Why are "truth" and "reality" relevant to epistemological inquiry?

[anvi]

I mostly like the Vonnegut speech because of the writing.  The writing is magnificent.  

But I take him in that commencement speech to be making a point not about "science" or "religion" in the abstract, but about one implication of the "Copernican Revolution."  What Copernicus did was to reveal to us that, in fact, from the perspective of science, human beings really weren't at the center of the universe, and more, that we were rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  That realization can be quite perilous for us, because it can lead, when science does indeed master the secrets of nature and when the realization of the large-scale unimportance of human beings passes from being an abstract realization into something that informs our already often wayward human motives, then we can get things like the bomb.  I doubt Vonnegut thought his brother, a scientist, would ever drop bombs on people, or was even suggesting that most scientists would.  But the mere "truth" of the Copernican realization is probably not the stuff to build human hopes upon.  Hope, optimism, requires that, given what we now know, we set that "truth" aside when it comes to our treatment of others, and willfully embrace the "superstition" that human beings should be paramountly important to one another.  I think that point is a rather powerful one.  

[Mopsus]

Does humanity's position in the universe really have that much to do with how we treat each other? Sure, it might have been easier to make the case for humane treatment of one's fellow man back when men were widely believed to be some form of higher life, but did that really prevent people from acting badly toward one another? Nowadays, it might be harder to build a philosophical case for compassion, but that doesn't mean that people have starting treating each other like animals. Because we still have a basic sense of how we should treat each other, whether that is natural or learned, and I don't think that that's going to go away anytime soon, no matter how much we learn about man's "smallness" in relation to the universe.

Besides, humanity might not be at the center of the universe, but we are at the center of our universe (that is, the limited section of the world with which we interact), and I think that that's just as important.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

A lot to chew on here... I'll just add two things for now:

If you think about another example, it could be the whole Todd Akin thing; women have a natural way of shutting down a pregnancy that’s the result of ‘legitimate rape’. Even if we drop the phrase legitimate and just talk about rape in general, such an assertion is medically speaking, bullsh-t. But for him, given his views on abortion it is a ‘noble lie.’ For someone who thinks being gay is abhorrent, saying that’s it’s caused by demonic possession would also fit that classification. The cold, hard, ‘divorced from philosophy’ sciences from psychology, to behavioural studies, to genetics, to evolution and so on affirms that there is nothing wrong with me. It’s hokum that makes people believe there’s something the matter with them because they believe those who peddle it.

Yes but Afleitch that wasn't always the case and even now depends on time and circumstance. The reason why, for example, the APA dropped homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1971 had nothing to do with science strictly speaking. Even now in countries like Russia 'scientific' psychologists still diagnose it as one. So what's really important here?

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This is a common argument but, quite frankly, I think it's rubbish. It overexaggerates hugely the importance of ideas - especially abstract, scientific ones - in human affairs. I mean, whose worldview was changed by Copernicus or Gailleo? Surely not the illiterate peasantry who made the majority of the population in Renaissance Europe. Similarly whose worldview was changed by the splitting of the atom. Einstein and Bohr certainly but those who ordered the Enola Gay to drop its bombs? Besides it underestimates the ability of people to read into scientific developments their own individual interpretations. One only has to think of the amount of cracked interpretations of Quantum Mechanics there are out there. And can we be certain that the horrors of technocratic warfare showed the fallacy of the Enlightenment or did it just confirm the a priori conclusions of the likes of Adorno and Horkenheimer?

[Beet]

But whether we believe that mankind was created with certain rights, or that it is better for all of us to act as if it was, what difference does it make?

Because "All men were created equal" is more inspiring than "We should act as if all men were created equal." I know that sounds trivial and sarcastic, but it's not my intention to be with this one.

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Well, someone speaking in 1950 would have reached the opposite conclusion. I don't think we've seen the end of history yet nor have we seen the implications of secularism and modernism. The lessons today already look terribly different from what they looked like 50 years ago. It'll take another 200 years to really understand the impact of the industrial revolution, IMO.

[afleitch]

Yes but Afleitch that wasn't always the case and even now depends on time and circumstance. The reason why, for example, the APA dropped homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1971 had nothing to do with science strictly speaking. Even now in countries like Russia 'scientific' psychologists still diagnose it as one. So what's really important here?

To be fair, as an issue non heterosexual sexual behaviour was considered as just that; ‘behaviour’ and was therefore first approached by psychologists. Being approached from a heteronormative position and therefore being considered an ‘imbalance’ was entirely in keeping with the moral and ethical standards of the era that were strictly speaking, misogynist. In most jurisdictions, homosexuality was a criminal offense and therefore the initial studies involved people who were sent, by individuals or by the criminal justice system for ‘treatment.’ It was considered a disorder because society had already framed the discourse (and for some hundreds of years prior) It of course became apparent through study that it was merely a normal variation of human sexual orientation and therefore had, strictly speaking, nothing to do with psychology or psychiatry at all. The APA and other organisations technically didn’t need to comment on it at all as it lay entirely out with their field. Unless of course, your desire as an individual to classify gay people as having a mental disorder because the alternative was morally unpalatable leads you to maintain that stance. Which curiously is now in itself an area for study.

While it’s certainly taken a while to get to where we are today regarding LGBT people, what has been learnt cannot be ‘unlearnt’ or made ‘untrue’ unless it is subjugated to the whims of people who need to socially control other people. People who reject scientific understanding because they are uncomfortable with the social, ethical and moral (or amoral) implications of it are the new peddlers of both hokum and ‘noble lies.’ Because their world view is ordered in such a way that it runs against scientific understanding, then they have to resort to such methods. Therefore we have creationists who oppose evolutionary theory as being too nihilistic yet it is supported by multitudes of evidence, legislators think that women’s bodies work in ways that they in fact don’t work, gay people can change or be cured when we now know they can’t be, vaccines are bad or dangerous or are smokescreens for government control when the vaccination program has saved countless millions of lives and so on. That’s how this line of thinking operates in the 21st Century and it is truly, truly frightening.

[Mopsus]

Because "All men were created equal" is more inspiring than "We should act as if all men were created equal." I know that sounds trivial and sarcastic, but it's not my intention to be with this one.

I don't deny that the former is far more inspiring than the latter. I just don't think that that has translated into any practical difference in the application of each principle.

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Fair enough. I just hope that you wouldn't deny that treatment of women and ethnic minorities, in the United States at least, has improved significantly since it was written that "all men are created equal".

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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While I don't disagree with what you say, there's important part your missing here. Homosexuality was considered a disorder because of social discourse not because of science and stopped being one as soon as the social discourse began to change. Still suggests that what scientists think isn't actually as important as some people here make out...

[anvi]

Does humanity's position in the universe really have that much to do with how we treat each other? Sure, it might have been easier to make the case for humane treatment of one's fellow man back when men were widely believed to be some form of higher life, but did that really prevent people from acting badly toward one another? Nowadays, it might be harder to build a philosophical case for compassion, but that doesn't mean that people have starting treating each other like animals. Because we still have a basic sense of how we should treat each other, whether that is natural or learned, and I don't think that that's going to go away anytime soon, no matter how much we learn about man's "smallness" in relation to the universe.

Besides, humanity might not be at the center of the universe, but we are at the center of our universe (that is, the limited section of the world with which we interact), and I think that that's just as important.

No myth or worldview will guarantee that people will treat one another one way and not another, of course.  But the "basic sense of how we should treat one another" does not arise in a vacuum.  Though it does have some basis in our biology, it emerges largely out of upbringing and culture.  Our ability to make the bomb combined with our political ambitions at the time evidently made compassion for, in this case, Japanese civilians, a little too difficult for us.

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This is a common argument but, quite frankly, I think it's rubbish. It overexaggerates hugely the importance of ideas - especially abstract, scientific ones - in human affairs. I mean, whose worldview was changed by Copernicus or Gailleo? Surely not the illiterate peasantry who made the majority of the population in Renaissance Europe. Similarly whose worldview was changed by the splitting of the atom. Einstein and Bohr certainly but those who ordered the Enola Gay to drop its bombs? Besides it underestimates the ability of people to read into scientific developments their own individual interpretations. One only has to think of the amount of cracked interpretations of Quantum Mechanics there are out there. And can we be certain that the horrors of technocratic warfare showed the fallacy of the Enlightenment or did it just confirm the a priori conclusions of the likes of Adorno and Horkenheimer?

Illiterate peasants are often not the ones who get to make a country's big military or political decisions.  And I think this whole discussion is too stuck in abstract hypotheticals about what people do and don't "have" to think and which people "might" be persuaded by this or that.  Look, I'm a lot more sold on science than Vonnegut apparently was; modern surgical sciences saved what is left of my eyesight once and saved my life once, so personally, I trust science and humanism much, much more than I trust traditionally religious motivations.  And on top of that, I'm pretty intellectually compelled by sciences's method, its achievements and its value.  But, for all of that, the powers that modern science give us are not necessarily accompanied by a what large cross-sections of people could appreciate as a correspondingly compelling narrative about what we're supposed to use that power for.  And without that connection, the people who get to wield those powers might, perhaps, more easily use them for increasingly destructive ends. 

But then again, what the hell...maybe compassion is most of the time just too difficult for us under any circumstances. 

[Mopsus]

Does humanity's position in the universe really have that much to do with how we treat each other? Sure, it might have been easier to make the case for humane treatment of one's fellow man back when men were widely believed to be some form of higher life, but did that really prevent people from acting badly toward one another? Nowadays, it might be harder to build a philosophical case for compassion, but that doesn't mean that people have starting treating each other like animals. Because we still have a basic sense of how we should treat each other, whether that is natural or learned, and I don't think that that's going to go away anytime soon, no matter how much we learn about man's "smallness" in relation to the universe.

Besides, humanity might not be at the center of the universe, but we are at the center of our universe (that is, the limited section of the world with which we interact), and I think that that's just as important.

No myth or worldview will guarantee that people will treat one another one way and not another, of course.  But the "basic sense of how we should treat one another" does not arise in a vacuum.  Though it does have some basis in our biology, it emerges largely out of upbringing and culture.  Our ability to make the bomb combined with our political ambitions at the time evidently made compassion for, in this case, Japanese civilians, a little too difficult for us.

I agree that the way that we treat each other is at least partially due to our environment. I also believe that it is possible to build a culture of compassion and empathy rooted in humanism, rather than in metaphysics.

As to your point about the use of the bomb, I guess that the question is, If different people, living in a different time, and with a different philosophy, were given the opportunity to use it, would they have done so? I tend to think that, in most situations, they would have, given that it isn't as if destroying towns and murdering civilians was unknown to history up until that point. All that had changed was the efficiency with which it could be done. Which brings me back to my point about wrt that Vonnegut quote: if you have a problem with war (as everyone should), don't blame "science" for making better killing machines - blame the people who chose to use them.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Neither do scientists. Not really anyway. (Technology is not the same thing as science)

I agree with the rest anyway but I don't think you are understanding my argument. It's not that I think science is good or bad, I think science just is as is everything else that we attach labels to and that the influence of scientific ideas isn't as great as people think. It's questionable whether even Darwinian evolution - and Darwin was not the first btw to posit that the earth was millions of years old or that we descended from apes but he was the first to suggest a plausible theory of how that might be so - was a major cause in secularisation (rather than secularisation made Darwinism possible). Now of course there is a lot of opposition to Darwinism but that's because its associations and has it come to mean historically and culturally and not really in the theory itself.

[Insula Dei]

So, no 'history of ideas' for you, then?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

So, no 'history of ideas' for you, then?

No, history of ideas is very important within its particular sphere. But my particular history of ideas would involve more the popular conception of ideas rather than the ideas themselves (Hell, even popularizations of Newton were dumbed down). But hey, I'm a Historian/Anthropologist, so sue me.

[Insula Dei]

So, no 'history of ideas' for you, then?

No, history of ideas is very important within its particular sphere. But my particular history of ideas would involve more the popular conception of ideas rather than the ideas themselves (Hell, even popularizations of Newton were dumbed down). But hey, I'm a Historian/Anthropologist, so sue me.

Well, Gramsci would supposedly wholeheartedly agree.And if Antonio can live with something, I'm always willing to make allowances.

[DemPGH]

"Popularizing" of science goes way back, certainly to Elizabethan times - Thomas Digges popularized Copernicus by translating it to English and reducing the complex, opaque mathematics, or else eliminating it all together. Science is often reduced to make it accessible.

Vonnegut is a wonderful writer, although I have not read that much, but in the end he is a bitter man. I find the "science produced the nuclear weapon" argument the most reductive and simplistic of all. As if all the vaccines, technology, and advancements to knowledge that have made life easier and increased our understanding of what's around us have not resulted in immeasurable good.

Any movement that helps break the stranglehold that the Medieval and Renaissance church had on life is a good thing, IMO, and while science was not the only factor in that happening, it was crucial. Why? Because it gave people a new way to make knowledge, and it complete demystified the priests, the pope, and other charlatans. When all you know is what the pope tells you, your world is pretty much going to be so radically different from today that I really do not think people can fully understand it.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

"Popularizing" of science goes way back, certainly to Elizabethan times - Thomas Digges popularized Copernicus by translating it to English and reducing the complex, opaque mathematics, or else eliminating it all together. Science is often reduced to make it accessible.

Vonnegut is a wonderful writer, although I have not read that much, but in the end he is a bitter man. I find the "science produced the nuclear weapon" argument the most reductive and simplistic of all. As if all the vaccines, technology, and advancements to knowledge that have made life easier and increased our understanding of what's around us have not resulted in immeasurable good.

Any movement that helps break the stranglehold that the Medieval and Renaissance church had on life is a good thing, IMO, and while science was not the only factor in that happening, it was crucial. Why? Because it gave people a new way to make knowledge, and it complete demystified the priests, the pope, and other charlatans. When all you know is what the pope tells you, your world is pretty much going to be so radically different from today that I really do not think people can fully understand it.

You are vastly overestimating the power priests and official clergy had over the minds of people in that period.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course the middle ages was far more intellectually and artistically interesting than tends to be acknowledged anyway...

...and as is usually the case when something like that is the case, the reasons are entirely political.

[DemPGH]

"Popularizing" of science goes way back, certainly to Elizabethan times - Thomas Digges popularized Copernicus by translating it to English and reducing the complex, opaque mathematics, or else eliminating it all together. Science is often reduced to make it accessible.

Vonnegut is a wonderful writer, although I have not read that much, but in the end he is a bitter man. I find the "science produced the nuclear weapon" argument the most reductive and simplistic of all. As if all the vaccines, technology, and advancements to knowledge that have made life easier and increased our understanding of what's around us have not resulted in immeasurable good.

Any movement that helps break the stranglehold that the Medieval and Renaissance church had on life is a good thing, IMO, and while science was not the only factor in that happening, it was crucial. Why? Because it gave people a new way to make knowledge, and it complete demystified the priests, the pope, and other charlatans. When all you know is what the pope tells you, your world is pretty much going to be so radically different from today that I really do not think people can fully understand it.

You are vastly overestimating the power priests and official clergy had over the minds of people in that period.

Ugh. People might not have taken the clergy with them to the grocery store or to Dillard's, but we all know that the clergy is where they got their information from. Where else would it come from? Bill Nye? The lecture series I listen to in my office? The museum of natural history? Very few could even read!

What I am talking about is: World view as dictated by the information one has on hand, and that came from the clergy. What competitors did they have? They tolerated no dissent, evidenced by the fact that Galileo got a tour of the dungeon before he retired to a life of physics experiments, because physics did not contradict Holy Writ at that time. At that time the Earth stood still in the heavens because of a passage from Joshua. I've held works by Galileo in my hands that contained his handwriting - books in very prestigious special collections. I've read his letters - I know what the clergy was about in that era.

Of course the middle ages was far more intellectually and artistically interesting than tends to be acknowledged anyway...

...and as is usually the case when something like that is the case, the reasons are entirely political.

Haha, it's all politics - most assuredly religion, as in assuring that social, aristocratic hierarchy survives. But you are right - John Dee was one such interesting person. He was interested in quite literally everything, from real astronomy to alchemy to occult stuff.

I do not find the Medieval inclination to pump up Aristotle as the end-all be-all very appealing, and while I may find Renaissance knowledge really interesting, I surely do not desire to live in that time.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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I suggest reading this book and then coming back and talk on this topic. I too study Early Modern History and so I do like to at least pretend that I know what I'm talking about.

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The people and various folk beliefs. One of the great tension of pre-industrial Europe from the Early Middle ages is on is the conflict between 'intellectual' religion of the higher and literate clergy and the dominant folk beliefs which while related to the religio-theological assumptions of the clergy very much had a life of their own including a lot of Pagan survivals. Read: Any book on popular religion or culture of the period. I've already recommended one, Here's another.

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19th Century Mythological bollocks written by a Radical Atheist at the height of the controversy over The Origin of Species. Again, Real History please, not mythology.

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This fact is shown by absolutely nothing you have said. The boundaries between 'science' and 'religion' were hardly clearcut in this period anyway. What's your opinion on, to take an obvious example, this for instance?

[DemPGH]

Gully, the bit on Galileo is just plain wrong. Maurice Finocchiaro is a mainstream academic who will set you straight on Galileo. The Church gave Galileo the benefit of the doubt until he published A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Then they shut him down, they threatened him with torture multiple times (how dare anyone suggest otherwise), and moreover to the point at hand, when Copernicus published The Revolutions, it contained an apology that said that what Copernicus was saying was not "really" true, but just helped mathematicians understand certain complexities. 

The other bit of your post concerns events in the 17th century when all those left wing political religious groups rose up. I'm talking about the times before that. Will you also claim that Galileo's abjuration statement was made up by 19th century atheists? Your post is a very bad lot of church-apologizing.

Of course I have read Keith Thomas. I never said there were not cults, magicians, pious hoaxers, and pagans wandering around. I mentioned John Dee to Al. John Dee dabbled in everything. He's fascinating. But cult nonsense could never compete with the Latin Church.

Read Daston, Park, Gallison, and Finocchiaro to start with.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt concerning Gailleo (which isn't my area) but there are a few things to add...

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I never made any reference to left-wing religious groups (and their influence has mostly been exaggerated anyway and besides to call them left-wing is anachronistic) rather my point was that these folk beliefs existed independently of the church and authority. What people believed and what they were told to believe were two very different things as always although there was a great deal of ambiguity and overlap between the two, as there is now for that matter (though the nature of intellectual authority and society has changed in all sorts of dramatic ways).

I don't see my post as church-apologizing rather there needs to be, when it comes to the human past, a much more nuanced view than the one you are arguing for here. That the Church was an authoritian and despotic institution is not a thesis I would argue against.

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A Latin Church which was not pre-dominant in large parts of Europe at that time, including in the land of John Dee. Of course, Dee was highly influenced by Renaissance Humanist views of science (not to mention Hermeticism!) which had pseudo-Graeco-Roman (and sometimes not pseudo) roots and thus 'pagan'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm reasonably sure that the term 'Renaissance' should under no circumstances be used unironically.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ditto 'Enlightenment', of course.

[minionofmidas]

Let's be fair here. The Catholic Church accepted the fact that the earth rotates around the sun, contrary to the Book of Joshua, a mere 28 years after it was scientifically proven.

The only issue is that Galilei was more than a hundred years dead and buried by then. Indeed the straight Copernican system - which Galilei believed in - was actually falsifiable by the time he was submitted to the first degree (ie explicitly told he might conceivably be tortured.)

[The Mikado]

Ditto 'Enlightenment', of course.

Absolutely.  By the way, has anyone read The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers by Curtis White?  It's a powerful little book calling for a revival of the values of artistic Romanticism and continental philosophy against the tide of empiricism and materialism of the sciences.

[Torie]

So, no 'history of ideas' for you, then?

No, history of ideas is very important within its particular sphere. But my particular history of ideas would involve more the popular conception of ideas rather than the ideas themselves (Hell, even popularizations of Newton were dumbed down). But hey, I'm a Historian/Anthropologist, so sue me.

Don't social norms and science have an ongoing "conversation" with one another as it were, as some science insight leaches into the culture, changing over time social norms, which changed social norms in turn bring some other scientific concept into vogue (e.g., Darwinism), and on and on we go?  And sometimes changing tastes or programs creates an economic demand for science to come up with something, and then that something starts affecting culture in other ways (to, wit the printing press because of the demand for the cheap printing of indulgences, and then suddenly it gets cheap for folks to buy books relatively speaking, and suddenly you start getting an educated and emerging upper middle class, etc.)?