Whose social values? Evaluating Canada’s ‘death of evidence’ controversy

With twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of science’s unfolding acceptance of the nature of scientific inquiry being value-laden, the persistent worry has been that there are no means for legitimate negotiation of the social or non-epistemic values that enter into science. The rejection of the value-free ideal in science has thereby been coupled with the spectres of indiscriminate relativism and bias in scientific inquiry. I challenge this view in the context of recently expressed concerns regarding Canada's death of evidence controversy. The worry, raised by Stathis Psillos, is that as constructivist accounts of science demoted the previously secure status of evidence for drawing justified conclusions in science, we were left with no rational delineation between the right and wrong values for science. The implication for the death of evidence controversy is that we may have no rational grounds for claiming that the Canadian Government is wrong to interfere with scientific enterprise. But he does offer another avenue for reaching the conclusion that the wrong social values are directing the current stifling of some sectors of Canadian science. Psillos draws from standpoint epistemologies to devise a salient defence of ‘valuing evidence’ as a universalizable social value. That is, government bodies ought to enable scientific research via adequate funding as well as political non-interference. In this paper, I counter that (i) non-epistemic values can be rationally evaluated and that (ii) standpoint epistemology’s universalizable standpoint provides an inadequate framework for negotiating social values in science. Regarding (i), I draw from the evidence-based medicine debate in philosophy of medicine and from feminist empiricist investigations into the science–values relationship in order to make the argument for empirically driven value arbitration. If social values can be rationally chosen in the context of justification, then we can have grounds for charging the Canadian leadership with being ‘at war with science’. (ii) I further argue that my recommended empiricist methodology is preferable to Psillos’s search for universalizable perspectives for negotiating social values in science because the latter method permits little more than the trivial conclusion that evidence is valuable to science.     

IN DEFENSE OF PUBLICS: PROJECTION,BIAS, AND CULTURAL NARRATIVES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION DEBATES

John H. Evans's recent book Morals Not Knowledge is a timely argument to recognize broader social and cultural factors that might impact what U.S. religious publics think about the relationship between science and religion and their attitudes toward science and/or religion. While Evans's focus is primarily on what can be classed as moral issues, this response argues that there are other factors that sit within neither the older epistemic conflict model approach nor a moral conflict model approach that also merit further investigation. There is a significant need for further research that examines the social, psychological, (geo)political, and broader cultural factors shaping people's social identities in relation to science and religion debates. When undertaking such research, we need to be wary of creating a binary between scholarly and public space discourse. Social scientific research in this field should be led by public perceptions, attitudes, and views, not by concepts or frameworks that we project onto them.     

THE QUR'AN,SCIENCE, AND THE (RELATED) CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM DISCOURSE

We discuss the special place of the Qur'an in the Muslim discourse in general and on science in particular. The Qur'an has an unparalleled influence on the Muslim mind, and understanding the Islamic treatise on science and religion must start from this realization. We explore the concept of science in the Islamic culture and to what extent it can be related to the Qur'an. Reviewing various Islamic discourses on science, we show how a simplistic understanding of the plan to adopt modern science within an Islamic revival program has been corrupted in the form of the theory of “scientific miraculousness of the Qur'an.” We assess and dismiss this theory but use it to show how a serious misunderstanding of the nature of modern science and a narrow view of the Qur'an has led to that embarrassingly popular yet misguided theory. We conclude by promoting a multiplicity of readings of the Qur'an and show that this allows for an enlightenment of one's interpretation of Qur'anic verses, using various tools at one's disposal, including scientific knowledge. We uphold Averroes's principle of “no possible conflict,” which can be used to persuade the Muslim public of a given idea not by proving that it can be found in the Qur'an but rather by showing that at least some readings of it are fully consistent with the given scientific theory.     

Trinh Thuan and The Intersection of Science and Buddhism

Trinh Thuan, professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, since 1976, has published a number of books over the years that have touched on topics in the science‐and‐religion discussion. This essay reviews these volumes in light of a recent book he coauthored with Matthieu Ricard, a monk in the Tibetan Mahayana tradition with previous background and training in the biological sciences. The shift is observed in Thuan's views from at one point being attracted to a form of theism based on inferences drawn from the anthropic principle to later being intrigued by Ricard's explanations of the cosmos based on Buddhist consciousness theories. Thuan's journey as a scientist seeking further understanding is a lesson to the religion‐and‐science dialogue that more of the world's religious traditions need to be engaged with their specificities so that what emerges is an expanded conversation.     

BARBOUR'S TYPOLOGIES AND THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE ON ISLAM AND SCIENCE

Abstract Despite various criticisms, Ian Barbour's fourfold classification of the possible relationships between religion and science remains influential. I compare Barbour's taxonomy with the theories of four authors who, in the last four decades, have addressed the relationship between science and religion from a Muslim perspective. The aim of my analysis is twofold. First, I offer a comparative perspective to the debate on science and Islam. Second, following Barbour's suggestion, I test the general applicability of his categories by comparing them with a discourse on science and religion that is not focused on Christianity. In the first section, I reconstruct Barbour's typologies, recalling some major objections to them, and arguing why despite the latter, Barbour's model is employed for the present analysis. I also reconstruct Barbour's parallel model for the relationships between different religions. In the second section, I reconstruct the discourse on science and religion developed by the Palestinian‐American scholar Ismail Raji al‐Faruqi. The third section is devoted to the ideas of the Persian‐American scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. In the fourth section, I examine the views of the Iranian author Mehdi Golshani. The fifth section reconstructs the theories of the Algerian author Nidhal Guessoum. In the final section, I argue that a generalized use of the “integration” concept to refer to the entire debate on Islam and science is unhelpful. While these positions do not appear to instantiate Barbourian integration of science and religion, they do move toward what Barbour (skeptically) describes as integration between religions.     

Measurement and Computational Skepticism

Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything, is wrong with these arguments. In the present paper we show that an analogous line of reasoning can be raised against the numerical measurement (i.e., numerical representation) of physical magnitudes, and we argue that this result is a reductio ad absurdum of the challenge to computational skepticism. We then use this reductio to get clearer about both (i) what's wrong with Putnam's and Searle's arguments against computationalism, and (ii) what can be learned about both computational implementation and numerical measurement from the shortcomings of both sorts of skeptical argument.     

POETIC NATURALISM: SEAN CARROLL,SCIENCE, AND MORAL OBJECTIVITY

Physicist Sean Carroll has developed a new theory of the fundamental nature of reality, which he calls “Poetic Naturalism,” with the stated goal of developing a theory of what is real that is consistent with the findings of natural science. Carroll claims to prove that morality cannot be seen as objectively true. This essay argues that Carroll's conclusion is not convincing; there is no good reason to reject moral objectivity within a purely naturalistic worldview.     

Becoming a philosopher: What Heidegger learned from Dilthey, 1919–25

Wilhelm Dilthey is, famously, an epistemological pioneer for a second, ‘human’ kind of science that ‘understands’ life as we live it, instead of ‘explaining’ things as we observe them. Even today, he is usually cited for his role in the Erklären–Verstehen debate. My article, however, follows Heidegger's suggestion that we make the existence of the debate itself the problem. Whether there are different sorts of entity, different reasons for studying them and different means for doing so – such issues raise questions about science itself, not just about how to do it better. Moreover, what sort of philosopher is competent to address such questions? Heidegger argues that Dilthey's later writings intimate that it must be one who thinks from the ‘standpoint of (historical) life itself.’ This issue, says Heidegger, is ‘alive’ in Dilthey but is continually short-circuited by his very traditional plan for a ‘Critique of Historical Reason.’ Dilthey's unsuccessful struggles to produce this Critique are his gift to us, however. They encourage us to explicitly reconsider, as Heidegger does not only in Being and Time but throughout his life, what Dilthey cannot: If philosophy, like all human practices, is historical to the core, what is it to ‘be’ philosophical, about science or anything else?     

Descartes as critic of Galileo's scientific methodology

Some philosophers of science suggest that philosophical assumptions must influence historical scholarship, because history (like science) has no neutral data and because the treatment of any particular historical episode is going to be influenced to some degree by one's prior philosophical conceptions of what is important in science. However, if the history of science must be laden with philosophical assumptions, then how can the history of science be evidence for the philosophy of science? Would not an inductivist history of science confirm an inductivist philosophy of science and a conventionalist history of science confirm a conventionalist philosophy of science? I attempt to resolve this problem; essentially, I deny the claim that the history of science must be influenced by one's conception of what is important in science — one's general philosophy of science. To accomplish the task I look at a specific historical episode, together with its history, and draw some metamethodological conclusions from it. The specific historical episode I examine is Descartes' critique of Galileo's scientific methodology.     

KAGAWA'S COSMIC PURPOSE AND MODERNIZATION IN JAPAN

Kagawa Tyohiko (1888–1960), who was a well known Christian leader and social reformer, is re‐evaluated from the perspective of a public philosophy, and as an example of the possibilities for collaboration and conflict between science and the religious humanities in East Asia. His last book, Cosmic Purpose, which appears to be a kind of natural theology, is analyzed from the perspective of the hidden topic of human evil. By considering Kagawa's deep religious sensibility and conscience, the book can be interpreted to reflect on the wrong directionality selected by modern Japan's leaders that resulted in the tragic war.     

THEOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE WARS: WHO OWNS HUMAN NATURE?

Lluís Oviedo examines in his article the current conflict over human nature and the role of the sciences in the debate, suggesting that there may be a role for theology to play as well. In this essay I examine and respond to some aspects of Oviedo's article and suggest that the nature of the conflict needs to be nuanced to understand it as a conflict not between scientific and philosophical/social‐scientific views of human nature but among scientists, social scientists, and philosophers over the role of science in thinking about human nature. I analyze some of the obstacles for theology's becoming involved and propose that thinking about what are distinctively theological questions as opposed to scientific ones may be an appropriate starting point.     

Three Questions about Minding God

Abstract. Gregory Peterson's Minding God does an excellent job of introducing the cognitive sciences to the general reader and drawing preliminary connections between these disciplines and some of the loci of theology. The book less successfully articulates how the cognitive sciences should impact the future of theology. In this article I pose three questions: (1) What semantics is presupposed in relating the languages of theology and the cognitive sciences? How do the truth conditions of these disparate disciplines relate? (2) What precisely does theology gain from what is central to cognitive science: the emphasis on information processing, inner representation, and the computer model of the mind? What exactly does cognitive science offer to theology beyond the now‐standard rejection of Cartesian dualism, the affirmation of an embodied mind, and the repudiation of reduction? (3) What can the cognitive sciences offer in tackling crucial questions in the theology‐science discussion such as divine agency and divine causation? Finally, I point to a possible begging of the question in the claim that cognitive science relates to theology because theology deals with meaning and purpose, and a particular interpretation of cognitive science grants more meaning and purpose to human beings than antecedent post‐Cartesian positions in the philosophy of mind.     

ON McCAULEY'S WHY RELIGION IS NATURAL AND SCIENCE IS NOT: SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS

Robert McCauley's Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not provides a summary interpretive statement of the standard model in cognitive science of religion, what I have previously called the HADD + ToM + Cultural Epidemiology model, along with a more general argument comparing religious cognition to scientific thinking and a novel framework for understanding both in terms of the concept of the maturationally natural. I here follow up on some observations made in a previous paper, developing them in light of McCauley's own response to my previous arguments.     

AFFIRMATIONS AFTER GOD: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND RICHARD DAWKINS ON ATHEISM

Abstract. In this essay, I compare the atheism of Friedrich Nietzsche with that of Richard Dawkins. My purpose is to describe certain differences in their respective atheisms with the intent of showing that Nietzsche's atheism contains a richer and fuller affirmation of human life. In Dawkins’s presentation of the value of life without God, there is a naïve optimism that purports that human beings, educated in science and purged of religion, will find lives of easy peace and comfortable wonder. Part of my argument is that this optimism regarding the power of objective science is subject to Nietzsche's criticism of Socrates and what he calls the “theoretical man.” As such, it fails in terms of providing a true affirmation of life in the godless world.     

SELF‐DECEPTION AND THE EXPERIENCE OF FICTION

Sartre's commentary on bad faith is the starting‐point for an exploration of self‐deception: what it is not, what it is, and whether it's always wrong. The proffered analysis of self‐deception parallels a certain theory of our experience of fiction. In essence, it is argued that the self‐deceiver creates a kind of fiction in which he is a character, a fiction that he nonetheless believes to be real.     

INSTABILITY AND DISSONANCE: PROVOCATIONS FROM SANDRA HARDING

Abstract. Sandra Harding's work is useful, not only as a critique of the scientific method and its epistemological constructs, but also in providing new energy and insights to the discussions about epistemology between theology and science. Feminist theory has been critical of the worldviews inherited from the Enlightenment. No longer is there one unambiguous way of knowing ourselves and the world around us, a single vision of reality. Feminist philosophers of science like Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway have redefined the scientific method and its analytic categories. They have contributed significantly to this discussion by moving the Enlightenment epistemological issues into the arena of politics and ethics. Feminist theory continues to remind us that what is important is not only how or what we know but what we do with that knowledge and how we use it.     

RELIGION IS EASY,BUT SCIENCE IS HARD … UNDERSTANDING McCAULEY'S THESIS

Robert N. McCauley's new book Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not (2011) presents a new paradigm for investigating the relationship between science and religion by exploring the cognitive foundations of religious belief and scientific knowledge. McCauley's contention is that many of the differences and disagreements regarding religion and science are the product of distinct features of human cognition that process these two domains of knowledge very differently. McCauley's thesis provides valuable insights into this relationship while not necessarily leading to a dismissive view of theology or religious belief. His paradigm allows the research lens to focus on cognitive differences in processing scientific versus religious information and the important role of automatic, unconscious, and intuitive cognitive processes in understanding both the natural and supernatural worlds.     

Scientists in the Swamp: Narrowing the Language–Practice Gap in Community Psychology

As a confluence of unique values and activities, the collective practice of community psychology is difficult to characterize in a simple way. Increasingly, however, professional contexts are laden with pressure to define any practice—from library work to medical interventions—in the orderly, compact language of traditional science. This trend has historically been resisted in the field by those sensing a fundamental lack of fit between the fluid, emergent aspects of community psychological practice and the fixed, precise language of classic science. In response to this “language–practice gap,” some have attempted to adapt the traditional language of science to better fit the field's practice, while others have explored alternative languages of practice seemingly more indigenous to the messy “swamp” of actual communities. While the former effort leaves some theoretical contradictions intact, the latter tends to discount scientific identity entirely. This paper proposes a potential step forward by resituating questions of disciplinary language and identity within a current philosophical discourse where the nature of social science itself remains sharply contested. This suggests shifting attention away from “should we be a science?” to “what kind of science might we be after all?”; in turn, alternative languages may be re‐cast as legitimate contributors to a kind of science more authentic to human communities—even a viable “science in the swamp.” One such language–philosophical hermeneutics—is presented as a particularly valuable supplement to traditional science. Illustrations highlight ways that hermeneutics may advance the formal language of the field towards a closer fit of what actually happens in practice, while preserving and even bolstering the empirical rigor and scientific identity of the field.