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[Poll #1001244]
Today, I was reading an essay by one Scott Atran on edge.org, wherein he criticized the modern movement among atheists (particularly Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris) against religion, and was surprised to see the following as the header of the first section:
...I really need to break that habit. I keep getting surprised by things I should expect.
Atran doesn't get it. (I bet that's why he objects to what Harris and Dennett are saying – they're working on different premises.) What Atran is doing here, with a single phrase, is denying the foundation of all science. To wit, naturalism.
Science operates on the principle of methodological naturalism. This does not mean that science assumes God doesn't exist, or demons don't exist, or hypnotism doesn't work, or herbal remedies, or any particular facts at all. This means that science assumes that facts exist. Science assumes that there are actual laws to the universe, and those laws always hold.
Let me explain what I mean. Suppose one of the consequences of Einstein's special relativity – that nothing may travel faster than light – were actually true. (It might actually be true, or might already be proven false – I'm not up on my latest physics research.) If this were true, then nothing could travel faster than light. Not anything – not you, not that glass of water, not the Starship Enterprise, not God, nothing. It would be true in the utterly, mindlessly absolute sense that dogma is supposed to be true. It would be as true when I did an experiment as when you did, or John C. Mather did. Even if one of us came up with a test that made it look like something traveled faster than light, nothing would have.
Did you start at that bit with the "not God" up there? Well, you shouldn't have. God gets no bye, under naturalism. Even if, say, we're ones and zeros in a computer program (or negative-ones, zeros, and ones), there's a universe with the computer running our program, and that universe operates under laws that are absolutely true. And they get no byes, either. The world is what it is, and won't be bargained with.
Atran wants science to concede that maybe on some days the Earth is flat, but who really knows – or, at least, wants scientists (atheists, rather) to concede this. It's not the whole of his argument, but it's his very first point of attack. But if it were true – if there were no such thing as truth – there would be no reason to do science at all.
Today, I was reading an essay by one Scott Atran on edge.org, wherein he criticized the modern movement among atheists (particularly Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris) against religion, and was surprised to see the following as the header of the first section:
(1) The Basic Irrationality of Human Life and Society.
...I really need to break that habit. I keep getting surprised by things I should expect.
Atran doesn't get it. (I bet that's why he objects to what Harris and Dennett are saying – they're working on different premises.) What Atran is doing here, with a single phrase, is denying the foundation of all science. To wit, naturalism.
Science operates on the principle of methodological naturalism. This does not mean that science assumes God doesn't exist, or demons don't exist, or hypnotism doesn't work, or herbal remedies, or any particular facts at all. This means that science assumes that facts exist. Science assumes that there are actual laws to the universe, and those laws always hold.
Let me explain what I mean. Suppose one of the consequences of Einstein's special relativity – that nothing may travel faster than light – were actually true. (It might actually be true, or might already be proven false – I'm not up on my latest physics research.) If this were true, then nothing could travel faster than light. Not anything – not you, not that glass of water, not the Starship Enterprise, not God, nothing. It would be true in the utterly, mindlessly absolute sense that dogma is supposed to be true. It would be as true when I did an experiment as when you did, or John C. Mather did. Even if one of us came up with a test that made it look like something traveled faster than light, nothing would have.
Did you start at that bit with the "not God" up there? Well, you shouldn't have. God gets no bye, under naturalism. Even if, say, we're ones and zeros in a computer program (or negative-ones, zeros, and ones), there's a universe with the computer running our program, and that universe operates under laws that are absolutely true. And they get no byes, either. The world is what it is, and won't be bargained with.
Atran wants science to concede that maybe on some days the Earth is flat, but who really knows – or, at least, wants scientists (atheists, rather) to concede this. It's not the whole of his argument, but it's his very first point of attack. But if it were true – if there were no such thing as truth – there would be no reason to do science at all.
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I do believe that there are understandable, quantifiable laws governing everything in the universe, and that these laws can be expressed mathematically, and can be understood by human minds. In that sense, I believe the universe to be rational.
I do not believe that humans will ever come to the point of knowing/understanding everything in the universe - there's simply too much to know, and the more we know, the farther we can see into the abyss of what we don't yet understand. This is tremendously exciting, and has led us to such wonderful concepts as feathered dinosaurs and dark matter (I still think that "dark matter" is the 21st century equivalent of "phlogiston", but I've been wrong often enough before not to put money on it).
I do not believe that the human mind is ever completely rational; we're far too connected with our chemical/instinctive/evolutionary irrational selves. The Angel's head is full of a logical, structured Heaven created from pure mathematics, but the Monkey is the one driving the body - into the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom, the grave. Until and unless we can put our brains into jars (or onto computer chips) and completely divorce our rational minds from our physical meat-bodies, we will never be entirely rational. So, in that sense, I do not think that the world is 100% rational - the space in our brains, and the way we act it out with each other, is part of the world, and that part can be wildly irrational.
So... yes, and no. :)
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Ooh, like! *adds to quote file*
As for the rest: I think we're in agreement. (; The world is rational, but it's rational like blackjack is rational – there's rules, and there's truths, but you even if you've got a good idea of the former you sure don't know the latter, and you're not even sure what the best strategy is with what you do know. And once the casino's plied you with three or four screwdrivers, you ain't playing with strategy anyway. :P
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It is all a matter of perception.
Even if your eyes are closed.
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Well, as far as what you think the world is, that's true. Everyone will have a different perception, with different gaps and (probably) different errors. But what I meant by "Is the world rational, yes" was that the theory was true.
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(I love that comic.)
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But I believe that, even if I can't lay down those laws with the same precision as physicists, those rules operate in rational ways. So, yes.
(If participation in the rule-making process rules out "rationality" as defined by you above, then in that case, I believe the universe is meta-rational. Turtles all the way up? ;-))
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(This may make me strange, given how many people believe exactly the opposite, but I find it difficult to imagine a universe where the fundamental laws aren't mathematically simple, like F = m·a. But then, I'm a naturalist. :P )
Late reply re: mathematical simplicity
Hypothetical example: Let's say that we were firmly and implacably convinced, since the days of our ancestors, that color influenced mass. (i.e., two spheres of the same material, density, and size had different masses based on observed color.) Then we'd have come up with a definition of mass that gradated it according to its place on the spectrum; and then our pretty and fundamental law would be F=m*a/k. (Along with gravity having a correcting factor, etc.) With just one change in definition the fundamental law cannot be reduced below three elements, instead of two. And who knows? Maybe we've made an error that would be similarly transparent to beings who didn't evolve with monkeybrain instincts, and really we're just defining time in such a stupid way that the best model is F=m (for some value of m infolded by d).*
Humanity self-selects for simpler answers -- and that's a good thing; see e.g. Galileo's heliocentrism vs. everyone else's geocentric models of epicyclic deferents. But the rules of the natural world didn't change when we described them differently. We just adjusted our model.
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* This is admittedly a stupid example. But you can see the difficulty, I hope, in coming up with a good one. Without being a Nobel Prize candidate.
Re: Late reply re: mathematical simplicity
Actually, I suppose I'm just saying I'm more optimistic than you are. It still could be that the universe has some consciousness under it all, but if it does, I'd lay you a thousand to one that if humanity – or any sentience – ever cracks the code, it'll be through developing a mathematical formulation that represents consciousness, just like humans developed a mathematical formulation representing forces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_%28spatial%29).