Andy Smarick wrote a blurb in National Review titled "Intelligent Discussion" bemoaning the recent defeats to the teaching of ID in the legislature. His thesis is that a watered down version of ID that ruffles fewer feathers (pays lip service to evolution, doesn't make ridiculous and easily disprovable claims like a young Earth) would have received a better reception from the courts and the scientific community.
He proceeds to describe his arguments in favor of the teaching of ID, claiming that "speculation" and the introduction of non-scientific theories in science classes are well established practices, consistent with the "principles of public education". Many examples follow.
Finally, he ends up saying that even if we disregard all these arguments, there is still an argument to be made for introducing morality into science, and ID does this.
I sent him a response, which is pasted below (pasted in blue text).
Your arguments show a lack of understanding of science.
Science is the study of natural phenomena. It's based on certain assumptions about the nature of reality - that entities behave according to their natures, that they are constrained by natural laws, by cause and effect. Your God is outside these laws. He is not subject to, or the subject of science.
If science ever does come across an "intelligent designer" it will immediately try to explain the designer in natural terms. The designer must be subject to the same laws as we are, and is simply a more advanced scientist. We can beat him at his own game, if we advance our science far enough. If he is not subject to the same laws, then he is God, and science has nothing to say about him because the scientific method does not apply to him, beacause he breaks the assumptions that science is based on.
This is why ID does not belong in the science class. It does not provide "valuable insight", that is, it does not provide scientific insight, regardless of value.
Neither does ID plug any holes in science. This talk of "complexity" and how it came to be is silly. Science is all about reducing complexity - finding simple explanations that boil down mountains of observations and data into a sparse, elegant explanation.
Newton saw that apples fall. So do oranges, pears, grapefruit, feathers, rain, lots of other stuff. To add complication to complication, stuff way up there in the sky like planets and moons appears to fall too, but in a different, more "complex" way. Newton reduced all this complexity to a simple law, which explains why all these very different objects behave the way they do. No need for a designer, the complexity is gone.
Science is full of examples like this. Every one of us starts off as a single cell, the zygote. This cell multiplies into the billions and billions of others that make up our bodies. Somehow all these cells know where to end up -- the cells at the tip of my finger know that's where they're supposed to be, and not in my liver. They know what they're supposed to be doing -- my finger cells don't try to produce digestive enzymes and my liver cells don't try to build an epidermis. Yet all these cells came from one cell, and all this information about the different cells in my present body, where they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to do, was crammed into that single cell. How could this be? There isn't enough DNA there to carry all this information.
The ID-type explanation would posit an intelligence behind it all. It would claim you need a designer to explain complexity of this order. But science didn't assume that, and now we know that this apparent complexity can be quite easily brought about by a few signaling molecules.
ID in evolution is the end of evolution. ID says that the complexity in life today cannot be explained by the operation of natural laws -- we must look to an outside creator. If science assumes this position, it grinds to a halt. The next step would then be to investigate this outside creator, which cannot be done since he is outside science.
But if science doesn't choose to plug the hole with an outside creator, if science lets it remain a hole accurately representing the limits of current knowledge, and if science methodically attempts to plug the hole with the discovery of new knowledge, then it actually has a hope of getting somewhere. Equally importantly, in the process, it remains science and does not become theology.
Defending the teaching of ID on the basis of "principles of public education" is all well and good. I have no problem whatsoever with teaching ID in the classroom. But it belongs in the theology curriculum, because that it what it deals with -- supernatural explanations. If you don’t buy into the ID beliefs but want to examine them critically you can put it in a class on creation theories or anthropology or whatever. Just not in a science classroom, because it’s not science.
You make light of your poor understanding of science by referring to it as "special" and "sacrosanct". It is special only in that it takes its authority from the natural world and what we can learn of it through observation and experimentation. It is immune to opinions, pleas, Ph.D.s and sarcasm. It is not sacrosanct at all, it is quite the opposite. Science is all about asking questions and contesting theories. It takes nothing as sacrosanct, it questions everything. Repeatedly.
The only requirement is that your questions be framed within the scientific framework, that they make sense scientifically. You, and other ID proponents rebel against that - they want science to go outside its domain, to be what it is not. If you are unhappy with science, you are perfectly free to create a new field of study called "non-science" and create your own rules for it. If your field is as productive as science, you will no doubt gain respect and people will start taking your ID theories seriously.
Finally, you claim that if nothing else, ID should still be put in the science classroom because it introduces an element of morality. This statement has enormous implications.You are in effect stating that you believe that ID does lead to God, that God is the only source of morality. This, in my opinion, is why evolution proponents see all arguments in favor of ID as being politically driven despite any and all protests that ID isn’t creationism.
There are many people who do not believe in God, but who live moral lives and break no laws. Trying to foist your religious version of morality on them is long established practice undertaken by every proselytizing religion. No doubt it will continue for the foreseeable future. But please don’t be upset if others don’t buy into your religion, if they choose to be guided morally by something other than your god. Please don’t be upset if they point out that this is a political discussion. You rightly perceive science as being a threat to your beliefs, and you want neutralize, or at least minimize it by hitting the source -- the science classroom. There are other people just as determined to keep you out. You outnumber them, but they have an advantage too. Science itself works with them and against you.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Friday, March 03, 2006
And it's altruism now ....
In my post Cooperation and Intelligence I mentioned this eagerness of (some) scientists to draw wild, fanciful and far-reaching conclusions about human behavior from a few miniscule observations.
Another example is this story from AP about babies being innately wired for altruism, based on behavioral studies.
Briefly, this is what was done. The researcher performed certain tasks in view of the subjects (18 month old toddlers). The researcher periodically made deliberate mistakes. The subjects saw the mistakes and attempted to help. They did not help if it appeared that the researcher made the same move on purpose -- only if it looked like a genuine mistake.
Now the researcher calls this "pro-social motivation" which sounds like a reasonable explanation. However, the article goes on to refer to the behavior as "altruistic" several times. It is not clear if the word comes from the researcher or from sloppy reporting. However, the article reports that anthropologist Joan Silk (presumably someone with scientific credentials) wrote in the accompanying review that the babies were motivated by "empathy".
There is a big stretch between "pro-social motivation" and "altruism", or even "empathy". According to Merriam Webster:
Altruism
1. unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
2. behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species
The first is a complex concept that requires language and an analytical mind to understand. These toddlers were pre-verbal; clearly they were not capable of such analysis. The second definition is simplistic and when applied to this case.
Defining a behavior as "not beneficial to" the subject assumes that you know exactly and completely what is beneficial to the subject.
The simpler and sparser explanation is that the behavior is directed towards gaining acceptance in the social group - perhaps by evoking appreciation and benevolence from others. Babies are somewhat helpless, and tend to rely on care from adults. In the same way that their disproportionately huge eyes look cute to adults, such behavior also evokes positive feelings from the social group. In other words, it is a survival trait for a social animal. There is nothing altruistic about it.
I can see how someone might call this "pro-social motivation." Calling it "altruism", on the other hand, makes absolutely no sense.
Another example is this story from AP about babies being innately wired for altruism, based on behavioral studies.
Briefly, this is what was done. The researcher performed certain tasks in view of the subjects (18 month old toddlers). The researcher periodically made deliberate mistakes. The subjects saw the mistakes and attempted to help. They did not help if it appeared that the researcher made the same move on purpose -- only if it looked like a genuine mistake.
Now the researcher calls this "pro-social motivation" which sounds like a reasonable explanation. However, the article goes on to refer to the behavior as "altruistic" several times. It is not clear if the word comes from the researcher or from sloppy reporting. However, the article reports that anthropologist Joan Silk (presumably someone with scientific credentials) wrote in the accompanying review that the babies were motivated by "empathy".
There is a big stretch between "pro-social motivation" and "altruism", or even "empathy". According to Merriam Webster:
Altruism
1. unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
2. behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species
The first is a complex concept that requires language and an analytical mind to understand. These toddlers were pre-verbal; clearly they were not capable of such analysis. The second definition is simplistic and when applied to this case.
Defining a behavior as "not beneficial to" the subject assumes that you know exactly and completely what is beneficial to the subject.
The simpler and sparser explanation is that the behavior is directed towards gaining acceptance in the social group - perhaps by evoking appreciation and benevolence from others. Babies are somewhat helpless, and tend to rely on care from adults. In the same way that their disproportionately huge eyes look cute to adults, such behavior also evokes positive feelings from the social group. In other words, it is a survival trait for a social animal. There is nothing altruistic about it.
I can see how someone might call this "pro-social motivation." Calling it "altruism", on the other hand, makes absolutely no sense.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Cooperation and Intelligence
BBC featured an article reporting a new brain imaging study by James Rilling at Emory University in Atlanta, which suggests that mutual cooperation is neurologically a rewarding experience.
Other researchers, including Robert Sussman of Washington University in St. Louis, and Agustin Fuentes at Notre Dame promptly used the results to support their theory that human intelligence developed partly as a response to predation -- that is, as a defence mechanism. Being victims of predation forced early humans to develop intelligence and cooperation.
This smells of propaganda to me. Quoting from the article:
The idea of "Man the Hunter" is the generally accepted paradigm of human evolution, says Sussman.
"It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive and a natural killer," Sussman told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis. "In fact, when you really examine the fossil and living non-human primate evidence, that is just not the case."
Sussman falls into the trap of Judeo-Christian ideology while simultaneously denying it. He says "no, man isn't the nasty aggressive natural killer that Judeo-Christian ideology says he is". But the very idea of aggressiveness being bad comes from Judeo-Christian ideology (Blessed are the meek ...).
If you remove the emotional and religious overtones, the bare facts are -- yes, humans can be aggressive, this was an evolutionary advantage for them. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil about it, it is a matter of context. If you are hungry and you are hunting to feed yourself and your family, you had better be aggressive and a "natural killer" or your genes are consigned to the dead-end bin of evolution. Aggressiveness untempered by intelligence and reason is bad, but then, anything is. Even Judeo-Christian belief doesn't say it's wrong to hunt to feed yourself, and how can one expect to hunt successfully if he's not aggressive?
It is stupid to treat "aggressiveness" as some primal urge that is devoid of context and must sooner or later manifest in the wholesale slaughter of his own kind. If you make this a biological claim, you are over-reaching yourself, and science. Biology and evolution make no such claim. In fact, if aggressiveness was such an urge, humans would have wiped themselves out hundreds of thousands of years ago. If you make this a philosophical claim, you have admitted to the Judeo-Christian ideology of viewing man as inherently evil.
The mistake is in the definition. It is not necessary to deny the Judeo-Christian ideology by denying aggressiveness altogether, and pretending that man evolved as a meek, defenceless critter, hard-wired to be nice to each other, who managed to survive the predators only by developing intelligence and cooperation in the face of peril. This is not science; it is rubbish.
For the most part most people manage to retain both aggressiveness and reason, using each when it is needed. Why should it have been any different in the past? Proto-humans didn't have as much intelligence or self-control as we do, but does that mean they had no sense at all? Animals like lions make a business of being aggressive, but even they don't fight each other constantly to extinction.
Returning to the science ...
Yes, there are imaging studies that seem to show that cooperation can be a pleasant experience for humans, but cooperation is needed just as much for hunting large animals (as primitive humans undoubtedly did) as it is to avoid being hunted by other predators.
Humans are social, so it should come as no surprise that they can cooperate with each other, or if indeed there are brain circuits that reward or facilitate such behavior. If this were not so, humans would live solitary lives like tigers do, instead of living in groups or packs as we did.
But what this says about the evolution of intelligence is harder to pin down. People can cooperate in aggression, such as armies do today, or a group of hunters taking down a mammoth or large deer have done in the past. They may cooperate in defense or other survival activities. They may cooperate in simply living together as a group without killing each other. They may co-operate in actively exchanging goods and services with each other. Sussman seems to think that cooperation in defense is more important than any other kind. Why, I don't know. He offers no evidence for it.
Many animals show these kinds of "cooperation" without evolving intelligence as humans did. I don't know of any evidence to suggest that the threat of predation was unique to humans. The authors make some reference to Australopithecus Afarensis as an "edge species" living in trees and on the ground, and say that edge species are typically prey rather than predators. This sounds simplistic to me.
The beginnings of human intelligence pre-date the building of predator-proof dwellings or the control of fire. Huddling together in the dark or climbing a tree aren't very effective ways to counter a hungry cat. In fact, the beginnings of intelligence and the appearance of Homo coincide with the development of tools, many of which are hunting and skinning tools. It seems far more likely to me that humans learned to cooperate by hunting large prey together, and success in this endeavor gave them confidence to ward off attacks by predators.
It is near impossible to say without further evidence what specifically the tools were used for first. Were they first used at night by groups of humans to defend themselves against an intruding predator, as the article suggests? Or were they first used to hunt down prey, with cooperative hunting evolving as a necessary step to hunting larger game?
The article mentions that chimpanzees typically do not help each other when one of them is in danger. Humans very often do. How this difference evolved is really a matter of speculation, until some better evidence comes in. Their view seems to be that cooperation is hard-wired into the brain and we can't help ourselves, we just have to help other humans in danger. Speaking for myself, I feel no such imperative. Whatever desire I do have to help others comes from my education and beliefs, things I have learned rather than was born with.
But if we are speculating, it seems unlikely to me that the urge to cooperate manifested some dark night when a saber-tooth crept into a cave occupied by humans. More likely, the instinct for self-preservation took over and it was each Homo for himself.
On the other hand, a group of proto-humans who had built tools for hunting, learned to hunt together as a group and take down large prey which was too powerful for any single individual, would be just what was needed that dark night to overcome their instinct to run, and say "hey, we can take this kitty". In other words, cooperation in defense probably came after cooperation in offense.
But this is all speculation and I have proved no more than the authors of the article did.
The only thing we know for sure is that some ape like critters learned to walk on their hind feet, freeing their hands. Those hands had opposable thumbs and were good for working with. These critters learned to make tools. They were smarter than other apes, but they were not men.
For hundreds of thousands of years, they pretty much stayed that way. Then, various "evolutionary pressures" such as climate and the availability of food persuaded them to start walking, and they spread over much of the world. In time, some of them developed into modern humans. There is no evidence I am aware of that this change was triggered by any new type of predation. There is plenty of evidence that bigger brains accompanied a high-meat diet, which came mostly from hunting.
Social living promoted the development of language, culture and similar things that are learned. But there is no evidence that hunter-gatherer groups were any different in composition 40,000 years ago among Homo Sapiens than 1.5 million years ago, among Homo Habilis. So I can't imagine that it was social living and cooperation alone that was responsible for the growth of the brain and intelligence.
Brain imaging research is often used as a tool by people with an agenda to support their own pet hypotheses. It carries a heavy weight of religious and social implications. Nevertheless, it is annoying to see scientists jump on to the bandwagon and subvert science to their own political viewpoints.
Other researchers, including Robert Sussman of Washington University in St. Louis, and Agustin Fuentes at Notre Dame promptly used the results to support their theory that human intelligence developed partly as a response to predation -- that is, as a defence mechanism. Being victims of predation forced early humans to develop intelligence and cooperation.
This smells of propaganda to me. Quoting from the article:
The idea of "Man the Hunter" is the generally accepted paradigm of human evolution, says Sussman.
"It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive and a natural killer," Sussman told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis. "In fact, when you really examine the fossil and living non-human primate evidence, that is just not the case."
Sussman falls into the trap of Judeo-Christian ideology while simultaneously denying it. He says "no, man isn't the nasty aggressive natural killer that Judeo-Christian ideology says he is". But the very idea of aggressiveness being bad comes from Judeo-Christian ideology (Blessed are the meek ...).
If you remove the emotional and religious overtones, the bare facts are -- yes, humans can be aggressive, this was an evolutionary advantage for them. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil about it, it is a matter of context. If you are hungry and you are hunting to feed yourself and your family, you had better be aggressive and a "natural killer" or your genes are consigned to the dead-end bin of evolution. Aggressiveness untempered by intelligence and reason is bad, but then, anything is. Even Judeo-Christian belief doesn't say it's wrong to hunt to feed yourself, and how can one expect to hunt successfully if he's not aggressive?
It is stupid to treat "aggressiveness" as some primal urge that is devoid of context and must sooner or later manifest in the wholesale slaughter of his own kind. If you make this a biological claim, you are over-reaching yourself, and science. Biology and evolution make no such claim. In fact, if aggressiveness was such an urge, humans would have wiped themselves out hundreds of thousands of years ago. If you make this a philosophical claim, you have admitted to the Judeo-Christian ideology of viewing man as inherently evil.
The mistake is in the definition. It is not necessary to deny the Judeo-Christian ideology by denying aggressiveness altogether, and pretending that man evolved as a meek, defenceless critter, hard-wired to be nice to each other, who managed to survive the predators only by developing intelligence and cooperation in the face of peril. This is not science; it is rubbish.
For the most part most people manage to retain both aggressiveness and reason, using each when it is needed. Why should it have been any different in the past? Proto-humans didn't have as much intelligence or self-control as we do, but does that mean they had no sense at all? Animals like lions make a business of being aggressive, but even they don't fight each other constantly to extinction.
Returning to the science ...
Yes, there are imaging studies that seem to show that cooperation can be a pleasant experience for humans, but cooperation is needed just as much for hunting large animals (as primitive humans undoubtedly did) as it is to avoid being hunted by other predators.
Humans are social, so it should come as no surprise that they can cooperate with each other, or if indeed there are brain circuits that reward or facilitate such behavior. If this were not so, humans would live solitary lives like tigers do, instead of living in groups or packs as we did.
But what this says about the evolution of intelligence is harder to pin down. People can cooperate in aggression, such as armies do today, or a group of hunters taking down a mammoth or large deer have done in the past. They may cooperate in defense or other survival activities. They may cooperate in simply living together as a group without killing each other. They may co-operate in actively exchanging goods and services with each other. Sussman seems to think that cooperation in defense is more important than any other kind. Why, I don't know. He offers no evidence for it.
Many animals show these kinds of "cooperation" without evolving intelligence as humans did. I don't know of any evidence to suggest that the threat of predation was unique to humans. The authors make some reference to Australopithecus Afarensis as an "edge species" living in trees and on the ground, and say that edge species are typically prey rather than predators. This sounds simplistic to me.
The beginnings of human intelligence pre-date the building of predator-proof dwellings or the control of fire. Huddling together in the dark or climbing a tree aren't very effective ways to counter a hungry cat. In fact, the beginnings of intelligence and the appearance of Homo coincide with the development of tools, many of which are hunting and skinning tools. It seems far more likely to me that humans learned to cooperate by hunting large prey together, and success in this endeavor gave them confidence to ward off attacks by predators.
It is near impossible to say without further evidence what specifically the tools were used for first. Were they first used at night by groups of humans to defend themselves against an intruding predator, as the article suggests? Or were they first used to hunt down prey, with cooperative hunting evolving as a necessary step to hunting larger game?
The article mentions that chimpanzees typically do not help each other when one of them is in danger. Humans very often do. How this difference evolved is really a matter of speculation, until some better evidence comes in. Their view seems to be that cooperation is hard-wired into the brain and we can't help ourselves, we just have to help other humans in danger. Speaking for myself, I feel no such imperative. Whatever desire I do have to help others comes from my education and beliefs, things I have learned rather than was born with.
But if we are speculating, it seems unlikely to me that the urge to cooperate manifested some dark night when a saber-tooth crept into a cave occupied by humans. More likely, the instinct for self-preservation took over and it was each Homo for himself.
On the other hand, a group of proto-humans who had built tools for hunting, learned to hunt together as a group and take down large prey which was too powerful for any single individual, would be just what was needed that dark night to overcome their instinct to run, and say "hey, we can take this kitty". In other words, cooperation in defense probably came after cooperation in offense.
But this is all speculation and I have proved no more than the authors of the article did.
The only thing we know for sure is that some ape like critters learned to walk on their hind feet, freeing their hands. Those hands had opposable thumbs and were good for working with. These critters learned to make tools. They were smarter than other apes, but they were not men.
For hundreds of thousands of years, they pretty much stayed that way. Then, various "evolutionary pressures" such as climate and the availability of food persuaded them to start walking, and they spread over much of the world. In time, some of them developed into modern humans. There is no evidence I am aware of that this change was triggered by any new type of predation. There is plenty of evidence that bigger brains accompanied a high-meat diet, which came mostly from hunting.
Social living promoted the development of language, culture and similar things that are learned. But there is no evidence that hunter-gatherer groups were any different in composition 40,000 years ago among Homo Sapiens than 1.5 million years ago, among Homo Habilis. So I can't imagine that it was social living and cooperation alone that was responsible for the growth of the brain and intelligence.
Brain imaging research is often used as a tool by people with an agenda to support their own pet hypotheses. It carries a heavy weight of religious and social implications. Nevertheless, it is annoying to see scientists jump on to the bandwagon and subvert science to their own political viewpoints.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Science and religion
This article by Robert Winston talks about his book The Story of God, which apparently addresses the conflict between science and God, and attempts to explain why many scientists believe in God.
I submitted the following response to his article (in blue text, copied below).
Religion and science do contradict each other. The fundamental contradiction is epistemological - between a methodology which seeks to discover natural explanations for phenomena through observation, theorization, falsification (the scientific method), and one which requires the believer to take on faith certain revealed truths. This contradiction may stay hidden until the conclusions of one system flat-out contradict the conclusions of the other (such as evolution versus creationism), but it exists nevertheless at all levels, for every single premise that we hold. Even if science and religion come to the same conclusion on some particular issue, the significance of the conclusion is different. Science will accept it as working knowledge but continually question it, test it, refine it; while religion has no choice but to accept revealed "truth" as dogma. There is no questioning the authority of God.
For these reasons, many scientists are atheists. They see the contradiction between the two approaches to knowledge, and make their choice. Not all scientists are atheists, because humans have a built in mechanism for living with contradictions -- compartmentalization. It is possible for us to be scientists and to continue to look for natural explanations in our field of study, but to compartmentalize away our religious beliefs by holding them as a thing apart, not subject to scientific scrutiny. This is promoted by the common belief (even among many scientists) that morality is the exclusive domain of religion, thus forcing a compartmentalization at that level. Those who do see a connection between science and morality often see it in a negative way, such as by translating biological half-truths like "survival of the fittest" to a social context.
This reflects largely a failure of modern philosophy, since it is the domain of philosophy, not science, to deal with questions of morality. Philosophy has failed to come up with a system that takes into account the epistemology of science and the immense body of knowledge it has produced, and to build from this a credible system which addresses all the needs of man, including the need for a moral code. At least, it has failed to come up with a system that convinces any large number of people. The best we have is a mish mash of (often self-contradictory) beliefs we call secular humanism.
Many scientists who see a clear contradiction between their work and any religious belief opt for atheism, and look for secular sources to guide them on questions of morality. Others separate the two contexts and follow different sets of rules in their work and personal lives. In other words, they compartmentalize.
I submitted the following response to his article (in blue text, copied below).
Religion and science do contradict each other. The fundamental contradiction is epistemological - between a methodology which seeks to discover natural explanations for phenomena through observation, theorization, falsification (the scientific method), and one which requires the believer to take on faith certain revealed truths. This contradiction may stay hidden until the conclusions of one system flat-out contradict the conclusions of the other (such as evolution versus creationism), but it exists nevertheless at all levels, for every single premise that we hold. Even if science and religion come to the same conclusion on some particular issue, the significance of the conclusion is different. Science will accept it as working knowledge but continually question it, test it, refine it; while religion has no choice but to accept revealed "truth" as dogma. There is no questioning the authority of God.
For these reasons, many scientists are atheists. They see the contradiction between the two approaches to knowledge, and make their choice. Not all scientists are atheists, because humans have a built in mechanism for living with contradictions -- compartmentalization. It is possible for us to be scientists and to continue to look for natural explanations in our field of study, but to compartmentalize away our religious beliefs by holding them as a thing apart, not subject to scientific scrutiny. This is promoted by the common belief (even among many scientists) that morality is the exclusive domain of religion, thus forcing a compartmentalization at that level. Those who do see a connection between science and morality often see it in a negative way, such as by translating biological half-truths like "survival of the fittest" to a social context.
This reflects largely a failure of modern philosophy, since it is the domain of philosophy, not science, to deal with questions of morality. Philosophy has failed to come up with a system that takes into account the epistemology of science and the immense body of knowledge it has produced, and to build from this a credible system which addresses all the needs of man, including the need for a moral code. At least, it has failed to come up with a system that convinces any large number of people. The best we have is a mish mash of (often self-contradictory) beliefs we call secular humanism.
Many scientists who see a clear contradiction between their work and any religious belief opt for atheism, and look for secular sources to guide them on questions of morality. Others separate the two contexts and follow different sets of rules in their work and personal lives. In other words, they compartmentalize.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Intelligent falling
Looking back at my previous post on Intelligent Design, I now realize that the situtation is much more serious than I had imagined. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Bad evolution teachers
Some evolution teachers are worse than the creationists.
The debate continues over the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to introduce pro-intelligent-design language in evolution courses.
While I’m sorry for the students in Kansas who will have to put up with this nonsense, I don’t think it’s such a big deal. Intelligent Design (ID) is not science, as these students will find out soon enough. Science has a built-in mechanism for sorting out trash, and ID beliefs will be laughed out of existence sooner or later. I don’t see serious potential here for any harm to science, because the two things – evolution and ID – are so obviously different. One is science, the other is a fairy tale. It is like forcing teachers to add a line saying “Some people believe that the moon is made of green cheese” to all astronomy courses. Such a statement can’t corrupt astronomy. ID will harm only the few people who believe in it, and those of them who take up science as a career will grow out of it soon enough.
Contrast this with a report I read on science teachers who voluntarily make their evolution courses more palatable to the creationists. Here are some quotes:
"Why not be fair and teach all sides?" a few teachers asked. Others argued that intelligent design, which says the Earth is so complex that a higher power must have created it, is more than religion. The designer doesn't have to be God, they insisted - it might be an alien.
Science is concerned with objectivity, not fairness. How are these teachers qualified to teach science, if they do not understand something so basic?
"What I point out to them is that we're not trying to convert them in any way, but they should be able to understand the tenets of organic evolution," said Brian Vorwald, chairman of the grades 6-12 science department for the Sayville school district.
In class, he notes that there are other evolution theories, including discredited ones such as the flat Earth school of thinking, and the kids laugh when he tells them, "There's absolutely something you're being taught this year in science that will be disproven."
This guy wants to turn his class into a joke. He’s going to teach the kids evolution, but he doesn’t want them to take his class seriously because like the flat earth theories, the stuff he’s going to teach them will turn out to be a lie. Why bother to learn? Why bother to deal with uncertainties?
Over the years, science teacher John Cunningham has fashioned a weapon of sorts for students who fear he will force them to accept evolution, counter to the wishes of their parents or religious leaders.
"What you're supposed to do is to attack theories all the time," the Brooklyn teacher said he tells them. "If you believe any of your theories, you've turned science into a religion."
This is the worst of all. This man is destroying science more surely than a truckload of Kansas School Board members could ever hope to.
He wants science to be devoid of truths. This process started with empiricists like Karl Popper, who declared that nothing can ever be proved, you can only disprove things.
This is an absurd position to take and there is nothing scientific about it. If nothing can be proven, I cannot prove that I am sitting here writing this. I cannot prove that I exist. Why should I bother to do anything? Popper would probably say that I should bother because "I exist" is a pretty good theory, seeing it hasn't been falsified since I was born.
The problem with this approach is that it equates “truth” with “omniscience,” which is not a quality possible to humans. You can never be sure of anything because it’s always possible that your senses lie, because reality might be an elaborate hoax perpetrated on humanity by some superior intelligence. You would have to be God to know the truth. Heck, you can’t even disprove anything, because disproving it requires that you trust your mind’s ability to reason logically, and how can you do that? You can’t even prove that you exist or that you have a mind to reason with.
Fortunately, although many scientists pay lip service to Popper, they don’t take him very seriously when it comes to science. I have not come across any scientific papers with the footnote “conclusions predicated on the unproven theory that I exist and wrote this paper”. This kind of belief is taken for granted as a matter of course.
Humans are not omniscient, and demanding infallibility from them is insane. When you say “nothing can ever be proven to be true” you are in fact demanding superhuman knowledge from humans, which we do not have and never shall have, and then as a consequence taking away all certainty from us.
Certainty to a human being simply means "this is true to the best of my knowledge today". This is all that science, philosophy, or any branch of study that claims to investigate reality can come up with, and this is all they will EVER come up with. Expecting or wanting any level of certainty higher than this is foolish, because it is the desire for the superhuman and supernatural, which is not science’s concern.
Why is this important? Because truth is important to humans. Staying alive requires that we act (eat, drink, work, sleep, etc.). Actions require beliefs, not theories. You must believe that your body needs food and water to survive. You can play intellectual games if you wish and convince yourself that this is just a theory, but you had better act as if it were the truth. Every action we take implies the truth "I accept that I exist, and I interact with a world that also exists." Every second that we are alive and acting, we are assuming something or the other to be the truth. We simply cannot avoid this need for truth.
When a science teacher says “If you believe any of your theories, you've turned science into a religion” he is telling his students that science offers no truths, only perpetually contested theories. If that were so, science would be a game which had nothing useful to offer to the student or to the world. But the facts point otherwise.
The problem is that he is talking about scientific theories, but applying the biblical standard of truth to them. For him, "true" means: true regardless of my current knowledge, true regardless of human limitations of knowledge, true in a non-human sense, because humans will always have limited knowledge and never be omniscient. This kind of truth is not possible to humans, it can only be revealed by a superhuman being, and even then cannot be proven to be true. It must be accepted on faith.
A theory is simply an explanation that covers some facts. Facts are observations, or deductions made from observations. Facts, by themselves, are useless to us. In order to live, we have to generalize, or theorize. To illustrate:
1. It’s a fact that this big red truck ran over Mrs. X and killed her. I saw it happen.
2. It’s a fact that this blue car knocked down Mr. Y and broke his leg. I saw it happen.
3. These facts tell me it's not safe to stand in front of the red truck and the blue car. Unfortunately, there are another billion vehicles out there whose potential for causing injury I have not observed, and there do not know as fact. I must now theorize.
4. I theorize that all heavy moving objects are dangerous. I can’t actually prove this, except by theorizing a whole bunch of other stuff first about mass and momentum and force and the squishiness of humans, but I can easily disprove it if my experiment shows just one person emerging unscathed after being crushed by a truck.
However, whether I can prove it or not, it doesn’t take a scientist, far less a smart one, to figure out that this theory is true. Not many of us would be willing to test it by standing in front of moving trucks. We just know it’s true, and damn Popper and his uncertainty.
Not all theories are this simple and easy to test. But a theory is useful only if it’s true, and to the extent that science has been useful to humanity (think aeroplanes, computers, refrigerators), it is based on true theories. True theories are not rare in science; they are common as dirt. That is, if you do not demand superhuman standards of truth.
What does it mean when it's said that scientists continually question a theory or keep testing it? It simply means that "truth" for scientists is not biblical truth, to be accepted on faith. It means that a scientist will continue to test his theory against new data, new situations, to discover the limits of his theory. This is how theories are refined, and sometimes overturned. It simply means that any theory is valid within certain parameters, with certain assumptions, and scientists constantly try to discover what those boundaries are. For any theory, you can add "true, given these assumptions and under these conditions". That does not negate truth, it circumscribes it.
We need to stop being ashamed of claiming to know the truth. We mustn’t fall into the trap that this makes us no better than the Bible thumpers, who also claim to know the truth. We mustn’t fall into the trap that there is some “perfect” truth only knowable to an omniscient being, a la Popper. In order to do this, we must take back the word “truth” from those who have hijacked it – and re-establish what it really means: a conclusion reached logically from available pertinent facts, which is not contradicted by any other conclusion reached logically from available pertinent facts. This is simple and adequate. Let's not confuse the issue by saying stuff like "facts which are observable and not revealed" or "not reaaaally truuuly proven since I'm not God and I don't know everything". Science can define what it is without having to add that it's not religion and not the philosophy of some guy with too much time on his hands.
The debate continues over the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to introduce pro-intelligent-design language in evolution courses.
While I’m sorry for the students in Kansas who will have to put up with this nonsense, I don’t think it’s such a big deal. Intelligent Design (ID) is not science, as these students will find out soon enough. Science has a built-in mechanism for sorting out trash, and ID beliefs will be laughed out of existence sooner or later. I don’t see serious potential here for any harm to science, because the two things – evolution and ID – are so obviously different. One is science, the other is a fairy tale. It is like forcing teachers to add a line saying “Some people believe that the moon is made of green cheese” to all astronomy courses. Such a statement can’t corrupt astronomy. ID will harm only the few people who believe in it, and those of them who take up science as a career will grow out of it soon enough.
Contrast this with a report I read on science teachers who voluntarily make their evolution courses more palatable to the creationists. Here are some quotes:
"Why not be fair and teach all sides?" a few teachers asked. Others argued that intelligent design, which says the Earth is so complex that a higher power must have created it, is more than religion. The designer doesn't have to be God, they insisted - it might be an alien.
Science is concerned with objectivity, not fairness. How are these teachers qualified to teach science, if they do not understand something so basic?
"What I point out to them is that we're not trying to convert them in any way, but they should be able to understand the tenets of organic evolution," said Brian Vorwald, chairman of the grades 6-12 science department for the Sayville school district.
In class, he notes that there are other evolution theories, including discredited ones such as the flat Earth school of thinking, and the kids laugh when he tells them, "There's absolutely something you're being taught this year in science that will be disproven."
This guy wants to turn his class into a joke. He’s going to teach the kids evolution, but he doesn’t want them to take his class seriously because like the flat earth theories, the stuff he’s going to teach them will turn out to be a lie. Why bother to learn? Why bother to deal with uncertainties?
Over the years, science teacher John Cunningham has fashioned a weapon of sorts for students who fear he will force them to accept evolution, counter to the wishes of their parents or religious leaders.
"What you're supposed to do is to attack theories all the time," the Brooklyn teacher said he tells them. "If you believe any of your theories, you've turned science into a religion."
This is the worst of all. This man is destroying science more surely than a truckload of Kansas School Board members could ever hope to.
He wants science to be devoid of truths. This process started with empiricists like Karl Popper, who declared that nothing can ever be proved, you can only disprove things.
This is an absurd position to take and there is nothing scientific about it. If nothing can be proven, I cannot prove that I am sitting here writing this. I cannot prove that I exist. Why should I bother to do anything? Popper would probably say that I should bother because "I exist" is a pretty good theory, seeing it hasn't been falsified since I was born.
The problem with this approach is that it equates “truth” with “omniscience,” which is not a quality possible to humans. You can never be sure of anything because it’s always possible that your senses lie, because reality might be an elaborate hoax perpetrated on humanity by some superior intelligence. You would have to be God to know the truth. Heck, you can’t even disprove anything, because disproving it requires that you trust your mind’s ability to reason logically, and how can you do that? You can’t even prove that you exist or that you have a mind to reason with.
Fortunately, although many scientists pay lip service to Popper, they don’t take him very seriously when it comes to science. I have not come across any scientific papers with the footnote “conclusions predicated on the unproven theory that I exist and wrote this paper”. This kind of belief is taken for granted as a matter of course.
Humans are not omniscient, and demanding infallibility from them is insane. When you say “nothing can ever be proven to be true” you are in fact demanding superhuman knowledge from humans, which we do not have and never shall have, and then as a consequence taking away all certainty from us.
Certainty to a human being simply means "this is true to the best of my knowledge today". This is all that science, philosophy, or any branch of study that claims to investigate reality can come up with, and this is all they will EVER come up with. Expecting or wanting any level of certainty higher than this is foolish, because it is the desire for the superhuman and supernatural, which is not science’s concern.
Why is this important? Because truth is important to humans. Staying alive requires that we act (eat, drink, work, sleep, etc.). Actions require beliefs, not theories. You must believe that your body needs food and water to survive. You can play intellectual games if you wish and convince yourself that this is just a theory, but you had better act as if it were the truth. Every action we take implies the truth "I accept that I exist, and I interact with a world that also exists." Every second that we are alive and acting, we are assuming something or the other to be the truth. We simply cannot avoid this need for truth.
When a science teacher says “If you believe any of your theories, you've turned science into a religion” he is telling his students that science offers no truths, only perpetually contested theories. If that were so, science would be a game which had nothing useful to offer to the student or to the world. But the facts point otherwise.
The problem is that he is talking about scientific theories, but applying the biblical standard of truth to them. For him, "true" means: true regardless of my current knowledge, true regardless of human limitations of knowledge, true in a non-human sense, because humans will always have limited knowledge and never be omniscient. This kind of truth is not possible to humans, it can only be revealed by a superhuman being, and even then cannot be proven to be true. It must be accepted on faith.
A theory is simply an explanation that covers some facts. Facts are observations, or deductions made from observations. Facts, by themselves, are useless to us. In order to live, we have to generalize, or theorize. To illustrate:
1. It’s a fact that this big red truck ran over Mrs. X and killed her. I saw it happen.
2. It’s a fact that this blue car knocked down Mr. Y and broke his leg. I saw it happen.
3. These facts tell me it's not safe to stand in front of the red truck and the blue car. Unfortunately, there are another billion vehicles out there whose potential for causing injury I have not observed, and there do not know as fact. I must now theorize.
4. I theorize that all heavy moving objects are dangerous. I can’t actually prove this, except by theorizing a whole bunch of other stuff first about mass and momentum and force and the squishiness of humans, but I can easily disprove it if my experiment shows just one person emerging unscathed after being crushed by a truck.
However, whether I can prove it or not, it doesn’t take a scientist, far less a smart one, to figure out that this theory is true. Not many of us would be willing to test it by standing in front of moving trucks. We just know it’s true, and damn Popper and his uncertainty.
Not all theories are this simple and easy to test. But a theory is useful only if it’s true, and to the extent that science has been useful to humanity (think aeroplanes, computers, refrigerators), it is based on true theories. True theories are not rare in science; they are common as dirt. That is, if you do not demand superhuman standards of truth.
What does it mean when it's said that scientists continually question a theory or keep testing it? It simply means that "truth" for scientists is not biblical truth, to be accepted on faith. It means that a scientist will continue to test his theory against new data, new situations, to discover the limits of his theory. This is how theories are refined, and sometimes overturned. It simply means that any theory is valid within certain parameters, with certain assumptions, and scientists constantly try to discover what those boundaries are. For any theory, you can add "true, given these assumptions and under these conditions". That does not negate truth, it circumscribes it.
We need to stop being ashamed of claiming to know the truth. We mustn’t fall into the trap that this makes us no better than the Bible thumpers, who also claim to know the truth. We mustn’t fall into the trap that there is some “perfect” truth only knowable to an omniscient being, a la Popper. In order to do this, we must take back the word “truth” from those who have hijacked it – and re-establish what it really means: a conclusion reached logically from available pertinent facts, which is not contradicted by any other conclusion reached logically from available pertinent facts. This is simple and adequate. Let's not confuse the issue by saying stuff like "facts which are observable and not revealed" or "not reaaaally truuuly proven since I'm not God and I don't know everything". Science can define what it is without having to add that it's not religion and not the philosophy of some guy with too much time on his hands.
More on torture
My earlier post on torture provoked a strong reaction where it was originally posted. Most of it negative, coming from people who didn't see why I had to talk about ideas so much. Their assertion was that war was a matter of going out and kicking butt, and torture (when necessary) is a form of that, so what's the big deal.
Here are some followup posts. I realize that the element of continuity is lost when I post only what I said, but for the most part my statements were complete enough in themselves to not need a whole lot of context. My posts are copied below in blue text.
The war in Iraq is a war of ideas. In the end, all wars are wars of ideas. The day the US loses the moral high ground is the day the US will cease to matter in world affairs.
We are in a unique position today, with the most powerful economy and military in the world. This is not a happy accident. It is because the US constitution has for over 200 years protected us from the tyranny of the state, promoting freedom and respect for individual rights, creating an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to do their best because they hope with some confidence that their efforts will be rewarded. More than anything else, the US is an idea, which has grown strong because it is an idea that appeals to whatever is good and virtuous in so many of us, in the US and abroad.
We are at war right now. The state of war, in itself, is an emergency which suspends many of the considerations and decencies of ordinary life. I am all for winning the war, but I do not believe that any war can be won in the long term by sacrificing our own values. I do not care how many people we have to kill to win this war and to minimize our own losses. Killing people has a long tradition in democracies. Our laws have always allowed killing in self-defense, in legal executions. Wars are a matter of self-defense; we don’t fight to conquer new territories any more.
But our laws don’t allow torture. This is because the majority of people see a difference between killing and torture. While there are many situations where killing might be necessary, there are none which have proven to be a convincing justification for torture, as can be seen in the political will of our people and the actions of our courts. We have fought many wars since independence. All wars involve cruelties and excesses at times, but we have a long tradition of punishing our own soldiers when they cross the line between fighting a war, and the rape, murder and plunder of a conquered people.
This is what separates us from those whom we fight. This is why decent people can continue to support us, and continue to call our cause moral after we leave mangled corpses and smoking craters in the enemy’s countryside.
Now there is a group of people who would change this. They claim that war justifies anything, that it breaks all the rules, and that there is no imperative other than to survive. This is happy talk. It makes some of us feel all tough and manly and hairy-chested. It makes some of us feel like we have a unique grasp on reality, which the pansy bleeding heart types can’t begin to see from the comfort of their armchairs.
This is not true. History shows us that militaries might win battles, but only ideas can win wars. The war against terrorism is a war of ideas, which pits civilization against barbarism. We can’t win it by becoming barbarians ourselves.
There is justification for being flexible, for adapting to the new conditions of war. No one before our times has faced the possibility of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. This is a new situation, which perhaps calls for new rules. Many of us see this, which is why there is talk of permitting torture in specific conditions. That was the purpose of my original post – to try to define why, when and how a free country could permit itself to resort to torture.
This post produced more protests. The points raised were:
1. Ideas don't win wars, the military does. Our military has won every war for us, with the exception of Vietnam, and that was because "we failed in our will". Ideas are useful for making the peace easier, but they are not necessary.
2. Why do we talk about whether or not to torture. Perhaps waterboarding isn't torture. Shouldn't we instead talk about what kind of activities are perhaps extreme questioning and what crosses the line into torture?
My response is copied below (in blue text).
Vietnam is no exception. As you say, Vietnam was lost because we lost our will, which is another way of saying that we lost the war of ideas against our own populace. You can lose Iraq the same way, when the majority of Americans decide that they no longer support the war. The war of ideas is not fought just against the enemy; it is first fought within your own culture, among your own people, to acquire and sustain their support for your military actions. If you break their trust, if you ignore their values, if you resort to torture when your own people consider torture contemptible and uncivilized, then you lose their backing for your military adventures. The reaction of many Americans when the Abu Ghraib pictures were published is a small indication. We DID lose some of our resolve for this war when we saw those pictures. We lose more every day with the trickle of news stories about yet more torture revelations. If you think it is only among the liberals who were anti-war anyway, then you are kidding yourself.
I do not talk about what constitutes torture because it is stupid and unnecessary. Talking about specifics before you agree on principles is a waste of time. It is the quickest way to bog down a discussion with intricacies and irrelevancies while you avoid looking at the big picture that is staring at you in the face.
We are not lacking a definition of torture. Our courts have been establishing what is torture and what is proper interrogation in police lockups, holding cells and jails for decades. It is disingenuous to claim that the argument is about what constitutes torture. We know it already. Do you want to know if a particular method is proper interrogation or torture? Apply it to a suspect being questioned in police custody, then ask a court to rule on it.
If we were talking about things that our courts allow on our own prisoners and suspects, there would be no need for this discussion. The fact is, we are definitely talking about stuff beyond that allowed by the courts. Whether it is waterboarding, or pulling out fingernails with pliers is irrelevant. You can argue about degrees of pain and anxiety and humiliation, which are all subjective things. The real question is, IF there is a pressing need to obtain critical information about an imminent attack on the country, AND torture is the only way to obtain it, THEN do we allow torture or not?
If we do, then the form the torture takes is immaterial to this discussion. I presume it will be a form that is EFFECTIVE, and if effective means pulling out fingernails and crushing testicles, so be it. I presume it will be SUPERVISED, because my country is doing it with my tacit consent, and I want my country to be accountable to me and to every person that votes. I presume it will be RECORDED, so there is no argument about what happened, so we can say at the end “this is what happened, this is why it happened, this is why we think it was necessary."
Here are some followup posts. I realize that the element of continuity is lost when I post only what I said, but for the most part my statements were complete enough in themselves to not need a whole lot of context. My posts are copied below in blue text.
The war in Iraq is a war of ideas. In the end, all wars are wars of ideas. The day the US loses the moral high ground is the day the US will cease to matter in world affairs.
We are in a unique position today, with the most powerful economy and military in the world. This is not a happy accident. It is because the US constitution has for over 200 years protected us from the tyranny of the state, promoting freedom and respect for individual rights, creating an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to do their best because they hope with some confidence that their efforts will be rewarded. More than anything else, the US is an idea, which has grown strong because it is an idea that appeals to whatever is good and virtuous in so many of us, in the US and abroad.
We are at war right now. The state of war, in itself, is an emergency which suspends many of the considerations and decencies of ordinary life. I am all for winning the war, but I do not believe that any war can be won in the long term by sacrificing our own values. I do not care how many people we have to kill to win this war and to minimize our own losses. Killing people has a long tradition in democracies. Our laws have always allowed killing in self-defense, in legal executions. Wars are a matter of self-defense; we don’t fight to conquer new territories any more.
But our laws don’t allow torture. This is because the majority of people see a difference between killing and torture. While there are many situations where killing might be necessary, there are none which have proven to be a convincing justification for torture, as can be seen in the political will of our people and the actions of our courts. We have fought many wars since independence. All wars involve cruelties and excesses at times, but we have a long tradition of punishing our own soldiers when they cross the line between fighting a war, and the rape, murder and plunder of a conquered people.
This is what separates us from those whom we fight. This is why decent people can continue to support us, and continue to call our cause moral after we leave mangled corpses and smoking craters in the enemy’s countryside.
Now there is a group of people who would change this. They claim that war justifies anything, that it breaks all the rules, and that there is no imperative other than to survive. This is happy talk. It makes some of us feel all tough and manly and hairy-chested. It makes some of us feel like we have a unique grasp on reality, which the pansy bleeding heart types can’t begin to see from the comfort of their armchairs.
This is not true. History shows us that militaries might win battles, but only ideas can win wars. The war against terrorism is a war of ideas, which pits civilization against barbarism. We can’t win it by becoming barbarians ourselves.
There is justification for being flexible, for adapting to the new conditions of war. No one before our times has faced the possibility of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. This is a new situation, which perhaps calls for new rules. Many of us see this, which is why there is talk of permitting torture in specific conditions. That was the purpose of my original post – to try to define why, when and how a free country could permit itself to resort to torture.
This post produced more protests. The points raised were:
1. Ideas don't win wars, the military does. Our military has won every war for us, with the exception of Vietnam, and that was because "we failed in our will". Ideas are useful for making the peace easier, but they are not necessary.
2. Why do we talk about whether or not to torture. Perhaps waterboarding isn't torture. Shouldn't we instead talk about what kind of activities are perhaps extreme questioning and what crosses the line into torture?
My response is copied below (in blue text).
Vietnam is no exception. As you say, Vietnam was lost because we lost our will, which is another way of saying that we lost the war of ideas against our own populace. You can lose Iraq the same way, when the majority of Americans decide that they no longer support the war. The war of ideas is not fought just against the enemy; it is first fought within your own culture, among your own people, to acquire and sustain their support for your military actions. If you break their trust, if you ignore their values, if you resort to torture when your own people consider torture contemptible and uncivilized, then you lose their backing for your military adventures. The reaction of many Americans when the Abu Ghraib pictures were published is a small indication. We DID lose some of our resolve for this war when we saw those pictures. We lose more every day with the trickle of news stories about yet more torture revelations. If you think it is only among the liberals who were anti-war anyway, then you are kidding yourself.
I do not talk about what constitutes torture because it is stupid and unnecessary. Talking about specifics before you agree on principles is a waste of time. It is the quickest way to bog down a discussion with intricacies and irrelevancies while you avoid looking at the big picture that is staring at you in the face.
We are not lacking a definition of torture. Our courts have been establishing what is torture and what is proper interrogation in police lockups, holding cells and jails for decades. It is disingenuous to claim that the argument is about what constitutes torture. We know it already. Do you want to know if a particular method is proper interrogation or torture? Apply it to a suspect being questioned in police custody, then ask a court to rule on it.
If we were talking about things that our courts allow on our own prisoners and suspects, there would be no need for this discussion. The fact is, we are definitely talking about stuff beyond that allowed by the courts. Whether it is waterboarding, or pulling out fingernails with pliers is irrelevant. You can argue about degrees of pain and anxiety and humiliation, which are all subjective things. The real question is, IF there is a pressing need to obtain critical information about an imminent attack on the country, AND torture is the only way to obtain it, THEN do we allow torture or not?
If we do, then the form the torture takes is immaterial to this discussion. I presume it will be a form that is EFFECTIVE, and if effective means pulling out fingernails and crushing testicles, so be it. I presume it will be SUPERVISED, because my country is doing it with my tacit consent, and I want my country to be accountable to me and to every person that votes. I presume it will be RECORDED, so there is no argument about what happened, so we can say at the end “this is what happened, this is why it happened, this is why we think it was necessary."
Friday, November 25, 2005
On torture
Torture is again in the news. In particular, I am referring to the amendment proposed by Sen. John McCain to a Pentagon spending bill which would outlaw cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of (foreign) prisoners suspected of being involved in terrorism.
The amendment was approved in the Senate by 90-9 vote last month. Vice President Cheney opposed the amendment, asking for an exception for CIA personnel holding a suspect who may have knowledge of an imminent terror attack. The White House has said that President Bush will veto the bill if the amendment is included.
Naturally, this is a topic that provokes strong emotions. With the context Abu Ghraib and the steady stream of torture accusations against the US trickling through the media in the months since, torture has become a hot issue, generating a frenzy of news reports, op-eds and blog activity.
Reading through some of them I am struck by the intense concern with particulars. Discussions run on and on about whether waterboarding is a form of torture, or whether severe temperature changes produce pain or only discomfort, etc. It reminds me of public reaction when the Abu Ghraib stories broke, with some people calling it torture, and others labeling it more of a "college prank". Even today, the mainstream press usually refers to the incidents as "prisoner abuse" which I guess is somewhere between pranks and torture in seriousness.
What is largely ignored, at least in my experience, is the need to address the issue in moral terms. In a free society, the ultimate justification for anything must be on moral grounds. By "moral grounds" I do not mean religion - I mean the secular values on which the society is based.
Coming across one such thread recently, I posted a response which is pasted below (in blue text).
There are several different issues here that need to be separated. Trying to address them all simultaneously just confounds the discussion.
1. First is the definition of torture, since there seem to be many arguments whether a given method of inflicting pain/anxiety constitutes torture.
2. The second is whether torture is a valid means of interrogation in a civilized society, even if only applied in “extreme” cases.
3. The third is the question of defining “extreme” cases, which I’m sure is also a controversial question.
These questions boil down to a discussion of the ethics of emergencies. Before we get into that, it would be good to remind ourselves why civilized people generally don’t condone torture. After all, we are not that many generations removed from public floggings, drawing and quartering, burning at stakes, impalement, crucifixion, etc.
I think the reason for this change in our outlook is moral and philosophical. As we have learned to value life and individual rights through the course of history, torture stands ever more in stark, barbaric contrast to what we value. The most fundamental of our rights, from which all other rights flow, is the right to our own body. Torture is the simplest and most direct assault possible on the body. It is a cold-blooded, premeditated assault on life itself, perceived by the victim in its most primitive biological sense, through the pain/pleasure mechanism.
As we grow more civilized, it becomes impossible for a person who truly values life to torture anyone. Most of us are capable of inflicting pain on others or even killing them, if we are sufficiently provoked. But these are range of the moment things, which accompany extreme anger or fear, and which cannot be sustained. Someone who can actually torture another person over a prolonged period is not the norm in our society.
As we grow more civilized, it becomes impossible for a society based on individual rights to condone torture. There is too great a dichotomy between professing to support an ideal while simultaneously destroying it. Something has to give, and it is usually the good that gives way to evil, because the good requires effort and force of will to sustain, while evil doesn’t take much more effort than looking the other way.
I say these things not because I am absolutely and irrevocably opposed to torture in all cases, but as a reminder to highlight the seriousness of what we are discussing. With this context, I’ll move on to the substance of the discussion, which I think is a discussion of the ethics of emergencies. The “emergency” in this case, is the terrorist, more specifically the terrorist who has information regarding a plot which could claim many lives.
The word “terrorism” has acquired a weight of meaning and emotion beyond that contained in dictionaries, so it would be good to define what makes this crime special, deserving of special laws.
The justification commonly proposed is that of numbers, and large numbers at that. After all, we don’t currently have laws permitting torture to extract information from someone who might know the identity of a serial killer. A serial killer can kill at most a couple dozen people, which while being a respectable number for the average suicide bomber, falls far short of the destructive potential of a 9/11 type attack. Therefore, to state the threat more specifically, we are defining “terrorist” in this case as someone participating in or having knowledge of a plot that could cause fatalities in the hundreds or thousands. This is the nature of the “emergency”.
There are arguments made that torture is not an effective means to extract information, since people will say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear in order to avoid more pain. Having no personal experience of torture, I cannot definitely say if this is true or not, but it sounds logical. However, it can’t be denied that there is always the possibility of coming across the odd individual who pours out a full and truthful account of the plot, once the thumbscrews are applied.
The “emergency” then, applies to very specific people - people who have knowledge of plots of the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, and there is no other way to prevent an imminent attack.
Naturally, torture cannot be used as a blanket screening technique to apply on every suspected terrorist on the offchance that he might have some vital information. We don’t round up our own population and cart them off to police stations for questioning on the offchance that some of us may have some information pertaining to a crime. Since we enjoy a protection under law not afforded to a foreign populace under wartime conditions, it becomes important to make sure that the process is adequately supervised.
This brings me to the crux of the ethics argument. Since, in my opinion, torture is antithetical to the morals and principles of a free and civilized society, it cannot be allowed to remain a dirty little secret. Such secrets, which are not so secret, undermine the moral fabric of our society and take away the things that make us strong - our confidence in our ideals, our feeling of being on the side of what is good and right, our willingness to fight for the things we value.
If and when the situation calls for torture, it becomes our responsibility as a nation, which we acknowledge and live with openly. No more excuses. No more nonsense from our leaders on the lines of “It didn’t happen! Oops - well, it might have. Hmm ... looks like some isolated cases may have occurred but I can assure you we are looking into it and the guilty will be punished.” And then six months later, “we don’t torture people”.
In other words, if you want to create a legal mechanism for torture, then you must also create a legal mechanism for responsibilities and oversight. Here are some suggestions:
1. Torture must be authorized from the top by senior officials. You cannot encourage the rank and file to indulge themselves on the sly to “soften up” the target, then disclaim all responsibility from the top.
2. Torture must be supervised and recorded. A senior officer must be present at all times. A complete audio/video record must be maintained to account for every second of the prisoner’s time in custody, and presented to appropriate courts and officials when necessary.
3. Torture must be reviewed by an external agency. You cannot have one agency such as the CIA be judge, jury and executioner. The simplest course would be to put it under the review and jurisdiction of the courts.
If these things are done, then those of us who believe in torture as a valid recourse in extreme emergencies will have a leg to stand on and defend our principles to ourselves and to the world. If not, we will continue to be confronted by a trickle of Abu Ghraibs, with their accompanying chorus of contemptible waffling, denials and excuses from our leaders.
The amendment was approved in the Senate by 90-9 vote last month. Vice President Cheney opposed the amendment, asking for an exception for CIA personnel holding a suspect who may have knowledge of an imminent terror attack. The White House has said that President Bush will veto the bill if the amendment is included.
Naturally, this is a topic that provokes strong emotions. With the context Abu Ghraib and the steady stream of torture accusations against the US trickling through the media in the months since, torture has become a hot issue, generating a frenzy of news reports, op-eds and blog activity.
Reading through some of them I am struck by the intense concern with particulars. Discussions run on and on about whether waterboarding is a form of torture, or whether severe temperature changes produce pain or only discomfort, etc. It reminds me of public reaction when the Abu Ghraib stories broke, with some people calling it torture, and others labeling it more of a "college prank". Even today, the mainstream press usually refers to the incidents as "prisoner abuse" which I guess is somewhere between pranks and torture in seriousness.
What is largely ignored, at least in my experience, is the need to address the issue in moral terms. In a free society, the ultimate justification for anything must be on moral grounds. By "moral grounds" I do not mean religion - I mean the secular values on which the society is based.
Coming across one such thread recently, I posted a response which is pasted below (in blue text).
There are several different issues here that need to be separated. Trying to address them all simultaneously just confounds the discussion.
1. First is the definition of torture, since there seem to be many arguments whether a given method of inflicting pain/anxiety constitutes torture.
2. The second is whether torture is a valid means of interrogation in a civilized society, even if only applied in “extreme” cases.
3. The third is the question of defining “extreme” cases, which I’m sure is also a controversial question.
These questions boil down to a discussion of the ethics of emergencies. Before we get into that, it would be good to remind ourselves why civilized people generally don’t condone torture. After all, we are not that many generations removed from public floggings, drawing and quartering, burning at stakes, impalement, crucifixion, etc.
I think the reason for this change in our outlook is moral and philosophical. As we have learned to value life and individual rights through the course of history, torture stands ever more in stark, barbaric contrast to what we value. The most fundamental of our rights, from which all other rights flow, is the right to our own body. Torture is the simplest and most direct assault possible on the body. It is a cold-blooded, premeditated assault on life itself, perceived by the victim in its most primitive biological sense, through the pain/pleasure mechanism.
As we grow more civilized, it becomes impossible for a person who truly values life to torture anyone. Most of us are capable of inflicting pain on others or even killing them, if we are sufficiently provoked. But these are range of the moment things, which accompany extreme anger or fear, and which cannot be sustained. Someone who can actually torture another person over a prolonged period is not the norm in our society.
As we grow more civilized, it becomes impossible for a society based on individual rights to condone torture. There is too great a dichotomy between professing to support an ideal while simultaneously destroying it. Something has to give, and it is usually the good that gives way to evil, because the good requires effort and force of will to sustain, while evil doesn’t take much more effort than looking the other way.
I say these things not because I am absolutely and irrevocably opposed to torture in all cases, but as a reminder to highlight the seriousness of what we are discussing. With this context, I’ll move on to the substance of the discussion, which I think is a discussion of the ethics of emergencies. The “emergency” in this case, is the terrorist, more specifically the terrorist who has information regarding a plot which could claim many lives.
The word “terrorism” has acquired a weight of meaning and emotion beyond that contained in dictionaries, so it would be good to define what makes this crime special, deserving of special laws.
The justification commonly proposed is that of numbers, and large numbers at that. After all, we don’t currently have laws permitting torture to extract information from someone who might know the identity of a serial killer. A serial killer can kill at most a couple dozen people, which while being a respectable number for the average suicide bomber, falls far short of the destructive potential of a 9/11 type attack. Therefore, to state the threat more specifically, we are defining “terrorist” in this case as someone participating in or having knowledge of a plot that could cause fatalities in the hundreds or thousands. This is the nature of the “emergency”.
There are arguments made that torture is not an effective means to extract information, since people will say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear in order to avoid more pain. Having no personal experience of torture, I cannot definitely say if this is true or not, but it sounds logical. However, it can’t be denied that there is always the possibility of coming across the odd individual who pours out a full and truthful account of the plot, once the thumbscrews are applied.
The “emergency” then, applies to very specific people - people who have knowledge of plots of the magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, and there is no other way to prevent an imminent attack.
Naturally, torture cannot be used as a blanket screening technique to apply on every suspected terrorist on the offchance that he might have some vital information. We don’t round up our own population and cart them off to police stations for questioning on the offchance that some of us may have some information pertaining to a crime. Since we enjoy a protection under law not afforded to a foreign populace under wartime conditions, it becomes important to make sure that the process is adequately supervised.
This brings me to the crux of the ethics argument. Since, in my opinion, torture is antithetical to the morals and principles of a free and civilized society, it cannot be allowed to remain a dirty little secret. Such secrets, which are not so secret, undermine the moral fabric of our society and take away the things that make us strong - our confidence in our ideals, our feeling of being on the side of what is good and right, our willingness to fight for the things we value.
If and when the situation calls for torture, it becomes our responsibility as a nation, which we acknowledge and live with openly. No more excuses. No more nonsense from our leaders on the lines of “It didn’t happen! Oops - well, it might have. Hmm ... looks like some isolated cases may have occurred but I can assure you we are looking into it and the guilty will be punished.” And then six months later, “we don’t torture people”.
In other words, if you want to create a legal mechanism for torture, then you must also create a legal mechanism for responsibilities and oversight. Here are some suggestions:
1. Torture must be authorized from the top by senior officials. You cannot encourage the rank and file to indulge themselves on the sly to “soften up” the target, then disclaim all responsibility from the top.
2. Torture must be supervised and recorded. A senior officer must be present at all times. A complete audio/video record must be maintained to account for every second of the prisoner’s time in custody, and presented to appropriate courts and officials when necessary.
3. Torture must be reviewed by an external agency. You cannot have one agency such as the CIA be judge, jury and executioner. The simplest course would be to put it under the review and jurisdiction of the courts.
If these things are done, then those of us who believe in torture as a valid recourse in extreme emergencies will have a leg to stand on and defend our principles to ourselves and to the world. If not, we will continue to be confronted by a trickle of Abu Ghraibs, with their accompanying chorus of contemptible waffling, denials and excuses from our leaders.
Beginnings
This is a place for recording thoughts and ideas before they are forgotten.
There are times when life seems to move so fast that information flows by me in a blur, and I am unable to organize it in any useful or meaningful way. Most of it is probably trivial and not worth the bother, but occasionally I come across ideas that matter to me, and this blog is my attempt to record them.
I think a blog is a semi-public statement of sorts, public in that it's published on the net, but only "semi-public" because it's usually lost in the noise and the chances of anyone else actually reading it are slim.
With this in mind, I'm mostly writing here for myself, but on the offchance that you come across it, you will probably find a mix of material that is not easily classifiable. Some of my interests are science, politics, philosophy, movies and music. I am interested in themes and ideas, so my method of "organizing" information is to try to get rid of the fluff and identify core premises.
More later.
There are times when life seems to move so fast that information flows by me in a blur, and I am unable to organize it in any useful or meaningful way. Most of it is probably trivial and not worth the bother, but occasionally I come across ideas that matter to me, and this blog is my attempt to record them.
I think a blog is a semi-public statement of sorts, public in that it's published on the net, but only "semi-public" because it's usually lost in the noise and the chances of anyone else actually reading it are slim.
With this in mind, I'm mostly writing here for myself, but on the offchance that you come across it, you will probably find a mix of material that is not easily classifiable. Some of my interests are science, politics, philosophy, movies and music. I am interested in themes and ideas, so my method of "organizing" information is to try to get rid of the fluff and identify core premises.
More later.
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