When cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker decided to go to bat for scientism—the belief that science provides us with the only valid forms of knowledge—he got lots of flak from pretty capable people. One aspect of his arrogance was largely passed over, but is highlighted for us by Jules Evans at Philosophy for Life:
Steven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive linguist, would not make a very good ambassador. In his latest diatribe, he attempts to reassure humanities scholars that science is not their enemy. Science is good, and humanities scholars should stop complaining about ‘Scientism’. Unfortunately, he says this in such a tactless way that it’s guaranteed to annoy not just humanities scholars, but no doubt many scientists too.
Right from the get-go, he patronizes the humanities, giving his essay the sub-title, ‘an impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians’, which makes everyone in the humanities sound like losers. Just to make sure of offence, he then claims that Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Leibniz, Kant and Smith were ‘all scientists’, and all materialists to boot. Even I know that’s wrong – Descartes, Rousseau, Liebniz, Kant and Smith all used spiritual ideas like the soul, providence, God or the General Will in their philosophies.
I don’t care about inter-departmental bun-fights. I am all for cross-disciplinary work between the humanities and the sciences, like the Stoicism and Therapy project I’m working on at Exeter University. The Scientism I object to, which Pinker expresses, is the shrill insistence that science has ‘proved’ materialist utilitarianism and any other world-view is ridiculous. I think that type of Scientism, besides being tactless, leaves out important aspects of human experience.
Might that include aspects of human experience that, heeded, would have spared Pinker the embarrassment?
On the arrogance of Salvador Cardoza, who too often forgets that UD is not his personal fiefdom, but is, according to it’s banner: “Serving the Intelligent Design Community”
Sal, since you seem to be in the mood for humble pie, how about you admit your errors in deleting posts and/or changing their content without justification.
Mung, should you and Sal talk? Some, including some who work at the site, actually don’t know what this is about. It’s not that nobody cares so much as nobody knows or can know. – O’Leary for News P.S.: Nobody reads everything.
News:
Salvador is currently engaged in a crusade to delete any post I make in any thread he authors regardless of the content of the post.
Formerly he had modified the content of a post I had written to make it appear as if I had written something else entirely.
He’s never admitted he was wrong in doing so and he has refused to modify his behavior so there’s not much for the two of us to talk about.
It’s one thing to censor unacceptable material, but his is a blanket censorship due to personal animus.
That’s what’s going on. And he continues to do it. Please tell him to stop.
The saddest thing about scientism is that it really underpins the Consensus in the most humiliating way for them, and they don’t even realise it.
Basically, the ‘promissory note’ is alive and well, and always will be for the materialist – for as long as they are able to get away with what being who/what they are.
What I am referring to is that, unbelievably cretinous though it is, they really CANNOT distinguish between Reason and Intuition.
When faced with a paradox, viz a concept repugnant to logic and reason, as occurs with increasing frequency under the QM paradigm, instead of understanding that it is counter-rational, logically absurd, crazy, even, as Bohr often referred to it – they designate it as, ‘counter-intuitive’.
And that is itself counter-rational, logically absurd, crazy, even, since we do not need the astrologer’s intuitive insights, but a simple understanding of what makes logical sense and what does not, but, rather, defies it.
No special course of education is needed to acquire intuition; it is a faculty instinct in us all at a primal level, albeit not as finely attuned as it is in mammals. But it is certainly not needed to discover that much of QM is counter-rational; all one needs is elementary reason.
QM is a mystery to them, but no-one needs intuition to tell them some matter is mystery. On the contrary, simple logic tells us so. The deeper mysteries themselves, far from being counter-intuitive, insofar as any of them can be fathomed, are only accessible in such measure BY our intuition.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that it impossible to argue with the likes of Pinker, Liddle et al. They just are not equipped to follow logic in the matter of their scientific world-view, in view of their perverse religious fear of religion, itself, in the elevated sense of belief in a Creator. Nor can they draw rational inferences from any scientific exercises, which could be rationally construed as propitious to deistic belief – in fact, increasingly, theistic. They are simply becoming more and more fearful of where science, itself, is heading. If they can’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. They’re a major part of the problem.
Apologies. In the second sentence, it should read, ‘… get away with being who/what they are.’
That’s sort of strange that Pinker would be so condescending towards the humanities since Professors in the humanities would seem to be a ready ally for him,
As to Pinker’s belief that science is the only true source of knowledge (scientism) and that all answers must be naturalistic/materialistic in nature, well those are both philosophical statements that cannot be proved by science. Moreover, advances in quantum mechanics has actually falsified naturalism/materialism as the true description of reality.
Moreover, this (the violation of Leggett’s inequality) is, by far, not the only place materialism has completely failed to live up to its hype as being the only true ‘scientific’ philosophy/foundation of the sciences. Theism, particularly Christian Theism, was at the very founding of modern science and continues, despite the denial of atheists to the contrary, to be a very viable philosophy under-girding the sciences.,,, For example of its braod explanatory power, the materialistic and Theistic philosophy make, and have made, several ‘natural’ contradictory predictions about what evidence we will find through our investigations. Moreover, and ironically, these predictions themselves, and the evidence we have now found, can be tested against one another within the scientific method to see which philosophy seems more reasonable to believe (i.e. more true).
For a quick overview, here are a few of the contrasting predictions between the two philosophies:
Stepping back from the evidence and looking at it all objectively, one can see that there is certainly no reason for Pinker, and other leading atheists in universities, to display such arrogance towards those who disagree with them. In fact they should be rightly humbled very much by such contrary findings as I listed:
Verse and Music:
according to it’s banner
“it’s” is not a possessive form of the pronoun “it”.
It’s contraction of “it is”.
All there is IS truth. Methodology to finding that truth is another subject to verify,
The bible is claiming to be a witness to truth. Some accept this method and others attack it.
Science is just a idea that there is a higher standard of investigation that can be done and only when done is truth discovered or previous truths defeated.
Then a fight about when this standard has been reached. Origin fights involve this matter.
All humans do is seek truth with what intelligence they have. A method.
If evolution is false it will not be the fault of scientific methodology but humans failing to put it under a hight standard of investigation.
People just didn’t do enough of a intelligent job of investigation.
I think its really about human intelligence and how this intelligence gathers and reasons through information.
Methodology is not the origin of truth but a special case of how smarter people control their investigations.
There is not really any such thing as science. Its just people thinking carefully.
News:
I talk. He deletes or changes the content.
Is that what you had in mind?
🙂
according to it’s banner
“it’s” is not a possessive form of the pronoun “it”.
It’s contraction of “it is”.