Tuesday, week 9
• What do you believe and why?
• Can you prove it? How, or why not?
• Does it matter whether you can provide evidence for
what you believe?
• Does what you believe matter?
• Is everything relative?
• Is science just another belief system?
• What are the roles of conjecture, evidence, and theory
in understanding?
What do you believe and why?
Kinds of belief: faith-based, evidence-based,
values (morals, aesthetics), other?
How can you know? (epistemology)
What is true? (ontology – truth – objectivity?)
Can you prove it? How, or why not?
Verifiability
Testability
Falsifiability
Faith, intuition, gut feeling, common sense,
perosnal experience, critical analysis, …
Does it matter whether you can
provide evidence for what you believe?
In 1991, President George H. W. Bush
called Ambassador Joseph Wilson a "True
American Hero." In 2003, senior officials in
President George W. Bush’s White House
tried to intimidate critics and punish Wilson
for what he knew—and finally made
public—about the administration’s lies
before the invasion of Iraq. …
In July 2003, Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame,
was outed as an undercover CIA operative,
allegedly in retaliation for Wilson blowing
the whistle on Bush administration
dissembling about Iraqi efforts to procure
weapons of mass destruction. …
http://www.amazon.com
Does the truth matter?
Does what you believe matter?
Pragmatism – it gets the job done
Simple relativism – all beliefs are equally valid
Liberalism – not to be confused with relativism
Nihilism – beliefs don’t matter (does anything?)
Logical positivism, reductionism, conventional or
objectivist science
Social constructionist science
Truth matters, all else being equal
Truth matters for its own sake
Is everything relative?
Epistemological relativism
Cultural relativism
Postmodern relativism
Socially-constructed theories and “strongobjectivity”
Theory-laden facts
Do beliefs matter?
Global warming – Is it real? So what? Is it our
fault? Can we do anything about it?
Global temperature
Temp rises as CO2 rises
increasing rapidly, recently
since industrial revolution
Global warming
Temperature variations over the last 1,000 years suggest a recent sharp rise in
temperature caused by human activities. The chart is relatively flat from the period
AD 1000 to 1900, indicating that temperatures were relatively stable for this period
of time. The flat part forms the stick's "shaft". But after 1900, temperatures appear
to shoot up, forming the hockey stick's "blade".
Nature 1998, Geophysical Research Letters 1999, by Michael Mann, Ray Bradley,
Malcolm Hughes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3569604.stm
CO2 and Global Temperature Change, by Whole Systems Foundation
http://www.whole-systems.org/co2.html
Do beliefs matter?
Ozone hole – Is it real? So what? Is it our fault?
Can we do anything about it?
http://www.eduspace.esa.int/eduspace/project/default.asp?document=257&language=en
Ozone hole - history
1928 - chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) Invented by Thomas Midgley, Jr.,
Widespread use as refrigerants - millions of tons of CFCs produced and
evaporated.
1974 – Chemists Rowland Molina of UC Irvine theorized that UV light in the
stratosphere would dissociate CFCs, and that the free chlorine atoms
would dissociate ozone.
1978 - CFCs in aerosol sprays were banned in the U.S.
mid-1980s - severe annual depletion of ozone began to appear above
Antarctica
1987 fifty-seven industrial nations signed the Montreal Protocol -- the first
global environmental agreement --to phase-out of CFCs.
1996 - All production of CFCs in developed countries halted on Jan 1.
2003 – Rate of growth of ozone hole slows
2005 – Ozone hole starts to shrink.
http://www.nrdc.org/air/pollution/hozone.asp
2003: Earth's ozone depletion is finally slowing
17:05 30 July 2003, NewScientist.com news service, Gaia Vince
Almost 30 years after it was first reported that pollutants were destroying
the Earth's protective ozone layer, there is clear evidence that the global CFC
ban has had an impact.
For the first time, it has been shown that the rate of ozone depletion in the
upper stratosphere - 35 to 45 kilometres up - is slowing down. "This is the
beginning of a recovery of the ozone layer," says Michael Newchurch, at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville, who led the new research.
Between 1997 and 2000, the average rate of ozone depletion slowed by the
equivalent of seven per cent per decade. But the authors say that it will take
at least 40 years before the depletion stops and recovery begins. "Ozone is
still depleting but just not as fast. We are still decades away from total ozone
recovery," Newchurch says.
2005: Ozone hole healing
Scientific American, November 2005
Is science just another belief system?
Science
testable
falsifiable
Faith
not subject to test
immune to falsification
designed to change
in response to discoveries
ideally immutable
evolution
questions for inquiry
Intelligent Design
“God of the Gaps”
What is faith? A confident belief or trust in a person,
belief, loyalty, or religion. (MS)
The Perimeter of Ignorance
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Natural History, Nov. 2005
… in centuries past, … most scientists, as well as many scientists today, identify
themselves as spiritually devout.
But … they invoke divinity only when they read the boundaries of their
understanding. …
Newton’s laws of motion … accounted for phenomena that had eluded
philosophers for millennia … Newton [insists on] data, “inferr’d from the
phaenomena,” But in the absence of data, … Newton invokes God …
…
A century later, … Laplace demonstrates that the solar system is stable over
periods of time longer than Newton could predict… when … Napoleon asked
him what role God played in the construction and regulation of the heavens, …
Laplace replied “Sire, I have ho need of that hypothesis.”
…
Today secular philosophers call … divine invocation “God of the gaps” …
…
… in … a stunning … philosophical inversion, … ecclesiastics … began to
declare that it was the laws of physics themselves that served as proof of the
wisdom and power of God.
The Perimeter of Ignorance
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Natural History, Nov. 2005
… eighteenth century “clockwork universe” – an ordered, rational, predictable
mechanism fashioned and run by God and his laws of physics
… [Big Bang as Genesis] …
In contemporary America, the notion that a higher intelligence is the single
answer to all enigmas has been enjoying a resurgence. This present-day version
of God of the gaps [has a new] name: “intelligent design.” The term suggests
that some entity, endowed with a mental capacity far greaterthan the human mind
can muster, created or enabled all the things in the physical world that we cannot
explain through scientific methods.
But why confine ourselves to things to wondrous or intricate for us to
understand … why not tally all those things whose design is so clunky, goofy,
impractical, or unworkable that they reflect the absence of intelligence? …
… Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
Science is a philosophy of discovery. …
Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design
Fri. Nov. 18. 2005, By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican’s chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent
design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest highranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United
States.
The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said
placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs
was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.
"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news
agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If
you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion
or cultural history is taught, not science."
What are the roles of conjecture,
evidence, and theory in understanding?
Conjecture – hypothesis – guess
Evidence – facts – data
anecdotal vs. statistical
Theory – law – model – map
What is truth?
(True or false? according to Lynch)
Truth is whatever you care about most. (CC)
Truth cannot be defined or analyzed. (MS)
Truth is a tool to get you what you want.
Truth is objective.
Truth depends on physical, mind-independent
relationships and properties.
Truth is causal realism, in part.
Truth is deeply normative.
Truth is good, a worthy goal of inquiry, worth caring
about for its own sake.
Do you care about the truth?
Do you care about caring about the truth?
Integrity and happiness (Lynch):
self-knowledge, self-respect
authenticity
intellectual integrity
good life, richly lived
pursuit of truth
What do you choose do with knowledge/power?
Looking ahead