Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 119

L&FP, 48i: Dallas Willard’s (partial) list of reasons for the unwarranted disappearance of moral knowledge

As we continue to explore the issue of the marginalisation of moral knowledge, let us highlight from 48b, Willard’s (incomplete) list of key causes:

(2). How did this disappearance [of moral knowledge] come to be the case?

Not through a discovery of some kind: e.g. that there was no such knowledge.

But through a lengthy historical process of idea change. Some components:

(A). The dismissal of theology from the domain of knowledge [i.e. the study and systematic knowledge of God, cf Rom 1:28 – 32], and the failure to find a secular basis for ethics [–> how can evolutionary materialism found ethics?].
(B). Disappearance of the human self and knowledge of the self from “respectable” knowledge. (The “soul” from Plato on.) [–> the self-moved, rational, responsible, conscience guided significantly free agent]

(C). All cultures come to be regarded as “equal.” None are morally inferior [–> diversity and radical tolerance]. Just “different.” Then there is no moral truth of the matter across cultures. [–> the denial of warranted, generally knowable objective truth on duty to right conduct, virtue etc; which is itself a claimed objective truth regarding duty to right conduct etc; it is thus a claimed objective moral truth that denies the possibility of such. It is self referentially incoherent, so false. (This will of course be hotly denied, but the logic is clear.)]
(D). Moral distinctions and standards viewed as power plays. (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud) [–> might makes right]
(E). Fear or resentment of knowledge itself as oppressive. Colonialism. [–> linked disappearing of logic and truth backed by warrant so of knowledge]
(F). Growth of the idea that it is always wrong to make moral judgments: that only bad or disgusting people do that. [–> the test case of a kidnapped, sexually tortured, murdered child] Pushes moral judgments out of the public domain. [–> marginalisation]
(G). The failure in Philosophy to recover moral knowledge. [–> institutional failure, the mutiny on the good ship civilisation issue]

Let us highlight A, by noting from the Author’s preface to Richard Swinburne’s influential The Existence of God, 2nd edn, Oxford 2004 (revised from 1979 and 1991):

By the nineteenth century . . . philosophical theology began to
feel the powerful sceptical influence of Hume and Kant. These
philosophers produced principles designed to show that reason
could never reach justified conclusions about matters much beyond the range of immediate experience, and above all that reason could never reach a justified conclusion about the existence of God. In recent years many others have argued in the same spirit, so that, both among professional philosophers and outside their narrow circle, there is today deep scepticism about the power of reason to reach a justified conclusion about the existence of God.

As I construct my positive arguments, I shall briefly give my
grounds for thinking that the principles of Hume and Kant are mistaken and that reason can reach justified conclusions outside the narrow boundaries drawn by those philosophers. Those who believe in the ability of modern science to reach justified (and exciting) conclusions about things far beyond immediate experience, such as subatomic particles and nuclear forces, the ‘Big Bang’ and cosmic evolution, ought to be highly sympathetic to my enterprise; Hume and Kant would not, on their own principles, have had a very sympathetic attitude to the claims of modern physical science.

Swinburne continues:

I shall, however, argue that, although reason can reach a fairly well-justified conclusion about the existence of God, it can reach only a probable conclusion, not an indubitable one.

I would of course adjust to “warranted” (post-Gettier) and would prefer plausibility rather than probability, as scaling becomes an issue. What is being put forth is that this major issue is being addressed in effect on inference to the best explanation, which — as does much of modern physical science — involves entities and states of affairs that are not directly observable by us.

He develops a summary on Confirmation Theory:

It will be useful to introduce at this stage the symbols of confirm-
ation theory that I shall use from time to time in subsequent chap-
ters. I represent by lower-case letters such as e, h, p, and q
propositions. P(p | q) represents the probability of p given q. [–> technically, a conditional probability] Thus p might represent the proposition: ‘The next toss of this coin will land heads’, and q might represent the proposition: ‘505 of the last 1,000 tosses of this coin have landed heads’. Then P(p | q) represents the probability that the next toss of the coin will land heads, given that 505 of the last 1,000 tosses have landed heads. (The value of P(p|j q) would then generally be supposed to be 0.505.) However, the relation between p and q may be of a much more complex kind; and clearly we normally assess the probability of claims on evidence other than or additional to that of relative frequencies. p may be some scientific hypothesis—say, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity—and q may be the conjunction of all the reports of the evidence of observation and experiment that scientists have collected relevant to the theory. Then P(p | q) represents the inductive probability of Einstein’s Gen-eral Theory given all the reports of relevant observations and experi-ments. Inductive probability is thus to be distinguished from statistical probability, which is a property of classes of things (for example, inhabitants of a certain town, say Tunbridge Wells) and is a measure of the proportion of things in the class that have some other property . . . .

A hypothesis up for investigation is often represented by h. Then
P(h | e & k) represents the probability of a hypothesis h given evidence (e & k). It is often useful to divide the evidence available to an observer into two parts—new evidence and background evidence; if this is done, the former is often represented by e and the latter by k. Background evidence (or background knowledge, as it is sometimes called) is the knowledge that we take for granted before new evidence turns up.

Thus, suppose that detectives are investigating a murder. h could represent the hypothesis that Jones did the murder; e could represent the proposition that reports all the new evidence that detectives discover—for example, that Jones’s fingerprints were found on the weapon, that he was near the scene of the murder at the time it was committed, etc., etc. k could represent the proposition reporting the detectives’ general knowledge about how the world works—for example, that each person has a unique set of finger-prints, that people who touch metal and wood with bare hands usually leave their fingerprints on them, etc., etc. Then P(h | e & k) represents the probability that Jones did the murder, given detectives’ total evidence.

For all propositions p and q P(p | q) = 1 if (and only if) q makes p certain—for example, if q entails p (that is, there is a deductively valid argument from q to p); and P(p | q) = 0 if (and only if) q makes ~ p certain—for example, if q entails ~ p. P(p | q) + P( ~ p | q) = 1. So if P(p | q) > 1/2, then P(p | q) > P(~ p | q) and it is on q more probable that p than that p. So (for background knowledge k) an argument from e to h will be a correct C-inductive argument if (and only if) P(h | e & k) > P(h j k), and a correct P-inductive argument if (and only if) P(h | e & k) > 1/2.

The division between new evidence and background evidence can be made where you like—often it is convenient to include all evidence derived from experience in e and to regard k as being what is called in confirmation theory mere ‘tautological evidence’, that is, in effect all our other irrelevant knowledge.

He points to the issue of cumulative evidence:

A similar situation normally arises with any far-reaching scientific
or historical theory. Each separate piece of evidence does not make the theory very probable, and indeed taken on its own makes some narrower theory much more probable. But the cumulative force of the evidence taken together gives great probability to the wide theory. Thus each of the various pieces of evidence that are cited as evidence in favour of the General Theory of Relativity do not by themselves make it very probable, but together they do give it quite a degree of probability.

He further notes, on a fallacious objection:

Note that it is no objection to a P-inductive or C-inductive argument from e to h that some contrary hypothesis h*
is also compatible with e, as some writers on the philosophy of religion seem to think. They seem to think that if, for example, the order in the universe is compatible with ‘God does not exist’, then there is no good argument from it to ‘God exists’. But one has only to think about the matter to realize that this is not so. In any non-deductive argument from e to h, not-h will be compatible with e; and yet some non-deductive arguments are good arguments.

These observations allow us to evaluate relative degree of support for hypotheses and competing hypotheses. The upshot is, it is quite reasonable, on evidence and reasoning similar to that used to compare scientific or forensic or historical alternatives etc, to conclude that there is good warrant for concluding that God exists. But in the nature of such a case, it cannot deliver utter certainty. Which, is common for many cases we hold such results to be reliable knowledge. Thus, there was no good reason to institutionally and culturally marginalise the study of God and knowledge about him.

Applying this framework to evaluation of duty to right conduct etc, if we are willing we can readily see that, first (cf. 48a), the reductio that establishes that there undeniably are knowable, warranted, objective moral truths is certain.

Going beyond, on cases such as the gruesome kidnapping, sexual torture and murder of a child for fun, we find that those who would object or deflect or evade simply show themselves defective in moral thinking. Such extends to notorious cases such as the Nazi holocaust and similar mass murders such as those by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. From which yardstick cases of moral knowledge, we may readily draw out responsible frameworks of moral knowledge regarding justice, rights, duty to neighbour, prudence, warrant, duty to right reason and duty to truth. (Yes, those are the Ciceronian first duties and first law.)

That is, as was drawn out in 48g we have a viable framework for objective moral knowledge, which can be extended to the framing of responsible political and social order (cf 48h). In turn, such is plausibly a framework of valid knowledge, conferring “the right and perhaps the responsibility to act, direct action, formulate policy and supervise its implementation, and teach.” (Cf 48i.)

There is no good reason to resort to relativistic despair of objective moral knowledge, the blind men and the elephant notwithstanding (cf 48d). Plato, 2360 years ago, was right (48e). So was Orwell, when he warned on the corruption of language in support of corrupt state order (48f).

Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .

Let us now return to moral sanity as a civilisation, before it is fatally too late. END

PS, as a reminder, here is Orwell speaking in the voice of Winston Smith:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

–> discussion remains open at 48a

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Remember how endless cycles of universe were supposed to show that the universe has no real beginning?

A wheel has come off:

As with Penrose’s model, Steinhardt and Ijjas’s model faces the philosophical problems of an infinite universe, and it must rely on a large number of questionable assumptions. Their effort to construct a model to explain the universe is perfectly reasonable, so I have no criticism of their sincerity or their competence. Yet the conclusion that the universe had a beginning is far more parsimonious and consistent with the evidence. The main reason for the resistance against it from many in the scientific community is its philosophical and theological implications.

Brian Miller, “Paul Steinhardt’s Cyclical Cosmology Fails to Challenge a Cosmic Beginning” at Evolution News (January 12, 2022)

The paper is open access.

While we are here, wouldn’t an infinite universe include the possibility that it doesn’t exist? Playing with infinity is playing a dangerous game.

There is a good article by Robert J. Marks on the topic of infinite parallel universes here.

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Cosmic social distancing: Our region of the universe floats in a void

And some think they now know the cause:

The Solar System floats in the middle of a peculiarly empty region of space.

This region of low-density, high-temperature plasma, about 1,000 light-years across, is surrounded by a shell of cooler, denser neutral gas and dust. It’s called the Local Bubble, and precisely how and why it came to exist, with the Solar System floating in the middle, has been a challenge to explain.

Michelle Starr, “The Solar System Exists Inside a Giant, Mysterious Void, And We Finally Know Why” at ScienceAlert (January 12, 2022)

The researchers think that star formation happens mainly at the perimeter (conveniently, one might add):

According to the researchers, this suggests that the Milky Way is likely full of similar bubbles, since the likelihood of this happening is very low if the bubbles are rare. The idea evokes a Milky Way structured similarly to a sea sponge, or perhaps a flattened wheel of Swiss cheese.

Michelle Starr, “The Solar System Exists Inside a Giant, Mysterious Void, And We Finally Know Why” at ScienceAlert (January 12, 2022)

Expected later research should shed more light.

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Is Darwinism an “Empty Theory”?

At Evolution and News, there’s a link to a 2017 article tackling the problems of inflationary theory in the field of cosmology. What I find so interesting is the second to last paragraph in this six page article. Here’s how it reads:

A common misconception is that experiments can be used to falsify a theory. In practice, a failing theory gets increasingly immunized against experiment by attempts to patch it. The theory becomes more highly tuned and arcane to fit new observations until it reaches a state where its explanatory power diminishes to the point that it is no longer pursued. The explanatory power of a theory is measured by the set of possibilities it excludes. More immunization means less exclusion and less power. A theory like the multimess does not exclude anything and, hence, has zero power. Declaring an empty theory as the unquestioned standard view requires some sort of assurance outside of science. Short of a professed oracle, the only alternative is to invoke authorities. History teaches us that this is the wrong road to take.

Is he talking about Darwinism? No, about the “multimess” as he calls it. In the meantime, here we have a high-powered scientist telling us that a theory that lacks “explanatory power” is a theory that “excludes” very little. We have said here for years that Darwinism can accomodate ANYTHING; and, hence, it “explains” NOTHING. It is, to quote the author, an “empty theory” that “invoke[s] authorities” to keep it as the “unquestioned standard view.” Most compelling is his final thought: “History teaches us that this is the wrong road to take.”

How many more “epicycles” have to be trotted out by the scientific monopoly that is evolutionary biology before we get off this ‘wrong road’? We already have had too many.

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Good question: Why do atheists reason so poorly?

Tom Gilson tells us, “Three things explain it, in my experience with them”:

Tom Gilson

1. It’s All About Science. All About Science.

They’re not just The Party of Reason, really. They’re the Party of Science-and-Reason. The hyphens signify the way atheists treat them as joined at the hip. Just this week I heard from one who said he wanted “evidence,” not “philosophy.” But “philosophy” in that case was just thinking through some facts. Why wouldn’t it count for him? Probably because it wasn’t science.

Science has a special lock on reason in this crowd. It’s not because scientists’ reasoning processes are better than logicians’ or historians’ or even theologians, though. It’s because science is “objective,” “self-correcting,” and therefore “less biased” than other lines of thought. Now, this is partly true: Science has successfully corrected many errors, from geocentrism to phlogiston to “physics is complete, there’s nothing left to discover” in the late 19th century.

Defensive reasoning is contained reasoning. If it can’t find truth inside its boundaries, then it simply gives up trying.

To think that it’s objective and unbiased, however, is to crown science with jewels it cannot wear. Science is a human project, not a mechanical one. Scientists can lock themselves in biases as much as anyone else. And even at its best, science comes up with wrong answers. Like geocentrism, phlogiston, and “physics is complete.” …

Tom Gilson, “Why Do Atheists Think They’re the Party of Reason When They Reason So Poorly?” at The Stream (January 15, 2022)

See also: At Salon: New Atheists Accused Of Intellectual Grift And Abject Surrender Now, it’s being attacked among the In and the Cool in Salon, mainly for espousing free speech.

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L&FP, 48i: Dallas Willard on the legitimate authority of knowledge (vs the radical narrative of oppression)

In the course of exploring the marginalisation/disappear-ING of moral knowledge, Professor Dallas Willard gave an expanded definition of knowledge that also draws out the legitimate authority of knowledge; including, moral knowledge, i.e. knowledge of duty to right conduct etc. As we can see from his handout for a 2010 video lecture:

What is knowledge and what does it do? Knowledge is the capacity to represent something as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. It and it alone confers the right and perhaps the responsibility to act, direct action, formulate policy and supervise its implementation, and teach. This helps us see what disappears along with “moral knowledge.”

He goes on to note on the “[f]ear or resentment of knowledge itself as oppressive,” noting too on “[g]rowth of the idea that it is always wrong to make moral judgments: that only bad or disgusting people do that.” He then observes on “[t]he failure in [academic] Philosophy to recover moral knowledge”

In his 2007 essay, “Where Is Moral Knowledge?,” he had remarked:

We have knowledge of any subject matter when we are capable of representing it as it is on an adequate basis of thought and experience. That is what “knowledge” means in ordinary life, and what you expect of your electrician, auto mechanic, and physician. The subject matter might be the English alphabet, the history of golf, the structure of the hydrogen atom, or others. The “adequate basis” can, sometimes must, include the word of others who have knowledge. We call our knowledge in that case knowledge by “authority”—though the word is more august than the fact. By far the most of what we know we know “by authority,” but that does not mean that it cannot be questioned or, in most cases, that there are no other ways of discovering it or verifying it. Most people who know the multiplication tables have never yet thought out a tiny portion of them to see for sure, and why, they are true. But they do know them, because those tables are given to them in a social context that warrants their acceptance as true. And they are true, and it is possible for a bright and enterprising child to think them out to see that they are true and why they are.

He then added:

But knowledge can “disappear.” This is because its public presence and availability depends upon the maintenance of a social context with authoritative institutions that sustain, refine and disseminate it. If for whatever reasons social institutions fail to do this, the respective knowledge will “disappear,” cease to be available.

There is much food for thought here. First, Willard’s definition is closely related to the updated, post-Gettier understanding, that knowledge is warranted, [credibly] true [and so, reliable] belief.

So:

We may adjust for the weak, commonly used sense of knowledge by recognising that credible truth and reliability of claimed and accepted knowledge [i] are established for cause and [ii] equally are subject to amendment for cause. This brings in objectivity, as addressing our error proneness and filtering for reliability and opening up general access to what is knowable.Willard’s adequate base of thought and experience has to do with warrant, and “as it [credibly] is” speaks to truth. Truth, accurately describing relevant entities and states of affairs as they actually are. (Not as we may imagine, wish or fear they may be.)Belief or adherence is implicit, one can only know what one acknowledges and so believes to be the case. Further implied, is the context, a coherent, functional body of knowledge, this is not just about at-random isolated bits and pieces.

Now, obviously, while knowledge can be disregarded or abused oppressively, there is no good reason to instantly suspect knowledge of being oppressive. Not even, moral knowledge. What is it that would be inherently or overwhelmingly oppressive about Ciceronian first duties of reason? Namely, duties:

1st – to truth,
2nd – to right reason,
3rd – to prudence [including warrant],
4th – to sound conscience,
5th – to neighbour; so also,
6th – to fairness and
7th – to justice
[ . . .]
xth – etc.

Why on earth, would reasonable people be led to the view that “it is always wrong to make moral judgments: that only bad or disgusting people do that”? (Including, the judgement, that it is wicked and utterly evil to kidnap, sexually torture and murder a child for fun?)

Something has gone deeply wrong.

Sawing off the branch on which one is sitting . . . [HT: YT]

To begin to fix such, let us note “right,” “responsibility,” “always wrong” and “only bad or disgusting people.” These are all markers of the branch on which we sit, pervasive, first principle status of the Ciceronian first duties and thus of how even objectors constantly appeal to them. (Of course for months there has been refusal to acknowledge that despite dozens of examples here at UD coming from objectors.)

I suggest, Willard put his finger on a key issue when he noted “[K]nowledge . . . alone confers the right and perhaps the responsibility to act, direct action, formulate policy and supervise its implementation, and teach.“

The root problem, in short, is that we are dealing with those who refuse to acknowledge objective moral knowledge as it would confer legitimate authority to what and to those they have a quarrel with. So, they sweep away a whole category of knowledge, regardless of its actual warrant. And, because this refusal has been increasingly institutionalised, moral knowledge has been made to disappear. The new magisterium wishes to impose very different rules and agendas. The damaging self-referentiality is obvious.

Six blind men and an elephant

Now, we have also seen how the story of the blind men and the elephant has been used to promote the radical relativisation of morality. However, it turned out that the sighted narrator was subtly posing his perspective as objective and corrective of the blunders of the blind. So, insofar as the narrator is seen as undermining objective knowledge, he is actually caught in a self-contradiction and thus is in reduction to absurdity.

Instead, we may rework our understanding of the parable in ways that help us to better understand objectivity of knowledge in general, and its legitimate authority.

As was further noted in 48d:

First, what if there is no true narrator, s/he is just the next blind man over, N1 = B7. On this supposition, we are then left to correct the pretence to transcend blindness, perhaps by reductio, then by exchange of experiments and observations, discussion and the like we may seek to have a more reliable overall view through analysis and correction. We may even need to clarify what it means to be sighted.

This is of course the historic Western paradigm of the community of scholarship, exploration/experiment and critically aware discussion towards objective synthesis. And to the extent that warrant is indeed established such can create an objective knowledge base that uses logically guided reasoning to compensate for and correct biases. Obviously, open ended and ideally self-correcting. However, prone to captivity of skeptical ideologies.

Another possibility is the existence of a genuine global narrator, N*. Learning to calibrate such and its narrative and granting it trust on establishment of reliability and insight is a major exercise in a cynical, hyperskeptical age. Hence, Plato’s parables of the cave and the ship of state.

So, we can see how a body of objective knowledge can be built up by limited, error-prone investigators once they share an in common focus for investigation and are willing to work together. I would suggest that our inner contemplations (such as we use in Mathematics, e.h. contemplate the null set { } –> 0) and reasoned argument can rebuild objective knowledge on morality, and could even open up calibrating testimony, record and revelation once there is enough to calibrate authenticity. Thus, the legitimate authority of knowledge including of duty to right conduct etc can be restored.

Are we willing or will we insist on doing as the mythical lemmings:

Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .

The choice is ours. END

–> Discussion continues to be open at 48a

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If there is a secret math in sand megaripples…

Is this not evidence of fundamental design in nature?

Certain sand waves, with wavelengths between 30 centimeters (almost 12 inches) and several meters (around 30 feet), are known as megaripples: they’re between ordinary beach ripples and full dunes in size, and we’ve seen them not just on Earth, but even on other planets such as Mars, well known for its all-encompassing dust storms.

Aside from their size, a key characteristic of these middle-ground ripples is the grain size involved – a surface of coarse grains over an interior of much finer material. Yet this mix of grains is never the same, and nor are the winds that blow across the sand to create the ripples in the first place.

Now researchers have discovered a surprising mathematical feature of megaripples: Dividing the diameter of the coarsest grains in the mix with the diameter of the smallest grains always equals a similar number – something that hasn’t been spotted before across several decades of research.

David Nield, “There’s a Hidden Mathematical ‘Law’ in The Sand Megaripples Found All Over Earth” at ScienceAlert (January 13, 2022)

How would fundamental design come to exist if this were not a designed universe?

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Undersea volcano erupts near Tonga, sends Tsunami waves racing across the Pacific

The eruption:

Waves have hit Tonga (in about 20 minutes) and other parts including Hawaii and the California coast.

Satellite imagery:

Developing. END

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Are Mutations Really Random?

That is the question they are asking over at Science Friday.

Now, scientists are questioning whether that’s actually true—or if mutation is more likely to occur in some parts of the genome than others. New research published in the journal Nature this week looks at just that question, in a common weed called Arabidopsis thaliana. After following 24 generations of plants for several years and then sequencing the offspring, the team found that some genes are far less likely to mutate than others. And those genes are some of the most essential to the function of DNA itself, where a mutation could be fatal. Conversely, the genes most likely to mutate were those associated with the plant’s ability to respond to its environment—potentially a handy trick for a highly adaptable weed. 

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A Case of Bad Timing

WARNING! The video linked here is extremely disturbing.

Four days ago Alexis Avila, a woman in New Mexico, had a baby. She put the baby in a garbage bag and threw him in a dumpster. She is being charged with attempted murder. The good news is that a passerby found the baby (umbilical cord still attached) still alive and called 911. The medics were able to save his life.

Ms. Avila could have gone to an abortionist a couple of hours earlier and had her baby chopped into pieces in utero. The abortionist could have then removed the pieces, put them in the same garbage bag and thrown it in the same dumpster. In that case, Ms. Avila would have committed no crime. Indeed, pro-abortion radicals would be applauding her “brave” decision to exercise her constitutional “right” to kill her baby in her womb.

Same woman, same baby, same garbage bag, same dumpster. Two hours difference would have resulted in a radically different legal outcome for Ms. Avila. American abortion law is insane and morally grotesque.

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