Smugly accomodating

There has been a recent to and fro in the blogosphere about accommodation of science and religion. On the one side you have a group of scientists and philosophers who term themselves anti-accommodationist and the other the accomodationists. What is accommodation all about?

Well, basically, it's the argument that science and religion basically can coexist without contradiction. But the argument more importantly has been about whether science promotions organisations should say nothing about accommodation or should promote accommodation so that religious people do not reject science. There is a lot to be said about this, and a lot has been said. What I'd like to look at is what I perceive as smugness on the part of the (pro) accommodation camp. This often presents itself when the pro portrays the debate as between extremist anti vs relatively benign religious person with the pro sitting serenely in the middle. The pro then tut tuts the anti for being at such an extreme and not coming over to the reasonable position where the pro sits near his benign religious buddy. This is quite a dishonest rhetorical tactic. That religion and science are not compatible in a epistemic sense is as plain as the balls on a bull. That people can be inconsistent and do science while believing in religion does not mean science and religion are compatible, but only that people can be inconsistent. So, if an anti points this out, that anti is not being extreme, but being reasonable. The pro is just being dishonest.

If you want examples of this smuggness, look at the way Chris Mooney tries to claim a false middle ground against Ophelia Benson, Russell Blackford and Jerry Coyne. Mooney smugly asserts there is some clear cut distinction between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism and anyone who doesn't agree with him is holding an extreme position when they deny his accommodationist position. Pity he's not half the philosopher he thinks he is. Of course, Madelaine Bunting is the master of accommadationist smuggness. She frustratingly spews her ignorance and tut tuts anybody who doesn't think she's the very font of reasonableness. She even puts the Age's Barney Zwartz to shame. Which is quite an achievement Read more!

My kind of scientist

Hat tip to PZ Myers Richard Feynman Read more!

Road to Reality II

The first chapter covers mathematical laws and mathematical platonism. Penrose to his credit is explicit about his views on both. I'm not sure I agree however, at least with how I understand Penrose, which may be wrong. By mathematical laws, Penrose means the mathematical formulas and models of the laws of nature. The thing to remember about laws of nature is that they are descriptive, they describe some phenomena, not precriptive like civil laws. Penrose often borders on treating these laws as prescriptive. He says everything in the universe is governed in completely precise detail by mathematical principles and if this is right, then even our own physical actions would be subject to such ultimate mathematical control. This seems very wrong-headed to me. A mathematical model is a simplificiation of some natural phenomena that relies on assumptions that make the problem tractable. It is descriptive of nature, and is tested against nature. It does not prescribe or control nature. We may formulate precise mathematical structures and models that approximate reality very well, but it's not the mathematics that controls nature. This seems quite confused to me.

The other thread running through this chapter is platonism. Plato imagined idealized abstractions such as a perfect circle, square, etc to have some existence of which we were aware and from which we compare the imperfect shapes and structures in the world. This again to me seems wrong headed. Penrose seems to waver from strong platonism to treating platonism as a synonym for the necessity of mathematical truths. I have no problem with saying that a mathematical truth is objective to all who examine it. That it is not some subjective thing that is true for one person and not another. At other times though, Penrose does seem to think there is some deep truth about mathematics, which is built into the universe and linked to platonic forms. The examples he gives to show that platonism is the way to go seem to be committing the fallacy of birfucation. It's not either we agree platonism works or maths is all subjective. Why can't the objectivity of mathematics be part of the consistent nature of mathematical structures or thinking without there being acutal entities, instead of idealizations?

On to the next chapter soon.... Read more!

The Road to Reality I

OK, this shall be filed under silly prat bites off more than he could chew. I bought Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality - A complete guide to the laws of the Universe ages ago, and have only ever scratched the surface of the first few chapters, let alone gotten to the physics. I'm not a mathematician, physicist nor philosopher. All of which seem prerequisites for untying this Gordian knot. But anyway, here goes.....


The book begins with a charming prologue. A story of some ancient called Am-Tep who, along with his city, is the victim of some volcanic event and accompanying Tsunami. I took this to be a bit of historical fiction based on the destruction of the Minoan civilization way back when. Anyway, the important point of the tale was that the universe seemed unchanged and unperturbed regarding the fates of men. That is, there's a lot more to reality, than our corner of the universe and our trials and tribulations. I couldn't agree more.


The tale ends nicely with some descendent of Am-Tep becoming initiated into the Pythagoreans at Samos. Pythagoras and his followers were a mystical bunch who thought the universe was fundamentally numerical or mathematical, and so worked on mathematical stuff and they liked beans, lots of beans. Now while I think beans are probably intrinsically related to reality in some profound sense, they're certainly tasty, except broad beans, they're the devil's work. I'm not as sure about the universe being mathematical. This theme seems to run through the parts the book I've read thus far. Penrose is a mathematician, and knows his stuff, so perhaps he knows more than I and I shouldn't be dismissive.


Begin boring, incoherent, digression

Still, if we're evolved animals, who've evolved enough where-with-all to get by in reality, then part of the getting by is how we perceive and think about the universe. So our ways of reasoning and perceiving are evolved, they may coincide with reality perfectly, - though this doesn't seem to be the case in the very minute or very large scale - but more likely they're enough to get by well in everyday life and not so for environments and scales we didn't need to be adapted too. Our everyday experience is neither on the atomic level nor the near luminal level and this is the arena in which we evolved. Perhaps how we reason and our logic and mathematics are some adaption that is near enough to reality without it being reality. It could be the form of our thinking. In this case then, we'd all perceive the objectiveness of maths and logic, thinks like proof and logical necessity, without it being how the universe is in some exhaustive and binding sense. We'd can't but think logically, but that doesn't mean the universe is logical or mathematical.

Recently I had an email exchange with Russell Blackford who pointed out that he couldn't imagine how the universe wasn't logical in some sense. He pointed out that he couldn't see how something could exist and not exist at the same time, the law of non-contradiction. While I see this point, I still think it's the form of our thinking, not necessarily something reality has to mirror at all times and places. In fact, I think that any argument that begins with I can't see how is an argument from incredulity or ignorance. This is not an attack on Russell, who is a fine thinker and person, only that our own way of thinking is not guaranteed to be exhaustive of reality, that is, just because we can't think it, doesn't mean reality can't do it. Some QM stuff one hears about, virtual particles, seem to violate this rule of non-contradiction for example. I guess my point would be, that if we apply our form of thinking and reasoning, logic and mathematics, to the universe as perceived by us and so model it, then what we get out will of course, fit the form with which we modelled it (i.e. logical and mathematical). Imagine some intricate pattern of laying down 1 meter rules that and unthinking robot followed. - Say, 2 meter lengths forward, turn right 90 degrees, 1 meter forward, turn right modulo 90 degrees modulo meters laid down, etc. - He'd not know where he'd end up, and neither would anybody else without prior calculation given those variables, but that doesn't mean that by following the pattern, that there was ever any doubt he'd end up with some integer of meters and at some place that was built into the pattern with which he started. After seeing where he ended up after some time, and pointing out there was never any doubt he'd end up there, it seems a big step to then claim that this pattern has an existence of its own and is part of the fabric of the universe.

This seems to be what happens when we claim the universe is mathematical or logical. We're taking our way of understanding the universe, our evolved way of thinking or reasoning, and claiming that this is the universe as it is, without a way of ever checking. I guess any attempt to prove that the universe is logical and mathematical that uses logic and mathematics presumes what it intend to prove and only shows that we use reason and logic to reason about reason and logic. That's probably another way of looking at Kantian trancendental arguments. Or is this a Kantian trancendental argument? That we need logic and mathematics to think logically and mathematical, but these form(s) of thinking, whilst being prequisites of our arranging our perceptions don't tell us about the objective nature of reality, only our form of thinking about reality that internally is objective. Or some such.....I guess I see science and reasoning as ways of approaching reality, not ways of determining what reality is.

end digression

That'll do for an introduction. I'll get to chapter 1, with it's Platonism, and version of science soon. Forgive spelling mistakes, I don't have spell-checker working on this machine. If none of the above makes sense, that's fair. Read more!

Returning soon....

Finally finished exams and associated study for this semester. Feeling like I might have a blog post or two in me..... Read more!

2 cats are better than 1

In a pathetic attempt to out cute Russell Blackford and the evil PZ Myers I give you Cheeky (le noir) and Maggie (la petite)!



Poor kitties want to go outside.... Read more!

Silly argument against existence of some non-existent

No, I haven't returned to blogging. You can all relax, I'll not bore you regularly with my inanity. Well, not at the moment. Hope all is well out there.

Just posting something I stuck together a few weeks back. Russell Blackford helped with this. Well, I pestered him with a few drafts and he kindly pointed out some of the more sillier bits that needed work. But I'm responsible! Anyway, it's posted so that I can find it later on, if the need arises....

It’s often said you can’t prove a negative. This is an interesting piece of folk philosophy. The truth is that you can prove a negative. The law of non-contradiction – something can both be and not be – is provable and is a basic law of logic. In fact, if you couldn’t prove a negative then the statement you can’t prove a negative would be false because it is a negative statement. One can always use the law of double negation to turn any positive statement into a negative. Take a statement you agree with, say 1 + 1 = 2, then by the law of double negation we have it is not the case that 1 + 1 does not equal 2. Obviously this is true and it’s a negative statement. So, one can prove a negative statement. What about proving that something doesn’t exist? This is often what people mean when saying you can’t prove a negative. Here it’s important to determine what one means by proof. If one means that you cannot prove deductively the existence some entity, then they are saying that given some set of premises you cannot prove deductively that something doesn’t exist. This too is false, for example:

Argument 1.

1. If the Balrog exists we see Balrog spores.
2. We do not see Balrog spores.
3. Therefore the Balrog does not exist.

This argument is valid, it relies on the inference rule modus tollens, the conclusion is a consequence of the premises. If one denies the truth of the premises one denies the truth of conclusion. One thing to note is that the form of the argument, the valid deductive part is content less, that is we could insert anything into the argument form and it would still be valid, we could set it out thus:

Argument 2.

1. If P then Q
2. NOT Q
3. Therefore NOT P

In our first deductive argument P was the statement the Balrog exists and Q the statement we see Balrog spores. We could substitute for P the statement Bill likes coffee and Bill goes to the café for Q in the above argument to obtain:

Argument 3.

1. If Bill likes coffee then Bill goes to the café.
2. Bill doesn’t go to the café.
3. Therefore Bill doesn’t like café.

Now, you might say, but Bill doesn’t go to the café but he likes Coffee, so the conclusion doesn’t follow, or that the Balrog does exist, we just haven’t been looking in the right place to find any Balrog spores. Deductive proofs only get you what you put into them. If the premises are true, then a valid argument guarantees a true conclusion. You can always disagree with the premises of a valid deductive argument and thus deny the conclusion. In some cases it might be reasonable to do so, especially concerning Balrogs. So, do we then have to prove the premises to be true? Well, in some cases we can, but somewhere along the line we have to accept some premises as being true to avoid an infinite regress of premise proving.

We can often get premises that people accept as true from observation. For example, the universe exists; there are people in the living room, and so on. If we accept that the premises are true, and feed these into a valid deductive argument then we can prove the truth or falsity of an argument. This is what was done above proving that Balrogs don’t exist. However, we need observations to support the premises. Having no evidence for Balrogs and a fortiori Balrog spores means that few people are going to accept that the argument proves anything except that I’ve read the Lord of the Rings once too often. So, deductive arguments alone cannot prove existence or non-existence, being empty formalisms. We need evidence and observations about the universe. What is there? Now we are relying on induction. We have up to this point in time never seen any trace of a Balrog. It doesn’t follow from this that we will never see any trace of a Balrog. Induction is indispensable and though not deductively valid, has up to this point in time worked. The previous sentence was itself based on induction. We can never deductively show that the laws of the universe will continue in a uniform manner tomorrow because we cannot observe tomorrow but instead rely on the past. We cannot demonstrate that induction is deductively valid, but we have to rely on induction in any case and to deny that the sun will rise tomorrow doesn’t seem reasonable.

Deductive proofs for the existence of God attempt to do something similar to proving a negative, they attempt to prove that something, God, does exist from premises that are supposedly reasonable. The arguments as presented are valid. If the proof succeeds, then as a matter of logical consequence it must necessarily be true, at least given the premises and that system of logic. If we turn the argument around we see that if the argument isn’t necessarily true then the proof hasn’t succeeded, this is known as the contra positive. We see from the above that proving the existence of something requires evidence. Empty propositions only show the validity of an argument, not that it succeeds.

Hume in his dialogs on Natural religion had this to say:

…there is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by arguments a priori. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary is a contradiction. Nothing, that is directly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no Being whose contradiction is demonstrable.

What Hume is getting out here is that some fact of this universe could have been otherwise. It would not be a contradiction to suppose that I did not exist. My existence, a matter of fact, is only known from observation. Like induction, it is not deductively guaranteed, but thankfully, is a matter of fact. Therefore if we can conceive of something not existing, without contradiction, it does not necessarily exist and must be shown by observation. If an argument for the existence of God succeeded, then God’s existence would be necessary. The contra positive is that if God’s existence is not necessary then God does not exist. Taking these premises we have:

Argument 4.

1. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary is a contradiction.

2. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non existent.

3. Deductive arguments for the existence of God attempt to demonstrate the existence of God.

4. There is no contradiction in denying that God exists. This follows from 2.

5. Therefore, deductive arguments for the existence of God fail as demonstrations because if they were sound, they would necessarily follow and could not be denied without contradiction.

6. God’s existence is not necessary, this follows from 2, we can conceive God as not existing and 5, deductive arguments for the existence of God can be denied without contradiction.

7. Ontological arguments argue that if God exists, then God necessarily exists.

8. If God doesn’t necessarily exist, then God doesn’t exist. Contra positive of 7.

9. God doesn’t exist. This follows from 6 and 8.

The first premise seems reasonable. A contradiction is when we have the same statement true and not true at the same time. I.e. I exist but I don’t exist is a contradiction. If any attempted demonstration leads to the conclusion that I exist and at the same time that I don’t exist, it fails.

The second premise states the obvious fact that we can conceive of unicorns existing and we can conceive of them not existing. The same goes for dinosaurs, people and even God. In fact, even when I conceive of God existing it has no bearing on the matter, no more than my conceiving that there is no God. Existence is not a predicate as Kant said. Just conceiving something necessarily existing is no more existence than conceiving it not existing.

The third premise states what deductive arguments set out to do. Demonstrate or deduce the existence of God using formal logic.

The fourth proposition follows from the second premises. We can conceive of God existing and of God not existing with equal ease.

The fifth proposition follows from the premises 1, 3 and 4. That is there is no contradiction in denying the existence of God, which means that demonstrations (deductive arguments) that try to prove the existence of God are false.


The sixth proposition states that if God’s existence were necessary, we could not conceive of God’s non existence. Also, if God’s existence were necessary, then the conclusion any valid demonstration of God’s existence would lead to a contradiction.

The seventh statement just describes what ontological arguments attempt to do. They attempt to show that God has some property of necessary existence, and therefore if God exists, God must necessarily exist.


The eighth statement is the contra positive of the seventh. If God doesn’t necessarily exist, then God doesn’t exist at all.

The ninth statement follows from the sixth and eighth statements. If the premises are acceptable, the argument valid, then the conclusion necessarily follows. Read more!