Comments on the Supernatural

By Oskar

After around twenty failed attempts to write articles for this blog, I have decided to compile a series of my better paragraphs that can be understood alone, but I feel lend strength to one and other. Most of them are comments on the debate over the existance of the supernatural that has been continually re-raised by Reuben. While I am on that topic, I should mention that I think we should change our sub-heading, as little actual thinking seems to be going on on either side of said debate. This, I feel is a hypocritical situation, given that most of our contributions come from Reuben, supposed champion against political rhetoric. I also feel it is a bit condescending, I personally do not feel qualified to teach anyone as a superior and am equally open to and expectant of, learning from my discussions with those critical of my thoughts.

Essentially what has been repeatedly said during our discussions is that some of us think we know what we currently can’t know , while others think we don’t know what we currently can’t know (thought I’d better express it in clear English). I put myself in the latter category because I make an initial assumption that, while it is impossible to confirm something (with the possible exclusion of some mathematics [I'm up for debate on this]), we should include the most probable scenario, based on our observations of the world, as part of our working model. While this assumption is unfounded, it removes the need to assume a host of other things, so I’m going to stick with it.

Simply claiming that there are things we don’t know is a perfectly valid, even a constructive, thing to do. Claiming, on the other hand, that YOU know what others don’t, should only be done when you have some kind of evidence that makes the probability of your thoughts outweigh the probability of existing thoughts. This is not always a clear cut case, but the most dramatic shifts in our thinking are often accompanied by clear cut changes in evidence.

Claiming that things exist “beyond the material world”, is something that is difficult to substantiate with evidence (keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming article I am writing about how this might even be a paradoxical claim). The person who has come closest to the mark in doing this is, in my opinion, Plato. With this in mind I would like to suggest that any attempts to make this claim could be substantiated by speculative philosophy (still, no philosopher has really gone beyond Plato, in this respect, in the past 2400 years, so good luck with that).

I believe both sides of this argument have made repeated reference to some kind of Darwinian evolution as evidence. I feel this is quite out of place, as that is not a debate on how present biodiversity has occurred, but on the existance or lack of, of the supernatural. This is a common mistake in debates on the existence of a god, because it is often used as evidence against a literal interpretation of the bible, but it is quite removed from the supernatural debate (evolution would not be disproved if the animals being selected for and against had souls or experienced reincarnation, or if they coexisted with any number of supernatural beings). This is accepted by most theists as well and groups such as the Vatican and the church of England have made it clear that they are no longer in conflict with evolutionists.

At one stage during the heated debate in the previous post, Sanders said “we have never seen an ape change into a human”. Indeed this is true in both its literal meaning, and the meaning I believe it is clear he was intending it to have. Like all things in science, we cannot actually prove that Darwinian evolution occurs. There is certainly a very high probability of this being the way biodiversity has occurred, given current evidence, but we have no confirmation that new evidence will not arise. Like our judicial system, we must base what we accept as our reality on evidence we have available to us that proves something ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

I feel that another point that has repeatedly been causing confusion in these discussions is the idea that logic and evidence will always agree. I believe (and history has shown) that this is not always the case. If I was to base an argument on my own assumptions, I would say that logic is, at least in part. based on our observations (in everyday situations). If we come across a non-everyday situation, the evidence we encounter may not follow our logic. Quantum undeterminism springs to mind as an example. On the other hand, logically applied reason can extend beyond our current evidence based theories and provide answers to questions yet to be evidentially confirmed, or even tried. A successful example of this is the other pillar of modern physics, Einstein’s relativity. A less successful example of applied logic is Xeno’s paradox (I know the paradox is actually based on flawed logic, but I have included it anyway because we do make wrong assumptions in our logical reasoning sometimes).

It should be noted that in the above paragraph I have used the word logic to mean something probably closer to common sense than some definitions of logic.

So there you have it.  A collection of my thoughts on the supernatural and our debate about it. Please debate, disregard, disprove, reinforce and force me to modify them as you like.

Oskar

A challenge to the scientific method

By Reuben.

From a random discussion on Facebook comes a rather interesting comment:

I’m not arguing against science or the scientific method at all. In fact, I wasn’t even espousing a particular worldview or religious dogma. My point was simply that Scientism as a worldview is incoherent. This is because Scientism maintains that the ONLY knowledge which is valid comes from the scientific method. But how do they arrive at that conclusion? Using the scientific method? The scientific method cannot be its own justification. Proponents of Scientism are making a metaphysical and epistemological declaration which cannot be arrived at empirically. That was my only point. The same problem holds for Logical Positivism which states that the only meaningful statements are those which are scientific in nature. But that is not itself a scientific statement, but one of abstract reason.

Discuss.

The logic of numbers, predisposed empiricism and the unreasonable accuracy of predictive modeling.

By Oskar (Osark, Sarko).
With a title like that, I don’t think I really need an article. I’ve got one nonetheless.
Before I get into the rather wordy topic I’m writing on, I’ll give a bit of info on myself to give you an idea of where I’m coming from and what to expect of me.
I was brought up without any religious instruction, both my parents and grandparents holding little stake in ‘muttering to the sky for help’. I like to think I have a slightly more complicated reason for my lack of faith. At the age of 10 I sat a test that put me in the 96th percentile for ‘non verbal reasoning’, but scored zero in ‘creative writing’ because I couldn’t think of anything to write. In high school I started a philosophy club which both Nat and Reuben were members of at one point or another. I am about to embark on a Bachelor of Science majoring in physics at The University of Melbourne. I am fairly calm unless arguing with Reuben, who I became friends with after a campaign of disagreeing with everything he said on his blog. I can’t spell the way normal people can.

So, the logic of numbers. Why is one one? How did we arrive at the values we have? Are they innate or do we learn them?
Well, tests on developing children reveal that there is a minimum age at which brain activity varies when shown different numbers of the same object. This makes me think that we arrive at the concept of numbers after we are born. It is possible that if the need to process and conceive numbers was not present in our developing environment then we wouldn’t be able learn them later in life.
This is certainly the case with language; it has been so far impossible to teach a child who had no linguistic stimulation before the age of twelve any more than the level of word-object association that can be taught to dogs, chimps and birds.
Perhaps it is not possible to not encounter numbers in the world in which we live, while it is certainly possible not to encounter language.
I would suggest that we encounter the world and tailor our logical systems (such as our numbers and our manipulation of them) to fit our needs in the reality we experience. This said, I certainly think we are predisposed to many of our mental and behavioral processes. Take the example of the hour for instance (numeracy). Chimps have been shown to be quite proficient at counting things rapidly and those that have been trained can do so much faster and more effectively than the average human. They are also able to add numbers quite well, but when faced with any other mathematical manipulative function (subtraction, multiplication…) they are unable to comprehend. This is probably due to their inability to hold abstract concepts, something that seems inherent in humans. In this way, I think we are applying our inherent tendencies, our built in ‘toolbox’ so to speak, to our environmental stimulus and so arriving at our thought and behavioral processes.

It has been said that mathematics shows an ‘unreasonable’ accuracy when describing the world. I believe this further supports my case for learned numbers, as a number logic based around what we observe would be expected to be closer to the observed world.

Not as controversial as some of the other articles, but please, discuss.