Robert Tulip wrote:DWill wrote:with evolution by means of natural selection for most educated people; the theory's reputation is high, probably beyond reproach in its essence. For certain other segments, especially of the American public, natural selection is in very low repute and is seen as entirely unreliable because it takes the creator out of the action. The certainty is that the theory is wrong.
DWill, you are saying here that we should extend intellectual respect to creationists. I find that a very disturbing suggestion. Creationism is an obsolete framework, which is only sustained by its valuable social function as a basis of community ritual. Opinions that conflict with scientific evidence do not deserve respect.
I can't imagine where you get that idea. You're mistaking my analysis for advocacy.
Robert Tulip wrote:DWill wrote:all we can do, if we care to expend the effort, is to show the many ways the theory has proved its reliability as well as usefulness. We can leave certainty out.
Once again, if you are not sure about evolution, how can you be sure of anything? Is evolution less certain than simple equations like 2+2=4? Where do you draw the line? Saying you are not sure if evolution is true or not leaves the political field wide open to the wacko creationists with their false convictions and desire to deceive the gullible public by saying 'look, the scientists are not even sure of their own views, why should anyone else believe them?'.
Look, the field
is wide open to the wacko creationists. It's a free country, as they say, and what good have statements about certainty from the other side ever done? Saying natural selection is right because it's certain is circular reasoning. The proposition stands or falls on its scientific merits, which are enormous. This knowledge provides all the impetus needed to stop creationists from imposing their agenda.
Robert Tulip wrote:Dwill wrote: Certainty doesn't exist in nature and is a state of the mind similar to 'liking' or 'fearing.'
No, there is a difference between reason and emotion. Certainty, when correct, is an intellectual product of reason. Fearing is a product of emotion. Correct certainty is different from instinctive emotional responses because it relies on scientific methods for corroboration. There are standards which determine if claims to certainty are accurate. They do not include religious fanaticism, emotional commitment or baseless prejudice. We are certain about the structure of the solar system because of corroborated scientific evidence. We are not certain that things we like are better than things we don't like because this is a subjective matter of sentiment. There is a categorical distinction between statements of sentiment and statements of reason and evidence.
Saying that your certainty was correct only gives you personal credit for something you have no influence over, whether an idea is true or not. Yes, if the evidence is strong, you have every reason to to assert that with the
emotional force that constitutes expression of certainty. But that emotion is not the indicator of truth, and you can be wrong when you express it, as, to me, creationists are obviously wrong in their certainty that nat. selection is false. The facts are all we have to go on.
Robert Tulip wrote:DWill wrote:It has undoubted utility in everyday life as a means of spurring us to action, and it has been key in our very survival as a species. But the neural signature of certainty often has nothing to do with whether a claim is correct. We can see that this happened many times in our own lives--our certainty becomes exposed as wrong--and in the many areas of knowledge that were once held to be reliable and now have been proven not to be. Surely it will happen that knowledge that we might be tempted to call certain will be overturned in the future. Science endorses this view.
There is a popular strand in the philosophy of science that endorses this nihilistic claim that we can know nothing with certainty. That does not mean this error is endorsed by "science". In fact, if you ask most scientists if they are certain of basic facts, they will say yes. It is only people who have been addled by bad philosophy who reject all certainty.
I think you'd find, on the contrary, that scientists would say the way must remain open to revision of what we know. Certainty, which in terms of science would be defined as, "these things are true, in just the way we now describe them, forevermore," acts as a roadblock to this openness. And we're not talking here about philosophical parlor games such as how I know I exist or am sitting in this chair. There is no nihilism anywhere in sight.
Robert Tulip wrote:There is a difference between the popular sentiment of certainty and scientific knowledge. The emotional certainty that some people may feel that Whitney Houston was the best singer ever is completely irrelevant to whether we can be scientifically certain about basic facts in evolution. It is disrespectful to the amazing achievements of scientific knowledge to assert that core corroborated knowledge may be untrue when the probability of it being untrue is infinitesimal. In calculus, the inverse of infinity is zero.
You are afraid that unless we claim the absoluteness of certainty, we'll have no conviction. Well, there is a dilemma here that I won't deny. You know the lines from Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." Yeats gives neither side his endorsement, clearly. To fight, putting oneself in physical or psychological danger, does require passion, I have no doubt of that. Is that passion only available if we don the mantle of certainty? But is that passion of certainty at the same time destructive of reasoned action, as Yeats believed?
Robert Tulip wrote:One of the background issues here is climate change. It is one thing to be certain that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but another thing entirely to say that carbon taxes are a sufficient measure to prevent global warming. People have a responsibility to exercise intelligent judgment about what is certain and what is not. It is fallacious to say that because people have wrongly claimed to be certain that therefore all certainty is impossible.
That C02 is a greenhouse gas has that high reliability that makes it seem a certainty, and there may be no harm at all in your looking at it that way. But certainty is not required for action, and it will a very good thing if that is true for global warming, because we need for people to agree to changes in lifestyle even absent a feeling of certainty about the issue. We can act out of prudence rather than certainty, and we often do. The lesson behind the fact that we as individuals, and as societies, have often been wrong in our certainties is only that we need to look past the walls of certitude to see the facts as they might really be. This is the more rational approach. In a pinch, if you tell me you are absolutely certain that we need to do X right away, I might figure my best chance is to take your certitude as backing up the facts at hand. If given some more time, though, I'd want to carefully look into things before following you.