Dean, it sounds as if you are echoing the concept that any scientifically valid idea must be falsifiable. This is - from my reading - one of the basic tenets of the scientific method.

I do not agree with your extension. If nothing else, an hypothesis may not be currently falsifiable, but still be scientifically valid. A good example would be current theories on evolution. We can't "empirically prove" how bacteria or chordates evolved, or even "empirically prove" (or, disprove) Stephen Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium. Does that make it opinion? Or merely an hypothesis to which we do not have the data?

Also, I would have to say that many Libertarian positions are based not upon reason, but upon rationality. Big difference.

My favorite aphorism about fact and opinion:

"In the world of business accounting, profit is an opinion but cash is a fact."

Casey: The theory of evolution is still called a theory for that very reason. It's a useful framework, but anyone who states that it's a fact is going outside of science and stating an opinion.

Also, one may be entirely rational and still wrong. That's my point.

Ara: Ha! I'll remember that one.

I'm not sure what you mean by libertarians needing to 'prove it empirically.' Libertarians, especially objectivists, (I'm one of the former but not the latter) believe in morality in government. A libertarian might say 'A libertarian government leads to more wealth than other forms of government,' and that would be a statement worth proving or disproving empirically. But when that libertarian says 'A libertarian government is more moral' what about it can be proved or disproved except by reason or rationality?

>>The theory of evolution is still called a theory for that very reason. It's a useful framework, but anyone who states that it's a fact is going outside of science and stating an opinion.

Dean,

This also goes for the Big Bang Theory of the universe. It is still theory, not fact. Correct me if I am wrong, but every single evolutionist also subscribes to the Big Bang Theory of the universe. I can even make the case that the Big Bang Theory is just as much belief as science.

I occasionally hear an evolutionist state that the creation theory of man presented in the Bible is simply a belief, and hence, unscientific due to its unprovability. To which I say, “Until you stop to consider that scientists hypothesize that the entire universe began as nothing more than the size of a basketball with infinite weight, infinite gravity, and infinite mass. Now that’s a belief if ever there was one.” I have yet to see any “scientist” with a come backer to that one.

This is not to toot my own horn or anything. I just believe people make too much out of science sometimes, especially when pooh poohing religion. Science is fun and exciting. It is what makes our society prosperous for God’s sake; but I also believe that there will always be conundrums that science will not be capable of answering.

Yes, Dean, you're right: an argument can be airtight, logically valid, and yet completely insulated from factual reality.

I love reason, I love reasonableness and rationality; but I consider rationalism a cancer of the human mind. I've known a number of self-professed rationalists in my time. Most of them were, shall we say, noticeably wobbly or strident individuals, with more than their share of psychological and emotional quirks. And yet one of the chief effects of their rationalism seemed to be to render them impervious, blind, to their own hang-ups. Indeed from my experience with these individuals I suspect that one of the chief functions of rationalism is to keep the user's thoughts and feelings carefully confined to the rigid, narrow channels of the user's chosen brand of rationalism. Like psychological horse blinders.

Didn't George Santayana once say that discursive reason makes a good servant, but a poor master? Most of the rationalists I've known have let reason become their master, not their servant. And their rationalism, like any good rationalization, becomes flawlessly self-sealing and self-preserving. Their way of thinking enables them to understand anything, except how any honest and intelligent person could ever think otherwise.

To be fair, unbridled emotionalism can wreak just as much havoc in a person's life as undiluted rationalism. One could argue that one of the typical failings of modern Western culture has been its tendency to split the full spectrum of our humanity apart into various polar opposites: head vs. heart, mind vs. body, transcendence vs. immanence, interpretation vs. representation, etc. Indeed one could argue that, in the intellectual history of the modern era, all this traces back to Descartes' cogito ergo sum and the ensuing predicament of the ghost in the machine. One could argue it, but I won't. It's been argued so often before as to be a commonplace.

The irony is, even reason, as it actually functions within us in everyday life, seems to be much richer, much more nuanced, much more finely reticulated, than anything rationalism will typically allow for. And this subtle depth can itself be articulated and laid forth in considerable rational detail.

Just to toss in a few items from my bookshelves, consider Michael Polanyi's notion of tacit knowing, as in his Knowing and Being, or Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Or the ideas of "low-focus thought" and "affect linking," as developed by David Gelernter in his The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought.

Or if you really want to dive into something post-Cartesian which overcomes the split of head and heart, there's the thinking of American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), one of the founding fathers of modern semiotics. Don't worry, this is not bullshit deconstructive English-department semiotics. This is extremely fine and technical thinking from a practicing scientist, philosopher of science, and very hardcore logician. Problem is, like I say, it's technical: with my background in graduate-level mathematics, I can follow a good chunk of it, but hardly all.

Another good approach to Peirce's stream of thought might be through the novelist Walker Percy, who was himself a fine student of Peirce's writings, and who wove some of Peirce's ideas into his novels. Best place to start might be Percy's novel Love in the Ruins. Or his novel The Second Coming. If you want from there to follow out the technical connections with Peirce's thought, Percy wrote a couple of books of fairly accessible essays: The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book.

Sheesh, Dean, you can tell you've struck on a theme that's close to my heart! I suspect you've also struck a nerve. What can I say? Put a topic like this in front of an ex-academic, and he'll give you a bibliography in reply. :-)

Dean,

I just came across your site - really good stuff in here, I plan to revisit often.

Hope I am not being too nitpicky (have no idea if that is even a word) but there seems to be some confusion on this forum about science in general and "theory" in particular.

The scientific method is a wonderful and complex thing that often gets oversimplified. Let me make my point by first stating what the scientific method is NOT. It is not someone coming forth with an idea while others simply try to poke hole in it. Science wouldn’t have gotten very far if this was all there was to it, but that is how it is commonly understood. This understanding often leads people to make the annoying observation that, “it’s just a theory” when talking about things like evolution, the big bang or relativity.

Yes, all of these are theories – so is gravity. Scientists observe nature and come up with theories that are consistent with those observations. The holy grail is to be able to use that theory to make predictions that are themselves consistent with what we observe in nature.

Most scientists have accepted evolution and the big bang because they are more consistent with what we observe in nature THAN ANY OTHER THEORY THAT HAS BEEN PROPOSED. This is not to say that they answer all questions or are perfectly consistent with observation, but they leave the FEWEST unanswered questions.

In other words, if you want to believe in “intelligent design”, fine, but you have more to answer for than does someone who accepts evolution as the most likely process for biological change. The same goes for anyone who wants to accept the steady state theory over the big bang.

This is all something of a pet peeve of mine so I couldn’t resist posting about it, but all of that said, you (and Paul) are absolutely right: “an argument can be airtight, logically valid, and yet completely insulated from factual reality.”

I came across your Monty Hall brainteaser myself a few years ago, and it changed my life too – I have presented it many times to some very smart people – no one has gotten it right yet.

Paul --

Were you the one that was talking about the Bhudda nature of the dog?

If so, perhaps you can fit into this framework what Bhuddism teaches about reason and emotion.

Ara

Ara, yes, I was the one who was talking about the buddha-nature of the dog.

As for the rationalists I've known, in my experience arguing with them on their own terms is worse than fruitless-- it amounts from the get-go to a struggle over whether they shall put their psychological horse-blinders on me. A lot like arguing with a Jehovah's Witness. Even when you argue circles around them logically, it does no good whatsoever.

The best thing anyone could do for many of the rationalists I've known, would be to "zen" them. I'm reminded of the time someone tried to put Jack Kerouac on the spot by asking him, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Kerouac instantly responded by slapping the fellow in the face.

Which, when you think of it, is a pretty damn good "zen" response. :-)

Off the top of my head, I'm quite foggy on what Buddhism teaches about reason and emotion, though I can sort of guess. At any rate, today happens to be my day off, so you've just moved me to get up off my duff, turn off my computer, and dig some books about Buddhism off my bookshelves.

Mike, welcome! Come back any time, and comment any time.

I am 100% in agreement with everything you've said so far, so we have no argument. :-)

(I love that brainteaser.)

Paul:

I'm reminded of the time someone tried to put Jack Kerouac on the spot by asking him, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Kerouac instantly responded by slapping the fellow in the face.

Bwah! Funny story, I'll remember that one...but oddly enough it doesn't sound like Kerouac.

I'd be interested in what you find about Bhuddism-emotion-reason.

Paul:

Re: Bhuddism-emotion-reason...this page looked promising.

Ara

Just for the record, the word 'theory' does not mean 'something I came up with last night while drunk'. It's the highest accolade a corpus of scientific thought can have. Also, there are 'facts', and then there are 'theories' to describe/explain those facts. Confusion arrises when the two are lumped together.

For example, gravitation is a 'fact'. It is empirically observable. Then there are sundry theories as to why gravitation exists and behaves in the manner it does. Likewise, evolution is a 'fact': it is empirically observable that animals have evolved and are evolving. Then there is the theory of evolution by descent with modification, with its pinnacle in the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

'Fact' in science is unlike fact in, say, mathematics or pure logic. A scientific fact is one where the weight of evidence in its favour is so overwhelming as to make it irrational to hold any other viewpoint. At present, no theory of gravitation falls in this camp. Darwinian evolutionary theory does.

The Hot Bing Bang model is intermediate. That the Universe was once smaller and hotter than it is today is empirically verifiable - things like the Hubble redshift and the relict mirowave background tell us this. Our theories also tell us that no static solution for the Universe can exist. However the details of what the Universe was like prior to 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang is beyond our current theoretic grasp.

Finally, belief and disbelief in a hypothesis are not in general equivalent. If A is a hypothesis and A' is its negation, they are logically of equal weight. But A and A' are not of equal weight epistemologically. The physical chemist Peter Atkins puts it thus: we do not treat the statement, 'there is a teapot in orbit around Pluto' with the same weight as its negation. Even if the Big Bang theory is a 'belief', it carries more weight than its negation.

For example, gravitation is a 'fact'. It is empirically observable.

Er, I must take exception to this. Micro-evolution, the slow changing of one species to better match its environment, is empirically observed and qualifies as a fact. However, Macro-evolution, or the overall theory that all lifeforms came about due to this process, remains unfalsifiable. Indeed, there are several widely acknowledged problems within that theory, quite as puzzling as the current problems in various theories of gravitation, that scientists are still working hard to try to explain.

This does not give equal weight to other hypotheses, of course. And you're right about everything else. ;-)

Actually, the opinion of "pure reason" (i.e intellectual navel-gazing) dean expresses in this article actually *IS* pretty much the Objectivist view on the subject. There's a pretty apropo quote from Rand to the effect of "If it doesn't work in practice, it wasn't any good in theory either."
It's a pretty fundemental tenent of the philosophy that all your nice, shiny rationally derived conclusions need to corrolate to emperical reality, and if they don't, (like with the brain teaser),your chain of logic is wrong somewhere, and you need to go back and re-think your premises (in this case your mental models of statistics) in light of the new info.

It's been my experience that Objectivists are in the habit of flatly asserting that they know the truth, that only Objectivism holds the key to truth, and the world rejects that truth because people are irrational. Even though much of what they have to say is clearly opinion, and questionable.

On the other hand, it's also been my observation that Ayn Rand herself was a good deal less dogmatic and wooden than some of her adherants, who seem to mistake acting like a two-dimensional character from one of her books for being "strong and independent."

Ah, but I always did like Heinlein better. I think I've said before that I am very ambivalent about Rand as a philosopher, and in part I think that's because of some of her adherants.

On the other hand, one cannot deny that she was the most influential and important philosopher of the 20th Century.