From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Fri Apr 08 2005 - 14:38:40 BST
Hi Sam, (and Ham)
On 8 Apr 2005 at 8:20, Sam Norton wrote:
msh:
I hope you don't mean me! I know from our many discussions that
your frontal lobe is perfectly in tact.
sam:
I heartily welcome your return. But one of your recent messages to
Ham did seem a little intemperate.
msh:
I'm not sure which part of which message you're referring to, but it
would be foolish to deny that I am sometimes intemperate. As I've
mentioned directly to Ham, I'm annoyed by his insistence that his
belief in a Designer and Creator of the Universe is somehow "better"
than a religious belief in that it was arrived at through philosophy,
not faith. This strikes me as disingenuous and somewhat insulting
to religious people who don't deny they've made the leap, and in fact
are proud of it. Anyway...
msh said to Adam:
I think the difference is in the motive for the assumption.
Scientists, engineers, mathematicians all make assumptions in order
to solve problems. <snipNow, see if you can find someone who's
made the leap of faith, who believes God exists but doesn't really
care whether or not their belief is correct. I think you'll see my
point.
sam:
I think you're a) confusing two different sorts of belief, and b)
underrating or misrepresenting the nature of religious 'belief'.
These are things I've said ad nauseam on this forum, but they are
worth repeating.
msh interrupts:
Well, before the repetition, let's make sure we understand what we're
arguing about. One position in the argument is that scientific
assumptions are faith-based and, therefore, no different than
religious assumptions. My position, expressed to Platt, to Adam, to
Ham, and to the kitchen sink, is that there is a world of difference
between the two , that scientific assumptions are made for pragmatic
reasons, and that to say they are "faith-based" is a nearly criminal
misuse of the term.
sam:
To say 'I believe that the mass energy of an electron is 0.51 MeV' is
to give one sort of a belief. To say 'I believe that my wife is
faithful' is to give another. One of the beliefs is hugely more
important, and is cared about, than the other.
msh:
I'd say the relative importance of the two is a matter of
circumstance. When the power goes out in the middle of winter, the
first belief takes on a whole new significance. But I understand
and, in general, agree.
sam:
If a scientist or engineer 'doesn't really care whether or not their
belief is correct' then they don't really care about the outcome.
msh:
No. The outcome is ALL they care about. They wanna land that
spacecraft, complete that circuit, build that bridge. What they
don't care about is the literal truth of their assumptions. In fact,
they care so little about the "truth" of the assumptions that, if the
assumptions get in the way of orbiting the satellite, they will DROP
the assumptions. This is pragmatism in action.
Now, do religious people routinely drop their belief in God when
their prayers are not answered? Or when they are confronted with
even more powerful evidence against his existence? Of course not,
because the nature of their belief is fundamentally different to that
of a scientist.
sam continues:
Which is probably true for much of the time, certainly in most
'normal science', and is a logical consequence of SOM and how
scientists are trained. But it doesn't happen always, and I'm pretty
sure it doesn't happen in revolutionary science. Did Newton care
whether the laws of motion were true? He had a lot of ego invested in
the debates with the Cartesians and with Liebniz.
msh says:
Now you're talking about ego. I'm interested in the perfect
scientist, who would be egoless. There's also a distinction to be
made between theoretical and applied science, But I think we can
work past this. The question is, did Newton care so much about his
assumptions that he would have refused to drop them in the face of
powerful contradictory evidence? What if Newton had met Einstein? I
don't know of course, but my guess is that Newton was enough of a
mensch to admit when he was wrong.
sam:
But religious belief is not analogous to 'scientific' belief, they
are not the same sort of thing.
msh:
My point exactly.
sam:
<little snip>You seem to make the assumption that caring about the
truth in this sphere is a flaw.
msh:
If you're speaking of the religious sphere, I say caring about the
truth is essential. But it seems to me that, in the religious
sphere, faith, more often that not, impedes the search for truth.
Maybe it's supposed to.
sam:
Whereas I think it is in the caring that the truth is found - and I
think Pirsig makes just this point in ZMM.
msh says:
I'm all for truth. As above, I think faith is more often than not an
impediment to truth. Pirsig makes this point, too.
sam:
Your argument seems to be a variety of the claim that science is
'value free' - is that really what you are arguing for?
msh:
I'm arguing for precisely what I indicated near the beginning of this
message. And I've said a dozen times that, to me, the value of the
MOQ is that it broadens the metaphysical foundation of science to
include the notions of good and bad, right and wrong. So, in answer
to your last question, no.
Best.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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