How to Annoy Scientists

I’ve previously described myself as a conservative post-modernist. This means that I like to use the methods of post modern theory to expose the assumptions of the (usually quite left wing) people who espouse post modernism. As I like to say, all history is fiction, especially if it’s written by Marxists.

I think many of the insights of theory are extremely penetrating. When Michael Foucault’s History of Madness was eviscerated by Andrew Scull in the Times Literary Supplement the other week, I wasn’t sure the attack was entirely fair. Sure, the basis of Foucault’s work in the historical sources was rather shaky, but his ideas were brilliant. As long as we are careful ourselves about keeping the facts sacred, we can use his ideas in many different fields. When I explained last week why I thought that Dennett, Pinker and others were all supporters of a modular theory of the mind because of their loyalty to evolutionary theories and the limitations of their experiments, I was being quite the Foucault disciple.

Scientists dislike having their practices subjected to scrutiny even more than left-wing professors do. They seem to think that the unique methodology of science makes them immune to the subjective pressures that the rest of us suffer from. Not a chance. If anything, the belief of scientists that their discipline is not prone to subjectivity makes them even more prone to it.

A few years ago, a new academic subject was born - the sociology of scientific knowledge (or SSK for short). The SSK mob started saying that scientific theories are social constructs divorced from objective truth. Scientists got cross about this because they had always thought they believed their theories because they were true. Of course, both sides are wrong and both have a point. When I ask the question “why does Richard Dawkins believe that religion is an unwanted by-product of something useful rather than an evolutionary adaptation that benefits its carrier?” or “why does Steven Pinker think the mind is modular?” (see here and here for a discussion of these questions in case they don’t make immediate sense) I can see a menu of options. One of the options is that Pinker and Dawkins are actually right, that their opinion is one reached by a rational examination of the facts that has led them to a correct conclusion. But that is only one option. There are other possibilities, such as the fact that their ideas fit well with their preconceived opinions. Dawkins hates religion and so he cannot accept a theory that claims it must be good for humanity. Pinker loves evolution so adopts a hypothesis of mind conducive to his favourite theory.

So I think I am justified in imagining that scientists often adopt the scientific theories that they do for reasons that are largely subjective. However, much it might annoy them, I think we do need to look at the motivation and biases of scientists before we decide that we are going to believe them.

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Dawkins in the Papers Again

There is another flurry of publicity over Dawkins’ The God Delusion in the run up to the paperback release on 21st May. I’m quite surprised the publishers haven’t held it back given the hardback is still selling by the shed load.

The main point of interest is a rather unrepentant new foreword where Dawkins’ largely fails to answer his critics. He claims, for instance, that he addressed fundamentalist religion because that is the normal sort. This is no defence, of course, because he also specifically attacked liberal religious thinkers and tolerant atheists as a Trojan horse and appeasers. If he really cared so much about fundamentalism, he would have written a book aimed at helping mainstream believers conquer it. Instead, he comes across as someone who heartily approves of fundamentalists as people who make his job of attacking all religious ideas easier.

William Rees Mogg says much the same things as me here.

Meanwhile, Christine Odone had the misfortune of sitting next to Dawkins at a dinner party. He bit her head off for suggesting that she’d shoot the last surviving elephant to save a human baby. This proves conclusively (if the anecdote is accurate) that Dawkins’ really is utterly nuts. We have other words to describe people who would stand by as a wild animal killed an innocent child, but I’ll let you work them out for yourselves.

A rather more serious topic is covered by Anjana Ahuja is her regular science column for the Times. It is about fraud in scientific papers and more specifically, that raw data is rarely checked.

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Karen Armstrong

How rude is it permissible to be about Karen Armstrong? Robert Spencer is jolly cross that she has been extremely nasty about his new biography The Truth About Muhammad in a review she wrote for the Financial Times. Spencer has received some uncompromising support in the London Daily Telegraph from the editor of the Catholic Herald. I’ll admit to finding Armstrong’s vacuous thinking and self righteous preaching rather irritating. But the girl has had a tough life and I’m not about to start kicking her just for being oleaginous.

The fact is that I can see where she is coming from and I think it is the right direction. Yes, it would help if she knew what she was talking about, but in this case it is not absolute truth that is important. We simply have to learn to get along with Islam and Muslims have to learn to get along with us. Attacking them, accurately or not, does not help relations one iota. That is why I am unsympathetic towards those like Spencer and Mark Steyn on the right together with Rod Liddle and Christopher Hitchens on the left, who would denounce Islam as a whole.

There are sensible and enlightened Muslims out there, like Ed Husain who has written a book about his experience as an abortive jihadi, who need support. The mistake we have been making in the UK is not the act of reaching out to Muslims (however annoying the phrase ‘reaching out’ is), but that we have been reaching out to the wrong ones. Ken Livingstone, London’s mayor, seems obsessed with some pretty unpleasant imams and the government’s attempt to bring several fanatical groups in from the cold has backfired. The successful end to Operation Crevice, with the jailing of the erstwhile Bluewater Bombers, shows how pervasive the influence of the wrong sort of Islam is. But it has also shown how hard other Muslims are resisting the radicalisation of their communities.

Smash the terrorists by all means. Show no mercy to those who are trying to destroy our society. But don’t tar all Muslims with the same brush. And above all, don’t imply, like Spenser and Liddle, that Islam is congenitally incapable of adapting to the modern world.

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Technorati Profile

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Theories of the Mind

Dan Dennett, Steven Pinker and Judith Rich Harris are all promoters of the idea of the primacy of genetics in any scientific explanation of human behaviour. As I said on Monday, I’m with them on that. Whenever my wife or I hear some piece of pop psychology we subject it to the ‘Pinker test’. If it doesn’t give pride of place to genetics then it is probably worthless. This tends to invalidate almost everything you hear about what causes people to behave the way they do. Of course, I see Dennett and co. simply catching up with St Augustine’s work on the inheritability of personality and the impossibility of completely subjugating our desires. Augustine must qualify as one of the greatest psychologists in history and, unlike lost other people of whom it is said, was well ahead of his time (at least in this respect).

Evolutionary psychology is not the only thing that Dennett, Pinker and Rich Harris have in common. A few years back Dennett brought out a book called Consciousness Explained. More recently, Pinker’s How the Mind Works has been almost as influential. Rich Harris’s new book, No Two Alike, ploughs the same furrow.

Their theory is simply stated. The brain has a number of inter-dependent service modules that each do a particular job. The modules are independent enough that if you disable one, the rest of the brain can continue to work. It’ll try a hot fix around the disabled component so that sometimes the conscious mind won’t even notice that something is missing. The modular theory states that consciousness is an epiphenomenon that results from all these modules getting on with their jobs and talking to each other. The modules themselves are in no way controlled by the conscious self. In fact, the conscious self doesn’t do anything very much beyond getting fooled into thinking that it is in charge.

Needless to say, I find this theory rather implausible. But I am more intrigued as to why it enjoys support from the same sorts of people who are also sympathetic to evolutionary psychology. I think it is because the modular mind is highly amenable to an evolutionary explanation. Each module can be explained by a different evolutionary just-so story which keeps things nice and simple. For instance, the speech organ postulated by Noam Chomsky before he turned into a barking mad nut case, can be made the subject of a story that leads from the ability to grunt to the ability to recite Homer in a few easy steps.

There’s another reason why I think that the modular theory is popular and it has to do with how science works when it is successful. Science is usually reductionistic because we lack the tools to analyse complex systems without breaking them up. The brain is the most complex system of all, so splitting it up into manageable chunks would seem a sensible way to go about understanding it. Almost all experiments on the brain have involved prodding it with stimuli and seeing which bits light up. More radically, when particular parts of the brain stop working due to injury or disease, we can examine the effects this has on its overall function. In fact, there are almost no other useful kinds of experiment you can do on the brain. I’m not denying that all this has been fruitful. Just that it hasn’t taken us a single step towards understanding what consciousness is. But it is not surprising that the theories of mind we do have, while generally rather implausible, have been shaped by the experimental limitations of neuroscience and the success of evolutionary theory.

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Bringing Up the Kids

There was an interesting article in Prospect Magazine this week which created a slight flutter elsewhere in the media. Judith Rich Harris was plugging her new book, No Two Alike, about how the mind works. Her theory (which I’ll take a side long look at later this week) is old and boring – it’s a rehash of the mind as modules idea loved by Dan Dennett and Steven Pinker. Of more interest was the beginning of her article about the relationship between genetics and parenting.

From time to time, science throws up something that is so much in conflict with common sense that practically everyone simply refuses to believe it. The effect that parenting has on children is one of those things. You hear all the time about way you can help your child develop into an intelligent, honest and well-rounded individual. There are lengthy lists of does and don’ts, most recently a panic about the perils of letting children watch TV when they have something called neuroplasticity. Psychologist Aric Sigman revealed himself to be totally ignorant of current science when he advised MPs that young children should not watch too much TV. Predictably, journalists didn't challenge the basis for his ideas.

Thus, we are urged to keep children out of nursery, to read to them, to give them lots of attention and affection, not to argue in front of them or leave them alone to long. And yet, the evidence from proper scientific testing, documented by Pinker in The Blank Slate’s chapter on children, is that none of this makes a blind bit of difference. Whether you are a Victorian Dad or a Modern Parent will have not the slightest effect on how your children are going to turn out. So stop worrying.

In fact, as Judith Rich Harris explains, the only contribution you can make to your children’s personality is to give them your genes. Intelligence, behaviour, emotional complexion and much else are 50% genetically determined. Although the source of the other 50% is unknown (more on that some time soon), it is definitely not based on parenting practices. Twin studies, adoption studies and much else have proved this almost beyond doubt. Yet we still refuse to believe it because it conflicts with our in-built ideas about causation.

Personally, I find the idea that I can’t screw my daughter up, any more than I can turn her into a genius, is of some comfort. It’s enough trouble keeping her fed, fit, healthy and, above all, happy, without worrying about how, by letting her watch The Night Garden and Balamory, I’m turning her into psychopath.

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Bede is Back

I'll be reactiving this blog from next week so pop back then to see what I have in store.

Best wishes

James

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The God Delusion and Goodbye

I've consumed it, digested it and well, you know what comes next...

Here's my review.

And for the moment, that's it. This blog will be going into hibernation mode for the foreseeable future. I have a new job starting Monday. My three years and five months as a PhD student are over and the real world beckons.

If there is any news on my book, Before Science: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, I'll let you all know here and on the yahoo group. The group remains active and I'll be posting there more regularly now I'm not posting here.

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Lewis

I was a great fan of Inspector Morse, the morose but cerebral Oxford police inspector whose long running TV advantures ended with a heart attack (and the sad death of John Thaw who played him), a few years back. ITV have resurrected the franchise by giving Morse's batman, Lewis, a series of his own after a successful pilot last year.

Last night's first episode of Lewis was, I thought, excellent. The old ingredients of college politics, wronged women and nasty posh murderers were all in place. While nothing could replace Thaw's masterclass in understated acting, I thought that Kevin Whately as Lewis was as excellent as ever.

The reason for the note on this blog is that Lewis's sidekick is one of the very few (the first I can remember for years) unremittingly positive portrayals of a Christian on British television. Hathaway, the police sargent who helps Lewis, is an ex-theology student. He is clever, young, good-looking and morally upright. The writers of the series do not roll out the cliche of his becoming a policeman because he lost his faith. Rather, he simply wanted a career where he could right wrongs and make a good living. Lewis himself lost his faith when his wife was killed by a hit and run driver. His inability to forgive and move on is shown to eat him up and warp his moral judgement. Never before have I seen the loss of faith portrayed as a damaging event on British TV.

Compared to the BBC's Waking the Dead, which bashes the Church every week and treats the faith of the Catholic policewoman as an object of scorn, Lewis is a breath of fresh air.

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Tis but a Flesh Wound Part 2

There is a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur comes across a knight guarding a path. The knight refuses to allow anyone to pass unless they first defeat him in single combat. Arthur accepts the challenge and cuts off the knight's arm. "Tis but a flesh wound!" the knight cries and insists that the battle continues. He refuses to accept defeat even after all his limbs have been hacked off. Arthur wonders off bemused as the knight slithers behind him trying to bite his ankles.

Arguing on the internet is often like this, especially when dealing with Jesus Mythers and other conspiracy theorists. One of the prime exponents on the Internet Infidels' board even claims to have a PhD in philosophy. No matter how often you point out his enormous errors, he keeps coming declaring that anything he doesn't like is a fraud or an interpolation added by Eusebius.

I should not be surprised that A.C. Grayling is behaving in the same way. Despite being shot down countless times, he continues to insist that he is right that Christianity has made not a single contribution to science. The Guardian wisely closes all threads after three days, but Grayling has promptly opened a new one where people can pile on his agony. I cannot understand why a well known and respected academic is trying to besmirch his own reputation like this.

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