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Super Turquoise
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Comment on Astin's Comment on Lane's Comment
« Thread Started on Jan 30, 2011, 4:46pm »

Comment on Dr. Astin's "Comment on Lane's 'Random Mutations'"

Dr. Astin emphasizes that "we know next to nothing about the complex antecedent circumstances that eventually led to the countless specific mutations that were necessary to the formation of most species."

As philosopher Patricia Churchland writes (and remember, to shift the focus to how you feel about MS Churchland is to commit a fallacy of relevance; even if she were a serial killer, her arguments would stand or fall on their own merits and cannot be dismissed on the basis of someone saying things like, "She's a reductionist," "She's Orange," etc.):

In general, what substantive conclusions can be drawn when science has not advanced very far on a problem? Not much. One of the basic skills we teach our philosophy students is how to recognize and diagnose the range of nonformal fallacies that can undermine an ostensibly appealing argument: what it is to beg the question, what a non sequitur is, and so on. A prominent item in the fallacy roster is argumentum ad ignorantiam -- argument from ignorance. The canonical version of this fallacy uses ignorance as the key premise from which a substantive conclusion is drawn. The canonical version looks like this:

We really do not understand much about a phenomenon P. (Science is largely ignorant about the nature of P.)
Therefore: we do know that:
(1) P can never be explained
or
(2) Nothing science could ever discover would deepen our understanding of P.
or
(3) P can never be explained in terms of properties of kind S.

In its canonical version, the argument is obviously a fallacy: none of the tendered conclusions follow, not even a little bit. Surrounded with rhetorical flourish, much brow furrowing and hand-wringing, however, versions of this argument can hornswoggle the unwary. From the fact that we do not know something, nothing very interesting follows -- we just don't know. Nevertheless, the temptation to suspect that our ignorance is telling us something positive, something deep, something metaphysical or even radical, is ever-present. Perhaps we like to put our ignorance in a positive light, supposing that but for the Profundity of the phenomenon, we would have knowledge. But there are many reasons for not knowing, and the specialness of the phenomenon is, quite regularly, not the real reason. I am currently ignorant of what caused an unusual rapping noise in the woods last night. Can I conclude it must be something special, something unimaginable, something.... alien ... other-worldly? Evidently not. For all I can tell now, it might merely have been a raccoon gnawing on the compost bin. Lack of evidence for something is just that: lack of evidence. It is not positive evidence for something else, let alone something of a humdingerish sort. That conclusion is not very glamorous perhaps, but when ignorance is a premise, that is about all you can grind out of it.

from "The Hornswoggle Problem" by Patricia Churchland http://www.wm-johnston.co.uk/philosophy/hornswoggle.htm

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don s
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Re: Comment on Astin's Comment on Lane's Comment
« Reply #1 on Nov 14, 2011, 8:00am »

Hi Turq:

I thought Professor Astin was making a simple observation, not promoting a dogmatic philosophic conclusion. Nothing you said contradicts the fact that there is much we don't know.

I haven't read the original for awhile, so he may have made the mistake you mention, but in the quotation you posted, I don't see any problem.

best,
don

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andy smith
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Re: Comment on Astin's Comment on Lane's Comment
« Reply #2 on Nov 17, 2011, 1:08am »

“the temptation to suspect that our ignorance is telling us something positive, something deep, something metaphysical or even radical, is ever-present. Perhaps we like to put our ignorance in a positive light, supposing that but for the Profundity of the phenomenon, we would have knowledge. But there are many reasons for not knowing, and the specialness of the phenomenon is, quite regularly, not the real reason.”

This view is typical of someone deeply committed to the Cartesian view of the objective observer. If, as science itself has told us again and again and again, the observer is part of the process being observed, then ignorance is a datum, and does indeed have the potential to be very meaningful. It does not just happen that we know some things and don’t know other things. The nature of our ignorance tells us something about the nature of our brains. I certainly agree with Churchland that the fact that we currently don’t know or understand some phenomenon doesn’t mean that we never will, but the fact remains that current ignorance can tell us something insightful about the way our brains are constructed.

Why are monkeys unable to learn much human language? Churchland would surely agree that this fact tells us something very important about the brain of a monkey. Yet she wants to argue that applying the same notion to human ignorance of, for example, our own consciousness is different. Why?

“I am currently ignorant of what caused an unusual rapping noise in the woods last night. Can I conclude it must be something special, something unimaginable, something.... alien ... other-worldly? Evidently not.”

This is clearly a red herring, and Churchland knows it. We can easily distinguish between not knowing the source of some phenomenon that is exactly like other phenomena for which sources are known—and a phenomenon which is like no other. Sounds occur in our environment all the time, and whenever we make the effort, we can find their source. We have no reason to believe that they don’t have observable physical causes. We do have a reason to believe that consciousness has no observable cause—both words in that term are critical. Not to say that it does or it doesn’t, only to say that we have reason to believe.

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