- Humans acquire a vast amount of factual information through testimony, arguably more than they learn through experience.
- The extensive reliance on testimony is remarkable given that one often cannot verify testimonial information.
- What makes testimony distinct from storytelling is that it has an implicit or explicit assertion that the telling is true. The literary format and style of the Gospels is that of the ancient biography, a historiographic genre that was widely practiced in the ancient word. Thus, one can regard these accounts as a form of testimony.
A Natural History of Natural Philosophy (pp. 165-172)
A more plausible explanation is that young children are psychologically disposed to acquire knowledge through testimony and perception: the information received in this way is basic, in the sense that it is unreflective and not based on other beliefs. This leads them to the impression that they have always known these facts. Also, and perhaps more crucially, children do not make a distinction between knowledge acquired through testimony and knowledge acquired through direct experience.
…children treat testimony to scientific and religious beliefs in a similar way.
…children do not find religious testimony intrinsically more doubtful than scientific testimony.
The current empirical evidence indicates that testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge, similar to memory and perception (in line with antireductionism), but that children and adults are sensitive to cues for the reliability of informants (in line with reductionsim).
Books such as the recent Faith vs. Fact by Jerry Coyne rely on this to be the case [that testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge], while at the same time denying that such knowledge counts as knowledge. Sadly, some commenters here at TSZ believe that Coyne’s “way to knowledge” is “the only way to knowledge.” Taking Coyne’s word for it is hardly convincing.
Hi, Fifth.
I’m sorry if you’ve already been asked this before, and I see that keiths asked something similar a day or two ago (you must get a little tired of repeating your self on these issues), but I feel like I wanted to ask one more thing to kind of close this circle.
First, I understand that you believe that God must exist by definition. While I believe that’s false, myself, I can’t deny that you’re in very respectable company there. To name a few celebs, you’ve got Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Plantinga. Most philosophers since the 18th Century would say that that view is based on a confusion, and it’s not held in particularly high repute these days, but, as I said, you are nevertheless in the company of some very smart guys.
Second, I understand that you believe that if God says something we can understand, it must be true. Here, I think the issue is whether veracity must follow from goodness. I take it that in order to be God, one must be perfectly good, and that such a one would not deceive us for shits and giggles. It seems to me that a perfectly good and perfectly intelligent being might, however, want to deceive us for some high reason, perhaps one we can’t understand, being very limited beings ourselves. So, I don’t think it follows from God’s goodness that He must be a truth-teller in every instance; He must just be a truth-teller whenever he has no good reason to fib.
Third, you believe that if the Bible is the Word of God, everything in it must be true. I think this one follows from the two propositions you believe set forth above. That is, if those are true, this one must be also.
Fourth, you believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I’m hesitant to ascribe a reason for this one. It may be that you find claims in it that, e.g., “I say unto you that so-and-so,” where the “I” is intended to refer to God. I think that would be circular, so maybe you have a better reason for this. Anyone wanting to be a Biblical literalist needs one, so I’m wondering (as I think keiths wondered earlier) what your basis is for this one.
Fifth, if science and the Bible conflict, the scientists must be wrong. This too, I think follows from the above. And I agree with you that one or the other must be wrong. I guess that means there’s a sense in which I don’t care much for the KN/Lizzie conception of religion, which makes it solely into something like “The Relaxation Response”–a method to help people feel better. I agree with keiths here that very religious people (or at least very religious Christians) generally want their religions to provide both comfort and (revealed truths). In fact, I think many would say the comfort is derived from the truths. (I discuss this matter a bit in my book on meditation.)
Sixth, you seem to believe that science should be respected as itself one pretty good way of getting at truths. I agree with you about this one, as I believe most people here would (although I’m not sure about Messers Murry and Byers).
Seventh, I think you’d agree with everyone else here that scientific investigations are not finished. That is, there are many things that we don’t know about the world, and some of the things we think we know are wrong.
It follows from these, I think, that to the extent we trust science, we can’t be too sure about what the Bible says. In fact, belief in all the above propositions entails that we really don’t an awful lot about what it means, and would probably be better off waiting for the findings of science to tell us. I’m also curious what you have to say about this inference. As I said earlier, back at the time of the Scopes trial and for hundreds of years prior, Biblical scholars had a very different picture about, e.g., the age of the Earth and what happened during the Noah story. You now take the view (that I think you must given the above propositions) that all those scholars were wrong, because the scientists seem to have concluded different things about what happened way back when.
I again thank you for your patience and candor. I, for one, have learned a lot about how one school of fundamentalists think about these matters from this discussion.
peace
I don’t think that the question as to whether reality is comprehensible is the issue here. (Even Neil will accept that some aspects of reality are comprehensible to us to some degree!)
As I see it, some aspects of reality are intelligible to us to some degree because that’s what brains are for: a brain is for scanning the environment for motivationally salient data that are relevant to the success of actions necessary for achieving the goals of the organism. There is no “gap” between “mind” and “world”: the cognitive systems of any organism are geared into the environment of that organism. (Which does suggest that if the environment were to change radically, the cognitive systems would not function properly. That’s been a nice theme of recent science-fiction, but especially in Peter Watts’s books Blindsight and Echopraxia.)
Put slightly otherwise: the Cartesian problematic of skepticism arises only if one’s conception of cognition is based on abstract, speculative thought. If one thinks about cognition as a perception-thought-action system — where abstract thought is a part of the whole of cognition rather than all there is to cognition — then the skeptical worry about a possible gap between “mind” and “world” doesn’t arise. And without that gap, one doesn’t need to posit a non-deceitful deity in order to cross it.
So, for no animal is there any gap between its cognitive system and its environment, and that’s just as true for humans as it is for spiders, lizards, hawks, and bears. The interesting difference between human minds and the minds of other animals is that we can constrain each other. A non-linguistic animal can think and reason quite well in many cases, in both causal and social domains. It has recently been shown that chimpanzees can even detect the inferences that other chimpanzees are making — a cognitive trick formerly believed that was unique to human beings. However — and this is what I find fascinating — they can only do so under competition. They do not detect, track, and classify each other’s inferences in order to cooperate, or in much the same terms, they do not detect, track, and classify each other’s inferences in order to help improve the inferences that they are making, and give the whole community a better grasp on reality. Humans do that; no other animal can (so far as we are currently able to determine through careful observation and experimentation). And that’s why humans can play the game of giving and asking for reasons, and chimpanzees cannot.
The further question would be whether our ability to “collectivize” our inferential resources, which plays a crucial role in our ability to have an increasingly better objective grasp on reality, can itself be explained without positing supernatural intervention anywhere in hominid evolution. Though we don’t have a complete story at present (and perhaps never will, given the paucity of data), it’s pretty clear that a massive expansion of the prefrontal cortex played a major role here, and it’s also pretty clear that the expansion of the prefrontal cortex involved some mutations in the genes that regulate brain growth.
My best guess at present is that as prefrontal cortex expands, there are denser and richer interconnections between the dorsal prefrontal cortex that plans actions (hence regulates actions in light of new data, which is to say, that infers) and the ventral prefrontal cortex that tracks social relationships. The selective pressure driving this expansion would be cooperative foraging, if Sterelny is right (and I think he is), which is an ecological niche that all human social groups inhabit, and which no other primate does.
(Sterelny also argues that the right to think about this process is by way of a new concept in evolutionary theory called niche construction. Presently I’m reading a very interesting article on the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis; Sterelny is one of the co-authors. And he’s a philosopher! Take note, those who think philosophy is useless to science!)
I don’t think there’s an interesting difference between prayer, meditation, and getting stoned. The major difference between using entheogens (e.g. marijuana, LSD, mescaline) and developing a spiritual practice is whether the neurobiological changes are induced exogenously or endogenously. For some people, that makes a big difference; for me, it doesn’t.
I wouldn’t say that the sole purpose of religion is to help people feel better. I’m a strongly committed Buberian — I think that the major function of religion, to the extent that religion is psychologically healthy, morally acceptable, and consistent with the political idea of secularism, is to help us achieve the I-Thou encounter. (Unlike Buber, I don’t think that religion is necessary to do this.)
They are sources of information. But information is not knowledge. We often question information. That questioning, weighing different kind of information, etc, is part of what goes into forming knowledge. So no, we do rely on testimony. We allow testimony as one of our unreliable sources, but we still get to question it.
Internally induced relaxation involves modifying one’s brain structures and is lasting. Drugs are crutches. Additionally, many drugs become tolerated, or less effective.
In case anyone is wondering this is exactly the kind of atheistic inference that I’m not “down with”
peace
KN
IMHO, “Entheogen” begs the question regarding the significance of the experiences that result from use of these substances as much as does “hallucinogen” or even “psychotomimetic” (Neither of which is an appropriate term, either.)
What I am asking is this: what testimony should we rely on as justification for calling our beliefs knowledge? You could answer that as RB does by noting scientific or statistical standards for reliability. But I agree that there is a deeper epistemological need to justify when and why we should rely on science at all.
The book you link seems to be about that philosophical issue. From a quick skim of the Kindle preview:
In other words, what we’ll be seeking to do in subsequent chapters is to determine which strategies, practices or mechanisms should govern a recipient’s acceptance of testimony,
— Shieber, Joseph. Testimony: A Philosophical Introduction (Kindle Locations 266-268). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
And a nice anecdote from Clinton in the intro to the book. I wonder what TV network he had in mind:
The old guy worked me into the ground every day and shared a lot of his homespun wisdom and country skepticism with me. Just a month before, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the moon, beating by five months President Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the moon before the decade was out. The old carpenter asked me if I really believed it had happened. I said sure, I saw it on television. He disagreed; he said that he didn’t believe it for a minute, that “them television fellers” could make things look real that weren’t. Back then, I thought he was a crank. During my eight years in Washington, I saw some I saw some things on TV that made me wonder if he wasn’t ahead of his time.
Shieber, Joseph. Testimony: A Philosophical Introduction (Kindle Locations 181-186). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
Fifth, I hope you’ll take the time to respond to my last post.
Hey Walto,
You asked several questions I’ll give them a go but make sure to let me know if I missed something.
No that is not necessarily the issue. Think of it like this.
If God is a not truthful then nothing we know can be trusted.
No one acts as if we can’t trust anything we know. We all act as if we can trust our faculties and the laws of logic for example. In my case those actions are not hypocritical
If God in not truthful then knowelege is impossible. It’s all pretty straightforward and simple in my opinion
It all has to do with the incarnation. If the Logos actually became flesh we then have a “Rosetta stone” to understand God.
Once we understand that Jesus is able and willing to make sure that his message is communicated to us infallibly then the infallibility of scripture is an obvious given.
NO, what follow is that we can’t be too sure about our interpretation of what the Bible says.
Biblical exegesis is a never-ending enterprise just like science.
What is important to know is that in the end there will be no conflict between truths found in the Bible and those found by other means.
That is why I make it a point to say that I am open to new information. I have often modified my beliefs when new information presents itself.
That is a motto of my particular brand of Christianity
semper reformata
peace
So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. (Hebrews 6:18)
Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, (Titus 1:2)
Of course, they are just following their Scriptures:
God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? (Numbers 23:19)
Granted, not a philosophical argument as to why God cannot lie.
But a Christian (or a Jew) is not likely to accept the premise that God can lie.
That “atheistic inference” is a big mistake. It is actually a Christian view, that the Adam and Eve story is just a story. Perhaps a minority Christian view, but still a Christian view.
The most common atheistic view seems to be that A&E is a foundational doctrine of Christianity — and since it is obviously false, Christianity is thereby refuted.
The confusion comes from the twisted idea that if Adam had a belly button then the A&E story is false.
That is what I mean when I say that appears folks here have rejected a straw man.
peace
From where I sit, you first deny that testimony is a source of knowledge and then you admit that testimony is a source of knowledge.
We get to question all our sources of knowledge, and who ever said otherwise?
The fact that we can question a source of knowledge doesn’t count against it being a source of knowledge, it in fact strengthens the case that it is in fact a source of knowledge.
Thanks, Fifth and mung.
One last thing: couldn’t you just dispense with the Biblical scholarship completely and just let the scientists tell us what has to be in there if it’s all to be true? I mean if there can be no conflicts, it would seem that hard science trumps exegisis, so you could just give up the latter as a pointless, if perhaps endlessly amusing enterprise. If the geologists decide next week that the entire world was indeed flooded and everything killed you’ll jjust have to revise your interpretation again. Why not just cut out the middleman and dispense with the jigsaw-like re-interpretations?
Testimony is certainly an important source of information about the world, but that doesn’t by itself imply that testimony is a source of knowledge. Usually we think of knowledge as justified true belief. The information accrued through testimony has to be carefully examined, and so far as possible, corroborated through other lines of information, in order to count as knowledge.
However, there has been some recent work on “testimonial injustice”, in which someone is harmed in his or her capacity as a knower by virtue of being assigned a credibility deficit by those with more power or authority. A classical and much-discussed example is a woman whose report of rape is not believed by police or other authorities.
Rectifying testimonial injustice suggests that we have an epistemic duty to accept testimony unless we have very good reasons to believe that the testimony is unlikely to be corroborated by other lines of relevant evidence.
walto,
Well, their view seems to be that empirical science and Scripture both have epistemic authority, so the hard work lies in reconciling them. Which one has to give depends on which claim seems to be more strongly confirmed.
For example, it’s highly confirmed that the universe does not have the structure that the ancient Israelites thought it did, so the Flood narrative has to be re-interpreted in light of geology. But if the ontological difference between humans and other animals is both evident in Scripture and more strongly confirmed than any paleoanthropological or primatological evidence, then they want to hold onto the former and make the latter go away.
I can see why you want to say that we don’t need to regard Scripture as having any epistemic authority, if empirical science has any. And I agree with you there; I read the Hebrew Bible as teaching the I-Thou encounter as refracted through the ancient Israelite worldview, not as having any epistemic authority in any domain of empirical knowledge. But the idea that Scripture has epistemic authority is itself central to their religiosity.
Now you see the problem.
That’s an unreflective or uncharitable reading of the term “act”, which has more immediate meanings than “to perform a (fictional) role in a play”.
Of course Mung was making an action, as I am at this moment, and as you were at the moment you posted. It’s all acts. That specific post I responded to was an act of an agent, and no reason to assume I meant that it was an act of a play-character. I am genuinely surprised that there’s any doubt about my motives; I’m not the kind of person to hide behind overly-nice words and if I thought someone was faking, I would go right ahead and say “Don’t pretend”. (Or just be silent in view of this site’s rules.)
I say “Don’t act like an idiot” because that makes clear that I am not poking Mung (or whoever) for inherently and in essence being an idiot. I don’t say “Don’t be an idiot” – which as well as insulting would be pointless because if he were really an idiot, he’d have no choice about being so, anymore than I have a choice about being a genius. Mung is certainly intelligent enough to hold his own when he chooses, but it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t choose to display it all the time (nor should he have to, neither raw intelligence nor book-learning should be the highest value of a person).
What I do hope is that we all have some choice in how we manifest our respective persons. I do choose to act as if actions are what matter, not what people “are” but what they do and say outside their own heads.
As for you, Patrick, I can’t understand why you chose to say “Do you have evidence that Mung is acting”? Reading in context, the only way you could have meant that is do I have any evidence that Mung is putting on a staged performance.. Evidence? Of course not! Damn, what do you think, Patrick, that I’m secretly recording Mung as he practices his villainous mustache twirls in the mirror and then whispers that he’ll pretend to be an idiot to fool the so-called skeptics at TSZ. Bwa ha ha. The curtain opens and … what? I reveal my evidence?
Of course not. It looks like a bizarre perversion of skepticism that you even asked.
I must say, though, I’m tickled that you said “Please” to begin with.
I think the doctrine of the original sin of Adam and Eve is unique to Christianity.
Accepting original sin does not require the A&E story to be literally true, of course.
But as I understand Christian doctrine for all mainstream denominations, if you reject original sin/inherited sin, then you could not be a Christian.
That observation is close but not quite accurate.
As usual the answer is found in the incarnation. If you don’t get the incarnation you will never understand the Christian worldview.
In the incarnation you have Christ who was equally God and man. Two natures one person. Neither nature has to give anything. That is the beauty and the mystery of it all.
At times the divine seems to be preeminent and at other times the human appears to be dominant. But that is just our limited perspective playing tricks on us
Just like in beautiful music sometimes you mainly hear the melody at other times at the rhythm gets your attention.
If it is good music what really is going on is a deep harmony in which the parts are complementary and necessary neither side has to “give” anything.
This is exactly the relationship we have between common and special revelation (science and scripture). However if you don’t “get” the incarnation you will miss it. It will seem like foolishness to you.
Hope that helps
peace
You both may enjoy this response by the biblical scholar James Kugel to the question posed by the blog author:
Frankly, I do not understand how the same man who intellectually deconstructs the very human pathways that lead to modern Orthodox Judaism can at the same time hold belief in their immutable correctness
Kugel’s book How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now is very good.
Totally weird.
I haven’t come across anyone making a belly button argument except in jest. Or, at least, I took it to be in jest.
The existence of Australian aboriginals is pretty strong evidence that the A&E story is false.
That’s pure nonsense.
No rational person has an idea that if Adam “had a belly button”, then the whole Adam-Eve-created-in-garden tale is false. Non-believers assume, if god created Adam out of thin air (or from dust, as the case may be), then god would have created Adam with diploid DNA with different alleles at various locations (just as if Adam had inherited it from two separate human ancestors) and with a bellybutton, too. Why not? Why would god create a prototype human who was anything less than a perfect example of the generations of born humans who were to follow?
Funnily enough, it’s the christians who have been arguing about this for centuries and can’t agree on the answer. Some claim that Adam could not have had a belly button, because he could not have been connected by his umbilical cord to the placenta and uterus of a mother. Some claim that he must have had one, because everything that was brought into creation was brought with the appropriate appearances.
No, the confusion is not about “bellybuttons”. The confusion is solely about post-Linnaeus/Darwin christianity wrestling with the proof that we are biological animals descended from an unbroken line of primate ancestors via hominid/proto-human ancestors. When that’s true, what could possibly be significant or interesting in the tale of Adam and Eve?
We’re smart enough to know that bellybuttons are irrelevant (except to fractious sects of christianity) when the only possible significance is whether god magically poofed something into Adam and Eve that made them different from their mothers and fathers. Soul? Maybe. Or maybe some other kind of “immaterial” if not “supernatural” ingredient that makes them (and us, their supposed descendants) special.
Yep, gotta be special. Else what’s the point!
Sounds like a kind of “reflective equilibrium’ between the two worldviews.
FWIW, I don’t think that music analogy quite captures it, but I see what you mean.
OK, I’m done with this stuff. Thanks again for your patient explanations and putting up with my wise cracks. Very interesting.
W
Hotshoe:
Which returns us to the question I have asked Fifth, which is straightforward.
Fifth, the current scientific consensus is that on the order of five to ten million years ago there existed a species ancestral both to Homo sapiens and to Pan.
Are you down with that?
Here are two possible answers:
“Yes, I accept the current scientific consensus, which is that on the order of five to ten million years ago there existed a species ancestral both to Homo sapiens and to Pan.”
“No, I don’t accept the current scientific consensus, which is that on the order of five to ten million years ago there existed a species ancestral both to Homo sapiens and to Pan.”
The belly button comment is just short hand for the idea that Adam might of had the appearance of a history.
Some folks have the strange idea that God was under some sort of constraint when he created Adam and that he had to do it like we would. I see no reason to limit God in that way.
I have no problem with the idea that Adam physically looked just like some of the creatures he came in contact with. However according to the story none of those creatures was a suitable complement to him.
You must have never heard of the out of Africa theory.
peace
Mung:
I have a Magic 8-Ball. It’s fun, but I question whether it is a source of knowledge.
Which, by your reasoning, strengthens the case that it is in fact a source of knowledge.
Let’s try it:
Oh Magic 8-Ball, will FMM give a straight answer to my question?
“Better not tell you now.”
Congratulations on your possession of a Magic 8-Ball. My advice is to buy low and sell high.
My position, as stated in the OP and in my response to BruceS, is that perception, memory and testimony are all sources of knowledge and that we rely on them as such all the time.
I’ve made no claim about Magic 8-Balls as sources of knowledge or about our reliance on Magic 8-Balls as sources of knowledge. I’ve read about “eight-ball reasoners” but I’ve never come across one in real life before. I’ve wondered whether you’re a skeptic and I’ve considered starting an OP on skepticism. But let’s set that aside for now. I’d like to address your earlier post.
I don’t think you have actually stated that perception, memory and testimony are not common sources of knowledge. Perhaps you are arguing that they ought not be, even though they in fact are. Perhaps you are arguing that perception, memory and testimony ought to be taken taken with a grain of salt. Toss reason in as well then, and why not? Certainly our reasoning is just as fallible as these other sources of knowledge. Right?
You indicate you have some knowledge of this subject and seem to think I should believe your testimony (to what end I am not sure). When asked why it is that I should believe your testimony, given your position that testimony is notoriously unreliable, you referred me to the testimony of others. (Apparently these are the people who are really in the know.)
If you don’t see a problem with that, I certainly do.
If it is in fact the case that perception, memory and testimony are notoriously unreliable [add reasoning], how is it that we carry on as if the opposite is the case?
If you, RB, were a full on skeptic I might be convinced that you actually believe that your arguments against perception, memory and testimony [add reasoning] as sources of knowledge ought to be taken seriously. Are you a full on skeptic, RB?
Which of the following do you deny:
1.) perception, memory, and testimony are all sources of knowledge.
2.) we do in fact rely on perception, memory, and testimony as sources of knowledge, all the time.
To argue that they are not always reliable is to admit that we do in fact rely on them.
So. Adam, the human father of us all, was before the Out-of-Africa migrations (and clearly, before the Australian aborigines moved across to Australia).
When, more or less, do you think Adam was created or ensouled or whatever you think it was that god did to have Adam be special? 60,000 years ago minimum? 100,000 years ago? Longer ago than that?
How do you reconcile a date for Adam, prior to OoA, with the genealogies and supposedly-historical sequences in the OT? 6000 years? 10,000 years?
Or is it that we are not literally all descended from Adam? IS that just some kind of metaphor? Was Adam as recent as the OT says and were all the other humans already alive in 10000 BCE not really fully human?
How does this work for children? How do children acquire knowledge?
please please please please please please
By now you must be rolling on the floor 🙂
Mung:
Oh, for fuck’s sake Mung, I was pulling your chain. I don’t really have a Magic 8-ball* and don’t regard them as sources of knowledge.
You said that questioning a source of knowledge strengthens the case that is is in fact a source of knowledge. It would follow that doubting the veracity of my (imaginary) 8-Ball strengthens the case for it being a source of knowledge, which is absurd.
That’s right. We utilize perception and memory almost every moment of our lives (testimony less pervasively) That’s why knowledge of the fallibility of memory and perception is important.
I experienced a striking demonstration of that when I set out to produce a word-for-word transcription of an interview I had conducted and recorded. It was a little awkward because all I had was a cassette player. I would play a sentence, type it out, then rewind and replay to check for accuracy. I was astounded at how frequently my initial transcription differed from the spoken word and needed correction. I often substituted vocabulary without having been aware I had done so, and in many instances transcribed the “gist” of what had been said rather than the actual words. That’s how human declarative memory works – by condensing events and utterances into compact “gists” and narratives. Encoding memory in that way is inherently selective and therefore immediately begins to introduce distortions. If that weren’t enough, the retrieval/reconstruction of a narrative memory (“remembering”) subtly changes the stored recollection each time it is accessed. Perception is subject to similar errors and surprising selectivity (c.f. “the invisible gorilla”). Just as the apparent contents of one’s visual field are “filled in” by the brain to a surprising degree rather than directly seen, one’s general reality contact through perception and memory is much more tenuous and guided by heuristics, shortcuts, rules of thumb and assumptions than we typically are aware. There’s a ton of research demonstrating this. (I recommend Khaneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
I am arguing that perception, memory and the production and consumption of testimony are fallible (subject to errors). Testimony cross checked by systematic observation is a far more reliable guide to knowledge than testimony alone. Absent that, when fallible meets gullible, look out.
I haven’t through a single word characterized myself as having knowledge of this subject. Rather, you have inferred from my posts that I have knowledge of this subject.
A neat demonstration of the fallibility of memory. With regard to my characterization of the literature on eyewitness testimony, I invited you to check for yourself. With regard to the testimony of researchers in experimental and social psychology, I described in some detail the lengths to which they go to mitigate these human limitations (recordings, standardized procedures, scripts, rating protocols, trained observers, multiple raters, control of inter-rater reliability, peer review, and so forth). Remember?
We muddle through, often harshly tutored by reality to abandon our misconceptions in immediate practical and social domains. In domains with little practical reality contact some of us wind up believing quite ridiculous propositions, because getting things wrong there makes little practical difference. Many of the major assertions of religions fall into this category.
What is a “full on skeptic?”
I think the above answers your closing questions.
*I did own one of the originals as a kid. Unfortunately, it was dropped on a tile floor and the inner glass envelope broke. It’s secret was a secret no more. I suppose I did learn about icosahedrons at that moment.
Amazing, really. Here we are at “The Skeptical Zone” and you don’t know what it means to be a skeptic.
This feeds in quite nicely to my theory that Elizabeth had no idea what she was hatching when she launched “The Skeptical Zone.” Skeptical of what, exactly?
The Skeptical of Intelligent Design Zone?
The Skeptical of Religion Zone?
The Skeptical of Skepticism Zone?
The Skeptical of Everything Zone?
You think you were pulling my chain but you were not in fact pulling my chain. You did not just up and invent “the magical eight ball” on a spur of the moment whim.
What you did was offer an argument for skepticism.
It should be clear by now that I reject skepticism as self-refuting nonsense.
No one claims that perception is infallible.
No one claims that memory is infallible.
No one claims that testimony is infallible.
No one claims that reasoning is infallible.
It follows, does it not, that science is not infallible?
My mistake.
fifthmonarchymnan:
fifthmonarchyman, one sentence earlier:
fifth,
If you’re not open to the possibility that the Bible is wrong, then your mind is not open.
Mung:
I don’t know what “full on” skeptic means to you. Don’t revert to internet dipshit Mung.
When you’re done not reverting (I understand that takes time and effort), define “full on skeptic.” Then I’ll telI you if I answer to that definition.
Yes I did.
You uttered nonsense (“The fact that we can question a source of knowledge doesn’t count against it being a source of knowledge, it in fact strengthens the case that it is in fact a source of knowledge.”). On the spur of that comment, on a whim, I cooked up an illustration that underscores how nonsensical your statement is.
More generally, I have articulated reasons why testimony bereft of observational support is a weak and fallible means to knowledge.
Of course science is fallible (although that doesn’t follow from your list, which really better illustrates that reasoning can be fallible). In fact, I stated, “It’s not a perfect system, but it is much more powerful means to knowledge than the alternatives, including bare testimony.”
Duh! Yet you seem to be no stranger to other forms of nonsense.
The are many varieties of skepticism.
I understand you to mean radical skepticism by “full on” skepticism, ie the denial of any possibility of knowledge.
Looking at the catchphrase for the site (“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”), I believe Dr Liddle was thinking of a less radical type of skepticism, eg “the art of constantly questioning and doubting claims and assertions, and holding that the accumulation of evidence is of fundamental importance”.
Of course science is fallible. Otherwise it would be dogma.
Does something have to be infallible to be knowledge? Well, maybe Descartes thought that. But I don’t think there are many modern philosophers who would go that far.
Do you think a child has to be able to explain the justification for a belief in order for it to count as knowledge for the child? Or is it enough that such justification can be provided?
ETA: Children acquire many beliefs. Some are knowledge, some are not.
Have you decided on what you are arguing yet? In the OP, you say:
Books such as the recent Faith vs. Fact by Jerry Coyne rely on this to be the case [that testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge], while at the same time denying that such knowledge counts as knowledge
In this quote, I read you as saying.
1. Testimony is a source of knowledge
2. Coyne relies on this.
3. Coyne denies that testimony is a source of knowledge.
4. Coynes contradicts himself.
But the issue is that the meaning of “source” in “source of knowledge” is not clear from your posts.
It seems reasonable to say
A. All knowledge which is not knowledge by direct acquaintance is sourced in testimony.
But that does not imply that
B. All testimony is knowledge.
if one understands “source of knowledge” to mean something which provides knowledge on some occasions but not all.
To me, your OP uses B. But if not all testimony is knowledge, Coyne is not contradicting himself merely by using testimony is some of his arguments when he provides reasoning for why that testimony is justifiable.
Of course, that leaves open the question of whether Coyne’s beliefs as expressed in the book are justified. I think some are (eg evolution) and some are not (eg writing this book is a good way to change religious people’s minds on evolution).
By the way:
FMM, the current scientific consensus is that on the order of five to ten million years ago there existed a species ancestral both to Homo sapiens and to Pan.
Are you down with that?
Here are two possible answers:
“Yes, I accept the current scientific consensus, which is that on the order of five to ten million years ago there existed a species ancestral both to Homo sapiens and to Pan.”
“No, I don’t accept the current scientific consensus, which is that on the order of five to ten million years ago there existed a species ancestral both to Homo sapiens and to Pan.”
I disagree. When I was a kid there were no adults known to me that were brave enough to be nonbelievers in public discussion. Okay, a couple of notorious ones, who were vilified.
The content of Coyne’s book is beside the point (provided the he has made no egregious errors). What is important is that it is published and is popular and not resulting in the end of his career.
The most important aspect of any theological discussion is removing the power to punish dissidents. When fear of retribution is gone, you can begin to examine facts and ideas.
I am 70 years old, and the internet is the only place where I can discuss religion. I could not dare have a theological discussion in any school I attended. (I did try once in college, but only once.) And never with friends or family. The social pressures are amazing.
Well, I look to the people who post on this board, like WMJ, Mung, phoodoo, etc. Or UD, I guess (but I don’t read it).
I think their reaction to Coyne’s approach as exemplified in the discussions here provides the most reliable prediction of how religious people who read Coyne’s book will react to its arguments Or since I doubt there will be many of those people who actually read it, I should say religious people who read about the ideas in the book somewhere.
They won’t change their minds.
I think Coyne’s science is fine. And of course it is great that we live in free countries where he can publish books (and not in theocracies where he might get his throat cut for his blog or books).
But that does not mean I agree the book will be effective in accomplishing his stated goals for it.
Exactly!
hotshoe_,
I was making fun of Mung. He seemed to get the joke. I clearly need to work on my delivery, though.
Oh, sorry, I have a notoriously-deficient sense of humor.
Not just in text, either, when non-verbal cues are missing, but also in person. You can imagine how much fun I am at a party. 🙂
Thanks Bill, great find.
I take it that “full on skepticism” is the opposite (or obverse, or converse or something) of “full comprehension,” which (I take from another thread) also doesn’t actually mean anything too specific.
But we shouldn’t give up. I have done some teasing out. As close as I can figure, a “full on skeptic” is something like a bad person, perhaps an asshole. “Full on comprehension” is big time wisdom plus being nice (the sort of thing that would make one dislike assholes). Finally, “full comprehensibility” is niceness (even flat-out niceness). You know, the sort of thing that the world would be if it were to have been put here by someone really really kind.
Many interesting (and important!) things may be inferred once these terms are fully comprehended.