It’s axiomatic that no thoughtful resolution of the abortion [or any other] question is going to issue from glib pronouncements of gloating liberals but only from heartrending deliberations of humbled conservatives.
I’ve long ceased commenting on current affairs for lack of any discernible meaning, and instead turned my attention to the theoretical, with an eye to a brighter tomorrow. Well, the 2012 elections may well prove to be an exception, a portent of something new, something different. No, not because the Democrats have won, but because the Republicans have lost!…
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— go to most recent comments76 - Glenn Contrarian
Anarcissie -
'Biological differences', like other abstractions, are constructed out of phenomena within frameworks containing a great many assumptions, may of them unquestioned, unanalyzed, indeed, even unconscious. There is probably something wrong, most of the time, with treating them as facts rather than provisional theories.
In other words, science is too scary for you to take seriously.
Look, Ana, the science is there whether we like it or not. We can either ignore it and everything we can learn from it, or we accept it and mold its meanings into something we can use for the good.
77 - Igor
As pointed out earlier, there's no sin in recognizing differences, the sin is in arbitrary invidious comparisons.
The human is a gregarious animal: we like other people and we like being with them. We're happy to help people. It's a good thing all this is true, else the human animal would have disappeared long ago. We want the best for the other people. All of us are charmed by the smiling, gurgling baby waving it's arms and legs in the air. That's normal. All of us humans need that love in our lives, or individually we wouldn't survive, let alone collectively.
So they are wrong when they say it is a Dog Eat Dog world. None of us would be here if that were true. None would be able to survive the variety of animosities of which people are capable.
78 - roger nowosielski
Yes, but we're also scared shitless, unwholesome and unhappy, gravitating between these extremes. The social order we impose from without, apart from serving the interests of the ruling class, is also designed to alleviate our fears.
79 - Anarcissie
I don't see how having idealistic fantasies about science does good.
80 - Cindy
76
Glenn,
In other words, science is too scary for you to take seriously.
Taking science 'seriously' requires, accessing studies as published and trying to tear them to shreds to find the likely flaws contained therein.
Reading preliminary (unreplicated) results in popular media and regarding them as fact is something more akin to being gullible or maybe even reckless, rather than science-minded.
Look, Ana, the science is there whether we like it or not. We can either ignore it and everything we can learn from it, or we accept it and mold its meanings into something we can use for the good.
Even evolution is a "theory". Science-minded is a skeptical mind. Taking science seriously, imo, would require data much beyond 4 links to a questioned-for-bias wikipedia article and popular news reports (which tend to use a sensationalizing tone), to even begin to discuss your assumptions about brains.
That said, I think Anarcissie's comment regarding science was very well put, and strikes me as true by my own experience. It might even be seen as very 'scientific-minded' in its skepticism and willingness to examine.
'Biological differences', like other abstractions, are constructed out of phenomena within frameworks containing a great many assumptions, may of them unquestioned, unanalyzed, indeed, even unconscious. There is probably something wrong, most of the time, with treating them as facts rather than provisional theories.
81 - Cindy
In the view I see, whole fields (evolutionary psychology) of "scientific" subject matter have been invented. As well as a variety "medical conditions" due to "brain differences" for every season.
82 - Cindy
One more point, Glenn. Researchers don't embark on a study in some "objective" way to find "the truth". Researchers have biases about which they create hypotheses to study. As for the results obtained, they may coincide with the researchers bias accidentally or on purpose. Researchers generally have "something to prove".
83 - Dr Dreadful
Agreed, Cindy: but you are leaving out that this is why we have the scientific method. All results are always open to further inquiry so that sooner or later, scientists' personal prejudices or wishful thinking are ruthlessly eliminated. This is especially important when we are talking about something as inherently prejudicial as politics.
Although there is strong evidence for it, the idea that genetics plays a part in determining one's political outlook is still a hypothesis. There isn't nearly enough experimental data yet to advance it to the status of a theory.
For one thing, the hypothesis doesn't yet do enough to address the reality that some (not all) people's political views change over time, sometimes drastically. It also needs to encompass environmental factors such as the influence of one's parents' and friends' political views, where one lives and one's personal economic circumstances, which I don't believe it has adequately done yet.
84 - roger nowosielski
@83
I don't know, Dreadful, how much time have you spend in social sciences departments. or whether you're familiar with the content of most sociological or political science journals, but let me assure you: the kind of hypotheses that are being tested and variables which go into them are not only very narrowly construed; they're also boring. They're not all like the kind of wide-reaching "hypothesis" that Glenn is suggesting.
In any case, there's also a host of problems/considerations which are peculiar to the social sciences per se (as opposed to the hard sciences). Peter Winch's The Idea of a Social Science is still the best treatment of the subject thus far, and parts of it, if not all, may be available online.
85 - Dr Dreadful
True, Roger, and it's arguable whether the social sciences are actually sciences at all.
However, the research Glenn is referencing is hard science: neurology, to be exact.
It makes sense that our attitudes are a function of the structure of our brains. To what extent our politics are determined by hardware rather than software is the question at issue.
86 - Glenn Contrarian
Doc and Roger -
Did I take it too far? Probably. But while it is erroneous to take one or two studies and use them as 'proof', it's every bit as erroneous (and even more so IMO) to assume that biology cannot have an effect on psychology and personality. While some may be offended at comparing dogs to humans, most of us have seen how different breeds of dogs often tend to have different personalities. That doesn't make one breed better than the others.
But back to humans. Much was made of studies showing that the Ashkenazi Jews tend to have higher IQ's...although there's opposition to such studies, particularly along the nature-vs.-nurture line.
I remember another study that wherein groups of Asian and Caucasian teenagers (in New York, IIRC) were shown pictures and were later asked to describe those pictures. The Caucasians were much more likely to focus on the main subject of the picture, but the Asians - though they were able to describe the central subject almost as well - were significantly more likely to be able to describe the rest of the picture, the surroundings.
There's more, but the central point is this: to assume (if only for political correctness) that biology cannot affect one's personality, one's likes and dislikes, is IMO quite erroneous. Instead of condemning the idea, we should instead objectively study and understand the results...but in ALL cases, defend the equality of all before the law and in general society.
87 - roger nowosielski
Except that neurological findings have to be translated into social constructs in order to be made relevant in the way he wants them to be. And here we run into the mind-brain identity thesis conundrum, the province of neurophilosophy, a branch of cognitive sciences.
Patricia Smith Churchland's Neurophilosophy (1986) is an ambitious textbook on the subject in case you're interested.
88 - roger nowosielski
Patricia Smith Churchland
89 - Dr Dreadful
Interesting from an intellectual standpoint, Rog, but I suspect you're splitting hairs. A theory that predicts the way the universe ought to work accurately enough to be practical for most purposes, without actually being the way the universe works, is nonetheless scientifically sound. The best example of this is Newton's theory of gravitation.
As I said, it remains to be seen whether the brain structure-political outlook hypothesis stands up.
90 - roger nowosielski
Well, let's just say I'm less interested in the predictive value of such theories than you may be.
91 - Cindy
Patricia Smith Churchland's proposition is a social construct, itself.
the research Glenn is referencing is hard science: neurology, to be exact.
I think the research Glenn is looking at is interpreted through the scientist's social construct. I have found no clear research that indicates any of these notions can be elevated beyond what you are calling the hypothesis stage. That is why I would argue that the social sciences are nothing like physics. (*But I would vote for being open to our own effects on even physics.*)
I don't regard it as a strictly neurological study, because it involves questionnaires about beliefs. I find that different than a study regarding the effect of a medication on brain function, say. Beliefs and presumption are loaded into social assessments, like what is a liberal or what is a conservation. Take those presumptions, and on top of them assume one can get correct answers about them via a questionnaire, which is extremely biased and limited by nature, and you are treading into dangerous waters. At least that is my opinion based on my experience in regards to assessing such studies.
Theoretically, scientific method is supposed to do what you say here:
...sooner or later, scientists' personal prejudices or wishful thinking are ruthlessly eliminated. This is especially important when we are talking about something as inherently prejudicial as politics.
perhaps, it will be later. ;-) I know of no studies that predict such socially constructed ideas are caused by physiological traits and after 30 years of interest in such things, I think there is a reason for that. That reason is that findings have to be translated into social constructs in order to be made relevant.
Perhaps we are not able to eliminate our own 'instrument' in our analysis of anything.
*As you may know, though Einstein did not believe 'God play's dice with the universe', quantum physics suggests he was likely wrong on that point and unable to breech his own biases.
92 - Cindy
Oh #91.
First two lines are to, Roger. The rest is to Dr.D.
93 - roger nowosielski
Of course it is. It is "scientism" at its worst, a reductive thesis at its best. There's this underlying idea in all projects of this sort that we can somehow, with the help of science, bypass the cumbersome mediation of language so as to be able to process reality without it and see it as it really is, directly and immediately. Motives and reasons are reduced to "causes," the decisions we make and the thoughts we have are said to spring from our neurons firing independently of us as though subject to their own laws, the human is reduced to a machine. All the while, we forget of course, that "cause" itself is a linguistic construct and that we can't do without language.
94 - roger nowosielski
Hence the aptness of Anarcissie's comment about idealized conception of science.
95 - Dr Dreadful
You have a good point, Cindy, in that measurements of attitudes are inherently biased. One person's right-winger is another person's centrist. For instance, how often have you read me, Stan (who seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, BTW - arms must have got tired with all that hanging on upside down) and the other non-American regulars explaining that US "liberals" are, by global standards, actually rather conservative?
96 - Dr Dreadful
Motives and reasons are reduced to "causes," the decisions we make and the thoughts we have are said to spring from our neurons firing independently of us as though subject to their own laws, the human is reduced to a machine.
But humans are machines, Roger, albeit highly sophisticated ones. Although the argument has long been made that our self-awareness sets us above and apart from other organisms, really it's just a higher degree of sophistication.
All the while, we forget of course, that "cause" itself is a linguistic construct and that we can't do without language.
Your thesis that our reality is a function of language, Roger, is also a human conceit. Once again, an appreciation of this is what led to the development of the scientific method.
It's perfectly feasible to function without language: computers do so all the time. (Computer languages are merely a medium for the programmer to communicate with the computer.) Mathematics is also a way of interpreting reality independent of language. A triangle, for example, would still be a three-sided shape even if there were not the word "three" or the numeral "3" to describe it.
97 - roger nowosielski
0-1-0-1-0-1 binary code, is a computer, decision-making, machine language. Mathematics is a language too.
A triangle is a triangle by virtue of our concept of a triangle. To a different brand of consciousness, form of life, it could well be something entirely different.
98 - Dr Dreadful
Binary code is simply a numeric representation of the two different states of a computer circuit: on/off.
A computer connected to a telescope can look at the Alpha Centauri system and note that there are three stars, without having to formulate that observation into language.
A triangle is a shape with three straight sides, which we humans happen to describe that way because we have the words "triangle", "shape" and "three" to do so. But there is no requirement for humans to be present to perceive a triangle in order for it to exist.
Also, trees do make a sound when they fall in the forest and no-one is there. That's physics.
99 - roger nowosielski
"On" and "off" is a decision-making language corresponding to an affirmation and negation, "yes" or "no."
So now "triangles" exist independently of the human concept. And I thought I was a Platonist!
100 - roger nowosielski
And who did you say was vain, I who am open to the possibility of different-than-human forms of life and forms of consciousness, or you who postulate human-originated conceptions as absolute?
101 - Dr Dreadful
I didn't say anyone was vain, Roger, I said that your idea of language-as-reality was, among other things discussed on this thread, a human conceit.
Although what does your suggestion that only humans are capable of conceiving of something as simple as a triangle say about vanity? :-)
102 - roger nowosielski
Quite the contrary, I never claimed the kind of realities available to us because of language are the only kind of realities.
And who said that the concept of a triangle was in any sense a superior kind of concept. It is only a human concept.
103 - Cindy
D,
But there is no requirement for humans to be present to perceive a triangle in order for it to exist.
Also, trees do make a sound when they fall in the forest and no-one is there. That's physics.
There are those who would suggest that physics is taking notice that "reality" might be something quite different than what we are ordinarily taught.
D + R,
You probably know about (but do you consider the possible implications of) the double-slit experiment. Or my favorite the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser.
But with regards to triangles, I find this is a helpful and interesting little piece called, "Do triangles exist?: the nature of mathematical knowledge and critical mathematics education".
There is a field of work on a philosophy of education called Critical Pedagogy,which aims at promoting a different sort of learning than is traditional.
Ira Shor defines critical pedagogy as:
"Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129)
Critical pedagogy includes relationships between teaching and learning. Its proponents claim that it is a continuous process of what they call "unlearning," "learning," and "relearning," "reflection," "evaluation," and the impact that these actions have on the students, in particular students whom they believe have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call "traditional schooling.
104 - Dr Dreadful
"On" and "off" is a decision-making language corresponding to an affirmation and negation, "yes" or "no."
No, Rog, they are simply descriptors for two opposing states. On/off, one/zero, yes/no, in/out, is/isn't, open/closed, they're just different ways of signifying the same thing. Binary can be used to build language, but of itself it is no more language than the alternations of sound and silence in your speech are language.
Cindy, your point about the quantum universe is well taken, but you overlook that the cumulative effects of the behaviour of quantum particles, which is usually counterintuitive, produce the phenomena of the macro world with which we perceive and which can often be predicted accurately by science.
105 - roger nowosielski
Opposing states are negation and affirmation, again a process of decision-making, the rudiments of language.
Try as you may, you can't escape the inconvenience of there being language for you to be anything, to say anything, to amount to anything.
Of course, it's an inconvenience to you, and that's where you're in error.
106 - Igor
@91-Cindy: actually, Einstein was right. He was explaining why people misunderstand the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which does NOT say that position and momenta are 'random' but that they are indeterminate because measurement itself disturbs that which is measured. That's consistent.
107 - Cindy
I don't think I've overlook that. I am not sure how, if I did. Can you explain? I would like to know if I have overlooked something.
We are intuitive with regard to the macro-world (the ordinary world of Newton's physics), because we have experience with it. The quantum world is fairly unintuitive and its very existence makes one question one's ability to casually comprehend 'reality'.
108 - Dr Dreadful
No decision involved, Roger: a thing either is or it isn't.
109 - Cindy
Igor,
My own readings suggest a different meaning to what Einstein said. i will go along basically with what I understand from Stephen Hawking and Niels Bohr (and whomever I was reading when I developed my understanding of it--I think it was someone writing about dark matter, but I can't think of the name) about what Einstein meant.
This idea is that Einstein was not happy with quantum physics' revelation that the universe is not deterministic. See Hawking: Does God Play Dice?
I will cheat and give you some quotes that explain my understanding of it, probably the fastest shortest route by way of explanations snipped from various commentators on a physics blog:
"Einstein simply meant that he didn't believe quantum mechanics (which deals with probabilities, rather than with certainties) was correct."
"He was particularly against the Born interpretaion of the wavefunction, that the (real) square of the (complex) wavefunction value gives a probability of finding the particle in whatever state the wavefunction is concerned with, and that beyond that probability, and then only as the result of a measurement, physics has nothing to say. This is about as far from realism as you can get, and Einstein couldn't go that distance. Neither could Schroedinger, the author of the basic equation of QM. The EPR paper and Schroedinger's cat thought experiment were episodes in the war the two great men fought against Bohr, Heisenberg and most of the rest of the quantum physics community."
"Einstein's final known position was that of the EPR paper, i.e. the probabilities predicted by QM are correct, but there must be some deeper level of reality that explains them deterministically."
or in other words (from a person on Yahoo Answers whom I think shares my understanding--though was not selected for the 'best' answer, I'm afraid):
The point is that quantum mechanics proves the universe to be non-deterministic (in broadest possible terms the uncertainty principle demonstrates that it is impossible to know the position and momentum of a given particle simultaneously to infinite precision). Einstein was not happy with this idea, and he and many others struggled to recast the equations of quantum mechanics in a more intuitive and a fundamentally deterministic form.
Repeated accurate predictions and further insight have, however, proven the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics as it stands to be very accurate. It is this proof to which Hawkins was alluding when he said "God not only plays dice, he regularly throws them in places where we can't see them".
Actually, Niels Bohr who pioneered quantum theory and was a contemporary of Einstein's said "Einstein, stop telling God what to do!"
110 - roger nowosielski
To say whether something is or isn't is in itself s decision and an application of a language faculty albeit of the most primitive kind, and presupposes the existence of a discerning subject who makes the decision. Your naivete, whether feigned or not, appears to have no limits.
It's almost as though you were determined to cut your nose to spite your face.
A tree, without the concept, would be nothing other than an undifferentiated chunk of matter. It is the thinking subject who, via language, creates the world and all the meaning
In the beginning was the word ... NOT the world!
111 - Dr Dreadful
Try deciding whether there is or isn't an electrical current next time you shove a screwdriver into a light fixture and flip the switch.
112 - Cindy
Before we can accept something as possible, most of our presumptions must be conquered.
Roger,
Do you remember when troll was trying to help me comprehend something and I just seemed to be giving arguments. Sometimes a person is just being defensive. But sometimes a person's doubts need to be overcome.
113 - roger nowosielski
In any case, you made a quantum leap here from whether "something is or isn't," (and what on earth are we talking about, what is that dummy variable "something," what does it stand for, in the absence of language to agree or to disagree on what is the intended referent of "something") to a computer program, namely software, which is language.
Again, I hate to be drumming it into your head, Dreadful, but the binary code, 01-01 etc. is language.
Make an intelligent comment for a change, e.g., concerning the distinction between notation (as in logic) and language, and I'll be all ears. For the time being, however, I get a distinct impression that I'm trying to converse with an alien life form.
114 - roger nowosielski
@112
Dreadful's rebuttal in #112 brings to mind Samuel Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkeley:
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."
Boswell: Life
In all seriousness, however, he ought to try to quench his intellectual curiosity by visiting a philosophy dept or two. San Diego is a big enough town, of that I'm certain. I'd tutor him for s nominal fee, but he hadn't offered.
115 - roger nowosielski
@112
That's not the case with Dreadful, Cindy, let me assure you.
116 - Cindy
I will present this interesting understanding of binary code:
To understand binary code, it is important to first understand exactly what the code is and the functions it serves. Binary code is a breakdown of complex language into very simple zeros and ones. For instance, the binary code for the letter "A" is 01000001, the code for "B" is 01000010 and "C" is 01000011.
In essence, binary code is merely a translation of an understandable language into what has come to be known as computer language. While there are many derivatives of binary computer language, each with the goal of presenting enhanced understandability for programmers, all derivative languages are converted into binary code for processing by a computer's CPU (central processing unit).
Read more: How Does Binary Code Work? eHow.com
117 - Cindy
Thus, binary code (rather like Morse code) is a coded language.
118 - Zingzing
But the thing that processes that language isn't expressing anything through that language. It's just doing what it was told to do.
Until skynet.
119 - Dr Dreadful
Binary isn't a language. Language can be constructed from it, just as language can be constructed from the sounds and pauses you make when you utilize your vocal apparatus.
But just as your vocal apparatus can also be used to make simple inarticulate sounds, such as sighs and grunts, binary can also be a meaningless series of ones and zeros (theres and not-theres, yeses and nos, ons and offs, what have you) - the difference, say, between a sailor transmitting a Morse code message and a kid playing with the light switch.
What I'm at root disputing is Roger's notion that there is no truth we can rely upon as empirical because our means of expressing truth, language, inevitably distorts it. To me that's obviously wrong. Alpha Centauri is empirically a star system four light years away from the Solar System whether we are here to observe it or not, whether we measure that distance in light years or not, whether we call it a star or not.
120 - roger nowosielski
That's how Dreadful and company propose to prepare us for subsequent reduction of the human mind and all its complexity to the circuitry of the brain,
Welcome to the brave new world and have no fear. Dr. Strangelove, oops, Dreadful.is in charge.
121 - Dr Dreadful
Wonder why a solipsist would need to take refuge in abuse?
122 - roger nowosielski
For earlier taint of condescension I apologize. As to the solipsism label, wrong again! I'm perfectly comfortable with language as my communication tool. It is you, on the other hand, who is less than satisfied with it and asks for more.
Science is your religion, Dreadful, face it, to overcome any inadequacies you imagine yourself to be suffering from, and natural language happens to be one of them in your secret heart of hearts. I see no reason why you ought to consider yourself so handicapped, but you do. And here, I'm afraid I can't help you. Which is why I momentarily succumbed to weakness and showed my impatience: because of your screwed-up motivation and unalloyed fears, the discussion was going nowhere.
123 - roger nowosielski
... to help you overcome ... 2nd paragraph, first line.
In the interest of improved communication between two inquiring minds, mate, just so you know!
124 - troll
Dreadful - while binary objects are not languages in themselves codes are aren't they?
...and what would a proof that a tree falls in the absence of language look like?
125 - roger nowosielski
Or to put it another way, what would be the point of trying to ascertain what does or does not exist, and in what form, apart from language?