The exchanges in the posts on 'sexual selection and race' have been fruitful for at least one thing. They have made me realize how badly the methods of scientific thinking are taught in schools in the United States. The anonymous poster in that exchange simply insisted that her 'common sense' was self-evident and therefore there was no need to consider evidence, or apparently even logic.
Richard Lewontin, a biologist who did not shy from controversy once wrote something apropos of our notions of common sense.
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
From Richard Lewontin,, Billions and Billions of Demons, a review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
In my work-life in various factory jobs, I have met many skilled machinists who have never gone to college; all of them, without exception, knew how to think logically and scientifically. They also knew that their 'common sense' notions had to be measured against evidence. This I believe was just an aspect of their profession. I have also met many lawyers who knew how to recognize evidence but, strangely, did not know the difference between evidence that was merely speculative or definitional, and evidence that was in some way testable or repeatable. This I believe is an aspect of the lawyer's profession. The main concern of lawyers is manipulating arguments and definitions, not testing evidence. The 'epistemological standing' of the evidence is a lesser order of importance than how it can be presented in an argument or how it can be used to stretch or contract definitions.
On the other hand most of the people I meet who have graduated from colleges, and have majored in subjects outside of the sciences, do not understand the methods of science or how science and logic can be counter-intuitive and simply destroy our common sense notions of what we think of the world. Further more they don't understand that such a statement as "I don't need evidence because I have my common sense and my common sense tells me X" is simply a non-sense statement. What we call common sense is itself a kind of evidence. But it is a very weak kind of evidence usually based on cultural prejudice or untested and non-verifiable subjectivity.
There are certain statements we simply accept because there are no ways to verify the statement either way or in order to verify or provide evidence for the statement we would have to do too much research. "The chair I see near my writing desk is a 'physically real' chair" is one such statement. I accept the physical reality of the chair without much proof and hope when I sit down that I am not hallucinating. In this sense I accept that a certain class of objects, such as chairs, are solid enough for me to sit upon without investigating the nature of that 'solidity'. I will check on occasion to see if the chair is 'rickety' but not to the extent that an engineer is supposed to check the stability of a bridge. I don't need to be an engineer or a carpenter to decide that the chair is stable enough or solid enough for me to sit upon. The problem is that once we try to go beyond our common sense and investigate the nature of 'stability' and 'solidity' we run into many problems that contradict our common sense. For example I could perform an investigation using my very amaturous study of physics. Quantum mechanics has shown me that this solid chair that is beneath me as I write these words is in fact not very solid. Against common sense, physics has shown me that the chair is made up of atoms that are mostly 'empty space' between the nucleous and the 'planetary' electrons. In other words there is more space than there is continuity. The old saying was natura non facit saltum ('nature makes no jumps.'). Against all common sense this has been disproven, and quantum mechanics has shown us that the physical does not abhor a vacume, but it does abhor our common sense notions of what is 'real.' None of this prevents me from sitting on the chair. It does prevent me from relying on my common sense alone.
Bertrand Russell once wrote:
"It is not to be supposed, in any case that 'perceiving' an object involves knowing what it is like. That is quite another matter. We shall see later that certain inferences, of a highly abstract character, can be drawn for our perceptions to the objects perceived; but these inferences are at once difficult and not quite certain. The idea that perception, in itself, reveals the character of objects, is a fond delusion, and one, moreover, which it is very necessary to overcome if our philosophy is to be anything more than a pleasant fairy-tale." Bertrand Russell An Outline of Philosophy.
This can be said of the opinions that we call 'common sense' in spades.
The idea that our personal observations of our very limited social mileau can reveal very much beyond our own prejudices, cultural biases, and self-justifications is a fairy-tale that only rational thinking can overcome. What most of us believe is 'inevitable' or 'natural' about our social reality is usually only contingent and only a very small part of the many possibilities of human nature. People who don't see this will forever be caught in their own distorting biases with no possibility of learning that many portions of their world view are simply the pleasant fariry-tale that they tell themselves. This is as true of myself as it is of others (such as the anonymous correspondent in the debate on 'race and sexual selectiion'). But I suppose we all think that we try to get beyond our pleasant fairy-tales. Unfortunately this is not easy to do and most of us try to hold on to our narrow biases and do not engage in conversations that might expand our world views. Yes, I too live in 'my own world', as we all live 'in our own worlds.' The first step in trying to obtain a non-subjective view of what ever we call reality is to admit this fact and, then, to try to transcend it by mutual agreement on what we can accpet as evidence and what we can call common ground. Again, unfortunately, many people will not question the little worlds they live in and like a narcissitic child will insist that their little world is the whole world.
There is a sense of security in maintaining our world-views and a sense of secuirty is necessary to continue to live a life that is not too unhappy. In this sense I think our 'world views' connect up with our biological needs in some undetermined way. As long as our world views are not grossly 'dysfunctional' within our given societal and 'natural' environement we usually maintain them. As long as our 'world views' don't kill us and don't put us at a selective disadvantage in relation to other human beings, then they are neutral from an evolutionary point of view. Further, it is possible that some world views that are positively destructive or even 'irrational' might provide temporary advantage over other people, who maintain less destructive world views. But it is also possible that some world views may provide short run selective advantages and, yet, in the long run may destroy us all. (Examples of such world views might be thae secular 'faiths' we call 'nationalism' and 'jingoism' or, when we profess the 'faith', we call these views 'patriotism' and 'national interest.')
How is it possible to convince another person to see that, in order to have a conversation in the first place, our notions of evidence and rationality must be grounded in something beyond our amorphous worldviews and our subjective cultural assumptions? Statements like 'biology is in the face,' and supposed conclusions that the face shows human racial sexual preferences, and that the fact of human diversity ipso facto means that there are human racial sexual preferences, need to be shown through reason and evidence in order to be accepted. If the person holding these views can't show them by reason and evidence, then we must assume that her assumptions are a kind of prejudice. In the case of the exchange that I am referring to here, the actual evidence to a large extent contradicts the cultural assumptions held by the anonymous poster. Also, since the notions put forward are a 'racial theory', I can't help, but conclude that this cultural assumption is derived from the racist and sexist assumptions that are rife in our culture. I would make a similar interpretation in regards to any notion or belief, that a person held without evidence.
My reflections on the difference between the skilled machinist, the lawyer, and the average graduate in humanities is only anecdotal, but my preliminary conclusion is that thinking rigorously, understanding the nature of evidence, and knowing when to use one's own 'intuition' and 'common sense' as an hypothesis to search for evidence is a practical matter of 'doing.' The truism is that people learn by practice. I would push the truism a bit further. People who actually perform this kind of thinking become smarter, self-skeptical, and questioning. People who don't remain within their little worlds without realizing that their 'world' is not the world.
Jerry Monaco
New York
March 2005
Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy & Culture
Hopeful Monsters: Poetry, Fiction, Memories by Jerry Monaco
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