In the final meeting before we break for summer, we have a joint meeting with the Swindon Humanists. Chris Street from Humanists4Science will speak on this assertion (the title), made by Peter Atkins.
Chris is a lifelong atheist who discovered Humanism seven years ago. A committee member of Atheism UK, Chris is chair of Humanists4Science and webmaster and education officer of Dorset Humanists.
In his talk, Chris will discuss the Humanists4Science group, Scientism and the naturalistic world view.
We’re looking forward to our joint meeting, so come along and get involved with the discussion.
There’s an argument I shall want to make in the meeting, but it involves several points, so I’m setting it out here for the speaker to think about in advance.
(1) Religion is defined by its attachment to the idea of the sacred.
(2) The idea of the sacred is that of the absolute (i.e., the unconditional): the idea that there are lines that may not be crossed under any condition, i.e., certain types of action that are absolutely (i.e., unconditionally) forbidden to all responsible agents.
(3) Knowledge is valuable only in so far as it serves as a guide to action.
(4) The relation to action of what is currently called “science” is essentially conditional: it neither forbids nor prescribes any type of action as such, but says, “If you want to achieve x, then do y”.
(5) “Scientism” is the ideological position according to which “science” is the only form of reliable knowledge. Scientism in this sense is the claim that nothing is sacred, i.e., that no type of action (e.g., enslavement, rape, torture or murder) is unconditionally forbidden to all responsible agents.
(6) To justify the proposal that you should enslave, rape, torture or murder me, you would need to give me reasons for consenting to it.
(7) But those types of act, by definition, could occur only without my consent, so that my consenting to them would be self-contradictory.
(8) Therefore, justifying a proposal of that kind would be logically impossible.
(9) And no one can responsibly act on a proposal he cannot justify.
(10) These types of action,therefore, are unconditionally forbidden by logical necessity to all responsible agents.
(11) It must follow, therefore, (a) that “science” is not the only form of reliable knowledge, (b) that Scientism is false and (c) that religion, in so far, at least, as it bears witness to the sacred, is true.
But which religion?
Seriously though, I would think this argument depends a great deal on how you define the terms religion, sacred, science, scientism etc, and because of that I would probably disagree with premises 1), 2), 3) and I would also disagree with 7) as it wouldn’t be that hard to come up with some hypothetical situation where one person would consent to another killing them. Looking forward to the talk though as the whole debate around scientism is fascinating.
I might agree with 11c) though as it doesn’t sound much different to saying that horoscopes are true in so far as they relate to astrology.
(a) Which religion? Of course traditional religions differ in what they forbid, (e.g., in matters of diet, killing of animals, etc) but they agree that there are absolute or unconditional prohibitions whereas science is essentially conditional. When we speak colloquially of observing some rule “religiously”, (e.g., dressing for dinner) we mean observing it unconditionally. The “lig” syllable in “religion”, from Latin, is the same as in “ligament” or “ligature”: something which “binds” or “ties”. Religion is something which binds unconditionally, and it is this feature of religion that I want to contrast with science. This answers your objection to premisses (1) and (2).
(b) If you object to premiss (3) you must be taken as believing EITHER that all knowledge, however trivial, is equally valuable (and therefore equally trivial) OR, quite arbitrarily, that some type of knowledge (e.g., physics) is inherently more valuable than any other, and neither of those propositions is tenable.
(c) Re premiss (7): Of course someone could consent to being killed, but that is not the point: he could not CONSENT to being MURDERED, i.e., killed WITHOUT HIS CONSENT, because consenting to be disposed of in any way without your consent (e.g., enslaved, raped, tortured) is an absurdity.
(d) Astrology does not involve the idea of the sacred, i.e., of unconditional rules,and so its prescriptions have no religious force; astrology is simply bad science in that it makes empirical claims for which there is no credible evidence. The claim I have made for unconditionality (or the sacred) is based on the logical impossibility of justifying certain types of action (rape, murder, etc).
Regarding a) – if I was being awkward I might point out that the prohibitions that religions say are absolute or unconditional are neither of those things for the deity in question, therefore are neither of those things.
My point on the knowledge question again probably depends on how you define it, but it is simply that knowledge can be valuable in and of itself, the pleasure I may get from learning something new is not necessarily related to any future actions I may wish to perform.
Regarding c) yes, an absurdity… and a confusing one, for me at least. Now I look again at 6), I want to ask why should a murder only be justified by the consent of the victim (which you say is contradictory) – it could be justified by reasons from another source. Or is it simply not murder of there is any justification for it? There are certainly cases where someone could consent to being killed and the killer could be charged with murder. Or is that not true?
Oh I think I see what you’re saying now, 6), 7), 8, and 9) lead to 10). That makes a bit more sense to me.
So if I were to rephrase your argument, would it be that:
A) There are some actions that are logically forbidden to a responsible agent.
B) Science does not forbid or prescribe any action.
C) Religion does forbid and prescribe actions.
D) Therefore religion gives us access to knowledge relating to those actions that science cannot.
I thought I had it for a minute, but now I’m confused again 😉
It seems like you’re saying because some things are logically impossible and science cannot say anything about them, that it can’t therefore say anything about things that religion class as sacred (or unconditional). Which makes no sense to me.
I would not say that “religion gives us access to knowledge that science cannot”; rather I would say that
– there is knowledge we have access to by means other than scientific (i.e.,empirical) research;
– that Scientism denies this while religion affirms it;
– so that, IN THIS RESPECT, Scientism is false about something to which traditional religions bear witness, e.g., that the Golden Rule is unconditionally binding, though the adherents of those religions tend only too often to forget it.
I hope I can say without sounding patronising what a rare pleasure it is to engage with someone who is willing to change his stance when he sees a point which had previously escaped him.
Well I’m very much a novice when it comes to philosophy so quite a lot escapes me I’m afraid 🙂
I think I would agree with your rephrased point now anyway, the interesting question is whether ‘scientism’ actually exists outside of those who use the term negatively, I’ve yet to be convinced of that (but it is certainly possible I could be).
Just out of interest, what would some of the other ways (other than science or empiricism) of discovering knowledge be in your view?
Also, now I think about it, doesn’t science forbid actions which are physically impossible, or proscribe absolute or unconditional ‘lines that may not be crossed’ – certain laws of physics for example?
Science gives us probable truths, but logic gives us necessary truths such that if you commit yourself, e.g., to the claim that “X is red”, you are also necessarily committed to the claim that “X is coloured”. In simple examples such as this which are used to illustrate the point, this doesn’t look like anything very important, but it becomes important when you are shown that a moral claim which you and everyone you know takes for granted has mutually contradictory implications. It was by doing just this that Socrates made a reputation for himself – and got himself sentenced to death.
So-called “scientific laws” merely describe the observed regularities of nature without prescribing or proscribing anything.
See you at the meeting.