This is actually old news – Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s most famous atheist, discusses atheism vs agnosticism at length in his book, The God Delusion (you can listen to the relevant section here.) In a recent debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Dawkins acknowledged that he is not 100% certain of God’s non-existence, and when asked if he is therefore an agnostic, he said that he was.

These statements have to be put into context, however – which Dawkins did in his book and elsewhere. In The God Delusion he outlines 7 stances toward the probability that God exists. He put himself into category 6, a strong atheist but less than 100% certain that God does not exist. He states he is less than 100% certain as a matter of principle – because a mere human cannot be 100% certain of anything. Only fanatical belief results in 100% metaphysical certitude. So he is as strong an atheist as a rational and intellectually honest person can be.

How, then, can we make sense of Dawkins acknowledging that he is also an agnostic. A report of the debate states:

The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: “Why don’t you call yourself an agnostic?” Prof Dawkins answered that he did.

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The bright light in the center of this NASA photo is the planet Mercury. But what is the smaller light off to the right? This is from a video available to the public on the SECCHI website (Sun Centered Imaging package and Heliosphere Imager). This is an array of imagers studying the space around the sun – the heliosphere. This still is taken from a video showing a coronal mass ejection. Mercury happens to be moving through the field of view.

A short clip from the video was uploaded to YouTube and now has over 4 million hits. The person who uploaded it (pseudonym sinXster) does a voiceover in which he says:

“That is definitely some sort of manufactured object. It’s cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it’s cloaked… There’s really absolutely no explanation for that other than it’s some sort of ship.”

I always worry with things like this that it’s a Poe – that it was created as satire. But because we have voiceover we can at least make a judgement about the sincerity of sinXster – he sounds sincere to me, and there are no red flags of a Poe. So – I acknowledge the possibility that it’s not serious, but will comment further as if it is.

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We all do it. In fact, we are generally very good at it. Smart and educated people are better at it.

Rationalizing is a daily practice, part of the “default mode” of human thinking. We make up reasons to justify believing what we want to believe. Often we are only dimly aware of why we want to believe something, the calculus largely occurring in the subconscious depths of our brains.

We defend beliefs because they are pleasing to our egos, because they minimize cognitive dissonance, and just because they are our beliefs. They resonate with our world-view, our internal model of reality.

We have at our disposal a long list of logical fallacies that we can marshal to the defense of our beliefs. Notions that are based on solid evidence and logic do not require such vigorous defense. Those beliefs that cannot be defended by logic and evidence require that bad logic and bad data be invoked to defend them. Luckily we have no problem distorting and cherry picking facts and twisting logic into pretzels.

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Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most iconic detective in literature. His character continues to enthrall – there is a new BBC series with a modern Sherlock Holmes, and other popular TV characters, such as House, are significantly based on Holmes. What I think is endlessly compelling about Holmes is the seemingly preternatural skill with which he “deduces” specific facts about people and situations, based upon careful observation and a rigorous thought process. But then he makes it all seem so easy in retrospect when he reveals his method.

Because Holmes is such a fascinating character and Doyle wrote prolifically about this character, Holmes is also a useful and frequently used example of logic and the process of detective work. I took a course on Holmes in medical school, using Sherlock Holmes short stories as examples of diagnostic principles (Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician, and clearly drew upon this experience in writing Holmes). A recent Scientific American article, for example, used Holmesian logic as an example of how not to make several common fallacies of thinking – falling for the conjunction fallacy, the representativeness heuristic, and failure to consider the base-rate.

Briefly, we tend to assume that someone belongs to a category if they have features we find representative of that category, or if we can readily bring to mind similar examples. We tend not to consider the base rate – what percentage of the relevant population belongs to that category. Sherlock Holmes encapsulated part of this idea with his famous quip to Watson that if you hear clopping on a cobblestone street in London, think horse, not zebra. This principle is common in medical diagnosis, and in fact we call rare diseases (those with a low base-rate) “zebras” after Holmes’ example. In other words – even if a person has signs and symptoms that resemble a specific disease, the probability of that diagnosis is still low if the base rate is very low – it’s a rare disease. In fact, an atypical presentation of a very common disease may be more likely than a typical presentation of a rare disease.

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Michael Egnor has responded to my prior post in which I outlined his numerous failings in logic and misrepresentations of neuroscience. His response continues to be incoherent, but does offer some further teaching points.

One of the main points of contention is this – what can we infer from the relationship between damage to the brain and resulting neurological signs and symptoms. My position is that, if the mind is entirely caused by the functioning of the brain, then damage to the brain will damage the mind. I maintain that this is true, as far as we can tell from our current technology and understanding of neuroscience.

Egnor maintains that this is not true – that the relationship is “not the least bit predictable.” Further, that this lack of total correlation is evidence for dualism, that the mind is produced, at least in part, by something immaterial. There are both factual and logical problems with his position. To my criticism of his claims, he writes:

Mental deficits – specific defects in reasoning, judgement, planning, memory– are highly variable. One cannot look at a CT scan done after a head injury and predict with any certainty that ‘this person will have an inability to remember numbers’. High level mental function localizes very poorly to specific brain regions. This is odd, if, as Novella claims, the material brain is entirely the cause of all mental function.

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One of the things I like about blogging is that it is as much a dialogue as it is as it is a venue for one person’s opinions. Often the comments section becomes more interesting than the post itself. I also occasionally blog in response to someone else’s blog, and it is not uncommon for a blog conversation (or argument) to break out. Responding to someone else’s comments (even if they are from some random or anonymous blogger or commenter) can make a discussion more interesting.

For example, I have blogged numerous times in the past about the “god of the gaps” style of argument, and the philosophical nature of science. This has garnered the occasional response from creationists, which is always amusing. Recently a blogger named Mariano Grinbank wrote a response on examiner.com. His response is largely an exercise in naked assertion and ad hominem style arguments. Responding to my mind/brain discussion he writes:

Just how is it clearly established that the brain causes mind? It could actually be said to be much more clearly established that mind causes the brain.

It could be said – but it would be wrong. The question is disingenuous because I outline exactly how it is clearly established that the brain causes the mind, in numerous posts, including the one that Grinbank refers to (although does not link to – perhaps he was just relying on Egnor’s responses to my posts). I will outline the evidence yet again: The hypothesis that the brain causes the mind (and does not merely correlate with the mind) makes a number of specific predictions:

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Humans are not entirely rational creatures. We all know this from daily experience, although we happily assume that we are more rational than other people (which is just one of our irrationalities). We are motivated by the need for meaning, and for esteem. We tend to pick sides, and then invest our egos in that side, defending it at all costs.

We are also motivated by the need for simplicity and control. The world is a very complex place, overwhelmingly so. Therefore we need to simplify it in our minds, so that we can deal with it. We use schematics, and categories, and rules of thumb to impose a manageable order on the chaos of reality. These devices are quite adaptive, as long as we realize that they are just that – human devices to approximate reality in a way we can handle.

But too often we confuse our simplistic models of reality with reality. Further, we like our morality plays to be black and white. The villains are villains, without redeeming qualities. The good guys wear white and have no major flaws (nothing beyond an endearing quirk). The ambiguities and gray of the world make us feel uncomfortable. This tendency, by the way, leads to certain logical fallacies, such as poisoning the well. If Hitler believed something, and everything Hitler did was bad, then that belief must also be bad.

We can see this need for moral clarity and scientific simplicity at work in the anti-vaccine movement. Their core belief is that vaccines are not safe, that they are causing harm to our children. They are incorrect in this belief, but that is the bedrock of their movement.

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A recent quote from physicist Stephen Hawking is causing a bit of a stir – actually, not much of one when you think about it. But those who take an interest in such things are, well, interested.

In an interview with the Guardian he is quoted as saying:

“I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

This is an elegant statement from a respected scientist. Hawking personalizes his view by putting it in the context of his own life. To him the prospect of death is an old friend. He faces his own mortality with acceptance. But at the same time he affirms his love for life – life is possibility and he wishes to make the most out of his own brief existence, which he also hopes is not that brief.

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In my opinion society is best served with open and vigorous debate about important topics of the day. Such debates are most effective, however, when proponents of opposing views are actually engaging directly with the claims and beliefs of the other side. This requires effort – to understand what the other side believes and why they believe it. This should be taught as a basic intellectual skill in school. Whenever confronted with a controversy, make a sincere effort to understand the best case that each side is putting forward.

In my (admittedly biased) experience, what I will call “fair engagement” is more the exception than the rule. It is easy to slip into accepting a straw-man caricature of the other side. We all do it to some degree. The danger for skeptics is to focus on the most extreme examples of a belief as if they are representative, while ignoring the more reasonable (if still wrong) end of the spectrum. But while there is a continuum, there are those who make a sincere effort to treat their opponents fairly, and those who are stramenticidal maniacs (sorry for my lack of Latin scholarship, but that’s as close as I can come to someone who likes to murder straw men).

The alternative medicine (CAM) community in particular seem to enjoy engaging with straw men of their opponents. It is partly a result of their genuine lack of understanding of our criticisms, but it is also a result of their propaganda. The CAM community (at least collectively) have mastered the marketing of their ideas. They manage to frame the discussion in a way that completely distorts the actual points that are in dispute – in their favor.

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In his latest book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking gives his opinion that the philosophy of science has outlived its usefulness – it is “dead”. The reason he gives is that modern philosophers have not kept up with the cutting edge of science, and therefore their musings have become irrelevant.

Not surprisingly, philosophers have not taken kindly to this suggestion. I find myself siding with the philosophers on this one. But Hawking’s observation is not without merit, especially if you give it one critical tweak - some philosophers of science have not kept up and their musings about science are largely irrelevant. I could also says that some scientists are not up on their philosophy and this hampers their efforts as scientists.

Christopher Norris does a good job defending philosophy (in the link above), so I won’t repeat the same points here except to summarize. Norris observes:

By the same token, scientific theories are always ‘underdetermined’ by the best evidence to hand, meaning that the evidence is always open to other, equally rational interpretations given some adjustment of this or that ‘auxiliary hypothesis’ or negotiable element of background belief. All the same, I don’t want to push that line of argument too far, because among some philosophers of science it has now become an article of faith; a dogma maintained just as fixedly as any precept of the old, unreconstructed positivist creed. Moreover it has given rise to a range of relativist or ‘strong’ sociological approaches which use the theory-ladenness and underdetermination theses to cast doubt on any distinction between true and false theories, valid and invalid hypotheses, or science and pseudo-science.

Very likely it is notions of this kind – ideas with their home ground in sociology, or cultural studies, or on the wilder shores of philosophy of science – which provoked Professor Hawking to issue his pronouncement.

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