Morality itself provides a rational warrant for bleief in God.
Argument:
(1) The normative nature of Moral Axioms is universally Recognized.
(2) Explanations must account for the universal imperative while preserving the normative aspect.
(3) Materialist explanations cannot preserve the normative aspect because they lack a basis for moral moral judgement (they can't supply a justification for the "ought").
(4) The concept of God provides the basis for Moral Judgement since God is omniscient, just, and compassionate.
(5) Therefore,since the concept of God provides the best explaination for the normative nature of moral axioms, and since we asssume the reality of the we we have a warrant for beief in God as a regulartoy concept.
Explanation:
Even though the mores may vary, all civilizations and cultures have a strong sense of moral outrage at gross injustice and a sense of fairness and desire for the right to win out. This seems like an innate sense. The real trick is not explaining how this innate sense came to be but explaining it in such a way that we can still take it seriously as a normative value.
Materialistic and naturalistic explanations can easily explain how the need for the moral dimension arose from naturalistic sources but they cannot explain why we should take it seriously as moral.
The Apostle Paul tells us that there is a universal moral law written upon the human heart (Rm 2:6-14). We can see evidence of this universal law throughout the world. Now social science is quick to tell us that moral codes of all cultures differ throughout the world; some are so drastically different as to allow for multiple mirages, in some cultures gambling and even cheating each other are expected, and in a few cultures there doesn't seem to be any notion of right and wrong. But we shouldn't expect that all the moral codes of the world would be uniform just because there is a moral law. The evidence of a universal law is not seen in structured belief systems but in the humanity of humans. People in all cultures have concepts of right and wrong, even though they may attach different kinds of significance to them. There are a few cultures that are actually pathological examples, but in the main most people are capable of being good, exhibit a basic human compassion, and feel moral outrage at cruelty and injustice.
It is this sense of moral outrage and the ability to empathize and to feel compassion that marks the moral law best of all. In Nicaragua in the 1980s members of the contra army fighting the Sandinistas conducted a campaign of terror to prevent the people from supporting the revolutionary government. To enforce a sense of Terror they cut off the heads of little girls and put them on polls for all to see [1] The modern equivalent is Issis. People are also repulsed by their doings. There is something about this act, regardless of our political affiliations which fills us with anger and revulsion; we want to say it is evil. Even those who believe that we must move beyond good and evil are hard pressed not to admit this sense of outrage and revulsion, yet if they had their way we would not be able to express anything more than a matter of taste about this incident for nothing is truly evil if there is no universal moral law.
Answering objections
(1) Genetic explanations only provide an understanding of behavior, they do not offer the basis of a moral dimension (trying to turn "is" into "ought").
(2) Social contract theory offers only relativism that can be changed or ignored in the shifting sands of social necessity and politics (this is both a practical issue and a matter of meta ethical theory).
(3) matters of feeling are merely matters of taste and should be ignored as subjective (the atheist dread of the subjective).
(4) God is possessed of a loving nature that makes the good a matter of rational on the part of the creator and his status as creator means he is more than qualified to be judge to translate te good into moral values.
Notes
[1] Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide:U.S. Intervention in Central America, South End Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 1999)
Pages
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Sunday, September 27, 2020
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Restructuring of my Moral Argument for God
Dixcussion with pixie on CADRE hadled meto think I can improve my moral argent,
Argument:
(1) Humans are possessed of moral motions which we find to be real and important. We cannot deny the senes of moral outrage over "evil" or the sense that one "ought" to do that which we find "good."
(2) Such moral motions can be understood as grounded in terms of behavior in our genetic endowment, but no explanation can tell us why we find them moral or how to justify them as "ought's."
(3) Genetic explanations only provide an understanding of behavior, they do not offer the basis of a moral dimension (trying to turn "is" into "ought").
(4) Social contract theory offers only relativism that can be changed or ignored in the shifting sands of social necessity and politics (this is both a practical issue and a matter meta ethical theory).
(5) In Christian understandng God is possessed of a loving nature that makes the good a matter of rationale on the part of the creator and his status as creator means he is more than qualified to be judge to translate te good into moral values.
(6) Therefore, God is the only source of grounding which works as a regulative concept for our moral axioms and at the same time actually explains the deep seated nature of moral motions. Universal Moral Law.
Argument:
(1) Humans are possessed of moral motions which we find to be real and important. We cannot deny the senes of moral outrage over "evil" or the sense that one "ought" to do that which we find "good."
(2) Such moral motions can be understood as grounded in terms of behavior in our genetic endowment, but no explanation can tell us why we find them moral or how to justify them as "ought's."
(3) Genetic explanations only provide an understanding of behavior, they do not offer the basis of a moral dimension (trying to turn "is" into "ought").
(4) Social contract theory offers only relativism that can be changed or ignored in the shifting sands of social necessity and politics (this is both a practical issue and a matter meta ethical theory).
(5) In Christian understandng God is possessed of a loving nature that makes the good a matter of rationale on the part of the creator and his status as creator means he is more than qualified to be judge to translate te good into moral values.
(6) Therefore, God is the only source of grounding which works as a regulative concept for our moral axioms and at the same time actually explains the deep seated nature of moral motions. Universal Moral Law.
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Why God's love is Universal Truth and Other Issues
[1]
God is love! That is the character of God, the image in which man is created; our ability to love is an outgrowth of God's character, God is eternal and therefore universal thus his love is universal. God's love is the principle upon which the universe was created, upon which morality is based.Those are logical extensions from basic Christian assumption.
when I complained about his assumption that Christians must prove God every time we talk about God he asserts that I am complaining about the questioning of God itself, as though Chritians can't stand for others to question their religion:
One would think its because it's not scientific now we find it's because Christians get tired of arguing for God every time they mention God. In fact he's ignoring the answer I gave pretending like I did not give it. Apparently pixie can't follow a simple sentence and he's always reading the worst motive into any Chritian statement.In response to the assertion that I never defend my belief in God I wrote:
To which he responds: "Which of those arguments is PROOF?" I am having a bit of trouble seeing this, First of all I never said I can prove God,I said I don't have to prove it. He takes that as a challenge that i can prove it; He asks which of my arguments is proof? Then he says:
"Ration Warrant" (Rational warrant") essentially means a good reason to believe something. The point I've made many times in the past is that we don't have to prove the existence of God as long as we can provide a rational warrant for belief. The problem is atheists refuse to recognize a real reason. They can never be honest about facts or about logic. I never said I do absolute proof and never denied about rational warrant.
Now we come to an issue we have been dancing around through this whole week. Pix assumes that modern laws of physics were founded upon hypotheses that were later validated by scientific observation thus proving that only the scientific method can establish facts and prove theiries about the world.My argument was that the assumptions upon which laws were already accepted as proven when the were chosen as assumptions and thus they were not validated by science until after. That means other methods were used to select them. Pix never answers this argument instead he changes his position.
Joe: No they only base laws on established assumptions not unestablished;you are confusing the method that evolved out of science with the history of scientific thought. Scientific method had to evolve,Read the Burtt book.[2]br>
Instead of giving a rational answer he storms:"Can you actually make an argument? All you have is this insinuation, but to me it looks empty." I don't know what "insinuation" he's talking about; I made a clear argument that the basic assumptions that led to the development of the scientific method were not themselves validated by science when they were assumed. They used other methods such as logic and so might we. He takes my argument to mean that we can trust unproven methods:
"If you think Newton's laws, say, are based on an unproved assumption, say what it is. Say exactly how it is bad science. Present the reasoning." He's apparently tacked on to that misconstrued assumption that I'm saying that laws of Newton are bad science. Where he got that I do not know.
My argument is clearly that modern science is built upon assumptions that were not put in place by science since they were building blocs that led to science.They were understood before science evolved.Thus there must be some pre scientific methods that can be trusted:
Joe: Do you really think Newton said I;m going to write some stuff and call them laws and someday someone will prove them and they will really be laws? Do you think Newton was an idiot? He did not make up bull shit then try to prove it he didn't call it laws before it was proven. You need to read Leviathan and the Air Pump.That is a book that gives us a good understanding of the process through which modern science evolved.[2]
Pix responds
"I think Newton's laws were a big part of establishing the assumption that the universe follows laws (if it was not done earlier). Newton established that at the same time as he established his laws." Good God. He thinks Newton had something to do with it. We need to contact the Smithsonian at once.Newton established that the universe runs on laws at the the time he established his laws? Good timing, I;m going to make some laws then I'm going to establish that laws are important. if this guy really knew anything about ewton hewoudknowthahe was a Chritian,so he assumed God created laws to run the universe that had been assumed for 2000 years.
Then he mysteriously changes his position and wants to assert that he always asserted that the assumptions were proven to begin with.
After: "As long as we agree 'they make laws from proven assumptions', that is fine with me." Hey what does it matter what we say as Long as you say I'm right?
he then cocedes:
"I do not know when they were established, but I guess before or by Newton. However - and this is important - I invented a hypothetical situation where it happened afterward. Do you see where I said 'Let us suppose'? That indicates that what follows is hypothetical." But he's still ignoring my point, Apparently he really can't follow a discussion,
He explains: "Even in the hypothetical situation in which the assumption was established later, the fact that it was established at some point means his laws are good, reliable science."
I can see his point but there are problems. First he was not arguing hypothetically,we clearly had a dispute going about history not hypothetical. I can see his point that it doesn't matter as long as they were validated later, but that does change his argument, because if they were validated first by other means and proven later by science that at least partially validated the other means as well
I want to go back to one thiung he said:"The reality is that you have a variety of arguments that kind of suggest God exists. But you then magically convert them into absolute certainty because... It is religion" I do not advance a rational process that onvert sugestions to certain nor do I advocateone, Taht rocesshas been workedin ne,I havegone fronsuggestiontocertaindduetomy own experinces of God. God is realso myxperinesof God are real. [1] [2] the Birtt book
Anonymous said... Pix: "I would love to know why he thinks God's love is a universal truth - but of course when Joe makes a "very swaggering claim" he sees no reason to support it. He is a Christian! He does not have to prove anything! It says it in the Bible, and we are all to assume the Bible is true.
God is love! That is the character of God, the image in which man is created; our ability to love is an outgrowth of God's character, God is eternal and therefore universal thus his love is universal. God's love is the principle upon which the universe was created, upon which morality is based.Those are logical extensions from basic Christian assumption.
when I complained about his assumption that Christians must prove God every time we talk about God he asserts that I am complaining about the questioning of God itself, as though Chritians can't stand for others to question their religion:
Px: Of course, when YOU are asked to support a claim about your religion it "is bull shit, unfair, and its stupid". Heaven forbid a Christian should ever have to do such a thing!And THIS is why religion is unreliable.
One would think its because it's not scientific now we find it's because Christians get tired of arguing for God every time they mention God. In fact he's ignoring the answer I gave pretending like I did not give it. Apparently pixie can't follow a simple sentence and he's always reading the worst motive into any Chritian statement.In response to the assertion that I never defend my belief in God I wrote:
Joe: Most of what i've said is about that,I've made 52 God arguments and argue many of them often. I don't have to prove God every time I talk about Him, I don;t expect you to prove science every time you ,mentioned it,
To which he responds: "Which of those arguments is PROOF?" I am having a bit of trouble seeing this, First of all I never said I can prove God,I said I don't have to prove it. He takes that as a challenge that i can prove it; He asks which of my arguments is proof? Then he says:
I seem to remember you making a big deal about ration warrants. Why would you do that if you have PROOF? You would not. The reality is that you have a variety of arguments that kind of suggest God exists. But you then magically convert them into absolute certainty because... It is religion.
"Ration Warrant" (Rational warrant") essentially means a good reason to believe something. The point I've made many times in the past is that we don't have to prove the existence of God as long as we can provide a rational warrant for belief. The problem is atheists refuse to recognize a real reason. They can never be honest about facts or about logic. I never said I do absolute proof and never denied about rational warrant.
Now we come to an issue we have been dancing around through this whole week. Pix assumes that modern laws of physics were founded upon hypotheses that were later validated by scientific observation thus proving that only the scientific method can establish facts and prove theiries about the world.My argument was that the assumptions upon which laws were already accepted as proven when the were chosen as assumptions and thus they were not validated by science until after. That means other methods were used to select them. Pix never answers this argument instead he changes his position.
Joe: No they only base laws on established assumptions not unestablished;you are confusing the method that evolved out of science with the history of scientific thought. Scientific method had to evolve,Read the Burtt book.[2]br>
Instead of giving a rational answer he storms:"Can you actually make an argument? All you have is this insinuation, but to me it looks empty." I don't know what "insinuation" he's talking about; I made a clear argument that the basic assumptions that led to the development of the scientific method were not themselves validated by science when they were assumed. They used other methods such as logic and so might we. He takes my argument to mean that we can trust unproven methods:
"If you think Newton's laws, say, are based on an unproved assumption, say what it is. Say exactly how it is bad science. Present the reasoning." He's apparently tacked on to that misconstrued assumption that I'm saying that laws of Newton are bad science. Where he got that I do not know.
My argument is clearly that modern science is built upon assumptions that were not put in place by science since they were building blocs that led to science.They were understood before science evolved.Thus there must be some pre scientific methods that can be trusted:
Joe: Do you really think Newton said I;m going to write some stuff and call them laws and someday someone will prove them and they will really be laws? Do you think Newton was an idiot? He did not make up bull shit then try to prove it he didn't call it laws before it was proven. You need to read Leviathan and the Air Pump.That is a book that gives us a good understanding of the process through which modern science evolved.[2]
Pix responds
"I think Newton's laws were a big part of establishing the assumption that the universe follows laws (if it was not done earlier). Newton established that at the same time as he established his laws." Good God. He thinks Newton had something to do with it. We need to contact the Smithsonian at once.Newton established that the universe runs on laws at the the time he established his laws? Good timing, I;m going to make some laws then I'm going to establish that laws are important. if this guy really knew anything about ewton hewoudknowthahe was a Chritian,so he assumed God created laws to run the universe that had been assumed for 2000 years.
Then he mysteriously changes his position and wants to assert that he always asserted that the assumptions were proven to begin with.
After: "As long as we agree 'they make laws from proven assumptions', that is fine with me." Hey what does it matter what we say as Long as you say I'm right?
he then cocedes:
"I do not know when they were established, but I guess before or by Newton. However - and this is important - I invented a hypothetical situation where it happened afterward. Do you see where I said 'Let us suppose'? That indicates that what follows is hypothetical." But he's still ignoring my point, Apparently he really can't follow a discussion,
He explains: "Even in the hypothetical situation in which the assumption was established later, the fact that it was established at some point means his laws are good, reliable science."
I can see his point but there are problems. First he was not arguing hypothetically,we clearly had a dispute going about history not hypothetical. I can see his point that it doesn't matter as long as they were validated later, but that does change his argument, because if they were validated first by other means and proven later by science that at least partially validated the other means as well
I want to go back to one thiung he said:"The reality is that you have a variety of arguments that kind of suggest God exists. But you then magically convert them into absolute certainty because... It is religion" I do not advance a rational process that onvert sugestions to certain nor do I advocateone, Taht rocesshas been workedin ne,I havegone fronsuggestiontocertaindduetomy own experinces of God. God is realso myxperinesof God are real. [1] [2] the Birtt book
Monday, September 14, 2020
Intelligence and Belief
A popular conception has grown up about IQ being meaningless as a measurement of intelligence. This view is held by various experts who study mind and things pertaining to it, as well as lay people. No great surprise that it is contradicted by experts who make IQ tests, It's what they do, Sure enough there's an article a friend of mine put me on to by an IQ researcher,Linda S. Gottfredson, who argues that most experts in the field see IQ as a valid predictor of intelligence and life success: "Intelligence as measured by IQ tests is the single most effective predictor known of individual performance at school and on the job. It also predicts many other aspects of well being, including a person’s chances of divorcing, dropping out of high school, being unemployed or having illegitimate children."[1]
I believe this is an example of what I call "the illusion of technique" and I understand it as an aspect of Marcuse's one-dimensional man,It is the limitation of human potential, it lends itself to exploitation, the commodification of intelligence. In the final analysis they may prove they are measuring something but not necessarily intelligence.
Researchers have tried to isolate a single factor which they call "g" that stands for "general intelligence," they claim to find it in any statistical variation the charts success and achievement.
By now the vast majority of intelligence researchers take these findings for granted. Yet in the press and in public debate, the facts are typically dismissed, downplayed or ignored. This misrepresentation reflects a clash between a deeply felt ideal and a stubborn reality. The ideal, implicit in many popular critiques of intelligence research, is that all people are born equally able and that social inequality results only from the exercise of unjust privilege. The reality is that Mother Nature is no egalitarian. People are in fact unequal in intellectual potential—and they are born that way, just as they are born with different potentials for height, physical attractiveness, artistic flair, athletic prowess and other traits. Although subsequent experience shapes this potential, no amount of social engineering can make individuals with widely divergent mental aptitudes into intellectual equals..[2]
I think it's fair to say that some people are smarter than others, I think it's fair to say that intelligence helps one in whatever one does, so that any measurement of success is probably to some extent bound up with intelligence in some way.The one major exception of course is Donald Trump who is both an idiot and highly skilled in certain ways. Yet this is still not the same as saying that IQ measures intelligence. It's also not the same as saying that if one is successful it's a measurement of being smart, necessarily. Nor is failure a measurement of stupidity.
My major reason for the view I hold really comes down to the failure of IQ testes to regard discursive reasoning or indeed reason itself, as a sign of intelligence, If you crunch numbers you are smart, if you read philosophy and don't crunch numbers you are not smart, according to the testers. But the testers are by definition number cruncher. So they are using themselves as the final standardized by which they define intelligence. Why would working mathematics be intelligence any more than discussing Hegel? Granted both involve intelligence, but is the one who works math well and can't seem to get the negation of the negation or the sublation of dialectic still smart but the Hegel scholar who doesn't excel at math less so? The lesser mathematician will have lower IQ because math figures in the test, that doesn't prove it's measuring intelligence. What it proves is that they gear the test to objective measures (you can't prove you are right about Hegel like you can math) but are they measures of intelligence? I suspect that they are really measuring a complex amalgam of things involving drive, ambition, technical profession, mathematical reasoning and intelligence. The variables are too complex to include all the psychological factors so they level it out with mathematical scores, That means mathematical ability will determine the end result.
Math is not the only problem, the view of intelligence enshrined in the test is really about cultural absorption. They are effect measuring cultural literacy. One of the major disproofs of the validity of IQ tests is a phenomenon known as the "Flynn effect." This is a disproof becuase it indicates that IQ not fixed, it rises with time and that what is being measured is actually not intelligence but cultural literacy.
Multiple studies have documented significant IQ gains over time, a phenomenon labeled the Flynn effect. Data from 20 industrialized nations show massive IQ gains over time, most notably in culturally reduced tests like the Raven's Progressive Matrices. To our knowledge, however, this is the first study to document the Flynn effect in a rural area of a developing country. Data for this project were collected during two large studies in Embu, Kenya, in 1984 and 1998. Results strongly support a Flynn effect over this 14-year period, with the most significant gains found in Raven's matrices. Previously hypothesized explanations (e.g., improved nutrition; increased environmental complexity; and family, parental, school, and methodological factors) for the Flynn effect are evaluated for their relevance in this community, and other potential factors are reviewed. The hypotheses that resonate best with our findings are those related to parents' literacy, family structure, and children's nutrition and health.[3] Flynn argues that our ancestors were not dumber. He rules out better nutrition or knowing the tests better. The bias of the test is such that a kind of technological imperialism is imposed upon the masses.
Flynn cites a hypothetical, but typical, test question: “How are rabbits and dogs alike?” Answers such as “both destroy gardens,” “both are dinner in some countries and pets in others,” or “you can use dogs to hunt rabbits” are true, but the response the IQ testers want is “both are mammals.” The question tests not knowledge of the world or of functional relationships but mastery of particular abstract concepts, which the test makers have themselves internalized as trained scientific professionals and literate intellectuals.[4]
The tests reward problem solving that reflects a bias toward the technological sort of thinking. IQ tests also reward certain problem- solving abilities—what Flynn calls “problems not solvable by mechanical application of a learned method.” He cites tests of similarities and analogies, and pattern-completion tests, such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices. In the latter, each question is a series of line drawings followed by a collection of drawings from which the test taker must pick the one that completes the sequence. When J. C. Raven developed the test in 1936, he claimed it measured the ability to discover patterns, which was for him the essence of intelligence. Raven’s test is often said (without good evidence) to suffer little or no cultural bias. Yet it is on tests of this type that the Flynn effect is strongest; gains in IQ scores of at least 5 points per decade have been seen. In the Netherlands, for decades all 18-year-old males drafted into the military were given the test, and those who took it in 1982 scored 20 points higher than those who had taken it in 1952.[5] Gottfredson tries to argue against this kind of criticism:
Some critics of intelligence research maintain that the notion of general intelligence is illusory: that no such global mental capacity exists and that apparent “intelligence” is really just a by-product of one’s opportunities to learn skills and information valued in a particular cultural context. True, the concept of intelligence and the way in which individuals are ranked according to this criterion could be social artifacts. But the fact that g is not specific to any particular domain of knowledge or mental skill suggests that g is independent of cultural content, including beliefs about what intelligence is. And tests of different social groups reveal the same continuum of general intelligence. This observation suggests either that cultures do not construct g or that they construct the same g. Both conclusions undercut the social artifact theory of intelligence. This doesn't answer the Flynn effect argument. "But the fact that g is not specific to any particular domain of knowledge or mental skill suggests that g is independent of cultural content," That does not mean that the test is not biased along the lines of thought categories such as science, g is not specific to any particular domain but if it is biased in favor of cultural literary it can fail to measure certain intelligent responses because they don't fit the categories. All cultures have cloistral categories it's going to show up in all of them,
Some have asked "if IQ tests are not predicting intelligence, or at least not fixed, unalterably, heritable standard of intelligence, what do they predict?" The Flynn effect give us one answer, cultural literacy. Another answer is academic motivation. That is not necessarily a marker for intelligence, since a bright student can be turned off from the process of learning or trying. Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and her team, conducted two studies; they did a meta analysis of 46 previous studies, the effect of monetary incentive's on IQ scores."...the effect of financial rewards on IQ scores increased dramatically the higher the reward: Thus rewards higher than $10 produced g values of more than 1.6 (roughly equivalent to more than 20 IQ points), whereas rewards of less than $1 were only one-tenth as effective."[6]
Duckworth's second study involved data from an earlier study, following 500 boys age 12, tested in the late 80s, they were video tapes and signs of boredom and lack of motivation were observed. The study was longitudinal, following the boys into early adulthood. There were no difference in IQ or other factors between the boys.
Duckworth's team analyzed the results of these earlier studies to see what they said about the relationship between motivation, IQ scores, and life success. By constructing a series of computer models of the data, the team found that higher motivation accounted for a significant amount of the differences in IQ scores and also in how well IQ predicted later success in life. For example, differences in motivation levels accounted for up to 84% of the differences between the boys in how many years of school they had completed or whether they had been able to find a job. On the other hand, motivation differences accounted for about only 25% of the differences in how well they had done in school as teenagers. According to the researchers, that suggests that native intelligence does still play an important role in both IQ scores and academic achievement. Nevertheless, the Duckworth team concludes that IQ tests are measuring much more than just raw intelligence--they also measure how badly subjects want to succeed both on the test and later in life. Yet Duckworth and her colleagues caution that motivation isn't everything: The lower role for motivation in academic achievement, they write, suggests that "earning a high IQ score requires high intelligence in addition to high motivation."[7]
This finding of course raises the question does this mean that those with high intelligence will score low on the test if they are not motivated? That test scores fluctuate at different times in your life would seem to be proof that IQ doesn't measure a fixed unalterable course. Take a book reviewed by NYT book review in 1998, published by Brookings Institue, the work shows that test scores between black and white narrow only a bit since 1970 but "the typical American black still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests. On some tests the typical American black scores below more than 85 percent of whites?" Yet no genetic aspect has ever been discovered that would indicate that blacks are any less intelligent than whites. As a matter of fact when black children are raised in white homes their per-adolescent test scores rise dramatically (that also goes for mixed race children). Black adoptee test scores fall in adolescents. [8] I would actually predict that, since at that time the difference in racial make up of the family becomes more acute (I base that upon the experience of relatives). That could be a motivational issue. Moreover, the findings reported above by Nisbet shows the IQ gap bewteen blacks and whites has narrowed a lot more since 98.
--Even nonverbal IQ scores are sensitive to environmental change. Scores on nonverbal IQ tests have risen dramatically throughout the world since the 1930s. The average white scored higher on the Stanford-Binet in 1978 than 82 percent of whites who took the test in 1932. Such findings reinforce the implications of adoption studies: large environmental changes can have a large impact on test performance.
--Black-white differences in academic achievement have also narrowed throughout the twentieth century. The best trend data come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been testing seventeen-year-olds since 1971 and has repeated many of the same items year after year. Figure 1-2 shows that the black-white reading gap narrowed from 1.25 standard deviations in 1971 to 0.69 standard deviations in 1996. The math gap fell from 1.33 to 0.89 standard deviations. When Min-Hsiung Huang and Robert Hauser analyzed vocabulary scores for adults born between 1909 and 1969, the black-white gap also narrowed by half.[9]
Some scientists attribute the difference in IQ between men and women to motivation. Males surpass females by average of 3.6 IQ pionts, but more males decide to go to college than females. William and Mary psychologist Bruce Bracken thinks this is a good argument for linking motivation to the test score. [10]
I don't doubt that there is a general intelligence, and I can see the benefit in a concrete measure for it. That does not mean that IQ tests are that measure. We should use and put weight on reading and understanding ideas more so than on working quizzes. As long we use technique to make that measure it's going to be exploited and used to oppress.
Sources
[1] Linda S. Gottfredson, "The General Intelligence Factor," Scientific American,(no month indicated) 1998, 24-29 , 24. from the PDF version,URL: http://www.hucama.se/uploads/1/6/5/0/16501994/g-factor_intellligence_1998.pdf (accessed 3/14/17).
LINDA S. GOTTFREDSON is professor of educational studies at the University of Delaware
another online version here:
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/803/822654/psychplace/genintell/genintell.html
[2] Ibid., 24.
[3] Tamra C. Daley,et al "IQ on the Rise, the Flynn effect Rural Kenyon Children." Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science. vol. 14, no. 3, (May, 2003) 215-219.on line version http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/3/215.short accessed 8/16/13
co authors include: Shannon E. Whaley2,Marian D. Sigman1,2,Michael P. Espinosa2 andCharlotte Neumann3
[4] Cosma Shalizi, "The Domestication of the Savage Mind," Book Rview of What is Intelligence, Beyond the Flynn Effect, by James Flynn, in American Scientist, Vol. 97, no. 3 (May-June, 2009) 244. on line version: http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-domestication-of-the-savage-mind accessed 8/16/13. Cosma Shalizi is an assistant professor in the statistics department at Carnegie Mellon University and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is writing a book on the statistical analysis of complex systems models. His blog, Three-Toed Sloth, can be found at http://bactra.org/weblog/.
[5] Ibid.
3,4,5 = 10,11,12
[6] Angela Duckwork in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, quoted by Balter op.cit.
[7] Ibid.
[8] New York Times book review, The Black and White Test score Gap, edited by Christopher Jenks and Meredith Philips. Washington DC: Bookings Institution Press. 1998. New York Times online http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html accessed 8/17/13.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Jeanna Bryner,"Men Smarter than Women Scientists Claim," Live Science, sept 8, 2006. On line resource or blog: http://www.livescience.com/7154-men-smarter-women-scientist-claims.html accessed 8/17/13
posted elsewhere by me a:"g whiz I used to be smart,"
I believe this is an example of what I call "the illusion of technique" and I understand it as an aspect of Marcuse's one-dimensional man,It is the limitation of human potential, it lends itself to exploitation, the commodification of intelligence. In the final analysis they may prove they are measuring something but not necessarily intelligence.
Researchers have tried to isolate a single factor which they call "g" that stands for "general intelligence," they claim to find it in any statistical variation the charts success and achievement.
By now the vast majority of intelligence researchers take these findings for granted. Yet in the press and in public debate, the facts are typically dismissed, downplayed or ignored. This misrepresentation reflects a clash between a deeply felt ideal and a stubborn reality. The ideal, implicit in many popular critiques of intelligence research, is that all people are born equally able and that social inequality results only from the exercise of unjust privilege. The reality is that Mother Nature is no egalitarian. People are in fact unequal in intellectual potential—and they are born that way, just as they are born with different potentials for height, physical attractiveness, artistic flair, athletic prowess and other traits. Although subsequent experience shapes this potential, no amount of social engineering can make individuals with widely divergent mental aptitudes into intellectual equals..[2]
I think it's fair to say that some people are smarter than others, I think it's fair to say that intelligence helps one in whatever one does, so that any measurement of success is probably to some extent bound up with intelligence in some way.The one major exception of course is Donald Trump who is both an idiot and highly skilled in certain ways. Yet this is still not the same as saying that IQ measures intelligence. It's also not the same as saying that if one is successful it's a measurement of being smart, necessarily. Nor is failure a measurement of stupidity.
My major reason for the view I hold really comes down to the failure of IQ testes to regard discursive reasoning or indeed reason itself, as a sign of intelligence, If you crunch numbers you are smart, if you read philosophy and don't crunch numbers you are not smart, according to the testers. But the testers are by definition number cruncher. So they are using themselves as the final standardized by which they define intelligence. Why would working mathematics be intelligence any more than discussing Hegel? Granted both involve intelligence, but is the one who works math well and can't seem to get the negation of the negation or the sublation of dialectic still smart but the Hegel scholar who doesn't excel at math less so? The lesser mathematician will have lower IQ because math figures in the test, that doesn't prove it's measuring intelligence. What it proves is that they gear the test to objective measures (you can't prove you are right about Hegel like you can math) but are they measures of intelligence? I suspect that they are really measuring a complex amalgam of things involving drive, ambition, technical profession, mathematical reasoning and intelligence. The variables are too complex to include all the psychological factors so they level it out with mathematical scores, That means mathematical ability will determine the end result.
Math is not the only problem, the view of intelligence enshrined in the test is really about cultural absorption. They are effect measuring cultural literacy. One of the major disproofs of the validity of IQ tests is a phenomenon known as the "Flynn effect." This is a disproof becuase it indicates that IQ not fixed, it rises with time and that what is being measured is actually not intelligence but cultural literacy.
Multiple studies have documented significant IQ gains over time, a phenomenon labeled the Flynn effect. Data from 20 industrialized nations show massive IQ gains over time, most notably in culturally reduced tests like the Raven's Progressive Matrices. To our knowledge, however, this is the first study to document the Flynn effect in a rural area of a developing country. Data for this project were collected during two large studies in Embu, Kenya, in 1984 and 1998. Results strongly support a Flynn effect over this 14-year period, with the most significant gains found in Raven's matrices. Previously hypothesized explanations (e.g., improved nutrition; increased environmental complexity; and family, parental, school, and methodological factors) for the Flynn effect are evaluated for their relevance in this community, and other potential factors are reviewed. The hypotheses that resonate best with our findings are those related to parents' literacy, family structure, and children's nutrition and health.[3] Flynn argues that our ancestors were not dumber. He rules out better nutrition or knowing the tests better. The bias of the test is such that a kind of technological imperialism is imposed upon the masses.
Flynn cites a hypothetical, but typical, test question: “How are rabbits and dogs alike?” Answers such as “both destroy gardens,” “both are dinner in some countries and pets in others,” or “you can use dogs to hunt rabbits” are true, but the response the IQ testers want is “both are mammals.” The question tests not knowledge of the world or of functional relationships but mastery of particular abstract concepts, which the test makers have themselves internalized as trained scientific professionals and literate intellectuals.[4]
The tests reward problem solving that reflects a bias toward the technological sort of thinking. IQ tests also reward certain problem- solving abilities—what Flynn calls “problems not solvable by mechanical application of a learned method.” He cites tests of similarities and analogies, and pattern-completion tests, such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices. In the latter, each question is a series of line drawings followed by a collection of drawings from which the test taker must pick the one that completes the sequence. When J. C. Raven developed the test in 1936, he claimed it measured the ability to discover patterns, which was for him the essence of intelligence. Raven’s test is often said (without good evidence) to suffer little or no cultural bias. Yet it is on tests of this type that the Flynn effect is strongest; gains in IQ scores of at least 5 points per decade have been seen. In the Netherlands, for decades all 18-year-old males drafted into the military were given the test, and those who took it in 1982 scored 20 points higher than those who had taken it in 1952.[5] Gottfredson tries to argue against this kind of criticism:
Some critics of intelligence research maintain that the notion of general intelligence is illusory: that no such global mental capacity exists and that apparent “intelligence” is really just a by-product of one’s opportunities to learn skills and information valued in a particular cultural context. True, the concept of intelligence and the way in which individuals are ranked according to this criterion could be social artifacts. But the fact that g is not specific to any particular domain of knowledge or mental skill suggests that g is independent of cultural content, including beliefs about what intelligence is. And tests of different social groups reveal the same continuum of general intelligence. This observation suggests either that cultures do not construct g or that they construct the same g. Both conclusions undercut the social artifact theory of intelligence. This doesn't answer the Flynn effect argument. "But the fact that g is not specific to any particular domain of knowledge or mental skill suggests that g is independent of cultural content," That does not mean that the test is not biased along the lines of thought categories such as science, g is not specific to any particular domain but if it is biased in favor of cultural literary it can fail to measure certain intelligent responses because they don't fit the categories. All cultures have cloistral categories it's going to show up in all of them,
Some have asked "if IQ tests are not predicting intelligence, or at least not fixed, unalterably, heritable standard of intelligence, what do they predict?" The Flynn effect give us one answer, cultural literacy. Another answer is academic motivation. That is not necessarily a marker for intelligence, since a bright student can be turned off from the process of learning or trying. Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and her team, conducted two studies; they did a meta analysis of 46 previous studies, the effect of monetary incentive's on IQ scores."...the effect of financial rewards on IQ scores increased dramatically the higher the reward: Thus rewards higher than $10 produced g values of more than 1.6 (roughly equivalent to more than 20 IQ points), whereas rewards of less than $1 were only one-tenth as effective."[6]
Duckworth's second study involved data from an earlier study, following 500 boys age 12, tested in the late 80s, they were video tapes and signs of boredom and lack of motivation were observed. The study was longitudinal, following the boys into early adulthood. There were no difference in IQ or other factors between the boys.
Duckworth's team analyzed the results of these earlier studies to see what they said about the relationship between motivation, IQ scores, and life success. By constructing a series of computer models of the data, the team found that higher motivation accounted for a significant amount of the differences in IQ scores and also in how well IQ predicted later success in life. For example, differences in motivation levels accounted for up to 84% of the differences between the boys in how many years of school they had completed or whether they had been able to find a job. On the other hand, motivation differences accounted for about only 25% of the differences in how well they had done in school as teenagers. According to the researchers, that suggests that native intelligence does still play an important role in both IQ scores and academic achievement. Nevertheless, the Duckworth team concludes that IQ tests are measuring much more than just raw intelligence--they also measure how badly subjects want to succeed both on the test and later in life. Yet Duckworth and her colleagues caution that motivation isn't everything: The lower role for motivation in academic achievement, they write, suggests that "earning a high IQ score requires high intelligence in addition to high motivation."[7]
This finding of course raises the question does this mean that those with high intelligence will score low on the test if they are not motivated? That test scores fluctuate at different times in your life would seem to be proof that IQ doesn't measure a fixed unalterable course. Take a book reviewed by NYT book review in 1998, published by Brookings Institue, the work shows that test scores between black and white narrow only a bit since 1970 but "the typical American black still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests. On some tests the typical American black scores below more than 85 percent of whites?" Yet no genetic aspect has ever been discovered that would indicate that blacks are any less intelligent than whites. As a matter of fact when black children are raised in white homes their per-adolescent test scores rise dramatically (that also goes for mixed race children). Black adoptee test scores fall in adolescents. [8] I would actually predict that, since at that time the difference in racial make up of the family becomes more acute (I base that upon the experience of relatives). That could be a motivational issue. Moreover, the findings reported above by Nisbet shows the IQ gap bewteen blacks and whites has narrowed a lot more since 98.
--Even nonverbal IQ scores are sensitive to environmental change. Scores on nonverbal IQ tests have risen dramatically throughout the world since the 1930s. The average white scored higher on the Stanford-Binet in 1978 than 82 percent of whites who took the test in 1932. Such findings reinforce the implications of adoption studies: large environmental changes can have a large impact on test performance.
--Black-white differences in academic achievement have also narrowed throughout the twentieth century. The best trend data come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been testing seventeen-year-olds since 1971 and has repeated many of the same items year after year. Figure 1-2 shows that the black-white reading gap narrowed from 1.25 standard deviations in 1971 to 0.69 standard deviations in 1996. The math gap fell from 1.33 to 0.89 standard deviations. When Min-Hsiung Huang and Robert Hauser analyzed vocabulary scores for adults born between 1909 and 1969, the black-white gap also narrowed by half.[9]
Some scientists attribute the difference in IQ between men and women to motivation. Males surpass females by average of 3.6 IQ pionts, but more males decide to go to college than females. William and Mary psychologist Bruce Bracken thinks this is a good argument for linking motivation to the test score. [10]
I don't doubt that there is a general intelligence, and I can see the benefit in a concrete measure for it. That does not mean that IQ tests are that measure. We should use and put weight on reading and understanding ideas more so than on working quizzes. As long we use technique to make that measure it's going to be exploited and used to oppress.
Sources
[1] Linda S. Gottfredson, "The General Intelligence Factor," Scientific American,(no month indicated) 1998, 24-29 , 24. from the PDF version,URL: http://www.hucama.se/uploads/1/6/5/0/16501994/g-factor_intellligence_1998.pdf (accessed 3/14/17).
LINDA S. GOTTFREDSON is professor of educational studies at the University of Delaware
another online version here:
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/803/822654/psychplace/genintell/genintell.html
[2] Ibid., 24.
[3] Tamra C. Daley,et al "IQ on the Rise, the Flynn effect Rural Kenyon Children." Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science. vol. 14, no. 3, (May, 2003) 215-219.on line version http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/3/215.short accessed 8/16/13
co authors include: Shannon E. Whaley2,Marian D. Sigman1,2,Michael P. Espinosa2 andCharlotte Neumann3
[4] Cosma Shalizi, "The Domestication of the Savage Mind," Book Rview of What is Intelligence, Beyond the Flynn Effect, by James Flynn, in American Scientist, Vol. 97, no. 3 (May-June, 2009) 244. on line version: http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-domestication-of-the-savage-mind accessed 8/16/13. Cosma Shalizi is an assistant professor in the statistics department at Carnegie Mellon University and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is writing a book on the statistical analysis of complex systems models. His blog, Three-Toed Sloth, can be found at http://bactra.org/weblog/.
[5] Ibid.
3,4,5 = 10,11,12
[6] Angela Duckwork in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, quoted by Balter op.cit.
[7] Ibid.
[8] New York Times book review, The Black and White Test score Gap, edited by Christopher Jenks and Meredith Philips. Washington DC: Bookings Institution Press. 1998. New York Times online http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html accessed 8/17/13.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Jeanna Bryner,"Men Smarter than Women Scientists Claim," Live Science, sept 8, 2006. On line resource or blog: http://www.livescience.com/7154-men-smarter-women-scientist-claims.html accessed 8/17/13
posted elsewhere by me a:"g whiz I used to be smart,"
Sunday, September 06, 2020
Countering Scientism
Scientism is the understanding that science is the only valid form of knowledge . It's an ideology and permeates real scientific circles. When thinkers whose understanding is colored by this ideology their defense of science against valid ordinary critique is ideological and programmed, We can always spot this kind of thinking immediately because they invulnerably see any valid criticism as an attack upon the very notion of science, This tendency to think of science as some fragile sacred truth that dare not be questioned is emblematic of ideological reverence, This attitude An example is fond in the essay by Marcel Kuntz is at the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire Végétale, CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier/CEA/INRA in Grenoble, The essay entitled "The Postmodern assault on Science"[1]
Kuntz tells us "Postmodernist thought is being used to attack the scientific worldview and undermine scientific truths; a disturbing trend that has gone unnoticed by a majority of scientists.[2] Postmodernism undermines all truth. Kuntz wants to privilege his view as THE TRUTH! You Know I believe in truth but I don't believe science is the one and only truth,
The scientific method has been the guiding principle for investigating natural phenomena, but postmodernist thought is starting to threaten the foundations of the scientific approach. The rational, scientific view of the world has been painstakingly built over millennia to guarantee that research can have access to objective reality: the world, for science, contains real objects and is governed by physical laws that existed before our knowledge of these objects and laws. Science attempts to describe the world independently of belief by seeking universal truths, on the basis of observation, measurement and experimentation. [3] I agree with several aspects of this view point, I think science is the chief means of understanding the naturalistic workings of the wold and that it does supply a less subjective means of understanding the regularities of the law-like framework of the universe's behavior. Yet when we frame it as "objective," even though it can be called that in a relative way, we set up the validity of the Postmodern critique, it is this very swaggering claim to the one and only truth that postmodernists are reacting against. The claim that science gives us access to "objective reality" is a metaphysical claim, that is guaranteed to open up not objectivity but philosophical critique, The statement about universal truth is a dead give away. Go's love is a universal truth, There might be a realm of the forms where Universal truths are housed, for all we know.This clam impinges upon all metaphysical claims and thus is itself a metaphysical assumption,That makes it fair game for philosophy.
The postmodernist school of thought arose to question these assumptions, postulating that claims about the existence of a real world—the knowledge of which is attainable as an objective truth—have only been relevant in Western civilization since the Enlightenment. In recent decades, the movement has begun to question the validity of claims of scientific truth, whether on the basis of their belonging to larger cultural frames or through heavy criticism of the scientific method. [4] Postmodernism did not arise solely to question the assumptions of science and objective evidence, That's an unfair generalization. That's the hallmark of his whole attack because it fails to distinguish between levels of postmodern thought, it lumps all philosophical critique of science into the same pile as the most extreme Postmdoerns,
When he gets specific the first one he goes after is Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn is probably the most famous and the most legitimately accepted and admired thinker to be labeled "Postmodern." If we must label him ofrm y money i wouldlabel him Postmodern light,
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn's contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines, but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions. To this thesis, Kuhn added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability.[5] "The concept of paradigm shift proposed by Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962;),[6] has also given weight to the critics of science and of its pretension to understand reality. If science is not a gradual process of accumulation of knowledge, but rather subject to sudden “revolutions” that overwhelm outdated theories, they argue, how can one trust scientific knowledge?" (from Kuntz, Op cit)
Who are they? Who are these faceless critics of science who are out to steal reality? He imagines this rival group of knowledge preachers with their own meta narrative to sell,.That Is ideology pure and simple, It;s saying My meta narrative is true not yours,
I don't believe he has read Kuhn, Here are a couple of red flags,First, Kuhn does not say there's a sudden change, Revolutions don't have to be sudden. The metaphor there is political not temporal. In fact Kuhn;s theory states that the shift happens when the paradigm can n longer absorb anomalies that can can a long time for the anomalies to pileup. He says that for an individual researcher it can come as a sudden realization but i;ts not coming overnight in terms of what;s gonging in the field as a whole. When Kuhn says it's not a gradual accumulation of knowledge he doesn't mean these questions haven't been floating around for a long time but that scientific knowledge is not cumulative. it's not a long slow piling up of facts util we find truth. Scientific knowledge can come in an instant he's talking about regular scientific knowledge. Another red flag his rhetorical question how can one trust scientific knowledge? That is his take on Kuhn,Kuhn himself does not say that, Kunb never goes after science, He is not a science baser. He's ;not trying to foster doubt about science.
"If, as according to Kuhn, scientific revolutions are also political upheavals in scientific policy, it is easy to understand why Kuhn's theory has attracted so much attention in a period that calls into question the established political order in the Western world." [7] So here wants to make postmodernism some kind of communist-like threat to peace and civilized order, That strikes me as red Baiting, Is that a bad thing? Questioning the political order?
I find that extremely simplistic, lacking in any specificity that makes it applicable to Kuhn, Kuhn is very specific abouit how defense of a paradigm is like a topological battle. That is why he calls it the scientific revolutions because defense of the old paradigm is like a political regime defemdimg against a revolution,
Then he starts talking about the strong programme as tough Kuhn is in that movement, He was not, The strong programme is the extreme end of postmodernism that does seek to overturn all truth and all science and fits the stereotype, It was largely based in Edinburgh- with thinkers like David Bloor [8] Then he slides into talkinga about the ‘strong programme' in such as way as toconvey the impression that it; related to Kuhn, He also milables and thus castigates other thinkers such as Ian Hacking,
Several deconstructionist thinkers, such as Bruno Latour and Ian Hacking, have rejected the idea that the concepts of science can be derived from a direct interaction with natural phenomena independently of the social environment in which we think about them. The central goal of science, defining what is true and what is false, becomes meaningless they argue, as its objectivity is reduced to ‘claims' that are simply the expression of one culture—one community—among many. Thus, all systems of thought are different “constructs” of reality and all additionally have political connotations and agendas.[9]
He starts out here Identified Hacking as a deconstructionist. Hacking is certainly not a decon. Hacking says He;s a Cambridge analytic philosopher [10]He has been lauded for his scholarship. I am a big fan of His, He is clearly a major historian of sicced,[11] If he can be labeled in the postmodren vain it would be as a Faulcaultian not a Derridan, That's very different, [12] Faucult had no ax to grind against science.
The generalizations in implacable and them vs us mentality against what should be considered a valid academic quest for knowledge is indicative of the ideological basis of geneticist thinking, That gives credence to the postmodern critic of the meta narrative,
Sources
all sources acceded 5/2/17
[1] Marcel Kuntz,"The Postmodern assault on Science" EMBO Rep v.13(10); (Oct)2012URL
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/
Kuntz is at the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire Végétale, CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier/CEA/INRA in Grenoble,
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Alexander Bird,, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), First published Fri Aug 13, 2004; substantive revision Thu Aug 11, 2011 URL =
[6] Thomas Kuhn,
[7] Kuntz op coit
[8] David Bloor, "The strengths of the strong programme." Scientific rationality: The sociological turn (Springer Netherlands, 1984) pp. 75-94.
[9]Kuntz, Op cit
[10] Ian Hacking quoted in "Who Are you? The Biosocial Being Ian Hacking Ioan Davies memorioal lecture, (4/14/17) held at university of Troomnto, URL: http://www.yorku.ca/ioantalk/lecture2011.htm
[11]Karen Grandy, "Ian Hacking". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
[12]Thomas P. Kasulis, Robert C. Neville, John Edwin Smith The Recovery of Philosophy in America: Essays in Honor of John Edwin Smith
Kuntz tells us "Postmodernist thought is being used to attack the scientific worldview and undermine scientific truths; a disturbing trend that has gone unnoticed by a majority of scientists.[2] Postmodernism undermines all truth. Kuntz wants to privilege his view as THE TRUTH! You Know I believe in truth but I don't believe science is the one and only truth,
The scientific method has been the guiding principle for investigating natural phenomena, but postmodernist thought is starting to threaten the foundations of the scientific approach. The rational, scientific view of the world has been painstakingly built over millennia to guarantee that research can have access to objective reality: the world, for science, contains real objects and is governed by physical laws that existed before our knowledge of these objects and laws. Science attempts to describe the world independently of belief by seeking universal truths, on the basis of observation, measurement and experimentation. [3] I agree with several aspects of this view point, I think science is the chief means of understanding the naturalistic workings of the wold and that it does supply a less subjective means of understanding the regularities of the law-like framework of the universe's behavior. Yet when we frame it as "objective," even though it can be called that in a relative way, we set up the validity of the Postmodern critique, it is this very swaggering claim to the one and only truth that postmodernists are reacting against. The claim that science gives us access to "objective reality" is a metaphysical claim, that is guaranteed to open up not objectivity but philosophical critique, The statement about universal truth is a dead give away. Go's love is a universal truth, There might be a realm of the forms where Universal truths are housed, for all we know.This clam impinges upon all metaphysical claims and thus is itself a metaphysical assumption,That makes it fair game for philosophy.
The postmodernist school of thought arose to question these assumptions, postulating that claims about the existence of a real world—the knowledge of which is attainable as an objective truth—have only been relevant in Western civilization since the Enlightenment. In recent decades, the movement has begun to question the validity of claims of scientific truth, whether on the basis of their belonging to larger cultural frames or through heavy criticism of the scientific method. [4] Postmodernism did not arise solely to question the assumptions of science and objective evidence, That's an unfair generalization. That's the hallmark of his whole attack because it fails to distinguish between levels of postmodern thought, it lumps all philosophical critique of science into the same pile as the most extreme Postmdoerns,
When he gets specific the first one he goes after is Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn is probably the most famous and the most legitimately accepted and admired thinker to be labeled "Postmodern." If we must label him ofrm y money i wouldlabel him Postmodern light,
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn's contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines, but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions. To this thesis, Kuhn added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability.[5] "The concept of paradigm shift proposed by Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962;),[6] has also given weight to the critics of science and of its pretension to understand reality. If science is not a gradual process of accumulation of knowledge, but rather subject to sudden “revolutions” that overwhelm outdated theories, they argue, how can one trust scientific knowledge?" (from Kuntz, Op cit)
Who are they? Who are these faceless critics of science who are out to steal reality? He imagines this rival group of knowledge preachers with their own meta narrative to sell,.That Is ideology pure and simple, It;s saying My meta narrative is true not yours,
I don't believe he has read Kuhn, Here are a couple of red flags,First, Kuhn does not say there's a sudden change, Revolutions don't have to be sudden. The metaphor there is political not temporal. In fact Kuhn;s theory states that the shift happens when the paradigm can n longer absorb anomalies that can can a long time for the anomalies to pileup. He says that for an individual researcher it can come as a sudden realization but i;ts not coming overnight in terms of what;s gonging in the field as a whole. When Kuhn says it's not a gradual accumulation of knowledge he doesn't mean these questions haven't been floating around for a long time but that scientific knowledge is not cumulative. it's not a long slow piling up of facts util we find truth. Scientific knowledge can come in an instant he's talking about regular scientific knowledge. Another red flag his rhetorical question how can one trust scientific knowledge? That is his take on Kuhn,Kuhn himself does not say that, Kunb never goes after science, He is not a science baser. He's ;not trying to foster doubt about science.
"If, as according to Kuhn, scientific revolutions are also political upheavals in scientific policy, it is easy to understand why Kuhn's theory has attracted so much attention in a period that calls into question the established political order in the Western world." [7] So here wants to make postmodernism some kind of communist-like threat to peace and civilized order, That strikes me as red Baiting, Is that a bad thing? Questioning the political order?
I find that extremely simplistic, lacking in any specificity that makes it applicable to Kuhn, Kuhn is very specific abouit how defense of a paradigm is like a topological battle. That is why he calls it the scientific revolutions because defense of the old paradigm is like a political regime defemdimg against a revolution,
Then he starts talking about the strong programme as tough Kuhn is in that movement, He was not, The strong programme is the extreme end of postmodernism that does seek to overturn all truth and all science and fits the stereotype, It was largely based in Edinburgh- with thinkers like David Bloor [8] Then he slides into talkinga about the ‘strong programme' in such as way as toconvey the impression that it; related to Kuhn, He also milables and thus castigates other thinkers such as Ian Hacking,
Several deconstructionist thinkers, such as Bruno Latour and Ian Hacking, have rejected the idea that the concepts of science can be derived from a direct interaction with natural phenomena independently of the social environment in which we think about them. The central goal of science, defining what is true and what is false, becomes meaningless they argue, as its objectivity is reduced to ‘claims' that are simply the expression of one culture—one community—among many. Thus, all systems of thought are different “constructs” of reality and all additionally have political connotations and agendas.[9]
He starts out here Identified Hacking as a deconstructionist. Hacking is certainly not a decon. Hacking says He;s a Cambridge analytic philosopher [10]He has been lauded for his scholarship. I am a big fan of His, He is clearly a major historian of sicced,[11] If he can be labeled in the postmodren vain it would be as a Faulcaultian not a Derridan, That's very different, [12] Faucult had no ax to grind against science.
The generalizations in implacable and them vs us mentality against what should be considered a valid academic quest for knowledge is indicative of the ideological basis of geneticist thinking, That gives credence to the postmodern critic of the meta narrative,
Sources
all sources acceded 5/2/17
[1] Marcel Kuntz,"The Postmodern assault on Science" EMBO Rep v.13(10); (Oct)2012URL
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/
Kuntz is at the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire Végétale, CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier/CEA/INRA in Grenoble,
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Alexander Bird,, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), First published Fri Aug 13, 2004; substantive revision Thu Aug 11, 2011 URL =
[6] Thomas Kuhn,
[7] Kuntz op coit
[8] David Bloor, "The strengths of the strong programme." Scientific rationality: The sociological turn (Springer Netherlands, 1984) pp. 75-94.
[9]Kuntz, Op cit
[10] Ian Hacking quoted in "Who Are you? The Biosocial Being Ian Hacking Ioan Davies memorioal lecture, (4/14/17) held at university of Troomnto, URL: http://www.yorku.ca/ioantalk/lecture2011.htm
[11]Karen Grandy, "Ian Hacking". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
[12]Thomas P. Kasulis, Robert C. Neville, John Edwin Smith The Recovery of Philosophy in America: Essays in Honor of John Edwin Smith