Does Science Over-reach?

Josh Landy
Are there questions that science is powerless to answer?

Ken Taylor
Or is science the measure of all things?

Josh Landy
Science may tell us what is. But can it tell us what ought to be?

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where Ken teaches philosophy, and I direct the philosophy and literature initiative.

Ken Taylor
And today we’re asking: does science over-reach? It’s the sixth and final episode in our series on intellectual humility.

Josh Landy
Does science overreach? You bet it does. Don’t you agree, Ken?

Ken Taylor
No. I mean, Josh, without science we’d be back on the savanna hunting with stone axes or something.

Josh Landy
Okay, like don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking science. I’m just saying it needs to stat its lane.

Ken Taylor
Stay in its lane? Josh, science’s lane is everywhere. I mean, it’s the measure of all things—of what is, that it is, and what is not, that it is not.

Josh Landy
Who are you today, Protagoras? I mean, look, science is not the measure of beauty or significance, or right and wrong.

Ken Taylor
Well, slow down, Josh. Do you take that list of “untouchables” to be objective or merely subjective?

Josh Landy
Why does that matter?

Ken Taylor
Well, because if your list of untouchables is objective, then science gets the last word, I’m afraid I mean, science and science alone, discovers and explains the objective features of the world. Right. Yeah. You agree that the objective features? Yeah, yeah, I mean, start by thinking about like quarks and gluons. They’re out there. And then all the less fundamental things like rocks and cells and animals that are, you know, built out of these fundamental things.

Josh Landy
Now, okay, that’s a pretty picture. But what’s it got to do with beauty?

Ken Taylor
Because if beauty is real, then a better fit into that picture somewhere. And if science discovers that beauty isn’t part of the picture, then I’m afraid that beauty is just not real. I mean, beauty would have to go the way of all the dead dogmas, superstitions and fantasies that science has progressively forced us to abandon. That’s what that’s why that matters.

Josh Landy
You sound like a total reductionist.

Ken Taylor
You make that sound like that’s a bad thing. Of course, I’m a reductionist. What’s wrong with being a reductionist?

Josh Landy
Well, look, even if it turned out that beauty isn’t including that that grand list of objective features of the world that you’re talking about, all that’s going to show is that beauty is an ineffable property of human experience, beyond the reach of science.

Ken Taylor
I know, like figments of our imagination right?

Josh Landy
Not ike figments of our imagination. No, no, look, even if beauty isn’t out there somewhere. It’s still real. Because you know, you and I, we are real. And our subjective experiences they’re real too.

Ken Taylor
Well, Josh and him know that depends on what you mean by “real.”

Josh Landy
Spoken like a true philosopher. Where that is a badge of honor to well and Mr. philosopher, let me just say this to you. Beauty got its grip on the human mind long before we became so obsessed with science and, and that grip on our imaginations that grip on us that’s going to last even if one day we relinquish some, oh, my God, that would be a tragic outcome. Fair enough. I’m not advocating that. I’m just saying can there’s more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your science textbooks/

Ken Taylor
Oh, no, you’re speaking like a true literary type.

Josh Landy
What’s wrong with that? Look, as a proud literary type, I’m going to insist on something I’m going to insist. Science Science is fantastic, but it’s never going to replace literature. Literature does things that science cannot hope to call Come on. Like what? Well, science explains the world and that’s very important, but literature. Literature also gets to narrate the world

Ken Taylor
Narrate the world? What’s the big difference?

Josh Landy
Well, explanations about causes and effects, but narration is also about experience, meaning, and value.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, okay, I get you, Josh. That’s an important distinction. But I’m still look, I’m gonna ask you, can’t there be a science of meaning making value having an experience? Well, maybe no, not maybe Josh. Not maybe there has to be a science of it. I mean, because look, after all, we human beings. hate to tell you this, Josh, we’re part of nature too. And we too, are made of matter and energy—we’re not made of spook stuff, mysterious spook stuff.

Josh Landy
You’re starting to sound a little scientistic

Ken Taylor
Scientistic?

Josh Landy
Yeah, like you think absolutely everything has to bow to science, like, like, it’s the almighty Ruler, you know, you know, the facts of everything and the value of nothing.

Ken Taylor
Look Josh, I don’t mean to be scientistic whatever that is, I mean, to be scientific. And I think there’s a big difference between scientistic and scienfitic.

Josh Landy
I totally agree. I’m just saying that’s a bit of a fine needle to thread if you’re going to thread that needle between science and scientism. You’d better start by acknowledging that science has limits.

Ken Taylor
Oh, of course it has its limits. I grant you that if we don’t respect the limits of science, we’ll end up doing bad science pseudoscience.

Josh Landy
Exactly. And there’s plenty of that out there. And it’s even worse than that. Even the best science can never answer all the pressing questions that human beings find so important.

Ken Taylor
And that’s precisely why we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Liza Veale to look at gender through the eyes of science, bad science, and nonscience. She files this report.

Liza Veale
There’s a long tradition of feminist critique of science. Various disciplines have tried to objectively describe gender, to find out is gender more than just a cultural construct? Is it based in biological difference?

Helen Longino
That’s an effort that’s kind of failed.

Liza Veale
Helen Longino with Stanford University says it’s hard to neutralize our ideas about gender, which is necessary to make objective observations. In a lot of studies…

Helen Longino
There were already assumptions built into the research itself, whether about how to interpret the evidence or assumptions about how to describe the data.

Liza Veale
There’s this example about how some mainly male anthropologists assume that men changed the course of human evolution. But that turned out to be not quite right. They figured out that humans adapted because of the development of stone tools, our teeth became smaller or postural, more upgrade, because tools made life easier. So the assumption was, stone tools are created by men for hunting. So men changed the course of human evolution. But a decade later, women anthropologist pointed out that those tools were just as likely used for digging crushing seeds, softening roots, in other words, female activities.

Helen Longino
And so that showed the ways in which the man the hunter model was really dependent on these assumptions about male activity, and female inactivity.

Liza Veale
Critiquing methodology is part of science—scientists are always self-critiquing. But Longino says some things are so subjective that it’s hard to approach them objectively. There is no perfect methodology.

Helen Longino
Our concepts of gender kind of affect the way we understand the rest of the world. So gender isn’t just an effect. Gender also produces ways in which we understand the world or at least they reinforce each other.

Liza Veale
So in trying to study things like gender, Longino knows the data will be messy. There’s no way to control for factors like history and culture and human behavior. There’s no accounting for what could be the limitless potential of the future. Longino says science…

Helen Longino
can’t predict how humans are going to change their kind of social and physical environments, beyond making kind of very broad general claims that are kind of empty.

Liza Veale
Gender is always adapting as the world changes, but right now it seems like the conversation is changing rapidly. Younger generations are dispensing with the female-male binary system faster than many could have imagined. And people are looking for ways to make sense of this outside of science.

Andrea Gibson
It isn’t that you don’t like boys; it’s that you only like boys you want to be.

Liza Veale
This is the poet Andrea Gibson and some of their poem “Your Life.”

Andrea Gibson
Mary Levine calls you a dyke and you don’t have the language to tell her she’s wrong and right. So you just show up to her house promising to paint your fingernails red with what will gush from her busted face if she ever says it again.

Liza Veale
The people challenging the binary gender system see gender as something expansive and fluid. Another poet, Leslie Feinberg, says gender is the poetry each of us makes with the language we’ve been given. And that’s what this poem by Andrea Gibson is about.

Andrea Gibson
You don’t yet know the boys are building their confidence on stolen land, but you do worry the girls might be occupied with things you will never understand, won’t ever ever be good at.

Liza Veale
Gibson says poetry—specifically queer poetry—helped them know how to be.

Andrea Gibson
Choosing your life, and how that made you into someone who now often finds it easy to explain your gender by saying you’re happiest on the road when you’re not here or there. But in between the yellow line running down the center of it all like a sunbeam. Your name is not a song you will sing under your breath. I promise your pronouns haven’t even been invented yet.

Liza Veale
You could say poetry, like science, is a way of knowing, but it’s subjective, not objective. Instead of giving us data, it conveys experience. And ultimately for every person, that’s what gender is: subjective experience. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Liza Veale.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for that fascinating tour through the science non science and pseudoscience of gender, Liza. I’m Ken Taylor, with me is my Stanford colleague Josh Landy, and today we’re asking about science and intellectual humility.

Josh Landy
We’re joined now by Massimo Pigliucci, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and co-editor of “Science Unlimited: The Challenges of Scientism.” Welcome back to Philosophy Talk, Massimo.

Massimo Pigliucci
It’s a pleasure as usual.

Ken Taylor
So Masimo fascinating, good topic, science versus scientism. But I wonder What first got you interested in the topic?

Massimo Pigliucci
As it often is the case and its personal history, I began my career academic career as a scientist, I was a scientist for more than 20 years and a biologist. And I also got interested in public understanding of science. And I tried to do some of my own contributions in that area. And then I noticed that some of my colleagues, whenever they were in front of a microphone or a television camera, we’re going way beyond what was actually warranted by, you know, the state of the of the art or the state of the science at that time. And that got me into paying attention to the fact that sometimes people can make claims on behalf science that are just not defensible. And and I think that that’s both for the service to the public, and a disservice actually to science itself.

Josh Landy
Well, so it sounds like I could see where you’re going to go. I wanted to get a get a sense of whose side you’re on. And then the debate that Ken and I were having a moment ago, you know, he was saying science is the measure of what is and what is not, it was a nice phrase. And I was saying it’s not the measure of meeting value and experience. So where do you stand on all this, Massimo?

Massimo Pigliucci
I think you’re absolutely right, Josh. And that’s not because you pay me for this? No. So it is an open question in the book that you mentioned from Chicago Press that I co edited with my friend and colleague, Martin boundary is a pretty clear sort of example of this, because we have a lot of philosophers there, and a few scientists, and they fall all over the place. Some of them are very critical of scientific approach, or how they what they see as a scientistic approach. Other ones actually wear it as a badge of honor. And then there are some people in between. So it’s not exactly an open shut case.

Ken Taylor
But let me ask you a question. Because Josh kind of avoided one of the things I said to him, I don’t know how much I believe everything I said in the opening and trying to get an idea out there. But he didn’t answer one of the questions, I believe, look, human beings make meaning they make value, they have experiences, but human beings are just part of nature. So is doesn’t there have to be some kind of understanding of how in nature, human beings making meaning and value and all that stuff arises and how it’s constituted?

Josh Landy
Or take Liza’s example from the report. There’s a subjective experience of gender—is there ever going to be a science of that of the subject?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, I think I hate to say this, but I think the answer is yes or no. You know, in the case of gender, you know, I love Ellen’s work. And I read a lot of her papers and books. But I think that particular example of gender, it’s a little bit problematic, because her own example, shows that you can you can clearly do a science of gender. I mean, you know, yes, the first pass was done by, you know, guess what? White, all white males or increasingly older white males, and therefore, there were certain assumptions built into that research. That however, can be corrected. You know, once in fact, one of Ellen’s points in a couple of her books is precisely the science should be done in by a diversity of kind of people precisely because they bring different perspectives on it. So you can check you can actually check it.

Ken Taylor
So I think what we have to sort out and we’ll have to start doing that in our next segment is how we said, I mean, not that there can’t be a science of gender, not that there can’t be a science of valuing. But what’s it going to contribute? versus what the having and living of this value and the living of gender, gender attributes? And I think that’s a complicated question that you can’t just dismiss with charges of scientism versus non scientism. But we’ll get to that. And as we go along, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re asking whether science is intellectually arrogant with Massimo Pigliucci from the City University of New York.

Josh Landy
What’s the difference between being scientific and being scientistic? pseudoscience should definitely give way to science. But should other forms of non science give way too? And how do we tell the difference between good science, illegitimate pseudoscience and perfectly legitimate non science like the stuff I do?

Ken Taylor
Distinguishing science, pseudoscience, and that which is not even in the business of science—plus your calls and emails (whether scientific or not,) when Philosophy Talk continues

They Might Be Giants
Science is real!

Ken Taylor
Well, of course, science is real, but that’s not the question. The question is, is it the only reality? I’m Ken Taylor, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy and we’re asking about science and intellectual overreach. Our guest today is Massimo Pigliucci, co-editor of “Science Unlimited: The Challenges of Scientism.”

Ken Taylor
So Massimo I want to draw some boundaries here, if you can help us, I think we there are two different boundaries there is that between legitimate science and like pseudoscience, that’s one hand and then there’s that boundary between that which is in the business of science and that which is not. But you got to admit, I’m not really sure how to draw either of these boundaries in a principled way. And you’re smarter than I am. So I wonder, can you help us out? I mean, start with whichever of the two year ease you find easier to deal with. But help us out here.

Massimo Pigliucci
Welcome to the club. It is difficult. And it’s difficult because both boundaries are, I think, inherently fuzzy. I do think that the easiest one or less difficult one is the one between science and pseudoscience. And the reason for that is because pseudoscience broadly construed is understood as some kind of enterprise. Like, I know, Pata psychology, for instance, that pretends to be science, meaning that it has all the trappings of science, you know, publications and experiments and things like that, while infected demonstrably is not. And so that’s somewhat easy, at least in most cases to draw that kind of boundaries, although there are in fact, borderline situation. Let’s come to the other. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, wait, sorry. When you come to the other, it’s kind of now you’re dealing with the entire universe of human understanding. Yes. But it’s much more broad.

Ken Taylor
So I mean, Josh is not a scientist. Thank you. Right. But I’ve heard you lecture, I’ve heard you lecture about how to understand the tax. And you say, you have to have a conjecture, and you have to have evidence, right. And the evidence has to the conjecture has to be ported but supported by conject. textual evidence. And that sounds very scientific. Yeah. No, it isn’t what you do, right.

Josh Landy
So I mean, first, I should say, I’m a huge fan of site. So look, you know, we’re, we’re all three of us, I think sitting in this middle ground where we’re lovers of science, but we also want to find the limits. Yeah. And the other thing, I totally agree, So Ken’s totally right. And Massimo wanted to throw this over to you. It sometimes seems to me that, in fact, the standards of evidence if you’re doing it, right, if you’re doing literary criticism, right. If you’re in an aesthetic field, you’re still making arguments, you’re still drawing on evidence, I think, a little bit comparable to the the standards of evidence in some of the natural sciences.

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, I do think that they are comparable. But but they’re now we need to ask ourselves another question. I mean, we seem to be talking as if we actually we actually knew what science is.

Josh Landy
Right, let’s start from that.

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah. And the problem is that sometimes people that are, you know, some of my colleagues were more scientifically oriented, essentially give one push, they give a definition of science that is essentially coextensive with human reason. For instance, very, very interestingly, they seem to automatically include both logic and mathematics within science. And I think that logic and mathematics are not science. They’re very useful to science, but they’re not they’re outside. Because they’re not empirical. They’re not, you know, they don’t do experiments to settle weather models, Paul phonons, is valid or not, and things like that. So it depends on how you think of it.

Josh Landy
Yeah. Do you think that that experiment that that’s one of the criteria for distinguishing what science and what’s not science?

Massimo Pigliucci
I would say, theory driven, or largely theory driven systematic experiments, and observations are the kind of thing that tend to identify something as a science, but even there, I mean, think about it this way. There’s two dimensions. First of all, there’s a lot of different kinds of Sciences. Physics is not the same thing as biology, which is not the same thing as psychology at all. I mean, they’re they work differently. Some of them are historical sciences. Some of them are not some of them are more experimental. Some of them are no do experiments at all. Not only that, but the definition that the concept of science actually changes throughout time. What what Aristotle was doing on the island of Lesbos was that science. Yeah, by some understanding of it, but certainly wasn’t nothing like, you know, the science that we know today was Galileo. Do it science? Yeah, it was closer, but not quite.

Ken Taylor
Okay. But but but let me give you a different thought. I mean, I get your point that that science has no like, fixed essence that can be articulated and necessary and sufficient conditions is a kind of sprawling thing with like a victim standing in the family resemblance, that seems plausible to me. But here’s the thing, suppose I owe Stan the total fabric of science rather than define it. I just say, there it is. Right. Now, here’s the thing about that enterprise, in its sprawling totality. It’s extraordinarily successful. And moreover, it’s extraordinarily good at doing something that’s it’s really hard to get in philosophy, and I think and literature to convergence of a convergence of belief, driven by considerations that are out in the open and, and public and all that stuff. And so, I mean, if you say you mean this temptation to equate that with human reason I understand where that comes from. Because if reason is that thing that produces consensus among Well, reasoning creatures, well, science is the main place where we see that operative, do you think there’s not anything to that thought?

Massimo Pigliucci
Oh, no, there’s a lot of that thought. But again, think about alternatives. So it’s well known, for instance, that mathematics and logic complex problems have sometimes multiple solutions at which you can arrive in different in different paths and no solution is necessarily better than another. That’s true. In other right, so in other words, a lot of what we do outside of science actually, in a lot of cases, the facts really underdetermined, so to speak, as philosophers say, the outcome, there’s more than one way of looking at it a number of complex issues. And yes, the lure of science is precisely what you’re talking about. But can I give you an example of where it runs into limitation? Surely. So So I was reading just before coming in the studio today, this this thing this has to do with economics, which, you know, aspires at the very least to be a science, certainly the most scientific of the social sciences.

Ken Taylor
It’s he dismal science, though.

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, exactly. Well, so here’s what happened a few decades ago, there was this incredibly successful program in Sub Saharan Africa, led by the World Health Organization to counter a particular parasitic disease that causes blindness in people. Okay. And the program was incredibly successful. Okay. It prevented hundreds of 1000s of people from from from going blind, which I think the three of us would agree it’s a success. Sure. Now, the economists that were involved in the program, however, could not show that it was worth it. What because they did a cost benefit analysis. And the analysis came down to be inconclusive, only recently can be being conclusive, right, is that the people who are being helped, were so poor, that the benefit for saving the high side didn’t, in fact, have a lot of monetary impact. Okay. In fact, they, in fact, the quote, Here is a quote from the report, they say, these are humanitarian benefits associated during humanitarian benefits associated with reducing the blindness and suffering caused by the disease. But these benefits are inherently unmeasurable, and we will not account for them.

Ken Taylor
What did you say to me in the opening Josh? I know the something—

Josh Landy
I know the facts of everything and the value. That actually brings me to to a broader question, Massimo? Yeah. So you know, one area where some people think there’s overreach, right? Where science really can’t answer the questions is the domain of value. So we were talking earlier about subjective experience. And maybe we should try to come back to that if we can. But But what I value, you know, there’s that humean line, right? You can’t get from an is to an all it means is that your view that that really science, science can tell us all kinds of things about what is but it really has nothing to say about what should be.

Massimo Pigliucci
So that’s a great question, because the ease art problem as understood by humans, since you, it’s a great divide between philosophers who reject science on the one hand, because all they need to do is to say, Hey, you said, is art unbridgeable? That’s it done? And that’s, I think, silly, quite frankly, it’s a little too quick. But, you know, as, yeah, as you, as you guys were saying earlier, I mean, you can’t just, you know, throw the labels of scientistic to somebody and be done with it, you have to actually justify, in the same way, I would add, as you can’t just throw a pseudoscience at somebody and be done with it. I mean, you have to actually do the work.

Josh Landy
But isn’t there something to this? I mean, you have my favorite I got, I’ve got this poster in my office that says, science can tell you how to clone a Tyrannosaurus Rex, humanity’s can tell you why it might be a bad idea. I mean, perfectly good. There’s something to this idea that, you know, science isn’t really in the business of I mean, that the world doesn’t come with values to be found in it. Well, how would science find values? Where would they beat you?

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, that’s right. So there is some value to the idea, which means that on the other side, when the scientists or some scientists are saying, Hey, we can just read your values in your brain scan, that’s also not a particularly good starting point. Which is why this this example this issue, that is art is actually a great example, to wrap our minds around this sort of stuff. Now, my favorite approach to this is something that was put forth a few decades ago by one of those philosophers that most people have never heard of, and they should have. And that’s Wilfred sellers. Sellers propose this idea that what we have in terms of human understanding is, is a scientific image of the world. That’s what the physicist tells you, the biologist tells you that chemists diligence onto what’s going on. So is the fact that I’m now taking notes on a you know, with us on a table and this table, really, at some level of analysis section, a bunch of really dynamic molecules bumping into each other. That’s the scientific view of the world. But then we also have the, what he called the manifest image. And the manifest image is the way in which we understand and navigate the world and day to day basis. And frankly, if a physicist tells me that this this table here is really a dynamic and highly unstable bunch of molecules bumping into each other, this helps me not at all, but using the table.

Ken Taylor
Yes, yes, yes. But I know I love this distinction of sellers is to I organized my this course I teach on a regular basis, mind meaning and nature around this distinction between the manifest and the scientific image. But the big question for me and I think it was a question for sellers is how can we make it the case can we make it the case that To deliver that we can reconcile the deliverances of the manifest image with the deliverances of the scientific image. I think that’s a real deep, hard challenge. I mean, you could say, well forget the reconciliation, but I think that’s given up to two. So like freedom, we experience ourselves as free autonomous beings. And then science comes along and says, you know, you’re just made out of quarks and gluons and cells and neurons and electrochemical transmitters, and I can’t figure out how that freedom thing fits in this picture. You don’t just get to say, Oh, too bad for you, Mr. Scientists, I got the manifest image. And I’m going to I’m no, I’m sticking with it. That’s not that doesn’t. That doesn’t work. Because I mean, one of the I mean, six science has successfully shown us over the centuries that elements of the manifest image are at least problematic and some may have to be surrendered. You don’t buy that?

Josh Landy
Atoms aren’t conscious, and yet consciousness exists.

Ken Taylor
So the question is, how do we get from the atoms and the molecules and the cells and the neurons to consciousness? We don’t, unless you’re gonna go David Chalmers route and just say what was super added, but that’s, that’s I don’t like that at all.

Massimo Pigliucci
Of course, atoms are not conscious unless you’re a pan psychist. And I am not. So Right. I think you’re absolutely right, that this this problem is a complex one. That’s why Wilfrid Sellars and some of his of his students actually thought that this is a major goal for modern philosophy. Right, right, that that maintaining, developing and maintaining and fine tuning these, what he called the stereoscopic view, that keeps in mind and sort of interact with the two with the two views is, in fact, a major research program for exactly.

Ken Taylor
So and then let me say, so I want to go back to value. I think it’s true, you poo pooed the idea that we could look at a cerebra scope and say, here’s what you value. But again, that I don’t talk about Josh said values are not out there. Some people would disagree with that. I mean, he’s influenced by Jay, who says there’s nothing in nature that commands right, he’s deeply influenced by that. So am I right? There is nothing in nature that commands. So where does where values get to be from us somehow, something we do. But again, we’re human beings. There’s another philosopher, you Hugh price, he says he has this thing called he calls, what he calls subject naturalism. The subject is part of nature. And we have to understand the subject as part of nature. Do you agree or disagree? I can’t tell. Whether you agree or disagree with the subject, ultimately, is just part of nature.

Massimo Pigliucci
And the reason you can’t figure it out, just because maybe I don’t know it either. Well, so. So here’s the thing. Yes, the subject, of course, I’m a biologist. So we’re human beings. So when when somebody wants to push and say, Look, we’re part of nature. So what are you talking about? I have to agree, of course, we’re part of nature. But then again, there’s better things that just don’t certain discussions for which that observation, which is true, doesn’t seem to help. So if I make a distinction, for instance, between artificial objects and natural objects, right, and I say look at trees, and is a natural object by the table is an artificial object, we understand pretty well what we’re talking about, right? There’s a clear distinction there. And now you can say, but now a table is also a natural object, because it’s made by human beings who are natural. Yeah, but now we are confusing two different things, you missing a distinction that it’s actually important. So let me get back to the values stuff for a minute. But instead of using ethics, in certain therefore, value, let me use mathematics. Because I think it’s easier to understand it that you understand the point that way. So math, think about mathematics and brain scans. So you can do a brain scan of a mathematician working on a problem, let’s say Fermat’s Last Theorem, okay. And you will learn a lot of interesting things from that drink and brain scan, probably, you know, which areas of the brain are lit up and what what what’s going on inside the hand of the mathematician, one thing you will definitely not learn from looking at the scan is whether the damn theory mystery.

Josh Landy
Exactly. That’s why I like this idea of stereoscopic vision. Because clearly, both of these levels of analysis are important, but the reductionist idea that only one of them counts at the lowest level is the real thing. And all this phenomenal stuff that’s just yet Oh, it’s just illusion. I can’t buy that at all right? It doesn’t sound like you buy it either. Seems like neither need the stereo scope.

Ken Taylor
And I agree with you both. But I do have to say, I want I think we should distinguish between, like studying the cognitive, cultural, psychological basis, for example of human valuing, and living out our values. I mean, ethical life is one thing, I think a life is never going to be replaced by a science of ethical life. I mean, but I do think there can be a science of our creation of ethical life, there can be a science of our creation of political life, a science of our creation of, of economic life, but that doesn’t substitute for like living the life. That’s the thing that I think the scientistic person—

Josh Landy
It’s the characterization of the expense, but it isn’t the experience.

Ken Taylor
It’s not the doing, right—it’s understanding the doing.

Massimo Pigliucci
It’s also a categorization. This means when I would push back a little bit and said that it’s a partial categorization and experience. Here is another example, which is one of my favorite ones. I have a colleague at City College that once came in, give a guest lecture. And the guy is a social scientist. And His specialty is research on colonialism. And so we were talking about the nature of social science as opposed to natural science as opposed to philosophy and things like that. And he came up with this description of what he does that I thought was capture really nicely, the distinction we’re trying to make, he says, Look, it’s called the social science, because we actually do use some of the standard tools of the sciences, you know, brought borrowed from the natural sciences, we collect quantitative data on, you know, the economy, economics of states under colonialism, and bunch of other things, you know, demographics and bunch of stuff like that. And that’s all very useful. It’s part of the picture of understanding the process and phenomenon of colonialism. But he said, Then I also have to spend a lot of time reading the personal diaries of people who lived under colonialism on each side on either side, and books and even fiction written about colonialism by people who lived it again on either side, because if I don’t get that, then I can’t make sense of the human experience exactly that all those numbers and objective measures kind of sort of give me a framework for but they don’t give me that and give me the human experience.

Ken Taylor
Okay, so this is all good stuff. And we’re gonna take some colors after the break and dig in some more, but you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re thinking about science and intellectual humility, with Massimo Pigliucci from the City University of New York.

Josh Landy
Science professes to be a form of intellectual humility, and it often is, but sometimes scientists get tempted to become scientistic. And then they abandon humility in favor of intellectual arrogance. How can we prevent this from happening.

Ken Taylor
Resisting the lure of intellectual arrogance—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Coldplay
No one ever said it would be so hard, I’m going back to the start.

Ken Taylor
Science may be able to help us achieve progress. But doesn’t the heart speak a language that science cannot grasp? I’m Ken Taylor, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy. And our guest is Massimo Pigliucci, from the City University of New York. Today, we’re thinking about whether science ever overreaches.

Ken Taylor
And we’ve got a caller on the line, Peter from San Francisco, welcome to Philosophy Talk, Peter.

Peter
Well, first of all, it really is a great discussion. And what I’m noticing, as I’m listening here is that what appears to be the arrogant side of science that you’re talking about, is when science assumes that there’s a certain truth. And that we’re, we’re searching for the truth in reality, whereas I think the other part of the conversation, which I think is more relevant is that science is a, an ongoing conversation that has a certain rigor to it. And that’s the rigor of logic, logic and mathematics. But there’s never an end to it. There’s never an end to the conversation. It just continues.

Ken Taylor
But thanks for the comment, Peter. So Massimo, what do you think? I mean, I think there is something to science as an ongoing, self correcting, right? Continuous thing that is willing to reconsider even what it takes to be received. And again, you say there’s this temptation to think about to equate science with reason, there’s another source of that temptation, the kind of continual self correcting nature of science and not politics isn’t like that.

Massimo Pigliucci
No, it’s not. But so I think one way to think about it is the difference, let’s say between a scientific theory and in a philosophical account, I don’t like to use the word theory for new philosophy. But let’s say account, so let’s say for instance, we’re talking about the difference between utilitarianism and deontology. And virtue ethics in ethics, right? In meta ethics discussions. Okay. If, on the one hand, and on the other hand, we’re talking about, I don’t know, the standard model in physics versus string theory. Now, when it comes to the standard model versus string theory, one of them is going to be turned out to be true or closer to the truth than the other one. And this is an empirical question that potentially at least it’s going to be answerable in certain ways. I say potentially, because, you know, you never know if you have actually enough of the sort of what it takes technically and brain power wise to do it, but potentially, it’s possible. On the other hand, if you ask me to say dance, the question is, is virtue ethics true? I’m going to look at you with a very puzzled look and say, I don’t know what you’re talking about real question right. I mean, virtue ethics is or you do Dinah’s more deontology is a framework so I you can ask me if it is coherent, if it involves, you know, for instance, contradictions or inconsistencies, or you can ask me if it is useful for certain things what, what is supposed to be doing, you know, guiding us through life and making decisions and so on. But true.

Ken Taylor
So I’m not sure I agree with you about that. But I do agree with you about something. But I think is underlying your reluctance to cover ethics true. And because philosophical conversations, like scientific conversations, I think our long form conversations spread over centuries, right. And some of it is about what is so. But some of it is about what we ought to do. Some of it is like trying to answer to what’s already so some of it is trying to make, well, what should we make be so and it’s long form, and it’s spread over? And there’s lots of give and take and their burdens? discharged and burdens? Not yet discharge. And it’s a form of rational extended rationality to I suppose, literature’s the same way.

Josh Landy
But I like what Marcion was saying earlier about needing to read literary texts, in order to understand colonialism. There is, I mean, obviously, literature has many different functions, values and purposes. But the phenomenological delivery of phenomenological data is definitely among them, you get to like we like we experienced with that poetry slam poetry that we heard in lies reveals rapport. You get to feel what it’s like to be a kind of person that you aren’t. And that’s really vital. And that’s not really substituted.

Ken Taylor
So let’s get some more voices in here. We’ve got Russell in Palo Alto on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Russell, what’s your comment your question?

Russell
I’m happy to be with you. And I want to tell you, I was a co founder of a ESP research program at Stanford Research Institute that ran for 20 years, we were working for the CIA and other parts of the government. We found downed airplanes kidnapped American hostages, Russian submarines, Soviet weapons factories, you files that we were they were the real X Files, 20 year program, run by three physicists rundown in their primary fields of lasers and nuclear physics. And we published our findings in Nature magazine, and the proceedings of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, very well reviewed, as you know, okay, but bring this home for me. So I take exception your visitors comment that everyone knows that Parapsychology is pseudoscience?

Ken Taylor
That’s where you’re going. Okay, thanks. Thanks for the call. Russell. Okay. Massimo, that that was thrown at you, the gauntlet was thrown. When do you respond?

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, I am going to just let it go there. Because otherwise, we’ll have to have another hour of discussion about pseudoscience. I’ll stand by my claim, but we can have a discussion all the time. What I like to do, however, is to go back to gender, if I can forget, because it’s a good it’s a good example of what we’re talking about. So to some extent, it’s true and fair to logics. And it’s true that you can do a lot of interesting scientific research on gender, whether it’s, you know, yeah, it’s gonna be biased in the biases can be corrected. And you know, that’s been part of how science works by correcting its own biases, as we were saying earlier. Now, suppose that it turns out that gender has a biological component to it. Okay, who knows how much who knows what, how exactly works? But let’s say that, that it turns out as a matter of empirical fact that yeah, actually, it’s not entirely socially constructed. There is a part of it, that depends on culture, but there is a part of it that depends on genetics, let’s say. Who cares? In terms of what we’re actually talking about that matters? That is, you know, the the rights of people who think of themselves in one way or the other who are transgender? Or not? Who are who identified themselves in one way? Or who are gender fluid? Or whatever it is? Why does that matter? It’s a similar—

Ken Taylor
So here’s the way it might matter. I don’t know if it does matter, or would matter. I’m not saying but here’s how it might matter. It increases our critical self understanding, it increases our understanding of the sources of this. So look, there’s back to the manifest versus the scientific image. Right. Partly, the manifest image is not completely true. But partly, the manifest image has to do more with our First Person understanding. And then our, our philosophical articulation of the deliverances of this first person under, we recognize ourselves as creatures with a sense of open possibility and all that sort of stuff. That’s from the first person point of view, science comes along and says, Well, you know, what, you’re also a brain and blah, blah. So now we got to try and reconcile this. And when we if we succeed in reconciling this critical self understanding is increased. So I don’t think we should say ever say that, well, the first person perspective, the lived experience is immune to any kind of correction in light of the Dilip delivering sciences, right?

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. And that’s not what I meant to say. So I’m going to correct myself. No, that’s right. In fact, one of the things that does annoy me as a philosopher and as a scientist is precisely when people say, hey, it’s my experience, and who are you to tell me otherwise? Well, you know, let me let me show you this experiment that shows you all the wise. So yes, in terms of self understanding, yes, I was talking in terms of rights. Right. So a lot of the discussions are going on here on in this particular issue of gender is, you know, should certain people be allowed to do this thing? Or that? Well, that is a conversation seems to me, it’s, it’s being conducted and should be conducted at the level of what is it right, and what are we granting when we grant certain rights? And you know, these are these societal agreements, whether the person that is asking to go to this bathroom or that bathroom or to dress this way or that way is actually in fact, influenced in that behavior by genes by environment by much more likely combinate complex combination of both. Okay, that’s interesting to know.

Ken Taylor
I agree with you. I agree with you, right. Yeah. I mean, that’s why I said, you can have a scientific understanding of the basis and the cognitive, moral, social evolved basis of ethical life. But that doesn’t replace ethical life, and the questions that arise only in the course of like working through ethical life. I agree with that total. We got a question from email. Let’s just throw it in. Well, we got a few few minutes left. It’s from Alvin from Berkeley says, Please comment on how inappropriate it is for climate change alarmist to call a scientist who questioned that doomsday model predictions of global warming, as deniers is not a response of authentic scientists. Scientists are supposed to be skeptical. You can respond to that. But here’s the question I want to ask you. We’re almost out of time. I don’t think science is intrinsically either inviter encourages intellectual arrogance. But in a lot of scientists who are intellectually arrogant, and not to or not, and I even know some philosophers who I’m tempted by scientism, how do we, how do we stop this? I mean, do we need to train scientists differently? This is kind of related to elevance question. But do we need to train scientists differently? And if so, how?

Massimo Pigliucci
I think we need to train both scientists and philosophers differently, and, frankly, the general public. So let’s get down to that. That one, it’s an important issue, scientists do need to have a little bit more understanding not just the humanities in general, but a philosophy in particular. And guess what, when I talk to grad students in the science sciences, they’re very open to that idea. They will love to have a course in philosophy of science or philosophy, history, science, they would love to have a course on ethics, but then their advisors respond that now that’s a waste of time, because that takes time away from you know, the technical training, and it’s not happening. Similarly, on the other side of the divide of the two cultures, you know, I really think that philosophers should be exposed to science to courses in sciences or to cross talk to scientists, certainly, whenever they think that they have something meaningful to say about science, which, of course, begins with everybody who considers themselves a philosopher of science, they really ought to do some science or at least know a hell of a lot of science before they talk about it. So how do we do this? This is an issue a really serious issue of sort of revising the curriculum and expanding the idea of cross disciplinary talk. Everybody, every dean and Provost that I know of talks about, you know, loves to talk about interdisciplinarity. But they don’t know then when they walk the wall, I need to do it. Yeah. I need to do it. They don’t.

Josh Landy
I agree. Cuz I think it’s easy to get into this kind of zero sum game mindset as though it’s either science or it’s management. We’ve got to work together, you know, it’s science can correct some of the sort of mistakes in the manifest image. But by the same token, humanities can come in and supplement—

Ken Taylor
It’s pressure both ways. And you know, what I love, we shouldn’t have two cultures, we should have one amalgamated culture. That’s kind of what you’re both saying. But Masimo on that note, I’m going to thank you for joining this has been a great conversation, not a hint of intellectual arrogance.

Massimo Pigliucci
It was a pleasure, guys.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been Massimo Pigliucci, Eega, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, co-editor of “Science Unlimited: The Challenges of Scientism.” So Josh, you got any scientific science, pseudo scientific, non scientific thoughts to leave us with?

Josh Landy
Look, I mean, I think this was fantastic. And, you know, I think it’s about finding the way to live in this middle space, because we’ve got to be massively respectful with science and leery of pseudoscience, especially in this age of fake news. But at the same time, we got to leave room for phenomenology and for values, they’re probably not going to get addressed by scientists. So I think if somehow we got to live in this middle ground and work together, be collaborative, you know, the scientists have to listen to humanists, when they tell them there may be biases creeping into their experiments. And we got to listen to the scientists.

Ken Taylor
The way I put this is that the pressure that this reconciliation project between the manifest image on the scientific image, some people think the pressure goes all all one way from the scientific image to the manifest image. But I think it’s a both ways thing. And because it’s a both ways thing, it’s a really hard thing. But you know what, that’s why I do philosophy. And that’s why you listen to Philosophy Talk. And that’s why this conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto with apologies to Descartes is Cogito ergo Blogo—I think, therefore I blog. And you too, can become a partner in that community just by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Josh Landy
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.org and we may feature it on the blog. Now here’s someone whose thoughts reach way over the speed limit—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… The war on science right now they say the country is becoming dumber that much is in arguable the internet the GOP and the Marvel Universe are to blame. That’s a known fact. As far as science goes, so it’s gonna trouble when I started to claim things for itself that probably should have been left on the table. Probably not science, its fault just lazy journalism. But every day still we see headlines like the science of the deal get something down to a science, the imperfect science of tariff building the science of dating the science of cheating, survival and Bitcoin so science is everywhere. But most of its fake a shell. And some things that used to be sciency aren’t anymore. Psychiatry and astrophysics come to mind, movies and books just to be full of shrinks and physicists sorting it all out for the audience. That’s right little Timmy. Ordinary electricity is deadly to these Martian invaders. Remember Simon Oakland at the end of psycho men spinning Norman bass to lawyers and police and US ironic since he later became Jeremy Gavin’s newspaper editor and knightstalker even as Jeremy Gavin earnest vampires and werewolves in urban environments I’m in Oakland didn’t want his newspaper to report anything. I started out with an inspiration for X Files, which also spent years not explaining mysterious goings on see America got tired of explaining. We love to fix cars, but the new ones got too complicated and connected to the internet, which is just wrong. We still have to build model trains but we put them in our tiny houses, Popular Mechanics and science digests replaced by Google Science lost us hold on our technophile hearts. For years it was It Ain’t Rocket Science, a brain surgery applied to almost any mundane job you could think of that trickled up to rocket scientists and brain surgeons themselves they in so special computers are half of it robot could do their job, soon embraced our ignorance, Googled or bribed our window jams and came to believe that pretty much everything in the world is a scam a sham machine, and the wonder sciences not much help frankly, we turn to Fox News and folk wisdom. old wives tales except my one grandma didn’t speak English and the other grandma frankly was kind of racist. They taught me nothing. A stitch in time saves nine for example, nine what nine stitches, I’ll take it savings is that really? How many stitches is time half if it’s just one of the old wife is lying to us. And if there’s a million stitches in time, nine stitches saved as an insult to time spent, what’s the point? It’s why grandma’s keep themselves to themselves these days. And science is mainly about pharmacological breakthroughs. treatments for diseases we develop just so science could give us drugs for them along the way. Big Pharma aka science, daddy also gave us a new miracle painkiller. Don’t worry. We were told it’s only addictive if you crush it up and start at Well, thanks for the tip Big Pharma. As you know, addicts do not consult their physicians before consuming. So you might say we have no more science just consultants, startups, rampant fraud addicts. The rise wants more fear and superstition paranoia and denial and the end of civilization as we know it as we know it mind. As we have seen, we no longer know much and a little knowledge of grandma. This is a dangerous thing, but maybe not. Grandma might have got that wrong too. How little knowledge is too little who measures that? I know they don’t measure ignorance in school anymore. That’s a known fact. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2018.

Josh Landy
Our executive producers are David Demarest and Matt Martin.

Ken Taylor
The Senior Producer is Devin Stroh Lavich. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research. Cindy. Prince Baum is our Director of Marketing.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Lauren Schecter.

Ken Taylor
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from Stanford University and from the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or (mis-expressed_ on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University, or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking

Neil deGrasse Tyson
An arrogant is one who distances his or her own research from the taxpaying public that enabled the research to happen in the first place. That’s an arrogant scientist.