[Ask the Gulch] Are belief and objectivity incompatible with one another?
Posted by ProfChuck 6 years, 9 months ago to Ask the Gulch
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Of course we all are aware that the climate change issue is heavily based on each parties' beliefs, since the subject is so complex complete understanding is out of reach. Likewise, the evolution vs creation argument is belief-oriented. The evolutionists have built a convincing trail of evidence, but choose to ignore findings that don't make evolutionary sense, while creationists ignore the mass of solid evolutionary evidence and focus on the small number of oddities, seeking proof of their belief.
Going back to my engineering, I always looked for evidence that either supported or refuted theory, and when the principles were affirmed, I applied them until new evidence arose. I had faith that what I learned in principle was a reasonable representation of reality, but looked for objective, real-world evidence to support those principles. I guess I'd say that there can be compatibility between belief and objectivity, so long as one is willing to revise his beliefs when objective analysis supports an adjustment.
Of course science is "belief-oriented". It is knowledge. If you don't believe it is true because it has been validated then what would be the point of it?
Mathematics is a science of method, establishing relations among measurements, not a faith about reality. Mathematics does not by itself represent reality, to be taken on faith and without the relevant valid concepts of entities, actions and attributes in reality.
When your brother said in answer to a specific question that he "would have to see the math", it could have been a perfectly rational response if all he meant was that he would have to see some inference conceptually proved as relations between known facts.
The science of evolutionary biology does not ignore facts. It seeks to explain facts not yet fully understood. All sciences are open-ended, expanding knowledge through discover of new facts and explanation. Creationists do not seek proof of their belief; they seek to further rationalize what they already improperly believe on faith.
There is an old story about J.P. Den Hartog (1901-1989), an expert in mechanical and electrical vibrations and a professor at MIT for many years who wrote several classic textbooks still consulted. He also did consulting work for companies. One of them had a vibration problem it could not solve for a large a structure. It hired consultants who did elaborate mathematical analyses but still could not solve the problem. Then Den Hartog went out and looked at the structure and immediately understood the cause and solution of the problem. It wasn't magic, he did it because he combined a thorough theoretical understanding with years of practical experience and could draw on his automatized knowledge and thinking together with direct observation to get to the essence.
That cannot always be done, and difficult problems require a combination of understanding and complex analytical ability (even for Den Hartog). But if you know what you are doing, even in a very complex problem you can often bypass needless irrelevant complexities. Regardless of the type of problem you are solving, your confidence is not based on faith.
Science often is belief-oriented due to human foibles, but not by design. Science is supposed to welcome anomalies that overturn our current understanding.
Context is what we know which we take into account as relevant in some thought process: the entire field of awareness currently possible or what we selectively focus on as objectively relevant out of what is available to us. When we later understand more we have an expanded context of knowledge, not a changed reality. We know more facts, with more relations between them, as knowledge expands.
"Current understanding" evolving in time is not a progression of overturned fallacies or sequence of changing floating abstractions. Except in cases of error, knowledge is not replaced, it expands -- expanding the context of knowledge in terms of which we think and apply what we know. Discoveries of "anomalies" do not overturn understanding, to be "welcomed" for that; they are new discoveries not previously known or understood that add to knowledge.
But that is not what you are asking, is it?
My theories about the portraiture of Alexander are not a matter of faith. And neither are the facts of history, or the facts of science, or the facts of philosophy, or anything else.
What Objectivism (capital-O) teaches is that there are no contradictions. If you run into a contradiction, then you must check your premises because one or both of them is/are false. Contradictions do not exist.
That is not the same thing as the limits of knowledge. In science, an anomaly is an observed fact for which there is no theory of explanation. Quasars and quarks were anomalies until theory was extended to explain them.
Many people believe that Jesus or Mohammed (or several other people), ascended directly into heaven. At what speed did they rise? 100 mph? Because if so, they have yet to leave the solar system, and so, are probably a long way from God in Heaven... wherever that may be... So, that kind of believe is fraught with contradictions. Those who believe in objective reality simply dismiss such claims, along with the claim that Zeus appeared to Lido in the form of a swan or that Kali was stopped in her rampage only when her husband Shiva laid down in her path, and so on.
Here is my conundrum. I can believe that two plus two makes four (because an authority figure told me so) or I can, because I understand the mathematics, know WHY two plus two makes four. These are two very different views of the world.
So, you probably agree that you don't solve anything with authority because you have the problem of authenticating your authority. How do you know whom to believe?
Also, as for WHY, that, too, depends on your standards of proof, which also need to be validated. A Bablyonian clay tablet with Pythagorean triples antedates the proofs by 1500 years, but the Babylonians would say that it is true by observation and needs no proof. Indeed, it does not need the many proofs we know (over 100 of them). It is true by observation, as is the fact that 2 + 2 = 4, given that we assign meanings to the symbols.
But the Greeks made a logical leap and developed the methods of proof in geometry. It is to that standard that we still hold just about all other evidentiary learning.
in other words, as long as they can have a nice house, car, family, they blow off any serious discussion about life...
...and most individuals are too lazy to do that work...
...and then they resent you for the work and thinking that you do...
...how many times have I heard..."that's just your opinion"...while they act morally superior...argh!!!!!
What caused most scientific discovery? The belief that an undiscovered answer existed. What underlies invention? The belief that a better solution to a problem exists. What is the backing of entrepreneurs? A belief that they can offer up better products and/or services than their existing competitors. Belief itself is not incompatible at all with objectivity. It is holding to a belief in the face of evidence to the contrary that turns belief into bigotry and bias.
One thing that one must be very careful of in this case is designing a test case to fit one's biases and then claiming that because there was no outcome from the flawed test case that the outcome disproves the premise. Another is to ignore the existing results of others who have applied a successful test because one does not like the outcome.
Arbitrary to whom? Ultimately, the only one who has the right to determine whether or not an assertion has the possibility of being proved is the one about to conduct the test - he/she is expending the time, energy, and resources! A third party may offer their opinion, such as in the case of a parent telling a child not to do something dangerous (like putting something in an electrical socket) but this neither invalidates nor should be allowed to override the original actor's opinion. How many inventors, scientists, and others have been told "that can't be done" only to prove to that their detractors were gravely mistaken?
"A legitimate hypothesis requires evidence of possibility."
There is no such thing as a "legitimate" hypothesis. It is in the testing of the hypothesis that legitimacy and confirmation - or rejection and illegitimacy - are determined. If one has already prejudged his or her hypothesis, one is simply introducing bias. Should the hypothesis include a likely outcome - an expected outcome? Absolutely. But this is very different than a "legitimate" outcome. The outcome is what it is. It is legitimate in its own right - not because we want it to be.
"Rejecting meaningless, contradictory, and arbitrary assertions as cognitively worthless is not a matter of "not liking" someone's claims to an alleged "outcome""
"Worthless" is a statement of personal valuation. It is an opinion - not a logical assertion. Therefore it is entirely a matter of whether or not the individual "likes" it enough to act on it. If one chooses to look at a subject and determine not to act on it, that is a personal decision. To attempt to make that decision for another individual is coercion and should not be tolerated.
'Cognitively worthless' means no cognitive value because there is no evidence connecting it to facts. Rejecting the arbitrary on principle as cognitively worthless is not subjective "bias"; it is a principle of logical thinking. The principle of not accepting a statement for lack of evidence is a matter of logic, not "opinion". Fantasy is not a tool of cognition. Lack of evidence has nothing to do with someone not "liking" an assertion. Cognitive value is not "entirely a matter of whether or not the individual 'likes' it enough to act on". That is subjectivism, not objectivity.
A legitimate hypothesis is one for which there is evidence of the possibility that it is true. It is does not mean that a statement must be proved true before it can be regarded as a hypothesis, which make no sense and is a straw man. Stating that something is possible is an assertion requiring evidence for the possibility, and that it is a conceptually meaningful, non-contradictory statement employing valid concepts to begin with. Arbitrary hypotheses are arbitrary assertions, to be rejected as such on principle. Rejecting the arbitrary is not choosing to not "look at a subject" -- unless the "subject" itself is the arbitrary assertion.
A subjectivist is not the "only one" with an epistemological "right" to evaluate the "possibility" of his assertions. Anyone can assess any statement by anyone. You again confuse logic with a political "right" to believe whatever you want to, immune from criticism and logical rejection. You cannot, in logic, demand that others take arbitrary assertions seriously. You can make whatever personal decisions about what to believe that you feel like, but in epistemology that is subjectivism, not objectivity.
The topic of this thread on the relation between objectivity to believing that something is true pertains to the individual mind, not "making decisions for another individual". Please stay on the topic. Whether one accepts logic in his own thinking is each person's decision to make for himself, but for those who don't there is nothing left to discuss. Reason and logic -- not arbitrariness, faith and feeling -- as the standard of discussion on an Ayn Rand forum or anywhere else is not "coercion".
When such a coupling occurs, however, it is usually bu accident.
Now the way I define belief is "the acceptance of an assertion as fact for which there is, or can not be, objective evidence to support it.". Under that definition, belief in something is incompatible with being objective about it. Which might lead me to say that belief is incompatible with objectivity. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that objectivity is incompatible with belief, per se, but it may well be. It may be that objectivity simply erases belief when what was believed in was proven either objectively true/factual or invalid.
Note that none of that says belief, itself, is inherently a bad or useless thing to someone being objective.