Secular Café: Deconstructing Dover, take XVLIIVII

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Deconstructing Dover, take XVLIIVII Apr 3rd 2012, 20:32 Actually,this is more about deconstructing the bad arguments put forth by some wanker philosopher, but I repeat myself, by the name of Bradley Monton. (I can only hope that like many modern philosphy wanks, he occasionally does a vanity google. :D) Thanks to davidm for posting the link to his paper. The only reason I'm bothering with this is because I followed the events in Dover rather closely as they were occuring, and read the decision and transcripts with some fascination as well. I was serving on the board of directors for Kansas Citizens for Science at the time, and this decision became somewhat important to us as well. Let's begin with this. (Unless otherwise noted, all quotes herein are by Monton). Quote: . In his decision, [Judge Jones] gave demarcation criteria for what counts as science, ruling that intelligent design fails these criteria. I argue that these criteria are flawed, with most of my focus on the criterion of methodological naturalism. The way to refute intelligent design is not by declaring it unscientific, but by showing that the empirical evidence for design is not there. I would say that Jones took the correct approach, and demonstrated both that ID is unscientific, in the fairly specific context of what is allowed to be taught in a high school science class, and that there is no evidence for it. Quote: Jones's ruling holds that that intelligent design (ID) counts as religion, not science, and hence the teaching of ID in public school is unconstitutional. In Jones's 139 page decision, he gives an answer to the contentious demarcation question – what criteria can we use to demarcate science from non-science? I will argue that Jones's proposed demarcation criteria are fundamentally flawed. Most of my discussion will focus on the issue of methodological naturalism – I will argue that rejection of the supernatural should not be a part of scientific methodology. The reason this matters is that it's a dangerous practice to try to impose rigid boundaries on what counts as science. For example, as I will show, a consequence of Jones's criteria is that the aim of science is not truth. While this may be the case, one would expect this to be established by philosophical argumentation about the aim of science (along the lines of e.g. van Fraassen 1980), not by a specification of demarcation criteria to distinguish science from pseudoscience. My position is that scientists should be free to pursue hypotheses as they see fit, without being constrained by a particular philosophical account of what science is. Monton seems to be under the mistaken impression that the ruling here determines what 'science' is in terms of what scientists are 'allowed' to consider or not in their research. He is, of course, incorrect. As noted, not only is Jone's decision only applicable to what is taught in a high school biology course (not exactly cutting edge research there), in this case, it is only legally applicable within the Dover district, which is covered by the jurisdiction of the court making this decision, so Monton's gnashing of teeth is even more pointless than it at first appears. The next line in the paper is this: Quote: In sum, I maintain that it is a mistake to try to argue against ID by declaring it unscientific. Monton has claimed that he was going to actually argue the point, but only presented an opinion, then skipped straight to 'in sum'. Maybe this is some sophisticated theology philosophy, but usually there needs to be arguments between those two things..... Quote: If our goal is to believe truth and avoid falsehood, and if we are rational people who take into account evidence in deciding what to believe, then we need to focus on the question of what evidence there is for and against ID. I recognize that, if we can't declare ID unscientific, this makes it harder to exclude ID from pubic school. But we first need to figure out the right thing to think about the scientific status of and the empirical evidence for ID; only then can we take up the very different question of what should be included in public school curricula. This latter question is outside the scope of this paper. The bold part is the whole entire point of Judge Jones' decision, and Monton is claiming it's outside the scope of this paper! I'm inclined to just say that Monton is an idiot, but demonstrating the various and sundry ways in which he is an idiot is outside the scope of this rebuttal....but I'm having too much fun. :D Let's address that first part. In order to evaluate evidence for any claim, one has to have a process with which to do that evaluation. In the real world, that process is called doing science, or more formally, the scientific method, in the broad sense of the term. ID doesn't 'do science'. It's a science stopper, as pointed out multiple times in the actual court hearing by several of the plaitiffs' witnesses. (At least one of which, I might note, is a Philosophy of science PhD who seems to disagree with Monton on several key points.) If you don't at least adhere to the barest outline of the process, you aren't doing science. Hence, it is unscientific. See kiddies, that's not so hard to follow. Get out your crayons, Monton, and make yourself a little flowchart, it might go easier on you that way. To be continued....

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