Hi
My apologies for not editing out more of Jeff's excellent
comments. It wasn't obvious where to chop without hurting Jeff's
message.
On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Jeff Ricker wrote:
> I WAS WRONG
> After more reflection, I think that I was wrong in setting up a
> dichotomy between faith-based beliefs and evidence-based beliefs.
> Instead, I think that the best assumption to make is that all people
> require evidence for each and every one of their beliefs, but that this
> evidence comes in many different forms and qualities. I think that what
I think you were right the first time. Whether you discuss the
issue as faith vs. evidence or feeble evidence vs. strong
evidence, it still comes down to some people choosing to believe
things in some final way without credible evidence. This is
inimical to doing science.
> I have been calling "faith-based" beliefs involve one of at least two
> kinds of evidence: (1) personal experience (aka "Paul Smith's favorite
> topic") and (2) the pronouncements of authorities. If "faith" is looked
> at in this way, then it seems obvious to me that we all develop
> "faith-based" beliefs . Let me explain.
>
> (1) Paul Smith has often alerted us to the place of "personal
> experience" in the beliefs of our students. This is the domain of
> anecdotal evidence and inference based on intuition. I assume that we
> all are aware of the problems with using anecdotal evidence to support
> our beliefs. When intuition is involved, we say that we have a "feeling"
> (a personal experience) that a belief is correct. This "feeling" is our
> evidence. Much research has shown that intuition (unless perhaps one is
> trained rigorously in organized programs that have been tested
> systematically to check the quality of the trainees intuitive reasoning
> in that specific area), can easily lead one into error because intuition
> is influenced strongly by biases and error-prone heuristics. Those of us
> who have received extensive scientific training have been taught NOT to
> rely upon personal experience involving anecdotes or "feelings" to
> support the validity of a belief (although we do use it to generate
> hypotheses to be tested). This, of course, is something we also try to
> teach to our students.
Exactly. So we are teaching students not to have confidence in
something that can lead them astray in their understanding of the
world. And rightly so.
> (2) A statement made by an authority is also evidence for a belief.
> Authorities may come from science, religion, politics, education, etc.
> For example, when the evidence for, say, a scientific belief is so
> complex as to be incomprehensible to all but experts in the field, then
> we are prone to accept the conclusions of the experts without attempting
> to consider the primary evidence. This is the situation, for example, in
> many areas of modern physics, such as quantum mechanics. The nonexpert's
> understanding requires an act of faith. Nevertheless, this faith is
> based on evidence. The nonexpert uses something like the following
> argument to justify his/her belief: "those engaged in scientific
> research have been trained to collect and evaluate evidence to support
> their conclusions--conclusions which have been subjected to review by
> other experts. Thus, the consensus reached by these experts IS MY
> EVIDENCE that the belief I now hold is a valid one." If someone could
> show that the argument's premises were incorrect, or if the consensus
> among the experts were to dissolve, this would count as evidence against
> the belief. As scientists, we are much more likely to have faith in the
> pronouncements of scientific authorities concerning the description and
> explanation of nature because we know the safeguards that usually go
> into scientific consensus building. We try to teach our students that
> they should be very skeptical about the pronouncements of other kinds of
> authority, when they are talking about natural phenomena, unless these
> authorities have used a scientific approach.
I am not sure that all kinds of confidence in authority warrant
the label "faith." As you correctly point out, there are sound
reasons for being confident about the pronouncements of science
(if not of individual scientists). And of course, much of
science is readily within the grasp of anyone who chooses to
pursue it (e.g., Darwin's writings are eminently readable).
> Thus, if faith is defined as "an unquestioning belief that requires no
> proof or evidence," then I cannot agree that faith-based beliefs exist:
> it seems to me that all beliefs are based on some sort of evidence. The
> quality of the evidence becomes the issue. In our courses, we try to
> teach students that some kinds of evidence support the validity of
> beliefs better than other kinds of evidence. Evidence that is based on a
> natural-science approach is the best kind for knowing the world. Over
> the last several hundred years, this approach has discovered many ways
> in which our reasoning is likely to be led astray. Natural scientists
> have developed a general set of procedures in which control of the
> research situation is considered paramount if one is to develop valid
> beliefs about the universe. Thus, in my original post about "belief in
> the unseen," I should have stated something like the following: Students
> in our courses often justify their beliefs by pointing to evidence based
> on personal experience or appeals to nonscientific authority. Nothing
> very surprising here, huh?? Thus, in our courses, we are trying to teach
> them an approach that involves extreme skepticism about knowledge claims
> based on personal experience or the pronouncements of nonscientific
> authorities (or something like this). Sounds pretty harmless; but this
> teaching goal actually is a very radical one; and I believe that it was
> what I was struggling with in the post that began this thread.
I agree that it is radical and difficult for students (and some
faculty) to grasp. Part of the reason is that commitment to
sound justification for one's beliefs does entail relinquishing
confidence in many things that one might have taken for truth.
Part of the reason that being a scientist and being atheistic are
so strongly correlated may be that atheists experience less
distress at the loss of certainty (they have less to lose).
> PSYCHOLOGY: A NATURAL SCIENCE?
> After more reflection, the problem is becoming somewhat clearer to me.
> Let me try to communicate it to you, if I can. As psychologists, we are
> trying to teach our students a scientific approach to the understanding
> of the human mind and behavior. The science of psychology is modeled
> after the natural sciences. The philosophical doctrines fundamental to
> the natural sciences are determinism and naturalism; and since the only
> known natural processes are physical ones, naturalism reduces to
> materialism (if I am understanding my philosophical doctrines
> correctly). When this scientific approach of the natural sciences is
> directed at the human mind and behavior, mind and behavior are conceived
> of as caused by physical factors. This is the "worldview" encouraged by
> scientific training. An obvious question arises: is this natural-science
> approach essential for the understanding of ALL phenomena involving the
> mind and behavior? I assume that it is, but I know that there are some
> (perhaps many) on this list who would disagree. I know that many of my
> students disagree. They seem to have adopted a different worldview--one
> that includes perhaps the naural-science approach, but that assigns it a
> limited role. This other worldview (which actually is a number of
> distinct ones, similar only in that a limitation is placed on a
> natural-science approach) accepts the existence of "nonnatural"
> phenomena as well as ways of knowing outside of those accepted by
> natural scientists. This second worldview seems to assume that there are
> valid kinds of evidence that do NOT involve the empirical study of
> physical causes. I suppose that these other kinds of evidence involve
> some sort of "personal experience" of these other "realms of the mind"
> as well as appeals to nonscientific authorities.
Perhaps the students are demonstrating their unwillingness to
give up the comfort of beliefs that would be undermined by a
strong commitment to scientific methods. Or perhaps they have
taken too many courses talking positively about postmodernism and
the like.
> The question, thus, is this: if we want to develop a complete
> understanding of the human mind and behavior, are we to allow these
> other forms of evidence back into psychology, thereby constructing a
> psychology outside of the natural sciences? (It does not seem to me that
> one can answer this question by bringing up the old chestnut about "the
> conflict between science and religion," and then assert that these two
> areas of human activity are complementary, or incommensurable, or
> whatever. That point seems to me to be irrelevant to what I am asking. I
> am asking whether or not psychology should allow approaches other than a
> natural-scientific one for the goal of understanding the mind and
> behavior.)
>
> This may seem to some of you like unnecessary territory in which to
> tread; but for me, it is absolutely necessary since it determines how I
> approach the questions and concerns of students who realize the conflict
> between the natural-science approach I am espousing and their own
> beliefs about mind and behavior. It is why I occasionally revisit this
> question in my posts to you: To my mind, psychology is the most radical
> (and threatening) of all the natural sciences because it applies a
> natural-science approach to the most central concern of humans--their
> "human nature." I am constantly concerned with this as I teach my
> students. If many of you believe that there is a dividing line between
> the parts of our nature that are amenable to a natural-scientific
> approach and the parts that are not, where do you draw the line? How can
> we ever achieve a consensus on what we think we know when different
> psychologists disagree about where to draw the limits of a scientific
> approach? How can we communicate this to students, each of whom has
> his/her own ideas about all of this?
My personal view is that this situation has been allowed to
continue (and worsen in recent years) by scientific psychologists
(and other scientists) trying to be too politic in their dealings
with people who have failed to embrace the scientific method and
all its implications (e.g., giving up beliefs based on weak
evidence [i.e., faith]). Several nice examples were given in the
Scientific American article on Science and Religion (e.g.,
biologists deleting reference to evolution being impersonal and
unsupervised in a position statement on evolution and education).
I also predict that we are going to see continued and more
extensive challenges to science as a "privileged" way of knowing
(which it is, rightly so).
Overall, I agree very much with Jeff's observations and the
position to which they lead him, difficult though those outcomes
are for many people to accept.
> "No one can accept the fundamental hypotheses of scientific psychology
> and be in the least mystical."
> Knight Dunlap
Who is Knight Dunlap and what is the source of this (excellent)
quote? It reminds me of one attributed to Sagan (I think) in the
Scientific American article on religion and science ... something
to the effect that one cannot do science during the week and
attend church on Sundays.
Best wishes
Jim
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James M. Clark (204) 786-9757
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L05D
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
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