Is free-will an illusion?

Excerpts from a long, yet entertaining and insightful, rant from a scientist about scientism, entitled "The Folly of Scientism:"

It’s open season on scientism again! Hughes is an evolutionary biologist with wide-ranging interests, and I’ve really liked some of his papers. Unfortunately, his ten-page essay in The New Atlantis, “The Folly of Scientism,” is not one of them. It’s a strongly-worded critique of scientism, which Hughes conceives of as scientists’ claim that only their fields can provide true knowledge of the universe, and can also answer questions that aren’t really in their bailiwick:

The big problem with Hughes’s essay is that despite his claim that there are other ways of apprehending truth beyond science—ways that involve the three areas of ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology—he gives not a single example of a question that those disciplines have answered. And, indeed, although practitioners of those disciplines may suggest answers to questions like “what is the meaning of life?” or “is it ever permissible to torture someone?,” those answers are subjective, not universally agreed on, and don’t involve “truth” in the same way scientists conceive it. One reader, responding to a suggestion that “truths” be divided into “objective (e.g., scientific) truths” and “subjective truths,” argued that we should just call these categories “truth” and “opinion” respectively!

A characteristic of articles on “scientism” is their loud proclamation that there are other ways of knowing truth, combined with a complete failure to cite any questions that been answered by these other ways. Hughes’s essay falls right into this pattern. Oh, he disses science a lot, accusing it of often failing to progress (he argues, for instance, that behavioral ecology “oscillates happily” and never makes progress, a statement that is dead wrong), and of enabling bad stuff like Lysenkosim in the Soviet Union and eugenics in countries like Germany and the U.S.

Hughes even drags in Alvin Plantinga’s argument that science can’t explain why human can do science, for natural selection hasn’t really given us the refined abilities to discern truth the way that modern scientists do. But that’s bunk. Natural selection has given us faculties to perceive truths about what is outside of our brains, and also bequeathed us brains big enough that we can refine our methods of discerning what’s out there in ways that keep us from deceiving ourselves. That involves prediction, replication, and observation or experiment by multiple people. The equipment for our doing science was installed by natural selection, but of course the actual doing of modern science is a spandrel, not an adaptation that was produced by selection.

Hughes makes lots of fancy-pants talk about Quine, philosophy, and positivism, but in the end his essay is a dog’s breakfast that leaves the reader with no idea of what the “other ways of knowing” really are, and what questions they have actually answered. Instead, one comes away with a disquieting feeling that science isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But Hughes’s critique of science (viz., his attack on behavioral ecology) is unconvincing.

His conclusion (you can read the essay if you wish, but I doubt you’ll learn much) is this:

In contrast to reason, a defining characteristic of superstition is the stubborn insistence that something — a fetish, an amulet, a pack of Tarot cards — has powers which no evidence supports. From this perspective, scientism appears to have as much in common with superstition as it does with properly conducted scientific research. Scientism claims that science has already resolved questions that are inherently beyond its ability to answer.

In other words—and we’ve heard this before, usually from religious people—scientism is a superstition, a faith akin to religious belief. But this statement bears no weight since Hughes hasn’t proffered a single question that’s been answered by metaphysics, ethics, or other “ways of knowing.” In fact, he winds up by issuing an idle threat about what will happen if we hubristic scientists continue to ignore those other ways:

Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence. One longs for a new Enlightenment to puncture the pretensions of this latest superstition.

In other words, scientism will destroy the credibility of science. LOL!

I’m not sure whether “scientism,” if it even exists (which I doubt), pretends to be something other than what it is. If it does, what does it pretend to be? Hughes is whistling in the dark here, for nothing is going to happen even if a few scientists do make exaggerated claims about the boundaries of their field. Science will progress as it always has, answering one question after another, while religion and other “ways of knowing” remain stuck in the mire. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

And a different point of view

layman wrote:

God, this slavish devotion to scientism gets tedious.

Have you noticed?
If it's researchers you agree with, call it evidence.
If it's researchers you disagree with, call it. argumentum ad populum.

Refutation by Caricature

See Ad Hominem.


Regression

This fallacy occurs when regression to the mean is mistaken for a sign of a causal connection. Also called the Regressive Fallacy. It is a kind of false cause fallacy.

Example:

You are investigating the average heights of groups of people living in the United States. You sample some people living in Columbus, Ohio and determine their average height. You have the numerical figure for the mean height of people living in the U.S., and you notice that members of your sample from Columbus have an average height that differs from this mean. Your second sample of the same size is from people living in Dayton, Ohio. When you find that this group's average height is closer to the U.S. mean height [as it is very likely to be due to common statistical regression to the mean], you falsely conclude that there must be something causing people living in Dayton to be more like the average U.S. resident than people living in Columbus.

There is most probably nothing causing people from Dayton to be more like the average resident of the U.S.; but rather what is happening is that averages are regressing to the mean.

The big problem with Hughes’s essay is that despite his claim that there are other ways of apprehending truth beyond science.. (Coyne)

Alright, i agree with you, free will and agency are illusion; and therefore science is an illusion. All these article you posted about were just the mindless, useless products of automatons on autopilot... :-(

Have you noticed?
If it's researchers you agree with, call it evidence.
If it's researchers you disagree with, call it. argumentum ad populum.

Alright, i agree with you, free will and agency are illusion; and therefore science is an illusion. All these article you posted about were just the mindless, useless products of automatons on autopilot... :-(

Denialists often claim that an established set of knowledge or scientific theory is not proven or "sound" and lacks evidence (or enough evidence). They say it is a controversy, requires balance, or requires both the strengths and weaknesses be considered. These tactics make the denialists appear "fair" (and those who oppose them not) and implies doubt in what is being denied with no consideration of evidence. Denialist groups also produce competing evidence through their own "research", which is often poorly performed (if at all) as it often is done by public relations firms with no technical expertise. They encourage people to form their own opinions or do their own tests, rather than relying on studies with appropriate methods and controls. Lists of experts (who may have no credentials in the area) are compiled as testimonials, or public relations campaigns are used to improve denialists' images (and slime legitimate scholars). Actual errors in mainstream science will often be blown out of proportion.[9] Most denialist rhetoric is focused at the layperson and not the expert, and usually paints a contrast between two positions rather than being about one point-of-view.[10] The use of self-generated content on the Internet ("Web 2.0") unfortunately contributes to the dissemination of denialist arguments.

Where did I claim that free will and agency are illusions?

it doesn't represent any of my claims.