in the technical definition of laws, they refer to causal conditionals of deterministic or probabilistic strength. I see a few pages of logical syntax (which I can’t really read) to firm this up on a firm logical foundation. My take on this is that whether a law is mathematical or not (like the assertions of natural selection , etc.), still they would fall under a rigorous definition of a causal conditional of probabilistic strength, we need a logician here to go further. But I am equally confident that the assertions of astrology would not pass the logician’s smell test of their assertions fitting under this category of causal conditionals. The logician would say that what astrology really consists of are accidental correlations, not causal conditionals of deterministic or probabilistic strength.

And if astrology doesn’t fit into this definition of “lawlike” from a strict logician’s viewpoint, then it would be excluded by the (b) adequacy condition of the IBE technique I was talking about above. Also, your example of “principles” might also not technically fit under this logical framework, not sure about that one. So this stuff can be formalized.

But you are correct, this all assumes that “science” is the IBE technique. We agree other models should be entertained. Your model doesn’t require hypotheses to necessarily be lawlike but rather falsifible as being the main criteria . I just prefer IBE because it , at least makes an attempt , to explain the big “WHY” questions. Perhaps logicians are fooling us into confusing their laws with “WHY” (like you were probing about the strict mechanisms), but I think there is value in the attempt. For instance, with the law of gravity, it is not just merely a deterministic conditional, but there is a physical basis for it: as the radius of the sphere expands as square of the radius, so too does the intensity of the force as the square. So in a sense, I would argue that Newton’s Law of Gravity isn’t just a logicians argument but really explains the “WHY” behind gravity. But of course you are correct it doesn’t get to the nitty-gritty explanations such as graviton field theory.
Contrast this with the nonsense of astrology, they are just grasping at accidental correlations and have no basis whatsoever for making their assertions .

“(For what it’s worth, I think we’re getting at the idea of predictive power from different angles.)”

That is the bottom line. I just think we’ve both been attracted to different models of science, both of which are valid models.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but figuring out what you mean by “lawlike” is exactly what I would like to determine.

We must be careful, here, too. “Out of the blue” carries with it a connotation of personal incredulity. Part of the power of science (and its inherently skeptical outlook) is that it has shown us that some things are true that we might never have even guessed otherwise (e.g., “you and I are related to geraniums”, or “space is curved”). Personal incredulity is not a valid reason to reject a statement.

If you want to argue that an “out of the blue” principle is simply made up, an astrologer might disagree with you there, too. It would seem reasonable to assume that anyone who thinks astrology is valid have had an experience (or have known someone who had an experience, or have read about someone else’s experience) that seems to bear out astrology’s validity. In their mind, they’re placing the same premium on empiricism and experimentation that the skeptic is. “I read that I would get money in my horoscope, and when I did laundry that week, I found five dollars in an old pair of pants!” The difference is in controlled experiments, and in whether or not it predicts results better than chance or guesswork.

Jeff: For instance, one of the main features of Universal Gravitation is that it has a property of being “inverse square” relationship, which is well known from various fields from math to optics, and even has a rational geometric basis (the area of a sphere increases as the square of its radius so the intensity of a quantity spread over that area would naturally decrease as the square) ; and also has the property of being “directly proportional” to the product of the masses.

If your assertion is that a scientific statement must be couched in mathematical terms, again, I must disagree. Natural selection can be described in a manner fully consistent with scientific understanding with no mathematical terms whatsoever, for example. As can something like “diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses” (in potential opposition to, say, diseases being caused by shaking salt with your left hand or something), or even “influenza is transmitted through a virus” (rather than “influenza is transmitted through Angie, when she looks at you funny”).

Jeff: But the bigger issue is this: there is not just one way to build a building, so why should there be one way of doing science?

I don’t think that there is. I thought our aim was to find out what things all pursuits we’d call “scientific” have in common. That doesn’t suggest that there is only one pursuit.

Jeff: I , at least, would like “skeptics” to hash out is where does skepticism fit into all this and what methodologies does “skepticism” propose?

I think the most basic is this: Claims about the natural world can be tested and, if they fit, provisionally accepted, and this acceptance is always subject to newer and/or better evidence. There is no reason to accept entities or processes that cannot be empirically tested and demonstrated.

Jeff: But Matt I certainly value this discussion, you are a bright guy, and it helps me to sharpen our pencils. good job.

Thank you, and likewise. Part of the power of science is to relentlessly and mercilessly batter ideas and only keep the ones that survive the onslaught. If I came off as brusque, I apologize.

Jeff: one easy definition I see in there: “a law is a generalization specifying what would happen if something else were to happen, characterized by means of causal conditionals of deterministic or probabilistic strength”.

I like that. But not all scientific statements are stated this way. Principles, for example, are not. “Atoms have at least one proton in their nuclei” is not phrased as an if/then statement.

Jeff: Astrology has no laws of this degree of strength. It is just obvious ad hoc BS.

I agree with your conclusion, but why should we not call this personal incredulity? There are those who think that quantum mechanics is obvious ad hoc BS.

Consider that science can be very general and still accurate, the way an astrologer might claim that they’re being accurate when they say that Geminis tend to be impulsive (or what have you), based on Geminis they’ve interacted with or read about.

(For what it’s worth, I think we’re getting at the idea of predictive power from different angles.)

I looked up definition of “laws of nature” and see about 3 pages of specific logical syntax that I don’t read. one easy definition I see in there: “a law is a generalization specifying what would happen if something else were to happen, characterized by means of causal conditionals of deterministic or probabilistic strength”.

My interpretation would be, Law of Gravity would fall under the category of deterministic strength, because every time in the history of the world, say, you bring a satellite to 2 earth radii from center of earth, its weight would decrease by factor of 4. And Newton reasoned from optics and math that this made sense, since the area of a sphere increases as square of radius, so logically the strength (intensity) of light, gravity, should decrease as square of radius.

Quantum physics has laws of probabilistic strength, where outcomes are predicted to a certain probability.

Astrology has no laws of this degree of strength. It is just obvious ad hoc BS.

OK, I will agree that agnostic could be considered redundant in that context. But consider this. Agnostic doesn’t necessarily describe a person’s belief. You could be agnostic and believe in an god, or you could be agnostic and not believe in a god, or you could be like (I presume) most agnostics and simply say “I don’t know.” The term agnostic isn’t very useful unless it’s understood to BE a statement of belief. But that isn’t its function, technically.

The term atheist is necessarily a statement of belief. You and I both understand that agnosticism is implied in atheism (and all other belief systems), but that is generally not well understood by most people who are not skeptics or atheists. Often, the terms “strong atheist” or “weak atheist” is used to make the distinction between “I believe there is definitely no god” and “I believe there is probably no god.”

I simply feel that since the term agnostic-atheist explains the latter position much better than “weak atheist” does because it describes WHY I believe that there is probably no god. I believe there is probably no god because I haven’t been presented with adequate realistic evidence (atheist) but I admit that no one can know for sure (agnostic).

I do think it’s a bit odd to be debating the merit of a term that must apply to all of human philosophy. Yes, we admit that we can’t know for sure, but the word exists for precisely the reason that most people do think it’s important in some contexts to make a distinction between those that admit that fact and those that refuse to admit that fact.

There are very few people who believe they can PROVE the existence of God. I agree there are some, but most believers don’t think God can be “proven.”

In reality, no one can prove the existence of anything — all scientists know this. We can’t “prove” Newton’s laws, or relativity, or quantum mechanics, or anything else. Science is about models that describe our observations in the most probabilistically likely manner. The word “proof” is useless and meaningless in any field other than mathematics.

Well, I see your point. I don’t believe the term is terribly meaningful either, but it does describe my position. Consider that there are some people that DO believe they are able to prove the existence of a god. I believe that they are misinformed, but these people don’t believe that they are agnostic, and thus the distinction.

Even if no one could prove the existence of a god then the term agnostic still wouldn’t be totally meaningless. Humans are by definition human, but that doesn’t make the term meaningless. All humans are also mammals, and mortal, and live on Earth – but that doesn’t make any of those distinctions less meaningful for certain applications.

“You’d be wrong. Gravity was a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis for centuries before any kind of plausible mechanism was even proposed.
Unless, you mean to state with something like this:
Jeff: a lawlike statement or mechanism
… that a mechanism is not really necessary, as long as there is a statement about it that is “lawlike” (whatever that means).”

(b) in IBE is technically a “lawlike statement”, you are correct, I probably just blurred that together into “mechanism”. The example of gravity does satisfy (b) because Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation is “lawlike”. We could argue over what that means, but to me that means that it isn’t something just out of the blue, like in astrology. For instance, one of the main features of Universal Gravitation is that it has a property of being “inverse square” relationship, which is well known from various fields from math to optics, and even has a rational geometric basis (the area of a sphere increases as the square of its radius so the intensity of a quantity spread over that area would naturally decrease as the square) ; and also has the property of being “directly proportional” to the product of the masses.

I would not put the claim that astrologers can predict the future into the “lawlike” category. What are the mathematical or other precedences for it?

So I was using “mechanism” in a broader sense as above, but you are correct, the real adequacy rule (b) refers to lawlike, and astrology doesn’t come in under that, unless you really, really stretch the definition of “lawlike”. “lawlike” should have some mathematical or physical precedences such as above, or at least some plausible rational. You are thinking in more absolutist terms such as “gravitons are a plausible mechanism”, I wasn’t thinking in those specific of terms when I used the word mechanism. I just meant mechanism in a broader way such as inverse square law.

But the bigger issue is this: there is not just one way to build a building, so why should there be one way of doing science? clearly, there are different scientific methodologies ranging from the simplest (1) is it supernatural or is it caused? (2) a basic theory of science where hypotheses are conditional, testable, and tentative (I believe that is the model you are referring to) , (3) more advanced models such as inductivism, deductivism, and abductivism (such as the IBE technique and its adequacy conditions (a), (b), (c)., (4) and what I , at least, would like “skeptics” to hash out is where does skepticism fit into all this and what methodologies does “skepticism” propose? that is uncharted territory obviously. I’m not laughing at skeptics, just wondering, sort of like the medieval philosophers couldn’t quite understand francis Bacon and the founding fathers of todays “science”.

But Matt I certainly value this discussion, you are a bright guy, and it helps me to sharpen our pencils. good job.

You’d be wrong. Gravity was a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis for centuries before any kind of plausible mechanism was even proposed.

Unless, you mean to state with something like this:

Jeff: a lawlike statement or mechanism

… that a mechanism is not really necessary, as long as there is a statement about it that is “lawlike” (whatever that means).

All that you need for a statement to be skeptically valid is for it to be falsifiable (otherwise, there’s no logical weight to the statement) and consistent with observable fact. There doesn’t need to be a mechanism. (It takes someone awfully uncurious not to want to look for a mechanism once a statement appears to be valid, though.) And if it’s falsifiable but no facts on the matter are in evidence, a good skeptic will withhold acceptance until facts can be brought to bear. (Even with facts, acceptance is always provisional.)

Jeff: So assertions such as astrologers can predict the future cannot be included for consideration in the set of hypotheses competing to explain the evidence, because they do not satisfy conditions (a) and (b) , and thus are not scientific.

“This astrologer can predict the future” is derivable. We can run an experiment. Ask him/her to predict the future, and see if it happens. (I can’t attest to (b) until I learn what you mean by “lawlike”. But as pointed out, a mechanism is not necessary.)

“If skepticism is to compete with mainline scientific method

Isn’t the scientific method an example of skepticism? Why should they compete?”

that is a good question, but makes my point. If skepticism isn’t rigorously defined as a technique, then what is it? We know what science is.

For example, the assertion “this astrologer can predict the future” can be determined to a high degree of likelihood without ever suggesting a mechanism for it”

I would assert that if mechanisms are not given, then hypotheses cannot be considered to have satisfied the adequacy requirements for scientific hypotheses: (a) derivability, the evidence should be derivable from the hypotheses’ premise, (b) a lawlike statement or mechanism , (c) exclusion of irrelevant factors, that is what I think you were referring to as parsimony.

So assertions such as astrologers can predict the future cannot be included for consideration in the set of hypotheses competing to explain the evidence, because they do not satisfy conditions (a) and (b) , and thus are not scientific.
Like in creation science “god created the universe as is”, does not satisfy (a) because it is just an assertion, not something derived. We could assert anything. For example, I could just say “M and M’s are always sold with snikers bars”, but nothing is derived , just stipulated. Creation science says all creatures and the fossil record is as is today, but (b) is not satisfied, there are no mechanisms like natural selection given. And creation scientists sometimes say “god created evolution” is (c) because god is now superfluous (an irrelevant factor) because he doesn’t do anything.

Maybe there is a model of science where you might be correct, but that one is not the IBE one, maybe inductivism or deductivism.

We DO know what Hitler believed, he said it many, many times. To quote him, in his own words:

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so”

When people ask me if I believe in God, I have to respond “How do you define God?”
If you mean a compassionate, fat, hairy old white guy, sitting on a metaphorical mountain somewhere, my answer would be a resounding NO.

If you mean a spiritual force, inhabiting all reality and having no impact on that reality, I’d have to say “I don’t know. ”

If I can’t measure it, it probably doesn’t matter and if it doesn’t matter, I won’t waste time praying to it.

I live my life according to the principle of “Do unto others as,,,”

It works for me and requires no godly intervention, no dicta from on high.

,,,and it leaves me free of any guilt as I pursue knowledge for its own sake. Which MAY, in the end, allow me to confront a superior being face to face and have something worthwhile to say to it. Ignorance of the nature of this reality is not a gift to any god.

,,,unless it is similar to a Goa’uld,,,

Gary 7

Isn’t the scientific method an example of skepticism? Why should they compete?

On the main topic, I think I’m pretty skeptical in my approach to things, but I wouldn’t self-identify as a skeptic or regard myself as part of the skeptical community. Evidence is important to me, but a person’s attitude to it wouldn’t be front and centre for me in the way I want to relate to them. If someone wanted to talk to me about their religion (genuinely, not just proselytising, that is), I’d want to know what it meant to them for its and their own sake, not because I’d be particularly interested in changing their minds.

Jump in the hottub and discuss!

If you’re trying to be rigorous about it, you should also include something about parsimony. It’s theoretically possible to come up with an infinite number of explanations for the evidence that predict it as an effect with equally high likelihoods.

Jeff: For example, the assertions of astrology are not law-like, they simply state an association or correlation between things without an intervening lawlike mechanism

A mechanism need not be suggested in order for us to ascertain the correctness of an assertion.

For example, the assertion “this astrologer can predict the future” can be determined to a high degree of likelihood without ever suggesting a mechanism for it. It is also telling that such a statement has not been demonstrated to a likelihood that any reasonable person would consider “a high degree”, in spite of tests which might ascertain it.

It is that, I would argue, and not the lack of a mechanism (or the suggestion of a mechanism that is then met with personal incredulity) that casts the field of astrology into doubt generally. If controlled tests cannot demonstrate the ability of astrologers to predict the future about relatively mundane things with reasonable accuracy, what reason do I have to assume that they can predict the future about anything with reasonable accuracy?

More to the point, is there any evidence that the methods astrologers use to predict the future — whatever they may be — are statistically much more reliable than mere guesswork or mere chance under controlled testing conditions? If not (and, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t), why should I credit astrology with greater predictive power than chance or guesswork?

this is very important. If skepticism is to compete with mainline scientific method, it needs a rigorous methodological foundation. For example, there are several models for the scientific method, but one firm model is IBE (inference to the best explanation), where several competing hypotheses are advanced to explain the evidence, and the one which predicts the evidence as an effect with the highest likelihood is the preferrable hypothesis. This lets us winnow out competing hypotheses. These hypotheses should satisfy adequacy conditions , such as containing one or more law-like statements, to be considered scientific hypotheses. For example, the assertions of astrology are not law-like, they simply state an association or correlation between things without an intervening lawlike mechanism , or otherwise they state a mechanism which is unbelievable ad hoc BS.

I wish it were. Unfortunately, there are plenty of things that people do without really analyzing them critically.

There’s often a world of difference between that which “seems reasonable enough” to an individual and that which is consistent with the facts. It is the former that, as far as most people are concerned, makes for “common sense”. Skepticism advocates responsibility to the latter.

I’ve used it mainly to show that the argument comparing Nordic countries to theocracy to prove that religion is the source of all evil is a bad one. First off, we currently have a total of about 3 theocracies in the world. Second, and more important: the history of Western Europe indicates that an economic development comes first, and secularization comes second. This is a general pattern which was followed in all European countries (except France), or is currently followed in Eastern European countries. Thus, religion does not preclude economic development. Third, over the last 10-20 years there has actually been an increase of religiosity in Western European countries. It’s a very small increase, but it is measurable. It doesn’t fit the model, but it’s a fact. Fourth, we have the U.S.: a developed country, which is the home of the most conservative churches.

Skepticism (n.) The opposite of gullibility.

Skeptical (adj.) The opposite of gullible.

If a community makes you feel good, fine. I will argue that despite your good feelings it may still be a bad thing. Just like reiki and homeoathy and distance prayer if you have a real disease.

…and Phil, I love ya man, totally. But stop telling us who you are friends with!!!! “He’s my friend too” doesnt add to the context of the topic in many cases and can get redundant!!

…and Phil, on SGU you robbed the show. I still say the dry ice bit was a poorly worded question!

@HvP: The word “agnostic” is therefore rather redundant, isn’t it. Every human being is agnostic; meaning no one — not even the Pope — can prove (or disprove) God’s existence with any degree of certainty. Therefore all humans are, by definition, agnostic.

According to dictionary dot com skepticism is:

1.
skeptical attitude or temper; doubt.
2.
doubt or unbelief with regard to a religion, esp. Christianity.
3.
( initial capital letter ) the doctrines or opinions of philosophical Skeptics; universal doubt.