Science Religion and Lunch Seminars
An interesting e-mail dialogue about the place of subjective experience in finding truth about the world.
Dear Professor Cooley,
I was present at the discussion of "The God Delusion" this afternoon and found your comments to be thought provoking. In particular, you mentioned that Dawkins' refutation of subjective experience as evidence for God's existence should equally refute scientific evidence obtained through observation – since observation involves experiencing things though the senses. I hope I haven’t miss-represented your intended meaning and if I have please correct me. If I haven’t, however, then I wish to clarify what Dawkins was saying. In his book, Dawkins was making a distinction between different ways of coming to know things. For example, an American Indian during the course of a pow-wow, may have the subjective experience of transferring his or her spirit to an eagle and flying over NDSU and seeing that there is a red car parked in front of the Minard building. This would be one way of coming to know that there is a red car parked in front of the Minard building. Another way would be for that same person to go to NDSU and stand in front of the Minard building and see a red car parked there. Dawkins was making a distinction between these two different ways of knowing things. Via the second method, the majority of people would have a similar subjective experience – they would tell you that there was indeed a car parked in front of the Minard building, that it was in fact red and they would probably be able to tell you lots of other things about the car that are readily verifiable. By the first method, in contrast, people’s subjective experiences are not consistent – each individual subjectively experiences something different. One person might tell you that there was a red car in front of the Minard building, but another might tell you that there were no cars there. Evidence obtained through the first method can not be reliably replicated. Furthermore, a person standing in front of the Minard building can hold a spectrophotometer up to the red car and measure the wavelength of light being reflected off of the car and tell you that it is in the red part of the spectrum. They could give you a precise value of 400 nanometers and tell you that their instrument measures with an accuracy of 0.01 nm, meaning that their estimate might be a little off, but only by less than a nanometer. A person whose spirit has been transferred to an eagle can not make such an assertion. The point is that evidence that can be replicated and quantified is more reliable than evidence that can not be replicated and quantified. I must be careful to point out here that I’m not commenting on whether or not we can replicate the subjective experience of transferring one’s spirit to an eagle – I’m commenting on whether or not we can find truth through that experience. I believe that we can not. Furthermore, I believe that when a better method of knowing if there is a red car in front of the Minard building exists then we should choose to use that method.
Best regards,
Aaron Clarke
Thank you for sending me the interesting explanation of Dawkin's work. I agree that he is making the distinction that you are making, but the problem with his approach is the skepticism he is using against religious experiences, while not applying it equally to scientific observation. Both rely on observation which is influenced by the perceiver. For science, we assume that our perceptions are reliable or accurate representations of the real world, but how do we ever establish that claim? If we say that our observations are accurate because they correspond to what others say, then we have begged the question. So what evidence is there for it?
There is also the standard objection to reliability that Dawkins ignores. Suppose that an old woman prophecies that there will be a bomb going off at a particular time and in a particular place, she has nothing to do with the bomb, and there actually is a bomb that goes off then and there. The woman never does another prophecy. If we are looking at reliability, then the woman is 100% reliable--even though this not what we want to call reliable. So how do we make a distinction here?
Finally, truth is more than merely if it fits with a hypothesis or law. the correspondence theory of truth-used for external world propositions-states that a proposition is true if and only if the proposition corresponds to facts of the world. That means if a person has had a religious revelation caused by a divine entity, then a statement such as "X had a religious revelation caused by a divine entity" is true, while "We can prove that X had religious revelation caused by a divine entity" can be false. Dawkins often confuses what we can prove with what is real.
The sad thing about the book is Dawkins could have stuck to examining the role that extremism in religion plays in society. His arguments can work there. However, he often goes way beyond what his evidence supports when he makes too strong of claims. He also would benefit from reading the work on religion that has been published by scholars in he 20th Century. I am not agreeing with them, but failing to address it shows a striking lack of scholarship.