From Data to Conclusion: Fact to Opinion

Politicians, policy makers, advertising men daily bombard us with their opinion on what is good and what is not, what should be done and what should not be and what is to our advantage and what is not. In doing so, they use facts and figures and argue from what they claim are objective "facts" to certain conclusions and they ask us to accept their opinion. Yet how do we tell if what they say makes sense. If some of the facts they quote to us appear to be credible, should we then accept the opinions they claim are based on such accepted facts?  I read a chapter called "From Data to Conclusion: a Bit of Philosophy" from Michael Phillips's The Undercover Philosopher (2008)

Descartes begins in his Meditations on the First Philosophy by regretting the disagreement between science and philosophy and tries to find a method which will provide answers so certain, so clear and compelling that all fair-minded, intelligent people cannot help but agree. He wishes to doubt everything until he comes to a point where he can no longer doubt and he comes up with his famous "Je pense, donc je suis"(I think, therefore I am) which he uses as the basis to build his philosophy of rationalism. According to Phillips, even today, there are some who still think like him: those who subscribe to the position of scientism but they have enemies, the so-called post-modernists. According to the former, only knowledge obtained from science is reliable and to the latter, no methods produce objective knowledge of the world because all inquiry bears the mark of its cultural, historical, ethnic, gender, religious and even personal origins. The postmodernists think that all knowledge is "situated" and we must give up the idea that mind can mirror nature. The most we can produce is useful "discourses" which are simply discourses which serve our needs. But both such positions are mistaken according to Phillips. Scientism is wrong because there is no method unque to the sciences. With the exception of such formal disciplines like maths and logic, all sciences employ a mix of familiar kinds of reasoning like induction, deduction, observation, hypothesis forming and peer review. Some use verification by experimentation but some don't. Contrary to what the postmodernists think, some methods are more reliable than others and some are very reliable indeed. Thus we cannot judge one method e.g the so-called scientific method as always more superior to another: some bits of physics are more reliable than others and some bits of history are more reliable than others eg. that George III was king when America declared its independence is more certain than the Big Bang theory. To assess the reliability of the route from data to conclusion, we need to trace the route itself. There is simply no shortcut.

Recent work on the history of science and the sociology of science conclude that there is nothing called "the scientific method". In the pre-scientific era, explanations of why things are as they are are mythological: they are particular and ad hoc, (they consisted of particular stories about particular events or phenomena), accepted on the basis of tradition and authority with no obvious way of confirming or disconfirming them or of defending them against competing explanations. Such explanations are anthropomorphic (they explain natural events by attributing to them human motives and intentions or those of the gods who themselves are modeled on human psychology) and they rely on obvious, familiar and commonly observed everyday forces and processes, and do not rely upon purely physical explanations like electrons or electro-magnetic forces. The first pre-scientific theory of knowledge was formulated in Greece by Thales, who thought the natural world could be understood in terms of four elements: earth, air, fire, water (solids, gases, liquids, and fire not understood as a gas) with water as the central elements with earth, air and fire treated as tranformation of water. Thus water turns to air when boiled, air turns to water when it rains, fogs, mists or dews and water turns to earth by the work of rivers and when it freezes and earth turns to water at the mouth of springs and at the bottoms of wells and water turns into fire when we light oil lamps or other liquid fuels or during volcanic eruptions and fire turns into water during lightning storms or when we extinguish torches in barrels of water and the seeds all plants are moist and so water is associated with life. But to Thales "all things are full of gods." but his disciple Empedocles sought purely physical explanations and thought that the elements mixed and separated because the "love" and "strife" of the elements. This is at least an advance because it is based on some observation and is based on purely physical explanation rather than on tradition and authority, as were the mythological and religious explanations based on the action of the gods.

Is there then one "scientific method"? This idea was rejected by Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations 1963) who thought that the only method of science is the negative method of trial by error and Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1962) thought that in any specific historical period the scientist can only work within the current scientific paradigm of what is considered possible and acceptable until contrary evidence has accumulated sufficiently for a new paradigm to be accepted as the then current model of acceptable theoretical explanations. The methods of biology e.g. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution ( although some evolutionary biologists now sometimes conduct experiments) does not rely on any experimentation at all as in ethology, geology and astronomy and much of anatomy and physiology is not mathematical at all as in physics. And although a biologist rely on observation, his observation is very different from the observation of a quantum physicist who studies the action of quantum particles/waves which are heavily theory dependent.  Some scientific conclusions are about things reasonably local in space and time (birds and bees, DNA) whereas others are about events happening in a fraction of a second billions of years ago (the big bang theory of the origin of the universe) whilst still others are concerned with scientific laws of nature which are supposed to hold true for all eternity and everywhere in the universe (e.g the laws of physics like the general and special theory of relativity, the laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, the theory of electro-magnetism).

However the idea that knowledge obtained by the so-called "scientific method" is more reliable is still widespread and still forms the subject of debate between the advocates of scientism and those of post-modernism and the apostles of scientism and post-modernism exploit this by picking on examples favourable to their case. Thus post-modernists talk as if all science is like quantum mechanics and string theory but the defenders of scientism pick examples closer home and talk as if all science were like cell structure, DNA and the birds and bees. But both of them exploit what Phillips calls "the illusion of equal reliability.". Postmodernism is originally a movement characterizing certain styles of architecture, art, poetry, fashion, cultural philosophy, journalism and even social relations but has now broadened into an intellectual fashion which is skeptical of traditional universally applicable maga-theory and of order and applauds or at least accepts the emergence of cultural relativity and pluralist cultural forms which define themselves in opposition to the Enlightenment rationalism and universalism. Enlightenment thinkers were thought to believe that we can achieve a complete understanding of the natural and human world through the proper exercise of reason and objective observation, instead of authority and tradition and is based on the optimistic view that through the removal of ignorance, superstition, religion, man is capable of creating an earthly paradise. But to Philips, the postmodernists' view of the Enlightenment is itself too simplistic because according to him, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, who were thought to be fathers of modernism did not hold all the types of value the postmodernists would have us think as typical of the Enlightenment. Hume was a skeptic. He is skpetical about both reason and observation and in opposition to the empiricists, he denies that we can understand the world by thinking about it like Descartes. Nor can we generalize from observation by the inductive method. He thinks that just because something has always happened in a certain way in the past is no guarantee that it will continue to do so in the future. It is simply a matter of  what he calls "animal faith". But we have no choice but to run our lives in accordance with this assumption. And in relation to ethics, Hume argues that "reason is a slave to the passions". Kant is thought by the postmodernists to be a champion of Enlightenment but Kant's most important philosophical project is to attack the pretensions of reason against faith because to him, we have no hope of undersanding the world as it is in itself (as he argued in the Critique of Pure Reason) and he protects the religious ideas of human freedom and immortality against the incursions of science and philosophy. The postmodernists think that all tools of of reason like our ideas, concepts, theories are "situated" geographically, historically and culturally and our views are limited by our religion, race, socio-economic class, gender, age, family of origin, schooling and other accidents of our personal psychology (genetic make-up and upbringing) and of personal developmental history and biography and that our culturally authoritative views of the world are merely the pictures of the dominant and privileged social class of our times and our societies and that it is arrogant on our part to think that our tools are better than all the possible alternatives.There is a great deal of truth is their assertions but nonetheless, to Phillips, it is too much to generalize further that all truth is relative, that there is absolutely no objectivity in our views of the world and that therefore all that we can reasonably have are stories we tell ourselves and that none of such stories has any more epistemic claim to our allegiance than any other and that in the end, it is all a question of our personal loyalty and expediency. In so arguing, they are throwing out the baby of science along with the bathwater of history, rational philosophy and theology. Because if no narrative has any more claim to truth than any other and if all reasoning is "situated" and hence "subjective reasoning", then why spend time trying to guard against any error at all? In arguing against Enlightenment reasoning, they are using sociological, historical, psychological and philosophical arguments to show that no sociological, historical, psychological, and philosophical arguments or conclusions are worthy of belief. Radical or extremne postmodernists therefore are cutting the ground under their own feet. Phillips says that when they are criticized, the postmodernists counter with the argument that they look upon this as just a further example of the type of "turf war" of different interest groups that they are talking about. He criticizes them by saying that postmodernists never get down to the details of what they proclaim as a general postmodernist theory and that they are "happier with their ritual dance of dramatic proclamations and balloon puncturing.".  

To Phillips, despite what the postmodernists claim, there really are some truths which are universal e.g the principles of arithmatic, geometry, the laws of physics. Every civilization has a calendar, sophisticated engineering and building skills, a legal system and other technologies that demand planning and co-ordination which are available to any intelligent person of any class, race, gender today simply because we are human and share certain common human capacities. The scientific picture of the world does bear some remarkable resemblance to the way scientists think how it works such that we are able to build airplanes, hydro-electric power stations and other technological inventions including the computer. Although the fact that we can build things that work does not logically imply that our theoreis are true, that is the best explanation that we have. We do have what has been called a deductive method such that when the basic premises is correct, the conclusion or result of our deductive inference must be correct eg. all men have a brain and John is a man; conclusion: therefore John has a brain. In inductive reasoning, we generalize from a large number of observable and theoretically repeatable particular  instances and then draw a conclusion as to the likelly outcome in the case of another new instance of another particular member of the same class in similar set of circumstances.e.g  it is observed that water always boils at 100 degree Celsius at sea level, we live on sea level and we are boiling water, therefore it is likely that it too will boil at 100 degree Celsius. Induction relies upon the assumption that what happened in the past will most likely continue to repeat itself in the future. The real problem of induction according to Phillips is to determine how or in what ways and when the future will resemble the past. Many seas in the past have now become deserts, many sea bottoms have now become mountain tops and many animal species have become extinct and we were once apes jumping from tree to tree and even longer ago, we were aquatic fishes (residual evidence in the form of the human embryo, sperm and our blood) . We know that baryonic matter constitutes only 5% of the known matter of the universe. That means that 95% of the matter of the universe are "dark matter". How do we know or can assume that baryonic matter, whose laws of operation we know about, is actually somehow eternally sealed off from having any causal relationship with the 95% of dark matter about which we know very little except that they exist. How do we know that the baryonic laws do not have a certain temporarily or provisionally causal relationship with the dark matter such that when the conditions of such relationship change, those laws will not apply any more? Of course, at the moment, we have no reason to believe that the universe is like that. But then we have no reason to believe that it is not like that either! Therefore, the laws of science are provisional only. They are good only up to now.

The real problem of induction occurs when we study human psychology, human sociology, human history because relationship between different kins, genders, different socio-economic classes, ethnic groups are quite variable between different societies and even within the same societies within different historical periods and the same holds true for our attitudes towards sex, violence, hospitality, mutual aid, foreigners, charity, minority, religion etc.  It would therefore be foolish to assume that what was true at a particular period in the history of China in, say, the Tang dynasty would be the same in, say, France now. In such cases, the most we can do is to describe how different societies were in different historical periods, according to the available sources of evidence and make some general comments on questions of interest even nowadays and on how and why such soceities were the way they were. In such cases, good explanations will attempt to rule out other alternatives but often we will be hampered by lack of evidence. Explanations tell us how and why particular things happened but interpretations tell us what those particular things are or mean and historical explanations are sometimes called interpretation because the boundaries between the two are not always clear but to Phillips, it may be useful to think of interpretation in terms of the concepts of part and whole. If so, a better interpretations takes into account more different parts of the events with more coherence and less contradictions or inconsistencies of the whole interpretation. A better interpretative frameworks explains more of the elements requiring explanations.

To conclude, Phillips says that "No one now believe that there is one and only one way to approach every question, problem and subject matter. Philosophers also now widely agree that there is no single method even for the sciences." Evolutionary biology is a very different enterprise than quantum physisc. And even within the same branch of science: evolutionary theory is short on experiment but not molecular biology. Explanations are often theory dependent but the degree of theory dependence varies with the individual science concerned and the meaning of some observations are dependent on a wider web of theories than others. Observations that are closer to the ground are relatively less theory dependent eg. that the heart pumps blood, that water boils at 100 degree celsius and thousands of discoveries are compellingly supported by observation in this way. In such cases, there is very little the post-modernists can do to upset such findings. In the social sciences, the areas of differences of opinion may be more serious because often it is difficult to say that one interpretation or theory is better than another but then in general, the more elements one theory or interpretation takes into account without internal inconsistency, the better it is. The history of nature-nurture debate in psychology, biology, the existence of God and various religious controversies and political theories show us that partisan interests may often become overriding against answers which are underdetermined by the evidence. In such cases, the postmodernists are on target. Phillips closes the chapter with the remark::" If we are interested in an accurate view of the world, we must let the chips fall where they may. We cannot just assume that truth is on our side."

How to find out whether what we regard as the "truth" is always a tricky question. Philosophers have struggled with the question for thousands of years and they seem no nearer to that elusive goal. However, we certainly do know much more than we did two thousand years ago. What we do know does give us a feeling of the very different texture on what the problem is and where the problematic areas lie. We have found some useful principles like observation, reason, evidence, the relative advantages and the limitations of the inductive, deductive methods, the scientific and the philosophic approaches to the truth, the need for attention to the social context of certain knowledge claims, and the need for coherence and inclusiveness of theories etc. That's certainly better than engaging in the exploration into the question and coming away completely empty handed!