Something from Nothing?

What caused the universe? "God" is not an answer for me because this mysterious "God" seems entirely made up and "He" creates many new answerless questions. So "He" is not an explanation.

Back to the question. What caused the universe? Why is there something rather than nothing. I generally conclude "I don't know." But then Roger Penrose comes along . . .

"There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future," he said, according to The Telegraph.

He added, "We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon."

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What is an Explanation? Why is it Important to Explore this Topic?

I majored in philosophy many years ago and I found this field of study, in equal parts, exciting and frustrating. Far too often, it seemed like an exercise in semantics. I found most articles in traditional philosophical journals to be tedious, pedantic, hair-splitting and boring. That said, some of the most hotly debated controversies in philosophy are alive and well. For instance, the philosophy of science is a field rife with simple-looking terms that turn out to be extremely fraught. One of those terms is "explanation." What is an "explanation?" During a cognitive science seminar at Washington University, I once asked Philosopher Andy Clark how to distinguish "descriptions" from "explanations." Clark wryly replied: "An explanation is a description that makes you feel good."

Why is the proper definition of explanation so important?  Because many of our current (non-philosophical) debates stalemate over whether the other side has adequately "explained" something. So how can we determine whether someone has properly "explained" something?

Philosopher of science Bas Van Fraassen wrote that an explanation is an answer—an informative description evaluated pursuant to the context established by a particular question—a request for a specific kind of information.  That makes intuitive sense to me, but the devil is in the details. Because we often attempt to explain things in terms of causation, the topic of "explanation" has a large overlap with "causation." Many philosophical luminaries have grappled with "causation," including David Hume ("constant conjunction"), Karl Popper and Nicholas Tinbergen (who offers four types of causation). Upstarts Mark Johnson and George Lakoff have pain-stakingly analyzed causation in terms of conceptual metaphors and their entailments, concluding that causation is:

a radial category of extraordinary complexity. In that complex radial category, there is no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that covers all the cases of causation. Therefore, causation as we conceptualize it is not a unified phenomenon. It does not simply designate an objectively existing category of phenomena, defined by necessary and sufficient conditions and operating with a single logic in the mind-independent world.

In short, Johnson and Lakoff indicate that "causation" is not one simple thing. Far from it. Lakoff further elaborates:

The science and the social sciences all use causal theories, but the metaphors for causation can vary widely and thus so can the kinds of causal inferences you can draw. Again, there is nothing wrong with this. You just have to realize that causation is not just one thing. There are many kinds of modes of causation, each with different logical inferences, that physical, social, and cognitive scientists attribute to reality using different metaphors for causation. Again, it is important to know which metaphor for causation you are using. Science cannot be done without metaphors of all sorts, starting with a choice of metaphors for causation. Most interestingly, if you look at the history of philosophy, you will find a considerable number of "theories of causation." When we looked closely at the philosophical theories of causation over the centuries, they all turned out to be one or another of our commonplace metaphors for causation. What philosophers have done is to pick their favorite metaphor for causation and put it forth as an eternal truth.

Why am I writing about these topics? Again, getting a grasp on the meaning and function of "explanations" has repercussions far beyond philosophy and far beyond science. It is relevant every time any person makes a claim. This includes political and moral claims. Getting clear on the meaning and function of "explanations" relate to most of the words that come out of your mouth whenever you are trying to be "serious."

The above ideas have been my starting points for exploring this topic of the functions of explanations. For years, I have been working on a much longer analysis of these critically important ideas.

To be continued . . .

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On the Asymmetry of Scientific Bullshit

Cleaning up false claims is a lot more work than making false claims.  That fact puts an immense burden on those of us who strive to correct the record.  From "The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit," by Brian D Earp.

As the programmer Alberto Brandolini is reputed to have said: “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” This is the unbearable asymmetry of bullshit I mentioned in my title, and it poses a serious problem for research integrity. Developing a strategy for overcoming it, I suggest, should be a top priority for publication ethics.

Earp urges that we (and especially, journalists) need to stay vigilant about the possibility that impressive looking scientific findings are severely flawed.  In his article, he identifies some of the telltale signs of science badly done, for instance, the Gish Gallop, the technique by which one spews forth torrents of error cannot be easily refuted in the format of a debate short form debate. That said, Earp succinctly explains that attacking flawed scientific claims is a completely different thing than honoring the scientific method. In fact, attacking science badly-done is an excellent way to honor the scientific method:

[S]cience is flawed. And scientists are people too. While it is true that most scientists — at least the ones I know and work with — are hell-bent on getting things right, they are not therefore immune from human foibles. If they want to keep their jobs, at least, they must contend with a perverse “publish or perish” incentive structure that tends to reward flashy findings and high-volume “productivity” over painstaking, reliable research. On top of that, they have reputations to defend, egos to protect, and grants to pursue. They get tired. They get overwhelmed. They don’t always check their references, or even read what they cite. They have cognitive and emotional limitations, not to mention biases, like everyone else.

At the same time, as the psychologist Gary Marcus has recently put it, “it is facile to dismiss science itself. The most careful scientists, and the best science journalists, realize that all science is provisional. There will always be things that we haven’t figured out yet, and even some that we get wrong.” But science is not just about conclusions, he argues, which are occasionally (or even frequently) incorrect. Instead, “It’s about a methodology for investigation, which includes, at its core, a relentless drive towards questioning that which came before.” You can both “love science,” he concludes, “and question it.”

I agree with Marcus. In fact, I agree with him so much that I would like to go a step further: if you love science, you had better question it, and question it well, so it can live up to its potential.

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The Woke Alternative to the Scientific Method

The Science Femme poses a simple question. The many comments are worth a careful read. Some of them might keep you up at night in that the humor is laced with deep concern.

The Woke Temple provides an illustration of the Woke alternative to the scientific method using a real-life problem. This type of "reasoning" is ubiquitous these days:

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My Plight: Burning Hours to Dissect Dumb Ideas with Precision

Claire Lehmann is Editor of Quillette. She nailed it in the Tweet below.

The Woke movement (she terms it "post-structuralist" thought) is a fermenting vat of vague, self-contradictory claims, much of them unhinged from the analytical evidence-based Enlightenment tradition that has proven itself by sending people to the moon. Wokeness functions as a Trojan horse; it looks like something good, but functions to disarm skeptical analytical thought. It functions much like fundamentalist religion, elevating raw feeling above analytical thought.

We need to meet Wokeness on its own terms if we are to show where it has gone astray. The challenge is that it requires a substantial investment to become fluent in Woke. Further, fully engaging seems like a non-ending exercise, given the continuous propagation of new ad hoc Woke concepts. Is it even possible to have a conversation where one side disparages analytical thinking, self-critical thought and even mathematics? It's the equivalent of sending a time-traveling Enlightenment thinker back to the Dark Ages to discuss the scientific method with Middle Age Church leaders.

I'm looking for the sweet spot--enough familiarity that I can demonstrate to timid outsiders that the Wokeness is drenched in destructive anti-intellectualism. Woke thought is also sprinkled with some salient legitimate concerns and emotionally-charged factual accuracies, however, so one needs to read and listen carefully.

Much of the danger can be nullified by putting the definitions of key Woke terms under the spotlight, terms such as "anti-racism, "critical," "systemic racism" and "gender."  Modern Discourses has compiled an excellent encyclopedia for understanding the origin and meaning of these terms by the Woke, as well as additional commentary.

In the meantime, how does one most efficiently convey this danger of Woke thought to the great majority of Americans, who are quietly hunkering down, waiting for this wave of socially-reverse-engineered thought to pass over? How does one best warn that this wave of anti-intellectualism and stifled inquiry will be around for a long time, given that a loud (but relatively small) mob of Woke activists has cowed the two key institutions that should be fighting the hardest against it (media and universities)?

That is our plight.

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