Defining the distinction between SCIENCE vs. Pseudoscience

Massimo Pigliucci interviewed by Richard Marshall.http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/rationally-speaking/

Philosophy of science is a big interest for you. Science vs religion has been making headlines but you’ve recently written about the demarcation problem – the issue about how we make the distinction between science and pseudo-science, and this strikes me as being as equally problematic and important as the atheist vs believer dispute. This is something Karl Popper discussed and Larry Laudan more recently too. Before saying why aren’t they the last word for you can you briefly introduce us to how they tackled the issue?

Even if philosophy is making progress, what do you say to those who argue that philosophy is being left behind by the fast advance of science and it can’t do the work it ought to because it hasn’t enough resources? This is the gist of something Peter Ludlowhas argued – there just aren’t enough people being thrown at philosophical problems to keep up. And philosophers like Ludlow and Dave Chalmers warn of the singularity problem – that advances in technology will soon be so far in advance of human capabilities that human philosophy will become redundant.
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3:AM: You participated in the Moving Naturalism Forward conference organized by Sean Carroll. You disagreed with mad dog naturalist Alex Rosenberg and defended a version of emergentism didn’t you? So why aren’t you with the mad dog view?
MP: Because it’s mad? Kidding aside, I don’t actually defend (strong) emergentism, as much as I am sympathetic to the idea and think the reasonable thing to do about it is to maintain agnosticism. Alex seems to think that modern physics has established the philosophical notion of strong reductionism, but this is highly debatable (and vigorously debated). Indeed, if one were to take a straightforward empiricist approach, one would have to lean toward emergentism, as there are plenty of higher-than-fundamental-physics level principles that scientists need in order to account for how the world works (i.e., quantum physics does no work at all – other than setting boundary conditions – in areas ranging from solid state physics to ecology, and from geology to the social sciences). And of course there is something inherently unsatisfactory, if not even downright self-contradictory, in people like Alex trying to convince others of the inevitable truth of nihilism. I mean, if he’s right, then everything we said at that workshop was already fated to happen since the moment of the Big Bang. So why argue about it? Except of course that according to his own doctrine he can’t avoid to argue about it, and I cannot but gently disagree, and so on…

3:AM: Are you agreeing with James Ladyman that there is no fundamental reality?

MP: That’s another area where I think engaged agnosticism is in order. I have read James’ and Don Ross’ Every Thing Must Go, and found it intellectually highly stimulating and thought provoking. Whether the notion that there are no “things” at the bottom of reality, or that – as they put it – ultimate reality is made of relations without relata, remains to be seen.
Science is clearly pertinent to answer certain questions about ethics. For instance: where does the strong feeling of right or wrong we all experience come from? Very likely from our evolution as highly intelligent social primates. Or, how does the brain handle ethical reasoning? That, obviously, is the province of neuroscience. But neither of these questions have much to do with the core of ethics, which deals with logic applied to resolving moral quandaries among actual human beings (or, as the virtue ethicists would have it, about answering what kind of life ought one to live). Anyone who has read Peter Singer or Michael Sandel will quickly recognize that the arguments put forth by Harris & co. are entirely irrelevant to the actual practice of ethics.

As Noam Chomsky once aptly put it, citizens of modern democracies need a course in intellectual self-defense to guard themselves against all the bullshit they will be bombarded with by corporate and governmental powers. I can’t think of anything better than studying history, reading Shakespeare and Joyce, learning how to admire a Picasso or Van Gogh, or understanding Aristotle and Marx as the foundations for that course.

3:AM: And finally, other than all your great books, are there five books you could recommend to readers here at 3:AM to take them further into your philosophical world?

MP: Just five? Ok, I’ll try, in no particular order:

- Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography, to learn about being a philosopher who is engaged in both rigorous intellectual work and important social causes.
- Michael Sandel’s Justice: What is the Right Thing to Do?, for a taste of what it is really like (pace Harris, Shermer et al.) to do ethics.
- John Searle’s Mind: A Brief Introduction, to appreciate how awesome philosophy of mind really is, and how much, ahem, debatable stuff has been written about it.
- David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, for a taste of first rate philosophy done by a first rate philosopher who writes both cogently and clearly.
- The Philosophy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, edited by Nicholas Joll, to appreciate how one can do philosophy about anything, and of course to be nudged toward (re-)reading Douglas Adams’ immortal masterpiece (which I guess was a sneaky way to get a sixth book on the list!)