Skepticism

I don’t pretend to be a top philosopher, but I listen (and read articles and blogs) to people who claim to be skeptics, but then I look at what they are really saying. What most are saying is that they do not believe something that contradicts what they believe – they are really just doubters. They make absolutist statements based on a fundamental-like belief system that anything other than their view is wrong. While fundamentalism is usually reserved for theological arguments, I use it to address any belief system that adheres to an absolute truth that refuses to budge on its position regardless of any other evidence. The physicist Richard Feynman quoted, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” If you do not want your views challenged because you believe they are absolute and cannot be violated, then you should suspect you are a fundamentalist. If you do this within a scientific set of beliefs then you would be accused of scientism.

The definition of skepticism (Merriam Webster): 1: an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object, 2 a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain, 2 b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics, and 3 : doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation). Why is this important? In a nutshell, because as I uncover and disclose more esoteric ideas, many will dismiss them outright without consideration simply because they do not fit their beliefs. Let me annoy many of my environmental friends and colleagues who love the scare/fear path of persuasion, which has never been shown to work long-term – Stop trying to save the earth. It’s been here a long time and will be in the future. Mass extinctions have happened before and will long after humanity is even a footnote on the planetary story. We need to save the humans and change our thinking. And here is the pricetag – it will cost NOTHING whatsoever to Save Humanity and hence the whole planet’s life support as we like it. No need to consider the trillions of dollars for endless programs, just think differently! Daniel Quinn again provides some great insights – If the World is to saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all. Old Minds think: How do we stop these bad things from happening? If it didn’t work last year, let’s do more of it this year (and throw more money at it). New Minds think: How do we make things the way we want them to be? It if didn’t work last year, let’s do something else this year. Humanity’s greatest problem is simply the set of belief structures that keep us locked in to the rut of greed, hate, decay and destruction. So what is this way of thinking that is so simple I hear from billions of doubters? We all know the answer, but are terrified of what is required of us. Better the rut we know, yet dislike, than the change we want! There is a lot of vested interest from the hierarchy in keeping us in the rut. There is an incredible amount of mindless chatter, but little mindful thinking. Silence is our enemy.

Lyrics to the song ‘Sounds of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel
Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again. Because a vision softly creeping. Left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain, Still remains, Within the sound of silence

And the people bowed and prayed. To the neon god they made. And the sign flashed out its warning. In the words that it was forming. And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, And tenement halls”. And whispered in the sounds of silence

Pyrrho of Elis, the father of the Greek school of skeptical philosophy, essentially said that a true skeptic never ends on a firm conclusion. That is, there is only what we know now, but we must continue to delve deeper and explore all avenues. Supposedly this is what the scientific method proposes, yet my experience is that scientists are as prone to ‘fundamentalism’ in their thinking as any lay-person. If you avoid definitive conclusions (that too easily become beliefs) you open yourself up to looking for other possibilities. The peripheral vison is kept alive and open to new ‘Aha’ moments. From Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ‘What we think we know ain’t necessarily so.’ In science we never say proven, only good evidence that supports a line of thinking. Yet to deny evidence simply because it doesn’t fit a mainstream line of thinking is problematic. Especially so when the mainstream has a vested interest in keeping us all thinking along the same line. As an example, Risk Communication is also a problem because what we fear most (and what the mainstream push at us through the media) is the most unlikely to happen, but what we find inconvenient to see as part of our lifestyle is often the largest cause of risk and health problems, and unhappiness on the planet.

In my Environmental Communication text, I talk about philosophic argumentation, in which I propose 3 basic questions for any argument: 1. What do you mean? 2. How do you know? and 3. What was presupposed? In the same text I also discuss scientific and environmental/ecological literacy, and thinking critically about scientific information. Suffice to say, scientific literacy is appallingly poor, and ecological literacy is even less understood by the public at large. (Just Google the Roper surveys and the NEEF surveys for U.S. results.) My observations and informal studies within classes showed me that people know a lot of environmental issues (Mainstream media is great at making us aware), but know actually little about them. When we dismantle or hobble the regulatory agencies and put all decision making on politicians, who are usually business owners or lawyers/solicitors that took only a couple of basic science classes (if at all), then there is no emphasis on critically educating people in a broad range of topics and critical thinking. Then add only the mainstream narrative of consumerism and we wonder why the planet is so screwed up. When we refuse to truly acknowledge and know why these problems exist and how complicit we are in creating them, then nothing will change. When we fail to recognize that facts can be contextual then we also fall in to the trap of absolutist thinking.

I recall at a big FASEB meeting once seeing two biochemists almost coming to blows over some new data. Both were working on the same biochemical mechanism but both had come to diametrically opposed conclusions based on their lab work. When I worked in the lab, my good supervisors always insisted I keep meticulous notes so that any outlying data might be explained. Many scientists omit outlying data that is blamed on measurement error simply because it doesn’t fit the rest of the data. A short story about why being open to inconsistent data is important. Once when I worked in the lab, I was doing whole cell metabolic studies with rigorous protocols and started getting unusually high cell reaction rates. In order to test drugs within these cells I was supposed to use a protocol with specific density of cells per volume of buffer. For some unknown reason I started getting reduced cell yields after my preparations. In order to get relative effects of the drugs I diluted the cells and got higher rates of reaction. Then the more dilute the cells got the higher the rates got? (Because the cells numbers were getting so diluted I had to use more sample to actually get a measurement, but inevitable the activity per cell was higher.) The phenomenon had to do with cell contact inhibition and the reason cell yields were down was that the bench centrifuge we used to pellet the cells, unknown to us, was slowly burning out. The speed we thought we set was actually slower than we realized – so less cells pelleted. Rather than simply discarding that datum finding, we found something useful that many of our colleagues in the field could use to answer a puzzling finding in their labs. People who were not good in the lab and did poor cell preparations with diluted cell testing got higher rates of reaction than good cell preparers who were able to use the accepted protocol density of cells for the testing. When we are open to alternate options, a whole world of other possible answers can be seen.

If I seriously claimed to have seen a unicorn, then many would instantly accuse me of lying or of being delusional. But for argument, what if I really believed I had seen a unicorn and actually had clear photographic and eye witness evidence of the creature? Then ‘skeptics’ would have a whole arsenal of reasons for debunking my claims, because to accept my claim at any level would mean having to take a close critical look at their own belief systems, which can be most uncomfortable, even psychologically damaging. Do Unicorns exist? A small group of hard-minded psychology, philosophy, and physicist friends once told me, “Unicorns stopped physically existing when we stopped believing in them.” So do beliefs create reality? That is a whole series of discussions to come. It is not about believing willy-nilly in something because we want it to be right. There is good peer-reviewed science to explain many things, but it takes a willingness to step outside the accepted mainstream and follow a different story. Newtonian thinking is all very well, but sometimes it makes us focus only on what is solidly in front of us. Buckminster Fuller again gives us an insight: “Everything you’ve learned in school as ‘obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.” I’m sorry if I do not give you the bulleted list of what you need to know and do to save humanity and to live sustainably – my SL text already overviews that. I need to guide you down a path for understanding. One of my favorite books is ‘A Sand County Almanac’ by Aldo Leopold. I used it in a class for over 20 years because of how he leads people down a path to make their own ‘Aha’ moments about their thinking. Are you still with me? – let’s continue down the rabbit hole.