Epistemological Modesty
Most of what I write about can be summarized in the following four sentences by David Brooks:
The correct position is the one held by self-loathing intellectuals, like Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott and others. These were pointy heads who understood the limits of what pointy heads can know. The phrase for this outlook is epistemological modesty, which would make a fine vanity license plate.
The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.
Which is fairly humbling, and not the greatest advertisement in the world for reading any of my essays.
The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.
I’ve always found, in a philosophical (or philosophy of science) sense, that this is the best way to look at the world; and I also think that it’s not nearly as degrading to science or the attempt to understand the world as people make it out to be. You still conduct science, you still attempt to learn all you can about the world around you, and you still do so with pride. You just recognize that the system with which we interpret the world, human consciousness, is likely an incomplete or flawed system, and pin back your expectations (and ego) accordingly.
I had a professor who, whenever I would bring up that kind of question, would say “that’s a squishy problem.” To him it was unscientific and not the kind of question that should be entertained by a suitably scientific mindset. What I always tried to get him to see was that at the heart of it, there is what seems to me to be a perfectly empirical question: is the medium of consciousness a dependable reflection of the world “out there,” and to what degree does any distortion disqualify us from answering certain questions? I just find that evolution makes a particularly faithful consciousness mechanism rather doubtful, myself. But I’m open to being proved wrong.
The point though is never to say “hey let’s give up! No LHC!” You can still learn a ton of things about the world around you. You can still read Jim Manzi articles and emerge better informed about the world around you. I just think that we should undertake the project with a little more intellectual humility, and keep in mind that, for certain questions, we simply won’t ever arrive at a perfect answer because of the box of language/consciousness.
— Freddie · Feb 20, 04:17 PM · #
I should say that the first question is empirical, the second is not. But I think it is an appropriately scientific question, at least.
— Freddie · Feb 20, 04:23 PM · #
The real question, though, Jim, is: does Brooks himself follow this dictum? Is he what he calls a “self-loathing” pointy head? I am afraid that is not what I get from his columns: his tone is always that of a wise old man dispensing wisdom from the high skies and his generalizations are almost always stretched to breaking point.
[The question doesn’t apply so much to you since even while one may not agree with your conclusions, your <i>style</i> is always what I call technical/academic, meaning that it resembles, more or less, the writing found in the academy. Brooks’ however is not! I find very little “epistemological modesty” when he makes his own big claims (“the West is an individualistic culture, the East is collective” etc. etc)].
— scritic · Feb 20, 04:35 PM · #
“The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.”
To echo freddy (and aviod doing my real work), that sentence is should read “…the word is to complicated to know perfectly….”
But we can still often put together an accurate enough picture of the world to act effectivly to one degree or another.
In a way, I think talking about this kind of philosophical stance is BS. The philosophy is nice and tidy but it’s a red herring really. It’s an answer to a question that isn’t really being asked in ther eal world. How often have I heard Brooks formulation used as an excuse not to act when acting will change the status quo in a way that cost someone something? The question isn’t really should we act on imperfect information, but is instead who loses and who gains. Everyone knows sometimes we try things that don’t work. Whethe we act or not rarely comes down to our philosophy, it’s almost always about basic human politics.
— cw · Feb 20, 06:28 PM · #
Right, and I notice your “epistemological modesty” is most typefied by your belief in a God for which nobody has ever supplied any evidence for, or communicated with in any way, but nevertheless you have arrived at a number of conclusions about in regards to how this figure wants you to live. (LOL!)
I’m sorry but absolutely nobody who sees a place for faith in their lives can adopt the mantle of “epistemological modesty”. Faith is the precise opposite of “epistemological modesty”. I’m not saying you have to immediately identify yourself as an atheist, or even an agnostic, but at the very least you should offer some explanation of how you can prize “epistemological modesty” yet practice epistemological arrogance in the form of religious faith.
— Chet · Feb 20, 06:42 PM · #
Economics—where this conversations started—is concerned with huge, super-complex ssytems like the weather or human behavior and because these systems are so large and complex you can’t do clean simple experiments. You have to observe and model. The result is that our knowledge of these systems is imperfect. But this is not news. Economics has been called the dismal science for a long time. And sometimes economists talk like they are sure when they can’t really be sure.But we already know that academcis do that, and we’ve known that forever. So I don’t get the concern here. We know these “sciences” are imprecise and maybe don’t qualify as sciences at all, but you can turn on the tv an get a pretty accurate idea of what the weather is going to be like tommorow andif you get depressed there are plenty of different kinds of treatments that are pretty effective, and weknow how to create housing bubbles by lowering interest rate so that the president we serve under (or next to) will get reelected.
— cw · Feb 20, 06:44 PM · #
Faith is the precise opposite of “epistemological modesty”.
No, it’s not. It’s the precise opposite of reason.
Faith hasn’t anything to do with epistemology, modest or otherwise. Both sides should remember that.
— JA · Feb 20, 06:56 PM · #
Jim,
I often don’t agree with your conclusions, but I appreciate the fact that you try to put these principles into your thinking and writing. As scritic@11:35 noted, this isn’t really a good descriptor of how Brooks actually writes, although it may well, for all I know, be a fine reflection of how he thinks, or at least how he thinks he thinks.
I would be interested to hear you expound in a little more detail about how much surety you feel we ought to have before recommending a particular sort of action. And, along a similar vein, is it your tendency to say that, not having x% surety about the outcome of any particular action, it’s best to make no action at all? But isn’t no action also an action of sorts, even if it’s just choosing the status quo?
In particular, vis-a-vis the stimulus package, I know you are skeptical about the efficacy of large parts of the program that passed. But, as has been noted countless places, including here, we really have no idea what we are doing in these entirely uncharted waters. I can definitely see an argument for not spending massive funds for no known purpose, but does that just become an argument in favor of not doing much at all?
— David Samuels · Feb 20, 07:34 PM · #
Freddie:
In my experience, most working scientists consider philosophy of science discussions to be mostly water-cooler talk, for fairly good reasons. In fact, one quick index of the health of a sub-discipline (health, as in, making lots of practical progress) is the lack of dispute over methodology at this high a level.
scritic:
Part of that is likely just a function of the different venues for which we each write. david has to fit everything into a 700 – 800 word column, which amost requires a lot of bald assertions.
cw:
I agree that “to know” needs to be qualified. I think that rather than “perfectly”, the implication of the paragraph is a somewhat stronger modifier, though – more like “sufficiently to serve as the basis for detailed, counter-intutive and long-range policies”.
I also agree that “absolute skepticism” is impractical, and almost always a ruse. The key here, IMHO, is matching our degree of certainty of knowledge to the “boldness” of our actions that we base on this knowledge.
Chet:
I don’t believe I’ve ever made any public statement about whatever religious beliefs I may or may not have, and I don’t intend to do so.
JA:
I’m guessing that analytical philosophy is the best conceivable training for the Bar.
— Jim Manzi · Feb 20, 07:45 PM · #
David:
Thanks for the questions. I gave my detailed take on what I think should be done about the stimulus here (and advocated some action).
I think that many academics are fond of citing a “status quo bias”, but if you think that some kind of evolutionary process has selected for cultural norms (loosely speaking), then you think that the status quo actually contains lots of useful, hard-to-disentangle information. Therefore, I would consider this to be more properly considered a “rational staus quo preference”. That doesn’t mean no information can trump it, or that no change should be made etc.; it simply implies an attitude of humulity and caution about this change. In other words, I am a conservative in that sense.
— Jim Manzi · Feb 20, 07:51 PM · #
“The key here, IMHO, is matching our degree of certainty of knowledge to the “boldness” of our actions that we base on this knowledge.”
Or matching our degree of certainty to the degree of risk in not acting. I think this caution or modesty or whatever is great as one step in a decision making process, but elevating it to the bedrock observation of philosophy of life seems lazy or too convienient to me. It just doesn’t seem that profound or relevant an insight.
On the other hand, I have seen this step in the descision making process ignored way too often in my working life, and haved had to live with the crappy results
i
— cw · Feb 20, 08:27 PM · #
The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.
Not “modesty” methinks….but cowardice and complacence.
Sure, we can’t know everything, Godelian incompleteness blah-de-blahblah….but why should that stop us from trying?
If you were really Riddick, you’d grab the goddess <i>Metis</i> by the throat and wring every drop of knowledge you could out of her, instead of modestly averting your eyes from her fierce and righteous gaze.
— matoko_chan · Feb 20, 08:42 PM · #
Jim: I’m guessing that analytical philosophy is the best conceivable training for the Bar.
Let’s hope so.
On the working scientist water cooler thing, as you say it’s a sign of health. Attending to philosophy of science is, to the scientist, what proprioception is to the baseball hitter.
— JA · Feb 20, 09:08 PM · #
Well, now, hold on a second. Either there’s someone else on this blog who posts as “Jim Manzi”, or you’re being just a little dishonest here.
After all, was it or was it not you, Jim, who assailed Jerry Coyne for the fallacy of
So you have faith that there are all these other forms of truth, all these other valuable ways of knowing – even though you were not able to mention a single example in 98 posts’-worth of thread.
I don’t see what’s at all modest about that. “Epistemological modesty” means not pretending that we know more than we know we can know, or at least, be confident in our knowledge that we’re not just making it up.
You’ve attacked – accurately, IMO – economics for insufficient justification for the things they claim to know, and the mantle of surety and empiricism that they attempt to don in order to give authority to what are essentially statements of opinion – or even faith.
But when Coyne makes exactly the same argument against religion, which makes even more truth-claims about the world than economics does, he earns your enmity. Well, let me hit you with the same argument – why are you assuming that science is the only form of economic truth, or the only means of arriving at economic knowledge that is of any worth or value? Why can’t economists simply pray to Mammon, for instance, and arrive at economic insights of equal or greater value than those that might be gleaned by rigorous testing?
— Chet · Feb 20, 10:20 PM · #
Chet:
Saying that Coyne hasn’t made the case that only scientific knowledge is valuable is pretty far from saying I profess religious belief.
If politican or academic or blogger X says that the US should implement stimulus policy Y because “God told him so”, I’d be pretty unwilling to accept the policy on authority.
— Jim Manzi · Feb 20, 10:44 PM · #
The substance of my comment is that faith is the exact opposite of the modesty you prize. Faith, in essence, is the abandonment of such modesty – it’s an attempt to say “I can’t possibly know; thus, I’m going to come to a conclusion anyway.”
You can hide behind the fact that you’ve never come out as religious in any way; the problem is, you’ve never come out as faithless, either. It’s a dodge. If you really prized epistemological modesty, you’d have been behind Coyne when he applied it to religion – not accusing him of being blind to all the very reasonable and logical ways to come up with make-believe.
Is this kind of intellectual dishonesty common at The American Scene? First Jacobs and now you.
— Chet · Feb 21, 01:18 AM · #
Chet,
The idea that Coyne’s article was an exercise in ‘epistemological modesty’ is laughable on its face.
— jlr · Feb 21, 02:47 AM · #
Faith, in essence, is the abandonment of such modesty – it’s an attempt to say “I can’t possibly know; thus, I’m going to come to a conclusion anyway.”
So Jim disagrees with your original bald assertion, and you respond with another mere assertion and then level a personal attack. Is this kind of blinkered rudeness common from you?
— kenB · Feb 21, 02:53 AM · #
In my view, Coyne’s article was an exercise in epistemological insanity, or else dishonesty. On the one hand, he claims (or pretends to believe) that scientific knowledge is the only true knowledge. Yet I presume that he votes, and invests, and disciplines (in the broad sense of the word) his children, just like the rest of us, even though we have no scientific knowledge to guide our beliefs in those areas.
— y81 · Feb 21, 04:09 AM · #
What he claims is that we don’t know of any other means to knowledge that provide any sort of reliability or confidence short of secular reason; thus, we should not assume that any alternatives exist.
That is, by definition, epistemological modesty.
Only if you didn’t read it. y81 clearly didn’t.
— Chet · Feb 22, 02:27 AM · #
Maybe a review of Pascal’s wager is in order…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
— Bill D · Feb 22, 02:46 AM · #
Not “modesty” methinks….but cowardice and complacence.
So, about this cowardice and complacence. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? And on what authority/evidence do you judge it to be so.
— The Reticulator · Feb 22, 06:53 AM · #
It is a bad thing.
And i suspect it is just another gimped effort to spread the cloak of liberty over the illiberal christianists.
My moral authority comes from my membership in the meta-tribe of America, and the humanist values proposed by the Foundes and Framers.
My intellectual authority comes from my own quenchless thirst for knowledge.
— matoko_chan · Feb 22, 10:53 PM · #
RE: Pascal’s Wager
I am reminded of a rather permissive form of Caribbean Christianity. As the story goes, this particular sect suggests that being a good person in a sermon on the mount kind of way is a preferable way to live and makes getting along easier, but it require no terrestrial affirmation of belief for salvation.
Shortly after death the departed’s soul transported to St. Peter’s Gate, where he or she will behold the Kingdom of Heaven in all its glory. If prior affirmations a belief have been offered, then he or she is permitted to enter. If not, non-believer is offered one last chance to reconsider.
If I were a betting man, I would be a congregant at this church.
— Tony Comstock · Feb 23, 03:50 AM · #
So matoko_chan bases his value judgments on some mystical revelation accessible only to himself, it would appear. Dunno why he should be imposing his brand of morality on the rest of us, though.
— The Reticulator · Feb 23, 06:08 AM · #
I’m a grrl, and I’m not imposing morality on you.
Just on Riddick in this case.
I’m not at all sure any of the rest of you have the substrate to get it, but I know he does.
— matoko_chan · Feb 23, 02:00 PM · #
matako_chan, you were imposing your morality wrt cowardice and complacence on us. Not by physical force, of course, but you were imposing your judgment on others. You said cowardice and complacence were bad.
— The Reticulator · Feb 24, 05:28 AM · #
I was talking explicitly about Manzi, and our continuing genetic determinism argument.
Sry if that wasn’t clear.
— matoko_chan · Feb 24, 02:46 PM · #
What does it matter what/whom you were referring to, matoko? What right do you have to impose your personal notions of morality (cowardice is bad, complacency is bad) on the terms of the discourse? I beg you to stop prancing and braying in the public square with these antiquated and unprovable notions of good/bad.
— Kate Marie · Feb 24, 06:37 PM · #
Obviously, Kate Marie is one of those prancing braying lower IQ socons.
We are discussing epistemological modesty.
As a scientist and an upper right tailer, I say epistemological modesty is either craven cowardice, or complacent fatuous trust in “traditional wisdom”.
/ghetto snap @ Kate Marie
— matoko_chan · Feb 24, 10:57 PM · #
Matoko,
I may be one of those lower IQ socons that your slogan-addled brain seems to fixate on, but I’m not stupid enough to keep trading in silly redundancies like “craven cowardice” while remaining completely oblivious to the points that Reticulator and Mr. Manzi and others have made on this thread.
“Craven cowardice” — is that some phrase you learned in your career as a “scientist and upper right tailer?”
Besides, you use the phrase “craven cowardice” as though it’s a bad thing.
Bray on, sister!
— Kate Marie · Feb 24, 11:14 PM · #
Ah, but I’m not braying about religion, like the Jesus-asses.
Dr. Manzi endorses the idea that genetic determinism is too “complex” to ever be unravelled….now I see him applying that to the world in general.
Oooo, the world is so complicated, lets just give up.
Pardon, but this smells like “faith” to me.
— matoko_chan · Feb 25, 04:33 AM · #