An interesting dust up between Leon Kass and Steven Pinker on the nature of the mind, and morality.

I think that, as is often the case in debates like this, that they are talking past each other, which is almost inevitable, given that they start with such profoundly different premises.

[Update early afternoon]

John Derbyshire (from whom I got the link) has further thoughts. I'm a little surprised that he's surprised that Kass can have a nasty side, though.

[Update an hour or so later]

He also has some cogitations about consciousness.

I'm puzzled why "scientism" is being invoked here. As I understand it, scientism means that undue importance is assigned to beliefs, authorities, and choices that are deemed "scientific". Here, Kass refers several times to scientism, but it's not clear to me who if anyone is actually guilty of it. The purely empirical claim "that genetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology can offer a complete, purely scientific account of our humanity" is alleged by Kass to be an example of "scientism", but I don't recall an argument on why this is an unreasonable claim to make. Perhaps there is subtlety in human interaction or the ontology of "humanity" that requires other disciplines to understand fully. But Kass seems to be implying that our humanity is beyond scientific inquiry, hence, any claim to the contrary is "scientism". Perhaps he should demonstrate the existence of things which cannot be fully studied scientifically. Say like humanity whatever that is.

I only read part of the first link as it simply bored me. It's not exactly a new discussion and hopefully it will never end (because there's no reason why it should). I'll stop there on that subject.

However the claim given as an example by Karl is clearly scientism as it overemphasises the interpretation of the results. That's the short answer, the long answer is to start studying Philosophy of Science.

In more detail the big offender is the word "complete" in the claim. That automatically shows a lack of understanding for or importance given to the fundamental difference between scientific model and reality. As far as scientism goes this is a routine example illustrating a lack of awareness of what science and the scientific method is and isn't in itself. Such a claim might well have been unintentional on the part of someone who knows better but it is intentionally parroted as truth by all those who don't know better.

Unintentional scientism is often a problem of simplification out of perceived necessity that just about everyone is guilty of but it is still erroneous and awareness of it is important.

Scientific models do not define reality but do their best to approximate it. Either one believes that or one doesn't and while it is a statement open to debate still the choice of answer is rather fundamental and science as we know it is based on the statement being correct (which of course is absolutely no guarantee that it might not in fact be false). Here be dragons.

Intentional scientism has quite naturally (due to ever-increasing complexity) become so prevalent and extreme in our society that the somewhat rare examples of people that do not default to scientism are almost a cause for celebration. More worrying is the fact that scientists too succumb in larger degrees to scientism and this can invalidate not only their conclusions but sometimes even their actual science.

That last part has gone so far, particularily within medical and pharmaceutical science (where scientism has been rampant), that some companies involved in heavy R&D no longer accept scientific research that hasn't been done in-house.

I tried to be brief (with all that entails).

When I was in eight grade, my science fair project was "Can a computer be programmed to have a personality?" The computer was a Commodore Vic 20, the programming language was basic.

I had a little poll that asked people, after interacting with the program, if they thought it had a personality. If I recall correctly, the votes ran about 70% to 30% that it did indeed have a personality.

It appears I should have pursued that question much more assiduously. I would have been an early mover in the field. I would have been rich and famous! Or rich and nerdy! Or maybe just nerdy. Ah well, I got there anyway.