Boom de ya da - A Naturalist Anthem

A few months ago, The Discovery Channel ran this commercial on TV. I loved it then, and I love it now; it perfectly illustrates why I just don't understand the common theistic claim that "naturalism takes the wonder out of the world." Reality is just awesome.

Interdisciplinary Woes

I'm a pretty interdisciplinary person. I've always been the type who would rather know a little bit about a lot of topics than a lot about a few topics--jack of all trades and master of none, if you will. Obviously I've had to focus somewhat as I've gotten more involved in academia, but philosophy is still an incredibly interdisciplinary field of study. It always has been--'philosophers,' traditionally, have played the roles of scientist, literary critic, playwright, mathematician, and a whole host of others--and though recently (i.e. within the last 200 or so years) our province has shrunk a bit, philosophers still commonly call on knowledge from several different areas of academia in the course of their work. This is particularly true in philosophy of mind, I think, which is increasingly overlapping with cognitive neuroscience, a rather new interdisciplinary program at many universities. Still, even if you're working in Medieval philosophy, the ability to synthesize across disciplines is vital. There are, however, some pretty troubling issues in various interdisciplinary programs, as an email I got today from a friend of mine pointed out.

When I was at Berkeley, I double-majored in philosophy and Peace & Conflict Studies (PACS). I've always been pretty interested in human rights, social justice, nonviolence, and similar issues, and this relatively unique program at Berkeley seemed to be a perfect fit when I enrolled as a Freshman. I quickly discovered, though, that the department was fraught with problems--the most severe of which, I think, was a general resistance to critical examinations of foundational assumptions (e.g. that violence is wrong), and an almost religious fervor in defending those assumptions. I'm not saying that everyone in the program was like this--I met some really great people in the PACS program, and was greatly impressed with at least some of the professors--but it was enough of a problem that I noticed, and apparently I'm not alone. I got an email today from a friend in the program saying that one of the more popular courses ended in "crying and a shouting match," as two contingents of the course (one of whom apparently thought that the professor was acting as a western apologist) clashed over how the material was being presented.

I definitely have my suspicions as to whom this altercation involved--I suspect it was the same group I repeatedly clashed with while I was there--but that's not really my point here. I think these kinds of clashes are going to become increasingly common in interdisciplinary programs like PACS, and I think that they're necessary growing pains that departments like this are going to have to go through before they'll be taken seriously by other academics.

The last twenty years or so have seen the emergence of a plethora of "new" academic programs, most of which end in the word 'studies.' Peace & Conflict Studies, Gender Studies, and African-American Studies (to name a few), have all arisen and/or started to become more popular in the last two or three decades. In the beginning, programs of this sort were occupied primarily by "true believers"--that is, people who had a strong (and often orthodox) view on the discipline--and were often pretty homogeneous as a result. PACS-style programs, for instance, have been traditionally attended by far-left leaning individuals interested primarily in activism and working for social justice.

This homogeneity, I think, is one of the reasons that other academics have a hard time taking (for example) PACS seriously. I was talking to John Searle once during his office hours, and mentioned offhand that I was double-majoring in PACS along with philosophy; he was agast. I can't remember his exact words, but they were something like "I always thought majors ending in the word 'studies' did anything but that." He was willing to listen to what I had to say, and I think he accepted some of the points I made about the legitimacy of studying war and violence specifically, but that kind of perception is very wide-spread in academia--as I said, I think that the traditional homogeneity of these disciplines is at least partially to blame. Academia is based, at least in large part, self-criticism and peer review--physics, philosophy, and other "traditionally" academic disciplines have advanced primarily through reasoned criticism from within: the fact that astrophysics has come as far as it has is directly related to the fact that not everyone accepted the belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth as dogma. Similarly, the fact that philosophers, on the whole, no longer accept Logical Behaviorism is related to the sustained and reasoned criticism of the doctrine that other philosophers made throughout the 60s and 70s. In short, a diversity of opinions within a single department is a good thing.

A lot of academics, I think, see the traditional insularity of departments like PACS and think to themselves "They all think more or less the same thing, so why should I listen to them;" philosophers in particular tend to eschew dogmatism. Because of this, I think we should welcome the current trend of breaking up the monotony of "-studies" programs. Even in my four years in PACS at Berkeley, I saw a truly enormous influx of students to the major, which naturally meant a huge influx of opinions. A lot of the people in my classes disliked me because I was unwilling to take assumptions as unquestioned axioms, but toward the end there was a small (but growing) minority of people who shared my desire to make the PACS major a bit more rigorous.

As this trend continues--and as "true believers" are replaced by people who are interested in but critical of the subject--I think we can expect majors like "Peace Studies" to begin to gain respectability, but not without growing pains. The incident my friend alluded to in his email is a manifestation of these growing pains, it seems to me--people who are in the program only to hear their own opinions repeated back to them are naturally going to resent those who seek to bring serious discourse into the classroom; dogmatic people don't like to question their dogma. Still, though, I think in the end the rewards will be worth it: interdisciplinary departments will, at last, begin to have the same recognition and respect shown to them that philosophy, English, biology, and physics do. All we need to do is keep arguing with ourselves.

Quicklink: More Evidence That Everything is Connected

A recent study apparently demonstrates that the perceived flavor of a glass of wine can be significantly impacted by ambient music playing while drinking. Snip:

Four types of music were played - Carmina Burana by Orff ("powerful and heavy"), Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky ("subtle and refined"), Just Can't Get Enough by Nouvelle Vague ("zingy and refreshing") and Slow Breakdown by Michael Brook ("mellow and soft")

The white wine was rated 40% more zingy and refreshing when that music was played, but only 26% more mellow and soft when music in that category was heard.

The red was altered 25% by mellow and fresh music, yet 60% by powerful and heavy music.

The results were put down to "cognitive priming theory", where the music sets up the brain to respond to the wine in a certain way.

Priming, the phenomenon whereby antecedent mental states affect perception, recall, or other cognitive functions, could indeed be responsible for this effect. Still, I think there's a deeper message here: namely, that we need to stop considering brain functions in isolation from one another and start looking at the big picture; let's get holistic!

On Pain

I got into a discussion on SoapBoxxer this morning about whether or not one can have rape fantasies. I've actually gotten a lot of flack on this subject before, as I got into a similar argument during my Philosophy of Social Science course at Berkeley--I was (in both instances) one of the few who argued that you can't desire to be raped. For some reason, this seems to be kind of a hot button topic--I suppose that's rape for you, though.

In any case, the discussion on SB this morning got me thinking about something that (I think) is a bit more philosophically interesting--whether or not anyone can truly be said to "enjoy pain." My initial position was similar to that on "desiring rape"--that is, that it's a contradiction in terms. 'Pain,' it seems to me, refers to an unpleasant sensation; if someone is enjoying a particular sensation, that seems to necessarily imply that what he is experiencing is not pain, but something else. I've discussed this with a few people throughout the day today, and my System Idle Process has been working on it as well; a few people have given me some pretty compelling arguments that I think need to be addressed--I haven't changed my position, but I have added some more nuance.

The first, and perhaps most obvious, counterexample to the claim "no one can enjoy pain" is the masochist case. Some people (I haven't been able to find a reliable estimate as to how many; if anyone knows, please comment!) claim to "enjoy" pain in the context of sexual activity. The medical term for this is algolagnia. This can take a variety of forms and occur in a variety of severities ranging from liking spankings to being unable to get sexually aroused without a bed of nails to lie on. People who suffer (no pun intended) from this condition claim to legitimately "enjoy" the painful sensations in the context of sexuality. It seems to me that there's something deeply incorrect about that claim, but in order to see what it is, we need to define pain a bit more clearly, I think.

There's a temptation, I think, to define pain causally--e.g. "pain is the sort of sensation that happens when you hit your thumb with a hammer"--a temptation that needs to be resisted, it seems, if we're going to give a coherent account of what pain is. We know that different neurobiological structures can cause individuals to qualitatively experience the same stimulus differently: differences in the structure of the eyes and/or brain can cause one individual to have the same sensation when presented with grass and when presented with a ripe tomato, and I learned today that my own mother is unable to qualitatively tell the difference between sweet and sour tastes. Pain, it seems, works much the same way--differences in neurological structure can cause an individual to develop algolagnia and begin to "enjoy" stimuli that he previously regarded as painful. A causal definition, then, won't work--we can't name any one stimulus that will reliably produce any single sensation in all individuals.

Similarly, we can't define pain behaviorally (i.e. in terms of what actions or dispositions to action it is likely to elicit), for reasons best outlined in Hilary Putnam's discussion of "super-Spartans" in his article "Brains and Behavior." Briefly, the argument goes something like this. Let's suppose that pain is defined behaviorally--that is, a sensation counts as a pain if and only if it disposes the person experiencing it to say ouch, wince, try to get away, etc. Now, let's imagine a community of people who value stoicism above all else; they consider it a terrible display of character weakness to give any sign that one is in pain, even if one is in excruciating agony. Let's call them "super-Spartans." They've disciplined themselves to the point that, though they still experience pain normally, they no longer have even the impulse to act in any of the ways that we would generally consider "pain-behavior" when they feel pain, no matter how great it is. If you were to ask a super-Spartan how it feels to (say) have his arm chopped off with a rusty axe, he would readily admit that it feels absolutely awful, and that the pain is tremendous; however, he would do so with the same nonchalance that he would show when discussing the weather or the price of tomatoes. Behaviorism, it seems, would make this sort of society impossible, but we can clearly conceive of it as a real possibility; behaviorism thus seems to be false. This is a rather quick treatment of a very nuanced issue, so I encourage you to read Putnam's original article.

What's left, then? One obvious choice, I think, is to define pain both qualitatively and indexically (i.e. in the same way that words like 'mine' or 'above' are defined)--in other words, to define it in an observer relative and epistemically subjective way. On this sort of definition, what counts as causing pain (as well as how one behaves when subjected to pain) will vary from person to person (that's the indexical part), but the essential character of the experience remains unchanged. In short, while experience x might be painful to you and not me (and vice-versa with experience y), both experiences share a common (and unpleasant) qualitative character; it is that common qualitative character that we're really referring to when we say 'pain.'

So what does this mean for people who claim to enjoy pain? Why is it the case that my muscle pain after a satisfying workout has an element of pleasure, whereas the same muscle pain, unprecipitated by exercise, would be experienced as significantly more painful? Why can some people claim to enjoy being whipped during sex, while others find the thought horrifying? My view here is akin to my view on color perception--that is, the environment (broadly construed) counts for a lot more in determining the character of an experience than we give it credit for. Apropos, then, a color analogy:

Suppose you cannot stand the color blue, and that your favorite color is green. If I were to ask you "What is your favorite color?" you certainly wouldn't respond with "Well, I really hate blue unless you mix it with yellow, and then I really enjoy it; my favorite color, then, is blue when mixed with yellow." Instead, you'd say "My favorite color is green." When the pigments for blue and yellow (each of which causes a specific qualitative experience in you) are combined, the result is an entirely new substance, which causes an entirely new qualitative experience--that of green. I think something similar is going on in the case of "enjoyed pain."

Obviously the analogy is not perfect--instead of mixing pigments that react with the environment to produce particular sensations in various individuals, we're directly mixing sensations (e.g. pain and sexual arousal). Still, I think the analogy makes an important point: two different things can be less than enjoyable separately, but can be combined to produce a third product that is itself more enjoyable. While it's true that both the pain and the sexual pleasure may be present still in themselves, it seems likely to me that--given the fact that for many people pain is enjoyed only in certain contexts--they combine to produce a third "metaqualia"--or second order qualia--that is itself enjoyable.

So can pain be enjoyable? The simple answer is 'no,' but the complex answer is a bit longer: in certain environments ('environments,' again, construed broadly so as to include facts about individual neurobiology), pain can contribute to pleasurable sensations, but pain itself is still not pleasurable.

Quicklink: Philosophy Students Increasing in Number

Recently, the New York Times ran an article discussing the increasing number of undergraduates who are choosing to major in philosophy. It's always nice when the discipline gets some positive publicity--the article speaks highly of the worth of a major in philosophy--so I thought I would share it.

Best paragraph in the article:

Jenna Schaal-O’Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive.

“That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.”

Link.

SoapBoxxes, Quantum Plants, and Free Will

Hi everybody! It's been a while since I last posted here, so before I get to the meat of this post, I'd like to explain myself. About two weeks ago, I discovered SoapBoxxer, an Internet forum (ish thing), and it immediately proceeded to swallow my life whole and digest it in a warm broth of argumentative goodness. The basic premise of the site is that anyone can create an "Opinion," which consists of a binary statement (i.e. something with a Yes/No or Agree/Disagree answer), and other people vote on it. After you vote, you can comment on, argue about, or discuss the original topic and/or other comments on it. The site is new, relatively small, and full of pretty intelligent people. If you enjoy Internet argument even one fifth as much as I do, I'd recommend joining up right away. I am (of course) RealityApologist over there.

I was convinced that something good would come of my newfound addiction, and yesterday something did. Someone from SoapBoxxer pointed me toward this study about the newly discovered relationship between photosynthesis and quantum mechanics. It seems that researchers at Berkeley (yay!) have discovered a possible reason for plants' uncannily efficient use of sunlight (they're able to convert upwards of 90% of absorbed light into energy, whereas most solar panels haven't even come close to 50% efficiency yet). For a long time, how exactly they managed this was a mystery, but it seems like we've got a possible explanation now.

"We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis,” said Graham Fleming, the principal investigator for the study. “This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one."

I can't stress enough how cool this is. Apparently the pigment molecules that are responsible for making the initial conversion of light energy to usable energy have a unique (so far--more on that in a bit) ability to momentarily "pause" the energy in a superposition and simultaneously explore all the possible ways the energy can be utilized. When it finds the most efficient way to utilize it, the wave function collapses into that state, and the energy gets passed on. The researchers on the project are careful to stress

For this reason, the transfer of electronic coherence between excitons during relaxation has usually been ignored. By demonstrating that the energy transfer process does involve electronic coherence and that this coherence is much stronger than we would ever have expected, we have shown that the process can be much more efficient than the classical view could explain. However, we still don’t know to what degree photosynthesis benefits from these quantum effects.

Obviously, I'm not a physicist (though reading about this stuff makes Columbia's MA in the Philosophical Foundations of Physics look mighty tempting), but it seems pretty clear that this adaptation is at least partially responsible for the very high efficiency of photosynthetic plants. Now, I'd like to take this idea a step further. What follows is PURE speculation on my part--I know there is at least one physicist in the audience, so PLEASE correct me if anything I say makes no sense.

I've discussed free will at some length on this blog, but I've spent very little time on Libertarianism (basically the view that we have free will in the traditional, robust, alternative possibilities sense). I've been dismissive of it as a viable philosophical position mostly because I haven't been able to see any scientifically plausible way that it could be true--most people who argue for it these days do so through an appeal to quantum mechanics, but are unable to describe how the brain might inherit the indeterminacy inherent in QM without also inheriting the randomness. This is a problem, of course, because random actions are no freer than determined ones--in order for us to really be "free" in a Libertarian sense, we have to be able to choose from multiple different paths without that choice being a random one.

Now the speculation: if chlorophyll can do this, why not the brain? If these researchers are correct, plants have evolved a mechanism to explore multiple quantum states at the same time before collapsing into the most beneficial one--what if our brains are doing something similar? Obviously, the mechanism would need to be far more complex than that involved in photosynthesis (making a rational choice doesn't seem to be just a matter of collapsing into the lowest energy state), but still: this research seems to lay some exciting groundwork for further exploration of the biological utilization of quantum mechanics. If our brains were somehow able to do something similar to this, it could potentially allow for quantum indeterminacy without quantum randomness--all possible quantum states would be open to us (indeterminacy), but which state we "collapsed" into would be dictated by something other than chance (not randomness). I'm very excited to see where this goes.

Charlton Heston

So Charlton Heston's dead. I'm sure someone else has already suggested this, but can we give his corpse a gun just for the fun of prying it from his cold dead hands?


Sorry--I couldn't resist.

Dogmatism Bites Man

Dogmatism in any form is dangerous. I think religion--as well as supernaturalism in general--is dangerous (in that it promotes false beliefs, etc.), but I would never argue that we shouldn't talk about religion or supernaturalism. As someone concerned primarily with truth, I don't think that suppressing the expression of any idea--no matter how absurd it might seem--is a good thing to do. That's why the recent exchange between secular activist Rob Sherman and Illinois State Representative Monique Davis (D-Chicago) is so appalling to me.

Rob Sherman is (apparently) rather well known in Illinois as the man who singlehandedly (well, pretty much) put a stop to the mandatory moment of prayer silence nonsense that the State Legislature tried to push on public schools last year. Well, he's back and rightfully pissed off once again. This time, he was testifying before the House State Government Administration Committee against Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's attempt to give a $1 million grant to Pilgrim Baptist Church (for "reconstruction of the historical landmark"). Unwilling to let things like Constitutionality and good sense get in the way of her beliefs, Rep. Davis had the following exchange with Mr. Sherman (emphasis mine):

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

And this from a Democrat! Some people (though not many) have called for Rep. Davis to publicly apologize, but I'm with Alonzo Fyfe in thinking that this isn't really enough; she needs to resign. She obviously has no regard for the separation of church and state--a fundamental part of our democracy--and, perhaps more fundamentally, she seems to hold the idea that those who disagree with her are dangerous and that their opinions need to be silenced. I'm all for disagreement, and I even suppose I might be OK with politicians saying things like "All atheists are immoral;" let the electorate see how ignorant they are, and they may not get reelected. It is, however, too much to tolerate when politicians begin to use their positions to bully people into silence.

The statement "it's dangerous for our children to even know your philosophy exists" shows not only a deep seated penchant for superstition, but also a pathological fear of putting the issue up for public debate--a fear that is fundamentally antithetical to her position as a democratic representative. If Ms. Davis believes her position to be the correct one, what could possibly be dangerous about giving kids all the facts?

Have you heard about this story before? I doubt it--though it happened over a week ago, it is only now being picked up (and pretty much only by blogs). Suppose, just for a moment, that the roles had been reversed here: suppose that it had been an atheist Representative browbeating and berating a Christian citizen in a public hearing. Do you think you would have heard about that? Is there something wrong with this picture?

The Sokal Affair

In honor of the holiday today, I want to talk a bit about my favorite academic hoax of all time: the Sokal Affair. In 1996, Professor Alan Sokal (a professor of physics at NYU) submitted an article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to the prominent postmodernist/literary criticism journal Social Text. His goal was to see if a well respected (at least within its own field) academic journal would publish an article whose point was total nonsense simply because it used pretty rhetoric and supported the ideological stance of the editorial board. "Transgressing the Boundaries" is delightfully absurd, containing such gems as:

It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality'', no less than social "reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific "knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities.

and

Thirdly, the postmodern sciences overthrow the static ontological categories and hierarchies characteristic of modernist science. In place of atomism and reductionism, the new sciences stress the dynamic web of relationships between the whole and the part; in place of fixed individual essences (e.g. Newtonian particles), they conceptualize interactions and flows (e.g. quantum fields). Intriguingly, these homologous features arise in numerous seemingly disparate areas of science, from quantum gravity to chaos theory to the biophysics of self-organizing systems. In this way, the postmodern sciences appear to be converging on a new epistemological paradigm, one that may be termed an ecological perspective, broadly understood as "recogniz[ing] the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the embeddedness of individuals and societies in the cyclical patterns of nature.'

and

Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and 'pro-choice', so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo-Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice.

In short, he argued that quantum mechanics have broadly progressive political implications, implications which favor radical feminism and and end to the "caste system in the sciences."

Of course one does not need to be a physicist to recognize that virtually everything in the paper (exemplified by my quotations above) is pure nonsense--Sokal himself thought it so obviously absurd that he was amazed when it was accepted for publication in Social Text's "Science Wars" issue; the idea that quantum mechanics is in some way "a progressive feminist science," for instance, is so bizarre as to boarder on total gibberish. In fact, Sokal even contacted the editorial board of Social Text repeatedly and asked them to read his article carefully and offer any suggestions for improvement or clarification (he said that he was, after all, a scientist writing in a humanities journal, and thus needed all the help he could get). The editors offered no suggestions and no criticism.

On the day the article was to be published, Sokal published another paper, this one in Lingua Franca detailing his hoax and discussing why he perpetrated it. Snip from that article:

The fundamental silliness of my article lies, however, not in its numerous solecisms but in the dubiousness of its central thesis and of the ``reasoning'' adduced to support it. Basically, I claim that quantum gravity -- the still-speculative theory of space and time on scales of a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter -- has profound political implications (which, of course, are ``progressive''). In support of this improbable proposition, I proceed as follows: First, I quote some controversial philosophical pronouncements of Heisenberg and Bohr, and assert (without argument) that quantum physics is profoundly consonant with ``postmodernist epistemology.'' Next, I assemble a pastiche -- Derrida and general relativity, Lacan and topology, Irigaray and quantum gravity -- held together by vague rhetoric about ``nonlinearity'', ``flux'' and ``interconnectedness.'' Finally, I jump (again without argument) to the assertion that ``postmodern science'' has abolished the concept of objective reality. Nowhere in all of this is there anything resembling a logical sequence of thought; one finds only citations of authority, plays on words, strained analogies, and bald assertions.

Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for example, about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the discussion of these matters.

In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.

Regular readers will know that I have an ongoing Cold War with proponents of postmodernism and poststructuralism for more or less the same reasons Sokal outlines above: I think that there is a dangerous lack of critical academic standards within the field as a whole and that, as a result, it is far too easy to pass off utter nonsense as serious "philosophy" simply by draping that nonsense in literary allusion and obfuscating rhetoric; because of this, it warms my heart to see an actual academic catch these jokers with their pants down (even if said pantsing happened 10 years ago).

Predictably, there was some backlash to the so-called "Sokal Affair." The editorial board of Social Text complained that their publication (which was not peer-reviewed at the time) was based on a relationship of trust between editors and authors--a relationship which Sokal violated when he submitted an intentionally spurious article. Sokal contended (and rightfully so, I think) that this was precisely his point: the whole business of getting at the truth about reality isn't something that should be based on trust, but rather on careful consideration of the facts. He pointed out that:

My article is a theoretical essay based entirely on publicly available sources, all of which I have meticulously footnoted. All works cited are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Now, it's true that the author doesn't believe his own argument. But why should that matter? The editors' duty as scholars is to judge the validity and interest of ideas, without regard for their provenance. (That is why many scholarly journals practice blind refereeing.) If the Social Text editors find my arguments convincing, then why should they be disconcerted simply because I don't? Or are they more deferent to the so-called ``cultural authority of technoscience'' than they would care to admit?

In the end, I resorted to parody for a simple pragmatic reason. The targets of my critique have by now become a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside. In such a situation, a more direct demonstration of the subculture's intellectual standards was required. But how can one show that the emperor has no clothes? Satire is by far the best weapon; and the blow that can't be brushed off is the one that's self-inflicted. I offered the Social Text editors an opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual rigor. Did they meet the test? I don't think so.

I say this not in glee but in sadness. After all, I'm a leftist too (under the Sandinista government I taught mathematics at the National University of Nicaragua). On nearly all practical political issues -- including many concerning science and technology -- I'm on the same side as the Social Text editors. But I'm a leftist (and feminist) because of evidence and logic, not in spite of it. Why should the right wing be allowed to monopolize the intellectual high ground?

And why should self-indulgent nonsense -- whatever its professed political orientation -- be lauded as the height of scholarly achievement?

So, in honor of April Fool's Day, thank you Alan Sokal for using a prank to make the world a slightly more rational place.

Quicklink: US Army Using 'Spirtual Healing' To Combat PTSD

Today's Quicklink comes from the Wired blog. Noah Schactman reports that:

The Army just unveiled a $4 million program to investigate everything from "spiritual ministry, transcendental meditation, [and] yoga" to "bioenergies such as Qi gong, Reiki, [and] distant healing" to mend the psyches of wounded troops.

Sure, we could try Reiki and acupuncture or we could, you know, not send people to kill other people for no good reason. I bet that's pretty reliable in reducing incidence of PTSD.

Quicklink: How is a Brain Not Like a Computer?

I'm going to try to start posting at least one "quicklink" every day--something cool (and relevant) that I found on the internet with a minimum of commentary. Today's comes from Developing Intelligence, and covers some reasons why the brain is really not very much like today's digital computers; this topic is important, as there are a lot of people out there who actually think that we're right on the brink of using computers to create beings with minds like ours. Snip:

It's easy to think that neurons are essentially binary, given that they fire an action potential if they reach a certain threshold, and otherwise do not fire. This superficial similarity to digital "1's and 0's" belies a wide variety of continuous and non-linear processes that directly influence neuronal processing.

For example, one of the primary mechanisms of information transmission appears to be the rate at which neurons fire - an essentially continuous variable. Similarly, networks of neurons can fire in relative synchrony or in relative disarray; this coherence affects the strength of the signals received by downstream neurons. Finally, inside each and every neuron is a leaky integrator circuit, composed of a variety of ion channels and continuously fluctuating membrane potentials.

The Great Tanta Challenge

Things like this make me smile a big happy smile of naturalistic joy. Earlier this month Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International challenged India's most prominent practitioner of Tantrik--a prominent superstition in India--to put his magic where his mouth is. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to give magical advice and aid to top Indian politicians, claimed on national television that he could kill any man "in under three minutes" with his black magic. Sanal, also present on the program, invited him to give it a try. After nearly two hours of chanting and ritual (including pressing on Sanal's temples, sprinkling him with water, and waving a knife at him), the show's producers declared the attempt a failure, prompting the following:

The tantrik, unwilling to admit defeat, tried the excuse that a very strong god whom Sanal might be worshipping obviously protected him. “No, I am an atheist,” said Sanal Edamaruku. Finally, the disgraced tantrik tried to save his face by claiming that there was a never-failing special black magic for ultimate destruction, which could, however, only been done at night. Bad luck again, he did not get away with this, but was challenged to prove his claim this very night in another “breaking news” live program.

Anyone want to guess how the super-double-secret magic ritual went? From the Rationalist International website:

Now the tantrik wrote Sanal’s name on a sheet of paper, tore it into small pieces, dipped them into a pot with boiling butter oil and threw them dramatically into the flames. Nothing happened. Singing and singing, he sprinkled water on Sanal, mopped a bunch of peacock feathers over his head, threw mustard seed into the fire and other outlandish things more. Sanal smiled, nothing happened, and time was running out. Only seven more minutes before midnight, the tantrik decided to use his ultimate weapon: the clod of wheat flour dough. He kneaded it and powdered it with mysterious ingredients, then asked Sanal to touch it. Sanal did so, and the grand magic finale begun. The tantrik pierced blunt nails on the dough, then cut it wildly with a knife and threw them into the fire. That moment, Sanal should have broken down. But he did not. He laughed. Forty more seconds, counted the anchor, twenty, ten, five… it’s over!

Pure, unadulterated awesome. Millions of people watched this happen live on India TV, and we can only hope that, for some at least, the spell of supernaturalism and religion was broken (or at least weakened) when the "most powerful wizard" in India failed to so much as give his compliant target a headache. It is these sorts of consciousness raising events that, ever so gradually, push the world toward a new age of reason.