Okay, so as usual when I want something to do other than the work that currently badly needs to get done, I took a spin through TVTropes.org. I stumble across an entry I hadn't noticed before called Better Than It Sounds, which contains descriptions of things and then the name of the thing behind a spoiler tag. One entry reads "People all around the world are brought together by the things they love best, which appear to be pornography, repetition of various phrases, and arguing." This refers to something that, when left to my own devices, I tend to think of as one of the distinctive technological triumphs of the 21st century. Ooops.

This weekend, I went with my friend Karl to watch the pro-ID documentary Expelled. It was an odd experience, to say the least. Before reading my review, you might want to read this review found via Vic Reppert. I don't link because I consider it a good review in the traditional sense, but because I suspect it's a good example of how people who don't know the issue are likely to respond: they find some things convincing, but can't buy all of it. This sort of movie is way too much to swallow whole.

The movie opened with black and white stock footage, most of it looking WWII (I'm retrospect I'm less sure because the use of stock footage was so indiscriminate, but hold off on that point). It wasn't just Holocaust, it was also war planning (Normandy Invasion, I think, again not quite sure). It threw me off for a moment; I thought perhaps I was watching the trailer for some other film. The relevance of that isn't made immediately clear. Only after seeing the end of the film do I suspect some of it may have been Berlin Wall shots.

Then we get to the movie proper, and for a moment it looks like things are going reasonably well. We get an audience waiting to hear Ben Stein speak, Ben Stein in his dressing room looking Very Serious (actually not terribly overdone) and then he goes out and begins delivering a ringing speech about Freedom. Trying to set up the battle over Intelligent Design as a matter of fundamental American freedoms seems a bit overdone, and there's a feeling of dissonance when you realize Stein is a comedian giving that speech rather than, say, a serious nonfiction writer, and those who did their homework will know the audience at Stein's speech were mostly extras. Still, all in all it's pulled off pretty well. It looks like a slick presentation.

Then we get to the claims that ID supporters are being persecuted, kicked off by an interview with Richard Sternberg. At this point, the presentation collapses with its very first instance of Lord Privy Seal. Lord Privy Seal is that feature of bad documentaries where content is paired with dubiously relevant images. The joke is that a discussion of the Lord Privy Seal would have shots of a lord, an outhouse, and a seal balancing a ball on its nose. In Expelled, this first precious moment comes when Sternberg says people got really, really mad about his publishing a sup-par pro-ID article, and it cuts to stock footage of guys pounding their hands on a table. I found the moment hilarious, though as the saying goes, I wasn't laughing with the movie. This first LPS was quickly followed up by shots of a guy in 19th century dress getting pushed around, I guess as a metaphor for how Sternberg got treated.

One thing I noticed with both Sternberg and the other big example of a supposedly suppressed scientist Guillermo Gonzales is that the claims were a bit vague. With Sternberg, there was a comment about "that's where my office used to be" (he was merely moved from one office to another) and being "pressured" to resign (it's clear he didn't lose any job over the controversy). It's also claimed his life was "almost" ruined, but only almost. Similarly, with Gonzales, they complain about his not getting tenure, but the filmmakers weren't about to go into the minefield issue of the details of his publication and grant record.

Nevertheless, both of those cases looked vaguely sinister if you don't know the full story behind them. However, one case I couldn't wrap my head around was the Michael Egnor one: he wrote a pro-ID article and got criticized harshly online. This was supposed to be shocking. To quote Expelled Exposed: "Michael Egnor had apparently never been on the Internet before." This seemed to be part of a pattern in the movie: it was unable to stop with a few effective bits of deception, and couldn't resist the temptation of completely overblown posturing.

Interestingly, I have at least one bit of evidence that the impact of the movie's "persecuted scientist" sequence wasn't as sharp as was intended. A few weeks ago, the campus atheist group I'm a part of spent some time discussing the movie (before it came out) and it turned out one Christian girl who had been showing up at meetings and was planning to see the film. She came back a little unclear on what exactly we had been discussing the other day. After seeing the film I tried to sort that out with her, and we worked out that she kinda remembered seeing Sternberg and it seemed "a little unfair," but I got the distinct impression it hadn't made much of an impact.

The handling of the arguments for and against ID was even more inept. The initial case against was presented in the form of one-sentence clips of representatives of the "scientific establishment" (which apparently includes Christopher Hitchens) saying variations on "ID is bad." The Stein asks, dramatically, "Do they have any other reasons for rejecting ID?" and plays a clip of a scientist talking about how boring it is. The intended impression seems to be that this is all scientists have by way of criticism of ID. Obviously, this is an instance of dishonest video editing, but it's so obvious that I don't know what Stein thought he would gain by the tactic.

The basic approach to presenting pro-ID academics like Dembski is to give them slightly more screen-time for their largely unexplained assertions, and hope this counts as a good argument. Stein keeps saying "I still have this question, so I'll go talk to so-and-so," but so-and-so is never given enough screen time to say anything of substance. The only real argument against scientific explanations of life comes with the first cell, where they go on about how cells are too complicated to come into existence by chance, yet everyone agrees that life had to start with a single cell. This isn't true though, most scientists assume life started with a simple self-replicating molecule. This was actually mentioned by an interviewee at some point (I think it was Dawkins) though a viewer would have to be really paying attention, and know what to look for, to catch this.

Also on the origin of life issue: Michael Ruse is shown proposing that life formed on crystals. This provided the context for the movie's most memorable Lord Privy Seal: a quick cut to a guy in a turban with a crystal ball. I can only wonder what impact that had on ordinary people who remember just enough of their high school earth science classes to know that crystals actually exist.

The number of points where the film goes clunk in this way are endless: attempts pseudo-dramatism made ridiculous by Stein's monotone; inane, repetitive questions ("was Hitler evil?" "Yes" "Do you believe there's such a thing as evil..."); a random shot of Stein scratching his back with a strange metal implement.

There was one instance, though, that really exemplified everything wrong with the movie: the infamous unauthorized use of John Lennon's "Imagine." Here's the context: shot of PZ Myers talking about religion gradually fading as science literacy improves. Then Stein declares "Myers thinks he's being original, but he's just taking a page out of John Lennon's song book!" Cue song, and random clips of commies. Two things are odd about this: one, the need to melodramatically inflate Myers' supposed claims, making him claim things for himself he never said, and two, there's an odd anti-climax in how random the shots are: Stalin waves, we are shown other things with no clear connection to anything.

I saw that clip on YouTube before seeing the full presentation and thought it exceptionally odd, but it didn't mean much the second time around: the whole movie is like that. Half the time, whoever was in charge of editing apparently had no idea why a piece of footage was included.

The one other part of the movie that needs comment is the section on the conflict between evolution and religion. Dawkins is seen saying some quite sensible things: most of the people who really invest their time in fighting creationism are non-believers, they reach out to believers for political reasons, putting Dawkins on the stand in the Dover trial would have been a bad move. Stein could have stopped with this, but had to go completely over the top and declare that this had completely refuted what Genie Scott said about evolution and religion and proved you couldn't accept them both. Then the film sinks to outright dishonesty in showing clips of theologian Alister McGrath saying Dawkins is all wrong about science and religion. The implication is that McGrath thinks we should allow religious explanations into science, the truth is almost exactly the opposite: McGrath thinks there's no conflict between the secular theory of evolution and religion, a view completely at odds with the view being promoted in the movie. This is not to say it was wrong about these claims, just that it lacked an argument beyond manipulating interview footage to create the impression of an open and shut case.

The final sequence was in some ways the most precious: Stein not only compares the supposed persecution of Intelligent Design with the Berlin wall, but intersperses shots of himself speaking with clips of Reagan calling for the destruction of the Berlin wall. It's a nice symbol of the movie as a whole: at every turn, it can't leave well enough alone but has to heap on loads and loads of melodrama, burying the well done bits of propaganda. Had I not seen any of the publicity for the film, you might have been able to convince me it was a clever parody of Lee Strobel: it's a lot like Strobel's Case for X books, only with Strobel's limited substance dialed down to zero and his annoying dramatism dialed up to eleven, and with everything done more ineptly.

None of this to say the movie is without value. I enjoyed it immensely, and I expect it to be loved by anyone who enjoys watching things done badly in subtle ways. It will be hard to resist the temptation to buy it on DVD. The Lord Privy Seals alone would provide sufficient fodder for a Rocky Horror Picture Show style screening. It would be fun to try to shout out rationales for every nonsensical use of stock footage. I, for one, consider it an prime example of something so bad it's good.

A new Carnival of the Godless is up.

When one analyzes [post-modernist and deconstruction] writings, one often finds radical-sounding assertions whose meaning is ambiguous and that can be given two alternative readings: one as interesting, radical, and grossly false; the other as boring and trivially true.

-Alan Sokal, via Massimo Pigliucci

The 85th edition of the Skeptic's Circle is up at Andrea's Buzzing About.

Some carnivals I haven't gotten around to linking yet:

--The 84th Skeptics' Circle at Archaeoporn\
--The 18th Humanist Symposium at Spanish Inquisitor
--Also, the 0th edition (i.e. initial annoucement) for an anti-Scientology carnival

Enjoy

While reading about the fight about how to fight Expelled, I came across a piece by Sean Carroll (prof here in Madison, gave a good introduction to Dawkins) titled Politicans and Critics. Honestly, I've sometimes felt things along those lines, and that they might be just to get the politicians and critics to ignore each other as much as humanly possible. However, the idealistic part of me wants to believe that the politicians can also be critics. Thoughts?

Last month, talking about the latest blowup in the Myers/Nisbet fight over framing, I wrote:... Continue reading at God is for Suckers!

It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer... At all events, philosophers seem, in general, not to make the attempt; and, whether in consequence of this omission or not, they are constantly endeavouring to prove that 'Yes' or 'No' will answer questions, to which neither answer is correct, owing to the fact that what they have beffore their minds is not one question, but several, to some of which the true answer is 'No,' to others 'Yes.'

-G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica

A friend recently alerted me to this excellent essay on why journalism sucks. Said friend is going into radio.

At Vjack's place, we find Shelley the Republican is still fooling people/ S'ok, man, everyone falls for her!

The internet was sent into a flurry this week over a hoax. I'm glad it was a hoax, but I must confess to thinking: I wish I could think of shit that crazy. Also, I have no idea whether this is a hoax.

Greta Christina has an admirable post on lack of evidence backing up (some) pro-gay rhetoric.

Ed Brayton and Michael Shermer recently published very valuable criticisms of the new Expelled movie. The Discovery Institute has responded. There's at least one counter-response out there somewhere, but it's not worth the trouble of linking to, as the DI response seems to be based on the assumption that their readers aren't actually reading the criticisms of Expelled.

Also on the Expelled front, there's some debate about whether the makers of Expelled are going to lose their profits to lawsuits over copyright infringement. Brian Flemming, who knows the movie business pretty well, says yes:

Fair-use exceptions are possible*, but if the Expelled producers simply used "Imagine" and "All These Things That I've Done" to underscore the emotion of the film's images, which appears to be the case, well, that's not fair use. It's just...use. That's how all movies use music. Fair-use exceptions have to be, you know, exceptional.

Russell Blackford takes up the opposite position, in spite of his general dislike of Expelled. Personally, I suspect the argument might sort of work if they had explicitily said "this is how atheists think! They sing this song at their atheist summer camp!" But it sounds like they didn't do that, and their usage definitely falls under "underscore the emotion of the film's images."

Oh, and one last thing: Viva la Google bomb!:
Expelled
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In a previous post, I criticized the zombie argument for dualism on the grounds that a similar argument could be made for vitalism. In response, Richard directed me to a previous post which touched on the vitalism and zombies issue:

But 'life' can clearly be analysed in functional and structural terms. There is no sense to be given to the notion of something that is functionally and structurally indiscernible from a duck, having all the same kinds of relations to other objects as another duck does, and yet somehow fails to really be a living duck. To be a living duck just is to have the right kinds of functional relations and so forth. There's nothing more to it than that.

Here, Richard almost talks as if the problem with the vitalism analogy is that the argument for vitalism is wrong. But the key thing is why it's wrong. It's wrong because we have good reason to reject our the pre-theoretical intuitions about the nature of life that some people have in a powerful form. Spend enough time around creationists, and soon you realize that many of them have an intuition that life is non-physical, so it would be impossible in principle for unguided matter to give rise to life. Sounds stupid? That's the point. We often mistake stupid ideas for profound philosophical insights.

Richard says life can be analyzed in functional terms (patterns of causal relations and such). I agree. But this isn't obvious, built into our pre-theoretical intuitions, or any such similar thing. If you want to analyze life functionally, you admit our intuitions about these things don't always give us the right answer. Conversely, some people think consciousness should be analyzed in functional terms. If they're correct, then consciousness is once again in the same boat as life.

Perhaps you dislike whatever theory happens to be the currently reigning functional analysis of consciousness. Perhaps you do so with reason. Still, we're in the beginning stages of understanding the brain. It's a false dilemma to say "either we have the right answer to this key issue already, or we have to accept our intuitions and not take seriously the possibility of ever getting another answer."

The burden of proof is on anyone who thinks there could be no physicalist account of consciousness. In my last post, I suggested there might be a good argument for that conclusion. But if there were, the dualist wouldn't need a zombie horde to do his dirty work. Invoking zombies is a weird way around this--it assumes we have reason to think consciousness isn't physical without ever providing the reason.

Richard has also recently written a post challenging the idea that thought experiments are question-begging. On this point, he brings in the analogy with the common sense belief that the Pope doesn't count as a bachelor. There's a disanalogy here, though: we're in a reasonably good position to answer that question based on our experience with how the term is used. In the zombie case, I don't know how we could know such things are possibit's mainly a question of what convinces people, but his interactions with Eliezer Yudkowsky suggested he thought many people who aren't convinced should be.

The most frustrating post on the zombie argument, though, has to be how to imagine zombies. There, Richard suggests that a world microphysically identical to ours would contain things like David Chalmers' book The Conscious Mind. This is a claim that should sound a caution in any good dualist's mind: if there is non-physical consciousness, it seems plausible to think that it affects the physical world, and most importantly is the reason philosophers like Chalmers write books like The Conscious Mind. The view that consciousness exists but has no such causal powers is known as epiphenomenalism, and is quite popular today. Chalmers endorses it. But Chalmers admits he isn't entirely confident about it. Now: if even a big-shot dualist like Chalmers isn't entirely confident about the truth of epiphenomenalism, what business do we have simply intuiting claims that presuppose its truth? Richard talks about what a super-genius would calculate, but the conclusions of super-geniuses seem an even poorer candidate for intuiting than most metaphysical issues (why bother with smart people if they can be replaced by intuitions?)* If nothing else shows the doubtful, question-begging nature of the zombie argument, this point should.

For more on this issue, I strongly recommend Siris' "Zombie Invasion" round-up. Especially the links there to the Brood Comb posts on epiphenomenalism. Oh, and be sure to check this out.

*As an aside: it matters a bit whether Richard means to say that the super-genius will know everything about a snap-shot of a world, or about it's causal processes and future as well. But it seems that "all there is to know" includes these things.

Will Wilkinson <a href="http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/04/09/to-the-slow-and-steady-and-smartest-goes-the-race/
">posts a graph that should depress philosophy majors, and then explains why actually we should be happy. Meanwhile, Lester Hunt has a vaguely similar discussion.

Okay... tired, but will try to do this right:

Instructions

1. Copy these instructions.
2. Link to the original 'useful meme' post.
3. Share 5+ things that may be of benefit to your readers -- useful facts, advice, product recommendations, etc.

(1) Bloglines.com Hard-core bloggers already know this, but if you don't know it, it will change the way you read blogs.

(2) TVTropes.org This will change the way you experience fiction.

(3) Various websites Judicious use of Google Scholar, Amazon.com, and even plain old Google will change the way you find dead-tree material. Find stuff. Find the stuff it cites. Find what other stuff people who've bought it have also bought. It's the only way to live.

(4) Stuff White People Like Didn't quite revolutionize anything for me, but did teach me a thing or two. If you're a typical upper-middle class first-worlder, this website will help you with that ever important task of griding your self-esteem into dust, something you really ought to be doing, no matter what your parents and teachers told you growing up. Really, you're way to full of yourself.

(5) Molecular biology This will change the way you see humanity. Everything in the human body is controlled by molecules. Want to control what your body does? Control the molecules. In practical terms, this means buy up biotech stock and psychologically prepare yourself for seeing the world transformed by ever more sophisticated manipulations of life at the molecular level.

And now the people I tag will be... Karl. Because I think he's the only person who responded to the last blog meme I tried to tag anyone with.

PS: Bonus sixth item: Notebooks Seriously, I have trouble remembering what I intend to do minute to minute, I almost forgot what I was going to say for some items on this list, as I typed it. Everything works better when you write things down in a notebook.

The 89th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up, and consists entirely of posts by people who are bad representatives of atheism. (Non-jokey lead in: the host did a great job. Check it out.)

I've previously blogged reading the first draft chapter of Peter Unger's Beyond Inanity. The draft chapters were up on his website, which is currently down, but check back there later, hopefully it will be back up soon. In this post, I'll be commenting on chapters two and three.

In these chapters, Unger delves in to exactly what parts of contemporary philosophy bother him. His central contention is that certain prominent philosophers, while purporting to offer concrete claims about the world, have only offered insubstantial ones (inane ones, in Unger's vocabulary). His first target is Donald Davidson's "Swampman" thought experiment, which imagines a man created by thermodynamic miracle. Davidson suggests that such a person, though by stipulation be an exact physical duplicate of some actual person, would have no beliefs, memories, friends, and so on. Unger's second target is Hilary Putman's claim that water could not possibly be anything other than H2O, so a person transported to a world where H2O was replaced by (superficially indistinguishable) XYZ would only make so many mistakes about thinking of that stuff as water. Finally, he takes on Kripke's claims about the essentiallity of origin, that an object could not possibly have originated in a different way than it in fact did and remain the same object.

Unger argues that these claims, if true, would fail to make any difference about the concrete world. I think it's pretty obvious he's right about this. Furthermore, it seems obvious to me that there is at least something strange about philosophy focusing on such insubstantial claims. But I think Unger makes some doubtful assumptions about how philosophers would likely respond to his criticisms. He seems to assume that fans of Davidson, Putnam, and Kripke believe their claims are concrete and would be embarrassed to admit they are insubstantial. I suspect, though that these philosophers would continue insisting on the importance of these claims in spite of their insubstantial nature. For one thing, philosophers often talk about abstract objects, which by definition aren't concrete, yet they seem to think it terribly important to understand abstract objects correctly. Mathematical objects are taken to be abstract, yet mathematics is important, that is one argument philosophers might use to justify their position. Philosophers have also long worried about understanding properties, which are also taken to exist as abstract objects. And some of the ideas that Unger dismisses as too absurd to be what philosophers have in mind, I unfortunately suspect they may have them in mind. Unger tries to deflate Kripke's claims about the origin of tables by inventing terms like "lables" (lot to be confused with "labels") and comparing the nature of tables with lables and such. Kripke suggests that no one could think that the essence of tables exists in any deeper sense than the essence of "lables," though after reading many of the philosophers he talks about, I wonder.

In spite of these criticisms, with more work on what Unger's targets are trying to say (and I don't claim to really understand them), I think Beyond Inanity could turn out to be a very interesting book.