Aiming at the wrong target

I ran across an old post by Dean Dough. For those who don't know, he's a "modernist Christian," having moved from the right end of the theological spectrum to the left end. Anyway, he said:

The stimulus for this post was a series of exchanges I had with Steve Hays et. al. on Triablogue here and here regarding methodological naturalism in scientific investigation.

When I asked him for examples of scientific investigation that avoided the pitfall of methodological naturalism, he directed me to Rupert Sheldrake and Stephen Braude. I took some time to learn about Rupert Sheldrake.

Sheldrake himself insists that he is working on accumulating evidence to back up his theories. The experiments posted on his website are meant to gather data that will support the idea that there is some kind of collective "memory" or "field" shared by all members of a given species and that information gathered by one member is shared with all via transmission through this "field." Steve Hays pointed to Sheldrake's experiments as an example of how one could do science without relying on methodological naturalism. In fact, Sheldrake's experiments do no such thing. His theory may be wacko mystical nonsense, as Wolpert claims, but his intent is to accumulate enough data to build an explanatory framework that conforms to the requirements of methodological naturalism. He appears to believe, for instance, that we will eventually be able to detect and measure "morphic fields" directly.

http://newchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/case-of-rupert-sheldrake-illustrates.html

But Dean commits a basic blunder: I wasn't referring to Sheldrake's theory of morphic causation. Rather, I was explicitly referring to his (as well as Braude's) investigations into the paranormal. Here is what I said:

STEVE SAID:
Dean Dough said...

"Yes, a case of purported demonic possession would be a good one to work with. Yes, the idea is to get the right answer. So, how do you know when you have the right answer? What criteria do you use? What kinds of evidence count and how much? What theoretical framework(s) will you use to relate your data? You are absolutely correct to focus on individual cases. But you wouldn't rethink the entire issue from the ground up each time. You would have some rules of thumb at least. That's what I'm interested in."

i) One can use standard diagnostic methods to screen out cases with detectable natural causes. That's a preliminary step.

ii) There's also the question of whether the patient responds to conventional therapies.

iii) There's the further question of whether the patient exhibits paranormal abilities.

However, I'm not impressed by your affectation of ignorance. Take critics of Rupert Sheldrake's experiments. Sheldrake has very specific criteria.

The underlying objection to his experimentation is not the lack of protocols, but philosophical resistance to the paranormal.

Same thing with Stephen Braude's investigations into the paranormal. He's also quite meticulous about the criteria.

I don't mention that to vouch for their conclusions, just to make the point that this pretense about not knowing what the alternative would look like is just that–a pretense.

4/14/2010 7:13 AM