Michael Shermer is promoting a new book, The Believing Brain: How we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths. The argument is that our brains evolved to first determine beliefs, and then find the evidence to justify those beliefs. This is why people have strongly held convictions about religion and politics, despite the inability to determine what is the “true” religion or the “right” political position. Instead, according to Shermer, it is only science that can lead us to truth. Only science can distinguish between truth and belief.
In fact, though, Shermer’s argument is just another example of a dissembled belief posing as a truth. Most importantly, his image of how science works is misinformed. While the scientific method sounds nice, it is not an accurate description of how scientists actually go about doing their research because science is not done in a social vacuum. Were he to take the time to study how scientists did their work within a research community, he would realize the uselessness of trying to establish a demarcation criteria between “science” and “non-science.” And this is not to discredit science by any means, but only to point out the importance of remembering the limitations of what we know. Scientists have human brains too.
Another incorrect implicit assumption of the book is that there exists some independent “truth,” and that this truth is clearly distinguishable from belief. Rather, in science, a belief becomes a “truth” when a widespread consensus is reached. This “truth” can change when the question again becomes open for debate. In the words of C. S. Pearce, one of the most important (and yet little read) American philosophers, there is no truth but only the “fixation of belief”:
The sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and what we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. “The Fixation of Belief” (1877)
And this in 1877! You’d think we would have made progress since then, but people like Shermer are keeping our ideas about science stuck in the 19th century.
Plato broached the distinction between knowledge and opinion in The Republic and examined the issue is depth in Theaetetus and The Sophist. It has been one of the central issues in philosophy ever since. Wittgenstein finally dispensed with it as a pseudo-problem, that is, trying to say something that cannot be described, but which logical examination shows. The Tractatus is an articulation of the logic of description and explanation. On Certainty is an elucidation of justification in ordinary language.
Wittgenstein got what Plato was driving at. What Wittgenstein’s examination shows is that logic is rule based and certain rules serve criteria (norms). Norms determine what is normal in that “language game.” When rules are pushed to their extremes, they result in conundrums and these conundrums often become “philosophical” problems. Logical examination shows that language is being pushed beyond its limits, since there is no “universal language game” whose norms encompass all other language games. This is reflected in cognitive science to some degree in the concept of frames. There is no overarching frame. They are cultural, institutional, and conventional.
There are certain similarities between Wittgenstein and C. S. Peirce. Wittgenstein was largely responding to Russell and Frege, and there is no evidence that read Peirce. Peirce’s influence on Wittgenstein seems to have come through his friend Frank Ramsey.
“The young Cambridge philosopher and mathematician, F.P. Ramsey, knew of these early volumes, and was greatly interested by them. Ramsey clearly acknowledges the influence of Peirce in his 1926 article, “Truth and Probability,” where he claims to base certain parts of his paper upon Peirce’s work. Ramsey’s interest in Peirce is not contentious. The influence of Ramsey upon the later Wittgenstein is also widely acknowledged. However, the subject of some speculation is the influence of Peirce upon Wittgenstein, via Ramsey. There is no direct acknowledgment of Peirce by Wittgenstein, but Ramsey’s review of the Tractatus recommends Peirce’s type/token distinction to Wittgenstein, a recommendation that Wittgenstein accepted. Wittgenstein did not hide the effect of Ramsey’s advice on his later work, and although the exact nature of the advice is unknown, it is common knowledge that Ramsey thought the Tractatus could overcome its problems by moving towards pragmatism. Potentially then, Peirce can claim an indirect influence over the later Wittgenstein.”
Charles Sanders Pearce, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
My own conclusion after doing a PhD in philosophy at a school (Georgetown that specialized in the historical approach is that the different philosophers were articulating a justification of a lifestyle. Obviously, there is no lifestyle that can be justified as true based on absolute criteria that are publicly available, or the debate would be over long ago. However, I would argue that the mystical literature of the world suggests that there may be a universally available lifestyle that does provide absolute criteria that are at once subjective and objective because cognition is unitary at that level. As Aquinas says, “knowledge is in accordance of the mode of the knower.” That mode of unitary cognition has been reported by relatively few and is only known through those who have reported about it. Even here, teasing out a common thread is controversial, and the mystics themselves testify that knowledge is only given out in terms of the time and in according with the need of the time.