Pontification: that's the name of the game. As a Grand High Pontificator of Nutters.org, I'm all for the odd bit of pontification. But Nutter-style pontification tends to be a little different from the norm, since when I pontificate, I tend to do it in a way that conspires to make my audience think and ask questions of a matter, rather than merely dishing out The Answers. Ideally, at the end of a typical Nutter rant, you will have the feeling that you never realised the matter was so complex, but that you also gained a new perspective on the issue. You will only be closer to The Answers in the sense that you are better acquainted with The Questions and The Problems.

The Edge, which is a respectable centre of pontification on the Internet, recently invited people to submit articles based on the hypothetical premise that President G. W. Bush had asked them, "What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" Unsurprisingly, much pontification ensued.

I would have blithely ignored this, since I assumed it would be mostly pontification about whether this or that particular field of study is the more deserving of research (along with the odd bit of creationist-bashing), but the Slashdot coverage and associated comments changed my mind. Some of the most highly-rated comments expressed sincere praise for Alan Alda's contribution, particularly those parts in the subsection entitled "deeper", which were more about epistemology than science. This is more like my field of interest, and so I'll pass comment on that subsection of his contribution, specifically.

When I say that Alda's contribution was more about epistemology than science, I don't believe he intended it that way. I think he meant it to be more about education, but his opening sentence identifies the need to "re-fashion the thinking of the country", and, in my book, this is epistemological territory. So how would Alda have us think, that attracts so much admiration from the Slashdot audience?

Alas, in many ways it boils down to simple "science versus religion" rhetoric, and so there's not a lot of depth for me to plumb. The long of it is summarised in his closing words, "put reason ahead of belief". My interpretation of Alda's comment is that we need more hard rationality and less religiously-founded belief. We should look to science, not scripture, for answers. We should accept that it is better to be ignorant and cognizant of our ignorance than to plug up the holes with arbitrary beliefs.

In short, it looks like Alda is pining for a world in which we are all good scientific rationalists, and it raises a "hear, hear" from the at-large audience of Slashdot nerds.

The intellectually gifted are often, but not always, enamoured of scientific rationalism. Perhaps it's a corollary of the proverb, "to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail": those with a keen intellect will be predisposed to believing that said intellect is the right tool for every job, even to the point of denying that other tools exist. But Blaise Pascal pointed out over two hundred years ago that all our reasoning ultimately ends in surrender to feeling. You can reason and reason, but you'll eventually work your way down to a set of foundational beliefs which you hold as self-evident, or (horrors) that you simply want to be true. The denial of such foundational beliefs ends in scepticism, concluding that nothing can be known.

What we have here, I think, in the writings of Alda and the approving noises from Slashdot, is a kind of weak scepticism. It desires evidence in all material claims, and dismisses the supernatural as baseless. It holds that certain things can be known with some degree of assurance, but that nothing is final, and all is subject to future review. Indeed, it demands uncertainty and ignorance, and considers these things to be a testament to its own correctness. Those who hold to this scientific rationalism have the guts to face a universe of uncertainty, as opposed to those who need a religious crutch to give them a sense of meaning.

Where the scepticism ends, of course, is at the boundary of epistemology. Alda, and so many others like him, are notoriously willing to believe their own philosophy; they are almost entirely unable to doubt the truth of the framework of scientific rationalism. In most cases, they are unable even to follow an argument which is constructed in a different framework. By adroit non-application of their own truth-finding mechanisms, the truth of scientific rationalism itself is not seriously questioned by most of its adherents. In a philosophy which prides itself on the absence of absolute and final truths, the philosophical framework itself is an absolute truth.

Many would disagree with me on that last point, saying that the philosophy itself is subject to review if we can find a better one. But "better" is a value judgment. What measurement is used to determine whether one thing is better than another? The framework itself provides the yardstick against which quality is measured, and you can be quite sure that things which validate the philosophy will tend to be judged "better" than things which contradict it. So take your pick: if the philosophy isn't grounded on an absolute truth, then it's holding itself up by its bootstraps.

I think it's fair to describe Alda's prescription for America as "an increase in devoutness", although he probably wouldn't like my use of the word. He laments the fact that "our culture increasingly holds that science is just another belief." (I think that "science" should be replaced by "scientific rationalism" in that phrase, since "science" is the study of the laws of nature, whereas Alda is talking about matters epistemic.) Alda would have us resist the temptation to believe in things, or at least to believe in things other than the supremacy of rationality. Scientific rationalism is not "just another belief", apparently, but The One True Way.

The similarities with those who see the chief failing of society as being "an increase in Godlessness" are eerie. The principal difference is that the scientific rationalists think their view is not a faith.