Does Fire Burn? Relativism and Foundational Facts

 

Fire burns skin. If relativism were correct, some cultures wouldn’t believe that. All cultures do. Is "fire burns” a Moorean truth?

Image by ChatGPT, after a prompt by the writer.

All philosophers must have had their Moorean moments. It didn’t follow from this that they then became champions of “common sense philosophy”. This simply means that “Moorean facts” need to be confronted. (The original Moorean fact: “I have two hands.”) The philosopher Jeremy Stangroom has a Moorean moment in the following passage:

“As we move through our daily lives, we rarely question the epistemological status of those things we take to be more than just probably true: walls are solid; fire burns; knives cut; jumping off a cliff will cause serious injury; it hurts to be hit with a rock than a violet; rain is wet; heat cooks food; aeroplanes fly because engineers designed them according to various physical laws (not magic); there is no little gremlin inside a radio set; and so on.”

Stangroom uses the words “we rarely question the epistemological status of these things”. G.E. Moore’s position was that we should accept them even after philosophical questioning.

The Status of Moorean Facts

It’s of course a fact that these supposed Moorean facts can be philosophically questioned. But that’s not the issue here. We need to know what status they have, and what the consequences of that acceptance are.

We may readily believe that all these Moorean facts are accepted (or believed) in order to survive. However, accepting that walls are solid or that fires burn may be useful, but it’s hardly a philosophical position. Indeed, it’s not even a scientific position. Science may have a position on solidity, but not really on walls and whether we should walk into them.

Similarly, “rain is wet” isn’t really a scientific statement. The study of rain belongs to meteorology and atmospheric science, the study of liquidity to fluid mechanics, and the nature of wetness to psychology and neuroscience. Thus, “rain is wet” isn’t equivalent to "water is H₂O" — even if rain is made of water (therefore largely H₂O).

In any case, at least Stangroom’s examples of foundational facts are all of a kind, even if very different from each other. Not so with G.E. Moore himself. Moore actually began his philosophical career by arguing that there are “moral facts”. He also included the existence of time and free will, and the reality of “other minds”. These examples are philosophical. But what about the statements “women are inferior”, “shamans can fly”, “the Hutu are superior to the Tutsi”, etc?

Relativism and Moorean Facts

Stangroom brought these Moorean facts up in the strict context of relativism. In simple terms, if relativism were true (or simply if it were taken to its logical conclusion), then in some cultures walls wouldn’t be deemed to be solid, or fire wouldn’t be deemed to burn.

We can guess that all cultures do not believe any of this. Can a relativist answer why that’s so?

Another way of putting this is to say that if every culture believes that walls are solid, fire burns, etc., then why can’t we move beyond these obvious examples to less obvious ones? Sure, they are indeed obvious. But what relevance does that have to philosophy? Similarly, accepting them helps save lives. So?

Again, can we move from these obvious examples of Moorean facts to Moorean facts which are scientific, moral, political, and historical? (Some of these Moorean facts actually require a scientific account to explain why they’re facts. However, in a Moorean context, that’s irrelevant too.)

The Psychology of Disbelieving Relativism

This stress on psychology (i.e., as it relates to both relativism and Moorean facts) is summed up by Stangroom:

“The real puzzle, then, about the doctrines of scepticism and relativism is that nobody really believes them. Not in their bones.”

Stangroom adds that “we know that scepticism and relativism are false”.

This is an extreme, or at least forthright, position.

It can be argued that Stangroom’s psychological points simply don’t matter when it comes to philosophy and the claims of relativists. Still, it’s also a philosophical claim to say that they do matter! After all, it can hardly be ignored (if it’s true at all) that most of the things relativists claim, they don’t actually believe! Whether these psychological points belong to philosophy or not may not be of supreme importance.

Stangroom mentioned probability in the phrase “more than just probably true”. Psychologically, he’s right. We don’t believe that we’d probably get burnt if we jumped into a fire. We believe that we will get burnt. Yet what bearing do these psychological states (or beliefs) have philosophically?

Stangroom elaborates on the psychology of belief (or on the psychology of believing in Moorean facts) in the following:

“The argument here is that it isn’t possible to doubt that there are facts of the matter about the world, or that it isn’t possible to think that truth is necessarily relative to cultures or forms of life. It is rather that we *don’t* in fact do these things.”

The second part of the argument goes as follows:

“Or, more precisely, the argument here is that our primary orientation to the world, the orientation in terms of which we *gear into* the world (to borrow some phenomenological terminology), will not allow us to doubt the fact that there are real, foundational truths about the world.”

Whether or not these claims are true, how can we connect them to the theme of relativism?

Do all cultures accept foundational truths about the world? And if they do, then why can’t we work up from them to other truths which can’t be taken to be foundational? In this case, are there any inferential links between foundational/Moorean truths and other kinds of truth? However, even if there are such inferential links, it may not follow that all cultures make the same links or recognise any links at all.

In the end, if there are foundational beliefs, facts or truths, it’s always possible for the relativist to accept them, and then draw a line. However, as already stated, what justifies this move within the strict context of relativism itself?

Language Games?

Oddly, although Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games” has been read as an example of relativism, his notion of “hinge” beliefs (as well as “forms of life”) can be taken as being Moorean or foundational. Yet aren’t they only foundational within particular language games? In other words, it may be the case that different language games have different Moorean truths or facts.

In a Wittgensteinian spirit, Stangroom sees these Moorean/foundational facts as being those “we gear into the world” with. Our psychologies “will not allow us to doubt the fact that there are real, foundational truths about the world”. Stangroom makes this psychological and behavioural reality even more clear when he states that we can’t “override our visceral, instinctual certainty about real, foundational truth”. He then mentions

“our fear of falling from great heights, our urge to jump out of the way of oncoming buses, and by our lack of inclination to put our hands into roaring fires”.

Again, isn’t all this about human psychology, even those aspects of human psychology which transcend all particular language games?…

But hang on a minute.

As an 18th-century empiricist might have been keen to say, don’t human persons first need to fall from a height, be knocked over by a vehicle, or put their hands in a fire to first realise these things shouldn’t be done? Either that, or they need to be told that by their parents or by others.

Still, perhaps a posteriori truths can be foundational truths too! What’s more, isn’t all this to assume that there’s a clear and deep divide between human psychology and “real, foundational truths about the world”?

The Anthropologist and the Shaman

Stangroom makes the discussion of these obvious facts more relevant and interesting when he cites two possible conflicts between two different cultures.

Take an anthropologist who’s been studying shamanism. According to one shaman,

"[l]arge solid objects moving above a certain speed turn into a magical substance which conveys spiritual insight on contact and feels like expensive massage oil”.

This shaman visits the anthropologist in London. As both walk across a busy street, the anthropologist avoids a bus by leaping backward and, in the process, yanks the shaman backward from the bus too. He was just standing still! In response,

“[t]he anthropologist stands there with her mouth open, gazing at her baffled companion and wondering what on earth she is going to write in that article now”.

Some relativists may (or probably will) regard Stangroom’s story as racist or a caricature of a shaman. They may argue that a shaman wouldn’t do that… Why not? Does cultural relativity stop at certain points? And if it does, then why does it do so?

So do all cultures accept Moorean facts, and then go off in their own very different directions?

Now take Stangroom’s next example. Stangroom writes:

“[T]he person who sort of believes that homeopathy might be true in a spiritual kind of way will choose standard, non-’alternative’ painkillers for a third-degree burn.”

This story parallels something I read on Medium. It includes both a shaman and someone who did accept “alternative medicine”. Paul Fiery wrote:

“I knew a person who died of cancer because a shaman had warned her that going to a Western doctor would ‘pollute her aura’ and render her immune to his shamanistic ministrations.”

It’s worth quoting the paranormal researcher Rupert Sheldrake here. In the book The Science Delusion, he informs his readers about the "miracle cure” for warts:

“Some people build up reputations as ‘wart healers’, and cure warts just by touching them. [ ] Another method is to rub the wart with a potato and then bury the potato under a particular tree at a particular phase of the moon. Some people get rid of their warts by selling them to a sibling.”

To be fair to Sheldrake, he’s emphasising the power of belief in the above. However, he only mentions that in a single sentence. What’s more, Sheldrake simply bypasses the fact that most people who do benefit from these placebos don’t actually believe that they are placebos. (Similarly, religious people don’t believe they’re taking part in an autonomous “language game”.)

Now take the following account of the “anarchist philosopher” Paul Feyerabend by science journalist John Horgan. (This account was about Feyerabend’s health at that time.) Horgan wrote:

“Recalling Feyerabend’s excoriation of the medical profession, I could not resist asking, did her husband seek medical treatment for his tumor? Of course, she replied. He had had ‘total confidence’ in his doctors’ diagnosis and had been willing to accept any treatment they recommended; the tumor had simply been detected too late for anything to be done.”

In both the homoeopathy and Feyerabend cases, politics trumps truth. Or, rather, in the end politics did not trump truth. Feyerabend believed it was politically important to respect other traditions when it came to medical matters, as well as when it came to voodoo, astrology and just about everything else. (Horgan even tells his readers that Feyerabend stretched this to include the Nazism of his youth! “Nazism should be allowed to thrive.”) The same with the fan of homoeopathy. She believes that the “spiritual truths” of other cultures must be respected and seen as being equal to all our own… except when it comes to third-degree burns!

Postmodern Relativists and Spiritual Anti-Materialists Against Science

 

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend." In politics, that phrase is often acted on. It can refer to people like Sheldrake borrowing ideas too.

In a book called Why Truth Matters (written by Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson), one passage is very apposite to the central theme of this essay:

“Meera Nanda discusses in Prophets Facing Backward the way way Hindu fundamentalists in India have drawn on postmodern scepticism and hostility to science in ‘Hinduizing’ Indian science, education, textbooks and the like.”

Rupert Sheldrake himself is sceptical of – and hostile to – science. He has certainly “drawn on postmodern scepticism and hostility to science”. He has done so in great detail. Yet he’s a scientist too — at least as far as his previous work in biology is concerned. However, like the Hindu fundamentalists, Sheldrake won’t see himself as a “postmodern sceptic”. He simply quotes them and uses their ideas.

The Criticism of Science is Scientific

As just stated, Sheldrake offers his readers very critical views of science. Does he think that these criticisms are themselves scientific?

Sheldrake’s position is very similar to that of the sociologist David Bloor and his “strong programme”. Bloor writes:

“If sociology could not be applied in a thoroughgoing way to scientific knowledge it would mean that science could not scientifically know itself.”

This position has it that science, in order to be true science, must know itself. And it can only know itself through sociology, not epistemology or the philosophy of science. All this chimes in with the position of another sociologist, Steve Fuller. Fuller states the following:

“[T]o a sociologist, it will be apparent that many of the ‘deep puzzles’ that these scientists brood over could be solved, or at least dissipated, by a dose of social science [].”

Fuller then went on to argue that

“much of what is said could have benefited from the presence of a sociological interlocutor”.

It can be supposed that Professor Fuller will probably believe that his own sociology would enable both physicists and biologists to see the wood, rather than the trees.

So, according to these self-important sociologists, sociology is not only a science: it’s a science that captures the truth about science as a whole. Although Sheldrake himself doesn’t use the word “sociology” much, this is exactly what he takes himself to be doing when he offers his own (sociological and political) criticisms of science.

Relativism and Sciences In the Plural

Sheldrake is a relativist about science. However, not in a dismissive way that rejects all science. Instead, Sheldrake argues that there are sciences in the plural. Thus, in his book The Science Delusion, he details various of these sciences (or examples of science).

Sheldrake believes in knowledges in the plural too. Here again, unlike the positions of postmodernist sceptics and relativists, he uses this not to argue that there is science, and then there are other examples of knowledge. Instead, Sheldrake believes that these other examples of knowledge actually constitute forms of science.

Sheldrake as a Kuhnian

Sheldrake is a (qualified?) follower of Thomas Kuhn. He explicitly quotes him and uses his ideas. This is particularly the case when it comes to Kuhn’s well-known notion of a “paradigm”. But firstly, take the following words from Maria Bagramian:

“[The] relativistic implications of Kuhn’s view seem evident. All assessments of the success, and even truth, of a particular scientific theory can be made only within and relative to a given paradigm — there is no room for extra-paradigmatic, non-relative evaluations in Kuhn’s view of science.”

Thus, does Sheldrake believe that his work constitutes a new paradigm, as well as being an example of a “paradigm shift”? In more self-referential terms, this means that all assessments of the success, and even truth, of Sheldrake’s theories can only be made within — and relative to — his very own paradigm. There simply is no room for extra-paradigmatic, non-relative evaluations of his theories.

Sheldrake’s position can be tied to Kuhn’s own words, rather than to Baghramian’s account of Kuhn’s (supposed?) “relativism”. Ironically, in this passage, Kuhn is critical of the positions of the “strong programme" and “deconstruction”, which he claimed had taken his own views too far:

“Talk of evidence, or the rationality of claims drawn from it, and of the truth or probability of those claims has been seen as simply the rhetoric behind the victorious cloaks of power. What passes for scientific knowledge becomes, then, simply the belief of the winners.”

From much of what Sheldrake has written, it’s clear that he too is against the science of the “winners”. (Does that make him a loser?)

Sheldrake’s Politics of Science

We can tie Sheldrake to the work of feminist philosopher Sandra Harding and her championship of “unconventional” epistemologies and sciences. Specifically, Harding wrote the following words:

“The dominant conceptual schemes of the natural and social sciences fit the experience that Western men of the elite classes and races have of themselves and the world around them.”

Sheldrake himself doesn’t, and needn’t, follow every single letter of Harding’s political worldview. However, he does often write about the dominant conceptual schemes of the natural sciences and how they’re institutionally embedded.

Sheldrake then allows the historian of science Patricia Fara to put his own position on scientists, rather than on science itself:

“Like police guards patrolling national borders, scientists decreed which topics should be inside the large domain they ruled over, and which should be outlawed.”

Sheldrake even tunes into the strongly political angle of much postmodernist philosophy and theory. He tells us that “[s]cience has always been elitist and undemocratic”. What’s more, “it is currently becoming more hierarchical, not less so”.

Like many of Sheldrake’s claims (or rants), there is an element of truth in much of what he says. It’s fairly easy to agree with him when he says that “[s]cience has always been elitist and undemocratic”. However, even this needs to be qualified. Of course, if it were qualified, then it wouldn’t have the rhetorical power Sheldrake wants it to have.

As for science currently being more hierarchical. That depends. Is science, or any particular science, more hierarchical than the institutions which Sheldrake himself is involved in? And what about the religions Sheldrake is favourable to?

Psychology and Buddhism

I’ve just mentioned religions because Sheldrake himself compares “the mystical traditions of both East and West” to the work of “academic psychologists and cognitive scientists”. The latter two use subjects “who have no professional training in observing or reporting mental processes”. Sheldrake then quotes “Buddhist scholar” B. Alan Wallace on this. Wallace tells us that cognitive scientists “receive no professional training in observing the realities that constitute their field of enquiry”.

Note the quick shift from the Sheldrake’s “paid subjects” of cognitive scientists to Wallace’s reference to cognitive scientists themselves.

Both Sheldrake and Wallace stress professional training. Can you have such a thing without some kind of hierarchy? It’s even possible that Buddhist scholars and people like Sheldrake indulge in behaviour that can be classed as being “elitist and undemocratic”. Indeed, even without Buddhist scholars and Sheldrake having as much social power as mainstream scientists supposedly have, this may still be the case. So, the worst that can be said of my statements here is that I’m wasting my time on small fish. (Didn’t Foucault argue that “power is everywhere”?)

Sheldrake’s Rhetorical Language Game

Whatever term is used – “language games” (Wittgenstein), “phrase regimes” (Lyotard), “paradigms” (Kuhn), etc. – Sheldrake offers his own take on the reality of “pluralism” and relativism:

“In almost every sphere of human life, there is not one but many points of view. There are many languages, cultures, nations, philosophies, religions, sects, political parties, businesses and life-styles. Only in the realm of science can we still find the old ethos of monopoly, universality and absolute authority that used to be claimed by the Roman Catholic Church.”

The way Sheldrake puts it, science shouldn’t have any kind of identity at all. Does that apply to all his other examples too? How many different points of view can be handled in most religions, political parties, and lifestyles? What about those points of view which actually negate the said religions, parties, cultures, nations, etc.?

Perhaps Sheldrake’s analogy doesn’t work anyway.

Can Sheldrake really see a comparison between many languages, cultures, etc. within a nation or culture, and the same being said about a particular language, culture, etc. within a single nation or culture? Obviously, religions don’t allow those points of view which stray too far from the religion itself. The same is true of philosophies, political parties, etc. So why should science be any different?

Sheldrake, in a very political mood, tells his readers that

“[a]rrogance and snobbery make most modern, scientifically educated people feel superior to all pre-scientific cultures, including their own”.

Is this true? In many cases, it’s obviously false. Many educated people have a rather patronising view of all pre-scientific cultures in that they respect them regardless of any specific details. There has been a long tradition among posh and educated people, dating back to the orientalist Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) and further back, of this. Educated hippies did this kind of thing all the time in the late 1960s and beyond. And, for the last decade or longer, there’ve been efforts to “decolonise” the universities.

Indeed, even when educated people don’t praise non-Western cultures in a grandstanding manner, they don’t automatically express superiority towards them either. This is why Sheldrake really needs to cut down on his non-scientific rhetoric.

Despite that, within science there actually are “many points of view” anyway. That’s not enough for Sheldrake. He wants science to incorporate many points of view that are outside science. And, here again, science would lose its identity were it to do so. Perhaps Sheldrake wants that. Yet, at the very same time, he often stresses that his own paranormal theories and work are scientific in seemingly mainstream or conventional ways. So Sheldrake stresses tests, experiments, observations, interviews, etc. on paranormal phenomena.

How many cakes can Sheldrake eat at the same time?

Sheldrake on the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Of course, Sheldrake is really talking about how this scientific monopoly and absolute authority have treated his own work. Thus, in the very next paragraph, he writes the following:

“This authoritarian mentality is most obvious in relation to psychic phenomena and alternative medicine. These are treated as heresies, rather than valid areas for rational enquiry.”

“Heresies against science”, the "absolute authority of science", “dogmatic scientists”, "scientific witch hunts", “scientific fundamentalism” … Okay! We get it, Mr Sheldrake! You believe that what some “materialists” and scientists have accused religious people of, they themselves are now guilty of. This is a theme (or a set of buzzwords) that Sheldrake uses… again, again and again.

Let’s spell it out.

If a materialist or scientist accuses a paranormalist, religious person, or spiritualist of x, then the latter will accuse the former of being x too. Thus, we have lots of paranormalists, anti-materialists, religious people, and spiritualists who’ve accused materialists and scientists of having “faith” in materialism and science. Indeed, they’ve also stated that “science [or materialism] is a religion”.

This happens a lot at infant and junior schools. In other words, when a young child accuses another young child of being x, then that other young child accuses the accuser of being x too.

Sheldrake carries on:

“Self-appointed inquisitions, like the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, try to ensure that the subjects are not taken seriously in the respectable media, deprived of funding and excluded from university syllabuses”

… I must state the painfully obvious here.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry has never burnt anyone at the stake or tortured/imprisoned any paranormalists, anti-materialists, etc. None of the materialists and sceptics around today have done anything remotely like this either. In fact, those people who’re supposedly the victims of sceptical inquisitions — such as Sheldrake himself — have published best-sellers, been interviewed countless times, have millions of followers, made lots of money, etc.

Sheldrake's current fame and fortune aren’t enough for him. He wants to be taken seriously by mainstream science too! Sheldrake wants existing science departments to study his hypothesis of morphic resonance, as well as other paranormal stuff. And then, of course, Sheldrake would become even better known and more well-off than he already is.

Finally, if all Sheldrake’s revolutionary dreams-for-a-future-science were actually put into practice, then no real science would survive. Literally!