January 19, 2022

92: "Science denial is about identity, not facts" - Lee McIntyre, philosopher of Science and author of "How to Talk to a Science Denier" - Sentientist Conversation

1 hour 35 minutes

Lee McIntyre (leemcintyrebooks.com & @LeeCMcIntyre) is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy & History of Science at Boston University & an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. Lee is the author of How to Talk to a Science Denier as well as many other books, essays & papers. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Scientific American, the Boston Globe, the New Statesman & the Humanist.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:30 Lee's Intro

- Philosophy of science to public philosophy ("it's supposed to be about making life better")

- "Science denial & misinformation are the scourges of our age... there's an epistemic crisis"

- Clarity & 2-way public engagement "philosophers can't just be talking to each other"

06:00 What's Real?

- Ontology (being) & epistemology (knowing)

- "It's possible there are things that are real... that we cannot know"

- Naturalistic ontology (only the natural exists) & epistemology (evidence & reason)

- Growing up in Portland

- Questioning: "My mom didn't treat me like a kid... That made me a philosopher early on"

- Dad & grandmother kicked out of church

- Raised non-religious

- "It was good to wonder, but it wasn't good to pretend that you were certain of things that you couldn't know or that you didn't know"

- Socrates: the real enemy isn't ignorance (because we can learn) it's false knowledge

- "Don't let the charlatans take that sense of wonder away from you"

- Norm MacDonald: Faith as a choice, a leap?

- Experiencing cancer & considering mortality

- How does Dawkins know there's nothing after death? Could there be a naturalistic afterlife?

- "The fact that there are questions we can't answer is not an excuse for pretending we have an answer"

- Faith is often a response to the discomfort of uncertainty

- David Hume & empiricism

- Skepticism, humility, hubris

- Karl Popper, fallibilism

- Pretend naturalism vs. good faith naturalism

- Science denial/conspiracism: Gullibility about what you want to believe & extreme skepticism about any alternative

- Arbitrariness

- Hugh Mellor's "The warrant of induction" https://youtu.be/0__p0iVUi2M & bayesianism

38:00 What (& Who) Matters?

- Teaching ethics for a decade but "I've never really made up my mind"

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.

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Thanks Graham.

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By Jamie Woodhouse

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