A comment below states:
I don’t think that your ranking of appropriate degrees of skepticism really has much to do with conservative politics, however. In fact, the one object of faith that is most common among those skeptical of religion is a quasi-religious faith in the metaphysical validity of modern natural science which betrays a lack of familiarity with both the history and philosophy of science….
This is a generalization. Generalizations are necessary, and often true (and often not). But I’m the type who likes to inquire as to how true the generalization is. In other words, the shape of the variance around the central tendency. If humans were universally philosophically coherent and operated from the same initial premises this would be a marginal activity, but as humans are not, and do not, there is often great variation which might surprise. This is why I explained to one reader the importance of being careful when extrapolating from your own introspection. It is irrelevant to me if something should not be theoretically if it is empirically.
So I decided to look at the HARMGOOD variable in the GSS, which asks:
How much do you agree or disagree with each of these statements? Overall, modern science does more harm than good.
This is a very weak test of whether one is scientistically inclined, but I am looking for trends, and assume that the rank order would hold if one queried more stringently (there are other questions which are related to this one, but in the interests of time I’ll leave it to the reader to perform those queries). I cross-referenced HARMGOOD with POLVIEWS (political ideology) and GOD (confidence in the existence of god).
| Ext Liberal | Liberal | Slightly Lib | Moderate | Slightly Con | Conservative | Ext Cons | N | |
| Strongly Agree | 6.2 | 3.8 | 2.1 | 2.8 | 4.3 | 4.3 | 7.2 | 177 |
| Agree | 21.8 | 10.4 | 13.5 | 13.5 | 12 | 12.3 | 16.7 | 650 |
| Neither Agree Nor Disagree | 20.7 | 15.9 | 21.2 | 28 | 19.4 | 24 | 21.5 | 1159 |
| Disagree | 32.9 | 48.9 | 44.7 | 42.9 | 48.6 | 41 | 40.4 | 2205 |
| Strongly disagree | 18.4 | 21.1 | 18.4 | 12.8 | 15.7 | 17.7 | 14.3 | 794 |
| N | 134 | 575 | 649 | 1852 | 822 | 787 | 166 | 4985 |
| Confidence in existence of God | ||||||||
| Don’t Believe | No Way To Find Out | Higher Power | Believe Sometimes | Doubts | Know God Exists | N | ||
| Strongly Agree | 7.4 | 5.6 | 3.8 | 3.7 | 1.8 | 3.8 | 179 | |
| Agree | 10 | 8.2 | 10.3 | 19.2 | 10.8 | 14.3 | 652 | |
| Neither Agree Nor Disagree | 18.7 | 15.1 | 15.1 | 20 | 18.9 | 26.8 | 1163 | |
| Disagree | 28.5 | 38.4 | 44 | 44.8 | 47.9 | 44.5 | 2190 | |
| Strongly disagree | 35.4 | 32.6 | 26.8 | 12.3 | 20.6 | 10.7 | 762 | |
| N | 140 | 212 | 445 | 192 | 778 | 3179 | 4945 | |
Poincare once said that social science has the most methods and the fewest results. I can’t tell exactly what you are proving, disproving, etc., but I would certainly question whether the terms that you use (i.e. liberal, conservative, etc.) are definable in a way which would be amenable to the kind of measurement that you are looking for here.
I don’t doubt that my skepticism about the theoretical coherence of the claims of modern science isn’t shared by the majority of public intellectuals or Anglo-American analytic philosophers, but that doesn’t particularly bother me. I do share (though perhaps not in the same way) your notion that, when it comes to science, theoretical coherence is less important to most people than technological efficacy. From what I can gather by reading the political commentary of those who write here, I also would agree with much of what is said but I just don’t buy into the scientistic stuff, nor do I believe that it is necessarily conservative (whatever that word might mean). I have been working through some of these issues (what political skepticism might be, what conservatism might be) on my own site, and those interested can take a look. I do look forward to future posts.
I may have more to say after more careful examination, but it would help if you would reformat the table to make it fully visible. The “Extremely Conservative” column on the right is being cut off in both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7. Widening the browser window doesn’t help because your stylesheet specifies a constant width for the content area.
but I would certainly question whether the terms that you use (i.e. liberal, conservative, etc.) are definable in a way which would be amenable to the kind of measurement that you are looking for here.
I’m presenting data more than making assertions. If you think measurement is not possible, that’s your prerogative.
Having looked over the data a bit more, I’m not sure I see a point to this. First, I don’t see why the question “Does science do more harm than good?” should correlate with “scientism” as defined in the Wikipedia article you link to. Someone might well agree that science is the ultimate authority on matters of truth, yet be a total Luddite and live in constant fear that the technology we derive from science is inexorably leading to the end of life on Earth due to despoiling the environment, global warming, the threat of nuclear war, genetic engineering, or any of a dozen other potential (or imaginary) threats. Contrariwise, one might be quite skeptical of science as anything other than a generator of new technology, yet be convinced that those new technologies overall are beneficial.
Someone might well agree that science is the ultimate authority on matters of truth, yet be a total Luddite and live in constant fear that the technology we derive from science is inexorably leading to the end of life on Earth due to despoiling the environment, global warming, the threat of nuclear war, genetic engineering, or any of a dozen other potential (or imaginary) threats. Contrariwise, one might be quite skeptical of science as anything other than a generator of new technology, yet be convinced that those new technologies overall are beneficial.
Yes. There are people like this. But I don’t think they’re nearly as numerous as the other combinations on the matrix.
Measurement is certainly possible and, in fact, it is central to science, which conceives of the world sub specie quantitatis. I’m merely questioning whether these categories are or can be defined in a scientifically coherent way. ‘Ideology’ as a self-ascriptive value is much more ambiguous than ‘Height’, for example. Actions and external characteristics just seem to me to be more easily reducible to measurement than beliefs (even religious beliefs, which, when reduced to a mere set of propositions, leaves behind the actual character of religion).
this is off topic, but does anyone happen to find the title font for this article makes it look a tad, like “who is såentistically indined”?
btw, i understand if this is modded out. just pointing out that this has a small (ok, very small) potential for future confusion.
All generalizations are bad.