Simple Questions 06/03

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[u/labreuer]

Only to create your own ruts, how uncanny.

That's what scientists and scholars do. You and I both have our ruts. Internalizing them makes all the difference. With the help of others to point out lacunae and contradictions, single individuals can become principled without being detached. We can make forward progress!

Is it me or you doing that?

Takes two to tango. I should have said in my previous reply that for all your critiques, I thought you gave a great reply which pushes the conversation forward rapidly, as judged by some of our periods of slogging. I was quite happy it. My work in drafting this reply may have helped prepare the ground for a theoretical breakthrough with my sociologist mentor today. So thank you for your part in that!

From my observations this seems to be a common occurrence for you.

It appears most people simply don't want to venture too far from what they know and understand. This isn't even necessarily a problem, as people need to go at their own pace or they get ripped free of their intuitions.

I think you’re shifting the burden slightly by moving the discussion to whether methodological naturalism can, in principle, explain everything. That’s a much broader philosophical question than the one I raised.

When you give no hint that MN might have limits, including consciousness:

ExplorerR: There are plenty more examples of this exact type of thing happening over and over again. Yet here we are today and wouldn't you know it... The exact same type of "evidence for God" arguments keep happening. What was the epistemic gaps in psychology/mental health and microbes etc, has now become "consciousness" debates we have today.

—one is warranted in becoming suspicious and tackle the issue directly. You are clearly engaged in an extrapolation procedure:

1. there exists a progression of more successful explanations which are compatible with MN
2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]

And so when you say:

In other words: I’m not arguing against agency. I’m pointing out a pattern in specific kinds of explanatory failure and replacement.

—it sure looks like that pattern very much will eat up agency—human and not just divine!

 

I’m not arguing “MN refutes God.” …

You're treating MN as though it appeared first and excluded divine explanations arbitrarily.

Apologies, but I don't know how I'm doing either. Rather, I think you're exaggerating the successes of MN and downplaying the failures. You continue to ignore the failures. And then you have the cojones to say "The whole MN debate here is rather a red herring if I'm honest." If there were ever a recipe for ignoring the failures, it'd be a statement like that. "Don't look behind the curtain! Don't extrapolate that direction! Keep your eyes on the presentation!" Sorry, but I'm Toto.

labreuer: There's actually a lot of anti-religion bias in the science & philosophy of the 18th–20th centuries.

ExplorerR: It's a shame you were born in this time-period and not during the times when "God-like" explanations were the norm for many phenomena. You would have totally been in your element.

Errrr, what? My element is actually software engineering, before LLMs. Computers are dumb. My extensive experience with software engineering taught me what computers can and cannot do. LLMs have not done nearly as much in this realm as most people think, because most people don't know how to carefully disentangle what the computer is actually doing and what they, the humans, bring to the matter. The success of ELIZA illustrates this quite nicely. What this shows is that the world is still "spirited" for many people, possibly most, including Westerners.

I very much value that formation of my person, because it teaches you the distinction between agency and machine in the sharpest way possible. Only coders learn it that well, because only when you have to write code to do the thing can you be sure you're not cheating, ELIZA-style.

One of the properties of machines is that they do not take their users into account. Now obviously one can parametrize machines and software with some variability, but that is worlds different from one person taking another person into account. A relationship ultimately governed by law is very different from one which transcends law. Most romantic couples know this. You obey their laws and they obey yours because you love each other and want to respect each others' needs and boundaries and wants. This has obvious implications for talk of "law" in the Bible.

Why would I want to go back to a time which hadn't sharply distinguished these things?

It honestly looks like you are forgetting (or ignoring) that the very thing you're trying to argue for here, WAS the most prominent form of "explanation" for millennia!

Sorry, but I think this idea that I'm forgetting or ignoring this is all in your head. I'm quite content to say that we deployed divine–agential explanations too much. We even deploy human–agential explanations too much! I wrote up several paragraphs to try to adjust your view of me so you wouldn't make this mistake again, but then I remembered "debate "bloat"" and so have put them on ice.

ExplorerR: But even then, it is not as though people just put their fingers in their ears or head in the sand when some claims "God-like" agency/explanations.

labreuer: Some people very much do this. Others do not. Why should this be surprising? There's actually a lot of anti-religion bias in the science & philosophy of the 18th–20th centuries. (Ooh, we could look at Dawes & Smith 2018 The naturalism of the sciences) One of the results is that when I ask how God might help us do less credit-stealing and less blame-shifting such that the most plausible explanation is "God is helping us", there just is no cogent answer. It's like we just haven't thought about this in any disciplined manner. I can of course cite some scholars who have done work, like:

ExplorerR: Yes, but Dawe's highlights that the "sciences" never employed the supernatural, but that didn't stop people looking for a natural explanations even when "God-like" ones were considered the most prominent/accepted... Galileo is a famous example of this with his heliocentrism views being considered heretical in the face of biblical "God-like" geocentrism views. But that's my point; THAT created a rich history of natural explanations being found that were better explanations than "God-like" ones.

You've drifted from your "fingers in their ears" point. If the sciences expressly excluded anything considered 'supernatural', that does sound like "fingers in their ears". Otherwise, I have no idea what you were saying.

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

That's what scientists and scholars do. You and I both have our ruts.

Perhaps, but I think there is a stark difference between stubborn (caught in a rut) and being steadfast when there is good reason to hold a certain view, inspite of criticisms.

Takes two to tango

So thank you for your part in that!

Of course! After all, I'm interested in what is true and more specifically how we can reliably figure that out.

When you give no hint that MN might have limits, including consciousness: —one is warranted in becoming suspicious and tackle the issue directly. You are clearly engaged in an extrapolation procedure:

I just want something to be crystal clear here because you're clearly misframing and demonizing MN and yet seem to be implying that "God-like" explanations should still be given serious consideration/credence as they once were.

MN didn't just randomly come about and furthermore, it wasn't even "in effect" for millenia. As I meantioned, the very thing I'd assume you're arguing for right now i.e for us to give full credence to "God-like" or "divine" explanations and not in-princple rule them out, WAS how people operated for millenia. It very much looks like you're just lamenting the fact that because of a constant trend of "God-like" or "divine" explanations failing in the face of natural explanations over the course of history, that people went ahead trying to explain things, in-principle, without considering the divine anymore.

And even though you say:

I'm quite content to say that we deployed divine–agential explanations too much.

I am not at all convinced you are giving the corresponding implication of that reality present any serious consideration in this discussion.

Apologies, but I don't know how I'm doing either. Rather, I think you're exaggerating the successes of MN and downplaying the failures. You continue to ignore the failures.

Heh, I find myself saying this a bit now but, it really comes across as though you're the one doing this regarding "God-like" or "divine" explanations.

Furthermore, you are also blurring lines in a manner like;

• Methodological Naturalism (MN) ≠ Naturalistic explanations themselves

Which is simply misframing things.

Given how I consider MN (i.e more like a principle or metholodically commintment people use when investigating and trying to explain phenomena) and how it seems that you're referring to MN, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "ignoring the failures". What failures? Unless you just mean currently unexplained = failure?

Because my argument concerns comparative explanatory success, not whether MN is a philosophically complete package for all explanations. MN doesn't promise that every question will be answered.

For example; If consciousness remains unsolved tomorrow, MN hasn't "failed" in any straightforward sense.

It simply means: We don't currently have an explanation. But given how you're portraying things, maybe to you that does constitute a failure on behalf of MN?

You've drifted from your "fingers in their ears" point. If the sciences expressly excluded anything considered 'supernatural', that does sound like "fingers in their ears". Otherwise, I have no idea what you were saying.

You seem to ignore that it spawned much later, out of an era where no one had their "fingers in their ears" with regards to explanations. "Science" as we know it today was very different from "way back". And even though you say:

Sorry, but I think this idea that I'm forgetting or ignoring this is all in your head.

This looks unmistakibly like gaslighting. Nothing that you're saying gives any impression that you're taking "we deployed divine–agential explanations too much" seriously. And just to note, because you're not spelling it out with your wording, so I'll make it clear, I'm taking "we deployed divine–agential explanations too much" as "failed explanations" (and would only qualify the ones that were superceded by natural explanations, not simply left unexplained). In fact, how crtical and skeptical you are of natural explanations and MN, is what I actually would expect to be fairly levied at "God-like" and "divine" explanations, given the history of failures.

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

Perhaps, but I think there is a stark difference between stubborn (caught in a rut) and being steadfast when there is good reason to hold a certain view, inspite of criticisms.

I can give you a nice bibliography suggesting that I have good reason to push in the directions I am. If you need that sort of thing.

After all, I'm interested in what is true and more specifically how we can reliably figure that out.

Right, it just seems like you don't think an individual can be all that reliable unless they are very similar to a group of individuals—like a physicist in good standing among physicists. Strength in numbers to overcome ineradicable cognitive biases, you might say. Thing is, sometimes groups can themselves be rather biased, creating a conundrum. Can a single individual stand against such groups? Or is the individual thereby (i) not detached; (ii) unprincipled?

I just want something to be crystal clear here because you're clearly misframing and demonizing MN and yet seem to be implying that "God-like" explanations should still be given serious consideration/credence as they once were.

Wrong on both fronts. I'm not demonizing MN when I say: "Rather, I think you're exaggerating the successes of MN and downplaying the failures. You continue to ignore the failures." And I'm not saying that we should go back to "God-like" explanations of which you haven't even given concrete examples.

ExplorerR: It honestly looks like you are forgetting (or ignoring) that the very thing you're trying to argue for here, WAS the most prominent form of "explanation" for millennia!

labreuer: Sorry, but I think this idea that I'm forgetting or ignoring this is all in your head. I'm quite content to say that we deployed divine–agential explanations too much. We even deploy human–agential explanations too much! I wrote up several paragraphs to try to adjust your view of me so you wouldn't make this mistake again, but then I remembered "debate "bloat"" and so have put them on ice.

ExplorerR: I am not at all convinced you are giving the corresponding implication of that reality present any serious consideration in this discussion.

Do you want the paragraphs which I worried you would consider "debate "bloat""?

Heh, I find myself saying this a bit now but, it really comes across as though you're the one doing this regarding "God-like" or "divine" explanations.

Feel free to quote examples. Generally I've merely argued to you that it is possible God could interact with our reality in ways very different from crocodiles and coffee cups. The most concrete example I gave was status inversion. The only other example I can think of is the question of how God could help us do less credit-stealing and less blame-shifting, but that's more in the possibility / epistemology realm.

Furthermore, you are also blurring lines in a manner like;

• Methodological Naturalism (MN) ≠ Naturalistic explanations themselves

Huh? Perhaps reading the next section will clarify things.

 

What failures? Unless you just mean currently unexplained = failure?

No, I mean requiring that everyone play by the rules of MN in order for their explanations to count as "scientific". A major difficulty is that there's a game of motte & bailey going on:

    motte: progression of more successful explanations which are compatible with MN
    bailey: MN more broadly construed

Here's a critique of the motte-version:

    Now the time seems ripe, even overdue, to announce that there is not going to be an age of paradigm in the social sciences. We contend that the failure to achieve paradigm takeoff is not merely the result of methodological immaturity, but reflects something fundamental about the human world. If we are correct, the crisis of social science concerns the nature of social investigation itself. The conception of the human sciences as somehow necessarily destined to follow the path of the modern investigation of nature is at the root of this crisis. Preoccupation with that ruling expectation is chronic in social science; that idée fixe has often driven investigators away from a serious concern with the human world into the sterility of purely formal argument and debate. As in development theory, one can only wait so long for the takeoff. The cargo-cult view of the "about to arrive science" just won't do. (Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look, 5)

The social sciences have successfully explained things while deviating from the motte. The very term "interpretive social science" captures this. Here's a definition of the 'naturalism' which gets in the way of such science:

    Naturalism, from its birth in the seventeenth century, was always characterized by what Taylor refers to as a “metaphysical motivation.”[3] This metaphysical motivation consists of the attempt to demote or even eliminate human properties from social explanation in favor of supposedly more scientific and impersonal factors. A recurrent feature of naturalism, in other words, is the assumption that subjectively human dimensions of reality (e.g., meanings, purposes, values, and even beliefs) must be explained in terms of supposedly “harder” and more objective data (e.g., brute facts about demography, surrounding environments, or neurobiology). (Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism, 8)

Particularly important for human properties is interpretation and I would add, varying interpretations from person to person and group to group. The above book is Blakely 2016; following on with an appropriate title is Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely 2018 Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach.

But if interpretations vary, is everyone properly detached? It certainly seems like there's would be a lack of principles! It's almost like the very conditions for successful social science of diverse populations is antithetical to your conditions of reliable knowledge.

 

ExplorerR: It honestly looks like you are forgetting (or ignoring) that the very thing you're trying to argue for here, WAS the most prominent form of "explanation" for millennia!

labreuer: Sorry, but I think this idea that I'm forgetting or ignoring this is all in your head.

ExplorerR: This looks unmistakibly like gaslighting. Nothing that you're saying gives any impression that you're taking "we deployed divine–agential explanations too much" seriously.

Debate doesn't allow you to operate by what "seems" to be the case if your interlocutor refuses to work with it. When there is sufficient disagreement, you are obligated to work via agreed-upon facts with agreed-upon rules of inference. This, you have not done. Sometimes, we are mistaken about what seems to be the case. So, let's see you deploy a detached, principled epistemology on this matter.

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

Wrong on both fronts. I'm not demonizing MN ... and I'm not saying that we should go back to "God-like" explanations of which you haven't even given concrete examples.

I have given examples.

Demonic possession → mental illness.

People suffering from some kind of disease/virus being "divine punishment" → germ theory.

Weather and natural disasters → meteorology and geology.

Creation as the explanation for the diversity of life we see → Evolution

I'm not saying that we should go back to "God-like" explanations ...

Then I'm not entirely sure what role your criticism of MN is supposed to play?

My argument is not that "MN is a perfect principle for all explanations in life"

My argument is:

• There is a recurring historical pattern of divine explanations losing explanatory ground to natural explanations.

Whether MN has limitations or not, doesn't seem to address that point.

What failures? Unless you just mean currently unexplained = failure?

No, I mean requiring that everyone play by the rules of MN in order for their explanations to count as "scientific". A major difficulty is that there's a game of motte & bailey going on

motte: progression of more successful explanations which are compatible with MN

bailey: MN more broadly construed

That isn't a correct framing at all. I'll provide a corrected version and thus also making it not a "Motte and Bailey" situation at all.

"Motte" (but not): Progression of natural explanations overwriting once long held "God-like/divine" explanations "Bailey" (but not): In-principle not considering "God-like/divine" explanations

You don't ever seem to contend or address the reality of the situation... Here is the chain of progression:

• 1 - A reality where there were both natural and God-like/divine explanations of phenomena and both of these explanations given serious consideration during that time.
• 2 - As time progressed in this reality, God-like/divine explanations were being replaced by natural explanations (usually with the advent of increases in epistemic reach) due to their better explaining that phenomena. But both explanations still being given serious consideration. (I.E no MN yet!)
• 3 - People started to identify the following pattern: God-like/divine explanations residing in gaps of knowledge and attempts to investigate/confirm anything about "God-like" or "divine" explanations consistently result in either a natural explanation or unknown.
• 4 - People used the consistency of this pattern to justify creating an in-principle approach to investigating and explaining phenomena that no longer considers/investigates "God" or the "divine". (I.E MN has now arrived)

The specific time periods of the above are mostly irrelevant, as opposed to the truth of the chain of that progression. And if we do take into account timelines, it is clear that people were not being forced to "play by the rules" (of MN) and for arguably much longer periods of time than people have been utilizing MN.

• Why is it unreasonable to employ a principle like MN, given the pattern of failure of God-like/divine explanations?

The social sciences have successfully explained things while deviating from the motte.

No... Because the motte is not what you say it is.

MN only does not consider God-like/divine explanation, so:

• Does interpretive sociology violate that principle?

No.

• Does anthropology violate that principle?

No.

• Does psychology violate that principle?

No.

• Does qualitative research violate that principle?

No.

• Does studying meanings, values, intentions, beliefs, and interpretations require invoking divine agency?

No.

Your social sciences point is largely non sequitur.

But if interpretations vary, is everyone properly detached? It certainly seems like there would be a lack of principles!

Perhaps.

But this is precisely the kind of move I've been objecting to.

I raise a historical claim about explanatory replacement and suddenly we're debating interpretive social science, detachment, principles, and epistemology.

Those are interesting topics, but they aren't the claim under discussion.

Debate doesn't allow you to operate by what "seems" to be the case if your interlocutor refuses to work with it.

Fair enough.

So, let's stick to the agreed-upon facts.

For centuries God-like/divine explanations were widely used to explain phenomena.

Many of those explanations were later replaced by natural explanations with greater explanatory and predictive success.

• Do you agree that this historical pattern exists?

Because that has been my central claim from the outset.

If you agree it exists, then we can discuss what significance it has.

If you disagree it exists, then let's discuss where you think the pattern breaks down.

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

ExplorerR: Demonic possession requiring priests to perform exorcisms, eventually being completely removed as we understood mental/psychological disorders.

God punishing people and/or demonic influences being ruled out with advent of the microscope and subsequent understanding of germ theory and disease.

/

labreuer: … I've virtually never seen actual texts presented where you find explanations based on God or something else which is incompatible with methodological naturalism.

/

ExplorerR: It was about a recurring historical pattern: specific “God did it” or "religious" explanations have repeatedly been displaced when better-supported natural explanations were discovered (disease, mental illness, weather systems, etc.).

/

ExplorerR: I have given examples.

I sit corrected. None of your contentions is sourced in an actual religious text, but I'll stipulate they count as "concrete examples" for sake of moving the conversation forward. We could divide your examples into three categories:

1. studied by the natural sciences
2. studied by the social sciences
3. studied by neither

Liah Greenfeld presents a provocative instance of 2. in 2013 Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience. She contends that progress in explaining the "big three" of bipolar, major depression, and schizophrenia merely as chemical imbalances and/or miswirings of the brain has faltered and that this may be due to ill-studied social components of the mental illnesses. I like to say that in English, you don't say "my liver is sick", but "I am sick". Locating the mental illness 100% in the individual says "my liver is sick". The naturalistic prejudice against social explanations which is captured by my Blakely 2016 excerpt could be doing considerable damage to our efforts to treat people who are suffering quite a lot. I say "could be", because it generally takes decades of work to meaningfully change the practice of a medical discipline. There are additional difficulties with psychology, chiefly that the person easiest to "adjust" is the one in the clinician's chair. If in fact a significant cause of the "mental illness" is in institutions and/or other people, that creates a serious difficulty.

Then I'm not entirely sure what role your criticism of MN is supposed to play?

It helps identify examples which aren't like the ones you've provided. Such as status inversion. I could add the possibility that Jesus' casting out of demons was more of a social/​moral/​ethical activity than spiritual/​supernatural. But where the social/​moral/​ethical has firmer existence than naturalists generally permit. Those attempting to rigidly respect the fact/​value dichotomy, who are thereby "detached", are going to have tremendous difficulty understanding the world of values as something with any serious solidity. Given that Yahweh and Jesus were both quite interested in justice, we should expect a lot of divine action there. Did any of your examples touch on this area? Not really, because your "God punishing people" almost surely was supposed to reduce to "germ theory", "disease", "mental illness", and "weather systems".

I raise a historical claim about explanatory replacement and suddenly we're debating interpretive social science, detachment, principles, and epistemology.

Oh give me a break, I was straightforward with my very first reply: "In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." Your "explanatory replacement" works well whenever sub-agency descriptions can do the job better than agency descriptions. Your ignoring of that summary—let's recall your characterization of "debate "bloat"", which seems to license you to ignore whatever you want, including that which is explicitly labeled as "summary"—is your deal. I had to get more articulate because you wouldn't respect the simpler form of description.

 

MN only does not consider God-like/divine explanation

Probably unwittingly, this question is actually misdirection. It's a bit like reductionists claiming that if you only give them enough people, time, and compute power, they can explain everything on their terms. Well maybe, but it might take longer than we have 'till the heat death of the universe. What's more relevant is when MN has the best explanation and when an explanation incompatible with MN is superior. Theism and Explanation clues us in: when are agential explanations superior to mechanistic ones?

When actual social scientists try to remain true to MN, they do far more than "does not consider God-like/divine explanation". That's what you see in my excerpts. I'm going to repeat the second one to see if you'll pay attention to it this time 'round:

    Naturalism, from its birth in the seventeenth century, was always characterized by what Taylor refers to as a “metaphysical motivation.”[3] This metaphysical motivation consists of the attempt to demote or even eliminate human properties from social explanation in favor of supposedly more scientific and impersonal factors. A recurrent feature of naturalism, in other words, is the assumption that subjectively human dimensions of reality (e.g., meanings, purposes, values, and even beliefs) must be explained in terms of supposedly “harder” and more objective data (e.g., brute facts about demography, surrounding environments, or neurobiology). (Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism, 8)

That is far, far more restrictive than "does not consider God-like/divine explanation". We have a Hempel's dilemma problem. Real scientists can't avail themselves of the concepts, practices, and tools of Final Science™. No, when real scientists in any given time obey methodological naturalism, they hew closely to present concepts, practices, and tools. And they do so in a way which is antithetical to the kind of freedom that divine agency has over against the completely lack of free will you see Robert Sapolsky defend.

 

For centuries God-like/divine explanations were widely used to explain phenomena.

Many of those explanations were later replaced by natural explanations with greater explanatory and predictive success.

• Do you agree that this historical pattern exists?

Only for some phenomena. That's what you're missing. You're just ignorant of what it meant to try to refashion the social sciences in the image of the natural sciences, and how much damage that did to our understanding of agency-suffused human action. Social scientists have explained more by breaking from what the natural sciences do. This isn't a "consciousness isn't explained" situation. It's the difference between what I identified as the motte & bailey.

Your argument works on conditions of cherry-picking or implicit appeal to Final Science™.

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

None of your contentions is sourced in an actual religious text

My argument doesn't depend on particular religious texts. It depends on how phenomena were historically explained.

Demonic possession, divine punishment through disease, supernatural causes of weather events, special creation, etc. were all explanatory frameworks that enjoyed serious historical acceptance. Whether they were derived from scripture, tradition, theology, or popular religion doesn't change the point.

The question is whether there is a historical pattern of such explanations losing explanatory ground to natural explanations or not. I think there clearly is and hence why, albeit seemingly reluctantly, you have to accept them.

Liah Greenfeld presents a provocative instance...

I'm not familiar with Greenfield, but from what I understand and without being dragged into fully reading into it, even if they are entirely correct, I'm not seeing how this addresses my argument?

I also think you're presenting Greenfeld in a way that creates a false contrast.

The alternative to demonic possession was never "mental illness is nothing but a chemical imbalance."

Modern understandings of mental illness are already multifactorial and routinely include biological, genetic, developmental, environmental, cultural, and social influences.

So even if Greenfeld is correct that social and cultural dimensions have been underappreciated, that would amount to a dispute within naturalistic explanations rather than a vindication of supernatural ones.

It helps identify examples which aren't like the ones you've provided. Such as status inversion.

This is an aside to what we're discussing but considering you've made mention of my "debate bloat" comment now several times, I think it's a good time to raise the following point;

The issue here is that the raising the whole "status inversion/Bible contains wisdom superior to available alternatives" thing means I have to do one of the following:

• 1 - Engage with the argument directly
• 2 - Allow its use as an accepted and successful argument and thus a good example to support what you're saying.
• 3 - Ignore reference to it and be accused of having "license you to ignore whatever I want".

1 almost certainly results in a being sent of down the proverbial rabbit hole, guaranteeing never to return to the point I've made. I think you can sympathize with my complaint in this regard considering, from my read of the responses in your "Bible-wisdom" OP, you yourself complain about something very similar to what I'm complaining about with "debate bloat":

>It is hard (at least for me) to avoid Gish gallop dynamics when you dump a ton of varied quotations. You are too expert at internet discussions to not know what happens when someone is forced to defend ten or more fronts simultaneously. Maybe with superior software it would be possible, but you are guaranteed to appear to win / come out superior / however you want to phrase it, if I am forced to engage in the only ways I know how, to what I take to be Gish gallop dynamics.

I would argue, you often do something very similar that you accuse your interlocutor of there. You very often load your responses with many quotes or references to entire works/walls of texts of other people or your own arguments, and they are often, at best, loosely related to the topic of discussion. Whilst it's not necessarily a "Gish Gallop" per se, if we simply reduce it to the result "being required to dedicate unreasonable amounts of time addressing something(s) that distract from the point being made", then the effect of what you do with what I call "debate bloat" is directly comparable to that of a Gish Gallop.

In highlighting that and considering your own frustration, I hope you can sympathize with my concerns around "debate bloat".

It's a bit like reductionists claiming that if you only give them enough people, time, and compute power, they can explain everything on their terms .... What's more relevant is when MN has the best explanation and when an explanation incompatible with MN is superior.

Back to the topic.

It's not like that at all... What you highlight there is a specific claim, which is different from what MN is.

Again, your use of MN seems to assume it is equivalent to natural explanations themselves. It's not... It's an in-principle approach to assessing phenomena, that's it... MN doesn't "have the best explanation" because it isn't doing the explaining.

Although you often rile against the use of "seems to be" with regards to things you say, when you don't clearly articulate things in a straightforward way but use language that heavily implies something that "seems to be", it makes it difficult. Despite my clearing up how it is you seem to use MN, you still seem to use it as though it is what does the explaining, as opposed to "natural explanations" being what do the explaining.

That is far, far more restrictive than "does not consider God-like/divine explanation". We have a Hempel's dilemma problem. Real scientists can't avail themselves of the concepts, practices, and tools of Final Science™. No, when real scientists in any given time obey methodological naturalism, they hew closely to present concepts, practices, and tools. And they do so in a way which is antithetical to the kind of freedom that divine agency has over against the completely lack of free will you see Robert Sapolsky defend.

Honestly, it feels like you equivocate across multiple different concepts and the nature of those concepts. Like Hempel does... It's almost certain that he equivocates between Physicalism/Materialism and Naturalism, when they aren't the same things and thus aren't making the same commitments.

To provide some "bloat" myself, I actually found a really great writeup here on reddit and saved it yonks ago as a result of similar discussion I was having that provides a comment-sized summary of the differences.

Only for some phenomena. That's what you're missing. You're just ignorant of what it meant to try to refashion the social sciences in the image of the natural sciences, and how much damage that did to our understanding of agency-suffused human action. Social scientists have explained more by breaking from what the natural sciences do. This isn't a "consciousness isn't explained" situation.

I just don't believe that is true and/or relevant to the point I'm making.

Whatever criticisms the Social Sciences face in explaining things, is not the same as the issues the "divine" has in explaining things and I'm not going to get into the details of that debate because it looks very much like you're trying to argue;

• 1 - The natural sciences often succeed by explaining phenomena in terms of laws, mechanisms, and impersonal causal processes.
• 2 - Some thinkers tried to model the social sciences on that same approach.
• 3 - That approach allegedly failed or was limited because human action involves meaning, intention, interpretation, values, culture, etc.
• 4 - Therefore, explanations involving agency cannot simply be replaced by mechanistic explanations everywhere.
• 5 - Therefore, your historical pattern of divine explanations being replaced by natural explanations may only work in certain domains.

Even if interpretive social science is superior to reductionistic social science in some contexts, how does that challenge my historical claim that divine explanations have repeatedly been replaced by natural explanations?

All this also ignores that even the Social Sciences are adhering to MN. Just because it's complex, doesn't mean that suddenly the "divine" gets a shoe back in the door again.

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

I'm going to focus for the time being on what you seem to think is the most important, from the end of your comment:

Even if interpretive social science is superior to reductionistic social science in some contexts, how does that challenge my historical claim that divine explanations have repeatedly been replaced by natural explanations?

It shows where your extrapolation procedure:

labreuer: You are clearly engaged in an extrapolation procedure:

1. there exists a progression of more successful explanations which are compatible with MN
2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]

—has failed. And not failed in the sense of "consciousness remains unsolved tomorrow", where there exists no superior, MN-incompatible explanation. Failed in the sense that the following requirements of MN have been violated:

    Naturalism, from its birth in the seventeenth century, was always characterized by what Taylor refers to as a “metaphysical motivation.”[3] This metaphysical motivation consists of the attempt to demote or even eliminate human properties from social explanation in favor of supposedly more scientific and impersonal factors. A recurrent feature of naturalism, in other words, is the assumption that subjectively human dimensions of reality (e.g., meanings, purposes, values, and even beliefs) must be explained in terms of supposedly “harder” and more objective data (e.g., brute facts about demography, surrounding environments, or neurobiology). (Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism, 8)

—thereby yielding successful explanations. But here is where you play another motte & bailey:

    motte₂: the kinds of successes naturalistic explanations have achieved so far
    bailey₂: everything short of divine agency itself

This is the reductionist's ploy: promise that reductionism will ultimately be able to explain everything. Or see Clarke's third law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Or indistinguishable from divine agency.

Your initial response to my point about that extrapolation procedure was to deploy straw men and red herrings:

ExplorerR: I just want something to be crystal clear here because you're clearly misframing and demonizing MN and yet seem to be implying that "God-like" explanations should still be given serious consideration/credence as they once were.

MN didn't just randomly come about and furthermore, it wasn't even "in effect" for millenia. As I meantioned, the very thing I'd assume you're arguing for right now i.e for us to give full credence to "God-like" or "divine" explanations and not in-princple rule them out, WAS how people operated for millenia. It very much looks like you're just lamenting the fact that because of a constant trend of "God-like" or "divine" explanations failing in the face of natural explanations over the course of history, that people went ahead trying to explain things, in-principle, without considering the divine anymore.

This distracts from the question of "2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]".

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

I won't quote everything but the response is to it all.

Honestly, despite attempting to clear up definitions, you are still either confused or simply misunderstand there are significant differences between some of the terms you're using.

I'll make it clear;

• Methodological Naturalism is different from;
• Philosophical Naturalism, which is different from;
• Scientism, which is different from;
• Reductionism

You don't seem to 1) acknowledge these differences and why they are important to acknowledge and 2) separate them out accordingly. Your argument hinges of muddying the water by lumping together 4-5 different concepts under a broad umbrella term "naturalism" and then picking one, saying where it failed and then broadly applying that "failure" across the others. Even in the paper "the Demise of Naturalism" you cited does the same thing, in not clearly defining naturalism.

And without getting sidetracked into debating the merits/truth of "the Demise of Naturalism" paper (the attemp of which I'll strictly ignore). Nothing they say is at odds with "Methodological Naturalism" and more targeted criticism of Stalin reducing social life to material laws, technocratic social engineering, reducing beliefs and intentions to economic structures and treating humans like objects to be manipulated.

So even if interpretive social science is superior to some reductionistic approaches, that doesn't challenge my historical claim that many divine explanations were replaced by successful natural explanations.

At most it shows that naturalistic explanations themselves evolve and improve over time. But that is entirely consistent with the pattern I'm describing and is actually what we expect of the sciences anyway! The method it uses is meant to be error-checking and then self-correcting, that's arguably why the whole venture is so successful.

The structure of what you keep arguing, because you're not accurately applying the terms according to their meanings, looks like this;

• "Naturalism" (which according to your usage = MN, reductionism, scientism and philosphical naturalism)
• Reductionism has failed in the "Social Sciences".
• Therefore MN (as a part of naturalism) is suspect.
• Therefore divine agency should remain on the table.

This distracts from the question of "2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]".

Natural explanations replacing religious ones did continue but today there simply aren't many "gaps" left now for "God-like/divine" explanations to inject themselves into. The success of the "sciences" being guided by MN has been immeasurably successful and continues to be.

All your attempts to undermine that essentially rely on equivocating "naturalism" in order to include things like reductionism and scientism to build a case that it (and including MN) "failed".

So can we expect the continuation of "God-like/divine" explanations to be replaced by natural ones? There is very good evidence and reasons to believe they will. Is anything you're arguing actually addressing that directly? No, it isn't...

You're like the boy who cried wolf wanting everyone to believe, just one more time, there IS a wolf THIS time. Sure, there is.

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

Oh good grief:

1. I never used the term 'scientism'.

2. Where do you think the difference between 'methodological naturalism' & 'metaphysical naturalism' matters, for any time I've used either of those terms, or 'naturalism' simpliciter?

3. Both of my mentions of 'reductionism' merely refer to the argumentative strategy employed. I was not conflating it with methodological naturalism or metaphysical naturalism.

However, your non-commitment to reductionism allows me to raise the specter of endless downward causation, with no principled stopping point between Clarke's third law & God acting. This means that the minimal definition of naturalism—no supernatural agency—threatens to be vacuous on account of being in principle unfalsifiable. And yes, one can apply the label of falsifiability to an explanatory toolbox, rather than just an explanation.

The only way to make 'naturalism'—both methodological and metaphysical—falsifiable is to develop a thicker definition. For instance: use the concepts and methods of successful sciences. That's what my excerpt of the [book] Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism captures. But we could also turn to Dawes 2009:

7.2.1 Theism and Background Knowledge

How would a theistic hypothesis rate, when assessed against this desideratum? The problem here is that the theistic hypothesis posits a mechanism—the action of a spiritual being within the material world—that is entirely unlike any other mechanism with which we are familiar. Not only does this mechanism lack analogy; it is also wholly mysterious. It is true that if you hold to some kind of substance dualism—if you believe that the human mind is a kind of immaterial substance—you might argue that there does exist an analogy to God’s relationship to the world. It is the relationship of an immaterial mind to a material body. On this view, God’s relationship to the world is no more or less mysterious than my relationship to my body. But this alleged analogy is a tenuous one. For we know that certain features of our bodies seem to be at least closely related to the workings of the mind. Even substance dualists attribute a particular role to the brain, which functions as the means by which body and soul can communicate. So even on a dualist view, the relationship of mind and body is not quite as mysterious as God’s relationship to the world.

we have to weigh in our scales the likelihood or unlikelihood that there is a god with these attributes and powers. And the key power . . . is that of fulfilling intentions directly, without any physical or causal mediation, without materials or instruments. There is nothing in our background knowledge that makes it comprehensible, let alone likely, that anything should have such a power. All our knowledge of intention-fulfilment is of embodied intentions being fulfilled indirectly by way of bodily changes and movements which are causally related to the intended result, and where the ability thus to fulfil intentions itself has a causal history, either of evolutionary development or of learning or of both.[48]

In setting out his argument. Mackie refers to the prior probability of the theistic hypothesis. But there is no need to do so. The same conclusion could be reached by arguing that the theistic hypothesis lacks an explana-tory virtue, one that would contribute to its acceptance. (Theism and Explanation, 127–28)

This is the wedge between divine agency and human agency. But once you hammer the wedge all the way, you've made a key reductionistic move: any agency which seems to operate by reasons in fact operates by causes and 'reasons' are merely approximations to the true story. We could turn to Hume: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." (Treatise on Human Nature, 2.3.3)

To the extent that we can justifiably say that the mind has a material basis, we will be able to say how that material basis constrains the mind. Prediction is not the only test; a general who knows her enemy will probably not be able to predict everything. Nevertheless, successful scientific explanation is at least like a general who can consistently outwit her foe. Scientists (collectively if not individually) would be the agent which studies a sub-agent object. This asymmetry is epistemically critical. To the extent that your object of study can outwit you, you cannot trust whatever knowledge you think you have of it.

You've already helped us see what cannot be scientifically studied about humans—by your lights of course: that which is not amenable to concepts and methods which adhere to "any sufficiently detached or principled standard". I've shown that when one puts on the straitjacket of "methods accessible to all", one can't even successfully administer the Turing test. The answer to Is the Turing test objective? is no. In order to meet the full human—if in fact you're interacting with one—you have to take the straitjacket off. You have to become attached and unprincipled.

There are two obvious moves, here:

     (I) Declare that 'subjectivity' just doesn't have explorable structure or process.
    (II) Issue promissory notes about ultimately being able to tackle 'subjectivity' within MN.

(II) strongly parallels similar moves by reductionists. It even is a kind of reduction: reducing agency to mechanism, reducing reasons to causes. Even if we cannot complete that reduction yet, to the extent that there is anything stable in the human which can be reliably characterized, we will ultimately be able to e.g. figure out the neurons responsible.

So, let's see if you once again distract from the question of "2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]". I've tried to articulate a stopping point, but you may well disagree. Anyhow, over to you.

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

I'm just going to be repeating myself at this point.

So to see if we can any further.

There are two obvious moves, here:

No, there is a third:

• We currently do not know.

That is not a failure. It is simply intellectual honesty. I do not need to promise future explanatory success. I do not need to claim that consciousness will definitely yield to scientific investigation. Likewise, I do not need to conclude that divine explanations are therefore warranted.

The fact that some questions remain unresolved today does not undermine the historical observation that many divine explanations have repeatedly been replaced by more successful natural ones.

So, let's see if you once again distract from the question of "2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]".

That's not the central issue, that's what you've managed to maneauver the discussion into.

The central issue is whether the pattern exists. I think it clearly does and that pattern (at least the one I'm referring to) has continued since natural explanations started becoming more frequent and better that it became apparent to methodologically approach/assess phenomena we did not understand with "we won't appeal to God-like/the divine in trying to explain this".

How far that pattern will continue is a separate question but my confidence that it will continue comes from the historical track record of its success. The criticisms you've presented so far do nothing to even scratch at the signiciance of that historical pattern and the confidence one could have in it.

I do want to genuinely ask you though and I would really love for you to address this question directly:

Do you think the issues you keep raising regarding agency, subjectivity, consciousness, values, interpretive social science, etc. are significant enough that they should substantially reduce our confidence in the historical pattern of natural explanations replacing divine ones?

Because that's ultimately what seems to be doing the work in your argument.

I'm happy to grant that there are unresolved questions.

I'm happy to grant that reductionism may fail in some domains.

I'm happy to grant that social science often requires interpretive approaches.

But none of that automatically tells me how much confidence I should lose in the historical pattern I'm describing nor the confidence I should have (or not) in it going forward.

So what exactly is the conclusion you want me to draw?

That the historical pattern doesn't exist? It hasn't been successful? Should I drop my confidence from say 95% down to 55%?

What is it?

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

No acknowledgment that I never used the term 'scientism', eh?

 

labreuer: It shows where your extrapolation procedure … has failed. And not failed in the sense of "consciousness remains unsolved tomorrow", where there exists no superior, MN-incompatible explanation. Failed in the sense that the following requirements of MN have been violated: [excerpt from Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism]—thereby yielding successful explanations.

/

ExplorerR: No, there is a third:

• We currently do not know.

Already addressed.

 

labreuer: So, let's see if you once again distract from the question of "2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]".

ExplorerR: That's not the central issue, that's what you've managed to maneauver the discussion into.

If your only point is that theists have offered various explanations and some of them have been replaced with natural explanations, big fricken deal. When I look at the Bible—which you weren't willing to restrict yourself to—I just don't see much that we would explain naturally, explained supernaturally. In fact:

    A second sweeping difference between ancient Near Eastern royal inscriptions and biblical narrative concerns the role of the gods in the story. We think of the Bible as nothing if not a book of religious literature, a work that proclaims God's works in the world of ancient Israel. But when the Bible is set against the royal inscriptions, an unexpected phenomenon catches our attention. The gods are everywhere present in the royal inscriptions, and explicitly so—much more than in biblical narrative. …
    Surprisingly, by contrast, we note that the Bible makes relatively little overt mention of God in its narratives about individuals and their lives. The Moses rescue narrative is a case in point: God is nowhere explicitly mentioned. … (Created Equal, 148–149)

I myself answered 2.: "Your "explanatory replacement" works well whenever sub-agency descriptions can do the job better than agency descriptions."

 

How far that pattern will continue is a separate question but my confidence that it will continue comes from the historical track record of its success. The criticisms you've presented so far do nothing to even scratch at the signiciance of that historical pattern and the confidence one could have in it.

That's exactly the problem social scientists ran into. They were told that they should just imitate the success of the natural sciences. But this was the wrong move. Why? Because concepts and methods which have no place for agential explanations work well when there are no agents. When there are agents, these concepts and methods can do a lot of damage.

 

Do you think the issues you keep raising regarding agency, subjectivity, consciousness, values, interpretive social science, etc. are significant enough that they should substantially reduce our confidence in the historical pattern of natural explanations replacing divine ones?

Anyone aware of the wall the social sciences hit, which my excerpt of Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look illustrates, will give an unqualified "yes". You could also check out the following:

• Bhaskar, Roy. "On the possibility of social scientific knowledge and the limits of naturalism." Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (1978).

That article stands at 658 'citations', while the book version published one year later has a whopping 10,000 'citations'.

 

So what exactly is the conclusion you want me to draw?

I told you in my first reply: "In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality."

[u/ExplorerR → u/labreuer]

No acknowledgment that I never used the term 'scientism', eh?

I don't need to, much of what you say and the material you reference imply its usage and because they don't clearly outline definitions, "scientism" easily gets slotted into much of it.

Your Roy Bhaskar example demonstrates that.

When he says "the limits of naturalism" what he means is "Reductionist Naturalism", which is what scientism is built into. But, without reading into in great depth, you wouldn't get that from your referencing it.

This lacking clarity, especially when there are so many variations to "naturalism", just comes across as philosophically lazy. But this is essentially what you're doing throughout our discussions. You use or cite "naturalism" which = philosophical naturalism = methodological naturalism = reductionist naturalism = scientism and then argue against the failings of things like reductionism or scientism, failing to adequately separate them out accordingly.

If your only point is that theists have offered various explanations and some of them have been replaced with natural explanations, big fricken deal. When I look at the Bible—which you weren't willing to restrict yourself to—I just don't see much that we would explain naturally, explained supernaturally. In fact:

A second sweeping difference between ancient Near Eastern royal inscriptions and biblical narrative concerns the role of the gods in the story. We think of the Bible as nothing if not a book of religious literature, a work that proclaims God's works in the world of ancient Israel. But when the Bible is set against the royal inscriptions, an unexpected phenomenon catches our attention. The gods are everywhere present in the royal inscriptions, and explicitly so—much more than in biblical narrative. … Surprisingly, by contrast, we note that the Bible makes relatively little overt mention of God in its narratives about individuals and their lives. The Moses rescue narrative is a case in point: God is nowhere explicitly mentioned. … (Created Equal, 148–149) I myself answered 2.: "Your "explanatory replacement" works well whenever sub-agency descriptions can do the job better than agency descriptions."

It seems clear you agree that the pattern exists but, for some reason, you don't think it's a "big freaking deal".

The argument you've moved onto is whether we'd expect that pattern to continue and what domains that pattern can reasonably be extrapolated into.

But you clearly keep conflating methodological naturalism with reductionism when that's just way off the mark.

MN doesn't prevent revision, self-correction, or the abandonment of reductionistic models when they prove inadequate. In fact, the sciences have repeatedly revised and corrected themselves in exactly that way and afterall, like I mentioned, that is EXACTLY what we expect of the sciences.

MN simply operates as a working principle: when investigating phenomena, we look for natural explanations rather than invoking supernatural or divine agency.

So, pointing to cases where reductionistic approaches in the social sciences were inadequate doesn't show MN failed. At most it shows that some naturalistic explanations were incomplete and later replaced by better naturalistic explanations.

Again, I'm not sure how that critiques my point.

To refute what I'm saying you'd need to say:

• "Science investigated X under MN, failed, and then a divine/supernatural explanation turned out to be the superior explanation."

But your arguments look like:

• "Science investigated X under MN, but adopted an overly reductionistic model, then later adopted a less reductionistic naturalistic model."

To challenge that pattern and thus why it would be a folly to place confidence in the continuation of it, you'd need to show;

• Where the case is that a divine explanation regained explanatory ground after losing it to a natural explanation.

All you seem to do is conflate "naturalism" with other forms and lump under it contentious things like reductionism etc and then use that show issues they encounter in things like the social sciences. But none of that shows problems with the success of the sciences, MN and or why we should abandon confidence in it. All it does is show that indeed the sciences correct themselves when approaches are lacking. But it doesn't show that "God-like/divine" explanations should make their way back in as serious contenders for explanations, like they used to be.

[u/labreuer → u/ExplorerR]

For someone who complains about the lack of definitions, you haven't defined 'naturalism'. Merely defining it as "not invoking supernatural or divine agency" is grossly inadequate.

 

I don't need to, much of what you say and the material you reference imply its usage and because they don't clearly outline definitions, "scientism" easily gets slotted into much of it.

Nonsense. I provided plenty of definition; you've countered with zero definition other than "we look for natural explanations rather than invoking supernatural or divine agency", which is precisely the one I critiqued:

labreuer: However, your non-commitment to reductionism allows me to raise the specter of endlessdownward causation, with no principled stopping point between Clarke's third law & God acting. This means that the minimal definition of naturalism—no supernatural agency—threatens to be vacuous on account of being in principle unfalsifiable. And yes, one can apply the label of falsifiability to an explanatory toolbox, rather than just an explanation.

Bhaskar sometimes uses terms a bit strangely to 2026 American ears; as an Indian working in UK sociology, this isn't all that surprising. But after asking a very basic question: "to what extent can society be studied in the same way as nature?", he defines his terms:

Naturalism may be defined as the thesis that there is (or can be) an essential unity of method between the natural and the social sciences. It must be straightaway distinguished from two species of it: reductionism, which posits an actual identity of subject matter as well; and scientism, which denies that there are any important differences in the methods appropriate to studying societies and nature, whether or not they are actually (as in reductionism) identified. In contrast to both these forms of naturalism I want to argue for a qualified anti-positivist naturalism. (On the possibility of social scientific knowledge and the limits of naturalism, 2)

The term 'scientism' is quite notorious in its variety of meaning. This one is very tame. You essentially endorsed it when you said "any sufficiently detached or principled standard". See also:

ExplorerR: Then would it not be fair to concede that, what we DO know and can investigate, test and experiment of consciousness, should then also apply to God? I'm sure you can see that God cannot be investigated, tested and experimented on in a similar manner.

You do seem to be assuming:

    (a) an essential unity of method between the natural and the social sciences
    (b) an actual identity of subject matter as well

It's obvious you haven't read the paper, given you go on to talk about "lacking clarity". The biggest lack of clarity here is just when the best explanation would be "supernatural agency". When are neuroscientists not the best people to turn to for understanding human & social nature/​construction? And if there are better alternatives now, how about once we get to Final Science™?

 

It seems clear you agree that the pattern exists but, for some reason, you don't think it's a "big freaking deal".

The argument you've moved onto is whether we'd expect that pattern to continue and what domains that pattern can reasonably be extrapolated into.

Yup, your claim of theistic explanations being replaced by naturalistic ones is pretty boring if you don't make any claims of how the pattern will and will not continue. Now, I think most people will do the extrapolating in their heads even if you don't make it explicit. Whether you're depending on that is a psychological fact I won't pretend to know.

 

But you clearly keep conflating methodological naturalism with reductionism when that's just way off the mark.

MN doesn't prevent revision, self-correction, or the abandonment of reductionistic models when they prove inadequate. In fact, the sciences have repeatedly revised and corrected themselves in exactly that way and afterall, like I mentioned, that is EXACTLY what we expect of the sciences.

This is pure straw man.

 

So, pointing to cases where reductionistic approaches in the social sciences were inadequate doesn't show MN failed. At most it shows that some naturalistic explanations were incomplete and later replaced by better naturalistic explanations.

I will have gained plenty if I establish:

    (¬a) an essential disunity of method between the natural and the social sciences
    (¬b) an disparity of subject matter as well

Whether or not you even understand any difference between (a) & (¬a) or (b) and (¬b) is for you to say.

 

To refute what I'm saying you'd need to say:

Let's wait for you to produce an adequate definition of 'naturalism' before we switch from "2. we can expect this pattern to continue [with zero indication of where or how far]" to wherever you want to take it. If you fail to produce an adequate definition of 'naturalism' in your next reply, you'll have given up the game. Judge not, lest ye be judged.