Dear Bill Nye the Science Guy, You don't understand philosophy.

Bill is a great guy, but severely mistaken about philosophy.

Dear Bill,

On one of your Big Think posts, you answered a question by a person called Mike about your thoughts concerning philosophy. Before I get to that, however, I want to say I am a big fan of your work. In my opinion, your ceaseless effort to make the world more scientifically literate, your environmental outreach, and tenure as the CEO of the Planetary Society are very admirable. I also love the respect and patience you show children (there is a reason why Bill Nye the Science Guy is still shown in schools) and think its awesome that you are willing to change your mind about GMO's. In my opinion, it takes a lot of chutzpah to admit when you are wrong. Given that you have the courage to reconsider your views, I decided to write you this letter. It contains commentary of your video and explains why I, a fellow skeptic, am troubled by your positions.

Socrates meets Bigfoot

Bigfoot in Nor Cal.

Recently there have seen several attacks on "Bigfoot skepticism." If you are unfamiliar with this label, it is a derogatory term used to bewail skeptics who deal mostly with topics like UFO's, astrology, psychics, and Bigfoot rather than social justice issues or religion. It recently exploded all over the internet via the comment section PZ Myer's blog (it should be noted that PZ had a nuanced view and has nothing against "Bigfoot skepticism." This post is directed more at the minority of his readers who think examining Bigfoot is a waste of time).

Instead of explaining why this accusation is incorrect (which I think it clearly is. Skeptics like Peter Boghossan and Matthew McCormick specialize in religion. Michael Shermer and the late Paul Kurtz also talk about religion in their books), the purpose of this post is to focus on why Bigfoot and his friends are invaluable when it comes to training skeptics. Please note that this is not intended to be a book length retort to other internet sites. Instead it is just a few points about why I think Bigfoot and co. are awesome. I hope you enjoy.

Before we do so, however, I think it would be helpful if we first contemplated the skeptical methods of Socrates (469-399 BC). As you probably remember from intro to philosophy class, Socrates was known throughout his home city of Athens for critically examining the popular claims of his day. He used a methodology based on rigorous questioning to tear down baseless assumptions held by his fellow Athenians about religion, morality, politics, and the meaning of life. After this deconstruction, Socrates would work with the person he was questioning to come to new, more sound conclusions based on logic. This systematized, logic-based dialogue is often referred to as Socratic Reasoning in his honor.

Today Socrates' skeptical methods are as valid as ever. The topics which he applied them to, however, are seen as boring and irrelevant by the general audience. This is not astonishing. After all, how many people find ancient Greek politics to be interesting? But, you may ask, "if we do not apply these methods to the topics Socrates examined, what should we apply them to?" This is where Bigfoot and his pals come in. For whatever reason, the furry guy has long captured the public imagination. By applying skepticism to Bigfoot and similar topics, skeptics open a dialog with the general public. Bigfoot is also much less threatening than discussing politics or religious scandals with a general audience (look up what happened for Socrates). While I certainly believe that nothing should be off limits for the skeptic, there is something to be said for pursuing topics that wedge open the door. 

Aside from his popularity, there are a couple of other reasons that we should bring Socrates to bear on Bigfoot.  First, Bigfoot is very useful for training fledgling skeptics. By applying the skeptical toolkit to the big guy and his friends, we can teach valuable lessons about eyewitness testimony, cognitive biases, and evidential standards. Since Bigfoot is a fairly straightforward case of an extraordinary claim, we can examine him without getting too abstract. This allows newbies to cut their skeptical teeth without having to read through a bunch of Plato's Dialogues about the Forms, mathematical truths, or the ultimate nature or reality. The works of Daniel Loxton, Ben Radford, and Joe Nickell are excellent examples of "Bigfoot skepticism" that help both beginner and expert skeptics fine-tune their reasoning skills.

Second (and more important), Bigfoot and is friends are widely believed by the American public to be true. In a country of 300 million people, as much as 52%  believe in astrology, 46% in ESP, 19% in witches, 35% in ghosts, and 22% in UFO's. A recent survey also shows that 35% believe that President Obama is hiding details about where he was born and 25% think that President Bush's administration was behind 9/11 (link). Socrates thought that it was detrimental to society if there was not a gadfly questioning and deconstructing widely held irrational beliefs. Without skeptics out there playing the roll of the gadfly, we are conceding our public discourse to non-reason and non-evidence based epistemologies. This concession could be severely detrimental to our planet, our liberties, our safety, and our economy.

Given these reasons, I think that skeptics have all the reason in the world to criticize Bigfoot, UFO's, homeopathy, astrology, and the like. Not only are they good for training junior skeptics, but they both in the popular imagination and widely believed to be true. Even if this was not the case and virtually no one accepted Bigfoot, Socrates would never pass up such an opportunity to engage a belief that is held for such bad reasons. As skeptics, I do not think that we should either.

If you want to know more about Bigfoot skepticism and how to we can use it to benefit our critical thinking skills, I recommend investigating the work of Daniel Loxton, Benjamin Radford, and Joe Nickell.  All of their work is top notch and conveys a very non-threatening "nice guy" approach to skepticism and critical thinking.

What do skeptics believe in?

When my fellow skeptics or I interact with believers, we are almost always asked the question: “Well if you do not believe in x, what do you value or believe in?” For some reason, people assume our answer will be: “Nothing. I do not appreciate anything or believe that there is anything interesting left to say about life.”  Since this stereotype is as popular as it is inaccurate, I decided to outline my own response in this post.  If you are a skeptic and also have a blog, I recommend you take the time out of your day to sketch out your own response.

I believe in the negative value of philosophy.

While philosophy may not give us knowledge, it provides plenty of wisdom.  This wisdom helps us realize how worthless many popular fetishes and activities really are.  This realization comes about through philosophy’s insistence that we need to think deeply about things like God, free-will, and right and wrong.  Since contemporary culture consists almost entirely of quick and shallow answers, philosophy’s contrary way of thinking helps us see through its vanities quite easily.

After fetishes like reality TV shows, celebrity gossip, chain restaurants, and New Age self-help nonsense are all cleared away, we can prioritize those things that are left.  Since I started doing this, I have accomplished things ranging from learning how to cook better to studying abroad in Russia for a semester.  I have also read a book a week (on average) for over ten years.  You would be surprised what you can do in the extra time you have from not watching so much television.

The “negative” value of philosophy will become even more important in the United States (and the world for that matter) as its population becomes increasingly nonreligious.  Philosopher Richard Taylor outlined this need in his book, Metaphysics.

When religion can make no headway, in the mind of the skeptic, ideology came sometimes offer some sort of satisfaction to much the same need.  Thus many persons spend their lives in a sandcastle, a daydream, in which every answer to every metaphysical question decorates its many mansions.  The whole thing is the creation of their brains, or even worse, of their needs—it is an empty dream, for nothing has been created except illusions (Taylor, 5).  

These beliefs, such as New Age philosophies and reality TV shows, are just as shallow as the traditional beliefs systems they are replacing. Like Richard Taylor, I believe this becomes apparent when we study philosophy.  

Since Socrates, philosophy has been about tearing down destructive aspects of Western culture.

I believe that the cosmos is wonderful without making stuff up about it.

Since I was a child, stars and planets have filled my imagination. I had posters of the planets all over my walls and read encyclopedias to learn everything I could about space. The beauty and size of the cosmos blew my young mind and induced a feeling of great awe. Since this time, I have never had these feelings replicated by anything else.

Despite what many New Age'rs and creationists think, understanding the science which underlies the workings of the universe does not undermine my cosmic awe. On the contrary! Science lead me to the profound truth that we are all connected “to each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.”

This shows that one does not need to turn to astrology or our tarot cards to feel the majesty of the universe. In fact, celestial courts are quite tame in comparison to the true wonders of space. The beauty and power of pulsars and quasars is wilder than anything dreamed up by an ancient soothsayer.  Like other space geeks, I’m rocked to my very core by the images and data retrieved by the Hubble telescope. Its images put any man made piece of art to shame. 

I believe if this sort of information was available in the past, almost all great works of art would be popularizations of science. Can you imagine a universe where Leonardo Da Vinci would have seen these pictures? I think he would have given up his other works and spent the rest of his days working on telescopes, painting palace ceilings with black holes and galaxies, and running the first ever Florence Astronomical Society.

I believe that critical thinking can be learned

When I was a teenager, I believed in all sorts of weird things. This stemmed from me never going past surface level depth in traditional religion. Unlike many Americans, I was never taught the Bible or theology, but a moot Christianity. In 8th grade, I began exploring the marketplace of ideas. For a while, I was what could have been described as a New Age'r. I routinely visited pagan chat rooms and read material on occult.

As I grew older, my education began to get in the way of my belief in weird things. In particularly, reading Michael Shermer. By 2008, I could no longer separate the way I thought in oceanography and symbolic logic from my everyday thinking.  Critical thinking had infected my mental faculties, which induced my first real intellectual crisis.  This soon changed as I started to explore skepticism through the internet.  I came to love the works of James Randi and other skeptics.

The way they used logic and scientific thinking to explain psychics, UFO’s, and big foot struck me as a potent way of viewing the world.  By applying these logical and scientific rules of thumb, I started to notice the nonsense on tv almost immediately. Things like political and pseudo-scientific scams became transparent and I no longer fell under their sway.  I officially began to forsake comforting fantasy for clear thinking and reality.

Despite the alarming beliefs of most Americans, I believe that critical thinking can be taught. I and the countless other members of the skeptic movement are proof.  Our demand for belief has greatly enhanced our lives. Clear thinking gave me and other skeptics a greater appreciation of reality. As Carl Sagan once said, “it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

Concluding thoughts:

In conclusion, I and many other skeptics believe a lot of things, such as the value of philosophy, the beauty of the cosmos, and that critical thinking can be learned.  If you want to know what else I believe, I recommend you read through the other posts on this blog or read through Carl Sagan’s classic, Demon Haunted World.