New Atheism, the Scientistic Turn

Pretty much right on my 15 year agenda here at Psybertron is this 2013 paper:

New Atheism
and the Scientistic Turn
in the Atheism Movement,
by Massimo Pigliucci.

Lots of good stuff – in a 13 page learned, professionally-referenced philosophy paper but starts with:

New Atheist “movement” from a particular angle:
what I see as a clear, and truly novel, though not at all positive,
“scientistic” turn that it marks for atheism in general.

“Not at all” positive. ie largely negative, notice. And towards the end:

 Scientia *includes* science sensu stricto, philosophy, mathematics, and logic – that is, all the reliable sources of third person knowledge that humanity has successfully experimented with so far.

In turn, when scientia is *combined with* input from other humanistic disciplines, the arts, and first-person experience it yields understanding.

Hear hear. Exclusively narrow science – the kind I call objectively greedy reductionist (after Dennett) – misses out on a large and important part of real world understanding. The more scientistic new atheists – and many vocal public scientists – regularly fail to appreciate this in their statements and arguments, even if they pay lip-service to the arts and humanities.

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Post Note:
The above is a link I came across thanks to the exchange below,
concerning another Massimo Pigliucci paper in TPM

TPM @philosophersmag
Cognitive science isn’t epistemology isn’t epistemology, and moral psychology isn’t ethics. New from @mpigliucci at TPM Online. http://www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/footnotes-to-plato/109-the-problem-with-cognitive-and-moral-psychology

(Having scanned the paper ….)

Ian Glendinning @psybertron
@philosophersmag @mpigliucci @judystout1
how is “rationalising not rational” any different to being post-hoc?

Judith Stout @judystout1
@psybertron @philosophersmag @mpigliucci
Rationalizing is to make excuses. Rational is based on reason or logic.

Ian Glendinning @psybertron
@judystout1 @philosophersmag @mpigliucci
err, no.

Massimo Pigliucci @mpigliucci
@psybertron @judystout1 @philosophersmag
err, yes.