98. Robert Pennock — An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral Character of Science

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2020

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An exploration of the scientific mindset — such character virtues as curiosity, veracity, attentiveness, and humility to evidence — and its importance for science, democracy, and human flourishing. Exemplary scientists have a characteristic way of viewing the world and their work: their mindset and methods all aim at discovering truths about nature. In An Instinct for Truth, Robert Pennock explores this scientific mindset and argues that what Charles Darwin called “an instinct for truth, knowledge, and discovery” has a tacit moral structure — that it is important not only for scientific excellence and integrity but also for democracy and human flourishing. In an era of “post-truth,” the scientific drive to discover empirical truths has a special value. Taking a virtue-theoretic perspective, Pennock explores curiosity, veracity, skepticism, humility to evidence, and other scientific virtues and vices. Shermer and Pennock discuss:

the nature of science
why Intelligent Design creationists are not doing bad science — they’re not doing science at all
what to do with anomalies not explained by the current paradigm
the role of outsiders in science
what scientific training does to develop the virtues of science
how authority is different from expertise
when experts pronounce on ideas outside their field
fraud in science and why it happens
why scientists are skeptical of UFOs, ESP, bigfoot, and the like
falsification of a scientific hypothesis vs. positive evidence in support of a scientific hypothesis
the naturalistic fallacy and the Is-Ought problem, and
the ethics of autonomous vehicles and the trolley problem.

Robert T. Pennock is University Distinguished Professor of History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science at Michigan State University in the Lyman Briggs College and the Departments of Philosophy and Computer Science and Engineering. He is the author of Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism.

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Science Alon Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Schirmer.
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