Introduction

Recently, there has been some buzz about Dawkin's comment about "bright" being roughly the opposite of theist; a quick summary:

Think about your own worldview to decide if it is indeed free of supernatural or mystical deities, forces, and entities... [If it is] "conceiving of reality as the natural world as it is known and experienced scientifically (no supernatural)" ... then you can simply say so and join with us in this extraordinary effort to change the thinking of society -- the Brights' Movement... Brights include those who are members of existing atheist, agnostic, freethought, humanist, rationalist, secularist, or skeptic organizations and those who are nonreligious and are not associated with any formal group.

Fine, no problem. I propose a countermovement: "The Smarts"

The Smart Manifesto

Are you a "Smart"? Some of history's greatest thinkers have been "Smarts"! Briefly, a "Smart" is anyone who is capable of admitting it's "dumb" to limit one's total arena of inquiry and thought only to that which has currently been shown by repeatable experiments under controlled conditions.

To be a Smart, you don't have to reject efficacy of science, experimentation, or rational thought -- you only have to admit it has limits, and has often been wrong or incomplete in the past. In doing so, Smarts aren't only being Smart, they're also being Humble. (Which is a breath of fresh air after the hubris of the Brights.)

Many different kinds of people can be Smart: Agnostics, those not currently part of a religion, theists, pantheists, and polytheists of all stripe. All you have to do is reject the fundamental postulates of Brightism:

(a) That which I don't know can't hurt me, and
(b) I can't know something unless I can repeat it in a laboratory under controlled conditions

In particular:

(1) Smarts are free to recognize (or even question) all existing evidence, historical, scientific, or otherwise.

(This evidence includes Godel's incompleteness theorem, mentioned in (3), below.)

In contrast with the "Bright" position, wherein only currently-known, repeatable scientific phenomenon are considered, Smarts are also free to posit entities outside the material universe, scientific phenomenon which might not yet be proven, and recognize that history, though not subject to repeatable experiment under controlled conditions, can also be a valid source of evidence.

Consistent with (2), we do not imagine these assumptions to be true, but neither do we prima facie assume they must also be false.

We hope that Brights will be consistent with their own philosophy and reject any recognition of historical events, or impact of such on their lives.

(2) Smarts hold to the efficacy of reason and inquiry, but also admit reason is only a product of her assumptions.

In particular, we are not shy about admitting the assumptions we start from This is in contrast with the "Bright" position which often circularly attempts to treat its postulates as the end of reasoning, rather than the starting point.

Example:

Smart: Given all the possible settings of universal constants, this universe seems to be configured to support life. It might not be unreasonable to consider whether this is a matter of purpose, and not blind luck.
Bright: No! It is improbable that what created the universe could have been personal!
Smart: Improbable? Using what data set? How many universes did you use in your survey?
Bright: I mean that positing a personal universe-creator is an extraordinary claim...
Smart: Extra-ordinary? Again, what are the 'ordinary' conditions of a universe's construction? I can count only one universe, and we haven't yet determined what caused it.
Bright: I find suggestions of a deity unbelievable.
Smart: 'Unbelievable,' now that's very scientific. Why?
Bright: It hasn't been proven.
Smart: No duh. Neither has it's opposite.
Bright: But I find your assertion incredible...

Both Bright and Smart are aruging from their underlying sensibilities and feelings, not data -- note how often 'Bright' uses words based on his own feelings. But Smart freely admits her position is just a postulate, where Bright tries to pretend there's only one "rational" assumption. Yet rationality is only proven by a conclusion -- it cannot be claimed for the underlying postulate! To do so is a fallacy.

(3) Smarts acknowledge that true propositions can exist outside of the current scope of experiments which can be repeated under controlled conditions ("science").

We recognize this not as a matter of "faith", but rather because science itself leads us to this conclusion: Specificly, we recognize that Godel proved, in his famous incompleteness theorem, that there exist things which can be true and false despite their not being provably so:

Gödel showed that provability is a weaker notion than truth, no matter what axiom system is involved ... Although this theorem can be stated and proved in a rigorously mathematical way, what it seems to say is that rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate truth ...

Brights appear to live as though Godel had not spoken.

"Smarts" recognize that science has always had it's limits: For example, the current "big bang" model would have been more closely predicted by theists in the early 1900s, not atheists who then believed in an infinite, uncaused universe. Neither assumption was "proven" at the time: Certainly, atheists felt the idea of a universe-beginning to be wrong (Einstein called it a "monstrosity") and imbued their own model -- an infinite, eternal space -- with a veneer of scientific correctness. Yet, when all was said and done, the theists had indeed chosen the correct assumption.

(4) Smarts have no specific dogma regarding the lack of danger or benefit of various unproven statements.

First, as noted in (3), Smarts do not confuse "unproven" with "untrue". When a given set of assumptions do not shed light on particular proposition, we are free to consider other assumptions.

Second, in light of (3), there are three types of true propositions: Those (a) already shown to be true given certain assumptions (say, materialism), (b) those which are true and provable, but have not yet been proven, and (c) those which are true, but are not provably true.

The "Bright" position implies all propositions in categories (b) and (c) must or are likely to have no impact worth considering. Smarts reject such unfounded dogmatic assertions.

(Imagine a terrorist mails you a photo of a package he has mailed which contains a bomb. The address on the package is blurry -- you can only make a few educated guesses about it, not make a definitive identification. Indeed, the bomb does have a destination, but it is certainly not provable. Yet such does not stop the result from having a very real impact. I cannot definitely prove the sun will rise tomorrow -- but that does not mean such can have no impact. Each unproven statement must be evaluated on it's own merits and evidence -- not simply dismissed because it falls short of laboratory critiera.)

(5) We recognize the difference between "process" and "conclusion".

We do not maintain that certain conclusions are prima facia evidence of intelligence or right thinking. We use the term "Smart" only in an ironic sense: Unlike "Brights" we do not claim the conclusion held demonstrates anything about the intellect holding it: there have been "brilliant" theists and sceptics throughout history, as well as stupid adherants to every possible philosophy.

In other words, being Bright doesn't prevent one from being Dumb, as so many famous Brights have demonstrated; nor does being Smart give on a special moral or intellectual edge.

Conclusion

If radical materialism were scientificly provable, sceptics would have done so long ago. Their recent employment of the term "Bright" is an attempt to use a sociological end-run-around to distract from a fundamental weakness.

But in doing so, the Bright position reveals its fundamental flaw: It is fundamentally self-contradictory. For it must assert it is only worthwhile to hold truths which are scientifically shown, and yet that proposition itself is not supported by science; instead leaves us with quite the opposite impression.

Through Godel, science has shown itself incomplete, and through the Big Bang, science has pointed out to there are processes outside its scope of inquiry which can have a very significant impact on our lives. (Our very existence being one such example.) The very scientific data and processes appealed to by Brights contradict the values they espouse.

Given the limits our our knowledge, the fundamental assumptions of Brightism -- that only laboratory science is important, and anything it cannot tell us yet is not even worth pondering -- appear quite dim and narrow.

(Indeed, Dawkins, founder of Brightism himself, does not think morality should be based on scientific (i.e. evolutionary) principles. He offers no particular rationale for an alternative, other than suggesting he doesn't want to live only by his own evolutionary postulates:

In my opinion, a society run along "evolutionary" lines would not be a very nice society in which to live... I as an individual can adopt idealistic or socialistic or unrealistic or whatever sort of norms of charity and good will towards other people. They may be doomed if you take a strong Darwinian line on human nature, but it's not obvious to me that they are.

So why adopt a belief which is inherantly self-contradictory?
Not very Bright. Be Smart instead.

References

• Pejman's Long Posting
• Machinery of Night weighs in
• Andrea Harris says they're really Smugs, and complains they're appropriating a perfectly good word

UPDATE: See also "Too Much to Dream"'s posting: Dim.