 So let's move on to argument number 5 and I think arguments number 5, 6 and 7 will be the more challenging arguments in the sense that a serious debate about these arguments is going on nowadays. So here's number 5. Science gives debunking explanations of common sense beliefs. Here's an example. Nowadays there's a large field called the Cognitive Science of Religion that aims to explain why people hold certain religious beliefs, why they believe in gods and ghosts and spirits and angels and demons and so on. So one example is an explanation in terms of a hyperactive agency detection device. So the idea is basically this, imagine that you're 10,000 years ago and you and your friend are sitting at a campfire and all of a sudden you hear something behind you in the bushes, a weird sound, well in that case you might think, oh that's probably just the wind or maybe a branch fall down of a tree or you might think, oh what's that? It might be a tiger or it might be a lion or some other dangerous creature. So let's get a stick or let's get ready or let's get out of here maybe, right? That's what you could do. Now it seems that those people who always think, oh that will be the wind or something else, those people are significantly less likely to survive because sooner or later it is going to be a tiger or a lion. So as a result of that people have a certain agency detection device that is hyperactive. So they detect agency, they're inclined to think, oh there's agency even when there isn't and people still have that hyperactive agency detection device. So as a result of that for instance they tend to see faces in clouds and as a result that they look at nature and think, wow this is so beautiful, there must be a God who created all of this but that's hyperactive agency detection, there's no God there at all. That's the basic theory and you will find similar or somewhat similar debunking explanations for morality. Now if you look at the literature you will find various explanations and they compete with each other but I don't think we should discount them on that basis, on the basis that they compete with each other because as long as one of them is correct then people who embrace those common sense beliefs might be in trouble. So the likelihood that this specific one is correct might be low, that doesn't count against their being a good debunking explanation. Alright I think there is still some work to do for these arguments though and let me point out three important things here. First what these explanations should do in order to be truly debunking, so in order to debunk religious and moral beliefs is rule out independent evidence. So in the case of God for instance they should rule out other evidence that counts in favour of the existence of God such as arguments for God or maybe certain revelations, right because believing God is not only based on agency detection, it's also based on other things. These theories should meet so-called criteria for good scientific explanations. So one example is good scientific explanations have a certain predictive power and it's not clear that all of these explanations as it stands have sufficient predictive power so that they can actually be tested themselves and finally they should be truly debunking. So in order to be debunking it should not merely explain the phenomenon but also explain it away. So it should explain away moral beliefs, why we hope moral beliefs and why that's somehow illusory and same thing for believing God. But in order to do that it seems one needs some kind of philosophy, right because one needs to explain well why this phenomenon exists and why it's somehow illusory and that's going to be a challenge if you are an adherent of scientism in the strongest version. Let's move on to the next argument. The next argument says science shows common sense is permeated with bias so we find bias all over the place. Here are two examples the denomination effect that's the bias that people have to spend more money when they have it in coins than when they have it in bills, right. So you give two people $100 each but you give it in coins to one of them and in bills to the other person. The person with coins is going to spend more money on average, right that's a certain bias people have. And another interesting one is judging other people in comparison with oneself. So they've asked for instance scientists how well they think they do in comparison with their colleagues and it turns out 95% of them think that they are better than their colleagues which of course can't be true. So people have a certain bias here, right and one might think look common sense so believes not based on science shows all these biases so it's not reliable so we should rely only on the deliverances of the natural sciences. So this is a good argument. Two points, first in order for this to be a good argument it should really be about beliefs. So the denomination effect for instance is not really something about belief but maybe more something about behavior. So if I spend more money when I have coins than when I have bills then that doesn't necessarily come with a belief. In fact once you ask people about it they might change their behavior. So we should focus on those biases that come with certain false beliefs. And the second thing is and I think more work needs to be done here is how widespread are these biases. We know that there are lots of biases and that many people have them but how widespread are they in the sense that are they sufficiently widespread to undermine the reliability of common sense and that would be an interesting thing to find out. So I challenge anyone working on this to do more research and show us that this is sufficiently widespread to undermine the reliability of common sense. And that brings me to the seventh and final argument for scientism and that's a complicated argument and there's lots of empirical research to back this up so I'm going to be very brief here. The argument is this science shows that common sense believes are illusory. Here are two examples, belief about free action. So Liebet has done several experiments and other people have taken those experiments to show that there is no such thing as free will because we can measure a certain readiness potential in people's brains before they act and they think they act freely. And the second example is beliefs about the reasons for which one does something. So Wagner and Talia Widley have done research on this. And one example I particularly like is the following. So they set up a certain experiment and what they do is they, someone is in a shopping street and has certain groceries with them or with her and that person drops the groceries apparently accidentally on the floor. This is all a setup. And then they look at the people surrounding this person in the street and they check whether they actually helped this person. And let's say it's nine o'clock early in the morning people are in a rush and it turns out most people won't stop, right? So about 80 or 85% of people just continue to walk and go do their work or wherever else they need to go. But here's something else they also do in this experiment and this is crucial. They put a $10 bill in a telephone box nearby and what they do is they check the people, they measure what they do, when they've been to one of those telephone boxes and found the $10 bill. And it turns out that 80 or 85% of those people will actually help the person who dropped the groceries. And they would interview the people afterwards and ask why did you help the person who dropped the groceries or why did you not help this person? And people will say things like well I helped this person because well we need to help each other, right, if we don't help each other what kind of society are we and so on but nobody will appeal to the fact that he or she just found a $10 bill in a telephone box. So this suggests that people don't really know the reasons for which they act. They don't really know why they did the things they did and why they did not do the things they did not do. That's the basic thrust of the argument and there are other experiments to back this up. Well the main question I think is how representative are these examples? There are more questions to be asked but this is I think the main question. How representative is this? Does it also apply to bigger decisions in our lives such as a decision to take a job or a decision to marry or other decisions? So these are great experiments and I think we need to continue to do them but in order to be a good argument for scientists and we need to know more about how representative they are.