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ID, the "God of the gaps," and metaphysics

Francis Beckwith's recent post Design, Theism, and Romans 1:20 has elicited a multi-faceted debate taking up, as of this writing, over 130 combox entries. In this post I want to focus on what I see as the most important sub-debate in that thread: that between the "theistic evolutionists" and advocates of intelligent-design theory (ID). Exchanges between Prof. Beckwith and Lydia McGrew afforded most of the substance of that sub-debate. Rather than rehearse its details, however, I shall frame the issue in a way I believe most conducive to progress.

ID presents itself as a scientific theory. It proposes that some features of living things can only be explained as products of intelligent design, and its proponents are confident that such a proposition is scientifically testable. For two reasons, though, I am not concerned with the question whether such confidence is justified. For one thing, I am not qualified to judge. But more important, I believe that the overarching philosophical question at stake would be left largely untouched even if ID were empirically well-confirmed.

I say "largely" but not "wholly" because the success of ID, if that were forthcoming, would at least be philosophically relevant. By showing that neo-Darwinism is scientifically inadequate as an explanation for the development of species, it would rightly cast doubt on the thesis of neo-Darwinian materialists that the origin of life itself can eventually be explained in non-teleological terms. And the ranks of those finding support for classical theism in ID would certainly be bolstered. But I do not share the confidence of ID theorists that things will take such a happy course; and even if they did, materialist neo-Darwinians could always emulate the old defenders of geocentrism by having recourse to epicyclical explanations for which they could claim predictive value. They could, that is, postulate that the pertinent features were designed by other material, if admittedly intelligent, beings. I have read that Richard Dawkins has already armed himself with such a comeback on the off chance that it turns out to be needed. Although it's hard to see how that postulate could be tested, it would in principle be testable.

But those aren't even the main reasons I disbelieve that ID can offer what most of its proponents seem to want: scientific evidence for classical theism. As I implied in my review of Georgetown theologian John Haught's book Is Nature Enough? Truth and Meaning in the Age of Science (2006), the very idea of seeking scientific evidence for classical theism is a category mistake. The aims, methods, and canons of natural science, though not immune to revision, remain just as they are whether or not classical theism is true. There is no scientific work for an appeal to a "God of the gaps" to do.

A more promising tack, I believe, would be to show that natural science does not, because it cannot, answer a certain question that its results make it reasonable to raise: why are the laws of nature, whatever they are, what they are? Natural science entails discovering causal regularities and subsuming them under higher-order causal regularities. Those are what natural science uses to explain and predict observable events. Within its proper sphere, it does so quite successfully; it might conceivably come up with a confirmable "Theory of Everything," where the quantifier ranges over physical things. And the nested set of causal regularities such a theory would present would just be "the laws of nature." But that doesn't rule out the question why the-totality-of-things-that-change, or what Wittgenstain termed "the sphere of what happens," exists.

Call that totality 'T'. Granted we do not know its full extent, and may never know it short of the Eschaton, T certainly exists. The question why T exists is meaningful because we cannot rule out that T embodies the intention of something it does not comprise, and is in that sense telic. We could rule out that possibility, and thus render the question meaningless, only by premising scientism: the thesis that only what can be known by means of modern science, and thus without recourse to final (and formal) causes, can be known at all. Yet, for reasons that needn't be explained, no scientific argument for scientism can be given. Scientism is a philosophical option for which, I've suggested, the arguments are essentially moral arguments. Given the full range and depth of human experience, those arguments are not particularly persuasive. And once one realizes that the question why T exists admits only a teleological answer if it is answerable at all, then a successful ID could be taken as evidence that the question is quite reasonable to raise. A true and non-trivial answer to that question would also afford an answer to the question why the laws of nature are as they are.

A successful ID would not and could not provide the answer to either question; but it would provide a good reason to admit both—a better reason, I should think, then Dawkins' saving-the-appearances hypothesis would be for excluding them. Here, "theistic evolutionists" would be on terra firma they could share with ID theorists. But only if ID proves itself scientifically cogent.

Comments (56)

"... By showing that neo-Darwinism is scientifically inadequate as an explanation for the development of species, it would rightly cast doubt on the thesis of neo-Darwinian materialists that the origin of life itself can eventually be explained in non-teleological terms ..."

This is precisely what I am doing in my sub-discussion with Sarah.


"... But I do not share the confidence of ID theorists that things will take such a happy course; and even if they did, materialist neo-Darwinians could always emulate the old defenders of geocentrism by having recourse to epicyclical explanations for which they could claim predictive value. They could, that is, postulate that the pertinent features were designed by other material, if admittedly intelligent, beings. ..."

There is that, and nor do I. "Darwinism" isn't about science (even aside from the fact that science isn't even about truth, in the first place), it's about the denial that there is a Creator-God.


"... I have read that Richard Dawkins has already armed himself with such a comeback on the off chance that it turns out to be needed. Although it's hard to see how that postulate could be tested, it would in principle be testable."

Nevertheless, its nature as a question-begging and special-pleading exercise would be apparent to all.

Cogent and lucid, as usual. Glad you are on board at WWWW. Not my usual cup of tea, but I will stop by more often now.

Natural science "might conceivably come up with a confirmable 'Theory of Everything,' where the quantifier ranges over physical things. ... But that doesn't rule out the question why the-totality-of-things-that-change, or what Wittgenstain termed 'the sphere of what happens,' exists."

You think that, because of this, it follows that the only explanation of why the totality of physical things T is the way it is is a teleological one; but there's also the possibility that T is the way it is because it necessarily must be. I find this possibility shocking to my sensibility (though I can't rule it out conclusively), but a lot of naturalists--not philosophers, usually--seem to like this.

But those aren't even the main reasons I don't believe that ID can offer what most of its proponents seem to want: scientific evidence for classical theism. As I implied in my review of Georgetown theologian John Haught's book Is Nature Enough? Truth and Meaning in the Age of Science (2006), the very idea of seeking scientific evidence for classical theism is a category mistake. The aims, methods, and canons of natural science, though not immune to revision, remain just as they are whether or not classical theism is true. There is no scientific work for an appeal to a "God of the gaps" to do.

Indeed. Dembski and many others in the ID camp have expressed their wish that methodological naturalism itself be attacked for this very reason.

Having done so much on this subject in other threads, I'm reluctant to dive in here as well, but I would just mention mildly that "what Darwinists could say" or try should not be confused with what they could _reasonably_ or _rationally_ or even _with a truly scientific commitment to finding the most probable explanation_ say or try. I think these are sometimes not distinguished sharply enough in such discussions.

Indeed, Lydia.

While it is important to note what others *do* say, it is at least as important to note whether what they do say is reasonable and rational ... and whether it coheres with what else they say.

Bobcat:

Since each of T's constituents is contingent in at least one sense of the term, the case that T itself necessarily exists, in a sense that would rule out its being contingent itself, cannot be made cogently. I devoted a chapter of my PhD thesis to showing that. E.g., Spinoza tried to do it by stipulatively defining 'substance' in a certain way, without giving any reason why we should accept such a definition as axiomatic.

By the same token, it does not follow that, if T's existence is contingent, there is a non-trivial explanation for its existence. The naturalist typically "explains" T's existence by pointing out that each of its constituents exists, and arguing that it would be the fallacy of composition to infer that T's existence as a whole calls for some additional explanation. From this point of view, "the laws of nature" are what they are because T's constituents are what they are. That leads to what I call the "happenstance" view: as Bertrand Russell put it, "the universe is just there, and that's all." T's existence is thus contingent on that of its constituents. But that doesn't raise any interesting questions. Rather, it is designed to rule out such questions.

The trouble with the happenstance view is the same as with scientism: one can rule out the question why T exists only by showing that the question could not admit a non-trivial answer. Short of premising scientism, there really isn't any way to do that.

Now if the question why T exists could have a non-trivial answer, that answer must be teleological. That is partly because the operative sense of 'why' is the sort which calls for citing intention, and partly because any other sense of the question allows for a trivial answer.

Best,
Mike

You say that if T is the totality of things that change--past, present, and future--then it is reasonable to ask why T exists. Suppose that M is a kind of primal substance, of which all the "things" in T are but changing manifestations. Is it also reasonable to ask why M exists, even though it never comes into existence or passes out of existence? The only sort of causality we know is the causality that happens between parts of M. Would it not be a category error to ask if that sort of causality might apply to M itself?

Lydia and Ilion:

If one premises scientism, then far from being unreasonable, the sort of thing Dawkins muses about follows if ID turns out to be scientifically cogent--which I'm not convinced it will. One might wish to reply "so much the worse for scientism"; but that brings us up against the moral arguments for scientism.

Best,
Mike

Roger:

It would indeed be a "category error to ask if that sort of causality might apply to M itself." But that is not what the theist is asking. The theist is asking whether T's existence as a whole depends on another sort of causality altogether: "God said: 'Let there be light', and there was light." Ruling out that sort of thing requires scientism. So even if your initial supposition about primal substance is true—which we do not know—the real question is whether scientism itself is true.

OK. But within the framework proposed, what might constitute reasonable grounds for suspecting that M was caused (or sustained) by some radically different form of causation? Successful ID? Anything else?

The entirety of neo-Darwinism is built upon this syllogism:

If there is no God, some form of macro-evolution is necessary to explain life.
But there is no God.
Therefore, some form of macro-evolution is necessary to explain life.

They don’t come out and say this explicitly, of course. Because then someone would ask them to prove the minor premise (that there is no God), and they know they can’t. But unless no-God is assumed, they know that there is really no reason whatsoever to consider any of their models to be remotely plausible, or even not ridiculous.

That is why hardcore Darwinists must be eternally grateful to these theistic evolutionists, who, like the useful idiots of the Soviet era, proclaim themselves to be both believers in God and admirers of the “serious and scientific” of the Darwinists.

But more important, I believe that the overarching philosophical question at stake would be left largely untouched even if ID were empirically well-confirmed.
Here, "theistic evolutionists" would be on terra firma they could share with ID theorists. But only if ID proves itself scientifically cogent.

A clarification question: Are you saying, Mike, that a successful argument for the appearance of design (in biology, say) would be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for concluding that the details of biology support theism?

Lydia, what I'm saying is that a successful ID hypothesis would be one more reason to justify raising the question why the laws of nature are as they are. That's the question which metaphysical naturalists want to exclude as either meaningless or otherwise unanswerable. But I don't think a successful ID hypothesis is necessary to justify raising such a question. It would just convince more people to do so. So I'd call it helpful rather than necessary.


George R:

You write:

The entirety of neo-Darwinism is built upon this syllogism:

If there is no God, some form of macro-evolution is necessary to explain life.
But there is no God.
Therefore, some form of macro-evolution is necessary to explain life.

I don't believe that's the argument neo-Darwinists make. The argument runs more like this:

Some form of macro-evolution is sufficient by itself to explain life.
Therefore, citing God as designer is not necessary to explain life.
Therefore, there is no reason to believe in God as designer.

There are two problems with that argument. One is that, even if we agreed on what 'explain' should be taken to mean, we really don't know that the first premise is true. But the main problem is that we don't agree on what 'explain' must be taken to mean. Thus, even if the laws of nature explain, at some level, why life arose and developed as it has, we don't agree that the laws of nature themselves call for explanation. Metaphysical naturalism, of which neo-Darwinist ideology is the latest iteration, would rule out the sort of explanation that classical theists believe is both called for and possible.

Roger:

...within the framework proposed, what might constitute reasonable grounds for suspecting that M was caused (or sustained) by some radically different form of causation?

By 'the framework proposed', I presume you mean the primal-substance hypothesis. If so, I'd answer as follows.

First, we cannot know that the primal-substance hypothesis is true. Thus, even if our universe developed from a primordial, infinitely dense singularity S that exploded, we cannot know that our universe exhausts T. For all we know, S might itself have been produced by something else comprised by T, and we don't know whether that would, together with our universe, form a causally unitary whole constituting T. Such is the "multiverse" hypothesis, which is compatible with yours.

Second, there is more than one sense of the question 'why'. In one sense, it really means 'how'. Thus the question why the constituents of S have developed as they have is answerable by citing S's initial conditions and the laws of nature. But in another sense of the question 'why', that doesn't rule out the question why S's initial conditions and the laws of nature are as they are (or have been). An answer to the question 'why' in that sense would have to cite intention, and present T as embodying that intention. As I've said, ruling out such a question requires scientism.

Assuming that the question should not be ruled out, one might ask why it should be raised anyhow. All I can say is what Aristotle said: "Philosophy begins in wonder."

I don't believe that's the argument neo-Darwinists make. The argument runs more like this:

Some form of macro-evolution is sufficient by itself to explain life.
Therefore, citing God as designer is not necessary to explain life.
Therefore, there is no reason to believe in God as designer.

Michael,

Like I said, the Darwinists can't explicitly put forth my syllogism. It's too blatant. But look at the first premise in your syllogism. It almost identical to the conclusion in my syllogism, except that it has been tweaked a little bit in order to make it look more objective.

I cannot restrain myself from pointing out that _laws_ cannot explain _anything_ without reference to initial conditions. I think this is sometimes overlooked by theistic evolutionists who, for whatever reason, are more comfortable hypothesizing that God specially set up the laws of nature than hypothesizing that God specially set up the initial conditions of nature. After all, initial conditions is a pretty big category and could include a lot of what one might call "hyper-fine-tuning" of things like trajectories, etc. I often find that when theistic evolutionists wish to point to "the whole process" or "why did natural law bring about this outcome" as a thing to be explained, they nonetheless simply _ignore_ my suggestion (and Mike Behe's as well--in fact, it was his first) that one possibility (if they do not want to invoke intervention) would be this sort of hyper-fine-tuning or what I call front-loading of initial conditions. They prefer, for whatever reason, merely to talk about why the _laws_ are the way they are. Perhaps this is because God's setting up of highly specialized initial conditions sounds too much _like_ intervention and would probably be supported by arguments of such a type as also to support intervention. Nonetheless, I think that if we are going to talk about "why the laws are what they are" we need to realize the minimal fact that laws by themselves are not going to be sufficient anyway. To take an extreme example, if the entirety of matter in the universe had consisted of two hydrogen atoms, you wouldn't have gotten life no matter what laws you had.

Hi Mike,

First, thanks for your gracious response. Second, let me get to the response:

"Since each of T's constituents is contingent in at least one sense of the term, the case that T itself necessarily exists, in a sense that would rule out its being contingent itself, cannot be made cogently. I devoted a chapter of my PhD thesis to showing that. E.g., Spinoza tried to do it by stipulatively defining 'substance' in a certain way, without giving any reason why we should accept such a definition as axiomatic."

A couple things in response to this: first, in what sense are each of T's constituents contingent? If they're contingent from our epistemic position, the naturalist I'm talking about (the necessitarian naturalist) will admit this; he'll just say that they're not metaphysically contingent. Second, if T's constituents are metaphysically contingent in at least some sense, why isn't this begging the question against the necessitarian naturalist? Third, given that "substance" is a metaphysical concept, albeit one that is supposed to align to at least some extent with our intuitions (although note that for many of us those intuitions are formed not only by the manifest image, but also by the scientific image as well), why is Spinoza's definition of substance any more stipulative than Aquinas's, Aristotle's, or Descartes's?

"By the same token, it does not follow that, if T's existence is contingent, there is a non-trivial explanation for its existence. The naturalist typically 'explains' T's existence by pointing out that each of its constituents exists, and arguing that it would be the fallacy of composition to infer that T's existence as a whole calls for some additional explanation. From this point of view, 'the laws of nature' are what they are because T's constituents are what they are. That leads to what I call the 'happenstance' view: as Bertrand Russell put it, "the universe is just there, and that's all." T's existence is thus contingent on that of its constituents. But that doesn't raise any interesting questions. Rather, it is designed to rule out such questions."

I'm certainly familiar with this move, and I've always found it difficult to counter. It really depends, as far as I can see, on how you define the universe. If the universe is just a collection of things, and each of those things has an explanation by other things, it seems to me that there is definitely one thing left to explain and perhaps another thing left to explain.

Assume you have an infinitely long chain of contingent substances, each member explaining the one after it and being explained by the one before it.

...-->C1-->C2-->C3-->C4-->...

Even if this goes back infinitely, some have the intuition that there is still something not explained, namely, why is there an infinite chain of beings in the first place when there could be nothing? I'm not sure I have this intuition, but I definitely have the following one: why is it an infinite chain of, say, cats but not dogs? I.e., why is it an infinite chain consisting of substances (S1, S2, S3...) but not (S0, S-1, S-2, ...)?

Are these the facts you think are left unexplained?

Lydia:

You're quite right that laws-of-nature do explanatory work only in conjunction with "initial conditions." And if classical theism is true, it would at least make sense to see the initial conditions of our universe as "front-loaded." As a theistic evolutionist, I have no objection to that. But the naturalist has at least two responses.

One would be that the singularity S out of which our universe developed is itself the product of something else which wouldn't qualify as the God of classical theism. That's the possibility which the "multiverse" hypothesis is designed to express. Or they could say that, even if our universe is not such a product, both the IC and the laws just happen to be as they are. If that is so, then the laws do their assigned explanatory work without even raising the question why there's anything for them to work on in the first place. Which simply brings us back to debating the legitimacy of the question why T exists.


Bobcat:

...if T's constituents are metaphysically contingent in at least some sense, why isn't this begging the question against the necessitarian naturalist?

It cannot be denied that each of our universe's constituents come to be and cease (or will cease) to be, and that they are contingent on others for coming to be. So, they are contingent in both those senses. But that does not suffice to answer the same question about the constituents of T. As I've said above, T might be much bigger than our universe. The question then arises whether the constituents of T are each contingent in some additional sense or senses. I'd say that some probably are and some probably are not.

Some constituents of our universe probably are in that there's no good reason to deny that they are causally necessitated by prior conditions and the laws of nature. But as quantum physics suggests, others may be only stochastically explicable. That is, given prior conditions and applicable statistical laws, it is likely that certain things develop at some-or-other point, but not necessary that they develop at any particular point. This shows that, even in natural science, causation needn't entail necessitation even though some causes are necessitating. So some constituents of T are "metaphysically" contingent in the stochastic sense. None of that "begs the question" against the metaphysical naturalist; for many of them hold exactly the same position. Of course that doesn't answer the question about T, which might well be bigger than our universe (and if biblical theism is true, T certainly is bigger than our universe, e.g. in virtue of angels).

The pivotal question is whether one may regard T itself as metaphysically contingent without begging the question against the naturalist. The force of that question is really the force of this question of yours:

...given that "substance" is a metaphysical concept, albeit one that is supposed to align to at least some extent with our intuitions (although note that for many of us those intuitions are formed not only by the manifest image, but also by the scientific image as well), why is Spinoza's definition of substance any more stipulative than Aquinas's, Aristotle's, or Descartes's?

For one thing, Spinoza's definition requires that substance be eternal. The Aristotelian and Thomistic definitions require only that substances exist not merely as parts or features of something else, but in their own right. The latter is more modest and accords better with our experience and "intuitions." Thus it is not question-begging; nor does metaphysical naturalism as such require accepting the idea that reality is simply a unitary, eternal substance of which every particular is merely a mode or attribute. The arguments for naturalism are moral, not metaphysical.

Indeed, the most common form of metaphysical naturalism stipulates not that T necessarily exists, but that T just happens to exist. That is a kind of contingency.

And once one realizes that the question why T exists admits only a teleological answer if it is answerable at all,...

I'm not entirely sure I understand that. Why is that correct?

That's a much longer argument to which I alluded in my PP piece. Let's just say the alternatives either don't explain anything or present T as necessarily existent.

Lydia:

I didn't do myself justice in the previous comment. The answer to your question appears in my second reply to Bobcat:

...there is more than one sense of the question 'why'. In one sense, it really means 'how'. Thus the question why the constituents of S have developed as they have is answerable by citing S's initial conditions and the laws of nature. But in another sense of the question 'why', that doesn't rule out the question why S's initial conditions and the laws of nature are as they are (or have been). An answer to the question 'why' in that sense would have to cite intention, and present T as embodying that intention. As I've said, ruling out such a question requires scientism.

Of course, more is need to flesh that out. But one can't say everything at once.

Best,
Mike

A clarification question: Are you saying, Mike, that a successful argument for the appearance of design (in biology, say) would be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for concluding that the details of biology support theism?

Biology would not necessarily show signs of design at this point, if one assumes the biblical narrative. The degradation of life on Earth as a result of sin's influence very well could be so great that by now we would no longer be able to see definitive signs of design. Thus, we might get the impression that we are the product of evolution haphazardly forming us, when in fact we are a world slowly in biological decline.

One of the interesting genetic experiments going on that may end up badly damaging darwinism is the research into Vitamin C production. There is a lot of speculation that once our ability to produce Vitamin C is fully restored, the health and life expectancy of the human race will dramatically increase. Wouldn't it be ironic (or fitting, I suppose) if geneticists proved that the life spans of the antediluvians were entirely possible at one point? At some point, that ability was lost for the entire human race. My money is on the flood event.

Michael (Liccione), I went back and re-read the PP piece more carefully. I think you are saying there that the naturalist cannot rule out the possibility that the entirety of all that happens was created by a person (outside of physical space-time) for a purpose. But "cannot rule out" isn't saying a whole lot. I cannot rule out--in the sense of logically rule out--a lot of things that it would be unreasonable for me actually to believe (little green guys in backpacks who can live without air on the moon, etc.). So that might explain why you would see the ID argument as helpful: Because then we are back to _features_ of the physical world that _look_ like they were created for a purpose, which might raise the possibility that the whole was created for a reason to something more than a bare possibility.

True enough, Lydia, but I'd go further. Sorry I haven't made myself clearer before.

The question at issue is why T exists. As I said to Bobcat: "...there is more than one sense of the question 'why'. In one sense, it really means 'how'." So the question why our universe is as it is is answerable by citing the primordial singularity S's initial conditions and the laws of nature. "But in another sense of the question 'why', that doesn't rule out the question why S's initial conditions and the laws of nature are as they are (or have been). An answer to the question 'why' in that sense would have to cite intention, and present T as embodying that intention." So as I see it, the only relevant sense of 'why' in 'Why does T exist'? is the kind that (in Anscombe's sense) calls for citing intention. That's why I said in the present blog post that "the question why T exists admits only a teleological answer if it is answerable at all."

Best,
Mike

I think I understand what you are saying there, but as I think you realize, if nothing about T _looks_ intended, then it's easy enough to shrug this intentional sense of "why" as nothing more than a bare possibility. Yes, it's _possible_ that there exists some Being who made everything with an intention, but who cares about mere possibility? It's also possible that no such intention is embodied in T.

Suppose we imagine setting aside the problem of mind. I think, as I've said repeatedly, that the argument from mind is quite a strong one for a disembodied mind as the creator of finite minds. But let's just set that aside. Imagine that all of us are minds free-floating in a world that is made up of nothing but rocks bumping into each other, some hydrogen here or there, interspersed with the occasional black hole out in space. Nothing interesting, no purple mountain majesties, no amber waves of grain, no dogs or cats or human bodies. And we're just looking at all this. That's the kind of T we appear to be confronted with. And because, in this scenario, we're not even embodied ourselves, we can't even find anything much out about the world--we can't run experiments or look through microscopes. It seems to me that _that_ sort of T hardly rates the question, "Why does T exist?" At that point (again, setting aside the question of where our minds came from) we are really looking at a sort of mere, stark _possibility_ that Someone exists who wanted to make this boring totality-of-everything for a purpose of his own, though we can't for the life of us imagine what that could have been.

So my own opinion would be that to get any sort of argument out of this you have to have _something_ (whether minds, bodies, fine-tuned constants, or something) _within_ T that merits special attention and that we have reason to think would express a divine purpose.

Mike,

I quite agree that the use to which theists wish to put ID is nothing other than a category mistake. It is a little surprising, after all these years, that people are still interested in making that sort of argument in the first place, but it certainly is of no help that people continue to waste their time with it--it seems to me only to feed the frenzy of the Village Atheists, giving them ever more ammunition, not in defense of the truth of their atheism, which it certainly cannot provide, but in defense of their assertion that their opponents don't really know what they're doing.

On the other hand, you raise a fascinating point about what questions science necessarily leaves unanswered while at the same time giving us perfectly good reasons for asking. Why, indeed, are the regularities of the natural order of things such as we observe them to be, rather than something else? It is tempting to begin thinking about this question rather defensively by asserting that theism is in no better position: once we come to know, by hook or by crook, that God has this or that property, we can still raise the question, why does God have this property rather than some other one, and religion, whether natural or revealed, often has nothing to say about the matter. To the extent that religion does answer such questions it only raises others, and is no different from the empirical sciences in its epistemological constraints (God cannot be both love and hate, but why love rather than hate? Because hate is incompatible with all of the other properties we think God has; but why does he have those rather than their opposites, etc.).

But this sort of an approach seems to me to miss something much more interesting about the issue you raise. The reason why the argument for theistic evolution is a category mistake is not limited to the straightforward fact that science is a strictly empirical pursuit while theology is not; it is also due to the fact that science and religious commitment have to do with entirely different sorts of knowledge claims. Scientific knowledge is always by its very nature a model of material reality, but we do not think that our knowledge of God is a model of God. It is, I suppose, like a model in that what we can claim to know is never more than analogously true, but it is not a model in the scientific sense, because what has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through the Magisterium is not open to revision or, a fortiori, rejection, as every scientific model must be. In short, what we know about God via that conduit is far more certain than anything within the epistemological domain of science can be even in principle. This suggests to me that the difference between scientific knowledge and our knowledge of God lies in a difference between the faculties by which we come to have such knowledge in the first place. Scientific knowledge is always empirical: we come to have it by means of perception modulo rational deliberation. Our knowledge of God, by contrast, is determined neither by reason nor by perception, though of course both of those sets of faculties are engaged when we attempt to expand our understanding of God or communicate it to others. The conduit of our knowledge of God is the grace of the Holy Spirit working within us, and I see no way to connect this to anything that science can possibly be connected with, either epistemologically or metaphysically.

Actually, it seems to me that Mike needs to reconcile the "category mistake" claim with the acknowledgment that a successful ID argument is in any way helpful to the argument he himself wishes to make. If the connection is a "category mistake" then it would seem to me there should be no relation to theism whatsoever.

Our knowledge of God, by contrast, is determined neither by reason nor by perception, though of course both of those sets of faculties are engaged when we attempt to expand our understanding of God or communicate it to others.

Scott, I think I agree entirely with this point - as long as you are restricting the term "knowledge" here to what we hold by Faith under the movement of grace. How does our other sort of "knowledge" of God play into the question? We can know - without faith - that God exists and that He is good, simple, etc. Isn't a God that we have reasoned to at least partly involved with our "religious commitment" of mind? Wouldn't we owe that God our gratitude and reverence even without revealed religion?

It seems to me, as both a layman in the scientific sense and theology sense, that physicists and biologists and chemists can't reason to a God from nature because they have mistaken the fact that such scientists generally ask only for material and agent causes for the belief (and nothing more than belief) that what it means to be science is to give material and agent cause. Their mistake seems to be simply not realizing that their self-imposed limitation of looking only for 2 sorts of cause is not forced upon them by science as such.

It may be a category error to attempt to locate God as a conclusion of an argument starting only from material and agent cause, but I don't off-hand see why. The fact that there are arguments for God from the stand-point of final cause may indicate that it is a category mistake to attempt to prove God exists, using only the methods of science that modern scientists are comfortable, with by way of teleology, since they don't recognize argument through telos as part of science.

But Aristotle did not think science was limited to material and agent causes, nor did Thomas. Indeed, if man is the proper study of man, then any proper, natural study of man's psychology will seek to know how the mind and will operate, and these cannot be properly studied without exploring final cause. As Aristotle's De Anima has.

Scott,

Thanks for commenting on my post. But I must agree with Tony. You don't seem to have left any room for natural theology. As a result, you reject any form of theistic evolutionism as well as ID in particular. There has to be something wrong with that.

Best,
Mike


Lydia:

I shall address together your two most recent comments addressed to me.

What we're discussing here is the question what philosophical relevance the ID would have if it proved scientifically cogent. What I'm saying is that such success would afford a better reason for raising the question why T exists than Dawkin's epicyclical maneuver would be for excluding it. But it doesn't follow that a successful ID would provide evidence for the right answer to that question. For reasons that I, and now Scott Carson, have given, that would be to make a category mistake.

You seem to think I therefore face the need to reconcile "the 'category-mistake' claim with the acknowledgment that a successful ID argument is in any way helpful to the argument he himself wishes to make. If the connection is a 'category mistake' then it would seem to me there should be no relation to theism whatsoever." In that last sentence, you appear to be agreeing with Scott. But that doesn't follow. The connection is that a successful ID would be a reason to raise the question; and this is where I disagree with Scott, or at least with what I interpret him to be arguing. But the connection is not that a successful ID would be scientific evidence for the right answer to the question. It would only be a philosophical reason for raising the question. That, I think, is the lesson of your thought experiment about T. Assuming that the real T contains elements of design, it's more reasonable to raise the question, and to entertain a teleological answer to it, than not.

Best,
Mike

“The very idea of seeking scientific evidence for classical theism is a category mistake”

Indeed. And ID is self-defeating even if it could stand as a rival theory to evolution (which it can’t, being unverifiable). Let’s imagine for an instant that ID actually was a theory (and not obscurantist pseudoscience). Let’s also imagine that it accounts for the evidence as well as classical evolutionary theory does. We could then argue that both theories are underdetermined with respect to the evidence. Do we have scientific reasons for preferring one to the other? We do indeed: parsimony. The ID explanation introduces an ad hoc entity that serves no purpose in any other scientific explanation (perhaps excluding cosmogony, but the putative singularity of the BB renders stale THAT old chestnut). This entity serves no useful end in explaining natural selection, but serves only the non-scientific agenda of supernaturalism.

“A more promising tack, I believe, would be to show that natural science does not, because it cannot, answer a certain question that its results make it reasonable to raise: why are the laws of nature, whatever they are, what they are?”

Why should there be a reason? This is a matter of generalising purely local conditions (“everything has a cause”). But causation itself is a myth – have you still not understood Hume? The causation which “brings things about” depends on an objective distinction between past, present, and future, and an objective passage of time. Yet the overall tendency in contemporary physical science is to treat such notions as AT BEST purely local, and as dependent on local gravitational and energetic conditions and on the orders of magnitude at which we elaborate our “world-view”. Things are not “brought about”, they just “are”.

So, first replace the notion of “brought about” in the question “what brought it about that there are laws of nature?” with “are”. We now have the question “why are there laws of nature?”. Replace “laws of nature” with “regularities” – and ensure that your answer avoids the myth of causation.

Your question “why are the laws of nature what they are?” is meaningless. Why should they be anything else than “what they are”? And what KIND of “something else” could they be? OK, we can imagine certain variations of value in the fundamental constants – c with a higher or lower limit, h giving a different proportion between energy and frequency etc., but these are counterfactuals which depend on the particular “language” of mathematical physics (and remain entirely within its universe of discourse). Could they, perhaps, have been replaced by the rules of chess, or the syntactical regularities governing the formation of English sentences?

The anthropic principle cuts both ways – if the laws were not what they were, we wouldn’t be there to remark on it. As they are what they are, we are here. What’s so remarkable about finding mushrooms where the conditions for finding mushrooms are met?

“the-totality-of-things-that-change” – now, here’s a nice bit of superstition! What, if anything, “changes”? Couldn’t we rather say that persisting things have temporal parts with different properties (just as the leg of the chair can be blue and its seat red)? Why not just “the totality of things that are”? This would be more neutral. But what effect would this perdurantist rewriting have on your comment “The question why T exists is meaningful because we cannot rule out that T embodies the intention of something it does not comprise, and is in that sense telic.” How could the existence of T – of “everything that exists” - now embody the intention of something that is not a part of T?

But why should we even postulate such an idea in the first place? Isn’t this just Paley writ large?

Things are. There are dinosaurs and computers and (perhaps) human visitors to Mars. There are battles and Mike-being-in-Americas. T comprises all there is, and neither T nor its parts are subject to “change” – the D-Day landings don’t suddenly become the War of Independence, and a Mike-being-in-America doesn’t become a Mike-being-in-Russia. “Endings” and “beginnings” are limits in the temporal dimension just as edges and surfaces can be limits in the spatial dimensions. Where there is no change, there is no instigator of change. The universe is, quite simply. How we cut it up depends on where we imagine its joints to be.

Any proper part P of T *seems* to be subject to change because we can (apparently) pass from non-P to P and then to non-P again. But how will you apply this to T itself? Category error indeed.

Let’s also imagine that it accounts for the evidence as well as classical evolutionary theory does.

Gee, no, instead, let's imagine that design accounts for it _far better_ than classical evolutionary theory. I leave it to all you guys with a stellar knowledge of what a "C-inductive argument" is in that case to figure out what that means.

I think this "category mistake" thing needs to be questioned anyway. Is or is not the probability of T (theism) higher if the biological facts are such-and-such than if they are otherwise? If it is higher, then there is no category mistake. And imagine what you like for the biological facts. Suppose that "God made me" were tattooed in tiny letters in the cell or something. For goodness' sake, sometimes I think people are just lacking in imagination when they make overly sweeping statements. Doesn't anybody even do any science fiction anymore?

"Why should there be a reason?" David Hirst

Why should you care? Why should you care in the least, in any remote sense whatsoever? It would seem you have your own teleological reasons, and designs and ends ... in mind.

Why is that?

And, what are those reasons? Philosophical? Ideological? Policy oriented? Peace of mind for yourself and for those of like mind? Render explicit your own teleological ends in a transparent manner, for the world to see and such that you might face cross examination yourself. Failing to do so is further suggestive of those teleological ends, of yours, of your mind.

Also, addressing other aspects of the discussion, it would seem the term "evidence" should be distinguished from "proof," unless the former term is being used in the restricted and stringent sense of serving to prove in absolute/deductive terms.

However, aporias are at issue in all this, thus a less stringent use of the term (i.e. evidence that is more simply suggestive) seems warranted.

David:

As I understand it, your argument is basically this: there's no compelling reason to believe that anything is objectively "caused" or even that anything actually changes; therefore, the questions I adduce as reasonable and meaningful are neither. My response is to question the premise.

With enough effort, it is of course possible to depict the physical universe in the way you propose. But why should we? Quantum physics, on which much contemporary technology depends, does indeed suggest that our ordinary, intuitive conceptions of space, time, and causation are objectively inadequate. We need to revise them to take account of scientific results. But I don't see many philosophers of science concluding that quantum physics requires us to jettison altogethr the very concepts of causation and real change. Those are not only quite serviceable at a macro-level; if they were not also objectively veridical in general, we could not rely on the observations and experiments that make the discipline of quantum physics possible in the first place. That suggests that our philosophical task is to integrate them with the knowledge natural science acquires. It is at best unparsimonious to jettison them altogether.

You ask me whether I've heard of Hume. Well, as a student I had more than my fill of him. One reason I found him too much to digest is that I never found good reason to accept his analysis of causation qua concept. We certainly acquire the concept of causation through the experience of constant conjunction of like events, at least in part; but it doesn't follow that that is what the concept itself consists in. Of course neither does it follow that the concept of causation, as Kant went on to delineate it, is unrevisable or objectively inapplicable. But the very success of quantum physics shows that its being revisable is no basis for jettisoning it, or even for regarding it as merely a regulative idea limited to "phenomena." Natural science gives us no basis even for ruling out the concepts of formal or final causation. In fact, quantum physics gives us more reason than Newtonian or relativity theory for permitting them.

I'm willing to concede that it is not demonstrably irrational to depict T in such a way as to rule out the question why T exists. It is also not demonstrably irrational to depict T in such a way as to admit the question and give sense to it. As I've said before, ruling out the question requires scientism, and the arguments for scientism are moral arguments. That's where you need to make your stand.

Best,
Mike

Mike - you should re-read your philosophers of science, and particularly those working on spacetime (it's more relativity than QM that militates against the "reality of change" on the macroscopic level).

But I shall address your remarks on a "moral" basis for scientism (and btw I would resist scientism, if by "scientism" you mean "naive scientific realism")

An impatiently condensed philosophical perspicacity in the first sentence, a cliff-hanger in the second.

The scientific study of evolution does not reference God at all. It doesn't assume a creators existence, nor a creators. It is predicated on observation, but philosophy.

David,

I did not say, or even suggest, that QM "militates against the reality of change" on any level. I don't believe any branch of physics does. And that's why I'm curious as to why you think relativity does. That's a philosophical view I was unaware that Einstein shared.

As to 'scientism', I stated in my post what I mean by that term. Would you resist scientism in that sense too? If so, why? If not, what's your moral argument for it?

Best,
Mike

The question of whether or not there is change. O, my Prophetic Soul, Most Venerable Liccione – and I have work to do!!!! Heigh ho, we all have our shoulders to burden…

Let's keep things on the linguistic level :

1. "x changes" is T iff (x is F before t AND x is ~F after t) OR (x is ~F before t AND x is F after t)

Now, I'd accept (1) as readily as the next person. But I'd also point out that the condition given in (1) does not imply "becoming":

If we take t to be an instant in time (in the Augustinian and the Newtonian senses), then the passage from "before t" to "after t" can be taken as being founded on an irreducible passage from the future to the past - but if we are to hold that the condition in (1) is based on a sequence of A-properties, should we not have given some kind of temporal operator in (1)?

If we take t to be a point event or limited local hyperplane, then "before t" and "after t" are locally-determined regions of spacetime. Tensed relations ("being in the past or the future of t") would obtain relative to an inertial frame which has its origin at t, and are therefore entirely local (there is no universal "now" – this is the "argument from the relativity of simultaneity"). The spacetime reading reduces the A-properties to local B-relations.

There are two ways of reading "x is F before t AND x is ~F after t". Either x endures from before t to after t – that is, it has all its parts before t, then it has all its parts at t, then it has all its parts after t – or it perdures from before t to after t: that is, it has a part(or parts) before t, it has a part at t, and it has a part (or parts) after t. Here, I'm afraid I must abridge further demonstration (I can't overcharge your blog!), but I think we have reasonable evidence to suppose the kind of middle-sized "objects" of our everyday discourse perdure rather than endure (and particularly if endurance is founded on the Augustinian instant). The arguments owe a lot to Quine, so you can probably imagine them ;(

If objects perdure, then "change" is just a matter of having different parts at different times. There is no "becoming" involved in a piece of wood being painted green at one end and painted red at the other – these are merely distinctions between spatial parts. But if we accept even local four-dimensionalism (and this follows on accepting Minkowski space as a reasonable geometric model of local spacetime), then there is no motivated distinction in the model between spatial and temporal parts – we should rather speak of spatiotemporal parts. Objects don't "pass through" time – they are extended in spacetime.

This would suggest that "change" is rather like "weight" – locally meaningful, but not at all what our intuition would suggest it to be.

***

I'm not making a bald claim that what is give above is either a preferable or a superior account of "the way things are" – the ideas are schematic and I haven't addressed the numerous objections – but it DOES show that an account based on "naturalist evidence" can circumvent certain of your arguments.

***

If ever you were interested in a development of some of the ideas I've touched on here, I can provide some good recent papers (and book references) both for and against – I think you'd find the work of William Craig interesting on the "against" side! The arguments for perdurance are more "individual", and will follow from a forthcoming paper on "chronotopoids" I'm co-authoring with Roberto Poli of Trent University in Italy (whether my co-author wants it to or not!) – we're hoping to provide a "third way" between the "part" and the "stage" accounts.

All the best, dear Mike

I really am sorry for the very hasty expositions - forgive Xanthippe...

If scientism is the view that the only "acceptable" evidence is scientific evidence (whatever "acceptable evidence" might be), then it's an epistemological corollary of naive scientific realism. Its naivety is the result of overlooking or underestimating the "question of language".

Might I add that scientism and naive scientific realism are to metaphysical naturalism what Baptist Fundamentalism is to Christian theology?

David,

I'm hoping you can help me out. Try as I might, I can't see how disputes about persistence, time, the nature of physical laws (unless, I suppose, you're a necessitarian), or causation are relevant to the sort of fine-tuning argument under discussion.

The first two, in particular, just seem obviously irrelevant.

Here's a (very rough) version of the argument, I think:

1. The laws of nature and the initial conditions appear fine-tuned to allow for the development of life.
2. The best explanation for (1) is theism.
3. So, theism.

Suppose I'm a perdurantist. Why think that this gives me some interesting response to the argument not available to an endurantists? Do I have to accept them all as a package to get the response you're suggesting? Suppose I'm also a B-theorist, who accepts broadly Humean views about causation and the laws of nature. Now do I get some interesting new response? I'm not seeing it.

Andrew

(2) is, to my view, erroneous; the discussion should only concern this. As I stressed (going so far as to post a further excuse), considerations of space and courtesy forbade further development; my object was to sketch out an alternative account that circumvented Mike's objections to the "limitation of explanation".

If you really wish to discuss these questions, I would invite you to the ResearchGate philosophy group (URL above) - not that there's anything going on over there, but it would avoid cluttering up Mike's blog !

Best regards,

David

Mike – I'm addressing your moral arguments (a first for Hirst), so let's start with a little epistemology – or is it pedagogy (not to mention pedantry)?

I'm sorry for the length, and I'm not sure I'm posting in the right place, but you did ask…

"To explain something is to account for why it is thus and not otherwise"

To explain something is also to establish its relation to the general web of beliefs by which we account for the world. If we examine these different accounts of explanation we can already identify certain theoretical assumptions – in your account, explanation tends to teleology; in mine, to naturalised epistemology. Not surprisingly, you open your discussion with an overt reference to Aquinas – and I open my reply with an implicit reference to Quine. My object in drawing attention to this is to underline that all our philosophical positions are self-referential – we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

What we have is given in experience. But even here our preferences will dictate our understanding of what "we" are and what it means for something to be "given in experience". To caricaturise, you will accept the well-foundedness of Descartes' conclusion, while I will question the separation of "experience" and "the contents of experience" – and here we have in miniature all the dualist-monist désaccord.

***

"As I’ve discovered over the years, however, the naturalist objection to that move is an essentially moral one"

Now then, lad; let the dog see the undetached rabbit parts… as for T and so on, if we understand T to be "all that exists", it follows logically that there is no thing that is not a part of T – but this is, once again, a matter of prior assumptions. But let's take for the sake of discussion the reasonable enough idea that T comprises spacetime and its contents (if distinction there is) and that there is indeed some X that is not part of T. For ease of discussion, let's set aside the many-worlds interpretation and take it that T comprises (1) the universe of spacetime at every order of magnitude as best we understand it (and that's limited enough) and (2) the entire set of human representations of "the world" (whether individual or cultural). If we give (2) a wide enough reading, this would include "minds", "universals", and other what-have-yous (and no comment is passed on their "ontological status", beyond the requirement that we can say "there are minds" or "there are what-have-yous": our commitment is to grammar, not ontology).

[Pursuing the matter of assumptions, if one accepts that T can comprise both physical and non-physical entities, and if one accepts unrestricted mereological composition, one could postulate an entity which is the fusion of T and X. However, as being put on the Index would defeat present purposes, I shall refrain from further speculation]

Let us accept that T can be explained in terms of X. This, I suppose, can be given by the counterfactual

"If X had not existed, T never would have existed"

I've argued elsewhere that the notion of X "having some intention with respect to T" is extremely obscure – shall we say that it either transcends human understanding or is meaningless (though note that both these alternatives depend on the "inexpressibility" of the notion – that is, they postulate a "limit to our language". This limit is also the limit I set previously to explanation in general). But, if we grasp the first alternative, we could argue that just because our language does not allow us to express some thing does not mean that that thing is not. God has, apparently, "told us" of His intention; if you consider the sources to be reliable, you can I suppose hold that the evidence justifies the belief that X had, in some incomprehensible way, some "intention" with respect to T.

Let us set aside the very evident counter-arguments and accept that there is some kind of "space" open to X other than the various geometries of T, and that X's intention is formulated in this space (and therefore outside, but not before, T). Of course, the only mathematical description we have of this space is not really reliable (Revelation 21:16), but it would surely resemble some kind of atemporal phase-space (how would that work?) in which certain possibilities are somehow both "realised" and "unrealised"; their determination would depend on the intention with which they are viewed (isn't this close to Berkeley?).

Now, the problem is that, given what we've said so far, and even if there is some X, we have no reason for postulating that X should have any intention towards T other than that given by the above-mentioned sources. I won't cite the difficulty of constructing a model of the "space" in which such intentions might be formed, as this is a petitio principii for the naturalist account. However, if the intention is removed, there is no reason not to prefer panentheism –the intention of X is an essential criterion for identifying X as "the God of Peter and Paul".

I have raised the objection before that your notion of explanation merely displaces the real problem, and does not address it at all. If we have X as an explicans of T, we have given a "unitary explanation" for T, but what explains X? If you argue that X is self-founding, then I would ask why we should not adopt the aesthetically more pleasing notion that T is self-founding. If X is not self-founding, but can only be explained in terms of some other explicans, then we are open to an infinite regress (and here we hear echoes of Peirce – O Shades of the Past!). But let's be clear about it – X introduces far more problems than it can possibly solve, and it doesn't really explain anything that is of any scientific interest.

But X's scientific interest is of little import in our present discussion – and with this phrase we consign ID, fringe versions of QM and string theory, and God's-eye views of the LET to the dustbin of irrelevance where they so rightly belong. Theism is not a scientific postulate, as you, Mike, would be among the first to agree. A theory advanced to further supernaturalist ends does nothing but disservice to both theology and science.

***

Now, is my objection to a non-necessary intentional relation obtaining between X and T a matter of "moral choice"? Well, given the various developments above, I would say that it's primarily a question of philosophical preference; but is this preference founded on some moral preference?

I'll be brutally honest – I do indeed hold Christianity to be offensive to reason, and active defence of Christianity to be a form of obscurantism. My objections are directed towards both the founding notions (which are anthropologically and historically unexceptional) and to the "authority" on which acceptance of these founding notions is based (why should Luke – for example – be a more reliable authority than Mohammed or even N. Ron Hubbard Smith Jr?). Later authorities – the Fathers, and then the Doctors – made some impressive silk purses, but for all their efforts the sow's ear still shows through.

So, would I affirm that one "should not believe" such stuff? Let's look at what you said:

"…naturalists typically argue that one ought not to expect people to find any of the putative explanations of natural theology cogent as explanations. Expecting people to do so is, in fact, morally defective"

Now, I think there are some jolly good reasons for questioning the explanations (and the vast majority are to be found in and around the Bible). I think that the belief system was based on a generalisation of entirely local conditions, and that the more we learn of non-local conditions, the less the belief system seems relevant. This isn't scientism – it's rather a question of coherence in a larger web of beliefs about the world (to give a non-immediate example : For classical Creationism to be true would require incoherence with a very large number of our beliefs about the world - and these are now part of a general world-view, not the specialised world-view of the evolutionary biologist).

But is my belief that one "ought not" or "should not" hold such views a matter of moral preference? Now, I might object to non-comparative teaching of these views, or to indoctrination with these views, on "ethical grounds", but is my attitude towards holding the views anything to do with an ethical stance?

I would say "no". My preference is a matter of aesthetics, not ethics. What you do with your own mind is your own business, as long as your beliefs have no impact on me and on my actions. If they do have an impact on me, then it's most impolite of you and I would ask you to stop – but this is a matter of the effect of your actions, and peu importe whether those actions were motivated by a belief in Jesus, Allah, or Father Christmas. If you should hold that you have some "duty" to impose a set of limitations founded on the implications of your belief system on those who do not share your belief system, then once again I would consider your behaviour to be impolite in the extreme and contrary to the most basic of ethical standards. But this argument holds generally against anyone who imposes their view on another, from Nazis and Stalinists to Rastafarians and The Insufferable Dawkins. The nature of the belief is irrelevant.

Setting aside the ethical question of the impact of your (putative) faith-motivated actions, it does indeed sadden me that a man of your personal quality and intellectual calibre should follow so much wasted talent into the "sow's-ears-into-silk-purses" trade. But this is because I think you would be a better philosopher if you were to take God's existence as a hypothesis to be tested rather than as a "truth that is already known". Truths that are already known as so boring, and one has a depressing tendency to arrive at them (in your case, all roads really do lead to Rome). But if this is "ethical", then it's the ethics of friendship and personal respect…

No, Mike, you could perhaps flame Dawkins with the accusation of moralism (and be right), but it won't wash with me. My interest in and against supernaturalism is metaphysical, not ethical. I couldn't give a recycled damn whether His Nibs has a strong personal dislike of condoms, crabs and abortion clinics – such matters are surely between each of us and our conscience. The argument from the existence of evil is a detail of the wider puzzle concerning God's perception of time – to cite it as a "fundamental argument" is naïve in the extreme. Catholicism has been responsible for a great deal of evil, but this is human error and human stupidity. Other religions have done as much – and other non-religions. Radical atheism is even less intellectually acceptable than belief - belief can rely on "revelation", but on what "revelation of nothingness" is non-belief to be founded?

No, Mike, the preference is that same preference for "desert landscapes" that motivated Quine. Sophisticated metaphysical naturalism strikes me as a more aesthetically pleasing account of the world than does supernaturalism – more elegant, more intellectually satisfying. Similarly, what attraction I might have felt for supernaturalist accounts has always been motivated by an aesthetic sense – and we Anglicans have the privilege of the most aesthetically-pleasing English-language account! But the schizophrenic jungle richness of such ontologies palls by its very lack of imagination… as Haldane or Eddington said, "the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine". Jehovah is poor stuff beside such unlimited possibility.

Change does occur. Your tack has changed, David, both stylistically and more substantively. Though perhaps most tellingly you're failing to forthrightly acknowledge your own fundamental teleological interest, even while a variety of phrases are indulged that point to that fact. This latest offering evidences a certain rhetorical indulgence as well, one bridled to that teleology - i.e. tendentiousness. In sum, prolixity has revealed a no more interesting argument with a burnished gloss and more bells and whistles.

First principles can perhaps be debated, to a degree and as long as each interlocutor holds themselves to high and rigorous standards, but paradox and aporias, via the power of tendentious and rhetorical indulgence, are not magically (or miraculously) changed to more positivist and more certain claims. In that sense, at least, change does not occur. Beyond that, Zeno Parmenides point to paradox and the need for further, still more demanding inquiry, not an invitation to rely upon sophistry, rhetoric and tendentiousness.

I did state that my preferences were primarily aesthetic. Would you discount such motivations, Michael? I take it that this is what you're getting at when you speak of "teleology".

My remarks are schematic - I admitted as much. Fuller development would be impolite to Mike; as for my chosen style, it is what it is: I make neither defence nor apology.

Accusations of sophistry, rhetoric and tendentiousness are unamusing without illustration... and the whole point is to have a bit of fun.

And, believe it or no, my puzzlement is fundamental and unfeigned, though I've perhaps caricatured it in the above. Otherwise, why bother with metaphysics?

Best regards,

David


David, the following seems to me to express the heart of the debate between us:

No, Mike, the preference is that same preference for "desert landscapes" that motivated Quine. Sophisticated metaphysical naturalism strikes me as a more aesthetically pleasing account of the world than does supernaturalism – more elegant, more intellectually satisfying. Similarly, what attraction I might have felt for supernaturalist accounts has always been motivated by an aesthetic sense – and we Anglicans have the privilege of the most aesthetically-pleasing English-language account! But the schizophrenic jungle richness of such ontologies palls by its very lack of imagination… as Haldane or Eddington said, "the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine". Jehovah is poor stuff beside such unlimited possibility.

There are two questions to be considered here. The first is whether aesthetic preference ought to be our primary guide in such matters; the second is whether, to the extent that aesthetics ought to guide us, there are objective grounds for preferring your aesthetic to mine.

As to the first, a little autobiography is relevant. When I began my reflective inner life as an adolescent, I noticed two things about the world. First, there is a great and pervasive beauty which intimates something larger behind it, even more beautiful yet unseen; we long for that, yet cannot grasp and hold it. When I first read C.S. Lewis, I recognized such an experience as what he meant by 'joy'. Most of us have had that experience. Second, life teems with evil, suffering, and tragedy that seem to mock said beauty and would kill "joy" if we let it. Such are life's "slings and arrows." At a certain point—I cannot say precisely when—I concluded that life is absurd unless the slings and arrows existed for the sake of causing us to turn in faith to whatever it was that "joy" intimates to us. Given the natural order plumbed by natural science, I concluded that it made more sense to see life as making sense than to see it as absurd. At that point, I could see how the Cross and the Resurrection had to go together. So I made an assent of faith, and I've been a traditional Christian ever since. In retrospect, I see the process leading up to that as what Ratzinger calls "the encounter" with the Person of Jesus Christ, which I now agree is the ordinary way of coming to faith. I see many other experiences in my life as such encounters too.

From your standpoint, the criteria of judgment in such a process would have to be deemed 'aesthetic'. And let's suppose together that such is what it is. Does that help to answer the first question I formulated? I'm not sure. What I do know is that, if traditional Christianity is true, then the assent of faith cannot remain subject to such considerations even if it is motivated by them. That is to say, a person who makes such an assent of faith cannot, consistently with doing so, go on to qualify it by saying: "Of course, if I later find some other theory more aesthetically pleasing, I will go with that one instead." To be sure, aesthetics never cease to be relevant; but even if one makes the assent of faith partly or wholly for such reasons, they cannot remain decisive. So then the question becomes whether aesthetics must remain decisive anyhow; if they must, that would preclude the assent of faith as I understand it. Accordingly, one can only beg the question against such an assent by assuming that aesthetics must remain decisive. I would argue that we can skirt the question-begging only by making truth decisive and pursuing the question what's true by means in addition to, not instead of, aesthetics.

Of course that doesn't bear on the second question I formulated. Whatever the importance of aesthetics may be, the question whether we can objectively adjudicate between aesthetic preferences remains. But in light of that question, your own stated preference puzzles me. You seem to believe that a "naturalized" metaphysics and epistemology leaves wider scope for the imagination than classical theism, and on that score is objectively preferable. I would not concede the first claim; but even if I did, I cannot see how a preference for 'desert landscapes' would support it. So I really am not clear how you would answer what I call 'the second question', save by a moral argument.

As I see it, that argument would run something like this. By means of a luxuriant ontology that paradoxically limits the scope of human imagination, classical theism unduly limits the range of truth we can discover. In so doing, it renders itself incompatible with the telos of human cognition. And we ought to be guided by that telos because failure to be so guided is both immoral in itself and has morally unacceptable results. Of course it's possible I might be completely misconstruing what your argument would be. So at this stage I'm more interested in understanding what your argument would be than in criticizing what I take your argument to be.

Best,
Mike

Mike, I'm glad you responded. Sometimes threads can go and and other issues/demands can take posters away. All of which is a long-winded way of saying I think this post is a keeper, for David's eloquence, and for yours.

David,

I don't discount your aesthetic interest whatsover, in fact I applaud that interest, my own interest is aesthetically motivated as well, in addition to being morally and epistemically interested. It's not a matter of one or the other and I'd assume you'd agree, if with a different set of priorities and tensions between those themes. After all, epistemic and moral concerns, absent aesthetics, results in narrowness, results in a type of provincialism and risks becoming detached from a basic humanity. Not good.

As to having fun, I was being no less and no more "brutally honest" than yourself, from a different pov, which seemed to be part of the fun in your case, as it was/is in my own case.

Before replying to Mike, I’d like to reposition the debate as I see it. This might avoid any misunderstandings.

First, a remark on “evidence” and “proof”: as far as scientific investigation of the physical world is concerned, and however well they might be predicted by theory, phenomena cannot be cited as “proof” of a theory; though they might well stand as evidence for the theory. This is a matter of underdetermination – while the theory covers the available data (to a satisfactory extent, at least), there is no reason to suppose that some other theory might not cover the data equally well - and this is evident in contemporary theoretical discussion of both particle physics and relativity.

And as far as evolution is concerned, ID claims that the various phenomena cited as evidence (from the geological record, from comparative anatomy, from genetic theory and research...) are at least equally well-explained as the result of some supernatural intervention; those who follow Paley would say that they are better-explained. Such preference is evidently not disinterested; but this does not in itself count against the notion. However, and besides citing the argument from parsimony, defenders of classical evolution argue that the notion also contravenes the general avoidance of teleological explanations in scientific accounts.

This more general avoidance of teleological explanations is, I think, what Mike seeks to address. Mike grants such avoidance as a methodological characteristic of the physical sciences within their specialised domain of discourse. However, he would question its generalisation as a criterion of metaphysical investigation.

I would reply that teleology as Mike understands it depends on local conditions governing locally-observable phenomena and cannot be generalised to events occurring, for example, at very small or very large scales or durations, at very high energy levels, or in very high gravitational fields. I would take scientific evidence of the diversity of the physical world as militating against a teleological explanation postulated on local assumptions and intuitions. If I were given to scientism; I would argue that such “evidence” militates for the view that only a scientific account can provide a satisfactory explanation of the world; personally, I would content myself with the observation that local conditions should not be generalised into universal laws (an example would be the universal Newtonian present). Mike would then argue against the assumptions governing my notion of “locality” &tc, &tc... - but this, as Mike has recalled, is not really the object of the present discussion. (I would furthermore apologise for having previously cited examples from my own field without further discussion. This is not a matter of deliberate obfuscation; links don’t seem to post here, but I had cited Steven Savitt’s Stanford article on “Being and Becoming in Modern Physics”, which gives a good introduction).

The nub of the question (which I will address below) is whether such preferences depend on some moral a priori. To quote Mike:

“Given [the classical naturalist arguments], naturalists typically argue that one ought not to expect people to find any of the putative explanations of natural theology cogent as explanations. Expecting people to do so is, in fact, morally defective. For such “explanations” necessarily transcend the sorts of considerations that it’s reasonable to count as evidence; expecting people to go beyond the evidence in forming their beliefs is expecting what’s unreasonable; and expecting from people what’s unreasonable is a sign of disreputable motives that are themselves all too evident in the history of religion.”

This is certainly the kind of argument one might find in naive scientism. However, it is naive precisely because it limits what counts as explanation to the sole resources of (a certain) physical science. It’s also a naive view of science (there is not one Science, but a maze of disciplines with differing ends and approaches – and even within disciplines there are glaring lacunae and contradictions). Whether or not macroscopic phenomena such as economic crises can be described using the language of, for example, quantum mechanics is beside the point; we can’t explain the economic crisis outside the largely teleological notions proper to economics, and particularly those concerning the micro/macroeconomic interface. Davidson, if I recall, wrote a great deal about the difference between giving a causal explanation and citing a “causal law”; Mike will correct me, but the idea comes I believe from Anscombe. This kind of very basic “philosophical sophistication” is unavailable to many scientistic commentators.

Those naturalists who do possess a certain degree of philosophical sophistication are less likely to oppose holding such views on the basis that they don’t conform to a narrow scientific notion of “justification” (that is, that we are justified in holding that a given theory is acceptable iff that theory satisfies certain criteria of parsimony, explanatory power, internal and external consistency etc. etc.). Whether this makes us any more tolerant is a moot point – there are many reasons for finding this or that aspect of a belief system inacceptable; and many such judgements are moral. But it does allow us to consider the belief system as a “coherent explanation of the world” given the system’s own criteria of justification.

Is it unreasonable to expect someone to believe natural theology? Given the appropriate context and assumptions, no. The view that the world either can or should be susceptible to a “teleological” explanation is such an assumption. That I should discount such an explanation doesn’t mean that I consider Mike “irrational”, though I would question his interpretation of certain phenomena and general situations. But whether I’d see these “interpretations” as moral errors or lapses of good taste is an entirely different matter. Such motivations go beyond the practice of philosophy and address our reasons for doing philosophy in the first place - one could go so far as to call them “biographical”.

I would certainly detach the question of whether such belief is “justified” from the historical accidents of this or that religious movement. Render unto God that which is God’s; but never mistake the hand of Caesar.

My remark on 'proof' and 'evidence' was intended precisely in the vein you've elaborated, David.

David:

Your reply suggests to me that, from a purely philosophical standpoint, what I call "the assent of faith" cannot be shown to be irrational (or: rationally unjustifiable) without begging the question against the classical theist. Of course, I would extend the same consideration to your position. I cannot show your position to be irrational or rationally unjustifiable without begging the question against your "first principles" of inquiry.

The conclusion I draw, of course, is that what is nowadays called "philosophy" is insufficient for settling the issues I consider most important. That's a point I often make to fellow Christians who believe that a rationally compelling case can be made for Christianity without assuming any revealed premises. I make the same point to non-believers who maintain that a rationally compelling case can be made against Christianity. And all that is why I find both theology and the spiritual life more important than philosophy.

I've enjoyed this discussion. Thanks for stopping by and contributing so effectively.

Best,
Mike

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