The weaker and the stronger Anscombe claims

 I think everyone working on the Anscombe essay (that includes one Victor Reppert) has been making a mistake in not distinguishing between Anscombe criticizing Lewis for, for example, not making the distinction between GC and CE on the one hand, and saying, and making this claim at the end of her piece:

I do not think that there is sufficiently good reason for maintaining the “naturalist” hypothesis about human behaviour and thought. But someone who does maintain it cannot be refuted as you try to refute him, by saying that it is inconsistent to maintain it and to believe that human reasoning is valid and that human reasoning sometimes produces human opinion.

That seems to imply a refutation, and a claim that once Anscombe's distinctions are drawn, the naturalist is off the hook. Lewis comes back and says "OK, I see your distinctions, but you're actually making it worse instead of better for the naturalist." At the end she goes from saying "You didn't refute the naturalist for these reasons," to "You can't refute the naturalist this way." It's more than just a correction. McGrath, who sees the whole thing as a win-win on both sides (just a friendly correction), overlooks this passage. But she doesn't repeat the more ambitious claim. 

Does Darwinian biology explain the mind?

 The whole thrust of Darwinian biology, which is the big naturalist selling point, is to replace mind explanations with mindless ones, rendering mind explanations perhaps useful but not literally true. If Darwinian biology explains the mind, therefore, it explains it away. It explains it in such a way that mental explanations are not literally true. So, if Darwinian biology is comprehensive, then it follows that it is not literally the case that Darwin inferred his theory of natural selection from the evidence, of, for example, finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands. So, you have to be the kind of naturalist that says that Darwinian biology does not explain the human mind. I know of someone who says this who doesn't believe in God or anything like God, but last I checked he had made a lot of people in the naturalist camp really mad for saying this sort of thing. Do naturalists want to include Nagel in their club, or keep him out?

What, exactly qualifies as naturalism? And what did C. S. Lewis think he had refuted?

 In defending the central argument in the third chapter of Miracles, we have to ask exactly what Lewis meant by naturalism when he said that naturalism is self-refuting. David Kyle Johnson thinks there is a standard definition of naturalism--an entity is natural if it is part of the universe, and naturalism is the view that only the universe exists. It has nothing to do with whether mental states are fundamental to the universe or not. Hence an argument that shows that there must be basic mental causes would not be sufficient to refute naturalism, since there are versions of naturalism where this is not denied. 

David Kyle Johnson, "Retiring the Argument from Reason," Philosophia Christ Vol 20, no. 2., (2018). 

But, in fact, the difficulty in defining naturalism is widely noted, and so far as I can tell, there is no standard definition. Alvin Plantinga defines naturalism as the view that there is no God, or no being like God. But what is God-like enough to be a problem for naturalism? 

Rickabaugh and Boras state that naturalism is a thesis about ontology, but is also a thesis about explanation. They note: 

The distinctively scientific mode of explanation is subpersonal and mechanistic.16 To give a mechanistic explanation of some phenomena (for example, change in location) is to cite a property of an object (for example, the mass of a body) together with a natural law (for example, Newton’s inverse-square law) describing how things with that property regularly behave. Such laws describe the most general patterns of variation in nature, based on the inherent tendencies of things. Mechanistic explanations thus tell us what we can expect to happen automatically (deterministically or probabilistically) and, as it were, of its own accord. That is, whether prior events strictly necessitate or fix the chances of a future event, still that event is the automatic result of nonrational causes. Deterministic laws predict a fixed outcome for phenomena that fall under their jurisdiction. Probabilistic laws, by contrast, assign a probability to all possible outcomes, and leave it to chance to resolve which comes to pass. Mechanistic explanations thus tell us that some phenomenon occurs because the state of the universe and the laws of nature necessitate it or make it somewhat likely. Here is our point: the central idea of naturalism (at least with respect to explanation) is that mechanistic explanation is in principle complete, that is, sufficient to explain everything that needs explaining.

16. The account of scientific explanation in this paragraph and the next follows Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 26–35, which is in turn based on the classic exposition in C. G. Hempel and P. Oppenheim, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science 14 (1948): 135–7

Brandon Rickabaugh and Todd Boras, "The Argument from Reason and Mental Causal Drainage: A Reply to Peter van Inwagen," Philosophia Christi vol 19, no. 2, 384. (2017). 

Lewis presents naturalism and supernaturalism as two options, so based on that you might think that he would be happy with Johnson's definition. However, Lewis also has a chapter on "Christianity and Religion" in which he argues against pantheistic views, and there he does not use an argument from reason. These pantheistic views include a position he once held, and the position he adopted once he became persuaded that naturalistic views "leave no room for an adequate theory of knowledge." That is, he became an Absolute Idealist. According to Absolute idealism, God is not distinct from the universe, and so by Johnson's definition, it qualifies as a form of naturalism. 

In any event, in the name of naturalism many people hold a position that says that the base level is mechanistic (in the sense described), the base level is causally closed, and whatever else there is supervenes on the base level. Most of them call the base level physics, which makes them physicalists. If these positions are refuted by the argument from reason, then it is hard to call the argument from reason a failure, even if it leaves space for people to depart from that position without embracing theism. After all, that is just what C. S. Lewis did when he was first convinced that naturalism as he understood it did not hold up. As he said "I didn't want there to be a God, I didn't want the universe to be like that."  Oh wait, with a tense change, that's Thomas Nagel. I apologize for the confusion. 

I have decided to renew this blog

 I have been spending quite some time thinking and working through the argument from reason once again. Maybe there will be a sequel to my C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. In the last 10 years, I have been in an exchange with David Kyle Johnson which began in Gregory Bassham ed. (Rodopi-Brill, 2015), and followed that up with an essay called "Extending the Debate on the Argument from Reason," which came out in Philosophia Christi vol 20 issue 2. I have been doing some things on the related matter of the Anscombe Legend, and I am working on a response to Peter van Inwagen's critique of the AFR, and recently did an interview on the argument with Parker Settecase, found here. 

Here is a discussion of a Menuge essay on Dennett

The Menuge essay itself is here.

Reply to Parsons on Mental Causation

Parsons on Mental Causation

The Secular Outpost: The Problem with Metaphysical Naturalism (According to Victor Reppert)

First, I do share Parsons' concern about getting definitions right. When I deal with a naturalistic view, I offer an account of what that is supposed to have in it, which includes the mechanistic character of the base level, the causal closure of the base level, and the superveniece of everything else on the base level. By mechanism I mean that we are excluding from that base level four properties: intentionality, purpose, first-person subjectivity, and normativity. Now someone might come along and say that they have a view that doesn't fit these characteristics but is still naturalistic in some sense, in which case we'd have to look at their theory to see in what sense they're calling it naturalistic and whether I think a version of the AFR can be advanced against it. Here, I am going to assume that Parsons agrees with this account, and move forward. 

Looking at this post, it seems to me that there are a couple of issues that we have to be careful about conflating. One of them is the claim that some version of nonreductive materialism can meet the argument from reason. In the combox, you get some discussion of that, and some responses to some exchanges with Clayton Littlejohn. However, the impression that I have had in discussion with Clayton is that he believes that mental events qua mental events do cause other mental states and physical states. Troubles with mental causation have been the focus of some of Jaegwon Kim's criticisms of nonreductive materialism, in particular the nonreductivism of Donald Davidson. Kim writes:

Davidson's anomalous monism fails to do full justice to psychophysical causation in which the mental qua mental has any real causal role to play. Consider Davidson's account: whether or not a given event has a mental description (optional reading: whether or not it has a mental characteristic) seems entirely irrelevant to what causal relations it enters into. Its causal powers are wholly determined by the physical description or characteristic that holds for it; for it is under its physical description that it may be subsumed under a causal law.

Jaegwon Kim, "Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation" ch. 6 of Supervenience and Mind, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 106.

Now, of course, there can be a debate as to whether a case cam be made for mental causation in a non-reductive materialist framework. I think it can't. It's not that I don't think higher-level properties can be causally relevant. They can be if the are configurational combinations of physical states. If a bowling ball knocks all the pins down, this is perfectly possible even though basic physics makes no reference to bowling balls and pins. However, I take it if you add up the physical states and know what words mean, you can't avoid the conclusion that the bowling ball knocked down the pins. What I don't see is how you can add up non-normative states and get normative states, how you can add up non-intentional states and get intentional states, how you can add up non-first-person states and get first-person states, or how you can add up non-purposive states and get purposive states.

Science always prefers the most tractable accounts it can get. Scientists are happy when they can analyze the movement of a bullet through space, and determine what kind of impact it would have to make given the speed at which it was traveling. But there is another type of explanation that we might be interested in with respect to the bullet. It was fired by someone who had some intention with respect to what he wanted the bullet to do. Perhaps, he fired the bullet to kill his mother-in-law, whom he believes to be the worst person he knows. That is an agent-explanation, and as such is less tractable to science than a ballistic explanation. However, it isn't a total mystery; we can understand the person's motivations, and perhaps not find the action totally unexpected. After all, we are talking about the motivations of a fellow human. Now, as action might be the action of a superior being of some kind, and there it is even less tractable. Still, I would not want to call it a pseudo-explanation, because we can have some understanding of a superior mind, even the mind of God.

But it is a natural impulse in science to want to analyze the world in as tractable terms as possible, and hence we can understand why materialism is appealing from the point of view of science. However, at the same time, science described the activity of scientists in mentalistic terms. Scientists gather evidence, they form hypotheses, they perform logical and mathematical inferences, etc. It would indeed undermine the scientific enterprise if these mentalistic explanations of the behavior of scientists were simply untrue. Few people would be materialists if it weren't appealing from a scientific standpoint, but if mentalistic explanations are all false, then there are no scientists, and therefore no science. So, some kind of explanatory compatibility thesis must be defended by materialists. Scientists are, in the last analysis physical beings whose actions can be fully explained at the physical level as part of a closed mechanistic system, and their rationality, such as it is, must be some supervening property that emerges through evolution in a materialist world.

Parsons' strategy for establishing explanatory compatibility is essentially the same as the one Elizabeth Anscombe, (not a naturalist herself, but surely the most famous critic of C. S. Lewis's AFR). The mentalistic explanations we need in order for science to be science are compatible with materialism because those explanations aren't causal explanations, while those offered by physics are causal explanations.

Now Parsons, like Anscombe, points out that there are compatible explanations. Of course there are. For example, if we ask why the soda-can is sitting on the bookshelf, I might say "Because I put it there yesterday, since I am planning on recycling it," or "because it has a cylindrical shape, and is sitting on its base." But there are, certainly, incompatible explanations. Otherwise, there would be no hope that scientific explanations could ever supplant religious explanations.

Parsons tries to establish the explanatory compatibility as follows, using as an example Sam's acceptance of Krugman's arguments that the Ryan budget is a recipe for disaster. 

When we say that Sam was convinced by Krugman’s arguments it seems to me perverse to attribute some very (I think in-principally) mysterious kind of causal power to the sense or propositional content of Krugman’s arguments. Attributing causal powers to Fregean Sinn (meaning), if this is what Victor wants to assert, just seems to me a straightforward category mistake. It is like saying that the set of all integers broke the deadlock between NFL players and owners. No, to say that Sam was convinced by Krugman’s arguments means that Sam considered Krugman’s claims, examined the supporting reasons, weighed them in the light of prior knowledge and norms of good reasoning, and judged that these were persuasive. However, considering Krugman’s claims, examining the supporting arguments, evaluating them, and judging them to be persuasive are things that Sam does with his brain, and happenings in Sam’s brain, being physical events, can cause things. 

Well, if Sam's considering and accepting Krugman's arguments is a brain process, it looks like we are going to end up attributing properties to Sam's brain that are going to violate the causal closure of the physical. If Sam finds Krugman's arguments persuasive, one of the things he has to be persuaded by is the logical connection between the Krugman's premises and his conclusions. To be aware of something is to be causally influenced by it. So, yes, my awareness of a stop sign causes me to stop, not the stop sign itself. If I don't see the sign, I'll barrel right through. But, the stop sign has to cause my awareness of the stop sign. And if the physical is causally closed, then everything that I am aware of has to be also physical, and by physical I take it we mean that it has a particular location in space and time. A logical relationship has no particular location in space and time, and so if I am aware of a logical relationship, and that logical relationship affects my brain, then the causal closure of the physical has been violated, because something that has no particular location in space and time is bringing it about that I think certain things.

If I am aware that the cat is on the mat, then there is a causal connection between the cat and my brain, which occurs within space and time. If I am aware of the fact that, if a=b, and b=c and a=c, then in order for this awareness to be fitted within the framework of a causally closed physical order, that truth has to have a particular location in space and time. But it has not particular location in space and time, so, if the physical is closed, I can't be aware of it.

Explanations have ontological commitments. If I explain the existence of presents under the Christmas tree by saying that Santa put them there, then I commit myself to the existence of Santa. If I say I believe something because I perceive a logical relationship, that means that there are logical relationships. But where is this logical relationship for me to be aware of?

I don't see that you really resolve the problem naturalism has with rational inference by denying the causal character of these explanations.

Labels: argument from mental causation, argument from reason, Keith Parsons, the argument from reason

From a Faith and Philosophy review of Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons ed. Kevin Corcoran

Jaegwon Kim’s essay “Lonely Souls: Causality and Substance Dualism” comes from a philosopher who operates out of the physicalist tradition. Unlike some in that tradition, however, he has been very serious about pressing difficulties for otherwise popular forms of physicalism in the area of mental causation. In this paper he presents some problems for dualism in the area of mental causation. He reconsiders the familiar objection to Descartes’ dualism that dualism is untenable because we cannot see how something nonphysical can interact with something physical. As Kim points out, this is often presented with no or almost no supporting argumentation. However, Kim does supply some argumentation to put some meat on the bones of the familiar objection, by generating what he calls the pairing problem.
Kim maintains that a spatial framework is necessary for the existence of a causal relationship amongst objects. If two rifles are fired and two people are killed, what criteria would lead us to correctly pair the causes and effects? The answer, says Kim, is the spatial relationships between deadly bullets and the victims. Kim also points out that lack of a spatial relation between a suspect and the victim is often sufficient to ground an alibi in a murder case. But since souls are not spatial, spatial pairing relationships between souls and matter cannot exist. Kim considers the possibility that souls have spatial locations, but he finds some difficulties with that idea as well, but he thinks this is problematic as well. We need to locate souls at a particular point in space, and claims that it would beg the question to locate the souls in the brain. Second, he argues that to locate souls in space would require that not more than one soul could occupy a location in space, that is, something like the impenetrability of matter would have to obtain. But he asks, if this is so, “why aren’t such souls just material objects, albeit of a very special, and strange kind?” And he thinks the soul found in a geometrical point could not have a structure capable of accounting for the rich mental life that humans have. Finally, he is suspicious of any solutions to the problem dictated by “dualist commitments.” He says “We shouldn’t do philosophy by first deciding what conclusions we want to prove, and then posit convenient entities and premises to get us where we want to go.”
First of all, it needs to be made clear just what it is for something to be a material thing. The book makes it evident that the concept of “materiality” and “matter” need to be made clearer than they are. This is especially imperative for Christians who want to go as far as possible in accommodating their faith to “materialism.” Orthodox materialism is a corollary of philosophical naturalism, and is typically committed to at least this: that the physical order is causally closed, and that whatever other states exist supervene on the physical; that is, there cannot be a difference without a physical difference. But what is more, physicalism is committed to the idea that the physical order is mechanistic, that is, purposive explanations cannot be basic-level explanations at the physical level. If the material is defined in this way, then it seems to me that something could have a spatial location, and it could also possess impenetrability, and still not be material in the orthodox sense. It could still be the case that the mental is sui generis and fundamental, and one of Foster’s dualist theses would still be true.

Gilbert Meilaender reviews Nagel's The Last Word

I believe that Thomas Nagel's The Last Word is really a defense of the Argument from Reason that stops short of offering theism as the conclusion. Nevertheless it does attack naturalism as we know it. The is Lewis scholar Meilaender's review of Nagel's book.