Thoughts on "The Big Picture" by Sean Carroll.

 "The Big Picture" was written in 2016 by Sean Carroll, a physicist at Caltech. As book cover suggests, Carroll is after big prey in this book: Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself. A blurb on the inside cover endorses the book this way:

With profound intelligence and lucid, unpretentious language, Sean Carroll beautifully articulates the worldview suggested by contemporary naturalists. Thorny issues like free will, the direction of time, and the source of morality are clarified with elegance and insight.

I do appreciate the straightforward manner in which Carroll writes, his willingness to take on big game, and his refusal to pull punches when he gets to the big questions. Even if I don't agree with much of Carroll's worldview, he has interesting and novel takes on many questions and some fascinating explications of scientific points.

I read the book not long after it was published and picked it up recently, noticing all the highlighting and notes I made throughout it. In this post I'd like to explore some of the notes I made in the text.

Chapter 15 is entitled "Accepting Uncertainty" and is specifically directed against religious dogmas. Carroll quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church several times, one of these being "Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie." Carroll's response to this is:

It is this kind of stance - that there is a kind of knowledge that is certain, which we should receive with docility, to which we should submit - that I'm arguing against. There are no such kinds of knowledge. We can always be mistaken, and one of the most important features of a successful strategy for understanding the world is that it will constantly be testing its prepositions, admitting the possibility of error, and trying to do better.

I'm not sure where his quote from the Catechism came from. I couldn't find it by searching on the Catechism, and the link he provides in the references no longer works, which is not surprising given it is nine years old.

In any case, the point of the Catechism is not to propose a successful strategy for understanding the world. It is to explicate for Catholics, who have already embraced the faith through whatever strategy they had for understanding the world, what it means to be and live life as a Catholic. It is more a map than a strategy. It is no criticism of a map to point out that the map dogmatically states where certain things are and the way to get from one place to another, when a better strategy to understand the world would be to express uncertainty where anything is and be constantly testing the map. The map user isn't interested in testing the map and making it better, he wants to get from here to there. Maps are for people who have made certain decisions and conclusions about where they want to go, an indication of how to get there. The Catechism is a map for those seeking salvation who have accepted the guidance of the Church on how to obtain eternal salvation. 

But I am more interested in the logic of Carroll's response, which is self-refuting in a way typical of naturalists. Carroll wants us to accept that there is no such thing as certain knowledge - "There are no such kinds of knowledge." That statement is, however, itself a knowledge claim and so subject to Carroll's insistence that no knowledge can be certain. We can't be certain, therefore, that there is no such thing as certain knowledge, which means there actually might be certain knowledge.

The best we can do is assert that we are currently unaware of knowledge that is certain and remain open to the possibility that it might be available. And, in fact, we do have certain knowledge in the form of various metaphysical first principles that are undeniable. For instance  the principle that "nothing can be and not be at the same time and in the same way." Science itself depends on these metaphysical foundations, which if not certain make science not just uncertain but impossible. Something can't be both hot and cold at the same time in the same way. If I measure the temperature as 60 degrees, it means that it is 60 degrees but also that it is not 30 degrees or any other temperature. If this weren't true science couldn't even get started.

This may sound like a trivial point, but that is only because fundamental metaphysical principles are so obviously true and certain that it can seem unnecessary to point them out. And it normally is unnecessary, until the time arrives when it is claimed they are uncertain or they are even denied. Naturalists often make this sort of claim indirectly with statements like "there is no such thing as certain knowledge." They are likely thinking in terms of empirical knowledge of the scientific type, in which case the assertion may be accurate. But they haven't considered the metaphysical background that makes science possible in the first place.

Jay Dyer, TAG, and Modern Philosophy

 The Transcendental Argument for God (TAG) is a modern argument for the existence of God popularly supported by Jay Dyer online. TAG differs from more well-known arguments like the Cosmological Argument in taking what might be called a "meta" perspective. It argues from the possibility of argument itself to the existence of God.

Listening to Dyer discuss TAG on his YouTube videos, he uses words like "paradigm", "presuppositions", "assumptions", and "worldview" frequently.  This is an indication that TAG is a characteristically modern argument, as opposed to something like Aquinas's Five Ways, which are characteristically classical. To understand what is really going on in TAG,  we must first understand some distinctive features of modern philosophy.

Rene Descartes may be, and often is, designated as a convenient dividing line between ancient and modern philosophy. It is not just when he lived that makes this natural (1596-1650), but also the manner in which he approached philosophy. As a young man, Descartes concluded that what he had learned in school - specifically, philosophy in the Scholastic tradition - produced nothing that was not doubtful and uncertain. He resolved to reject that tradition and replace it with a system he believed would produce certainty. This system was his famous method of methodical doubt, which would subject everything to the most searching doubt and accept only that which might survive. The first result of this method was his famous cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am.

Subsequent philosophers were deeply influenced by Descartes, but not quite in the way he hoped. Descartes thought he had restarted philosophy once and for all on a sure footing and later philosophers would follow his method and expand its results. While those later philosophers agreed with Descartes that the classical dialog of opinion merely resulted in fruitless debate, the lesson they took from Descartes was that they could restart philosophy themselves on whatever grounds seemed reasonable to them. It was not illogical for them to think so. A consequence of Descartes' approach was to divide thought into two realms: The realm based on methodical doubt that produced reliable and certain results, and the realm of thought not founded on that method and therefore capable only of producing uncertain and doubtful results. The thinking of Descartes before he restarted thought with his method of doubt - the time when he concluded that the Scholastic tradition was barren and in which the method of doubt itself was selected - necessarily occurred in that second realm of doubt and uncertainty, the "gray zone" of thought as it were, since it occurred before the invention of methodical doubt. Since by its own lights it was doubtful and uncertain, philosophers were happy to doubt it and felt free to select their own methods on which to reconstruct philosophy.

What followed was, among others, John Locke starting philosophy with his "plain, historical method",  David Hume researching the "secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations" and, most comprehensively, Immanuel Kant defining the categories of human thought in his Critique of Pure Reason.  Things proceeded in a similar manner from there, and the long term consequence of Descartes' philosophical revolution is the general conviction that philosophy begins more or less arbitrarily from some set of first principles that cannot themselves be rationally demonstrated. Everyone is free to choose from where he will begin.

This results in philosophical discourse about "worldviews", "presuppositions" and "paradigms." A worldview is your comprehensive view of things that results from the logical development of your presuppositions. Your paradigm is the methodical framework within which your worldview is explored. Since everyone's worldview is constructed from presuppositions that can be neither defended nor refuted, and not everyone's presuppositions are the same, philosophical debate is only possible where the participants can agree on some set of presuppositions from which valid argument can proceed. If agreement cannot be reached, then fruitful debate is not possible. So debates, including debates concerning the existence of God, often start with a preliminary discussion over what set of presuppositions can be agreed on.

This standard procedure TAG claims to transcend by arguing at a "meta" level.  The argument is about the presuppositions themselves rather than some set of conclusions from presuppositions. Simply put, in the version deployed by Dyer, it is argued that the self, the fact that words have meaning, and logic itself (among other things) stand in need of justification if philosophical argument is to proceed. Standard philosophical argumentation concerning God typically takes these things for granted and so is never justified as a whole. The TAG philosopher argues that only God as the one and final presupposition can justify the necessary elements to make philosophical argument possible, and therefore God should be the rationally preferred presupposition.

The peculiar form of TAG often confuses and frustrates its opponents, sometimes for good reason. Familiar with starting arguments by agreeing on presuppositions, the TAG opponent is puzzled that the TAG defender won't quickly agree on presuppositions to get the discussion going, but instead wants to argue about the presuppositions themselves. Yet the whole point of presuppositions in modern philosophical discourse is that they cannot be defended or refuted but only assumed.  So argument over which presuppositions are better than others is impossible in principle. There is only personal preference based on whatever arbitrary criteria one might choose. Matt Dillahunty makes this point in his debate with Jay Dyer.

Furthermore, among the many things the TAG philosopher claims need justification are the validity of logic itself and whether words truly have meaning. But if such things are doubtful, how can they be used to arrive at reliable philosophical conclusions, including TAG conclusions?  The TAG philosopher is like a man in the year 1500 pointing out that the ship I plan to use to sail from England to America is too small and leaky to make the trip, but that he has a much bigger and more seaworthy vessel I may use. He tells me the ship is over in America, so I need only sail over there in my ship to get it, when I can then confidently sail the Atlantic. Of course, if logic is reliable enough to get us to TAG conclusions, whether they be "meta" or otherwise, it is reliable per se. If logic is too leaky and unreliable to be useful in ordinary arguments concerning God, it doesn't magically become sound just because it is used to argue to TAG conclusions.

The interesting thing about TAG, and the reason I started this post discussing Descartes, is to make a point with respect to the modern philosophical project as a whole. Recall that Descartes resolved to embark on his method of methodical doubt because he had concluded that classical philosophical dialog was a fruitless waste of time. He would set philosophy on a sound footing from which it could derive certain results. Instead the history of modern philosophy has been never ending debate concerning just what those sure foundations are. The conclusion often drawn from the never ending debate is that there are in fact no sure foundations for philosophy, only presuppositions. And as a meditation on presuppositions, TAG is a sort of logical endpoint of modern philosophy. It must necessarily operate in the gray zone implied by modern philosophy, that realm of thought that occurs before the proper method and presuppositions have been determined. Therefore its reasoning and conclusions are necessarily suspect according to the foundational principles of the modern philosophical project. TAG claims that its presupposition of God is "better" than other presuppositions, but the only way to establish this is through using the logic and reasoning that TAG claims is unjustified as part of its premises.

There is only one way forward at this point: Question the foundations of the modern philosophical project itself, i.e. that the classical dialog of opinion is a fruitless waste of time. Since modern philosophy starts with doubting things, why not doubt that?

On Darwinian Positivism

 Over at the ZMan blog,  the ZMan has a post concerning natural reason, specifically the ability of reason to answer the big questions of life: How should a man live his life? How should we organize our societies and to what end? The ZMan does not think these questions can be answered:

The truth of it is, a truth Gregory Clark surely knows, is that nature is silent on those big questions about how we ought to live and organize our societies. Nature cares about one thing and that is fitness. Specifically, every living thing is driven by its gene’s desire to make it to the next round of the game. If your genes make even a partial copy of themselves in the form of your children, that is a win. How you make that happen is of no interest to your genes or Mother Nature.

This position, which might be called Darwinian Positivism, has always struck me as manifestly absurd. Isn't it obvious that human behavior is deeper and more complex than anything that can be captured in a simple causal analysis like the "gene's desire to make it to the next round of the game?"  Voluntary celibacy may be unusual but it is hardly unknown and in fact has historically been admired as a higher form of life. The ZMan himself, I understand, has no children. 

In fact, the ubiquity of abortion and contraception in modern society would seem to clearly falsify any notion that human nature is "driven" by the gene's desire to reproduce.  In fact, we indulge in those things to the point that we no longer reproduce at replacement rate.  That is only possible if there is some other source of human behavior powerful enough to overcome any desire to reproduce.

Comment on the ZMan

 I've been following a blog from the "dissident right" written by someone using the pseudonym "ZMan."  I just made a comment on this post of his. The ZMan likes to write a lot about "fitness" and has a philosophical view that might be characterized as a kind of Darwinian positivism. I push back on some of that with the following comment. The first quote is from the ZMan's post.

“One does not logically follow the other, but the hallmark of Western thought since the late Middle Ages is the error of assuming that observations about nature or nature’s god lead to rules about human behavior.”

It goes back much farther than that, at least to Aristotle and Plato. Is it really an error to develop rules for human behavior from nature? On what else would they be based? Perhaps the most basic observation about nature that leads to rules is that people who don’t reproduce themselves will disappear from the Earth. Another is that the education of the young will play a large role in determining the shape of the future. Plato observed both these things and spent a lot of space in his Republic developing rules concerning both reproduction and education.

Aristotle further observed that the nature of man is such that he only flourishes if he develops virtue, including but not limited to the virtues of courage, self-control, justice and wisdom. A civilization that doesn’t take into account natural facts concerning reproduction, education and virtue isn’t going to last very long. A nation of sterile cowards will soon find itself It on the wrong side of the fitness to which the ZMan often refers.

Now one may disagree with the rules Plato came up with concerning reproduction or Aristotle came up with for the development of virtue. But that doesn’t mean those facts of nature or their implications go away. Yet I don’t hear much on the dissident right about the most elementary rule of fitness, which is reproduction.

Whites aren’t reproducing themselves at anything close to replacement rate. Western Europeans are somewhere around 1.5 babies per woman, and a similar rate applies to whites in the U.S. That’s a demographic catastrophe. Meanwhile, black Africans have an exploding birth rate. It’s all well and good to limit or end immigration. But unless these numbers change, Africans can eventually walk into an empty continent. (And at that point, the last people here will be black or hispanic, as non-hispanic whites have a birth rate lower than either of them.)

It’s often remarked that we can’t vote our way out of the situation we are in. We may not be able to reproduce our way out of it either. But not reproducing and educating the next generation is a guaranteed loser. You want a concrete way to help the future of the historic white people? Get married and have kids. A lot of them. Nothing else matters without it.

Kant, Doubt and Solipsism

 In an earlier post I discussed my approach to solipsism.  In brief, my approach is not to attempt to prove that solipsism is false, but to show that it is not the skeptical philosophy it claims to be. For to doubt the reality of the external world is at the same time to affirm that my own mind is responsible for everything that common sense attributes to the external world.  Solipsism can only be true if my own mind is responsible for the discoveries of Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, the plays of Sophocles and Shakespeare, the novels of Dostoyevsky, and the art of Rembrandt and Michelangelo. 

Now if instead of claiming that solipsism is doubt of the external world, the solipsist claimed that his own mind is in fact responsible for all the achievements of the individuals listed above, it would be immediately recognized that the position is not one of skepticism but of colossal intellectual arrogance. Yet the standard presentation of solipsism and my reformulation of it are logically equivalent.

I think a similar analysis holds with the philosophy of Kant. Kant's "Copernican revolution in philosophy", we will recall, holds that the forms the ancient philosophers found in nature are really constructions the human cognitive apparatus places on raw experience. So we can't know the true nature of things in themselves, but only those things as they appear filtered through human cognition. 

Like solipsism, however, the Kantian Copernican revolution can be reformulated as a claim that the forms we find in experience are generated in the human mind. The beauty of the Grand Canyon, or the singing of a lark, the majesty of the lion - from the Kantian perspective we must affirm that these are creations of the human mind, not things that come from a reality greater than us. So just as the solipsist must believe he is a mathematician at least as great as Newton, the Kantian must believe he is a creator greater than whatever is responsible for nature; God perhaps. So Kantianism isn't really the skeptical philosophy it claims to be. It is rather a colossal affirmation of the self against anything greater than the self.

The Starting Point of Philosophy

There is an absolute starting point for geometry: It is the axioms of Euclid. There is an absolute starting point for Newtonian physics: It is Newton's Three Laws of Motion. There is an absolute starting point to legal theory: It is whatever constitution is in place.

There is no absolute starting point to philosophy. There are only subjective starting points to philosophy.

The reason is that philosophy, defined as the love of wisdom, is concerned with illuminating man's own life by reason. I use the phrase own life because in the act of philosophizing, I am not attempting to illuminate your life by reason, at least not primarily, but I am attempting to illuminate my own life by reason. The starting point of philosophy, then, is each man's own life. 

Geometry and physics can have absolute starting points because their object is abstract, timeless knowledge that bears no necessary relationship to any individual's life. A man may get on well enough in life without ever knowing that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, or that acceleration is proportional to force.

But philosophy just is that mode of thought that concerns man in his own concrete existence. That concrete existence is the starting point of philosophy. Philosophy degenerates when it loses touch with concrete existence and turns into an indifferent playing about with concepts, an ever present temptation in philosophy.

Consider Socrates in the Crito. Socrates is in prison awaiting his execution, and Crito visits him with news that his friends are willing to bribe officials to enable his escape. Crito provides an argument as to the rightness of escaping: By remaining, Socrates is playing into the hands of his enemies, and besides he has a duty to remain alive to nurture and educate his children. It is obvious, however, that Crito is offering rationalizations that are covering, and not very well, Crito's own desire not to lose his friend. Socrates responds to Crito with the following:

For I am and always have been one of those natures who must be guided by reason, whatever the reason may be which upon reflection appears to me to be the best; and now that this fortune has come upon me, I cannot put away the reasons which I have before given: the principles which I have hitherto honored and revered I still honor, and unless we can find other and better principles on the instant, I am certain not to agree with you; no, not even if the power of the multitude could inflict many more imprisonments, confiscations, deaths, frightening us like children with hobgoblin terrors.

The import of Socrates's response is that as a philosopher, his life is guided by reason, and that means he must submit to his reason in the here and now, when fortune has turned against him, just as he did in happier times discussing philosophy pleasantly in the agora. Were Socrates to rationalize an escape, he would falsity his own nature as a philosopher, a fate Socrates fears more than imprisonment or death.

The fact that there are only subjective starting points to philosophy, and not an absolute starting point, does not mean that philosophy is purely relative or can't gain a knowledge of the truth. The starting point of philosophy is not absolute, but the end point may very well be. We may start our travels in different cities, but it doesn't follow that our destinations must be different.

What is the absolute end point of philosophy? It is the Absolute Being Who is the Source of each of our individual, contingent beings. It is in the light of that Absolute Being that our own lives will finally become intelligible.

Cosmic Skeptic and the Moral Argument for the Existence of God

 The Cosmic Skeptic (Alex) has an interesting video ranking the arguments for the existence of God here.  The video is a discussion between the Cosmic Skeptic and Joe Schmid, who we learn is an agnostic.

In this post I'd like to address the discussion of the Moral Argument for the existence of God. That occurs at 1:28:40 of the video. As presented, the Moral Argument is formulated this way:

P1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.

P2: Objective moral values do exist.

C: Therefore, God exists.

The conversation notes that P2 may be denied, but they leave this aside as they are more interested in whether the existence of God does in fact follow if moral values exist. Joe Schmid asks an interesting question: What does God add to the question? When God commands something, he either has a reason for the command or he doesn't. If God doesn't have a reason, then he is arbitrary. If God has a reason, then it is that reason that is significant, not the fact that God has commanded it (I am paraphrasing here.)

As they note, this is a version of the Euthyphro dilemma from Plato. Schmid thinks his version is stronger than Plato's, because Plato is concerned with what makes things right or wrong, whereas Schmid's argument just refers to whether God has a reason or not.

They then get into a discussion of God's relationship to goodness, and raise the idea that goodness just is being more like God. They raise some problems with it,  for instance that if God is immaterial, then I am somehow better if I become immaterial, which doesn't seem to make sense. Schmid argues that God is simply acting as intermediary, because it is the loving, the kindness (as concepts) that are doing the heavy lifting, not God. It is the intellectual and moral virtues themselves, not God.

Alex then brings up a functional account of goodness.  A chair, for example, is a good chair to the extent that it fulfills its designers function for which it was made. It seems odd, however, to speak of it as a bad table even if it can be used as a table. 

They discuss the idea that moral values are doing what God designed us for, but they find that this is arbitrary as well, for God could have simply proclaimed the function of women is to be raped. Antecedent to God's design, there are no moral facts God is looking on in terms of which to structure his designs or define their functions. 

Alex brings up what he considers an equivocation between the functional use of "good" and "bad", i.e. in describing a chair as good or bad depending on how well it serves as a chair, and "good" and "bad" as used in moral language with respect to people, which is not merely functional.  The language of virtue used with respect to people is not used with respect to chairs.

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The conversation could have used an exploration of a Thomistic understanding of good and evil. What happens in God's creative act? He gives a nature and existence to a being. Embedded in the nature of the being are formal and final causes that give substance to that nature. They implicitly define good and evil with respect to that being. Were God to then command something in contradiction to the natures he has created, he would simply be contradicting himself.

Suppose a piano maker builds a beautiful piano, paying attention to the smallest details to make the instrument easy to play and so it will produce a beautiful sound.  He tunes it painstakingly so every string is in tune with every other.  Then, when he is finished with it, he never plays it, but instead sleeps on top of it because he has declared the function of the piano to be a bed.

We would find the piano maker ridiculous. His construction of the piano was built under the obvious plan that the function of the piano would be as a musical instrument. To then use it as a bed is simply to contradict everything the piano maker implied in his construction of the instrument. We might argue that the piano maker's choice to use the piano as a bed is an act of "freedom", but whether we wish to call it free or not, it nonetheless contradicts everything the piano maker did in construction the piano. "Freedom" to frustrate your own designs is a degenerate form of freedom.

When God creates, he creates natures with embedded formal and final causes. A dog has a certain nature and a certain mode of being; his life is centered around scent and is naturally sociable. If God then commands that dogs should always be kept in isolation and live in water,  this would contradict what God did in  the creative act that established the nature of dogs in the first place. Contradicting himself is not a "power" that an omnipotent creator need have, because it is actually an expression of impotence, not power.

So with respect to Schmid, God does not reference some already existing values in his creative act. He establishes good and evil with respect to particular natures in the very definition of those natures; just as playing a piano well is defined with respect to the inherent potentialities of the piano as a musical instrument.  To be good is simply to be in the best way with respect to individual nature. To be evil is to not be in some way that is appropriate for a given nature.  God won't command that women should be raped because that would contradict the good for women that was defined by God in creating women in the first place. 

Man is the particular subject of moral judgment because, unlike dogs and tables, he has an intellect and will that can perceive good and evil and act accordingly.  So to be a good man involves having a good intellect and a good will, which is not involved in being a good dog.

And what about the Moral Argument for the Existence of God itself? I am not a fan of it, because it seems to assume a certain arbitrariness with respect to morality, as though morality is layered on to already existing being, rather than being embedded within natures themselves when they are created.  The appropriate way to argue from morality to God is not to claim that the atheist can't know moral values without knowing God, but to argue what the knowledge of morality implies about the nature of being and its foundation, i.e. something like Aquinas's Argument from Perfection.