vol. xiv, sept. 2003

EPISTEME

Volume XIV September 2003

Episteme is published under the

auspices of the Denison University

Department of Philosophy

Granville, Ohio

ISSN 1542-7072

Episteml! aims to recognize and Edi tor-in-Chief encourage excellence in undergraduate Charles Shonk philosophy by providing examples of

some of the best work currently being Assistant Editors done in undergraduate philosophy Andrew Hupp programs around the world. Episteme

~latthew Tipping intends to offer undergraduates their first opportunity to publish

Editorial Board philosophical work. It is our hope that Brooke Bluestein the journal will help stimulate Tamara Carty philosophical dialogue and inquiry Ke\"in Connor among students and faculty at colleges Justin Jones and universities. NOall Lauricella Episteme ,>"ill consider papers Robert Wyllie written by undergraduate students in

any area of philosophy; throughout our Faculty Advisor history we have published papers on a Mark Moller wide array of thinkers and topics,

ranging from Ancient to Contemporary and philosophical traditions including Analvtic, Continental, and Eastern. Subntissions should not exceed 4,000 words. All papers undergo a process of blind revie'>v by the editorial staff and are evaluated according to the following criteria: quality of research, depth of philosophical inquiry, creativity,

Episteme is published original insight, and clarity. Final annually by a staff of selections are made by consensus of the u n d erg r a d u ate editors and the editorial board. Please philosophy students at provide three double-spaced paper Denison University. copies of each submission and a cover Please send all sheet including: author's name, mailing inquiries to: The address (culTent and permanent), email Editors, Episteme, address, telephone number, college or Deyartment ~f university name, and title of PhIlosophy, BlaH submission, as well as one (elecb"onic)

Kn~pp ,Hall, Del1i~on copy formatted for Microsoft Word for Uruverslty, Granville, Windows OIl a 3.5" disk. The deadline Ohio 43023. for submissions for Volume XIV is 15

February 2003.

EPISTEME

A Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy

Volume XIV September 2003

CONTENTS

Statement of Purpose and Editorial Board 4

Table of Contents 5

A Defense of Scientific Phenomenalism from the Perspective of Contemporary Physics

John Lee, Taylor UniversihJ 6

Desertification and Metaphysics in Nietzsche and Abbey David Allen Chenault, Grinnell College 19

What is "NaturaY' About Natural Science?: Philosophical Naturalism in the Evolution Debate

llya P. Winllilll!, Macalester College 31

ReJigious Experience, Pluralistic Knowledge and William James

Brittany G. Trice, University ofMissouri-St. Louis 45

Behavior and Other Minds: A Response to Functionalists Mike Loclclmrt, Univel'sittJ ofRegina 62

The editors express sincere appreciation to the Denison University Research Foundation, the Denison Honors Program/ Pat Davis/ and Faculty Advisor Mark Moller for their assistance in making the publication of this jomnal possible.

We extend special gratitude to the Philosophy Department Faculty: Barbara Fultnef, David Goldblatt, Tony Lisska/ Jonathan Maskit, Mark Moller, Ronald E. Santoni, and Steven Vogel for their support.

A Defense of Scientific Phenomenalism from the

Perspective of Contemporary Physics

JOHN LEE

odern science, particularly physics, is currently making claims about the existence of all kinds of fascinating entities. These range from quarks, superstrings, and gravitinos to

singularities, warped spacetime, and gravitational waves. While these entities inspire awe and amazement, it is possible that their positing is premature and perhaps entirely unfounded. In this essay, I will argue that this is indeed the case. Any ontological claims about the aforementioned entities rest on a form of realism that I believe is unwarranted. Rather, anti-realism, particularly scientific phenomenalism is the view that seems to be most reasonable. In this essay, I will first explain a version of scientific phenomenalism (SP) defended by W.T. Stace. After addressing some standard objections, I will propose some advantages that SP holds over scientific realism, particularly in the realm of physicS.

Scientific phenomenalism belongs to the larger category of anti-realism. Anti-realism denies the main claims of realism, namely, that scientific theories have truth values, theoretical entities really exist, and the aim of science is to give a literally true account of the world.i SF denies these claims and holds that science tells us simply how things appear. All that can be known to exist, at least scientifically, are the sensations of the world that we experience and how they are ordered. Any claims about the existence of theoretical entities (like forces, curved spacetime, elech'ons, potential energy, and electromagnetic fields) that underlie these sensations are unfounded.

SP holds that no amount of sense data can justify belief in something outside of perception. For no matter how many observations you have, it is invalid to then logically infer the existence of something beyond those observations. Stace argues that all causal relationships that are observed

7 DEFENSE OF SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENALISM

are in the world of perception. He writes,

If you admit that we never observe anything except sensed objects and their relations, regularities, and sequences, then it is obvious that we are completely shut in by our sensations and can never get outside them. Not only causal relations, but all other observed relations, upon which any kind of inferences might be founded, will lead only to further sensible objects and their relations. No inference, therefore, can pass from what is sensible to what is not sensible. ii

I believe Stace is right insofar as we are unable to infer the existence of theoretical entities based on sensible objects and relations. I do think that some inference from observabIes to unobservables is appropriate, just not in the practice of science.

Put another way, science, by its own standards, involves the study of the observable world. A theory that is produced can only mean something scientifically if there is some observation that can be done to confirm or falsify the theory. And so, if a scientific claim involves the existence of an object that by definil:ion cannot be observed, this claim ceases to be scientific. This is what happens when theoretical entities are posited to exist. They themselves can never be observed, only their supposed effects. Thus, claims about the existence of these entities are not in the realm of science. That is not to say that such claims are meaningless. Rather, they are metaphysical claims which I believe happen to have significant problems (I will not go into those problems here). But for scientists to make claims about the existence of theoretical entities is for scientists to go beyond the bounds of their discipline. As Chalmers puts it, 1/ a motivation underlying anti-realism seems to be the desire to restrict science to those claims that can be justified by scientific means, and so avoid unjustifiable speculation."iii It seems quite inappropriate to posit and defend, in the name

JOHN LEE

of science, the existence of entities that can, in principle, never be measured by the very tools of science, or any other tools for that matter.

However, this is not at all to say that theoretical entities are worthless and completely untrue. They are untrue in the sense that they do not correspond to any real, mindindependent existence in the physical world. However, they can be true in the sense that they are able to predict certain sensations (both in the future, and past recorded ones)}v For forces, curved spacetime, electrons, potential energy, and electromagnetic fields have proved to be very effective in predicting certain phenomena. Stace writes,

It is a matter of no importance to the scientific man whether the forces exist or not. That may be said to be a purely philosophical question. And I think the philosopher should pronounce them fictions. But that would not make the law useless or untrue. If it could still be used to predict phenomena, it would be just as true as itwasY

While exploring this issue it is important to add.ress a point more fundamental to the discussion. This is whether science explains anything, or if it just describes and predicts phenomena. Stace holds that it does the latter, and that beliefs in the former are what cause confusions over theoretical entities. For if one believes that science explains things, then it is quite natural to look for underlying entities that are "causing" the observed phenomena. I-Iowever, what really seems to be going on is the more detailed description of what is happening. For example, a tElble feels hard to the touch because of the repulsion of the electron shells of the atoms involved, which is attributed tol:he electromagnetic force, which is ultimately a m,aniestation of the combined electroweak force. While these 1/explanations" are couched in explanatory language, it is clear that they are just further descriptions, at some point, leaving the realm of perception and entering the realm of


theoretical entities. Niels Bohr wrote, "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns only what we can say about nature."vi

For example, when the question about why things fall was posed, the force of gravity was offered. And when this proved inadequate, curved spacetime was offered.vii . However, in reality, these forces and spacetime curves are simply mathematical tools to predict sensations. As Stace points out, "And anyone who takes them for 'existences' gets asked awkward questions as to what 'curved space' is curved 'in."'viii

I will now address some standard objections to SP. First, it is argued that scientific theories (like quantum mechanics) have been so amazingly successful in making predictions, how could they at least not in some way be true? SP acknowledges that theories can be very successful in predicting phenomena; that is why theoretical entities are not worthless. However, just because a theory makes successful predictions, it does 1I.ot follow that it must be true or nearly true. On the contrary, the ability of a theory to make predictions with related theoretical entities not actually existing has allowed. the continuation of some past theories (an example is Fresnel's theory of light as waves in an elastic ether)ix. Furthermore, because of the metaphysical nature of claims about theoretical entities, it is not necessary for the entities to exist for a prediction to be correct. In fact, theoretical entities by definition could never be observed, only their supposed effects.

Another objection involves the supposed vindication of atomic theory in the early twentieth century. Near the end of the nineteenth century, several anti-realists (including Duhem, Mach, and Ostwald) would not accept the atomic theory as true. The supposed atOIns were not real, but rather "useful fictions." However, by 1910, the supposed vindication of this theory was thought to have put anti-realism to rest.x According to Chalmers, the antirealists have a response:

10 JOHN LEE

They demand that only that part of science that is subject to confirmation by observation and experiment should be treated as candidates for truth or falsity. Howeverl they can acknowledge that as science progresses, and as more probing instruments and experimental techniques are devised, the range of claims that can be subject to experimental confirmation is extended.xi

Another reply is that, to use the objector's own language, it is still not clear that the atom has ever been observed. An atom can never be seen. The wavelength of visible light is not small enough to resolve the distances at the atomic scale. All that is "seen" are pictorial representations of some other probing technique. "Experiences" of atoms (or any other merely theoretical entities) are ultimately sensations which are quite compatible with scientific phenomenalism.

One may further object that scientific theories imply the existence of theoretical entities. However, this cannot be so. As Beebee puts it,

A theory employing theoretical terms is really only 'about' the observable world: what makes the theory true is the obseruable facts being the way the theory says they are. Theoretical terms are introduced into a theory only to make it simpler or more elegant. Their presence does not indicate any ontological commitment to unobservable entities 'referred' to by the terms, since the terms don't, despite initial appearances, refer to such entities. xii

A good example of this is presented by Stace. He discusses the nature of potential energy. Classical physics includes the idea of potential energy in order to support the law of conservation of energy. In order to preserve conservation of energy, sometimes when energy seems to disappear, it really is being transferred into potential energy. "Now/', as Stace writes, Jlwhat does this blessed world 'potential'which is thus brought in to save the situation-mean as ap


plied to energy? .. What positive meanin.g has the term? Strictly speaking, none whatever. Either the energy exists or it does not exist. There is no realm of the 'potential' halfway between .existence and non-existence."xiii Rather, the concept of potential energy is introduced to simplify the equations. However, it is a subtle and easy step to Inake the claim that this potential energy actually exists: "There will always be atemptation to hypostatize the potential energy as an 'existence,' and to believe that it is a 'cause' which 'explains' the phenomena."xiv It is natural for humans to try to create a mental picture of a physical process. However, it seems that this inclination is naIve, and cannot be the aim of scientific theories. Paul Dirac writes, "The main object of physical science is not the provision of pictures, but is the formulation of laws governing phenomena and the application of these laws to the discovery of new phenomena. If a picture exists, so much the better; but whether a picture exists or not is a matter of only secondary importance."xv

I will now present some of the advantages of adopting SP as opposed to scientific realism. One favorab1e result of scientific phenomenalism. is that it accounts quite nicely for the rejection of theoretical entities in the past, but the retention of their corresponding observations. It is easy to forget that in the past, light

l2 JOHN LEE

tive role they played in helping to order, and indeed to discover, observable phenomena...In the light of tlus, it seems plausible to evaluate theories solely in terms of their ability to order and predict observable phenomena. xvi

I will now discuss a few cases in which SP presents a. great advantage in interpreting some rather paradoxical scientific findings. Usually, it is inevitable that in the first year or two of university education, physics students will encounter the first of many paradoxes within the realm of modern physics. Here, the nature of everyday light comes under great scrutiny. Two famous experiments suggest two totally opposite natures of light. First, the photoelectric effect revealed that light seemed to come in tiny bundles, or quanta. These quanta were called photons and appeared to behave like particles. However, the two-slit diffraction experiment revealed that light had a very wave-like nature. For when light was shone through a slide with two narrow slits close to each other, the effect on the screen behind was that of interference. This could only result from the constructive and destructive interference between waves of light. However, if individual photons were fired at this slide at half hour intervals, the same interference pattern would gradually emerge on the screen (one dot at a time). Somehow, it seems that each individual photon would conspire with all the rest (temporally separated) to interfere with one another and make the corresponding interference pattern.xvii But that is a nonsensical interpretation. Even though each photon acts like a particle, it has a distinct wave nature. But it itself is not purely a wave or else it would interfere with itself. Thus, light seemed to have both wave-like and particle-like properties, depending on which nature was being investigated. The problem w'as complicated further when this effect was observed using electrons. Not only radiation, but matter, appeared to have a dual nature. This, however, presents a Significant problem. How could an electron be both a particle and also a wave spread


out over vast amounts of space?xviii Both could not be tl'ue at the same time. And so a serious paradox arises. However, the young physicist encountering this problem for the first time simply accepts this paradox and moves on to her next class assignment. Later, she will probably take a course or two in quantum mechanics and leal'll. about the existence of probability waves (or wave functions) which represent the electron and predict the results of the two-slit diffraction experiment. However, this just substitutes one hard to understand concept for an even more difficult one. For how could a probability wave ever exist? What is its fundamental nature? Is it just a mere mathematical construct? Bruce Gregory writes "The wave function [probability wave] that forms the solution to Schroedinger's equation does not picture something in nature."xix

And so, the ontological statuses of light, electrons, and probability waves become very troublesome, and can exist as a "thorn in one's mind."xx However, I suggest that the mental quandary that can occur when b'ying to grasp these entities is entirely unnecessary. Its elimination not only provides some mental relief, but a deeper understanding of reality. According to scientific phenomenalism, these troublesome entities are only troublesome because they are complex mathematical entities that are h'Jing to be squeezed into an existential box. They do not exist in the physical world; they are simply mathematical consb'ucts used to describe and predict phenomena that do actually exist. Once this is realized, the tension is relieved because we no longer have to reconcile there actually existing an object that has apparently contradictory properties. Rather, we simply acknowledge what does exist and thus what should be used in scientific reasoning: the observed phenomena and their mathematical description. Bruce Gregory, on Warner Heisenberg's take on this issue, writes:

The problem with trying to understand the behavior of electrons arises, Heisenberg said, because we persist in thinking of electrons as tiny marbles; we

14 JOHN

persist in talking as if there were subatonu,c H objects" that physical theories somehow describe. But elech'ons are not objects in this sense at all, .. Asking what the behavior of electrons is IIreally" like arises out of the marble fallacy. Such questioning is futile. At best any answer is simply a matter of taste. Discussions that do not lead to any new predictions have no impact on science; discussions that lead to new predictions are challenges to be met by experiments in the laboratory.xxi

Another example might serve to illuminate this point further. In the field of particle physics, there exists the Standard Model (SM), a theory that has proved spectacular in making accurate predictions. However, there was a possible problem with the SM, one that at first glance could appear fatal. In order for the theory to work, all particles must be massless. This is obviously not the case, but a clever trick has been developed to circumvent this problem. This trick is the Higgs mechanism. The Higgs mechanism involves a field which gives mass to all the particles (that have rnass) and as a result produces another particle, the I-:Tiggs boson. (Incidentally, this boson has not been"discovered" yet and is crucial to the survival of the SM.) This Higgs field. is interesting because it supposedly couples to all massive particles. I have heard several analogies to try to explain how this happens. One explanation is that somehow, wherever a massive particle is present, it is present with the Higgs field which gives it its mass. Another more crude analogy refers to particles, when they move through space, as lTIoving through a sort of molasses which is the Higgs field. The more they are slowed down by the molasses, the lTIOre mass they obtain. While these analogies have SOl1le intuitive appeal, they are really attempting to solve an unnecessary problem, namely, the problem of u.nderstanding what this Higgs field really is and how it behaves in the physical world. It seems to be more accurate to say that we observe that particles have mass, and the mathematical expression

DEFENSE OF SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENALISM

of this mass is the Higgs mechanism. But we do not have to say that the Higgs field really exists.

One last example from physics. According to Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic (EM) interactions occur via electromagnetic waves. These waves were initially thought to propagate through an ether. However, this ether was found not to exist but the EM waves were still measured.xxii So, the natural question arises: What do these EM waves trav.el in? What do the waves wave in? The answer is nothing. It gets even more conceptually difficult when try

; ing to understand how an EM wave moves. One way to think about it would be that at any given location, the elec

r tric (E)-field and magnetic (B)-field oscillate up and down at perpendicular directions as the EM wave passes through. But this only passes the problem off to E-fields and B-fields.

t What are they? WelL they can be measured by placing a test charge in the region and seeing how it moves. Now we are in the realm of observation. But until we move into this realm, the concepts of EM waves, E-fielcls, and B-fields are

) extremely difficult to grasp. Richard Feynman echoes this L. frustration: "I have no picture of the electromagnetic field

that is in any sense accurate .. .It requires a much higher degree of imagination to understand the electromagnetic field than to understand invisible angels ... "xxiii Perhaps these

11 fields are just useful mathematical tools that help to predict a where a test charge will move, or whether you will hear j grunge rock or NPR coming from your radio. s Not only does scientific phenomenalism provide a g more concise and mentally peaceful understanding of the e physical world, it also can provide a better context for thes ory development. One of the supposed. advantages of Pop

perian falsification ism is that it encourages the developy ment of bold, risky hypotheses that are easy to falsify. By s the invention of bold theories, science can move along be

cause as each new theory is falsified, something new is e learned which can be incorporated into the next theory.xxiv n Thus, it is argued that falsificationism provides a cleaner,

quicker, and more accurate development of science.

16 JOHN LEE

Whether or not this is the case, I believe that scientific phenomenalism can provide this same benefit. On the other hand, I believe that scientific realism can bog down scientific processes with unnecessary metaphysical problems. The following is, I think, a good example. In particle phys

there is a several decade old theory called supersymmetry (SUSY). According to this theory, every particle currently known to /Iexist" has a supersymmetric partner, which is usually much more massive. SUSY is theoretically attractive because it avoids the undesirable problem of large canceling infinities in the Standard Model. However, one alleged drawback to this theory is that in one simple act, the number of elementary particles currently thought to exist doubles. Some physicists find this troublesome, not only because it provides many more particles that have to be looked for and found, but because, to begin with, there were already too many elementary particles in the SM. However, this kind of theory, whether or not it is successful, is exactly the kind of theory that needs to be presented and rigorously explored just because of the fact that it is bold, The belief in scientific realism can produ.ce a kind of reluctance to seriously explore more unconventional theories. This is because, according to this view, these more extravagant theories may contain many more theoretical entities tllat must be discovered and incorporated into an already burgeoning metaphysical schema, However, the scientific phenomenalist can welcome these theories as bold ways to advance the course of science. There is no need to try to make metaphysical sense of the new mathematical entities.

In the end, it seems that the more philosophically appropriate and practically useful philosophy of science is scientific phenomenalism. Not only does it check metaphysical claims that are cloaked in scientific terms, but it provides a more natural way of understanding some supposed paradoxes in physics. Some may say that SP eliminates the awe and wonder that have been inspired by these alleged theoretical entities. However, the awe and wonder


remain; perhaps they have just been misdirected.

Notes

i Lecture notes from Dr. Jim Spiegel

ii Stace, W.T. "Science and the Physical World: A Defense of

Phenomenalism," from The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and

Contemporary Readings, ed. Louis Pojman. Stamford, CT: Wadsworth/

Thomson Learning, 2003, 97.

iii Chalmers, AF. What is this thing called Science? 3rd Ed., Indianapolis:

Hackett Publishing, 1999, Pg 232.

iv Stace, W.T. "Science and the Physical World: A Defense of


ContemporaI'Y Readings, ed. Louis Pojman. Stamford, CT: Wadsworth/

Thomson Learning, 2003, Pg 98.

v Ibid. vi Niels Bohr, quoted in Aage Peterson, "The Philosophy of Niels Bohr,"

in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, eds. A. French and P. Kennedy. Cam

bridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, 305.

vii Stace, W.T. "Science and the Physical World: A Defense of




viii ibid. ix Chalmers, AF. What is this thing called Science? 3"" Ed., Indianapolis:

Hackett Publishing, 1999, Pg 235.

x Ibid, Pg 237.

xi Ibid.

xii Beebee, H. Scientific Realism & Anti-Realism, http:/ /

www.anu.edu.au/physics/courses/ A07/notes/Beebee3.pdf

xiii Stace, W.T. "Science and the Physical World: A Defense of




xiv Ibid.

xv P.AM. Dirac, The Principles (!fQUl1IltulII Mec/lnllics, 2d ed., Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1935, 10.

xvi Chalmers, AF. What is this thing called Science? 3r

JOHN LEE

xh Gregory, Bmce. Inventing Reality: Physics as Language, New York:

John Wiley & Sons, 1990, Pg 95.

xx Spoken by Morpheus in the film, The Matrix

,,-xi Gregory, Bmce. Inventing Reality: Physics as Language, New York:

John Wiley & Sons, 1990, Pg 93.

xxii Chalmers, AF. What is this thing called Science? 3rd Ed.,

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999, Pgs233.

xxiii Richard Feyrunan, Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands, The

Feynman Lectures 011 Physics, vol. 2 Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley,

1963,20-29.

xxiv Chalmers, AF. What is this thing called Science? 3rd Ed.,

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999.

Bibliography

Beebee, H. Scientific Realism & Anti-Realism, http://www.anu.edu.au/ physics/courses/A07/notes/Beebee3.pdf

Chalmers, AF. Wiuzt is this thing called Science? 3rd Ed.! Indianapolis: HackettPublishin& 1999.

Dirac, P.A.M. The Principles of Quantum Mecl1anics! 2d ed.! Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935.

Feyrunan, Richard! Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands, The Feyml1an Lectlll'es 011 Physics! voL 2 Reading! Mass.: Addison Wesley! 1963.

Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings! Hidden Dimensions, tlHd the Quest for tile Ultimate Theory, New York: Norton, 1999.

Gregory, Bruce. Inventing Realih): Physics as Language! New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990.

Peterson! Aage. liThe Philosophy of Niels Bohr/ in Niels Bohr: A Celltenal1) Volume, eds. A. French and P. Kennedy'. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Smith! Wolfgang. The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key, Peru, Illinois: Sherwood, Sugden, & Company, 1995.

Stace, W.T. "Science and the Physical World: A Defense of Phenomenalism/' from The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings! ed. Louis Pojman. Stamford, CT: Wadsworth/Thomson Learnin& 2003.

Desertification and Metaphysics in Nietzsche and

Abbey

DAVID ALLEN CHENAULT

T he thought of Friedrich Nietzsche has been called anti-anti-naturalistic. It is not mere naturalism, nor is Nietzsche's body of work simply aligned with the reaction against naturalism. While a tacit admiration for such figures, such "strong, independent spirits" as Plato and Kant (Kant the paradigmatic antinaturalist, Plato a more difficult case) is surely present, Nietzsche's desire to make something new in and of the history of philosophy led him to roundly criticize their ilk. A conscious rhetorical distancing, from either of two given forces within history, and central to Nietzsche. The problem of nature and naturalism is the paradox of a dual immanence, of culture in nature and nature in culture. The 'sourcing' of the one into the other is, alternately, naturalism and antinaturalism; nature as giving the rule to culture, or culture apart from nature and in many ways governing it indeed. Nietzsche is inclined to read a false antinomy into this distinctionl thus revealing in his reading of nature his prototypical methodology.

Edward Abbey, 20th century heir to Thoreau, enjoys a Nietzschean encounter with the two "natures II aforementioned in his Desert Solitaire. The book's lyricism and readability has rendered it ripe for cooption by those disinclined to read the philosophy out of the prose, establishing a firm bond with both Thoreau and Nietzsche. For these writers style is substance, in this they stand out in the history of philosophy. Both Nietzsche and Abbey, on whom I will focus l always mean what they say, though deciding exactly what it is they are saying is a task of great difficulty, and of a very different kind from that found in the case of Kant or Hegel. The Nietzschean methodological move mentioned above is one I wish to read into Abbey, and its implications, one I see as arising explicitly out of the anti-anti-naturalistic


stance. Early in Desert Solitaire, Abbey states his anti-anti

naturalistic intentions:

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a nonhuman world and yet somehow survives intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.iii

The Nietzschean tension of the dual immanence of nature is here palpablei the desire of the subject to merge with nature (the world, Other) and still maintain itE? own integrity, its self-intelligability. Is this, though a paradox, possible? The advantages of both are obvious, and Nietzsche (and Abbey after him) seems to be asking, in his particular way, can we not have both?

Nietzsche's method would seem to say, 'perhaps.' Not in a concrete manner, however, for part and parcel of Nietzsche's method is the critique of "the doer behind the deed," ensuring that I'The form is fluid, but the 'meaning' is even more SO."iv This conjoined with his assertion that

...purposes or utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a functioni and the entire history of a "thing/' an organ, a cus

21 DESERTIFICATION AND METAPHYSICS

tom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one another but, on the contrary, in some cases succeed and alternate with one another in a purely chance fashion.v

results in a picture of understanding (and meaning)-in-theworld. This 'resolution' of the anti-anti-naturalistic paradox seems to create another antinomy that unlike the dialectical Kantian antinomy, is held up vibrating with conflict into . the air, a sort of totem. The problem of nature's dual immanence becomes analogous to, if not largely equivalent with, the problem of meaning, interpretation, and truth. Truth in the old sense, a static 'form' behind the world (whether that be nature or culture) is something Nietzsche, as is obvious, discards. He still speaks of 'truth,' though in a manner similar to his use of the word meaning.

That is, the fluid sign-chain of interpretation that is a given subject'S moment in history can be adapted in ways that are not all created equal. I-Ie condemns a tendency he sees in IImodern historiographYi" 1I ...it rejects all teleology; it no longer wishes to 'prove' anything; it disdains to play the judge and considers this a sign of good taste ... "vi All this would seem to arise necessarily out of the aforementioned, and Nietzsche admits to this in the same breath he critiques it. Nietzsche writes that the will to power in man "would rather will nothingness than not will. "vii AIld concludes the Genealogy with an assertion that "Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a l1/eaning for it- a purpose of suffering,"viii Thus a necessity of meaning is, paradoxically, injected into the picture of an always already interpreted, lirelativistic," world. What demands this meaning (Den'ida: "coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire."ix) is the will, and it is the will to power by which it can be measured, evaluated, interpreted.

22 DAVID ALLEN CHENAULT

The discussion of suffering above arises in the context of remarks on the adoption of ascetic ideals as man's best option to date, this after sixty pages of criticism. Adoption of the ascetic ideal is a case of willing nothingness, rather than facing the alternative. There is, for Nietzsche, a better option. In Beyond Good and Evil he writes:

To translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text of homo natura; to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in the discip line of science, he stands before the rest of nature, with intrepid Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all too long, 'you are more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!' - that may a strange and insane task, but it is a task - who would deny that? Why did we choose this insane task? Or, putting it differently: 'why have knowledge at all?'x

It, the interpretation for meaning, becomes at once the assumption of the most (best?) insane question a'nd its most rigorous and conunitted actualization. Committed, again in the sense that "there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming.../,xi gives a dynamic picture of interpretation. Perhaps to reach the ideal of the elimination of the doer, and to in turn embody that ideal to the point that it drops away, one must suffer through this insane task. Here the desert may be necessary.

All this is inextricably bound up with the paradoxical II nature II of nature, as described by Abbey. It arises out of the problematic situation that is being-in-the-world. Nietzsche and Abbey share a proclivity, a desire, to point out that the task of "translatin.g man back into nahne" is as necessary as it is insane. Abbey writes "A civilization which


destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself."xii It moves to eliminate suffering, and the desert. What this principle is, I will come to momentarily and it will surely and again be shot through with paradox. Perhaps this, this problem of the dual immanence of nature, this source of paradox, is the original "riddle of the sphinx."

The desire for' coherence in contradiction,' for meaning in interpretation, for b:uth in becoming, is pulled out of the dual immanence of nature. Humans are in nature, "in all her prodigal and indifferent magnificence which is outrageous but noble."xiii That is, in something vast and without purpose. It is human desire, will to power, the IInature" in man that obliges, forces with violence the interpretation with an intent that results in coherence, both within a subject and between subjects. This invariably does violence to the unordered 'order,' what Nietzsche called 'the primordial unity,' that is mere being-in-the-world. However, this "mere II is not sufficient, it does not satisfy the demand of the will to power, does not allow for the meaningful, meaning creating discharge of the will to power.xiv This violence is inevitable. Nietzsche writes:

Consider any morality with this in mind: what there is in it of 'nature' teaches hatred of the laisser aller, of any all-to-great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons and the nearest taskteaching the narrowing of our perspective, and thus in a certain sense stupidity, as a condition of life and growth.xv

This self-limiting, self-imposed adoption of 'morality/ of an ideal, is the necessary and agonistic resolution of the dual immanence of nature. The violence it does to the subject'S relation to the world is an inevitability, the concern only that it is taken through fully and with commitment. Nietzsche writes:


"You shall obey - someone and for a long time: else you will perish and lose the last respect for yourself" this appears to me to be the moral imperative of nature which, to be sure, is neither "categorical" as the old Kant would have it (hence the "else") nor addressed to the individual (what do indivduals matter to her?), but to peoples, races, ages, classes - but above all to the whole human animal, to man.xvi

This demand, instantiated by nature through culture (and nature's immanence in culture), creates in the conditions of the meaningful existence of humanity, and therefore human existence as such, a paradox. One that cannot be escaped.

This paradox is inherent in existence as such because it gives man the power to interpret, to create meaning; it gives the will to power. As Nietzsche writes:

In man creature and creator are united: in man there is material, fragment, excess, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in man there is also creator, formgiver, hammer hardness, spectator divinity, and seventh day: do you understand this contrast?xvli

If the creative potential in man is the only way of defining himself, the only interpreter, and this only comes out of a conscious turning away from his immanence in nature, then the paradoxical circle is complete. Humanity's Ineaning, existence, is founded on a turning away from that is at the same time a turning towards. The promise of meaning that is the primordial unity is merely a promise; humanity must, in this case, create their own promises in action. TILey must desertify, go into the desert that is heartless, that is a brick-walled riddle, thereby escaping a society which invariably enforces the old modes of meaning-creation. Enlbracing suffering as meaning, either physically or in. the ll1ind, is the desert. It is only subsumed in paradox, within


the desert, that meaning and interpretation, a new metaphysics, begins. Though the desert is always something to be eventually left, or forgotten.

When, in the Genealogy, Nietzsche mentions desert, it is briefly. A quarter of the way through his treatment of ascetic ideals in the Third Essay, he writes of the value of ascetic ideals for the IIfree spirit," that they provide motivation to" .. .all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into some desert: even supposing they were merely strong asses and quite the reverse of a strong spirit./lxviii Nietzsche does not deny that this strength of mind, of will, is valuable and something to be admired, even if the direction of that will, its reason, is misguided. This relates strongly to Nietzsche's stance on ascetic idealsi he does not condemn them as such, they represent what to date has been the best option for humanity, the best method for the 'insane task.' The deselt, as mentioned in the epigraph, need not even be a place. It is in Nietzsche a place 01' and of the consciousness, 'heartless,' where "no actor of the spirit could possibly endure lie./Ixix

Abbey has certainly been painted as just such a strong ass. His book illustrates that the difference between being an ass and a spirit is exceedingly fine. As Abbey writes, "there is a way of being wrong which is also necessarily right."xx What this is for Nietzsche, as regards ascetic ideals, is that the cooption of such ideals is as aforementioned not necessarily negative, though the dominant ideals of the modern age most certainly are. It is the purity and strength of these ideals' initial presentation, such as in the Old Testament where the desert looms large, that Nietzsche finds so appealing. It is the perversion of these ideals that he finds so odious, and therein lies his condemnation of Plato, Christianity, and lithe Germans." It is echoed in Abbey's condemnation of contemporary industrialism: "This is a courageous view, admirable in its simplicity and power, and with the weight of all modern history behind it. It is also quite insane. I cannot attempt to deal with it here."xxi

Indeed. And in much the same way as Nietzsche


does not critique Kant on Kantls own terms, impenetrable task that it was constructed to be, Abbey does not engage with his object of ire in its own realm. He retreats, literally, to the desert, using it like Thoreau did as a symbolic catalyst towards the state Nietzsche described as a desert. Abbey's "isolation" was as profound as Thoreauls; the latter was often seen galumphing across the fields to the Emersonls on hearing the dinner bell. However, Abbey's reflections on the desert parallel Nietzschels, in a way that reflects the latter's ultimate criticism of ascetic ideals. Just as Abbey's conclusion that the desert has no heart, that "its surface is also the essence"xxii results in a different view of truth implicit in the ceasing to be of any quest,so too does Nietzsche see in the externalizing tendencies of the ascetic ideal a violation, a tacit Idoerl tacked onto the deed. Nietzsche writes "All honor to the ascetic ideal insofar as it is honest! so long as it believes in itself and does not play tricks on us!" Abbey calls the industrial ideal !courageousl for this reason; it has a profound faith in itself and the ends it pursues. Despite this, there are reasons to reject it. Similarly with Abbey's quest to 'understand the desert;' as long as he looks for a 'meaning' or 'truth' behind what he is standing in, Abbey fails to 'see' the meaning of most value: the one that views each moment as itself the meaning. This in turn reveals the infinite chain of meaningsj interpretations present in-the-world.

Nietzsche sees an ascetic journey, whether actual or psychic, as at base false. It extrapolates an exterior 'meaning' from being-in-the-world, which is invariably a kind of trick. Just as Abbey!s creation of a desert in his mind distracted him and alienated him from the desert he was standing in, so too do ascetic ideals isolates m.an from his own life. In this way, Abbey's initial asceticism in Desert Solitaire can be seen as similar to that of industrialism. The ascetic move must be overcome, and perhaps the desertifying move through asceticism is the only way to found such a new metaphysics of immediacy.

But can this occur? Can this return to bedrock really,


as Abbey dreams, resolve the paradox of the dual inlmanence of nature? Will it allow the subject to become selfidentical with the world at large? This last bit of rhetoric demonstrates how quickly absurdity is here reached. It must be remembered that, as Abbey writes, lithe desert is also a-tonal, cruel, clear, inhuman, neither romantic nor classical, motionless and emotionless, at one and the same time - another paradox - both agonized and deeply still."xxiii The desert is irreducible and irresolvable, a paradigm of nature as it is faced by culture, by man. It may be that in Nietzsche the origin of the nature/ culture bifurcation, which for Derridaxxiv among others is foundational to philosophy as we have known it, begins when this base paradox is denied, when simplification and unneeded consolidation occur- in one direction or another. This casts. Nietzsche's moral critique in a very foundational light, one which (paradoxically) admits that at the deepest level of critique is the simplest of maxims. Not mere laisser aller, but a self-ordered relevance within the world that is simpler because it is sensical, sensible in the generic valence. Philosophy, after all, can be simpJe, and. never easy. Like the desert. .

This is reflected in the works under considera tion. Both Nietzsche and Abbey were brilliant stylists, and Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, and Desert Solitaire represent the apex of their mutual attempts to embody their philosophies within their literary efforts. Much has been made of how both authors contradict themselves often, and how this lends itself to oversimplified misinterpretation by those readers not as exacting as Nietzsche himself called for. There are profound differences between the two, Nietzsche far outreaches Abbey as a thinker (or missionary), while the genres in which they were working makes a literary comparison facile and pointless. Most important are tl1e intersections, their stances concerning nature as detailed above, and the variegated paradox it dictated, as one commentator has noted, applies to Nietzsche as much as Abbey:


The polyphonic voice of Desert Solitaire makes it difficult for opponents to identify and attack the center out of which Abbey's discourse flows; the multiple voices help defuse the resistance of the. skeptical reader...Because Abbey's celebratory tone bonds...to an ironic one which acknowledges the problematic status of a reverent attitude in the postmodern world, the book becomes an alloy of distin.ctive strength. xxv

The so-called 'multiple voices' of both Abbey and Nietzsche are not separate devices after the fashion of Kierkegaard, but rather a manifestation of the enormous breadth of these two writers. They are, to paraphrase Whitman, 'vast, and contain multitudes.' This, the enormous, contradictory nature of which both Abbey and Nietzsche sees themselves as immanent in, is the source of this "postmodern," decentered method of speaking so central to both. Morris is correct in seeing this as a great strength.

This is what is most 'basic' to Nietzschean metaphysics, a critiqued metaphysics etched by blown sand, from the desert that is man's strength, his move through suffering to meaning-in-the.-world. The ability to see, to move as Abbey did outside the culture that created him and take up something that, while it is likely harder, is also surely better. As Nietzsche wrote in the Nachlass, "I also speak of a 'return to nature' although it is not actually a 'return back,' but an 'advance towards' the strong, bright, frightful nature and naturalness of men who can play with great tasks, because they would become tired with small ones and feel disgusted."xxvi The conscious move into the desert is, as it was for Abbey, a move chasing an abstract and therefore false ideal which in the end brings about the dissolution of such ideals by virtue of the sheer harsh force brought to bear on the subject. The desert, in Abbey and Nietzsche, is a purifying place, cutting being-in-the-world down to just that, for its own sake.


Notes

i Friedrich Nietzsche. On the, GenealogtJ ofMorals in Basic Writings of Nietzsche trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 2000); 545. ii Edward Abbey. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New York: Touchstone, 1990); 243. iilAbbey; 6. ivOGM;514. v OGM;513. viOGM;593. "ii OGM; 533. viii OGM; 598. ix Jacques Derrida. "Sh'ucture, Sign and Play in the discourse of the Human Sciences" in Writing and Difference. h

30

-._


Morris, David Copland. "Celebration and Irony: The Polyphonic Voice of EdwardAbbey's Desert Solitaire" in Western American Literature 3:12.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings a/Nietzsche trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Modern Library, 2000.

What is "Natural" About Natural Science?:

Philosophical Naturalism in the Evolution Debate

ILYA P. WINHAM

T he theory of evolution is a remarkable scientific accomplishment. The empirical evidence behind the theory is overwhelming. The fact of evolution, that the present species of organisms have come into being over millions of years as a result of gradual changes, is difficult, if not impossible, to gainsay. The theory has been confirmed by the combined efforts of scientists all over the world. The theory is so well tested that those people who criticize it are usually dismissed as Biblebeating religious fanatics, or as unscientific, ignorant, stupid and insane - maybe even wicked. Harvard biologist Dr. Ernst Mayr, an expert on evolution, goes so far as to say that those people who do not believe in the truth of evolution have not received a good education, and the number of unbelievers "casts a lot of poor light on American education." l Today, a robust and refined version of Darwin's theory of evolution (neo-Darwinism) takes pride of place in science and philosophy classrooms in America. On the whole, the controversy between science and religion is over and done with. Theology is no longer threatened by the theory of evolution or scared of science finding out truths of the world.

Nevertheless, the so-called Creation scientists continue to argue against the theory of evolution. In good Darwinian fashion, the Creation scientists have had to craft better arguments in order to survive. A new species of Creationists has appeared-the neo-Creationists (neo-creos). They claim that mere evolution is false because there are signs of extra-natural (intelligent) forces at play. They argue that design exists in nature that is not a product of natural processes. What distinguishes the new creationists from the old creationists is that they have learned that the only approach to the question of origins and evolution is the scientific approach. As a result of more than a century of relent

32 ILYAP. WINHAM

less accusations of being unscientific and religious, along with failed attempts to push their view in the courtroom, the neo-creos have focused their efforts at unseating the philosophical. assumptions of science. They admit that the fossil and molecular data in particular, and the empirical data in general, support the theory of evolution, but they do not admit defeat.

Their new tactic is to turn the tables on the scientific method. They claim that they are not practicing pseudoscience, but rather that it is the Darwinists who are endangering scientific scholarship. The scientific method, they claim, must not rule out the possibility detecting further reality beyond the causal order of nature. Their main argument which is not new but has come back with renewed vigor - is that the naturalistic interpretation of the Descent of Life is not science, but a philosophical worldview. If methodological naturalism is expunged from science, as the Creationist reasoning goes, then pure scientific light shall be free to shine on the world as it is, in all of God's glory.

In this paper, I shall argue that naturalism is not a philosophical bias, but an essential foundation of science. The first section of this paper explicates the neo-creo argument against naturalism. The second section is a defense of naturalism against anti- or super-naturalism. The third section is a critique of arguments from design. We shall see why the approach of the neo-creos is unscientific, and that the exclusion of super-naturalism from an explanation of origins is warranted and desirable on both philosophical and scientific grounds.

I. NATURALISM AND ITS CREATION CRITICS

The theory of evolution is usually taken to include Darwin and Wallace IS idea of natural selection as the central mechanism of evolution. The theory says that all organisms originated from an undirected, natural, law-bound process of generation, development, mutation and natural selection - what Darwin called "survival of the fittest. II

33 WHAT IS IINATURAL" ABOUT NATURAL SCIENCE?

While the details of evolution are complex, a key part of the theory is that evolution happens without any purposeful input - no Creator, no Intelligent Designer. According to Darwin, nature is self-contained; chance and nature determine everything.

Few would deny that organisms have changed over time. The Creationist case against naturalistic evolution is almost exclusively focused on arguing that the theory of evolution is on its own terms a failure. Neo-Creationists oppose the theory that lithe full panoply of life has evolved through purposeless naturalistic processes. 1I2 The neo-creos point to many mysteries of biology, like the unknown origin of life, sexuality and the genetic code, to argue against the theory of evolution. However, the argument I am primarily interested in for the present purposes is the argument attributed to professor of law and father of neoCreationism, Phillip E. Johnson, 'who says that Darwinism is not so much a scientific theory, but a philosophical enterprise whose goal is to explain the world in a strictly naturalistic way that forecloses any role for a Creator or Intelligent Designer. Johnson has made his name by arguing that what has been sold to us in the authoritative name of science is actually a philosophical understanding of reality. As long as we take the fWldam.ental assumption of Darwinism for granted - that naturalistic processes can explain everything - Darwinism, he claims, becomes an absolute theory, seen as necessarily true, because the alternative, Intelligent Design, is automatically vetoed. Therefore, in Johnson's words, 'The first step for a twenty-first century science of origins is to separate materialist philosophy from empirical science. 1I3 This means that at the end of the day, scientists are supposed to come back from the field and look at what the evidence shows without a materialist bias and ask if natural forces explain what they see. For example, an an.., thropologist is supposed to ask herself:

Does the fossil record fit when you look at it objectively and without a Darwinian bias? We know the

34 ILYA P. WINHAM

answer to that is no. We ask, 'Does finch beak variation really show how you can get finches in the first place?" No, of course not. Neo-Darwinism is a failed project - give it up! "Not yet!" you say. "We're still trying to succeed."4

The anatomy of the problem, according to the neD-creos is, in short, that empirical science has become confused and cmlflated with materialist or naturalist philosophy, creating a conflict of interest. Evolutionary scientists, Johnson argues, have an obligation lito separate materialist philosophy from scientific investigation"5 and to accept what biologists know as biologists and what archeologists know as archeologists, but not their claims about philosophical issues like naturalism. Johnson appeals to the tide of history by pointing out that lIone by one the great prophets of materialism have been shown to be false prophets and have fallen aside. Marx and Freud have lost their scientific standing. Now Darwin is on the block."6

Johnson'S argument was evidently so convincing, that historian and philosopher Michael Ruse - the philosopher who in 1981 testified in an Arkansas courtroon1 that creation science has none of the essential features of science and is actually dogmatic religious fundmnentalism changed his opinion on the matter after being asked to comment on Johnson1s book Darwin on Trial. Ruse, speaking at a 1993 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said:

Alld it seems to me very clear that at some very basic level, evolution as a scientific theory makes a commitment to a kind of naturalism, namely, that .at some level one is going to exclude miracles and these sorts of things, come what may. Now, you might say, does this mean it's just a religious assumption, does this mean it's irrational to do something like this. I would argue very strongly that it's not. At a certain pragmatic level, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And that if certain things

35 WHAT IS "NATURAL" ABOUT NATURAL SCIENCE?

do work, you keep going with this, and that you donlt change in midstream, and so on and so forth. I think that one can in fact defend a scientific and naturalistic approach, even if one recognizes that this does include a metaphysical assumption to the regularity of nature, or something of this nature ... evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically?

In these words, Ruse is confessing that he has recently come to realize that the theory of evolution is based on unproven philosophical assumptions. Assuring the audience that he is "no less of an evolutionist now than I ever was,l! Ruse went on to say that "an evolutionist, is metaphysically based at some level, just as much as ... some creationist .. .! must say that live been coming to this kind of position myself."B Ruse in the early 1980s was of the clear-cut opinion that evolutionism is science and creationism is not. "Now," he says, "I'm starting to feeL .. that we should move our debate now onto another level. .. l think that we should recognize, both historically and perhaps philosophically, cel'-. tainly that the science side has certain metaphysical assumptions built into doing science ... 119

It obvious that Johl1son's interest in framing the

problem in terms of naturalism versus empirical science leaves the door open to the possibility of scientific evidence for design by refuting the naturalist worldview and its consequences. The logic of this strategy is to agree with the evolutionists that science, not philosophy or theology, is the only way to detect intelligent design and intelligent causes, and then to claim that the only epistemically acceptable science is that which is unencumbered by naturalistic philosophy. An acceptable science, suggests creationist William Dembski, is one that rejects "methodological naturalism."IO This type of call to weed the naturalistic philosophical bias (methodological naturalism) out of the biological sciences is not new. Creationist Duane T. Gish in 1973 says that he:

36 ILYA P. WINHAM

Strongly suspects that the dogmatic acceptance of evolution is not due, primarily, to the nature of the evidence but the philosophic bias peculiar to our times .... That this is the philosophy held by most biologists has been recently emphasized by Dobzhansky. In his review of Monod's book Chance and Necessity Dobzhansky (1972) says, IlHe has stated with admirable clarity, and eloquence often verging on pathos, the mechanistic materialist philosophy shared by most of the present 'establishment' in the biological sciences)1

In sum, neo-Creationists believe that many aspects of life are too complex to be explained except by reference to an intelligent designer, God. They say that scientists have overlooked evidence of design in nature because of a naturalist philosophical bias. Supporters of this view argue that evolutionary science is thus more metaphysical than an empirical undertaking, because naturalists are necessarily evolutionists and therefore not open to other explanations. In the follownlg sections, we shall see that this is not entn'ely true. Science does rely on methodological naturalism the study of matter, energy, and their interaction - in seeking logical explanations and empirical evidence for natural phenomena. However, the theory of evolution is not merely a philosophical worldview. Nor does it have an opinion on the intervention of supernatural powers in the natural world, except that there is no testable way to use this as an operative explanation.

II. TAKING NATURALISM SERIOUSLY

Framing the problem as one between philosophy and science is at best playing cat and mouse with the issue, and at worst unproductive, because it relies on a mistaken division. Taking science out of empirical philosophy is obviously a bad idea. In the words of John Dewey, "For according to empirical philosophy, science provides the only means we have for learning about man and. the world in


which he lives.1I12 EmpiTical materialist philosophy has no quarrel with science, and neither do the nea-creos. What they want to do is take the philosophy out of empirical evolutionary science to arrive at a science that is free from presupposition, or at least those presuppositions that they do not like. They have supposed that since science is supreme in the field of knowledge, philosophy is therefore unnecessary and should not contaminate science.

First, I must say that these comments lack any insight into the nature of science. In the words of Max Weber in an essay titled "Science as a Vocation/ "No science is absolutely free from presuppositions, and no science can prove its fundamental value to the man who rejects these presuppositions. lIl3 For instance, he notes that "All scientific work presupposes that the rules of logic and method are valid.1!14 In addition, all scientific work also presupposes naturalism, conceived as the absence of supernatural intervention. Ronald N. Giere defines naturalism as follows:

Ontologically, naturalism hnplies the rejection of supernaturalism. Traditionally this has meant pri~ madly the rejection of any deity, such as the Jlldco~ Christian God, which stands outside nature as crea~ tor or actor. Positively, naturalists hold that reality, including human life and society, is exhausted by what exists in the causal order of nature.15

Naturalism is indeed a philosophical worldview, empirical in method, that regards everything that exists or occurs as belonging to one all-encompassing system of nature, however intelligent, spiritual or purposeful nature may appear. TIle all-encompassing part of naturalism serves mainly negative purposes. It rejects supel1latural things and explanations and Cartesian dualisms that can make the existence of the external world a matter of doubt or of God's wilL It also rejects arguments from ignorance. Lack of knowledge about something never provides sufficient reason for alleging a non-natural explanation. Moreover, naturalism is not

38 ILYA P. WINHAM

concerned to disprove the existence of God. "Until and uIuess the existence of God is shown by empirical evidence," writes Sterling P. Lamprecht in The Metaphysics oj Naturalism, lIit is not an article by which human values and human ideals may be significantly determined or advanced or enforced."16

It is the task of Philosophy to describe what we have to assume in order to do science, namely, that nature is uniform, self-contained and law-bound. Science must presuppose naturalism for many reasons. For starters, the empirical nature of science must eliminate supernatural interventions as causal factors. The word IIscience," almost by definition

means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that corne into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existedP

Given this worldview, the naturalist is someone who necessarily respects the conclusions of natural science. Both naturalism and the scientific method belong together in theory as they exist together in fact.

Pragmatism is another reason that science presupposes naturalism. John Dewey, who grounded his philosophy in Darwin's philosophical and biological naturalism, writes that liThe naturalist...sees how anti-naturalism has operated to prevent the application of scientific methods in the whole field of human and social subject matter.l1lH Dewey's defense of natmalism is pragmatic - naturalism is pragmatic, anti-naturalism is not. He argues that antinaturalism tends to discount the actual resources available for the betterment of humanity. The outcome of science under the "handicap" of anti-natmalism is the systematic disregard by anti-naturalists (neo-creos) of scientific method

39 WHAT IS "NATURAe' ABOUT NATURAL SCIENCE?

and its consequences.19 The anti-naturalism of the neo-creos tends to "dull their sense of the importance of evidence, to blunt their sensitivity to the need of accuracy of statement, to encourage emotional rhetoric at the expense of analysis and discrimination."2o

Furthermore, the impossibility of a scientific antinaturalism is made explicit by Dewey. For IIIf they [antinaturalists] presented the naturalistic position in its own terms, they would have to take serious account of scientific method and its conclusions. But if they should do that, they would inevitably be imbued with some of the ideas of the very philosophy they are attacking."21 Dewey is striking a Humean note here by pointing out that arguments against naturalism are self-defeating. Hume's lesson in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding is that arguments from experience (induction) cannot prove that nature is uniform since these arguments are founded on the supposition of that uniformity. In other words, to decry science for supposing as its foundation the view that principally only calculable, na~ural forces exist, is to demand that science prove what it cannot logically prove, namely, the foundational principle by which science is possible.

III. CRITIQUE OF ARGUMENTS FROM DESIGN

Intelligent Design is, in part, an argument from analogy. Creation science is alleged to be analogous to what archeologists do when they come across a piece of stone. Certain shapes of stones and patterns knapped on them indicate the intelligent work of prehistoric man. Archeologists infer from an arrowhead or shard of pottery that it was made by some prehistoric person, and not by wind, water or any other natural force. Indeed, intelligent design is something we encounter every day. Entire vocations, like archeology, anthropology, cryptography, even insurance fraud investigation and the criminal justice system, exist on the basis of discriminating design from accident. We commonly recognize design in objects or events that are just too

40 ILYA P. WINHAM

improbable to have occurred by chance. Where the Creation scientists fall into error is in ex

trapolating this analogy to the world as a whole. It is one thing for humans to be able to detect design within the world they inhabit and construct. It is quite another for humans to detect design in the very 111.akeup of the world itself. Detecting design as a result of supernatural forces is not analogous to detecting design as a result of natural forces. We know how human beings design things and what these things look like, but we do not know how God designs things and what these things would look like. Hume makes this point in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Since all om' knowledge comes from experience, we can go from causes to effects, but only insofar as they are specific causes and effects within the world. Hume says that we have no idea what it means to say that the whole world is itself an effect, and therefore we cannot go from this premise - that the world as a whole is an effect - to some alleged cause that lies beyond or behind the world.22

Design reflects more of the maIU1er in which neocreos approach the world than of the manner in which the world, independent of the human mind, is constituted. Neo-Creationists say that they should be taken seriously because they do not presuppose anything about the world, unlike Darwinists, who view the world through the philosophical lens of naturalism. I need only appeal to Ruse and Weber to point up the flaw in their thinking - no worldview is free of philosophical presuppositions. Creationists proceed from the presupposition that "works of God exist," and then ask IIHow is their existence detectable in the struggle of life?" Neo-Darwinists, on the other hand, presuppose that God is absent and unnecessary. They proceed from the presupposition that "nature is all there iS,ll and then ask, "How are favored organisms preserved in the struggle for life?" No matter how strong a will, neoCreationism necessarily presupposes the possibility that God is not absent in the struggle of life and thus nature is not uniform or self-contained - even though this is not how


neo-creos would see their methodology. This is all one with saying that apart from philosophical super-naturalism or theism or something of the sort creationism is absurd and meaningless. According to Johnson's standards of scientific acceptability, then, neo-Creationism should not be taken seriously because it presupposes that design exists in nature.

Arguments from design are also based on Cartesian reasoning. Descartes argues in the Meditations that an effect carmot contain more perfection than its cause. This argument translates into the proposition that any design is an effect or manifestation of an intelligent cause, a mind. NeoCreationists see design in nature and infer causality by something with intelligence. This inference, however, is dubious. When Creationists purport, to see design or "information-rich structures of biologi'23 in nature, there is no process of reasoning that can secure them against the contrary supposition that the design they perceive is not really out there in nature, existing even when unperceived, but rather imposed on nature from without. What a Creationist takes to be a sign of intelligent design, the naturalist sees only a product of. nature. John Rowland makes this same point by quoting Voltaire,

who said that it was obvious that the nose was designed to bear spectacles, because it fitted them so well. In other words, the evolutionists say that the person who sees some sense of design in the eye or the ear or any other organ of the living creature, sees it because he himself puts it there.24

In short, design is not a basic h'ait of nature but an illusion which nature easily arouses in human beings.

Finally, a consequence of the different philosophical foundations of the theory of evolution on the one hand, and of creation science on the other, is that a scientist cam10t have an honest conversation with a creationist. What each has to say has no persuasive meaning for the other insofar

--

42 ILYA P. WI:\HA~f

as they are not vdlling to question the most basic presuppositions of their respective positions. This is why the contro\'ersv and debate between nee-Creationists and neeDarwinists will in all likelihood never be resolved. A Darwinist calIDot approve or go along "with those lv-hose beliefs "weaken dependence upon the scientific method, As much as Phillip Johnson might argue otherwise, the sacred and supernatural dimension of life witnessed by neoCreationists simply cannot be seen from the perspective of the scientific attitude.

In conclusion, arguing that evolutionary science is merely a philosophy is utter nonsense. The attempt to separate scientific claims from philosophical claims is na'ive because science has to make philosophical assumptions in order to 'work, as do we in order to live an orderly life. The philosophical assumptions of science are neither ilTational nor prejudiciaL Rather, naturalistic assumptions and explanations are necessary for doing science. In other words, philosophy is what makes science as a vocation possible and its applications useful and meaningful (pragmatic). We cannot believe the nee-creos when they maintain that they have observed the data objectively, that evolution cannot explain what they observe, and that, therefore, a supernatural intelligent designer is involved by default. Creation science and the theory of evolution both presuppose philosophical, methodological, and metaphysical views. The difference is that the presuppositions of the theory of evolution are continuous with science, while those of Creation science are not.

Notes

1 Mayr, "An Insatiably Curious Observer Looks Back on a Life in,

Evolution," The Nt'U) York Times, April 16, 2002, p. D2.

:2 William A. Dembski, "Introduction: Mere Creation," in Mere Creation:

Science, Faitll & Intelligent Design, edited by William A. Dembski

(Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 24.

3 Phillip E. Johnson, "How to Sink a Battleship/' in Mere Creation:

Science, Faitil & Intelligent Design, edited by William A. Dembski

(Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 449.

4 Ibid., p. 450.


5 Ibid., p. 451.

6 Ibid., p. 453.

7 Michael Ruse, "The New Antievolutionisnl," Speech at a AAAS

Symposium, February 13, 1993, http://www.arn.org/ docs/ol'pages/

or151/mr93han.htm. my emphasis.

8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Dembski, p. 28.

11 Duane T. Gish, "Creation, Evolution, and the Historical Evidence,lI in

But Is It Science?, edited by Michael Ruse. New York: PrometheLls

Books, 1988. p. 270.

12 John Dewey, "The Relation of Science and Philosophy ns the BaHiH of

Education," in John Dewey on Education, edited by Reginnld D.

Archambault. University of Chicago Press, 1964. p. 15.

13 Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation," Originally a speech at Munich

University, 1918, http://tiunet.tiu.edu/acadinfo/ cas/ socsci/ psych/

SOC410/Readings/ Weber/Works/science.htm

14 Ibid. 15 Ronald N. Giere, 'Naturalism/' in A Companion to 'lie Pililosophy of Science, edited by W.H Newton-Smith. Massachusetts: BlClCkwcll, 20()O. p.308.

16 Sterling P. Lamprecht, The Metaphysics of No Iurali:-/'1111',1/,

Vol, 1: Pmgll1atis1Il, Education, Democracy, edited by r ,(lI'l'Y llivkmllil tllld

Thomas M. Alexander. Indiana University PreHs,.199H. p.l (J:l.

19 Ibid., p. 167.

20 Ibid, 21 Ibid., p. 168.

22 Lamprecht, p. 178.

23 Dembski, p. 17.

24 John Rowland, Mysteries oj Science: A Study of tlw Umi/Il/iollfl (!{ thi'

Scientific Metl1Od, New York: Philosophical Library, J 957. p. li9.

Bibliography

Dembski, William A. "Introduction: Mere Cl'l:ation," in Mt'J'I' ('r1'l1/ioll: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design, ed. William A. [)(Inb~ki. 1111" nois: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

DeweYI John. "The Relation of Science and PhiloHophy HI'! I.lw BtlHlH of Education," in John Dewey on Educatioll, l~d. ReAimlJd D. /\Tchambault. Chicago: University of Chicago PI'{!BH, '1064.

Dewey, John. /I Anti-Naturalism in Extremis," in T11{' r;:;:;(,lllial r)(~7{JCI/, Vol. 1: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy, eel. Larry fJickm~n

44 ILYA P. WINHAM

and Thomas M. Alexander. Indiana University Press, 1998. Giere, Ronald N. "Naturalism," in A Companion to the Philosophy of Sci

ence, ed. W. H. Newton-Smith. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000. Gish, Duane T. "Creation, Evolution, and the Historical Evi

dence," in But is it Science?, ed. Michael Ruse. New York: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Jolu1Son, Phillip E. "How to Sink a Battleship," in Mere Creation: Sci ence, Faith & Intelligent Design, ed. William A. Dembski. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

Lamprecht, Sterling P. The Metaphysics ofNaturalism. New York: Meredith Publishing, 1967.

Mayr, Ernst. "An Insatiably Curious Observer Looks Back on a Life in Evolution," in The New York Times, April 16: 02. 2002.

Rowland, John, Mysteries of Science: A Study of the Limitations of the Scientific Method. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957.

Ruse, Michael. "The New Antievolutionism," Speech at an AAAS Symposium, February 13, 1993. .

Weber, Max. "Science as a Vocation," Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918. ,

Religious Experience, Pluralistic Knowledge and William Jalnes BRITTANY G. TRICE

If one claims to have knowledge based upon a religious experience, must they belong to a specific religion to have that experience? More importantly, must they have participated directly in that experience? These experiences may be an entirely normal human phenomenon, given that most have an understanding of /I a divine presence" or even "participation" in such an event) However, something so widely understood as II religious experience" falls short when a definition must be ascribed to it. Some may contend that a "religious" experience does not imply its origin in doctrinal or institutional religion.ii On the other hand, those that cling to religion often find that religion would be deprived (in most cases) of its most basic element if it did not at one time, or presently include what we call "religious experience". Arguably, in one degree or another, all experiences that support the basis of religion are considered ontologically to be of rnystical quality.iii It is the personal quality of mystical experiences that will be explored in the pages that follow.

The American philosopher and pragmatist, William James, had significant thIngs to say regarding mystical experience in his work TIle Varieties of Religious Experience (VRE). In reference to the above discussion, he felt that the moving force behind religion was not found in the creeds, dogmas or elaborate descriptions of religions, but:

What keeps religion going is something [ ... ] [other] than abstract definitions and systems of concatenated adjectives, and something different from fac- . ulties of theology [ ... ]. These things are the aftereffects, secondary accretions upon those phenomena of vital conversation with the unseen divine 1...] renewing themselves [ ... Jin the lives of hurnbIe private men (VRE 487).

46 BRITTANY G. TRICE

What he means here is that these "secondary things" are dependent upon this dialogical connection that, as he defines it, happens in a mystical experience.

Looking at his epistemology in general will be important to gain the proper understanding of mystical experience in Varieties. In this essay, I first trace this epistemological development in the later works of Pragmatism (P) and the posthumously published Essays of Radical Empiricism (ERE). Then, I examine whether he remains consistent after applying the findings from his epistelTIology to the metaphysical dimension he holds of religious experience. Finally, after leaving behind James's idea that religious experience remains only authoritative for the individual, I will defend my position that this does not entail mystical experience is less verifiable and applicable to a collective whole. From comparisons of our own and others' religious experiences and th.e role of cognitive feeling within them, this may be a case of what I term "pluralistic knowledge"an intersubjective knowledge that makes a practical difference to more than one individual's life. SOlne ideas from contemporary philosophers Richard Rorty and Bruce Wilshire will help illuminate the details of cognitive feeling, and the social community that this pluralism depends on.

I: An Inherited Religious Tendency

Who was !:his man William James, and why as a pragmatist, was he concerned with religion? Th.e innovation he brought regarding pragmatism was to see it as a method applied to moral, metaphYSical and religiousproblems regarding uses of truth and value, rather than just a method of scientific inquiry into the meaning of ideas. The first American pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, embodied the latter idea in his pragmatism, and became put off by the ideas of James, and henceforth diverged from James calling his own pragmatism, "pragmaticism" - a name he said was /I ugly enough [ ... ] to be safe from kidnap

47 RELIGIOUS EXPERlENCE

pers" (Thayer 88). In James's work Pragmatism, he describes the results of this wider inquiry as freeing us 1/from abstraction and insufficiency, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins" (51).

Throughout James's early life, he struggled with the notion that human thought and action was determined, and humans might be thus forced to act mechanically in a closed universe (Thayer 133). His father, Henry James was a religious man, having studied extensively at Princeton Theological Seminary, and he instilled in James a democratic way of viewing religious impulses (VRE v). Later in life, James fulfilled a promise to his father that someday he would deal critically with the issue of religion by writing the comprehensive work The Varieties ofReligious Experience, where the focus of religion would be placed not on the object (Le., God), but on the subject as an experiencing, believing, doubting, and praying person (VRE vii).

Although James did not consider himself to be a direet participant in mystical experience,lv he says in a letter to a friend that his purpose in writing the Varieties was to show the glue holding the world's religious life together. Furthermore, he wanted to show that the function of the life (Le., those things found within the religious experiences) of religion was mankind's most important oneY So how did James define mystical experience, and what did experience mean to him in general? These two components of his epistemology must be explored.

II: Experience: Mystical and Mundane

For James l there are four qualities that accompany mystical experiencevi and the resulting conditions he placed on these experiences. The first quality is ineffability; that is, it "defies expression" and a wholly adequate articulation is impossible. Second, it is noetic, or a state of knowledge, and we gain things from this experience. A third is transiencythe experience does not last long, but passes away quickly. FinallYI it is passive, or the feeling of union where one is ac

48 BRITTANY TRICE

tually "grasped" or "held" by a superior power. The condition James places on mystical experience is its authority for only those individuals who have it (VRE 414-15).

In SOlne of James's later works, the mindset he used to view experience and what he termed"experiences" unfolds for us. In radical empiricism, James explainS experiences within the flux of time as being within "a world of pure experience./I This world of pure experience is a world of "pure objects" in which things can only be identified as a /I that" or a "datum, fact, phenomenon, or content" (McDermott 227). In order for an object (say, a book) to be classified as more than a "that," but also as "physical" or a 1/ percept" of something else it must have a function (i.e., it can be read). When a particular object (the book) within experience is seen with and then obscured from the eyes, it can be thought of as "having been," or existing in past experiences and is thus a percept. In addition to this, taken in totality, my experiencing the book is what it is "to be conscious of something" .vii

Thus, James shows us in the world of pure experience, objects have three ontological states. First, they have their 11 pure" form, or "as they are" and can be referred to only as a "that" and without content. Secondly, as things move within space and time, they become divided into what they have been, are, and will be.vii Finally, these relations are conscious, given they are inseparable from the cognitive element of experience, and that acquisition of a conscious quality depends upon its having a context.

Given these examples and analyses, the tendency for Jmnes to emphasize the cognitive relation connecting things within experience should be evident, and that in cases where there are cognitive relations, these are as much experiences as the objects that they connect.iX Carrying the cognitive aspect of radical empiricism further, one may claim the importance of the personal feeling that gives mystical experience its individual quality.x In any event, the issue raised here by James's radical empiricism concerns the subjectivity of experience. This arises because the subjective

49 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

qualities of these experiences are inevitably determined by the limitations of that particular person's perceptions and sensations.

Similarly, James mentions repeatedly the importance of cognitive states in his Pragmatism lectures. The cognitive function of feeling arises when things are evaluated by their 1/ cash-value", or by the practical difference they make. Things are useful to us insofar as we value them. This useful value is determined by what our belief (i.e., the response to our feelings) about these things may entail.xi Cognition is defined as the action or faculty of knowing taken in its widest sense, including sensation, perception, memory and judgment. In Pragmatism, James uses an example of being lost and starving in the woods, and seeing a cow-path. It is reasonable, he says, to believe that there may be some human habitation beyond the path, for this may mean saving oneself from starvation. Thus, the inclinations given to this experience by sensations with the eyes had great implications for one's life and future well being: namely, the practical relevance of believing there is a human habitation beyond that path (P 93-5). We can see for ourselves that this feeling, or impulse to act on our belief would have implications important to our life, even though we would only be acting on the probability that there was something beyond that path. James elaborates on implications of individual belief somewhat further:

If there be any life better we should lead, and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life,

vol. xiv, sept. 2003

Documents

philosophy students

episteme volume

philosophy department

title of philosophy

area of philosophy

undergraduate students

faculty advisor mark

philosophical naturalism