{"id":3216,"date":"2017-06-15T16:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=3216"},"modified":"2017-06-15T16:00:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:00:05","slug":"nagel-on-materialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2017\/06\/15\/nagel-on-materialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Nagel on Materialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I mentioned Thomas Nagel in my previous post about Dennett, which reminded me that I had published a review of Nagel’s book Mind & Cosmos:\u00a0 Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False<\/a> (Oxford University Press 2012) in the Englewood Review of Books<\/a> a while back. \u00a0Here’s my review of Nagel.<\/p>\n

It has become fashionable in recent years to assume that all human behaviors, including all concepts of the human \u201cmind,\u201d finally are reducible to biochemistry.\u00a0 This presents a conundrum for governance, law and policy.\u00a0 As Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Center for Neuroscience and Society puts it, “[t]he idea that behaviour is determined by physical causes is hard to reconcile with the intuitive notions of free will and moral agency on which our legal systems are based.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Some \u201cneuroLaw\u201d scholars, such as David Eagleman, Director of the Initiative for Neuroscience and the Law at the Baylor College of Medicine, argue that the legal system should abandon concepts of intentionality and fault, and that the justice system should replace traditional punishments with \u201cprefontal workouts\u201d designed to recondition the brains of lawbreakers.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 These neuroLaw scholars represent a species of Darwinist \/ materialist reductionism that seeks to subsume all notions of morality and ethics within an evolutionary paradigm.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Thomas Nagel, Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University, steps boldly into this fray with his book Mind & Cosmos:\u00a0 Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False<\/em>.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Mind & Cosmos<\/em> is at once a convincing refutation of Darwinian reductionism and a frustrating misstatement of religious \/ theological alternatives to such reductionism.<\/p>\n

On the convincing side, Nagel ably argues that consciousness, cognition and value cannot be adequately accounted for by reductionistic materialism.\u00a0 Nagel\u2019s basic argument is familiar:\u00a0 reductive materialism eliminates the epistemic basis for the phenomena of consciousness, cognition and value.\u00a0 If human beings are nothing but complex gene replicators, there is no reason to think that we possess any capacity to get outside of ourselves and understand the world, beyond what is immediately required for survival.\u00a0 This would mean, among other things, that the practice of a science that could establish the objective truth of reductive materialism itself would be impossible.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Belief in reductive materialism requires a kind of epistemic realism that, for reductive materialism, must represent merely an epiphenomenal delusion.\u00a0 And this uncomfortable fact further implies that \u201c[f]rom a Darwinian perspective, our impressions of value, if construed realistically, are completely groundless.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 The \u201centire elaborate structure of value and morality that is built up \u2026 by practical reflection and cultural development\u201d would represent mere adaptations and not necessary truths about the world.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

For those versed in the debates between reductive materialists and their interlocutors, these arguments are likely to seem persuasive or unpersuasive depending on prior inclinations.\u00a0 I find the epistemic argument compelling:\u00a0 natural selection cares only about survival, not truth.\u00a0 The retort that an organism with an inaccurate perception of its environment is unlikely to survive is demonstrably false, at least if we understand \u201caccurate\u201d to involve a capacity to see beyond immediate circumstances and to take in the bigger picture.\u00a0 The fly on my window has no idea that it is sitting on a \u201cwindow\u201d in a \u201cbuilding\u201d filled with \u201cpeople\u201d writing \u201cbook reviews\u201d and other things on \u201ccomputers.\u201d\u00a0 Nor does the fly possess any capacities that would enable it to conduct investigations into these phenomena.\u00a0 The fly can, of course, sense the surface under its feet, and it can feel the oncoming pressure wave in time to zip off before my copy of Nagel\u2019s book smashes it into mush \u2013 that much, and only that much, is required for its survival.\u00a0 More than that would be inefficient and wasteful, and natural selection abhors wasted energy.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it is possible to construct just-so stories to explain how perceptual capacities evolved by our hominid predecessors in the crucible of the ancient African savannah have since been exapted for the purpose of higher-order reasoning.\u00a0 This likely is a debate that can never be resolved without resort to prior assumptions about what is and is not possible \u2013 that is, without first assuming the truth or implausibility of materialism.\u00a0 Still, Nagel does a fine job of presenting the anti-reductionist arguments clearly and concisely.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

The most frustrating part of Nagel\u2019s book is his lack of comprehension of traditional theological conceptions of God in relation to creation.\u00a0 Nagel suggests that \u201c[a]t the outer boundaries of the world, encompassing everything in it, including the law-governed natural order revealed by science, theism places some kind of mind or intention, which is responsible for the physical and the mental character of the universe.\u201d[10]<\/a>\u00a0 He argues that for this \u201ctheistic\u201d view to work, \u201cthe existence and properties of God and therefore of his creation, cannot conceivably be other than they are,\u201d and claims that theists \u201ctend to believe\u201d in this view of God and creation.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Nagel finds this approach unsatisfactory because, among other things, \u201c[i]t amounts to the hypothesis that the highest-order explanation of how things hangs together is of a certain type, namely, intentional or purposive, without having anything more to say about how that intention operates except what is found in the results to be explained.\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0 Nagel further assumes that theistic accounts of creation must involve Divine \u201cintervention,\u201d for example by \u201cassembling the genetic material that would result eventually in conscious life.\u201d[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

Nagel\u2019s description of \u201ctheism\u201d might apply to some contemporary analytic philosophers and \u201cintelligent design\u201d advocates who try to defend an abstract, deracinated, generic \u201cDesigner\u201d apart from the particulars of a Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other traditioned understanding of \u201cGod.\u201d\u00a0 It is not, however, a description of what \u201cGod\u201d means in any of the great theological traditions.\u00a0 God is not the \u201cmind\u201d or \u201cintelligence\u201d at the end of a long string of temporal \/ physical causes, for God is neither temporal nor physical.\u00a0 By definition, God is transcendent of creation, not merely another being-in-creation.\u00a0 To render God as if Godself were just a \u201cfirst cause\u201d within<\/em> creation, in fact, would constitute heresy.\u00a0 Nor does the traditional doctrine of creation require Divine \u201cintervention\u201d to \u201cassemble\u201d the building blocks of life.[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

It is true that the Abrahamic faiths traditionally understand God to have created the universe ex nihilo<\/em>.\u00a0 But it is not as though God were floating in outer space and suddenly decided to flick the pre-big-bang singularity with a finger in order to get things rolling.\u00a0 Properly understood, creation ex nihilo<\/em> means that at every moment<\/em>, the universe\u2019s existence is contingent on God\u2019s loving power and will \u2013 it does not even, technically, require a temporal \u201cbeginning.\u201d\u00a0 When classical theologians such as Thomas Aquinas speak of a \u201cfirst mover,\u201d they mean an a-temporal, eternal source towards which<\/em> the universe is drawn, not a force in the temporal past that overcame the inertia of static matter.\u00a0 In fact, the notion of pre-existing static matter contradicts creation ex nihilo<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cThe love that fires the Sun,\u201d for Augustine, was a love that ever draws creation into<\/em> God.[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

Nor would the Abrahamic faith traditions conceive of God as having \u201cproperties\u201d that are concomitant with properties of the physical universe, as Nagel suggests.\u00a0 In classical Christian theology, God is \u201csimple,\u201d meaning without parts or divisions.\u00a0 God does not \u201chave\u201d goodness; He is<\/em> good.\u00a0 God does not \u201chave\u201d love; He is <\/em>love.\u00a0 God does not \u201chave\u201d intelligence and wisdom; He is <\/em>the Logos<\/em>.\u00a0 And God\u2019s goodness, love, wisdom, and will are inseparable and unbreakable.\u00a0 \u201cHear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,\u201d says the shema<\/em>.[16]<\/a>\u00a0 It is therefore improper to speak of the \u201cproperties\u201d of God.\u00a0 It is because God is one and because God transcends all physical \u201cproperties\u201d that He can be the creator-God of the Bible and the Qur\u2019an, and not just the Very Powerful Designer of Enlightenment Deism.[17]<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, Nagel is only partly correct when he claims that there is \u201cnothing more to say\u201d about God\u2019s intentions for creation except by observing what creation is.\u00a0 For Christians, Jews and Muslims, observation of creation does tell us some things about God, in particular that He is creative, beautiful, powerful and glorious.[18]<\/a>\u00a0 But all of the Abrahamic faiths rely on revelation \u2013 on their scriptures, and on God\u2019s actions through his messengers and prophets (and for Christians, in the incarnate Jesus) \u2013 to discern more fully God\u2019s purposes for His creation.\u00a0 The possibility of \u201crevelation,\u201d of course, is one of the big sticking points between materialism and these religious views.<\/p>\n

Nagel\u2019s personal preference, as an atheist, is for a sort of process theology of human emergence.\u00a0 He suggests that human cognition \u201cwas originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well.\u00a0 Each of our lives is part of a lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.\u201d[19]<\/a>\u00a0 This is also a familiar refrain in debates about theology, science, and transcendence, which in contemporary discourse are often heavily influenced by process thought and process theology.[20]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cGod\u201d no longer is the transcendent creator of the universe, but rather Godself or God-consciousness or human consciousness is an emergent property within<\/em> the universe.[21]<\/a> \u00a0Perhaps process thought and process theology represent improvements over the sort of God-of-the-gaps interventionism that Nagel thinks represents the only option for \u201ctheists.\u201d\u00a0 It is less clear, however, whether process models offer a better account than an option that Nagel ignores:\u00a0 the traditional theological belief that God is the eternal transcendent source and goal of a creation graced with its own integrity \u2013 an integrity that makes scientific investigation possible \u2013 as a gift of Divine love.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Cf. my article\u00a0The Problem With NeuroLaw<\/em>, available at http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2214601.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>Martha Farah, “Responsibility and Brain Function,”<\/em> available at\u00a0 http:\/\/neuroethics.upenn.edu\/index.php\/penn-neuroethics-briefing\/responsibility-a-brain-function<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> See <\/em>Daivd Eagleman, Incognito:\u00a0 The Secret Lives of the Brain (Pantheon 2011).<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See, e.g., <\/em>David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone:\u00a0 How Darwin\u2019s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Ourselves (Delacorte Press 2007); Michael Graziano, God Soul Mind Brain:\u00a0 A Scientist\u2019s Reflections on the Spirit World (Leapfrog Press 2010); Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape:\u00a0 How Science Can Determine Human Values (Free Press 2010).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Thomas Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos:\u00a0 Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press 2012).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id.<\/em>, Chapters 3 and 4.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 109.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Even this presentation, however, is marred by Nagel\u2019s sympathy for \u201cintelligent design\u201d theories that posit gaps in natural processes represented by \u201cirreducible complexity\u201d in certain chemical pathways or physical systems.\u00a0 See id.<\/em> at 10.\u00a0 The epistemic argument against reductionist materialism does not require any such Design-in-the-gaps claims, since \u201cconsciousness\u201d might transcend the physical without gaps<\/em> in the physical.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Mind & Cosmos, at 21.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 21-22.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 25.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 59; see also id.<\/em> at 94 (\u201cfor theists there is the intentional alternative:\u00a0 divine intervention to create life out of the basic material of the world, and perhaps also to guide the process of evolution by natural selection, through the intentional production and preservation of some of the mutations on which natural selection operates along the way.\u201d).<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> For good discussions of these distinctions, see, e.g.<\/em>, David Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Univ. Notre Dame Press 1993); David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite:\u00a0 The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdman\u2019s 2004); Conor Cunningham, Darwin\u2019s Pious Idea:\u00a0 Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong (Eerdman\u2019s 2010);<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> See <\/em>Augustine, Confessions (Oxford Univ. Press 2009); see also<\/em> Bruce Cockburn, \u201cLord of the Starfields,\u201d on In the Falling Dark<\/em> (Remastered, Rounder Records 2009).<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Deut. 3:23.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> See supra <\/em>Note 13.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> See <\/em>Psalm 19 (\u201cThe heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.\u201d).<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 85.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> See, e.g., <\/em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy, \u201cProcess Thought,\u201d available at <\/em>http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/process-philosophy\/<\/em><\/a> (last visited February 12, 2013) and \u201cProcess Theism,\u201d available at <\/em>http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/process-theism\/<\/a> (last visited February 12, 2013); The Center for Process Studies website, available at<\/em> http:\/\/www.ctr4process.org\/<\/a> (last visited February 12, 2013).<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> See id.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned Thomas Nagel in my previous post about Dennett, which reminded me that I had published a review of Nagel’s book Mind & Cosmos:\u00a0 Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press 2012) in the Englewood Review of Books a while back. \u00a0Here’s my review of Nagel. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-PS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3218,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216\/revisions\/3218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}