What is Naturalism? Part V: Alternative Ontologies and Why We Should Care

So far, my primary aim in my series of posts on naturalism has been to offer an account of metaphysical naturalism—that is, naturalism construed as an ontology (an account of the nature of reality). I have proposed to define metaphysical naturalism as follows: it is the view that the picture of the world that emerges through the exercise of the scientific method (roughly as described in previous posts) is an exhaustive picture of the fundamental reality behind the world of appearances. In other words, it is the view that the scientific “picture” that emerges through the scientific method describes not merely the world that is constructed by the subject as it receives and organizes data coming in from things-in-themselves; it actually describes for us what the underlying noumenal reality is like. Or, more precisely, this is what would be achieved by the picture of the world that science would ultimately produce if it were able to achieve and adequately test an ultimate model of everything. In any event, science is bringing us ever closer to an exhaustive grasp of noumenal reality.
If this is what metaphysical naturalism maintains, then metaphysical supernaturalism becomes the view that even if science were to achieve that elusive theory of everything, and test it rigorously and successfully, the picture it gave us would not be an exhaustive depiction of noumenal reality.

But if we define metaphysical supernaturalism in those terms, then a further division becomes possible, between two broad species. The first species shares the naturalist premise that the scientific method is generating an account of reality as it is in itself, and not merely as it appears to us—but it denies that science gives us all of reality. This is the view that there are two kinds of reality—what might be called material or physical reality, and then some other kind (spiritual or mental, perhaps). Descartes can be seen as epitomizing metaphysical supernaturalism in this sense, insofar as he endorses a dualistic ontology that sharply divided the physical world and the mental, and insofar as he takes science to be capable of studying only the former.

The second kind of supernaturalism, by contrast, denies the naturalist premise altogether. That is, it denies that science and its methods have taken us past the domain of phenomena. This would be Kant’s contention. He would argue that at every stage in the process of science, we are dealing with the objective pole of consciousness, which is constructed by the engagement of the self with the world. What science gives us, then, is an increasingly useful phenomenal picture—that is, an understanding of the interface between self and external reality that facilitates at least one species of successful engagement, namely prediction and control. But this useful picture is still just a picture—the world as it appears to us, mediated through our faculties, our concepts, and our categories—and so is not to be identified with reality as it is in itself.

With respect to this second kind of supernaturalism, a further subdivision becomes possible, based on whether noumenal reality is thought to be utterly unknowable or simply unknowable through scientific means. The former is Kant’s position. The latter position admits of even further variations, in terms of both how much of the noumenal realm is thought to be accessible to human cognition and what means are thought to be of use in helping us understand the noumenal. These further subdivisions will not interest me here. It should be clear from what I have said in previous posts, however, that both Hegel and Schleiermacher fall within this broad category, as do many others—including, most significantly, a philosopher who preceded Kant by many, many centuries, and who might be regarded as the founder of Western philosophy. I mean, of course, Plato.

So, let us lay out these alternatives in more formal terms:

Metaphysical Naturalism: The theory that noumenal reality is to be exhaustively identified with the “idealized scientific picture of the world”—that is, the picture that would be generated by the scientific process of careful observation, modeling, and empirical testing of models, if only that process were allowed to continue to completion.

Metaphysical Supernaturalism A (Cartesian Supernaturalism): The theory that the idealized scientific picture would give us an accurate portrait of one kind or dimension of noumenal reality (what we might call material or physical reality) but that there is another kind or dimension (mental or spiritual) that lies outside the scope of science to adequately represent.

Metaphysical Supernaturalism B (Kantian Supernaturalism): The theory that the idealized scientific picture does not give us noumenal reality at all, but offers at best only an ever-more-useful phenomenal picture. Noumenal reality is something entirely other than what emerges in the scientific picture, and is furthermore inaccessible through any other means of inquiry. Noumenal reality, in short, is unknowable.

Metaphysical Supernaturalism C (Platonic Supernaturalism): The theory that the idealized scientific picture does not give us noumenal reality at all, but offers at best only an ever-more-useful phenomenal picture. Noumenal reality is something entirely other than what emerges in the scientific picture, but can be at least partly grasped through other means.

Now none of these categories offers a specific account of the nature of reality. What I have offered here are categories into which more precisely characterized ontologies might fall—but I have done so primarily in epistemological terms (that is, in terms of what and how we know). I have done so in large measure because my starting point was with naturalism, and because at least as I understand naturalism, the naturalist’s ultimate allegiance is epistemological.

Let me explain. If you are a metaphysical naturalist as I have defined it, that means you identify ultimate reality with the picture that would emerge through an idealized science. But insofar as contemporary scientists disagree about numerous things at a very basic level, being a naturalist in this sense doesn’t commit you to a specific picture of what ultimate reality is like. A metaphysical naturalist may have such a picture (and most usually do), but an allegiance to metaphysical naturalism entails a fallibilism with respect to any such picture, insofar as science might advance in ways that force the picture’s abandonment. There are surely metaphysical naturalists who believe string theory offers a (barely comprehensible) portrait of ultimate reality. But to be a metaphysical naturalist in the sense I have been articulating here is to care more about the scientific method than about any specific scientific means of modeling the world. If we advanced to a point where string theory could be empirically tested, and if it were then falsified, anyone who clung to string theory at that point would not be a metaphysical naturalist in my sense.

But this also means that, given my taxonomy, those who thinks noumenal reality is utterly inaccessible through any means, including scientific ones, are metaphysical supernaturalists (of the Kantian sort)—even if they also believe that (a) the inaccessibility of noumenal reality entails its irrelevance for human life, (b) all we should care about is understanding the phenomenal world in which we live our lives, and (c) we ought to rely entirely on scientific methods (and, perhaps, scientifically endorsed methods) in shaping our beliefs.

But persons who embrace (a)-(c) are not apt to call themselves supernaturalists, even though in terms of their views about ultimate reality they deny that an idealized science would put us in touch with that reality (and hence, in effect, believe that there is more to reality than meets the scientific eye). They are, instead, apt to call themselves naturalists. And of course, there is something very significant they have in common with metaphysical naturalists as defined above: they share a deep allegiance to the scientific method and its outcomes.

What this shows is that metaphysical naturalism is only one species of naturalism, and that for a full understanding of naturalism we need to make some further distinctions. In effect, the Kantian “supernaturalists” described above dismiss the entire category of “noumenal reality” as unimportant for human existence, and identify “reality” in the only significant sense as that which we must contend with in experience. The world of experience is the world we live in, and that world can be more or less accurately depicted. Accuracy is measured in terms of the depiction’s usefulness for prediction and control—and the method that's proven itself to consistently produce the best depictions for these purposes is the scientific method.

This perspective is what might be called “pragmatic naturalism.” For the purposes of living our lives successfully, noumenal reality is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what the phenomenal world is like, in terms of such things as the rules it follows and the state it is in—in short, in terms of the features that we must contend with whether we like it or not. This is “reality” in the pragmatic sense, and the best tool for putting us in touch with that reality is science. Theological speculation, by contrast, is utterly useless in telling us what we need to contend with—and so is useless in helping us to better predict what will happen next and how we can better control outcomes. Praying over grandpa doesn’t restore his heart to health and so keep him alive longer. If we want to do that, we need to learn through scientific methods how the heart works and what interferes with its ability to do its job—and then use that knowledge to devise life-saving surgeries.

Now from this broadly pragmatic perspective, there is no doubt at all that science is extremely important and that we ignore it at our peril. For the sake of predicting and controlling outcomes in the world we live in (however merely phenomenal that world might be), science is really the only game in town. But once we’ve stepped away from the question of what is ultimately real and into the question of what is most useful for living our lives in the world of appearances we inhabit, we need to acknowledge that there can be different ways in which a picture of things is useful. Prediction and control is only one species of usefulness. Conduciveness to a sense of wholeness or meaning should surely be construed as useful as well—and why should usefulness in terms of prediction and control be given priority over other forms of usefulness?

Furthermore, if the whole reason for attaching a special priority to the lessons of science is that they enable us to more effectively engage with our world, science is being assessed within a context of agency. That is, we are assuming that we have the power to make decisions based on our understanding of things. But decision-making depends not only on an understanding of what effects we are most likely to produce by this course of action as opposed to that course of action. Decision-making also depends on an assessment of which effects are most worthy of pursuing, and on judgments about the legitimacy of the available means for pursuing those results. A Nazi researcher conducting experiments on unwilling Jewish subjects might have been as committed to the scientific method as anyone else, and as conversant with its lessons as anyone of his era…and yet it doesn’t follow that this scientist is operating with the most useful belief system for successfully living a human life.

Put more simply, that science offers the most successful beliefs for the sake of prediction and control doesn't mean it offers the most successful beliefs in all areas. It doesn't mean it can ground ethics. In fact, some are convinced that the picture of the world generated by science is entirely value-neutral—reducing values to mere epiphenomenal facts about brains. But agency cannot operate without values. In fact, the entire pragmatic approach to deciding how and what we should believe is a value-laden one: “usefulness” is a value concept. And if values are wholly subjective, then the usefulness of any enterprise—including science—is radically relativized. And so it no longer becomes possible to say, as the pragmatic naturalist does, that the scientific method offers the “best” way of forming beliefs about our world. It is only the best relative to certain subjective value systems, that is, relative to certain brain impulses.

A pragmatic naturalist might attempt to avoid these problems by maintaining, as Sam Harris does, that science can be relied upon to give us the ethical norms we need for decision-making, and that these scientifically-grounded norms are in some sense “better” than any others. I have already expressed my skepticism about that, but for now it is enough to note that in looking to science for an objective grounding for ethics and values, Harris is at best expressing a pious hope. It certainly isn’t the case that the scientific method has demonstrated that science can ground objective morality.

There's another issue rooted in the fact that pragmatic naturalism operates in the context of agency. Specifically, what needs to be the case for “agency” to be possible at all? To be an agent is to make decisions based on reasons—but is that even possible under a purely scientific view of the self? To act based on reasons is a very different thing than to exhibit certain behaviors based on the causal influence of pre-existing conditions in accord with natural laws. The latter accounts for behavior in terms of past events producing an outcome. The former would have it that we are in some way capable of bringing about a course of action because of a judgment to the effect that something is worthy of being done.

One might attempt to take the “judgment that this act is worthy of being done” to be just folk-psychology short-hand for a complex predecessor brain state that produces further brain stimuli in accord with natural laws. But in that case, the conscious judgment as such is simply an epiphenomenal by-product of the brain state that causes the behavior.

This is important for understanding why Kant thought we had to postulate something distinctive about the noumenal self in order for morality to be possible. For Kant, moral principles are truths of reason. They are true by virtue of the nature of rational consistency itself. But unlike other truths of reason, such as mathematical truths (2+2=4, say) these are expressly about what behavior it is rational to engage in (whether or not anyone actually engages in it or has any desire to do so).

For Kant, being moral is about being directly motivated by one of these distinctive truths of reason rather than being motivated by what he calls “inclination” (by which he means any appetite, desire, instinct, emotional impulse, etc.). So, in order for it to be possible to be moral, we have to be capable of doing something, not because there is some prior inclination that causes us to do it, but rather because we are directly motivated by a truth of reason. But truths of reason are not brain states. 2+2=4 is not identical with any brain state, even if a brain state might represent mathematical truths. What makes 2+2=4 true is not some neurological event in the brain but the fact that the concept of “2” is related to the concept of “4” in the indicated way. It’s an abstract truth, not a physical fact.

But here’s the key thing: being moral means, for Kant, being motivated to action by an abstract truth rather than by a physical fact. If I do what I do necessarily and exclusively because of complex brain states that bring it about, then I am necessarily removed from the domain of moral agency.

And if I am removed from the domain of moral agency, then I am removed from the domain in which there might be any objective values that can guide my behavior (as opposed to the subjective preferences that are really just physiological impulses which feel a certain way). My behavior then falls into the same category as the behavior of the weather or the tides, except that the causal mechanism is far more complex and so much harder to predict (and is wedded to epiphenomena that are causally inefficacious). But if my behavior is in the same category as that of the weather or tides, then offering reasons to value science or speaking of the pragmatic value of science becomes utterly pointless. Giving reasons and arguments, making the case for valuing this or that—all of this presupposes a genuine capacity to be responsive to abstract ideas and judgments and principles, as opposed to being motivated by nothing but causal forces.

Or consider artistic activity. If all human actions are caused by prior physical brain states rather than being motivated by abstract principles and ideas, then a poem produced by a great artist is not in a different category than (to borrow B.F. Skinner’s crude metaphor) a turd squeezed out by toddler. The causal mechanism responsible for the former is more complex—but without the capacity for human beings to be guided behaviorally by abstracted ideas themselves (even if we concede that these ideas are always represented by brain states), none of the things we would like to say about the poem and the poet (things it makes no sense to say about the toddler and the turd) can meaningfully be said.

That’s how both Kant and I see it, in any event—and I cannot help but think that those who think materialism can easily make sense of human moral and artist agency just haven’t thought about it long enough to understand the problem. I’m not saying that the problem is necessarily insurmountable (although I can’t see a way to surmount it). What I’m saying is that the problem is real and it’s HUGE. Unless the problem can be surmounted, a worldview that admits in nothing but what science offers us about human nature and the mind is a worldview that systematically strips human life of everything that, well, makes us human.

If we are operating purely at a pragmatic level, rather than at the level of ultimate truth, then I cannot see how anyone could view such a worldview as pragmatically the best. While I fully accept that any pragmatically useful worldview must value the scientific method and treat its conclusions concerning the phenomenal world (the world we must contend with) as invaluable for the sake of prediction and control, the fact is that there isn’t just a phenomenal world I have to contend with. There is also a “me” who has to contend with the world. And there are some presumptions about this “me” that I cannot help but adopt as I engage with the world. One of these is that I can be and really am responsive to ideas and reasons and arguments—abstract entities that, like 2+2=4, cannot coherently be identified with any physical state of affairs (even if, as may very well be the case, these abstract entities are represented by a physical state of affairs, that is, by a brain state).

For Kant, this is precisely the point at which an unknowable noumenal reality becomes relevant despite its unknowability. Because Kant was convinced that the capacity for agency was not part of our phenomenal experience of the world. This may sound strange, since most of us have an instinctive understanding of ourselves as capable of making choices based on reasons. But this capacity for agency isn’t what we experience when we make ourselves the object of experience. When we look at ourselves in that way—when we put ourselves at the objective pole of consciousness and study ourselves the way that we study the stars and the inner working of biological organisms—the result is an understanding of ourselves as causally determined to behave as we do. And so as soon as we make of the self an object of experience--as soon as it becomes part of the phenomenal world--we are presented with an object about which we cannot attribute free agency.

Our sense of freedom and agency is present only when we don’t turn our attention to ourselves, only when we don’t make of ourselves an object of experience. It is immediately felt, we might say—part of our subjective experience of ourselves rather than part of our objective experience of ourselves. That this feeling isn’t corroborated when we investigate ourselves empirically would be devastating for the possibility of moral agency if the outcomes of such empirical investigation represented reality as it is in itself. But because it doesn’t, the determinism found in the empirical world doesn’t preclude us from assuming what we need to assume in order for human life to have the meaningfulness and dignity that (for Kant as well as myself) only comes from moral agency.

In other words, for Kant the chief value of an unknowable noumenal reality is that it makes it possible for us to coherently make postulates that transcend what science can teach us about the empirical world, postulates that we must make in order for our overall worldview to really work, not merely for the sake of prediction and control but for the sake of acknowledging ourselves to be what we intuitively take ourselves to be, and what we must be if our lives and projects are to be more meaningful than a turd.

All of this is a way of saying that Kant is not merely a metaphysical supernaturalist of type B, but also a pragmatic supernaturalist in something analogous to Metaphysical Supernaturalism A. If a pragmatic naturalist finds the most useful holistic picture of the world to be a purely scientific one that makes no room for positing entities or powers that defy scientific modeling, then Kant is a pragmatic supernaturalist in the sense that he finds a holistic picture that includes “transcendent” elements to be more useful overall. These transcendent elements are not objects of knowledge—because they are postulates about what falls outside the phenomenal world and hence outside the realm in which (for Kant) knowledge is possible. That there is a noumenal reality beyond the phenomenal world, even if we can't know anything about it,  make it possible to include in our overall worldview postulates that don't describe the empirical world and aren’t knowable—and this in turn makes it possible for us to operate in the phenomenal world with a worldview that is pragmatically more useful than any worldview limited to affirming what empirical investigation can support.

In effect, then, I am interpreting Kant as embracing Metaphysical Supernaturalism A and pairing it with pragmatic supernaturalism—in contrast with those who embrace Metaphysical Supernaturalism A and pair it with pragmatic naturalism.

Both of these positions need to be further contrasted with someone who embraces Metaphysical Naturalism but then pairs it with pragmatic supernaturalism. This would be someone who thinks that supernatural beliefs are false but useful and so should be encouraged despite being out of touch with reality. Daniel Dennett seems to think that many modern defenders of religion fall into this category, when he talks about “belief in belief” in Breaking the Spell. Richard Dawkins seems to treat Karen Armstrong in these terms as well.

I suspect they’re wrong. I think the theologians and philosophers they pigeonhole in this way are, like Kant, pragmatically-minded adherents to Metaphysical Supernaturalism B. That is, they think that ultimate reality is beyond our reach—including the reach of science—but that we nevertheless need to operate in terms of a (fallible) picture of reality, and that the best procedure for doing so is pragmatic. A picture that denies the models produced by the best science is less useful than any picture that affirms them—but one that affirms nothing but them is less useful than some pictures that affirm something more.

As anyone who’s read my book should know, I lean towards a kind of pragmatic supernaturalism—but I don’t identify reality with what is pragmatically useful. That is, I think reality is what it is, so to speak. But I also think that what we must contend with in experience, and which ways of thinking are most helpful in contending successfully, offer important guidance into bringing our worldview into alignment with a deeper reality (in this respect I am closer to Hegel than to Kant).

I’ve also been convinced by certain philosophical arguments (especially the Leibniz/Clarke Cosmological Argument which I discuss in my book) that the kind of reality pictured in scientific modeling cannot offer ultimate explanations. And so, if there is to be a reason for why there is something rather than nothing (a principle I find myself unable to set aside), then there must be a noumenal reality crucially unlike what science depicts. As such, I cannot accept Metaphysical Naturalism. But when it comes to which species of Metaphysical Supernaturalism I adopt, I find myself waffling quite a bit--but I think I ultimately lean towards the Platonic variety.

But I'm not content to simply go with my leanings here, because I think Schleiermacher and Hegel are right about something important: Whatever the noumenal reality is, I’m a part of it. Not the "me" who is an object of experience—that’s the phenomenal me. And the naïve “phenomenal me” that comes from immediate introspection is no less phenomenal than what scientists look at when they study my brain. What bearing it has on the “noumenal me” remains an open question.

But still, I am what I am—and so in being me (as opposed to putting myself at the objective pole of conscious observation and then studying me) I am being part of noumenal reality. And there may be a way to leverage that fact into some kind of understanding of noumenal reality. That’s what Hegel tries to do in The Phenomenology of Spirit--and whether a project like that is going to work is, I think, a question we should not attempt to answer in advance of pursuing it. I think the way to decide whether noumenal reality can be accessed in some fashion or other is to really try out different strategies and methodologies. The one Hegel recommends is, in effect, a pragmatic one—but one that fills in some crucial holes in more conventional forms of pragmatism.

And so there’s my set-up for talking about Hegel in future posts. But it may take awhile to get those posts put up, in part because I'm getting ready to leave for vacation, but more significantly because talking about Hegel is hard. There are two reasons for this. First, his writing is so danged obscure, so loaded with his own invented jargon. Second, Hegel has an authorial voice I can’t stand, one that is weighted down by the man’s obvious arrogance and sense of self-importance. But unlike certain others whose authorial voices turn me off, I’ve become convinced that Hegel’s is one I need to contend with—because, even if he is a pompous ass, he’s also brilliant.