Atheists in natural glass houses

Posted on 10/28/10 12 Comments

Atheists living in their “100 percent natural” glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But alas, when many insist they don’t live in such a house, or when they can’t see the glass walls hemming them in on every side, I suppose it’s difficult to persuade them that they shouldn’t hurl that hunk of granite in their sweaty palm at the passing priest. A little bit more careful reflection on what it means to be an atheist and thus what an atheist cum naturalist actually has to defend would be nice.

So what is naturalism? Is it a claim that only a particular kind of knowledge can be had (i.e. scientific)? If so, why believe that (especially when the naturalist’s very claim is not itself scientific)? Is it a claim that only a specific kind of thing exists? What is that thing then? Material? What if science ultimately progresses to describing everything in terms of waves? Does that falsify naturalism? I suspect at the end of the day the naturalist is simply a science fan just like the fourteen year old girl is a Justin Bieber fan:

Bieber fan: loves Justin Bieber so much that she declares in a fit of non-cognitive rhapsody “Justin Bieber is everything!”

Naturalist: loves science so much that he declares in a fit of non-cognitive rhapsody “Science is everything!”

Let’s look at one area that I mentioned last time: free will. My point in raising this issue was to point out that many naturalists/atheists/skeptics/agnostics have not even begun to think how to account for different aspects of reality from within their worldview. They’re ready to throw the rock without being aware of the vulnerability of their own walls.

Robert Gressis is the exception that proves the general rule. He’s an academic who spends his daylight hours thinking about these matters. And his open mode of critical enquiry is much appreciated. Gressis says that if materialism of the mind led to determinism then he’d abandon materialism. But Gressis points out that there are other options. First, he says that we may not need agent causation to have free will (which is what my claim assumes). (Metaphysicians distinguish between two basic types of causes: agent and event.) Second, he suggests that the brain may be the ground of agent causation. I’d be happy to hear more about both options.

Let me make a couple points in response however. First, the jury is certainly out on whether these proposals are viable or not. (Of course the jury is still out on almost everything in philosophy, which is just another reason why you shouldn’t throw stones in glass houses.) Second, even if these proposals are sustainable, it does not bother a Christian, for there are many Christian materialists qua the self (Peter van Inwagen for instance is both a well known defender of libertarian free will and a materialist). But if these proposals fail, and substance dualism is ultimately necessary for libertarian free will, then that is a real blow to the naturalist (however s/he defines the view). So the playing field may not be level, but that’s not my problem.

Finally, let’s note the response of AcesLucky to the free will challenge: “many do not believe there is such thing since every action, even the action intent, is telegraphed by neurological activity prior to any conscious decision.” This is striking! AcesLucky would sooner surrender commitment to free will so that every action we do is determined by prior physical causes, than give up naturalism.

I’m hunting for analogies to explain this extraordinary inversion of priorities. Okay, how about this: it’s like that fourteen year old girl insisting that she would prefer to be emancipated from her parents if it only meant she could have a date with Justin Bieber. Free will and parents be damned. Naturalism and Bieber here we come!

Alexander

Bieber fever! Of course!
toryninja

I belieber in you Dr. Rauser.
- randal
  
  That makes two of us.
Brenda

“So what is naturalism? Is it a claim that only a particular kind of knowledge can be had (i.e. scientific)?”

Yes. If you have another method besides the scientific method for determining objective facts about the world we’d love to heard about it.

“Is it a claim that only a specific kind of thing exists? What is that thing then? Material?”

Some but not all make this claim. It’s hard to see how the world could *not* be all that there is.

“What if science ultimately progresses to describing everything in terms of waves?”

It already does. Everything can either be described as a wave or a particle. Photons for example can be said to have a dual nature as either particles or waves. Which aspect of their nature gets expressed depends on the situation.

“Does that falsify naturalism?”

No.

“Let’s look at one area that I mentioned last time: free will.”

It’s difficult to see how there could be free will but many philosophers adopt various solutions. Some advocate intentional causation where intentionality can have casual effects. Others feel that quantum indeterminacy can somehow be retained at the psychological level and so give a kind of free will.

Eliminative materialist however pretty much reject free will. Not everyone is one though.
Brenda

By the way, John Searle argues that even if we cannot show that there must be such a thing as free will that all rational thought and argument presupposes it’s existence. That is, it is impossible for us to act rationally without the assumption of free will because our concept of a rational agent depends on our being able to freely and rationally choose between alternative courses of action. But if our choices are predetermined then rationality is an illusion and rational debate is utterly futile.
- randal
  
  Brenda,
  
  We should distinguish between incompatibilist and compatibilist theories of free will. I take it that Searle is saying that we cannot really accept hard determinism but we can accept soft determinism (compatibilism combined with determinism) as many Christians and atheists do, and certainly we could accept incompatiblism and indeterminism as me myself and I do.
  - Brenda
    
    “I take it that Searle is saying that we cannot really accept hard determinism but we can accept soft determinism (compatibilism combined with determinism) as many Christians and atheists do”
    
    I am not a student but I’ve read several of his books and listen to his podcasted lectures.
    
    The general consensus among philosophers who are interested in consciousness, as Searle certainly is one, is that it seems hard to see how there can be such a thing as free will when our understanding of human neurobiology is that the underlying processes are very deterministic.
    
    Searle specifically rejects compatibilism and well… he rejects epiphenominalism also. What he says is that while it may be true that libertarian free will does not exist, he doesn’t enjoy the prospect, but that even if it doesn’t exist we have no choice but to act as if there really is such a thing as free will because the alternative is too odious to accept.
    
    I think he is right about that. If determinism is true then there can be no such thing as rational free choice.
    - randal
      
      I disagree with Searle on many things but I appreciate his incisive critique of Daniel Dennett’s eliminativist approach to consciousness.
Jerry Rivard

Hi Randal

I (mostly) like your new site, especially in light of the mess they are making at CP. I see others are using their real names here, so guess I can be ‘convinced’ to use mine. ;o)

The Justin Bieber analogy suggests that we get to choose what is true or not. I don’t know whether the free will that we all seem to experience is an illusion or a reality, but it is clear that whichever it is, it is that way regardless of what we choose (or are determined) to believe. Whatever free will we do have, it is subordinate to reality.

As I type on this keyboard, the keys feel solid to my fingers. They don’t feel like they’re made of up molecules, or that the space between the molecules is greater than the molecules themselves. It doesn’t seem to me that the earth is spinning on its axis at 1000 miles an hour and rotating around the sun at many many times that speed.

But science has proven that these experiences are wrong. (I think) I can choose not to believe the evidence that proves my experience of touching solid objects on a non-moving earth wrong, or (I think) I can choose believe that there must be another explanation that is consistent with these experiences. But (I know (effectively)) that I cannot choose for reality to be the way I want it to be.

I just had a meatloaf sandwich for lunch. I considered my options and experienced myself deciding to have meatloaf. I feel that I could have had tuna, or turkey, or a number of other things, but that I chose the meatloaf. I cannot possibly know for certain whether I really could have chosen tuna, because I didn’t. Had I chosen tuna, I would have no way of knowing whether I could have chosen meatloaf. I strongly believe that I could have chosen anything, but I can’t prove it.

Some people who study the world as it is in ways and to a degree that I do not have reached a conclusion that free will is an illusion. That although we experience choosing, we’re gonna do what our biology and other factors determine that we do. I can say that this is extremely undesirable to me for many reasons, but I can’t say that it isn’t true. I don’t believe it. I believe that I did choose meatloaf, and that I could have chosen tuna. But no matter what I believe, there is a truth, even if no human being ever knows it, regarding the degree to which our experience of free will (and of interacting with solid objects in a stationary world) is real or illusory.

Much has been said on this blog and at CP about naturalism being the inevitable conclusion that follows atheism. Nonsense! A person can certainly believe that there are no gods, but that there are ghosts, for example. They may have an inconsistent world view as a result, but who doesn’t to some extent? And their world view may be more consistent than it seems to one who does not hold it, given that it’s made up of more thoughts and experiences than an outsider can realistically evaluate. It is quite arrogant to assume that you can think through someone else’s core beliefs to arrive at ‘inevitable’ conclusions they themselves have not arrived at. One might even call it hubris.

But speaking personally, I do believe a variation on “the natural world is all there is”. As this has recently been well summed up by Brenda on another thread, I’ll quote her here: “If there is indeed a supernatural or a spiritual world then it is made out of something. That something must casually [sic - causally?] interact in order to produce spirit minds, spirit bodies and spirit effects. In the end you’re going to have a science of spirit stuff and while it may obey different rules that [sic - than] the material world it will still obey rules.”

I’d say the same about the pre-big bang universe (or whatever they were calling it back then). It may not have obeyed the same rules we observe today, but it was some way. That way could have been nothing existing in no space except for an omniscient omnipotent deity who ‘then’ decided to ‘begin’ time and ‘make room’ for space, but this seems way more fanciful to me than the notion that there is blind stuff and blind rules that operate on it, leading over the course of infinite time to all sorts of amazing constructs, including (seemingly?) sentient beings.

In other words, I don’t believe in magic, only in the unexplained. Call it properly basic sans defeaters, if you so choose.

I have made many decisions in my life, some big decisions that changed the course of my life. We all have. Or so it seems. And I hope it’s true. I want there to be free will. So much of my world view, especially as regards my beliefs about how people should interact with one another, is tied to the concept of free will. Free will may be the closest thing I have to a god. I don’t want it not to be.

But no matter what my hierarchy of values consists of, I am wrong if I don’t place reality at the top of it. This is true for free will, and it’s true for god. Or for atheism. Even for my non-belief in magic. If it’s real, it’s real, and no amount of wishful thinking on the part of any atheist or believer can change that.

Whatever really is, really is. This is beyond properly basic sans defeaters, for any defeater to it must be real in order to be a defeater, and is thus itself subordinate to reality. Reality transcends even god, even if god is real.

Randal: “if… substance dualism is ultimately necessary for libertarian free will, then that is a real blow to the naturalist (however s/he defines the view)”

It is a blow to the person: a) for whom substance dualism is incompatible with their world view; and b) who is unwilling to adjust his world view to new evidence.

If it turns out that substance dualism is required for free will and my world view is that there is such a thing as free will and no such thing as magic (which includes god as commonly understood) then I need to acknowledge that either: substance dualism is a non-magical reality; or free will is an illusion.

If it turns out that substance dualism doesexist and is magic, then I have to rethink that aspect of my world view that says there is no magic. That could lead me to rethink that aspect of my world view that says there are no gods – it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch once I got past magic, but it is not inevitable.

If it is proven that there really is no such thing as free will, that all my choices are just the inevitable result of factors entirely beyond my control, then I’ll have a ‘choice’: I can either rethink that world view in light of the new evidence I’ve been exposed to, and change it as necessary to conform to reality as best I can understand it; or I can dig in my heels and find some way to cling to my ‘faith’ in free will, distorting my perception of the evidence to suit my desires and moving reality to a subordinate position on my value hierarchy.

I guess the choices we make when faced with evidence that disproves our current world views are an indication of what we’re made of – literally or metaphorically, depending on what the true reality is.

And finally, one tangent I can’t (or is it choose not to?) resist taking a step onto:

Randal: “Robert Gressis is the exception that proves the general rule.”

I’ve never understood this concept. How can an exception prove a rule? Doesn’t an exception prove the rule is wrong?
Robert Gressis

Hi Randal,

You wrote, “I’d be happy to hear more about both options.”

I’m not well-prepared to talk about the second option in any more depth than already did, so if you’d like to talk more about that, I suggest we both read a paper by Tim O’Connor on the matter. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to read that paper, so I’m going to immediately Welsh on my best (with apologies to the Welsh). So let me just get to Balaguer’s event-causal, materialistic libertarianism.

It takes a while to articulate, which is why I haven’t done it until now.

Balaguer’s view starts with the phenomenology of what he calls “torn decisions.” A torn decision is when you find the reasons for doing A just as good as the reason for doing B, and so you find it impossible to rationally prefer A to B or vice versa.

Here’s an example of a torn decision:
Ralph is deciding between moving to New York City and staying in Mayberry, North Carolina. If he moves to New York, he believes he’ll win fame and fortune (reasons R1 and R2). If he stays in Mayberry, he believes he’ll maintain safety and stability (R3 and R4). He values fame and fortune just as much as he values safety and stability. Consequently, he cannot decide between going to New York and staying in Mayberry. However, his decision has a deadline, so when he reaches the deadline he “just chooses” to move to New York City. If asked, “why did you move to New York City?”, he would respond “fame and fortune”. However, if he had been asked, “why did you move to NYC *over* staying in Mayberry?”, he would have responded, “I don’t know…I just had to make a decision, and the decision I opted for was moving to New York.”

Now imagine token-token materialism about the mind and the brain is true. Thus, every mental event is a physical (brain) event. So, what’s going on in Ralph’s brain when he makes a torn decision? Well, assuming Ralphs’s phenomenology is veridical, R1 and R2 favor A just as strongly as R3 and R4 favor B; another way of putting that is that at time t1, there is a 50% chance Ralph will select A by time t2 (the deadline), and there is also a 50% chance he will select B by the by t2.

In addition, because it is R1-R4 that fix the probabilities of Ralph’s future decision, we can say that, should Ralph choose A, then his choice of A was non-deterministically caused by R1 and R2 (this is just the physiological analogue of our saying that, if Ralph had been asked why he went to New York, he’d say, “because of fame and fortune”). Similarly, if Ralph chooses B, then we could say that his choice of B was non-deterministically caused by R3 and R4.

Penultimately, assume that Ralph’s eventual choice of A is a Ralph-consciously-choosing-A event. In other words, when he chooses A, he will feel as though he is purposefully choosing A.

Finally, assume that Ralph’s eventual choice of A is uncaused. This is the physiological analogue to his feeling that he “just chose” A. After all, what is it to “just choose” A over B? It is to arbitrarily, or whimsically, or randomly choose A over B. You know the reasons favoring A are no better than the reasons favoring B. But you have to make a choice of A. So you just choose A. On the physiological level, what this means is that there is no explanation for why the event of Ralph’s-consciously-choosing-A arose rather than the event of Ralph’s-consciously-choosing-B arose. In other words, Ralph’s actual decision is uncaused.

And Balaguer (and, I think, I) think that if the story I told above is correct, then it’s possible to have a materialistic, event-causal libertarianism.
- randal
  
  Robert,
  
  Before proceeding further in your excellent, and labor-intensive summary, let me camp here for a bit: “Now imagine token-token materialism about the mind and the brain is true.”
  
  That’s my biggest problem. I think it is the case not just that I fail to see how a mental event could be a physical event but that I can see that a mental event cannot be a physical event. In the same way that I can see the number 3 cannot be physically extended (in contrast to a conventionally agreed upon symbolic representation of the number 3) so I can see that a mental event cannot be a physical event. It’s the wrong kind of thing. So it seems to me that a person is forced to a property dualist position and, so far as I can see, epiphenomenalism, which would lock the mind out of the causal story.
  - Robert Gressis
    
    Randal,
    
    You may be right about the impossibility of token-token materialism, and I, like you, typically find it a category error to say that a mental event *is* a physical event. Typically, though, and as you know, when people object to materialistic accounts of *free will*, it’s not because materialism about the mind is wrong; rather, it’s because if materialism is true, then it seems as though the only options are us acting in a fully caused fashion or in a merely random fashion, with no middle ground.
    
    However, in defense of your response, Hilary Bok once wrote (in her 1998 book _Freedom and Responsibility_) that the main threat most people feel to their free will isn’t *determinism* but rather *mechanism*–the idea that we are made up of small little parts, and nothing but that, and that these parts are what exhaust us, makes us little more than gussied-up robots. So perhaps that’s where the relevance of your objection to the materialism part of the story comes in.
    
    For my part, although I sometimes have a big problem with materialism, I’m sometimes relieved of this worry when I remind myself that I have little idea of what the word “physical” means.