Brain-states and Subjectivity

Brain states and subjectivity

Koch’s analysis of the relationship between brain states and the subjective feeling of agency has only two possible solutions, one of which he rejects. The apparent options are that either further search will prove an unbridgeable gap between consciousness and physical science, or the progress of neuro-science will explain away the feeling of agency as nothing but the behavior of molecules. Koch considers the first option as the defeat of science.

The attitude of, “science” as expressed by practicing scientists as well as philosophers of science is that science is always unfinished, but there are no caps on what it can discover in the future. The question is whether further progress must lead to either a dualism that defeats physical science, or a complete reductionism that reduces consciousness to an illusion. A third possibility is a development of science that includes and surpasses the present state of science, but which sheds the philosophical assumptions of contemporary materialism.    

Koch, for one, offers a proposed direction of science that leaves contemporary materialism behind. He sets out to develop a theory that explains how and why the physical world can generate consciousness. After explaining the concept of “emergence,” and asserting that life is an emergent phenomenon of chemistry and physics, he asserts: “Subjectivity is too radically different from anything physical for it to be an emergent phenomenon” (119). The example that he offers to illustrate his point is the experience of a shade of blue, which is radically different from all of the electrical activity in the brain of a person who experiences the blue. Although he re-affirms the materialist premise that something such as the perception of a color cannot take place without the activity of the eye’s cone photoreceptors, he also acknowledges that the experience cannot be reduced to its physical cause. He takes a giant step if not a leap when he states, “I believe that consciousness is a fundamental, an elementary, property of matter.”119 The conventional attitude of most scientists and other modern thinkers is that the elements of the universe are unconscious until evolution accidently produces an animal with a relatively complex nervous system. Koch affirms that this is the attitude of most scientists, based on many conversations with fellow scientists.

Koch, however,  maintains that consciousness is immanent in all organized pieces of matter. The higher the organization, the greater the consciousness. Consciousness stands as a property of the organization of the elements and cannot be reduced to the elements themselves. According to his thinking, the organized matter need not be organic. Artificial consciousness in complex machines, designed by humans, looms as a distinct possibility.

Along with his late friend and mentor, Francis Crick, Koch attributes his insight to a theory devised by Giulio Tononi called integrated information. Tononi’s premises are that “Each conscious state is extraordinarily informative, extraordinarily differentiated and highly integrated. 125. Consciousness comes with organized chunks of matter. It is immanent in the organization of the system. “120.

            Since the word “information” generally means stuff that we know, the deeper scientific and philosophical meaning of the term “information” stands in need of clarification. Koch provides such a clarification beginning with the observation that when we describe every state of consciousness as “informative” we mean that its quality of differentiation makes it absolutely unique so that it can never be repeated. Its uniqueness differentiates it from every other conscious state. 

In addition to being differentiated, every conscious state is integrated. We cannot experience components of a state of consciousness apart from the whole. For example, if we are looking at a colorful landscape, we cannot experience it as black and white. While an artist may sketch the landscape using only black pencils, our experience of the sketch would be a different state of consciousness from that of seeing the landscape. If the areas of brain activity, which interact in a state of consciousness, become fragmented, as happens under anesthesia, consciousness fades. Also, if there is little specific information as happens in sleep, consciousness also fades. Consciousness requires a rich supply of differentiated information integrated in a single system. 125   “Any conscious system must be a single integrated entity with a large repertoire of highly integrated states.” 126

The implications of integrated information include the affirmation that consciousness constitutes a property of the universe that pervades every integrated system beginning with sub-atomic particles and becoming ever more prevalent in more complex molecules, and more obvious with the evolution of life and higher organisms.  Koch connects this conclusion with the ancient belief in pan-psychism, the belief that all matter is to some degree sentient. More specifically, he draws the parallels between integrated information and the belief of the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1954), whose law of complexification “…asserts that matter has an inherent compulsion to assemble into ever more complex groupings. And complexity breeds consciousness.”

            Although Koch affirms that consciousness constitutes a property of the universe that is distinct from matter and that cannot be reduced to matter or an emergent property of matter, he does not deviate from his reductionist stand that consciousness cannot exist without matter.  As he sums it up: “But without some carrier, some mechanism, integrated information can’t exist. Put succinctly: no matter; never mind.” Nevertheless, he affirms a Socratic-like scientific humility reminiscent of William James who said, “Our science is a drop, our ignorance the sea.” In Koch’s words, “Our knowledge is but a fire lighting up the vast darkness around us, flickering in the wind. So let us be open to alternative, rational explanations in the quest for the sources of consciousness.” 135.

Koch’s research and his interpretation seem to be more compatible with a teleological than a mechanistic view of the universe. Rather than consciousness being an accidental and insignificant by-product of matter, matter seems to be moving purposively toward the development of consciousness. Although Koch rejects the notion of a soul that can subsist without the brain and also rejects the religious notion of God, he affirms a trust, some might call it a faith, that the universe is not meaningless. Part of this attitude is a faith in science, specifically that it is poised to solve the mind-body problem. But he rejects the temptation to think of science as the final and absolute form of knowledge. “I do not know what will come afterward, if there is an afterward in the usual sense of the word, but whatever it is, I know in my bones that everything is for the best.” “I do believe that some deep and elemental organizing principle created the universe and set it in motion for a purpose that I cannot comprehend.” If his hunch is right on the last two statements, then consciousness, not human consciousness, but consciousness, has a priority over matter. Not everything is lost with the inevitable disintegration of the physical universe and there is a pathway for dealing with the problem of the good.

            As stated at the beginning of these posts, consciousness while the most universal and familiar of topic, eludes attempts to provide analytical understanding. Yet, consciousness stands out as the most essential condition for anything that we might call good. Materialism reduces consciousness and therefore all good, to an accidental product of blind, indifferent, unconsciousness physical events. But my thesis affirms the reasonableness of holding that consciousness precedes the evolution of the human brain, which becomes a channel of consciousness. If this view, as opposed to the materialist view is correct, then goodness is real and the meaning of our life consists of promoting that which is good aesthetically and ethically   In the following posts, I will strive to show what the priority of consciousness has to do with Biblical religion, how it can also provide meaning for those without religion, and how it enhances our understanding of environmental, economic, and social ethics.  

Is Free Will an Illusion?

Is Free Will an Illusion?

The issue of free will is closely linked to the meaning of consciousness because the whole question of free will asks whether consciousness can determine matter without being completely determined by matter. Put more specifically, can the conscious subject decide on particular brain events without the decision having been predetermined by other brain events? For example, consider a person who resolves to improve his or her fitness by taking up running. It seems, from the person‘s point of view, that the resolution causes the mind to focus on health and fitness so that physical changes takes place. The person now devotes time and energy to running on a road or track, time that would otherwise have been spent on some sedentary activity such as playing with a computer. But was the origin and continuation of the resolution caused by some other physical brain event of which the person had neither awareness nor control? Here I will resume the dialogue with Christof Koch’s Consciousness.

Koch offers as a definition of free will: “You are free if, under identical circumstances, you could have acted otherwise. Identical circumstances refer to not only the same external conditions but also the same brain states” (Koch, 92). He considers debates on the reality of free will to be futile since we cannot go back and do things differently. I think that his observation about the futility of debates on free will stems from his definition rather than on the real possibility of free will. His definition looks backward, “Could you have acted differently?” This definition sets up a sure failure for free will since, to the best of my knowledge, no free will theory would say that we are free to change the past. What’s done is done. But free will takes on a different meaning when we apply it to the future. The question of free will can be restated as: “Can I, through ‘attention with effort,’ make my future different from what it would be without such effort.” The phrase, “attention with effort,” flows from William James and his notion that ideas control action and that through effort we can determine which ideas control our action. This understanding need not slip into futility since it has a real impact. Suppose a young person heard this idea from someone whom she respects and tries to apply it to her life. Would this notion not make a difference in the way she lived? The practical significance of this question can best be understood by reviewing William James’s description of free will.

According to James, every idea has some bodily expression and ideas either instigate or inhibit muscular movements. Since we generally have several ideas at any one time, some contradicting others, we act on the most dominant one. We are free if and only if we can, by effort, make a chosen idea dominant by deliberately attending to it.

For example, a person who has a plate of fried chicken in front of him may eat it without effort since the dominant idea is how good it tastes. But if the same person turns his attention to the desirability of clean arteries and a healthy body weight, he may, through effort, make this healthy image dominant and so change his eating habits. The whole question of free will comes down to whether “we,” our conscious selves, can determine the ideas that we attend to and the amount of effort that we can exert to maintain the attention.

            If the materialists are right, then the whole process of “attention with effort” originates in molecules of which we may not be consciously aware, and “we” are mere spectators of a process over which we have no control. We cannot prove that the materialists are right or wrong, However, it is reasonable to believe that we can, perhaps to a very small degree, choose what we think is good, pay attention to it with effort, and thereby make our lives different from what they otherwise would be. If this assumption is true, then we have a free will and consciousness has a degree of control over matter.

            Koch offers two reasons to doubt that consciousness can exert control over matter. The first reason is based on the conservation of energy. Anything that happens in the physical world depends on the existing energy. Nothing happens without using some amount of energy that constitutes the physical universe. So the neural correlates of thought, the physical conditions necessary for any thought, depend on some physical event. They cannot originate from any non-physical entity, even if there are non-physical entities.

            Koch leaves an infinitesimal crack in the closed neuro-physical system that may provide an opportunity for free will, but he considers the degree of freedom to be insignificant, and on a practical level, indistinguishable from mere chance. In describing the one opportunity for free will, Koch refers to the view of Karl Popper and John Eccles, advocates of free will, that “the conscious mind imposes its will onto the brain by manipulating the way neurons communicate with each other in the regions of the cortex concerned with the planning of movement.” According to the Popper-Eccles view, the mind need not supply the physical energy for the movement of the chemical signals, but it can “direct traffic” by promoting activity in theses neurons and preventing it in those. But Koch argues that such influence is possible only in quantum-mechanical states in which there is a certain probability that a synapse will or will not switch. According to his argument, the mind cannot change the probability, but it might determine what will happen on any given event. Control over a single event does not change the probability that the person will act this way rather than that way. But, we may ask, if the mind can control this one event, might it also influence the next one and the one after? Could this type of influence, over time, not change the probability?

            Koch follows up with further arguments against the feasibility of free will (Koch 105-105). He cites and describes experimental evidence that brain activity that instigates an apparent act of will, actually begins before the actor is aware of making a decision. In Koch’s example, a person indicates the instant that he or she decides to move an arm. The actual movement of the arm coincides with the moment of their awareness, but EEG information shows that the process has started prior to the decision. This experiment implies that what we feel is a free choice is, in fact, the result of brain activity of which we are unaware.

            However, free will is not about a single action but about a life-time of habit formation. In the case of the arm movement experiment, it might be just as well if unconscious neuro-physical events choose the moment to move an arm. But there are many human activities in which it is crucial to choose a particular act at just the right moment. Such examples abound especially in sports. For example, if a baseball player is deciding to steal second base, he must pick the right moment. If he leaves a second too early he might get picked off; a second too late and he will be thrown out. So an unconscious physical brain event, which occurs before the actual steal attempt, might serve him better than slower conscious deliberation. But a baseball player has spent a lot of time deliberately developing the habit of running bases. He has chosen to develop these habits, therefore he has chosen the neural pathways that enable him to seize the moment without deliberation. The deliberate development of habits applies to all sports, music, dancing, cooking, hunting, and many other activities. We may freely choose to spend time developing these skills. When time sensitivity is not an issue, we are free to the extent that, over time we can choose how we develop our habitual behavior. The habits serve us well when we must act “in the blink of an eye.” While the above description does not “prove” free will, it does provide a feasible belief in free will that survives Koch’s argument against it.

            A further look at Koch reveals that he himself believes in free will. He affirms a "compatibilist” notion of free will, which means that you are free if and only if you can follow your own desires and preferences. For example, smokers who wish to stop smoking are free or not free depending on whether they are able to follow their desire to stop. Some can and some can’t. But even in the case of those who successfully follow their desire, the desires themselves stem from biological and psychological events over which the person has no authorship. (93). The person who wishes to smoke would be free if he were allowed to smoke without limitations and prohibitions. The same holds true of those who wish to express their preference for unlimited acquisitions, sexual encounters, or physical expression of anger. In Koch’s case, he not only wants to be able to express his desires and preferences without coercion or prohibition, but also specifies what he wants his desires to be. (I assume that this is also true of Dennett and most other materialists in spite of their theory).

It is worth quoting Koch at length to show his position regarding free will.

After rejecting both classical determinism that sees the future as already fixed, and also rejecting the notion that an immaterial “soul” can influence matter, he concludes:

“I’ve taken two lessons from these insights. First, I‘ve adopted a more pragmatic compatibilist conception of free will. I strive to live as free of external and internal constraints as possible. The only exception should be constraints that I deliberately and consciously impose upon my self, chief among them constraints motivated by ethical concerns; whatever you do, do not hurt others and try to leave the planet a better place than you found it. Other considerations include family, health, financial stability, and mindfulness. Second, I try to understand my unconscious motivations, fears, and desires better. I reflect deeper about my own actions and emotions than my younger self did” (emphases added).

Who or what is the “I” that “strives,” “deliberately and consciously imposes,” and “tries?” It seems that if consciousness has no autonomy, we can only hope that our molecules will do these things or, depending on the molecules, hope that they don’t. A dogmatic materialist may argue that Koch has gone soft in the paragraph quoted above.  But, on the contrary, the hopeful resolute paragraph may simply show the limitation of materialism.

An unpublished letter sent to the Wheeling Sunday News-Register.

                                                                                                                                                                October 24, 2017

Editor Sunday News-Register:

                Many critics of the Affordable Care Act argue that nobody should have to pay for insurance to cover services they do not need, including maternity care. Most recently in a column published in the October 22 issue of the Sunday News-Register, Betsy McCaughey complained: “You have to pay for maternity care even if you’re too old to give birth.” She could have added that even a lot of young people will never need maternity care. McCaughey praises the current administration for rejecting the maternity provisions of the Obama era.

                The problem is that few people could afford health care without insurance and all insurance is premised on the fact that there must be more payers than users. Specifically, if only those who hope to have babies paid for maternity care, the cost of childbirth would be prohibitive for most families.

                If the financial base of maternity care is removed, we can expect that the rate of abortions, which has been steadily declining, will take a sharp upward turn. Why are pro-life groups, including the Conference of Catholic Bishops, not protesting against the attack on maternity care? If politicians and citizens who call themselves “pro-life” really care about the value of all human life, they will want to assure that all women of child-bearing age have maternity coverage.

Richard P. Mullin

160 Poplar Avenue, Unit 4

Wheeling, WV 26003

e-mail: Mullin160@comcast.net

Consciousness and the Challenge of Neuroscience

Consciousness and the challenge of neuroscience.

            The whole notion of consciousness as a reality independent of and higher than the brain has come under attack in recent years. Scientists and philosophers, most notably Daniel Dennett and Francis Crick have presented explanations reducing consciousness to brain molecules. As noted in an earlier post, Francis Crick in his 1994 book, the Astonishing Hypothesis, depicted consciousness and the very awareness of self as nothing but the activity of molecules. Daniel Dennett offered extended arguments for understanding both consciousness and freedom in physical terms In Consciousness Explained (1991), and Freedom Evolves (2003).  

            Christof Koch, a younger colleague of Francis Crick took on the project of fully explaining consciousness in physical reductionist terms. In his 2012 book, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, Koch sets out to “describe a plausible quantitative theory of consciousness that explains why certain types of highly organized matter, in particular brains, can be conscious.” Koch argues that consciousness will ultimately be explained by the physical sciences, especially neuro-biology. But while he insists that consciousness cannot exist without matter, he rejects the notion that the reduction of consciousness to the activity of billions of tiny nerve cells excludes the possibility of meaning in the universe. 

            Koch grapples with the hard problem, a term used by David Chalmers, which refers to understanding why anybody can be conscious at all. He summarizes the great progress that neuroscience is making in connecting conscious states with neural events, but admits that all of the science is from a third person point of view. He poses the question that involves the hard problem from a reductionist’s perspective: “…how does nervous tissue acquire an interior first-person point of view?” Koch rejects the notion that the gap between brain’s mechanisms and consciousness is unbridgeable, dismissing such views as defeatist and a denigration of reason. His premise asserts that since science has been the best method for understanding the external world, it should also help us explain the interior world of consciousness.

            Koch contends that science can close the gap that still separates neurological understanding of the brain and actual first-person states of consciousness. Describing the advances that have been made in exploration of the brain he writes: “Neuroscience textbooks describe this organ in mind-numbing detail yet leave out what it means to be the owner of one.” Koch intends to make up for this “remarkable omission” by showing the link between the experiencing subject and the perspective of the brain scientist. His specific goal is to find what he and Francis Crick call the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) defined as “the minimal neural mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one specific conscious concept.”

It would seem that if he is successful, he will have refuted my thesis as explained in my opening post, namely that it is reasonable to believe that consciousness precedes matter. But even if Koch, or other researchers show how matter becomes conscious by developing a highly complex brain, and I am assuming that they will, it will show what a material being needs to be conscious, but not necessarily entail that all consciousness requires a material base. A full explanation of how matter becomes conscious leaves open the question of whether any conscious reality existed prior to matter becoming conscious.

When in Doubt, Start with William James

When in doubt, start with William James

            The vastness of literature on consciousness presents a problem of selection, especially a starting point. In this case, I will follow a personal maxim: “When in doubt, start with William James.”  In his Principles of Psychology (1890), James writes extensively about the meaning of consciousness. He points out that no one can deny that they have “states of consciousness,” although finding an adequate vocabulary to describe them poses enormous problems. Everyone who thinks about thought, including those in what was then the new science of psychology, can distinguish between the object of the thought and the thought itself. If they turn to reflective introspection, thinking about the thought itself, they can distinguish between the thought and the thinker. The thought is part of what James calls the empirical self, the “me.” But the thinker is the “I.” When I try to think of the thinker, I make it an object, part of the empirical me. While I cannot deny that there is a subjective thinker, its nature eludes me. For the sake of creating a naturalistic psychology, James defers the metaphysical question of what the thinker is, and limits himself to describing the most recent thought as the thinker. If I introspectively try to capture this thought, it is now a part of empirical me, which consists of all the thoughts of which I am aware. A new thought is now making this judgment. 

In his later works, James takes on the metaphysical question of consciousness.

The “Conclusions” to his 1909 work, A Pluralistic Universe, describes “religious experiences of a specific nature.” Significantly, James calls them “experiences,” rather than objects of faith or reason. These experiences reveal a range of happiness and power that supersedes our naturalistic thinking and “seem to show a world that is wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine.” He describes these experiences as a kind of life after death. Here James does not mean our biological death, but rather, “…death of hope death of strength…death of everything that paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their trust to.”  James contends that reasoning would never have inferred these experiences of a larger world revealing itself after the experience of despair.  But once they reveal themselves, anyone trying to develop a more complete philosophy must a take them into account. These experiences give individuals a sense that their own consciousness is continuous with a wider self from which the experience flows in. Describing an individual life as being “continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him,” James refers to “words which I have used elsewhere,” an allusion to the “Conclusions” of his 1901 Gifford Lectures, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

            In Varieties of Religious Experience James provides more insights on consciousness than this post can accommodate. The experiences that he describes in terms of expanded consciousness include unifying the divided soul, conversion, saintliness, and mysticism. In his chapter “Mysticism,” he expresses what he calls a truth that had earlier forced itself on his mind:

It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special types of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. 298.

Throughout the Varieties, James offers such experiential evidence that consciousness consists of much more than the awareness of any single human organism.

In the “Conclusions” he offers a way to interpret the larger consciousness. These experiences; conversion, saintliness, and mysticism, reveal a larger world from which our ordinary consciousness draws its significance. On the near side, it seems to be an extension of the conscious individual self. But it may extend further to include what religious believers call God. Based on the real impact that the larger consciousness has on human lives, often leading to heroic work and saintly behavior toward others, James infers that what seems to be a higher consciousness is in fact higher and greater than the individual, rather than something that the individual brain secretes.

            If James’s interpretation holds true, then consciousness is prior to matter, specifically prior to the matter of any individual brain. As the brain develops in human evolution and in the maturing of the individual, it becomes a vessel of what we call consciousness. In this interpretation, growth in consciousness, manifested in greater awareness, intelligence, and love, stands out as the goal of human life. From this point of view, whatever promotes the development of consciousness is good; whatever inhibits it is evil.

Consciousness, Freedom, and Evolution

Consciousness, Freedom, and Evolution

The subject of consciousness would overflow even a very large tome devoted to describing it. The purpose of this post must be limited to demonstrating consciousness as the exemplar of good in the universe. Part of the task consists of showing how consciousness develops in evolving species like our own, and how freedom flows from consciousness.

My reasoning about consciousness in the context of these post on the “justification of the good” rests on the assumption that the growth and development of consciousness stands out as a commonly accepted instance of something which is good. Anyone reading this paragraph will probably agree or they would not be reading this or anything else. While it is true that a person suffering clinical depression might prefer sleep to wakefulness, wish they had not been born, and become suicidal, they and anyone who loves them would clearly see their state as a tragic misfortune. Much of psychotherapy consists of enabling people to enjoy greater consciousness. The same can be said of most medical care and of almost all education.

Do we know what consciousness is?

           

A seemingly insurmountable problem faces us at the beginning of any conversation about consciousness, namely, trying to state clearly the very nature of consciousness. For starters, it is indefinable. Consciousness stands alone as a reality that does not belong to any genus and is not like anything else. But although we cannot define consciousness, we can describe it in the literal sense of the word “describe,” meaning that we can write about it. We can also talk about it and certainly think about it. We come to understand consciousness by contrast to unconsciousness as when we temporarily lose consciousness because of an accident or anesthesia. Other contrasts include sleeping and wakefulness, dreaming and awareness of our external surrounding, and boredom compared to full interest.

Further, we can look at conscious development both in the individual and in the species to show how consciousness moves from mere sensation, to perception, judgment, reasoning, and beyond. A problem presents itself in that all of these methods assume that we already know what consciousness is. The good news is that in fact we do know what consciousness is. Everyone who has ever thought of this question already knows what consciousness is. So the only task of this work is to articulate and interpret consciousness to show how it exemplifies the problem of the good. 

We can clarify our understanding of consciousness by comparing the poles of a spectrum from material to spiritual. If there is a totally non-consciousness being, what is it like?  Imagine a particle of matter as conceived in traditional Newtonian science. It appears to be dead, inert, moved and determined only by external forces, and impenetrable. By contrast, whether or not we believe that any non-material being exists, we can think of a pure spirit, in contrast to matter, as conscious, self-determined, and able to enter communion with other spiritual beings. We humans are obviously not pure spirits and we have much of Newtonian inertness about us. But if we have a degree of self-awareness, self-determination, and openness to community, then we are to that extent spiritual. An increase in spirituality as I use the term here, coincides with an increase in consciousness. 

            When we have moments of heightened awareness, we experience a more clear and intense knowledge of our world, a greater sense of freedom, and a feeling of oneness with people and perhaps things around us. Such heightened states may be generated from a wide and diverse range of human activity as reported by those who experience life-threatening emergencies, sports, music, contemplation of nature, and traditional religious meditation.  We can imagine that consciousness, freedom, and communion extend to infinity as all of our ordinary physical and psychological limitations lose their hold. Every spiritual tradition claims saints and mystics who actually experience unity with infinite being. More on the next post.

Creation and Chaos

Creation and Chaos

            The notion of God as a designer who controls every event in creation rules out the notion of evolution by natural selection; conversely the acceptance of evolution by natural selection rules out the possibility of belief in God the designer.  Religious thinkers who welcome the findings of evolution understand God differently from the theists and the atheists who think of God as a Designer. Theologian John Haught, for example, contends that the discoveries of Darwin open up the possibility of a richer notion of God than had ever been know before. Religious understanding, specifically the understanding of Christianity, does not portray God as an all-controlling designer, but as one who empties Himself to allow the world to be itself. As Haught sees it:

 God’s creative love constitutes the world as something ontologically distinct from God, and not as a simple extension of divine being. Consequently, the indeterminate natural occurrences that recent physics has uncovered at the most elementary levels of physical reality, the random events that biology finds at the level of life’s evolution, and the freedom that emerges with human existence are all features proper to any world that is permitted and even encouraged to be distinct from the creative love that underlies it.

In Christian belief and experience, God reveals Himself in the form of a poor man, of no political or economic consequence, who suffered death by execution on a cross. The trust in an incomprehensible God, in spite of unbearable sorrow also runs deep in the history of religious Jews from their early days of exile up through the Holocaust.  This notion, of course, has no appeal to those who do not accept it, but it shows that God as experienced in Christianity and Judaism bears no resemblance to the powerful but prissy god whom anti-evolutionists affirm, and atheists reject. God as experienced by religion is quite compatible with evolution by natural selection. As expressed by the renowned Jesuit paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) “Even to a mere biologist, the evolution of life resembles nothing so much as a way of the cross.”

            The key issue, as John Haught argues, is not whether the universe is the work of an Intelligent Designer, but whether the universe has purpose. The two questions are different although both sides often run them together as, “The world is either the product of Intelligent Design or it is pointless.” Advocates of Intelligent Design, invoke the complexity and beauty of design while atheists claim that the design is sporadic and explainable by randomness over vast periods. Haught’s rejection of design is similar to the argument of the atheists in that he contends that evolution does not look like the work of a designer. But Haught, rather than looking back for an original design, looks ahead to an evolving purpose. He further argues that the religions that sprang from Abraham consist primarily in hope for the future.

            The question of purposefulness in the universe cannot be answered by science. Scientists can and do express opinions on the issues of purpose, but in doing so they base their judgments on whatever factors cause a person to accept or reject faith in a purposeful universe. Haught compares the fatalism of some scientists to that of the Greek tragedies. Fate for the scientists as for the tragedians moves on with remorseless indifference to human aspirations and comes to a bad conclusion. Shakespeare’s Mac Beth expressed this powerfully on hearing of his wife’ death:

Life’s but a brief shadow; a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

Of course, the scientists who think of the universe as pointless may or may not feel their own life as tragic; they might be quite content with their “hour upon the stage.” But regardless of how scientists view life, their view is not part of their science. As Haught argues, science is not equipped to find the value of things. Such questions are metaphysical, and although metaphysics must be consistent with science, a metaphysics of promise is not less scientific than a metaphysics of despair.

            John Haught fully embraces the insights of science and especially those of Darwinian evolution. He contends that these scientific insights are not only compatible with the experience of biblical faith, but that they nourish a theology that is richer than pre-Darwinian religious thought. Scientists begin with the commitment to the belief that the world is to some extent intelligible and that truth is worth the hard work of science. These faith commitments of scientists do not prove anything about the ultimate nature of reality, but they are more compatible with a religious vision than with a materialistic one. Unlike the materialist interpretation of reality, the religious view sees the work of the scientist as part of a larger cosmic narrative characterized by a hopeful outcome.

             Haught shows the weakness of naïve theism as well as naïve atheism both of which find a world that grows from random events, as depicted by Darwin, incompatible with belief in God. These theists therefore argue that the events happen by design and the randomness is illusory; the atheists affirm the randomness and declare belief in a Creator to be the illusion. Haught grounds his view of creation in the religious insight that God’s love is self-emptying, which allows creation to develop on its own as something other than the Creator. As Haught writes:

An unrestrained display of infinite presence or “omnipotence” would leave no room for anything other than God, and so it would leave out any evolutionary self-transcendence on the part of the cosmos. It is a humble “retreat” on God’s part that allows the cosmos to stand on its own and then to evolve as a relatively autonomous reality distinct from its creative ground. In this sense, creation and its evolutionary unfolding would be less the consequence of an eternal divine “plan” than of a humble and loving “letting be.” 

The crucial meaning of Haught’s insights shows that a slowly evolving and chaotic universe does not necessarily lead to a materialist view of reality. Theists and atheist alike cannot get by with a simple choice of affirming or denying design.

            Haught’s process theology takes a different approach to the notion of God as designer. He maintains that the universe is allowed to grow as something independent of the Creator. He contrasts the understanding of God in process theology with the portrayal of god in naive theism and atheism:

A coercive deity---one that immature religiosity often wishes for and that our scientific skeptics invariably have in mind when they assert that Darwin has destroyed theism---would not allow for the otherness, autonomy, and self-coherence necessary for a world to be a world unto itself. 

A non-coercive creator allows not only human freedom, but also the pre-human spontaneity that allows for the formation of the universe and the evolution of life and of species. Haught concludes that God is the source not only of order, but also the instability and disorder that are necessary for novelty and for life itself.

While John Haught approaches the issue of evolution as a theologian with a deep understanding of science, Kenneth R. Miller approaches the same question as a cell biologist with a rich understanding of theology. In his book, Searching for Darwin’s God, Miller begins by demolishing the array of Creationists theories including Intelligent Design. These theories, while claiming the label of “scientific,” deny the validity of much well-established science, and they present a diminished notion of God. In chapters 3, 4 and 5, Miller shows that Creationists present God as: first, a charlatan who created the earth only ten thousand years ago, but through fakery, made it look older; second, as a magician who made living things appear out of thin air; and third, as a mechanic who tinkered together the intricacy of the living cell. Miller then demonstrates that the origin of life as well as of species can be accounted for by the scientific study based on Darwinian natural selection.   

            The conflict that still endures between some religious thinkers and some scientists

stems partly from the notion that religion can answer questions better left to science, for example, questions on the origin of life and origin of species. But the controversy is fueled by many evolutionists who contend that evolution makes mechanistic materialism triumphant to the point that any religious or spiritual ideas are superfluous and irrational. Those evolutionists hold in common with the creationists the premise that evolution and religion are mutually exclusive.

Evolution, the problem of evil, and a challenge to the idea of the good.

Evolution, the problem of evil, and a challenge to the idea of good.

The argument from evil stands out as the strongest case against belief in God. If an all good and all powerful Creator produced a world, the argument goes, that world would reflect the Creator’s own goodness. But a close look at reality presents something quite different from what we would expect. Life on earth is violent, terrifying and excruciatingly painful for its inhabitants. Except for those at the top of the food chain, animals must seek food for themselves and their young under the constant threat of being eaten by a predator. Their lives are likely to end with a few minutes of terror as they try to escape and then the horror and physical pain of having the claws and teeth of death tear into their flesh.

            Psychologist Ernest Becker writing about how our fear of death, which we try to suppress, describes an absurd nature in which the horror of human death constitutes a small but typical part:

What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to tear others apart with teeth of all types---biting, grinding flesh…bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating the essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue?

Becker argues that if we can remove all of the illusions that constitute our culture and look at life as it is, we realize that nature mocks the poet. In the context of these posts, we might conclude that nature mocks the idea of the good.

Why did the Creator not make us all vegetarians like the animals in the “Peaceable Kingdom?” Since plants lack the awareness and the nervous system to feel pain, eating them would not involve inflicting cruelty. Or better, yet, why not endow all creatures with the power of photosynthesis and skip eating all together?  But since eating constitutes such a pleasure, why did the Creator not grow lobster tails on trees so that we could enjoy them without throwing a live lobster into boiling water? And why can we not enjoy all sorts of steaks and roasts without the pain and horror of the slaughterhouse? Scientists today are working on growing meat from stem cells. Why didn’t an omniscient Creator think of that? The contrast between reality and our fantasy of what a benign all-mighty being would have created constitutes for many an airtight argument against belief in God.  Atheists like Dawkins do not posit an evil god, but simply an absence of any creator or source of good and evil. The universe including the process of evolution is, in their view, unconscious and pitiless. Atheists have a strong case to show that the world including living things does not flow from an intelligent designer. What happens to the idea of the good?

The self-sufficiency of nature and the case for atheism

The self-sufficiency of nature and the case for atheism

The first argument, mentioned in the previous post, that evolution renders the need for a Creator superfluous, rests on the premise that, in the vastness of time and space, anything that could happen will happen somewhere at some time. Advocates of this idea depict biological evolution on earth as just one small instance of physical evolution by which the universe takes on the structure of elements and molecules following patterns that we call laws.  When writers such as Daniel Dennett speak of “vastness”, they do not limit themselves to the 13.7 billion years or so that mark the progress of our universe since the big bang. Rather they posit a vast if not infinite number of alternate universes that may have no spatial temporal or gravitational relationship with our universe. Every universe that could exist probably does exist and we are part of one that happens to have a structure that supports life and consciousness.

            Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow offer an atheist explanation of reality in their 2010 book, The Grand Design. The title is ironic, I assume deliberately so, because theists have traditionally argued that design implies an Intelligent Designer. But Hawking and Mlodinow posit a design without the need for a designer. They contend that the laws of physics can create new universes out of nothing. As Hawking and Mlodinow describe the universe producing laws:

Any set of laws that describes a continuous world such as ours will have a concept of energy, which is a constant quantity, meaning it does not change in time…One requirement any law of nature must satisfy is that it dictates that the energy of an isolated body surrounded by empty space is positive, which means that one has to do work to assemble the body.

It is not clear whether these laws and concepts, which dictate what energy must do, are aspects of reality or “merely” the brain products of very intelligent physicists, at this stage of human evolution. In the first chapter of The Grand Design, the authors stipulate that they are employing a “model dependent realism,” which means that our brains must employ a model to interpret the sensory data received by our senses from whatever is real. So there will always be a gap between what even our best physicists know and what really exists.

For Hawking and Mlodinow, and perhaps for all atheistic scientists, the laws constitute an uncaused cause, and given the vastness of time and space, there is no limit to the number of universes that exist, have existed, or will exist. In the view of self-creating universes, each universe may have its own local laws. We are lucky to live in a universe whose laws allow for planets like earth to exist and for life and a degree of intelligence to evolve. But the process that provides for a countless number of universes requires a basic law of energy and gravity that creates from nothing. The nothingness consists of negative energy. Neither atheists nor theists can imagine or think of nothing, so we all posit a kind of reality that enables something to come from “nothing.” For theists, the reality is a conscious Creator, for atheists the “creative” reality consists of unconscious laws. (No one can think of nothingness, because if there were nothing, there would be no thinking. We may not be able to go as far as Descartes and posit a thinking substance, but we could not deny that there is thinking.)

Not only do materialists believe that, in a universe such as ours, 13.7 billion years allows for random events to produce life and consciousness, but also that the enormity of time supports the belief that the evolutionary process occurs randomly. The slowness of the process is compatible with randomness, but not with a purposeful Creator. Atheists see the ten billion years from the big bang to the beginning of life on earth, and the 3.5 billion years from the beginning of life to the emergence of human scientists, as a prodigal waste of time. The god in whom atheists do not believe would have been much quicker and more efficient. 

The Pitilessness of Nature and the Problem of Good

The Pitilessness of Nature and the Problem of Good

Facing the facts of Evolution

            Any view of reality worthy of belief takes account of the facts that confront human beings in every aspect of our individual and communal lives, aspects such as those studied by natural science, social science, and history. These disciplines do not tell us where we should go from here, or how to get there, but they form the basis for understanding how we arrived at our present state of reality. The present discussion will focus on the facts revealed by science. Since 1859, when Darwin published his Origin of Species, the notion of evolution has impacted not only biology, but also philosophy, theology, politics, and economics. Nothing in our intellectual life has been the same.

            “Our materialistic age” in the title of this series of posts flows from the prevailing interpretation of Darwin. In this interpretation, there is no longer a need to deal with the problem of evil, a problem that vexed those who believed in a good and almighty Creator. Now, the things that we call evil are seen as simply things that we do not like, as an animal in the jungle does not like being eaten up by a predator. But the plight of the prey and our plight constitute the same process of evolution, which is blind and indifferent to the fate of all of us beasts. The problem that we must encounter is “the problem of good,” beginning with whether there is such a thing as good, beyond the enjoyment that an animal or human predator takes in eating its meal, finding its mate, or other such pleasures. This investigation must be undertaken in the context of Darwinian evolution.

Is anything really good?        

The question that defines these posts is whether the term “good” refers to an objective reality rather than to merely a subjective point of view as when a big fish eats a little fish – The big fish likes it, the little fish doesn’t. Theologians use the term theodicy, which literally means the justification of God, to describe the problem of believing in a good God in an evil universe. Theos means God, dike means justice. Perhaps we can coin the term agathodicy from agathon meaning good, to describe the problem of maintaining the reality of good in a Darwinian world. The two questions, of God and of good, are closely linked since both theists and atheists, who disagree on the reality of God, generally agree that if God is real, He She, or It is the source of goodness. If God is real how do we explain evil? If God is not real, how do we explain good?

            This investigation proceeds with an examination of whether a Darwinian understanding of biological evolution and its application to the genesis of the cosmos, forces an atheist conclusion. Some religious believers agree with the hypothetical connection, “If Darwin is right then God does not exist,” and conclude that Darwin therefore must be wrong. Materialists, of course, take the opposite position – “Darwin is right, therefore God does not exist.” But I will take up the premise that Darwin is in principle correct, and ask whether atheism necessarily follows.

The atheist argument has three main premises: First, evolution stands as a sufficient explanation of the present world, and so any appeal to a Creator is superfluous. Second, the randomness, waste, and slow pace of evolution exclude the presence of a purpose that would be the signature of a Creator. Third, and most powerful, the violence, pain and suffering of evolving life are incompatible with belief in a decent, much less an all good, Creator. 

Purpose in Evolution: All or Nothing?

Purpose in Evolution: All or Nothing?

            The argument today, at least in the popular culture, seems to favor a take-it-or leave-it choice that either the universe proceeds from an Intelligent Designer or results from blind chance. The argument for the blind chance position holds that the process of evolution bears no resemblance to what would be the work of an Intelligent Designer. This argument takes the form of the classical atheist argument based on the problem of evil. If there were a good and almighty and all wise God as Creator, the universe would be a very nice place; but the universe is not a very nice place. The second premise bears a lot of weight. The world does not look like the product of a good Creator. While things are messy and violent on earth, the ancients, even up to the time of Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century thought that at least the heavens reflected a rational order. We know now that, in the heavens, whole galaxies are colliding into each other and on earth the development of life is “red in tooth and claw.”

            One response to the denial of a clean product from a good Creator with a clear purpose is to reject the notion of good, creation, and purpose, and posit a world that emerges by blind chance. Many if not most of the materialists hold this position as their main premise. They appeal to the notion that in the vastness of time and space an infinite number of universes evolve and ours happens to have beings with life, consciousness, and a degree of intelligence. This idea seems to have worked its way into the popular culture where characters on TV and in movies casually mention alternative universes.

            Does logic force us to accept the notion that only blind chance could have produced our world? I intend to offer an interpretation that diverges radically from the materialist views that effectively deny the significance of consciousness. This series of posts concludes with a sketch of the position that will be elaborated and applied in the remaining posts.  Many instructional books on learning the art of drawing advise the budding artist to begin with a sketch to set the boundaries and proportions of the subject. Afterward, the details, accents, and shading can be applied to flesh out the picture. (Spoiler alert) I will follow this pattern by giving a sketch of my proposal. Any attempt to explain reality, whether attempted by a philosopher, a theologian, or a physicist, must involve at least a little hubris. Honesty requires Platonic humility, which means that we call our ideas “a likely story,” or in the words of Charles Sanders Peirce, “A guess at the riddle.”

            As a minimum requirement, a worldview must be possible, meaning that it exhibits both logical consistency and compatibility with known facts. The writer must then show that the view presented is probably true and at least as feasible, or more so, than other alternatives.

            We begin with the recognition of brute facts, which constitute chaos and apparently no sign of any kind of consciousness, order, or benevolence. This statement applies to the period following the “big bang,” to the development of stars and planet, and to the evolution of life on earth from the first protozoa to the “origin of species,” and even to the history of the human race. The fundamental particles seem to be inert unconscious, impenetrable, and determined by the conflicting blind forces of both necessity and chance. They do not display completely random behavior, but follow a regularity that scientists discern as laws of physics. Yet, their behavior also displays some randomness and uncertainty. Moving from fundamental particles to biology, the forces of chance and necessity are still at work. The whole premise of evolution rests on the notion that random mutations occur but then become genetically fixed. This description does not go beyond the reality of brute facts although the elements become entangled in patterns that give rise to consciousness and the ability to find patterns and study them scientifically.  

            But we human beings, at this stage of our evolution have the ability to discern something different from brute facts. We experience beauty: in each other, in nature, in music and art, in our own creative ideas, and in scientific theories. We see enough order and what we call by the name of goodness to make many believe that a Creator-God is at work. This form of consciousness constitutes my title phrase, “the problem of good.” Just as atheists deem the “problem of evil” as proof of God’s non-existence, those who believe in a spiritual reality may see “the problem of good” as a challenge to materialism.

Of course, the materialists will pass all of this off as illusion, or at best, a quirk of a particular set of random mutations in our brain. The dogma of materialism holds that whatever we cannot understand at this stage of our evolution, meaning anything that does not fit the method and content of science, does not exist. With a relatively high level of intelligence, scientists can describe objectively the movement of elementary particles and energy. The assumption of popular materialism holds that the consciousness by which we know physical nature must be a product of nature as we know it.

In posing the problem of consciousness and matter, the danger of a simplistic all-or-nothing dualism looms. A person might think that we must choose between materialism and a kind of creationism. But the complexity and depth of reality should cause us to reject both religious and scientific fundamentalism. A person can reject a literal interpretation of the Bible, in fact reject the whole Bible, without being a materialist. Likewise a person can reject materialism without being biblical fundamentalist.

An alternative vision sees the universe as a process of moving from absolute chaos to a cosmos that expresses: order, beauty, harmony, consciousness, freedom, joy, and, love. The materialists might consistently maintain that these qualities are subjective and fleeting. But the materialist view is not the only rational alternative. We can rationally maintain that these qualities are prior to our known world and that they are powerful, creative, and productive. Whatever is the source of these qualities---call it God or don’t---we may rationally maintain that evolution consists of these powers overcoming the chaos, necessity, and inertness of the elemental brute facts. To the extent that this vision is true, the qualities such as consciousness, freedom, love, and creativity, which we experience to a degree in our own lives, have their seeds in the very formation of the universe.          

            Can we posit a chaos of blind, inert, purposeless, and brutal realities tending toward further chaos and division, and also a Creator Spirit working in the whole development of the universe including human evolution on earth to bring about purpose, intelligence, freedom and cooperation? To affirm both does not mean a dualism of two layers, one material and the other spiritual. Rather the world itself reflects the interaction of the two opposing forces. In the posts to follow, I will elaborate on this interpretation and argue that it stands out as the most rational view that we can hold

Faith and Reason

Faith and Reason

The idea of teleology brings up the specter of God, which the materialists find abhorrent. They do so because they associate God with faith, and faith with blind trust and apostasy to reason. Dawkins, after defining faith as “blind trust” writes:

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry…Blind faith can justify anything. If a man believes in a different god, or even if he uses different rituals for worshipping the same god, blind faith can decree that he should die--on the cross, at the stake, skewered on a Crusader’s sword, shot in a Beirut street, or blown up in a bar in Belfast. Memes have their own ruthless way of propagating themselves. This is true of patriotic and political as well as religious blind faith.

Dawkins convicts faith, as the apostasy to reason, and as the generator of much of the violence and evil in human history.

The notion that faith excludes reason runs contrary to the traditional notion of Natural Law that requires that we strive to “know the truth about God.” Natural law requires believers to think rationally about God, a task which thinkers such as Dawkins believe constitutes a self-contradiction. Can a twenty-first century person accept the method and content of science and still affirm a non-materialist view of reality? This question is a paraphrase of the question that Josiah Royce (1855 -1916) asked in 1913:”In what sense, if any, can the modern man consistently be, in creed, a Christian?” Our intention here is to go beyond Christianity, as Royce also did, to include any non-materialist view. Royce’s answer to this question will be the subject of a later post, but for now we can begin to answer the question of whether we can be scientific without being materialistic by looking closely at evolution.

Evolution seems to be a trial and error attempt toward a teleological unity. Is this seeming teleology a reality or an illusion? How can we think of the process beginning? Pure nothingness is incomprehensible. Of course, we can think of “nothing” between particles or beyond the expanding universe. But in these cases we think of “nothing” juxtaposed to something. But what if nothing at all - neither God nor nature - existed? We can say the words but can have no comprehension of such hypothetical situations of nothingness. Fortunately, we can think of a material world, composed of elementary particles, whether it is created or non-created. Finding language that describes reality below human consciousness poses problem as daunting as describing reality above the level of our consciousness. We can come closest by means of analogies, metaphors, and stories about the things that we can understand.

We can imagine the world beginning in a chaos of brute facts. Does this sentence describe reality right before or right after the big bang? Such a concept of brute facts would be nightmarish and perhaps would constitute the terror and horror of some forms of psychosis. But what if there is a redeeming agape-love at work amid the chaos of brute facts? How long would it take to create a world with intelligent life? Is that what is happening as we speak? If so, how far along are we?

Evolution is a movement away from the chaos of brute facts toward a conscious universal community. We can at last come to the seeds of a contemporary Natural Law theory. In the thirteenth century St. Thomas defined eternal law as “the order by which all things are directed to their end.” We can interpret this statement in a way infinitely richer than he could since he was limited to a pre-Copernican world-view. We can see the “order” to which all things are directed as the teleological harmony to which the brute elemental facts are being called. An understanding of the “order” must include Darwinian evolution but need not be limited to the materialist interpretations of some contemporary Darwinists.

The principle that genetically brought about the replications of molecules becomes conscious in us. The struggle against the separateness of brute facts is the reason that we are here. The same struggle gives us a purpose and direction in which we can progress. The four main precepts of traditional natural law are as pertinent as ever:

1. Preserve yourself, 2. Preserve your species, 3. Know the truth about ultimate reality, and 4. Create social justice.

            The first three of these are easily understood. Self-preservation means that we strive to maintain and enhance our individual physical and psychological integrity. Preservation of our species means that we follow Dawkins’s “selfish genes” to perpetuate the human race. Materialists and teleologists agree that we should strive to know the ultimate nature of reality, although they disagree extremely on what this means. As for social justice, the materialist might see it as one meme among countless others; a teleologist more likely sees social justice as the goal of evolution.

 Social justice can be described as an arrangement of practices that would allow for both freedom and unity. Evolution is working to overcome separateness and integrating all into community. Natural Law enjoins us to take part in that enterprise of creating such a community. But social justice cannot survive in a unity based on tyranny or conformity. Rather, justice would further the evolutionary process by allowing as much freedom as possible to each. Anything that would hinder any person from evolving to his or her full potential, whether the hindrance is oppression, deliberate exclusion, marginalization, or neglect, would stand out as injustice

            The conscious movement toward a just community would constitute the culmination of the whole process of evolution from the absolute chaos of brute facts. If the freedom and unity were universal it would constitute what Josiah Royce called the “Great Community” or the “Beloved Community.” Our purpose here is not to describe a Utopia but to imagine what we could be at our best. What is the ontological status of such an idea? To some extent it already exists. You and I have a degree of freedom and a degree of unity. Many of us can actualize our potential and do not suffer oppression, exclusion and marginalization. Tragically, far too many people suffer these life choking evils, and are cut off from any sense of community. And even for those who are better off, the freedom and communal connectedness falls short of what we think it ought to be.  

Purpose in Evolution

Evolutionary Teleology   

Our view of reality can go beyond materialism and therefore be literally meta-physical. However, it is not necessary to posit an ontological break between nature and super-nature; what we need may be a larger understanding of nature. Developing a larger view begins with a critique of the materialist view.

For a proposition to be scientific, it must be falsifiable. Falsifiable does not mean false. Rather it means that there must be some conceivable experiment that could show the proposition to be false, in case it is. The materialist view is non-falsifiable. According to materialism whatever happens is known after the fact to be possible. Since this world is what it is, and since according to materialist doctrine natural selection is the only way that things develop, a world like this could have and must have evolved by natural selection. Likewise, since there is such a thing as consciousness, according to the materialistic hypothesis, consciousness obviously could and did evolve by natural selection. Given the vastness of time and space, anything that can happen probably will.

The question is whether the materialist view is the most rational one, as materialists assume that it is.  A non-materialist view holds that consciousness precedes evolution and so evolution is consciousness struggling toward more complete manifestations. Those who affirm a God-Creator, or hold to pantheism, or any form of idealism, see consciousness as a reality prior to matter. I will refer to those who hold a non-materialists view as teleologists, meaning that they believe that life is purposeful.  Teleologists take consciousness as a given and can examine the development of consciousness in human beings without appeal to a miracle. In using the term “miracle” in this context, I am not making any super-naturalist assumptions but referring to any event that is wonderful, surprising, and not understood. The materialist view holds that the evolution of consciousness is the product of unconscious particles that over time become conscious. The emergence of consciousness would seem to be a miracle, although a very slowly forming one. But materialists do not see the need for a miracle because they take consciousness for granted. The bland assumption of consciousness resembles the way that we as individuals look at our own personal consciousness. We do not consider our consciousness and the control that we have over our voluntary muscles as a miracle, because by the time we are mature enough to think about these things, they have already become so familiar as to seem ordinary.

The familiarity of consciousness is seen in the fact that it is difficult to speak of the movement of material elements toward unity without using the language of intention. In materialist descriptions the elements “strive,” they are “selfish,” they “tend.” Materialists make it clear enough that this language is metaphorical and that the elements do not really have intentions. I think most of us frequently miss a most crucial gap in our knowledge, namely that the workings of anything below the conscious level lies beyond our understanding. We think that we understand inanimate nature because of familiarity and because of analogy to intentionality. Even when we manipulate things through our science and technology, it is our intentions that we understand, not the inner working of the things.

Both the materialists and the teleologists struggle with the relation between the elements and consciousness. The materialists explain the whole, namely human consciousness as a more complicated rendition of the mechanical action of the parts; genes are complicated molecular replicators, and memes are the cultural equivalent of biological genes. Can we instead turn the relationship around and see the movement of the parts as primitive expressions of the reality that we experience at the human level? Might there be a force which American Philosopher C. S. Peirce (1839 – 1914) calls agape, meaning love, working along side of mechanical necessity and chance?  Pierce holds a view, which he calls agapaism, which affirms a force of loving attraction that moves things at every level toward a teleological unity. In this case evolutionary attraction would be seen as a more primitive instance of what we would think of as the highest form of love. Agapaism is the inverse of materialism in that it gives the movement toward meaningful unity an ontological priority rather than seeing it as a mere chance product of inert particles. This view is not provable, but it is at least as feasible as the materialist view. 

Purpose and the Meaning of Good

From at least the time of Aristotle, the Good was identified with purpose. Aristotle’s Nicomachaen Ethics opens with the assertion: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has been declared to be that at which all things aim.” The highest good is the end, telos, which is desired for its own sake. The task of ethics consists in understanding what this good is and how to attain it.

Aristotle’s notion of the Good as the final end or purpose came into Medieval Christian thought primarily through the work of St. Thomas Aquinas and his theory of natural law. St. Thomas defined natural law as an aspect of eternal law, the order by which all things are directed to their end. Like Aristotle, St. Thomas thought of God as pure being, pure actuality, whereas creation consisted of a process of things becoming by actualizing their potential. Using a popular example, an acorn has the potential to become a mature oak tree. Inanimate things, plants, and non-rational animals achieve their actuality naturally. We humans, as rational beings, participate in the eternal law and must seek our end voluntarily using reason and free will.

            Reason and free will, in this view constitute the human faculties that enable us to know and love that which is good. Goodness and being are co-extensive, meaning that all being is good. Evil is a lack of something that ought to be. To take an example of a physical evil, if a person loses his eyesight, we call that a physical evil, (more often we would say “misfortune,”) because we cherish sight as a good thing that ordinarily accompanies our human nature. Moral evil consists of a lack of virtue. As we humans grow from infancy to adulthood, we ought to learn to control our lives by reason. The habits of rational governance constitute virtues such as temperance, courage, and justice. Anyone who fails to develop these qualities slips into intemperance, cowardice, and injustice. Since being is good, a good human being is one who is constantly becoming more human, which means a more highly developed rational animal. As we develop in this way we actualize our potential and move toward achieving our end, our telos.   

Contemporary Evolutionary Materialism

Contemporary materialism provides a view that rejects all of the concepts that constitute traditional natural law theory. Materialists deny the reality of the soul, eternal law, teleology, and objective good.  Francis Crick states the materialist position in explicit contrast to the notion of a soul, which his wife had learned in Catholic school:

The Astonishing Hypothesis is that “You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

If this thesis holds true, then we must understand conscious behavior of human organism as nothing but a product of physical and chemical events at the level of molecules.

For contemporary materialist thought, the term: “soul” does not refer to anything real. The activities that traditional philosophy attributed to the soul are now seen as nothing but “the behavior of nerve cells and other molecules.” So it is not you and I who experience joy and sorrow, remember things past, and strive for things future - the molecules are doing all of this.

Reason itself does not have the privileged place that it had in traditional thought, but we can choose to make it a supreme value. The materialist philosophers and scientists, to their credit, or to the credit of their molecules, give reason a place of pre-eminence. Materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett says in praise of scientific researchers and in response to those who argue that “trading mystery for mechanism” will impoverish our view of human potential:

Look around at those who are participating in this quest for further scientific knowledge and eagerly digesting the new discoveries; they are manifestly not short on optimism, moral conviction, engagement in life, commitment to society.

Fortunately we can value such things as life, health, and virtue. But nature is indifferent, neither good nor bad apart from our judgments. For materialism, there can be no eternal law, and inanimate objects do not seek ends.  The question for us is whether we can show that the principle of seeking ends still applies to us humans as understood in contemporary science.

            To answer this question we must first look at what the materialists put in the place of the teleology of eternal law, namely, an interpretation of natural selection based on chance. In the materialist view, everything from the formation of molecules to the most complex human thought comes about by natural selection. Some molecules replicate themselves and therefore copies of them will survive. Of the replicating molecules, the ones that are best suited to the environment in which they find themselves and which are not self-destructive, will pass along copies of themselves. This process continues as some of the molecules happen to join with others to form more complex structures. The fittest of these survive and eventually evolve into living organisms, which by the same process of natural selection develop sensation, consciousness, and intelligence. In the materialist view there is no need to posit a design or goal at any point in the process. At the lower levels there is no striving or wanting to survive. At the level of consciousness, the desire to survive might give an organism a competitive edge, allowing those organisms who happen to have a survival instinct to survive and reproduce. At the level of intelligence, planning and deliberately working toward long range goals may greatly enhance survival.

            Daniel Dennett offers an explanation of free will based on non-biological survival structures called memes. (The term “meme” has taken on a more restricted meaning in social media.) Dennett describes Memes as “cultural replicators” parallel to genes, which are the biological replicators. Examples of memes would be anything that is part of what we call our culture, from the way we prepare food to the way we enjoy music. The memes are products of natural selection so that, for instance, an innovation in food or music may or may not be replicated depending on whether or not it is to the liking of the biological host.

            Just as our genes have a natural tendency to replicate themselves, so do our cultural memes. Dennett quotes Richard Dawkins author of "The Selfish Gene” and coiner of the term "meme." Dawkins writes”

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and if necessary the

selfish memes of our indoctrination…We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines but we have the power to turn against our creators. We alone on earth can rebel against the power of the selfish replicators.

Who are “we?” We are sharers of information. With the sharing of memes we have the beginning of a community rather than just an aggregate of individuals. The question is how we rebel against the replicators as Dawkins affirms that we in fact do. Dawkins does not say how, and so Dennett himself attempts to answer this question. The answer is that the memes open up a world of imagination, which provides a variety of options to choose from. Because of imagination we are not limited to only the option that best enhances our own individual survival, nor the survival of our genes. One person may forgo a family and children to live a life of service; another may do so to live a life of hedonistic delights. In both cases the genes’ metaphorical “desire” for perpetuation will not be met.   

There does not seem to be any reason in the nature of thing to affirm that any choices are better than any others. And although scientific thinkers like Dennett and Dawkins stand poles apart from the classical existentialists who hold that reality is absurd, the ultimate outlook on what is good or bad is strangely similar. As Jean-Paul Sartre states after arguing that values have no reality apart from the choice of a free being that choose them:

It follows that my freedom is the unique foundation of values and that nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies me in adopting this or that particular value, this or that particular scale of values.

And yet, it seems that those who pursue scientific knowledge, as well as other pursuits such as health care or social justice, do so with the assumption that they are on to something real. We need to ask whether our contemporary scientific world-view is compatible with the notion that science is really good and not just one of the myriad of memes, along with such things as astrology and sorcery, that people happen to adopt. 

Purposefulness in a Materialistic Age

 Purposefulness in a Materialist Age

Materialism and Teleology

We can look at the things around us and the events in our own lives in several ways, but two of them stand out. We can look back at the causes, or look ahead to the purpose. For example we may compare a tree that a storm knocks over to a baseball that a centerfielder throws to home-plate. In the first case, air moves from an area of higher pressure to one of lower pressure in ways that meteorologists can explain. A tree or house that happens to be in the path of the wind might be destroyed, but the destruction does not serve any known purpose. By contrast, the trajectory of the baseball results from the fielder’s intention to get the ball to home-plate before the base-runner. Explainable factors such as the skill and strength of the player, wind resistance, and gravity all play a role in the outcome of when and where the throw ends. But, unlike the storm, the throw occurs only because of the intention of the player. Some people believe everything happens for a purpose. “It was (or wasn’t) meant to be.” Others hold that apart from human intentions, such as throwing, the universe lacks any purposeful action. We might also believe that there is purpose in the universe but that not everything serves a purpose.

Examining the meaning and of purpose, we may ask the question, “Why are we here?” This question might refer to an immediate presence such as why are we here in this meeting, classroom, or social get-together; or it may address a more cosmic concern: “Why are we here on this planet? Why do we exist?”  Looking backwards in the case of the specific “here”, we may say that we are here because we were called in by our boss, it was on our class schedule, or we were invited. If we are extremely literal minded we may say that we are here because we drove or walked. Those answers look backwards at how we got here. But we may also look ahead to the purpose of our presence: to discuss how to improve our company’s safety record, to gain insight into an academic field, or to be introduced to a method of enhancing our income by selling home products. Our individual purpose might be different from that of the boss, professor, or host. But whether the purpose is that of the person who called us to be there, or our purpose for showing up, the purpose refers to looking ahead to what we expect from our action of attending.

In asking the larger question of why we are here in the sense of our very existence, we may again look backwards. Depending on our knowledge and interest we may begin with the “big bang” and trace the history of star and planet generations up to and including the evolution of life on earth. Or we may be more interested in demographics, genealogy, or how our parents met. All of these questions look backwards and involve research in physical or social science, or family history. But the question that emerges as most important to each of us asks, “Now that we are here, what should we do with our lives, what is our purpose for living?”  We might try to answer this question by believing that we are part of a larger purpose and that we need to find our individual role. Or we might believe that our purpose consists only in what we ourselves create in an otherwise purposeless universe.

 The belief that all events can be explained completely and solely by what has happened previously is called a materialist or mechanistic view. These terms reflect an older worldview that portrayed nature as composed of material particles moving according to the laws of mechanical science. But contemporary materialists think in terms of every kind of physical energy and even allow for some randomness. Purpose plays no role.

            The view that things happen for a purpose we call a teleological view. This word is based on the Greek word telos, which refers to an end or purpose. Of course, a person may believe that physical causes – pushing from behind, and teleological causes – pulling from ahead, may both be factors.  The belief that there is some purpose in nature, however little, marks a decisive contrast to the materialist world-view. The distinction between materialism and purpose goes back at least to the time of Plato. The following two posts will contrast the traditional teleological view with the prevailing contemporary materialist view.