A review of Sean Carroll's The Big Picture: Part I

Physicist Sean Carroll's new book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself was released this past Tuesday (yay!). I, as well as many others, have been greatly anticipating the release of this book ever since Carroll announced it himself, and it's a pleasure to finally have it in my possession, and to be reviewing it.

I pretty much figured, before the book was released, that I would take up the task of writing a review. I felt this way because Carroll is an extremely articulate and modest philosophical naturalist and has been securing more of a secular following as of late--especially since he debated William Lane Craig, and, in my opinion, won--and I was very curious as to how he would make a cumulative case for a coherent naturalist metaphysic. And after beginning to read the book I do in fact feel that there are many things to comment on, as I had hoped. Though I obviously disagree with Carroll on many of his positions, Carroll's humble and unboastful attitude coupled with his articulate writing make this a great read.

So, on with the review, then. Carroll's book is split into six sections: Cosmos, Understanding, Essence, Complexity, Thinking, and Caring. I am, so far, planning to write a review on each section individually, though it might be the case that I don't have many comments to make on a particular section, and thus I might not review all of them. This Part I review will focus on the section labeled Cosmos.

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 Carroll begins the book by asking some important questions about the fundamental nature of reality, and stressing the importance of thinking about ontology. It is among this discussion of ontology that he begins advocating for philosophical naturalism. But Carroll's naturalism does not merely claim that all that exists is the natural world exhibiting patterns. Rather, Carroll introduces what he calls poetic naturalism. The "poetic" aspect of poetic naturalism (PN) is constituted by how we talk about, model, and interpret reality. Carroll describes this view:

[O]ur best approach to describing the universe is not a single, unified story but an interconnected series of models appropriate at different levels. Each model has a domain in which it is applicable, and the ideas that appear as essential parts of each story have every right to be thought of as "real." Our task is to assemble an interlocking set of descriptions, based on some fundamental ideas, that fit together to form a stable planet of belief. (p. 4)

This explication of poetic naturalism is very similar to two theories I've surveyed in the past, namely Model-Dependent Realism, as promulgated by Hawking, and Embodied realism, as promulgated by Lakoff. The key aspects of this philosophy are that we, as humans, talk about and describe different aspects or "levels" of the world using different models and different vocabularies, and that, as long as these models are consistent and coherent, they can overlap and reconcile with one another.

Unfortunately, Carroll doesn't delve too deep into this philosophy in the first section. Rather, he spends more space expounding this perspective in his second section Understanding--which should make sense since the "poetic" aspect of this philosophy is mostly epistemic. Therefore, I will save my comments on poetic naturalism until the next installment of the review.

Causality
One way that Carroll attempts to demonstrate the "layered" models of reality we conceptualize, as predicated by PN, is with Aristotle's notions of natures and causes. For Aristotle famously promulgated the principle of causality, which stated that something can only be "moved" if it was caused to do so by something else in motion. (Of course, by "motion" Aristotle really meant change, and by change he really meant something which is being reduced from potency to act.) But Carroll claims that the conservation of momentum has relegated such notions to mere useful macroscopic descriptions and constructions:

[T]he whole structure of Aristotle's argument for an unmoved mover rests on his idea that motions require causes. Once we know about conservation of momentum, that idea loses its steam. [...] What matters is that the new physics of Galileo and his friends implied an entirely new ontology, a deep shift in how we thought about the nature of reality. "Causes" didn't have the central role that they once did. The universe doesn't need a push; it can just keep going. [...] Of course, even today, we talk about causes and effects all the time. But if you open the contemporary equivalent of Aristotle's Physics--a textbook on quantum field theory, for example--words like that are nowhere to be found. We, still, with good reason, talk about causes in everyday speech, but they're no longer part of our best fundamental ontology. (p. 28-29)

I have a couple comments at this point. First, the conservation of momentum--which is embedded in Newton's law of inertia--doesn't, at all, call Aristotle's idea of motion into question. For, again, Aristotle said that when something changed, this required something responsible for that change. But uniform inertial motion is seen, as explicated by physicists, as a state in itself, and not a change per se. That is, the state of motion of an object is its velocity, and thus an object with a uniform state of motion is an object that is moving at a constant velocity--as long as it is not being acted upon by an unbalanced force--and thus is not changing, according to physics. Therefore, the conservation of momentum does not at all run counter to Aristotle's metaphysical principle, in fact, it is completely irrelevant to the principle.

Second, it is simply not true that talk of causality, at least efficient causality, is absent from contemporary scientific textbooks. In fact, it's ironic that Carroll specifically mentions quantum field theory textbooks since in An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory the authors write the following: The necessity of having a multiparticle theory also arises in a less obvious way, from considerations of causality[...] In a relativistic theory, this conclusion would signal a violation of causality. (p. 14)

These points may seem peripheral, but I believe they are important for a couple of reasons. First, the unmoved mover argument of Aristotle, if valid, would defeat a naturalist ontology, which Carroll holds. Yet, Carroll quickly dismisses Aristotle's unmoved mover argument, in light of the supposed irrelevance of concepts of causality, yet he does so fallaciously. Again, this isn't that big a deal since Carroll's thesis is not predicated on discussing Aristotle's proofs for God. Nevertheless, his fallaciously swift dismissal of the efficacy of causality is still a strike against his case.

Second, Carroll is trying to score a point for poetic naturalism by claiming that the language of causality is only a folk theory constructed from interactions at the macroscopic level, and isn't part of our "fundamental ontology" and has no utility in the domain of physics. Yet the fact that this has been demonstrated to be false with the quote above (one of many) already begins to poke holes in Carroll's form of naturalism. That is, we see that a concept like causality is not simply a model that only applies in one limited domain. Rather, it in itself should be part of one's fundamental ontology.

Carroll also makes much of the fact that causality is nowhere to be found in the laws of physics, and claims that such concepts are "emergent":

We look at the world around us and describe it in terms of causes and effects, reasons why, purposes and goals. None of those concepts exists as part of the fundamental furniture of reality at its deepest. They emerge as we zoom out from the microscopic level to the level of the everyday. (p. 54)

This is not correct, though. While it is true that causality is not palpable in the mathematical equations of physics and quantum physics--though we shouldn't expect it to be, since causality is not quantitative--this does not mean that causality is not operative and efficacious as it pertains to "reality at its deepest." I maintain that causality is ubiquitous at every turn, in the microscopic and macroscopic levels of reality.

To see this, consider the famous experiment conducted by physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948. Casimir placed two metal plates one ten-thousandth of a centimeter apart in a quantum vacuum. As one might logically theorize, these plates would stay put, since the space is empty and thus there are no forces to affect the plates. But they didn't stay put, rather they were driven towards each other! And the first question that should come to one's mind is "Well, what was the cause of this effect?" It turns out that the cause is that there is an imbalance between the quantum fluctuations in between and outside the plates, and this imbalance yields a pressure imbalance, which pushes the plates together.

The point here is that, contra Carroll, causality is no less efficacious in a quantum vacuum than in our familiar everyday lives, and causality does simply emerge as we "zoom out" from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

Reasons Why
Carroll also spends a good amount of the first section discussing our constant search for "reasons why" things happen or why facts obtain. He agrees that the search for explanations is extremely rational and makes sense in our everyday lives. Where Carroll draws the line is when one makes this search for explanation a metaphysical principle (e.g. the Principle of Sufficient Reason) that pronounces that everything must admit of explanation, or a "reason why." This is, no doubt, a very modest and logical position to take. Carroll is not committing one way or another to whether all things and facts admit of explanation. He humbly claims that they might or might not, and leaves the door open to the possibility of brute facts.

However, as one who does in fact believe that all things and facts must necessarily and logically admit of explanation, I do not agree with Carroll here. And I find that his arguments against the PSR to be rather weak. Carroll claims that "[o]ur standards for promoting a commonsensical observation to a 'metaphysical principle' should be very high indeed. "(p. 41) Now, I would agree here, but Carroll really doesn't survey any concrete arguments actually given (besides Leibniz's Principle of the Best) that would attempt to demonstrate why the PSR should be taken as a metaphysical principle. He merely says the following:

[F]or every fact we notice about the universe: as soon as we apprehend it, we think there must be a reason behind it. This isn't an argument that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is logically incontrovertible; it only implies that we often act as if something like it were true. If we're honest, it's an empirical, evidence-based argument, not an a priori one. (p. 42)

I agree with Carroll that this argument he has articulated is not a priori, and is not logically incontrovertible. The problem is that no (logical) person attempting to establish the PSR as a metaphysical principle would use this argument, especially since it's just an inductive argument which cannot form an immutable principle at all.

The type of arguments that are given in favor of the PSR (and that are a priori) consider the nature of epistemic chains of explanation themselves. And they argue that explanation forms an instrumental and transitive chain, so that if even one member of a chain is unexplained (i.e. is a brute fact) then the chain as a whole loses efficacy. (Indeed, I have argued that very thing here, though I don't expect Carroll to have read my own specific post.) The point is that Carroll has not done the appropriate philosophical leg-work to dismiss the PSR as casually as he has done. And again this is important because the PSR puts a wrench in the works of his poetic naturalism, and also calls into question many other pronouncements he makes in the book, as we'll see in subsequent reviews.

The arrow of time
More importantly, in Carroll's eyes, the denial of the immutability of causality and explanation, as well as the displacement  of their existence as a mere human convention of utility, is ultimately illuminated by the increase in entropy and the arrow of time:

"Memories" and "causes" aren't pieces of our fundamental ontology describing our world that we discover through careful research. They are concepts that we invent in order to provide useful descriptions of the macroscopic world. The arrow of time plays a crucial role in how those contexts relate to the underlying time-symmetric laws of physics. (p. 66)

Carroll's point is that we only utilize concepts like causality and explanation because events progress from past to future, due to the arrow of time. This is to say that such concepts are contingent upon the direction of time, which is itself a contingent fact of the universe and could have been otherwise. But the laws of physics, on the other hand, do not have an arrow of time imprinted into them, and thus, as Carroll claims, concepts like causality and explanation are not carving reality at its joints, but are only concepts that humans constructed in order to make sense of the world as we interpret it. For had the arrow of time been in the opposite direction, things would be very different, as would our concepts and models.

Now, while it is true that if the arrow of time were pointing in the reverse direction, from future to past, events in the world would unfold in a completely counterintuitive and foreign manner, this would still not remove the necessity for concepts like causality and explanation. For explanation and causality are always present wherever things exist and behave, and wherever events and processes occur. And even in a universe where the arrow of time were reversed, you would still have things which exist and events which transpire; and as long as you have that, you have causes and effects, as well as explanations.

So I maintain that Carroll has not demonstrated how humans "invent" these concepts, and again,  this is important, because Carroll's poetic naturalism in founded on the idea that these concepts are human constructs and models, invented through our interaction with the world on the macroscopic level due to utility. However, if these concepts are not cognitive constructs but are immutable principles embedded in the fabric of reality, then Carroll's form of naturalism loses ground.

Part II

Are space and time necessary?

The other day I was commenting over at DebunkingChristianity—usually not a good idea—regarding whether or not the universe could be said to be necessary. I got into a few decent discussions—which is surprising given the venue--one of which was with the very courteous Nicholas Covington, the author of Hume’s Apprentice, over at Skeptic Ink. During the discussion Nick brought up the possibility of not necessarily the universe per se being necessary, but space and time being necessary. It turns out that Nick has actually written up an article (here) defending this very thesis of his--in fact I remember reading it last year. It’s an answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” His answer is that the reason there is something rather than nothing is because space and time themselves are necessary and provide a necessary framework for existents. Needless to say, I don’t find Nick’s arguments persuasive nor valid, hence this post.

So, let’s see where Nick goes wrong. He begins by attempting to narrow down the definition of existence:

What is the difference between the two [a sea monster and the sun] that makes one real and the other imaginary? Well, the sun has detectable effects on ourselves and other things, but a sea monster doesn’t. […] In order to interact with other beings, or have effects on things, you must be within time. An effect takes place at a certain point in time, and you can’t act at a certain point in time if you aren’t within it.

My quibble here is with the talk of cause and effect necessitating temporality. I agree that usually causality is temporal, in that a cause usually precedes its effect in time. For example, I can hit my drink thereby knocking it over, and obviously the act of hitting my drink came before the act of the drink falling over. This is the common deterministic billiard ball type of causation. But, this is not universally the case, and this does not exhaust all types of causation, as I’ve argued in the past. There is such a thing as non-temporal and simultaneous causation. For example, if I hold my daughter, we have the cause of me holding my daughter, and the effect of her being suspended five feet above the ground. Yet, these are one and the same event, meaning the cause and effect happen simultaneously. I don’t hold my daughter and then she is subsequently being suspended, she is being suspended as long as I am holding her. The cause is simultaneous with the effect.

There are many more examples like this.  For instance, a person shaping a clay pot. The pot is only shaped simultaneously as the sculptor shapes it, not after. Or, the solidity of table. The effect of a table being solid is achieved as long as the material constituents are arranged in such a way as to be sufficient for that effect--the solidity is simultaneous with that arrangement. Or, the swinging of a hammer. The hammer’s motion is being caused by the swinging of the carpenter’s hand, and these two are simultaneous. There is no shortage of examples of simultaneous causation. But, what does this mean? Well, it means that, contrary to Nick’s claims above, a cause and effect relationship does not necessitate time.

But wait. I know I can already picture a reader making the following point: while the examples given demonstrate simultaneous causes and effects, the objects used in said examples are still in time. That is to say, the daughter, pot, carpenter, hammer etc. are all temporal objects existing in time. This is correct, but does it really call my point into question? No. For recall that Nick’s point was that in order for one existent to interact or to have an effect on another existent, time is a necessity—not that the existents themselves must be in time. But we’ve seen that this is false. If simultaneous causation is a reality then it is at least metaphysically possible for two existents to interact—i.e. one causing the other—without such an interaction being temporally ordered and without the existents to be in time itself. The point here is that causation qua causation need not be temporal.

Thus, Nick’s attempt to help pin down the definition of existence by interaction is moot so far. For if time is not a necessary condition for interaction, then one cannot infer that all that can or could exist must be within space and time—since Nick claims that interaction is fingerprint of existence. And therefore Nick has no warrant for concluding that we can define existence as space and time.

But Nick’s not finished. After (erroneously) defining existence as space and time, he continues:

Under our working definition of existence, space and time do not exist, strictly speaking. Space and time don’t have effects on things, space and time are a framework in which effects, actions, and reactions reside. As such, it makes no sense to ask whether the framework of existence exists.

There reside a few problems here. First, Nick has already made this inference off of poor reasoning when he assumed that time is a necessary condition for causality and interaction—and therefore for existing things. We saw that this was false. But even aside from this, he seems oblivious to the question-begging nature of his endeavor. For even if for the sake of argument we concede that Nick was correct that space and time were necessary for actual existents, this doesn’t give us any right to redefine existence as space and time itself. Let me put my point a bit more analytically: Demonstrating that X is a necessary condition for Y does not entail that Y is identical to X. That is to say, demonstrating that space-time is a necessary condition for existing things—something that he hasn’t even demonstrated but that we’re granting for argument’s sake—does not entail that existence is therefore defined as space-time. This is simply a non-sequitur. Nick has shown absolutely no good reason, then, for redefining existence as space and time, and to do so is to engage in blatant question-begging.

Second, if space and time were necessary, then, by the definition of ontological necessity, simply contemplating space and time would enlighten us to its necessity. Why would this be? Because something which is necessary contains the reason for its existence in its nature—that is to say, what it is would be identical to the fact that it is. Thus, if something is necessary, then contemplating its nature would be to simultaneously contemplate its existence. And a corollary of this is that you could not fail to conceive this thing existing. But space-time obviously does not satisfy this definition of necessity, since we can easily conceive of space-time not existing at all, and therefore space-time is not necessary.  However, Nick thinks that he can get around this by claiming that space-time does not “exist,” and instead claims that space-time is a framework, and that therefore speaking of its existence or non-existence is nonsensical.

However, this is might only be true if indeed existence is to be defined as space-time. But we’ve seen no good reason to think that we should redefine existence in such an idiosyncratic way. Yet, it gets worse than this, because Nick is basically engaging in explicit question-begging (again). He’s simply defined existence as X, and then claimed that you cannot question the existence of X since X is, by definition, the framework of existence—of which interaction is a corollary. But this is extremely problematic. One cannot simply a priori redefine existence as X and then claim that X is therefore necessary. In fact this is exactly what the ontological argument for God attempts to do, and Nick’s argument is fallacious for the same reasons—in fact we could call Nick’s argument the ontological argument for naturalism.

But it gets even worse than this for Nick’s thesis. For let’s grant for argument’s sake that Nick was correct in his arbitrary redefining of existence as space-time and that space-time is indeed the framework for all existents. Is it still true, as he stated above, that we cannot speak of this framework’s existence or non-existence? No it’s not, because space-time, in order to be distinguishable from literal non-being, must have certain properties and actualities. The fact that it is a framework does not absolve it from harboring these things. For example, in mathematics the set of integers is itself a framework that is completely different in nature from its elements. But the set itself--again in order for it to actually be something as opposed to nothing—must have certain distinguishing properties—e.g., it is infinite, and thus we see that a framework can have properties. So space-time, though it might be a framework, still is manifest in certain actualities and properties—and who would even argue that space-time does not have properties? But why is this important? Well, if space-time has certain properties—e.g., being n-dimensional—then it will always be possible to conceive the absence or lack of these properties, and therefore the lack of space-time itself. But this means that talk of the existence or non-existence of space-time is not nonsensical. And more importantly it means that, by the definition of necessary given above, space-time is not necessary and could metaphysically fail to exist. And thus space-time cannot be existence itself.

In conclusion we’ve seen that Nick’s bold thesis is extremely problematic. First, it assumes a faulty view of causality. Second, it engages in question-begging and non-sequiturs. And most importantly we’ve seen that even if we were to grant his argument and erase all previous objections, his conclusion is still not justified, and is false. It would seem that space-time, then, is not necessary.

 

 

Why science cannot (ever) explain the existence of the universe

Can the universe account for its own existence? Can we find, within physics and cosmology, the reason for why physical reality exists at all? Cosmologists and physicists are hopeful that finding an answer to these questions is at least possible and maybe even plausible. For the cosmologist’s job is to search out the origin of the universe—or find out if it had an origin at all—to find out why it exists in the first place, and why and how it came to exist in its current state. Now cosmology has come a long way in the last century and it continues to advance in leaps and bounds. But despite the advancements of physics, I maintain that physicists will never in principle be able to explain the existence of physical reality.

I realize that in promulgation of this statement I am shouldering a great burden of proof, and that such a statement can even come across as arrogant. However, please note that it is borne out of careful logical study of the philosophy of science, and not from a petulant view of science or scientists. In fact, I have found that it is “skeptics” who arrogantly fail to recognize the explanatory limits of science, and by doing so would only take my aforementioned statement as arrogant because their vision is dogmatically colored by the lens of positivism. However, since this is not the time to get into the hypocritical creeds of the freethought community, let us return to the thesis at hand: science cannot explain why the universe exists. (Note that by “universe” I include any possible meta-universe or multiverse.)

Now, what gives me the right to assert such a blanket statement like this?  Well, the nature of scientific inquiry itself does. You see, as I’ve pointed out before, science operates on inductive conditional statements like “if p, then q”. This is why scientists can run an experiment a finite amount of times and then generalize a conditional statement as a law. (Note again that such an exercise would be moot unless we took things to have shared essences.) And this takes us to the nature of scientific laws themselves. Scientific laws are mere descriptions of the way things tend to behave given certain ideal conditions. These laws are not prescriptive, in that they don’t inform substances on how to behave. Rather, substances behave the way they do and our formulated laws are informed by such behavior.

The pivotal point here is that scientific laws are ontologically dependent on existence, not the other way around. That is to say, scientific laws don’t obtain unless you first have something which actually exists and behaves in some way. That’s why the conditional statements of scientific law start with “if p,” meaning “if some state of actual affairs obtains in reality”.  Now, what exactly does this have to do with science explaining the existence of the universe? Well, if existence logically precedes scientific law, then the latter cannot itself ever explain the former. That is to say, scientific law first needs something already in existence to describe the behavior of—it doesn’t describe non-existence—therefore science is reliant upon existence, and thus existence will always be a higher member in an explanatory chain.  But in order for science to explain the universe it would itself need to be the higher member in an explanatory chain, and since this is logically impossible then it follows necessarily that science cannot in principle explain the existence of the universe.

There’s another point to be made here, however. It should also be noted that science cannot even account for its own laws. That is, science itself cannot determine why the laws are the way they are as opposed to being another way. Here’s why. Either (i) the reason scientific laws are the way they are is to be illumined by another scientific law, or (ii) the reason scientific laws are the way they are is to be illumined by an explanation not susceptible to scientific description. (i) is not a viable option because explaining scientific law by another scientific law just pushes the question back a step and doesn’t answer anything. Moreover, the question was to explain the set of scientific laws, and this cannot be done by another scientific law not in the set since the set already contains all scientific laws. Thus, option (i) isn’t even possible. (This is why arriving at a scientific Theory of Everything is not possible as well.) If one chooses (ii) then we arrive at an explanation not susceptible to science, which only proves my point, namely, that scientific law cannot explain itself.

Implications for naturalism

Now all these points actually have important implications for naturalism as well. For most ontological naturalists naturalism seems to imply physicalism—note that I’m not claiming that naturalism necessarily entails physicalism, only that most naturalists are physicalists. The reason for this is that if all that exists is the natural world and the natural world contains all matter, energy, space and time, then all that exists in the natural world is physical—or it at least supervenes on the physical—and therefore all that exists is physical.

But this means that physics itself should be able, in principle, to arrive at a theory of everything and thereby explain the existence of the physical world. But we’ve just seen above that this is what physics and science cannot, in principle, do. And thus physicalism and naturalism are false—again, based on those who would derive physicalism from naturalism. David Bentley Hart articulates the point numerous times in The Experience of God:

Physical reality cannot account for its own existence for the simple reason that nature—the physical—is that which by definition already exists; existence, even taken as a simple brute fact to which no metaphysical theory is attached, lies logically beyond the system of causes that nature comprises; it is, quite literally, “hyperphysical,” or, shifting into Latin, super naturam. This means not only that at some point nature requires or admits of a supernatural explanation (which it does), but also that at no point is anything purely, self-sufficiently natural in the first place. (p. 96)

To drive the point home one last time, physics and science are at a loss to explain exactly why the physical world is the way it is, and why it exists in the first place. Science is explanatorily inert here. And this should not be the case if physicalism were true. Thus, because of the nature of the universe and the explanatory limits of physics, physicalism is false. What implications should this entail for naturalism? I’ll let the reader decide for themselves.

 

The argument from contingency

The cosmological argument for the existence of God has taken many different forms for hundreds of years. However, the version that I take to be the most powerful, as some readers of my blog know, is the argument from contingency. And it is this version that I will be presently defending, as well as answering common objections put forward against it.

The terms

Before promulgating the argument I feel it necessary to define the terms being used (i.e. contingency and necessity). Now, there are different (though not contradictory) definitions of contingency, so let me spell these out. Something is contingent if: (1) it exists, but could have possibly failed to exist, or (2) it is not of the nature of it to exist, or (3) its nature can be contemplated without simultaneously contemplating its existence.

Let me now expand these definitions so as to illuminate how they each entail contingency. If some existent X satisfies (1) then, to reiterate, it is possible that X could not have been. But this necessarily entails that it is not of the nature of X to exist. For if it was of the nature of X to exist, then it could not be possible for it to fail to exist. (My claim here is that if it is of the nature of X to be Y, then you cannot have X without Y. As an example, if it is of the nature of a triangle to have three sides then it is not possible for an triangle to fail to have three sides.) This point seems to lead us directly to (2), and thus our first two definitions go hand in hand. Now what this means is that if it is not of X’s nature to exist, then X does not contain the reason for its own existence, and thus it must derive its existence from something else.

 Let’s take a look at (3). If I can contemplate the nature of X without simultaneously contemplating its existence, then this entails the fact that it is not of the nature of X to exist—otherwise contemplating the nature of X would be to simultaneously contemplate its existence. Thus we see that (3) leads to contingency for the same reasons as (1) and (2).

From what precedes it should be obvious how we can define necessary. Something is necessary if it is non-contingent. That is to say, something is necessary if it is not possible for it to not exist (i.e. it must exist), or if it is of its very nature to exist, or if contemplating its nature entails simultaneously contemplating its existence.

The argument

It is now appropriate to state the argument from contingency, and note that the term contingency in the argument can take the form of any of the above definitions:

1) If something is contingent, then it derives its existence from something outside of itself.

2) The universe is contingent.

3) Therefore, the universe derives its existence from something outside of itself.

The argument is logically valid, that is, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. But the question can be posed regarding its soundness, so let us go about demonstrating the premises. Premise 1) seems to follow necessarily from the definitions of contingency given above. To reiterate, if it’s possible that X could (have) fail(ed) to exist, then the reason for its existence is not contained within its own nature, and thus it must be contained in the existence of something else—and this thing would be where X derives its existence from. Premise 1) then seems to be on quite solid ground.

Let us now turn to what is most likely the premise that a naturalist will find most fault with, namely, premise 2). The easiest way to demonstrate premise 2) is to demonstrate that the universe satisfies the definition(s) of contingency. So, the first thing we can ask is whether it is possible for the universe to have failed to exist. Here we might meet some resistance. First, what exactly is meant by the universe, and how do we know that we can conceive of it failing to exist? Well, by universe I simply mean “all matter, energy, and space-time,” and therefore this includes not only our observable universe, but any meta-universe(s), if you will. Subsequently, to say that we can conceive of matter, energy, and space-time not existing does not seem to bring forth any inherent difficulty. That is to say, there is no contradiction or incoherence in such a statement, and thus I see no claim for inconceivability that could be made here. (Note that something is said to be metaphysically possible if it is conceivable.)

What about the second definition of contingency? Does the nature of the universe contain the reason for its own existence? I don’t see how it does, in that having the nature of being all matter, energy, and space-time does not tell us why all matter, energy and space-time actually exist in the first place. That is, there is nothing in matter, energy and space-time together (or even apart) that tell us that it must exist. This goes hand in hand with the third definition of contingency. That is, I can contemplate the nature of the universe without simultaneously contemplating its existence. But if I can do this, then the reason for the existence of the universe is not found within itself.

What this demonstrates then is that the universe—all matter, energy, space and time—satisfies all three definitions of contingency, and thus the premises of the above argument seem to be vindicated. This obviously means that the conclusion is valid and sound, and therefore the universe necessarily derives its existence from something else.

Objections

It should go without saying that the naturalist will not take this argument lying down, nor would I expect one to do so. There are many arguments or objections that could be leveled against the argument from contingency, and while I cannot deal with all of them here, I will currently try to deal with the most penetrating and popular ones.

(a) How do we know that what the universe derives its existence from is God? There is nothing logically wrong with claiming that perhaps the universe derives its existence from something that is itself contingent. However, this only pushes the problem back a step further, for then this thing requires an account for its existence. The point here is that we must, at some point, admit of something which is non-contingent, that is, necessary—something that cannot fail to exist. This would be something whose nature contains the reason for its own existence, and whose nature we can contemplate while simultaneously contemplating its existence. This thing then just would be existence, that is, it would be pure existence, or pure being. And surely this is worthy of earning the name “God.”

(b) Why admit of something necessary? Why can’t we have an infinite series of contingent beings? I will not answer this objection by asserting that an actual infinity cannot exist. For this is something that it seems even mathematicians and philosophers cannot agree on. Rather, my argument is that a chain of contingent beings remains contingent. Now, before one levels a fallacy of composition at me, remember that not every inference from a part to a whole is fallacious. For instance, if every brick in a wall is red, then it does in fact follow that the wall is red. What this means is that claiming that a chain of contingent things is itself contingent commits the fallacy of composition would need to be demonstrated. Moreover, this could be avoided if one simply demonstrates that a collection of contingent things is in fact contingent, and this I plan to do currently.

Physicist Paul Davies explains the problem elegantly:

[I]t is quite wrong to suppose that an infinite chain of explanation is satisfactory on the basis that every member of that chain is explained by the next member. One is still left with the mystery of why that particular chain is the one that exists, or why any chain exists at all.

This point was also made a long time ago by the mathematician Leibniz when he gave an example of an infinite collection of books, of which each book was simply a copy of the content in the previous book. The point being that the content in the books is not accounted for simply because the collection is infinite, and there must be something outside this collection that does account for it. The big picture here, then, is that if we have an infinite collection of individual things of which it is possible for them to fail to exist, then it is possible that the collection in its own right could fail to exist, and thus the infinite chain is still contingent. Therefore something necessary must still be admitted.

(c) Why expect the universe to admit of explanation at all? Why can’t the universe simply be? To claim that the universe (or anything) might escape explanation in principle is to admit of brute facts—in fact, that’s exactly what a brute fact is, namely, a state of affairs which has no explanation for its existence. There are a few problems with this line of reasoning. First, since things are made intelligible by explanation then a brute fact does not have an explanation for itself, and it has no explanation to impart to anything else. This entails that a brute fact cannot be a participant in an explanatory chain, and therefore it certainly cannot be the end of an explanatory chain, as the universe would have to be. (Note that I have argued this at much greater length here.)

The second problem is that an object or substance can only either possibly fail to exist, or not. This is to say that something can only either be contingent or necessary. There is no middle ground here, of which a brute fact would have to be. To deny that something can either only be contingent or necessary is to deny the law of excluded middle, and would thus be illogical.

(d) It’s possible that the universe is eternal, and thus it would not be contingent. I have no problem with theoretically granting the possibility of an eternal universe. However, simply asserting that the universe could be eternal does not thereby make it necessary. Let us return to Leibniz’s example of the collection of books to see why this is so, except let us not imagine a collection of books but, rather, simply one book existing eternally. Does the fact that this book has always existed demonstrate that it is necessary? No, because one can still ask why this book exists, has the content that it does, and why this content was not different. The point is that it remains true that nothing about the book, not even its eternality, provides the reason for why it exists at all.  To always exist is not the same as existing necessarily, because duration of existence does not enlighten us to the reason of existence. Moreover, duration of existence does not affect a thing’s nature. A triangle is still a triangle, whether it exists for a second or for an infinite amount of seconds.

Similarly, it would remain the case that an eternal universe could possibly have been different, or it could have not existed at all. Moreover, it would still remain the case that contemplating the nature of the universe does not entail contemplating its existence. Thus, even an eternal universe satisfies the definition, not of necessity, but of contingency.

There are other objections that can be raised (e.g. “What created God?” or “Why does God exist?”) but I felt the need to only address, what I take to be, the most substantial ones. The point seems to remain that the universe is indeed contingent, and that it ultimately derives its existence from something which is necessary and which we call God. The argument from contingency then seems to be successful.

The mind is what the brain does?

I recently ran across this post by neurologist Dr. Steve Novella over at his blog Neurologica. The post is basically a rebuttal to neurosurgeon Michael Egnor’s views regarding how memory is encoded in the brain; however, my agenda here is not to comment on this exchange. Rather, this current post of mine was sparked by comments made by Dr. Novella in his post regarding the nature of the mind. Here’s some of what he had to say:

As I have pointed out numerous times myself – mental phenomena are functional active things. They are based in the physical substance of the brain, but they are not just the physical substance – they are what results from the function of the physical substance. The mind is what the brain does.

I’ve heard this theory of mind put forward many times; that is, the theory that the mind just is what the brain does. Note that this is not the same as saying that the mind is identical to the brain, rather it simply says that psychological states just are the products of neurophysiological processes. This theory is simply a type of identity theory. Identity theory is a type of reductive materialism and is defined, by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, as the theory that “states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain.” And this seems to be exactly what Dr. Novella’s position is, for he says that “mental phenomena (including memory) do not simply correlate with the firing of neurons in the brain – they are the firing of neurons in the brain.”

The first step that most materialists take towards justifying identity theory—or really any variation of a materialist philosophy of mind—is to provide evidence from neuroscience that demonstrates that the brain and mind are intimately related. And needless to say this evidence is not lacking at all. We know quite well that altering brain chemistry and brain structure can subsequently alter personality, can create a “divide” in consciousness, and can even cause individuals to fail to recognize familiar objects or even loved ones. There is no doubt that this says much about the correlation between the mind and the brain, but does is say any more than that by itself? Not really. Philosopher of mind James Madden, in his book Mind, Matter and Nature, articulates:

Has neuroscience revealed an empirical identity between psychological states and brain states? It clearly has not, nor does it seem that it ever could. What neuroscience does is to provide us with ever more precise descriptions of the goings-on in our brains that are correlated with our psychological states[…] Correlation is a far cry from identity; two phenomena can be perfectly correlated, without being identical. (p. 108)

The point then is that identity theory cannot be justified solely by the correlation between the mental and the neurological. As is commonly said, correlation does not imply causation. Now I maintain that not only can identity theory not be justified by pure findings from neuroscience, but I maintain that it is rife with ontological problems regarding actually accounting for how it is even possible that psychological states just are, and are reducible to, brain processes.

Intentionality and Necessary conditions

One of the first problems that identity theory runs into is accounting for intentionality. In philosophy of mind, intentionality refers to the ability of something to be about, or refer to, or represent something beyond itself. When I think of my wife, my thought is about, and refers to her. Now the problem here is that physical things only exhibit derived or secondary intentionality. The written word “cat” only refers to a cat if a mind so interprets it that way. It could just as easily have been the case that we endowed the word and utterance “cat” with a completely different meaning, or that another group of individuals takes the word or utterance “cat” to mean love. This means that physical symbols only have extrinsic intentionality and derive their intentionality from a mind that already exists. Now note that psychological states that exhibit intentionality do not borrow this intentionality from somewhere else. That is to say, our thoughts are not intentional because something external to us interprets them, rather they exhibit intrinsic intentionality, and thus our mental states constitute intentionality that is completely opposite the physical.

Now this posits problems for any philosophy of mind that is primarily materialistic. For how can a physical process be that which grounds intentionality if the physical first needs a mind in order to have intentionality at all? The materialist, then, needs a mind in the first place before he can start talking of intentionality being present in the physical. But the mind is the very thing the materialist is attempting to account for!

Furthermore, things get even worse for the identity theorist than this. Let us imagine a scenario where I raise my arm to a certain trajectory T1. Now let us say that I intended to raise my arm for some specific reason—perhaps to greet a co-worker. Now an identity theorist would say that my act of raising my arm can be accounted for in specifically neurophysiological events which terminated in certain muscular events which caused the raising of my arm. We can call this physical sequence that leads to the raising of my arm X1. Note that X1, by itself, is a sufficient condition for the raising of my arm to trajectory T1. So, the raising of my arm is therefore accounted for in completely materialist terms right? Not necessarily. For now imagine that instead of the physical sequence X1 causing T1, we say that this physical sequence is altered by only one neuron to cause a slightly different trajectory in my arm raising. So we can call this different physical sequence X2, and this new trajectory T2. So now we can say that X2 is a sufficient condition for the raising of my arm to trajectory T2.

But this is where we run into problems. While X1 might be sufficient for raising my arm to T1, and X2 is sufficient for raising my arm to T2, X1 and X2 are not necessary conditions for raising my arm as an intentional act. That is, in order to raise my arm as an intentional act, I do not need X1 or X2, but could have some other physical sequence obtain. But this means that no specific physical act is necessary for explaining the intentional act of raising my arm! Rather, while physical processes are sufficient for explaining my arm being raised in a certain specific manner, they are not sufficient for explaining my arm raising as an intentional act. Now note that if psychological states just are neurophysiological processes (i.e. if the mind is what the brain does), then certain physical sequences would be sufficient and necessary conditions for raising my arm intentionally. And since this is not the case then it cannot be true that our psychological states just are processes in the brain.

Rationality

A second problem that confronts identity theory is that of rationality. When certain neurophysiological states in the brain are followed by other subsequent neurophysiological states, neurologists understand exactly how these states follow from one another. If S1 (a neurophysiological process) is followed by S2, which is then followed by S3, it is the electrochemical properties of the brain, ultimately grounded in physical laws, that cause this transition. Now imagine that I entertain the following line of thought: 1) John is usually late to class on Mondays, 2) It’s Monday, 3) Therefore, John will most likely be late to class. Now notice that, on identity theory, each thought (each psychological state) will correspond to a certain brain state (neurophysiological process). But this means that if identity theory is true, then the cause of me inferring 3) from 1) and 2) is simply the electrochemical properties associated with those brain states.

This obviously runs into problems. For my act of inferring 3) was due to the semantics associated with 1) and 2), and I simply saw logically that 3) follows. And, in fact, for any inference or conclusion to be considered rational, it needs to be caused by the meaning and semantics of previous thoughts, or propositions. But, again, this is not true on identity theory. On identity theory it is not the semantics of 1) and 2) that cause the mental state of 3), rather what causes 3) is simply the blind electrochemical properties of the neurophysiological state associated with 2), which was caused in the same way by 1). But this type of causation is purely blind deterministic efficient causation. That is, it is simply matter dancing to the tune of physical laws, and therefore cannot be called rational in any sense. Thus stated, on identity theory any type of “rational inference” is, upon closer inspection, only pseudo-rationality, and therefore rationality as such is only an illusion.

Note that these are not the only devastating critiques of identity theory (there are others that I've put forth here and here). But I believe they go a long way in demonstrating that this reductive materialist theory of mind—that the mind is what the brain does—is vacuous. Now let it also be noted that the arguments above are not soul-of-the-gaps arguments. That is, the arguments are not saying “this or that aspect of cognition is difficult to explain currently, so we need to posit the soul or some Cartesian substance to account for them.” Rather the above arguments are ontological and deductive. That is, they don’t argue from current scientific ignorance, but instead argue that the ontology of a materialist theory of mind cannot ever in principle solve these problems. These problems then are a sort of reductio ad absurdum of materialism, and thus findings in neuroscience are irrelevant here.

In conclusion, then, we see that identity theory rests on a conflation of correlation with causation, and faces insurmountable arguments that demonstrate that the mind cannot simply be “what the mind does.”

Naturalism and falsifiability

Metaphysical naturalism is the position that the natural universe is all that exists, and a common corollary of adherence to naturalism is a subsequent adherence to physicalism—the theory that everything that exists is reducible to the material or physical. Such a metaphysical jump seems warranted: if the natural world is all that exists, and the natural world contains only the physical, then everything that exists is physical. These inferences illuminate exactly why naturalists are so enamored with science. For if all that exists is physical, and science studies the physical (empirical) world, then science surely must be the be-all and end-all road to knowledge and inquiry.

However, while the partnership of science and naturalism might seem like a match made in (non-existent) heaven, it quickly becomes riddled with problems. First, remember that science is very strictly committed to the doctrine of falsifiability. That is to say, something is considered to be a valid scientific hypothesis or theory if it could, at least in principle, be proven false. But, how does this view of falsification jive with naturalism? That is to ask, is naturalism itself falsifiable?  Well it might seem at first glance that this is indeed the case. For all one needs is evidence of the supernatural, and naturalism would subsequently be rendered invalid, right? Well, maybe not. Let’s examine a discussion between naturalist Richard Dawkins and Cardinal George Pell that illuminates where I’m going:

Moderator: What would it take [to convince you of the supernatural]?

Dawkins: I used to think that if somehow a great big giant nine-hundred foot high Jesus with a voice like Paul Robeson suddenly strode in and said “I exist, here I am.” Umm, but even that I actually sometimes wonder whether that would…

Pell: I would think you were hallucinating.

Dawkins: Exactly, I agree. I agree.

The point of this exchange is the following. Regardless of the fashion in which the supernatural (if it exists) would expose itself, such exposure could always be explained away in terms consistent with naturalism and physicalism. For instance, if Jesus or God were to appear to me, or to the whole world, this could always be waved away as a hallucination, or a prank by a higher life form in the universe. Now obviously the validity of such theories would be highly implausible, although the naturalist could claim that the opposite—that the supernatural was actually manifest—is equally implausible. Nevertheless, the point remains that naturalism is still salvageable despite apparent evidence to the contrary.

This all means one important thing: naturalism is, at least in principle, not falsifiable. I stress “in principle” because I believe that most logical people would abandon naturalism in practice were the aforementioned events to take place. However, my focal point here is principle. Now, since naturalism is unfalsifiable, then naturalism is unscientific, for remember that science only deals with the falsifiable. But this leads to a perfect irony. For if naturalism and physicalism are true then science and empirical observation are our only source of knowledge. Yet, because of such empirical considerations naturalism itself must be rejected. Thus stated, empiricism and naturalism do not pair together as well as is commonly claimed.

On reductionism

All the talk on reductionism as of late has kept my mind quite occupied. So occupied, in fact, that I felt the need to devote an entire post to reductionism itself. Though reductionism does come in different forms, this post will deal with the form that claims that an object is nothing but the structure of its physical constituents. This form of reductionism is very appealing to naturalists for the following reason. If the natural world is all that exists, then objects are nothing but physical particles in different structural forms. Hence, a lump of bronze and a bronze statue consist of the same matter simply arranged differently.

The initial difficulty with this view was articulated perfectly by attentive commenter JD Walters:

[D]escribing a cat as a mere 'amalgam of physical properties' is the (metaphysical) bundle theory of particulars and has all sorts of problems, including the consequence that if even one of the cat's properties changed, even the number of hairs on its body, we would be dealing with a different cat.

Let us expound JD’s argument here. Let’s take a cat, which on reductionism is nothing but a hunk of matter arranged cat-wise. This cat, then, is defined by the structure and arrangement that the particles are exhibiting. So, now let us remove a single hair from its body. What do we now have? Well we now have a cat with a different physical arrangement than before, and thus we have a different cat altogether. Why? Because cat A (the first cat), though it looks the same as cat B (the second cat), has more physical constituents than cat B—the difference between their constituents being the particles that make up a hair—and thus has a different physical arrangement than B. Hence, since cat A’s matter has a different structure and arrangement than cat B’s matter, then cat A and cat B are not the same cat, on reductionism.

Now, this certainly seems to run counter to our common sense—though the fact that it runs counter to common sense only demonstrates that reductionism, then, runs counter to common sense. For when a cat goes for a haircut, say, we don’t really believe that the post-haircut cat is a different cat than the pre-haircut cat. But, this only means that there must be something more to a cat than its mere physical constituents.

However, one attempted rebuttal that I’ve heard so far from reductionists is that the reason we still consider cat A the same as cat B is because our brains still categorize that there are defining characteristics or properties in cat B that make it the same as cat A. But this response runs into problems. First, how our brains characterize objects is superfluous to the discussion at hand. Talk about how our brains characterize objects is epistemological, as well as psychological, while talk of what actually makes an object an object in mind-independent reality is ontological. Hence the above objection is only conflating ontology with epistemology. To reiterate, when we talk of reductionism we’re talking about what makes an object that very object—i.e., what makes a cat a cat, as opposed to a frog. Thus stated, we’re interested in substances in themselves, and not how we perceive or categorize those substances.

Second, this objection, even if we ignore its metaphysical conflation, still does absolutely nothing to answer the original point. Remember that on reductionism an object is nothing but the arrangement or structure of its physical constituents. So if cat A has a different structure (even by a few particles) than Cat B, then, on reductionism, they cannot possibly be the same object. And thus it makes no difference whatsoever how we categorize said objects, because they are necessarily different objects because they have different physical constituents and structures!

Furthermore, the topic of how we categorize objects, based on an ontology of reductionism, leads to further absurdities in itself. Let us return to cat A and cat B. It is true that the difference (a hair) between A and B is miniscule when we perceive it, and therefore our visual perceptions will regard A and B as the same. But what if the difference is greater? What if cat B is also missing a leg? Can cat B be recognized as cat A? Well, not in the way the reductionist would want, since, again, cat B has different (less) physical constituents than cat A, and such constituents have a radically different arrangement than cat A as well. But suppose, contra the conclusions of reductionism, that the reductionist still wants to affirm B and A to be the same cat. Well, we can go even further. Suppose cat B is missing a tail, an eye, and an ear, in addition to its missing leg. Suppose the cat continues to deteriorate. At exactly what point is this cat B, on reductionism, no longer cat A? Notice here that the reductionist would be stuck in a dilemma, because at whatever point he identifies that the physical arrangement of cat B no longer constitutes cat A, the only argument for stopping at that specific point, consistent with reductionism, can be that cat B’s arrangement or structure is different from cat A’s—because, again,  on reductionism an object is defined as nothing but its physical constituents. Now if the reductionist wants to claim instead that cat B is different than cat A because it no longer retains the properties that make it cat-like, then the reductionist has given up reductionism. For admitting that there are properties inherent in a substance or object that make it that very substance is to give up reductionism. That is, it is to admit that there is something in a substance over and above its physical structure that makes it a certain substance.  

But we can push even further against reductionism, by returning to our original difference (one hair) between cat A and cat B. Notice that if cat B has the same structure as cat A minus one hair then cat B’s structure and arrangement is subsumed under the structure and arrangement of cat A. That is to say, cat A’s arrangement contains the arrangement of cat B. Now we can continue this process by removing two, three, and four hairs etc., to create a cat C, D, and E etc. Notice that each subsequent cat is contained in the former ones. That is to say, cat A contains all of cat B, C, D, and E etc. But this leads to something quite peculiar. Since, on reductionism, all of these cats have different structures and arrangements then they are all different cats. But this means that cat A literally contains cat B, C, D and E etc., which means that present in cat A is a multitude of other different cats at the same time in the same place! Such is the absurdity of reductionism.

Reductionism, then, turns out to not only go against common sense but, also, to lead to absurdity. Obviously, then, an object or substance cannot be nothing but its physical constituents. Thus stated, there must be something more to substances in themselves over and above their parts.

 

Essentialism and reductionism

Mike D over at The Aunicornist has, once again, devoted a couple of posts to refuting the metaphysics of Thomism. Since I am myself a Thomist I felt the need to deal with such arguments and assertions. I will, for now, be dealing with this post of Mikes. So, let’s dig in.

Mike states the following:

[W]e all agree that if tomorrow all humans were wiped off the face of the Earth,cats (for example) would still be cats—that is, they would retain the amalgam of physical properties that our brains categorizeas simply “cats”, even there [sic] wouldn’t be anyone around to say, “Hey, that’s a cat!” But does it follow, then, that cats have a property of identity that makes them cats?

Here Mike demonstrates his poor understanding of Thomism by conflating identity with essence. What Mike is talking about here is essence which is just that whereby something is what it is. To grasp a thing’s essence is to grasp all the properties that are essential to that thing remaining that very thing. Or, to take Mike’s example, the essence of a cat is comprised of whatever properties a cat must have for it to remain a cat. Yet, Mike here uses the terms “the property of identity.” But, identity is not the same thing as essence. It is an essence that makes something what it is and not identity. Identity is more broad and more tautological. The property of identity simply means that something is identical to itself and is not identical to what it isn’t. A corollary of this is that all of a thing’s properties are contained in its identity. Yet this is not the same with regards to a thing’s essence.

Let’s use an example to illuminate the distinction between identity and essence. Take two chairs. Each particular chair is identical to itself and is not identical to the other chair even if they both look  exactly the same. Yet, these chairs do share the same essence in that they both provide a seat—here providing a seat is the essence of being a chair. So, two objects can share an essence without being identical. This is because identity takes all of a thing’s properties into account whereas essence only takes essential properties into account. It is essential that a chair provide a seat, but it is not essential for a chair to have four legs. Yet, when contemplating a chair’s identity it is crucial to include the property of how many legs it has—for a chair with four legs is obviously not identical to a chair with three.

All this is important because Mike, in the quote above, is again conflating identity with essence, which wouldn’t have happened if Mike adequately understood the position he’s attempting to refute. So, while none of this, so far, undermines Mike’s arguments, it does demonstrate that Mike does not understand his opponent’s positions the way he thinks he does.

Mike then illustrates his (already confused) argument with an example of a mountain:

Mountains are formed, if I remember grade school geology correctly, when massive tectonic plates press against each other, forcing the earth to slowly rise over eons. I wonder how the Thomist might think about this, then—at what point does the earth have the property of identity of a mountain, versus just being a really big hill or a giant pile of rocks?

Again, Mike should be talking about essence here, and not identity. For a mountain, or hill, at any stage in its formation will still always be identical to itself. And thus, the “property of identity” will always be present. What Mike means to argue here is that if we watched the earth slowly rising over eons then at what point could we say that the earth exhibits the essence of a mountain, as opposed to a hill? The point of this example is to demonstrate that determining the essence of something is not always so clear cut, and that such an endeavor can run into ambiguities and vagueness.

Yet, this argument doesn’t really make the case that Mike thinks it does. First, a Thomist would not claim that determining a thing’s essence is always an easy endeavor. It is in some cases very difficult to determine what the essence of something is, or how such an essence differs from the essence of another. But nothing about this difficulty demonstrates that there are no such things as essences. The real problem then deals with epistemology, and not ontology. Encountering difficulty in determining a thing’s essence is an epistemic problem, while proclaiming that things do not have an essence is an ontological problem, and Mike is conflating the two.  In order for Mike’s example to have any force he would need to demonstrate that difficulty in determining a thing’s essence entails that essences are therefore nonexistent. But Mike has not done this.

Second, Mike’s argument actually makes the case for Thomistic essentialism, and not against. By picking a vague case of determining essence, Mike is implicitly conceding that there are cases that are not vague. In fact, most cases are not vague. One could easily identify the essence of the brain, the heart, water, human rationality etc. The fact is that we can find an abundance of easily identifiable essences all around us. So why should we call essentialism into question because of a few exceptional cases that run into obscurity, instead of affirming essentialism due to the abundance of its applicability? There is no reason. The fact is that we wouldn’t even be able to recognize vague instances of identifying essence if we didn’t already have clear and precise examples.

Mike then articulates one of his central arguments:

Thomists take things like identity, essence, nature, 'prime matter' and potentiality to be literally real properties of the external world, independently of human minds. But at every turn, we can see that we have no reason whatsoever to think that any of these 'metaphysical' properties are anything more than conceptual constructs. There's no reason for us to think that the concept of "cat" is anything more than a useful categorization of our brains for a particular arrangement of matter; we have no reason to think that there exists any such a thing as the identity, essence, or nature of a cat independently of our minds.

Mike is making the argument that our metaphysical concepts are mind-dependent, and that they are simply constructs of our brain that help us order and identify the world we experience. There is no essence of a cat independently of our minds. The essence of a cat is simply something that our brains have constructed in order to arrange the matter that makes up a cat.
While this viewpoint might seem parsimonious, it is rife with problems. First, the world is exactly the way we would expect if there were in fact actual essences and identities of things. One example of this is unity. Let’s illustrate. If I consider all four of my dogs—my Chihuahua, Dachshund, Beagle and Blue Heeler—I can see that all of them share the same essence of “dogness” even though they are not identical. And in that sense they share in a unity between them. They are all individual particulars yet they are in fact related to one another. They are related to one another in a way that they are not related to a cup, a tree, or a lamp. But if Mike is correct, and dogs share no “essence” and we simply construct such things in our brain, then why is it the case that we attribute a shared essence to all these dogs? The only way one can answer this is to say that these dogs, in mind-independent reality, exhibit similar characteristics and have similar properties that allow us to group them into these related “kinds”. But then this simply makes the case for the Thomist! For this is what the Thomist has been arguing all along. For dogs can only be grouped into a specific kind because they have certain dispositions and properties that make them dogs, as opposed to, say, frogs. And it is these dispositions and properties that constitute an essence. So, the fact that the world contains a multitude of particulars yet many of these particulars are unified only makes sense on essentialism.

Second, Mike seems to forget that our concepts are always derived from reality itself. He is so smitten with Model-Dependent Realism and Embodied Realism that he seems to think that our brains literally make this stuff  (like essences) up. (A common example he uses is the way our brain “creates” color. But this is false. Our brains don’t create color. They simply perceive the raw materials of sense datum in a certain way so as to “see’ color. But everything that causes us to see color (e.g. wavelengths and photons ) already exists in the world. So color does exist, it simply exists virtually instead of formally. All this is to say that we perceive color because color exists virtually in reality, and is not a simple construct of our brain. ) But if our concepts are abstracted from reality then this simply isn’t the case. To use an example, I can tell the difference between an apple and an orange. Why? Is it simply because my brain arranges the matter into two different categories? Or is it because there is a real difference between the properties and dispositions of an apple and an orange and my mind is abstracting those differences? Obviously it must be the latter. But if this is true, then there must be something about an apple that makes it different than an orange. And we know this to be true because my understanding of the essence of an orange is different from the essence of an apple. But these essences weren’t simply constructed by my brain, rather they are rooted in the properties of the objects themselves in mind-independent reality.

Mike then states the following:

[W]e can reject the Thomistic metaphysical gobbledygook on the principle of parsimony — the notion that cats have a distinct, non-physical property of 'catness' (their 'essence'), for example, is completely superfluous to our understanding and description of what a cat is. We can have a fully accurate, useful description of the animal simply by recognizing it as an amalgam of physical properties which our brains categorize in a particular way, and nothing more. There is no need to postulate any extra non-physical or 'metaphysical' properties to understand what a cat is, why it behaves as it does, or what it evolved from. Since the assumption of the existence of such things is not essential to our description or understanding of cats, we can discard it. We don't even have to demonstrate its falsity — i.e., somehow 'disprove' the existence of those metaphysical properties — we can simply discard them as superfluous and thus meaningless.

A few responses here. First, nobody has argued that postulating things like essences and identities are pragmatic. So why would Mike be looking for pragmatism here? Why? Because Mike has an empiricist presupposition, and anything that is not scientifically observable, predictable, and measurable is, to him, not pragmatic and therefore “superfluous.” But in order for Mike’s position to be vindicated, he would need to demonstrate that science is the only path to knowledge. But Mike knows that this is self-undermining. So why, then, should we believe that metaphysical concepts like essence and identity can be thrown out simply because science has no use of them? The answer is that there is no reason.

 Moreover, let it not be forgotten that science is only interested in the quantitative aspects of the world and not the qualitative. Yet, metaphysical concepts like identity and essence are not quantitative, and therefore the fact that they might not be pragmatic in scientific investigation is completely irrelevant, since science isn’t looking for them to begin with!

Second, Mike’s argument above implicitly affirms reductionism. That is, Mike believes that any entity or object is nothing more than an amalgam of its physical parts and components. But reductionism runs into problems. For example, if water is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen composed together, then water should not have any dispositions and properties different from its constituents. But surely water does have properties that differ from hydrogen and oxygen. So then water cannot be nothing more than its physical parts. At this point one might say that we should expect water to have different properties than its parts alone, because water isn’t simply hydrogen and oxygen, but hydrogen and oxygen bonded together. So of course hydrogen and oxygen bonded together will behave different than hydrogen and oxygen by themselves. But this is exactly the anti-reductionist’s point. If water behaves differently than its constituents, then there is something about water as a substance in itself that amounts to more than its parts. Thus stated, if a substance has properties that its physical parts do not have by themselves, then there is something over and above these parts alone that make up the dispositions of said substance, and therefore a substance cannot be said to be nothing but an amalgam of its parts.

Hence we see that Mike D has failed to make his case. First, he has shown that he doesn’t even correctly comprehend the position he is arguing against. He constantly rebukes those who recommend Scholastic literature to him, yet he’s shown that his research into this very area is minimal and is lacking. So why not at least buy a book that gives a formal defense of such a position? That would be my recommendation. Second, he has tried to demonstrate why metaphysical concepts like essence and identity are meaningless and superfluous, yet his arguments are rife with problems. Third, he’s attempted to affirm metaphysical theories like reductionism which, when considered, only lead back to the very metaphysical concepts he was attempting to overthrow. I maintain, then, that nowhere have we seen good reason to overthrow Scholastic metaphysics, let alone metaphysics themselves.