Richard Carrier on the argument from contingency

I’ll be blunt. I’m not a big fan of Richard Carrier. Read almost any reply from Carrier responding to a critic of his work, and you’ll notice how arrogant, condescending, and antagonistic he is with his interlocutors. It can be very difficult at times, for me, to read through a polemic work of his without being extremely put-off. (Just survey his articles wherein he claims that the late Maurice Casey, Joseph Hoffman, Stephanie Fisher, and Robert Eisenman are all literally insane.) However, while I dislike him, I do find that many of his theses are well-thought out, well-argued, and worth responding to—I think this specifically about his book Sense and Goodness without God  and what I’ve seen from his arguments for Jesus-mythicism (though I haven’t yet read his On the Historicity of Jesus yet).

Now, the other day I was writing an upcoming post regarding atheist responses (and mischaracterizations) of the cosmological argument, and I realized that I had never read what Carrier’s specific replies were regarding said argument. (I have surveyed Carrier’s thoughts on God as an ultimate explanation here, but I had never seen him directly address the cosmological argument.) I decided to look up some of his responses, and one response I came across consisted of a handful of Carrier’s supposed refutations of the argument from contingency (the argument I find most persuasive, and have defended here) promulgated in a rebuttal, which was part of a debate he engaged in with Tom Wanchick in 2006 (see here). I (obviously) found Carrier’s rebuttal to be inadequate—though to be fair his opponent Wanchick formulated the argument poorly—and I will argue presently that he failed to refute the argument from contingency, when the concepts are formulated properly.  

So, let’s dig in by surveying Carrier’s first objection:

First, Wanchick has not shown that the universe does not exist necessarily. Contrary to what Wanchick falsely claims, scientists now agree that we cannot know whether the whole of existence had a beginning, even if the observable part of it did, nor do scientists agree that everything that exists (including all space-time) will end, even if the present cosmos will.

While Wanchick might have attempted to ground his argument in a universe which had a beginning, the argument from contingency need not assume such a thing. For the claim “the universe does not exist necessarily” does not require a universe that must have had a beginning. That is to say, the eternality or non-eternality of the universe is completely peripheral. For the theist argues that even an eternal universe can still be contingent.

But how can we actually establish whether the universe, or any other existing thing, is contingent or necessary? Well if it is not of the nature of X to exist, then X must derive its existence from something outside itself, and therefore it is contingent. That is, if the nature or essence of X does not provide the reason for its existence, then X is contingent. Another way to think about this is that if I can contemplate the nature of X without simultaneously contemplating its existence, then the reason for the existence of X is not contained within its nature, and it is, again, contingent. (There are many other criteria that can be applied: if something is ontologically composed of parts, or if it is a composite of act/potency etc.) Therefore, we need only apply these criteria to the universe to determine whether is satisfies said criteria. And indeed, what does happen when one applies this standard? Well, the nature of the universe is that it is all space-time, matter, and energy. But obviously, contemplating all space-time, matter and energy does not clue us in regarding why space-time, matter, and energy exist in the first place. That is to say, contemplating the nature of the universe does not provide us with the reason for why it exists at all—and it certainly doesn’t tell us why this universe exists and not another, or why any universe exists instead of none at all. Therefore, the universe’s nature does not contain the reason for its own existence, and thus it is, by definition, contingent.

So while Carrier might have been correct that his interlocutor did not demonstrate why the universe is contingent, we surely have. And none of our arguments need rest on the premise that the universe had a beginning, or will come to an end.

Carrier moves to his second objection:

Second, Wanchick has not shown that "every substance [including the universe] has an explanation." Wanchick only offers as evidence our observations regarding the effects of a universe. But he hasn't demonstrated that these observations hold for a universe itself. The only way we can logically infer that what is true of "the effects of a universe" is probably true of the universe itself is if we assume the universe is an effect, since otherwise we only have knowledge of effects, and whether the universe is an effect is precisely the matter in dispute. Wanchick hasn't demonstrated that the universe is an effect, and if the universe is not an effect, what we conclude about effects within a universe will not necessarily apply to the universe.

Carrier’s point here is spot on. However, it’s only adequate based on the fact that his interlocutor is (again) doing a poor job promulgating the argument from contingency. We can do better. For the way to demonstrate that the universe necessitates an explanation is to demonstrate 1) that the universe does not contain the reason for its own existence (which we have done); and 2) that the existence of brute facts is impossible. For if one cannot logically rule out brute facts, then it is always possible that the universe just exists with no rhyme or reason, end of story. Luckily I’ve already argued that brute facts are logically impossible (here), and therefore we’ve demonstrated that the universe requires an explanation for its existence, contrary to Carrier.

Carrier articulates his third objection:

Third, Wanchick claims "only minds" can cause any time or location to exist, but this cannot be true. It is logically impossible for a mind to think or act without a time in which to think or act, and a mind that has no location exists nowhere and what exists nowhere does not exist.[2] Therefore, he has offered no logical explanation for space-time. Likewise, Wanchick claims "there was no nature prior to the universe" as a reason to reject natural causes of the universe. But if "the universe" includes time, then there can never be a time when the universe didn't exist--even if the universe began--and therefore it is logically impossible for anything to exist at any time "before" the universe, whether a person or a thing. So if there was no nature prior to the universe, there was no person, either.

Here Carrier is implicitly begging the question. (Let us ignore the Scholastic doctrine of analogy presently since Carrier was not debating a Thomist.) It is not clear that one cannot act without time or space unless you a priori assume metaphysical naturalism. That is, to act must be to be actual, or to exist, in some way—you cannot act and not be actual—and thus Carrier is essentially saying that there cannot be existents without space-time—meaning there can be no existence outside of the natural world—which begs the question in favor of naturalism. He does the same thing with regards to time. I agree that it is nonsensical to say that anything existed “before” there was time, but this only means that temporal existence is nonsensical “before” the universe. However, we cannot assume that existing things can only be temporal unless we assume naturalism beforehand—that is, unless we assume that existents can only exist inside space-time and the natural world. Carrier is simply begging all the questions he possibly can.

Carrier moves to his last objection:

Finally, it's not logically impossible that "it is in the nature of a universe to exist," and if it's in the nature of this universe to exist, then the existence of this universe is self-explanatory. Even if we accept that "the explanation of the universe must be a metaphysically necessary, uncaused being," which "metaphysically necessary, uncaused being" would that be? Wanchick hasn't demonstrated that this "being" can't be the universe (or some part of it), nor that it could be a god.

A few responses. First, while it might not be logically impossible that it be of the nature of the universe to exist—though I would challenge this as well [1]—this tells us nothing about whether the actual universe is indeed necessary. And reasoning this way, though I’m not claiming Carrier is, is exactly the fallacy that the ontological argument commits. Second, if we accept a necessary being as an explanation of the universe I don’t understand why Carrier thinks the question “What necessary being would that be?” is efficacious. For if we arrive at a necessary being we arrive at the ultimate explanation of everything. That is, we arrive at the terminus of explanation itself in that which explains itself as well as everything else. And unless Carrier thinks there can be more than one of these necessary existents then I fail to see how his question makes any sense, or has any force against his interlocutor’s argument. Moreover, while Wanchick might not have successfully demonstrated that this necessary being cannot be the universe (or part of it), we certainly have.

So we have surveyed Carrier’s arguments against (a specific formulation of) the contingency argument. While some of Carrier’s objections pose a problem for his interlocutor’s formulation of the argument, I think this is due to the lack of said interlocutor’s ability to promulgate a more persuasive version of said argument. For we have seen that Carrier’s objections really pose no problem whatsoever when compared against a more rigorous formulation.

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[1] While we might be able to imagine a universe which is necessary I don’t see that we can conceive of one. For by universe I, again, mean that which is all matter-energy, and space-time. But to reiterate, contemplating all matter, energy, and space-time cannot tell you why this matter, energy, and space-time exists in the first place—for if it could then matter, energy and space-time would be self-explanatory already, and this current universe would be necessary, which we saw above it isn’t.

Theoretical Physicist David Deutsch on the limitations of science

One of the most important limits of science is that it isn't philosophy. [...] Scientism is the purported application of science to problems that are really philosophical. Such as the question of whether animals really feel pain or not. We can tell whether animal's nerves are excited and whether their brains react to that. But whether an animal feels pain in the sense that humans do, or merely react in the sense that a robot does, that is ultimately a matter of philosophy, because it's only philosophy that can determine the criterion for science to use when trying to distinguish between those cases. So that's a limit of science--trying to reach into philosophy is scientism. [...] I would say to [those who claim that the only good explanations are scientific explanations] that that theory is not part of science, and therfore it rules itself out.

Taken from an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

The rise of Aristotle

Many of those with whom I encounter through comments on the internet usually turn their nose up when confronted with the Aristotelian-Thomistic (Scholastic) philosophy that I espouse. To them, Scholasticism is simply a relic of an antiquated and outdated philosophy. It was what a group of people were forced to think about the world before the advent of science, before we became “enlightened.” They say that terms like actuality, potentiality, final causality, essence or form, have long been relegated to the dustbin of failed and superfluous philosophies, especially since science no longer has any use of them. As physicist Sean Carroll has said, “This kind of Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2,500 years ago. Today we know better.” Moreover, others also claim that the only people who even resurrect these antiquated and esoteric ideas and concepts are apologists, trying to mask their arguments in obscure and archaic terminology so as to confuse their interlocutor—while simultaneously making their philosophy seem sophisticated.

I maintain that all this is false. First, the individuals I know who are Thomists espouse this philosophy precisely because they genuinely find it to be the only valid metaphysic, and not because they simply want to prove God’s existence. I myself was sincerely enamored with the Thomistic concepts that I read in Edward Feser’s book Aquinas, and found said concepts and philosophy to be a convincing and necessary ontological description of reality.

Second, and more importantly regarding this post, it is actually the case that Scholastic philosophy is seeing a major revival as of late. Now this might not seem like a big deal to the “skeptic” currently reading, since the number of adherents of a position does nothing to entail the validity or efficacy of said position—and I would agree. However, what’s interesting about this resurgence is the fact that most of the individuals who are returning to the concepts inherent in Scholasticism are not theists, and are not really in the Scholastic “camp” at all. Rather, this revival is mostly led by philosophers of science (yes, science) who see that a return to certain Aristotelian concepts is a necessary step towards a valid ontology.

Let us survey this resurgence. First, there are philosophers who claim that efficient causality necessitates that objects must have intrinsic dispositional properties—what they call “powers”—that are directed towards the generation of certain effects. While they don’t refer to this as final causality, this is essentially a return to that very notion. This has been promulgated by analytic philosophers like John Heil, in From an Ontological Point of View, C. B Martin, in The Mind in Nature, George Molnar, in Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, and Stephen Mumford, in Getting Causes from Powers and Dispositions. Furthermore, biologist J. Scott Turner, in The Tinkerer’s Accomplice, and philosophers of biology Marjorie Grene and Andre Ariew, in The Understanding of Nature, argue for a return to an Aristotelian notion of inherent teleology.

Second, essentialism—the belief that things have an inherent nature or essence that accounts for them being what they are—has seen a revival among secular philosophers as well. Philosopher of science Brian Ellis, in The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism, and philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright, in Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations, put forward an Aristotelian essentialist interpretation of the results of the hard sciences like chemistry and physics.

Moreover, in recent analytic philosophy there has been talk of what are called categorical and dispositional properties (see here). As Edward Feser notes, these are really just different names for act and potency. The categorical properties of a thing being the properties that it actually instantiates—that is, the way it actually is—and where dispositional properties of a thing are properties that will manifest under certain conditions—that is, the way something can potentially be. These properties are discussed at length by Ellis, Mumford, Martin, and Molnar, all mentioned above, as well as analytic philosophers Galen Strawson and D.M. Armstrong,

Note again that these philosophers are secular and are not Scholastics, Thomists, or even Aristotelians. They are simply analytic philosophers who see that something like an Aristotelian philosophy—though they use different jargon than Aristotelians—of nature is a necessary framework for intelligibility of reality. The claim, then, that Scholasticism is nothing but an outdated and antiquated philosophy, mostly promulgated by apologists and charlatans, is blatantly false. Aristotelianism is on the cusp of a resurgence, and the naysayers would do well to sit up and take notice.

(More) about me

Up until this point I've kept my identity on this blog quite private. There was a reason behind this. The school that I used to teach at, up until this fall, was a heavily conservative Christian private school. They believed in a young earth, creationism, Jesus' divinity, Biblical inerrancy etc., and all sorts of things that I tend to question on this blog. So, I knew that if they ever came across this blog--and they did look online for their employees online activity--they would be taken aback and would most likely fire me--such is the heart of evangelical fundamentalists. So I kept my identity relatively obscure on this blog for that specific reason. However, I now work at a different school and no longer have this problem, so I felt the desire to illuminate more about my personal life, in case anybody cared.

So, my name is Steven (obviously) and I'm twenty-five years old. I was born on July 22, 1990 and raised in El Paso, Texas, where I still currently reside. Despite the tone of my posts, I'm actually a very goofy and sarcastic individual who is almost never serious. I have been married for almost two years to the most gorgeous woman alive (who also has her own blog), and I have a ten month old daughter named Norah Grace. I put a big emphasis on family and I make sure that that is always my number one priority. (I also have four dogs--I am a huge animal lover.) I graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics. I do plan to go back to school for a masters degree in philosophy, but that will have to wait. I have been teaching for three years and, to toot my own horn just a little bit, I am a damn good teacher.

I absolutely love football and am an avid Atlanta Falcons fan, which means I'm usually depressed during football season. I am obsessed with reading, though I rarely have time for it now since I'm a full-time dad. I also have become recently obsessed with chess, and I play online everyday--so if your interested in playing let me know!

Well, I thought I had more to say but apparently not. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

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.

 

 

Embodied realism revisited

Mike D, over at the newly rejuvenated The A-unicornist has decided to engage my review--my original posts can be found here: Part I, II, and III--of the philosophy of embodied realism, as promulgated in Philosophy of the Flesh, that I wrote about six months ago—I guess better late than never. His three posts can be read here, here, and here. While I did plan on writing more reviews on embodied realism, I instead found that the common readers of my blog were not really interested in the material, and, moreover, after my last post—wherein I attempted to demonstrate that embodied realism was self-refuting—I felt that I had adequately cracked the foundation that embodied realism lays upon, and therefore not much more needed to be said. But Mike D doesn’t agree (shocker!), hence his review, and thus I feel the need to revisit this topic in order to dispel the fallacies in his thinking and arguments. Sit back and enjoy, preferably with a cup of coffee.

Correspondence Theory of Truth

My first post on embodied realism was an attempted defense of the correspondence theory of truth, in opposition to embodied realism which claimed that such a philosophy is false because it ignores our levels of embodiment and the corollaries therein. Those that read the post will remember that I carefully made my point that all that is required for the correspondence theory to be valid is for truth-bearers to correspond to truth-makers. This is important, because Mike makes a mistake right off the bat in his review by claiming, contrary to the very post he’s answering, that the theory claims that the concepts in our minds correspond directly to real things in the world.” Well, no, this is not what it says, or at least this is not how I articulated my position for reasons that I specifically outlined in the first post, based on the distinction between formal and virtual properties that adhere. So Mike is already misstating my position.

Now, this idea of correspondence is a crucial reason why the example of the reality of color is an example utilized by both Mike and I. As was highlighted before, color does not exist without human embodiment—that is without the subjectivity of the cognitive and visual human apparatus. But this does not mean that the reality of color is not objective, that is, it doesn’t mean that it can be said to objectively obtain in reality. As I said before, there is a difference between objective truth, and truth obtaining objectively. Color cannot obtain without an embodied observer, so it does not obtain objectively, but this does not mean that color does not exist in objective reality. To argue such is to engage in conflation. Now, Mike did engage this point of mine, and found my definition of “objective” wanting:

So what on Earth could Steven mean when he says that he agrees with the authors that color does not inhere in the world objectively, but then he says that it is objective "virtually"? Steven appears to be operating on an idiosyncratic and, frankly, ambiguous definition of "objective". Objectivity generally means that the truth of a proposition is not dependent on any subject.

Here’s what I mean, and it reflects back to what I said above. All that is required for a statement to be objectively true is for a truth-bearer to correspond to a truth-maker. That’s it. It is the correspondence that must be objective, and not the bearer or the maker. So, why is this a problem for Mike? Well, the embodiment of man only renders the truth-maker to be subjective, and not the correspondence itself. For instance, if I say “The grass is green”, you have three parts related to the truth of this statement. You have the truth-bearer in the statement itself, you have the truth-maker realized in the color obtaining subjectively, and you have the correspondence between the two. Notice that the correspondence is objective, even though the truth-maker is subjective. Thus, the truth “The grass is green” is still objectively true, even though we need to be embodied in order for color to obtain. Embodiment, then, simply does nothing to call the objectivity of truth into question here, and therefore Mike’s position here is false.

Mike then continues his point, predicated on the same misunderstandings he expounded above:

It's quite clear that color, as well as conceptual spaces like skies and gardens, cannot fit any common-usage definition of objectivity. Steven seems to think (as would be the case in the correspondence theory of truth) that embodiment serves to "obtain" objective truths. But this overlooks the fact that our minds actually create and impose conceptual structures onto the world. Colors, skies, and gardens are all examples of things that do not exist in the classical sense of objectivity, but rather are what Lakoff describes as "mutliplace interactional properties": phenomena that only exist as an emergent function of our neurocircuitry interacting with the world around us.

Again Mike is conflating objective truth with truth obtaining objectively. Color obtains subjectively, but it is an objective truth that it exists. To reiterate, the fact that our embodiment can create and impose conceptual structures onto the world only affects the truth-maker, and not the correspondence itself, and therefore this subjectivity does not affect the objectivity of the correspondence itself.  Mike seems to have not caught it when I made this point in my original post. Moreover, this all stems from his poor understanding of what the correspondence theory actually means and how I originally articulated it—as we saw above.

Mike then incorrectly sums up my position and draws (also incorrect) conclusions from it:

Looking back, Steven's argument is just all over the place. He defines a property inhering "virtually" in such a way that is all but indistinguishable from Lakoff's position, and even concedes that Scholastics like him do not think color exists objectively in the world, just as Lakoff argues. Except then he says it does, if by "objective" we mean "virtually objective", even though virtual inherence (as he's defined it) directly conflicts with classical objectivity. As it stands, Steven's objections so far are just a mess.

First off, Mike incorrectly articulates my position by claiming that I conceded that color does not exist objectively. I never said that. I said that color does not obtain objectively, and this again demonstrates that Mike has misunderstood my position. I believe that the statement “color exists” is objectively true, and my only qualification is that the nature of its obtainment is subjective. There is a difference between the two, and unfortunately it has evaded Mike’s comprehension.

Second, Mike claims that virtual inherence conflicts with classical objectivity. This is false once again. To reiterate again, classical objectivity only requires a correspondence between a truth-bearer and a truth-maker. And a property that inheres or obtains virtually does not call this requirement into question. It only entails, as I said above, that the truth-maker obtains subjectively, but this does not make the correspondence itself subjective. So, contrary to Mike, no assaults have been committed against classical objectivity, and correspondence theory remains intact.

However, we’re not finished here, and we can see that things are even worse for those who would attempt to dispel the correspondence theory. For think about what one is saying when they say the correspondence theory of truth is false—as Mike and Lakoff do. They are saying that the theory fails to adequately represent the way reality operates—and this relies on the very same theory of correspondence. Even the authors of Philosophy of the Flesh do this! In order to make the case against correspondence theory they tried to show that the levels of embodiment demonstrate that the correspondence of correspondence theory is not a neat one-to-one relation as is supposed, and therefore the theory is false. But by doing so the authors are utilizing the very theory they’re attempting to disprove! That is, they’re arguing that correspondence theory cannot be true, because it fails to accurately correspond to the way reality actually operates. Thus, not only has Mike’s case not been made, it’s not even possible to make it.

Levels of Embodiment

Mike then (still in his first post) transitions to a particular criticism I made, regarding the levels of embodiment. Let me re-expound my argument presently, because it will be momentarily seen that Mike completely misunderstands it.

Remember that the authors of Philosophy of the Flesh claimed that there are three distinct levels of our embodiment: the neural, phenomenological, and cognitive unconscious level. The authors then claimed that there can be no truth statements that are “level-independent,” that truths can only be stated at distinct levels and distinct vantage points and that one level cannot be erected over and against another. (This position always reminds me of Obi Wan Kenobi in return of the Jedi stating "What I told you was true, from a certain point of view." Who knew Kenobi was an embodied realist?) Going back to our discussion on color, the authors stated the following:

Both the phenomenology-first and science-first strategies are inadequate in one way or other. If we take the phenomenology-first strategy, we miss what we know scientifically is true about color. We get the scientific metaphysics of color wrong. Our “truth conditions” do not reflect what we know to be true. If we take the science-first strategy, we do violence to the normal meaning of the word and to what ordinary people mean by “truth.”

The authors are saying here that, with regard to color, we cannot simply erect the neural level of embodiment as the end-all-be-all of the color discussion by saying that, scientifically, color does not exist—because then we do damage to the phenomenological level wherein color indeed seems to exist. But neither can we erect the phenomenological level over above the other levels because then we do damage to what science actually tells us about the physics of color.

Here’s where my point came in. My point was that sometimes we have to erect one level above another, and that many times doing damage to one level of embodiment is allowed and is necessary—at least, if we want our predications to be coherent. A prime example that I highlighted in my post, is cases where we know, through science, that our immediate qualia—a part of our phenomenological level--is wrong, or deceiving. And here we should be able to truly say that our phenomenological level is wrong and inaccurate, and the only way we know this is through science. And therefore in these cases a “science-first” strategy is logical and necessary.

Now, here’s what Mike had to say regarding this point, and it’s not even in the ballpark of answering or contending with my point:

The authors are not asserting that the correspondence theory of truth assumes the phenomenological level to be true all the time — indeed as Steven notes, the authors point out that the correspondence theory fails to even acknowledge these different (and sometimes conflicting) levels of truth, and that is the central issue.

Mike is quite confused here. First, I’m attacking the position of embodied realism, as stated by the authors. So my point had nothing to do with claiming that the authors were “asserting that the correspondence theory of truth assumes the phenomenological level to be true all the time.” Again, my point was not predicated on the authors taking this position. Furthermore, correspondence theory was momentarily irrelevant to my point, so Mike’s mention of it is misplaced and confused.

The point that Mike missed was that, contrary to the author’s point above, our levels of embodiment can in fact be erected over one another and do damage to each other. The example I utilized to make my point was that of hallucinations. Why? Because on the phenomenological level, a hallucination is in fact experienced. It does constitute valid qualia. And therefore, on embodied realism, a hallucination is seen as “true” on that level. But scientifically and neurologically, we know that the object of the hallucination does not actually exist in objective reality. So, should we just sit on our hands and claim that a hallucination is “real” from the phenomenological level, but false from the neural level, because God forbid we let one of these levels make the decision for us? Of course not. A hallucination is simply a false perception, and that’s it. Science wins here. And therefore there is one level, in this instance, that is erected above the “truth” of another and subsequently renders it false.

But, Mike’s not having it:

The authors do not at any point either state or imply the ridiculous assertion that all phenomenological claims must be taken at face value (Steven said, "just because we perceive something does not mean it is there”, with which the authors would of course concur). And importantly, the authors do not assert that different levels of embodiment are equally true at all times.

Whoa there. First, I never claimed that the authors stated such. Mike has once again misunderstood my point. My point was not predicated on the proposition that all phenomenological claims must be taken at face value, or that the levels of embodiment are equally true at all times. Remember that the authors claimed that embodied realism requires us to jettison the belief that we can formulate a unique and complete description, on one level of embodiment, of a particular state of affairs. Therefore, my point, to reiterate it ad nauseum, is that in the case of hallucinations we can, and must, formulate a unique and complete description of the event based primarily on neuroscience and psychology, which necessarily does damage to the “truth” of the phenomenological level, and this contradicts the author’s claim that this should not be done.

But wait, Mike’s not done:

When one level of embodiment produces stable truths that contradict unstable truths of another, the level of embodiment producing stable truths is privileged. That is why we're skeptical of hallucinations of dead relatives: we know from neuroscience that people in certain conditions experience a wide variety of hallucinations that may or may not include deceased relatives. The results from neuroscience are replicable, stable truths; visitations from dead relatives are not. When multiple levels of embodiment produce stable truths — as in our study of the mind through neurobiology, neurocomputation, and cognition — they create an overlapping and complimentary understanding — the kind that allows to us to learn that the correspondence theory of truth is, in fact, wrong.

Big problems here. Mike is doing exactly what the authors say cannot be done, and is actually agreeing with me in the process. That is, Mike here is arguing for a science-first strategy and is arguing for the momentarily privileged status of the “truth” of the neural level, and is thereby doing damage to the “truth” of the phenomenological level. The results from neuroscience, while they might indeed be stable truths, are being erected as the end-all-be-all of the discussion, and are seen as giving us a complete description of the state of affairs of hallucination.

But Mike is even more confused than his oblivious agreement with my stance would indicate.  He claims that his argument works because in this instance you have “multiple levels” that produce stable truths, as opposed to just one level being erected over another. But this is blatantly false according to the levels promulgated by the authors of Philosophy of the Flesh that Mike reveres. The examples of disciplines that converge on these stable truths that Mike lists—e.g., neurocomputation, neurobiology etc.—are all subsumed under one level of embodiment, namely that of the neural level—again, according to Lakoff. So contrary to Mike, if these stable truths—which are subsumed under the neural level--can indeed call the phenomenological view into question, then you have the epitome of one level gaining a privileged status above the others—the very thing Lakoff said couldn’t and shouldn’t be done. So either Mike is right and his beloved Lakoff is wrong, or Lakoff is right and Mike obliviously agrees with me. Either way it’s a lose-lose for Mike.

So did Mike really demonstrate that my criticism of the levels of embodiment was wanting? Hardly. He only demonstrated that he has trouble comprehending both my position and Lakoff’s.

Embodied Truth

My second post dealt with the theory of truth put forward by Lakoff in the form of embodied truth. I began the post highlighting a remark the authors made on how we conceptualize truth, and Mike had a visceral reaction to it:

Steven is already so far off the mark here that I'm just gobsmacked. The authors are not claiming there are no objective truths, or that truths do not exist independently of us. They are certainly not arguing that something is, for example, "true for me" in the form of pure subjectivism. Rather, they're talking about how human beings conceptualize truth, and how shared truths become stable truths.

Is Mike right here? Actually I believe he is (partially), and I do believe that I misread or misunderstood what the authors were getting at. I conflated the psychology of how we conceptualize truth with embodied truth as a philosophical theory of truth. So Mike is correct in highlighting this mistake of mine. Fair enough.

However, if the whole notion of embodied truth is not a theory of truth per se, then how, on embodied realism do we actually ground truth? Well, remember that due to the different levels of embodiment, we can have distinct truths at different levels, but we can have no neutral viewpoint apart from these levels from which to make objective predications? But then, how do we arrive at truth? That is, how can we say X is the case, or is not the case?

Here’s where Mike and embodied realism misstep. I claimed in my original post that a theory of truth is not amendable to scientific results like that of embodied cognition. Why not, you ask? Because one first needs a theory of truth before one can engage in science. Science presupposes truth, not the other way around. Here’s how Mike responded when this was brought up:

But of course, the authors discuss at length the assumptions underpinning scientific realism to which they adhere. The results of embodied cognition do not, as Steven asserts, constitute an a priori theory of truth, but rather illuminate how human minds conceptualize, understand, and share truths. The authors state, "A person takes a sentence as 'true' of a situation if what he or she understands the sentence to be expressing accords with what he or she understand the situation to be."

Let the reader understand that Mike completely side-stepped the issue. I don’t recall any instance where I asserted that embodied cognition constitutes an a priori theory of truth—I don’t recall it because it never happened. However, this isn’t even the issue. The issue is that embodied cognition simply does not have the power to make any such comment on what truth is, or is not, since it presupposes truth in the first place. If B relies on A, then no corollary of B can call A into question. And this is the issue to which Mike is completely silent on.

Embodied realism has not, then, called correspondence theory into question (as we saw above) and it has given us no other theory to put in its place. How then can embodied realism call competing philosophical theories false?

Metaphysical realism

My last post on embodied realism dealt with its relinquishing of metaphysical realism, and why I believe this to be not only false, but self-refuting. For example, the authors claim that “[Embodied realism] denies that we can have objective and absolute knowledge of the world-in-itself… [and] denies on empirical grounds, that there exists one and only one correct description of the world[.] (p. 96) My claim was that this position can only be taken seriously if it is being objectively predicated of reality-in-itself. That is to say, this position is effectively saying that reality is such that X is the case—that is, that we cannot know reality-in-itself. But, this obviously entails that we know something about how reality objectively operates, otherwise the position is literally false.

But Mike is prepared to answer this claim:

When the authors say that there is no "purely objective" understanding of reality, they mean "objective" in the unembodied sense of classical scientific realism: the idea that our mind directly grasps objective truths, and that things like concepts, abstractions, metaphors, and logic are part of the rational structure of reality. The authors' thesis is that those phenomena are emergent properties of the embodied mind, so that while indeed we can safely and reasonably assume that we can attain knowledge of an objective external reality, we cannot do so in a manner that is itself untethered from the cognitive framework through which we necessarily view the world.

The problem here is that Mike’s qualifications of the author’s position do not actually rescue said position from incoherency. First, I was already aware of the author’s belief in attaining knowledge through “stable truths”. By “stable truths” the authors simply mean repeatable and reliable patterns. The problem is that this claim still undermines their position. Consider this question: Is the statement “stable truths can attain knowledge” itself a stable truth? I don’t see how, since this is not a proposition that is susceptible to the type of scientific investigation that yields repeatable and reliable patterns. And this is because one must first have a priori knowledge before one even engages in science, and therefore before one begins the search for stable truths. Therefore, knowledge is already presupposed by the search for stable truths and thus the latter cannot be defined in terms of the former. (We’ll get more into this below when we speak of metaphysical assumptions.)

But it’s even worse than this for the embodied realist. For how do Mike and the authors know stable truths can and do in fact attain the status of knowledge of reality? They already need beliefs about the nature of reality in order to predicate this statement. Since we are part of reality, we need to already believe things about the nature of reality in order to state our epistemic relationship to it.  And Mike can’t turn back to stable truths to ground this belief, since he would be arguing in a circle. Mike is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 Thus we see that no matter how the embodied realist wants to jettison metaphysical realism, he will always return to it.

Metaphysical assumptions

Next Mike asks what I think is a very important and pertinent question:

The real conundrum is this: can cognitive science really say anything about how we fundamentally conceptualize reality, since science itself requires us to make philosophical assumptions?

He continues down the line:

It seems reasonable to conclude from his objections that Steven believes empirically-informed philosophical insights to be self-defeating — since those empirical results themselves rely on some set of philosophical assumptions in the first place. But as the authors have argued, only a minimal set of methodological assumptions is necessary for scientific inquiry to proceed. From those basic assumptions, we can gain insight into how our minds construct and interpret data, and we only need to make a very minimal few assumptions along the way.

A couple of things here. First, I in no way believe that empirically-informed philosophical insights are self-defeating. I only call empirically-informed insights self-defeating when they result in a reductio ad absurdum. That is to say, I find philosophical positions based on science to be self-refuting when they attempt to call into question the first principles that are necessary for knowledge and the intelligibility of the world, which is what science is predicated on in the first place.

And what exactly are these first principles, or assumptions, that are necessary for scientific inquiry? Well Mike, following Lakoff, lists the following:

•           Objective reality exists, and we can have stable knowledge of it

•           Other minds like our own exist

•           These minds can be studied empirically

•           The empirical results of those studies can be generalized to all human minds

While I (for the most part, and tentatively) agree with the assumptions listed here, they are by no means exhaustive. Before we do science there are still many more principles that need to be proposed. We need to assume that there exists causal regularity and uniformity in nature. We need to assume the validity of induction. We need to assume that things are intelligible in themselves. We need to assume the laws of logic. We need to assume a theory of truth. We need to assume, not that we can have stable knowledge of reality, but that we can predicate things of reality that accurately correspond to the way reality actually is.

Now why is the listing of all these assumptions important? Well, because if science presupposes these propositions, then no corollary of science can ever call these into question. You simply cannot pull the rug out from underneath yourself, and this is what Mike fails to comprehend, as is evident by these statements of his:

If we accept these assumptions — as most all of us do — then the philosophical implications of convergent empirical evidence across multiple scientific disciples cannot be ignored. When convergent scientific evidence informs us that most of our reasoning is unconscious and metaphorical, or that cognitive metaphors are crucially tied to our embodiment, we have to acknowledge that these results undermine classical conceptualizations of metaphor, reasoning, and indeed truth itself.

This is simply false. The philosophical implications of “convergent” empirical evidence can indeed be, and must be, ignored when they call into question the principles that science itself rests on. As I reiterated above, if B presupposes A then no corollary of B can ever call A into question. This is a logical necessity. And this is why Mike’s position, that of embodied realism, continually refutes itself, because it keeps trying to bite the hand that feeds it. You simply cannot kick out the foundation your position is resting upon and expect it to remain intact and coherent.

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If you’ve made it this far I congratulate you. (To be honest, I barely made it this far.) We’ve witnessed a lot of things in this post. First, we’ve seen that Mike was quick to point out my supposed poor understanding of embodied realism, when in fact a lot of the time he could barely rearticulate my own criticisms, or his answers sidestepped them so far that they became irrelevant and peripheral to the discussion at hand. Second, we saw that Mike could not slay the correspondence theory of truth as he wanted to; neither could embodied realism replace it with any coherent theory of its own; neither could embodied realism’s levels of embodiment put the correspondence theory into question at all. Third, we saw that Mike’s attempt to save embodied realism’s “realism” through the use of “stable truths” did not work, and could not work even in principle. Lastly, we saw that the results of embodied cognition do not have the power to call our most basic metaphysical principles into question, and that when embodied realism attempts to utilize these results to call said principles into question, it ends in self-refutation.

So that’s it. I have nothing more to say. Embodied realism is false and self-refuting, and despite Mike’s efforts, it cannot be rescued from the depths of incoherency.