“The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.” –Thomas Nagel

I’ve recently been reading about Thomas Nagel (quoted above), a famous philosopher who teaches at NYU. The reason I’m interested in him is because of his well known work in critiquing reductionist scientific accounts of the mind. I’m thinking about attempting to read his new book Mind and Cosmos, but I’m afraid it may be too dense for me. (Bill Vallicella’s review’s have been helpful.)

Nagel, I believe, would rightly consider himself to be an atheist, which is why I’m very interested in his take on this issue. Many of his materialistic, philosophical colleagues consider his views to be controversial. From what I can gather, having only read summaries of his famous essay and reviews of his books, Nagel is essentially arguing for a teleological view of evolution and trying to make some sort of non-eliminative monism fashionable. If that’s the case my ears are perked.

Some background.

I am really turned off by fundamentalist religious people who blindly accept religious doctrine without critical examination. I also can’t stand their counterpart, the “I only believe in science,” anti-religion crowd. You know the type.

Any cursory glance at history would tell you that the era known as Modernity (I lump the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment in with it) has no doubt thrust a heaping helping of either/or thinking upon us. That is to say, our paradigms are filled with dichotomies people!

This problem is no more evident than in the two dialogically opposed camps that I just mentioned, the young Earth creationist, fundamentalist, religious weirdos and the materialistic, reductionistic, “I only believe in science” weirdos. Both groups, as John Cobb puts it, “force the evidence into a straightjacket that is derived from an external source,” (1) that source being the Modern worldview.

One thing that really cracks me up about the so called “Science/Religion” debate that many people don’t get, is that both of these human endeavors are essentially after the same thing. Namely, an exhaustive explanation of reality. But what’s really confounding about this is that in the process of attempting to find that exhaustive explanation, both efforts end up focusing on the minute details while completely forgetting to backup and look at the big picture. Both sets of data are important.

Aristotle, the father of science, knew this (side note: I think scientists would be well served to study the history of philosophy, but that’s a discussion for another time) which is why in his metaphysic proposes four causes which result in change: material cause, formal cause, efficient cause and final cause or purpose. John Cobb writes:

“Aristotle emphasized the teleological or purposive element in the world and, therefore, explained things according to their functions or purposes. (1)

During the Middle Ages the Aristotelian view was the dominant one. But during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the most influential scientists chose to follow Rene Descartes instead, the ‘Father of Modernity.’ (1)”

John Cobb gets to the heart of this world view transition quite well. Basically, he says, many modern scientists and many supernaturalists (or traditional religious people) accept the same view of the natural world, Descartes’ mechanistic view (although if Descartes lived today he would probably liken the world to a computer or something). Modern science completely did away with Aristotle’s teleological cause and, instead, decided to emphasize the efficient cause, which is equivalent to that which causes something to change. In a nutshell, the world is a machine and the universe is composed of matter in motion.

I think we can all see the problem here.

Matter, in this view, can only be acted on externally (think of a sculptor chiseling out a statue). Since this view requires motion, God of course is brought into the picture as the moving force behind this matter. (This is how Descartes and Newton thought it worked anyway.)

The problem with this is that in order for God to be this “mover of matter,” it would mean that God would have to break some forces and laws which were already operative in the world.

This, I believe, is the main reason modern day science has “secularized” and does not acknowledge God as operable in the world. I would say rightly so, because to acknowledge God in the world with this distorted view of reality, would mean that you would also have to acknowledge the existence of a supernatural realm of which we could never know of or prove.

Now, I want to make something abundantly clear. No one (Nagel, Cobb, me) is saying science has not brought us very, very far. What people like Nagel and Cobb are critiquing is that with this antiquated worldview, science is limited and distorted and will simply not reach it’s fullest potential. The same could be said for religion.

Both science and religion are riding unicycles headed in opposite directions when they could be riding in a tandem beach cruiser together holding hands. (Aww how sweet!)

Most reasonable people intuitively know that they do not have to choose between fundamentalist religion’s young earth theory, which asks you to check your brain at the door, and orthodox science, which points toward determinism and randomness. The arguments people hear are ridiculous. Learning about this transition, and gaining an understanding of how western views of reality have been shaped has really opened new doors. I hate to sound cliche here, but the mist has cleared and a third way has indeed been presented.

It’s easy to see that purpose plays a role in all our lives. If Science is to actualize its fullest potential it must take the subjective side of reality a bit more seriously. Likewise, no Religion that refuses to see that objective facts are–as Michael Dowd puts it–God’s native tongue, will be taken seriously.

I’ll close by sharing this. One of the things I love best, and perhaps one of the most beautiful things about process-relational philosophy, is that it claims entities which exist in the world have “interiority.”(2) What Cobb means by this is that we are not just objects in the world, but we are also subjects. We’re not just bits of matter being acted upon externally, we exist as something in and for ourselves.The actions we take affect what happens in future events; this includes the course evolution takes. The universe, in the end, is nothing if not relational.

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Painting above by Bruce Riley

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Sources:
1. Cobb, J. (June 2003). Process & Science [processandfaith.org]. Retrieved from http://processandfaith.org/writings/ask-dr-cobb/2003-06/process-science
2. Cobb, J. (November 2006). Process & Science [processandfaith.org]. Retrieved fromhttp://processandfaith.org/writings/ask-dr-cobb/2006-11/atheism
3. Auster, L. (May 2007). A Teleological View of Evolution [amnation.com]. Retrieved from http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/010544.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes#Efficient_cause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel

Tags:descartesevolutionjohn cobbreligionscienceTeleologytheologyThomas Nagel