Another Chink in a Worldview's Armor?
by Steve PetermannMichael Ruse in a recent interview with the Boston Globe said:
"While scientists and creationists often square off over the scientific evidence for evolution, the source of the ongoing dispute is deeper. This is not just a fight about dinosaurs or gaps in the fossil record, is a fight about different worldviews."
If this is true, and I think it is, there is a lot more going on and at stake than the peripheral issues would suggest.
Now worldview wars are nothing new and could be characterized many ways. For our purposes one general way to categorize worldview positions would be teleological/ateleological. It would seem from whatever archaeological and secondhand accounts we have prior to the so called Axial age, a few centuries before and after 0 BCE, that worldviews were primarily teleological, perhaps grounded in some form of animism. However, it appears that circa 600 BCE things changed. Apparently at that time the first materialists appeared in the Indus Valley, the Caravakan philosophers [1]. They claimed that matter is all that exists and that it has "svabhava" or self-nature which ultimately is characterized by atelic natural law. This school of thought also showed up in the Greeks about a century latter as the atomists. Of course there were reactions to this ateleological worldview coming from the Buddhists in the East who denied svabhava and the vitalists in the West.
Ever since then there has been a steady struggle between the teleologists and the ateleologists to defend their worldviews with each gaining and loosing traction at various points in history. It would seem, however, that the ateleologists gained an enormous boost in support for their view when Roger and Francis Bacon formulated empiricism and the scientific method. From there coupled with the Copernican revolution and the advent of Newtonian mechanists that followed, it might have seemed a slam dunk for the atelic worldview, at least to the educationed masses. Only Descartes' mind/body dualism seemed to offer hope but he couldn't resolve serious problems with it.
Since that time, however, chinks in the atelic armor began to appear. Strangely enough those chinks didn't come from religious attempts as one might expect, but from science itself. Quantum theory with its formulations that put conscious choice at the causal foundation of constituting reality put in a major chink. While there is still much controversy about quantum interpretations, it's a chink that so far just won't go away.
The next came as scientists became more and more interesting in consciousness. While there may be few die hard scientists and philosophers who deny the "hard problem" of conscious experience, almost invariably everyone agrees that phenomenal consciousness is a fundamental problem. If it continues to look like conscious experience can't, in principal, be explained by reference to material explanations, another chink.
Finally, one has to wonder if intelligent design explorations will also put a major dent in the ateleological worldview. If after all the posturing is done, research continues, and problems with neo-Darwinism increase and persist, a profound disenchantment with the ateleological solution emerges, the chinks may become so severe that the worldview advantage will shift.
References:
[1] Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. (Allworth Press, 2002), 328.
May 10th, 2005 at 9:20 am
Francis Schaeffer contrasts "uniformity of natural causes within a closed system" - what we might call modernism (no God, humans are part of the system) versus "uniformity of natural causes within an open system" - pre-modernism (possibility of a God, humans are not part of the system).
The modernist/closed system excludes a priori the possibility of the supernatural - which not only excludes teleological explanations of the universe, but also miracles, resurrection and so on. But because the system is closed, the modernist then also struggles to find meaning for him or herself - we have these Escherian Lizards trying to escape from a two-dimensional picture only to find themselves still within the picture. Regardless of the fact that our genes might have allowed us to discover what the system is, they don't let us escape from the system.
The pre-modernist/open system permits the possibility of supernatural (the system, although generally well-behaved, isn't "closed") and external other, in addition to considering him or herself not necessarily to be a part of the system.
I'm not sure that it's possible for somebody to be convinced of (for example) Intelligent Design unless they are first prepared to concede the possibility that the system might be open. This is why worldviews are so crucial in this debate.
Comment by Exile From Groggs — May 10, 2005 @ 9:20 am
May 10th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
Hi Exile From Groggs,
Another alternative that I find very attractive is some strain of the vitalist/idealist/panpsychist/panentheistic worldview. I find them attractive because they reject the whole open/closed distinction and instead offer a holistic view of causation. To do this they reject, as the Buddhists, the early Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, and other vitalists do, the whole notion that there are non-intentional intrinsic natures at the ultimate level of reality. (Which certain quantum theories also reject). See here:
Also Nobel prize winner, Max Planck, during a lecture in Florence, Italy, once said:
Remarkably this sounds very similar to Anaxagoras' concept of nous (mind) which animates all matter, as well as objective idealists' metaphysics.
Over against the atelic worldview, strains of vitalist/idealist/panpsychist/panentheistic positions posit that there is an intentionality/mind intrinsic to nature. One advantage of this is also that it total eliminates the typical "god of the gaps" complaint for "natural but open" scenarios.
Of course these are all metaphysical speculations that may or may not seem compelling. However, what ateleologists often deny is that their rejection of intentionality as a basis for life is also a metaphysical speculation. Of course that rejection is fallacious and they have the burden of proof to support their claim just as the teleologists do.
Comment by Steve Petermann — May 10, 2005 @ 12:09 pm
April 13th, 2006 at 6:52 am
"almost invariably everyone agrees that phenomenal consciousness is a fundamental problem."
This is factually incorrect, many philosophers identify the hard problem as The Hornswoggle Problem.
Comment by T. Scrivener — April 13, 2006 @ 6:52 am
April 13th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Hi T. Scrivener,
You say many. Could you name a few prominent philosophers who think it is hornswoggle?
Comment by Steve Petermann — April 13, 2006 @ 9:09 am