Aristotelian
style metaphysics is dismissed out of hand in the name of the “scientistic” or naturalist position.
Edward Feser
identifies this as the position:
“that science alone plausibly gives us
objective knowledge, and that any metaphysics worthy of consideration can only
be that which is implicit in science (Ladyman, Ross, Spurrett and Collier 2007; Rosenberg 2011).
Feser
maintains that there are in fact no good arguments for scientism, and decisive
arguments against it.
Four general problems with scientism.
1. Scientism is self-defeating, and can avoid
being self-defeating only at the cost of becoming trivial and uninteresting.
2. The scientific method cannot even in
principle provide us with a complete description of reality.
3. The "laws of nature" in terms of
which science explains phenomena cannot in principle provide us with a complete
explanation of reality.
4. What is probably the main argument in
favor of scientism --the argument from the predictive and technological
successes of modern physics and the other sciences --has no force.
A dilemma for scientism: Scientism is
either self-refuting or trivial.
First horn of
this dilemma:
The claim that
"the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of
anything" (Rosenberg 2011, p. 6) is not itself a scientific claim, (not
something that can be established using scientific methods).
We cannot
establish scientifically that science
is even a rational form of inquiry, let alone the only rational
form of inquiry.
Scientific
inquiry rests on a number of philosophical assumptions:
·
that
there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists
·
that
this world is governed by regularities of the sort that might be captured in
scientific laws
·
that
the human intellect and perceptual apparatuses can uncover and accurately
describe these regularities
Scientific
method presupposes these things; it therefore cannot attempt to justify
them without arguing in a circle. To
break out of the circle requires an extra-scientific vantage point to validate
science.
“But then the very existence of that extra-scientific vantage point
would falsify the claim that science alone gives us a rational means of
investigating objective reality.”
Philosophy has
traditionally been invoked to justify these scientific presumptions. But more than that, philosophy also examines
the question of how to interpret what science has to tell
us about the world.
·
Is
the world fundamentally comprised of substances or events?
·
What
is it to be a "cause"?
·
What
is the nature of the universals referred to in scientific laws, concepts like quark,
electron, atom, and so on? (Nominalism vs. Essentialism)
·
Do
theoretical entities exist over and above the particular things that
instantiate them?
·
Do
scientific theories really give us a description of objective reality in the
first place or are they just useful tools for predicting the course of
experience?
While
scientific findings can shed light on such metaphysical and epistemological questions,
they can never fully answer them.
“Yet if science depends upon philosophy both to justify its
presuppositions and to interpret its results, the falsity of scientism is
doubly assured”
Feser quotes
John Keke
"Hence philosophy, and not science, is a stronger candidate for
being the very paradigm of rationality" (1980, p. 158).
The second
horn of the dilemma: The (above noted) claims of “philosophy” are really
scientific claims.
Advocates of
scientism might now insist that, if philosophy really does have this status,
then these inquiriesand corresponding claims must
really be a part of science. All
rational inquiry is scientific inquiry; there is no “outside of science[1].”
But then the
previously bold claim of scientism becomes completely trivial. By arbitrarily redefining "science"
so that it includes any bit of rational argumentation that could be put
forward as evidence against the view “There is not rational inquiry outside
science.” the advocate defends scientism by trivializing it.
This move
makes scientism consistent with views that are supposed to be incompatible with
it. Recall scientism stood as a supposed
critique on metaphysics and the rationality of metaphysics.
For example
arguments for an:
Unmoved Mover
Uncaused Cause
The existence
of God might be argued from the very (metaphysical) assumptions that also
underlie science and thus according to this view these (metaphysical) arguments
for the existence of God becomes part of science. Natural Theology itself constitutes a
kind of science.
Now Aristotle
and Aquinas would have no problem with this of course, since they did not think
there was a sharp divide between philosophy and what today we refer to us
science. This current divide between
modern philosophy and modern science is the result of the rejection of scholastic principles and the insistence that (modern)
science must restrict itself to:
“the narrow conception of "science"
on which a discipline is only "scientific" to the extent that it
approximates the mathematical modeling techniques and predictive methods of
physics.”
While it is
true that the claims of metaphysics:
·
May
not be expressible in mathematical language
·
Not
based on specific predictions or experiments
Nevertheless
these are:
·
no less
certain than the claims of physics.
·
Perhaps
more certain: metaphysical demonstrations vs inductive generalizations
“The point is that, if the advocate of scientism defines
"science" so broadly that anything for which we might give a rational
philosophical argument counts as "scientific," then he has no
non-arbitrary reason for denying that a philosophically grounded theology or
indeed any other aspect of traditional metaphysics could, in principle, count
as a science.
But the whole
point of scientism was supposed to be demonstrate that metaphysics was NOT
science, indeed to cast suspicion on metaphysics because it was not science.
“Hence, if the advocate of scientism can avoid making his doctrine
self-defeating only by defining ‘science’ this broadly, then the view becomes
completely vacuous.
The descriptive limits of science
Second main
problem: Science cannot in principle provide a complete description of reality.
Science is self-limited to purely quantitative
description of the world, regarding mathematics as “the language in which
the "Book of Nature" is written” (as Galileo famously put it).
“Hence it is hardly surprising that physics, more than other
disciplines, has discovered those aspects of reality susceptible of the
prediction and control characteristic of quantifiable phenomena. Those are the
only aspects to which the physicist will allow himself to pay any attention in
the first place. Everything else necessarily falls through his methodological
net.
There’s
a sense in which they found the easiest Easter eggs to find. Then they declare that theirs are the only
Easter eggs there are and their way of looking is the only way to search. When asked. “How do you know yours are the
only Easter eggs there are?” they respond, “Because those are the only ones
that turn up when you search the proper way.”
And when asked, “How do you know that yours is the only proper ways of
looking for Easter eggs?” they say. “Because our way turns up all the Easter
eggs there are.”
The success of
physics is in part explained by the questions it chooses to address and those
it chooses to ignore, according to Feser.
“We perceive colors, sounds, flavors, odors, warmth and coolness,
pains and itches, thoughts and choices, purposes and meanings. Physics
abstracts from these rich concrete details, ignoring whatever cannot be
expressed in terms of equations and the like and thereby radically simplifying
the natural order. There is nothing wrong with such an abstractive procedure as
long as we keep in mind what we are doing and why we are doing it.”
“…the success of physics doesn't for a moment show that the natural
world has no features other than those described in a physics textbook. The
reason qualitative features don't show up is not that the method has allowed us
to discover that they aren't there but rather that the method has essentially
stipulated that they be left out of the description whether they are there or
not.
Feser offers
some variation on Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities.
Secondary
qualities exist only in our perceptual awareness of matter rather than in
matter itself (as qualia). So rendered, scientism
admits qualitative features of the world exist, but only as redefined by
physics. But this only makes the qualitative features more rather than
less problematic.
Thomas Nagel
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of
the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective
physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the
crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a
mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended
in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities
such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among
them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand --how this physical world
appears to human perception --were assigned to the mind, and the secondary
qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in
terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those
appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or
subtract subjective appearances and the human mind --as well as human
intentions and purposes from the physical world in order to permit this
powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to
develop. (2012, pp. 35-36)
But that means
that the mind itself cannot be treated as part of the material world. The brain, no less than any other bit of
Cartesian matter, is devoid of qualitative features. But the mind/ mental is replete with
qualitative features. Indeed “mind” is
essentially defined by its possession of qualitative features. Cartesian dualism is not a resistance to
mechanistic science, but a direct consequence of it.
Erwin
Schrodinger:
“We are thus facing the following strange situation. While all
building stones for the [modern scientific] world-picture are furnished by the
senses qua organs of the mind, while the world picture itself is and remains
for everyone a construct of his mind and apart from it has no demonstrable
existence, the mind itself remains a stranger in this picture, it has no place
in it, it can nowhere be found in it. (1956, p. 216)
Again,
Democritus imagines a supposed conversation between the intellect (quantitative
reductionism) and the sense (qualitative antireductionism) and was quoted by
Schrodinger (1956, p. 211)
Intellect: Colour is by convention, sweet by
convention, bitter by convention; in truth there are but atoms and the void.
Senses: Wretched intellect, from us you are taking the evidence by
which you would overthrow us? Your victory is your own fall.
Feser
concludes:
“Democritus' point, and Schrodinger's, is that it will not do to take
an eliminativist line and deny that the problematic
qualitative features really exist at all. For it is only through observation
and experiment --and thus through conscious experiences defined by these very
qualitative features --that we have evidence for the truth of the scientific
theories in the name of which we would be eliminating the qualitative. Such eliminativism is incoherent.
Further, it
would seem that this is not merely a temporary failing of current science. Rather it is not possible that further application
of the mechanistic project will solve the problem of consciousness.
“… stripping away the qualitative features of
a phenomenon and redefining it in purely quantitative terms is the one method
that cannot in principle work when seeking to explain conscious
experience. For conscious experience, the method itself tells us, just is
the "rug" under which all qualitative features have been swept.
Applying the same method to the explanation of qualitative features of
conscious experience is thus simply incoherent, and in practice either changes
the subject or amounts to a disguised eliminativism.
Nagel pointed
this problem out long ago (1979), and Schrodinger saw it too:
“Scientific theories serve to facilitate the survey of our
observations and experimental findings. Every scientist knows how difficult it
is to remember a moderately extended group of facts, before at least some
primitive theoretical picture about them has been shaped. It is therefore small
wonder, and by no means to be blamed on the authors of original papers or of
textbooks, that after a reasonably coherent theory has been formed, they do not
describe the bare facts they have found or wish to convey to the reader, but
clothe them in the terminology of that theory or theories. This procedure,
while very useful for our remembering the facts in a well-ordered pattern,
tends to obliterate the distinction between the actual observations and the
theory arisen from them. And since the former always are of some sensual
quality, theories are easily thought to account for sensual qualities; which,
of course, they never do. (1992, pp. 163-64)
The reason that "of course, they never do" is that the
scientist's working notion of matter is one that has, by definition, extruded
the qualitative from it. Hence when the scientist identifies some physical
property or process he finds correlated with the qualitative features of
conscious experience --this or that property of external objects, or this or
that process in the brain --and supposes that in doing so he has explained
the qualitative, he is in thrall to an illusion. He is mistaking the
theoretical, quantitative re-description of matter he has replaced the
qualitative with for the qualitative itself. He may accuse his critic of
dualist obscurantism when the critic points out that all the scientist has
identified are physical features that are correlated
with the qualitative, rather than the qualitative itself. But such
accusations merely blame the messenger, for
it is the scientist's own method that has guaranteed that dualist correlation
is all that he will ever discover.
So:
While a
Cartesian account of the relation of the qualitative features of the world to quantifiable
matter may be unacceptable, the fact remains that qualitative features of the
world cannot in principle be explained scientifically nor coherently eliminated.
Bertrand
Russell (yet another hero of contemporary naturalists who saw things more
clearly than they do) indicates how:
“It is not always realised how exceedingly
abstract is the information that theoretical physics has to give. It lays down
certain fundamental equations which enable it to deal with the logical
structure of events, while leaving it completely unknown what is the intrinsic
character of the events that have the structure... All that physics gives us is
certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what
it is that changes, and what it changes from and to -as to this, physics is
silent. (1985, p. 13)
Russell is
suggesting here that, even if physics gives us the abstract structure of the
material world, we might still ask whether or not physics can tell us the anything
about the intrinsic nature of that which
has that structure. If not then
·
Physics
does not tell us everything about
physical reality
·
But physics
does tell us that there must be something
more to physical reality than what it has to say.
(There must be something that has the
structure.)
Russell,
Schrodinger, and most other modern commentators on these matters are still
working with the entire post-Cartesian framework. Russell for instance, attempts to solve both
the problems by identifying the qualitative features themselves as the
intrinsic properties of matter.
Feser himself
does not accept this. He maintains that the
Scholastic approach is incommensurable with that framework.
Regardless,
the problems described are philosophical rather than scientific. Thus
·
Science
is nowhere close to giving us an exhaustive description of reality
·
The
very nature of scientific method shows that there exist aspects of reality it
will not capture.
0.2.3 The explanatory limits of science
Just as there are
limits to what science can describe.
There are also
limits to what science can explain.
The third
problem for scientism: "laws of nature" (in terms of which science
explains phenomena) cannot in principle provide an ultimate explanation
of reality.
Consider physicist
Lawrence Krauss's book A Universe from Nothing (2012).
The title
suggests that he will give a complete explanation, in purely scientific terms
for the existence of the universe as a whole.
(or why anything exists at all) But for the most part it only explores how
the energy present in otherwise empty space, together with the laws of physics,
might have given rise to the universe as it exists today. Then Krauss acknowledges that energy, space,
and the laws of physics don't really count as "nothing" after all. He proposed that the “laws of physics” alone
might do the trick, but these don't really count as "nothing" either.
Krauss's final
proposal is that "there may be no fundamental theory at all" but just
layer upon layer of laws of physics, which we can probe until we get bored (p.
177).
Curious bait
and switch
Feser points
to the deeper problem:
The deeper problem “… is that Krauss not only does not deliver
on his promise but that he could not have done so. For any appeal to
laws of nature (or a series of "layers" of such laws) simply raises
questions about what a law of nature is in the first place, how it
has any efficacy, and where it (or the series of "layers")
comes from. And these are questions which the scientific mode of explanation,
which presupposes such laws, cannot in principle answer.
Feser, a
scholastic, offers their notion of what a law of nature is. For scholastics, a law of nature is
“a shorthand way of describing the manner in
which that thing or system will operate given its nature or essence. (emphasis added)
This is the
Scholastic approach to understanding physical laws. But on this view the
"laws of nature" presuppose
the existence and operations of the physical things that follow inherent
formal and final causes. And in that case the laws cannot possibly explain the
existence or operations of the material things themselves. In particular, and contrary to writers like
Krauss, since the ultimate laws of nature presuppose the existence of the
physical universe and the objects that comprise it, the same laws cannot
intelligibly be appealed to as a way of explaining the existence of the
universe.
But we might,
as modern science does, reject the scholastic appeals to formal and final
causality to give and account of laws of nature. An alternative view offered by the first
generation to reject the scholastic worldview (that of Descartes and Newton) is
irreducibly theological, a shorthand for the idea that God has set the world up
so as to behave in the regular way described by the laws. So this account of a “Law of Nature, has God's
action that strictly and ultimately doing the explaining in science.
A third view on
Laws of Nature is that these are really nothing more than a description or
summary of the regular patterns we happen to find in the natural world. To say that such and such is a law of nature is
only to say that A has been followed by B repeatedly in the past. On this view, the law is simply saying that A's
tend to be followed by B's in a regular way, and that's that.
But this
account of Laws tell us only that such-and such a regularity exists, but
not why this regularity exists. On this account, the laws of nature don't explain
a regularity, but merely re-describe it in a different jargon.
“Needless to say, then, this sort of view hardly supports the claim
that science can provide an ultimate explanation of the world.”
A fourth view
would be to interpret "laws of nature" as abstract objects, something
comparable to Plato's Forms. As with
God, this appeal to laws of nature doesn't really provide an ultimate
explanation of anything.
We would still
need to know:
·
how
it comes to be that there is a physical world
·
how
it "participates in" the laws
·
why it
participates in these laws (rather than others), and so on.
Regardless of what
account one wishes to endorse, answering such questions is the business of
philosophy, not science, because philosophy investigates precisely what all possible
scientific explanation must take for granted.
Some might
suggest that the sort of ultimate explanations philosophy seeks here are simply
is not to be had. That we cannot ever
determine what the answer to these questions are. (Indeed, perhaps there are no such answers.)
Bertram Russell refers to certain fact about the
existence of reality and certain truths about that reality as “brute facts.”
But even to
claim this is to make a philosophical
claim rather than a scientific one, one which many believe to be false.
A bad argument for scientism
The
unparalleled predictive and technological successes of modern science accounts
for the enduring allure of scientism.
Consider the
argument for scientism given by Alex Rosenberg in his book The Atheist's Guide
to Reality (2011). He writes:
The technological success of physics is by itself enough to convince
anyone with anxiety about scientism that if physics isn't "finished,"
it certainly has the broad outlines of reality well understood. (p. 23)
And it's not just the correctness of the predictions and the
reliability of technology that requires us to place our confidence in physics'
description of reality. Because physics' predictions are so accurate, the
methods that produced the description must be equally reliable. Otherwise, our
technological powers would be a miracle. We have the best of reasons to believe
that the methods of physics --combining controlled experiment and careful
observation with mainly mathematical requirements on the shape theories can
take --are the right ones for acquiring all knowledge. Carving out some area of
"inquiry" or "belief' as exempt from exploration by the methods
of physics is special pleading or self-deception. (p. 24)
The phenomenal accuracy of its prediction, the unimaginable power of
its technological application, and the breathtaking extent and detail of its
explanations are powerful reasons to believe that physics is the whole truth about
reality. (p. 25)
Of course,
many proponents of scientism would regard Rosenberg's physics-only version as
too restrictive. They would regard sciences like chemistry, biology, and the
like as genuine sources of knowledge even if it turned out that they are
irreducible to physics. But they would agree with Rosenberg's main point that
the "success" of science, broadly construed, supports scientism.
Rosenberg's argument, suitably modified in a way that would make it acceptable
to other defenders of scientism, is essentially this:
The predictive power and technological applications of science are
unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.
Therefore what science reveals to us is probably all that is real.
Feser claims:
Now this, I maintain, is a bad argument. How bad is it? About as bad
as this one: Metal detectors have had
far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places
than any other method has. Therefore
what metal detectors reveal to us (coins and other metallic objects) is
probably all that is real.
His point here
is that metal detectors, as physics also does, restricts the range of items it
seeks to detect and gather information about.
In fact, the success of metal detectors requires this restricted range,
but here we certainly do not think this success means the domain of reality it
investigates is exhaustive of all reality.
Likewise, physics
is methodologically restricted from investigating anything other than those
aspects of the natural world susceptible of the mathematical modeling. But however successful it is in carrying out
this project, is does not follow that their domain of reality is exhaustive of
all reality nor that it can answer all the reasonable questions which confront
the reflective human being.
Feser notes
that Rosenberg adds to his argument the suggestion that those who reject
scientism do not do so consistently. Rosenberg writes:
"Scientism" is the pejorative label given to our
positive view by those who really want to have their theistic cake and dine at
the table of science's bounties, too. Opponents of scientism would never charge
their cardiologists or auto mechanics or software engineers with
"scientism" when their health, travel plans, or web surfing are in
danger. But just try subjecting their nonscientific mores and norms, their
music or metaphysics, their literary theories or politics to scientific
scrutiny. The immediate response of outraged humane letters is
"scientism." (p.6)
Quoting
Feser:
So, according to Rosenberg, unless you agree that science
is the only genuine source of knowledge, you cannot consistently believe
that it gives us any genuine knowledge. But this is about as plausible
as saying that unless you think metal detectors alone can detect
physical objects, then you cannot consistently believe that they detect any physical
objects at all. Those beholden to scientism are bound to protest that the
analogy is no good, on the grounds that metal detectors detect only part of
reality while science detects the whole of it. But such a reply would simply
beg the question, for whether science really does describe the whole of
reality is precisely what is at issue.
Feser
points out that Rosenberg’s non sequitur, while still very common, is a non sequitur nonetheless.
Some
defender of scientism challenges its critics to match the predictive successes of
science with a demonstrated predictive success and technological applications
of metaphysics or theology. When no such
comparable result can be provided, they suppose that this is sufficient to
defeat the critics. But of course, this
misses the point. Metaphysics is not
science precisely because it deals with those aspect of reality that are not subject
to quantification and predictability.
“This is about as impressive as demanding a list of the
metal-detecting successes of gardening, cooking, and painting, and then
concluding from the fact that no such list is forthcoming that spades,
spatulas, and paint brushes are all useless and ought to be discarded and replaced
with metal detectors.
As
Feser points out, that a method is useful, perhaps outstandingly useful, for
certain purposes does not entail that there are no other purposes worth
pursuing nor other methods more suitable to those other purposes.
But
even if the defender concedes that there are questions and methods for
answering these questions outside of science and thus acknowledge the role
philosophy attempts to play in human affairs, nevertheless, they may insist
that these speculative exercises are of comparatively little value since they
do not provide the definitive answers that science does where consensus is
achieved or something approaching consensus.
Nor do they generate the technologies and practical applications that
science provides us with.
This
modified defense of scientism rests on the claim that science has superior practical
value.
But
this really doesn’t work either. It is
simply silly to criticize philosophy for not being as good at achieving
scientific aim as science is, since it is even trying to achieve those ends. To achieve similar results it too would have
to restrict its domain of questions and methodologies, essentially becoming
science. But the whole point is that
reflective human inquiry requires more than science can provide.
“If you will allow to count as
"scientific" only what is predictable and controllable and thus
susceptible of consensus answers and technological application, then naturally
--but trivially --science is going to be one long success story. But this no
more shows that the questions that fall through science's methodological net
are not worthy of attention than the fact that you've only taken courses you
knew you would excel in shows that the other classes aren't worth taking.
And
of course, the very claim that only scientific questions are worth
investigating is itself not a scientific claim, but rather a philosophical one.
Against "conceptual
analysis"
Finally
defenders of scientism might fault philosophy/ metaphysics for its reliance on intuition
when performing conceptual analysis.
The advocate of scientism will insist that unless
metaphysics is "naturalized" by making of it nothing more than
science's bookkeeping department, then the only thing left for it to be is a
kind of "conceptual analysis." And the trouble with this, we are
told, is that we have no guarantee that the "intuitions" or
"folk notions" the conceptual analyst appeals to really track
reality, and indeed good reason to think they do not insofar as science often
presents us with descriptions of reality radically different from what common
sense supposes it to be like. (Cf. Ladyman, Ross, Spurrett, and Collier 2007, Chapter 1)
But
this presumes that if science's methodological exclusion of certain
commonsense features of our experience of reality demonstrates these features are
not in fact part of the natural world. (e.g. teleological features). But as already noted, this is
fallacious.
Claims about what science has "shown" vis-a-vis
this or that metaphysical question invariably merely presuppose, rather
than demonstrate, a certain metaphysical interpretation of science. The absence
of a certain feature from the scientist's description of reality gives us
reason to doubt that feature's existence only given a further argument
which must be metaphysical rather than scientific in nature.
That
a feature cannot be found when looking though the scientific lens only supports
the further claim that it does not exist at all only if an additional argument
is given to demonstrate that everything that really exists DOES show up under
the scientific lens. But this is what
has to be proven. Otherwise one begs the
question.
However, Feser
is not content to limit philosophy to mere conceptual analysis insisting that it
is possible to take a cognitive stance toward the world that is neither that of
natural science, nor merely a matter of tracing out conceptual relations in a
network of ideas. As he points out in
his first objection to scientism, the defender of scientism herself takes this
third stance in the very act of denying that it can be taken.