On Feb. 2, 1948, Lewis and the philosopher G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe engaged in a disputation at the Oxford Socratic Club, of which Lewis was president. The subject was Lewis's argument that naturalism (the view that the natural world is all that exists) is self-refuting, since "no thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes" (Lewis, Miracles, ch. 3). Anscombe argued that he failed to distinguish two senses of the word "because," which can be used to denote not only a cause-effect relation, but also a ground-consequent relation. An argument could be valid, because (Ground-Consequent) its propositions entail each other, even if the propositions are generated (Cause-Effect) by irrational factors. Lewis eventually agreed that his argument was inadequate at this point and needed revision.

0.2 Against scientism

“Not every contemporary analytic philosopher welcomes the revival of old-fashioned metaphysics.” (Huge understatement)

Aristotelian style metaphysics is dismissed out of have in the name of the “scientistic” or naturalist position.

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).

There are of course many other critics of early analytic philosophy including Pragmatists and Idealists as this quote from Richard Rorty makes clear.

A brief history of analytic philosophy would show it marching briskly and triumphantly up the hill during the first half of this century, and marching down again, with equal bravura, during the second half. As the next century dawns, it is not at all clear, especially to many bemused non-anglophone philosophers, that analytic philosophy still has a direction and a momentum. It has repudiated all the Russellian doctrines which made it seem so promising in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and it is not obvious what has been put in their place. Since the anti-empiricism and the anti-foundationalism on which analytic philosophers now pride themselves was taken for granted by nineteenth-century anglophone philosophers such as T.H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet, one might be tempted to say that analytic philosophy was a century-long waste of time.[1]

However, 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.

0.2.1 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 apparatus 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 tells 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?

· 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, but 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:

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 may now insist that, if philosophy really does have this status, then these inquiries must really be a part of science. All rational inquiry is scientific inquiry; there is no “outside of science[2].”

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 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. 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:

· May not be expressible in mathematical language

· Not based on specific predictions or experiments

· Nevertheless: no less certain than the claims of physics.

· Perhaps more certain: 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.

0.2.2 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 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 mind, 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:

Qualitative features of the world cannot in principle be explained scientifically nor coherently eliminated. A Cartesian account of their relation to matter is unacceptable. (Scholastics agree) A purely quantitative conception of matter is problematic even apart from these considerations.

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)

But even if physics gives us the abstract structure of the material world, we might still ask whether or not physics tell us the intrinsic nature of that which has that structure. If not then

· Physics does not tell us everything about physical reality

· 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. A 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.

More later

But the point Feser stresses here is that answering such questions is the business of philosophy, not science, because philosophy investigates precisely with what any 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 (Feser et al.) false.

0.2.4 A bad argument for scientism

The unparalleled predictive and technological successes of modern science, Feser believes, account to 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 and we certainly must 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 not 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. He 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 nonethtless.

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, that suppose 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 that do not provide the definitive answers that science where consensus is achieved or something approaching consensus. Nor do they generate the technologies and practical applications that science provides us with.

But 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.

0.3 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 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 is 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.

---

[1] Rorty, Richard “Knowledge and Acquaintance: On Bertrand Russell” New Republic December 1, 1996

https://newrepublic.com/article/88351/knowledge-and-acquaintance-bertrand-russell

[2] Quine might be an advocate to such a view (i.e. naturalized epistemology)