Tina, thanks for the engagement! I know Philip is on vacation (like me!) - but hopefully he will chime in to address your questions before too long. Thanks again for the interest and queries.
Hi Charlie, thanks for this guest post! And thanks, Philip, that was refreshing. I have a couple of questions for you, and I apologize in advance for being long-winded on the first one.
1. "I think the evidence points to some kind of teleology, or goal-directedness, at the fundamental level, but in the absence of the traditional God. We could make sense of this with fundamental teleological laws, i.e., laws with purposes built into them"
What you're saying here strikes me as similar to what Plato meant by The Good, or even Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, a rational first principle regulating a teleological universe—a middle way—not some omniscient, omnipotent creator or demiurge. (Plato's god is limited by a negative principle which he calls Necessity or Matter—a second principle, of sorts, which he's a bit embarrassed to have to include.)
"The reason that evolution can't explain this aspect of rationality is that any evolutionary explanation presupposes it"
Yes! It's almost impossible to talk about evolution without using teleological lingo or even thinking along those lines. If only Creationists hadn't turned everyone off to the word! Now I'll just quote myself from my pompously titled undergrad thesis, "A Reconciliation of Science and Religion" (eyeroll) so I don't have to think it all through again. Keep in mind I wrote this a million years ago so it may sound sophomoric, but I still think it's right:
"First of all, we must not confuse Plato’s conception of teleology with what
may be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. In these
arguments, we are told that the universe is so complex and structured that it
must have been created, and we call the creator of the universe God. The most
famous example of this argument is that of William Paley (1743-1805), who in
essence said that when we study the universe, we recognize that it is ordered and
that each part within it serves a purpose. The analogy that he makes is between
the universe and a watch found in the middle of a desert. If we found a watch,
even very far away from civilization, we would have to assume that someone
created it because of its complexity and order. All of nature is ordered like the
watch, such that each part serves some purpose for the sake of the whole. From
this we must conclude that the universe has a maker, for nothing that is so
ordered could possibly come into existence as such on its own accord.
This is not Plato’s argument. Plato does not ever try to prove the existence
of God, nor does he try to show how the universe is ordered and therefore must
have a creator. Instead, Plato moves from the existence of God (the idea of the
good) to the objects of empirical observation, or God’s creation, showing that
they must be ordered in accordance to the idea of the good. It is important to
keep this in mind. Plato claims that we must start from the self-evident principle,
the idea of the good, and then deduce from this that the world must be ordered
and intelligent."
QUESTION: It seems to me if you could prove that value (teleology) MUST be presupposed in a scientific conception of the universe, that would be one hell of an argument...one that physicalists would just ignore, of course. :) I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Is it possible?
2. "Or if you’re sympathetic to panpsychism, which I think is independently the best solution to the mind-body problem, then you could ground teleology in the goals of a conscious universe."
QUESTION: I don't know where I stand, exactly, on philosophy of mind, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on why panpsychism is preferable to idealism (which I'm more drawn to) (which is probably obvious given the above)(and to anyone reading this, no I don't mean solipsism).
I'm not too familiar with contemporary forms of idealism, (although I'm very much looking forward to reading Yetter-Chappell's The View from Everywhere), so I'm not sure what is meant by "the physical world is illusion". To simplify, I'd say the idealism I prefer is sort of like 'Berkeley minus God' (God being the weak point in his version, though I'm not against the idea of God per se). I think B's critique of Matter implicitly acknowledges experience as it is experienced as the starting point of knowledge, and Matter as a kind of theoretical entity that isn't, even in principle, experienceable. So he's essentially a radical empiricist. That's what I like. I don't admire theories that dismiss experience on the whole as unreliable or illusory; I think they're forgetting the ground they're standing on.
Physicalism, on the other hand, seems to me to be a belief that knowledge must be scientific, which is to say it can only come from a process of subtracting all that is phenomenal or 'subjective' to arrive at the world as it is in itself. When it comes to the scientific study of nature, this works marvelously. But to try to understand phenomenal consciousness—the very thing it subtracted!—by the same process seems ludicrous.
I don't have a problem with panpsychism being weird. Hell, I'm weird, I'm okay with that. And I don't think the combination problem or subject problem is fatally serious or comes anywhere near the hard problem. It seems to me (some forms of) panpsychism are attractive in that they don't DENY phenomenal experience, but they don't necessarily account for phenomenal experience AS SUCH either. Monads are a kind of un-experienceable noumena that are theoretically compatible with experience. And yet... we don't have any sort of phenomenal-experiential access to them—unless I have it wrong?
This is what makes me prefer idealism to panpsychism. Maybe it's just a matter of scale. In speculative moods I'm all for thinking the universe could be monads. But then I wonder, why can't we just say reality is constituted intersubjectively as a collective phenomenal experiential world? Why must we always posit something *really real*, something in principle beyond our reach?
Anyway, no need to respond. I'll check out your writing!
In the meantime I leave you both with the Leibniz Monad song:
I'm a little monad
Short and stout.
I ain't got no windows
So I can't look out.
(Sorry about the all-caps. Can't do italics on Substack comments. ARGH!)
Tina, thanks for the engagement! I know Philip is on vacation (like me!) - but hopefully he will chime in to address your questions before too long. Thanks again for the interest and queries.
Thanks for letting me know. Enjoy your vacay, both of you!
Hi Charlie, thanks for this guest post! And thanks, Philip, that was refreshing. I have a couple of questions for you, and I apologize in advance for being long-winded on the first one.
1. "I think the evidence points to some kind of teleology, or goal-directedness, at the fundamental level, but in the absence of the traditional God. We could make sense of this with fundamental teleological laws, i.e., laws with purposes built into them"
What you're saying here strikes me as similar to what Plato meant by The Good, or even Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, a rational first principle regulating a teleological universe—a middle way—not some omniscient, omnipotent creator or demiurge. (Plato's god is limited by a negative principle which he calls Necessity or Matter—a second principle, of sorts, which he's a bit embarrassed to have to include.)
"The reason that evolution can't explain this aspect of rationality is that any evolutionary explanation presupposes it"
Yes! It's almost impossible to talk about evolution without using teleological lingo or even thinking along those lines. If only Creationists hadn't turned everyone off to the word! Now I'll just quote myself from my pompously titled undergrad thesis, "A Reconciliation of Science and Religion" (eyeroll) so I don't have to think it all through again. Keep in mind I wrote this a million years ago so it may sound sophomoric, but I still think it's right:
"First of all, we must not confuse Plato’s conception of teleology with what
may be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. In these
arguments, we are told that the universe is so complex and structured that it
must have been created, and we call the creator of the universe God. The most
famous example of this argument is that of William Paley (1743-1805), who in
essence said that when we study the universe, we recognize that it is ordered and
that each part within it serves a purpose. The analogy that he makes is between
the universe and a watch found in the middle of a desert. If we found a watch,
even very far away from civilization, we would have to assume that someone
created it because of its complexity and order. All of nature is ordered like the
watch, such that each part serves some purpose for the sake of the whole. From
this we must conclude that the universe has a maker, for nothing that is so
ordered could possibly come into existence as such on its own accord.
This is not Plato’s argument. Plato does not ever try to prove the existence
of God, nor does he try to show how the universe is ordered and therefore must
have a creator. Instead, Plato moves from the existence of God (the idea of the
good) to the objects of empirical observation, or God’s creation, showing that
they must be ordered in accordance to the idea of the good. It is important to
keep this in mind. Plato claims that we must start from the self-evident principle,
the idea of the good, and then deduce from this that the world must be ordered
and intelligent."
QUESTION: It seems to me if you could prove that value (teleology) MUST be presupposed in a scientific conception of the universe, that would be one hell of an argument...one that physicalists would just ignore, of course. :) I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Is it possible?
2. "Or if you’re sympathetic to panpsychism, which I think is independently the best solution to the mind-body problem, then you could ground teleology in the goals of a conscious universe."
QUESTION: I don't know where I stand, exactly, on philosophy of mind, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on why panpsychism is preferable to idealism (which I'm more drawn to) (which is probably obvious given the above)(and to anyone reading this, no I don't mean solipsism).
Thanks Tina. There's more on the argument here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mystery-of-consciousness-is-deeper-than-we-thought/ and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJm-5OojwE&t=40s It depends what you mean by idealism. I don't see any reason to think physical world is an illusion, which is implicit in some forms of idealism. For more on this see my arguments with Donald Hoffman on 'Theories of everything' channel and my own channel 'Mind Chat'.
I'm not too familiar with contemporary forms of idealism, (although I'm very much looking forward to reading Yetter-Chappell's The View from Everywhere), so I'm not sure what is meant by "the physical world is illusion". To simplify, I'd say the idealism I prefer is sort of like 'Berkeley minus God' (God being the weak point in his version, though I'm not against the idea of God per se). I think B's critique of Matter implicitly acknowledges experience as it is experienced as the starting point of knowledge, and Matter as a kind of theoretical entity that isn't, even in principle, experienceable. So he's essentially a radical empiricist. That's what I like. I don't admire theories that dismiss experience on the whole as unreliable or illusory; I think they're forgetting the ground they're standing on.
Physicalism, on the other hand, seems to me to be a belief that knowledge must be scientific, which is to say it can only come from a process of subtracting all that is phenomenal or 'subjective' to arrive at the world as it is in itself. When it comes to the scientific study of nature, this works marvelously. But to try to understand phenomenal consciousness—the very thing it subtracted!—by the same process seems ludicrous.
I don't have a problem with panpsychism being weird. Hell, I'm weird, I'm okay with that. And I don't think the combination problem or subject problem is fatally serious or comes anywhere near the hard problem. It seems to me (some forms of) panpsychism are attractive in that they don't DENY phenomenal experience, but they don't necessarily account for phenomenal experience AS SUCH either. Monads are a kind of un-experienceable noumena that are theoretically compatible with experience. And yet... we don't have any sort of phenomenal-experiential access to them—unless I have it wrong?
This is what makes me prefer idealism to panpsychism. Maybe it's just a matter of scale. In speculative moods I'm all for thinking the universe could be monads. But then I wonder, why can't we just say reality is constituted intersubjectively as a collective phenomenal experiential world? Why must we always posit something *really real*, something in principle beyond our reach?
Anyway, no need to respond. I'll check out your writing!
In the meantime I leave you both with the Leibniz Monad song:
I'm a little monad
Short and stout.
I ain't got no windows
So I can't look out.
(Sorry about the all-caps. Can't do italics on Substack comments. ARGH!)