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Date: Wed, 05 Feb 1997 19:12:47 -0800
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> Article 6 of 9
> 
> Subject:      Difficulties with "Miracles" - no quantum mechanics
> From:         Sam Dodsworth <sam@aristos.demon.co.uk>
> Date:         1997/02/03
> Message-Id:   <GbcXKBAxOn9yEwpf@aristos.demon.co.uk>
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> Organization: Annexia Free Press
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> Newsgroups:   alt.books.cs-Lewis
> 
>         When I started the "Limitations of Lewis' Apologetics" thread I
> said that I often found Lewis' arguments faulty but, rather unfairly,
> didn't give any examples. Now I've finally finished reading "Miracles"
> I'm in a position to comment on it - but since this is rather a large
> can of worms, it seems appropriate to start another thread.
>         I'm aware that there's recently been a long thread on this topic
> (Joshua Burton kindly mailed me copy), but I hope that the points I'm
> raising are sufficiently different from what's gone before to be worth
> posting. In particular, I'm more interested in the flaws in Lewis' own
> reasoning than in demonstrating that there are valid alternatives to his
> conclusions. I'd also like to check my own readings against other
> people's - I'm nowhere near as well read in philosophy as Lewis was, and
> I'm concerned that I may have misread his arguments, or failed to
> understand their ramifications.
> 
> [Postscript: This has taken me rather longer than I expected, and omits
> a couple of points from my notes that I've decided need further thought.
> I'll leave it at this for now, on the principle that an actual post,
> however incomplete or flawed, is better than a "work in progress" that
> no one gets to see. I'm enjoying this - hope you find the result
> interesting.]
> 
> 1) Naturalism, Supernaturalism and Theism.
> 
> From chapter two:
> 
>         "What the Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the
>         thing you can't go behind, is a vast process in space and time
>         which is going on of its own accord. Inside that total system
>         every particular event... happens because some other event has
>         happened; in the long run, because the Total Event is happening.
>         Each particular thing... is what it is because other things are
>         what they are; and so, eventually, because the whole system is
>         what it is. All the things and events are so completely
>         interlocked that no one of them can claim the slightest
>         independence from "the whole show".
> 
>         "[The Supenaturalist] thinks that things fall into two classes.
>         in the first class we find either things or (more probably) One
>         Thing which is basic and original, which exists on its own. In
>         the second we find things which are merely derivative from that
>         One Thing. The one basic Thing has caused all the other things
>         to be. It exists on its own; they exist because it exists."
> 
>         "Everyone will have seen that the One Self-existent Thing - or
>         the small class of self-existent things - in which Super-
>         naturalists believe, is what we call God or the gods."
> 
>         There are two difficulties here: the definition of Naturalism
> and the jump from Supernaturalism to Theism. To understand the first,
> think of the scientific worldview. Scientists believe that the things
> and events we observe are the result of physical laws, but also that the
> universe is a consequence of these laws and not vice-versa. The
> scientific worldview, then, is a Supernaturalist one by the terms of
> Lewis' definition, with the laws of physics serving as the "one basic
> Thing"; and atheists who believe in the scientific worldview are Super-
> naturalists.
>         Who, then, are the Naturalists? As far as I can see, almost
> nobody. The closest approach I have found (in my admittedly limited
> reading) is Epicureanism, which works in almost exactly the way Lewis
> describes naturalism - albeit with Free Will included as an intrinsic
> property of of some things. This is particularly interesting because
> Epicureanism matches neither of Lewis' two alternatives; the existence
> of Free Will means that not all events can be described purely as the
> result of other events, but the universe is not caused by Free Will.
> Naturalism and Supernaturalism, then, are not the only alternatives -
> and a disproof of Naturalism is not equivalent to a proof of
> Supernaturalism.
>         The second difficulty is Lewis' assertion that "everyone will
> have seen" that Supernaturalism is the same thing as Theism. Lewis makes
> no attempt to demonstrate this and it is, in fact, not true. Platonism
> (or at least a certain type of Platonism) is one possible counter-
> example: the relation between our world and the World of Forms is
> exactly that of the Natural and the Supernatural, but the World of Forms
> is not the same thing as a god or gods. Since Lewis was undoutedly
> familiar with Plato, this passage is probably best read as a rhetorical
> trick - but it's one that leaves a distinctly false impression of what
> Lewis is about to attempt to prove.
> 
> 2) "The Cardinal Difficulty Of Naturalism"
> 
>         My problem here is separating quibbles from substantial points,
> since Lewis is cutting out a lot of periferal issues in an attempt to
> make his arguments more accessable. Let's begin with his grounds for
> believing in the significance of rational thought:
> 
>         "It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless
>         that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real
>         insight. A theory which explained evrything else in the whole
>         universe but which made it impossible to believe that our
>         thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court... It would be
>         an argument which proved that no argument was sound - a proof
>         that there are no such things as proofs - which is nonsense."
> 
>         Note that it is not enough, within the terms of the argument, to
> cast doubt on the validity of our thinking - we need definite proof to
> create a definite contradiction. If we are merely unable to prove the
> validity of rational thought we can arrive at the "weak Naturalism" that
> Lewis dismisses near the end of the chapter:
> 
>         "...You may, if you like, give up all claim to truth. You may
>         say simply 'Our way of thinking is useful' - without adding,
>         even under your breath - 'and therefore true'. It enables us to
>         set a bone and build a bridge and make a Sputnik. And that is
>         enough... No more theology, no more ontology, no more meta-
>         physics. But then, equally, no more Naturalism. For of course
>         Naturalism is a prime specimen of that towering speculation,
>         discovered from practice and going far beyond experience, which
>         is now being condemned."
> 
>         What Lewis seems to be arguing, with some force, is that if we
> do not believe in Naturalism then we are not Naturalists. Moreover, by
> demonstrating that the view he is discussing is not a Naturalist one he
> has admitted the possibility that I brought up in the previous section -
> that there exist positions which are neither Naturalist nor Super-
> naturalist, as he defines the terms.
>         We are left, then, with two points. Firstly, to prove
> Supernaturalism it is not enough merely to refute Naturalism; we must
> deal with the other non-Supernaturalist philosophies as well. Secondly,
> to refute "weak Naturalism" (for want of a better term) we must show
> that the Naturalist view of rational thought leads not merely to
> difficulty but to outright impossibility. We are now in a better
> position to evaluate Lewis' central arguments:
> 
>         "It is clear that everything we know, beyond our own immediate
>         sensations, is inferred from those sensations... Put in its most
>         general form the inference would run, 'Since I am presented with
>         colours, shapes, pleasures and pains which I cannot perfectly
>         predict or control, and since the more I investigate them the
>         more regular their behaviour appears, therefore there must exist
>         something other than myself and it must be systematic.'"
> 
>         "...a chain of reasoning has no value as a means of finding
>         truth unless each step in it is connected with what went before
>         in the Ground-Consequent relation... On the other hand, every
>         event in Nature must be connected with the previous events in
>         the Cause and Effect relation. But our acts of thinking are
>         events. Therefore the true answer to 'Why do you think this?'
>         must begin with the Cause-Effect 'because'."
> 
>         "Acts of thinking are no doubt events; but they are a very
>         special sort of events. They are 'about' something other than
>         themselves and can be true or false. Events in general are not
>         'about' anything and cannot be true or false... Hence acts of
>         inference can, and must, be considered in two different lights.
>         On the one hand they are subjective events... On the other hand,
>         they are insights into, or knowings of, something other than
>         themselves."
> 
>         "An act of knowing must be determined, in a sense, solely by
>         what is known... Any thing which professes to explain our
>         reasoning without introducing an act of knowing thus solely
>         determined by what is known, is really a theory that there is no
>         reasoning."
> 
>         As I read it: Knowledge is the result of chains of inferences,
> derived from our immediate sensations. An inference must be based on
> valid grounds to be true, so its grounds must be knowledge - that is,
> the result of true inferences. But an inference is also an event, and
> Naturalism holds that all events must be part of a chain of cause-and-
> effect. Therefore, since we cannot have an inference without a cause,
> every true inference must be based on another true inference - any
> breaks invalidate the entire chain and all knowledge derived from it.
>         There is, of course, a problem here which Lewis doesn't stop to
> address. If inferences can only be based on knowledge then where does
> the first piece of knowledge come from? As Lewis recognizes earlier, it
> is in fact possible to base inferences directly on immediate sensations,
> thus breaking the chain of ground-and-consequence but not the chain of
> cause-and-effect. If this were not so then it would be impossible for a
> child to acquire knowledge. Unfortunately, this also means that we can
> have a true inference that is not based on knowledge - even within the
> bounds of Naturalism. I'm concerned that I'm misreading Lewis here,
> particularly since he proceeds to drop the whole issue and go on to
> discuss evolution:
> 
>         "Once... our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our
>         thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely
>         subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth. Those
>         which had a cause external to ourselves at all were (like our
>         pains) responses to stimuli... But it is not conceivable that
>         any improvement of responses could ever turn them into acts of
>         insight, or even remotely tend to do so. The relation between
>         response and stimulus is utterly different from that between
>         knowledge and the truth known."
> 
>         This is an example of what Richard Dawkins has called the
> "Argument From Personal Incredulity", and all that's needed to refute it
> is one example, however improbable, of a way in which this
> "inconceivable" development could occur. I will not, however, do this
> because in this case I believe that Lewis was right. Reasoning is not
> simply developed from reflexes: it requires memory, imagination and
> (arguably) language as well, and we have possible (and sometimes even
> plausible) explanations for how all these could evolve. Note, though,
> that the point is not that Lewis was unaware of recent developments in
> evolutionary biology but that his argument was inconclusive in the first
> place - and because it is inconclusive we still have, in "weak
> Naturalism", at least one alternative to Supernaturalism. The case is
> not proved.
> 
> 3) God and the Supernatural
> 
> From Chapter Four:
> 
>         "...what exists on its own must have existed for all eternity;
>         for if anything else could make it begin to exist then it would
>         not exist on its own but because of something else. It must also
>         exist incessantly: that is, it cannot cease to exist and then
>         begin again. For having once ceased to be it obviously could not
>         recall itself to existence... Now it is clear that my Reason has
>         grown up gradually since my birth and is interrupted for several
>         hours each night... Human minds, then, are not the only super-
>         natural entities that exist. They do not come from nowhere...
>         each has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existant, rational
>         Being, whom we call God."
> 
>         Here, Lewis is repeating the the rhetorical jump from the
> Supernatural to God that he made in Chapter Two, but there is also a
> flaw in his attempt to show that Reason, if supernatural in origin, must
> have a further source. The difficulty is a simple one. Lewis holds that
> a thing "obviously" cannot begin to exist without some further cause,
> but there is, as he has already explained, no reason to believe that the
> Supernatural is bound by cause-and-effect. The cause-and-effect relation
> is an observed property of Nature, and since the Supernatural is not
> part of Nature we have no reason to believe that it obeys Nature's
> rules.
> 
> Sam Dodsworth (sam@aristos.demon.co.uk)
> "I think there should be more sex and violence on television, not less.
>  Both are powerful catalysts of social change, at a time when change is
>  desperately needed."
>                         -J.G. Ballard
> 
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