Article 7 of 16

Subject:      Difficulties with "Miracles"
From:         Sam Dodsworth <sam@aristos.demon.co.uk>
Date:         1997/02/25
Message-Id:   <D9K2jAAOLxEzEwn8@aristos.demon.co.uk>
Distribution: world
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk
References:   <GbcXKBAxOn9yEwpf@aristos.demon.co.uk>
Organization: Annexia Free Press
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups:   alt.books.cs-Lewis



In article <OOsrYHArwiBzEwcU@aslan.demon.co.uk>, Andrew Rilstone
<andrew@aslan.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <GbcXKBAxOn9yEwpf@aristos.demon.co.uk>, Sam Dodsworth
><sam@aristos.demon.co.uk> writes
>>
>>2) "The Cardinal Difficulty Of Naturalism"
>
>Right. This is the 40,000 dollar chapter, the one that caused all the
>bother with Anscombe. 
>
>Let me start by declaring an interest, here. I agree, very strongly,
>with the basic point that Lewis is arguing from -- here, in "De
>Futilitate", in "Funeral of a Great Myth" and in various other places.
>It was also but forward, and I believe later recanted, by Lewis's
>intellectual arch-enemy J.B.S Haldane, against whom so much of
>"Abolition of Man" and the cosmic trilogy is directed. I have been told
>on a number of occassions that this argument doesn't work -- that it is
>almost too silly to consider. Yet it has always seemed to me intuitively
>obvious: I have never heard a satisfactory explanation of how my mind
>can be purely the result of things happening in my brain. The people you
>ask seem to fall into two categories: those who can't see the problem,
>and those who explain it by denying that we have a mind at all. I wonder
>whether we are dealing with an uncrossable difference in paradigms,
>here?
>
>> 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.'" 
>
>We don't have, and can't have, any direct, unmediated experience of the
>universe. What we have are sense-perceptions from which we infer the
>existence of the universe. (This is pure Descartes: I say that I say men
>outside my window; what I actually see are hats and coats (sense
>experience): I *infer* that there are men inside them.) 
>>
>>        "...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'."
>
>In order for something to be true, then there must have been a logical
>inference from valid premises. I know that the universe exists because I
>have made a valid inference from sense experience. However, if
>naturalism is true, then that act of infering was an event which
>occurred in my brain; a movement in my cortex, with biochemical,
>chemical, atomic and sub-atomic causes. 
>
>>
>>        "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."
>
>If we try to explain thought simply in terms of part of the Total System
>of Nature, then we have no reason for thinking that thoughts are valid -
>- that is, that the brain can make valid inferences. If this is true,
>then we have no reason at all for supposing there to be a universe; no
>reason at all for believing in naturalism, or indeed, for believing that
>the concept of "truth" has any meaning. If the brain is simply a lump of
>matter, what would in mean to say that that lump of matter was being
>true about another lump of matter?
>>
>>        As I read it: Knowledge is the result of chains of inferences,
>>derived from our immediate sensations. 
>
>Agreed. 
>
>>An inference must be based on
>>valid grounds to be true, so its grounds must be knowledge - that is,
>>the result of true inferences. 
>
>I think the point is more "the mind's capacity to make inferences must
>be valid".
>
>>But an inference is also an event, and
>>Naturalism holds that all events must be part of a chain of cause-and-
>>effect. 
>
>"That all events have causes which are explicable within the Total
>System of nature."
>
>>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.
>
>I don't think the problem is with a break in the chain; it's with two
>contradictory chains. One chain is a chain of logical inferences -- from
>a sense experience (a light seen through a telescope) to a belief
>("there exist stars and galaxies"). The other is a chain of natural
>events -- beginning with neurons firing in my brain, going back through
>the long and highly contingents series of events which caused animals
>with brains to come into being, ultimately to (say) a series of
>scientific axioms which resulted in there being a universe in the first
>place. If naturalism is true, then only the second chain can exist. My
>inference that the universe exists is caused by the non rational even of
>(say) the Big Bang. So what reason do I have to trust it. If you say
>"The mind's capacity to make inferences is in some way distinct from
>these blind causes" then you have, on Lewis's terms, ceased to be a
>naturalist: you have accepted at least one thing (your mind) that is not
>governed purely by scientfic laws. It is therefore in principle possible
>that other supernatural events, say, miracles, can occur. Thus far with
>Lewis, but no further. Any claim that "and therefore beauty and morality
>must have reali existence" or "and therefore God must exist" does not
>follow. 
>
        I think this veers a little too close to the refutation of
materialism that Lewis touches upon but doesn't explore in detail:

        "Thus a strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given 
         long ago by professor Haldane: 'If my mental processes are 
         determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have 
         no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...and hence I 
         have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of 
         atoms.' But Naturalism, even if it is not purely material-
         istic, seems to me to involve the same difficulty, though in a 
         less obvious form."

         In the light of your comments I amend my reading of his agument
as follows: Knowledge is the result of chains of events that follow each
other in a ground-consequent relation, while a Naturalist worldview
requires that all events be connected by chains of cause-and-effect.
Particular bits of knowledge are derived by cause-and-effect from
sensory impressions, but only if the capacity for rational thought is
pre-existant. For Naturalism to be true, then, we must show that this
capacity for rational thought can arise out of the "Natural" chains of
cause-and-effect. And thence to the discussion of evolution. 
        This leaves us with fewer difficulties than in my first reading,
but with two of the main ones still outstanding: Lewis' arguments about
the origin of consciousness are so weak as to be irrelevant, and he
neglects to consider the possibility of non-deterministic systems that
are not Supernaturalist. This last is particularly interesting because
Lewis comes very close to raising the possibility in his brief
digression on quantum mechanics:

        "If the movements of the individual units are events 'on their 
        own', events that which do not interlock with all other events, 
        then these movements are not part of Nature. It would be, 
        indeed, too great a shock to our habits to describe them as 
        *super*-natural. I think we should have to call them *sub*-
        natural. But all our confidence that Nature has no doors, no 
        reality outside herself for doors to open on, would have 
        disappeared...And clearly if she thus has a back door opening on 
        the Subnatural, it is quite on the cards that she may also have 
        a front door opening on the Supernatural - and events might be 
        fed into her at that door too."

        We are also, of course, left with the position that I call "weak
Naturalism", which Lewis attempts unsuccessfully to refute later in the
chapter. The "weak Naturalist" position holds that although cannot know
if our views are true in an absolute sense, they seem to work: that is,
they give us consistent practical results. This also demonstrates a
problem with the "refutation" of materialism: Haldane's argument shows
that we cannot know that materialism is true, but does not show that it
is false. This leaves us in no worse a position than Descartes, or
anyone else who believes that knowledge is derived from our senses and
that our senses are fallable. (A view that seems implicitly to be part
of Lewis' own brand of Supernaturalism, by the way.)

> At any rate, my
>reading is different from yours. The point is "where does the first
>piece of knowledge come from" but "How, within pure naturalism, does the
>mind's capacity to reason occur at all?" 
>
        Well, sort of. The way you formulate it is closer to Haldane's
position than Lewis'. Lewis takes Haldane's point as proved and goes on
to ask "How, within pure Naturalism, could the mind's capacity to reason
have come about?" He's considering the possibility of a system that's
Naturalist but not materialist - which only seems strange because we're
used to conflating Naturalism with science and science with materialism.

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