All-or-nothing theology

My recent rumination on human freedom and power(lessness) has also produced some interesting thoughts about the divine. Remember that I, in the previous post of mine, entertained the thought that in order to really determine anything to happen, one would have to determine everything. Today, I will go more deeply into this theme and write, at last in this blog, proper theology. Please keep in mind that, as an agnostic, I do not utter anything about God but in a speculative sense.

First, on the concept of "determining". I take it to denote an act which, without any chance of failure, sets an occurrence to happen. This is whence "determinism" gets its meaning: a conviction that everything happens without the slightest chance of anything happening otherwise. My "determining" would not allow such statements as, for example, that the driver determines the course of the vehicle. The driver steers, yes, and usually has some kind of a mental representation of the route ahead, but determining would mean that there be absolutely no chance of anything other than the driver affecting the course of the vehicle. Not one unexpected bump, braking or collision, nothing.

Given that definition, it is hardly surprising that I do not think human beings can determine much in this world. Most people admit this straight away: no matter how well we plan our actions, we may always be taken by surprise. But many people, I believe, still would like to think that within ourselves, that is, in our minds, we can consciously determine things. Our freedom to do what we want might have external limitations, but internally we are free to determine ourselves. Now I have argued, quite persuasively, I think, that this is not the case. Let me recapitulate the essential from my previous post:

If my thoughts were in any way decoupled from the current situation, from the moment of spacetime where I experience myself now, why could I not predetermine my thoughts for all the future situations, up to the moment of my last breath? "But of course", you might say, "you cannot predetermine thoughts to be experienced in future situations, because you don't yet know what kind of situations you will end up in: thus, you have no chance of determining just the adequate thoughts for each situation." Well, that is very true indeed, and has been my point all along. The amazing thing is that it applies as much to the nearest future moment as to the farthest!

So, whatever happens in my mind is not something I (consciously) impose on the situation where I find myself. It is, rather, just another aspect of the situation itself. And this is why, in order to determine my thoughts in a given situation, I would have to determine all the other aspects of the situation as well. Now I think that "situation" would have to be the whole of reality. Let O stand for an occurrence I want to determine. If there were something, let it be X, in the reality that was not determined by me, it should remain possible that even the initially wanted O gets no chance of happening. In short, an undetermined X might prevent O from happening. The chance of X preventing O might be negligibly small, but theoretically, that would be enough: as long as X was not in my control, it could affect other things in unpredictable ways, so that I could not really determine them.

To be sure, that argument rests on some presuppositions that could be questioned. Still, this is only an attempt to clarify the concept of "determining" and suggest that determining, in fact, would require determinism. The only plausible determining agent would, on this view, be an all-determiner, one that sets everything to happen, without any chance of failing or getting surprised by anything. By some, this all-determiner might be called God.

There are many notions of divine omnipotence. Some say God cannot do what is logically impossible, while others maintain he can cause anything except for what free creatures do. But most would admit that God's power is of a determinative kind: if he can do something, he can make sure it happens. Would he be God if he could not? I would like to argue that if God can, and does, determine anything to happen, it entails him determining absolutely everything, at least in the context of one reality. This is because, as explained above, if there were in the reality some thing X that was not determined by God, that X could prevent from happening some other things God would want to determine. So if God is to have any real determinative power, he will determine everything, including X – better safe than sorry!

The above said might still be countered by dividing reality into parts determined by God and parts not determined by him. Let the former be X's and the latter Y's. In addition, one will have to hold that there may be no causal interaction between X's and Y's. This is necessary for making sure that X's can really be determined and that their status as such cannot be undone by any influence of the random Y-things. For example, in the context of Alvin Plantinga's philosophical theology, the free choices and actions of human beings would fall into the Y-category, as they are putatively not determined or determinable by God. But at this point, one is clearly about to establish two distinct realities that are somehow interwoven without being interactive. This seems not very good to me: I am afraid that accounting for some occurrences in the world, for example the bulk of human action, would require interaction between X's and Y's to be possible. Then, the X's could not be strictly determined, which would amount to nothing being determined. The majestic, divine acts of creation would thereby be diminished to mere trying.

Let me be clear about this: at the moment, I am deeply skeptical about any attempts of leaving room for determiners other than God in theistic metaphysics. The difficulty of squaring God's sovereignty with free human agency is manifest in the thoughts of classical theists such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The latter, for example, applied Aristotelian metaphysics, one of the axioms of which goes: "Everything that moves is moved by another." In more abstract terms, this applies to all change from potentiality to actuality, so that everything that becomes actual is sort of pushed into actuality by something else. God is the only constantly actual being that pushes created things into actuality, and thus he is the ultimate cause of everything. At one point, Aquinas reasoned about free will and came to think that God does move "voluntary causes" as well as "natural" ones, but that voluntary actions are nevertheless voluntary because God operates such causes according to their nature. (Summa Theologica, Prima Part, Q83) Technically, it is still him who operates the causes, and no-one else.   This detail demonstrates quite well the tension emerging when we want to have one being with real determinative power, and other beings still able to decide something by themselves. Augustine, in turn, thought that a human being cannot will anything else than evil, unless God grants her his grace. This reads that whenever somebody genuinely wills something good, that is due to divine initiative. However, Augustine stressed that God's influence is not experienced by the person herself as manipulation, even though it technically could be seen as such.

As regards God, I think it would be best not to say that he "determines himself". Rather, he simply is the way he is. It would be meaningless to say God determines himself, because, by definition, he would then only be making sure he is just the way he is and not otherwise. In classical theism, God is taken to be immutable, eternal and necessary, and given this he would not have to specifically determine himself to be anything. There are other theistic models as well, such as different kinds of process theism, but it is not even required there that God have determinative power. That is why process theism is not relevant now.

So my primary theological suggestion here would be that if God has determinative power, then all occurrences in the world – the universe, reality, or whichever term you prefer – are determined by him. I think this could most easily be accepted by some Calvinists, whose theological tradition has generally been high on God's sovereignty. And given my recent arguments around the concept of free will (see here and here), I do have understanding for theists adopting that kind of a theology. For sure, its austerity does not appeal to everyone, because it implies that God has determined most appalling things to happen. The alternatives seem to be either to cling on to an unrealistic notion of human free will, or to turn to some kind of process theism.

A fatalist's take on freedom

In recent times, I have ended up thinking quite intensively about human freedom. One reason for this has been a university course I've been attending, with a special focus on the problem of evil in theistic philosophy of religion. Together with a peer, I gave an oral presentation on how the concept of free will has been utilized in theistic explanations for evil. As can probably be concluded from my previous posts on free will, I do not see that concept as having much explanatory power with respect to the problem of evil. In the most recent post, a specifically designed case example involving a moral choice was considered. The conclusion was that having free will cannot mean being able to consciously predetermine one's own states of mind, and thus it cannot entail an ability to prevent any decisions, moral or not, from happening in one's mind.

Before the discussion of the day, I have something of a confession to make. In the course of developing my arguments for this restricted notion of free will, that is since last summer, I have totally forgotten to mention what probably was my chief inspiration to the whole project. The unexpected reminder was found in Paul Katsafanas's article Nietzsche's Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization, which includes a quote from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: "[A] thought comes when 'it' wishes, and not when 'I' wish." I am not familiar with BGE, but I remember reading the same quote last spring in an introductory booklet on Nietzsche's life and philosophy, and getting really excited about it. My arguments about freedom and free will almost certainly are derived from that simple line, in an attempt to articulate its truth in detail. Nietzsche's original purpose, however, was to refute the Cartesian argument where the existence of ego (the subject) was concluded from the empirical fact that thoughts occur.

No wonder Nietzsche is the one philosopher I could call my favorite. Having now read Twilight of the Idols, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and On the Genealogy of Morality, I am ever more bewildered by the capacity of that exceedingly diverse human being to put out pithy, gem-like thoughts, without trying to force them explicitly into a unified system. Something for consistency-obsessed, analytic minds like myself to water down, I guess! So, all hail the spirit of Nietzsche. Now let us get to the point.

Having come so far in my critique of the concept of free will, I have felt a need also to say something positive about freedom. The limitations explored so far seem to deprive the word "freedom" of a meaning that, presumably, quite many ascribe to it: the power to consciously master one's own conscious states. If I don't see how freedom could have that meaning, what could it possibly mean, then? Have I not arrived at the conclusion that there is no freedom, that my life is fully beyond my conscious control, and that the best a human being can do is to stop willing because willing does not have effect on anything? That is, actually, not what I am suggesting: one should understand my arguments as descriptive of our human condition, not as prescriptive of anybody's future or way of life. All I have been saying is that one cannot know – or consciously determine – the future states of one's own mind. That has some consequences, admittedly, but does not have to lead to any sort of pessimism or existential anxiety. This is what I will try to illuminate now.

It has been a recurring trend in my life to resort to fatalism of some kind. Even though I have been a highly active and sometimes even aggressive personality, I have often rather intensely experienced lack of control over what is happening. Such experiences have functioned as both inspiration for theistic belief and objects of theistic interpretations, resulting in a strong sense that there is someone else who has the control. My existential fatalism has been, until recently, quite emotional and involved much brooding about my "inevitable" future – mostly envisioned in grim terms. But my philosophizing about the nature of free will has, in the course of the past year, led me to embrace fatalism in a profoundly new way. At least it has been new to me.

I recall how, when I was a child, my mother used to tell me that, in the face of difficulties (given they are relatively minor), one can choose one's own attitude. She would tell me this with a sense of optimism when I got into the mood of whining or ranting about some unpleasant occurrences or prospects. It was usually not possible for me to believe her at the time, but what about now, when recalling that optimistic advice from years ago? Does not my recent critique of free will render completely implausible any claims like "you can choose a different attitude" – does it not imply that I am not free to choose anything? I really think it does not, even if it limits the sense in which such claims can be understood.

In the context of a sensibly revised notion of freedom, my freedom to do X would mean that it is imaginable as a possibility that I would do X in the future. If I'm being pessimistic now, it is perfectly imaginable that I proceed to choose a different attitude in the future, perhaps all the more if someone close to me encourages me to do so. But I cannot predetermine whether it is going to happen, at least not consciously. If my thoughts were in any way decoupled from the current situation, from the moment of spacetime where I experience myself now, why could I not predetermine my thoughts for all the future situations, up to the moment of my last breath? "But of course", it might be replied, "you cannot predetermine thoughts to be experienced in future situations, because you don't yet know what kind of situations you will end up in: thus, you have no chance of determining just the adequate thoughts for each situation." Well, that is very true indeed, and has been my point all along. The amazing thing is that it applies as much to the nearest future moment as to the farthest! It is inevitable that, at each incoming moment, I end up thinking in a way that is not authored by my conscious self.  Thus, even if actions are initiated by conscious thoughts, my conscious self is not the author of actions, but an executionary agency.* Should I not get anxious about this? Such a lack of conscious self-control is surely an unsettling thought.

But somehow, in my case, this realization has resulted in a more relaxed attitude and a new kind of curiosity towards the future. A common misconception of fatalism is that it entails believing in a future as if the future were already known. "My fate is to become X", "My fate is to remain Y", "Your fate is to struggle against Z" – whoever starts talking in such terms shows, in my view, not enough epistemic humility and respect to the matter. Fate is not known but until now, and we cannot speak on its behalf in the future tense. I am free to do whatever I am going to do, I just don't know what it will be. If this is determinism, at least my determinism allows for surprises from the individual's point of view. I don't see how a mind that consciously predetermines itself could allow itself to be surprised! And what would a life without surprises be? (In fact, I tend to think that in order to absolutely determine anything to happen, one would have to determine everything. This idea will be a subject of a future post, probably one on divine omnipotence and omniscience.)

The key to understanding the concepts of both fate and freedom would, on this view, be found in recognizing my ignorance – sometimes blissful and sometimes tormenting – of my very own future. Note that I am not, so far, promoting radical Humean skepticism. I am not saying it is unknowable whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not. An astrophysicist with some competence in philosophy could likely argue convincingly that there is no way the sun could not rise tomorrow, and that therefore we can know it will rise. At issue here is not the possibility of knowing what will happen with some celestial bodies in the course of next 24 hours, but the impossibility of knowing what will happen in myself in the nearest future, just a blink of an eye away from now. That impossibility is real. That is fate, and that is freedom.


* There is a lot of neuroscientific evidence that conscious thoughts are not the ones that initiate action. See here, for example.

On the illusory nature of choosing

"Free will is a trick of perspective."

-John Gray, Straw Dogs (2002) 

In my previous critique of the concept of free will I explored the inevitable limits within which a person makes choices. Upon confronting a situation in which she could (theoretically speaking) act in multiple different ways, the person represents possible courses of action in her mind before choosing what to do. I argued that these mental representations of action emerge in a contingent manner, so that the subject ultimately has to choose from a given set of options. Since then, I have developed a more radical critique of free will and especially the concept of "choosing".

As I argued before, since I cannot have knowledge of any thought, e.g. a choice, before it already happens in my mind, I cannot be the one in control of my thoughts. This principle was first applied to the formation of mental "images" or representations that precede the act of choosing. But it appears that through that very same principle, even the eventual choice can be shown to involve no conscious, subjective control. Instead, it merely happens to the person: she experiences the choice in the present and does not consciously predetermine it.

Consider this case example involving what we could traditionally see as a "moral" choice. Mary is a teenage girl whose parents grant her a weekly 10 pounds of money. It's friday, and Mary's mother does not remember whether her daughter has already received her allowance that week. She has, in fact, already on tuesday. But since her mother does not recall this, she asks Mary: "Honey, have I already paid you the usual 10 pounds this week?" Mary, who has already spent her allowance, faces a choice. On the one hand, she should be honest and accept that her 10 pounds is spent for that week. On the other hand, she has the option to cheat and receive an extra 10 pounds. It is tempting, because it's friday and she will be going out with her friends later. She imagines the two options in her mind for a little moment. And then, Mary makes her choice at time t. We'll say she opts for cheating.

The decision to cheat appears in her mind at t. At any of the preceding moments, say, t-1, she probably did not yet know that she will decide to cheat. If she did know that already at t-1, it is unclear whether she made the decision at t and not at t-1. And if she was aware of her decision already at t-1, what about t-2? There is no reason why not to make an endless regression out of this, up to the moment t-n, and yet there would still be no explanation for the decision being made at that very moment. Should we say Mary has been aware of her eventual choice through all eternity before it? That would be unrealistic. She has not. Then it is most reasonable to admit that she first becomes aware of her deciding at time t, which is the moment the decision actually happens. Now why does it happen?

An important maxim in Western philosophy, at least since Aristotle, has been that "everything that begins to exist has a cause", or in more Aristotelian terms, "everything that moves is moved by another". In the context of this influential claim, the act of choosing can be effectively deconstructed. Mary's decision to cheat begins to exist in her mind at time t. What caused it? Of course, you might say, Mary herself! She is the cause of her own choice. The next question is, what caused Mary? She has definitely begun to exist at some point. So she can't be without a cause. If you are more precise, you will probably say that it was Mary's preceding state of mind that caused her choice. But what was it, then, that caused the state of mind? You will either end up postulating for Mary's choice some cause outside herself, or you will claim that Mary is her own cause and has thus not begun to exist.

It is, of course, possible to say that nothing ever has begun to exist, but that everything exists eternally. Past and future, actuality and potentiality would only be illusions arising from the limited perspective of a human being. This was a position importantly developed by Spinoza, and possibly some thinkers even long before him. Moreover, it appears to be supported by some well-established findings of 20th century physics, such as the Special Theory of Relativity. If this is an adequate way to view reality, it is possible that nothing is caused in the traditional sense. Therefore, not even Mary's choice is necessarily a caused event.

Therefore, either

1) Mary's choice has a cause that is not Mary, unless Mary is the cause of herself.
2) Mary's choice has no cause.

My point here is to ask whether, in the light of the above said, Mary has had the slightest chance to consciously determine what she chose at time t. If she did not know of the choice before it happened, she had no means to consciously prevent it from being the morally "bad" one, the one of cheating and lying. Had the decision been different, this could not have been due to any conscious control exercised by Mary. The same can be said of any of Mary's thoughts, at t-1, t-2 or t-n. I see no conscious control of her own involved in the formation of her thoughts, and thus no "choices". All I see is thoughts or, broadly speaking, states of mind following one another. A posteriori (afterwards), Mary might think that her thought A "led" to her thought B. Still, when thought A was present, Mary could not know a priori (beforehand) what thought B would be like. The thought at time t does not tell anything a priori of what will be experienced at t+1, and thus even choices are just unpredictable thoughts appearing in the consciousness.

I recognize that my discussion of this subject depends on considering time as moments (t, t-1, t+1 and the like), and even more radically on the concepts of past, present and future. There is apparently a wide range of philosophical literature on the meaning of these terms, with which I am not very familiar yet. As regards the ontology of time, Einstein's special relativity has shown how the notions of past, present and future are dependent on the observer. On the other hand, when we speak of our subjective experience of time, it can be questioned whether the division of time in moments or periods is always meaningful. Is not the experience of time, after all, quite seamless and lacking clear points of division? But, in the context of a certain widely used language of time, I think I have adequately challenged the idea of consciously controlled thoughts and, thus, of consciously controlled choices.

Believing, just believing

The question of the day is: What is a justified belief? In other words, what are we entitled to believe? The answer of the day, and the subject of my analysis, is the properly basic belief, a central concept of foundationalist theories of knowledge and rationality. The conclusion of the day is that the so-called properly basic beliefs are deeply problematic, and that personally, I would not even use the term. Properly basic beliefs as an epistemic category are of special interest to the philosopher of religion, because they have been invoked as a means to defend the rationality of religious beliefs, or at least the belief in a God. This has been part of the strategy of reformed epistemologists, of whom Alvin Plantinga is probably most well-known. Before explaining the use of the concept in reformed epistemology, which represents a modest form of foundationalism, it is appropriate to lay out the principles of foundationalism in general.

Foundationalism originated as an early modern development in epistemology. After the long period of religiously grounded, modest confidence in human reason in the Middle Ages, philosophers, beginning with René Descartes (1596–1650), engaged in the search for absolutely certain knowledge. They found it, as it were, in various ideas, beliefs or categories that were seen as foundational or logically prior to all other knowledge in an individual human mind. Descartes had his ”clear and distinct ideas”; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) discovered a priori categories of understanding. Generally, foundationalism treats human knowledge as consisting of two kinds of beliefs: basic ones and derived ones. The former, accepted without being supported by other beliefs, constitute the ground on which the structure of knowledge is built. Beliefs can be called ”properly” basic if it is reasonable to accept them independently of other beliefs. An example of improperness would be, for instance, believing that someone is guilty of a crime just because one dislikes that person.

Strong foundationalism is a notorious position where only self-evident or incorrigible beliefs can be accepted as properly basic. Such could be arithmetical truths and beliefs concerning one’s own, immediate experience, for example. It is deemed rational to hold them and beliefs logically derived from them. Strong foundationalism, however, has been met with devastating criticism, for it is actually self-referentially incoherent. The central requirement of strong foundationalism can hardly be a self-evident or incorrigible belief, and so it cannot provide a secure basis for rational beliefs. In other words, it is not rational for a strong foundationalist to be a strong foundationalist.

Reformed epistemology has been developed with the pitfalls of strong foundationalism in mind. Its advocates, such as Plantinga, accept a modest form of foundationalism. They do think that beliefs are either basic or derived, and that any system of rationally justified beliefs requires properly basic beliefs as its foundation. The difference to strong foundationalism is that we can consider any of our beliefs as properly basic if we don’t think we have derived them from other beliefs. The reformed epistemologist does not want to overproblematize knowledge: she is confident that human structures of belief and knowledge are basically in order, and that we do know most of those things that we think we know.

For Alvin Plantinga, this broad criterion means that the belief in God’s existence can be properly basic. He has been criticized for taking this stance – for example, Gary Gutting has objected that only such beliefs should be considered properly basic of which there is no widespread disagreement. Plantinga, however, rejects consensus as a criterion for proper basicality: ”[T]here is no reason to assume, in advance, that everyone will agree on the examples [of properly basic beliefs].” (Reason and religious belief, Peterson et al. 2003, p. 114) Why should a Christian conform to the examples of, say, an atheist? Basicality is affirmed or denied according to a belief’s provenance, not to its reception, and so everyone can legitimately have their own basic beliefs.

This person-relatedness inevitably paves the way for a kind of relativism. Philip Quinn has expressed concerns over this: in his view, it is problematic that anyone can claim even the most eccentric beliefs to be properly basic. Is one not, in defining proper basicality, dealing with matters of truth or even plausibility? This is a good question indeed. But in my view the big problem is that, in construing the notion of proper basicality, one limits the range of epistemology in a way that leaves us with a truncated, implausible, and not very interesting conception of what human knowledge is. I now move on to explicate what this means.

Reformed epistemologists and other foundationalists operate in a world of beliefs that are expressed as grammatically correct sentences. Consider the following example, given in Reason and religious belief: ”[Y]ou walk into a friend’s house and, because of what you are hearing, form the belief that someone is playing the saxophone in the next room. This is a basic belief, not inferred from other beliefs of yours … you just hear the sounds and find yourself with the belief that there is a saxophone in the next room.” (p. 113) Here, the foundationalist refuses to think further where it is both possible and necessary to do so. The belief in question does, in fact, logically entail a number of prior convictions. You have to believe that there is a musical instrument known as the saxophone, and that a player is required for the instrument to produce sounds, and even that the next room actually is there!

I stress that none of these prior convictions has to be part of a conscious process of reasoning that eventually produces the belief ”someone is playing the saxophone in the next room”. But logically, they have to be there. You do not form the belief exclusively ”because of what you are hearing”. If you did, probably any living creature capable of hearing and seeing could form the same belief as you do, given the same sensory input. But obviously, animals could not. Neither could all of your fellow human beings, especially not those who had never got to learn anything about the saxophone. The sensory input in question could not possibly cause such people to believe that someone is playing the saxophone. At best, they could believe that someone is playing a musical instrument. This I take to be self-evident, but the foundationalist seems unable to account for the fact that, even upon observing the same event, different people may form different beliefs.

A more detailed description of belief formation could be the following. What you are hearing interacts with your prior convictions, whether they be conscious or subconscious, and from this interaction emerges the belief – it is an interpreted experience, achieved through reference to some form of prior knowledge. In this case, reference is made to some things you have learned about the saxophone and the structure of your friend’s house. I label these things resources of interpretation. Or I could say they are implicit truth claims inherent in the explicit truth claim that is your belief. It is downright misleading to describe the situation as if the external stimuli had immediately caused the belief to appear in your mind as a grammatically correct sentence. It just does not happen.

Furthermore, it is far from self-evident that the sphere of correct language encompasses all human knowledge. No perfectly formed sentences pop out of nothing when a child learns to communicate. Prior to sentences, single words are uttered – how come they could not stand for knowledge, beliefs, or proto-beliefs if you like? It is entirely reasonable to maintain that, for instance, if a child utters the word ”mama” when approached by its mother, it is expressing knowledge of or belief in something. Neurologist Antonio Damasio has even argued that, in a conscious mind, there can be concepts even when there is no capacity for linguistic expression whatsoever, and that concepts logically precede words. It is, I understand, of reasons of convenience that philosophers like to discuss well-formed statements, but I wouldn’t deny that knowledge is manifest even elsewhere in human communication.

I maintain that beliefs necessarily come about as interpreted experiences, through reference to some resources of interpretation. Thus, if one wants to find out whether a belief is justified, one will have to inquire about the epistemic justification of the resources involved in the formation of that belief. For example, a person who believes in God could ask: ”Was it justified to possess the resources of interpretation that allowed me to form the belief that there is a God?” When the resulting belief is a basic one, the resources of interpretation have to be subconsciously held convictions, states of taking-something-to-exist, taking-some-conditions-to-prevail. They cannot be premises of a conscious deductive process, for if they were, the belief would not be a basic one. But is the question of justification even relevant when discussing those subconscious resources? Isn’t it so that one just happens to have certain resources, and that there is no inquiring about their justification at all?

If resources of interpretation were seen as implicit truth claims underlying an explicit one (i.e., the eventual belief), one could try to reconstruct belief formation as a deductive process. The resources of interpretation being turned into premises of deduction, their status as justified and reasonable beliefs could be discussed. In effect, though, this move would undermine the concept of basic belief, for the premises, as explicit truth claims, would be no more self-evident than the conclusion. One would have to find out what implicit truth claims lie hidden in them, and repeat the procedure. Logically, an infinite regress would follow – as a reconstruction of how the eventual belief came about! This all goes to show that the notion of basic beliefs implies an a priori confident attitude towards the subconscious resources involved in belief formation.

Alvin Plantinga has exemplified this central role of confidence in a specific case: supposing God exists, it would be reasonable to think that the cognitive mechanisms producing the belief in God work reliably. Plantinga posits the sensus divinitatis (sense of the divine) as a component in human cognitive makeup intended to produce in us the belief in God. In doing this, he wants to show that under certain conditions, which actually might prevail – since the existence of God has not been disproved – the belief in God could be warranted, i.e., point to a fact. But he admits that if there is no God, then we have no sensus divinitatis and the belief in God is probably not warranted. So it seems that, at least in the God-case, the resources of interpretation are considered reliable on the assumption that the eventual belief points to a fact. The belief is justified insofar as it points to a fact. But since you can’t know whether it does, you can’t know whether the belief is justified. You are believing, just believing – you are something like a fideist, are you not?

The problematics discussed above makes it evident that foundationalism in its different forms has to be a clearly demarcated epistemology, focusing exclusively on beliefs expressed as truth claims. Any other forms of knowledge, such as subconscious resources of interpretation, are outside its scope. But it is clear that other forms of knowledge are also epistemically relevant. If foundationalist theories can handle only a specific kind of knowledge, how relevant are they really when considering human knowledge in its full diversity? Do they explain anything – do they justify anything? I have figured out two attempts to justify the information which, of necessity, precedes the formation of any belief, even a ”basic” one. The first way led to postulating an infinite series of underlying beliefs for any actual belief, and the second one to justifying a belief on the sheer assumption that it is true. Neither one of the solutions is satisfying. But can the problem of justification hereby be declared a non-issue? I will continue on this in a further post, perhaps even the next one.

Further readings:

Peterson, Michael et al.: Reason and religious belief. 2003, Oxford University Press.
(Specifically chapter 6, Knowing God without arguments: Does theism need a basis?)

Imagination and free will

Today, I would like to present my interpretation of the central philosophical concept of free will. I argue for a view that stresses the role of imagination in all decision making, even so much that the concept of will as uncoupled from imagination will be deemed nonsense. I am not interested in denying free will in the sense that freedom would be an absolute quality, either present or absent in a living thing. Instead, I will define freedom as a property or state of all organisms, with some of them, such as most humans, enjoying greater freedom than others. References to traditional theories of freedom have decidedly been left out, for this post is not primarily meant as a critique of any of them. It is my analysis of the concept of free will, and as such it might contradict with, or bear resemblance to, ideas previously developed by others.

Let me first lay out the crucial role of imagination. Regardless of the existence or degree of our freedom, imagination is a necessary factor in decision making. One cannot choose a course of action beforehand if one is unable to imagine the action itself and, perhaps, some of its consequences as well. Human beings often see their actions as goal-directed: they aim at certain results. The ability to imagine ends and means was central already in Aristotle’s account on practical reason, and clearly visible in his practical syllogisms. There, for example, the act of eating could result from a person’s actual sensation of hunger and her belief that eating cures hunger. Such a belief entails envisioning a potential state of not being hungry: imagination, case in point. But Aristotle did not, as far as I know, pay much attention to the question whether humans make free choices.

Now, let’s assume that we indeed choose our actions freely. Imagination generates or comprises mental images that, in each given situation, represent different optional courses of action. Some of them are more realistic than others. When confronted by a dangerous terrestrial animal, for instance, one could envision both running away and flying away, but obviously the latter wouldn’t be a realistic escape plan. (It is nevertheless a remarkable capacity that we can imaginatively combine things that have not occurred together in our previous experience, and thus envision a human flying like a bird). In any case, the course of action one opts for is chosen from the set of mental images offered by imagination. The choice-making instance, I suppose, is what the concept of will refers to. Then, the chosen mental images are more or less successfully turned into action.

The crucial question here is: if actions are chosen by will, and will is provided with options by imagination, what is the instance that imagination is dependent upon? What determines exactly which kinds of mental images are generated?

Suppose that your imagination was free from all constraints. That means it could generate an unlimited mass of mental images, for example to represent an unlimited selection of different actions in a given situation. But to speak of an ”unlimited selection” is folly: in a temporally restricted situation, such as any situation you may encounter in your earthly life, no choice could be made from an unlimited range of options. No matter how free the will is, it simply has not got the time to go through an endless array of mental images. It is implied that, for you to be able to make choices at all, the range of options generated by imagination has to be restricted by something. But what would that something be?

Might it be called human intellect or rationality? Let me explore this possibility: I, as a subject, control the formation of images in my mind rationally. Such a view seems to imply that I should be able to anticipate what to think of next. But as hard as I try, I cannot run ahead of my thoughts. At the very moment I ”decide” what to think of next, the thought – a mental image or representation – is already there. It is not ”next”, it is now. I cannot anticipatively decide what to think. My thoughts come and go, and I guess the same is true of yours as well. What we call deciding what to do is thought A anticipating action α, and that is pretty conceivable. But I see no way my thought Α could anticipate my thought B, without B already being experienced in the present. Thoughts are always present, never anticipated, just like a certain action is never done first ”anticipatively” and then ”really”.

Even if I refuse to rely upon my own experience on this, the subjective, rational control of imagination would be hard to explain. For what else could the formation of mental images consist of than making choices between options? Intellect is very much about associating things with each other, and in order to construct mental images, one would have to choose which things to associate with which. By positing ”intellect” as the controlling instance of human imagination, I would merely make a replica of the choice-making instance of will and place it before the ultimate mental images. Obviously, this replica of the will generates the need to posit further replicas ad infinitum. It starts to seem like mental images were being pushed into our consciousness by something or someone outside our conscious mind.

If that is the case, the products of our conscious imagination probably represent a selection extracted from a greater, unconscious set of images. There has to be an instance doing this selective work and sending certain images up to the ”surface” so that they can be consciously reflected upon. This mysterious instance appears to be nothing but a separate meta-will, operating in the subconscious sphere. What else could account for the limited set of imagined possibilities emerging in the human mind before a free choice? Here, the theory starts going wild.

It is not the only problem with the subconscious meta-will that you could not be held responsible for the material provided to your conscious imagination, but it is a significant one. Look at it from an ethical point of view: it might actually hinder you from making good decisions in your life. Should you opt for an ethically unsound mode of conduct in a given situation, you would not necessarily be responsible for it. The ethically sound options just might not have been provided to your conscious mind by the meta-will. Who should we blame for that? People are usually not held responsible for actions committed in an unconscious state of mind.

In fact, this is only the beginning to a whole chain of problems. For the meta-will to be able to make choices, there has to be a subconscious meta-imagination as well. It is quite obvious: if the conscious will chooses from certain imagined actions, the meta-will also has to have some material at its disposal. And when we accept this, there is every reason to posit further meta-levels of choice-making instances (will) and instances providing options to them (imagination). Any set of options has to result from preceding choices, and the choices themselves have to be a selection out of a preceding set of options. This is a ridiculous thought, utter nonsense that does not offer the slightest help in understanding how human minds work.

What else, if not an endless chain of metacognitive apparatus, could account for a limited set of imagined options? An alternative is to think of human imagination as a contingent process. That is, the possible courses of action envisioned in an individual mind emerge without a single steering instance such as will or meta-will. There are many factors that are likely to influence an individual’s imagination: previous experiences, cultural background, natural surroundings and genetic makeup, for instance. This view resembles the point made by theologian Joel Green in Conversations On Human Nature (Fuentes & Visala 2015, p. 289):

”Decisions determine other decisions; relationships shape what is possible for us to even think. Our relatedness actually constrains our free will, not in the sense that it keeps you from making decisions, but in the sense that it shapes the way you even think what decisions are possible.”

In fact, when understood as above, imagination and freedom should not be thought as belonging to humans only. Our imagination obviously tends to be much more complex and our freedom, consequently, wider than that of other organisms. More images, more associations and therefore more options occur to humans than to others. But it is likely that some human mental images, associations and options are really special in the sense that they emerge through unique neurological mechanisms that no other animals exhibit. For example, human language could be a result of such mechanisms. Further speculations must wait for a more appropriate occasion.

To conclude with, I repeat my argument in a step-by-step format:

1 For a human subject, making a choice entails envisioning options in the form of mental representations.

2 In a temporally restricted situation, any choice must be made from a limited set of options.

3 The subject cannot plan any mental representations before actually experiencing them, because to plan X is to experience a mental representation of X.

4 This means that the subject cannot produce a limited set of options out of nowhere while still controlling the outcome.

5 Therefore, in a temporally restricted situation, the subject can only produce a limited set of options by deriving it from a preceding limited set of options.

6 If such limited sets are produced by the human subject herself, her every choice is dependent upon an endless regressive series of her own deliberative acts, deriving limited sets from previous limited sets.

7 An endless series is, given the context of a temporally restricted situation, impossible.

8 If such a series is not postulated, there has to be, at some level, a given set of options underlying the final choice made by the subject.

9 These options, being given, are outside the control of the subject.

10 The subject is not free to decide what occurs to her as possible.

11 In that case, the final choice can be free only inasmuch as the subject chooses freely from the given options.

I have here tentatively defined individual freedom as the range of possible mental representations and actions open to an individual organism. I do not believe it is an absolute property or quality of human mind or human will. In my view, the explanatory power of free will is zero unless one takes into account imagination, which obviously is not controlled by a single subject, but instead is a contingent stream, drawing influence from numerous tributaries.

Because it is a hare, because...?

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. 

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:20-25 (my italics)

In my introductory post, I mentioned the persistent Biblical idea in Christian thought that God has defined what constitutes proper, natural behavior for his creatures, animals and men alike. Moreover, as is obvious in the Genesis passage cited above, the creatures are thought of as representing different kinds, each of which belongs to a kind-specific habitat and is expected to behave in a kind-specific way. I will now turn to the concept of kind in animal kingdom and analyze it as used in a Thomistic context. There are several assumptions there that come out as problematic, most importantly the following:

We can objectively define an individual animal as representative of a certain kind.
We can deduce the natural ends of the individual from its representing a given kind of thing.
What is unnatural for the individual we can likewise deduce from its kind.

A useful starting point for the analysis is provided by the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosopher Edward Feser, who touched upon the issue of naturalness in his blog article Whose nature? Which law? It is probably best to quote the text directly, because it does not get much clearer than this:

"[D]ifferent kinds of material things have their own distinctive natures that determine distinctive kinds of flourishing. Darting about is something a squirrel needs to be able to do in order to flourish as the kind of thing it is, but it is not the sort of thing a tree or grass needs to do in order to flourish as the kinds of thing they are." 

"[No one would] raise silly objections to the effect that if a certain squirrel is born without a leg, then it must be natural for that squirrel to lack four legs, or that if a certain sickly tree fails to sink roots into the ground and ends up falling over or drying out, then it must be natural for that tree to fail to sink roots. For though these circumstances are 'natural' in the sense that they sometimes occur in the ordinary course of nature and arise from factors internal to the things in question rather than from human action or some other external factor, they are nevertheless unnatural in the relevant sense. For a squirrel’s being born without a leg or a tree’s having weak roots constitute failures to realize the ends that define the flourishing of these sorts of thing, and thus are failures fully to realize a thing’s nature. That is why we call them defects in a thing."

My purpose in this post is to ask questions about the explanatory power of such a philosophy of nature. Does it help me, or you for that matter, in conceptualizing observable phenomena in nature? In the Aristotelian-Thomistic scheme of Feser it is the "sort of thing" an individual represents that dictates what is good for it. Thus, a properly natural life is presented as a more or less unilateral relationship in which an individual (subject) acts in accordance to its nature in a specific habitat (object). For example, a squirrel lives darting around in a forest. No attention, however, is being paid to the obvious reverse: that the forest also lives in the squirrel.

I say "the obvious reverse", because it is obvious in the era of evolutionary understanding of organic nature. It certainly was not for Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, and they are not to blame for this. As much as they placed value on observing nature empirically, their observations were lacking for both volume and precision when compared to ours. They saw around themselves a world of living things that could be organized in categories based on observable similarities between individuals. There were certain characteristics by which one could determine "squirrels" as opposed to other things, and the lack of some characteristic in an individual squirrel could be labeled a "defect". They had a synchronic conception of nature, based on what things looked like at a certain moment in history.

(N.B. I am fully aware that Aristotelian Thomism is not the same as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas put together. I rather use these men as examples of a premodern scientific approach to nature.)

The rise of evolutionary biology from 19th century onwards has led to a new kind of understanding nature. The process can not be separated from the all-encompassing revolution in Western science, the revolution of history. As a result, we now have a diachronic conception of nature. It is based on what things have looked like during a long period of time in which different moments can be compared to each other. We definitely know that phenotypes of organisms gradually change over time, and this change is brought about by genetic mutations, some of which are advantageous for individuals in their respective habitats and therefore persist in populations. There was a time when ancestors of modern squirrels were quite different, both phenotypically and behaviorally, from modern squirrels, and when there were no beings we would label squirrels. What's more, we cannot tell what the future descendants of modern squirrels will look like and how they will cope in their respective habitats.

To an extent, this kind of understanding has undermined the relevance of synchronic analysis. The results of the latter can be questioned by the very method applied by classical and medieval scientists: making observations and comparing them. The basic difference is that modern observations and comparisons are diachronic rather than synchronic. The results they yield have implications for philosophy of nature and for concepts such as "natural", "kind", "flourishing" and "defect".

Consider the mountain hare. The color of its pelage tends to shift between summer and winter, becoming white to camouflage the hare in snowy conditions. Then, the color shifts back to brown again during springtime. One would probably say that this tendency is beneficial for the hare, for it reduces the risk of falling prey to predators. Avoiding predators surely is one of the ends that, in the Aristotelian-Thomistic idiom, define the flourishing of a mountain hare. A hare with an all-year-round brown pelage is more vulnerable; thus, its inability to shift color constitutes a failure to realize the ends that define its flourishing. It is natural and beneficial for that sort of thing to develop a white winter pelage. Luckily for them, most mountain hares have no problem doing this.

And yet I would not be so sure the hares possessing that ability are so lucky any more. In many parts of the mountain hare range, snowy winters are becoming rare and in any case shorter than before. In southern Sweden, coastal Norway and Finland, or the Baltic countries, one cannot really count on getting snow cover for periods longer than a week at a time. Suddenly, a white hare bouncing around sticks out and becomes an easy prey. A quality that once enabled the hare to reach its natural ends has become a burden. The habitat, in my language, no longer lives in the hare. And then it's probably time for the hare to cease to live in the habitat.

In turn, an inability to change color, being brown all year round, becomes a beneficial feature, even though it was supposed to be a defect for this sort of thing. Some mutation might produce, and probably does produce, mountain hares without a white winter pelage.* These are the hares the new habitat lives in, which lets them continue living in that habitat. Seen from an evolutionary perspective, defects in a thing are not necessarily to be defined by referring to the "sort of thing" in question. In the case of the hare, it is more adequate to speak of defects in a certain individual in relation to its surroundings. Conditions change, therefore the prerequisites for flourishing also change. Perhaps the kind, if there is one, changes as well.

But let us examine some possible objections to this. One could, for example, claim that there are some ends the hare must always be able to reach to flourish, such that remain stable no matter how the habitat changes over time. A mutation constituting a hinder to reach those ends would thus be a defect not just on the individual level but on the kind level as well. Lacking a leg would indeed be a good example: an effective camouflage would not make a big difference if the hare could not run in the first place.

However, the ability to flee from predators seems not to be something a hare would need because it is a hare. Rather, it is a useful ability common to many different animals not occupying an apex predator position in the food chain. It is not being a hare that determines the more stable ends of the creature, but rather – again – the position it takes in relation to other things. Which, in turn, is mutable over time. We need not consider the possibility of a Monty-Pythonian killer rabbit evolving in the distant future. Suffice it to keep in mind how the lousy and weak ancient hominids eventually became superb killers with no natural enemies: modern men.

A more radical means to invalidate my evolutionary argument questioning the existence of kind-specific ends could be denying the kinds themselves to be subject to empirical, scientific inquiry. This would mean that the existence of a kind, the mountain hare for instance, is independent of the individuals we can observe and study. Metaphysical facts concerning kinds of things could not be altered by scientific observations, but they would provide a suitable context for interpreting those observations. More importantly, one could claim, there are no natural sciences without an underlying philosophy of nature: thus, it cannot be science that dictates our choice of philosophical approach, whether it be Thomistic or something else.

I proceed not by rejecting this immunity of philosophy. On the contrary, I might accept it, at least for a while. For even if philosophy cannot be corrected by science, any given philosophy could still face major difficulties processing the scientific data we have. I suspect that will be the case with the approach illustrated by quotes from Prof. Feser. If some facts established by scientific research are not intelligible in a certain metaphysical framework, that framework probably has to be modified, even if one fancies to grant philosophy an epistemological position superior to science.

Feser explicitly refers to an individual, actual squirrel as a "kind of thing". A simple question would be: Since when have squirrels been the kind of thing they are? Should some animals be identified as the supposedly first squirrels in history, one might ask why not consider their immediate ancestors squirrels as well. It would be impossible to provide an unquestionable answer, because there is no objective "squirrelness" that scientists could detect. It does not read in the DNA of any creature that it is a squirrel. Thus, one could entertain the thought that such creatures we call squirrels are not necessarily squirrels, i.e. do not represent a specific kind of thing. They might lack a kind-identity altogether or share it with all of their ancestors, down to the first I-don't-know-what. Does that kind of a philosophy add anything to our understanding of what's going on in the natural world – that is, going on independently of our conceptual schemes? Speaking for myself, I think it does not.

While nothing said so far disproves the existence of natural kinds or essences, a significant epistemological problem has been pointed out, and it comes with ethical consequences. For as long as we cannot identify objectively the kind of an individual creature, we are not entitled to make strong claims as to what natural, given ends it should realize. We don't really get to taste the normative, teleological fruits that the Thomistic concept of kind seeks to deliver. Without them, the latter's nutritional value seems rather meager: it's like a hollow apple without peel, yet it "is there".

Professor Sarah Coakley was challenged in a similar manner as she applied, in a decidedly Aristotelian-Thomistic fashion, the concepts of "kind" and "flourishing" in her Gifford Lectures 2012 (see the 1st May lecture). She agreed that the difficulty of splitting actual evolutionary continua according to conventional taxonomy does pose problems for thinking in terms of kinds, but did not abandon the notion straight away. Instead, she suggested that we could allow for evolutionary transitional phases between different kinds. Perhaps, then, a kind would be an essentially social thing, becoming manifest not in a single individual but in a population with a relatively stable ecological niche, and thus relatively stable "goals" or "virtues". Supposing this, however, does not seem to solve the problem of reliable identification. What's more, it opens up the possibility that our own kind will enter a transitional phase, eventually becoming something else.

Even if we are no clearly definable kind, we at least do have some changing ends dictated by the conditions we live in. What makes this interesting is the tendency of our surroundings to become more and more constructed and conditioned by ourselves. This has been an ongoing trend for a very long period of time, probably millions of years. The more we create the challenges we face and must adapt to, the more it is we who also define what constitutes human flourishing. This is a subject I am definitely going to take up in a future post, now having considered animals in general.


The Bible quote is from biblegateway.com

* The Irish mountain hare population actually already exhibits a brown pelage all year round. Currently, biologists discuss its possible status as a different species. But would such a status make it a different kind of thing? 

What's so special about life?

I doubt there is anyone out there who has not at some point been wondering: ”How come this world exists at all?” Consider all the things we perceive around us: the sun, rain and wind, plants, animals, and other people, to name but a few. There is so much variability, so many different parts and entities, and many see in them a convenient, intelligible system of interactions and hierarchical structures. Furthermore, most of us surely have come to ask whether such a universe would be possible without a creative and, more than that, intelligent and very powerful agent constructing or at least initiating and regulating it. And many have answered: no, it would not be possible. This is an age-old line of reasoning and as such convincing to many Christians. The universe exists, therefore God the Creator must exist. There are also more detailed versions of this argument, paying special attention to certain aspects in the universe, and today I am going to take a look at one of those: the so-called Anthropic Argument.

Even though it has, to my knowledge, been demonstrated in modern physics that it is possible for the universe to have come about randomly, some note that even a seemingly random beginning could reasonably be attributed to initial divine agency and will. In fact, they might add, even more than reasonably: the beginning would best be explained through God. This is due to the peculiar qualities of this very universe. Here, it has been possible for life as a biological phenomenon to come about. We have organic nature, and that is, in a sense, remarkable.

Judging by what we know about the initial conditions of our universe, they were just about the only possible ones that could have led to a universe suitable for life. A bunch of interesting facts can be found, for example, in the 2003 book Reason & Religious Belief (p. 93):

”[H]ad ’the Big Bang expanded at a different rate, life would not have evolved. A reduction by one part in a million million at an initial stage would have led to recollapse before temperatures could fall below ten thousand degrees. An early increase by one part in a million would have prevented the growth of galaxies, stars and planets.’ Or had the gravitational force been slightly greater, all the stars would be blue giants whose life span is too short to allow intelligent life to evolve. But had it been slightly less, the universe would be devoid of many elements essential to life.”

The list continues, showing that many intricate details in the cosmic dawn were absolutely necessary preconditions for the much later emergence of organisms. Thus, the argument goes, one could think that the cosmos at its earliest stage was perfectly tuned for the purpose of eventually letting this organic nature come into being. Without those optimal initial ”settings”, we would certainly not exist! According to some, it is best for a rational observer to suppose a divine agent to be responsible for initiating this most unlikely line of development.

All that can seem quite impressive until one starts wondering why we think of organic nature as something remarkable. To start with, I make a guess: in any possible universe, there would probably be some natural phenomenon that could not occur in any other universe. Its presence would be a consequence of the unique initial conditions of that universe. In the universe we live in, there happens to be organic nature, but in other possible ones there would be different ”nearly impossible” phenomena. In a recent public debate in Helsinki, Dr. Peter Payne from the Institute for Credible Christianity maintained that there could be no ”complex structures”, whatever that means (I stress that it was me, not him, who was lacking for learning on astrophysical issues). That being said, it seems unreasonable to think that all the other possible initial conditions would have produced a cosmos with every natural phenomenon we have – except for one: organic nature.

Now what is it that makes organic nature so special? What sets it apart from other unlikely phenomena and supposedly makes it a proof for the existence of God? I dare say there is nothing special about this phenomenon, except for the fact that we are ourselves part of it. That is why we attach meaning to it; would we do so if we were not organisms? Probably not!

Could we even think of existing in a completely non-organic sense? More important: are we (human beings) nothing but organisms? This is quite another debate, but it is sufficient for my present purposes to sketch three basic answers to the question:

Materialist: We are nothing but organisms.

Epiphenomenalist: We are organisms with a mind or a soul that is dependent on organic matter.

Dualist: We are organisms with a mind or a soul that is independent of organic matter.

Of these three, the materialist and epiphenomenalist (from gre. επιφαινομενον, ”above-phenomenon”) would affirm that we owe our existence to the existence of organic nature. The dualist need not do this. My readers might remember, for instance, the Aristotelian Thomistic conception of human beings, where it is held that we possess divinely infused rational souls that function in union with our material bodies. Such souls are necessary for all properly human (as opposed to animal or vegetative) life, and they do not depend on organic matter. Although it is not often articulated in detail, dualism of body and soul is far more common among Christians than is materialism or epiphenomenalism. Even more evident is that God is thought to be a non-organic being, a spirit. And yet he is a living, thinking, perceiving, acting and communicating being.


Imagine for a while that the existing cosmos was totally unsuitable for organic nature: a chaotic, miserable sea of useless matter. Then imagine us two as non-material beings, floating around and discussing the existence of God. Upon observing the material world, I would say: ”I find it hard to believe in a creator God when looking at that mess.” And then you would go: ”Yeah, me too. If there were such a being, matter would certainly be in a nice and intelligible order.” Why wouldn't we then use our own existence as an argument for God's existence? Of course we would, and that's what the Anthropic Argument is doing as well, even though it might be presented as relying purely on technical information about the universe.

If there can be such life – human souls and God, angels, whatnot – independent of organisms, in some spiritual realm, why would the existence of organic nature hint to a divine origin for our universe? In bringing forth living beings capable of thinking and acting, God would have no more use for organic nature than for any other peculiar phenomenon of material character. To suggest that life as a biological phenomenon supports the case for God’s existence is to imply that life as a feature of created things is fundamentally organic, and basically that we could not exist as non-organic beings.

Thus, it is hard for me to see why a strict body-soul dualist would argue from the unlikely existence of organic nature to a nearly certain existence of God the Creator. This is not to say that she has to be a kind of gnostic, declaring material universe absolutely worthless; but it should make no sense to her to present organic nature as something God necessarily makes use of when bringing about life. In her view, life could exist without there being any organisms.

What can we say of the materialist and epiphenomenalist, then? Their position is different to a degree: they see us wholly or primarily as organisms, and thus hold that organic nature is needed for beings like us to exist. If they believe in God the Creator who interacts with living beings, they surely see organic nature as a proof for his existence. If a thinker is not preoccupied with such a religious view, it may be brought about in her mind by an urgent need to explain our existence as organisms. That is what the Anthropic Argument aims at. But the very conviction that life is something ”miraculous” or ”unbelievable”, or indeed anything that cries out for explanation, will remain a subjective, sentimental judgement. My own gut-feeling is that our existence, even though it is full of highly interesting and complicated phenomena, is in itself just a given fact.

Baruch Spinoza once wrote that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, ”I want to fall at the rate of thirty-two feet per second”. I deem it highly probable that the stone would go on reasoning: ”Somebody must have dropped me intentionally.”


Further readings:

Peterson, Michael L. Reason & Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 3rd ed. New York (NY): Oxford University Press, 2003.