On Medium: Is Life an Accident or the Result of Monstrous Causes?
Here's an article about what it means to ask whether life is an accident. Are there are any real accidents in nature? And would a godless natural order be reliable and reassuring?
"...If the universe somehow created itself from virtually nothing, with no guidance from any mind, everything that follows from the poisonous tree of that absurdity is tainted with eeriness"
A 'virtual' nothing is not the same as absolute nothingness. This idea es paramount when it comes to the notion of causality. It is the very fact that, as king Lear put it, "nothing will come of nothing" that causality must be known a priori. This is the point Kant emphasizes against Hume, namely, that while inductive and abductive reasoning indeed posit probabilistic natural 'laws' and causes of certain phenomena, causality itself is presupposed in those reasonings. If it wasn't, then causality would have a merely probabilistic status, as any other law of nature, given that we would be able to explain how something can come from absolute nothingness (the universe would be an uncaused effect of nothingness. We can plainly see that that statement is nonsense. This is completely different from saying there are unknown natural causes in a certain domain). The fact that we can`t shows that causality is a mental notion necessary to form explanations or posit probabilistic outcomes in the first place.
Now, causality doesn't necessarily means 'intelligently designed', in fact, causality and chance are not contradictory notions. The outcome of a coin flipping is a perfectly good example of an event both causal and random. I think the 'eeriness' of random natural processes comes from the fact that they are not personal or intelligently designed.
"...Instead of being blithely confident in the natural order, we should be shocked and revolted by it."
Is this necessity normative or descriptive? I think it is normative, given that it is based on an inductive form of reasoning, i.e. we know of a sufficiently large number of people who don't like at all nature's or the universe's indifference, so we come to the conclusion that this feature of the universe should makes us nauseous, for employing Sartre's metaphor, and all our endeavors are meant to keep that nauseating feeling at bay. I don't think it can be descriptive (as in saying that the 'absurdity' of the universe is an inherently bad thing) given that, at least in principle, there might be someone (now, before, or in the future) not bothered by the universe's complete indifference and live like animals or plants do, as the bad guy from the film 'ravenous'.
Thanks. This article touches on the Weberian theme of nature's re-enchantment, which I wrote about earlier in the article linked below. And it's an aspect of pantheism.
The Medium article distinguishes between the chance of an event happening and an event's happening "by chance." Real randomness may have to do only with the former, as the probability of a coin landing on one side or the other is 50-50, which is the definition of chance or randomness. But the notion of an event happening simply "by chance" seems opposed to the positing of causes or of nomic relations.
I'm not quite sure how you're using the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive, but I think I say that the hostile reaction is both. It's a descriptive generalization that has some exceptions, since the reaction is based on our social nature. The godless universe is asocial which makes it's appalling to creatures like us. Our species evolved to prefer to live within society, so the world beyond society is alienating. That's why animists populated nature with spirits, to humanize the inhuman. And it's why we're busy replacing the wilderness with our artificial civilizations.
"...But the notion of an event happening simply "by chance" seems opposed to the positing of causes or of nomic relations".
I don't know what you mean by 'nomic relations'. What I wanted to stress was that the happening of an event – whether by pure randomness or by an intelligent design – is a causal process. Nothing can 'happen' (by which I mean a changing state of affairs) without a cause. And so, absolute chaos and causality can co-exist.
"The godless universe is asocial which makes it's appalling to creatures like us".
I believe this statement is based on an inductive/abductive type of reasoning. So, when we say "we should be shocked and revolted by the natural order", that 'should' could be interpreted normatively, as in, we expect that should be the proper response to the universe, given the negative experience a large number of people experience, or would experience, when confronted with the universe's alienness.
To be truly descriptive, I think we would need more 'data', so to speak, to back up the claim that the universe produces universally that kind of response.
What happens in the case of a sociopath who doesn't care one bit about the universe's monstrosity? Well, I think in the mind of such individual, the universe would cease to have that property. This would force us to adopt more 'neutral' predicates for describing the universe. Pantheism only works assuming the general principles of human psychology, which I don't think are founded in nature per se. Outside those principles, I don't think it can hold.
A nomic relation is a necessary relation between instances of two types, or a relation between the types themselves. It's the real regularity that corresponds to a natural law.
Random events wouldn't exactly fall from the sky, but to speak of causality, we'd need a model of how the types relate to each other. We'd have to understand generally what's going on. I suspect, though, that the idiom of an event's happening by chance is indeed a euphemism for "miracle." This kind of event may not pop into reality from nothing, but it's not supposed to be part of a broader regularity, so it has no cause in the sense that this is a unique event rather than part of a pattern.
In any case, my point is that even modelled causality is strange and zombie-like when framed in atheistic terms.
We certainly need data to back up descriptive statements of fact. I look at the history of civilization as a long and elaborate retreat from the scary wilderness, into a refuge that flatters our egos, that surrounds us with comforting meanings. We're like Narcissus who's absorbed by his reflection.
A sociopath is an even deeper kind of narcissist since he can't step outside his ego or his animal urge to dominate, or imagine alternative perspectives.
If pantheism were understood in some parochial terms, then indeed pantheism would be subjective. But I don't see much trace of humanity in saying that nature is the supreme creative power.
I understand your point about nomic relations. Such relations would form the basis of a systematic, consistent, and unified system of knowledge, as I understand it. It's what empirical science strives for, never achieving it.
A causal relation, however, would be much simpler than that. Well, simpler as well as more fundamental, as a form of our knowledge. There are a myriad of phenomena not yet understood, however, we presuppose, a priori, a causal explanation of some kind for them. Even in theistic explanations! This would render explanations themselves "zombie like" as you call them, even when applied to transcendent realms (assuming those exist in the first place). So, there's really no exit from naturalism (causality). If god created the universe, we would then have to ask what created god. If a theist replies with "god is an unmoved mover" we know a priori that that's not possible, because the notion of a first cause is incoherent (every cause is the effect of a prior cause, and so on), like "the greatest number" is also incoherent, given the fact that numbers never end. Of course, there are finite sets and closed causal circuits, but the limits are always arbitrarily set.
"...But I don't see much trace of humanity in saying that nature is the supreme creative power"
"Creative" implies some sort of agency or imagination. A more neutral predicate might simply be "change" when describing natural processes. "Supreme" would also be in relation to our perspective, I think.
Maybe pantheism isn't subjective in an individualistic sense (I agree with your point on the history of civilizations and our need to retreat from the wilderness), but in the sense that it is not wholly on the objective side of the equation. As in, there are sets of predicates even more depersonalized for describing the universe than those employed by the pantheist. Now, the difference is of degree, not of essence, as language cannot achieve absolute neutrality.
I don't think it is any accident that Theists describe evolution as an accident. Colloquially speaking, an accident is when we end up doing something that we didn't intend to do & so it presupposes that there was an intention involved, though a thwarted one. Atheists don't presuppose there was an intent behind life, & so, like Dawkins, they are baffled when Theist's describe evolution in terms of an accident.
You say that the scientific worldview goes against the grain of the typical human tendency to attribute agency to every event. I agree with the caveat that many scientists seem to display autistic personality traits (though, to be accurate, the majority could probably not be diagnosed as autistic) & because autistics often have trouble with forming a theory of mind, it probably seems natural for them to attribute mindless causes to events. In that sense, they may be just as predisposed towards not seeing mind anywhere as someone on the schizoid spectrum would be in seeing mind everywhere. The interesting thing is that the schizoid point of view isn't necessarily opposed to science in the broadest sense. It's just a mental disposition that will inevitably color one's perceptions in the same way that autism does. Perhaps those competing views of nature are both artefacts of different types of human minds; psychological projections on the screen of Nature.
Well, I think Dawkins's point would be that theists are positing a false dichotomy between theism and saying the universe and life happen just by accident. So the fallacious point is that theists offer the only complete explanation. And Dawkins says that evolution by natural selection fills in some blanks.
An article I wrote in 2016 touches on what you say about the antisocial aspect of science (link below). I talk about the stock character of the mad scientist, for example.
The accident starts from the assumption that the appearance of life was an error.I don't know if we can make that value judgment.
A likely way of knowing whether the emergence of life on Earth was an accident would be to discover if life did not appear on any other similar planet under favorable circumstances to shelter it.
I don't see "error" as part of the meaning of "accident." The event has to be unintended or unexpected.
Indeed, if we learned that life doesn't appear on other planets under the same conditions, the emergence of life here would appear accidental in the sense of being anomalous.
But the existential point of saying that life is accidental is to stress the underlying absurdity, which should provoke some creative response.
Great and thought-provoking as always.
ReplyDelete"...If the universe somehow created itself from virtually nothing, with no guidance from any mind, everything that follows from the poisonous tree of that absurdity is tainted with eeriness"
A 'virtual' nothing is not the same as absolute nothingness. This idea es paramount when it comes to the notion of causality. It is the very fact that, as king Lear put it, "nothing will come of nothing" that causality must be known a priori. This is the point Kant emphasizes against Hume, namely, that while inductive and abductive reasoning indeed posit probabilistic natural 'laws' and causes of certain phenomena, causality itself is presupposed in those reasonings. If it wasn't, then causality would have a merely probabilistic status, as any other law of nature, given that we would be able to explain how something can come from absolute nothingness (the universe would be an uncaused effect of nothingness. We can plainly see that that statement is nonsense. This is completely different from saying there are unknown natural causes in a certain domain). The fact that we can`t shows that causality is a mental notion necessary to form explanations or posit probabilistic outcomes in the first place.
Now, causality doesn't necessarily means 'intelligently designed', in fact, causality and chance are not contradictory notions. The outcome of a coin flipping is a perfectly good example of an event both causal and random. I think the 'eeriness' of random natural processes comes from the fact that they are not personal or intelligently designed.
"...Instead of being blithely confident in the natural order, we should be shocked and revolted by it."
Is this necessity normative or descriptive? I think it is normative, given that it is based on an inductive form of reasoning, i.e. we know of a sufficiently large number of people who don't like at all nature's or the universe's indifference, so we come to the conclusion that this feature of the universe should makes us nauseous, for employing Sartre's metaphor, and all our endeavors are meant to keep that nauseating feeling at bay. I don't think it can be descriptive (as in saying that the 'absurdity' of the universe is an inherently bad thing) given that, at least in principle, there might be someone (now, before, or in the future) not bothered by the universe's complete indifference and live like animals or plants do, as the bad guy from the film 'ravenous'.
Thanks. This article touches on the Weberian theme of nature's re-enchantment, which I wrote about earlier in the article linked below. And it's an aspect of pantheism.
DeleteThe Medium article distinguishes between the chance of an event happening and an event's happening "by chance." Real randomness may have to do only with the former, as the probability of a coin landing on one side or the other is 50-50, which is the definition of chance or randomness. But the notion of an event happening simply "by chance" seems opposed to the positing of causes or of nomic relations.
I'm not quite sure how you're using the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive, but I think I say that the hostile reaction is both. It's a descriptive generalization that has some exceptions, since the reaction is based on our social nature. The godless universe is asocial which makes it's appalling to creatures like us. Our species evolved to prefer to live within society, so the world beyond society is alienating. That's why animists populated nature with spirits, to humanize the inhuman. And it's why we're busy replacing the wilderness with our artificial civilizations.
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2018/11/modernity-and-disenchantment.html
"...But the notion of an event happening simply "by chance" seems opposed to the positing of causes or of nomic relations".
DeleteI don't know what you mean by 'nomic relations'. What I wanted to stress was that the happening of an event – whether by pure randomness or by an intelligent design – is a causal process. Nothing can 'happen' (by which I mean a changing state of affairs) without a cause. And so, absolute chaos and causality can co-exist.
"The godless universe is asocial which makes it's appalling to creatures like us".
I believe this statement is based on an inductive/abductive type of reasoning. So, when we say "we should be shocked and revolted by the natural order", that 'should' could be interpreted normatively, as in, we expect that should be the proper response to the universe, given the negative experience a large number of people experience, or would experience, when confronted with the universe's alienness.
To be truly descriptive, I think we would need more 'data', so to speak, to back up the claim that the universe produces universally that kind of response.
What happens in the case of a sociopath who doesn't care one bit about the universe's monstrosity? Well, I think in the mind of such individual, the universe would cease to have that property. This would force us to adopt more 'neutral' predicates for describing the universe. Pantheism only works assuming the general principles of human psychology, which I don't think are founded in nature per se. Outside those principles, I don't think it can hold.
I'm a sort of pantheist myself, by the way.
A nomic relation is a necessary relation between instances of two types, or a relation between the types themselves. It's the real regularity that corresponds to a natural law.
DeleteRandom events wouldn't exactly fall from the sky, but to speak of causality, we'd need a model of how the types relate to each other. We'd have to understand generally what's going on. I suspect, though, that the idiom of an event's happening by chance is indeed a euphemism for "miracle." This kind of event may not pop into reality from nothing, but it's not supposed to be part of a broader regularity, so it has no cause in the sense that this is a unique event rather than part of a pattern.
In any case, my point is that even modelled causality is strange and zombie-like when framed in atheistic terms.
We certainly need data to back up descriptive statements of fact. I look at the history of civilization as a long and elaborate retreat from the scary wilderness, into a refuge that flatters our egos, that surrounds us with comforting meanings. We're like Narcissus who's absorbed by his reflection.
A sociopath is an even deeper kind of narcissist since he can't step outside his ego or his animal urge to dominate, or imagine alternative perspectives.
If pantheism were understood in some parochial terms, then indeed pantheism would be subjective. But I don't see much trace of humanity in saying that nature is the supreme creative power.
I understand your point about nomic relations. Such relations would form the basis of a systematic, consistent, and unified system of knowledge, as I understand it. It's what empirical science strives for, never achieving it.
DeleteA causal relation, however, would be much simpler than that. Well, simpler as well as more fundamental, as a form of our knowledge. There are a myriad of phenomena not yet understood, however, we presuppose, a priori, a causal explanation of some kind for them. Even in theistic explanations! This would render explanations themselves "zombie like" as you call them, even when applied to transcendent realms (assuming those exist in the first place). So, there's really no exit from naturalism (causality). If god created the universe, we would then have to ask what created god. If a theist replies with "god is an unmoved mover" we know a priori that that's not possible, because the notion of a first cause is incoherent (every cause is the effect of a prior cause, and so on), like "the greatest number" is also incoherent, given the fact that numbers never end. Of course, there are finite sets and closed causal circuits, but the limits are always arbitrarily set.
"...But I don't see much trace of humanity in saying that nature is the supreme creative power"
"Creative" implies some sort of agency or imagination. A more neutral predicate might simply be "change" when describing natural processes. "Supreme" would also be in relation to our perspective, I think.
Maybe pantheism isn't subjective in an individualistic sense (I agree with your point on the history of civilizations and our need to retreat from the wilderness), but in the sense that it is not wholly on the objective side of the equation. As in, there are sets of predicates even more depersonalized for describing the universe than those employed by the pantheist. Now, the difference is of degree, not of essence, as language cannot achieve absolute neutrality.
I don't think it is any accident that Theists describe evolution as an accident. Colloquially speaking, an accident is when we end up doing something that we didn't intend to do & so it presupposes that there was an intention involved, though a thwarted one. Atheists don't presuppose there was an intent behind life, & so, like Dawkins, they are baffled when Theist's describe evolution in terms of an accident.
ReplyDeleteYou say that the scientific worldview goes against the grain of the typical human tendency to attribute agency to every event. I agree with the caveat that many scientists seem to display autistic personality traits (though, to be accurate, the majority could probably not be diagnosed as autistic) & because autistics often have trouble with forming a theory of mind, it probably seems natural for them to attribute mindless causes to events. In that sense, they may be just as predisposed towards not seeing mind anywhere as someone on the schizoid spectrum would be in seeing mind everywhere. The interesting thing is that the schizoid point of view isn't necessarily opposed to science in the broadest sense. It's just a mental disposition that will inevitably color one's perceptions in the same way that autism does. Perhaps those competing views of nature are both artefacts of different types of human minds; psychological projections on the screen of Nature.
Well, I think Dawkins's point would be that theists are positing a false dichotomy between theism and saying the universe and life happen just by accident. So the fallacious point is that theists offer the only complete explanation. And Dawkins says that evolution by natural selection fills in some blanks.
DeleteAn article I wrote in 2016 touches on what you say about the antisocial aspect of science (link below). I talk about the stock character of the mad scientist, for example.
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2016/03/stultified-by-reason-horrific-vision-of.html
The accident starts from the assumption that the appearance of life was an error.I don't know if we can make that value judgment.
ReplyDeleteA likely way of knowing whether the emergence of life on Earth was an accident would be to discover if life did not appear on any other similar planet under favorable circumstances to shelter it.
I don't see "error" as part of the meaning of "accident." The event has to be unintended or unexpected.
DeleteIndeed, if we learned that life doesn't appear on other planets under the same conditions, the emergence of life here would appear accidental in the sense of being anomalous.
But the existential point of saying that life is accidental is to stress the underlying absurdity, which should provoke some creative response.