The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation - Chapter 3: Metaphysics
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We need to talk about metaphysics, even though Wittgenstein said we shouldn’t. One reason for this is that many of the people who enthusiastically agree with his condemnation of metaphysics are unwittingly deeply embroiled in it themselves. Another is that while physicists are free to “shut up and calculate”, anybody interested in the underlying nature of reality is forced by quantum theory to ask questions that are inherently metaphysical.
The word “metaphysics” can be used in more than one way, and this can lead to avoidable misunderstanding. In an informal sense it is used to mean something like “the study of spirituality”, but this is the sort of study where people are free to say pretty much whatever they want, for whatever reasons they choose. There is no need for it to be rational or comprehensible. In a formal sense it refers to the branch of philosophythat deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space.“Meta” is a Greek word meaning “beyond” or “after”. As it is normally used in English, the meaning is typically closer to “underneath” than either of the direct translations. Something deeper or more fundamental; metaphysics deals with the context in which we are to understand physics. Footnote:This difference is partly due to the ancient origins of this word, as the name given to some books of Aristotle when his surviving works were systematically ordered in the 1st century. It literally meant “after” in the sense that those books came after his work known as Physics.The subject matter of Metaphysics was Aristotle’s first philosophy – the place that his philosophy starts, in terms of a structure of ideas.
Mixing up science and metaphysics was one of the big mistakes of the New Age movement. If scientific terminology such as “energy” and “vibration” are going to be adapted to mean something non-scientific (in this case something metaphysical) then the alternative meaning and context need to be made clear. What is not acceptable is attempting to use scientific vocabulary to do heavy lifting when the meaning is sufficiently ambiguous that nobody is sure exactly what is meant – the scientific thing, the non-scientific thing, or both at the same time. Unintentional ambiguity results in sloppy thinking. Deliberate ambiguity, outside of art, can indicate something more cynical: the intention to mislead and confuse. We need to establish proper places for science, metaphysics and mysticism in a bigger system for categorising knowledge claims – one that encompasses them all, as well as everything else. This will require the careful drawing of boundaries, and that is the job of epistemology. For a century now a big paradigm shift has been brewing. Understanding the nature of this shift is the key to understanding how science and spirituality can co-exist peacefully. Maybe it is even possible that science and mysticism could collaborate to instigate and drive cultural progress in a way that neither has ever managed on its own. This is potentially of great significance for the ideological foundations of ecocivilisation in the West.
Metaphysical terminology (section one)
I must begin by defining some terminology. The exact meaning of many of these terms is contested, so I am providing my own definitions here to minimise the scope for misunderstandings later. I will explain the reason for a division into two sections when we get to section two.
Reality and truth
Reality is everything that exists, irrespective of whether it is perceived or known. This includes both subjective realities (human and animal consciousness) and objective reality (everything that exists beyond subjective reality). Entities or realms that have no causal connection to our own realities do count as existing, although presumably they are of no relevance to us.
Truths are statements (including mathematical statements) that correspond to objective reality. This correspondence can be partial – there can be partial truths, as well as complete truths about parts of reality. Statements can also correspond to what we are subjectively aware of or think – subjective truths of which we can be 100% certain ourselves, but to which nobody else has direct access (e.g. what gender I identify as) – and also objective truths, which correspond to the parts of reality of which we are not directly aware, but are nevertheless justified in believing exist. Note that subjective truths are not the same thing as opinions. It is subjectively true that I identify as a man, not an opinion. Opinions are beliefs that aren’t conclusive for some reason or another, whereas gender self-identification is conclusive by definition.
Truth can be contextual. Contextual truths are statements that correspond to reality, taking account of the current context in which those statements are being made. A statement like “it is raining” can only be true or false depending on where and when it is said. If someone says this in London, it could be true, but if someone says it at the same time in Mumbai, it could be false. Thetruth of the statement depends on the context of location and time. This is also relevant to Wittgenstein’s language games – whether a particular statement is true or false can depend on which language game is being played. For example the statement “Economic growth is desirable” is true in the language game of contemporary mainstream economics, but false in the language game of ecology. It is important to note that, in epistemology, contextualism is a semantic thesis about how the word “knows” functions in English, rather than a theory of the nature of knowledge, justification, or epistemic strength. [Footnote: Knowledge and Practical Interests, Jason Stanley, 2005, New York: Oxford University Press.]
Skepticism
Skepticism is a decision or policy to not believe in things without good reason. It is a general principle of rejecting faith. Scientific skepticism is a form of skepticism that strongly focuses on science, but stresses open-mindedness and is at least theoretically open to correction. It usually comes packaged with materialism or physicalism, but this is not a requirement.
Materialism and physicalism
The term “(the) material world” refers to a three-dimensional realm full of objects that changes with the apparent passage of time. This world contains our planet Earth, ourselves and other living organisms, and the whole of the rest of our cosmos. Please note that I mean exactly what I have written and nothing more, and also that I bracketed the “the”. That is because while “material world” is itself relatively unproblematic as a concept, we usually say “the material world”, and this “the” implies that there is unproblematically only one thing this could mean. In fact the situation is not so simple, for we could talk about “the material world we directly observe” or “the hypothetical material world as it is in itself, independent of our observations of it”. These are examples of compound conceptual terms consisting of “the material world” and something else – something that makes the compound term explicitly metaphysical. When we talk about “the material world”, we generally mean it in the non-metaphysical, pre-philosophical sort of way – the concept is so familiar to us that we don’t feel any need for a more precise definition. Everybody knows what “the material world” refers to, don’t they?
Materialism is a metaphysical view that “the material world is the only thing that exists” or that “reality is made entirely of matter and energy.” The reader may already have noticed a problem here; this will be discussed at length in the next chapter.
Naive materialism is materialism that hasn’t been given sufficient philosophical consideration.
Physicalism is the claim that reality consists of whatever our best theories of physics suggest or tell us that it consists of. This is more flexible than materialism, but is likely to lead to difficulties if our best theories are inconclusive in this respect. Our best physical theory is quantum mechanics. [Footnote: Some people would say our best theory is now quantum field theory, which I mention briefly in Appendix Two.] – a theory that is notorious for not telling us what reality is made of. It sets up some very interesting questions, but does not provide much in the way of conclusive answers. It is therefore not clear what the general statement “physicalism is true” actually means or implies. It is a placeholder rather than a specific claim or theory, and there are multiple competing and mutually contradictory explanations of what can or should occupy the place in question. This will also be explored in the next chapter.
Science, scientific materialism and scientism
Science is a systematic method of inquiry aimed at generating reliable knowledge about objective reality through observation, experimentation, and theoretical explanation. One of the central topics of this book is the status of scientific knowledge, and my position will develop as the book progresses.
Scientific materialism is a combination of a metaphysical claim (that materialism is true) and the whole corpus of scientific knowledge. It takes the place of a cosmology, in the anthropological sense (i.e. a worldview or belief system, not a branch of science). Compared to other cosmologies it is rather impoverished, as it has no moral or spiritual content, and offers no meaning, purpose or wisdom. Please note that this is not intended as a value judgement – I am not suggesting that scientific materialism ought to offer any of these things. It just doesn’t, even though it occupies the conceptual and cognitive role of a cosmology.
Scientism is a purely pejorative term referring to the overextension of scientific principles and methodologies into contexts where they are not appropriate or justified. Nobody self-identifies as scientistic – those described this way see themselves merely as strong advocates for science. They reject the idea that the scope of science can be overextended. To them, any claim to knowledge that necessarily lies outside the reach of science must be false, meaningless, or worthless. Scientism is the conviction that anything unsupported by science and reason fails to qualify as knowledge at all. Scientism is associated with the view that materialism/physicalism is itself justified by science and reason, or at least more aligned with science and reason than any alternatives. There is frequently a denial that it involves metaphysics at all – a claim that, to those familiar with philosophical terminology, only reinforces the conclusion that the speaker has a scientistic perspective.
Scientific realism
Scientific realism is the claim that our best scientific theories provide knowledge about a mind-external objective world – that science aims to discover truth. Note that scientific theories can be almost true, and that almost true is a great improvement on mostly false. Occasionally scientific theories turn out to be completely false, but this should not lead us to believe that all scientific theories are only tentatively true. Some scientific theories are so well supported that the probability that they will one day be falsified is zero. Note that this is not just “tending towards zero”, but actually zero. An example of this is the basic structure of our solar system – we are never going to discover that the orbit of Jupiter is actually inside the orbit of Earth (unless the orbit of Jupiter or Earth moves, of course). Another is common descent in evolution, both as a general principle and in countless individual cases – we are never going to discover that the principle doesn’t hold.
Some people find this assertion of certainty uncomfortable – they feel a need to demonstrate their open-mindedness, as well as that of science. They might say “of course we must remain open to the possibility that we’ll find evidence that other apes are in fact descended from humans – otherwise we would invite accusations of dogmatism, which isn’t acceptable in science.” But is this really true? Is there a non-zero probability that theories such as these will one day be falsified and replaced? I can see no way this can happen without jettisoning science entirely.
I believe scientific knowledge is too important for the future wellbeing of all humanity for its status to be downgraded in this manner (which is a value judgement). Open-mindedness is very important, but not to the extent that our brains fall out. That humans’ closest living relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos is surely a scientific fact – atrue statement about objective reality. It is a statement about the relationship between humans and other apes, in the context of the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-2016) provided a strong argument in support of scientific realism. It is called the “No Miracles Argument”, and is based on the observation that science undeniablyworks. It has transformed our world. Putnam argued that this unprecedented success cannot be some giant ongoing coincidence, and therefore some other explanation must be provided.Why does science work? What is it that science gets right, which can explain why scientific knowledge has proven so much more powerful than other (alleged) ways of obtaining knowledge? What does science do that non-scientific ways of knowing, such as intuition or revelation, do not? Putnam’s answer is that our best scientific theories tend towards the truth – that they correspond with a mind-external objective reality. In its basic form, scientific realism simply claims that the entities specified in our best or ideal scientific theories are real. A more nuanced version is structural realism – the view that science provides knowledge about the structure of objective reality. There are two types.
Epistemic structural realism (ESR) is the view that we can only know the structure of the world, not the intrinsic nature of the objects or entities that populate it. For example, in physics, we might understand themathematical relationships between particles but not what the particles “are” in themselves. ESR makes no claims about what objective reality is made of, or where or how it exists. For the rest of this book, when I talk about scientific realism I am referring to ESR.
Ontic structural realism (OSR)is the view that the structure itself is all that exists; the entities or objects we traditionally think of as the building blocks of the world are nothing more than nodes in a network of relations. Reality is constituted by structures, and objects are secondary or derivative from these relations. If scientific knowledge doesn’t tend towards truth about the structure of an objective reality then I can think of no non-miraculous explanation for the success of science. Anti-realists do exist, of course, but they typically provide their own justifications for rejecting scientific realism rather than tackling Putnam’s question head-on. The main anti-realist arguments are:
The problem of underdetermination – for any given set of data, there may be multiple valid scientific theories available.
The theory-ladenness of observation – it is impossible to make observations (in a scientific sense) outside of the context of existing theories. Therefore no observations are truly independent. Instead they are shaped by the underlying assumptions of the observer.
The “pessimistic meta-induction” –previous theories have turned out to be false, therefore we can’t rely on any existing theories to remain true.
The problem of reference – scientific terms (such as “electron” or “gene”) have had different meanings at different times. Why should we believe the current definition is “correct”?All of these qualifications are reasonable, but they are justqualifications. By that I mean that they apply in certain scientific situations to a much greater extent than they do in others. I gave the example of the evolutionary relationship between apes and humans precisely because it is beyond reasonable doubt. For the given set of data in this case, could there be a different valid scientific theory available as an explanation for the relationship between apes and humans? Is it possible that our observations of humans and apes are being critically shaped by some sort of unexamined underlying assumption that is leading us into error? It is possible that our understanding of the common descent of species may turn out to be false to the extent that it is no longer true that humans are descended from apes? Could changes in the meaning of the terms “ape” or “human” render this knowledge invalid? I believe the answer to all of these questions is a straightforward “no”.
The status and relevance of realism is very important in the context of this book. My goal is to establish epistemic conditions appropriate for meaningful public debate about how to create an ecocivilisation – to set some ground rules about what we know and what we don’t know, in preparation for the difficult discussions ahead. Given this context, isn’t it necessary for us to agree that the most well-supported scientific claims, such as “human CO2 emissions are causing rapid climate change” and “economic growth is ecologically unsustainable” are actually true? Are there any real-world situations where it would be reasonable to consider the possibility that they might be false?
If these things are accepted as true statements about objective reality then nobody can throw doubt on them for ideological (i.e. political or religious) reasons. The alternative is to create space for people to claim that climate change is just currently popular among some scientists, that scientists are mostly left-leaning politically, that they represent just one perspective among others (all of which are equally valuable), and that therefore skepticism is reasonable. Or that because phlogiston theory turned out to be wrong, there is no justification for believing that economic growth is ecologically unsustainable. Or that we should not be considering redesigning civilisation based on such flimsy claims to knowledge and that we should not submit to the epistemic tyranny of so-called “scientific truth” because the political and economic implications are so thoroughly inconvenient.
If we cannot agree that ESR is true – that scientific knowledge tends towards truth and sometimes arrives at it – then we can probably forget about ecocivilisation. We cannot redesign Western civilisation on a foundation of ecological realism if the conclusions of our best scientific theories are held to be negotiable cultural creations rather than facts about reality. We must acknowledge that it is our reality – the one reality that we need to figure out how to sustainably share. We must accept that anthropogenic climate change is real and that economic growth is ecologically unsustainable, and that we have arrived at this knowledge objectively and conclusively, rather than merely subjectively and inconclusively. This kind of knowledge has to be collective, not individual. From the perspective of ecocivilisation, those who reject it are on the wrong side of history. There is a critical distinction between theoretical openness to revision and structural knowledge that reflects deeper, unchangeable truths about reality. Certain scientific claims are based on an overwhelming accumulation of evidence and reflect what we might call the structural reality of how we understand the world. These claims, while technically open to revision, are so well-supported that revision is impossible in any meaningful sense, because to do so would lead to a falsification of the whole corpus of scientific knowledge (which would put us in the same territory as flat-Earth theory and Young Earth Creationism (YEC)). This structural knowledge forms a reliable foundation for decision-making, especially in the context of an ecocivilisation, where we must build on truths that guide action. Acknowledging such structural certainty allows us to avoid unjustified skepticism and move forward on issues critical to ecological sustainability. The path that opens up if we accept ecological reality is hard. The path we’ll end up on if we continue to refuse to accept it is easier in the short term, but ultimately much harder.
There is no reason for conflict between moral and practical reasoning here either. If there actually is an objective reality, and we can actually know things about it, then in practical terms the only justifiable course of action is to frame our problems realistically and restrict our discussion of possible solutions to realistic options. In ethical terms the same applies – if we start our moral reasoning with anything other than reality then we’re engaged in fake morality – we will be arguing about what would be morally right and wrong in some ideal reality, rather than the real one that we have to figure out how to share. And if the people we are having moral disagreements with are actually dealing with reality, while we are not, then they are engaged with real morality and we are claiming moral high ground we have no right to claim. This sort of behaviour is sufficiently damaging to the prospects of creating a real ecocivilisation that it warrants a formal term. I don’t need to invent one, because a suitable term already exists: virtue signalling.
Determinism and free will
Determinism is the view that everything that happens in the cosmos is fully determined (and therefore pre-determined) by physical laws. Before quantum theory, determinism seemed obviously true. Quantum improbability, at least on most interpretations, suggests otherwise.
Hard determinism includes the claim that free will is incompatible with determinism, and therefore doesn’t exist.
Soft determinism or compatibilism is the claim that free will is compatible with determinism. However, this implies a completely different meaning of “free will” to the one that is shared by hard determinists and believers in libertarian free will, which can lead to confusion (this is why Kant called compatibilism a “wretched subterfuge”). I use the term compatibilist free will to refer to the sort of freedom you have when you aren’t in prison, along with various other concepts of freedom which have nothing to do with metaphysics.
Libertarian free will is a metaphysical claim that humans have the capacity for a will that is not fully determined by the laws of physics. It is the belief that humans can freely choose to do X in a situation where the laws of physics allow that they could have chosen to do Y, and that this choice is not random but willed. This usually involves some kind of non-physical agent of free will, which is capable of interacting causally with physical reality (in both directions). I am an incompatibilist; when I say “free will” by default I’m referring to the libertarian kind.
Naturalism
Naturalism (or “metaphysical naturalism”)is a metaphysical view that everything happening in reality can be reduced to (or explained in terms of) the laws of nature (including laws we are yet to discover).Naturalism is logically entailed by materialism (all materialists are naturalists) but the reverse is not true (some naturalists aren’t materialists). If the material world is the only thing that exists, then there is no theoretical or conceptual space for anything else that could affect it (an agent of free will, for example, or God) so naturalism is logically entailed. Naturalism differs from determinism in that it can accommodate objective randomness – the future does not have to be fully determined, but anything not determined must be random (really random in every case, not just apparently so or only in some cases).
Some people use the terms “laws of physics” and “laws of nature” interchangeably, but they have slightly different meanings. The meaning of “laws of physics” is straightforward enough. “Laws of nature” is broader and encompasses all natural phenomena, including not just physical laws, but also biological, chemical, and maybe even some aspects of social or psychological phenomena that are considered “natural” in a broad sense. The laws of nature can include principles like natural selection in biology or chemical reaction rates in chemistry, in addition to the laws of physics.
Metaphysical terminology (section two – opposing terms)
With the exception of libertarian free will (which was easier to explain in section one, even though it actually belongs here) the terms defined above are broadly inter-related – they all tend to fall on one side of a dichotomy. Section two covers the other side.
Woo (or woo-woo) is the word that comes closest to referring to everything on the other side. It is derived from the sound effects that accompanied flying saucers in 1950s science fiction films. The term “woo” does not belong in the new paradigm. Firstly it is too vague, so each skeptic has their own idea of what it means, so it can mean whatever anybody wants it to mean in any particular situation. Secondly it is dismissive and derogatory, which combined with the vagueness amounts to “What I personally think is laughably stupid and/or weird”. We are going to need more precision than that. I only use the word “woo” in reference to the old paradigm.
Faith is the opposite of skepticism – a decision to believe in things even though there is no rational or scientific reason for doing so, and maybe even if it contradicts science and reason. Note that this is not the same thing as subjectively justified knowledge, because if you have that then faith is not required (e.g. my belief that I am conscious is not based on faith). Directly experiencing something yourself is not the same as believing somebody else’s claim to have experienced it, or that it is possible for people to experience it, or that it exists even though nobody has ever experienced and nobody ever will. The originating source of religions is individual humans who claimed to have direct personal experience which authorised them to make the claims around which those religions revolve. This (allegedly) includes both revelation and the witnessing of miracles to serve as proof of the divinity of specific individuals.
Dualism is the metaphysical view that reality is made of two sorts of stuff – matter and mind or consciousness (or perhaps “spirit”). Most forms of dualism specify an interaction between these two realms – an interaction many opponents of dualism find hard to believe is possible. Dualism will forever be associated with René Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes was the first Catholic philosopher to completely reject religion as a starting point, although he had to move from catholic France to Protestant Holland in 1629 in order to be free to speculate in this way. His great philosophical achievement was to reject the ancients completely and to establish where to start again. He began by applying universal skepticism and concluded that the statement “I think, therefore I am” (the “cogito”) must be the only legitimate starting point – and something like this has been accepted by the majority of philosophers ever since. For Descartes, the existence of a material universe, however self-evident that appears to be, could in fact be an illusion – he says he cannot even be sure he has a body. He could not, however, doubt the existence of his own mind. He asked why he was so sure of the cogito, concluded it was because it was clear and distinct, and invented a general rule: anything which we conceive very clearly and distinctly must be true. He said God had given him a strong inclination to believe in the existence of his body, and since God would not deceive him his body must exist. This results in Cartesian dualism – parallel realms of mind and matter which interact in the pineal gland (something only Descartes perceived to be clearly and distinctly true, because it was quickly dropped by his followers). Descartes believed God also gave us the capacity to correct errors, which can be used when deciding what is clear and distinct, and therefore true. Based on this supposed capacity, he proposed a complex cosmological theory that turned out to be entirely false.
Idealism is the metaphysical view that consciousness is the only thing that exists, or that reality is made entirely of mental things or ideas.
Subjective idealism is the claim that only what is consciously experienced exists – to be is to be perceived and there is no reality beyond that.
Objective idealism is the claim that an objective reality does exist, but that it too is ultimately mental or spiritual in nature.
Panpsychism is the metaphysical view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. That all things have a mind or a mind-like quality.
Neutral monism makes two basic claims – that reality is unified and that it is made of neither mind nor matter. This is arguably not an opposing term to those in the previous section. It is rejected by materialists, but it has not been traditionally popular with the opposing camp either.
Neutral monists have been rare in the history of Western philosophy, though one early example deserves a special note. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) came from a Jewish family which moved from Spain or Portugal to Holland to escape the Inquisition. The Jews excommunicated him and the Christians hated him, regardless of the fact that his philosophy revolves around the goodness of God. He accepted Descartes’ rationalism, but rejected his dualism, and instead adopted a very pure sort of pantheism – there is only one substance and that substance is God. He rejected personal immortality – the only sort of immortality he believed in was by becoming closer to God. He was an absolute determinist, totally rejecting both free will and chance in physical laws.
Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838-1916) theorised that physical entities are nothing more than their perceived mental properties, but made clear this was a form of neutral monism and not idealism. American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) used the term “radical empiricism” to describe his views, but it was close to neutral monism. British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) adopted neutral monism in 1918 and remained a neutral monist for the rest of his life.
English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) began in mathematics, then moved on to philosophy of science and finally ended up in metaphysics. He defended a metaphysical philosophy known as “process philosophy”. He believed that we should view the world as a web of inter-related processes – a form of neutral monism.When the paradigm shift is over, Whitehead will be remembered as one of its originators.
What sort of reality do we actually live in?
I offer a thought experiment. For the purposes of the experiment, we are concerned only with what happens while we are alive, and not with questions about any alleged afterlife. Let us also suppose that we know for certain that everything that happens does so in accordance with the laws of physics, and that we know that the randomness inherent in quantum theory reflects an objectively real randomness – the quantum dice rolls are truly and totally random. I will describe all these characteristics together as being definitive of a “type X reality”. Many people believe that we actually do live in such a reality. Among them are people claiming to be materialists, physicalists, dualists, idealists and neutral monists, as well as people who aren’t strongly committed to any of those metaphysical positions. Type Xversions of all of them can be constructed. If we know our reality is type X, should we even care which sort of type X it is? Is there any important difference between a dualist type X reality and an idealist one? The answer is surely no, unless you have a liking for purely semantic distinctions. What does matter is whether we really do live in a type X reality and not some other kind – one where there is an afterlife, or where sometimes things happen that defy the laws of physics, or where something non-random is hiding in the apparent randomness of quantum mechanics.
Whether materialism is true or false makes a functional difference because materialism entails naturalism. The same does not apply (at least in a general way) to the other three – there are versions of dualism, idealism and neutral monism that are consistent with naturalism, but there are also versions that aren’t. If something other than the material world exists, and is capable of interacting with the material world, then things can happen that aren’t reducible to the workings of the material world. If the material world is all there is, then that is not possible. This is why people who believe materialism is true find it impossible to take any sort of woo seriously. I am much more interested in what is actually going on in our reality (about causality, in a general sense) than I am in whether a particular type of reality should be categorised (for example) as neutral monist or objective idealist. Dualists, objective idealists and neutral monists all believe in an objective world external to our minds. Dualists say it is material, objective idealists say it is mental, and neutral monists say it is neither. My view is that I’m not interested in arguing about the label. I’m committed to ESR – that there is indeed an objective reality and that we have knowledge of its structure. I will simply refer to it as “objective reality”, and leave open for now the question of what it is made of, or instantiated upon, or what else it might contain along with the structures that correspond to the material reality we’re experiencing. All that matters for my argument is that it exists, and we can know and say something about its structure.
Why “supernatural” must be carefully defined
Given the above definition of naturalism, one might think it is straightforward to define supernaturalism as an opposing term: the belief that naturalism is false – the belief in forms of causality (or something resembling causality) that can’t be reduced to laws of nature; the belief that something else is going on. Relatively mild examples include free will, karma and synchronicity. More extreme examples are YEC and most of the miracles in the gospels, such as the Resurrection and the Feeding of the 5,000.
Not so long ago this definition would have been perfectly adequate. For the whole period between Newton and Einstein (inclusive) physics made absolute predictions about future observations. The laws of classical physics and relativity leave no wiggle room for anything else. In a world where those are our best theories of physics then supernaturalism necessarily involves a breach of laws – it has to involve something that intervenes in the clockwork causality of the material world to produce effects that are inconsistent with the laws of physics. This would be true of everything listed above as supernatural – the mild examples are as incompatible with Newtonian-Einsteinian physics as the extreme ones.
This situation began to change over a century ago. Modern physics is quantum physics, and quantum physics differs from what went before in several important ways. One of these is that the predictions made by quantum physics are probabilistic rather than absolute. This element of probability provides enough wiggle room to render the straightforward definition of supernaturalism useless.
There are multiple competing metaphysical interpretations of the scientific core of quantum theory. Strictly speaking, these interpretations aren’t part of science – they are metaphysical because they are attempts to explain what the scientific part of quantum theory actually means. They are theories about what is really going on, underneath the observations themselves, and about what exactly the words observation or measurement should refer to (if anything at all). They are about the context in which we are to understand quantum theory.
One interpretation in particular will help to demonstrate the implications of the probabilistic nature of quantum theory. In most interpretations there is only one outcome – a set of probabilities (the wave function) becomes just one observed outcome. This is known as “the collapse of the wave function” or just “observation” or “measurement”, and each interpretation involves a different explanation of what that should be taken to mean. The problem they are all attempting to solve is called “the measurement problem”. The Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) proposes a truly radical solution: it gets rid of wave function collapse altogether, by claiming that every possible outcome of quantum events occurs simultaneously in diverging timelines. The entire cosmos is continually splitting along these lines, but we’re only ever aware of one timeline because once they have diverged then there is no further interaction between them. Hence there is no need for any observation or measurement, but there are multiple versions of ourselves, living lives which continually diverge.
Even though most timelines in an MWI multiverse are “normal”, there will always be a small minority where all manner of strange things happen, including not just occasional improbable events but what appear to be co-ordinated sequences of them. The point I am making is this:
- As far as we know, according to science and reason, the MWI might be true. We cannot justify ruling it out on those grounds. It is considered a valid or live interpretation.
- If the MWI is true then there are timelines where sequences of exceptionally improbable events actually occur, without breaches of physical laws. Another way to say this is that it is physically possible that such things could happen in any timeline, but extraordinarily improbable.
The reason this matters is that the alleged supernatural phenomena on the “mild” list are consistent with the laws of physics: they require nothing more than events, or sequences of events, which are extraordinarily improbable. Take synchronicity for example. Carl Gustav Jung defined synchronicity as “an acausal connecting principle”. He equated it with the Tao, and connected it to Taoism’s divinatory system of the I Ching. Synchronicity manifests as combinations of events that are both exceptionally improbable and meaningful in some way, particularly but not always associated with personal psychological or spiritual development. Jung’s best known example occurred during a therapy session with a rational and highly educated woman who had been resisting dealing with her emotions. She was telling him about a dream in which she had been given a piece of jewellery in the form of an Egyptian golden scarab beetle – a symbol of rebirth and transformation. Jung heard a tapping on the closed window behind him and saw a flying insect knocking against the window from outside. He opened the window and caught the creature, which turned out to be a beetle virtually identical to the golden scarab, rarely found at that latitude, especially trying to get into dark rooms during the day. The improbability of such an event occurring at precisely that time allowed the woman to stop intellectualising matters and from that moment she began to make progress.
Science can give us no reason to believe in any such thing, because it gives us no way to distinguish between synchronicity and objectively random chance. But neither does it give us any reason to rule it out as impossible. It can’t do, because the MWI is consistent with science, and if it is true then there are timelines where events that fit the description of synchronicity happen to everybody, all the time.In fact in this case it would not actually be synchronicity, because there would be no need to posit an acausal connecting principle as the explanation. The point is that such events are physically possible even if the MWI is false.
Now contrast this with the things on the “extreme list”. There are no MWI timelines where YEC happened and none where it is possible to adequately feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes. Even in the unimaginably vast MWI multiverse there are no events which breach the laws of physics.
Among the other metaphysical interpretations of quantum theory is one that has become known as “consciousness causes collapse”, which removes the observer from the physical system. The earliest version was proposed by John von Neumann in 1932. His motivation was to escape from an infinite series of arbitrary physical observers (what observes the observer?) In Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer (2007), American physicist Henry Stapp extended von Neumann’s theory and explained the implications for a causal mechanism for free will. This is among the most controversial of the interpretations, not least because of certain questions it raises about evolution. If consciousness collapses the wave function then how can it possibly be a product of evolution? What collapsed the wave function before the first appearance of conscious organisms? If something else was collapsing it before that point in evolutionary history, then did it stop doing so afterwards, or does it still do so now? This does have something of a can-of-worms look about it.
Given the level of uncertainty regarding the interpretations of quantum theory, the definition of supernaturalism given above is not adequate. The phenomena on the extreme list still fit the old definition (they require a suspension of the laws of physics) but the phenomena on the mild list no longer belong in that category. It is not obvious how we should categorise these “mild” supernatural phenomena. On the one hand they do not contradict the laws of physics, but on the other they are not explained by those laws or reducible to them. There is a conceptual space and need here for two categories where currently there is only one. The first we might call contra-scientific supernaturalism. These are forms of causality that require an outright suspension of the laws of nature/physics, belief in which is not reconcilable with ecocivilisation. A person who truly believes that 5,000 people can be adequately fed with two fishes and five loaves cannot be expected to accept the epistemic authority of science, including its applications in ecology. This presents serious challenges when attempting to incorporate mainstream Christianity – or any other worldview that involves belief in contra-scientific supernatural phenomena – into an epistemic framework capable of sustaining an ecocivilisation. If this type of supernaturalism were possible, why wouldn’t God fix our world right now? If you can feed 5,000 people like that, then you can feed eight billion. Why doesn’t He conjure up another planet for us? The second we might call probabilistic supernaturalism: forms of causality involving exceptionally improbable events that are consistent with the laws of physics but that are not explained by them or reducible to them. There is no obvious reason why this should be irreconcilable with ecocivilisation.
Paranormal
The term paranormal is sometimes considered a subset of the supernatural. “Supernatural” is an older term and historically associated with religion, whereas “paranormal” refers to alleged oddities that are beyond current scientific understanding but might not always be. Perhaps we could use it to refer to probabilistic supernaturalism, but I fear that might encourage people to attempt to use scientific methods to investigate, prove or disprove these probabilistic phenomena, which I believe to be a mistake. If the phenomena in question exist at all, and they are fully amenable to scientific investigation, then why didn’t incontrovertible evidence emerge long ago? What has actually happened is an endless dispute about how to interpret borderline results which seem clear enough to people who already believe in such things but not clear enough to convince the skeptics. The believers accuse the skeptics of repeatedly raising the bar to ensure that all positive evidence is rejected as inadequate. The skeptics say the barneeds to be high because if you are making extra-ordinary claims then you need extra-ordinary evidence (the “Sagan standard”). I doubt this situation is going to change any time soon. I think the way forwards is for people to agree to disagree (at least for now), accept that the alleged empirical evidence is too borderline to convince the skeptics, and give up trying to resolve the unresolvable. If probabilistic supernatural phenomena are real then they involve causality (or something that resembles it) which is fundamentally different to anything science has ever successfully demystified. Jung didn't even try to invoke synchronicity under laboratory conditions, and to suggest such a thing is possible is to misunderstand the nature of the alleged phenomena. By definition, these are things that happen to people for a reason, and the reason is never that they are taking part in a scientific experiment designed to prove or disprove the existence of the phenomena themselves. I have no use for the term “paranormal”.
Praeternatural and hypernatural
There is another term available, which might be more appropriate than “probabilistic supernaturalism”. St Thomas Aquinas (c1225-1274) was the greatest of Catholic philosophers, and from his time onwards he was considered the only philosopher to have got Catholic Christianity “correct” – officially so since the rescript of 1879 by Pope Leo XIII. He was strongly influenced by Aristotle, and disliked Plato.
Aquinas claimed that God sometimes works miracles, but nobody else can – that magic is possible, with the help of demons, but is not properly miraculous. This distinction can strike modern people as odd, but from the time of St Thomas until the 16th century people had a different set of causal categories to us. We think of magic and miracles as synonymous – both are supernatural as opposed to natural causality. They had three categories instead of two – “supernatural” and “miracle” were terms reserved for acts of God involving a suspension of the natural order. Magic was categorised as praeternatural(or preternatural), which means “beyond nature”. Even though demons were involved, this was a manipulation of the natural order rather than its outright suspension. Praeternatural phenomena could have been entirely the result of natural causality, but aren’t. Magic – aka witchcraft or sorcery – was considered very real and most evil, hence this period is well known for the widespread persecution of alleged witches (of both sexes, but more frequently women). By the mid-18th century the term “praeternatural” had fallen out of use, and it eventually gained a modern non-metaphysical meaning of “so talented it’s spooky”. I don’t like the term “contra-scientific supernaturalism” – it is too cumbersome. “Probabilistic supernaturalism” isn’t quite right either. “Probabilistic” is fine, but anything “supernatural” sounds like it involves a suspension of the laws of physics. I therefore use “hypernaturalism” rather than “contra-scientific supernaturalism” and “praeternaturalism” for “probabilistic supernaturalism”. The term “supernatural” thereby disappears with the old paradigm, which will make very clear in any context whether we are talking about the old concept of supernatural, or the new concepts I am suggesting should replace it.
From here onwards:
Naturalism is belief in a causal order in which everything that happens can be reduced to (or explained in terms of) the laws of nature.
Hypernaturalism is belief in a causal order in which there are events or processes that require a suspension or breach of the laws of nature.
Praeternaturalism is belief in a causal order in which there are no events that require a suspension or breach of the laws of nature, but there are exceptionally improbable events that aren’t reducible to those laws, and aren’t random either. Praeternatural phenomena could have been entirely the result of natural causality, but aren’t.
The afterlife?
Naturalism, praeternaturalism and hypernaturalism, as I have defined them here, are claims about causality in our reality. The only relevance of the afterlife to these things would be if the spirits of the dead can have a causal effect on reality (such as communicating with the living). This would be inconsistent with naturalism.
I personally see no reason to believe we have individuated souls that survive the death of the body and get re-incarnated, go to heaven or come back to interfere in the realm of the living. However, in most cases I also do not lose any sleep if other people choose to believe such things. One situation where it does matter is when belief in an afterlife is a contributory factor in suicide attacks, for obvious reasons. Perhaps there are others.
This is not a topic I wish to dwell on, though I recognise that it is of major importance to many people. My position is that I don’t believe in it, and if I’m wrong then I’ll find out when I am dead. You must choose your battles, and I don’t choose this one.
What we need to know about quantum metaphysics
The story of the development of quantum theory is told in Appendix Two. The reason it does not appear in the main text is because most of it is only of background interest with respect to this book. This brief section explains what the reader actually needs to understand in the present context.
Before we get further into that, another definition is needed.
Local realism is the combination of two principles. Locality(physical changes or effects can only be caused by factors in their immediate vicinity, implying that no influence can travel faster than the speed of light) and realism (physical objects and their properties exist independently of observation or measurement).
Quantum theory differs from classical physics in many ways, the most important of which is that instead of making a single prediction about what we will observe, it provides a range of possible outcomes and assigns them various probabilities. This raises the question of why we only ever observe the particular outcome we actually observe, rather than one or all of the others. This process (if that is what it is) of turning a set of probabilities into a single manifested outcome is known as the collapse of the wave function. The collapse occurs when a quantum system is “observed” or “measured”, but there is no consensus about what an observation or a measurement actually is (i.e. what those words actually mean in the true account of the nature of reality). There is fundamental disagreement about how, when, where or why the collapse occurs, and even about whether it happens at all.
Four types of solution are available. The correct answer to the measurement problem must fall into these categories:
Category 1 is the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI). In the MWI there is no collapse and no observer, because all possible outcomes occur in a vast array of ever-diverging realities. Once diverged, these realities lose all contact with each other. They are not interdependent.
Category 2 is an objectively random single world. In these cases only one outcome occurs, and the apparent randomness is always objectively random. “Objective” here means it really is random, and doesn’t just appear that way to us because we lack the information that would allow us to see why it isn’t really random.
Category 3 is a deterministic single world. Again only one outcome occurs, but in these cases the apparent randomness is really the result of deterministic laws or naturalistic principles that we are currently unaware of (it is only subjectively random). It might be the case that we will never discover these laws or principles, but regardless of this they are governing what happens.
Category 4 is a praeternaturalistic single world. Again only one outcome occurs, and the collapse is caused by interaction with a non-physical Participating Observer (i.e. something outside of the physical system). The observer can also potentially load the quantum dice. This includes the von Neumann/Stapp interpretation, but it could also involve anything outside the physical system that can load the quantum dice, including all of the things I categorised as praeternatural. To be clear, these things (free will, synchronicity, etc.) aren’t what we normally consider to be observers, but they are taking the place of an observer in quantum theory. By this I mean that they are causing the collapse, and potentially influencing the probability of which of the possible outcomes occurs.
Various combinations of single world interpretations may be possible. It is possible we live in a reality where the apparent quantum randomness is sometimes objectively random, sometimes the result of hidden determinism, and sometimes the result of praeternatural phenomena.
Relational quantum mechanics
The single world interpretations can also all be modified by another theory known as relational quantum mechanics (RQM). In RQM there is no single, absolute, objective state of the world – all observations are relative to other observers (or other quantum systems). RQM is incompatible with the MWI, because in the MWI there aren’t any observers. In the case of RQM the apparent randomness is at least partly the result of a requirement to keep the various systems consistent with each other. The essential difference between the standard versions of the single world interpretations and the RQM versions is that in the standard version there is a single objective reality and in RQM there is a web of interdependent realities. This interdependence ensures that the whole system has characteristics that are true in all of the interdependent realities. It might look like we have lost objective reality, but it has actually just shifted up to a higher level of abstraction. On this view objective reality is the deep structure that must be true for all observers in order to keep the whole system coherent.
Conclusion
For the purpose of my argument in this book, all we need to know about quantum metaphysics is that these are the only options available. Some people will say that we can be more certain than this. They will either argue that we should already be able to agree on which interpretation is true, or that one or more of them shouldn’t be considered as live options. However, most physicists and philosophers will agree that even though they may have their own preferences, we cannot say with any certainty which interpretation (or class of interpretation listed above) is correct.
It is worth noting that one’s preference in this case is very likely to be influenced by other beliefs that have nothing to do with quantum theory, and maybe not even anything to do with science. Perhaps one of these options fits better with the rest of your worldview than the others, and there can be all sorts of different reasons for this. Perhaps you believe in an interventionist God. Perhaps you are strongly of the opinion that no such thing exists. Perhaps you are attracted to thebrute simplicity and all-conquering determinism of the MWI. Perhaps the subjective experience of free will is enough to convince you to favour the interpretation most compatible with this experience being veridical rather than illusory.
My conclusion is that we should not rush to firm conclusions when it comes to the interpretations of quantum theory. We are nowhere near a consensus as to what is the correct answer, and we may never arrive at one. Perhaps it is impossible to provide any sort of objective proof – either rational or empirical – of which answer is correct, in which case the question will remain open forever.
We now have the third principle of the New Epistemic Deal:
3: Epistemic structural realism is true.
Scientific knowledge tends towards truth. We acknowledge that there is such a thing as an objective reality, external to human minds, about which science provides structural knowledge that is reliable, albeit with certain qualifications. We reject the idea that all scientific knowledge is merely provisional, or as subjective as non-scientific forms of knowledge. We affirm the epistemic privilege of science.