After his extensive discussion of the scientific view of coherentism and non-absolute truth, Carroll takes on the question of God. He begins by noting the variable understanding of the word God by different theists and religious traditions making any empirical analysis difficult at best. He then concedes that theism and atheism are about equally likely from the standpoint of mere logic as the existence of God is “explanatory” while the non-existence of God is “simpler.” To address the question he asks us to imagine how changes to reality would support or discount each theory, in effect, applying Bayesian probability to God’s existence.
For example, the absence of evil would be strong evidence for God but would dissuade atheism as a purely natural reality would be expected to entail varying impulses and circumstances including evil ones. In a world full of miracles, God would be more likely while in world without miracles, atheism would be more reasonable. In a world with demonstrable souls and afterlife, God would be more likely while the absence of evidence of them would argue for atheism. A world of religious texts consistently revealing scientific truths and with consistency between unrelated religions would be supportive of God while one with neither would diminish that likelihood. Given the world we live in, these points make atheism more credible.
On the other side, in a world where no one believed in or suggested the existence of God, the divine would be less likely. A world like ours but without life or consciousness would be more likely to support atheism. Other points such as the immensity of the cosmos or the emotional support and value of belief in God are for some supportive of the theory of God while for others, billions of galaxies are more natural in a spontaneous universe and divine oversight is unsettling, even alarming. At the end of the day, we must try to eliminate as much bias as possible and examine and understand the universe to the utmost in order to make sense empirically regarding the question of God’s existence which informs his subsequent chapters.
(fourth continuation next post)
He next takes on epistemology in his chapter called Understanding. Like the philosopher, he reminds us the reliability of beliefs vary, and references Reverend Thomas Bayes’ theory of probability as a starting point. Degrees of beliefs or “credences” are affected by new information which supports or discourages a given belief. He embraces the use of doubt in strengthening belief, but rejects foundationalism as attempted by Rene Descartes. Instead he highlights “emergence” – the appearance of properties of a system that are “not part of a detailed ‘fundamental’ description of the system.”6
From there Carroll takes us to the coherence theory of truth (knowledge) which he calls planets of belief, meaning “a set of beliefs held together by the ‘gravitational pull’ of their mutual consistency.”8 Coherentism says knowledge isn’t founded on unimpeachable and unquestionable principles but on a system of beliefs compatible with each other. There can be many planets of belief, but they should share three important premises: (1) reason and logic are important in finding truth, (2) models of the world should provide accurate representations of what we observe, and (3) true statements correspond with actual elements of the world. Some planets of belief are more stable or ‘habitable’ and the best way to be safe is to avoid cognitive or confirmation biases, and by giving extra consideration to facts against your beliefs.
I continue now with my analysis of Sean Carroll’s book, The Big Picture. He begins with his fundamental conceptual framework of reality – poetic naturalism. In this construction, naturalism refers to the view that the only world is the natural one, consistently governed by the ‘laws of nature’ which can only be characterized by scientific methods and empirical investigation. In this worldview, there is nothing supernatural, spiritual, or divine; no cosmic teleology; and no transcendental purpose. Naturalism is typically conjoined with humanism and atheism.1 The problem with naturalism is that it offers unsatisfactory or incomplete explanations of much of human experience – such as love, purpose, or justice. Can the works of Shakespeare be explained as the mere output of quarks and leptons inside a carbon-based superstructure? Is one’s child nothing more than an aggregation of atoms in a defined area of space-time?
While some events seemingly demonstrate cause and effect it is also true that statistically unlikely events are in fact possible even if they never occur in human experience (such as the appearance of the moon in a different part of the solar system). This does not make them un-natural or supernatural. Moreover while events have causes, features may not. Logic does not permit us to impose a reason for the universe to be the way it is even if it is “natural” for us to ask why? – the fabric of reality and the laws that govern it may simply be ‘brute facts’ of the world. The imposition of reasons as to the make-up of the universe is, for Carroll, a problem of fallacious logic.
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser
If you watch physics or astronomy documentaries, you probably have seen Professor Carroll speak and are aware of his lucid and thoughtful explanations as well as his amiable and charismatic personality. The book’s jacket cover tells us that he is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. His earlier books include From Eternity to Here, and The Particle at the End of the Universe. He has been awarded some amazing prizes and fellowships including, most impressive in my mind, from the Royal Society of London. We are also told that Carroll is “emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation.”
At the composition end we find two modes: (1) structural – including the theoretical strings of energy in multiple dimensions, elementary particles, atoms, and the elements of the periodic table plus more obscure components such as dark energy and dark matter, and (2) dynamic – including fields, quantum uncertainty, observer effects and decoherence, the four forces, the interchangeablity of matter and energy, wave/particle duality, and the dubious prospect of panpsychism. At the other pole we likewise have two modes: (1) structural – the universe or the multiverse, its instantiation in all light, matter, and events, and space-time itself, and (2) the transcendental – unity, uniqueness, order, subtotal accessibility, infiniteness, cosmic evolution, and perhaps macroscopic consciousness.
There is Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “great chain of being,” reflexivity of in-ness of the universe and of ourselves, and the stimulation of spirituality. And of course there is Einstein’s unexpected ‘comprehensibility of reality’ where through a leap (of faith or of intuition?), the “rationality manifest in existence” brings one to an intangible, impersonal deity.
In another work Davies entertains (albeit reluctantly) panpsychism as espoused by the physicist Freeman Dyson who writes, “I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron.”15 Davies’ goal in referencing Dyson is to “affirm the reality of mental events and to show that they comply with his proposal that each new level of organization and complexity in nature demands its own laws and principles.” 16 But again he seems to be opening up the possibility that ‘mental’ events might occur at the molecular level based on laws different from those of human consciousness.
We ended last time with the theory of panpsychism formulated as monadology and now must examine what justification exists for its assertion. Allow me to start with this extended quote by the German physicist, philosopher, and experimental psychologist, Gustav Fechner (1801-1887):
Although we know nothing of its nature, we are forced to accept it by “the demands of logic and the application of evolutionary theory.”9 The phenomenon of self-awareness is a ‘basic mystery’ because it cannot be constructed theoretically from our current science, but we know it exists from experience. Thus we can infer that the mode of our experience “evolved from simple forms which are experienced by non-human things.”10
In the last two blogs we examined two possibilities for a cosmic consciousness: (1) decoherence of the quantum physicist and (2) non-organic consciousness emerging from cosmic structures. This leaves a last form for consideration, panpsychism defined by Dagobert Runes as “a form of metaphysical idealism, of which Leibniz’s theory of monads is the classical example, according to which the whole of nature consists of psychic centers similar to the human mind.”1 In effect, the panpsychist asserts that every component of the material world has a kind of consciousness.
For the simplest matter this “mind,” which he calls a monad, is only capable of “perception,” but through perception all matter expresses what goes on in the universe. This is demonstrated by the fact that all material substances have a degree of elasticity and of hardness which mirror what they encounter in the world. But the monad also reflects the law of continuation of the series of its own operations, its history, and its future as well as a primitive force akin to Aristotle’s entelechy which is combined indissolubly with its primary matter.2 Extension of primary matter and aggregation of monads leads to higher level consciousness and derived forces or vis viva as for example in animals and humans.3
