Noumena, Cognita and Dreams

A discussion of epistemology in relation to the paranormal.

c. Timothy V Reeves

December 2020

(Edition 6)

The mind of (wo)man penetrates behind the experiential façade to the logic that controls it. “A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears!” (Shakespeare).

 

This essay is a response to James Knight’s blog post here to which he drew my attention. James asks if the question of the existence of the supernatural can be answered via the kind of crowd thinking which is behind free market economics. James’ subsequent verdict is that stories of the supernatural are so prevalent that it makes the existence of the supernatural likely. I suppose it’s a bit like one of those experiments where a crowd of people give their estimates as to the number of items in a large jar and though very few get it right the average of the estimates often turns out to be close to the truth.    

I found it difficult, however, to proceed with a judgement on James’ post in the absence of a clear vision of just what the natural vs the supernatural dichotomy really means (….at least in the post in view, although James tells me that he has grappled with this question elsewhere….but see the appendix). But having said that I would certainly agree that the sheer weight of paranormal accounts is a kind of crowd based evidence which leaves me, at least, feeling that there is much more to those “high strangeness” experiences we hear reported from time to time than many would credit. What makes these experiences all the more compelling is that they are not necessarily associated with “supernatural belief”, either before or after the experience; quite often the experiencer isn’t a believer from the outset and after the experience they are left mystified as to what it all means and they do not subsequently engage in an elaborate interpretation of the meaning of their experience in terms of “the supernatural”; for them it remains an experiential anomaly they have to live with.

But let me start with some probing of the concept of the “supernatural”.  How do we distinguish the “supernatural” from the “natural”?  I don’t fully buy the quip that it’s simply a distinction between the known laws of physics being obeyed and them being transgressed. After all on that basis anomalous events leading to revisions of the laws of physics would then classify as “supernatural”, at least until such a time that they became incorporated into “settled science”.

If we hold to a conventional Christian theology (like myself), however, we then do have a clear theological basis for the distinction between the natural and the supernatural: Viz; that God himself classifies as capital “S” Supernatural and everything thing he creates is natural.  From this it follows that angelic beings (which includes Satan), then automatically classify as natural. There is much to be said for this definition theologically since it is (theologically) clear-cut and avoids a spiritual dualism which is inclined to lump God himself into a so-called “spirit world” where, like one of the Greek gods, he is striving with entities and objects that, although lesser than himself, nevertheless all classify as belonging to some supernatural domain of gods, thereby almost putting such entities in the same genus as God himself. This form of dualism may have its roots in the traditional Earth vs the Heavens dualism which contrasts the Earthly world of profane matter over and against the sacred & ethereal god-like spiritual beings that inhabit the sublime reaches of the Heavens. Echoes of this spirit vs matter (sometimes subliminally expressed as mind vs matter) dichotomy remain with us today. I personally am repelled by this kind of dualism, especially in the light of Colossians 1:15-17.  For me the only valid theological dualism is God vs. everything he has created.

But having said that this theological understanding isn’t in fact the folk usage of the term “supernatural”. It is more usual to lump together all those strange entities and events which revolve round miracles, prophecies, angelic beings, ghosts, ghouls and goblins as supernatural (“supernatural” without a capital S in this case).  Well, fair enough provided we keep at the back of our minds the fundamental God vs creation dualism.  But this returns us to the original question, namely, what does the “supernatural” mean in this secondary sense?  This is where our problems begin. 

The whole of this essay can be found here:

Evolution, Unstable Conceptual Feedback & Nihilism

Self affirming loop: Ok, as long as no one uses an eraser!

But Alex Rosenberg seems to be in the business of erasing his mind!

At a lecture I attended by Sir John Polkinghorne I was intrigued to hear him concede that strictly speaking he is an "Intelligent Design" creationist, but then went onto imply that he would never use that term of himself because it has become blighted by its associations with the highly politicised de facto Intelligent Design movement of North America. Sir John, as far as I can tell, is a conventional evolutionist but if I'm understanding him aright he believes that what he calls a "fruitful process" such as evolution could only have been designed by God. He has also said that just as the overarching principle of gravity dominates the cosmic dynamic and yet only tells part of the cosmic story, so evolution as an overall principle is only part of the story of natural history. I don't think I'm as convinced of conventional evolution as Sir John, but whatever way you look at evolution it would itself have to be carefully choregraphed to work - this is not something that many dyed in the wool atheists or dyed in the wool Christian fundamentalists would comfortably admit; ironically both parties (albeit for very different reasons) are inclined to believe that evolution is supposed to feed on the indifference of randomness.

Even though I have considerable doubts about bog-standard evolution I've nevertheless many times criticised de facto-ID, especially as it is expressed on the website Uncommon Descent. I have particularly criticised their philosophical dualism which dichotomises "natural causes" against intelligent design causation, where by intelligent design they really mean "God" as an alternative causative agent; that in my opinion demotes God to a causation level. But far worse than this in my opinion is that they've proved to be highly politized toward the Christian rightwing with at least some of their pundits supporting Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about a rigged American election and charging the Democrats of crypto-communism. But if I'm supposed to believe that the American Democrats are Marxist stooges using nefarious means to barge their way to the top then why should I not correspondingly entertain the parallel notion that in a political environment claimed to be so full of corruption Trump's charges of electoral rigging are also a dishonest fraud trumped up by a crypto-fascist rightwing culture that ultimately will bring about a Trump monarchy protected by AR15 tooting militia? The de facto ID community are doing their own bit to undermine trust in the classic and mature American democratic system by helping to sow the seeds of inter-community distrust. 

However, having said that I've got to acknowledge that the off-hand treatment of some ID stars such as William Dembski by the academic establishment has helped push the de facto ID community into the arms of the far right who fear & despise the left of centre academic establishment. And yet Dembski rightly perceived that evolution, if it was to work, would need to be set up from the outset with high information conditions (i.e highly improbable prerequisites). That lesson still stands as far as I'm concerned. (Except perhaps in the extravagant multiverse theories where all scenarios are played out - on this view we necessarily then find ourselves in a universe that supports our existence). What Dembski didn't succeed in doing (and  Dembski effectively admits this himself  - see foregoing link) is that of disproving evolution; he just made it clear that even evolution would require up front information (See my paper here on this matter). Where the ID community went wrong was to use Dembski's work as an argument against evolution in a similar way that they erroneously think the second law of thermodynamics is an argument against evolution.

But whatever the errors of the North American ID community, they have been humiliated and made to look like deep-south rubes. We've seen what happened in Germany when it was humiliated after WWI; they were then tempted to throw in their lot with a protectionist tough-guy who promised to champion their cause and preserve their culture, pride and egos. It seems that the ID community have also found a protectionist tough guy. 

***

Although I disagree with much of their underlying biases I nevertheless often find myself sympathetic with some of the posts on Uncommon Descent. A case in point is this post on UD which quotes from a review of a book titled How History Gets Things Wrong by atheist evolutionist Alex Rosenberg. Rosenberg  has stumbled across what I refer to as unstable conceptual feedback but seems to be unaware of it. I'll explain what I mean by unstable conceptual feedback after I have quoted the review as quoted by Uncommon Descent (my emphases):

 

Rosenberg writes that there are compelling reasons to question the Theory of Mind. His discussion of those reasons is prefaced by the statement that the Theory’s “Darwinian pedigree is no reason to accept it as true, or even mostly true. The process of natural selection does not as a rule produce true beliefs, just ones that foster survival” The statement that natural selection does not as a rule produce true beliefs, cannot, of course, be confined to the Theory of Mind—it isn’t only Theory of Mind related beliefs that cannot be held to be true due to their Darwinian pedigree. It holds across the board, so for all beliefs. If it is to be consistent, Rosenberg’s view must be that natural selection in general selects not for truth but for survival.

 What is frustrating is that Rosenberg’s book nowhere discusses the implications of this view for Darwinism itself, nor for science more generally. For the implications are monumental and disastrous. For if the mental faculties or mechanisms that produce belief in us are selected for not because they yield mostly true beliefs but because they foster survival, then this also regards science: whatever we wind up believing through science, whatever scientific theory we accept through scientific investigation, the fact that we believe it has to do with survival, not truth. But this means that given Rosenberg’s view on natural selection, we have no reason to think that our scientific theories are true, in fact we have a standing defeater for each and every scientific theory, evolutionary theory and the theory of natural selection included.

In the wake of Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism, this problem has received quite a bit of attention. But Rosenberg doesn’t engage with the literature, and has nothing of any interest to say on a problem that should exercise him greatly, given his over allegiance to scientism, roughly the claim that only science can give us knowledge.

Basically the problem talked about here is this: If evolution only guarantees survival then our "knowledge" serves survival first & foremost and not necessarily truth. There is, consequently, a self referencing problem here which leads to a potential internal contention within our thinking and loss of an axiomatic starting point providing us with the foundation on which to base the edifice of our knowledge; for if the truth of our knowledge isn't assured because "knowledge", so-called, primarily serves a survival dynamic then how do we know we've come to the correct knowledge about that dynamic in the first place?  Stated more generally the problem goes like this: If we believe that we have been generated by disinterested processes that bestow upon us pragmatic knowledge and not necessarily true knowledge then how can we be sure that our belief about the disinterest of those processes is itself true? This seems to be the general implication behind Rosenberg's conclusions, conclusions drawn from his concept of evolution. But then if we have correctly perceived those humanly indifferent processes as Rosenberg assumes then perhaps we have also correctly perceived the theory of mind?  For if there is a chance that we've got it right that evolution is purely a survival dynamic then perhaps we've got our theory of mind right as well.  There appears, therefore, to be a selective scepticism on Rosenberg's part perhaps in order to support his own theories of mind, or rather his theory that there is no such thing as mind! (According to UD). This is a kind of cognitive self mutilation, in fact a form of nihilism. As I often say atheism  teeters on the brink of the nihilist abyss.   

I discussed this kind of potential self-referencing contention in an essay way back in 1993.  Even Darwin himself appeared to be aware of it and as the quote above suggests,  so is Alvin Plantinga.  Like Richard Dawkins as I tell in my essay, we find that Rosenberg has at least put his truth anchors down in evolutionary theory even if he is missing the potential internal contradiction which so often has lead to the anti-foundationalism of nihilistic and postmodern responses and in turn the self-destruction of even secular humanism.  But in any case it is wrong to classify evolution as just a survival dynamic. Evolution is about an exploration of the possibilities in platonic space and who knows what kind of exotic configurations can come to light: Yes, living configurations must always be constrained by the requirement of viability; that is survivability, but within that constraint there may be a whole lot of other things those configurations can do apart from just survive. 

There are, nevertheless mitigating circumstances which in my opinion lend plausibility (if nothing else) to Rosenberg's thesis that an utterly impersonal & dispassionate world constrained only by the most ruthless survival ethic will only supply what one needs to know, or think one knows, for survival. The fact is that since the demise of the Ptolemaic human centred temple-cosmos in favour of a vision of humanity's physical insignificance** on the huge cosmic stage, coupled to a failure to find the ghost-in-the-machine, an atheist case that "the universe doesn't care about us" has some traction.  At this point walk carefully, very carefully; for if you trip you've got a long way to fall down that nihilist abyss. But for me the irony is that our very smallness may be evidence of how important we actually are.

Addendum 20/12/20

Psychological Nihilism

Here's another subject raised by Uncommon Descent where I would likely agree with them: See here:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/how-a-silicon-valley-psychologist-can-believe-consciousness-doesnt-exist/

Yes, it's the old "I'm going into denial about the existence of conscious cognition" attitude that UD are highlighting here. UD quote the offending psychologist as follows:

“I’ve lost friends over this because a denial of consciousness undermines a final refuge of the arrogance of selfhood: universal consciousness. But even most normal people are strongly insistent that consciousness is a real thing, a special thing, and that they possess it. The problem I have is that there’s not only no evidence for it, but what people seem to be referring to as consciousness is explainable as an effect no more unusual, no less materialistically explainable, than water flowing downhill… – Duncan Riach, “Why I Don’t Believe in Consciousness and What Ai Seems to Be Revealing About It” At Medium

Yes, consciousness may well be "materialistically explainable", and although I wouldn't use those words,  I rather think it is "explainable" as a feature of God given matter provided it is appropriately configured. But I would no more deny the macroscopic fact that water flows down hill as a liquid simply because it is explainable in terms of gravity's effect on water molecules than I would deny that conscious cognition is a feature of the thermodynamic macroscopic brain. As for  "no evidence"; my dear man "evidence" is comprised of conscious cognition's perceptions of the world; that is, the very concept of evidence is an item in conscious cognition's repertoire of experiences of the world;  "Evidence" is conscious cognition! Deny conscious cognition and you deny there is any such thing as evidence! 

Riach may as well deny that evidence for liquid water exists simply because  "it's all molecules". One of UD's commenters described Riach as an idiot. That could be true!

Footnotes

* Sections of the American right-wing were into the collective paranoia of conspiracy theorism before Donald Trump appeared on the scene. Trump simply exploited what was already there. See the links below: 

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2013/03/prepare-for-apocalypse.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/09/witchs-brew-from-townhallcom.html

** But in combinatorial terms humans are far from insignificant.