More Nagelisms

I was perusing blogs awhile back (actually a few years!) when I came upon this quote from Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. Rather than consulting my notes it is just easier to re-quote it here.

First, that the non-teleological and timeless laws of physics--those governing the ultimate elements of the physical universe, whatever they are--are not fully deterministic. Given the physical state of the universe at any moment, the laws of physics would have to leave open a range of alternative successor states, presumably with a probability distribution over them. Second, among those possible futures there will be some that are more eligible than others as possible steps on the way to the formation of more complex systems, and ultimately of the kinds of replicating systems characteristic of life. The existence of teleology requires that successor states in this subset have a significantly higher probability than is entailed by the laws of physics alone--simply because they are on the path toward a certain outcome. Teleological laws would assign higher probability to steps on paths in state space that have a higher "velocity" toward certain outcomes. They would be laws of the self-organization of matter, essentially--or of whatever is more basic than matter. (pp. 92-3)

This is a good summary of Nagel's attempts to reintroduce teleology into the natural universe. Nagel realizes that neo-Darwinism is a fatally flawed theory. The gist of the argument is that naturalism has to reintroduce final causes. Blind chance and mechanistic evolution don't get it. Mixed up in the argument is the typical atheist reliance on chance and probability. The motions of matter are not deterministic.

Okay, for the sake of argument, let's grant that. As theists we deny that the source of "probability" is what the atheist claims it to be -- an ultimate irrational residue of lawlessness. A world in which things happen for "no reason!" But back to the technical issues.

The probability distributions of quantum field theory can be computed with some very precise results for things like scattering amplitudes,half-lives, branching ratios and the like. These probability "amplitudes" are all functions of the basic properties of the physical systems being modeled. And, here's the point: the amplitudes have no teleological aspect. All of physics exhibits non-teleology. The future state(s) of the universe are solely determined by the present state, past and future are irrelevant. This principle falls out rather neatly from the principle of least action -- a very general principle from which all equations of motion can be derived given a Hamiltonian (think, "energy") or Lagrangian function that depends on the constituents of the system and their configurations. Moreover Nagel's plan is to require "... that successor states in this subset [those favoring replicating life] have a significantly higher probability than is entailed by the laws of physics alone--simply because they are on the path toward a certain outcome."

The nail in this coffin is that Nagel imagines some non-physical laws that must alter half-lives, branching ratios and so on, along the way.  After all, according to the atheist myth of macro evolution, the journey to replicating life is via small steps with compounded probabilities. We ought to be able to see such evidence in pre-biotic chemical reactions.  

Embracing such non-physical laws is to accept a new dualism and to abandon the pillar of monism in the atheist's philosophy. Paradoxically, the positing of extra-physical (should we say supernatural!) properties seems not to worry Nagel's new born "naturalism." 

An Agnostic asserts: "Humans are not random objects like asteroids." I ask, " Are you sure?"

It has been awhile. Off busy with other activities. I had typically tried to write longer entries. The following short commentary is due to a comment found on social media a couple of years ago by an avowed agnostic who stated:

"Humans can and do agree amongst themselves what constitutes acceptable behaviour for the greater good of all. That's what distinguishes us from random objects like asteroids. Individual bad people including tyrants may depart from those standards just as they may break other human laws such as relating to fraud or democratic procedures."

This assertion, typical of evolutionary atheists and agnostics, was made in the context of the issue of morality. This person was arguing for conventional morals. But, of course, conventional morals are not true morals. Conventions are arbitrary and not absolute. This is moral relativism all in all. Different strokes for different folks.

But the main point is that, in this quote, we have yet another case of the unbeliever's contradictory presuppositions of his rational freedom and freedom from the causal matrix of quantum field theory in a reality of material monism. He claims humans are not "random objects!" Is he sure? Can he prove this assertion is consistent with his metaphysical presuppositions?

He can't. It is a mere assertion and contradictory to material monism. As a bundle of material he is just a configuration of quantum fields and, ipso facto, "a random object!" On his presuppositions he actually is no different than asteroids, or any other material object in the universe. He would be nothing but a clump of matter responding to the equal and opposite reactions from other clumps of matter in the rest of the universe. The same actions and reactions that have been going on for eternity in his mythology. And, of course, none of these actions and reactions are evil, and none are good.

The Swindle of Emergentism

The inaugural post for Scripta Scientificae pro Christiana Apologeticum is now available. You can read it here: "The Swindle of Emergentism".

Village Atheism and Magical Configurations of Matter.

A discussion on social media yielded this claim by a village atheist:

"...but when I die, just like you, I will be nothing more than space dust and all the molecules of matter..."

Such statements are wide-spread and betray the philosophical naivety and unexamined assumptions of the typical village atheist.

Do you see the incoherence of this claim of an atheist material monist? He says he "...will be nothing more." This atheist's language betrays his belief that he is currently something more than molecules.

However, on the material monist view and his assumption of the uniformity of nature he was, is and will always be nothing more than matter. To be perfectly clear, according to material monism, this atheist is at present nothing more than molecules. This is a matter of logical consistency. The atheist's faith commitment to the uniformity of nature requires this conclusion. Of course, it is true that his current configuration of molecules is different than those of a dispersed configuration of those molecules, and as such, they exhibit different properties than the dispersed molecules. This is no more puzzling than Hydrogen molecules and Oxygen molecules having different properties than water when they are combined chemically to produce H₂O. But such properties, sometimes termed "emergent," are not autonomous properties.¹ All of the properties of water are reducible to the underlying laws of matter by way of the equations of quantum mechanics. The behavior of water is determined by the underlying quantum mechanical properties of the ultimate material constituents (the quantum fields which we have discussed here). This is the case for all configurational properties of matter, they are all reducible to the underlying physics. In fact, according to material monism and the uniformity of nature they must be. This is the scientific ideal of atheistic science -- all of reality must ultimately come within the purview of physical causal laws. After all, it is called material monism, right? Reality is closed with respect to matter and its motions via physical causes. According to the myth of macro-evolution, the physical processes that produced the stars, galaxies, solar systems, planets then ultimately life, then conscious life along with the human intellect, are necessarily, by continuity, the same processes producing the present behaviors of particular molecular configurations called "man." Any "mental" properties of this particular configuration of molecules are determined by the dance of the quantum fields, not the other way around. So much for free rational thought. Ironically, these philosophies and theories are the products of self-styled atheist "free thinkers!"

This atheist, like all village atheists, maintains the mutually incoherent assumptions of human autonomy, uniformity of nature (their principle of necessity) and the ultimate chance character of reality. These are uncritically examined presuppositions of the typical unbeliever. To maintain human autonomy in the face of material monism is to believe that humans are magical configurations of matter. In a solely material universe human autonomy would not exist. Nonetheless, village atheist Richard Dawkins unabashedly believes in atheist miracles.² "Consistent" atheists like Provine, Rosenberg and Harris (as discussed here, here and here) can clearly see the logical conclusion of their faith in material monism and the uniformity of nature and thereby deny human rational autonomy -- even though it reduces their epistemology and ethics to absurdity. It follows from their presupposition that they know nothing, despite their claim to "scientific" knowledge, and they acknowledge the total amoral character of reality.

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1 Philosopher John Searle's favorite example of emergent properties is digestion. He correctly points out that digestion is not a property of elementary particles. However, it is obvious that such an emergent biological property is not autonomous and is reducible to bio-chemistry, then to physics and quantum mechanics. To deny that would be to destroy the continuity of nature and the entire atheist reductionist "scientific" enterprise. Reductionism is a necessary corollary of material monism. And bottom-up physical causation is the only causation in town.^↩
2 Discussed here. Dawkins, by maintaining human autonomy, is apparently unaware that he has implicitly thrown out the uniformity of nature. Hence, human autonomy to Dawkins is an irrational miracle.^↩

Mind and Cosmos: Nagel's Unprincipled Principles, Part 2. Who's Afraid of Dualism?

In my previous blog, I mentioned the mysteriousness of the photon-electron interaction. It is an example of a purely physical interaction, and thus deemed to be "unproblematic" by a material monist. As we will see, this material monist view is unwarranted.

Last time we ended with this graphic.

That graph shows a purely physical interaction. It depicts a physical electron ("e") interacting with a physical photon (wavy line) -- matter interacting with matter. It would seem there are no difficulties there, right? Nothing like that mysterious mind-matter interaction "problem?" Wrong! Merely saying this is matter interacting with matter is a mere linguistic swindle of the material monist. As we have mentioned, modern material monism is attributive monism -- all of this matter "stuff" is not as similar as calling it all matter seems to imply. The many fields of quantum field theory (QFT) all have varying and differing attributes (charge, spin, mass, etc.) -- hence the term attributive monism. It's a jungle out there! The vocabulary of modern physics speaks of particle species and the particle zoo.

In the "innocent era" of pre-quantum theory, people viewed matter as all that "hard" stuff. Material interaction is no more mysterious than the collision of billiard balls -- what's so hard about that? Well, that simplistic picture which still seems to infect the thinking of the naive material monist isn't what is going on.

Even this simplistic and "common sense" view of causality was roundly criticized by Hume, who correctly noted that one could not observe such causation but only the "constant conjunction" of events.  That conditions of "such and such" were invariably followed by "such and such."

But there is more. Physics says nothing about why there is such an interaction between electrons and light or what is going on at that vertex. In fact, it doesn't even say when such an interaction takes place -- it only computes probabilities that such particle events transpire.¹ Yet, the basic interactions are mediated by something far less "solid." The basic ontology of the physical universe is the fields! And these fields are everywhere and "in contact" at every point (provided they mutually interact; more on this below.) These fields are not what one would call solid and impenetrable. Every school kid has experience with fields -- case in point, iron filings being moved about by magnetic fields! Stuff like that "spooky" magnetic field is what the physical universe is. So the universe is more spirit-like than matter-like than most believe -- more ethereal than solid.

In spite of the modern field theoretic view of the material universe, as mentioned above, proponents of material monism seem to entertain  an antiquated and superficial muddle-minded notion of material causation. This is the old atomistic and mechanistic physics where causation is something similar to the collision of billiard balls -- solid things impacting solid things and recoiling along with attendant conservation laws of energy and momentum. Causal interaction through contact.² This false perception is, no doubt, encouraged by the observations of particles -- they being viewed as tiny solid granular bodies.

Examples of such muddle-mindedness in regard to physical causation are evident in the writings of (dare I say all?) most modern atheist philosophers of mind.

In addition to Nagel, another example is Jaegwon Kim, who wrote: "For substance dualism, it is, at bottom, the extreme heterogeneity of minds and bodies that makes causal relations between them prima facie problematic." (emph. added)³ There are a lot of unwarranted assumptions and question begging in such an assertion. It certainly betrays an ignorance of modern physics. The assumption that matter itself is "homogeneous" in kind is certainly false. Matter is not homogeneous in spite of the fact that it is called matter, and it is not a pure monism in spite of being called material monism.  Contra Kim and others, matter too is extremely heterogeneous. To elaborate, I return to our figure of my prior blog. This figure is supposed to be credible to the monist. But it shows two heterogeneous types of matter interacting - a photon (a massless, neutral, spin one boson) and an electron (a massive, electrically charged, spin 1/2 fermion).

The complete (omitting only gravitation) set of fields (and associated particles) is shown in the following diagram found in the Wikipedia entry on the Standard Model. The diagram shows the particle view of a quantum field.  The blue lines show the interactions between the fields/particles.  Fields not connected by a blue line do not interact directly; they can only interact indirectly.  So in particular -- and quite amazingly -- electrons (the "e" within the lepton box) do not interact with other electrons except indirectly by an "exchange of photons."  (Note: There is no blue line that loops from the electron "e" back to itself.) So much for "like stuff" interacting with "like stuff!"   The only fields that have self interactions (other than gravity) are the fields with nonlinear free field equations. These are the gluons, Higgs boson, and weak bosons (indicated by the closed blue loops). One should note: all fields of QFT are "co-located;" they mutually exist at every space-time point (i.e. at every spatial location and for all time).⁴ Yet, amazingly, the leptonic and quark fields though everywhere co-located are oblivious of each other (note: there is no blue line between the leptons and quarks)! That is a rather embarrassing situation for the philosopher who argues for material monism. On the basis of the material monist principle, it would seem the monist should assert that all matter must interact with all other matter. The absence of direct lepton-lepton interactions (for one among others) should be a mystery to them. But such questions seem not to worry their limited epiphenomenal "minds."

[graphic from Wikipedia]

So then, the material monist can no more explain or account for material interaction (and amazingly the absence of interactions between different types of matter) among the various fields than a dualist can explain mind-body interactions. The complaint of Nagel, Kim and all material monists against dualism is superficial and is yet another example of atheist special pleading.⁵ As the saying goes, "That which is a problem for everyone is a problem for no one." So then, the monist's reason for accepting "monism" is based on a false principle that does not support their belief.

In closing, we should note that the diagram represents the "god" of the materialist. For the atheist, this immutable and eternal complex plurality of fields is a brute fact and accounts for all of reality. That is a most fantastic and incredible belief. It claims that human autonomy, rationality and morality are mere accidental configurations of these fields. It should be obvious to all not in the grips of irrational ideology that any such "emergent" properties are determined solely by the dance of these fields. Every future (probabilistic) state of the fields is determined by the current state via partial differential equations. Equations in which the only elements are quantities describing the configurations of the fields, and nothing more enters the equations. So much for human autonomy.

As Christians we know that this intricately plural and elegant unified structure of material reality is designed by God. The material creation does not account for all of reality -- it in no way accounts for the souls, spirits and minds, human rational autonomy, abstract entities and morality. These are things for which no material monist has supplied anything close to intelligible accounts. As detailed here, Nagel's attempt is superficial and fails utterly. In fact, the so called underpinnings of the material monist principles are found to be wanting philosophically and scientifically (engaging in unanalyzed question begging and special pleading).

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1 For example, quantum transition amplitudes typically involve integrals in which the time of the interaction is taken to be any time from the remote past to the remote future. Usually the integration over time is specified using the mathematical fiction of negative infinity to positive infinity.^↩
2 Newtonian gravity and early electromagnetic theories first introduced the rather scandalous concept of unmediated action at a distance. That concept slowly gave way to the concept of physical fields and the first steps towards modern physics. See the Wikipedia entry action at a distance.^↩
3 Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind, Westview 1998, p.133.^↩
4 This feature of the fields is contrary to the old concept of matter as having the property of impenetrability or that which cannot occupy the same space at the same time. In modern physics, the closest property to this idea is the Pauli exclusion principle which only applies to like fermions. Even in this case two electrons can be in the same location as long as their other properties differ (such as one being "spin up" and the other "spin down." From the Wikipedia entry: "This effect is partly responsible for the everyday observation in the macroscopic world that two solid objects cannot be in the same place at the same time." ^↩
5 It is special pleading since material interactions are also mysterious. So the rejection of dualism because it is mysterious applies equally to materialism. The supposed foundation of the entire material monist philosophy is built on a fallacy.^↩

Mind & Cosmos: Nagel's Unprincipled Principles

Having finally read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos -- previously discussed briefly here -- I had planned to write a more thorough and complete analysis of it. Other more important duties have precluded that goal. So instead, I plan to write a few shorter articles covering various problems in Nagel's philosophy. Here, belatedly, is my first installment of the promised analysis.

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Nagel's motivation for his philosophy of neutral monism is that material monism provides no basis for key characteristics of human experience, such as mind and consciousness. With this correct assessment, Christian theists will agree -- although we extend the list of features to include invariant abstract objects (such as mathematics and logic) and absolute moral laws. (Nagel's version of neutral monism¹ provides no metaphysical foundation for these either.)

Nagel rejects, therefore, materialism but he equally rejects theism. He wants to invent a "middle ground;" though he doesn't get near a putative "middle." Instead, what he posits is just a new version of attributive monism in which all "matter" (with its many usual physical attributes such as mass, charge, spin and so on) is also endowed with mental attributes. This is just as reductionistic as old-fashioned monism. It's a monism differing in degree, not kind.

Nagel asserts that dualism is not a serious option since it posits an inscrutable and a mysterious (at least more so to "naturalists") interaction between mind and body. To this end, then, Nagel resorts to postulating that all material of the cosmos has a property of mind attached. Every piece of stuff in the cosmos is intrinsically "mental" in some sense, in addition to being material.

This theory is tantamount to adding (in physicist terminology) a "psychic" quantum number to every quantum field. Of course such a psychic interaction has never been observed in particle-scattering experiments. Also, Nagel doesn't touch the issue of the quantity of psychic stuff attached to all matter. To be compatible with quantum field theory, there is a multitude of technical and mathematical issues that Nagel doesn't even begin to address. I won't delve into this in anymore detail at this point, but that alone deprives Nagel's theory of any shred of scientific credibility. Nagel, by mere verbal wishful thinking, expands on his "solution." Nagel postulates that though each particle is not conscious, one can hope to produce conscious brains by assembling enough of this psychically endowed stuff in sufficiently complex arrangements. A major defect of this theory is that the "mind" so produced is a composite of psychically endowed fields, and as such, still subject to bottom-up causation. All of the properties and "twitching" of this composite brain are the result of the interactions of the basic fields/particles. Such a mind is still physically determined. Thus, human rational freedom still does not exist. Such a theory is thereby a contradiction of most atheists' assumption of human autonomy. One can easily write the form of the equation that such a brain, and consequently the attached "mind," must satisfy. One does not need to know the exact details of the functional dependence of this composite mind on its constituents to draw the conclusion that such a brain is causally closed with respect to the underlying matter. Such an "emergent" mind is to the brain as pressure is to molecular motion - and, thus, has no causal autonomy. Case closed.

These, in brief, are some of the problems with Nagel's philosophy, but in a following blog I will look at the contradictory nature of Nagel's superficial rejection of dualism and proposing neutral monism. Nagel's principle, mentioned above, is that dualism is too mysterious and "unexplained" and that monism (and in particular his neutral monism that purports to explain "mind" and mental interactions) is not mysterious. But is it? Hardly. For a hint at what is coming, some might want to ask the question regarding the graphics below: "What exactly is going on at this electron-photon interaction?" (The straight red line is an electron of charge "e" and the black wavy line is an emitted (or absorbed) photon. The diagram represents the fundamental interaction of electrons and light.)

Continue to part 2.

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1 Neutral monism asserts that the ultimate constituents of reality are neither material (as in material monism) nor mental (as in idealism) but a neutral third kind of "stuff." For more details see Neutral Monism at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ^↩

More on TAG

A correspondent has asked, "Is 'logic' a premise of TAG (The Transcendental Argument for God)?"¹

This question underscores the typical unbeliever's inability to grasp the issues in the debate between totally antithetical worldviews. It also suggests a general unfamiliarity with transcendental argumentation -- as it construes TAG as a deductive argument, and it seems to lapse into a standard "deductivist" view of proof, so prevalent among many unbelievers.

First, TAG is not formally a deductive argument. Deductive arguments necessarily presuppose logic. Without logic, deductive arguments could not even get off the ground. So, the answer is, no, logic per se is not a premise of TAG.² In the presuppositional defense of Christianity, we do not presuppose a merely abstract and autonomous logic, nor do we posit it as a premise of a deductive argument leading to a conclusion of a God of indeterminate character or an abstract "God of the philosophers."

Second, when it comes to the issues of the existence of logic, abstract objects, and conceptual reasoning, in general, the point of TAG is that the godless reality of atheism, on the basis of its own metaphysical presuppositions, cannot account for their existence. For instance, the existence of logic and material monism are contradictory. Laws of matter and the ultimacy of chance do not produce mentally free, conscious beings who are capable of abstract thought. Materialism cannot account for the existence of immaterial abstract entities of any type (be it logic, mathematics, or moral laws).³ The existence of logic, then, is a problem, and failure, of the atheist worldview. As I have written before, atheists cannot give a "reason for reason." As such, atheists have no metaphysical ground for their presupposition of logic. Atheists, being "epistemological loafers" as Van Til put it, will not acknowledge this. Even in the face of continued prodding, they continue to use a merely assumed autonomous logic and reason, that is, just "take it for granted." But that is question begging and an intellectually empty response. Yet, on the other hand, they will assert that man and his mind was produced by (and thereby, still ruled by) ultimately random material processes. Atheism -- by asserting the autonomy of man (and thereby, the ultimacy of the human mind) along with the ultimately chance nature of temporal facts -- is self-contradictory. Atheism provides no grounds for any of its beliefs (articles of faith, as it were); it can only be adhered to by a willful intellectual blindness.

The positive presupposition of TAG is the existence of the Triune God of Christianity who has revealed Himself in the Bible, in nature, and within man himself. God is the metaphysical ground from which all human experience is intelligible. Logic (and other abstract objects) is not a problem for the Christian theist. Behind man's reasoning is the mind of God.

To reiterate the point: logic is a problem for atheists and agnostics; it is no problem for the Christian theist.

In response to the correspondent's question, I pointed out the following as an example of presuppositions: The laws of logic are laws of rational thought; as such logic presupposes a thinking mind. In Christian theism, that ultimate mind is the mind of the eternal and personal God. Though this may be wrongly interpreted as if it were a deductive argument, it is not. It is an illustration of a presupposition that underlies and is the metaphysical ground of human logic.

The correspondent responded with the question, "Why can't that mind be mine?" Indeed, that is the question for him to answer based on a presumed godless reality! Many questions come to mind. For example, where or from what did his mind originate? Did immaterial minds irrationally spring forth de novo from matter in motion (If indeed there be minds as opposed to mere physically determined material brains)? Was there a first mind? Or, is there an infinite past of finite individual minds begetting new minds, (coming into being at birth, then vanishing into nothingness at death)? Is his mind ultimate? If not, what produced his mind? Is his mind free from physical determination (i.e., does he have rational freedom and volition)? How many unrelated (material and perhaps non-material) causal principles does the unbeliever invent to account for the existence of minds? Are those causal properties, along with matter and minds, of which they are properties, eternal, uncreated, ultimate constituents of reality?  In addition, for a materialist the question is (a) how all the biochemistry going on in every human skull (different processes in different locations) gives rise to objective non-material abstractions, such as logic, or, if not a materialist, (b) from whence all these contingent minds emerged equipped with innate and invariant logic. Those are just a few problems for starters.

Again, the question remains for atheists and agnostics to answer on the foundation of their metaphysical presuppositions. Answers that millennia of atheist philosophies have failed to supply.

I've already given the Christian answer: Mind is not his alone. The ultimate mind is the mind of the eternal God of Christian theism.

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1 The historical connection of logic to TAG stems from Greg Bahnsen's use of the presuppositional apologetic in his debate with atheist Gordon Stein where Stein couldn't support the existence of, or use and reliability of, logic on the basis of his materialism. This was a defining moment for public awareness of presuppositionalism. In a way, it is a bit unfortunate that the debate paved the way for some, including Christians, to think that the existence of logic is the only or main element of TAG (thereby focusing attention mainly on logic in conjunction with TAG). But such is not the case. TAGs challenge to unbelief is that it cannot make sense (on its own presuppositions) of any fact of human experience. Thus, one can start with logic, or language, or mathematics or moral laws (among others) to expose the unbeliever's internal contradictions and refute the unbeliever's worldview or total view of reality. ^↩

2 What is at issue in the debate between Christians and unbelievers is not merely "logic," but the conception of logic that each participant in the debate holds. Logical reasoning is necessary -- for both parties -- in the encounter of belief with unbelief. When we reason with unbelievers we, of course, employ our God-given capacity for logical thinking. The unbeliever will likewise employ logic in the debate while all along denying God. However, the unbeliever typically does not question his capacity to reason, nor ask what is the metaphysical ground of the human ability to think and reason according to abstract laws of logic. The "logic" to which the unbeliever appeals (and which is his ultimate authority) is an autonomous "logic" that exists in a void. So an appeal to a common conception of "logic" is illusory. The totally antithetical conceptions of logic (among a host of other things) are at the core of the debate. Van Til addresses this issue:

"It appears then that if there is to be any intelligible encounter between the Christian and the non-Christian, it must be in terms of the two mutually exclusive visions that each entertains. To appeal to the law of contradiction and/or to facts or to a combination of these apart from the relation that these sustain to the totality-vision of either, the believer or the unbeliever, is to beat the air. It is well to say that he who would reason must presuppose the validity of the laws of logic. But if we say nothing more basic than this, then we are still beating the air. The ultimate question deals with the foundation of the validity of the laws of logic. We have not reached bottom until we have seen that every logical activity in which any man engages is in the service of his totality-vision." (Emph. added) Cornelius Van Til, The Case for Calvinism. The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia, 1964. (Quoted from The Works of Cornelius Van Til, Logos Digital Edition).

As to the question of logic in the debate between totally antithetical worldviews Bahnsen writes:

"The antithesis (in principle) between the philosophical systems of unbelievers and the philosophical system of believers is so broad and basic that it even affects the way they deal with central philosophical notions like logic, possibility, and objectivity (to mention but a few). This observation should not be misunderstood. The presuppositionalist does not say that Christians and non-Christians inevitably accept and operate with completely different, specific laws of logic in their practical exercises of reasoning. Yet they do clearly disagree with each other concerning the nature, source, and authority of the laws of logic. Both worldviews may endorse and utilize the disjunctive syllogism or De Morgan's theorems, but when we inquire into what they are talking about, the evidence that is appropriate or persuasive for their claims (about syllogisms, theorems, etc.), or the necessity of the truths about logic, we get radically different answers -- which almost always betray differing convictions regarding metaphysics." (Greg Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia, 1998. p. 280)^↩

3 It is true that there are some atheists who are not material monists -- but they are few and far between. There are idealistic monists (mind is the fundamental stuff of reality) and there are others usually referred to as "pluralists" who believe in a plurality of co-ultimate things (Roger Penrose, for example). But, in the case of the pluralists, merely asserting the existence of minds and a plurality of immaterial "platonic" entities with no coherent unity among them is question begging and provides no intelligible ground for human knowledge. In addition to being no answer to the problem of the one and the many, no atheist has given the account of what bridges the gap between the particulars of the atheist's material world with its basic chance characteristics and their eternal unchanging realm of universal "platonic" entities. As mentioned above, the existence of human minds in this worldview is also a major problem -- especially on the macro evolutionary account that human minds are no more than material brains assembled by (and thereby still controlled by) random physical processes. The dual atheist principles of human autonomy and the ultimacy of chance are contradictory.

The many problems of a platonistic conception of reality are well known, which explains why few advocate it, and won't be dealt with here. As to the idealists, which were more in vogue during Van Til's time, Van Til's writings, in particular A Survey of Christian Epistemology, provide a wealth of information on the internal contradictions of the idealists. ^↩

Heideggerian Nonsense Redux: Nonsense is still nonsense and nothing still yields nothing.

I received a reply to this prior post which began by providing this link to the Wikipedia page on Krauss' book A Universe from Nothing -- whose title itself is philosophical sophistry. The writer supplied this without analysis to my discussion of Heidegger's question.  Unfortunately, there are some (Richard Dawkins, for one¹) who believe Krauss has something relevant to say to that question.  As we will see, Krauss has nothing to say about that question. As discussed below, Krauss is both a philosophical charlatan and also, on occasion, exhibits incompetence in his physics descriptions .  Krauss' book is rather old news, and I suspect my interlocutor probably did not "drill down to" David Albert's devastating critique of the book: On the Origin of Everything.

In any event, Krauss' book certainly adds nothing to the philosophical discussion of Heidegger's nonsense.

As it turns out, even Krauss is not so dim as to believe that something comes from absolutely nothing -- even though he promotes this idea in cloaked words, as if that were the case (so much so that Richard Dawkins foolishly takes the bait). Krauss, in his lecture here, remarks (my punctuation added): "By 'nothing' I don't mean nothing I mean 'nothing' " Exactly so. (Of course, putting scare quotes in the title would not be as sensational.) The quantum vacuum of quantum field theory (QFT) is called the particle vacuum: it is the ground state of the fields (and that is something) in which no particles are detectable. The Wikipedia entry states: "[I]t is a mistake to think of any physical vacuum as some absolutely empty void." David Albert has remarked on this in his review of  "A Universe from Nothing" (supra). I have made similar analysis on Hawking here: Hawking's "The Grand Design" -- a new sub-Platonic Cosmogony for Itching Ears and here: More on Hawking's Grand Design.

To summarize: In quantum field theory, the fields are everywhere, particles are not.  One can have fields with no particles, but not particles without the fields. The fields are fundamental; they are the matrix of the particles. Particles are the quantized manifestation of excitations of the field -- i.e. discrete vibrations of the field.

It bears repeating.  The main point is that in all physical theories, the material is presupposed by atheists as eternally existent -- there is no explanation for their existence. The quantum fields are merely posited as uncreated and eternal. Krauss should have titled his book: A Universe from "Nothing"  -- but the scare quotes would be less sensational and no doubt "scare off" some potential book buyers. As titled, it is a marketing hook that certainly aids in attracting the naively gullible atheists, of which, Richard Dawkins is one. Richard Dawkins interprets Krauss' "nothing" to be literally nothing but yet a sophisticated something (!) (as we see in this humorous video in which Dawkins earns his dunce's cap. "The fool has said in his heart there is no God").

In closing, I point out that Krauss believes his mythology so deeply that it even seduces him into loose statements in his lectures. Here is an example from the video above at time 21:28 where he displays a simulation of his so-called "empty" space between quarks. He says the simulation shows the fields "popping in and out of existence." It shows no such thing.  As presented (by what it "shows" and what it omits) the simulation is an example of atheist propaganda. (If that simulation shows fields popping in out of existence, then this video shows a drum head popping in and out of existence! Absurdity!)  There is another remark around 18:00 where he describes this "empty" space as that which you get if you remove "absolutely everything" --  well, Krauss' subsequent discussion contradicts that.  The quantum fields are still there; so much, for "absolutely everything." Krauss is absolutely wrong.

Krauss should know better. The quantum fields do not pop in and out of existence. The fields exist eternally (in the atheist's philosophy) and everywhere. The amplitude of the fields (like the displacement of the vibrating strings on a violin or the membrane of a drum head) vary with time and position according to the relativistic wave equations, but that does not mean the fields are popping in and out of existence (anymore than the node on a violin string means the string has popped out of existence at the node). Krauss has made the embarrassing mistake of blurring objects and attributes of objects. One should also consider the simulation itself.   In describing the fields between the quarks, the simulation has program variables that hold the values of the fields at each instant and at each spatial point between the quarks -- those values can be zero at some points and times while the simulation is running.  But that does not mean the variables (and the fields they describe) in the program cease to exist!²   Those variables are programmed to obey a numerical representation of the relativistic field equations.  Well to be fair, if you observe Krauss' chartmanship you will have noted that the slide title is "Empty space not empty." That is loose (and self contradictory as written), but fits his atheist talking point. The slide should read: "Empty" Space is not Empty -- or, better: Space is not empty.

Finally, Krauss is wrong on so many levels when he talks about "empty" space. Consider: the four-dimensional space-time itself is something (even if it is a four-dimensional slice of a higher-dimensional "bulk" as in string theory -- the bulk, too, is something). The four-dimensional space is described by the metric (gravitational) field of general relativity. This field itself has the properties of distinguishing between the three spatial dimensions and time. It also mysteriously, and without explanation, encodes the value of the fundamental speed of light!  Finally, we should mention that the omnipresent Higgs field is also in Krauss' so-called "empty" space.  From the Wikipedia

  "The Higgs Field is an invisible energy field that exists everywhere in the universe" (emph. added).

So then, Krauss' "empty" space is most certainly something filled with a plurality of more unexplained eternal things interacting via equally mysterious "quantum interaction vertices." Krauss has swept a lot of mystery dirt underneath his atheist rug called "nothing." Unfortunately, Krauss' atheist philosophy is the stuff that passes as "science" and that permeates the writings of many of the current crop of pop celebrity atheist scientists; and fervently believed by many of the gullible public.

 "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools... Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator." (Romans 1:22,25)

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1 Richard Dawkins mistakenly states that Krauss has answered the theologian's "trump card": "Why something rather than nothing?" But no competent Christian apologist raises that question. Certainly no presuppositionalist would ask that question. That question, as stated, is nonsense.^↩
2 One should consider: If absolutely everything was removed between the quarks, as Krauss remarked, then there would be nothing for the program variables to simulate. There would be no need for a program, period!^↩

Douglas Wilson's Review of Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos"

Wilson wrote:

"Mind & Cosmos is subtitled 'Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.' When a book with this kind of subtitle comes out, written by a philosopher of Nagel’s caliber, and published by Oxford University Press, there should be no astonishment that it caused a stir. I wanted to note two very admirable traits of this book, and then engage at a couple of places where I think engagement could be profitable."

You can read Wilson's full review here.

I think I'll be adding this book to my reading list.  The "almost certainly false" is rather amusing.  Nagel raises the right question concerning the failure of materialism:  inability to account for consciousness, cognitive capacities, values and morals.  So, I'm curious to see what false "hope" he holds out for materialism -- but such qualification is typical of the skepticism of unbelieving professional philosophers  (it certainly keeps the profession going, for what that's worth).

Perusing the "Search Inside" feature at Amazon, I noted that Nagel (p. 4,5) is leaning to "neutral monism,"  a view posited by radical empiricist Ernst Mach.  Neutral monism is, at heart, a mere terminological shift -- it is just another more complicated version of attributive monism.  Some assert that neutral monism is the same as, or a very near kin of, idealism, phenomenalism, or panpsychism.   In any case, none of these can account for actual values and absolute morals (let alone unity/diversity, universals/particulars, individuals, space and time, among many others).

I plan to write on this version of "monism" in a future post. 

Update: The promised follow-up can be found here.

The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. The self-destruction of material monism.

A few weeks ago, I was contemplating why there are no atheist works on "systematic atheology"  (at least I was unaware of any.)  After all, there are many Christian works on systematic theology that lay out the basis and scope of Christian beliefs.   My interest in such a "systematic atheology" was that, should such a work appear, the self-contradictory nature of atheism would be laid bare -- straight from the horse's mouth. 

As it turns out, there has been an attempt, of sorts, in The Atheist's Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg.  The book lays out the hard-line implications of his particular denomination of atheism: material monism (matter is all there is) with scientism as his epistemological article of faith. Many of the absurdities of atheism are exposed to the light of day.   (And there is a final absurdity that Rosenberg says implicitly, but does not utter, which we will examine below.)  Some of the conclusions that follow from material monism (" a godless material reality" in which the only causation is physical causation) and which Dr. Rosenberg fully embraces are: 

• The only kind of  'mind' is a brain.
• There is no 'free will.' We are all robots moving according to the physical properties of matter.
• There are no objective morals of any sort.  Right, wrong, good and bad, they are all the same.

As Christians, we must say 'bravo' to Dr. Rosenberg!  If physics fixes everything then the above conclusions would be true.  His book is a brilliant self-refutation of atheistic material monism using its own presuppositions. . .and, thus, is TAG (Transcendental Argument for God) in brilliant display.

Dr. Rosenberg takes us down the same path on the implications of material monism that prominent presuppositional apologists Dr. Cornelius Van Til, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, and others have marked out before.   As well, some similar analysis has been posted in this blog.

Dr. James N. Anderson writes in his review of this book: 

"Christian philosophers have been developing and refining arguments for the existence of God since the earliest times, but it’s not often one comes across a convinced atheist making a powerful philosophical case for the existence of God. Yet that’s precisely what we find—quite contrary to the author’s intent—in Alex Rosenberg’s book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality."

Anderson's insightful review can be read at his blog.

I will add just a few observations.  A central tenet of presuppositional apologetics is that all non-Christian philosophical systems of thought (worldviews) are contradictory and reduce to absurdity, which Anderson discusses.  The coup de grace delivered by presuppositional apologetics is that non-Christian worldviews, when examined solely on the basis of their presuppositions, lead to the destruction of truth and knowledge.

Rosenberg's book promotes the conviction that only science leads to truth ("scientism").  He preaches with fervor the "truth" that everything consists of collections of fermions and bosons.  This is a scientific "truth."  Everything that is, or happens, is the result of laws of physics (properties of matter).  But then he asserts, after many chapters:

"Look, if I am going to get scientism into your skull, I have to use the only tools we've got for moving information from one head to another: noises, ink-marks, pixels.  Treat the illusion that goes with them like the optical illusions in Chapter 7.  This book isn't conveying statements.  It's rearranging neural circuits, removing inaccurate disinformation and replacing it with accurate information.  Treat it as correcting maps instead of erasing sentences." (p. 193. emph. added).

There are many falsehoods in that paragraph -- almost as many as there are words. (See Anderson's review, and his remarks on intentionality and aboutness.)   But the final epistemological suicide of material monism lies in these words: "This book isn't conveying statements."  And that is a really strange and fatal statement.  Here's why: statements (or propositions) are the carriers of truth value, which, from the implications of material monism, his book does not contain. . . a conclusion of material monism with which we wholeheartedly agree.

So then, Rosenberg has told us that his book contains no capacity to convey truth or knowledge (and that applies, as well, to: "This book isn't conveying statements.").  This is futility and the destruction of knowledge.  Nonetheless, Rosenberg tells us that "scientism" yields "truth," when by his own mouth he implies it doesn't.  Rosenberg's false metaphysics (material monism) supplies no basis for Rosenberg's false epistemology (scientism).

If material monism were true, then it would be false.  It is, therefore, false.

And that is the end of the matter.

Asking the wrong question.

At the end of the movie Collision, Hitchens was asked whether he believes there is “cosmic justice” at the end of time. Hitchens – being somewhat consistent with his materialist worldview – replied that there is none. However, this is not really the right question to ask him, because such a question presupposes that there is such a thing as justice and does not challenge Hitchens to account for justice on his presuppositions.

The question should be not whether there is such a thing as justice whose demands are not satisfied, but rather that in Hitchens' materialist atheism, the world is intrinsically and fundamentally amoral. There is no such thing as "right" and "wrong" inherent in physical processes, and, hence, there is no such thing as justice. Period.

Hitchens – when he attempts to attack Christianity as immoral – is appropriating absolute moral laws which would not exist according to his material atheism.

That was one point Cornelius Van Til made regarding unbelievers – they finance their worldview / philosophy using the borrowed capital of Christian theism. They oppose Christianity by adopting the truths of Christianity. However, such opposition is thereby self-defeating.

When Hitchens attempts to use logic/reason to attack Christianity, he is again using Christian capital to assail Christianity. Logic does not exist in the atheist's world of material monism.

Hitchens' materialist world is not only amoral, it is also a-logical, and a-mathematical. It is impossible to climb the ladder of physicalism -- in which every rung is physical causation via inviolable physical laws – and reach the non-physical “Platonic” heaven of logic and mathematics. Such realities cannot emerge from physical processes. There is an infinite, insurmountable gap.

The alternative, some form of Platonic atheist pluralism (as held by atheist Michael Martin)- in which there are equal absolutely independent ultimates of matter, logic, moral laws, and mathematics - is just as contradictory and incoherent.

Atheism – whether of the material monism variety or a godless pluralism – is irrational belief in the impossible. But more on that another time.