The Existential Project

We do things for reasons.  This is not quite an axiom, but it seems to be a pretty fair description of how most human behavior works, particularly "higher level" tasks.  I don't just build a house on a whim without any intention of ever using it.  Likewise, I think we study certain topics and ask certain questions for reasons.  I don't just wake up one morning and compulsively research the chemical make up of six different amino acids.  If I should ever find the desire to know such information (not very likely), there would be some reason motivating that quest.

This all, I think, follows from the second axiom I laid out.  We as people think about the world that we experience.  Thinking is a worthless activity if it doesn't make some sort of sense.  We don't think strings of meaningless syllables, we think words and sentences, we think in a way that we "understand," and wrapped up in that concept is the idea of coherence.  For us to meaningfully understand the world, to think rationally about it, we have to organize our thoughts in some way that makes coherent sense.  Sometimes that drives us to study something more, to ask questions that as of yet we don't have answers to, to engage in some sort of academic exercise to "fill in" gaps in our understanding of the world.  As a product of our observation, the questions that people will ask and seek the answers to are often very different from one person to the next, a reinforcement perhaps of the first axiom.

A very basic question that we might ask is "why?"  Why do we seek knowledge at all?  Why do we try to understand the world?  Why do we ask questions?  Why am I even asking this question? This "why" question I think is what justifies the philosophical enterprise.  Some have answered that we seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  That to me sounds like the pretentious self-justification of someone in an ivory tower with no connection whatsoever to the real world.  But perhaps I am just not profound enough a thinker.  A better answer seems to me to be that we seek an understanding of the world because that understanding helps us to do things in the world.  But what things exactly are we trying to do?  I teach a group of fourth graders, and when I ask them why they might want to go to college someday the answer is usually some derivative of "so we can get smart and make lots of money."  In their mind, knowledge aids us in acquiring wealth.  That is certainly not an uncommon conception.  But is it a good one?  To me it seems very shallow and self-absorbed.  Admittedly, this is my predisposition as a Christian toward a particular conception of ethics in which helping others is more important than acquiring wealth for myself.  Perhaps that conception is wrong, perhaps Nietzsche is right and such ethics only results in my weakening myself and shackling myself down.  Perhaps we posit instead that the reason we pursue knowledge is because it allows us to gain power and influence over other people.  One critique of knowledge offered by some Post-Modern thinkers is exactly along those lines- knowledge is just a tool used by the powerful to oppress the weak.  As a graduate student studying theology and philosophy, I have a bit of a hard time buying that one, but perhaps that is just self-serving.  Perhaps I am the oppressor and I resent someone calling my bluff.  Another suggestion might be that we seek an understanding of the world because it helps us to solve our problems, to fix things, to end conflicts, etc.  This was the battle cry of the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries.  If we look at history since then, two world wars, several genocides, and the atomic bomb later, it doesn't seem like many problems have been solved.  But perhaps I'm just being too cynical.  The most ancient proposal, and the one that I find the most compelling, is that we seek an understanding of the world because such an understanding allows us to be moral people, to live a moral life.  It is important to note that moral does not just mean for the ancients things like not lying or not killing your annoying neighbor and her cat (I don't have such a neighbor, just to allay any suspicions).  For them it is rooted in the idea of a "telos" a goal toward which we are moving.  We all have such a "telos," they would argue and the moral life is the one that steers us toward fulfilling that goal or purpose for our lives.  The critic will argue that anyone who believes such silliness is being overly spiritual.  Who can really believe that everything or everyone has a purpose?  That's just an ancient myth, our modern conceptions know better.  We can build atomic bombs now, we don't need to appeal to such stories to tell us how to live our lives.

The conclusion that I am about to reach (if I want to keep my new years resolution to make these posts shorter) is in some ways not a very happy one.  The conclusion is that because we are subjective, we cannot start off with a ready answer to this question.  There is not another axiom to be found here that would take the form of "the pursuit of knowledge is for purpose x."  That, it turns out, is one of the questions that we must each wrestle with as we attempt to make sense of the world.  What purpose does the knowledge we seek hold for us?  At its heart, however, I think this question pushes toward a deeper question: what sort of person am I that I want this knowledge?  What is it that I want to do that requires this understanding?  That question points toward a project we can call "existentialism"- the project of shaping our own existence, of determining the kind of person that we are going to be.  To do this requires that we have an understanding of the world and our place in it, it requires a "philosophy" in the very general terms that I have sketched it.  But it also requires that we take ownership for the shape of that philosophy, for the way in which we approach the world, for the knowledge that we seek.

An Alternative Take on Free Will

My apologies to anyone who reads this and finds it too technical. This is a more "philosophical" post than most that I have written lately, and its going to read more like a paper than a blog post.

A while back I wrote a post about the tension between free-will and determinism and the seemingly negative consequences both sides of this debate take us to when followed to their logical conclusions. Essentially, it seems to me that determinism logically implies a radical form of skepticism, and at the same time libertarian freedom seems to imply atheism and a lack of causality to the universe. Neither road seems particularly desirable, but I was then unaware of any potential solution.

Lately I have been reading quite a bit on ancient philosophy. Two thoughts have been in the background of this reading. First, I have often wondered if there is an inconsistency in ancient philosophy over the issue of free will. Most ancient philosophers conception of deity (I'm using this term loosely) is one of a completely transcendent deity whose being produces by emanation the world. This is Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" or Neo-Platonism's "Perfect Being." Many of these concepts have been adapted by Christians to form the ideas of Classical Theism- an omnipotent, omniscient God who transcends space and time. In modern terms we consider these ideas to imply determinism. However, in the ancient world, they firmly believed in free will. Is there a logical problem in the ancient systems here?

Another thing that has been in the background of my reading has been a belief that the questions asked by Modernist philosophers off track. For a more thorough discussion of what I think on this issue, look over this post. Basically, though, I think that Modern philosophy, which has replaced the ancient concept of "telos" with scientism, is self-defeating and absurd. Thus, I find the ancient concept of "telos"- that all things are striving toward an innate purpose within them, to be a very appealing concept for explaining not only the regularity of our scientific observations but also avoiding the absurdity of naturalistic scientism.

I think that this concept of "telos" has answered my first question about the consistency of ancient philosophy and provided a solution to the free will dilemma.

In a nutshell, here is how the concept of "telos" works: Everything has a "purpose" or a "goal" that is innate in it. This goal stems from the defining characteristics of the thing- a tree has the "telos" of being a tree- growing tall, sprouting limbs, making fruit, etc. If it doesn't do these things, we consider something to be wrong with the tree- it is defective, it doesn't do what trees do. This idea of innate "purpose" applies to everything, including humans. We have a "goal" of being a human, and maybe more specifically of being a particular kind of human. Its in our "DNA," so to speak, that we will be a certain way. And so subconsciously all our lives we work toward that end because that is what we are meant to be. It is our "telos." As a side note: from a more modern perspective, this is a very similar concept to Heidegger's Dasein (Being).

So far, this sounds very much like determinism. And in a way, it is a form of determinsim/compatibalism. However, I think there is a crucial difference from the more standard versions of compatibalism that prevents us from falling into the trap of skepticism that I have discussed earlier.

This "telos" is internal and subconscious. I don't consciously set out to be a human, I am one. I don't consciously decide that I will like ice-cream, I do. So our "telos," without our thinking about it, sets parameters on what we do and do not do. I don't breathe through gills underwater because as a human, that is simply something I do not do. And I don't eat other people because subconsciously without even having to think about it I believe that to be morally wrong as a human. Yet, specific actions are not really laid out by my "telos." Whether I will walk across the street or not is not really defined by my "telos." Either walking across or staying on this side of it are perfectly consistent with my being a human and being the kind of human that I am.

Lets use DNA as a metaphor again. DNA may define the kind of species an organism is and may define many particular traits of that organism. But it doesn't lay out every action the organism takes. Two oak trees may have very different layouts of their branches. Two children with the same parents may have very different traits. Even identical twins can have drastically different personalities. The cloned sheep Dolly doesn't do everything exactly the same way its clone-partner does, its life is somewhat different.

And so my "telos" may set parameters of who I am and what kind of person I am, but it also leaves a lot open to choice. Exactly how much so may be debatable, and I'm not going to get into that. But this means that ancient philosophers could be consistent in believing in a transcendent deity and in free will. The transcendent deity may impart "telos" on creation, a deterministic act, but this "telos" does not govern every individual action, it simply sets a course to be followed. Hence, I think the theist can consistently embrace both a belief that God ordains how the world will operate and that we participate in this freely. Thus, we neither have to be skeptics or atheists, nor do we have to be hard determinists or radical libertarians.

The Irrationality of Naturalism

The enlightenment and Modernist philosophy have posed a dramatic philosophical challenge to Christianity, with, for the first time in philosophical history, atheism becoming a dominant presupposition. Indeed, atheism seems the inevitable conclusion of Modernist philosophy. The problem, however, is that this results in a complete logical absurdity.

Modernist philosophy replaces the ancient concept of "telos" (the idea that all things are striving to fulfill a purpose) with naturalistic determinism: the regularity of the universe is explained by set natural laws. If we follow the naturalist thought process, this eliminates all supernatural existences- God, human souls, angels, etc.- and reduces us to a completely material universe governed by the physical laws. If this state of things is correct, then all things are completely deterministic. Under naturalism, this must also include the activities of our minds, which are natural entities. Thus our thoughts, desires, beliefs, etc. are all determined by the natural laws of the physical universe.

This description of our mental state results in a radical skepticism. If my thoughts and beliefs are merely the products of physical reactions that have been determined since the moment the universe came into existence then what reason do I have to trust that these beliefs are in any way sound? It does not seem that such a reason exists, and even if I could come up with such a reason that conclusion would also be reached only because of chemical reactions over which I had no control. This eventually results in an absurdity because even my beliefs in naturalism or the deterministic nature of the universe would also be subject to the same criticism. Ultimately then, I not only have no basis for knowing anything (the usual claim of skepticism), I actually do not know anything under naturalistic determinism.

This is certainly not an argument for Christianity. In fact, this could be used just as well by a pantheist mystic as by a Christian. What this does establish to me, though, is that if we want to maintain any claims to knowledge then we cannot embrace a fully naturalistic worldview. Even if we scrap naturalism, though, the question remains whether the modernist paradigm of science (which has an anti-supernatural balance and attempts to explain natural phenomenon according to set scientific laws) can be maintained without a naturalist conclusion. In other words, can we maintain Descartes dualism and claim that the natural world operates by fixed laws but somehow our minds are able to escape those laws (despite being attached to bodies that are subject to them)? This seems to be a very flimsy solution at best.

Instead, I think that we have to return to a more ancient way of looking at the universe and reinterpret Aristotle's concept of "telos." Christianity should have no problem adopting the idea that all things are working toward accomplishing an ultimate purpose. This idea also explains the regularity that science observes without moving toward a conclusion that is completely naturalistic and irrational.