I recently wrote an
introductory article on the philosophy of Hans Jonas for a collection focussing
on new continental perspectives on bioethics. The editor, Darian Meacham,
suggested that I read Thomas Nagel’s Mind
and Cosmos. Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost
Certainly False (Oxford University Press 2012), because some of the ideas
in it seemed to correspond with those of Jonas. So that is what I did, and I
wasn’t disappointed. Just like Jonas, Nagel (cautiously) argues for a
teleological understanding of nature, even though he doesn’t seem to be aware
of Jonas’s work.
Nagel’s argument is
highly speculative, of course, but not entirely implausible, and I found it
interesting to learn that he was harshly criticised for it, notably by Simon
Blackburn who declared it “profoundly wrong-headed” and claimed that despite
his professed atheism, Nagel was playing into the hands of both religious creationists
and tough-minded scientists who will see Nagel’s book as yet another
confirmation of how useless and out of touch philosophers actually are: Blackburn on Nagel
Nagel’s heresy is to
question the reductionist and mechanistic neo-Darwinian account of the origin
and evolution of life and to shed doubt on the widely held assumption that the
appearance of life, consciousness, and reason can, in principle, adequately be
explained by it. Questioning common assumptions, however, can hardly be said to
be unphilosophical. And in this particular case I find doubt quite
understandable. That inanimate matter should have given rise to life at some
stage in the history of the universe is indeed astonishing enough and has so
far not been sufficiently explained. Subjectivity is even harder to account
for. That there are now beings in the world that can actually experience it,
that are conscious of that world and of themselves, and that can even reflect
on the nature of that world and aspire to understand it in its entirety, all
that we haven’t understood at all. And neither scientific materialism nor
standard evolutionary theory really allow for such an understanding. They
rather circumvent the problem by either denying the existence of consciousness
(as something distinct from, and not reducible to, matter), or its relevance,
or by taking it as a brute fact that requires no further explanation.
Nagel suggests that, in
order to make its appearance comprehensible, we need to think of mind as being (and
having always been) part of matter, not only in such a way that it allowed for
its emergence, but that it positively advanced it as an “unsurprising if not
inevitable consequence of the order that governs the natural world from within.”
(32) The mere possibility is not enough. We also need to understand how and why
it became actual.
In a certain way, of
course, all scientists who believe that the world can actually be (fully)
understood by our intellects, tacitly assume already that there is a natural
correspondence between our minds and nature: that its order is such that it can
be understood by minds like ours. But why should that be? Where does that
confidence come from? Why should we be able to form true judgments about the
world in the first place if all our capacities are owed to random mutations and
the selective pressures of the environment, especially given the scope of those
judgements? “Is it credible that selection for fitness in the prehistoric past
should have fixed capacities that are effective in theoretical pursuits that
were unimaginable at the time?” (74) Nagel thinks not.
One reason is this: If
it is to be expected that we will believe whatever is most conducive to our
survival, then we will have this
belief also if it is most conducive to our survival, independent of whether it
is true or not. And if the reason why we have our beliefs is not that they are
true, but that they are conducive to our survival, then believing (and having
convinced ourselves through the application of our ability to reason) that this is true in no way shows that it is
true, but just that believing it to be true is conducive to our survival. Evolutionary
naturalism thus “provides an account of our capacities that undermines their
reliability, and in doing so undermines itself.” (27) To escape this circle we would
need “not to discover a foundation that makes our knowledge unassailably secure
but to find a way of understanding ourselves that is not radically
self-undermining.” (25)
However, the argument
seems to rely heavily on the assumption that we are capable of forming a true picture of the world. Nagel finds it
undeniable “that our clearest moral and logical reasonings are objectively
valid” (31), and thinks that we should too. And it is of course difficult not
to trust them, especially our logical reasonings. We cannot even justify our
doubt without relying on reason. But is the unavoidability of that trust really
sufficient to demand that an acceptable account of the world explain the
existence of our capacity to reason in a way that is consistent with its
objective validity? I’m not sure. Reason, Nagel maintains, “connects us with
the truth directly.” (82) But does it really? I’m a bit hesitant to agree,
especially since Nagel seems to believe the same about practical reason. In other words, he is a moral (or more precisely
metaethical) realist who thinks that our moral judgements can be objectively
valid just as much as our theoretical judgements. “If I oppose the abolition of
the inheritance tax, it is because I recognize that the design of property
rights should be sensitive not only to autonomy but also to fairness.” (84)
Should they really? Is that a fact?
Is it true that property rights
should be sensitive to fairness? I don’t think morality has got much to do with
truth, even though we often talk as if it had. But that is hardly conclusive. When
Nagel shows himself “convinced that pain is really bad, and not just something
we hate” (110), I even have trouble to understand what this means. It seems to
me that if it weren’t something we hated, then it couldn’t be really bad, and
that we don’t really hate it because it is “really bad”, but rather because it
is painful. I don’t quite understand how, or what exactly, its alleged badness
adds to its painfulness.
I do think, though,
that Nagel is right to insist that the emergence of life and consciousness is
an astonishing fact that has not been adequately explained yet and is not
likely to ever be so within the established scientific framework. “Each of our
lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and
becoming aware of itself.” (85) Should this be purely accidental? Nagel finds
that hard to believe, and I do too. And he is also right to suggest that “an
explanation of the appearance and development of life must at the same time be
an explanation of the appearance and development of value” (121), because every
living thing asserts its own existence as valuable, and consequently there are
things that are good and things that are bad for it. In this sense I agree that
there is objective value. There may
also be in the sense that the emergence and development of life and
consciousness indicates that it is in some way better for there to be life and consciousness rather than not. But
if it is, in what way exactly? Better for whom, or for what?
