MYSTERY

101
 MYSTERY
101
An Introduction
to the Big Questions
and the Limits
of Human Knowledge

Richard H. Jones
Cover art: Camille Flammarion, L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888).

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2018 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means
including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu

Production, Jenn Bennett

Marketing, Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jones, Richard H., 1951– author.

Title: Mystery 101 : an introduction to the big questions and the limits of human knowledge / Richard
H. Jones.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017008962 (print) | LCCN 2017050117 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438468228 (e-book) |
ISBN 9781438468211 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Knowledge, Theory of.
Classification: LCC BD201 (ebook) | LCC BD201 .J66 2018 (print) | DDC 121—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008962

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Preface
1. Philosophy of Mystery
2. Do We Create Our Own Mysteries?
3. Do We Know Anything at All?
4. What Is Reality?
5. Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
6. Why Is Nature Ordered?
7. Reductionism and Emergence
8. Does Science Dispel Mystery?
9. What of Current Mysteries in Physics and Cosmology?
10. What of Current Mysteries in Biology?
11. What Am I?
12. What Is Consciousness?
13. Do We Have Free Will?
14. Does God Exist?
15. Is There an Objective Meaning to Our Lives?
16. The Mystery of the Ordinary
Further Reading
Bibliography
Index
 Preface

Sooner or later, life makes philosophers of us all.

—Maurice Riseling

At one time or another, we have all pondered at least some of the Big
Questions of philosophy and science—Who am I? Why do I exist? Why does
anything exist at all? Many books attempt to supply answers to these
questions, but the most basic philosophical issue receives only scant
attention: Are we even in a position to answer such questions? I will examine
this basic question and support the unpopular view that we are not currently
in a position to answer the really Big Questions in philosophy and science,
and probably never will be. There are limits to human knowledge of one kind
or another that we simply cannot get around. This leads to agnosticism.
Agnosticism is commonly maligned as wishy-washy—a refusal to take a
stand on an issue due to lack of interest or intellectual cowardice. However,
agnosticism is a philosophically defensible stance, and I will maintain that it
is in fact the only intellectually honest position for us in our epistemic
situation concerning the Big Questions. In sum, the objective of this book is
to expose the limits to human knowledge in the area of the Big Questions,
thereby revealing that we should be more perplexed concerning the basic
nature of reality than we normally suppose.
The book is written as a collection of short introductions. My approach is
from a general analytic philosophical perspective rather than from one of the
more specific contemporary schools (e.g., pragmatism or process
philosophy). I presume some familiarity with philosophy, but not much.
I hope the positions taken here will provoke the reader to further reflection.
The only thing I distinctly remember from any of my high school science
classes is one day in physics class when we students were responding with
the correct answers from the book. The teacher stopped and stared at us for a
moment and then picked up a blackboard eraser and threw it against the wall.
We students looked at each other, wondering what we had done wrong. Then
the teacher said: “Why did that eraser continue to move after it left my hand?
If you think it’s obvious and doesn’t need an explanation, then you are not
thinking like scientists, and I want you to think like scientists, not just parrot
back answers!” Then he gave us a brief lecture on answers to that question
from Aristotle to Newton. I want this book to be like that flying eraser. I hope
you start to think about the Big Questions if you haven’t already done so or
honestly to examine your own deeply held assumptions and any answers you
have already given.
 1
Philosophy of Mystery

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion
which stands at the cradle of all true art and science. Whoever does not know it and can no
longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
—Albert Einstein

hat don’t we currently know about our situation in the world? And
W what can’t we know in principle? What is unknowable in principle
about reality constitutes philosophical mysteries. These are not historical
mysteries that we are not in a position today to answer, nor are they like the
mysteries in murder novels—they are mysteries about the fundamental nature
of reality that we do not currently know even how to approach. Whether we
are in the position to crack the mysteries surrounding the Big Questions of
philosophy and science is the subject of this book.
One might argue that all philosophical issues are mysteries since basic
issues in philosophy today are unresolved—individual philosophers may
believe they have resolved the issue of, say, the relation of our mind to our
body, but their opponents are not convinced and instead advance well-argued
counterpositions. However, many philosophical issues do not touch the Big
Questions about being human and about the natural world that most people
with a philosophical bent think of when they contemplate the reality of their
lives and our world; instead, philosophers today most often busy themselves
with more technical matters—such as, whether propositions or possibilities
are real—that are at best only very distantly related to the Big Questions.
When people reflect on their existence and keep pushing for deeper
explanations, they end up with these central mysteries:
 • Where did we come from, and why are we here? Why do we suffer? Do our lives have an
objective meaning? Are our moral, intellectual, and aesthetic values objective parts of reality,
or are they only our own creations?
• What is fundamentally real in a human being? Is our apparent “consciousness” really nothing
but material events? Do we survive death?
• Are all actions determined by physical forces alone, or do we have free will?
• Do we have any genuine knowledge of reality as it exists in itself, or do our claims even in
science merely reflect our cultural or personal interests?
• Does a creator god or other alleged transcendent realities exist?
• Why does anything exist at all?

This book will identify today’s key mysteries and some of the answers
given by philosophers, but its main thrust is a deeper philosophical question:
Are we capable of supplying well-grounded answers to these questions, or at
least of reducing them to more manageable problems? Or are these questions
we are posing questions that we simply cannot answer? That is, the objective
here is not to canvas all the positions today on a given mystery and try to
determine which is currently the best option, but to determine whether we
have the mental and technologically enhanced capacities to dispel the
mystery, at least in principle. For example, when it comes to the “meaning of
life,” no particular answer will be defended here; rather, the issue here is
what that question means exactly, and are we in a position to know whether
there is in fact a meaning of life? In short, this book asks whether we can
answer the Big Questions at all. In that way, this is a work in
metaphilosophy.

Mystery and Knowledge

The Big Questions provoke emotions connected to a sense of mystery—
wonder, awe, and humility before reality. But mystery relates to our claims of
knowledge. Mysteries arise from our attempts to understand and explain the
world and our lives. Thus, they are products of our inquiring into what is real.
The sense of philosophical mystery is an intellectual reaction to what we do
not know. It does not come merely from ignorance—that is, the lack of
knowledge or evidence—or from simply assuming that there is more to
reality than we currently know. This sense of mystery can arise even if
science provides answers to all the questions of how a phenomenon occurs:
we may thoroughly understand all the steps and mechanisms by which a seed
becomes a blooming flower and still wonder why reality is set up to do that
and why we have a mind that can comprehend it. A starry night or the birth of
a child may produce similar reactions—the “why” of the events remains after
all the “how” questions have all been answered in a way that explaining how
a magic trick works does not.
Not knowing something need not provoke a sense of mystery if we think
that we know how generally to search for an answer or at least how to
address the problem. Nor are philosophical “why” mysteries inherently
religious—that is, they need not lead to a religious reaction of answering the
questions in terms of a god or another transcendent reality. The majesty of
the universe can cause atheists such as Carl Sagan to marvel at being alive on
a planet like ours in a galaxy and universe like ours. Even when the “why”
type mysteries do not provoke any sense of awe, there is still an almost
visceral, “felt” quality to a sense of mystery that ordinary unanswered
questions do not provoke. It is not merely the trivial point that there is always
more to learn about virtually anything (including ourselves)—it is a sense
that the true significance of something is being missed and that we cannot
grasp it. That is, we have a sense that there is something more of significance
about something that is as yet unknown and that at present we do not know
how even to address trying to comprehend it. Problems get solved or at least
diminished with study, but mysteries seem to get only greater and more
ingrained in reality the more clearly that we see they are there.

Mystery versus Problems

Problems present matters that we do not know but that we think we know
how to tackle—we may not know the answer today, but we know how to
determine an answer through reasoning and experience. Problems may be
difficult to solve—or even impossible to solve as a practical matter—but at
least we have an idea of how to proceed against them. Thus, there are many
issues in science that are properly labeled “problems,” even if we do not have
the technology or mathematics to solve them today. Mysteries, on the other
hand, present greater difficulties. They are issues that we have more trouble
grasping intellectually. We do not know how to get a handle on them, or how
to formulate fruitful questions, or even how to approach them. Thus, with
mysteries something is incomprehensible and inexplicable—something
seems to remain hidden and to defy our attempts at understanding and
explanation. We may well not possess the conceptual apparatus to see how to
grasp a mystery, and thus we may have difficulty even in articulating what
the mystery is. Such mysteries would then be “brute facts” for us—that is,
things for which we are incapable of providing any further explanation, and
thus things we simply must accept unexplained no matter how arbitrary they
may seem.
Thus, the basic criterion for a philosophical mystery is our inability to
know how to attack something unknown—a mystery is a puzzle about reality
that we, either currently or permanently, do not know even how to address.
We may never reach the far side of our galaxy, and so there may be many
questions concerning our own galaxy, let alone the rest of the universe, that
may remain forever unanswered, but this lack of knowledge does not grab us
existentially and thus does not constitute a philosophical mystery. However,
theories that postulate “multiple universes” do pull at us as a mystery: the
possibility of entirely different universes affects our existence in a way that
simple ignorance about other parts of our own universe does not. So too, we
may speculate wildly. A classic example is H.G. Wells’s suggestion that our
entire universe may be only a molecule in a ring on a gigantic hand in some
larger universe. Such fantasies do not provoke a sense of not knowing
something that is actually real and so does not qualify as a genuine mystery.
They remain a product of our imagination untied to anything empirical. But
speculations around the edges of scientific theories may broach subjects that
we think we should be able to master and thus may present the possibility of
mystery.
Something may be an ontic mystery—something in the world that is itself
inherently unknowable or paradoxical. Or something may be an epistemic
mystery—something that lies beyond our ability to grasp but that otherwise is
not mysterious in itself and thus knowable by beings with a different set of
cognitive abilities or in a position transcending the natural universe. Our
uncertainty by itself does not indicate which type of mystery may be involved
or whether the issue may simply be a currently unresolved problem. So too,
something may be an epistemic mystery to one person but not to another.
What is a mystery also changes over time as our knowledge expands. But the
subject for this book is what remains mysterious today generally in a
scientifically informed culture.
Since mystery is a matter of our knowledge and understanding, one may
think that all mysteries are epistemic and not ontic. Of course, there would be
no ontic mysteries to the natural world for an omniscient creator god: such a
being would presumably know all the basic aspects of the natural world. But
mysteries may persist for all beings within the phenomenal universe, no
matter what their mind or sensory apparatus is. That is, there may be aspects
of the natural world that any finite beings may not be equipped to solve. Nor
is it clear that all of the natural world must be expressible consistently in at
least some conceptual system. Thus, there may be brute facts not only for
human beings but for all beings existing within the natural universe. Such
mysteries would be ontic in nature, not merely epistemic.
Either way, identifying something as a mystery is a conclusion that we are
lacking knowledge where we think that something significant exists but that
we are stuck on how to conquer that gap in our picture of reality. Declaring
something to be a mystery does not give us any knowledge at all of the
subject that we are trying to grasp—it only designates an area where our
inquiries are stymied. We cannot say of something “It’s a mystery” and
believe we have understood or explained anything. Mystery is not an
explanation and cannot be used to explain any phenomena or another mystery
—it is just a blank where we want knowledge. In sum, it is a gap in our
knowledge in which we believe something important dwells and that we
would very much like to fill but cannot.
“How” mysteries may arise in science concerning the workings of nature.
And since philosophical “why” mysteries concern the significance of a
natural or human phenomenon, science may prompt “why” mysteries
concerning why the world is set up the way it is. This may also lead to
mysteries in metaphysics. Science has no direct control over metaphysical
questions, although it has an indirect bearing since metaphysics must also
account for the best current scientific findings. Chief among the metaphysical
mysteries is why there is anything at all rather than nothing. The other major
area of “why” mysteries relates to existential responses to our lives.
Questions of meaning are foremost here and quickly lead to the entire
question of whether transcendent realities exist and affect our lives.
Such philosophical mysteries arise at the limits to our knowledge. This
raises the prospect of permanent limitations to our abilities to understand
reality. Mysteries may point to aspects of reality that we either have no access
to or that we are apparently unable to wrap our minds around. However,
apparent mysteries may only be puzzles that we ourselves create by how we
currently conceptualize phenomena and therefore by our questions being
misguided. Many philosophers see all alleged mysteries as such misguided
puzzles that will be dispelled either by science or by a conceptual
clarification through philosophical analysis. But genuine mysteries are
questions we cannot answer either because of the very nature of reality or
because of limitations on our ability to comprehend or analyze reality. They
are left standing after all scientific and philosophical analyses are exhausted.
Thus, there are several possibilities: perhaps there is no answer to a given
question; perhaps we cannot even know if there is an answer or not; perhaps
there is an answer, but we are incapable of knowing it because of our
cognitive limitations; perhaps we simply do not know the answer at present
but will eventually solve the problem. This in turn presents problems about
problems: How do we know that we are currently asking questions that no
amount of human ingenuity will ever be able to answer? How do we know at
present what is a genuine mystery and what is a solvable puzzle? How do we
know we are not artificially generating a false mystery by misconceptualizing
a situation? In the case of genuine mysteries, are we so enwrapped in certain
problems that we cannot get any distance from them to examine them as
phenomena distinct from ourselves? That is, if we cannot separate ourselves
from a problem, how can we ever explain it? Will we ever be in a position to
answer definitively that something is or is not a mystery?

Identifying Mysteries
Labeling a mystery may give the illusion of understanding it. Naming a
problem does help us focus and organize our attention, but labeling a problem
only identifies the problem and does not increase our understanding in any
way. The method in science for resolving a problem is to “seek the causes.”
Explanation in science is often equated with the ability to predict a
phenomenon’s occurrence, but more than a thousand years of accurate
predictions apparently confirmed the erroneous Ptolemaic cosmology. Thus,
consensus has no authority: it does not necessarily mean that we are
converging on the truth. Equally important, whether prediction is always
needed for a scientific explanation is open to question—geologists can
explain earthquakes even though their predictions are only very rough. And it
is very hard to see prediction as even possible in the case of metaphysical
mysteries. Explanation more generally is a matter of giving a reason for
believing something that is the case should be the case—providing an
account that “makes sense” of a phenomenon to us and puts to rest our
curiosity for a “why” or a “how.” In our everyday lives, we do not look for an
ultimate explanation of something; rather, we tend to rest satisfied once we
find any connection to something that we take to be unproblematic. With
mysteries, however, we do not have that option. We must reach a point where
we believe that we have reached the ultimate justification for believing
something and where no further explanation seems to us to be needed or even
possible. Only when we are thoroughly satisfied that we have reached the
bottom do we think that we have finally understood something that we
previously found mysterious and thus no mystery remains. But this means
that a resolution depends on our feeling content with an explanation—further
study of a phenomenon or an advance in science may upset that contentment
and lead to new bafflement. Thus, finding mysteries and defusing them can
be open ended—what is mysterious and what is not mysterious can change
with history.
Whether a particular conundrum is a solvable problem or a genuine
mystery is not always obvious even after extensive study. History is full of
examples of problems that were once deemed philosophical or theological
mysteries that ended up being amenable to scientific analysis. Today perhaps
what seems mysterious may be dispelled in the future by a new conceptual
approach to the subject being studied; that is, if we conceptualize an issue
differently, we may be able to formulate answerable questions and thereby
enable science or philosophy to move forward. Thus, some things that seem
mysterious to us today because our current reasoning cannot penetrate them
may not be an epistemic mystery for all sentient beings or eventually even for
ourselves.
Thus, declaring something to be “in principle beyond our understanding” is
always risky. Perhaps there are no permanent, indefeasible mysteries, as
many philosophers argue, even if there are no prospects for resolving a
particular mystery at present. However, the starting point for addressing
philosophical mysteries is our current reasoning and empirical study.
Theologians may start with revelations, but to address mystery
philosophically we cannot take that approach. Any conclusion that something
is a mystery is the end of a discussion, not the occasion for invoking a god.
(Whether revelations or invoking a god can dispel mysteries will be an issue
in chapters 5 and 14.) It is affirming that there are limits to what we can know
while believing that there are important aspects of reality yet to know.
Identifying something as a potential philosophical mystery will depend on the
circumstances of each subject-matter, but in all cases a conclusion that there
is a mystery will reveal limitations on our abilities to know—not merely
limitations on our current technology, but something that we cannot properly
grasp at all. Our capacity to tackle basic questions may well be meager. If so,
then some mysteries are indefeasible—matters that our finite minds currently
and perhaps permanently cannot master. There would then be limits to our
knowledge that we simply cannot pass.

Mysteries Today
It will be maintained here that mysteries surround our knowledge of
ourselves and of the universe—in fact, that our big picture of things is
permeated with mystery. We do not know if some well-formed questions
have unknowable answers or no answer at all. This is certainly not to
disparage the genuine knowledge of reality that we do have—it is not to
claim “All you know is wrong!” Nor is it to suggest that we curtail
philosophy or science in any way in order to preserve a domain for some
mystery in our lives. Philosophy and science should be pushed as hard and as
far as we can, and anyone who would attempt to limit them should not be
listened to. Nevertheless, even if philosophy and science advance as far as is
humanly possible, some genuine mysteries to reality still appear to remain—
we cannot demystify reality totally no matter how hard we try.
But it must be noted that people generally resist any mystery in their lives
—our minds try to explain anything unfamiliar to keep puzzles away so that
we can proceed with our daily work. So too, people who are not
philosophically minded can simply ignore the whole matter and proceed with
their lives undisturbed. (It is worth remembering what Sören Kierkegaard
said: one way God punishes people is by making them philosophers.)
Moreover, it must also be noted that today philosophers in general hate
mysteries: all legitimate questions of reality can in principle be answered
either by science or by philosophical analysis. To them, claiming “It’s a
mystery!” is defeatist. Granted, the conclusion that something is a mystery
does end conversations and thus leads only to silence—again, a mystery is
not an explanation of anything but only an indicator of a hole in our
knowledge where we think something important should be. For many
philosophers, a mystery is at best only an attempt to put a positive spin on our
ignorance, and to discuss it further only shows a willingness to plunge
forward into something that we admit we cannot know. At worst, mysteries
are an admission of the defeat of the intellect or an attempt to obfuscate
something that can be addressed clearly and defused—any question is
meaningless if we cannot know how even to begin to address it, and so any
question leading to a claim of mystery can be dismissed out of hand. Thus,
the place to begin to determine whether the Big Questions end in mystery is
to examine how philosophers have dealt with mysteries in the past.
 2
Do We Create Our Own Mysteries?

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating,
and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
—Bertrand Russell

History of Mystery in Philosophy

Socrates can be credited with making us aware of our own ignorance in
philosophical matters. In the Theaetetus, Plato has Socrates say that
wondering about something is the point where philosophy begins. It is
realizing that we do not actually understand what seemed unproblematic. To
Socrates, what was “self-evident” to his fellow Athenians was ripe fodder for
analysis. To Plato, we should remain in the state of wondering about things
since this opens up inquiry—it is an unsettling state, but we should remain
open to the inscrutable in the everyday world. Plato’s student Aristotle also
stated in his Metaphysics: “It is owing to their wonder that men both now
begin and first began to philosophize.” But Aristotle advocated the
countervailing trend of closure: ending wonder by finding the causes of the
subject of our wonder. He valued wonder only as a preliminary step—wonder
is ultimately eliminated by knowledge.
Aristotle’s position came to dominate Western thought. By the time of
Thomas Aquinas, remaining in a state of wonder and amazement was only a
sign of sloth: we should keep pressing until we know all the causes except the
one unknowable cause (God). By the beginning of the modern period, René
Descartes listed wonder in The Passions of the Soul as the first of all
passions, but he too insisted that this was only a means for gaining
knowledge of things and that an excess of wonder is always bad—one stuck
in astonishment is not apt to investigate causes. And he believed that his
method of analysis would replace all wonder with comprehension. He
thought that those who understood his work would see that in the end there is
nothing at which to marvel, and thus wonder would cease: his doctrine of
“clear and distinct” perception implied that if we understood a thing at all we
understood it completely.
Descartes’s search for certainty and clarity shaped the modern
philosophical quest: since the Age of Enlightenment, a campaign to banish all
mystery from the world has been waged in the West. The objective is to
maximize our vision and minimize mystery. Of course, many philosophers
continue to wonder at the world. For example, Immanuel Kant wondered at
“the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” But the anti-
mystery sentiment of most analytic philosophers of the last hundred years is
expressed by the logical positivist Moritz Schlick: “No meaningful problem
can be unsolvable in principle”; “a genuine question is one for which an
answer is logically possible”; “in principle there are no limits to our
knowledge”; “there is no unfathomable mystery in the world.” He could still
maintain that “the more we know of the world the more we shall marvel at it”
and that “if we should know its ultimate principles and its most general laws,
our feeling of wonder and reverence would pass all bounds,” but nevertheless
he believed that all mysteries will be banished under the glare of reason. Any
real question will have a logically possible solution, and scientists—at least
in principle—will be able to find it. All we have to do is to formulate the
right question with the appropriate concepts. Conversely, if scientists cannot
possibly answer a question, there was no real question there in the first place.
The only limits to our knowledge are the practical limits of science. To
logical positivists, the alleged deep philosophical mysteries of reality do not
fall into that category because no observation could in principle solve them—
e.g., how could we possibly tell if the world is ultimately mind or matter, and
what would it matter to us if we could tell? There is nothing “unsayable”
about the real world, and thus no genuine mysteries.
But the positivists’ solution failed: they never succeeded in reformulating
scientific theories into sentences about sense-experience alone with no
theoretical commitments, and without being able to do that, their way of
dealing with mysteries rang hollow. Trying, in effect, to produce a new
language in which metaphysical questions could not be formulated failed.
However, the idea that all mysteries are to be clarified by philosophers and
the remaining empirical matters are to be resolved by scientists did prevail.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein said in the preface to his Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus: “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one
cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” In the body of the work, he states:
“When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put
into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is
also possible to answer it.” “Everything that can be known can be expressed
in the propositions of science.” And he ended the Tractatus with the famous
last line: “What we cannot speak about we must consign to silence.” This did
not prevent Wittgenstein from expressing “wonder at the existence of the
world,” although he thought this expression was a misuse of language
(because he believed that we cannot imagine the world not existing). The
philosophers’ job was to solve the conceptual problems resulting from, to use
Wittgenstein’s phrase from his Philosophical Investigations, “the
bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” Philosophical
questions are of the form “I am in a muddle; I don’t know my way,” and the
purpose of philosophy is “to show the fly the way out of the bottle.” Thus, the
objective was not to offer a solution to a mystery but simply to show that it
never existed in the first place.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the philosophical analysis of
ordinary language in Anglo-American philosophy was going strong.
Certainly, ill-formed questions lend themselves to being clarified and then
revised or discarded. To give a simple example, consider the old question,
“What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?” This
can be easily resolved by a philosophical analysis: if there is an irresistible
force in reality, then by definition there cannot be any immovable objects—
anything can be moved; conversely, if there is an immovable object, then
there cannot be irresistible forces. Thus, the two cannot meet—if the one
thing exists, then the other cannot—and hence the question of what happens
if they meet is only a muddle. The question may sound meaningful, but it is
as meaningless as asking “If 2 + 2 = 4, what happens when 2 + 2 = 5?” Once
the muddle is cleared up, nothing remains, and the apparent mystery
vanishes.
Thus, that question had an implicit contradiction revealed by philosophical
analysis. For a simple example of how science and philosophy work together
in an analysis, consider another old question: “Does a tree falling in the
woods with no one around make a sound?” This comes down to what we
mean by “sound”—if we mean “the generation of sound waves,” then of
course the falling tree makes a sound; if we mean “the sensation resulting
from the impingement of sound waves on an ear drum,” then of course no
sound is generated (the sound waves simply dissipate unheard). All that is left
after the analysis are scientific accounts of the generation of sound waves and
the generation of the sensation of sound in a person and a decision on how to
use the word “sound.”
Under ordinary language analysis, all alleged mysteries once again would
be reduced to empirical problems for scientists or conceptual problems for
philosophers—all legitimate questions would be answered. That is, the
alleged misuse of ordinary language was seen as the cause of philosophical
problems, and the philosopher’s task was to point out the confusion—and the
alleged mysteries would then evaporate. Unfortunately, the ordinary language
movement also did nothing to resolve mysteries: the Big Questions have not
proved to be amenable to such dissolution. The mind/body problem and free
will were especially popular targets, but the philosophical community finally
accepted that these issues, like the other Big Questions, required substantive
arguments.

Mystery in Philosophy Today

Nevertheless, the negative attitude toward mysteries persists today. For
example, Daniel Dennett states that “[a] mystery is a phenomenon that people
don’t know how to think about—yet.” Mysteries, he claims, are tamed once
we know how “to tell the misbegotten questions from the right questions.”
Alleged mysteries are still divided into two groups: empirical puzzles that
scientists either will solve or will at least reduce to “in principle” solvable
remainders, and philosophical mistakes generated by our conceptual systems
that philosophers will unravel. All that is required is the proper analysis.
Thus, the only legitimate unanswerable questions about reality are those that
scientists as a practical matter cannot address, but nothing remains obscure in
the sense of exceeding our ability to comprehend in principle. We may still
feel awe and astonishment about some phenomena or reality itself, but all
legitimate questions about reality will have been tamed.
However, there is a surprising lack of consensus among professional
philosophers today on any of the Big Questions.1 As Peter van Inwagen
notes: “Disagreement in philosophy is pervasive and irresoluble.” And
philosophers also change their mind on major issues, as with Antony Flew
over whether there is a transcendent deistic source to the natural world. This
does not mean that there has been no progress on addressing the Big
Questions or that any of the Big Questions are necessarily mysteries—
perhaps some philosophical positions maintained today are correct and
perhaps arguments may be forthcoming that will convince most opponents.
Certainly, the disputants do not take the lack of consensus as a sign of
mystery—each believes that he or she and like-minded colleagues have
solved a particular alleged mystery or at least have made important strides
toward cracking it. But the field is divided up into competing camps rejecting
the others and defending their own claims. The competing answers do help to
clarify current issues, but the relative lack of progress toward any consensus
does suggest that these issues are not simple problems. (And remember the
Ptolemaic astronomy problem: consensus does not guarantee moving toward
the truth. Here, closure may be no more than a way to quiet our questioning
mind rather than the truth.) In science, there are empirical methods to resolve
conflicts, and disputes usually are eventually resolved as long as further
research is possible. But philosophy has no resolution protocols, and the lack
of any way to resolve the disputes may mean that we are stuck with
mysteries.
Still, the prevailing view among philosophers today, to the extent they
think of mysteries at all, is that there cannot be ontic mysteries: mystery is
obviously only our problem—it is a matter of our lack of an ability to know
and understand. Epistemic mysteries may remain but only because of the
limitations to our mental and technological capacities. On the other hand,
perhaps everything is in fact comprehensible with our rationality and
technology—since we are a product of nature, our rationality may eventually
be able to unravel all of it. If so, it is only a matter of time before we know
everything fundamental about reality. Either way, for most philosophers
nothing is truly mysterious about reality itself: it must be rational—how
could reality have any intrinsic mysteries or paradoxes?
Few books or articles have been written on the subject in philosophy since
the rise of logical positivism. Indeed, mysteries are seldom mentioned in
most works in epistemology and metaphysics, even just to mention
unraveling one. (One exception: the term “mysterians” was applied as an
insult by the opponents to one position in the mind/body field, but advocates
of that position happily adopted it.) Part of the problem is simply that
mystery is not a subject for direct assault—it is the residue remaining after an
analysis. Philosophers cannot get the type of closure that they like to get in
their arguments when the topic is so murky. Thus, the very idea of “mystery”
has fallen into disfavor.

Conceptualization and Mystery

However, the analytic philosophers’ assault on mystery does raise an
interesting question: do we in fact create mysteries where there are none
simply by the way we conceptualize situations? Concepts are innately vague,
and this can lead to unanswerable questions. For example, should a given
stone be classified as a “pebble” or a “rock”? Or the “paradox of the heap”:
how many straws can we remove from a bale and still have a “bale”? Or
consider the ship of Theseus, the legendary founder of Athens, that the
Athenians kept in good repair: if we replace broken parts of a ship one by
one, when do we no longer have the original ship? What if the original ship
was insured and the ship now consisting entirely of new parts is in a wreck—
does the insurance company have to pay? What if someone builds a ship by
refashioning all the discarded pieces—which ship is now insured? Perhaps
pushing philosophical analysis on any subject far enough leads to all things
looking fuzzy and mysterious.
We do create puzzles here, but no one considers these to be real mysteries
—they are only products of, for example, applying our discrete “digital”
concepts to a continuous “analog” world, and no one but philosophers linger
over the resulting problems. But conceptualizations can present deeper
problems. Consider how our conceptualizations play a role in seemingly
straightforward empirical questions. For example, the question “What is the
longest river in the world?” seems simple enough—we just get a globe and
measure all the rivers in the world and see which one is longest. As things
stand, the Nile River is the longest. However, Mark Twain in Life on the
Mississippi mentions something relevant here. The Mississippi was originally
mapped by Europeans north to south from its headwaters in Minnesota down
to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, when the Mississippi met a big
body of water flowing in from the west, that body was considered a separate
river—the Missouri. But if the Mississippi had been mapped south to north,
then when the mappers reached the confluence of the two bodies of water the
mappers would have considered the Mississippi as turning west since that
was the larger branch. This means there would be no Missouri River but only
a much longer Mississippi and a “new” river heading north (perhaps called
the “Minnesota River”), and the revised “Mississippi River” would then be
the longest river in the world. Thus, how we conceptualize the situation—
how we label the rivers—determines the answer to an apparently simple
empirical question.2
Or consider the famous paradoxes of the ancient Greek Zeno. By
arguments that are now familiar he showed, for example, that a rabbit, no
matter how fast, could not catch up to a tortoise with a head start, or that an
arrow shot from a bow could not move. We know from experience that these
situations are not so, but the point is that we can conceptualize things in such
a way that shows them to be impossible—we create a false “mystery” by how
we conceptualize a situation. This leads to an unsettling question: how do we
know that our conceptualizations and questions are not so totally misguided
that they create problems where there are none, just as with these paradoxes?
Perhaps, as many philosophers believe, all philosophical mysteries are in fact
no more than by-products of our misrepresenting reality, and all we need to
do is to devise concepts that better reflect the nature of reality. We can revise
concepts—for example, in the Copernican revolution, new meanings were
given to earlier astronomical terms—and that may be all that is needed to
dispel deep-seated mysteries. In the mind/body field, perhaps what we need
to do is to devise a conception of ourselves that does not reflect a dualism of
“mind” and “body” and our sense of not understanding will disappear.
More generally, what we consider things to be depends on how we
conceptualize things, and when a paradox arises we may be able to figure out
another conceptual scheme that avoids the conflict of ideas crystalized in the
paradox. For example, the ancient Egyptian word for “south” literally means
“to go upstream” and the word for “north” means “to go downstream,”
reflecting the northerly flow of the Nile River. So when Egyptian soldiers
encountered the Euphrates River, which flows south, they had to call it,
paradoxically, “that circling water that goes downstream in going upstream.”
The physical situation itself was obviously not paradoxical—the soldiers
could clearly see the direction that the Euphrates was flowing—but their
language simply could not handle what they saw. We now have conceptual
systems that consistently handle the situation with more abstract concepts of
“north” and “south” that are not tied to local phenomena and thus avoid the
paradox caused solely by the ancient Egyptian language.
This suggests that at least some paradoxes are of our own making: they are
only the result of how we conceptualize situations. But all paradoxes arise
only when our concepts conflict with each other, not necessarily because of
the way reality is. Our ideas then seem to produce absurdities. Paradoxes
often occur at the limits of knowledge on a given subject. They can also
occur directly from our conceptual systems, as shown by the paradoxes of
self-reference—the most famous being the Liar’s Paradox (“This sentence is
false”—if it is true, then it is false; if it false, then it is true). Paradoxes in
science lead to attempts at reconceptualizing reality. But if we cannot get
around a paradox, we are left with a mystery: reality may in fact involve
paradoxes or perhaps we simply cannot see reality clearly enough or think
deeply enough to develop a system that circumvents the problem. If we are
left with a paradox, how can we tell if the problem lies with reality itself or is
only a by-product of our all-too-human conceptualizations? Conversely, are
we routinely imposing consistent order where there in fact is none?
We accept the Aristotelean laws of identify (x is x and not not-x),
noncontradiction (nothing can be both x and not-x), and the excluded middle
(anything is either x or not-x with no third possibility), and we think that a
contradiction in a statement about the world indicates that one of two
conflicting claims must be wrong. That is, we believe that the universe
cannot contain paradoxes because we believe that any self-contradictory
statement cannot be true. We would not know what to believe in a self-
contradictory description of anything. If someone said, “Both the Mets and
Yankees won last year’s World Series,” what are we supposed to believe
when we know that only one team can win it? But why are we unable to
accept two halves of a contradiction simultaneously? Is it because of the way
our brain works, and so we are incapable of thinking any other way? Or is
just the rules of how any language must operate to be intelligible? Or is it
because reality itself cannot be contradictory?
For most philosophers, the laws of logic are only a matter of the relation of
our statements—they are a restriction on our statements and do not constrain
reality in any fashion. Claiming that something is both “x” and “not-x” tells
us nothing whatsoever about that thing or about anything else and thus is
meaningless. But philosophers routinely draw a consequence of this without
any discussion: reality must be logically consistent—it must conform without
any contradictions to some set of concepts that we can devise. However, it is
not clear why reality must conform to our concepts without contradictions or
how we can be certain that contradictions among our ideas must be only the
product of our conceptual systems.3 Why must reality be capable of being
fitted consistently into some conceptual scheme that beings with our
particular brains can devise? In fact, the consequence of the laws of logic
being only a matter of our statements is that logic in no way compels
anything to be logical or prohibits reality from being illogical. Perhaps there
may be aspects of reality that lie outside of any conceptual horizon that any
beings existing inside the natural universe could conceive. Indeed, many
philosophers throughout history have accepted limitations to our ability to
understand reality. For Plato, the fact that we inhabit an imperfect material
world limits our ability to comprehend the real world of the realm of perfect
forms: we are like prisoners in a cave who can see only moving shadows on
the cave walls caused by real people walking by a fire—we cannot see the
reality causing the shadows. So too, for Immanuel Kant (as discussed in the
next chapter): our mental abilities cannot comprehend the world-in-itself. But
it is not clear how we can resolve this matter of logic and reality.
One final issue about the nature of conceptualizations must be noted: may
our conceptualizations not only create apparent mysteries but also shield us
from a genuine mystery? That is, do we supply a conceptualization or
explanation to what is in fact a genuine ontic mystery that only makes us
erroneously feel that we understand it? Do our conceptions obscure much of
reality? For example, do reductive explanations completely miss nonphysical
factors at work in nature? This leads to a troubling bottom line: even if we
think that we have solved a mystery or reduced it to a solvable problem by a
reconceptualization of a situation, how can we be sure? Or does our perennial
view of something that never seemed mysterious miss something vital that
would expose a deep mystery? Perhaps future conceptualizations will open
up new mysteries. And does this mean that our conceptualizations are too
impermanent to determine today whether there are genuine mysteries to
reality? Do we simply open and close “mysteries” by our very fragile
conceptualizations? Or, are all human beings endowed with an unrevisable
set of concepts that conditions us to see things as paradoxical when there are
none? Does an irresolvable paradox or other mystery indicate something
profound about reality or only show that we are way off the track for a proper
understanding of reality and that we need a new way of looking at things?
How can we ever tell what is the true situation?

Asking Questions and Demanding Answers

It is often said that the questions asked in philosophy are more important than
the answers proffered at any moment. But the questions reflect how we see
reality, and particular questions may be faulty: how do we know that we are
asking questions that will lead to genuine final knowledge? Perhaps we are
closing off aspects of reality by our questions. The limits of our language
may not set the limits of our world, as Ludwig Wittgenstein thought, but
language does encode what we take to be real and how we conceptualize the
world.4
William James spoke of “our indomitable desire to cast the world into a
more rational shape in our minds than the shape into which it is thrown there
by the crude order of our experience” and that “[t]he world has shown itself,
to a great extent, plastic to this demand of ours for rationality.” Looking for a
“because” for our “why” questions is a sign of rationality, but philosophers
may also suffer from a compulsion: trying to dispel all mystery by
demanding reasons for mysteries even if there are none. The mindset to
resolve all mysteries at all costs is the “philosopher’s disease”—that is, the
belief that, even if we do not have the correct answer today, we can be certain
that one is forthcoming because there must always be a sufficient reason that
we can find for anything. Talk of mystery simply covers up confused
thinking. Looking for a reason must be pursued, but this approach becomes
counterproductive when the assumption that there is always a reason will not
be given up under any circumstances—when one is certain that there must be
a “because” no matter what. Even if as a matter of simple logic there must be
a “x” or “not-x” answer to any meaningful question, it is another matter to
assume that that answer must be available to us.5 Such a predisposition may
distort our ontic and epistemic situation in the world—the demand can lead to
dismissing legitimate questions and forcing erroneous answers and fraudulent
reasons where there are none. It may lead to accepting a partial understanding
as a sufficient or total understanding. At a minimum, this creates conceptual
barriers between us and reality by directing our attention away from direct
contact with reality and focusing it on the conceptual products of our mind.
And why the universe must be transparent and free of paradoxes or mysteries
to finite beings such as ourselves would also be an issue that must be
addressed. And if the universe does indeed turn out to be transparent, that
itself may turn out to be a mystery. But perhaps our rationality cannot be
celebrated as all-encompassing—genuine mysteries in fact would then
become only deeper and more entrenched as we study more of reality.
 Unless we can prove that all well-formed “why” questions must have a
“because” (and that appears hard to do), we should remain immune to the
philosopher’s disease and should remain open to the possibility of
indefeasible mysteries to reality. Whether the basic philosophical mysteries
of the Big Questions will ever be resolved as science advances is a real issue.
Conceptual clarification by philosophers would of course be helpful at any
point in history, but some questions that we accept at a given time as well
formed may be unanswerable by us even in principle. That they are
unanswerable does not make them literally meaningless even if we not are in
a position to know how even to begin to answer them—in fact, they may be
of utmost importance to us. So too, when studying mysteries, we must
remember the danger noted above that we may only be fooling ourselves by
the answers we provide: we may never be in a position to guarantee that there
are no genuine mysteries to reality—we may simply be supplying
conceptualizations that quiet our mind but that do not reflect reality. This is a
mystery about mysteries that is always present.

Notes
1. A 2009 survey of professional philosophers shows the lack of consensus on any major
philosophical topic (Chalmers 2015: 351–352). For example, on the mind/body problem, 57
percent accepted or leaned toward physicalism, 27 percent nonphysicalism, and 16 percent other;
on the question of God, 73 percent accepted or leaned toward atheism, 15 percent theism, and 13
percent other. Only a “nonskeptical realism” about the external world reached over 80 percent
support (82%). David Chalmers believes that new insights, methods, and concepts may finally
lead to answering the questions because all truths are logically entailed by fundamental empirical
truths concerning fundamental natural properties and laws discovered by scientists—none are
inscrutable. But he acknowledges that not all philosophers today (e.g., Colin McGinn and Peter
van Inwagen) are so optimistic: they believe that some answers may be unknowable because the
lack of progress on the Big Questions shows that human beings do not have “the level of
intelligence” to answer some of them (ibid.: 368–369).
2. Today, the Nile is once again longer because engineers have straightened the Mississippi by
cutoffs.
3. It should be pointed out that most of us operate normally with contradictions permeating our
everyday thought. Many of us do not try to make all our beliefs consistent with each other but
simply accept dilemmas unresolved. F. Scott Fitzgerald opined: “The test of a first-rate
intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the
ability to function.” But that is not the issue here—here the issue is the theoretical possibility of a
consistent conceptual system reflecting the basic nature of reality.
4. Bryan Magee correctly points out that the limits of what we can apprehend determine the limits of
what is linguistically intelligible to us, not vice versa.
5. Badly formed questions can distort situations. Even apparently simple “yes or no” questions may
have a background that entails implicit claims that make a question ill-formed. For example, the
classic question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” cannot be answered “yes or no” by a
husband who has never beaten his wife.
 3
Do We Know Anything at All?

Calculate what man knows and it cannot compare to what he does not know. Calculate the
time he is alive and it cannot compare to the time before he was born. Yet man takes
something so small and tries to exhaust the dimensions of something so large! Hence he is
muddled and confused and can never get anywhere. Looking at it this way, how do we know
that the tip of a hair can be singled out as the measure of the smallest thing possible? Or how
do we know that heaven and earth can fully encompass the dimensions of the largest thing
possible?
—Zhuangzi

o we have any real knowledge of the world, or is everything a mystery?

D Was the oracle at Delphi correct in calling Socrates the wisest of all men
because he claimed to know so little? When it comes to the fundamental
nature of reality, we may feel that we know little or nothing, but in everyday
matters we are confident that we know things—I know whether it is raining
outside my window right now, how many people there are in my room right
now, and so on. So too, we have solid scientific knowledge, even though we
readily accept that knowledge of things may be inexhaustible—there is
always more to learn about virtually anything (including ourselves). But the
issue here is the basic question of whether we can in fact truly claim to know
anything at all. To know something rather than merely to believe it involves
objectivity and certainty—it is a type of universal true belief.1 However, can
we be certain about any of our claims of knowledge?

Pushing Our Search for Knowledge

As discussed, the question of unresolvable mystery arises when looking at
our claims to know and understand, especially in our claims to give a final
explanation to what we consider known phenomena. An explanation is more
than merely identifying the cause of something—it is establishing that we
think we understand how or why it exists. Normally we can stop at
intermediate explanations: we do not need a PhD in physics to repair a
household electrical problem—we can stop with lesser understanding to live
our lives in the everyday world. But that is not an option when we deal with
philosophical matters. It is when we push to our final understanding of a
phenomenon that the issue of mystery arises.
Our knowledge-claims are oriented toward our needs and reflect our points
of view. Thus, they are not free of presumptions. No description or
explanation is dictated by reality in a simple and straightforward empiricist
manner but reflects our interests and how we see things. Science presents a
particular point of view on how questions are to be answered; individual
scientific theories add more restrictions. This does not mean that our claims
are necessarily wrong but only that our knowledge is not necessarily a
reflection of reality. Moreover, changes in theories throughout the history of
science usually represent progress, but this also means that scientific
knowledge-claims today are most likely transient and so should be held only
tentatively. In particular, our view of reality on the subatomic and cosmic
scales may be very different in a hundred years.
So too in philosophy: what is “self-evident” changes as knowledge
advances. Few today would agree with Descartes that since the idea of God
as a substance that is infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, and omnipotent
is the “most true, most clear, and most distinct of all the ideas that are in [his]
mind,” God must exist. Similarly, the changing methods and positions in
philosophy in the last century do not inspire confidence that final knowledge-
claims are being attained. Overall, as David Chalmers puts it, “arguments for
strong conclusions in philosophy (unlike in science and mathematics) almost
always have premises and inferences that can be rejected without too much
cost,” and arguments from even “consensus premises are relatively powerless
to settle the big questions of philosophy.” Basic premises may be wrong, and
in what is known as Frank Ramsey’s maxim, chronic philosophical disputes
commonly rest on mistaken assumptions that are shared by all the disputants.
So too, Gary Gutting points out that intuitions of what is “self-evident” play a
greater role in philosophy than is normally thought, and there is a surprising
lack of rigorous argument even in contemporary philosophy. George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors grounded in our embodied
experience in the world permeate our thought and are not merely literary
devices—we have no “pure reason.” Our reasoning also typically reflects
cognitive biases and logical errors. The role of emotions, attitudes, and
personal background in our evaluations and decision making is also gaining
attention in philosophy today. All of this leads many to endorse a fallibilism
in which we must continually reevaluate our conclusions in light of the
danger of unnoticed prejudices and ungrounded intuitions.
Thus, paradoxically, as our knowledge increases, our confidence and sense
of certainty in basic claims has decreased.

Explanations and Brute Facts

Another issue is how we can be certain that an explanation or justification is
in fact final. There is always the danger that we may have stopped looking for
a complete or ultimate explanation too soon. More importantly, as Karl
Popper argued: “There is no explanation that is not in need of a further
explanation.” When it comes to the Big Questions, nothing ends until we
think that no more explanations are needed. But for any explanation, we can
always ask “why that?” Every premise must be supported by some reason,
and the process of justifying any conclusion never ends and thus is never
complete. In a trilemma named in honor of Baron von Munchausen,
philosophers as far back as the Greek skeptic Agrippa have asserted that all
arguments end in one of three ways: circular reasoning, an infinite regress of
justifications, or unproven assumptions. The only way around this is finding
foundations that need no further support, but philosophers today discount that
as even a possibility: nothing is self-justifying or self-explanatory. So too, the
contingency of all intuitions rules out the possibility that something is truly
“self-evident.” All arguments that end in an ultimate explanation involve
accepting something as a brute fact—that is, something that simply must be
accepted without further justification or explanation and thus whose existence
is itself a mystery. Because of this incompleteness of any argument ending in
a brute fact, such facts present mysteries and are not the foundation for any
certainty in knowledge—one cannot appeal to what is accepted as
unexplained as a premise for an argument for complete knowledge.
Thus, our claim to know or understand definitively never ends in closure.
We have to admit that our knowledge is not complete. Philosophers may be
dissatisfied with this and discuss it very little, but brute facts limit all our
efforts at being thoroughly rational. (As noted in the last chapter and below,
many philosophers insist that reality cannot be irrational—that is, it must
meet our standards of reasoning all the way down.) To accept mystery is to
admit there are brute facts but to refuse to accept any temporary intermediate
point as a final answer. Even the prospect that what is currently
unexplainable will someday be explained only leads to new brute facts.
Indeed, how in fact do we know when we have reached a true brute fact that
“just is” and thus is incapable of any further explanation? Are we actually
only fooling ourselves with our current explanation of a mystery? Have we
allayed our curiosity only by connecting a mystery to something from our
ordinary experience that really is no explanation at all? How can we be sure
that what satisfies us today is indeed the final answer removing a
philosophical mystery? In science and mathematics, what seems certain in
one generation is sometimes overthrown in the next. Do we have enough
information at this date for any final answer? Our curiosity may be laid to
rest, but how can we ever really be certain that we know that our alleged
explanation is correct? Perhaps with more information we may
reconceptualize what we deem real and remove the problem that led to a
sense of mystery concerning some fact. Nevertheless, the “subjective”
element that explanations necessarily rely upon—our experience and our
understanding—must always be part of the picture.

Problems on the Path to a Final Explanation

There are also limitations on human experience and our ability to reason that
must be contended with. Even when extended by technology, there are limits
to what we can sense on submicroscopic and astronomical scales. This limits
what we can ever see of reality. Henri Poincaré asked the interesting question
of what our physics would be like if the sky were permanently overcast and
we could never see through the clouds. By extension, we must ask whether
whatever we are able to see on scales outside the everyday world is not also
limited and incomplete.
Scientists also raise issues related to whether we can believe our eyes. We
like to think that we normally see the external world “as it really is,” but
neuroscientists have found otherwise. Some issues are these: the subjectivity
of our perception of objective light waves, illustrated by color blindness and
by the puzzle that if I could tap into your optic nerve would I perceive what
you call “blue” as what I call “yellow”; that animals experience different
ranges of the light spectrum; whether synesthesia (e.g., seeing numbers as
having color) suggests that we might have seen the world very differently if
we had evolved differently; the experience of phantom limbs; and why some
optical illusions persist even when we know that they are illusions. But the
principal problem is broader: there is evidence that our conscious and
subconscious mind creates images of the world, not merely filters or
structures sensory data. Experiments show that our mind “corrects” and
constructs things (e.g., filling in visual and audio blind spots). Apparently,
our mind automatically creates a coherent, continuous narrative out of all the
sensory input it receives. What we actually “see” is a reconstruction of the
world, and this leads to the question of whether our visual world is only a
“grand illusion.” According to the neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, the mind
seems overall to have difficulty separating fantasies from facts—it sees things
that are not there and does not see some things that are. The mind does not try
to create a fully detailed map of the external world; instead, it selects a
handful of cues and then fills in the rest with conjecture, fantasy, and belief.
Our brain constructs one subconscious map that relates to our survival and
another that reflects our conscious awareness of the world.
Obviously, we must have some reliable knowledge of the world if we are
to survive, and we can utilize technology for more objective observations, but
the issue of the “grand illusion” survives concerning our overall picture of
reality. We must ask by what independent source we can verify our claims as
ultimately true, especially for the fundamental matters of the Big Questions
that are not related to immediate survival. We cannot step back from the
world and check whether there is an accurate correspondence between our
claims and the world.2
Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason presented another troubling
prospect: we never can experience the world “as it is in itself” independent of
our senses. Rather, our minds are active in constructing the world of
appearances: we see only phenomena—that is, the noumenal world as
structured through mental concepts such as space, time, substance, and
causation—and can never know what the world is like in itself independent
of the structuring that our mind necessarily employs. Appearances are created
by our subconscious imposition of a priori categories of understanding upon
what is real.3 Such ways of organizing the world are innate to all human
beings and are not derived from experience or thought—we are born with
them and cannot get around them. Even “mind” and “external world” are
appearances and not part of the world in itself. Thus, what our common sense
says is real is not in fact reality as it exists apart from us. Even space, time,
and substance are not part of the noumenal realm—they do not exist in their
own right but are only “species of our representations.” Our reason may posit
noumena, but even our “pure reason” cannot reflect the nature of noumenal
reality but only the world of appearances. All we know of noumenal reality is
that it is not like the phenomenal world of our experience. Our minds cannot
reach the noumenal realm in any sense, and thus we have no conceptions of it
—it is only an inference we make to explain why we have experiences. And
we also create a false realism by reifying the content of our sense-experience
into an external world: if all conscious beings ceased to exist, the entire
phenomenal world—including all of space-time—would also cease to exist
since that realm is dependent on us.
But if we cannot know “true reality,” what is truth? Yet Kant did not deny
that we have genuine knowledge of a real world: there are certain ways that
things-in-themselves appear to beings with our cognitive structures, and true
claims reflect those appearances. He argued only that this knowledge is
packaged in forms we ourselves supply—the content of knowledge derives
from our experience of the real world, even though we impose the order or
form upon that content. Nevertheless, appearances always remain different
from reality, and sense-experience cannot get us to that reality. And trying to
think about reality-in-itself only leads to unresolvable antinomies (e.g.,
whether the universe is eternal or not, or whether it is made up of simple
parts or not): advocates of each horn of a given antimony claim that the other
one leads to absurdities. We cannot even speak of it as one or many.
Contradictions reveal nothing inherent in the reality-in-itself but only reveal
the limits of our understanding. Reason is confined to more practical matters
within the phenomenal world.
Thus, if Kant is correct, there is an impasse: the real world is cut off from
our cognitive abilities—the real world is simply unknowable and thus
unconceptualizable by us. Similarly, we cannot know the self, the subject of
consciousness: it is what observes (the “transcendental self”) but cannot itself
be observed. The noumenal realm hence is unknowable in a different way
that some distant part of our galaxy may forever be unknowable to us. For
Kant, “Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its
knowledge it is burdened by questions that, prescribed by the very nature of
reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but that, as transcending all its powers, it
is also not able to answer.”
 This unknowability of the noumenal realm solidifies a place for mystery in
Kantian thought. Moreover, one can ask where the categories of our mental
life (time, space, and so forth) come from. Aren’t they also real? The
spaceless and timeless noumenal reality is forever inaccessible, forever
hidden behind a veil of appearances that we have no choice but to create. Our
knowledge is limited to the phenomena that we ourselves partially generate:
we know only the world of sense-impressions and according to Kantians
these tell us nothing of reality-in-itself. In fact, we can only infer its existence
at all. In the end, we are left with a complete mystery concerning the realm of
reality existing independent of our mind and senses. Thus, if Kant’s thought
is accepted, mystery is permanently established in all our thought and
experience.

Reasoning about Reality

Even if we reject Kant’s position, there may well be limits to what embodied,
evolved beings such as ourselves—indeed, any finite being within the
universe—can understand of the universe, whether we are created by nature
or a god: there may be limits to what our reasoning can achieve even if we
are the product of what we want to understand. All evolved animals are
limited in their cognitive abilities, and we are no different. We might like to
think that our minds are unfettered and limitless, but our consciousness has
evolved so that we can interact with our environment (the surface of one
planet) more effectively in matters of survival, even if it also participates in
the reality that generated it. As Bryan Magee says, our bodily apparatus has
evolved without contact to most of what we know exists, and it would be a
sheer coincidence if we had the capacity to know all of it. Even if our
consciousness does participate in reality, we have reason to believe that we
are not able to come up with correct ideas for all ultimate how-mysteries.
Moreover, how can we ever know answers to the ultimate why-mysteries of
reality when we cannot turn all of reality into objects for examination? As
noted in the last chapter, there is no reason to believe that the universe must
be transparent to beings such as ourselves or that all of the universe’s features
must be expressible consistently in one of our conceptual systems.
So too, even to start reasoning we must presuppose that reasoning works.
But can we trust our reason? There is no abstract “reason” but only our
concrete reasoning, and our reasoning is not as firm as we usually believe.
Such reasoning changes with cultures and history. Aristotelian laws of logic
may be transcultural standards that apply in all valid arguments, but all
arguments depend on different premises and rules of what constitutes a valid
deduction. (Lewis Carroll in one of his more serious works also showed that
the justification of inferences itself involves an inference.) Premises may hold
hidden assumptions that we do not see. Consider the “A white horse is not a
horse” paradox formulated in China about 300 BCE. It can be schematized as
follows:
(1) A black horse is a horse.
(2) A white horse is not a black horse.
(3) Therefore, a white horse is not a horse.

No one doubts the two premises, and the conclusion does follow. This
bedeviled Chinese logicians for some time. The problem is that the first
premise is ambiguous depending on what the meaning of “is” is—“is” can
mean either identity (all horses are black) or being a member of a class (a
black horse is one type of horse). With the first meaning of “is,” the
conclusion does follow; with the second, it does not. How do we know that
deductions that hold as valid today are not similarly loaded or have other
problems that we simply do not see? Indeed, today’s quintessential deduction
actually involves circularity:
(1) All men are mortal.
(2) Socrates is a man.
(3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The problem is that we cannot know that the first premise is true unless we
already know the conclusion is true. That is, the first premise is not a matter
merely of definitions, such as “All bachelors are unmarried men,” but an
observation based on our experience of human beings, and so we must
already know that the conclusion is true (since Socrates is part of “all men”)
before we can adopt the first premise.
Why we have rationality at all—that is, the ability to recognize valid
arguments and reasons—needs explaining. Reasoning about everyday matters
is one thing, but gaining scientific knowledge about aspects of reality outside
our everyday world is another. So is being able to develop abstract
mathematics. Philosophers debate whether our reason can be relied upon at
all if it is only the product of our highly contingent evolution—why should
the fallible ravings of what Charles Darwin called a “monkey mind” reveal
any truths at all? If determinism is true and our thoughts are only the
deterministic output of our brain, how can any reasoning be valid? Or are
there independent standards that assure that our reason can reveal something
of reality? We may not embrace empiricism, since there is little reason to
suppose that sense-experience must be the only source of knowledge for
beings with minds like ours—especially when our reason must correct optical
illusions and when we do not know whether sense-impressions reflect reality-
in-itself—but we also should be cautious in what we think that the reasoning
of our particular evolved brains can accomplish.
One common position in philosophy today is that rationality demands that
in principle there are no barriers to our knowledge and nothing can end in
unknowable mysteries—ultimately there can be no mysteries to the world. If
we know that something exists, we must know something about it, even if
there is always more to learn about it. The thing must have some
characteristic that distinguishes it from nothingness or we would not know it
exists at all—if it did not, there would be no difference between believing it
exists and believing it did not. But this line of reasoning leads to the “paradox
of knowability”: common sense tells us that there probably are truths that
human beings will never know, but logically it is impossible to know that
there is some statement that is true but unknown to anyone. That is, if a given
truth is in principle knowable, then it is in fact known to exist—to know that
it is unknowable, we would already have to know it. Thus, there can be no
unknown truths: if a true statement were in principle unknowable, then it is
unknowable that it is a truth that is not known. Other philosophers argue that
there are statements that must be either true or false, but (following Gödel’s
theorems in mathematics) it is impossible to tell which: there are pairs of
propositions that are knowable, and one must be true and one false, but
because of the limits of our knowledge, we can never tell which one is true
and which one is false.

Skepticism
Also consider the specter of skepticism—that is, that we have no grounds to
consider any claim to be true about the external world or about any alleged
reality other than our present state of mind. The word “skeptic” comes from
the Greek “to investigate,” and the result of their investigations is that all our
claims to knowledge are unfounded and only opinions. According to Sextus
Empiricus, skeptics do not make any firm claim of the truth of anything they
assert—they merely accurately report each thing presented to their senses at a
given moment. Skeptics present arguments attacking the very root of
knowledge and leading to one conclusion: all knowledge-claims can be
doubted—there is no convincing argument for believing that our mental
capacities thoroughly and accurately reflect reality since we cannot prove the
reliability of the means we employ in our apparent contact with the external
world. There is nothing that we can be sure about, and by traditional
standards we can have no knowledge at all without certainty. Skeptics can
ask of any explanation or justification that we advance “How do you know?”
and this process would go on ad infinitum. So too, we need a criterion for
truth, but then we would need a criterion establishing that criterion and so on
ad infinitum. The same applies to any proofs. But this does not mean that
skeptics dogmatically assert that all empirical beliefs are necessarily false—
we cannot know that either. Since statements about the experience of
phenomena are accepted, while any statement, pro or con, about the
underlying nature of things is denied, this leads to accepting a conventional
social life but to suspending all judgments of truth or falsity of beliefs about
the world or values. Thus, all belief-commitments are eliminated. (According
to Pyrrho of Elis, this neutral state of belief leads to peace of mind.)
Philosophical skepticism is not the practical skepticism of scientists in which
their theories are treated as tentative and open to revision—indeed, skeptics
deny there is any progress in knowledge. Rather, it is the universal
questioning of all evidence for claims about the external world.
Such skepticism arose in the West with the ancient Greeks, and in
searching for absolute certainty, Descartes in his First Meditation firmly
planted a version of skepticism in modern philosophy. His attempt to find
irrefutable foundations upon which absolutely certain knowledge could be
built led to his famous cogito ergo sum. He thought that the only certainty we
can have is from the innate ideas God implanted in our minds that we see
clearly and distinctly. That is, all we truly know are only those matters about
which it is impossible for us to be wrong. However, he could not get past the
possibility that we may be dreaming or that an “evil demon” may be
misleading us about what our senses seem to be telling us about the world.
(Like many others, I once was discussing Descartes’s point, assuring a
listener that I knew with absolute certainty that I was awake and that nothing
could convince me otherwise, only to wake up to find that I was dreaming all
along.) Today the analogies are to the possibility that we are no more than a
brain in a vat hooked up to a computer on some other planet with more
advanced technology than ours, or that we are all only characters in the world
of The Matrix.4 But there is no way we can know or test whether this is the
case or not: nothing that occurs in our phenomenal world can show us that we
are a brain in a vat or not. (Thus, G.E. Moore’s appeal to common sense in
response to skepticism does not work—we would be just as certain of the
world if we were a brain in a vat.) All we can be certain of is that even in
those circumstances we are conscious and therefore must exist at this moment
—cogito ergo sum—not anything about what our mind and senses deliver.5
Thus, philosophical skepticism is a product of the quest for certainty. Some
philosophers today change the standard of what constitutes “knowledge” in
response to skepticism, but most concede that such skepticism cannot be
refuted. Skepticism would avoid all possibility of error, but philosophers
dismiss taking it seriously since it requires a standard for knowledge that is
beyond unrealistic—this standard is impossible in principle to satisfy since
refuting it would require that we stand outside of the world. Most believe that
we should trust our senses and rationality until they are proven unreliable.
But as long as realism is accepted, the possibility that we are profoundly
wrong in our claims about the world cannot be gotten around.
However, philosophical skepticism is a theoretical point. It is a second-
order claim about the nature of our first-order knowledge-claims about the
world: it does not mean that all our first-order knowledge-claims are
necessarily wrong or that we do not know anything—it means only that we
do not have absolute foundations upon which to assert the certainty of claims.
(If skeptics claimed to know nothing about the world, they would have to
admit that they know at least that they do not know this—but, like
skepticism, that claim would be a second-order claim about our first-order
knowledge-claims about the world necessarily being wrong.) Thus, we can
accept the skeptics’ assault on the certainty of first-order claims and still go
about our lives as before. We do not need irrefutable proof that the world or
other persons exist in order to proceed with life. As David Hume said, radical
skepticism about the world’s existence cannot be refuted, but it is not a live
option—we cannot live as a total skeptic.
To deny the first-order knowledge-claims themselves leads to solipsism—
the belief that only you exist and that the rest of the apparent world is an
illusion—and, as with Pyrrho, to renouncing all practical living.
Nevertheless, today Peter Unger does advocate a scorched earth skepticism
that leaves nothing standing: we have no grounds to believe our senses or our
reasoning about claims based on our sense-experience; and since no one can
ever know anything, nobody can ever be justified or even reasonable in
believing anything or ever be happy about anything or regret anything. We
have no assurance that there is any as yet unknown reason for believing or
refuting any claim, and so all first-order claims must be denied. But Unger
admits that he has trouble living up to this creed.
Most philosophers today think that there is no good reason to accept
skepticism. They simply shrug their shoulders and move on to topics they
find more interesting. (Robert Fogelin says that East Coast skeptics are
deeply troubled by realizing that their knowledge is limited, while West
Coast skeptics find the idea liberating.) We can still accept the second-order
claim of skepticism that we cannot give a definitive reason for believing the
“real world” is so but go on living in it. So too, we can live denying solipsism
even if we concede that we cannot logically refute it.5 Thus, we are in the
paradoxical situation in which we can affirm the principle of skepticism
while recognizing that we must actually live as if it were untrue.
This leads to the question of whether skepticism is really a reason for
accepting mystery about the existence of the external world at all, rather than
merely being a theoretical point about our inability to attain certainty.
Nevertheless, the value of radical skepticism is that it reveals that we have no
certainty on the basic ontic topic of the reality of an external world.
Thus, the thrust of skepticism is that we are left with mystery about the
fundamental nature of what is real. We are deluding ourselves when we think
that we truly know with confidence anything basic about reality beyond that
we exist and have mental states. This has the valuable effect of countering
any dogmatic assertions or unsupported metaphysical accounts of the nature
of reality, but it goes further: most broadly, skepticism means that we cannot
guarantee any knowledge-claims for a reality independent of our present state
of mind, and thus that we cannot be certain that any alleged outside world
does not ultimately remain a mystery to us.

Agnosticism
But even if we dismiss skepticism as requiring too much certainty, we still
must consider agnosticism about our knowledge of the world. Agnosticism
also involves believing that we cannot be certain about things that many
people accept. It is not confined merely to whether God exists; it can include
other topics such as free will or what is the best available interpretation of
quantum physics. It need not be global like philosophical skepticism. And
unlike skeptics, agnostics accept that there are good arguments for or against
the existence of something: in most matters of our alleged knowledge, one
side will have the stronger argument about whether something exists or not,
but for some matters there currently are no compelling arguments one way or
the other, and thus we are left unable to affirm or deny the claim. (Thus,
agnosticism is not, as commonly portrayed, indifference.)
In sum, agnostics deny that we have enough knowledge on a particular
subject to commit one way or the other to its existence—there is no way to
tip the scale to belief or disbelief. Either we cannot know the truth or we in
fact do know it but we are not in a position to know that we know. Strong
agnostics assert the impossibility of knowledge of some subject in principle,
and other agnostics assert there is a lack of sufficient knowledge of it at
present to make a determination. Further evidence may cause agnostics to
change their position on a given topic, if we are able to gain more evidence.
That something is unknowable does not necessarily require agnosticism—
Kant was not agnostic about the existence of the noumenal realm. So too,
agnostics need not suspend judgment in practice: they may adopt one position
(e.g., they may have little doubt that the external world exists and thus have a
high degree of confidence in acting on the assumption that it exists), but they
admit that their position is not epistemically superior to that of those who
adopt the opposite position. They may also disagree on what counts as “good
enough” or “sufficient” or “compelling” evidence for a position.
Agnostics may try to remain neutral on a given topic of vital importance to
our lives, but that is often hard to do—for example, whether there is free will
or life after death. Should one believe without sufficient evidence? Does one
have the epistemic right to do so? This brings up the ethics of belief. William
Clifford argued that it is always wrong in every situation for anyone to
believe anything upon insufficient public evidence. William James responded
that a “leap of faith” is acceptable on issues of human existence that are
“forced, live, and momentous” when the evidence is inconclusive and the
issue unresolvable—we are forced to make a decision, and so we must
choose. Are we compelled as a practical matter to take a side on such issues
as whether there are transcendent realities, free will, or life after death once
we are presented with the issues even if neither camp is in a better epistemic
position? Can we actually suspend judgment even in the face of a lack of
evidence one way or the other? In short, is agnosticism not a real option for
us on the Big Questions? Or is it instead in fact the default position on
mysteries?

The Limits of Knowledge and Reason

For the different positions on evidence, consider a balancing scale: believers
on a given issue think that the scale tips one way, disbelievers think the scale
tips the other way, agnostics think that the scale is balanced (or at least that it
is not definitively tipping one way or the other), and skeptics believe that
there is no real evidence to place on the scale to begin with. The option of
agnosticism and the irrefutability of skepticism may lead to accepting less
than certainty as our standard for knowledge. Pragmatists and reliabilists
have no problem accepting a lower standard. And we do know at least that
we exist in some fashion, and we do have what appears to be genuine
knowledge of the world. Nevertheless, we are left with mysteries: reality
apart from our experience is largely unknown (if Kant is correct, it is
completely unknowable), the knowing self has its own mysteries, and the
process of conscious experience itself introduces other problems. We have
difficulty accepting that conclusion. Many philosophers deny that there are
any intrinsic ontic mysteries to reality, but some are willing to accept that
there may be limits to our knowledge and thus that epistemic mysteries will
remain. For many philosophers, our reason demonstrates the limits of itself.
As Blaise Pascal put it: “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an
infinite number of things that are beyond it.”
The role of philosophy here is not to produce new knowledge but to
understand the status of our existing claims of knowledge of what is real. But
whether there also may in fact be philosophical knowledge about the nature
of reality in metaphysics is the next subject.

Notes
1. Postmodernists deny the entire enterprise of searching for objective and universal knowledge,
reasoning, and justification. For the objection that postmodernism’s perspectivism (relativism)
involves a self-contradiction (i.e., postmodernists make claims that they themselves see as
objective and universally valid) and other problems, see Nagel 2003.
2. The alternative to a “correspondence theory of truth”—a “coherence theory”—has its own
problems: it is based on a consistent web of beliefs, but for total consistency the web must be
detached totally from the world, and how to root any web of beliefs based only on coherence in
 the world in a way that guarantees truth is hard to specify. That is, if statements only refer to other
statements, how do they connect to the world?
3. Constructivists go further and argue that cultural categories also structure our perceptions. Thus,
there is no “pure experience” untainted by thought. As Willard Quine puts it, experience is not “a
medium of pure unvarnished news.” Conversely, Kant points out that concepts without
experiential content are empty. He gives the analogy of a dove complaining about the air
interfering with its flight, but without the air it could not fly, and without nonconceptual
constraints, our concepts could not fly either but would be out of control.
4. For another angle, consider Bertrand Russell’s remark that we could not prove that the universe
was not created five minutes ago. Of course, we would have to have been created with our present
memories and physical condition, trees would have to have been created with rings, and light from
stars would have to have been created in mid flight, but nothing we could observe could confirm
or refute the possibility. He did not advance this for serious consideration—he added that “[l]ike
all skeptical hypotheses, it is logically tenable but uninteresting.”
5. Descartes himself was not a skeptic, but the resulting Cartesian skepticism is actually stronger than
Greek skepticism. Cartesian skeptics present arguments against perception providing knowledge
of the external world, while Greek skeptics remained more neutral on whether perception can
provide knowledge. Greek skeptics readily accepted everyday beliefs—their main target was the
dogmas of the “professors.”
6. There is a joke about a woman walking up to Bertrand Russell and saying “I’m a solipsist, and I
don’t know why everyone isn’t one also!” But if we take solipsism to be a second-order position
like philosophical skepticism, that is not quite as silly as it sounds: she may have meant that there
is no rational way to justify fully any metaphysical realism beyond solipsism even if, as a practical
matter, we all but must reject it in our lives.
 4
What Is Reality?

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.

— F. H. Bradley

Metaphysics and Metametaphysics

hen you walk into a wall, you get a certain sensation of reality. But
W what exactly is reality? This Big Question precedes even “first
philosophy”—metaphysics, that is, the delineation of the basic categories of
what is real. The objective in metaphysics is to identify the irreducible
realities behind appearances. For example, are matter, mind, time, or
causation real? What are the fundamental realities, what depends upon those
fundamental realities, and what is actually only an illusion? Today,
metaphysicians try to identify the best language in which to take inventory of
the fundamental furniture making up reality.
But the more basic question is a metametaphysical one: what exactly
constitutes “reality”? That is, what makes something real, and what is its
nature? That is the main topic for this chapter, but it should be noted first that
epistemic and perhaps ontic mysteries surround many of the traditional topics
of metaphysics. Not all metaphysical issues generate real mysteries. Some
come only from studying the nature of our conceptualizing. For example,
philosophers debate whether a mountain is a separate entity from its
surrounding earth since we have the term “mountain.” (This issue takes on
importance concerning “persons” and theoretical “entities” in science.) So
too, the issue of universals versus nominalism comes only from arguing over
the nature of our conceptualizing. Some philosophers dismiss such disputes
as unanswerable because the questions are ill-formed. But many
metaphysical issues seem more substantive. Consider time. Why does reality
change—that is, why is there a flow that we call “time”? Change occurs and
it has causal order, but is the time by which we measure it only an illusion—a
fabricated extra element to reality that we imagine “flows”? If time moves,
what does it move in? So too, with “now”—that elusive moment “in” time
that Ludwig Wittgenstein called the image of eternity in the phenomenal
world. “Now” is not part of the measurement of time but is the space on the
temporal continuum within which we are aware of reality. Since “now” is not
part of scientific equations, is it actually not part of objective reality? Or
consider order. Are the laws of nature real? Or what is the nature of
causation? How do causes bring about effects? When a cause occurs, why
must an effect follow? Do conditions bring about a cause?
Such questions are the epitome of the questions that logical positivists
found meaningless since these are questions about the world with no
empirically testable answers, and even if we could find an answer that, say,
time is unreal, it would not affect our lives. Many philosophers today
working in the foundations of metaphysics want to dismiss all metaphysics
for the same reason. They ask whether these questions actually have answers,
and, if they do, whether the answers are substantive or merely a matter of
how we use words. Many treat all metaphysical questions like they treat the
question of whether a statue “really exists” in addition to the gold it is made
of—unanswerable or pseudo-questions because nothing real is truly at issue.
To them, it is like asking when there is a cup and a saucer, is there an
additional third object—a cup-and-saucer? We all should agree that a term
for an entity consisting of a mailbox, a piece of toast, and a walrus does not
“cut nature at its joints” or help us understand the nature of things, but are all
“entities” no more than our conceptual creations? Or should the basic
inventory of the world even be in terms of entities (tables, statues, and so
forth) rather than the distribution of the material that things are made of
(carbon, gold, and so forth)? Many metaphysicians today believe that
quantum physics has shown that there are no things but only structures to
reality. Many also deny that there is a “logically perfect language” that carves
nature at its joints. That would avoid the issue of whether the conflict of
different inventories is a pseudo-mystery produced only by our conceptual
systems and not by reality since they see no empirical matters at issue and
thus no determinate truth-value of “true” or “false” for claims about them.1
Some question whether existence-claims about entities such as subatomic
particles or persons have a determinate truth-value. At best, they want to
revise how terms are used.
Other metaphysicians try to naturalize metaphysics by restricting it to
unifying the results, practices, and presuppositions of science: “speculative
metaphysics” is rejected, but the search in “scientific metaphysics” for the
basic structures of reality is permissible as long as the inquiry is based on the
content of science and not on a priori posits based on intuitions.2 So too,
philosophy must use the methods of science to solve its problems. Thus, any
“speculative ontology” has no place in a scientific understanding of reality.
Philosophers must engage scientific problems to add anything of value to our
knowledge of reality.
The tables (as it were) have turned from the heyday of “ordinary language”
analysis. However, according to David Manley, most analytic philosophers
working in metaphysics today are “robust realists.” Even if such metaphysics
involves speculation, realists accept that substantive questions about the
nature of reality are at stake—they believe that there is a true inventory of
what is real in the universe, and that is so even if we may not be able to
determine it.
Another problem for all metaphysical views of reality is this: our brain
receives sensory signals that we interpret as being from “objective” reality—
we do not experience reality directly and immediately. For example, light
from the sun takes six to seven minutes to get here: the sun itself is always a
little to the west of where the image our mind creates appears to place it—we
never see the real sun. We posit something as producing the effect, but, as
with Kant’s noumenal world, we can never experience that posit. Indeed,
every visual signal takes enough time for the brain to edit the input and
produce a representation. George Berkeley’s idealism (in which the world
consists of ideas in the mind of God) could get around this problem only by
positing that perception works without sensory signals.

What Is Reality?
Commonsense realism starts by treating as real what apparently exists
independently from our mind plus the consciousness of the subject. In such
realism, the world does not depend for its existence on the mind of an
individual conscious being—something exists independently of our
consciousness and so if all conscious beings were removed from the universe,
something would still remain. In short, such realism is merely anti-solipsism:
the natural universe is not a subjective illusion—there is a universe that has
existed for billions of years before any conscious beings existed within it and
will continue after we are gone; and now there is also a mind that is real, if
perhaps dependent on the body. That is, there is an “objective” reality—a
“something out there” when no one is experiencing it—plus consciousness as
a part of what is real in the final analysis. In short, what is real is the natural
realm of matter and energy, space-time, and consciousness. Many will add
transcendent realities to the list. Within this context, metaphysicians try to
determine what is “fundamentally” or “ultimately” real (i.e., what is not
dependent upon anything else), what is derivatively real, and what is unreal.
This leads to a more basic issue: how do we determine what is real? Is it
what can produce a causal effect? Is it what grounds experience?
Traditionally, philosophers East and West have believed that something must
persist throughout change to be real, but must something last forever to be
deemed real? Is there only one way to “be,” that is, only type or mode of
being, and thus everything real exists in the same way? We may agree that
what is real is what cannot be denied in our final analysis of things—that is, a
nonnegotiable feature of the universe that we cannot get around in leading
our lives, in scientific findings, and in our theory of things. It is what cannot
be analyzed into anything simpler or more fundamental or dismissed as
illusory. Naturalists who are structural reductionists see the real in terms of
matter and energy only—“matter in motion.”3 Idealists see the fundamentally
real in terms of consciousness. Another basic divide is between naturalists
and transcendent realists: the former accept only what is open to scientific
analysis as real, that is, space-time and its contents (although, somewhat
inconsistently, many naturalists add mathematical entities as realities in order
to make science work); the latter also accept realities transcending this
realm.4
But still, whatever stuff is finally deemed “real,” what is it to be real? What
makes something real? What is its nature? If we think that the stuff of the
world is matter, fields of energy, consciousness, “spirit,” ideas (or computer
simulations) in “the mind of God,” or God himself, we still must ask what the
ontic nature of that stuff is. The question is not answered by scientists
identifying the smallest bits of matter—the question of what is the basic ontic
nature applies as much to matter as anything else. Even if there is something
in the universe that gives particles their mass (e.g., a Higgs particle or field),
we still have to ask what gives that reality its being and what is the nature of
its being. The same is true of alternatives to matter, such as energy or space-
time. As the physicist Richard Feynman remarked: “It is important to realize
that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is.” Or what is the
nature of a “field” from which matter arises? Calling it a “state of space,” as
Michael Faraday did, does not explain all of its nature.
All in all, the nature of the “stuff” of the world is unknown. The physicist
John Wheeler saw this problem and argued that today “we are no longer
satisfied with insights only into particles, or fields of force, or geometry, or
even space and time. Today we demand of physics some understanding of
existence itself.” He proffered a “participatory universe” in which later
observers somehow participate in the creation of the universe that permits the
reality of those observers. But this still does not explain “existence itself.”
Indeed, no science will help do that: as discussed in chapter 8, scientists deal
with the structures responsible for the interaction of things, not the medium in
which those structures are embedded or what gives those structures their
reality. Physicists do not deal with “substance” or “matter” but only study
certain structures of reality that can be measured by the interaction of things.
This is true even for mass: it is measured only by interactions and not
otherwise analyzed. If matter is ultimately quantized in small packets, it is
still the interactions of the packets that physicists study, not the nature of the
“stuff” in the packets.
In short, scientists identify structures, not being. Physics is called the
“science of matter,” but a better title would be the “science of the most
general level of structures.” It is not the “science of being”: being cannot be
tested by pushing and pulling since it is uniform to everything—there are no
parts, and thus no way to measure it through the interactions of parts. Indeed,
matter/energy is much more of a mystery than we usually recognize. The
universe is made of something about which we know nothing scientifically.
We do not know even where to begin to ask about the nature of matter,
despite it being the most familiar “thing” we experience. It is simply the
medium in which structures are embodied. Calling being “matter” only
reveals our prejudice in metaphysics toward our common sense (here, solidity
and weight). Perhaps we should follow the idealist scientist Arthur Eddington
and start instead with what we all really know as real—our minds and sense-
experience.
Being
So what constitutes “being”—that is, the “power” of things (including matter
and energy) to be? Labeling it “substance” as a substratum that carries
properties or otherwise grounds or sustains things does not help much—we
only end up with John Locke realizing that it is “something we know not
what.” Analytic philosophers have little interest in the question. What the
world is made of in a metaphysical sense (as opposed to a scientific issue of
the most fundamental entities and fields) is no longer a major topic in
philosophy. Rather, the question becomes reduced to another: whether
“being” is a property that things have simply because they exist. To logical
positivists, the immediate givenness of experience is not amenable to further
analysis, and any speculation on the ultimate nature of being is the paradigm
of meaninglessness since no scientific finding is relevant to determining its
nature. To most philosophers today, “being” is either an empty term or
denotes merely the sum of all objects. The question of being is either
considered ill-formed—a puzzle arising only because we have terms denoting
“existence”—or overly ambitious since science cannot answer it. Neither
empiricists nor the more rationalist-minded are concerned with it. To Willard
Quine, “to be is to be the value of a variable.” Beyond that, philosophers
occupy themselves with such issues as whether abstract objects are real or
not. The focus is not on what gives anything existence. Being simply is—at
best, the mystery of being is only the mystery of the existence of the world.
However, one can still ask what constitutes “being”—the sheer “is-ness” of
things or the “power” of things to be—of both the stuff being ordered and the
structures doing the ordering. What is the nature, in Buddhist terms, of the
“such-ness” of the natural world apart from our conceptual division of it into
objects? This is a prime instance of the mysteriousness of the ordinary: in
Buddhist terms, there is both the “form” of objects and their “emptiness”
(i.e., objects are empty of anything that would give them an independent
existence and permanence). Being is not undifferentiated matter but is what
gives matter its existence—along with mind and whatever else is part of the
universe. The philosophical mystery of “matter” is not to identify the lowest
level subatomic particles or any issue related to how the world is—those are
subjects for science. Rather, it is to identify what is the being of “matter.”
What gives matter its power to be? Is the being of living or conscious beings
something different than the being of atoms or that of numbers or truths?
Even if being has some inherent properties (e.g., mass or consciousness), still
what is it? What is a superstring, or whatever is the smallest bit of matter,
apart from the structures it embodies? And how do the structures of nature
(e.g., gravity and electromagnetism) relate to the stuff on which they operate?
Can we explain anything about being? What can we say beyond that it is
whatever gives things existence? How can we get any distance from it to
analyze it? All attempts to grasp or express the nature of being transform
being into a distinct object. But these attempts must fail since being is not a
particular object among objects but something common to all objective and
subjective phenomena. Examining an object will not suffice since being is
not an object—to grasp being as an object, we would have to step outside the
universe (and outside of ourselves), which obviously we cannot do. If being
is beyond all possible analysis, how can we say anything about its nature?
Doesn’t the question of its nature lose any frame of reference and thus
become devoid of sense? To most philosophers, there is only a perplexing
and ultimately nonsensical question with which we plague ourselves and
which we should set aside.
But one philosopher, Milton Munitz, has seriously examined the question
of being. He asks whether we can even speak of being since it is not an object
or set of objects. Being, Munitz notes, never presents itself as a phenomenon
—it “shines through” the known universe but is not identical with it. It is not
an entity of any type—not a thing, a combination of things, or the totality of
things. Unlike an object, it is not “conceptually bound.” It has no properties,
qualities, or structures to discover, nor is it a cause, source, or creator—it has
nothing to describe. Nor does it perform any actions within the phenomenal
universe. It is utterly unique in that it is not an instance of any category (since
categories encompass more than one thing). It is beyond all conceptual
analysis and rational comprehension. It can be characterized only negatively
as “not this, not that.” To be aware of being is a level of human experience
unlike any other; recognizing it is a basic experience that cannot be analyzed
into anything simpler or more fundamental. Thus, being-in-itself is
unintelligible, since intelligibility requires the applicability of descriptive or
explanatory concepts or laws. That is, we see trees and cars, not “being,” and
we cannot formulate propositions about it. We live in a world of
differentiated objects and see and speak only of those objects. Being itself
remains beneath any of the conceptual maps that we apply to the world in
order to create order. Once we start speaking of being—or even just naming
it—we make it one object among objects, which “it” is not. (Note the
similarity between what Munitz says about being and what introvertive
mystics say about the reality they allegedly experience.)
If Munitz’s position is correct, any understanding or explanations of the
being of our world would be foreclosed. As Ludwig Wittgenstein ended his
Tractatus, there are things that manifest themselves (and hence that we are
aware of) but are unutterable and incapable of being conveyed in language;
and what we cannot speak of, thereof we must remain silent. This would
apply to our awareness of the being of the world. If this position on language
is correct, we are left with only mystery about the very being of the world.
That is, being cannot be “captured” by any language, and thus its nature is
unconceptualizable and inexpressible—it is essentially unknowable and thus
a permanent mystery.
So is the being of the universe indeed beyond our understanding? One
issue is how exactly we are aware of being. We experience our bodies, tables
and chairs, the wind, and so forth, but do we experience being? When we
walk into a wall, do we experience the being of a wall or just its structured
objectness? If we are aware only of objects, is our sense of beingness only a
product of reflection, that is, a posited reality that we infer beneath what we
actually sense? But being does not seem to be inferred—it seems experienced
immediately and constantly in our awareness even if we only know objects. Is
our own awareness of being conscious any closer to being than sense-
experience? Do mystical experiences put us in contact with being per se free
of our conceptualizations? Or is the being of reality completely unknowable?
But we cannot avoid the presence of being even if we could successfully
confine our lives just to a world of the objects that we conceptually
differentiate. Indeed, being is self-evident even if we have no idea of what it
is except that we are continually aware of it, strange as that might sound.
But again, as a constant in all experience, we cannot step away and
examine being. This means that we realize that there is something very basic
to reality that we experience in some sense and yet cannot comprehend. We
end up asking a question that is not answerable: “What is the nature of
being?” It is this reflection on what we are aware of that creates the mystery
of being.
A related mystery is our sense of both permanence and impermanence—of
timeless “being” and constant temporal “becoming.” Their relation remains a
mystery. In fact, why there is any change at all is puzzling. We think being is
pure and undifferentiated but also unchanging and hence static; yet the world
is dynamic, a realm of perpetual change. Mustn’t change itself be explained
in terms of something that does not change, and yet how is that possible since
change is not changeless? Is why there is any change at all in the universe an
intractable mystery? Should we follow Parmenides and claim that in the final
analysis change is unreal? Or is change primary? Does only the dynamic
“becoming” exist, and is the idea of changeless “being” simply an illusion
that our mind has created? Is it like our sense of an unchanging personal
identity that persists through the constant changes as we age?
So too, we must account for the structures that scientists study. These
order the changes in the stuff that is structured: the commonality of being
provides one unity to everything, and structures provide a common order.
The distinction of these two dimensions of reality goes back to Aristotle, but
since most philosophers today are not interested in being, the issue of their
relation is rarely broached. The “power to be” is common to both, but how
are the reality of the organizing structures and the stuff being organized
related? And is one component—what is structured or the structures—more
fundamental? Can the structures be “more real,” since, as Ernest Gellner
asked, what is so great about weight and substance anyway? Structures have
at least an equal claim with matter to be real. After all, natural structures
appear to show the same unchanging permanence as the stuff underlying the
shifting configurations of the universe that they structure. Indeed, one can
argue that in fact structure is more fundamental—the stuff of the universe is
merely a medium here only to support the structures that really run the show.

The Problem with Metaphysics

Philosophy helps to clarify our situation in the world, but does all of this
mean that there is no genuine metaphysical knowledge? We human beings
have a stubborn desire to form visions of the world, but are all metaphysical
systems merely shields against the unknown to quiet our mind? We may
accept that based on our experience in the world and the success of our
reasoning in science that we have the epistemic right to speculate at least a
little on what is beyond science. The insight of empiricism is that we should
keep thought as close to experience as possible and that the further we stray
from the check of experience the greater the risk that we are fooling
ourselves. That nature is constantly surprising scientists should give
metaphysicians pause about their projects when they think that they can know
the fundamental nature of reality by basically a priori thought alone. What
“seems plausible to us” changes for scientists over time, and this will
indirectly affect metaphysics. But if theorizing beyond our immediate
experience is totally prohibited, we could never get beyond solipsism and
would have to conclude that there is no external world and no other persons.
However, we must always remember that theorizing is our thought and
that, unlike in science, there is no way to test either through experience or
reasoning which metaphysical theories are best and which are off track, and
thus there is no finality to be attained. We cannot even determine if there is
an objectively correct answer. Moreover, we must be cautious in our
intuitions about what is real: the unreliability of intuitions has been shown as
science has advanced.5 So too, what a naturalist deems to be “self-evident”
about what is real is obviously wrong to a theist and vice versa. This affects
all our reasoning in the field—justifications in metaphysics often end up
being circular. This in turn leads to adopting an agnosticism about the truth of
whatever metaphysics one endorses.
Not only is the Big Question of what is the nature of reality left
unanswerable, we cannot proceed on the assumption that our cognitive
resources are adequate to assure that we are in touch with the fundamental
things making up reality on both the everyday and exotic levels of reality.
Metaphysicians may assert that reason demands that we can discern the
underlying structures of reality and produce a thorough account of them. But
those not suffering from the philosopher’s disease do not find that claim
compelling. There may be more to reality than our conceptual packaging can
capture—not only may there be more to reality than is dreamt of in any
philosophy, but more than we are capable of dreaming of. In addition,
Immanuel Kant pointed out that the same conceptual apparatus that gives
order to our experience inevitably leads to confusion when it is applied to
matters beyond our experience. Thus, tentativeness in metaphysics is not
merely wise but mandatory. Metaphysics has changed through the centuries,
but whether it has advanced in the sense of resolving the issues is another
question. (The history of metaphysics can be seen as a series of valuable
insights blown out of proportion.) Nor has philosophy uncovered new
information for theorizing—when a theory leads to anything empirical, a new
science is born and takes things from there. Philosophy itself, however,
cannot be fully “naturalized” as being continuous with science as long as
philosophers advance untestable theories.
Notes
1. The idea of “essences” results from thinking that something in nature must correspond to our
unchanging concepts. This creates the puzzle of how an “essence” persists through changes to a
thing. But the real philosophical question is whether a concept applies to something that is
constantly changing rather than whether that thing has an unchanging substance-like essence.
2. How to ground the philosophy of naturalism (and also scientism) by means of science without a
circular argument is far from clear since naturalists by definition accept only what can be studied
in science as being real. However, science is only a filter—one way of looking at reality—and
naturalists go further than the practice of science itself and reduce reality to only what that filter
reveals. But that a scientific ontology exhausts reality is itself a metaphysical claim that cannot be
justified by any scientific experiment or observation.
3. Identifying what “matter” is is harder than might be supposed. Carl Hempel identified the
dilemma: if we define matter in terms of what is discovered in physics, then a problem arises since
the theories of physics change—we cannot equate matter either with the posits of current theories
because they will be superseded or with an ideal theory without admitting that we do not currently
know what matter is.
4. Scientism is the epistemic correlate of naturalism: only science can give us knowledge (including
knowledge of the nature of knowledge). It would require that true knowledge of oneself depends
on scientific analysis and not on subjective “self-awareness.” How many people actually subscribe
to this “ism,” consciously or subconsciously, is a matter of debate.
5. For an example of how our intuitions fail when we extend them into exotic realms, consider the
infinity of natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, …). If we remove all the odd numbers from the list, we are
left with only the even numbers (2, 4, 6, …), and so we are left with only half as many numbers,
right? Wrong—we have just as many numbers as we began with, as counterintuitive as that may
seem. To see why, go back to the original list of numbers and double the value of each entry; now
we have the list of only the even numbers, but we have not deleted a single item from the list (we
have only doubled each item’s value), and so we have as many numbers as we began with.
 5
Why Is There Something Rather Than
Nothing?

THE RED KING: “What do you see?”

ALICE: “Nothing”
THE RED KING: “What good eyes you have!”
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

hy is there anything at all rather than nothing? This is one of the

W biggest Big Questions of them all. Gottfried Leibniz, reflecting a
philosopher’s demand for answers, put the matter more fully: “Why is there
something rather than nothing? For nothing is both simpler and seemingly
easier to comprehend than is something. And once you start with nothing,
how do you get from nothing to something?” Perhaps there could have been
nothing, but now something definitely does exist. Is there a reason for
existence? The physicist John Archibald Wheeler wrote, “I know of no great
thinker of any land or era who does not regard existence as the mystery of
mysteries.” Martin Heidegger considered this question the fundamental
question in metaphysics. But Buddhists find the question to be only a
distraction from focusing on the goal of ending our suffering, and the
question is not foremost to many people who take the universe to be eternal.
Nevertheless, the contingency of the world’s existence does produce
existential angst and astonishment in many persons—Paul Tillich’s
“ontological shock” of sheer that-ness.

Nothingness
Let’s start with nothing. Indeed, philosophers make much ado about nothing.
But Friedrich Schelling’s question “Why is there not nothing at all?” is hard
to think about since we inevitably end up forming a visual image of “nothing
at all”: our mind reifies “nothingness” into an object of thought, a thing—that
is, we make our concept for the total absence of anything into a concept of
something. “Nothing” is no longer merely a concept denoting the lack of
anything—it becomes a reality itself (e.g., a big, black silent abyss, empty of
all content) since that is how our discursive mind works. It becomes a
negative reality, like a negative number. So too, we cannot realistically
imagine that we do not exist: we can, of course, imagine a world in which we
were not born, but we will be thinking this—whatever we imagine, the
thinking subject is always there. Thus, the Cartesian “I think therefore I am”
comes back to mess up the process. Our imagining mind cannot be left with
true nothingness, nonexistence, and only negation.
Richard Swinburne asserts: “It is extraordinary that there should exist
anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no
universe, no God, no nothing.” That is, the “most natural” state of affairs
would be the empty set. But while that would obviously be the simplest state
of affairs, it is hard to see how to evaluate whether it is the “most natural”
state (or the “least arbitrary”) or even what exactly that means. In addition,
since something can exist, as evidenced by the fact that we are here, the state
of nothingness would in fact need an explanation. As Sidney Morgenbesser
exclaimed to a group of students arguing about the issue, “If there were
nothing, you’d still be complaining!”
Could there in fact have been nothing? Through “ordinary language”
analysis we may argue that the claim “There could be nothing” has no subject
(since nothing is nothing), and thus the claim is in fact meaningless. Bede
Rundle tries to dismiss what he sees as philosophy’s central question by
arguing that we cannot make sense of the idea that “there might have been
nothing.” Because of the way that we think, there must always be something.
For example, we cannot conceive of a universe coming into being or going
out of being: the universe always comes out of something or something is left
at the end—we are left with at least the setting from which we ask the
question, and so we never have true nothingness. Thus, he argues, there is no
mystery why there is something rather than nothing: we cannot actually
imagine there being nothing. Ordinary usage of the word “nothing” thus
shows that “there could be nothing” is not a genuine, intelligible claim—it
can only apply to parts of what exists and not to the whole of reality.
But just because any idea of “nothing” that we can possibly form makes it
into a “something” does not mean that the idea of nothingness is
unintelligible. Certainly, just having a word for it does not make it a
something. So too with just thinking about nothing: just because it is an
object of thought does not mean that it exists otherwise. Similarly, it is
impossible to visualize true “nothingness”—we are always left with a
container, as Rundle says, and also with someone doing the imagining. By
definition, when we try to picture anything—including nothingness—we are
always picturing something. But it is not clear why we cannot conceive the
removal of all somethings that leaves nothing, including the big, blank space
the things were in and the consciousness imagining it. So too, just because we
cannot imagine—that is, form a mental image—something does not mean that
it cannot exist (contra Rundle), nor does it make the question of why
something exists nonsense (contra Wittgenstein). We cannot imagine an
infinite number of numbers, but we can handle the concept of “infinity” in
mathematics without trouble. We also cannot visualize colorless particles
such as electrons without giving them color, but we can conceive them and
utilize them in physics—our inability to form literal pictures of them is not
grounds to think they do not exist. So too, in cosmology we can conceive of
space as an inflating balloon expanding into nothing, but we cannot visualize
that nothing—we imagine a something that the balloon expands into. As the
physicist P. W. Bridgman said, “the structure of nature may eventually be
such that our processes of thought do not correspond to it sufficiently to
permit us to think about it at all. … We are confronted with something truly
ineffable.”
More generally, there is no reason to believe that reality must comply to
what we can visualize or otherwise imagine with our evolved brains. Why
should the ability of any evolved creature to visualize or imagine something
be a criterion for what is real? Here we can conceive the idea of “coming into
existence” and also the opposite process—the removal of all things—even if
we cannot create a mental picture of the end without leaving an empty space.
But even if beings with our particular brains (or probably any beings) cannot
visualize the situation, we should still accept that it might have been the case
that nothing ever existed.

Can We Get from Nothing to Something?

Another basic problem is how we could possibly get from nothing to
something. Since the pre-Socratic Thales, many have thought that since
something cannot arise from nothing, there must always have been some
“something.” Indeed, a simple argument can be made that something must
have always existed based on that one fundamental premise: “You cannot get
something from nothing.” That is a premise that is very hard to deny. As
William James put it, “From nothing to being there is no logical bridge.” If
we can get something from x, then x must already have existed in some sense.
X cannot be truly nothing if it has the capacity or potentiality to create
something—something is there.1 (If something can in fact come from literally
nothing without any something causing it, it means that we know nothing
fundamental about how reality works.) Thus, if something exists today—and
everyone grants that—it could never have come from nothing. Hence, there
must always have been something. In short, if there is something now, there
could never have been nothing, and reality exists eternally or in some
timeless sense.2 Yet we can still ask why that original “something” exists.
Peter van Inwagen argues why there is something by first imagining an
infinite lottery—each possible state of affairs (with each being equally
probable), with nonexistence being only one possible state out of an infinite
number of possibilities. He then argues that the chance of nonexistence is
zero (one divided by infinity). The problem with this argument is that the
probability of any other one state of affairs then is also always zero—thus,
the probability of our particular world existing is zero, and yet here we are.
Indeed, in the infinite lottery under his approach there can be no winner at all.
But the real issue here is that there are only two basic options: something
versus nothing. Nothingness should not simply be included as one option
with all the different somethings (like including zero with the positive
numbers—0, 1, 2, 3, 4, …). Rather, it is in a different category altogether
(like 0 versus the positive numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, …). And it is not clear how we
can apply probability to that situation.3 The choice of analogy thus makes all
the difference.

Are Values the Answer?

Can an axiological approach explain why anything exists or how to get from
nothing to something? The value realized by creating the physical universe
may explain why a god would choose to create it—that is, realizing value
(goodness, love, or whatever) is the purpose of the universe, or God’s
goodness compels its expression by making beings to love. Arthur
Schopenhauer disagreed. He thought that it would have been better if the
world did not exist since no one would then be here to suffer. But even if it is
better that God did create a world, this does not explain the existence of the
creator god itself and thus does not ultimately explain why there is something
rather than nothing—the first reality remains unexplained.
It is also difficult to argue that some value must be realized in a physical
universe. (And if things of value logically must exist, then no creator god is
their source.) It may well be better that something exists rather than nothing,
but how does value necessitate it? Why should an ethical or other good
require or obligate that something exists? And how could it compel a
physical universe to exist? How could any value bring about its own
fulfillment by requiring that a universe exist? And if value compels existence,
why is there now suffering and evil?
But most basically, why do the values exist in the first place? That ultimate
ontic question remains unanswered. Thus, this approach only introduces more
mystery. (This approach also assumes some values are objective realities.)

Does Religion Have the Answer?

Contrary to popular opinion, answering the question “Why is there something
rather than nothing?” is also impossible in religious terms. God or a
nontheistic transcendent reality may explain why the phenomenal universe
exists, but its own existence too must have an explanation to get a final
answer to the question of why anything exists. That is, we must still ask: why
does God exist? Indeed, a creator needs an explanation more than does the
created. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said, if the existence of the world is so
miraculous that we need to posit God, then God is even more miraculous and
not a final explanation but needs an explanation. Gods too cannot arise from
nothing. Even if God is uncreated and eternal, we must still ask why he is
there. The answer that theologians give is that God is “self-existent” or is his
own cause. But how can anything cause itself? Nothing can do anything
unless it already exists, and so no reality can make itself. And using a Latin
label for the concept—“sui generis”—does not save it. Only the implicit
demand of the philosopher’s disease to satisfy our mind by supplying some
answer, any answer, to why something exists would lead to such a concept
for placating our mind.
 “Self-caused” at best can mean only that something is eternal and without
a cause—it cannot mean God caused his own existence. (Advaita Vedantins
consider Brahman to be “unborn [a-ja]” rather than self-born, which does not
frame the issue of its existence in terms of a cause.) We normally treat a
“why” question in terms of where something came from or what caused it,
but if something is eternal that approach does not apply.4 “Causation” and
“dependency” are concepts that work for events within the universe but do
not apply to reality as a whole. Traditional theistic thinking about “creation”
and a “creator god” sets us on the path of thinking of something coming from
nothing—that is, an origin rather than eternality. Theists tend to find the idea
of an eternal universe incredible—they believe that it must have been created
and nothing can just pop into existence—and yet have no trouble with an
eternal, uncreated god. But it is not at all clear why if there can be an eternal
“self-caused” reality, it cannot be the natural universe. For example, the
universe may not be merely the particular “miniverse” that started with our
Big Bang but an infinite series of such miniverses—such a “multiverse”
would not “pop into existence” any more than an eternal god would. If either
the universe or God is eternal, it has no cause at all, not a first cause in the
infinite past, as theists tend to think: there is no point when something did not
exist, and no origin. Origin-oriented concepts such as “self-caused” and “self-
created” only give us a false sense that we understand—the terms are
meaningless and only cause our thought to go off track. Even “self-existent”
usually involves thinking in terms of a cause—that is, something causing its
own existence. (Baruch Spinoza took it to mean a thing the “essence” of
which involves “existence.”)
But again, even if “self-caused” or “self-existent” means only being eternal
and thus without a cause, we still must ask why that reality exists. That is,
even if there is no cause, we can still seek a reason why the eternal reality
exists—for example, require a philosophical argument for why something
must exist. In short, is there a reason to expect that that eternal something
should exist? And here the obvious problem is that whatever reason is
advanced, it will be an answer from our limited perspective—we will never
be in a position within the universe to know if our answer is correct or is
simply something that quiets our inquisitive but finite mind. So too, relying
on what we take to be “self-evident” is risky: the subjective and historically
conditioned element of any such intuition is too great.
It is hard to see how any eternal reality could have an external explanation.
Rather, anything eternal is a brute fact unless it can be self-explanatory. But
nothing can be self-explanatory any more than it can self-created. In addition,
arguing that the universe needs an explanation because it began in time but
God does not need an explanation because he is timeless (i.e., existing
outside of time) does not get around the problem—we still must ask why God
is there. So too, if the natural universe is eternal, we still can ask why it is
here. Thus, with an eternal reality we are still left with an unexplained brute
fact, not an explanation.
Positing such self-contradictory categories as “self-caused” or “self-
explanatory” is only an attempt to address our need to think that we
understand. But a brute fact is something we simply have to accept as
unexplained. Theists claim that “self-existence” has a logical necessity to it
and thus asking why it exists is like asking why a circle is round, but it is a
self-contradiction. Theists cannot form an idea of “self-creation” any more
than they can of a square circle. The theological rejoinder is that “self-
existence” must be accepted as a “profound mystery,” but gibberish is
gibberish. At best, it can mean only that some reality simply exists, not that it
is its own cause or its own reason for existing. In short, theists should accept
that they do not know why God is there and not bewitch their minds with
such meaningless terms as “self-existent.”
Thus, we are stuck with a brute fact, and our quest to know why anything
exists cannot be completed in this manner—it ends up without an answer but
with a mystery. A creator god may well account for why the natural world
exists, but it does not account for why it itself exists and thus is not the
ultimate answer to why anything exists. Through theology, we always have to
end up with something being simply accepted as a brute fact—either an
eternal universe or a source.

Does Science Have the Answer?

Science too is no help here: scientists can explain how events happen, but not
why there is something here to happen. However, some scientists simply do
not get the basic cosmological question at all but try to reduce it to a
scientific problem. They reduce the philosophical question “Why is there
something rather than nothing?” to the scientific question “How does matter
arise from nonmatter?” and believe that they are answering the former by
answering the latter.
The idea that the universe emerged as an ordered realm from a prior chaos
predates science. In the West, it goes back to the pre-Socratic Anaxagoras.
But the Greeks did not argue that an ordered realm emerged from literally
nothing—something preexisted. The idea is also common in myths. In the
Bible, God does not create (àsá) the heavens and the earth but shapes (bará)
them from a preexisting formless void (Gen. 1:1–2). In India, the Rig Veda’s
famous Hymn of Creation (10.129) begins “At the time of the beginning,
there was nothing either nonexistent nor existent,” but by “nonexistent
(asat)” the hymn means only what is “unstructured” or “chaotic,” not literal
nonexistence—there is still present “that One (tad eka)” that is beyond the
categories of “what is existent” and “what is nonexistent” since these
concepts apply only after the creation of the ordered world. And, as the hymn
ends: “From what did this creation come to be? Was it is established by itself
or not? Surely he who is the overseer of this world in the highest heaven
knows—or perhaps does even he not know?”
Today, Stephen Hawking believes he has shown how the universe
spontaneously arose out of nothing—that structures within nature explain
why anything exists at all—and thus science can prove why anything exists.
The universe has no boundaries, and no external conditions are involved.
However, he actually explains only why one state of affairs (the manifest
universe) must arise from another state of affairs (a certain quantum state).
He makes no attempt to explain why that prior state—what Steven Weinberg
calls the “quantum stage”—existed or where it came from. If the manifest
universe is the result of, say, an unstable quantum fluctuation bubble,
Hawking still has to explain why the stuff of the “quantum vacuum” already
existed. Thus, in his theory the universe is far from “self-explanatory.”
Moreover, there are also laws preceding the creation of the manifest
universe whose existence remains unexplained. Hawking merely states that
because there are certain laws “the universe can and will create itself from
nothing”—the basic questions of where these laws come from, why these
laws exist and not others, and why any laws have the power to create a
material universe are never answered. Nor has he explained why the vacuum
is encoded with structures that make the quantum “fluctuation” possible.
An unstable quantum state that can produce the visible universe is not
nothing since something can come out of it—anything that is already there
and can do something is not literally nothing. The quantum vacuum is the
state of the universe without any stable particles, not nothing. At most,
Hawking has shown only that the universe cannot remain stable in an
unmanifested state but must become manifest because of certain physical
forces—that is, why there is some thing rather than no thing—but not why
there is something already there that could become the manifest universe
rather than nothing or why there are laws to make it manifest. There may be a
zero sum between the positive and negative energies within the universe, and
so no external or additional energy is needed to create the manifested
universe, but where did that “stuff” come from? If there is something there
that is “unstable” and any “symmetry” must split, there is still something
there prior to the present state of the universe. That prior state may be free of
the structures ordering the manifest universe and hence not of any scientific
interest and thus “nothing” to scientists, but in no sense is it truly nothing—
its existence too needs an explanation.
Thus, Hawking is discussing only the transition of one state of the universe
into another. The ultimate cosmological question of why there is anything to
convert into “something” in the first place remains, even if Hawking thinks
that philosophy is dead. Switching to a scientifically answerable “how
“question does not get around the basic “why” question of what, in
Hawking’s earlier words, “breathes fire into the equations” and makes a
universe for physicists to describe.5 In the end, Hawking is at a loss to answer
the question, “Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?”6
So too, even leaving aside the theories of multiple universes and an eternal
universe, the Big Bang does not answer, in Alan Guth’s words, where “the
stuff that banged” came from. More generally, scientists’ interest in
prediction and order cannot address the ultimate cosmological question of
why anything exists. Any scientific answer may trace the current state of the
universe to a prior one, but it will always have to presume that something
already existed to change into the current state, and thus scientific analysis
cannot explain its existence. There is always an existing medium in which
mathematical laws or software is embodied. Nor does science answer why
any laws should exist to force the arising of something, even if, as modern-
day Pythagoreans such as Max Tegmark see it, mathematics is the generative
principle of reality.

Does Philosophy Have the Answer?

In short, science has no answer for why both the stuff of nature and its laws
exist. The enigma of why anything exists remains as large as before science.
So, does philosophy then have the answer? The philosophers’ approach to
nothingness discussed above did not prove promising. Still, many
philosophers dismiss the question as a linguistic error. Language itself seems
inherently to require a something: by saying “There was nothing” or
“Nothing existed” (or conversely, “Nothingness cannot exist”), we apparently
are committed to claiming that nothing is a something and thus a reality—
otherwise, there is no subject to the sentences. That is, we cannot deny
nothingness without making it into a thing to discuss and thus implicitly
affirming its existence.7 However, claiming “There was once not anything”
or “There could be the lack of anything” gets around such a facile rejection of
the problem.
The substantive problem is that we cannot invoke any entity or principle to
explain the existence of everything—that would be invoking part of what
exists to explain all that exists. Only if it can be shown that some item’s
existence is logically necessary—that is, the claim that that entity or principle
might not exist leads to a logical contradiction—can we establish a final
explanation without appeal to some further cause or principle, even if this
introduces the problem of how an abstract principle could create a
phenomenal reality.8 But this is hard to do. Robert Nozick introduced the
concept of “self-subsuming” to get around the problem of “self-causation” or
“self-explanation,” but this notion still cannot bootstrap beingness itself into
existence. Nor can a creator god be shown to be logically necessary: such a
god would have to exist in every possible universe, but we can conceive a
universe without an outside source of any kind, and so a creator god, let alone
the all-powerful, all-loving god of theism, is not necessary in all possible
worlds. (What we consider a “possible world” also depends on what we can
conceive, and thus again seems to make what we can conceive a criterion for
what is real.)
Nor will trying to deduce that something exists by using pure reason
without any premises involving something that already exists via an
Ontological Argument succeed: we simply cannot establish the existence of
something in the world from the analysis of our concepts. A reality with
nonmaximal properties would be even harder to establish as necessarily
existing. At best the Ontological Argument succeeds in establishing that if a
perfect being in fact exists, then it must exist. Even in its modern form, in
terms of modal logic, we are left in the end with the alternatives “God exists”
or “God does not exist,” as its one-time defender Alvin Plantinga had to
admit. Thus, such reasoning is of no help at all.
Indeed, probably every philosophical argument must fail here. First, there
is the Munchausen trilemma, noted in chapter 3: any answer to the question
will either lead to an infinite regress of explanations, be a circular
explanation, or lead to some assumed but unexplained reality. Second, there
is a problem concerning causal chains. Bertrand Russell argued that every
state of affairs in an eternal universe always has a prior cause and thus there
is an explanation for each state of affairs. We can utilize the infinite number
of negative numbers as a model: there is no first number, and yet every
number has a predecessor. Theists characterize the universe in toto as
contingent and thus see the need for a creator god. Such a sustaining source
would not be a first cause in the chain but of a different order: the concept
“cause” (which was devised for phenomenal events) would not apply to a
sustaining source relation to the physical universe, but such a source would
be responsible in some sense for the existence of the phenomenal world in
toto. However, a chain of contingent events does not demand a “necessary
being” or any other source, as Russell showed. Nevertheless, even if we have
a reason for each event in the chain, we can still ask why the total eternal
chain of events exists. Without such an explanation, we are left with a brute
fact. And as noted above, a creator would itself need an explanation. Thus,
with or without a creator, in the end we remain stuck with a brute fact.
We want to reject the concepts of both self-causation and an infinite
regress of causes. This may indicate that we have been looking at the
situation improperly from the beginning, but we do not know how else to see
it. More broadly, with the way our mind works, we are always looking for a
“because” for every “why.” Leibniz enshrined this in philosophy as the
“principle of sufficient reason”: for every event or state of affairs, there is a
reason sufficient to explain it. He wanted a final, “ultimate” reason for all
contingent events—nothing would be left arbitrary or unexplainable in the
end. He believed that the chain of causes had to end with an uncaused first
cause—a necessary being (i.e., God) whose existence does not require an
explanation because God is not a contingent state of affairs. Thus, Leibniz
had to twist the intuition underlying the principle of sufficient reason and end
with something allegedly being self-caused. But again, “self-causation” is
meaningless. Thus, resorting to “self-existence” is not the successful
conclusion of an argument but an admission that we do not know what we are
talking about. To push the principle of sufficient reason beyond what it can
rightfully achieve is a clear instance of the philosopher’s disease—it is
dogmatically demanding that every question must have an answer that
satisfies our reason.9 But why reality must satisfy our demand that there must
be a reason for the world simply because we want the universe to be
thoroughly comprehensible to us is not obvious. And nevertheless, we are
still left in the end with an unexplained brute fact—the mystery of any
“uncaused first cause.”
The sense of a “necessary being” need not be of logical necessity, but only
of metaphysical necessary—that is, a reality whose existence explains the
existence of the contingent universe. The necessary being is a
creator/sustainer of the contingent realm and thus not the first cause in the
causal chain of phenomenal events. But in this case, the creator’s existence is
as contingent as that of the universe, and we are still left with a mystery. In
addition, substituting the mystery of a creator’s existence for the mystery of
why the natural universe exists does not advance our final understanding one
iota—it merely pushes the mystery of existence back one step. This satisfies
theists since it pushes the mystery of the natural realm out of the natural
realm, but the central mystery of why anything exists remains untouched. If
theists accept that God’s existence is mystery, then they in fact cannot claim
an ultimate explanation for the universe. In short, one mystery cannot explain
another.
Furthermore, the choice remains between accepting the natural universe or
God as the unexplained explanatory stopping point, and it is more rational to
stop with a known reality—the natural universe—especially when positing a
further mystery also introduces new “how” mysteries of how creation
occurred (if the universe is not eternal) and how the creator/sustainer
maintains the existence of the natural universe. (Theists would argue that
there are reasons unrelated to this issue to introduce a creator.) Our objective
is understanding, not more mysteries, and these metaphysical posits cannot
give us any knowledge. Mystery is an admission of not knowing, not an
explanation of anything.

The Oddity of the Question

Thus, philosophy also fails to answer the question. In fact, the question,
“Why is there something rather than nothing at all?” is actually very odd and
probably logically unique. When it comes to answering it, we reach the
impasse noted above: any answer we supply—any being, any reality, mind or
consciousness, any force, any principle, any scientific law, any value, any
event, Schopenhauer’s sheer “will of existence” to exist, logical necessity,
mathematics, or anything else—is always something, and we can always ask
why that something exists. Even if we could apply the phenomenal concept of
“causation” or “origin” to the totality of things, any causal explanation will
only introduce a new reality (the cause) to question. Any cause must already
exist and thus is part of what is to be explained by means of that cause. As
Paul Edwards pointed out, the question “Why is there something?” has a
simple logical error: it presupposes an antecedent condition that can explain
that “something,” but there can be no such antecedent since it too must be
subsumed in the “something” that must be explained. Even any answer in
terms of a logically necessary reality still does not address why any reality at
all was possible to begin with or why reality as set up in such a way that
something that could not but exist is a possibility at all. In sum, we simply
cannot answer why something exists with a “something” of any nature, but
there is no other way to answer the question.
Thus, theism, science, and philosophy are all bound to fail here. They fail
most fundamentally because any answer will be in terms of a “something”
and we can always ask why that something exists. We want an answer to why
“all there is” exists, and this does not permit a reason or cause outside of it.
We cannot get from nothing to something without invoking a something
whose existence is unexplained, and the alternative of self-explanation does
not succeed. Indeed, answering the question may well end up being logically
impossible in any terms since we can always ask why that answer exists—we
cannot get beyond all that we are trying to explain.
The problem is not merely that our particular evolved brains are unable to
deal with such matters: any being inside any universe cannot get outside of
all that exists to gain a perspective from which to address the question. We
just have to accept that the fact that something exists is an unexplained brute
fact and move on. Wittgenstein thought that the riddle of existence does not
exist because the question is not legitimate. And many philosophers today
argue that it is a pseudo-question since there is no way to form an answer to
it. The atheist J.J.C. Smart thought the question “Why does the cosmos exist
at all?” is unanswerable and so should be set aside, but nevertheless that
anything should exist at all still struck him as a matter of “the deepest awe.”
Nonetheless, merely because we are not in a position to answer the question
does not mean that “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is not a
legitimate, well-formed question.
Since we cannot answer the question, why anything exists will remain a
permanent mystery for us, and we will just have to accept our lot—that
something exists is simply a brute fact for which we have no explanation,
causal or otherwise. Maybe there is a “because.” Maybe not. The point is that
we are not in a position to know. This is not to say that the universe
necessarily exists or conversely that it happened by chance or is a random
accident or a miracle—we cannot know. In addition, concepts such as
“random” or “by chance” cannot apply since these presuppose some kind of
causation that we would expect from our experience in the natural world, but
that is missing for the totality of things. Nor can we call the universe
“irrational” or “absurd” simply because we are not able to find a reason for it
—that label presupposes that we know that there is in fact no reason for its
existence. And if in the final analysis, the universe “just is” with no
explanation, then its existence is “nonrational,” not “irrational” (i.e., contrary
to our reason).

The Wisdom of Queen Victoria

In the end, agnosticism again recommends itself since we are not in a
position to answer the question of why anything exists or even to know if
there is an answer. All we know for certain is that the mystery of existence
will always remain open, however we deal with it: beings within the universe
simply are not in a position to know why it exists. Nevertheless, it is difficult
to maintain agnosticism and remain open here—even those not under the
sway of the philosopher’s disease want closure on such a basic question and
thus to think that we know.
But if we do make a choice, we are left with having to pick our poison:
accepting the existence of the universe as an unexplained brute fact, or
positing the existence of a transcendent cause that is itself an unexplained
brute fact. That is no better than accepting a cause that is itself a mystery or
accepting no cause at all. Perhaps whatever general metaphysics one ascribes
to will determine one’s choice. But in any case, we end up with something
unexplained. We must accept that whichever poison we pick, neither is an
explanation providing an ultimate reason, and that in the end we are left with
an unresolvable mystery, not understanding.
Thus, this is a genuine mystery that is a permanent part of the human
condition—the universe’s very existence is simply incomprehensible. Theists
may accept that. After all, Job’s answer from the whirlwind was “Where were
you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4). But the philosophical
mind may keep churning away. Isaiah Berlin likened philosophers to children
who persist in asking “why?” Inquiring children can be bought off with ice
cream, but philosophers cannot—they do not stop until there is a resolution or
the acceptance that a mystery is involved. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
(3.6), the teacher Yajnavalkya is pressed again and again by Gargi over what
is the true source of the world, and he finally has to tell her to stop
questioning every answer he gives or her head would split open. As Queen
Victoria wrote to her granddaughter: “I would earnestly warn you against
trying to find out the reason and explanation of everything. … To try and find
out the reason for everything is very dangerous and leads to nothing but
disappointment and dissatisfaction, unsettling your mind and in the end
making you miserable.” This may be sage advice, but being what we are, we
probably will go on searching for a “because” to answer the most
fundamental cosmological “why” question even if we know that we can
never find one.

Appendix
In the Prologue to his Why Does the World Exist? Jim Holt gives a simple
philosophical argument for why something must exist:

Suppose there is nothing. Then:

(1) There would be no laws, for laws are something.
(2) If there are no laws, then everything would be permitted.
(3) If everything were permitted, then nothing would be forbidden.
(4) So if there were nothing, nothing would be forbidden.
(5) Thus, nothing is self-forbidding.
(6) Thus, there must be something.

However, there are three problems with this argument. First, if we begin by
supposing that there is nothing, then (2) “everything would be permitted”
does not follow: if there is nothing, then there is nothing existing that could
do anything, whether permitted or not—that is, if we start with the
supposition that there is nothing, then there is nothing to do anything period.
Second, the sense of “nothing would be forbidden” is different in (3) and (4):
in (3) it means “there would be no restrictions on anything occurring”—
following from (2)—but in (4) it shifts to something about “nothingness.”
Thus, (4) cannot follow from (3)—they are in fact unconnected. Third, (4)
itself is a problem. Perhaps he means:
(4’) If there were nothing, nothingness itself would be forbidden.

But (4’) is obviously wrong: no state of affairs would be forbidden because

there is nothing to forbid it—there would simply be nothing. And if (4’) is
wrong, then (5) does not follow from (4’), and the argument fails. So perhaps
he means this:
(4’’) If there were nothing, then there would be no states of affairs.

In this case, (4’’) is true and (5) does follow, but (6) does not follow. There
would be a state of affairs—the lack of anything (i.e., the null set)—but (6)
would follow only if we reify nothing into something: “There is a nothing
there.” But that would make nothingness into some reality, begging the
question (if it made sense at all). Or perhaps Holt means:
(4’’’)If there were nothing, then no states of affairs are prohibited.

But (5) obviously does not follow from (4’’’)—indeed, it contradicts it.
I don’t see any other options for what “nothing would be forbidden”
could mean, and unless some viable option can be found, this argument fails
to establish why there must be something, even ignoring the problems with
(2) and (3).

Notes
1. Martin Heidegger made a verbal form of the word “nothing”—to “noth.” That is, “nothing noths.”
However, this makes nothing into something—a thing that does something—thereby negating its
nothingness. But this does show how our mind works: we cannot help but reify concepts.
2. The converse may also be true: once anything at all exists, there can never be nothing again—we
can imagine the process, but nothing can terminate all existence including itself. Indeed, it is odd
to think of the universe coming into existing and then going out of existence—as if it exists only
for a brief period between two big nothings. But if time is a property only of what changes, we
misconceive the situation by thinking that way.
3. This brings up a problem with applying Bayesian statistics to any basic issue: we have to make
assumptions. Thus, for example, believers and nonbelievers would make different assumptions
that would determine very different probabilities for the existence of God.
4. Seeking a cause to answer any “why” question is encapsulated in the word “because” itself: the
word comes from the Middle English “bi cause”—“by the cause.” The law of the conservation of
energy is how we observe things today—it is not itself a natural force that somehow rules out an
initial creation of matter/energy.
5. So too with theories such as loop quantum theory: the theory cannot explain why that law itself
exists or why the loop is there. Similarly, if we follow the scientific assumption that matter/energy
cannot be created or destroyed and thus that the universe is eternal, we can still ask why that initial
supply of matter/energy exists (and why it never changes).
6. Similarly, one should not (as Sean Carroll does) mix up the metaphysical question of whether the
workings of nature can proceed without interference from a god with the metaphysical question of
whether a god created the natural realm to begin with. Establishing that nature can operate without
any transcendent input is irrelevant to the latter question.
7. Platonists assert that numbers and truths necessarily exist: such entities are eternal even if there are
no conscious beings to know them or any phenomenal universe to manifest them. Some
philosophers argue that there cannot be nothing since if there were no material phenomena there
would then at least be the fact that there is nothing material or the real absence of material reality
—thus, there is always something. But these philosophical denials of nothingness are irrelevant to
the Big Question of why anything that we experience exists, although it does highlight the fact that
the question of why anything exists is different from the question of why the physical universe
exists.
8. The notion of “necessarily existing” also introduces the question of why anything that did not
logically have to exist now exists—that is, why are there contingent realities, or the absence of
necessary realities?
9. In addition, if current theories in physics are correct, the decay of a radioactive atom’s nucleus is
literally uncaused. Thus, there are events in the physical world that violate the principle of
sufficient reason, and thus applying the principle in metaphysics to the world as a whole becomes
very risky. Even if another theory replaces current theories, this still shows that we can conceive
of there being contingent events without a cause.
 6
Why Is Nature Ordered?

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

—Albert Einstein

hen we move from the mystery of why there is something rather than
W nothing, the next Big Questions are why is there any phenomenal
universe at all, and why does it have the general character it has? There
appears to be no ultimate answer for why there should be any phenomenal
universe—that is, why some principle should be instantiated in a physical
form. But obviously something phenomenal now exists, and we can ask why
it does and why it has the character it has. For example, why is there
matter/energy, and, if there are other substances, why those? And why not
others? And why does the universe have the order it has?
If all logically possible universes somehow must be realized in reality, then
why ours has the structures and features that it has is not a mystery—some
world had to have them. Theists will instead invoke a creator/designer god.
There seems to be no way to test these options empirically from within our
phenomenal world. Our metaphysical predilections may direct us to jump to a
transcendent or a naturalistic answer to close our questioning, but we have no
reasoned final explanation, nor do we have any reason to believe that we ever
will. Agnostics can accept the universe’s structures and features as simply an
unexplained brute fact.

Why Any Order at All?

Let’s look more closely at one of the mysteries: why is there any order at all?
Without order and continuity in the world but only chaos, life could not form,
nor could we comprehend nature. And no one can deny that there appears to
be an incredibly intricate and complex order to reality. But that the world is
ordered at all is no less strange than that it exists. Why if anything exists, is it
not just chaos? This question precedes the issue of why the universe has the
particular structures and laws it has—it is the question why any phenomenal
universe has any structure at all. The existence of a stable order is a
presupposition of free will and also scientific testing—otherwise there would
be no reason to expect our predictions to be fulfilled. But even a Theory of
Everything will not approach the ultimate issue of why the universe is orderly
in its operation (or why the order is causal)—no law of nature could explain
why there are laws of nature.
So, if there could have been changes without any order, why is there order?
Why didn’t the “explosion” of the Big Bang bring total chaos? Where did
order come from? Why is the universe structured with laws of nature in the
first place? Why do laws exist? Did the laws governing nature’s evolution
exist before the physical universe? Objects do not simply bump into each
other—why do higher levels of organization form and apparently have their
own causal powers and orders of causation? Why is physics governed by
exactingly precise laws? Are laws of nature evolving? Was the physicist Paul
Dirac correct in suggesting that natural laws and constants (including the
speed of light) may vary over time? If natural forces do change over time,
why? If not, why not? Or is there no unique fundamental order, or none that
is intelligible to us? If the ordered universe is eternal, order and laws were
never created. If Platonists in mathematics are correct, laws exist timelessly
regardless of whether there is a phenomenal universe to manifest them and
whether there are conscious beings to know them—but we can still ask why
they exist and how such principles cause phenomena to be ordered.
Where did this structure come from? Is there an intelligence behind the
world? Or can we forego postulating a transcendent architect altogether?
Even if being and natural structures both exist eternally, is “order” only
something that we impose on reality since our minds seem hardwired to see
patterns and agency even when there are none? Virtually all philosophers in
the past have believed that reality coheres into a unity and that science shows
how the parts fit together in that unity. But was Bertrand Russell correct in
his bedrock conviction that the universe is “all spots and jumps, without
unity, without continuity, without coherence or orderliness or any of the other
properties that governesses love”? Do we make reality more intelligible than
it actually is? Indeed, is the entire idea of a “law” of nature merely our
invention, just the imposition of our idea of social laws onto nature? Should
the idea of “laws” be discarded from science as an antiquated holdover of the
idea of God as a law-giver?

Causation
And if there is order, why is the order causal? Forget about the problem of
how one event exactly “causes” another—why are there laws of certain
events and conditions causing certain other events? Or, like Leibniz’s
monads, are events independent but coordinated and ordered by some
principle and we only infer causal connections between them? Since
causation does not figure in fundamental physical equations, should we
conclude that causation is not in fact a feature of reality? Or is reality
genuinely causal? Is there also a fixed determinism of events? If causation is
a real part of our everyday world but not the subatomic world, why is that so?
1
The empiricist David Hume’s argument about the nature of causation
should also be noted: all we actually experience are isolated individual sense-
impressions; we infer that there is a causal connection and order only by habit
from the correlations of events that we regularly see together, but we cannot
know whether there are actual connections or not. To be certain that there is
an unvarying necessary causal conjunction of types of experiences, we would
have to demonstrate that nature operates according to unvarying laws, but all
we have is our habits, and we cannot extrapolate from them to an objective
cause/effect order existing independently of us. Nor do past regularities
guarantee that nature will not change and abandon these patterns. Any
argument for the objectivity of a causal order inevitably involves circularity.
Thus, our reason cannot demonstrate that there is an objective causal order to
reality. The same argument applies to any alleged immutable laws of nature.
We have no guarantee that our limited sense-impressions reflect reality as it
truly is. We can know only our individual sense-impressions. We cannot
attain truth about reality independent of them—that remains a mystery.

Why Is There Disorder?

Complexity in the universe seems to grow over time as the structures do their
work. But consider the presence of disorder in our universe. According to
current theories in physics, there are only probabilities at subatomic levels for
certain events, not deterministic certainties—such as in the radioactive decay
of groups of atomic nuclei: there is no way to predict which particular
nucleus will disintegrate. Physicists end up with statistical laws, albeit very
precise ones, showing only patterns. Many scientists accept this as the final
word on the subject—there is literally no reason why certain events occur.
But why is there such randomness in an ordered universe? Some physicists
refuse to accept such indeterminacy—as Albert Einstein said, “God does not
play dice.” They believe that the necessity of using a statistical method shows
only that physicists have not yet found the foundational laws of nature, and
so they look for deeper deterministic laws. But merely because indeterminacy
is “unsatisfying” certainly does not mean reality must conform to our wishes.
Why must there be something like a Pythagorean “harmony of the spheres”
to reality?

Order and Structure

In the end, order and the presence of structures is as much a mystery as why
there is something rather than nothing. The structures of the universe and
their origin need explaining just as much as existence itself, as does how
structures are imprinted upon the substances they structure. Structures do not
emerge from matter but are a separate dimension of reality. Naturalists accept
them as simply brute facts incapable of further explanation. As the British
emergentist Samuel Alexander put it, the existence of the powers must be
accepted with “natural piety.” Deists and theists will posit a transcendent god
as a law-giver, and their positions cannot be ruled out if invoking a further
mystery to explain a mystery is permissible. But are we barred from ever
knowing the ultimate explanation? We have no reason to believe that we will
ever know with certainty which option is correct or whether there may be
other options that we cannot conceive. Beings within the natural order,
whatever their cognitive abilities, may be incapable of knowing. If so, why
there is order to reality at all will remain an intractable mystery.

Notes
1. One basic question—must any order be causal?—is difficult to address. Even imagining an
alternative order for an empirical world is hard for beings within a world such as ours.
 7
Reductionism and Emergence

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms.
Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less
or more?
—Richard Feynman

f metaphysics is about cutting nature at its joints and establishing the

I foundational explanatory principles, then central to it is determining what
are the true substances and structures of reality at the foundations of things,
and this brings up the issue of reductionism. Both reductionists and
antireductionists want to explain the world’s phenomena with the fewest
types of irreducibly real substances and structures—they simply disagree
over the number needed. Is there more than one substance to reality (e.g.,
matter and consciousness), or is all of reality made of only one type of stuff?
Is the universe nothing but matter pushing matter in a void? Are human
beings nothing but soulless machines, at best existing only to propagate
genes? Is the mind nothing but the brain? Is the natural universe all there is,
or are there also transcendent realities? In the cases of life, consciousness,
and society, do new realities emerge that cannot be reduced to simpler
components? How do parts become wholes and create new entities? Can
wholes act downwardly on their own parts? So too, are the structures depicted
in physics the only real structures operating in the universe? If so, are all
scientific theories and concepts ultimately reducible to those of physics?

What Is a Reduction?
There are eliminationists in metaphysics who deny the very existence of
some everyday phenomena (e.g., life or consciousness). But reductionists do
not deny the reality of life, minds, and so forth. Rather, they attempt to
explain such macrophenomena in terms of simpler realities not having the
properties to be explained. If the explained phenomena have no causal power,
then they are considered merely epiphenomena. A reduction thus gets us
away from dependent realities and closer to the independent realities and
fundamental causal powers—what is more basic in explanations and thus
“more real” in that sense. For example, it is not a reduction to claim that a
religious experience cannot occur without a certain neural state of the brain—
the reduction is to claim that the experience is only that brain state.
An example of a reduction in science is the explanation of the heat of a
gas. When we explain why one object is hot by pointing out that it is being
heated by another hot object, we only explain why that particular object is hot
—we have not explained the phenomenon of heat itself. To explain heat
itself, we have to invoke something that is itself not hot—that is, something
to which the concept of “heat” does not apply but which is responsible for
heat. For the heat of gas, scientists have advanced such an explanation in
terms of the movement of molecules: the molecules themselves are athermal
entities, but their movement generates heat. To reductionists, heat is not
caused by molecular movement but simply is nothing but the movement of
molecules. The temperature of a gas is reduced to the average kinetic energy
of its molecules. It is an aggregate effect like the shape of the mound created
by pouring out particles of sand into a pile. Indeed, reductionists reduce all of
the thermodynamics of energy and entropy to the kinetic laws of individual
particles and their momenta. Thus, there is nothing left to explain about the
heat of a gas after this reduction.
An example of a dilemma that inspires reductionism comes from the
astrophysicist Arthur Eddington. He presented a paradox: he was actually
writing on two tables at once—the “everyday table” that we experience
(bulky, colored, substantive, comparatively permanent) and the “scientific
table” (mostly emptiness with numerous electrical charges constantly rushing
about furiously). The problem is how to reconcile these two very different
realities. Is the table really solid and rigid, or is it mostly empty space?
Reductionists have a simple solution: only the “scientific table” is real—there
are no composite entities; rather, there are only simple realities without
further parts that are arranged by physical forces into entities. That is, there is
no everyday table but only subatomic particles “arranged table-wise,” and all
the everyday phenomena of the table are caused only by those particles. The
reality of solidity thus is not denied, but we do not have to include “tables” in
our inventory of what is real—a swarm of quarks, or whatever are the real
particulars, is all that is really there, and everyday solidity is simply the rigid
arrangement of those parts.

Types of Reductionism
Ontic and structural reductionism must be clearly distinguished.1 Ontic
reductionism involves the stuff of the universe, and structural reductionism
involves the fields and forces in the universe ordering the interactions of
things. To use an analogy, consider this book: the ink and paper are the
substance, but the letters, words, and sentences structured by the rules of
grammar order the ink. The two dimensions cannot be conflated, and no
amount of study of one dimension can give any information about the other.
So too, just as grammarians can ignore the ink or any other medium of
embodiment, scientists can ignore the ontic stuff of the universe—the “being”
of the universe—in which the structures they study are instantiated.
Philosophers do not typically distinguish substance and structure and so do
not distinguish ontic and structural reductionism—thus they mistakenly
believe that a commitment to ontic reductionism also requires a commitment
to structural reductionism. So too, looking at the makeup of the universe in
terms of “substance” and “properties” without the role of structure is off
track.
Ontic reductionists believe that life and consciousness can be explained as
exclusively physical phenomena. Ontic dualists affirm a self or mind in
addition to the material body. But ontic reductionists may reject structural
reductionism and accept that more than only physical structures are at work
in nature. For example, naturalists are ontic reductionists—they believe there
is only one type of reality and it is open in principle to scientific analysis and
so reject any separate life-substance or mind-substance. But naturalists are
not necessarily structural reductionists: there is no reason that one cannot be a
naturalist and still accept that some types of natural forces are not reducible
to physical ones but are open to scientific study. Thus, scientists can affirm
the reality of biological structures and still be naturalists. (If ontic and
structural reductionism are distinguished, resistance to structural
antireductionism may lessen.)
 Structural reductionists go further than ontic reductionism: there is only
physical structure at work in what is real—everything consists only of the
complex interactions of realities having only physical properties.2 Most
structural reductionists may believe that ultimately there are only quantum-
level realities and that everything else is only produced from the interaction
of quantum structures, thereby unifying all apparently different physical and
nonphysical structures. As theoretical physicist Lee Smolin says, “[t]welve
particles and four forces are all we need to explain everything in the known
world.” Thus, all things are only more and more complex combinations of
one order of structure. But one can be a scientist without believing that—one
can practice science and believe that there are irreducibly biological or
psychological structures or multiple types of irreducible physical causes. For
example, the mind may be ontologically only the same type of stuff as rocks
and trees, but it may have irreducibly nonphysical properties. Even many
physicists reject the notion that there are only physical properties, and many
reductionists within physics reject the notion that there are only quantum-
level structures. Philip Anderson can say that particle physics is “utterly
irrelevant” to his work in condensed matter physics. In short, one can endorse
ontic reductionism and reject structural or theoretical reductionism and still
be a scientist. And according to polls, many American scientists actually
reject ontic reductionism: they may treat nature as closed for scientific
purposes, but many are theists, deists, or agnostics concerning transcendent
realities.
One caricature of reductionists is that they deny the phenomena of the
everyday world. Another is that they believe that to determine what actually
is real we have to chop up entities into their tiniest parts since only the lowest
subatomic particles void of structure exist—all we have to do is look at
things’ parts in isolation to see all we need to know about the things
themselves; we can totally ignore their organization. However, reductionists
need not be mechanicalists but can consider the context of a phenomenon as
relevant. So too, they must accept that physical structures are an irreducible
part of the world. Matter is not inherently attracted to matter: without some
form of gravitational structure this would not occur. Thus, there is a
difference between a box of loose computer parts and a functioning
computer. The box of parts and the working computer are not simply two
different arrangements of the parts: materially they are the same, but one can
do something the other cannot. Structural reductionists recognize that higher-
level phenomena such as solidity are real and not features of subatomic
particles—when we step on the floor, it is not like stepping onto a “swarm of
flies,” as Eddington put it. Nature may be, as Bertrand Russell said, a “vast
collection of electric charges in violent motion,” but solidity still persists in
the everyday world and thus is a genuine feature of reality even if it is not a
feature of the atomic and subatomic levels of the world. But these
reductionists believe that the subatomic particles in situ are all that is needed
to explain all such higher-level properties: if we ever learn all about the parts
in situ of any whole, there is nothing more to know about the whole. This is
true of persons as well as tables. While ontic reductionists believe that
persons are a totally physical phenomenon, they cannot think that persons are
unstructured piles of matter, simple aggregates of subatomic parts—
structures are at work organizing matter into living, conscious human beings.
In this way, amorphous aggregates are distinguished from structured entities:
structure gives matter properties other than simply existing. Thus, there is no
more to the entity than those atoms ordered by physical structures: atoms in
persons have been arranged in such a way that the wholes become conscious.
In sum, for structural reductionists wholes are only the sum their parts in
situ, but they must accept that structures ordering the interaction of things are
a necessary part of the explanatory picture. They do not deny context, but
they see all phenomena as completely explainable by their parts in situ. They
can accept that there is a hierarchy of scales or levels of interactions and
complexity beginning with elementary quantum realities up to the everyday
world. For example, interactions on the quantum level of a baseball bat and
ball may appear to be totally irrelevant to the causal act of a batter hitting a
ball, but according to reductionists the structures at work, like the stuff
structured, are completely physical, and interactions on each lower level
completely determine the next higher level of complexity. Thus, the
interaction of the batter, bat, and ball merely requires a very complex
description in quantum terms but is possible in principle. Quantum-level
physical truths entail all phenomenal truths. In short, reality is nothing more
than physical particles and the structures studied by physicists. In the end,
there is a simplicity to explaining everything, with no need for multiple types
of substances or any nonphysical structures.
Thus, for structural reductionists, all phenomena are only more and more
complex layers of interactions of simpler physical parts governed by
quantum-level laws or perhaps higher-level physical laws. All explanations in
terms of higher-level phenomena are only temporary conveniences—
eventually all theories will be in physical terms, and so only physical theories
will ultimately remain standing. All will be describable by relatively simple
mathematical equations or computer programs. If higher-level theories
remain, it is only because of an epistemic problem that we have, not because
of the nature of reality: the interactions of lower-level realities that produce
the illusion of independent higher-level realities may be too complex for the
human brain to analyze, but there is no “emergence” of any new realities in
any sense of the word. Many reductionists see unique concepts for higher-
level phenomena as indispensable for descriptions of those phenomena those
phenomena but only for our convenience—for them, questions of the final
ontology can be framed only in physical concepts.

Antireductionism
Antireductionists see reality as more complicated: new principles are
operating in the higher levels of phenomena that are not governed by
quantum or other level physical laws. Ontic antireductionists claim that there
is more than one substance to reality, and structural antireductionists claim
that there are biological and psychological structures as well as physical ones
organizing nature. Matter does not produce or otherwise generate life or
conscious, nor do physical structures—thus, to require an explanation of how
matter or physical structures generate life and consciousness (as structural
reductionists do) is to view the situation wrongly from the very start. The
nonphysical structures create different orders of causal interaction between
phenomena, and determinism on one level does not necessarily translate into
determinism on another. So too, interlevel causation does not entail a
reduction. For example, if quantum level events are one cause of gene
mutation, as “quantum biologists” assert, nevertheless biological structures
still organize those events’ effects. Biological structures dampen the chemical
“noise” within a living cell and create order. What is real is not reducible to
merely the physical since some properties cannot be explained by the
physical properties of their components in situ. Antireductive properties are
any that cannot be completely explained from the bottom up or as aggregates
of the parts and their properties. Wholes are integrated systems with some
unique properties that cannot be predicted or explained by even complete
accounts of their parts. The parts of such systems are entangled, and so the
state of the system cannot be defined simply by listing the state of its parts.
Physical structures are not “more real” than other structures, nor do they
explain nonphysical structures. (Nor are nonphysical structures any more
teleological than physical ones.) Thus, there are higher-level truths that
cannot be deduced from lower-level truths. Living and conscious beings have
properties and can do things that their parts cannot account for. There is no
need for a living substance—such as Henri Bergson’s “élan vital”—if nature
has biological structures (e.g., biotic fields) producing living organisms.3
Quantum physics may show that on that scale there are real structures but
no real entities (i.e., causal wholes). Nevertheless, structural antireductionists
accept different layers of atomic and subatomic particles to be real entities
because of their causal powers—atoms can do things as a unit that cannot be
accounted for simply by their components in situ and hence are structurally
as much “entities” as their components. Each such organized pattern of
activity is an entity in its own right. Lower-level structures merely provide
some of the conditions for the new phenomena not found in lower-level
entities in situ, not create or constitute such phenomena. Some
antireductionists consider emergence of new structural realities to be very
rare, limited only to life and consciousness or even only to the latter. To
others, it is a common event even on the physical level. For example,
molecules. John Stuart Mill pointed out that salt crystals are nothing like the
sodium and chlorine atoms composing them. And once NaCl molecules are
incorporated into a living being, their properties may change again. Wholes
depend on their parts for their sustained existence, but the parts’ causal
capacities become partially dependent upon the whole. The atoms lose their
individual properties in situ: new features appear in the systems formed by
the interactions of the atoms. The wetness of water manifests a property
through chemical bonding that the properties of the hydrogen and oxygen
atoms in situ do not; thus, if we analyze H2O completely, we will not be able
to explain all the phenomenal properties of water in terms of its chemical
parts, let alone quarks. The heat of gases may also be an irreducible property
—temperature is not like the pressure that is generated by the pounding from
the motion of the molecules but is a new type of phenomenon, even if we can
correlate changes in temperature with changes in the amount of motion.
Some antireductionists begin emergence even lower. For example, a proton is
made up of three quarks, but it has properties (e.g., angular momentum) that
cannot be found by adding up the properties of quarks. So too, electrons lose
their individual identity when they become part of an atom: to understand an
atom, we have to look at the properties of the functioning whole system, not
those of the components. Overall, as Gilbert Ryle noted, particle physicists in
a very real sense do not describe tables and chairs at all.
Thus, if the reductionists’ catchphrase is “nothing but,” the
antireductionists’ is “yes, but.” Structural antireductionists are not saying that
human beings or other phenomena are materially more than their physical
parts but that nonphysical structures operating in them give them properties
that can never be found by analyzing their parts even in the context of the
wholes. The chemicals underlying DNA do not contain the biological
“information” written in DNA—the sequence of molecules is irrelevant to the
underlying chemistry and thus is merely “accidental” from the point of view
of physics and chemistry. But to antireductionists, DNA is a structural reality
in addition to its chemical components.
Thus, higher-level structured wholes are “more than the sum of their parts”
and hence are as real as their parts and must be included in our inventory of
reality as real entities along with their components. Such phenomena are
materially the same as the sum of their parts (i.e., ontic reductionism still
applies and there is no need to postulate additional substances), but they are,
structurally speaking, separate entities from their material parts. Not all of the
wholes’ properties are determined by the properties of their parts. In sum, a
golden statue must be included in our ontology in addition to the collection of
gold molecules arranged in statue form that materially constitute it if it has
unique properties as a whole that are not the sum of the properties of its parts
in situ. If it does not have any unique properties, it is only an aggregate of
parts and not a real entity.4
Many metametaphysicians think that there is no substantive question about
whether the statue exists or is merely a pile of gold molecules arranged as a
statue—to ask whether there “really” is a statue in addition to the gold
molecules is a misguided unanswerable question. (Presumably, the same
applies to “persons” and the physical entities arranged as persons.) But to
antireductionists if a structured entity has properties that its parts in situ do
not, a substantive question of what is real does remain. Distinct causal
powers of wholes are especially important. How structures exist and how
matter and structure are connected may remain mysteries. But all
“spontaneously self-organizing” phenomena on every level have an equal
claim to reality, and none are reducible to phenomena on other levels.5
Structural antireductionism is usually described as “emergentism.”
However, basic antireductionism is structurally more modest than
emergentism. From the anti-reductionists’ point of view, no new reality
“emerges” or “emanates” from matter: there need not be an upward power
causing higher-level phenomena—the lower levels of structures merely set
the stage for higher levels of structures to become operative.6 No new
structures emerge from physical structures, and there is no upward causation
of new phenomena from the bases. Thus, according to antireductive
naturalists, no new realities sprout miraculously into the universe—only more
layers of natural structure are at work in higher-level phenomena such as
living and conscious beings. In short, the physical and chemical properties
become base-conditions for more natural structures to kick in. In this way,
the higher-level phenomena depend on the lower-level phenomena for their
appearance, but they are not determined or fixed by the lower-level
phenomena or otherwise reducible. The base-conditions are not creative; they
are merely necessary preconditions for higher structures to become active.
Perhaps the disorder that arises when more and more entities on one level
interact is a necessary condition for higher levels of organization to become
operational. In any case, there is no need for separate “emergent forces”
causing nature to become more and more complex or driving nature upward
to make conscious beings: when the bases are assembled properly, higher-
level phenomena naturally appear under the operation of nonphysical level
structures without anything more. Only emergentists appeal to special
upward-driving forces, and only reductionists have the problem of explaining
higher-level phenomena as the products of upward causation from lower-
level phenomena.
Nor do all antireductionists introduce downward causation, that is, higher
phenomena affecting their physical and chemical bases.7 Emergentists go
further and include “top-down” causal power, but antireductionists need not
argue that: higher-level phenomena do not emerge out of lower-level
phenomena and are not produced by them; rather, higher-level wholes are
produced by natural structures and are part of one inclusive causal order;
these structures may affect the physical base-conditions, but the higher-level
phenomena do not.8 Wholes do not affect the parts, and no new forces are
operating on subatomic levels—quarks and electrons behave the same in
inorganic and organic entities. It is not as if wholes that arose later act
backward in time to form their own bases. But the components fuse to form
the bases for higher-level phenomena.
 According to structural antireductionists, two perspectives are needed to
understand any phenomenon: both the parts and the wholes must be studied.
For antireductionists, there are biotic structures that are as built into the
universe as firmly as physical ones such as gravity and electromagnetism,
making life as natural and normal as rocks. So too with consciousness. Such
nonphysical structures may have existed since the Big Bang, just as did the
physical structures that would eventually produce atoms, but they had to wait
to become operative until the proper base-conditions arose. Materially, living
and conscious beings are only the physical parts making them up, but more
levels of natural structure are operating in them. Thus, biologists would not
learn more about biological structures by studying quantum physics.
Physicists and biologists produce different accounts of a plant because they
study different levels of its organization. In this way, no science is more
fundamental than any other, even if physicists study the broadest levels that
are the base-conditions for all higher-level phenomena. Thus, not all theories
in biology are reducible to theories in physics—some may be, but some
capture a unique level of properties and activity. In fact, structural
antireductionists believe that there are fewer intertheoretic reductions than
reductionists suppose—instead, explanatory “gaps” are common. And each
level requires some unique concepts to depict its phenomena.

Reductive and Antireductive Ontologies and Explanations

The differences in ontology between reductionists and antireductionists lead
to differences in how many types of explanatory theories in science and
levels of conceptualizations are needed in the final analysis. Many naturalists
follow Willard Quine in believing that we should only accept in our ontology
those entities that the best scientific theories of our day require, and thus the
number of necessary levels of theories becomes important. Structural
antireductionists see multiple levels of organization, each requiring their own
explanations and concepts; reductionists see only physics as needed in the
end, and thus the number of theories and their ontological commitments will
be corresponding smaller.9
Many people think that science is inherently reductive in its search for a
simplicity to the workings of nature. Scientific algorithms, as John Barrow
puts it, condense vast arrays of observational data into compact formulas; and
science aims to explain more and more phenomena with fewer and fewer
theories. Thus, many believe that all science must push toward a reduction to
physics and a final Theory of Everything—the objective of science is to show
that simple laws explain extraordinarily complex phenomena that do not
possess the symmetries of the underlying laws. (Whether a TOE is in fact a
theory of everything or only a theory of one level of everything will be
discussed in chapter 9.)
However, science involves only the analysis and explanations of
phenomena. But structural reductionism is not merely a matter of the
scientific identification of the physical or chemical bases in a phenomenon—
reductionists go a step further and make the metaphysical claim that the
reality of a whole is nothing but its parts and physical structures. A
reduction, in short, reduces the reality of a phenomenon to something else
that it appears to be. In addition, “reductionism” is more than any scientific
reductions: antireductionists can readily accept that some apparent realities or
theories may be reduced without embracing the “ism” that scientists must
march toward reducing all realities and theories—they see limits to how
much reduction is possible and see no reason to force a reduction of all
structures to physical ones on a metaphysical Procrustean bed. Scientists do
try to bring more and more phenomena under the umbrella of one theory, but
there may be limits: antireductionists assert that the search for simplicity
should not be simplistic and force reductions at all costs merely because the
reductionists’ metaphysics demands it—that would distort reality. If in the
end more levels of structure are accepted by scientists, multiple levels of
theory will also have to be accepted, and there is nothing antiscientific about
that conclusion—science is fitted to what is real, not to a metaphysics of
inclusion that overextends its reach. Antireductionists accept some entities as
ontologically real because of their properties as a unit even if the science of
the operation of its parts is complete. In sum, scientific analysis itself is
neutral to the question of reductionism and antireductionism.
Thus, the issue between reductionists and antireductionists comes down to
the basic makeup of the universe: how many substances, entities, and
structures exist? It is a question of metaphysics. The reductionists’ conviction
is that there is a fundamental simplicity in the workings of the universe
behind what we experience, both in substance and in structure: all that is
needed is matter and however many physical forces there are at work in
nature for the universe to evolve into what it is today, even if some
randomness is also involved in the history of the course of events. The
antireductionists’ intuition is that since the physics operating in stones and
plants is the same, there must be more at work in plants than just more
complex physical interactions: for higher-level phenomena such as life and
consciousness, nonphysical structures (and perhaps mental substances) are
also needed.10

The Mysteries of Reductionism and Emergence

To sum up: even if there is only one substance to the natural world, properties
resulting from structures are also real features of that reality. Reality also
appears to be a layered hierarchy of levels of phenomena. Structural
reductionists do not deny that structured phenomena are real or that there are
even multiple levels of properties—rather, they insist that all can by
explained by the forces of physics alone. Thorough-going reductionists insist
that ultimately only realities on the quantum level (or whatever is the basic
field or level of physical structure) have causal power even though describing
in quantum terms the convoluted quantum interactions of everyday
phenomena is too cumbersome in practice. Structural antireductionists, on the
other hand, believe that nonphysical forces are operating in nature and that
causal power is not confined to products of physical structures—thus, there
are irreducible nonphysical phenomena and multiple levels of irreducible
properties. To antireductionists, causal wholes are as real a part of the world
as their lower bases. We cannot reduce everything to the physical, let alone
quantum, level. More structures are needed to explain all the phenomena of
the world, and multiple sciences will remain needed to explain phenomena—
quantum physics will never replace, say, biology, even in principle, nor will
biology replace a science of mental structures. Scientists simply will not be
able to deduce biological or psychological theories from quantum physics
plus limiting conditions. A final “disunity of the sciences” will remain
standing, not the “unification of the sciences” that logical positivists
envisioned.
There are three mysteries to all of this. First, the basic “how” mystery:
neither structural reductionists nor antireductionists as of yet can explain how
everyday phenomena relate to quantum-level realities. It is a daunting task to
explain the complex phenomena of the universe. Reductionists must get
“more from less” using only the forces of physics. But they seem
unconcerned by the general lack interest by scientists in searching for
reductions. Nevertheless, they have only a metaphysical picture of what they
assume must be the case—physics has not yet shown how quantum-level
events produce, say, the wetness of water or how higher-level phenomena are
even possible. Multiple levels within entities must be accounted for. Perhaps
unwieldy complexity on one level somehow triggers the arising of a new
level of causal interaction that is relatively simple compared to the lower
level. But even coming up with testable hypotheses for how higher-level
phenomena appear in an orderly manner is difficult. Reductionists may claim
that the complexity of interactions is so great that it makes it impossible as a
practical matter to specify the details of the reductions, and that the role of
randomness prevents a reconstruction of the history of the universe from
simple laws. But they will add that this is only our epistemic problem and
does not affect the reality of the reductions occurring through physical forces.
They may take this problem to be a permanent shield against all criticism—
even if some phenomena resist multiple attempts at reduction, this will
probably not dent the structural reductionists’ commitment to all things being
material and that in principle reductions are possible.
On the other side, antireductionists have not found any structures
comparable to those in physics to explain life or consciousness or a law of
nature governing evolving complexity. All either side has at present are
declarations of metaphysics. Because reductionism requires fewer structures
does not mean the reductionists’ task is simpler—indeed, that makes it
harder. But perhaps scientists will discover a way to explain each instance of
a higher level of a phenomenon by its lower-level activity alone. Or perhaps
they will discover nonphysical structures. But antireductionists need not
endorse special structures devoted uniquely to causing emergence.
But the mystery of how higher levels appear may be amenable to scientific
resolution. A second mystery is that the appearance of more and more levels
of phenomena seems to be a central feature of reality. Why is the universe so
creative in this way? Even if there are also random events in nature, why is
the universe apparently organized into different levels of causal interactions,
and why do more and more levels appear? Scientists may be able to explain
how higher levels of complexity appear, but why is reality set up to do that?
That is, why do higher and higher levels of organization appear at all?
Reductionists have to deal with this central feature of reality. Even if
scientists could give a quantum-level account of all phenomena, reductionists
still must explain why and how reality is organized to produce higher-level
phenomena. How do structures exist, and how do they structure the stuff of
reality? How do entities unite the causal power of their parts to form new
causal wholes and why? (Advocates of hylomorphism invoke special
structures that carve out individuals from the sea of matter/energy. At a
minimum, this does raise the issue of why reality has individual entities.)
Why did our evolving universe generate ever-increasing orders of
organization? Why do higher levels have their own laws? Even if large
groups of subatomic particles somehow cancel out subatomic properties, why
does each level of properties have some unique features? Why do billiard
balls and planets behave by new laws? Why aren’t higher levels merely
disordered products of quantum events? Why didn’t the universe remain on
the quantum level, and why didn’t the complexities of interactions remain of
one type? In short, not only how but why did the non-quantum world appear?
The structural reductionists’ quest to identify the smallest physical parts of
reality and the true physical forces and then to explain all of reality in those
terms cannot explain the presence of the upward drive in complexity. If
nature builds in an upward fashion from physical laws and only entities with
lower-level structures, how do these entities happen to become parts that
support higher-level phenomena? Why did a pile of interacting inanimate
material apparently operating only under physical structures become
reproducing and exhibit all the other indices of life? And why did some of the
piles become aware of themselves and exhibit the other indices of
consciousness? Neo-Darwinian evolution may explain the development of
life and consciousness once they arose, but why is reality organized to permit
life to appear to begin with? Structural antireductionists accept the full causal
reality of different levels of organization. For them, “emergence” is no
mystery: more irreducible natural structures simply operate in some things.
Nevertheless, a science of the upward thrust of emergence is needed to
explain this, not merely sciences of systems and complexity. The four forces
that physicists currently recognized do not appear related to emergence. Each
force would only produce more of the same order and if anything would
prevent higher levels of order from arising. For example, gravity would only
lump more and more matter together and would do nothing toward
organizing it, let alone make higher levels appear. Nor would the interaction
of all the known physical forces collectively produce higher levels. In short,
the basic forces of physics cannot establish how physical connections enable
higher levels of organization. As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, the forces
of physics merely shuffle existing “information” around, not create new
“information.” Throwing in a role for random events to explain the history of
the universe does not help but only hurts the possibility of explaining the
appearance of more and more levels of organization. And when it comes to
biology, it is not clear how gene mutation or natural selection alone would
lead to greater types of complex organisms. Why is nature set up to permit
cells to combine into specialized organs? Is there a “social” dimension to
reality provided by structures? (Teleology is not part of basic
antireductionism.)
Stephen Hawking once opined: “I think the [21st] century will be the
century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws that
govern matter and understand all the normal situations. We don’t know how
the laws fit together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I
expect we will find a complete unified theory sometime this century.”
However, a general theory of complexity has yet to come forth—indeed, the
study of the basis of complexity is not showing signs of great advancement.
In any case, a science of emergence is needed, not merely a science of
complexity. A related problem is that a new mathematics may also be needed
for a science of emergence—bifurcation theory may be a start, but more is
involved in emergence than merely complexity.
A third mystery appears intractable: how can we test between the reductive
and antireductive metaphysical alternatives? If we could discover a universe
in which, for example, H2O existed but did not produce the properties of
water, we could conclude that higher levels of structure are at work in our
universe when hydrogen and oxygen combine in this way. But that test is
obviously impossible. Experiments in this world will not help: a scientific
finding will not determine if new structures are involved or not since the
observed phenomena would look the same either way. If, for example,
scientists are able to produce life from a soup of chemicals, the basic dispute
would remain: is life produced from only the physical chemicals, or have
scientists merely assembled the base-conditions enabling biological structures
to become active? Do the chemicals in situ produce life or merely set the
stage for more structures in nature to order the chemicals? Either way, life
would appear “spontaneously.” This problem exists for whatever scientists
establish. (This raises the prospect that scientists may not be able to detect
higher structures even if they exist. At least how to test for them would be
complicated.) Thus, science may not decide between a reductive and an
antireductive explanation. Nor will computer simulations of the interactions
of parts help since they will depend on our programming reflecting either
reductive or antireductive assumptions—if we write a program that generates
emergence from reductive assumptions, we cannot be certain that nature
works that way. And this exhausts any way to test between these two schools
of metaphysics. The Big Question of what are the fundamental structures and
substances operating in the universe appears to be irresolvable, and thus we
are left with an unsolvable mystery.

Notes
1. Actually, five types of reductionism and antireductionism should be distinguished: ontic (the
number of substances), structural (the number of forces ordering nature), theoretical (the number
of necessary types of scientific theories), conceptual, and methodological (see Jones 2013: ch. 1).
But for the issue of mystery, the first three types are the most important.
2. The term “materialism” will not be used here since it may mean either one type of ontic
reductionism or a combination of both ontic and structural reductionism. In other words, it is not
clear whether an ontic physicalist who rejects structural reductionism (and thus accept structures
other than those of physics) should be classified as a “materialist” or not.
3. Even in denying vitalism, matter should not be called “lifeless.” Unless panpsychists are correct
(in which case all matter is conscious in some way), parts of reality are organic and parts are
inorganic because of the structures operating in them. That is, the stuff of the universe in itself is
neutral: whether a whole is physical or both physical and biological (or also psychological)
depends on the structures at work, with different properties resulting.
4. How much is the human body worth? The answer varies depending on the level of structure
involved. If we look only at the chemicals involved, then the body is mostly water and not worth
very much. But if we look at the biological level of organs, then it is worth quite a bit. Structure
makes all the difference.
5. “Self-organization” is a misnomer and distorts our picture of what is going on. When theorists
speak of a pile of iron filings “spontaneously self-organizing,” they do not mean that the filings
literally organize themselves—a structure (magnetism) is at work ordering them. So too, water
does not “spontaneously” freeze magically for no reason—it does so only under specific physical
structures and conditions. Similarly, higher-level phenomena appear through natural forces, not
“spontaneously.” In sum, “self-organization” only means that natural forces alone are at work in a
phenomenon.
6. Only the reductionist perspective leads us to think of higher levels being caused by lower levels
and thus “emerging” from them. But from an antireductionist perspective, there are merely more
structures operating in some phenomena than in others—nothing “emerges” from something else.
7. Reductionists believe that they can handle the social type of downward causation—such as the
role of soldier ants in their colonies explaining why their jaws are so specialized for piercing their
enemies that they cannot feed themselves. Reductionists see such phenomena as in effect
unconscious genetic engineering determined by complicated physical factors alone.
8. Antireductionists can argue that, say, biological structures shape the chemical parts that form
organisms. When we have the idea for something new, we do not proceed by looking around for
preexisting things that are laying around—we have the idea of the thing in mind and make the
parts that are necessary. In nature, higher structures replace “intelligent design”: biological
structures create the chemical entities into living cells and more complex entities. In this way, in
 cases of higher-level causal realities, nature does not build upward from preexisting parts (as
reductionists believe) but starts with the structures of the wholes and works downward to make the
parts from the available material. Reductionists must explain how the laws of physics alone make
the parts that then combine to form new wholes with new levels of properties.
9. Reductionists are committed to a naturalistic theory of mind in order for it to be reducible.
Antireductionists can accept a naturalistic mental structure or an ontic dualism—for example,
Henri Bergson’s theory of the brain as a reducing valve that lets in only as much of a cosmic
“mind at large”as we need to survive; altered states of consciousness may let in more of it.
10. Emergentists have more elaborate ontologies, for instance, an independent soul emerging from
consciousness. Samuel Alexander had such a comprehensive metaphysics: matter emerged from
space-time; life emerged from complex configurations of matter; consciousness emerged from
biological processes; and deity emerged out of consciousness. Even space could be seen as an
emergent reality generated as the Big Bang expands, and causation between parts may be a level-
effect that only appears above a certain level of phenomena.
 8
Does Science Dispel Mystery?

Theories don’t prove nothing, they only give you a place to rest on a spell, when you are
tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there ain’t no way to
find out. … There’s another trouble about theories: there’s always a hole in them somewhere
sure, if you look close enough.
—Mark Twain (Huck Finn in Tom Sawyer Abroad)

he next Big Question is whether scientific theories harbor any genuine

T mysteries. Science has the reputation of demystifying reality—as with
John Keats’s claim that Newton “unwove” the rainbow and conquered “all
mysteries by rule and line.” Indeed, the objective of modern science in the
eyes of many (and not just logical positivists) is to eliminate all mystery from
reality and to replace it with solid knowledge. According to physicist Niels
Bohr, “[s]cience’s job is to reduce all mysteries to trivialities.” If so, science
is a powerful tool against mystery. And its scope is increasing: more
scientific knowledge has been achieved in the past few decades than in all
pervious history. But is such a view justified?

Basic Science
Science is a way of questioning nature, and this is more noteworthy than the
theories held at any particular moment. Fundamental scientific research is
about how things work. First, scientists attempt to establish lawful patterns of
events in the natural world through observations and experiments that are
checkable by others. (Much of what even scientists believe in their work-life
is taken on faith in previous scientific findings, but at least with the proper
training they could in principle duplicate those past findings.) They then use
reasoning to posit features in nature that may not be open to direct experience
(e.g., fields) that they hypothesize are responsible for the lawful changes in
the everyday world. Explanatory theories based on those posits direct
observation and the direction of research, thereby affecting what we attempt
to know of reality. They also affect what are taken to be facts—for example,
the nature of the “sun” and the “planets” in a Ptolemaic versus a heliocentric
cosmology.
But there can never be a theory-neutral explanation of phenomena.
Empirical testing keeps theories from being groundless speculation, but the
human element is always present: we never get a scientific picture of reality
that is not answering our questions. As Werner Heisenberg stated, “what we
observe is not nature but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Nature constrains our imagination by providing empirical feedback to our
questions, but it does not tell us what questions to ask. And, as the ancient
Greek Heraclitus noted long ago, “nature loves to hide.”
Scientists advance mathematical models of how they think something in
nature works. Under antirealist interpretations, science is about only the
observed events, and we have no claim to know what we cannot experience.
For antirealists, scientific theories are at best merely shorthand devices for
connecting observations—it is pointless to debate whether the models are
“true” or “real” but only whether they agree with observations. Theories say
nothing about what is actually real. So too with such principles as the
conservation of energy: these are only mathematical tools and not meant to
be descriptions of mechanisms in nature. Some antirealists treat all natural
laws as part of our models and thus as human inventions. Empiricists do not
deny that real structures are at work in the world; they claim only that we can
have no knowledge of them if we cannot experience them and thus we should
reject all theories based on unobservables—in short, the unexperienced
structures remain a mystery. Thus, under empiricism, all theoretical realities
are rejected: all we can know is what we can experience, and no speculation
is part of true science. The sparticles of supersymmetry theory and the hidden
dimensions of space-time of string theory are paradigms of this today.
Instrumentalists such as Stephen Hawking are not concerned with how reality
is: different theories present different fundamental elements and concepts,
and no theory is “better” or “more real” if all predict equally well. Their
motto is “Shut up and calculate!”
But under realist interpretations of theories, scientists identify real parts of
the world that explain observed events. To theoretical realists, science is not
merely a matter of predicting new observations: it is a matter of discovering,
even if only approximately, real structures in nature—an “invisible order” of
postulated explanatory realities—and advancing theories as explanations of
their mechanisms. Scientific theories may never mirror reality exactly and
may always be open to revisions, but to realists they capture some features of
reality. (This is a “critical realism” rather than “naive realism.”) The problem
is that all scientific theories require our speculation. As the physicist John
Wheeler put it: “What we call ‘reality’ consists of an elaborate papier-mâché
construction of imagination and theory filled in between a few iron posts of
observation.” Indeed, even the fixed “iron posts” we observe reflect the
questions that we ask nature. Nevertheless, science’s claims are testable
empirically, and to realists it would be a miracle if predictions are
consistently fulfilled without hitting something real in the structure of things.
Thus, for realists, theories are not total fictions the way that Mickey Mouse
is, but they are human creations that have to be treated as such.
Probably few practicing scientists believe that their theories provide no
understanding of nature. However, there are real problems about whether
scientific theories give genuine knowledge. Data always underdetermine any
theory, and thus there is room for error. All scientists agree that at least in
principle all explanations are provisional: each accepted theory is only the
best of the then available options—scientists say “It’s interesting” or “I’ll
hold it until a better theory comes along.” The classic problem is that correct
predictions were taken as confirming Ptolemaic cosmology for over a
thousand years. Thus, one’s commitment to a theory should remain tentative.
Theories today on the edge of research in quantum physics and cosmology
present conflicting models of what is real that must eventually be reconciled
if we can truly claim to know reality. And if history is any indicator, our
science will look very different in a hundred years, if we are not reaching the
end of what our technology is capable of aiding us to observe—as more and
more exotic phenomena are discovered, today’s picture of the fundamental
nature of things will be rejected in major ways, and our view of reality will
change greatly. (Past books on what would occur in the following ten years in
the sciences are interesting for what they get wrong—inevitably, the authors’
predictions miss new discoveries and lines of research, and their optimism
that solutions to the then-current problems are just around the corner is
usually misplaced.) Thus, no explanations can ever be considered final or
complete.

Simplification and Reality

Reality may in fact not match any abstracted picture that we create. Scientists
attempt to explain more and more data with fewer and fewer postulates,
thereby bringing more phenomena under the umbrella of one theory. (As
discussed, this need not lead to structural or theoretical reductionism.) The
quest is for simplicity, but nature is complicated. Even modeling the motion
of only three bodies within each other’s field of gravity is problematic, even
with computers. Thus, scientists speak in terms of ideals and abstractions,
like road maps treating the world as flat. We all understand the claim, “There
are 3.2 people in the average family” without thinking there can be two-
tenths of a person, but we forget that much of science is like that. As the
saying goes, “nature has no straight lines.” At best, science is like
approximating a circle with polygons with more and more straight sides: the
actual reality is not reproduced. Are all logically consistent models of the
universe “impoverished or simplified” versions of it, as physicist Paul Davies
believes?
This brings up the issue of the role of simplicity in scientific theorizing.
We assume that, everything else being equal, reality is set up more simply
rather than more complexly—if something can be accomplished more easily
one way than another, nature will follow the simpler path. (William of Occam
justified his “razor” by saying that God would be “vain” if he created
something in a way that could have been created more simply.) But why
should reality always follow what we consider simpler? Or is applying
Occam’s razor only the easiest way for us to understand and thus only an all-
too-human tool for aiding in the construction of models? Computers, with
their massive computing power, are not so confined. A deep unity of
structures may be intellectually satisfying, but how do we know that we are
not imposing our own desires onto reality? The fullness of reality certainly
looks complex and not merely the result of the interactions of a few
principles—it is intricate, tangled, and fuzzy, with mathematics applying only
to limited aspects of it. The Standard Model in particle physics is certainly
less than elegant (although its mathematics is very precise), and the
indeterminacy of some subatomic events hurts the case that reality is rational
to its core. Or does the simple fact that we cannot express π in terms of the
ratio of whole numbers reveal something deep about reality?
 Perhaps the universe is not as coherent and unified as we like to think.
Alfred North Whitehead’s advice is apt: “Seek simplicity and distrust it.” Our
sense of beauty affects what we consider simple, but why nature should
conform to our sense of beauty is not at all clear. Why do we believe, as John
Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all / Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know”? Why should they be connected at all? Consider the
contrast between the beauty and simplicity of the surface of a human body
versus the messy and complex inner workings of the body. Perhaps the
beauty we see in the universe is like that—seeing the universe in terms of
beauty may be a gigantic oversimplification. Accurate predictions are not
enough to confirm nature’s simplicity if we are preselecting only aspects of it
to fit. And the presence of possible indeterminacy and the loss of precise
predictions in some cases may be pointing to further mysteries about which
we have only scratched the surface.

Mathematics
So too with mathematics. Mathematical precision has certainly helped with
predictions, but why do we assume that the final picture of what is actually
real will be mathematical? Perhaps the “book of nature” is not written in the
language of mathematics, as Galileo believed. Bertrand Russell pointed out:
“Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical
world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties
that we can discover.” And why does relatively simple math work so well in
helping scientists depict exotic levels of the universe? Eugene Wigner asked
about the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics in the natural sciences
and found it hard to explain. For example, why does π—the ratio of the
circumference of any circle to its diameter—figure in so many physical
equations that have nothing to do with circles? More generally, why do
physicists so often find that the math they need for some new phenomena has
already been devised by mathematicians from considerations that have
nothing to do with physical phenomena? Wigner believed the enormous
usefulness of mathematics in science had no rational explanation and
bordered on the mysterious.
Part of the problem is that we do not know if mathematics is our own
invention (conventions we find useful for our models) or part of reality
(mathematical objects existing in a nonmaterial realm independently of our
thoughts). That is, are mathematical truths just the necessary products of the
logic of our symbol systems, or do they reflect something of reality existing
independently of our thoughts? Nonrealists advocate the former view and
Platonists the latter. But both positions seem wrong: if math were merely a
human product, then we should be able to invent simpler and neater symbol
systems (e.g., make π a simple rational number), but the idea that our minds
are contacting a Platonic realm of fixed and timeless mathematical truths also
seems farfetched. Do irrational numbers merely reflect the strict rules of the
mathematical language that we invented? Or do numbers, including π and the
“imaginary” numbers such as the square root of –1, exist in reality in some
way? Problems such as Kurt Gödel’s theorems also raise the issue of whether
truths in mathematical systems can be complete, consistent, and decidable—
why would that be so if math were either our invention or were part of
reality?
In any case, mathematics remains a language that we devised by the free
use of our minds—so why is it so very helpful in empirical science? If what
mathematicians devise are simply the logical implications of the axioms and
rules they themselves define, why does math apply to reality? Part of the
answer is that we have created mathematics as we have in order to deal with
our experiences in the world—math can summarize in short formulas the
patterns that we see—and thus our intuitions of what is mathematically true
are also shaped by our experiences. Reality corrects some of our intuitions, as
with finding Riemannean geometry to be more useful for relativity than
Euclidean geometry. But still why does math lead to new insights about
reality in realms we cannot directly experience, such as the unpicturable
quantum realm? Perhaps there is an implicit circularity: we simply create a
language that generates a particular image of nature, and we then take
verified empirical predictions as confirmation of the language’s objectivity—
in the end, we take whatever picture of reality math creates to be the skeleton
of reality.
But why does mathematics seem to be the key for understanding all the
structures of reality? At present, math is the only basis for believing there are
multiple universes or superstrings. But is it safe to rely on math in our
speculations? Does reality have a mathematical structure, like some
underlying musical harmony? Even if the world is ordered, why should the
order be mathematical in structure? Have we simply mathematized reality
and thus can see only what our math permits? Even some mathematicians
think that the final models of science will be computer programs, not
mathematical equations—math was simply a phase scientists went through,
and it has done its job and will be passé to the next generation. Indeed,
Richard Feynman once remarked: “If all of mathematics disappeared, physics
would be set back exactly one week.”

Empirical Limits to Knowledge

In addition, the limits of our ability to observe and reason must again be
noted. The problem here is not that nature is too complex for us to grasp
thoroughly. Rather, the problem is that, for example, we can only sense a
fragment of the spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation, and technology
can extend our ability to observe only so far: it allows us to extend our
sensing to such areas of the spectrum as radio waves, x-rays, and infrared
rays. But we cannot be sure what else may be filling the atmosphere.
Moreover, someday further research into the quantum realm and the
expanse of the cosmos will come to an end: at some point, we will hit the
limits of even technology-enhanced perception. How can we be at all
confident that we will have exhausted all that is basic? On the astronomical
scale, the universe generated by our Big Bang has at least a hundred billion
galaxies each with a hundred billion stars—the celestial phenomena that we
can perceive is a proverbial grain of sand in the Sahara. Even in principle we
cannot see all of that: unless we can travel faster than light, the vast majority
of our cosmos will always be beyond our event horizon and hence
unknowable. Add to that the prospect of multiple unobservable universes.
Are there basic features of the universe that we are missing and cannot ever
find? How does this lack of knowledge impact the completeness of our
theories?
On the quantum scale, it is an open question whether physicists will be
able to exhaust all the depths so that none are in fact left totally unseen.
Scientists may never be able to determine if reality has been fully plumbed—
there may be levels of smaller scale that we simply cannot reach with our
technology. Perhaps like a fractal (such as the Mandelbrot sets), there is a
simple discoverable recursive law working on all levels, even if they go down
forever, and no one fundamental physical level to the universe. Or perhaps
Freeman Dyson, David Bohm, and others are correct that there are an infinite
number of deeper and deeper levels of different structure to reality.
Explaining such levels may strain the limits of our imagination. Or perhaps as
J.B.S. Haldane suggested: “Not only is the universe stranger than we
imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” That we can comprehend any of
the structures outside of the everyday realm at all is in the eyes of many,
including Paul Davies, “the greatest scientific miracle of all”—science keeps
revealing reality to be more and more complex, and yet scientists still
comprehend some order.
Scientists keep pushing back the border of the unknown, but we must
remember that what we see is only nature as we experience it—all we can
hope for is learning the workings of nature that we experience directly or
through technology, and we can never be certain that we have reached the
basic principles of reality. The limits of technology will one day put an end to
any possible empirical checking of new theories that would require access to
phenomena outside the range of our then-current technology. Our scientific
speculations about exotic realms are guided by our experience of the
everyday scale of things, and without an empirical constraint on our theories,
our reasoning may go totally off track. Science may not end since there may
well always be smaller issues to explore, but the Big Questions in science
will then come to an end or be reduced to matters of speculation alone—
speculation guided at best by mathematics.

Comprehending Reality
Also consider that reality could have been more mysterious than it is—why
isn’t it? And when it comes to realities outside of the everyday world, why
does science work at all? Why can our minds penetrate, at least to a degree,
nature’s workings? Minds need not have had the capacity to grasp any depth
to reality. Obviously if we are to survive, we must be able to grasp some of
the surface of the planet—without some reliable knowledge of our
environment, we would not last long. And our brain has evolved as part of
nature, and so the forces obeying the laws of nature are at work in it. But this
does not explain why our minds can grasp at least something of the
underlying structures at work deep in reality (assuming theoretical realism is
correct). We have a limited mental capacity, and yet we can discern some
underlying structures—perhaps all of them. Where does this mental ability
come from? Is the human mind (and hence our reasoning) somehow deeply
ingrained into reality? Are we an integral part of the scheme of things? Does
our mind reflect “the mind of God”? But if our cognitive capacities are God-
given, why are our intuitions about scales of reality far from the everyday
level so far off? (It is also important to remember that intuitions, and theories,
do not arise out of nowhere: our minds travel along particular ways of
looking at things developed from the past history of science.) Indeed, why do
we have even optical illusions in the everyday world? Is our capacity to know
instead only a fallible product of natural evolution? That is, is our knowledge
just a matter of our evolved mental functions rather than anything about our
minds innately reflecting the structure of reality? If so, why can we grasp any
depths at all?
Also consider a physiological limitation on our knowledge: our senses
have developed through evolution for our survival, not for knowledge of all
aspects of reality. As noted above, we see only a tiny sliver of the
electromagnetic spectrum. If we saw a different range (e.g., bees are sensitive
to ultraviolet radiation and the polarization of light), our view of what is real
may well have ended up very differently. So too if we relied more on touch
and smell, as most animals do. We cannot tell if we are missing major
features of reality because of the senses evolution has given us. In addition,
there is a related problem: however good our sensory apparatus is, we still
only know reality through the sensory stimulation of our brain, and our
representations of what is “real” are only our brains’ interpretations of those
signals. Nature may not be an unknowable Kantian noumenon, but we cannot
be certain about how “reality-in-itself” truly is: all we have is our limited
sensory interactions with it—nature loves to hide, and much remains veiled.

The Discovery of Mystery

Albert Einstein remarked that there is no mystery in science that does not
point to another mystery beyond it. In fundamental research, this has
certainly been true so far—in fact, as some puzzles are solved, the presence
of greater mysteries has only become clearer. New findings have opened up
new horizons that we previously did not even suspect existed. And, unless
reality is truly transparent, at some point we will be up against the limits of
what our technological abilities can find out about nature and what we can
even conceive about its workings. Perhaps the era of great scientific
discoveries is coming to an end. Perhaps fundamental science in a hundred
years will not look much different from today. Or perhaps basic science is in
only its infancy. Perhaps scientists will find things that we have not yet even
conceived. Perhaps important areas of science are only now beginning to be
opened. Perhaps the universe is infinitely complex at every level of
organization, and there will be fundamental questions to be asked in the
future that we do not currently have the conceptual background even to
conceive. In any case, once technology has exhausted what we can find,
scientists may end only debating alternative explanations, each equally
supported by the limited observable phenomena that scientists were able to
accumulate. Any more scientific revolutions would then be on only the
conceptual side of science, with no new avenues of research being possible to
test models. It may be that in the future, human beings or our successors will
learn much more of the how-ness of reality. But we have to admit that today
we know less about the fundamental how-ness mysteries than we usually like
to suppose and that we may never conquer them all.
In fact, scientists’ repeated failures to close the openness of reality should
make them especially aware of the mysterious quality of reality’s structures.
Thus, our sense of mystery of the how-ness of reality should be greater now
than at any time since the rise of modern science. According to Einstein, “the
real nature of things—that we shall never know, never.” Max Planck added
that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because
in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the
mystery that we are trying to solve.” Even so, he did not think that this
stopped science from being “the pursuit of the unknowable”—in fact, he
thought that this is its chief attraction. Understandably, we may concentrate
on the part of reality that we know, but that our knowledge is surrounded by a
sea of mystery cannot be forgotten.
Indeed, perhaps the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century
was that there is so much that we do not know and that there are limits on our
ability to attain more knowledge. The expanse of our ignorance was revealed.
Not that this was not noticed before: William James stated “[o]ur science is a
drop, our ignorance a sea,” and earlier Isaac Newton likened himself to a boy
on a beach “finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.” Are we merely finding
the smallest niches of nature that are open to our understanding in a vast sea
of unknown and unknowable phenomena? Perhaps our minds are able to see
only an ordered abstraction of reality. We may be filtering out only a small
fragment of reality—the parts that we can order. That is, we can see only
what our mind can sense, and this may be only the simplest features of a
complex world.
There is no reason to believe that our reason and languages must be able to
capture all of reality—it is only the philosopher’s disease that would require
reality to be thoroughly rational. David Hume rightly asked: “What peculiar
privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we
must make it the model of the whole universe?” Perhaps one role of the mind
is to simplify since we would be too overwhelmed to survive if we received
too much information from our environment. If so, what is rational to us
about reality is only a very limited slice of it all—scientists may be
abstracting out only the easiest parts that we can control but missing many
fundamental causal factors at work. For example, theists may claim that there
is divine teleological causation at work in nature that scientists cannot detect
by their methods. We have no reason to conclude that what we can
experience directly or indirectly or can conceive must be all that there is to
reality. Much of reality may be darker than “dark matter”—there may well be
depths we cannot comprehend or even conceive.
But whatever is the case, this highlights that science is very much a human
product and always open to revision. At a minimum, as our island of
knowledge grows, so does its shoreline on the unknown—paradoxically,
scientific progress also advances our awareness of mystery and its profundity.
This does not mean that scientists are not providing us with genuine
knowledge of reality—some features discovered through observation and
experiment are so well established that they will no doubt be incorporated in
one fashion or another into any further refinements of theory. But science
provides less certainty than many of us like to think. Even well-established
theories are only ideals and abstractions that do not mesh cleanly with reality.
Our models of quantum phenomena are ultimately based on ideas arising
from our thinking that is embedded in our everyday world, but how reliable
can our intuitions be for the exotic realms? And how can we keep ourselves
from not seeing what is “real” in terms of our everyday experiences? This
makes any quantum-level models very provisional.
It also suggests not that we should deny all theories, but that we should be
agnostic about more than just new theories on the edge of research in
cosmology and quantum physics. This is not to deny that we are gaining
more empirical data—the question is what we know of the basic nature of
reality, and this involves the theories of science. Science does progress, but it
is not a simple matter of adding new bricks—empirical data—to a preexisting
wall. Rather, new theories change the design of the wall and rebuild it from
scratch by repackaging the content of the bricks of empirical data in different
conceptualizations.
 This limits science’s power to dispel the mysteries of nature. We will no
doubt gain more and more knowledge of how nature works. But we can never
be certain that we have arrived at the true fundamental structures of reality
and thus at the final explanations of phenomena. Without experiences
encompassing all of nature, our understanding will necessarily be limited.
But we cannot access all of reality, and because of this limitation we are
never in a position to know if our final answers reflect the fundamental order
of things. Even if reality is rational through and through and has no ontic
mysteries, we may never be able to fathom all of it, and thus we may be stuck
with epistemic mysteries. Probably no being inside the universe can explain it
all.
In any case, it is an outdated view that scientists will conquer all the
mysteries of nature: all humanly possible scientific knowledge will not
exhaust all of nature’s mysteries or reduce them to trivialities. Science gives
us the best and most authoritative knowledge we can have, but the typical
exalted view of science gives the illusion that we know more than we do. We
are left with uncertainties and probabilities in many matters.

A Two-Pronged Relationship to Mystery

Thus, science has a two-pronged relation to mystery: scientists remove many
(and perhaps all) of the “how” mysteries of nature, but we can never be
assured that scientists have conquered them all. Our science also exposes the
limitation of the knowledge we can gain. Many scientists and philosophers
believe that science will dispel all purported “why” mysteries from the world
by reducing them all to solvable puzzles. Such thinkers need not dismiss the
emotions of awe and wonder at the scales and intricacies of the universe as
revealed by science or the humility we ought to express before the majesty of
it all even on the everyday scale—in fact, they often wax poetic about how
science increases the wonder because, as Richard Feynman reminded us, it is
no longer based on ignorance.
Indeed, science can enhance our amazement at the universe, and the failure
of theories can enhance our humility before reality. Scientists can unweave
the rainbow and a blooming flower by decoding how they arise and yet still
express wonder at why the universe is set up to produce such phenomena.
But in focusing on the defeasible problems in science, many scientists and
philosophers miss the mysteries that lie beyond scientists’ capacity to
eliminate. So too, scientists can speak of scientific knowledge as only an
island in a vast sea of unknown phenomena, but the sea of addressable
scientific problems still must be distinguished from grander underlying
scientific mysteries. These deeper questions are more fundamental to what
we deem to be “reality”—what we consider real changes with shifts in
theories, and no final answer to the Big Questions in science may ultimately
be defendable.
 9
What of Current Mysteries in Physics and
Cosmology?

If my view of the future is correct, it means that the world of physics and astronomy is
inexhaustible; no matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things
happening, new information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding
domain of life, consciousness, and memory.
—Freeman Dyson

onsider next the problems at the edge of science today: are they all
C solvable, or are some genuine mysteries? Not every interesting problem
that scientists encounter is a Big Question. Those of profound significance to
human beings qualify as philosophical mysteries, but some other problems
still qualify as scientific “how” mysteries. There are many such problems.
Consider first some in particle physics and cosmology: How did the universe
begin (if it did)? How did the universe’s present state evolve? How will the
universe end (if it will)? Why is the universe made of matter and not just
energy? What are the smallest components of matter, and how do they relate
to fields of energy? Is space infinite and eternal? Why does the universe have
the forces and constants it has? Is the flow of time a component to reality or
merely an illusion that our mind creates? Are there other “universes” beyond
our possible range of observation? Why does the universe have multiple
levels of organization, and how did the higher levels appear? What is the role
of randomness in the development of the universe? Or is everything in some
sense necessary, so that if the universe evolved again we would end up
exactly as we already have? If some of these problems remain standing, they
will be classified as philosophical mysteries. Other scientific puzzles may
remain scientific mysteries—for example, why some particles have no mass,
or why matter has an effect on space. So, do we have reasons to believe today
that some of these problems will end up being unanswered or unanswerable
and thus will end up being intractable mysteries?

Quantum Physics
Particle physics is one of the greatest achievements in science. A hundred
years ago we knew almost nothing of the nature of an atom; now we know its
nature and an incredible amount about levels below it. Particle physics’ very
precise mathematics and experimental results have been established since the
1920s, and the Standard Model of subatomic particles and forces explained in
terms of quarks, leptons, and bosons was set in the 1970s. But it is old news
that understanding particle physics has not advanced since then. When a
physicist of the stature of Richard Feynman says, “I think it is safe to say that
no one understands quantum mechanics. … Nobody knows how it be can like
that,” we know we are in strange territory. There currently are a number of
different ontic interpretations of the mathematics—from the Copenhagen
Interpretation favored by antirealists that eschews all attempts to understand
how the physics works to a realism involving indeterminacy to realisms
involving determinacy (either by each possible experimental outcome being
realized in different universes in Hugh Everett and Bryce DeWitt’s “many
worlds” solution or by David Bohm’s inelegant interpretation involving
hidden variables and faster than light signals) to Eugene Wigner’s
interpretation that gives consciousness a role in experiments. So far, all
models have produced the same experimental predictions. And no other
progress has been made on other grounds for forming a reasoned consensus.
It may well be that all existing interpretations are wrong.
Many aspects of particle physics are certainly so bizarre as to be an affront
to our everyday commonsense—for example, entanglement of particles
resulting in connected “nonlocal” effects, or theorizing a possible backward
flow of time. But some aspects are presented to the general public as being
more mysterious than they really are. For example, the claims “There is no
reality in the quantum world,” “Nothing exists until observed,” and “The
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle shows that physics can no longer provide
reliable information about the physical world and that the physical world has
lost its claim to objectivity.” Those claims are wrong. Even antirealists admit
that something exists that causes the observed effects, even though we cannot
know anything about it—the mixture of the unseen reality and our measuring
procedures produce what is observed, but that is not to deny that that unseen
reality exists. That reality exists independently of our observations and is
“nothing” only in the mistaken sense that Stephen Hawking says that the
world came from “nothing” (as discussed in chapter 5). Nor does the
Uncertainty Principle mean that there is no objective knowledge of particles:
physicists can gain very precise knowledge of what is really there—they
simply cannot measure momentum and location at the same time. The act of
observation does affect what is there, but on submicroscopic scales it is not
surprising that the light used to measure properties affects what is there. Nor
is the “wave/particle duality” usually presented properly: an electron is not
both a wave and a particle—it is always observed as a particle. However,
groups of particles exhibit some wave properties—that is, wave properties are
properties of groups of particles but never the properties of a single particle.
What is actually there—the reality-in-itself—is something “we know not
what” that can produce either the wave or particle effect when we mix
different actions with it in different experimental setups. All that is ever
observed are particles, never waves or fields. The only “duality” is that we
cannot observe an individual particle and a group of particles at the same
time. It is also worth noting that the “wave-function” is only a mathematical
construct within quantum theory that shows the probabilities of arrangements
of particles—it is not a feature of space controlling those arrangements.
One of the new mysteries in particle physics involves “supersymmetry.”
This is the assumption that particles of matter may be converted into particles
of force and vice versa. Why and how this should happen is a mystery. Is
some unknown force responsible for breaking symmetries? There is no
empirical evidence yet for such symmetry. There is also the issue of why
some particles are massless and why particles in the Standard Model have
different masses: why do different particles “feel” the presence of a Higgs
particle or field that gives some particles mass differently? The nature of
“dark matter” that is not made up of quarks or other parts of visible matter is
currently a mystery, as is the nature of the “dark energy” that is hypothesized
to explain the accelerating rate of the universe’s expansion. Thus, what we
can observe may constitute less than 5 percent of the mass of our universe.
And to what degree theories about these matters will be testable is an issue.

Relativity
The bizarre effects described in the theory of relativity are well known—the
twin paradox, the contraction of length of objects moving near the speed of
light, the absence of a universal “now” (and consequently of simultaneity),
and so forth. The loss of simultaneity wreaks havoc with the notion of
causation and thus with the very idea of “natural laws.” Scientists question
whether time exists. Is matter continuous or digital—is it, to use Bertrand
Russell’s metaphor, a bowl of jelly or a bucket of shot? And why? Space is
no longer seen as a big empty box but as the reality out of which matter
arises, and yet matter can bend space. Thus, matter loses its status as the
primary category for what is physically real to a space-time field. Is matter
just an excited state of space-time—the surface fluctuations on an ocean of
energy? But to see matter metaphorically as “condensed energy” or
“condensed space-time” only pushes the mystery of beingness back one step
to “what is space-time?” It also adds the mystery of how matter arises from it.
That space itself, and not merely its contents, is expanding is a mystery: the
galaxies are not expanding “into” space but are being carried along as space
itself expands—space is not expanding into anything and yet is somehow still
getting larger. And recent theorizing about “atoms of space-time” with
literally nothing in between tightly meshed atoms only adds to this model the
mystery of nothingness in between particles of space.
Both general relativity and the Standard Model in particle physics are
extremely well confirmed—most recently in relativity by reportedly finding
the gravity waves that Einstein predicted. They also are complete enough that
they leave few puzzles pointing in the direction of where possible new
theories may lie. But this leads to a big problem: the two fundamental and
well-confirmed theories are incompatible. The physics of the very large and
the very small simply conflict. Relativity is deterministic, while particle
physics appears indeterministic. More basically, gravity requires a continuity
that particle physics cannot provide. Thus, there is something basically wrong
in our theory of things—we cannot conceive that both theories can be correct.
We believe that one or both theories must be revised, but attempts to
reconcile them (such as “quantum gravity”) have failed for decades. Nor has
any attempt to reconcile them in terms of the emergence of space-time out of
quantum realities been attempted. No one wants to accept that there is no
reconciliation, but the lack of headway may indicate that we have not yet
reached the fundamental laws in one or both fields.
Theories of Everything
This brings up attempts to find a single theory for all the known physical
forces—that is, devising a “Theory of Everything.” If devised, we would end
up with an equation that would fit on a T-shirt that encompasses all of basic
physics, or at least the shortest possible computer program whose output is
the laws of our universe. It would show that our universe could not be
ordered otherwise than it is—it would give a necessity to all that is since
there would be no contingent posits, and we would have a certainty and
completeness that many crave. It would show that the laws of our universe
are not arbitrary. It would answer Einstein’s question: God had no choice in
creating the world as it is. But a “Theory of Everything” embraces all
phenomena only if reductionism is correct: only if reality is organized
reductively would a physical TOE be the foundation of all chains of
explanations—if reality is organized antireductively, then a TOE would be
only a “Theory of One Level of Everything.” Alternatively, if
antireductionism is true, a TOE would have to incorporate all biological and
psychological structures. In the end, all structures would be different
manifestations of one underlying structure.
Also consider what a TOE must explain. A true TOE must explain why
there is both visible and dark matter and energy, why there are six types of
quarks and not more or less, why there are the number of different particles
there are and why they have their particular masses and properties, the
strengths of different physical constants, and so forth.1 Why did four forces
disentangle from the primal force—why these and not others? Why weren’t
matter and antimatter created in equal amount (and so destroy each other)?
Why, as Paul Davies asks, are there a set of laws that drove the featureless
gases of the Big Bang toward life and consciousness? Why is the universe set
up to gain more and more levels of complexity? How do different levels of
organization appear? Why didn’t the universe remain simpler—for instance,
having nothing more complex than quarks? Indeed, why was the universe so
unstable that it could not remain in its initial state of symmetry? Why wasn’t
the universe governed by something like Newtonian laws rather than
relativity and quantum laws? In sum, why does the universe have all the
fundamental features it has and not others, and why is the universe as creative
and complex as it is? In addition, there are the questions of the initial
conditions of the Big Bang, why the stuff of our universe was set up to
“bang,” why inflation can happen, and what happened before the Big Bang?
Indeed, why is there any space-time at all? Answering these questions is
obviously a tall order, but nothing less constitutes a truly total explanation.
And this is not to mention the philosophical issues of why anything exists for
the TOE to operate on, why there is order in nature, and why any TOE exists
at all. The contingent events of history would not have to be explained, but
no fundamental scientific laws and constants could be left as unexplained
brute facts for a theory actually to be a “Theory of Everything.”
Theories of superstrings—one-dimensional lines of energy that wiggle in
different ways—are one candidate for a TOE. They unify general relativity
and quantum physics in a consistent way. They also would bring order to the
current hodgepodge of subatomic particles. One version—Edward Witten’s
M-theory—predicts the existence of particles carrying gravitational forces.
However, this theory has problems: it requires more than half a dozen more
dimensions to the universe that are not “unfurled,” and there are a mind-
boggling number of alternative types of universes in the model (at least
10500). More importantly, it runs up against a major roadblock: it is not yet
empirically checkable—it does make predictions, but ones that cannot be
tested with the energies available with our current accelerators. It does
encompass all the discoveries that preceded it, but it is based on no more than
the mathematics of the theory of our universe’s initial inflation and its own
elegance. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Feynman quipped that superstring
theorists do not make predictions but excuses, and the same is still true today.
“M-theory” has become “Mystery-theory.”
Alternatives to string theory that might be testable today are being
proposed. So too the recent discovery of dark matter and dark energy—if
they in fact exist and are not merely epicycles of theory—raises the question
of whether we are in a position to believe that we know all the basic features
of our universe. When scientists claim that dark matter and dark energy
constitute more than 95 percent of the mass of our universe, one has to
wonder whether anything else of such a magnitude has been missed. The
same for undiscovered items on the smallest scale: scientists at the Large
Hadron Collider in Switzerland recently reported possible traces of a new
particle that does not fit in the Standard Model. Evidence of a fifth physical
force (possibly connected to dark matter) has also just been reported.
Computer simulations of a universe without the weak nuclear force have also
worked fine, suggesting that we do not really know what the true
fundamental forces of the universe are. In addition, mathematicians may not
have yet devised the proper math to summarize the patterns that are being
observed.
Thus, today we may not be anywhere near ready to devise a true TOE, and
it is arrogant to think otherwise—indeed, all of the current relevant theories
may be in a relatively primitive state. Perhaps a conceptual revolution
unifying general relativity and particle physics would so alter how we see
things that any TOE proposed now would then look silly. Nor can we be
confident that there are no forces on the smallest and largest scales that
simply lie beyond our capacities to know. Even if we could reach the level of
superstrings with some new accelerator, we can never be confident that there
is no further level explaining them. So too, we cannot rule out that there may
be a rational structure to all of the cosmos that is simply permanently
mysterious to beings such as ourselves.
There is also the entire issue of how science could show that there is only
one consistent set of physical laws. Perhaps there are many possible TOEs
that could produce viable universes, and this raises the issue of why our
particular TOE is embodied in our universe—perhaps a creator god would
still have had a choice even if there is a TOE. Any necessity to a TOE would
be lost. For Steven Weinberg, the possibility that the world could have been
operated by another TOE is an “irreducible mystery” that cannot be
eliminated. Thus, our TOE would require an explanation for why it was
instantiated in reality: something would be needed to explain why that
equation is in force and not another. A multiverse theory would be one
explanation: if each “miniverse” has its own TOE and is causally unrelated to
the other miniverses, one with our features is only to be expected. But in that
case, the laws of our miniverse are accidental and not universal. Moreover,
no law can explain itself—gravity cannot explain why the universe is set up
to allow gravity to operate in the first place. Nothing can be self-explanatory
—it is either explained by something else or is simply an unexplained brute
fact.
Or perhaps no TOE is possible. There may be no one fundamental
underlying order but only local ones. Perhaps there are some arbitrary
constants or laws in our universe. Perhaps the idea of unified cosmos—a
“uni-verse”—is, as Bertrand Russell suggested, only a relic of pre-
Copernican astronomy. Perhaps, as Freeman Dyson hopes, the world of
physics and astronomy is inexhaustible, infinite in all directions, and that a
TOE is an illusion: just as Gödel’s theorems show that axioms in
mathematics leave unanswered questions, so too no set of axioms in physics
produces answers to everything—otherwise, “the Creator had been
uncharacteristically lacking in imagination.” Certainly, Stephen Hawking’s
declaration in 1980 that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved by
the end of the twentieth century did not pan out.
In any case, enthusiasm for TOEs has greatly waned in the last twenty-five
years.

Cosmology
Also consider the old and new mysteries in cosmology. One bit of old news is
the “fine tuning” controversy. Various physical constants seem perfectly
suited to an amazing degree for producing life (even if there turns out to be
comparatively little life in the universe).2 It looks as if conscious beings are
built into the universe. As Freeman Dyson said: “I do not feel like an alien in
this universe. The more I examine the universe and study the details of its
architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe must in a sense have
known that we were coming.” And it is hard to accept this as simply a brute
fact—most of us feel that it demands an explanation. So far there have been
three responses. First, many scientists say that, despite appearances, “fine
tuning” is an illusion, just an effect of the early inflation of the universe—the
variables are interconnected and by this interconnection necessarily produce a
stable universe with many features, only one of which is life. Others offer one
of two deeper explanations: either a designer god set things up for conscious
beings to appear, or a multiverse theory explains it. In a multiverse scenario,
as long as there are a sufficient number of miniverses, and the laws and
constants vary from one miniverse to another, then of course a world like
ours should exist—many may be without laws or otherwise sterile, but some
producing life would occur. But many theists fervently resist any multiverse
scenario since it would be an alternative explanation to God: a creator god
could, of course, create a multiverse as easily as one miniverse, but the order
of our world could no longer be used as evidence of a god. To Richard
Swinburne, it is the “height of irrationality” to posit trillions of other worlds
simply to explain the features of our one world. But multiple miniverses were
not posited to explain fine tuning. They are the consequence of other
generally accepted theories—in particular, the idea of the inflation of our
world, an idea well supported by both observational data and established
theories. That multiple miniverses would explain the apparent fine tuning is
only a bonus.3
In fact, multiverse models are becoming increasingly popular among
scientists. The idea of an eternal multiverse was first hypothesized by
Alexander Vilenkin in 1983. Various models have been inferred from various
theories in physics and cosmology. Many agree with Paul Davies that some
form of multiverse theory is “probably an unavoidable consequence of
modern physics and cosmology.” The idea of countless worlds arising and
dissolving goes back to the pre-Socratic Greek Anaximander’s idea of the
Boundless (aperion), but the contemporary theories result only from spinning
out the consequences of the math of other theories (such as superstring
models) and are currently only theoretically testable. They add a whole new
dimension to the question of whether the cosmos is infinite and eternal since
other miniverses would not merely be hidden dimensions of our own
miniverse. These theories expand the universe in a way not comparable to
any theories in the past—that the stars are far from our solar system, that
there are other galaxies, and that our universe is expanding. Each miniverse is
distinct from ours, and the “mother universe” or even each miniverse may be
propagating new miniverses forever, each possibly with its own set of laws
and constants. Finding evidence of, in effect, other entire universes would
have an existential impact on us second only to finding intelligent life on
other planets.
Philosophers David Lewis and Robert Nozick go to the extreme of
advancing an all-worlds hypothesis: every logically conceivable world exists.
But any of the models would not only explain why our miniverse has the
structure to produce life, we no longer have to ask what an eternal creator god
was doing prior to 13 to 14 billion years ago before our Big Bang occurred. It
also introduces the issue of whether the universe is eternal and offers
different options for the ultimate fate of our miniverse. If what occurred prior
to the Big Bang is cut off by the heat of the Big Bang, science is precluded
from empirically addressing what may have come before or the nature of any
other miniverses or of the multiverse of all the miniverses and their source
(the “mother universe”). In addition, we could never tell how many
miniverses remain undetectable or what their laws are. So too, the whole
question of the origin of the entire cluster of miniverses becomes
unanswerable. Physics and cosmology become at best only sciences of our
local observable miniverse, not truly universal of all of reality. We would
have an explanation for why our miniverse is the way it is, but only as a
random result of a far larger incomprehensible universe. Mysteries within our
miniverse may be dampened, but the mystery of the total universe only vastly
increases.
But again, the drawback to multiverse models is testing for the presence of
other miniverses unconnected to our own. To John Wheeler, Hugh Everett’s
“many worlds” solution to problems in particle physics has to be rejected
because “its infinitely many unobservable worlds make a heavy load of
metaphysical baggage.” Observations may actually be possible to detect a
past collision of our miniverse with another miniverse, but critics contend
that until such evidence is found the entire multiverse scenario is only a
matter of metaphysical speculation—elegant metaphysics that is guided by
mathematics, but metaphysics nonetheless.

What Is the Nature of Science Today?

The general lack of testability and observational support in multiverse and
string theories has generated a dispute among physicists about the nature of
science itself. Some physicists such as Sean Carroll claim that “empirical
checking” is now an outdated notion (at least for these Big Questions in
physics and cosmology). They want to change the rules of science: in “post-
empirical science,” what matters is elegance, consistency, and the
mathematics of a model. As Helge Kragh puts it, this would be an “epistemic
shift,” a redefinition of science, not by philosophers but by a minority of
active scientists. Leonard Susskind labels advocates of Karl Popper’s
falsification requirement “the Popperazi” for trying to impose unrealistic and
irrelevant methodological restrictions on science.
Disparagers of this view respond that this redefinition spells the end of
science in these fields: when we abandon checking, what we have is no more
than speculative metaphysics, not scientific theories at all. (Of course,
experimental physicists, as opposed to theoretical physicists, have always had
a great disdain for philosophizing.) If a theory makes no checkable
predictions, it is worse than useless from a scientific point of view—it leads
to just concocting fairy tales. Such speculation reflects the age-old human
need to have creation stories, but ideas that predict nothing produce no
testable claims and no fruitful research—they are not science but no different
than theology or astrology. Advocates of the standard view readily admit that
all theories begin with speculation, but they see no reason to end the demand
that at some point observable consequences are required for a theory to be
science—the speculation must become empirically useful at some point down
the road. For them, to drop the need for some empirically confirmable or
refutable claims would be the end of science. As Einstein said in the first half
of the twentieth century, “Time and again the passion for understanding has
led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world
rationally by pure thought without any empirical foundations—in short, by
metaphysics.” He added (and Kant would agree): “Concepts are simply
empty when they stop being firmly linked to experience.”
Advocates of the new view of science point out that problems with these
theories have persisted for decades with little progress: competing theories
interpreting quantum physics have remained intact since the 1930s; the
Standard Model has only gotten more and more complex since the 1970s; and
theories such as cosmic inflation and superstrings have been around since the
1970s with little or no advancement. This stagnation is sufficient, they argue,
to redefine science: the new theories may be one step beyond empirical
science, but they are not unbridled speculation or groundless fairy tales, as
critics assert—it is not “anything goes.” Mathematics develops along with
science, and perhaps developments in math can take the lead here. (That we
do not know the nature of math adds to the problem. Advocates of the new
physics would have to be Platonists: math must structure reality and not
merely be our invention to summarize data if it is to be the basis of a new
speculative science.) But critics still insist that this makes “particle physics”
into “particle aesthetics” and theories become grounded only in our sense of
beauty and our untrustworthy intuitions of what is real—we cannot call a
theory “science” unless it takes the risk of making some confirmable or
disconfirmable predictions.
Must a theory predict novel phenomena, or can it merely make sense of
existing data and still be called “scientific”? Can a theory remain testable
only “in principle” indefinitely and still be called “scientific”? Can such a
speculative theory be the basis for further research? Or is “scientific
research” reduced to speculation alone? Do the new “post-empiricists”
simply want to keep the honorific name “science” rather than admit that they
are doing metaphysics? How will this dispute be resolved? Certainly,
philosophers cannot dictate to scientists how to practice their craft. Perhaps
this is a case where physicist Max Planck is correct: “a scientific truth does
not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up
that is familiar with it.”
However, whether we label these edges of science “science” or
“metaphysics” is not important: if the theories never become checkable, it
would mean either way that science is hitting a wall. How do we know a
theory is true and not just a groundless overextension of a theory into
metaphysical illusion, no matter how elegant it is? How could a theory
accepted solely on grounds of elegance be the basis for further speculation?
In old-fashioned “empirical science,” elegance and consistency are part of the
set of criteria utilized for selecting one theory from among the available (but
empirically equal) options, but they never become the sole grounds for
acceptance when testing is impossible. And remember that Ptolemaic
cosmology and Newtonian physics were once considered the most elegant
options.

Is the End of Theoretical Science at Hand?

This points to another issue: are we approaching an era when the only
“revolutions” on the Big Questions in particle physics and cosmology will be
on the conceptual side, with multiple theories all explaining all of the
available data? Could scientists reconceptualize nature around another root-
metaphor (e.g., the universe as the output of a computer program) with other
idealized conditions in a way that not only does not need certain
hypothesized entities (e.g., dark matter or black holes) but also rejects what
are now considered basic laws such as the law of conservation of energy or
the invariance of the speed of light? (And there is a cottage industry of
scientists who reject the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe, relativity,
or the Higgs particle.) This in turn leads to such issues as whether there is a
genuine question of whether space-time is flat or curved: do we mathematize
nature, and could we come up with another mathematics for the geometry of
space-time? If computer programs come to dominate physics, will we see
space and particles as digital? Does such a prospect render the whole
question of the “real” nature of reality moot, as antirealists argue? Or would
the end of “empirical science” mean the end of antirealism in philosophy of
science since science would no longer be able to make predictions? Are laws
not “objectively real” but just the way we currently happen to describe
things? Are they, as Victor Stenger puts it, “simply restrictions on the ways
physicists may draw the models they use to represent the behavior of
matter”? Arthur Eddington thought that the laws of nature were subjectively
chosen by us: they are the rules for recurrent patterns that scientists observe,
but the footprint we find in nature is only our own. If any of this is so, what
does this say about science in general?
We always like to believe that we are living at the dawn of a new era, but if
testable alternatives to the currently untestable theories are not devisable
today, any new research on these Big Questions may have to lie dormant
until sufficient technology is developed, if ever. If not, these questions in
physics and cosmology may come to an end, not because the quest to find
final answers has been completed, but because there are limits to what we can
know about these matters. Interest in these Big Questions may fade away, as
with past efforts to confront them in creation myths. A sense of ennui may
engulf them as new scientists turn to what they find to be more productive
areas of study. Many scientists may become as depressed as Sheldon Cooper
was on The Big Bang Theory when he realized that the field he had devoted
his professional life to—string theory—was untestable and that in his mid-
thirties he would have to start over in another area.

Facing the Mysteries Today

In any case, today the science of these Big Questions seems to have hit an
impasse. Since relativity and particle physics cannot be reconciled at present,
we have no reason to believe that fundamental physics is approaching
finality. Perhaps all of today’s models are in fact only poor approximations of
future ones and will have to be discarded. And as the historian Daniel
Boorstin noted: “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the
illusion of knowledge.” Old ways of thinking may interfere with devising
new ways of conceiving things. We have to rely on intuitions, and our
intuitions are shaped by our everyday world, and these may very well not
only be useless when dealing with the more exotic realms but warp our
thinking—especially when they are no longer guided by new research data.
But human beings being what we are, we may be satisfied by our guesses. All
this means that asking the right questions in our situation may prove to be
even harder than finding any answers.
But as discussed, we must face that at some point particle physicists will
have theorized the smallest components or the most basic fields that human
beings are capable of exploring empirically or even conceiving, and that will
be the final frontier in this field. But whether this means that scientists will
then have reached the most fundamental physical level of organization to
reality is still an open question: Are there levels of scale beyond our reach or
beyond our comprehension even through mathematics? Are there also other
fundamental forces at work on these levels that we cannot know? Indeed, we
may in fact be vastly ignorant of the true workings of nature. Current particle
physics may be like Ptolemaic cosmology—great on predictions, but
fundamentally wrong on theory. At the least, the problem of modeling what
is further and further from the everyday realm will only get worse—any
reality that physicists strike will no doubt remain highly counterintuitive.
So too with the opposite scale of things: we may have only an inkling of
the true nature of the universe as a whole—it may remain fundamentally
incomprehensible. Many agree with astronomer John Barrow’s conclusion
that the astronomer’s desire to understand the structure of the universe is
doomed—we can merely scratch the surface of what is out there. “All the
great questions about the nature of the Universe—from its beginning to its
end—turn out to be unanswerable. There is a fundamental divide between the
part of the Universe we can observe and the entire, possibly infinite, whole.”
We can expect, he adds, the universe to be endlessly diverse both throughout
space and historically—it is most unlikely to be even roughly the same
everywhere. We most likely “inhabit a little island of temperate tranquility
amid a vast sea of cosmic complexity, forever beyond our power to observe.”
So too, we should “regard with a Copernican suspicion any idea that our
human mental powers should be adequate to handle an understanding of
Nature at its ultimate level.”
In such circumstances, accepting mystery and remaining agnostic about the
theories is mandatory. Indeed, it may be most reasonable to withhold even
tentative assent to any of the untestable theories. In addition, we have to
accept the prospect that scientists may never be able to answer the big “why”
and “how” questions here. However, we are a species that wants answers to
these questions, and so we may continue to speculate—these questions affect
us existentially in a way most questions in science do not. But we have good
reason to believe that we will reach the limits of our knowledge in these areas
and no good reason to believe that nature is transparent in all its scales to
beings like us. Thus, there are matters that are permanently unknowable. We
will have to accept with humility some physical and cosmological realities
simply as brute facts incapable of further explanation.
Notes
1. A change in one theory can wipe out problems in other theories. Here, adopting a multiverse
hypothesis makes the stubborn problem of why elementary particles have the particular masses
they have simply vanish: each miniverse may have its own set of values for the elementary
particles—there is a randomness and arbitrariness to such values in any given miniverse, and no
further explanation is needed for the values in ours. Thus, physicists may have been struggling
over what is really a nonproblem, and no TOE needs to explain such values. Of course, we do not
know how future theorizing may change the whole landscape of physics.
2. “Fine tuning” can be expanded to include other things. For example, if water contracted when
frozen like most liquids do, the oceans would have much more ice, and life as we know it probably
would not exist. Or would life have adapted to this and taken another route around this problem?
Why are quarks and leptons related to each other in simple ratio? Why do electrons and protons
have the same electric charge value?
3. How Occam’s razor applies here depends on your point of view: ontologically, a multiverse is
obviously immensely larger, but it is actually simpler from a theoretical point of view—it is
simpler for a theory to posit the entire range of logically possible miniverses than only one since
for there to be only one miniverse, a new ad hoc rule would have to be added to the theory
explaining why only one of the possibilities is realized (e.g., perhaps our universe is the only
miniverse because it is the best for producing diversity from limited natural laws, and some
unknown force destroyed all other miniverse).
 10
What of Current Mysteries in Biology?

I cannot think of a single field in biology or medicine in which we can claim genuine
understanding, and it seems to me the more we learn about living creatures, especially
ourselves, the stranger life becomes. … The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I
feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature.
—Lewis Thomas

iology today has its own set of “why” and “how” Big Questions. What
B exactly is life? And how did it begin? How, in particular, did human
beings arise? Are human beings nothing more than evolved, gene-driven
organisms? How does life fit into the physicists’ picture of reality? Why do
cells die and atoms don’t? Why do genes and amoebas self-replicate and
inorganic material does not? Is the earth itself a planet-sized interconnected
ecosystem or even a whole that can be likened to a single life-form, as Gaia
theorists argue? Why is reality set up to produce and sustain life and
conscious beings? Is there a teleology to life—that is, does life appear
accidentally and evolve unguided, or are there natural or transcendent
principles at work guiding its course?

What Is Life?
Consider first what exactly “life” is. A living entity is not inert matter or a
soul embodied in inert matter. What exactly distinguishes a living person
from a dead body? If a deceased person is just a machine with a broken part,
why doesn’t repairing that part bring the person back to life? This is harder to
define than one might think. Scientists are not in agreement on what
constitutes “living,” but the processes of self-reproduction (things making
copies of themselves out of inorganic material), self-repair, growth, and an
autonomy not exhibited by inanimate objects are central to life. Biologists
debate whether macromolecules or viruses are “alive.” Crystals can “seed”
other material to make more crystals, but nothing characteristic of life ever
appears.1
Despite the problem of definition, life appears as a distinct level of
complex phenomena, and how nature made this monumental leap is the basic
mystery underlying biology. Scientists do not know how life began. Neo-
Darwinian theory does not purport to explain how life arose, but only to
explain changes once it arose. And finding a natural explanation for the
origin of life has proven harder than once expected. In 1953, Stanley Miller
discovered that the “building blocks of life”—certain organic compounds
such as amino acids—could be synthesized by sending an electrical charge
through a soup of methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and water. However, few
strides have been made since then beyond creating some self-replicating
amino acid molecules, and doubts have been raised whether the experiment
duplicated early earth conditions. But even if scientists can generate life in a
laboratory, this does not mean that they have duplicated how nature did it any
more than the airplanes that we build duplicate how nature made birds.
Nevertheless, naturalists are confident that a purely natural explanation of life
will be forthcoming.
All sorts of conditions had to appear for life to arise, requiring millions of
years of preparation through the evolution of the earth and atmosphere. Most
scientists agree that the original DNA or RNA template for life was so
complex that it could not have appeared by pure chance—natural forces had
to play a role in restricting the events surrounding how it came into existence.
But life on earth still appears so miraculous that Francis Crick suggested that
it began by being seeded from space. (Of course, this only pushes the
question of the ultimate origin of life back one step to how the life of the
seeds arose.) Certain chemical bases are needed, but what exactly the
necessary bases are may not be known until we find life in different forms on
other planets. For example, is carbon necessary, or are non-carbon-based life-
forms (e.g., based on silicon and methane) possible? The complexity of any
form of life on earth has also proven to be a problem. A cell is more complex
than any inanimate entity of the same size. Even the simplest one-cell animal
is so complex that how it arose perplexes everyone. The astrophysicist Fred
Hoyle likened believing that the first cell originated by chance to believing
that a tornado ripping through a junkyard full of airplane parts could produce
a Boeing 747.

The Evolution of Life

The historical question of the emergence of life may never be answered, but
however life was established, the next problem is what Charles Darwin
considered the “mystery of mysteries”—the evolution of distinct species. All
life on earth—animals, plants, fungi—appears to have evolved over the last
three billion years or so from the same DNA. Thus, all living things on earth
are related. That is firmly established, but the explanation of how evolution
has occurred has given rise to disputes. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel
Wallace proposed a natural mechanism for the changes (“natural selection”):
members of a species that have survival-related genetic advantages over other
members in their environment tend to thrive and to produce more offspring
that survive; with enough genetic changes, a new species branches off.2 This
idea was combined with modern genetics by 1950: changes occur randomly
in the genes (e.g., radiation may alter a gene), and these are then passed on in
a lawful manner to the offspring through inheritance. Thus, both randomness
and laws are involved in generating new species.3
But nothing in neo-Darwinism explains the general trends toward greater
diversity and greater complexity. Even if complexity enhances survivability,
nothing about natural selection or gene mutation, any more than the
underlying chemistry, would predict or explain the very possibility of a
continuous increase in diversity and complexity. Why would changes in the
environment cause beings to acquire greater and greater complexity? Even if
adapting to changes in the environment is responsible for the appearance of
new species, why do new degrees of complexity develop? How could natural
selection, random mutation, and the transmission of genetic changes alone
produce greater types of complexity rather than simply more of the same type
of complexity? Natural selection may effectively weed out the unfit, but how
does it create something genuinely new?4 Even if an accumulation of small
changes over long periods of time can create an entirely new species, why is
there a drive to create new species at all? Even if the drive is for new species
that are better adapted to their environment, why is nature set up to permit,
not just diversity, but more and more levels of complex organisms with
specialized parts? In sum, why did novelty originate?
 Most generally, why didn’t life remain on the one-cell level? Why would
single-celled organisms begin to fuse together, as it were? Why did cells
begin to have specialized functions? Why did complex, specialized organs
evolve? Wouldn’t one-celled animals that can survive in very harsh extreme
conditions be more easily adaptable to changes in the environment? Growth
in size and complexity without structure should lead to instability and
collapse. Are as yet unknown forces at work organizing life-forms? Or
consider this: do some natural structures explain why we share 99 percent of
our DNA with our cousins the chimpanzees and yet are so different? Other
species exhibit consciousness and altruistic social behavior—why are human
beings and our consciousness so much more powerful? Do our ancestors’
evolutionary needs alone explain why our cortex is now so much more
complex than that of other animals? Do we differ only in degree, or is
something more at work? The Human Genome Project proved disappointing
—mapping the genome led to more mysteries about heredity than answers.
Nature apparently has programmed within it not only an urge for
organisms to thrive through adaption, but also for life to gain greater
complexity. Why are chemicals “designed” (for lack of a better word) first to
assemble into living organisms and then the organisms “designed” to become
parts that assemble into more complex organisms? Antireductionists argue
that biotic structures as basic as those in physics must be at work in the origin
and evolution of life. Some rules must be programmed into reality to generate
novelty—the universe seems set on getting more and more complex and
leading to life and consciousness. As Paul Davies says: “This systematic
advance in organized complexity is so striking it has the appearance of a law
of nature.” Such a “complexity law” would involve exclusively natural
forces, not an active transcendent designer—biotic principles can be as
natural as physical ones. They would be “designing life” without a
transcendent designer and without any further goal or the future orientation of
“final causes.” A biotic structure, however, is basically non-Darwinian since
it limits the role for randomness in the course of evolution. Antireductionists
accept that natural selection plays a role in evolution, but they think that neo-
Darwinism does not provide the full picture and that some new theory of
evolution incorporating natural selection, genetic mutation, and biotic
principles will one day be forthcoming when scientists know more about the
workings of life. This may mean that a true revolution is needed in biology. If
Darwin was the Newton of biology, we may still be waiting for its Einstein to
explain the emergence of more and more complex organs and species.
Stalwart reductionist defenders of neo-Darwinism such as Richard
Dawkins will have nothing of this. Many biologists, such as Edward O.
Wilson, are reductionists who anticipate the demise of their science as
biology becomes explained by chemistry and ultimately physics. Why
naturalists should be committed to only physical principles is not clear, but
structural reductionists oppose any biotic structures. They think that natural
selection and random mutation operating at a genetic level are the only
mechanisms at work in evolution, and thus neo-Darwinism explains the
history of life. They believe that Darwin solved all the great mysteries of life
—as Dawkins says, all that is left is for biologists to fill in the details and for
chemists and physicists to reduce biology to chemistry and then to physics. A
few simple physical laws will ultimately explain it all. For example, John
Conway’s computer “Game of Life” showed how complexity can arise from
only a few simple rules and time. Indeed, that DNA is determined by the laws
of chemistry and physics is, according to Francis Crick, the “central dogma”
of modern biology. (His former colleague James Watson thought in 1984 that
biology still had “at least fifty more interesting years” in it.) All we have to
do is discover the basic physical laws at work—the actual history of life on
earth is a history of contingent events and thus is, as the chemist and
reductionist Peter Atkins says, “scientifically unimportant” since scientists
only identify and explain the laws and forces at work in nature.

Reductive and Antireductive Views of Life

The Big Question here is how ingrained into the universe life really is. The
biological level of reality seems to be as natural as atoms and molecules.
Reductionists believe that life arose only as an accidental product of physical
forces and random events—the inanimate is “more real,” and life on earth is
just a fortuitous fluke of nature. But to antireductionists, biological and
mental levels of reality are features of the universe on an equal footing with
the physical: plants and animals are as much built into the overall structure of
reality as atoms and molecules. Thus, we are a normal feature of the universe
and not a freak occurrence. To reductionists, however, life should be rare in
the universe: life will occur “spontaneously” under the right physical
conditions, but random events are necessary for these conditions to appear,
and so the right conditions occur only by chance. Complex beings crossing
the threshold to self-consciousness would be an even rarer accident. But for
antireductionists, the mere presence of conscious beings on earth provides
enough evidence to show that life is as firmly implanted in reality as material
objects. Thus, if antireductionism is correct, life should be fairly common
throughout the universe since some life- and consciousness-generating
structures as fundamental as physical and chemical structures are ingrained
throughout the universe, along with their base-conditions. Indeed, to some
antireductionists, the universe is not only “bio-friendly”—life is central to the
universe’s design, since without conscious beings, the universe would be a
silent, colorless, meaningless affair.
But how can we test between the reductionist and antireductionist
alternatives? Finding that life is common in our galaxy would be a point for
antireductionism. Physicists and astronomers tend to think that life will be
common in the universe because they predict that there will be millions of
bio-friendly planets in the galaxy. (That our solar system is comparatively
young suggests that the odds are against intelligent life on earth being the
first occurrence in our galaxy if intelligent life is common.) But biologists are
more aware of the history of contingent events leading to life and side more
with reductionists: they predict that life may be very rare in our galaxy—if
life on earth is any indication, it takes a lot of work for any conscious life to
appear, and our level of consciousness is obviously even rarer. Some
biologists suggest that life may even be unique to our planet.
But a basic mystery remains: do the laws of chemistry alone explain the
appearance of life, or does chemical bonding merely set up the necessary
base-conditions for natural biotic structures to kick in and produce life?
Chemical bonding is completely closed on its own level, and nothing in it
suggests that this could lead to anything new in terms of higher levels of
phenomena. Complete knowledge of the chemical structure of living entities
does not help us understand why some wholes are living and some not.
Chemistry simply does not appear to account for the origin of the existence of
a biological level of “information.” Reductionists must explain by the
mechanics of bonding or other physical or chemical processes how molecules
obeying only chemical laws could become arranged into entities that maintain
and reproduce themselves. But on the other hand, how can we test for
antireductive biotic structures? How could we isolate an ordering principle in
action?
Consider gene mutation. It appears to be random.5 Reductionists deny that
any guiding laws are involved in gene mutation—it is in fact truly random.
That evolution is not pretty but inefficient and wasteful is enough for them to
conclude that no guidance is involved in how life evolves: nature is
indifferent to what comes next. Antireductive naturalists believe that biotic
structures such as a biogenic field cause the course of mutation and the
preservation of genes to flow in the direction of more complexity and higher
levels of organization, including conscious beings. More complex forms then
arise from earlier forms. Thus, they believe that the dice of evolution are
loaded: some as yet unknown structures “select” among random mutations
those needed for complex forms of life and preserves them. It would like a
machine in which rules of grammar control a random flow of letters so that
only when words and sentences are formed do strings of letters survive, while
other strings fall aside, and thus over long stretches of time different texts
eventually arise.
But how can we determine if mutation is in fact truly random or is guided
by some biotic law? What test would rule out biotic structures or test for
purpose? Short of finding trademark notices on genes from God, nothing that
scientists could find would be decisive (and naturalists would still question
whether such notices came from powerful but perfectly natural alien beings).
Whatever scientists find would look random to those holding that theory, and
the big picture of evolution would look guided to those holding that theory. If
there is no way to detect guidance empirically, this issue will never be
resolvable by science. Science does not require random mutation, but
biologists will treat evolution as if it is truly random if guiding principles
cannot be demonstrated by science. The fact of evolution, as opposed to the
neo-Darwinian theory of the causes, is neutral to the issue of guided versus
unguided mutation, as the National Academy of Science acknowledges. But
if evolution is in fact guided, then science is currently not only incomplete
but in fact wrong. And philosophers cannot rule out the possibility of biotic
laws a priori.
So too, if scientists ever succeed in cooking up life from a prebiotic
molecular broth, this would not resolve the issue of whether there are biotic
structures at work or not: we would still not know whether physical forces are
producing life or whether scientists merely have assembled the necessary
base-conditions for the biotic structures to become operational. Reductionists
claim that life arises without nonphysical causes from a collection of
interacting physical parts: once simple chemicals reach a certain level of
complexity, the chemicals undergo a transition no more mysterious than
liquid water becoming solid ice. The chemicals “assemble themselves” under
physical structures alone. But antireductionists would still insist that more
structures had become involved in the “self-organization” of materials.

Intractable Mysteries Remain

Thus, both “why” and “how” mysteries persist surrounding both the origin
and the development of life, even if scientists find the natural conditions that
cause life to arise from chemicals. Moreover, whether the universe is set up
reductively or antireductively, why is it set up in such a way that life is even a
possibility, and why is the trend toward diversity and higher levels of
complexity so prominent? Neither reductive nor antireductive metaphysics
changes the fact that, as Karl Popper said, life represents something utterly
new in the universe. Even if only a few simple natural rules account for the
origin and development of life, we can still ask why these rules exist. In sum,
why did even microbes emerge, and why did higher levels of biological
complexity evolve? (Of course, in a multiverse model in which all logical
possibilities occur, this needs no explanation beyond why life is a logical
possibility at all.)
All in all, we know less about the basics of yet another familiar
phenomenon—life—than we normally suppose. And in the end perhaps
biology should be more central in our overall understanding of the universe
than the more abstract sciences of physics and chemistry. That is, a better
understanding of the nature of the universe may come by starting with the full
flowering of nature, including both life and conscious beings, as central to the
scheme of reality rather than focusing on their physical bases. After all,
physics is the science with the most assumptions about what can be ignored
from the fullness of reality, thus leading to the greatest abstraction from
nature. Only the reductionists’ intuition that physical structures are older and
thus “more real” than life and consciousness leads us to think in terms of life
“emerging” from physically ordered matter. Nor should naturalists be certain
that life is nothing but configurations of “dead” matter. Reality is not less
than living: nature is not inanimate or free of sensory properties—life and
conscious beings are at least equally part of what is real, and perhaps more
central to nature’s overall structure.

Notes
1. If human beings reach the “singularity” where we merge with machines, or if our creations surpass
us in an Age of Artificial Intelligence, a new set of Big Questions concerning life and human
beings will arise.
2. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If neo-Darwinism is correct, the egg came first: it was
laid by a creature that was not a chicken, but the egg had a mutated gene that caused a new species
—the chicken—to be born from it.
3. Disputes have arisen over the ultimate unit of selection—genes, individual beings, or groups.
Various theories have been advanced—the selfish gene, inclusive fitness, evolutionary and
developmental biology, unique genes—with no consensus emerging to date. Even a form of
Lamarckism has returned in epigenetics.
4. Antibiotics are seen as producing new resistant bacteria, that is, the bacteria mutate in reaction to
the antibiotics and new resistant strains result. But that may not be what happens: it may be that
antibiotics kill off certain strains of bacteria and leave the field to the already existing resistant
strains, thus letting the latter multiple without competition. If so, the antibiotics are not a source of
novelty—they only kill off the competition.
5. “Random” does not necessarily mean uncaused or indeterminate but only our inability to predict
an outcome—the outcome of a roll of a die is random, but this does not mean it is physically
undetermined. In evolution, “random” means that natural events such as mutation are not guided
by the adaptive needs of organisms or by a designer god. So too, physical events that affect the
course of evolution, such as the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, are not physically
uncaused, but they are random from a biological point of view.
 11
What Am I?

If we’re destroyed, the knowledge is dead …We’re nothing more than dust jackets for
books … so many pages to a person. …
—Ray Bradbury

ext consider something even more familiar than life in general: you
N know you exist, but what exactly are you? For a philosophical
examination, we should start by accepting that our bodies consist of the
refuse of a past supernova and that we are products of evolution here on
earth, not by claiming to be special divine creatures placed here by a god. But
are we only evolved animals? Or are we merely a chemical machine, and if
not, how do we differ?1 Can this “I” be reduced merely to tissues?
Antireductive naturalists may add psychological structures to our makeup,
but we would still be a purely natural reality. Even if we cannot exist
independently of the body, is there anything more to us? Or is there an
immaterial component to us that might exist independently of our body? May
we continue in some form after death? Are we in fact embodied transcendent
beings? Can science determine if we are only evolved entities for propagating
genes or a chemical machine? Should we follow the school of personalism
and take “the person” as the irreducible primary ontic category—that is, all
reality is a society of persons, and personhood is the fundamental explanatory
principle? Or is personhood at least one irreducible category of reality?
If human beings are a social animal, then another class of Big Questions
arises: Are there social structures to reality? Is there one “human kind,” or do
persons vary from culture to culture and era to era? Should we follow George
Herbert Mead’s antireductive social approach in which the person is
composed of both a “me” (a “self” defined by social roles and the attitudes of
others) and an “I” (by which the individual responds to the social “me”)? Are
there social realities (communities, nations, and so forth)? Does any account
of any individual human require a social dimension? At least for human
beings, are societies in fact more real than individuals? Or are reductionists
correct that there are no social entities at all but only individuals? Was former
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher correct when she said, “There is no
such thing as society. There are individual men and women and their
families”? (But, of course, a “family” is a social unit.) Is there one best type
of society? Where does the authority of laws come from? How do we know
what is right? If we are social creatures, how does love figure into our lives?

The Self
In philosophy, these questions coalesce around the issue of whether there is a
“self”—that is, an individual real entity having some relation to the body. We
have a sense of continuing personal identity and a core of agency to our
actions that do not seem to be material—it seems to be a simple, singular
reality. We seem to own our actions, experiences, and feelings. This sense of
“I” is experienced as different (if not distinct) from our body. This “I” cannot
be localized anywhere within the brain, or indeed anywhere in space and
time. It is more than the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that we have at any
given moment: it is allegedly a reality underlying all of our mental and bodily
functions that persists throughout all our changing mental and physical events
—the self is the bearer of our states of consciousness and the subject of those
states. It gives a unity or identity to the total content of our inner life.
But is there such a unified reality? The traditional answer in most cultures
is an ontic dualism of a material body and a “soul,” “self,” “spirit,” or other
substance that exists independently of the body. However, problems related
to the effect of damage to the brain on consciousness and the difficulty in
figuring out how an immaterial mind could make the material body move
leads most philosophers to reject the idea of a self as a “ghost in a machine.”
Indeed, apart from what occurs in the body and brain, we would have no idea
that there is a “soul” or “spirit”—we do not know what it is in itself or what it
does without a body. Nevertheless, most people believe that there is some
entity that thinks their thoughts and experiences their experiences. Such a
subject can exist without self-conscious reflection. Most agree with René
Descartes’s “I think therefore I am”: I may not be awake and in control of our
thoughts—I may be dreaming, I may be a brain in a vat, I may be being
deceived by an evil demon—but for any of these scenarios to occur I still
must exist. Thus, the mere fact that I am conscious proves that I exist.
However, naturalists question whether there is such a reality independent
of our body. To naturalists, any talk of disembodied persons or realities
without some physical vehicle for memories or continuity is absurd. To speak
of a disembodied life is meaningless. The human mind develops by
interactions between the brain with other body parts and the world. Thus, the
nature of our mind is not a pure, disembodied consciousness: it is tied to what
we do—that is essential to being a human person, and thus a disembodied
person is impossible. We are part of nature and tied to our environment.
Francis Crick sums up the ontic/structural reductionists’ view of a person:
“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal
identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and
their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a
pack of neurons.”

To these reductionists, a person is only a natural product of the universe

resulting from combining organic material—a physical body undergoing
causally connected changes in physical states. There is no “self” but only a
hierarchy of sublevels of different activities in our brain. Some philosophers
argue that the sense of a “self” is merely a creation of our language: because
we have terms that we use for convenience—“I,” “me,” “mine”—we
mistakenly believe that some reality must correspond to them, and so we
posit an entity, the “self.” But the “self” or “person” is not a reality, and as
we advance in our understanding we will see that. Daniel Dennett argues that
the brain generates “self-consciousness” and the illusory sense of “I” (the
unified center of mental activity) through a process of editing all the mental
activity going on throughout the brain. This posited source of the narrations
occurring in the mind is an entirely fictional product of the brain and not a
causal reality in any sense. The sense of a “person” is merely a story that our
brain tells itself.
Derek Parfit’s Humean “bundle of connected perceptions” theory is an
example of the eliminationism that is popular among naturalists today: all the
experiences of a “person”—memories, sense-experiences, emotions, pains, a
sense of identity, and so forth—exist but can be described without an actual
“person” or “self” existing. That is, we can give a complete description of our
inner reality without invoking the idea of a “person”—we consist of a body
and a series of interconnected physical and mental events, but our ultimate
ontology contains no category “person.” Such eliminationists may also accept
that the psychological components are not reducible to physical ones.
According to those naturalists who are structural antireductionists, human
beings on earth may not have been predestined to exist or be the goal of
evolution, but because of natural nonphysical structures the appearance of
conscious beings somewhere in the universe is as expected as stars and
planets. The physical is a necessary part of what it is to be a person, but it is
not all of it: there is an irreducibly psychological character to persons—a
mental level of organization to matter—that is not captured in a reductive
ontology. Antireductive naturalists reject any dualism of substances: there is
no separate substance called a “self” that could survive death. But they accept
the reality of persons and believe that the concept of a “person” is incoherent
if we subscribe to the reductive physicalists’ program: mental phenomena
have causal power, and a “person” is a complex of physical and
psychological components that has causal power as a unit and thus cannot be
reduced to a collection of those components. Hence, persons are irreducible
realities—wholes with causal powers—that must be included in our inventory
of what is real. In sum, antireductionists accept mental phenomena as
irreducibly real and include “personhood” as a fundamental category of
reality that cannot be eliminated ontologically or conceptually.
Many antireductionists such as Robert Nozick and Mary Midgley speak of
reductionism not only as a philosophical blunder but as a moral failing: in
reducing persons to something nonpersonal, it devalues people. If a rock or
machine breaks or ceases to exist, there is no moral problem, but not so if a
person or animal is a reality worthy of moral concern. Reductionists reply
that they do not deny the phenomena constituting “persons” and “animals”
and that we must treat persons and animals differently from rocks because we
can suffer, and that must be taken into account when we decide how to act.
But this still does not fully value human beings. Under antireductionism, our
humanness is fully affirmed: conscious beings are not only real but part of the
fundamental blueprint of reality and not accidental. To biologist Stuart
Kauffman, this worldview beyond reductionism is one “in which we are
members of a universe of ceaseless creativity in which life, agency, meaning,
value, consciousness, and the full richness of human action have emerged.”

Indian Alternatives
Many mystics affirm the fundamental reality of consciousness but deny the
reality of the ego, that is, a real “person” within the phenomenal world.
According to Advaita Vedanta, our everyday sense of a “person” is an
illusion: the one and only reality is a pure, self-existent consciousness, called
either “Brahman” or “atman.” This eternal and unchanging consciousness
constitutes all phenomena—all of what we classify as “subjective” and all of
what we classify as “objective.”2 Thus, the being of a “person” and of all of
the phenomenal world is Brahman, and the illusion is to imagine and
experience the person as a separate reality in a plural world of real objects
(maya) that we fabricate out of what is in fact only one (Brahman). The true
reality is called the “self (atman),” but it is not an individual person (jiva)—
that “person” is no more than a character in a dream that mistakes the dream
to be a reality distinct from Brahman. This view is the opposite of solipsism
since no individual exists, only the one undifferentiated consciousness. Thus,
translating “atman” as “self” is misleading: Brahman has no connotations of
personal selfhood. Instead, the only reality is a nonpersonal consciousness
with no real objects of consciousness: the ontic substance (atman) of
everything, including a person, is only that consciousness. This
consciousness is not based in matter, nor is there any matter for it to interact
with. And there is no pluralism of individual consciousnesses.
Descartes took the one “unshakable and unchallengeable reality” to be the
individual self experienced in self-consciousness. He conceptualized the
situation this way: “If I doubt I exist when I think, then the existence of an I
is affirmed by that very fact.” But Advaita Vedantins take the very same
experience to be immediate awareness of the one reality (Brahman)
constituting ourselves and all that we take to be objective realities. Thus,
consciousness transcends the “dream” realm: no individual “self-
consciousness” is involved in our awareness of our ontic substance (atman).
Advaitins thereby see the situation in terms of a nonpersonal transcendent
consciousness alone. But all either Descartes or Advaitins can be certain of is
that consciousness is occurring when we think—we cannot be certain that a
distinct individual “person” is involved. Thus, even if we can be sure that
consciousness exists, we cannot be sure of its nature or its relation to a person
based on this experience alone.
The Samkhya school of India presents a classic dualism of matter and
consciousness. Yet Samkhyas see things quite differently than we do in the
West: they separate an inactive, pure consciousness completely from all
matter, and they take perceptions, a sense of “I,” and the other mental
activities that we take to be nonphysical actually to be material. They identify
a center of pure consciousness as our true self (purusha) and distinguish it
completely from the equally real physical world (prakriti) that also includes
all other mental activity.3 The universe contains a multiplicity of such real
selves. Thus, unlike in Advaita, there is no one reality. Each individual self is
a separate eternal and unchanging conscious unit that witnesses or illuminates
thoughts and the other material content of the mind, but it exists
independently of such content and continues to be aware in the absence of
any content—it is like a searchlight that is on even when no objects are being
illuminated. This consciousness is unmoving and yet affects matter, like (to
use their simile) a magnet controlling iron filings. Thus, each true self is free
of all content and intentionality and continues in a disembodied state after the
death of one who is enlightened.
Most Buddhists take a different tack: they do not treat consciousness as
fundamental. Instead, “persons” are only aggregates of nonpersonal realities.
In this pluralistic ontology, persons (pudgalas) consist of five components,
one physical (its form) and four mental (sensation, conceptualization,
dispositions, and perception). The whole is not ultimately real or a unity. No
reality emerges from the parts: the “person” is not treated as a causal whole
but only as “conventionally real.” Each “person” is a temporary aggregate of
parts, like (to use their simile) a chariot that has its parts replaced over time.
Each component of a “person,” like all the components of phenomenal
reality, is impermanent and conditioned by other components. Consciousness
is not an eternal and unchanging transcendent reality as in Advaita and
Samkhya that “persons” are identical to; it is temporary and contingent,
existing only during conscious episodes of a person. So too, there is no
underlying, permanent “self” experienced in the phenomenal world in
addition to the parts—all that is real in the world are only streams of
constantly changing mental and physical components that we label “persons”
for convenience. (A karmic residue of our unenlightened desire-driven
actions in one life persists and is reembodied in a next one.) In short, there
are “selfless persons”: there are thoughts without a “thinker,” and pains
without a distinct “self” feeling them—there are only temporary bundles of
impermanent components succeeding each other in a continual flux.
Conventionally, we can still speak of “persons,” but from the correct ontic
perspective no such entities exist. However, the reality of a working chariot is
not denied—all that is denied is that there is some separate, permanent,
unchanging entity called a “chariot” in addition to the parts that exists
independently from those parts. And the same applies to “persons.” Persons
exist in a way that Mickey Mouse does not since there is a stream of
impermanent parts that we label “persons” for convenience, but ultimately
the talk of “persons” is also a fiction and not part of the true inventory of
things.

The Reduction of the Self

But as noted above, the effect of the body on our mental functioning
convinces most philosophers to reject a dualism of mind and body: evidence
from the effect of illness to split-brain patients suggests that the mind is not
independent of the brain.4 The latter also raises problems for the sense of
unity to our subjectivity. Thus, for naturalists, everything connected to a
“self” is connected to the body: everything that science reveals suggests that
we are no more than mortal animals, and our sense of “self” is too tightly tied
to a body to permit an immortal soul. When death occurs, all that happens is
that the body breaks down and the brain stops functioning—we cannot say
that the “self” ceases since there was no “self” to begin with.
Ontic dualists, however, reject such a reduction. They believe that some
substance—a soul or spirit—existing independently of the body survives and
may also have preceded any embodiment in the natural universe. Thus, death
is an illusion because the individual survives in some form—either a coherent
personal identity or at least personal traits continue on. Some naturalists
assert a sort of cosmic law of the conservation of what is real: in a person
cannot die but must continue—not just the parts of the body, but mental
features—even if the individual no longer exists. Some emergentists argue
that God or natural psychological structures supplement biotic and physical
structures to generate a new reality—a soul—that then has a reality
independent of physical nature and thus can survive its current embodiment.

Mystery Remains
Is there any way science can determine if one of these options is correct?
There may be good reasons to embrace naturalism, but it is hard to see how
science itself could disprove something alleged immaterial and transcendent:
science can give a potentially complete account of the “hardware” of the
body, but it is neutral on whether any “software” of a person is also involved.
In short, science cannot demonstrate that we are only machines. Nor does any
other resolution seem possible without resorting to sheer metaphysical
speculation. Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are prima
facie evidence for the reality of a mental entity existing independently of the
body. But naturalists dismiss near-death experiences, explaining them away
as due to oxygen deficiency (although other instances of that deficiency do
not give rise to such experiences) or as merely something the brain evolved to
make dying more peaceful and thus easier (although why that effect should
arise at all or be passed along to offspring to help in survival is far from
obvious). If the drug ketamine can give rise to out-of-body experiences, is it
producing only a hallucination, or is it disrupting the connection of the “soul”
with the body? Some naturalists argue that these experiences indicate only
that brain activity takes longer to cease upon death than our sensory
technology can indicate. Overall, researchers are split on the issue. Thus, we
must conclude that, even if it is reasonable to believe that anything real
survives death, what happens to a person at death remains a mystery today.
Indeed, the Big Question of a “self” is surrounded by mystery. To Kant,
the true self is as much an unknowable noumenal reality as anything else.
Descartes argued that we know the existence of the self with absolute
certainty and that this is the cornerstone of all of our knowledge, but many
philosophers now argue that the self does not exist at all. Mystics have other
views. Paradoxically, there is something so very obvious to us—that we exist
—and yet we do not know our basic ontic nature at all. Views range from a
soul existing independently of the body to human beings being merely
evolved animals whose idea of a unified “self” is an illusion. On the one
extreme, we are so certain of our existence that some people actually defend
solipsism. On the other extreme, perhaps “personhood” or “a self” is only a
cultural creation that we ourselves fabricate only from the grammar of our
language about a “person” and there is no real entity distinct from the rest of
reality. We do not know how to answer questions about its nature—we
literally do not know what we are talking about here.
The mystery here may be epistemic rather than ontic: there may simply be
something about how our brain evolved that keeps us from knowing the
nature of a “self.” But it is nonetheless a genuine mystery—one that probably
will persist forever. Even if we learn more about how the brain works, the
problems persist. That our subjectivity is always a subject and never a
phenomenal object of perception only complicates trying to address the
mystery. We press up against the limits of our ability to know in a way more
like when we confront the beingness of reality than when we approach
scientific problems. All we know is that the universe somehow has created a
way of knowing itself through us—what the nature of that reality is we do not
know.

Notes
1. An interesting question is whether the natural evolution of human beings has ended. Our gene pool
is now too large to accommodate large-scale changes easily. Can the scope of genetic engineering
affect the future of humanity or only affect a few individuals?
2. This is not, however, an idealistic reduction of all reality to mind in the modern Western sense: for
Advaitins, the mind and its content (except consciousness itself) that Westerners consider
“mental” are as illusory as what we consider “objective, physical” entities.
3. In traditional Indian psychology, the thinking mind (manas) is not the self or a soul but merely a
sixth sense, with the brain as its sense-organ and ideas as its sense-objects.
4. Ontic dualists can respond that this merely shows that the brain is a receiver of a soul: when the
receiver is damaged, the reception is damaged—the coherence of the signal is undamaged, but the
signal is badly received, as with radio waves and a damaged radio. The condition of the body at
death would also be irrelevant to what occurs to a soul after death.
 12
What Is Consciousness?

How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of

initiating nerve tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin
rubbed his lamp.
—Julian Huxley

t is hard to overemphasize the importance of our type of consciousness.

I Unlike the consciousness of animals, we can transcend ourselves, thereby
making it easier to think about things that are not immediately before us. Our
consciousness makes us more aware of the universe and ourselves, and this
makes us more fully alive in our world. It is the source of our ability to create
language, culture, and science—and enables us to foresee our own death.
But understanding the nature of consciousness could not be more difficult.
It is always a subject and cannot be made into an object—paradoxically, it is
never known as an object, but we can be aware that we are conscious at any
time. That is, intentional consciousness is always consciousness of
something, but consciousness itself is never that something: we can be aware
that we are conscious, but it is always a matter of being aware of some object,
not awareness of consciousness itself. So too, nothing is more obvious to us
than the fact that most of us can make our body move at will. But how
exactly does this happen? What is the difference between thinking about
picking up a pen and actually initiating the process of picking it up? How
does the “mind” get the “body” to do something? What is the difference
between a wink and an involuntary blink if they are physiologically the
same? Despite all the advances in neuroscience concerning the activities of
the brain, we still know no more about this most basic aspect of being alive
than did the ancient Greeks: we are simply at a loss to explain how
consciousness or our “will” brings about an action.
To many naturalists, the mind is the last surviving mystery. Do brain
events cause mental events, or do mental events cause brain events, or is
there some entirely other relationship? Or is our mind actually nothing but
our brain? Are consciousness, perceptions, intentions, feelings, the will, and
desires irreducible features of reality? Are they merely powerless
epiphenomena, or indeed entirely nonexistent, or does the mind have causal
power? Is “consciousness” a total illusion? Are we in the end nothing more
than mindless piles of matter?
This issue divides philosophers like no other. Many doubt that their
opponents really believe what they are saying. But most speak with a
confidence that would make theologians blush. In fact, they cannot even
agree on what “consciousness” is. But they concur that the mind is indeed
complex. It is not just sense-perceptions, emotions, reasoning, and
imagination. There is a sense of here and now, the kinesthetic awareness of
the body, and also a unified “self-awareness.” Perhaps there are more exotic
properties such as parapsychological powers or a Jungian collective
unconscious. There is certainly more to the mind than we are aware of by
introspection: there are subconscious processes. Cognitive scientists now find
that much of our thought and motivation occurs subconsciously. For
example, we all have had the experience of ideas that “just came to me.”
What exactly distinguishes subconscious mental activity from conscious
ones? Do all of these activities converge into one unified “mind,” or are there
multiple unconnected mental functions?
Even if we take a common-sense “I know it when I see it” approach—that
is, consciousness is any state of awareness occurring when we are not
unconscious—how do we begin to analyze it? The mind feels embodied; it
seems related to the body, and not just the brain. Bodily actions often feel
almost a part of the thinking process. Nevertheless, accepting a dualism of
mind and body is understandable since our inner life feels different from any
sensed inanimate external object. But most philosophers today believe that
René Descartes got us off on the wrong track by framing the issues in terms
of a dualism of substances—a material body and an immaterial “thinking
substance.” How can an immaterial substance cause a physical event, when
by definition it does not have any physical energy to bring about a change in
the physical? How can the two substances interact? How could an immaterial
substance intervene in the body without violating the principle of the causal
closure of the natural world and the law of the conservation of energy if
“mental energy” could somehow be injected into matter? Approaching the
subject with such a dualism, we are left with a mystery that seems
unresolvable.

Reductive Naturalism
To naturalists who are also structural reductionists, science requires that we
are merely physiochemical machines and the events that we think are mental
are actually nothing but inanimate physical events ordered by physical
structures alone. Sensing is just a physical event involving sense organs—it is
no more “mental” than a camera taking a photograph—and thinking is just a
physical event involving the brain, even though they feel different than an
object while the events are occurring. Thus, consciousness and all mental
states are reduced without remainder to states, properties, or processes of the
brain or are useless epiphenomena. Consciousness is at best an illusion
generated by the brain: the brain only makes it look as if there is something
nonphysical involved. Thus, the vexing question of “what is consciousness
anyway?” is eliminated. To reductionists, consciousness is just brain activity
under another name. But eliminationists go further and simply deny the
existence of the mind. To Daniel Dennett, we are no more conscious than a
TV set that is on. So too, characters on the TV screen appear conscious but
are not, and the same illusion applies to us. The brain merely records our
prior physical actions and plays them back, thus giving our brain more and
more new material to react to as we age. Mindless zombies are not different
from us because we are zombies.1
However, reductionists have a problem: why are there mental states? Even
if consciousness is an illusion, how can it be there at all? How is it possible?
If the mind is simply a state of matter, why does consciousness accompany
physical events? In addition, how are mental states “realized” by some
physical state? The problem is not merely that at present we do not know the
mechanisms that give rise to consciousness—rather, we cannot imagine how
any mechanisms could give rise to it. Reductionists like Patricia Churchland
readily admit that today we cannot imagine how consciousness could be a
physical process, but they see this as only a psychological limitation on our
part and that science will eventually explain how consciousness is merely
physical. But the very idea that something exists outside of the physical is to
reductionists, in the words of J.J.C. Smart, “frankly unbelievable”—“I just
can’t believe it.” Like him, they cannot accept that physics can explain
everything except consciousness. When we finally engineer robots that can
do everything that we can do, the illusion that consciousness is real will go
the way of a vitalistic substance in biology. Today philosophical therapy to
overcome our deep-seated intuition of consciousness being real must suffice.

Antireductive Naturalism
However, naturalists who embrace structural antireductionism see the
situation very differently. They deny ontic dualism, but they treat the mind as
causal and thus real. It is hard to see our feeling pain as causing C-fibers to
fire, but there is no reason to think that all mental properties must be like
pain. Instead, the mind is a natural product and part of the one causal network
in nature. (Antireductionists also do not have the problem with the placebo
effect and its inverse that reductionists have.) To John Searle, just as the
stomach produces digestive acids, so the brain “secretes” the mind. But this
does not mean that physical structures must be the source of the mind—
instead, nonphysical structures are at work that make the brain the base for
consciousness and other mental activity. But the mind does not violate the
principles of the causal closure of nature and conservation of physical energy
since no immaterial “mental energy” is injected into the natural realm.
Rather, how computer software guides the flow of physical events in the
computer’s hardware is more analogous: the electronic flow in integrated
circuits conforms to the laws of physics, but the flow is also directed by the
commands in the programs as operated by a user without violating the law of
conservation of energy. Similarly here: the causal completeness of the
physical is preserved—there are no gaps in physical events in which the mind
works—and there is no overdetermination of causes since the mental does not
interfere with physical operations; rather, mental information merely guides
the flow of energy, and the physical account of events would thus be
complete on its own level.2 Nor is mental causation a matter of downward
causation since the mind is not a product of matter. There are no separate
mental events existing independently of matter but only separate biological
and mental structures operating in matter and ordering it. In sum, every event
on the level of the body would have a set of natural causes, some of which
are mental—demanding that the causes all be physical is only a matter of
reductive metaphysics.
To structural antireductive naturalists, there is no mind apart from matter.
But even though consciousness cannot exist without a brain, this does not
mean that they are identical or that consciousness is merely physical. Rather,
the physical and biological levels of organization are only the bases that must
be present for mental phenomena to appear. But the mind does not “emerge”
out of the physical: it is simply the result of another level of structures
ordering matter that is on a par with the physical and biological levels. But
psychological structures become active only when the proper base-conditions
are properly assembled. Such structuring is an objective part of nature’s
structure even if we experience its results only subjectively. It is not the
creativity of the physical level of organization that generates mental realities
—it is not as if some currently unknown property of, say, electromagnetism
produces consciousness—but the creativity of other aspects of the universe.
The physiologist Benjamin Libet proposes a “conscious mental field”—but
a field that, unlike a magnetic field, can act upon its base (the brain). Some
naturalists endorse the “neutral monism” espoused by Bertrand Russell and
C.D. Broad: nature consists of only one substance, and that substance is
neither physical nor mental but can be organized by structures differently. To
David Chalmers, consciousness is a fundamental feature of nature—it is as
irreducible as such physical properties as electrical charge. Others are also
willing to consider a panpsychism in which all matter has consciousness or a
potential for consciousness (“proto-consciousness”) as an inherent basic
property, just as matter has physical properties, although this introduces the
problem of how the consciousness properties aggregate or are structurally
combined to produce conscious beings. (Critics argue that such panpsychism
is counterintuitive, but then again, so then again so is the reduction of mind to
matter.)

First-Person Experiences
Central to antireductionism is the difference between the physical and
subjectivity—that is, all our first-person experiences of thoughts, sense-
perceptions, emotions, pains, and so forth. Subjectivity always has a private
inner dimension that any corresponding neurological correlates cannot have.
Our awareness of ourselves as subjects and agents is distinct from our
awareness of ourselves as physical objects. Scientists may well be able to
reduce some mental functions to the mechanical operation of physiological
states, but this subjectivity cannot be reduced. Indeed, it cannot be studied at
all by examining the electrochemical activity of the brain—science is limited
to what can be produced for inspection by others, and subjectivity is not an
objective, observable phenomenon. Thus, we cannot reduce the first-person
ontology of consciousness to a third-person objective one. No third-person
account can capture first-person experiences. We know ourselves and our
consciousness immediately, not through any accumulation of third-person
descriptions. In sum, first-person experiences are an irreducible field of
reality all their own. Thus, the reductionists’ method of explaining any x in
terms of non-x will not work here precisely because what is to be explained is
not something with physical properties, and physical properties can only
explain other physical properties.
Thomas Nagel stresses part of this subjectivity: the irreducibility of our
perspectives to any framework that admits only the physical. A point of view
or what it is “like to be” something cannot be grasped by even an exhaustive
physical analysis of the brain. It is something that we can imagine only from
the inside. We can ask what it is like to be a bat because they presumably are
conscious and thus have an “inner life,” but it makes no sense to ask what it
is like to be a chair since it has no inner life. This subjectivity is real and
cannot be reduced to something else: we could know all there is to know
about a bat’s brain, but it would not tell us what it like to be a bat. There
simply is more than one dimension to the world, and the gap between the two
is unbridgeable. A point of view cannot be constructed out of components
that do not have a point of view; such a process would be logically, not
merely empirically, impossible—even God could not create conscious beings
by piecing together a lot of particles having nothing but physical properties.
Subjective events have a “view from the inside”—perspectivity,
intentionality, and experientiality—that objective events do not and that
cannot be grasped from the “outside.” In John Searle’s words, any attempt to
reduce intentionality to something nonmental will always fail precisely
because it leaves out intentionality.
Also central to our mental life are the felt aspects of our phenomenal
experiences—the greenness we sense when we look at grass, the hotness of
touching a hot surface, and so forth. These are strictly subjective elements, as
opposed to the physical input or resulting behavior. Such qualia are in a
totally separate category of reality from physical causes and results, and thus
they are not reducible to them. As Albert Einstein once said, science cannot
explain the taste of soup.
Reductionists realize that they have a major difficulty with the presence of
qualia in a physical world. Even if qualia play no causal role in our actions,
they are still there, and without a physiological reduction their existence is
incompatible with physicalism. Jaegwon Kim had to modify his position to
“physicalism, or something near enough” because why qualia arise from
neural substrates remains a mystery—he simply can see no way to fit them
into a reductive physicalist system. Some reductionists just awkwardly brush
these phenomena aside and, in Francis Crick’s words, “hope for the best.”
Others, such as Daniel Dennett, blithely deny the obvious—our inner
experiences—and simply eliminate them as completely unreal since to affirm
them, they believe, would be unscientific. It seems “intuitively clear” (at least
to reductionists) that the mind and the brain are one. Reductionists redefine
subjective terms in physical terms—such as “pain” as the physical damage or
our resulting behavior—but this does not change the nature of experience. As
John Searle says, it is merely playing with the words, not making a new
empirical discovery about the world. Reductionists have not analyzed the
mind and found it to be the brain, like analyzing water and finding it to be
H20—they merely declare it to be the brain because their metaphysics
demands it.
Antireductionists see the reductionists’ ploy as a flat-out refusal to face
reality. They insist that we must accept that there are in fact features of reality
that are not reducible even in principle to physical features. The sensation of
color is as real and as much a part of the world as light waves and the sensed
physical objects. It is a feature that requires the mental level of organization
to appear, but it is no less real for being so. Thus, a neuroscientist who sees
the world only in black and white is missing something about reality: when
she finally sees in color, something new is learned, and thus her knowledge
of the mind was previously incomplete, even if she had complete knowledge
of how perception works. No new knowledge-claims may be forthcoming
and no new evidence for old ones, but she now knows more of reality.
Reductionists reply that qualia are not the result of seeing something new in
the world but are only properties of the experiencer: as color blindness
shows, colors are only inner representations that the brain creates to help us
distinguish things in the world.
Is Consciousness Reducible?
The “easy” problems of consciousness are explaining the brain mechanisms
for such phenomena as memory, sense-perception, and information
processing and storage, although these are proving harder than once thought.
For example, sensation may be readily explainable in terms of sensory
stimulation of nerves, neural signals, and computational mechanisms. But the
“hard problem” is why the physical workings of the brain are accompanied
by any subjective experience at all—that is, why do subjectivity and qualia
accompany neural events? In short, how do we explain consciousness itself?
It is not merely a different scale of physical events that can be reduced to
another physical level. Can it be explained in terms of memory and our
language ability? It is especially puzzling in those cases where it is not
needed—for example, computers can simulate thinking and robots can
behave like us and perform some of our activities without any accompanying
subjectivity.3 We may assign a derivative status to the images produced in
sensory experiences, but we cannot do so with consciousness itself: it is not
the appearance of some underlying reality but is the reality in question.4 Our
“subjective” experience is as much a part of reality as what is experienced—
the subjectivity involved in seeing the Mona Lisa is as real and irreducible as
the canvas and paint.
We have as yet no idea why consciousness exists or how it is connected to
the brain, although scientists are coming to understand the neural
mechanisms accompanying it. But can science conquer the hard problem of
how and why consciousness appears? How do neural firings give rise to
subjectivity? Why is consciousness connected to neurons and not blood cells?
Why do systems of neurons form and grow, thereby permitting more types of
consciousness? And most surprising, why does anything new at all appear
from nonconscious elements, let alone something so unexpected as
consciousness? Moving the locus of the arising of consciousness to
computation on a quantum level does not help with the basic gap of matter
and subjectivity. Consciousness and matter seem so contradictory as to be
irreconcilable. (Hence the appeal of ontic dualism.) Scientists may be able to
explain all chemical properties as products of electromagnetic forces acting
on electrons and ions, but now try to do that for consciousness. In short, why
is consciousness even possible? The mystery surrounding consciousness will
remain until we gain a clear idea of how anything in the brain could cause
conscious states. But it is not obvious how any increase in our understanding
of the mechanisms at work in the brain or the functions of other mental
activity will shed light on how or why consciousness accompanies some
physical events or anything about its nature. Nor does introspection help: we
only “see” the mental phenomena, not how they can be related to the brain.
Indeed, antireductionists argue that consciousness itself will never be
explainable in terms of physics or any third-person science, no matter how
thorough our knowledge of the structural and dynamic properties of physical
processes may become. No account of the mechanics of sensing color or
hormonal explanation of a person’s condition can account for the person’s
experiences themselves. The laws of physics cannot in principle encompass
consciousness: it is impossible to deduce from the laws of physics that a
certain complex whole is aware of its own existence. The unbridgeable gap
between consciousness and the physical mechanisms supporting it is as much
logical as empirical since the natures of the two are totally distinct. We lack
any idea for why the neural firings in the brain could give rise in experiencers
to a felt aspect of the event. Even treating consciousness as merely a
biological phenomenon would not account for its uniqueness—it differs
from, say, stomach acid in being totally subjective and not objective.
Some antireductive naturalists such as Thomas Nagel think that, although
at present a solution to the mind/body problem is literally unimaginable, it is
possible that in the future some explanation of consciousness may be
forthcoming. Others would agree with Freeman Dyson: “Mind and
intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether
surpasses our understanding.” Indeed, the “mysterians” such as Colin
McGinn and Steven Pinker think there are good reasons to believe that no
explanation will ever be forthcoming. McGinn suggests that the way we are
constructed cuts us off from ever knowing what it is in the brain that is
responsible for consciousness: our brain has evolved to navigate us through
our physical environment and not to reflect upon itself, and thus we will
never know very much about consciousness. Thus, how a system of
insentient neurons generates subjective awareness will remain insolvable in
principle: we need a new type of category that links the mental and physical,
but we cannot think in categories other than the mental and the physical. How
could we step back from our situation and come up with the missing way of
thinking? It is a limitation of our cognitive abilities, like not being able to
visualize four dimensions in mathematics. We have evolved to look outward
for survival and not inward, and so we do not have a cognitive apparatus to
observe conscious states qua conscious states. The senses are geared to
represent things in the world with spatially defined properties, and it is
precisely because consciousness lacks these spatial properties that we are
incapable of resolving the mind/body problem. We cannot link nonspatial
consciousness to the spatial brain and so are not in a position to figure out the
right questions to ask.
Thus, there are, McGinn believes, physiological causes for the limitations
in our ability to understand subjectivity and how consciousness arises: it is a
question that falls outside the “cognitive space” of beings like us and thus
will remain a mystery for us. (In fact, McGinn believes that most
philosophical issues will remain mysteries because of our physiological
limitations.) Consciousness is merely another natural product, and nothing is
really magical about how the brain generates it—we will never be able to
fathom the process because of cognitive limitations, but it remains a purely
natural fact, and its appearance is not different from that of any other higher-
level natural phenomenon. Just because we do not understand it is no reason
to start invoking souls or a god. In short, the mystery lies within us, not
nature, and thus is epistemic, not ontic.

The Reductionists’ Dilemma

Reductionists can readily agree with this last point. Eliminationists eliminate
consciousness altogether as illusory (and thus deny there is a gap or hard
problem), while reductionists admit that they do not have a clue as to how
consciousness arises but still insist that it must be physical because
reductionism is true. But for antireductionists this mystery cannot be brushed
aside with simply a declaration that the mind must be material because
science cannot deal with the immaterial. They believe that even if we knew
every last physical detail about the universe such information would not lead
us to postulate the presence of conscious experience. Reductionists cannot
just smile and pretend it is not a problem. Indeed, the rationality of holding
reductionism today is very much in question—it is based on what we do not
know.
In fact, structural reductionism is so counterintuitive here that it needs a
very strong argument before we can accept it: the reductionists’ accounts of
the mind totally miss the central features of what is to be explained
—subjective experience. This feature is so clearly part of our experience that
it seems to be a fundamental feature of nature. Even if consciousness were a
mere fluke of nature, as reductionists contend, why is it there and how could
it appear? That is, the basic mystery for reductionists is how and why
consciousness and other mental phenomena appear at all if they are not real
and have no causal power. Even if consciousness is only a product of
evolution, developed in conjunction with the body, it is hard to see why it
would have evolved or survived if it had no value.5 As Karl Popper put it,
from a Darwinian point of view it is hard to see how an utterly useless
consciousness should have appeared at all. Why would nature generate and
preserve causally useless epiphenomena or illusions? So too, the
accompanying consciousness must give us some advantage for adaptation
and thriving (e.g., by creating mental pictures for us to work with).
Reductionists have the monumental task of explaining how consciousness
could have evolved from quarks and why consciousness is even a possibility
in a material world. Antireductionists at least have no problem affirming the
obvious—that consciousness exists. And reducing subjectivity to some
objective reality simply misses its very nature completely. It may be open to
explanation, but it cannot be explained away by denying it merely by fiat. To
Thomas Nagel, reductionism here is self-refuting: it denies the very data that
it meant to explain—Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained is
actually Consciousness Ignored. As the Galen Strawson says, the
eliminationists’ denial of the reality of their own consciousness “is the
strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought,
not just the whole history of philosophy.”
If this is so, one must explain the reductionists’ reluctance to accept
consciousness as real. Their basic intuition is that the physical—both matter
and physical structures—existed for billions of years on earth before life and
consciousness appeared, and hence it must be “more real.” But simply
because it took time for nature to assemble the base-conditions of
consciousness does not mean that consciousness is any less real than its bases
or must be a physical rather than a nonphysical natural property. Indeed, the
presence of consciousness adds a new dimension to the question of why there
is a nonconscious universe at all.

Science and Consciousness

Naturalists believe that science in principle gives a complete picture of
reality. And reductionists contend that only their brand of naturalism
comports with science: they start with the premise that science deals only
with the physical and can in principle give a complete picture of reality; thus,
if consciousness does not fit in the picture, it cannot be real. But merely
because scientists must approach all phenomena from the “outside” does not
mean that no reality has an “inside.”6 To practice science certainly does not
require that—scientists qua scientists need not deny there is more to reality
than what they study. Merely because first-person phenomena cannot be
studied by third-person scientific methods in no way means that scientists
have proven them to be nonexistent. In addition, the idea that the mind is a
systems-feature of the human body with causal powers shows that the alleged
inconsistency of mind and science only comes from the reductionists’
metaphysics: the completeness of physical causes is incompatible with any
real mental causes, but the causal closure of the natural realm is not—rather,
it may be that the mind in fact produces one type of natural cause in one total
natural causal order even if the mind is subjective. Nor would the mind’s
action in this scenario violate the law of the conservation of energy even if
how it works is not yet understood. Thus, the reductionists’ truncated view of
a person results from their metaphysics alone—it is not required by science.
An antireductive naturalism is “close enough” to science in light of what we
know today to be the more rational choice.
Structural reductionism rests on the claim that the physical bases are both
necessary and sufficient for the appearance of the mental and thus explain
them, but without scientific evidence for this, it is merely a bald metaphysical
assertion. However, science only shows that the physical is a necessary
condition for the appearance of mental phenomena in us—it cannot show that
the physical is both necessary and sufficient for causing it. That is, if we
affect or remove the physical level upon which a mental property depends,
then the mind also will be affected or terminated, but this cannot show that
matter and physical structures are the only factors in the appearance of the
mental—it may be that physical and biological base-conditions are only
necessary for psychological structures to kick in. In fact, even if we could
make computers or the internet conscious, antireductionists could still argue
that all that was demonstrated is that mental structures can operate in a
different set of base-conditions to make consciousness appear, not that
consciousness is reducible to those physical material and conditions.
In addition, the current approach in neuroscience will not be able to resolve
the reductionist/antireductionist dispute even if scientists attain a complete
mapping of the brain. Our knowledge of the brain has increased dramatically
over the last two decades, but neuroscientists are only discovering
correlations of physical and mental states—they cannot prove a brain/mind
identity or epiphenomenalism or establish bodily causation of the mental. In
themselves, correlations of mental and brain events give us no reason to
claim that the mind is dependent on the brain or identical to it—
antireductionists and dualists have no problem accepting such correlations.
Indeed, nothing is explained merely by correlating consciousness with
physical phenomena. In fact, doing so introduces a new puzzle to be solved:
reductionists must explain how physical structures produce the type of mental
phenomena that appear, and antireductionists must explain how nonphysical
structures require specific base-conditions to become operational. Questions
such as whether the flow of adrenalin causes anger or vice versa or have
some other relation remain more metaphysical in nature.
Today most neuroscientists may adopt reductionism, but they cannot argue
that science proves it. Neuroscientists can practice their science as if
reductionism is true because their findings are neutral to the metaphysical
issues. In addition, even if they ever achieve a complete understanding of the
brain’s wiring, how subjectivity appears remains unanswered. Moreover,
even if we ever establish correlations between neural processes and all mental
events, why a new layer of nature—consciousness—should accompany some
mental phenomena is still left unanswered. What empirical finding could
even suggest that subjective experience would accompany physical facts? No
neurophysical theory may be able to explain why consciousness accompanies
mental functions. That is, science cannot explain why reality is set up to
permit that possibility at all.
Furthermore, we may never know whether conscious beings are an almost
impossible miracle in the universe or a common occurrence. It may be that
consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality programmed into the
universe, that is, the universe has written into its forces and laws a way of
knowing itself. Or maybe not. As Bertrand Russell said, we simply have no
idea of life’s relation to the universe: it may be the final climax, an accidental
and unimportant by-product, or just a disease affecting matter in its old age.

The Essential Mystery of Consciousness

Thus, the Big Question of consciousness leaves us with yet another
unanswered basic mystery surrounding something that we are intimately
familiar with. Somehow we became little outcroppings of nature by which
the universe became aware of itself, but the why and the how remain central
mysteries. Science cannot help because we cannot get distance from
consciousness to analyze it objectively. If the possibility of a reduction “in
principle” is the reductionists’ fallback position for when all else fails, then
the untestability of subjectivity and the question of whether the brain
generates consciousness or is only the base-condition for the appearance of
consciousness is the antireductionists’ counterpart. But how subjective
consciousness appears and why it is part of the natural world at all remain
mysteries for both metaphysics. These mysteries seem intractable, despite the
reductionists’ creed that these are problems only to be solved by science. Our
descendants may develop an intelligence that makes ours look like an ant’s,
but the basic problem may well remain for any being with a brain structured
like ours—if so, consciousness will remain an unexplained brute fact.
We seem here to be again at the limits of our cognitive capacities. But it is
possible that we have created a false mystery by misconceiving the situation:
by conceptualizing our state by separating “mind” and “body” into two non-
overlapping categories, we may well be blocking ourselves from any solution
—this way of conceptualizing ourselves does seem to make it impossible to
get the two categories back together again and thus forecloses any
explanation. The best that philosophers can do in these circumstances is to
come up with a better conceptualization than a relation of “mind” to “body.”
Antireductionists are attempting this, but they have to invoke nonphysical
structures for which there is currently no scientific evidence.

Notes
1. Substance dualism is not entirely dead, but today it is advocated chiefly by the religious who want
something to survive death and who invoke God as the cause of consciousness. They argue that
the mind is independent of the body and somehow initiates which neurons will fire in the brain.
But how a particular soul is tied to a particular body, what it is about the nature of mind and matter
that permits this interaction, and how the interaction occurs are not explained but remain a
mystery. Nevertheless, today some ontic reductionists (such as William Lycan) admit that, while
their reductionist stance is rational, they do not proportion their belief to the evidence: arguments
for both reductionism and dualism fail to be compelling, and reductionists should admit that the
standard objections to dualism are not very convincing.
2. While analogies of the brain to a computer are popular today, scientists are finding the brain to be
more complex than any current computer and to operate differently. In a hundred years, another
technology may well be the model for the brain.
3. That computers can simulate our thought does not mean they are conscious any more than the fact
that they can simulate digesting food means they eat. What computers do is transform one set of
 symbols into another by an algorithm. Making computers such as IBM’s Watson that analyze
massive amounts of data does not impinge the issue of whether computers have consciousness.
John Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought-experiment makes a strong argument that computers as
currently constituted will never be able to think: understanding is not merely a matter of
manipulating symbols—no increase in computing power will duplicate consciousness. The critics’
best reply is that a new type of computer is needed, one that we have not yet conceived, after we
learn how the brain actually works. So too, robots would have to duplicate how we perceive and
intuit before the issue of consciousness arises. However, even if the simulation is good enough to
pass the Turing test, we would still have to ask if a computer or android is only simulating human
reactions or is actually conscious. After all, an android could perfectly simulate what it is like to
feel pain when its arm is jabbed with a pin (e.g., saying “ouch” loudly, grimacing, and jerking its
arm away), but without nerves it would be hard to conclude that it is actually feels pain.
4. This impacts the question of reality in another way. There is no color without us: the greenness of
grass is not independent of our neural system—it is a matter of the interaction between us,
lightwaves, and the grass. But reality is not colorless or devoid of other sense-qualities. Calling
colors “subjective” or “only in the mind” is misleading—they are as much a part of reality as
anything else we sense. Nature is not, in Alfred North Whitehead’s characterization, “a dull affair,
soundless, senseless, colourless”—the world is not colorless any more than objects in a closed
drawer are invisible just because they are not being sensed right now. Calling objects invisible, is,
to use George Santayana’s example, like calling a drum silent because we hear the sound waves
and not the drum. Seeing color is a complex phenomenon: it requires physical objects, the
generation of lightwaves, and beings capable of transforming the signals into color. Nature had the
capacity for color and created all that was necessary for the generation of color, including color-
sensitive subjects, even if it took time for the conditions to develop.
5. Antireductionists need not deny a role for evolution in the development of levels of consciousness.
For example, why didn’t dinosaurs, which survived for a hundred million years, develop our level
of consciousness? Simply because they did not need any greater level of consciousness to survive
in their environment. Hominids had more challenges to survive, and that led to a need for greater
consciousness, and through evolution a set of base-conditions accommodating greater
consciousness arose.
6. The new “mind-reading” technology actually reads only brain activity, not consciousness.
 13
Do We Have Free Will?

The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.
—William Shatner

ince we have a physical component, most of us agree that some mental

S control over the body is necessary if the mind is at all real. Indeed, this
ability is the most important of the mind’s functions, if it exists. And if the
mind does not have such power, a person could not have true free will—we
would not have the genuine power to choose how to act but would instead be
completely controlled by nonconscious physical events in our body.1 But
does the mind have causal powers, or is free will an illusion? How could
freedom be even possible in a material being? Are what appear to be free acts
really done by the body without our control and determined solely by a chain
of physical and biological forces operating in our body? If we have the
personal control of free will, we have genuine choice and agency to at least
some degree, and our choices would then have to be taken into account for
any complete explanation of our actions. (The classical formulation of free
will in terms of “could have done otherwise” ends up causing more problems
than clarification.)
So do we have free will or not?

The Reductionists’ Denial of Free Will

Naturalists who are also structural reductionists reduce the mind to the
nonconscious brain, and eliminationists eliminate the mind—either way, free
will is eliminated altogether. Thus, mental phenomena are seen as at best
powerless epiphenomena. An immaterial mind, even if it existed, could have
no causal power. To use Thomas Huxley’s image, a mind could no more
cause actions than a train’s steam whistle could cause the train to move. To
accept more would be to deny that there can be a complete physical
description of physical events. Moreover, a sufficient physical cause
precludes the need for any other cause. Physical phenomena are the actual
causes at work when we mistakenly think the mind is causing an event.
Moreover, free will could not possibly arise even in principle in a
deterministic world. Thus, we have no more free will than any other animal,
including those animals that we think have consciousness. If determinism is
true for all events in our universe, then there is no free will or random events:
from the beginning of time (if time has a beginning) it was fixed that I would
be typing this sentence right now on this planet and that you would be
reading it whenever it is that you read it, and nothing could change these
events from occurring. As Sean Carroll puts it, given the quantum state of
elementary particles of a person and the environment, the future is fixed by
the laws of physics—any true free will would violate everything we know
about the laws of nature. If there are some random events at the quantum
level or above, the history of the universe would be different, but there is no
reason to believe that such randomness could somehow create free will.
To reductionists, only the brain acts, with its nonconscious actions based
on only our accumulated past experiences, our abilities, and our environment
—no mental decisions are involved. Those experiences fix what occurs next
through the determinism of events governing nature. Even if our brain, acting
like a computer, can distinguish different reasons and follow what the chain
of past experiences dictates to be the best, no free decisions occur. The brain
does not “decide”—there is no agent or choice but only mechanical
operations. All events are really physical, and all physical events are
determined completely by previous and concurrent physical events. The
appearances of personal agency and free will is no more real than the
appearance that a thermostat freely adjusts the room temperature. Only
because we do not know what will happen next do our actions appear to be
freely chosen—our brain does not (and perhaps cannot) predict the next
outcome of the complex phenomena operating in us. But we are not the
author of our actions: nonconscious matter is in control. A string of inanimate
events in the brain that we think we initiate by free will are caused merely by
neurological events. Actions happen to us, and the feeling of a conscious
“will” is only an illusion generated by the brain thereby creating in us a sense
of ownership of our actions. (Why evolution created the illusion of ownership
is not clear since actions in a deterministic world would occur the same way
without a sense of agency or ownership.) It is only because we, unlike
everything else in the world, are conscious that we have this illusion.
Since Thomas Hobbes, “compatibilists” within the reductionist camp have
tried to put a smiley face on determinism: as long as one is not restrained by
outside forces or an inner compulsion caused by mental disorder, there are no
compelled actions, and one is thus autonomous and free. Compatibilists think
this the only “free will” we have. One is morally responsible for one’s actions
as long as one acts only from one’s inner desires that are not caused by a
brain disorder. So too, habits or dispositions conditioned by previous actions
may determine an action.
Compatibilism is the most popular position in philosophy today, but many
philosophers object that there is nothing “free” about our actions in
compatibilist “free will.” Compatibilists have formulated several defenses to
try to make the position convincing, but none are very strong: what they
mean by “free will” simply is not what is normally meant—we are still left
with a purely deterministic chain of physical events. For compatibilists, we
are still only a biochemical puppet, and when Sam Harris says “a puppet is
free as long as he loves his strings,” opponents would respond that he is only
playing with words. How does the unconstrained or unhindered operation of
a deterministic brain form “free will” in any sense? And if all acts are
determined, it is not clear why the absence of any internal and external
constraints makes a relevant difference—it is just another type of
determination. It may make a significant difference legally but not
philosophically: a person’s actions are still totally fixed by nonconscious
events—“unconstrained” only means that normal bodily mechanisms
determine our actions, not that any free will is involved.

Affirming Free Will

In opposition are the “libertarians” of the philosophical (not political) kind
who claim that mental states have at least some causal power over the body.
This permits the possibility of true free will: we can choose our course of
action—the course is not fixed by physical events. Structural
antireductionists can offer an explanation for this: nature has psychological
structures that are real and on par with the physical and biological structures
that set up minds with causal powers, personal choice, and control. Because
mental phenomena have their own causal consequences, they are a
nonnegotiable feature of reality and not reducible to products of the physical
or biological structures. Making a choice is different from a physical action:
it has an “inside” that mechanical actions do not. Mental phenomena are
dependent on the physical (both matter and the physical level of organization)
as the base-conditions for their appearance, but they are equally real in their
own right and can exercise causal power over the body.
To structural antireductionists, the mind causally enters into events (as
discussed in chapter 12). This is no more problematic than any other level of
causation—it is simply another level of normal structure, and thus of ordinary
causation, that nature has produced. Prior to the appearance of beings with
self-awareness or a self-reflective mind in the evolution of the cosmos, a
determinism may have prevailed (although uncaused events on the subatomic
level would present an issue). But once the base-conditions for mental
phenomena are fully assembled, such a mind arises, and psychological-level
structures operate in implementing our beliefs and values, emotions,
intentions, and so forth into actions. Indeed, how free will could evolve in a
world that is deterministic before the appearance of self-conscious life if
consciousness is not the result of a separate level of organization is not clear.
Thus, the antireductionists’ account accepts the autonomy and agency of a
person, genuine choice, and mental causation as components of the overall
causal system affecting our actions. Collectively, this permits the possibility
of free will. If so, our behavior results from intentionality and agency, and
these cannot be accounted for solely by the causal role played by physical
forces. We then have at least some degree of choice in our actions, and a
complete explanation of our actions would require reference to our choices as
causes, not just to the physiological conditions of the event. Under this
approach, there also is no causal overdetermination since physical events are
not the complete causal account of the course of events. A complete account
of the course of brain activity requires a role for beliefs and decisions, even if
events are closed on a neural level.2 The mysteries surrounding mental
causation are merely a subset of the general mystery of how any level of
organization operates in nature. (But that the mental level is involved and is
not determined by the physical level does not guarantee that there is free
will: a more encompassing determinism including determination of events in
the mind may still prevail. Mental structures must enable a freedom of choice
for free will to prevail.)

Determinism versus Causation

To address whether we have free will or are determined, we must first
distinguish causation from determinism—free will requires the former but is
incompatible with the latter. If our actions were totally chaotic, we would not
have the control permitting acts of will, but causal order permits control by
enabling us to predict the outcome of our actions: if actions X and
consequences Y in the past routinely occurred together, then we can
confidently predict that if we do X, then Y will probably follow. Determinism,
however, goes beyond causation: it entails a fixed chain of causes: A (along
with some surrounding conditions) causes B, B in turn causes C, C in turn
causes D, and so forth. For reductionists, all the causes are physical. In
determinism, all events and properties are completely fixed by past causes: if
we know all the causes and conditions, once a chain of events starts we can
predict its determined end. Thus, causation is only about isolated lawful
conditionals, while determinism is about the antecedents of those
conditionals and how they lead to a fixed chain of consequences from an
initial action. (Calling an isolated action “determined” is slippery: it can mean
simply “caused” without loading in all the metaphysics of determinism.)
With genuine free will, one can control some of the antecedents in causal
chains, picking the antecedents as we go along. Thus, we can affirm the
lawfulness of actions and consequences necessary for choice and affirm that
every human event has a cause and yet still reject determinism.
Unfortunately, philosophers usually do not distinguish causation and
determinism. Instead, they equate the two and thus see the rejection of
determinism as having only one alternative: chaos—a randomness of
physically uncaused events, like that theorized to be happening on the
subatomic level of organization. But with the distinction of causal order from
determinism, one can reject determinism and still affirm the order of
causation: the alternative to determinism is not necessarily indeterminism but
may be the middle ground of causation that permits predictive control. Thus,
with causation the resulting actions of a human agent are not random but
selected by our decisions and carried out by voluntary actions.
This distinction also permits dismissing a standard refutation of free will.
The argument goes: either determinism is true or it is not; if it is true, then all
our actions are fixed by prior states, and thus there is no free will; if it is
false, then there is only subatomic-like randomness, and so we have no way
to control our actions and no way to guide their results through predictions,
and thus once again there is no free will. In sum, there is either an
unstoppable, uninterrupted chain of physical events and so no free will, or
there is no predictable outcome and so no meaningful free choice can be
exercised. But if we can predict the short-term outcome of our actions at least
to a degree through our knowledge of recurring causal patterns and can also
control our actions at least to a degree, then there is a third option—causal
control without determinism—and free will is possible.3 In sum, free will
does not entail randomness but requires control, and causal lawfulness
without determinism provides such control.4
This distinction also renews the possibility of an “agent causation” in
which a person can exercise free will in his or her actions without any
determinism. Peter van Inwagen believes that free will remains a mystery
even if there is agent causation because free will and determinism both
obviously exist but are incompatible. But if causation and determinism are
differentiated, this particular mystery disappears: there is in fact no
determination of human actions, and we can cause actions in an ordered way.
Every event still has a cause and is lawful, but mental causes can be in its
chain of causes of human actions and so for our actions there is no
determinism of inanimate causes. Causal order prevents randomness by
giving persons the predictive control needed to exercise free will, and we
then supply a cause in the chain of actions. But the question then is: How
does the decision of how to act arise? Is there still a gap in the causal chain?
Are the decisions determined by something other than physical events? Does
some causeless event still occur? Does a thought how to choose just
magically appear from our subconscious—just “pop into the mind”?5 And are
subconscious events determined by physical events alone? This may remain a
mystery, but libertarians accept that in some way a person enters the picture
as a cause by freely choosing how to act.6

Science and Free Will

Thus, the stark contrast: under determinism our actions are a fixed chain of
physical events, while under libertarianism we can control at least some
causes by selection. Can we ascertain if the events in our brain are
deterministic or permit causal control? Neuroscience may be a way.
Benjamin Libet conducted experiments in the 1980s that showed that
apparently freely chosen acts were in fact initiated by the brain a fraction of a
second before the conscious decision to act occurred. These experiments have
since been replicated and expanded by others. Determinists have jumped on
these results as proving that free will does not exist and that in fact the
conscious mind plays no role in the chain of our events—indeed, for them
this is the last step necessary for science to remove all aspects of mind from
science.
But neuroscientists have not been so quick to reach that conclusion. They
have suggested other explanations for the results. For example: that the
“readiness potential” (which occurs in the sensory motor-cortex) that these
experiments actually measure is unrelated to the decision making (which
occurs in the parietal lobe); that the readiness potential actually begins to
build up before the choice has to be made in anticipation of having to make a
choice when the participants in the experiments are told that they will have to
make a decision, and thus it is unlikely to be related to the actual decision of
choosing which way to act—that is, the urge to move is unrelated to the
decision itself; that it simply takes more time for the conscious mind to
register its actions in the brain; that the participants could not report the
timing of their acts of will accurately; or that these results apply only to snap
judgments rather than complex thought-out decisions that require reasoning,
planning, and choosing and thus take much longer. They also note that the
predictions are correct only about 60 percent of the time—which is clearly
better than a 50/50 guess but not anywhere near certainty. Libet himself still
believes in a “robust free will”: he affirms that the conscious mind has veto
power over the unconscious originating events—the conscious free will not
does initiate acts, but our conscious ability to veto has a control function.
Nor, he claims, is there any evidence or even a proposed experimental design
that definitively or convincingly demonstrates a physical determinism of
human action. In fact, he thinks there is prima facie evidence that conscious
mental processes can control some brain processes.
Thus, neuroscience to date has not decided the issue. And there does not
appear to be any other empirical way to reach a resolution. We are once again
left with metaphysics and mysteries. The determinists’ mystery is why we
have the illusion of free will since it cannot be of evolutionary value—the
illusion would cause us to believe that we could act freely, but if all actions
are determined there is no point in the brain creating that illusion. The
libertarians’ mystery is how mental action occurs. Libertarians can readily
accept some points made by determinists: that there are a myriad of
nonconscious events in the body in any human action; that all our actions are
preceded by nonconscious causes and conditions, biases, and influences; that
we are much more conditioned by our genetic and social background than
most of us realize; and that subconscious processes dictate the options given
to the conscious mind. But these points do not mean that our conscious mind
cannot then exercise free will control over what is presented to it—they mean
only that what options we have are more limited than we usually accept. That
is, we cannot control the cards that are dealt us, but we have some freedom in
how we play them.
Thus, current neuroscience does not refute free will, and if current theories
in physics are correct, not all of reality is deterministic. Subatomic
indeterminacy is currently considered ontic—a feature of reality and not
merely the result of our cognitive limitations. So science has not answered
the Big Question of free will yet, nor is it obvious that it will ever be able to
answer it since a test for it is hard to devise. And there is a simple explanation
for why there has not been any progress on the matter in philosophy: once
again we apparently lack the cognitive apparatus to answer a vital question
due to our physiological limitations in how we have evolved, just as we are
incapable of answering the Big Question of consciousness.

Free Will and Agnosticism

Given the state of science on this issue, should we remain agnostic about free
will? One might conclude that considering what is at stake about our view of
what we are that we ought to affirm the obvious despite its problems—that
the mind has causal power—over a determinism of brain events. In addition,
there is a clash of metaphysics based on conflicting intuitions (free will
versus reality being deterministic), and the intuition about determinism has
already been damaged by particle physics. Thus, common sense says to
affirm a free will. (William James saw the question as a quarrel of
unverifiable metaphysics, not science, and chose to reject the pessimism of
determinism.) In light of our experiences, we can continue to believe in it
even if we cannot explain it. We only have to give up the philosophical
demand of an explanation of how free will would work before we decide to
affirm it, which is only a consequence of the philosopher’s disease.
But there is an odd twist here: we cannot help but presume to have free
will even if we did not want to. It is hard, if not impossible, to give up a sense
of the mind’s control and simply let our body do whatever it was conditioned
to date to do—we feel we are choosing and acting. (This leads pragmatists
following C.S. Peirce to conclude that it makes no difference if we have free
will or not since it does not affect our disposition to act.) To put the point
ironically: we have no choice but to believe we have a choice. Even
determinists admit that we must act as if free will is real. And fatalists still
must seem to themselves to choose actions because they do not know in
advance which actions are predetermined or the result of fate—if you fell off
a boat into the ocean, you would still try to save yourself, no matter what you
think about fate and determinism. And there is a further twist: how can one
pretend not to be determined without having the actual mental causal power
and free will to do that? It is hard to see how those who deny free will could
convince themselves into pretending to have free will. It is one thing to feel
controlled by physical causes and to consider free will as an illusion as one
goes through life—like the illusion of a straw looking bent in a glass of water
that we still see even though we know better—but how does one believe that
we are puppets on a string and pretend to have free will? And again, if we
have that ability to pretend, how can we not have genuine power? In this
way, the very ability to pretend that we have free will becomes an argument
for the existence of free will.
Thus, at worst we should be agnostic about whether there is genuine free
will—it is an open empirical question that we simply cannot answer at
present or perhaps ever. And those who remain agnostic about free will on
philosophical grounds can go on acting exactly as they must in any case.

Notes
1. Lack of control over our actions would also raise the issue of whether we are morally responsible
for our actions. Criminal punishment would be only a type of conditioning—a way to adjust the
pool of experiences from which the brain derives our next action.
2. The events in the brain may still follow a strictly physical order of causation. (The analogy to the
mind as software to the brain’s hardware was noted in the last chapter.) When we walk, our
actions are constrained by the law of gravity—indeed, our actions must conform with all physical
laws—but gravity does not determine where we walk. So too, if free will is genuine, the course of
the neural activity is not determined by the physical laws that govern the activity of the neurons in
the brain: the laws governing neural activity no more determine our choices than gravity and the
physical laws governing our bodily movements determine what direction we choose to walk in. If
free will is real, persons are free even if their brains are not—it is the person who makes decisions
freely, not the brain. The brain would still affect the way we operate, but it does not explain all of
how we think, desire, and choose.
3. If reality is organized into levels of causation, indeterminacy on the subatomic level is irrelevant to
decisions on the everyday level. In any case, science has not shown that subatomic randomness
affects a predictable causal order of the everyday world—billiard balls still behave like billiard
balls despite what is going on at their quantum level. It also raises the possibility that causation is a
power produced only on higher levels.
4. Another standard problem is that if there is an omnipotent god, his omnipotence and our free will
are not compatible: if we have free will, then there is something even a god could not control and
thus he is not all-powerful; conversely, if God has all the power, we have no control of events.
God’s perfect knowledge would also be incompatible with our free will: if God knew from the
beginning of time what I am going to have for breakfast tomorrow, do I have any free will in the
matter now? If God knows now that I am going to have pancakes, that fact is now set and there is
nothing I can do about it. One might respond that he knows only what I am going to freely choose
tomorrow. But there is still a problem: one can only know what is true; thus, if God now knows
what I am going to have, it must be so now, and thus I now have no freedom to do otherwise
tomorrow morning. Some theologians try to get around these problems by making the ad hoc
assumption that God somehow withdraws his omnipotence and omniscience in the case of human
action.
5. An illustration of this occurred while I was writing this chapter. One Saturday morning I was
planning on getting pizza for lunch. Then “out of the blue,” the idea of getting a falafel came to
me. At that moment, I was not thinking about lunch or where to go for lunch—the thought “just
came to me,” and no conscious decision making or act of will was involved. (I went for the falafel.
The question is whether I had the free will to veto that impulse.)
6. Whether this requires a commitment to the metaphysical concept of personhood—a unified agent
or center of action—or whether one can accept all the personal properties and capacities without
such a commitment remains an issue.
 14
Does God Exist?

On the one hand, nothing seems more certain that faith or more compelling than religious
experience. On the other hand, nothing seems less certain than any one particular system, for
to any one system there are so many vital and serious alternatives.
—Ninian Smart

prominent Big Question is whether realities such as gods and a soul

A exist that transcend the natural realm of space and time. Do we have
good reasons to believe that such realities exist, and, if we do, can we know
anything of their nature? Let’s limit the question to whether the personal god
of Western theism exists and what its nature is.

The Classic Arguments

First consider the classic arguments for the existence of God.1 The
Ontological Argument attempts to prove the existence of a being “greater
than which nothing can be conceived” simply by analyzing the concept. But
most philosophers agree that we cannot get the existence of something
merely by analyzing our concepts for it, although identifying exactly where
the Argument fails has proven surprisingly difficult. At best, all that can be
established is that if God exists, then that reality by definition must be
“greater than which nothing can be conceived” and must of necessity exist.
(Charles Hartshorne argued that if God possibly exists, then he exists
necessarily.) In addition, that we could not conceive a further reality is
irrelevant: reality is not in any way restricted by what human beings can or
cannot conceive or by what is consistent in any of our conceptual systems—
our ability to conceive simply has no bearing on the issue of what is real or
what can exist. Changing the Ontological Argument to make God a “logically
necessary” being—that is, a being that must exist in every conceivable world
—does not help: even if the idea is coherent (which most philosophers
doubt), we are still left with the unanswered question of why those worlds
could be there to begin with (i.e., why something rather than nothing exists)
and thus with no ultimate proof of God —God becomes just another being
within what exists.
Probably the most popular argument for the existence of God is the
Cosmological Argument.2 It is used to explain why the world exists: starting
with the principle of sufficient reason, we can argue that everything (or at
least every contingent thing) requires an explanation, and the chain of
explanations must logically end with a reality that does not need or there
would be an infinite regress of causes; so there must be a self-explanatory
and self-existent first cause, and that is God. But while this may explain the
existence of a created universe, this does not explain the existence of God:
even if God is eternal, we can still ask why he is there. In addition, as
discussed in chapter 5, the concepts of “self-existent” and “self-created” are
simply incoherent. Moreover, if there can be an eternal, uncaused, self-
existent reality, it is not obvious why it cannot be the natural universe itself.
Certainly, the ancient Greeks, Indians, and Chinese had no problem with the
idea of a creatorless eternal universe. (Baruch Spinoza also accepted that God
was “greater than which nothing can be conceived,” but he equated God with
nature or substance, not a transcendent reality.) Our particular miniverse may
well have a beginning and an ending, but an eternal flow of miniverses is not
impossible. If one argues that the universe cannot be the source since the
universe is constantly changing, then one must explain how God is
changeless and yet he creates, answers prayers, and so forth since any action
involves change.3 Claiming that “self-existence” is simply “a profound
mystery” does not help since our account of reality would still end up with a
mystery. So too, we could accept the claim only if we knew what the claim
meant. It would be no different than if I were to type a line of gobbledygook
and say, “Don’t try to understand it—it is a profound mystery!” Nor can we
invoke a bigger mystery to explain a lesser one (the phenomenal world’s
existence)—our overall understanding does not increase at all by such a
move. Theists think in terms of a creator, but God only introduces an entirely
new order of existence that must be explained and new “how” mysteries of
how it creates and sustains the universe.4
 The only alternative to being uncaused that we can conceive is an infinite
chain of causes. And as noted in chapter 5, it is not obvious why there cannot
be an eternal, infinite chain of contingent causes: each cause would have a
cause, and there would be no first cause in the ancient past—no “necessary
being” is needed to start the chain. Nevertheless, we can ask why that chain
of causes exists in the first place. If theists say that God creates and sustains
the chain, we still must ask what creates and sustains God? Even if the
concept of being “self-grounded” is coherent, why God is there still requires
an answer. If “self-grounded” is not coherent, then there must be some other
reality that sustains God, and that reality needs a sustainer, and so on and so
on—in the modern version of an old image, the flat earth rests on the backs
of four elephants that stand on the back of a turtle and after that “it’s turtles
all the way down!”5 That too is a mystery that we cannot comprehend. But
naturalists, for whom all that exists is space-time and its contents, see no
reason to postulate even the elephants—the universe is all there is. This may
seem “intellectually unsatisfying” to theists, but to naturalists it is only the
theistic point of view of creation that leads to a need for a creator and
sustainer—that is, asking where something came from—when nothing
empirical suggests a need for a transcendent source of the beingness of
things. To naturalists, we are not in a position to know why the universe is
here, and only the philosopher’s disease compels us to demand an ultimate
explanation.
In sum, we are stuck with mystery with either answer. Theists prefer to
adopt a concept that they concede makes no sense rather than accept a creator
god as an unexplainable brute fact—they happily agree with Alfred North
Whitehead that “God is the ultimate limitation, and his existence is the
ultimate irrationality.” Naturalists have no problem with an infinite past with
a beginningless chain of causes, although why the chain should be there at all
is still a mystery. Theists kick the mystery out of the natural realm and into a
transcendent one, but naturalists see no reason to leave the natural world by
introducing a new layer of reality that has its own “why” mystery and that
creates new “how” mysteries—we still end up with no more understanding
but now with greater mysteries. We can pick our poison or accept that we
have no answer and accept the universe as a brute fact. There is no reason to
suspect that beings with our mentality can answer these questions, and
naturalists see fabricating some ultimate explanation just to fulfill a demand
by our limited mind as illegitimate. But the important point is that no matter
what we do, we end with a mystery. We have again reached limitations on
what we can know.
Thus, the Cosmological Arguments fails to end mysteries. The
Teleological Argument has a parallel difficulty. The argument is that we can
infer the existence of a transcendent designer from both the order and the
complexity that we see in the world. However, who designed the designer?
“Self-designing” makes no more sense than “self-creating.” And if “self-
designing” is intelligible, why can’t the natural universe self-design itself?
Whether God is alleged to be only a little more complex than the complex
creation he created or to be infinitely more complex, the source of that
complexity is still unexplained. We think that a designer must be at least as
complex as what is designed, but if the complexity of our universe requires a
designer, then so does the complexity of the designer who designed this
universe, and that leads to another infinite chain.6 That God is supposedly a
reality that is personal in nature cannot make God self-designing—a person is
complex, and we can ask the source of that complexity. Indeed, how can we
get any complex realities from a simpler reality? However, if the designer
need not be as complex as what it created but can be simpler, then why can’t
a set of simpler nonconscious natural laws embedded in the universe be the
source of the designing? If these rules need a designer, we are back to the
infinite chain of complex designers. Because of their beliefs, theists may
think in terms of agents and purpose, but naturalists see no reason to do that
—the convoluted course of evolution shows how complex phenomena can
arise from simple natural processes—and they dismiss the theists’ intuitions
as merely vestiges of children seeing agents everywhere. But either way,
order and complexity does not receive an ultimate explanation—neither
nature nor a creator/designer is self-explanatory. And so we are once again
left with an unanswerable mystery.
Another popular claim is that morality requires the existence of God. In
fact, Jean Paul Sartre claimed that the starting point of existentialism is
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s statement “If God did not exist, everything would be
possible.” That is, there is no objective standard of morality without God—
nothing would be morally wrong. However, philosophers have argued that
morality is autonomous from religion ever since Plato first posed the problem
in the Euthyphro: “Do the gods approve the holy because it is holy, or is it
holy because the gods approve it?” In theistic and moral terms: “Does God
command acts because they are moral, or are they moral because God
commands them?” Either way, theists have a problem: if God commands acts
because they are moral, then there must be a standard of morality
independent of God’s power and control; on the other hand, if the acts are
moral merely because God commands them, then whatever God commands
must by definition be deemed moral. Under the first horn of the dilemma,
God is not the source of morality, and thus God is not omnipotent and not
sovereign in all matters; that is, there is something—morality—that exists
independently of God and is beyond his control; thus, God has not created
everything and is not omnipotent in the universe but, if moral, is constrained
by something more substantive than the formalities of logic. Even if God is a
loving god who is necessarily moral and thus incapable of commanding an
immoral act, this still leaves morality independent of God’s control. But
under the second horn, theists must hold that if God commanded the
gratuitous torture of babies, then it would be morally good to torture babies.
But few people would say that such torture is immoral only “because God
says so” and would be moral if God said so—God could make it a religious
requirement by decree but not a moral one. Some theists do maintain that
God controls morality—in fact, some maintain that God controls
mathematical truths. But this would make ethical precepts simply a matter of
might makes right, and most of us think that morality has more substance
than that. Morality is a matter of concern for others’ welfare for their own
sake, and this cannot be mandated by God: God may ordain concern for
others, but obeying for that reason then becomes a matter of prudent self-
interest (to gain heaven or avoid hell) rather than a genuine moral motivation
(i.e., acting out of concern for others). Thus, if morality has a demand upon
us, it does not establish the existence of God—its source is still a mystery.

Natural Suffering
A problem related to both the Moral and Teleological Arguments is natural
suffering, that is, the suffering beings endure simply by being alive in a
material universe—for example, babies who are born with severe birth
defects, who never live free of excruciating pain, and who die young. Even if
we accept that human evil is the result of human free will and that God had
moral reasons to grant us free will, the problem of natural evil remains
despite creation supposedly being good (Genesis 1:25). Some philosophers
such as Alvin Plantinga are not troubled by this philosophical problem: they
point out that there is no logical contradiction between suffering and an
omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god: theists can always simply
assert that God has his reasons for permitting natural suffering that we cannot
know because of our cognitive limitations, and suffering then is no longer
incompatible with such a god.7 Finite beings can never see the big picture and
thus cannot be certain that some greater good is not being achieved by what
looks like horrendous evil. In short, for all we know, God may have his
reasons for what looks to us to be gratuitous suffering. But this appeal to
ignorance begins to ring hollow if we have no idea why God would permit so
much apparently gratuitous suffering. Indeed, that refrain makes belief in
God logically reconcilable with any amount of suffering, no matter how
horrendous it is—after all, if there is a hell, it was designed by God, and
according to traditional doctrines, the vast majority of humans go there to be
tortured eternally by some of God’s creatures.8
In sum, claiming “God may have his reasons that we cannot know” is
absolutely irrefutable, but no amount of suffering would be counter-evidence
against the existence of God, and thus it is not a satisfactory explanation of
suffering. Granted, if this universe was created for our “soul-making,” to use
John Keats’s term, then there should be hardships and suffering: the world
should be challenging—as Yogi Berra said: “If this world was perfect, it
wouldn’t be.” Thus, some evil may be necessary to create a greater good.
However, Plantinga’s tack gives up trying to find a sufficient reason for
suffering and rests content with it being merely logically possible that God
might have a justification. This relies only on faith and hope: our ignorance
shields God from criticism—all counter-evidence is dismissed as “a mystery
known only to God”—and theists no longer have to defend their belief in
God from any amount of suffering. Nevertheless, an appeal to mystery is
never itself a positive argument for anything: it is an admission of how little
of the nature of God and his plan is known. Also, if God’s values are a
mystery, then they may be utterly unlike our own, and we then cannot
reasonably apply the attributes “good” or “moral” to him without knowing
more of his nature. Nor could theists be certain that he is worthy of worship.
Thus, an appeal to ignorance here only raises the question of the rationality of
believing there is an all-loving god.
In fact, one has to ask: does the world look like it is the creation of an all-
loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god? Naturalists see the amount of natural
suffering in our harsh and cruel world as irrefutable proof against such a god.
As the philosopher of biology David Hull notes, evolution is cruel,
haphazard, “rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death,
pain, and horror”—all evidencing, not a loving god who cares about his
creatures, but the careless indifference of an almost diabolical god. In our
universe, life is not precious—even life feeds upon itself. Couldn’t an
omnipotent god have made all animals vegetarians? That would have greatly
reduced suffering of animals. So too, cancer has recently been discovered to
have been in hominids for over a million years.
All in all, the traditional hymn about God’s goodness “All Things Bright
and Beautiful” must be counterbalanced with Monty Python’s revision—“All
Things Dull and Ugly.” Arguing that at least we will be compensated in the
next life for suffering does not make it any less evil but is only an admission
that we do not understand why there is so much suffering. At a minimum,
most people would agree that it is far from obvious that such a being created
our world. As Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote: “God is love, transcendent and
all-pervading! We do not get this faith from Nature or the world. If we look
at Nature alone, full of perfection and imperfection, she tells that God is
disease, murder, and rapine.” In such circumstances, it in fact is hard to argue
from any feature of the world to the existence of a moral creator.9 Nor is it
clear that we are the final conscious beings to evolve: perhaps a creator has
plans for another species that will follow us, or perhaps nature will show no
more care for us than for the many other humanoid branches that have gone
extinct.10

Religious Experiences
Perhaps religious experiences are more promising evidence of God. After all,
most people appeal to their experiences or religion’s impact on their lives to
justify being religious, not philosophical arguments. But there is a major
problem with the appeal to religious experiences and revelations: religious
beliefs from around the world and throughout history genuinely conflict, and
no neutral way to adjudicate between them to determine which one, if any, is
valid is apparent.11 Even if one set of beliefs is superior to the others, how do
we establish by experiences what is best and what is not? Revelations
notoriously conflict, with no neutral way to decide between them. So too,
those mystics who have types of mystical experiences that allegedly involve
transcendent realities cannot themselves tell if their knowledge-claims are
correct when other equally well-experienced mystics make conflicting
claims. If so, transcendent realities may be apprehended by mystics but not
comprehended by our conceptualizing mind.
In addition, religious experiences have the problem that scientific
explanations of the events occurring in the brain during these experiences
may be the complete explanation of such experiences—that is, there may be
no more to these experiences than internal brain events. The scientific
explanations themselves do not prove such a naturalistic reduction: all
cognitive experiences have some basis in the brain, and the religious can thus
accept that any scientific account of religious experiences in terms of brain
events is compatible with them being cognitive—after all, an experience of
God must have some mechanism in the brain to permit it to occur. But the
very real possibility that such experiences may be no more than subjective
brain events greatly harms the claim that religious experiences are evidence
of any transcendent reality—religious experiences may in fact be
exhaustively explainable as natural events having no cognitive significance.
How can we tell if a religious experience is cognitive if it is
phenomenologically the same whether it contacts a transcendent reality or
not? And even if the experiences are cognitive, are mystical experiences at
best only experiences of our own consciousness or of the beingness of the
natural world? Or may the feeling of joy or love given in many religious
experiences come not from God, but only from more mundane natural causes
such as from feeling connected either to other people or to the natural realm,
or simply from the mind during mystical experiences being empty of all its
typical noisy clutter? Or is a sense of love merely being read in because the
experiencer is already immersed in his or her religious tradition’s teaching of
love?
But even if we reject all such natural explanations and take the experiences
as at least indicating that some transcendent reality exists, does what we can
know by experience, even when combined with reasoning, get us to a full
theistic god that responds to human needs, or, say, only to a nonpersonal
deistic reality that creates and then leaves the universe alone, or only to a
transcendent nonpersonal consciousness that we participate in? Indeed, why
should a transcendent creator be experienceable? If our mind is totally
natural, why should we expect any contact or participation in what transcends
this realm? Even if one interpretation of a given type of mystical experience
is correct, most understandings must be wrong, and this undercuts the
reliability in general of all such experiences for establishing any substantive
cognitive claim. Mystical experiences, like psychedelic drug experiences,
may open up more levels of our own consciousness and thus affect how we
see reality, but can they be the basis for cognitive claims about reality beyond
the mind? Mystics may have the only human access to noumenal reality
when the mind is empty of all differentiated content, but what is its nature?
We may decide that it is reasonable to conclude that mystical experiences are
in general generated by a healthy brain and not by a pathological condition
and thus that mystics have experienced some reality that we do not normally
experience. Nevertheless, the conflict of understandings among mystics from
around the world shows that even mystics themselves cannot answer the
question of the nature of what is experienced in introvertive mystical
experiences. That question is answered outside introvertive experiences in
our baseline “dualistic” subject/object state of mind. The reality that mystics
experience may be the depth of their own mind, a mind transcending the
universe, a deistic source of this world, or a personal being—or it may simply
be the ordinary mind that gives a sense of calm or euphoria or connectedness
when spinning its wheels while it has no real content to engage that mystics
later mistakenly take to be cognitive of a greater reality.
Overall, there are too many questions about religious experiences for us to
have any confidence in relying on them as a solid basis for believing that we
know transcendent realities exist or to know anything about their nature.

Theology and Mystery

Theists may well find that collectively all of these matters can be best
understood under a theistic assumption, but even most theists would agree
that the case is not compelling. At best, the arguments lead only to it being
rational to hold one’s own religious faith and to accept that those of other
religious faiths are equally well grounded in experiences. “Inferences to the
best explanation” always rely on intuitions that opponents do not share.
Naturalists, of course, are totally unconvinced of the need to posit any type of
transcendent realities in order to better understand the natural realm. (But it
should be noted that not all naturalists end up being nonreligious: today there
are now “religious naturalists” who deny any transcendent realities and
reduce theism to merely matters of ethics by reductively reinterpreting
Biblical claims in naturalistic terms—in particular, “God” becomes in the
words of Ralph Burhoe, “the ultimate necessities of laws and boundary
conditions imposed by nature.”) Many others argue that at best the arguments
only get us to an intellectual postulate like a deistic Aristotlean “prime
mover” (who got the eternal universe moving) to round out a metaphysical
system. Theism is not better grounded experientially, and its speculation is
just that—speculation. And as Charles Darwin asked, why should we believe
the ravings of a “monkey mind,” especially when they are not tied to
scientific checking? Indeed, many naturalists dismiss this as irrational since
it goes beyond what science can check.
This can lead to the via negativa: renouncing attributing any positive
phenomenal attributes to God—all that human beings can do is declare what
God is not. In the words of Thomas Aquinas: “Now we cannot know what
God is, but only what He is not; we must therefore consider the ways in
which God does not exist rather than the ways in which He does.” However,
our inability to know God’s nature either through reasoning or indisputable
experiences leads to basic mysteries. But this is only to be expected: if
scientific phenomena outside the range of everyday experiences lead to
mysteries, we can only expect that an alleged reality transcending the natural
realm would be, almost by definition, mysterious. Certainly, to claim to know
the “mind of God” seems extravagant. And accepting that we do not know is
not an excuse to believe anything—theists cannot fill in the blank with any
doctrine they like but must accept that we they do not know.
But this leaves theists in a conundrum: if God is an unfathomable,
ineffable mystery utterly unlike anything from the temporal realm, then no
understanding of God is any better than any other—indeed, all
understandings of God in worldly terms are wrong. But theists also want to
assert that they can know something of God’s nature—for example, they can
know with confidence that he is not the nonpersonal Brahman of Advaita
Vedanta but is a conscious personal being who is moral and all love and the
source of our being, for otherwise he would not be worthy of trust or worship
and could not answer prayers. But this means that he is not utterly unlike
anything temporal.
In addition, once it is accepted that God is a total mystery, what reason
would there be to believe that he exists? Even mystics who emphasize more
the incomprehensibility of God want to align their lives with reality as it truly
is, and this requires beliefs about what reality truly is. But mystical
nonpersonal conceptions such as Meister Eckhart’s “Godhead” or Paul
Tillich taking being itself as the “God beyond God” have not proven to be
religious satisfying. So too, theists cannot rest with accepting God as a deistic
reality that created the universe and supplied its laws and then sat back and
was no longer active in this world. Moreover, if God made us “in his image,”
the human person should be a model for him. Nevertheless,
anthropomorphism has been recognized as a danger ever since the ancient
Greek Xenophanes asserted that if oxen, horses, and lions could draw, their
gods would look like oxen, horses, and lions. However, since theists believe
that God is a conscious person, how can they curtail engaging in deeper
anthropomorphism since they have to model any ideas of the nature of
transcendent realties on what we are familiar with?
In sum, theists accept that God is a mystery but not a complete mystery:
they assert both mystery and some closure of mystery through their
tradition’s revelations or other means, although again revelations conflict and
there is no neutral way to determine which, if any, are true. Theists’
speculation is not totally groundless since it is based on experiences giving a
sense of transcendental realities, but it still goes beyond what the experiences
justify, and members of other traditions (including naturalism) can
reasonably reject it. Thus, theists do not depict God as completely unknown,
but they must defend their tradition’s revelations, if challenged, on grounds
other than these revelations and religious experiences.
Religious mysteries become aspects of what is known, not an indication of
what is completely unknown. To mystics, a transcendent reality is
experienced as “bright and dazzling,” not obscure—their experiences
illuminate a depth to a transcendent reality even if they baffle the
conceptualizing mind. But the otherness of any transcendent reality still
presents a problem: to most believers, God is unique and hence beyond all
temporal categories, and therefore nothing truly accurate can be said of him.
Thus, applying terms from our familiar realm leads to paradoxes. Probably
the best theists can say is, as William Alston put it, talk of God is not “strictly
true,” but it is “close enough to the strict truth” to be useable in the religious
life. Nevertheless, the tension between affirming God’s otherness and the
need for some familiar conception for a religious life remains. Theists will
have to engage in speculation based on what a person is in this world, but
they also have to realize the limitation of doing this when they are talking
about a transcendent reality. Because of our limitations within the
phenomenal world, human beings cannot rely on our intuitions of what a
transcendent reality must be like. Our intuitions lead, as Kant pointed out, to
antinomies concerning the phenomenal world, and matters are only more
obscure concerning alleged transcendent realities.
Once the otherness of God from all human conceptualizations is accepted,
the mystery of God should receive more emphasis. Pluralists in comparative
theology who see multiple paths equally leading to salvation see more
mystery and ineffability to transcendent realities and to what the afterlife is
like. But those who believe that their own religion is the exclusive vehicle for
salvation tend to de-emphasize mystery. Overall, there is very little mention
of mystery today in Christian liturgy and worship. In the modern era, there
has been, in William Placher’s phrase, a “domestication of transcendence”:
transcendent realities are no longer seen as “wholly other” but as
comprehensible—God is now taken to be an object remote from the
phenomenal world but still comprehensible in terms meant for phenomenal
objects. The demand for “clear and distinct” ideas of God made him wholly
encompassed by our reason. Placher wants to reclaim the mystery of God, but
he recognized that to admit that God is “transcendent in a more radical sense”
would be admitting that “in important ways we do not know what we mean
when we talk about God.” (But only a theologian could add that language
about God “enables us to say something true while not understanding what is
means.”)
Today theologians at best preface remarks by affirming the mystery of God
but still plow ahead by affirming attributes to God—like tribal cultures that
affirm a high sky god but base their religious life on more approachable gods
and lesser divine beings. Thus, theologians may affirm mystery in theory, but
in practice they defuse mystery and end up with an anthropomorphized
version of God. Perhaps totally new conceptualizations of God are needed
today, but all will be limited by being metaphoric extensions of terms that
were invented for phenomenal realities. That being so, one would think that
theologians would exhibit more humility before a transcendent reality and be
tentative in their speculation. But if Alston is correct, contemporary Anglo-
American analytic philosophers of religion exhibit “a considerable degree of
confidence” in their ability to determine the nature of God. For example,
many theologians believe that God takes “great pleasure” in watching his
creation evolve. Richard Swinburne apparently knows that God is “very
anxious” that human understanding of him should develop through
experience, effort, and cooperation.
Theists assert that to reduce God to only our conceptions of him would
create an idol, but this has not stopped theologians from engaging in the
paradoxical task of, in David Burrell’s words, of trying to “know the
unknowable God.” The point of theology today is to close off mystery, not to
face the fact that it is a mystery or to increase our sense of mystery or to
generate religious experiences. Ironically, it is naturalists who emphasize
more the mysteries of reality, and it is theologians who want more closure.
Here it is the theologians who suffer from the philosopher’s disease. But as
Peter Byrne has found, the history of Christian theology has not exhibited an
accumulation of insights into the nature or actions of God. Rather, there have
been only changing conceptions as knowledge in other fields changes—for
example, process theology arising in the twentieth century in response to
quantum physics. So too, mystical experiences no longer add any new
knowledge but are only repetitions of the same experiences that have
occurred for many centuries. (Mystical and other religious experiences are an
embarrassment to many theologians since alleging actual experiences of a
transcendent reality is even more out of step with their naturalist friends than
merely asserting the metaphysical claim that a transcendent reality exists.)
Nor can God be engaged the way that scientists study nature since by
definition there can be no empirically checkable tests on alleged transcendent
realities. Thus, not only is there is no good reason to believe that we are
gaining more knowledge of God, there is reason to doubt that we have any
certain or absolute knowledge here at all.

Agnosticism
In such circumstances, agnosticism both about God’s existence and his
attributes is not only acceptable but is more reasonable than asserting belief
or disbelief. In fact, Thomas Huxley invented the term for precisely this
situation, and it should be the default position in philosophy today (although
surveys show that the majority of philosophers are atheists).12 Agnosticism is
not an atheism that accepts that the concept “God” is coherent, and so
concedes the logical possibility of the existence of a theistic god, but sees the
preponderance of evidence (especially natural suffering) as indicating that no
transcendent realities exist. Nor is it indifference to the issue or the doubt of
skepticism, although agnostics tend to adopt a nonreligious way of life.
Rather, it is the admission that we are not in a position to determine the truth
or falsity of the claim that transcendent realties exist: because of our situation
in the world, no arguments for or against theism are seen as compelling. Even
if some doctrines about God are correct, we are not in a position to determine
which ones they are. The limitations of our cognitive abilities strike again.
But note that one can accept philosophical agnosticism and yet still be
committed to practicing a particular religious or antireligious way of life. One
cannot be both highly skeptical about the existence of God and committed to
a theistic way of life. (So too, one can be an “agnostic Buddhist” as Stephen
Batchelor claims to be, but not a “skeptical Buddhist,” by practicing the
Buddhist bodhisattva way of life and being agnostic about a cycle of
rebirths.) Theists and atheists may have different degrees of confidence in
their beliefs: probably few theists or atheists are 100 percent certain about
their beliefs, but few adopt agnosticism about not being in a position to know
the answer—they still believe but without certainty. However, one can be
both agnostic about our being able to establish the existence of God and still
believe in him. (If an agnostic bets that God does exist, he or she cannot
condemn on philosophical grounds another person who bets differently.) For
example, it is not inconsistent or an instance of false consciousness to claim,
“I am not sure that we will ever be in a position to prove or disprove God’s
existence or know his nature, but I believe that there are some good reasons
to believe that he exists, and I believe that my theistic way of life is an
appropriate response to his existence.” Thus, theists can affirm a creative
mystery at the heart of things while acknowledging that our position in the
world precludes establishing it.

Notes
1. Probably few in the West in the Middle Ages genuinely doubted the existence of God. The classic
arguments were not advanced to refute atheism but only to show that not only revelation but
reason too could show that God exists.
2. It is good to remember that the religious are not usually religious because of beliefs: religion is a
matter of the ultimate nature and meaning of things, but it is not a matter of accepting certain
metaphysical arguments. Theists do not advance God as an explanatory posit. Faith is a way of
life, and the faithful are typically uninterested in arguments about beliefs entailed by their way of
life. (This can go to extremes: the only adamant atheist I know, someone who enthusiastically
enjoys arguing that there can be no god or life after death, is a practicing Catholic. He goes to
church and confession regularly, and he and his wife are raising their children as Catholics. He
enjoys the social life of his church and the pageantry of the rituals, and when I ask him how he
could be a practicing Catholic and not believe in the existence of God, life after death, or that
Jesus is the son of God, he just looks at me funny and says, “What does that have to do with
anything?”) So too, many accept their own versions of doctrines and are not interested in any
mysteries surrounding transcendent realities. It is Blaise Pascal’s overwhelming “God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” not the truncated and domesticated theoretical entity that is the “god
of philosophers and scholars,” that is the common basis of belief and worship. (Not that these are
 different realities—rather, it is two ways of looking at the same alleged transcendent entity.) As
David Holley says, religious talk of God is not so much an explanation of what seems puzzling as
a way of expressing an apparent apprehension of a deeper meaning disclosed in experiences in
general and that stories of revelations are the key that unlocks awareness of the deeper meaning.
The justification of belief is a matter for philosophers, not the majority of the faithful.
3. The Buddhist rejection of the idea of a creator god is simple: such a god must be either immutable
or not—if it is immutable, it cannot change and thus is unable to decide or act to create; if it is not
immutable, it is within the realm of change and thus did not create the realm of change but needs
an explanation as much as anything else in the realm of change.
4. One common generalization is that the “modern mind” informed by science forms worldviews in a
different way than does the “traditional mind” informed by religious experiences and mythology.
The former starts with the natural world as given and looks for what knowledge we can attain
through sense-experience and reason. The latter starts with the primacy of transcendent realities as
given; it sees the natural world as a product of supreme transcendent realities and sees human
beings as capable of participating directly in transcendent realities through experiences or rituals.
Through the traditional approach, societies come up with competing, comprehensive metaphysical
views. Through the modern approach, we need not end up with a metaphysical system that denies
all transcendent realities (i.e., naturalism), but all metaphysical systems require defense in terms of
reasons other than revelation.
5. The physicist Paul Davies has suggested a “turtle loop”: the universe is in a self-consistent and
self-supporting ontic loop. But one can still ask why that loop is there.
6. Theologians have come up with versions of unchangeable and simple transcendent realities that
survive this problem, but the results are not the loving, active, personal god of theism. If being a
designer is an attribute of any theistic god, then the problem of an infinite chain of designers is an
argument against there being a theistic god. The same problem occurs with the Cosmological
Argument if being the source of everything and not just the phenomenal universe is an attribute of
a theistic god.
7. Alvin Plantinga also once argued that the devil is responsible for natural suffering. But this would
not exonerate God from moral culpability: God would have created the devil and would also have
permitted him to cause the suffering of his creatures. If it is argued that God permitted this in order
to preserve the devil’s free will, it would exhibit a gross lack of concern for the suffering of
billions of his victims.
8. If salvation is a matter of being a member of a particular religion or holding a particular belief,
there is also a moral problem: whatever is the “true religion,” more than three quarters of the
world’s population are not members and thus are condemned to hell for eternity—most for no
other reason than that the true religion was not a live option where they were born. If there is
predestination, the problem is aggravated: why would a moral god permit billions and billions of
people to be born if he knew that their fate would be only to end up being tortured in hell for
eternity?
9. One common theistic defense is that God does not want to make his existence known so that we
will remain free to accept him or not. But in the book of Job, Satan has conversations with God:
Satan knew with absolute certainty that God exists, and yet he still could exercise the self-will to
rebel or whatever it was that earned him a spot in hell. So too with his minions. (Also note that
angels with free will cause a problem for theologians about the need for any material creation with
its suffering to produce beings with free will.) Thus, just knowing God exists is not enough, and
one can ask why God would purposely hide and jeopardize billions of his creatures going to hell
for eternal suffering. That God is so hard to detect is in fact an argument against his existence: the
“absence of God” argument—an all-loving god would not want to condemn the majority of human
beings to eternal suffering in hell, and so he would make his existence plainly knowable to all
human beings; that this has not occurred must mean no god exists.
10. The multiverse hypothesis may aid theists here: if a sufficient number of miniverses exist with
different features, then the amount of suffering would differ in every world having conscious
beings, and the amount of suffering in our part of our miniverse would then be no mystery. A
being “greater than which nothing can be conceived” may well prefer a multiverse to the a single
“best of all possible worlds.” (If the point of the universe is only to produce beings that can be
saved, and we are the only conscious beings in the universe, then even our galaxy alone is
wasteful on a truly cosmic scale. The theists’ reply is that vast regions with no conscious beings is
inconsequential to a transcendent reality.) But, as noted in chapter 9, the possibility of a multiverse
also harms the Teleological Argument: a creator god could, of course, create a multiverse as easily
as one miniverse, but the possibility of other miniverses ruins the thrust of order or complexity in
this world as pointing to the need of a transcendent designer—our order and complexity is only to
be expected to exist somewhere if there are a sufficient number of miniverses with different laws.
This also points to a problem for the Teleological Argument: it is too flexible—no matter how
much or how little order or complexity or suffering there is in our world, God is invoked to
explain it. Whatever there is, “God did it.” But anything that explains every possible state of
affairs regardless of what they are is not an explanation of any particular state. A multiverse also
neutralizes all perceived value in our world: our world with its values is only here because every
possible world is probably somewhere.
11. One might think that theists would at least converge on the idea that they all worship the one
creator of the natural universe. But apparently things are not that simple today. Conservative
Wheaton College recently suspended a tenured professor for saying that Christians and Muslims
worship the same god. She and the college finally agreed that she would leave.
12. In the survey cited in chapter 2, 62 percent of the philosophers accepted atheism and 11 percent
leaned toward it. Many claim that in the absence of convincing positive evidence for God, one
should be an atheist. Theists can argue the opposite. But the absence of convincing arguments for
atheism or for theism only leads to agnosticism. The faithful and atheists may reject agnosticism
and argue that they know the answers, or they can accept that they are not in a position to answer
the question and simply state what they believe.
 15
Is There an Objective Meaning to Our Lives?

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure
it out. What am I doing right?
—Charles Schulz, author of “Peanuts”

or the general public, probably the most important philosophical question

F is about the meaning of life. Robert Solomon called it the Big Question
—“the hardest to answer, the most urgent and at the same time the most
obscure.” Probably everyone has asked about it at some point. Why am I
here? Why do I exist? Do I have a purpose? How do I fit into this world?
How can anything I do on this tiny planet have any significance or lasting
value in the big picture of things? Is all that I do as we “strut our hour on the
stage” no more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing”? If our world comes to an end, must all our pursuits be deemed
worthless? In sum, does anything I do matter? Are we just animals with no
purpose beyond our own pleasure or reproduction of our genes? If we are
inherently a social creature, is meaning necessarily social rather than
individualistic? Can a society survive if most of its members see no meaning
to life? So too, what makes a life meaningful or gives the world meaning? Is
there any objective way to determine what is truly worthwhile to devote our
lives to? When we look back on our lives, have we wasted so much time on
frivolous pursuits, or are all human pursuits merely frivolous in the end? We
should not sweat the small stuff, but in the end, is everything small stuff? Is
the author of Ecclesiastes correct that we should enjoy whatever work comes
our way because all is in vain? And why do I suffer? What happens at death?
Must we have some greater purpose? Why are we obsessed with the demand
that our lives have meaning? Is the demand that humanity must have some
meaning only a cosmic form of solipsism? Also, what about the universe as a
whole?1 What is it doing here? Does it have a transcendent purpose or other
principle that makes my life meaningful? Must it have some purpose? Can
we have a well-lived life without some meaning to the cosmos? Do we
simply fabricate a meaning to our lives to keep us going in the face of all our
hardships and knowledge of our ultimate demise, or is there an objective, real
meaning to the universe and our place in it? Is there a plan to life? In short,
what’s it all about?
Such questions arise both from our awareness of our own mortality (as
Arthur Schopenhauer emphasized)—death shows us our limits—and from
our sense of being small, finite, and overwhelmed by a universe so much
vaster than our own little world. Concern with our happiness or flourishing
(Gk., eudaemonia) once was central to philosophy: philosophy was seen as a
contemplative way of life leading to the best possible life based on
knowledge.2 But today analytic philosophers rarely deal with this, although
the issue of a meaningful life has recently begun to regain attention. Indeed,
the low point of linguistic analysis was dismissing these questions as
meaningless since “meaning” is only a matter of semantics and thus only
words have meaning—in short, life is not a word and thus has no meaning.
So too, for most philosophers the only purpose something can have is a
functional purpose in the interaction between things—the world as a whole
has no purpose. But to existential philosophers the central philosophical issue
is: is life worth living? For Albert Camus, the most urgent issue is the
meaning of life—in fact, the only important question in philosophy is why
should we go on and not commit suicide?
Psychologists have long recognized the importance of having a sense of
meaning to one’s life. Viktor Frankl considered it as central as any biological
need for human life: we need to trust reality, and seeing a purpose to the
world provides that assurance. “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find
meaning in the suffering.” The anthropologist Clifford Geertz concurred: our
need for meaning is as real and as pressing as our more familiar biological
needs. The physicist John Wheeler asserted that more important than the
deepest scientific question is finding a significance to our life—the most
fundamental question we can ask in life is how we fit into the scheme of the
things. For the sociologist Peter Berger, we have a deep need to know that we
have significance and worth: we cannot accept meaninglessness, and religion
protects us against that terror by conceiving the entire cosmos as humanly
significant. To make the contingencies of life understandable and thus more
bearable, religions offer narratives that show our place in the scheme of
things—one then can lead a meaningful life. For example, with hope of an
eternal reward, all labor and suffering, no matter how harsh, can be
withstood. We have something to fall back on in moments of crisis when our
self-image is shattered. As Friedrich Nietzsche said: “He who has a why to
live for can stand almost any how.”
Overall, there are four types of responses: God or another transcendent
reality is necessary to provide meaning to our lives; there is an objective
natural meaning to the universe; all senses of meaning are subjective, but that
is sufficient; the only intellectually honest answer is to realize that there can
be no meaning whatsoever to all this.

Transcendent Meanings
For the traditionally religious, transcendent meaning is necessary for there to
be a meaningful life and cosmos. The religious are, as John Hick and Huston
Smith noted, “cosmic optimists”—life is meaningful and there are grounds
for ultimate trust and confidence. There must be a “because” for our plaintive
“why,” and so there must be a meaning to all this. And only a meaning from
outside the natural universe itself can give a real meaning to the world in toto
and to us individually: nothing can give meaning to itself, and the same
applies to the natural universe as a whole. Helping one another with our
suffering or trying to make things easier for those who come after us may
make one’s life meaningful, but it would not explain why we are here and
why we suffer—there must be some more significant end that we achieve,
and only answering these “why” questions by accepting the existence of
something transcendent gives a final picture of the meaning of life. As
Aristotle pointed out, all teleological explanations must end with something
that is an end in itself. Theists may see the universe as “fine-tuned” to evolve
conscious life. For all religions, human beings are not just an evolutionary
accident of a pointless universe. The entire universe, including the sources of
suffering, can be cast within a transcendent framework. In the words of
Alfred North Whitehead: “The final principle of religion is that there is
wisdom in the nature of things.” All the Big Questions of life—why
misfortunes befall us, why we live, why we die, what happens at death—are
answered in terms of transcendent realities. Thus, life has a transcendent
meaning, and our summum bonum is to align our lives with the reality
providing that meaning, however salvation is defined in a given tradition.
For theists, only by seeing the natural world as a creation of God can it
have any meaning at all. So too, we can only have meaning if God
intentionally made us individually or at least created human beings as a
species. What this meaning is varies depending on the revelations and
teachings of a tradition. (The Bible has rules on diet and haircuts but does not
specify what the meaning of life is.) But even if they do not know exactly
what the meaning is, most theists are satisfied that God created the universe
and thus it must have a meaning. With the universe as a creation, suffering is
given meaning—we may not know what that meaning is, but God has some
purpose for permitting suffering. The vicissitudes of history also gain
meaning. Nontheists such as those Hindus and Buddhists who are
transcendent realists can downplay the idea of creation and history as a venue
of meaning: this world of change and suffering is eternal but meaningless.3
For many Hindus, the eternal cycle of the emanation and absorption of
phenomenal worlds is the “play” (lila) of a creator god or a nonpersonal
reality (Brahman): emitting a world is simply the act of its nature, like
breathing is to us, with no plan. It is done without motive or desire or further
purpose—there is no “why” to the universe. But the transcendent goal of
escaping this meaningless realm still gives our life a purpose.
However, there are problems with what theists identify the purpose of the
world to be. The usual proffered answers always place human beings at the
center of God’s purpose—indeed, since we are looking for the meaning of
things for us, it is difficult for us to think otherwise. But this makes all
attempts at setting forth a purpose sound dubious. Consider some traditional
purposes: God created the world to become known, loved, or glorified; or, in
the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, man and the world only exist because
God needed to both express his love and to be loved. But if the goal of
humanity is to know, love, or otherwise please God, that could have been
accomplished if we were placed in heaven and did not have to go through the
suffering of a physical world. (Bertrand Russell in his retelling of the Biblical
creation story suggested that God got tired of angels worshiping him and
wanted to see if he could get beings who suffered to worship him.) Moreover,
it also raises a moral issue: if God could have accomplished his purpose
without creating a world of suffering, then was creating a universe with so
much suffering really a moral act, no matter how much good is also created?
This illustrates the problem: theological attempts to articulate the point of the
universe, as the theologian John Haught notes, “inevitably sound flat and
inconsequential.” He adds that it is not necessarily our business to know the
purpose of the universe (although this may only be a theological
rationalization for our inability to know any transcendent purpose or
meaning). Perhaps it is impossible to know God’s plan—perhaps God’s
purpose is so alien that any beings within the universe could not comprehend
it. Many believers find faith in God sufficient and leave the matter to God—
in short, believing “God has his purpose” is enough for them.
More generally, naturalists would raise the problem that we are uncertain
about the existence of transcendent realities or life after death. But for theists,
naturalism can give no real meaning for the world or our lives—nihilism is
the naturalist’s only option.4 Theists do not deny that naturalists can have a
meaningful life in the sense of having a rich, full life dedicated to pleasure,
creating art, helping others, leaving the world a better place for human
beings, or whatever one is passionate about—but they believe that no act, no
matter how noble or heroic, has meaning without God. Perhaps one can have
a good life even in the pursuit of something trivial, such as becoming a
checkers champion.5 (Can one have a meaningful life being a mass murderer,
or must morality be part of any meaningful life?) So too, naturalists can be
struck with awe and wonder at the universe. But, theists contend, naturalists
cannot provide a meaning of life in the sense of an objective meaning of the
entire scheme of things. Naturalists must realize that the meaning they see is
merely subjective—they must know that they are making it up and thus that it
cannot truly give real meaning to their lives. For traditional theists, naturalists
must believe we are only cogs in a cosmic machine of no significance—for
naturalists, there is no valid reason to live, and they should envy children who
avoid suffering by dying young.

Naturalism and the Meaning of Life

But naturalists do not see things that way. They believe that natural suffering
and the convoluted course of the evolution of both the universe in toto and
life on this planet shows that no transcendent reality is guiding things: the
world is directionless except for an increase in complexity, and the bottom
line is that our world of tsunamis and cancer just does not look like a world
designed by a transcendent source, benevolent or otherwise, and we simply
must accept that. Living with a sense of cosmic purpose is no doubt very
comforting, but that does not make it real.
In addition, naturalists also think that merely fulfilling another being’s
planned-out purpose—simply slavishly doing a task that we are assigned by
God in order to avoid ending up in hell—is not a goal worthy of free beings.
We are not the Deltas of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, created to do
only tasks assigned to us—performing the tasks might give the Deltas’ lives
meaning, but this does not make their lives or the world objectively
meaningful. Indeed, simply doing an assigned task is not even moral unless
we can know what God’s purpose is and can see that it is moral and valuable
in itself.
Nor is it obvious that any afterlife necessarily makes this life meaningful.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein asked: “Is some riddle solved by my surviving
forever? Is not eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?”
Unless we know what awaits us in the next life, life after death would not per
se answer the question of the meaning of this life—for example, simply
sitting around praising God for eternity is not a meaningful life in the eyes of
most people. Thus, extending life indefinitely does not per se make life
meaningful. Indeed, some argue that only a finite life could have meaning:
only knowing that we come to an end makes what we do matter—otherwise,
we would have eternity to change the outcome of our acts. In fact, eternity in
general presents a problem. For example, if you are a scientist, in heaven
perhaps teachers will teach you about how the universe works in as much
detail as you want and religious teachers will teach you why the universe was
set that way. So now what do you now do for the next billion years? And the
next billion billion years? Think of whatever you believe gives life meaning,
and then think of doing it, not for a year or even a billion years, but for
eternity. Indeed, every possible thing that could be done would be done an
infinite number of times over and over and over again. Upon realizing that
the billion times you have done something is only a drop in the bucket, the
tedium of the endless repetition and knowing it is our permanent state would
drain all meaning from it (as Buddhists note). Others argue that it is possible
that an inexhaustible amount of new experiences, valuable things, and new
inventions may await us that would keep us occupied for eternity; or perhaps
changes in our personality over time would keep weariness and boredom
away.
In any case, since we do not know what will transpire in the distant future,
the question remains whether life is meaningful now. Naturalists also ask
why meaning has to be connected to fulfilling some transcendent purpose
rather than something inherent in the natural universe itself. For naturalists,
the meaning that the religious claim is actually subjective and depends only
on their interests and values—the religious simply do not realize that they
project a meaning that they themselves have concocted onto a nonexistent
transcendent reality and mistakenly think that it is objective. A transcendent
source and a transcendent part of ourselves (a soul) is only their own
invention. It is a matter of “terror management,” to cope with death, but the
search for such meaning is illusory. In addition, even if there is a
transcendent source to this universe, this does not guarantee that our lives
have meaning: the source may have created us just to watch us suffer or had
some self-serving purpose that we do not know. Thus, merely invoking a
source cannot still our disquiet over the meaning of life. There is also an
Euthyphro-type problem here: does God confer an intrinsically valuable
meaning upon the universe, or is the meaning valuable merely because God
confers it? If the latter, then the meaning may be arbitrary and not really
render life meaningful at all; but if the former, no god is needed since its
value is independent of God.
Moreover, naturalists can rightly argue that to give a complete answer to
the meaning of reality, the religious must provide a meaning for the
transcendent source itself. The question “What is the meaning of God?” may
not arise for theists since the question of meaning ends for us with a reason
for our existence. But theists are merely pushing the problem of objective
meaning back one step: human beings would have a purpose—being the
obedient servants fulfilling God’s plan, or whatever—but reality as a whole
may not. What is the meaning of the totality of the natural realm plus its
source? If God has no further source of meaning, the mystery of the meaning
for the totality remains. If by definition what gives meaning to something
must transcend it, our picture will always be incomplete: there can be no
meaning transcending the totality that gives it meaning—there cannot be
something outside “all there is” that gives it meaning. If so, there can be no
meaning transcending God giving him meaning, and thus there is no final
explanation of our purpose or value. Or does this render the question of the
“ultimate meaning of everything” senseless? Or can meaning instead be
internal to reality? Theists may argue that God is the source of his own
meaning, but whether this is any more successful than the idea of something
being the source of its own reality is doubtful. Moreover, if something can be
its own source of meaning, why can’t it be natural universe itself? Why can’t
the vibrant, complex universe as a whole give meaning to our lives?
Realizing that we will die may be a stimulus to leave some mark on the
world, to engage with others, or to be creative. We may want to be alive at
the end of the story, but living somewhere in the middle may be satisfying as
long as we contribute to the plot. This is connected to the idea that we need to
cast a mark that lasts for eternity to be significant—that our actions must
“echo through eternity.” For what is the difference between someone who
leaves no trace and someone who never existed at all? Indeed, many think
that all our achievements are meaningless since our world is only temporary.
Leo Tolstoy believed that. Thereby the fate of the universe becomes crucial
to the question of personal meaning for many people. And in fact, all of our
possible impact will vanish in the future: how do we find meaning in the
world knowing that it will come to an end? Our planet or miniverse will
come to an end, and nothing of any of our achievements will leave a lasting
dent in the universe’s history unless our lives are somehow recorded in the
fabric of the universe in a way that we do not see. In four or five billion
years, our sun will expand and engulf the earth, destroying everything.
Before then, we may be replaced by another species. But does that make our
lives meaningless? Nothing has to last forever to be valuable—all pieces of
music come to an end, but that does not render them worthless. So too, most
people would prefer to be a flower that blooms beautifully and dies than a
swarm of quarks that lasts forever. Thus, death does not completely
undermine the possibility of value and meaning. But the fact that our world
will come to an end means to naturalists that we must find meaning in how
we live in the present.
Nor is it clear that only what is left at the end of history is all that matters.
Each segment can still be significant even if there is an infinity of time before
and after. Only our human hubris demands a permanent effect of our actions
for them to have any value at all.6 Perhaps there is no universal death—
perhaps the universe continues through an endless series of miniverses. But
even if each of us is forgotten in an eternal universe, it does not mean that
human life must be meaningless or that we cannot make a significant
contribution enriching what is real today. (There is also a logical problem: if
the universe is itself of infinite value, then we cannot add any value—it is
already infinite.) That we may be superseded by another species or otherwise
not last forever is irrelevant. Certainly, leaving traces of good or
improvement to humanity’s lot is enough to give an objective meaning even
if it does not last for eternity.
For naturalists, we must be ends in ourselves to be of value, not mere
vehicles to fulfilling some transcendent purpose. Nor can meaning be put off
to an indefinite future of humanity since we do not know what that holds. We
are integral to the world, not thrown into it: we are of the world, not in it—
only religion alienates us from our true home by making us believe that our
true existence is transcendent.7 Any human need for transcending ourselves
must be satisfied by the natural world by giving up our sense of self-
importance—for example, by being willing to sacrifice ourselves for some
greater welfare of others. Indeed, if we are an inherently social animal, any
meaning of life may not be individualistic. We are all made of the same dust
from some dead star, and our biological connectedness with every person,
animal, and plant is quite enough for many naturalists—enough even to
overcome a sense of loneliness. Naturalists such as Paul Feyerabend too can
say that all that matters is love. Just being part of the fascinating unfolding
evolution of the universe and of life on earth is enough to give our life
purpose and meaning. Naturalists do not need a meaning to the totality of
reality any more than theists do. Indeed, naturalists can take the world more
seriously than do theists since their focus is not being divided between this
world and a purported transcendent realm. So too, naturalists can treat our
one brief life as more precious: if immortality were awaiting us, this life is
not as significant, and dying is not really dying.

Objective Natural Meaning

For Freeman Dyson, no open, eternally expanding universe with intelligent
beings is pointless. There must be an objective value to our being here even if
the meaning is internal to the universe itself. Indeed, many antireductive
naturalists find the mere fact that the universe has produced conscious beings
with free will is enough to conclude that we are an integral part of reality, not
a fluke, and that in itself indicates that there must be some reason for all this:
we are purposeful beings who are in a position to take an active role in the
course of the universe’s development. The deep structure of the universe is
somehow programmed to produce life and conscious beings, and that is
enough to guarantee meaningfulness—there is rationality behind all of this,
and no external source is needed to make the universe meaningful. Such
value is not arbitrary or subjective but as objective as any other feature of the
universe.
However, naturalists who are committed to structural reductionism have a
problem finding any objective meaning to the universe: meaning requires the
originality that only free conscious beings can provide, and to reductionists
consciousness is a mere fluke, if it is accepted as real at all, and not integral
to the universe as antireductive naturalists believe. (For eliminationists, we
are only nonconscious robots, which would be extremely depressing if we
had consciousness.) That is, it is difficult to see how there could be any
meaning to the universe in any sense without conscious beings with free will
or some other source of originality—a deterministic world that simply plays
out a fixed, predictable course would be meaningless even if a transcendent
agent created it. Indeed, one can ask why a creator would bother creating
such a world. So too, consciousness seems necessary if the beings within the
universe are to have meaning. A universe without consciousness would be
swirling along meaninglessly—like Mozart’s sheet music existing with no
one playing or hearing the music. For reductionists, all we are and all we do
are nothing but the fixed result of the accidental collision of atoms. Random
events on the quantum level would not significantly alter the picture.
That conscious beings with free will are necessary for there to be meaning
to the universe does not mean that the universe has no objective value, any
more than the fact that we need a certain sensory apparatus for the universe to
register its colors and sounds. Nor does this mean that making conscious
beings is the central purpose of the natural world. But the structures of the
universe may provide an objective meaning, and part of that may be that
conscious beings must be there at some point to ask whether there is such a
meaning. The presence of conscious beings asking about the meaning of it all
certainly does not make any such meaning subjective.
In fact, naturalists can argue that it is the religious who have the problem
of finding some genuine meaning to the natural universe since they do not
fully integrate human beings into the universe but believe that the most
important part of us transcends the universe and that our real home lies
outside of the natural universe. Indeed, any transcendent purpose may render
this world meaningless in the end since salvation in all traditional religions
involves existence outside of this world. Thus, it is difficult for the religious
to show any ultimate value to the natural universe itself at all. Moreover, for
naturalists, theists mistakenly start with human beings as central to the
scheme of things rather than looking for whatever meaning there may be to
the existence of the natural cosmos as a whole and in the evolution of all life.
Naturalists can also take ending suffering more seriously than can the
religious who have to have an explanation making suffering palatable. For
naturalists, natural suffering is simply part of our lot, and to look for a
transcendent meaning to it is misguided. Only someone already committed to
a theistic point of view thinks something is missing from the naturalists’
picture.
However, any meaning of the universe beyond producing conscious beings
remains a mystery for naturalists. (To speak of “purpose” implies a
transcendent or at least a natural objective to the universe and thus gets us off
on the wrong foot.) For Philip Kitcher, we are only cogs in a vase machine
whose point exceeds our comprehension, and how our condition confers
meaning on what we do remains a mystery. For secular humanists, human
beings are the sole source of meaning, and developing human potentials to
their fullest is the only objective to be achieved. (Not all secular humanists
are as antireligious as Richard Dawkins; some such as Kitcher and Ronald
Dworkin can find value in religion, at least as matters of ethics, in countering
reductive naturalism.) As noted in the last chapter, there also are today
“religious naturalists” who find meaning while denying transcendent realities.
Don Cupitt can even exclaim: “That existence is purposeless is to me
religiously wonderful.” Christian religious naturalists may attempt to
establish the “Kingdom of God” on earth, as the Bible mentions, even if it is
not a matter of the return of a transcendent Christ from a transcendent realm.
But most naturalist philosophers prefer their worldview straight up without
any religious sugarcoating even while acknowledging a mystery to all this.8
They also point out that the difficulty the religious, traditional or naturalist,
have in specifying a transcendent meaning to the world. But, as Kitcher
acknowledges, the religious have a confidence that secularists cannot enjoy.

Subjective Responses
However, many naturalists reject such objective natural meaning. According
to Friedrich Nietzsche, both the world and life are meaningless, but we can
create meaning for ourselves and thus lead a meaningful life. Naturalists
claim that any meaning that we make up is subjective, but the meaning is
nevertheless sufficient to make their lives worthwhile. The need for meaning
is only a human phenomenon and inherently subjective. As noted above, they
see theists as fabricating meaning in transcendent terms to give their life
meaning. When the astronomer Owen Gingerich says, “Frankly, I am
psychologically incapable of believing that the universe is meaningless,” he
is saying more about himself (and many other religious believers) than
anything about the universe itself. In fact, to require a transcendent meaning
only diminishes the glory of the universe.
It may be natural to see ourselves as central to the purpose of all this, just
as it is natural to see an unmoving earth as the physical center of the universe.
But science has shown us otherwise—we live in a truly vast universe of
billions of galaxies (and perhaps in a multiverse), and our world will come to
an end. For reductionists, reality is purposeless and void of value or meaning,
merely the actions of physical particles in space-time governed by the laws of
physics—there may be consciousness but no true novelty. Nothing suggests
that human beings are special. Nature, as Stephen Jay Gould put it, did not
know we were coming and does not give a damn about us now. For Richard
Dawkins, the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should
expect if there is at its bottom no design, no purpose, no values of good and
evil—nothing but blind pitiless indifference. We are evolved products that
are not for anything except to propagate our genes. We are alone on an
insignificant planet in a cold, uncaring, pointless universe with no god to help
us. Our aging and declining bodies are telling us our fate. We see our loved
ones die, and we know we too are sentenced to death.9 In the words of Robert
Solomon, the universe does not care about our plans, and we are not part of a
cosmic plan that would give our lives a permanent value. And if this is one of
few planets with conscious beings in our universe, it shows how incredibly
unlikely conscious beings are the objective of the universe rather than only an
odd fluke. And as the physicist Steven Weinberg infamously said: “The more
the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
Members of prestigious scientific societies indicate that the best scientists are
less likely to believe that there are transcendent realities. So too, as our lives
become more comfortable, the question of why we live becomes less
pressing: we do not ask if life is meaningful when we are happy—we can
keep ourselves busy with work and family, distract ourselves with friends and
amusements, and not worry about how it all hangs together.10 For many
people, theism slides into a deism, and almost without notice this slides into
religious indifference. It is not that today many more people are embracing
atheism—many of the religiously unaffiliated (the “nones”) still seek a
meaning to life, but many are simply too uninterested in religious matters
even to bother calling themselves “atheists.”
Still, in such circumstances one can accept a subjective meaning and find
life worth living—a Jamesian “leap of faith” is appropriate. It must be in
accord with how one believes reality to be, but we can accept a meaning that
one believes may in fact be objectively true even if we realize it is only a
subjective guess. So too, the bar for a meaningful live may not be very high.
Perhaps Paul Thagard is correct when he argues that a live filled with
fulfilling work, relationships with other people, and a sense of autonomy is
enough to satisfy our psychological needs for meaning, although transcendent
realists do not think that would suffice to bear all the troubles we go through.

Nihilism
However, the attitude that we must create our own values and meaning in
order to make our individual lives meaningful can also lead to embracing
nihilism—the denial that there is any meaning to the world. God is dead, and
nothing matters. There is no value except perhaps pleasure. The only
intellectually honest response is to face the meaninglessness of life and the
futility of it all. The existentialist Albert Camus thought that we should defy
the meaninglessness and fight the abyss with dignity and courage by helping
others—Sisyphus may have to spend eternity pushing the same boulder up
the same mountain again and again, but we can imagine him being happy
with his lot. However, nothing we do matters. Jean-Paul Sartre thought life
was a tragedy: “Everything is born without reason, prolongs itself out of
weakness, and dies by chance.” (Sartre actually had a more optimistic view of
life than that may sound, since we have the freedom to invent our own
meaning.) The novelist Nikos Kazantzakis found life meaningful only in
searching and struggling—his epitaph reads: “I hope for nothing. I fear
nothing. I am free.”
Since the cosmos has no objective transcendent or natural meaning, there
is no point even in projecting a subjective meaning onto it. We come from
nothing and go to nothing—in the end, what we do in between to fill our lives
has no significance. The absurdity of the human condition comes from our
perceived need to find a meaning in what is meaningless. We are an animal
with a conceptualizing mind that creates a problem of meaning where there is
none, only natural events. Even to imagine that there could be a meaning or
purpose is misdirected: we are thinking in terms of concepts that only distort
what is truly here and only making ourselves miserable. But without the
illusory idea of an eternal afterlife misleading us, death loses its horror: like
miscarriages and birth defects, it occurs, but a transcendent standpoint
magnifies the loss. We may love the world and life so much that the prospect
of no longer existing is horribly sad, but the end of our existence is our
natural lot.
However, one must ask how nihilists know that the world is meaningless.
Or why should choosing the most hopeless option be the default position? It
is difficult to see how nihilists can be so certain they know the answer.
Granted, science does not show us any purpose or meaning to the world, but
all that scientists produce is an abstraction of reality in terms of efficient
causes and material—that is, only a skeleton of the full world. Science by its
self-imposed focus on causes is not designed to find meaning. (And it should
be noted that many scientists in America are theists or deists.) One may adopt
science as ideally providing the complete picture of things—thereby
eliminating all purpose and meaning—but one has to defend such naturalism
on philosophical grounds since science itself does not demand it. Indeed, it is
hard to see how a transcendent purpose could be established by any scientific
finding—for example, finding any teleological activity in nature will be
ascribed to natural principles by naturalists. Even if science could rule out
any teleological mechanisms being active in reality, this does not rule out a
meaning to reality in terms other than a goal to be achieved. So too, a
transcendent purpose may be achievable without such mechanisms operating
in nature—for example, scientists may one day be able to show that life and
consciousness are the products of purely physical natural forces, but a god
still could have set up the general order of things in a reductive manner that
accomplishes that purpose. Science may eliminate any anthropocentric view
of meaning, but science cannot prove there is no transcendent meaning to the
universe in toto. That is, science “makes sense” of the world only in the sense
of explaining how it works—it says nothing one way or the other about the
“meaning” of the world in the sense of why the world exists or is as it is. (Nor
does finding the universe to be at least partially comprehensible to us through
our discovery of laws and patterns mean that it must have a transcendent
purpose or other meaning.) All in all, we cannot be surprised that scientists
do not find any transcendent or natural meaning to the universe when science
is not designed to find meaning in the first place. Thus, there may be a
meaning to all this, regardless of what scientists find.
In sum, as noted by philosophers from Socrates to Wittgenstein, the entire
issue of meaning is screened out of scientific approaches, and thus scientists
can succeed completely in what they do—describing and explaining nature’s
workings—and the questions of the meaning of why the universe exists and
of our place in it will still remain open. Is there any other way to determine if
there is a transcendent or natural objective meaning to all this? There does
not appear to be. The “sense of the world” may, as Wittgenstein said, lie
outside the world, but we are foreclosed from that perspective. Theists may
rely on revelations and teachings, but there is no neutral way to determine if
any of them are anything more than the subjective products of our mind. It
may be that seeing a transcendent meaning leads to greater well-being or that
belief in an afterlife leads in general to a happier life, but this does not prove
that some meaning is objectively real but only that because of how we are
constructed such a sense meaning is positive or perhaps even necessary. At
least for nonpragmatists, the question is whether a meaning of life is true is
not only a matter of whether endorsing one such meaning leads to healthy
effects.

Values
What of our values? Are our moral, intellectual, and aesthetic values
objective? Can something have value in itself, or is value inherently relational
and thus requires a conscious being who values? Are goods such as pleasure,
love, and moral worth only what we subjectively favor or are they objective
features of reality? Is there some objective standard of positive and negative
values? Is beauty innate to nature or merely a sense that has evolved in us?
(Even naturalists such as Steven Weinberg can admit that “nature seems more
beautiful than is strictly necessary.”) Why are we aware of beauty at all, and
why do we value it so? Were we created to respond to it? Does the impact
that music has on us indicate something about what is real apart from our
subjective reactions? Are all values merely products of our emotional
responses? Are they any less real because of that? So too, William Barrett can
ask: “Why should the pulse of life toward beauty and value not be a part of
things?” In fact, are values the reason that a universe exists at all? That is,
does value somehow cause there to be a physical universe with free
conscious beings?
 It is hard to determine how such questions could be answered. The dispute
in metaethics between noncognitive antirealism (e.g., moral values are only
projections of our own personal or social likes and dislikes) and realism (i.e.,
normative and evaluative values are objective facts of reality, like
mathematical facts) is continuing with no end in sight. Morality seems to
have an objective demand on us. But even if basic moral principles (e.g.,
against murder), if not all ethical precepts, are universal we still cannot
determine whether these are any more than cultural products that are
necessary for any society to flourish that our species has developed through
our social evolution, even if they seem more objective than a “social
contract” tacitly entered into in order for the ethics to work. People also
disagree over whether moral concern should extend to only our own social
group, all human beings, or all sentient animals. Skepticism concerning
values as well as beliefs cannot be refuted. This does not mean that nihilists
are correct, but only that no ultimate justification of our value choices can be
established. Moral values and values in general are not necessarily unreal
simply because their basis is a mystery, but we have to accept them as such.11

The Mystery of Meaning

Once again we have a Big Question that we are not in a position to answer:
we cannot know whether life and the universe has an objective meaning. It is
hard, despite what reductionists and existentialists claim, not to think that if
there are conscious beings here there must be reason for all this (especially if
the beings have free will). But this may be only an instance of the
philosopher’s disease—our mind demands a “because” to a “why” question
even if we cannot answer it. And even if we accept that there must be some
reason for all this, we must admit that we are not in a position to determine
what the reason is or whether our subjective meaning reflects how things
really are. Thus, we do not know if there is some unknowable meaning or no
meaning at all. For a naturalist like Robert Solomon, realizing that this “why”
has no answer is “the singular fact that now defines our existence.” For
Viktor Frankl, our concern about a meaning of life is “the truest expression of
the state of being human.” But we are doomed to live with this deepest
personal mystery of all.
Adopting agnosticism once again is the most rational position: we are not
in a position to know whether there is any objective meaning to reality or not.
Perhaps no finite being within the phenomenal universe is in a position to see
the true big picture of it all. But once again, we can both adopt agnosticism
and endorse an objective meaning or meaninglessness, although we must
accept that we may well be wrong concerning it.
If liberal religious people need a meaning to go on, many may be able to
rest comfortably, agreeing with Arthur Koestler that merely knowing that life
must be meaningful—that there must be a reason for all this or we would not
be here—is enough, even if we cannot know what that meaning is. It is not
merely a wish or hope that there is meaning but a deep-seated conviction that
there is. The mere fact that there is conscious life is enough to lead many to
an optimistic view of the universe, and such an attitude is reasonable even if
we do not know whether there is a meaning to this world or what happens at
death (although this optimistic attitude does not support any one particular
religious way of life). In a quest for a more intellectually satisfying position,
other religious people may speculate on the meaning of things, but they must
admit that “we now see through a glass darkly” (I Cor. 13:12).
Still, no one can fault anyone else on philosophical grounds who accepts
another answer, whether it is a transcendent one, a natural one, or nihilism.
We cannot have great confidence in any answer. However, agnosticism does
damage the commitment one can have to that meaning—it is difficult to live
in a web of meaning once one recognizes that we cannot determine if it is
true—but agnosticism remains the most intellectually honest action in this
area of mystery.
In the end, the question of meaning is not so much a matter of knowledge
as ethical belief related to living a certain way. Meaning gives a sense of
well-being. Even adopting a meaning that we know is only subjective can
make life worth living in such circumstances. Nevertheless, one may live
without supplying a “because” for the “why” of the universe or with a
minimal sense that there must be some unknown reason. Not knowing a
“why” need not lead to anxiety, nausea, and despair as existentialists assert.
Admitting that we can never fully comprehend our place in the universe leads
to despair only if we demand that the universe must be fully comprehensible
to us. But if we reject the philosopher’s disease and its demand for answers, it
can be exciting simply to know that we are part of a wondrous universe
evolving more and more complex forms without knowing what the meaning
of it all is or even if there is a meaning (and despite its many sources of
suffering). Any anthropocentric meaning is difficult to maintain in light of
science—conscious beings may be vital to the scheme of things and even
uniquely valuable in the universe, but we have no reason to believe that we
on this minor planet are the unique crown of creation. Yet we can still be
open to the possibility of meaning of all this.
For Ludwig Wittgenstein the solution to the problem of life is seen in the
vanishing of the problem. That is, we continue to live even if we have no
answer to this question and despite our apparent deep psychological need to
believe that our lives are essential to the cosmic scheme of things—we stop
worrying about any possible meaning of life and simply get on with living.
This may be possible to do while accepting that the question of meaning
remains a mystery by being agnostic here and simply giving up the search for
a meaning.

Notes
1. Even though the question of meaning is of the meaningfulness of life to us, the questions of a
personally meaningful life and of an objective meaning to reality are distinguishable: one can have
a “meaningful life” in the sense of leading a full, purpose-driven existence even if the universe has
no objective meaning. Conversely, one’s life may be empty and meaningless even if the universe
has an objective meaning that we are missing.
2. Happiness may be necessary to a meaningful life, but that happiness is not the same as
meaningfulness can be easily seen: if we had a drug that permanently put us in a state of ecstasy,
we may be permanently happy, but few would consider such a life meaningful. So too, as John
Stuart Mill pointed out, one can be happy without being aware of the issue of a meaning to life.
Happiness is a byproduct of a meaningful life.
3. The Buddhist claim that “all is suffering (dukkha)” should not be taken to mean that all is painful
or unpleasant—there are pleasures in this life. Happiness is a byproduct of a meaningful life.
Rather, the idea is that even pleasurable experiences are only temporary and thus ultimately
unsatisfying—pain and disappointment is inevitable. Eventually even pleasure become boring in
countless rebirths. Thus, “all is unsatisfying or unfulfilling” is a better rendition of the idea. The
Buddhist quest is to find an end to the dukkha inherent in the realm of rebirth by ending our
rebirths. Any meaning to the world or life other than escaping it is hard to find with this view.
4. Most people see what they value as something all people should value and thus essential to a
meaningful life. So, philosophers naturally think intellectual pursuits and an examined life are
necessary to a meaningful life. But, not to sound flippant, a joke from Emo Philips is worth
repeating: “I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I
realized who was telling me this.” Perhaps an unexamined life is in fact meaningful for many
people, and an overexamined life is not a full life at all.
5. “Carpe diem”—“seize the day”—in America has come to mean party ’til you drop, but it can also
mean to be fully engaged in whatever you deem important or not to waste time.
6. Those who want fame and want their name to be remembered should consider what the Stoic
Marcus Aurelius said in his notes to himself: most of the people he encountered in court as
emperor of Rome were, to paraphrase, jerks, and he saw no reason to believe that people in a
thousand years will be any different, so of what value is lasting fame?
7. Albert Camus spoke of our conceptualizing mind as alienating us even from the natural world: “If
I were a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not
 arise, for I should belong to the world. I would be this world to which I am now opposed by my
whole consciousness.” Nor does the question of meaning arise in such an animal consciousness.
8. Mystical experiences do not per se give a meaning to the cosmos. They may give a sense of the
beingness of reality free of the conceptualizing mind, but bare being does not explain why we are
here. Mystical experiences may overcome a sense of isolation or alienation from the world and
other people that our conceptualizing mind generates and replace it with a sense of connection.
This can lead to life seeming to make sense or to everything seeming all right as is, even if no
concrete message of a meaning to life is given when the mind is empty of all conceptual content.
When one is totally engaged in any activity, there is no inner distance to consider the issue of the
meaning of life, and in the mystical enlightened state one is always totally engaged in the present
with the activity at hand, and thus the issue never arises. In this way, the quest for meaning ends
with the disappearance of the question.
9. The harshness of life presents a problem even without the question of life’s meaning. A story from
India’s Mahabharata illustrates this: a man is chased through the jungle by a herd of wild
elephants and jumps into an abandoned well to escape; he clings to a vine, but the herd is still
outside, so he cannot leave; he looks down and sees a snake at the bottom waiting for him to drop;
he looks up and sees mice gnawing away at the vine that he is clinging to; over the well, there is a
beehive and angry bees are swarming him, stinging him; through all this, a drop of honey falls
from the beehive and the man catches it on his tongue—the secret of life is to be able to enjoy that
drop of honey in those circumstances.
10. In arguing that meaning is to be found in living our everyday lives, Will Durant related a story
about an ant who in her travels discovers that there is no Great Ant ruling over us and that their
colony is only one of millions of ant hills made out of mud in an endless universe. She tries to
convince her fellow ants to stop being slaves because life is pointless. But a young ant replies:
“This is all very well, sister, but we must build our tunnel.”
11. William Lane Craig is not alone in believing that there are no objective moral values if there is no
god. But even ignoring the Euthyphro problem, it does not take a god’s commandment to know
that gratuitously torturing a baby is morally wrong—it is morally wrong simply because it
needlessly inflicts suffering on another human being. Craig also argues that we need belief in life
after death and postmortem rewards and punishments to be moral. But if we act solely out of self-
interest (here, fear of hell or hope for heaven), we are not being moral at all but simply looking out
for ourselves—it is only a matter of prudent self-interest, not of a genuine moral concern for
others. But Craig believes that anyone who does not believe in a postmortem reward or
punishment is being “just stupid” to act any way but selfishly—for them, there is “no reason to be
human.” However, does he really believe that (to use his example) a mother who risks her life to
save her children is being “just stupid” unless she believes that she will be rewarded for it after
death? Nor is it obvious why a naturalist should feel compelled to adopt selfishness over concern
for others: one can be selfish, but one does not need to be once one realizes that we are dependent
upon others for our survival and that all life is connected. “No man is an island.” Indeed, concern
only for oneself conflicts with how things really are in an interconnected naturalistic world. In this
way naturalism can ground morality. Without a heaven or hell awaiting us for our conduct, Craig
apparently can see no reason to help others or to be human, but naturalists may believe otherwise
for reasons connected to their metaphysics and act out of a genuine moral concern for others, not
out of self-interest.
 16
The Mystery of the Ordinary

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best,
the wonder remains.
—Alfred North Whitehead

he upshot of all this is this: we know that something exists, but we also
T know that our world has known aspects, currently unknown aspects, and
unknowable aspects. We have to recognize the limitations to what we can
ever know, both from our finite cognitive abilities and our place in the
universe and from possible limits in the universe itself. We must accept that it
is very likely that we can know only a very tiny sliver of the total universe,
even as reality flows in us. That mysteries surround all the Big Questions
must be accepted—we will always lack closure on fundamental aspects of
ourselves and our world. The religious once claimed all mystery as
exclusively their own (although the mystery is not often mentioned in
religion today), but even with the most ordinary things we participate in
mysteries of a philosophical kind. Indeed, we are engulfed in mysteries: we
cannot separate ourselves from our lives and the universe, and thus we cannot
gain the necessary cognitive distance between us and the mysterious in order
to make what is mysterious into objects that we could analyze or experiment
upon and thus perhaps open to defeat. Our quest for comprehensive
knowledge ends consigned to failure. To be sure, science in the future, as in
the past, may well reduce some things that we currently consider “how”
mysteries to manageable problems and solve them—scientists may devise
procedures in the future that we do not have the conceptual and technical
background today even to imagine. But as discussed, our lot is also to be
stuck with some intractable mysteries no matter how far science goes in
explaining the how-ness of things.
Some will find the fact that there is more to reality than we can know (and
thus that our quest for knowledge leads to mysteries) exhilarating, and some
will find it depressing. However, acknowledging a barrier to our claims to
knowledge is a defeatist view of science and philosophy only if we believe
that all of reality must be transparent to beings with our particular evolved
brains, but there is no reason to believe that. There is also the very real
possibility that science, at least when it comes to the Big Questions, may
come to an end one day. Science may in these matters be, in effect, only a
phase we are going through. But even if this happens, scientists should not be
depressed that the quest for knowledge that they have devoted their work
lives to cannot in principle be completely fulfilled any more than they should
be depressed over the fact that their work is likely to superseded in the future
—they are making valuable contributions to our knowledge of reality, and
that should be enough for a meaningful life.
Nor is affirming mystery the height of irrationality: accepting limitations to
our ability to know and that there may be aspects of reality that are in
principle unknowable to any beings like us seems irrational only to those who
suffer from the philosopher’s disease of demanding an answer to a question
even when we unable to supply one due to our circumstances—indeed, that
disease would only stifle our sense of reality by imposing some false closure
to questions where none is possible. Bryan Magee points out that sensory
data cannot be “like” something that is categorically different from them—
thus, they cannot correspond to objective world as it is independent of our
experience. We cannot even form conceptions of the independent world:
what exists exists without the characteristics that are dependent upon us—
when it comes to the world independent of us, we are like airline pilots flying
by instruments in a fog.
But today we seem to have lost any sense of mystery to reality. Modern
science’s “disenchantment of nature” has led to the spiritual impoverishment
of many who value science. And it is certainly the case that in our everyday
lives we can focus only on the known. Nevertheless, what is currently
unknown and unknowable in principle cannot be forgotten and should play a
role in our lives: we know less than we like to think, and our predicament
must be given its due. It is not a matter of wandering around constantly
gawking in awe and wonder, although Thornton Wilder’s Our Town reminds
us of the wonder and beauty of ordinary things that we do miss every day.
Nor is it to ignore the fixable problems we have with the world. Rather, it is
realizing in moments of reflection that what we know is framed by more of
reality: there is a fuller picture of reality, and the permanent feature of
mystery in our basic picture of reality should be brought into the light. When
we ponder the full range of reality in light of our situation, we see how little
we do know and see how tentative what we do know is.
Fundamental things related to the being of the world and our consciousness
—matters that we are all but constantly aware of—enclose us without our
ability to comprehend them in any complete sense of the word. We may
agree with G.E. Moore’s common-sense position that the existence of
ourselves and the world does not need proving, but these still confront us as
having fundamental mysteries at their foundations: we know they exist, but
we do not know their basic nature. That is important to remember in order to
realize what we are and what the world is. It is not only that we cannot
control all that happens to us, but that we are surrounded by brute facts even
in our everyday lives that we will never comprehend.
A sense of mystery adds another dimension to our lives: no matter how at
home we feel in the universe, there is a strangeness to our being here that we
cannot get around. Because of the conceptualizing mind that we have
evolved, we are probably the one creature on our planet that is able to see the
strangeness of there being such a reality, wonder about it, and formulate
questions concerning it. But unfortunately, we are unable to answer all the
questions that the strangeness of our situation provokes. Nevertheless, simply
to ignore the mystery of all of this is to leave us with a truncated view of
reality and not with the realization of our true place in the world. The more
we increase our knowledge, the more we are aware of the presence of our
ignorance and the limits of our knowledge, and that in the final analysis we
have no certain fundamental knowledge beyond that something exists.
Thereby, we can be more open to reality if we recognize that we live on the
shoreline between the known and the unknown. Both sides of that shoreline
are part of our world. Thus, living with mystery means balancing openness
with the closure provided by our conceptual systems. It involves utilizing our
science and our conceptual attempts at closing off the unknown while treating
them as just that—our all-too-human attempts at dealing with what is
ultimately beyond our grasp.
Perhaps the professional life of quantum physicists is the exemplar of how
to lead a fuller human life in the world: they are constantly encountering the
unknown, but they can live without closure with tentative theories despite
their problems—indeed, it is only by remaining beyond the control of those
theories that they can advance their science by seeing things in a new light.
As physicist Richard Feynman put it: “I can live with doubt and uncertainty
and not knowing. I think it much more interesting to live with not knowing
than to have answers that might be wrong.” He notes that in order to make
progress in science, we “must leave the door to the unknown ajar.” (It is
worth noting that he also said that he was not frightened by being in a
universe that has no purpose.) In a similar way, a sense of mystery can be
very valuable to all our lives without the sense of not knowing overwhelming
us. We can remain open by asking the Big Questions and not settling with
any proposed answers as closure. The loss of certainty in our answers need
not be seen as a loss at all but as a type of liberation. Indeed, life can be more
interesting when we live with this openness to the fullness of reality.
Accepting that we are not in a position to answer some or all of the Big
Questions— agnosticism—is in fact the most rational approach to take.
Agnosticism does not mean indifference: it is not lack of interest in the Big
Questions, but a reasoned-out epistemic position on what we can and cannot
know based on the study of the issues surrounding mysteries. Nor is it simply
the acknowledgment that all well-articulated positions on any philosophical
issue probably will eventually be shown to have problematic premises that
would not command the assent of all reasonable people. Rather, agnosticism
is a matter of seeing that we are not in a position, due to limitations resulting
from our evolution and our situation in the world, to resolve certain
fundamental questions that we can formulate.
However, agnosticism is not very popular today. Most people from theists
to reductive naturalists believe that they know more about basic questions
than agnostics would admit as justified. Most philosophers may grudgingly
acknowledge that agnosticism is all that is ultimately justifiable, but this does
not discourage them from speculating. Such speculations provide closure and
thus quiet our minds, and some may in fact be correct. However, we must
accept such speculations as only that—guesses that are only based on our
experiences and ways of thinking—and we must admit that we are not in a
position to determine if our intuition-inspired speculations are correct. But
this does not mean that the questions are not worth asking or have been
shown to be illegitimate through a philosophical analysis—indeed, they are
vital to understanding what we are and what the world we live in is like.
Nevertheless, our position should be to accept, however reluctantly, that we
cannot have much confidence in our speculations since we do not actually
have the resources to answer the questions with any definitiveness. As Bryan
Magee concludes, agnosticism is the only honest way to live without
evasions or self-indulgence—it is the fullest acknowledgment of our
ignorance.
But again, emphasizing mystery clearly goes against the spirit of our age.
Today, most people, if they note the mysteries of reality at all,
understandably focus on what is known and at best pay lip service to the
mysteries. However, philosophy, as Plato noted, begins in wonder, but it also
ends in wonder. Embracing mystery can lead naturalists to having more
reverence for the ordinary and lead transcendent realists to being more
humble toward all of reality. Philosophers today should continue to analyze
problems to see if we have generated mysteries where there are none by how
we conceptualize problems. And metaphysicians today will no doubt
continue to try to penetrate the mysteries that remain standing after such an
analysis by advancing speculative answers. But the foundations of all
philosophical explanations are not secure, and it is best that we understand
our situation in the world. The ground that philosophers walk on is soft, with
no sure footing.
Thus, we must live with this acceptance of mystery. Philosophy can play a
role today that is at least as important as speculation simply in exposing our
epistemic situation by bringing mysteries to light and showing where they
came from, even if this throws a little discomfort into our lives by bringing
uncertainty to our claims of knowledge. Charles Darwin told the story that
illustrates much of science: as a young man, he spent a day near a river and
noticed nothing about the rocks, but after ten years of study he returned to the
spot and noticed obvious evidence of glacial activity. Something like that
also occurs in philosophy: no new empirical facts may be revealed, but by the
end of the journey our understanding of where we stand in reality may be
increased. In that way, philosophy can fulfill its claim to be the “love of
wisdom.”
 Further Reading

Chapter 1
For more on this and the other subjects in this book, see Jones 2009. Also see
Solomon 1999 on the lost joy of philosophizing and Magee 2016. On wonder
and awe, see Fuller 2006. For a survey on wonder in philosophy, see
Rubenstein 2008: 1–24. For introductions to the Big Questions, see Van
Inwagen and Zimmerman 1998. On types of senses of mystery, see Verkamp
1997. On “why” questions, see Edwards 1967. On the classic account of the
distinction between an irremovable “mystery” and a solvable “problem,” see
Gabriel Marcel 1950–1951.

Chapter 2
Analytic philosophers have written little on mystery in the last hundred years
—see Foster 1957, Ross 1984, Cooper 2002, Jones 2009, and Rhodes 2012.
On the complexity of concepts, see Wilson 2006. On the law of
noncontradiction and paradoxes, see Fogelin 2003: chap. 2.

Chapter 3
On other logical and conceptual limitations to our knowledge, see
Williamson 2002. For skepticism, see Unger 1975 and Stroud 1984. On
agnosticism, see Joshi 2007. On reason and evolution, see Nagel 2003: chap.
7 and Sterelny 2003. On the paradox of knowability, see Kvanvig 2006. For a
contemporary version of the Clifford/James debate, see Feldman and
Warfield 2010.

Chapter 4
On current metaphysics, see Van Inwagen and Zimmerman 1998. On
naturalized “scientific metaphysics,” see Ross, Ladyman, and Kincaid 2015.
For metametaphysics, see Chalmers, Manley, and Wasserman 2009. On
being, see Munitz 1986: 181–235 and 1990: 192–208; on being and language,
see Jones 2016: chap. 6. Also see Lawson 2001 on “closure” versus the
“openness” of reality and Rubenstein 2008.

Chapter 5
See Munitz 1965, Nozick 1981, Parfit 1992, Rundle 2004, Holt 2012, and
Goldschmidt 2013. For Stephen Hawking’s view, see Hawking and
Mlodinow 2010 and Krauss 2012. See Leslie 1989 for the idea that values are
the source of the phenomenal universe.

Chapter 6
On whether there actually is causation in the world, see Field 2003.

Chapter 7
For a fuller treatment, see Jones 2013. See Anderson 1972 for a classic take
on the issue by a physicist. See Morowitz 2002: 25–38 for a delineation of
twenty-eight levels of emergence. On the new emergentists, see Clayton and
Davies 2006. On metametaphysics and conceptual reductionism, see Sider
2009.

Chapter 8
On the sciences, see Gleiser 2014. On limits in mathematics and science, see
Yanofsky 2013. See Davies 2003 for the suggestion that mathematized
theories in science are unlikely to survive long.

Chapter 9
On the Big Bang, see Craig and Smith, 1993. On TOEs, see Lindley 1993.
On fine tuning, see Rees 2000 and Stenger 2011. On string theory, see
Greene 1999 (pro); Smolin 2006 and Woit 2006 (con). On the multiverse
controversy, see Rubenstein 2013. On the end of science as we know it, see
Baggott 2013.

Chapter 10
See Kaufmann 1993 on an order rather than natural selection that generates
effects as the reason why genes tend to settle into recurring patterns. On
alternatives to neo-Darwinism, see Corning 2005. For a reductionist view of
evolution, see Dawkins 1986. For antireductionist views, see Davies 1987,
Morris 2003, and Nagel 2010.

Chapter 11
On the elimination of the self, see Parfit 1984 and Dennett 1991. On the self
as causal, see Flanagan 1992. On Advaita and the self, see Jones 2014.

Chapter 12
For a current overview of the mind/body field, see Chalmers 2003. Also see
Dennett 1991, Searle 1997, McGinn 1999, and Nagel 2012. For a defense of
dualism, see Foster 1991. On the rebirth of hylomorphism, see Jaworski
2016. On recent work on consciousness and quantum physics, see Tuszynski
2006. On John Searle’s “Chinese Room” argument, see Preston and Bishop
2002. On panpsychism, see Strawson 2006.

Chapter 13
For compatibilism, see Dennett 1984 and Koch 2012; against it, see
Honderich 2002. On free will debate, see Russell and Deery 2013. For the
denial of free will, see Wegner 2002. For agent causation, see Chisholm
1966. On Libet’s experiments and free will, see Libet 1999.

Chapter 14
On the arguments for the existence of God, see Peterson and VanArragon
2003. On atheism, see Martin 2002. On mysticism, see Jones 2016. On the
absence of God argument, see Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002. On religious
agnosticism, see Gutting 2013. For an evangelical Christian take on God as
being both revealed and an impenetrable mystery, see Boyer and Hall 2012.

Chapter 15
See Klemke and Cahn 2007 and Baggini 2005. See Munitz 1993 on
beingness and meaning. On value, see Nagel 2012: 97–126. On religion and
meaning, see Smith 2001 and Runzo and Martin 2000. On whether
immortality must be boring, see Williams 1973 (pro) and Chappell 2007
(con). For existentialism, see Kaufmann 2004.
 Bibliography

Alston, William. “Two Cheers for Mystery!” In Andrew Dole and Andrew
Chignell, eds., God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays in Philosophy
of Religion, pp. 99–114. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Anderson, Philip W. “More is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of
the Hierarchical Structure of Science.” Science 177 (August 4, 1972):
393–396.
Atkins, Peter W. On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions
of Existence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Baggini, Julian. What’s It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Baggott, Jim. Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the
Search for Scientific Truth. New York: Pegasus, 2013.
Barrow, John D. Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of
Limits. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
———. New Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Beckermann, Ansgar, Hans Flohr, and Jaegwon Kim, eds. Emergence or
Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism. New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992.
Benatar, David, ed. Life, Death & Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on
the Big Questions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Boyer, Steven, and Christopher A. Hall. The Mystery of God: Theology for
Knowing the Unknowable. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2012.
Brockman, John, ed. This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant
 Theories of How the World Works. New York: Harper Perennial, 2013.
Burrell, David B. Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides,
Aquinas. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.
Byrne, Peter. God and Realism. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays. Translated by Justin
O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Carroll, Lewis. “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.” Mind 4 (1985): 278–
280.
Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental
Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
———. “Consciousness and its Place in Nature.” In Stephen P. Stich and
Ted A. Warfield, eds., The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind,
pp. 102–142. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
———. “Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?” In Ted Honderich,
ed., Philosophers of Our Times, pp. 347–370. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015.
Chalmers, David J., David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, eds.
Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2009.
Chappell, Timothy. “Infinity Goes Up on Trial: Must Immortality Be
Meaningless?” European Journal of Philosophy 17.1 (2007): 30–44.
Chisholm, Roderick. “Freedom and Action.” In Keith Lehrer, ed., Freedom
and Determinism, pp. 11–44. New York: Random House, 1966.
Clayton, Philip, and Paul Davies, eds. The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The
Emergent Hypothesis from Science to Religion. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Cooper, David E. The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Corning, Peter A. Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the
Bioeconomics of Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Cottingham, John. The Search for Meaning. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Craig, William Lane. “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical
Foundations for Morality.” Foundations 5 (1997): 9–12.
Craig, William Lane, and Quentin Smith. Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang
Cosmology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the
Soul. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994.
Davies, E. Brian. Science in the Looking Glass: What Do Scientists Really
Know? New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Davies, Paul C.W. The Cosmic Blueprint. London: Heinemann, 1987.
———. The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton, 1986.
———. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for
Wonder. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Dennett, Daniel C. Elbow Room. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984.
———. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991.
Dewdney, A.K. Beyond Reason: Eight Great Problems That Reveal the
Limits of Science. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
Dworkin, Ronald. Religion Without God. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2014.
Dupré, John. The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the
Disunity of Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Durant, Will. On the Meaning of Life. New York: Long & Smith, 1932.
Dyson, Freeman. Infinite in All Directions: The Gifford Lectures, 1985. New
York: Harper & Row, 1988.
Eddington, Arthur. The Nature of the Physical World. Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1958.
Edwards, Paul. “Why.” In Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, vol. 8, pp. 296–302. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
———. “Life, Meaning and Value of.” In Paul Edwards, ed., The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 4, pp. 467–477. New York:
Macmillan, 1967.
Ferré, Frederick. “In Praise of Anthropomorphism.” International Journal for
the Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 203–212.
Feynman, Richard P. The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist.
Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998.
Field, Hartry. “Causation in a Physical World.” In Michael J. Loux and Dean
W. Zimmerman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, pp. 435–
460. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Fogelin, Robert. Walking the Tightrope of Reason: The Precarious Life of the
Rational Animal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Ford, Dennis. The Search for Meaning: A Short History. Berkeley/Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2007.
Foster, John. The Immaterial Self: A Defense of the Cartesian Dualist
Conception of the Mind. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Foster, Michael B. Mystery and Philosophy. London: SCM Press, 1957.
Fuller, Robert C. Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Galison, Peter, and David J. Stump, eds. The Disunity of Science:
Boundaries, Contexts, and Power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1996.
Gell-Mann, Murray. The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple
and the Complex. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1994.
Gleiser, Marcelo. The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the
Search for Meaning. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Goldschmidt, Tyron, ed. The Puzzle of Existence: Why Is There Something
Rather Than Nothing? New York: Routledge, 2013.
Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and
the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Guthrie, Stewart Elliott. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Gutting, Gary. What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic
Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
———. “Religious Agnosticism.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 37 (2013):
51–67.
Haeckel, Ernst. The Riddle of the Universe. Translated by Joseph McCabe.
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992. (Originally published 1899.)
Haldane, John. “The Mystery of Emergence.” Proceedings of the
Aristotelean Society 70 (1996): 261–267.
Hasker, William. The Emergent Self. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1999.
Haught, John F. “Mystery.” In What is God? How to Think About the Divine,
pp. 115–131. New York: Paulist Press, 1986.
———. “Science and Mystery.” In Christianity and Science: Toward a
Theology of Nature, pp. 19–33. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007.
Hawking, Stephen W. “Letter to the Editor.” American Scientist 73 (Jan/Feb
1985): 12.
———. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Hawking, Stephen W., and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. New
York: Bantam Books, 2010.
Heidegger, Martin. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by R.
Manheim. New York: Doubleday, 1961.
Hepburn, Ronald. “Wonder.” In “Wonder” and Other Essays, pp. 131–147.
Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1984.
Holley, David M. Meaning and Mystery: What It Means to Believe in God.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Holt, Jim. Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. New
York: Liveright Publishing, 2012.
Honderich, Ted. How Free are You? The Determinism Problem. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Paul K. Moser, eds. Divine Hiddenness: New
Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Jackson, Frank. “Mind and Illusion.” In Anthony O’Hear, ed., Minds and
Persons, pp. 251–271. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jaworski, William. Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How
Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Jeans, James. The Mysterious Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1928.
Jones, Richard H. “The Religious Irrelevance of the Ontological Argument.”
In Mysticism Examined: Philosophical Inquiries Into Mysticism, pp.
149–166. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
———. Curing the Philosopher’s Disease: Reinstating Mystery in the Heart
of Philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009.
———. Analysis and the Fullness of Reality: An Introduction to
Reductionism & Emergence. New York: Jackson Square
Books/Createspace, 2013.
———, trans. Early Advaita Vedanta Philosophy, vol. 1. New York: Jackson
Square Books/Createspace, 2014.
———. Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2016.
Joshi, S.T., ed. The Agnostic Reader. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,
2007.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and
Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Kauffman, Stuart A. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection
in Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
———. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization
and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York:
Plume, 2004. (Originally published 1975.)
Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind. 3rd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
2011.
Kitcher, Philip. Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
Klemke, E.D., and Steven Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life. 3rd ed. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Koch, Christof. Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.
Koons, Robert C., and George Bealer, eds. The Waning of Materialism. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kragh, Helge. Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions
in Physics and Cosmology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Krauss, Lawrence. M. A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something
Rather Than Nothing. New York: Pocket Books, 2012.
Krishnamurti, Jiddhu, and David Bohm. The Limits of Thought: Discussions.
New York: Routledge, 1999.
Kvanvig, Jonathan L. The Knowability Paradox. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Ladyman, James, and Don Ross, with David Spurrett and John Collier. Every
Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied
Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books,
1999.
Landesman, Charles. Skepticism: The Central Issues. New York: Blackwell,
2002.
Laughlin, Robert B. A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the
Bottom Down. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Lawson, Hilary. Closure: A Story of Everything. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Leslie, John. Universes. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Lewis, David. Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Lewis, Hywel D. “God and Mystery.” In Ian T. Ramsey, ed., Prospect for
Metaphysics: Essays of Metaphysical Exploration, pp. 206–237.
 London: Allen & Unwin, 1961.
Libet, Benjamin. “Do We Have Free Will?” Journal of Consciousness
Studies 6.8–9 (1999): 47–57.
Lindley, David. The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory. New
York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Lowe, E.J. “Why is There Anything at All?” Proceedings of the Aristotelean
Society 70 (Supplement 1996): 111–120.
Macquarrie, John. Mystery and Truth. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University
Theology Department, 1973.
Magee, Bryan. Ultimate Questions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2016.
Manley, David. “Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics.” In
David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, eds.,
Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, pp. 1–
37. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009.
Marcel, Gabriel. The Mystery of Being. 2 vols. Translated by René Hague.
Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1950–1951.
Margolis, Joseph. The Unraveling of Scientism: American Philosophy at the
End of the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2003.
Martin, Michael. Atheism, Morality, and Meaning. Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 2002.
McGinn, Colin. Problems in Philosophy: Limits of Inquiry. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1993.
———. The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World. New
York: Basic Books, 1999.
Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self & Society. Edited by Charles W. Morris.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015 [1934].
Meheus, Joke, ed. Inconsistency in Science. Boston: Kluwer, 2002.
Messerly, John G. The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical,
Transhumanist, and Scientific Perspectives. Seattle: Durant & Russell
Publishers, 2012.
Metz, Thaddeus. Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013.
Miller, James B., ed. Cosmic Questions. New York: New York Academy of
Sciences, 2001.
Morowitz, Harold J. The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became
 Complex. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Morris, Richard. The Big Questions: Probing the Promise and Limits of
Science. New York: Henry Holt, 2002.
Morris, Simon Conway. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely
Universe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Moser, Paul K., and J.D. Trout, eds., Contemporary Materialism: A Reader.
New York: Routledge, 1995.
Munitz, Milton K. Cosmic Understanding: Philosophy and Science of the
Universe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
———. The Question of Reality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1990.
———. Does Life Have a Meaning? Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993.
Nagel, Thomas. The Last Word. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
———. Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–
2008. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
———. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is
Almost Certainly False. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Needleman, Jacob, and David Appelbaum, eds. Real Philosophy: An
Anthology of the Universal Search for Meaning. New York: Penguin
Books, 1990.
Newberg, Andrew, and Mark Robert Waldman. How God Changes Your
Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist. New
York: Ballantine Books, 2009.
Nozick, Robert. “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” In
Philosophical Explanations, pp. 115–164. Cambridge: Belknap Press,
1981.
Parfit, Derek. “The Puzzle of Existence: Why Does the Universe Exist?”
Times Literary Supplement (July 3, 1992): 3–5.
Penfield, Wilder. The Mystery of the Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1975.
Peterson, Michael L., and Raymond VanArragon, eds. Contemporary
Debates in Philosophy of Religion. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003.
Placher, William C. The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern
Thinking About God Went Wrong. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1996.
Preston, John, and Mark Bishop, eds. Views into the Chinese Room: New
Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence. New York: Oxford
 University Press, 2002.
Priest, Graham. Beyond the Limits of Thought. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
Quine, Willard van Orman. Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1981.
Ramsey, Ian T. Models and Mystery. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.
———. “On Understanding Mystery.” In Jerry H. Gill, ed., Philosophy and
Religion: Some Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 295–308. Minneapolis:
Burgess Publishing, 1968.
Rescher, Nicholas. The Riddle of Existence: An Essay in Idealistic
Metaphysics. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
———. The Limits of Science. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1999.
Rhodes, Michael Craig. Mystery in Philosophy: An Invocation of Pseudo-
Dionysius. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012.
Ross, Don, James Ladyman, and Harold Kincaid, eds. Scientific Metaphysics.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Ross, Steven David. Philosophical Mysteries. Albany: State University of
New York, 1981.
Rubenstein, Mary-Jane. Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and
the Opening of Awe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
———. Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013.
Rundle, Bede. Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2004.
Runzo, Joseph, and Nancy Martin, eds. The Meaning of Life in the World
Religions. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000.
Russell, Bertrand. Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion
and Related Subjects. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957.
Russell, Paul, and Oisin Deery, eds. The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential
Readings from the Contemporary Debates. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings. Edited by Stephen
Priest. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Schlesinger, George N. “Possible Worlds and the Mystery of Existence.”
Ratio 26 (June 1984): 1–17.
———. “The Enigma of Existence.” Ratio n.s. 11 (April 1998): 66–77.
Schlick, Moritz. “Unanswerable Questions.” The Philosopher 13 (1935).
———. “Meaning and Verification.” Philosophical Review 45 (July 1936):
339–369.
Searle, John. The Mystery of Consciousness. New York: New York Review,
1997.
Sider, Theodore. “Ontological Realism.” In David Chalmers, David Manley,
and Ryan Wasserman, eds., Metametaphysics: New Essays on the
Foundations of Ontology, pp. 384–423. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009.
Smart, J.J.C. “Sensations and Brain Processes.” Philosophical Review 68
(April 1959): 141–156.
Smart, Ninian. “Paradox in Religion.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
Supplement 32 (1959): 219–232.
———. “On Knowing What is Uncertain.” In Leroy S. Rouner, ed., Knowing
Religiously, pp. 76–86. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1985.
Smith, Huston. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an
Age of Disbelief. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.
Smolin, Lee. The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of
a Science, and What Comes Next. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Solomon, Robert C. The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the
Passionate Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Sorensen, Roy. A Brief History of Paradox: Philosophy and Labyrinths of the
Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Stannard, Russell. Science and Wonders. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.
Stenger, Victor. The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not
Designed for Us. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011.
Sterelny, Kim. Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human
Cognition. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Strawson, Galen, et al. Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does
Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? Charlottesville, VA: Imprint
Academic, 2006.
Stroud, Barry. The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984.
Swinburne, Richard. Is There a God? New York: Oxford University Press,
1996.
Templeton, John Marks, ed. How Large is God? Voices of Scientists and
Theologians. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 1997.
Thagard, Paul. The Brain and the Meaning of Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2010.
Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1952.
Trusted, Jennifer. The Mystery of Matter. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1999.
Tuszynski, Jack A., ed. The Emerging Physics of Consciousness. New York:
Springer, 2006.
Unger, Peter K. Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975.
Van Inwagen, Peter. “Why is There Anything at All?” Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society 70 (Supplement, 1996): 95–110.
———. “Free Will Remains a Mystery.” In Robert Kane, ed., The Oxford
Handbook of Free Will, pp. 158–177. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
Van Inwagen, Peter, and Dean W. Zimmerman, eds. Metaphysics: The Big
Questions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Verkamp, Bernard J. Senses of Mystery: Religious and Non-Religious.
Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1997.
Vernon, Mark. Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life. New York:
Palgrave, 2007.
Wainwright, William J. “Theology and Mystery.” In Thomas P. Flint and
Michael C. Rea, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology,
pp. 78–102. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Wallenstein, Immanuel M. The Uncertainties of Knowledge. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2004.
Wegner, Daniel M. The Illusion of Conscious Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2002.
Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes of the Universe. New York:
Basic Books, 1977.
———. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
White, Curtis. The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture
of Easy Answers. New York: Melville House, 2013.
Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of
Immortality.” In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972,
pp. 82–100. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Williamson, Timothy. Knowledge and its Limits. New York: Oxford
 University Press, 2002.
Wilson, Mark. Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behavior.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by David
F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. London: Routledge and Paul, 1961.
(Originally published 1922.)
———. “A Lecture on Ethics.” Philosophical Review 74 (January 1965): 3–
12.
Woit, Peter. Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search
for Unity in Physical Law. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Wolf, Susan. Meaning in Life and Why It Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2010.
Yonofsky, Noson S. The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science,
Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013.
Young, Julian. The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. New York;
Routledge, 2003.
 Index

Advaita Vedanta, 49, 118–119, 120, 122, 155

agent causation, 141
agnosticism, vii, 32–33, 43, 57, 144, 158–159, 162, 177–178, 184
Agrippa, 23
Alexander, Samuel, 64, 80
Alston, William, 156, 157
Anaxagoras, 51
Anaximander, 100
Anderson, Philip, 68
antireductionism, 69–77, 78, 79, 80, 110, 111, 113, 117–118, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134,
135, 136, 139–140
Aquinas, Thomas, 9, 155
Aristotle, 9, 15, 27, 42, 155, 165
artificial intelligence, 114
Atkins, Peter, 111
Aurelius, Marcus, 179

Barrett, William, 176

Barrow, John, 73, 105
Batchelor, Stephen, 159
being, 39–42
Berger, Peter, 164,
Bergson, Henri, 70, 80
Berkeley, George, 37
Berlin, Isaiah, 57
Bernard of Clairvaux, 166
Berra, Yogi, 152
biology, 70, 72–73, 77, 79, 107–114
Bohm, David, 87, 94
Bohr, Niels, 81
Boorstein, Daniel, 104
Bradbury, Ray, 115
Bradley, F. H., 35
Bridgman, P. W., 47
Broad, C. D., 127
brute facts, 4, 23–24, 50–51, 54–56, 57, 61, 64, 97, 99, 105, 135, 149, 183
Buddhism, 4, 45, 120, 159, 160, 168, 179
Burhoe, Ralph, 155
Burrell, David, 157
Byrne, Peter, 158

Camus, Albert, 164, 174, 179

Carroll, Lewis, 27, 45
Carroll, Sean, 59–60, 101, 138
causation, 49, 55, 57, 62, 63, 70, 79, 90, 95, 126, 139, 140, 140–142, 145
Chalmers, David, 22, 127
Churchland, Patricia, 125
Clifford, William, 32
compatibilists, 138–139
computers, 126, 129, 135–136
conceptualization and mystery, 13–17
consciousness, 123–136, 137–146
Conway, John, 111
cosmological argument, 148–149
cosmology, 47, 83, 99–101
Craig, William Lane, 180
Crick, Francis, 108, 111, 117, 128
Cupitt, Don, 172

Darwin, Charles, and Darwinism, 28, 108, 108–111, 113, 114, 132, 155, 185
Davies, Paul, 77, 84, 87, 97, 100, 110, 160
Dawkins, Richard, 110, 172, 173
Dennett, Daniel, 12, 117, 125, 128, 132
Descartes, René, 9, 10, 22, 29–30, 34, 116, 119, 121, 124
determinism, 28, 63–64, 70, 96, 138–140, 140–142, 142–143, 143–144
DeWitt, Bryce, 94
Dirac, Paul, 62
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 150
downward causation, 72, 80, 126
dualism, ontic, 15, 80, 116, 118, 119, 124, 126, 130, 135
Durant, Will, 180
Dworkin, Ronald, 172
Dyson, Freeman, 87, 93, 99, 130, 171

Eckhart, Meister, 156

Eddington, Arthur, 39, 66, 68, 104
Edwards, Paul, 56
Einstein, Albert, 1, 61, 64, 88, 89, 96, 97, 102, 128
eliminationism, 65, 117, 125, 131, 137, 171
emergentism, 64, 72, 80, 121
Everett, Hugh, 94, 101
evolution, 76, 88, 108, 108–111, 112–113, 114, 115, 122, 132, 136, 138, 143, 150, 152, 165, 170
existentialism, 150, 174, 177, 178
explanations, 6–7, 22, 23–24, 49, 50, 54, 73–74, 153, 160

Faraday, David, 38
Feyerabend, Paul, 170
Feynman, Richard, 38, 65, 86, 91, 94, 98, 183
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 19
Flew, Antony, 12
Fogelin, Robert, 31
Frankl, Viktor, 164, 177
free will, 62, 117, 137–146, 151, 160, 161, 170–171

Galileo, 85
Gargi, 58
Geertz, Clifford, 164
Gellner, Ernest, 42
Gingerich, Owen, 172–173
God, 4, 7, 9, 18, 41, 49–51, 147–162, 165–167, 168–169
Gödel, Kurt, 29, 85, 99
Gould, Stephen Jay, 173
Guth, Alan, 52
Gutting, Gary, 22

Haldane, J. B.S., 87
Harris, Sam, 139
Hartshorne, Charles, 147
Haught, John, 166
Hawking, Stephen, 51–52, 78, 82, 94, 99
Heidegger, Martin, 45, 59
Heisenberg, Werner, 82, 94
Hempel, Carl, 44
Heraclitus, 82
Hick, John, 165
Hindus, 166, 180
history of philosophy, 9–13
Hobbes, Thomas, 138
Holley, David, 160
Holt, Jim, 58–59
Hoyle, Fred, 108
Hull, David, 152
Hume, David, 31, 63, 90, 117
Huxley, Aldous, 167
Huxley, Julian, 123
Huxley, Thomas, 137, 158
hylomorphic structures, 76

idealism, 37, 38, 39, 122

intuition, 22, 23, 36, 43, 44, 50, 54, 74, 86, 88, 90, 102, 104, 114, 125, 132, 144, 150, 155, 157, 184
Inwagen, Peter van, 12, 18, 48, 141

James, William, 17, 33, 47, 89, 144, 173

Johnson, Mark, 22

Kant, Immanuel, 10, 16, 25–26, 32, 33, 34, 37, 43, 88, 102, 121, 157
Kauffman, Stuart, 118
Kragh, Helge, 102
Kazantzakis, Nikos, 174
Keats, John, 81, 84, 152
Kierkegaard, Sören, 8
Kim, Jaegwon, 128
Kitcher, Philip, 172
Koestler, Arthur, 177

Lakoff, George, 22
Leibniz, Gottfried, 45, 54, 63
Lewis, David, 101
libertarians, 139–140, 142, 143
Libet, Benjamin, 127, 142–143
Locke, John, 39
logical positivism, 10, 36, 39, 75, 81
Lycan, William, 135

Magee, Bryan, 19, 27, 182, 184

Manley, David, 37
mathematics, 29, 38, 47, 53, 62, 77, 85–86, 95, 98, 99, 102, 103, 151
McGinn, Colin, 18, 130–131
Mead, George Herbert, 115
meaning of life, 163–180
mental causation, 126, 139, 140, 141, 145
metaphysics, 35–44
Midgley, Mary, 118
Mill, John Stuart, 71, 178–179
Miller, Stanley, 108
mind, 123–136
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 152
Moore, G. E., 30, 183
morality, 48, 118, 138, 145, 150–151, 160, 166, 167, 176, 180
Morgenbesser, Sidney, 46
multiverse, 49, 99, 100–101, 106, 161
Munchausen, Baron von, 23, 54
Munitz, Milton, 40–41
mystery, and knowledge, 21–34; and theology, 154–158; of the ordinary, 181–185; versus problems,
 3–6
mysticism, 41, 119–120, 122, 153–154, 156, 158, 179

Nagel, Thomas, 128, 130, 132

natural, meanings of life, 167–174; suffering, 151–153
naturalism, 38, 44, 64, 67, 80, 112, 116–118, 120–121, 125–127, 130, 132–133, 137, 149–150, 152,
155, 166–175, 180
near-death experiences, 121
Newberg, Andrew, 25
Newton, Isaac, 81, 89
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 164, 172
nihilism, 174–176
nothingness, 45–47
Nozick, Robert, 53, 101, 118

Occam’s razor, 84, 106

ontological argument, 53–54, 147–148
order, 61–63
ordinary language analysis, 11–12

panpsychism, 79, 127

paradoxes, 14–16, 27, 28–29, 66, 156
Parfit, Derek, 117
Parmenides, 42
Pascal, Blaise, 33, 162
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 144
persons, 115–122
Philips, Emo, 179
philosopher’s disease, 17–18, 43, 49, 54, 57, 90, 144, 149, 158, 177, 178, 182
physics, 94–99, 101–103
Pinker, Steven, 130
Placher, William, 157
Planck, Max, 89, 103
Plantinga, Alvin, 54, 151–152, 160
Plato and Platonism, 9, 16, 60, 62, 85, 102, 150, 184
Poincaré, Henri, 24
Popper, Karl, 23, 102, 113, 132
Pyrrho of Elis, 29, 31

qualia, 128, 129

Questions, Big, 2
Quine, Willard van Orman, 34, 39, 73

Ramsey, Frank, 22
reality, 35–44
reductionism, 69–80, 125, 128–129, 131–132, 132–134, 135, 137–138, 140, 171, 173
religion, 49–51, 55, 57, 61, 64, 100, 147–162, 165–170, 180
religious experiences, 153–154
Riseling, Maurice, iv
robots, 125, 129, 136, 171
Rundle, Behe, 46–47
Russell, Bertrand, 9, 34, 54, 62, 68, 85, 96, 99, 127, 134, 166
Ryle, Gilbert, 71

Sagan, Carl, 3
Samkhya, 119–120
Santayana, George, 136
Sartre, Jean Paul, 150, 174
Schelling, Friedrich, 45
Schlick, Moritz, 10
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 48, 56, 64
Schulz, Charles, 163
science, 51–53, 84–92, 93–106, 107–114, 133–134; post-empirical, 101–103
Searle, John, 126, 128, 136
self, 115–122
Sextus Empiricus, 29
Shatner, William, 137
skepticism, 23, 29–32, 33, 34, 159
Smart, J. J. C., 56
Smart, Ninian, 147
Smith, Huston, 165
Smolin, Lee, 67
social nature of a person, 115–116
Socrates, 9, 21, 175
Solomon, Robert, 163, 173, 177
Spinoza, Baruch, 50, 148
Stenger, Victor, 104
Strawson, Galen, 132
subjective meanings of life, 172–174
subjectivity, 122, 123–129, 129–130, 132, 134
survey of philosophers, 18
Susskind, Leonard, 101
Swinburne, Richard, 46, 100, 157

technology and its limitations, 13, 24–25, 30, 83, 86–87, 89, 104, 121, 135, 136
Tegmark, Max, 53
teleological argument, 149–150
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 152
Thagard, Paul, 174
Thales of Miletus, 47
Thatcher, Margaret, 116
theories of everything, 62, 73, 96–100, 106
Thomas, Lewis, 107
Tillich, Paul, 44, 156
Tolstoy, Leo, 169
transcendent meanings, 165–170
transcendent realities, 147–162
Twain, Mark, 14, 81

Unger, Peter, 31

values, 48–49, 106, 152, 173, 176, 180

Victoria, Queen of Britain, 57–58
Vilenkin, Alexander, 100

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 109

Watson, James, 111
Weinberg, Steven, 51, 99, 173, 176
Wells, H. G., 4
Wheeler, John Archibald, 38, 45, 83, 101, 164
Whitehead, Alfred North, 84, 136, 149, 165, 181
Wigner, Eugene, 85, 94
Wilder, Thorton, 182
Wilson, Edward O., 110
Witten, Edward, 99
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10, 11, 17, 35, 41, 47, 49, 56, 167, 175, 178

Xenophanes, 156

Yajnavalkya, 57

Zeno of Elea, 14
Zhuangzi, 21
zombies, 125