A Theory of the Absolute

Benedikt Paul Göcke

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137412812
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137412829
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

A Theory of the Absolute develops a worldview that is opposed to the dominant paradigm of physicalism and atheism. It provides powerful arguments for the existence of the soul and the existence of the Absolute. It shows that faith is not in contradiction to reason.

1

Introduction: A Theory of the Absolute

Any system of philosophy is an attempt to answer fundamental philosophical questions in a way that combines the minimum number of principles with the maximum explanatory force in accounting for empirical reality. Ideally, there would be only one principle that explains everything, or at least everything on a certain level of philosophical reflection.¹

1.1 Physicalism and atheism

In the last century, physicalism became the standard system within what is called ‘the analytic tradition of philosophy’. Physicalism asserts that everything is physical from an ontological point of view. If physicalism is true, then the only principle that we need in order to understand the ontology of the universe, and everything in it, is the principle of the physical.

Although there are notable exceptions, such as Peter van Inwagen (2007), physicalism goes hand-in-hand with another dominant position in recent analytic philosophy, namely atheism. Unlike physicalism, with its positive affirmation that everything is physical, atheism is the mere denial of the assertion that God exists. In our context atheism expresses the thesis that there is no extramundane personal cause of the being of the universe – a cause which for the atheist by definition could not be described as a physical cause.² According to the symbiotic worldview of physicalism and atheism, we are nothing over and above certain physical particulars that evolved through a blind process in a God-less universe and that cease to exist when our bodies or brains disintegrate.

There is one obvious question which every person should consider: how could this stance on reality become common sense in philosophy, not to mention amongst eminent intellectuals, and large sectors of the informed public? How has it come about that philosophers and public intellectuals seriously believe that the universe is self-sufficient or groundless? How is it that they seriously believe that they themselves are nothing over and above billions of atoms moving in empty space?

In order to answer such questions, one can choose between a historical approach and a systematic one. According to the historical approach, the answers have to focus on the history of ideas and the development of our culture. Such a line of response would deal with the gradual vanishing, and growing unpopularity, of the ideas that God exists and that we are immaterial souls. My interest is not in the history of ideas. I am interested in the systematic approach to the question of how physicalism and atheism could become dominant in recent philosophy, and whether they should be dominant. What matters from the standpoint of the systematic approach is sound argument. History may have developed as it did; it is not itself the measure of truth.³

Are there any sound arguments for physicalism and atheism? In order to answer this question, we have to be clear about what exactly is at stake. Is this a matter of science? Could science prove the truth of physicalism and atheism? Is it any kind of scientific belief that everything is physical and that there is no God?⁴

Science, in contrast to the philosophy of science, is ultimately based on the experimental testing of hypotheses within a given paradigm. Any knowledge science can discover is therefore based on what can be tested, or verified or falsified, by empirical investigation in the form of the carrying out of reliable experiments within the boundaries set by the paradigm deployed.

We have to ask a simple question: what kind of experiment could show that everything is physical or that God does not exist? Apart from the impossibility of empirically verifying an implicit universal quantification, it is clear upon reflection that science cannot have a single word to say on whether there are genuine non-physical ‘entities’, such as God or the soul, because empirical experiments by definition are restricted to observing and measuring what is physical. What is non-physical is not in the domain of the sciences. Therefore, although many people seem to suppose that physicalism and atheism are a consequence, or presupposition, of science, or are themselves scientific claims, all this is simply false.⁵

Instead, we have to understand physicalism and atheism as philosophical theses about the fundamental structure of the totality of reality we can experience. The only relevant question, then, is whether there is any sound philosophical argument for physicalism and atheism. A sound argument is a valid one, in that if the premises are true then the conclusion cannot fail to be true, and all its premises are true.⁶

1.2 A problem of method

Does what we already know about the world and ourselves entail that everything is physical? Does it entail the claim that God does not exist? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question because there is no unanimity amongst philosophers as regards philosophy’s ability to acquire true statements on its own – statements that could figure as premises in the relevant arguments for or against the thesis that everything is physical or the one that God (or the soul) exists. There are two camps: the pessimistic philosophers and the optimistic philosophers.

1.2.1 Pessimistic and optimistic philosophers

Whether they acknowledge it or not nowadays, pessimistic philosophers are still trapped in the paradigm of the Vienna Circle because they suppose that the only ways to obtain knowledge are scientific.⁷ On their view, philosophy is the handmaiden of the sciences: it clarifies scientific concepts, or illuminates conceptual relations, but philosophy has no power to obtain insights into reality independent of the sciences. The pessimistic camp, consequently, assumes that empiricism is the method of choice as regards our ability to obtain knowledge of the world.

The camp of the optimistic philosophers assumes that philosophy is not the mere handmaiden of the sciences but is capable of discovering truth on its own. Optimistic philosophers trust our apparent ability to obtain knowledge that is independent of science, but is nonetheless genuine knowledge concerning this world and our being in it. Since according to this camp, the method of philosophy is not exclusively based on experiment and empirical knowledge of the world, optimistic philosophers tend to be rationalists with a firm belief in both the possibility of a priori knowledge gained through rational intuition, and a reliable connection between conceivability and metaphysical possibility.⁸

The reason this division into camps is a problem in the context of the question of whether there is sound argument for physicalism and atheism is that pessimistic philosophers tend to be physicalists and atheists whereas optimistic philosophers tend to be much more open to recognising the existence of God and the soul.

This is natural. If, as a philosopher, you are pessimistic about your own faculty of obtaining knowledge of the world, or the soul, or God, independently of the sciences, or if you suppose that there is only empirical knowledge and perhaps some analytic a priori truisms, then you will not be convinced by, say, Cartesian arguments for substance dualism, or Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God. You will not believe that your ability to conceive of yourself existing without a body entails the metaphysical possibility of your existing without a body, and therefore you will resist the conclusion that you are not a physical particular. Instead, you will deem it best to suppose that you are your brain or body, an object that is available to empirical investigation.

If, on the other hand, you are optimistic about our being able to obtain synthetic a priori knowledge about the world or the soul, then you will be deeply baffled about how somebody can actually believe that he or she is nothing over and above his or her brain, because it will be obvious to you that it is conceivable, and therefore possible, to exist without a physical body. Each side of the camp, almost inevitably, must look pathological to the other side.⁹

1.2.2 An argumentative quandary

Because physicalism and atheism on the one hand, and substantial speculative metaphysics on the other are intertwined in this way with their corresponding stances on the limit and scope of genuine philosophical knowledge, it is almost impossible for one camp of philosophers to convince philosophers of the other camp of their conclusions. The reason is not, or not necessarily, that there is something wrong with the validity of the arguments deployed. Rather, there is fundamental disagreement about the methods for establishing the truth of the premises needed for sound argument in the first place. The most one could hope to achieve is to point out a straightforward contradiction in the other’s assumptions.¹⁰

If, however, neither camp in principle seems to be able to convince the other of the proper method of philosophy, or of which kinds of truths are discoverable by philosophical reflection, then one might be forgiven for supposing that there simply is no truth, or at least none which we could hope to access. One might argue that the best explanation of why agreement is impossible is simply that there is nothing to be agreed upon. One could then explain the division between pessimistic and optimistic philosophers by assuming that there is no fact of the matter to agree or disagree about.

Although one could draw the conclusion that epistemological relativism is at the basis of this sort of philosophical disagreement, it seems to me better to keep on assuming that there is a truth of the matter because, from a logical point of view, one of the following cursive sentences is true: Either everything is physical or it is not the case that everything is physical. As regards the existence of God (or the soul): Either God (or the soul) exists or it is not the case that God (or the soul) exists. As long as we suppose that these sentences express meaningful propositions, we could only suppose that there is no truth of the matter if we reject the principle of bivalence, which is far too high a price to pay. Therefore, the most that could be doubted is that we can discover the truth-value of these propositions. But even this doubt seems to me to be unnecessarily sceptical. It might take time to convince the other camp of certain claims, but as long as everyone participating in the debate is open-minded and willing to listen carefully to the other camp’s argument, not excluding or ignoring disagreeable ways of thinking about the totality of reality as we experience it, right from the start, then progress might be achieved.

Of course, to perceive the situation in this way is itself an act of belief, a decision that is based on my intuitions about the ultimate nature of philosophy, bivalence, and truth as such. However, I do not consider this to be much of a problem from a systematic point of view. Everybody has to start by taking certain assumptions and intuitions as basic. It is illusory to suppose there can be any systematic philosophy that is not to a certain extent based on our intuitions as starting points. These intuitions are, of necessity, not justifiable in any ultimate sense, so that just by pointing them out one cannot expect to convince other people to adopt them as well.

What is important is the overall plausibility and consistency of the system that is based upon these intuitions, or based on these beliefs, in accounting for the phenomena that are given to us in experience of us ourselves and the surrounding world.

1.3 The world and the soul

As you will soon recognise, the present essay is written from a philosphically optimistic point of view in regard to our ability to gain insight into empirical reality and its foundation. This insight is independent of science but does not at any point contradict science. A lot of what I am going to argue for cannot contradict the findings of science because, apart from minor points in the theory of time, my main concern has to do with the metaphysical or categorical interpretation of the totality of reality, with which science has little to nothing to do. We must draw a distinction here between the sciences as they are actually carried out empirically by the scientific community, on the one hand, and certain positions in the philosophy of science on the other. Whereas science is concerned with the interpretation of empirical phenomena, the philosophy of science is concerned with the metaphysical interpretation of the relation between scientific results and empirical reality. The arguments developed here will contradict atheistic and physicalist positions in the philosophy of science, but they will not contradict any scientific results whatsoever.

I have written the present book in order to counter the dominant physicalist and atheist worldview and to show that there is a reasonable, or at least not unreasonable, alternative stance on empirical reality which is consistent with science and provides room for the being of God and the soul. In what follows, I provide a rough overview of the main arguments to be developed throughout the book.

1.3.1 Possible worlds and individual essences

The first thesis I justify is the actualistically inspired thesis that: Possible worlds are temporally well-ordered structures of maximally consistent co-exemplifiable combinations of individual essences. The individual essence of a particular is a maximally consistent modal and temporal determination of the properties that the particular in question exemplifies at certain points of time in the possible worlds in which it exists.

The second thesis I justify is the thesis that it is reasonable to suppose that only the world we live in is actual because only this world is such that we have a meaningful notion concerning its flow of time, which is to say that: The actuality of the actual world consists in the fact that this world is the only one in which there is a flow of time from the future to the past through the ontological highlight of some moment’s being the present moment of time. Since only what exists now can be the object of experience for a subject of experience, it follows that the actual world is in fact the only possible world that can be the object of experience for a subject of experience. If we supposed that there is a flow of time in another possible world, then we would have to assume that this world can now also be potentially experienced by a subject of experience but this contradicts the difference between the actual world and other possible worlds as defined.

I end the ontology of possible worlds, in Chapter 5, with a justification of the following thesis: Conceivability, properly understood, entails metaphysical possibility. On the ontology developed, this thesis is analytically true because individual essences are at once the building blocks of poss...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: A Theory of the Absolute
• 2  Possible Worlds and Individual Essences
• 3  Existence and Individual Essences
• 4  Time and Individual Essences
• 5  Conceivability and Individual Essences
• 6  A Clarification of Physicalism
• 7  A Refutation of Physicalism
• 8  Reflections on the Soul
• 9  Concepts of God in Philosophy and Theology
• 10  The Contingency of Empirical Reality
• 11  The Indistinct Absolute
• 12  Summary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index