Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 130p (Kindle version).
Thomas Nagel sets himself the task of revealing the limits of a Neo-Darwinian Materialist arguments accounting for the origin of the cosmos. Nagel calls this Neo-Darwinian Materialist argument “reductionism” – the reduction of the cosmos to material argument to the exclusion of “Mind” or “noos” or “consciousness.” The material reductionism of the cosmos is a fundamental mistake, which Nagel holds Neo-Darwinism accountable for. However, following the argumentative principle of moving from the known to the unknown, Nagel started out with a classic psychosomatic understanding of reality: “The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-body problem is not just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history” (p. x.). So psychosomaticism, origins of which, in Modern Science and Philosophy, he attributes to Galileo and Descartes in chapter 3, serves as the entry method into the complex argument for the inclusion of “consciousness,” “reason,” and “value” in any credible explanation of the origin of the cosmos. For, as he argues, “[o]ne of the legitimate tasks of philosophy is to investigate the limits of even the best developed and most successful forms of contemporary scientific knowledge . . . The starting point for the argument is the failure of psychophysical reductionism, a position in the philosophy of mind that is largely motivated by the hope of showing how the physical sciences could in principle provide a theory of everything” (p. 2-4). The implication here is that physical science, exemplified by Darwinian biological and natural evolutionary creation, is inadequate in its explanation of the origin of the cosmos. In order to make this point evident, Nagel dedicates a chapter each to the questions of “consciousness,” “reason” and “value.”
Nagel’s “statement of the problem” is this: “It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection” (p. 5). Nagel takes exception to the belief that consciousness can come from dead matters: ” . . . The prevailing doctrine – that the appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing but the operation of physical law – cannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis” (p. 10). “If one doubts the reducibility of mental to the physical, and likewise of all those other things that go with the mental, such as value and meaning, then there is some reason To doubt that a reductive materialism can apply even in biology, and therefore reason to doubt that materialism can give an adequate account even of the physical world” (p. 13-14).
Nagel’s “state of the question” is this: “The great advances in the physical and biological sciences were made possible by excluding the mind from the physical world. This has permitted a quantitative understanding of that world, expressed in timeless, mathematically formulated physical laws. But at some point it will be necessary to make a new start on a more comprehensive understanding that includes the mind” (p.7). Here precisely is where Nagel locates himself – an Antireductionist. Antireductionists are those who seek an alternative to the present Neo-Darwinian presupposition that all life forms are reducible to material biological evolution. In order to call for a shift in perspective, Nagels postulates that: “If evolutionary biology is a physical theory – as it is generally taken to be – then it cannot account for the appearance of consciousness and of other phenomena that are not physically reducible. So if mind is a product of biological evolution – if organisms with mental life are not miraculous anomalies but an integral part of nature – then biology cannot be a purely physical science. The possibility opens up of a pervasive conception of the natural order – very different from materialism – one that makes mind central, rather than a side effect of physical law” (p. 14).
Here is Nagel’s thesis: “The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness” (P. 51).
The temptation to return to Platonic cosmic dualism of two worlds – forms and real – to account for the presence of cosmic consciousness was not a viable alternative for Nagel. Also, the creational explanation of the cosmos as a work of a Divinity, from a Judeo-Christian perspective (intelligent design/designer), falls short of Nagel’s materialistic based argument for a cosmos that is both “conscious” and “material,” rationally argued for to the exclusion of Deus ex machina. In other words, Nagel is not out to condemn Neo-Darwinian evolutionary materialist creation account of the cosmos; on the contrary, he aims to point out the lacunae in their argument and to suggest a probable alternative argument to eliminate the lacunae (pp. 117-118).
Nagel approaches his thesis from a different perspective which, he things, was hitherto for unapplied: to study the cosmos from within or the so-called “neutral monism” or “panpsychism” (pp. 53-55). He says: “Both theism and evolutionary naturalism are attempts to understand ourselves from the outside, using different resources” (p.22). He posits two proponents of these approaches: Descartes, for the theistic, and Darwin, for the naturalistic extremes, respectively. What falsifies their respective approaches is that “[n]either of these proposals provides a defense against radical skepticism – the possibility that our beliefs about the world are systematically false” (p. 23). An alternative is “intelligibility from within.” That is, to posit the presence of consciousness at the very inception of evolution. Consciousness becomes ahistorical and evolution of physical realities historical – life, consciousness/mind and value are co-extensive or came into being at the same time (pp. 115-118).
Positing a methodological shift led to the distinction made between “consciousness” and the “mind.” In order to understand the cosmos from within Nagel limits “mind” or mental activities to human beings and attributes awareness or “consciousness” to the whole of cosmos, albeit, to different degrees (p. 66). The basic difference between “consciousness” and “mind” is that the former is subjective and the latter is objective. The mind or mental activities are trans-subjective: they presuppose a reality other than the self. The transcendence or objectivity of the mind is argued for linguistically. Language allows for the communication and sharing of knowledge, which in turn accounts for the independence of mental activities from subjective reality (p. 73).
Going by the natural selective model of Darwinian evolutionary process, consciousness is built into the “natural selection” of species as a survival kit or tool. In other words, consciousness is not an addition to evolution, but part of evolution itself, it is needed for the survival of each specie. Cultural history shows that the human crave for survival is crass, an observable reality in different species (pp. 75-79).
After an extensive argument geared toward revealing the weaknesses of the Darwinian argument for the origin of the cosmos, Nagel concludes with “teleology” as a viable alternative grounding principle and basis for the evolution of the cosmos (pp. 111-120). For him, built into the cosmos are the wherewithal for all that the cosmos contains. It sounds like the old saying – ex nihil, nihil fit (nothing comes out of nothing). The advantage of a teleological argument is that it fits into the Darwinian program and scheme of things – evolution or gradual unfolding. Therefore, whatever is experienced or noticed about the cosmos must have its foundation already in the cosmos, nothing is added. This is the so-called “constitutive” argument.
Nagel’s book, entitled “Mind and Cosmos” renders contemporaneous the question of modernity, whether material rationality could claim monopoly for the explanation of reality. The claim of Modernity has been modest, however: only phenomenon is explainable not the mind (noumenon). Phenomenologists like Jean-Luc Marion now argue that the dichotomy between phenomenon and Noumenon is not tenable because Phenomenon encompasses Noumenon. A simple example is the concept of love. Love is invisible, but made visible in acts of love.
Ayodele Ayeni, C.S.Sp.
Newman Theological College, Edmonton, Alberta.