The End of Mechanism, #8–Physics Without Physicalism, & Science Without Scientism.
By Robert Hanna
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Table of Contents
II. Natural Piety and the Limits of Science
III. From Kant’s Anti-Mechanism to Kantian Anti-Mechanism
IV. Organicism Unbound: In Defense of Natural Piety
V. Scientific Pietism and Scientific Naturalism
VI. How to Ground Natural Science on Sensibility
VII. Sensible Science 1: Natural Science Without Natural Mechanism
VIII. Sensible Science 2: Natural Science Without Physicalism
IX. Sensible Science 3: Natural Science Without Scientism
X. Frankenscience, the Future of Humanity, and the Future of Science
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This installment contains sections VIII and IX.
But can you can also read or download a .pdf version of the complete essay HERE.
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VIII. Sensible Science 2: Natural Science Without Physicalism
31. If transcendental idealism for sensibility is true, then it not only vindicates mathematics and natural science, but also entails the denial of ontological and explanatory materialism or physicalism, in two ways.
32. First, the vindication of mathematics, alone, is sufficient for the denial of reductive physicalism.
As against Mill, arithmetic is a priori, not empirical; as against Frege, arithmetic is synthetic a priori, not analytic; and natural science presupposes arithmetic.
Hence natural science presupposes the synthetic a priori, and is grounded on pure sensibility and its forms of intuition, the a priori intuitional representation of time and the a priori intuitional representation of space.
But pure sensibility is neither reducible to the physical facts, because it is a priori, nor is it necessarily determined by/nomologically supervenient on the physical facts.
E.g., there is no nomologically determined causal pairing relation that discriminates between the actual world effect E of a physical cause, and its mirror-reflected counterpart, or enantiomorph, E*.
As Kant’s “Directions in Space,” Inaugural Dissertation, and the Transcendental Aesthetic collectively show, the non-physical a priori intuitional representation of space is required for recognizing the difference between incongruent counterparts.
33. Second, even a priori logical knowledge necessarily involves pure sensibility via the schematizing imagination and its cognitive phenomenology; and natural science presupposes pure general logic; but a priori knowledge of pure general logic is neither reducible to the physical facts, nor is it necessarily determined by/nomologically supervenient on the physical facts.
E.g., there is no nomologically determined relation from the physical facts that discriminates between
proposition (i): (P&Q)
and its De Morgan equivalent,
proposition (ii): ~(~Pv~Q)
But (i) and (ii) are distinct propositions, because a priori knowledge that (P&Q) logically entails P is not the same as a priori knowledge that ~(~Pv~Q) logically entails P, for a rational subject S who has not learned the De Morgan Equivalences yet, because, when S learns the latter, that knowledge is recorded by S as new a priori information.
Therefore, in nomologically identical worlds, all the physical facts can exactly remain the same while proposition (i) is replaced by proposition (ii), or conversely, and thus the propositional difference between those worlds does not nomologically supervene on the physical.
So transcendental idealism for sensibility entails the denial of both reductive and non-reductive physicalism.
IX. Sensible Science 3: Natural Science Without Scientism
34. If natural science is metaphysically grounded on pure sensibility, and if transcendental idealism for sensibility is true, then at least transcendental philosophy is not the Lockean “underlaborer” of the natural sciences: on the contrary, transcendental philosophy is autonomous from science, epistemically and metaphysically prior to science, and transcendentally presupposed by science, that is, transcendental idealism for sensibility is the condition of the real possibility of natural science.
Moreover, given the truth of transcendental idealism for sensibility, perhaps very surprisingly, we can also show that scientism is false on Kantian aesthetic and ethico-religious grounds alone, in two steps.
35. First, given the truth of transcendental idealism for sensibility, since natural mechanism and physicalism are both false, then we can take fully seriously the sensibility-grounded, essentially non-conceptual evidence provided by the aesthetic experience of the beautiful in nature outside us, as veridically tracking natural purposive form, without a purpose, in a way that is inherently disinterested and therefore divorced from all possible self-interest (CPJ 5: 204–211).
In short, the experience of the beautiful shows us that beautiful nature outside us cannot be and ought not to be regarded or treated purely instrumentally, that is, merely as a means, or exploited.
36. Second, given the truth of transcendental idealism for sensibility, since natural mechanism and physicalism are both false, then we can take fully seriously the Romantic/natural-religious/natural-theological reverential experience of the mathematical sublime (“the starry heavens above me”), which, because nature outside us is thereby experienced as having a specific character and normative value that is expressible only as a transfinite quantity, it inherently cannot reduced to a denumerable quantity, no matter how great (CPJ 5: 244–260).
Hence, nature outside us, experienced as sublime, cannot have a “market price” and is experienced as beyond price, or priceless, since all “market prices,” or exchangeable economic values (say, monetary values) “related to general human interests and needs” (GMM 4: 434), are expressible only as denumerable (natural number, rational number) quantities, even infinite ones.
Thus the specific character and normative value of nature outside us inherently transcends any economic calculus.
This is what I call the proto-dignity of nature outside us.
Nature outside us is not itself a person, and therefore it does not have dignity.
Nevertheless, nature outside us, as sublime, inherently cannot (without eco-disaster) and ought not (without moral scandal) to be merely exploited, or merely bought or sold, that is, treated as a mere capitalist resource or commodity, aka commodified.
This, in turn, is precisely because our experience of the sublime in nature outside us (“the starry heavens above me”) shows us that nature outside us is the metaphysical real ground and “home”of persons and their dignity and autonomy (“the moral law within me”).[i]
In that sense, to borrow Thornton Wilder’s lovely phrase, sublime nature outside us is metaphysically our town.
Or as Mary Shelley’s tragic natural scientist, Victor Frankenstein, negatively formulates the same point:
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.
Therefore, on Kantian scientific pietistic grounds alone, it follows that the Baconian/Cartesian technocratic “mastery of nature” attitude towards the natural world outside us is not only deeply philosophically mistaken and wrongheaded, but also deeply aesthetically, ethically, and natural-religiously wronghearted.
Wrong, and wrong again.
NOTES
For convenience, I cite Kant’s works infratextually in parentheses. The citations include both an abbreviation of the English title and the corresponding volume and page numbers in the standard “Akademie” edition of Kant’s works: Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlich Preussischen (now Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: G. Reimer [now de Gruyter], 1902-). For references to the first Critique, I follow the common practice of giving page numbers from the A (1781) and B (1787) German editions only. Because the Akademie edition contains only the B edition of the first Critique, I have also consulted the following German composite edition: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. W. Weischedel, Immanuel Kant Werkausgabe III (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968). I generally follow the standard English translations of Kant’s works, but have occasionally modified them where appropriate. Here is a list of the relevant abbreviations and English translations of works directly relevant to this essay:
CPJ Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000.
CPR Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997.
CPrR Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. M. Gregor. In Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996, pp. 139–272.
GMM Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. M. Gregor. In Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, pp. 43–108.
DS “Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space,” in Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Trans. D. Walford and R. Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992. Pp. 361–372.
DSS “Dreams of a Spirit Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics,” in Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Pp. 301–359.
ID “On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (Inaugural Dissertation).” In Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy: 1755–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992. Pp. 373–416.
MFNS Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Trans. M. Friedman. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004.
OP Immanuel Kant: Opus postumum. Trans. E. Förster and M. Rosen. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.
OPA “The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God.”Trans. D. Walford and R. Meerbote. In Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992. Pp. 107–201.
Prol Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Trans. G. Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004.
Rel Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Trans. A. Wood and G. di Giovanni. In Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996. Pp. 57–215.
WiE “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” In Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, pp. 17–22.
[i] See also S. Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996).
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