Benjamin Chicka, Philip Clayton, Daniel Dennett, Charles Sanders Peirce, Robert Cummings Neville, theology of nature, natural theology

1. http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2010/03/29/disagree-to-agree-philip-
clayton-and-daniel-dennett/
John Sobert Sylvest says:
March 29, 2010 at 11:52 am
Ben, this is an excellent recap and faithful to the way I experienced that particular
Mardi Gras afternoon (the ONLY person in New Orleans virtually at Claremont
and not actually on Bourbon Street; forgive me, Lord.).
I would say that we all need philosophical norms to provide a meta-metaphysical
perspective but that essential Christian dogma are not inescapably loaded with
any particular scientific, philosophical or metaphysical presuppositions,
including such as a soul, metaphysical self or even a wholly autonomous free will.
There is a probabilistic middle ground, for example, between absolutely free
choices and seemingly free choices that can be established even within a so-
called hegemony of the physical. I have imported some of my own reflections on
the Clayton-Dennett debate into another discussion we’ve been having at
National Public Radio about related matters re: philosophy of mind, where I offer
an expanded critique of Dennett that keeps his baby but cleans up his bathwater.
Should one go metaphysical, that’s fine as long as it is fallibilist.
John Sobert Sylvest says:
March 29, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Ben, another distinction: I tend to lump metaphysics into the same category as
natural theology and natural philosophy, where it is useful in framing up our
ultimate concerns, disambiguating our concepts, clarifying reality’s putative
initial, boundary & limit conditions, maybe even formulating our arguments thru
abductive inference but going no further, chastized by past overreaches,
attempts to prove too much or to say more than we can possibly know. With a
contrite fallibilism, we explore the nature of our questions and the form of our
meta-talk. This critique is not the radical apophaticism that’s exhibited by some
of those with overly dialectical imaginations; rather, it affirms metaphysical
realism but suggests that our deontologies should then be considered as
tentative as our ontologies are speculative. IOW, we might severely question how
much normative impetus our metaphysics can claim as we move from what we
think IS to what we think OUGHT to be.
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2. What I whole-heartedly affirm is the robust engagement of our analogical
imaginations, employing analogies and metaphors in what is a essentially poetic
rhetoric that has its starting place within the faith and is thus a Theology of
Nature. This is how I receive most of the work of Clayton, Bracken, Haught et al.
These are elaborate tautologies filled with nature references and even technical
scientific jargon that are nevertheless on par with the psalms, St. Francis’ Hymns
to nature and such but brought up to date for our postmodern milieu. They have a
tremendous amount of interpretive and evaluative significance and the more
consonant with what we already know from descriptive science and normative
philosophy, the more taut will be the tautology, which means that, while all
metaphors eventually collapse, our metaphors can be rather resilient and
versatile. IOW, such theologies of nature find their usefulness among those who
have already taken the leap of faith, not unaided by reason and not inconsistent
with science, but not so much as argumentation for faith, like the classical proofs
which were metaphysical. Such a theology of nature-enlivened imagination can,
indeed, recursively help further illuminate our understanding of life, in general,
as we believe in order to know.
Anyway, that’s my parsing. As for competing metaphysical tautologies, the way I
would adjudicate between those is by asking which one might best foster the
normalization of gravity and quantum mechanics. Otherwise, they aren’t terribly
interesting are helpful. We know that religion as a value-realization approach
enjoys epistemic virtue, just like science. But we can’t deny that they otherwise
differ in the amount of epistemic risk; we can only suggest that the increased
risks has commensurate rewards.
John Sobert Sylvest says:
March 29, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Ben, that was a delightful read. It is something I will keep in my pdf library. As for
us getting there from opposite directions, your suspicion may be suspect
because my philosophical project is called a Peircean-Nevillean Integral
Axiological Epistemology [PNIAE] and my theology of nature is called Pan-
semio-entheism. If I grasped the import of your own thrust correctly, we may be
hermeneutical blood-brothers. I am mighty pleased to thus make your cyber-
acquaintence. I am precisely interested in the application of my PNIAE in the
interreligious realm, employing a concept that Amos Yong (my collaborator)
calls the pneumatological imagination. Our collaboration remains a work-in-
progress. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page , where it reads NOTES,
there you will find some summary materials. BTW, I reject the transcendental
thomism of Rahner b/c its kantian notions are too a prioristic and rationalistic. I
do look to Lonergan but similarly qualify his stuff. Stay in touch! Are there others
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3. of you at Claremont with pragmatist leanings?
Jo Ann, I am about at the same place Phil Clayton is with all of this. I just finished
archiving all of the stuff I’ve been scribbling over the past 10 years post-
retirement and have basically given up new investigations of this nature. They
have reached a point of diminishing returns for me. You know: So much straw.
They reached that point for others much earlier, I know. I suppose I get on
discussion forums like this one at National Public Radio only to avoid going cold
turkey with my pomotheo process addiction. Still, at times, we must engage
others like Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens on their own terms and
with their jargon in order to better subvert their systems from within. At other
times, such jargon represents a lapse because it is not audience-appropriate and
thus offends charity by excluding people. Then again, on the other hand, it can
be a shortcut and will take less time and less space than a more accessible
version in an exchange such as the one above. My time and this space is limited
but I will gladly address any specific questions as I can, when I can.
John Sobert Sylvest says:
March 30, 2010 at 7:29 am
Well, as Radical Orthodoxy might say, Dennett does have a few rather
confessional stances, himself. One way to bust the religious move is to avoid
getting so apophatic that one imagines that what is wholly incomprehensible is
not, at the same time, partly apprehendable or thinks that a failure to successfully
describe a reality necessarily forecloses on one’s ability to successfully refer to
it. Each stance has risks and rewards. Perhaps one measure of the amount irony
that will attend to any given stance is its risk:reward ratio vis a vis what Lonergan
has described in terms of a growth in human authenticity through various
conversions?
John Sobert Sylvest says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Ben, I better understand our convergence, now. I am an autodidact w/no
academic background in philosophy, religion or theology, plus I lead an almost
eremitic life, and this might make my prose a tad dense and my wordings
somewhat idiosyncratic.
Below is my defense of what I think you are saying using Peircean categories as I
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4. understand them. I think this sets forth how our views resonate. I do not want to
presume upon your time. Also, I do not want to suck the oxygen out of this thread
with an off-topic consideration so I am inviting Tripp to delete it and send it to
you by e-mail for your disposal at your convenience. Whatever protocol dictates.
I do not have the luxury of classroom exchanges, seminar discussions and grad
dept coffee klatches, so I don’t want to presume upon your generosity, which
might be easy for me to do.
In my approach to Peirce, I distinguish between 1ns and 3ns in terms of the
in/determinate and un/specifiable, respectively. The indeterminacy is epistemic
in nature and results from methodological constraints. Any unspecifiability is
ontological, or modal, in nature and results from a putative in-principle
ontological occulting. One way these would differ is that any ignorance due to
unspecifiability would be invincible, while that due to indeterminacy is
potentially temporary and could be conquered with future methodological
improvements (e.g. technological) or epistemic insights (e.g. aha moments,
abductions, paradigm shifts). Our semantical vagueness thus treats the modal
possibilities of 1ns such that excluded middle holds while noncontradiction folds
(in epistemic indeterminacy) and the modal probabilities of 3ns such that
excluded middle folds while noncontradiction holds (in ontological vagueness).
Which modal realities will later present as the actualities of 2ns, where EM & NC
both hold, remains to be seen because we cannot a priori know when it is that our
ignorance is invincible due to an in-principle ontological occulting and when it
might otherwise be conquered due to our overcoming of methodological
constraints. Of course, we adopt a methodological naturalism precisely because
to otherwise presuppose that our ignorance results from an ontological occulting
would be to drive into an epistemic cul-de-sac. A philosophical naturalism a
priori presupposes that all ignorance results from what is temporarily
indeterminable, epistemically speaking, and issues a metaphysical promissory
note for future ontological specificity.
I say all of this to provide me a framework for grappling with your directionality
distinctions. Stipulating to the indexical nature of human knowledge, it would
seem that any intentionality that moves from humans in the world reaching
toward what is unknown, which we cannot a priori presuppose as either
temporarily indeterminate or invincibly unspecifiable, would entail a fallibilist,
speculative metaphysic, which necessarily employs both positivist and
philosophic methodologies. And it would seem that any reversal of that claim in
Dewey’s notions of intending symbols mediating the world back to humans is
also an integral part of the same triadic inferential process as 3ns play its
mediating role in an ongoing recursive interplay with 1ns and 2ns. This would
thus correspond to the Peircean rubric that the normative sciences (3ns) mediate
between phenomenology (2ns or science) and metaphysics (1ns, incl speculative
cosmology and highly theoretical physics). This is to say that it seems that Neville
is talking about Peircean 1ns and you are talking about 3ns (vis a vis your
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5. reversal). And it is also to suggest that, while your insights are indispensable that
they are supplemental and not wholly over against Neville’s account, which
would be incomplete per your description.
You appear to be making an additional move, as I see it. I appreciate that the
context of Neville’s work hereinabove was theological, but my treatment above
prescinded from that theological take to the strictly phenomenological,
philosophical and metaphysical. In your treatment of 3ns, you are taking an
essentially phenomenological category and coloring it with a theological hue,
analogically imagining that the world is mediating to us not only our local
environs but also expressions of primal reality (reality’s initial, boundary & limit
conditions). Thus you are making a distinctly theological turn and have segued
from a natural theology to a theology of nature.
The reason I thus characterize your thrust as a theology of nature is because our
natural theology is confronted with what is very likely an immeasurable amount
of information erasure due to entropic processes. The deeper we go into the
structures of matter and the closer we get to t=0 near the Big Bang, the less
information available re: our initial, boundary and limit conditions, much less
ultimate reality. The world certainly mediates info to us re: our own horizons but
any temporal critical realism looks like it will indeed be methodologically
constrained if for no other reason than temporality, itself, collapses, a
spatiotemporal reality on which we rely in our common sense notions of
causation. The human experience of ultimacy remains fraught with mystery as
reality appears terribly ambivalent toward us and incredibly ambiguous to us in
the symbols it has intended for us. Thus, if with Blake we do see the world in a
grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower, holding Infinity in the palm of our hand and
Eternity in an hour, we are doing a theology of nature. And so it is that I call my
own theology of nature a pan-semio-entheism. I make that theological turn with
you and take that existential leap even while suggesting THAT Ultimacy is
mediating Herself back to me through manifold and multiform symbols (physical
signs at that) even if I cannot give a robust account of just HOW that may be so.
On that front, I prefer to remain ontologically vague, if only to return the favor to
the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This indeed supports a robustly
pluralistic approach to the world’s Great Traditions and indigenous religions.
John Sobert Sylvest says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:43 pm
BTW, and that’s also why I characterize Dennett’s confessional stance as a(n) (a)
theology of nature, also ;)
Someone is saying more than one can possibly know, proving too much, taking a
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6. leap but not looking over one’s shoulder at the leap and considering its distance
and nature.
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