God and Creation: Why Monistic Idealism is Certainly False: A Review of Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos"

The last decade has seen a slew of books written by philosophical atheists, attacking the Christian faith as being irrational. Often what underlies such writings is a smug arrogance that ignores epistemological and metaphysical issues which trouble the naturalistic worldview. A dogmatic adherence to Darwinism, scientific positivism, and an epistemology of “atheism is more rational because I said so,” seems to be the flavor of the day for those who have deemed themselves “evangelical atheists.” However, this last October another atheist author published a much anticipated book denying such a worldview. Not only did he deny such claims, but said that they are fundamentally flawed and impossible. The name of the book is Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian view of Reality is Most Certainly False, and the author is famed philosopher Thomas Nagel. Dr. Nagel is well known for his others book which have been written in the areas of epistemology and ethics. He has caught much attention for being a committed atheist, yet antagonistic to the typical party line of the “free thought” intellectuals. In many ways Mind and Cosmos is a sort of magnum opus for his career, which pieces together a lot of his thought and reflections in light of a lifetime of study. This is why this work deserves careful attention from those in Christian circles, as there is much that can be drawn from the volume as it pertains to the defense of the faith. However, there is also a need for an apologetic response to the arguments and worldview that Nagel, as an atheist, promotes in this book. But first, let’s examine the value of Mind and Cosmos for Christian apologetics.

The Positives

In this volume, Thomas Nagel’s effectively dismantles the current anti-Christian paradigm from the inside out. He does this while maintaining his admitted theophobia, while in many ways also appearing to be “fighting for the angels.” He effectively deconstructs the current paradigm pertaining to four categories; the nature of science, consciousness, cognition, and ethics/values. In arguing from the nature of science he uses an argument that has been popular for decades with Christian apologists of all stripes, yet with the academic rigor that comes with his post. Essentially, he says that the nature of the scientific enterprise and scientific knowledge presumes upon certain characteristics of the universe and how it relates to the human mind. In the beginning of the book he clearly states his goal to propose a system “that makes mind central, rather than a side effect of physical law.” In making these arguments he is not just talking about individual human minds, but the concept of “mind” overall. He argues for such a metaphysic out of the very nature of human knowledge.

“In the meantime, we go on using perception and reason to construct scientific theories of the natural world even though we do not have a convincing external account of why those faculties exist that is consistent with our confidence in their reliability-neither a naturalistic account nor a Cartesian theistic one. The existence of conscious minds and their access to the evidence, truths of ethics and mathematics are among the data that a theory of the world and our place in it has yet to explain. They are clearly part of what is the case, just as much as the data about the physical world provided by perception and the conclusions of scientific reasoning about what would best explain those data. We cannot just assume that the latter category of thought has priority over the others, so that what it cannot explain is not real.” In other words, Nagel is arguing that the existence of science itself, and transcendental absolutes, is an empirical fact that needs to be explained to justify our endeavors. Naturalists cannot just shrug their shoulders and say “that’s just the way it is.” A project, such as science, requires a foundation. Nagel repeatedly reinforces throughout his books the idea that such cognitive dissonance amongst naturalists is not acceptable. Science needs an epistemological foundation in order to function and progress. The Christian worldview provided one such worldview centuries ago, but having been rejected by “the academy,” Nagel points out that the emperor no longer has any clothes. However, as we shall see, Nagel concurs with the Christ rejecting epistemology of the academy, and merely suggests another secular alternative. But Nagel points out further, that if naturalism cannot account for scientific knowledge, or provide it an epistemological foundation, neither can it do so with consciousness itself.

Consciousness

Nagel begins chapter three by immediately “pushing the antithesis” on naturalism’s relationship to human consciousness. He declares, “Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science.” In this chapter Nagel contributes what is most likely fresh material for many Christians who would reflect on these issues. In it Nagel deals with the identity theory of human consciousness. The identity theory is the preferred option of those who hold to a naturalistic worldview. The content of the theory can be found in its name; human consciousness is identical with various brains states. In other words, consciousness is an accident of brain chemistry, much in the same way that it just so happens to be that smoke rises up from fire. However, in all their attempts to make ‘A=B,’ as it pertains to consciousness and brain states, materialists have missed the glaringly obvious fact that by their nature they are two separate entities. Nagel says, “Materialists had to explain how “pain” and “brain state” can refer to the same thing even though their meaning is not the same, and to explain this without appealing to anything nonphysical in accounting for the reference of “pain.” He illustrates that in other realms of science, for example, it is valid to indentify H20 with Water. All that water is, is H20, whether water is present or experienced. But when we are talking about consciousness and experience itself, and trying to equivocate them with a physical description, we run into issues. “Experience of taste seems to be something extra, contingently related to the brain state-something produced rather than constituted by the brain state.” He goes through several mind experiments and analogies to demonstrate that mental states are indeed a non sequitur to brain states, and that current theories do not constitute a proper explanation. One example he brings to the table is the analogy of a calculator. In trying to understand a calculator, it does not follow that the calculator displays the numbers 8 when 3+5 are entered, as an explanation. There is certainly correlation but not necessarily explanation. Without the further fact that the calculator was designed to embody an arithmetic algorithm and to display its results in Arabic numerals, the physical explanation alone would leave the arithmetical result completely mysterious. It would give the cause of the figure that appeared on the screen, but would not explain the number as such. In other words, because certain brains states are associated with certain experiences, in no way “explains” those conscious experiences in their essence. Furthermore, no evolutionary theory adequately tells us what consciousness is, or why such a phenomenon would pop up in the long battle for survival of the species. So the scientific enterprise, and consciousness itself are an enigma, or an anomaly to current theories, and they cannot simply be brushed aside. Nagel provides much more juicy material in this chapter, which I can only recommend that you read yourself, in order to benefit from it. In the next chapter Nagel aims even higher, and sets his sights on the act of cognition itself.

Cognition

This chapter of Mind and Cosmos reflects most strongly the fact that Nagel has interacted with Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. His basic argument is that natural selection does not select for “truth.” In other words, there is no reason why the mechanism of “survival of the fittest” would produce creatures that could accurately ascend beyond the realm of mere appearances to “true beliefs” about reality. He write, “The natural internal stance of human life assumes that there is a real world, that many questions, both factual and practical, have correct answers, and that there are norms of thought which, if we follow them, will tend to lead us toward the correct answers to those questions.” Some may argue that it is necessary for advanced life to ascend to such a level of intelligence, since they operate in the real world and must contend with it. However, for mere survival, Nagel points out that it would only be necessary for creatures to perceive true appearances of reality. For survival, it would not be necessary to transcend to the level of true beliefs, universals, or “pictures” of reality. Even assuming that such is the case presupposes, in the first place, the real existence of certain transcendental absolutes which are above the particulars of the material universe. Furthermore, evolutionary theorists themselves are the subjects of such theorizing and presuppose that the picture of reality they have in their own minds is valid. “Therefore any evolutionary account of the place of reason presupposes reason’s validity and cannot confirm it without circularity.” This is the same argument that Plantinga has made against evolutionary naturalism, yet with the clarity and elegance that characterizes Nagel as an academic philosopher.

Eventually the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionary, naturalistic terms must bottom out in something that is grasped as valid in itself-something without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible. Thought moves us beyond appearance to something that we cannot regard merely as biologically based disposition, whose reliability we can determine on other grounds. It is not enough to be able to think that if there are logical truths, natural selection might very well have given me the capacity to recognize them. That cannot be my ground for trusting my reason, because even that thought implicitly relies on reason in a prior way. Amen. Nagel concludes that cognition requires teleology for valid existence in creation. However he argues for teleology grounded in a Hegelian concept of mind slowly coming to self-awareness, rather than in the Triune God of Scripture.

Morality/Virtue

This is probably the area of Nagel’s book which is the weakest, as far as his own arguments go, as well as providing value for Christians in “pushing the antithesis” on naturalism. What is most striking about this chapter is that the whole concept of revelation is not only dismissed by Nagel, but completely ignored. Many non-Christian thinkers are completely ignorant of biblical revelation as a source of epistemology and metaphysics, and understandably so. Yet virtually all of them will recognize the religious case for “revealed” morality. However Nagel apparently ignores it all together. In considering the options, Nagel restricts himself to only subjectivism and realism in evaluating the origin of values and virtue. Subjectivism explains the truth or falsity of our value judgments in light of our own inner moral sense, whereas realism seeks to ground those judgments in our real circumstances. Nagel seems to affirm the value of both in a way, which is natural given his metaphysic of mind slowly become conscious of itself through the subjective experience of individual consciousnesses in concrete history. He argues that virtue/value comes from the “cosmic predisposition to the formation of life” and consciousness. In making his arguments he presupposes a humanist pleasure/pain value system as self-evident and the final court of appeals in terms of virtue. He writes:

[Y]et we can be motivated by the recognition that pain is bad, and that there is reason to do what will prevent it, whether for ourselves or for others. Such considerations can get us to resist the immediate, built-in motivation of present pleasure or pain, giving it only its objective value.

In making these arguments he does not provide a convincing foundation for his version of virtue to rest upon. How can he demonstrate that the human mind is not just projecting its own experience of pleasure and pain as a transcendental absolute onto the universe, claiming that it is binding upon sentient creatures? He offers no such demonstration, but merely draws out the implications of what he already assumes to be morality. Obviously, the Christian concept of morality is much more lofty and profound than the dichotomy of pleasure and pain as experienced by the creatures (although not mutually exclusive to it). Christianity affirms subjectivism and realism as they are subset’s of God’s revealed will. The moral law is written within, and the course of nature generally blesses the adherence to it. However, Nagel does argue that the mere concept of virtue contradicts a naturalistic account of reality. He argues, “we should think of ourselves as calling on a capacity of judgment that allows us to transcend the imperatives of biology.” In other words, the existence of virtue is a problem for naturalists, as Christian apologists have been arguing for decades.

Before we move on to “push the antithesis” on Nagel’s own system, and examine some of the negatives of his book, there is one more positive thing to say about his work. Even though he accepts a fundamental form of evolution, Dr. Nagel does creationists a service by legitimizing the Intelligent Design enterprise. He writes:

[e]ven though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves.

He says further, “[t]hey do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.”

We should be grateful that Dr. Nagel exhibits such intellectual honesty and academic courage, given his position. Despite that, there are multiple problems with this book, both from a general worldview assessment, as well as from a specifically Christian assessment of what he is promoting in this book.

The Negatives

While Nagel’s criticism of naturalism is strong and valid, the positive worldview statements he makes are often vague, confusing, and self-contradictory. Just as he “pushes the antithesis” on naturalism, exposing her nakedness as a philosophy, the same needs to be done with his atheistical monism. Nagel begins his discussion on the nature of science by denying that the human mind can comprehend the total picture of reality in any form. Christians can certainly amen this assertion, and much of what Nagel says fits in with what theologians refer to as the archetypal/ectypal distinction in human knowledge. Yet after placing a limitation on human knowledge and saying that naturalism can in no way accurately picture reality, he states that in finding the limits of science it “may eventually lead to the discovery of new forms of scientific understanding.” Lacking an understanding of the Archetypal knowledge of God mediated to us through the ectypes of revelation, Nagel collapses back onto the same man-centered epistemology, or scientism, he criticizes, yet in a different form. It is here that he first admits he is a philosophical monist. This put him in a dichotomy where he confidently that the elegance of monism is to be preferred over the dualism of theism, and yet he admits that apart from such an aesthetic preference, knowledge may very well be fragmentary. He says “perhaps, in the worst case, there is no comprehensive natural order in which everything hangs together-only disconnected forms of understanding.” So he states that monism is to be preferred because of its unifying nature, but then he goes on to say that such a standard of unity may in fact not square with reality. But there is a problem in that if knowledge is fragmentary, we could never come to the “unified” understanding that it was so in the first place. Nagel is clearly lost here, which is not surprising, given he is grounding knowledge in human rationality, rather than in divine rationality. Like Van Til observed about unbelieving thought, he lacks a foundation for certainty; therefore, his system is caught up between the opposite poles of absolute rationalism and absolute irrationalism. His desire for a unified mind behind everything is clearly a Christian motivation, which could find rest in the doctrine of divine simplicity, yet being an unbeliever he has no basis to assert that unity of thought reflects ontology, or is to be preferred. Nagel’s straw-manning of the Christian option, and preference for monism is problematic in several other areas as well.

First of all, Nagel spends a lot of time attacking materialism and naturalism, which are the very bedrock of evolutionary theory. He even admits that the research of ID theorists is compelling and deserves to be heard. But then he moves on to embrace a Hegelian form of evolution; but upon what basis? If evolution is problematic from a metaphysical, epistemological, and empirical standpoint (as he argues), then isn’t it time to start over? It becomes clear when going through Mind and Cosmos that Nagel has chosen autonomous human reason before even the mere possibility of a transcendent God and His verbal revelation. In light of his sober criticisms of naturalism he is only left with monism and a form of self-creation or emanation. Nagel does not create much of a positive case for these views; he merely chooses it as the only alternative between naturalism and his straw-manned version of Christian theism or “dualism.” Nagel paints a picture of the Christian view, as one in which the natural world exists autonomously and which God periodically enters into, in order to “tinker” with it. According to him, this undermines the coherence of nature and invokes complicated, unnecessary entities. However, in doing this, and in arguing for simplicity while using Occam’s razor, he is borrowing concepts that are implications of the doctrine of Divine simplicity. James Dolezal wonderfully defends this doctrine, in another excellent recent publication, God Without Parts. He defines it as, “[t]he doctrine of divine simplicity teaches that (1) God is identical with his existence and his essence and (2) that each of his attributes is ontologically identical with his existence and with every other one of his attributes.” The doctrine of Divine simplicity gives us the same elegance, or unity, while maintaining the doctrine of creation and intelligent design, yet avoiding the logical contradictions inherent in monism. Of course the most blaring contradiction in his system, as in Hegelianism in general, is the concept of self-creation or unfolding. When Nagel argues for teleology without mind, he is demanding a purpose that precedes mind. The purpose or “track” that the universal mind follows in its unfolding, must precede it, as the instances of history are what this mind experiences as if becomes increasingly self-aware through each particular. Such a mind is only aware of each stage of development as it happens, therefore it cannot precede and plan the events of history. How then can there be teleology? The universal mind that Nagel proposes suffers the same problem he illuminates for individual minds in history; how does such a mind rise beyond appearances to achieve “self-awareness” pertaining to some entity out there called “universal reason.” Wouldn’t such “reason” be yet another object that needs explanation, and through which the universal mind is explained and understood? Now we are stuck with a potential infinite regress and his argument that monism is more “simple” falls apart. It is merely a surface level mirage. Furthermore, monism hardly solves the problem of the one and many, as it merely brushes aside the reality of particulars. Even if a monist desires to argue that the particulars are merely illusory, they still have the fundamental problem that when speaking of particulars, they are still referring to a definite “thing.” This, and many other issues, renders monism as incoherent. But the Christian doctrine of a transcendent God who is simple, identical with His attributes and will, and whose will is eternal and comprehensive, solves these issues. However, Nagel has already set aside this concept of theism as being a “limiting concept” (an idea he gets from Kant, not the catholic faith) and dualistic, according to his Deistic straw-man of it. He writes, “So long as the divine mind just has to be accepted as a stopping point in the pursuit of understanding, it leaves the process (of science) incomplete, just as the purely descriptive materialist account does.” However at the end of his book he admits, “It is perfectly possible that the truth is beyond our reach, in virtue of our intrinsic cognitive limitations, and not merely beyond our grasp in humanity’s present stage of intellectual development.” Again the Archtypal/Ectypal and the Creator/creature distinctions in ontology would help him here if he would submit his mind to Revelation. But Nagel has revealed he is interested in no such thing. In the book Nagel makes the admission that contrary to his colleague, Alvin Plantinga, he has no “sensus divinitatus”. However, it is not simply that Nagel lacks a sense organ, it is that he is actively suppressing the truth. Romans 1 tells us:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to the, because God has made it plain to them.

Nagel has said before a more honest admission “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” This is why he can actively expose the weakness of other non-believing worldview, all while ignoring the same issues in his own worldview; he is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. This is also why he must straw-man the Christian worldview. Yet he also borrows concepts from the Christian worldview, and from God’s active revelation to him (reason, logic, virtue, realism), all while denying their source. He even borrows content from special revelation, as mediated to him by his colleague Alvin Plantinga. Unfortunately, Plantinga has not helped in this matter as he does not own up to the source of his worldview, but follows many other Christian apologists before him who claim they are merely making “rational” arguments. In claiming that the clarity which God’s spoken word brings is merely common to all men, they give unbelievers a warrant to lift such arguments out of their Christian context and claim that they are purely secular observations. Presuppositional apologetics is much clearer and draws the line sharper in the antithesis, than Plantinga’s supposed “reformed” apologetics. Cornelius Van Til stated concerning unbelieving thought:

In the non-Christian outlook, the space-time universe exists and is intelligible apart from God; whatever happens is random, and facts are not preinterpreted, related, or controlled by a personal mind. Value stem from man himself or are somehow inherent in nature. The individual’s own mind thus provides the connections between himself, objects, events, or other minds-as well as contributing the (purely formal) principles or law by which he thinks and evaluates and by which he orders and interprets his experience.

Van Til’s statement here seems almost prophetic of Nagel’s position. However, Van Til didn’t have a crystal ball, he just understood how the unregenerate mind works. Herman Bavinck also has some rich observations about the nature of monism and pantheism:

Kleutgen, accordingly, is right on target when he writes: "The difference between pantheism’s speculations and that of the theist… is this: whereas the former starting with assumptions-as obscure as they are unprovable-about the divine being, ends in open contradictions; the latter, proceeding from a sure knowledge of finite things, gains even-higher kinds of insights, until it encounters the Incomprehensible, not losing its grip on the fact that the One whom it recognizes as the eternal and immutable Author of all things is far above our thought processes in his essence and works."

I’m sure if both Van Til and Bavinck were alive today, they would make almost the exact same statements in response to Nagel’s book of monism as well.

Conclusion

In the end, while this book is helpful, and in many ways will provide inroads for criticism of naturalism into the academy, it also presents us with nothing new. Unbelieving thought has been developing for quite some time in the West, and many of those who have rejected the faith have also rejected naturalism. All one needs to do is look at the popularity of eastern mysticism, and the monism behind it, as well as the new age movement to see that such is the case. In the end of his book, Dr. Nagel says that the answers may come from somewhere much more radical, or a version of his philosophy that is taken further, and I wonder if such occult options could end up being the more radical versions of Nagel’s philosophy for those who follow him. If Nagel and his followers bring us to an age beyond naturalism that will mean that the Christian church will have to be ready for some changes. Many of the epistemological arguments and transcendental arguments that reformed apologists use against naturalism will also be used by other unbelieving counterparts. This will mean that a lot of the worldview “defeaters” that reformed apologists use today will have to be modified and replaced in order to disarm the credibility of idealistic monism. We could find such potential in using the same presuppositional method against monism, but by reinvestigating the rich ontology which the Christian worldview provides. Doctrines like divine simplicity and the Creator/creature distinction will have to be rethought in light of popular monism, and formulated in a similar “street” level as the “transcendental argument” was in approaching naturalism. Furthermore, the doctrine of the Trinity and the personal-relational nature of reality will also have to be reasserted and put on the offensive against the dehumanizing impersonalism inherent in monism. In the end though, we can be thankful for Nagel’s book, and as the popular unbelieving worldview potentially shifts, we must be encouraged to persevere in our mission to defend and “push-back” against claims “and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”