Metaphysics lives - part 4

This is the last in a 4-part series of posts based on a review* at Catholic world Report of Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. 

Contemporary scientism contends that there is no such thing as metaphysics that can go beyond physics and that nothing can attain fundamentals better than modern science. Feser disputes these contentions:-

4. The successes of modern science can in no way vindicate the theory of “scientism.” Impressive technological achievement is the worst, and yet the most popular, of all the arguments for “scientism.” But it is a flat-out non sequitur. The strongest fist or prettiest face is no argument for who should be the ruler of the playground or the student body president, no matter how many people knuckle under or melt in the presence of such dazzling displays. 

It is foolish to think that the successes of modern science either prove, or even render probable, the overconfident claim that science alone can reveal to us everything that is real. Feser offers an analogous line of reasoning to expose the fallacy (thereby suitably mocking one of today’s most cherished — and dumbest — cultural prejudices): 

1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has. 

2. Therefore what metal detectors reveal to us (coins and other metallic objects) is probably all that is real. 

If you have had enough of this sort of foolishness, you may look to the tradition of Scholastic metaphysics, which is a bracing alternative to today’s regnant “scientism.”

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* The reviewer is Christopher S. Morrissey, professor of philosophy at Redeemer Pacific College, Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia.

Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. Editions Scholasticae, 2014, 290pp. 

Metaphysics lives - part 3

This is the third in a short series of posts based on a review* at Catholic world Report of Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. 

Contemporary scientism contends that there is no such thing as metaphysics that can go beyond physics and that nothing can attain fundamentals better than modern science. Feser disputes these contentions:-

3. In principle, the laws of nature discovered by the scientific method offer incomplete explanations of reality. Feser discusses how the much-ballyhooed “laws of nature” presuppose physical things that exist and that operate in accordance with the laws. But even if the “laws of nature” are able to describe how, for the most part, actual physical things really behave, that description is still different from an explanation for why they do what they do.

Are the physical things listening to a decree from God that demands that they follow the laws he prescribes? Hardly. But this puzzle opens up vast arenas of philosophical controversy. Yet we need only appreciate for the moment the difference between a description and an explanation. All too often, the proponents of “scientism” think that because they can write equations for “laws of nature” they therefore somehow possess explanations of physical things. But usually they don’t; usually they are simply confusing mathematical descriptions with essential explanations.

Feser points out that “laws of nature” need not tell us anything about the natures or essences of physical things. Further, they need not reflect the will of God. As ad hoc pattern recognition on our part, they stop short of ultimate foundations and remain merely provisional descriptions—unless in haste we inflate them into unwarranted philosophical deities that pretend to be explanations. As soon as this distinction can be appreciated, the need for the serious intellectual competencies of philosophy will be likewise rightly appreciated. Philosophy is destined to play an indispensable complementary role along with science whenever humanity seeks ultimate explanations for the real natures of things in the most rigorously essential terms.

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* The reviewer is Christopher S. Morrissey, professor of philosophy at Redeemer Pacific College, Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia.

Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. Editions Scholasticae, 2014, 290pp. 

Metaphysics lives - part 2

This is the second in a short series of posts based on a review* at Catholic world Report of Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. 

Contemporary scientism contends that there is no such thing as metaphysics that can go beyond physics and that nothing can attain fundamentals better than modern science. Feser disputes these contentions:-

2. In principle, the scientific method is incapable of a complete description of reality. Modern science in general, and modern physics in particular, is fond of quantifying things with mathematical equations or univocal schemata. But this craze for quantitative description, powerful as it is for unlocking many fundamental secrets of nature, is still in principle leaving out vast sectors of reality from its descriptions: namely, those qualitative aspects of reality that cannot be subjected to empiriometric mathematization or empirioschematic quantification. As the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger recognized: “the mind itself remains a stranger in this picture, it has no place in it, it can nowhere be found in it.” After all, who is applying the scientific method, if not beings with minds? 

Clearly, there is here a fundamental aspect of reality that will forever elude scientific description, because the mind cannot be reduced to the merely quantitative, without annihilating all the qualitative features of the mind and of the scientific method that it wields. To maintain otherwise, Feser points out, is like saying we can clean a house by sweeping all the dirt under a certain rug—and then arguing that we can get rid of the dirt under that same rug by applying the very same method. In the same way, the scientific method, by targeting only particular and specific aspects of reality (like the quantitative), guarantees that we are in principle leaving out everything not targeted by that method. To then step beyond that method, by rashly claiming that everything can be explained by and reduced to what that method focuses on, is an unjustified—indeed, a crazy—philosophical maneuver.

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* The reviewer is Christopher S. Morrissey, professor of philosophy at Redeemer Pacific College, Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia.

Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. Editions Scholasticae, 2014, 290pp. 

Metaphysics lives - part 1

This is the first in a short series of posts based on a review* at Catholic world Report of Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. 

Contemporary scientism contends that there is no such thing as metaphysics that can go beyond physics and that nothing can attain fundamentals better than modern science. Feser disputes these contentions:-

1. The philosophical theory known as “scientism” is either self-defeating or trivial. Feser shows that science depends upon philosophy to justify its presuppositions and its method, as well as to interpret its results. Usually, whenever scientists are caught in the act of making self-defeating “scientistic” philosophical claims (“self-defeating” because they began by claiming that philosophy is dead and we only need science now), when the self-defeating contradiction is pointed out to them, they then claim that, okay, philosophy is allowed, as long as it has “scientistic” presuppositions. But obviously such a claim is trivial, since it rules out dialogue with all other philosophical points of view. It rigs the debate in advance, since it defines those other points of view as “non-scientific,” and unworthy of philosophical consideration, because they do not endorse the superiority of science the way the philosophy of “scientism” does. 

But it is a trivial point to establish that your philosophy is the only real philosophy if you have defined anything that is not “scientism” as not being philosophy. Either way—whether “scientism” asserts science’s superiority by a self-defeating philosophical claim, or whether it rigs the debate by trivially defining scientism as the only serious form of philosophy—“scientism” withers as soon as it comes under the burning light of serious philosophical scrutiny.

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* The reviewer is Christopher S. Morrissey, professor of philosophy at Redeemer Pacific College, Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia.

Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser. Editions Scholasticae, 2014, 290pp.