Austin Cline on C S Lewis

Cline is hardly dispassionate; he claims that “C.S. Lewis wanted to explain nature on the basis of his supernatural god”. It is immediately obvious what prejudice will be applied to the subject. What Lewis actually did was to arrive at what he felt was an undeniable, incorrigible truth, that the existence of rationality implies something other than mere agglomerations of atoms.

”Lewis appears not to have understood that some events and systems are, even in principle, not explainable despite being entirely natural. No one disputes that the weather is completely natural, but while weather events can be predicted to varying degrees of accuracy, it’s not possible even in principle to explain every facet of them because they are too complex, chaotic, and probabilistic.”

Cline makes three associations without any attributions: weather events are “complex, chaotic, and probabilistic”. It is hardly arguable that weather events are complex. But Cline must support his claim that they are chaotic (first defining his interpretation of the word). And it is complexity vs current comprehension that leads to probabilism, not the inherent characteristics of weather: we use probabilities because not all the factors are known or can be taken into account. This doesn’t make them “unexplainable”, it just means that we can’t do it yet. Cline makes a leap to a-scientism when he declares the weather to be – presumably permanently, by nature – probabilistic. There is no reason to presume that weather patterns do NOT have causes, even if the causes are multitudinous in their complexity.

So Cline fails in this attempt to fault Lewis on his understanding of science. Cline himself fails.

And Cline’s reference to quantum events is a point made in a void:

”This isn’t necessarily true. Lewis was aware of advances in physics which revealed that events on the quantum level were probabilistic rather than deterministic, but he regarded this as a reason to think that there exists something more than “Nature” rather than as a reason to think that maybe nature isn’t quite what he (like others) assumed it to be. He rejected the findings of science because they conflicted with his assumptions.”

Quantum mechanics is far from a mature source of knowledge. Making philosophical truth statements on quantum mechanics is not convincing. Even so, the mind-matter connection in quantum mechanics (Is Cline aware of it?) seems to back up Lewis. There is more to nature than naturalists allow.

”Thus, what we encounter is a tactic which Lewis uses continually: the construction of a false dilemma fallacy in which he presents the “wrong” option in an unfavorable and incorrectly defined way against the “right” option which, he hopes, will seem more reasonable against his straw man. The idea of a third option, like rejecting both extreme determinism and supernaturalism, is never entertained.”

Cline is right, there are two additional options to the dilemma: (a) accepting both determinism and metaphysical existence, and (b) rejecting both determinism and metaphysical existence. But Cline makes the covert presumption that (b) is the correct answer, without any defense for it. What does it mean to reject, as Cline calls it, extreme determinism? Are we allowed to put any effect into a causeless category, determined purely by chance? Where does that leave empirical science?

No answer here, Cline moves quickly away and on to the idea that atoms don’t need to be rational in order for large agglomerates of atoms to be rational. He claims that requiring a characteristic of the agglomerate is not necessary for the individual component under the Fallacy of Composition. But the Fallacy of Composition says the opposite:

From the Fallacy Files:

”Some properties are such that, if every part of a whole has the property, then the whole will too—for example, visibility. However, not all properties are like this—for instance, invisibility. All visible objects are made up of atoms, which are too small to see. Let's call a property which distributes from all of the parts to the whole an "expansive" property, using Nelson Goodman's term. If P is an expansive property, then the argument form above is validating, by definition of what such a property is. However, if P is not expansive, then the argument form is non-validating, and any argument of that form commits the fallacy of Composition.”

Is property P expansive, if property P is “rationality”? No, rationality is not a property of atoms at all. Period. So property P cannot be either expansive or non-expansive, since it does not exist in the object of discussion.

If it does not exist in the object of discussion (an atom), then it will not exist in large aggregates of the objects, either. So intellect and reason cannot be presumed to arise from atoms, because that property does not exist in atoms.

The invisibility of atoms is not a property of atoms, it is a property of the human eye and its resolution, or lack thereof, at the size of individual atoms. This is a misdirection, and is “just one more example of Cline [not Lewis] constructing fallacious arguments". Misuse and misunderstanding the basics of logical fallacies is a trait that one must watch carefully when dealing with Atheist “analysis” of arguments which they refuse to comprehend.

Cline moves on to the Lewis – Anscombe debate. The details of the debate are presumably available in the accumulated papers of philosopher Anscombe – more about that coming up. There are two distinctly opposing views as to what happened at the meeting (now called a “debate”), and what Lewis’s reaction was. Two of his friends claim that Lewis was “devastated” by his defeat. Others claim, ignoring evidence to the contrary, that Lewis stopped his apologetics writings and focused entirely on children’s allegorical fantasies. But Anscombe herself has a different story of what happened that day:

"The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much…. My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis’s rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends – who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments of the subject-matter – as an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection.”
(Note 1)

In his book, “Surprised by Joy”, Lewis chronicles his journey away from his schoolboy philosophy. His philosophy was strictly and rigidly Naturalist. He came to reject that philosophy as he progressed in his thinking through those early years, mostly at Oxford. By the time he wrote “Miracles” he had written explaining his previous thinking and why it was wrong. Cline seems to have missed this whole part of Lewis’ life story, which gives much of the strength to Lewis’ mature writings. In fact, it is doubtful that Cline has read a single page of Lewis; it is more likely that he got his information third-hand, and uncritically used it in his “critique”.

Cline’s essay on Lewis is segmented into falseness on the one hand and prejudice on the other hand:

”Lewis relied, for example, on a bizarre epistemology, according to which knowledge can only be attained indirectly by inferring from sensory perception to the objects supposedly lying behind them. Because of this, he felt that reliable knowledge depends upon logical reasoning — that we cannot come to have true, justified beliefs about the world without it.

This is a peculiar and extreme form of rationalism, but it’s not an epistemology which is compatible with modern science and thinking. It doesn’t enjoy wide currency today, even among Christians who ostensibly accept Lewis’ apologetics. If they do not accept the epistemological assumptions he uses, though, they cannot also accept his theological conclusions which they find so appealing.”

This is not even a good description of Lewis’ beliefs as a “naïve young man” who was a Materialist. It seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of Cline or at least a poor description of what he thinks Lewis thought.

Cline is not a reliable source for much of anything, certainly not theological theories. There are other, better sources.

For a very interesting paper on the anthropological argument which includes Lewis, see this:

http://www.cslewis.org/ffblog/archives/2005/09/does_mathematic.html

And by physicist Kyler Kuehn, a very interesting review of a book by Victor Reppert, ”C.S.Lewis’s Dangerous Idea”. Reppert apparently updated Lewis’s arguments and refutes attacks on them, fairly successfully according to Kuehn. The problem encountered is the standard problem with all philosophy, including apologetics: when you get to the bottom axioms you find something which cannot be proved, something which must be accepted and used as a presupposition.

http://www.ps.uci.edu/~kuehn/personal/reppert.htm

For example, Skeptics can always ask, “can you prove…” As in, “Can you prove that you exist?” “Can you prove that rationality exists?” “Can you prove that validity exists?” “Can you prove that logic means anything given that you cannot prove that validity exists, or that rationality exists, or that you exist, or that existence exists?"  It’s the obvious which is unprovable.

Of course none of these things can be proven using rationality. And that’s the final downfall of ALL philosophy and apologetics: the Skeptics can always find the final axiom which must be presupposed, and then claim that that voids the argument, because your premises, at their base, cannot, to the Skeptic's satisfaction, be proven. Or true. Or meaningful – or whatever. Taken to the radical skeptical limit, nothing can be proven rationally, ever.

So according to the Skeptics, you can’t make an argument from rationality if you can’t prove that rationality exists, and that necessarily done without unprovable presuppositions.  Perhaps this is something like what Lewis confronted in his discussion with Anscombe, the ultimate fate of all philosophy: failure at the level of axioms.

Keuhn concludes that Reppert’s assessment of the updated Lewis arguments are valid and work, IF one is allowed to presuppose that “rationality exists”. But that is too much for Skeptics, apparently, despite the obvious consequence that if there is no rationality then all their blitherings are meaningless, meaning that their charges of falseness are meaningless, too. So if their charges are to have meaning, then rationality must exist. (note 2)

I have Lewis’s “Miracles” book on its way. I might have to get Reppert’s book, too. Book acquisition never ceases.

But back to Cline, there is no need to believe what he says about Lewis or anything else. Look for reputable sources. Go deep. Then go deeper.

Note 1:
http://gavinortlund.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/the-lewis-anscombe-debate/

Note 2:
One skeptic claimed that because the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, it is merely informed of the brain's activity after the fact, so the mind cannot have beliefs. Reppert’s response: “You expect me to believe that?”  I suggest this response: “So you believe that there are no beliefs?”