Yesterday, while listening to the beginning of what promises to be an excellent discussion of science and faith between Hans Halverson and Sean Carroll at Veritas.org, I noticed that SC gave a reason for denying that we need to ask questions about the whole of nature, such as "Why is there something rather than nothing?" I confess that I didn't get to hear HH's response because of time constraints. But I'm going to scribble this comment down for now with the hope of returning to this post for further comments after I've given the rest of the discussion a listen.
SC gives a very clear (and I think quite incomplete) phenomenology of what it's like to ask the question why. It goes like this. We ask that question when something goes against some other non-fulfilled expectation. So asking "why?" always involves a contrast of the way something happened with the way we expected it to happen. But we don't expect the world not to exist; hence we don't even have a reason for asking why "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Instead of attacking theism's answer to this question, therefore, SC argues that there's no good reason for asking it. To the question "Why everything?" "Why not?" might be the best answer, suggests Sean Carroll.
My reply:
SC is exalting a rather particular-minded curiosity while paying no attention to global wonder. The latter can be conveyed in the form of questions like "Why everything?" but not because we previously expected nothing to exist; rather it's because we desire to know truths about those matters that are most important to our lives, and the fact that the world continues to exist is surely high on the list of important facts.
The central importance of world-directed wonder becomes apparent once we situate it within the context of our quest for a meaningful life. One who embarks on that quest must consider whether his or her life has a meaning that in some sense already exists and is waiting to be discovered, whether that meaning still needs to be invented, whether both discovery and invention come into play in determining the meaning of one's life, or whether no meaning can be either invented or discovered. Regardless of what how one proposes to answer the question, one will surely agree that its answer is intertwined with answer to the question "What is the point of everything?"
Sean Carroll himself admits earlier in the Veritas discussion that important questions about meaning of human existence are yet to be addressed by naturalism. I propose that the desire to address the existential question will surely motivate the asker to take the question "Why everything?" more seriously. And the fact that the title of SC's blog is "Preposterous Universe" suggests to me that SC himself has given that question a thought or two.
One may object that I have changed the subject by treating a question regarding the cause of the universe to a question about its purpose. I reply that it is precisely because we are interested in the possibility that the universe may have a purpose that we bother to take the causal question so seriously.
Furthermore, SC's restricting legitimate reasons for asking "why?" to the case in which events have gone against expectations is an example of cherry-picking. I grant that we sometimes ask "why" because something surprising has happened. But that by no means happens all of the time. We sometimes ask why things behave in a manner conforming to our expectations. This is especially true of scientists. For science is principally concerned with explaining regularities in nature. That's why physicists talk about laws of nature. Consider, for example, the pre-Copernican question "Why does the sun rise and travel across the sky each day?" Or "Why is there death?" Or "Why are there four seasons?" Or "Why are there specific kinds of animals and plants?" As Chesterton points out in a book (whose title presently escapes me), it would be more remarkable for buses show up on right schedule than it would for them to show up a bit late or early. Consistency is remarkable, amazing, worthy of our wonder, and the ultimate consistency most worthy of that wonder is the fact that the universe has and continues to exist. In restricting why questions to inconsistencies, SC is not only closing off philosophical wonder, but is negating the legitimacy of much scientific inquiry. Instead, he should make room for a broader notion of inquiry--even if even if it means allowing oneself to ask questions whose answer may be God.
I suggest that SC sees inquiry as he does because of his respect for the scientific method. A scientist decides that the answer to a question is worth exploring only if he or she can come up with a testable answer, and that answer necessarily concerns events occurring at specific times and places. Generalizing from there, one might form the opinion that the only philosophical questions worth exploring are those whose answers can be confirmed/ falsified with data derived from observations at a particular place and time. The question "Why everything?" certainly doesn't stay within this restriction.
I would propose that a naturalist who shares SC's veneration for science could come to appreciate the "Why everything?" question if he or she related it -- not to curiosity about the answer to specific experiment-directed questions but with the motivation for becoming a scientist. What moves one to embrace science as a vocation is not so much the desire to get a very specific answer to a very specific question but the desire to find the truth, to see how all of the truths within one's discipline fit together, and to see how these truths mesh with those in other disciplines as well. This desire to know can, if unchecked by negative assumptions, lead one to ask questions that cannot be answered by any scientific experimentation. It can lead one to ask philosophical questions, including the question of why everything exists.
(revision needed: "Why does the universe continue to exist? is a stepping stone to "Why would the universe ever exist?" BUT between the two is the question of whether or not everything is contingent or whether the whole, or some part of it, is necessary. Also, wonder as to how everything fits together also antecedes explicit wonder regarding the existence of everything, but perhaps the latter sort of wonder is insidiously present in the former).
SC gives a very clear (and I think quite incomplete) phenomenology of what it's like to ask the question why. It goes like this. We ask that question when something goes against some other non-fulfilled expectation. So asking "why?" always involves a contrast of the way something happened with the way we expected it to happen. But we don't expect the world not to exist; hence we don't even have a reason for asking why "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Instead of attacking theism's answer to this question, therefore, SC argues that there's no good reason for asking it. To the question "Why everything?" "Why not?" might be the best answer, suggests Sean Carroll.
My reply:
SC is exalting a rather particular-minded curiosity while paying no attention to global wonder. The latter can be conveyed in the form of questions like "Why everything?" but not because we previously expected nothing to exist; rather it's because we desire to know truths about those matters that are most important to our lives, and the fact that the world continues to exist is surely high on the list of important facts.
The central importance of world-directed wonder becomes apparent once we situate it within the context of our quest for a meaningful life. One who embarks on that quest must consider whether his or her life has a meaning that in some sense already exists and is waiting to be discovered, whether that meaning still needs to be invented, whether both discovery and invention come into play in determining the meaning of one's life, or whether no meaning can be either invented or discovered. Regardless of what how one proposes to answer the question, one will surely agree that its answer is intertwined with answer to the question "What is the point of everything?"
Sean Carroll himself admits earlier in the Veritas discussion that important questions about meaning of human existence are yet to be addressed by naturalism. I propose that the desire to address the existential question will surely motivate the asker to take the question "Why everything?" more seriously. And the fact that the title of SC's blog is "Preposterous Universe" suggests to me that SC himself has given that question a thought or two.
One may object that I have changed the subject by treating a question regarding the cause of the universe to a question about its purpose. I reply that it is precisely because we are interested in the possibility that the universe may have a purpose that we bother to take the causal question so seriously.
Furthermore, SC's restricting legitimate reasons for asking "why?" to the case in which events have gone against expectations is an example of cherry-picking. I grant that we sometimes ask "why" because something surprising has happened. But that by no means happens all of the time. We sometimes ask why things behave in a manner conforming to our expectations. This is especially true of scientists. For science is principally concerned with explaining regularities in nature. That's why physicists talk about laws of nature. Consider, for example, the pre-Copernican question "Why does the sun rise and travel across the sky each day?" Or "Why is there death?" Or "Why are there four seasons?" Or "Why are there specific kinds of animals and plants?" As Chesterton points out in a book (whose title presently escapes me), it would be more remarkable for buses show up on right schedule than it would for them to show up a bit late or early. Consistency is remarkable, amazing, worthy of our wonder, and the ultimate consistency most worthy of that wonder is the fact that the universe has and continues to exist. In restricting why questions to inconsistencies, SC is not only closing off philosophical wonder, but is negating the legitimacy of much scientific inquiry. Instead, he should make room for a broader notion of inquiry--even if even if it means allowing oneself to ask questions whose answer may be God.
I suggest that SC sees inquiry as he does because of his respect for the scientific method. A scientist decides that the answer to a question is worth exploring only if he or she can come up with a testable answer, and that answer necessarily concerns events occurring at specific times and places. Generalizing from there, one might form the opinion that the only philosophical questions worth exploring are those whose answers can be confirmed/ falsified with data derived from observations at a particular place and time. The question "Why everything?" certainly doesn't stay within this restriction.
I would propose that a naturalist who shares SC's veneration for science could come to appreciate the "Why everything?" question if he or she related it -- not to curiosity about the answer to specific experiment-directed questions but with the motivation for becoming a scientist. What moves one to embrace science as a vocation is not so much the desire to get a very specific answer to a very specific question but the desire to find the truth, to see how all of the truths within one's discipline fit together, and to see how these truths mesh with those in other disciplines as well. This desire to know can, if unchecked by negative assumptions, lead one to ask questions that cannot be answered by any scientific experimentation. It can lead one to ask philosophical questions, including the question of why everything exists.
(revision needed: "Why does the universe continue to exist? is a stepping stone to "Why would the universe ever exist?" BUT between the two is the question of whether or not everything is contingent or whether the whole, or some part of it, is necessary. Also, wonder as to how everything fits together also antecedes explicit wonder regarding the existence of everything, but perhaps the latter sort of wonder is insidiously present in the former).
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