Alvin Plantinga - Image via Wikipedia

The discussion is interesting and well worth a listen. Although I think both sides could have made a stronger case. The moderation was mostly fair. However, I couldn’t help my bemusement that Plantinga was consistently ‘Plantinga; one of the world’s greatest philosophers of religion etc. ad infinitum‘ while Stephen Law had to make do with being just plain old ‘Stephen Law.’ I mean, sure, what do I know? Perhaps Plantinga just has these Übermensch qualifications to rival even The Stig while poor Law is inexorably left behind in the dust of mediocrity. But it did become increasingly comical in iteration as the show progressed.

The first part of the show was naturally dedicated to Plantinga explaining his argument. I shan’t explain it better than I already have. It’s a simple enough idea, and anyone with an urge for detail can listen to the show or read more about it online. The next part of the show was dedicated to Law’s questions, worries, and objections. Law – who by the way is currently relevant by having taken William Lane Craig up on his debating challange – started things off by questioning whether the probability of naturalistically evolved reliable cognition is truly as low as Plantinga thinks it is. It is entirely the right question to ask. Unfortunately, however, it led to an impasse very fast. Neither man was able to give any particularly persuasive arguments for their preferred probability assessments.

Stephen Law

On agreeing to move on, Law raised an issue, which could easily have been of particular relevance. I say ‘could have been’ because I feel Law dropped the ball somewhat. His worry was that even if we grant Plantinga his argument, it might just as equally lead to a defeater for theism as for naturalism. Plantinga’s theism entails an omnipotent divine creator with a desire to bestow upon us cognitive reliability. However, says Law, if our cognition then leads us to the conclusion that there is no such omnipotent divine creator, then we land ourselves yet again in murky waters. Unfortunately his chosen cognitive method of arriving at a no-God conclusion is the classic problem of evil, which Plantinga doesn’t find very persuasive anyway. I don’t necessarily find it as unpersuasive as Plantinga must, but I think it brings us somewhat far afield from the topic at hand. At the very least I think Law missed an excellent opportunity to bring Plantinga to task with a problem Plantinga seems to have created for himself.

The classic problem of evil is (roughly) that there seems to be an inconsistency between our actual world (it has evil/suffering) and the kind of world we should expect given an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent creator. We can easily modify this argument to bring it closer to Plantinga’s home. There seems to be an inconsistency between our actual world, in that our cognition is massively and systematically unreliable, and the world we should expect given an omnipotent creator with a preference for cognitive reliability. We might call this ‘the problem of bias.’ I.e. whereas the problem of evil asked “If God has the ability, knowledge, and desire to prevent evil, whence then evil?” our modified version much more modestly asks “If God has the ability and desire to make humans cognitively reliable, why aren’t we?” This problem is far less easily brushed off by Plantinga than the classic problem of evil. (I should note that according to Wikipedia both Fitelson and Sober, and Ramsey have mentioned a similar problem for Plantinga. I haven’t read their papers, though, so I’m not in any way trying to do them justice.)

As a matter of interest I mentioned Plantinga’s argument to my biologist girlfriend. She scoffed at the argument and suggested the – to her obvious, but to me intriguing – solution that since Plantinga’s examples of adaptively beneficial yet ultimately false beliefs are highly circumstantial, it would probably be much more cost-efficient for our brains to have true beliefs. Sort of like our brain’s ability to learn chess by the simple rules of how each piece moves contrasted with our brain’s inability to learn chess by memorising each and every possible legal chess position by rote memory. (My example, not hers.)

Image via Wikipedia

There’s this post over at Gawker with the shocking headline “A Majority of Icelanders Believe in the Existence of Elves.” What is the basis for this outrageous claim? Why, this study reported on Iceland Review, of course, which found that only 8% of Icelanders believe that elves definitely exist.

I must have skipped one too many math-classes in school and missed the one about 8% constituting a majority. Even if you add the amount of people, who believe in the likelihood of elves to the ones believing they definitely exist, that still only makes 25%

Gawker must have misread, right? The following, however, is part of their direct quote:

Only 13 percent of participants in the study said it is impossible that elves exist, 19 percent found it unlikely, 37 percent said elves possibly exist, 17 percent found their existence likely and eight percent definite. Five percent did not have an opinion on the existence of elves.

What the Hell, Gawker? Didn’t you even read what you were quoting? Okay, let’s be charitable. It’s true that a majority of Icelanders (62% > 50%, see how that works?) believe the existence of elves is at the very least possible. That’s fine. So what? So do I. Since elves aren’t, to my knowledge, logically self-contradictory there is a possible world at which elves exist. It might even be very close to ours.

I don’t really understand the questionnaire placing “possibility” between “unlikelihood” and “likelihood.” Unless the likelihood of something is either zero or one, it has no bearing whatsoever on the possibility of said something. Perhaps the researchers intended “possibility” in a more colloquial sense, but if so then they can hardly lament ambiguity in their results. In any case a majority believing in the possibility (no matter the sense) of something isn’t exactly sensational.

I shall argue that Behe’s Irreducible Complexity fails to invalidate a proper understanding of Darwinian evolution by natural selection by considering three ways in which evolution might adequately explain seemingly irreducible complexity. I shall then argue that even granting Behe the falsity of evolution is insufficient to establish an Intelligent Designer. Lastly, I shall couple Behe with Dembski’s argument for reliable empirical indication of intelligent causation, and show this strongest version of Intelligent Design to be a fallacious argument from ignorance at worst or most charitably understood as an ultimately unwarranted inference to best explanation.

φ

It should be noted that all Intelligent Design (ID) arguments are themselves components of an overarching argument for scientific legitimacy. That is, the aim of the ID movement is not only to provide arguments for the explanatory necessity of an Intelligent Designer but also to legitimise said arguments scientifically. As much can be said against the inclusion of ID, and as interesting demarcation in philosophy of science may be, I shall here solely concern myself with the philosophical validity and soundness of the former kind. Whether the arguments can be said to be scientific will take a backseat to whether they are right.

As per Dembski (1998) the two-pronged approach of the ID movement is the critique of Darwinism coupled with the provision of a positive alternative – i.e. Intelligent Design. If Dembski by ‘Darwinism’ does not mean ‘Darwinian evolution by natural selection’ (henceforth ‘evolution’) his allusions are utterly abstruse to me. However, this would imply that Dembski’s scientific literacy is wanting as attested by his claims that ‘[a]ccording to Darwinism, undirected natural causes are solely responsible for the origin and development of life’ and that ‘Darwinism [is] hopelessly entangled with naturalism.’ Neither, of course, is accurate. Evolution is concerned neither with the origin of life nor with ontology. Evolution merely states that those organisms or genes least likely to die in a given environment will therefore be the ones most likely to reproduce and eventually become quantitatively dominant. Evolution is silent on the matter of life’s origins and the existence of the supernatural alike.

Of course, natural selection is a natural cause but it is hardly ‘undirected.’ The natural selection of random mutations in a population is very much directed by environmental pressures. It is likely that Dembski meant to say ‘undirected by any intelligence’ but a simple thought-experiment wherein we imagine life originating from a supernatural agent who occasionally enjoys tinkering with environmental pressures, thereby obliquely directing natural selection, should suffice as a counterexample to Darwinism ruling out ‘the possibility of a God or any guiding intelligence playing a role in life’s origin and development.’ Indeed, human beings ourselves constitute guiding intelligences playing a role in life’s development – granted mostly through artificial selection but also occasionally through altering environmental pressures and thereby affecting the course of natural selection.

Having a firm conceptual grasp on evolution we may now turn to the first prong of the ID approach, namely the critique of evolution as championed by Behe, and see how it fares. Behe argues for an Intelligent Designer from a supposed deficiency in evolution to explain how certain biochemical systems came about. Behe attributes such systems the property of Irreducible Complexity; defined as follows:

A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

(Behe, 2006, p. 257)

The idea is that since evolution requires every mutation selected for to be of gradually increasing advantageousness to survival, and if it can be shown that a system loses its advantageous function by the removal of any of its component parts, then that system is irreducibly complex and cannot have evolved gradually. The astute reader might rightly wonder how a disproof of evolution in any way is proof of a designer or proof against all possible natural explanations whatsoever. However, my charitability is here curtailed by my incomprehension of Behe’s position. He seemingly thinks that irreducible complexity somehow constitutes ‘a purposeful arrangement of parts that bespeaks design’ (2005, p. 87). I can, at the most charitable, only see it as an arrangement of parts unexplainable by evolution but possibly by some other explanation. It could be either natural or supernatural and surely purposiveness has yet to be demonstrated either way.

I shall drop this for now. It is better dealt with in our later considerations of inferences to best explanation and in any case, as we shall see, Behe’s position can be strengthened by a symbiosis with Dembski’s. For now let us consider proposals as to how irreducible complexity might evolve after all. We said before that every selected mutation must be advantageous. This was a lie by omission. For ease of understanding evolution is often described in positive terms as selection for fitness. However, more accurate is the negative description of selection against unfitness, prompting the revision ‘survival of the fit enough.’ (Scott, p. 37) It is not ‘endorsement’ of advantage; only ‘censure’ of disadvantage and therefore mutations need only be fitness-neutral. Indeed, there is ample evidence that human beings have suffered neutral genetic drift resulting in losing the ability to produce vitamin C (as opposed to most other mammals) due to evolving in an environment with a ready dietary availability (Max, 2003).

This leads us to scaffolding. According to Michael Ruse the salient point ‘is not whether the parts now in place could not be removed without collapse, but whether they could have been put in place by natural selection.’ (2008) The oft-repeated analogy is that an arched stone-bridge is ‘irreducibly complex’ by Behe’s definition since the removal of any stone would collapse it. Yet we know it was not built instantaneously; rather onto supporting scaffolding later removed. Similarly a system might be irreducibly complex now, only due to past shedding of its reducible ‘scaffolding’ in neutral genetic drift.

Above: The removal of any arch-stone would result in collapse.

Below: After the bridge is built the scaffolding (brown) is burnt away.

Another closely related evolutionary path to irreducible complexity is improbable but possible happenstance. Suppose an adaptive ability requires two (or more) mutations in order to function and either mutation alone is useless. As long as mutation A confers no disadvantage it could still be acquired through neutral drift without mutation B, priming the organism for advantage if B should turn up later. One might be inclined to scoff at the improbability. However, this possible scenario has already been proven actual in an ongoing experiment by bacteriologist Richard Lenski, in which e-coli bacteria evolved the metabolism to feed on citrate. The improbability of such an event fades into mere rarity by the law of large numbers but is still rare enough to demonstrate the requirement of more than one mutation (Dawkins, pp. 116-133).

The final way in which evolution can give rise to irreducible complexity is cooption or exaptation. This is the commonest answer given to Behe’s favourite example; the bacterial flagellum. In the Dover Trial (Behe, 2005, pp. 80 – ) Eric Rothschild, attorney, continually mentions the type III secretory system as a possible precursor to the flagellum. We need not go into too much detail but the general gist is that even though the removal of any flagellum-part will cease locomotive function, partial flagella can still be put to some other functional use – e.g. secretion. Behe concedes as much yet nonetheless insists that even though the type III secretory system is indeed a subset of a flagellum – i.e. identical to a flagellum with parts missing – the flagellum is still irreducibly complex because said subset does not function as a flagellum.

Left: Type III secretory system. Right: Bacterial flagellum.

I make neither head nor tails of this insistence since evolution, to my understanding, implies no demand for specific functionality but as previously stated only selects against detriment. To make a silly but evolutionarily accurate allusion to Nietzsche: what does not kill you will make your descendants stronger if they can find a use for it – any use.

However, an argument for an intelligent designer – as opposed to against evolution – can hardly stand and fall at the failed or successive critique of evolution alone. From the supposed explanatory inadequacy of evolution regarding an unexplained phenomenon nothing else follows about what does explain said phenomenon. Conversely if an appeal to intelligence adequately explanatory of the phenomenon were produced nothing else follows about evolution.

QualiaSoup's explanation of what's wrong with arguments from ignorance.

Simply, evolution and intelligent design are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. If we had two adequately explanatory hypotheses for the same phenomenon we could strengthen one at the expense of criticising the other but Behe has made no headway in producing neither arguments for – nor explanatory adequacy of – an intelligent designer. The case for one is therefore not strengthened by his critique. Let us then grant Behe the falsity of evolution for the sake of argument and seek assistance from Dembski’s proposed demarcation between design and non-design.

Dembski’s argument is that the property he calls ‘complex specified information’ is a reliable empirical indicator for intelligent causation. To be honest no amount of reading has yet yielded me a clear understanding of Dembski’s concepts and I am not alone in my confusion. However, since mathematics and information theory are far out of my depth I defer deeper criticism to the equally puzzled Elsberry et. al. (2009). As far as I can gather we may strike ‘information’ from the property since, whatever it is, it follows from ‘specified complexity’ alone. According to Dembski Complexity ‘is a form of probability’ and specification is defined as ‘a match between an event and an independently given pattern.’ (Ruse, 2008) To the best of my understanding, it is a needlessly convoluted way of saying that non-arbitrary patterns are more indicative of design the greater their improbability of happening by chance.

At the risk of being uncharitable – and I make no pretension to correct exegesis – Dembski seems deliberately obscure for the sake of a cleverly disguised strawman. Evolution is not committal to but the rejection of improbable random chance in favour of probable non-random natural selection. Nobody is committed to ‘lucky chance’ and, as previously mentioned, the improbability of a specified outcome is indicative only of an explanation – not a specific intelligent one – even if we grant being ignorant of the explanation for the sake of argument. It should be clear now that design arguments are at worst fallacious arguments from ignorance and at best attempted inferences to best explanation.

Either they fallaciously argue to an intelligent cause of a phenomenon by appeal to our ignorance of its explanation, or – more charitably – they infer, from the premise that the design hypothesis would provide a “better” explanation for the evidence than would any other hypothesis, to the conclusion of its truth (adapted from Harman, 1965). However, such charity cannot stave off the resulting problems. First, the argument that theism cannot provide causal explanations (Le Poidevin, 1996, pp. 35-38) is easily adapted to ID since it scarcely meets the criteria of informativeness nor of generalised connection between cause and effect. ‘The flagellum was produced by a flagellum-producing intelligence’ explains nothing at all but merely asserts intelligence while said assertion was warranted only by its supposed explanatory adequacy. Moreover, there is no generalised connection between intelligence and flagellum.

Second, enumerative inductive inferences from a particular instance to a universal affirmative proposition are reliable if and only if the possible counterexamples to the proposition are exhausted. ID arguments construed as attempted inferences to best explanation argue from the single instance of a failed natural explanation to the failure of all other possible natural and supernatural explanations bar one. The ID proponent only escapes the argument from ignorance by committing an equally fallacious false dichotomy of ‘either evolution or ID.’ Granted, we might be hard-pressed to come up with an alternative natural explanation to rival evolution but that might just attest to the success of Darwin or the failure of our imagination. It is easier by far to go supernatural; if I am allowed to posit a flagellum-producing intelligence why not an unintelligent flagellum-assembling machine constituted by the Platonic ideals of cogs and springs running on steaminess? I fail to see why the eternal existence of such a Platonic Assembler should be any more mysterious than that of an Intelligent Designer.

φ

We have seen that properly understood evolution might produce seemingly irreducible complexity by way of scaffolding, possible happenstance by neutral genetic drift, or cooption – each of which is supported by ample evidence. Thus having met Behe’s objection we have seen that even granting the falsity of evolution makes no headway in establishing an intelligent designer since a disproof of the former in no way constitutes proof of the latter. We have then seen that Dembski’s empirical identification of intelligent causation by specified complexity verges on the incomprehensible and to the extent it can be understood and applied to Behe’s position makes ID arguments out to be arguments from ignorance at worst and attempted inferences to best explanation at best. Lastly, we have seen such an inference to best explanation as unwarranted since evolution and ID exhaust neither all possible natural nor supernatural explanations and thereby finally collapse into false dichotomy.

Bibliography

• Behe, M.J. (2005). Dover Trial. [Court hearing transcript]. United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania with E. J. Rothschild. 19^th October 2005. Available at: http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day12AM.pdf
• Behe, M.J., 2006. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313.
• Dawkins, R., 2010. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Free Press. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594795.
• Dembski, W.A., The Intelligent Design Movement. Cosmic Pursuit. Available at: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-idesign.html.
• Elsberry, W. & Shallit, J., 2009. Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information.” Synthese, 178(2), pp.237-270. Available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/a1l08u041t72m227/.
• Harman, G.H., 1965. The Inference to the Best Explanation. The Philosophical Review, 74(1), pp.88-95. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183532.
• Max, E.E., 2003. Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics. The Talk Origins Archive. Available at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/.
• Poidevin, R.L., 1996. Arguing for Atheism: Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Routledge. Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arguing-Atheism-Introduction-Philosophy-Religion/dp/0415093384.
• Ruse, M., 2008. Creationism. In E. N. Zalta, ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/creationism/.
• Scott, E.C., 2009. Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, 2nd Edition, University of California Press. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-vs-Creationism-Introduction-2nd/dp/0520261879.

♦

Except for the occasional sceptic, we all believe that things persist through time (Loux, Readings, p. 321).

Endurantism and perdurantism are the views that temporal persistence of a thing is respectively explained either by its existing wholly and completely at different times or by its having three-dimensional parts at different times, which constitute a four-dimensional whole – or ‘spacetime worm.’ Since these two views usually arise from two different temporal ontologies, namely that of presentism – only the present exists – and eternalism – time is a dimension on par with the spatial dimensions – I shall treat endurantism and perdurantism as interchangeable with their intuitively corresponding ontologies.

Since I am torn on this issue rather than trying to convince the reader I shall devote this essay on an analysis of why perdurantism, which is the view to which I lean the most, appeals to me but why I am still hesitant to embrace it fully.

Scientific Considerations

I should be a perdurantist because I believe that GPS is reliable and that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old. The connection to persistence is not immediately obvious. However, both beliefs are reliant on Einstein’s theories of relativity. In his book, Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku explains how crucial relativity is to the reliability of GPS.

…in order to guarantee such incredible accuracy, scientists must calculate slight corrections to Newton’s laws due to relativity, which states that radio waves will be slightly

shifted in frequency as satellites soar in outer space. In fact, if we foolishly discard the corrections due to relativity, then the GPS clocks will run faster each day by 40,000 billions of a second, and the entire system will become unreliable (p. 257).

Likewise other physicists will tell us that at least some of their methods for ascertaining the age of the universe (Kaku mentions three experimental “proofs,” p. 282) are derived from Einstein’s theories. Another iconic example of relativity impinging upon us is the famous experiment conducted by astronomer Arthur Eddington in 1919, which verified that the Sun distorts spacetime around it and thereby deflects rays of light as predicted by Einstein (French, pp. 44-45).

The crux of the matter is that the results of relativity are seemingly so inescapable to anyone living in the 21st century that we all take them more or less for granted. Yet few of us ever follow up on this acquiescence by allowing it metaphysical ramifications. I should perhaps not speak so readily on behalf of everyone else. However, I – for one – am painstakingly aware of my own cognitive blind spots. To be sure, relativity is built around a four-dimensional model of space and time.

The salient question is to what extent it makes sense to ignore the connection between the results and the assumptions that produced them. Loux, while explaining that this connection used to be a common line of perdurantist argument, expeditiously diffuses it again in the same breath.

The claim is that the endurantist account fails to square with our scientific understanding of that world. The claim is that a four-dimensional picture of the world is implied by the physics of relativity theory. Since the idea that time is just another dimension on par with the three spatial dimension leads so naturally to a theory of temporal parts, the claim is that the only way of accommodating our scientific beliefs about ourselves and the world around us is to embrace a perdurantist theory of persistence through time. This line of argument was once quite popular. It is not, however, the one we characteristically meet in recent writings of perdurantists. In part, I suspect, recent perdurantists are sensitive to the very real difficulty of extracting an ontological theory out of the mathematical formalisms of physics; but the more central reason recent perdurantists do not rest their case on facts about scientific theories is that they are anxious to show that our ordinary, prescientific beliefs about the world are not, in fact, at odds with the perdurantists’ talk of temporal parts (Loux, Introduction, p. 243).

Now, I readily concede Loux’ point that it is problematic to extract ontology out of mathematics. I ought to clarify that I am not proposing the reliability of GPS as a persuasive argument for perdurantism nor do I pretend to understand theoretical physics. It is not within this essay’s scope to venture into the quagmire of scientific realism versus instrumentalism. And any philosopher worth her salt knows that one might arrive at a factually correct conclusion by valid inference from false premises. From the fact that certain assumptions make physicist’s numbers add up, nothing need follow about the veracity of those assumptions.

However, my proposal is that if I were to deny four-dimensionality on these grounds simply because I do not care for the metaphysical implications, while still happily retaining other fruits of relativity, it would make me hypocritical at worst and incongruously compartmentalised at best. As such, this is not an argument for perdurantism but an account of its pull on me personally. I feel I ought to accept it – at least tentatively – unless I have a particularly good reason not to, simply for the sake of intellectual integrity. How persuasive this is to anyone else depends whether the person in question shares a similarity in disposition.

Default Intuitions

Let us turn to what Loux’ central reason for casting aside the scientific argument for perdurantism. Throughout ‘Concrete Particulars II’ in Introduction (pp. 230-56) Loux consistently describes endurantism as cohering more than perdurantism with ‘commonsense,’ ‘intuitive conceptions,’ ‘prephilosophical beliefs’ etc. Taking this line of thought further in Readings (pp. 321-29) Loux states:

So endurantists take theirs to be the account of persistence that conforms better to our prephilosophical intuitions. Evidently, perdurantists agree; for whereas endurantists are content merely to state their view, perdurantists feel the need to present arguments on behalf of a temporal parts account of persistence.

This reasoning strikes me as all sorts of odd. An image of a boulder-pushing Sisyphus vividly springs to mind – wherein the very act of increasing his efforts immediately slopes the hill ever so more to his detriment. Surely, any endeavour of philosophy is wrongheaded if the act of arguing one’s view entails a proportional opposition of intuitive common sense. The game-breaking strategy would be to never budge an inch from offering only a ‘says me!’ in one’s favour, since anything more would constitute tacit concession of loss.

Nevertheless – burden of proof aside – it is not simply obvious that Loux is right about our intuitions. At the risk of committing armchair arson and becoming an ‘experimental philosopher’ I asked a few of my non-philosopher friends where they stood on the existence of the past, the present, and the future. While this can hardly be considered statistically significant the divisiveness of their answers was still astounding. The only consistent agreement was on the existence of the present – the oddest answer being the existence of present and future but not the past.

However, appeals to our shared intuitions – though illuminating – do not exert much toll when it comes to the fundamental structure of reality. I am not even convinced by my own intuitions. Although neither would they help Loux since they align themselves with perdurantism to a certain extent.

Past Events

I should be a perdurantist because I believe past events are a matter of fact. Intuitively once something has happened it stays happened. Even if no one remembers it and it imparts no influence on current events, there is still a fact of the matter. This to me can only be sufficiently accounted for by the reality of the past.

An obvious presentist contender would be a very strong determinism – i.e. A determined the occurrence of B, determining C etc. So even if A is long forgotten, we might be able to infer it. However, while determinism is intuitively understandable, it is not so obvious that backwards-working determinism makes sense in a universal context. Consider this by analogy of addition; while adding three to three strongly determines an outcome of six, working our way backwards from six is impossible. The outcome of six could not have been otherwise. But looking back from six we are unable to decide whether the correct six-producing mechanism was indeed three plus three and not, say, five plus one. It is hardly obvious that there is one, and only one, chain of events that could possibly have produced the current state of affairs of our universe.

Yet the mere conceivability of backwards determinism could still serve as a counterexample wedge between my intuition of past events and the requirement of perdurantism. Let us therefore, for the sake of argument, assume backwards determinism. Would that be enough to account for the factuality of past events? I would say no. To return to our alphabetical series, we can imagine that A occurred simultaneously with another event, A² – also producing a simultaneous B². However, at the advent of C, B² somehow failed to produce a C². No event in our second series ever had any interaction with our first series. Even given backwards determinism we would have no way of inferring that A² and B² ever happened.

Fatalism

I should not be a perdurantist because it commits me to fatalism. Now, it is a glaring omission that my preceding considerations said nothing of the future but – not unlike people – dwelt only on the past. Indeed, I am unable to intuitively commit to perdurantism based on the reality of the past because my intuition balks at the notion of an already existing future. Loux would have me believe that I could hold this view in unproblematic consistency.

Consider what we called the growing block theory of time. On that view, reality consists of the past and the present. What counts as the past and present is always changing, so the view is an instance of the A-theory; but as we have seen, the view endorses a four dimensionalist picture of what it calls reality; reality is a four dimensional block that is constantly growing. Within this framework, then, concrete particulars turn out, once again, to be spacetime worms. Accordingly, we once again have a theory of time that is not just compatible with perdurantism; the theory provides a natural home for that theory of persistence (Introduction, p. 235).

However, Loux might have failed to convince himself.

Endurantists will argue, for example, that the perdurantist claim that the spatiotemporal boundaries of a familiar particular are essential to it runs counter to intuitions we all share. We all believe, for example, that it was possible for Winston Churchill to have lived a day longer than he actually did; and we all believe that each of us could, at any time, have been in a place other than the place we actually were in at that time (p. 256).

I am quite convinced though that a growing block cannot be the case. A four-dimensional view of spacetime necessarily entails fatalism. The reason is that growth requires the very time we have done away with literally into empty space. When a three-dimensional block grows it is, according to the perdurantist, a progression through temporal parts of its four-dimensional self. The only way a four-dimensional block could grow would then have to be by progression through temporal parts of yet a higher fifth-dimensional self. One could argue for timeless change but I have no idea what that means.

I now face a dilemma of accommodating all my intuitions. I should not only have to spatialise time but I should also have to introduce yet another dimension – possibly even more. Alternately I could bite the bullet and accept a fatalistic universe – in which case I have no choice in the matter, so I might as well refuse. Incidentally Einstein seems to have taken seriously both the entailments of his theory and the stubbornness of his intuitions.

I am a determinist, compelled to act as if free will existed, because if I wish to live in a civilized society, I must act responsibly. I know philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crimes, but I prefer not to take tea with him

(Kaku, pp. 154-55)

A Multiplicity of Entities

In a past essay of mine about the teleological argument I said that:

Accepting the actual existence of many worlds in order to escape the existence of God seems arbitrarily discriminatory (unless you are a quantum physicist and therefore believe that there is bona fide evidence for a multiverse).

Similarly I was disinclined to arbitrarily discriminate against only one aspect of relativity – namely four-dimensionality – merely on the grounds of disliking the metaphysical implications. However, turning this on its head I should be disinclined toward perdurantism because it is quite arbitrary to continually populate my ontology with ever more dimensions simply to appease my gluttonous intuitions.

I have argued that my everyday beliefs and intuitions (layman’s scientific and prephilosophical) ought to demand of me perdurantism. However, I have also argued that perdurantism has counter-intuitive implications, which complicate my ontology to accommodate. Ultimately I should like some more tangible evidence of higher dimensions than intuitive reasoning and mathematical convenience before making a metaphysical commitment.

♦

Bibliography

Books:

• French, Steven, Science: Key Concepts in Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2007)
• Kaku, Michio, Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos (London: Penguin Books, 2006)
• Loux, Michael J., Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, third ed., 2006)
• Loux, Michael J. ed., Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings (London: Routledge, 2001)

Websites:

• Experimental Philosophy website, <http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jk762/ExperimentalPhilosophy.html>
• Sepahi, Sketch, Puddles, Black Holes & Fungi, <http://sketchsepahi.com/blog/archives/99>