How did we get here and what are we? How did life begin? Is the human mind just software running inside a meat robot built accidentally by natural selection? Could the universe have an eternal past or be part of a multiverse? Can chance account for anything given enough of it? Could all of this have happened without God? And what of recent discoveries in biology showing unimagined functional complexity and the cellular level, and purposeful behavior that seems to defy computation at the multicellular level?

I don’t mean to answer those questions in this essay, at least in any depth. Rather, I have noticed that most people who do address them do so half-cocked, reaching conclusions that are contrary to reason, and that result in logical absurdity if you follow out their logical implications. This is fatal, because if we abandon logical consistency as a guide to truth, any possible conclusion follows from any possible observation with equal rational justification.

So what I want to do here is to point out and explain certain logically inviolable truths that are especially pertinent to considering the Big Things, and that the talking heads who discuss the Big Things routinely violate, so that you will see the logical errors in their thinking and be equipped to work through these topics rationally and clearly yourself.

To my mind, there are three major principles that are most egregiously overlooked and violated, and they are all related to each other, one following from the next. I will list all three with an explanation for each:

1. Nothing Can’t Do Anything

This should be self-evident to all, as it’s hard to conceive of any fact more basic or logically inescapable that this. Simply put, in order for something to act in any way or cause anything to happen, it must obviously BE something. Something that doesn’t exist can’t do anything because there’s nothing there TO do anything.

As obvious as this is, you still see the occasional yahoo (looking at you, Lawrence Krauss) who will try to do an end-run around logic, such as by claiming that the universe was caused by nothing. But as with any attempt to evade logic, making it seem plausible requires sophistry, and people who do this must invariably try to subtly redefine “nothing” as something (such as Krauss redefining “nothing” to mean quantum foam, or “approximations of nothing,” and the like).

For more, see here: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/02/forgetting-nothing-learning-nothing.html

2. The Principle Of Sufficient Reason

Okay, so if nothing can’t cause something, then what CAN cause it? Well, as should be almost equally obvious, it must be something logically sufficient to cause it.

I’ll give a silly concrete example to help illustrate this. Let’s say you ask how the Statue Of Liberty got from France (where it was built) to New York, and I reply that it was carried on land by a carpenter ant. You immediately know that this cannot possibly be right. Why? Well, there are a bunch of reasons, but let’s start with the fact that carpenter ants are not capable of carrying things nearly as heavy as the Statue of Liberty and that New York is not connected to France by land. There is nothing in the cause I have cited (a carpenter ant carrying things on land) that is physically or logically sufficient to cause the effect you want explained (the Statue Of Liberty moving from France to New York).

An ant carrying things on land is simply logically irrelevant to the Statue Of Liberty being moved from France to New York. Not only that, but by appealing to it as the cause, I have committed the logical equivalent of attributing the Statue Of Liberty’s movement to nothing, since I have offered nothing of any relevance as having caused it.

In other words, the Principle Of Sufficient Reason is actually the principle that Nothing Can’t Do Anything by another name, with its implications teased out: Since it’s illogical to say that something was caused by nothing, it’s also illogical (and logically equivalent) to say that something was caused by something else that has nothing of any causal relevance or sufficiency to it.

3. Reductionism Is Subjectivism

The topic of reductionism is always forefront in discussions of the Big Things, and has been a major current in the sciences and in philosophy since Descartes mainstreamed a reductionist, mechanistic concept of the natural world. Materialists will typically say that the mind reduces to computation, for instance, or that design and purpose in biology reduce to natural selection.

We’re familiar with the language, but what does it actually mean to say that one category of thing reduces to another like this?

Here’s what it means: To say that Category A reduces to Category B is another way of saying that only Category B actually exists in objective reality, whereas Category A only subjectively seems to exist in the human mind as a result of how we subjectively experience Category B.

Let’s take an example that nearly everyone will agree on: The motion of the sun and the other planets in our solar system around the earth actually reduces to the earth’s and other planets’ motion around the sun. In objective reality, the motion of the sun and the other planets around the earth doesn’t exist, but it subjectively seems to exist in human minds as a result of how we subjectively experience their motion around the sun from our vantage point on earth.

Some other common examples since the time of Descartes are how reductionists typically conceive of things like temperature and color. A reductionist would say that in objective reality, there is only individual particles in various states of kinetic energy, and that warmth and coldness as we know them as we know them exist only in our minds as a result of how we subjectively experience that kinetic energy or lack thereof in the particles around us. Similarly, a reductionist would say that in objective reality, there are only various wavelengths of light, and that, say, the color red as we know it exists only in our minds as a result of how we subjectively experience certain wavelengths of light.

The takeaway here is this: To say that one thing reduces to another is implicitly to say that it exists only subjectively in the human mind. Ipso facto, to affirm that something is objectively real is implicitly to deny that it reduces to anything else. For those familiar with Aristotelean philosophy, to say that something is objectively real, and hence not reducible to something else, is the same thing as identifying it as a substance in Aristotelean terminology. If someone claims that something (say, the human mind) is real but also that it reduces to something else (say, computer algorithms) they are subtly contradicting themselves. Be on the lookout for this, because materialists do it all the time.

For more, see here: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/nagel-and-his-critics-part-ii.html

And here: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-limits-of-eliminativism.html

4. Did I Say Three Logical Principles? I Mean Four

This isn’t really a distinct principle of its own, but I think it’s worth highlighting how principles #1 and #2 logically work together with #3 to produce a fourth basic principle of reasoning about basic things. If you say that some category of thing is objectively real - and hence that it doesn’t reduce to some other category of thing as per principle #3 - then its existence cannot be accounted for by some other category of thing because as per principle #2 you would then lack any cause sufficient to account for it, which as we saw is tantamount to attributing it to nothing, which is nonsensical as per principle #1.

If Category A does not reduce to Category B, then objects of Category B are not causally relevant to account for the existence of objects of Category A, because objects of Category B lack the causal powers or properties that make Category A irreducible to it. To attribute the origin of Category A to Category B would thus be logically equivalent to saying it was caused by nothing.

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Wrapping Up

Now, as I said, I don’t mean to answer the Big Things in this essay, but before signing off, I do want to at least point out in broad strokes how they are routinely violated in major discussions, and what to look for if you want to avoid these pitfalls and see the errors in many popular arguments for yourself.

For example, consider eliminativism in the philosophy of mind. This is the school of thought that says that the human mind does not exist, that thoughts with propositional content don’t exist, that consciousness does not exist. They say that these things are “illusions.” This is a flagrant violation of principle 1, that nothing can’t do anything, since they are attributing the experiencing of illusions to something that they claim does not exist, the human mind. Similarly, they attribute falsehood to the idea that the mind is real and that thoughts with propositional content exist, even though the claim itself denies that anything with propositional content exists that could be true or false.

Or consider a reductionist who accepts that human consciousness is real, but claims that it reduces to a computer algorithm. This violates principles 1 and 3. Why? Because as we have seen, the claim that something reduces to something else entails that it doesn’t exist objectively, but only seems to exist subjectively in the human mind. But you contradict yourself if you try to explain the human mind (and human consciousness, etc) itself this way, since the human mind must objectively exist in the first place to have any subjective experience of itself, thus violating principle 3. To try to reduce the human mind in this way is thus also thus to attribute action (subjective experience) to something that you say doesn’t objectively exist (in other words, nothing), violating principle 1.

Or consider that term that is all the rage in intellectual circles these days, “emergence.” Proponents of emergence routinely violate principle 2, the principle of sufficient reason. They, to their credit, typically recognize the failure and incoherence of reductionism and seek to avoid it. They will acknowledge, for instance, that wholes exist with causal powers and properties that are objectively real and thus do not reduce to the aggregate properties of their parts. However, the word “emergence” itself serves as a sort of weaselly incantation to evade the logical implications of this fact and account for these things with magic, without requiring any cause sufficient to account for the origin of these novel powers.

Anyhow, that’s enough for today. Hope someone finds it helpful.