Mechanism, Mystery, and Miracle

Mechanism, Mystery, and Miracle

Locke thought that the external world is a mystery: we know there is such a world, but we don’t and can’t know how it works or what it’s like. Physics is a mysterious science (Newton agreed). But he didn’t think the mind is a mystery, specifically knowledge: he thought he knew how the mind produces knowledge, and it is really quite simple. Ideas are derived from sense impressions by an intelligible process (abstraction). Knowledge consists of mental images. He is a physical mysterian but a mental non-mysterian. Matter is mysterious, but the knowing mind is not. Descartes, on the other hand, is a mysterian about mind but a non-mysterian about matter. He thinks the external world consists of objects in space that obey knowable mechanical laws—a machine. He thus believes that we can know about the intrinsic nature of this world, in principle limitlessly. But he is a mysterian about the mind: this is because ideas (concepts) are implanted by God in the human soul at birth. Descartes has no theory of how this happens or what ideas intrinsically are (they are not mental images). Our knowledge of the world is mysterious, but the world known about is not. Locke has (he thinks) an intelligible theory of knowledge (human reason) but not of material bodies, whereas Descartes thinks he has an intelligible theory of material bodies but not of knowledge. Berkeley, for his part, is a mysterian about neither: he thinks the whole universe is intelligible to us, mind and matter. First, he doesn’t believe in matter in the sense in which Locke and Descartes do (the philosopher’s concept of matter)—though he does believe there are tables and chairs outside human minds (“finite spirits”); these objects exist in God’s mind as mental entities. His theory of knowledge is like Locke’s (and Hume’s)—an empiricist theory. He doesn’t even have a problem explaining abstract ideas, because he doesn’t accept that they exist. He gets rid of mystery altogether, which is all to the good because he thinks it leads to atheism. Thus, idealism dispels mystery (hence skepticism). In this he was broadly followed by subsequent philosophers—they are mostly idealists of one kind or another (despite their official intentions). Of course, Berkeley replaces mystery with miracle, because we need God to perform constant miracles of producing ideas in human minds (animal minds too, presumably). There could in principle be mysterians about both or non-mysterians about both: Chomsky and I are of the former persuasion; most contemporary thinkers claim to be of the latter. There is no entailment from one locus of mystery to the other: you could be a mysterian about one but a non-mysterian about the other, like Locke and Descartes; or you could be a global mysterian or a global non-mysterian. I would say, though, that mystery about one naturally leads to mystery about the other, and ditto for non-mystery, since it is probable that human intelligence is limited across the board or it is not.

How about mechanism? Locke would seem to be a mechanist about both mind and matter, though not a hardline mechanist: for his empiricist theory of ideas is quasi-mechanistic and his conception of nature follows the corpuscular philosophy of Boyle. Descartes is emphatically not a mechanist about the mind, but he is about the body and matter in general. Hence, his dualism. Berkeley is not a mechanist of any kind about the external world, but his theory of knowledge is like Locke’s and therefore quasi-mechanistic (as is Hume’s). Berkeley’s ontology, however, consists only of active spirits, so is not mechanistic. He is a non-mechanistic non-mysterian. Locke is a double mechanist, Descartes is a single mechanist, and Berkeley is a double non-mechanist. What we don’t see is someone who is a mechanist only about the mind, the body being regarded as non-mechanistic; but the position exists in logical space (maybe a behaviorist occultist about nature would qualify).  Berkeley avoids both mystery and mechanism by postulating God, but the cost is a giant miracle at the heart of things. This is the general shape of the history behind our current moment. It revolves around these three concepts.[1]

[1] Of course, I have not gone into any detail about all this, restricting myself to broad themes and summary formulations.