On Choosing the Right Philosophical Story

Why Some Explanations Are Better Than None—and Which Ones to Choose

If I must choose between some story (explanation) or no story (brute fact) regarding a piece of philosophical data—like contingency, composition, or what have you—I obviously think it’s better to go with some story. And if I have to choose between different stories, I think it’s also better, other things being equal, to go with the one that makes the most sense of our strongest, clearest, and most basic intuitions.

My motivation for this is simple: to avoid skepticism.

The general idea goes like this—if we start entertaining the notion that certain things, which are clearly restrictedly intelligible (meaning they don’t adequately explain themselves), could just lack explanation altogether, we’re opening the door to a wild and woolly world of radical skeptical scenarios.

For instance, what if all your thoughts (or memory beliefs, etc.) weren’t the product of rational, reliable causal processes, but instead just popped into your head because of some magic bean (which itself popped into existence from nothing) that randomly generates thoughts in people’s minds, which may or may not have any association with the outside world—like the thought that there is a stuffed elephant in front of me named Peter the Elephant? The mere possibility of such a scenario would seem to immediately blow up much of our claims to knowledge, especially empirical knowledge.¹

(Naturally, one might argue that this scenario is extremely improbable, even if technically possible, because of an acceptance of brute facts. But here’s the issue with that: if probabilities are ultimately grounded in things or their powers, and we allow for the idea of things just popping into existence uncaused, from nothing, then all probability judgments essentially go out the window.² Once again, serious skepticism looms large.)

I think a similar issue arises when we start breaking with so many of our basic intuitions about the world—the sorts of almost basement-level beliefs (belief in an external world, other minds, the principle of causality, the possibility of knowledge, the contingency of things, certain moral principles, human agency, teleology, change, the self, etc.) that are more or less automatically occasioned in us and form the foundation for much of our reasoning.

To the extent that we begin offering various “error theories” about these pre-philosophical beliefs, we risk undermining the general reliability of our belief-forming mechanisms—another necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge, I would say. Indeed, in many cases, it seems clear that if you start to break even just one of these basic beliefs, you risk seriously destabilizing many others—a kind of package deal or “companions in guilt” scenario, as various philosophers have argued. And this, once again, opens the door to catastrophically skeptical scenarios.

There’s a lot more to be said about all this, of course, and I cover much of it in The Best Argument for God. But if you can at least see the plausibility of this suggestion, then you can see why, other things being equal, it’s better to accept some explanation rather than no explanation of something that seems to crucially require some further reason for why it is or has the characteristics it does. And, beyond that, other things being equal, it’s better to accept whatever explanation best preserves our most basic pre-philosophical beliefs. Got it?

Great.

So, for example, I think it’s clearly better to hold that there is some story explaining why the universe—either as a single big contingent thing or merely as the aggregate of all concrete contingent things—exists. And I think the best story is the classical theistic one, as I’ve argued in about a million places. This is definitely a better option than just holding that the universe is a bare brute fact—saying it’s there “just because” and leaving it at that. To say “just because” is really to say there is no “because” whatsoever. Lame! (And again, if the universe—especially as the aggregate of all concrete contingent things—can be there “just because,” then why couldn’t that magical, false-thought-producing bean also be there “just because”? I think the best and most obvious response to this is also the simplest: because nothing of the contingent type can exist uncaused. But, of course, once one accepts this, they must move beyond the contingent—that is, to the necessary—to find an adequate explanation. At this point, we can no longer accept the universe, whether understood as the collection of all contingent things or even as a single big contingent thing, as a brute fact.)³

But of course, someone could offer another story. They might say our intuition of contingency is just radically off. In fact, everything is actually necessary—the universe had to be there, and it had to have all the members and features it does. Thus, we wouldn’t need anything to explain why there’s anything contingent because, according to this view, there isn’t anything contingent in the first place.⁴

OK, I think there are a million—no, a billion!—things wrong with this alternative story, and I actually don’t think it’s plausible at all. But let’s allow it to sit at the table of theoretical options. Even so, I think, other things being equal, it’s better to go with the traditional theistic story (if just having to choose between these two options; of course, there are others), since it not only explains why there is anything contingent but does so without eliminating or radically revising our original intuition of contingency—the sense that many things exist but need not have been and could have been otherwise.⁵

At the end of the day, if you ask me why I believe so many of the things I do—why I’m an adherent to Perennial Philosophy (Thomism)—I’ll tell you it’s because the grand narrative offered by this worldview, in my view, makes the most sense of our strongest intuitions, and is independently well motivated through various, impressively convergent, lines of philosophical investigation. In other words, as far as I can tell, adherence to Thomism has never forced me to radically revise any of my broadest, strongest, most common-sense beliefs—whether with respect to moral realism, authentic human agency (libertarian free will), the realm of contingency, consciousness, the possibility of knowledge (both metaphysical and scientific), or human dignity. The list goes on.

Indeed, I would count it a hugely significant cost if my worldview—my overarching Philosophical Theory—compelled me to radically revise any one of these strongly intuitive beliefs, let alone multiple or all of them. In fact, back when I was an atheist, I frequently felt almost overwhelming pressure to revise nearly all of these. And to the extent that I thought any of them could be preserved, it was almost always by adopting additional theoretical components that seemed fantastically, indeed unbelievably, contrived. (Sorry, but I never could take seriously much of the talk about supervenience—whether of moral properties, subjective states, or what have you. However fantastic one might think the existence of God is—and honestly, I find it quite easy to affirm, but to each their own!—few things strike me as more fantastic than the ways certain naturalists strive to make sense of moral facts, consciousness, and so on. So here, I definitely side with anti-realists and eliminativists—at least concerning outcomes or conclusions. I merely depart from them with respect to the philosophical starting point. Just my two cents!!)

Of course, I don’t place huge stock in arguments from intuition alone. However, I would argue that when you work through the Thomistic system (or if you prefer, Perennial Philosophy or Big Ten Platonism as some call it), beginning with the various arguments that motivate it—arguments which make claims about certain necessary conditions to secure the broadest, most obvious features of reality (like change or persistence or composition or becoming)—you eventually see how well it secures (often through a complex metaphysical framework, I admit!) a remarkably common-sense view of reality. Discovering that was a huge “oh yeah, this is almost certainly true” moment for me; if nothing else, I mean a strong confirmatory sign.⁶

Here’s a contention that, for now, I’ll have to leave largely as an assertion (though I defend this extensively in The Best Argument for God): when comparing theism and naturalism in terms of their comparative explanatory force, there are many cases where the only plausible story available is the theistic one. (I know signaling intellectual modesty is all the rage these days among philosophers, but hey, I really do think that!) Conversely, in other cases where the naturalist can offer a story, it requires a radical revision of some basic, intuitive beliefs.

An example of the former scenario concerns the question of (contingent) existence. I just don’t think anything but the classical theistic story succeeds—everything else (including other theistic stories, not just atheistic ones!) ultimately terminates in a brute fact. (Beware The Bean!) And this isn’t surprising, since, as I’ve emphasized many times, once we begin to think about what sort of thing could be the ultimate autonomous fact (i.e., the self-explained explainer of everything else), there are good reasons to believe there is really only one sort of thing that could fit the bill.

An example of the latter scenario concerns moral experience. I don’t think atheistic forms of moral realism are particularly plausible. I realize this goes against a popular trend these days, where many theists seem willing to concede that moral realism is tenable apart from theism. What can I say? Maybe I just like being countercultural. Or, more to the point, I simply think it’s false. Why? Because, at least to my mind, the most initially plausible forms of moral realism on (mainstream? conservative?) naturalism still end up relying on a collection of highly coincidental brute facts—such as the claim that certain moral properties necessarily supervene on certain natural properties. Which, I mean, right on the surface, seems… a bit magical, to say the least. (And this is especially so, at least, when operating within the inner logic of naturalism—that is, the idea of trying to explain everything through some combinatorial method: atoms and the laws we use to combine them, or something like that.) When proponents of these views are pressed on the matter—particularly on the whys and hows—they often respond with something along the lines of, “Well, we all have to terminate in brute facts somewhere,” as if that somehow justifies leaving presumably foundational ethical facts with a simple, “Welp, that’s just the way it is.”⁷

But, of course:

1. The claim that we are all stuck with brute facts is something the classical theist will strongly deny; indeed, they will insist that escaping brute facts is perhaps the reason to embrace classical theism.

2. Even among those who (I think wrongly) grant the existence of brute facts, most, if not all, still maintain that certain states of affairs—particularly those involving an array of unfathomable coincidences—are far worse places to end the explanatory hunt than others. And surely, the idea of moral properties—just the right ones, conveniently enough—supervening on natural properties is one such example. It strikes many of us as, if not outright unintelligible, at least so deeply mysterious that, without a further account, it becomes almost wholly unbelievable.

Either way, we’ll save that whole debate for another time. I realize the claims I’ve just made concerning moral realism will be hugely contentious for many atheists and theists alike, but you’ll either have to check out my book for a more detailed discussion or wait for a future post on the matter. Besides, the example above is really just one of many that could be swapped in (perhaps a much easier or safer example would have been one concerning libertarian freedom… but hey, what’s done is done), if necessary—say, on the condition that someone, particularly a theist, is actually convinced that moral realism is tenable apart from naturalism. So, don’t get too hung up on that particular example, is all I’m saying.

But let’s say you’re willing to go with me this far. What remains, then, is for the atheist to consider moral anti-realism, perhaps situated along the lines of a typical Darwinian account: moral beliefs as false but useful for “having sex and avoiding bears”—nothing more than mere sentiment at the end of the day. While this is certainly a story, it’s one that—for me, at least (and I suspect for many of you)—would require a radical revision of how I interpret my moral experience. And that’s not good.

So, where am I ultimately going with this? Probably nowhere—that is, nowhere that isn’t already obvious. So, I’ll finish, simply, by reiterating the main point: if you’re stuck choosing between some explanation or no explanation for some phenomenon, better, I say, to go with whatever story is available than no story at all. After that, if you’re trying to decide between different stories, then, other things being equal, go with the one that lets you hold on to more of your most basic, pre-philosophical beliefs about the world. (What those are, I admit, can be a bit hard to pin down, but I think the obvious ones are… well, obvious).

And finally, if you follow me on this line of thought—and if you carry it through in your analysis of reality (which I suspect many of you—classy beings that you are—conduct in the evening, slouched in your crumbling La-Z-Boy, tumbler of Old Grandad in hand, cigarette butt behind your ear, staring at a CRT-TV you’ve propped up with an old pizza box)—I think it will give you good reason, perhaps even decisive reason, to be a classical theist since, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, classical theism isn’t just about God.

1. This example is admittedly outlandish—probably the extent of being unhelpful—because I apparently can’t help myself. But a more mundane illustration could be this: suppose you acquire information from a newspaper you found in your mailbox, but it turns out your neighbor placed it there as a prank, writing that the president had been assassinated to get a rise out of you. Now, let’s also suppose the president actually was assassinated. So, the belief you formed is technically true, but it wouldn’t count as knowledge because it wasn’t formed through a reliable process.

The connection to skepticism is this: once we admit the possibility of brute facts—where thoughts might arise randomly, with no reliable connection to the world outside our heads—then we find ourselves in a similar situation to the person with the fake newspaper. Even if our beliefs happen to be true, they wouldn’t—because they couldn’t—count as knowledge.

2. Alexander Pruss and Robert Koons both have good work on this line of thought, if you want to go further.

3. As for the suggestion that perhaps just some part of the universe is uncaused or necessary, I’ve addressed why this is implausible in many places—particularly in my book—but here’s a good post to start with:

4. In somewhat funny way, this move just effectively concedes “stage 1” of cosmological arguments. Which then just puts us at “stage 2” of trying to analysis what sort of thing could be, not just necessary, but actually ontologically independent. And you already know my answer to that ; )

5. I don’t think this intuition needs much defense, but I do recall a prominent atheist intellectual once admitting that the contingency of things seemed as obvious to him as anything—something not to be denied, if at all possible. Interestingly, he said this because he thought it counted against theism due to certain modal collapse issues. Obviously, I think he was wrong about those modal collapse issues, but not about the "data" of contingency.

6. Just think of it this way: you have independent reasons or arguments supporting a theory, and then you notice that this theory allows you to retain some of your clearest pre-philosophical beliefs about reality on a large scale. Meanwhile, another theory—lacking those independent reasons or arguments—forces you to revise or abandon those beliefs. I mean, which one do you think you should go with?

7. And if the naturalist wants to appeal to essentialism to secure moral realism, as certain recent volumes have done, then I’ll say—fair enough. I, in fact, am an essentialist. However, essentialism itself, I would argue, is in severe tension with the inner logic of naturalism. (There is, after all, good reason why so many naturalists have long rejected essentialism!)

At the end of the day, one must explain the essences of things—where they come from and how they are instantiated. And that, I contend, is best—and ultimately only—explained by classical theism. (Sijuwade, in fact, presents a powerful case for moving from essentialism to classical theism in Analytic Theism.)