What Is The Data to Be Explained?
Part of the problem of engaging worldview comparison is agreement upon data and how much a prior commitment to a worldview can influence what the relevant features of the world (i.e., explanatory data) are. In other words, the theory winds up determining the data, rather than the data determining the theory.
This is easily illustrated through moral features. Are there moral facts? Certainly, most people seem to act and believe as if there are. Indeed, many naturalists are themselves moral realists, not moral anti-realists. If the atheist and theist agree upon the data of moral facts, they can then see which metaphysical theory makes better sense of this data, is more explanatorily comprehensive and hopefully just as simple if not simpler, etc.
However, many naturalists do not believe there are moral facts. At most, they think there is just the naïve impression thereof, and so the data they must account for is not moral facts as such but rather the mere appearance or illusion of moral facts. Here, I want to grant that naturalistic evolutionary theory provides something of a decent account of this, where evolutionary pressures put beliefs into us that, while not corresponding to anything objective concerning human nature or God’s commands or some platonic realm or what have you, nevertheless help us to “avoid bears and have sex.” False, but useful, as it were.
That account flows naturally from a naturalistic paradigm (which is why so many naturalists maintain it); but it also shows how much a theory affects one’s accounting of the data. For it seems strange that anybody would deny moral facts unless some prior commitment to a worldview which appeared inconsistent with moral facts is compelling them to do so, given that the moral realm as objective is intuitively obvious. Personally, I believe this is clearly an instance of the theory determining the data, rather than the data determining the theory. HOWEVER, I am not saying this is irrational, as one might have other reasons, including other data, for thinking that theory must be true. Thus, it makes sense, in some instances — even if not in this instance — to allow one’s theory to determine some of the data because of how that theory is determined by other data.
Anyway, if that is where the conversation is concerning morality, then worldview comparison becomes more difficult, because the disagreement is not about what best explains some feature of the world but what the features of the world are. If the theist says moral facts are better explained by theism but the atheist doesn’t think there are moral facts to explain – well, you can see the problem. This means either one of two things must happen. Either the dispute must be settled concerning the status of moral facts, which shifts the debate toward issues concerning moral realism or moral anti-realism, or the respective worldview competitors must agree to set that issue aside and list out features of the world they do agree on, then see which worldview provides a better explanation of those.
For my money, the following is a list of features which are either undeniably true or extremely well evidenced, which means if any worldview cannot account for each and all these facts, it is not a serious contender.
- Concrete (causally capable) contingent entities
- Consciousness
- Rationality
- Knowledge
- Physical fine-tuning
- Complex, elegant structures (particularly in biological)
- Moral facts
- Moral knowledge
- Suffering and evil
By my lights, these features are logically independent, at least in certain directions. I.e., that there is some contingent concrete entity does not entail there are beings which are conscious, or that the universe is physically fine-tuned for the emergence of interactive intelligent biological life. Moreover, physical fine-tuning, to the best of my knowledge, does not entail complexly structured biological life. Fine-tuning strikes me as water to fish: a necessary but not sufficient condition. No fish without water, though water can be without fish. Moreover, there could be – however odd this may seem — moral facts without anybody coming into reliable cognitive contact with those facts, so moral knowledge must be accounted for as well, which I think we have. So must knowledge in general be accounted for, especially since there could be instances of knowledge of things other than moral facts. That is, there could be knowledge even if there is no moral knowledge. Likewise, there could be consciousness without rationality, as is presumably the case with brute animals.
However, some of these features could not occur without prior features – like complexly structured biological life apart from physical fine-tuning or suffering and evil without causally capable contingent entities. This is an important consideration, for if some worldview cannot possibly account for some necessary prior feature, then that worldview is dropped to probability zero, which is sticky, even if it might seem to better explain subsequent features. For example, if it were shown that naturalism cannot possibly account for why there are any contingent entities, then naturalism is “stuck” there. Further evidential considerations, including those concerning evil, are irrelevant unless a naturalistic theory can be made “unstuck.” Here, obviously, I am hinting at the force of cosmological reasoning, which has traditionally maintained that nothing apart from the existence and activity of a transcend first cause (immaterial, non-composite, eternal, etc.) can possibly explain the existence of contingent being. That, of course, is a conversation for another time, and one I have had many other times.
The point for now is just this. It strikes me that the features above are non-negotiable, so obviously true or so well evidenced that if there is a true theory of everything, it must be able to account, and account well, for each of these features and be neither forced nor inclined to eliminate any of them. My suggestion is naturalism struggles seriously with most of these features, must frequently adopt auxiliary hypotheses to maintain that struggle, and cannot in principle explain several of them (like contingent being and rationality).
This is a claim I will substantiate in subsequent posts.