Worldviews 101: Building Your Philosophical Theory of Everything

Two posts in one day? I guess this is what happens when one of your kids wakes you up at 3:55 a.m. : ) But unlike the previous post, this one will be shorter and more basic.

In fact, I thought we might talk a bit more about worldview—or as the Germans call it, Weltanschauung—what it is and how to construct one.

Simply put, a worldview is a philosophical “Big Picture” or Theory of Everything. Those who engage in systematic philosophy or worldview construction aren’t just trying to make sense of one particular feature of the world—like human consciousness, causality, or morality—but are also trying to integrate these features into a coherent whole.

In my view, worldview construction just is philosophy, precisely because it involves asking fundamental questions—including the ultimate question of how all these fundamental questions connect (or if they even do connect). For what it’s worth, saying philosophy tries to answer fundamental questions isn’t just me trying to make philosophy sound important; it’s really just what philosophy is! After all, it’s why we naturally say that when people start asking really deep questions, they’re “getting philosophical.”

Let me give you an example: If we ask whether any goose in the world is purple, we aren’t really asking a philosophical question—that’s an empirical or scientific question. But if we ask whether there is such a thing as a “goose nature,” something by which we can identify and classify certain beings as truly similar, then we’re asking a philosophical question—and a very important, traditional one. The difference is that one question can be answered simply by going out and taking a look; the other, if you really think about it, is a much deeper question. In some respects, it’s obvious (if there weren’t something like a “goose nature,” why do we call all these things geese?), but in other respects, it’s far more difficult to prove, let alone give an adequate account of (what exactly is this “goose” nature, where is it, etc.?).

Anyway, to get back to the main point: most everybody has a worldview—they just might not think about it much. By that, I mean everyone holds certain commitments that are properly philosophical, particularly about the nature of the human person (including if there is such a nature!), what the good life is, and whether there is any grand narrative or purpose to reality. So, having a worldview isn’t really something that can be avoided; the only thing that can be avoided is actually thinking your worldview through, trying to get it right and consistent. And the moment you begin engaging in that project is the moment you start “doing” philosophy.

Of course, people often come to their worldview through a variety of means. Some rely on philosophical investigation, while others adopt certain commitments through religious traditions, purported revelation, or basic everyday experiences and intuitions. Naturally, science can also play a significant role in shaping one’s worldview, either directly or indirectly. Whether these means are all reliable, even if not equally so, is itself a philosophical question—one related to epistemology, or the theory of knowledge (an essential component of any worldview).

In some cases—just to give another example—people adopt a rather restricted epistemology called scientism, which essentially claims that the only things we can truly know or have confidence in are those delivered through the scientific method. People who subscribe to a scientistic epistemology are likely to hold a materialist and reductionistic worldview. In case you're not familiar with those terms, a materialist worldview asserts that everything that exists is fundamentally physical or material, with no supernatural or immaterial elements (like God, souls, or abstract realms). A reductionistic approach, on the other hand, generally seeks to explain complex phenomena (such as human consciousness or morality) by reducing them to simpler, often physical, components.

If the connections aren’t already obvious, here they are: a scientistic epistemology naturally leads one toward a materialist worldview because science deals with physical things, but also a reductionist approach, where one believes that everything that needs to be explained can ultimately be reduced to, say, atoms and the laws that govern them. Of course, this doesn’t mean that people who hold to scientism are relying solely on science to form their worldview; scientism itself is a philosophical position and requires philosophical support—it’s not something that science alone can prove or confirm.

Just to contrast materialism, another worldview is Aristotelianism, which—as the name implies—broadly follows the thought of Aristotle. Aristotle actually did believe in immaterial entities, including a purely actual prime mover as the ultimate explanation for why change occurs. For Aristotle, the most fundamental sorts of things are substances—things that exist in their own right rather than derivatively. For example, a cat would be a substance in Aristotle’s view, and he would argue that the cat as a whole is actually more fundamental than its physical parts. The physical parts of the cat—the cells and so on—actually get their essence and function from being part of the whole; they are whole-dependent parts.

Obviously, the Aristotelian worldview is a very different sort of picture from the modern materialist perspective. Part of what makes philosophy so fun and interesting (frustrating? Noooo!) is comparing the virtues of competing worldview theories or hypotheses. And Aristotle, I think, if he were around today, would not be surprised at the enormous power of the physical sciences, but he would almost certainly condemn scientism as overly restrictive. He was neither a physicalist nor a reductionist (atomist). He would likely argue—as he did in his own time—that we need to posit things like substantial forms and other metaphysical parts to make sense of underlying, pre-philosophical commitments like change, composition, and causality—all of which seem to be presupposed by the very practice of science itself. But those debates, I think, are best saved for another time.

Now, there are a lot of worldviews out there—too many to survey in a brief introductory post. But just to name a few: classical theism, Stoicism, pantheism, naturalism, idealism, and Christianity. To make matters more complicated, there are, of course, different schools of thought within each of these broader categories—not all naturalists, for example, think the same way about causality (some are dispositionalists, some are Humeans) or consciousness (some are eliminativists, some are functionalists). You’ll have to look those terms up—or wait until I cover them in another post—but the point is, even if people broadly share a worldview, they often differ substantially on specific issues. So yeah, fun stuff!

FWIW, here’s my worldview, which is essentially a variant of Aristotelianism.

To wrap up, it might be helpful to list the kinds of questions philosophers ask when they engage in worldview construction. As you’ll see, these questions span a remarkably wide range of topics, probing the nature of many different phenomena, including causality, knowledge, consciousness, morality, God, and more. Here are just a few:

• Are there different modes of existence? Does everything exist in the mind, or do some things have existence outside the mind?

• Do only physical things exist?

• Does everything that exists change? Does everything that exists do so necessarily, or only contingently?

• Are there more possible things than actually existing things?

• What is the difference between right and wrong? Are right and wrong the same as good and bad?

• What is the nature of evil? Is it possible to pursue evil for evil’s sake?

• Are things good because we choose them, or do we choose them because they are good?

• Where do moral obligations come from? Are there any objective (universally binding, culturally independent) moral laws?

• Are there circumstances where goods conflict? Can there ever be such a thing as a just war? Was bombing Nagasaki wrong? Is it okay to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?

• Do we have souls—if so, what is the soul?—or are we just physical beings?

• How do we know what we know, and what can we be certain about?

• Is there a purpose or meaning to existence? If so, what is it, and how do we find it?

• Does God exist? And if so, what is God’s nature, and how is God involved in, or related to, the world?¹

1. A lot of these questions are taken from my book The Best Argument for God.