Pascal's Fire by Keith Ward

I have flip flopped around the idea of consciousness this year - in particular because I allowed myself to be influenced by some impressive philosophers I had a discussion with. They were both articulate and materialist (although weak materialists really). I then read Eagleman's Incognito which was also a weak materialist pamphlet (although a good deal more reflective than the philosophers). This left me feeling somewhat deflated, and harried as I was at the time I kind of surrendered to the idea of materialism without forcing myself to recollect why I have thought (for decades) that it's a bankrupt philosophical position. Then I picked up Keith Ward's book and was reminded both of some of the more complex science I should have remembered but also some pretty elementary philosophical arguments that I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I had actually forgotten in my 'moment of weakness'.

Ward's book, an exploration of a wide variety of scientific theories and general approaches to looking at their potential impact both on theology and their shaping by theology in society was a remarkable breath of fresh air.

As a one time physicist who tries to keep his hand in I was impressed with his grasp of modern physics (and by modern I mean post logical positivism, by which I mean after General Relativity was published in 1916). In particular I was delighted to be reminded about issues concerning the limitations of induction based upon the assumption that the visible universe is the only stuff there is as well as some fascinating stuff on consciousness.

In particular it reminded me of a couple of items regarding consciousness; firstly that even Eagleman's attractive notion of warring ideas which decide before we're even aware of them just hides the problem of decision making (by shoving it back into 'unconsciousness' and secondly, that the argument that Quantum Mechanics has no role in explaining consciousness is wrong headed.

The anti-QM argument is wrong for two reasons, first it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of QM (it's not really about randomness at all but about entropy and information) and secondly, that we have no real scooby of how consciousness emerges from our physical instantiation. I'm not a believer in a disembodied consciousness at all. However nor am I a believer in a complete instrumental explanation either. I'm generally quite happy with combining the philosophy of Raymond Tallis and John MacMurray.

That's my own tangent though, because Ward's book is a broader project than consciousness, or evolution or even cosmology. It's about explicitly looking to the most modern philosophy of science and forcefully crashing it into theology and social ideas of meaning to see what happens.

I have written before that I find this problematic because I hold a faux notion that because ideas in science change all the time there is a danger that integrating them into our ontologies is always going to lead us wrong. However, Ward has accomplished a fascinating integration without losing core ideas and without surrendering to the idea that 'once integrated never changed' fear I have. I know it's a stupid position on my part and this book has encouraged me to be more aware of the ideas I love so much be tend to keep (at least on the surface) separated to keenly.

Ward also posits a very (technically not in terms of the arguments actual strength) "Weak" notion of intelligent design that I have an instinctive problem with. I think my gut reaction is because of the term rather than his formulation of Tillich's notion of God as the Ground of Being. In the end it is an interesting interpretation of Tillich's idea and it is tremendously unfortunate that fundamentalists have so poisoned the phrase with their nonsense.

In the end this book was a wonderful, and easy, read. It reminded me of some stuff I should have remembered earlier in the year (sorry Shaw) and helped me realise I'd forgotten some of the more forceful arguments for why I'm not a materialist (even if I'm thoroughly down with the idea of physical laws etc etc etc.) In fact I was moved to write to him and thank him for it. Can't say more than that really.