Does Evolution Undermine Religion? Part 2
Part 2 - Religious Consciousness and the Space of Reasons
But you will gather what I am driving at, namely that it is a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests — that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless antimetaphysicians still take our fire from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is truth, that truth is divine. — But what if this should become more and more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie — if God himself should prove to be our most enduring lie?
— Nietzsche, The Gay Science
In the first part of this series, I constructed an argument purporting to undermine the rational standing of religious belief based on the likelihood that our religious dispositions are subject to explanation in terms of evolution by natural selection. You might remember that I based the discussion on the stipulation of two noncontroversial definitions (at least by my reckoning):
Religion: There are supernatural entities and/or principles relevant to conduct.
Evolution: The human tendency to hold Religion is explained by the reproductive fitness it accrued to our prehistoric ancestors.
The crux of the argument is that Evolution and Religion are indirectly incompatible (see part 1 for an explanation of that notion), such that holding Evolution should leave us dubious of our rational standing for Religion. Since we have good reasons to hold Evolution, we then have good reasons to doubt our rational bearing toward Religion. Even if we think we have impeccable reasons for holding Religion, those might not be what actually binds us to it; despite our flattering, self-conscious stories, something far less grandiose is really running things behind the scenes (and form our distant past). In other words, Evolution places us in the Space of Causes with regard to Religion, which kicks the latter out of the Space of Reasons. I put the case more formally as follows:
If Evolution, then Religion is explained by natural selection in terms of reproductive advantage.
Reproductive advantage is an explanation in the Space of Causes.
Therefore:
If Evolution, then Religion is explained in the Space of Causes.
Evolution is very likely.
Therefore:
Religion is very likely explained in the Space of Causes.
Therefore:
Religion is not explained in the Space of Reasons.
At least for the purposes of this discussion, I do not raise any direct problems with (2)-(6). I do, however, have worries about an ambiguity in premise 1 that infects the rest of the argument. That is, it is unclear as to what is meant by “belief” in premise 1, and how we clarify this issue has consequences for the soundness of this argument. Under some senses of “belief,” I think premise 1 is just fine, and the argument is then sound. There is one sense of “belief,” however, under which premise 1 comes out false, rendering the argument unsound. Importantly, it is only in this sense of “belief” that the argument should be at all worrisome to a religious believer. At the very least, a skeptic would have to go much further to show premise 1 to be true. As long as such a case remains outstanding (and I think it does), one is well within her rights to hold premise 1 in doubt and with it the entire argument.
To see the ambiguity, consider three different aspects of believing one might have in mind when speaking of “belief”:
Belief Consciousness: qualitative, intentional, logical content of holding a belief
Belief Behavior: the patterns of overt behavior following on a belief
Belief Physiology: the biological structures (mostly neurophysiology) requisite for a belief
Belief consciousness is the content of the belief., i.e., what one is thinking about when having a conscious belief. Here I have in mind not just its reference, but the sense too, i.e., what is classically called the thought or meaning of a proposition one believes to be true. The content of the belief There’s a snake over there! is what is present to your awareness when you consciously hold that There’s a snake over there! There are, of course, many ways to frame conscious content (mental images, concepts, qualitative feels, etc.), but for our purposes we can be neutral among those options, i.e., belief consciousness just is whatever counts for consciously holding a belief, the experiential or intentional component of believing.
By belief behavior, I have in mind the overt bodily activities that are associated with holding a certain belief. For example, avoiding the corner of the room wherein the rattle snake is coiled in a clearly responsive and non-accidental manner, e.g., changing course or saying “There’s a snake over there!” is a case of belief behavior. We have long-term dispositions along certain patterns of behavior that are fitted to practical situations, and these allow us to understand what someone believes based on the behavior in context, e.g., I knew Smitty believed there was a rattle snake in the office corner, when he climbed up on the desk. In other words, our dispositions for belief behavior are what allow beliefs to make a difference for how we get around in the world.
Belief physiology is the set of biological structures that are required in order for a certain belief, and these will be most directly (though not exclusively) neurophysiological patters of activity. For example, there is probably a fairly standard neurophysiological state of activity that is operative under the typical conditions in which a human believes there is a snake nearby, and these physiological substrata are likely necessary for our holding such a belief.
Notice, belief behavior does not entail belief consciousness (at least not immediately), e.g., I can follow the behavioral patter of believing the chair is under me without any consciousness as such. I doubt you very often consciously believe the chair is under you as you sit, but I also think you do in a significant sense believe the chair is there whenever you set about sitting down; your behavior bears that out. That is is why you are unpleasantly surprised when someone pulls the chair away — you believed (falsely!) that the chair was there, without ever calling the conscious content of that belief to mind. In other words, you can act on a belief (exhibit belief behavior) without ever bringing such a belief to consciousness. Moreover, you can even have beliefs behaviorally that you can’t bring to conscious awareness. For example, I know my way around the neighborhood I have lived in for the last twenty years (and thereby exhibit nearly flawless belief behavior regarding the street my pal Smitty lives on), but I honestly cannot name the cross streets for all the tens blocks south of my house in their actual order. (This may be a sign of early cognitive decline, but let’s just not think about that now.)
Furthermore, we have good reason to believe belief physiology is sufficient (in context) for belief behavior and other relevant neurophysiological states. Suppose Zeta is the belief physiology associated with the presence of a rattle snake coiled in the corner of the room. Physiology alone is sufficient to cause the requisite behaviors for the belief that there is a snake in the room. In other words, as long as the right sorts of events are going on in the nervous system (and probably more broadly in the other relevant physiological systems), you will engage in the behaviors that are appropriate to the belief that there is a rattle snake in the corner of the room. Note well then that belief behavior and belief physiology can get on rather nicely without the help of belief consciousness! Belief physiology doesn’t need any help from belief consciousness in order to bring about belief behavior. I make this case more extensively in another article.
Moreover, and this will be a good bit more controversial, belief physiology does not explain belief consciousness all on its own. This is a case that I make in great detail in my forthcoming book Thinking about Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Technological Nihilism and in this lecture, but I will give something of a quick version here. Suppose Lambda is the belief physiology in contemporary human beings associated with our belief consciousness Paris is the capital of the Fifth Republic. (Of course Lambda varies a good bit, but that only serves to make my point.) No doubt, under standard conditions, the vast majority of us will have the belief consciousness Paris is the capital of the Fifth Republic only when we are likewise in Lambda. Fair enough, but that is not to say that Lambda is strictly sufficient for the belief consciousness of Paris is the capital of the Fifth Republic. Consider a case in which a prehistoric human is put into Lambda fortuitously millennia before Paris ever existed, e.g., some sort of freak brain trauma or surgical interventions by ancient alien scientists. It is difficult to conclude that he or she would then have the belief consciousness Paris is the capital of the Fifth Republic. Are we to believe that there is some intrinsic link between Lambda and Paris such that even if Paris hasn’t come to be yet (or even never comes to be) all an organism needs to be conscious of Paris is to instance Lambda? I find such a claim to strain credulity. There is nothing about that pattern of neurophysiological activity that links it directly and all on its own to Paris (let alone the Fifth Republic, etc.). It is only because our Lambda has been formed by a certain historical process, aimed at dealing with the real city currently serving as the capital of the Fifth Republic that this physiological structure is a ground for the belief consciousness Paris is the capital of the Fifth Republic. If an organism did not form the physiological in the appropriate way, then it does not have the belief consciousness, even if that physiology might have been related to such consciousness in other external conditions. Thus, an organism can have belief physiology without the associated belief consciousness.
These considerations hold important consequences relevant to our argument. Certainly, the explanation of belief behavior and belief physiology are intimately related. If belief physiology is necessary (and in some sense sufficient) for belief behavior, then a process that selects for some ranges of belief behavior thereby shapes belief physiology. The way one makes long term behavioral changes is by arranging things physiologically. Thus, if something explains the behavioral dispositions of an organism, then it does so ultimately by offering an explanation of the relevant physiological structures of that organism, because physiology explains behavior. The same goes in the other direction. If you have a very good explanation of the behavior of an organism, you then have a very good explanation for the relevant physiological underpinnings. An animal’s behavioral dispositions are expressions of its physiological underpinnings, but those particular physiological structures went online because of their contribution to those behavioral dispositions. Belief behavior and belief physiology thereby form an explanatory nexus. Notice, however, that is not the case with respect to belief consciousness and belief physiology. Since belief physiology is insufficient for belief consciousness (the former can occur without bringing about the latter), an explanation of belief physiology does not give us a complete explanation (or even a very good explanation) of belief consciousness. Neither is there an explanatory connection between belief behavior and belief consciousness, since we saw above that the former can carry on quite well in absence of the latter. Belief consciousness and the belief behavior-belief physiology nexus are, no doubt, related in us, but not in an explanatorily significant way.
Let me tie all of this together a bit more tightly. A complete explanation of belief behavior could be given in complete indifferent to any associated belief consciousness, i.e., explanations of behavior do not necessarily explain consciousness; and an explanation of belief physiology does not necessarily explain any associated belief consciousness, i.e., physiology alone is insufficient to explain consciousness. Thus, if a physiological explanation of belief behavior can be given, that does not necessarily explain the associated consciousness. Evolution by natural selection explains belief only to the degree the behavior of the belief contributes to reproductive fitness. Of course, reproductive fitness is a behavioral affair, which is causally tied to physiology. Thus, evolution by natural selection can offer a rather satisfying explanation of the belief behavior-belief physiology nexus, but it does not thereby explain belief consciousness.
Notice that relating to a belief in the Space of Reasons is an attribute of belief consciousness. That is not say that all belief consciousness is operative in a normative space, but that when one is in the Space of Reasons, he or she is consciously so (or at least potentially so, i.e., Smitty could give his reasons). Maybe there are unconscious (warranted without being justified) underpinnings of the Space of Reasons, but the game of giving reasons is a conscious process. Notice, however, that we can then see that even though we have a Space of Causes explanation of the behavior and physiology of some belief, it is does not follow that we thereby have a Space of Causes explanation of its consciousness. The consciousness of a belief could still be in the Space of Reasons, even though its behavior and physiology are in the Space of Causes, because belief consciousness has a sort of explanatory spontaneity with respect to belief physiology and belief behavior. I am not calling into question the Typical Assumption, i.e., if a belief is explained in the Space of Causes, then it is not explained in the Spaces of Reasons, but I am applying it in light of the distinctions I have drawn among belief consciousness, belief behavior, and belief physiology. I don’t doubt (for our purposes) that, if a certain aspect of a belief (consciousness, behavior, or physiology) is explained in the Space of Causes, then that aspect is not explained in the Space of Causes. Notice, however, that we can now see that one and the same belief can have any of three aspects, which may be logically and explanatorily independent. Thus, even though one gives an exclusionary Space of Causes explanation about a belief in its behavioral and physiological aspects, it does not follow that one must likewise give a Space of Causes explanation regarding its conscious aspect.
We can then apply these considerations directly to the relation between Religion and Evolution. Thus, we need to distinguish between three aspects of Religion:
Religious Consciousness: the qualitative and intentional content of religious belief
Religious Behavior: the patterns of overt bodily movement of religious belief
Religious Physiology: the biological structures (mostly neurophysiology) of religious belief
There are then subsequently three different versions of premise 1 (really four, if we take the version including the conjunction of all three, but that needlessly complicates things), each corresponding to one of the modes of Religion:
Premise 1.A: If Evolution, then religious behavior is explained by natural selection in terms of reproductive advantage.
Premise 1.B: If Evolution, then religious physiology is explained by natural selection in terms of reproductive advantage.
Premise 1.C: If Evolution, then religious consciousness is explained by natural selection in terms of reproductive advantage.
Premise 1.A should be non-controversial. Evolution supposes the religious belief is explained by in terms of natural selection, and the immediate vehicle of reproductive advantage is overt behaviors leading to “dating success.” Basic evolutionary principles (and plain common sense) tell us physiology is there for the sake of behavior, so given premise 1.A, we then have good reason for premise 1.B. Following our argument above, however, both religious behavior and religious physiology can go on without religious consciousness, so the fact that Evolution puts the former two into the Space of Causes does nothing with respect to the latter. That is, the rather good case for Evolution regarding religious physiology and religious behavior neither entails nor even significantly implies Evolution regarding religious consciousness. We can concede that Evolution is true, but that only tells us something about religious physiology and religious behavior, without offering an explanation of religious consciousness. Thus, premise 1 (since version 1.C is false) cannot support a conclusion regarding religious consciousness. Thus, the argument only works, if we limit the scope of Evolution to religious behavior and religious physiology, and draw no conclusion regarding religious consciousness. In short, Evolution does nothing to give us reason go think we are not in the Space of Reasons regarding religious consciousness, even though it does so with respect to religious behavior and physiology. Those results, however, are not exactly earth-shattering, as no one is likely surprised to find that we are not in position to give transparent reasons for our physiology and many of our behavioral dispositions.
I expect one is inclined to ask the following: If religious physiology is insufficient for religious consciousness, then what is? I don’t claim to know this answer, and maybe it’s not the kind of thing that can finally be put to rest. Consider again Lambda as the physiology that supports the consciousness Paris is the capital of the Fifth Republic. The difference between Lambda in a certain range of contemporary humans and Lambda in a hypothetical prehistoric human is that our Lambda is formed by a process that ultimately (maybe very remotely) deals with Paris. Likewise, a religious physiology grounds religious consciousness when it is formed by actually dealing with an object. What that object is, what gives religious consciousness its content, is of course a matter of some dispute. Moreover, the objects we deal with in a certain belief consciousness might be historically moving targets, e.g., Paris hasn’t always been the capital of the Fifth Republic, and there’s no telling what the future holds for the City of Lights. There may well be no final set of necessary and sufficient conditions explaining any belief consciousness, since our beliefs are constantly fitting into a world that is rather ill-behaved. Of course, one might claim that what we are dealing with in our religious consciousness is not at all like what manifests itself in that consciousness, i.e., religious consciousness might be merely phenomenal, non-veridical, or plain delusional. That goes far beyond the scope of this discussion, but I think I have shown that appeals to Evolution do not advance that skeptical case any significant distance. In any event, we are dealing with something inasmuch as our religious beliefs have belief consciousness over and above their behavior and physiology. What that something is, natural or supernatural, is The Religious Question.
One might try to argue that a Space of Causes explanation for the belief behavior-belief physiology nexus spills over into the arena of belief conscious, such that the evolutionary explanation of the former supports the evolutionary explanation of the latter. That, of course, begs the question against my foregoing arguments, and, even worse, it is self-defeating. The claim that any physiology for which a Space of Causes explanation can be given, e.g., in terms of reproductive advantage, undermines its corresponding consciousness’s standing in the Space of Reasons implies a self-refuting form of skepticism – the ultimate “universal acid.” Certainly, all of our endeavors in the Space of Reasons (including evolutionary psychology) have behavioral and physiological correlates subject to explanations in the Space of Causes. If this arrangement alone debunks religious consciousness, then it undermines rationality in general and we have all, religious believers and evolutionary scientists alike, been drinking too much cough syrup.