C. S. LEWIS' TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT*
Houston A. Craighead
Winthrop University
* Published in Encounter, vol. 57.2 (Spring, 1996), 171-185.
In his book, Miracles,[1] C. S. Lewis offers a version of the teleological argument against, what he calls, "Naturalism" and for the existence of an intelligent creator (God). This paper is an examination and defense of that argument. In the end I shall claim that the argument provides good reason to disbelieve in Naturalism. It may also provide reason to believe in God.
It should be noted that the argument I am discussing is not Lewis' original argument. In the first (1947) edition of Miracles, Lewis offered a somewhat different argument, which was much criticized by Elizabeth Anscombe at a meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club.[2] Whether Anscombe's critique was fatal for Lewis is itself the subject of much debate and many anecdotes.[3] When the second edition of Miracles was published in 1960, Lewis did not mention Anscombe but had revised his argument to take account of her criticisms. It is this second argument, the stronger one, with which I am concerned here. Anscombe's contention that Lewis had failed to distinguish between cause/effect and ground/consequent is taken care of in the later argument.
THE ARGUMENT
In chapter 3 of Miracles, C. S. Lewis defines Naturalism as "the doctrine that only Nature -- the whole interlocked system -- exists. And if that were true, every thing and event would, if we knew enough, be explicable without remainder (no heel taps) as a necessary product of the system."[4] Augustine Shutte phrases this more clearly as "the view that the universe is an ultimately homogeneous mechanical system in which everything that happens, human thought and action included, depends on something else that is happening within the system and ultimately on the whole system of completely interlocking events."[5]
Lewis contends that if we believe Naturalism to be true, then we cannot rationally believe that the reasoning process is itself trustworthy. Since we do believe the reasoning process is trustworthy, we cannot believe Naturalism to be true. Further, the belief in Naturalism itself is said, by the Naturalist, to be based on reason. It is said to be rational to be a Naturalist. But if Naturalism is true, there is no good reason to trust reason. Hence, if Naturalism is true, the belief in it cannot be based on reason. Naturalism may, in fact, be true, but we could never rationally justifiably believe it to be so. Lewis proceeds as follows.
We have direct knowledge only of our own experiences. From these we infer the existence of other things. We have a feeling of certainty about this, which we express with words like "must be," "therefore," and "since." If this feeling of certainty, this logical insight is not due to a rational inference from the data but is brought about in our minds solely by the workings of an unconcscious nature (Naturalism), we have no reason to think it is true.[6]
Further, says Lewis, the theory which says that all our thoughts are solely the products of a mechanical nature is a theory which has itself been arrived at by trusting reason. But, if the theory is true, there is no ground for believing that reason is trustworthy. Hence, there is no ground for believing the theory is true.
So, we have a double argument. (1) We cannot reason from any one thing to another (e.g., from our sensations to objects) if our feeling of certainty in that reasoning is not the result of that reasoning but of a natural, mechanical cause (nature). But we do think that feeling is trustworthy. Hence, we presuppose the falsity of Naturalism. (2) Naturalism itself is a view arrived at by trusting reason. But if naturalism is true, there is no ground for trusting reason. Hence, either Naturalism is false or, if it is true, we could never know it to be true. We must, therefore, on both counts, assume the falsity of naturalism. We must assume that our rational capacities have a non-mechanical, non-accidental, non-blind, conscious, intelligent source.
A most effective way of discrediting someone's views, Lewis points out, is to explain them wholly in terms of cause and effect (not in terms of logical links, ground and consequent). "You believe that only because you are a hypochondriac." If that is true, if my belief about something is solely a result of my hypochondria, then, though the belief may be true, I do not know or even have good reason to think it to be true. If all beliefs, then, of everybody are solely the result of nonrational causes, then nobody knows or even has good reason to think the beliefs are true. Determinism, Naturalism, Materialism (whatever excludes conscious determination on the basis of ground-consequent justifiability) is then either false or could never be known or even have good reason for being thought to be true.
Acts of thinking are no doubt events; but they are a very special sort of events. They are 'about' something other than themselves and can be true or false. Events in general are not 'about' anything and cannot be true or false. (To say 'these events, or facts are false' means of course that someone's account of them is false.)[7]
Naturalism offers a full acount of mental behavior which leaves no room for acts of knowing -- acts which are not mechanistically explained. What we call "thinking" is only the result of the evolutionary process of natural selection. Less "fit" behaviors were weeded-out by the process.
The difference [between Lewis and the Naturalist] I am submitting is that he gives, and I do not, a history of the evolution of reason which is inconsistent with the claims that he and I both have to make for inference as we actually practise it. For his history is, and from the nature of the case can only be, an account in Cause and Effect terms, of how people came to think the way they do. And this of course leaves in the air the quite different question of how they could possibly be justified in so thinking. This imposes on him the very embarrassing task of trying to show how the evolutionary product which he has described could also be a power of 'seeing' truths.
But the very attempt is absurd.[8]
The "humblest and almost the most despairing" attempt the Naturalist might make, says Lewis, is as follows. The Naturalist may say that though we cannot presently see "how natural selection would turn sub-rational mental behaviour into inferences that reach truth," it did. We know this, the Naturalist says, because natural selection preserves and increases useful behaviour, and our inferential habits are useful. Hence, they are truthful. But this clearly begs the question. The Naturalist is now using reason to show that reasoning gives true inferences. But in order to do that he must assume precisely what he wants to prove: that reasoning gives true inferences!
One might try an even "humbler" response, says Lewis, and give up all claim to truth. One might just say our inferences are useful (and not go on to say they are, therefore, true). But Naturalism itself is claimed to be true, not merely useful. And it is claimed to be true on the basis of rational inferences, not simply because it evolved. That is, the Naturalist refutes himself when he claims that reason shows us that Naturalism is true. Reason, on the account of the naturalist, is a wholly natural phenomenon determined by other natural phenomena. It can show nothing to be true. It is just one more event(s) in the sequence of natural events.
On the other hand, Lewis continues, the Theist sees reason differently. He sees it as having its ultimate source in the Creator, beyond natural processes. It is endowed with the ability to reach truth.
To call the act of knowing -- the act, not of remembering that something was so in the past, but of 'seeing' that it must be so always and in any possible world -- to call this act 'supernatural,' is some violence to our ordinary linguistic usage. But of course we do not mean by this that it is spooky, or sensational, or even (in any religious sense) 'spiritual.' We mean only that it 'won't fit in;' that such an act, to be what it claims to be -- and if it is not, all our thinking is discredited -- cannot be merely the exhibition at a particular place and time of that total, and largely mindless, system of events called 'Nature.' It must break sufficiently free from that universal chain in order to be determined by what it knows. ... The description we have to give of thought as an evolutionary phenomenon always makes a tacit exception in favor of the thinking which we ourselves perform at that moment.[9]
Another way to put this is in terms of two kinds of causality, Ground-Consequent and Natural. Ground-Consequent can be a cause in the sense that we come to see that a proposition is true because it follows logically from certain evidence. Our coming to see this produces in us the belief that the proposition is true. However, this presupposes the use and trustworthiness of reason, that the feeling of certainty we have in such cases is to be trusted because it is linked to the evidence. On the other hand, natural causality is a cause having nothing at all to do with evidence, with an inferential link, with reason. The universe is simply said to be of such a nature that it produces certain events. Hence, under certain circumstances one comes to hold certain beliefs because one's body chemistry (or whatever) is thus and so. Though these beliefs may be true, they are not justified -- and one cannot know them to be true (even though they may be). The Naturalist is in the latter position with regard to all of his beliefs, even the belief in Naturalism itself. Justified belief presupposes that Naturalism is false.
I think it would be helpful, even at the risk of misinterpreting Lewis, to try to put these arguments into a more straight-forward form. The basic argument, I believe, is as follows.
Premise 1: Any belief that is held solely on the basis of non-rational causes is a belief that is not rationally justifiably held.
Premise 2: If Naturalism is true, then all of our beliefs are held solely on the basis of non-rational causes.
Premise 3 (from 1 and 2): If Naturalism is true, none of our beliefs are rationally justifiably held.
Premise 4: We take for granted that at least some of our beliefs, for example, our belief in the existence of an external world of material objects, are rationally justifiably held.
Premise 5 (from 3 and 4): Either we must take for granted that Naturalism is false or we must stop taking for granted that any of our beliefs, including the belief in an external world of material objects, is true.
Premise 6: We will not (cannot? should not?) stop taking for granted that some of our beliefs are true.
Conclusion (from 5 and 6): We must take for granted that Naturalism is false.
Note that Lewis' use of our belief in an external world of material objects is not necessarily a belief we need to use as an example; it is merely the example Lewis himself uses. To attack Lewis' "representationalist" view of perception here[10] is irrelevant. He does not need that example. Any example of a rationally held belief would do, say the belief in the existence of conscious beings other than oneself, the belief that I am the same person over time and, thus, responsible for certain actions that were performed in the past, the belief that Nicole Simpson was murdered by her ex-husband, the belief that the Earth goes around the sun rather than vice versa, the belief that penicillin cures strep throat, etc.
Lewis' second argument is directed to the belief in Naturalism itself.
Premise 1: Any belief that is held solely on the basis of non-rational causes is a belief that is not rationally justifiably held.
Premise 2: If Naturalism is true, then all of our beliefs are held on the basis of non-rational causes.
Premise 3: The Naturalist believes that Naturalism is true.
Conclusion: The Naturalist's belief in his own view is not rationally justifiably held.
The key premise in both of these arguments is the first one. If it is true, then the conclusion of each argument would seem to follow inevitably. What reasons, then, are there for thinking Premise 1 to be true?
Lewis' principle argument seems to be that there is a self-evident distinction between mere "events" and "acts of thinking" (by which, in this case, we can take him to mean acts of reasoning). "Events" are not "about" anything; they simply occur. Leaves fall, the Earth turns, people sneeze, cough, and snore. Events are neither true nor false. They either happen or they do not. Acts of reasoning, on the other hand, are "about" something other themselves. There is an inferential link between premises and conclusion. One must "see" that inferential link and hold his belief because he sees it in order for a belief to be rationally justifiable.
Further, if one's "seeing" the inferential link is itself wholly determined (a mere "event"), then the process still breaks down. This "seeing" and "holding" must be of a qualitatively different sort than events. This does not mean that a belief held because of non-rational causes, e. g., hypochondria, cannot be true. It means that it cannot be rationally justified in such a way. For a belief to be rationally justified, there must be, at its root, a rational cause, a ground-consequent cause, a non-naturalist cause.
If one holds, Lewis argues, that natural selection (a form of Naturalism) tends to produce "useful" (thus, true) beliefs because such beliefs have survival value, then we must examine the belief in natural selection itself. Natural selection is held to be true, not merely useful. And it is claimed to be true on the basis of rational inferences. It is claimed to be a rationally justifiable belief. Hence, if the Naturalist uses this argument, he has refuted himself because his own position is that no belief is held on the basis of rational inferences.
At bottom, then, that is Lewis' claim. He is not saying that beliefs cannot be held due solely to natural (non-rational) causes. He is saying that beliefs held in such a way, though possibly true, are not rationally justifiably held. If one is willing to give up the claim that some of our beliefs are held rationally justifiably (e.g., the belief in Naturalism), then Lewis' argument has no force against him. But, clearly, no one wants to give up that claim.
It might, of course, be objected that Lewis' view commits us to some sort of psycho-physical dualism. All of this talk about acts of reasoning having to be "qualitatively different" from mere events seems to place such acts into a metaphysically different category. That, in turn, leads to all the problems of dualism, including the notion of many "modern thinkers" that dualism is just passe.
Well, let us assume that Lewis' view does entail some kind of mental-physical dualism and some kind of "interactionism" as the way in which the two relate. One ploy Lewis might take is to say that rather than dualism's being a problem for his view, his view is, in fact, a very strong argument for dualism. If there are attendant problems for dualism, they will just have to be worked out.[11]
A strong (and exceedingly clear) critic of Lewis is John Beversluis. Beversluis says that Lewis is wrong because "to say something is fully explicable in purely causal terms is only to deny that it is random, unintelligible, the result of 'blind caprice.' It is not to deny that other noncausal considerations are relevant or that they can provide complimentary explanations of a different logical type."[12] Beversluis gives the example of Beethoven's string quartets being explicable in terms of psychology and also musicology. To explain psychologically, he says, does not mean we don't also need the musicological explanation. "Fully means 'exhaustively' only from a particular point of view."[13]
Beversluis does say that those naturalists who claim human behavior is completely (not simply from a particular point of view) explicated in terms of one set of explanatory categories are refuted by Lewis. But, he says, most naturalists don't make that claim.
"Well," Lewis might reply, "I am not at all concerned with Naturalists who don't make that claim. Such Naturalists are only 'naturalists' in a weak sense. They are not those with whom I am doing battle. They are not those who contradict Theism. So long as one leaves open the possibility of the ground-consequent explanation of reason, he is no danger to theism at all." Hence, Lewis can fully accept Beversluis' analysis without in any way giving up the argument. Lewis does not mean to deny that other types of explanations might be given for a belief, but only that they are not exhaustive. Such other explanations may even show certain necessary conditions for holding a belief, but they do not provide sufficient conditions. And they have nothing at all to do with whether the belief is rationally justifiable.
Augustine Shutte[14] has tried, successfully I believe, to show that Anscombe did not refute Lewis' earlier argument. As was stated above, the present paper is not concerned with that earlier argument, but I would like to bring in what I consider to be a crucial point made by Shutte.
What is central to Lewis' argument, says Shutte, is the realization that the rules of logic themselves, if they are to have the normative force they are taken to have, must be correct because they actually do show us which inferences are really correct. If the rules of logic are merely accidents of evolution, they are no better than aribtrary conventions we might have made up for some game. There would be no reason to think they are truly normative for our thinking. The rules determining validity, says Shutte,
must be regarded as normative for events and processes in the real world, namely those that constitute thinking and arguing. Either that, or else the rules of logic are purely conventional and absolute in the way that the rules of chess are, seeking no justification and having no reference outside the game itself. And that would make the rule about an undistributed middle as arbitrary as that determining the move of a pawn.[15]
It must be seen, in other words, that if Naturalism is true, the rules of logic themselves are no longer normative. They, like everything else, are believed to be true solely because certain physical events in nature have brought it about that we believe them to be true. But if that is the case, there would be no such thing as a rationally justifiable belief, including the belief in Naturalism itself. There is no "going behind" reason. Attempts to explain everything in a non-rational way defeat the very enterprise of giving such explanations. If the view being propounded by the Naturalist is indeed true, then the Naturalist has no good reason for believing it to be true in the first place!
I conclude, then, that Lewis' argument against Naturalism is correct. That, in turn, leads to a second issue. Does Lewis' argument also provide good reason for believing in God? It is to this question that we now turn.
IS THIS EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?
Richard Purtill[16] says this is evidence for God's existence. The best argument against Lewis, he says, is that natural selection accounts for reason because reason is useful for surviving. Hence, on that argument, it is not an issue of a Universal Intelligence vs. a blind, random nature, because, on the natural selection view, nature, though "blind" in the sense of being "unaware," does operate to produce species that will survive. If reason has survival value, it is reasonable to think nature will, then, produce reason.
However, Purtill continues, Lewis can answer this. He can argue (and, says Purtill, does so indirectly) that though natural selection could produce mind/reason, it is much more likely that a "previously existing mind"[17] would do so. Purtill quotes from Lewis' The Great Divorce:
[Reason] is a behavior evolved simply as an aid to practice. That is why when we use it as an aid to practice we get along fairly well but when we fly off into speculation and try to get general views of "reality" we end in the endless, useless and probably merely verbal disputes of the philosopher. We will be humbler in future. Goodbye to all that. No more theology, no more ontology, no more metaphysics. ... But then equally, no more Naturalism. For of course Naturalism is a prime specimen of that towering speculation, divorced from practice and going far beyond experience which is now being condemned.[18]
That is, if natural selection produces what is useful for survival, then it might well produce reason so far as reason is useful in that way. But it would not produce reason so far as reason is not useful, so far as it engages in metaphysics. But Naturalism is a metaphysical view, one of the verbal disputes of philosophers. Hence, if reason has produced Naturalism (as the Naturalist says it has), reason is much more likely not to have been produced by natural selection (which produces only things useful for survival) but by a pre-existing reason, a universal Mind.
I am not sure Purtill has done Lewis a great deal of service here. The Naturalist may readily reply that his view, Naturalism, is useful. Hence, unlike the other (useless) metaphysical views, what produced Naturalism is most likley to have been natural selection. Of course the burden of proof would then be on the Naturalist to show that his view is (more) useful for survival than, say, Theism. And the Naturalist might appeal to Naturalism's predictive value (if it has any), etc.
I think the best way for Lewis to argue here, though, is to grant that natural selection may well have produced reason, but that if it did then reason is not what we normally take it to be. That is, reason given to us by a universal Mind would be expected to allow us to "discover" our true metaphysical situation, to discover that, in fact, we are the creation of such a Mind. On the other hand, reason produced by natural selection would be expected only to help us to survive physically.
Yet, the Naturalist might reply to this by saying that fingers were naturally produced because they contribute to physical survival -- but fingers also allow us to wear rings on them. The wearing of rings has nothing to do with physical survival. Hence, reason, like fingers, may have been produced because it contributes to physical survival but that is not all it can do. Creating metaphysical theories is analogous to wearing rings.
Perhaps the best way to make Lewis' case, if it can be made at all in this regard, is to follow Richard Taylor's approach in his teleological argument.[19] Taylor offers an analogical argument[20] according to which the trust we place in our cognitive faculties (see Lewis' rational thinking) presupposes the belief that these faculties have an intelligent creator.
Taylor offers two analogies. While traveling across Britain by train, one sees rocks on a hillside spelling out "The British Railways welcomes you to Wales." If one concludes from this evidence alone that he is entering Wales (as he probably would), then he could not consistently believe that the arrangement of the stones was accidental. In fact, says Taylor, "it would be irrational for you to regard the arrangement of the stones as evidence that you were entering Wales, and at the same time to suppose that they might have come to have that arrangement accidentally, that is, as the result of the ordinary interactions of natural or physical force."[21]
A second analogy is about digging up a stone with interesting marks on it. It turns out that a scholar recognizes these as an alphabet and that they say "Here Kimon fell leading a band of Athenians against the forces of Xerxes." If one takes the marks to have been caused by, say, accidental volcanic activity, they could not be taken to reveal anything at all except about themselves or their origin. If they are taken to mean that Kimon really did fall in this place, they must be taken to have been put on the rock by an intelligence who put them there with a purpose.
Now, just as Lewis speaks of the feeling of certainty we have about our reasoning process, Taylor speaks of our trusting and relying on our senses to tell us about things that have nothing to do with the senses themselves. Taylor grants that the stones and the rock, as well as our cognitive faculties, could have the same arrangements they have and be wholly produced by natural causes. However, if we trust them to tell us anything that is true, we assume some intelligence to have arranged them in that way. We do trust our senses and memory. Hence we assume some intelligence arranged them to reveal the truth to us.
As we all know, there are many problems with analogical arguments as such. Further, if this is construed as an analogical argument, it can be pointed out that while we have observed correlations between signs and their makers, we have no such observations of correlations between cognitive faculties and their makers.[22] However, though both Taylor and Lewis are contending that we would contradict ourselves if we both trust our reasoning/cognitive faculties and assume them to have an accidental, non-intelligent cause, they are not contending that these faculties could not have such a cause. The issue is whether it is more reasonable to believe that such faculties were intelligently or non-intelligently created if we take them to be what we usually do take them to be: truth-conveyors.
In the case of other truth-conveying phenomena (e.g., signs), we do think it more reasonable to believe in their intelligent creation. Granted that our rational/cognitive faculties may not be as analogous to signs as Taylor seems to contend, still it does seem logically odd that we would think it more likely, or even as likely that our rational/cognitive faculties would have a non-intelligent cause.
I conclude, then, that C. S. Lewis does show that Naturalism is at best improbable and at worst self-refuting. Further, it follows from this, as Lewis would have agreed, that disbelieving in an intelligent creator is logically (if not sociologically) odd. We ought to conclude, at least, that an intelligent creator probably exists.[23]
ENDNOTES
1. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Collier Books), 1960.
2. G. E. M. Anscombe, Philosophy and the Philosophy of Mind [collected papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. 2] (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981, ix-x and 224-232.
3. For example, see Luke Rigby, "A Solid Man," in James T. Como (ed.), C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 38-67. Also, Richard Purtill, C. S. Lewis' Case for the Christian Faith (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 24.
4. Miracles, p. 12.
5. Augustine Shutte, "The Refutation of Determinism," Philosophy, vol. 59 (1984), p. 481.
6. Miracles, p. 14.
7. Miracles, p. 17.
8. Miracles, p. 21.
9. Miracles, p. 23.
10. John Beversluis, C. S Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985), p. 82.
11. See, for example, Hugo Meynell, "An Attack on C. S. Lewis," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 8, #3 (July, 1991), P. 309: "And if reason is a mere 'epiphenomenon' of underlying causal determinism, it is difficult to see how it can be really operative in the world in the way that it must be if our speech and thought, and therefore our science, are ever to be reasonable. One seems to be left with some form of mental-physical interaction; with the physical events which underlie our mental life being sufficiently undetermined by their physical preconditions for us to act and think as we do really because we have good reason to do so. But this is precisely what Lewis is arguing. The nonrational causes which predispose us to act irrationally, it may reasonably be suggested, do so precisely because they render it difficult or even impossible for us really to act for reasons, by more or less totally determining the situation causally. It is not so much religious superstition, as the real difficulties attendant on the alternative possibilities, which have driven such thinkers as Sir Karl Popper to champion a form of mind-brain interactionism." (Italics added.)
12. Beversluis, p. 73.
13. Beversluis, p. 74.
14. Shutte, pp. 481-489.
15. Shutte, p. 487.
16. See note 3 above.
17. Purtill, p. 26.
18. Purtill, p. 26, quoting from C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 120-121.
19. Richard Taylor, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 94-102.
20. Taylor himself denies that his argument is analogical (p. 101), but I believe that is the best way to read it. See also Ronald J. Glass, "Taylor's Argument from Design," The Personalist, vol. 54, (Winter, 1973), pp. 94-99, and E. D. Klemke, "The ARgument from Design," Ratio, vol. 11 (December, 1969), pp. 102-106.
21. Taylor, p. 97.
22. Klemke, p. 105. However, if we take some of the advances in computer technology to include cognitive faculties, we have observed such correlations. But I shall leave that issue for someone else.
23. Perhaps "exists" should be in quotes here. I do not mean the word in a way that would conflict with Tillich's dictum that God neither exists nor fails to exist but is being-itself. Lewis' argument, as I would use it, shows that being-itself is not less than intelligent, is at least intelligent. This does not mean that being-itself is an entity and is limited to what we think of as our intelligence.