Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

96 J.J. Haldane
about reality, and no one who takes scientific canons of enquiry seriously
should be willing to suppose that the world came into being in the period
suggested by literal biblical creationists. Further, I acknowledge that there is
a history of evolutionary processes, and that our evidence and inferential
grounds for thinking this also provide reason for linking humankind with
pre-human species. What I have been arguing, however, is that biology,
including its evolutionary dimension, cannot be understood or adequately
accounted for in purely mechanical non-teleological terms. The emergence of
life and the start of speciation call for explanations and what reductionism,
has to offer fails to provide these, giving at best a blank cheque to chance,
which is to say offering no intelligible explanation at all.
Mind over Matter
Consider next, then, the special case of Homo sapiens. One of the enduring
problems of philosophy concerns the nature of mind and its relation to
matter. Over the centuries a variety of possibilities has been canvassed, but
these can all be placed within a general and exhaustive distinction between
materialist and non-materialist views. Smart is a materialist; I am a nonmaterialist.
There are different forms of each position. Earlier I discussed
eliminativism as a view about biological phenomena. This holds that there
are no such things as biological states and that we are misled if we think
that biology implies that there are. Anything true that it has to say can, in
principle, be otherwise and better said in the language of some more fundamental
science – ultimately physics. Similarly eliminative materialists in the
philosophy of mind maintain that there are no such things as mental states.
I regard this view as not much more plausible than it sounds, which is to say
wildly implausible; and on other occasions I have tried to argue this in debate
with one of its best-known proponents, viz. the Canadian-born philosopher
Paul Churchland. 12
Here I shall not pursue the details of our dispute, but it is appropriate
to offer the following brief defence of common-sense, or as it is sometimes
disparagingly referred to, ‘folk’ psychology. First, then, it is uncontested
between critics and defenders that we have an idea of ourselves as subjects
of consciousness, thought and agency. We describe ourselves as acting and we
explain and evaluate our actions by citing reasons for them. Our reasons are
taken to involve beliefs and desires, or more generally to have cognitive and
conative aspects or elements. These latter we take to involve representations
of our common environment; further, it is supposed that in language and
through other forms of symbol manipulation we communicate our beliefs
and feelings to one another. The eliminativist’s claim is that all of this is a
myth, an erroneous account of the nature and causes of behaviour. We are in