Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Atheism and Theism 99
Taking these in reverse order, the issue of whether the physicalist worldview
is adequate is precisely what is in question and so it cannot be assumed
as part of a case against any alternative. Equally the idea that acknowledgement
of mental attributes is incompatible with physics is only true if by
‘physics’ one means not physical science but physicalism, the doctrine that
there is nothing other than what physics deals with. Certainly the latter is
incompatible with acceptance of sui generis psychological states and features,
let alone the existence of an immaterial deity, but again the truth of physicalism
is what is at issue. It cannot be part of an argument in favour of itself.
As regards what one might term ‘the argument from causation’ recall my
earlier comments about the variability of causal (‘because’) explanations. When
we say ‘Kirsty wrote because she wanted to communicate’ and ‘her body
moved because of events in her brain’ it is by no means obvious that the two
‘becauses’ signify the same kind of relation. In the second case we are dealing
with efficient causation; very crudely, a case of an energy transfer communicated
from one place to another through the intervening physical medium,
sections of the body. But in the first case what ‘because’ introduces seems to
be an item from the rational and not the physical order; in Aristotelian–
Thomistic terms it is a formal-cum-final cause. Compare this with the difference
between saying ‘the circular stain on the table is there because of a coffee
mug’, and saying ‘the area of the stain is not equal to that of a square of the
same breadth because it has a circular boundary’. In the first case the base of
the mug left an impression on a surface, but in the second, circularity is not
doing any impacting or pushing, the relation in question is an abstract geometrical
one. So from the fact that ‘because’ features in explanations of writing
and of bodily movements we cannot immediately proceed to the conclusion
that both are statements of efficient causation, and then look for this single
inner causal factor.
Moreover, the causal argument I sketched helped itself to an ambiguity
in the term ‘behaviour’. We can say the writing was a piece of behaviour on
Kirsty’s part, and that during the relevant period her body was behaving in
various ways. But it would be another hasty inference to suppose that what is
referred to is the same in both cases, and thus that if the cause of the latter
was a set of brain events then ex hypothesi this was the cause of the former.
Writing is intentional behaviour, i.e. action; bodily movements may or may
not be intentional. So although there is an appropriate use of the term by
which we may speak of the behaviour of muscles and bones it would be a
fallacy of equivocation to infer that movements and actions are one and the
same. Of course, this fails to show that they are not the same; for all I have
just said they could be. The point was rather to defuse an argument that
assumed they were, and on that basis inferred that actions are nothing other
than bodily movements effected by brain events.