Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Atheism and Theism 85
no relevant facts additional to behavioural ones someone might hold that
mental concepts have a content that cannot be reduced to that of behavioural
terms. In this event one might advance ontological but not conceptual or
explanatory behaviourism. Every fact about ‘minds’ is a fact about behaviour,
but not every (or any?) mentalistic description is equivalent in content to a
behavioural one.
The philosopher-theologian Bishop Butler (1692–1752) coined the maxim
‘Everything is what it is and not another thing’ and thereby pointed to a
general difficulty for reductionism. If some class of entities does not really
exist why are there terms purportedly referring to them? This question
becomes the more pressing in a context in which someone insists upon
ontological reduction but concedes that conceptual or explanatory reductions
are unavailable. In the case of average weights the question is easily
answered by indicating the convenience of averages so far as certain of our
interests are concerned. But here the insistence upon ontological reduction
is accompanied by an adequate explanatory reduction. Consider instead
the philosophical example mentioned above, namely that of behaviourism.
If, as is now generally accepted, mentalistic vocabulary cannot be reduced
to behaviouristic terms, what can motivate and sustain the insistence that
this fact notwithstanding there is really only behaviour, with apparent
reference to mental states being an artefact of a way of speaking? One
response would be to show that, appearances to the contrary, there are no
irreducibly mental states because there could be none. The very idea, let us
say, is contradictory.
In Smart’s essay we find him arguing that a properly scientific view has
no place for teleologies, not because he has an argument to show that
there could be no such things as purposes, but because he believes that such
teleological talk can be shown to be like the case of average weights, a convenient
façon de parler. However, from the terms in which he invokes neo-
Darwinian theories of natural selection to set aside ‘old’-style teleological
arguments, it also seems that he accepts that were there irreducible purposes
in nature that fact would support a case for theism. For my part I contest
the claim that purposive descriptions and explanations are out of place in
science. Not only do I believe that many teleological concepts are irreducible,
I think that a commitment to the reality of objective natures, functions and
associated values is presupposed by scientific enquiry and speculation. In
effect, therefore, I am suggesting that Smart’s approach is unwarrantedly
‘scientistic’ inasmuch as it is motivated by a prior concern to avoid nonnatural
explanations and its concept of nature is an austerely physicalist one.
I shall try to show how it is possible to respect and value science without
being scientistic and thereby to develop a less restrictive and more extensive
understanding of nature.