Mystery or Nonsense?
The other day in the class I’m working with this quarter (“Theological Portraits of Human Nature”), we had a very interesting discussion on the question of what is at stake in dualism/physicalism debates. It was very illuminating and helped along by the excellent book by Joel Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life. At one point, the idea of “mystery” came up in connection with an ontologically separate and separable soul (or mind); the idea intimated was that belief in a soul may seem unnecessary or superfluous given current neuroscience, but its existence should be accepted on faith. The way this all works is a mystery that we should accept.
Now, I’m all for mystery. I think the Christian faith is built on mystery, awe, and wonder – what is more mysterious (especially to a nonreductive physicalist!) than the Incarnation of God in a very human Jewish carpenter; or, more, the Resurrection of a crucified criminal three days after death? But there still must be criteria in place to distinguish between mystery and good old fashioned, incoherent, self-contradictory bullshit (which is, by the way, an important philosophical term). We should affirm mystery and faith (all knowledge, after all, rests on some fiduciary framework; as G.K. Chesterton said, “Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”), but eschew nonsense.
From "The Tree of Life"
The trick, of course, is sussing out the difference between the two, which I do not think can be done universally or once-and-for-all and then applied to each particular situation (what Yoder called “methodologism”); rather, on a case by case basis, you must assess the argument and evidence before you, see how it fits within one’s epistemological web, and see which argument makes better sense out of what is “going on.” Of course, one person’s mystery is another person’s bullshit, but this merely illustrates the strength of Nancey Murphy’s holist, “web” epistemological method (following Imre Lakatos) – we all have principles and “hard core hypotheses” guiding our rationality. Within a particular web, the debate between mystery and nonsense can take place; it is an inter-web (or inter-tradtion in the MacIntyrean sense) discussion.
Explore posts in the same categories: Alasdair MacIntyre, Anthropology, G.K. Chesterton, John Howard Yoder, Nancey MurphyTags: epistemology, Imre Lakatos, mystery, Nonreductive Physicalism, soul
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
