What's the use of metaphysics?
It's worthwhile to think about what metaphysical picture you would like
I used to dislike metaphysics, especially ontology. Such a messy corner of philosophy, originally named after what comes after Aristotle’s Physics, where we stack philosophy’s slightly embarrassing leftover things like ontology, free will, time, and all the other bits that did not find their way to proper science or proper philosophical subfields. This absurd video should give you a flavor of how I zone out during talks about metaphysics—
As a good citizen of our profession, I completed the PhilPapers survey about 10 years ago, with questions such as:
Free will (options: libertarianism, compatibilism, no free will, another position)
I picked “Lean toward compatibilism”, the majority option chosen by members of our profession (I'm surprised so few people deny free will as on some days it does not strike me as less plausible than the popular compatibilism. However, I find libertarianism very implausible.)
Thus I went from question to question, guided by vibes more than anything else. Had I completed the survey a day later, I would likely have given some different answers. Maybe vibes are all we’re going on, and our sophisticated defenses are no more than post-hoc rationalizations.
Working in philosophy of religion, I frequently encounter metaphysical positions, particularly as they relate to the existence of God. Many philosophers who are theists are drawn to the Anselmian Omni-God. Countless books, conference presentations, and papers argue that God, if God exists, has the properties of the omni-god: omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient. A lot of ingenious philosophical machinery is used to make the case.
One reason that these discussions in philosophy of religion left me cold is that I am skeptical about whether we humans, with our cognitive limitations, can ever understand or grasp with our reason what God is like (see my A Natural History of Natural Theology, 2015, MIT Press co-authored with Johan De Smedt). We have cognitive biases that push us to find some teleological and causal ideas attractive, but the reason why we have those is not so we can engage in theology but to engage in the main evolutionarily salient business of survival and reproduction.
At the time, I was an agnostic about the properties of God, but not about the existence of God. I was, and am still, pretty sure God exists because the world appears to me this way. The numinous is an integral part of my life—I am no mystic, but there seems this kind of glimpse of the holy in the everyday that I’ve had ever since I was little, and a few unforgettable religious experiences where I truly felt at one with (I imagine) God. I tried atheist naturalism in my 20s after reading a lot of Dawkins and Gould and found it ill suited to my experience of the world.
Gradually, as I became older, wiser, and marked by the vicissitudes of life, my conception of God began to shift without me even realizing it at first. I felt I could no longer trust God was benevolent. Rather, especially after I considered the problem of evil in animals and other non-humans (such as trees and other plants, which I think can be harmed though their suffering is different from ours), I slowly began to see God as a magnificent artist, a creator who takes enormous liberties for his creative ends.
The endless cycles of predation, disease, mass extinction… it's all justified because God creates a universe of wondrous beauty. At that point (we are around 2017-2018), I had several conversations with theologian John Schneider. Schneider had to leave Calvin College because of his unorthodox position on the Fall (he didn’t think it happened), on which he published several papers. Still, Schneider is very orthodox in other respects. He develops a careful theodicy in his recent book Animal suffering and the Darwinian problem of evil (2020), which argues that evil, particularly animal suffering, occurs because of God's artistic intent. He uses the story of Job and particularly God’s divine speeches at the end of that story as biblical support. It was a beautiful picture that accorded well with the data. But it was also disturbing: this God who can take such artistic license that our suffering and the suffering of multitudes of creatures is justified.
I think the picture respects the evidence: the universe is extremely beautiful and laden with value, but it also appears cruel and indifferent. Indeed, the way God supposedly creates complex life forms, natural selection, thrives on severe competition, suffering and death. I found myself increasingly unsure on how to act on this new picture of God that had shaped in my mind. Should I still pray to this God? Is such a God (blasphemous thought) worthy of worship? What do I even say to him? There seemed to be nothing left to say.
This brings me to the question I’ve posed at the outset of this essay: what good is a metaphysical picture, and what does it help us achieve?
Far from leftover philosophy, I’m increasingly convinced that metaphysical pictures are absolutely foundational and crucial for a well-lived life. This is why many people have such a picture, including people who never opened a philosophy book or listened to a philosophy talk. Their picture might be purely inherited from their religious tradition, it may be not well articulated, but it is there. For instance, my father, a bricklayer during his working life without a high school diploma, and a practicing Catholic would sometimes say to us, “I am convinced that once we are dead, we are just no more, like the animals.” A disquieting, interesting idea.
The best comprehensive metaphysical pictures help us fulfill three aims:
They give us a sense of what the world is like and our place within it
They provide an ethical guide
They help us find some modus vivendi with our condition, quieten our passions and help us to deal our disappointments. (We often try to change things such as systemic injustices, and this is very laudable, but I also think our scope for this is realistically limited, so a modus vivendi must still be sought, especially for things we cannot change, such as our own mortality).
I found that my theistic picture, cobbled together from my Christian (Catholic) upbringing and more deliberate philosophical reflection, wasn’t really working for me anymore.
It was already difficult for some years, but I plodded on due to some sense of loyalty to my past self, sunk costs, and other factors. Then some recent events precipitated a quicker decline (I write more about these here): my move to the US and my close encounter with the entanglement of Christianity and white nationalism there, as well as a disappointing episode with the Society for Christian Philosophers where my suggestion to show our support for Black Lives Matter after George Floyd was murdered was dismissed, because it might alienate some constituencies. This made it clear to me that our visions were no longer aligned (I was a long-time member, I appreciate what we've done together, and I wish them well)
But coincidentally—or not coincidentally as I co-wrote the grant after all—I had begun working on a new project on oneness (various monistic and holistic philosophies) which should result in a co-authored book and some papers. For this project, my co-author (Johan De Smedt) and I are interviewing natural scientists (astrophysicists, climate scientists, geologists, particle physicists etc), and it’s very interesting to see their wide range of metaphysical pictures, including several forms of naturalism. Pantheistic, panpsychist, and teleological but naturalistic pictures are seem all to be common among them. It’s also clear that such metaphysical pictures play a guiding background role in their work. This empirical work-in-progress underscored again to me that it is useful to have a metaphysical overall picture of the world that can play a productive role in your life.
William James famously said that temperament and contingency, more than evidence, determined what sort of metaphysical picture you’d end up with, materialism“will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution,” idealism by another.
While I think there’s a lot to this, we can still shape our own Umwelt by making ourselves attentive to some forms of evidence. So, at the moment I am considering Spinozism as a live philosophical option. I vastly prefer this picture to the cruel creator God. When I now see a tree and consider it in Spinozist fashion I see a thing that tries to persevere in its being (like I am also a thing that tries to persevere), that avoids things that harm it (by creating chemicals to ward off pests) and that goes toward things that help it (by turning its leaves to the light). I see a fellow creature that strives to persevere in this changing world. Eventually it will die, probably after I am long gone, such is the way of things.
By contrast, when I consider the tree on the creator-God hypothesis I see something God creates for God-self, maybe for God’s artistic or other purposes, unsure what will happen to it. Is it valuable enough to be restored in God’s new creation? (Schneider thought that justice requires that God not only resurrects us but also other creatures, especially as they have suffered too). Instead of a cruel, artistic creator God, Spinoza’s God/nature is perfectly free and has its own ends. It is creative and purposive, but there is no further purpose behind the existence of the universe. There is no moral or amoral intent or reason behind our suffering.
Another live hypothesis I am entertaining is Daoism as outlined in the two major proto-Daoist works Zhuangzi and Daodejing. Particularly, the Zhuangzi gives us another oneness picture where we are all hooking into the Dao, where you have to find your own specific way to be, which is free from broader teleological concerns, live out your years in peace, and do not worry about death, which is just a natural part of life (see here for a recent piece in Psyche Magazine co-authored with Pauline Lee). The changing and shifting of the natural world is partly what makes it wonderful, and by non-action you can achieve a perfect command and skillfulness and beauty.
When I was a teenager, and at the time a practicing Catholic, I was warned explicitly about metaphysical explorations like these. I had doubts. I did not like the church’s stance on abortion, or on women, and was wondering if I could improve my beliefs by moving to some form of Protestantism (which I eventually did). When I discussed it with a priest who was our spiritual director on a retreat, he framed my doubts as “Shopping around beliefs out of mere convenience.” Yes, the church has views on women and abortion that strike me as problematic, but could I expect any views to align 100% with my beliefs? I think our inherited beliefs are valuable, but there is nothing wrong with trying to find metaphysical pictures that are more in line with what we deem to be true.
You still need to have a picture that is livable and workable. In practice, as Philip Goff points out in his forthcoming book Why? The purpose of the universe (OUP) many metaphysical pictures are empirically equivalent. You can be a dualist, or a panpsychist, or a materialist, and argue your views perfectly align with contemporary physics. However, the way these pictures resonate is very different. Is the world fundamentally lifeless and unconscious, with consciousness arising from it? Or is it fundamentally conscious at some deep level? Since I think Plantinga is right that the logical formulation of the problem of evil does not work, I also think that you can have an omniGod view of the world that is perfectly compatible with our data, including evolution. But it is also a disquieting picture, under which God’s morality becomes totally inscrutable and removed from us (see Mark Murphy's God's own ethics) or where God is a cruel artist, maybe one where it will all come ok in the afterlife. These views are certainly workable for some people.
Reading carefully argued philosophical works defending metaphysical positions (such as Goff’s) can help us expand our range of live options. And given what role these pictures play in our lives, it’s worth spending some time thinking about them, even if you are not a metaphysician (or a philosopher, for that matter).