Gregory Pappas’s Nine Points of Contrast of Dewey’s Moral Philosophy vs. Non-Empirical Moral Philosophies: Number 1

At the end of Gregory Pappas’s John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience, Pappas is drawing a distinction Dewey often made between his experience-centered moral philosophy and non-empirical moral philosophies. These are just too good not to list verbatim, and I have to confess as I am researching the book on Levinas and Scheler, these 9 points have been circulating in my mind in very different ways (The problem is how one might do political theology with Kingian beloved community with a finite God of American proessive naturalism, or if the changes in the Divine somehow effect what is given in the phenomenological ethics of Levinas and related to Pappas’s efforts: If democracy is the ideal of moral community and beloved community is, according to me, the ideal our democratic community should take, then what is the relationship between how Dewey’s democratic ideal relates to the personalist-laden beloved community?). Pappas just states these claims a lot more clearly than even Dewey himself (which is also why this book is so good on Dewey’s ethics). Appearing at the end of the book in Chapter 9 from pages-156-161, the first point is:

1. “Many of the debates among ethical theories center on whether it is certain acts, traits of character, rules, goals, motives, feelings, or obligations that provide the basis for distinguishing morality from other aspects of life. For Dewey, all of these elements are integral to moral experience, since they are found in the context of a situation. The basis for distinguishing morality from other dimensions or modes of experience is the subject matter, problems, and pervasive quality of situations. There is no criterion that is antecedent to the sheer having of these experiences. Hence, in principle, anything in experience can be experienced as having moral significance and can also be continuous with other ways of immediately experiencing the world (aesthetically, politically, religiously). The locus of moral experience is a present situation, thought of as a qualitative whole that is susceptible to dramatic structure, that is, one with patterns, rhythms, and phases. Situations are the ultimate context of our problems, inquiries, ideals and resources” (157-158).
   
   It’s here that the Deweyian naturalism and ontological continuity is a problem for phenomenology. It’s not a problem for the immanent processive God. Instead, Levinas’s infinite demand of the Other constitutes the pre-cognitive and pre-theoretical space of the situation prior to and independently of any situation. For this reason, my project is that persons are of infinite value, and it’s that one piece of Levinas and Scheler that ties into and binds this insight into a religious register that Dewey seeks to naturalize here. In this way, there is at least one element of phenomenological givenness that we must treat as logically and transcendentally prior to a philosophy of that qualitative whole. Thus, the infinite value of persons streams forth from them and into the entire whole of what persons can experience, but I disagree that the situation is the ultimate context; it is the recognition of persons’ and their ultimate value that conditions the rhythms and patterns of the immediate whole. The natural side of ethics is the sociality and relations in which its possibility streams forth.
   
   Given that Levinas and Scheler, are nonnaturalists about the phenomenologically given, the Deweyian may object that I’ve simply exaggerated an element of qualitive immediacy and its content to constrain how all other situations should be regarded. The rejoinder to the Deweyian lies in categorizing why Levinas’s insight into the face-to-face encounter works the way he describes. A personalist may say that since persons experience the world as mediated through what they are that life and the immediate whole are already suffused with value, but in agreement with the Deweyian, neither the personalist nor the Levinasian need be a straightforward Quinean ontological naturalist. Instead, we may be Jamesian processive naturalists, which is in line with how I also read Dewey.
   
   The phenomenological facts that are immediately known or regarded as self-evident are the irreducible content of experience, and we need neither reduce phenomenological facts to Quinean naturalist facts, nor do we need to be transcendental phenomenologists and wish naturalism away tout court as some Husserlians are apt to do. Values pop up as part of the pre-theoretic and pre-cognitive life of what it means to be a person “personning”, and it’s here that Scheler helps. Scheler’s phenomenological description can be regarded as a description that elucidates both subjective and intersubjective life as a natural part of the processes of human cognition from within the boundaries of experience and the relationality that experience entails. For it is not the parts of a relation that need explained as either transcendental phenomenological fact of a nonnatural variety anymore than a naturalistic reductionism of a physical fact. What matters most are the qualitative immediacy and content of the relation itself and the two double-barreled terms of the physical-pole of that relation, the mental-pole of that relation, the interpretive act that originates in that relation giving rise to a new relation, and so on.
   
   The fact that the value of persons is inexhaustible is part of how persons exists as embodied subjects that are in constant relation with the world around them. In this way, values are a feature of the natural universe produced by personal existence in embodied subjectivity that first feels the push and pull of the cosmos, society, and situations. Neither the cosmos, society, or situation are completely external and outside that relation anymore than the facts of what a person is feeling and believing can be completely separated from the external to be only internal. Both the subjective life and the life of objects in the world are a product of their constant conjoining. If we permit this infinite value of persons to be continuous with the world as the world itself is a product of a God continually engendering its existence in an Emerson-like immanence, then the God-world relationship is a larger person that, like us, produces values that call out to us, even if we lose sight of the God-World/Divine-World ground relationship. We can be called to them since persons, values, and the divine are ontologically continuous together. In this way, religions as wisdom traditions offer some values that seem to return to us again and again for that in those relations we have with the universe, God, humankind, and natural living animals as non-human persons.
   
   The metaphors of fluidity, water, and mixtures is more appropriate than the traditional God of Augustine and Neoplatonism who is outside space and time, ontologically divided and separated out from that which is made. That’s why the metaphor of artisan is employed to imply the separated, implying an asymmetric relation of Creator higher than created that is reinforced by King on high ruling over that which is not as high. Already one can see the ontological implication of hierarchy, the really-real and unchanging are part of the power stand over and against everything in the sensible world. Paternal metaphors for God imply this asymmetry, not so much of ontological separation, but the power that reinforces that separation. A reality versus appearance distinction is introduced in Greek thought and the Hellenization of Christian thought employs that Platonic-like dualism that sharply divides religion from the truths of science rather than seeking out an empirically-friendly understanding of reality that avoids introducing the damaging effects these binary oppositions introduce into our thinking and acting.
   
   

The Dilemma of an Open Universe and a Closed Universe

However indirectly, I wish to piggyback off of William James’s famous essay, “The Dilemma of Determinism.” In that work, James reveals to us how one might apply his pragmatic method. For the purposes of brevity, I won’t rehearse an explanation of that method nor the background assumptions surrounding it. I only wish to apply it. James asks what the purpose or conceivable effect a particular idea or concept has for us? In doing so, we know exactly what concepts to keep since they are ultimately bound and maintained by the purposes they serve for action. For James, every concept serves some purpose or effect in my experience and our co-experience of the same concept. In this way, James argued that determinism saddles one to an existence in which choice nor freedom to alter one’s fate are illusions. Such a consequence is one that foregoes the concept of human freedom. By contrast, indeterminism means that there’s an element of chance and an ability that we both can make a difference in the lives of others. Our experiences open us up to a world in which we can make a difference to ourselves and possibly others. At root of James’s philosophy is this belief he called meliorism. Meliorism is the thesis that our agency can impact and improve the world.

So let us start with James and assume meliorism. That seems easy enough. You and I can make a difference in the world, and our agency is not controlled or undermined by causal determinism in order to inaugurate world-changing action. By world-changing, I do not mean something like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, I simply mean that the world has something new added to it that it did not anticipate before and it is through the exercise of my agency or our combined efforts that some improvement in the state of affairs has occurred, no matter how small or large such change is. Let causal determinism be defined as a cause or series of causes that give rise to an effect and the attendant belief that in giving rise to an effect, the cause(s) and effect relationship could not have happened any other way. Causal determinism, therefore, posits a past that very much causes this and only this effect or set of effects. The universe could not unfold in any other way if causal determinism is assumed to be true. What I want to push is the implication of the level of control and weight causal determinism assumes for the view of the universe.

If causal determinism establishes that this and only this effect follows from a cause and the past controls how the present will unfold, then there is no teasing apart human freedom from the other objects in the universe that are seen as stipulated and therefore controlled by causal determinism. Human action is similar to a billiard ball striking another. Someone can regard scientific laws as determining the present unfolding of the phenomena they describe. Likewise, God can be added to the causal determinism picture as the source of law and order that determines subsequent effects.

A natural law theorist holds that the teleological nature of a thing is an expression of its becoming a good example of its kind through God as a designer and maker of the natural law. The Divine is the source of divine law and included within divine law are the laws of nature, what is sometimes referred to as simply natural laws. Included within the natural laws of the universe are the moral laws of what we ought to do and refrain from doing. The limited freedom of the will in such accounts is the choice for humans to fulfill their expected rational nature or not to conform their wills to the divine law or how reason may add to the natural law. Law and order follow either from God apart from causal determinism, or they can be joined together by positing God as the reason for the regularity of cause and effect. In the former case, the universe is definitively closed. In the latter case, the universe is mostly closed with respect to the moral law. Likewise, a secular version that simply maintains the truth of causal determinism mixed with the causal closure principle in physics would still be closed.

A closed universe is one in which the laws that control how it unfolds are designed or ordered in such a way that no surprises occur in the universe at all. James famously uses the analogy of a “block universe.” It’s as if the principle of sufficient reason robs the universe of novelty to produce something new and it fit together nicely like blocks holding together a wall. Whether not all laws describe how the universe unfolds might invite the speculation that the universe’s design and scientific laws merely await discovery through reason and if they remain yet to be discovered, once we discovered them, we could see how the unfolding universe similar to a movie will unfold. In other words, a closed universe is finished. It is ready-made, maybe by God or Nature. The script has already been written to the manner of its unfolding (or at the very least the major components of it are minus, perhaps, human freedom to obey those moral laws), and the universe will never combine into something new since it’s ordered all the way down.

When God is involved in a closed universe, there is no becoming of the moral law. The usage of God in a closed universe is that the concept of God is both the authority of what is and ought to be. Authority flows from God having been the moral laws’ author. In addition, the material universe is set in its own ways. All that can be discovered is finished. The meaning of the universe is a movie playing itself out that no unscripted parts or surprises. In this way, all things are determined and if we wish to improve upon the world, we are asked only to conform our will to the source of the moral laws. There’s nothing we could do to experiment and test the moral laws as they are already sanctioned by God as the source of their authority. God doesn’t need our help to improve the world. What will be will be. This is especially true for the God of ontotheology, the Augustinian God who is extended outside space and time and knows what will happen in the past, present, and future simultaneously. Every moment of the unfolding script offers no surprise to either us (if we were in God’s epistemic position) or God.

Now, I asked us to start by assuming meliorism true. In the immediacy of experience, I have the intuition that I can make a difference. I can begin something anew; I can add to the universe a possibility that never was before and maybe I can change something for the better. Let me introduce a dilemma now.

EITHER humans live in and exercise agency in a closed universe (with God or not) OR humans live in and exercise agency in an open universe. Before characterizing what my response is, let’s talk about and define an open universe.

An open universe is one in which the possible extant laws do not control how the universe unfolds and built into the unfolding is a bit of freedom for chance and growth. This is not to say that there is not an enduring structure through these changes, but that even with enduring structures and individuals, an open universe is looser in its organization. The metaphors appropriate to it seem Taoistic like streams and rivers or the ebbing of tides. These elements may be designed or ordered in such a way that surprises occur in the future. The full weight of the causal past is contained in the present unfolding of relations. Though the past is contained in the full actualization of some event, the weight of the causal past influences the present, but it does not control the present such that what will be will be. The future is, therefore, open. The course of river is not set, nor is the future. Instead, what will be is what might be. Such a universe has a bit of indeterminacy in it based on the part of the becoming of a thing’s own structure and the relations that emanate outward from it in relation to all other things.

In such a universe, the God of ontotheology is not present. Instead, one may invoke the God of process theism (often called panentheism) or open theism. I do not have time to get into these conceptions of God in a full defense, but I will only say that by making God the world-ground of reality in panentheism and adopting that God is the ground of that bit of creative novelty in the universe, such a God requires my help in improving the world. Thus, the immanent presence of God and the ability to engage in world-changing activity by realizing possibilities and purposes into the world are possible. In other words, the belief in meliorism is reconciled with the divine since in this universe the script involves us deciding how best to finish a scene, but the overall arch has yet to be written. In this way, our relationship to God is more like guided improv coach inviting us to act with Him/Her/It than the author of a script with no surprises. This is the first consequence of an open universe–a God that respects human freedom and invites us into relation with it as the source of values it wants us to emulate, but it does not seek to control us from on high. Instead, the process-oriented God of an open universe is with us by being in tandem with us and through us. It is not coercive as a Lord, but alluring, a spontaneity that constantly calls out to us like leaving a New Orleans bar only to hear beautiful jazz music.

The second upshot need not revise a conception of God as we might just describe the universe as open but without the Divine. The second benefit of an open universe is that it takes evolution and contemporary science more seriously than sequestering science away from ever challenging metaphysical views of the closed universe. More accurately, the universe evolves and changes and thus an open universe is one in which possibilities are being generated and the scientific understanding of observational cosmology is undergirded by the primacy of change, growth, and temporality. The universe is expanding. We don’t know what it is expanding into, but the fact that the observable universe is changing means that it’s at least possible that such change requires metaphysical primacy and so rather than thinking the universe itself or God as immutable, an open universe reflects a greater possible synergy with the natural and social sciences. What’s more, if the universe suddenly changed, then being open to the possibility that creation/the universe itself is being created at every moment such that what comes before influences, but does not weigh or control the outcome as much as causal determinism states.

Hopefully, now, we can see that there are two immediate pragmatic benefits of affirming one side of the dilemma. In accepting that “humans live in and exercise agency in an open universe,” we affirm the datum of freedom we feel in the very marrow of our agency. A closed universe cuts us off from realizing possibilities that are new, experimental, and shocking. An open universe is more consistent with how I sense my own agency and it’s in an open universe where the self-determination of my own actions adds meaning and value to the world (or at the very least possesses the slightest probability of doing so). An open universe is one where I can make a difference and add to its possibility and the possibility is publicly available for assessment in how we are sharing in the co-responsibility of realizing values into the world. For this reason, when presented with the dilemma of a closed universe or an open universe and we are committed to our ability to act freely in improving the world, the only sensible choice pragmatically is an open universe over against a world where our actions make no difference.