McGinn, Colin

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Book ReviewMind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-DarwinianConception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel.New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 144. H/b £15.99.The problems with this book begin with the provocative subtitle, bleedinginto the introductory chapter and its polemical sequel. Nagel just assumesfrom the start that modern Darwinism is committed to materialist reduc-tionism. Then he attacks evolutionary theory, as it exists today, for beingreductionist. But metaphysical materialism and evolutionary theory are logic-ally independent of each other, so the faults of the former do not transfer tothe latter. He thus attacks a straw man. Nagel persistently asserts that pro-ponents of the science of evolution are materialists, calling this the ‘orthodoxview’; but he gives no citations to actual biologists, footnoting only StevenWeinberg, a physicist. However, even if they did in fact hold that metaphys-ical position, the apparatus of Darwinian explanation is surely not committedto it. Nagel just conflates the two questions throughout his book. There isabsolutely nothing to prevent an anti-reductionist about consciousness, cog-nition and value from espousing Darwin’s theory of the origin of species bymutation and natural selection — and I strongly suspect that this is the ortho-dox view (it is certainly my view). So far as I can see, even idealism andCartesian dualism are consistent with Darwinism.Nagel thinks that scientists interested in the origin of life approach thequestion with materialist assumptions: they seek a chemical explanation be-cause they are diehard reductionists. But this is surely wrong: they look tochemistry simply because chemicals were the only stuff around on earthbefore early life (in the form of bacteria) arose. Later traits of organismsmight be irreducible (being genuinely emergent), but the origin of lifemust have begun in non-life (unless we think life goes all the way back tothe big bang). Oddly, Nagel says nothing about the actual theories that havebeen proposed, such as Cairn-Smith’s crystal replication theory or the idea(well expounded in Nick Lane’s Life Ascending) that the conditions in deep-sea thermal vents were conducive to the evolution of the first bacteria. Hetalks as if the laws of physics and chemistry alone must explain the origin oflife on earth, instead of the peculiar local conditions that obtained on theearly earth. He also makes the remarkable statement that in his judgmentthere has not been enough time during the course of evolution for geneticMind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2013  Mind Association 2013 at University of California, Berkeley on September 19, 2013http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from variation and natural selection to produce the variety of organic forms we seetoday. He gives no argument or evidence for this and it seems completelyimplausible (here I would recommend Richard Dawkins’s The Ancestor’s Talefor a convincing account of how organic forms evolved over geological time).In general, Nagel relies on an overly schematic caricature of actual evolution-ary theorizing in making his very sweeping claims, assuming that the courseof evolution is held to be deducible from the laws of physics.Although Nagel makes much play with the words ‘material’ and ‘physical’he says almost nothing about how these words are to be understood. Butthere are considerable difficulties in providing any clear conception of whatthe associated doctrines are supposed to be, pointed out by many peoplefrom Hempel to Chomsky. Postulating gravity and later electromagneticfields already went beyond the resources of classical mechanistic materialism,and one would need to know what all of future physics might contain toarrive at a sound characterization of what ‘materialism’ maintains. It is quiteunsatisfactory to gesture at ‘the spatiotemporal order’ as the domain of the‘physical’: that just assumes that the mental is outside the realm of the spatial,as well as leaving us unclear how matter is to be distinguished from space. SoI do not really know what the doctrine of ‘materialism’, as Nagel understandsit, is. He uses the word ‘mechanistic’ at one point, which adds some clarity;but then much of contemporary physics will not be ‘materialist’ by this cri-terion. Physics itself is quite heterogeneous in its theoretical machinery, sinceelectromagnetic theory is not reducible to gravitational theory (I discuss thisin Basic Structures of Reality).Nagel is strangely blind to the evident irreducibility of standard Darwinianbiology to physics. Evolutionary theory is couched in the following kinds ofterms: predator, prey, parasite, symbiosis, function, fitness, adaptation, armsrace, selfish gene, extended phenotype, eye, heart, sex, display, mimicry, andso on. How are these remotely ‘reducible to physics’? The familiar point hereis that the special sciences employ their distinctive concepts and categoriesthat fail to map reductively onto the concepts and categories of physics. So wealready know that reductionism is false well before we get to consciousness,reason and value. The middle ground between reductionism and theism, forwhich Nagel yearns, is quite robustly occupied by Darwinian biology itself —and this position is quite orthodox. Ironically, Nagel is taking reductionismmuch more seriously than he should.One of his more striking claims is that any explanation of life or mindneeds to show that these things are probable. He counts it against any his-torical theory that life should emerge ‘by accident’, as a matter of chance. Inhis view, matter must have an inherent tendency to produce life and mind.He remarks at one point that matter must be shown to have a ‘bias towardsthe marvelous’. It is hard to know what to make of these uses of the notion ofprobability, but the following points should be noted. Must matter be cred-ited with an inherent bias towards producing TV sets, since it came to assumeMind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2013  Mind Association 20132 Book Review at University of California, Berkeley on September 19, 2013http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from such a form? Is it not really just a cosmic ‘accident’ that TV sets came to be?Then why is it different with the platypus? Second, mutation is a chancyphenomenon, so how can it be that its results are not? Third, it is surely justchance that the dinosaurs were driven extinct because of a stray meteor, thusproviding the opportunity for mammals to take over; so the existence ofmammalian life as we have it is an accident. Why does the existence ofmammals have to be somehow antecedently probable or implicit in matteras such? If not, then why is life as a whole? Fourth, as far as we can see life isan extreme rarity in the universe (as is mind), so how can it be ‘probable’ orbuilt into matter from the start? The conditions on earth just happen to favorlife, but matter elsewhere has no observable tendency to move in an organicdirection. Oddly, Nagel ignores the cosmic rarity of life and mind, talking asif matter is perpetually on the brink of breaking into organic form.Once Nagel leaves biology behind he gets into his stride and has some niceNagelian discussions of consciousness, cognition, and value. He makes agood case that these things are problematic for evolutionary explanation,and problematic generally. But what strikes me is that he does not mentionmany other things that are generally regarded as problematic for Darwinianexplanation and which are frequently discussed. Thus: sex, altruism, dream-ing, syntax, reference, aesthetic sense, suicide, aging, bipedalism, fiction,modal thinking, mathematics, music, dance, depression. None of these iseasy to explain, as Darwinians have long recognized, but no one thinksthey undermine the overall correctness of Darwinian theory. In addition tostandard adaptationist explanation, theorists try to see what can be done withspandrels and sexual selection. I would like to have seen Nagel explore thiskind of theory a little more fully, especially when it comes to the developmentof advanced cognition (braininess might be like the peacock’s tale). In gen-eral, his discussion of Darwinian theory is far too abstract and detached fromthe biological nitty-gritty.Nagel’s alternative to what he takes to be orthodox evolutionary thinking iswhat he calls ‘natural teleology ’. This part of his discussion left me particu-larly puzzled. Do we not already have natural teleology in biologicaltheory — in the shape of the idea of function and what is good for theorganism? Why does he think orthodox biology is non-teleological? Morefundamentally, I do not really know what he means by this phrase, since itdoes not seem to include the idea of a goal or purpose. He seems to meansomething like a tendency to organized complexity, but again many biologistsbelieve that evolution naturally progresses to greater sophistication and com-plexity (thus eye design has improved over evolutionary time). At times heseems to mean some sort of anti-entropic principle, which makes me wonderif he thinks the law of entropy is an example of ‘natural teleology ’, since it istemporally asymmetric and a general tendency of material systems. Also,what about extinction and evolutionary stasis? In the end I was baffled.Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2013  Mind Association 2013Book Review 3 at University of California, Berkeley on September 19, 2013http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from All in all I found this a frustrating book, in which the author seemed to betilting at windmills and ignoring crucial distinctions. His grasp of evolution-ary theory seemed sketchy and peculiar. There is much about the evolution oflife and mind that we do not understand (and maybe never will), but thisbook seemed to me like a rather hysterical jab at something the author findsdistasteful. Yes, we evolved from worms — get used to it.COLIN MCGINNDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of Miami1252 Memorial DriveAshe BuildingCoral GablesFL 33124-4670USAdoi:10.1093/mind/fzt059Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2013  Mind Association 20134 Book Review at University of California, Berkeley on September 19, 2013http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from 

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel

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Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel

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