Radical Nature

In Radical Nature, Christian de Quincey has already written a seminal book and there are two more volumes to come! I was speaking to Brian Goodwin at the International Futures Forum in Arbroath a fortnight ago and discussing Christian's book. He said that it marked the return of animism, which he regarded as a major breakthrough. My mind went back a few years to a conversation with Brian in a Cotswold pub when we were discussing panpsychism. I remember him saying that he thought it the only logical solution to the emergence of mind. And this, as readers of his article above will have realised, is Christian's thesis.

The three parts look at our modern cosmology story, the options in terms of clashing world views, and the solution to be found by taking Whitehead's route via the panexperientialism of David Ray Griffin. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have already written about the debilitating existential consequences of our current cosmological story. This basically reflects the stoic but grim statement made by Bertrand Russell a hundred years ago, echoed by Jacques Monod and more recently by Steven Weinberg: that matter is dead and insentient, and that human life is devoid of meaning and significance. Such writers urge us to accept the consequences of such a view as it is sanctioned by the findings of modern science. Its major premise is also its major problem: how to account for the emergence of consciousness if matter is entirely insentient. How can one conceive of mind emerging from matter if matter is inherently without mind?

Christian's answer is that the materialistic account is logically impossible (although he is nearly convinced by Nicholas Humphrey in the Epilogue) and to propose a 'radical naturalism' whereby consciousness - instead of turtles - goes all the way down. He also feels, in common with Steve Rosen, that we are in need of what Steve calls 'epistemotherapy' as a result of damaged sustained from an inadequate world view. In the first part he sets out his own definitions of consciousness and his criticisms of the conventional approaches. His own definition is that consciousness 'is the ability that matter-energy has to feel, to know, and to direct itself'. Note here the prominence given to feeling, which returns later in the book when he introduces one of his original concepts, the 'Ep-On bootstrap principle' involving the co-determination of epistemology and ontology whereby knowing becomes being. This principle is related to his interesting view on the free will problem where he asserts that 'there is no dualism of agent and choice. Agency is the act of choosing'. It is our categories that get us into trouble.

Another troublesome category is substance, which is almost bound to lead to dualistic types of thinking that render the mind-body issue unresolvable. Christian follows Whitehead in taking a process view that prioritises time over space. Incidentally, I found Christian's discussion of consciousness and localisation fascinating. He makes a good case for consciousness being non-located rather than technically nonlocal, adding that he thinks that the issue should probably be addressed in terms of time rather than space.

The second part goes into questions of meaning, problems associated with consciousness and the history of panpsychism. This last chapter is especially interesting in its tour d'horizon of Western philosophy which he traces back to Orphism. We then make special pit stops at the Presocratics, Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, then Bruno, whose place in the history of philosophy has been underestimated. He was the first to formulate matter as in a sense self-organising. Then we come to Leibniz, Spinoza and the Chinese influence. In his discussion of Plotinus, Christian invents another term for the emanationist process whereby the many emerge from the one – 'onvolution', which is a logical rather than a temporal process.

In Part Three we move towards Christian's solution with a superb chapter on Whitehead, which is one of the most lucid introductions to his thought that I know. Then on to a critical discussion of Griffin's panexperientialism and his exchanges with Colin McGinn. The arguments are set out very clearly and in detail, so that the reader understands exactly what is at stake and how his radical naturalism overcomes the contradictions inherent in other stories. In his conclusion Christian makes a brief reference to the possibility of 'disembodied consciousness' and the possibility of survival of bodily death. He rightly points out that there may well be other 'subtle bodies as asserted by Indian traditions, but I felt that his discussion here could have benefited from reading Mark Woodhouse's Paradigm Wars, which I did not find in the bibliography. Looking at a similar range of data, Mark formulates his 'energy monism' in which consciousness is the inner and energy the form at any conceivable level of existence. These are inseparable in terms of the existence of a manifest world.

By the end of the book Christian is able to return to the story question with which he began and sketch out some of the elements of the new story that one finds emerging in holistic views of science. This is a rich and complex book that repays careful study. Christian makes a strong case for his radical naturalism as a way of resolving the puzzle of consciousness for modern science and bringing back meaning and value into a world view consistent with the findings of science. Readers will find the process of epistemotherapy stimulating and liberating: if you only read one philosophy book a year, this is it; and if philosophy is part of your regular fare, you will find plenty of engaging and original material in this book.