Does “thinking” have any relevance in an age of science and technology? Does one need to “think” at all since we can now “research” everything using a scientific methodology? This might seem like a very provocative way to begin the article, but it makes a lot of sense in light of what Heidegger famously declared more than half a century ago that “science does not think” (Heidegger 1968). Let me unpack the statement step by step before getting into the primary goal of this article, namely, to put forth a vision of what I call “cultural and epistemic pluralism.” Heidegger opens his well-known Memorial Address by claiming that “man today is in flight from thinking” (Heidegger 1966: 45). But he qualifies his statement immediately by saying that people will flatly deny that they do not think anymore. They will point to the massive amount of scientific research and argue that never in human history has there existed such “research” on countless inquiries (Heidegger 1966: 45). Heidegger anticipates such arguments and explains that the word “research” or more properly science itself has replaced real thinking because “science does not think.” He characterizes scientific thinking as “calculative thinking” whose “peculiarity consists in the fact that whenever we plan, research, and organize, we always reckon with conditions that are given. We take them into account with the calculated intention of their serving specific purposes” (Heidegger 1966: 46). In other words, we aim for specific, empirical results. For Heidegger, calculative thinking remains calculation even if it neither involves numbers nor uses a computer, since its essence remains computational (Heidegger 1966: 46).
Hearing these arguments in 2023, one cannot help but agree with Heidegger. The title of a recent book on thinking by a major analytic philosopher proves Heidegger’s point. The book is entitled The Border Between Seeing and Thinking, and yet the reader would be disappointed if they expect some kind of discourse on “thinking” (Block 2023). Instead, Ned Block tells us from the beginning that he is going to refrain from deploying philosophical arguments, which for him involve merely intuitive thinking without any scientific, empirical basis. So, he marshals a large quantity of empirical research from various disciplines such as cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, etc. to explain what distinguishes perception, including not just seeing, but also hearing, touching, and so on, from cognition, which includes thinking, reasoning, and decision-making. Assuming cognition to be synonymous with “thinking” (which it is not), there is surprisingly little in his book on what constitutes “thinking.” Taking empirical research on perception to be the ultimate judge of the issue, Block does shed some light on the border between seeing and cognition, through such arguments that perception is nonconceptual, adaptive, and iconic while cognition is conceptual, propositional, and discursive (see McDowell 1994 and Wittgenstein 1953 for a contrasting view). But the overall analysis is tinged with irony, since thinking involves “universals” and concepts, while Block wants to settle this very issue through empirical research, which by definition is particular and inductive, no matter their “quantity.”
II
Be that as it may, the trend away from “thinking” even in the discipline of philosophy is symptomatic of a larger cultural paradigm which has to do with the ascendency of science since the seventeenth century. Notwithstanding its particular merits, scientific thinking does not leave room for metaphysics, even though it inevitably presupposes one, namely naturalism (i.e., the causal closure of the physical world) or materialism (i.e., matter is the ultimate ground of reality). As Bas Van Fraasen says:
I propose the following diagnosis of materialism: it is not identifiable with a theory about what there is but only with an attitude or cluster of attitudes. These attitudes include strong deference to the current content of science in matters of opinion about what there is. They include also an inclination (and perhaps a commitment, at least an intention) to accept (approximative) completeness claims for science as actually constituted at any given time (Fraasen 2002: 59).
Now, I do not personally have issues with materialism, so long as it leaves room for other paradigms. But today’s materialism is sui generis in that when combined with scientism, it develops a picture of what I call “scientific totalitarianism.” And it is scientific totalitarianism, which obfuscates any road to alternative thinking or thinking itself, whether cross-cultural, platonic, or non-Eurocentric. Let me provide some examples. In his recent Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel lays out a far-reaching manifesto. He wants to defend not only consciousness against reductionism, but also the higher mental structures of cognition and ethics. He is uncertain about the Darwinian account of evolution on two grounds: he does not think three billion years has provided enough time for mere random mutation to have transformed us to the height of complexity that characterizes life today; and, more importantly, he sees unbridgeable gaps in the Darwinian story, especially at the point where the machine of self-replicating carbon-based matter is supposed to have flared up into full-blown consciousness. The Darwinians’ theory, at that point, lacks any sort of “pineal gland” of the kind Descartes resorted to, to be an interface between spiritual stuff and material stuff. Nagel thinks one must go beyond the Darwinian story to explain the appearance of conscious organisms, and not merely behaviourally complex organisms (Nagel 2012). In Nagel’s thinking, there are three salient attributes of existence which are too complex to be explained away mechanistically—consciousness, cognition, and ethical law—and they must have been part of physical matter from the beginning. Although Nagel is a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and takes pains to make that clear, he is unable, as one should, to resist the “intelligibility” of the universe through naturalistic explanations. “Mind,” says Nagel, “is doubly related to the natural order. Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings” (Nagel 2012: 17). His contention is that these happy correspondences are “fundamental features of the universe, not byproducts of contingent developments.” He calls it a natural teleology—or teleology without purpose, as a way of stipulating that God has not designed any of this. “Mind and everything that goes with it is inherent in the universe,” he contends. “The intelligibility of the world… is itself part of the explanation of why things are as they are” (Nagel 2012: 17).
Now it is surprising how severely Nagel’s thesis has been attacked by both scientists and philosophers, although his critique falls within the orbits of materialism in the end. I am not concerned here with the validity of Nagel’s thesis, although I do agree with him that human intelligence and consciousness do not seem to fit in the naturalist picture. Rather, what worries me is the dogmatic attitude of materialism, which resorts to science as the ultimate arbiter of metaphysical questions such as what is real, what is possible, and what is good. Moreover, as Nagel’s example shows, the current version of scientific totalitarianism violently rejects any other alternative to humanity’s quest for truth. As if this is not enough, philosophy itself, thanks to the efforts of analytic philosophers, now takes on the role of the handmaiden of science, as we saw in the case of Block’s recent book. This is because only scientists are allowed to say what is actually real, while philosophers must limit themselves to what questions one can ask and how to think clearly. But this division of territory between scientists and everyone else is not established by God or reason, rather it is a social fact and a historically contingent situation (Dagli 2024).
III
It is undeniable that many (if not most) intellectuals in the West only accept proofs that result from mathematical modelling and physical evidence. For thinkers such as Alex Rosenberg, such an attitude is a necessary concomitant of the so-called successes of modern science (Rosenberg 2020). Broadly, for such philosophers, the success factor of empirical science far outweighs the methods of philosophy or any other tradition that purport to illuminate the nature of reality. Therefore, only what is affirmed by science as real can be counted as real. Needless to say, this is a highly contentious claim, since what counts as “scientific” or whether one can only mention “success” in relation to science are both widely debated (not least because of the present environmental and nuclear crises). Moreover, while empirical science can boast of its ability to develop theories such as general relativity and quantum mechanics, it is much less clear whether it can deliver confident judgments when it comes to the nature of being or consciousness. This is a vast topic, but briefly, empirical sciences face a fundamental challenge when it comes to human subjectivity, since it cannot give us access to subjectivity from the outside (Faruque 2021). Any scientific thinking presupposes that we are already conscious of ourselves and others. So, when we use a scientific method to investigate a given aspect of subjectivity (i.e., a given mental state or conscious activity), we are always necessarily objectifying it using and relying on our subjectivity.But consciousness is always a subject in relation to a known object, even though sometimes it can be represented in the mind as an object.Some would argue that empirical sciences cannot even provide a complete description of the natural world, since they operate on the basis of the famous Galilean distinction between primary and secondary qualities as well as the hypothesis that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. One can mention Husserl and Heidegger in this regard, among many others, who have brought into the open many of the fundamental epistemological and ontological assumptions clouding modern science (see Husserl 1970; Heidegger 1977).
In addition, it is not at all clear that there is a consensus among scientists or more properly physicists when it comes to settling the ultimate questions. This is demonstrated by a widely discussed paper entitled “On Math, Matter, and Mind” by three well-known physicists (Hut et al. 2006). The paper begins by observing that although physicists agree on the formalism of their theories and the methodology of their experiments, they often disagree about the question of how to interpret their results as they pertain to ontology. It then proceeds to categorize different camps in terms of the following:
- The Fundamentalist View
- The Secular View
- The Mystic View
The fundamentalist view represented by the physicist Max Tegmark argues that a straightforward application and further exploration of the current framework of physics will eventually cover and explain all of reality. Assuming materialism to be true, it further holds that the physical world, at bottom, is nothing other than the mathematical world. The secularist (Mark Alford) and the mystic disagree. The secularist responds by arguing that science deals with a limited domain of reality. As such, its results hold true only for that limited domain. Hence, the urge to derive a metaphysical framework from scientific theory is akin to putting the cart before the horse. The mystic (Piet Hut) in their turn recognizes a flaw in materialist reductionism and argues that physics has left out the subject pole of experience. So, it must address the problem of consciousness. Nevertheless, the mystic claims that science may change in shape and form, but it steadily advances closer to ultimate truths. Although I find much to both agree and disagree with these views and would like to point out that they misinterpret Platonism, the more important issue is to realize that science does not resolve the metaphysical questions, as many seem to claim it does. In fact, it is apropos here to quote the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger on the limitations of scientific materialism:
This is the reason why I believe it to be true that I actually do cut out my mind when I construct the real world around me. And I am not aware of this cutting out. And then I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. I t gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. So, in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it, we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it… (Schrödinger 2014: 95).
Schrödinger also points to the lack of philosophical reflection among science-educated people, which might shock us:
It is certainly not in general the case that by acquiring a good all-round scientific education you so completely satisfy the innate longing for a religious or philosophical stabilization, in face of the vicissitudes of everyday life, as to feel quite happy without anything more. What does happen often is that science suffices to jeopardize popular religious convictions, but not to replace them by anything else. This produces the grotesque phenomenon of scientifically trained, highly competent minds with an unbelievably childlike—undeveloped or atrophied—philosophical outlook (Schrödinger 2014: 12).
Since many people bring up the “success factor” of modern science, it is necessary to shed some light on this. For many observers, modern science is great and ubiquitous because it enables us to connect with each other instantaneously across thousands of miles as in Zoom and Skype, to perform complicated heart surgeries, and to almost mimic human intelligence through AI as with ChatGPT. But this is an outmoded, triumphalist view of science that first of all confuses “science” with the technological successes of science, and secondly, neglects to consider some of the disastrous consequences of scientific technology in such domains as climate and nuclear weapons. In fact, one observes a growing dissatisfaction among an increasing number of intellectuals concerning scientific totalitarianism (McGilchrist 2019, 2021; Merchant 2020; Zwicky 2023; Smith 2012, 2020, Nasr 2008). The philosopher Jan Zwicky’s (one of the very few analytic philosophers, who, in my opinion, are still thinking!) remarks below support my observation:
Western civilization is over. By that I mean the culture that replaced the European Middle Ages, that began with the Renaissance, saw the invention of the printing press and the telescope, fostered the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, engendered capitalism and a host of European empires, persevered through the Romantic Reaction, and went on in the twentieth century to dominate global economic policy and social aspiration, is finished. The signs are everywhere: teetering economies, democratic institutions under threat, belligerent populism on the rise, ecological cataclysm on the horizon (Zwicky 2023: vii).
Zwicky then says that she is not interested in the proximate causes of this cultural demise, which she, nonetheless, outlines: automation, the global shift to digital technologies, addiction to life online, the decline of literacy, the evisceration of humanistic studies, the growing gap between the less-than-one percent and everyone else, human overpopulation conjoined with accelerating rates of diet-induced human disease. According to Zwicky, the root cause of many of the West’s problems stems from a “way of thinking,” which originated nearly six hundred years ago. She acknowledges that this particular way of thinking, namely scientific thinking, fostered the growth of capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and Big Technology. But in her estimation, it is intensely anthropocentric, and it has led those who embrace it to regard the nonhuman world as nothing more than potential furniture and drilling sites. Moreover, it is oblivious to context and has trouble seeing big pictures. While it analyzes, mechanizes, digitizes, and systematizes, it rejects empathy and compassion as “distorting influences” and insists on cold objectivity (Zwicky 2023: viii; see also Han 2015; Rosa 2019; Bauman 2007).
IV
If you are still following what I have been saying, then you can be rest assured that Heidegger would be delighted to see Zwicky’s overarching critique of scientific thinking. In the Memorial Address, Heidegger quotes an American Nobel laureate who said “Science [and that is modern natural science] is a road to a happier human life” (Heidegger 1966: 50). Heidegger criticizes such a view by saying it never springs from reflection, as it forgets to ask: What is the ground that enables modern technology to discover and utilize new energies in nature? For the proponents of calculating or scientific thinking, Heidegger contends, nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. He then rightly points out how such a strange view of nature, namely that it is a “resource” to be exploited, developed only in Europe, as it was altogether alien to former ages and civilizations (Heidegger 1966: 50).
The point of all these critiques is to show that we need to advance alternative paradigms that transcend calculating or scientific thinking, naturalism, and materialism. But this does not mean materialism will have no place in the alternative paradigm that I am proposing, since it is still the dominant view in the West, even though one cannot say the same for the rest of the globe. Regardless, I want to outline here the alternative paradigm which I call “cultural and epistemic pluralism” and which is defined as follows:
Cultural and epistemic pluralism is the recognition that fundamental questions of philosophy have been addressed by major cultures, and that there are multiple valid epistemological frameworks to address the questions of truth, knowledge, and being.
It should be obvious from the above that cultural and epistemic pluralism in question leaves the door open to materialism, as it does to Platonism, decolonial and postcolonial thinking, and cross-cultural philosophy in various garbs. What it objects to is scientific totalitarianism, which claim exclusive and unwarranted rights to metaphysical questions such as what is real, possible, or good. It is also worth pointing out that these questions, in one form or another, are presupposed by any thought-system, be it materialism or Platonism. Also, this kind of pluralism should leave room for critical attitude toward each other’s paradigm; otherwise, one falls into the bottomless pit of relativism.
Having critiqued materialism and naturalism, and having defined cultural and epistemic pluralism, it makes sense to also outline my alternative epistemology and metaphysics. Taking leads from a long line of thinkers in Greek, Indian, and Islamic philosophies such as Plato, Shankara, Suhrawardī, and Mulla Ṣadrā, my perspective seeks to overcome the Cartesian dualism of res cogitans and res extensa through an existence-based epistemology (Ṣadrā 2001-05; Suhrawardī 1999). Cartesian epistemology, which eventually leads to epistemic subjectivism, sees reality in terms of discrete, atomistic units, with human beings given an undue, privileged onto-epistemic status. In my onto-epistemology, reality is no longer an aggregate of discrete entities and a collection of independent objects set against the knowing subject that presides over them. It is rather the interconnectedness of beings, set against a gradational plane of existence, that simultaneously discloses an aspect of being (wujūd) and determines the process of knowing. In this picture, one already encounters the world laden with meanings and relations at the level of sense experience. Moreover, in line with the basic tenets of Platonism but extending it further (Gerson 2020), I take it that naturalism is unable to explain the ontological basis of the physical world. For that we need immaterial forms which belong to the intelligible world. A form is neither a particular nor a hypostasized universal (so Platonism differs from both realism and conceptualism), but rather a metaphysically distinct “one-over-many.” The array of internally related forms are “eternal natures” whose omnipresence explains both possibilities and why those possibilities are actualized under the appropriate physical conditions. Plato’s response to naturalism, embodied in Anaxagoras’s philosophy as depicted in the Phaedo, is to posit an intelligible realm cantered on the Good as it is depicted in the Republic, namely as beyond being and essence and explanatorily responsible, directly and indirectly, for both the intelligible and sensible realms. Also, the absolutely simple superordinate Idea of the Good (the One) is to be distinguished from the unity of coordinate forms (including the Form of the Good), by way of which it is causally efficacious in both the intelligible and sensible world. We cognize the One abductively through instances of self-sufficiency. In order to explain how being (i.e., the total array of forms) is both complex and unified, Platonism requires both the doctrine of the superordinate One as first principle of all and the doctrine of the eternal intellect. The intellect is good-like by functioning to impart integrative unity (i.e., intelligibility) to things, and things in their turn are good or good-like in virtue of possessing integrative unity. Importantly, for the forms to be efficacious, one requires the causal efficacy of the Good, instrumentally mediated by the eternal intellect operating in and according to the forms (Gerson 2020).
It goes without saying that the above account provides an alternative to analytic philosophers’ appeal to language as the ground of what Sellars calls the “space of reasons.” For instance, McDowell posits “language” as the repository of accumulated wisdom about what is a reason for what. Following Gadamer, McDowell invokes a fusion of linguistic horizons when participating in the dialogue between different linguistic traditions (McDowell 1994). But one can argue that such an appeal to language and a fusion of linguistic horizons still fails to account for why they come to ground the space of reasons. While I do not discount one’s initiation into a linguistic tradition in order to orient oneself in the space of reasons, the question remains as to how to explain the unique status of the logical space of reasons without reducing it to naturalism, especially since the appeal to linguistic traditions or their fusion reifies “language” and almost makes it a self-conscious, superstructure underlying everything. In short, language achieves the status of an ultimate reality and becomes the supreme, all-founding being. In my view, the Platonic-Islamic account of the Universal or the Active Intellect, which is the intelligible world seen as one single reality, is well-suited to address these concerns. It allows us to sustain the isomorphism between what we experience and what reality truly is, because of the identity relation between the Active Intellect and the Giver of forms. Ultimately, such an epistemology provides us with resources to resist, as in McDowell, the excessive philosophical obsessions of modernity with the successes of natural sciences.
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