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Are you a simulation created by some dude on his computer in his basement? In fact, couldn’t our whole universe be a simulated universe? Patrick Flynn, Catholic philosopher and host of The Pat Flynn Show and Philosophy for the People tackles the growing consensus among the smart people that we might be living in a simulation.
Cy Kellett:
Could we really be living in a simulation? Pat Flynn is next. Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. This week, we welcome a new affiliate, apologist to Catholic Answers, an affiliate apologist, someone who’s going to work with us and help us do what we do, and we’re very happy to have Pat Flynn taking on that role here at Catholic Answers. We asked Pat a question that’s really been bothering me. Is it possible that I am currently living inside of a computer?
Cy Kellett:
Well, you’re probably hearing me through some kind of computer somewhere, but am I actually living in one? Is the me that I think of as me, not the product of flesh and blood, but is that me the product of some computer program possibly running in the basement of some advanced young man in a society that I will never see? Am I the product of something like that? This has become a serious question. The philosopher Nick Bostrom raised it in 2003 in what has become probably the most talked about philosophical paper of this century. It’s just asked a simple question, “Are you living in a computer simulation?” Here’s what Pat Flynn had to say. Pat Flynn, welcome to Focus. Thanks for being with us.
Pat Flynn:
Cy, It is a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. It’s nice to talk to you as an affiliate apologist of Catholic Answers. We’ve spoken before, but never in your role as an affiliate apologist. Thanks for bringing your voice to our efforts. It’s a great marriage for us. I hope it is for you as well.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. What an honor, honestly, Cy. As I myself journeyed to the Catholic faith, Catholic Answers played a significant role, answered a lot of important questions for me, so I hope that I can just give a little something in return.
Cy Kellett:
We’ll talk in a minute about your podcast, Philosophy for the People, because I want people to find that, but we pose the question to you now that the great Larry King posed to the smartest man in the world, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I know Neil deGrasse Tyson is the smartest man in the world because he tells everyone that. That’s not true. He doesn’t actually tell everyone that. He just gives that impression. You can ask Neil anything when he is on Larry King. Can I play you a little clip, and then we’ll talk about what he had to say?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, please. I always enjoy hearing Neil.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Larry King:
Like Mr. Musk things, are we living in simulation?
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
I find it hard to argue against that possibility.
Larry King:
Meaning?
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Meaning you look at our computing power today, and you say, “I have the power to program a world inside of a computer.” Well, imagine in the future where you have even more power than that, and you can create characters that have, for example, free will or their own perception of free will.
Cy Kellett:
Wow. That would be power, computer power. This is one of the great services that Neil deGrasse Tyson makes, I think. He is very good at making a succinct and clear argument. Because he’s often committed to arguments in favor of things that are completely wrong, he actually gives you an opportunity to, “Okay, it’s not just amorphous. He has in a very clear way said the wrong thing that lots of people are thinking in less clear ways.” I thought that was very clear. What did you think of what he said?
Pat Flynn:
It’s a great summary of a very influential argument that first, I suppose, came into philosophical circles with a gentleman named Bostrom. I believe he was from Oxford.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, he had this influential argument for the simulation hypothesis, and Neil gave a nice summary, but the idea is, “Look, there’s three possibilities.” Either we’ll never have the technology where we’ll be able to essentially generate the situation that Neil just talked about. That’s possibility one. Two is we could get that technology, but for whatever reason, we won’t really put it into effect, maybe ethical reasons. We’ll say, “We should never do this.” Or three, we will put it into effect. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Then it seems like if we put it into effect once, maybe we’ll do it a bunch of times, maybe even infinitely many times, and then the idea is, “Well, if that’s the case, that could actually happen…” Then just throw a dart. I think Neil actually says this later on in the interview. Just throw a dart. What are the chances that you either land into the original world would, call that base reality, or any of the infinitely many simulations out there? This is supposed to freak you out probabilistically in the sense that, “Shoot. It seems like if I just throw that dart, I’m probably living in a simulation right now.”
Cy Kellett:
Right. That’s what Neil [crosstalk 00:04:58]-
Pat Flynn:
Right. That’s kind of the sketch of the argument. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
One of the clever things about Neil Bostrom’s original argument is he actually put a percentage on it. He actually said, “As a philosopher, I want to try to figure out what is the percentage chance we’re living in a simulation?” I can’t remember now what that percentage was, but it was a significant percentage. I think he’s gone up in the 20 years since that very influential article, Are We Living in a Simulation?, was published. But okay, so here’s the thing. This argument that Neil deGrasse Tyson is making sounds very similar, to me, to the argument where people say, “Well, there has to be other intelligent life in the universe. There has to be, because what are the chances we’re the only ones?” In other words, it’s all about probabilities whether or not you get intelligent life. It seems to me the probabilistic argument for intelligent life is itself a failed argument. It’s not true. If people would stop making that argument, then you could relax, and you’re not living in a simulation, and you’re not going to be killed by aliens.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. So much of it depends on your background assumptions. As we’ll talk about moving forward, I just don’t think it makes any sense. In fact, I think it’s a strict metaphysical impossibility to think that a computer, anything that’s purely physical, could generate beings like us, beings with a conscious awareness and rationality and freedom of the will and all that. We’ll get there in a minute. But of course, if you think that’s a strict metaphysical impossibility, then the probability that we’re in a computer simulation is zero.
Cy Kellett:
Exactly. Right.
Pat Flynn:
It’s nothing, right?
Cy Kellett:
Exactly. Yes.
Pat Flynn:
It’s only if you grant that assumption that you can then start to fall into these, I would say, really radically skeptical scenarios. That’s the first thing I want to point out about this computer simulation hypothesis is that it’s structurally really no different than any globally skeptical scenario. The funny thing is that from Descartes on, every culture has had its own unique, radically skeptical situation. If you remember back to Descartes and his meditations, in his first meditation, he gives you this barrage of skeptical arguments of, “Well, maybe everything that you think you experience, maybe everything that you think that you’re thinking is actually the result of some demonic hallucination.” This is different than the simulation hypothesis because Descartes isn’t entertaining this as a real possibility. He’s actually using it as a method to try and get to some foundation of knowledge that’s incorrigible and incorruptible that can’t be doubt, and then he wanted to build back better, baby. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right. The idea is you just doubt everything that could possibly be doubted and only say what you’re absolutely certain of. This way, your knowledge will be grounded on a solid foundation of what I am absolutely certain of.
Pat Flynn:
Right, and then you build back up with valid arguments. Descartes is using doubt actually to try and get to certainty. That’s what he’s to do. Most have kind of thought that he failed in that, and I agree, but there’s parallels here, and we’ll be able to tie this in. But the first point I wanted to make is that this is just a radically skeptical scenario because we’re just asked to imagine that nothing is really as it seems. It’s all fundamentally an illusion. Whether it’s from a demon or some kid running a computer program in his parents’ basement, it really makes no difference. It’s still a globally skeptical scenario. Brain in a vat, demonic hallucination, simulation hypothesis, it’s all sort of the same thing. It just kind of is situated in a different culture. We don’t think about demons as much anymore. Now we think about computers. But it’s the same thing.
Cy Kellett:
Then there’s quasi-versions of this. People will say, “Well, the simulation hypothesis, that’s just the matrix.” Well, actually, no, it’s not just the matrix. The matrix is the idea that you have a physical body. It’s just being fooled by machines. The simulation is you ain’t got none of it. You’re ones and zeros.
Pat Flynn:
You’re a complete digital entity. Right. Yeah. There’s no real you that was knocked unconscious and then plugged into a computer. The one that we’re dealing with here is, “No, you are entirely generated by the computer.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Pat Flynn:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. There’s extreme versions of this hyperbolic doubt, like Descartes and then the simulation hypothesis, which are similarly extreme, but then there’s also modified versions like the movie Prometheus, like, “Well, we were created by another race that created us, and maybe that other race was created by another race that created them.” You undermine the sense of the uniqueness of the human person. That’s one of the consequences of this. But also, it’s just a way of doubting and adding doubt upon doubt upon doubt.
Pat Flynn:
Right. I want to say two things, or I want to kind of break this into two different ways of thinking about it, because sometimes… Maybe, Cy, you’ve had this conversation before. You’re out and about, and things get philosophical. You start getting to kind of your core beliefs, and maybe you say to somebody that you believe in God. But then they say, “Do you know what, man? For all we know, we’re living in a simulation.” Sometimes this is presented as as an objection to theistic belief in a sense. I just want to just flag that really quickly, because if this is presented as some objection to existence of God, I think it’s irrelevant. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. It has no effect on the question of whether or not God exists.
Pat Flynn:
Right, because it can’t be simulations all the way down. Presumably, there… not presumably. Definitely those would all be contingent realities still crying out for that necessary self-explanatory explanation. It’d be an odd scenario to run the traditional arguments for God from, but it wouldn’t block the traditional arguments for God. Now, that somewhat ties into Descartes’ considerations. He makes a different type of argument for God, but he wants to actually get the certainty and the reliability of our faculties from God’s goodness. He wants us to say, “Well, God is perfectly good, so he is not going to put me in this radically skeptical scenario.” I don’t think that actually works because clearly God does allow people to be deceived. I think we could say, “Probably God might not allow all of us to be radically, systematically deceived,” but I don’t think you’re going to get the sort of certainty that Descartes was hoping for by just punting to God.
Pat Flynn:
However, you can say this. If you’ve already got the God hypothesis, then we can certainly appeal to parsimony, because clearly the simpler hypothesis is, “We have God, and he created the real world.” Philosopher James Anderson has a good response to this. He says that, “In terms of these different scenarios, we’ve got a personal creator, God, and then we have the real world. That’s hypothesis one. Hypothesis two is we have a personal creator, God. He permitted the construction of a massive computer simulation. We’re part of that massive computer simulation. We don’t have experiences of the real world.” Well, in terms of just a general theory, that latter is far more complex. It has far more components that could go wrong. We can say at least probabilistically, other considerations equal, we should prefer that first hypothesis. We’re very probably not living in that second hypothesis, the computer simulation one. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right. Okay. That’s on probabilistic terms, but you say on metaphysical terms. That means you are certain. You have a moral, philosophical certainty. In other words, if someone says to you, “Pat Flynn, are we living in a simulation?” you’re willing to say, “No, we are not living in a simulation.” Where do you come by that kind of certainty?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. I want to come by it in two ways. I want to come from an epistemological standpoint, which epistemology concerns our theories of knowledge, “How do we know what we know?” and then I want to come from the standpoint of philosophy of mind. I want to make an argument that whatever else consciousness is, it’s not reducible to physics. If that’s the case, then you’re never going to get it from a computer simulation. The first point, the epistemological argument, actually ties back into these radically skeptical scenarios. I think what we can argue is that the simulation hypothesis is absurd to the point of being self-defeating, that it’s actually going to be irrational to believe. Now, why is this? Well, here’s the thing. When we begin to doubt the existence or the reality of the external world, we’re using reason to cast doubt on our cognitive powers, our cognitive faculties, including deep intuitions.
Pat Flynn:
We just have deep intuitions. The first time I told my wife, Cy, about the simulation hypothesis years ago, she said, “That just sounds ridiculous to me. That’s absurd. I don’t like that, Patrick.” She said, “I don’t like that, Patrick.” When she really doesn’t like something, she uses my name. “I don’t like that, Patrick.” Philosopher Thomas Reed would say that’s her common sense that’s functioning properly. The common sense isn’t how we normally think of common sense. The common sense is that sense that affirms to us the reliability of our other senses by deep intuition, this deep seeming that something is the case. Just like it really seems that two plus two equals four or it really seems like the external world is real, we all rely on these intuitions and seemings. If you think about it, we have an intuition that our intuitions are reliable. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Exactly. Right.
Pat Flynn:
We have this intuition-
Cy Kellett:
We have reason to because we ask questions about it, we answer the questions, we make those judgements, and we can keep coming to the conclusion, “Well, yeah, that one proved out. I don’t have to keep fussing over that. That one proved out.”
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Now, here’s the key point. The problem is as soon as you begin to doubt the reliability of your cognitive powers, reason is one of those cognitive powers. You’re really giving yourself reason to doubt reason itself. But then if you’re doubting reason itself, you have no reason to take any argument seriously, let alone Bostrom’s for the simulation hypothesis. You see what I’m saying?
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Pat Flynn:
We need our cognitive powers to be reliable to entertain any philosophical argument. As soon as we start to cast doubt on that, the idea is that the doubt is utterly corrosive. It goes down, and it even corrupts itself, such that we can’t even really see these radically or globally skeptical scenarios as something that could be affirmed rationally. Actually, it becomes irrational to believe because of that self-corrupting doubt. Right? Yeah. Does that make sense, Cy?
Cy Kellett:
It makes sense. It brings up this, and I know this is a slightly off the point, but I do want to say this. We could have a motivated reason for wanting to diminish our reliance on reason. That is to say, when I say, “We can’t know anything for sure,” then we really can’t know right and wrong for sure. I think all of us like to have permission to do things that are wrong. Do you see what I’m saying? You’re making a very well-reasoned argument, but I would just like to take a brief moment to say, “Why do we like to think that there’s no rational explanation for things? We like to think that because that gets us off the hook morally.” I think there’s a great attraction to getting off the hook morally.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. I think there’s some interesting psychological explanations behind all that. Also, the point that I want to make is opposite of Descartes. We just can’t begin the project of epistemology, answering what knowledge is and how we know things, by doubting everything, because then we get stuck in these radically self-defeating skeptical scenarios. What do we have to do instead? What we have to instead is start from the position that all of our cognitive faculties, the powers that we have, are at least generally reliable, or at least generally reliable, or they’re innocent until proven guilty, because we know we can go wrong. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Of course.
Pat Flynn:
We can be deceived. We can get things wrong, but the only way we know we’ve gone wrong is because we rely on our cognitive faculties to make those corrections. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Pat Flynn:
So they can’t be totally unreliable, right?
Cy Kellett:
No. I want to give you an example of that. Our senses tell us that the sun rises. People will say, “Well, you trust your senses. If you just trusted your senses, then you would think that the sun rises,” but we don’t just trust our senses. We trust our senses to give us data that we can continue to ask questions about and get answers about. That’s how you get a person who says, “Well, it’s looking like the sun rises, but actually the sun is not rising. The earth is turning.” I think the hyper-suspicion of our sensory experience comes from the fact that often our sensory experience is illusory. But if we would just go one step further, we would say, “But it’s not so elusory that we never get to the truth. It allows us to continue to reason and ask questions, get answers, and come to the truth.”
Pat Flynn:
Right. It’s not that we were way off. Our senses were telling us that things were moving.
Cy Kellett:
Very good.
Pat Flynn:
We just had the interpretation wrong of what’s moving, right?
Cy Kellett:
Well said. Yes. Very well said.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. One more point about the self-defeat problem, because what I propose, I think, is a a global solution to all skeptical scenarios, but I want to go back to James Anderson, who has some good writing on this before, and he proposes that the simulation hypothesis in particular has a special self-defeat problem because it relies on scientific knowledge from a fake world. You see what I’m saying? It relies on the knowledge we’ve gained from this world about how computers work, about evolutionary history, but now-
Cy Kellett:
But this world is not real.
Pat Flynn:
But this is not real. Why should we think that that applies in base reality? You see that, right?
Cy Kellett:
Exactly.
Pat Flynn:
I think that’s really neat. That’s definitely right. It just invalidates itself right from the get-go.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. If you know how computers work in a simulated world, that doesn’t mean you know anything about how computers work in the real world. Therefore, your knowledge in a simulated world is utterly unreliable as to whether or not a computer can produce a simulation like that.
Pat Flynn:
That’s spot on. That’s exactly it. Right.
Cy Kellett:
All right. But the key thing that I think you get at, Pat, is that consciousness, as we experience… See, I thought it was so interesting that Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “Well, maybe you can create a creature in a computer with free will or the perception that it has free will.” Okay, but, “Maybe you can,” is not at all interesting. Can you or not? The answer is, “Well, right now you can’t, Neil deGrasse Tyson. What makes you think that just an increase in computing power will eventually result in Tron? Eventually, we’re going to get to Tron.” That’s what seems to be the argument. Well, no, just because you can make a movie about something doesn’t mean that it’s real. There are no elves. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I apologize to all of Ireland. There’s probably elves. But do you see what I’m saying?
Pat Flynn:
Of course.
Cy Kellett:
The argument is, “Well, our computing power is getting better and better. Eventually we’ll be able to make conscious being…” Well, you’ve never done it. How do you know you’ll eventually be able to make conscious beings?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. There are some critical assumptions that are operative here in this type of hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis. One is a broad physicalism or materialism, that whatever else reality is, it’s what physics and chemistry tell us that reality is, and that whatever else we are, whatever else human beings are as conscious rational agents, is just the result of this physical stuff that, through enough time and through enough configurations, eventually started thinking and becoming self-reflective and stuff like that. I want to jump off the-
Cy Kellett:
Which explains nothing. That’s just a story. It’s not an explanation of how anything happens. It’s just, “Eventually, it just started thinking.” Well, that doesn’t explain to me how that happened.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Then it’s linked. There’s not just physicalism and materialism, but there’s also certain philosophies of mind there, such as functionalism, and functionalism will say that whatever else the mind is, it’s just what the brain does. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Then there’s a subset of functionalism known as Computational Theory of Minds, which says, “Well, what the brain does is it computes.” I just want to say all that’s false. Physicalism is false. Materialism is false. Functionalism is false. Computational Theory of Mind is false. If you have reasons to reject these assumptions, you have reason to not be bothered by the simulation hypothesis at all. Let’s just sketch a few considerations here that might be helpful to people. If we start from a physicalist paradigm, what we’re supposed to believe is that the fundamental constituents of reality, whatever we’re made out of…
Pat Flynn:
Different physicalist have different commitments of what they are. Some think it’s just fundamental particles, like fermions and bosons. Others just leave it undefined. But they’re agreed that whatever this stuff is, it’s disparate. It’s not self-reflective. It’s not conscious. It’s not aware. It’s not about anything. It’s not directed towards anything. Then what we’re supposed to imagine, Cy, here’s what we’re supposed to imagine, is given enough time and given enough ways that this stuff could maybe be configured, it somehow by magic flips over into its complete qualitative opposite. It becomes a reality that’s unified, that’s about things, that’s critically self-reflective, that’s conscious, that’s aware, that’s rational. That’s magic.
Cy Kellett:
It becomes something that it’s not.
Pat Flynn:
That’s magic. Right?
Cy Kellett:
[crosstalk 00:22:50].
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. The analogy I sometimes like to use is imagine you just have a bunch of white Lego blocks, and somebody says, “Okay, build a purple tower.” You say, “I can’t do that.” They say, “Well, here, I’ll give you more Lego blocks.” You say, “I still can’t do it.” “Here, I’ll give you more time.” You say, “I still can’t do it. You can give me an infinite number of Lego blocks. You give me an infinite amount of time. I’m never going to get a purple tower from white Lego blocks.” Switch the relevant things around, and I think you see the fundamental problem of trying to get consciousness, beings like us, from a physicalist paradigm, and just using words as philosophers do like emergent doesn’t solve the problem.
Cy Kellett:
No, it just makes you sound like you’re saying something, but you didn’t say anything.
Pat Flynn:
It just relabels the mystery. It doesn’t solve anything. A philosopher I really like on this, David Bentley Hart says, “If you just go through a lot of the literature from physicalist philosophers of mid, just replace the word emergent with magic, and you’ll lose nothing in terms of explanation.” Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right, right.
Pat Flynn:
[crosstalk 00:23:47]
Cy Kellett:
You’re using a word to say, “Well, a thing happens. We don’t know what that thing is, but it happens.” Right. I think Hart is correct on that. You just replace it with the word magic, and then you’ve got it. Okay. Maybe you should say something, because what I hope is that we will engage in this video with some folks who believe or suspect that the simulation hypothesis is really a strong hypothesis. Well, okay, so I think the first thing they might say to you is, “Pat Flynn, look, if my brain is not producing my consciousness, what do you think consciousness is? Because your idea sounds like magic too.”
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. First off, I’m not a reductionist. I’m not a physicalist. I’m broadly an Aristotelian. I think that we just have a substantial form and that we are physical beings, but we’re physical beings with certain powers, and we have powers to think. That’s just not going to be something that a computer is. I’ve got a paradigm. I’ve got a theory to make sense of consciousness, but it’s not a reductionist theory. It’s a theory that has aspects of top-down causation as much as bottom-up. I think that’s the worldview that you need to have, a sort of… not to be too technical, but a sort of substance or nature-first worldview, if you’re going to make sense of rational agency and conscious beings.
Pat Flynn:
In fact, Cy, I have an article on Catholic Answers maybe we could link or point to that’s called… I forget what it’s called, something about Physics Isn’t the Full Story, or something, where I give an account of free will, but you could just apply what I detail in that article to how I think about consciousness as well, because these things are deeply, deeply linked. But I want to say just two more things in relation to that. One is that we’ve only very briefly sketched one consideration challenging one of the assumptions helping to propel the simulation hypothesis. There’s a ton more out there. What I want to say is that if you have good arguments against these assumptions, physicalism, functionalism, Computational Theory of Mind, I think there’s decisive arguments out there that refute these positions, then it really is a metaphysical impossibility. However, I want to say this. If those are your assumptions, if that’s your paradigm, you should be worried by the simulation hypothesis. This should keep you up at night, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:26:10].
Pat Flynn:
One of the things-
Cy Kellett:
I’m sorry, because in that same interview, Neil deGrasse Tyson says, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether I’m living…” I think you challenge that on the… Well, it actually does matter. Go ahead, Pat.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Imagine that, right? Imagine that you have these assumptions, and you encounter something like Bostrom’s argument, and you say, “Yeah, probably I do live in a simulation,” and that you entertain these thoughts that Tyson entertains that, “Yeah. It just might very well, even very probably, be the case that what I am is the result of some hormonally-unstable teenager programming me up in his mom’s basement.” Then you think that that doesn’t make any difference? That’s insane. How can you sleep at night, that anything about me or anything that could happen to me is the result of some hormonally-unstable teenager programming in his mom’s basement? I don’t know.
Pat Flynn:
The problem I want to suggest, Cy, is not that Tyson takes the simulation hypothesis seriously. It’s that he doesn’t take it seriously enough. You know that he doesn’t really believe this because if he did, he wouldn’t be able to just dismiss it. This is too significant. If we really thought we lived in a world like that, how could you not live with a constant crippling anxiety that your programmer isn’t just going to suddenly transport you into a torture chamber to have your legs boiled in molten sulfur for 100 billion calendar years just because he’s bored?
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah. I hate molten sulfur.
Pat Flynn:
Me too.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay. Again, though, I come back to this, that, what would be the motivation for this? I have to say deGrasse Tyson’s blase attitude permits a moral promiscuity.
Pat Flynn:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
I don’t want to say that’s the only reason he thinks that, because I don’t think that, but I do think we have to check our own motivations. If I live in a world where God made me directly, that it’s not possible for me to exist and have the powers that I have except for a direct intervention of God in my creation, I matter in a way that I don’t matter if it’s the bad kid from Toy Story 2 that’s controlling me, that I matter and my actions matter, and I have to attend to them in a way that I don’t if that kid is my God.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. I certainly think that’s right, Cy. I think the latter not only has severe implications that should give you a crippling anxiety, they’re also nihilistic. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
And that blase attitude. To me, that that is a sort of… If it’s not an explicit nihilism, it’s sort of a practical nihilism. It’s a lived nihilism. “It doesn’t really matter.” Yeah. That’s really a nihilist speaking, even if he hasn’t realized it yet. You know?
Cy Kellett:
No, and if I were the kind of person that believed that, I think I would do everything… This is me. I’m not accusing anyone else of this. If I believed that, if I had that kind of blase nihilism that comes from this, then I would try to behave in a way that makes me socially acceptable, but I wouldn’t worry about what I actually do morally, because I would know it doesn’t really matter. I put on the show because that makes it easy for me to get along. Can we have a society when everyone’s just faking it morally, no one actually believes that it matters? Because when no one’s looking, I could do horrible things. It just doesn’t matter.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. I agree. No, I don’t think we could ever have a society like that. I would just say fortunately, most people still operate according to that common sense. Most people, and I would say even Tyson, deep down does not believe this hypothesis. He can nominally entertain it on a talk show, but the way he lives his life, and in the core of his being, he knows it’s ridiculous. He knows it’s false. He can’t maybe articulate why. That’s where I actually like arguments like this because they show, “Hey, if you hold these assumptions, this should bother you.” But we also know that this shouldn’t bother us. It just seems so frankly ridiculous. We have this incredible seeming that we are not in a simulation. What’s wrong with this argument? Well, what’s wrong with this argument are those sort of assumptions that are just really built into it that aren’t argued for, at least in most of the primary papers putting this out. They are literally just assumed, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
It gives you an opportunity, I would hope, to reflect more deeply on the nature of reality, what your worldview actually is, and find a position where you can make sense of those deep intuitions and seemings. Now, what’s a good position with that? Well, God created us, and he created all of our cognitive powers, including those deep intuitions, that the world outside my head is real. It’s not fake. It’s not a simulation. I’m warranted in believing that, not just because I have this deep seeming, but because it’s true, because that’s actually the case. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yes. I don’t believe any of this simulation stuff, but when you affirm for me, Pat, that it’s true and that you have very good reason to believe… There’s a kind of peace that comes with that, and I can get on with other things if I don’t have to, I don’t know, have this hyperbolic doubt that won’t let anything be settled. That’s really inhumane to live that way. It’s really awful.
Pat Flynn:
It’s crippling. It’s crippling. In fact, just to share a personal note, when I was in my naturalist years, skepticism was a real struggle for me. Skepticism was something… and not just moral skepticism, but really these even more radically skeptical scenarios were things that really caused me to make that critical turn back on a lot of my assumptions. It wasn’t the only consideration that brought me to theism, but these were points of constant disturbance to me, constant inner conflict and turmoil that eventually caused me over time to abandon a number of those assumptions and to see why they were false. In that sense, a lot of people don’t take a lot of these scenarios seriously. Again, because we have that deep intuition, it’s hard for people to take them seriously. But I actually kind of like these thought experiments and these philosophical arguments. I think they can serve a useful purpose for… and hopefully we’ve highlighted what some of those might be.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, and maybe prompt the question… Fundamentally under this is the question, “What am I?” That’s what we’re getting at. Is it possible that I’m this kind of thing? Is it possible that I’m this kind of thing? If you ask the question, “What am I?” there are wonderful answers and solid, hard certainties you can settle on. You cannot drain the mystery out of what you are, but you can be very confident that some things are true and some things are false.
Pat Flynn:
Right. Yes, absolutely. Even if we can’t say exactly what we are in every particular respect, we can know definitely what we are not in other respects.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, and we’re not a simulation.
Pat Flynn:
We’re not a simulation. We’re not just a collection of fundamental particles. We are rational animals. We’re composites of form and matter, all that good stuff that would be too much to get into now, but it’s there.
Cy Kellett:
It would be, but I’ll close with this question, and then I do want to ask you about your podcast, because I would like you to promote it a little bit, because we need more clear thinking. I feel like there’s a certain naive way a person might approach this, and they go, “Look, Neil deGrasse Tyson, first of all, is smarter than both of you, and he is a scientist of the first order. You’re referring to a guy that died almost 2,500 years ago as the… Aristotle has been proven wrong. Modern science is how we know things. Why would you say Aristotle is right about what a human is, what a person is…” well, I don’t think you would use the word person, but, “what a human is and Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong? Why would you do that given he’s way smarter than you and he knows science way better than you and science is the privileged way of knowing these things?”
Pat Flynn:
Right. Yeah. There’s an implicit scientism at work there, isn’t there, Cy, in that?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
There’s also this, also, assumption that just because somebody is really accomplished or really intelligent in one area, say the physical sciences or astronomy, that they automatically know what they’re talking about in other areas, say, philosophical or anthropology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind. The truth is, is that just as different sciences have different methods and are distinct from one another, science and philosophy have different methods and are really distinct from in one another. Just having competence in one area does not guarantee competence in another area. In fact, we see this all the time with many specialists who are scientists. Because scientists have become something of of a priestly class in society, I think this… I don’t want to do too much armchair speculation, but I think it gets to the head of a lot of science popularizers where they frequently venture out of their lane. It’s fine to venture out of your lane as long as you’ve done your homework or you qualify with what you’re saying is, “Hey, this isn’t my normal area of research, but here’s a working hypothesis,” but that-
Cy Kellett:
Or you do so with curiosity, not with a sense of, “Now, let me take my scientific knowledge and explain all the things you don’t know,” but, “Let me come with this same curiosity I came when I went to science class to philosophy class.”
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, and, “I’m going to give you a bunch of pseudo-philosophical twaddle.” It’s under the guise of, “Well, I’m a scientist, so it must therefore be correct.” That’s just horribly sloppy thinking. There’s no guarantee that anybody, even the most significantly accomplished person in one area, is going to have anything significantly accurate to say in another area. You just have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and take it case by case. Yeah. Even if you want to say about Aristotle that, “Yeah, he was wrong on some of the scientific details here and there…”
Cy Kellett:
Of course.
Pat Flynn:
… it doesn’t mean he was wrong on his ethical theory. It doesn’t mean he was wrong on his metaphysics. It doesn’t mean he was wrong on his philosophical anthropology. These are distinct disciplines, distinct subject matters. They have distinct methodology. One can be off on one and completely right on another. I think broadly Aristotle was fundamentally correct. If Aristotle were around today, I’m willing to put some money on it, he would gladly adopt many of the contemporary, mainstream scientific theories, but he wouldn’t be a physicalist. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
He wouldn’t be a materialist. He would not hold to functionalism. I strongly suspect that. I can’t be sure because he’s gone now, God rest him. But of course, we do have this incredible Renaissance of [inaudible 00:37:31] philosophy, many of whom are severely accomplished scientists who would fundamentally disagree with Dr. Tyson on a lot of these deeper philosophical issues.
Cy Kellett:
All right. Let me propose a possible law to you and see if you agree with it. A person is not the kind of thing that happens by chance. Therefore, you can never make a probabilistic argument about whether or not a person will come into being.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. No, I think that’s fundamentally correct. Again, if you’re making these probabilistic arguments, it depends on the launchpad. What are your assumptions? What do we mean by chance, first off? What do we mean by chance? If by chance we mean the intersection of causal lines that are themselves providentially ordained, well, that’s different now. You see what I’m saying, cy?
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Well said, Pat. Yes. Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
That’s different, because then God can bring things about by chance. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
But it’s not completely random in the sense that, say, a lot of physicalists want us to think is the case. Now, I think that type of chance, that type of randomness is, again, just a metaphysical possibility. That’s not the actual world. That’s not even a possible world. For me, it’s hard to even entertain anything downstream from that because I just don’t even think that’s a legitimate starting point, if that makes sense.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. I love talking philosophy with smart people who can teach me stuff like that. Very, very well said there on the meaning of the word chance. Any chance you could tell us about Philosophy for the People, your podcast?
Pat Flynn:
I can, yeah. Fairly recently, I started a new podcast because I didn’t have enough with my good friend, Dr. Jim Madden. He actually is a specialist in philosophy of mind, so he’s much sharper on a number of these issues than I am, because that’s not my specialty. It’s called Philosophy for the People. That’s just what we do. We bring philosophy to the people, Cy, and we do it obviously from a Catholic perspective, but we’ve done a number of series already. We did a 10-part series on Plato’s Republic. Now we’re going through Aristotle’s Ethics. We’re working on Aquinas’ On the Principles of Nature. We’ve got a lot of good stuff going on there, and people can subscribe to our YouTube channel, Philosophy for the People
Cy Kellett:
Philosophy for the People, and also big news, Pat Flynn is also an apologetics associate with us here at Catholic Answers, a new position, and we’re just so glad you are, Pat, as people can see why. We’re just very, very blessed to have that association with you. Thank you, Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn:
My pleasure, Cy. Thank you.
Cy Kellett:
Things like you and me cannot be created by things like computers. It’s not possible. Pat Flynn says, “It’s a metaphysical impossibility.” That’s as impossible as an impossible thing can get. But it’s not easy to see that. It’s not easy to see, well, what kind of creature you and I are, and it’s not easy to talk about and to talk in convincing ways for modern people about what it would take to create something like you and me. What it takes maybe is evolution, maybe the instantaneous creation of our bodies out of dirt and mud or whatever, but what it certainly takes, in addition to however that part of our creation is accomplished, is divine power, divine power working immediately, directly to create us. Otherwise, you are not going to get anything that can be called a person. You’re not living in a simulation. I think it’s a very convincing argument, but it requires all kinds of other arguments, but those are arguments we make on other episodes of Focus, arguments about what it means to be a person, what it means to have a soul.
Cy Kellett:
I hope you’ll check out our other episodes. If you’d like to communicate with us, shoot us an email, focus@catholic.com, focus@catholic.com. If you’d like to support us financially, we would appreciate it. Thank you for your support. Just go to givecatholic.com. If you’re watching on YouTube, thanks. We’re growing there. Maybe hit that little like button and… or no, it’s a little bell. That way, you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. If you’re listening on one of the podcast services, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or one of the others, please like and subscribe. That way, you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. I’m really excited about getting to work more with Pat Flynn. We’ve gotten to interview him before, but now he’s part of the family. I hope you will check out his podcast at Philosophy for the People. That’ll do it for us. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.