From Scientism and the Mechanistic Worldview To Expressive Organicism
* Article: Cold Reason, Creative Subjectivity: From Scientism and the Mechanistic Worldview To Expressive Organicism. Otto Paans. Borderless Philosophy 5 (2022): 161-212
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Contents
Otto Paans:
"In this essay, the issues to which organicist thought is a response will therefore be discussed in detail.
Section II starts with a synoptic survey of a complex of eight commitments that jointly characterize mainstream contemporary Western metaphysics, namely:
(i) physicalism about matter,
(ii) the thesis of universal natural mechanism,
(iii) scientific naturalism,
(iv) covert dualism about the structure of reality,
(v) the mind-body problem,
(vi) epiphenomenalism about consciousness,
(vii) adherence to conceptualism, and
(viii) a disregard for anything that does not fit this structure, in turn betraying some deep-seated assumptions about the nature of thought itself.
This set of eight commitments exacts a heavy cost on thinking:
- it enforces the
repetition of existing theories in a new form;
- it epicyclically reiterates the chain of
problems that emerges when two or three commitments lead down the same conceptual alley again and again;
- it nurtures a blatant disregard for an entire range of
human experiences that does not sit easily with the assumptions underlying the set of basic commitments;
- and it is unable to overcome its own presuppositions.
Section III, a tripartite section, deals with the philosophical consequences of mainstream contemporary Western metaphysics. Notably, three assumptions that the eight commitments jointly entail cause philosophical problems that lead to gaps in our
understanding of the world. Working around these gaps engenders restrictive habits
of thought or thought-shapers (Hanna and Paans, 2021), such as
(i) thinking of matter as inherently inert,
(ii) physical reductionism and
(iii) rigid part-whole thinking.
These three habits appear as the only viable way of thinking, but in fact, they can be straightforwardly questioned and undermined once their shortcomings are brought to light.
Section IV provides a description of a future philosophy and more specifically contains the contours of a metaphysical outlook called expressive organicism.
Therefore, its scope will be broad, and there will be ample opportunity for filling out details or deepening themes that surface in the discussion. In the same way that a charcoal sketch expresses the essence of an artistic idea without necessarily illuminating its details in the same way that a fine line drawing would do, so too this section provides a synoptic overview of the areas that organicist metaphysics may touch and indeed revolutionize. As such, it is more a “fragment,” or a “sketch-of-system,” than a fully matured philosophical theory.
It is my aim to demonstrate how an organicist metaphysics can escape the conceptual prison into which scientism and the mechanistic worldview have driven us."