METAPHYSICS BY DEFAULT:
NATURALISM AND METAPHYSICS RECONCILED

ABSTRACT:

       Can metaphysical philosophy be reconciled to naturalism?  The author of this paper argues that it can.  The challenge of the reconciliation is shown to lie in finding a natural mechanism of transmigration.

       The paper begins with a critique of Proclus' classical immortality argument.  The critique draws attention to classical and modern views of recursive systems, and sets forward modern evidence of corporeal recursion.  The evidence leads us to deduce that the soul is completely mortal.

       That evidence also informs a review of the concept of personal identity.  The review grounds the three criteria most universally accepted as being necessary for personal identity — physical continuity, episodic memory, and subjectivity.  Advances in cognitive science are shown to correlate personal identity with the function of particular brain structures.  Personal identity is deduced to be both corporeal and temporally finite.

       The paper weaves all these deductions into William James' "stream of thought" paradigm.  James' time-gap physiology is extended by means of a classical illustration.  When extended through the illustration, time-gaps are shown to encapsulate the subjective experience encountered at the temporal limits of personal identity.  These limits are interpreted as metaphysical "terminals."

       The illustration maps subjective conditions of a death and a birth to two time-gap terminals.  This mapping reveals a metaphysical relation between two personal identities.  When the illustration's time-gap is analyzed, a natural mechanism emerges for the transfer of personal identity between lives.  This mechanism is an insensate state defined as "existential passage."  Subjective awareness is argued as transferring through existential passage; not by any physical or epiphenomenal action, but through a failure of personal identity.  This transference constitutes a natural form of transmigration.

       The temporal properties of existential passage are sketched.  Also, karma and memory transfer are judged to be incommensurate with existential passage, and are rejected.

       At this point a precedent for existential passage is presented.  Scholars of the eleventh-century Fatimid empire drew near to existential passage while formulating Muslim metaphysical philosophy.  Their medieval Hellenistic synthesis is explored, and contrasted to the modern concept.

       Thereafter, four types of existential passage are deduced — unitary, merged, ex nihilo and split passage types.  Diagrams of each passage type are presented alongside results of a formal probability calculus.  This formal calculus has proved the relative frequency of occurrence, for three of the four passage types, to be expected under conditions of population stability.  A corollary property, noetic reduction, is also discussed.

       Behavioral, neurological and anatomic evidences are brought to bear on the question of personal identity in other species.  The evidence indicates that personal identity likely exists in all vertebrates, and also in some cephalopod species.  Consequently, existential passage is seen to extend beyond homo sapiens.  The central nervous system (CNS) is argued as distinguishing those species which participate in existential passage.

       The philosophy is shown to have application to the concerns of contemporary environmental ethicists, ecologists and animal-liberation activists.  Paul Taylor's "moral concern" emerges naturally from the metaphysics.  Also, noetic reduction lends precision to the idea of "common destiny."  Finally, Peter Singer's central ethical criterion is seen to map precisely to the CNS criterion of existential passage.  This dovetailing of criteria conjoins naturalistic ethics with Metaphysics by Default, reconciling two strains of thought in a harmonious whole.