The Role of Philosophical Presuppositions | Ch.1&2 of C.S. Lewis's Miracles

Welcome to the Parker’s Ponderings read-along of Miracles by C.S. Lewis!

This is my first official companion essay and it’ll be the first of six. I’ll share one essay every Monday starting today and going through May 5th. That means, if you’re joining me for the read-through, you’ll be reading through the book in six weeks. For some, that’s way too fast and for others that may feel too slow, but I assure you, it’s probably too fast. This book is a blend of Lewis’s deepest philosophical and theological insights. He includes insights into the philosophy of mind and personhood, the doctrine of God and philosophy of religion, philosophy of nature and science, the theology of religions (that is, how Christianity makes sense of the existence of other religions), polemics against rival conceptions of God and the cosmos, and more—so, if you’re feeling like the reading schedule is too slow, take some more time to reflect on and think through the arguments and positions Lewis is putting forth. Speaking of which, here’s another look at the schedule:

Read-Along Schedule

So, here’s what I’m thinking, a 6-week read-along broken up into the following sections with 3 zoom calls for paid subscribers and a companion essay from me for each week’s readings:

March 31st - Chapters 1-2 – World-and-life views, presuppositions, and the philosophy of fact

April 7^th - Chapters 3-6 – Definitions and the Argument(s) from Reason

Zoom Call for Paid Subscribers

April 14^th – Chapters 7-8 – common objections to miracles, the nature of nature, and what miracles are not

April 21^st - Chapters 9-12 – The Author Analogy, The Ultimate Fact, Doctrine of God

Zoom Call for Paid Subscribers

April 28^th - Chapters 13-14 – Presuppositions and Argument from Reason revisited, Criterion of Miracles, a Theology of Religions

May 5^th – Chapters 15-Appendix B – The True Myth, One vs. Two-Floor Realities, Against Monism, Author Analogy Revisited

Zoom Call for Paid Subscribers

I haven’t picked the dates for the Zoom calls yet but I will and I’ll announce those in the chat for paid subscribers. If you benefit from my work and want to support it, please do! Become a paid subscriber here on Substack or if you want to support for a higher amount, check out my Patreon. Thanks so much!

A Note on Participation

Please interact in the comments. This is a read-along, there’s a whole schedule posted, and there are many other people reading with you! That’s actually really cool! Drop your thoughts in the comments. Did you find something particularly fascinating or challenging? Drop a comment. Were you utterly perplexed by one of Lewis’s arguments? Ask a question in the comments. I will do my best to answer your questions and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll search my massive CSL library and if I still can’t find it, I’ll pull on one of my CSL scholar friends for help. Additionally, there will surely be other CSL nerds in the comments reading along with us all who can add their two cents as well.

Just be cool. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t be all snide and condescending, this is a fun thing we’re doing, so let’s have fun with it!

Please like these posts and restack them and/or share them with some of your friends. All of that really helps me grow my Substack audience, which in turn leads to more paid subscribers who fund this kind of work. So please do like and share, comment, and consider becoming a paid subscriber for some of the perks, like reading exclusive essays, but also to help me spend more time on things like this CSL read-along.

A Note About C.S. Lewis

Who is C.S. Lewis (CSL)? This is the hardest part of the entire read-along for me. I have so much to say about who this guy is that it’s become a major hurdle to actually working on these companion essays. So, I won’t say all that I need to about who he is—I say “is” not “was”, despite the fact that CSL passed away on November 22^nd, 1963 (the same day as President JFK and Aldus Huxley (author of Brave New World)), because I believe, like CSL did, that we are essentially our souls, and likewise, that our souls survive the death of our bodies. Thus, CSL’s consciousness was not dissipated or annihilated in 1963, but continues on in the presence of his savior—but more on this in later companion essays.

I am planning on writing up a bonus essay introducing CSL in more detail but allow me to give a very brief introduction for those who don’t know him and then I can hyper-focus and block quote my way through a massive introduction later.

CSL was a lot of things during his time here on earth. Professionally, he was an English literary critic and historian, teaching courses in English literature at Oxford, where he was trained, and later at Cambridge. But CSL was also a fantasy and science fiction author, lay theologian, Christian apologist, poet (with his own memorial stone in poet’s corner https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25031909 ) and classical philosopher.

CSL set out to be a professor of philosopher, but later changed his mind. He attended Oxford as an undergraduate and earned three degrees during his years as a student there, one in Classical Moderations, which covered Greek and Latin texts; another in Literae Humaniores (“more human literature”, as opposed to res divinae/ literae divinae aka Theology)[1] nicknamed “Greats”, which was an honors degree in classical texts philosophy, and ancient history; and the third in English language and literature.

CSL tutored F.H. Bradley’s nephew in philosophy! That’s pretty awesome.

I follow Adam Barkman in considering CSL to be a Neoplatonic Christian Classical Philosopher—but more on that in another essay.

If you just can’t wait for that introductory essay on Lewis, then check out these episodes from my podcast, Parker’s Pensées where I discuss CSL with CSL scholars:

A Note About My Companion Essays:

CSL is a marvelous writer and a very sharp thinker. In his non-academic books, he wrote in a style that was meant to be comprehendible to a lay audience, which sounds like it should go without saying but he actually took flak for writing about deep things of God, apologetics (the defense of the faith), and philosophy to the regular rabble. However, we are not the regular English rabble of the 1930s-60s and so some of the words and phrases may be challenging to modern readers. So I will try to help you understand obscure words and phrases.

Secondly, like I’ve said above and in other posts announcing this read along, this book is actually really tricky. Lewis intentionally refrains from using explicit philosophical and theological jargon and shorthand words like ‘epistemology’, ‘mental causation’, ‘the aseity of God’, ‘Christology’, etc., but the content of those concepts are present in the book and part of my goal is to tag them for you to help you better understand them using Lewis as an example. So, when Lewis says things like “It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs—which is nonsense” (22), I’ll mention that CSL is employing what’s called a reductio ad absurdum, which is when a thinker reduces their opponent’s position or argument to an absurdity by pointing out that it contains or entails a contradiction. Here and there I’ll add extra details which may be too much for most of my readers but which some may find helpful or interesting and I’ll write these extras in italics so those who wish to skip the extras can do so more easily. In the case above, I may add extra details about what’s called ‘the principle of explosion’ which states that anything follows from a contradiction— a proposition, a conclusion, their negations—anything, and so establishing a contradiction that is inherent to your opponent’s argument or logically entailed by it is a death stroke. And I may add even more fine-grained details like how the principle of explosion itself has come under fire lately with advent of different systems of logic such paraconsistent logic and other subclassical or non-classical logics.

So, all that to say, my companion essays will be meant to help you understand the arguments CSL runs in Miracles and to help you learn a little philosophy and theology along the way by introducing you to the philosophical and theological concepts which belong to the content CSL employs in each chapter. I will get better and writing these essays as we go along, but if I miss questions you had while reading the chapters then please drop them in the comments for me to answer there and for the rest of the audience to ponder as well!

A Note About Reading the Primary Text vs. My Secondary Essays

Read the Miracles chapters first, try to understand on your own steam first, struggle and wrestle, write down what you think he means and whether or not you agree, then, after sitting with and chewing on the primary text itself, read my secondary essays. I could be wrong in my assessment of CSL, so go to the text itself first and start forming your own views and then you’ll get more out of my companion pieces, but don’t read mine first and then go to the text wearing Parker-colored spectacles.

CSL actually has a great passage about primary and secondary texts which I have to share with you, it’s too good not to:

“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, al about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”[2]

So, while CSL’s Miracles isn’t quite as ancient as Plato’s Symposium, it was first published in 1947, which makes it closer to Plato’s time than our own. I’m only half kidding about that. Much to Lewis’s chagrin, I will be adding lots of “isms” to my companion essays, but I think they will actually be helpful for you, so sorry CSL. But the main thrust of the quote above is spot on. Don’t be afraid to dive right in with Miracles. CSL is a great philosophical mind, and that makes him intelligible and a delight to read—go meet him face to face and then come over here and read my companion essays.

How’d We Get This Book?

We can thank Dorothy Sayers for CSL’s Miracles as it was a letter from her which prompted him to start his preliminary study. In his book C.S. Lewis: A Companion & Guide, CSL archivist, Walter Hooper notes that “On 13 May 1943 Dorthy L. Sayers wrote to thank Lewis for The Screwtape Letters. In her light-hearted letter she complained about an atheist who was bothering her about various problems connected with Christianity, including Miracles.”[3] Sayers lamented that

There aren’t any up-to-date books about Miracles. People have stopped arguing about them. Why? Has Physics sold the pass? Or is it merely that everybody is thinking in terms of Sociology and international Ethics? Please tell me what to do with this relic of the Darwinian age who is wasting my time, sapping my energies and destroying my soul.[4]

To which CSL replied, just four days later: “I’m starting a book on Miracles”.[5]

But as you’ll see, this book turned out to be more of a philosophy of miracles than a book on miracles simpliciter (philosopher speak for: simply; absolutely; without qualification or conditions).

Now let’s jump in with chapters 1 and 2 of Miracles.

Chapter 1 – The Scope of This Book

Chapter summary: We must examine our philosophical presuppositions.

CSL starts us off right away with an epigraph from book II of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions.” This quote serves to set the tone for chapter 1 as well as the rest of the book, as this book is a preliminary study of miracles, rather than a book examining different miraculous claims—it’s more like a philosophy of miracles book, which makes sense, since Lewis is training in philosophy.

He then recounts a story of a woman, a naturalist, who disbelieved in an immaterial soul, and who claimed to have seen a ghost. The interesting point here is that the woman continued to disbelieve in immaterial souls after seeing the ghost. Why? Because of her philosophical presuppositions. She was something of a physicalist or naturalist, believing that the only things that exist are those things that physics describes, and so what she saw MUST have been her eyes playing tricks on her or some kind of illusion, since her view of the world precludes such things as disembodied spirits or immaterial souls or ghosts. And thus, contrary to the popular dictum, seeing is NOT believing—we will at least tend to interpret what we take in with our senses according to our world-and-life-view.

Lewis goes on to state more explicitly that “What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.”[6] Now, some of you may quibble with this, especially those who are direct realists, that is, those who believe we have direct access to reality without any constructive work from our minds or anything else. But Lewis’s point is that we can always explain away something miraculous if we have a worldview which precludes miracles from the start. Thus, there’s no use examining various miraculous claims until we’ve settled the fact whether or not miracles are possible and if miracles are possible, how probable are they? If someone has a philosophy of fact that says there cannot possibly be any factual accounts of miracles because miracles are impossible, then there’s no point looking into any miraculous claims.

Just as our experience can be shaped by the philosophy we bring to it, so too can our study of history be shaped by the philosophy we bring to it. If your philosophy, your worldview or world-and-life-view, tells you that there is no God and no immaterial souls, and that the ‘world’ is just the physical universe and the physical universe is causally closed—meaning that the only causes which operate in the universe are physical causes—then there’s no way you can look back on accounts of miracles and believe any of them are actually true. By ‘world’ here, I mean the philosophical sense of the word, which includes the whole of reality, the total state of affairs, including the physical universe and everything else like God or gods, immaterial souls, abstract objects like numbers or propositions, and universals and transcendentals like the form of ‘the Good’or ‘Truth’, if those things exist, not just ‘world’ in the sense of our world, aka our planet earth.

So, the philosophical question “are miracles possible?” must be asked and answered first before considering sense experiences and historical accounts of miracles, since experience and historical surveys alone are insufficient in and of themselves.

So, Lewis intends this book as a preliminary or prolegomena to a future conversation about miracles. He wants to help put his readers in a position to consider the evidence without the reader begging the question against miracles from the start. CSL does this by advancing a series of related arguments against the main worldview which precludes the miraculous, what he calls ‘Naturalism’. Now, Lewis advances the arguments, which have come to be known as the Argument(s) from Reason, in chapters 3-6 & 13, but before he does so, Lewis follows his own advice (by way of Aristotle) and asks some more important preliminary questions, namely, what exactly are we talking about? So in chapter 2, CSL provides some definitions.

Chapter 2 – The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist

Chapter summary: We need 2 levels of reality for explanation but naturalism only allows for 1 level of reality.

CSL defines a miracle as “an interference with Nature by supernatural power” (5), which he acknowledges in a footnote is not quite how a theologian (or philosopher of religion today) would define them. Here we see CSL doing the work of a public philosopher instead of an academic philosopher. He acknowledges the need to get clear on the terms we’re using but he doesn’t spend the rest of the chapter working through a rigorous defense and explanation of his definition. He just stipulates “here’s what I mean” and drops a footnote. In the footnote, CSL says that he actually chose this definition because it is crude, claiming that this is the kind of definition that a popular audience would most likely have in mind. So instead of defining away concerns, Lewis bites the bullet and takes on the challenges which come with the popular understanding of ‘miracle’, which is the more difficult of the two options and is totally admirable.

In analytic philosophy, that is, the kind of philosophy which followed the style of the Logical Positivists of the Vienna School of philosophy into the Anglo-American world (but which has since spread all over), and which (over)emphasizes definitions, clarity, logical rigor, etc., there’s a style of defining terms nicknamed “Chisholming” after the great Roderick Chisholm who employed this tactic to great(?) avail. When you are Chisholming, you start with a kind of cursory definition and then show how it’s inadequate by showing counter examples or showing that the definition is too broad, including things which don’t actually fit; or too narrow, excluding things which ought to fit under the definition; or both. Then you work and work and work towards a more adequate definition. For a masterclass in Chisholming, check out the academic work of Alvin Plantinga.

Lewis goes on to give us definitions of ‘naturalist’, ‘supernaturalist’, ‘nature’, ‘natural’, ‘ultimate fact’, and a couple others before advancing a light preliminary polemic[7] on naturalism and setting up his Arguments from Reason the next three chapters.

This companion essay is already getting pretty long so let me just rapid-fire these definitions for you ( x =def. is a shorthand formulaic way of showing that you’re giving a definition in analytic philosophy):

Miracle =def. an interference with Nature by supernatural power.

Naturalist = def. someone who believes nothing exists except Nature.

Supernaturalist = def. someone who believes something else besides just Nature exists.

The Whole Show =def. the philosophical sense of ‘world’, i.e., all that exists, including the physical universe, abstract objects (if those exist), universals (like The Good, True, Unity, Beauty (if those exist)), God, immaterial souls, angels, demons (if any of those kinds of beings exist), etc.

Nature = def. what you do not need labor for; what you will get if you take no measure to stop it.

The Natural = def. what springs up, or comes forth, or arrives, or goes on, of its own accord: the given; what is there already: the spontaneous, the unintended, the unsolicited.

The Ultimate Fact = def. the base level of explanation; the last fact, which you cannot get behind.

The Total Event = def. the big grand system of the natural process.

Now taken in isolation here, these definitions may seem a bit odd, but in context, Lewis gives some well-reasoned explanations for how he arrived at them (even if he isn’t going in on full-blown Chisholming). I especially appreciate CSL pulling on his Classical Moderations degree and providing us with the etymology of the English word ‘nature’, which is physis in Greek, meaning to grow, and natura in Latin, meaning to be born. Lewis also rebuts a naïve empiricist[8] definition of nature as “what we perceive with our five senses” arguing that our emotions are presumably ‘natural’ events and yet we don’t primarily know them through perceiving them with our five senses, thus showing that the definition to be inadequate.

There is a lot to say about CSL’s definitions but he said it all pretty well already. However, if you have some quibbles with his definitions, leave a comment explaining why—a major aspect of philosophy is quibbling over definitions, and though many outside of philosophy find this to be a bug in the philosophical system, it’s definitively more of a feature. Definition is very, very difficult but it’s necessary if we’re ever going to make progress.

But definitional disputes aside, here are CSL’s key contentions based on the definitions he provides:

If naturalism, then no miracles; If supernaturalism, then maybe miracles—they’re at least possible in principle. On naturalism, something like physical nature is the whole show, the world just is the physical universe, and the total event is all there is. Nature is the naturalist’s ultimate fact, it’s the vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord and there can be no interference from the outside because the interlocking system of events leaves no room for interference from the outside and furthermore, there is no thing and no one outside of nature to do the interfering anyways.

Today, there are ‘nonreductive physicalists’, who I think are synonymous with ‘fainthearted’ naturalists (a kind of pejorative/tongue-in-cheek moniker), who argue that the world is fundamentally physical but who admit certain non-physical entities into their ontologies, their catalog of existents, their picture of reality. Reductive physicalists, who I think are synonymous with strong/staunch naturalists, on the other hand, seek to reduce everything down to the physical. Non-reductive physicalists take shots from both reductive physicalists and anti-physicalists (those who claim that the physical is not fundamental) who rightly want to know how it is that non-reductive physicalists feel free to help themselves to non-physical entities.

CSL argues that since Naturalism includes this total event view, which posits a grand interlocking system of physical events, the thoroughgoing naturalist (our strong/staunch naturalists from the paragraph above) doesn’t believe in (or shouldn’t believe in) free will, by which he means independent action apart from what the laws of nature and the causal chain of previous interlocking events necessitate.

CSL probably has what’s known as libertarian free will in mind, which is an incompatibilist view, meaning that free will is incompatible with determinism. Libertarian free will states that a choice is free if the agent could have chosen A or not-A in the same conditions and thus if an agent is determined to choose one option, then they are not in fact free, but since we do make free choices, determinism must be false. I believe this is roughly synonymous with the liberty of indifference. In the moral responsibility literature, which is closely related, we find the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) which states that a person is morally responsible for what they’ve done only if they could have done otherwise, that is if they could have chosen an alternate possibility.

These incompatibilist views in free will and moral responsibility literature are opposed to compatibilist views of free will and responsibility which claim that freedom and responsibility are compatible with determinism. What matters for freedom and responsibility, according to compatibilists, is not so much the ability to do otherwise or the liberty of indifference, but the liberty of spontaneity, that is, the freedom to act according to one’s own desires. It doesn’t matter if you were predestined or predetermined to perform an action so long as you actually wanted to do said action. As if this weren’t all complicated enough already, there’s also a distinction between leeway views and sourcehood views. Leeway views incorporate PAP. Leeway incompatibilists argue that freedom requires the unconditional ability to choose alternate possibilities. Leeway compatibilists argue that freedom requires a conditional ability to choose alternate possibilities, that is, that they could choose an alternate possibility if they wanted to. Sourcehood proponents argue that PAP isn’t all that important for freedom, what matters more is that the agent is the ultimate source of their choices, they want to make their choices and their choices are their own. Source incompatibilists say that someone is free if they are the ultimate source of their choices and they aren’t casually determined to have the desires they have or make the choices they make based on those desires. Source compatibilists argue that someone is free if they are the ultimate source of their choices and that this can be compatible with being causally determined. See this paper by Kevin Timpe for more.

CSL will press the point about free will a bit more once we get into the Argument from Reason stuff in the next few chapters. But for now he just broaches it and continues on to a comparison between naturalism and supernaturalism. He argues that the supernaturalist agrees that there must be a basic Fact which is the ground of all other facts and is the starting-point of all explanation but he says that it’s not the whole show for the supernaturalist.

On supernaturalism there is a two-tiered reality: original and derivative. Original, or basic, or primary, or fundamental reality exists on its own, it’s self-existent, it’s of itself, which, theologians call the doctrine of aseity (from the Latin a se, from oneself). Lewis identifies fundamental/original reality with God. Derivative, created reality is the created order, the cosmos, the natural order.

CSL also gives us an excursus on the multiverse from page 12 through 14 which is honestly kind of random haha. I don’t know why he did that but it’s fun. He explores that theme more in his Narnia series. In chapter 2, however, CSL argues that there very well could be a multiverse but that wouldn’t change the nature of the two-tiered reality, there would still be primary reality: God, and secondary reality: creation—it would just include lots of parallel universes (or maybe more accurately, lots of parallel worlds). It’s here that he broaches his author analogy which comes into play later in the book and in a fantastic essay called the Seeing Eye, wherein he compares God to an author and the world to his novel. I can’t wait to explore that more!

So, supernaturalism posits two levels or reality, it’s a two-ism or du-ism (?? Can’t call it dualism since that is a view about the human person), whereas naturalism is a monism, a one-ist view of reality.

I know this has been a massive slog but with these two views in place, CSL is going to attack Naturalism based on the fact that it only has one level of reality and the fact that its view of reality is causally closed and causally determined by physical events. CSL argues that the very things which the Naturalist posit to keep miracles out of their universe are the same things which would undermine their own reasoning capacities. And since Naturalism undermines reason, we cannot use reason to affirm Naturalism.

Finishing up on the preliminaries, CSL argues that if Nature isn’t the whole story, then we won’t be able to rule out miracles tout court (without exception). But if you think Nature is the whole story, then you may have to give up on free will and you may have a self-refuting or self-defeating worldview. But much more on that in the next post.

I apologize for the length of this one! I had those introductory notes which were way longer than I wanted. The next 5 companion essays shouldn’t be as arduous. But now to hear from you all! Leave me your thoughts and questions in the comments. What’d you think of chapters 1 and 2 so far?

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literae_humaniores

[2] C.S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius (titled elsewhere as “On Reading Old Books”) (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 3.

[3] Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Companion & Guide (London: HarperCollins, 1996), 343.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 344.

[6] C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (NY: HarperCollins, 1996), 2.

[7] Critical attack

[8] Empiricism, from the Greek emperia, “experience”, is an epistemological (theory of knowledge) view which claims that all knowledge, or justification for our true beliefs, is derived from sense-experience.