Several years after C. S. Lewis passed away, G. E. M. Anscombe, the philosopher who caused him to retract an early version of the argument, reflected on Lewis’s final attempt to save his argument. According to her,
[Lewis] distinguishes between ‘the Cause-Effect because’ and ‘the Ground-Consequent because, where before he had simply spoken of ‘irrational causes’. If what we think at the end of our reasoning is to be true, the correct answer to “Why do you think that?” must use the latter because…. These thoughts lead him to suggest that being a cause and being a proof must coincide — but he finds strong objections to this. (He obviously had imbibed some sort of universal-law determinism about causes.) (The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Vol. II, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, Basil Blackwell, 1981, ix, “Appendices to ‘What Lewis Really Did to Miracles,” Journal of Inklings Studies I, 2, October 2011)
In her paper debunking Lewis, she wrote, “I am going to argue that your whole thesis is only specious because of the ambiguity of the words ‘why,’ ‘because’ and ‘explanation’” (“A Reply to Mr C. S. Lewis’s Argument that ‘Naturalism’ is Self-Refuting,” The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Vol. II, “Appendices to ‘What Lewis Really Did to Miracles,” Journal of Inklings Studies I, 2, October 2011). An editor has relabeled a relevant section of the paper “the varieties of explanation”. Some explanations for an utterance may involve grounds and other explanations may involve causes, but there is no inherent reason why two different explanations should be rivals for the same space. Anscombe quoted Lewis as writing, "Unfortunately the two systems are wholly distinct" (quoted in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Vol. II, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, ix). Lewis, according to John Beversluis, "wants 'wholly distinct' to mean 'incompatible,' but it only means 'different'"(C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion Revised and Updated, Amherst: Prometheus, 2007, 174).
Antony Flew, another philosopher who knew Lewis personally, also disagreed with him. He wrote, "[Lewis] argues that to say that you hold a belief because you have excellent grounds leaves no room for saying―in another context―that you hold it because your organism is in such and such a physiological condition." This contention is "plausible, but surely mistaken" (Hume's Philosophy of Belief, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, 203). I agree with Flew that Lewis's Argument from Reason is flawed. I'd like to add that the Argument could only exist in an era where men have discarded "animistic" theories. In an age where events in the external world are seen as being "animated by a mind," explanations in terms of Cause and Effect either don't exist or are not the real explanation.
In Stubborn Credulity, I wrote, "We don't look to physiological processes to explain philosophical doctrines." Judging from a cursory glance at the history of ideas, it appears that my view may be old-fashioned. I find it suggestive that the Argument from Reason is a relatively new argument for the existence of God. Let's inquire whether it isn't a coincidence that it emerged in an era where scientific inquiry, narrowly speaking, is being applied to all areas of study.
Before continuing my speculation, it's necessary to introduce readers to the controversial topic of scientism. According to its most prominent critic, F. A. Hayek, the term describes "an attitude which is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the world, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed" (The Counter-Revolution of Science, Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, 15 & 16 <https://archive.org/details/counterrevolutio030197mbp/>). The "habits of thought" that Hayek was referring to were the methods of the physical and natural sciences. According to Hayek, in the nineteenth century, the term science "came more and more to be confined to the physical and biological disciplines…. Their success was such that they soon came to exercise an extraordinary fascination on those working in other fields…. Thus the tyranny commenced which the methods and technique of the sciences in the narrow sense of the term have ever since exercised over the other subjects" (Counter-Revolution of Science, 13). The methods of "Science" have a "proper sphere" (Ibid, 15). As Hayek's teacher, Ludwig von Mises, argued, "There is no doubt that empiricism and pragmatism are right as far as they merely describe the procedures of the natural sciences" (Human Action Scholar's Edition, Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998, 32). At this point, I can only speculate, but I believe that there was a gradual development, beginning in the nineteenth century, that paved the way for the Argument from Reason. Once science becomes narrowly defined to mean only physical and natural sciences, then a scientific explanation becomes, by definition, a causal (Cause-Effect) explanation. There is no logical reason why the causal explanation should be considered the "full explanation" or the real explanation, but it's understandable why theologians and even scientists could hold that naturalism entails such a view. I doubt that it is coincidental that Hayek wrote his articles criticizing scientism in the same decade that Lewis published the first edition of Miracles.
After reading the following passage from Hayek, it's no wonder that theologians could accuse scientifically-minded people (naturalists, materialists, physicalists) of not being able to believe in reason:
The tendency to abandon all anthropomorphic elements in the discussion of the external world has in its most extreme development even led to the belief that the demand for "explanation" itself is based on an anthropomorphic interpretation of events and that all Science ought to aim at is a complete description of nature. There is … that element of truth in the first part of this contention that we can understand and explain human action in a way we cannot with physical phenomena, and that consequently the term "explain" tends to remain charged with a meaning not applicable to physical phenomena. (Counter-Revolution of Science, 18)
According to Hayek, people once accepted animism and attributed agency to natural phenomena. Once upon a time, people found minds everywhere―in the wind, the rain, etc. Reasons, in the sense of motives, were replaced with reasons, in the sense of causes, with respect to natural phenomena. Naturalists, who believe that everything is encompassed under natural phenomena, had a choice. They could ask for an explanation of human action, but, with humans, as opposed to inanimate objects, there are at least two explanations. There is a causal explanation for human action, and there are non-causal explanations for human action. As Antony Flew taught, there are reasons for doing something and there are reasons for believing something. If the scientific explanation is, by definition, the causal explanation, and the scientific explanation is the real explanation, then all explanations involving reasons (in either non-causal sense of the word) are non-scientific. One could then conclude that a scientific worldview can't accommodate reason. Since science is methodologically naturalistic (Michael Shermer, How We Believe, New York: W.H. Freeman, 1999, 115), one could get the idea that naturalism has no place for reason. Reason exists; so naturalism would be refuted. There is no necessary reason why scientism, applying the methods of "Science" to human action, should lead to the belief that reason doesn't exist, but it's not surprising that scientism and the Argument from Reason were being pushed at the same time.
Anscombe accused Lewis of having a mistaken notion of "full explanation." According to her, "the expression 'full explanation' has reference only to the type of explanation that is in question" ("A Reply to Mr C. S. Lewis's Argument that 'Naturalism' is Self-Refuting," The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Vol. II , 228 & 229). Lately, John Beversluis has proposed simpy denying that a causal explanation counts as a "full explanation." Regardless of how we define "full explanation," "there is surely room: both for a scientific account of the origins of my beliefs―considered as psychological or as physiological phenomena; and for my having, and knowing that I have, good reason for some of those beliefs―considered now as something to which rational standards may be applied" (Antony Flew, Hume's Philosophy of Belief, 98). The methods of the physical sciences may be rigorous and precise, but that doesn't mean that we must explain everything using the terms of that discipline. Although naturalists only accept natural explanations, it is not the case that natural explanations must be scientific, narrowly defined, explanations. As Michael Martin argued, "There is no reason why naturalists cannot use terms such as truth, validity, and probability to explicate rational thinking"(Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990, 194). A scientific, narrowly defined, explanation is only a full explanation in the case of inanimate matter. Applying the tools of the physical sciences to human action is fine if we are considering it, in the words of Anscombe, merely as an event ("A Reply to Mr C. S. Lewis's Argument that 'Naturalism' is Self-Refuting," 227). We need not consider it that way. As Flew explained,
Suppose that someone utters a series of sounds, which could be interpreted as a significant assertion. The most usual reaction would be to consider it as such; proceeding to raise questions about its truth and about the reasons for holding it to be true or not to be true. But it would also be perfectly legitimate, albeit rather curious, to consider it as if it had been a purely physiological phenomenon. You might then proceed to raise questions about its possible physiological causes, systematically ignoring the semantic aspect which usually is the more interesting. (Hume's Philosophy of Belief, 97)
The methods of the natural sciences can only investigate the causes, but the causes, in the sense of physiology, don't fully explain the assertion.
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