Update: This was originally posted on March 31, 2016. Robert Heineman replied on June 6, 2016. His reply can be found in the comment thread. Click on this for his original talk.
A RESPONSE TO ROBERT HEINEMAN
By Philip Ebersole
My friend Dr. Robert A. Heineman gave a talk to the Rochester Russell Forum on March 10, 2016, saying that modern philosophy is a failure to the extend that it denies the reality of the “transcendent.”
He unfortunately did not provide a good five-cent definition of “transcendent,” so I resorted to my old Webster’s dictionary. Here is what I found:
TRANSCENDENT: (1) exceeding usual limits, (2) extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience, (3) beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge, (4) transcending the universe or material existence.

Dr. Robert A. Heineman
I would not deny that there are forces, entities and laws not only beyond ordinary experience, but beyond all possible experience and knowledge. Our knowledge is a drop, as William James is quoted as saying, and our ignorance is an ocean.
My question is: How do you philosophize about something that is beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge and transcends the universe itself? My second question is: What relevance would things beyond all possible knowledge and experience have to me and the people I know?
∞∞∞
Dr. Heineman looks for answers in the findings and limitations of modern science. He makes three points.
First, he argues that contemporary science has produced concepts such as “quantum entanglement” that appear to defy logic and certainly defy common sense, but appear to fit the facts.
It may be, as the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane said, that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.
Second, he argues there are certain questions that science can’t answer and may never be able to answer.
I think this is true, and important to keep in mind. Dr. Heineman is very right to push back against reductionist arguments that claim metaphysical questions can be answered in terms of chemistry and physics.
Scientific inquiry reveals much that is important about how things work and that is relevant to philosophical understanding – for example, about how brain activity and brain chemistry are correlated with human thought and emotion.
But neurology and biochemistry do not explain how my experience of being a conscious, thinking, decision-making human being arises from brain activity. In fact, I can’t define what an explanation would consist of.
Third, he argues that the structure of mathematics is an example of transcendence. The Pythagorean Theorem is not tangible. It is not part of everyday human experience. Yet it is objectively real, not a human creation like literature. Mathematicians are continually making new discoveries that other mathematicians verify.