|
Author
|
Topic: James Barham: Thoughts on Thinking Matter
|
Jacob Aliet
Member
Member # 578
|
posted 15. February 2003 09:39
I have been following this discussion with great interest. I have seen materialism/ physicalism being derided and treated as an -ism whose time is over.
There has however, been paucity of evidence to support these claims. I have never given much thought to whether I am a physicalist or idealist, but I label myself as a metaphysical naturalist.
quote:
To begin with, there seems to exist a fundamental problem for physicalism. Everyone who is conscious, is certain of the reality of their consciousness. Consciousness is self evident. This is not true for the physical world. With only "physical" evidence for reference, arguments for the *reality* of the physical are hopelessly circular. While a physical architecture or style is obvious, the physical-as-reality model is underivable and must be accepted on blind faith.
Since you have not defined consciousness, I hope it will be okay for me to use it to mean "awareness".
I see consciousness as a higher-order emergent property of matter arranged in a certain state - life ( arranged so as to exhibit the state we call "life").
Consciousness without a physical brain is impossible and we know from neuroscience that the Reticular Activating System is the part of the brain that controls arousal, attention, and awareness (what make up consciousness) - a material object. Brain damage can lead to a coma, which is loss of consciousness - meaning consciousness is contingent upon the existence of a working brain (matter in a certain state).
I see no challenge at all to materialism posed by consciousness in the sense of being self-aware/ attentive. Because its purely a property that is derived from the brain "material".
quote:
Consciousness is self evident. This is not true for the physical world.
This does not make it necessary to separate the mind from the physical world. This cartesian dualism is eliminated by the M=R concept - and Wheelers idea of the mind being merely the infocognitive part of reality. Because the mind is part of the physical world, so the mind (read consciousness) equals reality (M=R).
I do not see how creating a dichotomy between consciousness and the physical world adds to our knowledge unless it can be demonstrated that consciousness can exist without the brain(part of the physical world). Otherwise, consciousness is just an emergent property of matter.
Tell me, when a plant phototropically takes a corner and grows towards the source of light, can we say it is conscious too?
quote:
(a). The initial derivation of a lawful universe from a lawless initial singularity.
I see this as no problem at all. Laws are descriptive, not prescriptive.
It is not up to physicalism to prescribe how the universe should start. Even under the laws, we still have chaotic systems (like the weather system) and events at the subatomic level are indeterminate. The eternal flux in the universe is consistent with physicalism.
Physicalism is not a cosmological theory and does not need to be. But even then, an unlawful universal wavefunction is consistent with quantum mechanics (a branch of physics).
quote:
Derivation of animate organisms from inanimate dead matter.
This is something that is still being investigated by scientists world over, but we know that the building blocks of life are amino acids, which can be derived from chemical matter reactions.
quote:
Derivation of self regulating organisms from dead matter that has no concept of self.
Its not a leap from dead matter=>self-regulating organisms.
It starts from primitive cells/ organisms which evolve *slowly* over billions of years.
Its a subject thats still under investigation from many "schooll of thought" panspermia, Minimalist life, abiogenesis and many others that an expert can tell you.
The following diagram illustrates how the theory of abiogenesis explains the origin of life.
[Moderator edit removal]
Note that materialism/ physicalism, like many other -isms, concerns reality - a worldview. I can bring out the epistemic/ methodological "perspectives" wrt physicalism later - if need be.
quote:
Derivation of a reproducing organism from non-reproducing dead matter.
Derivation of consciousness from unconsciousness.
You seem to be having only two "problems" that challenge physicalism:
a) as above
b) the emergence of life from non-living matter (because consciousness, self-regulation, life and abiogenesis concern living things).
Your questions sound like those one would expect from a non-reductive physicalist. So are you against physicalism per se or reductive physicalism?
If you find my response to your "objections" inadequate, please, state so.
[ 15. February 2003, 19:04: Message edited by: Moderator ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Moderator
Administrator
Member # 1
|
posted 15. February 2003 14:55
Jacob,
Be warned. Your post shows an inattention to the conversation that has taken place in this thread. Your post also reveals a level of hostility that borders on unacceptable. Please take note that this is not the place to fight your battles.
The moderators at Brainstorms are not very patient. The purpose of Brainstorms is to conduct civil, professional conversations. When people come here to play either cheerleader, thought extinguisher, or battle warrior, it is almost immediately evident. You have been tagged as a potential thought extinguisher/battle warrior. If you have a battle to fight, fight it elsewhere.
[ 15. February 2003, 14:58: Message edited by: Moderator ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Rex Kerr
Member
Member # 632
|
posted 16. February 2003 03:19
William, I don't feel the least bit besieged, but thanks for asking. The discussion's reasonably cordial, and I have no particular emotional attachment to physicalism, so it doesn't feel like I'm being "ganged up on" or anything.
quote:
Everyone who is conscious, is certain of the reality of their consciousness. Consciousness is self evident.
I might agree with this. Everyone who is conscious, is conscious. No surprise there. However, it is not necessarily the case that everyone who is conscious is self-aware, or has a concept of reality, or (etc. etc.). I think this is an important (if seemingly trivial) caveat, because losing that perspective encourages an attempt to make your epistemology account for more than it needs to.
In any case, this observation isn't relevant to physicalist ontology. It's only relevant to epistemology, and with epistemology the physicalist is free to start with consciousness. (And has to, since that's all we have access to.)
quote:
Other derivational challenges/problems for physicalism include;
The initial derivation of a lawful universe from a lawless initial singularity.
Derivation of animate organisms from inanimate dead matter.
Derivation of self regulating organisms from dead matter that has no concept of self.
Derivation of a reproducing organism from non-reproducing dead matter.
Derivation of consciousness from unconsciousness.
How do you know the initial singularity was lawless? What do these terms even mean when applied to a singularity?
I dislike the terms "animate" and "inanimate", because the so-called "inanimate" matter has an awful lot of motion on the atomic/molecular scale--the same, in fact, as animate matter. On a molecular level, where presumably all the physical action happens, there is no qualitative distinction.
Self-regulation doesn't require a concept of self. It just requires a feedback loop. I can build a self-regulating voltage clamp out of a couple of transistors and a few resistors and capacitors. I don't think my little circuit has any concept of self.
Abiogenesis is the study of production of life from non-life. Although the research is far from conclusive in practice right now, there is no obvious reason that abiogenesis could not occur even in principle.
And evolutionary explanations take care of the consciousness from unconsciousness, at least in principle.
With basically all of these, we simply don't know enough about how the universe works to rule in or out any of these with great confidence. As such, they make for pretty unimpressive challenges.
quote:
Another problem for physicalism is the use of *language* to describe meaningless physical systems. All languages are structured sequences of *meanings.* Every *functioning* word has an associated
non-physical *meaning* (a Weinbergian ?tooth fairy?). What do such non-physical *meanings* have to do with a *physical* universe/system?
The physicalist explanation would be: the non-physical meaning is, in fact, implemented physically within our brains as, for example, a network of connections that causes a certain group of neurons to fire in a repeatable way, and which have output going to other groups of neurons (that implement other concepts).
By virtue of our ability to abstract, we can form mental tokens corresponding to something without any physical qualities at all; but this does not mean that the mental token is not implemented physically itself.
Dan wrote:
quote:
Are you saying that we could have gotten the information she is about to report to us in some other fashion? Are you saying that her neuroscientist sister could have predicted her response?
Yes, I am saying that. (Given enough information about Arlene, and assuming that quantum uncertainty doesn't propagate to the level of behavior too rapidly--but those are technical details.)
Why is this not possible? We can't do it, but then we're not superneuroscientists like Mary, are we? So I don't see how we could confidently conclude that Mary could not. (I don't see how we could confidently conclude that she could, but I am not arguing that physicalism-must-be-true, just that physicalism-can't-be-ruled-out.)
IP: Logged
|
|
Dan Smith
Member
Member # 656
|
posted 16. February 2003 12:02
Rex and Jacob,
Some interesting points are raised.
Jacob, you point out the distinction between reductive and non-reductive physicalism. You may be aware of Jaegwon Kim’s sustained argument to the effect that any non-reductive physicalism is incoherent. Jaegwon, a philosopher at MIT, is a reductive physicalist about cognition, but, at the same time, he is skeptical that physicalists can ever explain qualia.
There is a good review of Jaegwon on the Philosophy of Mind site. Let’s briefly recap that. The non-reductive view is that one mental event can directly cause another mental event, and, of course, physical events cause other physical events. In short:
M -> M* and
P -> P*.
But, at the same time, any good physicalist must maintains that mental state M is fully ‘realized’ by physical state P and M* is realized by P*. If this is true, however, then mental states have no causative power independent of their physical realizations. All the causative power remains on the strictly physical level. Thus there is a logical contradiction between non-reductionism and physicalism.
Partly as a result of Jaegwon’s arguments, those people who once thought of themselves as physicalists are now, like Jacob, calling themselves metaphysical naturalists. They believe that there are real, spontaneously emergent properties. And this implies that there is, at least, a minimal degree of downward causation, in the sense that for something to be real, it must have independent causal powers.
But this brings us back to Mary and Arlene. Arlene, the art critic, may see a new painting and her aesthetic response could well instantiate a novel emergent mental property. By definition, it would, even in principle, be impossible to predict that response.
Rex, however, in his last posting, seems to be saying that ‘emergent’ properties are only epistemological in nature, not ontological. That is to say that these properties are epiphenomenal and have no real causative power. We speak of these properties only as a matter of convenience and convention.
But the problem for the reductionist is then to specify what, if anything, is real. Where does the reduction stop? Are quarks real? Are not quarks just a mathematical convention? Theoretically, individual quarks are unobservable. ‘Quark’ is just a label that was, very whimsically and loosely, associated with some very abstract mathematical machinery. The same is true of ‘charm’ and ‘spin’, and virtually every other word that has been invented by ‘particle’ physicists in the last hundred years.
We are left then with just verbal and/or mathematical conventions. Our world then is just ‘conventional’ from top to bottom. Rex seems to be very uncomfortable with this lack of objectivity and substantiality. Rex has all the instincts of a fundamentalist. He wants there to be something about the world that is rock-solid and objective, and yet he is unable to find any such thing in the world. There is no bedrock of reality. There are only phenomena; there are no noumena.
This is the logical conundrum of the reductionist. All of our reductions and distinctions are necessarily conceptual. If we cannot conceive of something, we cannot know about it. We can never transcend our own conceptual sphere. We cannot climb out of our conceptual boxes. If there exists something outside of our conceptual sphere, it is inconceivable to us. That is why Kant invented the ‘noumenon’. The noumenon is just a putative, mind-independent reality (MIR). That there exists a noumenal MIR is just a gut feeling, or intuition, that most of us have about the world. But there is nothing in science or in physics that can tell us about the existence of such a strictly unknowable entity or realm. It is pure metaphysical speculation in which Kantians like to indulge.
So, Rex, if you would like to embrace the noumenal MIR, please, be my guest. But if you think you are doing this in the name of Science or Physics, well, you are misconstruing the fact that Science has been and always will be a purely epistemological enterprise. If you wish to address any ontological issue, then you are engaging in pure metaphysics.
I will be happy to engage in metaphysics. In fact, I claim that humanity will not survive if we are not able to correctly identify the true nature of reality. As for instance, the question of whether life is an accident or not. It is urgent that we reexamine that question in a post-reductionist light. Will you agree that we need to do that?
--------------------------------
Before moving ahead with the problems of life, allow me to anticipate the standard qualm that almost anyone would have concerning a rejection of the MIR hypothesis. Let’s look at the gut feeling we have about mind vs. world.
But first, consider the Queen of Shangri-La. Could she have any conception of an MIR? I doubt it. The world would offer no resistance to her. She would have no needs or desire to change the world. Her willing subjects could fulfill all of her desires. In her harmonious Queendom, even her subjects might not feel any resistance. They would see that everything was in its proper place and functioning just as it was always supposed to.
The important point is that the very idea of there being a distinction between mind and world does not come, in the first instance, from the world. It only comes from inside of us. It only comes from our desire for the world to be something other than it is. Without that desire we are completely at one with the world. There is a complete harmony. I might conceivably be a starving untouchable on the streets of Calcutta and still feel that everything was just as it was supposed to be. There is no prima facie reason for me to think, or anyone else to think, that there was anything wrong or dysfunctional with my spending my life looking for my next scrap of bread. That is exactly how things are supposed to be.
Ah, you say, but now we know better, and now, we people who think of ourselves as ‘in the know’ think that the untouchable ought to know better. But what exactly is it that we know? And how exactly is it better? The world just always is what it is, no? From whence is coming this ‘ought’? Who knows? The point in all of this is that, in the crucial first instance, the alleged objectivity of the world is entirely a subjective, intuitive feeling and a very strange one at that. It can be viewed as a strange sort of mental disturbance that had virtually no social significance until, one can reasonably argue, the Protestant reformation in Europe.
Only at that peculiar point in history did the notion of an MIR, take on any practical significance. And there was Immanuel Kant, right on the ground floor, ready with his Noumena. This is not brain surgery, this is just history. Until that point, we had been living more or less as if we were all sleepwalkers, walking through a more or less pleasant sort of dream world. The notion of the aboriginal dream world remains very much alive in mysticism of all kinds, and, if I have anything to say about, that aboriginal mystical intuition or gut feeling is about to become far more rational and coherent than any sort of cosmology ever contemplated by science. Let me hasten to point out that, to this day, there is not a single shred of evidence from science or anywhere else that can provide anything other than most indirect, abstract, and convoluted sort of evidence in support of an MIR.
Now something funny happens. There is really only one telling, one very practical question that arises in most people’s minds: does this mean that I am in favor of the starvation of untouchables? Notice here that the gut response does not come back to the abstractions of science. The gut issue, as always, is going to be political and social. That is just how the world is, my friends -- MIR or no MIR.
Dan
[ 16. February 2003, 16:30: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Mark Szlazak
Member
Member # 391
|
posted 16. February 2003 15:59
Dan, I want to move "out of thread" and pass on an ontological paradox that has being dubbed the Nagarjuna Paradox. You and others may find interesting.
IP: Logged
|
|
Rex Kerr
Member
Member # 632
|
posted 17. February 2003 02:36
quote:
Rex, however, in his last posting, seems to be saying that 'emergent' properties are only epistemological in nature, not ontological. That is to say that these properties are epiphenomenal and have no real causative power. We speak of these properties only as a matter of convenience and convention.
I think I more or less agree with this. But it is important to note that even though, say, air pressure has no causitive power beyond the aggregate effect of the motions of all the individual air molecules, we detect the aggregate behavior more readily than the behavior of each individual molecule.
quote:
But the problem for the reductionist is then to specify what, if anything, is real. Where does the reduction stop?
Wait, wait. Air pressure is real. It simply isn't fundamental, because it is derived from the properties of the constituent molecules of air. I don't think we know where the reduction stops. This means that we have to do our (tentative) ontology backwards--work from non-fundamentals via induction to properties that we think are more fundamental. At some point, our uncertainty becomes too great for it to be worth continuing.
quote:
We are left then with just verbal and/or mathematical conventions. Our world then is just 'conventional' from top to bottom. Rex seems to be very uncomfortable with this lack of objectivity and substantiality.
Our descriptions of the world are 'conventional' in the philosophical sense, but the conventions cannot be chosen arbitrarily. And I'm not really uncomfortable with the situation; it's just rather annoying in that it would be much simpler philosophically if you knew for sure that the universe was goverened by a 5th order partial differential equation--then you'd just have to find it.
But we haven't this philosophical luxury. However, the profound lack of success in using arbitrary conventions suggests the existence of a noumenal MIR, to the degree to which it is useful to take that as one of our most heavily supported assumptions about our own experiences.
Because this is evidential, it is uncertain.
quote:
It is urgent that we reexamine that question in a post-reductionist light. Will you agree that we need to do that?
We need to examine the question you are raising here. I think I have been examining things this way the whole time, though, so it wouldn't be a reexamination for me; and the term "post-reductionist" sounds like it is something that comes up after reductionism is rejected, while I think it's just a caveat that reductionists hadn't noticed yet.
quote:
The important point is that the very idea of there being a distinction between mind and world does not come, in the first instance, from the world. It only comes from inside of us. It only comes from our desire for the world to be something other than it is.
I think it's even more primitive than desire--it's just perception. You think about things, you perceive different things. Whether this is desired or not, you notice the disparity.
quote:
Let me hasten to point out that, to this day, there is not a single shred of evidence from science or anywhere else that can provide anything other than most indirect, abstract, and convoluted sort of evidence in support of an MIR.
Well, the banana continues to fail to care whether I watch it or not. How do you account for this without invoking MIR?
Personally, I can't manage to construct a coherent epistemology without MIR. Once I have granted MIR in my epistemology, I am free to explore the ontological consequences, as long as I don't forget that MIR was only a very much mind-dependent model to begin with.
Mark: interesting link, thanks!
I find myself agreeing with Garfield and Priest's interpretation of Nagarjuna with surprising frequency, at least to an extent.
IP: Logged
|
|
Dan Smith
Member
Member # 656
|
posted 17. February 2003 09:33
Rex,
With Mark apparently bowing out, it’s just us chickens anymore. This was not meant to be an endurance contest. Have you seen ‘Hands on a Hard Body’, Rex? It’s the documentary of an annual contest staged by an Alabama car dealer. The last person with their hand on the shiny new pick-up wins it. It’s a 72-hour ordeal. In our case, will the last person with their hand on the MIR (mind independent reality) win it? Are we surprised that it is usually a woman who wins the truck? I’m still good for a few more hours, how about you? The last few contestants ended up singing gospels.
Mark did leave us with an excellent suggestion, however: Nagarjuna. And you may be more familiar with him than I am, but I’m a fairly quick study.
I gather that there is little dissent from the view that Nagarjuna (c. 200 AD) was the single most influential philosopher of all time. And what was his message? There is no MIR, or to put it in his terms: nirvana = samsara. To put it in Kantian terms: noumena = phenomena. Nagarjuna waged an all-out intellectual battle with the Kantian dualists of his day, and won. When we now speak of Eastern or oriental philosophy, we are really speaking of Nagarjuna’s legacy. He also had a strong influence on Hegel and the subsequent phenomenologists and existentialists, both theistic and otherwise.
What I see are developmental stages, both personal and historical. On this necessarily simplistic view, Nagarjuna represents the death of God or the dark night of the soul. To move beyond that point of ultimate nihilism, we have to realize that we are the resurrection of God. This latter idea is embedded in the notion of Krishna or Christ consciousness. More technically speaking, beyond Nagarjuna we have only the ‘bootstrap’. This is making a very long story, very short.
(being continued...)
The bootstrap idea is already big, and it will be getting a lot bigger.
But let me first refer back to your main point, Rex:
Our descriptions of the world are 'conventional' in the philosophical sense, but the conventions cannot be chosen arbitrarily.
I agree. The world may just be a convention, but that does not mean that ‘reality’ is arbitrary. All that we have to discover, then, are the underlying parameters that determine the convention that is the world. Another way we might put it is to ask, whose convention is this, anyway?
Supposing the world to be some sort of bootstrap, what determines its nature? This is where the mystics fall off the wagon. They just see endlessly looping bootstrapped universes. In other words, there are no determining parameters; everything is arbitrary and accidental. This corresponds pretty closely to the most current cosmic model of the physicists: there are infinitely many universes, with every physical possibility being realized. We just happen, of course, to be in one of the ‘anthropic’ loops. End of story? Sorry!
The mystics and the physicists have discounted the power of coherence, or simply the power of the mind. They forgot about Maupertuis and Leibniz. Underlying the whole schmeer, there must be some sort of action principle or logic. No. The forgotten principle is just the latest buzzword of the complexity theorists: self-organization.
But that is a strange idea. Why do they use exactly that phrase? When you back them into the corner about the ‘self’, they quickly retreat to talking about pure ‘spontaneity’. But they don’t use that label. Why do the physicists find it necessary to smuggle in the metaphysically loaded notion of the ‘self’? They are subconsciously(?) hinting at the crux of the cosmic enigma.
At this point we have to appeal to the Quantum, the most enigmatic beast of all. If it did not already exist, we would now have to reinvent it, but in a thousand years we could probably not have dreamt of anything quite so weird.
That brings us to John Wheeler and his student, Frank Tipler. At one point, John was also my professor, and at another point, Frank was a fellow grad student.
(and still being continued...)
Here’s the scoop. We start with Wheeler’s vision of the ‘participatory universe’. Somehow the ‘physical’ universe is just a self-excited, self-organizing quantum loop. There has to be an observer in the loop. ‘No phenomenon is real unless it is observed.’ An unobservable universe is inconceivable. This would reduce the idea of the MIR to an absurdity. Like Wigner’s ‘friend’, we need a warm body in the loop to help collapse the cosmic wave function and keep Schrodinger’s cat alive. Tipler takes this idea to its logical, quantitative extreme with his version of Teilhard’s Omega Point. He takes another of Wheeler’s ideas, the ‘delayed choice’ experiment, and blows its teleology up to cosmic proportions. The cosmic wave function is not finally collapsed until, ‘transhumanically’ we have converted ourselves from carbon to silicon and seeded the entire universe with little ‘observer chips’ that nanotechnologically will, more or less, transform matter (‘it’) back into information (‘bits’), and thereby observationally, teleologically, eschatologically close the quantum loop of the cosmos.
This ‘transhumanism’ leaves me cold. Call me a ‘carbon chauvinist’. But more to the point is the question of the self. I’m betting the farm on the self. Where does the self come in?
Let’s go back to Nagarjuna. How did Nagarjuna defeat the MIR? He anticipates Wheeler’s quantum dictum: no phenomenon is real unless observed. A more formal way to think of this is with relations: to be is to relate. Nagarjuna was the first known (to me) relationalist. Nothing is an island unto itself, except possibly the cosmic self, but even that is no exception, and that is why we are here, to observe the cosmic self, or to help the cosmic self to observe itself. There is no independent, absolute existence. There is no MIR.
But right here, and almost inconceivably, Nagarjuna drops the ball. The most related, and thus the most real thing of which we can conceive is the self. How Nagarjuna managed to drop that ball, God only knows. Someone will pick that ball up. That will be the logical end of philosophy. What you see here is my attempt to be the last philosopher.
All we have to do then is look around, and what we mainly notice are lots of other selves. Where there is smoke, there must be a fire. There must exist the relational mother of all selves. Or not? That is the only question that matters anymore.
But it is hardly questionable, anymore. Take just one step beyond reductionism, and logically, we all land ourselves right back in the lap (least action principle?) of the cosmic source, the cosmic Mama. If we allow just one irreducible entity into our ontological zoo, then Mama will be knocking at our door.
What can we say about Mama? The most important thing to recognize is that there can only be one Mama, as qualified in the next paragraph. That should be too obvious a point for me to have to flog, but flog it I will, if necessary.
There is then only one final point: relationalism -> mind -> coherence -> BPW. It’s that simple, folks. Given a relational, mind based, self-cohering cosmos, it can be nothing other than the ‘best’ possible cosmos. That is a simple restatement of the least action principle as applied to the phenomenal realm. But ‘best’ for whom or what? I should leave this as an exercise for the reader, but let’s not play games. There logically cannot exist just a singular self. Mama, at the least, needs some sort of magical mirror to be self-observant. That magical mirror is just Creation. Coherently, it will not be any old creation. It can only be the ‘best’ possible one. What then is the relational superglue holding all this together? What else but love? The whole point of Creation is the qualitative maximization of love. That is the BPW, and that is, I swear, the end of the story, for now. I don’t know about yours, but in my BPW there are now two feet of snow to shovel.
Dan
[ 17. February 2003, 13:19: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Rex Kerr
Member
Member # 632
|
posted 17. February 2003 17:55
quote:
This was not meant to be an endurance contest.
Heh. When people withdraw from a lengthy discussion, I tend to view the matter as unresolved, so inasumch as a discussion is a contest, outlasting others doesn't really do one any good.
quote:
The world may just be a convention, but that does not mean that 'reality' is arbitrary. All that we have to discover, then, are the underlying parameters that determine the convention that is the world. Another way we might put it is to ask, whose convention is this, anyway?
It is our convention, unavoidably. If it is anyone's convention other than ours (or, more precisely, mine, from my perspective), then all the problems come up again about accessing a universal truth from a limited human perspective.
quote:
Supposing the world to be some sort of bootstrap, what determines its nature?
But I think the very question contains a presupposition that is not justified. It confuses epistemology with ontology, or to avoid the baggage associated with such terms, it confuses how-we-know with what-exists.
The world is not some sort of bootstrap. We must boostrap our way into understanding anything, but that doesn't mean that our understanding is that everything is a bootstrap! In fact, our bootstrapping process indicates that our best model--our most self-consistent convention--is that the world isn't conventional at all. That is, reality exists.
There are many ways to construct a model that accounts for this. You can postulate one universal mind, or no universal mind and simple rules, or that everything is horribly complicated for many reasons but we only perceive the simple parts.
Right now, I think that evidence is best explained by a universe-is-simple-rules model. At least, we have made vast progress in being able to predict and manipulate the universe by using that model, and have made virtually no progress by following other models. (In those cases where the models have different predictions--if they have the same prediction, it doesn't matter which you follow, obviously.)
quote:
Somehow the 'physical' universe is just a self-excited, self-organizing quantum loop. There has to be an observer in the loop. 'No phenomenon is real unless it is observed.'
That's an interesting philosophical spin on what affects wavefunctions. But as I recall--correct me if I'm misremembering--it is in fact wrong, if we keep any sensible definition of observer. Specifically, if you put a detector in a two-slit experiment that can tell which slit a photon goes through, you don't get an interference pattern, regardless of whether anyone is watching the output of the detector.
A more conservative view is that instead of "observers", there are physical interactions that collapse wavefunctions and those that don't.
Again, you can explain this by having a universal mind watching, but you can also get by without this mind.
So I still submit that physicalism isn't dead, and in fact, isn't even seriously challenged. There is nothing that we know about that it inherently can't account for; there are simply a lot of questions about implementation details, and if the details fail, well, physicalism will also. We're nowhere near that point yet, though.
(I also don't follow why the world must be the best possible, but since I reject the necessity of a universal mind, that's not really a major issue for me.)
Edited for typos. I always seem to have to do that.
[ 17. February 2003, 20:43: Message edited by: Rex Kerr ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Jacob Aliet
Member
Member # 578
|
posted 18. February 2003 00:55
quote:
Jacob,
Be warned. Your post shows an inattention to the conversation that has taken place in this thread.
Sorry - warning noted. My fault. I posted before reading James Barhams article. I now have. But I was more interested in the failures of materialism and perhaps thats why my post struck you as tangential.
I apologise nevertheless.
About the hostility (assuming your assesment was based on the talkorogins abiogenesis image), I hope this post shows I have done something about that.
Let me start with Barham's paper to bring the chickens (as Dan Smith has put it) back to our main focus.
I think Barham raises very important questions. And to a large extent, I am in agreement with him that the so-called "mechanistic consensus" is not the only substitute for intelligent Design: opening new lines of research line non linear dynamics etc should help close the explanatory gaps that exist between events/phenomena reduceable to mechanistic explanations and those that are not. My main purpose in writing this is to show that the the "conceptual" and explanatory gaps arent that wide and I have the following views concerning what Barham says in that paper.
I am of the position that some of the foundational arguments that he uses to demonstrate the inadequacy of the mechanistic position are not entirely valid.
He says:
quote:
But biochemistry has no conceptual resources with which to explain the *meaning* and the purpose of
this reaction--the very things that constitute the reaction as a signal, and not just a meaningless jostling of matter. What makes the living cell profoundly different from ordinary inorganic matter is the way in which each reaction is coordinated with all the others for the sake of the whole. There is no doubt that this coordination itself transcends the explanatory resources of biochemistry, because it operates according to functional logic, not just physical law (Jonker et al., 2002; Pattee, 1982; Rosen, 1991, 2000). [emphasis mine]
The *meaning and purpose of reactions question* or normative question is largely a moral or philosophical one and not a scientific one and the context in which the "conundrum" is constructed makes it clear that it is not a teleological but a moral question because it concerns "goodness" or what is good for the organism. The author uses the phrase "for the sake of the whole" and thus imputes moral motives to the events in question.
In addition, in the mousetrap explanation of his use of the word normative, he writes "more dead mice is good" meaning, he is talking about goodness(morality) and not purpose (teleology) - or he has conflated the two. His failure to point out that the mousetrap has no concept of morality aside, one can make the following observations:
One can argue that it is not because biochemistry lacks the conceptual resources for answering these normative questions, but because these questions are outside the domain of biochemistry - and I daresay, science.
One could also say that it is a wrong question. Like asking what is the meaning of a food-chain? Or the timeless question "what is the meaning of life?"
When Barham says more dead mice is good, it would have been of great help to add that "...is good for us" because later, after he has led the readers down the garden path of meaning and purpose, he uses the cell analogy and says it works "for the organisms sake" and the reactions that take place in the cell are chosen purposefully from a host of many otherwise destructive reactions. The mousetrap is created by intelligent beings with a clear purpose. The cell is not known to have been created - yet. One is a machine, the other is not. This analogy ends up mixing apples with oranges when the reader reaches a critical section of the garden path and its difficult to see that the questions that arise - when examining cell reactions, are based on a false analogy. I do not believe this is easy to see for a reader who is not discerning in addition to the fact that he conflates teleological with moral questions.
We know that because the earth rotates on its own axis, we are able to get sunlight and this (the rotation) has greatly influenced our lives (sleep at night, work during the day) in a rather convenient way - we know we cannot do without sleep(and if we go beyond 72 hours without it, we experience a lot of physical and nervous problems). The earth is also just at the correct distance from the sun to allow organic life as we know it and if it moved closer to or futher from the sun, life would be impossible. Does that therefore mean that the purpose of the earths rotation is to "distribute" sunlight to all spheres of the earth and that the distance between the earth and the sun has a *purpose* (e.g. to sustain life)?
We know that its rotation is due to the angular momentum (preserved from the formation of the solar system) and its position between Mars and Venus is wholly coincidental.
But astronomy does not explain why organic life is only on earth (where everything is fine-tuned to support organic life) and not in Venus or Mars (the anthropic principle may be invoked here) and why the planets position, composition and behaviour seems to support life. Does that therefore mean we should open a new field that will study the *meaning* of celestial mechanics?
quote:
From a purely physical point of view---at least so far as our present state of knowledge is concerned---there is no reason why a reaction that is good for the organism should occur rather than one that is bad for it. Normativity simply has no place in physics or chemistry as currently understood. And yet it is at the very heart of life.
I would like to point out that there are various organisms in nature that do not exhibit this said normativity.
* We know that Haemoglobin, which has more affinity for carbon monoxide than for oxygen.
* Cave-dwelling creatures that live in total darkness from fish, to insects and spiders and still posess eyes violate this necessity for normativity.
* Some snakes such as blindsnakes and colubroids posess a normal lung and an atrophied one, the atrophied one consumes space that would be used by the normal one for better surface area as seen in other snakes.
* Apes and humans requiring vitamin C in their diets yet they can sysnthesise their own.
* Flowers on plants such as dandelions, which are apomictic (asexual) and thus do not need to attract pollinating insects
* The foetal teeth of anteaters and baleen whales, which are made, only to be reabsorbed.
* the human appendix, which has no known function.
And so on and so forth. Normativity is found in some parts, but we must also admit that in some species or instances it is not evident.
quote:
Every reaction in the cell is more than just a reaction, it is a functional action. Such an action constitutes a choice among states that are energetically equivalent so far as the ordinary laws of physics are concerned.
The "choice among states", IMO, appeals to the idea that there are many "choices" which can not be the case if the reaction in the cell is regulated by the (1) structure of the cell and that gives it functional integrity (2) the chemical composition of the cell. (he says this idea is "unpalatable to most biologists because to them it smacks of pre-scientific 'vitalism' he however does not enumerate who these 'most biologists' are though he mentions that its an idea that has attracted a number of physicists, notably Schroendiger, Bohr, Polanyi etc)
It would be of great help if the author used an actual example of a cell. The focus would then be the basis for assuming that there indeed exists many choices in a reaction, then one would work out why a certain reaction over others took place.
In the absence of a clear example, we would be merely speculating.
Bahram says that "if organisms were made of inert, functionally uncorrelated parts, then evolution would be impossible due to combinatorial explosion."
An "organism" by its very definition has parts that are coordinated systemically so the statement is erroneous. He goes further to state that:
quote:
If organisms were literally machines, they would be miraculous. There has simply not been enough time since the big bang for even a single protein to be created in this way with any reasonable probability, much less an entire cell.
He does not provide the mathematical calculations (or sources) to support this absolute statement and so its not possible to evaluate its merit.
He proceeds to state that:
quote:
...On this point, the intelligent design critique of Darwinism is perfectly sound
I would like to state the following concerning the authors point:
a) Darwinian evolution does not state that organism are "literally machines" as the author states (pg 10). Functioning like a machine (purely a functional analogy), does not make an organism a machine (let alone "literally").
b) The formation of biological polymers from monomers is not a random/ chance event but one that happens according to the laws of chemistry and biochemistry, which are not random.
c) The author says that there "has simply not been enough time since the big bang" for a protein to be formed. One wonders how much time would be required to make something that is based on pure chance to be probable.
He says about natural selection acting like a ratchet:
quote:
But what Darwinians forget is that the way a ratchet increases probabilities and imposes directionality is through its own structure
This is like stating that a food chain imposes some structure to organisms in an ecosystem. Natural Selection, like a food chain, is an abstract concept that we derive from what we observe, it is not an causal entity or a force (causative) that can "impose" anything.
He states further that:
quote:
...the normativity of biological functions can be fully naturalized in terms of Wrights (1998) analysis in which a function is part of a system that exists because of the role it plays within the system.
This argument is goes against the non-functioning eyes of cave-dwelling creatures which live in total darkness: hundreds of species, from fish (eg Astyanax mexicanus) to insects (eg the Hawaiian cave planthopper Oliarus polyphemus), spiders (eg Neoleptoneta myopica), salamanders (eg Typhlomolge rathbuni) and crayfish (eg Cambarus setosus).
These eyes (read part of the system) exist but perform no known function.
Same to the human appendix. And there are many "organs" that are found in organisms that are not vestigial and perform no conceivable normative purpose.
As far as normativity goes, it would give a lot of validity to the idea that biological systems are normative if the author (or anyone) had an explanation for the above phenomena that I listed at the beginning of this post.
As concerns formal emergence, the author says:
quote:
Cells evidently posess an inherent power of intelligent agency
This is where I bring the question concerning the intelligence of a plant that phototrophically bends toward light. Does it posess intelligent cells?
Does acting intelligently mean intelligence? When the chess grandmaster Kasparov Lost the Chess Match to deep blue, he said he made sacrifices that the machine rejected that would have given it short term strategic advantage. Was the machine not acting purposefully?
But then this brings us to the next point:
He says we can never really make a robot give a damn.
My question to him is this:
If we created a robot in such a manner that everything it did, was wired to ensure the robot stays working properly like having sensors (to provide warnings for low battery etc), detect threat from humans (frowns, body language etc) and react to ensure their own survival (flee, fight for electrical power, destroy any entity that becomes an obstacle) - fine, we would know the robots didnt give a damn, BUT, what would the robots "think" (given a heuristical inference engine)?
When we see a lion ready to maul us and we run, do we run because we want to survive, or do we run because we are afraid?
Do we choose to be afraid? Do we choose to be hungry? We dont choose to be thirsty either. We are wired to respond to those needs/ emotions but does that mean we give a damn?
If we lacked desires/ fears would we give a damn? Do we choose to give a damn, or do we find ourselves giving a damn? We are simply self-aware - thats why we think we give a damn - we impute motive. Does a mating dog give a damn? or does it react based on its instincts? How far apart are we biologically? Isnt it only a matter of having a higher IQ that makes us "stand" outside nature and question?
What makes us think we give a damn any more than the robot above?
After looking at material emergence as Barham explains it, and his arguments against mechanistic causation vis a vis formal emergence (non-reductive physicalism - because a threshold must be reached), it seems he can be categorised as a non-reductive physicalist who is also embracing a reductive approach (material emergence).
This is what Jaegwon Kim says is not possible.
Material emergence (with "bifurcation events" involving cells), is reductionist because it shifts complexity down to the cells (from the idea that complexity - consciousness etc is a property emergent from simple cells combined together).
After all the points he raises, I think it would be good to spend more time on the argument about normativity of reactions in living things. He does raise good points which provoke thought. I cant comment on the alternative approaches (alternative to ID and M. Consensus) because I am not familiar with them.
Dan,
Thanks for the link on Jaegwon Kim's (brand of) physicalism.
quote:
Partly as a result of Jaegwon’s arguments, those people who once thought of themselves as physicalists are now, like Jacob, calling themselves metaphysical naturalists. They believe that there are real, spontaneously emergent properties. And this implies that there is, at least, a minimal degree of downward causation, in the sense that for something to be real, it must have independent causal powers.
IMHO, -isms like monism, dualism, physicalism etc, are rigid and tend to stagnate progress as far as knowledge and scientific progress is concerned. My M. Naturalism is a grounding assumption I operate under in everyday life, but it almost never comes to the fore. I prefer focusing on evidence and the arguments that people make and almost never try to fit them to any -ism. Because at the end of the day, we could all be wrong. Irrespective of how passionate we are about our -isms.
quote:
But this brings us back to Mary and Arlene. Arlene, the art critic, may see a new painting and her aesthetic response could well instantiate a novel emergent mental property. By definition, it would, even in principle, be impossible to predict that response.
Jacksons Mary problem has been pretty well refuted. It assumes that sensory information is factual and goes further to assume a lot of other things. Mary could come from her black and white room and because of some defect (colour blindness etc), she can see red as green and she will ask others - "aah, so this is red?" - and they say "yes, that is red".
She will think what she is seeing is red and assume she has the same "seeing experience" as others, but because of her defect, she would be seeing green. Because she cannot share her experience with others.
It cannot be a fact that Mary has indeed experienced seeing Red by showing it to her. Its an assumption. Because Mary cannot have knowledge of other peoples minds and experiences. Jackson assumes she can.
At the end of the day, physicalism is correct because it bases knowledge on facts, not assumptions.
It cannot be demonstrated that Mary actually experiences red - we only speculate. Mary also assumes that she knows what others experience when they see red, this too is not factual, the only factual thing about red is about its wavelength which she learnt in the black and white room.
So Physicalism is not weakened in any way by Mary's problem. I would ask Mary to go back to her black and white room.
I am not familiar with Arlene. I will search.
IP: Logged
|
|
Dan Smith
Member
Member # 656
|
posted 18. February 2003 09:50
Rex and Jacob,
Permit me, please, to attempt a synopsis.
Our (the three of us) highest commonality at this point might best be given the label of ‘pragmatism’. Where we may disagree is what we are being pragmatic about or for. Both of you assign a high (highest?) value to the scientific enterprise. I am pointing out that there may be things more important in the world than science. I submit that human survival ought to trump science in importance.
There are those who seem to feel that Truth is the ultimate good, and that science is the only way to pursue Truth. And, therefore, we should pursue science even to the detriment of humankind. I don’t think any of us here are of this persuasion.
However, many people do draw a contrast between scientific truth and religious belief. It is stated that the pursuit of scientific knowledge, is an enterprise in which every human could participate in a peaceful and progressive manner, and which could thereby serve as a universal goal for humanity. At the same time we would continue to harvest the material and technological rewards of science, and come to a fuller understanding of the truth about our place in the world. When cast in this light, it would seem that religion could hardly hold a candle to science.
Both of you seem to be advocating something of this nature. And, furthermore, when stated in these terms, I would have to agree with you. But I am here to change the terms of this centuries old debate between science and religion.
First of all, I am not a proponent of religion. I am, in the first instance, merely a proponent of reason.
Now I am very well aware that science has, over the centuries, arrogated to itself what it calls reason and rationality, and, amazingly, religion has bought into the idea of its own irrationality; nay, it even prides itself on its anti-rational, anti-intellectual posture.
I am here to condemn the religionists for taking this posture. At the same time, I will provide a rational explanation for their historical capitulation. What I am advocating, in the stead of either scientism or religionism, is rational theism. In fact, my thesis is that, far from being an oxymoron, rational theism is a pleonasm. How so?
(being continued…) (p.s. If you are looking for Arlene, she exists in my head.)
I submit that taking reason away from science is as easy as taking candy from a baby. To wit: in as much as science is a reductionistic enterprise, it also reduces reason, to what? It reduces reason to some kind of logical mechanics or to pure computation.
Of course, all remaining reductionists will claim that we are like computers and so computers can reason just like us. I dispute this. I simply point out that this reductionist thesis has already been disproven beyond reasonable doubt. Let me just list the key points:
1.) Reductionism itself has failed. There is not one thing in the world that has ever been successfully and completely reduced to any other thing.
2.) In particular, the analytical, reductionist movement in philosophy was declared dead by the consensus of its practitioners over fifty years ago.
3.) Recognize that reason is irreducibly and ineluctably normative and intentional. To wit: reason has never been defined. No one is presently attempting to define it.
4.) At the present time the principal practitioners of metaphysical ontology are the ‘Artificial Intelligencers’.
A plethora of references to the above points are provided on my website.
The third point stands out as crucial. The scientific reductionists and postmodern deconstructionists, recognizing that they could never claim that reason is a scientific object, have, in an almost adolescent fashion, sought to denigrate all reasoning, thereby notoriously managing to subvert the rationales of their own enterprises.
I point to the holistic, vital, intentional, organic nature of reason. But the crux of the matter is that the entire process of reasoning must be and can only be founded upon a very robust concept of the self. Reasoning is, in the first instance, essentially ‘selfish’. That obvious, virtually indisputable fact is just about the whole ball game for rational theism.
In the meantime I have some more snow shoveling to attend to.
[ 18. February 2003, 11:09: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Jacob Aliet
Member
Member # 578
|
posted 18. February 2003 11:05
Dan smith,
Your recap pretty much states the position I hold - I assign the HIGHEST importance to the scientific enterprise (regret today that I did Information Technology instead of maths, botany, medicene or physics).
Rational theism, IMHO, is a contradiction in terms. Martin Luther said, for religion to flourish, we must gouge out the eyes of reason. Theism, by its very definition rests on a bedrock called faith. The nature of faith is such that one must accept what one is told without asking for evidence - the very opposite of science.
The very opposite of reason and logic.
This is a topic I would have liked to discuss but I have already been warned. No need crossing the line and getting whacked by the mod. If you are serious about a free discussion over this rational theism thing, we can cross over to infidels.org and expose the idea to the most rigorous examination possible on earth.
The truth is not good. That is a moral judgement. The truth is just the truth. We pursue it for whatever it is - knowledge is power.
quote:
But I am here to change the terms of this centuries old debate between science and religion.
I dont think ISCID is the place for that. Come to infidels and your ideas will be pretty well cleaned out. I came here to keep away from theism-atheism debate. Very mouth-watering but I wont bite. Ok, I have licked it a bit, but thats it. Stop it.
<looks over his shoulder at the frowning mod>
IP: Logged
|
|
Jacob Aliet
Member
Member # 578
|
posted 18. February 2003 11:24
quote:
I am a teleologist. From my perspective evolution causes and comes logically prior to reproduction. It is the primordial, metaphysical necessity of the Telos that causes and ultimately explains the emergence of biological and reproductive phenomena.
Nothing damning about evolution coming prior to reproduction. Read some abiogenesis, the most primitive lifeforms were self-replicating, not reproducing in the sense that we understand it (male and female gametes etc) - I believe.
The only problem with teleology is it has been used to sneak in moral or quasi-religious questions and make arguments based on those while discrediting science.
IP: Logged
|
|
Dan Smith
Member
Member # 656
|
posted 18. February 2003 16:53
Jacob,
My thesis, Jacob, is that coherence is indivisible. No part of the world may be understood independently of any other part of the world. Nothing can be understood outside of its total context. This coherence thesis is obviously true of many individual sub-domains of the world. Examples are:
1. Ecosystems
2. Societies
3. Organisms
4. Languages
5. Theoretical physics
6. Machines
Obviously any theory of Complex Systems will have to confront the problem of coherence.
Any part of the world that is removed from its global context will, ultimately, be found to be incoherent. There can be just one Grand Unified Theory of the world. This fact, when combined with the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), results in a global coherence. The power of reason is an essential aspect of the world; and it reflects, in each rational being, the rational structure of the world. Conversely, any form of pluralism is incoherent and irrational, just by its own definition.
This is by no means a religious statement. This is simply a restatement of the Coherence Theory of Truth. The only other theory of truth is the Correspondence Theory. That is the Joe Friday theory of the truth: Just the facts, mister, nothing but the facts. That may be your understanding of reality, Jacob; but it is not mine.
In my view, you are forever trafficking in nothing more than partial truths. In general, these partial truths will badly misconstrue the nature of reality, and, when abused, as they often are, they will result in the commission of evil.
In the name of Truth you dissect Truth. If the Truth is something organic, then you commit a form of murder, or perhaps worse.
Now, I could be wrong, but there is every indication that I am not. Do you wish to defend your Correspondence Theory of Truth, Jacob; or do you simply wish to promulgate incoherence?
Dan
[ 18. February 2003, 17:05: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Mark Szlazak
Member
Member # 391
|
posted 18. February 2003 21:01
Rex and Dan,
I passed on the following quotes to Quantum Physicist Henry Stapp for comment. His response follows.
quote:
quote:
Dan Smith: Somehow the 'physical' universe is just a self-excited, self-organizing quantum loop. There has to be an observer in the loop. 'No phenomenon is real unless it is observed.'
Rex Kerr responds: That's an interesting philosophical spin on what affects wavefunctions. But as I recall--correct me if I'm misremembering--it is in fact wrong, if we keep any sensible definition of observer.Specifically, if you put a detector in a two-slit experiment that can tell which slit a photon goes through, you don't get an interference pattern, regardless of whether anyone is watching the output of the detector.
A more conservative view is that instead of "observers", there are physical interactions that collapse wavefunctions and those that don't.
Again, you can explain this by having a universal mind watching, but you can also get by without this mind.
So I still submit that physicalism isn't dead, and in fact, isn't even seriously challenged. There is nothing that we know about that it inherently can't account for; there are simply a lot of questions about implementation details, and if the details fail, well, physicalism will also. We're nowhere near that point yet, though.
Dan Smith can point to Wheeler's statement "No phenomenon is phenomenon unless it is an observed phenomenon." This is certainly true---by the dictionary definition of the word "phenomena": "any observable fact or event that can be described scientifically." The idea of Observation is built into the meaning of the word "phenomenon." But Wheeler's statement goes deeper: it stresses the fact that quantum theory is a theory about connections between observations: the act and the fact of observation plays a key role in quantum theory, particularly as it is formulated by the founders as a *practical* scientific theory. And all other versions must tie into this pragmatic interpretation to be relevant to science.
But what Kerr says about the double slit is also correct: If one puts detecting devices behind the two slits then the interference effects will be destroyed, unless one brings the states of the two detectors into a state of interference (quantum eraser effect) in which case the interference effect between the parts of the beam passing between the two slits can in principle (and also empirically) be exhibited.
It is clear that the theory cannot be formulated with no reference at all to mind. The way that the mathematical formulas relate to the empirically observed facts is not as trivial in quantum theory as it was in classical physics. The Schroedinger equation (Quantum field theory version) is local and deterministic, but it generates a smeared out continuum of physical states that do not all agree with our experiences. So SOME reference to our experiences, and how they are tied to the mathematics, must be made: a 100% materialistic description is inadequate.
Also, Bell's theorem shows that Nature cannot be conceived to be a local deterministic reality of the kind postulated in classical physical theory, with our thoughts just mechanical consequences of our brain activities.
But this does not mean that every brand of "physicalism" must fail. Quantum theory is compatible with a Spinoza-type monism in which the single kind of ontological stuff has two "aspects," one describable in term of mathematical properties localized in space, the other described in mentalistic terms, with the dynamical connection between these two aspects described in terms of von Neumann's Process I.
This fundamentally ontologically monistic "physicalism" supports a "pragmatic" scientific theory that is effectively an "interactive dualism," since it takes the two kinds of description---the physical description in terms of local mathematically described properties, and the psychological descriptions of our experiences---as description of two aspects of reality that can, within this pragmatic scientific theory, be regarded as interacting, in a way slightly analogous to the way that the particle and field aspects of classical physics can be regarded as interacting aspects, described in very different languages, of the single physical reality. The point is that the underlying single ontological quantum stuff has both spacetime-imbedding features and knowledge-type features, and hence straddles the Cartesian categories of extension and cognition. Process I describes the interaction between the differently described parts.
The core data here are the data of neuropsychology, which empirically connect these two kinds of data: the data dealing with activations of neurological/electromagnetic/biological processes and the data described in terms of meanings, knowledge, feelings, and experiences. Hence we need a practical theory that relates data of these two different kinds.
Quantum theory is specifically designed to deal with connections between data of these two different kinds: von Neumann's process I is specifically designed to cope, in a pragmatic scientific way, with the connections between these two kinds of data.
Quantum theory REQUIRES this Process I connection, or some nontrivial replacement of it, in order to tie the math to empirical data. But classical physical theory is dynamically complete without any such process, apart from a metaphysical idea that we can observer macroscopic features of objects without disturbing them. But when we come to one's own brain process the idea that you can "observe" it without disturbing it becomes highly dubious.
So quantum theory and classical physics lead to very different sorts of "physicalism." In classical physics the physical part is dynamically complete within itself, and the observer is dynamically passive or inert: consciousness is either immaterial (in both senses) or a highly mysterious identity of mind with an aspect of a classically conceived reality that has no hint of mindfulness in it. But in quantum physics the basic structure has mindfulness built in from the start.
These considerations are discussed in more detail in my contribution "Physics in Neuroscience" to the volume "Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation, and the Brain." (Ed. M. Beauregard, Pub. John Benjamin)
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html
Henry P. Stapp
[ 18. February 2003, 21:07: Message edited by: Mark Szlazak ]
IP: Logged
|
|
Dan Smith
Member
Member # 656
|
posted 18. February 2003 23:20
Mark,
I admire the work that Henry Stapp has done to keep alive the metaphysical implications of quantum physics. The great majority of physicists are simply not interested. Most scientists view themselves as mere technicians. They pursue science only for its material rewards; or, at best, they see it as an intellectual game. Henry seeks a higher truth. He seeks meaning.
Unfortunately, meaning does not come in small packages, and particularly not in quantum packets. I am afraid that Henry has already squeezed every last drop of meaning out of the quantum. The quantum enigma is a tantalizing portent of a larger meaning. It is a footprint in the sand. Henry, I believe though, is persuaded that the quantum enigma is the keystone of the cosmos. He and John Wheeler and a few other physicists see the quantum almost as the Holy Grail.
I regret that quantum physicalism is only a small departure from physicalism proper; but, yes, it is a suggestive departure nonetheless. It is certainly suggestive of panpsychism, and it is strongly anti-reductionist. It was the quantum enigma plus the anthropic principle and the ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ of mathematics that finally persuaded me of the deep insight of Sir James Jean: the universe is more like a great thought than a great machine.
John and Henry were never about to take this final step. To do so, they would have had to turn in their physics ‘union cards’. They are more effective in stirring the metaphysical pot from inside their profession. I am quite content to pick up the metaphysical baton from where they must leave off.
I can say the same of the Intelligent Designers. Irreducible complexity is very suggestive, but still it is a very small departure from materialism proper. It is still looking at the world as a machine and not as a thought. It is just another footprint in the sand. It will be an intellectual dead-end for those who cannot see beyond its dualistic assumptions. The designer will remain completely remote and completely mysterious. I think they miss the full implication of the Incarnation, which was designed precisely to remove any such barriers. The IDers have the right telescope, but are looking at the world through the wrong end.
Dan
IP: Logged
|
|
|
Topic Closed
Printer-friendly view of this topic
