Indeed it is now legitimate to talk of a logic to biology, not a term you will hear on the lips of many neo-Darwinians. Nevertheless, evolution is evidently following more fundamental rules. Scientific certainly, but ones that transcend Darwinism. What! Darwinism not a total explanation? Why should it be? It is after all only a mechanism, but if evolution is predictive, indeed possesses a logic, then evidently it is being governed by deeper principles. Come to think about it so are all sciences; why should Darwinism be any exception?
But there is more. How to explain mind?…
To reiterate: when physicists speak of not only a strange universe, but one even stranger than we can possibly imagine, they articulate a sense of unfinished business that most neo-Darwinians don’t even want to think about. Of course our brains are a product of evolution, but does anybody seriously believe consciousness itself is material? Well, yes, some argue just as much, but their explanations seem to have made no headway.
He’s a paleontologist at Cambridge, an expert on the Cambrian era (and the Cambrian explosion); not an Intelligent Design supporter, but certainly a supporter of intelligence and design behind the universe.
(I owe someone a hat tip for this link but I’ve lost track of the source…)
_______________
Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
Morris has some good stuff. Regarding whether he’s an ID supporter, it depends on what you mean by ID. The distance between Evangelical TEs (or Evolutionary Creationists as most of us prefer to be called) and Evangelical ID supporters who accept common descent is actually quite small. Now, if we could just sit down over a coffee and discuss rather than insult eachother on the net all the time …
I’m with you, Steve, about the common ground and needlessness of insults.
“The distance between Evangelical TEs (or Evolutionary Creationists as most of us prefer to be called) and Evangelical ID supporters who accept common descent is actually quite small.”
Are there any prominent “Evangelical ID supporters who accept common descent”? Behe is almost the only IDist that accept common descent, but he’s catholic…
Hi Nick: Depends on what you mean by prominent. Dembski has already said common descent is acceptable. Mike Gene (pseudonym) who started telicthoughts accepts it; many of the others that carry on this site do as well. I’ve run across other ASA’ers who would properly be described as ID & agree with common descent – but not sure any of them are prominent. Some who would call them ID’ers would even go so far as to accept Allan Harvey’s 4th definition for evolution that “Evolutionary mechanisms account (physically) for common descent”. The point is, the line between EC/TE & ID is sometimes a little gray – but in the war of rhetoric, this is seldom acknowledged.
As an atheist, this is what I’ve been telling creationists for a long time: why reject science when it is easier and more consistent to believe that the laws of the universe were designed to permit evolution.
(I do disagree with this, though: “being a product of evolution gives no warrant at all that what we perceive as rationality, and indeed one that science and mathematics employ with almost dizzying success, has as its basis anything more than sheer whimsy”. If evolution is a search engine driven by the laws of the universe, there’s no reason it can’t eventually find a solution that discovers those laws itself. And if there’s any doubt that we are that solution, we can adopt a pragmatic approach and continually test and retest rationality.)
Tom,
I think you probably got that from Telic Thoughts. That’s where I saw it.
Nick,
Good question. My question is: what does Behe mean when he says that he accepts common descent? Limited common descent? Universal common descent? He does not accept universal common descent by means of random mutation and natural selection. He has also said that it is “trivial”:
“The bottom line is this. Common descent is true; yet the explanation of common descent—even the common descent of humans and chimps—although fascinating, is in a profound sense trivial. It says merely that commonalities were there from the start, present in a common ancestor. It does not even begin to explain where those commonalities came from, or how humans subsequently acquired remarkable differences. Something that is nonrandom must account for the common descent of life.”
Hello woodchuck64
As an atheist, this is what I’ve been telling creationists for a long time: why reject science when it is easier and more consistent to believe that the laws of the universe were designed to permit evolution.
What science? Perhaps you might consider applying your commendable skepticism towards the arguments for a naturalistic universe. Measure them and wiegh them by the same standard you apply to theistic arguments. If your experience is at all similar to mine you will first find the criticism of naturalism, quite literally, “unbelieveable”, if you continue to dig you will think that particular critique is an anomaly and overall the philisophy is well supported – after all, a lot of well-educated people believe it is… don’t they? – but carry on and you will discover that, while many may believe it, it really isn’t well supported by the science. The next stage I experienced was shock… it shook my world… everything I had thought true about nature suddenly looked like castles in the sand, apparently stable and well build but destined fall with the advancing tide. The sense of shock was followed closely by outrage… how could all those teachers, even my own parents, have passed on such nonsense? Then I understood, they had believed it just as much as I had, we had never seriously questioned the assumptions which underlay the philosophy and, ultimately, the interpretation of the science.
If we assume that naturalism is true then evolution follows as surely as day follows night. It matters nought what we observe in nature because we already know the only valid hypotheses assume naturalism. A blogger in the UK is publishing a chapter by chapter review of Richard Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth” and his latest installment contains the following quote from the book vis a vis the science supporting evolution.
Question Darwin
Dissenter is a doctor (GP) and an apple grower. Aged 53. My views are my own although no doubt few if any are entirely original, there being ‘nothing new under the sun’
The Agent Intellect blog had a link to a very interesting article by Jim Manzi, appearing on Andrew Sullivan’s blog (still with me?). Here is the link to the article:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/robert-wright-against-jerry-coyne.html
The gist is that Genetic Algorithms show how seemingly random processes can actually be much better explained as having an ultimate end in view (as being purposeful). So even if evolution is accepted, it most certainly does not provide evidence of no creator–to work at all, genetic evolution requires matter, rules, and algorithms (which imply first cause and final cause).
Oh, read the article, I am almost certainly making a hash of it!
Here is Agent Intellect, for the record: http://agentintellect.blogspot.com/. The links appeared on October 13th.
That is to say, really complicated random processes. How on earth does anything useful happen there are billions of “wrong answers” available to a random process?
Oh I give up, read the article.
He makes some interesting if esoteric points. I have little faith in the “fact” of evolution for similar reasons so I think his point that “Accepting evolution, therefore, requires neither the denial of a Creator nor the loss of the idea of ultimate purpose.” is irrelevant. That said, it is from reading writers who share his view that I finally learned to question the dogma.
SCM:
He put his finger on the crux of the evolutionary non-explanation. Consciousness is not explained by reference to biochemistry. It is not explained by biological changes. Incontrovertability is a major problem for the theory. (That may be a newly invented word).
Hey, William,
Can you explain what you mean by incontrovertability? Interesting, tantalizing, but I would like to hear your full explanation.
Fred, do you have a conversion formula allowing us to determine the critical biomass signifying the dawning of consciousness? Interesting indeed.
6 November 2009
Robert Wright and the Evolution of Compassion
by Clive Hayden
Robert Wright is seen here in a video presentation giving a lecture about the evolution of compassion.
He begins by saying that compassion, love and sympathy had earned their way into the gene pool. Regardless of how any gene could “earn” it’s way into a gene pool before it is a gene (because all genes, by being genes, are in the gene pool), the question that seems taken for granted is Do we have genes for compassion, love and sympathy? These are metaphysical things, so, notice that what he’s doing is taking metaphysical reality and making it material. But in the same way logic and reason are metaphysical, that is, there are laws of logic and reason that are not reducible to laws of physics or chemistry. Do these owe their existence to genes earning their way into the gene pool also? If so, then we have ruled out logic and reason existing on their own, and are subject to an evolutionary process that constantly changes, otherwise it isn’t an evolutionary process. I cannot see how, on the premise of evolution of metaphysics, which includes all mental capacities, all of our metaphysical judgments, to talk of the evolution of compassion and at the same time understand that the ability to reason to this conclusion is just as subject to evolution.
[....]
The rest of the story
JAD, a frequent commenter at Telic Thoughts, had this to say:
Consciousness can be viewed as fundamental and not reducible to mass/energy. When viewed this way empirical objections to design become much more problematic. A key component of Intelligent Design is the notion that intelligence precedes the existence of that which is designed. If consciousness is one of Nature’s fundamentals then empirical endeavors related to mind function acquire a natural consistency to ID which contrasts with materialistic approaches. IDing the designer is not a show stopper when consciousness is fundamental. You don’t have to explain mass amd energy. They are simply there to be observed, measured and ordered within explanatory theories. Ditto consciousness.
William Bradford wrote:
This quote is a nice demonstration that creationism is a science stopper. If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that science should stop at the boundaries of today’s knowledge and never even attempt to probe the nature of things considered today fundamental.
To see how wrong-headed this approach is, imagine what would happen if scientists followed it in the past. Newton could have said that planets follow elliptical paths just because God intended them to and leave it at that. No reason to develop the laws of mechanics and the theory of gravity. Pasteur could have accepted that diseases are God’s wrath and not bother with the germ theory of disease. I can go on and on.
But you’re not even telling us to stay within today’s boundaries, you want to push science boundaries back. Forget biology, I am talking about physics. Here are your words, again:
This is a perspective that was common in the early nineteenth century. Then along came Emmy Noether and showed that energy conservation is not a fundamental principle but is merely a consequence of a symmetry. The rotational symmetry of our world gives rise to conservation of angular momentum, the symmetry with respect to translations in space gives rise to momentum conservation, and the symmetry with respect to translations in time explains conservation of energy. So cross out the energy on your list of fundamental things, we have already moved past that stage.
Mass isn’t fundamental, either: it’s rest energy. The mass of a proton comes mainly from kinetic energy of quarks and gluons.
Creationism of any stripe is a misguided attempt to keep science from evading what used to be religion’s turf. Sorry, guys, but you simply need to get out of the way.
Funny: Newton and Pasteur were theists.
You do like to read into quotes that which what is not there. Who said anything about stopping at boundaries. The quote you’re commenting on indicates that our investigations need not presume that consciousness is reducible to configurations of biomatter observed to correlate to human behavior. That complex thoughts are not merely emergent properties of neural cells, but rather interact with them while existing independently, is not in conflict with our observations (or thoughts).
Nonsense. Nothing I wrote inhibits one from investigating how thinking affects physiology, how physiology impacts thinking or how behavior is both revealing of and modified by cognitive functions. Generalizations, corresponding to laws of physics, are not only possible but inevitable without having to assume a materialist mindset at the outset of an investigation.
The “God’s wrath” reference is an atheist talking point. Pasteur believed in God but like his fellow believers found no inconsistency between that belief and another indicating that events can be described through a mechanistic paradigm.
Citing the work of Emmy Noether hardly refutes anything I’ve written. Energy conservation is an idea marking humanity’s attempt to accurately conceptually model what we detect. Emmy in effect indicated that there’s another way of looking at this. Viewing consciousness as not necessarily an emergent property of matter does not keep us from making parallel insights into neurobiology.
Fine. Would physiological change being a consequent effect of thought (and not merely a manifestation of neural events giving rise to thought) conflict with your hallowed view of how we properly investigate nature?
Tom Gilson wrote:
Tom, if every theist were a creationist there would be no need to introduce a new term. Ken Miller believes in Christian God but he is no creationist.
Think about that.
William Bradford wrote:
William, could you explain to me in what sense complex thoughts exist independently of neural cells? Do they live outside of human heads? Inside? And if they interact with neural cells, perhaps they can also interact with some man-made receivers and transmitters? I see a beginning of an experimental research program here. Don’t disappoint me by telling that our brain cells are the only instrument that can access these independent thoughts.
Noether’s insight wasn’t just another way of looking at something. It showed that symmetry plays a key role in physics. Beyond virtually every conserved quantity lurks a symmetry. Symmetry turned out to be vitally important to quantum mechanics and its applications to particles and condensed matter. Eugene Wigner won the 1963 physics Nobel prize “for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles.” The quark model was derived from a classification of (then) elementary particles under transformations of an SU(3) symmetry (the 1969 Nobel prize). Last year’s Nobel prize was given for the discovery of the effects of broken symmetry on the properties of elementary particles. In light of this, you can’t label Emmy Noether’s profound insight as just “another way of looking at [energy conservation].” Its significance goes way beyond that.
Likewise it may well be that viewing the mind as an emergent phenomenon arising as a result of the interaction between neurons opens up new fields of knowledge. Creationism simply declares this avenue of research not worthy of exploration. Why? Just because they are afraid that another gap will be explored and no signs of God will be found? I see no other reason to avoid this direction. Maybe you can tell me.
Likewise it may well be that viewing the mind as basic to our reality
an emergent phenomenon arising as a result of the interaction between neuronsopens up new fields of knowledge.CreationismMaterialistic emergentism simply declares this avenue of research not worthy of exploration. Why? Just because they are afraid that another gap will be explored and no signs ofGodmaterialism’s god will be found?Only a bit off topic, Francis Beckwith is soon to publish a 16,000-word article “How To Be An [Intellectually Satisfied] Anti-Intelligent Design Advocate,” in the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy, 4.1 (2010)). (The square brackets are mine.)
Some important background (not relevant to his thesis, but indicative of the false antecedents in the Intelligent Design movement as well as revealing its Ockhamian (anti-universals and natures) pedigree): in May 2007 Beckwith made public his return to the Roman Catholic Church, and resigned as both President of the Evangelical Theological Society and member of the society, effective 07 May 2007.
This, among other issues that have been building for some years now, will likely further undermine support for the Discovery Institute’s push for Intelligent Design to be taught in science classrooms, and will further reveal Dembski’s mistaken acceptance of the modern idea that an Enlightenment view of science is the paradigm of knowledge, i.e., it will further reveal Dembski’s flawed mechanistic (Newtonian) view of reality and the reductionism of inferring God through the modern empirical sciences.
It is also exposes, among other things, Dembski’s rejection of natures… which has a long pedigree originating in the Reformation’s wrong-headed “plain meaning” hermeneutic subsequently also wrongly applied to the “Book of Nature” as well. Dembski constantly spins his wheels in philosophy of science (whose formal object is methodology) in the vain attempt to buttress his position, while either rejecting or ignoring a realist philosophy of nature than utilizes analogical language to study reality.
Note that secular Darwinists should not consider this a “win.” In fact, it also brings to the forefront their own reductionist, scientistic view of reality. I don’t see them making any serious effort in really trying to understand what Beckwith is saying… to their disadvantage.
My sense is 2010 will be an “interesting” year for both secular Darwinists and IDer’s alike… and by “interesting” I mean in the sense of the Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times.”
olegt:
Anything that is perceptible to the five primary senses of a human being is, to one extent or another, accessible for study by the modern empirical sciences (MESs).
What exactly and explicitly, then, is perceptible about the scientific method? Nothing. (Would you mind putting one in my pocket, please?) It’s high time for science to humbly stop at that boundary… and many others.
If you tell me the scientific method is a methodology to which we reason from sensory knowledge, then good! But it isn’t then equivalent to sensory knowledge, is it? (What exactly and explicitly is sensory accessible about a “methodology”… like the scientific method or the rules of chess?) It’s knowledge that we’ve reasoned to from our senses, isn’t it? Oh dear… does that mean things exist beyond the reach of our senses… to which (horror of secular horrors) we can actually reason? What about the claim “nothing exists beyond the reach of our senses”? Try applying that criterion back upon itself to reveal the claim’s self-stultifying nature.
What about your implied notion that everything will be accessible to the MESs? (With the further implication that if something is not accessible to the MESs, then it isn’t real or such knowledge is not fully “valid”…) What about that notion itself? Perhaps you’d like to stop at that boundary?
Holopupenko wrote:
There are quite a few things things that are not perceptible to our five senses, yet we can study them in science. Radio waves and X rays come to mind.
Science does not study the scientific method, Holopupenko. Philosophy of science does.
Sure, we can reason about numbers even though we can’t sense them or, more precisely, can’t experiment with numbers. For that reason mathematics is generally not considered to be a science. See Mathematics as science.
olegt:
Neither are light waves that which we “see”… and, while x-ray’s can’t be “seen” we can supplement our senses to “see” them. Can we supplement our senses in any way to “see” the “scientific method”? No. It’s a mistake similar to the one that holds it is our eyes that “see.” No, it is I who “sees”… but what is it about the “I” that science can “see”. Nothing. (What is it about “now” that science can “see”? Nothing.)
Actually, you’re only partially correct about the philosophy of science studying the scientific method: if you mean studying it as a methodology, then yes. But the scientific method is not merely a methodology, is it? Its epistemological character is inextricably woven into it… so you must go beyond a mere philosophy of science.
But that’s small potatoes: do you view the MESs as being “privileged” above all other forms of knowledge, i.e., arbiters of what really counts as knowledge? If so, then on what scientific basis do you hold that? If not, why the implication that science knows no borders? (You avoided that in your response to my previous comment, by the way.)
Your last paragraph implies a (discredited) Platonic view of numbers, i.e., that they “exist” somewhere out there even though we can’t sense them. So… how did you ever get the notion that they “exist” if your senses didn’t pick them up? (That’s sloppy.) In other words, what is the “raw data” that lead you to believe numbers “exist” somewhere out there floating about, and how does that “raw data” connect to the immateriality of your numbers? (Without running to Wikipedia or some other philosophically-challenged source, can you provide a definition of what a number is?)
Furthermore, you’ve opened the door to reasoning to (your words) other non-sensory-accessible (not accessible to experimentation [confirmation?], again, in your words) things… like “liberty” and “angels”. Care to elaborate on that?
Speaking of Eugene Wigner, I was facinated with his essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
Olegt, I can and will turn this around and ask you to explain in what sense neural cells exhibit consciousness in the absence of human thought? Do certain signal transduction proteins signal the advent of consciousness or is it a particular pattern of synapse firings? Protein sequence content of chimps and humans are strikingly similar so is the greater size of the human brain that which distinguishes the two species or is it something else? I see a research program too. But I envision the possibility of experimental results which would better accord with a dualistic paradigm. Can you envision data more consistent with dualism than emergence or does every possible outcome signal a mysterious but unknown emergence? Or is this a research program like OOL where promissory notes can never be called in but no adverse inferences may be drawn from a history of frustrating results?
Holopupenko wrote:
Holopupenko, you’re not exactly arguing with me. You make straw man versions of my arguments and bravely fight them. I quickly lose interest in conversations like that. Nothing in the above quote contradicts what I said (science does not study the scientific method).
Science is not privileged above other forms of knowledge, it’s distinguished from them. It certainly has boundaries: it cannot study tooth fairies of flying spaghetti monsters. Do you get my drift?
I don’t think anyone can conclude from that paragraph that I hold to the Platonic view of numbers, Holopupenko. In case you still have doubts, I don’t.
olegt,
The “distort and disdain” approach you use is becoming all too transparent. To me you wrote,
I have thought about it. Newton and Pasteur were creationists by your definition of the term (indeed, by almost any definition). It didn’t stop them from doing science.
To Holopupenko you wrote more than one thing as if it needed explaining. That’s disdain in action.
Surely you know that nobody commenting here would need to have it explained to him that we use instrumentation to extend our perceptual abilities. I commend Holopupenko for not replying with similar disdain.
You also wrote,
That was his point. You missed where he headed with it: knowing where the scientific method’s limits are:
By the way, you did something similar earlier with Bradford, though in a way I can understand it. You quoted from his earlier comment, and then wrote,
You did qualify your statement by saying “If I understand you correctly.” But the conclusion you came to was in essence that Bradford is a blithering idiot who wants all science to stop in its tracks today: Close the labs, cut the final checks to the all the researchers and assistants, open the doors and let the lab animals loose, thank you very much, it’s been fun but we’re done. Then you ran with it as a demonstration of all that’s wrong with creationism anyway.
Now, I’ll admit that Bradford opened himself up to this charge by the way he wrote what he did, provided you take what he wrote as if it were his only expression of opinion on the topic. But you’ve read an awful lot of his work on Telic Thoughts, and you know he does not draw the conclusion that you say could be drawn from his comment.
It appears to me that Bradford was stating a rather complex and difficult philosophical thought in as short a form as possible. I know when I do that, sometimes I don’t achieve the greatest possible precision. I also know that when I do that, I trust that people will not grab my imprecision and say, “Did you see that?! He’s saying that science should stop at the boundaries of today’s knowledge! What a blithering idiot!”
In your answers to me, to Holopupenko, and to Bradford you grabbed the LMU—Least Mockable Unit—and you mocked it. I’m calling you on it, and I’m inviting you to quit hunting for LMUs you can take out of context and distort. I’m inviting you to take a position as a serious participant in this discussion instead, by interacting with the substance of what is said here.
********
Interesting…
I wrote all of the above, and then I decided to put up a blog post defining the LMU. While I was doing that, olegt posted a complaint that Holopupenko was making straw men of his arguments. I’m out of time now for this morning, so I don’t have time to assess whether there’s something of substance in that. I’m confident Holo will respond appropriately. (I’m sure he’ll at least point out that he wasn’t disagreeing with “science does not study the scientific method.” He was making the same point himself, and drawing an application from it that I’m not sure olegt has engaged with. But as I said, I don’t have time now to work this through any better than that.)
But the LMU is obviously a cousin to the Straw Man fallacy; not quite the same, but closely related. I found this to be quite an ironic thing for olegt to bring up in light of that.
William Bradford wrote:
True to his old self, William deflects things and asks his opponent to do his work. No problem, sir.
Look at other, well understood cases in science where emergence plays a key role. For example, superconductivity is an emergent property of electrons in a metal cooled to liquid-helium temperatures. We don’t experiment with superconductivity itself, it’s just a concept. Experiments are done with electrical current of electrons. The theory of superconductivity nonetheless makes certain predictions about the behavior of electrical current in a superconductor. Most importantly, there are predictions that distinguish a superconductor from a good (or even perfect) conductor such as the Josephson effect or the Abrikosov vortex lattice. (Experiments confirmed both; Josephson and Abrikosov collected their Nobel prizes.)
So there is no problem in principle with experimental verification of a theory based on an emergent property. Now it’s your turn. If your theory holds that thoughts are not an emergent property of the brain but is something that exists independently of it, is there a way to test such a theory?
We all get your drift Olegt. You chide Holopupenko for responding to straw men and proceed to indulge in your own straw man with the usual knee jerk mockery: “tooth fairies of flying spaghetti monsters”. Holopupenko asked a legitimate question relevant to an issue you raised- scientific boundaries. That alludes to the broader issue of relevant knowledge. At Telic Thoughts I’ve repeatedly noted that our current state of knowledge marks scientific boundaries. Obviously the boundary lines move like boundaries of a shore line. The advantage of that definition is that it avoids the temptation to insert faith based expectations for what should be empirical outcomes. Anyone who follows origin of life debates knows exactly what this references.
Rather than the trite tooth fairy responses why not answer with an actual depiction of what you consider to be boundaries. If there are none then state that. You might start with an issue related to this discussion. Is science capable, in your view, of determining whether or not the existence of a mind could precede the existence of this universe? A straightforward answer would suffice.
Olegt:
I never doubted that emergence in principle is a valid concept. My reference was to a specific instance in which emergence is theorized but not demonstrated. The alternative to emergence is to regard consciousness as an independent entity not reducible to neural cells.
Yes. If thoughts are not independent then markedly different thinking should correlate to different neural causal pathways. Painting a portrait should correspond to neural pathways which are distinct from solving a mathematical word problem. That suggests the alternative namely, identical pathways linked to distinctly different thinking.
olegt,
Is consciousness an emergent property? If so, then it is a property. If it is a property, then by definition it is what philosophers call “causally effete.” It has no causal abilities whatsoever. It’s a rider along with causally effective properties and events, but itself it does nothing. “Red” is a property of some apples, or alternatively a property of certain wavelengths of light. But red doesn’t cause anything. Light can cause things, but red cannot.*
Now, I could imagine a way one could understand consciousness so that being causally effete poses no problem. (“Consciousness is just the descriptive term we use for the state that occurs when we … ” — you can fill in the blank.) But let me refer back to the relevant portion of the SCM quote that started all this:
It seems to me that the point he is getting at here could have been made this way, and that this version is completely consistent with his intention:
You yourself have treated the problem of thought as a parallel to the problem of consciousness, for example when you wrote,
So I’m going to suggest we ask the same questions we’ve been asking, only with respect to thought instead of consciousness. Two main questions:
A. Do you consider thought to be an emergent property of neural systems?
B. Does thought have any causal efficacy or is it causally effete?
(By the way, the interactionist problem you raised here is nowhere near as difficult as you seem to think. But I don’t want to deflect this discussion onto that.)
*Can “red” make us stop at an intersection? No. It is light impinging on the retina, causing processes to begin in the brain, connecting to interpretations based on social learning and etc., that causes us to stop. That connection to interpretations is of course closely related to what is under discussion here, so I won’t try to develop it any more fully in a footnote.
William Bradford wrote:
Yes, William, there are boundaries to what science can study. I was only half joking when I mentioned tooth fairies and I was entirely serious about numbers. Science cannot study things that elude empirical verification. Tooth fairies and numbers can’t be studied experimentally.
Or take string theory. At the moment we have no way of doing experiments with strings directly, so string theory is not yet science. String theorists heard the message and have been busily working on generating predictions that could be tested experimentally. They have come up with a couple of predictions—supersymmetric partners of known particles and effects of the extra dimensions—which may be observed in experiments at the LHC within the next decade or so. Or they may not be: the energy scales at which these effects kick in are not known. But at least these predictions are testable in principle.
I am not sure, however, how one could test the idea that “a mind could precede the existence of this universe.” I see no way in which this could be done. Do you?
Hello olegt
I am not sure, however, how one could test the idea that “a mind could precede the existence of this universe.” I see no way in which this could be done. Do you?
I think you misapprehend the intent of the question which was to elicit the response you provided. Similar difficulties would arise in determining whether a “mind” precedes the existence of these words on you computer monitor. Which brings us back to the original observation, “What is mind?” What is this particular reflective capacity which we humans, and as far as can be determined only we humans, exhibit?
It’s all well and good to suggest that “mind” is an “emergent property” of matter in a particular configuration, but what is an “emergent property”? You use the example of superconduction as “emergent property” but your example conflates the question of “how we achieve a particular effect” with the question of “why this should be the case”, such as why mixing two gases, hydrogen and oxygen, will produce liquid water with its manifold properties. The term “emergent property” is, epistemologically identical to “and then a miracle happens”.
Describing “mind” as an “emergent property” of matter in a particular configuration does nothing to answer the question. We are, apparently unique among all creatures, capable of reflectively observing ourselves and our environment, and through such reflection, developing conscious knowledge and inventing big words, such as epistemology, to describe and communicate that knowledge. This is what naturalists call the “hard problem of consciousness”.
Personally… I think it is just a case of mind over matter… If you have no mind, it doesn’t matter.
William Bradford wrote:
Something along these lines has been done a few times. We know that different modes of thinking light up different regions in the brain. Here is an excerpt from an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal:
This looks like evidence supporting the hypothesis of a mind emerging from brain activity.
I find it interesting that you did not propose how your theory can be tested. Instead, you proposed to test the competing theory and if the competing theory fails the test then yours wins. The problem with this approach is that scientific theories do not win by default. You can’t say “Theory A is wrong, so theory B is right.” You need to test Theory B itself. It looks like this time your theory lost anyway, but I wanted to point out this problem to you nonetheless.
olegt,
This is not entirely accurate:
Here is one way Theory B can be tested indirectly. If the following obtains:
- Theory A is found to be wrong, AND
- Theory B is conceivably true, AND
- There is no Theory C on the table, and none on the horizon, either
… then there is strong support for Theory B, by virtue of its being the only conceivably true theory. (I’m sure you know the difference between “strong support” and “proof.” I’m not claiming this proves Theory B, but I am claiming that if the above obtains, then there is strong support, which is what science is looking for most of the time in conducting tests of theories, isn’t it?)
This is all pretty ordinary. Suppose you are wondering who put a certain typed note on your desk at the office. You know there are exactly two other people in the building beside yourself, and you also know that no one else has been in the building during the time the note could have been placed there. You ask Person A, “Did you put it there?” and A’s response convinces you that A did not do it (Theory A is found to be wrong). Do you have to ask B if B did it, or do you know the answer already?
But that’s all by-the-way. Personally I think the “test” for mind being (partially) independent of brain is philosophical, not empirical.* In fact it is necessarily so, because the brain-independent mind is ex hypothesi not testable by empirical means. (No one claims mind and brain are not interdependent, by the way, so the existence of correlations between mind states and brain states is expected and acceptable for those of us who consider mind to have some kind of its own—interdependent—reality.)
Anyway, because it is a philosophical inquiry in which we must engage, for that reason I’m still eagerly looking forward to your answers to the questions I put to you a couple hours ago, when you have a chance to answer them.
*There are also theological ways of approaching the question, but for us to use that here would require theological common ground that probably doesn’t exist between us.
Here is an example of the difficulties which arise when we accept the naturalistic explanation of “mind”.
Murderer with ‘aggression genes’ gets sentence cut
This conundrum was recognized by Darwin, even as he was writing the book which would would make it respectable.
http://www.discovery.org/a/9581
It surprises me that those who advocate determinism (no free will) always grant themselves an implicit exception tot he deterministic laws which govern everyone else. Free will is a prerequisite of free intellect. If our actions are determined then the intellect which guides our actions must also be determined. If the intellect which guides our actions is determined solely by genes or environment then the product of that intellection, whether action or words, can have no more significance (meaning) than billiard balls rolling around the billiard table.
“The enlightened few…?” The execeptions to the blind deterministic laws of nature? And how did this “enlightened few” manage to overcome the deterministic laws of nature? Does this exceptionalism grant the “enlightend few” license to guide the development of the greater mass of “ordinary people” into the utopian mold the “enlightened few” have imagined?
The New Scientist article also notes;
It is but a short step from excusing the actions of those who [allegedly] cannot prevent their actions to deciding that those who [allegedly] cannot prevent their actions should be isolated or removed from the great mass of “ordinary people”. After all, if they are constitutionally incapable of governing their own actions, and their actions consititute “harm” to the great mass of “ordinary people”, and that constitutional incapacity is heretary, does it not behoove us to protect the great mass of ‘ordinary people” by removing those harmful genes from the gene pool?
This reflects a common modern confusion about the law, a confusion which has led to such abominations as “hate crimes” legislation. The law is ultimately interested in whether or not a person committed the acts attributed to him, motivation may play a mitigating factor in sentencing, but the ultimate interest of the law is guilt or innocence… did he or didn’t he?
However, if we return to Darwin’s thought about the “enlightened few”
If “ordinary people would never be “fully convinced of its truth,”, because they are incapable of overcoming the deterministic laws of nature which Darwin and the “enlightened few” have managed to overcome, due to some exceptional, or dare I say, miraculous capacity, how then should the “enlightened few” act toward the masses of “ordinary people”?
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-green-nudges-an-interview-with-obama-re
And lest you suggest that I am misinterpreting the concept of “Nudge” because Sunstein pays lip-service to libertarian concepts of choice let me remind you that the concept of “Nudge” is not argument and persuasion but propaganda and regulation. Consider the advice to princes from Niccolo Machiavelli…
Tom Gilson wrote:
Let’s see how that works in practice. Having explained the motion of planets around the sun by purely naturalistic means, Isaac Newton pondered why all the planets move in the same plane (the ecliptic). He could not find any natural explanation for that, so he supposed that this state could not have arisen randomly. He wrote in a letter to Richard Bentley:
It seems like the conditions you stated are satisfied: no natural explanation on the table and none on the horizon. It took hundreds of years for the theory of planet formation to appear, but we now have it, so Theory B (divine origin of the solar system) is no longer needed.
And yes, Newton did play a creationist in this episode.
Good point. To test whether distinct thoughts map to distinct neural activity we would want to focus on the particular part of the brain linked to the activity in question. Mathematical and linguistic aptitudes have been sourced to specific brain regions. My son majored in math and we’ve discussed how different approaches can lead to the same solution to a problem. It’s the kind of exercise for which neural activity could be revealing. If my son were to solve problem x one day and then later solve the same problem using a different approach what might we conclude if neural activity differed for each attempt? What is the pattern was the same? How would we know if neural dynamics resulted from his thought flow or prompted it? How do we go about identifying “unit thoughts” that are distinct in time and content from other thoughts which also were part of the same problem solving process? What methodology would be utilized to identify causal factors and link a causal trail of neural events and thoughts so as to distinguish causes from effects? BTW, the answers to some of this is that technology is not up to snuff. But I suspect there is much more ti it than that. These are immensely complex problems when we get down to the very intricate details.
Or merging with brain activity. The last paragraph is revealing. Brain states are referenced. Differences in brain wave patterns. “Your brain is really working quite hard…” Note the personification. You are not working hard, your brain is. So what’s the differences? Consciousness in a nutshell. If the brain is some sort of detached biochemical factory its inner workings could entail varied patterns and perhaps more greater reaction intensity (or maybe less) but working hard is not a detached concept. At some level effort is quantified. And effort is?
Take a look at something else. The changing brain wave patterns are preceded by changing thought patterns. No, you say? Changing brain wave patterns alter thoughts? And changing brain wave patterns result from increased effort. LOL. See what a tangled web we weave!
That suggests the alternative namely, identical pathways linked to distinctly different thinking.
Take another gander at this remark. Scientific theories do not win by default. That the mind emerges from biomatter is an established theory… er I mean a theory needing to be placed on an empirical footing. So how dare you take your own fancy footed dualism theory and compete with my unsubstantiated theory of mind emergence. Whose defaulting here anyway? LOL. Actually Olegt, I’m suggesting a standard which could serve as a demarcation between the two paradigms. On one side of the line emergence is supported (but not shown) and on the other side dualism is indicated but also not conclusively shown.
That’s right, olegt. Theories are often supported for a long time and then supplanted by others. That happens with purely naturalistic ones, too.
By the way, is there some reason you’re not answering the questions I asked this morning, and reminded you of again later? Or should I assume you’re working on it now, since it’s only been a few minutes since you posted that last comment?
Hi Dave,
Have you seen this brilliant piece before? Makes the point.
Have you seen this brilliant piece before? Makes the point.
That puts it in perspective. Give me one good reason not to do it.
Tom, the answer to your Question A is Yes. To answer your Question B I will have to figure out what the heck causally effete means. I am not particularly interested in philosophical meanderings, so this may not happen soon.
Thanks for answering, olegt. I defined “causally effete” in the question, I thought. Another synonym is “impotent,” in the strongest sense of the word: not just weak, but completely incapable of producing any effect in the world whatever.
If you’re not interested in philosophical meanderings, then I can understand why you would think science is the only route to knowledge. It may just be the only one you’re interested in.
Here’s why I would suggest you consider Question B worth working on. If you are right that (A) thought is a property of the brain, and if (B) as a property it is incapable of causing anything, then your thoughts do not produce any effect in the world. If someone asked, “Why did you come to that conclusion…?” you could not answer, “Well, I thought it through, and …” That answer could be true only if your thoughts can cause an effect (that conclusion, in this case); but if both A and B are true, then your thoughts can’t do that. The “emergent property” theory of thought makes thoughts causally impotent.
And that’s a lot to give up for the sake of a theory.
The Unnatural Selection of Consciousness
Written by: Raymond Tallis
http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=485
Raymond Tallis is emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, a philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic. His many books include The Enduring Significance of Parmenides: Unthinkable Thought (Continuum) and The Kingdom of Infinite Space (Atlantic).
Full article
http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=485