Reports of the Demise of Materialism Are Premature
October 30, 2008 3:42 AM Subscribe

"You cannot overestimate how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down.", argues psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, part of a growing "non-material neuroscience" movement, an approach that evokes Cartesian dualism - the belief that the mind is not linked to the body, taking on the qualities of a soul. However growing the movement might be, others argue that the end of materialism is far from nigh. (via)
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing (263 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite

I was listening to a doctor interviewing a doctor about emerging treatments. One comment started with "It's like psychiatry. Only 50% of what we know is true, and we don't know which 50% it is."

I think that sums it up right there. First Freud, and now this.
posted by ewkpates at 3:52 AM on October 30, 2008 [9 favorites]

shit... i was hoping for a serious critique of materialism. it's actually IMHO a fairly tenuous concept in physics too...
posted by geos at 3:59 AM on October 30, 2008

Ouch. There is sooo much room for confusion in that article. It is vital to point out that consciousness or sentience is still a hard problem, and the identification of brain states with mental states is not an established "fact" at all. Many perfectly serious thinkers in this field, who would have no truck whatsoever with ID or any such crap, are questioning simplistic identification of mind and brain. Dave Chalmers, who led to the ubiqutous label of the "hard problem of consciousness" is one such, and has been called (derided as) a dualist from some quarters. Please, please, don't take it from that article that any radical metaphysical proposal about the relation of matter and sentience is symptomatic of a hankering for ID or Christian Myth propagation!
posted by fcummins at 3:59 AM on October 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

Earlier Mario Beauregard, a researcher in neuroscience at the University of Montreal, Canada, and co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul, told the audience that the "battle" between "maverick" scientists like himself and those who "believe the mind is what the brain does" is a "cultural war".

The word 'scientist' has no place in that sentence.

There's certainly legitimate arguments for dualism, but none are going to involve arguing for the existence of 'the soul'. And most are going to recognise that even the most impassioned scientific debate doesn't generally involve 'cultural war'.
posted by xchmp at 4:06 AM on October 30, 2008 [8 favorites]

Please, please, don't take it from that article that any radical metaphysical proposal about the relation of matter and sentience is symptomatic of a hankering for ID or Christian Myth propagation!

The "soul" link goes into this in more detail, incidentally.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:10 AM on October 30, 2008

From the "argue" link:

To be clear - science does not say, and cannot say, that all life on earth was not created in an instant by an all powerful designer. It is agnostic towards such a belief. It can only say that such a hypothesis is outside the realm of science because it cannot be tested scientifically. That is methodological naturalism.

I don't know why it's so hard for some people to accept "we don't know" as an answer.
posted by Restless Day at 4:12 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Yes, there's nothing I find more threatening than a lack of evidence.
posted by DU at 4:13 AM on October 30, 2008 [16 favorites]

Back when I used to study this stuff in the university, this subject used to be a hobby horse of mine. It always seemed to me that dualists were simply making the God-of-the-gaps argument that because we can't explain something directly, it must point to the reality of (their conception of) a soul.

I see that in nigh 15 years, very little has changed on this front.
posted by moonbiter at 4:24 AM on October 30, 2008 [17 favorites]

On the contrary, moonbiter, I think that thinking around the foundations of cognition has changed substantially over the last 15 (or 50, your choice) years. We have gone from a view of the brain as an information processing device with perceptual inputs leading to motor outputs that constitute the behavior of an autonomous agent to a vastly different view of the brain as a dynamical system whose functional structure is exquisitely matched to the characteristics of the environment if finds, and of the organism as inextricably embedded in its environment, just as nervous systems are inextricably embedded in very specific bodies. Clark gets a mention in the target article, but the Enactive view, based in Francesco Varela's work, and the Ecological view originating with J. J. Gibson all conspire to provide a radically different view. There is no simple "materialist/dualist" debate left.
posted by fcummins at 4:28 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

As a continuation to the "others argue" links, Neurologica had a third part to the series explaining the definitions and positions in more detail.
posted by mystyk at 4:29 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

the difference between my self and any other human being on earth is entirely non-material.

what
posted by DU at 4:30 AM on October 30, 2008 [9 favorites]

Except that, fcummins, it reads from the New Scientist article that there is, in fact, a materialist/dualist debate, driven by some religiously-inclined types. Unless I am misreading the article.
posted by moonbiter at 4:37 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

If part of the brain's material is damaged (for example by a large Occam's razor) part of the mind is damaged. Therefore the mind is dependent on the brain's material.

Or not!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:40 AM on October 30, 2008 [13 favorites]

moonbiter: there is, in fact, a materialist/dualist debate, driven by some religiously-inclined types.

well, yes, sorry. There is, but not within contemporary cognitive science, at least not in those simplistic terms. Once the ID crowd butt in, everything is up for grabs.

EMRJKC: Therefore the mind is dependent on the brain's material.

Which is emphatically not the same thing as saying that the brain is, in any sense, the mind, or that any simple equivalence can be drawn. Kept in sensory deprivation, the mind would be damaged too. The mind is dependent on the environment of the body. And on the body, for that matter.
posted by fcummins at 4:50 AM on October 30, 2008

Here's a great article about how the denial of materialist neuroscience is the “new creationism.”
posted by diogenes at 4:58 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

"The BRAIN has 4 corner simultaneous 4 way MIND matter in only 24 part BRAIN scans. 4 Corner MIND, CUBES BRAIN."

I think that's pretty much caught the gist of what they're saying.
posted by mandal at 5:00 AM on October 30, 2008 [23 favorites]

Are we talking "non-materialist" as in "made of pure spirit" or as in "software"? And don't give me any innocent-eyed questions about "what's the difference". The difference is spirit can exist independently while software can't.
posted by DU at 5:06 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

fcummins, I think you might have gotten the impression from my comment that I was implying that there has been no advance in the science at all in 15 years. I was not, and do not believe this. I have the highest confidence that the cognitive sciences are advancing quite nicely.

I was simply attempting to point out that the arguments from these dualist-types are nothing new, and are no more convincing now than they were then.
posted by moonbiter at 5:14 AM on October 30, 2008

Isn't this some intelligence design/creationism kerfuffle by another means?

Or am I thinking of something else?
posted by Lord_Pall at 5:18 AM on October 30, 2008

The materialist paradigm is in no danger until people start living forever as spirits.

Reality has a way of re-asserting itself no matter how hard you pray.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:18 AM on October 30, 2008 [23 favorites]

From the first link:

This is an especially nasty mind-virus because it piggybacks on some otherwise reasonable thoughts and worries. Proponents make such potentially reasonable points as 'Oh look, we can change our brains just by changing our minds,' but then leap to the claim that mind must be distinct and not materially based. That doesn't follow at all. There's nothing odd about minds changing brains if mental states are brain states: that's just brains changing brains

I was with him until "That doesn't follow at all." Just because the dudes who are related to the ID movement are spewing politicized drivel doesn't mean they can't have right opinion, or be on to something.

Also, a denial of materialism doesn't necessarily lead to dualism either. It is possible that soul and body are the same but that there are hidden mechanisms of consciousness in matter which I will be demonstrating in a lecture series entitled Here, Smoke This, No It's Fine: A Semiotic Distillation of Presubconscious Dialecticism by Potomac Avenue PHD DDT.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:18 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

Oh, dualists, huh? I suppose they'd be willing to let me dope them up on psychoactive drugs and hit 'em in the head a few times, since brain states don't correspond with mind states.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:23 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Dualism in general seems like a hold out of magical/religious thinking dressed up as ontology. It basically says "the entire universe obeys laws that can be studied and described by using logic, mathematics and observation, except for this special little part of it which is so goshdarn special it just couldn't possibly follow the same rules as the rest of it, now could it? Nope, that part must be run by god/angels/random magical agent."
It's sloppy thinking, little more than propaganda. Not really anything to argue against. Even Descartes apparently put the dualist thing in to keep the church off his back.
posted by signal at 5:27 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

The dualists, exceptionalists and IDers are being chased down the alley of ignorance by the ravening beast of rationalism. This is just another trashcan of obfuscation that they've pulled over to try to slow the progress of the beast as it snaps at their heels. It will prove no more effective than the other trashcans thrown before, as the chase hurtles towards the brick wall of reality at the dead-end of the alley.
posted by Jakey at 5:28 AM on October 30, 2008 [20 favorites]

Isn't this some intelligence design/creationism kerfuffle by another means?

Yes, it is.
posted by diogenes at 5:29 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

A view from David Chalmers, originator of the phrase 'the hard problem'.
posted by Phanx at 5:38 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

There's a lot of really closed-minded people in this thread. I think it's disappointing how the priests of material reductionism scream and threaten anyone who suggests that there might be something beyond the reach of science; it's sad how, in this day and age, the people who dissent from scientific dogma must be silenced and punished, lest the weaknesses and flaws in naturalism tear it apart. It would be far better that scientists investigate those flaws and build a better model of reality than work so vigorously to defend a flawed ontology and a blinkered epistemology.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:42 AM on October 30, 2008 [10 favorites]

The day that science bottles the soul in glass,
We'll plant Apple trees and drink blue screens of death.
And nail up Turing's thesis to the Churches,
And peer through fractal saints in broken Windows.

And when the nano inquisition came
the witches would be made confess (in hex)
Konami codes to live as many lives
As plumber brothers and their 8-bit brides.
posted by kid ichorous at 5:45 AM on October 30, 2008 [22 favorites]

How did Discovery Institute crap get on the front page. Marisa Stole the Precious Thing, for shame. It's not growing - its the same old bullshit from the same old bullshitters. Schwartz -> Beauregard -> O'Leary -> Dembski.

Consciousness is fundamentally nonmaterialist, in that the difference between my self and any other human being on earth is entirely non-material.

Wrong. Sorry. But wait - where is this magical difference? Oh, that's right, it's non-material so you don't have to demonstrate it at all! How utterly convenient.
posted by Sparx at 5:45 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

I think this is another 'wedge issue', where they're lying their heads off about something that doesn't agree with 'common sense', to sow discord with science and promote an evangelical agenda. I don't think they believe this strongly, it's just a method to sow confusion.

They're setting up for another Big Fight here, trying to get magical thinking back into the mainstream.
posted by Malor at 5:46 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

To properly support dualism, however, non-materialist neuroscientists must show the mind is something other than just a material brain. To do so, they look to some of their favourite experiments, such as research by Schwartz in the 1990s on people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Schwartz used scanning technology to look at the neural patterns thought to be responsible for OCD. Then he had patients use "mindful attention" to actively change their thought processes, and this showed up in the brain scans: patients could alter their patterns of neural firing at will.

From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material.

That's pretty weak "proof" of the soul. It's no different than neurofeedback, which is certainly not spiritual.

I have to say though, I am excited to see what kind of new research can come out of this and the intense debates that will ensue. Hopefully there won't be a lack of fervor for "scientific" methodology to get in the way of that.
posted by tybeet at 5:47 AM on October 30, 2008

How did Discovery Institute crap get on the front page. Marisa Stole the Precious Thing, for shame.

You'll notice that there is more than one link in the post, thanks.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:48 AM on October 30, 2008

On post-view - David Chalmers is a question begging git.
posted by Sparx at 5:49 AM on October 30, 2008

It always lights up my sense of skepticism when people assert "We're not sure how it works" --> "OMG MAGIC!"
posted by mullingitover at 5:52 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

You'll notice that there is more than one link in the post, thanks.

Is the world flat? Views differ. Let's give them all equal time because everyone has the right to an ~~informed~~ opinion.

Good Lord, I'm in a argumentative mood today.
posted by Sparx at 5:56 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Dualism is the poster child for "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." Or what signal said.
posted by Skorgu at 5:59 AM on October 30, 2008

"We're not sure how it works" --> "OMG MAGIC!"

In my experience, this is how most people treat computers.
posted by adamdschneider at 6:03 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

The "conclusion" they've drawn from a legitimate experiment is pretty sad, and its sad that they're trashing a perfectly good experiment with their nonsense. I mean, I can program my computer to change the state of its CPU "at will", this does not indicate that my computer has a soul, merely that the processor changes its state on demand.

mek wrote Consciousness is fundamentally nonmaterialist, in that the difference between my self and any other human being on earth is entirely non-material.

What leads you to conclude that? The "software" the brain runs pretty much has to be encoded in some material manner, or else the brain couldn't run it. Whether its a literal matter of a "wiring" difference in how neurons are connected, or something more subtle (quantum states? different chemistry in certain neurons? etc) hardly matters.

To use a computer analogy there can be a vast difference between two hard drives made by the same manufacturer: they can store different data. The data is not represented by anything grossly physical (ie: push rods, etc) but don't tell me that the magnetic fields that represent the data are non-material.
posted by sotonohito at 6:10 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

Aren't we sick of FPPs that poke fun at Christians yet?
posted by liquidindian at 6:11 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Even if consciousness were nothing more than software running on a neural net, there is still a lot of uncharted theory here, and much of it could be considered magical. So fear not, philosophers.

- Are other animals capable of self-awareness? Is there a test superior to the Turing test that can determine this for creatures unable to vocalize or learn language? For example, does recognizing your image in a mirror make you self-aware?

- How does a self-aware process perceive itself once it dies? Does it relive some portion of time endlessly?

- How do you know that the whole universe, in some earlier condensed state, was not once self-aware?

- If so, how do you know that it won't be again?
posted by kid ichorous at 6:12 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

the difference between my self and any other human being on earth is entirely non-material.

No, the difference is in your head, as an approximation of a collection of cells, which in turn are approximations of collections molecules and atoms, but those approximations are stored and processed inside your head, which is made of material itself.

Also, note the way that anti-science people attack the word "materialism". It's kind of a pun, they want to mix the word "materialism" as it applies to philosophy with it's meaning in general which means, you know purchasing stuff, buying stuff, having a sort of vacuous materialistic lifestyle. They're totally different but the anti-sciencers love to confuse them.

On the other hand, it's much more common for scientific people to talk about observable reality as "nature", but it's harder to attack "nature". It's a harder sell to teach your kids unnaturally (or supernaturally)
posted by delmoi at 6:17 AM on October 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

Reality has a well known materialist bias.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:18 AM on October 30, 2008 [23 favorites]

- How do you know that the whole universe, in some earlier condensed state, was not once self-aware?

- If so, how do you know that it won't be again?

Can you think of an experiment that would test this hypothesis? If not, it's not really science. After all, we can't 'scientifically' prove that 'god' doesn't exist either.
posted by delmoi at 6:19 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Reality has a well known materialist bias.

Perception has a well known bias bias.
posted by bunnytricks at 6:20 AM on October 30, 2008 [8 favorites]

Can you think of an experiment that would test this hypothesis?

Well, if I had the computational resources, I'd test all sorts of configurations of entropy, energy, density, and universal constants to see if any other sorts of computational patterns might emerge from the physical puzzle. Biological computers don't have to be the only kind out there.
posted by kid ichorous at 6:24 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

But then I'd also be able to play Fallout 3, so this newer kind of science might have to wait...
posted by kid ichorous at 6:25 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yes, there's nothing I find more threatening than a lack of evidence.

/me strips nekkid, paints self blue, sneaks into DU's house and hides in his closet, and bursts out late at night screaming, waving a bloody katana in one hand and holding the severed head of Prince in the other.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:27 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

People have odd hang-ups about the brain that are only rivaled by their hang-ups about genitalia. I'm not sure what the shrill dualists find so alarming about the idea that the physical state of the brain controls the mind: I guess to the right it cuts God/Jeebus/souls off at the knees (though this doesn't necessarily follow) and to the left it undermines the idea that people are endlessly malleable (though this doesn't necessarily follow) and/or raises the inference that some intellectual differences between groups are not socially created. In that regard, I'm not sure how these views differ much from the sort of Palinesque anti-intellectualism much maligned and ridiculed on this site. I also wonder how any of these crazies explain why being off their meds so thoroughly influences their thinking - certainly pesky little things like neurons and synapses can't control the great and special and unique human mind!
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:29 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

...if I had the computational resources, I'd test all sorts of configurations of entropy, energy, density, and universal constants to see if any other sorts of computational patterns might emerge from the physical puzzle...

This would be a good approach as a first step to exploring parameters space and getting your mind wrapped around the issues, but isn't really an "experiment". An experiment tests reality, not an assumptions-programmed-in simulation of reality.
posted by DU at 6:30 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

- How does a self-aware process perceive itself once it dies? Does it relive some portion of time endlessly?

I'd be interested to hear what you think your computer does once it shuts off.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:30 AM on October 30, 2008

>"We're not sure how it works" --> "OMG MAGIC!"

> In my experience, this is how most people treat computers.

I disagree. Alot, maybe the majority of the population manage to get by without knowing how their car, or their computer or whatnot works. Through their own experience, and the example and guidance of others, they learn how to turn it on and make it go, and do what they needed to do, and their heads don't explode because they don't happen to have mastered the fundamentals of internal combustion or microprocessor architecture.

The same applies to consciousness; most of us do a reasonable job of being conscious, functioning individuals without being neuroscientists or having a complete abstract model of how their consciousness works.

We haven't quite mastered that hubris thing yet.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:31 AM on October 30, 2008

and to the left it undermines the idea that people are endlessly malleable

Ah, reinforcing both a) the ridiculous notion of human nature and b) the idea that leftism is somehow tied up in forcing people to reject it. How charming.

Please, explain to me how the answer is always somewhere in the middle.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:32 AM on October 30, 2008

From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material.

And doesn't this indicate EXACTLY the opposite of what Schwartz would like us to believe? His view suggests something like the relationship between a steering column and a suspension indicating to the observer that one item can't be part of the car.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:32 AM on October 30, 2008

Is the world flat? Views differ. Let's give them all equal time because everyone has the right to an informed opinion.

That's funny and all, but I think it's important to point out that the links are not strictly point vs. counterpoint. I realize you obviously have some pretty strong feelings on this, but equating a legitimate and on-going discussion in the scientific community with Flat Earthers - possibly because religious elements have tried to co-opt the discussion as their own - doesn't make it go away.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:35 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Please, explain to me how the answer is always somewhere in the middle.

I mean right and left in the most exaggerated sense, of course. Extreme state involvement is akin to extreme religious involvement: the idea that one can overtime people's proclivities completely through manipulation of the non-physical.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:35 AM on October 30, 2008

I'd be interested to hear what you think your computer does once it shuts off.

Nothing, for sure. But I also wonder what a quantum computer does when it's "not running," and I wonder even more about the computational models that eventually achieve sentience. We're a long ways off.
posted by kid ichorous at 6:39 AM on October 30, 2008

It makes sense that cognitive science (and pseudoscience) is the next big arena for intelligent design issue wedging; the thing about god of the gaps positions is that when one gap starts getting uncomfortably narrow (gap gods have great big pudgy waistlines and tend to overflow their armrests), they look for other gaps that are still wide.

I wonder which gap they'll migrate to if and when consciousness is better understood. I think it might be something like the ongoing puzzling lack of a zombie apocalypse, but there are other contenders.
posted by Drastic at 6:46 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

An experiment tests reality, not an assumptions-programmed-in simulation of reality.

I thought an experiment tested some aspect of a model of reality under examination under controlled conditions.
posted by mrmojoflying at 6:47 AM on October 30, 2008

I realize you obviously have some pretty strong feelings on this, but equating a legitimate and on-going discussion in the scientific community with Flat Earthers - possibly because religious elements have tried to co-opt the discussion as their own - doesn't make it go away.

Take a moment to understand that konolia says this in every evolution thread.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:49 AM on October 30, 2008

I thought an experiment tested some aspect of a model of reality under examination under controlled conditions.

That is a simulation, not an experiment.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:49 AM on October 30, 2008

Take a moment to understand that konolia says this in every evolution thread.

God damn it.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:50 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material.

Which is an argument that we don't accept regarding the functioning of muscle tissue, the immune system, or any other biological system with self-regulating feedback mechanisms.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:52 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Clark gets a mention in the target article, but the Enactive view, based in Francesco Varela's work, and the Ecological view originating with J. J. Gibson all conspire to provide a radically different view. There is no simple "materialist/dualist" debate left.

fcummins, thanks for introducing me to those new schools of thought I'm surprised I have never heard of them before. Gibson's theroies of direct perception are particularly interesting.

But I'm not seeing on what they have to do with the mind/body problem, particularly Chalmer's "hard problem of conciseness". Could you explain further?
posted by afu at 6:53 AM on October 30, 2008

in nigh 15 years

In nigh since the beginning of written language, you mean, specifically with regard to the cnostruction of the idea of the duality. Mind the gap.

And Marisa, I had to chuckle on seeing this. ding-ding! ROUND TWO!
posted by mwhybark at 6:55 AM on October 30, 2008

kid ichorous: Where is that poem from you posted earlier? My google gave me nothing. It's very Philip Larkin.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:56 AM on October 30, 2008

And Marisa, I had to chuckle on seeing this. ding-ding! ROUND TWO!

Round Two of what? Remind me. The battle rap thread?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:58 AM on October 30, 2008

When Galileo turned a telescope towards the night sky it stopped being "heaven".
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:00 AM on October 30, 2008

PG/DU/mrmojo: I'll accept that. What I described doesn't exactly put nature to the torture in the Baconian sense. Simulation is a better word. However, the "thought experiment" is all we have when falsifiability remains out of reach.

But I do want to assert that magic has a long history of standing on the limen of new science. Remember Newton's occultism, the alchemy sets and copies of John Dee stashed in the cellar. Magic is a liberating drug. It has value in posing transformative questions and shaking us from rehearsed paradigms.
posted by kid ichorous at 7:06 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

It is one thing to propose that reductionism isn't the best approach to dealing with a specific problem. While you can talk about Google Chrome entirely in terms of the fundamental operations of a Turing-complete system, and a tire failure entirely in terms of the motion of individual molecules of gas in 3-d space, those descriptions are not that useful for explaining that Chrome doesn't run under OSX, and tires should be properly inflated.

It's another to propose that the cerebral cortex is an antenna to communicate with something else via some unknown hypothetical physical force that is beyond the threshold of experimental physics.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:06 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

"YOU cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down.

His enthusiasm was met with much applause from the audience gathered ... for an international symposium called Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness.

As a member of the 'scientific establishment,' you cannot overestimate how thrilled I am that there are ~~wankfests~~ symposia for people who want to thunder and to go beyond the Mind-Body Problem. I will politely point this out to the next person who comes in to my office wishing to discuss quantum consciousness. These were pretty exciting ideas to me once upon a time when ~~I had an abundant supply of weed~~ my brain was young and curious. But I have become old and cranky.

This must be an exciting time to be a cognitive scientist -- so much is being learned so quickly about brain function, and modeling thought is an incredible challenge. But the discussion in these links seemed more about trying to stir up controversy by poking at old ideas with a blunt stick than about any new science.
posted by Killick at 7:09 AM on October 30, 2008 [8 favorites]

More like round 2 million.

I liked that forum thread you linked, it makes it clear how much dissension there is among philosophers while most scientists don't really have anything to say about it because they have other shit to do.

The problem is this, as far as I can tell:

1. Unlike evolution or global warming or flat planets, consciousness examining itself is beset by philosophical paradoxes, some brought into play by indeterminacy emerging in scientific theories.
2. These paradoxes can be used by christian ideologues or the new age naively hopeful to make sweeping, unprovable statements about the mind.
3. Scientists, having no background or interest in such paradoxes, go too far in denying these statements, and accuse everyone who brings them up of being motivated by fantasies of the soul.
4. Stalemate.

This will only end with time and continued study through the scientific method of the nexus of neurology and quantum physics. Piece by piece a viable theory will emerge, and the hand-wringers on both sides will shift to a different area. Now everybody stop fighting and start doing experiments on fruit flies.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:13 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

It's actually quite funny that this is coming out of the Discovery Institute, because if taken on it's face, intelligent design is a materialistic theory. It looks for proof of a "designer" in the physical world, and presumably the designer acts directly on the world in a physical manner.

Some kind of Dualism is pretty much the only honest position that a well educated theist can take, and their are many dualistic arguments that are not crazy or dishonest like the one from this post. Throwing in dualism with intelligent design is really going to far. (and I say this as someone who thinks dualism is a bunch of bullshit, but at least it is interesting bullshit.)
posted by afu at 7:14 AM on October 30, 2008

But I do want to assert that magic has a long history of standing on the limen of new science. Remember Newton's occultism, the alchemy sets and copies of John Dee stashed in the cellar.

Oh, give me a break. Magic is not the future. Magic is the past. Magic held, if I may quote Poe, illimitable dominion for nearly the whole of human history. Science is the project of the last few milennia, and the last few centuries in particular. It is a slow slog up out of superstition and magical thinking.

Newton's occultism granted him no advantages; imagine what more he might have created had he not been consumed with it! It was rational thought and empirical experimentation that produced his accomplishments, not magical thinking and superstition.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:16 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

DU: Yes, there's nothing I find more threatening than a lack of evidence.

If this comment is in response to my comment directly above it, I'm not saying "just because a hypothesis can't be tested doesn't mean it isn't true." I'm saying if a hypothesis cannot be tested then we cannot know if it's true or not. I'm not defending the acceptance of a claim on faith, without proof--please, please understand that. I'm not anti-materialist or anti-science, but it's just as unscientific to say that without proof a hypothesis is wrong. Without proof it is neither right nor wrong.
posted by Restless Day at 7:19 AM on October 30, 2008

There can never be a science of consciousness because a model can't be built from one data point, and each person can only ever observe his own consciousness. There is simply no way to falsify the hypothesis that (for instance) rocks are conscious*.

* Here is how the argument will go:
Me: Make a case that rocks aren't conscious.
You: This is dumb. They don't even have nerves!
Me: How do you know that nerves are required for consciousness?
You: Everything conscious that we've seen has nerves.
Me: How do you know which things are conscious, and don't say "they have nerves"?
You: Consciousness is caused by information processing of a certain sort, and so if a thing does the right sort of information processing, then it's conscious.
Me: That's begging the question. Rocks aren't conscious because they don't do the right kind of information processing, and the right kind of information processing is required for consciousness because we've never seen a conscious rock?
You: Define consciousness to be information processing.
Me: Define me as having a pony.
You: I know I'm conscious. I assume that other things are conscious based on their similarity to me. Rocks are very dissimilar to me, therefore I rule out their consciousness.
Me: P -> Q does not mean -P -> -Q
posted by Pyry at 7:23 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

sparx, just because it's old to you doesn't mean it's old to everyone here. If it's old to you, just don't read that link; go to the other links and the excellent discussion going here.

/eye rolling
posted by nax at 7:28 AM on October 30, 2008

Can we make uninformed statements about how quantum physics proves that consciousness is god, or is it a little early yet for that?
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:30 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

The "brain as computer, mind as software" metaphor is very popular, but software is only meaningful in an input/output context. Who or what is interpreting the output of your mind?

What does this even mean?
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:31 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

a legitimate and on-going discussion in the scientific community

Well, perhaps you should have linked to that, then. Surely if it's both legitimate and ongoing it shouldn't be too hard to find some mainstream credentialed exponent of scientific dualism that isn't an axe-grinding ID sophist demanding we teach whatever manufactured controversy they are currently peddling.

Good luck with that, BTW.
posted by Sparx at 7:34 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Never too early or too often for an uniformed statement Pope. It's like voting!

I just had a conversation with some fruit flies and they say that they are conscious, so I think we've got this thing nailed down.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:39 AM on October 30, 2008

There is simply no way to falsify the hypothesis that (for instance) rocks are conscious.

Hence, Quarry Kittens. Nobody would hurt a Quarry Kitten!
posted by fleetmouse at 7:40 AM on October 30, 2008 [7 favorites]

I just had a conversation with some fruit flies and they say that they are conscious, so I think we've got this thing nailed down.

You better not have funded that conversation with earmarks!
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:43 AM on October 30, 2008

So this is like Time Cube but with post-modernism levels of academic acceptance?
posted by jeffburdges at 7:45 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Surely if it's both legitimate and ongoing it shouldn't be too hard to find some mainstream credentialed exponent of scientific dualism that isn't an axe-grinding ID sophist demanding we teach whatever manufactured controversy they are currently peddling.

As one example there's the discussion going on in the forum of the second link. I put it there as I thought it was lively and engaging from all sides, and thought it was a good condensation of the discussion as a whole. In any event, I do think the issue obviously brings up strong feelings on the matter, and can provoke thoughtful commentary, as evidenced in this thread. I just took issue with being "shamed" for posting on the subject altogether.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:47 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope Guilty: Newton's occultism granted him no advantages; imagine what more he might have created had he not been consumed with it!

But he wasn't too consumed with it, and I think that's the knack. Magic is nothing worse than semi-bounded creative play. You don't throw your life, or heart, (or life savings) into it any more than you throw them into recreational drugs, or role-playing, or other catalysts for fantasy and imagination (of which we have far more available than in Newton's day). You certainly don't expect anything from it. But the moderate indulgence can loosen ties of habit, offer new perspectives, and so on.

Potomac Avenue: kid ichorous: Where is that poem from you posted earlier?

It's a Metafilter original!
posted by kid ichorous at 7:48 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

but equating a legitimate and on-going discussion in the scientific community with Flat Earthers - possibly because religious elements have tried to co-opt the discussion as their own - doesn't make it go away

But this is a discussion between the scientific community and Flat Earthers and their pseudo-scientific cohort. Which should have made it go away from Metafilter.
posted by nicwolff at 7:48 AM on October 30, 2008

"You cannot overestimate how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down."

Yes, I can assure you, we are all quaking in our boots.
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:53 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

OK, that sounds censorious. Actually, good post, interesting discussion - better to know what hoi irrational polloi are "thinking" than to pretend that science has defeated superstition.
posted by nicwolff at 7:55 AM on October 30, 2008

Threatened?
No, I embrace the long view: it might take 500 years or so but everytime religion has gone against science, religion has lost.
posted by francesca too at 7:56 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

My kitty-cat has a soul. And lots of fur. But she sleeps a lot.

QED
posted by Bokononist at 8:01 AM on October 30, 2008

I've never understood materialism as an ontological concept. Consciousness is fundamentally nonmaterialist, in that the difference between my self and any other human being on earth is entirely non-material.

See, that's the problem right there. That sentence is so full of words that have more than one precise meaning - "consciousness", "materialism", "self" - that identifying an agreed-upon meaning, much less determining the truth or falsity of it is impossible. For example, I count no fewer than 4 meanings of "materialism" in the comments to this post.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:02 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Magic is nothing worse than semi-bounded creative play. You don't throw your life, or heart, (or life savings) into it any more than you throw them into recreational drugs, or role-playing, or other catalysts for fantasy and imagination (of which we have far more available than in Newton's day). You certainly don't expect anything from it. But the moderate indulgence can loosen ties of habit, offer new perspectives, and so on.

How many rich occultists have you ever met? The only ones I'm aware of are the ones who write books for the others to buy. This is what gets me about people who believe in magic- if it's so amazing and awesome, why aren't you fantastically rich and famous? Why are all the believers in magic that I've ever met either slogging away in horrible dead-end jobs or living with their parents?

There's a not-entirely-fair, not-entirely-unfair joke that runs "What's the difference between a witch and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four." While there are many believers in the occult and the uncanny who do in fact support their families, why are there so many who live in poverty and failure, and none on the level of George Soros or Warren Buffet?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:03 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

p.s. Try walking out your fourth-floor window if you don't believe the material world is real.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:03 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

better to know what hoi irrational polloi are "thinking" than to pretend that science has defeated superstition.

A fair(ish) point. I'd prefer not to grant them the legitimacy of considering it actual thought, and take issue with the description of Discovery Institute shills as a 'growing movement' as opposed to, say, a bunch of fringe dwelling pseuds with a stated agenda of overthrowing methodological naturalism, but that's obviously a personal preference that makes Nax's eyes roll and might induce further kleptomania in FPPosters so I'll leave it at that and step away from the keyboard.
posted by Sparx at 8:04 AM on October 30, 2008

p.s. Try walking out your fourth-floor window if you don't believe the material world is real.

"I refuse to believe any radical skeptic without bruised shins."
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:06 AM on October 30, 2008

This seems awful handwavy. I wouldn't assume there is more to the brain until we've really investigated how it works and seen that we can't explain all of its function. And we've barely scratched the surface on that yet. I'd have more respect for these people if they'd fund research instead of screeching from their soapboxes about theories they pulled out of their ass and supported with nebulous interpretations from cherry-picked research. Seems like they are more interested in controlling what the public believes instead of doing the hard work to figure out the truth. They even acknowledge this themselves by calling this a 'culture war'. Its like intelligent design part 2 (of many).
posted by no_moniker at 8:07 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Marisa: Afterlife and the Mind. Heh, check out my last comment over there. Mind you, I'm staying out of the ring this round.
posted by mwhybark at 8:08 AM on October 30, 2008

Afterlife and the Mind.

Ooh, yes. Now I remember. That was a fun one.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 8:12 AM on October 30, 2008

I wonder which gap they'll migrate to if and when consciousness is better understood.

It may be the gift that keeps on giving, since I'm not sure there is even an agreed-upon definition of consciousness. Hence the inane argument above.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:14 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope, I think you might be hitting on a similar problem with other creative play, such as drugs, novels, music, or television. Many of those we'd define as dealers and producers are rich, whereas many of those defined by their use and consumption are poor. One (simplistic) explanation would be that people in harder circumstances are more attracted to the overuse of escapist outlets, for one reason or another.
posted by kid ichorous at 8:15 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Malor: They're setting up for another Big Fight here, trying to get magical thinking back into the mainstream.

I wish magical thinking wasn't already the mainstream.

What bothers me about this entire line of argument is what it translates to in the real world: Christians (and others) convincing people to stop taking their psychiatric medications and "pray their way out of it." I had one of my clients commit suicide because of that. So I have a hard time seeing this as an abstract discussion.
posted by threeturtles at 8:16 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

For a Spinozist approach to this question, see Lothar Bickel's The Unity Of Body And Mind.
posted by No Robots at 8:17 AM on October 30, 2008

As a child he thought that all lamps held genies and he would rub electric lamps and desk lamps and hope for genies to emerge to grant wishes. He grew older and thought only the old fashioned lamps like the ones from the story hold genies. How silly I was a boy. And he found some lamps like the ones from the stories and rubbed them and nothing happened except the lamps got shinier. As an old man he thought perhaps there are just a few magic lamps, hidden away, in a distant land. He traveled the world rubbing exotic lamps. No genies. Never genies. He died.
posted by I Foody at 8:17 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

Christians (and others) convincing people to stop taking their psychiatric medications and "pray their way out of it."

Yes, it's the harmonic convergence of fundies and L_Ron_Hubbardists.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:19 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Sparx: Did you read that Chalmers blog post that Phanx (eponcoincidental?) linked to? Or did you just see something about rejecting materialism and whipped out the Git card?

The simplest way to see this is to note that the "hard problem" does nothing to suggest that consciousness doesn't lawfully depend on physical processes, at least in the sense that certain physical states are reliably associated with certain states of consciousness in our world. Even if materialism is rejected, there is still good reason to believe that there is such a dependence, via laws of nature that connect physical processes and consciousness. But if so, there is no problem at all with the idea that evolution can select certain physical states, which yield certain states of consciousness. If interactionist dualism (on which consciousness has a causal role) is true, evolution might even select for certain states of consciousness because of their beneficial effects. And if epiphenomenalism (on which consciousness has no causal role) is true, consciousness can still arise by evolution as a byproduct. Perhaps the thought that consciousness is a byproduct is unattractive, but if so the problem lies with epiphenomenalism, not with evolution.

And in his response to a materialist and a theist in a comment:

Shawn: Certainly people have used the problem of consciousness for a long time to support theism, but one can do that without using it to oppose Darwinism. My post was mainly about the latter topic, not the former. No doubt anti-Darwinist uses have been around the place for some time too, but these have had much less prominence until recently.

Shrink: On squaring Darwinism with dualism, see the post. Karl Popper even used Darwinism about consciousness as a premise in an argument for dualism. I wouldn't go that far, but certainly many people have accepted Darwinism and rejected materialism. (N.B. As it happens, I'm an atheist.)

It doesn't have to be handwavy, but sadly it is usually is.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:19 AM on October 30, 2008

The Life and Times of Mr. Shaquille O'Neil, by I Foody
posted by kid ichorous at 8:21 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

id you read that Chalmers blog post that Phanx (eponcoincidental?) linked to?

I'd add that the "soul" link charters the story of a scientist's approach to addressing the question of consciousness, and how, even though ultimately his quest to scientifically prove faith led to him ignoring the mind-brain connection, his research did earn him a Nobel and opened more than a few doors in the field of neuroscience. I think this is important, as the desire to answer these questions leads us into new territory, regardless of whether the primary motivation is spiritual, rational, or both.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 8:35 AM on October 30, 2008

π=4.4. Dude I can overestimate anything.
posted by Mister_A at 8:35 AM on October 30, 2008

A wizard did it.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:36 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm not keen on the western concept of a soul. It emphasizes that your essence is your unique traits. Such things are surely an emergent phenomenon which cease to exist when you die. So the whole western view of the soul emphasizes that you nolonger exist after your death.

Of course, western philosophers have explored all manor of insane supernatural life after death beliefs trying to cover this fundamental error in their notion of immortality. Your very unique traits quite simply don't survive your death.

One might instead imagine that your unique or emergent components are not that important next to your quasi-immortal replicatiors, i.e. like your biologically heritable components like genes, and more importantly your intellectually heritable components like memes.

I'm saying that emphasis on our known quasi-immortal aspects is inherently the happier philosophy. It also offers the best social motivation : A scientist, author, etc. who communicates their ideas effectively is more immortal than some less published person. A person who spends their life pursuing incorrect ideas like religion is less some person who participated in meme-lines with more future.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:41 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Did you read that Chalmers blog post that Phanx (eponcoincidental?) linked to?

Yes - in particular the two papers he linked to (one of which I had read before, admittedly a while back). Chalmer's arguments usually end up being based on dodgy assumptions, which even Searle has called him out on, particularly his reverse-zombie argument in the second paper. Hence my use of two descriptive words before the finality of 'whipping out the Git card'.
posted by Sparx at 8:46 AM on October 30, 2008

How do the monists in the room deal with the problem of infinite regress? The "brain as computer, mind as software" metaphor is very popular, but software is only meaningful in an input/output context. Who or what is interpreting the output of your mind?

That's only true because it wouldn't be worthwhile to write software without outputs, but obviously it's something we could do. On the other hand, people are not only able to measure their own consciousness, but it becomes quite clear that other people are conscious as well. Their words and actions are the 'output' by which we understand that they are conscious.

Some psychologists believe that we come to understand ourselves the same way that we understand other people. By 'watching' what we do all the time we begin to learn who "we" are. It may very well be that our 'consciousness' is just along for the ride, watching what we do and making predictions about it, the same way we would anyone else.
posted by delmoi at 8:48 AM on October 30, 2008

The "brain as computer, mind as software" metaphor is very popular, but software is only meaningful in an input/output context. Who or what is interpreting the output of your mind?

MY LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST
posted by infinitywaltz at 8:54 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

After digesting all of these links and all of these comments [and wondering exactly what makes this subject so hotly debatable time and time again] i've returned to a simple default thought:

Science does well to theorize the how of things.

Spirituality does well to theorize the why of things.

Neither should be considered infallible or static concepts really, but proponents of both seem to have some incredible desire to become the most popular kid in class.

The most interesting link to me seems to be the neurologica blog link, which covers much of the semantics involved in this discussion.

It is indeed a good idea to make sure we're talking about the extent of the term "materialist", "dualist" and one that i've not seen used in this thread yet "monist".

Monism is synonymous with materialism in this context, as it deals with the emergence of consciousness through brain-based means, while the proponents of ID take offense to the idea, but are likely offended through their own extension of the mechanics of monist-materialism to the entire universe becoming reducible to this concept.

The dangerous part of this whole thing is not to the existence of either schools of thought, but the fundamentalist paradigm emerging (which some of you on both sides of the fense ) that the other side doesn't have the right to exist.
posted by phylum sinter at 8:56 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Marisa: Yeah that was a cool story, but it is as challenging for the concept of religious scientists as much as it is for strict materialists.

Eccles’s story tells us, too, that scientiﬁc evidence alone can never overcome assumptions based on faith, simply because faith is a claim to a nonsensory, nonrational form of knowledge and, therefore, explicitly insulated from scientiﬁc evidence and the claims of reason. In the end, when facts contradict our cherished beliefs, each of us decides, with only intellectual honesty to guide us, whether our beliefs or the facts are dispensable.

I'd argue that the first statement isn't true, and that it is possible to attempt a theory of mind as a religious person without rejecting rationality or letting your motives distract you from inductive reasoning. But I got no examples. And I am a (bad) writer, not a scientist. So I'll jest keep on prayin for a sign!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:56 AM on October 30, 2008

A person who spends their life pursuing incorrect ideas like religion is less [immortal than] some person who participated in meme-lines with more future.

Yes, if there's one thing history has taught us, it's that religious figures are quickly forgotten, while researchers into basic physics and biology are household names for all time.
posted by echo target at 8:57 AM on October 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

ahem,

...fence.

Also: a wise man once said that all the science in the world will tell us more about ourselves than the universe.
posted by phylum sinter at 8:58 AM on October 30, 2008

Sparx: Noted. I will RTFP. But only because I need to figure out how to reverse zombies ASAP.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:00 AM on October 30, 2008

Spirituality does well to theorize the why of things.

The dangerous part of this whole thing is not to the existence of either schools of thought, but the fundamentalist paradigm emerging (which some of you on both sides of the fense ) that the other side doesn't have the right to exist.

I call bullshit. There isn't a religion out there that confines itself to the "why" of things. Every religion has a creation story, has stories about physical, empirical reality, and every religion conflicts thereby with science. Pretending that there is some "spirituality" entity which can coexist with science is false. A "spirituality" that can do so would have to be invented from whole cloth.

...which shouldn't be so hard, since it's not like the existing religions weren't made up to begin with.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:02 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm not even sure what all of this could actually mean in terms of measurable physical consequences. Shouldn't they start small, by trying to build a falsifiable experiment to show if free will exists or not? It's the same issue I have with philosophical zombies — if there's no way to tell the difference between a hypothetical p-zed and a "real" person, would it matter in any measurable manner?
posted by adipocere at 9:04 AM on October 30, 2008

There is no nonrational form of knowledge. There is knowledge, which is sensory and rational, and there is delusion. That's all you got. Delusion is insulated from everything. Kant's point was, hey, you can say there is a nonrational form of knowledge, but that's all you can say. Then you have to row off into the mist of valueless statements, since they are all equally knowledgeless. So, its knowledge or delusion. And all delusions, whether they be gods or monsters, are equal. Would you like to say there are gods and souls? Fine. Since you can't predicate, you barely even get that.

The Delusionals never run out of gas though, that's what I enjoy about them. They are like the Hollywood of the human race. Same plot, different action hero.
posted by ewkpates at 9:07 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

The brain is so necessary to consciousness that you can get by with almost none.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 9:07 AM on October 30, 2008

Surely if it's both legitimate and ongoing it shouldn't be too hard to find some mainstream credentialed exponent of scientific dualism that isn't an axe-grinding ID sophist demanding we teach whatever manufactured controversy they are currently peddling.

The new mysterians aren't exactly dualists, but they do claim that we will never find a material cause for consciousness. The mostly philosophers, but their views are certainly respected as not being crazy. Chomsky is a scientist who is sometimes included with them, but I'm not sure he would accept that claim.
posted by afu at 9:08 AM on October 30, 2008

Forgot the Wikipedia link
posted by afu at 9:09 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope Guilty - I'm in agreement with you. I guess that the differentiation between why and how does blur in most mythos, but most rational people would be able to see a different purpose behind say, the Hopi creation myth and a paper on the analysis of h2o. The paper on h2o probably will not go so far as to say the ultimate source of the water.

I could just as easily say that science 'oversteps' its' bounds when it tries to touch upon the 'why' (which is spirituality's territory/purpose).

So who is the real aggressor here?
posted by phylum sinter at 9:09 AM on October 30, 2008

The paper on h2o probably will not go so far as to say the ultimate source of the water.

The ultimate source of the water would be the Big Bang, in which the matter comprising the water originates. I suspect, however, that you want something like "because God wanted there to be water", but there simply is no way to make an honest teleological claim.

I could just as easily say that science 'oversteps' its' bounds when it tries to touch upon the 'why' (which is spirituality's territory/purpose).

So who is the real aggressor here?

Science never touches "why". Some scientists will occasionally speculate on "why", but teleology is not a valid avenue of scientific inquiry.

The real issue is that, as far as any can tell, there is no why. Teleology is nothing but human arrogance. We are so infatuated with our ability to act that we assume everything that happens must be caused by will. The fact of the matter is that no human being has access to the "why"; anyone who tells you they know, or has any idea beyond pure self-congratulating invention, is either lying or deluded.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:15 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

"Even Descartes apparently put the dualist thing in to keep the church off his back."

Um, what? Do you have even a shred of evidence for this claim? Anything? Anything at all?
We know that he chose not to publish a particular work because he felt that it was thematically to close to material that got Galileo in trouble. Is that what you base your claim on?
posted by oddman at 9:17 AM on October 30, 2008

No, I embrace the long view: it might take 500 years or so but everytime religion has gone against science, religion has lost.

No it hasn't. The Christian church effectively stamped on Greek science and philosophy in the Dark Ages. A flourishing Islamic science died out several centuries later under religious pressure. Soviet biology was destroyed by Communist theory. We can and do go backwards.

Hmmm. Maybe the savior of science is competition between nation states? States that don't pursue open scientific enquiry get invaded a century later by their technologically-advanced neighbours? Bit Darwinian. Does that mean that the possession of nuclear weapons is the biggest threat to American science?
posted by alasdair at 9:19 AM on October 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Pope: Aren't you making a "Why" statement when you say there is none? That's the common area of overstepping in scientific circles. "Oh shut up about X, it doesn't exist?"
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:20 AM on October 30, 2008

A final thought: i think that the problems in thinking arise when one thing goes around masquerading as another, attempting to assimilate it in the process.

I'm not entirely sure who started this particular problem - perhaps either scientists trying to squish (or merely uncover) the purpose of everything or spiritualists trying to toss a cloak up at some point in the scientific process and merely saying "it is the will of the creator" but it's pretty obvious to me that the ID/scientist debate isn't even about science or spirit, it's about getting the world to agree on something that remains too abstractly defined to be taken as absolute truth.
posted by phylum sinter at 9:20 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope: Aren't you making a "Why" statement when you say there is none? That's the common area of overstepping in scientific circles. "Oh shut up about X, it doesn't exist?"

Let me restate that as "none that we have any access to". Possibly there is a "why". We lack any ability to investigate it, however, and as such any statements along the lines of "I know what the "why" is, and it's x" are either the product of deliberate lies or an inability to distinguish between knowledge and imagination.

Happy?
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:23 AM on October 30, 2008

Descartes' Error
posted by growli at 9:24 AM on October 30, 2008

The real issue is that, as far as any can tell, there is no why. Teleology is nothing but human arrogance. We are so infatuated with our ability to act that we assume everything that happens must be caused by will. The fact of the matter is that no human being has access to the "why"; anyone who tells you they know, or has any idea beyond pure self-congratulating invention, is either lying or deluded.

Are you speaking ex cathedra there, Pope Guilty?
posted by Crabby Appleton at 9:25 AM on October 30, 2008

pope guilty said: anyone who tells you they know, or has any idea beyond pure self-congratulating invention, is either lying or deluded.

Again we're in total agreement. I would just extend that the big bang is as easily looked at as a myth (which i think you're saying but i'm not sure with the whole teleology thing) as anything outside our direct experience.

Yes indeed, arrogance is causing the whole world to erupt... but maybe we can't help that. In any case it's good fun.
posted by phylum sinter at 9:26 AM on October 30, 2008

Are you speaking ex cathedra there, Pope Guilty?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. You're so clever! Science and religion are totally, like, equally valid avenues of inquiry!
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:26 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope: A bit, but it's still a statement within an area of knowledge that you declare not to exist.

To clarify, it's the "Shut up about X" part that is intellectually presumptuous, not that claim that it doesn't exist. No-one has the right to be the only one to make statements on a subject, it's as unfair as solipsism's, "Well that's just your opinion man."

How do you know there is no ability to investigate "Whys" without investigating them? Rejecting lies and misconceptions through investigation is a lot of fun and good for the environment.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:27 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I would just extend that the big bang is as easily looked at as a myth (which i think you're saying but i'm not sure with the whole teleology thing) as anything outside our direct experience.

The Big Bang is a theory that fits the available evidence and can be used to make reliable predictions about future findings. If you can't tell the difference between this and religious myths, then I submit that you are either dishonest and vexatious in your participation in this discussion or simply too blinkered by a religious viewpoint to comprehend that science and religion are not only different things, they're different kinds of thing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:29 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

To clarify, it's the "Shut up about X" part that is intellectually presumptuous, not that claim that it doesn't exist.

Look, man, we do not have "why" sensory organs. Nobody can reliably be shown to have any contact with God or Brahma or whoever. Nobody can be shown to have any actual reason for knowing "why". Every single "why" claim that has been made has been a variation on either "God said it" or "it would be really awesome if". These are not useful sources of information.

How do you know there is no ability to investigate "Whys" without investigating them?

That's a nonsensical question, akin to asking how I know that there's no way to drink the entire ocean without first drinking the entire ocean. Tell me, how do you believe that "whys" can be investigated?
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:32 AM on October 30, 2008

ewkpates wrote: Kant's point was, hey, you can say there is a nonrational form of knowledge, but that's all you can say.

But Kant demanded that rational knowledge be subordinated to non-rational belief. "I must abolish knowledge to make room for belief" (Preface to the 2nd edition of Critique of Pure Reason). And why? Because rationality denies personal immortality, liberty and God. For Kant, we have for this reason a moral imperative to subordinate knowledge to belief. On the other hand, we have Spinoza who understands knowledge and belief as inter-connected aspects of our thought, and the mind as the body thinking itself. See Constantin Brunner's Spinoza contra Kant.
posted by No Robots at 9:33 AM on October 30, 2008

The new mysterians aren't exactly dualists, but they do claim that we will never find a material cause for consciousness.

Well, they're not dualists at all, and they do not make the claim that there is no material cause for consciousness, merely that our wiring limits certain fields of enquiry concerning the mind so some questions are literally unknowable, eg, how it feels to be something else. Which is an interesting argument to make, but in no way carries water for the dualists, being a position about knowledge, rather than underlying mechanics.
posted by Sparx at 9:34 AM on October 30, 2008

Look, man, we do not have "why" sensory organs.

I submit the human genitalia as evidence to the contrary.
posted by kid ichorous at 9:38 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

That's only true because it wouldn't be worthwhile to write software without outputs, but obviously it's something we could do.

We can write software that has no output, but would that program be a mind? The mind seems to have a meaningful inner experience, so I guess to shore up the metaphor you'd need to create artificial intelligence.

On the other hand, people are not only able to measure their own consciousness

How do people do that? With their conciousness?

but it becomes quite clear that other people are conscious as well. Their words and actions are the 'output' by which we understand that they are conscious.

I don't think you can call another person's actions a measure of their conciousness. That's the whole zombie problem - there's no apparent way to tell if anyone else does have the same inner experience as yourself.
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 9:39 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope Guilty said: The Big Bang is a theory that fits the available evidence and can be used to make reliable predictions about future findings. If you can't tell the difference between this and religious myths, then I submit that you are either dishonest and vexatious in your participation in this discussion or simply too blinkered by a religious viewpoint to comprehend that science and religion are not only different things, they're different kinds of thing.

I'm not religious by any extent of the word, but i do have plenty of vexations and am not sure what honesty entails here.

Don't take what i say as passionate tubthumping really, my participation here was initially to share what i see as different takes on the same material. What you've added/questioned is great and i'm happy to have the blue to clarify my thinking on the screen.

I'm very aware that science and religion are two different kinds of things, i'm trying to point out that they tend to get on each other when they try to over-extend themselves into the territory of the other "type of thing" (e.g. how v. why). Maybe it's just one side that gets more defensive when they see the influx of information or observation that attempts to remold the consensus agreements, thus causing the other thing to bark louder over and over.
posted by phylum sinter at 9:48 AM on October 30, 2008

This seems to be stretching the scientific enquiry into philosophy, if I'm understanding correctly where people are taking this.

We have evidence -- as good as experimental in that we can see cause and effect -- on brain alterations and resulting changes in consciousness as reported by the subjects. To suppose that, yes the brain and mind are connected but the mind is immaterial and somehow merely connected to the brain seems like a conveniently unprovable addition.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:48 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

Pope guilty, I agree with you in just about every thing you've said. Having said that, dial it down a notch, eh?
posted by boo_radley at 9:49 AM on October 30, 2008

I loled.
posted by rusty at 9:52 AM on October 30, 2008

Your Holiness: Look, man, we do not have "why" sensory organs.

So you admit the mind is non-material!!!!!?!??!1

Just kidding. I don't think we disagree to much. I don't think the big bang is just another religious doctrine or something. But I do beleive in Stephen J Gould's non-overlapping magiesteria theory (which I link to every couple of weeks in MetaComments I guess) that says that Science doesn't need to deny Spiritualism or Religion's claims, as their provenances do not coincide.

The investigations are being done by Theologians and Philosophers, some of whom say just what you are saying, that no Truth Values can be assigned to the results of the discussion. But it's not a given of science that such a thing must be so, nor is it the place of science to demand that these disciplines admit that they are full of shite.

On the flip side of course, we (non-professional cafe-dwelling boho wannabe Socrateases) need to keep our fingers out of the theories of consciousness unless we actually know anything about neurology. Hence the righteous disdain for the psuedoscience of the first FPP link.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:52 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Kant was admitting he was doing something stupid. He probably had his reasons. He set out to prove that God wasn't necessary to knowledge. He did it. He might have felt bad about it, other people might have been upset with him for doing it. He says, in the preface to the second edition, that God is not possible within human experience.

So. Yeah.
posted by ewkpates at 9:53 AM on October 30, 2008

My mind told my brain, over and over, not to comment.

DAMN YOU, MAVERICK BRAIN!
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 9:54 AM on October 30, 2008

Forgot to link and/or spell check my Gould reference. Sigh, back to the coffee machine, which I offer as solid evidence for a innate malevolence in inanimate objects.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:54 AM on October 30, 2008

Growli, I think that was possibly the most poorly written wikipedia entry I've ever seen.
posted by oddman at 9:55 AM on October 30, 2008

Durn Bronzefist wrote: To suppose that, yes the brain and mind are connected but the mind is immaterial and somehow merely connected to the brain seems like a conveniently unprovable addition.

We experience reality in thought as matter: thought is primary and matter is secondary.
posted by No Robots at 9:58 AM on October 30, 2008

I'm very aware that science and religion are two different kinds of things, i'm trying to point out that they tend to get on each other when they try to over-extend themselves into the territory of the other "type of thing" (e.g. how v. why)

As Pope Guilty said, religion very often delves into how, and in my opinion that's a relatively common-sense area of religion to get into. Also, it seems like the "there is no why" really is a logical outcome of scientific findings, which generally find that natural processes often don't have any discernable higher meaning.

I think the real conflict is that both sides see their method of theorizing about the world as better. Religions often claim that their theories were given to their followers directly from a god or gods, and reject any alternate theories on the basis that they are by definition inferior because the god or gods know infinitely more about how the world works than any human possibly could. Scientists often claim that religious theories are in fact made-up by humans, and as a result depend on the whims of the people who control or shape the religion, rather than conforming to experimental results and real world observations as scientific theories do.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:59 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

abc123xyzinfinity: That's the whole zombie problem - there's no apparent way to tell if anyone else does have the same inner experience as yourself.

Ehh, at the end of the day, I think the pragmatists have it pretty much right. The zombie problem is just a subset of the whole problem with empiricism taken to an absurd conclusion. In the end though, we can say that observations tend to correlate strongly enough to make useful statements about the world we live in, and that's about as good as we are going to get. Obsessive concern about which observation is real and which is illusion is a distraction unless you can find some way to falsify one or the other.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:01 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Man, modernists. There's more to the entire universe than science, y'know.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:05 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

brunmp3s: I think the real conflict is that both sides see their method of theorizing about the world as better.

Probably the central point of conflict between methodological materialists and theological apologists is that the latter insist that scripture must be given some truth value a priori and the evidence be interpreted in light of this principle.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:10 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Man, modernists. There's more to the entire universe than science, y'know.

Prithee, what? What else is there?
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:17 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Pope Guilty: You're so clever!

This just goes to show what a great and generous soul Pope Guilty is. He knows beyond doubt the answers to the deepest mysteries of existence, yet he says I'm clever. What a guy.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 10:21 AM on October 30, 2008

non-overlapping magisteria

Science: OK - you get all the stuff that can't be measured.
Religion: Ok - I'm down with that. So we get ... love?
Science: Neurochemicals - ours
Religion: Um, religious experience?
Science: Activity in the frontal and parietal lobes. Ours
Religion: Altruism!
Science: Evolved survival trait in tribal groups - ours
Religion: Well, what DO we get then?
Science: I don't know - it can't be measured.
posted by Sparx at 10:23 AM on October 30, 2008 [20 favorites]

Prithee, what? What else is there?

Not Yorrick that's for sure. That bamma is long gone. Where's all his funny jokes and gambling winnings and freestyles? Played out like a muthafucka.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:25 AM on October 30, 2008

Prithee, what? What else is there?

Well, for example, metaphysics?
posted by shakespeherian at 10:26 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

shakespeherian: Man, modernists. There's more to the entire universe than science, y'know.

A bit of a non-sequetor because science is a method of creating knowledge, and the universe is, well the universe.

Pope Guilty: Prithee, what? What else is there?

Well science as properly understood is only the inductive process of constructing useful generalizations from multiple data points. As such, it has some basic limitations. It can't claim that a generalization is true for all possible cases. You can't use science to prove the Pythagorean theorem. It doesn't work well with deduction, nor is it necessarily the best tool for talking about the uniqueness of cases. There are problems validating the scientific method using the scientific method.

shakespeherian: Well, for example, metaphysics?

Which is another method of creating knowledge. So still a bit of a non-sequetor.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:32 AM on October 30, 2008

One crucial limitation of science is that we can't generalize laws based on past data to hold in future experiments. Some fundamental law of the universe might just change on a whim. There's no induction hypothesis by which one can assume that Law(t) -> Law(t+1), and thereby guarantee that the law shall hold for all time and space. This suggests that faith is still a necessary ingredient in the application of any scientific knowledge.
posted by kid ichorous at 10:40 AM on October 30, 2008

And yet, it doesn't mean you should just go jump out a window. It's a strange universe.
posted by kid ichorous at 10:41 AM on October 30, 2008

phylum sinter wrote:
Science does well to theorize the how of things.
Spirituality does well to theorize the why of things.

I've heard that, or variations on that, pretty much my entire life. And I've recently come to realize that its total nonsense. Religion, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, has in fact done a terrible job of theorizing about the why of things.

It hasn't actually provided any "why" answers worth having, or often any at all.

Christianity, for example, never bothers to explain why the universe exists, Genesis explains that God created it, but never once says why God would choose to do so. Or where God came from. Or anything else. Its answers to other questions are mostly either platitudes, nakedly there to serve the priesthood, or non-answers. "Why do we exist?" And the answer Christianity hands back is "to love God". Whoopiee, can you see me turning cartwheels with joy at that wonderful, entirely satisfying, and in no way inane answer? No? That's because its not an answer, its an insult, a slap in the face.

I'm picking on Christianity because I know it best, but I've studied religion and I've never found anything resembling a meaningful or worthwhile answer to any of the "why" question in any religion.

So, yeah, I don't think spiritually does well at all to theorize on the why questions. Its done a terrible job on that front. I mean, if they haven't found any answer in the entirety of recorded history I think its time to stick a fork in 'em, they're done, let's try something else as an approach to "why" questions.
posted by sotonohito at 10:45 AM on October 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

It's amusing to see so many people talk about scientific laws as if they were real things.
posted by oddman at 10:49 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Kid Ichorous:
One crucial limitation of science is that we can't generalize laws based on past data to hold in future experiments. Some fundamental law of the universe might just change on a whim. There's no induction hypothesis by which one can assume that Law(t) -> Law(t+1), and thereby guarantee that the law shall hold for all time and space. This suggests that faith is still a necessary ingredient in the application of any scientific knowledge.

But science has never been about proving anything beyond the shadow of a doubt. What we can say is that there's no evidence of physical laws changing over time. Nothing's 100% certain, and that's a feature, not a bug. If you want certainty, that's what we have religion for.

And yes, oddman, you're right. They're systems of describing things. The behavior comes first, then the 'law' that 'governs' it.
posted by echo target at 10:55 AM on October 30, 2008

No Robots: We experience reality in thought as matter: thought is primary and matter is secondary.

Well, I experience reality in terms of perceptions. "You" are as secondary to me as the desk I am sitting at. I don't think positing secondary and tertiary material makes you the dualist you seem to think you are.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:06 AM on October 30, 2008

I think this is another 'wedge issue', where they're lying their heads off about something that doesn't agree with 'common sense', to sow discord with science and promote an evangelical agenda. I don't think they believe this strongly, it's just a method to sow confusion.
They're setting up for another Big Fight here, trying to get magical thinking back into the mainstream.

As Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy [via] explains, they're seeking "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies".
posted by finite at 11:07 AM on October 30, 2008

Well, yes echo. But one of the foundational tenets of astrophysics has been the projection of known laws over vast reaches of space and time, and this is really the most difficult thing for science to do. Fortunately, we're getting good at collecting data from further and further afield.

As for seeking a 'use' for religion, again I'd suggest that it's like seeking a use for LSD, or for magic mushrooms, or for the color red. I know that CS Lewis turned Ovid's Cupid and Psyche into Till We Have Faces, which is a little like turning an already fine wine into Dom Perignon. It wouldn't have been possible had certain Christian ideas not been stamped on his imagination. And Neopaganism may be like catnip to a certain subspecies of feckless teenager, but it also gives me above-average comic books like Hellblazer. Ultimately, I don't think it can be excised from the human mind without ceding away substantial territories of the imagination.
posted by kid ichorous at 11:11 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

What a stimulating post, thanks Marisa Stole the Precious Thing.

I was getting all excited about the premise until it came to "soul" and then I felt dismayed. Why is the alternative to materialism soul and not mysterious space or the unknown, the Dark Matter aspect of existence?

Can't read the articles now but am looking forward to the think/contemplation later.
posted by nickyskye at 11:13 AM on October 30, 2008

Possibly there is a "why". We lack any ability to investigate it, however, and as such any statements along the lines of "I know what the "why" is, and it's x" are either the product of deliberate lies or an inability to distinguish between knowledge and imagination.

Guilty, you've kind of nailed it here, even sort of contradicting yourself while doing so which makes it all the more beautiful. Confusing? That's kind of the point as it's compelled me to get involved in a fascinating discussion/argument that I swore to myself I would only observe. If I may, I'm going to channel my inner editor and restate the above as follows:

Possibly there is a "why". However, we lack any scientific means with which to investigate it and/or prove it either way, which makes all statements along the lines of "I know what the why is, and it's x" either deliberate lies or evidence of an inability to distinguish between scientific knowledge and imagination.

Which leaves us with imagination. Where the hell does that come from? And how? And why?
posted by philip-random at 11:14 AM on October 30, 2008

Durn Bronzefist: I don't think positing secondary and tertiary material makes you the dualist you seem to think you are.

I am an absolute idealist and a relative materialist: We are thought that perceives itself as matter.
posted by No Robots at 11:15 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

There's a lot of really closed-minded people in this thread. I think it's disappointing how the priests of material reductionism scream and threaten anyone who suggests that there might be something beyond the reach of science; it's sad how, in this day and age, the people who dissent from scientific dogma must be silenced and punished, lest the weaknesses and flaws in naturalism tear it apart. It would be far better that scientists investigate those flaws and build a better model of reality than work so vigorously to defend a flawed ontology and a blinkered epistemology.

I would enjoy science a lot more too if only scientists would invest their time and energy investigating my theories rather than defending their own. Those close minded bastards think that I should do my own work! The disembodied non-corporeal nerve!
posted by srboisvert at 11:17 AM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

I'm picking on Christianity because I know it best, but I've studied religion and I've never found anything resembling a meaningful or worthwhile answer to any of the "why" question in any religion.

Let me paraphrase my long gone clergyman uncle here (I think he was some kind of Jesuit):

"The singular problem of the human mind is that it can't even begin to comprehend the vast and complex reality of God, and yet it seeks to do so anyway."

Or words to that effect. I think was around twelve at the time. He was killed a couple of years later when a car skidded on some ice and ran into him on a sidewalk. But the car didn't kill him. The ambulance did when it hit the same sheet of ice, skidded and ran over his head. God (or nature) really wanted that guy dead.
posted by philip-random at 11:24 AM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

The dangerous part of this whole thing is not to the existence of either schools of thought, but the fundamentalist paradigm emerging (which some of you on both sides of the fense ) that the other side doesn't have the right to exist.

I don't really see this happening from the naturalist/materialist side; it seems to be something that dualists/theists/anti-Darwinians and other fringies love to claim, though.

If there were evidence to support dualism I think it would be taken very seriously, but as far as I can tell there isn't. Similarly, there's no evidence for an intelligent designer, and so people who persist in dragging it out as a worthwhile scientific theory without any evidence get a certain amount of well-deserved ridicule.

It's not that the theories don't have a "right to exist," it's just that they are extraordinary claims and have no evidence to back them up. Instead, they seem to be supported mostly by people who have a desire to believe that they're true, and take a lack of counter-evidence as carte blanche to posit that they then must be correct.

To be fair, I know physicists who would lump string theory in with dualism and ID, under the general heading of "Things People Want to Believe But There is No Evidence Of," so it's not just a religious-vs-secularist problem. It's really a believing-things-without-evidence problem; you might even call it a faith problem. Faith has no place in science, since it's by definition irrational, or at best arational.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:26 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

I don't know kid ichorus, while Faces was definitely one of Lewis's most interesting works, I don't think I'd call it superior to the original myth--as far as raw power goes, myths always work better the less they're explained (imo)--the closer they are to the subconscious feelings they evoke. He creates a good story, but the myth aspect of it is almost the weakest part. The main character is much more compelling than Psyche.

Whereas in the original myth, the excitement comes from the fear Psyche feels in looking in the face of her god---her rebellion is what makes her both human and sympathetic, and even though we're supposed to take away the idea of "obedience is the only true way to happiness" we tend to sympathize with her and feel like her husband/god is kind of a giant douche for being so strict, and root for her success.

/semi-unrelated literary discussion
posted by emjaybee at 11:28 AM on October 30, 2008

What leads you to conclude that? The "software" the brain runs pretty much has to be encoded in some material manner, or else the brain couldn't run it. Whether its a literal matter of a "wiring" difference in how neurons are connected, or something more subtle (quantum states? different chemistry in certain neurons? etc) hardly matters.

I'm gonna butt in late, and address this specific comment: Sure, the "software of the mind" has to be encoded in some material manner--but not in any particular material manner.

There are lots of different ways to implement the hardware architecture needed to run a particular piece of software. And of course you can run the same application on different machines, or even on purely virtual representations of those machines that may have completely different physical architectures (virtual machines). Hell, if I understand Wolfram's work correctly, you can match the processing power of any computing machine by just shading in some cells on a piece of graph paper according to a fixed set of formal rules. (I'm way oversimplifying.)

If there's any validity to the mind = software analogy at all, then I would say, yes, there is in a certain sense a kind of duality at work. The kind of duality usually characterized as form vs. function. The kind of duality that mathematical realism propounds.

But to me, the more profound problem is that I still haven't seen a persuasive argument (nor any substantive experimental evidence) for the existence of the "material" component of the materialist position. What material? Where? The universe is a place full of energy states and frequencies of different wave-lengths and chemical processes and so on, but as of yet, there's still no definitive evidence of anything even remotely resembling an atomic unit of matter--there's no there there, in a sense. That has profound implications. For example, what we experience as something being solid to the touch is a function of patterns of electromagnetic interference at the subatomic level; no actual physical contact, in the way we normally understand it, takes place when we touch a hard surface. Nothing is "solid" in any absolute sense. Some things are just more solid than others relative to each other.

So what exactly does it mean to hold a materialist position? Sure, there are these phenomena we call particles and subatomic particles, but anyone with expertise in the field will acknowledge, they're not at all like the simple, hard billiard balls we were raised believing in, and are, in fact, a lot more like little knots of electromagnetic vibration. So where does that leave the material world? Where's all the "material" you'd expect to find in it? If my brain is just a platform for implementing my particular mind, and my mind like software, is platform independent, why couldn't it be implemented on another system capable of running the same kind of program? I'm not actually in the camp on this side of the argument myself (my own view is a little more agnostic), but I do think it's a question that can't easily be shrugged off, and one that leads directly to many other philosophically-rich questions about the nature of consciousness and identity in general that are valuable areas of inquiry in their own right.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:36 AM on October 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

there are some neuroscientists that have tried to tackle consciousness. see Christof Koch and Frances Crick's work on the neural correlates of consciousness. since consciousness is so poorly defined, all science can do now is investigate the mechanisms behind behavior believed to be associated with it. but then it seems to me more prudent to say you're studying "attention" or "memory" rather than "consciousness."
posted by alk at 11:45 AM on October 30, 2008

Altogether now: With your feet in the air and your head on the ground...
posted by mandal at 11:51 AM on October 30, 2008

Pope Guilty: Newton's occultism granted him no advantages; imagine what more he might have created had he not been consumed with it! It was rational thought and empirical experimentation that produced his accomplishments, not magical thinking and superstition.

I know this might sound strange, but some scholars have come to believe that Newton's occultism might have given him a few advantages in understanding how gravity works. Back then, the dominant physical theory was Aristotle's - which said that all bodies have a natural place that they move towards. If you pick up a rock and then let it go, it will fall down to the ground because that's where it comes from and that's where it belongs. It's possible that it was Newton's occult knowledge that led him to realize that bodies affected each other from a distance and that gravity was universal.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:12 PM on October 30, 2008

Sheesh! Questions don't hurt anyone. Discussion doesn't hurt anyone. There are many things science has not yet explained, and raising questions about them is the basic point of science - asking questions about the way life works! When we mandate learning something that isn't science in science class (like ID) that is hurtful, but that is not the same as rational discussion. Some of the responses here have been ridiculous.

If someone asks a question about something that you believe has been adequately explained, explain it! IRT to evolution and religion, it's more useful to say "You're correct that the fossil record is incomplete, but really there is a lot more information than you realize and essentially all scientists have agreed on this. Here are some fossils we have found and why we know these led to humans" than it is to respond with "You're stupid and religion is magic so SHUT UP!"
posted by Solon and Thanks at 12:15 PM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

If my brain is just a platform for implementing my particular mind, and my mind like software, is platform independent, why couldn't it be implemented on another system capable of running the same kind of program?

I think, if you take on premise that what we experience as 'consciousness' is something akin to a program being run on a biological computer, then there is no reason why you couldn't create consciousness on some different "platform."

The problem would be merely (!) creating a platform that could simulate the native hardware -- the brain -- completely. Of course, we don't know what "completely" would involve: would you have to simulate right down to the synaptic level? The molecular? The atomic? The quantum? It's not clear. We don't know how precise the simulation would have to be, and we definitely don't know what you'd have to do to bootstrap it.

But if you could do that, then there doesn't seem like any reason why you wouldn't get consciousness as a result. If the 'mind' is a product of the 'brain' then by simulating the brain precisely enough, you ought to get the mind. That's not dualism at all, in fact it's the opposite; it's the crux of materialism.

I don't think there's any reason why that's necessarily impossible. I might agree with people who say it's unlikely to ever be achieved, but not because there's something fundamentally impossible about it -- I suspect we'll probably just destroy ourselves as a species, or at least as a high-technology society, before we develop the tools and techniques necessary to do it. But that's quite different from saying that it's impossible because there's something fundamentally special about the human brain that wouldn't be present in an absolutely perfect simulation of a brain. It's the leap from 'very unlikely' to 'impossible' that I disagree with, since there doesn't seem to be any evidence for it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:19 PM on October 30, 2008

"That has profound implications. For example, what we experience as something being solid to the touch is a function of patterns of electromagnetic interference at the subatomic level; no actual physical contact, in the way we normally understand it, takes place when we touch a hard surface. Nothing is "solid" in any absolute sense."

I don't think this is profound at all & this sort of thinking is related to the mind/body problem. "Physical contact" is what it is, it's the same shit it's been for thousands of years. There is "actual physical contact" in exactly the way we normally understand it. It turns out that we simply didn't "normally understand" what happens in the world at nano scales.

The notion that the world at a scale a billion times smaller than the macro world is the same is nothing, it's a notion, a whim, poetry or at best a "theory". Why does it matter to anyone that with greater engineering allowing us to perform new observations and experiments a notion based on nothing more than imagination turns out to not work so well?

Ultimately I think a lot of the philosophical debates are about concepts that are equally nothing not just wrong but meaningless. I bet Schwartz is a serious scientist who can do great work in the standard parameters of science, but he's clearly got a philosophical axe to grind.

Of course so do I, I guess I'm an epiphenomalist. I tend to think that the mind/body connection is a standard physical system. That the input of a pyschiatrist leads to electronic responses and so on until someone either does or does not stop washing their hands 100 times a day. Now this thinking on my part doesn't answer any questions because it's just a vague theory. It does suggest plenty questions and a research program.

So the epiphenomalist part of this is that my theory/worldview says nothing about consciousness or subjective experience. So what? Perhaps I'm a bit of a dualist or a mysterion or whatever, I believe there is a profound disconnect between everything in physical science and the "notions" of consciousness and subjectivity. I believe that solipsism is a rational theory. At best dualism is a way of talking about this disconnect. But it doesn't go anywhere there is no framework like science for going anywhere with a non-physical "consciousness". What do you do with this theory other than justify your religious belief? People justified their religious belief just fine prior to the invention of neuro-imaging, this is not progress.

Now that's not to say that there isn't a science-like framework for going somewhere with pyschiatry in the absence of a materialistic reduction of the mind. You can still make observations and do experiments and build models with absolutely no clue as to how the stuff you're looking at is instantiated in terms of molecules. It's really not a big deal, molecules are just models themselves.
posted by Wood at 1:01 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Long story short: it's a god of the gaps. A little girl told me: God is love. I like that theory. So... two behavioralists are having sex afterwords one says to the other: "It was great for you, how was it for me?"
posted by Wood at 1:05 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I kind of like how the last link puts it (on the pro-"materialism" side of the argument):

In fact, the term materialism as broadly defined does not have much applicability today. We know that there is more to the universe than ordinary matter, and if you include everything in nature in your philosophy then you have naturalism. Materialism is mostly used in its narrow sense as it applies specifically to consciousness (that consciousness is what the brain does) and stands in opposition to dualism (the belief that consciousness is a non-physical thing unto itself).

It does seem a little odd that "consciousness" is one of the last remaining areas where people still tend to employ the narrower, now broadly trivialized sense of the term "materialism." Why shouldn't we just say there are naturalistic mechanisms at work in the mind, and dispense with the whole debate? What makes the mind so uniquely material in nature that the old sense of the term "materialism" still applies to it, when it rarely does in other areas of study?

If you take my brain apart while I'm gazing into my son's eyes, where will you find the experience I have of seeing myself reflected in those eyes and the overwhelming sense of affection and pride that accompanies the experience? Where is that picture and that feeling? Where is the thing itself? The bicycle--not the wheels, gears, pedals or chain--but the bicycle.

You might be able to point to all the mechanisms that produced my experience. You might be able to point to all the chemicals that interacted in different ways to trigger the perceptual illusions I experienced as feelings of love and pride. But something still gets overlooked in such analysis: The thing as a whole, the gestalt.

The gestalt of a complex phenomenon is a thing, too, one that has as legitimate a claim to its ontological status as any of the constituent parts a reductionist analysis might reduce it to. But we don't have a useful science of the gestalt. And because we don't, the vacuum is filled by charlatans and mystical gobbledy-gook.

But if you could do that, then there doesn't seem like any reason why you wouldn't get consciousness as a result. If the 'mind' is a product of the 'brain' then by simulating the brain precisely enough, you ought to get the mind. That's not dualism at all, in fact it's the opposite; it's the crux of materialism.

I don't think this last bit is a wholly accurate characterization of many of the more subtle modern dualistic arguments. The emergent theory of consciousness, for one example, posits that mind is an emergent phenomenon of the complex, non-linear physical processes of the brain, but that it's a fundamentally metaphysical phenomenon and, to a greater or lesser degree, a causally-autonomous intentional agent (in other words, changes in higher-level mental states don't always correspond to observable changes in lower-level physical brain states, and higher-level mental states can exert downward causal force to intentionally alter lower-level brain states).

then by simulating the brain precisely enough, you ought to get the mind. That's not dualism at all

Not "the brain"--any mechanism, biological or otherwise, that can produce precisely the same mathematical patterns. Think abacuses and calculators. Physically, they're workings are completely different. Yet both are calculating devices that can be made to yield consistent results. Just what are those results? Are they properties of abacuses or properties of calculators? A mathematical realist says they're neither. The results of a set of calculations exist independently of the mechanisms or methods that produced them. A mind, in the same way, exists independently of the brain that produces it, to a dualist. (As I said, that's not my position, but that's the argument, and it's an interesting one.)
posted by saulgoodman at 1:06 PM on October 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

daniel_charms: That's all very well, and for that matter of course scientists shouldn't be restricted to thinking only of ideas which can be experimentally disproved at the present time with the present budget. On the other hand, it's not too hard to think of theories which can't be disproved, or not without significant investment. And then atoms weren't proven to exist for a good long while after they were first suggested.

People have enough problems proving episodic memory in nonhuman animals (I mean, how on earth do you prove that without the use of language).

Between me trying to convince you that I'm neither a Turing test competitor nor a philosophical zombie, and a Scrub Jay proving that it is actually remembering the act of storing its cache of food rather than using a heuristic tuned over millions of years of evolution, it seems to me there is plenty of grey area for religious and philosophical debate, as well as valid scientific enquiry.

Wow, this is rambling! Basically I mean if an idea is trivially irrefutable (God exists, he just doesn't want you to find him), then true or not it's not science. If an idea is clearly experimentally refutable, then true or not it's science. And consciousness and the associated stuff seems to be in neither category at the moment.

On preview: maybe I'm just saying that because epiphenomenalism leaves me with no choice, despite what I think. brrr....
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 1:08 PM on October 30, 2008

saulgoodman wrote Where's all the "material" you'd expect to find in it? If my brain is just a platform for implementing my particular mind, and my mind like software, is platform independent, why couldn't it be implemented on another system capable of running the same kind of program?

I don't see a problem here. If the monist position is correct (and I think it is) then there's nothing magic, or special, or unique, about the human brain. If its a meat machine we should be able to take its state vector and implement it on a silicon machine, or a whatever machine. I think to many people that's a rather frightening thought, but to me it sounds like our best (only) hope for immortality or life after death.

But that hardly implies that there's something special, or magic, about the software. If I write a piece of Java code, its machine independent, but that doesn't mean it has a non-physical existence, it exists only in the physical sense that it is represented by magnetic patterns on a disk, or reflective patterns on a CD.

The information in a book can take many forms as well, does this mean that the information has an independent non-physical existence?

Assuming the mind is software I see no problem at all copying it to a virtual brain running on hardware radically different from that we evolved. I hope to do that with my own mind one day. Whether we'll develop the technology to implement that kind of thing within my lifetime is, of course, open to debate. I hope so, but I rather doubt it. I do, however, think that unless humans kill themselves (or ruin our technological society) the technology will be developed at some point in the future. To think otherwise is to believe that there is something magic about the brain.
posted by sotonohito at 1:17 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

"Assuming the mind is software ... To think otherwise is to believe that there is something magic about the brain."

That's a pretty big assumption to make based on hand-waving and intuition. My handwavey intuition tends to disagree. And to suggest that therefore I believe in magic because I don't .. believe in software? Whuh? Is that like saying that if you don't think that we'll ever invent time machines you believe there is something magical about time? The universe doesn't have an amendment to say that that which is not specifically forbidden is allowed. It may be that you can't make a conscious being out of silicon, not because of magic, just "because".

This has real world consequences. I tend to think computers will never be conscious. If you offer me $50 to beat your dog to death I'll call the cops, if you want me to beat your AIBO to "death" I'll take your money.

I think that changes in this area won't come from science but will come from the same gut that makes us treat each other like beings. I find it distasteful that children may someday grow up to give a computer pet the seriousness that I've treated animal pet life with but what can you say?

I could easily be wrong though. We can't build a "Data" (of Star Trek) so lots of things will be discovered before we have to decide whether or not it's murder to throw one in the trash or simply wasteful.

I doubt anyone will ever wake up in Hell for being to robots what Dahmer or Hitler was to humans.
posted by Wood at 1:33 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wood Well, either consciousness arises from understandable and material causes or it doesn't, and anything not understandable or material I think its safe to put into the category "magic". I don't really see a lot of wiggle room here.

I doubt that consciousness is something that requires meat, but it seems unreasonable to assume that there's something particularly special about meat.

As for dogs and robot dogs, the issue seems to be one of complexity, not anything inherently special/magic about meat. The AIBO is no more conscious than a pocket calculator, I'd consider it wasteful (distastefully wasteful) to wontonly destroy either, but I'm in full agreement that it isn't inherently immoral. But I do think that, assuming things continue as they do, when the day comes that we can build a robot dog that has the same brainpower as a meat dog, behaves in the same general manner, can be trained just the same, etc it would be equally immoral to beat it to death.

To extend the argument further, a human level sentient robot is entitled to exactly the same human rights as a human is. If it is possible to build someone like Data, I can't see how its anything but a being entitled to all the rights and responsibilities everyone else is. To my way of thinking its the mind that matters, not its shell or the material that composes that mind.
posted by sotonohito at 1:59 PM on October 30, 2008

The notion that the human mind is equivalent to software that you could run on a computer is a science fiction conceit. There's no reason to take it seriously. It's amazing to me that anyone does.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 2:00 PM on October 30, 2008

Wrinkled Stumpskin: my comment wasn't really meant as an argument for or against anything. Some of the comments earlier in this thread simply reminded me of this theory about Newton and the role his occult interests might have played in his scientific discoveries. Only after posting it did I realize that in the context of this thread, it might be interpreted differently than I had intended it.
posted by daniel_charms at 2:04 PM on October 30, 2008

The "brain as computer, mind as software" metaphor is very popular, but software is only meaningful in an input/output context. Who or what is interpreting the output of your mind?

What does this even mean?

Here's what I think it means: first, a computer, like any human-made artifact or technological invention, is an extension of consciousness/cognition: specifically an extension of the essential intentional nature of consciousness/cognition (our cognitions are always by definition "cognitions of"). Now, consider animal architecture: a beehive, beaver dam, bird's nest, termite mound, etc. These are things the animals are hardwired in some way to make, and can be seen as extensions of their natural capacities. The problem with thinking about consciousness itself is the problem of obtaining the proper vanatage point for pure empiral self-reference: i.e that we must think about thinking. To consider how immediate (i.e. unmediated) conscious experience is, is to realize that we do not have recourse to a position of absolute objectivity. This is the source of the Cartesian hyperbolic doubt, and is a statemnt about paradox as someone upthread pointed out. My own view is that the students of Brentanao, particularly Husserl, understood this in a useful way: Husserl's phenomenology can be read as an explicit attempt to isolate through description the means by which the useful paradox of self-consciousness is even possible. Note that I am not defending the view that consciousness is somehow not biological in origin, or is any way magical, but am arguing that the subtle problem regarding the primacy and absolute self-evidence of consciousness is a subtle philosophical problem. One can appreciate this problem even if one ultimately feels the approximation "mind is what brain does" is as good as any.
posted by ornate insect at 2:21 PM on October 30, 2008

The notion that the human mind is equivalent to software that you could run on a computer is a science fiction conceit. There's no reason to take it seriously. It's amazing to me that anyone does.

A good science fiction conceit should be taken seriously, not as fact (or future fact) but as a guiding notion. It's called imagination and I suspect you'd find that pretty much every great breakthrough in human thought, science, physics, whatever began with some serious imagination.
posted by philip-random at 2:29 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

emjaybee: I don't know kid ichorus, while Faces was definitely one of Lewis's most interesting works, I don't think I'd call it superior to the original myth--as far as raw power goes, myths always work better the less they're explained (imo)--the closer they are to the subconscious feelings they evoke. He creates a good story, but the myth aspect of it is almost the weakest part. The main character is much more compelling than Psyche.

I guess what really struck me was how in the world that particular convergence of writer and subject could turn out so non-disastrously... and female. Faces was, to my surprise, exactly the sort of book I could share with my mother and sister without provoking a lecture; I'm not sure certain parts of his otherwise excellent Space Trilogy could ever be. Lewis was... old-fashioned, to put it kindly.
posted by kid ichorous at 2:32 PM on October 30, 2008

Crabby Appleton Well, I doubt the mind is software in the literal sense, I mean I'd be really surprised if, when we do fully understand the mind, its actually anything at all like computer code.

But the analogy sounds solid. The gross structure of my brain isn't too different from that of anyone else, but obviously the minute differences matter quite a bit. Obviously the computer distinction between hardware and software doesn't literally hold up, but its not bad as far as analogy goes.

Why shouldn't we be able to map the brain (at whatever level of grainyness that is necessary: axon, molecular, atomic, quark, whatever) and simulate it on a powerful enough computer?

You have to imagine that there is something ~~magic~~ special about the brain to think that it is impossible to copy and simulate.
posted by sotonohito at 2:33 PM on October 30, 2008

I don't see a problem here. If the monist position is correct (and I think it is) then there's nothing magic, or special, or unique, about the human brain.

Sotonhito: I don't see a problem there either. I'm a monist, too. But I come at it as an idealist, because I happen to think "materialism" is a confusing and poorly-formed concept. Science deals with "material" as opposed to what? As the passage I quoted earlier notes, if everything that exists naturally satisfies the definition, then materialism is just another name for naturalism. I'm on board with the idea that everything has a naturalistic explanation (but it seems like a trivial claim).

But to then make the leap from accepting that to accepting that science allows us to escape the protective membrane of our own sense-perceptions, neurological functioning and cognitive biases to glimpse, even for a moment, the world as it really is--even to take "the world as it really is" to be a meaningful utterance--is an unwarranted inferential step. (And not one I think many actual scientists would make, but one commonly attributed to science by self-styled enthusiasts of the scientific worldview.) It's too early in the game for anyone to presume to know already what the world is all about at a fundamental level: I always thought science was supposed to be about trying to figure that out.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:43 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wood : I doubt anyone will ever wake up in Hell for being to robots what Dahmer or Hitler was to humans.and entertainment. I may not have to worry about a fiery afterlife, but I can promise you, they speak my name in fearful hushed tones around the robotic watercooler.
posted by quin at 2:53 PM on October 30, 2008

I doubt anyone will ever wake up in Hell for being to robots what Dahmer or Hitler was to humans.

I doubt that to. Because there is no hell.
posted by tkchrist at 2:55 PM on October 30, 2008

ornate insect - that is a very nice way of explaining the phenomenon of mind, and I might be one who subscribes to the 'mind as brain software' thing. Everytime there's something on the blue about the concept of self, from any perspective, it makes me wonder about whether we'll ever really come to an agreement on just what we're made of.

5 hours later and this thread is still burning. Great to see - have some of these more [original?] thoughts have been published anywhere else? We ought to write a book.

Metafilter: From conceptual flames to hardcover book.
posted by phylum sinter at 2:57 PM on October 30, 2008

Stupid unclosed bracket...

Wood : I doubt anyone will ever wake up in Hell for being to robots what Dahmer or Hitler was to humans.

Frankly that's a bit of a relief. Because I've done some pretty unspeakable things to my roombas in the name of both science and entertainment. I may not have to worry about a fiery afterlife, but I can promise you, they speak my name in fearful hushed tones around the robotic watercooler.
posted by quin at 3:06 PM on October 30, 2008

saulgoodman: I guess the problem here is that while "matter" may be a somewhat problematic term when you get down to it, "nature" is even worse. I don't think that just shifting the frame from "matter" to "nature" really gets one's ass out of the fire. And the problem that we really don't know what matter is becomes something of a moot point. At the level of touching a surface, a description of the system as electrons creating a repulsive force by exchanging virtual photons appears to be sufficient. It doesn't matter much if the internals of that electron are a wave, a string, or a demon. You still have a quantified packet of charge with a quantified packet of mass, exchanging quantified packets of force.

But to then make the leap from accepting that to accepting that science allows us to escape the protective membrane of our own sense-perceptions, neurological functioning and cognitive biases to glimpse, even for a moment, the world as it really is--even to take "the world as it really is" to be a meaningful utterance--is an unwarranted inferential step. (And not one I think many actual scientists would make, but one commonly attributed to science by self-styled enthusiasts of the scientific worldview.) It's too early in the game for anyone to presume to know already what the world is all about at a fundamental level: I always thought science was supposed to be about trying to figure that out.

When I read this paragraph, I see you setting up a strawman, admitting that it is, in fact, a strawman uncharacteristic of most science (which admits these problems and posits only methodological materialism/naturalism), and then returning to the strawman.

It's trivially addressed by pointing out that the materialism/naturalism most often proposed is a methodological assumption, grounded on the assumption that when it comes to touching objects and thinking of a bicycle, explanations that operate in terms of physical things are probably as good as we are going to get, because those explanations can be evaluated and either modified or rejected.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:08 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

philip-random, I don't disagree with what you said. I like science fiction. Imagination is indispensible in science, for formulating a research program, forming hypotheses, doing thought experiments, and maybe other stuff that didn't occur to me immediately. Also, fwiw, I think methodological naturalism has been very effective as a basis for scientific progress over the last few hundred years, and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

That said, I think a sharp distinction should be drawn between speculative notions and scientific fact. It's all too easy to blur that distinction, particularly when it's pleasant to do so.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 3:12 PM on October 30, 2008

It's too early in the game for anyone to presume to know already what the world is all about at a fundamental level: I always thought science was supposed to be about trying to figure that out.

Well, I wonder where you get that impression. The business of science is to make inductive generalizations from the systematic collection of multiple sets of data. Much of science is about figuring out more practical concerns.

To the extent that science does try to figure out what the universe is all about at a fundamental level, I don't think it can. Science as properly practiced is useless without data. Astronomers theorize that billions of years in the future, expanding spacetime will have moved all signs of the big bang beyond the visible horizon of the local universe. Some argue that information critical for a full understanding of the universe is already beyond our reach.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:21 PM on October 30, 2008

I doubt anyone will ever wake up in Hell for being to robots what Dahmer or Hitler was to humans.

No, but in 10,000 years, when the earth is completely frozen over, a robot that saved a scrap of your hair might provide you the chance to fulfill its one last wish after aliens bring you back to life.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 3:42 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

The "brain as computer, mind as software" metaphor is very popular, but software is only meaningful in an input/output context. Who or what is interpreting the output of your mind?

What does this even mean?

I believe the reference here is to Putnam's Representation and Reality and Searle's "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?". (Also see Chalmers's response, "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite State Automaton?") It's a good question.
posted by painquale at 3:57 PM on October 30, 2008

Science does well to theorize the how of things.

Spirituality does well to theorize the why of things.

False equivalence. "How" is knowable; "why" is not.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:00 PM on October 30, 2008

There's no induction hypothesis by which one can assume that Law(t) -> Law(t+1), and thereby guarantee that the law shall hold for all time and space.

Yet life itself would be impossible were we to not act as though that were true.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:09 PM on October 30, 2008

And I must reiterate:

"Reality itself is a thinking thing, and the object of its own
thinking." - Parmenides

posted by Mental Wimp at 4:12 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: just a vague theory
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:18 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

As Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy [via] explains, they're seeking "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies".

Materialism really lights up their hate circuits.
posted by homunculus at 5:51 PM on October 30, 2008

sotonohito, you think your analogy "sounds solid" and is "not bad" because of a set of assumptions (both explicit and implicit) that you're making. You need to make all your assumptions explicit and justify them.

Parenthetically, I'm a little confused about exactly what you're asserting. Initially, it seemed to me that you were saying (to condense it somewhat) that the human mind is equivalent to a Turing machine program running on a Turing machine. (But perhaps I'm mistaken about that.) That's a fairly precise assertion that I think I could argue against. But then you seemed to back away from that and move to a model involving a software simulation of the physical brain. I assume it's the latter you'd like me to address. You said:

Why shouldn't we be able to map the brain (at whatever level of grainyness that is necessary: axon, molecular, atomic, quark, whatever) and simulate it on a powerful enough computer?

It's hard to know where to start with this. I guess I'll assume this is not a rhetorical question. In which case it occurs to me to wonder why I need to answer a question when you are the one making an assertion (whatever it is, exactly, you're asserting). Doesn't your extraordinary claim require proof? Also, this question reveals that you really don't know anything about how the human mind works, not even the level of abstraction that is necessary and sufficient for formulating a specification of it. If you don't even know that, why should I find you credible on any aspect of the problem?

I could stop there, but I want to respond to your question (and the rest of your comment). My guess is that mapping the brain would be far from trivial. It might not even be possible; the process of mapping might destructively interfere with the operation of the brain such that the resulting map would be worthless. But let's assume it is possible. Now we have to simulate the brain. Do we even know how to write a correct simulation (at whatever level of abstraction is required)? There are still gaps in our physics; we have no theory of quantum gravity. But let's imagine that we do know how. Then can we physically build a sufficiently powerful computer? How big would it be? The size of a galaxy? Who knows? I don't. And neither do you.

But let's assume that we could construct a brain simulation of "sufficient" fidelity (whatever that means). Is that really what's required? Does the mind reside fully within the brain? (There are credible accounts of personality changes in heart transplantees, to more closely resemble that of the heart donor.) Does the mind reside within the brain at all, or just communicate with it in some fashion not yet understood? (You said "[t]he gross structure of my brain isn't too different from that of anyone else", but it is from this guy's.)

I don't know the answer to these questions. You don't either. But you need to, and I don't. Because you're the one making the assertions.

You know, Wood wasn't kidding about "hand-waving and intuition". You said:

You have to imagine that there is something ~~magic~~ special about the brain to think that it is impossible to copy and simulate.

I don't know whether there is something special about the brain. But I'm pretty sure there's something special about the human mind. For one thing, it's unique. No other animal can do what we're doing right now. SETI has been scanning the skies for forty years or so, and no other evidence of any other intelligent species has been found. (With the possible exception of the Wow! signal, which has never been replicated.) No (existing man-made) machine can do what we're doing right now. Back in the '70s, Marvin Minsky and his merry band of GOFAIers was telling us that human-level AI was right around the corner. A lot of very smart people worked very hard on it. And then the AI winter fell. Two decades later, still no joy.

Human-level intelligence is special and unique. It seems magical to me. Maybe that's just an instance of Clarke's third law. Or maybe not.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 6:57 PM on October 30, 2008

I find the supernatural/natural conflict very amusing. I find it amusing because I don't understand what it means for something to be supernatural. Superficially it means that it is outside our known laws of the universe, i.e. it is something that is not within the understood boundaries of behavior of the universe. But wouldn't we, the moment we observed something "supernatural", revise our known laws of the universe to include it? Would it then become "natural"? The only thing that would be inherently "supernatural" would be something that is so bizarre and incomprehensible that it literally cannot be described by a physical law. Maybe something like this:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

I guess I don't feel threatened, as a godless materialist scientist, by the idea of a "magical" body-mind duality, because I think all that would mean is we haven't discovered the "mind field", or the "tau spiriton" yet. It would be weird and cool if we do discover it, but I don't see why it couldn't also be scientific. I think this is why I love science so much - when people try to convince me that I suffer for lack of the rich world of religious mysticism, I try to explain that the universe is infinitely complex and beautiful in so many discovered and undiscovered ways that there is no way any human contrived magic could ever compete with it for sheer wonder.

.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 8:07 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is what gets me about people who believe in magic- if it's so amazing and awesome, why aren't you fantastically rich and famous?

you know, one doesn't even have to believe in magic to regard this as a pretty shallow philosophy of life and success
posted by pyramid termite at 8:35 PM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Well, I wonder where you get that impression. The business of science is to make inductive generalizations from the systematic collection of multiple sets of data. Much of science is about figuring out more practical concerns.

To the extent that science does try to figure out what the universe is all about at a fundamental level, I don't think it can.

Well, the earliest natural scientists were most definitely concerned with the practice of science as a method for glimpsing "fundamental truth" and all that jazz. But your point about the current state of affairs is valid; modern science tends to be concerned with fundamental truths only when it needs attention-grabbing press release headlines when campaigning for more grant money (just kidding, just kidding--did I mention, I really love science, BTW?).

I misrepresented my own position, when I wrote: "It's too early in the game for anyone to presume to know already what the world is all about at a fundamental level: I always thought science was supposed to be about trying to figure that out." Let me clarify.

Operating under any a priori assumption (other than to exclude the possibility of supernatural agency) poses serious methodological problems for science, because proceeding from the assumption that science is a fundamentally "materialistic" enterprise arbitrarily limits the kinds of conclusions scientific methods can reach. Suppose it were theorized and somehow experimentally verified that a particular obscure mathematical principle known to be formally unfalsifiable but also unprovable--what to all appearances is a purely mathematical concept--accounts for some quirk of an electron's spin. A purely materialistic science could never yield such a result, and yet, it's not hard to imagine such a result.

I don't mean to suggest opening up a pandora's box of supernatural forces dressed up as science (and I don't consider any of the many insidious variations on ID to be science), but it's not even accurate to say that science is strictly materialistic in the usual sense. To reach its conclusions, scientific analysis routinely relies on formal mathematical reasoning, which in turn relies on unprovable or only formally provable axioms--essentially, metaphysical principles. So it's not entirely accurate to say that science is concerned only with the physical. Even data are no more "physically real" than points on a chart are; data points are theoretical constructs that only represent physical phenomena.

And in any case, the real objects of scientific observation ultimately aren't the particular occurrences of physical phenomena, but the abstract patterns those phenomena, taken together, seem to suggest. Or, to put it another way: science isn't about what makes one ball roll down a hill, it's about what makes balls roll down hills (or not, if that happens to be the case). A scientific observation has to be repeatable to be accepted as meaningful. This is why, at its core, science is an idealistic pursuit.

For centuries, we searched for the "atom"--the fundamental building block of matter--because the classical philosophers argued its discovery would provide irrefutable proof of the material nature of the world. By definition, we were looking for an irreducible particle of matter. That's literally what the root of the word "atom" means: undivided. Our science didn't find that. Instead, it found something else, and for a brief time, we mistook that something else for the thing we'd originally hoped to find. But even though we soon realized our mistake (since this supposedly indivisible atom of ours actually turned out not to be especially indivisible), we still couldn't bring ourselves to call it a mistake--after all, we had discovered something new, hadn't we? So we just kept calling that new something "atom" anyway, and from that point on, we continued to maintain we had finally proven the case for "materialism," although somehow it sailed right over our heads that we had not actually found the philosophers' long-sought after proof of "materialism."

The history of human-knowledge is such a crazy half-baked mess. We're constantly letting the meanings of our terms drift so much over time that our knowledge loses its historical continuity and gets divorced from itself. But we still go merrily on our way, as if it all still makes sense somehow. John Berryman probably put it best: "We are using our own skins for wallpaper and we cannot win."
posted by saulgoodman at 8:35 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Genesis explains that God created it, but never once says why God would choose to do so.

because he "saw that it was good" - which may not be an answer that satisfies you, but it is in there, if only you had read it
posted by pyramid termite at 8:47 PM on October 30, 2008

There's a not-entirely-fair, not-entirely-unfair joke that runs "What's the difference between a witch and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four." While there are many believers in the occult and the uncanny who do in fact support their families, why are there so many who live in poverty and failure, and none on the level of George Soros or Warren Buffet?

where's your data to back this up? or is this some kind of irrational belief?
posted by pyramid termite at 9:02 PM on October 30, 2008

While there are many believers in the occult and the uncanny who do in fact support their families, why are there so many who live in poverty and failure, and none on the level of George Soros or Warren Buffet?

You're assuming that George Soros or Warren Buffet aren't profound believers in the occult.
posted by philip-random at 9:10 PM on October 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

One could also argue that occult knowledge is orthogonal to material success, not contradictary, but irrelevant adn dealing with other matters. So one who persues occult knowledge may not be interested in wealth.
posted by Snyder at 9:36 PM on October 30, 2008

I promise I'm really not trying to troll - I am being serious

How is Christianity qualitatively different from "the occult"? Better organized, I suppose. I was under the impression that many of the fantastically rich believe in supernatural things (via the Bible). I understand the cultural distinction being made here, but I think in a discussion about materialism vs magic and dualism, Christianity and witches' brews and spells and stuff are in the same genus.

Then there's Hollywood, about half of which is in the Church of Scientology.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 10:37 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Where do you all come up with this stuff?

1. Saulgoodman's science is just a metaphysician's dream. The real science is just materialism. It is all there is. Everything else is just a dream. To argue that ideas about materialism are non-material is to, well, just go over and stand in the corner with the other incompleteness theorem guys until you all realize what you did wrong.

2. Human level intelligence isn't special or unique. Other animals make and use tools, make up languages and words, and generally "get around" as the Beach Boys said. We've out competed them and gotten up to some bizarre shenanigans, but don't think we are all that different. Thinking so just means you are more impressed with your naval than you should be.

3. There is no magic. If there was, then witches would be rich and on TV. If you don't think so, then you have misjudged people and are likely both metaphysically poorer and actually poorer for it.

4. Religion created a demand for itself as all good products do. RELIGION SOLD US ON THE IDEA THAT THERE IS A WHY, and then cheerfully began billing us for the endless investigation of it. There is no why. None. Carry on.
posted by ewkpates at 4:08 AM on October 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

(There are credible accounts of personality changes in heart transplantees, to more closely resemble that of the heart donor.)

Um, what? That's a bold statement that could use some backup.

Human-level intelligence is special and unique.

Nope - that's an excessively anthropocentric view. Our intelligence is no more special and unique than any other. Plenty of animals have much better intelligences with regard to their environments - birds and the calculations required for pinpoint accuracy in flight, ocean dwelling animals that operate every day in 3 dimensions in our blind spots of up and down, etc.

Human intelligence is specialised and its line of development has some interesting repercussions such as art, literature, and engineering, but it is not special. Just as evolution is not a line of progress, but a branching bush, intelligence is ultimately situational and not truly an IQ-like gradient.

As to whether human, or human level intelligence can be replicated - you are correct in saying that we do not yet know the full scope of the problem. But there's a little thing I like to call 'extrapolation'. Just as we don't need to know the precise mechanics of swimming in order to make a submarine, we don't need to build an entire brain to be able to replicate some of its functions (as, indeed, we have, replacing non-functional bits with machines) and discover those functions are purely mechanical. And until someone comes up with a plausible explanation as to why special pleading should apply to the nature of the brain that is more than a wishy-washy sense of entitlement, there is no particularly compelling reason to suspect that, utimately, the brain is any different to anything else we have encountered (and thus devoid of supernatural aspect), or, indeed, that it operates as anything more than a cleverly evolved and ultimately replicable meat machine, a handy adjunct to the meatsac responsible for acquiring nutrition for the dominant bacterial lifeforms of planet earth. That which we term thought is merely a by-product of it's activity - more useful than harmful most of the time, but no more than that.
posted by Sparx at 4:09 AM on October 31, 2008

because he "saw that it was good"

I believe that's an assessment after the fact, not a reason why.
posted by Mental Wimp at 6:09 AM on October 31, 2008

I guess the objection that materialism has been philosophically found to be invalid because our theories of the nature of matter have changed over the last century strikes me as something of a problem. It's an argument that doesn't seem to carry over to political philosophy, where we admit that modern democracy and the concept of the state is radically different from Greek and Roman models, or epistemology where the concept of knowledge and belief has changed over time.

To insist that materialism be considered, not in the light of contemporary concepts such as wave-particle duality, and four fundamental forces, but instead according to the theories of the 19th century, seems a peculiar objection.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:12 AM on October 31, 2008

pyramid termite wrote "because he "saw that it was good" - which may not be an answer that satisfies you, but it is in there, if only you had read it"

I have read it, and its not an answer. Among other things, you are misrepresenting the line, it isn't an explanation of *WHY* God did things, merely a statement that he thought he did a good job, or that the result was good.

Oddly, and ironically considering the claims of modern thinkers that religion is all about the "why", the Bible tends to offer "how" answers to those big questions, not "why" answers. Of course the "how" answers the Bible gives all boil down to "because a magic man made it so", but the fact that they're wrong "how" answers doesn't make them "why" answers.

If I make a sandwich I can see that it is good, but that doesn't explain why I made the sandwich. Maybe I made it because I was hungry and I want to eat it. Maybe I made it as a courtesy for a guest. Maybe I'm a cook and a customer ordered a sandwich. Maybe I made it for practice because I'm entering the World Sandwich Making Championships. Seeing that it was good in no way explains why anything happened.

Crabby My only assumptions are pretty straightforward:

1) Everything observable is understandable.
2) It might take a while to understand specific things.

Zelazny put it poetically in his novel Lord of Light: "It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy - it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either."

To imagine that there is something so special, so unique, about the human mind that it is forever incomprehensible is, to me, anathema. We do not yet understand the inner workings of our minds, but that doesn't mean we will never understand it. "Currently not known" != "will never know". We may not figure out the mind for a long time, I *hope* that we can get a handle on it before my death, but I'm not under any delusion that it's going to happen immediately or even within the next few decades. It might take centuries, but as long as the human species continues to exist in a high tech state we'll understand it eventually.

Obviously simply knowing how the mind works does not automatically lead to copying or any other useful technology. But I do explicitly and axiomatically reject the idea that we simply cannot learn what makes the mind work.

It seems likely that if we can capture a mental state vector it will include more than purely the brain, various glands, the spinal column, etc do seem likely to be critical as well. The heart I'm not so sure about, I've heard stories about personality changes following heart transplants, but mostly they've been pretty urban mythish and never backed by any actual study. But, assume its true, the heart is a lot less complex than the brain, so it shouldn't present a problem.

We haven't build AI, but frankly the early pioneers were insanely optimistic. Not even the biggest and most powerful super computers today match the even a dog brain's complexity. The human brain contains around 100 billion neurons, and each neuron is connected to thousands of others. That's a rather staggering degree of complexity. Still, if Moore's Law continues to hold up we'll be manufacturing chips with about that level of complexity around 2045.

You appear, and please correct me if I'm wrong, to be working on the assumption that because we are the only sentient species is us, that somehow there *IS* something truly special, unique, and non-reproducible, about the human mind. I don't see how that follows at all.

Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that there is something that prevents consciousness from arising in non-organic brains, we should still be able to produce "artificial intelligence" in the form of sentient genetically engineered life.

But the over optimism of the early thinkers on the subject of AI hardly seems like a reason to toss the entire idea out the window. Early thinkers on the subject of space travel were also incredibly overly optimistic, but we did achieve useful space travel, yes?

Then can we physically build a sufficiently powerful computer? How big would it be? The size of a galaxy? Who knows? I don't. And neither do you.

No, I don't know, but we can make some fairly good guesses based on what we do know. We know the rough number of neurons in a human brain, we know the curve at which computer speed has increased for a long time now. Let's assume, just for a moment, that it'd take something 100 times as complex as the human brain to simulate a human mind. That sounds rather safely pessimistic. If Moore's Law can hold out until 2045 we could pack something that complex into a box about 100 times the size of a modern laptop.

Also, I'd like to add, that unless you know a way around the speed of light, a computer even the size of a solar system, much less a galaxy, wouldn't be much good.
posted by sotonohito at 6:25 AM on October 31, 2008

Anybody ever read that Asimov story about how a computer thought the universe into a new big bang?

There's that, and then there's the simple fact that while the debate is fun, we just don't know. However it happened, we're here, and as I've said in previous threads, the sheer amount of play and magic I can create inside my own head is enough for me, without needing to pay much attention to this debate.

Find me an atom that thinks and communicates with you, then let's have this debate.
posted by saysthis at 6:46 AM on October 31, 2008

Among other things, you are misrepresenting the line, it isn't an explanation of *WHY* God did things, merely a statement that he thought he did a good job, or that the result was good.

that's pretty much overthinking the old plate of beans

Oddly, and ironically considering the claims of modern thinkers that religion is all about the "why", the Bible tends to offer "how" answers to those big questions, not "why" answers.

except when you're presented with a "why" answer, you say it's inadequate - which is hardly a scientific answer as you have no evidence to base your opinion on

there are all sorts of metaphysical and philosophical reasons why you may believe that "because it was good" is an inadequate answer - there are no scientific reasons you can offer and saying that it's no answer is your opinion, not established fact

the sloppy thinking of the so called rationalists on this board never ceases to amaze me

If I make a sandwich I can see that it is good, but that doesn't explain why I made the sandwich.

sometimes people really do things because they're "good" - in any case, you're projecting your motivations for doing things on to god, which is not evidence for anything except hubris

why you waste your time arguing about the motivations of a being you don't believe in is beyond me anyway

fact - genesis does give a reason - that you don't like the reason but can't refute it is beside the point
posted by pyramid termite at 7:08 AM on October 31, 2008

So god, like, KNEW the sandwich would be good BEFORE he made it. Then he made it, and it was good, so he said, GOOD SANDWICH. Duh. That's solid thinking right there

I love the whole "it is an adequate answer... if you understand it" line. Keeping sending the bills Religion, we'll keep payin' 'em! We know you'll figure out that Why someday!

P.T. said it best. There is one born every minute.

Why you ask? ITS ALL PART OF GOD'S SANDWICH.
posted by ewkpates at 8:00 AM on October 31, 2008

saythis: The Last Question, sheer brilliance. Very much in the same vein The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (not entirely a comfortable read if you're easily grossed out) whose author is a mefite I believe.

I can't believe that a dualism/materialism debate is still going on and that it's unironically involving the bible. I also applaud anyone willing to indulge in a philosophical debate via slow text; you're braver than I.
posted by Skorgu at 8:10 AM on October 31, 2008

pyramid termite I'm completely not understanding what you're getting at, we're experiencing a total miscommunication here.

Can you explain why you say I'm over thinking things?

As for debating motives of a being I don't believe in, I'm simply disputing the claim that religion is there to provide "why" answers. I do consider many "why" answers to be not merely inadequate but insulting to boot. The answer to "why am I here" offered by the Catholic catechism, for example, is "to love and obey God". It is a definite answer, and I won't claim in the slightest that it isn't an answer. I consider it to be woefully inadequate, and an insult to both my existence and my reason, but I acknowledge that it is an answer.

But the statement in Genesis WRT the creation of the universe simply doesn't look like an answer to me, and I'm puzzled as to how you, or anyone, could conclude that it is. Can you explain your reasoning to me?

I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse here, but the "and He saw that it was good" looks very much like a judgment on the creation, not an explanation for it. To make it perfectly clear, I'm not claiming that it is an inadequate answer, but that it doesn't appear to be intended as an answer at all.

But I think the whole "and it was good" issue is not really central to my main point. My main point is that religion has had the entirety of recorded human history (and likely a good deal of time before records) to provide good "why" answers, and that all it has come up with is either is a naked claim for priestly power, or depends entirely on having faith in their religion. That isn't a success story for religion providing "why" answers.

And, of course, most of their "why" answers tend to be most unsatisfying because they lead to bigger questions that are never answered. To pick on the catechism, the obvious questions are "why does God want or need my love?" and "why does God want or need my obedience?" But they aren't answered anywhere.
posted by sotonohito at 8:16 AM on October 31, 2008

ewkpates RELIGION SOLD US ON THE IDEA THAT THERE IS A WHY

I disagree; I think the WHY came first, and religion followed. Sentience first, then the WHY, then religion which, as I see it, has always and only been about establishing a set of rules to live by, created by those who aspired to power and who would invent an omnipresent, all-seeing eye (I imagine hunter-gatherers who charge their young ones to stay in camp and guard the food cache, warning them that if they abandon their post, or if they eat from their store of food, the sun or the moon will see them and report them to their parents) to give weight to and strengthen their authority. The creation myths are just a back-story to flesh out the characters, because you know the kids'll be asking questions.

Religion is strictly a human invention, and it may well have served its purpose, until different cultures with different gods collided and sowed seeds of doubt among the believers, and now religion itself presents an obstacle to the concordance it sought to establish. The Creator meanwhile has all kinds of time; if we destroy ourselves, other sentient beings will follow, to find the answer to the question.
posted by Restless Day at 8:20 AM on October 31, 2008

I disagree with your disagreement.

Too many have profited from religion for it to be something born of sentience. Also notice that the Why in religion works best with the uneducated and uninformed. As science explains more, religion loses influence. Not because science is explaining the Why, but because science is developing critical thinking skill to the point where the con game doesn't work so well anymore.
posted by ewkpates at 9:19 AM on October 31, 2008

Human-level intelligence is special and unique

This reads to me as a premise rather than a conclusion. In the last 20 years or so, it's generally been seen in response to some animal study that demonstrates a quality of intelligence or self-awareness in animals heretofore thought to be exclusively human. It generally accompanies the replacement of the previously postulated unique quality with a new one, ad infinitum, in much the same fashion as the ID transitional fossil nonsense.

The sandcastle of human exceptionalism has been, and continues to be, steadily eroded by the rising tide of knowledge. No doubt there will be those who continue to maintain that the castle still exists when it's 20 feet under the sea, but in the fullness of time they'll be classed with the IDers and flat earthers.
posted by Jakey at 9:32 AM on October 31, 2008

Wait--are you saying we are in agreement? Because it sounds, essentially, like we are.

Religion doesn't explain anything; the original intent was, I think, to establish a code of conduct, that the community might be more cohesive and more effective. But of course another way to put it is, to control the unruly masses and indeed to discourage independent thought.

But again I would say that the human brain, interacting with its environment, begat curiosity and speculation, which begat critical thinking, which begat Science--and not the reverse.

And, the way I see it (you do not have to agree), this environment with which we interact speaks to us--forsooth it's waving its arms in the air at us--and the fact that we have eyes to see and ears to hear and a brain to process the information suggests there might be a point to it all . . . a WHY.
posted by Restless Day at 9:51 AM on October 31, 2008

Sorry--didn't preview--I'm responding to ewkpates
posted by Restless Day at 9:52 AM on October 31, 2008

We have science because we wanted to predict the future. How fast will the apple fall? Where will the stars be in 4 years?

We have religion because con artists played upon our uncertainty and ignorance. They tricked us into trying to puzzle out answers to questions that have no answer because the questions are based on nonsense imaginary ridiculousness. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Can god make a weight too heavy for god to lift? Why does god love us? There are no answers to these questions. They are asked so that the con artists can suggest that they know more, then we give them money and political power.

Let me show you: What is a Zytrachtal? You never wondered until now, did you? A Zytrachtal is a all-powerful consciousness that uses its powers to get people to take risks. Otherwise, why would we do it? There has to be a reason that we take the kinds of risks we do. It must be a supernatural power. What does it want from us? Lots of risks.

$5 please.
posted by ewkpates at 10:25 AM on October 31, 2008

We seem to be talking past each other ewkpates but I want to add one more thing: What's fucking ironic is if we want to survive as a species long enough to figure out the answer to the question--or even to establish whether or not there is a question to be answered--we have to learn how to get along with each other, and to live within our means. Mitakuye Oyasin
posted by Restless Day at 10:37 AM on October 31, 2008

Restless, buddy, I'm not digging you. But you write well.

We've been not getting alonging each other to death and living beyond our means since before we had writing. Every now and then they pull some caveman out of the ice with a split skull... I'm pretty sure we survive in spite of our inability to learn either how to get along or how to live within our means.

What astounds me is that we have the sense to group up in order to maximize our ability to be violently appetative. From a group of monkeys who seem bent on chaos, this is just amazing.
posted by ewkpates at 11:56 AM on October 31, 2008

I guess the objection that materialism has been philosophically found to be invalid because our theories of the nature of matter have changed over the last century strikes me as something of a problem.

Well, that's not really the point, though. The point is that "materialism" is now an incoherent concept. It originally had a very specific meaning, suggesting a particular model of the world that could be experimentally verified: a world in which all physical objects were made of small indivisible particles, beyond which no more fundamental level of reality existed. This imagined bottom to the "chain of causality" constituted the entire basis for the reductionist argument.

That model has not been verified (in fact, it's been refuted), but that's okay because the term "materialism" is no longer used in that original sense anyway. It's current sense, however, cannot be experimentally verified because, by definition, any result science can yield must be viewed as consistent with a "materialistic" worldview (science, after all, is a "materialistic" enterprise in search of materialistic results)--so the modern sense of "materialism" is tautological, and therefore, trivial.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:10 PM on October 31, 2008

This imagined bottom to the "chain of causality" constituted the entire basis for the reductionist argument.

Not quite sure that follows.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:48 PM on October 31, 2008

Mental Wimp: The classical argument for reductionism was that first causes resided at the level of the atom--the single, indivisible ur-particle that made-up all observable solid objects and materials. The chain of causality in the classical view began at the bottom, with the microworld being the source of the first causes of macro events. That was the original argument for reductionism: The real causes of observable phenomena are operating at the "atomic" level--all the more gross observed phenomena are just effects of those first causes. Well, guess what? There are no first causes. Causality turns out to be a tangled mess, with causal linkages seemingly possible in both downward, upward and sideward directions. And that kind of makes sense, since there is no indivisible atom (or first cause) to set the "causal chain" in motion.
posted by saulgoodman at 3:17 PM on October 31, 2008

saulgoodman, can I have a cite or two for that? Although I realize you are probably trying to summarize more than one thread of argument in your paragraph, I'm not familiar with that particular line of argument for reductionism and I don't see its necessity, in that reductionism has worked pretty well in a number of areas without solid, indivisible atoms being at the core of things. It seems to me that all reductionism requires is that things at level i+1 are a function of the interaction of things at level i, but that if min{i} is -&infin all is still good.
posted by Mental Wimp at 6:53 PM on October 31, 2008

Er, make that -∞.
posted by Mental Wimp at 6:55 PM on October 31, 2008

Can you explain why you say I'm over thinking things?

god is said to have created several things and saw they were good - it's repeated several times and it's pretty plain to me that the author puts great importance on god seeing these creations as good and following up with new ones

it's quite reasonable to interpret this text as meaning that god's motive in doing this was that it was good and many, in fact, do exactly that - it's the most simple explanation of the author's meaning

As for debating motives of a being I don't believe in, I'm simply disputing the claim that religion is there to provide "why" answers.

but it is - the fact that you don't like the answers is another issue

But the statement in Genesis WRT the creation of the universe simply doesn't look like an answer to me, and I'm puzzled as to how you, or anyone, could conclude that it is.

if you're disputing that the author believes that god created the universe because it was good, i really don't think any other interpretation fits - if you're disputing that the universe isn't good, why are you still here?

My main point is that religion has had the entirety of recorded human history (and likely a good deal of time before records) to provide good "why" answers, and that all it has come up with is either is a naked claim for priestly power, or depends entirely on having faith in their religion.

all i can tell you is that there's a difference between religion and spirituality and yet the two are often commingled in a puzzling and frustrating way - for all the talk about the value and meaning of science, one often is puzzled at where the real spirit of scientific inquiry is in our educational and corporate institutions of science, being shot through with offfice politics, bitter rivalries, cant and profiteering

humans tend to fuck up anything they do, whether it be science or spirit - one of the biggest scientific achievements of the last century was the discovery of the means to blow civilization to smithereens so it could never be recreated - that's not those priests who thought that up, that's those guys in white lab coats that did

if that scenario ever comes to pass people will be cursing science a lot more than they'll be cursing religion, even if some fundie pushes the button for fundie reasons

say what you will about the church, or the religion you're currently disliking now, they never thought up a way of killing billions of humans like *that*

tell you what, when the rationalist materialists get rid of these damn bombs that THEIR people created, then they can tell us how religion is the evil that killed all these millions of people and took their money and blah blah blah - yeah, they can lecture us about our stupidity when they've cured their own
posted by pyramid termite at 8:57 PM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

I've read all the replies to my last comment, but I'm only going to respond to sotonohito's. If, after reading this comment, you feel that I failed to address some devastating argument you made, remind me of it and I'll try to respond.

sotonhito, earlier on you said:

Assuming the mind is software I see no problem at all copying it to a virtual brain running on hardware radically different from that we evolved. I hope to do that with my own mind one day. Whether we'll develop the technology to implement that kind of thing within my lifetime is, of course, open to debate. I hope so, but I rather doubt it. I do, however, think that unless humans kill themselves (or ruin our technological society) the technology will be developed at some point in the future. To think otherwise is to believe that there is something magic about the brain.

I've been trying to figure out whether you had any basis other than ideology, dogma, faith—in other words, any scientific basis for those statements. As far as I can tell, you don't.

In your more recent comment, you used the first few paragraphs to reiterate your ideology. Then you said:

Obviously simply knowing how the mind works does not automatically lead to copying or any other useful technology. But I do explicitly and axiomatically reject the idea that we simply cannot learn what makes the mind work.

I believe that you don't understand something unless you can replicate it (or describe in a rigorous manner how to replicate it). So I think that if we truly knew how the mind works (with no "...and then a miracle occurs" clauses), replicating it would become an engineering problem.

But if you "explicitly and axiomatically reject the idea that we simply cannot learn what makes the mind work", then you're propounding a dogma. We simply don't know how the mind works, and we don't know whether we can (even in principle) ever learn how it works. But I hear that it's an article of faith for you that we can. I can relate. But I can't accept that particular dogma.

(I agree that the heart transplant thing is a bit of a red herring in this discussion. Also, I shouldn't have used physical size as a metaphor for computing power.)

We haven't build AI, but frankly the early pioneers were insanely optimistic. Not even the biggest and most powerful super computers today match the even a dog brain's complexity. The human brain contains around 100 billion neurons, and each neuron is connected to thousands of others. That's a rather staggering degree of complexity. Still, if Moore's Law continues to hold up we'll be manufacturing chips with about that level of complexity around 2045.

You're treating this as an engineering problem. But it's not (or not only) an engineering problem. We don't have the slightest idea how the mind works. I'm familiar with Moravec's calculations of how much computing power would be required to replicate human intelligence. It's all predicated on the assumption that the neurons are doing what he thinks they're doing. But nobody knows that for sure. It's speculation. Fun, thought-provoking speculation, but, in the end, just speculation.

If you had your 2045 computer today, you couldn't get it to participate in this discussion; nobody else could either.

You appear, and please correct me if I'm wrong, to be working on the assumption that because we are the only sentient species is us, that somehow there *IS* something truly special, unique, and non-reproducible, about the human mind. I don't see how that follows at all.

Let me just make it clear that I'm not trying to make any positive arguments here. I'm just trying to cast doubt on your arguments.

When I say that the human mind is special and unique, I'm not making an assumption, I'm making an empirical observation. I observe that humans can do things with their minds that no other animal, that no machine, that nothing else we know of, can do. Which makes us special and unique (as far as we know).

That's how computing theorists categorize computational models—by what they can do that other models can't. A Turing machine can do (compute) things that a push-down automaton can't; a push-down automaton can do things that a finite state automaton can't. You could put together an arbitrary number of finite state automata, and you still couldn't recognize a context-free language; you need a push-down automaton for that.

So when you say that there's nothing special about the human mind, I recall my observation that it can do things that nothing else can, which leads me to believe that your assertion requires proof. So far, I haven't seen it.

But the over optimism of the early thinkers on the subject of AI hardly seems like a reason to toss the entire idea out the window. Early thinkers on the subject of space travel were also incredibly overly optimistic, but we did achieve useful space travel, yes?

Space travel is different. We had just about all the science necessary to do it before we started trying. That really was just an engineering problem.

I don't toss the entire idea of AI out the window. It might happen some day. But I'm not at all confident that it will.

But the ~~hubris~~ over-optimism of the early AI ~~charlatans~~ thinkers is a great cautionary tale. Here we have highly respected scientists at top universities (MIT, CMU, Stanford) spinning out wonderfully inspiring science-fiction stories, who turned out to be completely full of shit. Remind you of anything?
posted by Crabby Appleton at 9:53 PM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

god is said to have created several things and saw they were good - it's repeated several times and it's pretty plain to me that the author puts great importance on god seeing these creations as good and following up with new ones

Several problems with this as an answer to "why". Saying the world was created because it was good begs the question of why it is good. Which brings up another problem and that is that the words "good" and "god" are essentially the same, derivationally. Thus, this explanation of "why" is circular. You can play along by identifying other such fallacies.

So, no, religion does a pretty poor version of answering the question "Why?"
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:18 AM on November 1, 2008

Several problems with this as an answer to "why".

i'm simply saying that the text does attempt to say "why", not that it's a satisfactory answer

Which brings up another problem and that is that the words "good" and "god" are essentially the same, derivationally.

in hebrew? i don't think so
posted by pyramid termite at 9:36 AM on November 1, 2008

Well, this stayed interesting!

One thing which I think may be germane here - we can make an artificial neuron. It may not be a perfect duplicate, but the effectiveness of their model suggests that they have hit on some kind of nuts-and-bolts (rather than holistic, top-down) understanding of what's important. Now, it seems to me that if we can duplicate and replace one neuron, we can replace another, and ultimately all. At which point we will know if the mind is something special which can only manifest itself in an actual brain. Or some fine legal brains will decide just what proportion of your brain has to be biological for you to qualify for human rights.

Also, my favourite answer to the why stuff:
"A physicist is the atom's way of thinking about atoms"
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 10:29 AM on November 1, 2008

So when you say that there's nothing special about the human mind, I recall my observation that it can do things that nothing else can, which leads me to believe that your assertion requires proof. So far, I haven't seen it.

But this observation is true for every single unique invention up until the point that we recreate it. Elephants could push more than anything for millions of years until we invented the truck. Birds could fly and we couldn't until we invented the airplane, the list is fairly endless. The fact that we can't synthesize something has zero predictive power as to the fundamental nature of our ability to in the future synthesize it.

Specifically:
your assertion requires proof
Assuming that the assertion at question is that human minds are not in some way intrinsically special that assertion requires no proof any more than the assertion that there is not a teapot in low earth orbit. Proposing an added, invisible something that prevents our knowledge is what requires proof.

The default principle of science is that all things are knowable until proven otherwise, deviating from that ground state isn't science unless it's based on evidence.
posted by Skorgu at 10:56 AM on November 1, 2008

i'm simply saying that the text does attempt to say "why", not that it's a satisfactory answer

For your argument to hold, I think you have to make the big assumption that YHWH, as quoted by the author, is reasoning ex post facto. The more natural interpretation is that the author says YHWH did these things, for whatever unstated reason, and judged the result to be "good", the criteria for which is also unstated.

Which brings up another problem and that is that the words "good" and "god" are essentially the same, derivationally.

in hebrew? i don't think so

Good point. I could find no evidence in a quick online search that the two are connected in Biblical Hebrew. I did find this, which does shed some light on your argument:

The word "tov" would best be translated with the word "functional". When looked at his handiwork he did not see that it was "good", he saw that it was functional, kind of like a well oiled and tuned machine.

I would argue that this implies not a moral valence to the word, but rather a pragmatic one. This doesn't sound to me like an attempt to argue the "why" of the world. I think the argument for religion attempting to explain why things are the way they are is really more in the moral realm than the physical.
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:35 PM on November 1, 2008

See, that's the problem right there. That sentence is so full of words that have more than one precise meaning - "consciousness", "materialism", "self" - that identifying an agreed-upon meaning, much less determining the truth or falsity of it is impossible. For example, I count no fewer than 4 meanings of "materialism" in the comments to this post.

Indeed. Consciousness tends to be conflated with intelligence, sentience, rationality, analytical behaviour, or hell, all of the above. Materialism is usually grossly oversimplified. The arguments in the FPP are facile, but Chalmers (and others) get much closer to the heart of the matter. And the entire debate has been utterly mucked up by religious/spiritual impulses, which have basically nothing to do with the question.

Arguing from the mechanics of the human brain to an explanation of consciousness is absurd on its face. A materialist solution to a dualist problem?

What is difficult to grasp, and what Chalmers spends approximately half his career reiterating, is that while a human brain may be necessary for consciousness (though it may not), it is by no means sufficient for consciousness. [And may I reiterate, that by consciousness I simply mean the sensation of being.] This is the point of the zombie problem. We can never know what set of "material" (be it software, hardware, energy, matter, etc) is sufficient for consciousness, because consciousness cannot be experimented with, it cannot be observed by a third party. We can conclude that various things are necessary: memory, senses, analytical ability, etc... but there will never be a true test of consciousness, as Turing noted. Consciousness is the "added, invisible something" we can never prove, except it is simultaneously the only undeniable fact, as Descartes recognized. A materialist theory can never account for consciousness.
posted by mek at 12:57 AM on November 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

tell you what, when the rationalist materialists get rid of these damn bombs that THEIR people created, then they can tell us how religion is the evil that killed all these millions of people and took their money and blah blah blah - yeah, they can lecture us about our stupidity when they've cured their own

It may be science that builds bombs, but it is religion that tells us to use them.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:41 AM on November 3, 2008

Religion as a motive has been killing people in order to maintain power for longer than we've had written language. It has been doing it the old fashion way(s), drawing, quartering, crucifying, boiling alive, burning alive, disemboweling, feeding to wild animals, raping to death, and that's not counting the fact that much of this was considered good entertainment.

Science has been used as a tool, not a motive, to further the political purposes of both religion and political governments. Science is a more humane tool, but nevertheless, as a tool, it has leveraged fewer deaths than religion has motivated.
posted by ewkpates at 6:07 AM on November 3, 2008

Mental Wimp: Wish I had the time to dig up more/better cites, but if you care to look into the history of reductionism a bit more independently, here's a broad summary, which notes: He [Descartes] formulated the notion that complex situations can be analyzed by reducing them to manageable pieces, examining each in turn, and reassembling the whole from the behavior of the pieces.

Descartes' arguments for reductionism were closely related to his views on causality, which he held to operate only from the bottom-up (i.e., in his view, an observable phenomenon is reduced to an effect of its constituent parts, which in turn are effects of their constituent parts, with the fundamental causal agent in the chain of causality remaining somewhere at the bottom-most level of scale).

Ironically, although Descartes is regarded as the most significant modern champion of reductionist thought (resurrecting and further developing the arguments of Democritus, the father of classical Atomism in ancient Greece), Descartes was also a committed dualist. And in my opinion, that's precisely why he needed to adopt a "materialist" position in the first place: materialism represented the other half of the duality he saw in the world. And that's why the concept of "matter" is only really meaningful even now within the context of an otherwise dualistic worldview, in which "matter" serves as a dialectic opposite to the concept of "spirit" or "mind."
posted by saulgoodman at 8:00 AM on November 3, 2008

He [Descartes] formulated the notion that complex situations can be analyzed by reducing them to manageable pieces, examining each in turn, and reassembling the whole from the behavior of the pieces.

Not sure that Descartes implies a problem with infinite regress, or pieces that are not atomic, either in this quick summary or in his more extensive writings. To inject an assumption that the pieces have to be the smallest possible pieces is a mistake, in my opinion. The principle works even if there still are more layers to inspect. Empirically, chemistry, physics, and biology have all profited greatly from reductionism.

And that's why the concept of "matter" is only really meaningful even now within the context of an otherwise dualistic worldview, in which "matter" serves as a dialectic opposite to the concept of "spirit" or "mind."

No, you don't have to get all mystical. I think Descartes was thinking of material vs. metaphysics, not spirits. Freedom, mind, ideals, and evil are all concepts, not material, but I hardly need to invoke spirits. I can also derive duality from this position, although it doesn't ring some people's chimes the way "spirits" do.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:19 AM on November 3, 2008

because consciousness cannot be experimented with, it cannot be observed by a third party.

Or even a second party.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:21 AM on November 3, 2008

Well, Mental Wimp, that's what I meant to impart by using "spirit/mind"--and FWIW, Descartes did believe in a spiritual world, since his religious commitments (as incorporated into his arguments by a series of rhetorical sleights-of-hand) were arguably all that kept his radical skepticism from leading to simple solipsism. And the strong arguments for reductionism from first causes absolutely do break down in the case of infinite regress--if there is no first cause, there's no necessary order to the chain of causality. Without such an order, there's no logical foundation for supposing that greater degrees of causal agency reside at lower-levels of complexity (and indeed, there are no lower-levels of complexity--just many interconnected levels of reality that are each in their own way equally complex).

But accepting a non-reductionist view doesn't mean rejecting the value of a reductionist point of view as a set of methodological conventions: reductionism is valuable not because we live in a universe governed by bottom-up causality or that otherwise conforms to reductionist principles. Reductionism is valuable because it stands to reason that analysis of an observable phenomenon across all knowable levels of abstraction will contribute to a more complete predictive model of the phenomenon. It's not that we shouldn't use reductionist methods, in my view, just that we shouldn't rely exclusively on such methods since they will always yield incomplete results in the absence of complementary and equally rigorous methods for carrying out non-reductive analysis. Relying only on reductionism, we ignore fully half of the gestalt of a given phenomenon (since everything above the everyday, immediately observable level is presumably out of bounds to science and our grasp on how to analyze events on an everyday level is shaky at best).

My own view is that causality (as problematic as the concept is to begin with) is built up cumulatively, by the interaction of causal agents operating across every level of abstraction. At every level of abstraction, there are things we classify for various analytical purposes as discrete physical phenomena: A bike has tires, gears, etc. The gears are made of a metal alloy, which has a particular molecular structure, which accounts for the physical properties of the alloy that makes up the gears. Those molecular structures are composed of atoms. The atoms have subatomic structures of their own. Etc. But the bike, as organized into its particular functional form, has properties that aren't solely dependent on these lower-level physical properties. That's why its conceivable you could make a perfectly functional (if short-lived) bike out of hard wood, or even certain forms of plastic, too.

So simple reductionist descriptions don't really make a full descriptive accounting of what makes-up a complex entity. Formal structures (governed by metaphysical principles) play as important a role in determining what properties and behaviors a complex entity exhibits. That's why a bicycle exhibits properties and behaviors not found in a bag full of disassembled bicycle parts. None of the parts that the bike reduces to, nor even all the parts together, can fully account for the observable properties and behaviors of that bike.

In my view, at different levels of abstraction, complex phenomena can inherit properties and behaviors from their lower and higher-level constituent phenomena. The specific formal structures embodied by these constituents can give rise to additional, unique properties and behaviors particular to the level of abstraction at which the structure is formed. These unique properties can exert causal effects up, down, or sideways along the causal chain. So strong reductionism offers a very incomplete picture.

As a computer programmer, I see this kind of thing in action all the time on the job, when polymorphism is used to create program objects that exhibit completely new properties and behaviors by building up sufficiently complex logical structures out of simpler logical structures. And when debugging or troubleshooting code, a bug sometimes turns up at a higher-level of abstraction (as when a particular software component times a program event in a way that conflicts with another component's timing of an event) and sometimes a bug can be found at a lower-level (a variable at the code block level wasn't properly initialized). A purely reductionist, line-by-line approach to debugging code can completely overlook the root cause of a bug of the first kind. Which for me reinforces the idea that meaningful information exists at higher, more abstract levels of analysis, too.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:09 AM on November 3, 2008

A purely reductionist, line-by-line approach to debugging code can completely overlook the root cause of a bug of the first kind. Which for me reinforces the idea that meaningful information exists at higher, more abstract levels of analysis, too.

I think we agree in principle. This higher level of abstraction, though, in a reductionist viewpoint, is still driven by the lower, atomic level, it's just that the abstraction provides a more efficient way of communicating about it. Your example of a timing problem is still at the level of code, just in a different domain than the explicit lines of code. It's represented by code somewhere else in the system. Perhaps a better example of higher-level would be when metadata don't match?
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:41 AM on November 3, 2008

Perhaps a better example would be when every line does what it's supposed to and in fact everything seems to be correct and then you realize that you forgot something and the whole damn design is broken and will never work and it'll be easier to just find a new job.

Wait, I'm not helping? :)
posted by Wood at 12:04 PM on November 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's represented by code somewhere else in the system.

Well, I would say it's represented by an interaction between code components across two different domains. The bug lurks in the design of an interaction between two discrete program objects in memory. The particular interaction space in which a bug arises doesn't necessarily exist until the code is instantiated and the two program objects begin functioning asynchronously in real-time. It's not necessarily the case that there's anything at all "wrong" with the logic of the code as written. It's at the functional level--where some one-in-a-million timing conflict occurs--that the bug arises.

But you're right: a more cogent point concerns methodological efficiency. I might never find the bug if I didn't consider the higher-level program structures in my analysis--the mechanical cause of the bug might be present in the underlying code, but no amount of analysis at the code level really explains the bug in a comprehensible way: the offending code just looks like noise at that level. You might eventually stumble onto what seems like a fix, but only through systematic trial and error, not due to an understanding of the root problem--and that's often how subtle, new bugs creep into code. But that's a whole 'nuther can of worms.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:42 PM on November 3, 2008

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