How can a starkly austere alienesque reality as painted by physics -- a realm totally devoid of any intentions, purposes, teleology, as well as devoid of all colours, sounds, odours -- how can such a reality where everything that ever happens is due to blind directionless material causation, possibly conjure up minds that are replete with all the forgoing?
In this deeply weird conception of reality, the mind is an anomalous tenant. The mind-body problem is all about the forlorn endeavour to make the mind non-anomalous, to make it the same as the rest of this deeply alien reality.
Ian Wardell: Philosophical Thoughts
Mostly philosophical topics, especially pertaining to the philosophy of mind and whether an afterlife makes sense.
Wednesday 1 May 2024
A Starkly Austere Alienesque Reality
Friday 29 March 2024
Ralph Lewis's Arguments against an Afterlife
Mind-brain dualism is the view that brain and mind are derived from entirely different kinds of things — physical stuff and mind-stuff. Dualism assumes that both kinds of stuff exist in the universe and that science has simply not yet detected and discovered the mind-stuff. Dualism feels intuitively correct to most people, as it fits with our subjective experience. But it is completely contradicted by science.
It seems to me to be very difficult to deny that consciousness is non-physical. Regardless of whether brains produce consciousness or not, it seems straightforwardly obvious that consciousness itself lacks mass or any other physical properties. This is in stark contrast to the neural correlates of consciousness. It's also very difficult to deny the existence of a mental substance. For is it intelligible to say there could be, for example, a pain without any entity undergoing that pain? Or that there can be thoughts without a thinker? So, contrary to what Ralph Lewis claims, I'm not sure if it is correct to say any assumptions are being made here. Rather, substance dualism seems to be derived from our immediately lived experience. It is for this reason that substance dualism is the commonsensical position that we are all born believing. Even most of those who emphatically reject an afterlife implicitly accept this commonsensical position.
But is substance dualism contradicted by science? Although it is true that science has not detected either this self or its conscious experiences, the failure here neither suggests anything about their existence nor does it point to a defect of science or contradict it. Science only detects the measurable or quantifiable aspects of reality. Hence, it can detect neurons firing, but it cannot detect the conscious experiences correlated with this neuronal activity. But this doesn’t mean that selves and their conscious experiences don't exist, nor that science is wrong, rather science is simply the wrong tool for the job. Compare this to the fact that a metal detector will fail to detect wood or plastic. We certainly wouldn't conclude that wood and plastic don't exist, nor that the metal detector is working incorrectly.
He also says:
There is no aspect of the mind, the personality, or the self that is not completely susceptible to chemical influences or physical diseases that disrupt neuronal circuitry.
So, how is it that scientists are so certain that dualism is false? Quite simply, because for dualism to be true, all of science would have to be false.…Dualism so fundamentally contradicts the foundations and entire accumulated evidence of modern science that in order for it to be true, we would have to start rebuilding modern science from the ground up. If dualism turned out to be true, it would also be a complete mystery or fluke as to how most of our advanced technologies (including all of our electronics) work at all, since their design and engineering are based on the very principles that would necessarily be entirely invalidated if dualism were true.
I'm going to go into a bit more detail here since this is a serious charge to make. For, if true, it places advocates of dualism firmly in the anti-science camp. But why on earth do certain materialists believe this?
From reading around, and especially reading the arguments of the physicist Sean M. Carroll (whom the author appeals to in a footnote), it seems they are convinced that science entails that the physical world is closed. This is the thesis that physical causation wholly accounts for all change in the world, including all of our voluntary behaviour and even the direction our thoughts take. This is what all forms of materialism hold, and at least interactive substance dualism contradicts this since, contrary to the materialists, those who subscribe to it believe consciousness, in and of itself, is causally efficacious. So since substance dualists usually believe in the existence of mental causes in addition to physical ones, they are committed to denying that our current laws can be completely accurate. Does this entail most of our modern technology wouldn't work, as Lewis and others claim?
Firstly,
we should remind ourselves that this contravening of physical causal
closure only occurs with the impact of consciousness on processes within
the brain. This impact will likely be minuscule, most likely on the quantum scale, and hence will be undetectable. After this initial impact by consciousness, we might suppose the usual chains of physical causes and effects
apply, cascading this initial minuscule change to larger and larger effects resulting in our voluntary behaviour. But, apart from any changes precipitated by our own voluntary activity, why on earth do they imagine that the rest of
physical reality would be affected? After all, the vast preponderance of the Universe is far removed from this initial change precipitated by
consciousness.
Hence, thirdly, and regardless of whether one subscribes to an afterlife or not, it needs to be pointed out that we immediately experience our own causal efficacy whenever we make any voluntary movement, or even when we entertain a chain of thought. And in case people don't find that convincing, I argue in this blog post in the first two sections that it is simply incoherent to suppose consciousness has no causal impact and, furthermore, that this causal impact necessarily has to be over and above physical causation.
Fourthly, our current
physics leaves out the existence of consciousness in its description of
reality (see the hard problem of consciousness) and a fortiori, it also leaves out any causal role that consciousness plays. So, this entails our
current theories simply cannot be completely accurate, at least when applied to living brains.
Ralph Lewis seems very certain of himself in the dismissal of an afterlife. But, at least in this article, it does not seem to me that he has brought up anything particularly problematic regarding either interactive substance dualism or an afterlife.
Monday 13 November 2023
A Review of "Threshold: terminal lucidity and the border between life and death" by Alexander Batthyány
Preamble
The rally, or the last hurrah, which in recent years has been termed terminal lucidity, refers to where a person, typically suffering from dementia or some other neurological disorder, suddenly and seemingly miraculously reverts to their pre-dementia original selves. This usually occurs shortly before death. I recently read a book on this topic called Threshold: Terminal lucidity and the Border between Life and Death by Alexander Batthyány. I'll provide a summary of the salient points of this book followed by a few of my thoughts.
A summary of the book
According to Alexander Batthyány, states of intoxication and other induced exceptional psychological states pose a relatively weak argument against an enduring self or soul. This is for the simple reason that such conditions are temporary, and the original self soon returns. So, here, it cannot be the case that the original self was ever destroyed. The original self was there all along, but temporarily hidden.
It is seemingly very different with dementia. The progression of dementia appears to actually destroy a person's beliefs, interests, memories, and very character. This, in turn, also implies that normal brains cause our usual standard personality and character. If these suppositions are correct, what can be left of any eternal, immutable soul?
However, terminal lucidity has now demonstrated that the original self can return. This is, to say the least, perplexing since, at least with dementia, the damage to the brain is still there. How is it possible to have a normal, clear, lucid mind with a severely diseased brain if the brain produces consciousness? Indeed, it doesn't seem possible.
The author draws parallels between terminal lucidity and Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). In NDEs, we also have self-consciousness and personhood when these ought to be highly unlikely given the impaired brain states. So despite compromised brain activity during both terminal lucidity and NDEs, individuals have normal if not enhanced mental alertness, vision, and memories. As an aside, whilst the author doesn't mention this, one might wonder about a potential connection to savant syndrome here?
The author posits that both terminal lucidity and NDE's strongly imply that it cannot be the brain, or indeed the whole body, that somehow produces consciousness. And yet, on the other hand, the author also feels this is strongly contradicted by all the other overwhelming evidence that appears to show that consciousness, or the mind, is very much dependent on the proper functioning of one's brain.
The author tries to reconcile what terminal lucidity and NDE's seem to imply with this contrary evidence, by employing two analogies. The first one is that the mind-brain relationship resembles a total solar eclipse. During such an eclipse, we cannot see the sun, we can only see the coronal filaments peeping out from behind the moon. If we did not know better, we would fallaciously infer the moon somehow produces these filaments. Similarly, we fallaciously infer the brain produces consciousness. The other analogy is the mind at large idea. This holds that the brain functions similarly to a “reducing valve”, which filters out a much greater and expanded consciousness to prevent us from being overwhelmed and confused by a vast ocean of conscious experiences.
My Thoughts
On the other hand, apparently contradicting this evidence is the undeniable fact that a damaged brain usually leads to a damaged mind. Do the total solar eclipse and the mind at large analogies explain how a soul could exist in the face of all this contrary evidence?
[W]e would expect the progressive destruction of more and more of the brain’s “filter” by Alzheimer’s disease to progressively “free” more and more of consciousness, and thus increase Alzheimer’s patients’ mental proficiency as the disease progresses.
Of course, with terminal lucidity, some Alzheimer’s patients' mental proficiency is indeed increased (which they do not mention), but this is the exception rather than the norm. So the mind at large hypothesis needs to be fleshed out a bit to address this criticism.
Thursday 31 August 2023
What's the point of all things?
Thursday 24 August 2023
Do colours, sounds and odours as we experience them exist out there in the external world? I think so.
1. Introduction
Common sense holds that what has been labelled the secondary qualities, such as colours, sounds and odours, exist out there in the world independently of us. For example, grass really is green regardless of whether anyone is looking at it or not – that is, it is an objective feature of the world. In stark contrast, academics and the scientifically educated overwhelmingly reject this view. They hold that colours, sounds, odours and the other secondary qualities do not exist out there in the world at all, rather they only exist as an experience produced by the brain. This is in contrast to their position on the primary qualities, such as shape and size, which, like common sense, they regard as existing out there.
To explicate this academic view regarding the secondary qualities, let's consider the example of colours. Briefly, the story goes like this: objects reflect particular wavelengths of light, this light then enters the eyes and precipitates a chain of physical processes in the brain, finally, the brain somehow crafts the experience of a colour from these signals it receives. In this story, it should be stressed that the light itself is not considered to be coloured at all, the colour only comes into existence at the end of the causal chain. Watch this video for a simplified scientific story of what happens.
I find it hard to convey how utterly radical this conception of the world is. A world that is entirely bereft of any colours, sounds or odours is a deeply alien one, and arguably unimaginable. It is a bare skeletal outline of reality denuded of the flesh of the qualitative. Roses are not really red, violets are not really blue. And an unpleasant odour is not literally out there in the world, rather allegedly it's a fabrication created by our own brains!
So given the radical nature of the claim, one would expect a lot of pushback. But, curiously, it seems almost entirely absent. Even those who typically believe in psi and an afterlife and constantly question mainstream academic positions, accept the arguments advanced for this conception of reality. Indeed, these very same people have, at times, been quite trenchant and dismissive of my own belief that the world is more or less as we perceive it to be. On this issue, I seem to be virtually a lone voice. So I thought I would set the record straight and explain why I remain intransigent on this matter.
Here's how I intend to proceed. The next part, part 2, will be devoted to advancing arguments for this thesis that the secondary qualities do not exist out there. Part 3 will be devoted to questioning these arguments with part 3(i) mostly addressing the perceptual illusion argument and part 3(ii) addressing the causal story argument. Part 4 will be devoted to articulating an alternative to this causal story. In Part 5 I will give my concluding thoughts.
Throughout this essay, I will largely be focussing on colours. However, it can be assumed that, in the main, similar arguments are equally applicable to the other secondary qualities. I will also, contrary to my own views, follow the standard practice of referring to the brain rather than the mind as playing a pivotal role in shaping the contents of our sensory perceptions.
2. The arguments for the claim that colours, sounds and smells as we experience them do not exist out there
Let's first of all consider illusions involving vision. The two most impressive ones I've ever encountered are the shadow-checker illusion and that famous dress. In the former, the squares A and B appear to have very different colours. However, if we remove most of the picture leaving just the squares A and B, then, much to our astonishment, we will see that they are actually the very same colour.
With the dress, it is either perceived as being white and gold, or alternatively as being black and blue. If that were not astonishing enough, the very same individual might initially see it as being coloured one way, but then at a later date are only able to see it as being coloured the other way. Indeed, this actually happened to me. Initially, I could only see the dress as being white and gold, but ever since that first day I can now only see it as being black and blue. It now seems baffling to me that I ever saw it as being white and gold!
It is of vital importance to understand that perceptual illusions are not outliers in how we perceive the world. They are not tricks. Rather they underscore the way that we always sense the world. Indeed, everything we ever perceive could, in a sense, be considered to be an illusion.
We can infer then that we do not simply
passively perceive what is out there. In the case of our vision, it's
not as if we are looking out of a
transparent window onto the external world just simply
seeing what is out there. Rather, seeing is an active process. That is, the brain plays an active role in
shaping the colours we see. What seems to
be happening here is that the brain holds an unconscious implicit
hypothesis about the nature of the external world. This hypothesis includes the
idea that objects have intrinsic unchanging colours. So the brain adjusts accordingly, shaping and moulding visual experiences to try and ensure that
specific objects appear to retain more or less the same colour
irrespective of all the differing lighting conditions and the actual wavelengths of light entering our eyes.
Furthermore, consider also that our sensory experiences will not be the
same for all individuals. For example, some individuals have varying
degrees of colour blindness or colour vision deficiency. It also seems
that animals differ from humans in what they can sense. Some see fewer colours than we humans do, but other animals, most notably many insects, see more colours. And animals also differ significantly in their other senses too.
So naïve realism does not seem to be tenable. The secondary qualities that we experience are not just determined by objective features of the world
such as wavelengths of light, they are also influenced by a perceiver's expectations and beliefs, as well as, of course, the nature and structure of a perceiver's sensory organs and brain. But if what we perceptually experience differs from what the world is like in and of itself, then how do we know colours and the other secondary qualities exist out there at all?
None of the foregoing in this section makes it conclusive that colours and the other secondary qualities do not exist out there. But the case is arguably considerably strengthened if we also take into account the alleged fact that we have a complete scientific story for how we perceive. Crucially, this story involves only the primary qualities as being causally efficacious – the secondary qualities are deemed to be causally impotent. So, in the case of vision, it is the wavelengths of light only, not the experienced colours associated with those wavelengths, that figure in the scientific story of how we perceive colour. And the same applies to the other secondary qualities.
I will now summarise the arguments that colours and other secondary qualities do not exist out there.
a) We do not passively perceive the world, rather the brain moulds and shapes our perceptions to make them congruent with our implicit expectations about what the world is like. Hence, a colour as perceived might be very different from the actual colour of objects. So why believe there are actual colours out there at all?
b) Secondly, two individuals can perceive a secondary quality very differently. Indeed, this is even the case with unimpaired senses since one's implicit expectations and beliefs play an important role in what we perceive. The dress is an excellent example that illustrates this since two individuals can see radically different colours. Indeed, even the same individual can perceive the dress as having very different colours on two separate occasions.
c) The alleged clinching argument is that we have a complete scientific story of how we perceive secondary qualities, and no reference is made to any actual secondary qualities existing out there in the world. Hence, even if they do exist, they play no role in explaining our experience of the secondary qualities.
3. The Pushback
(i). The argument from perceptual illusions dismantled
Let’s consider the shadow-checker illusion again. Suppose this was an actual object in front of us with the image on our retinas approximating to the 2D picture presented to us on our computer or mobile screens. Despite the wavelengths of light entering our eyes from squares A and B being identical, the way our vision works we will perceive squares A and B as having very different colours, just as in the 2D illusion. Yet we're not being fooled since if we were to approach this object, and view it from various perspectives, then we would effectively confirm that squares A and B are indeed very different colours and to the same degree as we perceive in the 2D illusion.
More generally, since differing lighting conditions influence the wavelengths of light reflected from objects, then if we were to simply experience the colours corresponding to the wavelengths of light entering our eyes, the colours of objects would appear to us to be in a constant state of change. In short, we wouldn't be seeing colours as they are in themselves out there in the world. And as with the checkerboard, it would compromise our ability to recognise objects.
If colours do exist out there in the world and objects are intrinsically coloured (they retain precisely the same colour over time), then their actual colours correlate poorly with the wavelengths of light that enter our eyes. The fact we do not see the colours corresponding to these wavelengths cannot therefore be used as an argument that we're not seeing the world as it is. On the contrary, the very fact that our brains mould and shape the colours we actually perceive by taking into account the lighting conditions, suggests that we do see the world with its colours more or less as it is in itself. Of course, it also entails that our vision is an active rather than a passive process. That is, the brain moulds and shapes and infers what the world is like. But that doesn't mean to say that what we eventually perceive, what the brain infers, cannot be normally a fairly accurate representation of what the world is like in and of itself.
(ii). The argument from the scientific story called into question
Let's for the sake of argument, and contrary to my own view (see here and here), take for granted that a type of materialism so characterised is unproblematic. It nevertheless wouldn't be purely a scientific story of how we perceive since one would be assuming upfront the type of materialism so defined. A scientific justification for rejecting the existence of secondary qualities in the external world cannot be predicated on a certain metaphysical stance being true. That is, if we are to have a scientific justification for supposing that colours, sounds, smells and tastes are conjured up or created by the mind rather than residing in an external world, then this ought to apply under any metaphysical stance on the mind-body problem, even if it resembles something like Berkeley's immaterialism (more on immaterialism/idealism near the end).
4. Are we obligated to accept the Causal Story?
This is all deeply implausible. So we need compelling reasons to accept this story. Yet it seems to me that we lack any such compelling reasons. Indeed, I question whether we have any reasons at all. But are there any reasonable alternatives? My response is an emphatic yes. Let's see how.
5. Concluding Remarks
A Starkly Austere Alienesque Reality
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