What were the chances of me being born?

What were the chance of any specific person being born? More specifically, what were the chances of me being born? If we accept the prevailing belief, then our self or identity is determined by a specific sperm fertilizing a specific egg. A specific sperm and egg are required since it is believed that each sperm and each egg are unique. Armed with this information the blogger Ali Binazir has attempted to give an estimation of this chance. (update 18/11/2019. The webpage no longer exists)

He concludes:

Probability of your existing at all: 1 in 10^2,685,000 

That is a one followed by 2,685,000 zeros! Undoubtedly we can quibble about this figure. But, even though it might be wildly wrong in underestimating the true probability, we can nevertheless safely conclude that the probability of me being born are effectively zero. Since though I have been born it seems to me we have to reject the original stipulation that my identity is determined by a specific sperm fertilizing a specific egg.

I've never encountered anyone who actually agrees with me here. The common response is that the fact we were born is not remotely surprising. Indeed, they often make the rather bizarre claim that the probability of me being born, or any specific person being born, is actually 1; that is it is certain I would be born! And when I say it's a common response, I mean it's an extremely common response. For example in the comments section of Ali Binazir's blog entry there are many who express precisely this position.

But what could it possibly mean to say that it is a probability of 1 that I would be born? If our identity is indeed tied down to a specific sperm fertilizing a specific egg, then it cannot possibly be 1! My parents might never have met for example.

The gist of their argument can be gleaned by something Richard Feynman is alleged to have once said (obtained from here): (update 18/11/2019. This webpage also no longer exists)

“... I had the most remarkable experience this evening. While coming in here, I saw license plate ANZ 912. Calculate for me, please, the odds that of all the license plates in the state of Washington I should happen to see ANZ 912. Well, it’s a ridiculous thing”.

Well, obviously the probability would be 1 divided by the total number of license plates in the state of Washington. However, we can see his point. The fact he saw this particular license plate cannot be deemed to be surprising since whatever license plate he might have happened to glance at he could have asked the same question.

Transferring this to the probability of me being born, the point is that someone will be born, and that someone, whoever he may be, can always wonder at his own existence and argue that it is so unlikely that he were born that his existence cannot possibly be due to a specific sperm fertilizing a specific egg. But yet someone will be born and so it is certain that someone will express such astonishment. But then it might seem his conclusion -- and indeed my conclusion -- that his identity cannot possibly be determined by a specific sperm fertilizing a specific egg, is simply in error.

So, as I see it, that seems to be their argument. And on the surface it sounds reasonable enough. However, I regard the argument to be flawed. Let us now see why.

Let's consider something like the UK National Lottery. There are 6 balls drawn (let's forget about the bonus ball) from a total of 49 balls. There are approximately 14 million combinations of numbers (the order in which they are drawn does not matter). Each of these combinations have equal likelihood of being drawn. Thus any arbitrary combination of balls has 1 chance in approximately 14 million in being drawn. A combination such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is no less likely than any arbitrary combination such as 7, 16, 23, 29, 35, 43. This being so, then according to these people, we ought not to be any more surprised if last night's lottery numbers were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 then if they had been a combination of numbers such as 7, 16, 23, 29, 35, 43.

But of course we would be surprised if last nights lottery numbers had have been 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and rightly so. To argue that we ought not to be surprised, or worse still to argue the probability is 1, is to fail to recognise that some combinations of numbers are special, and that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is the most special combination of numbers of them all. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is special in the sense that the numbers are not arbitrary but have a pattern which draws our attention. What we ought to be doing is not comparing the probability of this special combination of numbers with any arbitrary combination of balls -- which of course are the same -- but rather comparing the probability of this special combination of numbers with the total sum of all the probabilities of all non-special combinations of balls taken as a whole. Hence we are entirely justified in being very surprised if last nights drawn balls were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

In order to drive this point home we can consider other scenarios where the prior probability of an event is somewhat less than 1 in 14 million. Let's consider a game of Whist or Bridge. Apparently the probability of each of the 4 players being dealt all 13 cards of each suit is 1 in 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,559,999. Despite such an event being alleged to have actually occurred, as for example in this news article, and indeed on other occasions such as here, I think it can be safely concluded that this wasn't just happenstance and infer that either somebody fixed the cards beforehand, or the deck of cards was inadequately shuffled, or they are simply not telling the truth.

The point being that if 4 people were dealt such hands, we would regard it as either miraculous, or some shenanigans or some other factor were at play biasing the distribution of cards. I assume the vast majority of us would not declare that such an event was not remotely surprising, least of all would we declare that the chance of it happening was 1.

Is the case of me being born different? To answer this question we have to consider whether me being born is special compared to anyone else who might have been born in my place. Now from my perspective I am justified in considering me being born is special since, if anyone else had been born in my place, then I would never have existed. It is true that from an objective perspective me being born is no more likely, or less likely, than any other person who might have been born in my place. True but irrelevant. It is also the case that last night's lottery draw of 7, 16, 23, 29, 35, 43 is objectively no more, or less likely, than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 being drawn, but it is the meaning we human beings bestow onto the latter sequence of balls which is all important. Likewise each and every one of us consider ourselves to be special compared to anyone else who might have been born in our place.

It might be argued by some people at this point that I'm omitting a crucial factor here. They might entirely agree with me that certain combinations of lottery balls and certain Whist hands ought to be considered extremely surprising, but argue that the scenario of being born differs in a crucial way. That is to say that in stark contrast to the examples of lottery balls and card hands, if I had never been born, then I would never have existed to wonder about it. I can only wonder about my existence if I had actually been born. Hence the fact I find myself in existence cannot be deemed to be remotely surprising.

Supplementing the argument in this way is, however, also flawed. This can best be seen by the use of another slightly different analogy, an analogy used by the philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne. He says:

"Suppose that a madman kidnaps a victim and shuts him in a room with a card-shuffling machine. The machine shuffles ten packs of cards simultaneously and then draws a card from each pack and exhibits simultaneously the ten cards. The kidnapper tells the victim that he will shortly set the machine to work and it will exhibit its first draw, but that unless the draw consists of an ace of hearts from each pack, the machine will simultaneously set off an explosion which will kill the victim, in consequence of which he will not see which cards the machine drew. The machine is then set to work, and to the amazement and relief of the victim the machine exhibits an ace of hearts drawn from each pack. The victim thinks that this extraordinary fact needs an explanation in terms of the machine having been rigged in some way. But the kidnapper, who now reappears, casts doubt on this suggestion. ‘It is hardly surprising’, he says, ‘that the machine draws only aces of hearts. You could not possibly see anything else. For you would not be here to see anything at all, if any other cards had been drawn.’ But of course the victim is right and the kidnapper is wrong. There is indeed something extraordinary in need of explanation in ten aces of hearts being drawn. The fact that this peculiar order is a necessary condition of the draw being perceived at all makes what is perceived no less extraordinary and in need of explanation". (Obtained from here) (update 18/11/2019. This webpage is yet another one that no longer exists)

Swinburne utilized this analogy to illustrate the fact that what has been labelled the anthropic principle does nothing to explain why the Universe is such an orderly place -- a point with which I am in full agreement even though I do not concur that this necessitates the existence of a traditional concept of God (see some musings of my own here). But it also equally applies to any anthropic principle type argument that attempts to render the fact I was born as something unsurprising. As Swinburne's argument illustrates, this simply isn't true. In fact, despite first appearances, it is no more effective than the original argument and Swinburne's analogy illustrates the fatuity of both.

In summary then, given that the chance of being born is 1 in 10^2,685,000, even if that is only a very rough ballpark figure, this chance is so incredibly small as to be effectively zero. Hence any position which holds that we are both selves and that our selves are determined by a specific sperm fertilizing a specific egg, cannot realistically be maintained. I do not believe this conclusion is obviously problematic for materialism, at least so long as the existence of a persisting self is denied (I discuss the issue of a persisting self here).

Self-Driving Cars

I tend to pooh pooh predictions regarding new technology and how it will utterly revolutionise our lives. And it seems to me such predictions have a very poor track record. 
 
But I think self-drive cars -- more specifically those that do not allow humans to take over control -- will eventually completely replace human driven cars and utterly revolutionise the world.

Which is not to deny there will be many problems to solve before we get there. For one thing they'll initially encounter a lot of resistance due to the fact that many people -- predominantly men -- just simply love to drive. In addition we presumably will see a mixture of self-drive and human driven cars on the roads at first, and this will create formidable problems. And what of problems such as kids jumping out in front of the cars to see them automatically stop! And I question whether a car which looks like one that Noddy might drive, such as the google self-drive car depicted in the photograph above, will ever become popular.


So ironing out all the problems will take a great deal of time, and we're talking here probably of a few decades. But I'm going to be bold here. I predict that by 2060 no one will drive cars any more on public roads. And practically no one will die any more on the roads.

Update 23/10/14   A very negative article I've just come across:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.single.html

Article says:

But the biggest issue with the Google car is one that has bedeviled computer researchers for as long as computers have been around: how to endow the machines with the sort of everyday knowledge that humans acquire and use from childhood on.

It's going to be incredibly difficult -- albeit not impossible -- to endow them with that sort of knowledge because they are not conscious and never will be. But presumably people were aware of all these problems. I myself hint at them above.

I certainly don't agree it will never happen. A mixture of normal and self-drive cars will be very problematic. But all cars being self-drive is altogether a different issue. But how do we get to the scenario whereby all cars are self driving without going through the problematic situation of both normal and self-drive cars being on the roads? Perhaps in reality there will be a gradually transition with cars becoming more and more autonomous until the point where they become fully self-driving.

A Further Update 17/01/15

I've just been having an argument with a certain James Burkill on facebook about what computers are capable of. The subject turned to self-driving cars. I showed him this blog entry. He said to me:

Tesla already have self driving cars on the market. And they already drive better than humans. They can see through fog. It can decide on the precise torque required for the forward or rear engine to maximise efficiency. Driving is a perfect application for a machine learning algorithm. There is no shortage of data.


In two years from now all car companies will be offering models with autopilot. By 2020 we will have cars without steering wheels or pedals. By 2022 there will be debates raging over whether we should allow humans to drive due to safety concerns. By 2027 humans will be banned from driving in most western countries.

So his prediction for when no one will drive cars any more on public roads is 2027, compared to my 2060. Quite a bit of difference! I think his prediction is hopelessly optimistic. There again I know virtually nothing about computers. But we shall see.

And yet another Update! 29/08/18

See 2 further blog posts I've made in my other blog on this topic:

https://ianwardells.blogspot.com/2017/08/fully-autonomous-cars.html


https://ianwardells.blogspot.com/2018/08/autonomous-cars-and-human-drivers-are.html

Free Will and the notion of "could have".

5/11/2019  Update:  My most recent blog post -- A Causal Consciousness, Free Will, and Dualism -- covers all pertinent issues regarding free will.


I have advanced an argument here for the notion that our consciousness is necessarily causally efficacious. I want to talk on this occasion about free will and more specifically to address a common conception of what it means to have free will -- namely the notion that in any given situation one could have behaved differently from how one actually did behave.

American professor of biology Jerry A. Coyne has written:

I mean it [free will] simply as the way most people think of it: When faced with two or more alternatives, it's your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation. A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently.

In my experience this definition that stipulates one has free will if one could have chosen otherwise is a very common one. Unfortunately it is often left unstated as to the precise meaning of this -- as if its meaning were entirely unambiguous. The problem here is how the precise meaning of "could have" is to be construed. Does "could have" mean that I have the capacity to behave in a given way, even though inevitably I will not?  This would be my own position.  Or does it mean that given the precise same circumstances and the precise same physical configuration of the Universe, I need not inevitably make the same choice every time? That is to say if we keep rerunning the tape of my life a sufficiently large number of times up to the choice in question, then I will eventually make a different choice? Expressing it as Jerry Coyne does in terms of the tape of ones life, strongly suggests to me that he means the latter. From my reading around on the subject of free will I also get the impression that there are other philosophers and scientists who share this conception.  Unfortunately this interpretation seems to me to be unintelligible.


Suppose I were to spot a £20 note while I was walking around outside. I would stoop down, pick it up, and put it into my pocket. What if we were to keep replaying the tape of my life an arbitrary large number of times? Would my behaviour ever differ at this point? I can't imagine it would do. Why would it?


Let's consider another scenario. Imagine you could travel backwards in time to some famous historical event. Imagine also that you don't reveal your presence to anyone and you have no impact whatsoever on the environment. In this case these historical figures will say and behave as the history books tell us. We will know their future lives in their entirety. And however many times we revisit a specific time and place, these historical figures will say and behave precisely as they did on all previous occasions.

This also implies that if someone from the future were to covertly observe us, and if we make a mark so that our actions are recorded in the history books of the future, then that time traveller might in principle know precisely what we will do and say at a specific time and place.  And again, should our time traveller keep revisiting that specific time and place, he will not see any variation in anything that we do and say.


Now I would submit that it would be absurd to conclude that these scenarios demonstrate we do not have free will. In the £20 note scenario I would pick it up because of the obvious reason I can purchase goods and services with it. If we rerun the Universe numerous times why would I ever choose differently? Similar reasoning applies to our time travelling thought experiment. If we travel backwards in time, and we do not even disturb the motions of any molecules, then this scenario differs not at all to the one whereby we stay in the present, but we are able -- via some future technology -- to visually view past events "as they happen". Or if aliens on some exoplanet 100 light years away -- presently viewing the earth via a colossally powerful telescope -- are currently watching events unfold on the earth as they happened 100 years ago. Clearly the events they view would not differ in any way from what we know took place 100 years ago.

So it seems to me that the words "could have" certainly ought not to mean that if I reran the Universe I might have acted differently. When I exercise my free will I deliberately choose a particular course of action. Even where my choice is simply arbitrary, for example I really do not care whether I go right or left when I'm out on a walk, that same slight disposition to turn left will still exist if we reran the Universe.

But it seems to me that Jerry Coyne -- and many other scientists and philosophers who have defined free will in the same way -- do have this meaning of "could have" in mind. But then what they're doing is advancing an unintelligible conception of free will.


At this point Jerry Coyne and others of a likewise opinion might agree with me that such a conception of free will is indeed unintelligible. But they might argue there are no other conceptions of free will which can be rendered intelligible. The arguments I have advanced merely serve to illustrate that human behaviour is as determined as any other physical process or change in the Universe. Hence our future behaviour is as fixed as, for example, the motion of the Earth as it orbits the Sun, or the motion of a boulder as it rolls down a hill.


I think though that such reasoning would be wrong. The mere predictability of someone's behaviour is not typically thought to conflict with commonsensical notions of free will. The more we get to know a friend, the more we will be able to predict his behaviour or the views he will express. However it would be absurd to suggest that this makes him less free, or that he never had any free will in the first place.


What we need to understand is that the predictability that your friend will pick up a £20 note if he spots one on the ground, and the predictability of the path of the Earth as it orbits the Sun, seem to have quite distinct different causes. We regard the behaviour of your friend as being caused by a specific intention in his mind and an end goal -- it is this conscious intent which initiates his behaviour.


But the behaviour of the earth? Well I submit that most of us won't regard that the Earth orbits the Sun because of a conscious intent on the Earth's part, or because it wants to! Typically we regard the Earth as being constrained to follow the path it does. That is it does so either because physical laws govern the Universe or because gravitation represents some force or warping of space-time which compels the Earth to follow the path it does. If the Earth were to suddenly stop in its path, or to orbit the other way, or to jig up and down, this would be considered miraculous, and indeed deeply worrying! This is in stark contrast to the case where I ignore the £20 note on the ground and simply walked on by. The latter would be irrational and it would never happen. But the impossibility of it happening seems to be of a wholly differing nature to the impossibility of the Earth suddenly stopping in it's path round the Sun and jigging up and down. Certainly my failure to pick up the £20 note would not be considered miraculous!


The important thing to bear in mind is that, in contrast to other physical objects, we are not obliged to conclude that a person's voluntary behaviour is wholly caused by physical laws or other external factors. Given a particular physical state of the Universe, it need not be physical laws coupled with this physical state that wholly determines what we normally take to be our voluntary behaviour. Rather one's voluntary behaviour is caused by the self or consciousness, and this choice will inevitably be a specific unique one given a particular physical state of the Universe.  This also might suggest that a specific unique future exists -- not because we are hapless puppets controlled by physical laws -- but because we do not act randomly but make specific choices in a given situation.  However, as I hope I have made clear, this is entirely consistent with a full-blooded commonsensical conception of free will.

I hasten to add though that I have not shown that such a full-blooded commonsensical conception of free will exists.  The majority of scientists and philosophers will deny that the origin of our behaviour differs in kind from the rest of the Universe. They are liable to express the view that if physical laws govern the path of the Earth as it orbits the Sun, so too do physical laws govern our behaviour, it's just that we are vastly more complex so it is not so readily apparent that they do so.

Why Philosophy is important

If an individual never thinks philosophically, never questions his existence, what the world is about, what justifies certain moral stances and other philosophical questions, then what will determine his beliefs in such things? Presumably the prevailing beliefs of his culture. He will trust what he considers to be the most intelligent peoples' stance on such issues. These are likely to be people in the higher echelons of academia and especially what scientists say.

Hence, for example, he is likely to accept that he is merely a sophisticated biological robot with no free will, that science can in principle tell us everything about the world and indeed everything else. He might even accept that there are no objective morals -- that they are merely an expression of emotions, or they merely reflect psychological truths about the way human beings happen to be.

In that case, by not thinking for himself, he is merely absorbing the common wisdom of his culture. This is highly undesirable for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that those who rise to the top in the academic community are liable to express views consonant with the prevailing orthodoxy -- for if they do not then they will be less likely to have risen to such a position in the first place. So certain beliefs about the world tend to be perpetuated, not necessarily because of their underlying merits, but because there are influences actively discouraging the expression of views which are at variance with generally accepted beliefs. Since the prevailing common wisdom is both rather bleak and also, it seems to me, profoundly wrong, this surely cannot be desirable.

Secondly it is of benefit to be able to understand underlying philosophical issues in and of its own sake. This has the benefit not only of hopefully obtaining a greater understanding of our underlying beliefs about ourselves and the world and other philosophical issues, it also is helpful in developing our critical thinking skills which can be applied in many other aspects of our lives.

And a final brief word on the benefits of philosophy to science. It was Richard Feynman who is alleged to have said: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” I agree that this will be true for the average scientist, certainly. But the truly great scientist who hopes to revolutionalize the way we view reality, must break out of orthodox ways of thinking and truly understand all the philosophical ramifications of competing revolutionary scientific hypotheses. With that in mind perhaps it might be more accurate to say philosophy of science is about as useful to the average scientist as knowing about how the engine works is to the average car driver. But what if your car keeps breaking down? What if the car accelerates when you hit the brakes? Or turns right when you steer left?

 
Update 26/12/14

I found this link.  The video there can also be found on youtube here.  An excellent video which I'm in entire agreement with.  In the event the links become broken in the future, here is the transcript of the video:

"From a distance, philosophy seems weird, irrelevant, boring — and yet, also, a just a little intriguing. But what are philosophers really for?

The answer is, handily, already contained in the word philosophy itself.

In Ancient Greek, philo means “love” and sophia means “wisdom” — philosophers are people devoted to wisdom. Being wise means attempting to live and die well.

In their pursuit of wisdom, philosophers have developed a very specific skill set — they have, over the centuries, become experts at many of the things that made people not very wise. Five stand out.


1. WE DON’T ASK BIG QUESTIONS

There are lots of big questions: What’s the meaning of life? What’s a job for? How should society be arranged? Most of us entertain them every now and then, but we despair at trying to answer them. They are the status of almost a joke — we call them “pretentious” — but they matter deeply, because only with sound answers to them can we direct our energies meaningfully. They have, over the centuries, asked the very largest. They realize that these questions can always be broken down into more manageable chunks, and that the only really “pretentious” thing is to think one’s above raising naive-sounding inquiries.

 2. WE ARE VULNERABLE TO ERRORS OF COMMON SENSE

Public opinion, or what gets called “common sense,” is sensible and reasonable in countless areas. It’s what you hear about from friends and neighbors — the stuff you take in without even thinking about it. But common sense is often also full of daftness and error. Philosophy gets us to admit all aspects of common sense to reason. It wants us to think for ourselves. Is it really true what people say about love, money, children, travel, work? Philosophers are interested in asking whether an idea is logical, rather than assuming it must be right because it’s popular and long established.

3. WE ARE MENTALLY CONFUSED

We are not very good at knowing what goes on in our own minds. Someone we meet is very annoying but we can’t pin down what the issue is; we lose our temper but we can’t readily tell what we’re so cross about — we lack insights into our own satisfactions and dislikes. That’s why we need to examine our own minds. Philosophy is committed to self-knowledge and its central precept, articulated by the earliest, greatest philosopher Socrates, is just two words long: “Know yourself.” 

4. WE HAVE MUDDLED IDEAS ABOUT WHAT MAKES US HAPPY

We’re not very good at making ourselves happy. We overrate the power of some things to improve our lives and underrate others — we make the wrong choices because, guided by advertising and false glamor, we keep on imagining that a particular kind of holiday or car or computer will make a bigger difference than it can. At the same time, we underestimate the contribution of other things, like going for a walk, which may have little prestige but which can contribute deeply to the character of existence. Philosophers seek to be wise by getting more precise about the activities and attitudes that really can help our lives to go better.

5. WE PANIC AND LOSE PERSPECTIVE Philosophers are good at keeping a sense of what really matters and what doesn’t. On hearing the news that he’d lost all his possessions to a shipwreck, the Stoic philosopher Zeno simple said, “fortune commands me to be a less encumbered philosopher.” It’s responses like these that have made the very term “philosophical” a byword for calm, long-term thinking and strength of mind. In short, for perspective. The wisdom of philosophy is in modern times mostly delivered in the form of books. But, in the past, philosophers sat in market squares and discussed their ideas with shopkeepers or went into government offices and palaces to give advice. It wasn’t abnormal to have a philosopher on your payroll. Philosophy was thought of as a normal, basic activity, rather than as an esoteric, optional extra. Nowadays, it’s not so much that we overtly deny this thought, but we just don’t have the right institutions set up to promulgate wisdom coherently in the world. In the future, though, when the value of philosophy is a little clearer, we can expect to meet more philosophers in daily life. They won’t be locked up, living mainly in university departments — because the points at which our unwisdom bites and messes up our lives are multiple and urgently need attention, right now".

What determines where we go should there be an afterlife?

Should there be an afterlife I suspect we don't all go to the same place.  I would speculate that the afterlife realm will consist of different levels and/or quite distinct environments.  Moreover, I also suspect it wouldn't be our behaviour in and of itself which determines our final destiny in the afterlife realm, but rather what might be labelled our "intrinsic essence". 

Why not our behaviour?  Off the top of my head I can think of 3 reasons.   Firstly, our behaviour is highly influenced by the state of our brains. Just consider someone like Phineas Gage. Or how peoples' behaviour is affected after they've consumed a large amount of alcohol. Secondly, our behaviour is inevitably hugely influenced by our peers and what is deemed appropriate and acceptable and normal for ones culture. Indeed we are all actors and try to behave in a way consistent with our past actions and what other people expect of us.  And thirdly, we can get into habits which are psychologically difficult to break out of.

This is not to deny there will be a correlation between behaviour in this life and our final destination.  For it seems to me that our intrinsic essence will also presumably play a large role in influencing our behaviour.  However, due to the aforementioned influences, this will not be a perfect correlation; indeed perhaps far from it.


So I would speculate that whether we go to a pleasant realm, or unpleasant realm, will be determined by our intrinsic essence.  But what do I mean by intrinsic essence?  Briefly I mean what we truly are.  More specifically our capacity, or at least latent capacity, for love, empathy, compassion and so on, or contrariwise the presence of hatred, malice, self-absorption and so on.

However in my opinion it seems somewhat implausible that we will be judged by any external entities or source, rather I suspect it will be our intrinsic essence which will "gravitate" us towards the appropriate levels/environments in the afterlife realm.   So finding ourselves in a pleasant environment or indeed unpleasant environment in the afterlife realm (Heaven or Hell) will not be because we are being rewarded or punished.  Rather it will be our innate natures which propel us there.  Of course, everyone at some point will probably harbour negative thoughts, and this might temporarily propel people to those realms not entirely appropriate to their essence, but their inner essence will shortly reassert itself so that we will eventually find ourselves in that environment/level which mirrors our true essence and affinities. Of course should this be correct we will find ourselves in the company of like-minded individuals. 

A very brief introduction to Immaterialism

We very strongly feel the world exists out there independently of us. We feel it is solid, has colours, that sounds are out there and so on.

However, the scientific story holds that we are profoundly mistaken in all of this. The apparent solidity of objects is -- scientists allege -- merely the repulsive force between the electrons in the tips of our fingers and the electrons near the surface of the "touched" object. Colours, in reality, are merely a certain wavelength of light that objects reflect. Sounds are merely rarefactions and compressions of the air. Smells are merely molecules in motion.

So reality is entirely divest of colours, sounds, and smells, and really nothing is solid either. These qualitative experiences are supposedly entirely a creation of the mind. The world out there is wholly quantitative and devoid of anything qualitative. And hence unimaginable. The greenness you experience when looking at a green object is entirely a creation of your mind. The perceived object is not actually green at all in the commonsensical use of the word green.

This scientific picture not only applies to materialism, but any position that holds that science depicts a literal state of affairs.

I want now to take a very brief look at the metaphysical ideas of the 18th Century philosopher, George Berkeley. He subscribed to a metaphysical view of the world called immaterialism, commonly referred to as subjective idealism. This rejects the notion that science depicts a literal state of affairs and, with commonsense, affirmed that colours really are out there in the world, as are sounds and smells. They are not merely entirely a creation of our own minds. The world is as it seems.

But, in another respect, his immaterialism radically departs from commonsense.  He is notorious for denying the existence of a mind-independent reality. Normally, we think that a coloured object is wholly independent of our minds, or indeed any minds whatsoever. But Berkeley held that our very perceptions constitute reality.   

Now, consider that when I see grass and I see it is green, this is clearly not entirely a creation of my own mind. There is, after all, a difference between my perceiving grass and when I think and hold an image in my mind of grass.

So, if what we think of as the external world doesn't have a mind-independent existence, but yet what we perceive is not entirely conjured from our own minds, then why do we have any perceptions of an ostensible external world like grass, trees, houses, stars and so on at all?  

The answer is that Berkeley held that when I see something, I am participating in God's conception of the world. Our various perceptual experiences -- vision, sounds, smell, tastes, sense of touch -- are a result of God directly conveying to us his conception. Our perceptual experiences of the external world are, in a sense, a direct communication with God.

Of course, one need not follow Berkeley all the way here. Perhaps all sentient minds somehow create physical reality. It is this collective mind that we are participating in when we experience "physical" reality.

It might be thought that immaterialism profoundly contradicts what science has discovered about the world. This is a mistake.  We can never break out of our world of perceptions. Science is purely in the business of describing the connections between our various perceptual experiences. There is no requirement that we hypothesize a reality forever beyond what we can in principle perceptually experience.

So, does this mean that something like atoms do not exist since they are in principle unperceivable? Let's step back a bit and consider a normal everyday macroscopic object. Let's consider an apple. What we call an apple has a certain physical appearance that shifts according to perspective, a certain feel, and a certain taste. But, according to George Berkeley, the apple I see and the apple I touch are not literally caused by a mind-independent apple out there causing both. Rather, certain visual appearances, and certain tactile (touch) sensations are constantly conjoined together. It is a family of associated perceptual experiences that we label an "apple".

So the apple itself and indeed all physical objects are an implicit hypothesis we all hold about the world. The existence of objects serves to explain the course of our perceptual experiences. The existence of unobservable entities such as atoms, although more hypothetical or theoretical, also play a fruitful role in our hypotheses and theories about the world. Therefore, they can be said to exist in a comparable manner to the common objects of our experience.

Why does the external world exhibit uniformity? If there is no mind-independent reality, what accounts for the fact that the tree outside remains there regardless of whether I look towards it or look away? The answer for Berkeley resides in the fact that the world is governed by physical laws. Compare to the environment in a computer game. The character I control might be facing towards a tree. I can turn the character a full revolution through 360 degrees and the tree will still be there.  The tree is still there because the computer game environment is governed by rules implemented by a computer programmer. Likewise, our external world exhibits uniformity due to physical laws, with physical laws simply being directly caused by God.

I'm not sure if I would follow Berkeley in everything he says, but he provides much food for thought and I would gravitate towards some type of idealism, even if not subjective idealism.

26/05/2021  Update:  I've just published another blog post on Berkeley's immaterialism. 

Never never give up!

From an unknown author:

One day, two frogs were enjoying the day in the barn when they accidently fell into the farmer's bucket of cream, and they couldn't get out. The two frogs kept swimming around to keep from drowning, and every once in a while they would try to climb out, but this was becoming very tiring.

One frog kept saying, "This is useless, we should just give up." But the other frog just ignored the comment and kept swimming.

Finally, the pessimistic frog gave up and drowned. The other frog was sad at the loss of his friend, but he wasn't going to give up. He kept swimming and swimming, and, finally, the cream turned into butter and the frog simply climbed out.

This story shows that even if we stumble and others try to pull us down, we've got to keep on swimming because, eventually, the cream will turn into butter and we'll make it out of the pail.

I wholeheartedly concur.  No matter how desperate a situation may seem, no matter how unlikely it seems to be able to attain the desired outcome by continually struggling, nothing is achieved by simply giving up.  And even in the most dire circumstances all hope might not be lost.

Moreover the striving itself serves to give us purpose and direction in life.  No chance of landing that dream job?  Well certainly not with a negative attitude.   And we can even grant it might be unrealistic even with a positive attitude.  But negativity makes failure a certainty.  Positivity, even where it fails to achieve the specific goal in mind, gives us hope, gives us something to look forward to, gives us a reason to live even if only to see if our plans come to fruition.  And if they don't?  Then make some new plans!   Always fight, and never never give in! 

Does the self as opposed to a mere "sense of self" exist?

An interesting blog entry by someone regarding whether the self actually exists.

Can the Chariot take us to the land of no-self?

Here is the issue as I see it. It seems to me that materialists cannot believe in a self. This follows when we remember our bodies are in a constant state of change and hence our mental states too. There can be nothing permanent to which materialists could hang their hat on and call a self. And materialists sometimes approvingly speak of Buddhism as sharing their belief here.

But what does it mean to claim the self doesn't exist? Well first of all it certainly doesn't mean that they are claiming that we are not conscious. We know in a most immediate manner that we are conscious. Nor would they deny we have a sense of self. Thus from one minute to the next we feel we are the same self, or the same person, enduring during that time.

The materialists (and Buddhists) claim this is an illusion. In other words, although we have a sense of self, this does not correspond to a real self. This can most easily be seen when we compare ourselves now to when we were children when we had very different personality characteristics. If our intelligence, interests etc have changed so radically since then, then in what sense can we be claimed to be the same person?

But the materialist and Buddhist are claiming much more than this. They claim that even from one second to the next there is no actual enduring self. To understand what they mean by this we need to be aware of the distinction between alterational change and existential change. The author of the article expresses it in the following way:

Phenomenologically, mental change is not existential change, but alterational change, or in a word, alteration.  Existential change, as when something comes into being or passes away, is not a change in something, or at least it is not a change in the thing that suffers the change: a thing that ceases to exist is no longer available to be that in which  this change occurs, and a thing that comes to exist is not available prior to its coming to exist to be that in which this change occurs.  We express this by saying that there is no substratum of existential change. Alteration, however, requires a substratum: alteration occurs when numerically one and the same individual is in different states at different times.

Let me put this in a more readily easily understood manner. Consider a table. We could paint it a different colour. That's alterational change. It's the same table, but has been altered slightly. But now consider destroying a table, and putting in it's place a table looking identical. That's existential change.

I take it that commonsense takes it for granted that, at least from one minute to the next, we undergo alterational change and emphatically not existential change. If the latter were true then, since we continuously change from one second to the next, then we would, from the commonsensical perspective, be effectively constantly "dying" from one second to the next. And this is precisely what materialists are obliged to believe. Hence both materialism and Buddhism entail a profound shift in the manner in which we view ourselves -- for one thing it would entail our fear of death is wholly misplaced!

In part one of the linked article we are presented with an argument for such existential change. I want to supplement the arguments there with my own. Imagine that in the future teleporting is possible. In the teleportation booth we scan a person, and simultaneously destroy (kill) that person, and create an identical person in the destination booth. That person will feel as if he has "jumped" from the original booth to the destination booth and will have the same memories etc and will feel that he is the same person that was killed.

So the teleported person will feel he is the same self i.e his sense of self will be intact. But in reality he has been killed and been replaced by a different self who looks exactly like him, shares the same memories and in every other way is psychologically identical to the original.

But -- so the materialist will argue -- the exact same position pertains in our everyday second by second existence. We have an almost identical physical appearance, almost identical memories and more generally an almost identical psychological state from one second to the next. However there's absolutely nothing persisting any more than a table does if we were to continually destroy the table and replace it with almost identical versions every second.

The author of the blog argues that this no-self hypothesis is untenable. As he puts it:

Suppose my mental state passes from one that is pleasurable to one that is painful.  Observing a beautiful Arizona sunset, my reverie is suddenly broken by the piercing noise of a smoke detector.  Not only is the painful state painful, the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one is itself painful.  The fact that the transition is painful shows that it is directly  perceived. It is not as if there is merely a succession of consciousnesses (conscious states); there is in addition a consciousness of their succession.  For there is a consciousness of the transition from the pleasant state to the painful state, a consciousness that embraces both of the states, and so cannot be reductively analyzed into them.  But a consciousness of their succession is a consciousness of their succession in one subject, in one unity of consciousness.  It is a consciousness of the numerical identity of the self through the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one.  Passing from a pleasurable state to a painful one, there is not only an awareness of a pleasant state followed by an awareness of a painful one, but also an awareness that the one who was in a pleasurable state is strictly and numerically the same as the one who is now in a painful state.  This sameness is phenomenologically given, although our access to this phenomenon is easily blocked by inappropriate models taken from the physical world.  Without the consciousness of sameness, there would be no consciousness of transition.

If we are aware of not only a pleasurable state followed by a painful state but in addition an awareness that I have changed from a pleasurable state to a painful state, then there must be something enduring which persists through both states. So, in addition to mental states at specific instances in time, there is an underlying awareness of these mental states at specific instances in time. This underlying awareness plays the role of uniting these experiences. To wit:

 . . the self is experienced not as an object alongside objects, but as the conscious transtemporal unity of the pleasurable and painful states.

Has the author established that it is plausible to suppose the self exists? I certainly think the example of the self is very different to that of a chariot or any other physical object. The self or I seems to serve the purpose of demarcating one set of experiences from another. I do not experience your experiences, and you do not experience mine. The prospect of an enjoyable night out down town seems very different if I were to experience it rather than an identical twin of mine were to experience it. Simply because the self can neither be pointed to nor is discernible in isolated conscious experiences does not entail such a self does not exist. In short if the materialist or Buddhist is to assert that there is no persisting self then he needs to address this challenge of the "conscious transtemporal unity" of successive conscious states.

But what about the teleportation example? Indeed we can imagine the following scenario. Imagine that every infinitesimal fraction of a second you are getting teleported from place to place. Obviously if you keep your eyes open you'll just see a confusing blur. But you could close your eyes, and everything would seem to be normal. You could be thinking of a problem, daydreaming, or whatever. Nothing would seem different as compared to when you have your eyes closed normally, except in the teleportation scenario you are continuously being killed and spontaneously coming into being every infinitesimal fraction of a second! Does this then refute the notion there can be an enduring real self? Well, yes, but only if you believe that teleportation in the manner described is possible. And this possibility is dependent upon some materialist position being true. When the original body is scanned it is typically implicitly being supposed that a person is exhausted by the total sum of information constituting his body. But to suppose this is to assume that reductive materialism is true, or more specifically that human beings are nothing but their material bodies. But non-materialists will reject that either consciousness or selves are themselves material. More specifically they will deny the self or its conscious states can be constituted by information (for if they could why would they not by definition be material?). A weaker materialist position could be adopted which holds that even though conscious states are not the very same thing as the brain or its processes and hence cannot be scanned and reproduced, conscious states are nevertheless produced by a person's brain. In which case the teleported person's body will produce consciousness and teleportation will be possible after all, even if we reject strict materialism. 

None of this though says anything about the possibility of a persisting or enduring self should we reject all materialist positions. Perhaps the body doesn't produce either selves or their conscious states but only modifies conscious states whilst leaving an unchanging self intact. This might be compared to tinkering with the innards of a TV set and altering the picture quality being displayed, yet without altering in any way whatsoever the actual content of the programme being screened. It seems to me that if this is so then the implications for teleporting would be that it is impossible, at least in the manner described, and a mere corpse would appear in the destination booth.


Edited to add: For those who might be interested there's a paper on why Berkeley's conception of a real enduring self is not susceptible to David Hume's dismissal (I also talk about Berkeley's philosophy here: )


Berkeley's Refutation of Hume On the Self

Does the discovery of fake psychics provide good evidence that there are no genuine psychics?

Imagine 2 possible worlds:

a) No psychics exist due to the fact that anomalous information acquisition is simply not possible i.e the physical laws of nature prohibit what we refer to as ESP.

b) Psychics do exist, but they are comparatively rare.

It is clear to me that in world "b" there will be more fake psychics than in world "a". Why? Here's an analogy. If we lived in a world where £20 notes didn't exist, then it is likely there would also be no counterfeit £20 notes either. There would be no purpose in counterfeit £20 notes since no one would be fooled by them. However, in our world where £20 notes exist and they are in demand, then inevitably there will be many counterfeit £20 notes.

Similar reasoning applies to psychics, albeit to a much lesser degree. That is to say in world "a" there will be fake psychics, but it seems clear to be that they will not be as numerous as fake psychics in world "b".

Skeptics of the paranormal often allege that the discovery of fake psychics provides compelling evidence that genuine psychics do not exist. But since there are many more of them in world "b" this is not only false, but arguably (and admittedly counterintuitively) makes the existence of genuine psychics more likely.

In addition, they sometimes use the argument that since every psychic they have heard about turns out to be a charlatan, then it is reasonably, via induction, to infer there are no genuine psychics. But this is rather like a person flicking through a wad of £20 notes, carefully removing those counterfeit notes which are fairly easy to discern with the naked eye, and then declaring that since every note they've examined so far is counterfeit, it's reasonable to infer they all are! 

In other words skeptics focus on the easy targets and insinuate that similar debunking can be applied to all alleged psychics. And this is the strategy that skeptics of the paranormal seem to me to apply across the board to all paranormal phenomena (to be fair though such underhand tactics are pretty well universal no matter what the subject matter happens to be i.e. people have the propensity to attack the weakest articulation of a position or resort to attacking straw men, and to avoid addressing the strongest or most compelling articulation of a person's position on any subject).

 

Predictions for 2024

A few months ago, as a result of making disparaging comments about Isaac Asimov's predictions in 1964 for 2014, someone asked me to make predictions for 2024. 

I think making predictions is extraordinarily difficult. And I don't have the knowledge to attempt such a thing. However I decided not to be boring and gave it a crack anyway. This is what I said: 

2024? Well I'll predict everything will be more or less the same.

OK google glasses will have limited success when they are first launched. But later models will become more and more popular as all the issues are ironed out. It'll be like the history of mobile phones (cell phones). At first very few people will have them, but eventually they became all pervasive.

People will not make a one way trip to Mars in April 2023 to live the rest of their lives there! I just can't see that happening, at least not by that time.

Smart watches will find a market, but they will never become that popular. They're too small and people will prefer their smartphones.

Much less stress will be placed on the notion that saturated fats are a great evil. It will be increasingly recognised by 2024 that it is sugar and refined carbs, rather than dietary fat and lack of exercise, which is largely responsible for rising obesity rates and ill-health.

Yeah not very startling exciting predictions.  But I'm trying to be realistic.  I think I may have been proven to be correct with the Mars trip already since the last time I heard a year mentioned it was 2025!  But, regardless, I cannot imagine it happening before 2040, and I doubt that a one way trip will ever happen -- or at least not until Mars is terraformed!