Materialism/Physicalism is incompatible with our ability to reason

5/11/2019 Edited to add: For an expanded and superior consideration of this issue, see my A Causal Consciousness, Free Will, and Dualism.


Contemporary wisdom holds that all physical events have entirely physical causes -- causes cashed out in terms of physical processes that we can potentially measure. This includes everything we ever say and do. This might be taken to suggest that our reasoning, our intentions, plans and so on, don't actually do anything.

However, it seems clear to me that our reasoning must have causal powers. It cannot merely be physical processes that have causal powers. Otherwise thinking something through, and reaching an understanding, would be illusory since any conclusion at the end of a chain of reasoning would not be caused by the chain of reasoning itself, but rather by the neural correlates of the chain of reasoning. If this is so then we can have no more reason to think that our reasoning processes will lead to true conclusions, than false conclusions (see my Can consciousness be causally inefficacious? for a more comprehensive defence of this point).

Materialists often agree with this but assert that materialism does not have this consequence. It does not have this consequence because, so they claim, conscious experiences, such as our reasoning processes, are literally identical to physical processes in the brain. If a train of thought is literally identical to some physical processes, and these physical processes have causal powers, then it necessarily follows that the train of thought itself has causal powers too. So we have no problem here.

I beg to differ.

Let's suppose that in the brain we have a physical causal chain:

1. A → B → C → D → E


And we have a mental chain representing a chain of reasoning:
 
2. a → b → c → d → e


Now, of course, the materialist claims that “A” is identical to “a”, “B” is identical to “b” etc.
But nevertheless, we have 2 different accounts of how A/a progresses to E/e. In "1" we have the interactions of molecules as mathematically described by the laws of physics. In "2" we have a train of reasoning which, when we attain an understanding of something, will have involved rational connections between thoughts.

Now if materialism/physicalism is true, then everything has the ability to be explained in terms of the physical as exemplified in "1". Account "2" is simply not required, since physical laws, which describe physical processes, make no reference to reasoning, nor indeed do they make any reference to intentions, desires, plans, or any other aspect of consciousness. Indeed, reasoning only comes into the picture for a vanishingly medium part of the world; namely brain processes, and a minority of brain processes at that. And it is held by materialists that physical laws provide a sufficient explanation for these minority of brain processes just as much as they provide a sufficient explanation for the rest of the Universe.

But it then follows that reasoning something through is causally irrelevant. Hence identifying reasoning, and the rest of our mental life, with physical processes, doesn't allow us to escape an epiphenomenalist position. I regard this as a reductio ad absurdum of materialism.

The self and its experiences

Is helpful to distinguish between the self and its experiences. What is the self? I suggest it is that underlying reality making one the very same individual from when one were a toddler, to the present time when we are adults, to when one is drunk and so on and so forth. Throughout these different times our interests, intelligence, behaviour and so on all change . Therefore these latter attributes cannot constitute the self since that would entail that the self quite literally changes after, for example, one has had a few alcoholic drinks. The self changes when one is drunk, but only in a comparable manner to which a table might change if we paint it a different colour, and not change in the sense of smashing the table up and replacing it with a similar one. 

Think of a container and lots of objects filling that container. Compare the container to the self, and the objects within it to one's personality characteristics. Just as the objects themselves are not the container, so our experiences, intelligence, interests etc are not the very same thing as the self. Moreover, the objects are all different shapes and not any shape will fit into any container. Likewise not any personality characteristic will go with any self. The nature of one's self will limit the possible personality characteristics.

Stephen Law's opinion on "invisible beings"

The philosopher Stephen Law has recently written an article entitled:
Why are we humans so prone to believing spooky nonsense?

The beginning of the article states:

Human beings are remarkably prone to supernatural beliefs and, in particular, to beliefs in invisible agents – beings that, like us, act on the basis of their beliefs and desires, but that, unlike us, aren’t usually visible to the naked eye. Belief in the existence of such person-like entities is ubiquitous. As Steven Pinker notes in ‘The Evolutionary Psychology of Religion’ (2004), in all human cultures people believe that illness and calamity ‘are caused and alleviated by a variety of invisible person-like entities: spirits, ghosts, saints, evils, demons, cherubim or Jesus, devils and gods’. In the United States, for example, a 2013 Harris Poll found that around 42 per cent believe in ghosts, 64 per cent in survival of the soul after death, 68 per cent in heaven, and 74 per cent in God.

Why are we drawn to such beliefs? The answer cannot be simply that they are true. Clearly, most aren’t. We know many beliefs are false because they contradict other similar beliefs.

In order to justify the contradiction claim he mentions the many types of Gods believed in. But the fact we have contradictory beliefs in this regard couldn't justify the dismissal of any type of creator of the world/Universe. At most, it could only apply to idiosyncratic Gods. I illustrate this in an analogy in my A ridiculous conception of God blog entry.

But, leaving that aside, he mentions that we human beings are visible to the naked eye. However, only our bodies are visible to the naked eye. Our consciousness -- which is what we truly are -- is invisible. No one ever perceives someone else's consciousness directly, we only ever infer it from their bodily behaviour. Thus we are invisible agents. Indeed, since consciousness is invisible, it follows that any conscious agent, whether humans or demons or whatever, will be invisible too.

Of course I'm sure that he would object to what I've just said. He might point out that, in the case of us human beings, our consciousness can be inferred from our causal agency as exhibited by our bodily behaviour. Presumably then, it would likewise be legitimate to infer the existence of other invisible agents should they have bodies. Or, alternatively, if they could bring about any causal influence in the physical world by other means. But these invisible agents lack physical bodies (I think?), so cannot enact any influence in that regard. But could they be influencing the physical world by other means?

Stephen Law says not. He maintains that science has demonstrated that many of these invisible agents do not exist -- for example "diseases are produced not by demonic beings but by entirely natural causes". So, what hitherto might have been ascribed to invisible agents such as demonic beings and the like, can now be entirely explained by natural laws.

I think such a conclusion cannot be maintained. Here's why.

The mainstream view held by the "intelligentsia" is that we human beings are merely very sophisticated biological machines. Thus it is the physical events in our brains, together with the input from our 5 senses, which wholly explains everything we ever do, say, and think. In and of itself consciousness could not then be regarded as having any causal efficacy. Hence, I am typing this out, not because of an intent on my part to express certain ideas, but due to physical laws playing out. Thus our consciousness is not only invisible, but causally inert! Instead our behaviour can be wholly accounted for by natural laws. Modern science, so it seems, wholly leaves out the existence of consciousness in its description of reality.

So if we apply Law's reasoning to ourselves it would seem that science has demonstrated that we human beings don't exist either! Or, at least it has demonstrated that we are not conscious, rather we are merely soulless automations (or philosophical zombies in the jargon). Clearly we know this to be false, at least in our own individual case. Every one of us in the most immediate sense is aware of our own consciousness. But, if science is wrong here in its "demonstration" of our non-consciousness, then likewise it cannot demonstrate that demonic beings and the like do not exist.

But what if we assume that reductive materialism is correct? This metaphysical stance stipulates that consciousness is the very same thing as the underlying neuronal activity in the brain, or it is the very same thing as what the brain does. Note here it is not saying that such neural processes causes or produces consciousness, rather consciousness is one and the very same thing as such neural processes.

Now I do not believe such a position to be intelligible, and have argued elsewhere it is not. In addition Stephen Law himself has denied he's a materialist (or more accurately he's "not committed to materialism"). But let's put aside such objections and suppose that reductive materialism is correct. In this case consciousness would then be accommodated by science and, indeed, we would know by observing other peoples' brain activity that they are conscious. We would not need to merely infer it. This is seemingly unlike demonic beings, Gods and the like, since they do not possess bodies and hence brains.

One might then be able to explain peoples' activities in the world at 2 differing levels. One by natural laws governing the processes in our brains, and the other by our thoughts, plans, end goals etc. They are not contradictory, but 2 differing ways of describing the very same cause of our voluntary behaviour. But now we can see that this offers no escape for supposing demonic beings and the like are contradicted by science. For the fact that diseases are caused by natural laws might also be described, at a differing level, as the activity of disembodied demonic beings. Thus adopting reductive materialism is of no help in denying the existence of such beings. I should perhaps hasten to add I am not saying that the existence of such beings is likely. I would guess that such beings do not exist, but I do not know they don't. I am merely pointing out that science doesn't demonstrate their non-existence.

Does Law give any other justification for his position? He goes on to say:

When people are asked to justify their belief in such invisible beings, they often appeal to two things. First, to testimony: to reports of sightings, miraculous events supposedly caused by such beings, and so on. Any New Age bookshop will be able to provide numerous testimonies regarding invisible agency that might seem hard to account for naturalistically in terms of hallucination, self-deception, misidentified natural phenomena, trickery, and so on. Second, many will also claim a subjective sense of presence: they ‘just know’ their dead Auntie is in the room with them.

I find it interesting that Stephen Law, while he is sitting in his armchair, seems to believe he's in a better position to judge whether someone's dead Auntie is in the room than those who undergo the actual experience itself. Surely people who actual undergo a particular experience are the best judges as to what that experience is of? And of course it's often not just a vague sense that their dead Auntie is in the room; the Auntie is often perceived in the form of an apparition. If we're going to dismiss the possibility that something interesting is occurring here, i.e whether an anomalous phenomenon has occurred, then it is of little avail to consider the weakest cases. We need to consider the strongest cases. For example, where one perceives their dead Auntie, close up, in daylight. How are we to dismiss those cases?

At the end of the article Law says:

Suppose I see a snake on the ground before me. Under most circumstances, it’s then reasonable for me to believe there is indeed a snake there. However, once presented with evidence that I’d been given a drug to cause vivid snake hallucinations, it’s no longer reasonable for me to believe I’ve seen a snake. I might still be seeing a real snake but, given the new evidence, I can no longer reasonably suppose that I am.

Similarly, if we possess good evidence that humans are very prone to false belief in invisible beings when those beliefs are based on subjective experience, then I should be wary of such beliefs. And that, in turn, gives me good grounds for doubting that my dead uncle, or an angel, or god, really is currently revealing himself to me, if my only basis for belief is my subjective impression that this is so.

Let's continue to focus our attention on apparitions, in particular let's consider what are referred to as crisis apparitions. This is when someone, let's call him A, undergoes some type of crisis, quite often death. Another person, let's call him B, who is usually a friend or relative, has a visual hallucination of A roundabout the same time. Often B is not aware he is undergoing an hallucination and believes that A is physically present. It is only when the apparition of A disappears he realises his mistake.

It is only afterwards that B learns of A's death, or other crisis that he underwent. For those cases investigated prior to modern communications, this often was days afterwards.

So here we do not merely have a subjective sense of presence. The apparition is typically seen in daylight and is often mistaken for the real person. The person seeing the apparition hasn't typically been taking any drugs. He receives information about the person undergoing the crisis that he could not have received by any normal means. Such crisis hallucinations appear to be far from uncommon. Moreover the experience of them appears to be universal. So, all in all, the standard dismissal of them as being due to folly, delusion, cognitive illusion and pathology and so on are rendered extremely implausible.

I should hasten to add that such apparitions certainly do not prove we survive our deaths. But it seems to me we do have a genuine anomalous phenomenon here, whatever the ultimate explanation for them might be. The standard dismissals simply do not pass muster.

The question I would ask Stephen Law is what good evidence is there that this is not an anomalous phenomenon? What possible justification could he give?

The changing meaning of the word skepticism.

Modern skeptics of the paranormal often appeal to a quote made by the late Carl Sagan that  “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". However, I believe that originally to be a sceptic (I'll spell with a "c" for the original sense and a "k" for the modern sense), was to not simply accept the prevailing beliefs of one's culture, but to question them to see if these beliefs stand up to scrutiny. Crucially, no particular stance was taken. The prevailing beliefs may or may not be true, but the sceptic avoided simply assuming that they are true, and indeed avoided simply assuming they are false. What they attempted to do was apply reason and evidence and reach tentative, provisional conclusions in that way.

In contrast, skepticism in the sense in which it tends to now be currently used, at least as regards the "paranormal", has a supposition that modern science together with its implicit metaphysical assumptions, has successfully broadly painted a picture of what reality is like.  Lots of the details need to be filled in for sure, but in its broad outline skeptics assume it is essentially correct.  And, in general, the background beliefs of the intelligentsia regarding reality are shaped by the message that modern science seems to convey.

Now of course there are certain phenomena which are not consonant with such background beliefs and the conception of reality they entail e.g. apparitions, telepathy, the notion of an afterlife and so on.  Hence, when people claim to experience such things, the supposition of the skeptic is to assume that explanations consistent with the prevailing beliefs of one's culture are sufficient to explain the phenomenon concerned.  This is so even if such normal conventional explanations might be highly convoluted and implausible.  This is because no matter how implausible such conventional explanations might be, they do not rival the implausibility of accepting any paranormal phenomena -- or so skeptics maintain.  Any explanations not consistent with their beliefs are deemed to be controversial and extraordinary.  In order to accept a given anomalous phenomenon for what it seems to be, the evidence, to use Sagan's words, would need to be "extraordinary". 

So, in a nutshell, a skeptic assumes prevailing beliefs held by the intelligentsia are correct, and consequently he or she has a propensity to dismiss out of hand alleged phenomena inconsistent with such prevailing beliefs.  To describe modern skeptics as deniers is perhaps too strong.   But it certainly seems to me that modern skepticism is in many ways quite the opposite of the original meaning of the word scepticism.

Of course, a skeptic could argue that we are justified in subscribing to those beliefs informed by modern science.  He could also argue that the results obtained in parapsychology fall far short of the reliability of the results obtained in physics (as in the case of all "soft" sciences, including psychology and sociology). 

Two points should be made:

First of all, this doesn't justify the hijacking of the word "skepticism" to label this approach.

But secondly, and much more importantly, there is a stubborn misconception regarding what science actually does.   It tends to be conflated with a particular metaphysical interpretation of reality, an interpretation which itself cannot be justified.  More importantly, unless we presuppose materialism -- a metaphysical position which seems to me to be simply untenable -- science leaves out the existence of consciousness in its description of reality.  This includes our normal perceptions from our 5 main senses. Yes, we can describe the neural correlates of a conscious experience, such as a visual perception. But, even in principle, we cannot derive the experience itself, even from a thorough scientific understanding of the brain.  So, if normal perceptions are in principle inexplicable, how on earth can we claim that extrasensory perceptions are ruled out by science?   I suggest only by assuming philosophical materialism.  And materialism, apart from its unintelligibility, is not derived from science, but is a certain metaphysical stance.

Other blog entries by me might be of interest in this regard:

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia
Do scientific explanations actually explain?
Science and the Afterlife
A very brief introduction to subjective idealism
 

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How to lose weight and keep it off permanently

This is a chart of my weight since the 23rd of August 2012 until around a week ago.  You'll notice 2 sharp drops in my weight, one occurring at the beginning of the chart in August 2012 and another one in June of this year.  I'll talk about the latter one first.

This latter drop in weight occurred in June of this year and was precipitated by moving to another area of the country (in England).  This was very stressful for me and when I worry or am stressed I tend to eat somewhat less than I do normally.  As can be seen I regained the weight after about 3 months or so.  I never tried to keep this weight off, nor did I try to regain my weight. I just ate what I liked during this time period. The fact that it has gone back up to what it was originally, but then stayed there without going further up, suggests to me that I have a natural weight or "default" weight which my body will strive towards. Thus if I lose weight for whatever reason over a few weeks, my body will make me sufficiently hungry so that I eventually regain that weight. But the same might happen if I eat too much over a few weeks. My body will reduce my hunger so that I lose it again.

I further suggest this is why the vast majority of diets fail-- namely because people can only keep up a diet for a few weeks or months since they are constantly having to struggle against their hunger. Once they give up their bodies will make them sufficiently hungry so that they regain all the lost weight. So dieting was a fruitless endeavour because all that happens is that whilst you're on the diet you're hungry for a few weeks or months, you eventually give up, and you just end up putting all the weight back on. So people go through all that suffering (being hungry all the time) for nothing. Moreover, I have heard that constantly dieting, then falling off the wagon, might be deleterious to one's health.

But what about the first drop in weight back in August 2012? Did I move home then too? Was I worried about something? Was I stressed about anything at all?  No, I went on the 5-2 diet i.e a diet where for 2 days in every week I restricted my calorie intake to 600 calories on each of those 2 days. These days were not consecutive. The other 5 days I just ate what I liked. 

So I kept on this 5-2 diet for a few months and lost close to a stone (a stone is 6.5kg or 14 lbs). At that point I wasn't really losing any more so I came off the diet. Why didn't I regain the weight? I'm not sure. One possibility is that the 5-2 diet is more successful than other diets. But I suspect it was because even when I came off my 5-2 diet I still weighed myself every day. On those days where my weight seemed to be a tad high I cut back on my food intake slightly on that day. Those days where my weight was slightly lower I just ate what I liked. At this point I wasn't on a slimming diet, but just frequently checking my weight and reducing my food intake accordingly on occasional days.  I did this for a few months, but I don't do that any longer. I just eat what I like now.  However my "default" weight has changed from what it was prior to August 2012.  It has gone down by almost a stone.

I suggest to lose weight permanently one has to change their "default" or natural weight. The only other alternative to permanently lose weight is to deliberately restrict your calorie intake and fight against your hunger for the rest of your life!  I suspect one can change their default weight by first of all going on a diet (probably the 5-2 diet isn't necessary, but I'm not sure). Then once you're down to a desirable weight to keep checking your weight every day and make slight adjustments as necessary to one's calorie intake. After a few weeks or months then perhaps your body will have adjusted to a new "default" weight and you won't have to do this any more. This seems to have happened to me anyway.

A ridiculous conception of God Part 2

I want here to add a little on what I said in a previous blog entry:

A ridiculous conception of God.

Let's remind ourselves of the analogy I employed there.

Let's suppose that in the future the bots in a computer game become conscious. Some bots think their world (computer game environment) is designed and a creation of some intelligence, others do not (let's call them atheists).

The atheist bots assume that should there be a creator/designer of their world, then it must be some entity within their computer game environment. That is to say, any designer must either equate effectively to some particularly coloured pixels or failing this to at least influence the environment in some way. However, since no such appropriately coloured pixels have ever been detected, and their world operates according to discernible rules (physical laws), they regard it as being highly unreasonable to believe in the existence of a designer. Certainly if there is such a designer then the onus is upon those who suppose he exists to supply some evidence for his existence.

However, many of the theist bots think that this concept of a designer is utterly ridiculous and think of a designer in a quite different sense -- namely a computer programmer who exists "outside" of their reality (game world) altogether. However, they do disagree and quarrel about the name and personality of the designer (programmer).

This computer game analogy is not necessarily analogous in all respects, at least not with a sufficiently sophisticated conception of God. Hence the analogy conveys the notion that God created the Universe but that the Universe is ontologically self-subsistent -- that is, to say, nothing keeps the Universe in existence, it has the ability to exist all by itself without the need for an external cause keeping it in existence. But instead of God causing the Big Bang then sitting back with his arms folded playing no further role, another possible hypothesis is that God sustains the existence of the Universe on a second by second basis. In this scenario the Big Bang would not constitute a special event -- it's not as if only the Big Bang required an external cause to bring it into being, and then all other events did not. This concept of God implies that physical laws, the physical constants, the behaviour of a physical primitive such as an electron, and the fact that these values do not vary over time, is due to God's ongoing activity. Physical laws on this understanding would then be an approximate codification of God's behaviour.

However, I find that atheists do not tend to have this conception of God at all. Incredibly this also applies to professional philosophers who are atheists. To give a few examples.

The philosopher John G Messerly has said:

we should remember that the burden of proof is not on the disbeliever to demonstrate there are no gods, but on believers to demonstrate that there are. Believers are not justified in affirming their belief on the basis of another’s inability to conclusively refute them, any more than a believer in invisible elephants can command my assent on the basis of my not being able to “disprove” the existence of the aforementioned elephants. If the believer can’t provide evidence for a god’s existence, then I have no reason to believe in gods.

And near the end of the same article he more flippantly asserts:

You might comfort yourself by believing that little green dogs in the sky care for you but this is just nonsense, as are any answers attached to such nonsense.

And the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell has said:

nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.

And what about the famous philosopher Antony Flew? From here:

Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees and an argument ensues. They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer remains unconvinced, and insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The skeptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.

Such a conception of God mirrors the countless references to flying spaghetti monsters, invisible unicorns and the like strewn throughout the net.

We can agree that if a creator is in any way comparable to invisible elephants, giant teapots, invisible gardeners, flying spaghetti monsters and the like, then such a creator is just as unlikely to exist as the foregoing. But, of course, it is this concept of God which is at fault. It's the concept of a God analogous to that which the atheist bots in the computer game hold; namely a concept of god that equates effectively to some particularly coloured pixels in their computer game world. A group of coloured pixels which somehow intervene with the programming of the game.

Why do seemingly the vast majority of atheists have such a ludicrous conception of God? One possible answer is that this is the only concept of "God" they have ever entertained. I imagine this might apply to a large number of atheists, but surely not to professional philosophers? The suspicion naturally arises that what we have here, at least in the case of atheist professional philosophers, is an example of the widespread practice of attacking either the weakest articulation of a position, or resorting to attacking straw men, and then concluding that the belief held has no merit. If so then this is ridiculous because it achieves nothing whatsoever apart from perhaps persuading others that the notion of any type of "God" is foolish. But one can always attack the most naive concept of x -- whatever x might stand for -- and show it to be untenable. Surely, and especially for professional philosophers, what they ought to be interested in is getting to the truth. To that end what, in fact, ought to be done is to address the strongest or most compelling articulation of a person's position on any subject and try to show that it doesn't hold up. So they ought to address the most compelling conception of "God" and attempt to show that it is reasonable to reject the existence of such a "God".

Often people defend attacking the weakest articulation of a position by pointing out that many people do in fact subscribe to such an interpretation. Hence, I have heard atheists say that this concept of God as a being existing within physical reality is the one that most theists actually subscribe to. Now that might or might not be the case, but so what? To justify calling themselves atheists they must think it is reasonable to reject any type of entity or reality which it would be reasonable to label "God". But the vast majority of atheists simply do not give any arguments attacking more sophisticated conceptions of God. Indeed often they appear to have difficulty in grasping the concept of God I articulate.

Paradox of the Ravens

I came across this youtube video last night (below) which I thought was a real eye opener. The argument expressed is that we can provide evidence for the proposition all ravens are black by observing things/objects which are not black and are not a raven. So I observe a daffodil. I note it's yellow and is not a raven. This provides evidence that all ravens are black! I observe grass. I note it's green and not a raven. This also provides evidence that all ravens are black!

This of course seems preposterous. The video below explains why it seems we are obliged to accept such a counter-intuitive position:

Here is the argument as I see it and expressed as simply as I can put it:

Suppose we have 2 lists:

List A: Every single black object in the Universe.
List B: Every single non-black object in the Universe.

So together the 2 lists comprise all objects in the Universe.

If all ravens are indeed black, then it follows that every single raven in existence must belong in list A. Conversely no ravens whatsoever will be found in list B.

So if we look at every single object in list B, and none whatsoever is a raven, then this necessitates that all ravens are black.

But this also suggests that just looking at a single object in list B, and finding it is not a raven, constitutes an incredibly small amount of evidence that all ravens are black!

So is there a paradox here? I've read nothing of the various arguments expressed, but it seems to me that if we observe all objects in list B and none are a raven, then this necessarily entails all ravens are black. So the probability of each of the individual observations of the objects in list B must add up to a probability of 1. But that doesn't mean to say that each observation provides equal evidence. Thus it might be that the observation of manufactured non-black objects -- for example a green car -- does not add any evidence for the proposition. But this might be made up by other observed non-black objects which are not ravens -- for example objects which nobody has ever seen -- providing a corresponding increased degree of evidence for the proposition.

Why Scientists and Philosophers reject the Soul

Eric T. Olson is an American philosopher who specializes in metaphysics and philosophy of mind and is most renowned for his research in the field of personal identity. He’s written one of the chapters in The Myth of an Afterlife which can be read here. I’ve read approximately a third of this book so far, but had not as of yet got to this chapter.

Similarly to the other authors of the myth of an afterlife, Eric T. Olson suggests it’s very unlikely that we have a soul which survives the death of our bodies and the reasons he gives parallels very closely the arguments given by these other authors. He says:

“ . . there is wide agreement that, possible or not, it is very unlikely to be the case (that a soul survives). All the evidence supports the opposite conclusion.

For instance, if you could remain conscious despite the total destruction of your body, you could certainly remain conscious after comparatively minor and temporary damage to your brain (van Inwagen,2002, pp. 196-198). We would expect a sharp blow to the head to affect the interaction between you (the soul) and your body, temporarily preventing your body from obeying your will and giving you sensory information, much as damage to a remote-control aircraft might prevent its owner from operating it. You would be unable to move. Everything would go black and silent and numb. The soul itself, though, would be undamaged, and ought to remain fully conscious. You would find yourself effectively disembodied, wondering what had caused the condition and how long it might last. Yet that is not what happens: a sharp blow to the head makes you completely unconscious. General anesthesia does the same thing in a gentler way. But if such a minor alteration to your brain invariably causes unconsciousness, how could you remain conscious when your brain is totally destroyed?

We also know that medium differences in the brain are correlated with dramatic differences in intelligence, alertness, mood, memory, recognitional abilities, sense of humor, and many other mental properties. As far as we know, every mental phenomenon varies according to the state of one’s brain. Though there is much we don’t know about the connections between mental phenomena and the state of the brain, there is little doubt that the connections exist. Facts like these suggest that mental goings-on are physical processes in the brain, not non-physical processes in the soul. There does not appear to be any soul—or if there is, it has nothing to do with our mental life, and its continuation after death is of no more relevance to the afterlife than the continuation of our carbon atoms.

For these and other reasons, the overwhelming majority of philosophers and scientists regard the Platonic model as a lost cause. If this were the only way of escaping the devastation of the grave, we could only hope that the experts are badly mistaken. Naturally we cannot rule this out: theories that were once supported by all known evidence have turned out to be thoroughly wrong, and theories once undermined by all available evidence are occasionally vindicated.

But it is unwise to bet against the settled scientific consensus.

First things first, and as I have mentioned before, the evidence cited here is indeed extremely compelling -- at least from a psychological perspective.  It feels to me ridiculous to suppose our consciousness survives wholly intact with the destruction of our body, yet the brain can affect consciousness so as to seemingly completely extinguish it under general anaesthesia.  But yet I nevertheless gravitate towards a belief in a “life after death”.   Why is this?  Well certainly not because I don’t recognise the compelling nature of the argument that Eric T. Olson has articulated!

In my view, in order to come to any type of provisional conclusions regarding what we should believe on any topic, we need to look at the arguments and evidence on both sides.   Thus on the one hand there’s the evidence that Eric T. Olson cites.  On the other hand, there are reasons which very powerfully suggest that it is very implausible to suppose brains create consciousness.  I explain this in my Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia. 

To repeat what I said there, it’s not just the case that science cannot at present explain the existence of consciousness, but rather that science, at least as currently conceived, cannot in principle explain the existence of consciousness!  Brains might cause consciousness, but if so then this causal relationship is different from any other causal relationship we see.  Moreover, we have mindless matter interacting with itself which somehow produces not just conscious experiences, but also what philosophers label as intentionality -- the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs.  Indeed, it seems to me that the hypothesis that brains create minds is more surprising than if someone, without any knowledge of television or television sets whatsoever, were to hypothesize that the internal components of a TV set wholly create the programmes screened. 

Furthermore if brains create consciousness it is difficult to assign a causal role for consciousness.  It seems to me incoherent to suppose consciousness is wholly causally inefficacious as I explain in my blog entry can consciousness be causally inefficacious?  Eric T. Olson takes the option of asserting that “mental goings-on are physical processes” but physical processes and “mental goings-on” are wholly characteristically different with nothing in common whatsoever.  Hence by definition they are not one and the same although one of course may cause or elicit the other.

In addition there is all the evidence, both direct and indirect, which suggests an afterlife.  Such evidence includes near-death experiences (NDEs) and the closely related phenomenon deathbed visions, evidence for reincarnation in the form of children’s recollections of previous lives (although not alleged memories retrieved through hypnosis which is much poorer quality evidence), apparitions of a certain type, and mediumship. There is also much indirect evidence which tends to suggest the continuation of consciousness after death. The most notable indirect evidence is psi phenomena. It seems to me that the totality of all the evidence suggests that it exists even if the more remarkable demonstrations of such phenomena turn out to have involved trickery. Contradicting our current western understanding of the mind-brain relationship, the existence of such phenomena suggests there is far more to the mind than is implied by regarding consciousness as merely being either a function of the brain or a causally inefficacious by-product of the brain.

And it seems we can render the concept of a soul coherent providing we conceive of a self/soul in a certain way.  The fact that mental states are affected by brain states can be squared with such a conception of the self or soul by considering the brain to be a type of "filter" (see my is a "life after death" conceivable?).

Is a "life after death" conceivable?

So why is the concept of a soul a lost cause?  We can easily see why one would conclude this if only the evidence cited by Eric T. Olson is taken into account.  Is this what all the scientists and philosophers who decisively reject an afterlife are doing? Are they just considering the evidence against an afterlife and blithely ignoring all the reasons and evidence which might suggest an afterlife? 

In all honesty it seems to me this is precisely what they are doing.  I’m approximately one third of the way through reading the myth of an afterlife, a book consisting of a collection of chapters written by different authors. With the exception of one of the authors – Keith Augustine – they have all thus far concentrated on all the various ways that the brain affects our mentality, albeit in far greater detail than EricT. Olson.  No mention whatsoever has been given by any of the authors of the conceptual difficulties facing any type of materialism -- difficulties which I regard as decisive (although I stress that just because materialism is wrong, doesn’t entail there is a “life after death”.  But it does make the prospect vastly more likely).  Furthermore, with the exception of Keith Augustine, no mention is given of the evidence suggestive of a “life after death”.

Now of course someone might point out that it is likely that they’d find the reasons and evidence for an afterlife completely lacking any merit.  Perhaps so, but they need to argue for their conclusions here.  If I am to be quite frank I don’t get the impression that they even aware of the profound difficulties that face the hypothesis that the brain creates consciousness. 

Or perhaps they consider the evidence that the brain produces consciousness to be so overwhelming that no other reasons or evidence need be addressed?  But the evidence cited by EricT. Olson doesn’t entail that the brain produces consciousness.  If changes in X inevitably initiate particular characteristic changes in Y, this does not entail that X produces Y.  They might agree with this, but insist that any change in Y (the self) means that you have not survived.   In other words the self, or soul, is held to have a certain psychological properties. If these change then you have not literally survived. But I submit this is not the commonsensical notion of the self.  If our dispositions, interests, intelligence and memories constitute the self or soul (rather than being mere properties, as I hold) then we will not have survived from our childhood to adulthood either. 

But anyway, this is all besides the point because all these points need to be thrashed out.  Ignoring them, as all the authors of the myth of an afterlife do (thus far at least), might be profitable in persuading people of the foolishness of an afterlife, but it does little in terms of trying to establish the truth.  If we are serious in trying to establish the truth or falsity of a hypothesis (whether a scientific hypothesis or not) then all pertinent information, arguments and evidence need to be considered.

Finally I would take issue with Eric T. Olson’s words in the final paragraph I quote of him.  As I’ve mentioned before consciousness cannot, even in principle, be scientifically explained -- at least as science is currently conceived.  All we have are correlations between brain and mental events.  Making any causal connections cannot in principle be provided given that we subscribe to the mechanistic concept of reality.  So what’s with his reference to the settled scientific consensus?  Presumably this refers to scientists’ opinions, but their opinions are pretty much irrelevant since, first of all, it is not a scientific issue but rather a philosophical one, and secondly, if they only consider the evidence from one perspective and completely ignore all the evidence and arguments against this position, we cannot have any confidence in their conclusions.

In addition our modern western culture is pretty much unique in emphatically rejecting an afterlife.  What do the intelligentsia know that the most intelligent people in other cultures didn’t understand?  Are modern scientists more knowledgeable on this specific issue?  Certainly there is now a far greater degree of knowledge of the correlations between brain states and specific regions of the brain, and mental states. But presumably people have always been aware that sharp blows to the head can render one unconscious, have always been aware of deep sleep, have always been aware of the effects of alcohol and other drugs.  Why didn’t this evidence convince the greatest minds in the past that we all cease to exist when we die?   My suspicion is that it is less to do with knowledge of mind/brain correlations, which has convinced the “experts” (modern day scientists and philosophers) and more to do with the birth of the mechanistic philosophy and the profound shift in the way of conceiving reality that this initiated.  Once again see my Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia.

Eric T. Olson claims modern day scientists and philosophers are experts.  Well why doesn’t he, his fellow authors of the myth of an afterlife, and other prominent figures of the intelligentsia, provide some arguments and consider the whole matter dispassionately and justify this label?

Can consciousness be causally inefficacious?

5/11/2019 Edited to add: For an expanded and superior consideration of this issue, see my A Causal Consciousness, Free Will, and Dualism.


My very first blog entry a logical proof that we all have free will wasn't greeted with a great deal of comprehension.  Hence this is another attempt to try and convey what I wrote there.   I'm also motivated by the fact that I'm encountering a lot of people, especially scientists -- for example in The Myth of an Afterlife -- expressing their view that the scientific evidence very strongly suggests that our consciousness plays no causal role whatsoever in anything we do, say, or think.  Frequently the experiments of Benjamin Libet and  subsequent similar experiments such as carried out by John-Dylan Haynes are invoked in this regard. It is claimed that such research show that decisions to press either one of two buttons can be predicted with a success rate of sixty percent, 7-10 seconds before one actually consciously makes a decision (chance would suggest fifty percent).  Of course, as I argued in my blog entry about the nature of free will, the ability to predict has very little to do with free will and a fortiori has very little to do with the causal efficacy of consciousness.  For example the ability for someone to predict that I will pick up a £20 note I spot outside before I decide to do so, wouldn't have any implications for my free will, nor does it suggest that it isn't my conscious decision which causes me to stoop down to pick up the note. An instrument measuring brain activity might detect a proclivity or propensity on my part to behave in a given manner, but I don't think this has any implications for free will, nor the causal efficacy of consciousness.  But let's leave this aside in the context of this blog entry.



When we maintain something has no causal efficacy, what we are saying is that it has no causal impact on its environment whatsoever.  If some object -- let's say a rock -- has no causal efficacy whatsoever this means that we wouldn't be able to see it since no light could be reflected off it to enter our eyes.  Nor could we touch it since the electrons near the surface of the rock would lack any causal power to repel the electrons near the surface of the tips of our fingers.  Our hand would pass straight through it! Indeed it would seem that a causally inefficacious rock cannot be distinguished from a non-existent rock.  And the same applies to any physical thing or process.  That is to say that in order to exist a physical thing or process must possess causal powers.  Even if we reject this it surely is the case that, regardless of whether it makes sense to talk about the existence of a causally inefficacious thing or process, we could never ever know about its existence.

  

Now the reason why so many people are convinced consciousness has no causal efficacy is because they hold that all change in the world originates from unbroken chains of physical causes and effects. This will not only apply to our conscious decisions to behave in a given manner, but will also apply to the progression of our thoughts too.  Let's suppose that in the brain we have a physical causal chain

A → B → C → D → E   

But each physical event causes a mental event. 

So A → a, B → b, C → c, D → d, E → e  where a,b,c,d and e all stand for mental events. 

Thus we have an apparent chain of thought  a → b → c → d → e, but this is in fact an illusion.  Hence the direction that my thoughts take when I think something through and reach certain conclusions, is not guided by my developing understanding as a chain of thought unfolds.  Indeed it will have nothing whatsoever to do with my understanding.  Rather the direction a chain of thought takes is wholly dictated by impersonal physical laws.  The direction of our thoughts is wholly imposed from without, in other words by physical laws, just as the Moons orbit is wholly determined by impersonal physical laws (gravitation in the latter case).


I now maintain that this is simply untenable. First of all I would maintain that we know, indeed with complete certainty, of the existence of our own consciousness. One is in direct contact with one's own consciousness, as it were. At this instance, and in the most immediate sense, I now apprehend I'm having certain experiences. Indeed, to have experiences at all, is by definition to be conscious since to have experiences just is to be conscious. So the first thing to say is that if indeed consciousness is wholly causally inefficacious, then it is the only causally inefficacious existent we could know about!


Moreover, when I entertain the thought of the certainty of my own existence, it must have some temporal duration.  I might think to myself yes I know I am conscious.  Of course it might not be put explicitly in words, but this thought, this conviction, must be of some temporal duration.  But if consciousness is wholly casually inefficacious, then this thought as it reaches fruition is caused by neuronal activity rather than caused by any unfolding understanding on my part. But since it is this understanding, this conscious conviction, that justified my certainty, then in denying the casual efficacy of this understanding or conscious conviction, this then means my certainty cannot be justified.  But then we reach an absurdity since one cannot possibly be mistaken in one's realization of one's own consciousness.  In other words we cannot escape the conclusion that it is one's unfolding understanding which causes my knowledge of my own consciousness.

And if this thought -- yes I am definitely conscious  -- is not caused by the underlying neuronal activity (or at least not wholly so), then we know with absolute certainty that consciousness is causally efficacious.  Hence there can be no good reason to doubt that this won't also apply to other instances of reaching an understanding by thinking things through. And it will apply to our decisions and our choices.  Since our voluntary behaviour invariably follows on from our decisions to act in a certain way, then it would be reasonable to infer that it applies here too.  In other words consciousness must necessarily be causally efficacious.  Any scientific evidence which seems to suggest otherwise therefore needs to be reappraised.

Of course this is not to deny that the vast majority of our behaviour is on auto-pilot, as it were.  When I walk to a pub, I do it automatically.  I do not have to initiate a step on every occasion!  But which pub I choose to go to, or indeed whether I decide to go out at all, is likely to be initiated by my consciousness.

Having wrote the above I want to stress that even if one is unconvinced the proof works, the notion that consciousness has no causal efficacy is far from unproblematic.  It might be thought for example that if consciousness is literally the very same thing as specific processes within the brain (as in a certain interpretation of reductive materialism), then since the latter are causally efficacious it follows the former are causally efficacious too.

Now I have elsewhere in my essay Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia  explained that reductive materialism is simply not compatible with the existence of consciousness. But even leaving this aside, this strategy cannot wholly escape my foregoing argument.  

This is because as materialists (of whatever flavour) they necessarily regard the observable physical processes as comprising a complete explanation of all change in the Universe.  This includes all the physical processes within the brain including those correlated with conscious processes such as thinking.  And such physical processes are directed only via virtue of physical properties as described by the physical sciences. So this entails we need only pay attention to these physical processes and not to the correlated conscious processes to predict someone's chain of thought.

But if someone's chain of thought is entirely predictable and accountable purely through the physical properties of brains, and the conscious angle of meaning and understanding is not required, then a chain of thought doesn't develop according to any understanding at all -- any such understanding is causally redundant.  But then we have no justification whatsoever that any of our thought processes could lead to correct conclusions rather than false conclusions. So even if, contra my Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia essay, reductive materialism can be squared with the existence of consciousness, we could never have any basis whatsoever for supposing our chains of thoughts when thinking things through will lead to true conclusions rather than false conclusions.  I submit that this is staggeringly implausible...

8/4/16 Update.  Also see my Materialism/Physicalism is incompatible with our ability to reason.

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia