Evidence for souls?
Brian Holtz
attempts to show that modern philosophy and science are moving away
from materialism/physicalism and toward dualism, thus allegedly
supporting the Christian notion of the soul. Throughout his essay,
Glenn repeatedly makes three mistakes:
1. He repeatedly makes the strawman claim that physicalists deny that
minds, mental states, and intentions can play any role in explaining
mental phenomena. In fact, physicalists most definitely *do* assign
explanatory and causal roles to mental states. They simply deny that
mental states have any irreducible non-physical aspects.
2. He repeatedly equates "consciousness" and "mind" with "soul". He's
trying to sell the idea of soul, but he knows readers will likely only
buy mind, so he claims they are the same thing. They may very well be
the same if he assumes dualism, but since he is arguing for dualism he
should not *assume* it.
3. He repeatedly equates physicalism with classical (pre-quantum)
Newtonian mechanics. He seems not to realize that while classical
mechanics (plus materialism) implies physicalism, physicalism does not
imply classical mechanics.
The first mistake is so pervasive that I will not bother refuting it
each time it appears in my excerpts from his essay. Instead, I will
mark the excerpts with "[physicalism = no minds]" to point out
instances of this mistake.
Before getting into the details of Glenn's essay, here are some
definitions (from my book):
* Dualism is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of both
the material or physical and the ideal or mental.
o Substance Dualism is the thesis that the material and the
ideal or mental constitute two different and fundamental
kinds of objects.
o Property Dualism is the thesis that the material or physical
and the ideal or mental constitute two different and
fundamental kinds of properties. Property dualism can be a
form of materialism if it says that mental properties are
nevertheless fundamental material properties (analogous to
mass or charge).
* Materialism is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of
matter. Physicalism is the thesis that all facts can be described
in physical (and thus non-subjective) terms. Physicalism implies
materialism, but materialism does not imply physicalism.
o Functionalism is the thesis that mental states are
functional states consisting of causal relations among
components for processing information.
Glenn writes:
moral accountability within theological justice was
predicated on the causal efficacy of the soul (as it is in
our human legal systems).
You cannot seriously contend that modern jurisprudence assumes the
existence of an immaterial "soul" -- as opposed to simply a mind with
specified causal powers and unspecified substrate. This contention is
so absurd that I would suspect I am misreading you somehow, but it
seems consistent with your "mind = soul" mistake.
The very difference between the crimes of "Pre-meditated
murder" and "manslaughter" makes no sense whatsoever without
the practical belief that a person's "inner life" can have
"intentions" , make "choices", [physicalism = no minds]
Of course. But one need not posit an immaterial "soul" to say that
the brain's functioning mind can have functional intentions and make
choices.
If it can be demonstrated that [..] mental states can
measurably and spontaneously change brain/body chemistry
[..], then the physicalist paradigm will be shown to be
fundamentally flawed. [physicalism = no minds]
Physicalists does not deny that there is such a thing as mind, and
that it has states, and that those states have causal roles. These
propositions are the very foundation of functionalism, which is
probably the dominant theory of mind among physicalists. Just because
something can be reduced does not mean its reducers think that it
cannot have an explanatory or causal role. Heat can be reduced to
molecular motion, but heat still has explanatory and causal roles.
[physicalism claims] the universe as we know it is
completely determined, completely closed, and devoid of any
non-physical objects. Consciousness, of the sort we seem to
experience everyday, CANNOT 'fit' in such a universe.
Physicalism does not necessarily claim that every event is
predetermined by sufficient causes. It merely claims that every cause
is ultimately a physical cause. Physicalism does not say that
consciousness cannot exist. It merely says that consciousness is
emergent from purely physical phenomena.
If these intentional states are NOT 'outside the system' in
some sense, then THEY THEMSELVES are deterministically
caused by mindless physical processes (and correspondingly,
are in no way affected by independent, conscious processes)
1. Again, physicalism does not imply determinism. 2. You appear to be
*defining* consciousness as an immaterial or nonphysical process, and
thus are begging the question.
The Physicalist view maintains that there is only physical
causation; the non-physicalist maintains that there is also
an agent causation
Physicalism does not deny that intentional agents have causal powers;
it simply claims those powers are purely physical. One can ascribe
simple intentionality to a thermostat, and yet thermostats are purely
physical systems.
[Physicalism claims ] consciousness--as an allegedly
irreducible element in reality-- is an illusion.
Right, in the sense (and no more!) that heat or color or wetness are
illusions.
[Dualism claims ] cconsciousness is ontologically real
Dualism is not the position simply that consciousness "is real".
Dualism is the position that consciousness is not purely physical.
[Physicalism] assume[s] the closed, mechanist, physicalist
universe as a fundamental constraint on any theory of
consciousness. [..] But it is this closed, mechanist,
Cartesian universe that has been disappearing out from under
us for the last 75 years!
Physicalism does *not* assume Cartesianism or classical (pre-quantum)
mechanics. This is a pretty blatant strawman argument, because I know
you cannot name a currently-practicing physicalist who affirms
classical mechanics.
Materialism, physicalism, reductionism, and mechanism are
simply being abandoned by the scholarly community
1. As an ontology, metaphysical materialism is ascendent rather than
declining. As a physical theory, the classical view of matter has of
course been replaced, but that does not disprove metaphysical
materialism.
2. Physicalism seems under attack only among consciousness scholars
with a mysterian intuition that non-problems are really "hard"
problems.
3. Reductionism is not a position but an accusation. Nobody defends
unjustified reductions, and everybody claims to accept justified
reductions. The dispute is simply over which reductions are justified.
4. Classical mechanism was of course invalidated by quantum theory,
but that is irrelevant to physicalism.
[Davies writes:] the Newtonian world view, with its doctrine
of materialism and the clockwork universe [..]
Davies is of course not so foolish to write that metaphysical
materialism necessarily implies a Newtonian "clockwork universe", and
you would be foolish to read him that way..
[Davies writes:] Many people [..] regard materialism as a
sterile and bleak philosophy, which reduces human beings to
automatons and leaves no room for free will
Then "many people" (and perhaps Davies) are simply unfamiliar with the
history and literature of the free will problem. There is a robust
Hobbesian tradition that resolves the alleged problem by saying that
a) our internal mental states indeed determine our choices, b) such
states are what make these choices "our" choices, and c) any
indeterminism in these choices would make them happen *to* us and not
*by* us.
There is no evidence for Stapp's quoted speculation that conscious
events are able through quantum effects to "grasp a possible large-
scale metastable pattern of neuronal activity in the brain, and
convert its status from 'possible' to 'actual'".
[Squires writes:] although one can understand the view of
neurosurgeons and others who see the brain as a lump of
warm, wet, biological tissue, it has to be emphasised that
such matter, conceived in classical terms, does not in fact
exist, and that to discuss the problem as though we lived in
a classical world [..]
We have only Squires' assertion that the brain is being "conceived in
classical terms". (Is this where you were infected with the strawman
meme of equating physicalism with classical physics? ;-)
[Shear writes:] physics, [..] ha[s] sometimes seemed to
reintroduce the notion of consciousness as well. The most
extreme example is that of quantum mechanics, where the role
of the 'observer' paradoxically seemed to become essential
not only for knowing the discrete phenomena of nature, but
even for their very existence as discrete phenomena
Quantum theory reserves no special role for conscious observation per
se. Observation can be performed by instruments that are quite
unconscious. "Observation" of an event is simply the irreversible
widening of the scope of influence of the event.
[Watts writes:] the attempt in molecular biology to explain
biological phenomena in terms of physics and chemistry [..]
has met with a significant degree of success. The important
point, though, is that it has not been completely successful
[..] Given this lack of any cases of completely successful
reductionism in science, [..]
So until reduction of biology or psychology to physics is "completely
successful", you and Watts will entertain any theory whatsoever to
explain the dwindling gap? Such a "dualism of the gaps" is doomed.
reductionism is not consistently useful. For example,
Chalmers argues in his works that physics does not try to
reduce its fundamental entities any further--electromagnetic
charge, mass, space-time--and suggests that consciousness be
added to this list
You claim physics shows that "reductionism is not consistently useful"
simply because we still have multiple fundamental physical properties
like mass and charge. This is absurd. Physics is the canonical example
of successful reductionism, reducing myriad properties like wetness,
color, texture, temperature, stickiness, odor, etc. Just because there
remains more than one fundamental physical property is *hardly* a
justification for tossing consciousness onto the list.
'practicing' particle physicist. Douglas Bilodeau [writes in
JCS::4.5] The next step is to transcend the hard problem by
accepting a richer nonmechanical ontology. This is not
physicalism nor idealism nor dualism, but a view of reality
as a unified process in which we are participants and which
we conceptualize in many ways in accordance with the many
kinds of knowledge we can have about the world
I hope this quote made sense in its context, because out of context it
has the sound of hand-waving nonsense.
"Toward a Science of Consciousness"), held at the University
of Arizona, indicated that only 27% of the respondents
believed that "there is no other reality than the physical
universe". [data from the Consciousness Bulletin, U of Az,
Extended University]
What would you expect at a conference devoted to the allegedly "hard"
problem of consciousness? I bet that among philosophers in general
the percentage of physicalists is much higher. Some course notes at
Indiana U. say "few contemporary philosophers are dualists"
(http://www.ageofsig.org/courses/q240/).
If we have good reasons to believe that our mental states
can have some 'downward causation', then [..] we will be
justified(epistemically) in believing in the
mind/soul/consciousness.
Again: physicalists believe in the existence of the mind and the
ability of its functional states to have causal effects. Your
conflating of "mind/soul/consciousness" is quite a bold example of
question-begging.
[Eliminative materialists] literally ASSUME WITHOUTARGUMENT
that reductionism MUST BE true. [Dennet writes:]
Of course the brain is the seat of consciousness,
and all the phenomena that compose our
pre-theoretical catalogue of conscious phenomena
are ultimately explicable in terms of the
activities in our brains and bodies [..]
Dennett's position that the brain is the locus and substrate of
consciousness is not an assumption, but a conclusion. Aristotle
thought the brain was an organ for cooling the blood. Surely you are
aware of some of the neurological discoveries between the times of
Aristotle and Dennett?
[Dennett's eliminative materialism] uses the Ostrich
approach to the 'hard problems' of consciousness
As your essay later says, this is a clash of brute intuitions, and so
ad-hominems are especially indefensible. Even Chalmers admits (in
"Moving Forward on the Problem of Conscousness") that he "takes [..]
for granted" the "existence of consciousness [as] explicitly
distinguished from functional concepts [of it]". He admits his basis
for doing so is just "informal surveys" showing that most people don't
understand how the functioning of their brains could produce their
qualitative experiences. This shortcoming of folk neuropsychology is
hardly a sufficient reason to advance a vague mysterian dualism in
place of materialism (the most spectacularly successful research
program in the history of human knowledge).
positions like "I have a belief that beliefs are actually
illusions" [physicalism = no mind]
Your strawman, repeated.
[Dennett's eliminative materialism] is:
1. unnecessary with the radical changes in the views of
physical reality;
2. counter-intuitive and counter-experiential
3. too limited in scope to answer the 'questions' [e.g.
about qualia]
4. [contrary to] neurological data that supports some kind
of quasi-dualism
5. [contrary to] innate [..] belief in subjective mental
states
6. logically fallacious [..]
7. [lacking] a meaningful response to the Bafflement
Argument[..]
8. cannot deal with semantics (a la the Chinese Room)
9. weakened by fallacies [..]
10. at odds with neurophysical data [..]
11. disclaims that it is 'more scientific' than Cartesian
dualism [..]
1. Mystical physicists and pop science notwithstanding, quantum theory
is (again) simply orthogonal to physicalism.
2. The brain is far and away the most complex phenomenon in the known
universe. Who says its highest functions are guaranteed to be
"intuitive"?
3. Qualia do not exist, as the zombie argument shows (through
failure).
4. There are no such data, except against your "physicalism = no mind"
strawman.
5. Strawman: physicalism is in fact compatible with intentionality and
apparent subjectivity.
6, 9, 10. Details, please.
7. Even I can see the response (below) to the Bafflement Argument,
without even reviewing the literature.
8. As the literature shows, the Chinese Room is utterly refuted by the
Systems Reply.
11. You miss Dennett's innocuous point that his metaphors aren't
privileged, and that they must (and do) prove their worth.
Research in infant cognition (CS:WIK) documents that
children display knowledge of others' subjective mental and
intentional states quite early [..]
Such research refutes only your "physicalism = no mind" strawman.
There are many, many suggestions for where quantum effects
influence the brain [..]
"Many suggestions", and zero experimental *evidence* for any such
influence. As your own quote says: "Obvious questions include how
organized macroscopic quantum processes could possibly occur in the
brain".
[Herbert argues] universal mentality interpenetrates the
physical world. His phrase'quantum animism' suggests that
every quantum wave contains consciousness
Such panpsychism is just silly.
Nunn, Clarke, and Blott showed that EEG's collapsing the
q.field at the brain hemisphere level affected task
performance in test subjects! [JSC:1.1.127ff]
If they truly had shown the result you claim, it would have been
front-page news. I doubt they did. Even if true, this would not
actually refute physicalism, unless you could show intentional and
physically inexplicable influence on what should be otherwise random
quantum events.
8.Non-linear systems theory is increasingly [.. "complexity"
.. "dynamic" .. "chaos" .. "fractals" .. "strange
attractors" ..]
9. Pribram proposed in 1971 mental representation occurs
holographcially by interference of coherent waves
Fashionable buzzwords do not a coherent theory make. As excerpted,
this appears to be no more than vague nonsense.
11. coherence may occur below the level of the synapse [..]
12. consciousness arises from coherence in [..] protein
'behavior'
These utterly miss the point, since physicalism of course does not
assume that neurons are bits or that proteins are non-chaotic.
13. [Warner writes:] Since the electrodynamics of an
individual neuron is not constrained by the first law of
thermodynamics, there is little reason to expect this law to
constrain a system at higher levels of organization
Uh, isn't the whole *point* of thermodynamics that it is statistical
and thus *only* applies to higher-level systems?
remember that living organisms are 'exempt' from these laws
(and 1st and 2nd laws of thermo) as open systems
In pointing out that organisms are open systems you spectacularly miss
the point of the objection. Physicalists aren't wondering how you
don't starve to death. We instead wonder how your soul exerts the
microjoules and milliwatts that it *must* exert in order to affect the
matter in your brain. (We also wonder why these microjoules and
milliwatts have never been measured. Ever.)
solutions fall into a few categories:
1. Consciousness might arise from brain-centric quantum
effects [..]
Experimental evidence for this does not exist-- and wouldn't
necessarily contradict physicalism.
2. [..] massive coherence between elements at one level
gives rise to a 'whole' (agent) at the level above it [..]
-- and in which the "whole" and all the "elements" are physical.
Congratulations, you've just discovered physicalism.
[..] the issues are at a system level, instead of a
molecular level [..]
If you mean a *functional* "system", then congratulations: you've just
discovered the standard form of physicalism known as functionalism.
[..] examples are lasers, superfluids [..]
So why are lasers and superfluids not evidence against physicalism, as
(you think) consciousness is?
3. Consciousness is already 'here', being from-below [,]
-above[, or] -within reality
These theories (like all forms of dualism) seem irredeemably
unparsimonious.
data points and arguments supporting the causal efficacy of
the mind: [long laundry list of mental phenomena and common
intuitions about them]
Such research refutes only your "physicalism = no mind" strawman.
The Bafflement argument [: conscious agents are likely to
report ineffable qualia that causally baffle the agent's
ability to describe them]
The Bafflement Argument is just this: if at least some humans lack an
intuition of how the most complex physical system in the universe (the
brain) could cause the most complex phenomenon in the universe
(experience), then that causation must not be completely physical.
Given that most humans do not even have a correct intuition of how
inertia interacts with gravitational acceleration to produce parabolic
trajectories, I would not put much stock in human bafflement.
The old reductionist optimism--that we would be able to
unambiguously associate specific neural states to ALL
qualia, subjective experiences, intentional states, and
executive functions of the consciousness -- has become more
of a 'old religion' than a well-grounded prediction.
Are you saying that until we can build a fully-functional
qualia-sharing mind-reading machine, physicalism is just a quaint hope
unsupported by evidence? With the drip-drip of headlines about some
new PET scan localizing another brain function, are you saying that
there is zero progress in neurophysiology?
There are actually several problems in this area:
- We don't actually know what neural activity IS!
But we know what a "soul" is? Thanks, that gave me quite a good
laugh! :-)
Gray (Psychology) reports [..] "in the case of
consciousness, what we have is brute correlation. We have
[..] perceptual inputs, [..] behavioral outputs and [..]
conscious experience, but we do not at present have an
account of how one is linked to the other..."
Before DNA was discovered, all we had for heredity was "brute
correlation". Was it therefore unjustified to search for a physical
mechanism of heredity?
DeLancy: "much of the debate about consciousness is
reducible to a disagreement of brute intuitions."
It is true that we have a fundamental clash of intuitions here. It
will not be resolved by philosophical argument, but by the continuing
explanatory progress of physicalistic cognitive science, and the
continuing explanatory superfluousness of dualism.
--
Brian...@sun.com
Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net