Materialism Is Dead
Julio Siqueira
non-practicing microbiologist
juliocbsiqueira@terra.com.br
______________________
Sat, 11 Aug 2007
10:47:59 -0700
"Julio Siqueira"
<juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
Re:
science of divine
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A volume of H2O at sea level and room temperature
will exhibit properties that the same volume of H2O at see level but at "above
boiling temperature" will not. So, the question is: are these properties
1- truly emergent, or 2- merely always there all the while (as potentials).
If 2 is the case, then they are not truly emergent, but reducible properties.
Best,
Julio
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Sat,
11 Aug 2007 10:17:48 -0700
"Julio Siqueira"
<juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
Re:
science of divine
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Two Paragraphs from Vic:
Now, what moved the quarks and
electrons in his brain? Was it some interaction with psychons that are not
composed of quarks and electrons but by a mind also not made of quarks and
electrons that emerged out of a system of quarks and electrons when it achieved
a certain level of complexity and took on new powers that cannot be reduced
to quarks and electrons?
I disagree.
It is a question of fact. Is there some new force in the universe that evolved
in matter but now transcends matter?
I see these above as Pandoras's
Box in a Nutshell... I will talk about it in my next email, later today.
Best,
Julio
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Sat,
11 Aug 2007 11:23:26 -0700
"Julio Siqueira"
<juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
Re:
science of divine
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As I said, Pandoras Box in a Nut Shell. Commenting on them
so:
Now, what moved the quarks and
electrons in his brain? Was it some interaction with psychons that are not
composed of quarks and electrons but by a mind also not made of quarks and
electrons that emerged out of a system of quarks and electrons when it achieved
a certain level of complexity and took on new powers that cannot be reduced
to quarks and electrons?
I disagree. It is a question
of fact. Is there some new force in the universe that evolved in matter
but now transcends matter?
The very first tricky issue is
causation itself. Causation is not a fact. It is a belief. It may be right.
But it cannot ever be proved. We believe that A causes Z. Science sets out
to check it; to explain it (ex-plain: make it completely plain), and finds
out that actually A causes M and it is M that causes Z. Offstream academics
falsify this, and show us that, instead, A causes E that causes M that causes
R that causes Z. And so it goes. Science is actually a multiplier of misteries...
But even if we can be really sure that there is only A causing B, with no
in-between, causation is still a belief. What we can rationally be confident
of is "co-ocurrence" (a term almost never used...). Co-relation implies (usually)
some sort of causation, even if an indirect one. Coincidence implies that
there is no causation, and thus have its own burden of proof...
So, if you, Victor Stenger, is
talking about causation, and taking that as part of your argumentative framework,
then it makes sense to talk about bottom up causation and top down causation.
You say bottom up causation is ok. So, what about top down causation? Examples
were given by others. I did not dislike them, but I did not like them much
either. One that I myself offer is genetic engeneering. It is a top level
system (brain, or mind) acting causally on a bottom level system (genome
systems).
But there is also the second tricky
element in the Pandoras Box: emergence. We could talk of epistemological vs
ontological emergence and of property vs substance emergence. So, 1- epistemological
emergent properties, 2- epistemological emergent substance, 3- ontological
emergent properties, 4- ontological emergent substance. And all this applied
to... topdown causation. I continue from it later.
Best,
Julio
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Sun,
12 Aug 2007 14:08:43 -0700
"Julio Siqueira"
<juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
Re:
science of divine
AVOID-L@HAWAII.EDU
Still having in mind these two paragraphs from Vic (Victor
Stenger):
Now, what moved the quarks and
electrons in his brain? Was it some interaction with psychons that are not
composed of quarks and electrons but by a mind also not made of quarks and
electrons that emerged out of a system of quarks and electrons when it achieved
a certain level of complexity and took on new powers that cannot be reduced
to quarks and electrons?
I disagree.
It is a question of fact. Is there some new force in the universe that evolved
in matter but now transcends matter?
I talked before about the way
I view the issue of causality. Emergence is similarly weird. And also its
counterpart: reduction. We usually see emergence being talked about in one
(or more) of the following 3 ways:
1- The “emergent entity” (be
it a property or a substance) is not reducible to what brought it about.
Water’s “wettiness” at sea level/room temperature is not reducible to either
H or to O. A good question in this specific instance would be: is it (wettiness)
really not reducible? Or maybe it is indeed reducible. Even in this example
(provided by another list member) we are tempted to conclude that what lies
under the concept of “emergence” is our ability, or lack of, of foreseeing
a given course of events...
2- A given outcome is "emergent,"
in the sense of not being "expected" (or predicted, or... predictable) by
us. That's what is sometimes said of certain "behaviours" that emerge out
of some software, like Vic's spiral pattern that he believes not to be built
into his algorithm... Obviously, in this instance and, to a great extent,
in the example above too, we kind of feel that what actually "emerges" is
not anything in the objective world itself, but rather something inside our
subjective cognition: we just come to realize the full potential of something,
a potential that had actually been there all the while...
3- One entity "becomes" another,
like A becomes B, and thus B is emergent. (One interesting "extreme variation"
of this number 3 would be A continuing to be A but "giving birth" to B...
- Violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics? Maybe). This situation number
3 is to a great extent, say, "illusory." Macroscopic objects may change,
and yet the underlying atomic and subatomic structure remains. However...
some examples may be truly transformational. Those who can really check the
validity of these examples are you, good physicists. The examples that I
can think of are: electron and positron becoming "pure energy" (photons);
and matter coming out of the "nothingness" of the void. And, as far as our
present knowledge of the Universe is concerned..., consciousness emerging
out of the brain fits just in the example in the parenthesis above... It
is exactly A (the brain and its functioning) continuing to be A (the brain
and its functioning) and giving birth to B (subjective consciousness). Could
it be that consciousness is a violation of the law of conservation?
Now, let's take a close look
of Vic's questions above in light of what I have said here:
Is there some new force in the universe
that evolved in matter but now transcends matter
I have come to the conclusion
that "emergence," actually, is everywhere and everything. One thing simply
gets transformed into some other thing and we just don't know why it is so
(in the most stringent sense of the word "know"). Even continuity is a kind
of "emergence." A proton now is still a proton tomorrow. Why didn't it change?
Why does it keep "re-emerging" day after day as the same? So the answer to
the question above from Vic is Yes and No. Yes, some new force has emerged,
particles from the Void, photons from protons, etc. And, No, nothing that
we know - better: that we CAN know! - is transcendent. And it is so simply
because of the fact that if something is transcendent, then by its sheer
definition it is beyond any interaction and beyond any detectability. So,
how could we ever tell? For all we know, there may truly be lots and lots
of things coming out of matter, transcending it, and becoming forever undetectable
(transcendent).
Now, what moved the quarks and electrons
in his brain? Was it some interaction with psychons that are not composed
of quarks and electrons but by a mind also not made of quarks and electrons
that emerged out of a system of quarks and electrons when it achieved a certain
level of complexity and took on new powers that cannot be reduced to quarks
and electrons?
That above is a kind of substance
dualism. It may be true. But it answers nothing. And it is definetely not
necessary for the explanation of things and of how they work. A psychon (if
it exists), in relation to the known ordinary matter, is just as imaterial
and transcendent as is a photon in relation to a proton.
During all the history of mankind,
and through all the mighty efforts of science and of philosophy, there is
only one single example of emergence that defies any attempt of explanation,
and it is: consciousness (subjective consciousness; qualia; Chalmer's Hard
Problem; phenomenal consciousness). It just should not exist at all. No one
knows how it came to be, and no one knows what the hell is it for, and what
entities have it indeed (trust no one in this; zombies may lurk in the dark,
and in the academia...). As far as we know, it has no role whatsoever in the
Universe. It performs no action. But... it is correlated (co-occurrent) closely
with material states (brain states).
Top down causation? If Brain
System -> Genome System (genetic engeneering), then Yes. If Consciousness
-> Genome System (or even Consciousness -> Brain System), no one can
tell...
Best Regards,
Julio
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Tue,
28 Aug 2007 08:16:37 -0700
"Julio Siqueira"
<juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
Why
Materialism Violates the (Energy) Conservation Law.
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Hi Brent,
and everybody,
The reason why materialism violates
the conservation law is because its budget is not in balance once you introduce
consciousness into it. Materialism claims that everything is matter, and
that consciousness pops up (emerges) out of it. That reads:
M -> M + C (matter leading
to matter plus consciousness).
That is substance emergence.
And in such a way that it is the same as 1 + 1 = 3. That surely violates conservation
and causal closure (whereas, surprisingly enough, dualism and panpsychism
strive to maintain this most cherished tenet of science and of logics, successfully).
So, this inbalance of materialism's
budget either leads to matter substance emergence, therefore violating conservation,
or, which is far more dreadful, it leads to spiritual substance emergence...
Choose which one you like best... :-)
Best Wishes,
Julio
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Tue,
28 Aug 2007 18:04:38 -0700
"Julio Siqueira"
<juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
The
Essay: Why Materialism Violates the (Energy) Conservation Law.
AVOID-L@HAWAII.EDU
Why Materialism Violates the Energy-Conservation Law...
Sad, but true. Good old materialism,
bold and elegant, is at odds with one of the most cherished tenets of modern
science: the energy-matter conservation law. Or am I terribly wrong? Perhaps
I am. Nevertheless, let me explain what leads me to this dreadful conclusion.
First I will have to define what
I mean by "materialism." Second, I will have to explain how I came up with
this most weird idea, that is, what set me on this bizarre trail. And finally,
I will put down what exactly is entailed if I just happen to be... right!
The results are not necessarily comforting for spiritualists either.
Just to be precise, I am referring
to *energy conservation* (i.e. conservation of matter and energy) as it is
explained by physicist Zoran Pazameta (in Skeptical Inquirer Sep/Oct 2000,
"The Laws of Nature: a Skeptic's Guide") in the link below:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-09/laws.html
So, energy-matter cannot be created
or destroyed. It can only be changed ["In general, conservation means that
in an isolated system a given physical quantity does not change with time.
(If you do have outside interference, it can be included by extending the
definition of the 'system' and conservation will still hold.) An especially
important and useful conservation law is that matter and/or energy are neither
created nor destroyed over time; they merely change form, and their sum total
always remains the same."].
Basically, I see two types of
materialism: religious materialism and scientific (or philosophical/pragmatical)
materialism. I suspect that both of them violate energy conservation. Not
all types of materialism violate energy conservation. Not necessarily, at
least. For example, materialism that utterly denies the existance of consciousness
(i.e. of subjective experience) most likely is a hundred percent fine. But,
IMO, religious and scientific materialism comprise almost all of the actual
materialism that there is (that is embraced by people). And these are doomed
from the start... Why so?
The problem is subjective experience,
and how materialism can account for it.
Scientific materialism claims
that all that exists is matter (or matter and the void), and that conservation
holds. Religious materialism claims that life after death does not exist.
Especially, subjective experience will not continue after death. With brain's
death, consciousness dies as well. Scientific materialism claims that consciousness
either is *produced* by the brain or *is* the brain itself at work.
Now, what is consciousness (subjective
experience)? It can only be one out of a very few options:
- It may be a substance. In substance
dualism that is exactly what it is: the material world, made of "dead" (unconscious)
matter vs the "spiritual" world, made of conscious stuff. In some forms of
panpsychism, consciousness is also substance, as any type of matter is consciousness
(consciousness and matter are the same thing). If consciousness is a substance,
then in gramatical terms we would call it a noun.
- Consciousness may, instead,
be a property. What is a property? In grammar, it is called an adjective.
It is a facet out of many different facets that a given object has. For example,
water has the property of being fluid. Properties are pretty much relational.
They are what other objects "see" a given object as being, and the way they
interact with this given object. The tricky thing here is that properties
are also kind of "definitional." In logical terms, if you describe all the
properties of an object, you define the object itself. One may say that if
a (hypothetical) object has only one property, then in this case this property
*is* the substance of this object. What I mean is that it is not so easy
to tell property from substance as many people seem to believe...
- A third alternative is that
consciousness is an illusion. What is an illusion? An illusion is something
that truly exists, but that is misinterpreted. Light may seem to be water
in the desert. But it does not have its properties and it will not quench
your thirst. For us here, the important thing is this: illusions are real!
The fact that they are misinterpreted does not detract from their reality.
- The last alternative for consciousness
is that of a lie. That is, consciousness may not exist at all. It may just
be that everybody is lying and no one truly experiences subjective awareness.
So, summing up:
Consciousness is:
1- A substance.
2- A property.
3- An illusion (property or substance).
4- A lie.
Now, what do you think consciousness
is?
Those who claim to have consciousness
often stress that it is not a lie. (Fracis Crick, in his "The Astonishing
Hypothesis: the Scientific Search for the Soul", 1995, quotes eminent neuroscientist
Benjamin Libet at the opening of his concluding chapter on that: "Our own
subjective inner life, including sensory experiences, feelings, thoughts,
volitional choices, is what really matters to us as human beings." - Benjamin
Libet). Then, it can only be a property or a subtance (as illusion itself
can only be a property or a substance). And we have seen the difficulty in
telling properties from substances.
We know from physics (conservation)
that things cannot be created or destroyed. They can only be changed. That
is the core of the notion of *emergence*. And "emergence" is the way (i.e.
the process by which) materialism accounts for the birth of consciousness:
it is said to emerge out of the brain. And to die with it. But we also know
that many sound thinkers (like philosopher David Chalmers, physicist Roger
Penrose, and mathematician-computer scientist Stan Franklin, author of the
book Artificial Minds, 1995, just to name a few) think or feel that consciouness
is probably a basic property (substance?) of the Universe.
Stan Franklin says: "Following
Chalmers (1996) I'm beginning to view phenomenal consciousness as a fundamental
process of nature comparable to mass or energy. Both mass and energy can
only be measured indirectly by their effects though inferences can be drawn
from their structure and activity (again effects). I suspect that the same
will prove true of phenomenal consciousness." (IDA. A Conscious Artifact?
Stan Franklin. Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 10, number 4-5, 2003,
page 64).
Similarly, Chalmers almost sends
a chill through the reader's spine by saying: "I should note that the conclusions
of this work are conclusions, in the strongest sense. Temperamentally,
I am strongly inclined towards materialist reductive explanation, and I have
no strong spiritual or religious inclinations. For a number of years, I hoped
for a materialist theory; when I gave up on this hope, it was quite reluctantly.
It eventually seemed plain to me that these conclusions were forced on anyone
who wants to take consciousness seriously. Materialism is a beautiful and
compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to
go beyond the resources it provides." (The Conscious Mind, 1996, page xiv).
And further on: "When someone strikes middle C on the piano, a complex chain
of events is set into place. Sound vibrates... ...to my ear. The wave is
processed... ...inside the ear... ...(brain's) auditory cortex. (...) All
this is not so hard to understand in principle. By why should this be accompanied
by an experience?" (The Conscious Mind, page 5).
Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet,
taking a dualist stand, states: "I agree with Sutherland that we must not
accept the panicking fear, of most philosophers and probably cognitive scientists,
that any theory must exorcise any implied 'ghost of agency.' Theories that
avoid any 'ghost' have not successfully or convincingly explained the unity
of conscious experience and the experience of conscious control of voluntary
acts. Postulating a subjective 'ghost' need not be incompatible with the
laws of nature, as Schroedinger pointed out. The conscious mental field (CMF),
that I have postulated to account for the unity of experience and an active
role for conscious intention to act, could be viewed as a sort of 'ghost.'
(in "How Can we Explain the Unity of Conscious Experience?", available online
at http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/libet.html).
So, the core question is: what
happens to a physical system when consciousness *emerges* out of it? To address
this question, we must at least sketch how emergence happens.
As I have said elsewhere, emergence
can "happen" in one of the following 3 ways:
1- The “emergent entity” (be
it a property or a substance) is not reducible to what brought it about.
Water’s “wettiness” at sea level/room temperature is not reducible to either
H or to O (and not even to H2O at minus 200 degrees, for that matter).
A good question in this specific instance would be: is it (wettiness) really
not reducible? Or maybe it is indeed reducible. Even in this example, we are
tempted to conclude that what lies under the concept of “emergence” is our
ability (or lack of) of foreseeing a given course of events...
2- A given outcome is "emergent"
in the sense of not being "expected" (or predicted, or... predictable) by
us. That's what is sometimes said of certain "behaviours" that emerge out
of some software, like Victor Stenger's spiral pattern (in "God: the Failed
Hypothesis", 2007) that he believes not to be built into his algorithm...
Obviously, in this instance and, to a great extent, in the example in the
previous paragraph too, we kind of feel that what actually "emerges" is not
anything in the objective world itself, but rather something inside our subjective
cognition: we just *come to realize* the full potential of something, a potential
that had actually been there all the while...
3- One entity "becomes" another,
like A becomes B, and thus B is emergent. (One interesting "extreme variation"
of this number 3 would be A continuing to be A but "giving birth" to B...
- Violation of the Conservatio of Energy/Matter Law? Maybe). This situation
number 3 is to a great extent, say, "illusory." Macroscopic objects may change,
and yet the underlying atomic and subatomic structure remains. However...
some examples may be truly transformational. Those who can really check the
validity of these examples are good physicists. The examples that I can think
of are: electron and positron becoming "pure energy" (photons); and matter
coming out of the "nothingness" of the void. And, as far as our present knowledge
of the Universe is concerned..., consciousness emerging out of the brain
fits just in the example in the previous parenthesis... It is exactly A (the
brain and its functioning) continuing to be A (the brain and its functioning)
and giving birth to B (subjective experience). Could it be that consciousness
is a violation of the law of conservation?
To assess if consciousness could
possibly violate conservation, we must look at what we know about consciousness,
and also at what we just cannot know about it. Curiously enough, there are
some myths about it that go almost always utterly unnoticed. Briefly, we
can say that: 1- Consciousness varies in its "intensity," that is, sometimes
it is very attenuated, and sometimes it is very vivid and "strong." 2- Consciousness
comes in many different "flavours," i.e. qualia. 3 - Consciousness is tightly
associated ("co-occurrant") with certain neuronal states (Francis Crick's NCC - neuronal correlates of consciousness).
4- *I* have consciousness! It is also important to bear in mind that
when any given sense is blocked (like when you become blind), we can perhaps
better describe this situation not as absence of perception but rather as
"perception of the absence." Further, unconsciousness is something that,
by sheer definition, cannot be experienced. Therefore no one can be really
sure if unconsciousness exists or not...
Now we come back to the core
issue: what happens to a physical system (the human brain, for example) when
it becomes conscious? We have seen that consciousness is said to emerge out
of it. The unconscious matter in the brain becomes conscious matter. So either
we have property emergence or substance emergence.
Either it is M becoming Mc (unconscious
matter becoming matter with the consciousness *property*) or it is M becoming
M + C (unconscious matter continuing to be what it is, with all its total
amount of matter/energy unaltered, plus a conscious substance emerging).
But as it seems when consciousness pops up, M is indeed completely unaltered
(the total amount of matter/energy is unchanged) but still there is an extra
something.
The way I see it - and I know
that I may be wrong in that -, either materialism leads us to the conclusion
that there is an *emergent material substance* [therefore violating the conservation
law and greatly undermining its (materialism's) theoretical feasibility],
or it leads us to the conclusion that there is an *emergent imaterial substance*
(therefore rendering materialism as self defeating at its sheer definition
that all that there is is matter).
All this reasoning does not make
things like spirits any more likely (or any less unlikely, for those who
see it this way) than they already are. And as to an afterlife, the options
are not necessarily comforting. Personally, I consider panpsychism the best
alternative available, and it would mean that consciousness goes on and on
throughout time, but with no hope of eternal bliss. Quite on the contrary,
varying degrees of consciousness plenum might mean, too, suffering and pain
far beyond anyone could ever dream of... Let's pray the Lord that materialists
are right!
Best Wishes,
Julio
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Fri,
31 Aug 2007 07:26:00 -0700
"Julio
Siqueira" <juliocbdsiqueira@YAHOO.COM>
Materialism,
like ID, is incompatible with NeoDarwinism...
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We all know and we all agree that it is topmost that religion be
out of the classroom, that is, of science classes. Religion is not science,
though they do share vices and virtues; after all, they both are human endeavours.
Nevertheless, religion is not and probably will never be science. So, out
of science classes! And that applies both to spiritualism-religion (like
intelligent design creed) and to materialism-religion . We all know that intelligent
design most likely is incompatible with Neo Darwinism. What many do not know
is that most certainly materialism *is indeed* incompatible with Neo Darwinism...
Again. What is materialism? Almost
all materialism that there truly is is a combination of these candid statements:
all that there is
is matter and the void; God and the afterlife do not exist, and consciousness
both pops up through the activities of certain neuron-groups of the brain
and it will die when brain dies. And... all humans have consciousness.
However, we have seen respectable
philosopher David Chalmers stressing: why should any brain activity be accompanied by experience?
Chalmers is not alone. Far from
that... The bottom line is that, even for the species that we know the most
on Earth, namely Homo sapiens, we simply have not discovered, over
the last 2,500 years of mighty intellectual efforts, any function whatsoever
for this thing called consciousness (subjective experience). More specifically,
this leads to the warranted conclusion that... consciousness, regardless
of its precise ontological status, most likely can play no role at all in
evolution, that is: it is a feature that cannot give any adaptative advantage
to any individual or species. According to neo darwinism, such features can
indeed exist. What they cannot be, usually, is a feature that all members
of a given species would have. Neutral traits (i.e. that give no adaptative
advantage or disadvantage) are subject to genetic drift.
Therefore, there should be more
than 90% of zombies among human beings (utterly undetectable, but still zombies).
Materialism (as defined above) claims that there is none... And that just
cannot be.
Best,
Julio
P.S.: so... out of the classroom!
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