Philosophy / Science / Religion
 

I recently had an interesting discussion on Facebook with an old friend on religion, philosophy, etc and it wandered into a subject that I am very interested in lately. Writing it out made me realize how much this has crystallized in my head.

"Faith" is defined as a belief that is not based on any evidence whatsoever. This makes no sense to me. I do not have "faith" in things, I "believe" them to be true, due to observable evidence. This could, theoretically, include a belief in a God if I felt I witnessed any evidence for God's existence. I'm seeing evidence mount in the opposite direction.

Does this mean I've lost a connection to our communal spirituality, or the wonder of being? Quite the contrary. It's my firm belief that feelings of connectivity and delight in nature are quite natural and have no need for a magical shadow world. The more I learn about animals the more evidence I find that they have their own versions of connectedness and purpose and morality which are quite similar to our own and have no need for omnipotent authority.

I have come to believe that all of our impulses, much like our physical attributes, are derived from our evolutionary history. And just like our obvious physical similarities to other animals, mental gymnastics like morals, loyalties and respect are also evident in animals. The idea that we either a) were bestowed with these abilities by a higher being, b) created these concepts ourselves, or c) have evolved them out of whole cloth in a clean break from the rest of the animal kingdom is an illusion. Even spirituality, which is another way of saying you feel connected to things around you, is a version of what other creatures feel, all the way down to worker ants. (I love this video.)

I hope I don't upset anyone, but it seems plain to me that we are just as amazing as the other animals on this planet - which is plenty enough to be proud of without an invented divide.

What say you?

What she said.

I will note that I think the meaning of the word "faith" has shifted emphasis over time. It can also mean "trust," and in an earlier day, saying "Have faith in the Lord your God" meant "have trust in the Lord." It was taken as a given that God (or gods) existed, so an admonition to faith was more about your response to an entity whose existence was not in doubt. And hearing someone say "Have faith in Yahweh" might really mean "Don't give Baal, Attis or Marduk the time of day, Yahweh is the god we've made a pact with."

Defining faith as belief without evidence has become more of a necessity in our post-Enlightenment world.

Now, if you've given up on any idea of free will then my process of slow indoctrination is complete.

Err...I mean, I've never felt comfortable sharing my views on issues such as this so I'm not going to start now.

I'll happily concede that free will could easily be an illusion, an irresistible one without which I wouldn't know how to proceed. (I think I'm already on board with the self being an illusion, but I still sign my invoices and bank slips.)

very interesting thread to come across .... for a person, say, such as myself, who's been tripping on acid for the past few hours, and for the first time in decades.


But I can't collect my musings suitably, so I'm afraid I'll have to pass, for now.

Actually, short of digging up your old posts, I can say I've agreed with much of what you've said about free will.

And yes, you've indoctrinated me. Just five years ago I felt differently.

Welcome to my school of thought :) I once felt differently as well, but I'm glad those dark ages are over.

I feel pretty much the same about philosophy, science, and religion as I did five years ago ... if anything, further along the same lines as before ... and pretty much the antithesis of classic Alexism.

Hey Alex,

I've had a few friendly arguments about Free Will (or the lack thereof) recently. Other than trying to remember what boots I bought for college philosophy classes that I skimmed and threw away, what do you suggest I read to brush up on the concept? Schopenhauer? Locke? Someone more modern and digestible?

Not really, it is mostly a self-reached conclusion (which I had no choice but to reach).

I've seen no evidence for a non-deterministic universe. Free will is non-deterministic (in that if you chase it far enough, at some point it requires a result without a cause), therefore, I see no reason to believe in free will. But I'm sure any reasonably well educated student of philosophy would be able to argue circles around me (not that this would make them right, necessarily, just me improperly equipped to handle the debate).

It isn't a well researched position, though I have read plenty of people talking about it, but it is like religion to me in that it can be interesting to discuss the nature of god but until there's something that solidly requires god exists, it's just a game.

But it isn't that vital a point as obviously even if I'm right our chemistry results in us believing we have free will and so it is essentially a non-negatable hypothesis.

The closest we can come in answering the question in a lab instead of a metaphysics seminar, so far, is showing that aspects of behavior that we interpret as free will aren't necessarily evidence of such (such as Benjamin Libet's famous experiments or psychopharmacology which is heavily based on the idea of subconscious brain chemistry altering behavior).

And as a reminder, because I don't believe in free will doesn't mean that I necessarily believe in predestination. I accept that there are elements of randomness at the quantum level that do bubble up to the macro level in various ways that renders the outcomes of current state unpredictable. So the result can't be changed but it also can't be known.

Also, just because I don't really believe there is free will (no matter how strongly I perceive it) doesn't mean I believe we should (even if we could) throw up our hands and accept social anarchy on the grounds that nobody can be held morally responsible for their actions. If you can say you had no choice but to rape that girl I can in response say I have no choice but to support putting you in jail.

The guy with the philosophy degree sitting next to me suggests any of the Existentialists (esp. Sartre, Schopenhauer or Karl Popper) and for a contemporary take, Robert Hofstadter (Godel, Escher, Bach, etc.)

That's the guy with the fez, right? I'll try Hofstadter again.

No, the guy with the fez is Scoundrel and he don't know jack about philosophy.

I think I use a similar approach as Alex but come to a different conclusion in that I seem to experience of free will, the ability to make choices and direct my life, and have no reason to suppose the counter-intuitive, that my conscious decisions are an artifact of some deterministic process.

But I'm existential/phenomenological in this thinking - that is, regardless of whatever the metaphysical reality is, it is essentially unknowable and consequently irrelevant to how I perceive or act in my life - to Alex's last paragraph, even if there is no free will, it's stupid to claim it as an excuse. To me that's about the same as shrugging and blaming God's will.

We get to the same place but I use the same process of rejecting the counter-intuitive. It is just that for me given the fact that free will requires some element of the supernatural I have no reason to suppose the counter-intuitive that just because I perceive it is a reason to think it real.

But yeah, definitely not an issue of any great import. If someone figures out how to prove it one way or another (scientifically, for my satisfaction) then great. But similarly, if it does turn out that we're in a holograhpic universe it doesn't really matter one lick as for as our experience of life goes.

Stick with older Hofstadter. He's gotten all "We have souls that can persist"y since he lost his wife to cancer.

This would all be very interesting if it weren't all part of a big solipsistic projection.

Then it is just interesting in a different way. Why did you create this projection?

Seems to me that Alex and € are on the same page, really.

I don't see any reason to believe in anything else. It's the only thing that makes sense. We are a collection of chemicals that thinks. The thoughts are manifestations of the chemicals. We have layered up enough that we don't see the hardwiring anymore. But we are still "mechanical" in nature.

Thought of this way, it seems inevitable that we will create "intelligent" robots eventually.

I am flabbergasted that anyone truly believes chemicals can think, or that the influence of chemicals or any other natural substance can determine precisely what thoughts a living being can think or what actions a live creature may take. Poppycock on its face.

In a way, a conversation about this seems as useless to me as would a conversation with Sarah Palin about compassion. There is no common frame of reference on which to base a discussion.

So if you think "you" had no hand in deciding what socks you put on today, there's no frame of reference I can imagine to refute that - it is simply completely off base to my entire framework of knowledge and experience.

It's one thing to assert we don't consciously assist our heart in beating, but quite another to allege I had no option but to type the word "zebra" just now.

I typed and erased four other words before settling on "zebra." Was that a chemical process entirely physical in nature? Of course, we can never know. But why anyone would have such a notion is beyond me. :rolleyes:

A chemical can't think. A highly complex collection of chemicals that interact with each other in highly complex ways result in a pattern that we describe as "thinking".

Electrons can't compute. A highly complex collection of electrons (and protons and neutrons) that interact with each other in highly complex ways result in a pattern that we describe as "computing".

See, we'll have to just agree to disagree. It's unprovable, undemonstrable, and I'm dumbfounded to conceive why anyone would, with no evidence, reduce their entire existence to such a dehumanizing concept. But I guess that's what some people's complex chemical interactions are producing. Mine are thankfully producing quite the opposite.

What's unprovable is that there is anything OTHER than the physical realities of the universe that could possibly be at work.

Well, it isn't exactly a new notion, Democritus described a form of determinism 2,500 years ago.

But yes, if you generally accept the notion of supernatural phenomena then it would make no sense to accept a view based on hard determinism.

But let me ask you a question that I'm sure will seem like nonsense: If you can will yourself to have typed zebra instead of some other word, independent of any external input, why can't a rock will itself to roll uphill?

I, however, don't see determinism as dehumanizing, any more than learning that the origin of thunder and lightning is a purely physical process (as opposed to supernatural) makes them less impressive. Frankly, if anything, I find it more amazing that whatever we perceive as consciousness is an emergent process than if we just waived our hands in the air and proclaim it "magic."

Added to quotes.

I'd add - we have measured the chemicals and electric signals in our brains using all kinds of methods. We have experimented with hindering these actions and found that they impede not only basic motor skills but also sense of self. There are hundreds of named diseases and injuries that affect how we think and feel.

I'm curious - if you believe that our "point of view", "sense of self", "decision-making", etc are all rooted in a Spirit or Soul, then what of people who are autistic? People with acute autism do not understand that they are people and that others are people as well. Do they have autistic souls? What of the millions of others who have accidents or illnesses that harm their personalities?

Agreed.

This from someone with a lifetime's worth of experience with just how drastically even a small change in the chemical balance of the body can have drastic effects on thought.

I'm not saying thought is not a physical reality. But I am saying it's a reality at least partially under control and guidance by a living entity. If we create or activate different chemicals to, say, choose bacon over asparagus - then perhaps it's just a matter of chicken and egg. And while thoughts can be (and certainly are) influenced by electricity or chemical additives, that's not the same as saying that ALL thoughts are so influenced.

I would reply that a rock is not alive.

Is fire alive? Does it will itself to burn things? Dunno. That's the gray area to me. Not rocks.


I'm also not claiming consciousness is non-emergent, or that it's evidence of a soul or spirit. My position is that once-emerged, whether through biology or spirituality, it can and often does direct thought and action independent of biology.

I find it amazing that we perceive light waves as color. A century ago, I suppose that would have been unthinkable. As far as I'm concerned, the science is still out on whether consciousness is merely mechanical.

Yes, I agree diseases, injuries, chemicals, energies all affect how we think and feel. But they do not affect ALL we think and feel. We have the ability to think and act independent of those inputs. Where is the science indicating we do not?

I do not necessarily believe our sense of self, etc., is rooted in spirits or souls. But even if that were the case, I don't see anything inconsistent with souls trying to experience ALL things, including states of being that do not recognize the self. I'm not sure that trees recognize their selves, but they are alive nonetheless - and if WE have souls (which I'm not saying we do) - so do trees.

:D

I've addressed this above, but nice point!

A feedback loop does not imply something outside physical reality. Yes, a "thought" generated by the current state of the physical universe affects all future thoughts. But that thought was affected by all previous thoughts. And all of those previous thoughts were affected by all thoughts previous to them, etc. etc. etc. It's still the end result of an unfathomably complex succession of events that have taken place since the beginning of our universe. "The current state and current actions can affect future states and future actions" is not equivalent to "The current state is not the direct result of all previous states and actions." It's the corollary thereof.

You seem to be mixing up "affected by" with "determined by." I'm not saying my thoughts aren't affected by a zillion things, but the precise nature of them is not necessarily determined by any of those things.

for me determinism contradicts consciousness. While it may be an artifact of mechanical systems, I would have to wonder why my consciousness is limited to one set of experiences. If things are all connected, and consciousness is an artifact of that complex connectedness, why do I not have a universal consciousness?

Who says you do not?

Just because you may not be aware of it at this time does not mean you don't have it.

I can only speak of my own experience

Well, that experience can change. You might experience a different tune someday.


I recommend a month of meditation on a remote Himalayan mountaintop.



Or several sessions with LSD.



for starters.

but then I might as well assume the existence of God, or the spaghetti Monster, as I haven't experienced those either

[eta: in response to iSm's post about "affected by" vs. "determined by"]

What is it determined by? And more to the point, what necessitates that there be something else that it must be determined by? What about the physical universe is insufficient for producing thought, when we can demonstrate such a direct link between brain chemistry and thought?

I say determined by and I mean determined by. The thought that you have that affects the thought the thought that you're about to have was affected by the thought previous to that, which was affected by the thought of your neighbor which led them to put a red curtain in the window viewable from your front door instead of blue, which was affected by the thought his cat had before knocking the crate and barrel catalog off the table so that it landed open to the page showing a room with red curtains, which was affected by the gust of wind 10 seconds earlier, etc. etc. etc. until everything is affected by every single atom, every single proton, every single quark, every single bit of everything that has ever existed and ever will exist. Yes, determined by. On such a unfathomable vast scale that we have no choice but to abstract that determination down to where it LOOKS like "affected by" rather than "determined by", but make no mistake, at some point it all comes back to the same thing - recreate the absolute identical state of the universe at any point down to the finest sub-atomic Heisenbergian detail and hit play, and you will get the same result.

You can't see infrared light, but there's some pretty good evidence it exists. There is simply no mechanism for your consciousness to communicate directly with others', it doesn't have the necessary sensory input (and any connectedness is many many many many orders of magnitudes weaker than the connectedness your consciousness has with the various parts of itself, so there's not much reason for it to bother evolving such sensory input).

Any computer connected to the internet is connected to every other computer on the internet, but they do not act as one computer, nor do they have any access to the internal workings of any other computer.

Right but that infra-red light I can infer from my experience (i.e, by conducting an experiment). And I can communicate to other people, see photos of things they see, and yet don't experience them as a "self." I only know of my own consciousness, and can only assume it of others - if there is no distinct self, why would I experience one?

Yes, you can communicate with others, but that's external communication, distinct from the kind of communication your internal feedback loop provides to itself. You don't experience them as a "self" because they don't have access to the internal communication methods between your specific cells and brain structures that those systems interpret as "self". They feel "different" because they do not provide the same input into your system as your own consciousness does.

Perhaps if there were a way to link 2 people at a neural level, to where their neurons were receiving input from each other, we WOULD see a break down of the walls of self.

Actually, just wait a few years until these two girls' language skills improve (they're reportedly a little bit slow on the developmental milestone scale, but progressing steadily). They might be able to provide do a better job of explaining than me.

I have faith in science.

I simply don't agree. And I'm pretty sure there's no science to back up that particular assertion of yours. But of course, that would solve the question right there. Because I contend (and likewise cannot prove) that if you created an identical universe down to the finest sub-atomic mush and hit play, you would get different results.

Just out of curiosity - what do you (or anyone wishing to reply) make of the fact that something is either a particle or a wave depending on whether it is observed by someone with consciousness?

If true, I'd think it nifty, but you're incorrect (at least according to the leading physicists who understand this stuff much better than me and are nice enough to try and explain the math in laymen's terms) about consciousness being the mechanism for waveform collapse. Mathematically it is not. However, for I'd think pretty obvious reasons, we can never know the outcome of that collapse without a consciousness being involved but that doesn't mean it created the created the collapse.

And if you want to go way down the quantum consciousness route you'll run into another refutation of free will in the form of the fact that while the exact result of a specific wavefunction collapse can not be predetermined it can be defined exactly probablistically. And then when you take that idea into the various described metaverses or multiverse you kill free will completely for if all possible outcomes actually exist then no choice can ever be made.

What Alex said. Subatomic particles exhibit properties of both waves and particles, but that doesn't mean they are either one or the other.

If you believe that the universe runs on rules, then it follows that our brain also runs on rules.

GD, I believe you are incorrect about subatomic particles having properties of both particles and waves. The entire point of the huge scientific splash the discovery made quite a few years back was that they are pure potentiality and that they behave as either particles OR waves, not both, and which behavior manifests is determined by the mere act of being observed.

Perhaps I'm not as up-to-date on this as I'd like - - - but that was the big news in physics-meets-metaphysics, and I've heard nothing but subsequent confirmations.

Seems to me the question would be "where is the science indicating that we think and act independently of our physical selves?"

Ok, so what IS a living entity? How does it control and guide? Living entities are physical beings, made of physical particles that run under laws. To say that the control and guidance is not physical in itself makes it sound like you're referring to something above "the whole of its parts". It's like saying that an assembled automobile is more than lubricating oil, gas being sparked into explosions, electrical signals, etc. A car is a car, functioning on the laws of physics, unless you believe a car has a metaphysical spirit of its own (and a lot of people do).

This isn't to say that we aren't "more" than the whole of our parts - the beauty of the top layer of our brains is well established. We've taken these rough bits of reality and made amazing things with it. The uncountable billions of neuron fires that go into painting and political theory and space travel should not go uncredited. Hell, I'll even say that cars DO have a personality of their own - and that it's a combination of their many parts. A 1988 Toyota Tercel with a high pitched whine, high gas mileage, springy seats and no a/c would feel totally different than a 1979 Cadillac with a lazy turn signal, low slung ride and well-worn leather...and we would interact with the cars in different ways. That doesn't mean that they are anything more than the sum of their physically limited parts.

Someone needs to correct me if I'm wrong but I've always thought that this was no big deal when I realized that in order to observe something you have to bounce something off of it - light, gamma rays, or what have you. Bouncing rays off of minute particles would obviously affect them. Maybe a Smell-O-Scope would be more useful.

If this is true (I'm too lazy to research it) then how does that affect causality and decision making theory? It doesn't matter to me what the nuts and bolts in my head actually are, what matters is that they are things that act in a certain way. If the claim is that "we can therefore know nothing of the universe" then you may want to turn in your television, your polio vaccine, and everything else man ever created because of scientific inquiry. Obviously, there is plenty we can and do know. If the claim is that "we can never know how minute physics works because we can't view it", that doesn't mean we assume that it doesn't work by any rules. Everything we have ever discovered works on rules, and the burden of proof is on the other side of things.

If you haven't heard it already - Here's a short-short version of Hofstadter's "Careenium" analogy, which I think goes a long way towards making firing neurons and bouncing electrons make more sense in terms of consciousness.

I remember distinctly my reactions to the (1st) Body Worlds exhibit in L.A. Well, my first reaction was being far too conscious of my skeletal, muscular and circulatory systems as I lived and breathed for the next several months (which is why I didn't go to see subsequent shows).

But my second reaction was - even after viewing all the wonderful mechanics of human biology, and speaking extensively with the curators and staff of the exhibit - I could grok how everything worked so amazingly - but still not have an inkling of WHY it worked. That is, what made the system go and do what it was so well-equipped to do. Sorry, but electrical impulses and energy direction (especially if you add in that the direction is also based purely on other mechanics) is simply not enough for me. It doesn't cut it for me, and never will.

After seeing that exhibit, I felt like a walking meat puppet for far too long. But that's not what I am. If anyone wants to be cool with that concept, or consider that the end of story for them, that's fine. But it's not for me, and as far as I'm concerned, it's regrettably (if understandably) short-sighted.


I know that doesn't exactly address your questions, CP, and I haven't yet had a chance to read what you linked to.

More later.



Thanks for the interesting thread, btw. I hope we can soon move past this quasi-dispute about the nature of the soul vs. meat puppet and discuss some other science / philosophy / religion as well.

The best answer to the question of particle vs. wave and potentiality collapses lies in the definition of "observe".

It's a poor choice of words, imo, that has unfortunately stuck because it makes for a good mental image, but it does not mean "observe" in the sense of "only when a conscious being makes an observation." It simple means "is interacted with."

Left alone, in a vacuum, isolated from all other molecules, atoms, particles, the electrons around an individual atom remain in a state of pure potential. The only certainty you can say is that, "If something tries to interact with this atom, the mass and charge of its electrons will act as if they are at some point within a particular region around the atom. What the exact point is, at the exact moment of interaction is unknown. All we can say about it is that for each possible point within that region, there is a certain, known, probability that the electron will be at that point."

However, the instant anything, ANYTHING, interacts with the atom/electron, that collapses, and the position is definite. It has nothing to do with consciousness, or a person "observing" it.

Bleh, I don't like that summary of the Careenium. It's one of the most powerful thought experiments I've ever read and those 5 paragraphs don't nearly do it justice.

maybe "observable" would be a more helpful term?

I dig your point about the defects in using the word "observation" when the scientists, purportedly, mean something entirely different. It seems like you did some research on it, so I will trust you ... but the fact that electrons will change or become "activated" to be either particle or wave when they interact with something else is so completely D'UH that I'm perplexed it made such a splash of news when it was "discovered."

And why would they not only use the term "observe," but also strongly imply in all the stories I've seen and heard that it was, in fact, the act of observation and not any interaction with the physical that caused the sub-atom to become either particle or wave???

:confused:


There's either more to this, or much misleading has been done by the scientific news media of the day. But I'm far too busy to look into it myself, so I'm content to leave it where you left it.

Because A) Science reporting is by and large abismal, B) The term "observe" is used in a technical sense within the field, so it's an understandable misunderstanding if you are not versed in it's more technical meaning and C) there is still an element of the actual "observation" in that the only way we can KNOW an electron's position is if we observe it, which, obviously, instantly and inextricably requires the kind of inter-particle interactions that collapse probability waves.

In short, our only window into what happens is through what we would generally call "observation", but what happens is not contingent upon what we generally call "observation".

I really wish I was not so distracted with anxiety and stress - I would really love to be engaging in this conversation.

Well, it really was (and still is) a massively important discovery (though just to be clear these discoveries are all nearly a century old).

But in terms of the duality it isn't so much that a photon becomes either a wave or a particle at the moment of observation it is more that any particular observation can only reveal either its wave or its particle aspects. And the ways in which experimentation reveal and flip between those aspects are weird nearly beyond comprehension (and largely are beyond my comprehension).

In a very crude analogy (it fails on many levels), take a blue apple-flavored candy cane. It is simultaneously blue and apple flavored. But when you observe it with your eyes all you can determine is its blueness, and when you observe it with your mouth all you can observe is its appleness. But when you observe its appleness it doesn't lose its blueness. And it is impossible to simultaneously observe both its blueness and its appleness because you can't see it and taste it at the same time.

GRAND CAVEAT: I'm hardly qualified to explain the deeper nature of quantum mechanics and there is perhaps a greater than even chance that I've screwed it up. That said, I have read a lot on what people who are qualified to explain quantum mechanics feel the implications are within the area under discussion. So if I say something obviously stupid, it is best to assume that the flaw is with me and not with them.

Stephen Hawking's latest book The Grand Design does, I think, a pretty good lay explanation of wave-particle duality.

<------Ducks under Alex's caveat umbrella.

The reason that I included that aside is my sense when you talk about the way these discoveries were conveyed is that you're reporting them as if you personally remember when they were announced.

If that is incorrect and you're referring to the discoveries of the 1910s and 1920s (which is what I'm talking about) then apologies.

But if you aren't, I'm wondering if what you're recalling is the explosion of Quantum Mysticism starting in the mid-'70s (such as with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and Gary Zukov's The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and eventually Deepak Chopra's claptrap) which "discovered" the implications of quantum mechanics for theories of consciousness. These generally involve horrible abuse of the science they claim to build on, extending it by metaphor into areas on which actual quantum mechanics has nothing to say, at best, or says the opposite, at worst.

me too

My sympathies to the distracted and stressed among us. Lately I've been attempting to engage here more often in an attempt to de-stress.

I'm also frustrated by the short Careenium explainer but it's not available in full online. Maybe I'll scan it in later?

If there's any other Philosophical / Scientific / Religious discussion people would like to spark here, be my guest. :)

Ooh, new Hawking? Hold placed.