Absent-Minded Science

This nurdle is going to need a strong cup of arabica instead of this green tea before any dendrite or synapses fires in my mind on this subject. Maybe a bike ride around the block and then re-read.

"Mind" does not exist. It is simply a label that we have created for the effect of the operations of an evolved brain so that we can talk about what we are experiencing. Those dendrites and synapses and electrochemical energy flows are all there is. They produce a sensation of consciousness that allows the self-awareness necessary to distinguish between ourselves and our environment and therefore to operate and adapt our actions within that environment. We call that feeling of consciousness "mind." In our hubris and narcissism, we'd like to think it is special. To dredge up one of my favorite Hemingway quotes, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

I disagree with your metaphor of the billiard balls. Consider the property of "emergence". Ants, who individually are incapable of complex architecture or multi-front war campaigns, are incredible as a group at decision-making and accomplishing vast structures. Mind could still be an emergent property of sufficiently complex networks. This discussion is, for me, insufficiently skeptical.

This is Creationism / Intelligent Design theory. Check out Ray Hartman's video on God's making of the banana ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq7LXn... ) and then the refutation of his argument ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Banana ) and decide which view Mr. Hunt's argument supports. This struggle to find Mind in the universe is the struggle to find God in the universe and is a spiritual quest. Science ignores God because science is all about defining the rules and by definition ignores God, though not (human) mind, which may be subject to 'rules' that may be investigated through science. Finding spirit does not require finding God, and a spiritual life can be lived in harmony with science. God is the trap that prevents this harmony and the Buddhists seem to be the only major group that has succeeded in avoiding the trap. I'm neither Buddhist nor scientist - just stand against Creationism and other ignorance. And it is almost impossible for me to spell Buddha correctly!

Nice essay, Mr. Hunt; good food for thought.

Your metaphors push the ideas in the wrong direction, which is toward the god (mind) of the gaps. ('Not there, so where is it?... Oh, there it is!')

I lean toward a mind in the parts, rather than the whole. My understanding of biology is that constituent parts contribute to the whole, often in surprising and new ways. A bit here, a bit there, and pretty soon we're talking about a whole mind.

It only looks magical because of the bazillions of tiny steps, accomplished by zillions of tiny parts, over billions of generations, of millions of permutations over 65 million years of primate evolution. Built upon, of course, what went before.

The mind has not been abandoned by science, just ignored while examining the pieces.

I also don't think you accurately sum up modern biological understanding by saying mind has been separated from mechanics:

: : : "Science has progressed far by expunging mind from its explanations. But to go further than today’s impasse we need to re-embrace mind, and ourselves, as an inherent part of nature."

-- at least not the folks I've been reading.

a recent example: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/...

When you say, “It is literally impossible for mind to spring forth from that which is wholly devoid of mind,” what you should be saying is, “It is literally impossible for me to conceive that.…” After all, if I said, “It is literally impossible for mind and purpose to have been infused into the universe from the very beginning,” you would probably accuse me of closing down the discussion by stating my conclusion at the outset and refusing to acknowledge even the logical possibility that I might be wrong.

As to your example of brain surgery, it only becomes useful if we’ve already decided that the word “mind” refers to an object that should be visible. If one doesn’t make that assumption, the example is irrelevant.

When you turn to biology, you claim that because humans have “minds,” “intentions,” and proceed with “purpose,” it is literally impossible for these not to be present in all forms of matter (as must, presumably, every other faculty of mind and aspect of human psychology, including, I suppose, all of the DSM categories), and must have had roles “in the evolution of life from the very beginning.” Once again you offer no logical argument here aside from the assertion that this must "surely" be the case. How does the existence of intentionality in humans prove that evolution in particular and the universe in general must surely have been guided by intentionality?

Evolutionary biologists use the phrase "designed for," utterly without shame, except in scientific journal articles. It's because a history of vast "trial and error" is harder to conceive of and (especially) communicate than false reverse-engineering. "Trial and error" is another handy little lie, used to describe gene mutation.

Darwin explained life's complexity with greater economy than religion does, creators needing to be infinitely complex to micro-manage the great mass of intricate ecological relationships among myriad complex entities, and yet caring only in the most mysterious ways, such as soulfully watching every sparrow fall.

Mavericks like John Lovelock ("Gaia Hypothesis") are impressed that Earth is so special, but is it? You could walk from one corner of Kansas diagonally to another, taking gazillion steps, but would you see Providence in the fact that you had to wade or swim precisely where the fish and pollywogs lived? (They need water, and presto there it is!) Didn't think so.

Minds like Lovelock's want to believe that the real reason salmon migrate from ocean to mountain stream is that Gaia wants to return iodine to the terrestrial environment. See, mind makes all things possible!

Darwin didn't prove that atoms don't think, or that our known universe isn't just an "atom" in the beak of a vast bird. But atoms keep any thoughts to themselves, or chemists would delight in displaying evidence to the contrary. Well, probably some purport to do so, if they have product to promote on AM radio late at night.

Ain't there a market for that! Oh, to live in Pee Wee's palyhouse with friendly, talking furniture....

Eckermann, the argument that "mind does not exist" is known as "eliminativism" and can be eliminated as a valid argument as easily as closing your eyes and contemplating your own consciousness. It's a fallacy of the worst sort to suppose that because we, as subjects, can describe the world "objectively" in such a way that other subjects can agree on at least parts of our description that subjects themselves don't exist. There are no objects without subjects and no subjects without objects.

Sbfellow and PK, my argument in the article is designed to show why "emergence" fails as a theory. What I call the materialist view is the same as the emergence view of mind. So when I describe how what is fundamentally mindless can never lead to the "emergence" of mind, I am arguing against the emergentist/materialist view of mind. As Sewall Wright, the American geneticist wrote in 1977: "Emergence of mind from no mind is sheer magic." It can't happen unless there is at least some mind, some subjectivity, in at least the most rudimentary way, in the constituents of matter.

This panpsychist view has been defended by many eminent biologists, physicists and philosophers over the centuries, as described by Skrbina in Panpsychism in the West.

PK, I am not saying that I can't conceive of how emergence could be possible. I am making a stronger claim than that. I am saying, based on accepted rules of logic, that if modern physics defines the constituents of matter as fundamentally mindless, then it is logically impossible for mind to spring from those constituents. There has to be at least some mind in the constituents to result in the mind we have. Ergo: there is at least some mind in all of our constituents.

It is important to clarify - which I didn't have room for in the article - that the panpsychist position that I advocate doesn't suggest there is any kind of full-blown mind in a cell or an electron. Rather, there is a smooth continuum from the human full-blown consciousness down to the electron. What is this "mind" at the level of electron? We can never know, of course, but we can infer that it is a very simple awareness of the universe around it (based on the causal laws of physics that influence the electron) and a basic choice in each moment in terms of how to manifest in the next moment in light of this simple awareness.

Freeman Dyson, a well-known Princeton physicist, writes:

“The processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when made by electrons.”

neworion, there are more than two positions on the question of Mind or God in the universe. I am not a materialist and I am not a Creationist or IDer. Panpsychism is, in fact, the rational middle ground between these two extremes.

I don't argue for the "God of the gaps." In fact, I barely mentioned God in my piece. I do, however, agree entirely with Freeman Dyson, the physicist, who writes (1988):

"I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension."

This is not the God of the gaps. This is accepting that Mind is fundamental to all matter - they are two faces of the same stuff - and that what we call Mind at the human scale may be worthy of being called God when it reaches much larger scales. But this is more speculative than the arguments I focus on in my article which are on far more firm ground.

Binky, I responded to your "God of the gaps" argument in my previous post.

Also, I agree with you that many scientists and philosophers are less dogmatic than my article suggests. However, my main point is to address the more dogmatic arguments that are being made by people like Dawkins, Dennett, and other hard-core materialists who are often the loudest voices in these kinds of debates.

Adonis, Darwin's enterprise was motivated by a desire to explain evolution without referring to the supernatural hand of God (though he acknowledged God may have had a role in creating life). As such, it's an extension of the Cartesian project to explain the universe entirely mechanistically. My point is that the mechanistic approach fails from the get-go because it ignores the undeniable reality of mind in us. If we are part of nature, and we have minds, then all things have some kind of mind. It's logically necessary. The only question is: what kinds of minds are present in other things?

Whitehead's very detailed philosophy is a "philosophy of organism" because it recognizes that literally all things are experiential to some degree. So for Whitehead, the "particles" of physics become "organisms." Physics is the study of small organisms and biology the study of much larger organisms. It's all one fabric, one continuum, from the most simple organisms we call electrons, quarks, etc., to the far more complex organisms we call human beings.

There is a new movement afoot in biology that recognizes the need to recognize mind in nature, and that it has had a key role in the evolution of life. This is obvious if we recognize that all stuff is comprised of organisms. It's only the chauvinist/materialist/eliminativist view that thinks it can explain all of life without resort to mind.

Ah, Mr. Hunt, I made no claim that subjects do not exist. I have no doubt that both you and I exist as living organisms with complex brains and that we are able to communicate (most likely to enable us to develop and nurture mutually beneficial cooperative relationships). Just because my brain still works with my eyes closed does not prove that there is a mind. It only proves that the electrochemical activity of my brain works with my eyes closed. Remember your Darwin. What you call "mind" is either a product of natural selection, developed by the survival feedback loop or it is some kind of a priori substance. If mind is a product of life then it exits only because it provided our ancestors with a survival advantage of some kind. If mind is an a priori substance of some type, then we are talking physics or, more probably, metaphysics. Regarding metaphysics, Wittgenstein famously observed," Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Now, Tam, Whitehead was playing with the Reddi Wip, wasn't he.... But who ***wouldn't*** prefer a touchy-feely universe, scientists included? It's not chauvinistic to ask for evidence.

If a new religion is afoot that purports to be friendly to evolution, then out of decency it should call itself a church. Another word for religion is faith, as in The Christian Faith, etc. And the logical definition of faith is belief in the absence of compelling evidence. Ya just turn the Critical Thinkin' Switch to OFF, and then anything's possible. Woo, woo!

Adonis, Whitehead was a logician, physicist, mathematician and philosopher who attained the highest levels of professional recognition. He spent the last decade or so as professor of philosophy at Harvard. My point: he was no intellectual slouch, so it's a tad skewed to suggest that Whitehead and those who agree generally with his vision (like me) are not thinking critically or demanding evidence. (I am not one to blindly use the "argument from authority," rather, I mention Whitehead's bona fides here to rebut your suggestion that the views I describe are those that avoid hard thinking).

To the contrary, the reductionist materialist viewpoint ignores half the universe - as Schopenhauer point out so well. That half is, of course, mind (subjects). So the materialist view recognizes only objects and pretends that it can explain subjects with only objects. It can't.

Accordingly, the panpsychist view is far more rigorous, comprehensive, and adequate-to-the-facts that materialism.

Eckermann, if we could describe your brain with whatever precision we desired we would still fail to describe what it is like to be you. This is what I mean by matter as the "outside" vs. mind as the "inside" of all real things. Materialism looks only at the outsides of things and pretends there is no inside. But we know from direct experience - in fact, it is literally the only thing we really know, as Descartes accurately pointed out with his famous "I think, therefore I am" meditation - that there is an inside in us. And if there is an inside to us, which cannot magically spring from components that wholly lack an inside, then our components must also have an inside. Again, we are back to panpsychism and the necessary view that all things have some degree of mind, an inside, subjectivity, interiority, or whatever term you prefer.

Tam

Which of the accepted laws of logic does the following proposition violate? “Mind has sprung from constituents that are fundamentally mindless.”

You haven’t addressed my original closing question: “How does the existence of intentionality in humans prove that evolution in particular and the universe in general must surely have been guided by intentionality?”

Are species extinctions countenanced by the atoms in (for example) Archaeopteryx's snout because those atoms know they're immortal? Let's hear something better than cream of New Age soup.

The dialectic of "outside" and "inside" is an illusion, a way of talking about things. Poor Decartes was sadly mistaken. There is only stuff. Complex stuff is made of combinations of simple stuff. What it is like to be me is unique because I am an unique arrangement of stuff. Not even I, with all the precisions of science and the ambiguities of philosophy, can ever hope to describe what it is like to be me. In fact, what it is that is me is created again and again each and every second from the moment I was conceieved in the womb until the moment I die. What is me is a moving, changing target hell bent for annihilation with a little living and perhaps some procreation along the way. Continuity of personality is another one of those illusions our brains give us for survival purposes (and to keep us from freaking out our wives). Materialism is the way and the truth because the only thing there is, is only that which exists.

While I await your explanation of how the presence of intentionality in humans proves the presence of intentionality in evolution and in the universe at large, I can sharpen the point I was making about the logical status of your basic claim about mind.

Statement A: “X cannot be equal to not-X” is a statement in logic, its truth independent of the nature of X. However, your claim takes the form of Statement B: “X cannot derive from not-X,” the truth of which, in contrast, depends on the nature of X. For example, if X is ultraviolet light, fear, or water, then Statement A remains correct but Statement B does not: Statement A is a rule of logic, Statement B is contingent. The supposed validity of your claim “Mind cannot derive from nonmind” is a rule in a particular metaphysical system. It’s an unprovable axiom that you happen to find reasonable and useful; it is not a logical truism.

I'm having the same problems with Mr. Hunt's essay as you are, pk.

To me, Hunt makes this assertion as fact:

"Materialism looks only at the outsides of things and pretends there is no inside."

... and from there carries on as if all science has adopted the materialistic view point.

Secondly, his dominant argument is suspiciously similar to the core of Intelligent Design advocates: if there is design, there must be a Designer. In Hunt's case he replaces 'design' with Mind, and posits the idea of a Mind which has always been there.

Modern biological theory recognizes the relentless tinkering and trials with errors of a witless, often out-of-tune evolution of species and mind.

Evidence from Biochemical Pathways in Favor
of Unfinished Evolution rather than Intelligent Design
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Is...

Cells, Embryos and Evolution:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/book...

PK, you've asked two questions:

1) Which rules of logic does materialist emergence break?

While the "rules of logic" themselves are not written in stone, I agree with you that the most basic rule of logic (going back to Aristotle and probably earlier) is that X cannot also be not-X.

If X is matter, defined as wholly mindless, then saying mind, Y, emerges from X, is to say that X can also be not-X. Thus, the basic rules of logic are broken. However, we can easily solve this problem if we define "matter" as including the potentiality for mind, which is, I suspect, your preferred definition. But if you accept this revised definition of matter you must ask yourself what it means to have the potentiality for mind. Where is it? What does it look like? When we think deeply, we realize that mind is a point of view, a locus. When I describe Eckermann's brain, I am saying "this is what your brain looks like to me, over here." But the reverse holds true: Eckermann could describe my brain objectively, from the outside, and completely miss the fact that there is also an inside to my brain (me, presumably). Through this chain of inference, which recognizes also that mind cannot spring from that which wholly lacks mind, we are led to the conclusion that all matter must have some degree of subjectivity, an inside, not merely some hazily defined potentiality for mind. There are many other lines of reasoning for this conclusion, which you can read about in Griffin's Unsnarling the World-Knot.

As an exercise, ponder the moment at which mind emerged for the first time in the universe, under the materialist emergence view, and then ask yourself why right then, and not a moment before or a moment later?

PK, continued.

2) How does intentionality in humans establish intentionality in all matter?

If we accept the panpsychist view, which I believe is logically necessary, then we must ponder what this actually means. What is the subjectivity of an electron, a cell, etc? At its root, subjectivity is awareness that leads to a choice. The most basic choice is how to manifest in the next moment, a process that Whitehead calls "the creative advance." It is creative because there is a choice in each component of the universe. What we call the laws of nature are, according to Whitehead, better described as the habits of nature, and this of course matches well with quantum physics, which is a statistical theory (as are, arguably, all modern physical and chemical theories).

Accordingly, if awareness and a choice are fundamental to all matter we cannot ignore this in the evolutionary process. See Stuart Kauffman's great work in At Home in the Universe or The Origins of Order where he describes his ideas on "order for free," based on physical and chemical laws, as an alternative to natural selection as an agent for evolutionary change. Kauffman doesn't stress Whitehead much, but he mentions Whitehead and he has obviously been inspired to some degree by Whitehead. For a more explicit vision of how an infinity of tiny purposes can lead to evolutionary change at the macro level see Margulis and Sagan's What is Life or any of Samuel Butler's four books on evolutionary theory.

Eckermann, you write: "What it is that is me is created again and again each and every."

I agree entirely. This is what it is like to be you, a self, which is an ever-changing pattern of awareness that is part and parcel of the stuff (matter) that you call your brain and body.

And this is my point: there is an objective component to you, what I can describe from MY point of view. And there is a subjective component to you, what you describe from YOUR point of view. While in the cosmic sense (described particularly well in the Vedanta tradition and some forms of Buddhism), this point of view is the same, in our normal reality these two points of view are obviously different. And the same goes for every locus in the universe, every "particle" or whatever term we choose to use. Every piece of the universe has its own point of view.

Alan Watts said it particularly well: "For every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside." Watts was an astute scholar of Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism and many other great spiritual traditions. And he was a panpsychist.

Binky, as I wrote in a different response, there are more than two positions on the dial with respect to evolutionary theory. I am neither a materialist nor a Creationist. I believe, along with many other biologists, that organismic evolution - millions of little pushes, rather than any pull from a Designer - have been the primary cause of evolution. See Steele, et al, Lamarck's Signature (written by working immunologists), demonstrating how in the field of immunology it is nothing but Lamarckian evolution. They speculate that similar processes may hold sway in evolution more generally. Others have been more explicit, including Margulis and Sagan (What is Life?), Jablonka and Lamb (Evolution in Four Dimensions), and Samuel Butler in his evolution books, to name a few. Combine this neo-Lamarckism with Kauffman (At Home in the Universe, The Origins of Order) and Thompson's (On Growth and Form) "order for free" and we have a very powerful alternative to the random evolution and selection of the adaptationist dogma that has held sway for the last few decades in evolutionary theory. Last, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's new entry on "adaptationism" for more on this debate.

Talking about subjective vs. objective points of view is, in my view, violating Wittgenstein's admonition to remain silent about subjects whereof one may not speak. Poor Ludwig (who was actually very relgious and spiritual) found it impossible to apply the rules of logic to the metaphysical. I agree with him. While there is an "objective" universe in which we all operate, I doubt that any of us "subjects" ever see it accurately, especially since the act of observation can even alter our environment. In fact natural selection has not found it necessary to endow us with perfect observational capability. Or observational skills only have to be good enough to operate effectively in our environmental and survive long enought to reproduce the next generation. Our ability to apply to logic to our observations is similarly limited. However, this is all very much fun to ponder and discuss. Thanks for engaging.

I do not support an adaptationist view, if my writing has been unclear -- exactly the opposite. I suppose you would call my interpretations of biology as pluralistic.

But I do have a question for you, from which my reading of your essay (and your various comments) begs: do you believe the ever-present Mind as you have outlined it, is a part of a unified schema, a supernatural order of things; a aspect of what most people define as God?

Maybe a more direct form of my question is: are you defining Mind in the same way theists utilize divine simplicity?

Tam
You treat the proposition “Y is X” as being logically equivalent to the proposition “Y emerges from X,” where Y is not-X. But “is” is not synonymous with “emerges from.” “Not-X is X” is logically contradictory. “Not-X emerges from X” is not. It is logically contradictory to say “Water is not water,” but it is not logically contradictory to say “Water emerges from the interaction of elements that are neither water nor have the properties of water.” You might find the panpsychist view to be wonderfully explanatory, but it is not “logically necessary” just because you think that any alternative is “impossible” according to your metaphysical outlook.

Even if one accepts the notion that the individual components of matter (assuming it’s legitimate to slice the universe into individual components in this way) have “awareness that leads to choice” (and I have to admit that I have no notion of what those words are supposed to mean when extended from what I know of myself and the living organisms of my lifeworld to neutrinos, for example), this does not logically entail that the overall process of evolution, which is not a “thing” on the same ontological level as individual organisms, is “intentional” in a sufficiently analogous sense to what “intentional” means when applied to my own volitions and those of the beings with which I’m familiar. I acknowledge that the issue in this paragraph is not one of logic but of comfort with particular philosophical views and their implications, and my discomfort is certainly not “proof” that you’re wrong. I find your extension of words like “purpose,” “choice,” “intention,” and “awareness” to all of matter to be too great an abuse of language to be worth the prize that you believe you’re gaining. Moreover, your inability to grasp the logical fallacy in your thinking renders your enterprise even more dubious.

PK, I think I've said all I care to say on the issues you raise in this forum, so I recommend, if you're interested in pursuing these ideas further reading Whitehead directly (though he's rather difficult), or Griffin's works that I've recommended above, or also Bertrand Russell's Analysis of Matter and Analysis of Mind. Russell was never a keen panpsychist, though some of his writings suggest he was sympathetic. I recommend his works, however, because he was very clear on what physics and modern materialism include in their purview: physics is about the external relations between objects. It has nothing to say about subjects, insides. So this again brings us back to the main point I've been trying to make: if modern physics, and the materialist/emergentist metaphysical system that is based on the current views of physics, only look to the external relations of objects then they cannot, by definition, say anything at all about the insides of things, subjectivity. (This goes directly to your logical arguments above and I think you'll see why if you think it through further). And I'll leave it at that for now though I am planning a part II to my article above which you will probably find interesting (and I'm also wrapping up a couple of books on these topics, so stay tuned).

Binky, glad to hear that you're not a dogmatic adaptationist. Nature is clearly far more complex than the adaptationists would have us believe.

What I've been calling Mind in this forum is, in my view, part and parcel of what is normally called matter. But when I use "matter" here the more accurate term (a neologism of mine) is "menter." Menter expresses the view that all of matter is actually matter/mind aka menter. All things have an outside and an inside. What we normally call matter is the outside and what we normally call mind is the inside.

Menter oscillates in each moment of the "creative advance" between mental and physical poles, taking in information from the universe around it and deciding how to manifest objectively in the next moment, then becoming a datum for all other mental poles to absorb. This is essentially Whitehead's vision, as described in Process and Reality, Science and the Modern World, Adventures of Ideas, and other books, but with my own twist.

The process that gives rise to our complex consciousness is a compounding of Mind, from many constituents becoming one at each level of organization, from the simplest components of matter up through the chain of being to our very rarefied consciousness.

As Dyson writes, when this process passes beyond our comprehension we may as well call it God.

But we needn't invoke God in our evolutionary theories. Rather, evolution is, in my view, caused by the myriad localized teleologies of each organism. And keep in mind that "organism" here means every constituent of the universe because what is normally called a "particle" or a "string" is better termed an "organism" because of its oscillatory experiential and purposive nature.

If you want a catchphrase for this view of evolution we can call it "organismic selection," and this term has in fact been used by some biologists sympathetic to the vision I've outlined above. Organismic selection is directly opposed, though could also be framed as complementary, to natural selection, for reasons I'll delve into in my next essay.

Tam
I pointed out the crucial difference in logical status of “Not-X is X” from that of “Not-X emerges from X,” a difference that undermines your project, and illustrated with an example, and you responded by lecturing me with a reading list, a denunciation of modern physics, an incoherent remark on the “insides of things” and subjectivity, and a condescending suggestion that if I think it through further I’ll understand what your evasive and irrelevant comments have to do with my criticism of your debilitating failure to understand how logic works. Thanks for all of the advice, but I already understand quite enough.

Eckermann, I think you've got it backwards. The only thing we know is our own experience. All "objective" knowledge comes through our experience and is only "objective" because it represents what various observers can generally agree on as objective. So you've flipped reality on its head - and this is in fact the fallacy that materialism rests upon and which I am trying to dispel in my work - by suggesting that all we can talk about is that subset of reality that we call "objective reality" because it consists of those data that science considers its normal domain.

Primary reality is not, however, objective; it is subjective through and through. There is no objective reality without subjective reality and objective reality is a subset of subjective reality.

So, to repeat my main point, to pretend that reality consists only of objective reality, of "outsides," is to ignore primary reality and its all-pervasive role in objective reality, the normal domain of science. For modern science to become more complete, then, it must acknowledge that the normal "objectivation" approach (to use Schrodinger's term) is just shorthand and one stage in the scientific process of understanding reality. Here's what Schrodinger writes about this approach, in his lectures that became the short book Mind and Matter:

"[The principle of objectivation is] a certain simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature. Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world."

Schrodinger, a profound thinker, to be sure, recognized that this "simplification" ignored the primary reality.

PK, a key confusion, in my view, results from assuming that the obvious emergence of new features in the natural world is analogous to the alleged emergence of mind from non-mind. This is, to quote David Ray Griffin, a "category mistake of the most egregious kind."

Emergence of properties like the oft-mentioned liquidity or solidity rely simply on new organizations of matter. There is no "problem of emergence" with properties like this, even if such properties are not entirely predictable a priori from the constituents. These types of emergence are, to stress again, simply new organizations of whatever constituents are at issue (such as hydrogen and oxygen molecules, in the case of the emergence of liquidity in water from what was previously a collection of gaseous molecules).

To suggest that consciousness itself emerges from non-conscious matter is to argue that a miracle occurs. It is no explanation at all because it begs the question: "HOW does consciousness/mind emerge from what is wholly mindless"? In other words, we can explain quite well why liquidity or solidity emerge from gaseous molecules, based on our understanding of bonding properties, polarity of H2O, etc. But to suggest that this is analogous to the alleged emergence of mind gives us no insight at all. HOW do the properties of wholly mindless matter give us mind when the right kind of organization is reached?

This brings us back again to my billiard ball analogy. If the billiard balls are defined as wholly mindless, no combination/organization of these wholly mindless constituents will yield a collection of matter that also has some mind.

Ergo: we must include mind in our definition of matter. Or, if you prefer (as some scholars do), we can call this "proto-consciousness" or "proto-mind," to distinguish it from human-like consciousness. But it is mind, nonetheless, in terms of its representing the inside of matter, as opposed to the outside of matter that is available to other subjects.

To bring this back to your formal logic argument: in the case of the alleged emergence of mind, emergence reduces to identity, contradicting your argument. And for the sake of argument, I could concede this point and still assert validly that panpsychism is a far more plausible explanation than emergentism because even if emergentism is not logically contradicotory it is still inferior as an explanation because it asks us to believe that a miracle occurs in each organism that becomes conscious and that there is some defined point in space-time that mind originally appeared in the universe where it was wholly absent before. This is problematic for a variety of reasons, particularly from a biologist's point of view because biology teaches us that life is a continuum all the way down, not a system with discontinuous breaks of such a profound nature.

I'll include a couple great quotes from modern philosophers to amplify this point in my next post.

PK, Sewall Wright, a well-known American geneticist and philosopher, said it well (1977): "Emergence of mind from no mind is sheer magic."

Philosopher Colin McGinn (not a panpsychist, but critical of emergentism) described this problem in more detail:

"[W]e do not know how consciousness might have arisen by natural processes from antecedently existing material things. Somehow or other sentience sprang from pulpy matter, giving matter an inner aspect, but we have no idea how this leap was propelled. . . . One is tempted, however reluctantly, to turn to divine assistance: for only a kind of miracle could produce this from that. It would take a supernatural magician to extract consciousness from matter. Consciousness appears to introduce a sharp break in the natural order – a point at which scientific naturalism runs out of steam."

And David Ray Griffin (1998) makes the problem even more clear:

"The alleged emergence of subjectivity out of pure objectivity has been said to be analogous to examples of emergence that are different in kind. … But the alleged emergence of experience is not simply one more example of such emergence. It involves instead the alleged emergence of an "inside" from things that have only outsides. It does not involve the emergence of one more objective property for subjectivity to view, but the alleged emergence of subjectivity itself. Liquidity, solidity, and transparency are properties of things as experienced through our sensory organs, hence properties for others. Experience is not what we are for others but what we are for ourselves. … To suggest any analogy between experience itself and properties of other things as known through sensory experience is a category mistake of the most egregious kind."

Tam

First, I appreciate your taking the extra time with this.

My example was not intended to serve as an analogy of how mind might emerge from nonmind, so the array of philosophers you quote is irrelevant to my point, although before I return to it, let me comment on your criticism of that example. It is, to use your phrase, a category mistake to equate the quality of liquidity, which is an attribute of a substance, with a reorganization of matter, which is a relationship between substances. So the emergence of liquidity from a reorganization of matter is not an example of like coming from like.

Your billiard ball analogy merely restates your claim; it doesn’t prove it.

As for asking for insight into how mind arises, I can ask for the same with regard to what it means to speak of the “inside” of a neutrino being “represented” by something analogous to human interiority. This strikes me as every bit in need of a nonmiraculous explanation that doesn’t come down to “it just happens to be the case.”

Now back to the logical argument. You claim that “emergence reduces to identity.” I frankly don’t know what this is supposed to mean. “X emerges from Y” is not the same as “X equals Y.” To use a different example, my attribute of being a grandfather is not equal to the physical act of my daughter’s giving birth, but it did emerge from it. Taken simply in its logical form, the proposition “X emerges from not-X” is not self-contradictory. To say, falsely, that it is self-contradictory proves nothing about the world.

Your claim that emergentism relies on a miracle but panpsychism is far more plausible shifts the argument from logic to metaphysics, where it belongs. However, whether the presence of an “inside” in neutrinos (including, I suppose, protodisgust, protofear, protoanxiety, proto-everything else that comes with the interiority of being human) is “more plausible” than the emergence of mind from nonmind is a matter of taste, which shifts the argument again, this time to psychology and the rather challenging problem of why different people find different sorts of explanations satisfying. I’m not arguing for an “anything goes” approach to understanding the world, merely cautioning against an overconfident belief that there is something obvious and objective in the notion of what constitutes a “plausible” view of life.

Finally, you clearly disagree, but it’s a standard view in biology that life originated from nonlife. To use your belief that it can’t to support your belief about the origin of mind begs the question.

Anybody here a sophistriotomist?

With all due respect, I believe that you have it backward. In the beginning, prior to the existence of narcissistic humans there was an objective reality. The biological activity of sentience and perception produces an illusion of subjectivity and point of view. Indeed you are correct that all of the objective world is perceived by us through the filters of our perceptual equipment. But I assure you that the world exists independent of you and me, existed prior to subjects existing, and will be here after all us self-referential beings are gone. In fact, when the world is swallowed by super nova, the universe will continue to exist, albeit without anyone to notice.

Tam, thank you for taking on this very demanding discussion and staying with it so long. I have very much enjoyed reading this exchange between a number of obviously bright and knowledgeable people.

I have a great interest in this material, but because of my relative inexperience in discussing it I will limit my contribution to suggesting a reading of Alan Watts’ “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” and B. A. Wallace’s “Choosing Reality.” Both authors are exceedingly bright, extraordinarily knowledgeable, and very readable, and both powerfully discuss the issues being addressed here.

Eckermann, I should have clarified that I was speaking epistemologically with respect to subjective reality being the primary reality. My mistake. Ontologically speaking, subjective and objective reality are, in my view, co-equal. They oscillate in each moment of the creative advance, which is the laying down of reality in each moment.

This is not human-chauvinist at all. Rather, it recognizes that for humans to exist, with an inside/subjectivity, this subjectivity must exist in all things to some degree - unless we are to posit the "miracle occurs" approach of materialism. The "some degree" is very important. A common critique of panpsychism is that it supposes some kind of complex consciousness in subatomic particles. This is not the case. The inferred subjectivity in subatomic particles is maximally simple: merely awareness of the universe around it and a choice as to how to manifest in the next moment based on that awareness. This is obviously parallel to the normal conception of mainstream physics that recognizes that all particles "feel" the universe through the fundamental interactions and then react. The key difference, logically necessary, between the materialist physics of our day and panpsychism is that the particle in the panpsychist view is actually an "organism" because it actually feels and actually makes a choice - as Dyson suggested in the quote I mentioned a few posts back.

So what is framed in quantum physics as being chance, and thus the statistical nature of quantum physics resulting, is actually an infinite number of choices being made by each particle/organism. Because the choices made are heavily influenced by previous choices, for very simple subjects like particles, they generally maintain their previous course, and thus the statistical laws become fairly predictable for simple systems (thermodynamics, etc.). But as this ability to choose is magnified at each higher level of organization, subsuming many smaller choices within one larger choice, this fundamental free will eventually manifests in behavior highly contrary to the "laws" of physics. Thus, life, a higher level type of organism, is highly negentropic, contradicting the more general trend for a decrease in order. This was in fact how Schrodinger defined life: life feeds on negentropy.

But life, like consciousness/subjectivity, is a continuum that goes all the way down. What we call living systems are particularly complex forms of matter that allow the maintenance of more complex consciousness (matter and consciousness being two aspects of the same thing) over time through storage of energy in various forms, as described in amazing detail and insight by Mae-Wan Ho in her 1998 book, The Rainbow and the Worm, which takes up where Schrodinger left off over 60 years ago.

Eckermann, cont.

Last, while we can imagine a universe without consciousness, as you suggest, I don't believe it is metaphysically possible - and perhaps logically impossible also. This is the case because of the various lines of reasoning I've fleshed out above, based, again, primarily on the undeniable reality of human experience/subjectivity, which can't simply ignored, as the "principle of objectivation" approach has erroneously done for far too long.

Tam, e=mc^2 tells us that energy and matter are just different manifestations of the same thing. If matter has intentionality, does energy have the same property? If so, that suggests that, for example, an ocean wave has intentionality. If not, where did it go? And where does it come from when energy is converted into matter?

High fructose corn syrup
Carmel color
Sodium bonzoate
Citric acid
Caffeine
Artificial and natural flavors
Acaia

Which ingredient is the Root Beer? Stumped?

There's a little Root Beer in all of them!

Just as Root Beer has no discrete definition- it is just a name we've given to a particular carbonated syrup drink- "mind" is just a name for a set of phenomenon that occur due to human brain function. Mind has no meaning beyond it's informal usage to describe conciousness. Thus, discussing whether it exists in any measureable quantities in this atom or that molecule is akin to asking how many Root Beers are in one carmel color.

TheJesus, I suggest you read through previous comments where I've directly addressed this issue. If you are an "eliminativist," a la Dennett, you deny your own subjectivity. You are free to do that (it's a free country), but it is of course a performative contradiction for a conscious subject to deny his/her own subjectivity. That is, the very act of denial affirms your own consciousness/subjectivity, which I could describe from the outside as the activities of your brain/body, but only you, the subject, can describe from the inside.

SezMe, energy and matter may indeed be conceived of as interchangeable aspects of a single substance. As such, yes, energy is yet another face of consciousness. In fact, all these terms (matter, energy, consciousness, information) really boil down to the same thing: the stuff of reality. And that stuff necessarily has an inside and an outside. The words mean less than the concept the words are trying to express.

However, the energy of a wave surely has no unitary consciousness - rather, the constituents of the wave have their own very basic consciousness, just as a rock surely has no unitary consciousness but its constituents surely do.

This goes to what is known as the "boundary problem" or the "combination problem" of consciousness. What defines the boundary of any particular consciousness? Whitehead distinguished "mere aggregates" (rocks and waves) from "compound individuals," but didn't dwell at length on how to distinguish the two. I've written a technical paper on this topic called Kicking the Psychophysical Laws Into Gear: A General Theory of Complex Subjects. It should be published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies before too long...

The short answer to my solution is this: field coherence is necessary for a unitary subject to arise. Field coherence requires synchronous manifestations of the subunits at issue, just as electrical field gamma synchrony (observed during normal consciousness) is achieved in the human brain through apparently nonlocal processes. The details get complex but this should give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

If "a rock surely has no unitary consciousness," neither does half a rock, half of half a rock, half of half of half a rock,.... Regardless of how far down you go in this series, you will never reach a constituent that does have unitary consciousness. Calling Dr. Zeno.

The main point I made, which you seem to have overlooked, is a critique of your entire enterprise. What is the relevance of examining where "mind" comes from when it doesn't have a discrete definition? (Neither does consciousness, for that matter) Moreover, you need to describe the activity and its properties in a principled way before you start asserting that pieces of rock are quantum entangled through consciousness to other stars in the milky way, which is undoubtedly your goal here. All you have is a lot of words and some hand-waving.

Your outside/inside distinction is a false one. I'm only limited from knowing your "subjective" (your inside) because of the limitations of current neuro-science and psychology.

By the way, which stone has more consciounesses, marble or slate? I'm debating which flooring to buy for the bathroom and my contractor said slate was the smarter choice.

ZING!

TheJesus, I recommend pumice. You can touch up your feet, brush your teeth and exchange brain waves with your dog all at the same time.

WA-A-Y easier to moon-walk on marble. Forget pumice.

Back to Mr. Hunt's argument; it looks like at least four of us aren't buying the inside/outside definition or absolute as he persistently asserts it as understood fact. My problem is the logic that has been put forth my Mr. Hunt seems to require these little leaps of faith to remain cogent, and I can't go the faith-based route.

Such as here (from Tam Hunt's replies):

-- "This goes to what is known as the "boundary problem" or the "combination problem" of consciousness. What defines the boundary of any particular consciousness? Whitehead distinguished "mere aggregates" (rocks and waves) from "compound individuals," but didn't dwell at length on how to distinguish the two."

-- "However, the energy of a wave surely has no unitary consciousness - rather, the constituents of the wave have their own very basic consciousness, just as a rock surely has no unitary consciousness but its constituents surely do. "

and here (which I can't even follow, as it seems positively deCartesian):
"but it is of course a performative contradiction for a conscious subject to deny his/her own subjectivity. That is, the very act of denial affirms your own consciousness/subjectivity,"

Ah Mr. Hunt, I know we were all once seduced by Calos Casteneda back in the day, but alas subjectivity is merely an illusion produced by biological electrochemical activity. It exists nowhere else but in living things and may not even exist in all of them. I understand the siren call for eternity and meaning can drive one to use our limited logic abilities to develop fantastic theories about the ubiquity of "mind." But, sadly, we are each alone with our thoughts. Let me try to meet you half way. DNA is an unique molecule in that it seeks to endure and has developed into millions of species to do just that. Thus natural selection. If any molecule has intent, it would be DNA. I would argue that DNA is simply structured to act so. On the other hand, maybe it "wants" to survive. Spooky.

Eckermann, you can choose to believe your own subjectivity is an illusion - again, it's a free country. But I assert, along with pretty much every one who has thought seriously about this topic, is that our own subjectivity is ALL we know. So how on earth can one reach the conclusion that literally the only thing an individual knows, the primary reality of subjective experience, is an illusion? Only through constant indoctrination with the materialist paradigm. But such is the nature of philosophy and debate - we are free to choose our beliefs and there is, when we really get down to brass tacks, as much faith as logic in how we choose our beliefs on fundamental issues like the nature of consciousness. I personally believe, obviously, that there is a lot more logic in the panpsychist position, but this is not exactly a universal position - yet.

ThinkAboutIt, thanks for the references. Perhaps not ironically, I have been long inspired by Watt's The Book. I read it originally when I was 19 and again 20 years later. I have Wallace's Choosing Reality on my shelf so will pick it up and finally read it.

PK, four final thoughts:

1) I strongly urge you to read both David Ray Griffin's Unsnarling the World-Knot, as an introduction to Whitehead, and then Whitehead's own Process and Reality. I think you'll appreciate the reads even if you don't ultimately agree with the worldview described. I have some optimism, however, that you may find the worldview convincing because I have myself evolved from a strong materialist/atheist, over the last twenty years, into a strong panpsychist, based largely on the logical failures and empirical inadequacies of the prevailing materialist worldview.

2) As I write above, I am not arguing for the complex consciousness you imply with your terms "proto-disgust," "proto-fear," etc., in simple physical structures. Rather, again, I am arguing that simple subjects consist merely of limited awareness of the universe and a choice as to how to manifest in the next moment, based on that awareness. This is, thus, a far more plausible and satisfying explanation for the development of complex consciousness than the materialist explanation of "a miracle occurs" because the panpsychist view rests on downward extrapolation from our own incontrovertible experience. The materialist argument rests merely on an alleged miraculous emergence of mind from wholly mindless matter, with no explanation of how this magical jump occurs.

3) Similarly, your reframing of Zeno's paradox to consciousness doesn't work because it ignores the fact that we have incontrovertible evidence for unitary consciousness in ourselves, allowing reasonable extrapolations to other unitary consciousnesses (like you, Eckermann, and all other people, and my cat, etc.). When we take a biologist's perspective to the realm of life vis a vis consciousness, we realize that this consciousness must surely be a continuum and not discontinuous, thus it goes all the way down (plus all the other lines of reasoning I've fleshed out above). Sewall Wright, a biologist, wrote in 1997 that "emergence of mind from no mind is sheer magic."

4) Last, modern biology does indeed assert that life springs from non-life, but this is as incoherent a claim as the argument that consciousness springs from that which wholly lacks consciousness. Any way we define life we run into fatal difficulties if such definitions imply that some parts of the universe are alive and others not. Rather, any coherent definition of life must recognize (like Schrodinger's negentropic definition of life) that life is a continuum with all things at least a little bit alive, but complexifying as form complexifies.

Tam
Some final thoughts as well.
1. I'll go with the "miracle" of mind from nonmind over the miracle of "awareness" and "choice" among quarks and no explanation of how this magical behavior occurs and how it complexifies as the form of matter complexifies and moves closer to constructing a human brain.
2.I think my recasting of Zeno's paradox raises a point (if there's no unitary consciousness in a rock, or in smaller pieces of a rock, or further and further on down, then where does one find the constituents that do have such consciousness, and at what point on going back up the ladder does it disappear?) that requires more attention than simply claiming again that it is "plausible" to extrapolate from what we know about our interiority that quarks must have an interior life as well.
3. As with the rest of your "must surely be's," it doesn't convince me that modern biology's view that life springs from nonlife is incoherent.

You're faced with the same conundrum trying to determine at what point life begins as you are determining at what point consciousness begins. Because you haven't defined either's properties, any philosophical conclusions you reach are essentially vapid. In other words, neither of these terms has an operational definition, at least none that you've provided.

Lastly, modern soft drink manufacturer's do indeed assert that Root Beer springs from non-Root Beer, but this is as incoherent a claim as the argument that consciousness springs from that which wholly lacks consciousness.

You're right!

PK, one last comment: if you're interested in reading my own detailed explanation of how consciousness complexifies as form complexifies, from basic constituents to the full-blown consciousness we enjoy, email me at tam dot hunt at gmail dot com and I'll send you my draft technical paper on these issues. I'd appreciate your feedback.

"I have myself evolved from a strong materialist/atheist, over the last twenty years, into a strong panpsychist"

It only took David Chalmers 6 months of backpacking around Europe, but in both cases your argumentum ad ignorantiam led to a wrong conclusion. At least Chalmers does not succumb to the ridiculous strawman caricatures of science and reductionist materialism that litter your article. There's a lot of excellent scientific and philosophical work going on to solve the certainly *difficult* problem of how matter can make mind -- see for instance http://www.naturalism.org/appearance.htm and http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/pro..., and Robert Kirk's book "Zombies and Consciousness". These people are way above your pay grade (think Dunning-Kruger Effect).

"if you're interested in reading my own detailed explanation of how consciousness complexifies as form complexifies"

What a foolish notion (which you absurdly and ignorantly claim is "[T]he prevailing theory" in science). Complexity is a necessary condition for consciousness but it is not at all sufficient -- it has to be the *right kind* of complexity, functionally. No scientist holds the stupid notions that you attribute to them.

"That is, at some point in the history of life on our planet, a mind appeared for the first time where it was wholly absent before. "

Just as living organisms, multi-celled creatures, plants, animals, dogs, apes, sight, hearing, speech, digestion ... all appeared for the first time where they were wholly absent before. Except that "wholly" is grossly misleading, because all of these things had precursors, in-between states -- just as there was not an exact moment in your own personal development when you were conscious. To hold that the scientific view is that there is a sharp dividing line between the absence and presence of consciousness is a deeply ignorant and stupid position, the sort of foolishness behind the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. The answer of course is the egg -- there were eggs long before there were chickens. Well then, the fool asks, which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg -- as if there were a sharp dividing line between eggs that aren't chicken eggs and eggs that are, and between fowl that isn't a chicken and fowl that is -- but people who aren't fools, who understand evolution or any other developmental ontology, readily grasp that there are no such sharp dividing lines. But that does not imply panchickenism or paneggism or pananythingism -- that would be *stupid*.

'This is, thus, a far more plausible and satisfying explanation for the development of complex consciousness than the materialist explanation of "a miracle occurs" '

This is the most damning thing about your display here -- that you repeatedly LIE about the materialist position.

You do good work for the CEC -- you should stick with your competencies.

"Last, modern biology does indeed assert that life springs from non-life, but this is as incoherent a claim as the argument that consciousness springs from that which wholly lacks consciousness. Any way we define life we run into fatal difficulties if such definitions imply that some parts of the universe are alive and others not. "

How droll. David Chalmers insists that dualism about consciousness is NOT like vitalism because vitalists agreed with materialists that what needed to be explained was form and function, nothing more, and yet here you are, doltishly insisting that life is more than that. As Wikipedia puts it, "Living organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations." Yes, some parts of the universe have those characteristics and some parts don't. To say that this is "incoherent" is itself incoherent, and plain dumb.

"I assert, along with pretty much every one who has thought seriously about this topic, is that our own subjectivity is ALL we know. "

Hey, Eckermann, Tam put you in your place, didn't he? You obviously haven't thought seriously about this topic because, well, everyone who HAS disagrees with you! Hey, no circularity or argumentum consensus gentium there! Clearly, Susan Blackmore, author of "Consciousness: An Introduction", "Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction", and "Conversations on Consciousness" (all from Oxford University Press) hasn't thought seriously about this topic because she says that consciousness is an illusion!

I don't necessarily agree with Susan, but I'd pay a lot more attention to her than a clueless intellectually dishonest buffoon.

One final comment on eliminativism, the bizarre view in which a subject denies its own existence: denying subjectivity is akin to denying that one's own hands or feet exists. It's as obvious as anything could be obvious that they do exist in some manner, or we wouldn't perceive them. But every thinking being (subject) has the prerogative to make such denials.

However, denying the existence of one's hands or feet is actually far less egregious than denying one's own subjectivity because to deny one's own subjectivity is to deny entirely one's own existence, hands, feet, body, emotions, dreams, reason - everything. This is the case because literally all information about the outside world comes through one's senses, one's subjectivity. Without a subject, there is no sense data. And without sense data there is no existence.

A lot of this discussion comes down to confusions about terminology. I agree with the Buddhist insight that the "self" is an illusion in terms of there being no permanent self. When I talk about subjectivity and consciousness, I am using these terms differently than "self," which can be defined as a fairly stable pattern of consciousness over time. So while the self, as a permanent and unchanging entity, is surely an illusion, to take the next step and call subjectivity/awareness/consciousness an illusion is, to be blunt, sheer absurdity.

I don't know if anyone else saw this in the New York Times, but Mr Hunt has company with his argument against "materialism" with Notre Dame prof Gary Gary Gutting:

::: "But what is the evidence for materialism? Presumably, that scientific investigation reveals the existence of nothing except material things. But religious believers will plausibly reply that science is suited to discover only what is material (indeed, the best definition of “material” may be just “the sort of thing that science can discover”). They will also cite our experiences of our own conscious life (thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.) as excellent evidence for the existence of immaterial realities that cannot be fully understood by science."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...

An argument similar to Mr. Hunt's notion that science is both unsuited to explain "immaterial" events within current and future knowledge, and just-not-talking-about-the-same-thing when it does.
.

Tam.
When I deny the subjectivity of leptons, I'm not denying my subjectivity; I'm denying your views about subjectivity. You might think that it comes down to the same thing, but that's precisely what's open to debate.

Since you have already said that to exist is to have subjectivity, your next paragraph merely repeats your claim as though it were a proven basis for further conclusions.

As to whether there is a legitimate distinction between between a permanent "self" defined as "a fairly stable pattern of consciousness over time" (which is an illusion) and a subjectivity/awareness/consciousness residing in matter (which would be a "blunt, sheer absurdity" to claim is an illusion), I leave it for you and the buddhists and vedantists to debate, not to mention the materialists. Clearly, some disagree on how absurd it would be to disagree with you.

Thanks for sending your paper. I'll get back to you when I've digested a bit more and formulated some thoughts.

Binky, I appreciated the Gutting piece, so thanks for sending the link, but I'm making quite a different claim. I'm making the claim that materialism, in its strong version, is patently unscientific in that it ignores the very data it is supposed to explain. Again, the only data we have is that which comes through our senses and appears in our subjective "theater." Thus, to ignore this process and pretend that all that exists is the objective world, defined as those sense data that we can generally corroborate with other people (who are, to each of, just more sense data), is completely backwards.

The "deep science" that Ken Wilber has fleshed out in such books as The Marriage of Sense and Soul, and which I flesh out in my soon to be published book, Mind, World, God: Science and Spirit in the 21st Century, reconciles science and spirituality by bringing both under the same umbrella. This umbrella doesn't simply ignore evidence that materialism says don't exist, even though we know from direct experience that it does, and it recommends a scientific testing process of hypotheses for explaining such evidence that we can ultimately call theories. These theories allow us to make sense of the sense data that is our primary reality.

PK, my last comment on eliminativism wasn't directed at you. I don't think you've taken that position so it was directed at others in this forum who seem to be arguing that they themselves, as subjects, don't exist. While I respect every person's right to argue that they are in fact a zombie, I feel pretty comfortable dismissing this argument as unserious.

But, again, it's really about terminology. I don't think any of the good people in this forum are in fact arguing that they're zombies. They just seem to be doing so because we're using the same terms differently. It's important to be clear on definitions, so I've tried to distinguish in these last couple of posts that I am not arguing for any kind of essential self or soul when I argue that consciousness/subjectivity/interiority is primary. I am simply arguing that it is incontrovertible, literally the firmest thing we can possibly know, as Descartes pointed out centuries ago, that a subject (me) exists right now, here, at this point in time, that is clearly distinguishable from the universe of objects presented to me, the subject, as sense data. This is quite a different debate than whether any permanent self or soul exists, which I don't assert.

Tam, you wrote, "It is literally impossible..." The billiard ball example does not support that assertion. I can conceive that such a system could exist. The issue here is not materialism, it is lack of insight and faulty logic on the part of panpsychists.

"The solution...some degree of mind in all matter." This is not a solution to the non-problem, it is a premise for science fiction.

Much of this discussion appears to be a semantic nightmare. A circuit with a feedback could be described as 'self-aware', having 'Mind'. I could argue that an iron atom is self-aware and thus has capital M 'Mind' because it has physical charisteristics that allow it to retain its identity and that inform it how to act internally and interact with the 'outside' world. If it joins with other atoms in a chemical process the combined individual 'Minds' become a larger, more complex 'Mind'. This is a restating of materialism in a different semantic scheme.

Human mind/self-awareness then gets blurred into the re-phrased descriptions of physical interactions at the atomic level, thus allowing one to impute Mind to inanimate objects. Semantics allows this argument, not logic.

This is followed with, "If there is mind in us, and in all matter to some degree, then mind surely has had a role in the evolution of life from the very beginning." Despite any argument to the contrary, this is Intelligent Design. Multiple 'if/thens' give atoms magical power to act consciously and direct their own evolution. If I could jump to the moon I could get some green cheese and jump back. Panpsychism's fiction may be more grandiose, use bigger words, have better references, yet is no more plausible.

In the Letters section of the Sep/Oct issue of the magazine Skeptical Inquirer Geoffrey Milos wrote, "Kurt Godel used mathematical symbols to demonstrate that every coherent system of statements relies on at least one unprovable assumption...the religious among us call that assumption God." Bruce Greyson, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the Univ. of Virginia wrote, "Embracing either theism or atheism in the absence of empirical evidence is equally the result of our fear of ambiguity and uncertainty and is an emotional rather than rational choice."

Tam, you have chosen one of Greyson's two false options. In light of the 'one unprovable assumption' theory, the rational choice is agnosticism. Anything else is sophistry. Someone pointed out "knowing" is above our pay grade. Panpsychists' misuse logic to convince themselves they know the unknowable and their semantics confuse the issue for the rest of us.

My original assertion stands: this is a quest for spirituality that has gotten out of hand. I drift between atheist and agnostic, yet consistently use a pantheist framework that allows me a stable and powerful spirituality. I do not make the mistake of believing that this framework has any objective traction, it is subjective and solely for my spiritual health. The panpsychist framework DOES seem to make the mistake of believing that the framework has some objective traction.

You are selling a spiritual viewpoint as useful for something other than spiritual salve. You assert panpsychism has logical bona fides it does not. Neither is panpsychism useful in describing the Universe, as it has no predictive or historically descriptive value. It does nothing to reconcile the divide between atheism and theism. Use it for your personal spiritual growth but please don't try to describe the Universe with it.

Binky, Gutting is talking nonsense. Scientific investigation is empirical investigation, the drawing of best (by Bayesian measure) inferences from evidence. So "excellent evidence for the existence of immaterial realities" either falls under the purview of science or is BS. The fact is that inference of "the existence of immaterial realities" from "our experiences of our own conscious life" is invalid.

""Kurt Godel used mathematical symbols to demonstrate that every coherent system of statements relies on at least one unprovable assumption"

No, that's not what he did, and is a particularly idiotic misformulation among the many misformulations by people who don't understand his theorems, because *all* mathematical axioms are unprovable assumptions.

"Embracing either theism or atheism in the absence of empirical evidence is equally the result of our fear of ambiguity and uncertainty and is an emotional rather than rational choice."

Nonsense; atheism is simply lack of a belief in god -- it's the default position in the absence of any evidence. As it is, though, there is a great deal of evidence against all specific claims about gods made by various religions, and there's a great deal of evidence that the universe is the sort of place we would expect if there were no god, which leaves us in the same epistemological position in regard to god as in regard to leprechauns and fairies. As Laplace said to Napoleon, "I have no need for that hypothesis".

Binky, a number of thoughts:

1) Again, I am not arguing that anything like the complexity of human consciousness prevails at the level of atoms or molecules. I am arguing that a very simple interiority/subjectivity/consciousness prevails, which consists mostly likely of simple awareness of the outside world. And, again, this simple subjectivity is necessary, in my view, to explain our complex subjectivity because this fundamental feature of the universe can't simply spring from that which is defined as entirely lacking subjectivity (thus, we must change our definitions).

2) My arguments have nothing to do with Intelligent Design as this phrase is used by those who advocate Intelligent Design. IDers conclude, based on arguments such as "irreducible complexity," etc., in biological systems that there must have been a designer of some sort. This "designer of some sort" is not, in their view, a million tiny designers that are the organisms themselves (my argument). Rather, the intelligent designer is, for IDers, God or something akin to God such as a supremely powerful alien... There is a large difference between my highly distributed teleologies pushing from every point in the universe toward greater complexity and the single large teleological force pulling from the outside that IDers argue for.

3) I'm not sure why you've brought in theism/atheism/agnostic arguments about God. I've not mentioned such issues except to set the stage with the history of Descartes' division of the world into two categories. However, you are right that panpsychists (including me) do see in panpsychism not only a more rational and adequate to the facts explanation of consciousness and the material world but also a more satisfying spirituality. I just finished writing a book on these topics. A major advantage of panpsychism as a basis for a rational spirituality is just that: it's rational. You talk about your own spirituality, as do most people, as something separate from their rational selves. Why fragment yourself? Why not seek a rational spirituality that unifies a highly rigorous and adequate philosophy/deep science/spirituality? This is integration of the highest order.

Not only does panpsychism very satisfactorily situate humankind within nature, it also allows for a far more rigorous and comprehensive science of the natural world - which reduce to the same thing in one "deep science."