Consciousness Really Explained?

Physicalist thinking is unscientific.

Posted: 1 March 2008 (printer-friendly permalink)

Introduction

Physicalism: The Modern Creed

Scientific Knowledge is Causal

Physical Causation

Mental Causation

Physical and Mental Causation

Rationalism Under Attack

Conclusion

Discussion:  (huh?)

Introduction

Here is the deal.  I have encrypted the first verse of genesis with the gpg package using this secret key/public key pair to produce this encrypted file.  I can decrypt this file—I can run gpg on it to get back the plain text—but nobody else can (as far as we know), because only I know the pass phrase (and I have been careful to choose one that nobody is likely to guess).

Here is my point.  I claim there are no physical traces that can be used to decrypt this file—I haven’t written the pass phrase down anywhere, and I haven’t told anyone.  Only I can do this because of the information that I have in my mind.  (Please bear in mind that nobody has been able to satisfactorily explain or demonstrate that animal memory is ‘stored’ in any physical medium—and its not been for want of trying—and, in my opinion, given all the evidence that I am aware of that people are able to remember past lives, this is unlikely to change any time soon.[1])

This is an experiment that anybody can repeat for themselves.  Indeed there is nothing surprising about this experiment, so what is the big deal?

Physicalism: The Modern Creed

The thought experiment is designed to tease out a contradiction embedded in our modern way of thinking.  The central idea, called physicalism in its most radical form, is that all things and all processes are, at bottom, physical; everything can be reduced to physical processes; all causation is physical.  As the physicist Henry Stapp says in The Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer :

You may imagine that your mind—your stream of conscious thoughts, ideas, and feelings—influences your actions.  You may believe that what you think affects what you do.  You could be right.  However, the scientific ideas that prevailed from the time of Isaac Newton to the beginning of the twentieth century proclaimed your physical actions to be completely determined by processes that are describable in physical terms alone.  Any notion that your conscious choices make a difference in how you behave was branded an illusion: you were asserted to be causally equivalent to a mindless automaton.  

We now know that that earlier form of science is fundamentally incorrect.

[…]

Science rests, in the end, on an authority that lies beyond the pettiness of human ambition.  It rests, finally, on stubborn facts.  The founders of quantum theory certainly had no desire to bring down the grand structure of classical physics of which they were the inheritors, beneficiaries, and torch bearers. It was stubborn facts that forced their hand, and made them reluctantly abandon the two-hundred-year-old classical ideal of a mechanical universe, and turn to what perhaps should have been seen from the start as a more reasonable endeavor: the creation of an understanding of nature that includes in a rationally coherent way the thoughts by which we know and influence the world around us.  The labors of scientists endeavoring merely to understand our inanimate environment produced, from its own internal logic, a rationally coherent framework into which we ourselves fit neatly. What was falsified by twentieth-century science was not the core traditions and intuitions that have sustained societies and civilizations since the dawn of mankind, but rather an historical aberration, an impoverished world view within which philosophers of the past few centuries have tried relentlessly but fruitlessly to find ourselves. The falseness of that deviation of science must be made known, and heralded, because human beings are not likely to endure in a society ruled by a conception of themselves that denies the essence of their being.

Henry Stapp, The Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer

These are the first and final paragraphs of the book.  Between them Stapp looks at the physics and philosophy of brains and thinking, and sees the need in the early twenty-first century, to remind researchers of some of the basic developments in twentieth century physics.  As Stapp points out, Henry James, before the modern revolution in physics, knew there was a problem with the physicalist orthodoxy of nineteenth century physics, saying ‘to urge the automaton-theory upon us, as it is now urged, on purely a priori and quasi-metaphysical grounds, is an unwarrantable impertinence in the present state of psychology …’  (emphasis in original):

But there are much more positive reasons than this why we ought to continue to talk in psychology as if consciousness had causal efficacy.  The particulars of the distribution of consciousness, so far as we know them, point to its being efficacious. 

William James, The Principles of Psychology, p. 138

Between Stapp and James there have been a steady stream of books[2] explaining this ‘unwarrantable impertinence’, and the problems it is causing to our understanding.

This point is so fundamental and so much a part of us that, to have any hope of success, it must be reduced to its core, hence the above simple thought experiment.  As William James says, the scientific idea of causation is at the centre of the puzzle.

Scientific Knowledge is Causal

As Richard Feynman said, ‘whether [scientists] like a theory or they don’t like a theory is not the essential question.  Rather it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment.  It is not a question of whether is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense.’[3]  Feynman explains how this works in explaining the role of symmetry in physical law.

The simplest example of this kind of symmetry – you will see that it is not the same as you might have thought, left and right symmetric, or anything like that – is a symmetry called translation in space.  This has the following meaning: if you build any kind of apparatus, or do any kind of experiment with some things, and then go and build the same apparatus to do the same experiment, with similar things but put them here instead of there, merely translated from one place to another in space, then the same thing will happen in the translated experiment as would have happened in the original experiment.  It is not true here actually.  If I actually built such an apparatus, and then displaced it 20 feet to the left of where I am now it would get into the wall, and there would be difficulties.  It is necessary in defining this idea, to take into account everything that might affect the situation, so that when you move the thing you move everything.  For example, if the system involved a pendulum, and I moved it 20,000 miles to the right, it would not work properly any more because the pendulum involves the attraction of the earth.  However, if I imagine that I move the earth as well as the equipment then it would behave in the same way.  The problem in this situation is that you must translate everything which may have any influence on the situation.  That sounds a little dopey, because it sounds as if you can just translate an experiment, and if it does not work, you can presume that you did not translate enough stuff – so you are bound to win.  Actually, this is not so, because it is not self-evident that you are bound to win.  The remarkable thing about nature is that it is possible to translate enough stuff so that it does behave in the same way.  That is a positive statement.

I would like to illustrate that such a thing is true.  Let us take an example the law of gravitation, which says that the force between objects varies inversely as the square of the distance between them; and I would remind you that a thing responds to a force by changing its velocity, with time, in the direction of the force.  If I have a pair of objects, like a planet going round a sun, and I move the whole pair over, then the distance between the objects of course does not change, and so the forces do not change.  Further, when they are in the moved over situation they will go at the same speed, and all the changes will remain in proportion and everything go around in the two systems in exactly the same way.  The fact that the law says ‘the distance between two objects’, rather than some absolute distance from the central eye of the universe, means that the laws are translatable in space.

That then is the first symmetry – translation in space.  The next one would be called translation in time, but, better, let us say that delay in time makes no difference. [...]

I will give another, very interesting, example of a symmetry law.  It is a question of uniform velocity in a straight line.  It is believed that the laws of physics are unchanged under a uniform velocity in a straight line.  This is called the principle of relativity.  If we have a space ship, and we have a bit of equipment in it that is doing something, and we have another piece of equipment down here on the ground then, if the space ship is going along at a uniform speed, somebody inside, watching what is going on on his apparatus, can see nothing different from the effects I, who am standing still, can see on my apparatus.  Of course, if he looks outside, or if he bumps into an outside wall, or something like that, that is another matter; but in so far as he is moving at a uniform velocity in a straight line, the laws of physics look the same to him as they do to me.  Since that is the case, I cannot say who is moving.

I must emphasize here, before we go any further, that in all of these transformation, and all of these symmetries, we are not talking about moving a whole universe.  In the case of time I am saying nothing if I imagine that I move all the times in the whole universe.  So also there would be no content in the statement that if I took everything in the universe and moved it over in space, it would behave in the same way.  The remarkable thing is that if I take a piece of apparatus and move it over, then if I make sure that a lot of the conditions, and include enough apparatus, I can get enough of the world and move it relative to the rest of all of the rest of the stars, and this is still does not make any difference.  In the relativity case it means that someone coasting in a uniform velocity in a straight line, relative to the average of the rest of the nebulae, sees no effect.  Put another way, it is impossible to determine by any experiments inside a car, without looking out, whether you are moving relative to all the stars.

Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p. 85

Feynman then gives some examples of non-symmetries in physics, such as change of scale as noted by Galileo in his Dialogue (e.g., if a typical structure is scaled up enough in a gravitational field, keeping its proportions, it will collapse under its own weight).

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, ‘These are the conditions, now what happens next?’  But all our sister sciences have a completely different problem: in fact all the other things that are studied – history, geology, astronomical history – have a problem of this other kind.  I find that they are able to make predictions of a completely different type from those of a physicist.  A physicist says, ‘In this condition I’ll tell you what will happen next.’  But a geologist will say something like this – ‘I have dug in the ground and I have found certain kinds of bones.  I predict that if you dig in the ground you will find a similar kind of bones’.  The historian, although he talks about the past, can do it by talking about the future.  When he says that the French Revolution was in 1789, he means that if you look in another book about the French Revolution you will find the same date.  What he does is to make a kind of prediction about something that he has never looked at before, documents that still have to be found.  He predicts that the documents in which there is something written about Napoleon will coincide with what is written in other documents.

Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p. 114

In this way of seeing things all knowledge is about making predictions—making bets that this or that feature will turn up in the future, which is to say all knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge, is causal.  If you have a theory about the world then you must be able to make some predictions, which is to say that when a given set of conditions obtains at some time in the future then, you claim, some definite evolution of the situation will occur.  When these causes are assembled these other effects will be observed.  This is the essence of all scientific theories—and of course other structural, aesthetic and practical criteria will need to be present in a useful and successful scientific theory—but without this prospect of making predictions, without some causal content, it isn’t a scientific theory.

The insistence that a scientific theory be objectively verifiable by third parties is another way of saying the same thing:  you have a theory which makes certain predictions which have been verified by these experiments, then I should be able to repeat the experiments and confirm for myself that the theory is indeed making predictions.

Likewise, that a scientific theory should be falsifiable also follows.  If the theory is to have any content then when the antecedent conditions hold, once the system has been prepared, two possible kinds of evolution should be possible, and it shouldn’t be clear which of the two will occur is the theory is to be useful: either the system evolves according to the predictions of the theory or it doesn’t.  If it doesn’t then the theory has been ‘falsified’, and this must be a real possibility, with the greater the likelihood of the theory being falsified by experiment, the stronger and more useful the theory.[4]

Physical Causation

This is all very well but it doesn’t explain the remarkable breakthroughs that started to happen in natural philosophy in seventeenth century Europe—what we now call the scientific revolution.  Kepler, Galileo and friends focused on physical causation, assuming a largely atomistic metaphysics, started to make systematic quantitative observations, built mathematical models and made quantitative predictions.

If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, I, 1-2

The key to building good physical models is to filter out non-physical factors that might interfere with the physical evolution of the system, so when Galileo was measuring the rate that balls rolled down inclined slopes he would have been careful to make sure that any furry friends in the vicinity, or indeed himself, didn’t interfere with their progress, and in the event of such an eventuality he would have discarded the data, and everyone else would do the same, and we would insist that they do so.  This is so obvious that one is inclined to forget what is going on: the whole of the scientific process systematically filters out non-physical influences on systems and studies the evolution of so isolated systems.

Mental Causation

If I resolve on making myself a cup of tea, all other things being equal—I don’t get distracted, a thermonuclear explosion doesn’t manifest in the vicinity, etc.—I will get up and make a cup of tea.  You too can verify this and repeat the experiment for yourself (you may have to adapt it if you aren’t a tea drinker, or have no pressing need for that refreshment).  I am not talking about introspecting for tea drinking impulses (whatever that means) or anything fancy like that—just make a note of the fact that you would like to do something—you can even make a log of it in a book specially set aside for the purpose—and that at some later stage, the thing happens (and you can make a log of that too).  You can also observe that in the absence of deciding to do a given thing in a given period of time, it generally doesn’t get performed in the succeeding interval—you could make a log of these things too.  And you will notice that there is a strong correlation between resolving on doing some x at time t and finding yourself doing that x in a given segment of time with t as its centre, way above the likelihood of finding yourself doing an x in any given random, comparable time segment.

Some people may object and say that correlation doesn’t mean causation.  Anyone who has been following the argument carefully will realise that, of course, correlation does mean causation.  If when I say that when these conditions A are assembled then these other things will B happen then as long as that is borne out by experience then that means that A causes B, no more and no less.  We may observe what is going on in the A things and isolate more precisely some C things and note that whenever C happens A happens and also whenever C happens B happens.  We will then have a more refined theory, but as long as it is observed that when A happens then B happens then we can say that A causes B—this is just what it means for A to cause B—that I can use it to make good predictions.[5]

Other people may object that these mental episodes, the forming of the intentions, aren’t publicly observable in the sense that I can’t directly observe the mental episodes manifesting in your mind stream—you could make a resolution and keep it to yourself and I would never be the wiser.  However, it is difficult to see how this is relevant as the whole interest of science lies in studying phenomenon that aren’t necessarily grossly visible.  Nevertheless, we can all repeat these experiments and observe the effects for ourselves, and of course we do it all day every day—its called living.

Now physics doesn’t study mental causation (or at least it doesn’t at the moment) and most physicists would no doubt argue that the whole point of physics is to filter out ‘experimenter’ effects so that purely physical causation can be studied.  Nevertheless, one can’t deny that mental causation exists—it is there to be observed by anyone, and more easily verified it is than any but the most gross physical principles.

Physical and Mental Causation

At the end of the nineteenth century, for a while, it looked as if physics was capable of modelling all natural phenomenon.  William James (and no doubt many others) both understood the explanatory power of physics and that this couldn’t be the whole story as it is difficult to see how mental causation can be satisfactorily explained.  But, given the intellectual climate of the late nineteenth century it is perhaps understandable that such conceptual confusion should arise—every age has its characteristic confusions which seem so obvious to those that follow, once the problem has been pointed out.

What is not quite so easy to understand is that in the early twenty-first century there should exist philosophers and scientists, and not just one or two but a large body of them, representing the orthodox scientific view that all natural phenomenon are in principal reducible to physical phenomenon, when the most rigorously tested scientific theory developed to date, quantum electrodynamics (which as far as we know accounts perfectly for all the phenomenon we encounter in our daily lives—excluding gravitation and nuclear processes) says that reality is inescapable ideal (the minds of the observers are essentially involved) and physical process are underdetermined (this theory can only predict the likelihood of some future event happening).[6]  One reason for it being is so well tested is that the consequences of the theory were so revolutionary that it has been attacked more vigorously than any other and has emerged from each assault stronger.

Yet the following is all to common in the scientific literature, especially the literature intended to school non-professionals in ‘real’ science.

I can do no better than to end the chapter by quoting the philosopher Dan Dennett’s reflections on the way modern neurobiology has debunked pseudo-religious mystical views of human consciousness:

Looking on the bright side, let us remind ourselves of what has happened in the wake of earlier demystifications.  We find no diminution of wonder: on the contrary, we find deeper beauties and more dazzling visions of the complexities of the universe than the protectors of mystery ever conceived.  The ‘magic’ of earlier visions was, for the most part, a cover-up for frank failures of imagination, a boring dodge enshrined in the concept of a deus ex machina. […] When we understand consciousness – when there is no more mystery – consciousness will be different, but there will still be beauty, and more room than ever for awe. (Dennett (1991), p. 25)

Robin Dunbar, The Trouble with Science, pp. 174-5

The problem with this is that neither Dunbar nor Dennett can begin to explain how to extract the kind of conscious experience that is fundamental to all of our appreciation of the physical world from merely physical processes, indeed the very physical processes which have been systematically stripped of all mental content.  In the place of any real explanation we see the furious peddling of mystery, awe and their very own dei ex machinis.

There is of course no question, but that physical processes effect mental processes—that would be the whole point of making a cup of tea—and indeed much fascinating work has been done in neuroscience recently to document various ways that neural mechanism can affect minds, but also the ways minds can alter neural mechanisms.[7]  To maintain the notion that mental processes are physical epiphenomenon is simply to invite confusion and to grossly misunderstand the nature of the phenomenon; it is, to put it very mildly, a false ‘simplification’.

For those that aspire to ‘debunk’ anything,  pseudo-religious mystical views or otherwise, it is well worth paying attention to the basic physics of the systems under study and then to apply relevant contemporary physical theories, not, for example, applying nineteenth century physics at the atomic level, but, incredibly, it has taken until the early twenty-first century for anyone to check that the right basic physical principals are being applied throughout neuroscience.

Many neuroscientists who study the relationship of consciousness to brain processes want to believe that classical physics will provide an adequate rational foundation for that task.  But classical physics has bottom-up causation, and the direct rational basis for the claim that classical physics is applicable to the full workings of the brain rests on the basic presumption that it is applicable at the microscopic level.  However, empirical evidence about what is actually happening at the trillions of synapses on the billions of neurons in a conscious brain is virtually nonexistent, and, according to the uncertainty principle, empirical evidence is in principle unable to justify the claim that deterministic behavior actually holds in the brain at the microscopic (ionic) scale.  Thus the claim that classical determinism holds in living brains is empirically indefensible: sufficient evidence neither does, nor can in principle, exist.  

Henry Stapp, The Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer

Contemporary physics strongly underlines what ought to be evident from common sense: that the thought of a carrot is quite distinct from a carrot, and they shouldn’t be confused, nor can one be coherently reduced to the other, no matter how much hand waiving or smoke and mirrors are brought to bear.

Rationalism Under Attack

A privileged position is often claimed for scientific knowledge because it is firmly rooted in empirical observation, a characteristic the Dalai Lama appreciates, seeing this to be shared with the Buddhist approach to philosophy.

As a result of talking to people, especially professional scientists, about science, I noticed certain similarities in the spirit of enquiry between science and Buddhist thought—similarities that I still find striking.  The scientific method as I understand it, proceeds from the observation of certain phenomena in the material world, leads to a theoretical generalization, which predicts events and results that arise if one treats the phenomena in a particular way, and then tests the predictions with an experiment.  The result is accepted as part of the body of wider scientific knowledge if the experiment is correctly conducted and may be repeated.  However, if the experiment contradicts the theory, then it is the theory that needs to be adapted—since the empirical observation of phenomena has priority.  Effectively, science moves from empirical experience via a conceptual thought process that includes application of reason and culminates in further empirical experience to verify the understanding offered by reason.  I have long been gripped with a fascination for the parallels between this form of empirical investigation and those I had learned in my Buddhist philosophical training and contemplative practice.

Although Buddhism has come to evolve as a religion with a characteristic body of scriptures and rituals, strictly speaking, in Buddhism scriptural authority cannot outweigh an understanding based on reason and experience.  In fact, the Buddha himself, in a famous statement, undermines the scriptural authority of his own words when he exhorts his followers not to accept the validity of his teachings simply on the basis of reverence to him.  Just as a seasoned goldsmith would test the purity of his gold through a meticulous process of examination, the Buddha advises that people should test the truth of what he has said through reasoned examination and personal experiment.  Therefore, when it comes to validating the truth of a claim, Buddhism accords greatest authority to experience, with reason and scripture last.  The great masters of Nalanda school of Indian Buddhism, from which Tibetan Buddhism sprang, continued to apply the spirit of the Buddha’s advice in their rigorous and critical examination of the Buddha’s own teachings.

In one sense, the methods of science and Buddhism are different: scientific investigation proceeds by experiment, using instruments that analyze external phenomena, whereas contemplative investigation proceeds by the development of refined attention, which is then used in the introspective examination of inner experience.  But both share a strong empirical basis: if science shows something to exist or to be non-existent (which is not the same thing as not being able to find it), then we must acknowledge that as a fact.  If a hypothesis is tested and found to be true, we must accept it.  Likewise, Buddhism must accept the facts—whether found by science or found by contemplative insights.  If when we investigate something, we find there is reason and proof for it, we must acknowledge that as reality—even if it is in contradiction with a literal scriptural explanation that has held sway for many centuries or with a deeply held opinion or view.  So one fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment to keep searching for reality by empirical means and to be willing to discard accepted or long-held positions if our search finds that the truth is different.

The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, p. 23

George Johnson in his review of The Universe in a Single Atom for the New York Times acknowledges this ‘extraordinary concession’ but then qualifies it.

But when it comes to questions about life and its origins, this would-be man of science begins to waver.  Though he professes to accept evolutionary theory, he recoils at one of its most basic tenets: that the mutations that provide the raw material for natural selection occur at random.  Look deeply enough, he suggests, and the randomness will turn out to be complexity in disguise – “hidden causality,” the Buddha's smile.  There you have it, Eastern religion's version of intelligent design.  He also opposes physical explanations for consciousness, invoking instead the existence of some kind of irreducible mind stuff, an idea rejected long ago by mainstream science.  Some members of the Society for Neuroscience are understandably uneasy that he has been invited to give a lecture at their annual meeting this November.  In a petition, they protested that his topic, the science of meditation, is known for “hyperbolic claims, limited research and compromised scientific rigor.”

There may be a political subtext to the controversy. According to an article in Nature, many of the petitioners are Chinese.  But however mixed their motivation, they make a basic philosophical point.  All religion is rooted in a belief in the supernatural.  Inviting a holy man to address a scientific conference may be leaving the back door ajar for ghosts.

George Johnson, 'Universe in a Single Atom': Reason and Faith

Here we have the extraordinary spectacle of a religious leader making the case for keeping an open mind about the prospect of better understanding some processes currently assumed to be random (presumably on the basis of insights gained form his own and general Buddhist experience arising from meditative investigation), only for an advocate of science (‘reason’) sneering at an irrational religious leader (‘faith’) trying to question a dogmatically held tenet of modern science.  In a critique of this review, Alan Wallace agreed with Johnson that science assumes that consciousness is a physical process, but wondered on what basis this assumption was being made.

Since scientists have devised objective means of measuring all kinds of physical phenomena, it is remarkable that no scientific instruments can detect whether or not consciousness is present in inorganic matter (e.g., computers or robots), in plants (e.g., insect-eating plants), or in animals (e.g., single cells, insects, human fetuses, or normal human adults).  Given that consciousness is invisible to all known means of scientific measurement—unlike all other kinds of physical phenomena—the burden of proof for the physical status of consciousness should be on those who make this assertion, not on those who question it. 

Scientists have established that specific neural processes are necessary for producing specific conscious mental processes in humans and some other animals.  In this way, correlations have been identified between brain and mind processes.  Brain processes are detected with the third-person methods of biology, but mental processes are directly observed only by means of the first-person perspectives of individuals introspectively monitoring their own states of consciousness.  This evidence proves that certain neural processes are necessary for producing specific mental events in humans, but not that they are sufficient causes of consciousness, nor does this indicate that consciousness itself is a physical phenomenon.  Moreover, while many scientists believe that mental phenomena are emergent properties of brain, no one has ever objectively measured any mental event emerging from the brain, so that, too, remains an untested hypothesis that can be taken for the time being only on faith. 

Buddhists maintain that “coarse” mental processes in humans, such as sensory perceptions and discursive thinking, require a physical basis in the body.  However, they insist that subtler modes of consciousness can persist without any underlying neural mechanisms.  A parallel for this view can be found in the history of physics.  Until the late nineteenth century, physicists assumed that all kinds of wave phenomena required a material substrate.  Just as water waves require a fluid medium, and sound waves require a medium such as air, so did scientists assume that this was true for light waves.  When light is propagated in empty space, devoid of any solid, liquid, or gaseous medium, they believed there had to be a physical medium of a “luminiferous ether” to provide a material, mechanical explanation for the wave properties of light.  Lord Kelvin expressed the view of virtually all mainstream physicists of his time when he declared, “One thing we are sure of, and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminiferous ether.”[8] But, to the astonishment of the scientific community, the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 decisively refuted the existence of the luminiferous ether.  Mechanical explanations were possible for “coarse” material waves, but no material substrate was needed for the propagation of “subtle” light waves.  Following this seminal experiment and the subsequent development of quantum theory and relativity theory, Einstein concluded, “All assumptions concerning ether led nowhere!”[9]

As the Dalai Lama points out in his recent book, Buddhists have long claimed that with the development of highly refined states of attention known as “samadhi,” first-person experiential evidence has been found for the existence of a subtle continuum of individual consciousness prior to conception and following death.  Scientific field studies such as the work of Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker also lend support to this view.[10] But thus far, mainstream science has largely chosen to ignore such evidence on the grounds that there must be a physical explanation for consciousness.  Over the past century, cognitive science has focused on third-person measurements of the physical correlates of mental phenomena, while marginalizing introspection, the only means by which mental processes can be observed directly.  As a result of this materialistic bias, scientists have yet to come to a consensus regarding the definition of consciousness, they have no means of detecting it or even its neural correlates, and they have yet to identify the necessary and sufficient causes of consciousness, and they have not discovered how neural events influence mental events or how mental processes influence each other.  Scientists have made great progress in revealing the physical correlates of specific mental phenomena, but they have left us in the dark regarding most of the fundamental questions about the nature and origins of consciousness.  To paraphrase Einstein, “All physical explanations for consciousness led nowhere!” Maybe it is time for scientists to learn a lesson from the history of their own discipline and open their minds to the possibility that mechanical explanations are just as limited for consciousness as they are for light.  And if the cognitive sciences are to successfully grapple with the problem of consciousness, they must develop the direct observation of mental phenomena, and, as William James declared more than a century ago, this means that introspection must play a key role in collaboration with the study of the brain and behavior. 

While materialists and Buddhists will continue to disagree about the nature of consciousness, the beauty of their differences in perspective is that they don't have to remain matters for philosophical debate, which are rarely resolved by philosophers.  Many Buddhists, unlike scientific materialists, don't have faith that further study of the brain and behavior alone will shed light on the nature and origins of consciousness.  But if refined first-person methods are used in conjunction with the third-person methodologies of the cognitive sciences, unprecedented clarity may be shed on these age-old questions.

Alan Wallace, In Defense of 'The Universe in a Single Atom'

Conclusion

No matter how many people try to explain some basic facts of science and philosophy, from James (1890) to Stapp (2007), the mechanistic idea that everything can be reduced to the cogs and wheels of physics has a tremendous grip on the modern mind, which is why this humble little thought experiment is proposed, being both concise and positivistic.

Strong cryptography allows information to be pickled so that a message can only be recovered with the application of a key.  If that key is held in only a person’s mind then that person, using their mental faculties, can carry out a procedure that is otherwise impossible.  This publicly observable phenomenon has no physical explanation nor is there any prospect of one appearing.

Its long overdue that scientific orthodoxy stopped trying to pretend that those mental faculties don’t exist, or can somehow be reduced or explained away.  Only then will there be a chance of developing a truly-coherent scientific understanding of them.[11]

Copyright © 2007 Chris Dornan
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