You and Betty pique a question. That is, "How does the evolutionist attend, epistemologically, with the order of mind, consciousness, or any other abstract, invarient universal entity. It seems that as one asserts that a biological entity is declared to have any of these abstract entities, especially consciousness, it is declared to have evolved an entity which has no way to explain its origin. If it is said to have developed superveniently upon this universe (something derived from another entity which it does not have) it has abandoned naturalism and have embraced panpsychism. But in embracing panpsychism, it has abandoned physicalism and naturalism and cannot yet account naturalistically for theirphysicalist worldview. No, naturalism is in its death rattle and its devotees must come to grips with these questions or abandon that worldview. It has embraced a metaphysical episteme for what they say is an evolutionary worldview.
Lately, they've been calling the mind, soul or consciousness an "epiphenomenon" of the physical brain. Epiphenomena are secondary phenomena which can cause nothing to happen.
That means a physical brain caused the above post. "You" didn't cause it to happen. "You" are just an epiphenomenon. "You" can't cause anything to happen.
If they really believed this nonsense they would have to say a person couldn't be tried for a crime. He is just an innocent epiphenomenon. He can't cause anything to happen. He didn't do it. He couldn't.
That raises a humorous legal point - if only the physical brain can be guilty for causing a crime, it would be cruel and unusual to punish the innocent epiphenomenon or the rest of the physical body.
Well, that question is easy enough to answer, dear Texas Songwriter: The evolutionist does not "attend" to such questions at all — and epistemology be damned.
The reason is that, although the fundamental presuppositions of Darwin's theory — random variation (mutation) + natural selection — remain unchallenged and seemingly unchallengable, in more recent times, Neodarwinist theorists have committed themselves to reducing all of biology to the terms of classical (i.e., Newtonian) physics.
Since classical physics describes "matter in its motions," the Neodarwinist assumption is that explanation of all living systems in nature can be "reduced" to physical (material) descriptions. Thus such things as mind, consciousness, even life itself are to be regarded as epiphenomena of physical (material) causes/processes, that "emerge" in due course according to the siren call of natural selection. (Then they instantly forget that epiphenomena cannot be tested by physical methods. So under Neodarwinist doctrine, they never achieve the status of what we might call the "really real.")
IMHO, this entire exercise is engaged in pure, unmitigated abstraction that "throws the baby [of life and consciousness] out with the bathwater." But it does have the advantage of shoring up Neodarwinist doctrine.
Let me try to explain what I mean with a real example.
For the past nine years, I have had the privilege of reading the articles of a friend, a working astrophysicist with a burning interest in theoretical biology. He — "AG" — somewhere along the way of his researches realized that life cannot be reduced to the merely physical. Because he is a Magyar speaker for whom English is a second language, he sends his papers to me, pre-publication, to ensure that his "language" conforms with standard English usage.
AG is already widely published in various professional journals. But the "nut" he's never been able to crack is publication in what is probably the most prestigious peer-reviewed journal devoted to the subject of theoretical biology (which shall be nameless here). He had written an article on the subject of the algorithmic complexity of living organisms, and submitted it for peer review to said prestigious journal.
Well, I read the rejection letter, signed by a peer juror — "PB." As far as I could make it out, the reason for the rejection was that AG had strayed too far off the reservation of accepted Neodarwinist doctrine.
Oh well. But this same exact paper was accepted for publication in a wonderfully thought-provoking book, Divine Action and Natural Selection: Science, Faith and Evolution, J. Seckbach & R. Gordon, eds., 2009. The authors of the articles came from all over the world, representing just about every conceivable viewpoint regarding the title subject matter.
To me, a very great charm of this work is that every article was subject to rebuttal from dissenting thinkers in the form of a "dialogue" following the article.
But I found it a little surprising to find that the very PB who blackballed AG at the prestigious journal followed him to the book, and took issue with him there yet again.
Of course, AG was free to counter PB's arguments in the ensuing dialogue. To me, it was fascinating — and highly revealing — reading.
As far as I can find out, PB is neither a working scientist nor an academic. He is a self-described "writer on science." But given my friend's experience, I suspect he is a "hired gun" whose purpose in life is to enforce Neodarwinist orthodoxy.
Regarding my friend, AG: His main inspiration comes from an obscure Hungarian physicist/theoretical biologist by the name of Ervin Bauer, whose telling insight was that, unlike inorganic systems in nature, living systems demonstrate the constant propensity of maintaining maximum distance from thermodynamic entropy. (Then the question for science becomes: How? Not to mention, "Why?")
Well, my claim that PB is an enforcer of accepted Neodarwinst orthodoxy and my friend AG is not — for he is trying to think outside the box of Neodarwinist orthodoxy — I leave up to the reader to decide, on the basis of the following selections from the actual dialogue (the entirety of which you can read for yourself, if you buy or can borrow this book).
PB gets to go first:
PB: At root, I am perhaps most perplexed by the notion that algorithmic complexity has to be high to account for biological phenomena. Has it not been one of the underpinnings of complexity science that complex behaviours can arise from simple rules? [c.f:: Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, 2000 — highly recommended!). [AG] asserts that no physical models can account for the trajectories of of biological organisms. But they can! Models of ant motion, driven by simple ideas such as chemotaxis and random searching, can reproduce the behaviour of ant colonies rather well. For simple organisms such as bacteria, it seems even possible in principle that one might measure from moment to moment all the environmental influences acting on a single cell, and thereby predict its motion with great precision. Certainly, it is not clear why there need be anything mysterious or aphysical about this behavior.Here AG lets the cat out of the bag: He is seeking a fundamental biological principle akin to the fundamental principle of physics known as "least action." For AG, that principle is called "maximal action." It is that which allows biological organisms to set "endpoints" towards which, and by which, the myriad biological functions of living organisms are conducted behaviorly and systemically. On AG's view, the biological "endpoint" must be established first; that is, before physics has anything to do. But once established, physics does the rest. For example,
[AG] argues that abiogenesis cannot seem to create, in a sufficiently short time, the complexity we see in life: if I understand correctly, he implies that only life (or 'intelligence') can beget life. To my mind, there are two shortcomings with this. First, it assumes that accumulation of complexity is linear, whereas it now seems that many complex systems possess thresholds above which entirely new modes of behavior — new capabilities — appear [i.e., thanks to natural selection]. Secondly, I see no explicit role here for evolution: for the quite remarkable efficiency of searching in the landscape of possibilities for effective 'answers' that is permitted by the rather simple algorithm of random mutation and replication in the face of limited resources. Diversification and complexification are, in this respect, boosted by the fact that every evolutionary step broadens and modifies the landscape in which subsequent steps are taken: evolution does not simply have to respond to a preordained landscape, but to itself. [Circular reasoning here?] To my mind. "intelligence in Nature" here becomes another God of the gaps, an expression for what we do not yet understand (and that therefore astounds us) about the capacity of the physical world to generate richness and complexity. ]Emphasis added.]
AG: I agree with [PB]'s note that the recent emphasis on DNA as a depository of digital information might be an overstatement. Indeed, as I tried to indicate it ... perhaps not consequently enough, it is the cell as a whole, with all its constituents and biological couplings, which governs the cell's behavior, and not DNA alone. For example, I argued that the cell utilizes a significant part of its thermodynamic potential for biological organization.... [T]he static information of DNA in itself is not suitable to govern (or participate in) the time sequence of biochemical reactions. In my point of view, this is a fundamental unsolved problem of modern biology. It seems that [PB] approaches only the physical aspect of the cell's behavior. Indeed, enlisting the physically influential parameters of the input and the output of the process regulating the behaviour of the cell, he implicitly ignores the biological aspects of the problem. The biological aspects of the cell's behavior are related to thermodynamically uphill reactions made possible by biological couplings between endergonic [i.e., energy consuming] and exergonic [energy releasing] reactions. My point is that DNA also contributes to the biological coupling processes through spontaneous photon emissions and absorptions, electron transfer and many other ways, in coherence with all the biochemical processes, all of which are governed ultimately by an autonomous biological principle.
AG: The difference between self-organization and biological organization is that physical self-organization [e.g., snowflake formation, Benard cells] does not need a continuous control. In contrast to physical self-organization, in biological organization a continuous flux of information is required to govern biochemical reactions.... Biology is present not within the framework of an already definite physical problem, but on the contrary, biology prepares the conditions for the physical laws to act. Biology is the control science of physics....But to PB,
"...where does the teleological 'biological endpoint' come from? Since when did we need to invoke any prescience to biology in order that it 'works?' Biology is, from moment to moment, surely quite blind, and it is only evolution that has installed an 'apparent' purpose to it all."Because PB rejects this problem in principle, he is free to invoke the behavior of ants and bacteria as proxies for higher-level organisms — another feat of reductionism.
But as AG points out, maybe this sort of thing might serve for the description of the organization of ant colonies; but it sheds no light on the behavior of individual ants. And it does not at all explain the autonomous and even social behavior of the individual bacterium....
Anyhoot, as a student of the history of science — not someone who is a working scientist myself — I feel very privileged to have been given a seat as an observer of how the "scientific sausage" is made....
In conclusion, dear Texas Songwriter: Science will never go for
And thank God for that! For it seems to me panpsychism doesn't explain anything about life and mind any better than Neodarwinist orthodoxy does.
JMHO, FWIW
Thank you ever so much for your outstanding essay/post! Plus I do agree with your conclusion: "Naturalism is in its death rattle."
And thank God for that, too!