Posted on 10/03/2003 10:00:40 PM PDT by bondserv
I Think, Therefore I Am Chemicals 10/03/2003
The Darwinian Revolution was part of a drive to naturalize biology; that is, to explain biology, including the origin of species, strictly in terms of natural law and chance, without divine intervention.1 Much rode on the coattails of that effort: evolutionary psychology, evolutionary sociology, evolutionary ecology, and evolutionary politics. Perhaps the crux of the debate is the human mind. Is there a naturalistic causal chain leading from hydrogen to the mind? Are all of our deepest emotions, dreams, aspirations, values, logical arguments, thought processes, preferences, assumptions, intuitions, hopes, plans, core values, and sincerely held beliefs traceable to the chemical reactions in our neurons, plus nothing?
Thomas Metzinger thinks so, and his book Being No One is given favorable press by Franz Mechsner (Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research) and Albert Newen (Philosophy Department, University of Bonn) in the Oct. 3 issue of Science.2 Their book review, entitled “Thoughts Without a Thinker,” states the issue beginning with Descartes’ foundational premise:
When the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes made his famous statement “I think, therefore I am,” he was certain that this intuition could not possibly be doubted. If there are thoughts, there must be someone who thinks. Descartes identified the thinker with “himself,” and himself with the immortal soul. Unsatisfied with the Cartesian framework, scientists try to explain human self-consciousness as a natural phenomenon. This “naturalization project” is guided by the complex question: How may conscious selfhood (subjective experience and autonomous agency) emerge from causal chains of events in a physical world? In Being No One, the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger addresses this challenge and proposes a framework of how self-consciousness might be naturalized. In a bold, thorough, and thought-provoking synthesis, he combines a huge body of neuroscientific and psychological research data with philosophical considerations and fine-grained phenomenological reflections on real-life experiences.The reviewers delve briefly into Metzinger’s framework, and discuss one of his most important observational supports: the mental patients with “Cotard’s syndrome, in which patients experience themselves as being nonexistent, obviously contradicting Descartes’s claim that the mere presence of thoughts leads to the conviction of existence.”
Metzinger, a professor at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, maintains that there are actually no autonomous selves in the material world. The perception that one is the source of thoughts and actions is an illusion, emerging from physical processes in neuronal networks where no self can be identified. To put it provocatively, there are experiences, but no one who experiences; there are thoughts, but no thinker; actions, but no actor. Based on this premise, naturalization of self-consciousness means explaining the detailed representational, functional, and computational structure of the selfhood illusion. One must consider its evolutionary advantage, how it emerges from neuronal processes, and how it is related to the puzzling philosophical riddles in connection with consciousness, such as the mind-body problem.
The theory of subjectivity Metzinger presents in Being No One seems very promising in that it offers a conceptual framework for explaining many empirical phenomena related to human self-consciousness. His basic strategy is to show that everything of interest regarding self-consciousness can be reduced to phenomenal representations. Under the presupposition that phenomenal representations emerge from neuronal processes, this means that naturalization of self-consciousness is indeed possible. Metzinger’s interdisciplinary approach opens a new path toward a scientific theory of consciousness and self-consciousness.
A conceptual framework is not a fact, and a strategy is not a truth. Neither of these three evolutionists has established anything close to the wide-sweeping conclusion they claim. On what empirical evidence do they make such bold philosophical judgments? Some mental patients claim they have no self. How do we know they are not good actors, and the psychologists are just suckers for what they are being told by the patients? Have they ruled out all other possibilities? And if minds don’t exist, how can they apply their minds to get into the mind of someone else and know anything? They just shot themselves in the foot with the self-referential fallacy: if thoughts are illusions emerging from chemicals, they have no ultimate validity; therefore the claim that thoughts are illusions from chemicals is invalid.
They also committed the either-or fallacy about the “mind-body problem.” To say there is either all mind or all body is a false dichotomy. Both are real. The mind can harm the body, and the body the mind. There are complex interrelationships between the two that we cannot fully understand. That does not mean that one or the other is an illusion, or that one has to explain everything about the other in its own terms.
Notice how, again, they trot out the favorite evolutionary miracle word “emergence” and flash it over the place. Who needs scientific causality when uncanny entities like thoughts can just emerge from non-thoughts, when selves can emerge from non-selves, when acts can emerge without actors, when souls can emerge from neural synapses, when pneuma can emerge from sarx?
Notice their hunger and thirst for mammon. The desire to naturalize all of reality is clearly shown to be a passion, not a science. Early science was motivated by desire to seek the mind of God; post-Darwin science is motivated by a desire to undermine all mind. It is a reductionist mission, promoted with all the zeal of an evangelist, to expunge the I term, information, from all equations, and leave only T (time), E (energy), and M (matter). It is a project filled with presuppositions, assumptions, beliefs, axioms, philosophical puzzles, and doctrines. It is not science. It is religion.
They talk about illusion. Who is being deceived here? They are deluded into thinking they have arrived at a coherent, naturalistic system. For to believe that mind, self, and consciousness are ultimately definable in toto by matter in motion, they must endow T + M + E with all the attributes traditionally ascribed to deity: omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, and autonomous self-existence. This is not naturalism: it is pantheism. Science Magazine offers no platform for a rational alternative or rebuttal; it has become the pulpit for the most radical of the philosophical materialists, and the pseudo-scientific mouthpiece of the Church of Pantheism. (Notice also that this is the only religion permitted in the science classroom, and is defended against all engagements by zealots of the NCSE, ACLU, PAW, and Big Science. This is to ensure that young impressionable minds, which are mere illusions, will not be disturbed as the Doctrine of Emergence is inculcated into them, with the thought, which is a mere illusion, that there might be alternatives.)
Theistic evolutionists should take note. This review makes abundantly clear that Metzinger-type evolutionists have no room for you. They will not stand for any personal Deity, no matter how remote from the operations of nature. There is no soul in their theology. And if there is no soul, there is no relationship, there is no Logos, there is no communication, and there is no salvation. Ye are dead in your sins, and of all evolutionists most miserable. Understand your plight, and choose you this day whom you will serve.
Pastors should take note. Believers of all stripes should take note. Thinkers should take note. Human beings who have hearts thumping in their chests should take note. This book review should amplify the red alarm, in case you haven’t already heard it blaring since 1859. Darwinism, predicated on the religious belief it is possible to naturalize all of reality, seeks to usurp all other belief systems. It instigates the worst totalitarianism in history, for its core beliefs deny the existence of free will itself. Its laws lead to the end of reason, the destruction of the soul, and the dissolution of self-consciousness into a frothing sea of illusions. It is none other than the abolition of man.Their hope is dashed on nothing less Than nature's blood and randomness. They dare not trust Descartes' frame, but wholly lean on Darwin's claim. No solid rock in Darwinland, All logic ground is sinking sand, All reasoning is thinking bland.
One arguement I hear regularly is, "Religion (Supernatural/ Metaphysical) events are outside of science, therefore should be seperated from the discussion."
They set all of the rules.
No, not all the rules...just the rules of science.
Then it wasn't science.
It's frustrating to defend science against those who haven't taken the time to learn the definition of science and who proceed with absurdly false statements based upon their ignorance.
In part we can base it on our own experience. I suspect that we all loose the thread of consciousness -- and I mean when we are fully awake and functioning -- much more often than we generally realize or admit. Ever been driving, especially over a familar route, and had this happen? You suddenly notice that several minutes, and maybe more than several, have gone by when your body, including your mind, was operating the car perfectly well, but there was no "you" there experiencing and participating in the function.
We will tell ourselves, or infer, or assume, that our consciousness is continuous, even over such periods, if only because the alternative -- that for many periods, many more than we ever actually notice, we become consciousless automatons -- is a bit spooky; but if we were perfectly honest with ourselves, I believe our experience tells us this is a reality.
Now this doesn't verify the authors theory (at least so I presume, not having read the book and not really knowing exactly what the theory is) but it does tend to suggest that consciousness is in some sense epiphenomenal. It's not a "thing" or even a "state" that is always there.
Cremo's "evidence" is hyped-up frauds, errors, and nonsense. And yes, I've read the book. His stuff doesn't even pass the laugh test, much less rise to the level of "very convincing evidence".
From an earlier post of mine:
Michaelo Cremo is a crank who makes outrageous claims to sell his books and get paid to go on the lecture circuit. From his own website:
Michael Cremo is on the cutting edge of science and culture issues. In the course of a few months time he might be found lecturing at a scientific conference, appearing on a national television show, touring sacred sites in India, or speaking to an alternative science gathering.This is a guy who makes his career and fame on the basis of catering to the "strange mysteries" crowd.But looking at his actual evidence, it's clear why he publishes his "research" in mass-market books instead of in peer-reviewed science journals...
Looking at the earliest page of "evidence" in the table (26-55 million years ago), we find primarily "eoliths" and "paleoliths".
The problem is that these are hardly firm "evidence" for human civilization. They're rocks. Needless to say, rocks are pretty common on the Earth even without human invervention.
A "paleolith" is a stone tool. Unfortunately, as should be pretty obvious, a piece of rock in isolation may be a stone tool, or may be a natural hunk of rock -- there's no real way to tell without finding other nearby evidence of human habitation. If all Cremo has to offer is the find of a "paleolith" -- and not an accompanying more clear sign of humanity -- then all he has is "we found a rock, and it looks to me like it could have been used as a tool". Not very convincing, unless you're really straining.
"Eoliths" are even more of a problem, because anthropologists in general this century have abandoned all belief in "eoliths" as any sort of evidence altogether. An eolith is a rounded rock with scars or markings that were previously thought may have been human in origin. However, it was later found that such rocks are of natural origin.
From Creationism: The Hindu View:Likewise for the fleeting references to "chalk ball", "cut wood", and "carved stone". Balls of stone, chalk, and other substances can occur naturally due to the action of waves, flowing water, or especially glaciers. "Cut wood" could have been sliced in a variety of natural methods, and "carved stone" is in the eye of the beholder.Now, palaeoanthropology is a speciality of mine, but archaeology is not, so I showed the book ["Forbidden Archeology"] to a couple of colleagues whose speciality it is. Dr. Andrée Rosenfeld was not highly delighted, but offered some comments on the book's long, long, discussion of Eoliths. These are (no, were) supposed stone tools from extremely ancient deposits, believed in by many archaeologists in earlier generations but now universally discounted.
"The problem", Andrée explained, "lies in their selective emphasis and choice of language; have they not heard of semiotics? For example, on p 106 they quote an early objector to eoliths, Worthington Smith in 1892, and totally misunderstand its significance; eoliths can be extracted from any gravel from any period, whether with or without other artefacts, and with any range of patina - eoliths in fact only ocur, as far as I am aware, in gravel or similar deposits." That is to say, in any deposit with lots of small stones in it, you are going to find some stones that by chance resemble crude artefacts! "They have not examined eoliths, but present a value laden discussion of the lterature. The question is not 'could such fractures arise from hominid action' but could such fractures (or other marks) arise naturally - and if so, they cannot be taken as evidence for hominid presence."
As for the two claims of "human skeletons", I could find no reference at all to the alleged de Mortillet find (itself a suspicious sign). But I do note that de Mortillet was an anthropologist who studied artifacts and remains found in caves. One has to wonder if Cremo has misread one of de Mortillet's cave finds and mistakenly presumed that the bones within dated back to the age of the surrounding rock...
The other alleged "skeleton", however, shows the sloppiness of Cremo's work and either his gullibility or his dishonesty. That skull, known as the Calaveras skull, has been thoroughly examined and shown conclusively to be modern (no more than a thousand years old), *not* many millions of years old as Cremo asserts.
For information on the Calaveras skull, see The Calaveras Skull Revisited , or The Museum of Hoaxes. Hell, even the 1911 Encyclopedia entry for it expressed serious doubts about its authenticity -- so what excuse does Cremo (and other creationists) have for still presenting it as "evidence" 92 years later?
I regret to inform you that creationists are often preyed upon by con men, hucksters, cranks, and the misguided.
Sorry, but that kind of thing just isn't very convincing. It's possible for your friend to have sensed or inferred all the necessary data to constuct the "out-of-body" image without actually being out of the body.
After all, even in "normal" perception we construct an apparently complete and seemless picure of reality out of raw sense data that is full of holes and gaps. This is always taking place with your vision, for instance, as studies of eye movement have shown. We don't "actually" see the whole field of view we "think" we see. There are large gaps and discontinuities that our mind is constantly "filling in".
Abrupt changes of perspective, such as percieving ourself to be "out of the body" are rare for most people, but they can be learned with sufficient effort. (It's also possible with sufficient practice to move the locus of self within the body. Normally we feel that the percieving "self" is localized in our head, but it is possible to cultivate a sense of the internal self being localized instead in the chest, or in the stomach.)
Finally, even people who are adept with "out of body" experiences have never been able to prove that they were actually percieving from outside of the body under controlled conditions. E.g. experiments where a subject lying on a bed was asked to read the number on a set of dice resting on a shelf above the bed never produced guesses better than chance, even when the subjects firmly believed they had succeeded in leaving their bodies and reading the dice.
I'm not confusing them at all, unless you want to claim that the soul becomes "mindless" upon death, which is certainly not the ordinary view.
They are two distinct entities. I would be happy to explain them to you if you want.
I would welcome your hypothesis on the matter, especially if you think you have any sort of actual evidence for it.
Sorry, but that kind of thing just isn't very convincing. It's possible for your friend to have sensed or inferred all the necessary data to constuct the "out-of-body" image without actually being out of the body.
After all, even in "normal" perception we construct an apparently complete and seemless picure of reality out of raw sense data that is full of holes and gaps. This is always taking place with your vision, for instance, as studies of eye movement have shown. We don't "actually" see the whole field of view we "think" we see. There are large gaps and discontinuities that our mind is constantly "filling in".
Abrupt changes of perspective, such as percieving ourself to be "out of the body" are rare for most people, but they can be learned with sufficient effort. (It's also possible with sufficient practice to move the locus of self within the body. Normally we feel that the percieving "self" is localized in our head, but it is possible to cultivate a sense of the internal self being localized instead in the chest, or in the stomach.)
Finally, even people who are adept with "out of body" experiences have never been able to prove that they were actually percieving from outside of the body under controlled conditions. E.g. experiments where a subject lying on a bed was asked to read the number on a set of dice resting on a shelf above the bed never produced guesses better than chance, even when the subjects firmly believed they had succeeded in leaving their bodies and reading the dice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.