84 thoughts on “A Mind-Blowing Leap”

1. This is correct, in my view. It reminds me of Gregory Bateson's theory of mind.

   • Hmmm. Here's what I find: "According to Bateson, consciousness is the bridge between the cybernetic networks of individuals, society and ecology." Seems opposite my point. Panpsychism is all about consciousness connecting everything, and I'm saying consciousness is an emergent construct of material interactions. But I suppose my post could remind someone of Bateson's ideas in the sense that I'm countering them.

2. It is interesting that the 'brain' is the same mental model as the mind. The body is whole (as far as a person is concerned, so exactly) and the brain cannot exist without the circulatory system, the lymphatic system, and the endocrine system.

   That is, the complexity spreads radially in three dimensions, no matter which part of the system we consider.

   Again, to be moved by this greatness while appreciating its excellence and humbly accepting one's own partiality is a great task.

   IMHO.

   • Excellent point. In order to have thoughts at all, one needs blood, a heart, kidneys, metabolic organs, air, water, minerals, plants, animals, fungi, microbes, an earth, a sun, a galaxy. Thus, even "our" brain (let alone a fiction like a soul or consciousness) doesn't wholly own "our" thoughts.

     • This is very close to the question of consciousness/mind in (non-human) animals.
       Is it true that (even simplified) animal experience (non-color vision, other types of sensations that are not available to humans, specific sensations whose mechanism of operation has not been studied, etc.) is not mind/consciousness?

       Why then can dogs be put to sleep, and rats are euphoric ("high")?
       There are studies that show that even simple organisms and plants have the complex interaction that occurs with the matter of the body (not just the brain or even the nervous system).

       It is clear that this "experience" is not available to us, but it definitely means that people are just another domino in a large pile of similar ones. The fact that we have gained a competitive advantage, as we see, has not led to a positive outcome for all another lives.

       Who the hell are we to cut from behind the head and decide fate?
       The masters of the Universe, who cannot even recognize the greatness, patience and (luck?) of its formation and functioning.

       If the simplified and "stupid" mental maps of a crocodile allow it to survive for tens of millions of years, then most likely we (people) are definitely doing something wrong (6 mass extinction, metacrisis)

3. Challenging Cartesian Duality is a good project. The ‘thinking mind’ is not a separate entity, but instead is deeply embedded in our animal nature. Here are some examples that might count as more evidence that mind/consciousness is a phenomenon of our meat brains. 1) Brain injuries or diseases cause predictable and profound changes in personality, memory, cognition, suggesting that mental functions are tied to physical brain structure. 2) Using imaging tech, like fMRI and PET scans, researchers can observe brain activity in real time. Neural patterns and activities correlate with subjective experiences like feeling emotion, or forming a thought, or seeing a color. 3) You mention this, but drugs that alter brain chemistry — antidepressants, anesthetics, or hallucinogens — predictably change mental states, lending weight to the idea that consciousness and thought are chemically mediated. 4) Persons being treated for epilepsy who have their corpus callosum severed can exhibit dual behaviors, showing that hemispheres can operate independently. Doesn’t all this point to the fact that specific brain regions and their connectivity are critical to a unified personality and consciousness?

   • This reminds me of Ahmed Afzaal's blog post on the PLAN site:
     https://planetarylimits.net/bitesize/know-your-metaphysics/

     "Regardless of whether or not we consciously hold these beliefs, they remain the fundamental assumptions that ultimately justify the modern worldview and the modern way of being. We cannot grasp the root causes of our ecological predicament without appreciating the ubiquitous influence of Cartesian metaphysics."

4. I think what you are suggesting is very similar to panpsychism. Panpsychism is not dualist. It suggests that mind (or consciousness) is part of matter. Consciousness as we experience it arises as an emergent property. But it does so because there is an inherent quality of matter that when arranged in a sufficiently compex way produces it. This is almost exactly what you are saying. You reject it because you want to be absolutist in your materialism. I think your suggestion dodges the issue of how such a thing as 'experience' has arisen. You say why it might have happened, but not even a hint of how. Panpsychism is an attempt at the how. It ties this to the material world but it also links it to thousands of years of human philosophy and sprituality. Our need to be connected to everything in some fundamental, but also transcendental way. This 'need' has driven religion, philosophy and other belief systems, such as Buddhism and Taoism. You dismiss this as illusion, rather than a manifestation of something inherent. We are conscious because every particle of us is imbued with that potential. It is a feature, not an accident.

   • I hear you, but disagree. I don't dispute that humans have needs that drive the creation of fictions, but our needs have nothing to do with the actual organizing principles of the universe. I don't see us as entitled to understanding "how." I believe the jump to consciousness as an inherent organizing principle is unjustified and a result of needing to make up a "how," arising from dissatisfaction and impatience. It strikes me as inherently dualist to say: yes, there is matter, but this completely separate transcendent phenomenon of consciousness acts to organize the matter. Absolutism goes both ways, like the unsupportable claim that "every particle of us is imbued with that potential."

     • It could just as easily be turned around to say that the problem is that we have a very partial understanding of 'matter'. There are a number of quantum approaches and the field of quantum biology has only really started. New discoveries about how entaglement (for example) is involved in many aspects of biology are being found every day. While it is fine to say that we don't know and may never know, it isn't fine to use that lack as the basis of a theory – which, in effect, is what you are doing.

       Similarly, the issues about brain damage causing changes in perceived experience do not rule out, or in, any particular mechanism. They just tell us that an intact brain is necessary for humans to be … fully intact in all aspects. This is not surprising. What is odd is to think that this demonstrates anything other than the obvious. Without a properly working brain, we cannot experience 'properly'.

       Panpsychism isn't suggesting that 'mind' is separate from body – to the contrary. It ties them together as two aspects of materiality. Ockham's razor says that the simplest solution should be chosen, but you are not offering a solution, just a hedge. In effect you say, we don't know, but dismiss all other possible solutions on the grounds that they are not complete. What's sauce for the goose…

       • "two aspects of materiality" dances with the dualist devil: watch out there! "Ockham's razor says that the simplest solution should be chosen" which seems like exactly what I am doing: normal atoms and the physics we know is sufficient to account for experience. Meanwhile, adding consciousness as a parallel aspect seems to me to complicate the foundation unnecessarily. You echo the trend I pointed out in the post: the sin of not knowing, and a demand for a full explanation. Sometimes we don't get what we want (see my comment on this post about being disappointed). We have learned enough about the fundamental interactions of matter, which appear to be sufficient to allow the rest in an explosion of complexity. Why invent new layers? Just because we can't trace the full complexity is no justification for concocting soothing substitutes.

5. An interesting article, thank you. I think the logical effect of your argument is that there is no free will, how can we decide what to even think? Also there is no survival after death.

   I am quite happy to accept both of these propositions but in my experience the majority of people are not.

   • Correct: these two conclusions are consistent with my thinking. Lack of free will does not mean we can't do things, react to complex stimuli in ways we can't predict, or have agency in that we can be agents of change by interacting with the world, heavily influenced by our neural shenanigans. It just means there is not a we/I outside of the matter arrangement and physics interactions: no override; no entity in control. Our atoms do what they do because they are in arrangements and relationships that have been honed by evolution to be successful and flexible performers on the world stage. There's nothing more to us than the piles of atoms in bogglingly-complex arrangements that are able to do amazing things. The gap between what we can comprehend and the material reality is so vast that folks can't stomach it, and grasp for the safety of a reassuring notion.

     When you say: "how can we decide what to think," there is no "we." No one in charge outside of, above, transcending the material body. Our bodies think what they do, guided by matter and relationships (physics), in arrangements that simply have evolved to work. It's beyond us to fully get it.

     • Hear, hear.

       Accepting the reality of no free will leads to a lot of mind blowing realisations about our predicament and our supposed concerns about our predicament. I even recoil at what you say about "agency" which, to me, implies an ability to act outside of one's, ahem, programming. Surely that is impossible. It "feels" like we have agency so, surely, we have? If agency is just affecting the rest of the world by what we do, then it seems to have no meaning.

       • To me, agency of an organism is, as you say, affecting the world—in a way that can be largely (but never entirely) associated with the processes in the individual. There may be no "we" (soul?) in control outside of the physics, but actions can still be attributed in part to what happens in an individual's brain/body. On the other hand, thoughts within brains are shaped by structure, thus evolution/genetics and also by interactions with the rest of the universe—therefore are not ever 100% "owned" by the individual organism. Meaning is the layer you bring to this. It's not hard to find meaning/relevance in any complex interaction, as almost every one has consequences.

6. So you have progressed from denying free-will to denying consciousness?

   The problem with illusionism is that illusions are a conscious experience. Rocks don't have illusions (I confidently assert).

   You're only imagining you have an imagination!

   Consciousness is just information processing. You don't need to deny it exists to refute dualism.

   • Cute. Your last statement is not far from where I am: our sensation of consciousness is just neurons constructing a feeling. The illusion is that it is a transcendent phenomenon beyond a material origin. Check out what the panpsychists say. What I have are neurons (and all supporting hardware), which construct what we call imagination and consciousness. Rocks don't have neurons, so I agree: no illusions possible. The main thing is that our experience of consciousness is an emergent material phenomena, not a separate (dualist) phenomenon transcending matter arrangement and the physics we already know—which is enough.

7. Nice one Tom. Lot of this stuff goes over my head, but it's still very interesting.

   I recently got into Peter Wessel Zapffe and Thomas Ligotti. I always ignorantly equated this pessimism, nihilism, HP Lovecraft stuff with satanic worship. LOL. But these guys are showing me that they are very hip and aware to our predicament. I'm new to it and still have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but your essay today reminded me of this passage from Ligotti:

   "We are defined by our limitations. Without them we cannot suffice as functionaries in the big show of conscious existence. The farther you progress toward a vision of our species without limiting conditions on your consciousness, the farther you drift away from what makes you a person among persons in the human community. In the observance of Zappfe, an unleashed consciousness would alert us to the falsity of ourselves and subject us to the pain of Pinocchio."

8. Yeah, you think getting people to give up dualism is tricky, just try getting them to give up free will.

   I have appreciated Dennet for decades, ever since I read "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." But my favorite thing about him is (was?) his insistence on the existence of free will. Especially considering his take on the illusion of consciousness. That an illusion should have free will is truly hilarious.

   • Yeah—I can't account for that disconnect (as I consider it to be). But neither is it surprising. The illusion is rather convincing, and we can "know" more about it through direct personal experience than we can possibly know about all the mechanics that make the illusion possible. So it's very attractive, and as "obvious" as a rock is solid.

9. Hi Tom,
   Amen to this: “Any prescription that advocates humility, right-relationship, reciprocity, being part of a whole—fantastic!”.
   The idea/possibility of “emergence” of consciousness from matter is something I am still grappling with, but I am certainly not one to dismiss it! (For me, one of the most amazing things about existence is the actual experience of colour. Nothing will ever explain this to me! No words or maths at least! And any explanation that labels it an illusion seems daft to me… Maybe we should just accept that the possibility for “explanation” is limited? All models fall short. The complete explanation for something would be the thing itself?)
   I really think you and other interested commentators might get something from reading one or more of
   Freya Mathew’s The Ecological Self”, “For Love of Matter”, “Reinventing Reality” and “The Dao Civilisation” (this latter work is a good summary of her overall current thinking). She labels her philosophy “Living Cosmopsychism”. I must admit that, for a former scientist like me, a label like this immediately sets off alarm bells 🙂 However, to me the metaphysic she presents seems very much something that a Western-type scientist can accept/entertain as a good/reasonable/not-without-merits argument for seeing ourselves as part of a whole, and that guides us naturally to a state of humility and a desire to seek right-relationship. I particularly like the way Freya considers the merits of indigenous worldviews but at the same time recognises that we must take as our current starting point the fact that the vast majority of us have a Western-style, dualist, reductionist mindset. We can’t simply “go back” to the past, we must progress from where we are.
   On a more general note, the term “panpsychism” seems to be something of a lightening rod/anathama. It is worth keeping mind that there are all sorts of interpretations. Sometimes it gets confused with (or what people are actually presenting is) better described as “idealism” – the view that mind is fundamental and that the physical word is an illusion (ughhh!). Some versions try to fit within a reductionist and/or dualist mindset, which immediately makes people freak out about the idea of electrons having a mind. I find it important to read each piece of work on panpsychism with an open mind rather than letting a “vibe” discourage me from pre-emptively dismissing it. But people’s time is limited and one can’t read everything…
   One of the things I really like about Freya’s work is that in the end it essentially advocates for “being in the world” rather than always trying to explain it, and this encourages a synergistic style of existence more grounded in reality, rather than “living in a model” (to borrow your term, Tom).
   On a different but related note, I have also come across some recent “out there” work by Stuart Kauffman that is worth a look, eg.
   https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=yoPM0F8AAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=yoPM0F8AAAAJ:oynPyU19kbsC
   For anyone needing reminding about the mind-blowing phenomenon that is Life, his recent papers on “Bioscosmology” are a must. Life will find a way! A good read is also his paper “Eros and Logos”:
   https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0969725X.2020.1754011
   I personally find Freya’s work a lot more useful (and humble!) in terms of providing an actual overarching framework for living well
   Thanks again for your fantastic work, Tom! What I like about you most is your humility and pleas for us to respect the inherent value of all life.
   Cheers, Bim

   • I appreciate the warning about overreacting to labels. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and the lesson of living in the world as part of it is certainly music to my ears. The thing that sets off alarm bells for me is when folks of various panpsychist stripes attempt to describe my type (a materialist-monist), and seem to get it completely wrong—as if they haven't understood the depth that is possible in such a position. The labels of reductionist and closet-dualist and Cartesian miss the mark very widely. I tried to give voice to some of these frustrations in this post.

10. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this thorny subject Tom. Having pondered these questions for most of my adult life – with no conclusion reached – I feel that it may be a ‘both and’ rather than an ‘either or’ kinda thing, frustrating though it may be.
    There doesn’t seem to even be a hypothesis on the table as to how matter can give rise to consciousness. We’ve made progress and gained insights into so much of the natural world, yet we remain unable to even posit a notion as to how this could happen.
    Similarly we don’t have an explanation as to how matter, or the apparent materiality of the universe emerges from consciousness, if that is the fundamental substrate of existence.
    Quantum physics appears to demonstrate that what we took to be a material universe is anything but.
    Are we looking at two sides of the same coin? Is a dualist perspective an inevitable one?
    It seems as though the same charge could be laid at the feet of both materialism and idealism…that it is the other that is responsible for casting us out of the Garden of Eden, for creating this rift between the two hemispheres of our brains, the dual perspectives that evolution has produced in us.
    Either way, I agree that it is probably impossible for us to ever know the answer to these questions. I’m not sure that collapsing the answer into either side of this eternal debate will ever prove satisfactory. I guess that make me a dualist! 🤣

    • It is not difficult to sketch out a plausibility argument for a sensation of consciousness arising from matter and its interactions. We know enough about neurology to get how memories form and sensations arise. The layers of complexity, however, might be significant enough to put experimentally conclusive tests off the table. That's different from being absolutely stymied about how it could possibly happen, at a total loss. Quantum physics in no way demonstrates a non-material universe, at least to physicists who explore the subject in the laboratory. Be aware that 99% of physics books are not about the particles, but about their complex interactions. Quantum physics added unanticipated twists to interactions, but does not itself refute materialism.

      • I’m not sure that quantum mechanics demonstrates a material universe either…it kind of depends on who you listen to.
        There is another philosophical option on the table though, ‘Dual Aspect Monism’. I think that comes closest to the position I hold and leaves more options on the table than either materialism or idealism alone.

    • I'm prepared to posit a notion. You need sensory apparatus, motor apparatus, memory apparatus, neural layers of increasing abstraction, and a playroom. You remember the feedback you get from wiggling your motors and sensing the effects. Eventually you build an abstract model of the world in which the parts you can wiggle are you and the parts you can't are not-you. Then the bastards send you to school.

11. I hear you Tom and sympathise with your frustration. I wonder if the way we straight out dismiss the work of others or don’t appreciate the true depth of their thinking is largely to do with semantics, i.e. people Imbuing different meanings (sometimes only subtle) to many words. Also, or related to this, we often can’t faithfully put into words what it is that we are really thinking/feeling ourselves. If this weren’t bad enough, we then speak/write those words and expect someone to hear/read those words and be able to faithfully translate them into exactly the same feelings/thoughts we had, error-free! No wonder we are frustrated! These are the points that Abraham Peper makes (I mentioned him in my comment on your last post). That’s why I agree with others that language and “explanation ” can be a real problem, one leading to barbarically cruelty and wars. And that’s why I think just “being in the world” is often better than trying to explain it (even to ourselves). We leave out the translation step(s) in which we attempt to convert our multi/-sensorial experence into a one-dimensional string of symbols (and then vice verca if communicating with some one), and instead remain more directly engaged with the world via our full range of senses (I find this a better way to let go of my mind than meditation). If we did more of this we might not be so enslaved/enamoured/addicted to the mental models we create, and we might begin to develop some resistance to the worst dualism/illusion of all – the belief that we are separate from nature. With that, I will shut up…

12. If I might insert a reflection. Physicists are accustomed to being disappointed, and not getting their way. Experiments hand the microphone to nature (the universe), which might not say what we want. Relativity, quantum mechanics, a cosmological constant, or neutrinos having mass were not adopted because of their appeal, but crammed down our throats by the most powerful and final arbiter imaginable. We can't now decide it's fashionable/attractive to adopt some counterfactual theory.

    Meanwhile, other disciplines operate under less constraint, and have no ultimate authority telling them NO. Anything goes. Preference, affinity, cleverness now can play a guiding role. This is why I keep saying that we don't get to decide how the universe actually works, and might well be stuck with a reality that does not cater to our wishes. That's the tough-love universe I'm used to. It pairs well with humility.

    • I like this: "Physicists are accustomed to being disappointed…"

      I only ever got as far as A'level physics, but, from what I have gleaned since, it seems that the finer the measuring apparatus available to physicists (CERN etc), the more underlying complexity is discovered. Must be disappointing to never find a "Complete Theory of Everything." At this point I'm not sure there's that much difference between particle physics and theology in terms of its usefulness to humankind.

    • "Experiments hand the microphone to nature (the universe), which might not say what we want."
      Was the development and testing of atomic weapons Nature not saying what physicists wanted? Or was it man-made destruction being crammed down the throat of Nature?
      "other disciplines operate under less constraint, and have no ultimate authority telling them NO. Anything goes. Preference, affinity, cleverness now can play a guiding role."
      But 'anything goes' is exactly the same ethos used by physicists (hence atomic tests etc – all due to cleverness). I know what you're saying, that you can't break the laws of Nature, but physicists are certainly as guilty of cleverness as other scientists are.
      Modern science, while accomplishing really great success in investigating the phenomena of the material world, turns out to be of no use for the direction of human life, or even does actual harm.

      • I see what you're getting at. However, the universe had already accomplished fusion (stars) and even chain reaction fission on Earth 2 billion years before humans arrived (Oklo). But the greatest cleverness of all is Life: exploiting the available physics/chemistry to produce advantage. Plants and animals have developed all manner of clever strategies and technologies to advantage itself (like the moon snail boring a hole in a shell, injecting acid to dissolve/digest prey inside its own shell). The point is: if nature allows it, we should not be surprised to see it develop. But we are absolutely limited to what nature allows and can't just make up stuff that isn't real and expect it to become true (like consciousness as an extra-material phenomenon, as presented in this post).

        As for the harm of science, I generally agree (see my post called Confessions of a Disillusioned Scientist). That's science in the hands of a culture of modernity. Science has also taught us about universal connectedness (all using the same physics), which *could* promote better ecological living. That's where it has taken me, so it can be of use in setting a direction for human life—within the right culture.

13. What is life? What makes something alive? We can say it moves, reproduces, metabolises, but those are how we recognise it. We know when something alive is no longer so. But again that is by the fact that it no longer does those things. We struggle with the boundaries – viruses, prions, which do some of these things, some of the time. We differentiate between sentience and non sentience, e.g. plants versus animals. But what about forests? Here the trees are connected through a complex of fungi and exchange chemicals that influence 'behaviour'. Is that sentience? The point is, we have no real explanation for life and how it differs from non-life, and for the many manifestations of life that are hugely different in what we might think of as 'mind'. Mind itself is a loose concept. Is it more than sentience, or just sentience plus? If so, plus what? Explaining everything as an ever-more complex arrangement of matter is not an explanation. It's a cop-out. In effect, we don't know, so we deny a need for an explanation.

14. You ask what went wrong at the foundations of modernity, citing human supremacism as a culprit (I agree), and the Enlightenment as driving a wedge between mind and matter, due to Descartes (who was a dick, I agree).
    But you're conflating two things you don't like ('mind' and modernity) and saying this had something to do with the creation of modernity, somehow.
    I agree that matter (brains) produces mind, but fail to see how that is relevant to modernity.

    More apposite is that the Enlightenment was when science really began to dominate. The secular, modern world was *born* through the practical application of science.
    It was the Enlightenment that gave rise to the prevailing, reductionist view of the world.

    'Reductionist' does not have to be derogatory. It literally just means reducing a complex phenomenon to a level where it can be understood, at least theoretically. A phenomenon like life…

    "machines such as the amoeba"
    Indeed those creatures (and humans) are the amazing result of evolution acting over deep time. It's not accurate to call them 'machines' though. Machines are defined as *artificial* constructs – unlike living organisms, such as the amoeba.

    We know that all living organisms experience their existence. This experience may be called consciousness.

    If consciousness is only an illusion, then:
    How do you know you exist? The only experience that is directly available to you comes from your senses. The only evidence you have for your existence is your experience. Which is not an illusion (although it is necessarily subjective, and therefore not amenable to objective study or definitive statements).

15. Thank you
    The Judeo-Christian view is the Bible says "Man had dominion over all the earth," and consequently people have taken this as a licence 'we can do what we want and damn the rest' without realizing we are damning ourselves as well.

16. I think I might have referred to one of Freya Mathew’s books as “Reinventing Reality”. It is “Reinhabiting Reality”. Big difference!
    I wanted to add one last thing…
    The Greek philosophers got us hooked on theorising and explanation, which, as Freya suggests, is a new way of processing reality rather than just experiencing it directly and accepting it on its own terms. As if we know better than nature/the world/the cosmos! Maybe any species that seeks to explain/understand everything, including its own existence, is doomed to becoming non-existent? We live in an increasingly delusional word because of our addiction to the mental models we have constructed using our “grand” theorising.
    People even talk of being close to a “Theory of Everything”. My god! As if we truly know anything much at all!
    If we need to keep our questioning mind busy, I think our biggest question should perhaps just be something like “How can I be GENUINELY content?”. And, importantly, this question should be directed outward, not a question directed to ourselves. That is, we should seek the answer just be “being in the world” and letting the world “do the talking” rather than trying to provide the answer to ourselves via our theorizing inner voice. Maybe we can then slowly begin to feel at home again in the world. A whole that is part of the Whole.

    • Thank you for this. I agree that insistence on full explanation is part of our sickness: an addiction to our puny mental models. That accounts for some of my attraction to letting the basic physics we do know run wild in ways we can't track, without needing to layer on additional elements for the purpose of satisfaction (that we have the answer). Just let incomprehensible complexity atop a simple foundation suffice and enjoy being in the result! Let it go.

17. I love this post, and completely agree with you Tom. Thank you for writing this!

18. Really loved this article and the last one. This article is like a short summary of Alex Rosenberg's "An Atheist's Guide to Reality" (which he wanted to call "On the Nature of Things" but he said Lucretius already used that title … Alex is a philosophy professor at Duke).

    Alex's book has a ton of references in the final section called "the backstory" which he introduces books that support his views like "From Eternity to Here" by Sean Carroll, "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" by Richard Feynman, "Dreams of a Final Theory" by Steven Weinberg, and many others including from fields from biology, cognitive science, philosophy, etc.

    I think your readers would find it interesting, educational and supportive of your analysis and a great reference.

    Thanks for spending the time to write these great articles.

19. in the 1960s Kenneth Boulding used the analogy of our current economy being a 'Cowboy Economy' but us having reached a point that it was imperative to transition to a 'Spaceman Economy' with us all being crew members upon this 'multi generational Ark Ship' that we live on,

    http://arachnid.biosci.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/Readings/Boulding_SpaceshipEarth.pdf

    his wife took a great interest in indigenous peoples and their beliefs and modes of thinking and living, Boulding being an American used the familiar trope of 'the Cowboy' in his analogy, the white settlers in America had squeezed out the indigenous people and replaced the indigenous culture and economy with a European one,

    after digesting his writing and some other supporting material I found myself coming to the conclusion that we obviously must transition to a Spaceman Economy to survive, it has to be circular and sustainable, in harmony with the biosphere, not continually eroding it,
    but the main realisation for me was that the indigenous people were already living the Spaceman Economy, therefore it's not a case of progressing towards a different way of living, but one of returning to a way that has been able to sustain humanity for millennia prior to the industrial revolution.

    we shouldn't look to our current leaders for direction, they are leading us up a dead end, possibly over a cliff, we should look to the people we have pushed out of the way and marginalised in our race to conquer nature and industrialise our society.

20. I would like to point out that from a scientific materialistic point of view, Tom tells a very deceptive story about naive ignorant people and the smart truth telling scientists.

    "It was likewise self-evident that a rock was completely solid, rather than mostly empty space, whose mass exists in the form of nuclei occupying 0.0000000000001% of the volume. While it sure looks and feels solid to our blunt senses, the truth is more complicated"

    No Tom your are being very deceptive.
    You start out talking about the concept of SOLID, then you very deceptively swap out SOLID for the scientific concept of MASS. And then assert it is just empty space. That is just a lie and Tom knows it.
    The electrons in atoms have a small amount of mass and they move very fast and they fill up that volume in an atom. And electrons are not just particles they also have characteristics of waves. And even more importantly electrons have CHARGE as does the nucleolus of the atom. And the differences in charge create fields that fill the space and provides the internal structure for atoms.

    And it becomes very obvious that Tom is just full of it when you think of an actual example of a solid and a liquid. Take water. Its mass distribution in the atoms that make up water doesn't change when it goes from solid ice to liquid water. He is just throwing out some sciencey factoid so you don't think clearly about what he is asserting.

    • I'm sorry this comes off as trickery. Rutherford's gold foil experiments truly shocked the world (neutrons sailed through, very seldom hitting any geometric obstruction). Prior to the gold foil experiments, it was just assumed that the mass of a solid was volume filling, which was entirely untrue. I would not claim liquids to be a different story (your invention), but use solids for their perceived impenetrability. The point that was emphasized is that it's complicated: more than meets the eye—which as far as I can tell you do not dispute. I'll skip over the accusations, which passed through without striking anything.

21. [edited down; who wants Bot-talk anyway?]

    1/This week I began reading Philip Ball's "The Book of Minds".

    2/Here are four reasons one might find Rene Descartes likeable – a chatbot came up with these:

    ### 1. **His Curiosity and Open-Mindedness**

    ### 2. **Gentleness in Disagreement**

    ### 3. **His Love for Solitude and Simplicity**

    ### 4. **Encouraging Women in Intellectual Pursuits**

    • I searched 'Descartes animal cruelty', and the first result was:
      "“Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly."
      To me, that makes him unlikeable.

      • Even if he had a pleasant smile? While performing vivisection?

        • Lol, yes, even then

22. I was very happy when I started reading Tom's articles (resilience. org) . I'd found a similar "mind".
    I think, my illusion tells me so, we try to look at things the same way.
    I don't have the English language level to explain my thoughts as you do with yours (although I can understand you properly). So I just want to share some very simplified ideas for anyone to be used and expand if worthy.

    Human mind/body is so narcissistic that we created Gods in our image and likeness. (homo narcissus)

    As evolution did not stop with the arrival of humans, social pressure is the main driver for brain changes in our spices. So the idea of God's has been the most successful tool for autodomestication. As well as destruction of nature (you mentioned that). I live alone in the mountains and I see communication between different species, but no one between normal humans and nature.

    You give a lot of importance to dualism. Let me add the most important one of all. (for me)
    We have created a linear universe, a linear life, where we are looking for universal laws. But for me life and this universe is Chaos.
    Exponential grow don't end up in infinite quantities, but in a different chaotic system. (discussed mind, or quantum physics, or the climate show emerged properties like in the change of a chaotic system)
    Pitty that hardwired dogmatic education has avoid this way of thinking because is totally against the idea of gods and a tamed society.

23. No need to prove the illusion of free will and the illusion of self, like we can't prove that there is no Santa Claus. It's completely logical.
    Given enough information logic gets there.
    We literally feel our body (brain , neurons). Its not even emergent phenomena, I had the aha moment learning neuroscience. Our behavior can be said to be emergent to an outsider. (See definition of emergence). We tend to overcomplicate things. Nothing can be reduced, nothing can exist without everything else. It's just our capacity to comprehend. So don't bother with those who don't, you would need to teach them the entire universe for them to understand it. The hard pill to swallow is that it all doesn't mattter, it's all already determined.

    • One note: even if the future is determined, the path is *entirely* unpredictable. We don't know what parts we play in whatever develops. So, it would be tragic (and tantrum-adjacent) to react to determinism by shutting down: "If I can't be in charge, then I refuse to play along." Of course, should that happen, it could not have gone any other way. 😉 Who can know? Just realize that we are actors in the universe, not its creators. It does not exist and flow because our mental models tell it to. Recoiling against determinism is a failure of mental models, not of the universe, which will barrel along no matter what bounces around in our heads.

      • For me it's more about acceptance. Of course superdeterminism is unpredictable due to our lack of knowledge, I don't stress about that (and if I was I couldn't have done otherwise) 😀
        I feel very much like a passenger, an observer from the outside. When things go wrong I find pleasure in thinking that it's not going to last forever for me. Everything bad was always meant to be but will pass, ultimately without meaning anything. It might sound counterintuitive but for me these are comforting thoughts.
        The feeling of great wonder or great threat about this topic is just our current mode of thinking based on our experiences, anxieties that we cannot control anyway. Everything is out of control, and it's okay. 😊
        (I really enjoy your writings and your mode of thinking, I really miss knowing and being around people like you personally.)

24. Respectfully and with sympathy, I think that unfortunately your philosophical musings are falling in the typical trap of physicists mastering something very complex (physics) and therefore feeling like they can master any other field of knowledge with a few amateur readings.
    If you are really interested would suggest reading some serious philosophy, starting with the classics and moving from there, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine (that's where the will gets invented), Aquinas, Descartes (read him, don't rely on the comic book version), Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein… as it is, this reads as if I, with no formal training in physics beyond high school, read some popular books from Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson, a few issues of Scientific American and such, and deemed myself ready to explain what's wrong with the dominant understanding of quantum mechanics…

    • I sympathize with the notion, and have experienced plenty of quantum amateurs, lunar landing hoax believers, etc. However, I will point out a fundamental asymmetry that perhaps shifts the "equal footing" premise of your concern. The quantum amateur is not assimilating all the results of experiment (what nature says), and respecting the predictive tapestry that physics has provided (e.g., elemental abundances on Earth happen to line up very well with stellar evolution, fusion, etc. in a way that wasn't at all forced—and *loads* of other amazing "fits"). Physics does not rely on authority of what individual humans mused or said, but on what experiment revealed about the repeatable, predictive nature of the universe as we find it.

      I am not aware of an empirical foundation for philosophy; evidence-based; proof; or any predictive capability whatsoever. Surveys of philospphers find that basically nothing has been resolved to near-universal agreement, lacking any mechanism for verification of ideas. So, one resorts to appealing to a list of impressive thinkers as authorities. It's just not the same, and other thinkers are not at a similar disadvantage, since musings are not verified by nature the same way experiments are. You still have a point, but perhaps not as strong/equivalent as you might wish.

      [later addition]: Note also that I am not attempting to one-up the famous philosophers by offering a superior framework. I'm basically saying don't even bother: we're not up for it. We only fool ourselves to believe we can capture the essence of reality in our mental models. I'm satisfied that matter exists and does stuff independent of (well before) life, and that sufficient leeway is present to enable a flourishing of complexity that we will never fully track but might very well admire.

      • I wasn't appealing to authority at all, I was simply saying that to engage in complex philosophical debates one should learn, and understand, what others have said before, or else come off as amateurish, and not persuasive at all to people who have thought more deeply about the same.

        If you are interested in exploring one glaring issue, your assumption that physics is more solid, and more authoritative against the quantum amateur, because it is based on experiments seems to reveal a lack of awareness of how the epistemological foundations of experimental science are not, and cannot logically be, themselves experimentally, or even experientially, established. Again, Kant would be a great starting point.

        In more practical terms, your fascination with free will, determinism, consciousness, etc. may cheapen or even imperil the effectiveness of your more solid insights about what's physically possible on this planet. Already in this comment section, which is a pretty small place and thus relatively protected from the spiraling craziness of larger internet fora, one can see early signs of quasi-cultish mentality and assorted crankery. I think you have an important message that the world needs to hear, and doesn't want to. I don't think the world, or anyone, needs another amateurish philosophy (there are so, so many already) explaining how we have a problem with the illusion of free will etc.

        • In the end, I'm a very practical sort and not keen on arguments about whether matter is real or experimental results are valid. I guess I'm more amused than interested in the fact that some folks can't make out whether experimental knowledge (watching the universe do its thing) is valid. Not too surprising, but nothing seems to get resolved in such musings. What's the line about arguing that black is white and proceeding to get killed at the next crosswalk? Brains can come up with all manner of chicanery that I'll never put much stock in, however deeply thought. Show me instead the universe as it plays out independent of our neural gymnastics. It's part of humility: accepting what we can't know, and not pretending to have much to add to the amazing world that's already (experimentally?) present. Or is it all a grand deceit in our minds? Scratch that. I guess that's all I'll say, and let the rest slide.

          Oh, but one last thing: we lack the means to differentiate Philosophy from an erudite form of cultish crankery, as you put it. At least experiments, handing the microphone to the universe, tell a reliable, repeatable story. Seems more authoritative than a wagging beard and knowing nods from the illuminati. I trust the universe over the output of brains.

          • The philosopher would point out that you cannot trust the empirical universe over the output of brains, as you only have access to the latter. The universe may indeed all be an illusion, but then we come full circle back to solipsism, dualism, brains in bubbling vats living in simulated realities etc. Interesting to talk about over a spliff at 3am but ultimately unhelpful, rather like the discovery of the Higgs boson.

          • A good capture, in my view, of why it's okay to ignore the philosopher.

          • Methinks that "it's ok to ignore the philosopher" (meaning philosophy in general, I suppose) is a very arrogant and ignorant statement. Same for the wagging beard and nods to illuminati, if you think that's what philosophy is about, you know nothing of philosophy. Evidently you don't trust my words, which is fair but the value of philosophy cannot be demonstrated in a comment sections unfortunately, but really you are doing quite exactly as badly as the amateur quantum mechanics.

            It is a bit ironic because this fetishization of experimentalism and disdain for anything that cannot be "practically" (that's not actually what "practical" means, but ok) proven is itself a rather extreme manifestation of the arrogant "modernity" you otherwise so despise.

          • This is an excellent comment, and one that I truly earned. I was admittedly being glib and extreme. Indeed, I am aiming for the opposite of arrogance, as I believe humility is a far more appropriate way to tuck into this world in a long-term sustainable way.

            Our brains are exceptional among 10 million species (most of which don't possess brains). Note: exceptional, and not saying superior. They get us into a lot of trouble, and may even turn out to be an evolutionary "blunder," in that an adaptation was taken too far. Thus, I do not trust much of what our brains have generated—especially in the last 10,000 years of this highly unusual and distorted mode of living. Material conditions shape the kinds of thoughts we have.

            Part of my brand of humility is to look beyond what humans fabricate in our limited, flawed brains. How does the universe work? How do microbes interact with the world? What can the plants and animals teach us about how to live on this planet? Deep time imbues real wisdom in these time-tested practices. Compared to this billions-of-years accumulation, mental constructions of the last few hundred or few thousand years would seem to have little to add. I'm trying to avoid the hubris that our enormous brains can settle the big mysteries (they haven't). My strong preference for physics over philosophy is that one listens to the whispers outside humans, whereas the other is primarily the whispers within our meat-brains (not echoed by the universe).

            I don't hold physics/science to be the pinnacle of "ways of knowing," in that it hasn't resulted in better ecological living. Indigenous cultures did a better job of that (and yes, brains were not absent, just being used differently than they are in modernity and academia). Their ways of knowing flowed out of deeply-integrated daily interaction with ecological communities of life, borrowing its wisdom. Modern philosophy (over the last few millennia) does not center that heritage, being more a product of the exalted man, separate and transcendent from the "lower" creatures, and very much self-concerned. At least those are the aspects that make me want to throw out the bathwater. Apologies if there's a baby in there somewhere (that aligns well to proven Indigenous ways) I have not yet been exposed to.

            Importantly, I hope I'm not coming across as arrogant or as claiming to have the answers. What I'm trying to say is that none of us do, and we can't get there by thinking. It's a "throw the bums out" impulse, rejecting the fake mental wrapping on what the universe hands to us to live within and enjoy being a part of. It's a blanket demotion of modern thinking.

    • I'm not sure that philosophy can be thought of as a "field of knowledge" in that it is essentially opinion and not subject to falsification by experiment.

      When it comes down to it, we are all made out of matter and only matter. Consequently, can consciousness be anything other than an illusion brought about by the interaction of our molecules?

      • This relies on the assumption that the material universe exists. All we have access to is information, therefore surely all we can say for certain is that there is information out there and it seems to behave in certain ways, most of the time. We can formulate "laws" to predict the flows of information, but the deeper we look, the more those laws seem slightly off, and need to be refined.

        Moreover anything that seems inexplicable, e.g. near death experiences, synchronicity, visions etc, we dismiss as anecdotal evidence, which is another example of humans giving primacy to their mental models when the evidence doesn't fit the narrative.

        • We can only go on information we have access to. We can speculate about all sorts of things that we don't have access to but we can't verify those speculations. Anecdotal "evidence" is anecdotal.

      • If you think that only experimental knowledge is knowledge, you have a pretty narrow mindset. Not just philosophy but many other non-experimental things are knowledge. Art, literature, history… in fact most of human knowledge is not experimental. By the way, the idea that falsifiability is a mark of scientific knowledge comes by a famous philosopher, so if you think you know THAT, you are already into philosophy even if you don't know it.

25. Thanks for this. I find it very challenging, as I am trying to form my own useful pattern of belief including parapsychological phenomena, Lyell Watson’s stuff, Seth Speaks, Yuval Noah Harari’s talks on AI, reincarnation evidence, etc. I suppose the basis of this philosophy is that matter arose from consciousness, not vice versa. So your logic is a fine bracing cold bath for me. I am letting it sit there for a while without coming to any conclusions, and allowing the prospect of death to reform itself. I wonder if new developments in AI will be helpful in understanding this? I hope they will.

26. {At the risk of attracting the fatal designation, 'off topic', still…}
    Some comments from this thread can bear further scrutiny:

    "If agency is just affecting the rest of the world by what we do, then it seems to have no meaning."

    "it all doesn't mattter, it's all already determined."

    "Everything bad was always meant to be"

    This bleak worldview is based on assumed knowledge (that God does not exist). The only logical position to hold is agnosticism, i.e., 'God may or may not exist. I am in no position to know, one way or the other'.
    On this subject, Blaise Pascal came up with his famous wager:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

    To address the first comment, on agency having no meaning – the doing *is* the meaning. Eg one can *say* how terrible is the plight of the homeless, or one can *give* them cash / food, or otherwise help them.
    If someone punches you in the face, it *means* they don't like you. Etc.

    The second comment is classic, derived from Einstein's erroneous interpretation of his own theory. According to this 'block universe' picture of spacetime, the past, present and future all exist simultaneously. It totally ignores the fact that 'now' is the only part that's real.

    The third comment sounds dangerously close to the 'everything happens for a reason', so beloved of the feeble-minded. If I deliberately burn down your house, can I say in my defence that it was always meant to be?

    Our actions mean what they are, having consequences in the physical world. Modernity is a fine example of actions having real meaning. We've messed up the planet by exercising agency, meaning death for many species – possibly including Homo Stupidus. We are responsible for our actions.

    • On the third topic: meant to be? Why not? Doesn't imply reason, just physics playing out. The consequences (punishment by a social species among them) would also be "meant to be," along with your using that defense. It doesn't amount to a great deal that the unpredictable future *feels* open-ended to us. It would have to, of course.

      • Ok, everything does happen for a reason, technically (i.e. billiard-ball physics etc).
        The sense in which it's often used though is as a trite saying, e.g. to comfort someone whose dog has been run over, or whose child has been murdered etc. It absolves people of responsibility for their actions.

        It would be letting murderers etc off the hook for their crimes, if they could just say 'it was always meant to be'.
        Call me naive, but I can't accept that there's no such thing as personal responsibility (and therefore no difference between good and evil).

        • A deterministic vantage is not at all the same thing as advocating leniency to murderers. That's an unprescribed leap, conflating the underlying phenomenology with behaviors of a complex social species. For adaptive, evolutionary, selective reasons, we punish (some) behaviors that create overt negative consequences. Determinism is not a get-out-of-jail-free card because the argument goes both ways: "It was fated that I would kill your child" is met with "Then it was fated that we hand you a death sentence." Determinism has no interest in the structure of the web it shapes, but selection pressures step in to guide behaviors.

          • I accept that whatever is going on in the brain (or the organism) is physical, i.e. there is nothing happening that is outside the purview of physics.
            However, it seems to me that it can't be explained soley by the physics we have at the moment. I suspect that this missing part (of the description of the *physical* world) is what allows the organism (us) to direct its thoughts, and therefore to make decisions.
            The alternative – that everything is fated – does not square with reality. When you think about a problem or question, or make a choice about anything, of course you are aware of the various options and outcomes. You (or your brain etc) weigh these inputs up and come to some conclusion. To say it's all an illusion is (sorry if this comes across as a bit harsh) a cop out.
            If it's all fate, then there is no point in being the slightest bit concerned about environmental pollution, overpopulation, deforestation etc. or anything else – as there is nothing anyone can do about those things – or about anything at all.

            (Btw, I realise mine is a minority view on this subject here, so thanks for allowing me to express it.)

          • Claiming that the physics we know is incapable of accounting for what happens in the brain strikes me as unjustified (shortcut) speculation simply in reaction to complexity. The notable presence of a large gap does not imply that the gap is unbridgeable (in theory—even if never accomplished in practice) without new physics that has failed to show up in other matter interactions involving the same atoms.

            Determinism is not so easily ruled out. Unpredictable—except by allowing the actual full universe to run its course—is not the same as non-deterministic.

            Evolution sees to it that it is the rare individual who will allow philosophical protest over something like determinism to override the urge to respond to pressing concerns (stimuli). Not a good survival strategy. For those principled martyrs detached enough to let philosophy win, we could say it was fated to be so, but it seems unlikely to shift the aggregate response. If, in the end, humans do successfully address the big issues (i.e., if that is the path that unfolds), it will be due to actions in response to concern (over a battery of stimuli). The realized path must therefore have managed to set up the concerns that led to mitigation attempts. If this reasoning seems circular, another term for that is self-consistent. It is capable of squaring with reality.

          • (Side note: The deterministic position you hold certainly *does* completely absolve murderers, and if they have no choice, how can it be fair to inflict punishment on them?)

            If unkown physics is involved, the reason it hasn't been observed (in other interactions involving the same atoms) is that no experiments have come close to replicating the conditions that exist in nature which gives rise to it. You admit that our machines etc. are puny in comparison to what evolution has produced.

            Also, there can be no such thing as evolutionary pressure if everything is already decided in advance. All the actors (animals, plants etc) would just be robotically following a program/script. There would *be* no adapting to (scripted) environmental changes, instead only the elaborate show (for some reason) of life appearing to do this.

            There can be no actions *in response to* concern, in a universe where the script has already been written. How does a path set up concerns??

            Another logical consequence of the 'block universe' is the negation of 'now', in which case, how is it that we experience 'now' instead of some other, arbitrary moment?

    • Agnosticism may be the only reasonable view to hold. However, this is true of any view related to undetectable things. Usually, we come to a conclusion on the basis of what we're able to determine through observation and logic.

      Related to god, it seems to me that the only reasonable question is, does god interact directly in the working of the world and does its existence have any bearing on what we do? There is no evidence of the former and searching for the answer to the latter could fill books.

27. As far as I am concerned, I have had experiences in and out of meditation that I cannot reduce to tricks of the body's biochemistry. Definitely not. It may sound strange, but I say this reluctantly, not being the type to seek metaphysical comfort. It would be much more pleasant for me to think that death is the end of everything: a perspective that I find much more 'restful' than the alternative that probably awaits us. And I could always choose to leave without fear of negative consequences.
    But patience. Good luck to all, for life and what follows.

28. I have the sense that the world can be described as a flow of energy and matter, with the flow giving rise to and being shaped by information. What is information? It is a tricky question but maybe it is pattern formed by feedback loops of energy-matter, so that a whirlpool helping to drain a sink is information that feeds itself to create pattern that helps dissipate the energy gradient. Where the pattern can sustain itself you get growth. Our brains are the most complicated recursive patterns of them all. I know this isn't very helpful, but it does place my thoughts within the great wavefront of energy and matter than is forever transforming and has been flowing since the big bang.

29. I'm starting a new thread in response to James' comment at 2024/12/10 at 01:34 (so we're not too deeply nested). I usually hesitate to keep "tennis match" stalemate comments going, but get lured into thinking something might finally get resolved, in one more attempt. I may never learn.

    In this case, I think a critical disconnect might be revealed. To say that evolutionary pressure or responses cannot obtain in a deterministic universe is so tremendously far from my conception that surely it exposes the fundamental disagreement, easily addressed (so I tell myself).

    It's as if saying: if a collection of matter undergoes a deterministic path (imagine billiard balls, dropping a rock, whatever), the very idea of cause and effect is removed. If scripted in advance, there can be no reactions, responses, dynamics (evolutionary pressure), consequences, or feedback since it's already set. Wow.

    Two major pieces here. First, the script is not written. Not even the universe knows the outcome. The only way to find out is to let the entire entangled universe interact and evolve. Second, that evolution is precisely cause/effect; stimulus/response; reactions, consequences, and feedback. Even mundane physics reactions between atoms go like: "Oh—you're right there? Well, I have no choice but to feel this force and move this way in reaction. It's not "We both know what happens in a trillion years, so I don't see the point in reacting to the present reality. After all, 'now' is arbitrary, right?" The whole shebang is dynamical interaction and stimulus/response—even if dutifully following a set of rules. A poor ecological fit, as might very well arise since no one prevents it upon somehow seeing the failure in advance, will interact, feel the pressures, and fade away if not up to the challenge.

    Nothing is already decided in advance. That's working backwards. The only thing decided is: when you do this, I do that—between all particles in the universe. The adaptations/reactions *become* the script, but only in hindsight. Sure, one might say that the notion of determinism is that initial conditions then set the only path that can manifest. Okay, but so what? A probabilistic nature and sensitive dependencies (chaos), together with overwhelming complexity, completely preclude knowing that path. Object A will always react to object B. Evolutionary pressures still play out. Concerns arise (I'm hungry!) and actions/responses follow. Deterministic or not, the only way to stop the one future from unfolding would be to terminate all material interaction, which is precisely what writes the "script."

    The realization of the future must flow through a tedious progression of "nows." Even deprived of arbitrary flexibility, the only way to get there is to "live" it. The past was once the future, whose script we can now read, and say that's the one way things actually happened, consistent with the rules. But prior to its happening, no script was available. Determinism doesn't mean it's already done and known.

    Nothing has been written, but it for sure will be, and by matter faithfully following rules. What other choice does the matter have, and by what new devilry?

    I suspect this is still insufficient to produce an Aha moment. Barring progress or the revelation of new glaring sticking points that I think might finally break the deadlock, I'll be tempted to end it here. But who knows: the script isn't written yet.

    • RIght, I mistakenly thought you were advocating the (very popular) 'block universe' idea derived from some interpretations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. As I said, according to that model, everything *has* already been written.
      While the picture you've just given is less bad, it still denies the ability of lifeforms to make choices. That's where we fundamentally (and, let's face it, probably irreconcilably) disagree.
      I can even accept that no new physics is needed, and that organisms' ability to think, react and decide is produced by unknown mechanisms but using existing physics.
      I understand that, once something has happened, it was inevitable.

      The thing I can't accept, is that awareness ('sentience', 'decision making', 'consciousness' – whatever label) is an illusion. I'm not being human supremacist either – all life is conscious, in some way. Without that, there's no way for it to react to the billiard-ball physics playing out around it in the deterministic manner you describe.

      So, in the end, what I'm saying is that life, although built from the same stuff, behaves differently to inanimate matter. Is that outrageous?

      • Okay, we might actually be getting somewhere.

        A key phrase is "by unknown mechanisms." That's exactly what I'm suggesting. We do not know nearly enough to assert that new physics is needed, so it seems the sensible reaction to things we don't understand is "unknown mechanisms" rather than new fundamental interactions that have escaped detection somehow. The gap in our understanding is immense, so there's no shame in admitting we don't know how it works from end-to-end. The key is: mechanisms. Yes.

        Let's try to tackle life and reactions/choices. Consider a seed or spore. Is that life? I'd say so. It has all the fancy arrangement of matter prepared by evolution: DNA, proteins, cells, functionality. It's a phase of life. It's waiting to make a choice: when to spring into action. It is a bit like a coiled spring, in fact. It has receptors to sense the presence of favorable conditions (water, nutrients), and we can probably accept that these sensors are mechanisms. Much of molecular sensing has a mechanical basis: does the molecule in question fit into this specially-shaped pocket? The decision/choice to execute the next phase in life therefore comes down to a mechanism. I don't think any less of the spore/seed for relying completely on physics, and in fact might admire it all the more for cleverly working out how to perform complex decisions based on the physics available.

        Life is absolutely special, having utilized available physics to sense and react. No need to attribute the complex behaviors to anything more than layering of elaborations that exceed our abilities to track. Evolution had unfathomable amounts of time to work it out. Our failure to track is insufficient justification for claiming that the phenomenon of life is not based on complex mechanisms using vanilla physics.

        There is still a disconnect in your comment, though. At one point you can accept that thinking/reacting/deciding could be unknown mechanisms needing no new physics. Great. But in the next section, you cannot accept that decision-making is mechanistic, and that there would be no way to react to billiard balls without a new ingredient called consciousness. Why aren't elaborate (unknown) mechanisms sufficient to sense and react, like our spore/seed? Why a separate plane? In fact, in order to sense mechanics of billiard balls, one surely is better off doing so mechanistically, in order to connect/interact on the same playing field. Why now have a new "plane" in dualist form? To me, it's simpler to say that thinking, reacting, deciding, choosing, and sense of awareness/consciousness are all built on the same physics (nothing new, except more complexity than we can easily handle).

        Amazing? Absolutely! Humbling? You bet. Could scientists replicate in a lab from first principles, without simply copying what evolution cooked up over deep time? Not even close! Does life behave differently than a rock? Of course, and look at the VAST difference in structural complexity. It's no accident. Why even bother with the material complexity if it were not necessary to bring about the complex behavior (choice) by mechanistic means?

        • At the smallest scales, we know quantum effects apply. They are not deterministic, and have an element of unpredictability etc.
          Life may have exploited quantum-level processes in order to gain the ability to make choices, react and think.
          Such micro-events might be amplified in the organism (still all just matter), by its physical complexity, allowing it to direct its actions (or thoughts) in a way that would not be possible using only billiard-ball physics.
          After all, quantum mechanics is a part of Nature. It would be strange if life didn't make use of it.
          So yes, I'm saying decision-making is *not* mechanistic, if it's based on quantum, i.e. non-deterministic physics.

          • I see. It is helpful for you to clarify (admit?) that you can't conceive of decisions being made by mechanisms. Maybe plenty of things in the universe—especially those that took billions of years to hone—are going to turn out to be hard for us to conceive.

            For sure, quantum effects are ubiquitous and throw in even more unpredictability than just incalculable complexity. I sometimes take pains to say quasi-determinism and explain that the "quasi" covers quantum probabilities. But I've gotten lazy and just use determinism—the sort of determinism that renders the future unpredictable and incalculable. The world does not appear to be deterministic in a naive sense of predictable Newtonian clockwork: that's been accepted for quite some time. Note the M in Quantum Mechanics: another mechanism of nature that obeys strict rules so that outcomes are 100% constrained and repeatable within the probable possibilities. It's a complicated mechanism, but still a mechanism. But QM is just another wrinkle of nature, beyond control. You seem to imply that somehow living things can steer the probabilities. That seems not only "outside" physics, but unnecessary.

            Does the spore/seed deciding to spring into action need to manipulate quantum probabilities in order to sense and react to conditions? Is it all decisions or just the harder ones? I can buy that living organisms make use of QM, but have a much harder time supporting the idea that it can alter the rules that we have never seen violated—and suspect it doesn't need to. Can we imagine amoebas (no brains) deciding to move in response to detected gradients in nutrients, moisture, heat, etc. (one side different than the other) using plain physics? Deciding not to step off a cliff seems possible via processing visual input without resorting to new physics. At least, it's a highly dubious assertion.

            It seems you are not satisfied that life must sink to the level of grubby mechanics, and somehow needs to be elevated to explain its amazingness and specialness (qualities that I also attribute to life).

            But isn't it all the more "miraculous" if life manages to utilize physics as it is? I mean, why sell it short (diminish or demean it) by giving life a "magic" get-out-of-jail-free card (to override ordinary physics) for the simple reason that it's hard to conceive the complexity of the mechanics involved? That's what I see as a cop out: a reassuring shortcut to skip over the hard part.

          • Indeed, plenty of things in the universe, honed over billions of yesrs are going to turn out to be hard for us to conceive – and that includes the idea that life can direct its actions in a non-deterministic way, i.e. it can choose.
            All of physics is involved. The spore you mention might 'mechanistically' lie inert until the right molecules trigger its receptors or whatever, and quantum effects might begin later in the plant's development. Idk.
            The brain and body are the same stuff – an amoeba having no brain is still alive. It still *feels* (consciousness).
            As for deciding not to step off a cliff by processing visual input, how do you account for someone deciding *to* step of the cliff?

            I'm not trying to elevate anything, merely to explain how things *might* work. No "magic" is involved in quantum or Newtonian physics. There is no override. You just have a problem with the simple idea that organisms (yes, with the caveat of environmental inputs etc) have the ability to choose – despite the evidence all around us, everywhere.

30. The back-and forth between me and James reached the nest depth limit again, so popping out into the main. Normally I do not perpetuate long exchanges, but A) this is the end of an otherwise nearly spent post (comments automatically shut off after 10 days); B) I suspect others are interested spectators, given the meat of the matter.

    Points of agreement from above: 1) complexity in the universe can easily overwhelm our capacity; 2) "idk" (seldom wrong for any of us to say we don't know); 3) brain and body the same—this approaches my "meat brain" mantra: no special status; it's all amazing, and all matter using all of physics. 4) Amoebas without brains still sense and react similarly to more complex lifeforms, sharing much more in common than many think (lots of genetic overlap, too). Amoebas can also learn and pass on learning to those it contacts (merges with). Life is indeed a special arrangement of matter that can perform feats very much unlike other (much less structured) arrangements.

    My main point is that we need not get fancy or invent new physics to account for the amazing result we witness. We don't know that we need new special sauce, so why complicate matters? Despite the accusation, I have no problem AT ALL with the idea that organisms make choices that are obvious by observation. I just don't define choice as exceeding known physics. Choice is accepting (many) inputs through senses, weighing the pros and cons, and reacting in a way that is the "best guess" as to the best outcome. The decision mechanism has been honed by evolution/selection to be decent, on average. Nowhere in this impressive chain is a call to exceed known physics. It's obvious we make choices and execute decisions that are not predictable. We don't know for sure if an organism will do A, B, C, D, E, etc. but are pretty sure that time won't stop and that *something* must happen.

    Looping back to determinism, what I am proposing is that this entire, elaborate mechanism—involving all of physics—has no override to interrupt the mechanisms of physics, and thus follows the only path physics sets out, given the interactively-evolving "initial" conditions (with quantum probabilities adding spice/variation, but uncontrollably so). It has every appearance of unpredictable choice, and indeed the task of carefully weighing inputs/stimuli *is* carried out in the organism, impressively. Letting physics play out is not the same thing as saying the organism isn't an active participant in shaping outcomes. The amazingness is in the selected structures that nudge toward decisions that have adaptive advantage and seem to "come out of nowhere."

    I'm just trying to keep things to the simplest form, free of unsupported elaborations and elevations. If plain physics *can* do it—and it's not clearly incapable—then why not make peace with that? Why not adopt the simplest, humblest, and in some ways most mysterious version rather than sweeping complexity under the rug and saying it must require new rules since we can't make out the complexity?

31. Ok, I agree, no new physics is needed.
    However, I still think agency (in all life) is at least partly non-deterministic, due to the exploitation of quantum effects, perhaps being magnified to allow the organism to make choices at the macro level. No new rules or magic required.
    No dualism, either (brain and body are made of the same material).

    • Okay—whew! So, to clarify, is your position that determinism (straight physics playing out on matter) is observationally inconsistent with behaviors (i.e., the net effect we observe can't possibly trace to standard physics playing the only way it can without intervention), or is it more about preference (find the idea distasteful, or it sure doesn't feel that way)? If you're saying it can't be deterministic, then I'd call that new physics (need some new twist other than complex arrangements and clever exploitation of what's there), and wonder how we can possibly know it doesn't work: what observations can't be accounted, in principle? You're accepting that new physics may not be necessary, but have a persistent aversion to the idea that regular physics is flowing the only way it can, following inviolate rules. I can't locate the consistency.

      • I truly don't know. No one can know for certain how life works. It's just intuition on my part really (but – intuition is no proof).
        At the quantum level, things aren't deterministic are they? So wouldn't it be possible for life to exploit this non-deterministic quality in some way? Its very complexity means we wouldn't know how it does it.
        Why do you rule out non-determinacy for aspects of life's behaviour? Is it because life is macroscopic, where quantum effects are not allowed (or rather, almost infinitely unlikely)?

        Others (notably Penrose and Hameroff) have speculated about how quantum states might be maintained at the macro level by life, though they received a lot of criticism.
        Maybe I should have read more about it before this discussion lol.

        • Right: we don't know, and can't bank on intuitions being correct. My own preference is elegance out of simplicity: a minimal set of fundamental flourishes, and all participants in the universe operating on the same basis.

          Quantum disrupts the most simplistic version of clockwork determinism. It adds probabilistic flare, but still obeying rigid rules defining possible outcomes (obeying conservation, symmetry). Any mechanism to "hack" or control those probabilities would be new physics. To me, the big question is: why conjure such a feat? Is it actually necessary to explain what we observe? Not as far as we know, so let's keep it simple and consistent with the rest of the universe, as it expresses itself in experiment and observation.

          Determinism as I view it is wholly unpredictable (quantum playing a part of that), but basically just an exceedingly complex web of inextricably coupled interactions following inviolate rules. In principle (but FAR from it in practice), precise initial conditions would allow one to compute the evolution, or at least an expanding family of possibilities folding in all the probabilistic outcomes. It's still inaccessible in terms of intervening or overriding. Life is along for the ride, in a deeply engaged way, having figured out how to utilize interactions (in fact, robust against, or largely insensitive to quantum indeterminancy as the unpredictability hampers basic function) in such a way as to facilitate selective, adaptive survival. An awesome trick, but more one of riding the wave than being in control of the wave.

          • As to the big question 'why?', maybe it's necessary for life itself.
            Or not. I doubt I'll ever know.
            Science never tires of asking questions. Scientists (like Penrose & co.) feel the need to discover and explain. I guess it's a trait of humans, curiosity. Maybe a bad one, in the end.

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