By elevating human experience above the remainder of the universe, dualist beliefs can impede efforts to move past modernity—which I believe must end whether we wish it or not. Therefore, it seems important enough to devote some time to the matter. The first question one might ask is: “Am I a dualist?” A crude test involves answering the following questions:
- Is matter real (not a creation of mind), obeying physics independent of consciousness?
- Is mind/consciousness its own phenomenon, not a product of known matter and physics?
Here’s how I would label the results: Y/N is materialist (like me: mind is matter); N/Y is idealist (mind is everything); Y/Y is dualist (mind and matter separately real), and N/N is too bizarre for me to confront. “Maybe” answers are okay, too, but perhaps this series will result in greater clarity.
The topic of dualism is too important and too stealthily integrated into modern worldviews to be handled in a post of ordinary length. Maybe a book would be better, but I’m going to be lazy and parcel it out as a series of posts. I recognize that what I am attempting is very tricky, and probably insufficient to persuade anybody—we do get set in our beliefs (although I was once a default dualist, and still squirm at some of the implications of abandoning this comfortable, safe, and culturally reinforced position). All the same, I will try to anticipate failure modes and navigate around them before they seize the reader.
The larger effort here benefits from first establishing a starting position before even getting to the main topic of dualism. I hope it helps build a coherent framework, perhaps establishing deep resonance, connection, and trust before trying to extract the toxins. Of course, I may lose some people even in trying to establish a foundation, but I find I’m most interested in building something among those who start off with admiration for the universe we are lucky enough to inhabit. The others may be beyond reach.
The motivation for starting with an exaltation to the living world is mainly that I will ultimately be making the case that we find ourselves in a material universe, and that the only non-dualistic way to take this seriously is to have microbes, fungi, plants, and animals (including humans, of course) be entirely material beings. For many, this elicits distaste over the notion that humans and animals are “just machines,” and thus don’t deserve any more regard than a calculator. This hasty conclusion misses something enormous, and I thought it important to begin by expressing complete admiration for Life (which I even tend to capitalize, mimicking the convention for God). If being “only” material would seem to make a living being worthless, I hope by the end of the series the reader will understand this to be a failure of scope and not at all a necessary conclusion.
Exaltation Inoculation
We start with a full-throated expression of awe and wonder for the world we inhabit. This is important grounding for what follows, since a key part of what preserves dualism is a misunderstanding or fear of the implications of strict materialism. Such objections are manufactured to fill the void that removing “the toxin” creates, which is where it can quickly go wrong. So, the goal here is to pre-load what the view becomes (or remains) after the procedure is complete. If, in future installments, it seems that the implications run counter to what is presented here, just know that they are indeed fully compatible, and that reactions to the contrary might not have all the pieces in place, yet. In other words, don’t rush to judgment until the operation is complete. At that point, it should be possible to return to this post and make connections that otherwise might seem at odds with the intermediate stages.
The Universe
What a universe, huh? On cosmic scales, it’s got stars, galaxies, dust clouds, stellar nurseries (nebulae), dense star clusters, neutron stars, black holes, cosmic voids, filaments of galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and loads more in the menagerie. An untold number of PhD dissertations—including my own—can concentrate on any one of these entities.
At the small end, the universe is full of photons (light), neutrinos that sail through Earth as if it isn’t there, quarks bound in nuclei, electrons gluing atoms together, and a smattering of more exotic actors that continually enter and exit the stage unannounced. But the previous sentence perpetrates a huge misunderstanding by focusing on the nouns: the particles. The truly astounding bit is the set of interactions: the relationships. That’s what you’ll find dominating the pages of physics books: all the crazy, complicated actions these actors get up to when allowed to ad-lib. Just like improvisational actors who are encouraged to create a cooperative flow by following the rule of “yes, and” (rather than “no, but”), the rules of physics are simple enough to express, yet quickly turn into jaw-dropping, brain-busting behaviors that defy our ability to fully track, describe, or predict. That said, persistent effort is often able to decode key features of the dance, and no known exceptions operate outside of the minimal set of rules.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, here. For the purposes of this introduction, I simply intend to express wonderment at the stage upon which our lives are set. It’s not an impoverished, sterile backdrop of “dead” matter, but a richly tangled and diverse cast of grabby actors and complex phenomenologies that are worthy of marvel. Just because rainbows are understood as light refracting, reflecting, and dispersing in spherical droplets acting like prisms does not make them any less beautiful to behold (for some, such knowledge can enhance appreciation and awe). What luck that our universe allows a seemingly infinite number of such amazing spectacles!
We don’t understand why there even is a universe, and never will—except in story. Why there is something rather than nothing is not answerable by science. So what? It is the way it is—not at all concerned with how we might wish it to be arranged. Likewise, we don’t understand why the particles are what they are (why they have the masses, charges, and spins they do), or why the interactions behave as they do (why the fundamental forces are as they are, and have the strengths they do), or why the expansion of the universe is accelerating (cosmological constant; dark energy). That’s just what’s being served. Sometimes physics research does manage to make deep connections that link previously-disconnected pieces together, like electricity and magnetism (electromagnetism), space and time (spacetime), electromagnetism and weak nuclear force (electro-weak), and other revolutions that stick words together (see: physics isn’t hard!). But we have no basis to expect every property to be explained: sometimes things just are as they are.
In any case, we can count ourselves lucky because it would not take much variation in relative strengths of gravity vs. electromagnetism, nuclear vs. electromagnetic strength, mass ratio between protons and electrons, or strength of the cosmological constant to utterly wreck our universe’s ability to even make stable atoms, create chemistry, have stars or galaxies, or either blow itself apart too rapidly to form lumps of matter or collapse violently soon after formation. We appear to enjoy a Goldilocks scenario, on so many fronts at once!
Now, this is easily chalked up to a selection effect—especially in the context of multiple instances of universes (multiverse). And why wouldn’t there be more? Anyone’s distaste for the idea is not powerful enough to prevent occurrence, and if one universe can be made, others (forever causally disconnected from our own) are welcome to exist. Anyway, we simply could not have found ourselves (as we are) in a universe without chemistry, without stars, without billions of years of relative stability to cook up complex organisms through evolution.
The point is that we inhabit a fabulous universe that we did absolutely nothing to create, and are lucky for it. I suppose if you’ve ever felt awe when looking at a dark sky full of stars, I need say no more.
The Sun
None of us could exist without the sun, so let’s take a moment to appreciate its existence and qualities. The sun is mostly made of primordial hydrogen and helium, created in the Big Bang. Gravity pulls this material together in an effort that would crush it if carried to an extreme, but because the sun has enough mass (12 times more than the threshold limit, in fact), the internal temperature from this crushing influence is just enough to barely trip fusion of hydrogen into helium, releasing about 10-million times more energy per mass (calories per gram, for instance) than the chemical energy in your food. This energy manifests in the form of light (photons) trying to push out through the plasma (charged electron/proton gas)—a process that can take a million years as photons pinball around the plasma. The slowly-escaping photons exert an outward pressure balancing the gravitational pressure to achieve stability. Negative feedback establishes an equilibrium: too much light (fusion) expands the star, lowering temperature and thus fusion and thus light until it shrinks again; too little light would cause additional contraction, thus increased temperature and fusion and light until it re-balances. It’s a great trick that we don’t need to worry about.
The sun is powerful enough to deposit copious energy on Earth, but not temperamental in terms of flares and hiccups. Not all stars enjoy the stability that our sun exhibits. The sun deposits enough energy on Earth to maintain water in a liquid state, but not enough to evaporate oceans (a Venus scenario). This also derives from proximity, of course, in addition to intrinsic solar properties, but I’ll keep it in the “sun” column for the purposes of this post.
Again, many of these attributes are selection effects: humans could not exist—as we find ourselves—around other stellar types or at the wrong distances. It’s no less special for having happened, though. We’re lucky!
The Earth and the Moon
This is a huge one, of course. Our type of life could not exist on a gas giant, and it’s not clear any complex organisms could emerge in such places. Regardless, we—as we are—need a rocky body with sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere for us to breathe. We could not survive on other known bodies: certainly not as naked apes, but probably not for any long duration (even a single human lifetime) using techno-tricks. None of the thousands of planets discovered outside the solar system are habitable (much of which is itself a selection effect on what we’re sensitive enough to observe, but not entirely so).
Anyway, Earth has—for us—the perfect gravity, perfect atmosphere, perfect temperature (on average), and perfect ecology. Yet again, this is almost entirely selection effect, in that we are perfectly adapted to the planet as it has been for the past few million years—climate cycles and all.
The moon’s presence is important as a stabilizer of Earth’s orientation, providing a regularity that favors evolution of complex life. Yes: we need the moon, too.
Life!
As if all that weren’t enough, what really takes the cake is Life. We can’t know how rare or ubiquitous self-replicating ability might be in the universe, but we also can’t easily conceive billion-year timescales over which molecules might bump together in novel and fascinating ways. All it takes is one lucky hit and then the capability is locked in like a ratchet, at which point selective influences kick in to shape fitness.
Amazing as that step is, what happens from there is truly remarkable. Patient—but effectively blind—experimentation operating in feedback quickly acts to favor advantages and disfavor disadvantages. It’s a simple concept that can’t be prevented from operating. Lifeforms cleverly utilize the materials and physics and chemistry available to them in novel ways, then propagate those capabilities to their descendants. Some of the solutions to life’s hardest problems are beyond genius—in that our human geniuses can’t even come close to touching it in terms of effective creativity.
Our many impressive abilities—metabolizing; building cell walls; contracting muscle cells; sensing light and chemicals; replicating cells and ourselves—all were developed by single-cell organisms and copied down the line, used by every one of us every second of every day, billions of times over.
Let’s pause from the usual self-congratulation at our cognitive prowess and acknowledge that humans would not be possible without billions of years of heritage, and that the things we’ve built by pushing matter around absolutely pale in comparison to even a “simple” amoeba. I’m guessing that almost anything we believe we invented, Life did first in some way, and did better (in that Life’s inventions are self-replicating, self-healing, 100% recycling, ecologically integrated).
I’ll just point out that it is perfectly possible for a strict materialist to be tremendously fond of and respectful toward all life. Every microbe, plant, and animal is a genius—performing tasks we haven’t the foggiest clue how to contrive. I adore the newts that slowly tromp around my local area, and do all that I can to protect them from undue harm.
Ecology
Life is not a collection of isolated feats of evolution, but a tangled set of interacting, inter-related entities in constant relationship. The situation is not as crisp as we are tempted to make out in our heads. A bunch of largely-overlapping genetic code is distributed across dynamic and often-overlapping groupings we compulsively delineate as species, all evolving in perpetual entanglement with others and with the ever-changing “inanimate” world. Evolution is always co-evolution: never in isolation. It’s not a competition establishing victors over the vanquished: it’s not survival of the fittest, but survival of the best-fitting in an ecological context. Relationship matters.
Two ways to appreciate the non-competitive overall view: 1) biodiversity tends to increase over time (between catastrophes), rather than whittle down in single-elimination competition; 2) a barren new volcanic island in the ocean builds enormous ecological wealth rather than early victors eating it away in competition.
Ecology refers to the myriad relationships binding a Community of Life together. We will never know the full story, and in fact as members of modernity are individually more ignorant than in times past when it comes to ecological relationships. But we can begin to recover our place by living in awe of the uncountable dependencies that have emerged over deep time.
Experience
All that we can know as individuals involves our experience, and that experience is marvelous—or can be, anyway. A toasty blanket on a crisp night; the silence and beauty of a fresh snow; a cobalt-blue sky; the refreshment of a summer plunge; the taste of our favorite food; the aroma of spring flowers; the babbling of a brook—these and many more form unique sensations that we can relish.
Of course, we also experience pain, grief, and unpleasant sensations. But they always have their place, and we might at least appreciate that we can feel in these ways. After all, can we truly know joy without sorrow to provide contrast?
As hard as it is to know the experiences of a person of the same species (is my red the same as your red?…certainly not if one is colorblind), it becomes nearly impossible to relate to experiences of other beings.
A common tendency has been to deny that other beings have analogous experiences/feelings at all, which seems utterly ridiculous—especially in light of a continuous evolutionary heritage. I would be foolish (and lack the authority) to put it past an amoeba to have a thoroughly happy “vibe” when coming across an abundant delicacy, or a cell-pervading sensation of panic and fright that prompts flight from danger. Something tells the amoeba what to do, and at some level it must be represented as reaction to conditions—as in a valanced assessment of “good” or “bad” situations (because responses to each differ dramatically: it has no difficulty differentiating). Sure, an amoeba’s way of experiencing will not be like our way, but that doesn’t mean it’s not experience, or that it lacks meaning to the amoeba.
Modern humans are talented at claiming a monopoly on any superlative or “higher” function, like love, humor, compassion, empathy, altruism, and the like. Given lack of access to the experience of others, such assertions have no possible evidential basis. If not encumbered by a supremacist lens, experiments can easily show or at least make ample room for these traits in other species. It would be rather bizarre if these states are somehow mysteriously absent from the entire evolutionary tree, when every other sense and capability is shared and often exceeded in the living world (plus others we simply do not possess at all). This is not to say that an amoeba has equivalent experiences, or analogs to all these feelings, but it seems a reasonable starting point to assume some version—however alien— exists in many or most forms of life (plants and fungi included), rather than the unjustified starting point that only humans experience them. Though we tend to stress and amplify differences, similarities abound.
Mystery and Other Ways of Knowing
Post-Enlightenment scientific discoveries notwithstanding, it seems safe to assume that mysteries will always remain. As hinted above, science is not capable of answering all questions. An amoeba knows how to do things that we haven’t caught up to yet, intellectually. We’re always learning, and there are clearly other ways of knowing. The Community of Life is chock-full of other ways of knowing: pieces of knowledge that we not only don’t know ourselves, but don’t even recognize as missing (or classify as knowledge, by our narrow and self-centered definition in the neural domain).
Starting most simply, an electron knows how to behave in reaction to its surroundings instantly and perfectly—even in intractably complex arrangements that would defy our best supercomputers to get right. Stars knew how to perform fusion well before we figured it out—and still beat the pants off our flailing experimental attempts. A spore or seed knows when conditions are favorable to open for business, even if we don’t. An amoeba knows which way to go for food. A hummingbird knows how to weave a strong nest out of spider webs and moss and feathers and mud and lichen and spit in ways that we would fail to replicate if we tried. Most of these ways of knowing are alien to us. That doesn’t make them any less real or amazing.
Lucky Us!
I’ll close this introductory segment with acknowledgement that we’re awfully (awe-fully?) lucky to be a part of this grand show. Equivalently, one might appeal to a selection effect: the fact that we’re here means that all the dice had to fall favorably to allow it to happen. Either way, the appropriate reaction is humility and gratitude.
Why did I start this way in a series on dualism? I want to make it clear that I am smitten by the richness of the lives we get to experience. What follows can strike some as depriving life of the qualities I and others cherish—and that are clearly present no matter how we account for them. It is important to start this process recognizing that all these marvelous attributes of the universe as we find it are still awe-inspiring even from a different starting point. In fact, my own experience is that it all becomes rather more incalculably stupendous as a result of shifting away from a dualist perspective.
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Tom – great post, as usual! Two things :
1) You say : "We don’t understand why there even is a universe, and never will—except in story."… How can you be so confident that we "never will" understand why there is a universe. "never" is a very absolute term. Note, that I think you are correct – but shouldn't some of the humility you mention come into play? Maybe saying "We almost certainly will never know why there is a universe."… is better? Or if you are that confident we will never answer this question – can you explain why?
2) This is my recurring pitch that you should take your assertion that "modernity will end – whether we want it to or not" on a "mainstream" podcast or TV news show! Your argument – although it will be perceived as "pessimistic" amongst the average American – is *really* important – because I believe it is the *correct* one – and one that *is not* being openly discussed more! I think you going on Joe Rogan would be great. I am not a huge fan of Rogan – but he is really widely followed – and does have all kinds of different guests on. Or, pick one from the list here : https://podcastcharts.byspotify.com/ … Or – (and this isn't as good – because it's not as amenable to a long form discussion)… take your assertion on a mainstream TV news show. Unfortunately… in America… that's mostly Fox News (barf)… but maybe you could fine a good one on CNN? Jake Tapper? 60 Minutes? You are continuously updating this blog… why? You must feel like you have something important to say. So… why not say it where it will reach a bigger audience? Unfortunately… I think your message will not be well received by the average American… but you should still put it out there… because I think your message is the *correct* one. Thank you!
On the first point: A) I usually hedge statements in exactly the way you suggest, but sometimes forget; B) even if I say and mean "never" doesn't mean I'm right. In this case, I believe a six-year-old can always ask "why" until no answers avail. So, if someone said: the reason there's a universe is because quantum fluctuations in hyperspace spawn inflationary bubbles, some of which have enough matter/antimatter asymmetry (and other properties) to spawn a universe like ours—we can ask why there's a hyperspace to begin with, or why quantum fluctuations exist, or why inflation operates, or why there even is matter/antimatter. Our mental models (and especially even more highly constrained language) can probably never "get outside" the universe to offer any definitive answer a six-year-old couldn't tear to pieces. I could be wrong, of course.
On the second point, I couldn't find the button to make any of that happen. Lots of reasons why it's unlikely (though not impossible).
Tom
I really appreciate your responses!
1) Your response makes sense to me – fair enough!
2) I don't know how you get on one of those podcasts… in most cases it seems like someone has to already be some kind of "known entity" (like a comedian, actor/actress, politician, famous business person, etc, etc)… but in other cases… maybe just reach out to the show yourself? (email/phone call) … and say you want to go on and have the topic be something along the lines of how you have reasonably deduced that : "humanity's modern lifestyles powered by heavy energy usage and non-renewable supplies must at some point fade away (because we are burning through those non-renewable resources…) and we should be more openly discussing this eventuality and what we may want the "other side" of that to look like?" If you need some help… I'd volunteer to make cold calls/emails to get you on somewhere! (really though… just let me know… and I'd try at least haha…) Thanks for your voice of sanity in a sea of over-hyped unrealistic techno-optimism!
I’m really looking forward to this, Tom. I myself am now pretty comfortable with the “materialism” version of events, as long as I am careful to keep reinforcing the interaction aspect of it all, as well as the inseparable interconnectedness of everything (which demolishes the fear that materialism “reduces” everything to “mere machines”, or a dead heap of small billiard balls). Physical reductionism (terrible name) actually corresponds to an amazingly expansive view of things when you take into account the fact that the collection of particles that the universe is “reduced” to always remain inseparably interconnected, as described by the laws of physics (“expansive reductionism”?).
I like the acknowledgment of the limits of science, while at the same time stressing our limits as humans (some want the former and not the latter). Speculation is fine, but not when it seeks to override the reality of the universe we exist in.
I’m going to kind of play the devil’s advocate here and say how I think a panpsychist (dual-aspect monist) might respond to your two key questions. First of all, they would likely split the first question into three and answer as follows:
Is matter real? Y
Does it obey the laws of physics? Y
Is it independent of consciousness (or some sort of “mental” aspect)? N. A panpsychist will not necessarily argue that an electron has full blown consciousness (“what will I do today?”), but that it has some sort of “mental” aspect that encompasses agency and self-awareness. A materialist might respond that agency is nothing more than the electron doing its things of buzzing around according to the laws of physics, and that the electron is only “aware” in the sense that it responds to what’s around it (the whole universe) according to the laws of physics. Now here is where I think we get to the crux of it: the “self” bit in “self-awareness”. A panpsychists wants the electron to be imbued with the same sense of being an individual that we carry… a feeling of “what it is like” to be an electron that has some degree of secrecy or privacy or separation from the rest of the universe (and this, I fear, may just be dualism lurking deep down). But an electron doesn’t possess this separateness (or need not)… and neither do we, ultimately. Every thought we have “leaks out” into the universe in some way. We are not closed systems.
A panpsychist might also split the second question up:
Is mind/consciousness its own phenomenon? Y (kind of). It’s different from the physical aspect of matter, but it never occurs separate from the physical aspect of matter.
Is mind/consciousness NOT a product of known matter and physics? N (sort of). It is kind of a product of known matter and physics in that any “mental structure” (e.g. mind) only exists by virtue of the corresponding (and inseparable) physical structure (brain) that been built up according to the laws of physics, but it is not (completely) captured by a description of the physical structure.
If mind/consciousness is a “product” of matter that has no mental aspect to begin with, a panpsychist might object “but that implies there was a point at which the mental did appear in the history of the universe. When?When life appeared? When humans appeared?! So we think humans are special! This is sounding like dualism in disguise!”
I would respond that the starting point for the “mental” was actually when matter first came into existence, because, indeed, you can’t have the mental without particles and their interactions. In the same way, I would say that life started at the start of the universe. But this doesn’t imply that particles have an “inner mental aspect” or that there is a “life force”, at least not beyond what is already captured by the laws of physics.
Panpsychism may be viewed, uncharitably, as just another case of human minds revering themselves/consciousness too much, but in some ways it might be seen as a positive effort to make us all a bit more humble, in that it at least grants the “mental” to literally everything in the universe, not just humans. Its key message is/can be/should be the same as materialism: we are entirely made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe and need to act as as a well-integrated part of the whole. I feel that it at least gestures in the right direction, even if it is ultimately wrong/“wrong”… but I could be wrong 🙂 It’s only one step away from saying that the universe I has or is a mind (which forms of it do claim), and from there, full-blown idealism. It’s a tightrope to walk…better to stay on the ground (materialism) I guess?
I respect that panpsychism is thoughtful enough to extend dualism to every level (including elementary particles): an improvement over Descartes. I can imagine a panpsychist vehemently rejecting the dualist label, but when it comes to it, the insistence is that some other (inherently dual/separate) quality exists alongside those measured by physics experiment that collectively "builds" "mind" by rules that lack a real or testable theory. It's an appealing shortcut to bypass unimaginable complexity. I agree that panpsychism respects physics (to the point of desiring an analog of elementary consciousness-aspect to particles), so it's not idealism. But it still insists (without authority) that our experience of consciousness can't be built out of normal physics: thus the need for some dual companion.
I get ahead of myself here, though, so let's hold off further discussion on this substantive until the post content catches up.
Perhaps a rather perfect post for Thanksgiving, I'm thinking. Exaltation indeed!
Count me as a staunch materialist because I believe that there is ample evidence to support this view, that is, consciousness appears fully absent in a dead brain and can be seriously modified by LSD or transorbital lobotomy. While I can think of no good evidence to support a transcendental dualist view.
When I ponder why people go in for dualism, I suspect that it serves once again as a psychological balm for death anxiety. (Some) People wish to survive their death, and if religious beliefs about eternal afterlife seem too silly a prospect, perhaps a perspective of non-material consciousness provides an alternative path to immortality. The physical brain dies but the non-material consciousness lives on in some ethereal corner of the cosmos.
Perhaps Freddy Krueger movies, Stephen King books, and the like, as well as religious concepts such as heaven, hell, and purgatory have instilled in westerners (especially) an immature perspective of something so common and necessary. Isn't death ultimately an evolutionary strategy that accelerates the velocity of evolution, and thus leads to greater speciation and diversity? – I doubt that we could be here without it. And isn't death a very important negative feedback that (ideally) balances the positive feedback of births so as to prevent runaway population growth and corresponding ecological overshoot and collapse? – From this perspective, death is not merely the cost of living, but is in service to Life. – So if it isn't downright good, it at least is not all that bad. Or am I wrong?
Would living forever really be all that great? What if someone's transcendental consciousness got stuck inside a whirling black hole for a few billion years? In any case, I for one am glad to not have to worry about eternal hellfire or eternal boredom. Three cheers for meat-brains! 🎉
I don't get treating an electron's interactions with its surroundings as a way of knowing. An electron can't act in any other way. It didn't evolve its actions, it didn't slowly accumulate the knowledge of how to act. It is simply acting in a way that we codify as the rules of physics. You wrote that "sometimes things just are as they are." This is one of those times. In fact, I can't think of any time that things are as they are not.
There is a lot to say about this post but too much for a comment. I might set up my own post to do that.
I'm just trying to expand "knowing" to unfamiliar contexts, while not claiming it's a type of knowing we practice (part of why it's one of may "other" ways—although in some sense it's the same way but FAR less elaborate). I use this framing in the sense that an electron knows how to move: it's never confused or disobedient—always responding to the physical environment according to the rules. The universe somehow "knows" its rule set, but where is that knowledge stored? It isn't ludicrous to say that the particles hold some of that knowledge (thus know how to respond), in a way that's hard to pin down in familiar terms.
The parallel question becomes: can a spore that opens for business under certain conditions act in any other way, or is it just following codified rules? Can a hungry amoeba following a food gradient act in any other way (and still be an evolutionary success)? Life examples get hella complex, but the electron is at the ground floor and follows all the same rules that more elaborate arrangements do. To impose an ontological gap flits right back into dualism—but again I'm getting ahead of myself and ask that we pick this back up later in the series.
One of the few physicists that offers up really out-there ideas that I have any time for is Lee Smolin. His two big assertions are that time is fundamental, and that when a quantum measurement is performed, the outcome is not determined by a pre-existing law but instead randomly selected from the set of all previous outcomes from similar “experiments” (the “Principle of Precedence” ). He then argues that this ultimately implies that the universe’s history (which he suggests stretches way back further than the Big Bang) includes the evolution of its own physical laws. Thus, current matter and its properties MAY not simply be a case of “they just are”, but perhaps the end result (so far) of a process. For us humans and our science, though, it may be forever impossible to establish whether ideas like Smolin’s hold any weight, so saying that matter and the laws of physics “just are” are likely what WE have to settle for. I defer to the sentiments Tom expressed in his response to Michael Black above. “But why the Principle of Precedence?” etc.
I still enjoy reading Smolin’s stuff though 🙂 He might argue that the universe/an electron actually did “evolve its action” and that it did “slowly accumulate the knowledge of how to act”. He has even reached the stage of asking whether the universe is essentially an autodidactic process. But, yes, he is just one human with “crazy ideas”… There are lots of them!
I agree with Smolin that time is fundamental. In Time Reborn (great book btw) he rejects the 'block universe' of Einstein & co., arguing that only *now* exists (in the 'block' model, past, present and future all exist together).
If only the present exists then time travel is necessarily impossible (even more impossible than space colonisation).
I share the materialist interpretation.
The only thing I would like to add (maybe the answer will come later) is how to preserve this knowledge in a simple form, in an understandable form, because after 500 worthless years of “modernity” there is unlikely to be anything essential left. I mean, why would anyone need to know about the electron or the weak interaction? Why is it needed (in 500-1000 years)? Helium and hydrogen in the Sun? Will they be able to preserve the explanation? If not? This is how religions, histories and myths are created, which can carry false meaning. This is how knowledge, landmarks and “correctness” are lost. At some point, "someone" will notice the "advantages" of humans in manipulating the environment and knowledge (deception, cunning) and try to build a "wood and stone" civilization again…
Maybe we should just focus on the "human" (in the sense of experience)?
Yes, this straw in the water looks shorter, that's how I see it, but in reality it's long.
If I take a long stick and put it on a stone, I can move the other one myself, with a short stick it won't work (it will work worse). I don't know what it is (a rainbow), but it's beautiful, magical, etc. Things are drawn to the ground. Water looks for the easiest way.
In essence – "Something happens this way, because it happens that way."
Tom, you seem to have written a textbook with the most detailed argumentation of the fallacy of dualism (if you summarize all the relevant articles and essays). Only those who lack knowledge, or stubborn arrogance, or cognitive dissonance, reject this. The desire for everything to be this way, and not otherwise. Using incomplete knowledge (not exhaustive knowledge) about our universe allows such people to find a blank space, to point a finger in a fit of rage: “Here is the mind, the soul, God, ghosts, Lemurians, leprechauns, infinite growth, levitation and time travel” (with a meme in the style of the hero Leonardo DiCaprio).
I think that the author who is the first to describe a worldview in the explanation of experience or the “human lens” with detailed explanations will make a lot of money in our necrocapitalist world (will take on the role of an applied ultra-realist in the style of indigenous peoples). Or create a religion on this basis. I don't know, I haven't dealt with this idea.
That's all, nothing to add (comment) yet.
Thanks!
One could equally say by elevating utility ('progress' through science) above all other considerations, materialist beliefs can impede efforts to move past modernity.
I am not a dualist (as mind and body are inseparable) or a materialist.
Putting the word 'inanimate' in quotes implies there's no difference between life and non-life. Immediately after an organism dies, its structure and material composition have not changed – yet we recognise the difference.
I say "I don't know the answer(s)" to metaphysical questions. Some say, with certainty, "God exists". Some say, with equal certainty, "Everything is soley particles and their interactions".
Is there a 'Life force'? 'God'? 'Spirits'? Who knows. Such things, if they exist, cannot be utilised in the way the material world has been (with disastrous consequences over recent millennia). Not everything fits into the categories of science. Maybe those things are not for us to know. But because the scientist can't see how they can be, because they are immune from analysis (and elude the left hemisphere's grasp), he loudly insists upon their non-existence.
So, you *were* a dualist. That explains why you write so often about dualism, in the same way that religious converts are always the most fanatical.
Why the need for certainty? Why does it matter?
I understand why agnosticism (literally "not knowing") is so unpopular. (Perhaps for evolutionary reasons) people, materialist or religionist, crave certainty – where in reality there can be none.
Unimaginable complexity is right. Does that rule out things we can't perceive? No. Science is but one path to truth, as you've said yourself (although whether you really believe so is another matter).
Maybe it *is* all particles and their interactions, maybe not. Either way, I would not point to any one position (materialist, dualist, panpsychist, religious etc etc) and declare: "here is The Truth".
As most kids in my culture do, I believed in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. As most adults in my culture do, I believed (as a young adult) in a conscious "helmsman" behind my physicality (akin to a soul). I also believed in modernity and that we'd live in space someday. Now I perceive all of these beliefs as detrimental to living compatibly on this planet, and thus find value in sharing my take.
I can't possibly lay claim to the truth of the universe, but it rubs me wrong for people to invent/concoct unnecessary elaborations as cheap shortcuts just because we can't think our way through the complexity. To me, there's more humility in saying: "this bare-bones material foundation could very well be enough" than in "I'm dissatisfied with just materialism and desire something extra, alongside the directly-accessible material realm." Even if "inseparable," a conjoined mind and body still counts as two things (dualism), rather than the experience of mind deriving from basic physics interactions (all material: one thing). I'm trying to be less greedy and let the universe get by on its own rules without assuming the authority to make up extra stuff. We'll never know the universe, but can at least acknowledge our ignorance and try to satisfy ourselves with the minimal set (e.g., just body and its emergent properties). Brain-busting complexity can take it from there.
But this post is primarily on exaltation, so I'll leave the rest of the series (likely at least 8 installments) for the continuation of this thread.
I find myself exploring the Idealist camp. Few seem to give it much credence, but for me it certainly beats Materialism with its improbable mathematical exponential numbers, even given billions of years. Dualism is a nonstarter. And Panpsychism seems like a compromise due to its inability to break free of Materialism and embrace the possibility of Idealism.
Humans have the ability to imagine all sorts of things. But what do the data say? What can we actually observe and measure? Proving that there is no such thing as something we can't or haven't observed, or that we can't infer from interaction with stuff we can observe, is impossible. Such things seem not to exist but it's impossible to know for certain even if the unobservable appears to violate the physics we currently understand.
We can't really discuss the imagined except to say "yeah, I can imagine that, too" or "no, I just can't imagine that." There is no delving into the detail of it. There is no delving into how it affects what we do, and sense. Tom usually sticks to what we think we know to be real because of past physical observations.
There is an actual camp in the N/N territory it's a mixed bag of "matrix simulation" and "universe hologram" intellectuals. They view reality as both an illusion and beyond the control of the participants. I think some branches of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy lean in the N/N direction.
Thanks, Tom. I would answer your two questions, 'Y/N', making me a materialist but I think I do harbour dualist notions, deep down. I'm really looking forward to your next posts.
Eric
I'm definitely in the N/N camp. This "existence" must be some type of constructed punishment of me. To live through the winters I love diminish, the glaciers melt, the lakes drained, forests cleared, entire ecosystems shredded, this has to be some kind of instrument of torture, even our own society ravaged by media saturation and isolation. As a child of the early 1970s I got a taste of potential, and then watched it get squandered. What else could this be other than a constructed punishment?
I prefer just to keep my brain at the “Dud worldview, dud outcomes” level. Anything beyond that is stretching it for me. Unhelpful to the individual and unhelpful to anyone/any creature/the biosphere/the Earth.
We just happen to be at the pointy end of modernity, where a lot of chickens are coming home to roost. We have been living in a “made up world” that is sustained by consuming the real one. We are all now suffering the repercussion of the majority of our species having going rogue, whether we subscribe to the modernist worldview or not. We are indeed living in a “constructed punishment”: the punishment constructed by modernity.
A pig in a factory farm, a solitary orangutan sitting in a bare tree surrounded by burnt-out forest, etc. are perhaps the ones most justified in complaining about their existence amounting to a “constructed punishment”.
… if they were to actually complain.
Eight or nine installments in this series will make for an exhausting treatment, which will likely open lots of doors but close relatively few. I’ve been circling these ideas most of my life and reached conclusions that are unlikely to shift barring some unexpected mystical reveal or event. Ironically, contemplation of these philosophical questions by unusually smart people often ends with squinting to distort perception and screwing the mind to arrive at some out-there interpretations. I resist the resulting woo.
One note of concern: obsession with human-style cognition and consciousness, which investigators alternatively seek in other creatures and project onto other phenomena, is often plagued by faulty thinking. I’ve heard other large mammals called “the usual suspects” when they exhibit traits and behaviors (proto-consciousness?) that may have enabled the current evolutionary state of human development. Further, while rocks and water and wind each have their unique interactions in and on the material Earth, to say that a rock “knows” how to be a rock or the wind “knows” how to blow is to project animism onto inanimate materials. Out of awe and respect for Nature (capital N), that variety of panpsychism might be appealing but is ultimately about humans seeking transcendent connection, a quasi-religious impulse borne of frailty, and calls into being (at least ideologically) a mythical realm that has so far been awfully difficult to establish and explore except through chemical alterations of human cognition. Other more commonplace behaviors leading to human connection don’t typically result in reification.
I certainly appreciate this cogent message of concern for the "project," and I can't say you're wrong. I share the reaction about smart people able to gymnastically twist their brains into some unique position that has nothing to do with the actual universe as we find it: a neat trick, but… One aspect that *might* be different in my case is that I distrust *all* brainworks, including my own. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but that we oughtn't make up stuff to satisfy the shortcomings, and acknowledge that the universe is craftier than we are in making basic relations come to life.
To be clear, panpsychism does seem to "elevate" all matter into the superior club by having some modicum of consciousness, and thus remains a form of shadow dualism (mind and matter still distinct phenomena). But that's still a supremacist foundation (guess what: we have the most!). So I agree that it yearns to preserve a transcendent element to being human (or alive/animate). When I say that an electron, a rock, a river, an amoeba, etc. "knows" something, I basically mean that they are never confused about how to act. Material conditions dictate what goes. Same for us: no ontological gap, just mind-blowing complexity eliminating our tracking abilities to smoke it out. No override to physics. We *can't* fully twist our brains into seeing that complete picture, but might (doubtfully?) accept that limitation.
Just a slight pushback. Although I think it is likely the case that a great many panpsychists do regard humans as the "most conscious" creatures on Earth (if not the Universe), and that their belief in this philosophical view may ultimately stem from a desire to "preserve a transcendent element to being human" (whether they consciously realize it or not), I personally don't think that the belief that matter has a mental aspect need necessarily be shackled to such ideas. This is because I don't think that matter having a "mental aspect" (if it somehow happens to) would automatically imply/prove that humans actually are transcendent/superior. In fact, don't think ANY of us are really in a position to definitively state that humans are the "most conscious" creatures, that the human form of consciousness is "superior", or that human consciousness is even really that good in the grand scheme of things. We are just the creatures that have the “greatest amount of human consciousness", and that's about all we can safely say about consciousness at the end of the day, which is essentially nothing. To me, thinking that humans are superior is an "added step" that any individual may or may not choose to take, and, honestly, at this stage I'm not really convinced that being a materialist (or proclaiming yourself such) makes one more or less immune from taking this dumb step than a panpsychist. A panpsychist thinking that humans are superior on the basis that they appear to be the "most conscious" would seem to me to be pretty much on par with a materialist claiming that humans are superior because they appear to have the most physically complex brain.
I again recommend Ed Yong's book "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us". I think that regardless of whether you are a materialist or a panpsychist (or whatever else), you would come away with the same key message without altering your overall views on the mind-physical matter relationship: we humans are just one of a vast number of species, each possessing a unique set of sensing and cognitive skills, and each, consequently, inhabiting a unique Umwelt/reality. Each species is "special", but also very limited, including us. As far as consciousness goes, we don't even know the half of what goes on in other creature's heads… Might it also be the case that, for example, "our" consciousness (which extends beyond just the "I" state) actually includes that of the microbes that inhabit our guts, presuming they have consciousness of some sort? Perhaps we really ought to be thinking and talking in terms of the “consciousness of the biosphere” rather than our “own” all the time? (a spruke for Ed Yong's other book, "I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us And A Grander View Of Life", while I'm here).
Most 'smart' people are usually highly educated professionals who've been through the 'education' system and grown up within the culture (such as it is) of modernity. Therefore, they've absorbed its narratives and beliefs – including, I'm sorry to say, materialism. The mainstream culture believes in particles. Indigenous cultures (the nearest thing to how humans evolved to live) believe in spirits etc.
Naturally, the scientific establishment believes its view to be correct – after all, experiments prove it. But when the microscopes have seen as far as they can, what then? What is a quark? What is a spirit?
Animist beliefs have enabled people to live in/with the habitat that supports them. Science has enabled 'progress', leading to technology…
Machines and computers are everywhere (and increasingly so) in the modern world, whose sole 'values' are science and utility ('decisions' are even 'made' by algorithms). Truth, beauty, goodness – they can take a hike. Computers and algorithms don't do those. Like creativity, they require imagination (and therefore, life) to experience.
The result of seeing the world *as* a machine is that it becomes one. That's what has happened since the 'Enlightenment'. When brains are seen as computers, when Life is seen as (no matter how complex) mechanism, when what is 'right' is seen as evolutionary strategy, there can be no other outcome.
A failure to listen to the right hemisphere (the right one) has produced a pandemic of greed, selfishness, control and exploitation – aka modernity.
Materialism as it relates to consciousness does not have anything more to do with modernity than dualist notions. Descartes was a devout Roman Catholic, a successful religion in modernity. There's a mountain of evidence on the materialist side and exactly zero compelling evidence on the dualist side of the argument, as far as I am aware. Why do we need to invoke a third dimension when everything points to this universe and its matter being sufficient?
As an aside, I'll bet that my education was less conventional than yours.
*Third dimension is a poor choice of words as I am not suggesting that three dimensional space-time isn't a thing, but rather, I mean invoking an extra dimension, a special dimension. Or where does this ethereal consciousness reside? How is it getting dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, acetylcholine, serotonin, GABA, and other hormones/neurotransmitters in the absence of chemistry (and gut bacteria)? – As one example.
I was only saying that the Establishment consensus, promulgated through the education system, is materialism, which it is. I don't care what Descartes believed – he was an arse anyway. Materialism is correct, as far as it goes. It may be the whole story, it may not – I don't know (as I've said, many times).
Where did I invoke an extra dimension? Or consciousness, ethereal or otherwise? You seem to be conjouring a straw man to argue against.
So you had an unconventional education – and?? I had no choice – I went to a comprehensive (it was crap).
Not trying to strawman you. I suppose there are different flavors of dualism. I was recently involved in a conversation that included quantum vernacular, microtubules, harmonic resonance, and Penrose was cited. Evidently (according to the storyteller) human memories are stored in another dimension outside of time, energy, and space. – Some hybrid of quantum consciousness and dualism? – I lost patience with this particular conversation, sort of I would (and have) with flat-earthism, but this is probably why I was thinking about dimensions.
The common denominator of dualism is that there is something more than the physical brain producing or involved in consciousness, yes? – Personally, I cannot see why that would need to be true, and can frankly not imagine how consciousness could disentangle itself from the physical human brain, which cannot get itself around being subject to material realities. And further, if us thinking that because our consciousness is 'more than', we are 'more than', it can make us a problem relative to other creatures on this planet. And yes, Descartes was very not nice to animals, properly called a wanker.
Anyway, we'll see what Tom has to say with the rest of the series.
Scientific materialism (which amounts to what the scientific method – under modernity – has revealed about what the universe is made of and how it works) provides a lot of detail that humans didn’t/don’t need to know to live well (witness the indigenous peoples). This detail was indeed ruthlessly extracted as part of modernity. It emerged as part of people not living well, under the influence of a faulty worldview.
The strange thing is that it turns out that the detail that materialism provides may be precisely the thing to most effectively convince us modernites of the faultiness of this worldview, and the need to seek a more ecologically compatible existence (at least for a great many of us modernites. I personally think panpsychism might more effectively/efficiently do the job for certain large sections of society. And there are other worldviews on offer that might similarly be useful for some of us to adopt, as long as they are genuinely “eco-friendly”). Materialism shows that we humans are made of exactly the same stuff as the rest of the universe and are not superior and/or partly of another entirely separate world. So, in a sense, scientific materialism might be viewed as an antidote to modernity that modernity inadvertently managed to produce for itself. Many of us would benefit from taking this medicine!
I totally agree with your sentiment, but I still consider Tom's materialist view of the universe as essentially correct. The problem isn't believing that the universe follows deterministic laws. The problem comes from hubristically believing that we can model the complexity and therefore control the outcomes. In fact the complexity is so great that it may well be better to model the universe animistically in terms of the outcomes for the world and our species. It's certainly true that, in terms of deep time, the animistic point of view was more stable and had better wide boundary outcomes for life.
Perhaps true wisdom comes from acknowledging that we can't fully understand what's going on and just letting it go. Live in the hands of the gods, as it were.
True, the material world is real and the only guaranteed, provable reality.
Also "The problem comes from hubristically believing that we can model the complexity and therefore control the outcomes." – I completely agree with this.
@Dan, not sure whom you're addressing, but if it's me, I also find myself in the materialist camp. But it's an uncomfortable fit. The bulk of my interest in life is aimed at essences, but they're not particles or spirits. I'm more inclined toward phenomenology and intersubjectivity. Ironically and in agreement with McGilchrist, I find that even if I don't believe in certain culturally resonant idea complexes, it's often better to act as if I do.
Et tu, Brute? Every man and his dog's a materialist round here… which is fine.
If you are, though, why do you intimate that you're not interested in particles? Surely that's what material is made of?
(Fwiw, McGilchrist is definitely not a materialist/reductionist.)
Also, why do you think it's better to pretend to believe in culturally resonant idea complexes (and what *is* one)?
I should probably defer this to later, because I get to these issues later in the series… but first: materialism is 99% about interactions, not particles (not dead legos but vibrant, interactive participants: just pick up a physics book and check out the emphasis!). Second, pairing materialist with reductionist misses something huge. Any mental model is reductionist. Panpsychism, for instance is *more* reductionist than materialism, sweeping an enormous and incomprehensible amount of complexity into a tidy self-standing concept of consciousness (facile, attractive, affinity-based reduction of the materialist's staggering and incomprehensible complexity). It's the absurd reduction I object to. Noting that the universe is made of atoms interacting via electromagnetism, for instance, isn't reductionist but observation: it didn't come from our brains but was shown to us (all in the same way, independent of culture). Materialism is expansivism in terms of the practically unlimited phenomena that can sprout from the simple seeds the universe has provided.
But we'll leave it here for now and await the main event.
Fair comments, and good point about panpsychism. I am looking foward to the rest of the series.
Thanks for a revision of Monty Pythons Galaxy Song. I can't wait to read the rest…