Alex
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awesome! yes, probably best not to tell them :)
Dr. Philip Goff, Will Academia Get Beyond Materialism? |409|
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Philip Goff
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Thanks!
malf
Member
Can someone explain the explicit difference between materialism and panpsychism? I mean, any hard materialist (in the unlikely event, you find someone who describes himself as such) has experiences, and must reconcile those with the world out there as he sees it. He must grant ‘the material’ the magic to generate these experiences.
I guess panpsychism has a cross-party neatness to it. Good PR. After all a proton seems to be aware of what their electrons are up to.
I guess panpsychism has a cross-party neatness to it. Good PR. After all a proton seems to be aware of what their electrons are up to.
David Bailey
Member
Philip - welcome to the forum!
It was interesting to hear you feeling the need to move beyond materialism - with a British accent for a change! We do need more academics to express their doubts publicly - as famously Thomas Nagel did a while back.
I think I'd like to ask you whether you really have chosen Panpsychism as superior to Idealism or Dualism, or whether when you say Panpsychism you are just articulating the need for something beyond materialism - something that treats consciousness as a fundamental component of reality? (See my post above).
I have been here for some time, and I must say I am really impressed by the sheer amount of evidence that is stacking up against the materialist position.
1) Evidence published by doctors and others of NDE's. These are really amazing phenomena in which people who have no blood flow (or possibly some extremely poor blood flow while being resuscitated) have extraordinary experiences, and sometimes access information that they did not know beforehand.
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/skeptiko-nde-documentaries-thread-and-other-related.136/
There is vastly more at IANDS, but really it is important to realise that here is evidence that can't just be cast aside.
2) The physicist, Dean Radin has done extensive studies of a phenomenon he calls presentiment, in which people shown a mixture of calm pictures and more disturbing ones (erotic pictures work best!) randomly selected by computer, show an unconscious awareness when a disturbing image is about to be displayed. This is detected by electrical conductance measurements performed using skin electrodes. These experiments are run automatically under computer control.
3) Dean was also able to obtain some data from researchers doing conventional psychological experiments that could be analysed to show the same presentiment phenomenon. His work has been replicated by others, and yet conventional science tries to ignore it.
4) There is some remarkable evidence for re-incarnation. Look up Ian Stevenson for more details.
5) There is rather a lot of detailed biochemical evidence that demonstrates that the theory of evolution by natural selection (Darwin's theory) is simply wrong. See for example, this discussion of a new book by Michael Behe:
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/behes-argument-in-darwin-devolved.4317/
I suspect that it is hard for someone who is still in academia (BTW many years ago I did a PhD and part of a post-doc in Chemistry) to accept that some researchers aren't really honest in their treatment of other people's ideas. I'm afraid, by now I am very much more cynical.
I hope you stay on the Skeptiko forum for some time, and participate in some of our discussions, and I hope you find the experience useful for your own work.
David
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Philip Goff
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It's broadly agreed in academic philosophy that what neuroscience contributes to the science of consciousness is correlations. They may also provide explanations of other mental phenomena, so long as those phenomena are defined functionally. Many neuroscientists add that if they go on doing what they are doing the problem of consciousness will somehow go away, or even be explained. I think that's a (confused) reflective opinion about what they're doing rather than a description of what they're doing. The passage quoted seems to reflect that: it begins with a definition of neuroscience I have no problem, and then states an aspiration of a neuroscientist that I don't agree with (at least in so far as it applies to consciousness).
Michael Larkin
Member
Welcome, Dr. Goff. I've just been watching this lecture by you:
-- and have a number points to raise.
1. I notice that in neither the interview with Alex nor the video do you mention idealism. Is this because you haven't considered it, or because you have and have rejected it?
2. Have you read any of Bernardo Kastrup's work?
3. As you say yourself, you're not a physicist and so feel inclined to work within the consensus framework of the standard cosmological model. Hence you seem to accept (at least for purposes of discussion) big bang theory, inflation, and so on. That said, as I pointed out in a post recently:
...here's a Scientific American article that expresses some of my own incredulity about modern cosmology and points to its "big problems". Here's a tidbit:
After spending many years researching the foundations of cosmological physics from a philosophy of science perspective, I have not been surprised to hear some scientists openly talking about a crisis in cosmology. In the big “inflation debate” in Scientific American a few years ago, a key piece of the big bang paradigm was criticized by one of the theory's original proponents for having become indefensible as a scientific theory.
Why? Because inflation theory relies on ad hoc contrivances to accommodate almost any data, and because its proposed physical field is not based on anything with empirical justification. This is probably because a crucial function of inflation is to bridge the transition from an unknowable big bang to a physics we can recognize today. So, is it science or a convenient invention?
I suppose one point is that the necessity for at least some of the fine tuning constants could arise out of the standard cosmological model. IOW, some of the fine tuning constants could be artifacts of the model rather than realities in and of themselves. And indeed, since the whole physicalist (not merely the standard cosmological) model of reality is open to doubt, perhaps most or even all of the constants are dubious, just constructed so as to fit in with current models.
Were such the case, then your arguments could be piling misconception on top of misconception. I'm not saying that is the case, necessarily, but could you comment on this?
Many thanks.
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Philip Goff
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I'm attracted to panpsychism because of the Russell-Eddington view I talked about briefly. The basic idea is that physics doesn't tell us what matter is, only what it does. Thus, there is a giant hole in a scientific picture of reality. By inserting consciousness in that hole, we get a much more simple and unified picture of reality that dualism offers. Matter and consciousness are the same thing, seen from two perspectives.
1. See my response above.
2. Yes, Bernado and I met at an idealism conference in Shanghai and we've lots of interesting conversations. Really interesting stuff, but I have some difficulty with the idea that the conscious subject that is me is numerically identical with the conscious subject that is you.
3. I just feel as a non-physicist, I have to rely on the consensus of physicists.
David Bailey
Member
I like to compare neuroscience with this rather fanciful research program. Suppose that an alien race had deposited a number of computers on earth, complete with suitable power supplies, and that this happened before we had anything like that technology. Imagine the resultant research program. To begin with they would have probably dismantled a few computers and probably destroyed them without discovering much. Then someone would have observed that some chips warmed up more with one task than another. This would have produced huge numbers of papers measuring the distribution of heat output in the various chips performing an assortment of tasks. Could that have been used to deduce the way that computers work?
David
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Michael Larkin
Member
I'd say that materialism, as far as it can, avoids the whole issue of consciousness, some going even so far as to deny it exists at all. Panpsychism (especially of the bottom-up, micropsychical variety as opposed to top-down cosmopsychism) is the last resort of those materialists who recognise that consciousness is real, but want to fit it in with the idea of materialistic monism, i.e. that the ontological primitive of all reality is physical. The main issue for me with bottom-up panpsychism is the combination problem, i.e. how it is that many small units of consciousness can somehow get together to generate higher levels of consciousness.
David Bailey
Member
Agreed, but that doesn't really pick out Panpsychism as distinct from other possibilities.
I am far less keen on Bernardo's ideas than Michael Larkin. The problem he has, is that Idealism can very easily degenerate into a theory that could explain absolutely anything!
Whatever you do, don't do that! I mean clearly you already don't, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about Panpsychism! I think scientific consensus is a very slippery concept! If we all accepted scientific consensus, this forum would not even exist!
David
Michael Larkin
Member
Glad you've met Bernardo and in some respects your views are similar (being, as it is, that you seem to lean to cosmopsychism, which some might categorise as a close cousin of idealism). Maybe you haven't seen his recent PhD. defence:
It's worth a look -- he has two PhD's, the first in computer engineering, and now his second in philosophy. His latest book, The Idea of the World (as well as his PhD thesis, both based on the same series of published papers), contains possibly the most complete recension of his ideas yet. One thing is, I have never come across his saying that "the conscious subject that is me is numerically identical with the conscious subject that is you." Maybe that's your words for something he said to you, but if so, is it possible you've misinterpreted it, or maybe I don't quite understand what you're saying?
I can understand your feelings as a non-physicist, but it seems to me a rather shaky justification for simply accepting the fine-tuning constants as being facts rather than the consequences of modelling in physics. Bernardo, as you know, is well-versed in physics and in his book tries to exhaustively reconcile his ideas with it, including quantum theory.
I don't know, however, what his view on the fine-tuning constants is, and how (or indeed whether) he has a place for them in his ideas (I'm only half-way through his latest book) so I think I'll ask on his forum. Should he respond, I'll relay his answer here on Skeptiko.
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Michael Larkin
Member
Give it time, David!;) I'd recommend that you read Bernardo's latest book, or if you don't want to splash out on that, try reading his PhD thesis, which isn't that much more technical (and in any case, your appreciation of physics is better than mine, so I doubt you'd have much difficulty).
You say: "Idealism can very easily degenerate into a theory that could explain absolutely anything". Well, that can be taken two ways: your way, which is a tad pejorative, or in the sense of a theory of everything, which isn't limited solely to Bernardo. Lots of people are attempting a TOE, and if Bernardo's TOE can degenerate, well, theirs can too, so he's in good company.
Alex
Administrator
thx so much for joining us here Philip.
Dan_LastName
Member
I like what you say here, Jim.
For me, beliefs are partly intellectual, partly emotional, and partly social/historical/political/cultural.
I think that's basically true for folks across the board. Certainly seems true for little people like me, but I think it's interesting to consider how it might also be true for the "social engineers", to use the Skeptiko lingo. I think even the powerful folk of the world are driven by emotion as much as anybody else. If there are powerful folks and/or groups who are working to mislead the rest of us, their motivations (power, wealth, etc) would seem to be emotionally driven (along with healthy doses of their own intellect and their received social/political/historical/cultural paradigms). Not to say that excuses any unethical behavior among elites... For some reason, I feel the need to try to "humanize" the powerful folk of the world, if only to make them seem less like boogey men, or something along those lines.
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Michael Larkin
Member
A really enjoyable listen, Wormwood. Thanks for sharing.
I was thinking about what Sheldrake said about the sun possibly being conscious. I'm not a panpsychist, so I don't believe the sun is conscious in the same way a living organism is, i.e. in its being able (to whatever extent) to self-reflect meta-consciously; being aware that it's aware.
That said, the sun, being constituted of the same kind of "stuff" (actually mental process?) as the rest of the inanimate universe, might be a part of TWE's non-self-reflective consciousness -- as, it suddenly occurred to me, might be the body.
This might be why we perceive (often via instrumentation) that our bodies are composed of the same kinds of "stuff" as are detected (on the screen of our perception) on planets and in stars. It's not so much that human beings (for instance) are material receptacles for an immaterial soul (the classical dualist view). No: it's more that a non-self-reflective process ("the body") occurring in MAL is, in living organisms, intimately associated with a self-reflective process (what we often think of as the soul).
That could be what is meant by the term "dissociation" as Bernardo uses it. For as long as an organism is alive, the two forms of consciousness are intimately linked. There's a temptation to think of self-reflection as being a step up in complexity; but a careful examination of the body reveals it to be immensely complex, immensely ordered, far beyond the self-reflective conscious process that we think of as the soul.
What happens when the body dies? Possibly, the self-reflective part of us continues, but the body, now having no purpose, loses its complexity and succumbs to entropy. None of its constituent parts disappear, but they do take on less ordered forms until at least some of them are eventually recycled in other organisms.
As for the body, maybe so for the sun; as far as we know, the sun isn't self-reflective. But it might, as a part of TWE/MAL itself, be conscious in a non-self-reflective way, and be in some sense responsive to or in communion with the self-reflective consciousnesses of human beings and other organisms.
Like I said, this insight came suddenly and I haven't completely fleshed it out. I might reject it tomorrow, but I will be pondering it further...
Jim_Smith
New
Part of their problem is their power. Power corrupts. (I hesitate to judge people who have temptations and options that I have never experienced). Another part of their problem is that a lot of them are sociopaths.
A sociopath corrupted by power is not a pretty sight.
I prefer organizations (governments) where power is decentralized rather than centralized because decentralization limits the power available to any one sociopath.
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David Bailey
Member
Let me put it the other way round - I don't see how Bernardo's ideas could ever be falsified by observation - even in principle. If that is so, it means that strictly speaking Idealism isn't a scientific theory - even though it might represent ultimate reality! Tell me how anyone could test - and therefore potentially refute Bernardo's Idealism.
Science has always developed in stages, and I am far more interested in the minimal extension to normal science that would encompass a lot of the phenomena we discuss here, rather than the maximal possible extension. For example, given some sort of Dualism, it might be possible to test the concept by looking for ways in which information could be stored outside of the physical universe, and then retrieved. In other words, there would suddenly become a respectable scientific reason to test Rupert Sheldrake's morphic field concept, instead of scoffing at it, as happens right now. I'd guess it could be proven beyond all reasonable doubt if enough effort were put into the job.
Successive minimal theoretical extensions of that sort, might end up encompassing BK's Idealism.
David
Michael Patterson
Member
Ta. Will, try that.
Michael Patterson
Member
But I think there were also folk pulling them off when they tried to get back on. Things were fine when a uni education was free, but when uni became hungry for money we discovered there was no profit in an arts degree. It was not about building the person so much as making them instrumental in the process of production. When I went to high school the non nerdy students got trained to be employees - probably not a bad thing. Now STEM graduates struggle for employment in places where free thought is permitted. You want a job? You shut up and calculate.
Sure materialist reign in universities. They are bullies, manipulators and they bring in the cash. Its money first, knowledge second and morality last.
These days science graduates can get PhDs for highly specialist research projects and be useless beyond their field of expertise. Its a Doctor of Philosophy for God's sake. So if there's no philosophy component its not a real PhD - just an anachronistic and misleading title handed out as if it means something. So we have nerdy twats prancing around calling themselves Doctor. Give me a break!
Jeff says the conversation is changing and I am seeing that in other areas as well. Look at Harvard Business School and you see a greater focus on almost spiritual themes. Likewise the rise of Social Entrepreneurs indicates a passion for doing good rather than making buckets of cash. I think Kuhn's observation about how things change in science applies further afield.
Sadly, this is like confessing that change occurs because in the inevitable mechanism of generational change is what makes it possible for new ideas and values to be expressed. But that happens only because there are people driving change with enough will to make it stick. I know it is popular in some quarters to blame baby boomers for things they had nothing to do with - like rising house prices (if you think that go get an education in basic economics). Sure not all baby boomers were social activists - but those who were transformed our culture.
Within the academy there may still be determination to keep non-profitable fields like the humanities down. Who would get an arts degree and end up with a debt and job making coffee? In Australia we pay a fee to study (HECS) to the government, but there's an income threshold before payments become mandatory - so if you are happy making coffee you can still get an education of sorts. I had to pay a HEX, sorry HECS, debt of around $30k for Masters degree and I thought that was crap. But at least I was earning enough to do so. What's happening in the US is shocking.
But while the humanities suffer in all but private unis, the passion for inquiry is not STEMmed. When you look at the websites, podcasts and forums like this one the passion for the humanities is booming - but with perhaps not the advantage of the discipline a degree course develops.
The cultural landscape has changed markedly in the past 20 years, which is a mere blip. My benchmark is the change in governance values in corporations and governments. I see this through the field of Inclusion and Diversity, which is my day job these days. Even in then last decade the change has been more marked. I think if we looked at our cultures (the advanced Western ones at least) closely we will see uniform significant change mixed with reactive regression (exemplified by D Trump for eg).
This why I found the discussion about How Change Happens intriguing (several books by that name on Amazon). Not only is change happening, but the good guys are finally catching up and learning how to do it nicely.
I think Goff has been a great kick off for a line of thought that can be followed by Kripal and one of the guys writing on how change happens. That would equip forum followers with a coherent set of arguments. If we do not understand how change happens we are doomed to misread the signals and manifestations of unsettling things.
I know Kripal is right. He and others have long engaged in the struggle, and now the tide is turning. How do we helps along? How do we become collaborating agents of change in our own right?
You want great bread? It needs the radical violence of a hot oven - and even before we get to that we have both violence of kneading and the apparent passivity of resting while the yeast does its stuff. Where are we in our evolution as a culture toward a renewed spiritual conversation? That's where we are going, and if we start complaining at the kneading stage we are just going to make it messier than it needs to be.
David Bailey
Member
Absolutely spot on - this is what I don't think philosophers quite get - that by now science has lost the plot in so many areas - precisely because philosophers have stopped criticising scientific ideas. There are notable exceptions, of course, such as Nagel (Who might make a great guest).
I mean, the philosopher David Chalmers has hiven a helping hand - think about the hard problem - and if you do, you can see how ridiculous neuroscience is at providing explanations of consciousness, as opposed to possibly spotting medical problems etc. Yet it only took one GOOGLE for me to come up with a quote that illustrates the fact that they really do think their work will explain consciousness!
Philosophers could make a difference in so many areas - even maybe 'Climate Change' because perhaps they could ask the obvious hard problems:
What level of warming would be too small to matter?
What exactly should we learn from the many historical climate fluctuations?
What amount of excess heating do we have already (0.8 C), so is that great enough to cause problems? If it isn't, can it possibly make sense to claim that CC is already causing damage - as they do.
If the only issue of concern is warming caused by CO2, why obfuscate the issue by renaming it 'Climate Change'?
Do we have any experimental setup by which to demonstrate that the phenomenon actually happens? Greenhouses work by stopping the convection of heat, not the radiation of heat - a fact that I have seen grudgingly acknowledged in at least one pro-CAGW web site. Thus greenhouses are at best an analogy to the claimed phenomenon.
They could ask about the true significance of conditions on Venus.
I suppose philosophers could act as highly intelligent and acute lay people - ask the right questions with enough authority of scientists and if they did, I think the concept of 'Climate Change' would simply collapse.
David
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