Posted by
Rob on Thursday, January 04, 2007 11:34:31 AM
There was a time when Materialists were bold and incisive, when their reasoning was clear and cold and as refreshing as a mountain brook, a time when men like Betrand Russell and AJ Ayer could shred your contented little reality with the buzz saws of logic. But today we are given old and gray Materialists, unable to say what they mean and who they stand for, muttering and twittering indistinctly into their beards. It is the twilight of the gods, when Reason lies fallen on an Arab street, and Promises imprisoned in some Turtle Bay cubicle. It is a sad, and not wholly undeserved ending for the Materialist Century that promised us LIberte, Egalite, Fraternite once we had loosed our chains of superstition and religious opium. But today Liberty no longer leads the troops with one breast bared, but wears a hijab and bids immolation on her sons in stead.
Instead of Progress we received Pollution, instead of Freedom we have RFIDs, and instead of Peace we inherited Terrorism. This is not to say that jet planes, computers, internet and cell phones haven't changed our life and made it much easier to find friends in airports and megalopoli, but somehow that wasn't what we asked for in 1900 when we were filling out our New Century's Resolutions. But by far the greatest loss was the loss of Logic, the retreat of Reason, the futility of Explanation. If there be a goal, a trophy, a Platonic Ideal that shines above the 20th Century of Materialism, it is the gleaming hope that human reason will overcome all obstacles and bring us to paradise. Quoting my favorite Materialist, Titus Lucretius Carus,
(I:50)When human life lay grovelling in all men's sight, crushed to the earth under the dead weight
of superstition whose grim features loured menacingly upon mortals from the four quarters of the sky,
a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge.
Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor the lightning flash and the growling menace of the sky. Rather,
they quickened his manhood, so that he, first of all men, longed to smash the constraining locks of
nature's doors. The vital vigor of his mind prevailed. He ventured far out beyond the flaming ramparts
of the world and voyaged in mind throughout infinity. Returning victorious, he proclaimed to us what
can be and what cannot; how a limit is fixed to the power of everything and an immovable frontier post.
Therefore superstition in its turn lies crushed beneath his feet, and we by his triumph are lifted level
with the skies.
Can there be a goal more noble, more sublime? Twenty three centuries have passed since Epicurus inspired these words with the 20th Century standing as the acme of Materialist triumph over the dead superstitions of men, yet somehow our achievements taste like dust in our mouths, and our accomplishments cut. The NYT writes a piece on the freedom secured for us by Materialism, but I doubt Lucretius would approve.
Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University
who has written extensively about free will, said that “when we
consider whether free will is an illusion or reality, we are looking
into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair.”
This is a far cry from Epicurus' victorious return. What reason does Dennett give for such morbid pessimism? The NYT explains.
Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but
it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience
free will. They have the sense they are free. “The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said.
Speak for yourself, Dr. Hallett, or perhaps you haven't heard about Hoodia, for people without will power? And why is it that you know for certain that my perceptions are flawed, but view yours as infallible? Really, if free will doesn't actually exist, why are you trying to convince me of this?
“That strikes many people as incoherent,” said Dr. Silberstein, who
noted that every physical system that has been investigated has turned
out to be either deterministic or random. “Both are bad news for free
will,” he said.
Maybe because it is incoherent? And isn't it curious that the same scientific method that denies the reality of "purpose", "will", and "design", has never found it in scientific experiments? Isn't that what we used to call a "tautology", the sort of meaningless statement like "Survival of the fittest means the fittest will survive"?
I waste my breath. The bad news for free will lies not in scientific experiments, as if a scientific method that only admits material causes could ever discover an immaterial "free will", but in the metaphysics that demands we look for free will with a microscope. The bad news, which isn't news at all, is that materialism alone is responsible for nihilism and despair. Aristotle said as much in his critique of Epicurus, oh, twenty three centuries ago, and Dr Silberstein is only now discovering this? But perhaps he would prefer something more recent, say, GK Chesterton's critique in 1911. No? You think it's best to manfully bear the burden of despair and conquer the universe by sheer force of will and copy of Nietzche? Fine, shoulder on, Dr Silberstein.
"So if human actions can’t be caused and aren’t random, he said, “It must be — what — some weird magical power?”
The short answer is, ... yes.
But let me rephrase your confusion. If human actions aren't determined and aren't random then they aren't materialist, which is to say, the one purpose for which Materialism was created (denying purpose), it cannot accomplish. Let me say this again. Lucretius can be a fine Materialist while staring at thunderstorms and stars, but when he looks at himself, he falls into a dark pit of his own making. Therefore if Materialism remains convincing (at least, to scientists), it must have some weird magical, bewitching power, because it certainly isn't logic.
With that proper interpretation of Silberstein's quote, we can then make sense of this beard-muttering NYT article--the author is trying to uncover the spell that has bewitched science. Since he knows nothing of spells or logic, there's a feeling of Mickey Mouse in the "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", so put on Dukas and and let's get the broom going.
A vote in favor of free will comes from some physicists, who say it is
a prerequisite for inventing theories and planning experiments.
We needed a physicist to tell us that? I think our poor NYT hack really wanted to say "metaphysicists" but his editor used the rule that gave us "buses" and "modeling"-- "use the shorter form of a word that has two spellings". (Both the rule and the application are a classic case of journalism departments not having enough philosophy requirements, but that's another screed.)
That is especially true when it comes to
quantum mechanics, the strange paradoxical theory that ascribes a
microscopic randomness to the foundation of reality. Anton Zeilinger, a
quantum physicist at the University of Vienna, said recently that
quantum randomness was “not a proof, just a hint, telling us we have
free will.”
Sigh. No, it wasn't just the NYT editor who can't tell the difference, it is physicists themselves. Okay, let's sweep out the cobwebs here. QM is neither strange nor paradoxical, it is a very nice way to accurately predict the outcome of experiments. Only it uses waves, or at least, the mathematical equivalent of waves, to explain what atoms are doing. It's the materialists, beginning with Democritus and Epicurus, who insisted that atoms are particles, not waves. So the only thing strange and paradoxical about QM is that it denies Materialism.
This, of course, is just not acceptable. So instead, Niels Bohr tried to handle his cognitive dissonance (see the last post), by inserting a buffer layer between the facts and the conclusion, and this is exactly the same one used by the Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds tobacco companies--deny the statistics. That is, we know that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer, but wait, drag out David Hume who proved that correlations are not causation: "just because the statistics show an effect doesn't mean smoking causes cancer". So the physicists pull the same causality gambit, "just because QM works doesn't mean that atoms don't exist".
No, wait, that's too obvious, any fool can see through that argument. I know, let's add another buffer statement! "We don't know why QM appears to work so well." No, that looks as if we are ignorant. Ah, I know, lets make doubt into a self-referential statement, sort of like a fox doubling back on its tracks, then no one will be able to figure out why we hate it so much! How about, "QM only gives probabilities which aren't causality". Yup, that should do it.
Alas, the fox was too clever, and physicists have been wandering through the pathless wood for 70 years now, trying to find their way back to certainty. This is why I firmly believe the only way forward is to go back to Bohr's "Copenhagen Interpretation", scrap it, burn it, and scatter the ashes. But the spell was spoken, the broom is out of control, and there's far too much water on the floor. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the scene our faithful NYT journalist describes next.
n the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a
physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up
the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the
volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a
finger, while he noted the time on a clock. Dr.
Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred
half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them. The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.
In
short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the
unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an
illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already
done. Dr. Libet’s results
have been reproduced again and again over the years, along with other
experiments that suggest that people can be easily fooled when it comes
to assuming ownership of their actions
Let's do the math. It takes time for signals to propagate through neurons, through wires, through the vacuum of space. In space, light travels 186,000 miles per second, electricity is about half that speed in copper, and in neurons we're lucky to get about 10 miles per hour. (Yup, one more materialist proof that man is a better designer than God, we would have used copper.) So what we are doing here, is timing a series of events at different locations on the body, and asking the victim when he became conscious of them. Then when our copper signal comes in before our neuron signal we say, "Look! Causality is denied!"
Let me ask a dumb question, Dr Libet. Have you ever watched a sports event on TV and listened to it at the same time on the radio? Did you notice, perchance, that one preceded the other? Did it cause you to believe that the radio caused the TV or that causality didn't exist at all? So why do stupid synchronization problems in your sloppy lab setup cause you to suddenly take up metaphysics!
The broom is still fetching water, and Libet is trying to kill the
broom with the axe. He splits it in half instead. So not only are
uncertain about probability, but now we are told it is a false
perception that we are uncertain of. We are lost and we don't even know
why! This is getting messy. Anybody know where those "slippery when wet" signs went?
Dr. Dennett, the Tufts professor, is one
of many who have tried to redefine free will in a way that involves no
escape from the materialist world while still offering enough autonomy
for moral responsibility, which seems to be what everyone cares about.
Great, you went for help to a philosopher. And what does he propose? Define the problem away. You know the riddle, "If you call a sheep's tail a leg, how many legs does a sheep have?"
Find me someone else, please! The broom is destroying the house!
Other philosophers disagree on the
degree and nature of such “freedom.” Their arguments partly turn on the
extent to which collections of things, whether electrons or people, can
transcend their origins and produce novel phenomena. These
so-called emergent phenomena, like brains and stock markets, or the
idea of democracy, grow naturally in accordance with the laws of
physics, so the story goes. But once they are here, they play by new
rules... Are the rules elusive just because we can’t
solve the equations or because something fundamentally new happens when
we increase numbers and levels of complexity?
So the solution, if you didn't quite follow, was that materialism morphs into something else as it gets complicated. But then, is it still materialism? Can you still say "you are nothing but atoms, and your frustration is just bad chemicals" if you have an emergent soul?
Opinions
vary about whether it will ultimately prove to be physics all the way
down, total independence from physics, or some shade in between, and
thus how free we are. Dr. Silberstein, the Elizabethtown College
professor, said, “There’s nothing in fundamental physics by itself that
tells us we can’t have such emergent properties when we get to
different levels of complexities.”
Whoa. Did I just hear you say, "there's nothing in materialism that denies the immaterial"? Surely you must be joking, Dr Gliberstein. For if materialism doesn't exclude souls then it doesn't exclude God. And if the gods exist, our good friend Lucretius will be very, very disappointed. What's the whole point of materialism then!
Oh, you didn't mean that? Then did you mean "too complicated for us to determine now, but we'll determine it later"? No? You mean it will never be determined? Then emergent means there's something that is neither law nor chance, but sort of like purpose? So purpose comes out of non-purpose, and will arrives randomly, and meaning comes from non-meaning, and your genius came from sheer stupidity? Is that what you mean, good Doctor, from all this meaningless blather?
He waxed poetically as he imagined how the
universe would evolve, with more and more complicated forms emerging
from primordial quantum muck as from an elaborate computer game, in
accordance with a few simple rules: “If you understand, you ought to be
awestruck, you ought to be bowled over.”
He did mean that. The god of Evolution emerges, wraithlike from the warm pond of Darwin, and it is embarassingly naked. But Dr Stein doesn't notice, having prostrated himself already, to his own reflection.
I have to admit that I find these kind
of ideas inspiring, if not liberating. But I worry that I am being sold
a sort of psychic perpetual motion machine. Free wills, ideas,
phenomena created by physics but not accountable to it. Do they offer a
release from the chains of determinism or just a prescription for a
very intricate weave of the links?
Interpretation. "Help! The water is up to my waist! Will somebody, anybody, please stop the broom?"
And so I sought clarity from
mathematicians and computer scientists. According to deep mathematical
principles, they say, even machines can become too complicated to
predict their own behavior and would labor under the delusion of free
will. If by free will we mean
the ability to choose, even a simple laptop computer has some kind of
free will, said Seth Lloyd, an expert on quantum computing and
professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
No! No! Please not him, anyone but Bill Gates! Lock the doors, shut the windows. You heard me, close the Windows!
Every time you click on an icon, he
explained, the computer’s operating system decides how to allocate
memory space, based on some deterministic instructions. But, Dr. Lloyd
said, “If I ask how long will it take to boot up five minutes from now,
the operating system will say ‘I don’t know, wait and see, and I’ll
make decisions and let you know.’ ”
You didn't listen. Now not only am I lost and don't know why, but my map is lost too. Great help you are.
Why can’t computers say what they’re
going to do? In 1930, the Austrian philosopher Kurt Gödel proved that
in any formal system of logic, which includes mathematics and a kind of
idealized computer called a Turing machine, there are statements that
cannot be proven either true or false. Among them are self-referential
statements like the famous paradox stated by the Cretan philosopher
Epimenides, who said that all Cretans are liars: if he is telling the
truth, then, as a Cretan, he is lying. One
implication is that no system can contain a complete representation of
itself, or as Janna Levin, a cosmologist at Barnard College of Columbia
University and author of the 2006 novel about Gödel, “A Madman Dreams
of Turing Machines,” said: “Gödel says you can’t program intelligence
as complex as yourself.
Thank you, thank you Goedel! You don't know how much I owe you for freeing me from the clutches of Bill Gates. So computers can't get lost, its just the users who have a problem? What a shame Theodore Kaczynski didn't hear this at MIT.
But you can let it evolve. A complex machine would still suffer from the illusion of free will.”
Aaargh! The other broom is alive and fetching water too! Please somebody, stop all these brooms! I (glub) can't (blub blub) breathe!
That works for me, because I am comfortable
with so-called physicalist reasoning, and I’m always happy to leverage
concepts of higher mathematics to cut through philosophical knots...
Dr. Wegner said he thought that exposing
free will as an illusion would have little effect on people’s lives or
on their feelings of self-worth. Most of them would remain in denial.
“It’s
an illusion, but it’s a very persistent illusion; it keeps coming
back,” he said, comparing it to a magician’s trick that has been seen
again and again. “Even though you know it’s a trick, you get fooled
every time. The feelings just don’t go away.”
Oh. I'm not drowning. I'm just in denial. Drowning is a trick, a feeling that just won't go away. A feeling that just won't go away, that won't go away, go away, go awa...