Defining Naturalism and Physicalism

A dialogue I had with the Maverick Philosopher, Dr. Bill Vallicella, is here.

Emergence Revisited

I want to update an opinion I’ve had about whether or not first-person subjective experience (FPE) -- the “hard” to explain aspect of consciousness -- is essentially an emergent phenomenon. In the past I believed that FPE is too radically unique a phenomenon to have just suddenly popped into the natural world because, say, the human nervous system reached some threshold level of complexity or functional organization. Even if human-style consciousness is uniquely robust in the natural world, I didn’t think FPE itself could arise in a world lacking some fundamental feature which was a precursor or building block.

It is this belief that helped set me off on the “road” to panexperientialism: the theory that an experiential aspect must be present in all of nature (the term is due to process philosopher David Ray Griffin).

Here is a counter-argument: emergent phenomena of all sorts are ubiquitous in nature, and this should make an account of FPE as emergent more plausible.

On this topic, I recently read A Different Universe, by physicist Robert B. Laughlin. The book is an extended essay stressing the role of emergent organizing laws in nature generally and in physics in particular (where we assume reductionist approaches have had their greatest success). Laughlin argues (compellingly I thought) that the world is constituted by a hierarchy of physical principles of organization, which often cannot be derived from principles governing the parts, and which furthermore are sometimes insensitive to compositional detail. Laughlin presents examples starting with phase organization of materials, from the more mundane (water) to the exotic (involving superfluidity and superconductivity). He then goes on to argue, more controversially, that systems of physical description up to and including relativity are descriptions of collective or emergent organizational principles. Emergence is not just about biology and social sciences, it’s about physics.

So, if “collective principles of organization are not just a quaint side show but everything – the true source of physical law”, what should we take from that? Well, I think it means we lack a well developed modern philosophical system (metaphysics) which is consistent with what we’ve learned about the natural world. The dominant metaphysical interpretation of naturalism is physicalism (the older version was materialism). While there is a vast literature on physicalism which makes generalizing dangerous, I find physicalist accounts to be typically inspired by reductionism and the analogy of mechanism. Emergent phenomena are not to be separately explained, but rather are asserted to supervene on lower level phenomena, and it is further assumed that the lowest level of nature is fully deterministic and causally closed. The fact that quantum physics is not conventionally deterministic doesn’t change this for most physicalists (although it should); they assume it adds a bit of randomizing, but doesn’t otherwise impact the story. I conclude that physicalism doesn’t explain well a world in which emergent phenomena exist at multiple levels of nature.

So, looking back, when I rejected the idea of first-person experience as a true emergent phenomenon, I was assuming that if it were (ontologically) emergent, it would be uniquely so in a world otherwise well explained by reductionist accounts. Therefore I sought an explanation of FPE in terms of simpler experiential ingredients – basically a reductionist account of experience to be (somehow) integrated with the paradigm account of the physical world. But if reductionist accounts are actually inadequate for physical phenomena, then the project is a different one. The goal is to develop a new metaphysics which is consistent with ubiquitous emergence, and then explain FPE in this new context.

In fact, I think it would be most productive to assume all natural systems above the quantum level are emergent – to be a natural system is to have been actualized from an underlying potential. As I recently discussed on this blog (here), the hierarchy of natural systems in the world may be made more explicable by utilizing an event ontology which has two poles: the set of potential realizable properties, and also an actualizing property which binds these into systems. And again I must plug Gregg Rosenberg’s excellent A Place for Consciousness, which presents a detailed proposal in this spirit (my original posts on the book are here and here). By the way, it turns out that his approach, while taking a different road than my old one, still entails a form of panexperientialism!

[As an aside, I recommend the Laughlin book for those interested in this subject matter, but I'll warn that I found it a bit annoying to read. I was put off by the many digressions and modestly amusing anecdotes and also some poor analogies (all meant to increase accessibility to the lay audience, I guess). Part of the problem is that I simultaneously started the latest Richard Dawkins book, which was spoiling me in terms of truly great science writing.]

The Trouble with Tropes

In this interesting post at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella explores critically the metaphysical theory that all properties in the world are tropes, which are ontologically simple building blocks (technically speaking, abstract particulars). In other words, trope theory is a one-category ontology. The key question is, then, how do these tropes come together to make things? The advocate of the view would need to propose a compresence relationship which binds tropes, but still is itself a trope of the same ontological variety. Vallicella then argues that this leads to problems, particularly a vicious regress. If the compresence trope ‘C’ links tropes ‘R’ and ‘S’ together, then what links C to both R and S? If it is another trope C*, you can see the regress. It made sense to me, although I imagine philosophers who have developed different varieties of trope theories would have a response. In any case, the arguments are carefully constructed, and I refer you to the post itself and the SEP entry on tropes for further reading.

For me, this discussion lends support to my previously held belief that a single simple ontological building block cannot account for the diversity of natural entities. A second relation is needed – a property which binds and actualizes, but is itself not in need of binding in the same way. At first, this may seem to make for a less appealingly simple or monistic ontology; however, when the property complexes that result are cast as events rather than things, the dual aspect seems to me elegant and not ad hoc, as I argued in this recent post.

More Quantum Causality

I have suspected that modern quantum theory contains the seeds of a new theory of causality. I did a search on Google scholar looking for more papers. I thought this one, by mathematical physicist V.P. Belavkin, was interesting, and I offer the briefest of summaries below. As usual, I was limited in my ability to follow the formalism, and therefore will “bleg” anyone with expertise in this area to comment or offer references which help explain this in layman’s terms.

Belavkin says that “the latest developments in quantum probability, stochastics, and in quantum information theory” make it possible to bypass the paradoxes of the measurement problem in the traditional quantum theory. The original theory divides the world into an external observer and a closed quantum system to be observed, which results in the problem.

It goes something like this: Belavkin analyzes open quantum systems using a dynamical approach which gives the output statistics of continuous quantum measurements which result from the solution of a stochastic differential equation. He then applies a special filtering method or superselection rule – which he calls a causality principle – which imposes a past-future boundary. The past consists of classical particle trajectories, the future are the quantum probabilities compatible with these trajectories. The statistical results obtained are consistent with experiment, just as in the traditional formulation.

Now it seems we haven’t gotten “something for nothing” here. In exchange for getting rid of the seemingly subjective observer problem in the original theory and making things more objective, he had to insert “by hand” a boundary defining the arrow of time. Still, it is appealing to think that time and causality are in an objective way intimately bound up with the transformation of quantum potentials into classical realities, as is the case with this proposal.

Fish, Bird and Octopus Consciousness

David Chalmers' blog has a post which links to 2 papers on the subject of fish consciousness. After skimming both, the article by Rose (which is skeptical about fish experience) appears to be based on a flawed premise, which is that experience in humans is generated by the neocortex. While the distinctively human cognitive apparatus resides in the neocortex, experience itself can be traced to older (in evolutionary terms) structures. As pointed out in the other paper by Chandroo et.al. and importantly buttressed by the papers in the recent issue of Consciousness and Cognition which I linked to in my recent post, areas such as the thalamocortical system are strongly implicated in experience, which supports the idea that it is shared more widely in the animal kingdom.

Since that last post, I read most of the other articles in the Consciousness and Cognition issue. My favorite was "Identifying hallmarks of consciousness in non-mammalian species", which discussed the avian case as well as the possiblity of some conscious awareness in the octopus! This is an interesting potential case of convergent evolution which wouldn't depend at all on the particular neural structures of vertebrates.

How to Get the Many from the One

I am a realist about the existence of individuated natural systems in the world, of which we humans are instances. I also believe that we, as well as all natural systems, are embedded in a larger world-network which shares the same underlying character. So how do I address the ancient problem of how the many could arise from the one?

The classical view of a world comprised of uniform fundamental particles of stuff following simple deterministic laws cannot solve the problem. Large systems in nature gain and lose these particles through time, but retain a nature which seems to transcend them.

If you adopt an event or process ontology, this challenge becomes easier. An event unfolds: it is a becoming. This means a possibility becomes actualized. It then changes the space of possibilities available for the next event. To make this work you do have to violate the purity of monism, but only slightly. The nodes of the network include an ability to actualize and also be actualized. This is a duality, but not a pernicious one. It seems to be the minimum complication necessary to create a chain or network of events. Otherwise there is no change (and therefore really no reality). Whitehead and his intellectual heirs are the most prominent advocates of a view with these ingredients historically.

For a very recent example of how this kind of system can work comes from Gregg Rosenberg. In Chapter 9 and subsequent chapters his book, A Place for Consciousness (which I have discussed previously here and here), he lays out a detailed metaphysical proposal of causality and the structure of what he calls “natural individuals”. To do the work of causation he postulates that there exist two kinds of (interdependent) properties, effective properties and receptive ones. Effective properties have a range of possible values, while receptive properties are needed to place the effective properties and determine them. Then Rosenberg makes one more key move which is to say the receptive property is connective in nature (one receptive field can bind more than one effective property). This allows complexes of effective properties to be bound together at multiple levels of nature (not just the micro-level) to form natural individuals.

The breathtaking ambition of this metaphysical proposal is such that it not only explains causality and the formation of individuals, but the receptive property is seen as that which gives rise to experience for the system, thus forming the basis of a theory of consciousness.

But for now, what I take away from these ideas is that the process of actualizing possibilities can explain the causal structure of nature, and this foundation provides enough richness to create a model which explains the presence of individuated natural systems within the larger world-network.

To finish this post, I want to revisit what I see as the strong compatibility of this metaphysical structure with quantum mechanics. In a measurement of something like an electron, position, charge or spin are the effective properties. The "ability to measure" (or ability to receive information) of the measuring system is the receptive property. The one thing missing from quantum theory is how larger natural systems which have this ability to measure are put together.

But perhaps physicists working on decoherence theory will figure this out. I am intrigued by the work being done here, but am severely limited in my ability to understand the papers (I hope I can find some work by a good philosopher of physics to help me out). Some interesting quotes have stuck in my head from this paper by Wojech H. Zurek (whose work was briefly discussed in this post). After summarizing the progress made in his theory, which among other things involves regarding observers as “open quantum systems, distinguished only by their ability to acquire, store and process information”, he says in his conclusion that “Many conceptual and technical issues (such as what constitutes ‘a system’) are still open.” I speculate that, consistent with Rosenberg’s theory, the “ability to acquire information” also includes a connective property which allows “open quantum systems” to form.

Delicious Blog Archive

Over on the side bar I now have a page which organizes my blog posts by topic. I used a service called del.icio.us to create this (thanks to a tip from Philosophy, et cetera).

Response on PA Intelligent Design Bill

I got a response back from Rep. Thomas Gannon after sending him a letter which expressed my opposition to the bill in the education committee of the PA House which authorized the teaching of so-called Intelligent Design theory. Below is my letter and the key paragraph of the response, which I briefly deconstruct.

First my letter---

Dear Representative Gannon:

I am writing with regard to House Bill no. 1007, which is in the Education Committee. As your constituent and a parent of school-age children, I am compelled to contact you to let you know this bill would harm the quality of science education in our schools.

The notion of “Intelligent Design” is a philosophical or theological set of ideas, it is not an accepted scientific alternative to evolution. The correct way for new theories to reach our children is by first being tested and achieving wide acceptance among scientists, not through legislative interventions by non-scientists.

Compromising the quality of science education hurts our children and it ultimately harms the competitiveness of our Commonwealth. Please do what you can to prevent this harmful bill from becoming law.

The response --- after paragraphs thanking me for writing and reporting on the status of the bill(hasn't gone anywhere yet), he writes:

It should be noted that the bill does contain language that prohibits using supporting documentation or material specific to a denominational, sectarian, or religious belief.

Should I be thankful that obviously illegal provisions are excluded?

Thus, any supportive material will need to have a scientific or logic-based component to it, not theology. Good scientific theory should stand on its own merits and should be subjected to academic scrutiny, including both theories (evolution and intelligent design).

First a good comment about the need for academic scrutiny, which if done legitimately will kill ID in its tracks. But then the "balance boogeyman" comes in with language which implies evolution and ID are on equal footing as "theories".

I will be interested to see what recommendation the subcommittee makes and how that impacts the bill's chances for passage.

Non-committal on whether he would support the bill or not.
We'll see where this goes.

Plausibility

In debates about God, a lot of time is wasted on discussion of whether one could prove or disprove God’s existence. This is not going to happen. So it is really about whether the existence of God (or a particular concept of God) is plausible (or very plausible) and thereby worthy of our belief.

In a couple of short paragraphs on this blog I will cut through centuries of debate and draw conclusions about the plausibility of God’s existence by looking at some of the evidence we see (or don’t see) in our world.


In my view, the positive evidence for the existence of God is the widespread belief which exists among billions of folks. I think there is something to the religious experiences people have reported which provides support to the concept of a divine essence in the world, i.e. a sense of connection with something large accompanied by feelings of purpose and value. I believe these experiences provide much less support for the existence of any detailed conception of a divine being, since the more specific features get reported after passing through a filter of preconceptions about God and religion.

Most of the other traditional philosophical arguments for the existence of God have been adequately countered and don’t offer plausible reasons for belief. Because it continues to make hay in our culture let me comment on one: I give no credit to design-based arguments for a transcendent personal God, given that we can easily conceive of rich but impersonal processes giving rise to the world we experience (I’m not claiming today’s science has this all figured out of course).

The main evidence against the existence of God comes from the well-discussed problems of evil and suffering and the related general problem of divine hiddenness. The existence of evil and the suffering of the innocent makes the existence of a God which is both benevolent and omnipotent (able to intervene) extremely implausible. Philosophers of religion these days have to resort to tortured exercises in modal logic to try to defend against this argument. Importantly, this is not an argument against a deity which lacks one of the specified attributes, say, omnipotence.

Divine hiddenness asks why God doesn’t reveal his or herself in a straightforward way. The answer is usually that God is playing a game to see who will believe anyway for use in judging us, or simply that the reasons for this (as well as for allowing evil) are beyond our comprehension. Given the weakness of these arguments, this problem again leads me to conclude the existence of God is implausible. Again I must note that this issue has traction against the God with the particular package of attributes of traditional monotheism, and is not an argument against all kinds of theism. Actually, I can’t see that any traditional arguments against the existence of God apply to pantheism.

So, I conclude that the existence of some impersonal and limited divine essence in the world is plausible. However, the existence of a God with the particular attributes offered by traditional monotheism is extremely implausible.

Sometime soon I will follow up with thoughts about the case for pantheism (and/or its relative, panentheism).

Ethical Stance toward the Brain-Damaged

Now that the political and media circus surrounding Terri Schiavo has quieted, let me try out my “ethics of subjective experience” perspective on the issue. I don’t know the specifics of Schiavo’s neurobiology, so I’ll keep the discussion general.

I have been tentatively trying out the idea of assigning moral value to the quality and robustness of subjective experience as a crucial (but never sole) guide to ethical issues (see posts here and here). The healthy human represents the pinnacle of high quality, robust first-person experience, but some level of subjective experience exists in other natural systems as well (see for instance this recent post).

Severe damage to the neocortex might eliminate higher cognitive brain functions, and radically diminish experience. But if other parts of the brain (as well as the rest of the body) were functioning, and if we could determine that the patient was not in pain, it would be wrong to assign zero value to the patient’s subjective experience. Not to be flippant, but what if the person’s experience were akin some kind of lower mammal, or bird or fish? I would assign some value to this status. I object to the term “vegetative state”, which seems to make so many implicit assumptions. Of course the more we can learn about the neurobiology of the patients, the more we can infer about their experience.

Beyond the experience criteria, other positive considerations for valuing the person’s life would include special consideration that the person is a member of the human family, and not actually an animal (some limited species-ism is OK, in other words); and an “uncertainty premium” associated with our imperfect knowledge of neurobiology. Weighed with these issues would be the expressed wishes of the patient (absent in Schiavo’s case), then the wishes of kin (unfortunately conflicting in Schiavo’s case), and finally the cost to broader society (modest in Schiavo’s case).

As usual there are shades of gray. Given the above considerations, I must disagree with those who argue that loss of distinctively human cognition is equivalent to death. Of course, those who likened removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube to murder are wrong also. Given a very low but positive value to be placed on a patient’s subjective experience, it is appropriate that the decision lay in weighing some of the secondary issues mentioned above such as the wishes of kin and the cost to society.