Paul Wallis Seems to Disagree with Stephen When He Says: The Material World Was Preceded by Consciousness according to Plato.
My Mama told me I would always be right about everything. Mama wouldn’t have lied to me would she?
Plato’s Timaeus contains his description of creation. (Interestingly the only one of Plato’s works known to the Middles Ages although they absorbed other ideas through Neo-Platonism.) Preexistent chaos is shaped by the deliberate intent of Intellect (nous) anthropomorphized as the handiwork of a Divine Demiurge (dêmiourgos). The universe as a whole and all its parts are infused with teleology.
Steefen have I somewhere expressed a contradictory opinion?
note that “most of them did change their minds–veering away from the idea of a direct, causal role of consciousness” (10:34)
Yes, I misremembered and mischaracterized how common the interpretation is. It is, though, still alive. See for example, ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and integrated information theory (but note that IIT is more than just an interpretation; it actually makes, according to Chalmers and McQueen, substantive predictions, yet untested), though they note the idea is “now widely dismissed.”
What I’m wondering is whether there have been any real-world experimental results that confirm what Wallis says,
I don’t believe so. In that, I think he is definitely misrepresenting the state of QM (and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise earlier, though looking back at the exchange, I probably did do). As far as I’m aware, they are either interpretations of the same math and experimental results that make no novel predictions, or (like Chalmers’s IIT) they are theories that make their own substantive predictions but are as yet still untested.
Ok I wasn’t able to make it completely through these three videos because of time contraints but I did listen to substantial chunks. Enough to get the point I think. Some comments.
Consciousness is mysterious and imperfectly understood. But admitting that science lacks a comprehensive accounting doesn’t mean this guy’s view is correct. Substance dualists still have to provide some compelling reason to think their view is correct. Punching holes in my case doesn’t make yours true, right? Otherwise this is just an argument from incredulity or a “god of the gaps” type argument. Just because we don’t have the right answer doesn’t mean there aren’t wrong answers.
While responses to brain trauma are interesting, you could just look at normal brain functioning. The truth is, if I alter my brain chemistry then my consciousness changes. Drink lotsa beer. Smoke some primo bud. Hyperventilate. The point is that even if we don’t understand all of it there is obviously some relationship between physical brain states and consciousness. The guy admits this. He has to. What reason do we have to think there is some non-physical aspect in the first place? It gets back to an old philosophical argument: what is the difference between a supernatural explanation and a natural explanation we just haven’t figured out yet? Surely Occam’s Razor applies here.
The guy also seems to think something like “elasticity”, the ability of the brain to respond to outside stimuli, is evidence of a non-physical aspect to the brain. But under a physicalist model this is exactly what you would expect. The brain shapes consciousness and consciousness shapes the brain. Mysterious but not unexpected.
And notice the way he equivicates with his use of the freighted term “soul”. At one point it is a metaphor for the functioning of the mind and human personality. Then it is an actual “thing” floating around in there. But how does that work? Where is the spot where the soul latches onto the brain? I ask because the guy makes a big deal about how there is no detectable physical brain “center” for subjective personal experience.
Looking at this guy’s video output it’s clear he is a big time Christian apologist. But doesn’t he realize there is nothing particularly Christian about any of this? If my consciousness is not identical with my brain state did it come into being when I was born? Before? (Like Origen thought.) What about reincarnation? Seems as if we’re getting rather far afield. All of this is consistent with his views. Where does he draw the line?
Do you think human consciousness of, say, John Doe continues after the death John Doe?
Honestly? No one knows. I hear claims. Unverifiable claims.
I hope we do survive death. I’m not particularly afraid of personal oblivion but I’ve lost loved ones and it makes me sad to think that all they were is gone forever. But wanting it to be true doesn’t make it true.
What makes me angry is the “Psychic” industry devoted to exploiting grief and loss. If Hell exists it must be designed for scum like that.
Notably, neither McQueen nor Chalmers are physicists
Correct. I know less about McQueen, but still Chalmers, a philosopher principally concerned with consciousness, and a philosopher who dabbles in pretty out-there theories, is nevertheless very much a respectable and high-profile academic philosopher. He’s an honest-to-god household name (among philosophers). The theory is respectable enough that physicists are willing to engage it
_Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False_ by Thomas Nagel
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.
Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.
Nagel’s skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In _Mind and Cosmos_, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic.
In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
There is a lot we don’t know. Merely pointing out that science doesn’t have an explanation for everything doesn’t bring you one step closer to demonstrating your view is correct. Where is the evidence for your point of view?
While you’re providing us with that evidence also give us even one single example where a previously unknown mystery of nature was solved by recourse to a supernatural explanation. God’s track record sucks.
“There is a lot we don’t know”
Is it the case that “we… know” a God of:
theism _doesn’t_ exist?
deism _doesn’t_ exist?
“Merely pointing out that science doesn’t have an explanation for everything doesn’t bring you one step closer to demonstrating your view is correct”
What are some things, if anything, you think “science doesn’t have an explanation for”?
“Where is the evidence for your point of view?”
On what subject(s)?
“give us even one single example where a previously unknown mystery of nature was solved by recourse to a supernatural explanation”
Some explanations are better than other explanations.
Inferences to the best of several alternative explanations of the available data are often made.
What’s your explanation for the origination of the vast quantity of information encoded in biology’s DNA?
(totally-mindless processes did it?)
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