On the Side of Reason
Perhaps a few years from now, we will be willing to agree that David
Papineau may be afforded the singular distinction of having had the last word
for materialism. There is the expression, 'It's all over, but the
shouting.' Well, David's ought to be and can be the last shout.
David did not even have to shout. He had only to, very candidly,
admit that materialism spells the end of reason. Ever since materialism
raised its head at the dawn of philosophy, there have been few illusions about
its ultimate hostility to reason. So what is new with David?
Here's what: history. David clearly senses an historical precedent.
Everyone agrees that the mind itself is the last frontier of
materialism. David has only to side with the 'mysterians', which he does
in a muted fashion, and then to put this position into its proper historical
context, which is also done in a low-key, but, nonetheless, unmistakable
manner. The resulting eschatological message is almost subliminal; it
may not even have been deliberate, but is better transmitted for not having
been so. This is pure, totally innocent, eschatology, and so it may be
seen as such only when viewed in retrospect.
End of story? No, just the beginning of the end. Only the
Millennium now stands between us and God. David's message ought to be
the signal that frees us to turn our minds and hearts to the imminence of the
Millennium. If I am unable to act accordingly, it will just be another
one of probably many missed opportunities. It will then only signal,
once again, my lack of faith.
------------------------------------
Where to, with the Millennium? Nowhere for now. I have
said most of what I can say. I just keep hanging out here waiting for
some action. I can only wait for more people to opt for coherence.
The world will beat a path to whomever can spell out the most reasonable and
coherent cosmology. Google should make it easy for us coherentists to
cohere. I am not the only one who senses the materialist blood in the
water. Materialism will be an easy act to follow. Many would-be
visionaries hang out their shingles on the Internet. One of us will be
the first to break though the noise and skepticism. This may already
have happened, but I have not spotted it. I may be looking in all the
wrong places, but there are only so many words that a radical coherentist can
avoid using, and that Google can miss. If I don't have a decent handle
on that venue, then I have surely missed a calling.
Every morning is a new day. Every time I put a search term into
Google, I know that it could be my last blind search. It may not sound
like much, but I do have that much faith. It would not take many of us
to turn the Internet around, and to light the lamp of reason that will never
be extinguished. It is a new day in a new year, and my patience
persists. For what more could anyone ask?
----------------------------------------
Perhaps the next step is to give a synopsis of rational theism. What
is its motivation and what are its consequences?
[1/9]
In a seemingly paradoxical fashion, it is the rise of science that may be
most closely correlated with the decline in our regard for human reason.
As already pointed out, Kant is the
pivotal figure in this reversal of fortune. But to get a better handle
on Kant we must consider his intellectual milieu, the Enlightenment:
Bernard
de Fontenelle, popularizer of the scientific discoveries that contributed to
the climate of optimism, wrote in 1702 anticipating "a century which
will become more enlightened day by day, so that all previous centuries will
be lost in darkness by comparison." Reviewing the experience in 1784,
Immanuel Kant saw an emancipation from superstition and ignorance as having
been the essential characteristic of the Enlightenment. [Britannica 2001,
here & ff]
Before
Kant's death the spirit of the siècle de lumière (literally,
"century of light") had been spurned by Romantic idealists, its
confidence in man's sense of what was right and good mocked by revolutionary
terror and dictatorship, and its rationalism decried as being complacent or
downright inhumane. Even its achievements were critically endangered by the
militant nationalism of the 19th century. Yet much of the tenor of the
Enlightenment did survive in the liberalism, toleration, and respect for law
that have persisted in European society. There was therefore no abrupt end
or reversal of enlightened values.
The
perceptions and propaganda of the philosophes have led historians to locate
the Age of Reason within the 18th century or, more comprehensively, between
the two revolutions--the English of 1688 and the French of 1789--but in
conception it should be traced to the humanism of the Renaissance, which
encouraged scholarly interest in classical texts and values. It was formed by
the complementary methods of the Scientific Revolution, the rational and the
empirical. Its adolescence belongs to the two decades before and after
1700 when writers such as Jonathan Swift were employing "the artillery of
words" to impress the secular intelligentsia created by the growth in
affluence, literacy, and publishing. Ideas and beliefs were tested wherever
reason and research could challenge traditional authority.
The
scholars of the Enlightenment recognized a joint inheritance, Christian as
well as classical. In rejecting, or at least reinterpreting, the one and
plundering the other, they had the confidence of those who believed they
were masters of their destiny. They felt an affinity with the classical
world and saluted the achievement of the Greeks, who discovered a regularity
in nature and its governing principle, the reasoning mind, as well as that
of the Romans, who adopted Hellenic culture while contributing a new order
and style: on their law was founded much of church and civil law. Steeped in
the ideas and language of the classics but unsettled in beliefs, some
Enlightenment thinkers found an alternative to Christian faith in the form
of a neo-paganism. The morality was based on reason; the literature, art,
and architecture were already supplying rules and standards for educated
taste.
[...]
The philosophes knew enough to be sure that they were entering a new golden
age through rediscovery of the old but not enough to have misgivings about a
reading of history which, being grounded in a culture that had self-evident
value, provided ammunition for the secular crusade.
"The
new philosophy puts all in doubt," wrote the poet John Donne. Early
17th-century poetry and drama abounded in expressions of confusion and dismay
about the world, God, and man. [...] The
method expounded in [Descartes'] Discourse on Method (1637) was one of
doubt: all was uncertain until established by reasoning from self-evident
propositions, on principles analogous to those of geometry. It was serviceable
in all areas of study. There was a mechanistic model for all living things.
A
different track had been pursued by Francis Bacon, the great English lawyer
and savant, whose influence eventually proved as great as that of Descartes.
He called for a new science, to be based on organized and collaborative
experiment with a systematic recording of results. General laws could be
established only when research had produced enough data and then by
inductive reasoning, which, as described in his Novum Organum (1620),
derives from "particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so
that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all." These must be
tried and proved by further experiments. Bacon's method could lead to the
accumulation of knowledge. It also was self-correcting. Indeed, it was in
some ways modern in its practical emphasis. Significantly, whereas the
devout humanist Thomas More had placed his Utopia in a remote setting, Bacon
put New Atlantis (1627) in the future. "Knowledge is
power," he said, perhaps unoriginally but with the conviction that went
with a vision of mankind gaining mastery over nature. Thus were established
the two poles of scientific endeavour, the rational and the empirical,
between which enlightened man was to map the ground for a better world.
Reason has never recovered from the debacle that followed the
Enlightenment. Was this the failure of reason? No, it was the
arrogance of reason. The failure of the Enlightenment stands as a great
lesson concerning the evil that can result when reason denies its own
source.
Human reason does not naturally deny its source. It has to be
provoked, and mightily provoked it was by the sectarian history that preceded
the Enlightenment.
Until the final revelation, the prophetic tradition stands on the authority
of God, as defined by its prophets. Recognizing its own prophets was the
major challenge facing this tradition. Another problem is that all
prophets cannot be equal. If history is to have meaning or value, then
it can only be in the context of a progressive enlightenment of
humanity. This observation can even be inverted: the very idea of a
universal history originated in the prophetic context.
It is only with the Enlightenment that the notion of a progressive history
became self-conscious. If only the Reformation and the Enlightenment
could have conspired, might not much of the evil of the past two centuries
been avoided? If this were, indeed, the Best Possible World, would that
not have been the scenario of choice? Why was this hope seemingly held
out to us and then taken away? Why could not this final revelation have
come at least two centuries earlier?
The real question thus becomes, Why couldn't history have ended at least
two centuries earlier? That question becomes much more difficult.
It is tantamount to asking, Why history? Why creation? The final
revelation answers that question.
But there is a caveat. History is the story of our separation from
and then our rejoining with God. This is the fundamental premise of all
prophecy. It has never been a secret. The function of the final
revelation is to convince the world that history is coming to its logical
conclusion. The subsequent Millennium is just that reasonably protracted
concluding phase. It is the grace period in which all our unfinished
business is finished. All our debts are settled. A thousand years
should be considered as a reasonable upper limit for this denouement and rapprochement.
The final revelation makes sense of history and creation. In this
regard, there is just one little secret that is not really a secret, but
which, nonetheless, must be officially 'revealed'. Creation is not
gratuitous. As I will continue to emphasize, without a Creation there is
no Creator. Even God cannot ignore that simple, analytic
tautology. Indeed, creation is the primary function of any
self-respecting god, nay, of any god.
But there is more to this non-gratuity than mere tautology. There is
the pantheist insight that Creation is the essence of God. In some
sense, God = Creation. Having achieved this mystical insight,
pantheists, much too often, go on to devalue creation, history, life,
God. They set their spiritual sight on a realm beyond the tangle of
Creator and Creation. How many of us have never contemplated the trading
of life for nirvana? One can hardly blame them. N.B., however,
mystics are much less inclined to suicide than the general population.
That should tell us and them something. The life of the mystic is about
as far from being absurd as one can get. No small paradox, that!
Hinduism had its combined Reformation and Enlightenment in Buddhism.
It was, like our own Enlightenment, eventually rejected. Why? I'm
afraid that the answer was all too mundane. Buddha was unable to
overcome the Caste system. (Has Jesus fared better? You'll have to
be the judge of that.)
But was that Buddha's fault? No. You will have to blame it on
the system, the system of Creation, not Caste. Buddha somehow had to
play the logically scripted role of the non-prophetic prophet. This
might actually have been a greater spiritual challenge than anything on the
other side which was naturally meant to be more straight forward. Just
ask me about straight forward!
Creature and Creator are essential to each other. Why have the
authorities always gone to such lengths to obfuscate this simple fact?
The authorities take it upon themselves to intervene between creature and
Creator, a role that is not entirely at odds with the prophetic process of
mediation. Thus we have the 'divine mandate' of popes and kings.
The Cabots speak only to the Lowells, and the Lowells speak only to God.
That is not supposed to be a two way street, we think. We like to have
our kings be kingly and our presidents be presidential. If today the
President called you to ask for your advice on Iraq, how would you feel?
You might feel just a bit put out. Then imagine if it were God on
the other end of the line. Let the preachers preach so that the rest of
us can mind our own business, thank you.
The final revelation is that we are all in this little boat together, and I
do mean 'little'. Creation may not be perfect, but it is the best one
possible, and I do mean 'one'. There is no second best creation.
There is no second best creator. Secondness is the beginning and end of
all incoherence, nay, of all absurdity. The Savior and Santa Claus are
not the same. Santa Claus has to jump down every chimney. The
Savior has but one. Ours was it. Despite the superficial
materialist appearances, there is no spiritual redundancy in the
Cosmos. There is only that supposedly mysterious second and final
coming that we are about to witness in all of its down-to-earthiness.
The final coming is meant precisely to break the seal of Creation. The
key is in our own, oft-maligned minds, hidden in plain sight. It is just
our universal power of reason -- a reason that knows only one authority --
love. That is our ticket to heaven.
Do you feel less than convinced? Well, don't take my word for
it. Go talk to David. His is the
last word for materialism. Does that spell the end of reason? No,
that is just the beginning of a universal reasoning no longer cowed by the specter
of atomism.
[1/10]
Since at least the time of Bertie
Russell, The Analysis of Mind (1921), folks have turned to 'neutral
monism' as a means to avoid the incoherence of materialism and dualism,
without having to embrace the dreaded immaterialism.
David
Hume, an 18th-century Scottish skeptic, developed a theory of knowledge that
led him to regard both minds and bodies as collections of
"impressions" ("perceptions"), the primary data of
experience. Bertrand Russell, a 20th-century British logician and
philosopher, called the neutral entities "sensibilia" and argued
that mind and matter are "logical constructions." William James,
the American pragmatist, held that the neutral primary stuff is not a series
of atomistic perceptions but is a "booming, buzzing confusion"
that he termed "pure experience," with mind, or consciousness, and
body as names of discernible functions within it.
Neutral-monist
theories have been criticized as inadequate in their account of either mind
or body. Hume himself said (A Treatise of Human Nature) that his concept of
mind as a bundle of perceptions inadequately accounts for the identity and
simplicity of the mind. Others have criticized the notion that physical
bodies comprise some sort of primary experience as implicitly idealistic.
Hence, the central problem for neutral monism is seen as that of specifying
clearly the nature of the neutral stuff without qualifying it in an
exclusively mental or physical fashion. [Britannica 2001]
Neutral monism has taken a variety of forms, but mainly those of
phenomenalism and, more recently, informationalism. This latter form
covers David Bohm's 'implicate order' by which he attempted to provided a 'hidden variables'
interpretation of the Quantum. Even the standard Copenhagen
interpretation is virtually a neutral monism. I would submit that
panpsychism and pantheism, when not purely immaterialist, are versions of
neutral monism. Kant's noumenal realm is yet another
version.
More to the point, naturalism and even non-reductive physicalism strongly
overlap with neutral monism. Unless one is able to pretend that there is a
very strict epistemic/ontic divide, then one is bound to deal with some form
of neutral monism, at the least.
Let's see now. We are left with naturalism and, of course,
supernaturalism. Off to the side is immaterialism. Supernaturalism
is, to most folks, the same as dualism. If we shuffle these three cards
once again we get neutral monism, dualism and idealism. The theistic
dualists hold the incoherent wild card. If they ever saw the light of
coherence available in idealism, our premillennial game would be over.
Most theologians verge on idealism, but they will not confront the scientific
establishment. The Creationists do that, but they are wedded to their
dogmatic dualism . Without foreseeable support from the non-rational theists, we
immaterialists must be the ones to confront the naturalists with their own incoherence.
That is the only opening for rational, ideal theism. [Confrontation?
Maybe just a nudge in the right direction.]
The naturalists fall back on the limited coherence of the scientific
cosmology. Their weakest link is in explaining the evolutionary
emergence of the mind. Except for the few remaining non-reductive
physicalists, most naturalists assume a neutral monism that is tantamount to
panpsychism.
It seems to me that it is a very slippery slope from naturalism to vitalism to
panpsychism to pantheism to panentheism to a monistic theism.
Where the naturalists find themselves on this slope is not something they are
wont to advertise. No thoughtful naturalist could be unaware of this
slope and of the non-existence of any logical retaining wall on their side of
theism. They just see no reason to brag about the logical tenuousness of
their position. Darwin and the Big Bang are their fortress. It
seems a formidable fortress until one inspects its foundation.
There are mountains of evidence supporting the scientific cosmology.
Those mountains may be shifted with one's little finger. This is
accomplished by yanking the materialist rug out from under the scientific
edifice. The smallest amount of panpsychism may then provide the grease to
set that edifice adrift. It might as well be floating in mid-air, which
is exactly the claim of immaterialism. It's all in the mind, be it
cosmic mind or whatever.
Is there no alternative to panpsychism for the naturalist? What about
all those dissipative structures and spontaneously emergent properties of the complexity
theorists? The issue we found there was whether there can be
non-trivial self-organization without a non-trivial self.
Biology is replete with apparently non-trivial emergent properties.
But, by definition, an irreducible property is unexplainable
scientifically. It cannot be explained by physics. The realm of
the irreducible, should it not then be identified as some sort of projection
of Kant's noumenal realm?
All of the emergent properties of which we shall ever have cognizance will
pertain to living systems. If their noumenal source is other than some
kind of vitalism, we could never know it. Naturalism tends
naturally to vitalism. Do the naturalists deny this? Not to my
knowledge. They simply don't brag about it.
But now it gets worse. There are a plethora of irreducible emergent properties with
which we happen to have more than a nodding acquaintance. These are the states of
our own psyches. It is often suggested that this acquaintance is so intimate
that it is, at the least, unimpeachable. No one can vouchsafe our own mental
states. Indeed, our own mental states may not even exist outside of our
experience of them. Thus do we see how vitalism naturally and easily
spills over into panpsychism.
There are caveats. We have to consider unconscious mental states, as
well as the possibility of an artificial intelligence.
---------------------------
[from the PDA, not wanting to break the natural (sic) flow]:
Friday,
January 10, 2003
6:05:51
PM
·
[@GreenSpring
Courts]
·
There are
caveats. We have to consider unconscious mental states, as well as the
possibility of an artificial intelligence.
·
[from 'On the
Side of Reason' page.]
·
·
These two
considerations may be related.
·
The
computationalists like to think that our uCs is where the bulk of our
information processing takes place.
·
It is only our
HOT's ['higher order thoughts'] that become conscious.
·
Once again we
find a possible venue for Kant's noumenal realm.
·
Naturalists
can avoid vitalism only if connectionism or computationalism can take up a
significant amount of the noumenal gap.
·
There are
strong indications that these approaches are mutually negating.
Only if some unknown amalgamation of them can be concocted, is there a
way out of this logical dilemma.
-------------------------------------
My claim is that 'strong' AI is the only thing that stands between
naturalism and vitalism or panpsychism. Thus is strong AI the last retaining wall
on the slippery slope from naturalism to theism.
Once theism is back on the intellectual radar screen, immaterialism will
then have its entrée onto that same screen. And once theism and
immaterialism can no longer be intellectually dismissed, rational theism, as
herein specified, will come into its own. This will complete our premillennial phase.
This is the most likely foreseeable course of events. The timing is
now the last unknown. Within this decade? How about 2012 as the
drop dead date? Let's give the Mayans their due. Why not? If
we can bring it all in before then, well, so much the better. (And how
many would-be cosmologists can say that only their ol' man knew D-day?
Crypticism was never my strong suit.)
--------------------------------------
Here's a page for the record; this was on the neutral
monism list: Neutral
Monism & the Mind/Body Problem. This page is from the Holoweb.
It belongs to Keith Choquette.
Notice the similarities and differences between our two
sites. So near yet so far??
[1/11]
Let me attempt to recapitulate yesterday, as well as some earlier
material. I think there has been some progress in my assessment of the
tenuousness of our scientific grip on reality.
A significant factor is that the materialists have run out of ideas.
The more thoughtful and candid amongst them, Jaegwon Kim and David Papineau
are conspicuous examples, have admitted as much. They have run out of
new arguments without making any significant dent in our natural,
non-materialist intuitions concerning the nature of our own minds. The
philosophical ball is now officially in the court of the
non-materialists. And this is just for starters.
The complexity theorists are also running out of ideas for explaining the
emergence of novel properties in complex systems, despite the tremendous
advances in our computational ability to model such systems. As if to
add insult to this injury, the Artificial Intelligentsia is now picking up the
cause of ontology that had been dropped by the philosophers. They are
looking at the minimum, irreducible ontologies that must be posited so that we
can move ahead with our knowledge enhancing systems. Philosophers ought
to be taking notes.
The philosophers who are taking note are the Continental
semioticians. The phenomenology minded semioticians are effectively
ganging up with our own computational ontologists to roll back the
Anglo-American initiative in analytic philosophy that dominated our academies
in the last century.
Lacking any analytical alternatives, philosophers are reluctantly being
pushed toward logical synthesis and metaphysical emergence on a number of
fronts. Notions of vitalism and panpsychism are being reconsidered with
what some might consider alarming regularity by our workaday
philosophers.
For the modern non-materialists, the metaphysical battle is now theirs to
lose. Barring some totally unforeseen change of fortune, the momentum is
increasingly and very perceptibly shifting away from materialism.
Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight, one can almost pinpoint the turning point
as having occurred at mid-century: W. V.
Quine (and herein) (1908-2000), 'Two Dogmas of
Empiricism' (1953). Did Willard sense the magnitude of what he had
wrought. Only privately, if at all. He was no evangelist and
surely no eschatologist. All the more for the rest of us!
[1/12 -- Many folks would place the discovery of the Quantum, at the turn
of the last century, ahead of any philosophical development in helping to
reverse the fortunes of materialism. There is a cottage industry of Quantum
Minded physicists, formerly led by David Bohm, and now by Sir Roger
Penrose and Henry Stapp. Keith
Choquette's Holoweb
site provides an excellent synopsis of these developments occurring on the
fringes of Physics. His book, The
Holonomic Paradigm: Biophysics, Consciousness and Parapsychology
(2002), goes into much greater detail. I take
exception. Yes, me, with my two master's degrees in Physics, beg to
differ with some of the greatest minds in that field.]
This turning point came despite, and, one is tempted to speculate, almost
because of a continuing wave of startling advances on the scientific and
technological fronts. Only now, at the bi-millennium, is this wave
beginning to dissipate. A thoughtful person could have anticipated that
science might be working itself out of its own job. Either science would
naturally find its own limitations, or the worst nightmares of transhumanism
would quickly be descending upon us. Oh, yes, there are plenty of
self-styled 'futurists' out there who keep the transhumanist faith, and you
are very welcome to do the comparison shopping, but I don't think you have to
be a brain surgeon to sense that their faith rings hollow. The human
intellect and spirit are restless. If the 'futurists' cannot offer
us new nourishment, we will be, and we are, moving on to other pastures, other
futures.
-----------------------------------
I just got a response from Keith inviting me to peruse
his material. Here are some excerpts from his Overview
and the succeeding pages:
Ilya
Prigogine, the Nobel prize winning chemist, is a colleague of Pribram's and
has written on the relevancy of chaos theory to Bohm's physics. In his work on
chaos theory, Prigogine described the spontaneous reorganization of far
from equilibrium systems. The emergence of correlations far from equilibrium
due to fields that were ineffective in a less chaotic system is the same
principle that Bohm appeals to as the basis of effects from hidden variables
of the holonomic order. Subtle fields impose an unexpected order on
chaotic systems through a top down constraint upon the system. Bohm
refers to the emergence of correlations between electrons in superconductive
material at very low temperatures as one example. Pribram also describes the
holoscape as a chaotic system, susceptible to the same sort of top down
constraints.
[...]
Much as Copernicus taught us that the earth is not the center of the world,
the holonomic paradigm indicates that the world manifest to our senses and our
instruments is not the whole world but only a corner of a vast reality beyond
what has been imagined.
[...]
Based upon that assumption and the data of recent studies, Puthoff has gone on
to describe basic properties of matter such as mass, inertia and gravity in
relation to this zero-point field. Others have suggested that the hidden
energy of the vacuum develops a pronounced coherence in living organisms
and bears upon life processes in important ways, even as the basis of
consciousness.
[...]
Consciousness is a fundamental part of reality in Walker's theory. There can
be nothing physical according to Walker, without consciousness to complement
the physical potentialities and bring them to actual physical states. Does
this mean that there was no physical reality until the evolution of conscious
observers? Not according to Walker, because consciousness was always present
in the world, right from the big bang
[...]
Consciousness does not emerge from the physical forces recognized in the
standard model. Rather consciousness is a hidden variable necessary to
accommodate the data of physics....
[...]
Pribram argued for a pluralistic monism in which "informational
structure" remains neutral to the apparent distinction between mind and
matter. He goes on to note that the implicate order Bohm described introduces
such information structure in the hidden variables of the implicate order,
beyond the material system.
[...]
Yet when one looks back to the dawn of the scientific age and the presentation
of Newtonian physics, it is easy to understand how the enthusiasm of the
scholars of that time fueled new hope that everything about the physical world
would be comprehensible to human reason. The age of enlightenment ensued and
the match between a rational world and the rational observation of it seemed
perfect. Einstein once said "The most incomprehensible thing about the
universe is that it is comprehensible". The holonomic paradigm
suggests that what can be comprehended is really just a small corner of a vast
reality reaching beyond the stars, forever hidden behind the veil.
-------------------------------------------
Keith,
Please excuse this open response. I will post your reply only if you
desire.
Why the pessimism? I agree that reality vastly transcends the
built-in limitations of any purely objective science. But this deeper,
implicate order to which you and many others expectantly refer: what is its
nature? Is it not much closer to the nature of mind than of
matter? You say that the implicate order is responsible for the
self-organizing potential of matter. Is it not likely or conceivable
that much or even most of our own mental processes are embedded in the
implicate order, beyond the structures of space and time? Is not such a
collective mental field necessary to explain the data of parapsychology, not
to mention psychology and biology?
The fact that we cannot drag our scientific instruments into this domain,
is hardly cause for despondence. Our most powerful instrument of
discernment is already ensconced in the heart of that noumenal world.
For what more could we ask? Is it not the birthright of everyone of us
to have a ringside seat under the noumenal Big Top?
I need not point out to you, of all people, that our puny little egos are
not the biggest show in the cosmic mind field. Surely the spontaneous
organizing potential of the implicate order has realized mental powers that
transcend our own. In fact, it may well be that our present egos relate
to the cosmic mind rather as the mental power of an individual neuron relates
to you and me. Is this cause for pessimism? Only if we can't
figure out how to put our heads together. Does not the Internet serve as
a prime accelerant in this inevitable process of global coherence? Here
we are reasoning together about from whence we have come and whither we shall
go. Our intellectual weblogs may or may not converge. Those that
do converge and cohere are likely to set the pace and tone for what is to
come.
Only a minimal faith in the universal power of reason, as amply
demonstrated in mathematics and other fields, is necessary for all of us to
win the cosmic mind game. For what other reason could we have possibly
come this far from out of the primordial chaos?
If that is not good enough, we can always cheat. A little clairvoyance
can go a long way in the teleological field of the implicate order. If
we are not chips off the old block that is the cosmic mind, then someone is
trying hard to fool us. All we have to do is collectively remember from whence
we came.
Am I being too optimistic?
Dan
[1/12]
I am taking exception to the Quantum
Mind brigade. I have several times favorably mentioned my own
experience with what I call 'quantum
dualism' (also here and here,
etc. I just realized, though, that 'quantum' appears in none of my page
titles. This oversight will have to be corrected.). I recognize
that the main intent of the Quantum Mind people is precisely to avoid
Cartesian dualism, and one can only applaud their efforts to this end.
But, as with Bohm, we are left with the explicate and the implicate orders,
reminiscent of Kant's phenomenal and
noumenal domains. These domains cannot be treated as ontological equals,
despite Descartes' supposition that we could have the equal reality of both
mind and matter. The nascent scientific enterprise was quite happy to
grab and run with their half of the ontological loaf. Only in the last
half of the last century did that establishment dare attempt to complete their
ontological heist.
That is water over the historical dam. The Quantum brigade is
resorting to a partial roll-back of the materialist juggernaut, rather in the
spirit of postmodern pluralism, i.e. let sleeping dogs lie. It is my
intent to demonstrate that any such partial measure is too little and too
late. We cannot now turn the clock back toward dualism and
pluralism. There is a global need and desire for coherence on all
levels.
But, I will hardly have to lift a finger. I have only to point to the
slippery slope. Give the psyche an inch
and it will take a mile. If there is an ontological domain for the human
psyche in the implicate or noumenal realm that has little or no regard for the
limitations of space and time, then surely there is room for supra-human
intelligence in that same realm.
We then have a stark choice to make. What shall we take to be the
primary ordering principle for the cosmos? Will it be the space-time
manifold, or will it be the mind. Kant and Bohm and many others,
including other physicists, have realized that space-time could only play a
derivative role. There had to be a 'pre-geometric' or noumenal
order. Surely the mind, conscious and unconscious, human and
supra-human, is a part of this order. We then need only choose between
pessimism and optimism. The pessimist supposes, with Kant, that the
noumenal order is a primordial chaos, almost totally opaque even to the
supra-human mind.
The optimist finds this notion of cosmic incoherence hard to swallow,
especially after three centuries of progress in the mind's penetration of
nature. There is an ordering principle, alright. Darwinism is
surely not sufficient. The is also an Anthropic principle at work.
Then there is the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of mathematics within physics
and beyond. Does the mean that the supra-human intelligence is limited
to mathematics? Is there not always a close correlation between
mathematical and musical aesthetics? Witness the creations of
Mozart.
Science has led us to see virtually to the end of nature. We now
confront the noumenon. It is either an alien domain or it is our one
true source and home. Our ecos, our logos, our telos. Is not
pessimism just born of the desire to avoid our inevitable time of reckoning
with our own destiny?