So the Fall 2012 semester has ended, and the holiday break has begun. What new things await me for the new year? Some of these things have already started to dawn upon me as a paradigm shift in my way of thinking approaches, thanks to reading some criticisms of current paradigms in psychology by Patricia Churchland, Joseph LeDoux, Antonio Damasio, and others. I've also encountered a new theory called embodied cognition from a new book that I bought and plan to read soon called Louder than Words: The New Science of How The Mind Makes Meaning by Benjamin K. Bergen. Some of these issues I hinted at in my last blog post, but only as I have sought new information have the ideas really been coming to light.
The current paradigm in cognitive psychology is that of the computational theory of mind, which has been with cognitive psychology from its conception in the 1950s. Although there have been other theories such as connectionism, computationalism has remained steadfast in its presence and is still advocated strongly by Steven Pinker.
In Consciousness Explained Daniel Dennett, inspired by philosopher Gilbert Ryle and AI researcher Marvin Minsky, criticizes the idea of a 'Cartesian theater', a place in the brain where all of consciousness comes together and is observed by some equivalent of a homunculus. Dennett instead proposes a multiple drafts model which lacks a central cartesian theater. Dennett views some of the trends in cognitive psychology and functionalist philosophy of mind as suffering from remnants of Cartesian Dualism, and in effect are Cartesian materialist theories. Indeed the (brilliant) cognitive psychologist and linguist Noam Chomsky even called one of his books Cartesian Linguistics. In chapter 9 of the book Neurophilosophy, Patricia Churchland argues against the same sort of issues as Dan Dennett; she claims the insistence of cognitive psychology (the computatonal theory of mind) on the"hardware-software distinction
as applied to the brain is dualism in yet another disguise." (pg. 408)
In addition, some of the books I have read by V.S. Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, and Joseph LeDoux have shown me how important the body and emotions are to cognition. In Descartes' Error, Damasio argues that just as it is a mistake to think of the mind and body as separate, so too is it an error to disconnect brain and body, emotion and reason. In The Emotional Brain, LeDoux demonstrates the failure of traditional cognitivism of capturing the essence and importance of emotions to cognition.
Okay, so there is no Cartesian theater in the brain, and emotions and bodily states are important to cognition. What could fill the gap? Embodied cognition, the thesis that our bodies are vital to the way that we think. At the current moment I do not know much about this theory, but I plan to learn more from the book that I bought and other reading material about it, because the philosophical criticisms from Dennett and Churchland and the neurological evidence from Damasio, Ramachandran, and LeDoux seem to be pointing this direction.
This also has some philosophical appeal to me. I am a Physicalist and a Naturalist, meaning that I believe the only things that exist are physical objects and the physical forces acting on them. As such, a concrete bodily explanation of the mind is very appealing to me. If emotions and cognition are both by definition certain states of the body, that ipso facto means that the idea of disembodied mental states -- that is, the mind as something immaterial -- is entirely senseless.
As I investigate these issues, I hope that I will find more information important to the puzzle that is consciousness, and I think that embodied cognition really might be the key. Next semester, I will be taking two neuroscience courses and also working in a personality psychology laboratory, so I will have much to learn and will be able to get some real research experience. This is a very exciting time for me, and in fact is the most excited I have been about my interests in a long time. I truly look forward to exploring the paths that lie before me. I do not know for certain what lies ahead, but that is part of the fun of being a scientist; to paraphrase one of my professors, "One of the things you have to get used to being a scientist is dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty."
But the awakened one, the knowing one, says: "Body am I entirely, and
nothing more; and soul is only the name of something about the body."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Chapter 1.4
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Some Short Thoughts on Consciousness and the Future of Neuropsychology
Consciousness is one of the big key questions in modern neuropsychology. Why are we conscious? What exactly is consciousness? How are we conscious? These are the big questions, the end game of neuroscience. I am a materialist, and I do not believe that there is anything more than just the atoms that make up physical space. Physics may reveal the nature of matter to be quite complex and mysterious, but I do not think that understanding quantum mechanics is of any value to understanding consciousness, contrary to Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, as well as new age mystics like Deepak Chopra. However, while I love cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience (which I will refer to collectively as cognitive neuropsychology), I think that cognitive neuropsychology is dominating consciousness research and that it's going to take a lot more than just understanding cognition to understand how the mind works. Here are some key things that I think are necessary to full understand consciousness, and thusly, what it is to be human:
What does this mean for Artificial Intelligence? I do believe that it is possible that there could be a conscious machine some day with human like intelligence. Note that I said human like. Without emotions, personality traits, and the ability to socially interact in a meaningful way I do not think a machine could ever have a mind truly the same as a human mind, regardless of how intelligent it may be. Emotions and feelings I think are particularly biological phenomenon (as shown by the research of Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer), and it would require some way to emulate the biological processes that give rise to emotions to make a truly human like mind. Even if a model of emotional decision making could be implemented in a machine, without actual reproduction of the emotions artificial intelligence will remain just that -- artificial. However, I think the field of AI is extremely valuable to our understanding of cognition and the nature of the mind, and is something that should be pursued. There is much to be learned from seeing what it takes to make a machine intelligent, as it sheds light on how we are intelligent. It also allows us to implement theoretical models of memory, cognition, and perception. At the same time, the limitations of AI help demonstrate how unique biological life is, and the wonderful power of natural selection over millions of years compared to our "intelligently designed" machines. Nature is truly majestic.
- Emotions. The neuropsychological study of emotions, or Affective Neuroscience is becoming increasingly important to cognitive neuropsychology. The research of Antonio Damasio for instance has shown that emotions are very important to how we make decisions. His current research is on the importance of self-awareness to consciousness and how the brain creates selves. In the future I think that cognitive and affective neuropsychology will become increasingly intertwined.
- Personality. I define a personality trait as a predictor of behavior. For example, when someone describes someone as neurotic, there is not literally the essence of being neurotic in their brain, but that this means "this person has a tendency to behave in such a manner that displays a tendency to worry and over react". While a personality trait is easy enough to define, and is measurable with personality tests such as the Big Five Personality Inventory, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, what gives a person a unique personality trait is still somewhat of a mystery. We know that much of it is due to inheritance as well as non-genetic biological factors as well as social environment and life events, the specifics are still not well researched.
- We Are Social Animals. I do not think that consciousness would have evolved if we were not social animals. Consciousness allows us to deliberate in depth, to be aware of what we are perceiving, and to better predict the behavior and intentions of others. This is vital to a social animal such as ourselves. The ability to think about other people this way allows us to have empathy, which I believe is the foundation of morality. This is sometimes called "theory of mind" or "the intentional stance" by philosophers and psychologists, and an impaired theory of mind is characteristic of autism, and a lack of empathy --- which is dependent on a properly functioning theory of mind I think --- is characteristic of antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy).
What does this mean for Artificial Intelligence? I do believe that it is possible that there could be a conscious machine some day with human like intelligence. Note that I said human like. Without emotions, personality traits, and the ability to socially interact in a meaningful way I do not think a machine could ever have a mind truly the same as a human mind, regardless of how intelligent it may be. Emotions and feelings I think are particularly biological phenomenon (as shown by the research of Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer), and it would require some way to emulate the biological processes that give rise to emotions to make a truly human like mind. Even if a model of emotional decision making could be implemented in a machine, without actual reproduction of the emotions artificial intelligence will remain just that -- artificial. However, I think the field of AI is extremely valuable to our understanding of cognition and the nature of the mind, and is something that should be pursued. There is much to be learned from seeing what it takes to make a machine intelligent, as it sheds light on how we are intelligent. It also allows us to implement theoretical models of memory, cognition, and perception. At the same time, the limitations of AI help demonstrate how unique biological life is, and the wonderful power of natural selection over millions of years compared to our "intelligently designed" machines. Nature is truly majestic.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Cartesian Dualism: A Functionalist Critique
I would like to begin by saying that I have a lot of respect for Rene Descartes. He was one of the most brilliant philosophers of all time, and his emphasis on epistemological rigor is to be admired. However, this is not to say that his views were correct. In this post, his dualist belief in an immaterial mind that is separate from the body will be challenged. People in general have an intuitive belief that we are more than just our bodies or brains, and many have found dualism an appealing and convincing view for that reason. After examining his classic argument for dualism, I will examine some of the reasons that dualism is appealing, and why one should not be so quick to believe it.
Descartes laid out his case for dualism in his classic book Meditations on The First Philosophy. His main argument is found in the sixt meditation, but builds on arguments from previous meditations, particularly the second and third meditation.
The gist of the argument is that it is possible for you to doubt that you have a body. However, it is not possible to doubt that you have a mind, because doubting is a type of thought and for you to be aware of thoughts makes it self-evident that you as a mind exist. Since the body has the property of being doubtable, but the mind cannot be doubted, they possess different properties. Since they possess different properties, they cannot be said to be the same thing. So, Descartes concluded, the mind must be a separate entity from the body. This invokes a logical principle that later would come to be called the Indiscernibility of Identicals Principle by Gottfried Leibniz. Simply put, the principle states that if two things are identical then they are indiscernible from each other. Again, since the mind and brain appear to have different properties, they are discernible, and thus cannot be identical since identical things are indiscernible. Descartes said that mind is made of mental stuff, or res cogitans, and matter is made of res extensa.
The problem with this argument is that he concludes that just because the mind is conceptually distinguishable from the brain, that it is altogether a separate entity. Take the other organs besides the brain for example. Digestion is a different concept from the digestive system. Breathing is different from the lungs. Pumping blood is different from the heart. The functions of these organs are conceptually different from the organ that does them. Thinking is what the brain does, just as the other organs perform their functions. I agree with Descartes that the mind and the brain are conceptually different, but this conceptual difference does not make them separate entities no more than breathing is a separate entity from the lungs. It amounts to a misapplication of the indiscernibility of identicals principle.
How do we know that the brain and mind are so intimately connected? After all, couldn't the brain be the mechanism by which some immaterial mind or soul acts through? As is commonly known in modern times, brain damage or brain disease can severely affect the way you think. Damage to the Wernicke's or Broca's area can severely damage your ability to speak. Imbalances in neurotransmitters can cause various mental illnesses. Damage to the visual cortex can result in blindness despite perfectly healthy eyes. Just as well, we know that conscious awareness seems to come after brain activity, as shown by experiments from Benjamin Libit in the 1980s.¹ This shows that decisions were detectable in the brain milliseconds before there was conscious awareness. Milliseconds may not sound like much, but consider that nuclear explosions happen on an even shorter time scale of microseconds and make quick work of anything near the fireball. Besides, it is not how long brain processes occur before there is conscious awareness, but the fact that brain processes occur at all before conscious awareness that shows mental states are on metaphorical puppet strings, with the brain being the puppet master.
It follows then that the mind, or rather, mental states can be thought of in terms of what they do, or their function. Functionalism is technically agnostic on the ontological matter of whether or not mental states should be thought of as separate from brain states, in contrast to views such as type-type identity theory, or reductive materialism, which holds that brain states are identical to mind states, or eliminative materialism which is the radical thesis that there are no mind states and that our "folk psychology" terms (thought, feeling, belief, desire) are just names that were invented to describe behavior of people with ignorance to neuroscience. However, functionalism fits well with a materialistic view of the universe, and generated the dominant theory of cognition, the computational theory of mind. It might be worth noting that the computational theory is not a single theory, but rather an approach to generating theories of the mind. The computational theory of mind sees the mind as an information processing machine, and there are competing views of exactly how this computation works.
In the functionalist view, different mind states can be seen as functional states of the brain that could conceivably take place in something besides a brain.² Research into artificial intelligence is a huge part of this; artificial intelligence research attempts to take the models of human cognition from cognitive psychology and implement them in computers. There has been limited success, such as the feats of the supercomputers Deep Blue and Watson. There are doubts however that a computer could ever be as complex as a human mind, or be capable of genuine emotion even if it could think.
Another reason for a materialist to support functionalism is the fact that different brain states can represent the same mind state, not just between different people who obviously have different physical brain states for an identical thought, but within the same brain. I myself took this as evidence of dualism previously, but now believe it to be compatible with materialism if one adopts a functionalist view.
You might be thinking hold on a minute! What about explaining qualia, or the first person, subjective awareness of the world? Philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers have proposed that even if we understood the computational aspects of the mind, and had a complete neuroscience, that we still would not be able to explain this phenomenological aspect of the mind. Chalmers refers to this as the "hard problem" in explaining consciousness. He has proposed that we must conclude there is more to the mind than just matter, and supports a different type of dualism from the substance dualism of Descartes called naturalistic dualism or property dualism.³ I do not think that proposing a dualism is a very helpful solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Concluding that there is an immaterial mind, or some mystical aspect of matter besides physical properties, is a cheap and quick solution, but it raises more problems in the end. Just as saying God created the universe or launched the big bang leads to more questions of what the nature of God is, how he accomplished such a feat, and where God came from, so too does the dualist answer to the hard problem raise questions such as how something immaterial could control something material, or how physical processes in the brain cause immaterial properties to emerge from matter. Rushing to a dualist solution then makes the problem unsolvable in principle, since immaterial things are by definition unobservable.
I also question the validity of the concept of immaterial substances. I believe, as per the pragmatic maxim, that the meaning of a word consists in its practical or observable consequences (this at least applies to nouns and verbs). To what exactly does the concept of res cogitans refer? If the idea of immaterial or mental substance refers to our phenomenolgical awareness, then that is tantamount to saying that mental substances are the mind, which is made of mental substance. It is rather circular. I agree with Thomas Jefferson when he wrote, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul."⁴ I do not think I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that only material things exist, but I think my objections to the concept of immaterial substances are sufficient to warrant accepting materialism as the best view of reality and of the mind. It is possible however for a functionalist to conceive of mental states as being an immaterial property of matter or one that "emerges" from the physical processes of the brain, but my main quarrel is with Cartesian or Substance dualism.
In conclusion, I have attempted to show that Descartes was correct in saying that the mind and brain are different, but only conceptually and not ontologically. I have also attempted to show that functionalism and the functionalist computational theory of mind are better ways to think about the mind-body problem and that being a materialist need not warrant an overly reductionist or eliminativist viewpoint. Finally, I have attempted to show that rushing to viewpoints that invoke concepts such as immaterial substances do little but make already difficult and mysterious problems such as the origins of the universe and the nature of consciousness that much harder, or perhaps impossible, to solve. It is better to admit of uncertainty and make incremental progress than to rush to quick and easy answers; as Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “There are times, at least for now, when we must be content to love the questions themselves.”
References:
1. Libet, B., Gleason, C.A., Wright, E.W., Pearl, D.K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain. 106 (3):623–642.
2. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996) by David Chalmers
3. A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind by Peter A. Morton, Chapter 11, pg 297-334
4. Jefferson's letter to John Adams, from Monticello, August 15, 1820.
Suggested Further Reading:
1. How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker
2. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
3. Descartes' Error by Antionio Damasio
4. Chapter 4 & 5 of A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind by Peter A. Morton
Descartes laid out his case for dualism in his classic book Meditations on The First Philosophy. His main argument is found in the sixt meditation, but builds on arguments from previous meditations, particularly the second and third meditation.
The gist of the argument is that it is possible for you to doubt that you have a body. However, it is not possible to doubt that you have a mind, because doubting is a type of thought and for you to be aware of thoughts makes it self-evident that you as a mind exist. Since the body has the property of being doubtable, but the mind cannot be doubted, they possess different properties. Since they possess different properties, they cannot be said to be the same thing. So, Descartes concluded, the mind must be a separate entity from the body. This invokes a logical principle that later would come to be called the Indiscernibility of Identicals Principle by Gottfried Leibniz. Simply put, the principle states that if two things are identical then they are indiscernible from each other. Again, since the mind and brain appear to have different properties, they are discernible, and thus cannot be identical since identical things are indiscernible. Descartes said that mind is made of mental stuff, or res cogitans, and matter is made of res extensa.
The problem with this argument is that he concludes that just because the mind is conceptually distinguishable from the brain, that it is altogether a separate entity. Take the other organs besides the brain for example. Digestion is a different concept from the digestive system. Breathing is different from the lungs. Pumping blood is different from the heart. The functions of these organs are conceptually different from the organ that does them. Thinking is what the brain does, just as the other organs perform their functions. I agree with Descartes that the mind and the brain are conceptually different, but this conceptual difference does not make them separate entities no more than breathing is a separate entity from the lungs. It amounts to a misapplication of the indiscernibility of identicals principle.
How do we know that the brain and mind are so intimately connected? After all, couldn't the brain be the mechanism by which some immaterial mind or soul acts through? As is commonly known in modern times, brain damage or brain disease can severely affect the way you think. Damage to the Wernicke's or Broca's area can severely damage your ability to speak. Imbalances in neurotransmitters can cause various mental illnesses. Damage to the visual cortex can result in blindness despite perfectly healthy eyes. Just as well, we know that conscious awareness seems to come after brain activity, as shown by experiments from Benjamin Libit in the 1980s.¹ This shows that decisions were detectable in the brain milliseconds before there was conscious awareness. Milliseconds may not sound like much, but consider that nuclear explosions happen on an even shorter time scale of microseconds and make quick work of anything near the fireball. Besides, it is not how long brain processes occur before there is conscious awareness, but the fact that brain processes occur at all before conscious awareness that shows mental states are on metaphorical puppet strings, with the brain being the puppet master.
It follows then that the mind, or rather, mental states can be thought of in terms of what they do, or their function. Functionalism is technically agnostic on the ontological matter of whether or not mental states should be thought of as separate from brain states, in contrast to views such as type-type identity theory, or reductive materialism, which holds that brain states are identical to mind states, or eliminative materialism which is the radical thesis that there are no mind states and that our "folk psychology" terms (thought, feeling, belief, desire) are just names that were invented to describe behavior of people with ignorance to neuroscience. However, functionalism fits well with a materialistic view of the universe, and generated the dominant theory of cognition, the computational theory of mind. It might be worth noting that the computational theory is not a single theory, but rather an approach to generating theories of the mind. The computational theory of mind sees the mind as an information processing machine, and there are competing views of exactly how this computation works.
In the functionalist view, different mind states can be seen as functional states of the brain that could conceivably take place in something besides a brain.² Research into artificial intelligence is a huge part of this; artificial intelligence research attempts to take the models of human cognition from cognitive psychology and implement them in computers. There has been limited success, such as the feats of the supercomputers Deep Blue and Watson. There are doubts however that a computer could ever be as complex as a human mind, or be capable of genuine emotion even if it could think.
Another reason for a materialist to support functionalism is the fact that different brain states can represent the same mind state, not just between different people who obviously have different physical brain states for an identical thought, but within the same brain. I myself took this as evidence of dualism previously, but now believe it to be compatible with materialism if one adopts a functionalist view.
You might be thinking hold on a minute! What about explaining qualia, or the first person, subjective awareness of the world? Philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers have proposed that even if we understood the computational aspects of the mind, and had a complete neuroscience, that we still would not be able to explain this phenomenological aspect of the mind. Chalmers refers to this as the "hard problem" in explaining consciousness. He has proposed that we must conclude there is more to the mind than just matter, and supports a different type of dualism from the substance dualism of Descartes called naturalistic dualism or property dualism.³ I do not think that proposing a dualism is a very helpful solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Concluding that there is an immaterial mind, or some mystical aspect of matter besides physical properties, is a cheap and quick solution, but it raises more problems in the end. Just as saying God created the universe or launched the big bang leads to more questions of what the nature of God is, how he accomplished such a feat, and where God came from, so too does the dualist answer to the hard problem raise questions such as how something immaterial could control something material, or how physical processes in the brain cause immaterial properties to emerge from matter. Rushing to a dualist solution then makes the problem unsolvable in principle, since immaterial things are by definition unobservable.
I also question the validity of the concept of immaterial substances. I believe, as per the pragmatic maxim, that the meaning of a word consists in its practical or observable consequences (this at least applies to nouns and verbs). To what exactly does the concept of res cogitans refer? If the idea of immaterial or mental substance refers to our phenomenolgical awareness, then that is tantamount to saying that mental substances are the mind, which is made of mental substance. It is rather circular. I agree with Thomas Jefferson when he wrote, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul."⁴ I do not think I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that only material things exist, but I think my objections to the concept of immaterial substances are sufficient to warrant accepting materialism as the best view of reality and of the mind. It is possible however for a functionalist to conceive of mental states as being an immaterial property of matter or one that "emerges" from the physical processes of the brain, but my main quarrel is with Cartesian or Substance dualism.
In conclusion, I have attempted to show that Descartes was correct in saying that the mind and brain are different, but only conceptually and not ontologically. I have also attempted to show that functionalism and the functionalist computational theory of mind are better ways to think about the mind-body problem and that being a materialist need not warrant an overly reductionist or eliminativist viewpoint. Finally, I have attempted to show that rushing to viewpoints that invoke concepts such as immaterial substances do little but make already difficult and mysterious problems such as the origins of the universe and the nature of consciousness that much harder, or perhaps impossible, to solve. It is better to admit of uncertainty and make incremental progress than to rush to quick and easy answers; as Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “There are times, at least for now, when we must be content to love the questions themselves.”
References:
1. Libet, B., Gleason, C.A., Wright, E.W., Pearl, D.K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain. 106 (3):623–642.
2. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996) by David Chalmers
3. A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind by Peter A. Morton, Chapter 11, pg 297-334
4. Jefferson's letter to John Adams, from Monticello, August 15, 1820.
Suggested Further Reading:
1. How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker
2. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
3. Descartes' Error by Antionio Damasio
4. Chapter 4 & 5 of A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind by Peter A. Morton
Monday, September 24, 2012
Thoughts on Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape
In 2010, Sam Harris published a book titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. The general premise of the book is that morality is something objective that we can determine based on scientific fact. The book has been generally negatively received by ethical philosophers, but well received by figures associated with "the New Atheism" such as Richard Dawkins.
First of all, I agree with Sam Harris that morality is not relative. If you read any of his book, it should be the first chapter in which he debunks relativism and establishes a level of realism in ethics. Harris rejects the is-ought distinction and the naturalistic fallacy, and maintains that science can tell us about what establishes well-being. Well being is the foundation for his ethical theory, or perhaps more properly stated, the goal. Harris contends that a science of morality can investigate what causes better human well being, and that those discoveries should influence our moral opinions. In other words, the fact that we want to have a better life is taken for granted here, which I do not have a problem with, but I do take issue with his utilitarian like method of finding out what well being is. Even the most skeptical scientist admits that science is imperfect, which is inevitable due to the nature of the inductive logic by which it operates, so one is always left with the problem of knowing whether or not one truly knows the best way to live. Harris gets around this by proposing that there is a "Moral Landscape" which represents "peaks and valleys", with the higher peaks being the best ways to live, and the valleys representing the worst. This is a rather contentious solution to the problem, but those with deontological ethical views will see a serious issue here. I imagine Utilitarians would have less of a problem.
His discussion on the notion of free will is intersting. I agree with Harris that the modern scientific picture of the world and mind leave little room for the notion of free will. Harris tries to defend the idea that moral responsibility is compatible with this deterministic view, but I do not think he succedes very well. Michael Gazzaniga does a much better job defending the idea of moral responsibility given the deterministic account of the mind in chapters 6, 7, and 8 of The Ethical Brain, as well as in his book Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Interestingly enough, in the notes section of the book Harris refers to his arguments from The Ethical Brain. For the record, Gazzaniga maintains that moral responsibility is something found between people in a social context, not between brains. For Gazzaniga, freedom and responsibility are moral concepts, not physical or metaphysical ones. Harris maintains that he is not advocating a fatalist view, which is the hardest of hard deterministic views; fatalism maintains that reality is the way it is out of necessity, that it could not be other than it is. Harris still seems to represent a rather "hard determinist" view, which I think is a bit excessive. After all, the purpose of our evolved brains is to be able to make choices. Are these choices free from the causal change of the universe, or completely independent from one's life experiences, genetic predispositions and such? Of course not. Yet we are capable of making choices out of many, many, possibilities. It's not exactly clear what "free will" really means, either. Is free the same as random? We wouldn't want our choices to be random and impulsive. Generally, when someone's thoughts are random and incoherent, or impulsive and uncontrolled, they are thought to be mentally ill. In this regard we should be thankful that our brains are not "free", if "free" means random. In any case, if that is what free will is supposed to mean, then it is clearly false. If by free will one means not being compelled by another person or situation, then we do have some capacity of freedom. This is the compatibilist view, and although it is often criticized as re-defining the problem, I think it has merit. Aristotle's discussion of voluntary and involuntary actions seems to fit well with this view, which can be found in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Due to his rejection of free will, Harris also rejects the concept of retributive or "revenge" justice. This is the notion of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in our times, perhaps "a 5 year sentence for a breaking and entering" and so forth. While he does NOT go so far as to say we should not imprison anyone, he does maintain that if a cure for certain antisocial behaviors is ever found, that these should be used instead of ordinary punishment. Perhaps so, and in theory I have no problems with this, but I am skeptical that such a thing could ever occur. It's hard to imagine that there will be a pill to cure rapists, pedophiles, or serial murderers, but if there were, I see no problems in using such a thing, provided that the offender is made to recompensate society for their troubles, perhaps through community service, and are kept tabs on by a parole officer and are made to see a therapist. When dealing with criminals, we must remember that the purpose of justice, regardless whether you take a rehabilitational or retributive stance, is to keep that person from re-offending.
His views of "well being" being the goal of morality are not unlike the view of Aristotle, who proposed the goal of ethics is "eudamonia", or the good life. However, Aristotle's solution simply involved observing how two extremes lead to problems, and taking the middle path. This is a far more practical approach than the utilitarian like approach of Sam Harris. Harris's views are not very different from those of Michael Shermer's in his book The Science of Good and Evil, but I think that Shermer is a better writer and makes a better case. Nor can Harris's views tell us whether or not we should consider animals in our views, and all become vegetarians. Nor can he tell us whether or not we are justified in killing one person to save many, or if doing something dishonest for the greater well being of mankind is justified. In the end, contrary to Dawkins's claims on the back cover, I hardly think that moral philosophers will "find their world exhilaratingly turned upside down," but there are far worse books you could read.
Recommended Reading: The Ethical Brain and Who's In Charge? by Michael Gazzaniga, The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, and The Right and the Good by W.D. Ross
First of all, I agree with Sam Harris that morality is not relative. If you read any of his book, it should be the first chapter in which he debunks relativism and establishes a level of realism in ethics. Harris rejects the is-ought distinction and the naturalistic fallacy, and maintains that science can tell us about what establishes well-being. Well being is the foundation for his ethical theory, or perhaps more properly stated, the goal. Harris contends that a science of morality can investigate what causes better human well being, and that those discoveries should influence our moral opinions. In other words, the fact that we want to have a better life is taken for granted here, which I do not have a problem with, but I do take issue with his utilitarian like method of finding out what well being is. Even the most skeptical scientist admits that science is imperfect, which is inevitable due to the nature of the inductive logic by which it operates, so one is always left with the problem of knowing whether or not one truly knows the best way to live. Harris gets around this by proposing that there is a "Moral Landscape" which represents "peaks and valleys", with the higher peaks being the best ways to live, and the valleys representing the worst. This is a rather contentious solution to the problem, but those with deontological ethical views will see a serious issue here. I imagine Utilitarians would have less of a problem.
His discussion on the notion of free will is intersting. I agree with Harris that the modern scientific picture of the world and mind leave little room for the notion of free will. Harris tries to defend the idea that moral responsibility is compatible with this deterministic view, but I do not think he succedes very well. Michael Gazzaniga does a much better job defending the idea of moral responsibility given the deterministic account of the mind in chapters 6, 7, and 8 of The Ethical Brain, as well as in his book Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Interestingly enough, in the notes section of the book Harris refers to his arguments from The Ethical Brain. For the record, Gazzaniga maintains that moral responsibility is something found between people in a social context, not between brains. For Gazzaniga, freedom and responsibility are moral concepts, not physical or metaphysical ones. Harris maintains that he is not advocating a fatalist view, which is the hardest of hard deterministic views; fatalism maintains that reality is the way it is out of necessity, that it could not be other than it is. Harris still seems to represent a rather "hard determinist" view, which I think is a bit excessive. After all, the purpose of our evolved brains is to be able to make choices. Are these choices free from the causal change of the universe, or completely independent from one's life experiences, genetic predispositions and such? Of course not. Yet we are capable of making choices out of many, many, possibilities. It's not exactly clear what "free will" really means, either. Is free the same as random? We wouldn't want our choices to be random and impulsive. Generally, when someone's thoughts are random and incoherent, or impulsive and uncontrolled, they are thought to be mentally ill. In this regard we should be thankful that our brains are not "free", if "free" means random. In any case, if that is what free will is supposed to mean, then it is clearly false. If by free will one means not being compelled by another person or situation, then we do have some capacity of freedom. This is the compatibilist view, and although it is often criticized as re-defining the problem, I think it has merit. Aristotle's discussion of voluntary and involuntary actions seems to fit well with this view, which can be found in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Due to his rejection of free will, Harris also rejects the concept of retributive or "revenge" justice. This is the notion of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in our times, perhaps "a 5 year sentence for a breaking and entering" and so forth. While he does NOT go so far as to say we should not imprison anyone, he does maintain that if a cure for certain antisocial behaviors is ever found, that these should be used instead of ordinary punishment. Perhaps so, and in theory I have no problems with this, but I am skeptical that such a thing could ever occur. It's hard to imagine that there will be a pill to cure rapists, pedophiles, or serial murderers, but if there were, I see no problems in using such a thing, provided that the offender is made to recompensate society for their troubles, perhaps through community service, and are kept tabs on by a parole officer and are made to see a therapist. When dealing with criminals, we must remember that the purpose of justice, regardless whether you take a rehabilitational or retributive stance, is to keep that person from re-offending.
His views of "well being" being the goal of morality are not unlike the view of Aristotle, who proposed the goal of ethics is "eudamonia", or the good life. However, Aristotle's solution simply involved observing how two extremes lead to problems, and taking the middle path. This is a far more practical approach than the utilitarian like approach of Sam Harris. Harris's views are not very different from those of Michael Shermer's in his book The Science of Good and Evil, but I think that Shermer is a better writer and makes a better case. Nor can Harris's views tell us whether or not we should consider animals in our views, and all become vegetarians. Nor can he tell us whether or not we are justified in killing one person to save many, or if doing something dishonest for the greater well being of mankind is justified. In the end, contrary to Dawkins's claims on the back cover, I hardly think that moral philosophers will "find their world exhilaratingly turned upside down," but there are far worse books you could read.
Recommended Reading: The Ethical Brain and Who's In Charge? by Michael Gazzaniga, The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, and The Right and the Good by W.D. Ross
Friday, September 21, 2012
Considering Objections to Skepticism
As both a lover of rational discourse and psychology, I've been recently interested in how our cognitive biases make us come to wrong conclusions, or conclusions that are not justified logically, as well as how people create and reinforce beliefs (needless to say, Michael Shermer is prominent in my upcoming reading list.) I've had some conversations recently with some friends who share quite different views than I do on the subjects of evolution and astrology (I accept evolution, reject astrology). I've noticed some objections to the skeptical way of thinking about things that are worth considering.
1) You've just got to have faith!
Why? What's so special about faith? Just because a worldview gives you comfort does not mean it is true. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so forth, all give billions of followers worldwide comfort and happiness, a sense of community, a sense of purpose, and an (mistaken) understanding of the world and our place in it. If faith itself is just a virtue, then there's no need to hold prejudices against those of other religions. Nor is there a need to see them as damned and going to hell, if you admit in the first place that it's just a matter of faith and not really supported by any evidence.
Another spin on this is the objection that skepticism is just too dull, that life is something best viewed with "color", or that skeptics are too pessimistic and we just need to have more hope. Again, does holding a belief because it is aesthetically pleasing or because it gives us hope make it true? No. Some philosophers like William James might argue that it is a justified belief in a pragmatic sense, but it still doesn't make it true of reality. If you are a consistent truth seeker, you should apply skepticism across the board, and not accept something just because it makes you happy.
2) Science is a belief too!
Not quite, science is a way of inquiry about the natural world. However, the findings of science are beliefs. The issue is not over whether or not something is a belief, but whether or not it is a justified belief in the first place -- does it (insert whatever you wish for the "it" here) make sense, or are there good reasons to think it? Secondly, the issue is over whether or not the justified belief is TRUE, in which we can happily say we know something.
Now, there are a couple of general ways to come to a belief which are rational. The first is deductive logic, which I discuss in a previous blog post. This is, broadly speaking, a method by which you move from some general principles to a specific conclusion.
From where then do these general principles which serve as the premises come? The method by which we move from specific premises to a general principle is called inductive logic. There are many methods of induction, but there is the simple type of induction which works by enumeration, such as the sun rose every day thus far, and therefore will rise tomorrow. This type of reasoning is rather prone to error, and is the subject of much skepticism by philosophers. The "problem of induction" concerns this form of inductive reasoning.
Other types of induction include causal reasoning, which is best exemplified in John Stuart Mill's methods of induction. There is also statistical and probable reasoning, exemplified by the mathematics of statistics, including both the Frequentist and Bayesian methods.
Science of course utilizes all of these methods of reasoning! Science is the disciplined practice of developing hypotheses (positive statements or predictions) about the world, devising a way to test them, and hoping to reject the null hypothesis, or hypothesis of no effect. A hypothesis, for instance, could be that the position of the sun relative to constellations has mystical power on us that determines our personalities and life events. The null hypothesis would be that there is no observable effect of the sun's position relative to constellations has an influence over our life. Unless there is sufficient evidence (in statistics, sufficient evidence means that the probability of it occurring due to chance is less than a mere five percent!), there is no reason to accept a hypothesis. That is a bad example of a hypothesis, of course, but I used it since I mentioned astrology at the beginning of this post. A good hypothesis should be easily falsifiable. You can never directly test whether or not there is a mystical, invisible, force behind anything because it is by nature undetectable. However, you can deduce the consequences of that being true -- such as people born under a specific star sign all truly displaying the same personality, and test that. Of course, there is no such convincing evidence so the null hypothesis is what must be accepted if one wishes to be consistently rational. If the consequences of a hypothesis that is hard to directly falsify are inconsequential, then it can be fully dispensed with. I rather like the pragmatic maxim of Charles Sanders Peirce, which is similar to the "ockham's razor" or principle of parsimony: It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows; "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." (from How To Make Our Ideas Clear)
While deduction and induction are commonly juxtaposed to each other, even viewed as opposites, I would like to point out that this is not the case. As I said, deductive logic goes from a general to a specific. The general principles that serve as the premises, however, have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is induction. Science uses both. Induction and Deduction are not opposites, they ought to be thought of as inseparable.
The point of all this is to clarify what thinking scientifically is. Those who object that science is just a belief just don't get the point of it -- to develop justified and hopefully true beliefs.
3) You're being narrow minded!
I see this one used a lot, especially from religious folk who claim their views are supported by the evidence. There is a difference between being consistently rational and being narrow minded. Being narrow minded is clinging to a belief because it makes you happy or because you do not wish to change your opinion. Being rational is only changing your opinion when a sufficiently good argument or evidence warrants it, regardless of your feelings towards the new conclusion. Ironcially, those who accuse people of being narrow minded are often the ones being just that.
In a sense, this objection is a combination of the first two. It's proposing that science or rationality are just one way of thinking, and that they are no better or worse than superstition, mysticism, or faith. The implication is that everything is relative, and that one is better off believing something that makes you happy or gives guidance in life rather than having a "party pooper" belief.
I consider myself a seeker of truth, so if consistently applying rational rules to my thinking makes me a party pooper, a cynic, or narrow minded, then so be it. I prefer this over what I call "intellectual hedonism." I define intellectual hedonism as the tendency to seek out beliefs that give one pleasure. I propose on the contrary that truth is valuable in its own right. To refer to the popular film The Matrix, I would choose to live in the "desert of the real" over the computer simulation.
1) You've just got to have faith!
Why? What's so special about faith? Just because a worldview gives you comfort does not mean it is true. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so forth, all give billions of followers worldwide comfort and happiness, a sense of community, a sense of purpose, and an (mistaken) understanding of the world and our place in it. If faith itself is just a virtue, then there's no need to hold prejudices against those of other religions. Nor is there a need to see them as damned and going to hell, if you admit in the first place that it's just a matter of faith and not really supported by any evidence.
Another spin on this is the objection that skepticism is just too dull, that life is something best viewed with "color", or that skeptics are too pessimistic and we just need to have more hope. Again, does holding a belief because it is aesthetically pleasing or because it gives us hope make it true? No. Some philosophers like William James might argue that it is a justified belief in a pragmatic sense, but it still doesn't make it true of reality. If you are a consistent truth seeker, you should apply skepticism across the board, and not accept something just because it makes you happy.
2) Science is a belief too!
Not quite, science is a way of inquiry about the natural world. However, the findings of science are beliefs. The issue is not over whether or not something is a belief, but whether or not it is a justified belief in the first place -- does it (insert whatever you wish for the "it" here) make sense, or are there good reasons to think it? Secondly, the issue is over whether or not the justified belief is TRUE, in which we can happily say we know something.
Now, there are a couple of general ways to come to a belief which are rational. The first is deductive logic, which I discuss in a previous blog post. This is, broadly speaking, a method by which you move from some general principles to a specific conclusion.
From where then do these general principles which serve as the premises come? The method by which we move from specific premises to a general principle is called inductive logic. There are many methods of induction, but there is the simple type of induction which works by enumeration, such as the sun rose every day thus far, and therefore will rise tomorrow. This type of reasoning is rather prone to error, and is the subject of much skepticism by philosophers. The "problem of induction" concerns this form of inductive reasoning.
Other types of induction include causal reasoning, which is best exemplified in John Stuart Mill's methods of induction. There is also statistical and probable reasoning, exemplified by the mathematics of statistics, including both the Frequentist and Bayesian methods.
Science of course utilizes all of these methods of reasoning! Science is the disciplined practice of developing hypotheses (positive statements or predictions) about the world, devising a way to test them, and hoping to reject the null hypothesis, or hypothesis of no effect. A hypothesis, for instance, could be that the position of the sun relative to constellations has mystical power on us that determines our personalities and life events. The null hypothesis would be that there is no observable effect of the sun's position relative to constellations has an influence over our life. Unless there is sufficient evidence (in statistics, sufficient evidence means that the probability of it occurring due to chance is less than a mere five percent!), there is no reason to accept a hypothesis. That is a bad example of a hypothesis, of course, but I used it since I mentioned astrology at the beginning of this post. A good hypothesis should be easily falsifiable. You can never directly test whether or not there is a mystical, invisible, force behind anything because it is by nature undetectable. However, you can deduce the consequences of that being true -- such as people born under a specific star sign all truly displaying the same personality, and test that. Of course, there is no such convincing evidence so the null hypothesis is what must be accepted if one wishes to be consistently rational. If the consequences of a hypothesis that is hard to directly falsify are inconsequential, then it can be fully dispensed with. I rather like the pragmatic maxim of Charles Sanders Peirce, which is similar to the "ockham's razor" or principle of parsimony: It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows; "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." (from How To Make Our Ideas Clear)
While deduction and induction are commonly juxtaposed to each other, even viewed as opposites, I would like to point out that this is not the case. As I said, deductive logic goes from a general to a specific. The general principles that serve as the premises, however, have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is induction. Science uses both. Induction and Deduction are not opposites, they ought to be thought of as inseparable.
The point of all this is to clarify what thinking scientifically is. Those who object that science is just a belief just don't get the point of it -- to develop justified and hopefully true beliefs.
3) You're being narrow minded!
I see this one used a lot, especially from religious folk who claim their views are supported by the evidence. There is a difference between being consistently rational and being narrow minded. Being narrow minded is clinging to a belief because it makes you happy or because you do not wish to change your opinion. Being rational is only changing your opinion when a sufficiently good argument or evidence warrants it, regardless of your feelings towards the new conclusion. Ironcially, those who accuse people of being narrow minded are often the ones being just that.
In a sense, this objection is a combination of the first two. It's proposing that science or rationality are just one way of thinking, and that they are no better or worse than superstition, mysticism, or faith. The implication is that everything is relative, and that one is better off believing something that makes you happy or gives guidance in life rather than having a "party pooper" belief.
I consider myself a seeker of truth, so if consistently applying rational rules to my thinking makes me a party pooper, a cynic, or narrow minded, then so be it. I prefer this over what I call "intellectual hedonism." I define intellectual hedonism as the tendency to seek out beliefs that give one pleasure. I propose on the contrary that truth is valuable in its own right. To refer to the popular film The Matrix, I would choose to live in the "desert of the real" over the computer simulation.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Science and Spirituality
In my previous post, I discussed the general outline of my world view. I'd like to discuss it further in depth. What made me want to revisit this issue is a certain picture posted on Facebook, pictured below (click to make larger, putting at the original size here causes formatting problems).
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I read through this picture and started to reflect on what this actually means. The general idea proposed here is that one should take comfort in the law of conservation of energy, meaning energy is neither created or destroyed. It gives the impression that one lives on through some sort of afterlife as an energy, scattered throughout the cosmos. As rosy and feel-good as this may sound, I think that it is at root false. As you (hopefully) know, the universe is composed of matter and energy (which are identical, as E=MC²). There is one fundamental class of existence observable by science (I will leave aside metaphysical debates over mind-body dualism and the problem of universals, for one, science has given no reason to think the mind seperate from the brain, and secondly, issues over the nature or existence of universals is irrelevant to this discussion.), and that is matter/energy. They are like lego blocks that compose all of existence. When we die, our bodies decompose, and the thermal energy that is in our body radiates into the environment due to a physical process called entropy, which states that in a closed system, matter or energy will take on a uniform structure. To overcome entropy, there must be energy intake. This is why we need food to live. So obviously, after we die that entropy takes over because our bodies no longer are fighting against it. The "lego blocks" that make up our bodies begin to fall apart. Now, this may seem trivial, but my point is that there is nothing comforting in this because it is not the things that make up your body that matter, but the way those things are put together. Or as Carl Sagan once said, "the beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."(from Cosmos)
The way these things are put together are information structures. Remember that the brain is composed of neurons and glial cells, with the primary unit of information processing being the neuron. A neuron has an input and output function. The inputs of a neuron are called dendrites, and the outputs are called axons. Neurons are webbed together, with axons and dendrites nearly touching (and held together by glial cells) at places called synapses, across which neurotransmitters and ionized electrolytes flow, carrying an electrical charge across the synapses. Many of these neurotransmitters function to modulate electrical activity. (For more specific information, I highly recommend The Synaptic Self by Joseph Le Doux). This is to say that the brain has a specific structure, and these neurons group into regions that carry out specific tasks throughout the brain. The synaptic connections are determined by genetic and epigenetic factors, and are altered through life experience. This determines who you are. Now, the brain's job is to process information from the world that it takes in through sensory perception and make decisions for survival. Knowing this, cognitive psychologists map cognitive function according to a theory called "The Computational Theory of Mind". The task of cognitive psychology is to model the basic cognitive machinery of every human being. Cognitive Neuroscience seeks to understand how the brain carries out this cognitive computation of information.
Keeping in mind the fact that your mind is the information processing of the brain, which is determined by your synaptic structures, and the fact that your brain is an organ which must fight entropy to stay alive and function, once you are dead, entropy takes over. The synaptic structures in your brain begin to decay. So yes, the energy and matter that you are made of does recycle. But who you are is annihilated. There is no more cognition, no more sensory perception going on. The downside to this is that there is no joyous afterlife. The upside is there's no hell to fear, either. You may ask about the soul, which there is no scientific reason to believe in, but nevertheless that is not the subject of the picture I am discussing.
My aim here is not to be a cynic or a pessimist. My goal is to show that one should be careful in how he or she interprets science. To drive home my point further, consider following scenario: Imagine that you are a child who has just completed the coolest object made out of lego bricks. Your brother or sister then comes along and smashes it to pieces, and you naturally become very upset. Then your sibling tells you, "don't worry, the legos that made your creation are still here, they're just less orderly!" Would that bring you any comfort? Of course not. The structure of your creation is now gone, even though the materials are still there. So it is with death, too.
Carl Sagan wrote in the splendid book on critical thinking, The Demon Haunted World, that “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
It is important to distinguish between two sorts of spirituality. The first is the mysticism variety, full of new age healing crystals, astrology, meditation (though meditation can be beneficial outside of a mystical context), and lots of talk on "quantum" and "consciousness". This sort of spirituality is typified by people like Depaak Chopra. This post is already lengthy enough, so I won't take the time to dismantle that here, but I recommend the aforementioned book by Carl Sagan, and War of the Worldview: Science vs Spirituality by Depaak Chopra & Leonard Mlodinow. The other sort of spirituality is an outlook on life. Science can be fun. There is a great joy one can feel upon learning facts about the world, or discovering something previously unknown. Science is also a social practice that can't be practiced meaningfully alone, hence the term "scientific community." One can encounter much joy out of making friends in the scientific community. One can also appreciate, as Carl Sagan said, the heroic acts of great men and women. At the same time, I think it is important not to overstate the beauty of nature. There are far more many ways to be dead than alive, and nature seems to be filled mostly with ways to be dead. Nature is morally neutral. It's not going to stop having natural disasters because it's not nice.
In conclusion, it is important to not overstate the majesty of nature, or interpret something in science to mean more than it is. Reality is morally neutral, unconscious, and does not care about you. Remember that these "spiritual feelings" that Carl Sagan speaks of are subjective experiences, not some real aspect of the world. As I said before, there are more ways to be dead than alive. I would like to end on a positive note, since this all sounds rather pessimistic. There are billions of neurons in your brain, that can be arranged in trillions upon trillions of different ways. No one will ever have the same arrangement as you, and no one will ever share the exact same life experiences. You are unique. There will never be another one of you. The probability of you having the personality that you do is unfathomable. Take joy in your improbable self*, and use those neurons to think well!
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits." — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
*Though, as it turns out, there is no single function of the brain known to correspond to a "self", but rather, the "self" is the awareness of an autiobiography, in short. Nevertheless, it's a harmless and useful illusion even if it has no "metaphysical" correlate.
Friday, August 31, 2012
A Brief Explication of My Worldview
A person's worldview is perhaps the most important thing about them. It guides one's conscious choices, it is the lens through which we interpret events in the world. It is how one sees the relationship between one's self and the rest of the world. I would like to take a brief time to explain the basics of how I see the world, my modus operandi. This is not an explication of my answers to "the big questions", but rather, how I go about considering "big questions."
For my whole life, I have been fascinated by science. I've always been fascinated by the way the world functions, and facts about the world. As such, my dream was to be a scientist one day. Growing up, my favorite science was meteorology. I also considered a career in forensic science at one point. When I first went to college, I studied computer technology, as I was not sure exactly what I wanted to do and computers seemed interesting. I had also picked up an interest in philosophy, which as defined by Frederick Ferré, is the "sustained effort to wonder critically about comprehensive issues." After taking some psychology courses as electives and not doing so well in computer programming courses, I decided to change my major to psychology. My interest in philosophy influenced this somewhat, as the psychologists I knew of such as Sigmund Freud were influenced by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer.
For now, I must elaborate on my interest in philosophy. In high school, I had become interested in the topic of religion and spirituality. I had grown up being so fond of science that the claims made in church never sat well with me, and I was always skeptical of Christianity. In my investigations of spiritual issues, the topic of paranormal phenomena had become particularly interesting. One of the books that really got me interested in critical thinking in general was a book called Paranormal Phenomena in the Opposing Viewpoint series. The arguments of the skeptics won me over against belief in the supernatural. However, after this, my interest in the topic waned. It was when I discovered philosophy proper that I became engaged in "wondering critically about comprehensive issues." Philosophy had recovered that sense of wonder at the universe I had as a child. It brought to my attention ultimate questions about life, and how some of the most brilliant people in history have tried to tackle these issues.
The interest in philosophy of course brought to my attention the need for precision in arguments, and the need for logic. In the past few years, my opinions on various topics have changed a multitude of times. Each time I change, my views become more precise. Studying formal logic in school has helped me acheive this. However, mastering critical thinking and logic skills also helps me think scientifically. What does it mean to think scientifically? Logically speaking, science is the application of deductive and inductive logic to observation and experimentation. However, science is also about not believing something to be true unless one has good evidence to support it. It is about being skeptical of a more complicated explanation that makes more assumptions than a simpler explanation that has less assumptions. It is about admitting that you do not know something, but trying to find out.
Some may wonder how I get along without any spiritual or religious views to guide my moral choices or give me meaning in life. I believe that rationality can help one make ethical decisions via the study of philosophical ethics, as well as taking serious the conclusions that you come to and acting by those conclusions. I believe that there is no ultimate meaning to life, no grand purpose. I also believe this gives us freedom to find a way to live that makes us happy. I think that spirituality likes to throw around words such as "quantum" and "energy" without really understanding what these words mean. For instance you often see quantum used in new-age feel good spirituality, but really it is just a more up to date word for atomic, since atom originally meant "not able to be cut", when we now know they can. Quantum just refers to the particles that make up atoms, and the other particles that exist on that scale; the word "quantum" in Latin means "how much" and is also the root of the word quantity. Energy also is merely the ability of one object to perform work on another object, not something immaterial. Sometimes you will hear people say that Einstein proved that reality is just energy, that matter is just an illusion. This is also false. They are referring to the equation E=MC², which means that energy is equal to the mass of a given object multiplied by the square of the speed of light. What this actually means is that to find out how much work an object (say, a chunk of weapons grade uranium) can do on other objects is deducible by taking the mass of your object and multiplying it by the squared speed of light. Which, of course anyone familiar with nuclear weapons knows, a chunk of weapons grade uranium can do A LOT of work on other objects. There is nothing mystical in this. Once you understand what words like this that mystics often like to throw around actually mean, their statements just dissolve themselves. I understand that spirituality can be encouraging, but I don't think that in the end anyone benefits from the abuse of words and of world views built on those abuses and misunderstandings.
In summary, my world view is one that celebrates reason, morality, and knowledge. My world view is that I love knowledge, and I hope to know more. My world view acknowledges that I do not and cannot know everything, but the implication of this is that neither does anyone else. This means that I should be skeptical of claims others make, but I also should be humble and listen to what others have to say. For anyone who wishes to understand how a non-spiritual person views the world without being nihilistic, I hope that this has elucidated the answer.
(Originally posted 8/31/12, edited 9/3/12)
For my whole life, I have been fascinated by science. I've always been fascinated by the way the world functions, and facts about the world. As such, my dream was to be a scientist one day. Growing up, my favorite science was meteorology. I also considered a career in forensic science at one point. When I first went to college, I studied computer technology, as I was not sure exactly what I wanted to do and computers seemed interesting. I had also picked up an interest in philosophy, which as defined by Frederick Ferré, is the "sustained effort to wonder critically about comprehensive issues." After taking some psychology courses as electives and not doing so well in computer programming courses, I decided to change my major to psychology. My interest in philosophy influenced this somewhat, as the psychologists I knew of such as Sigmund Freud were influenced by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer.
For now, I must elaborate on my interest in philosophy. In high school, I had become interested in the topic of religion and spirituality. I had grown up being so fond of science that the claims made in church never sat well with me, and I was always skeptical of Christianity. In my investigations of spiritual issues, the topic of paranormal phenomena had become particularly interesting. One of the books that really got me interested in critical thinking in general was a book called Paranormal Phenomena in the Opposing Viewpoint series. The arguments of the skeptics won me over against belief in the supernatural. However, after this, my interest in the topic waned. It was when I discovered philosophy proper that I became engaged in "wondering critically about comprehensive issues." Philosophy had recovered that sense of wonder at the universe I had as a child. It brought to my attention ultimate questions about life, and how some of the most brilliant people in history have tried to tackle these issues.
The interest in philosophy of course brought to my attention the need for precision in arguments, and the need for logic. In the past few years, my opinions on various topics have changed a multitude of times. Each time I change, my views become more precise. Studying formal logic in school has helped me acheive this. However, mastering critical thinking and logic skills also helps me think scientifically. What does it mean to think scientifically? Logically speaking, science is the application of deductive and inductive logic to observation and experimentation. However, science is also about not believing something to be true unless one has good evidence to support it. It is about being skeptical of a more complicated explanation that makes more assumptions than a simpler explanation that has less assumptions. It is about admitting that you do not know something, but trying to find out.
Some may wonder how I get along without any spiritual or religious views to guide my moral choices or give me meaning in life. I believe that rationality can help one make ethical decisions via the study of philosophical ethics, as well as taking serious the conclusions that you come to and acting by those conclusions. I believe that there is no ultimate meaning to life, no grand purpose. I also believe this gives us freedom to find a way to live that makes us happy. I think that spirituality likes to throw around words such as "quantum" and "energy" without really understanding what these words mean. For instance you often see quantum used in new-age feel good spirituality, but really it is just a more up to date word for atomic, since atom originally meant "not able to be cut", when we now know they can. Quantum just refers to the particles that make up atoms, and the other particles that exist on that scale; the word "quantum" in Latin means "how much" and is also the root of the word quantity. Energy also is merely the ability of one object to perform work on another object, not something immaterial. Sometimes you will hear people say that Einstein proved that reality is just energy, that matter is just an illusion. This is also false. They are referring to the equation E=MC², which means that energy is equal to the mass of a given object multiplied by the square of the speed of light. What this actually means is that to find out how much work an object (say, a chunk of weapons grade uranium) can do on other objects is deducible by taking the mass of your object and multiplying it by the squared speed of light. Which, of course anyone familiar with nuclear weapons knows, a chunk of weapons grade uranium can do A LOT of work on other objects. There is nothing mystical in this. Once you understand what words like this that mystics often like to throw around actually mean, their statements just dissolve themselves. I understand that spirituality can be encouraging, but I don't think that in the end anyone benefits from the abuse of words and of world views built on those abuses and misunderstandings.
In summary, my world view is one that celebrates reason, morality, and knowledge. My world view is that I love knowledge, and I hope to know more. My world view acknowledges that I do not and cannot know everything, but the implication of this is that neither does anyone else. This means that I should be skeptical of claims others make, but I also should be humble and listen to what others have to say. For anyone who wishes to understand how a non-spiritual person views the world without being nihilistic, I hope that this has elucidated the answer.
(Originally posted 8/31/12, edited 9/3/12)
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