Teachable Moment: A math puzzle and the nature of metaphysics (souls, atheist)
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Apparently there has been a lot of discussion recently about a math puzzle posted on FaceBook by a site called "Brain Dare." (See the link below if you want to see an article about the puzzle.)
The puzzle is this:
1+4=5
2+5=12
3+6=21
8+11=?
I won't give a spoiler, but the bottom line is this: Brain Dare gives an answer, but a bunch of people have pointed out that a different answer is equally good, so they insist that Brain Dare should post both answers.
What does this have to do with Religion and Spirituality? The puzzle itself doesn't have much to do with R&S, but the "controversy" that arose over it can serve as a quick, easy guide to the nature of philosophy and the on-going tension between Materialists (who tend to be atheists) and Non-materialists (who tend to be more agnostic or theistic or perhaps "mystical" in some broad sense).
A key philosophical concept that applies here is often referred to as underdetermination. The basic idea is that there are lots of situations in which the empirical evidence available is insufficient to identify which belief we should hold about that evidence. (The Stanford Encyclopedia has an article here if you are interested in a more in-depth discussion of that.)
From a philosophical perspective, the Brain Dare puzzle is just a simple example of underdetermination. In other threads in this forum I have pointed out that materialism is a metaphysical position, it is not a "scientific" theory. Some materialists get confused about this and claim that science "supports" materialism, but that is simply wrong. Many scientists assume materialism for methodological purposes, and this approach has an excellent track record as being a good strategy, but this does not change the fact that materialism is a metaphysical assumption, and it does not change the fact that other non-materialist assumptions are equally well-supported by scientific evidence.
Materialism is not a theory to be proven; it is an assumption that has generally worked well insofar as it has forced us to keep uncovering deeper and more powerful natural mechanisms for seemingly mysterious processes. Materialism is one possible solution to the "grand puzzle," but there will probably always be other possible solutions. Science has done a great job of narrowing the gaps wherein mysteries (and "God") can hide, but it will probably never eliminate all possible gaps. Taking the Brain Dare puzzle as an analogy to science, you can imagine some empirical evidence allowing us to put one of the answers in place of the question mark. This eliminates the rival answer, but then a new question will arise, and a new question mark will generate a new metaphysics. Materialism and theism will both always have "promissory note" options, although when attempting to explain the nature of qualitative conscious experience I think the promissory note option of traditional materialism has worn so thin as to be untenable. Which is why, although I am still an atheist, I am growing increasingly confident that traditional reductive materialism is wrong. Perhaps some non-reductive sort of materialism could work, but I'm more inclined to think that the whole paradigm of materialism has crossed the threshold from being helpful to being a burden on science. I think "physicalism" in a broad sense is almost certainly true. Positing non-physical souls, etc., is not at all helpful for explaining anything. As I see it, minds are physical systems, but I doubt that they are reducible to determinate mechanical components - at least not the determinate mechanical components composing the current "Standard Model" of physics.
This doesn't mean we have to adopt theism, but I think it does mean that we need to find some way to explain consciousness in a way that does not rely on traditional mechanistic causation. This will leave a substantial gap for some liberal conceptions of "God," but I don't care. I think science, overall, will benefit from moving beyond the old reductive materialist paradigm.
My main point is this: atheists need to realize that traditional reductive materialism is not their only metaphysical option. Current scientific evidence is compatible with several lines of metaphysics. Feel free to shop around. And theists need to realize that traditional scripture-based conceptions of God are scientifically and philosophically dead. Clinging to Bible literalism in the face of modern science and moral intuitions is utterly irrational, and downright poisonous to the human mind and spirit.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TroutDude
8+11=96
I think it took me about 4 seconds to figure out the pattern. It's pretty easy. The alternative answer given, although justified, does not follow the presentation of the equations. They are separate equations, with a common pattern, not a continuous grouping, which the alternative answer presents. The answer of each does not impact the next equation; in other words, that is not the commonality.
It is an artificial construct, just as metaphysics are.
This doesn't mean we have to adopt theism, but I think it does mean that we need to find some way to explain consciousness in a way that does not rely on traditional mechanistic causation. This will leave a substantial gap for some liberal conceptions of "God," but I don't care. I think science, overall, will benefit from moving beyond the old reductive materialist paradigm.
I think at least one branch of science at least IS moving away the old reductive materialist paradigm and has been for some time: quantum mechanics of course. The world where particles become entangled, move through solid matter, appear in two place at once and behave as both a particle and a wave at the same time.
I totally agree, we do need to find some way to explain consciousness in a way that does not rely on traditional mechanistic causation. At the risk of sounding like a one trick pony I will revisit Roger Penrose on this (I'm a big fan). What he says about consciousness basically goes something like this:
Consciousness cannot be explained by anything we currently understand - that something non-computational is going in in the brain. And we all agree that consciousness is something that exists. But since we are great believers in science, something must exist within the physical framework of the universe (that we don't understand yet) that gives rise to consciousness. If we understand that the laws of physics that exist here on earth are the same laws that exist everywhere in the universe, then the framework that gives rise to consciousness is somehow a fundamental part of the universe.
Sorry I hope I explained that well enough.
Also Jim Al-khalili has been investigating quantum mechanics and how we are just beginning to understand how quantum entanglement may be the start of an explanation into how some aspects of the brain work.
Quote:
Which is why, although I am still an atheist, I am growing increasingly confident that traditional reductive materialism is wrong. Perhaps some non-reductive sort of materialism could work, but I'm more inclined to think that the whole paradigm of materialism has crossed the threshold from being helpful to being a burden on science.
I don't think materialism is a burden on science, far from it, however I think a lot of scientists could benefit from being a whole lot more open minded, certainly.
This will leave a substantial gap for some liberal conceptions of "God," but I don't care.
It will NOT leave a legitimate gap, or indeed a gap at all, for conservative conceptions of "God" but that won't (and hasn't) stopped conservative theists from claiming that gap just the same. It won't (and hasn't) stopped a wide range of theists and mysticists from abusing the word "quantum" and what the word represents as some sort of scientific justification for or endorsement of all sorts of bizarre woo.
I do care very much about THAT.
It seems reasonable to me for science to consider the possibility that either consciousness or aspects of it fall outside current paradigms but I don't know that this necessarily implies anything immaterial.
I still lean towards a simpler explanation: we simply haven't figured out yet how to properly conceptualize it. Just as Newton had to appropriate and give new meaning to terms like "mass" and "energy" and Shannon had to conceptualize information as a measurable "thing in itself" before science could make further progress in physics (Newton) or information theory (Shannon), just as Turing had to conceptualize a "universal machine" -- something which no one had the slightest framework to imagine until he came along -- to pave the way for general purpose programmable computers, we probably lack a conceptual framework for things we already are aware of but don't know how to think about how those things work together to produce what we call consciousness.
On top of that, sometimes scientists have to cross-pollinate. Turning, for all his brilliance, saw his "universal machine" as mostly something to feed numbers to. When he met Shannon he marveled, "He doesn't just want to feed numbers to an [electronic] Brain -- he wants to put cultural things into it. He wants to sing songs to it!" Turing gave us information processing, Shannon gave us a concept of information that rendered an arbitrary array of information to be processable. Not to mention networking and its effects.
I suspect consciousness will yield something like that. It is going to take two or three conceptual breakthroughs and then those are going to have to be combined in some meta-conceptual synthesis. So it may be premature to start casting about for new frontiers; we have certainly not exhausted all the possibilities in the current ones.
I don't think materialism is a burden on science, far from it, however I think a lot of scientists could benefit from being a whole lot more open minded, certainly.
Good point. I should amend my statement slightly. I don't think that materialism is a burden to science, in general. Indeed, for the majority of scientific questions, materialism has a lot of good miles left on it. All I really want to say is that, for certain deep question concerning fundamental physics and the nature of consciousness, science will benefit from, as you say, a more open-minded approach - specifically: the realization that mechanism need not imply mechanistic determinism. We need to explore the possibility that some physical mechanisms are (metaphorically speaking) more "organic" than "robotic." Some aspects of this distinction are painfully subtle, but could be profoundly important to humanity in the long run.
My metaphorical use of the term "organic" is meant to get at the idea of not being reducible to the bottom-up rule-following patterns of determinate micro-blobs of matter. The key thing we learned (or should have learned) from Neils Bohr is that quanta do not have isolated, determinate properties until a measurement takes place. The macro-scale context of the "measuring apparatus" determines (in an ironically indeterminate way) the nature of the properties being measured. There simply is no answer until the question is asked.
Here, again, the Brain Dare puzzle provides a rough model. If you think about the puzzle in one way, you get 96. If you think about it in another way, you get 40. There is no unique "correct answer" that is simply sitting there waiting to be found. The two answers are complementary. Each answer is correct, but both answers can't be correct in the same way, at the same time. The effort made to ask the question in a certain way determines the nature of the answer to be found. "Asking the question" (i.e., making a measurement) is, itself, a physical process, and the answer is a physical process, so it should not be too surprising to realize that the properties of the answer won't be fully realized (i.e., the properties are not fully determinate) until the question is asked. This implies a type of holism that cannot be avoided.
Quote:
I will revisit Roger Penrose on this (I'm a big fan). What he says about consciousness basically goes something like this:
Consciousness cannot be explained by anything we currently understand - that something non-computational is going in in the brain. And we all agree that consciousness is something that exists.
Your references to Penrose, of course, are fully appropriate in this regard. We are almost certainly dealing with a non-algorithmic process.
Apparently there has been a lot of discussion recently about a math puzzle posted on FaceBook by a site called "Brain Dare." (See the link below if you want to see an article about the puzzle.)
The puzzle is this:
1+4=5
2+5=12
3+6=21
8+11=?
I won't give a spoiler, but the bottom line is this: Brain Dare gives an answer, but a bunch of people have pointed out that a different answer is equally good, so they insist that Brain Dare should post both answers.
What does this have to do with Religion and Spirituality? The puzzle itself doesn't have much to do with R&S, but the "controversy" that arose over it can serve as a quick, easy guide to the nature of philosophy and the on-going tension between Materialists (who tend to be atheists) and Non-materialists (who tend to be more agnostic or theistic or perhaps "mystical" in some broad sense).
A key philosophical concept that applies here is often referred to as underdetermination. The basic idea is that there are lots of situations in which the empirical evidence available is insufficient to identify which belief we should hold about that evidence. (The Stanford Encyclopedia has an article here if you are interested in a more in-depth discussion of that.)
From a philosophical perspective, the Brain Dare puzzle is just a simple example of underdetermination. In other threads in this forum I have pointed out that materialism is a metaphysical position, it is not a "scientific" theory. Some materialists get confused about this and claim that science "supports" materialism, but that is simply wrong. Many scientists assume materialism for methodological purposes, and this approach has an excellent track record as being a good strategy, but this does not change the fact that materialism is a metaphysical assumption, and it does not change the fact that other non-materialist assumptions are equally well-supported by scientific evidence.
Materialism is not a theory to be proven; it is an assumption that has generally worked well insofar as it has forced us to keep uncovering deeper and more powerful natural mechanisms for seemingly mysterious processes. Materialism is one possible solution to the "grand puzzle," but there will probably always be other possible solutions. Science has done a great job of narrowing the gaps wherein mysteries (and "God") can hide, but it will probably never eliminate all possible gaps. Taking the Brain Dare puzzle as an analogy to science, you can imagine some empirical evidence allowing us to put one of the answers in place of the question mark. This eliminates the rival answer, but then a new question will arise, and a new question mark will generate a new metaphysics. Materialism and theism will both always have "promissory note" options, although when attempting to explain the nature of qualitative conscious experience I think the promissory note option of traditional materialism has worn so thin as to be untenable. Which is why, although I am still an atheist, I am growing increasingly confident that traditional reductive materialism is wrong. Perhaps some non-reductive sort of materialism could work, but I'm more inclined to think that the whole paradigm of materialism has crossed the threshold from being helpful to being a burden on science. I think "physicalism" in a broad sense is almost certainly true. Positing non-physical souls, etc., is not at all helpful for explaining anything. As I see it, minds are physical systems, but I doubt that they are reducible to determinate mechanical components - at least not the determinate mechanical components composing the current "Standard Model" of physics.
This doesn't mean we have to adopt theism, but I think it does mean that we need to find some way to explain consciousness in a way that does not rely on traditional mechanistic causation. This will leave a substantial gap for some liberal conceptions of "God," but I don't care. I think science, overall, will benefit from moving beyond the old reductive materialist paradigm.
My main point is this: atheists need to realize that traditional reductive materialism is not their only metaphysical option. Current scientific evidence is compatible with several lines of metaphysics. Feel free to shop around. And theists need to realize that traditional scripture-based conceptions of God are scientifically and philosophically dead. Clinging to Bible literalism in the face of modern science and moral intuitions is utterly irrational, and downright poisonous to the human mind and spirit.
Well done, Gaylen. I continue to marvel at the cleverness you exhibit in trying to expose the philosophical Achille's heel of materialism. The physically conditioned perspective of the hard-core materialists does seem remarkably impervious to reason.
A key philosophical concept that applies here is often referred to as underdetermination. The basic idea is that there are lots of situations in which the empirical evidence available is insufficient to identify which belief we should hold about that evidence.
No, I think the bigger thing is that metaphysical ideas are unfalsifiable. It's not that there's a lack of evidence to point to the right conclusion, it is that there isn't even a framework for figuring out how to possibly confirm or deny them. The best you can do is pick one that seems to not get in the way too much and get on to doing something useful.
I notice that although you mention that maybe there are better metaphysical approaches you don't mention any of them nor do you discuss how to determine if they are better. From that, I see no real reason to think that it is worth wasting much time on. It seems like a real jump from the math puzzle to concluding science must be on the wrong path towards understanding consciousness and it needs help from philosophers. Sounds more like wish fulfillment rather than an honest evaluation of the process of studying brain function.
No, I think the bigger thing is that metaphysical ideas are unfalsifiable. It's not that there's a lack of evidence to point to the right conclusion, it is that there isn't even a framework for figuring out how to possibly confirm or deny them. The best you can do is pick one that seems to not get in the way too much and get on to doing something useful.
I notice that although you mention that maybe there are better metaphysical approaches you don't mention any of them nor do you discuss how to determine if they are better. From that, I see no real reason to think that it is worth wasting much time on. It seems like a real jump from the math puzzle to concluding science must be on the wrong path towards understanding consciousness and it needs help from philosophers. Sounds more like wish fulfillment rather than an honest evaluation of the process of studying brain function.
Just so. Materialism hasn't produced answers to a lot of things yet aside from fully explaining consciousness. But it has a superb track record and I don't see any reason to suggest that consciousness is a special class of problem that's particularly ill-suited to research based on materialist assumptions, when the alternative -- immaterialism, if you will -- is not something that can even be worked with when you can't construct scientifically valid hypotheses around it.
Here I think we need to regard the concept "immaterial" as very similar to the concept of "supernatural". We are creatures of the natural world, so assessing an un-natural world is inherently outside our capabilities and comprises a realm of sheer speculation that cannot lead towards truth and in fact tends to lead away from it. We are material creatures living in a material universe -- the immaterial is simply a concept that can't be assessed and therefore is, for pragmatic purposes, irrelevant.
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