Mind and emergent properties

An emergent property is one that stems from factors lower down in the evolutionary process that do not involve the emergent property. The emergent properties emerge from amid a set of properties none of which herald the emergent one. It just springs forth, life from non-life, consciousness from non-conscious, por soir from en soir....[E]mergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each of the quoted terms is slippery in its own right, and their specifications yield the varied notions of emergence that we discuss below. There has been renewed interest in emergence within discussions of the behavior of complex systems and debates over the reconcilability of mental causation, intentionality, or consciousness with physicalism.[1]

According to O'connor and Wang emergent properties can't be reduced to the properties from which they spring. If true that means that if consciousness is emergent it's not reducible to brain fuction. Yet every reductionist I've ever argued with uses emergence to explain the rise of consciousness, which they take to be reduciable to brain chemistry. Emergence is also divided into strong and weak. Strong emergence is when the phenomenon is high level and emerges from a low level domain. Strong emergence was evoked by the British emergentists in the 1920s and is featured in most philosophical discussions about emergence. Weak emergence is in respect to low level domain when high level phenomenon emerges from low level domain but truths concerning that phenomenon are unexpected given the principles governing that domain.[2] The more radical consequences stem from strong emergence. As David Chalmers says, if the property could be deduced principle from the properties it emerges from there's no need to evoke new laws. The radical consequences result from the evoking of new laws, resulting from the emergence of properties not deducible in principle. I am avoiding discussions of artificial intelligence or the Chinese room argument (Searl)[3] as they would divert from the argument. I will, however, bring up Searl's argument about AI in order to make a larger point. Searl argues that consciousness is a biological product and computers can't be emergently conscious because they can't produce a biological basis. In answering Searl Paul Almond says:

While it is reasonable to regard consciousness as an emergent property of a physical system there is no profound sense in which it can be said that different people's brains work according to the same kinds of processes and an appropriately programmed computer and a human brain would work according to different processes. Any difference between these situations is just a matter of degree and any argument that we should presume other people conscious because their brains work in basically the same sort of way could also be used to justify presuming an appropriately programmed computer conscious.[4]

This may be a fine idea in philosophy, but how would it work in real life? A doctor in a hospital says “I can't deliver this baby because I have no proof that all human reproductive processes are the same.” You could not practice medicine on that basis. Almond also seems to be contradicting himself because he says on the one hand that we can't assume human thought processes work the same, but somehow we can assume that our minds work the same as computers (which would contradict the ideas that they don't all work the same). Why should we assume it's only a matter of degree? It's pretty self evident that there is a qualitative difference. Searl's argument doesn't help us in deciding about consciousness in humans as emergent but Almond's response tells us something about fallacies in human reason. We must assume that there is a likeness in human consciousness or we can't even do medicine and there's no point in doing science. Thus we can draw analogy between human consciousness and order in the cosmos, metaphysical hierarchy. This will become apparent in unfolding of the argument. But emergent properties per se do not destroy the TS argument.

The notion of emergent properties is firmly ensconced in the repertoire of modern scientific acumen. It's an article of faith for all, those who fail to pledge their allegiance to it are to be ridiculed. Actually there's no reason why emergent properties per se can't be embraced along with belief in God. There is no way to establish that God didn't set it up that way, it probably makes more sense to assume he did. Given the law-like regularity of the universe and modern notions of cause and effect, assuming spontaneous emergence with no prior arrangement of mind is just a contradiction to these aspects of nature (regularity and the necessity of causes). So emergent properties without God (the TS or some other prior agent) violate the criteria of best explanation laid down in chapter three [the book I am writing]; the logical consistency criterion. The emergence of mind is one of the most difficult questions. With simple “self organizing” such as snow flakes there's no problem. When reductionists start insisting that consciousness is emergent and reducible to brain chemistry (actually a contradiction, emergence belongs to holism and is the enemy of reductionism, but one finds at popular level these technicalities escape notice) we must take issue. The need for mind in creation is reflected in the hard problem and in the irreducibility of consciousness.

Reductionists, (especially readers of Dawkins) are convinced that brain chemistry explains consciousness but that view has been proved inadequate. The reductionists are doing a bait and switch, switching brain function for consciousness. Those who claim to evoke mystical experience by brain stimulating use no reliable means of measuring religious experience.[5] One of the major arguments, against the reductionist view, is known as “the hard problem.” The hard problem says that there's a texture to consciousness that can't be communicated, much less reduced to physical origins, but is with us all and thus its existence is self evident. That argument is illustrated by Thomas Negal in his famous article “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” [6] We can have all the facts science can provide about bats but that wont tell us what its like to be a bat. Consciousness has an irreduceable dimension that is fundamental to understanding it and yet scientific reductionism can't tell us about it. In fact some can't admit it exists, even though we all know it does. Sean Carroll dismisses the idea saying, “Nagel actually doesn’t spend too much time providing support for this stance, as he wants to take it as understood and move on.” [7] As though we don't know about the personal dimension to consciousness because we are all conscious (or most of us).

Nagel wrote a book way back in 2012,Mind and Cosmos, for which he was raked over the coals by all manner of scientifically inclined critics. Nagel's basic argument is that because there is this dimension of mind (the hard problem—we can't know what it's like to experience consciousness by reducing the concept to empirical data)-- the subtitle of the book says it-- “...the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.” He did not argue that evolution is wrong but that the reductionist understanding will never unlock the hard problem because they can't admit there's an aspect of the world their methods can't grasp. He says this not just about brain and mind but that “it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history...a true appreciation of the difficulty of the problem must eventually change our conception of the place of the physical sciences in describing the natural order.” [8] He points to the hubris in modern scientific reductionism in thinking we can understand and explain all things, he argues that we don't understand much of the universe at all. He is arguing about what can and cannot in principle be understood by existing methods.[9] He argues that the failure of psychophysical reductionism to produce a theory of everything marks the inability of reductionism to penetrate the mind-body problem. He argues for a mind-like process in nature but he is not arguing for God. He's an atheist. He introduces teleology back into science.

Negal also argues that the connections between the physical and the mental that emergentists think are responsible for consciousness are all higher order. They concern only complex organisms and don't require any fundamental change in the physical conception of the elements that make up those organisms. "An emergent account of the mental is compatible with a physically reductionist account of the biological system in which mind emerges." [10] So emergence doesn't require any change in the 'ground up' conception of what makes up the universe. To be a true explanation, emergence can't just be a set of correspondences between the physical and mental. It must also be systematic, providing principles or laws linking the two. It must tell us why, or at least how, the physical emerges into the mental.

But even with a systematic theory, emergence seems like an unsatisfactory explanation of the mental. That purely physical elements, when arranged in a certain way, and even if systematically accounted for, should result in consciousness seems like magic. That physical things should exhibit, at the macro level, properties and relations not constituted out of the properties and relations of the physical parts making it up seems like magic. In other cases of emergence, we can understand how the micro properties of the parts give rise to the macro properties of the whole. Liquidity emerging from H2O molecules is an example.

Because emergence of the mental remains mysterious, we should seriously consider an explanation of the more fundamental constituents of the universe. This kind of explanation would draw on a general monism which posits that the basic building blocks contain properties that explain not only physical but also mental properties at the macro level. So there's a deeper more comprehensive reality, of which the physical is only one expression. This deeper framework would explain physical and mental as two aspects of this more fundamental reality. The physical would be an explanation of phenomena from the outside, and the mental would explain things from the inside. "Consciousness in this case is not an effect of the brain processes that are its physical conditions: rather, those brain processes are in themselves more than physical, and the incompleteness of the physical description of the world is exemplified by the incompleteness of their (brain processes) purely physical description." [11] Monism or dualism really depends upon how the terms are used, I don't intend to go into that here. I don't necessarily agree with him on monism but I do about the mental as a basic property of nature. Carroll reviews Mind and Cosmos, he justifies the sorry treatment it was given by the followers of new atheism, who paned it without giving it a chance. They basically treated Nagel like he is a young earth creationist (I believe he's an atheist). Carroll's justification:

Back in the dark ages a person with heretical theological beliefs would occasionally be burned at the stake, Nowadays, when a more scientific worldview has triumphed and everyone knows that God doesn’t exist (emphasis mine), the tables have turned, and any slight deviation from scientific/naturalist/atheist/Darwinian doctrine will have you literally tied to a pole and set on fire. Fair is fair. Or, at least, people will write book reviews and blog posts that disagree with you. But I think we all agree that’s just as bad, right?[12]

Translation: “this is not about facts, truth , logic, or reason. Obey the priesthood of knowledge and don't think. But hey we are imposing this ideology so the world will be safe for free thought, just remember to stick with the right ideas.” He says "everyone knows God doesn't exist," 90% of the population is excluded from “everyone.” His answer to the hard problem is basically that it's an old idea and David Chalmers likes it. He accuses Negal of using bad reasoning but his only example is a general allusion to “common sense” which he takes for bad logic, and does not bother to document (although I stipulate that he does appeal to that standard several times).. Appeal to common sense is not the best. Philosophers tend to hate it and its easy prey for people who themselves do not understand argument. For example Carroll belabors Nagel's admission that he's not an expert, not part of the priesthood of knowledge. He misses Nagel's rhetorical strategy in emphasizing consciousness, judgment and intuition in an argument about consciousness. We are all experts in being conscious. He also includes principle of sufficient reason, which is an immanently reasonable standard and one many great philosophers accept. Carroll's rejection of that principle is no doubt based upon the fact that he does not have a sufficient reason for ignoring the need for prior cause, necessity, and can't answer the questions raised by those who want real answers. His major reason for his beliefs is that they free him from belief.

In attacking Nagel's position that we need an explanation for physical law. Carroll says “They [people such as Negal] cannot simply be (as others among us are happy to accept). And the only way he can see that happening is if 'mind' and its appearance in the universe are taken as fundamental features of reality, not simply by products of physical evolution.”[13] Believers are actually tortured with all of that unnecessary thinking? And I thought we were benighted. Apparently it's the skeptics who are happy not to ask questions. There's less to being a “free thinker” than I thought. Carroll then contemplates the terrible consequences for human reason if we accepted that consciousness is not purely physical, (as though the mental dimension just isn't there even though we all experience it all the time); “Imagine what it would entail to truly believe that consciousness is not accounted for by physics. It would entail, among other things, that the behavior of ordinary matter would occasionally deviate from that expected on the basis of physics alone.”[14] There's an expectation that it wont deviate? If it's not prescriptive, if there is nothing to make the regularity stick then we should expect deviation however rare. But of course that's one of those things free thinkers should be happy not to question.

What would it entail to truly believe that consciousness is not accounted for by physics? Belief in God? Nowhere does Nagel go near that conclusion, and in calling himself a monist he could be veering away from that conclusion. Nor does he actually say that physics can't account for consciousness, only that I hasn't, and wont as long as it refuses to consider a mental dimension. Apparently even one step in the direction of God is too close. Carroll then says, “Several billion years ago there weren’t conscious creatures here on Earth. It was just atoms and particles, bumping into each other in accordance with the rules of physics and chemistry. Except, if mind is not physical, at some point they swerved away from those laws, since remaining in accordance with them would never have created consciousness.”[15] Come again? There are laws that determine things? They can't be deviated from? If the regularity of nature is only a description of “tendencies” why shouldn't there be deviation? More of that double minded assumption, laws are not prescriptive except when they help us pretend there's no God. “So, at what point does this deviation from purely physical behavior kick in, exactly? It’s the immortal soul vs. the Dirac equation problem.”[16] Nagel never says we have an immortal soul. Where does that come from. It's like he's arguing with someone other than Nagel. By that statement he means that if the process of our brains “isn't simply following the laws of physics” (another implication of mandated physical law) then “you have the duty to explain in exactly what way the electrons in our atoms fail to obey their equations of motion. Is energy conserved in your universe? Is momentum? Is quantum evolution unitary, information-preserving, reversible? Can the teleological effects on quantum field observables be encapsulated in an effective Hamiltonian?”xvii[17]

First of all, Nagel doesn't say anything about the consciousness dimension being opposed to the laws of physics. Neither do I. Who says there is not a conscious dimension to the laws of physics that we don't know about? But that would be like admitting the priesthood of knowledge doesn't know all things. Secondly, the smokescreen of Nagel's inability to answer specific questions is, as smokescreens usually are, a red herring. If it's a dimension we don't know, then of course we don't know. He has no argument to disprove the hard problem, and no means of demonstrating that Nagel's surmises about it are not sound. Carroll's basic argument is “this can't be true because if it was it would mean the priesthood is not all knowing and there might be a God.” In Carroll's world those reasons are as sound and valid as the equations to which he alludes.

The veracity of this charge is summed up in his final paragraph in the phrase: "He [Nagel] advocates overthrowing things that are precisely defined, extremely robust, and impressively well-tested (the known laws of physics, natural selection) on the basis of ideas that are rather vague and much less well-supported (a conviction that consciousness can’t be explained physically, a demand for intelligibility, moral realism).”[18] Nagel doesn't advocate overthrowing anything, nor does he suggest departing from physics or the methods of scientific exploration. He even says that dualism is a wrong choice. All he is really saying is that there's a dimension that we don't know much about and until we start including it in our explanations, our explanations lack something in explanatory power. Carroll's answer to that seems to be “don't question the faith!” If there is a dimension we don't understand and admitting that is of “enormous consequence” then if true the explanation offered by materialism, physicalism, science itself is not the best. That explanation doesn't account for all the data, one of the criterion for best explanation. The TS argument assumes that dimension and since it doesn't overturn the laws of physics, but assumes them, then it is a better explanation.The irreducibility of mind to brain serves two purposes in the argument: (1) it means there is a dimension that physicalism has ignored, thus it cannot be the best explanation, (2) it sets up Nagel's answer that there must be some mind-like process in the universe for which physicalism cannot take account. When I say “physicalism” in this context I mean all the camps such as: materialism, physicalism proper, reductionism, functionalism, scientism. In presenting evidence for irreducibility of mind to brain I am setting up the argument for mind as the best organizing principle. There is actual positive scientific data that mind does not reduce to brain.



sources

1 Timothy O'Connor and Hong Yu Wong, "Emergent Properties", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Here, Accessed 9/13/15 2 David Chalmers, “Strinmg and Weak emergence,” Research School of Social Sciences, Austrailian National University, online resource, PDF URL: http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf accessed 9/13/15. 3 David Cole, "The Chinese Room Argument", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = .
4 Paul Almond, “Searl's Argument Against AI and emergent Properties—part 1,” MLU: Machines Like Us, (December 29, 2008) online resource, URL: http://www.machineslikeus.com/news/searles-argument-against-ai-and-emergent-properties-part-1 accessed 9/13/15.
5 Joseph Hinman, The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief. Colorado Springs: Grand Viaduct Publishing, 2014,
6 Thomas Nagel, "What is it like to be a bat?", Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 166. pdf: http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf accessed 9/14/15. Nagel is philosophy professer atv NYU. Ph.D Harvaed 1963, awards: 1996 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
7 Sean Carroll, “Mind and Cosmos,” Sean Carroll (blog)(posted August 22, 2013) URL:
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/ accessedd 9/14/15.
8 Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos:Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False,. Oxfor: Oxford, London: New York University Press, first edition, 2012, 3.
9 Ibgid 4
10 Ibid 55
11 Ibid 57
12 Carroll, “Mind…”op. Cit.
13 Ibid
14 Ibid
15 Ibid
16 Ibid
17 Ibid
18 Ibid

The Ideology of Scientism (part 2)

 

 We left off talking about E.O. Wilson.

Wilson started sociobiology and then it transmogrified into evolutionary psychology.

            Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain psychological traits in terms of direct relation to evolutionary needs. Wilson didn’t just invent evolutionary psychology out of the air, there were other thinkers involved. From 1963 to 1974 William Hamilton, George Williams, Robert Trivers, John Maynard Smith pioneered in the sort of understanding we find in evolutionary psychology.[1] Wilson galvanized this trend with his work Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which has been said to mark the epoch.[2] In speaking of the spread of evolutionary psychology Wright says “a new world view is dawning.”[3] He uses the phrase world view literally. He says it’s a body of theory and fact, much like quantum theory, or molecular biology, but unlike that, “it’s also a way of seeing every day life. Once truly grasped (it is easier to grasp than either of them [quantum theory or molecular biology]) it can entirely alter one’s perception of social reality.”[4] Well that’s actually one good definition of ideology. That fits my concept of ideology: One idea that defines the world and determines how one sees everything filtering all perceptions through the lens of its truth regime.

The Questions addressed by the new view range from the mundane to the spiritual and touch on just about everything that matters: romance, love, sex (are men and/or women built for monogamy? What circumstances can make them more or less so?); friendship and enmity (what is the evolutionary logic behind office politics—for that matter politics in general; selfishness, self sacrifice, guilt, (why did natural selection give us that vast guilt repository known as the conscience? Is it truly a guide to moral behavior?)…[5]

Evolutionary psychology draws biologically oriented thinkers and is rejected by social science types such as anthropologists and sociologists, who chafe under the reductionism of the view point. They refuse to accept the explanatory power of naturalistic models. This is largely either the result of or fueled by the nature vs. nurture debate.[6] There have been criticisms of evolutionary psychology to the extent that it is seen as ideological. Stephen J. Gould, as David J. Buller tells us, “disparaged evolutionary psychology as ‘pseudo science’ and Darwinian fundamentalism.”[7] Buller goes to on to talk about the nature of his own flirtation with evolutionary psychology. He was lured into interest and then  “once I began to focus on evolutionary psychology, I seemed to encounter it everywhere I turned…it seemed to be all over television, not just on highbrow channels like PBS…ABC Special Report with John Stossel examining the evolutionary psychology of sex differences…” [8] This was in the period where there was also some popular idea like “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus,” or men hunt and women nest, a lot of it backing the so called “Regan Revolution.” He goes to describe falling out of love with the theory.

Initially I was completely captivated by evolutionary psychology, I was certain that it was providing a deep and accurate understanding of human mentality and behavior…after six months research it was unclear to me how everything that went by the name ‘evolutionary psychology’ fit together and I began having serious doubts…a years research latter, it was clear to me that there were distinctly different lines of research being conducted under the evolutionary psychology label. I became convinced that the line of research that had garnered the most attention, both within academia and through popular media was wrong in almost every detail.[9]

            The first aspect that seemed to draw Buller to evolutionary psychology was a sense that genes almost have a mind of their own, they are the one’s actually guiding our moves. “I recalled a vivid passage in Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene that describes us as survival machines for our genes, which created us body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rational for our existence.” [10] The way he describes his infatuation, and subsequent disillusionment, sounds like a teenager’s crush or a young student turning to the Romance of Marxism and protest in the sixties. One can see how easy it might be to get caught up in such a romance. At least at one time, almost everyone who took an intro psychology class in college would go through a phase of spouting pop psychology at everyone and trying to diagnose problems with pseudo Freudian sounding labels. That process might even be more alluring if tied to Darwin and modern research. Evolutionary psychology has generated a fiercely loyal following. Buller again, “…I found evolutionary psychologists dismissing their critics as anti-scientific, politically correct postmodernists, or closet creationists. Any skepticism about the claims of evolutionary psychology was typically portrayed as a product of dogmatic indoctrination in the social sciences…”[11]

Exacerbating the conflicts, some evolutionary psychologists present their paradigm as replacing, rather than coexisting with, current paradigms, alienating advocates of epistemological diversity. An alternative explanatory model is presented - one that is grounded in evolutionary theory, reflects recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology, and achieves a dialectical balance between nature and nurture.[12]

Evolutionary psychology seems to present a totalizing view that some times overshadows even other scientific work, not as a result of careful scholarship, but merely because it is the word form the camp.

            We can see the same kind of ideological defense at work in the wanton attacks upon Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos. [13] Nagel is a philosopher at NYU and achieved fame and respect for his 1974 essay “What’s it like to be a Bat?”[13] This work has become a standard among those who seek to disprove the reductionist’s take on brain/mind issues. His Mind and Cosmos has drawn fire from many quarters, no doubt including evolutionary psychology. It’s not clear what he means by “Neo Darwininan” but no doubt it must include evolutionary psychology. By labeling it “materialist” he’s taking in the largest possible group since that would include not only materialists but most naturalists and physicalists. He’s arguing that we can’t have a grand theory of everything as long as that theory is coming out of a ideological camp that only allows one view point. That is essentially the nature of the Neo Darwinian understanding. That’s not such a radical thing to say, but the tendency of the scientistic Zeitgeist won’t allow him to say it; the tendency is to reduce all knowledge to one form of knowledge. Not so much because it’s connected to atheism, although atheism is a part of it, but because it’s accepted as scientific fact in modernity, Neo Darwinian view point predominates because science predominates. Philosophy and Religion are not treated as knowledge, so they are not treated as valid alternative view points.

            The major thrust of the attack as been to label Nagel as “creationist” or “Intelligent Design” which he famously is not. It doesn’t help him that the Intelligent Design’s Discovery Institute has lauded the book. Brain Leiter and Michael Weisberg began the assault by attempting to tear it to pieces in The Nation, then Harvard psychologist, champion of evolutionary psychology Steven Pinker dismissed it as “shoddy reasoning,” not likely. New York Times Review of Books and London Review of books panned it. The Guardian (America) named it the “most despised science book of 2012.”[15] Alva Noë argued that Nagel is being confronted by Orthodoxy, “and they are responding the way the Orthodox respond.”[16] Nagel didn’t attack evolutionary psychology per se but one assumes that’s part of the “Neo-Darwinan” crowd. The reaction of anger certainly betrays and ideological vent, a “them and us,” a certain mentality of solider confronting the enemy.

            There is a cadre of physicists who are busy beating up on philosophy, even though their views can actually be described as philosophical. This is another aspect of the ideological tentacles claiming their grasp on a slice of science. These physicists are primarily but not exclusively part of the new atheist movement. Professor Massimo Pigliucci (City University of New York) complains about how in the days of Einstein and Bohr Physicists were intellectually sophisticated and respectful of other branches of knowledge. They were honored to work together with philosophers and theologians. [17] In fact there is a picture of the young theologian Paul Tillich together with Einstein and other physicists, philosophers, and theologians at a conference in Davos Switzerland, march 18, 1928.[18] That meeting may have had some influence on the production of Einstein’s publication arguing against the personal God. Tillich responded with an article, not chiding Einstein but lauding his views, yet putting them into a larger theological perspective that didn’t confine God to the realm of dead matter, nor did it defend God as a magnification of human psyche.[19] This is the kind of exchange that used to exist between philosophers and physicists. Now, Pigliucci complains, it seems physicists are more concerned with attacking philosophy. “These days it’s much more likely to encounter physicists like Steven Weinberg or Stephen Hawking, who merely go about dismissing philosophy for the wrong reasons.” [20]

Nonetheless, let’s get to the core of Krauss’ attack on philosophy. He says: “Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.” This clearly shows two things: first, that Krauss does not understand what the business of philosophy is (it is not to advance science…); second, that Krauss doesn’t mind playing armchair psychologist, despite the dearth of evidence for his pop psychological “explanation.” Okay, others can play the same game too, so I’m going to put forth the hypothesis that the reason physicists such as Weinberg, Hawking and Krauss keep bashing philosophy is because they suffer from an intellectual version of the Oedipus Complex (you know, philosophy was the mother of science and all that... you can work out the details of the inherent sexual frustrations from there).[21]

He continues amusingly in the vain. Basically he shows that the physicists want to deal with philosophy as though its goal is to reproduce science. All of their criticisms are oriented around the notion that philosophy is not contributing to scientific understanding but is reacting to it. Essentially Pigliucci’s entire publication is in reaction to this movement he perceives of science types fighting against and trying to take over philosophy (and liberal arts in general) this is made explicit and typified in is article “on the Difference between Science and Philosophy.” [22] George Musser sums it up by affirming that in the days of Einstein philosophy and physics were close. As a sign of the drift apart he points to the Weinberg chapter title “Against Philosophy,” from the book Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage 1994).[23] He also points to what may be a trend of the move back to reunion due to a sense that the search for grand theory is stalling. “At meetings where the two groups come together, they strike me as quite compatible. The philosophers in attendance tend to have training in physics, and the physicists, even if they can’t tell their Hegel from their Heidegger, are eager to learn.”[24] But are they compatible because they are becoming more attune to tolerating diverse opinion or because they are all becoming scientism’s pawns?

 

            There seems to be an amalgam of several ideologies that turn on the same naturalistic assumptions and that really go together. It’s often the case that one holds all of them at the same time, they include: materialism, physicalism, naturalism, and reductionism. Reductionism is a mythological procedure or assumption in many scientific fields. It also amounts to a philosophical stand within naturalism, et al. All of these “isms” go together, bleed into one another, and form an overarching set of ideas or a sort of “meta ideology,” so to speak. We could break it down endlessly into types of reductionism and so forth, but there’s no point in doing that. For brevity sake I’ll just refer to this whole amalgam as “Scientism,” when speaking in general of the major flow of ideas around that admixture, and as “reductionism” when talking about the connection to the assumptions of any form of reductionism. There are different kinds of naturalism and this may become confusing but I basically mean scientific naturalism as an opposition to religious thinking. The terms materialism and physicalism are related. They can be used interchangeably but have different histories. Phsyicalism is usually preferred as it recognizes that matter is also a form of energy so while matter isn’t all there is, it’s not necessarily the basis of all there is, it’s related to energy. That term reflects the reality of a modern understanding of science. Materialism is the older word and came out of the mechanistic era when the workings of the physical world were compared to a machine. “Materialism” was used in opposition to the concept of spirit. Physicalism was introduced in the 1930’s by two prominent members of positivism’s Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap.[25] Naturalism is the more general term. Turning to an atheist movement understanding of these terms:

Materialism (or physicalism) can signify either a broad metaphysical view, or, more narrowly, a type of theory of mind. Metaphysical materialism is a specific kind of naturalism which contends that everything that exists is either physical or dependent upon the physical. Broadly understood, reductionist materialism maintains that everything is strictly physical; more narrowly, it maintains that the mind (at least) is purely physical. Nonreductive materialism also allows the existence of nonphysical properties that inhere in, or emerge from, a physical substrate. Consequently, it is sometimes called emergent materialism or property dualism. In the broad sense, nonreductive materialism holds that everything is physical or at least dependent upon the physical; and in the narrower sense it holds that the mind can have both physical and nonphysical aspects even though it must be instantiated in a physical system like the brain.

While metaphysical materialism entails a materialist theory of mind, one can be a materialist about the mental without believing that everything is physical (e.g., some theologians are nonreductive materialists about the human mind but believe that God is neither physical nor dependent upon the physical; and some philosophers who think that the mind is purely physical also believe in nonphysical abstract objects).[26]

            Even within their own movement those who understand the terms acknowledge that they are metaphysics and don’t try to pass them off as science. “Philosophical materialism (physicalism) is the metaphysical view that there is only one substance in the universe and that substance is physical, empirical or material. Materialists believe that spiritual substance does not exist. Paranormal, supernatural or occult phenomena are either delusions or reducible to physical forces.”[27] The amalgam we are talking about doesn’t necessarily limit itself to atheists. E.O. Wilson is not an atheist. Nevertheless, in some quarters of the atheist movement adherents are constantly beating the drums for these philosophies while denying that’ it’s a movement and trying to pass them off as science proper. They try to juxtapose their view of the world, which they claim to be factual and scientific, while at the same time imposing these philosophical ideas as we see Thomas doing above. At the philosophical level academics make no attempt to hide the fact that this is philosophy, no holds barred. Geoffrey Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson state:

In [11] we laid the groundwork for a comprehensive materialism based upon physical science which the problems of ontology and of the interrelations between higher order sciences—biology, psychology, social theory, and so forth on the one hand, and basic physical science on the other could be correctly stated and accessed. It was our aim to formulate principles of phsyicalism which are strong enough to incorporate the kinds of appeals to the comprehensive and fundamental character of physical science that materialists have sought to make…[28]

Materialism and phsyicalism are metaphysical assumptions. Both of these constitute philosophical positions; they are going beyond the domain and nature of science.

            There are several types of phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism, for example,  and minimal phsyicalism. The word supervenience is currently enjoying a renaissance in philosophical circles. It basically means, as used in philosophical circles, that there are two sets of characteristics and one set is dependent upon the other or connected with it in such a way that a change in one means a change in the other. The concept came out of meta ethics but is being used in physics and philosophy of mind and other venues.[29]

            Daniel Stoljar illustrates supervenience with the use of an analogy by David Lewis. The analogy is to a dot-matrix picture, that is just dots and the global properties are formed solely from patterns in the dots. The pictures supervene on the patterns of dots and non dots. No two pictures could differ in their global properties unless they differ in the placement of dots.

Lewis's example gives us one way to introduce the basic idea of physicalism. The basic idea is that the physical features of the world are like the dots in the picture, and the psychological or biological or social features of the world are like the global properties of the picture. Just as the global features of the picture are nothing but a pattern in the dots, so too the psychological, the biological and the social features of the world are nothing but a pattern in the physical features of the world. To use the language of supervenience, just as the global features of the picture supervene on the dots, so too everything supervenes on the physical, if physicalism is true. [30]

Lewis says that “no two pictures can be identical in the arrangement of dots but different in their global properties”.[31]

The other versions of Physicialism include “minimal,” “token and type,” “reductive and non reductive,” and “a priori and a posteriori.” Minimal physicalism is tied up with philosophy of mind. That’s the version that’s always discussed wherever people discuss the brain/mind issue. It’s in this venue that we most often find arguments about the falsehood of physicialism.[32] Minimal physicalism is basically the core commitment of all phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism is neutral in a good many issues. Minimal physicalism is the basic core belief of the physical nature of everything.

            There can be no doubt as to the philological basis of these ideas. While rank and file atheists profess their disgust for philosophy because “it’s making stuff up” the leaders of their movement have always and still are basing their world view and their movement upon obviously philosophical view points. Materialism is in line with the classic definition of metaphysics, reasoning about that which is beyond our observation, and phsyicalism takes up where materialism left off. Physicalism is completely rooted in philosophy of mind. Physicalism serves as the basis for atheist thinking. 

            Andrew Brown, himself an “old” kind of atheist, identifies and summarizes the ideology of the new atheists based upon the works of their major leaders and spokesmen.

So, who are they? The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration. All of them make claims about religion and about believers which go far beyond the mere disbelief in God which I take to be the distinguishing mark of an atheist….

❄ There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief.

❄ The cure for faith is science: The existence of God is a scientific question: either he exists or he doesn't. "Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is just superstition" [Robert L. Park]

❄ Science is the opposite of religion, and will lead people into the clear sunlit uplands of reason. "The real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition" [Jerry Coyne] "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." [Dawkins]

❄ In this great struggle, religion is doomed. Enlightened common sense is gradually triumphing and at the end of the process, humanity will assume a new and better character, free from the shackles of religion. Without faith, we would be better as well as wiser. Conflict is primarily a result of misunderstanding, of which Faith is the paradigm. (Looking for links, I just came across a lovely example of this in the endnotes to the Selfish Gene, where lawyers are dismissed as "solving man-made problems that should never have existed in the first place".)

❄ Religion exists. It is essentially something like American fundamentalist protestantism, or Islam. More moderate forms are false and treacherous: if anything even more dangerous, because they conceal the raging, homicidal lunacy that is religion's true nature. [Sam Harris]

❄ Faith, as defined above, is the most dangerous and wicked force on earth today and the struggle against it and especially against Islam will define the future of humanity. [Everyone]

All of these propositions will be found in the authors I have cited as well as in the comments to religious articles here. I sometimes think that only the last two are unique to the new atheists: you can certainly find the others in earlier authors. But those are the six doctrines which I would reject when saying rude things about the new atheists.[33]

Each of these opinionated positions summarized by Brown appeals to science as its justification; none of them can really be based upon science. Take the counter intuitive opinion that moderate religion is more dangerous than extreme religion because it’s somehow concealing some hidden lunacy (there’s a clinical scientific term, “lunacy.”) within it. That’s the sort of scientific thinking that motivated the mental health industry in the days of witch trails and brain stones. There is no data justifying this bromide. It’s obviously a slogan serving to energize the base and prevent defection to more reasonable versions of religion. At the same time it casts the aura of science over the evil essence of religion. The implications of essentialism alone mark it as totally unscientific. Science, in the hands of the new atheist leaders, takes on a role and a make up that real scientists would never recognize as scientific. It becomes more than ideology, something close to religion itself.

            These view points bear the ear marks of ideology. They reduce knowledge to one kind of knowledge and they reduce the world to one idea that fits everything. They form the basis of a kind of politics as they motivate and urge and define society in terms of negative results based upon the following of the antithetical ideas they seek to challenge. In that sense they are very reminiscent of Marxism: Marxism has the eternal struggle between the worker and the owner. The working class is exploited by the ruling class, and all the ills of society are due to that exploitation. The ruling class justifies itself through a false consciousness, if that consciousness was property cleared up by the “truth” of the proper van guard understanding, the workers paradise would be inaugurated. The same is true of atheism. According the ideas Brown discusses, there’s a great evil that spawns all the social ills, created by the false consciousness of religious belief. The priest class keeps the believer enthralled with “superstition” as the ruling class keeps the workers enthralled with promises of wealth. In Marxism the workers are save by the revolutionary van guard of the party. In new atheism the brain washed believers are saved by the van guard of science.  Workers are liberated by the party line, believers are liberated by the facts of science.

Making a chart like this is not meant to suggest that there is no truth in Marxism or that reduces neatly to just these points. In fact Christianity can also be put on such a chart. Yet is does illustrate the fact that these ideas lend themselves to an ideological perspective and unwary can be led down the garden path into some tempropal human idea of an eternal struggle for the good.

	Marxism	New Atheism
Great struggle	Class struggle	Brain washing of believers
Victims	workers	everyone
Enemy of people	Capitalists/owners	Religion/religious people
Van Guard	party	Scientists/atheists
Knowledge (gospel)	Party line	Science/skepticism
eschatology	Workers paradise	Secular society
means	Propaganda	Mocking and ridiculing reiligion

Christianity

Great struggle	Sin/evil
victims	Human race
Enemy of people	Satan
Van Guard	church
Knowledge	Gosepl
Eschatology	End of times, second coming, judgment
Means	Preach gospel

Does the fact that Christianity can be subjected to ideological analysis mean that it is an empty ideology? No more so than science. The fact that science can be distorted and laced with ideological assumptions doesn’t mean there is no clear idea of science, nor does it mean that science doesn’t have a valid basis. Ideology can take over any view point. Any truth can become reduce to an ideological understanding if one is not careful. While we might consider that Christianity is like the prototype, ideology the copy. Although Christianity was not the first religion thus we could say religion as a whole is the prototype and these other versions are the ideologies. Yet we know religion can be ideological as well.

            One of the major examples of religion as ideology is creationism. Of course in saying that we have to aware of the fact that the counters to creationism can also be very ideological.

            The ideology of new atheism is a subset of the larger ideology of scientisim. Not all scisentistic types are atheists and not all atheists are scientistic. There is an atheist ideology that is an outgrowth and subset of the lager umbrella of scientism. What the umbrella has in common all of its many departments is the reduction of all knowledge to one thing; that one thing is the illusion of technique. In even the one thing is an illusion because the ostensible one thing is “science.” Yet it’s not really science because science is about hypothesis testing and this is more what William Barrett called “the illusion of technique.” The illusion of technique is the manipulation of all knowledge and fact, all feeling and questions into the closed realm of discourse. The reduction assumes the only possible questions and the only possible answers go back to the same circular concept, both problem and solution: the reduction of all knowledge not to science but to technology. It’s the bait and switch, the substitution of science for technology. Science leaves off with debunking what it could and then the offering of possible knowledge in the form the best explanation.[34] Yet technology assumes we have the answers. Technology assumes we have the answers and we are going to apply them. It assumes either we know the truth or it doesn’t matter. What is replacing truth is the ability to control things.Science is put over as “the truth” when in fact its’ only a means of hypothesis testing. That leaves us with a void in our understanding of the nature of truth.

---

[1] Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York and Canada: First Vantage Books edition, Division of Random House. 1995.4.

Robert Write is an award wining American Journalist, writes scholarly books about science is respected for his scholarship.

[2] Ibid. 4

[3] Ibid. 4

[4] Ibid., 4-5

[5] Ibid., 5

[6] Harvey Whitehouse, “Introduction,” The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology Vs. Ethnography. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers. 2001,1.

[7] David, J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for human Nature. Cambridge Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2005, 4.

[8] Ibid.3

[9] Ibid., 3

[10] Ibid., 2

[11] Ibid., 5

[12] Linda Gannon, “abstract,” “A Critique of Evolutionary Psychology.” Psychology, Evolution, and Gender. Volume 4 Issue 2, (2002), 173-218, 173.

[13] Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. no page cited.

[14] Thomas Nagel, “What’s it Like to Be A Bat?” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4., (Oct. 1974) 435-450.

[15] Jennifer Schuessler, “An Author Attracts Unlikely Allies,” New York Times, Feb 6, 2013, ON line copy 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/books/thomas-nagel-is-praised-by-creationists.html?_r=1& accessed 10/18/13.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Massimo Pigliucci, “Lawrence Krauss: Another Physicist With an Anti-Philosophy Complex.” Rationally Speaking, online publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ca/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html   accessed 9/27/13.

[18] Krista Tippett, “Einstein’s Refutation of Personal God,” On Being, online publication http://www.onbeing.org/program/einstein039s-god/particulars/1930  accessed 9/27/13.

Photograph from conference in Davos Switzerlan, March 18, 1928, courtesy of Image Archive, ETH-Bibliotek, Zurich. Published, On Being,

[19] Paul Tillich, “The Idea of a Personal God.” Online article from a blog by Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith reprinted with permission form the Yale Divinity School Library. URL: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsgod/tillich-einsteinresponse.shtml (visited 8/31/2010) No indication is given of a translator or original publication.

I document this in a footnote to an article I wrote on my blog, “Paul Tillich and the Personal God: was Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being an Impersonal Force? Part 1.” Metacrock’s Blog, March 14, 2011 on line

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/paul-tillich-and-personal-god-was.html  accessed 9/27/13.

In that article I put a caption under the picture (same Photograph published by Tippett the converence in 1828 In Switzerland) it says  Einstein’s paper was presented at a New York Conference science, philosophy and Religion, 1940.

[20] Pigliucci, Op Cit.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Massimo Pugliucci, “On the Difference Between Science and Philosophy.” Rationally speaking, on line publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-difference-between-science-and.html  accessed 9/27/13.

[23] Steven Weinberg, “Against Philosophy” (chapter VII)  Dreams of a Final Theory: Scientists Search for The Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York, NY: Vintage, reprint edition, 1994. 166.

[24] George Musser, “Deep in Thought, What is a Law of Physics Anyway?” Scientific American Blogs (June 4, 2010) Onilne  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/06/04/deep-in-thought-what-is-a-law-of-physics-anyway/  accessed 9/27/13.

George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American. He focuses on space science and fundamental physics, ranging from particles to planets to parallel universes. He is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. Musser has won numerous awards in his career, including the 2011 American Institute of Physics's Science Writing Award.

[25] Daniel Stoljar, “Physicalism:Terminology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy fed 13, 2001, sept 9, 2009. Online resource: URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#1  visited 3/11/11

[26] Keith Augustine,  “Materliaism,” The Secular Web  Internet resource online URL: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/materialism.html  visited 3/11/11.

[27] Robert T. Carroll, “Philosophical Materialism (Physicalism),” The Skeptics Dictionary.  1994/2012 the article updated last 2010. on line resource, http://www.skepdic.com/materialism.html  accessed 9/22/13

[28] Geoffery Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson, “Physicalist Materialism,” Nous, 11, Blackwell Publishing, 1977 available online through JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2214560  visited 3/11/11.

[29] Stoljar, Op Cit.

[30] Ibid, citing David Lewis, On The Plurality of Worlds,1986, 14. no page numbers for Stoljar.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid

[33] Andrew Brown, Andrew Brown’s Blog, “New Atheism, A Definition and Quiz.” online version published by The Guardian. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2008/dec/29/religion-new-atheism-defined   visited, 11/1/11.

[34] Popper, find