Correlation and Causality in Miracle Hunting

The discussion I put on limits of scinece was pretty successful (well received) but the skeptics get hung up on the threat that miracles might be real. We have to put that fire out immediately lest someone get the wrong idea and strat seeking God. This little discussion with Hermit is in the comment section, there are other comments there (limits of scinece no 3) that are wroth seeing, the reader might want to drop in. The little exchange with Hermit is pretty typical of a lot of exchanges on boards concerns Lourdes miracles:



Hermit:

The question was, "What method, other than empiricism, can we use to reliably distinguish between real and fraudulent miracles?"

Meta:
Empiricism is the method for that. Of cousre it goes without saying you have to combine logic withe empiricism or you can't interpret your data.

The Global knowledge idea deals with the overall question God and life and the big picture, the ascertaining of miracles is really small picture. Empirical methods would be the method there, but empiricism as an ideology or a philosophy is way too limited.

Hermit:

The Lourdes rules are clearly an attempt to demonstrate that something out of the ordinary, or miraculous, has occurred.

Meta:
What's wrong with that? that's what your trying to figure out.


Hermit:

What they don't do, of course, is demonstrate that there is any reason to connect a visit to Lourdes to the spontaneous remission of any condition, especially since such spontaneous remissions occur at a greater frequency for patients who DON'T travel to Lourdes than for those who do.

Meta:
No you are clearly confused about the nature of remission. Now this is what the member of Lourdes committee told me in our exchanges of email: Remission never means the total absolute vanishing of traces overnight. Remission is not the condition is totally gone in one night as though it never existed. That's what some of the Lourdes miracle are and that is not remission. Remission is the backing up of the condition over time, it reverses itself for a while. Many remissions cease and the disease comes back.

Moreover, as I pointed out in my piece, the rules are set up to screen out remission. You are also confused in saying there's no way to tell, there certainly is, because you go by the appearance of remissions that we know are remission. Study the instances that re not claimed as miracle see if the case conforms to it. that's why they are able to determine how to screen for it in the rules.

For example they don't take leukemia healing for 10 years after the incident becuase remissions are high.


Hermit:

Having a fever appears to be more closely associated to spontaneous remission of some cancers than visiting a shrine of any kind. So, if anything, Lourdes appears to be associated with a suppression of such "miracles", which are more probably die to hormonal or immune system mechanisms.

Meta
Your thinking is so illogical. If you have a case where the disease is gone without a trace overnight, that is not remission that's something different. So you look to see what int h patient background is different than other Patience. If the only thing is going to Lourdes then you got it. that's every reason in the world to connect the two, especially since the rules say it has to be immediate.



Problems of Causality and Corrolation

Quite often I find skeptics assuming that I don't know the difference in correlation and causality.Moreover, they assume that knowing the difference is enough to kill a causality argument. Some assume that since they are clever enough to know the very basic information, the difference in correlation and causality, that I must not know that because I'm a Christian and Christians are stupid, and they are so very clever to know some basic fact that all high school kids should get, correlation is not causality. What they don't get is that just I argue inductively that correlation is indicative of a cause if certain conditions obtain, that doesn't mean I don't know the difference. The difference only kills the argument when you can establish that a stronger correlation exists between alternate causes and the phenomenon. Atheists often seem to act like they think the mere possibility of an alternate cans is as good as proven fact. This happens a lot on the religious experience argument where they seem to think that just the mere fact that experiences are connected to brain chemistry is enough to destroy the connection between God and religious experience.


Correlation is indicative of Cause.


What these very clever atheist don't get is that correlation is indicative of cause. part of the problem is that certain people don't seem know what indicative means. Be that as it may, there is an epistemological gap in our knowledge it a problem at the most fundamental philosophical level. We can only establish causality in one way, buy making very tight correlations and eliminating alternate causes. This is the only way there is, and that's what Hume really proved with the billiard balls.

Science can't prove causes. We can only prove correlations. When I assume causes on miracles, it's the only way we ever establish cause.  Because if we can't observe causality and it must be inferred from correlation, then you can't say "I have eliminated an alternate cause by showing causality and eliminating it." That's just a repeat of the same problem. The alternate causes are only possibilities, they are not proven either. What it boils down to is in the final analysis a really tight correlation is the only way to determine cause. Although it is important to eliminate the alternative possible causes, essential in fact. What this means is I am right to assume causes from correlations, given that I can eliminate alternatives, and I usually can.

All of this means that medical evidence showing the disease went away, when examined by scientific medicos is good evidence for miracles. It's not absolute, there is no absolute. There will always be a gap in our epistemology. We will always have to make epistemic judgment.

This is really a simple concept. It is not wonder, then, that atheists have had a great deal of trouble understanding it. I say that because they always try to approach it as some big hairy radical deal that’s a fallacy in and of itself. I expect the skeptic to question the argument, but to actually question it in a way that implies that there’s some big logical problem with correlations is quite amazing. That they try to twist the argument totally out of proportion is just, as Dylan said, “sleepy time down south.”
Take a couple of analogies that illustrate Science's willingness to draw assumptions of causality from correlation. First the idea of smoking as a cause of cancer. In 1963 (or so) the Surgeon General made the ruling that smoking might be the cause of cancer and thus a warning was printed in cigarette packs. That ruling was made not because they had direct scientific proof. In fact when the tobacco companies responded that science could not find a mechanism in tobacco smoke that causes cancer, they were right about that. They remained right about it until this century. For almost a quarter of a century the whole campaign and war against smoking rested totally upon statistical correlation. I used this fact to indicate that science takes correlation proof seriously as proof. It’s not illogical to assume that if a correlation is tight enough causality is a logical inference. The atheist response has been “but the link from smoking to cancer has been proved.” It is true that the link has now been proven, but only recently (in this first decade of the twenty-first century, the ruling was imposed over forty years ago when all they had to go by was a correlation)..(1) That is typical. The fact that the link was proved and a mechanism found over forty years latter doesn’t in the least blunt the fact that for almost half a century science was willing to assume that as a fact based upon statistical correlation. This is all common knowledge. I remember when the Surgeon General made the announcement, even though I was a small child. I remember when cigarette ads were banned. A multi million dollar industry, probably a billion dollar industry was destroyed and taken down all on the basis of statistical correlation.

Anyone with half a brain should be able to conclude that science respects a good correlation; we may treat correlations as causality if (and only if) the correlation is tight enough. Another analogy is that of the neutrino. Before I go into that let me point out that I am not arguing from analogy. I understand that the similarity to cases in these analogies is not proof of the existence of God. I am not saying that. The function of an analogy is nothing but an aid to illustrate an idea that is exactly what I’m about here, nothing more. My argument does not proceed from arguing the analogy. But the fact is atheists treat the correlation of God to miraculous healing as though there is no implication of God’s reality in the experiences because, they think, there is no proof of causality in a correlation. But I am here illustrating the fact that their beloved priesthood of knowledge,  scientists, are willing to assume a strong correlation as rational warrant for a causal relationship.

The second example is that of the neutrino.(1)

DONUT home Fermi National Acceleration Laboratory*:
6/29/01

Nutrinos

Neutrinos didn’t emerge onto the particle physics scene until 1930, when Wolfgang Pauli invented the neutrino to “save” conservation of energy, which was under threat from observations of beta decay in radioactive materials. Scientists such as Henri Bequerel and Marie and Pierre Curie performed the first studies into radiation starting in 1898. In the years that followed radiation was classified into 3 categories: alpha, beta and gamma. In studying beta radiation, scientists discovered a disturbing phenomenon. It seemed that when a nucleus underwent beta decay, which consisted of the emission by a neutron of an electron to create a proton, conservation of energy was violated. There was a missing amount of energy that could not be accounted for by their measurements or calculations. In 1930 Pauli made his hypothesis....

It was not until 1933 that Pauli admitted the possibility of a zero mass neutrino (the discovery of the neutron in 1932 by James Chadwick forced him to change the hypothesized particle’s name to neutrino). Today we know that neutrinos have some unknown mass and that they move close to the speed of light. The first detection of neutrinos occurred in 1956 by Clyde Cowan and Fredrick Reines who found a convenient source of neutrinos--nuclear power plants. Power is created in nuclear plants when atoms undergo nuclear fission, a process of which the neutrino is a byproduct. Cowan and Reines employed a 400-L tank of cadmium chloride as their target. The neutrinos struck a proton inside the target, producing a positron and a neutron. That positron encountered an electron; the two annihilated each other, producing two gamma rays (or photons). The neutron was absorbed by a cadmium chloride atom, producing a photon at a 15-microsecond delay from the emission from the positron. Using this knowledge of the photon emission, Cowan and Reines were able to detect the electron neutrino.

Leon Lederman, Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger followed with the detection of the muon neutrino in 1962. They fired a GeV beam of protons through a target creating pions, which decayed into muons and muon neutrinos. Thick shielding halted the muons but the neutrinos continued until they entered a detector where they produced muons, decaying into electrons and a photon that were observed in the spark chambers.(2)

Pauli describes his reasoning in asserting an unproven hypothesis (the neutrino)

I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the “exchange theorem” of statistics and the law of conservation of energy. Namely, the possibility that there could exist in the nuclei electrically neutral particles, that I wish to call neutrons, which have spin 1/2 and obey the exclusion principle and which further differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light. The mass of the neutrons should be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any event not larger than 0.01 proton masses. The continuous beta spectrum would then become understandable by the assumption that in beta decay a neutron is emitted in addition to the electron such that the sum of the energies of the neutron and the electron is constant...(3)

Now I’m sure atheists are saying “that’s just the way science works. State a hypothesis and test it.” Of course it is, and that’s fine. But the problem is that’s pretty much what has been done in regard to mystical experience, as well as miracles. Religious believers have been a lot more definite about their hypothesis than Pauli was about his, but it’s the same thing really, and with very similar results. The only real difference is the scientist can eventually get “absolute” proof (in a scientific sense) when the question is an empirical one, but we can’t get this kind of certainty of God. Nevertheless, we can be as certain, thanks to the M scale, as where the physicists in their discussion of neutrinos at the time that Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger did their work. We can be as certain in terms of Lourdes miracles, at least certain that some a typical process has occurred for some inexplicable reason what was the normal course of nature know to us has been altered. It is the medical diagnostic tools that give us this certainty. Of course, I’m not advocating understanding religious belief as scientific hypothesis, but the basic logic of the co-determinate is the same. One can clearly see that the logic of the co-determinate is not a fallacy, formal or informal; it is not the same as saying “I believe it, so that proves it.” It is not a radical move that I invented. It’s the normal way correlations have been used to assume causality since modern science began. It’s the use of the term “co-determinate” that gives atheist the idea that this is some new brand of logic I invented. If I called it “the correlate” they would probably not say that, and that’s all it is. In that case they would turn around and say, “Correlations are not proof of causality.” No, they are not, but on the other hand I did not claim to prove it. I only claimed that it’s reasonable to draw a conclusion from the association!


Here’s an even more interesting twist: Since the work in 1962 science assumed that Neutrinos were proved, but they didn’t have direct proof until much latter:

Fermi lab: Phyiscs at Fermilab

Discoveries at Femrilab: The Tau neutrino
7/09/2000

An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on July 21, 2000 the first direct evidence for the subatomic particle called the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino known to particle physicists. They reported four instances of a neutrino interacting with an atomic nucleus to produce a charged particle called a tau lepton, the signature of a tau neutrino.(Ibid)

The “detection” of muon was in 1962 and yet it says the first direct evidence of the subatomic particles called tau neutrinos wasn’t until 2000. I know these are different particles that are coming out of a different stage in the process. But the fact remains, the original hypothesis was merely an attempt to explain the actions of certain particles in a certain context, theory was manufactured to fit the apparent case. The theory was born out latter with empirical proof. The point is that the theory was deduced from the action of particles around the neutrino, not from direct evidence of the thing itself. The neutrino is the co-determinate of those reactions, it goes with them logically and is implied by them, just as the foot that makes the impression in the snow is logically deduced from the impression and is thus implied by it and inseparable from it.

Much the same thing has happened with respect to the scientific study of religious experience. First people have had such experiences for thousands of years. They developed an explanation for them (God, the divine, the supernatural). With that explication there evolved a complicated economics of metaphor that emerged as a means of understanding that which is beyond understanding. Then, after all that fuss, the hypothesis is partially corroborated with empirical scientific techniques (such as the M scale). What has been corroborated is that the process works, as we would expect it to in living up the exceptions derived form our teachings on the divine. Real experiences that are truly affecting the brain produce real measurable concrete change in life and a valuable way of life that revolutionizes the lives of those having these experiences, and dramatic and positive way. Thus, the scientific findings corroborate that the experiences conform to what the divine is supposed to do. We should not be surprised since that understanding is derived from the experiences themselves, but now that process is proved valid through science.

Atheists will be very insistent to demand “this does not prove the origin.” Remember, I never claimed, “proof!” But why is it not reasonable to assume that the origin is the divine, since it conforms to our ideas of what it supposed to be? After all, that is literally exactly what the supernatural actually was in its original conception.(4) Thus it is a reasonable construal. I never said it was “proof” (except in the practical sense, close enough to proof to place confidence in the hypothesis). In response to this, some atheists have lunched an old familiar tactic from message boards, ridicule of a hypothesis by use of reduction to absurdity. So they will say there’s a high correlation between global warming and pirates, therefore, global warming causes piracy. This is supposed to prove the fallacy and stupidity of asserting a “co-determinate.” Reductio Ad Absurdum is not necessarily the best-advised course for an argument. It is totally fallacious to think that just because one can construct a false association based upon absurdities a valid association is illogical. The logic of the argument within the argument is what must determine whether or not an association is logical. This relates back to the soundness of an argument. All they are saying at this point is “that’s not sound,” although their only reason for thinking so is that they don’t like the conclusion I’m drawing. They cannot tell me why the argument is unsound without elevating my claims to the level of proof. But I don’t claim proof.


(3) Don't need to show hit rate


The argument is made we must show the percentage of those healed vs not healed.

That's ridiculous. The reason is because we do not know the reason when someone is not healed. We cannot assume "Ok not being healed means there's no God, because some are healed." Knowing the hit rate is important in many cases. such as prophesy, "so and so is a true prophet he predicted x," but how many predictions did the make that did not come true? Knowing the hit rate on healing when you can establish an actual healing is irrelevant.


(a) We don't know if the failed healing is the result of no God just didn't want to heal. Because a will is on the other end of the prayer we cannot treat it like a natural process and expect it to behave like a drug in a field trial.

(b) Miracles are supposed to be impossible. they violate natural law. that's the whole theory of naturalism in a nut shell; nothing happens apart form natural law.

Thus if one miracle happens that proves miracles and all it takes is one. proving that x% are not healed doesn't prove anything. miracles are supposed to be impossible and can't happen, if one of them happens, or we can assume it happened, then that proves they do happen. We don't know the rate because God is not a drug. Divine healing is a matter of God's will.


(3) God's action in healing is not indicative of God's feelings about those healed or not healed.

This is the whole fallacy of the God hates amputees thing. You might as well say God hates breakfast because not once in my Christian walk has God ever made me scrambled eggs in the morning.

St. Augustine proved that there is no correlation between worldly prosperity or success and God's love. Rome was sacked by the vandals and everyone was saying "this disproves Christianity." but Augie said "no it doesn't, divine favor is not based worldly success. Stuff happens to Christians too, God causes it rain on the just and unjust."


(4) No double blind


Lourdes evidence does not need to be double blind First of all these are not "studies." They are not set up as a longitudinal study to see if healing works. These are real people and their journey to Lourdes is part of their journey in life in a search to be healed, they are not white lab mice plotting world conquest.

Secondly, double blind is used as a means of control so we know data is not contaminated by the subjects knowledge of the test. People suffering from an incurable disease cannot cure themselves. So it doesn't matter if they know. If the data shows the condition went away immediately and it can be documented that all traces are gone, the of course can assume healing, provided there is no counter cause such as he took a wonder drug before he left for Lourdes; they do certainly screen for that.

Of course there are still epistemological problems. There will always be such problems. That's why you can't prove you exist. But just as the answer to that problem is "Make epistemic judgment based upon regularity and inconsistency of data," so it goes with miracles, proving smoking causes cancer or anything else.

Thomas Reid got it right, we are justified in assuming empirical evidence provided it's strong evidence.

One more problem. When I say "correlation" this invites the question "how can you find a correlation if you don't know the hit rate? A correlation implies X and Y are seen together a lot, not just in one instance. But we can't go around giving people cancer and praying for them over and over to see if they ar always healed. We have to let multiple cases stand for correlation. But since we can't say why healing didn't take place we have to use empirical means to assert on a case by case basis.





(1) Website “Cancer Research UK,” URL http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/healthyliving/smokingandtobacco/, “Smoking and Cancer” visited March, 24, 2009.

(2)Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Donut home, “Neutrinos What are they?” Website URL: http://www-donut.fnal.gov/web_pages/neutrinospg/Neutrinos.html, visited March 24, 2009.
Ibid.

(3)Fermilab website URL: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/physics/neutrino/discovery/index.html visited March 24, 2009.

(4)The page on my website dealing with the nature of the original concept of the supernatural and how it has been degraded. “What is the Supernatural” on website Doxa. URL: http://www.doxa.ws/meta_crock/Supernature.html visited March 24, 2009. The major work on this section I explication of the original concept of Super nature comes from the article “Christianity and the Supernatural” by Eugene R. Fairweather of Toronto Universe (1965) published in the book New Theology No. 1 edited Martin E. Marty. Also Mathias Joseph Scheeban, Nature and Grace,

G.J. Mattey, Thomas Reid,Theory of Knowledge lecture notes. Philosophy, UC Davis
http://-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/phil02/tkch4.htm
prior to the Revision of May 22,2008. Now located at:
http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/mattey/mattey/phi022/reidlec.html

Argument From Consciousness

I will return to the Doherty stuff in a couple of days. I want to change focus for a moment to the arguments about consciousnesses. Atheists Almost unanimously accepted the idea that consciousness can only be the result of brain chemistry (thus only something a biological organism can experience). This is by no means proved, and to illustrate how weak it is I present a God argument based upon what we know about consciousness.



Argument:

---

(1) Conscousness is irreduceable to physical property:

a) Hard Problem

b) Doward Causation

c) Veto Power

(2)Therefore, consciousness/mind is a basic property of nature.

(3) Grand Unfified theory posits the need for a centeral organizing principle which would be the key to all organization.

(4) Mind is the best exaple of such an organizing principle.

(5) Since consciousness is part of the basic structure of nature, and since that structure requires a single unifying principle of which mind is the best example, it stands to reason that a conscious mind was the original structure that put consciousness into the universe.

---

Athiests seem to almost universally assume that science solved every aspect of the brian/mind problem. It's all reduced to chemicals in the head, and there's no point in questioning further, and that all sciences agree completely.The truth is little is know about consciousenss at this ponit, and it is far from settaled that brain chemestry alone "causes" conscoiusness, or that conciousness reduced to chesestry.

The New York TimesApril 16, 1996Arizona Conference Grapples With Mysteries of Human ConsciousnessBy SANDRA BLAKESLEE[T] UCSON, Ariz.

http://www.as.wvu.edu/~tmiles/myster.html

"The next major group of consciousness seekers might be called modern dualists. Agreeing with the hard problem, they feel that something else is needed to explain people's subjective experiences. And they have lots of ideas about what this might be.According to Chalmers, scientists need to come up with new fundamental laws of nature. Physicists postulate that certain properties -- gravity, space-time, electromagnetism -- are basic to any understanding of thee universe, he said."My approach is to think of conscious experience itself as a fundamental property of the universe," he said. Thus the world has two kinds of information, one physical, one experiential. The challenge is to make theoretical connections between physical processes and conscious experience, Chalmers said.Another form of dualism involves the mysteries of quantum mechanics. Dr. Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford in England argued that consciousness is the link between the quantum world, in which a single object can exist in two places at the same time, and the so-called classical world of familiar objects where this cannot happen.Moreover, with Hameroff, he has proposed a theory that the switch from quantum to classical states occurs inside certain proteins call microtubules. The brain's microtubules, they argue, are ideally situated to perform this transformation, producing "occasions of experience" that with the flow of time give rise to stream of consciousness thought.

Let's examine each of these premises in detail:

(1) Consciousness is irreduceable.

(a) Hard problem

The frist objection to this argument, which is almost universally accepted by atheists, and fervently beileved, is that science proves conscousness is just a property or side effect of brain chemestry. This is far from the truth. David Chalmers (Philosophyer U. Arizona) argues that it is not even consciousness that the functionalists study, but congrnative function. That is to say, the functionalists study the way the brain processes information and the way it is produced. Yet, the do not study and cannot explain the aspect of consciousness itself. This means they are merely "losing the phenomena." That is, they are "reducing" consciousness out of existecne, ignoring it, swtiching something else in its place. Unitl the hard probelm is solved, conscoiusness cannot be understood. Charlmers explians:


David J. Chalmers
Department of Philosophy
University of Arizona

[Scientific American, December 1995 pp. 62-68. N.B. As always at Scientific American, this was heavily edited. For a more careful treatment of this material, see my "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness".]

The Puzzle of Conscious Experience

The easy problems of consciousness include the following: How can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately? How does the brain integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behavior? How is it that subjects can verbalize their internal states? Although all these questions are associated with consciousness, they all concern the objective mechanisms of the cognitive system. Consequently, we have every reason to expect that continued work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience will answer them.

The hard problem, in contrast, is the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience. This puzzle involves the inner aspect of thought and perception: the way things feel for the subject. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations, such as that of vivid blue. Or think of the ineffable sound of a distant oboe, the agony of an intense pain, the sparkle of happiness or the meditative quality of a moment lost in thought. All are part of what I am calling consciousness. It is these phenomena that pose the real mystery of the mind.

To illustrate the distinction, consider a thought experiment devised by the Australian philosopher Frank Jackson. Suppose that Mary, a neuroscientist in the 23rd century, is the world's leading expert on the brain processes responsible for color vision. But Mary has lived her whole life in a black-and-white room and has never seen any other colors. She knows everything there is to know about physical processes in the brain - its biology, structure and function. This understanding enables her to grasp everything there is to know about the easy problems: how the brain discriminates stimuli, integrates information and produces verbal reports. From her knowledge of color vision, she knows the way color names correspond with wavelengths on the light spectrum. But there is still something crucial about color vision that Man does not know: what it is like to experience a color such as red. It follows that there are facts about conscious experience that cannot be deduced from physical facts about the functioning of the brain.

Indeed, nobody knows why these physical processes are accompanied by conscious experience at all. Why is it that when our brains process light of a certain wavelength, we have an experience of deep purple? Why do we have any experience at all? Could not an unconscious automaton have performed the same tasks just as well? These are questions that we would like a theory of consciousness to answer.

b)Doward Cauastion


Glenn Miller, Christian Think Tank:

6. "We know from non-linear systems that emergence can exercise downward control in OTHER systems. If consciousness IS such a system, then there is no theoretical objection to downward causality--indeed, given the definition of such systems, it would be EXPECTED. [Journal Conciousness Studies:1.1.92] And, indeed, this is exactly what we find at the nervous system and other metabolic levels.(For an detailed treatment of various non-linear effects in the nervous system, see Kelso [CS:DPSOBB, chapter 8], where he describes nonlin effects at the microscale, mesoscale, and macroscale levels. Also see Mainzer on subcellular and metabolic oscillation phenomena," CS:TIC:91.)

"We have studies of neuronal changes induced by mental processes (with the interface mechanism unspecified) [JCS:1.1.124]: "for example, neural activity (as indicated by measurements of regional blood flow or metabolic rate) has been shown to increase selectively in the supplementary motor area (SMA) when the subject is asked to imagine moving his fingers without actually moving them."

Rosenberg (Ibid.)

"Take the matter of 'downward causation' to which Harman gives some attention. Why should this be an issue in brain dynamics? As Erich Harth points out in Chapter 44, connections between higher and lower centers of the brain are reciprocal. They go both ways, up and down. The evidence (the scientific evidence) for downward causation was established decades ago by the celebrated Spanish histologist Ramon y Cajal, yet the discussion goes on. Why? The answer seems clear: If brains work like machines, they are easier to understand. The facts be damned!"[Miller quoting Rosenberg, Journal of Consciousness Studies, op. cit.]

c)Veto Power


Glenn Miller, Christian Think Tank:

"The studies of neuronal timing by Libet has demonstrated that conscious will exerts a veto effect on action sequences initiated at an unconscious level [Journal Conciousness Studies:1.1.130; CS:TSC:342f]. In other words, an unconscious process may get a muscle ready to move, but when that readiness becomes 'visible' to the conscious mind, that conscious mind can let the action continue, or shut it down! Elsewhere [CS:TSOC:113], Libet explains the implications of this veto-power, over against those who would ASSUME that even the veto was "upwardly caused":

"It has been argued that the appearance of the conscious veto would itself require a prior period of unconscious neural development, just as for conscious intention; in such a case even this conscious control event would have an unconscious initiating process. However, conscious control of an event appears here after awareness of the impending voluntary action has developed. Conscious control is not a new awareness; it serves to impose a change on the volitional process and it may not be subject to the requirement of a preceding unconscious cerebral process found for awareness. In such a view, a potential role for free will would remain viable in the conscious control, though not in the initiation, of a voluntary act. These findings taken together have a fundamental bearing on the issues of voluntary action, free will and individual responsibility for conscious urges and actions."

In case you didn't get that--the veto cannot have antecedent unconscious processes (before it becomes aware), since it only appears in as the initiated action has ALREADY become aware--it controls with a go/nogo decision THEN.

For a boat load of data and other arguments on irreduceablity of mind to brain...

(see my pages on the issue of Conciouness overall, including mind, spirit, what the Bible means by "soul" and "spirit."


(2) Mind is basic property of nature

Chalmers (Ibid)

propose that conscious experience be considered a fundamental feature, irreducible to anything more basic. The idea may seem strange at first, but consistency seems to demand it. In the 19th century it turned out that electromagnetic phenomena could not be explained in terms of previously known principles. As a consequence, scientists introduced electromagnetic charge as a new fundamental entity and studied the associated fundamental laws. Similar reasoning should apply to consciousness. If existing fundamental theories cannot encompass it, then something new is required. Where there is a fundamental property, there are fundamental laws. In this case, the laws must relate experience to elements of physical theory. These laws will almost certainly not interfere with those of the physical world; it seems that the latter form a closed system in their own right. Rather the laws will serve as a bridge, specifying how experience depends on underlying physical processes. It is this bridge that will cross the explanatory gap.

Thus, a complete theory will have two components: physical laws, telling us about the behavior of physical systems from the infinitesimal to the cosmological, and what we might call psychophysical laws, telling us how some of those systems are associated with conscious experience. These two components will constitute a true theory of everything.

(3) Grand unified theory posits single organizing principel like a mind

Major Physicists propose Unitive principle they call "God."


Stephen Hawking's God

In his best-selling book "A Brief History of Time", physicist Stephen Hawking claimed that when physicists find the theory he and his colleagues are looking for - a so-called "theory of everything" - then they will have seen into "the mind of God". Hawking is by no means the only scientist who has associated God with the laws of physics. Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, for example, has made a link between God and a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson. Lederman has suggested that when physicists find this particle in their accelerators it will be like looking into the face of God. But what kind of God are these physicists talking about? Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg suggests that in fact this is not much of a God at all. Weinberg notes that traditionally the word "God" has meant "an interested personality". But that is not what Hawking and Lederman mean. Their "god", he says, is really just "an abstract principle of order and harmony", a set of mathematical equations. Weinberg questions then why they use the word "god" at all. He makes the rather profound point that "if language is to be of any use to us, then we ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and 'god' historically has not meant the laws of nature." The question of just what is "God" has taxed theologians for thousands of years; what Weinberg reminds us is to be wary of glib definitions.

(4) Mind is the best example of organizing principel.

well, ok, within our limited human expeirnce. Sure, there could be some impersnoal principle that organizes the universe for us, and holds physical laws in place and unifies everything and makes it work; of course we could evoke the fine turnning argument to show that such an impersonal force, to the extent that it would display no pruposiveness, would not bother to actually fine tune the fine tunning. There are immpersonal, or seemingly impersonal forces that are organizing principles, such as survivle of the fittest, chaos theory, and so forth. It would be begging the question to assert either way tht this or is not indicative of true organizing, or that is turely personal or the product of sheer blind forces. But in so far as we understand, given our limited sample of the uinverse, planed, purposive, consciously directed organizing works a lot better most of the time, than blind forces. When we see unbelieveable complexity organized eligantly and effecitvely, we can't help but assume that it is the product of mind; of course now we are in design argument country.


(5)Since consciousness is part of the basic structure of nature, and since that structure requires a single unifying principle of which mind is the best example, it stands to reason that a conscious mind was the original structure that put consciousness into the universe

Here I'm combining the suggestion of mind or purpose in the organizing with the probablity of conscouisness as a set structure or property in nature. It seems too coincidental that we could have both and one is not the prior structure that is respionsible for the other.

Physicists are begining to think of conscousness as basic to reality:

"Scientific Proof for The Existence of God"
An Interview with Amit Goswami, by Craig Hamilton

What is Enlighement magazine.
Issue curret as of April 7, 05.


"Goswami is convinced, along with a number of others who subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to exist, requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an observer, he claims, it only exists as a possibility. And as they say in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling evidence from recent research in cognitive psychology, biology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the ancient mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case for a new paradigm that he calls "monistic idealism," the view that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is."

"A professor of physics at the University of Oregon and a member of its Institute of Theoretical Science, Dr. Goswami is part of a growing body of renegade scientists who in recent years have ventured into the domain of the spiritual in an attempt both to interpret the seemingly inexplicable findings of their experiments and to validate their intuitions about the existence of a spiritual dimension of life. The culmination of Goswami's own work is his book The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. Rooted in an interpretation of the experimental data of quantum physics (the physics of elementary particles), the book weaves together a myriad of findings and theories in fields from artificial intelligence to astronomy to Hindu mysticism in an attempt to show that the discoveries of modern science are in perfect accord with the deepest mystical truths."

"Quantum physics, as well as a number of other modern sciences, he feels, is demonstrating that the essential unity underlying all of reality is a fact which can be experimentally verified. Because of the enormous implications he sees in this scientific confirmation of the spiritual, Goswami is ardently devoted to explaining his theory to as many people as possible in order to help bring about what he feels is a much needed paradigm shift. He feels that because science is now capable of validating mysticism, much that before required a leap of faith can now be empirically proven and, hence, the materialist paradigm which has dominated scientific and philosophical thought for over two hundred years can finally be called into question."

Objections

Objection #1. Brain damage changes mind.

this argument is made everytime the issue comes up.They always say "if you hit someone in the heard hard enough they wont be conscious anymore." For many skeptics the relation between mind and brain is very sipmle requires no exploration.

Answer: This brings us to an important epistemological question. The alternative to the skeptics conclusion is that brain function gives us access to consciousness, if the brain is damaged we are denied access, but a consciousness is still in there; just as damaging the monitor denies access to soft ware, but it doesn't prove that soft ware is nothing more than a side effect of monitor.No amount of scientific data can ever resolove this issue, because any data could always just be data from access not the thing itself. The real issue can't be resolved until we can resolve the hard problem.