A recent paper by a physicist is the latest paper by a mainstream scientist claiming to offer a solution to a "problem of consciousness." After you read the title ("A Relativistic Theory of Consciousness") you should chuckle. The term "relativistic" refers to Einstein's theory of general relativity and his theory of special relativity, neither of which has anything to do with explaining the arising of human bodies or the arising of human minds. These two theories have some relevance to whether the universe is habitable, having the kind of physical conditions that are necessary for living beings such as us. But neither the theory of general relativity nor the theory of special relativity has any relevance at all to explaining human minds. The paper is filled with obscure mathematical equations, which give us a strong clue that the author has done nothing to explain consciousness. You can't math-equation your way to explaining mind.
At its beginning the author goes through the usual silly talk that occurs at the beginning of such papers. A mere "problem of consciousness" is raised, defined merely as some problem of why humans have conscious experience. There are two gigantic errors that typically occur very quickly in such discussions:
(1) There is an incorrect problem statement, in which it is asked, "How can the brain give rise to consciousness?" We do not know that brains give rise to consciousness, and we have very many strong reasons (discussed on this blog) for disbelieving that brains are the cause of human consciousness, self-hood, thinking, memory recall and memory formation. So no one should be asking some question that pre-supposes a belief that is unproven and dubious. Asking "how can the brain give rise to consciousness" is as inappropriate as asking "how can the moon give rise to schizophrenia?"
(2) Given a huge quantity of mental phenomena that are not currently explained in a credible way by brain activity, it is extremely inappropriate to be raising a mere "problem of consciousness." The problem that should be raised is a much wider "problem of human mentality." The problem of human mentality is the problem of credibly explaining the thirty or forty most interesting types of human mental experiences, human mental characteristics and human mental capabilities. These include things such as these:
- imagination
- self-hood
- abstract idea creation
- appreciation
- memory formation
- moral thinking and moral behavior
- instantaneous memory recall
- instantaneous creation of permanent new memories
- memory persistence for as long as 50 years or more
- emotions
- speaking in a language
- understanding spoken language
- creativity
- insight
- beliefs
- pleasure
- pain
- reading ability
- writing ability
- ordinary awareness of surroundings
- visual perception
- recognition
- auditory perception
- attention
- fascination and interest
- the correct recall of large bodies of sequential information (such as when someone playing Hamlet recalls all his lines correctly)
- eyes-closed visualization
- extrasensory perception (ESP)
- dreaming
- volition
- out-of-body experiences
- apparition sightings
Explaining these things is a very big and wide problem that we can call the problem of human mentality origination. It is a huge mistake to try to shrink that problem into some thousand-times smaller problem that you call "the problem of consciousness," and to speak as if it was merely consciousness that needs to be explained. As soon as you start reading a paper that starts out by posing a mere "problem of consciousness," you have a strong reason for suspecting that the paper is not worth reading. The person posing a mere "problem of consciousness" is like some economist who poses a mere "problem of street traffic obstruction by beggars" rather than posing a much wider "problem of poverty" or a "problem of economic inequality."
It is all too easy to understand why scientists engage in this kind of shrink-speaking. A "million-kilogram" problem is one that is very hard to credibly solve. But if you can use shrink-speaking to make it sound like the problem is a mere "one kilogram" problem, then maybe you can make people think you have a solution. For example, the problem of reducing the danger of nuclear weapons is an incredibly hard problem. But if someone tries to shrink the problem down to a mere "excess heat" problem, maybe he can persuade you that he has a solution involving "compensatory cooling." Or if someone tries to shrink the problem of nuclear weapons down to a mere "dust dispersion" problem, then maybe he can persuade you that he has a solution involving "more efficient vacuum cleaning." Trying to shrink the problem of human mentality down to a mere "problem of consciousness" is as silly as such examples of trying to shrink a problem.
There is another place in science where we see scientists shrink-speaking in a way that tries to make a "million-kilogram" problem sound like a "one kilogram" problem. That place is developmental biology. Developmental biology has the "million-kilogram" problem of how it is that the simplicity of a speck-sized zygote cell (a fertilized ovum) is able to progress to become the vastly more organized structure of a full human body. This is the problem of the origin of the structure of an adult human being. It consists of many questions that are currently far beyond the ability of material science to credibly answer. These questions include the following:
(1) How is it that polypeptide sequences (mere chains of amino acids) are able to organize so quickly into the distinctive three-dimensional shapes that are functional protein molecules? We know of about 20,000 different types of human protein molecules (each with its own unique sequence of amino acids), each of which has a distinctive three-dimensional shape. But we do not know what causes such simple sequences of amino acids to form into the three-dimensional shapes needed for protein molecules to be functional.
(2) How is that 200 different types of incredibly organized human cells are able to originate in the human body, which has DNA that merely contains low-level chemical information, and does not contain any specification of the structure of a cell, or any of its components called organelles?
(3) How is it that cells are able to become organized into the tissues that are needed for humans to live?
(4) How is it that such tissues are able to become organized into the organs that are needed for humans to live?
(5) How is it that organs are able to become part of extremely organized organ systems?
(6) How is it that the exterior structure of the human body is able to arise, with structural features such as the two arms, two legs, ten toes, ten fingers, and one neck?
(7) How is it that there is able to arise the skeletal system consisting of a specific arrangement of 206 bones?
(8) How is it that the incredibly dynamic biochemistry of the human body is able to arise and persist?
DNA gives us none of the answers to these questions. DNA specifies only low-level chemical information. DNA does not specify anatomy. DNA also does not specify the incredibly intricate arrangements necessary for human biochemistry. At the end of the post here, you can read quotes by 20+ biology experts telling us in various ways that it is untrue that DNA is a blueprint, program or recipe for building a human. Even if such a blueprint existed in DNA, it would not explain the origin of adult human bodies, for the simple reason that blueprints don't build things. Blueprints are guides used by intelligent agents that use blueprints to get ideas about how to build things.
Faced with such mysteries, developmental biologists often try a trick of shrink-speaking. They often try to reduce the "million-kilogram" problem of the origin of structure in a single human body (during the nine months of pregnancy) to a "one kilogram" problem of "the origin of a human shape." Of course, the problem of the arising of an adult human body from a vastly less organized speck-sized zygote is a problem enormously larger than a mere problem of the origination of a human shape.
There are three general reasons why each one of us is a wonder far beyond the explanation of physical science:
(1) Physical science has no explanation for the vast amount of organization occurring when a simple one-cell zygote (lacking any anatomy blueprint in its DNA) progresses from such a speck-sized simplicity to the hugely organized state of a human body.
(2) Physical science has no credible explanation for the appearance of an adult human mind, because such a thing is not credibly explained by the appearance of a brain, for reasons given in the posts of this blog.
(3) Physical science has no credible explanation for the improbably habitable universe we live in. The chance of a random universe having conditions needed for living things is microscopic. A huge amount of fine-tuning is needed for a universe that can have planets and sun-like stars or any type of long-lived radiant stars. To give one of many examples of precise fine-tuning needed for a habitable universe, were there not a perfect balance between the absolute value of the proton charge and the electron charge (despite protons being 1836 times more massive), with these two numbers being equal to 1 part in a billion billion, stars and planets would not even hold together (for reasons explained by the astronomer Greenstein). Random universes are lifeless and lightless. The only "explanation" physical science has offered is the bad joke that is the claim of a multiverse (that there exists some infinity or near-infinity of universes, each with different conditions). Such an explanation does nothing to explain why we live in a habitable universe. You do not increase the chance of any one universe being habitable by imagining some infinity of universes. Similarly, you do not increase the chance of any one lottery ticket buyer becoming a millionaire in a lottery win if you imagine millions of lottery ticket buyers.
We may imagine the following conversation between a curious young boy and a distracted mother walking on the street.
Boy: Mommy, who made the clothes I wear? And who made the TV shows I watch? And who made the cars I see? And who made the street lights?
Mother: The answers are simple, my son. They are: Santa Claus, Santa Claus, Santa Claus, and Santa Claus.
We can also imagine a similar conversation between a philosopher and a neuroscientist.
Philosopher: From whence comes that hint of the transcendent we feel when we look at a sky ablaze with stars? From where do our loftiest ethical principles arise? Why do we lie awake and ponder the weightiest riddles of existence? How do we ever grasp the most abstract notions such as the idea of the universe and the eternal laws of nature?
Neuroscientist: The answers are simple. They are: neurons, neurons, neurons, and neurons.
When we are told such an answer, we are being fooled as badly as the small child is being fooled in the example above.
No comments:
Post a Comment