Thursday 29 November 2018

My forlorn attempt to get an essay published

I submitted the following essay Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife to a magazine called Philosophy Now. Literally approximately 5 minutes after I sent it, I received this response:






Hi Ian, thanks for the submission, but I think the argument for a Cartesian soul has to be better made than just saying 'for all we know, it's possible'. Why should someone believe such a thing, eg why should someone overturn their materialism? 'Because we don't know how consciousness works' does not seem strong enough, as that leaves various other options open too. In any case, we're just finishing putting together an issue on mind and self, so we wouldn't really want to cover this again in the foreseeable future. But thanks for thinking of us.
Regards

Grant Bartley
Editor



As a preliminary, I should note that the time between the time I sent my essay via email, and this response scarcely gave him enough time to read it; at best he skim read it.  This suspicion is reinforced by the fact his comments reveal he simply hasn't assimilated what I have said at all.  



In my responses I'll largely simply be repeating what I said in my essay.  Let's dissect his remarks one by one.  He said:






I think the argument for a Cartesian soul has to be better made than just saying 'for all we know, it's possible'.



I actually argue that the certainly amongst the scholarly community and educated people that we cease to exist when we die cannot be justified. And that is all I argue -- certainly I do not argue for a Cartesian soul. Indeed, I'm not even arguing for any type of afterlife, just that it's not so unlikely as people tend to maintain.



He also said:






Why should someone believe such a thing, eg why should someone overturn their materialism?



He means why should anyone believe in an afterlife, why not continue to believe in something like materialism?  But my whole essay addresses this very issue, which he has simply completely ignored. To repeat: my argument wasn't for an afterlife, my argument was that the mind-body correlations do not suffice to give near certainty that there is no afterlife. This is contrary to what most educated people believe.  



As for materialism, this is a position that people are forced to subscribe to if they both believe that the brain must create consciousness, yet also realise that consciousness (as conceived by commonsense) cannot in principle be derived from any material processes. Materialism essentially denies the very existence of consciousness as we tend to think it --  that is it denies we have qualitative subjective experiences such as the experience of colour and so on; at best such experiences are illusionary.  But, in order to believe this extraordinary unlikely hypothesis, they need to be convinced that the brain must create consciousness.  However, the main part of my essay argues that this is precisely what they shouldn't be convinced of.



He also said:






""'Because we don't know how consciousness works' does not seem strong enough, as that leaves various other options open too.""



Of course I am not saying that at all.  I argued that it seems we cannot in principle explain consciousness. Saying we "don't know how consciousness works" suggests that in principle consciousness can be derived from physical processes, we just don't know how yet.  This, though, is a direct denial of my argument, but without explaining how my argument errs.

And if consciousness cannot be derived from physical processes, how do we know it is parasitic on such physical processes?  Of course, there are other options compatible with no afterlife, but so what?  He is expressing the very common view that in order to show that a near certainty in the existence of x is not justified, one must provide strong arguments that x doesn't exist.  This is, of course, ludicrous.  I need do no such thing. I do not have to demonstrate the reality of an afterlife in order to dismiss the idea that the mind-body correlations provide overwhelming evidence that there is no afterlife.




I did point out to Grant Bartley that his comments were already comprehensively addressed in my essay, and that given he also took just 5 minutes to respond, I can only conclude he took the barest of glimpses of my essay before responding.  He denies this, and he also said that if he doesn't understand my essay, then there's precious little chance that the readers of Philosophy Now will understand it. Well, I've also published my essay in a couple of facebook groups.  I've had virtually no responses, but one person, a certain Alan Hugenot, in one group commented:






Unfortunately, Your thesis ignores the facts. I am a scientist who is also a medium. Check out this video and then re think your BELIEF that consciousness is a by-product of the brain. Maybe the brain is just a filter for consciousness existing outside the physical.


He also provided a youtube link which, I believe, features him (I haven't looked at it) 




Another person, a certain Heather Barden Koellein, in another facebook group said:






Read books by Dr Brian Weiss,a prominent psychiatrist very educated in the best schools,was totally skeptical until one of his clients proved that it exists. It took work with many patients using regression to convince him.



So, Grant Bartley the editor (or one of the editors) of Philosophy Now, misunderstands my essay.  He thinks I'm arguing that the Cartesian soul exists, and that if materialism is incorrect, there must be an afterlife.  These other 2 people also misunderstand my essay, but in a completely differing way.  They think I'm actually arguing against an afterlife!



I do not believe it is plausible that my writing is so wretchedly unclear that if people had actually carefully read my essay, that they could possibly believe I am saying what they currently think I'm saying.  This is especially so since they are coming to such diverse  conclusions as to my actual position (all of which are incorrect).  No, it is abundantly clear to me that these people have only given the briefest perusal of my essay, then leapt to conclusions about my message.  This is especially reprehensible in the case of Grant Bartley since he is the editor of Philosophy Now.

Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife

The following essay is essentially an expanded and updated version of a previous blog post I've written called: Why are we all so convinced the brain produces consciousness?



1. The arguments for the thesis that the brain produces consciousness




To believe in an afterlife, at least in the form of a soul dwelling in some afterlife realm, is to suppose our consciousness can exist independently of our bodies.  However, there appears to be a crippling obstacle to holding such a view, namely the apparent dependence of our mental states on a properly functioning brain. For example, our capacity to understand written and spoken words and the capacity to speak are impaired or even eliminated with injuries to certain regions of the brain. Damage to the hippocampal and thalamic areas of the brain can destroy one's ability to store new long-term memories. More radically, injury to the brain can result in significant personality change; the most famous example here being undoubtedly Phineas Gage.  To top it all off, we could also point to the fact that drugs have a propensity to affect our emotions, attitudes, and dispositions. Indeed, even alcohol and caffeine do this. Taking all this into account, it seems more or less certain to many people that it is the brain that somehow or other gives rise to our consciousness – that is it is the brain that gives rise to all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and so on.  Hence, how could our consciousness possibly survive the death of our bodies and brains?



In my experience, proponents of an afterlife appear to largely ignore these facts.  Instead, they counter with the evidence for an afterlife such as NDE’s, mediumship, recollections of alleged previous lives, and so on.  The problem here is that if it is indeed the case that the mind-brain correlations makes it more or less certain that the brain produces consciousness, then such evidence, no matter how apparently powerful, cannot possibly point to an afterlife.   Hence, for example, NDE’s, interesting as they may be, cannot possibly represent any sort of encounter with some afterlife realm.  They must somehow be hallucinations produced by the brain. 




2. Reasons to question this thesis




Let’s consider the following argument:



It surely must be obvious to everyone that eyeglasses actually create vision. Changing the lenses affects the vision in certain characteristic ways. One can make one's vision worse, or better. One can make one be able to see in the distance, but not close up; or conversely, to see close up, but not at a distance. We can invert peoples' vision. We can make people see everything in blue, or red, or green; you name it. Or all blurry. By painting the lenses black we can even eliminate one's vision completely! And all these effects are consistent across different people.



Of course, we know that eyeglasses don’t create vision. Indeed, we know in principle that eyeglasses could not create vision all by themselves since there is no appropriate mechanism, or conceivable causal chain, whereby vision could be created. Extra ingredients are required; namely eyes and the part of the brain dealing with vision.



Other examples apart from eyeglasses can be considered. Thus, consider a prism. The mixture of coloured lights obtained is not wholly produced by the prism all by itself. Something extra is involved, in this case, the white light that enters the prism. Or consider a TV set. The internal components all by themselves do not produce the programmes. Similar to the prism something else is involved, in this case, TV signals.



How can we be so confident that the relationship between our consciousness and our brains (and more generally our bodies) is not of a similar nature to these examples?  Perhaps our conscious states are merely affected by our brains?  Perhaps the brain merely either facilitates or inhibits the ability to perceive, think, feel, deliberate and so on, not creates them?  Is this plausible?



The unreflective view is that consciousness is supposed to come into being as the end consequence of material chains of causes and effects.  Such causes and effects are cashed out completely in the form of processes that we can measure; namely particles with physical properties such as charge, momentum, spin and so on.  Each link in the chain of causality follows as a direct result of these properties.  But, at the end of such causal chains, we get a sudden abrupt change, a radical disconnect from these measurable processes to subjective experiences such as the greenness of grass, the warmth of love, the smell of roses and so on.  These subjective experiences do not have physical properties, so we cannot, seemingly in principle, derive them from the prior physical causal chains.  



So, if consciousness is indeed produced by the brain, then it seems it just suddenly springs into existence.  I am not able to understand how this differs in any substantive manner from supposing eyeglasses could actually create vision rather than merely modifying it, or prisms actually produce colored light rather than merely modifying existing white light, or the innards of TV sets actually create the programs shown rather than merely modifying and changing TV signals.  Of course, in these other examples, we know how the end phenomenon comes about.  Yet, if we lacked this knowledge, we surely would not, for example, suppose that the innards of a TV set, all by themselves, could produce TV programs with their storylines.  It would be miraculous.  Why should the supposition that the brain creates consciousness be considered to be different, to be any less miraculous?  Why reject the more plausible alternative that consciousness exists all along, with the brain merely serving to facilitate or inhibit conscious states?  








3. The Materialist Option




People are aware of this problem of how the brain creates consciousness, or at least philosophers are.  By far the most common solution, at least amongst the scholarly community, is to adopt a position called materialism.   Modern materialism is essentially the position that science, or at least some ideal science, investigates the totality of reality.  Since science investigates reality via its measurable aspects, modern materialism holds that only these measurable aspects of reality exist.



In section 2 I mentioned that subjective experiences are supposed to come into being as the end consequence of material chains of causes and effects.  Materialism denies this.  Since modern materialism holds that only these material chains exist, there can be no additional facts in the form of subjective conscious experiences that we cannot measure. Instead, conscious experiences are typically either conflated with appropriate material processes within the brain, or conflated with the causal role that such material processes play.



It’s hard to get across how radical materialism is.  It is far more than simply saying the brain somehow produces consciousness.  Rather, strict modern materialism asserts there is only the brain and processes within it, and consciousness -- at least in terms of qualitative subjective experiences -- is somehow illusionary, that it has no real concrete existence at all.  I do not regard such a position as tenable and I go into detail why I believe this here and here.  However, even if one were to argue that it is tenable, why on earth believe it?  I have argued that although consciousness is affected by the brain, it is not necessarily produced by it.  In fact, it seems the only way it could be produced by the brain were if some variety of materialism is correct.  But we were never forced into supposing the brain must produce consciousness in the first place.  Hence, even if -- contrary to my own position -- it were possible to argue modern materialism is a viable position, there is no need to adopt such an uncommonsensical position.






4. An Objection





It is often argued that we lack any enduring nature since we change so much over time.  Hence our moods, demeanour, interests, intelligence, and so on change throughout our lives.  Compared to when we were children we now have a much increased intelligence, we have differing interests, we have differing memories, our emotional reactions are very different. Even during the course of one day, our moods can change significantly.  And just consider how much people change after a few alcoholic drinks.



This being so, if there’s an afterlife, what survives?  Myself as a child at 7 years of age, or as a young adult at 21, or when I’m an old man at 81?  Or some other age? When drunk or sober? Does the impossibility of answering this question suggest that the brain must somehow produce consciousness?



This issue pertains to personal identity.  What is it that makes me the very same person from one decade to the next, or indeed one day to the next?  If we cash out personal identity in terms of intelligence, interests, memories and so on, it seems we do not literally survive from childhood to adulthood.  This entails that not only is there no afterlife, but given that I’m now an adult, my 10 year old self has now quite literally ceased to exist.  And when we imbibe lots of alcohol our sober selves quite literally cease to exist, even if only temporarily. 



But why subscribe to such a radical uncommonsensical notion of personal identity?  Perhaps what constitutes the self is not my interests, intelligence, memories and so on.  Perhaps what constitutes my self is that sense of me-ness that has endured since I was a child, to when I'm drunk, to what I am now.  Consider a table.  Depending on what it is made of, it might acquire certain types of scratches as it grows older.  But, no matter how many scratches it acquires, it is still the very same table.  The scratches do not comprise the table, even though what the table is made of determines the type of scratches and how easily it acquires them.  In a comparative manner, maybe my interests, intelligence, memories and so on do not comprise my self even though my self influences them.  Going back to the eyeglasses, my vision can be altered in a variety of ways by trying on differing eyeglasses.  Nevertheless, that does not alter the fact that there is an unaided vision which remains unchanged throughout my life, even though we may never experience it.  It might be the case likewise for my self, and it is this self that survives should there be an afterlife.




5. Conclusion




It seems to me that the mind-brain correlations argument against an afterlife is significantly less compelling than people think.  If the afterlife hypothesis is to be regarded as an extraordinary one, then it is my position that other arguments or evidence, apart from the mind-body correlations, need to be appealed to.  However, I am not aware of any other such arguments. Of course, even if it is not regarded as an extraordinary hypothesis, it needn’t be true either.  Implausible that it might be, perhaps consciousness does suddenly appear with a functioning brain, even though we lack any conceivable causal chain as to how this could happen.  Philosophical speculation can only take us so far.  We also need to look at the evidence for an afterlife – NDE’s, memories of past lives, mediumship and so on – before reaching any provisional conclusions.

P.S. I attempted to get this essay published in a magazine called Philosophy Now.   It was rejected, moreover it was rejected within approximately 5 minutes after I had sent it.  I cover what happened here.





Saturday 24 November 2018

The story of a rodent's unrelenting quest for happiness and fulfillment.





Superb.  An accurate portrayal of modern life in the west -- namely that it's deeply unsatisfactory.  At 2:58 I'm hoping the afterlife will be like that! LOL



A few related posts by me

Feel the rapture of being alive!

Are You A Slave To The System?

Modern Life

Depression, Suicide, and the Modern World

Saturday 17 November 2018

Why haven't we detected any aliens?

I'd say we haven't detected any aliens because:


1) Life in the Universe will be very uncommon given that a suitable star and planet are required.

2) Even on those planets where there's life, life as intelligent as us will be rare.


3) 
Yet rarer still will there be intelligent life with limbs and opposable thumbs and living in an appropriate environment so they can manipulate their environment (which rules out a life form similar to dolphins even if they are as intelligent as us).  


4) And 
extremely rare indeed will there be intelligent life with the appropriate technology to make their presence known. Consider the percentage of time that human beings have had the appropriate technology compared to how long we've been on the planet.

5) And then they need to have a desire to create technology and manipulate their environment. For example, other intelligent beings might just like to swim in their oceans and play. 



6) Aliens might have found something better than electromagnetic signals to communicate with.


Considering all the above I'd have been astounded if we had of detected any alien signals!  So why do the "scholarly" community think it is strange we have yet to detect anyone?

Sunday 4 November 2018

Capital Punishment

A member of parliament in the UK has called for the reintroduction of capital punishment.  See here.  Is this a good idea?  Before reaching any conclusions as to the desirability, or otherwise, of capital punishment, we need to be aware of a whole range of issues.

There's the issue of the purpose of executing. Is its purpose to act as a deterrent, or rather is its purpose an appropriate retribution or punishment instead?




Indeed, does it in fact deter? If it does, should we execute people if the net sum of peoples' lives are saved, even if we regard capital punishment as barbaric? Or if it does not deter, at least not significantly, is retribution or punishment enough of a justification for its reintroduction?  Regardless of whether the purpose is deterrence or retribution, how does the possibility of executing an innocent person effect our decision here?



What about the cost of keeping them in prison for many years compared to execution?


What about the issue of the ultimate origins of our behaviour? Are we mere meat robots whose behaviour is determined by physical laws rather than our conscious intentions? Even if, in a suitable sense, it is me that determines my behaviour, am I just purely a product of my environment? In other words are we born morally neutral?  If physical laws, or the environment, or both, wholly determines our behaviour then why would any punishment be justified?



 Alternatively, do we have free will and are we the type of people we are, at least in part, due to an innate component? That is say, do we self-determine to a degree how moral we are even though the environment and genetics plays a large role in influencing our behaviour too? 



Who should we execute? Anyone who illegally and with premeditation murders someone else? What about a woman who murders her husband as a result of being beat up by him day after day, year after year? Or murdering anyone who has made your life a living hell? What about murder due to a hopeless all-consuming jealousy?



Is executing, in fact, a greater punishment than spending many years languishing in prison? That also depends on what will actually happen to that person after death.

Thursday 1 November 2018

When I first went on the net

Got my very first computer ever at the end of 1998 (a place called Time computers and cost me around £1400.  It had a 10GB hard drive and everyone thought that was huge at the time). Didn't go on the net till about 6 months later. You had to connect your computer to a phone line and you had to pay for each minute you were online. So even when I figured out how to get on the net, I only spent very brief periods online.



However, in 1999 or 2000 my phone company, NTL, introduced a special offer. On Saturday you could ring a national number (as opposed to a cheaper local number) and speak on the phone to someone as long as you like, all for 40p!



So what I did is I used this national number for my computer to connect up to the net! Hence, each Friday at midnight I went on the net. And in the morning I connected to the net and was on it all day until midnight. So spent around 2 hours after midnight on net, then on all day Saturday too (never went on for the rest of the week of course since it would have cost me a packet).



It didn't even cost me 40p since NTL had another offer whereby if you spent a certain amount on telephone bills you got a discount. But they applied the discount before reducing my Saturday bills to 40p. They result was that NTL actually gave me money for going on the net all day!