Should we just be concerned with day to day issues in our lives?

Questions about what the world is, what we are, why we are here, what it all means, are questions we surely are all interested in. But most of us react angrily when people ask such questions. It's something most of us don't want to think about. Most people want to concentrate on the "real world" -- the practicalities of existence, the transient issues of the moment.


I have been told that people are not interested in such ultimate questions because they are concerned about the next meal and being able to make a living. Yes, but questions about what we are, what the world is, are nevertheless questions which some of us will entertain no matter what our circumstances. They are perennial questions. Struggling for a living will perhaps necessitate that we cannot find time to pen such thoughts or even think about them too deeply, but they are there underneath the surface of existence nevertheless.

What's it all about eh? We find ourselves on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an infinite sea of nothingness. And yet . . and yet . . people just live out their lives thinking exclusively about the mundane, being concerned about wearing the right clothes, condemning those who think beyond everyday concerns...

Do we really want an endless hedonistic lifestyle?

I just read this article this morning.  In it he says:

I once saw a ‘Twilight Zone’ half-hour
which I thought was very insightful. A gangster, un-principled even by
the standards of his colleagues, was shot to death during a crime.
Crossing to the other side, he found himself in a posh apartment
accompanied by a butler dressed in all-white street clothes. The place
could not have been more to his liking. Beautiful women abounded, his
liquor cabinet never wanting; turn on the TV? One of his favorite shows
24 hours a day. He also gambled: ponies, poker and pool; and he never
lost, not once.

Then a strange thing happened: he grew
bored with everything that had once amused him. In desperation, he
turned to his butler and said, “I’m sick of this place! I want to the
other place!”

“You mean Hell?”

“Damned right!”

The butler smiled and began to glow. “Why, sir, you’re already there!”

So it turns out, for this individual at
least, the punishment of his eternal damnation would consist of being
bored forever. A subtle extraction that.

A thorough grounding in Human nature, it
seems to me, would lead us to suppose equally boring, equally punishing
would be multiple virgins, and singing praises all the day long. It
would be the painful equivalent of grape jelly and peanut butter
sandwiches three times a day… forever [although for this thought I lack
scriptural advocacy]; we need challenge, growth, set-backs, learning,
and the like.

I'm not sure what we need, but I am sure that although a non-stop hedonistic lifestyle might be great for weeks, months, or even years --
or in my case decades --  ultimately one would become bored, and
worse still deeply unsatisfied. Whether in this life, or an afterlife, an
important element of happiness is feeling fulfilled from within. The
feeling that your life and all things have an ultimate purpose and
you're a very important part of that purpose. That we are striving
towards some goal -- some ultimate purpose. That gaining knowledge and
understanding about the world and our place in it is part of this quest.
And especially the development of an empathic identification with all
other beings and realising we're all in it together.



Oops that very last part sounds like a David Cameron soundbite . . but anyway. 



I would imagine that if there is an afterlife we will not be engaged in endless pleasures or any other endless behaviour which goes nowhere.  Rather I would hope that we will grow and develop as spiritual beings.   Perhaps the afterlife realm consists of different levels that we will ascend as our souls develop.   This is not to deny there might be many pleasures  to be experienced, but endless non-varying pleasures will become ultimately tedious.

Do scientific explanations actually explain?

To provide a scientific explanation of a given phenomenon is to show how it is ultimately derived from physical laws. Sometimes physical laws governing some aspect of physical reality can be shown to be derived from more fundamental physical laws.  But these more fundamental physical laws appear to be simply a brute fact.  In other words certain physical laws appear to govern the Universe and no one has any idea why such physical laws assume the form they do.  Moreover, by necessity, an answer to this question could not come under the province of science since science assumes such physical laws at the outset.

But then scientific explanations are not in fact explanations in the fullest sense of this word.  It is of little avail to say we can explain the existence of X in terms of Y, if Y itself has no explanation and is simply a brute fact. This is why, contrary to what most people believe, science doesn't strictly speaking provide explanations, but rather mere descriptions. Yes we can explain how a phenomenon is deduced or derived from physical laws, but this fails to provide any ultimate explanation if we don't know why physical laws assume the form they do. Indeed since physical laws are simply a brute fact without any explanation, then in providing a scientific explanation we are only ever engaging in discerning specific patterns (some phenomenon) deduced from more general patterns (physical laws).


28 Dec 2015 Update:

A rather excellent article on the same topic by Dr. Bernardo Kastrup which I'm in full agreement with.  He employs a splendid analogy which is worth quoting:

[O]ne needs to know nothing about computer architecture or software in
order to play a computer game well and even win; just watch a
five-year-old kid. Playing a computer game only requires an ability to
understand and predict how the elements of the game behave relative to
one another: if your character shoots that spot, it scores points; if
your character touches that wall, it dies; etc. It requires no
understanding whatsoever of the underlying machine and code upon which
the game runs. You can be a champion player without having a clue about
Central Processing Units (CPU), Random-Access Memories (RAM), Universal
Serial Buses (USB), or any of the esoteric computer engineering that
makes the game possible. All this engineering transcends the “reality”
accessible empirically from within the game. Yet, the scientific method
limits itself to what is empirically and ordinarily observed from within
the “game” of reality. Scientific modelling requires little or no understanding of the underlying nature of reality in
exactly the same way that a gamer needs little or no understanding of
the computer’s underlying architecture in order to win the game. It
only requires an understanding of how the elements of the “game,”
accessed empirically from within the “game” itself, unfold relative to
one another.

On the other hand, to infer things about what underlies the “game” – in other words, to construct a metaphysics about the fundamental nature of reality – demands more than the empirical methods of science. Indeed, it
demands a kind of disciplined introspection that critically assesses
not only the elements observed, but also the observer, the process of
observation, and the interplay between the three in a holistic manner;
an introspection that, as such, seeks to see through the “game.”

Very foolish to believe in a life after birth!

I just thought I'd share the following metaphor which I found interesting:

In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you
believe in life after delivery?”

The other replied, “Why, of course.
There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare
ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than
here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we
will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating
with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and
everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after
delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s
different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord
anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then
why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of
life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and
silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We
are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not
and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and
you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you
can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”

~ Útmutató a Léleknek

Found here.

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia

 

1. Introduction

I read this article a couple of weeks ago by a professor of philosophy called John G Messerly.

He says:

There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?

He advances the view that a combination of modern science and reason very strongly suggests that there is neither a God nor an afterlife. The intelligentsia understand this, but most of us have failed to take on board this knowledge. The author speculates that we resist these conclusions due to various genetic and environment factors. He places a special emphasis on wishful thinking.

I want in this essay to concentrate on the notion of an afterlife and why so many of the “intelligentsia” consider it so unlikely in the light of modern science. What knowledge and understanding do they possess that even the most intelligent people in the middle ages lacked? Are they justified in their stance? The short answer to that question is an emphatic no. It will be my task in this essay to explain why the answer to that question is “no”.

To accomplish this task we first need to understand the origins of modern science. This will involve taking a brief look at the intellectual edifice -- namely the mechanistic philosophy -- which allowed the birth of modern science. As we shall see, it is the mechanistic philosophy rather than modern science per se that provided the groundwork for this profound shift in views.

2. The Mechanistic Philosophy

Prior to the 17th Century there was a tendency to view the world as being ultimately mysterious. Lingering on from medieval times was the belief that the world was full of meaning - a world teeming with supernatural causes where angels and demons, spirits, occult powers and mystical principles played a prominent role. In particular, God and an afterlife were a given. The scientific revolution, which was inaugurated in the 17th Century, was not only instrumental in creating our modern world together with its technological ubiquity, but was also pivotal in eroding all these beliefs, and in particular fostered the notion of man as simply being a biological machine.

So what kicked off this scientific revolution? Essentially it was to start conceiving of reality in a particular manner, namely the way encapsulated by what is referred to as the mechanistic philosophy. In the 16th and 17 centuries it was increasingly being noted that carefully conducted experiments tended to always produce the same results. This fostered the notion that reality behaved in a predictable manner. In addition, there was an idea percolating around at that time that if an omnipotent God had created the Cosmos and we were the reason for its creation, wouldn't God make the Cosmos amenable to human intellect? In particular, would he not make the cosmos operate according to well-defined laws that we potentially are able to discern?

Largely as a consequence of these factors the mechanistic philosophy was born. It can be expressed succinctly in 5 points:

1. All action is by contact: no action at a distance.
2. All objects in the Universe are composed of microscopic ultimately small parts (indivisible 'atoms').
3. All change in nature and natural phenomena results from alterations in the configurations of matter.
4. All change in the world is explicable in terms of unbroken chains of physical causes and effects.
5. No teleology - that is events and processes are not governed by any
   purpose but simply are a result of mindless interactions with matter.
   

This mechanistic philosophy implied that any phenomena whatsoever can be wholly explained by the interactions of all its parts. This encapsulates the essence of what is called reductionism. The basic idea of reductionism is very simple. It is the belief that all phenomena, no matter how complex, can be understood by considering their most elementary parts. It is the motions of these parts and how they interact together which completely explain the phenomenon concerned. For example, consider a clockwork clock. By looking at the components of that clock - namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels - and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the minute and hour clock hands move.





If, as reductionism implies, all change in nature and natural phenomena results from alterations in the ultimately smallest particles of matter, then it follows that we human beings constitute no exception. This was understood as far back as the birth of the mechanical philosophy. At that time it was widely debated whether animals could be understood as being, in essence, mere biological machines. More radical thinkers took this to its logical conclusion and advocated that human beings too might simply be elaborate machines. Thus the entirely of our behaviour could in principle be understood through all the physical processes occurring in our bodies in addition to the input from the environment through our five senses. And if we are merely elaborate biological machines, then this implies that no afterlife awaits us any more than an afterlife awaits a computer once it is irreparably damaged, or indeed awaits a clock.





The mechanistic philosophy fosters the view that although a complete explanation for what human beings are, why we are conscious and so on has yet to be determined, this merely reflects the complexity of the brain. It is possibly the most complex thing in the Universe. However, we can be in no doubt that such an explanation will be forthcoming -- or so people claim. After all, look at the phenomenal progress of science over the past 300 years. We can send men to the moon, create small devices which can virtually instantaneously connect us to anyone in the world with a similar device, create chess computers which can beat the best chess players on the planet. Why do we imagine the human brain is something special? That it won’t eventually be understood like everything else? Hence many people maintain that it will surely succumb to a full explanation eventually – it’s just a question of time.

3. The elimination of the Qualitative/Subjective

There is, though, a crucial distinction between us human beings plus other animals on the one hand, and computers, clocks and other machines on the other. It is that the former are conscious, and the latter are generally held not to be (although it is held by many that computers will become conscious in the future). Given that we are mere biological machines, then it is true that the mechanical philosophy, and hence physics might, at least in principle, wholly explain our behaviour. But to explain our behaviour is one thing, to explain our consciousness is another thing entirely. But why should consciousness be a special problem?




Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. In his recent book Mind and Cosmos he says:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36)

Here in a nutshell is why science, at least as currently conceived, cannot in principle account for the existence of consciousness. In order to make this clear let's flesh out what Nagel is saying here.




The mechanistic philosophy stipulated that physical reality is wholly quantitative. That is to say that the external world that our five senses reveal is wholly comprised of things and processes that can in principle be detected by our measuring instruments and hence can be measured. All change in this external world can be accounted for in terms of chains of physical causes and effects which are exclusively cashed out in quantitative terms. So we have each physical event or thing composing a link in the chain causing another physical event, and each link represents something that can be measured -- for example mass, velocity, shape and so on.



But we think of the external world as being filled with colours, sounds and smells. So what of these qualitative features of reality?  In short, they were held not to exist at all since they are not detectable by our measuring instruments and therefore not measurable. Instead, colours, sounds and smells were redefined to stand for those measurable aspects of reality that were deemed to cause these qualitative experiences. Hence, colours were redefined to refer to certain wavelengths of light that objects reflect. Sounds redefined to refer to rarefactions and compressions of the air. Smells redefined to refer to various molecules in motion.




So the qualitative aspects of reality were subtracted from the external world. Instead, they were deemed to be creations of the mind fashioned from the quantitative data entering our senses.  For example, the greenness you experience when
looking at a green object is entirely a creation of your mind. The
perceived object is not actually green at all in the commonsensical use
of the word green. As a consequence, the world out there became
wholly quantitative and devoid of anything qualitative. This made the
external world wholly unlike that which we perceive it to be; indeed
unimaginable. Moreover, as Thomas Nagel mentioned, human intentions and purposes were subtracted too.

4. Consciousness cannot in principle be accommodated by Science

Thus, a consequence of the mechanistic philosophy is that it stipulated -- again I stress that this was not a discovery -- a very much emaciated conception of the physical external world. A bare skeletal outline denuded of the flesh of the qualitative. But that brings with it a huge problem. If only the quantitative, or that which is measurable or detectable, constitutes the external world, how can we suppose that minds or consciousness are part of that reality?  Hence the mind-body problem or what has been referred to as the hard problem.




Since almost everyone, including the "intelligentsia", has so much difficulty in understanding this, it might be a good idea to try and hammer this point home.


Let's return to the example of a clockwork clock brought up in section 2. As mentioned previously, by looking at the components of that clock - namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels - and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the hour, and the minute hands move. Each cause and each effect in the causal chain(s) leading to the movement of the hands are wholly quantitative, something which can be measured.


The same pertains whenever we reach an understanding of some phenomenon. Consider tornadoes for example. They seem to be entities in their own right; they seem to act as organised wholes.  Nevertheless, they are nothing more than the movement and interactions of all the air and water molecules which constitute them. But whether we are talking about clocks, tornadoes or anything else, reductionism holds that the number of parts constituting that thing doesn't allow for the possibility of producing anything beyond what a
colossal number of interacting particles are capable of producing.  A clockwork clock can display the time, but that's just the inevitable consequence of all its interacting parts. If a functioning clock, or a tornado, or any other device or phenomenon was also associated with conscious experiences, then that could not be reductively explained.  It would, in a sense, be miraculous.  

Why should brains be any different? If the brain does indeed produce consciousness, then we have chains of quantitative causes and effects which at the end of these chains produce purely qualitative phenomena; namely conscious experiences. But then this contradicts the mechanistic philosophy since it stipulates that reality is wholly quantitative. And hence consciousness also eludes any possible physical theory since physics deals exclusively with the quantitative or that which can be measured.



To try and explicate this fact yet further what we have is a chain of physical causes and effects following physical laws, and at the end a conscious experience such as the experience of pain. Unlike our clock or tornado, where we can always understand, at least in principle, how an effect is brought about by a thorough understanding of the arrangements and properties of their parts, we cannot have a similar understanding with consciousness. All we can note is that when certain physical events occur in the brain, this might be correlated with a certain characteristic experience -- an experience moreover which can only be known by the subject. Consciousness is not objectively detectable.

5. Consciousness is what the brain does?

One way of putting consciousness back into the world is to claim that it is literally one and the very same thing as some physical thing or process (not merely caused by a physical process). I think this is an act of desperation.


We think of the world as being populated with objects. Sometimes what we think of 2 different objects are in fact one and the same object e.g. the morning star and evening star. However we can trace their paths through space-time and see that they coincide. However we cannot do this with brain processes and conscious experiences. We can trace the formers path in space-time, but not the latter.



Also if 2 objects are in fact the very same object, they should share very similar properties. It's true that one and the same object can change its properties over time e.g. a spanking brand new table will not look quite the same 20 years down the line, although they'll look broadly similar.



But physical states and the correlated conscious experiences exist at the same time. However they are utterly different in their properties. The former is characterised by the quantitative and is observable from a third person perspective. The latter is characterised by the qualitative and is not observable from the third person perspective -- it is only known through the experiencing subject. Since conscious experiences share no commonality with any physical states or processes whatsoever, it is gratuitous and vacuous to declare they're one and the very same thing.

6. But does the brain produce consciousness anyway?




Even though, being qualitative through and through, consciousness is non-physical, the foregoing should not be understood as suggesting that the brain cannot produce consciousness. It's just that if it does, then that's simply a brute fact about reality. In fact, arguably, we have good reasons to suppose that the brain produces consciousness and these reasons come in the form of mind-brain correlations. Just to mention a few examples; our capacity to understand written and spoken words, or 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. In addition radical personality change may be brought about by injury to the brain. The most famous example here is undoubtedly Phineas Gage. We can also point to the effects of drugs that have a propensity to affect our emotions, attitudes and dispositions. Indeed even alcohol and caffeine do this. Most importantly we enter deep sleep every night where we do not seem to be conscious at all.

To return yet again to our clock analogy. Let's suppose we have a thorough understanding of the properties and arrangement of its parts. There's nothing about the arrangements of these parts which could account for the fact it sounds an hourly alarm. In addition let's suppose that removing a particular component of the clock results in it not sounding the alarm. And replacing that component but removing another component also results in it not sounding the alarm. But removing other components one at a time has no effect. So even though the reason why it sounds an alarm might be wholly mysterious, we have, so it seems, specified critical components whose presence are essential to causing the alarm. We might, therefore, feel justified in supposing that such critical components jointly produce the hourly alarm.




It might well be that something similar is happening with brains and consciousness. Science can never in principle explain why brains produce consciousness, but this needn't prevent us, in the absence of any other reasons, from supposing that it is specific parts of the brain which are somehow producing this phenomenon. It seems to me that this is especially compelling when we consider the comatose state, or even the deep sleep state we enter every night where we do not recollect any conscious experiences. This at least suggests that the brain is playing a crucial role in whether we are conscious or not. The most straightforward explanation for this is that the brain produces consciousness.

7. The implausibility of the brain producing consciousness thesis.

As a preliminary I should point out that the case for the brain producing consciousness outlined in the previous section would not curry much favour amongst the “intelligentsia”. It is deeply unsatisfactory since consciousness spontaneously appearing without explanation when certain physical processes occur seems essentially magical. Hence, the tendency to conflate conscious experiences with some physical process, thing or function. A strategy I have already argued in part 5 as being gratuitous and vacuous. Nevertheless, we may feel that the arguments of the previous section make it extremely likely that brains do somehow produce consciousness. So let's explore this further.




In the previous section I mentioned removing components of a clock and noting that should the alarm cease then these components might justifiably be supposed to be jointly producing the alarm. Let's replace our clock with a Television set. Removing certain components of the TV set will result in the picture disappearing, and generally tinkering with the internal components will affect the quality of the picture displayed. So we might suppose that at least some of the components produce the picture.



But it’s not quite as simply as this since there is a distinction between the TV set’s ability to display a sequence of pictures, and the form those pictures take. On a standard TV set it would be scientifically inexplicable why it should display a sequence of pictures constituting a TV programme in the absence of any TV signals.





Likewise, since it is scientifically inexplicable, indeed in principle, that the processes of the brain produce consciousness our preference ought to be that something external is involved. But, unlike the case of the TV set which explains the sequence of pictures shown by virtue of TV signals, this external influence accounting for consciousness couldn't be anything physical since we simply get the same intractable scientific problem of the quantitative creating the qualitative. It would need to be some non-physical influence -- perhaps a self or "soul" which has, as an essential property, conscious states.





In short, in a comparable way in which the internal components of a standard TV set is insufficient to explain the sequence of pictures being shown, it seems to me that the brain itself is insufficient to produce consciousness. In both cases something external is required. The fact that altering brain function changes our conscious states and abilities, or indeed even suppresses any consciousness completely, doesn't entail that the self which undergoes and underlies and unites these various conscious states is itself affected. Compare this with the fact that fiddling with the internal components of a TV set might affect the picture, but which in no shape or form alters the TV programme being screened (See my essay Is a "life after death" conceivable? for an explication of what I mean by these ideas).

8. Conclusion

I have pointed out that consciousness must forevermore remain scientifically inexplicable, at least as science is currently conceived. However, the mind-brain correlations and the apparent complete dependency of mind states on brain states might dispose one to feel the brain produces consciousness anyway. Nevertheless, this still remains deeply unsatisfactory and it seems to me a new way of conceiving consciousness and its relationship to the world is required. Since something extra over and above the brain seems to be required, this suggests that we might well survive our deaths.



Note that in reaching this conclusion I have made no mention whatsoever of any of the evidence that suggests an afterlife (NDEs, apparitions, memories of previous lives etc). The possibility that consciousness might well survive the deaths of our bodies has been established purely by philosophical argumentation. Once we take such evidence into consideration the case for a "life after death" becomes that much stronger.

9. So why do the "Intelligentsia" believe otherwise?

But then what are we to make of the comment by John G Messerly at the beginning of this essay? With just a few exceptions, professional philosophers, professional scientists, and more generally the "intelligentsia", are all united in thinking that modern science has shown there is no afterlife and it is only foolish and ignorant people who suppose otherwise.



But, as I have argued, this is simply not the case. Are the "intelligentsia" all unaware of the history and philosophy of science and the mind-body problem? Are they all unable to think through the issues?




I think the problem here is that science has been so incredibly successful in describing the world that the "intelligentsia" conclude that it is reasonable to infer that the methods of science are susceptible to explaining all aspects of reality.  Consciousness should be no exception. Couple this with the fact that scientists tend to be quite poor at philosophy, but yet at the same time enjoy a high level of prestige. Thus scientists opinions carry a great deal of weight. Hence, when they continually extol the outstanding successes of science, but at the same time depreciate the value of philosophical thought claiming it doesn't deliver the goods, we have fertile grounds for reaching fatuous conclusions. Fatuous conclusions, moreover, not just about how consciousness fits into the physical world, but on more general questions pertaining to the nature of reality which rightfully belongs to the province of philosophy.



Professional philosophers operate in this environment that scientists have created. Those that offer dissenting views are ferociously attacked. The most notable recent example is Thomas Nagel's recent book Mind and Cosmos, which I mentioned and quoted in section 3. For example Andrew Ferguson who is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard has written:

The Guardian awarded Mind and Cosmos its prize for the Most Despised Science Book of 2012. The reviews were numerous and overwhelmingly negative; one of the kindest, in the British magazine Prospect, carried the defensive headline “Thomas Nagel is not crazy.” (Really, he’s not!) Most other reviewers weren’t so sure about that.

. . .



“Evolutionists,” one reviewer huffily wrote, “will feel they’ve been ravaged by a sheep.” Many reviewers attacked the book on cultural as well as philosophical or scientific grounds, wondering aloud how a distinguished house like Oxford University Press could allow such a book to be published. The Philosophers’ Magazine described it with the curious word “irresponsible.” How so? In Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, the British philosopher John Dupré explained. Mind and Cosmos, he wrote, “will certainly lend comfort (and sell a lot of copies) to the religious enemies of Darwinism.” Simon Blackburn of Cambridge University made the same point: “I regret the appearance of this book. It will only bring comfort to creationists and fans of ‘intelligent design.’ ” (From here.)

This despite the fact that Nagel is both an atheist and rejects the existence of a soul or any possibility of a "life after death". The very fact he thinks materialism simply cannot withstand scrutiny is sufficient to earn their opprobrium. But he also has a few defenders. Edward Feser, an American associate professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College, has mounted a rigorous, uncompromising defence of Nagel's book from his varied detractors that may be found here (the link is merely part 1 of 10 parts! In my opinion Feser comprehensively dismantles the negative reviews of Nagel's book showing they frequently rest upon a misunderstanding of Nagel's arguments).



Thus there are pressures -- subtle and not so subtle -- for philosophers to conform to mainstream thinking. Those who rise to the top in the academic community are liable to express views consonant with the prevailing orthodoxy -- for if they do not then they will be less likely to have risen to such a position in the first place. So certain beliefs about the world tend to be perpetuated, not necessarily because of their underlying merits, but because there are influences actively discouraging the expression of views which are at variance with generally accepted beliefs.





On a final note, I recommend people read my related essays:


Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness


Is a "life after death" conceivable?


Science and the Afterlife

Do non-human animals have a "life after death"?

Philosophical materialists tend to implicitly suppose I
believe only human beings survive their deaths and no other animals. 
But I do not view this as being remotely plausible.  I presume a dog's
brain is very similar to a human being's, albeit less complex.  If only
human beings have an afterlife this means that a dog's brain produces
consciousness, but that a human being's brain does not -- the human
being's brain merely "filters" the self or consciousness (see my essay here on the notion of the brain acting as a "filter" for the self).  But surely
the similarity between our brains and dogs brains suggests they perform a
similar function irrespective of whether this function is producing or merely "filtering" consciousness? Moreover, if one brain produces and the other brain
merely "filters" consciousness, then it seems to me that it ought to be
the more complex brain which produces consciousness!


There
is another consideration.  If we exist both before conception and after
death (and I argue for this contention here), this at least opens up the possibility that there is some
ultimate purpose to our existence.  By ultimate purpose I mean something
over and above the meaning we ourselves bestow on our lives.  The word
"purpose" connotes the idea that we have some ultimate teleological
destiny (see here where I propose this).

But if only human beings survive their deaths, this
means only our lives could have this ultimate purpose, and that other
animals whose intelligence is not too far behind our own, for example
dolphins, apes and elephants, do not have any such ultimate purpose. 
But why would human beings be special in this way?   Taking both
considerations into account I'm afraid I can't make much sense of this
notion that only human beings survive their deaths and no other animals.

A ridiculous conception of God.

As a preliminary readers might be interested in another blog entry by myself where I make an analogy between our minds and God's mind. 



I want to employ and extend an analogy I first used here to try and dispel some of the apparent misunderstanding between atheists and, at least some, theists.



Let's suppose that in the future the bots in a computer game become conscious. Some bots think their
world (computer game environment) is designed and a creation of some
intelligence, others do not (let's call them atheists).

The
atheist bots assume that should there be a creator/designer of their world, then it must be some entity
within their computer game environment. That is to say any designer must either equate
effectively to some particularly coloured pixels, or failing this to at least influence the environment in some way. However since no such coloured pixels have ever been detected, and their world operates according to discernible rules (physical laws), they regard it as being highly unreasonable to believe in the existence of a designer.  Certainly if there is such a designer then the onus is upon those who suppose he exists to supply some evidence for his existence.

However many of the theist bots think that this concept of a designer is utterly ridiculous and think of a designer in the correct sense -- namely a computer programmer who exists outside of their reality (game world) altogether.  However they do disagree and quarrel about the name and personality of the designer (programmer).

The take home message from this analogy is that we should really try to get away from the ideas that should a "God" exist then he/it is some entity which exists within reality, and that he/it intervenes with physical laws (a so-called "God of the gaps").  It is just as ludicrous for us to entertain such a conception of "God" as it is for the bots to entertain such a conception of a designer for their game world.  Moreover, for the bots, the question of whether a designer exists, is not a question which could be answered by their science.  Their science deals with the regularities of their world and therefore could only address the concept of a designer should that designer exist within their reality.  The exact same applies to us.  The question of whether there is a creator, where that creator exists outside our physical reality, is not in principle something which could be addressed by our science. It is a purely metaphysical issue.

In addition, although the disagreements between the various religions might at some level be interesting, this really doesn't have any implications for the existence of some type of "God", at least not if we construe such a "God" in the minimal sense as a creator or designer of our world.  Compare this to the scenario where the bots disagree about the name and personality of the computer programmer.  It would be absurd to maintain that this suggests that no one created their world at all!

This conception of "God" as being wholly outside of our physical reality, or that our physical reality exists "within" God, also dispenses with the  requirement that it is incumbent upon the theist to demonstrate that a creator exists. Why?  First of all we need to understand why the burden of proof is normally on those who claim that something exists.


In our observations of the world we note that the Universe appears to be described by physical laws.  It seems that these laws have universal applicability -- that is the very same laws apply throughout the Universe.  
Hence we know what entities to
expect and what not to expect -- thus our expectation is that stars will have planets orbiting them, and not flying teapots.  In short, if someone asserts that x exists, but x would be unexpected given our understanding of physical laws, then the burden of proof ought to be on the one making the assertion.  Note though that strictly speaking there is no distinction between
positive and negative assertions. Hence we surmise there are galaxies
beyond the cosmic horizon even though in principle we can never detect
them. So, contrary to what people maintain, the burden of proof is not on the one asserting something exists, but rather it's on the one asserting something exists which we would not expect given our understanding of physical laws.

But clearly this does not apply to any existent which resides outside physical reality.  Either our physical reality came into existence through a conscious external agent --  some type of creator, although such a creator need not necessarily correspond to what we typically think of as "God" -- or the Universe, Multiverse or whole physical shebang came about as a brute fact with no cause.  Whichever hypothesis pertains arguments need to be advanced to justify ones position on this issue.

Related to this is the fact that many self-proclaimed atheists assert that they merely lack a belief in any type of "God" rather than disbelieve in a "God".   However, if one lacks a belief in whether there is a creator, then necessarily one also lacks a belief in the converse.  That is they also lack a belief in the supposition the Universe came into being as a brute fact.  This is contrary to how atheism was originally understood as being the position of supposing that most likely there is no entity or reality corresponding to what one might label "God".

2nd part here.