The Two Dogmas of Materialism

I’m working under the assumption that there is no proven conjecture. However, “awareness” is just a word, and if particles appear to be aware of each other, that seems like enough to me. You seem to be aware, and that’s enough too. I feel like I’m aware, but I’m a little too close to judge

We appear to agree that ‘meshing gears’ can give the appearance of awareness.

So you think there is something special about the arrangement of elements in animals? Something beyond nature? Beyond SI units?

Awareness is not beyond nature!!!!!  The most populous organisms - single celled beings - have no nervous system and still process environmental information enough to be aware of (detect) and understand (respond logically) food particles and dangerous chemicals.  The science is clear as to measuring the info processing of gears - where no mental work is done versus that of a small biological unit (with inherent DNA storage of coding) where self-interest drives behavior.

The mutual information between gears - which includes symmetrical information objects that determine the interaction - and those of a biological organism expressing individual and group goals is vastly different.  Gears have no measurable range of response other than in SI units and the outcomes they determine.  The informational equations define fixed courses of action.   

On the other hand, the simplest of organisms are defined by their adaptive behavior to opportunity in the local environment.  This is a feed-back system, mapped by information flow and characterized by structure that results from mental (negentropic) work.  Gears do not detect each other or the amount of lubricant.  Bacteria do detect the affordances and dangers and respond with behavioral outcomes that are logically appropriate.

 We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in macroscopic order. We consider viewing metabolism in living things as microscopic variables directly driven by the second law of thermodynamics, while viewing the macroscopic variables of structure, complexity and homeostasis as mechanisms that are entropically favored because they open channels for entropy to grow via metabolism. This perspective reverses the conventional relation between structure and metabolism, by emphasizing the role of structure for metabolism rather than the other way around. Structure extends in time, preserving information along generations, particularly in the genetic code, but also in human culture. We also consider why the increase in order/complexity over time is often stepwise and sometimes collapses catastrophically. We point out the relevance of the notions of metastable states and channels between these, which are discovered by random motion of the system and lead it into ever-larger regions of the phase space, driven by thermodynamics. We note that such changes in state can lead to either increase or decrease in order; and sometimes to complete collapse, as in biological extinction. Finally, we comment on the implications of these dynamics for the future of humanity. 

 https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1908/1908.08374.pdf

Meausuring entropy, negentropy (organized information to a goal-state) and communication are done in units such as bits and bytes, which describe reality but are not SI units.

Thanks for all the replies to my post.  Interesting reading!

What I have seen from many in the scientific community, at least those who put themselves forth as its spokespersons, is very much a materialistic world view.  An understandable motivation for this would be to push back against the science-denying religious communities.  That is a noble motivation but I think this is dangerous as it spawns, effectively, a new dogma.  Scientists should absolutely "stay in their lane" and speak as an authority only to those subjects that are in the specific area of expertise.  Should they wish to venture beyond they should go out of their way to caveat their words as opinion and certainly not authoritative.

Those that don't take this tact are, at best, making a mistake.

So, on matters that involve the existence of purpose, or God, or the source of consciousness, or the origin of the universe, etc, etc.... science should just say "we don't know".  Its the only intellectually honest position.  Any version of "it will likely be absorbed into materialism" is simply an appeal to faith (in materialism).  Again, its a perfectly fine world view but it isn't science.  That's really my only point.

Of course the idea of "science-denying religious communities" is a popular one. It has some relevance. But we should not let that obscure the fact that many prominent figures in the history of science had belief of their own. Religious belief by itself doesn't automatically mean an inability to perform science to the highest standards.

Thanks for all the replies to my post.  Interesting reading!

What I have seen from many in the scientific community, at least those who put themselves forth as its spokespersons, is very much a materialistic world view.

Which is understandable. The findings of methodological naturalism represent both the products of the scientific community, and the state of the art with respect to what "materialism" means. So it's basically one and the same, if you are talking about those holding a scientific world view.

That doesn't preclude any scientists from also incorporating various faith-based ideas into their overall world view, though.
 

An understandable motivation for this would be to push back against the science-denying religious communities. That is a noble motivation but I think this is dangerous as it spawns, effectively, a new dogma.  Scientists should absolutely "stay in their lane" and speak as an authority only to those subjects that are in the specific area of expertise.  Should they wish to venture beyond they should go out of their way to caveat their words as opinion and certainly not authoritative.

Those that don't take this tact are, at best, making a mistake.

So, on matters that involve the existence of purpose, or God, or the source of consciousness, or the origin of the universe, etc, etc.... science should just say "we don't know".  Its the only intellectually honest position.  Any version of "it will likely be absorbed into materialism" is simply an appeal to faith (in materialism).  Again, its a perfectly fine world view but it isn't science.  That's really my only point.

The problem is that the ideas you list aren't ideas which are "outside the lane", with respect to materialism/methodological naturalism. So it isn't obvious that scientists in the relevant fields aren't supposed to comment on them, a priori. It is obvious, if one spends any time at all paying attention to socio-political discussion, that these are subjects where many people are not interested in what science might find on the subject if it conflicts with their preferred faith-based views (including other scientists). So the idea of non-overlapping areas of inquiry serves as a refuge, but it isn't science.

I'm not appealing to a faith in materialism when I say any version will likely be absorbed into materialism. That's just a guess on my part based on watching the very weird and immaterial stuff which has already ended up incorporated into materialism. We haven't yet found a limit to what won't be regarded as material. I suppose it's possible that we will. But the rather ordinary, anthropomorphic ideas people have about the existence of purpose, or God, or the source of consciousness, or the origin of the universe don't seem even remotely as strange as what has already been incorporated in materialism. So at this point, I don't see any reason to think they will be excluded if they turn out to have some validity.

It's reasonable to choose something other than "validity" (used in the technical sense) as the basis of your worldview. I agree with others who say than one worldview is no better than another, because I don't think we really know what metric to use for that choice. If you decide to go with "validity", then materialism can be regarded as successful. But it fails if "palatable" is the metric, for example.

Linda

Of course the idea of "science-denying religious communities" is a popular one. It has some relevance. But we should not let that obscure the fact that many prominent figures in the history of science had belief of their own. Religious belief by itself doesn't automatically mean an inability to perform science to the highest standards.

And of course materialism is ultimately just one more belief system, as Bernardo Kastrup recently wrote about ->

Every generation scorns the picture of ‘reality’ which came before

Metaphysical materialism imagines a purely abstract matrix—namely, matter—that allegedly exists outside and independent of mind, and then tries to explain mind in terms of this abstraction of mind. That it then resoundingly fails to catch its own tail doesn’t seem to be reason for embarrassment, or even weaken materialism’s good standing in our intellectual establishment. As obvious an appeal to magic as it is—namely, the magic of conjuring up the qualities of experience from the quantities that exhaustively define material arrangements—it is still considered eminently plausible today, just as fairy sorcery once was.

Be that as it may, the key question here is this: just how is it that we repeatedly end up attributing plausibility to nonsense? What makes us blind to the ultimate untenability of our mental pictures? Why do we regard—with a properly snobbish attitude for good measure—our ludicrous appeals to magic as legitimate, rational, rigorous and even hard-nosed?

I have a little theory about it. At any point in history, scientists and philosophers inherit a certain set of foundational values and beliefs—Kuhn famously called it a ‘paradigm’—from the culture they live in. This inheritance defines their sense of plausibility, which is thus also inherited: whatever is validated by their cultural context is bound to sound plausible to them, at least until they examine it more critically. If you and I had grown up with talk of fairies, we would find it entirely plausible that certain odd happenings—such as things being misplaced, disappearing or some people falling mysteriously ill—are caused by fairy sorcery. That we’ve never seen a fairy wouldn’t make them any less plausible than elementary subatomic particles, quantum fields and superstrings: all these invisible entities are imagined on account of their alleged effects.

The point is that our sense of plausibility isn’t at all objective or reliable. What I described above, for instance, is a kind of ‘plausibility by habit,’ which is almost entirely subjective. In fact, such plausibility by habit is—at least in my view—precisely what keeps metaphysical materialism alive, despite its insurmountable problems and internal contradictions.