Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

[Laird]

You seem to be on the fence when it comes to Darwinism. I don't know what your position is re. psi and the afterlife, but I assume that you are aware that if you tend toward the proponent side of the psi/afterlife question and also Darwinism you also entertain a possible massive cognitive dissonance. This may also be the case for the converse. This is because the two are directly contradictory. Darwinism is the essence of reductionist materialism and very clearly says that the human being is nothing more than an intelligent animal, and consciousness is purely the result of massive data processing by billions of neurons. Clear implications of Darwinism are that psi and an afterlife are impossible and superstitious fantasies. Either Darwinism or psi/afterlife are the truth, but not both.

It's interesting, nbtruthman... I've noticed that you often express ideas that I've been vaguely intuiting or otherwise arriving at but haven't yet gotten around to expressing myself. The above is a case in point. Whilst I wouldn't express it in the same terms you have, nor quite as definitively, I've been slowly coming around to a similar position.

For me, it's not so much about the implications of psi (I think Chris expresses why pretty well) but about the implications of interactionist dualism, which I've been coming more and more to having strong confidence in as the correct theory of mind - and, of course, that position on the mind-body problem opens the door to the possibility (maybe even likelihood) of an afterlife - but/so I would premise a similar argument to yours on the implications of interactionist dualism rather than those of an afterlife, since I think interactionist dualism comes prior.

My similar argument to yours would be that if the mind is not "generated" by the brain, but instead exists in its own right and in some sort of relationship with the brain, then the brain must somehow be "suited" as a "receptacle" for the mind, and it's hard to see how a strict neo-Darwinism can explain this suitability. First of all, it can't explain why minds exist in the first place, nor why/how they enter into relationship with brains - but this is not fatal. Secondly, whilst it is not logically impossible that a neo-Darwinian process somehow produced brains that just happened to be "suitable receptacles" for minds, it would seem to be a very unlikely and strange thing if this had happened, and if "somehow", from who-knows-where, minds floating around out there in the ether just "happen" to jump on board with brains at some point during a physical being's development after conception. More likely is that brains (and bodies!) had to be carefully designed so as to be a "fit" for the mind (and any soul/etheric/astral aspects of beings), and the process by which a mind becomes associated with a brain too had to be designed, and even continuously managed by - i.e. to decide which mind associates with which brain/body - (an) intelligence(s).

As you can see, I don't see this sort of argument as being quite as strong as you seem to, but I do agree that there does seem to be at least some potential for major cognitive dissonance for one who believes both in the afterlife (and hence in mind-body dualism) as well as neo-Darwinian evolution.

Maybe as (if) I think about this sort of argument longer and harder I will find ways to express it that are more conclusive. Thanks for - once again - expressing a very agreeable intuition/argument!

It's interesting, nbtruthman... I've noticed that you often express ideas that I've been vaguely intuiting or otherwise arriving at but haven't yet gotten around to expressing myself. The above is a case in point. Whilst I wouldn't express it in the same terms you have, nor quite as definitively, I've been slowly coming around to a similar position.

For me, it's not so much about the implications of psi (I think Chris expresses why pretty well) but about the implications of interactionist dualism, which I've been coming more and more to having strong confidence in as the correct theory of mind - and, of course, that position on the mind-body problem opens the door to the possibility (maybe even likelihood) of an afterlife - but/so I would premise a similar argument to yours on the implications of interactionist dualism rather than those of an afterlife, since I think interactionist dualism comes prior.

My similar argument to yours would be that if the mind is not "generated" by the brain, but instead exists in its own right and in some sort of relationship with the brain, then the brain must somehow be "suited" as a "receptacle" for the mind, and it's hard to see how a strict neo-Darwinism can explain this suitability. First of all, it can't explain why minds exist in the first place, nor why/how they enter into relationship with brains - but this is not fatal. Secondly, whilst it is not logically impossible that a neo-Darwinian process somehow produced brains that just happened to be "suitable receptacles" for minds, it would seem to be a very unlikely and strange thing if this had happened, and if "somehow", from who-knows-where, minds floating around out there in the ether just "happen" to jump on board with brains at some point during a physical being's development after conception. More likely is that brains (and bodies!) had to be carefully designed so as to be a "fit" for the mind (and any soul/etheric/astral aspects of beings), and the process by which a mind becomes associated with a brain too had to be designed, and even continuously managed by - i.e. to decide which mind associates with which brain/body - (an) intelligence(s).

As you can see, I don't see this sort of argument as being quite as strong as you seem to, but I do agree that there does seem to be at least some potential for major cognitive dissonance for one who believes both in the afterlife (and hence in mind-body dualism) as well as neo-Darwinian evolution.

Maybe as (if) I think about this sort of argument longer and harder I will find ways to express it that are more conclusive. Thanks for - once again - expressing a very agreeable intuition/argument!

I made a similar argument on skeptiko once (can't remember if it was on the old or new forum).

[Laird]

I made a similar argument on skeptiko once (can't remember if it was on the old or new forum).

Nice, man. Would be interested in reading your take if you ever happen to come across the post again.

That doesn't quite make sense to me. If there were physical laws we didn't know about, then wouldn't Darwinism be the result of the actual physical laws, not the known ones?

For the sake of argument, suppose psi is the result of some physical laws we don't currently know about - say some laws involving the interaction of complicated collections of information with matter. Then where relevant your elimination principle would follow the physical laws we know about, together with the psi laws, and there doesn't seem to be a problem.

Most scientists have the fixed view that we know all the macroscopically applicable laws of nature that there are, in particular all that govern biology including Darwinistic evolutionary biology. They confidently know that they are justified in rejecting out of hand any and all reports of paranormal events which appear incompatible with these laws. The notion that there are physical laws applicable to Darwinist evolution that we don't know about, beyond the Standard Model, is automatically rejected. 

Darwinism is regarded as a complete theory in the sense of requiring no extension of any basic physical principles. This thinking rejects all psi and other paranormal phenomena, which are incompatible with known physics because they violate basic principles like the inverse square law and the effect of physical barriers (telepathy), limitations of the existing forces and fields (telekinesis, psychokinesis and clairvoyance), and even basic causality (precognition and retrocognition). And most importantly, which are incompatible with Darwinistic evolutionary biology's understanding of the nature of mind as purely the result of neural activity. Darwinism as formulated in the past and today inherently brings along with it all the baggage of reductive materialism. 

This is the Darwinism I referred to in the post.

Sure, if you want to invoke some arbitrary imagined additional laws of physics that somehow allow such violations of the present Standard Model in the special case of human beings then psi,  esp and an afterlife could somehow be incorporated into the belief system of materialism and evolutionary biology. Maybe it could then be called immaterialism. I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't think that such a speculation has any likelihood of succeeding. Speculation is easy. You can speculate about anything, like how many angels can sit on the head of a needle.

To date, no adequate physical theory of psi, esp and an afterlife has yet to be developed, experimentally verified and accepted. My feeling is that this will always be the case, because such an effort runs into the basic mystery of the dualism of mind and physical brain and the "hard problem" of qualia which I think are probably fundamentally impenetrable by humans. This is related to a philosophical position called mysterianism, which includes such luminaries as William James, Thomas Nagel and Roger Penrose.

nbtruthman

Thanks for explaining.

But that idea about psi being a consequence of physical laws was only an example for the sake of argument, to show why I felt there was something wrong with your reasoning.

Another example might be some kind of mind-body dualism, where the two can interact. In that case I don't see why the two shouldn't evolve together as a result of natural selection. 

If you define Darwinism to exclude the existence of psi, then obviously it's going to be incompatible with psi. I just don't feel the non-existence of psi is an essential constituent of a theory of evolution by natural selection.

It's fair to say I tend to the proponent side for psi, on the basis of the evidence, but not for the afterlife, because I think the evidence for that is more problematic.

But I also tend to look directly at the evidence rather than thinking about the metaphysical implications and drawing conclusions from that. So as I can't (or won't) look at the evidence about Darwinism, I'm not going to draw a conclusion there. But in any case, I'm not convinced that psi couldn't be consistent with Darwinism, or with the view that consciousness is purely a result of physical processes in the brain. If psi exists, we know so very little about how it works.

Well that sounds entirely reasonable, except that in that case, I don't understand why you joined this particular discussion!

David

Well that sounds entirely reasonable, except that in that case, I don't understand why you joined this particular discussion!

If it's particularly important to you to understand, I think you'll be able to work it out from my posts on this thread, but I shouldn't bother about it if I were you.

nbtruthman

Thanks for explaining.

But that idea about psi being a consequence of physical laws was only an example for the sake of argument, to show why I felt there was something wrong with your reasoning.

Another example might be some kind of mind-body dualism, where the two can interact. In that case I don't see why the two shouldn't evolve together as a result of natural selection. 

If you define Darwinism to exclude the existence of psi, then obviously it's going to be incompatible with psi. I just don't feel the non-existence of psi is an essential constituent of a theory of evolution by natural selection.

In my long tenure at skeptiko and now here... I've come realize folks whom prefer to comprehend the physical  world through the lens of metaphysics are convinced they have the key to unlock these mysteries. However, in the centuries long history of metaphysics I recall not one metaphyscian succeeding. I have full confidence should this forum exist in say ten years I would read the same pro metaphysic arguments and still without evidence. I wonder if this thread had been titled Metaphysics Unhinged:  The Bugs in Metaphysical- how much response there would be?

However, in the centuries long history of metaphysics I recall not one metaphyscian succeeding. 

Well, there was that Jewish bloke who vanished into thin air from Spitalfields in the 1960s:
http://www.rachellichtenstein.com/conten...nskys-room