From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Aug 19 2003 - 03:57:55 BST
Ian,
> Scott, you said ...
> If you keep the randomness, then it is very difficult to see why natural
> selection would move things toward greater complexity. Amoebae are better
> survivors than dinosaurs, etc. Complexity adds more things that can go
> wrong, and so reduces the odds of survival (ask any computer programmer).
>
> Ian says ...
> Difficulty is no proof of falsity.
I did not say the difficulty proves Darwinism false. I said it makes it
implausible. I do in addition, though, consider Darwinism impossible as an
explanation for the existence of consciousness, but did not give my reason.
It is given below. I've presented it a couple of times in this forum, but no
one has given an argument as to why it is not valid. (I do not assume it is
unassailable, just that no one so far has assailed it). Nor has anything
I've read in Dennett or Rorty or anywhere else addressed the problem it
raises. If you know of a response, I'd like to know.
I would also ask, why is an explanation that avoids purpose better than one
that doesn't? Other than, of course, a prior commitment to a mindless
materialism. Purpose obviously exists. Matter (which I would define as that
which the senses can perceive) doesn't obviously exist outside the mind, or
rather, it "obviously" (naively) exists, but analysis raises doubts. What we
perceive is produced in the act of perception: we see trees, not photons. So
why do materialists try to provide an explanation of how perception works in
terms of what perception produces?.
- Scott
Here's the argument (taken from a Jan. 10 post):
Consciousness, or even sentience, *cannot*
evolve out of non-consciousness. To see the problem, take the normally
accepted view of how visual perception works: light bounces off an object,
stimulates the rods and cones in the eye, which stimulate nerve cells, and
(much complexity later) we say "I see the tree". The materialist is forced
to conclude that all that nerve cell agitation is the seeing of a tree. But
this is impossible, if one assumes that space and time are the context in
which all that is necessary to explain perception occurs.
To see this, ask how the excitation of one electron being hit by one photon
can have any *connection* to any other electron that is being, or has been
hit by another photon. For this to happen a signal must pass from the first
to the second, but that signal cannot carry any additional information than
that of a single photon. So unless we assume an electron has memory, and can
distinguish between one photon and another, there can be no greater
experience than that which an electron experiences on absorbing a photon (or
any other single interaction it can undergo, like being annihilated by a
positron.).
This argumentation applies at whatever level of granularity one tries to
think it through. One nerve cell excites others. But unless the nerve cell
itself has memory and is sentient, it cannot make distinctions or note
similarity. But how can it if it has parts (separated in space). One or more
of these parts must be responsible for holding a piece of the memory, but
then that piece has to be combined with others....
There is one out, and that is depending on quantum non-locality. But note
that doing so says that reality is fundamentally non-spatio-temporal, that
*all* spatio-temporal experience arises out of eternity. So teleology just
means causation in a different temporal direction, and Darwinism becomes
irrelevant.
[Added now:]
I've been considering whether an appeal to fields (e.g., the electromagnetic
field) could provide another out. I don't see it. For one thing, fields are
just mathematical models to describe the results of action at a distance.
That is, there is action at a distance, and that is basically saying that
space and/or time is transcended. So if we say these fields are real in
themselves, and that perhaps consciousness is a very complicated nexus of
fields, well, aren't we saying that fields transcend space and time? The
question, then, is this still materialism, or are the goal posts being
moved?
In any case, we would be saying that the electromagnetic field arising from
one moving electron has to be conscious. Otherwise, adding and combining
fields together won't add up to qualia.
By the way, I am familiar with Dennett's and Hofstadter's "systems" response
to Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. This is not the same. It (my
argument) is that spacetime separation means that there can be no larger
awareness than that of the smallest unit of matter or signal one knows
about.
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