Philosophers, Physicists and Cranks
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rocketdodger
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A more accurate statement is "if a physicist tries to explain consciousness, they become a cognitive scientist, computer scientist, or neurobiologist."
The Man
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Well, that’s the real problem as “interpretations” (Copenhagen, Many Worlds or Transactional) they all simply try to extrapolate upon the same quantum mechanical interactions. Until someone can come up with some verifiable hypothesis that would be expected to have different results depending on which interpretation was used to describe the interaction (or interactions) involved, we may never really know, as that verifiable hypothesis may not be possible.
blutoski
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Gardner's coverage of the "philosophy of science" is consistent with some other poster's descriptions: it is a retrospective explanatory philosophy rather than a prospective predictive one. ie: the philosophy of science is a model to explain how/why science works, rather than a model to explain what scientists should do.
He specifically warns against this latter attitude, and his examples of Soviet Lysenkoism (darwiniam natural selection rejected because it it inconsistent with Dialectical Materialism) and Lenin's rejection of quantum theory because it was inconsistent with his interpretation of Kantianism. He also touches on extreme postmodernism, as it was gaining political ground in academia at the time, but I feel that the lack of centrality of this subject makes the book feel dated.
This is different than discussions about the underpinning philosophies that help science, the most important of which is critical thinking, formal logic, &c.
Philosophy is pretty much reflective thinking, so it's impossible to agree with a statement like "philosophy does not help science."
Where scientists get bent out of shape is "philosophers generally know more about how science works than scientists" or "philosophical school of thought X should be the basis for science," or "learning about philosophy will make a more productive/fruitful/efficient scientist," or "philosophy is sufficient to resolve questions about nature." These statements are all extremely questionable.
godless dave
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Did Ben say science doesn't answer questions about the fundamentals of consciousness? Or that physics doesn't?
Scientists are certainly investigating consciousness. They don't have answers to those fundamental questions because there is still so much to be learned and technological limitations to what they can find out. But the scientists addressing those questions are biologists and psychologists, not physicists.
I sure hope not. I think I said that physics, specifically, has historically given us very good ultra-reductionist laws of nature. There is no evidence that "consciousness", an ultra-complex emergent sort of phenomenon, will ever be understandable by reductionist techniques.
Imagine that you built a giant brain-like object, with as many (and as varied/variable) interconnections as the brain has, but you built it entirely out of gears, conveyor belts, and billiard balls. Neuroscientists would not be able to predict its behavior. Build a giant brain-like object out of classical digital logic gates; ditto. Neither of these would suggest to Skwinty (or so I hope) that "Newton's and Hooke's laws need to be improved if we're ever to figure out this gear-machine", nor "consciousness may not be discoverable unless logicians can figure out more-fundamental truth tables." However, that's basically the sense of Gardner's statement.
Well, what would prove directly or indirectly that the Transactional interpretation is...
1.) Possible?
2.) Not Possible?
What aspects of physics would prove it was or was not true?
INRM
blutoski
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Further, though, this is one of those unreasonable expectations based on arbitrary or even gibberish definitions.
Science can't answer a question like: Is this thing in my hand a stone or a pebble? or Is Pluto a planet? A related question is When does consciousness start?
Emergent properties that are relevant to humans may not actually be 'real things' and so science may be the wrong place to look for answers.
People - philosophers included - do have a bad habit of reifying. Before accusing science of failing to solve 'the problem of consciousness' it's valuable to resolve the ontological debate about whether this is even a reasonable expectation.
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Acleron
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At last, someone mentions something concrete about what philosophy can contribute to science. Indeed, if philosophy can train someone in critical thinking and logic, it could be useful. However, philosophy is not necessary for understanding the type of thinking required for science.
The history of science shows a continual movement from philosophy. In essence when any particular branch of knowledge has been shown to have logic and laws, it has become science. The philosopher, John Locke, claimed in the 17th century that "natural philosophy is not capable of being made a science". Well it did, it became biology and all its myriad offshoots. It seems that whenever philosophy claims something to itself, such as conciousness, origin of the universe etc along comes a scientist to fit it properly into our understanding.
Skwinty
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Hi Ben m,
Yes,that was my mistake. My statement was that you said science, however I did include your quote where you said physics. Sorry my mistake.
I would not expect a revision of hookes or newtons laws for us to understand the mechanical gear system, as you correctly surmise.
I suppose one day there will be a "theory of everything" and that would include "conciousness" otherwise it would only be a theory of "nearly everything" I suppose that is the crux of what Gardner was saying.
Thanks to all for your thoughts and opinions. I find them illuminating to say the least. Ben your last post with regards to many worlds and schrodingers cat has made me see the light about this issue.(or at least some rays) I am now reading about bubble universes, multiverses etc and will post my thoughts on the issues later this week, then I will await critique of my understanding.
Coming back to the start of this thread where I stated that Einstein felt that philosophy made him a better physicist, I am indeed pleased to see some consensus on this issue.
Blutoski, does this statement below refer to the Martin Gardner quotation
"Further, though, this is one of those unreasonable expectations based on arbitrary or even gibberish definitions."
Gardner has said that he suspects that the fundamental nature of human consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable, unless perhaps a physics more profound than ("underlying") quantum mechanics is some day developed
The Man
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As I said, "some verifiable hypothesis that would be expected to have different results depending on which interpretation was used to describe the interaction (or interactions) involved”.
As long as something is consistent within its own tenets as well as consistent with current observations and experimental results, then it is possible, it is, however, verifiability and falsifiability that demonstrate the validity of any hypothesis.
godless dave
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Well, there's not really any basis to assume human consciousness has a "fundamental nature", and there's no reason to think that physics has anything directly to do with it. Sure, physics describes the behavior of the particles that make up the atoms that make up the molecules that brain chemistry is based on, but you don't call a physicist to figure out the fundamental nature of human digestion or respiration; why would it be different for neuroscience?
Skwinty
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Hi Godless Dave,
Firstly, physics is a broad based field. I agree that a Nuclear or Particle physicist for example would not be able to answer the question of conciousness but a Biophysicist should be able to determine the fundamentals of conciousness.
Secondly, Physics stems from reason and reason is but a subset of conciousness.
Thirdly, how can science be serious about a theory of everything, if it does not include conciousness. After all, conciousness is the fountainhead of all thought and theory.
Doctor Evil
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This has no meaning. Physics does not stem from reason, but from observation and the apparent fact that these observations are consistent with each other. Logic and math are tools used to construct arguments, but are not the heart of physics.
When physicists talk about a 'theory of everything' they mean a unified theory of all the basic forces of nature. Knowing how the basic forces behave does not mean we 'know everything'. For instance, complex systems have all kinds of collective effects appearing. In many cases we know the underlying equations that should describe such collective effects but cant solve them. As a result we do not fully understand them.
Skwinty
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Does making observations and validating these observations against other observations not require reason?
I understood that the unification of the basic forces of nature was called a Grand Unification Theory and not the theory of everything.
The theory of everything is a complete description of reality and I would imagine it to be an abstract mathematical theory and thus without any linguistic baggage.
Surely the term everything means everything and not just 4 things?
Those 4 things being gravity, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and electro magnetism.
Doctor Evil
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The term 'theory of everything' is just a name. It is commonly refer to the theory of the basic forces. Its good to know what people mean before drawing conclusions.
As for your appeal to 'reason' or 'consciousness' I don't know what exactly do you mean by it. The problem is that you don't know too. I will clarify using a story.
When I was an undergraduate student I took a few courses in philosophy. (What? A scientists taking courses in philosophy. That can't be!) I can note that I do not think they helped my scientific carrier later, but that is not the point of the story.
In one of these courses I had to compose a useful philosophical argument about any science related subject. The topic I chose was that of artificial intelligence. This is were the story connects to terms like consciousness and how philosophy treats it. There are a few philosophical arguments trying to prove that computers can not really be conscious. Unfortunately, this was a good few years ago, and I can not give references to these arguments.
I remember these philosophical argument as been sophisticated, and well constructed, but a careful examination convinced me they were useless, because they eventually amounted to arguments out of ignorance.
Why? The reason is that we have no idea what consciousness really is. A typical argument would state that some fuzzy property X (which is not clearly defined, again) is part of being conscious. Then it will construct a machine which mimics this behaviour. At this stage the argument will try to convince us that the machine and the conscious being are not really the same.
I wish I could remember the actual arguments more clearly, but they all had the same pitfall. Without knowing what consciousness really is there was not clear way to say that a machine constructed a conscious being is not conscious. Please note that my conclusion was not that computers could be conscious, but rather that its not possible to draw conclusion about something unless we have a clear idea of at least one well defined property it should have.
Where am I going with this?
Firstly, I hope that my story gave you a rough idea about the problems with applying philosophy to the real world. This is an example which, in my opinion, is related to the basic reason why science has been so much more successful then philosophy in the last few centuries.
Secondly, I have the feeling that your main issue is with our current lack of understanding of consciousness. If we ever make progress in understanding such a complicated question, it will be done by scientists which would construct clever experiments which will allow us to make the fuzzy idea of being conscious less fuzzy.
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sphenisc
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Doctor Evil
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Yep, these were there. But I have a vague memory of at least one more argument. Oh well, it was more than 10 years ago.
"Electromagnetism" unified the magnetic and electric forces, which previously had been separate phenomena.
"GWS Theory" (formulated 1970s, many predictions since verified) unified the electromagnetic and weak forces into a single electroweak force.
"Grand Unification Theory" (yet to be formulated) would unify the strong force with the electroweak force.
"Theory of Everything" (yet to be formulated) would unify the strong, electroweak, and gravitational forces.
A theory which could answer any arbitrary question you want to ask---like "what is consciousness", "how long does it take E. coli to evolve citrate metabolism", "does P = NP" and "what causes high-temperature superconductivity in YBCO"---is not usually called "Theory of Everything", but rather "A Computer the Size of the Universe" (AKA "Deep Thought").
Skwinty
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The only problem with "Deep Thought" is it only produced one answer to the question and that was 42.
now according to the billboard in the sky that was the wrong answer. See attachment for the correct answer.
Now, before all the sceptics hit the quote button, this is an attempt at humour.
