By Laura Knight-Jadczyk
In the previous post,
we looked at Philip Goff’s take on “Cosmic Purpose Without God”. He covered Non-Standard Designers,
Teleological Laws, and left Cosmopsychism dangling. But we ended with a hint as
to the direction he was going:
Teleological laws are the
most parsimonious accounts of cosmic purpose. They simply accept the
brute existence of cosmic purpose without feeling the need to postulate any
deeper explanation of it. On the other hand, the deeper explanation of
cosmic purpose provided by non-standard designer hypotheses is an attractive
feature. We arguably have a tie here, with one theory ahead in terms of
parsimony, the other ahead in terms of explanatory depth. The idea would
be to find a way of securing the extra explanatory depth but with minimal cost
in terms of postulating extra entities.
Fortunately, there is such
a theory: rather than postulating a supernatural designer, we can instead
ascribe mentality to the universe itself.
And so, in the next
chapter, we enter “A Conscious Universe”. Goff warns us that this is a view that was
once laughed at, is wildly controversial, and yet, nowadays, is being taken
quite seriously. How did this happen?
The following is gleaned from Goff’s discussion.
Bertrand Russell, in
the 1920s, was considering the fact that our most fundamental science, physics,
is purely mathematical. The math has
changed and become more complex and abstract over time, but it’s still
basically mainly equations that describe the mathematical structure of our
reality. This is apparently due to the
fact that Galileo made the decision that ‘natural philosophy’ must take a
purely mathematical form.
This isn’t of much use
to a philosopher. And so, quite a number
of them, inspired by Bertrand Russell, are positing that consciousness is what
underlies the mathematical structures of physics.
The standard form of
this view is that, at the fundamental level of reality, there are networks of
very simple conscious entities that behave in simple, predictable ways and have
rudimentary experiences.
The idea is, then, that
what we call mathematical structures are just descriptions of the interactions
and patterns of these micro-entities and their rudimentary behaviors and
experiences. These patterns and
structures are what we call ‘physics’.
The micro-entities reveal their consciousnesses in ‘mass’, ‘spin’, and
‘charge’. And so, the view of the Russellian panpsychists is that physics
emerges from consciousness. And, if this view is the right one, what you are
doing when you are doing physics is simply studying the behavior of very, very
simple conscious entities.
And of course, here we
see the basis of Goff’s “Pan-Agentialism” wherein matter
is inherently disposed to respond rationally to reality. Particles have ‘conscious inclinations’ even
if their behaviour is imposed on them by Pilot Waves, according to Goff, thus
casting doubt on the idea that matter is ‘inherently disposed’ to anything in
its responses.
Goff reports that
Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t like this idea because the Standard Model of
particle physics, (best model of the 25 kinds of fundamental particles),
predicts behavior based on physical properties, i.e. mass, spin and
charge. If you add non-physical
properties such as consciousness, then you lose control of your ability to
predict behavior. She declares that if
particles were conscious, then their consciousness would show up on the
behavior and physicists would easily be able to spot it.
Goff points out the
Hossenfelder obviously does not understand the panpsychist hypothesis and she
is interpreting panpsychism in dualistic terms, i.e. as if the particle has
physical properties – mass, spin, and charge – and additional properties of
consciousness. She assumes that the
micro-level consciousness proposed by the panpsychist exists at the level of
the most basic mathematical structures.
The panpsychists, however, are actually concerned with the reality that
underlies the mathematical structures. Goff’s view of the matter is:
… panpsychism offers the best solution to the mind-body problem, the
philosophical challenge that arises from the fact that we access objective
reality in two very different ways: perception and introspection. In perception we access the physical world
through our senses, something we’ve learnt to do more accurately and precisely
through science. Through introspection
we access consciousness, via our immediate awareness of our feelings and
experience.
The problem is, of
course, how to bring consciousness and the physical world together into a
single unified theory of reality? There
are three main philosophical solutions to the problem:
1. Materialism: The physical world is fundamental, and
consciousness arises from physical processes in the brain.
2. Panpsychism:
Consciousness is fundamental, and the physical world arises from more
fundamental facts about consciousness.
3. Dualism: Both
consciousness and the physical world are distinct but equally fundamental
aspects of reality. Contemporary
‘naturalistic’ dualists like David Chalmers postulate special ‘psycho-physical’
laws of nature to hook consciousness up to the physical world.
Goff notes:
In terms of materialism, nobody has ever made the slightest progress on
its central explanatory task of explaining how we can get consciousness out of
purely physical processes in the brain. Moreover, I think there are good arguments
that show that such a thing cannot be done in principle.
That is a useful
point, but for me, the even bigger problem is actually the converse: how can anyone possibly explain the existence
of a single particle at all… a single grain of sand? Where did the stuff of the Universe come
from? Especially considering the
Standard Model of Physics and its ‘Big Bang’! If the physical world is
fundamental, what made it? Where did the
‘stuff’ come from and how?
Goff then states the
most obvious thing of all: “The
mathematical structures of physics cannot produce consciousness, but
consciousness can produce the mathematical structures of physics.” That, right there, makes the
materialists/physicalists shudder in horror!
The Dualist option is
problematical because it leads to positing two distinct entities when one
should do (Ockham’s Razor) and, again, cannot explain the existence of matter
in any coherent way.
In any event, Goff
concludes (after a brief foray into neuroscience that need not detain us),
that:
Our choice is between a philosophical explanation nobody’s ever managed
to make sense of (materialism) and a philosophical explanation we know how to
make sense of (panpsychism). Once the
options are correctly understood as philosophical – rather than scientific –
rivals, there is, to my mind, an obvious winner.
Goff next brings in
the ‘combination problem’, or the challenge of figuring out how many conscious
particles come together to form a complex system which has its own unified
consciousness. He considers that this problem is of concern only to those who
advocate very reductive forms of panpsychism. Goff himself argues for a hybrid
of reductive and non-reductive views; he distinguishes between conscious experiences
and the ‘I’ that has the conscious experiences.
Goff’s “‘I’ is more than the sum of its parts, but its conscious
experiences are ‘inherited’ from streams of consciousness at the level of
fundamental physics.”
Are you confused by
that? I am. Goff appears to want to have his cake and eat
it too. He doesn’t like materialism, and
yet he continues to try to argue for a hybrid form of it. He didn’t tell us anything about where his
favored Pilot Waves come from, nor what foundation gives particles ‘agency’. He appears to propose that a bunch of
particles with this ‘agency’ jostle about guided by pilot waves and over vast
expanses of time, eventually form consciousness with an ‘I’ somehow. This consciousness then has the ability to
make choices against what it wants itself and what it knows to have value; and
all in the frame of Darwinian evolution. Because, of course, if there is a
designer s/he is limited somehow to just getting the ball rolling.
Goff goes on to say:
Even if human consciousness ends up being utterly irreducible, it’s
still better to be a panpsychist than a dualist. Panpsychism earns its keep through its
reduction of the physical world to consciousness. If it can also reduce human consciousness to
particle consciousness, whether partially or wholly, then that’s a bonus: the
more we can reductively explain, the simpler our basic theory of reality.
That is to say, Goff’s
Panpsychism pretty much says that the complex consciousness of a human (or
animal) brain is built up out of, or emerges from, the consciousness of
particles with agency guided by Pilot waves.
Goff says nothing about where the particles, the agency, or the pilot
waves come from.
He notes that many
theoretical physicists think that the fundamental building blocks of reality
are not particles at all but rather universe-wide fields in which particles are
simply local vibrations within those fields. That is, some fundamental form (or
forms) of consciousness underlie these universe-wide fields and that a
fundamental mind is the origin and bearer of those fields. This hypothesis is known as Cosmopsychism.
Goff’s view of this
hypothesis is that the consciousness of the universe is just some kind of huge
meaningless mess. “The kind of
experiential understanding enjoyed by human beings is the result of millions of
years of evolution, but the consciousness of the universe has not been shaped
by the pressures of natural selection.”
Again, Goff is trying
to have his cake and eat it too.
Goff doesn’t think
that a “meaningless mess” consciousness of the universe can explain the
consciousness of beings nor the Fine Tuning of the universe. So he tries to wrangle that problem that
simply wouldn’t exist if he would make a different assumption. Goff presses on
with his “meaningless mess” universal consciousness, proposing something like
the ‘agency’ of particles in his pan-agentialism:
…replace the picture of a universe of messy meaningless experience,
blundering from one moment to the next, with a view of the universe as
something that recognizes and responds to considerations of value. On the view we can call ‘teleological
cosmopsychism', the universe is essentially driven to try to maximized the
good. […]
Many philosophers postulate impersonal causal powers to explain the
behavior of the universe. But it’s
equally consistent with observation to suppose that the universe’s drive to
maximize value is running the show.
Or is it? Doesn’t this lead
straight back into the problem of evil?
If the universe is trying to maximize the good, how do we explain the
terrible things that happen within it, at least on the planet we live on? Also,
how do we think about the laws of physics on this picture? If the universe is driven by a compulsion to
maximize the good, shouldn’t there just be one law of physics, … ‘Do Your
Best’?
We can kill both of these birds with one stone. On teleological cosmopsychism, the laws of
physics record the limitations of the universe.
Each moment, the universe is pushing to maximize the good, but under
quite severe constraints as to what it is able to do. As with the Limited Designer Hypothesis… it’s
not that something outside of the universe is limiting the universe. It’s just a primitive fact about the universe
that it is able to do some things but not others.
Here I simply must
comment. Goff keeps talking about ‘good’
but he never discusses the fact that there can be many perspectives and what is
‘good’ to one perspective, is ‘evil’ to another. He talks about morals, but what morals? Whose morals?
What is moral in one culture, can be deeply immoral in another
culture. From the perspective of Goff’s
beloved Darwinism, killing is a great moral good as long as it is the weak and
stupid that are killed off and the strong and intelligent survive. The very
thing that Goff most hates – suffering – about our reality, is in-built into
the theory he is fighting so hard to conserve with his feats of philosophical
legerdermain.
Getting toward the end
of this discussion, Goff decides that the teleological cosmopsychist can
propose that the universe fine-tuned itself. That is, teleological cosmopsychism
is extremely parsimonious. Goff writes:
We know, or so I would argue, that there must be something underlying the mathematical structures identified by
physics, otherwise our universe would contain no consciousness. And we know there must be something that drives the predictable behavior
of the universe. It’s certainly possible
that the fundamental level of reality is wholly impersonal and
non-conscious. But the alternative
hypothesis of a universe responding to value under limitations recorded by the laws
of physics is empirically indiscernible and no less parsimonious.
So Goff proposes that
during the first split second of time, the universe fine-tuned itself because
the universe must have been aware of future possibilities, and to account for
this, we can attribute to the universe conscious awareness of the full
consequences of each of the options available in that instant of time. And he
then “cheekily” (his word) borrows the multiverse theory which he previously discarded,
and which he now tries to slide in with a twist of Ockham’s razor; again, most
confusing.
Goff next brings his
pan-agentialism together with teleological cosmopsychism, and is quite
satisfied with the results. He writes:
If we stripped away the Bohmian mechanics, we could bring together
pan-agentialism and cosmopsychism by identifying the universe with a
universe-wide field, with the result that the universe will behave in a
predictable way because the universe is conscious but lacks experiential
understanding, and so inevitably acts through the basic rational response: do
what you feel like doing. But, contrary
to the teleological form of cosmopsychism, this would not be a view on which
the universe is maximizing the good; it’s just doing what it feels like
doing. […]
…we need to identify the cosmic fine-tuner with the wave function
itself. On the resulting view, the wave
function is a conscious entity that is aware of the complete future
consequences of the options available to it, and acts by choosing the best
one. During the Planck Epoch, the best option
available to the wave function was to put itself in a state whereby the
universe would become life-permitting.
The apparently mechanical behavior of the wave function thereafter
reflects the limited options available to it. […]
On teleological cosmopsychism we start with rational matter, as
particles and the wave function are themselves rationally responsive material
entities. The wave function then
fine-tuned itself in order to allow mater to reach a greater realization of its
rational nature.
And there you have it,
Glory Be! Goff declares that the fit
between fine-tuning and matter is not a coincidence!
Goff has a twisty sort
of brain. I normally wouldn’t make the
following discursus, but this problem is too big to just sweep under the
rug. The way Goff works through problems
reminds me of a passage in Lobaczewski’s “Political Ponerology”:
Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both
in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible:
including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious
blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of
seemingly uncomfortable premises.
We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was
proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final
comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a
preceding directive from the subconscious, which considered it inexpedient or
disturbing. This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which
may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could
be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration. A
conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious
way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be totally
harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often
accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.
We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into
the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into
the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for
arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further
logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct
proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data. An ever-greater number
of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally,
a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way
even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the
person.
The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus
eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion.
Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed
one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes
the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious.
That passage in PP reminds
me of a passage in Barbara Oakley’s book “Evil Genes”:
A recent imaging study by psychologist Drew Westen and his colleagues at
Emory University provides firm support for the existence of emotional
reasoning. Just prior to the 2004 Bush-Kerry presidential elections, two groups
of subjects were recruited - fifteen ardent Democrats and fifteen ardent
Republicans. Each was presented with conflicting and seemingly damaging
statements about their candidate, as well as about more neutral targets such as
actor Tom Hanks (who, it appears, is a likable guy for people of all political
persuasions). Unsurprisingly, when the participants were asked to draw a
logical conclusion about a candidate from the other - "wrong" -
political party, the participants found a way to arrive at a conclusion that
made the candidate look bad, even though logic should have mitigated the
particular circumstances and allowed them to reach a different conclusion.
Here's where it gets interesting.
When this "emote control" began to occur, parts of the brain
normally involved in reasoning were not activated. Instead, a constellation of
activations occurred in the same areas of the brain where punishment, pain, and
negative emotions are experienced (that is, in the left insula, lateral frontal
cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Once a way was found to ignore
information that could not be rationally discounted, the neural punishment
areas turned off, and the participant received a blast of activation in the
circuits involving rewards - akin to the high an addict receives when getting
his fix.
In essence, the participants were not about to let facts get in the way
of their hot-button decision making and quick buzz of reward. "None of the
circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says
Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive
kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get
massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states
and activation of positive ones." {...}
Ultimately, Westen and his colleagues believe that "emotionally
biased reasoning leads to the 'stamping in' or reinforcement of a defensive
belief, associating the participant's 'revisionist' account of the data with
positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. 'The result is that
partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new
data,'" Westen says. Westen's remarkable study showed that neural
information processing related to what he terms "motivated reasoning"
... appears to be qualitatively different from reasoning when a person has no
strong emotional stake in the conclusions to be reached.
The study is thus the first to describe the neural processes that
underlie political judgment and decision making, as well as to describe
processes involving emote control, psychological defense, confirmatory bias,
and some forms of cognitive dissonance. The significance of these findings
ranges beyond the study of politics: "Everyone from executives and judges
to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when
they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,'" according to
Westen.
My point is that Goff
seems to be very attached to a materialist view of reality, while trying to
argue for some form of consciousness that is above and beyond materialism. Sort of like the “participation prize” that
kids are given nowadays for just showing up and making half-hearted
efforts. He argues that the Universe has
purpose and next, he is going to tell us how to “Live with Purpose” based on
his twisted, bizarre reasoning. But, that’s the next post.
