Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

The Non-Materialist Threat!

By Gregon

Missed this one from a couple of weeks ago on Mind Hacks: Neuroscientist Martha Farah and theologian Nancey Murphy wrote a letter to Science, warning against ‘non-materialist neuroscience’ becoming the new front-line in the religion wars. (You might remember how a recent article in New Scientist flagged similar concerns.) From the letter to Science:

By raising questions like this, it seems likely that neuroscience will pose a far more fundamental challenge than evolutionary biology to many religions. Predictably, then, some theologians and even neuroscientists are resisting the implications of modern cognitive and affective neuroscience. “Nonmaterialist neuroscience” has joined “intelligent design” as an alternative interpretation of scientific data. This work is counterproductive, however, in that it ignores what most scholars of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures now understand about biblical views of human nature. These views were physicalist, and body-soul dualism entered Christian thought around a century after Jesus’ day.

A fair bit of boggle factor in there – not least, the reduction of theology down to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. I also quite liked the “even neuroscientists are resisting the implications” remark.

Somebody pass these letter-writers a copy of Irreducible Mind. Or at least send them over to Henry Stapp’s archive of papers on the web…

Previously on TDG:

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
Related

One Comment

  1. Ah, the quantum
    Hello Everybody!

    I’m not quite understanding why people think of quantum mechanical systems as being non-materialist.

    They are complex and counter-intuitive to be sure, but they are still as real and ‘material’ as our arms and legs. As per Henry Stapps archive’s ion exchange is how the brain transfers charge across synapses (sodium ions i think). Anyway, my biology is poo so…

    Since our arms and legs are composed of atoms with electrons clouds etc, they also have a quantum mechanical aspect, but we dont think of them as non-material.

    Consciousness could well have a quantum mechanical aspect to it, or be highly quantum mechanical, as per Stapp. Generally these papers break down quantum mechanics. Say how important it is. Describe a few mysteries, then describe a few bits of conscious experience and compare it to the quantum mechanical parallel that they have previously set up. All well and good, but more will need to be done. Much more than just comparisons.

    Alot of the literature that uses quantum mechanics falls into the same groups.

    Some of them feel as if they are doing it just to get away from what they term ‘classical’. Baring in mind that there is nothing wrong with the classical, it just sits at the upper scale level to the quantum mechanical.

    Sometimes in their other-worldliness they miss explaining wave/particle duality. We are still dealing with particles, just their wave function aspect. If we have stepped away from thinking of electrons and photons as part of the material world then we are playing with words.

    There is also often a strange focus on the observer as a conscious object in the system, which you dont see in quantum mechanics lessons. The vantage of the observer is rhetorical. It is to make you consider how you disturb a system by looking at it and is to do with how we look at quantum mechanical systems. The observer affect it real, but bare in mind that to observe anything you must measure it and to do this you have to affect it with something. Like shining a light at it, even if it is just a single photon. Ultimately you will end up affecting the quantum mechanical system by measuring it. It is the effect of what you are using to measure it that affects the quantum mechanics. Observation is used as a way of teaching this, but you are expected to realise that you are a material object and it is this that changes the system.

    Quantum mechanics occurs at a given scale. Even though everything has a quantum mechanical aspect, it is the scale that defines how important it is. No neural network has reached the sophistication of the human brain, but some have reached enough to forage for food, avoid obstacles etc. This is an entirely ‘classical’ system, but it still uses electricity so has quantum mechanical aspects, but they can be ignored in its ‘decisions’ are made via weighted options where the weighting can be as simple as increased resistance on a motor etc. Obviously we weight our descisions differently, using sight and sound etc, but they might be similar to this simple example.

    I have no difficulty seeing how the brain could evolve to what it is in a purely classical sense, but the quantum mechanical aspect is very interesting.

    As a final note i would add that if the brain is quantum mechanical then it is not necessarily great news. Being a quantum mechanical wave function occuring in the brain might be good for explaining certain aspects, but it ties the mind to the brain.

    Sometimes you get the feeling that quantum mechanics is so far out there for some people that it is almost a license to think that these probability wave functions and quantum processes are not tied to ordinary matter so they can do esoteric things like floating around on the substrate of spacetime unhinged from matter. The point is though that they are just another way of looking at electrons and photons. They are ordinary matter. Just a very successful way of looking at it on a certain size scale.

    There are definitely feedbacks between the brain structure and ‘the mind’, but in the end the mind is highly defendant on the brain structure and available chemicals. Consider the roll of dopamine and serotonin for example.

    What would be interesting is an assessment of the scale of complex molecules in the brain on these possible quantum systems. Quantum processes break down at certain scales, collapsing into classical chemical systems. If the molecules are too big then they will struggle to fit into an overly quantum mechanical description of the mind and you will lose the ability to explain more than you gain.

    A strong correlation and interdependence between the quantum and classical seems to be the order, just like when you turn on a torch when you have a power cut.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal