NP:Leading atheist branded a ‘heretic’ for daring to question Darwinism

[s0crates]

I'll have to read his argument. I'm familiar with Nagel's work (I recommend his essay "What is it Like to be a Bat" as a primer), and he isn't one to advance propositions without justification.

Philosopher? Pretty sure a philosopher isn't qualified to be an expert on Darwinism.

Pretty sure you don't understand the discipline. Philosophers criticize fundamental assumptions and abstract ideas, often by examining the implications of those ideas.

One such assumption is that the world consists entirely of material substance operating according to mechanical laws, a view with such worrisome implications that many smart people have come to see it is not tenable.

First line "The philosopher Thomas Nagel is not taking phone calls."

Exactly what are his credentials for evaluating a scientific process and refuting that which the majority of science has upheld the last century or so?

Here's his CV.

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/nagel/nagelcv.pdf

Now that the ad hominem is out of the way, perhaps we can discuss his argument.

It seems Nagel's view is motivated by the current paradigm's inability to solve the mind-body problem in a satisfactory way.

I know a bit about that topic, and I think Nagel may have a point. Some of our most fundamental assumptions must be mistaken, in particular the eliminative/reductive materialist thesis, which seems to be what Nagel is objecting to (moreso than natural selection). There are some strong arguments to be made against materialist assumptions.

Maybe I'll come post some of the basics after my class today. For now I'll just say that the current scientific worldview (perhaps outside theoretical physics) is inconsistent with what we know about ourselves as conscious beings with free will . . .

[drtdrums]

I didn't realize how old this article and book are.

[s0crates]

From the article in the OP:

. . .his point is not a scientific one. It is a philosophical one about the limits of a science that subordinates biology to physics. He calls it “reductive materialism” and argues the more we learn about life, the less believable it gets, and the more central mind and consciousness seem to the true picture.

If you know any philosophy, then you get this idea, and you know it isn't something we can easily dismiss.

Some of the responses to Nagel seem to me dogmatic. Not saying you have to agree with him, but you should at least try to understand his reasons and address those before dismissing him out of hand.

[s0crates]

Before you can understand Nagel's argument, you need a basic understanding of modern Philosophy of Mind. Here's an intro for anybody who wants to actually try to understand the issues Nagel is dealing with:

[Predicto]

From the article in the OP:

If you know any philosophy, then you get this idea, and you know it isn't something we can easily dismiss.

Some of the responses to Nagel seem to me dogmatic. Not saying you have to agree with him, but you should at least try to understand his reasons and address those before dismissing him out of hand.

 

 

I don't think people are dismissing Nagel's work as much as they are dismissing the spin of the article (drawn from Canada's version of Breitbart, btw) and Nagel's other public statements.

 

I'm not sure they understand the nuances of everything Nagle has written (I sure don't) but I sure as heck know he is not being burned at the stake just because people criticize his writing and subsequent comments that provide cover for pseudo-science like young earth creationism.   Like any scientist or philosopher, he should grow a backbone and defend his ideas in the intellectual community, not hide behind a facade of whining about persecution.  

 

Whatever the merits of his philosophical arguments, according to the article Nagel also says stuff like this:

 

 

 

Prof. Nagel has, too, writing of the “counterorthodoxy” that emerged in defence of U.S. science education against legislative efforts to introduce intelligent design and how it displayed a “tendency to overstate the legitimate scientific claims of evolutionary theory.” ....  He praises intelligent design proponents Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer as “iconoclasts” whose ideas “do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.

 

This is not philosophy.  This is nonsense.   Intelligent design is religious belief parading as science, while using none of the tools of actual science to reach its predetermined results.   Nagle's comments elevate dishonest pseudo-science to the realm of actual science, and rightly invites a response from those people who have to deal with anti-intellectualism on a day to day basis in American life.

[PeterMP]

I think everybody in biology and related fields understands the idea that the reductionist approach is only going to take us so far and has significant limits.  Emergent properties are real and affect the systems, but are also difficult to deal with.

 

Hence the popularity and rise of systems based approaches (e.g. systems biology).

 

And while realistically, there is still a lot of reductionism being carried out in studies that claim to be at the "systems level", I think it shows at least in implicit understanding of the issues with the reductionist approach.

 

The problem becomes the development of ideas, methods, techniques, and instrumentation that can cause us to rise above the reductionist approach.

 

Suggestions on how to do so are probably more useful than blanket criticisms of the reductionist approach.

Furthermore, I don't really see why one would select one field that has practiced reductionism (e.g. evolutionary biology) in particular to reject as compared to any other field of science that have also pretty heavily embraced reductionism.

 

A priori I see no reason to believe that reductionism can and will do a less good job of describing how the brain will work (with the advent of relevant technologies, ideas, and methods) than it would at describing the true nature of the universe.

 

Is there any real reason to believe that understanding the consciousness of the mind through reductionism is more likely to fail than the origin of the universe, or the nature of dark matter?

[alexey]

Here is all the hyperbole from the article:

Atheist Thomas Nagel branded a ‘heretic’

...

all wanting to reach the modern “heretic,”

...

the perils of raising arguments against intellectual orthodoxy.

...

One critique said if there were a philosophical Vatican, Prof. Nagel’s work should be on the index of banned books for the comfort it will give creationists

...

prompted sneering remarks the author is centuries behind the times, and somehow missed the Enlightenment.

....

environmentalism had come to resemble religion

...

Al Gore as a secular saint.

...

orthodoxy inspires the brutal treatment of heretics, even as it lures adherents into a simplistic, unreflective, fanciful faith in its own methods.

...

And here is the only actual sourced piece of information:

“What has gotten into Thomas Nagel?” tweeted Steven Pinker, the Canadian cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Pinker also called Mind & Cosmos “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.”

 

Thanks for the quality source, Mr. Z.

[Corcaigh]

 

This is not philosophy.  This is nonsense.   Intelligent design is religious belief parading as science, while using none of the tools of actual science to reach its predetermined results.  

 

Michael Behe himself admitted during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Trial that his definition of 'theory' as applied to intelligent design was so loose that astrology would meet the same standard.

[Slateman]

So? What has that to do with the price of tea in China?

Well a philosopher is commenting on science. It is outside of his realm and he provides no reason as to why he is qualified to declare that evolution should be discounted in any way. He is an utter moron who should be given the same credence as the person standing on the corner, claiming that ants are really the almighty creator of the universe

[London Kev]

Well a philosopher is commenting on science. It is outside of his realm and he provides no reason as to why he is qualified to declare that evolution should be discounted in any way. He is an utter moron who should be given the same credence as the person standing on the corner, claiming that ants are really the almighty creator of the universe

 

Ah, but have you ever seen unequivocal proof that they didn't?

 

Antichrist is mentioned five times in the New Testament. Coincidence? I think not!

[alexey]

Here you go, more sneering remarks from intellectual orthodoxy book burning heretic hunting science believing inquisitioners.

[s0crates]

Well a philosopher is commenting on science. It is outside of his realm and he provides no reason as to why he is qualified to declare that evolution should be discounted in any way. He is an utter moron who should be given the same credence as the person standing on the corner, claiming that ants are really the almighty creator of the universe

Sticking with the ad hominem attacks and dogmatic thinking I see.

Any chance you might examine what he thinks, why he thinks it, and address that?

Judging by your comments so far, I'm guessing not.

[zoony]

The title of the article gave it away as fodder for small minds. Not worth a click

[alexey]

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/

Here is Sean Carrol's view on all that jazz.

[s0crates]

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/

Here is Sean Carrol's view on all that jazz.

Thanks for the link. Although I didn't find the blog post overly informative, it did at least link Nagel's Times piece explaining his position. Maybe that will allow us to actually understand and discuss his argument (as opposed to what is happening in this thread so far).

So here it is:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/?_r=0&pagewanted=all

The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos’

By THOMAS NAGEL

AUGUST 18, 2013

This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False,” which was published by Oxford University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to offer a short summary of the central argument.

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.

This means that the scientific outlook, if it aspires to a more complete understanding of nature, must expand to include theories capable of explaining the appearance in the universe of mental phenomena and the subjective points of view in which they occur – theories of a different type from any we have seen so far.

There are two ways of resisting this conclusion, each of which has two versions. The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, either (a) by holding that the mental can be identified with some aspect of the physical, such as patterns of behavior or patterns of neural activity, or ( by denying that the mental is part of reality at all, being some kind of illusion (but then, illusion to whom?). The second way is to deny that the mental requires a scientific explanation through some new conception of the natural order, because either © we can regard it as a mere fluke or accident, an unexplained extra property of certain physical organisms – or else (d) we can believe that it has an explanation, but one that belongs not to science but to theology, in other words that mind has been added to the physical world in the course of evolution by divine intervention.

All four of these positions have their adherents. I believe the wide popularity among philosophers and scientists of (a), the outlook of psychophysical reductionism, is due not only to the great prestige of the physical sciences but to the feeling that this is the best defense against the dreaded (d), the theistic interventionist outlook. But someone who finds (a) and ( self-evidently false and © completely implausible need not accept (d), because a scientific understanding of nature need not be limited to a physical theory of the objective spatio-temporal order. It makes sense to seek an expanded form of understanding that includes the mental but that is still scientific — i.e. still a theory of the immanent order of nature.

That seems to me the most likely solution. Even though the theistic outlook, in some versions, is consistent with the available scientific evidence, I don’t believe it, and am drawn instead to a naturalistic, though non-materialist, alternative. Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy. I would add that even some theists might find this acceptable; since they could maintain that God is ultimately responsible for such an expanded natural order, as they believe he is for the laws of physics.

I believe this is a sensible position, and it is one I'm very familiar with. This is not creationism, it is a criticism of reductive materialism.

The materialistic worldview cannot be made consistent with things we know about ourselves as conscious beings (e.g. we have mental lives with a certain phenomenal feel, we have free will, etc.).

I'm more than happy to explain further if anybody is actually interested in examining Nagel's thesis . . .

[alexey]

In that case here is an excerpt from Sean Carrol's essay:

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/

...

Imagine what it would entail to truly believe that consciousness is not accounted for by physics. It would entail, among other things, that the behavior of ordinary matter would occasionally deviate from that expected on the basis of physics alone, even in circumstances where consciousness was not involved in any obvious way. Several billion years ago there weren’t conscious creatures here on Earth. It was just atoms and particles, bumping into each other in accordance with the rules of physics and chemistry. Except, if mind is not physical, at some point they swerved away from those laws, since remaining in accordance with them would never have created consciousness. In effect, the particles understood that sticking to their physically prescribed behaviors would never accomplish the universe’s grand plan of producing conscious life. Teleology is as good a word for that as any.

So, at what point does this deviation from purely physical behavior kick in, exactly? It’s the immortal soul vs. the Dirac equation problem–if you want to claim that what happens in our brain isn’t simply following the laws of physics, you have the duty to explain in exactly what way the electrons in our atoms fail to obey their equations of motion. Is energy conserved in your universe? Is momentum? Is quantum evolution unitary, information-preserving, reversible? Can the teleological effects on quantum field observables be encapsulated in an effective Hamiltonian?

This is not a proof that consciousness must be physical (as some folks will insist on misconstruing it), just an observation of the absolutely enormous magnitude of what the alternative implies. Physics makes unambiguous (although sometimes probabilistic) statements about what will happen in the future based on what conditions are now. You can’t simply say that physics is “incomplete,” because on their own terms physical theories are not incomplete (within their domain of applicability). Either matter obeys the laws of physics, or physics is wrong. And if you want us to take seriously the possibility that it’s wrong, you better have at least some tentative ideas about what would be a better theory.

Of course, Nagel has no such theory, which he cheerfully admits. That’s for the scientists to come up with! He’s just a philosopher, he says.

Which is why, at the end, his position isn’t very interesting. (Because he doesn’t have anything like a compelling alternative theory, not because he’s a philosopher.) He advocates overthrowing things that are precisely defined, extremely robust, and impressively well-tested (the known laws of physics, natural selection) on the basis of ideas that are rather vague and much less well-supported (a conviction that consciousness can’t be explained physically, a demand for intelligibility, moral realism). If someone puts forward even a rough sketch of how a new teleological view of reality might actually work, including how it affects the known laws of physics, that might be very interesting. I don’t think the prospects are very bright.

[s0crates]

Okay, I'll try to reply to some of that:

 

 

 

Imagine what it would entail to truly believe that consciousness is not accounted for by physics. It would entail, among other things, that the behavior of ordinary matter would occasionally deviate from that expected on the basis of physics alone, even in circumstances where consciousness was not involved in any obvious way.

 

Supposing it is true that the behavior of ordinary matter would occasionally deviate from what we expect if Nagel is correct, I'm not sure such an implication dooms Nagel's thesis.  I'm no physicist, but from what I've read of quantum physics (in particular the double-slit experiments), it seems safe to say that matter behaves much differently than we imagined in the 17th century (and yet our fundamental materialistic assumption, that the world is matter operating according to mechanical laws, is basically still the same as it was in the 17th century).  There really is something the matter with the matter.

 

 

 

This is not a proof that consciousness must be physical (as some folks will insist on misconstruing it), just an observation of the absolutely enormous magnitude of what the alternative implies.

 

I don't think Nagel would deny that.  I'm sure he is well aware that he is criticizing the fundamental assumptions of our current intellectual era, and I'm sure he realizes that the implications of rejecting those assumptions are massive.

 

 

 

And if you want us to take seriously the possibility that it’s wrong, you better have at least some tentative ideas about what would be a better theory.

 

This is just nonsense.  It is not at all clear to me that you have to propose some alternative theory of your own before you can criticize somebody else's theory. Why should that be the case?

 

Anyway, it seems Nagel does have some "tentative ideas," namely that we need a way of accounting for consciousness. The materialistic theory does not, "a better theory" would.

[s0crates]

You might listen to the following arguments by David Chalmers against reductive materialism if you are curious about the type of concerns Nagel has in mind:

I'd especially like to hear your thoughts about Chalmers thought experiment involving Mary the colorblind neuroscientist (towards the end of the first video). I'd also ask you to notice what he says in the second video about the need for "radical ideas," as it seems that is Nagel's point.

[PokerPacker]

"So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory."

Translated: I don't know how the brain works, therefore it defies the laws of physics and thus there is a magical ether creating consciousness.

[s0crates]

Translated: I don't know how the brain works, therefore it defies the laws of physics and thus there is a magical ether creating consciousness.

That's a straw man. I think you are too smart for such tactics.

[PokerPacker]

That's a straw man. I think you are too smart for such tactics.

Perhaps I hyperbolized my translation a little bit, but really, his explanation basically boiled down to "we don't currently know how this works, so it's not physical"

[CurseReversed]

I think his assertion that consciousness cannot be formed by physical process is not necessarily true.   But his assertion that physical consciousness cannot be explained by just physical theory might be right on.   If thats how he meant it.

 

I believe its true that there is that there is no scientific way to explain how or why people think the way they do, and that consciousness cannot be explained by any known physical theory.  

 

There are only correlations that can be drawn but true causation is, I believe, impossible. 

 

Although Asimov may have disagreed. 

[alexey]

Supposing it is true that the behavior of ordinary matter would occasionally deviate from what we expect if Nagel is correct, I'm not sure such an implication dooms Nagel's thesis. I'm no physicist, but from what I've read of quantum physics (in particular the double-slit experiments), it seems safe to say that matter behaves much differently than we imagined in the 17th century (and yet our fundamental materialistic assumption, that the world is matter operating according to mechanical laws, is basically still the same as it was in the 17th century). There really is something the matter with the matter.

I think Sean Carrol covers this:

"He (Nagel) advocates overthrowing things that are precisely defined, extremely robust, and impressively well-tested (the known laws of physics, natural selection) on the basis of ideas that are rather vague and much less well-supported (a conviction that consciousness can’t be explained physically, a demand for intelligibility, moral realism)."

Some ideas stood up to centuries of experiments and rigorous tests, while others did not. Naturalism is one of those ideas. As Seal Carrol puts it:

"the materialist Neo-Darwinist conception of nature is almost certainly true, so it’s worth pushing back against a respected philosopher who says otherwise."

I don't think Nagel would deny that. I'm sure he is well aware that he is criticizing the fundamental assumptions of our current intellectual era, and I'm sure he realizes that the implications of rejecting those assumptions are massive.

One implication is that people are talking about him.

This is just nonsense. It is not at all clear to me that you have to propose some alternative theory of your own before you can criticize somebody else's theory. Why should that be the case?

Anyway, it seems Nagel does have some "tentative ideas," namely that we need a way of accounting for consciousness. The materialistic theory does not, "a better theory" would.

Nagel does not seem to offer anything other than argument from incredulity and appeal to common sense.

[alexey]

You might listen to the following arguments by David Chalmers against reductive materialism if you are curious about the type of concerns Nagel has in mind:

I am familiar with these arguments, and I was never particularly impressed with them.

Daniel Dennett does a good job explaining away the "hard" problem. Tons of videos out there on that, as well as a ted talk.

TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en

Something from youtube:

 

I'd especially like to hear your thoughts about Chalmers thought experiment involving Mary the colorblind neuroscientist (towards the end of the first video). I'd also ask you to notice what he says in the second video about the need for "radical ideas," as it seems that is Nagel's point.

Mary does not know everything there is to know about color if she never experienced it.

How radical do we want to get? Would you see value in radical ideas that reject the germ theory of disease?

[s0crates]

I think the claim that "the materialist conception of nature is almost certainly true" shows a real ignorance of the criticisms of that conception of nature.

 

Materialism is the thesis that reality is composed entirely of mindless, purposeless, physical objects operating according to the mechanical laws of physics.  (The neo-Darwinian thesis is an extension of this, the view that evolution is a blind, material, algorithmic process of natural selection).

 

According to this view, minds are identical to brains, and consciousness is explainable in entirely objective terms (in terms of brain functions and behavior).

 

I'd like to draw out some of the implications of this view for illustration, but before I do let me make sure we agree on terms. Do you think my definition is accurate?

 

I am familiar with these arguments, and I was never particularly impressed with them.

Daniel Dennett does a good job explaining away the "hard" problem. Tons of videos out there on that, as well as a ted talk.
 

 

I'm very familiar with Dennett's work.  I read the entire tome "Consciousness Explained," only to find explanations of behavior and function, but no explanation whatsoever of consciousness. 

 

Mary does not know everything there is to know about color if she never experienced it.

 

Do you not think that suggests that minds are not identical with brains (by Leibniz's law)?

 

How radical do we want to get? Would you see value in radical ideas that reject the germ theory of disease?

 

Of course not.