Thursday, December 20, 2012

Noe on the mind-body problem and the failure of materialist reductionism

Ed Feser quotes philosopher Alva Noe on the Achilles heel of materialist reductionism in science.

Noe:
The scientific revolution took its impulse from what the philosopher Bernard Williams called the Absolute Conception of Reality. This is a conception of the world as "it really is" entirely apart from how it appears to us: a colorless, odorless value-free domain of particles and complexes moving in accordance with timeless and immutable mathematical laws. The world so conceived has no place for mind in it. No intention. No purpose. If there is mind — and of course the great scientific revolutionaries such as Descartes and Newton would not deny that there is mind — it exists apart from and unconnected to the material world as this was conceived of by the New Science.

If modern science begins by shaping a conception of the cosmos, its subject matter, in such a way as to exclude mind and life, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that we can't seem to find a place for them in the natural order so conceived.
This is why Nagel observes, at the beginning of his book, that the mind-body problem isn't just a local problem concerning brains, behavior and the mind; correctly understood it invades our understanding of the cosmos itself and its history.


Materialist reductionism inherently excludes the mind and purpose from science. Coherent explanation of mental phenomenon becomes impossible, because the whole point of the materialist/reductionist enterprise is to decant nature to particles bumping in the void. Materialists even flounder with an explanation for the mathematics to which many natural processes adhere so effectively and so unreasonably. In a world composed entirely of bumping little billiard-balls, materialists are at a loss to explain the elegant mathematics to which the little balls hew.

There is a much better way of understanding the natural world. Aristotelianism posits that change in nature can only be fully understood by examination of four causes-- material, efficient, formal and final. For many practical applications, it's fine to focus on material and efficient causes, in the tradition of science since Newton. But a genuine understanding of nature must incorporate formal causation-- the intelligible aspects of things-- and final causation-- the directedness of change-- loosely speaking, its purpose.

Materialist reductionism, and it's banal application to biology, is a crude mistake. 

14 comments:

  1. Well, we can add particle physics to the long list of subjects Egnor is completely ignorant of. The world is not 'entirely composed of bumping little billiard-balls'. That picture of the atom went out decades ago, with Nils Bohr.

    Pretending that the mind and consciousness are not explicable by materialism is just silly.

    The split brain/split mind demonstrates that dualism is absurdity of the highest degree.

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    1. Johann, I am perfectly happy to accept the proposition that you are a meat machine, molded by environmental contingencies and the luck (or lack thereof) of genetics.

      That's why I'm inclined to think of your commentary as noise, like the sound of flatware in a wooden box tumbling down stairs. It's loud and seemingly complex, but, if you know the initial conditions, perfectly predictable. And, therefore, uninteresting.

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    2. Yea. I guess some meat just fell on bach's keyboard. That explains a lot.

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    3. Dr. Boggs,

      It is wrong to say that a mechanical system such as this one is "perfectly predictable." It is a widely held misconception popularized by Laplace. Laplace was great, but he was wrong nonetheless.

      Physical systems with more than one degree of freedom turn out to be un-perfectly-predictable. Which means that we cannot determine their precise coordinates and velocities in the long run. Unless we know their initial coordinates and velocities with infinite precision and can calculate with exactly zero error. It is, in fact, this unpredictability that makes statistical mechanics possible (and not just desirable).

      Hoo

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    4. @Hoo,

      You're right. the behavior of many complex systems cannot be predicted with precision.

      Where do the laws of nature come from?

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    5. Note my caveat, "if you know the initial conditions". I anticipated your "Unless we know their initial coordinates and velocities with infinite precision".

      Nice try, though.

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    6. Where do the laws of nature come from?

      Us. They reflect our attempt to describe the action within the universe. You're still stuck chasing your tail down the rabbit hole of Platonism.

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    7. Note my caveat, "if you know the initial conditions".

      Even with your caveat, you're wrong.

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    8. Dr. Egnor,

      Let's first agree on what laws of nature are. Would you say that Kepler's laws of planetary motion are laws of nature?

      Hoo

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    9. Dr. Boggs,

      Next time please be careful and do not use the qualifier perfectly if you do not mean infinite precision.

      Hoo

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    10. The laws of nature are the regularities of change, which often hew to mathematical formulations.

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    11. This is too vague for me to have a meaningful discussion. Are Kepler's laws laws of nature? If they are not, which specific laws qualify as such?

      Hoo

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    12. Dr Hoo:

      Point taken.

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  2. re: Anonymous (latest version)

    The Force is strong with this one.

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