Examining Mr. R. Carrier's use of Bayesianism. Part IV

A gross theological caricature

(See here for Part I, Part II and Part III)

In part IV of this series, I'm continuing to comment on the following post by a Mr. Richard Carrier:

Why the Fine Tuning Argument Proves God Does Not Exist • Richard Carrier Blogs 

As Richard stares out at our strange cosmos and considers the question of theism and whether or not a cosmos like our's would have been produced by the kind of God conceived by most theists, this is what he thinks:

It cannot be predicted that this [Universe] is what a God would produce, or that it is what he would want to produce. Whereas it is exactly 100% predicted to be what we’d see if there was no God

I would certainly question Richard's second sentence here: What kind of universe/cosmos would I have predicted if there was no God? As we saw in the previous parts I certainly wouldn't have predicted our own remarkable universe in all its organized complexity, it's surprising organized contingencies and above all an organization which gives it a very strong propensity to generate life....... especially that propensity to generate complex organic objects! After all, only in recent history have humans started to master systems capable of generating other systems.  Why wouldn't I have predicted all this in the absence of God? .... because the evidence of our experience is that organization of all types, both simple and complex, are associated with the activity of human (and animal) intelligence. Therefore, when I see a cosmos so organized that we can distill out of it those highly succinct mathematical laws of physics, laws which are crucial for the generation & maintenance of life, my intuitions turn to thoughts of an a priori intelligence being active. Moreover, the fact is that the laws we distill from cosmic organization can never have the property of Aseity (that is of self-explanation). This is because these laws are mathematically descriptive devices destined to always leave us with a hard core of irreducible, incompressible and enigmatic contingent information; those laws are therefore logically incapable of delivering the logical necessity of Aseity. Some atheists at least do understand this. Take for example atheists Galen Strawson and Sean Carroll: Both appear to understand that all probing human inquiry into the form and pattern of the cosmos must eventually bottom out with unexplainable brute fact: Aseity is beyond the reach of conventional descriptive science.  This is a mathematical truism. See the following links for more details...

Quantum Non-Linearity: Galen Strawson on "Why is there something?" (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Quantum Non-Linearity: Something comes from Something: Nothing comes from Nothing. Big Deal (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

There have been some who have tried to get round all this by suggesting that somehow quantum mechanics can be used to redefine nothing in such a way that it tells us how it is possible to get something from nothing: But this line of thought is achieved by mere empty linguistic tricks: One can use the same tricks to claim that this simply amounts to a redefinition of something! (See footnote *2)

***

And yet I'm inclined to agree with Richard's first sentence in the quote above:  I don't think I could have predicted that the kind of God I think I know would have created the specifics of our universe, not only because of its strange impersonal and dispassionate vastness but also because of the much closer to home, well aired and time-honored conundrums around suffering and evil. Yes, I might have predicted a highly organized universe, but organization covers a multitude of possibilities, and it seems a multitude of sins. So, I do have some sympathy with honest atheists on this point. (But types like Richard don't want sympathy & measured opinions; they want abject submission to their thinking; his attitudes match those of the hardened fundamentalists of Biblical literalism).

Moreover, based on our experience of intelligent activity in this world (which by & large is human and animal) we have to admit that not only does intelligent activity have an immense space of creative options open to it making anticipation of specific activity in the absence of evidence all but impossible, but also that intelligent activity has a fair measure of inscrutability. For example, the ancient stone circles we see dotted around Europe entail a high level of organization both in their configuration and the logistics of their construction and yet as to their purpose we have to resort to hypothesis and speculation. Furthermore, coming from a vacuum of evidence I could not have predicted from first principles that early cultures (probably as a consequence of that time honoured search for cosmic meaning & purpose) would build stone circles. Because of the huge variety open to intelligent behavior I can't move from an evidential vacuum to stone circles. But the reverse is possible: Given the evidence of stone circles I can link that to known aspects of the human psyche, a psyche I share. This means we have at least some inkling of the motives driving the human organization of inanimate objects and therefore have a chance of interpreting the meaning of this activity; in this case that the stone circles probably represent a culture's attempt to engage with the numinous and seek to give shape, meaning, and purpose to the universe; I personally think I understand that mystical endeavor. 

Likewise, as we look out onto the cosmos itself, we observe high levels of organization in a pattern we couldn't predict even if we knew beforehand that a creating deity was behind it. But conversely, if we are sufficiently primed theists, we at least stand a chance of getting a purchase on cosmic purposes via theological hypothesis and speculation. But if we reject God's attempt at self-revelation and we reject the necessity of the epistemic bootstrap of faith (See Hebrews 11:3&6), we will remain as much in the dark about Divine purposes as we are about those enigmatic stone circles. For it is possible in my view to come up with at least a hypothesized framework as to the meaning of the cosmos. 

***

But now I ask myself this: What would I have predicted if there is no God of any sort? My first intuitive response to that question would be absolute empty nothingness; but this is patently not the case: Our conscious perceptions tell us that the universe exists and therefore we do have an evidential handle on this question. In fact, as I said in Part III of this series, if the evidence was that the universe is completely random (That is, a Big-R superverse), I would interpret that as evidence of the absence of the God I think I know. As Sherlock Holmes observed in the story of The Cardboard Box where he was commenting on a particularly tragic case of crime...

“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes, solemnly, as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But to what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”

(See the introduction to my book on Disorder and Randomness where I first used this quote)

But whilst I'd agree that our intuitions suggest that Big-R points to atheism, the reverse isn't true: Viz: Given atheism I wouldn't have been able to predict a Big-R universe: The consequences of the absence of God are just as inscrutable as God himself. In any case a prediction of Big-R isn't a straightforward deduction from the absence of God. Let me explain...

Firstly, in a Big-R universe I wouldn't exist to perceive anything and neither would anyone else. Being an idealist where I regard conscious cognition and perception as an important underwriter of reality, I would therefore question the coherence and intelligibility of Big-R notions.

Secondly, randomness represents the very opposite of a logical truism; A logical truism, once understood, has zero surprisal value and therefore no information, whereas randomness has maximum surprisal value and maximum information. If you are looking for the logical necessity of explanatory completeness or aseity you won't find it in randomness. The existence of randomness entails maximum contingency and maximum mystery. It is first and foremost the very opposite of a logical truism, the very opposite of "necessity".  It therefore explains nothing in the sense of explanatory completeness; rather it just leaves us with a conundrum as to who or what is managing to generate the most complex pattern of all, a pattern that requires a maximum of computational effort. 

***

In the following quote we find Richard continuing to dig even deeper into the hole he is already in....

RICHARD: Thus, Fine Tuning is not a “peculiar” thing for us to observe. It is not distinctive of God-made universes; it is, rather, distinctive of godless universes. It is literally the only thing we could ever observe—unless God existed and made the universe. Because only then could the universe possibly have been made conducive to life without the Fine Tuning of our peculiar fundamental constants. Hence God-made worlds will tend to not be Fine Tuned.

MY COMMENT:  As we saw in Part III, so-called "fine tuning" is just a small facet of a much bigger story of a remarkable order which has facilitated the human project of distilling out of the pattern of that order some remarkably elegant mathematical forms which from my standpoint have a very divine feel about them. They look to be the very epitome of an incredibly intelligent design. And let me repeat, further "explanation" of these forms can never deliver aseity but could only ever be a further enhancement of the succinctness of their form; but increasing mathematical succinctness can't go on until one has nothing left to compress; an incompressible kernel of contingency will always remain using mathematics as we know it. 

***

Richard Carrier has a very low view of our Cosmos. In spite of its exceptional and highly stable order, an order strongly conducive to the emergence and maintenance of life Richard still courts the Big-R hypothesis, the random bizarro universe that can be used to explain away anything. Take a look at the following...

RICHARD: This is a crucial realization. Fine Tuning of our observed fundamental constants is only necessary when a God is not doing the designing; it is only necessary when observers only evolve through billions of years of gradual cellular scaffolding, and life at all arises only by chance chemical mixing, and only after billions of years of the meandering random mixing of chemicals across a vast universe billions of light-years in size filled with random lifeless junk, which is almost everywhere lethal to life, and only hospitable to it in tiny specks of the chance arrangement of randomly mixed conditions. Only those conditions require Fine Tuning. Quite simply put: only Godless universes have to be Finely Tuned.

Which means when you observe a universe like ours (old, huge, deadly, and producing life only in the most awkward of ways and rarest of places), you can expect it to have been Finely Tuned by chance accident, not intelligent design. Intelligent design would more likely make a universe as large and old as needed to contain the life it was made for, and would create life directly (not employ billions of years of cellular scaffolding), and imbue the world with only those laws of physics needed to maintain it to its purpose (no weird fundamental constants, no weird fundamental particles). It would not produce a universe almost entirely hostile to life. There would be no lethal radiation-filled vacuum. No dead worlds or lifeless moons. Stars would not be uninhabitable monstrosities. Black holes would never exist.

MY COMMENT: And again: Chance fine tuning is a very bad argument for atheism; it neglects that the values of the "fine-tuned" variables only make sense in the context of the highly organizing effect of a set of remarkable laws and which together with those laws constitute pre-conditions which considerably enhances the chance of life. As I've said above, because of the huge space of possibilities open to intelligence and on top of that intelligence's inscrutability it is difficult to anticipate in advance what intelligence will do. But the reverse is an easier path. Given the works of intelligence we, as intelligences ourselves, can work backwards with a chance of interpreting the purpose of its works. To my mind all those dead worlds are the evidence of a search, reject and select computation, a declarative procedure that may well use teleological constraints.

The emphasis on fine tuning in Richard's quote above completely misses the plot; namely, that what is actually being fine-tuned is a remarkable cosmic computation machine of immense dimensions. And yet according to Richard's theology God simply doesn't do things like this; instead, God does things without logic and without sequence; it is ironic that Biblical literalists often think in a very similar way. But contrary to this kind of thinking is the evidence of our experience of the way intelligence works: Viz: It works using an experimental search, reject and select activity; the cosmos appears to be a tableau of intelligent activity, a tableau of creative activity.

And while I'm here a note to self: Here's a speculation for me to think about. The fine-tuning constants could have many, many non-zero decimal places after the decimal point. Therefore, if ordinary parallel processing rather than expanding parallelism is the search space method being used to develop the cosmos, the fine-tuning constants could be a sneaky way of feeding information, a priori, into cosmic evolution, thereby speeding the search up. 

***

Epilogue

In Part III I introduced the idea that the cosmos can be thought of as a fantastically large computation, a computation which is expressible in a very abstracted form as an equation relating the information content of the created configuration to a function of two variables: 1) The starting information and 2) the minimum possible number of computational steps. This equation looks something like this: 

I = S + Log T

Equation 1

Where I is the information content of the configuration created, and S is the minimum length of the algorithm needed to generate the configuration using a minimum number of execution steps of T. See here where I give more details on this relation.  (See also here). For a parallel computation the time taken for the computation will be proportional to T, but if as I feel is entirely plausible for our universe expanding parallelism is somehow being employed, the computation is achieved much faster. 

As we saw in Part III according to the theology of Richard Carrier, God, if he existed, would just do stuff abracadabra style; that is Richard takes it for granted that T ~ 0 and that creation has no sequential duration; in his theology God just does his stuff by downloading reified brute fact via his mighty magic commands. As we saw this is also the theology of the Biblical literalists (See footnote *1 below for the theology of the North American ID community). 

***

As I have said so often; there is a sense in which the elegant & succinct mathematical forms distilled from the high organisation of the cosmos "explain" absolutely nothing in the deepest sense of the word. Explanatory mathematical objects as we know them are less an act of explanation than that of compressed descriptions; as such they can never break the explanatory completeness barrier and deliver aseity. 

Our world is just one of the possible worlds that can be reified from the platonic realm. This fact is going to be hard to take for those who hanker after the secular notion that somehow the so-called material world can be so closed ended that it delivers an aseity of its own. Rather, it is just one of many possibilities that can be dragged out of the platonic world, reified and because of its organization, described with succinct "distilled" mathematical forms. It is in fact a work of art rather than a work of necessity; there is good art and bad art, but all is art, and art is but realized possibility. Our science gives us the pattern of the creation but not its fundamental origins; as many people have put it; the objects of science give us the "how" but not the "why?". But "why?" is only intelligible as a question in the context of an assumed a-priori sentience; in the context of this assumed conscious cognition the concepts of intention, goal and purpose have meaning. So, is our ravenous curiosity going to be satiated with answers that merely tell us about the "How"?  For some people at least that does seem to be the case. 

As we try to make sense of the cosmos we use a combination of induction, abduction and deduction: The generalizations of induction sometimes help prompt the production of theories but perhaps more often a theory is abducted with a giant intuitive leap of inspiration. Crucially, however, a theory arrived at by inspiration must then be tested via the predictions of deduction. This testing methodology has grown up around the relatively simple conceptual objects which control the physical regime, but it is a methodology that is far less effective when dealing with the inscrutabilities & complexities of the personal, the psychological, the sociological and above all the liminal world of the numinous. These phenomena are far too complex, erratic and full of exceptions to easily admit formal methods. The numinous in particular is the domain of anecdotal evidence, the domain of personal revelation. 

***

The evidence of our senses is that our cosmos is highly organized, and that this unique organization is such that it facilitates those descriptive conceptual devices and tokens we call the laws of physics which ride on top of and can be intellectually distilled from this order. That this order is being created and maintained everywhere and everywhen by an a priori intelligence is not an implausible proposition for many of us, even if for some it seems too large an epistemic step to make.  But I'll concede that it is not a proposition that can be formally tested like the relatively simple physical regime can be tested; testing such a complex entity is more akin to testing the partially veiled and complex world of sociology and human thought. So, although individuals may feel they have tested their faith anecdotally the anecdotes they tell won't convince everyone, least of all the evangelical atheists. But we do have this: Theism has the potential to at least make sense of the cosmos in terms of purpose and meaning whereas vanilla science, which only tells us the "how", cannot do this.  Moreover, as an idealist I would contend, that the reality of the particulate cosmos is unintelligible unless one first posits an a-priori up and running conscious cognition. Particulate matter only makes sense as the mathematical constructions of a conscious, thinking & perceiving sentience. For me Hebrews 11:3&6 is a necessary first principle of epistemology.

But of course, I can't expect an evangelical atheist like Richard to agree with any of this as it is very much dependent on personal anecdote rather than formal observational protocols. All I can advise is that people like Richard will just have to get out on their bikes and find some anecdotes of their own. As far as I'm concerned, all bets are still on!

***

Depending on how I feel I might complete this series by looking at Richard's tongue in cheek theology which he expresses in the picture that heads this post. Viz: God needs blood to fix the universe, but only his blood has enough magical power to do it, so he gave himself a body and then killed it. I wonder where Richard got his grist to come up with that one? I just wonder. The guilty parties probably know who they are.

Footnotes

*1 On North American Intelligent Design (NAID): Although I'm fundamentally an Intelligent Creation person I must once again disown any intellectual sympathy with this community, especially so as they fall into the welcoming embrace of the far-right, merging Christianity with politics. 

I personally don't have any intellectual commitment to the engine driving evolutionary change as currently conceived and yet I would heavily criticize the line taken by the NAID community: They have entrenched themselves in a tribal culture which is married to a set of misleading conceptual cliches: Viz: anti-evolutionism, "blind natural forces", anti-junk-DNA, "chance vs necessity" and subliminal deism. (See here for more). The NAID community make a sharp distinction between so-called "blind natural forces" and intelligent activity. The consequence is that they have adopted an epistemic filter which makes hard going of the identification of the basics of the physical regime as a work of hyper-intelligence; thus, in a sense chiming with Richard Carrier's view that the physical regime is a product of mindless blind Kaos; how utterly ironic!

If we assume that the cosmos is created and maintained everywhere and everywhen by the Divine will, then immediately the NAID category of "blind natural forces" becomes problematical. This is because in the context of intelligent creationism those forces can hardly be classified as blind and natural; in fact, the cosmos as the reification of artistic possibility rather than of necessity is highly unnatural. Although the NAID community are by and large like myself old cosmos creationists they nevertheless have subliminally taken on board the category of God as a super-duper conjurer creating stuff instantaneously as fully formed configurations, stuff that just springs into existence like a rabbit out of a hat. If this statement of their views is caricatured and unfair they had better tell me why it is. 

The particularly North American notion of God as a magician appears to be associated with the view that somehow the T term in equation 1 classifies as a "natural force" and therefore we must have T ~ 0. For them admitting T >> 0 is an intolerable bogy that is shockingly close to admitting some kind of evolution; to them it is the evil thin end of the "natural forces" wedge of secularization.  But in my opinion for the Everywhere and Everywhen God T is just as much a divine creation as is S. 

*2 Footnote: Falling into the linguistic trap of "nothing":

Richard tells us this: 

Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco • Richard Carrier Blogs

 What I showed is that once you actually allow for there to be nothing—nothing whatsoever—then a quasi-infinite multiverse is the inevitable, in fact unstoppable outcome. Because removing all barriers to what there can be or what can happen entails allowing all potential outcomes an equal chance at being realized (given only a single constraint: that logically contradictory states have a zero probability of coming to pass). There is nothing there to prevent that, nothing around to keep “nothing” a stable absence of everything. “Nothing” is, by its own defining properties, unstable.

That's not how probability works. Probability isn't a dynamic capable of generating something from nothing: it is about the level of observer information. Moreover, the physics of probability is about describing random patterns and not about the "instability of nothing". Probability and randomness are in no way an argument for the impossibility of "nothing"; trying to use them to generate aseity is well beyond their scope of usage. 

I've seen similar misinterpretations of the Uncertainty Relationship: As Richard is doing here, the principles of probability and randomness are glorified by raising them to the level of a kind of transcendent god-like dynamic or propensity capable of at least creating randomness from nothing. They don't see randomness as being only the mathematical description of a class pattern we meet in the universe rather than being a transcendent creative dynamic.

Another point: The principle of equal a priori probabilities concerns human information levels. That in itself isn't a sufficient condition that automatically translate into reified patterns of randomness.

CONSCIOUS COGNITION

 

Is there really gritty matter out there? Or do we construct the out-thereness 

of matter from the mathematical rationality of our pattens of consciousness? 

Unraveling the Puzzle of Consciousness: Key Brain Region Discovered - Neuroscience News

I've written a lot on the subject of consciousness over years. In that time I've expressed my philosophical slant towards idealism, a philosophy that I see as the only chance of making sense of consciousness.  In trying to summarize my view I would give account of my own version of idealism as follows:

The Problem

There seems to be an incommensurability, or conceptual disconnect between conscious cognition and the material world of particles which make up the many kinds of dynamic configurations we perceive around us. What is it about a dynamic configuration such as we see in the neural structure of the brain which makes it conscious? The problem is compounded by recent strides in Artificial Intelligence which are starting to do a good job of simulating at least some aspects of human behavior. The AI problem seems to be simply a case of creating the right kind of dynamic configurations which imitate human thinking. In trying get the AI cognitive dynamic right the question of adding the sentient magic of consciousness doesn't come into it and in fact is of no help at all when trying to design AI systems. It is no surprise, therefore, that some people, misled by the third-person linguistic currency of science which deals largely with dynamic configurationalism and which is (necessarily) oblivious to the first-person perspective, will tell us that consciousness is a mirage or some kind of illusion; a position which is a bit like saying that pain and suffering are illusions and therefore what's the fuss all about?

But yes, on the face of it there is an issue here: In all our attempts to investigate the dynamic configurational basis of intelligence/sentience, whether by deeply probing neural structure or trying to simulate intelligence/sentience computationally the concept of consciousness simply doesn't come into our thinking: So, does it really exist?

The Solution. 

The consciousness problem arises because of the seeming logical impossibility of finding consciousness even in the most sophisticated material configurations; for the closer you look at any configuration the more you find just further configurational detail and that is not what we mean by consciousness.  I would explain that this is because conscious cognition is an entirely different genus of category to configurational categories; conscious cognition is the thing that is doing the looking, whereas material configurations are the things being looked at.  The question "Where can one find consciousness in the physical regime?" is therefore unanswerable until our attention becomes focused back toward the observer rather than the observed. 

So, if we are going to treat material configurationalism as fundamental, axiomatic and elemental we will never be able to solve the question of consciousness. The solution, then, is to turn the question around: Viz: If the perceptions of conscious cognition are taken as fundamental, and axiomatic can we then find a material physical a regime? The answer is a clear yes.... 

If the perceptions and qualia of sentience are sufficiently organized with mathematical precision and faultless registration it then becomes possible for conscious cognition to define material objects in terms of the mathematical logic controlling experience. But to do so would also require that conscious cognition is itself sufficiently organized, rational and sophisticated for it to be able to mentally construct material objects from its experience. The elegant twist in the logic here is that we find conscious cognition is itself describable in terms of the very material physical regime conscious cognition constructs and perceives. I love this twist of circular self-affirmation: As I've said before it so reminds me of the way a computer language compiler can be written in the very language it compiles; that is, a computer language is actually described in terms of itself. Likewise conscious cognition constructs and conceives the objects of the physical regime and discovers itself to be describable in the self-same terms of that physical regime*. See the introduction to my book where I grappled with these ideas.

 

The Thing-in-Itself

Of course, we can never know the nature of the thing-in-itself which delivers the organised patterning of our experiences (However, see Acts 17:28 for a possible Biblical answer).  But if we have sufficient intelligence we can perceive and understand the organization of the experiential interface that this thing-in-itself mysteriously presents to us. It is this organization which enables us to define a rational physical regime of apparently "gritty" matter (or should that be "wirery" strings?). And at the same time we find that we can also self-describe ourselves in terms of that matter. 

At this point one might be tempted to say that because the material physical regime is a mathematical construction made possible by the high organization & high registration of our experiential interface then it follows that "gritty matter" is a kind of mathematical illusion and that conscious cognition is the actual elemental & fundamental reality. This turn of phrase, which I have some (but not full) sympathy with, turns the "consciousness-is-an-illusion" philosophy on its head; if I say "gritty-matter-out-there is an illusion" it serves as a useful hyperbole to get the message of idealism across that the thinking conscious intelligence is fundamental and axiomatic to the cosmos. 

But that message needs qualification: As I've said before, I suspect there are no bit parts in the material "illusion": I'd guess that no object is simply an experiential facade, unlike the characters and objects which appear in a novel or a computer game which are developed just enough to keep up the illusion of a deeper reality. All the mathematics of all the objects and characters in the story of matter have, I suggest, been worked out in full whether it be those distant galaxies or those events of the distant past. 

So, am I claiming that life, the universe and everything is some kind of thorough computer simulation giving us a facade of apparently gritty matter? The answer to that is both "yes" and "no". 

"Yes" because there is, I believe, some kind of matrix dedicated to supplying us with an experiential interface capable of empirically answering all the questions we put to it. This constitutes the equivalent of a kind of Turing test for an ontologically real world; as far as empirically interrogating this world is concerned the "illusion" seldom reveals itself to be an "illusion" and survives robust probing.  But we just don't know the absolute nature of the medium on which this mathematics has been reified (although as a Christain I would quote Acts 17:28). Moreover, because the philosophy of idealism gives conscious cognition such a primary and fundamental place it helps to break us into the notion that divine conscious cognition is the a-priori matrix on which the physical regime is reified.

"No" because the computer simulation argument has only been presented in a way where it is clear that "gritty matter" is assumed to be axiomatic, elemental and fundamental. See here for my reaction to the computer simulation notion.  

Very early on in my thinking career I was impressed by the logic of positivism; it seemed irrefutable that not only did all knowledge come via experience/observation but also the objects of the material world were meaningless without their ordered experiential base and the cognitive ability to construct them mathematically. This kind of logical positivism rightly assumed that the combination of organised experience and sophisticated cognitive abilities were axiomatic and fundamental. But where positivism was in danger of falling-over was that it was liable to render meaningless any thought that the constructions built from the data dots of experience pointed to a reality beyond the observer; history, distant galaxies and above all other sentient beings were in danger of, very counter intuitively, dissolving into nothingness, leaving us with a very egocentric solipsism. There had to be a matrix out there that was far more fundamental and elemental than the cognizant observer and which maintained that highly organised facade and interface to a real world. Given the primacy of sentience in the idealist philosophy, for me Acts 17:28 was a rational guess for the nature of the matrix, a guess that integrated and made sense of so much about the human predicament. 

End Note:

My own highly speculative attempt at the physics of consciousness can be found here. I don't push this theory with any strong conviction, but just to prove that theorizing on consciousness should not be a taboo subject. What this theory lacks however is the colourful qualitative nature of conscious experience. Experiential qualities are irreducible to the formal black & white terms of configurationalism. Although Penrose's idea that conscious cognition is a correlate of incomputability is a possible line of inquiry I'm not impressed by this theory myself. 

Footnote

* It must be understood that this self-description is only in terms of the formal structure of cognition as opposed to the qualities of conscious cognition: An AI system may be able to do a could job of formally simulating/describing the neural activity of the mind, but identity of formal structure is not a sufficient condition to create the qualia of consciousness. 

Does this Interview Solve the Human Predicament? Part IV

 Spoiler Alert: Probably not, very probably not!

This boasting far exceeds even Donald Trump's bragging! 

The World Transformation Movement (WTM) is far too full of 

loud-mouthed hype to classify as a scientific movement. 

Self-praise is no recommendation. 

.

The previous parts of this series can be found here:

Part I

Part II

Part III,

The thesis proposed by WTM guru Jeremy Griffith, a thesis I have begun to criticize in the previous parts of this series, is this: That the human predicament with all its personal and social aggravations is down to a clash between inherited instincts and the conscious mind. 

I very much beg to differ with this analysis: As I've proposed in the previous parts of this series I find that the human predicament is grounded in the very physics of conscious cognition: Viz: That the private first-person perspective of the conscious mind means that it is not party to the experience of the second or third persons and therefore can only to infer, but not feel, the experiences of other minds. Consequently, reacting acceptably to other centers of conscious cognition presents both an epistemic and a moral challenge to the conscious individual ....Viz: The epistemic challenge of correctly inferring the experience of other minds and the moral challenge of rightly reacting to those inferences. 

Human instincts and motives are then layered on top of the basic physical fault line between individual minds, but I see no necessary clash between human instincts and the conscious mind. The repertoire of human instincts such as seeking social recognition and status, sexual motives, fear, joy, anger, aggression, hunger, love, the search for meaning, the search for coherence etc. etc. are all part of the human survival suite of goals, a suite which doesn't necessarily clash with the conscious mind, but rather works in partnership with it; Viz: it is these motives which constitute the interest suite of human life, a suite which motivates the intellect to work out the means and methods of achieving the goals of the whole person. Without the goal-seeking motivations provided by this suite conscious cognition would lose the spark, energy and purpose which drives it. Instincts, then, are a very necessary aspect of the conscious mind. The problems of the human predicament come about when there is a conflict of interest between individual centers of human cognition. But the fact is the relative isolation of those centers is built into the very physics and biology of life. 

In the following interview with Craig Conway, Jeremy Griffith fleshes out his thesis in more detail whereupon I will correspondingly criticize his thesis in more detail. Craig clearly thinks Jeremy's thesis makes sense; he then asks a question......

CRAIG CONWAY: Yes, that makes sense Jeremy, so what happened though when this animal became conscious and its whole life turned into a psychologically distressed mess?

JEREMY GRIFFITH: Well, the easiest way to see what happened is to imagine the predicament faced by an animal whose life had always been controlled by its instincts suddenly developing a conscious mind, because if we do that we will very quickly see how that animal would develop a psychologically troubled competitive and aggressive condition like we suffer from. So let’s imagine a stork: we’ll call him Adam. Each Summer, Adam instinctually migrates North with the other storks around the coast of Africa to Europe to breed, as some varieties of storks do. Since he has no conscious mind Adam Stork doesn’t think about or question his behaviour, he just follows what his instincts tell him to do. But what if we give Adam a large brain capable of conscious thought? He will start to think for himself, but many of his new ideas will not be consistent with his instincts. For instance, while migrating North with the other storks Adam notices an island full of apple trees. He then makes a conscious decision to divert from his migratory path and explore the island. It’s his first grand experiment in self-management.

MY COMMENT: Firstly, it seems likely to me that those animals who share with us a very similar neural basis for their minds also have consciousness, although what they are conscious about will likely considerably differ both in quality and quantity to ourselves: In fact, it is likely that the consciousness of human beings, with their relatively large brains, will qualitatively and quantitatively far exceed that of many animals. From this it follows that consciousness isn't an all or nothing affair but comes in degrees and in different qualities; it doesn't suddenly switch on when a cognitive threshold is reached.  

In the above scenario Jeremy is asking us to imagine a case where a migration journey is neurally hardwired into the mind of a stork. Presumably at one time this journey was a vital part of its survival strategy and was a solution to both breeding and feeding. But it seems that changing environmental conditions have brought about better potential solutions that the stork, if the stork had sufficient intelligence to work out those solutions, could have employed. In the above scenario Jeremy imagines that the intelligence of the stork has developed to the level where it is able grasp a more efficient survival solution.  What Jeremy has not told us is that the overriding urges servicing the need to survive such as an urge to feed, breed and conserve energy are instincts which are still very much in place. Therefore, in my view to characterize the human predicament as a conflict between instinct and intelligence is a misrepresentation. 

JEREMY GRIFFITH: But when Adam’s instincts realise he has strayed off course they are going to criticise his deprogrammed behaviour and dogmatically try to pull him back on his instinctive flight path, aren’t they! In effect, they are going to condemn him as being bad. Imagine the turmoil Adam will experience; he can’t go back to simply following his instincts. His instinctive orientations to the migratory flight path were acquired over thousands of generations of natural selection but those orientations are not understandings, and since his conscious mind requires understanding, which it can only get through experimentation, inevitably a war will break out with his instincts.

Ideally at this point Adam’s conscious mind would sit down and explain to his instincts why he’s defying them. He would explain that the gene-based, natural selection process only gives species instinctive orientations to the world, whereas his nerve-based, conscious mind, which is able to make sense of cause and effect, needs understanding of the world to operate. But Adam doesn’t have this self-understanding. He’s only just begun his search for knowledge. In fact, he’s not even aware of what the problem actually is. He’s simply started to feel that he’s bad, even evil.

MY COMMENT: As I have already suggested humans have a large suite of instincts motivating them: Let me list them more fully:

 e.g. feeding, breeding, sexual interest, seeking social status and recognition, seeking community, anger, seeking safety and security, seeking comfort and warmth, seeking meaning and purpose, curiosity, seeking understanding, artistic endeavor and above all an instinctual sense of what is and what is not just and moral. 

 None of these motivations can be labeled as bad or evil per se and as far as I'm aware none has a necessary conflict with the conscious mind: The conscious mind has a valuable partnership with these instincts in as far as the intelligence of that mind is able to find ways in which the goals behind these potentially life enhancing drives might efficiently be achieved. So, Jeremy's picture of a war between mind and instincts does not come over as true to life. Even anger, which we might see as potentially troublesome has its upsides:  For example, many people who face the tragic consequence of social injustices do not have to explode with an incoherent burst of anger but instead we often see them channeling their emotion of anger by dissipating it into constructive channels of endeavor as they seek to right the injustices in society and thus better society thereby. But what about egocentricity? Well, we will come to that next..... 

Where the angst and predicaments arise is when human beings are unable to fulfill these primary instinctual motivations, especially so because life is full of zero-sum games and therefore inter human-interests conflict and egos clash. But again, like other instincts ego is not a bad motivator per se: We all have a sense of dignity and worth and have a right to protect that sense of self-worth when it is challenged with a threat of belittlement or even extinction. Naturally enough each centre of conscious cognition seeks to enhance itself and its experience of life - nothing wrong with that in itself. But the zero-sum games of life mean that the interests of individual centres of conscious cognition have the potential to collide and conflict. So, the primary potential source of conflict isn't between one's instincts and one's mind but between individual centres of conscious cognition. Ego isn't the problem; the problem is egocentricity: that is when a particular human ego seeks solutions to his life experience by enhancing his experience regardless of and at the expense of the egos of other human beings; in short, egocentrics are people who ignore their super-ego. 

CRAIG: Okay, so what you’re saying is a war has broken out between his conscious mind and his instincts, which he can’t explain, and it’s left him feeling bad or that he is bad in some way, or even evil. So what happened then?

MY COMMENT: Well, Craig if you had the nous, you'd understand that there is no necessary clash between instinct and the conscious mind but there is a potentiality for a clash between the interests of individual conscious minds, a potentiality that results of the experiential isolation of the first-person perspective. This isolation is imprinted on the very substance of which we are composed.  I refer to it as a potential clash of interests because self-denial in favour of others (which is what morality is all about) should in theory kick in at this point. Human beings have a choice on this score; they can either give deference to the inferred feelings and experiences of their fellows or put the priority entirely on the self, the ego and become egocentric. Which is it to be? I must also point out that compounding the challenge of self-denial are the epistemic difficulties of being able to correctly extrapolate into other minds. 

JEREMY: Well, tragically, while searching for understanding, we can see that three things are unavoidably going to happen. Adam is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from his instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienated— which is the psychologically upset state we call the human condition, because it was us humans who developed a conscious mind and became psychologically upset. (And ‘upset’ is the right word for our condition because while we are not ‘evil’ or ‘bad’, we are definitely psychologically upset from having to participate in humanity’s heroic search for knowledge. ‘Corrupted’ and ‘fallen’ have been used to describe our condition, but they have negative connotations that we can now appreciate are undeserved, so ‘upset’ is a better word.) So Adam’s intellect or ‘ego’ (ego being just another word for the intellect since the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ego’ as ‘the conscious thinking self’ (5th edn, 1964)) became ‘centred’ or focused on the need to justify itself—Adam became ego-centric, selfishly preoccupied aggressively competing for opportunities to prove he is good and not bad, to validate his worth, to get a ‘win’; to essentially eke out any positive reinforcement that would bring him some relief from his criticising instincts. He unavoidably became self-preoccupied or selfish, and aggressive and competitive.

So our selfish, competitive and aggressive behaviour is not due to savage instincts but to a psychologically upset state or condition. Basically suffering psychological upset was the price we conscious humans had to pay for our heroic search for understanding. In the words from the song The Impossible Dream from the musical the Man of La Mancha, we had to be prepared to ‘march into hell for a heavenly cause’ (lyrics by Joe Darion, 1965). We had to lose ourselves to find ourselves; we had to suffer becoming angry, egocentric and alienated until we found sufficient knowledge to explain ourselves.

MY COMMENT: That diagnosis of the human predicament is far from the truth. As I keep saying the existential angst of the human condition comes not from a clash between instinct and the conscious mind; after all, as we have seen our instinctual motivations, if properly served, are life enhancing and the conscious mind has an important role in finding ways of fulfilling those profound instinctual goals.

Summing up: The real clash at the root of the angst in the human condition has its origins in....

1. Conservation laws which mean that life is full of zero-sum games.

2. The physics of human conscious cognition which entails private first-person perspectives isolated from the first-person perspectives of other sentient beings. This privacy entails a potential clash of interest between humans who do not directly share one another's consciousness. I stress potential clash because cooperation, self-denial, compromise and the urges of moral instincts present to us choices which have the opposite potential of heading off clashes of interest between egos.

3. The epistemic problems of putting oneself into the experiential shoes of others. 

Given this context our life enhancing instincts are not to be shunned or blamed for our existential angst; our conscious cognition has no necessary argument with those instincts; they are important motivating and goal seeking urges. As we have seen even anger has an upside as a justice seeking motive. 

The tendency toward egocentricity is a potential outcome of the separation of conscious cognition into quasi-isolated first-person units each of which is tempted is to serve self above all: This situation has a far deeper grounding in the hardware of our cosmos than mere instinct: it is built into the very physics of living things. 

I simply can't identify with the thought that any existential angst I have has its origins in a clash of instinct and intellect: Which of my instincts gives me aggravation? None that I'm aware of!  Where the clash comes is when the implementation of my drives is likely to badly impact the experience and feelings of other human beings; it is then that the following language used by Jeremy (taken from the above quote) actually applies: Viz:  

Adam (that is myself)  is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from his (moral) instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienated— which is the psychologically upset state we call the human condition,

That correctly describes a human, like myself, a sinner sold under sin, when I know I've done a disservice to the goals of a fellow human; I am then tempted to engage in the deceptions of self-justification that Jeremy talks of. So Jeremy's description of the human condition is in some ways correct but his identification of the deep causes are wrong. Moreover, to call it an "upset state" is an understatement that makes light of a fundamental human fault line built into the very fabric of reality.

Jeremy goes on to continue to construct this straw man that our existential angst is because our instincts are rebelling against the search for knowledge. No way!... it is the very search for knowledge that is driven by our deepest instincts such as curiosity and the search for meaning and purpose. There is no way in which my heroic search and thirst for knowledge is being labeled by my instincts as bad or evil: That is simply not true. What does trouble my conscience and is liable to be labeled as bad or evil is if in life's zero-sum games, I short-change my fellow humans in favour of self. In spite of Jeremy's straw man depiction, just who is labelling the heroic search for knowledge as bad and evil? No one I know. But the label "corrupted and fallen" is appropriate to my frequent failure to give the first-person experience of fellow humans a rightful place in my life. 

CRAIG: Wow Jeremy, I mean this is just fascinating. So Adam Stork—we humans—developed a conscious mind and unavoidably started warring with our instincts, an upsetting war which could only end when we could explain and understand why we had to defy our instincts, which is the understanding that you have just supplied, yes?

MY COMMENT:  *shakes head*

JEREMY: Exactly, remember Adam Stork became defensively angry, egocentric and alienated because he couldn’t explain why he was defying his instincts, so now that we can explain why, those defensive behaviours are no longer needed and can end! That’s basically all there is to explain, that is the biological explanation of the human condition that so explains us that, as Professor Prosen said, it brings about ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’!

CRAIG: This is such a simple story but so far-reaching in its ramifications—I mean it is world-changing is what it is, because it truly enables ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’! I mean that is just wonderful.

MY COMMENT:  Simple story? Rather, it is simply false!  Once again: I'm personally unaware of my intellect being at odds with any of my instincts, least of all the heroic search for knowledge, meaning and purpose: Both intellect and instinct are life enhancing and especially so if they work cooperatively in tandem. But the temptation to serve exclusively within the purview of my first-person perspective is the only "instinct", if "instinct" it can called, that has the potential to open a door to a troubled world of angst, ambivalence and denial. Yes, I'd agree that the explanation of the human condition is biological, but Jeremy has nailed the wrong biological explanation. Moreover, because the perceptive fault-line between those centers of biological sentience is so fundamental to the fabric of reality the WTM's superficial analysis that the solution to the human predicament lies in the psychological rehabilitation of the human race falls woefully short of the mark.

Well, I don't suppose I can expect too much insight and critical analysis from Craig who seems to be utterly blown away by the presence and guru status of Jeremy Griffith and Harry Prosen both of whom clearly fail to see where the real challenge of the human predicament lies; namely, in good old fashioned "sin", the word with the "I" in the middle.

***

There is also one another source of human vexation which I really need to mention: That is the unfilled targets of our instinctive ambitions.  If we are thwarted in our aims, this can be a great source of frustration and unhappiness.  However, this is often related to the clash of human interests; viz: Selfishness, when it proceeds against a background of zero-sum games, leads to the goals and aspirations of many being at odds with one another and consequently in the subsequent scramble many dreams remain unfulfilled. 

ADDENDUM 13/02

I've been trying think of cases where there is a clash between instinct and intellect.  Possible cases: 

1. Eating habits: When there is a surfeit of food such as we find in rich industrial societies the instinct to eat as much as possible while the going is good  - which is appropriate when food is much scarcer - can impact health badly; that's even though our intellects understand this health impact.

2. Large anonymous industrial societies which are very much a product of human intellectual work may cut across human instincts which prefer smaller intimate tribes and communities close to the natural order of things. cf The Romantics. This instinct, if instinct it is, of tribal/group/class/community identification and its potential for inter-community competitiveness may be bound up with the factional human violence which we see so much of. 

***

....to be continued. 

'Hostilities began in an extremely violent way': How chimp wars taught us murder and cruelty aren't just human traits (msn.com)

Galen Strawson on "Why is there something?"

Picture from: Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff review – a real poser (msn.com)

"W

hy is there something rather than nothing? It’s meant to be the great unanswerable question. It’s certainly a poser. It would have been simpler if there’d been nothing: there wouldn’t be anything to explain".

So starts a Guardian article written by Galen Strawson* where he reviews a book by Philip Goff titled Why? The Purpose of the Universe. 

Usually, the word "Aseity" is only applied to God: The phrase "The Aseity of God" is intended to convey that in some way we don't understand God's existence is a self-explaining logical truism and therefore, the idea that God doesn't exist is a contradiction. For those who are uncomfortable with the kind of theism which posits an all-embracing totalizing sentience called "God" I suppose it is possible to attempt to apply the notion of Aseity to the secular cosmos; Viz: that the existence of the cosmos itself has some inherent logical necessity that we've yet to understand, if indeed "Aseity" can ever be humanly comprehended as it may involve infinities.

But as I have expressed many times before, whether the source of Aseity is sentient or not, that source isn't going to be found in conventional physics & science. This is because the laws of science as "explanations" merely describe. That is, they do not "explain" in a sense which addresses any inclination we may have toward believing that our perceived reality has its foundation in some kind of Aseity. Conventional science and physics work because the high organization and high registration in the patterns of our experiences makes it possible to describe those patterns in the succinct and compressed forms we call the "laws of physics/science".  No matter how compressed these forms are - and they can never compress to nothing - they will always leave us with a hard kernel of incompressible contingent information which has no further "explanation" than "It just is". As I wrote in this blog post: 

I favour the view that mathematics betrays the a-priori and primary place of mind; chiefly God’s mind. The alternative view is that gritty material elementals are the primary a-priori ontology and constitute the foundation of the cosmos and mathematics. But elementalism has no chance of satisfying the requirement of self-explanation as the following consideration suggests: what is the most elementary elemental we can imagine? It would be an entity that could be described with a single bit of information. But a single bit of information has no degree of freedom and no chance that it could contain computations complex enough to be construed as self-explanation. A single bit of information would simply have to be accepted as a brute fact. Aseity is therefore not to be found in an elemental ontology; elementals are just too simple.

Those who find the notion of God unacceptable nevertheless often betray an instinctual intellectual need for at least a non-sentient form of Aseity: We see hints of this instinct in the expression of puzzlement at the "unexplained" contingencies that science can only ever deliver (But see my quote from Bertrand Russell below). It seems that human intuition is confounded by brute-fact and yearns for deeper explanation, reason or cause (call it what you like) for the apparently arbitrary state of affairs the cosmos presents us with. Given the state of human knowledge then as the above quote from Strawson suggests, "nothingness" is actually the most reasonable state of affairs we can think of as it wouldn't demand any explanation at all. But in discussing these questions we really need to define just what we mean with words like "explanation", "reason" and "cause"; for as we have seen "scientific explanation" is in the final analysis mere description and in a deeply intuitive satisfying way is no explanation at all (But see Russell!) 

Anyway, continuing with Strawson's article...

STRAWSON: Some people think that if we knew more, we’d see that there couldn’t have been nothing. That wouldn’t surprise me. Others go further: they think we’d see that there couldn’t have been anything other than just what there is: this very universe, containing just the kind of stuff and laws of nature it does contain. That wouldn’t surprise me either, nor – I suspect – Einstein: “What really interests me,” he said, “is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.” (Einstein’s God is a metaphorical device: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.”)

MY COMMENT: Once again, we see the same intellectual hankering expressing itself here; namely, that the very existence of the cosmos is founded in some kind of logical necessity or has a profound "reason", "explanation" or "cause" - whatever those terms mean. Not only that, but some wonder if the very form and configuration of the cosmos (as described by its laws) is underwritten by logical necessities we have yet to comprehend. 

STRAWSON: Most people who ponder these things take a different view. They think the universe could in fact have been different. They think it’s puzzling that it turned out the way it did, with creatures like us in it. They are tempted by the idea that the universe has some point, some goal or meaning. In Why?, Philip Goff, professor of philosophy at Durham, argues for “cosmic purpose, the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life” and the existence of value.

I’m not convinced, but I’m impressed. Why? is direct, clear, open, acute, honest, companionable. It manages to stay down to earth even in its most abstract passages. I’m tempted to say, by way of praise, that it’s Liverpudlian, like its author.

MY COMMENT: OK, so assuming the very existence of the cosmos is a necessity (even if we are unclear about the logic of that) the next question is why is the cosmos the way that it is? According to Strawson most people don't see logical necessity in the form of the cosmos even if its existence is a necessity; that is, it seems logically possible the cosmos could have had a different form altogether with different laws. So, according to Strawson, in response to this Philip Goff addresses the question of why the universe is as it is by proposing that the cosmos has goals and purpose, and these goals and purposes bring configuration & form. Goff is therefore implying that the cosmos is subject to teleological constraints. Or as I have put it many times in this blog using an algorithmic metaphor, the cosmos works like a declarative computation: that is, it is searching for declared goals: The cosmos has a declared computational purpose. 

But Strawson is not convinced ...too right he's not convinced: Teleology fits rather too well with an a priori sentient creator! Talk of "cosmic purpose" makes most paid up atheists feel very uncomfortable indeed. 

STRAWSON:The book has a double beat, like a heart: each chapter begins with a diastole, an admirably accessible section on its subject – consciousness, the point of life, the purpose of the universe (if any), the existence (or non-existence) of God – and closes with a systole, a more taxing “Digging Deeper” section.

Goff rules firmly against the traditional Christian God, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent – while backing the notorious “fine-tuning argument”, which goes roughly as follows: it’s so incredibly unlikely that a universe such as ours, containing life, consciousness and value, should have come into existence at all that we must suppose that some purpose has been at work, tuning things to come out as they have. It’s extremely hard to do this well, and Goff provides an intellectually aerobic primer on the logic of probability, and in particular the Bayes’ theorem, one of the core ideas of our day. His conclusion is as advertised in his title: nothing is certain, but the balance of evidence favours belief in cosmic purpose.

MY COMMENT: As I am unlikely to read Goff's book I can't challenge him on the specifics of his rejection of the Christain God; however, I assume that Goff has in his mind some sort of overarching sentience working out its will in the cosmos because only in the presence of sentience does the purpose, goal and meaning have any intelligibility. I personally have gone down the (Christian) theism route as the only way I can think of satisfying our need for Aseity, epistemic security, a sense of anthropic purpose and an account of human social & political failure in one swoop (Not to mention the need for human salvation). So for me the traditional Christain God is my way of trying to make sense of the human predicament and circumstances; if indeed the need to make ultimate sense of things has meaning beyond human strivings; after all it seems unlikely animals are plagued with the enduring curiosity which drives a lifetime of existential yearning for ultimate explanation and purpose. Animals appear to be satisfied to simply accept the earthly status quo, as long as it provides food and safety (Although there is evidence that at least some animals also prefer an interesting, varied & social environment. Although it is not clear that they are plagued by the existential angst over meaning and purpose)

I guess that Goff's Bayesian arguments are along the lines I've described in this document. However, I think I'd agree with the last sentence above: Viz: that according to Goff  nothing is certain, but the balance of evidence favours belief in cosmic purpose.

STRAWSON: The question is genuinely difficult. I’m bothered by the fact that many of the arguments for fine-tuning depend on varying the fundamental physical constants (eg the charge on electrons) while holding the existing laws of nature fixed. I can’t see why engaging in this curious activity could ever be thought to explain anything, or support any interesting conclusion. And if – as Einstein and I suspect – nothing could possibly have been different, the fine-tuning arguments collapse, as Goff acknowledges. But his discussion is ingenious and illuminating.

MY COMMENT: I think Strawson has a point here; that is that fine tuning cannot be coherently separated from the other aspects of the laws of physics. Using the algorithmic metaphor: It is clear that both initial conditions and the information inherent in the laws of physics form one package of curiously contingent fine tuning. Moreover, there is no known logical obligation which tells us why the cosmos should sustain itself moment by moment and place by place. Ergo, the so-called fine tuning of the fundamental constants is not the only enigma but so is also the maintenance of the known form of the laws of physics everywhere and everywhen. 

In his last sentence in the foregoing quote Strawson displays the same intuitive intellectual instinct which seeks some kind of Aseity "explaining" why the cosmos is as it is. Although I guess that in Strawson's case he would likely posit that that Aseity is to be found in a non-sentient object, rather than in the conventional notion of God. 

STRAWSON:  In the chapter on consciousness, Goff brings up the standard view that there’s a radical difficulty in explaining its existence. I think that those who believe this have gone wrong right at the start: they think – quite wrongly – that they know something about the nature of matter that makes it mysterious that consciousness exists. Wrong. There’s no good reason to think this, as Goff agrees. The solution is to suppose (along with a good number of winners of the Nobel prize for physics) that consciousness in some form is built into the nature of matter from the start. This view is known as panpsychism, and Goff ends his discussion with “a prediction: panpsychism will, over time, come to seem just obviously correct”.

MY COMMENT: I sort of agree with Strawson and Goff here: That is, that matter, if rightly configured has built into it the ability to generate conscious cognition. I stress rightly configured because I don't think our current AI simulations, no matter how good, are conscious; they are just simulations and don't use matter in a way which generates conscious thought. My long shot guesses at the way matter must be used to generate consciousness can be found in this paper.  See also my footnote below on idealism*

.

STRAWSON: Why? is a rich book. It aims high and ends with some good political reflections. It’ll turn quite a few heads. It should get the discussion it deserves. I don’t for all that think the universe has a purpose. I think it just is.

It does, though, seem to have a taste for complication. The balance of evidence is a delicate thing, but it seems at present to favour the view that something is going on that isn’t fully accountable for by the laws of physics. It’s nothing to do with “Nobodaddy” (William Blake’s name for the nonexistent Christian God), or any sort of goal, but Wittgenstein seems to be on the right track when he tries to express his sense of absolute or ethical value and finds it crystallised in one particular experience: “I wonder at the existence of the world”.

MY COMMENT: So, Strawson thinks the cosmos "just is" and without purpose. Bertrand Russell said something similar in his debate with Father Copleston:  

I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all [there is to it!]

Strawson's notion of a "just there" cosmos is consistent with what we understand about so-called "scientific explanation" which because in the final analysis is fundamentally just a form of description can only ever leave us at the contingent edge of a "just there" kernel of information. So it is no surprise that Strawson can only say “I wonder at the existence of the world”. Well, so do I but for me I have the urge to seek beyond the absurdity of a "just is" contingency to a deeper concept of explanation which satisfies the human yearning for purpose. Aseity based on a Christian concept of God and an account of human Sin are concepts I find no more absurd than a  "just is" cosmos and the moral, social and political perplexities it leaves us with. 

***

Strawson's reference to God as "Nobodadday" is a pointer to the attitude of many in the hyper-secularized atmosphere of elite intellectual culture; these communities look askance at theists and religionists and may even treat them with a mocking disrespect. Although hyper-secularized culture dominates academia and intellectual elite communities these groups are in many respects an anomaly in the sea of faith which is broad and full in the wider world. Billions of the world's population are religiously motivated and in notable cases those religionists of (authoritarian) faith dominate politics. If the hyper-secularized intellectual community think of those of faith as deplorables with absurd views it will only help polarize the religious populares against them and provide fertile ground for demagogues who will tell those religionists what they want to hear. The populares will turn to these demagogues for guidance rather than academia who they may perceive as part of a conspiracy to defraud them of their traditional values. In spite of their sneers, I personally support academia although I would criticize those like Strawson who hold a hyper-secular message of a "just is" cosmos, a paradigm which I find just as absurd as they might find my theism.  Moreover, as we know from the French revolution and various attempts to establish Marxism, hyper-secularism is also a high road to authoritarian traditionalist values, the re-emergence of a paradoxical secularized religion and the return of ruling demagogues. The political world of left and right isn't a flat space but is curved into a sphere where the extremes of left and right meet at the same authoritarian place. 

* Footnote on Idealism

I hold the view that conscious cognition exists because without it reality is an unintelligible notion: If reality doesn't deliver patterns of conscious experience and, at that, sufficiently organized experience for conscious cognition to be able to construct a rational ordered reality, then the meaning of reality is lost in the nebulous notion of "gritty matter" having an existence independent of sentient perception. So, reality is the conjunction of organized conscious experience, and this organization facilitates the construction of a rational world which conscious thought builds around organized experience. The Matrix teaches us that reality is the logic of experience. 

But if conscious thought is itself to classify as real it too must deliver a rational account of itself. It follows then that reality has a self-affirming, self-referencing character: Viz: Conscious perception of the cosmos gives the cosmos intelligibility and coherence; but if reality exists only if conscious thought delivers a rational account of it, then for conscious thought to classify as real it too must have a rational account of itself. So, as conscious thought gives coherence and substance to the concept of a highly organized material cosmos then the cosmos in turn accords reality to conscious cognition by returning a rational account of conscious thought. (See the introduction of this book where I first mooted this self-referencing account of reality). However, there is one big problem with this form of idealism: Human beings come in and out of existence and therefore cannot be the primary reality. This is why it becomes necessary to posit a primary overarching sentience which gives meaning and reality to the cosmos. 

* Guardian Footnote: 

Galen Strawson is a philosopher and author of Freedom and Belief (Oxford). Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff is published by Oxford (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer buy your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. From Friday 8 December 2023 to Wednesday 10 January 2024, 20p from every Guardian Bookshop order will support the Guardian and Observer’s charity appeal 2023.