On Panda's Thumb: Do we have free will? Part II

Spoiler Alert: Pseudo Question!

The free will-determinism dichotomy is an illusion

This is the second part of a two-part series where I discuss a post by Matt Young on the evolution website "Panda's Thumb" entitled Do we have free will? No.  See here for Part I.  In his post Matt mentions that in 2001 he wrote a book with the title of No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe. This is what he says of his book:

MATT YOUNG: In that book, I argued that humans were biological creatures and therefore governed by the laws of physics. Those laws are deterministic (we will get back to that in a minute), so everything we do, think, or decide is determined by those laws. We may think we have free will; we certainly have to act as if we have free will; but in fact we have no such thing.

MY COMMENT: I wouldn't take issue with Matt's statement that humans are biological creatures and therefore governed by the laws of physics.  After all, as a Christian I support the view that our highly contingent physical regime has been reified from the platonic realm in an act of Divine creation and therefore displays miraculous wonders every second of the day; it can have no property of Aseity and therefore its mere daily existence is a sign and wonder. Where Matt falls over in the above quote is that he's barged straight into subject as if we have a clear idea of what freewill and determinism are about; but we don't: See my series where I took to task a Christain who was also sure that the dichotomy was absolutely uncontestably clear and meaningful; that it certainly is not! My understanding is that even a computer running a deterministic program can be said to have "free will" in that it makes choices/decisions according to its physical make up; but it loses that freewill if outside influences coercively steer it away from its natural decision tree. I don't necessarily dispute that the laws of physics govern human behavior, although we must caution that it is clear from the state of physics that in spite a substantial understanding of the "algorithms" which constrain the patterns of the cosmos we cannot claim to have a comprehensive understanding of those laws. But as I show in my series I've linked to, the conclusion that we either have "free will" or "no free will" is an unintelligible dichotomy. 

MATT YOUNG: Now before you get your knickers in a twist, none of the foregoing implies, for example, that we should not punish criminals. The pain they may inflict is real, and we may have to separate them from society until (or unless) they reform. I suggest, however, that their lack of free will suggests that we should be rehabilitating rather than punishing criminals. But that discussion is a little off-task here.

MY COMMENT: Interesting to note that Matt in his comment about the pain criminals inflict is very probably implicitly making an empathetic extrapolation whereby he perceives the first-person perspective of other human beings; that is, he is implicitly recognizing the existence of private consciousness. 

Yes, I think I agree with Matt's rehab line but the awful public punishment spectacles of times past were a primitive attempt to interfere with human psychology via a kind of social aversion therapy; that is, fear of the consequences of transgressing the societal status quo help keep law and order. It's a crude kind of rehab on the social level. It may well be that the sometimes-irresistible instinct to punish & wreak vengeance (something we all feel at times) is a proximate motivation which finds its utility in more primitive contexts.   In fact, in times of war it swings back into action, with a vengeance.

MATT YOUNG: When I wrote NSO, I assumed that quantum mechanics was itself purely deterministic and that someday we would discover an underlying, deterministic theory. It simply seemed unreasonable that, for example, an atomic nucleus would decide all on its own to emit an alpha particle, rather than being caused to do so by some external agency. It still seems unreasonable to me, but it may not be right

.MY COMMENT: Interesting to note that Matt was inclined to rebel against the idea that QM presented randomness. I suspect two motives for this: 

a) Prior to the coming of the new mechanical sciences there was much more scope for attributing inexplicable events to the fiat of spirits and gods.  In contrast under the new paradigm stuff happened because it conformed to known (or perhaps as yet unknown) mathematical patterns. But the notion that events, some events at least, are part of larger random patterns seems to leave the door ajar for the introduction of superstitions about spirits and gods manipulating the world via fiat. After all, the apparently acausal nature of randomness is counter intuitive and spirits and gods may be resorted to as a way of restoring conventional ideas about cause and effect; human beings find it hard to except patterns at face value. 

b) Determinism, if it can be expressed in terms of succinct mathematical algorithms which can be humanly grasped, gives us the feeling that it wraps things up in a neat package and looks to be a big step toward a closed ended system that crowds out divine fiat - or so it seems.

So, it is my guess that Matt is sublimating here an ulterior need for an intellectual hegemony which lives in the hope of tying up all those loose ends with a comprehensive system of intellectually tractable deterministic laws or algorithms which describe all that happens in the universe; This is the search for explanatory completeness.  It is futile quest destined to end with a hard core of unexplained brute contingency - and I'm talking about "explanation" here in a sense that is more satisfying than mere mathematically tractable descriptions. 

But, and here is the big "but", randomness is just another pattern albeit with the mathematical property that it requires either very large algorithms to specify it or very long algorithmic generation times. In the final analysis randomness presents us with the same mysteries that underlie those humanly tractable deterministic patterns: Viz: From whence come these ultimately contingent patterns of behavior? What sustains their reification moment by moment and place by place? Their mystery isn't to be found just in their instantiation in mathematical generators at the beginning of time but also in that they continue to work everywhere and everywhen when in fact there is no logical necessity (i.e. no Aseity) that they should continue to do so. 

 

MATT YOUNG:  Does quantum mechanics then come to our rescue and somehow grant free will? No. First, so many molecules are involved in, say, neurotransmission that their action may be considered completely classical and therefore completely deterministic. Even so, the occasional quantum fluctuation would not so much grant free will as it would make our decisions somewhat random, a condition that I think proponents of free will would not particularly care for

.MY COMMENT: It is possible that the human mind, like many other systems in the cosmic physical regime, is a non-linear feedback system, making it chaotic and therefore influenced by the butterfly effect of random quantum events. This actually may be a useful feature as the mind seeks creative solutions to problems: The randomness is exploited to provide useful novelty, but this doesn't necessarily mean human decisions are random; our decisions are likely constrained by overall teleological considerations that regulate this novelty, selecting or rejecting those randomly generated contingencies according to the goals and aims of the human complex adaptive system. 

However, it's true that I can't be dogmatic about the foregoing paragraph, but it does mean that Matt's conclusions above are in no way obliging. 

MATT YOUNG:  Quantum randomness may have been critically important to the evolution of the early universe. If we ran the “experiment” again, we might, for all I know, end up with a very different universe, one that does not even include us. That said, quantum randomness has very little effect on our daily lives, unless you count, for example, cancers induced by radioactive decay or cosmic radiation. Thus, as Sapolsky would argue, everything we think, say, and do is wholly and unequivocally determined by our detailed histories (except, as I have noted, for the occasional quantum fluctuation)

MY COMMENT: Matt's first two sentences here may well be true, but I feel he is likely to be wrong that quantum randomness (if it exists) has very little effect on our lives given that non-linear feedback systems are ubiquitous in our world. But this question, in my opinion, has very little impact on the free will-determinism question: The latter question as I have shown is really bound up with our definitions.

MATT YOUNG : I conclude, then, that we have no free will in any sense. I do not understand why some people consider that threatening; it simply is the way it is. We feel as if we have free will, we act as if we have free will, and we are treated as if we have free will. Free will is thus a useful fiction, but in reality it is only a fiction.

MY COMMENT: Determinism, as I've implied, is a perspective effect that is a function of the level of epistemic tractability of the patterns in nature. Determinism is an epistemic spectrum which runs from those simple (that is, short) algorithms of elementary physics which we find relatively easy to handle, to the much more complex patterns of apparent randomness, patterns which do not yield to simple algorithmic expressions. Ergo, determinism is a subjective category which depends on one's information, i.e. it depends on one's perspective. Matt's triumphant conclusion that "we have no free will in any sense" is as incoherent as those who hang onto to freewill categories. 

The two sides in this polarized debate between so-called "freewill" and "determinism" advocates find one another's stance threatening because they undermine each other's dearly held philosophy.  But for me their respective positions are void of intelligibility. 

The Riddle of The Sphinx

"It chanced that the face was toward me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile  on its lips. It was greatly weather worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease." The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 

 I once watched a lecture by historian Tom Holland where he expressed his view that Western culture is saturated in Christian values, even when it is at its most secular. He contrasted these values with those of the classical world of pre-New Testament civilizations such as Greece and Rome. Western secularism thinks of itself as having outgrown the "superstitious" beliefs of core Christianity, beliefs which affirm Jesus as a co-equal member of the Trinity & the Resurrected Savior of a humankind mired in Sin. But according to Holland even in the absence of this supernatural kernel, faith in Christ's teaching about humanity's moral duties still informs Western thinking. 

In a similar vein I was intrigued to see an article in the June 2022 edition of Premier Christianity magazine by a Glen Scrivener. In this article Scrivener picks up on a theme similar to Holland's and runs with it; in fact he has written a book on the subject called "The Air We Breathe", the same title of his Christianity article. The book got a good review in the same copy of Christianity. 

In his article Scrivener lists the values of equality, compassion, consent, science, freedom and progress as ostensibly an axiomatic part of Western moral mores. These mores all have their roots in what he calls "The Jesus Revolution". Above all, concern for the poor, the weak and the victimized, a stance which at least gets lip-service in Western humanist thought, was very much part of Christ's teachings.   

However, we should bear in mind that there was a long gestation-period before these Christian values  surfaced substantially into social discourse and subverted the status quo.  It was only during the slow demise of the aristocracy and serfdom that we start hearing that familiar "freedom and human rights" language (e.g. The 1381 peasants revolt) and see a drive to advance science (e.g. Francis Bacon). But having said that we nevertheless find Christian values embedded in Western history going a long way back before the peasants revolt and Bacon: That very peculiar tendency of Christianity to glorify courage and service in the face of vulnerability was there all along: e.g. Many of the churches of Norwich celebrate martyrs who like Jesus himself submitted themselves to those who would kill them for their faith. Examples  are  St, Edmund, St. Peter, St. Clement, St. Laurence, St Stephen and St John all of whom have at least one ancient church in Norwich memorializing their life and heroic deaths. A sacrificial life is the epitome of heroism in the Christian play book and these churches glorifying sacrifice come right out of the depths of the aristocratic middle ages. Christ's teaching had so sunk into the consciousness of the war-like Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans et. al. that they started to perceive a romantic heroism in a life of serene vulnerability.***

Humanly speaking it's a strange paradox that Christianity celebrated submission unto death  This was surely a revolution and an inversion of the old might is right ethos that dominated civilizations such as Egypt, Assyria and Rome; these civilizations glorified, above all, victory in war and in the building of empires, their despotic rulers claiming a large slice of the glory. Set that against Philippians 2:1-11

But when contemplating Holland's and Scrivener's theses we should also bear in mind that many latter day interpretations of Christianity are regressive and repressive and have become the receptacles of ugly attitudes and false beliefs such as European empire building, fundamentalism, brutal certitudes, anti-science thinking, young earthism, flat earthism, fideism, gnosticism, heavy shepherding, spiritual intimidation & abuse, demagogic leaders, conspiracy theorism, Christian dominionism and the like. Our understanding of the effects of "The Jesus Revolution" must have built-in qualifiers: Typically of the human predicament, progress is a backwards and forwards motion, a zigzagging to and fro somewhere between the good, the bad and the ugly.

But then Christianity itself has an explanation for this very mixed picture: Human beings, Christian and otherwise are moral shades of grey and always face the challenges and uncertainties of an imperfect epistemology: But that's why Christ came; He came to not only reveal Himself but to also save us from the ultimate consequences of human sin. But without that supernatural centre around which those important values of humility, serenity, meekness and service orbit, the way to hell is paved with good intentions: The French revolution and Marxism all made claim to laudable Christian humanist values about liberty, fraternity and equality but human beings are apt to corrupt those values beyond recognition. As Sir Kenneth Clark said in an episode of his epic "Civilization"* series, the leaders of the French revolution....

              ....suffered from the most terrible of all delusions: They believed themselves to be virtuous. 

...and may I add believed themselves to be the sole supplier of veracity, the only truth tellers. Such attitudes, it seems, can be found among those with triumphalist visions of utter certitude: From Marxists, through Christian sects, to Islamic fundamentalists** they see themselves as the last word for mankind,  But Scrivener, as a good Christian should be, is well aware of the failings that also plague churches: "I could go on. Criticisms of the church abound and many of them are entirely valid", he says. But he then says that such criticisms are actually using Christ's moral compass as the standard against which a flawed church is measured.  I feel that Scrivener and Holland are very much on the right track.....Christianity has had a very humanizing effect on us very flawed humans. Christ's teachings not only act like salt & light halting the rot somewhat but also, in places, reverses that rot. 

Finally, I would like to draw attention to one very profound observation that Scrivener makes. Viz:

The deepest clash between "belief" and a purely secular worldview does not occur between Christians and non-Christians. It occurs within the Western secularist, because the secularist is a believer too. They navigate their life by roughly the same stars we do - equality, compassion, consent and so on. On a daily basis, they walk according to these convictions, and yet as they look up to such supernatural values they insist that they are standing on purely natural ground. They claim to have a (practically) atheist account of the world, even as they live by (basically) Christian assumptions. 

Scrivener then goes on to make further observations that I would identify as the secular paradox: Viz: Christ's teachings so obviously give meaning and purpose to life and yet when they are seen through the lens of a purely secular interpretation of the cosmic perspective there seems to be an overwhelming disconnect: Where do those Western moral values we aspire to come from given the wider context of what to the secularist looks to be at first sight a huge impersonal universe apparently guided only by a ruthless survival ethic and which will eventually end in oblivion? There is an apparent mismatch of incommensurables here more stultify than the mismatch between gravitational theory and quantum mechanics.  Atheism teeters on the brink of the nihilist abyss..... This is the Riddle of the Sphinx for today's secular milieu.

Footnotes

* See the episode "The Fallacies of Hope"

** Critical Theory, which tries to trace (all?) human problems back to the observable conditions of the cultural, economic and political milieu, is likely to fall short of the mark if it fails to acknowledge that individuals, which are the seat of the first person conscious perspective, will naturally enough be tempted to look after self first under any circumstances.

*** It is possible that other religious leaders at one time or another preached similar values, but it seems that it is Jesus who is the almost exclusive source of these values in the modern world.

Moral Relativism

It is true that atheism doesn't set people up well to resist the intellectual pathologies found in the extremes of postmodernism and nihilism; these philosophies are like corrosive acids liable to eat away at not only one's grasp on rationality and truth. but also of one's morality. The only defence are the deep heart felt instincts supporting good community which, of course, many atheists feel as strongly as anyone else (See Romans 2:14-16). But other than having the status of being identified as strong social instincts there is little more these instincts have to commend themselves to the atheist world view other than in these social relativist terms; any cosmic absoluteness to morality (and even rationality) is in the final analysis completely lost. 

In this connection I was intrigued by a post on the de facto intelligent design web site "Uncommon Descent" by its supremo Barry Arrington in which he posted his response to the comments of two atheists named as Ed George and Seversky. These two talk about morality in the context of their atheism.  Here's the first part of Arrington's post: 

ARRINGTON: Ed George asserted that morality is based on societal consensus.  Upright Biped utterly demolished that argument.  See here.  Seversky and Ed tried to respond to UB’s arguments.

Let’s start with Sev:

"I, like everyone else here, would also want [the rape] to stop. Why? I should not have to say this but it is because we can imagine her suffering and know that it is not something we would like to experience nor would we want to see it inflicted on anyone else. It’s called empathy and its derived principle of the Golden Rule which, in my view, is more than sufficient grounds for morality."

MY COMMENT: Well done Seversky! Empathy is the ultimate (God given) rationale for morality as we shall see. It is this rationale which motivates the succinct expression of moral code embodied in the Golden Rule. One can hardly complain if Severersky carries out a thoroughgoing implementation of this rule (which of course no human being, apart from one, can do perfectly). But for a thoroughgoing atheist there is no ultimate reason why this Golden Rule should have any claim to an absolute status; after all, it is quite likely that on the basis of a minimalist survival ethic one can imagine social contexts where putting self first may be a "better" strategy (whatever "better" means in this context). Ironically an unbridled free market may illustrate the potential for moral perversity in a world without moral absolutes: For example some claim that rampant selfish self-betterment is supposed to lead to a wealth "trickle-down" affect, an affect which from a survival point of view benefits everyone. 

Nevertheless Barry has a good starter here for sharing and promoting  a common moral rationale and perhaps discussing what the origins of this rationale might be. But unfortunately he blows his chance:

ARRINGTON: This is a muddled mashup of two of the materialists’ favorite dodges.  First Sev appeals to empathy as the basis for morality.  He completely ignores several problems with this argument, including:

1.  Mere feelings are a very flimsy ground for a moral system.

2.  Some people do not have empathy (we call them sociopaths).  If empathy is the basis for morality, a sociopath has no basis for morality.

MY COMMENT:  Contrary too what Arrington is claiming here the existence of consciousness cognition (which is the context in which feelings have meaning) is the only ground for a moral system as we shall see.

Arrington inadvertently acknowledges the crucial moral role played by empathy in his reference to sociopaths; when it's not present things go badly wrong. Sociopaths have something about them which means they have no regard for the feelings of conscious cognition. To get an inkling of what it may be like to be sociopathic think of some of those realistic "shoot-em-up" computer games: Human game players have no compunction in shooting up gaming entities simply because there is no consciousness cognition to empathise with! In a sense human beings who live good moral lives outside the games environment turn into "sociopaths" of sorts when they play computer games in so far as they have no empathy (and rightly so!) for the simulated beings. These simulated entities have no consciousness and therefore no feelings. So consciousness changes everything. Perhaps it is not surprising that some atheists are inclined to deny the reality of the first person perspective of conscious cognition (as Arrington well knows - See here). For some atheists the reality of the first person perspective has just too much mystique; if there really is such a strange thing as a first person perspective inaccessible to third person observation then who knows perhaps there's even a......

But although empathy is the ultimate rationale for morality there is a difference between empathy and moral systems. Moral systems are there to best serve a society of conscious cognitions and therefore with out conscious cognition moral systems are without meaning, goals and purpose. Therefore moral systems are a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. For if human beings, like the facades of computer game entities, are a mere simulacrum with no first person perspective behind them then moral systems are purposeless and meaningless. A moral system is a code of behaviour that is cognisance of people's feelings in the context of community,

Moral systems, however, can be intellectually taxing: It is difficult for humans to anticipate all the ramifications of their behaviour in a social context and come to a reliable opinion on which moral systems best serve a community of interacting conscious entities. The moral challenge humans face therefore resolves itself into two challenges; firstly the challenge of raising a sufficient empathetic concern for other conscious entities and secondly the epistemic challenge of having to work out which moral system best serves community interests: Human beings, of course, are only capable of  imperfectly  responding to both challenges.  But even if we assume that a community is composed of perfectly empathetic beings anxious to get a moral system in place that best serves the community (clearly an idealistic assumption) there remains the problem that human epistemic limitations will imply they are unlikely to discover a moral code that best serves community.

The Golden rule is a neat one liner which sums up the spirit of moral systems but the complexity of community means that the devil is going to be in the detail; the system of moral code that best serves a community of conscious beings is going to be only fully understood if  one has divine omniscience. 

After Arrington's weak start, however, things improve:

ARRINGTON: 3.  Even for those with empathy, Sev offers no reason why they should not suppress their feelings if they believe the pleasure of their act exceeds the cost of the act in pangs of empathy.

Next Sev appeals to the Golden Rule as a ground for morality.  Well, Sev, it certainly is.  Yet, materialism offers no ground on which to adhere to the Golden Rule as opposed to any other rule such as “might makes right” or “if it feels good do it.”  Sev demonstrates yet again that no sane person actually acts as if materialism is true.

Sev, if you have to act as if your most deeply held metaphysical commitment is false as you live your everyday life, perhaps you should reexamine your metaphysical commitments.

MY COMMENT: Arrington's third point above does make headway: On what basis, other than ephemeral instinct, should anyone be troubled by the consciousness of other human beings. and instead live for self? For if as some atheists maintain consciousness is just an illusion constructed from a complex social interface why bother with it and instead just play as if one is in a computer game? But contrariwise I suppose all said and done an atheist could still claim that whilst moral instincts and code have no real absolute cosmic significance this doesn't stop people behaving instinctively with empathy and using the Golden rule. Let's hope that remains the case..... there is an unfortunate human history of principles based on bad ideology over ruling compassion all the way from the Nazis, through Christian fundamentalists to the French and October revolutions.

ARRINGTON: Now let’s go to Ed, who writes:

. . . UB’s question is not worth responding to

Ed states that a person who lives by himself has no moral obligation to anyone who venture near him.  UB points out that if that is true, Ed has just given said loner a license to rape any woman who ventures too near without breaking any moral injunction.  Instead of abandoning his screamingly stupid assertion, Ed pretends UB’s extension of Ed’s premises to their logical conclusion is “not worth responding to”. Ed is not only stupid.  He is a coward.

MY COMMENT:  ... or alternatively what does the loner do if he sees someone who desperately  needs help? (for example a child drowning in a pond? - assuming the loner can swim). Here we have an example of how the futility and purposelessness  implicit in atheism can have a corrosive affect on one's sense of what is right.

But don't let anyone go away thinking that I'm suggesting that it is only atheists whose morality is subject to corruption: As we well know those who think they have a moral code sanctioned by divine authority and go on to implement it without cognizance of the first person perspective, are also liable to corruption; especially so if they think their reading of scripture provides an all but direct, easy and utterly certain revelation of the divine will. Whether a moral system is arrived at from first principles or based on an interpretation of Holy Writ, the fact is you can't trust human beings to get it all right!


Relevant Link
https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-foundation-of-morality.html

The Foundation of Morality

You can't feel others feelings and sensations; if you did "they" would be "you"! Instead the third
 person account of humanity only yields: a) behavioral patterns at the macroscopic level and b) 
a complex dynamic molecular network at the microscopic level. 

I recently had a discussion with a Facebook friend (Chris Erskin - he's happy having his name published here) about the basis of morality. Although Chris is not an atheist (He is in fact a Christian) he is troubled by the question of what atheists base their morality on. Like myself he can't quite write-off atheism as a world view which necessarily leads to an amoral stance and he believes they do have grounds, even apparently without God, to behave morally. But if so, from whence does this morality come?  The following was Chris' opening gambit:

I am struggling to wrap my head around the atheist perspective of good and evil. If it is purely natural, as in a genetically evolved reflex or emotional response then how can it be said to exist at all? If it does exist then does it matter, if something that is said to matter is something that is of consequence. Nothing mankind does is of consequence as it it will all be forgotten and eventually destroyed. The only way I can see that it matters is if an atheist thought that we had transcended our nature somehow to achieve morality and that a good action remains a good action despite it being brief. That is hard for me to understand so any help?

True, atheism does have an abstract philosophical problem over the nature of morality; why should atheist behavior be constrained by anything other than a mere survival "ethic"? But in spite of atheism's philosophical difficulties here, atheists themselves, on a practical level, can display exemplary morals by human standards. After all: 

13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. (Romans 2:13-16)

But can we say more about conscience and those inner secret thoughts which give atheist and theist alike their hidden inner universal moral compass?  I believe we can.

Below I reproduce the discussion I had on the question with Chris E. But my own answers to this question depend on what I consider to be axiomatic; namely, that human beings have a private first person conscious perspective; without this axiomatic foundation the universal basis for morality disperses like an early morning mist; even for Christians. Having said that, however, I can't answer for those atheists* who attempt to deny the existence of consciousness and regard it as illusory. In fact Barry Arrington, supremo of the de facto Intelligent Design site Uncommon Descent, criticises atheist Sam Harris who, according to Arrington, claims consciousness is an illusion  Below I quote from Arrington's article (With my emphases):

Long time readers know we have occasionally indulged in Sam Harris fricassée in these pages.  See here, here and here for examples.  Harris is one of the leading proponents of the “consciousness is an illusion” school, which means he denies the Primordial Datum – the one thing that everyone (including Sam Harris) knows for a certain fact to be true — that they are aware of their own existence.  [See here for more on Harris' views on consciousness]

I agree with Arrington's objection. As Arrington says Harris will, in fact, know the Primordial Datum to be a self-evident reality; but of course, that doesn't necessarily stop him outwardly denying it as a reality. My own view is that even if we should have in our possession a complete neuro-molecular account of human brain functioning (an idea I'm actually in great sympathy with - I'm not a fan of ghost-in-the-machine dualism) it would still not do away with the first person conscious perspective - in fact it requires it. (See here for more on this subject. See also my footnote below on John Searle*). 

However, I depart from Arrington in his next comments:

That said, we will be the first to admit there is an integrity – of a sort – to Harris’ silliness.  He understands that his materialism precludes, in principle, the existence of immaterial consciousness, and so he denies consciousness exists.  Yes, I know, it is gobsmackingly stupid.  But at least it is an honest sort of stupidity.

Where I disagree with Arrington here is his implicit dualist ID mindset which envisages there to be a sharp dichotomy between the "immaterial" and the "material". It is this dichotomy which leads to de facto ID's self-inflicted philosophical fault line between intelligence and so-called "natural forces". In my view one can not separate cognitive self-awareness from the so-called "material" (Once again see here for more on this subject). I've taken de facto ID to task over this false dichotomy many times before on this blog so I will say no more at this juncture. That Arrington somehow perceives an honest logic in Harris' position is a sign that they share a Western dualist category system which sets "the supernatural" against "natural forces". 

Nevertheless, I agree with Arrington that Harris' position, if in fact he holds it, is gobsmackingly stupid; it is the self-beguiling of someone who is unwilling to accept something he knows not only to be true and but which also underwrites truth. For as Arrington suggests, Harris will in his heart of hearts be aware of the Primordial Datum; it is the starting point on which objectivity is rooted in as much as all observation of the objective must evidence itself via our first person experiences. Likewise, as I propose below,  it is also the corner stone of morality and one's secret moral compass within.  

Whatever an atheist like Harris may say in public, his morality, such as it is, only makes coherent sense if he believes the reality of other human beings to not merely reside in a facade of elaborate behavioral patterns registering in Harris' solipsistic interface of personal experience, but are also centers of conscious sensations of joy, pleasures and pains like himself. The occasional denial of the first person perspective may actually have its roots in anti-theism: For to admit that human beings have a first person perspective which necessarily doesn't and cannot figure in a third person account of human beings is uncomfortably close to theism's positing of a cosmically embracing divine first person perspective.

The contents below appeared on Facebook.

***

Hello Chris;

A rather long post I’m afraid. The contents here were destined for my blog, but I’ll lumber you with them as well. Below I take quotes from your post and interleave my own comments. 

The secret of morality (in my view) is that we see other human beings as having a first person perspective like our selves - that is, as entities with a consciousness of pains and joys etc. If we are well tuned into this empathetic extrapolation the feelings of others become our feelings to a greater or lesser extent. This is probably the basis of the Golden Rule (See James 3:9 and Romans 13:8-10) and also atheist morality. However, we have a big issue here. The third person (scientific) perspective only ever yields human beings as patterns of behavior and/or dynamic configurations of particles. Accordingly,  some people  (notably some atheists) have proposed that that sense of conscious feeling which is the basis of morality (that is, the first person perspective) is entirely illusory! It may be that these atheists feel uneasy about something which as far as science's third person language is concerned remains (by definition) unobservable and may look like the thin end of the theistic wedge. It is when one attempts to reduce the first person perspective to just a third person perspective that the meaning of morality becomes a problem. The two perspectives of the first and third persons must run in parallel for a meaningful morality to emerge. One needn't be a theist for this to happen. Take for example the atheist philosopher John Searle who acknowledges the first person point of view as an irreducible feature of our universe.**

QUOTE: I am starting to see I have stumbled on an area of philosophy that hasn't changed much in the last few hundred years with a consistent clash between free will and determinism. I think you are right to put the moral decisions of right and wrong within the gaps of the two greater theories but it also fairly unsatisfying! If free will is an illusion through biological evolution then so is the decision making process of moral law. The problem is then justifying through evolution alone the huge amount of resource of calories and blood that goes into making us under an unnecessary illusion of free will. UNQUOTE:

MY COMMENT: I have always had a major problem identifying a coherent meaning of the “Free will vs determinism” dichotomy. I’m neither denying nor affirming either side of this dichotomy – I’m just saying that neither are intelligible as concepts. For every finite pattern you observe there is at least one mathematical function of greater or lesser computational complexity which can be used to generate that pattern. Therefore because this kind of mathematical "determinism" is an almost trivial mathematical theorem it raises the question of just how useful “determinism” and its negation “free will” are as concepts. Patterns are just patterns with varying levels of mathematical tractability. Ergo, in my view, “determinism” and “free will” are both of illusory significance. If I may put it stronger; they are both bogus categories. Forget them.

QUOTE: The other end of the spectrum is the theist [does he mean atheist? Ed] that denies the physical attributes of consciousness who is also wrong. I see why you agree with Leighton in his middle ground. Yes biological evolution produces real free will (probably) and with free will comes an external understanding of empathy which can be used to want to buffer others experience of pain, as an example, as you would yourself. UNQUOTE

MY COMMENT: Well OK, let’s accept for the sake of argument that (constrained) evolution has generated entities called humans, entities which have the first person perspective of conscious cognition. Given the latter humans therefore have the potential to engage in a kind of empathetic projection which means they are able to identify one another also as centres of conscious cognition. This realisation, however, has amazing implications: It means that so-called “matter”, if assembled into the right configurations, results in the first person perspective of conscious cognition. This is an astounding property of matter for it suggests that the potential for conscious cognition and personality is an inherent and implicit property of matter.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think you are agreeing with me that the innate ability of human beings to project empathetically, thus enabling them to identify other humans as centres of conscious cognition, is an important precursor of morality. But if consciousness is an implicit property of matter (that is, matter in the right configurations) it follows that our taboo against obnoxious behaviour isn’t just a kind socially constructed rule that arbitrarily defines the category of “obnoxiousness”: This follows because the taboo actually has its origins in the fundamental character of matter and its implicit potential for giving rise to a social network of self-conscious beings who in turn have the potential to infer something about what one another are feeling. If the first person perspective and its potential for empathetic projection has its origins in particulate configurations of matter it follows that the fundamentals of morality also have their basis in our physical regime and not merely in social construction. This understanding should be no problem for a Christian because for the Christian the physical regime is God created and therefore it is no surprise that it has what in Western dualistic language would likely classify as something tantamount to a “supernatural” attribute; that is, the potential to generate the first person perspective of conscious cognition. No wonder some atheists find consciousness hard to stomach. 

QUOTE: I still think this middle ground lacks the explanation of moral law unless it can be reasoned as a sort of mutually developed group approval. Even in this case I would argue it is just the methodology behind an evolved mechanism and therefore holds little value as the thing by which we feel we understand values such as justice. The wrongdoer would just be someone who failed to have the genetic or social make up in which to maintain correctly the normal values that we assume within the culture. The truth that this isn’t the case is acted out constantly in people’s furious anger against those who they know to have done wrong. UNQUOTE

MY COMMENT: Although I think it’s true that morality does become socially embroidered with a lot of arbitrary rule driven complexity obeyed by way of rote rather like a computer following its program (especially in religion), I’m proposing that the underlying kernel of morality is based on the fact that matter has the potential to generate self-conscious cognating identities and with it the potential for empathetic projections to be made between those self-conscious identities. Thus it follows that what underwrites fundamental morality is not arbitrary social convention, but surprisingly, the fundamental physical regime itself which, of course, for the Christian is created, sustained and managed by God himself.

Human anger results when they believe that another centre of conscious cognition, of which it is assumed has the capability to make the right empathetic projection, nevertheless insists on engaging in offensive behavior which is careless of the feelings of others. In this sense the meaning of "sin", the word which appropriately has  the "i" in the middle, is clear, but there is an epistemic problem in identifying whether "sin" exists in particular cases. The epistemic problem is that a person’s offensive behaviour may have mitigating unseen circumstances like, for example, an autistic problem with identifying people’s feelings etc. But if one’s genetic makeup has given one the ability to make a correct empathetic projection and yet one still engages in offensive behaviour then sin is sin, even if it takes an omniscient divine perspective to identify its presence with certainty. It is an irony that what you identify as “genetic determinism” is the very thing which bestows the responsibilities of morality upon us: For surely it is the right genetic make-up which is required to generate the brain capable of giving us insight into the feelings of other minds and therefore the choice on how to respond to those inferred feelings. (Psychopaths may be deficient of the ability to empathetically project)

QUOTE: The response you would expect if it was merely a deviation from the expected behaviour would be more like - "Apologies we the majority have decided that your physical individual interpretation of morality does not fit in well with our society at this time. Despite the fact that it seems unreasonable to lock you up we have decided to take this course of action. We hold no hard feelings or ill will towards you as we understand you are only working with the confines of your genetics, your experiences and your ability to empathize" UNQUOTE

MY COMMENT: Yes and no. “No” because we’re not talking arbitrary social fiat here. For reasons I’ve already given fundamental morality has its basis in the fundamental character of matter and its God given potentiality to generate conscious personalities and by implication the potential for empathetic projection. And “Yes” because judging whether or not an individual has willfully neglected his/her capability for empathetic projection is, as I have already said, epistemically precarious. Hence human social justice, in my view, should err on the side of serving the role of pragmatic deterrence and restorative justice, rather than judging sin – the latter is God’s role not ours.

QUOTE: Instead now more than ever the response is fury and disgust at those that dare disagree with your world view. In this way I think they prove the belief in a right to hold others to a far higher account then merely the biological. UNQUOTE:

MY COMMENT: Ironically (in my view) it is the "mere" biological which gives us morality! That “higher account”, as you call it, is, I propose, found in the very low level details of created matter itself; to be precise (I suspect) the details of quantum biology. If true, what an irony!

 QUOTE: Leighton’s point that it isn't evidence of a higher being is probably true. Despite using Jesus summary of the entire Bible as evidence that we no longer need a higher beings morality. It does show that the idea of moral law itself could be part of the illusory sense developed. My point about the overzealous commitment of those willing to condemn others also works as well to prove that the higher moral law is an abstraction that solidifies conviction and doesn't necessarily make it more true. UNQUOTE

MY COMMENT: Evidence is always an interpretation; in the light of this understanding of what constitutes so-called “evidence”, it is awfully easy to interpret the fact that conscious cognition, personality and therefore morality are implicit in our physical regime as “evidence” of theism. After all, it suggests that conscious personality is a fundamental potential of the cosmos. It’s then a very short intellectual journey into the world of the anthropic principle and the question of theism! This may be why some, repeat some, atheists prefer to declare the first person perspective as an illusion in order to cut this dangerous line of thinking in the bud.

***

Let me finish by noting again the irony that the so-called  “higher law” of morality is in fact written into the very low level fabric of matter! Western philosophy is held back by a gnostic “spirit vs. matter” dualism which sees them as two very different categories. In Western thinking either one of these categories tends to be dominated by the other, perhaps leading one or the other being declared as unreal or unworthy: That is, atheists tend to declare the spiritual to be unreal and Christian Gnostics declare the material to be profane. This dualistic philosophy also holds back our church life with its modern stress on a quasi-gnostic rendition of Christian experience. This alienates many Christians whose faith isn’t just based on “wow!” experiences. To be frank I've never really developed any synergy or rapport with Western Christianity myself, so I know the feeling.

Christian scientist Denis Alexander is worth reading on this subject. Like myself he is not in favour of dualism. See:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/christian-world-views-part-2-christian.html

Footnotes:

* Atheist Daniel Dennett has also been accused of denying the existence of consciousness.  Philosopher John Searle says of Dennett's view:

To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?

** John Searle has been accused of sexual harassment. An accusation has surfaced that "Searle has had sexual relationships with his students and others in the past in exchange for academic, monetary or other benefits". It seems that when a pattern of such accusations emerge about influential males in high places we can safely conclude that there is no smoke without fire. It is ironic that in identifying the necessary precursor of morality (i.e. conscious cognition) Searle should show such a flagrant disregard for the feelings of those he has offended against.  Because philosophy tends to follow the vagaries of fashion, it is quite likely that Searle's behaviour has damaged his philosophy. More's the pity.