The following is a series of emails exchanged between Mat Wilson and I over the course of the last several months (my messages will be in bold, Mr. Wilson's not):

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Mat,

First, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that just yesterday I watched a video where an objectivist read something Rand said about the encounter between European colonists and the many indigenous populations who originally inhabited North America. Basically, she tried to justify the genocide by saying the natives had no concept of individuality, rights, or property, and so it was somehow moral for the colonists to just take the land and kill them all in the process. I find this absolutely appalling, both because of how she seems to ethnocentrically apply the idea of non-aggression, but also because of how she conceives of the earth as something to be "owned" and only valuable when produced and sold by humans. This kind of anthropocentric attitude has lead to the largest extinction event in 65 million years (approx. 20,000 species are going extinct every year; the background rate is about 1 a year) and caused a forthcoming change in climate that could very well spell the end of civilization as we know it. So even though I am rather unsettled about her perspective, I will try to approach Rand's philosophy "objectively", as they say.

I just read Rand's epistemology on Wikipedia. I know, not the best source, but its good enough for an introduction, eh? I have a few issues:

1) While I reject the extreme relativism of post-modernism, I think there are some very important insights it has provided that any serious philosophy today needs to take into consideration.

a) there is the issue of logic. There are many kinds of logic aside from the Aristotelian. There is no one absolute and correct Logic, as philosophers once thought. Logic is normative, in other words. So long as all involved agree on the kind of logic to be employed, it is 'objectively' true. In a similar sense, there is no longer one kind of geometry. Euclid's geometry is now only one possible form of geometry, next to Riemannian, projective, etc. geometries. This is important considering how Rand dismisses the necessary/contingent distinction. We can say that there are many possible space-time manifolds because we know there are many possible geometries. So our particular space-time manifold is not necessary, it could have been otherwise.

b) there is the issue of multicultural sensitivity, which obviously Rand does not understand, as her opinion on the colonization of NA shows. Her "rationality" is not Absolute. It arose out of a particular cultural and historical context and is not necessarily objective for all people. There are many ways of knowing, each valid in its own sphere. Again, I'm not a relativist, but nor am I an absolutist or objectivist. I think there is truth, but we must always be careful to remember that truth can be approached from a whole variety of perspectives.

2) I think Rand's epistemology neglects the importance of emotion for cognition. fMRI scans of the brain in action show the limbic system (associated with emotion) and the prefrontal cortex (associated with rational thought) are always active together, mutually dependent one on the other. This is true even when subjects are evaluating the truth of statements such as 2+2=4. This is true for us not only because it is logically correct, but because it is somehow pleasurable for us emotionally.

I could go on but I'll stop now and wait for your response. Thanks for your interest in engaging me in all this, by the way!

take care,
Matt

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Matt,


Mat,

The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has helped me conceive of how animals are thinking and conceptualizing beings despite the fact that they do not speak. Whitehead writes (in "Process and Reality") that propositional thought does not require language. Dogs, for example, DO think spatially about object relations. Otherwise they would not be able to catch a frisbee. The pervasive Cartesianism that separates mind from body in our modern culture prevents us from understanding how bodily motility (human or not) is already a form of cognitive articulation. Language is simply a further development of the silent propositional logic of the body; it allows us to reflect upon our own meanings, to reframe situations and so define more appropriate and complex behaviors in a way not accessible to non-speaking animals. Obviously, as you go backwards down the chain of complexity, organisms become less conscious and more instinctual. But there is no sharp line separating humans from animals. Dogs are conscious, in my opinion. Insects are not, though certainly they are still experientially-aware in some limited sense (not blind machines or mere automatons).

We like to think of ourselves as the rational animal, but I think this is largely a future aspiration and not a current reality. Our current global socio-economic situation is about as inefficient and irrational, not to mention morally egregious, as I could imagine. Inefficient because it (industrialism) is thermodynamically unsustainable, morally egregious because it (capitalism) is feeding off the poor periphery (global South) to accumulate wealth and resources at the industrialized, "developed" centers/cities (in the West). One of the things Hornborg discusses at length in his book is how money/wealth is never "created," but is rather part of a zero-sum game in which any gain for one party comes at the loss of another. Capitalism is inherently exploitative and based in unjust social relations. Money is fetishized (as Marx recognized) and obscures inequitable personal relations by raising a veil of abstract exchange value between us. We think some invisible hand, or intrinsic goodness of "the market" maintains fairness, but this is just ideological medicine for a deeply rooted psychological sickness alienating us from one another and the earth which birthed and sustains us. Human beings and their economy do not produce anything but new symbolic/cultural relations--the only true producer is the Sun, or perhaps plant life, which converts light into food and air for the rest of the biosphere to eat and breath. Until we recognize that ecological relations trump any contrived "economic law," we will continue to pillage the planet and exploit the labor and resources of "undeveloped" people. The logic of capitalism requires that there be a class of poor people and cheap resources to be exploited by a class of rich owners. We will never live in a just and equitable world until we totally re-think our economic relations.

Another thing that needs critiquing (in my humble opinion) is the Anglo-American (since at least Locke) tendency to abstract the "individual" from the society/culture in which they are embedded. Individuality does not come before society. Everything you as an individual know and do is provided for you by a cultural matrix of relations. Your "individual rights" arise from and are protected by "collective responsibilities." Your identity is at least partially constructed by those you interact with on a day to day basis, as well as by the language you happened to be born into. Don't get me wrong, individuality is a wonderful thing. But it is not an end-in-itself. We cherish individuality because of the expression it affords us, and expression is a communal value. We individualize because we want to share our authentic selves with everyone else. Autonomy is always in communion.

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Great point on the dog.. how could it calculate the proper steps to catch a frisbee? I was actually thinking of the dog when writing that there is evidence that it does have a 'ghost' in its 'shell'.

"We like to think of ourselves as the rational animal, but I think this is largely a future aspiration and not a current reality."

Yes, the unique part of of being rational does imply volition. And each person must choose out of their own volition to operate through reason (i.e. concept formulating and hypothesizing and testing). It seems the average person, though, lives in ignorance and happily lives passively never pondering on philosophy and just hoping good luck or fate will continue to provide them of their wants and needs. They don't care about history, or what makes things works.

"Inefficient because it (industrialism) is thermodynamically unsustainable"

What is your definition of, "industrialism"? And I hope it's not something to do with factories or cars.. that is technology. (including the waste it may produce. All organisms produce waste of some sort. Humans just happen to have ugly smoke come out of their cars. But cows fart grass and deteriorate the ozone.. or so I've heard!)

"morally egregious because it (capitalism) is feeding off the poor periphery (global South) to accumulate wealth and resources at the industrialized, "developed" centers/cities (in the West)."

Capitalism doesn't do anything. Capitalism doesn't even exist. It is only a word to describe the interpersonal interactions among people as traders (not just monetary trade either.. but any sort of relationship where each party has the intent to make a mutual-benefit that will further enhance and/or sustain his life.. including love, conversation, etc...).

So, if we break it down: I take what you're saying as, 'It is morally egregious to use one's mind and live as a human being through free, rational thought and trade amongst one's self and others.'

You must be more specific. Who is committing a crime against whom? In a politics that recognizes and upholds the individual.. it is only the individual that is prosecuted and not his neighbor that had no part in it.

"Money is fetishized (as Marx recognized) and obscures inequitable personal relations by raising a veil of abstract exchange value between us."

Money is a unit of credit remunerated to a person for his contribution to a society's economy and livlihood. We cannot eliminate money and say, "You scratch my back, and I'll scracth yours."

If we relied on that bromide.. it may be that simple in certain cases but it's just like arithmetic v.s. algebra. We can deal with simple, direct addition and multiplication of known, simple numbers but when several other 'factors' (pun intended.. think polynomials ;) comes into play and exponents and unknown exponents, etc.... No one can control what is beyond their mind's direct, perceptual capacity so we must resort to "abstract exchange value between us" because properly-formed concepts are valid pointers of what exists in actual reality. It all has to do with 'unit-economy' or what Ayn Rand called, "crow epistemology".

"We think some invisible hand, or intrinsic goodness of "the market" maintains fairness, but this is just ideological medicine for a deeply rooted psychological sickness alienating us from one another and the earth which birthed and sustains us."

That "invisible hand" is your mind's [volitional] power of abstract reasoning and ability to form concepts. You cannot know everything.. no one can know 'everything' (at least directly/perceptually ;). The market does maintain fairness as long as a gun (or any form of force or fraud) is NOT involved to acquire value. We are far from that though and politicians are currently trying to take over the medical industry in America.

The Earth, as a planet, is an unconscious piece of rock (if I may be so crude ;). The sun has no consciousness either. It is true that they have given us our existence, but they are not dieties and did not volitionally intend to create us. We cannot 'thank' them.

"Human beings and their economy do not produce anything but new symbolic/cultural relations--the only true producer is the Sun, or perhaps plant life, which converts light into food and air for the rest of the biosphere to eat and breath."

Yes, but aren't those "symbolic/cultural" (and material formations, too! ;) wonderful and grand!? And like I said, the Sun has no volition and is not some kind of diety. It is not a producer.. it's just a great resource that happened to be put in the right spot. ;P

(Some people like to get nice tans, too, with it. Others think about how they'll make a solar panel out of it to power their entire city. But we don't give it thanks or money.. it demands none.)

"Until we recognize that ecological relations trump any contrived "economic law," we will continue to pillage the planet and exploit the labor and resources of "undeveloped" people."

These "underdeveloped people" are humans, right?? Or are you referring to plants and bugs? There are no "underdeveloped" humans (unless the person has down-syndrome or similar.. then you're missing a chromosome or whatever and really missing out on major qualities of life). There is really only irrational cultures that have psycho dictators or politicians leading them.(actually.. 'forcing' would be a better word)

"The logic of capitalism requires that there be a class of poor people and cheap resources to be exploited by a class of rich owners."

I hear that argument all the time. It always lacks the context of volition and current reality. The latter, reality, argument: The poorest people in America today, are farrrr richer than some of the richest kings and tribesmen in history... Those bossy monarchs sure as hell didn't have internet, tv, heating and air, running water, grocery stores, sugary goods, microwave and fast foods, etc. etc. etc.. even a couple hundred years ago!)

And volition: Success is not an accident. Anyone that is willing and determined to, can become rich beyond what they dreamed possible. It doesn't mean everyone will make several hundred million dollars.. but pretty much anyone willing to refine their studies, work, and discoveries and maintain it.. will do something tremendous (or even small!) that will reward them justly.

But when politicians start pointing the guns for pursuing one's own interests.. that's when jobs and poverty start pouring down.

"We will never live in a just and equitable world until we totally re-think our economic relations. "

I absolutely agree! (just not in the same way you do ;)

Alright, this will probably be my last letter for the night. Write me a short reply on whether or not you still disagree and if I cleared up anything or confused you...

I still have yet to respond to your last paragraph. I will do so tomorrow but I do agree that identity and autonomy is largely inherited and "is provided for you by a cultural matrix of relations."

I think that statement is written eloquently! (namely, "cultural matrix of relations")

Btw, I think we could get away with some animal rights. I think it's absolutely horrific when these weirdos scrape fur off of *living* animals and leave them in pure agony... I also don't like when people allow their dogs to get in dog fights and bet on the dogs....

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Well, I wouldn't want to say the dog "calculates" the proper steps to catch the frisbee, as if it projected a Cartesian grid onto the world in order to decipher its coordinates and direction. Rather, the dog's knowledge of the frisbee's spatio-temporal arc is implicit and embodied: a "know-how" rather than a "know-what." It is much the same for you and I when we, say, encounter a flight of stairs. We don't need to logically analyze each movement of our legs in advance in order to walk up the steps; instead, our legs do the "thinking" for us in real time.

I should point out that even this formulation ("our legs do our thinking for us") seems to suggest a dualism between "you" and "your" legs, as if there were some metaphysical chasm separating one from the other. It is more ontologically honest to say "I am a body" than "I have a body," for who is this "I" apart from the body-as-lived? You are the active attunement of your body to others and the world. Your volition is a function of your biological constitution: animation-from-within, will, purpose, etc. are not exclusively human possessions. Rather, they are part and parcel of being alive. Every organism is in this sense ensouled. Even the biosphere as a whole constitutes a living system with its own intrinsic telos. In fact, human purposes are best described as derivative of the primary directionality of the cosmos at large (which are diverse, ranging from creativity to cataclysm). The human being is quite unique, I wouldn't want to deny that. We are the leading edge of a 13.7 billion year cosmogenesis, leading because we are the first species, not only to know (to be self-conscious) in the general sense, but specifically to know transcendent love. Ironically, self-consciousness is only possible if we have internalized otherness. Internalizing otherness is synonymous with loving another selflessly, giving oneself to an other for the sake of something greater than either of you as individuals.

All this is directly precisely against the Randian ethos of enlightened selfishness. To my mind (as they say), such a doctrine ignores the discoveries of modern depth psychology (Nietzsche, Freud, Adler, Jung, Lacan, Hillman, Tarnas, Rozak...) concerning the various reasons and ways in which the ego is not the master of its house (the psyche). The notion of acting out of rational self-interest is a tautological platitude. It's meaning is always self-referentially defined, and so the ego can perpetually convince itself that it is in control, even if in actual fact its life remains largely unpredictable and mysterious. The philosophical or reflective life is not the norm, not by any stretch of the imagination. It involves what I mentioned above, an incorporation of what initially appears foreign or other (in the case of philosophy, this is Wisdom/Sophia) by way of loving cognition. Philosophy is quite literally the love of wisdom.

Industrialism is the use of machines (both technological and social) to transfer extropy (negentropy) from the global periphery to "developed" centers of capital accumulation. In the process of thus transferring highly ordered energy and materials (i.e., extropy) from resource rich localities to technologically sophisticated cities, industrial machines produce tremendous amounts of entropy (waste, pollution, etc.). The net gain in "productivity" and "profit" for those at the center is at the expense of the ecosystems, peoples, and cultures surrounding them (for example, the US imports Ecuadorian oil in exchange for the exported weapons their government needs to secure the resource from rebellious peasants). Economics is a zero-sum game. There is no growth in one sector without the destruction of another. This is the main lesson we learn by applying thermodynamics to the global marketplace.

All organisms produce waste, it is true. But unlike global industrial capitalism (GIC), nature reproduces itself differentially, in myriads of forms and niches. This provides for long-term stability (evolutionary stability, no doubt... stability is here defined not as static conservation, but as the continuous movement toward diversity and mutuality).  GIC reproduces homogenously, turning the whole planet into English speaking, McDonalds eating consumers because it is built atop a logic of general-purpose money whose value is so abstract that it can substitute for almost any cultural meaning. Hence the rapid commodification of EVERYTHING, from food to friendship, so typical of the waning years of the industrial system. Marx was right about at least one thing: capitalism is invincible to outside ideologies, but inevitably tends toward its own self-destruction (because of ecological inefficiency leading to biospheric crisis and moral egregiousness leading to class revolt).

I have nothing against mutually-enhancing relationships between people. In fact, I think they are our only hope! I'm arguing that GIC requires a general-purpose monetary system, and that such a system necessarily trends toward the commodification of all facets of life. If you define capitalism differently, that's fine. But as I (and the economists I have read) use the word, it means a specific social arrangement predicated upon the use of abstract, general-purpose money not tied to any concrete social or material reality other than what neoclassical economists call "use value." The result is alienation from oneself and one another, as the only valid way of relating to the world becomes instrumentalism (i.e., how am I to best use other people and nature to get what I want?).

We do have perceptual capacities limiting our interaction with others and the world, but such limits are also possible gateways. Relating to others (and even ourselves) via abstract use-value closes the door to the many other ways of being-towards-others and being-in-the-world. We should be careful not to naturalize the ideology implicit in GIC, that which turns the human subject into a disembedded consumer.

The earth is best seen as a dynamic whole, but for the purposes of analytical understanding we can divide it into a core with several spheres. The core is (to the best of our scientific knowledge) liquid iron. It is spinning rather quickly and produces an electromagnetic field that protects the earth from solar radiation. Without the electromagnetic membrane produce by the activity of the core, life would not be possible on the surface. The lithosphere could be described as rock, but it is not of a single piece but 12 major plates. I don't need to bore you with a lesson on plate tectonics, I'm sure you're familiar. It suffices to say that the movement of these plates represents a sort of self-healing wound. The lithosphere is constantly remaking itself, keeping its surface fresh. The process occurs at speeds so slow relative to human life that it is no wonder we have trouble recognizing it for what it is. The biosphere is the thin film of organic life surviving between lithosphere and atmosphere, an atmosphere whose composition the biosphere created and maintains. The noosphere is hard to describe exactly (because it provides the very possibility of description), but most certainly includes the conceptual meaning you and I are exchanging here as language-speaking humans. All of these spheres of activity unite to birth a single living earth. The sun, of course, is the source of it all. We are basically inside the sun, surrounded on all sides by its heliosphere. Its multi-billion year process of dying supplies earth with the energy it needs to live. Perhaps you do not feel a sense of awe and reverence for these heavenly bodies. I can't help it. Even if I understand rationally/scientifically how it all works, the mystery as to why it should be at all leaves me spellbound and mystified. The only authentic reaction I can muster is of a spiritual sort.

Sorry I have written so much, but I wonder if you'd mind if I posted our conversation on my blog? It is too interesting and poignant not to share!

Yours,
Matthew

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Actually, I was planning on publishing this elsewhere later on and asking you that... (why rewrite the same stuff over and over.. and why have to re-await another opportunity to express and consolidate ideas??) But not as soon you probably will.

I give you explicit permission to post whatever and ALL of what I e-mail you unless I explicitly note otherwise.

I will definitely say you did get very close to the source of your beliefs. I.e. I now understand much more your underlying cognitions and beliefs.

I will respond more tomorrow or this weekend. (including that last paragraph of your last e-mail)

For now, I want to make one comment: If the entire world was 'Americanized'.. i.e. industrialized and materialized and everyone was motivated to find work, keep moving, and motivated to have material wealth.. we would not have such poverty and exploitation that exists all elsewhere in the world. And there would not be soo much of a gap of 'socio-economic classes'. For instance, 15%-18% of the world's wealth (possibly a bit more.. I can show you how I figured this out if you are interested.. just a quick calculation) are from people that are millionaires and above!

The global GDP per capita is $8,100 (directly from Wikipedia ;) ). While $8,100 per person is pretty damn good.... I'm sure hundreds of million make only a few hundred a year at most. Is this because they are so worthless? I think not. It's because their oppressive nation that they have no choice but to stand around idly wondering what to do with themselves. Also they were not born into a culture like you or I where there are so many ideas and fields to explore. Many have no concept of individual liberty like the wackos in North Korea... Many of them love their leader despite what a bastard and psycho he is!

And you totally refuted me (which I was prepared for as hinted in last letter) that the Earth is far more than a 'rock'! I would have to agree. Also, it is quite bizarre that how old and BIG this universe is most of us still seem to think we are the center.

And how many thousands of galaxies exist without any evidence of sentience or consciousness beyond Earth.

More later.

- Mat

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This is a presentation my good friend Chris Becker and I lead at our Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness graduate program's retreat to Esalen in Big Sur, California. Thinkers mentioned include Rudolf Steiner, Walter Ong, Hans Jonas, Plato, Jean Gebser...

"Biology... shows us that we can expand our cognitive domain. This arises through a novel experience brought forth through reasoning, through the encounter with a stranger, or, more directly, through an expression of a biological interpersonal congruence that lets us see the other person and open up for him room for existence beside us. This act is called love, or, if we prefer a milder expression, the acceptance of the other person beside us in our daily living. This is the biological foundation of social phenomena: without love, without acceptance of others living beside us there is no social process and, therefore, no humanness. Anything that undermines the acceptance of others, from competency to the possession of truth and on to ideologic certainty, undermines the social process because it undermines the biologic process that generates it."

-The Tree of Knowledge: Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Maturana and Varela, 1992, p. 246

The following was posted on PZ's blog, Pharyngula, in response to this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/nicholas_wade_flails_at_the_ph.php

Evolution. Theory, fact, or both? I don't think answering these questions is as simple as PZ or Wade make it seem. It involves more than science and philosophy, and forces us to deconstruct notions of a pure science uncontaminated by politics, culture, industry, and the happenstance of history.

"Fact" comes from the Latin, "facere," meaning "to do," or "to make." In this sense, technoscientific facts are constructed not only by what scientific heroes do in the laboratory, but by the larger socioeconomic context determining which questions are worth asking and which research programs provide the best opportunity for investment returns to shareholders. The production and protection of facts costs money. If someone wishes to contest a fact, it also costs money to set up a counter-laboratory. Take a look at Bruno Latour's book, "Science in Action" if you're interested in how scientists and their networks of human and nonhuman allies construct facts.

As for theory, it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps with PZ's statement that theories "integrate a collection of facts into a useful model in our brains." It is difficult to articulate how mysterious the work of theory is precisely because we must already have assumed a theoretical background to say anything at all about the world. Contrary to PZ's assumption that facts pre-exist theories, I'd argue that the theory (or paradigm) within which one operates determines what counts as a fact. This is only partially true of course, because scientists inevitably begin to notice after a while the unexplained "noise" which builds up around a once favored theory. Given enough world-class scientific experimentation, the history of science clearly shows that revolutions occur and theories collapse, leading to gestalt shifts in the way scientists perceive the world (see Kuhn, 1962). What was once the highest and most authoritative scientific fact can come to seem in a single generation to be the silliest sort of pseudoscientific superstition. Theories change everything, even facts.

This is not a metaphysical claim about reality. I'm not saying human theoretical frameworks literally create nature. I am making phenomenological claim by saying that in every attempt to know the world, the world changes us as we change it. Knowing is not passive observation, but active participation.

So... evolution. Fact, theory, or both? I'd say both. But there is a history behind the word "evolution" which makes it a problematic choice in this context. As much as I'd like to get into the various reasons Darwin refused to use the word anywhere in "Origin of Species" (until he entered it once in the 6th edition), for lack of time I'll just sum up: There are many evolutionary facts (like the genetic unity of all life), just as there are many evolutionary paradigms (neo-Darwinian, DST, Teilhard, Aurobindo, etc).

It’s probably not news to most people that philosophers have a tendency to get stuck in their heads. This is especially true in the field of cognitive science, where for several decades the dominant paradigm has lead philosophers (and scientists) to look in the brain for evidence of thought and consciousness. The core metaphor guiding this paradigm is that human cognition is computational—in other words, that the brain is a computer.

While it may still be mainstream, this disciplinary matrix has a growing number of critics. Those philosophers, like David Chalmers, who take consciousness seriously point out that even a complete computational account of brain activity (which is itself still far from feasible) would fail to explain why said activity should be accompanied by experience. If the brain is merely a computer processor—if it is capable of performing all its tasks in a mechanical, algorithmic fashion—why should a world have to show up for it at all?

Proponents of computationalism, like Daniel Dennett, claim that we have too inflated a view of conscious experience. Dennett points to certain visual inadequacies like change and inattentional blindness as proof that our consciousness of the world is far less complete than we are lead to believe. In fact, Dennett goes so far as to argue that our first-person experience of a richly textured environment is largely an illusion. We don’t see what is there; rather, we see the choppy, low-resolution fantasy the brain clumsily constructs for us.

One might begin by criticizing Dennett for his reduction of consciousness first to perception, and then to visual perception specifically, but even supposing he was right about the over-inflation of consciousness more generally (an insight of Jungian depth psychology as well as contemporary mind science), the claim that conscious experience is a phantom still hasn’t even begun to explain why we (the brain) should experience such appearances at all. Why can’t the brain perform its functions without “our” having to be aware of the illusion of a world? The computationalist theory of cognition would be true even on an earth populated entirely by zombies or robots. It therefore fails to adequately account for the world we actually live in, that of purposeful projects and meaningful, moral relationships with others.

Dennett’s is one of a family of greedily reductionistic views criticized by Alva Noë in his new book. The book is made not merely of ink, glue, and paper—at least if what he argues for in it is true. If he is right, and consciousness is not lodged in the skull, then his book is literally a piece of his mind. “Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness” presents Noë’s case that the dominant paradigm within the cognitive sciences is off the mark.

Rather than looking for consciousness within the confines of the skull by supposing the brain’s job is to internally represent a world it has access to only through the filters of five fallible senses, Noë reminds the forgetful philosopher and scientist alike that thought and perception are tied to action, and that the mind is embodied and embedded in the world. The senses are not windows through which a pre-existing world is mentally reconstructed. Rather, sensory perception is always already motor activity, always already participating in the appearance and subsequent course of worldly events. We see the horizon not because of "information" encoded by neurons in our visual cortex, but because we are living bodies that can stand upon the earth, turn our heads, and look.

Noë does not believe that Chalmers’ so-called “hard problem” of consciousness is a problem at all. He and Dennett are in agreement about this much, but for entirely different reasons. Dennett believes the word “consciousness” is nothing but a cultural idol that continued neuroscience will soon call down off its pedestal. Eventually, he assures us, the “hard problem” will go away because we simply won’t recognize our conscious experience as anything other than an illusion generated by unconscious neural activity.

Noë is of the opinion that though the brain is necessary for consciousness, it is not sufficient for it. He dismisses the “hard problem” as the product of misplaced concreteness: it asks how brain matter might be in the possession of mind and experience, when really these emerge through the dynamic relationships between brain, body, and world and are never “possessed” (or simply located) in the first place.

I am conscious not merely because my brain is doing something special, but because it is coupled to others and the world via language, various levels of emotive intentionality, and a series of sensorimotor (or perception-action) loops. From Noë’s point of view, a brain in a vat would not be conscious. Only contact with and access to an actual world is sufficient for conscious experience. Being conscious is something we must do, something we constantly achieve together with others and the help of the world itself. Organisms and their environments can only be studied in the abstract as separate systems. To fully understand the evolutionary process of phylogenic adaptation, or the ontogenic process of skillful coping (learning), one must develop a sense for the dynamics of whole organism-environment systems [my essay, “Unearthing the Earth” investigates what the implications of this approach are for our being-on-the-earth].

Noë writes:

We are, to use Merleau-Ponty’s phrase, empty heads turned to the world. The world is not a construction of the brain, nor is it a product of our own conscious efforts. It is there for us; we are here in it. The conscious mind is not inside us; it is, it would be better to say, a kind of active attunement to the world, an achieved integration. It is the world itself, all around, that fixes the nature of conscious experience. (p. 142).

The computational approach to consciousness assumes that consciousness is equal and reducible to intra-cranial neurochemical processes. Noë’s rejoinder is a refreshing reminder that such solipsistic misplaced concreteness is, ironically, a product of the same Cartesian tradition most mainstream theorists rail against. That consciousness is located in the brain, that it has no direct access to the real world but through some internal language of ideas (or mental representations)… these are thoroughly Cartesian presuppositions. Noë suggests we begin not with the abstract thought experiments of lonely philosophers, but with the lived body and its everyday being-in-the-world among others (life-world).

http://www.youtube.com/user/Professoranton

Several weeks ago, I posted a blog about my entry to Discover Magazine's "Evolution in Two Minutes" contest. Developmental biologist and outspoken atheist PZ Myers is judging the entries (still no word on the winner), and out of curiousity, I decided to visit his blog Pharyngula. Though it is supposedly a science blog, Myers posts little about his field of study: evolutionary development. The few posts he did make over the past month about biology were fascinating, and I learned quite a bit. Evo-Devo is a research program attempting to fill in the gaps in neo-Darwinism, which originally assumed the development of organisms had little to do with the evolutionary process. I'm quite interested in Evo-Devo, as it calls neo-Darwinism out on its greedy reductionism. Organisms cannot be understood based only on the differential survival of genes. But Evo-Devo isn't in any way in opposition to the basic approach of the Modern Synthesis, unlike Developmental Systems Theory, which aims to totally overthrow the neo-Darwinian paradigm in favor of a more holistic account. Not genes or isolated organisms, but whole organism-environment systems become the focus. All this takes us far afield from the point of this blog, but suffice it to say that Myers' biological work fascinates and excites me.

The point of this blog, however, is about Myers' (and the watchdogs policing his blog's) militant brand of atheistic materialism. I can understand the frustration many scientifically-educated people express concerning the widespread denial of the common descent of species among fundamentalist Christians in America. But accepting evolution, and all of contemporary science for that matter, does not necessarily religate all forms of spirituality to a superstitous past. For me and a growing number of others, the scientific cosmological story provides a more numinous background to earthly existence than any ancient religious cosmogony to come before it. Matter, energy, space, and time have been on a 14 billion year adventure that has inexplicably lead to the creation of an intelligent species of ape capable of knowing so. It's quite astounding.

The most pressing challenge of the 21st century is to develop a planetary mythos, a global spiritual worldview that allows all human beings to become integral with the ongoing process of creative expression that brought us into existence. Science must play a central role in any such development. Myers and his cheerleaders seem to go wrong not in their enthusiasm for science, but in their dogmatic insistance that the observations of science must be interpreted in a materialistic fashion. There are many complex arguments for a materialistic or physicalist interpretation of scientific facts, but none that I am aware of can coherently account for human consciousness. There is plenty of hand-waving, plenty of "just-so" stories pretending to explain how an entirely mechanical process could lead to sentience and volition, but so far as I know, no convincing solutions to the hard problem of consciousness have yet been devised. If anyone disputes this, please comment below and fill me in!

Many materialistic atheists would dispute the idea that our species still needs myth in a scientific age. This amounts to saying that consciousness can exist entirely independent of the unconscious. There is no hubris greater than this conceit, and none more dangerous. As William Irwin Thompson writes, "That shoreline where the island of knowing meets the unfathomable sea of our own being is the landscape of myth," (The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, p. 87). Science is an epistemic activity, a way of knowing. All our human attempts to rationally know the full extent of our cosmic existence are limited for the simple reason that we are that which we are attempting to know.

Alfred North Whitehead expressed a similar sentiment: "Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning." No amount of scientific progress will ever change this basic fact about human psychology. Knowing is not a disembodied, purely rational activity. What we know is always already shaped by our imaginative and intuitive faculties.

The danger of supposing science can totally rationalize our society is already apparent. The mechanistic model of nature has made possible the current global religion (at least in the West): capitalist consumerism. It's a myth that has grown out of the assumption that the only truly real, truly powerful thing in the world is money, and that the non-human earth community is ours to exploit as we see fit (since it is nothing but blind matter in motion, anyways). There can be no solution to the current ecological crisis until this self-destructive mythos is totally re-imagined.

But the mechanistic/materialistic myth is not only dangerous because of its ecological implications; it also degrades human life. Prior to the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, humanity had a system of values based on more than a merely horizontal scale. As E. F. Schumacher explains in his wonderful little book A Guide for the Perplexed, this flattening of value reverses the vertical conception humanity has held for the vast majority of its existence. The result is moral relativism and/or utilitarianism. The Good is measured solely upon what feels good at the time for me, so long as it doesn't prevent others from getting their cheap pleasures, as well. Schumacher outlines the Great Chain of Being, which begins with matter and progresses through the plant kingdom, the animal, the human, and continues to God, the ideal Person. Natural science focuses only upon the material level, and so long as it doesn't overstep its legitimate bounds by claiming to explain all other levels by reduction to matter, it remains a tool of utmost value to the human endeavor. Science is an empirical enterprise, and so fittingly studies only that aspect of nature that is visible. As Schumacher makes plainly evident, however, all of reality above the material level is invisible. To know anything about these higher levels, we must become internally adequate to them. This is where the vertical chain of being becomes so important. If you want to know what life is, or what consciousness is, or what self-consciousness is, you've got to develop your instrument of knowledge. The reason science is so successful and produces so many incontrovertable theories about the physical world is that any normal adult with fully functioning senses is adequate to understand it. When it comes to truths about higher levels of being, something more than simple logic and sense perception becomes necessary: namely, wisdom.

Schumacher writes:

"There is nothing more difficult than to be aware of one's thought. Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see. Every thought can be scrutinised directly except the thought by which we scrutinise. A special effort, an effort of self-awareness is needed - that almost impossible feat of thought recoiling upon itself: almost impossible but not quite. In fact, this is the power that makes man human and also capable of transcending his humanity," (p. 54).

Science is one of the most valuable tools the human spirit has ever developed, but if all human knowledge is reduced to the empirically verifiable sort, most of reality is placed entirely beyond our reach. Further, a reductionistically naturalistic picture of the universe puts the cart before the horse by forgetting that all knowledge of the cosmos comes through experience (therefore, attempting to derive experience from nature conceived of as entirely physical is incoherent from the get go; read my essay Unearthing the Earth for a more developed explanation as to why). There is no conflict between faith and reason, nor between science and religion. The only conflicts arise when science is adopted as a religion, thereby becoming scientism, or when religion begins making scientific claims, thereby becoming creationism.

As Galileo put it: "The Bible [<---insert your spiritual tradition of choice] shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go."

And Kant: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

Let us not obscure the difference.

Daniel Dennett says biology is engineering. He argues that living organisms are machines, flattening the classical Aristotelian difference between natural and artificial. For Aristotle, natural things had their form and purpose internal to themselves, while artificial things were designed from without for a purpose other than themselves. Of course, the beauty of human art (film, painting, poetry, music, ...) is also of itself so, and in this sense participates in the autopoiesis of nature (Plato was suspicious of the muse precisely because it brings the soul back in touch with the body). But can manufactured technologies, like computers, really explain living systems, like us? Is biology engineering, or is Dennett conflating science (i.e., theoretical knowledge) with technology (know-how)?

If my body is the product of a purely mechanical process "as patient as it was mindless" (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, p. 188), out of what did this process make the psychological existence that I am? Why was the early earth in such a rush to come to life? How did molecules begin to feel? And why is it that metazoa evolved eyes in at least 40 distinct hereditary lines? It is as though nature's evolutionary adventure has an aim: seeing clearer in order to feel more intensly. Patient it may be, but now that nature has grown muscles and nerves, innovation has become a regularity.

Darwin wasn't trying to account for the wholeness of organisms, but for specific differences between them. Dennett has turned this useful heuristic into a "universal acid," thereby conflating a phylogenetic theory for a theory of ontogeny. In other words, Dennett tries to explain the immanent purposes and holistic form of individual organisms entirely in terms of the differential survival of replicating genetic algorithms. He doesn't seem to find the question of how a living body continually produces itself particularly relevant to biology, or perhaps assumes Darwin's anecdotes somehow explain self-organization and production. Certainly, variation and competition are necessary for evolution to occur; but they are not sufficient as an explanation for life. Darwin assumes the existence of autopoietic organisms that can reproduce--they are the underlying momentum powering his theoretical analogy between the domestication of animals via human selection and the entire history of life. The reductionist explanation for living organization cannot come out of a theory that already assumes it exists.

[Also, see my essay On the Matter of Life for the reason the Design paradigm fails from the beginning to approach biology from the proper angle (as physis, rather than techne -- for more on this distinction, see this essay: Unearthing the Earth). This is true whether we're talking about Supernatural, or Natural selection/design.]

Cosmology is an art that involves speaking about the whole: to do cosmology, I must share stories with others concerning what we all belong to. This can be done in many languages --some musical, others mathematical-- and if I succeed, perhaps in English text.

The universe is a body, according to Plato-- a Living Thing. It is unlike our own animal bodies, because it has no arms or legs to move around, since it is everywhere at once. Nor does it have a mouth, since there is nothing for it to eat except itself. Nor eyes, for who would it see?

Plato's living cosmos is both still and in motion at once. It is a moving image of eternity. Our own bodies are signs of this body, mortal replicas of the universal model. This Cosmic Being is not just an empty body, though; it is given life by a soul.

Plato writes (as Timaeus in the dialogue) of a soul woven together with the body of the universe, and that:

...revolving within itself, [the world soul] initiated a divine beginning of unceasing, intelligent life for all time, (p.1240, Plato Complete Works).

Eternity can only appear to move and remain unified because of the harmony of time, as recounted by the soul. Plato sees the cause of the motion of the fixed stars is none other than there destiny: time is told according to number --past and future part of a single whole-- together a "symphony of proportion." The universe is a living likeness of the One held together by the music of the spheres.

Plato writes:

This world of ours has received and teems with living things, mortal and immortal. A visible living thing containing visible ones, perceptible god, image of the intelligible Living Thing, its grandness, goodness, beauty and perfection are unexcelled, (p. 1291, PCW).

Plato's tale (he admits several times it is only a "likely story") includes a demiurge, a divine craftsman responsible for shaping the chaos of matter into an ordered cosmos. The demiurge created lesser gods to make humans, because a truly immortal thing such as he could not create mortals. Intermediaries were required. Plato means the fixed and wandering stars (planets) when he speaks of gods, and says of the earth that it "ranks as the foremost, the one with greatest seniority," and is our nurturer and guardian of night and day (p. 1244, PCW).

Though he speaks often of mortal bodies in general (by which he means the male body), seldom does Plato mention sex. When he does, he explains its origin thus:

...according to our likely account, all male-born humans who lived lives of cowardice or injustice were reborn in the second generation as women, (p. 1289, PCW).

It's a fitting tale for a philosopher in love with only invisible ideas and their abstract explanations. But in the embodied world, sex remains to be encountered before it can be accounted for. Plato explains sexual difference by all but avoiding it, which is to say he demands we reign in our bodily desires to commit ourselves entirely to the Good itself, beyond all space and time, and especially beyond the pleasures and pains of the body. Only a brief line or two are required for Plato to remind the reader that the female body is but a corupted offshoot of man's. He describes a woman's uterus as though it were the cause of a demonic possession, making women nearly incapable of being reasoned with (Plato, in the Republic, does grant women rational souls of their own); he speaks of intercourse as "plucking the fruit from a tree, [sowing] the seed into the plough field of [the] womb" (p. 1290, PCW), thereby making man the cause of new life, and woman merely its temporary vessel. [Read this essay I wrote last year for more on the repression of femininity throughout Western history. Riane Eisler has elsewhere detailed the importance of agricultural metaphors in patriarchal civilization.]

Cosmology is the study of the body of the universe, its soul, and the living, procreating, and dying of the plants and animals within it. Plato retains a few precious hints of the goddess mysteries that tied pre-historical human civilization together; but much of his account of the cosmos is despite sex and death, rather than integral with them. Plato's is the story of Man's universe, though he is still forced at times to admit the presence of something else.

The most mysterious of Plato's metaphysical concepts is not the demiurge, whose fatherly role is quite straightforward; rather, the motherly Receptacle remains "difficult and vague," as Plato writes of this "wetnurse":

Not only does it always receive all things, it has never in any way whatever taken on any characteristic similar to any of the things that enter it, (p. 1253).

The demiurge could not create on his own, but needed the help of space, of the cosmic womb. What does it mean that our universe is the product of such divine intercourse? Plato does his best to make it a sexless cosmos, and his failure is evidenced by his blatant phallocentrism. Where his ancient Greek tale fails, we modern children of Gaia are called to put the pieces back together. How are we to tell the story of our universe so that it celebrates women, sex, and mortality as much as the True, the Good, and the Beautiful?

A poem offered in the hope that our attempt to re-make our cosmos is not still-born: