Letters to the Editor
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Not Science....Not Even A Little
Salon, I'm surprised at you. There was abosuletely no reason for Wallace to name drop quantum mechanics, string thoery or any other impressive sounding physics. Yeah the universe might be explained by secon quantized field thoeries, but that doesn't mean it is mysterious, or spooky, it is still governed by a set of physical laws that can be said to be every bit as mechanical as anything else; it doesn't mean there is woo-woo going on. To long people have abused "the new physics" to say all manner or insipid things.
Also the science describing neuro-activity is not 19th century. All manner of high tech imaging, AI and sophisticated mathematical modeling whereby complex phenomena follow from simple rules of large systems are used to study the brain. Just becuase science hasn't yet figured out ever little thing about the brain, doesn't mean science can't explain conciousness.
In fact Wallace offers us no explanations at all. Why is it the human brain becomes attached to some floating conciousness and paperclips do not? How does the attachment happen? What is the mechanism of reincarnation?
Finally not once did he really go into the details of how to test hypotheses of reincarnation or unphysical origins of conciousness, just nebulous statements about a few interviews with no quantitative nformation at all in them.
Why did Salon stand there and let Wallace get away with the same crap IDers would et killed for? Arguments from ignorance, positing the existence of grand unphysical objects to explain thing materialism may well explain alone, and no explanations of these objects are to behave. Just as IDers insist evolution can't explain the diversity of life, then go on to posit exactly no mechanism in its place. You could have asked these questions, or found a Buddhist with some real understanding of science...Shame on you Salon, you made sciencelook bad and Buddhism look worse.
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The Big Con
There has been a growing tendency to elevate "consciousness" to some profound analog of "spirit" or "soul." Wallace is just a very articulate advocate of a very ancient human obsession with the glorious miracle of "self." The problem is that once you think about consciousness as a hallowed phenomenon, you have stopped using the word "consciousness" as a term of scientific interest.
Every breathing animal is conscious at least some of the time. So the state of being conscious, which might be called "consciousness," is not so rare a thing that heaven and earth must be joined to explain it. In this very simple framework, it is simply a mental state -- easily tested for and easily confirmed or denied.
What Wallace and others seem to want to imply is that a being's awareness of her own consciousness is somehow more mysterious than mere reflexivity. If I write, "I am writing," is it any more exciting than if I write, "I am writing about writing"? The conflation of self-awareness with something other than mental states that are contingent on physical properties is just ethereal nonsense.
Like all spiritualists, Wallace presumes a mystery that requires a supernatural solution. Take away the presumption, and the need for a supernatural explanation vanishes into the ether.
If I ever have any severe neurological problems -- including a loss of my sense of self-awareness -- I hope that I'll find myself in the care of talented, inspired neuroscientists, not quack spiritualists.
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Science and Consiousness
To those who make statements such as, "No explanation of the mind can assume that it is anything OTHER than an emergent property of the brain", I ask, "Where is your science?"
Perhaps the place to start is to do some real science, i.e., to make some observations, form a hypothesis, and then to test the hypothesis.
Some observations:
(1) There is exactly one (1) organism from which your first-person view looks out.
(2) All the data shows that you cannot move your first-person view to another organism, even if you want to.
(3) Organisms with first-person views are created from material from other organisms with first-person views.
(4) The chemical state of an organism with a first-person view has a strong effect on the nature of the first-person view. Take a few slugs of tequila as a small side experiment.
(5) If you alter the chemical state of the organism sufficiently, the first-person view begins to dim. In a subset of cases, the organism can restore its original chemical state, and the first-person view likewise returns to a state similar or identical to the original.
(6) If you alter the chemical state sufficiently, the first-person state dims completely, and neither the first-person view nor a pre-alteration chemical state return.
It seems we can all agree with these observations, and perhaps some others.
Now for the hypothesis: (Supply your favorite theory; be sure to account for all of these observations)
Now test your hypothesis scientifically: (Provide details for experiments you can use to demonstrate and defend your hypothesis)
Good luck!
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It will be a long wait
Wallace wrote "But I'm also waiting for a neuroscientist to tell me how the hypothesis that mental states are nothing more than neural states will be repudiated", and paraphrased this sentiment a number of times. Calling it (or coming close) an article of scientific faith, at one point.
The problem here is that science is not in the business of disproving the existence of anything (because scientists know this is impossible). So, the hypothesis that is "nothing more" than is inherently unscientific. Science hypothesises about the existence of causes, and the relationships between causal entities, but does not make claims of certainty regarding the nonexistence of causes that are not known yet. Any good scientist would readily accept at any point in time that there very well might be additional causes that might work in unknown ways.
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Sorry, enough's enough
In his first statement, Wallace Sensei says that Buddhism " [has] a broad range of empirical methods for investigating the nature of the mind, for raising hypotheses and putting them to the test," but fails to back that up, or to reference any of the methods.
In his second, he tells us that "All of the great pioneers of the scientific revolution -- Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and on into the 19th century with Gregor Mendel -- they were all Christians. And their whole approach to science was deeply influenced by Christianity. Religion, whether we like it or not, is making many truth claims about the natural world as well as the transcendent world. And now that science is honing in on the nature of the mind and questions of free will, it is definitely invading the turf that used to belong to religion and philosophy." While true, this has nothing to do with the question. The fact that either side of an argument is encroaching on the other's thesis has nothing to do with the accuracy of either thesis.
In his third, he asks "Can you test the statement [emphasis mine] that there is nothing else going on apart from physical phenomena and their emergent properties? The answer is no." This is a complete non sequiter, not germane to the thesis, and proves nothing. It also vitiates the argument that religion and science have anything in common, prima facie.
In the fourth: "But there are many other domains of reality that the physical instruments of science have not yet been able to detect." An assertion that is unprovable, and thus, again, not germane to the argument.
Unfortunately, Mr. Wallace has fallen into precisely the trap that he claims doesn't exist: the fruitless attempt to equate the mystical and the scientific. With four egregious errata in the first four statements, I didn't bother to read further. (I am a practicing Zen Buddhist.)