The Skeptics Guide #697 - November 17, 2018 (Ad Free)
Added 2018-11-17 17:34:07 +0000 UTCGuest Rogue: Devin Bray
What's the Word: Cybernetics
News Items: Earth's Dusty Satellites, How We Think, The Mad Russian, Engineering Photsynthesis
Is Stuff Real
Who's That Noisy
Science or Fiction
Comments
I was behind on the episodes so I just listened. Great job Devin! You’re a natural!
Brian Cross
2018-12-02 21:45:00 +0000 UTCYeah, it's a tough question. If you want to read more about this stated by a much BETTER philosopher than myself, I recommend tracking down Daniel Dennett's paper on "Real Patterns." There, he argues that responsible empiricism requires we grant the existence (and therefore, the potential causal relevance) of patterns on ANY level of organization, where positing the pattern allows us to capture the phenomenon in a way that would otherwise take much more information and computational power to describe. It's a kind of modern extension of the sort of thought process David Hume was fond of. It's staunchly empiricist, since it says we should use experiments and observations to determine what can meaningfully said to be causally relevant to what. Philosophers like Sam Harris present themselves as offering a "scientific" or "naturalistic" view, but positing that all causation must take place at the microlevel, and that therefore our conscious, experienced deliberations and willings are totally causally inert, seems like it's introducing *extra* metaphysical assumptions, not taking them away.
Devin Bray
2018-11-22 07:06:09 +0000 UTCThank you Devin. From your response it's clear you are a sincere and honest philosophical skeptic; I retract any implication that you're a vaguest troll. Your point gets down to the fundamentals. What 'things' are real'? I have a hard time with that. Yes a 'configuration on a higher level' can constrain or influence 'behaviors ... on lower levels".
Kevin Brinck
2018-11-22 05:24:57 +0000 UTCPhysicists largely appreciate the points I was making, as you mentioned - they get that particles are a kind of metaphor of convenience. Far be it from me to tell them how to do their jobs! My point, which I think came out less lucid than I was hoping in the broadcast, is that this point often goes underappreciated by scientifically minded nonphysicists, especially philosophers. I should have mentioned Sam Harris’ view as the kind I’m interested in countering. I am claiming hard determinists like Harris often dismiss the possibility of free will based on an oversimplified reading of what it would mean for a “thing” to be “real,” and therefore an oversimplified picture of causation as all “draining down” to the level of the smallest putative entities. "You can't possibly be in control in any meaningful sense - all of the causal work is being down by the things that are really real, in the realm of atoms." In other words - there’s probably no indeterminism or randomness involved when our nervous systems give rise to our experienced selves...but it’s hasty and simplistic to say that therefore, an “experienced self” cannot possibly be of any causal significance. A "self" can't push particles around, but it's reasonable to believe that a configuration on a higher level of organization might somehow constrain or influence the behaviors of constituent processes on lower levels. Yes, we’re robots. But how do so-called “executive” control functions like so-called “willpower” really work? How are we going to cash it out biologically? I want to know what the relevant causal differences are between cases of exercising willpower or failing to do so, and how that might relate to understanding causality with complex dynamic systems in general.
Devin Bray
2018-11-22 02:51:11 +0000 UTCFor a while I suspected that Devin had paid for a massive troll appearance with his arguments leading to a Deepak Chopra type argument to the point that fundamental particles as fields meant their constituents were fields meant consciousness controlled everything... blah blah blah. He didn't go there. That said, I think his main point of particle-wave duality focused on particles mean physicists didn't appreciate the ambiguity of everything being a manifestation of conjoined fields (at least I think that was his point, perhaps he can correct me) does not properly address that the physicists who are actually doing these studies are using mathematics where the distinction is irrelevant.
Kevin Brinck
2018-11-21 23:41:10 +0000 UTCDevin was a great guest, would be happy to hear him again any time.
Andrew Eikum
2018-11-18 22:15:24 +0000 UTC
