Empirical Evidence of Supernatural (part 2)

Argument from God Correlate:

Dr. Hood, Univ. Tennessee Chattanooga:

Inventor of the 'M Scale"

the post that appeared and disappeared is on Atheistwatch, sorry. The one about method and atheist argument

We can't demonstrate empirical knowledge of God to others, even if we feel we have it ourselves. But if we can correlate something that is empirical with God, the effects of God in the world then we could know by association between sign and signified that there is divine reality. Just as the fingerprint betrays the presence of the owner of the fingers that made them, or the track in the snow proves the presence of the creature that made it, so RE as the God correlate points to the presence of God in reality is the effect of the divine upon our lives. As a theological example of this principle we can draw upon the works of Schleiermacher. God is the correlate of RE as God is the correlate of the feeling of utter dependence. In Speeches on Religion to it's Cultured Dispersers he seemed to be making the simplistic argument: “I feel emotional when I pray to God so there must be a God to feel emotional about.  [1] By the time He wrote his magnum opus Glaubenslehre (the Christian faith) he had developed a much more sophisticated version. He now understood these religious affections in a particular way, as a feeling of utter dependence. [2] Though critics often interpret the concept of “feeling” as an emotional response the real crux of his argument turns the utter dependence aspect. Rather than merely emotion he's identifying the feeling as indicative of a religious capacity. [3] We could think of it as a “religious instinct,” or more properly a religious consciousness. It is from this sense of consciousness that doctrines derive their meaning, as verbalization of the sense.

This sense of consciousness as part of the basis of religion offers a theoretical framework for connecting the sense of the numinous to the notion of real experience of the divine. Of course it's not a direct unmediated revelatory face to face encounter, but like the track in the snow points to a presence not directly seen.

It is the original pre-theoretical consciousness...Schleiermacher believes that theoretical cognition is founded upon pre-theoretical inter subjective cognition and its life world. The latter cannot be dismissed as non-cognative for if the life world praxis is non-cognitive and invalid so is theoretical cognition..He...contends that belief in God is pre-theoretical, it is not the result of proofs and demonstration, but is conditioned solely by the modification of feeling of utter dependence. Belief in God is not acquired through intellectual acts of which the traditional proofs are examples, but rather from the thing itself, the object of religious experience..If as Shchleiermacher...says God is given to feeling in an original way this means that the feeling of utter dependence is in some sense an apparition of divine being and reality. This is not meant as an appeal to revelation but rather as a naturalistic eidetic or a priori. The feeling of utter dependence is structured by a correlation with its whence. [4]

This conclusion might be somewhat deflating for apologists, but there are two of caveats that might make it more palatable: (1) We don't have to reduce religion to just feeling or to consciousness, we don't have toally agree with Schleiermacher, we can understand doctrines and feelings as bound up with the same reaction to reality and the consciousness that obtains from sensing it. (2) we can construe the feeling as a phenomenological approach rather than a definitive commentary upon all of reality. If affections or consciousness based upon affections are primary in belief, this does not mean that arguments are of no value since people rationalize their feelings, and arguments help to clear away the clutter and clarify feelings.

Critics such as John Webster et. al. Attack this notion as a continuation of his mistake from On Religion, that Schleiermacher got the process backwards. [5] It is not feeling that produces doctrine biut doctrines that produce feeling. The deep connection to affections is dismissed as his Moravian upbringing, the mark of the romanic era. “...The feeling of utter dependence, which Schleiermacher thought universal is an expression of the salient Christian virtue of humility with a particularly Protestant emphasis on the utter helplessness of man to save himself.” The argument is that Schleiermacher is just generalizing, the feeling is merely a feeling about the world from which he generalizes based upon his Christian upbringing. “All religions do not simply promote awe and connectedness to it.” [6] To the contrary, thanks to the M scale, we now know that these experiences are universal. The feeling of utter dependence is really about a sense of contingency, the radical contingency of all things, and it's great underlying unity, this equates to the sense of the meniscus and undifferentiated unity one finds in mystical experience. While Schleiermacher's feeling is not exactly mystical experience itself it is very closely related. Thus the universality found in RE supplies an answer to the criticism.

Thus the presence of the sign (the experience) informs us of the presence of the signified (God); like finger prints match the finger and thus reveal the person who made the print. The association between the divine and mystical experience is at least theoretically valid in terms of an anthropological perspective; religious experience forms the foundation upon which organized religions are built. [7] The sense of the numinous is a deep all pervasive since of love. The basic assumption made by those who have the experience is overwhelmingly that they have experience God. How can we know this to be the case without already knowing that God exists and what it is like to sense God's presence? We could set up criteria based upon the nature of religious belief. What conditions would one expectorate to prevail or what aspects would one expect to find in sensing God's presence?    

Criteria:
(1). Life Transforming and vital in a positive life-affirming sense(2) It would give us a sense of the transcendent and the divine.(3) No alternate or naturalistic causality could be provenThese criteria are based upon the nature of religious belief and experience taken from all major world religions. More to the point they are derived from the works of W.T. Stace who argues that in all world religions there are certain claims about certain types of experiences that answer our most basic existential questions  [8] These claims about answering the basic questions and positively affecting our lives constitute some of the most basic truth claims of world religions. If these claims are justified we should see these conditions in the criteria met. Religion in general seems to attempt to make sense of the nature of being human, to construct and then explain the Human problematic, or the human condition.. This knowledge is said to tranform the the lives of those who have such experiences. The content of the experiences themselves include a snese of the Holy, a sense of the sacred, the imparting of noetic content, these are all communicated in the texture of the experience itself. This realization accounts for criteria 1 and 2. It is only reasonable to think that the experience might be an experience of a reality involving the divine, since it indicates the validity truth claims of religion. It is equally reasonable and scientific to assume that if no counter causality found the God based conclusion is warranted. Thus, we have Criterion 3. These criteria are fulfilled by the data, and that allows us to derive the following argument from the criteria.
Argument:

(1) Real effects come from real causes

(2) If effects are real chances are the cause is real

(3) the effects of mystical experience are real

(4) Therefore, the cause of mystical experience is real.

(5) the content of mystical experience is about the divine

(6) Since the content of ME is divine the cause must be the divine

(7) Since the cause is real and it is divine then the divine must be real.

(8) Therefore belief in the divine is warranted by ME

Justification for P1 “measurably transformative in a positive sense” is reflected in the findings throughout the 50 year period during which the body of researched has been collected. A huge number of studies corroborate these findings, not all of them use the M scale but they all use various measurements. Many of them use standardized measurements already in place for happiness and self actualization and other such affects. I have selected a range of studies that spans the time period. Two of the first scientifically rigorous scientific studies on the topic were Robert Wuthnow (1978) [9] and Kathleen Noble (1987) [10]Summary of their finds are as follows:

Wuthnow:

*Say their lives are more meaningful,

*think about meaning and purpose

*Know what purpose of life is

Meditate more

*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities

*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends

*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy

*Reflective, self aware

Noble:

*integration, allocentrism,

*psychological maturity,

*self-acceptance, self-worth,

*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,

*increased love and compassion

*Experience productive of psychological health

*Less authoritarian and dogmatic

*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient

*intelligent, relaxed

*High ego strength,

*relationships, symbolization, values,

Lukoff and Lu (1988) conducted a literature search reflects many studies demonstrating the transforming effects of religious experience, some of them using the early version of the M scale.[11] For example Finney and Maloneyh (1985) found contemplative prayer was instrumental in improvement in psychotherapy. [12]Hood (1977) found high correlation between mystical experiences and self actualization, persons of relatively high self actualization were more likely to have had mystical experiences. [13] Other studies (not in Lukoff and Lu) include Greeley who, “found no evidence to support the orthodox belief that frequent mystic experiences or psychic experiences stem from deprivation or psychopathology. His 'mystics' were generally better educated, more successful economically, and less racist, and they were rated substantially happier on measures of psychological well-being.”  [14] Sullivan, using a large quantitative base of former mental patients found that 48% identified spiritual practices as crucial to their healing and this was corroborated by those ho cared for them. [15] This is just a small sample of the studies that demonstrate the transformative aspects.

Justification for P2 cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and effect will be dealt with mainly below in answering the argument on brain chemistry. P3 affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explanations and the effects are real we should assume that they are genuine experiences of something transcendent of our own minds. That they are independent of counter causality derived from 2. That they are real is derived from the measurable effects in 1. P4, experience of something: The content of the experience is about the divine, or ultimate reality. Even when the experience is interpreted by the receiver not to be about God the receiver has been known to act in ways that are consistent with belief in God. Moreover, the experiences described tend to match those described as experiences of the divine. Ergo it’s just a matter of interpretation. Secondly, the vast majority of those who have these experiences do believe they are about God. [16]

This final point about the universal nature is of particular interest, When doctrinal explanations and differences of tradition are controlled for, the experiences themselves are the same the world over. Even among atheists, those who have religious experiences respond to them in the same way that religious believers do. This might indicate that these people are all experiencing an objective reality which is external to the human brain. There is a voluminous and ancient tradition of writing about experiences by people from all over the world, who claim to have experienced the divine. Mystics and philosophers have catelogued such writings. Two of the most noteworthy examples are Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, [17] and Teachings of the Mystics by Philosopher W.T. Stace. [18] Many other such writers have included these experiences. Thirdly, grounded in empirical evidence, the universal nature of such experiences implies a source external to the human mind. When I say “external” I mean it originates externally but is experienced internally. This includes human brain structure and brain chemistry as a conduit not that it circumvents natural processes. W.T. Stace shows that, as Ralph Hood Jr. put it, “within and eventually outside of the great faith traditions mysticism has flourished.”  [19]

Stace offers five characteristics that demonstrate the commonalities to mystical experience; these are characteristics that are found universally in all cultures and in all forms of mystical experience:

The contemporary interest in the empirical research of mysticism can be traced to Stace’s (Stace, 1960) demarcation of the phenomenological characteristics of mystical experiences (Hood, 1975). In Stace’s conceptualization, mystical experiences had five characteristics (Hood, 1985, p.176):

1. The mystical experience is noetic. The person having the eerience perceives it as a valid source of knowledge and not just a subjective experience.

2. The mystical experience is ineffable, it cannot simply be described in words.

3. The mystical experience is holy. While this is the religious aspect of the experience it is not necessarily expressed in any particular theological terms.

4. The mystical experience is profound yet enjoyable and characterized by positive affect.

5. The mystical experience is paradoxical. It defies logic. Further analysis of reported mystical experiences suggests that the one essential feature of mysticism is an experience of unity (Hood, 1985). The experience of unity involves a process of ego loss and is generally expressed in one of three ways (Hood, 1 976a). The ego is absorbed into that which transcends it, or an inward process by which the ego gains pure awareness of self, or a combination of the two. [20] 

The other aspect of importance to this work is the universality argument. The universality argument could be taken as a warrant for belief, but I use it here to show that there’s a reason to equate these experiences with Supernature. When Hood took out the name specific to a religious tradition (from the M scale) and just asked general questions about experience, the experiences described were the same. This indicates that what is being experienced is the same for all the people having religious experiences. This is actually the same as saying Stace’s theory was validated. If it wasn’t validated they would not describe the same experiences. The indication is that there is an objective reality all of the mystics experience. The reason is because religion is a cultural construct. If they were just describing a constructed set of expectations resulting form culture, the experiences would be conditioned by culture not transcending it. So that means Iranian Muslims experience what they think of as “Allah” and Baptists in Cleveland experience what they think of as “Jesus” in the same way. This is should not be the case if they are merely experiencing culturally conditioned constructs. The implication is that they may be experiencing an objective reality that both understand through culturally constructed filters. Thus, there is a good indication that some external reality is experienced. One would then be warranted in thinking that this external reality is God, since the content of experience and its result on people's lives correlate with the objections of God belief in general.

Sources

[1] Frederick Schleiermacher, Speeches on Religion to it's Cultured Dispersers. New York: Cambridge University Press, Trans. Riichard Crouter,1996, 24-5

[2]  Frederich Achleiermacher, On The Christian Faith. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, Trans. H. R. MacKintosh and J.R.Stewart, 1986, 76-8

[3]  Ibid., 124.

[4]  Robert R. Williams, Schleiermacher the Theologian: Construction of the Doctrine of God. Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 1978, 4.

[5]  John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Ian Torrance, ed., Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, Oxfor:Oxford University Press, 2007, 421.

[6]  Ibid.

[7] David Steindl-Rast, “The Mystical Core of Organized Religion,” Copyright © 1989 by David Steindl-Rast. Used by the Council on Spiritual Practices with permission.First appeared in ReVision, Summer 1989 12(1):11-14. Online resource, URL: http://csp.org/Steindl-Mystical.html (accessed 1/2/16)

[8] Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy,, op.cit., 42-44.

[9] Robert, Wuthnow,"Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), (1978), 59-75.

[10]Kathleen D. Noble, ``Psychological Health and the Experience of Transcendence.'' The Counseling Psychologist, 15 (4),(1987). 601-614.

[11] Lukoff, David & Francis G. Lu (1988). ``Transpersonal psychology research review: Topic: Mystical experiences.'' Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2), 161-184.

[12]Finney and Maloneyh, “An Empirical Study of Contemplative Prayer as an Adjunct to Psychotherapy,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 13 (4) 284-90.

[13]Ralph Hood Jr., “Differential Triggering of Mysticalo Experiences As A Function O Self Actualization,” Review of Religious Research, 18, 1977, 264-70.

[14]Charles T. Tart, Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm, New York: Dutton, 1977, back in print ed. 2001, 19.

[15]W. Sullivan, “It Helps Mev Be A Wholoe Person: The Role of Spirituality Among The mentally Challeneged.” Psychological Rehabilitation Journal, 16 (1993) 125-134.

[16] Ralph Hood Jr. “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism.” In Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion.  Patrick Mcnamara ed. West Port CT: Prager Publications, 2006, 119-235.

[17]Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A study on the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual consciousness. New York: Dutton, 1911

[18]W.T. Stace, Teachings of the Mystics: Selections from the Greatest Mystics and Mystical Writers of the World. New American Library 1960. A good General overview of Stace’s understanding of mysticism is  Mystical Experience Registry: Mysticism Defined by W.T. Stace. found onine at URL: http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mystical_experiences/learn/experts_define/stace.shtml  

[19]Ralph Hood Jr. “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism.”op. cit., 119-235.

[20]Robert J. Voyle, “The Impact of Mystical Experiences Upon Christian Maturity.” originally published in pdf format: http://www.voyle.com/impact.pdf.  

Google html version here: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:avred7zleAEJ  Voyle is quoting Hood in 1985, Hood in return is speakingStace.

:www.voyle.com/impact.pdf+Hood+scale+and+religious+experience&hl=en&gl

=us&ct=clnk&cd=2&ie=UTF-8

Soft Sell on The Hard Problem

Our skeptical friend,  "I am Skeptic,"  put up a thing n the hard problem. I think in response to comments I made on his blog last week r so. I'll be responding to the whole piece today.


IMS

Philosophers who favor a supernatural or dualistic view of mind have contrived an argument that they think poses a major obstacle to physicalism.  It is the so-called hard problem of consciousness, that claims there is an unbridgable gap between physical substance and mental substance.  It is basically the claim that the stuff of conscious experience - the qualia, or qualitative component of consciousness - the texture of our perceptions - cannot be explained in terms of physical substances and phenomena.  [1]

Joe:
The Hard Problem (THP/HP) has nothing to do with SN. Both David Chalmers and John "Searl are  atheists and both major critics of Dennett and the reductionist view. Secondly there is no such thing as 'supernatural view of mind."First the HP doesn't claim anything. It has a point vto it it's not a claim. Secondly, that,s not it. It doesn't say there's a unbridgeable gap between physical and mental substance although I guess probably someone advancing the HP does say that, The real point is that consciousness is of a different quality from brain function. All the study of brain function will never tell us about consciousness, To drive home that point the hard problem illustrates aspects of consciousness that can't apart from exponential means.

IMS:

But this is an unscientific argument.  It amounts to an argument from ignorance.  It is saying that because we don't yet know how to fully explain consciousness in terms of physical matter and its properties, then there must be something immaterial about it.  This fallacy gives courage to those (especially theists) who choose to ignore the track record of naturalistic science, and instead posit the existence of things like the immaterial soul as the answer to the problem.

Joe:
(1) The "scientific" content of a statement is concerned with the correctness of it's methodological procedures not by the adherence to some ideological doctrine such as atheism or scientism. Even though it is true that the HP is more an illustration of a philosophical issue it's hardly opposed to science. Moreover it is scientific in the sense that it points up the methodological and philosophical flaws in a large portion of scientific work.

(2) It is a not argument from ignorance yours. Rather argument against ignorance. AFI is not about your opponent's ignorance, Pointing out the limitation of scientism a d reductionism for understanding min d is not AFI.

(3) The HP is not the entire case by itself but it clearly illustrates a barrier to reduction of mind to brain not just a gap in  knowledge. In my article "Mind is not reducible to brain" I spell out six scientific reasons why it can't be done. Not just we don't know how to yet but reasons why it can't be possible.See also the great book by Edward Kelley Irreducible Mind [2]

IMS:

 

I say this argument is contrived because it hinges largely on a matter of perspective.  Our experience of the world by means of sensations is first-person, or subjective.  It is necessarily true that we have our own experience of sensations, but we don't share those experiences with another person.  The subjective perceptions of qualia occur within our own mind, not someone else's, because they are uniquely our own experiences.  Even if we wired another person's sense organs to our brain, we would still have our own subjective experience of his sensations.  There's no way we could say that one person's subjective experience of qualia is the same as the other person's.  If I see redness, is it the same as the redness another person sees, or could it be that he sees something that I would call blue?  We can't describe redness in an objective manner.  The best we can do is to compare it to other things that are similar.  But we can't give a fundamental description of redness that would be comprehensible to another person, such that he understands it independent of any reference to something in his own experience. 

Joe:
that merely proves the validity of the HP. you are reacting in knee jerk fashion with the atheist fear of the subjective Anything subjective must be wrong or invalid. The impenetrable nature of the subjective is  exactly  why the HP disproves Dennett and his ilk. you can't demonstrate the reduction of mind to brain chemistry with this subjective dimension that can't be shared or mutually understood,. If it was the case that mind is reducible there should be total transparency when we get to  a demonstrable level. That we can't give a fundamental description of redness  is the point. That means experiencing consciousness is not just a matter of chemicals but also has dimension that can't be reduced to just the physical components It also prevents us from understanding consciousness.

IMS:

This is the basis of Thomas Nagel's argument.  His discussion of what it's like to be a bat focuses on subjective experience, and our inability to make an objective description of it.  There are facts about the bat's experience that are unknown to the rest of us, he says.  And without an objective description, the phenomenon of conscious experience eludes science, he claims.  But that is simply the reality of subjective experience.  There's no reason to suppose, based on the inability to objectively describe what is inherently subjective, that science could never explain the existence of these experiences as physical phenomena.

Joe
We can explain the existence of them now without science. They exist. What we see here is the atheist reductionism trying jettison from reality anything it can't control through scientnsism, This is what we call "losing the phenomena" (we in the philosophy of science biz). They are going to reduce it out of existence. When they get to a point they can't handle well that is not important because if it was they could handle it, This is one of the tricks of tricks of reduction: redefine, reliable, lose the phenomena, proclaim it minutia. That is a function absorbing the anomaly as Kuhn says.


IMS:

David Chalmers makes an argument for the immaterial aspect of mind based on the conceivability philosophical zombies.  A zombie is said to be physically identical to a human, but without the conscious experience of qualia.  The zombie can see and hear, and respond to conversation in a way that is indistinguishable from an ordinary person, but without the qualitative feeling of sensations that humans experience as the substance normal consciousness.  According to Chalmers, there is no physical difference, but the zombie lacks something else that is supposed to be the immaterial substance of mind. 

Joe:
Chalmer's is an atheist. He sees mind as supervened upon brain, he does not believe in any SN ideas. His from of dualism is property dualism which is not SN.Your first statement implied that anyone supporting the hard problem believes in SN  that's Bull Shit. Of course I am imbued with SN, and I'll take on all comers. That doesn't mean they all are. The point of philosophical zombies is not to show there's an immaterial part of the mind but to show that there's an explanatory gap between consciousness and brain function, We don't5vknow why we are conscious. From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

A metaphor of Saul Kripke’s helps to show how the zombie idea threatens physicalism (Kripke 1972/80, 153f.). Imagine God creating the world and deciding to bring into existence the whole of the physical universe. Having created this purely physical universe, did he have to do any more work to provide for consciousness? Answering yes to this question implies there is more to consciousness than the purely physical facts alone can supply. If nothing else, it implies that consciousness depends on nonphysical properties, ones that would not exist in a purely physical world; it would be a zombie world. Physicalists, on the other hand, are committed to answering no. They have to say that by fixing the purely physical facts, God did everything that was needed to fix the mental facts about the organisms thereby created, including their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and experiences. And if fixing the physical facts is alone enough to fix the mental facts, then a zombie world seems impossible.[for those who don't know about Phil Zombies check out this FN][3]

IMS:

Chalmers maintains that the experience of qualia is non-functional, and plays no role in physical causation.  So the zombie can have sensations and react to them without ever having conscious awareness of their quality.  But the zombie that can't experience qualia couldn't possibly behave the way conscious people do, because our behavior is intimately related to the qualitative feel of things.  We are attracted to the pleasant taste of sugar, and repulsed by the rotten smell of garbage.  We recoil from the unpleasant feeling of pain.  If a zombie didn't experience these things, he wouldn't behave the way we do.  Imagine a zombie holding his hand in a fire and saying "I can feel the sensation of pain, but there's nothing unpleasant about it."

Joe:
I think IMS has his subject/object dichotomy screwed up. He thinks that Zombies wouldn't;t work because they can't do qualia and qualia is what gives us our feel for living, he puts it: " because our behavior is intimately related to the qualitative feel of things." His example is taste., That's the subjective dimension that he hard problem is about, Why would zombies have to know the sweet taste of sugar to act like we act? That's the subjective side of things and it's unimportant remember?

IMS:

Chalmers' thought experiment postulates something that sounds logically possible, but is actually incoherent.  A zombie couldn't possibly behave in a way that is indistinguishable from a conscious person.  First, the zombie must be able to sense things the way we do, or he wouldn't know anything about his surroundings.  He wouldn't be able to converse, or to see what is in front of him.  Second, the zombie must be able to distinguish the difference between different colors, sounds, smells, etc.  If you place a red block and a blue block in front of him, and ask him to pick up the red one, he will correctly discern which one is red.  But that ability do discern one color from another can only exist if there is something qualitatively different between them.  That's precisely what we call qualia. 

If that's so then how do you explain Trump supporters? His argument is really over doing it. For example there are people who can't see colors, or can't see the same color the rest of us see. They usually are not picked out of a crowd. Not unless someone says raise your hand if you see this red thing and guys doesn't raise it,. I don't know if Other people taste Sweetness the way I do.

IMS

The bottom line is that we have every reason to think that the experience of sensations, that we call qualia, is very much a physical phenomenon, and that it plays a vital role in our ability to survive.  The simple fact that we can't make an objective description of subjective experience is no reason to conclude that mind must be immaterial.  The "hard problem of consciousness" only provides a weak excuse for dualists to hang on to their belief in the existence of something else for which there is no real evidence.

Joe:
Here he displays a real lack of understanding about the nature of the HP. No one tries to say that sensations are not physical. But the sensation of them registers upon the mind and thus is not physical in that sense, But that's not even the point, the sensation itself is obviously physical. Notice in his piece overall he had not answered the HP, he's merely tried to reduce it., He also loses the phenomena by  discording experiences into the realm of the subjective where they don't matter., Then  to use them against the reduces them to a totally physical dimension. The mind is kept sealed off from what's going on so he doesn't have to deal with the immaterial., He has failed to come to terms with the HP.

For a long, very well researched ,brilliant disposition on the overall topic of consciousness, see my article "Mind is Not Reducible to Brain." One of the great works of our time. (if we limit the field to my blog): Mind is not Reducible to Brain Part 1

Part 2




Sources
[1] I am Skeptic, "The Hard Problem of Consciousness," The Keptic Zoe,Saturday, (May 7, 2016 ),blog URL:
http://theskepticzone.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness.html accessed 5/8/16

[2]  Edward F. Kelley and Emily Williams Kelley, et al, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21^st Century. Boulder, New York, Toronto: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Inc, 2007/2010, 37.

[3] Kirk, Robert, "Zombies", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

from the article:

Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures designed to illuminate problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world. Unlike those in films or witchcraft, they are exactly like us in all physical respects but without conscious experiences: by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave just like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness.

Few people, if any, think zombies actually exist. But many hold they are at least conceivable, and some that they are possible. It seems that if zombies really are possible, then physicalism is false and some kind of dualism is true. For many philosophers that is the chief importance of the zombie idea. But it is also valuable for the sharp focus it gives to philosophical theorizing about consciousness (for example Howell 2013; Kriegel 2011; Stoljar 2006; Tye 2008). Use of the zombie idea against physicalism also raises more general questions about the relations between imaginability, conceivability, and possibility. Finally, zombies raise epistemological difficulties: they reinstate the ‘other minds’ problem.

 

Argument from Laws of Nature

If you recall last time I posted a prolegomena to an argument from laws of nature. In other words, an argument for existence of God based upon laws of physics and nature. That article was just thinking getting ready to make such an argument, Here I am making it. I encourage the reader to go back and read the article fist if you haven't already. The point is two fold:  the folks on Secular Outpost were so dubious of any such argument  and the presentation that set them off so deserved their ire (designed by Campus Crusade for Christ) [1], that I felt like I had to try to (a) prove to the atheists there is a potential argument there and show my fellow Christians how to find it, at to offer  direction in which to move.

The bad argument on the website was purely a "god of the gaps" argument:

How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change? Why is the universe so orderly, so reliable?"The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence."[2]

The only rational upon which the argument turns is the mystery concerning how laws work. That is a god of the gaps argument by definition, textbook. My arguments begins by stating a rational that, while it may hard to prove, is at least not a gap in knowledge, at least not only a gap. The problem with gaps is that they close up. Yet if we can demonstrate that mind is a more solid basis for the seeming law-like regularity of the universe that night make for a better explanation.[3] The argument:

1) mind is the most efficient and dependable source of ordering we know,

(2) Random ordering is usually inefficient and the odds are against it's dependability.

(3) The Universe Displays a Law-like efficiency and dependability in the workings of it's natural machinations.

(4) Such efficiency and dependability is indicative of mind as ordering principle (from 1,3), therefore, it is logical to assume mind as the best explanation for the dependability of the universe..

(5) A mind that orders the universe fits the major job description for God, Thus mind is the best explanation, assuming the choices are mind vs random chance.


Notice I said nothing about law implying a law giver. The rational for mind is not based upon analogies to law. This does raise the one real sticking point, premises 1-2. Can we prove that mind is the best explanation for law-like regularity? I'm going to assume that it's pretty obvious that (P3) universe displays like-like efficiency. Also I don't think it will be such a struggle to prove 4-5 linking a mind that orders the universe with God. Therefore I wont bother to argue those here. Thus I will concern myself primarily with P's 1-2.

Certain schools of philosophy hold that an inference to the best explanation is a valid argument. That is if one amid a variety of explanations has a more significant likelihood of coming true, and is more in line with prevailing theory and serves to explain more of the data then that hypothesis can be warranted as "the best explanation,"[4] Ratzsch goes on to quote Peter Lipton: "According to Inference to the Best Explanation … [g]iven our data and our background beliefs, we infer what would if true, provide the best of the competing explanations we can generate of those data (so long as the best is good enough for us to make any inference at all)."[5]

That complexity and efficacy are indicative of mind as an organizing principle might be hard or impossible to pull off but it makes sense on one level. Through complexity and fitedness one might deduce purpose or telos, and mind might be indicted in that sense.

All the richness and diversity of matter and energy we observe today has emerged since the beginning in a long and complicated sequence of self- organizing physical processes. The laws of physics not only permit a universe to originate spontaneously, but they encourage it to organize and complexify itself to the point where conscious beings emerge who can look back on the great cosmic drama and reflect on what it all means."

...The laws that characterize our actual universe, as opposed to an infinite number of alternative possible universes, seem almost contrived-fine-tuned, some commentators have claimed-so that life and consciousness may emerge. To quote Dyson again: it is almost as if "the universe knew we were coming." I cannot prove to you that this is design, but whatever it is it is certainly very clever][6]

Now the secularist skeptic might argue evolution demonstrates an organizing principle producing great complexity and in mindless fashion, While that might be the case the problem is evolution is surely the product of the law-like regularity and not it's cause. Presumably then we need laws to make evolutionary processes work and so we have not explained anything. even so the skeptic can always fall back on the fact that we don't have a world that we know is or is not designed by a mind to which we compare our own world. Even though P1 might make sense there is no way to prove it. Not having an undesigned universe to compare may mean that we can't prove the existence of God by the argument here advanced, It does not necessarily mean the argument is not a good one. If we forget about proof and talk about warrant: it may not be proof but it is probably the best explanation and that may warrant belief.

 In arguments of this type, superior explanatory virtues of a theory are taken as constituting decisive epistemic support for theory acceptability, warranted belief of the theory, and likely truth of the theory. There are, of course, multitudes of purported explanatory, epistemic virtues, including the incomplete list a couple paragraphs back (and lists of such have evolved over time). Assessing hypotheses in terms of such virtues is frequently contentious, depending, as it does, on perceptions of ill-defined characteristics, differences in background conceptual stances, and the like. Still, in general we frequently manage rough and ready resolutions...[7]

The argument does turn on the premise of a design argument but it could be considered more than that. Hawking ascribes the origin of the universe to the laws of physics, particularly gravity He certainly seems to indicate that they are more than just descriptions of what happens. Yet he makes no attempt to explain where these laws come from. In the sense mind offers a more complete explanation it could be the "best."

Stephen Hawking wrote a book, The Grand Design. in which he argued that gravity accounts for the existence of everything else:

If the total energy of the universe must always remain zero, and it costs energy to create a body, how can a whole universe be created from nothing? That is why there must be a law like gravity. Because gravity is attractive, gravitational energy is negative….Bodies such as stars or black holes cannot just appear out of nothing. But a whole universe can….Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing in the manner described in Chapter 6. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.[8]

Edger Anders discusses the problem with this approach:

So gravity is God. Unfortunately the authors have no time to tell us who created gravity (earlier they rule out God because no one could explain who created him). Nor can they tell us why matter and gravity should pop out of nothing, except to argue that ‘nothing’ undergoes quantum fluctuations. However, this requires that (like gravity) the laws of quantum mechanics pre-existed the universe and that ‘nothing’ possesses the properties of normal space, which is part of the created order and cannot be its antecedent.[9]

Were I involved in a debate ageist a seasoned great thinker or some professional philosopher this is not the argument I  would use. I think it is a valid warrant for belief, the best explanation for law-like regularity.


Main supporting evidence: Laws of Physics,k beyond descriptoveprescroptovedochotomy

this is a chapter for a book I'm working on. It;s in three parts but supports thsi argument real well,


Supporter Material

Laws of physics: beyond prescriptive/descriptive Dichotomy

Sources


[1] Bradly Bowen, Adamson's Cru [de] Arguments for God part 1, Secular Outpost, (April 25, 2016) blog URL:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/04/25/adamsons-crude-arguments-for-god-part-1/
accessed April 28, 2016

[2] Marlyn Adamson, "Is There a God," Every Student, Published by Campus Crusade for Christ
On line resource, URL: http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html
She sites fn 11:Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great about Christianity; (Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2007, chapter

[3] I recently posted on criteria by which to judge best explanation.

[4] Ratzsch, Del and Koperski, Jeffrey, "Teleological Arguments for God's Existence", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/teleological-arguments/>.

[5] Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation. 1st Edition. London: Routledge (1991, 58): quoted in Ratzsch, Ibid.

[6] ."Paul Davies, "Physics and the Mind o God; Templeton Award Address, First Things ON LINE URL
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24 accessed 1/1/16

Paul Davies is Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the twenty-fifth recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which he received on May 3, 1995 at Westminster Abbey. His books include The Mind of God, God and New Physics, The Cosmic Blueprint, Superforce, and Other Worlds.



[7] Ratzsch, Ibid.

[8] Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, New York: Bantum Books, 2010. 180

[9] Edgar Andres, “Review: the Grand Design,” Challies'.com, Tim Challies, on line reouce, URL:
http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/the-grand-design acessed 10/4/15
Andres is Emeritus professor University of London. Physicist and an expert on large molecules. Born 1932

Do Contingencies Require Necessities?

This is a sore point for me as I've had trouble with atheists on this point lo these many years of internet apologetics. Over this last week end I had an argument with three atheists at once over the Cosmological argument (comment section of this blog). My argument asserts that all natural things are contingent because they require causes, At least we have no examples of things that don't require causes,

IMS (I am Skeptic): " I do not accept this. Contingent things (if defined as things whose existence has a beginning in time) have a cause (by premise 1), but that cause could be anything. I do not grant that it must be a necessary thing."

Meta*: this is a deductive argument man. We are going to deduce something we do that by arguing premises, p2 doesn't have to embody the conclusion of the argument it only has to be true in itself, saying it could be anything is BS because by the end of the argument it will be apparent not true.



http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/n.htm#nec

*for those who don't know I am Meta (aka Metacrock) ,my old screen name  

necessary / contingent

Distinction between kinds of truth. Necessary truth is a feature of any statement that it would be contradictory to deny. (Contradictions themselves are necessarily false.) Contingent truths (or falsehoods) happen to be true (or false), but might have been otherwise. Thus, for example: "Squares have four sides." is necessary. "Stop signs are hexagonal." is contingent. "Pentagons are round." is contradictory. This distinction was traditionally associated (before Kant and Kripke) with the distinctions between a priori and a posteriori knowledge and the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgment. Necessity may also be defined de dicto in terms of the formal logical property of tautology. Recommended Reading: Jules Vuillemin, Necessity or Contingency? (C S L I, 1995); Colin McGinn, Logical Properties (Oxford, 2001); Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Clarendon, 1989); and Margaret Dauler Wilson, Leibniz' Doctrine of Necessary Truth (Harvard, 1984).

A contingent being (a being such that if it exists, it could have not-existed or could cease to exist) exists. This contingent being has a cause of or explanation for its existence. ... Therefore, what causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must include a non-contingent (necessary) being.Jul 13, 2004
Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)



https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

also


Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

by B Reichenbach - ‎2004 - ‎Cited by 64 - ‎Related articles
Jul 13, 2004 - A contingent being (a being such that if it exists, it could have not-existed or could cease to exist) exists. This contingent being has a cause of or explanation for its existence. ... Therefore, what causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must include a non-contingent (necessary) being.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

The Cosmological Argument
www2.oberlin.edu/faculty/mwallace/CosmologicalArg.html
Jun 25, 2008 - This means that it relies on our experience of the world--beyond the tools of ... that some things are caused to come into existence by other things, and that ... Aquinas supposes that not everything can be contingent in this way, ...

2/28/2019 10:45:00 AM

necessary / sufficient

Distinction between logical or causal conditions. In logic, one proposition is a necessary condition of another when the second cannot be true while the first is false, and one proposition is a sufficient condition for another when the first cannot be true while the second is false. Thus, for example: "I have a dog" is a necessary condition for "My dog has fleas," and "You scored ninety-five percent" is a sufficient condition for "You received an A." In causal relations, a necessary condition for the occurence of an event is a state of affairs without which the event cannot happen, while a sufficient condition is a state of affairs that guarantees that it will happen. Thus, for example: the presence of oxygen is a necessary condition for combustion, and the flow of electrical current is a sufficient condition for the induction of a magnetic field. Recommended Reading: Brian McLaughlin, On the Logic of Ordinary Conditionals (SUNY, 1990); Conditionals, ed. by Michael Woods, David Wiggins, and Dorothy Edgington (Clarendon, 1997); and David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Blackwell, 2000). Also see SEP, Norman Swartz, and CE. [1]

Rather than sufficient I used contingent but the word has a causal dimension it is not a misue of the term. In the quotation abovevthe relivant part is:

 In causal relations, a necessary condition for the occurence of an event is a state of affairs without which the event cannot happen, while a sufficient condition is a state of affairs that guarantees that it will happen. Thus, for example: the presence of oxygen is a necessary condition for combustion, and the flow of electrical current is a sufficient condition for the induction of a magnetic field. Recommended Reading: Brian McLaughlin, On the Logic of Ordinary Conditionals (SUNY, 1990); Conditionals, ed. by Michael Woods, David Wiggins, and Dorothy Edgington

Tim Holt.

Something is “necessary” if it could not possibly have failed to exist. The laws of mathematics are often thought to be necessary. It is plausible to say that mathematical truths such as two and two making four hold irrespective of the way that the world is. Even if the world were radically different, it seems, two and two would still make four. God, too, is often thought to be a necessary being, i.e. a being that logically could not have failed to exist.
Something is “contingent” if it is not necessary, i.e. if it could have failed to exist. Most things seem to exist contingently. All of the human artefacts around us might not have existed; for each one of them, whoever made it might have decided not to do so. Their existence, therefore, is contingent. You and I, too, might not have existed; our respective parents might never have met, or might have decided not to have children, or might have decided to have children at a different time. Our existence, therefore, is contingent. Even the world around us seems to be contingent; the universe might have developed in such a way that none of the observable stars and planets existed at all.
The argument from contingency rests on the claim that the universe, as a whole, is contingent. It is not only the case, the argument suggests, that each of the things around is us contingent; it is also the case that the whole, all of those things taken together, is contingent. It might have been the case that nothing existed at all. The state of affairs in which nothing existed at all is a logically possible state of affairs, even though it is not the actual state of affairs.

I have made the argument in causal terms and I chose to use the e\term "contingent," I could tweak the argument and use another term, I may do that, it doesn't matter. IMS has nothing to say so he refuses to accept the definition but the truth is her can't me a single example of some aspect of nature that doesn't have a cause. We trace those causes to the big bang and can trace o further but we have no proof of what caused the big bang.

Moreover I will make a sub argument here to the effect that materialism itself depends upon  accepting the notion that all natural things have causes.

1) The notion of something from nothing voilates basic assumptions of materialism

a. Materailism based upon cause and effect

Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism" [3]
"...the belief that everything that exists is ethier matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence."

Backing up Flew's assumption is Christepherv Southgate"

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offence to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable." [4]

b) Something from nothing contraidicts materialism

The great philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, also mathematician who wrote Principia Mathematica with Bergrand Russell, stated:

 "We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... sciene which is employed in their deveopment [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical casation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."[Whitehead was an atheist]  [5]

c) Causality was the basis upon which God was expelled from Modern Science

It was La Plase's famous line "I have no need of that Hypothesis" [meaning God] Which turned the scientific world form believing (along with Newton and assuming that order in nature proved design) to unbelief on the principle that we don't' need God to explain the universe because we have independent naturalistic cause and effect. [Numbers, God and Nature] [6]

2) Materilism Undermines Itself

a) Big Bang contradicts causality (see quotation above)

b) QM theory seems to contradict cause/effect relationship.

c) Rejection of final cause

3) Probabalistic Justification for assumption of Cause

We still have a huge justification for assuming causes inductively, since nothing in our experince is ever uncaused. The mere fact that we can't see or find a cause isn't a proof that there isn't one.

4) Therefore, we have probabalistic justification for assuming Final cause

Thus, the basis upon which God was dismissed from scientific thought has been abandoned;the door to consideration of God is open again. The reliance upon naturalistic cause and effect in consideration of ultimate origins is shattered, but this does not make it rational to just assume that the universe opoped into existence with no cause. Since we have vast precident for assuming cause and effect, we should continue to do so. But since naturalistic cause and effect seems unnecessary at the cosmic level, we should consider the probablity of an ultimate necessary final cause.

Sources


[1] Garth Kemerling, The Philosophy Pages  (websiter   are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 ) URL:
http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/index.htm
accessed 5/5/16

This is a concise guide to technical terms and personal names often encountered in the study of philosophy. What you will find here naturally reflects my own philosophical interests and convictions, but everything is meant to be clear, accurate, and fair, a reliable source of information on Western philosophy for a broad audience. The curriculum vitae elsewhere on this site describes my experience in academic life.

Garth Kemerling Ph.D. In Philosophy from University of Iowa


[2] Tim Holt, "Philoso[hy of Reliogion,"  www.philosophyofreligion.info website. URL:
http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-cosmological-argument/the-argument-from-contingency/
accessed 5/5/16

rom one of his sites: Tim has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in philosophy from the University of Sheffield, and a Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford. From September 2005, he has been teaching philosophy, religious studies, and critical thinking at Cirencester College.


[3]   Anthony Flew, "Materialism,"   Dictionary of Philosophy,  New York: Macmillon  press limited, 1979, second revision 1984, 222
[4]  Christopher Southgate and Lawrence Osborn, God, Humanity and the Cosmos. T&T Clark:  Edinburgh , 1999 quoted on website:
Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences URL:
http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?(this source is already linked above)
accessed 2001. This site no longer exists. Dr. Sothgate was head of the institute.

this material is now availed on the counter balance website: URL:

http://www.counterbalance.org/ghc-bb/creat-frame.html
access 5/5/16

[5] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and The Modern World, .NY: free Press, 1925, 1953. 76
[6]  Roger Hahn, God And Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Los Angeles:University of California Press, David C. Lindberg (Editor), Ronald L. Numbers (Editor). 1986, 256-277