NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/callahan/13991

Text File | 1992-11-22 | 10.2 KB | 176 lines

Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!linac!uchinews!quads!mss2
From: [e-mail] (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: science, religion, and spirituality
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Keywords: n
Sender: [e-mail] (News System)
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 11:30:07 GMT
Lines: 162

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>"The easy analogy to make, since most people here are familiar with
>computers, is with the levels one can speak of with regards to
>computers and their operation.  The hardware mechanisms are like the
>"low level explanation" physical sciences of physics and chemistry,
>while the software is like the "high level explanation" social
>sciences.  For example, a program is best described at a higher level
>(though in theory it could be reduced to a lower level of explanation
>in terms of what goes on in the CPU registers, that's not a *useful*
>level of explanation-- and other aspects of computer operation may not
>be describable at all at lower levels).  But no one would claim that
>the operation of the program requires something beyond the hardware of
>the program, some sort of metaphysical 'programness'.

    "The operation, no.  But I'll point out that the _purpose_ of
the program quite certainly and provably _does_ come from outside of
the computer.  The hows of normal computer operation are internal--
the whys are external.  Also, of course, there is _abnormal_ computer
operation which often derives from external factors, as you should
know better than anyone, Snark.  :-)" Snark is free to decide whether
this refers to the strange electrical malfunctions which seem to
follow him around or simply to his experience as a desk attendant at a
computer center-- either way, the reason why a computer zigs when the
program says zag may well be because of dust particles or human
intervention or something else outside the normal context of the
machine on any level.  "Again, all that may prove is that the computer
analogy is imperfect-- I'm more concerned with questions of purpose
myself.

    "Also, self-awareness as an internal phenomenon strikes me as
a serious mystery.  Not the operations of the brain and its relations
to cognitive function, which may well be explicable (and no way in
Hell am I going to try to argue with Snark about his specialty!  :-) )
but the self-perception of the ego as experienced by me (and I presume
by all other humans).  In other words, the existence of a `me' which
is `awake' and divides the universe into `me' and `everything else'
does not seem at least _currently_ explicable by materialism.  Whether
it will be explicable or not is a matter of belief, of course, but
it's raised doubts in people more inclined to materialism than me.
Robert Heinlein, for one (he didn't discuss his religious beliefs
much, but his fiction often questioned a wholly materialist view [see
"Elsewhen", or Jubal Harshaw on the idea that self-awareness is merely
a matter of chemical reactions] and one gets the impression from the
few factual snippets which can be gleaned that he suspected some form
of reincarnation.  [See his comments on the Bridey Murphy case in
Expanded Universe, and Spider Robinson's report that the reason he
refused to become a corpsicle is that he was afraid it would interfere
with rebirth.])  Or any number of otherwise hardheaded scientists.
Selfhood is crucial to us, and yet we have no real understanding of it
at all.  Certainly we couldn't prove its existence or nonexistence to
any degree of certainty-- we accept that of other humans by analogy,
but if it exists in anything else we'll have a hard time determining
it.  The Turing Test isn't enough, certainly (we have computers which
can pass it with a fraction of people _now_, which as certainly as
anything's certain aren't self-aware)."

  (One might
>argue that *starting* the program would of necessity require an
>external impetus, such as a human at the console giving an execute
>instruction.  Personally I wouldn't extend the analogy to the real
>universe as far as to postulate the necessity of an external factor at
>the 'Big Bang' moment of creation... note the weirdnesses of Hawking's
>theories of imaginary time and such suggesting a mathematical
>completeness to spacetime... but it's a possible point of compromise
>for some.)

    "Again, where the universe `came from', and if that question
is meaningful, is an important one.  Maybe it's turtles all the way
down, with the mass of the universe having been part of an
expansion/contraction cycle forever.  Maybe it just appeared out of
nothingness in a causeless quantum fluctuation.  But then I'm not sure
why those explanations have any more compelling power than a
supernatural one-- it's all blind guessing when we don't even have the
physical laws of the universe to guide us.  If those laws came into
existence as part of the formation of the universe, then we're not in
a good position to theorize about anything prior to at least the laws
governing the first unified force (which later differentiated into our
four fundamental forces) coming into existence.  Maybe Hawking can--
I'm not qualified to judge or even really understand his theories.
But even if the question of beginning and ending really have no
scientific meaning, I'm not sure what that means to the philosophical
questions predicated on where the universe came from, which can
probably be summed up irreverantly as `What the hell's it doing here?'
Maybe nothing-- but if so, it's a pretty active sort of nothing with
inhabitants who act as if their acts should have reasons and not just
causes."

>"Anyway, in the real world, I have a faith of sorts that everything is
>material (i.e. there is no need to invoke supernatural explanations),
>though a given concept may be best explained at higher levels of
>abstraction."

    "Ah, well, Snark-- it's probably good that we should disagree
on this.  We tend to agree on so many things that it would be boring
otherwise.  :-) But I'm still inclined to trust my intuition that
materialism logically (though not in actual behavior, humans not being
purely logical beings) leads either to a moral contradiction or to
amorality.  Moral axioms don't really lend themselves to materialist
origins.  At least, I can't think of a materialist origin for moral
axioms which doesn't reduce them to pragmatism (e.g.  evolution,
sociobiology, `benefit to society', game theory, etc)-- in which case,
IMHO, they're not moral principles at all.  (Because if they're
pragmatic, then there are always cases where violating morals will be
pragmatic-- betrayal of one's friends to save one's own life, for
example.  If you're alive, there's a chance you'll live it down and
get over the guilt; if you're dead, you're dead.  The decision not to
betray is a moral decision, and no explanation of friendship in terms
of evolutionary strategy or of loyalty as herd instinct or other
materialist origin for loyalty to friends can really explain, in the
actor's own terms, the decision to stand fast.  One is loyal because
one is loyal, ultimately-- but the `why' either ends in nothing or in
the unknowable; either you run it down inside the universe or you
chase it outside.  IMHO, of course.)

    "But I tell you three times that that does _not_ _not_ _not_
mean I think materialists are amoral, or particularly less moral than
anyone else in actual practice!  (Snark knows this, but I _know_ that
if I don't make this clear I'll offend someone.  Besides, as we've
already established on the last go-round, Snark's a de-facto moral
absolutist even though at a high enough, abstract enough, and to him
irrelevant level he'll admit to not really believing in a cosmic
standard.)  Personally I think most people, whatever their philosophies,
have better intuitions than they give themselves credit for.  Even the
avowed moral relativists always seem to have something which they have
as a loose yardstick for `badness', whether it's coercion of others or
disrupting people's lives or deliberately hurting people.  Very few
people really consider Naziism an equally valid moral expression with
everything else, and most of those that claim they do still seem to
have a sense of justice more developed than `this pleases me, this
displeases me, and that's the only way I choose between what I approve
of and what I object to.'  I do know people who'll say, `Well, yes, I
think that's wrong, but that's just _my_ opinion and of no greater
value than, say, a Nazi death camp guard.'  Personally, I just don't
think those folks are giving themselves enough credit for being able
to distinguish right from wrong, but I don't expect to convince them
of that either.

    "Conversely, having spent ten years or more as an agnostic and
basically as a materialist (it dates from the time I first started
really thinking about religion, so that I find it difficult to
pinpoint) I'm hardly going to suggest that people who find it
difficult to choose an answer on the available data are fools-- I'd be
shooting myself in the foot.  I think dogmatic materialism is, well,
dogmatic, without even having the excuse that dogmatic religion does
of there _being_ a higher authority to lay down dogma.  Materialism as
a working assumption until and unless something else comes along to
displace it seems somewhat reasonable to me, though ultimately it
didn't hold me.  (And I do credit Heinlein as being one of the primary
factors in my first questioning it, for whatever that's worth.
Certainly it wasn't likely any religious writer would have done it,
since their agenda was obvious and, to me, unconvincing.  Conversely,
having some of Heinlein's characters ask, "Who told _you_ that
consciousness was a material phenomenon, and what's your basis for
believing it?"  carried real weight.)

Michael
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS    "Indeed I tremble for my country
[e-mail]     when I reflect that God is just."
[e-mail]     -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
[e-mail]        Virginia (1784)