Off the Deep End Philosophies

You probably are aware that I have a philosophical bent. I am not a professional philosopher (to profess being a philosopher, you have to say “I am a philosopher); I am an amateur philosopher and I am of the position that everyone dabbles in philosophy, so we are all, to some extent, philosophers. I am however fearful for the topic as the professional philosophers seem to be constantly going off the deep end, actually diving into the deep end of the pool, when there is no water in it.

To avoid ridicule, the pros wrap their statements in cocoons of jargon, impenetrable by the uninitiated, which is the bulk of us. As a consequence there are far fewer critics able to address their writings. Plus as a recovering academic there is a certain attitude in academia of “I won’t criticize your work if you do not criticize mine.” This is why academic disputes are so nasty. You know there is far more beneath the surface that in the purported topic under discussion.)

What I am getting to are the current philosophical positions regarding consciousness.

To start we do not know what conscious is, so each discusser is somewhat free to define it along lines consistent with their views. Some limit consciousness to simple self awareness, others go much, much farther, but I do not know whether any of these discussions advance our understanding on conscious, even a little. Before science was “Science,” at least in the western tradition, it was called Natural Philosophy. But starting in the sixteenth century and then continuing on for a couple of centuries Natural Philosophy became science and natural philosophers became scientists.

I suspect that some of the driving force in this spilt came from “scientists” wanting to know answers and were willing to do experiments or make measurements of nature being irritated with Natural Philosophers who could shoot their mouths off in volume but weren’t interested in finding out what Nature has to say about their blather.

The trigger for this latest of my diatribes, is those “philosophers” who think that the universe is conscious or the universe is merely a mental state within an at-large cosmic mind from which we are all breakaway fragments or ‘alters’ (via Bernardo Kastrup in his Analytic Idealism).

Now, I am probably not the best person to criticize his betters because my philosophy is quite simple, namely: “what is is and shit happens.” Science is an investigative tool to study what is and what shit happening involves. It doesn’t “mean” anything otherwise. Apparently that makes me a pragmatic materialist or pragmatic realist, but I care little for either label.

So, me and my little pea brain see this: we don’t know fuck all about consciousness. Part of it is surely self awareness, being able to ‘hear” our own thoughts unspoken or spoken, which is probably a good place to start, but not now, for me.

There seems little doubt that our mental abilities are located in our brains. Years of studying brain diseases and injuries seem to support this hypothesis. (It has to be an hypothesis because until we know what conscious is, stating where it is located is highly speculative.) Anatomical studies show that the nerves which carry the signals from our eyes go to a defined location in our brains, the visual cortex. Similarly there are oodles of evidence that sensory data for sensory nerves gets trucked into our brains, specifically to other locations, so at a bare minimum our brains are a center of nerve information sorting. More anatomical studies have located centers for other mental functions. Still we do not know what consciousness is or what thoughts are.

A reasonable hypothesis is that consciousness, whatever the fuck it is is a property of our brains. Supporting this is that in order to process information, it has to be shuttle back and forth all over the land. (We now know that memories aren’t stored in one place; they are split with the aural parts storied in our auditory cortex, the visual parts storied in the visual cortex, etc. When a memory is recalled, all of those parts get stitched back together. Now here is the key part: in order for any information to be processed, many nerve impulses need to be shuttled around and nerve impulses in the human body travel at about 200 mph (320kph). Since your brain is like 5-6 inches thick along any axis, and that 200 mph translates into roughly 3520 inches per second, a nerve impulse only takes like 0.0017 seconds to make the longest trip across the brain.

In order for “the universe” to perform cognitive functions and possess a mind, like humans do, its “nerve impulses,” whatever they may be, are limited to the speed of light, roughly 3 billion meters per second, a whole lot faster than biological nerve impulses, but … and you knew that but was coming, didn’t you? imagine trying to have a conversation with an astronaut on the planet Mars. Since neither Mars nor the Earth are stationary, this would take anywhere from 3 to 22 minutes per message. This is why science fiction stories use workarounds (A subspace message, Captain!) and “hyperspace message torpedoes, etc. except The Martian which was a breath of fresh air to scientists viewing that movie or reading that book.

Okay, my point? Imagine what your thoughts would be like if every nerve impulse had a lag time of 3 to 22 minutes. Got it? Goodbye cognition. Hello, human slug.

And these are two planets quite close together in the same solar system. What about Alpha Centauri, a neighboring star to our Sol and also in “our galaxy and therefore our universe,” which is 4.4 light years away. What would a 4.4 year time lag do to the steps in any possible processing of information?

Now, this doesn’t stop many philosophers and speculative physicists, they imagine that the speed of light isn’t a speed limit, or that there are parallel universe to ours (parallel how?). This is what happens when recreational drugs get legalized. Like cats and laser pointer dots, these folks follow the dot no matter where it takes them: La La Land, Neverland, Wonderland, etc.

If our consciousness is located in our brains then there is a good reason it is so, evolution does play dice with the universe. Our brains are composed of neurons and other cells whose functions have squat to do with processing food or locomotion or any other physical task but as to identifying where to put our feet when we are walking, our brains are way cool. And they are small and compact while still consuming vast amounts of blood sugar and oxygen in order to create mental states and whatnot. Anything much, much larger is unlikely to have consciousness, sure blue whales, dinosaurs, and so on, but mountains? planets? solar systems, galaxies, universes? Too big, Bubba, try again with another bullshit theory, the current ones are crap. (Why? Because they ignore obvious facts.)

Can Thoughts Become Causes?

A major objection to free will by determinists is that they cannot grasp how thoughts can be causes … of anything. According to determinists causes are solely physical. So free will cannot exist because our thoughts cannot cause anything to happen.

It is clear by now, I hope, that one of the brain’s primary functions is to create thoughts. How it does that is unknown. But our brains create thoughts, seemingly to me anyway, willy-nilly and all of the time, even when we are asleep (we call those thoughts dreams). Sometimes those thoughts involve words but often as not images. We can see those parts of the brain used to process images and words being active in brain scans while we sleep. Obviously they are also involved when we are awake. And when asked to imagine something, real or not (my favorite is a “green hot dog”) the same brain regions are engaged as when we are processing sensory data for words and images.

Now, I wish to undermine (my brain is shouting “destroy” but that is probably just my overactive male ego barking) the concept that “thoughts cannot cause anything.” Are you ready? I only need two words: brain plasticity.

Here is an Overview of Brain Plasticity (Supplied by Google’s AI)
Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt its structure and function in response to experiences, learning, and even injury. This means the brain can modify its connections, pathways, and even create new ones throughout life.

Key aspects of brain plasticity:
Lifelong Adaptation:
Brain plasticity isn’t limited to childhood; it continues throughout a person’s life, allowing for learning, adaptation, and recovery from injury.
Synaptic Changes:
Plasticity involves changes in the strength of connections between neurons (synapses), allowing the brain to re-wire itself in response to new information or experiences.
Functional and Structural Changes:
Plasticity encompasses both functional changes (how the brain operates) and structural changes (the physical connections between neurons).
Importance for Learning and Memory:
Brain plasticity is crucial for learning new things, forming memories, and adapting to new environments.
Recovery from Injury:
Plasticity plays a vital role in the brain’s ability to recover from injuries like strokes or traumatic brain injuries.

I hope you noted that our brains can rewire themselves because of physical injury, which is nice, but also for “ learning new things, forming memories.”

Gosh, that sounds like the thoughts we run around in our minds have a physical effect on how the brain re-wires itself, no? The changes thus wrought involve both functional and structural changes in our brains.

<Imagine the voice of Howard Cosell saying “Down goes strict determinism, down goes strict determinism!”>

There is so much that we do not know about how the brain functions and how thoughts are even created, so negating statements like “free will is impossible because thoughts cannot be causes” are not helpful as in this case that one seems to be dead wrong.

Is Consciousness Beyond Understanding?

The trigger for this post was the sentence: “How this organ (the brain) produces consciousness remains highly mysterious.”

One could (should?) have said “How this organ produces consciousness remains as yet unknown.” To refer to the source of consciousness as mysterious is iffy in that the definition of “mystery” is:

1. a : something not understood or beyond understanding (Source: Merriam-Webster Online)

The “something not understood” part is fine, but “beyond understanding” is ridiculous and that is the part that most people think of when they hear the term “mysterious.” So, that post-inducing sentence is a loaded claim. And as a fan of the English language the modifier “highly” makes no sense when applied to the “not understood” part but works with the “beyond understanding” part more, so the focus is shifted there again.

How would one go about determining that something is “beyond understanding”? How long would you have to try to understand something to reach this state? How many people would be required for the effort? How much money needs to be spent in the effort? These are questions I bring up when people claim “science cannot explain … <fill in the blank here>.” In order to understand something scientifically, there must be people working on “the problem” for a substantial amount of time as well as money to be spent in the effort. Look at the questions answered by billion dollar atom smashers. Those questions could not be answered before those machines were built, no matter how hard someone thought, there just wasn’t enough data of the appropriate kind. If thinking hard was all that was needed, the ancient Greeks would have developed quantum mechanics.

I suggest that the problem of consciousness has been seriously studied only since the invention of brain scanners, ca. 1970-1975. Prior to that all we had were electroencephalograms (EEGs) as data and they are hardly up to the task. So, we have been scientifically studying consciousness for about 50 years. Since this is a tough problem, it will probably take another 50 or even 100 years to crack it. Until the problem is cracked, we do not even know which data are important and which are not.

It sure as Hell doesn’t help to declare anything to be “beyond understanding” because there is no way to determine whether that is true or not, it is just a claim of impotence … on the speaker’s/writer’s part.

Problems Within the Free Will Debate

Without further ado:

Some problems within the free will debate are:

1. conflating causality with determinism
   I have written about this before. Chains of causes do not completely determine the outcome of a process. If A causes B and B causes C, then we conclude that A causes C. But A doesn’t necessarily cause the properties of C. For example, If A is a cue ball on a pool table and B is a target ball sitting right in front of a Ball C which is right in front of a pocket on the table, a sharp rap on the cue ball, directed at Ball B will cause Ball B to hit Ball C and push it into the pocket. Back up and replace Ball C with an orange. A sharp rap on the cue ball, directed at Ball B will cause Ball B to hit the orange and push it into the pocket. In neither case do the actions of the cue ball determine the properties of the “ball” that ends up in the pocket.
2. assuming free will is only conscious free will and subconscious actions are excluded
   I have also written about this before. Most of our actions are done without conscious thought, that is they are done subconsciously. But since we are not aware of these mental processes we do not associate with them, but only I can make the subconscious actions and decisions I make, so I do Identify with those actions being made by “me.” So, my concpet of free will includes both my conscious and subconscious mental processes. Most philosophers, biologists, etc. only consider conscious free will in their arguments. But if it were not for subconscious mental processes, we wouldn’t even be able to tie our shoes or drive a car without immense effort.
3. the systems providing free will may well be determined by that doesn’t mean the outputs are determined
   Our mental properties seem to stem from brains operating on the same bases as those of other animals we do not ascribe free will to. There are neurons, which are networked and the chemistries involved are the same. But there are difference between the composition and organization of the materials making up our brains and the brains of roundworms. (Roundworms have a relatively simple nervous system, with only 302 neurons in their entire body, 188 of which are in their brain. Humans have 86 billion neurons, most of which are in the brain. This makes for over 100 trillion neural connections in human brains.)

   The concept of emergent properties in any system is still being debated but here I claim that our minds and our wills are emergent properties of this 100 trillion neural connection information processing organ.

4. rationality cannot exist without free will
   The mental property of applying reason to our actions, which we call rationality, cannot exist without free will. Other animals operate on prescribed modes of action we call “instinct.” So a prey animal which senses the presence of a predator, moves away and they don’t do that because they have considered all of their options and selected the one most likely to succeed: away is away, period.
5. confusing the mechanism with the output
   One convinced determinist, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Stanford biologist, said this: “Find me the neuron that [started the choice], the neuron that [was activated] for no reason, where no neuron spoke to it just before. Then show me that this neuron’s actions were not influenced by whether the man was tired, hungry, stressed, or in pain at the time. That nothing about this neuron’s function was altered by the sights, sounds, smells, and so on, experienced by the man in the previous minutes, nor by the levels of any hormones marinating his brain the previous hours to days, nor whether he had experienced a life-changing event in recent months or years. And show me that this neuron’s free-willed functioning wasn’t affected by the man’s genes, or by the life-long changes in regulation of those genes caused by experiences during his childhood, nor by levels of hormones he was exposed to as a fetus, when that brain was being constructed. Nor by the centuries of history and ecology that shaped the invention of the culture in which he was raised.”

   This is a bit like pointing to the threads on a bolt that hold a piston rod to a crankshaft and declaring those threads determine the output of the engine they are in. None of the parts of and automobile engine determine the car rolling down a road. There are additional considerations: the major one being organization of the parts. A campfire doesn’t cause any movement. A gasoline fire (actually an explosion) inside of a piston cylinder in an internal combustion engine can cause a piston to move, which can translate through a highly organized chain of parts into the car moving down a road. This is somewhat confusing a chain of causality for determinism.

My position is simple: somethings are quite determined and others are not. In other words the answer to the question “Are our wills free or determined?” is yes.

Yet Another Comment on Consciousness Studies

I ran across this in a piece on whether quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.

The “Hard Problem of Consciousness” is a now-famous term introduced by Australian philosopher David Chalmers in a 1995 paper, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” The problem is usually framed in terms of qualia: the subjective qualities of our mental experiences, such as the experience of the colour red or of pain.

I think trying to link quantum mechanics to consciousness at this point in time is a fool’s errand, but we are Great Speculators as a species, are we not? My comment is on this phrase “. . . qualia: the subjective qualities of our mental experiences, such as the experience of the colour red or of pain.”

When I first heard of this concept, it seemed obvious but now I don’t think so. My current thinking is that qualia are imaginary. Consider the case of our ability to see in three dimensions. Our vision accepts light and projects it, via a lens, onto a two dimensional surface, our retina, where it is converted into neural signals. In doing that, we lose one of the three dimensions we are seeking to see, but we can recreate it by post-processing of the image just created. Similarly “the color red” is initiated by a small segment of the electromagnet spectrum, in this case, part of what we call visible light (“red” light is roughly 620 to 750 nm in wavelength). Visible light is just those EMRs that cause a response in our eyes that we can process.

Now, here is my point. Once the red light interacts with our retinas it is gone, kaput, finito, disappeared. All that remains is chemical energy in a neural network. So, our brain is not experiencing “the color red” it is experiencing neural activities we associate with the color red.

You have, I am sure seen astronomical photographs in what are called “false colors.” This is usually the case in which the “colors” of EMR being described/illustrated/etc. are not visible. As an example. you have seen a map of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, I am sure, but just to be clear, here is  one such.

Note the blues and reds? Since we do not see microwaves, these are false colors. The colors represent different temperatures, the difference between red and blue is a tiny fraction of 1 Kelvin, so no big deal (too bad they didn’t build in the gradation into the map).

In effect, all colors we see are “false colors.” Colors are a mental interpretation of the neural impulses provided by our eyes. In other words, they aren’t real. So, the qualia of “the experience of the colour red” isn’t real either, which is why it is referred to as “the subjective qualities of our mental experiences.”

But this subjective experience bit applies to everything our minds do, so why are we trying to interpret qualia when what we want to do is understand how our brains process information? All sensory inputs are converted into neural signals, which are the only things our brains can interpret . . . subjectively.