{"id":75864,"date":"2019-07-09T10:39:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T16:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=75864"},"modified":"2019-07-09T10:39:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T16:39:37","slug":"woo-and-the-study-of-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/07\/woo-and-the-study-of-consciousness.html","title":{"rendered":"“Woo” and the study of consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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An image for \"consciousness\"<\/a>
\u201cConsciousness\u201d (A public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I found this 2016 Scientific American<\/em> article by the science journalist John Horgan<\/a> extremely interesting:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Mind\u2013Body Problem, Scientific Regress and \u2018Woo\u2019:\u00a0The science of consciousness, far from converging on a sensible paradigm, is going backward\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Horgan, it seems fairly obvious, is a naturalistic materialist. \u00a0Such reductionism is the overwhelmingly preferred general model for contemporary studies of mind. \u00a0But his unhappiness with the direction in which the \u201cscience of consciousness\u201d or the study of the \u201cmind-body problem\u201d currently tends is quite revealing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Based upon several years of experience with the daily posts from my blog\u2019s most vocal atheist ideologue, I could easily write his response myself: \u00a0Gods (for whose existence there is no evidence) were invoked for most of human history to explain every question, but science has relentlessly reduced the area where theism has anything to explain. \u00a0And we can be confident that this process will continue. \u00a0Thus, we know that there is a naturalistic explanation for consciousness, which is secreted by the brain essentially the same way that bile is secreted by the liver.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The British molecular biologist Francis Crick (1916-2004) \u2014 winner, with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the double helix structure of DNA \u2014 put this notion very clearly in his 1994 book\u00a0The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul<\/i>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou,\u201d your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice might have phrased it: \u201cYou\u2019re nothing but a pack of neurons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, thus far at least, science has not demonstrated this to be the case. \u00a0And the proliferation of contradictory explanations for consciousness \u2014 not to mention the rise, particularly among certain philosophers of mind, of the \u201cmysterian\u201d position, which holds that the problem of the origin of consciousness is humanly insoluble \u2014 suggests that there may be problems for Crick\u2019s view.<\/p>\n

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Could it be that mind is primary? \u00a0Irreducible?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Could it be that ideologues such as my frequent commentator are resorting to an argument that might be called \u201cnaturalism of the gaps\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be better, at this stage, to say that we simply don\u2019t know, scientifically speaking, how consciousness arises, nor precisely how mind and brain are related? \u00a0After all, as Crick also<\/em> says in The Astonishing Hypothesis<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou cannot successfully pursue a difficult problem . . . \u00a0without some preconceived ideas to guide you. . . . \u00a0But to a scientist these are only provisional beliefs. He does not have a blind faith in them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A small grab bag of science news that has recently caught my attention:<\/p>\n

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\u201cMoonlight shapes how some animals move, grow and even sing: Behavior can be tied to the lunar phases\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere Does Mars\u2019 Methane Go? New Study Provides Possible Answer, with Implications in the Search for Life.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do the young and healthy sometimes drop dead? \u00a0When one her closest friends died midway through a 10k run \u2013 and later came back to life \u2013 Sophie McBain was determined to get to the heart of the matter.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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It gives new meaning to the concept of \u201cpotentially explosive archaeological discoveries\u201d:<\/p>\n

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\u201cUnexploded World War II bombs may still be buried at Pompeii:\u00a07 to 10 unexploded bombs may await archaeologists in unexcavated parts of Pompeii.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes the Universe Rotate?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not exactly sure what the \u201crotation\u201d of the universe would mean. \u00a0Against what stationary background or standard would it rotate, anyway? \u00a0But the answer to the question seems to be \u201cvery likely No.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s a question (accompanied by its answer) that I\u2019m sure very few of you have been asking:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWas Holy Communion celebrated during the first moon landing 50 years ago?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I found this 2016 Scientific American article by the science journalist John Horgan extremely interesting: \u00a0 \u201cThe Mind\u2013Body Problem, Scientific Regress and \u2018Woo\u2019:\u00a0The science of consciousness, far from converging on a sensible paradigm, is going backward\u201d \u00a0 Horgan, it seems fairly obvious, is a naturalistic materialist. \u00a0Such reductionism is the overwhelmingly preferred general […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Woo" and the study of consciousness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    I found this 2016 Scientific American article by the science journalist John Horgan extremely interesting:   "The 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