Of Dangerous Ideas - And 'Dumb And Dangerous Ideas' From Dr. Steve Mason

Dr. Steven Mason  (left)- unable to distinguish a dangerous idea from a dumb and dangerous idea. Right- Joseph Schmitz, holocaust denier appointed as Trump foreign policy advisor.

In his latest Integra essay 'Dangerous Ideas', (Nov.-Dec, .p. 18) , Dr. Steve Mason outdoes himself with pseudo intellectual nonsense with his endorsement of "dangerous ideas". This would be a terrific essay if only Dr. Steve had managed to discriminate between the truly dangerous, for example - natural selection - which is true, and the merely dumb and dangerous, e.g. holocaust denial.  But alas, he doesn't, instead almost frolicking in the sheer contrarian shock value of the latter.

Why is this important? Well, because too many of our fellow citizens know too little about the holocaust and WW II in general. This knowledge gap enables hucksters and propagandists to harvest their brains. One of whom is Joseph Schmitz, a recent foreign advisor named by Trump to his administration. Schmitz acquired infamy by proclaiming, in dismissing the holocaust, that:

“the ovens were too small to kill 6 million Jews.”

Leaving out that the Jews were not killed in ovens, but in large gas chambers, as at Auschwitz.  The ovens were used to incinerate the bodies afterwards but because of the mass of victims, the Nazis later went to mass graves. It became too difficult to cremate thousands of gassed bodies at one time. This is why Dr. Steve's remarks bear scrutiny in the context of  his "Dangerous Ideas" theme. Let's return to natural selection as a dangerous idea before going to Steve Mason's example of holocaust denial.

In the case of natural selection which Tufts professor Daniel Dennett covered in his book, 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea', we have a truly dangerous idea, the moreso because it is true. We learn of a 4 -step loop process that amounts to "a mindless algorithm that displays no intent, no design, no purpose, no goal, no deeper meaning. This simple algorithm has been running on Earth for four billion years to produce every living thing, and everything made by every living thing" . A purposeless, algorithmic process - the horror!

It is "dangerous" precisely because it undermines orthodoxy (in this case religious) but also because it has the benefit of being true in the scientific sense - meaning  has been validated a gazillion times.  Then Mason breaks down and blows it with this.  (Even wifey, when I showed her his reference, exclaimed: "What an idiot!"): Mason actually wrote:

"Here's a really Dangerous Idea: The Holocaust is a hoax. It must be a Dangerous Idea because simply repeating those five words will get you jailed in  more than a dozen countries, including: Belgium, France, Germany, Romania and Poland."

Mason then draws an absurd parallel putting the "holocaust hoax" on the same "dangerous idea" level as the Apollo Moon landings hoax. In the latter case,  citing all kinds of nonsense "evidence", e.g. American flag "rippling" on an airless world, from idiot lunar landing hoax websites.

This again shows Mason lacks any balanced rational insight to compare these two. In effect, comparing the claim of hoax for an actually recorded historical genocide to a nonsense claim which is easily refuted by reference to lunar laser ranging experiments - only made possible by the fact laser reflectors were left on the lunar surface....by humans.

Incomprehensibly, Mason appears to regard both ideas as equally "goofy". He scribbles, in regard the lunar landing deniers (p. 21):

"The last I heard no one was locking them up.  Being goofy isn't against the law, so what is it about questioning the death camps that creates such a stir?"

He then speculates it might be because "support for Israel will diminish"

But he's off base in his reasoning. As I showed before, Mason often makes erroneous conclusions in his assorted essays predicated on a solipsistic viewpoint. For example, in his June Port of Call effort he actually questioned whether global warming is real based on: "Clearly I don't know but then who does?" To which I pointed out that Mason is not a climate scientist - like Prof. Gunter Weller- so no surprise he wouldn't know, his specialist training is in psychology not climate science.

The same sort of skewed reasoning leads him to question death camp denial based on something like offending Israel. In fact, it is a dangerous idea because extreme right, pro -fascist parties (like Marine Le Pen's National Front) in France, actually exist in the here and now. Further, they are eager to invoke holocaust denial as an auxiliary means to advance their own justifications for existence and agendas. The upshot of actual German history, as my German sister-in-law Krimhilde put it, is that even frivolous dismissal of the holocaust plays directly into the neo-fascist platforms, as we beheld in Munich back in 2013, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-are-new-german-nazis-really-up-to.html

Those "dozen nations" Mason cites, therefore,  do not want a repeat of history, in line with George Santayana's famous words "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." They would rather err on the side of legal heavy handedness than regret it later when a future Fuhrer tries to duplicate the inhuman acts of the earlier one.  Impossible? Then read the Financial Times article below ('Ideas That Fed The Beast of Fascism Flourish Today') on how the same forces active in Europe in the 1930s are also present today:

https://www.ft.com/content/599fbbfc-a412-11e6-8898-79a99e2a4de6


The nations that prosecute it, for Steve's information, do so in order to impose a painful reminder that one cannot just lie about the past as a cynical way to sweep it under the rug to thereby better enable similar horrors in the future.  To put it another way: They already experienced the horrors once,  they have no intention to do so again! Thereby harsh laws punishing the denialists (who effectively diminish the holocaust)  are intended to send an uncompromising message: "You spread this crap - undermining the historical truth- at your own peril. We will not tolerate your lies here!"

So Mason has his head and emphasis in the wrong place. Apart from those countries bearing far right parties eager to exploit holocaust denial they were also places whose citizens were packed  into box cars for transport to death camps (Treblinka,  Auschwitz,  Mauthausen etc.)  to be gassed and for which we possess actual visual and other recorded evidence that it happened, e.g. the scene below photographed outside of Mauthausen by Russian soldiers who liberated that camp in 1945:


This is emphatically not the stuff of droll essays in a high IQ journal, or invoking facetious word games.

Poland was among the worst affected nations, featuring the death camp Auschwitz, where over 1.6 million were slaughtered and Dr. Josef Mengele performed hideous experiments on children, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/01/auschwitz-commemoration-why-wasnt.html


Mason, by using a specious basis to compare dangerous ideas  (conflating goofy, stupid ones with serious ones) actually demeans and diminishes the import of the real ones, e.g.  the denial of the factual genocide of 6 million Jews.   Let us also  reference how he earlier chirps: "I should come clean and admit I like dangerous ideas!"  Evidently, both the dumbass and the serious dangerous, like holocaust denial.

Now, to be fair, Mason is not a stupid guy by any means. He can't be to have become a doctor in psychology or a member of Intertel. However, he does have a habit of becoming overly enchanted with his own peculiar, idiosyncratic ruminations. This solipsistic fascination leads him to wander off the rational reservation at times,  writing idiotic essays in Intertel's media.

Recall Mason is the same character who wrote several months ago (in the June Port of Call NL):

 "How can I believe anything when what I believe changes?"   This is actually a misrepresentation of his stance when what he really meant was "How can I believe anything when the science behind it changes?" And seen in this light, one wonders if Mason was ever a genuine scientist at all, because the very nature of the scientific enterprise is to mount new discoveries, via new findings obtained from ever more refined instruments and techniques. Hence the change from the old epicycles-based Ptolemaic solar system to the heliocentric one. Or, the change from Bohr's simple 'planetary' model atom to the wave model of Schrodinger, Born et al. Or the change from Newtonian gravitation to general relativity (though the former is still used for space trajectories, missions).

In the current essay, after ruminating on Darwin's dangerous idea,  he recycles  similar nonsense to that  he opined in the June PoC, writing (p. 19).:

"The world of science - if you wait long enough - is always wrong anyway!"

If he really, truly believes this codswallop I'd like him to explain to me how it is we can reliably use celestial mechanics to send space craft (like Curiosity Rover) to Mars, and the Horizons probe to Pluto.  If science is "always wrong" how can that be? Well, ok, maybe he's thinking 5 billion years in advance when orbits likely shift for a variety of reasons. But, in that case it isn't the (current) science that's wrong, it's the fact orbital elements would have changed.

Same thing with quantum theory, one of the most complete we have, which enables us to correctly predict the spectral line emissions of atoms as well as the working of solid state devices.

It seems clear based on these examples that Mason's glib takes on physical science disclose he really doesn't know much about it. I would bet he actually thinks that because Einstein's theory of gravity is used, Newtonian gravitation is wrong or passe.  If so, he'd  probably be amazed to learn that Newtonian gravitational theory is what enables our celestial mechanics to get space craft to Mars, the Moon, or Jupiter.

The point is that a real scientist - even a psychiatrist or psychologist- would know and understand science HAS to change for our understanding of the cosmos, nature to evolve. It is unscientific and naive to expect findings to remain static. At the same time, the true expert in science has to know that changes in a scientific discipline - like physics - don't necessarily mean the former theory is chucked. Again, look at Newtonian gravitational theory and Newton's laws of motion.  These still have applicability at macro-scale levels, and at speed much less than the velocity of light, c.

Other Mason examples in his essay are more clearly and rationally chosen, and articulated. For example, the dangerous idea that "religion is a WMD". (Though I would have phrased it as a "mind virus of mass destruction")  Another plausible choice is that "our system of government causes us to elect the worst candidates".  (Say like Donald Trump) To support that dangerous idea he cites evidence from evolutionary psychology, to wit, "groups work best only when they get behind a leader, to put him in that position".  This contrast with our money-graft  system where candidates aspiring to be leaders must incessantly beg for money and votes, so "are probably the least well qualified for command" - again from an evolutionary psychology standpoint.

These are "dangerous ideas" to be sure, like Darwin's natural selection, but based on a record of data, investigations and historical experience. They are worthy of consideration in an essay aimed at  people in the upper 1 percent of IQs, in other words. But holocaust denial and fake lunar landings are not in that same category. The first is indeed dangerous, and not merely as an idea.  The second is too stupid and easily disproven to be considered truly dangerous.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/69871/the-big-trump-media-story-bannon-and-a-crew-of-dangerous-propagandists-are-in-the-cockpit-of-national

New Support for a Quantum Model Of Mind

The issue of the brain and its relation to consciousness is one that interests and intrigues many physicists. The standard take by many is that quantum mechanics isn't involved at all. For example, physicist Mark Alford, writing in the Skeptical Inquirer (  May-June, 2011, p. 8 ) observed:

"It seems improbable that these very delicate processes are the crucial feature in the functioning of the human brain which is not a suitagle environment for quantum subtlety".

But is this so?  For example, we know that the scale of the synaptic cleft is on the order of 200-300 nm and hence subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This is precisely a quantum scale so it makes sense that the Heisenberg Principle would apply at this level, and hence quantum mechanics also.

Using this logic, I introduced a quantum model for consciousness in my book,  'The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism', (Chapter 6), and developed it by appeal to how a quantum computer would operate via "quantum gates" predicated on the Pauli spin operators. This entailed conversion of standard logic gates (NOR, OR, NOT, etc.)  in the classical format - applied to ordinary computers- to counterparts in the quantum format.

For example, the NOT gate can be represented by what is called a unitary matrix, or Pauli spin matrix-operator σ_x = (0,1¦1,0) where the left pair is a matrix 'top' and each right pair a matrix 'bottom' - since they are usually written in a rectangular array form.

Similarly, the other Pauli gates would be defined by: σ_y = (0,-i¦i, 0)and  σ_z = (1, 0¦0, -1), where i denotes the square root of (-1).  Incorporation of such Pauli (quantum) gates meets a primary application requirement for feed forward networks, in describing synapse function. (See e.g. Yaneer Bar-Yam, 'Dynamics of Complex Systems', Addison-Wesley, pp. 298-99.)
The advantage is consciousness is elevated out of the strict machine-like model of an ordinary computer to one that can explain more features of the human experience.

In my book I used this basis to challenge Daniel Dennett's claim (in Consciousness Explained) that quantum mechanics isn't needed and Newtonian classical mechanics suffices to account for any particulate interactions.  But as I pointed out, it was physicist Henry Stapp who first  pointedly noted that uncertainty principle limitations applied to calcium ion capture near synapses showed they (calcium ions) must be represented by a probability function. (Stapp, Henry, P.: 1993, Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag, p. 42.)

I also used it to challenge Michio Kaku's simple deterministic model of mind, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/michio-kakus-model-of-mijnd-is-too.html

Now, new support for this view appears to have arrived with the book, 'Life On the Edge', by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Kahlili - a quantum physicists - reviewed by John Gribbin in the WSJ ('Physics for Bird Brains', Aug 1-2, p. C5).   Gribbin begins by noting "the entangled strands of DNA....are held together by a quantum phenomenon know as hydrogen bonding. The way these strands untwist and build new double helixes is at heart a quantum phenomenon"

So why not brain operation as well? This is one thread in the book, using concepts of "quantum weirdness" and entanglement, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-epr-paradox-and-quantum-nonlocality.html

that ultimately leads to a novel account of brain operation. As Gribbin puts it (ibid.):

"The authors have saved the best - if most speculative idea- for last: that quantum procedures help explain consciousness and the mechanics of thought, as surely as they do photosynthesis... It is an old question going back to philosophers such as Descartes: How does mind make matter move?"

He elaborates a bit more without giving away too many details:

"The new answer presented draws from the physics behind those quantum computers. Where an ordinary computer can be thought of as operating through a series of switches that can be set at 1 or 0, the power of a quantum computer  depends on the ability of quantum entities to be in two state at once, known as a superposition"

Which was exactly the point I raised in my own book. So rather than limit storage to bits (1 or 0), one can work with qubits (truncated for quantum bits) where the superposition of a combined data element (1 + 0) applies:

U = U(1) + U(0)


And the storage capacity dramatically expands as a result.

In general, for any given n-bit combination – with n a whole number, a qubit register can accommodate 2 to the nth power total combinations at one time. Thus, 16 combinations could be held in memory for 4-bits, 32 for 5-bits, and so on. This change marks an exponential (two to the 'n' or 2^n) increase over any classical counterpart. Since, human brains typically can hold the equivalent in memory of whole libraries, it seems that qubit processing is at least worth consideration.

As Gribbin concedes, and the authors as well, all this is still in the realm of conjecture. No one as yet has inserted experimental probes into brains to precisely detect quantum wavepacket collapse, energy exchanges or energy increases owing to repeated superpositions and nonlocal actions.

However, from Bell's theorem there is powerful theoretical support, as the most recent book makes use of.  Indeed, Bell himself may have suggested a clue on how to proceed experimentally (Foundations of Physics, (12,) .989 ):

Although Y is a real field it does not show up immediately in the results of a ‘single measurement’, but only in the statistics of many such results. It is the de Broglie –Bohm variable X that shows up immediately each time.

In other words, the best approach may be a large number of experiments from which multiple measurements are obtained, perhaps similar to those conducted by Dr. Robert G. Jahn (using random number generators), as published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration. (Vol. 1, No. 1).

At the very least this latest work provides more philosophical and explanatory support for the integration of quantum mechanics into brain operation.

Science Can't 'Disprove' God - But It Doesn't Have To

"The modern scientist is not so naïve as to deny God because he cannot be found in a telescope, or the soul because it cannot be revealed by the scalpel. He has merely noted that the idea of God is logically unnecessary. It does not help him to explain anything or to make verifiable predictions"- Alan Watts, in  'The Wisdom of Uncertainty'


Alan Watts' words above are timely on this Easter Sunday, and possibly might incite more thoughtful Christians to consider the question of the existence of God, as well as the concept of emergence. In fact, in a recent salon.com article : Science Doesn't Disprove God: Where Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists Go Wrong, author Amir D. Aczel considers these questions and declares Dawkins and the New Atheists far far from disproof of any divine Being on account of their over simplified narrative.

While Aczel touches on evolution, his primary focus is on consciousness, which admittedly has been over-simplified by too many atheists (new or old) and with the quality of emergence denied. Referencing the work of Daniel Dennett, for example, Aczel writes:

"Dennett and his collaborators consider the human mind from two problematic viewpoints: looking at the brain as a kind of computer, and looking at the brain as the result of animal evolution. The human brain is far more than a computer: computers have no consciousness. And to think of the brain as simply something that has evolved out of animal ganglia and primitive brains is also a mistake: there is a giant leap from the brain of a monkey or a dog to the brain of a human being."

This is correct, and I already gave the example of Michio Kaku being a victim of a similar brand of reductionist thinking in his own model of mind:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/michio-kakus-model-of-mijnd-is-too.html

Therein I pointed out the inherent problem in all New Atheist thinking (also highlighted by Aczel), whether of Kaku, Victor Stenger or Richard Dawkins:

Monistic physicalism in its most rudimentary form can be summarized by Victor Stenger’s comment (cf. God and the Folly of Faith, 155) :

It does not matter whether you are trying to measure a particle property or a wave property. You always measure particles. Here is the point that most people fail to understand: Quantum mechanics is just a statistical theory like statistical mechanics, fundamentally reducible to particle behavior.

In other words, all are victims of a form of scientism which interjects a kind of scientific "dogma", i.e. all of nature must be reduced to the particulate and mechanisms based on it.   This is why Aczel is led to next state:

 

Neither approach explains Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Picasso’s Guernica, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or the palaces on Venice’s Grand Canal. Neither do they explain Einstein’s general theory of relativity or Freud’s invention of psychoanalysis. Both the mechanistic and animalistic views of the brain fall flat in their attempts to explain any of these great historic achievements of the human mind.

 

By 'either approach' he means simplistic "rat-o-morphic" evolution (the human brain is just a more complex version of the rat's or lemur's), or the notion that human consciousness can simply be reduced to computerized components.  In neither case is emergence allowed, or tolerated. For example, Stenger is on record as criticizing one of the foremost physicists (and a 1977 Physics Nobel Prize winner), Philip Anderson, for his challenge to ardent reductionism, appearing in an article in Science with the title ‘More is Different’.  Basically, Anderson had the courage to question the indiscriminate extrapolation of reductionism to all phenomena by his peers. Stenger  then took umbrage noting: [1]:

 

the fact we cannot derive these emergent principles from particle physics  does not prove that everything cannot be just a collection of particles.

This is true, but only to the extent reductionism has been consciously chosen as the best way to not only analyze problems, but also interpret them. It is in the interpretations that the real problems inhere. For example, David Bohm’s holistic physics as wonderfully outlined in his Wholeness and the Implicate Order, is a majestic work that discloses all that fundamental quantum mechanics can do in exposing our eyes and other senses to higher dimensions – not taken into account. 

Anyway, this hyper-reductionist narrative pushed by the likes of Dennett, Dawkins and others is what prompts Aczel to remark:

An alternative explanation is that God gave us the mental abilities and that extra something we use in making decisions and in creating great works of art, sublime music, magnificent architecture, beautiful literature, and science and mathematics. Our incredible brains can do all these things because they contain some ingredients that science has not yet found or explained and whose origin remains one of the deepest mysteries in all of science.

 

The problem here is that "God" is not really an alternative explanation. It's what we call employing an argument from ignorance or invoking a "god of the gaps". So because Aczel can't fathom a scientific explanation he goes right to the supernaturalist one (assuming he believes, like most believers, "God" is a supernatural Being).

 

But as I pointed out in my recent book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God, this isn't needed. Emergence, then, is enabled by the simple expedient of integrating quantum mechanics into brain function, as physicist Henry Stapp has insisted (but which most reductionists don't accept, or the New Atheists who embrace reductionism).   Stapp has pointedly noted that uncertainty principle limitations applied to calcium ion capture near synapses shows they (calcium ions) must be represented by a probability function. (Stapp, Henry, P.: 1993, Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag, p. 42.)

More specifically, the dimension of the associated calcium ion wavepacket scales many times larger than the calcium ion itself. This nullifies the use of classical trajectories or classical mechanics to trace the path of the ions.  It thereby opens the door to quantum mechanics.  Once quantum inputs are permitted, the emergence of all the phenomenal human traits Aczel references can manifest, and no supernatural cause is required. Explanations thereby remain entirely in the physical realm.

By the use of such a full integration the late David Bohm provided a putative basis for a holistic quantum consciousness which he referred to as the Holomovement. This was done by positing a hyper-dimensional reality (e.g. 5- dimensional) in which mind was enfolded as part of an implicate order. To enable a unified mental field within this higher dimensionality, Bohm appealed to hidden variables obeying Heisenberg  uncertainty relations such that:

(d p)( d q) > h/ 2π


where p, q denote two hidden variables  underlying a sub-quantal scale indeterminacy relation. From this (leaving out lots of details) he developed an agent to assist in the nonlocal action of distal variables, and called it the "quantum potential", defined:


V_Q=   {-ħ²/ 2m} [Ñ R]² / R


for a wave function, U = R exp(iS/ħ)

where R,S are real.

If one then fully applies Bohm's Holomovement model to physical reality it is possible to show the relation of explicated individual forms to the universal aggregate  (or Holomovement) - which might be depicted:

INDIVIDUAL FORMS (EXPLICATE ORDER)

___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___

DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER)

The relation is holographic in the sense that each of the individual forms contains the information of the whole holographic field. The Dirac Ether is equivalent to Bohm's Implicate Order, or what he calls the holomovement, and is a pure frequency domain. If one imparts to it a universal consciousness (as Bohm does) it would also be the "Universal Mind". The difference from the  "God" that Aczel references is that this Universal Mind is impersonal and physical, as opposed to personal and supernatural.   Meanwhile, the ripples on Bohm's Dirac sea are the distinct material forms perceived as separate entities in the universe because we are generally unaware of the implicate order.  But - to the extent we become aware, whether by learning the applicable quantum mechanics, or using meditation - yes, we emerge as conscious forms manifesting the Whole.

Emergence of the type Aczel describes is enabled and indeed demanded by the relationship between the relatively localized ensembles of energy (in individuals or explicate forms) and the vastly larger whole which contains vast energy in each cubic centimeter of space.

At the same time the use of the word "God" becomes unnecessary, redundant. Since logically "God" can't be extracted as a separate entity from the oceanic reality i.e. which enfolds all the explicate forms, it makes no sense to call the word out or use it. You can't separate it out any more than a wave from the ocean. By extension, it makes zero sense for atheists to joust at it, because they are inveighing against a redundancy, a superfluous verbal construct. They effectively become like Don Quixote tilting at windmills of their own mind.

Once all and sundry agree the word "God" is only a regulative ideal of the mind, a verbal symbol to represent a concept that can't be really processed or extracted (differentiated) as a separate reality, then we move away from false onto-theology and useless polarizations - say between "believers" and "unbelievers".

In this context, Aczel is wrong for failing to see the futility of marking out "God"  separately via language and assuming one needs it  as a separate supernatural cause to account for emergence and all the wondrous talents humans  disclose.   The New Atheists and all the reductionist scientists are wrong for being mesmerized by their over-simplistic (explicate) particulate models which prevent them, or more accurately - blind them - from perceiving oceanic reality that binds the cosmos at its most fundamental level.  The simple expedient of integrating quantum mechanics into brain function would obviate this, but they won't hear of it - and hence this dogmatic refusal becomes scientism.

Physicist Bernard d'Espagnat advises caution for all those who'd willy -nilly hitch their wheels of reality to it: (In Search of Reality, p. 56):

If scientism were correct, or more precisely, if the view of the world it proposes so forcefully, that of a world ultimately consisting of myriads of small localized objects merely endowed with quasi-local properties were correct, then such an evolution of our mentality would admittedly be excellent. It is always good for man to know the truth! But on the other hand, if the ultimate vision of the world which scientism proposes is false, if its conceptual bases are mistaken, then this development is – on the contrary –quite unfortunate.

 

He continues by noting that in his estimation the presumptions of “common scientism” are false and he bases this not on subjective opinion but on specific scientific facts, e.g. the nonlocality disclosed in the (1983) Aspect experiment, and the existence of de Broglie waves as revealed by the Davisson -Germer experiment.

Aczel ends his essay thus:

Symbolic thinking allowed human beings to create amazing art many thousands of years ago. It brought us language, science, art and everything that makes us uniquely human. Neither computers nor animals can do any of these things. So the emergence of consciousness and symbolic thinking remain one of the most formidable hurdles in the path of atheism. We have no good explanation of how consciousness and symbolic thinking came about. These may well be described as divine gifts.

Or, we may more logically and rationally describe them as natural, physical offshoots of assimilating consistent quantum mechanics into brain dynamics. For those atheists (like me) who have already done this, neither consciousness or symbolic thinking pose a hurdle, and we don't buy the trope that "there is no good explanation of how they came about".  While not every nuance or particular  facet can be explicated, we do have a general idea - predicated on the quantum-based models of mind proposed by David Bohm and  Henry Stapp.  Also the singular one I advanced in my recent book, combining aspects of both Bohm's and Stapp's models.  The fact a reasonable physical conjecture exists, avoids the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius  which Aczel falls victim to.

The reader can make up his own mind, but s/he needs to be aware that there does exist a path, a rational way,  between the extremes of supernaturalism and reducing the cosmos to a mere assembly of particles and humans to animated meat.

 

In other words, there does exist a progressive atheism that has moved beyond the myopic version now on offer from the "New Atheists."

 

 

---

[1] Stenger, God and the Folly of Faith, 208

 

Getting a Grip on "Temporal Illusions" and What They Mean

Ever since a 6 -year old video emerged of (then) Salk Institute intern James Holmes giving a 10 minute talk on "temporal illusions" - which can currently be viewed in toto at the website of the San Diego Union Tribune - the blogosphere has gone nuts with what this means. (Never mind Holmes' mentor at Salk, John Jacobson, told reporters that despite the presentation, Holmes' didn't appear to understand the basic science behind the work.)

Some bloggers have surmised the research meant that Holmes intended to "go back in time" and change the past so he could change the future or some such rot. Or, that he intended to alter his memory of what he intended to do in the future. When one watches the video one beholds Holmes waxing on about "subjective time" but in fact subjective time is a well known phenomenon not requiring peculiar neuro-science degrees, insights or computations. For example, G.J. Whittrow in his 'The Nature of Time' (Pelican Books, 1972, p. 103)gives a good account (with examples) of what is meant by "subjective time".

All it means is that the passage of interior time for a person, anchored in his particular consciousness, passes - or appears to pass - much more slowly depending on the event. If I am sitting in the dentist's chair and waiting for a crown to be fitted, this time will pass much more slowly, as compared to a delightful family occasion or party that appears to pass excessively fast. In more than one sense, then, subjective time is a psychological time for the person - but is not necessarily an "illusion", since by all accounts objective time (as recorded by the person's watch) still tells the true story. There is no contradiction or subversion of causality, in other words.

In a previous blog  I cited Alex Rosenberg's book The Atheist's Guide to Reality and pointed out that perceptual systems are defective in the sense of being hindsight-biased: due to the finite speed of signal transmission, and delays due to neural processing,  so changes in our immediate environments do not register in our experience instantaneously.  Rosenberg bases all these on documented experiments, such as those by Lüder Deecke and Hans Helmut Kornhuber in 1964, showing that all human actions precede conscious decisions to perform them. For example, Rosenberg observes (p. 152) that: "On average it takes 200 milliseconds from conscious willing to wrist flexing and finger pressing".

Thus, to the ordinary (sensory deluded) human it appears as if he's willed and initiated the action, but he really hasn't. It's all an illusion. As Rosenberg goes on:


"But the cortical processes responsible for wrist flexing started 500 ms earlier. "

In other words, 500 ms before a test subject depressed a button to indicate when he felt the actual conscious act of willing was initiated. As Rosenberg concludes (ibid.):

"In other words, wrist flexing is already set in motion, and everything needed to complete it has already taken place 300 ms before the subjects are conscious of deciding to flex the wrist and press the button"

Rosenberg then goes on to argue the basis for "free will' is destroyed if the causality presumptively underlying it is a fiction. If the outcome has occurred before your actual intended action to effect it, there is no "free will" involved, the action was essentially done for you.  Rosenberg then adopts this as a grounding for his notion that we are beings entirely governed by "blind sight". (I.e. p. 155, `Driving Through Life with Both Eyes Fixed on the Rearview Mirror').In other words, all our sensory outputs are based on ex post facto- conducted neural process corrections to much earlier sensory inputs that, for lack of a better term, need to be transduced.

The point is we aren't equipped to gain real time access to anything in our world.

The obvious implication? "Consciously deciding to do something is not the cause of doing it"

Cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett in his paper : "Temporal anomalies of consciousness: implications of the uncentered brain" provides a more technical cognitive analysis of how subjective time can be a victim of the sort of delayed neural processes discussed by Rosenberg and others. Dennett begins by focusing on “macroscopic time intervals” as he writes:

“This picture of how conscious experience must sit in the brain is a natural extrapolation of the familiar and undeniable fact that for macroscopic time intervals, we can indeed order events into the categories "not yet observed" and "already observed" by locating the observer and plotting the motions of the vehicles of information relative to that point. But when we try to extend this method to explain phenomena involving very short time intervals, we encounter a logical difficulty: If the "point" of view of the observer is spread over a rather large volume in the observer's brain, the observer's own subjective sense of sequence and simultaneity must be determined by something other than "order of arrival" since order of arrival is incompletely defined until we specify the relevant destination. If A beats B to one finish line but B beats A to another, which result fixes subjective sequence in consciousness? (cf. Minsky, 1986, p.61) Which point or points of "central availability" would "count" as a determiner of experienced order, and why? "


This, of course, is based on Dennett's model of consciousness explicated in his book, Consciousness Explained. in which he uses the concept of "multiple drafts". That is, a given conscious manifestation, of word or action, is the end product of editing and selection from amongst a raft of  potential "drafts". Just as writers go through dozens of drafts before a final product emerges, so the individual consciousness edits and refines many drafts before its product is released to the external world of perception. The Multiple Drafts model thereby avoids the tempting mistake of supposing that there must be a single narrative (the "final" or "published" draft) that is canonical--that is the actual stream of consciousness of the subject. There is scope for perceptual as well as temporal variation....and illusion.

In the case of the latter, retroactive “editing” can occur that removes at various points of the “memory arcade” those incidents, verbal outbursts and confrontations the self may not wish to recall, or "own".  Voila! One gets a temporal re-constitution of events, or what may be called a “temporal illusion” .  The author describes  the process thusly:

“Consider… a Stalinesque mechanism: in the brain's editing room, located before consciousness, so there is a delay, a loop of slack, as it were, like the "tape delay" used in broadcasts of "live" programs which gives the censors in the control room a few seconds to bleep out obscenities before broadcasting the signal.  . In the editing room, first frame A, of the red spot, arrives, and then, when frame B, of the green spot, arrives, some interstitial frames (C and D) can be created and then spliced  into the film (in the order A,C,D,B) on its way to projection in the theater of consciousness. By the time the "finished product" arrives at consciousness, it already has its illusory insertion. “

So, for example, if  I am aware of the visual delay effect for most humans and insert an altered image or action in the delay space, I can essentially game the subject's reality and incept a temporal illusion. "Wait a minute! I could have sworn that lady had dark glasses on! Now she doesn't!"

This is the actual meaning and context for temporal illusions. So no, we need not worry that at any time Holmes will suddenly materialize into the past - and escape the not so nice future that awaits him!