Rational Philosophy

On the various uses (valuable or not) of the human (and primate) mind.

Scientists at Duke University have shown that it’s possible for a primate to control a machine using brain signals. The scientists trained a monkey to make a robot walk on a treadmill using its mind. The feat is impressive and the ramifications of the work could be enormous.

Cosmologists have shown (among other odd things) that the world around us is likely to be just a fleeting figment of our imagination. Since it computes to be cheaper (from a probability perspective) for a free-floating, fully populated brain to pop into existence than an entire universe (think The Matrix on acid), the cosmologists calculations indicate that it’s far more likely that I’m just imagining that I’m writing this blog entry than that I’m actually writing it… Very disheartening. With complex calculations and intense debate, theoretical cosmologists seem as fiercely certain of their predictions as they are of their ridiculousness.

There’s no accounting for the efforts of the human brain.

Meanwhile Allison Arieff, in a promising new monthly column for the NY Times, bemoans the endless torrent of flashier gadgets and electronic gizmos that replace one another in such quick succession. (Allison defends her own gadgetization “The culture of my workplace necessitates me having mobile e-mail and a calendar.” As far as I know columnists for the NY Times from 1851 until, ooh, probably around 2003 or 2004 accomplished their work without mobile e-mail and calendars.) Nevertheless, Allison strikes a resonant chord. Let the designers put their creative efforts into reducing the waste involved in new technology, or creating nifty new designs for lifesaving devices rather than snazzier cellphones. Good call, Allison.

One can easily imagine that the efforts of scientists researching the capacity for brains to control machinery will lead to both incredibly valuable innovations, as well as incredibly purile and perhaps dangerous innovations. The most obviously valuable use would be for those who currently have no control or limited control over their bodies. Being able to control machinery would give them the ability to move and act in ways that they currently cannot. Any catalog of purile uses I might devise can, I’m sure, easily be bettered. But how about cell phones that we can dial with our minds, or a TV channel changer that surfs without us lifting a finger..? As for dangerous innovations, the Pentagon is already trying to append robotics to people to make them stronger and more lethal. The success of the recent machine-mind research at Duke is a big step in that direction.

The world of innovation and thought must remain, by definition, a democratic place. Ideas don’t ask for permission to occur to us. Cosmologists will continue to follow their calculations into a fizzling fantasy-land until someone goes to the chalkboard to erase an invalid assumption and send them all tumbling. Designers of gadgets will keep designing flashier funkier gadgets until and unless, as Arieff points out, market forces direct them toward greener, leaner, less useless inventions. And mind-machine innovators will take the robot and run with it in as many directions as they can. Only demand, necessity and regulation can steer them in the right direction.

(As to wacky cosmology, I’ll cross-reference here my own thoughts on the philosophy of the universe and time.)

The New York Times Science section today summarizes a debate that’s more than 2,000 years old: Can we say that the universe reflects fundamental laws? As its hook, the article highlights the thoughts of Dr. Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State, who brought the debate to a rolling boil recently by opining that science was, to some extent, a matter of faith.

Despite all of the hoopla and the plethora of theories on the subject, it seems to me that we can satisfy ourselves about the nature of the universe as follows:

First, we can restrict our field of inquiry to the universe that we live in. Sure, it’s interesting to postulate what other universes may exist, but let’s explain the one we live in first.

Second, we can say that the universe operates according to the principles of space and time. (This is a pragmatic statement of fact; what other principles would it operate in accordance with?)

And here’s the most important part: Since principles are concepts, and since concepts don’t exist in the concrete, but only in the abstract, the principles that govern space and time must exist outside space and time. Space and time don’t create them, but must concur with them. (This leaves open the possibility that another universe may concur with other principles.)

I believe that this adequately addresses much of the uncertainty. (Quantum mechanics is simply another principle of space and time, perfectly maleable as an abstract concept, and nothing to get hung up on.)

With these founding ideas, we can make rapid and comprehensive progress in understanding our universe and our existence. (As I explain in my book.)

And when we read stories like the one from Detroit in which a seven year old girl was shot six times as she tried to shield her mother from an attack, or those from Iraq where the dire feuds between factions and attacks by insurgents continue to cause misery and mayhem, we realize that we yet have a lot to understand and address in our own universe without needing to go looking for others.

�

Reggie Miller, in commenting on Stephon Marbury’s ill-fated split from his old Timberwolves basketball partner Kevin Garnett, had this to say about one’s time in the game: “You only got so much time in this league, and you want to make the most of it.” The same can be said of time in general.

For rats on Rat Island, time may be running out. Scientists plan on trying to eradicate rats from the island so that birds and other species can return and flourish. Rats have been eating birds’ eggs and the birds themselves and destroying the island’s natural habitat for the last couple of hundred years. The extermination plans represent a tough break for the rats, but a boon for other, less-resilient forms of life. (How did the rats reach the island in the first place? A ship that ran aground.)

And at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service an ex-administrator’s narrow concerns with her own needs may have hurt the chances of survival of several endangered species. Julie MacDonald meddled with scientists’ recommendations on what should make the endangered species list. (And so it goes with people and our see-saw interference with other species.)

Scientists and philosophers debate the nature of time. What is time? Is there such a thing as a flow of time? Is the present moment all we have or is it an illusion? Does time have a direction? If so, why?

Such questions seem hopelessly unimportant, I’m sure, if you’re on the endangered species list, or if you’re a Norwegian rat and the planes swoop in to drop poison on your island. They may also seem unimportant if you’re reaching the twilight years of your basketball career on a beleaguered team with a losing record and with your prospects for a championship medal rapidly dwindling.

Firstly, any analysis of the thing we call Time applies only to the existence of this universe and the things in it. (As if that isn’t enough.)

Secondly, our perception of time and Time itself (if such a thing exists) are not one and the same thing. (We perceive things indirectly through our senses and mental impulses, not directly.)

Thirdly, time has no meaning without space and matter. We only know of time through causality (things that happen in space).

With these three reasonable points of analysis we have a great deal of insight.

Let’s take the example of carbon dating — carbon dating relies on measuring the relative proportions of different carbon isotopes in the sample being considered. If the logic of the method is sound, we can start with causality and say: “The fossil is so-and-so million years old.” In other words, the data of our experience induce the reasonable conclusion that time passes at a measurable rate and that with enough data we can map out a pretty good idea of what existed when in what state.

But, and this is a very important but, those millions of years are just an extrapolated record. We can’t encompass the time passed by measuring its data points. It (time passed) doesn’t “exist.” We just infer it.

The present moment is no more than a state of existence which we can infer was preceded by prior states of existence beginning at the point of origin of the universe (the first moments of the big bang). Again the present moment cannot be measured, defined or encompassed.

We perceive the present moment as “something” because our minds compile a fluid picture out of all of the impulses of our organsim. These include the impulses from our nerve endings, including our eyes, ears, nose, as well as the impulses of our immediate memory, all combined to induce the perception that the present moment is palpable and substantive.

If we project forward to future states of existence, we can reliably say that eventually the sun will cool down, the universe will grow cold, the earth will cease to support life. Looked at this way, each of us and every living thing belongs to an endangered species. More pointedly, we human beings each have a life expectancy of only seventy or so years, a much more abbreviated horizon.

However, viewed through Reggie Miller’s pragmatic lens, we can find liberation and energy in acknowledging our ultimate fate. There may be no “now” but we can enjoy the complex illusion that our mind shapes for us, and we can make the most of our own ability to influence the way that that illusion gets shaped.

My daughter just started high school and has a course called physics. Her grandmother made the comment: “Oh, how wonderful, physics is the best; you’ll learn how everything works.” Which is true. Physics pursues an ever more sophisticated explanation for the way things work. Philosophy seems sometimes to give ground as physics rolls on, but I prefer to think that physics provides a great tool for the philosopher.

Fundamental physics can be a particularly fine-pointed tool. The more we know about the most original and smallest parts of existence, the more we can build up a fully consistent picture of the whole.

Physicists pursue evidence to support their hypotheses, but the best physicists expect to have to refine or throw out their hypotheses. Good physics is a process. A never-ending process.

The title of this blog is misleading for that reason. What’s fundamental today won’t be fundamental tomorrow. Before we knew about atoms, solid matter was considered just that, solid. And the atomic view was replaced by a perspective that included electrons, protons, and neutrons. Which in turn was replaced by a view that allowed for whole families of hadrons and baryons.

Fundamental physics is always in transition. But the philosophy of fundamental physics, the way we use the tool of physics, is a well established conceptual process. Philosophy seeks to know “what can this new insight tell me about our condition.”

Unfortunately, whereas philosophers and physicists were once indivisible (Newton, Galileo, Copernicus and many more were both philosophers and physicists) these days, philosophy and physics have moved ever more deeply into the deep grass at the ends of their respective fields. They no longer speak the same language. They no longer understand one another.

What we end up with is pop philosophy based on some apparently trendy new scientific premise or discovery. (Superstrings, for instance.) Or random conjecture on meaning from the brilliant scientists of the day. To continue to make philosophical progress, the two fields need to be brought back together.

Even some of the now more established scientific findings of recent years can produce quite revealing insight into the philosophy of our existence. One particularly compelling example of this caused me to spend three years analyzing and writing about its implications (the product of which is LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive). It’s this:

What can we discern about the fundamental principles of space and time by observing the evolution of the material universe?

To answer this question we must know enough about the physics of the early universe and the development of particles and star systems over time to be able to discern the pattern. If I hadn’t had a grounding in physics (my original field of study) this pattern probably would have eluded me.

The pattern or principle itself is quite simple. As a thing (particle, particle cluster, dust cloud, etc.) comes into being, it will be more likely to remain in existence if it is stable.

This very humble observation explains why, even though there are dozens of particles that can exist in the material universe, all of the matter in the universe consists of electrons, protons and neutrons clustered together as atoms. The atomic form is the only stable material form and therefore the only one that persisted.

Here is an excerpt from LIFE!

[T]he form of existence we have taken, and the form of existence that predominates in the world we know and interact with (our world: our solar system and the rest of the visible universe, every rock and tree, every cereal box on the supermarket shelf), consists not of lambda or omega nuclei orbited by neutrinos, but of protons and neutrons orbited by electrons. But we need to answer why this is so. It is not, as was once thought, that these are the only possible types of particles. Although they have cornered the market on atomic existence, electrons, protons, and neutrons come from quite large families of particles known as leptons and hadrons. And although leptons seem to be truly fundamental particles, hadrons result from combinations of still smaller particles known as quarks. The electron (which is a lepton) has six brothers and sisters—the muon, the tau, the neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. (Each lepton also has an antimatter twin, known as an antilepton.) Quarks, which come in six types, don’t exist as free particles but combine in pairs or triplets to form mesons and baryons, collectively known as hadrons. (The proton and the neutron each consist of three quarks.) There are dozens of hadrons.We begin to understand why atoms are ubiquitous when we look at the properties of the members of these particle families: the electron and the proton are the lightest and therefore the most stable of the lepton and hadron families. The more massive leptons and quark combinations don’t last very long before breaking up into lighter particles. Of the leptons and quark combinations that do remain stable, only electrons, protons, and neutrons group together into naturally stable structures. In an atom, electromagnetism keeps the negatively charged electrons tightly bound to the positively charged protons. Nuclear forces bind protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus.

Although the neutrino (a lepton quite similar to an electron but with no electromagnetic charge) is also a stable particle, and although the universe produces neutrinos in great numbers, their lack of an electromagnetic charge means that neutrinos can’t bind electromagnetically with protons as electrons do, and therefore they don’t form atomlike structures. Instead, neutrons fly through space, unbound and disconnected from the physical structures of stars and planets.

The proton has an effectively infinite life span. It is the only hadron that doesn’t spontaneously degenerate into another hadron plus radiation. By comparison, the neutron, when not bound, has an expected life span of less than eleven minutes. But when bound with a proton in an atom’s nucleus, the neutron can last indefinitely. Therefore, despite the dozens of fundamental particles and the many ways in which they could (statistically) be combined with one another in atomlike structures, atoms consist entirely of electrons, protons, and neutrons because other particles either quickly decompose or can’t combine into stable structures.

From this straightforward analysis of the particles that make up the universe and why these particles and not other particles give rise to material existence, we suddenly have an insight into a principle that guides the development of everything that exists in space and time…