The video on the link below published online by The Economist is a useful introduction to the basic problem of consciousness.
It is presented as a balanced view with David Chalmers representing those who think the ‘hard problem’ exactly that, utterly intractable and Daniel Dennett representing the consciousness-is-an-impossible-problem deniers.
Filed under Consciousness
Some people believe that modern science has explained occurrences that were considered magical or mysterious happenings by people long ago. There is surely a truth here but it is not the whole truth.
Think of thunder and lightning. The belief that only a supernatural force could account for them seems primitive and naïve to us today. Thunder was a roar of anger from the gods, lightning the flash of a divinely hurled bolt. Nowadays we learn that a discharge of electricity, an, apparently, matter-of-fact, down-to-earth (literally and metaphorically) description adequately explains these events.
I have to be careful here. I am not a scientist but I am a supporter of the whole scientific endeavour that has achieved such a wide and deep understanding of the natural world in the last three hundred years or so. I put in this aside so as not to be misunderstood. This post is not a criticism of science. Far from it. But it is a criticism of scientism, the view that science and science alone has all the answers.
Scientists considered the natural events, thunder and lightning, and after long study and analysis came up with an explanation in terms of the concept of electricity. And their conclusions were put out into the open to be verified or disputed by other investigators until a consensus was reached. It proved to be a convincing and enduring explanation.
But there is a difference between ‘explaining’ and ‘explaining away’. One of the virtues of science is that it reduces many different phenomena to a simpler formula that underlies them all. So, we are told that everything in the universe in all its richness and complexity comprises a hundred or so elements either on their own or in a myriad of combinations and every movement of, or change in, any object in the universe is explicable in terms of the effects of four fundamental forces of nature. What an incredible achievement of the human brain (itself a product of the universe, of course) to take these enormous steps in classification.
But ‘explaining’ is not ‘explaining away’. What is electricity? (Or gravity, for that matter?) What is behind these forces? How do we account for them? How did they arise? Why are they at the strength they are? Why are there any forces at all? Why is the something rather than nothing? These are further questions demanding to be asked. We don’t close down a mystery but move from one mystery to another, a deeper one. And suppose a persuasive account is given of these problems at some time in the future. Will that be the end of the line as far as explanations go? Is that the terminus at which all questions stop? Of course not. For whatever may be revealed to be behind them becomes the next mystery to be confronted. As we have seen science explains one set of phenomena, complex and diverse ones, in terms of usually simpler concepts. But by its very nature it is not capable of giving final answers.
The human mind cannot cease from asking why? why? why? The limited capacity of the human intellect constrains our progress in answering. There are probings and wonderings and interrrogations that can never by satisfied. The human mind is innately restless. There is no cure, no relief from mystery. A permanent sense of wonder is legitimate.
When we first come across the achievements of science, of course we are deeply impressed. Perhaps we exaggerate its success and regard it as an intellectual panacea. Surely it will solve all our problems, won’t it? But on reflection this is an impulsive response. In due course one can be awestruck both by the brilliance of scientists and, in a quite different way, by the mysteries of nature that remain when the scientists have done their best work.
FRUIT
‘It’s a wondrous thing that fruit grows on trees,’
I mumbled before I went to school.
Then after some learning from teachers and books
I thought my former self a fool.
But now that I’m older and heavy with years
in a stronger voice again I say,
‘It’s a wondrous thing that fruit grows on trees.’
Tell me. Am I wise or losing my way?
Filed under Knowledge, Religion, Spirituality
Consciousness and Other Matters 