The Limits of Science to know Reality without a Thing-in-Itself

Mind, Matter, and Will

Lightning in A Bottle
“'Yes.' Omar sighed. 'When it comes to recovered memory, some opt for minimum coverage. They wake up in a dark room with a flashlight in their hand, and have no interest in knowing how they found the flashlight without first having a flashlight.'” ~from Chapter Two of An Aversion to Ladders

When it comes to lightning in a bottle, science’s explanation is always in terms of the bottle and never the lightning. Science can tell you there are more neural firings in the brain than there are atoms in the known universe, but it cannot tell you how this inscrutable neural chemistry creates thoughts, memories, and perceptions, or even what thoughts, memories, and perceptions are in themselves. By its reductivist credo, it must equate process with what things are in themselves, and insist the latter is materially reducible from the former.

To this end, reductivists are not dualists when it comes to the brain—that is to say they do not believe mind and matter are separate things. Simply put, mind is a biochemical byproduct of matter, and nothing more. However, there is no clear empirical demonstration of this, for though science holds that thoughts arise from neurochemical processes, what is demonstrated when it tinkers with brain chemistry is not the direct creation of thoughts but rather the direct creation of physical sequences in the mind that trigger feelings and impulses that lead to thoughts. Beyond this, thoughts—even manipulated thoughts—cannot be isolated as things-in-themselves under a microscope.

Schopenhauer also argued mind and matter were identical, but he means something entirely different by his claim.

For him, mind and matter are metaphysically the same thing—not physically the same thing, as science contends. It is mind alone that imposes the idea of differentiation on mind and matter, for mind is not only a precondition of matter in thought, but also a precondition of itself as thought. When we seek to examine mind or matter as an exercise, we are, to use Schopenhauer’s analogy, trying to see the eye that sees everything but itself, and resultantly we cannot find mind in matter or matter in mind because mind is both the barrier and the medium by which we conduct the exercise.

“In short, I, as a perceiving subject insisting on an object to contemplate, impose duality where none transcendentally exists. This difficulty can be appreciated when, like Hume, I go to look for myself in my thoughts and find only the thought of myself looking for myself. I must be a perceiver to have a perception, but I can never know myself outside the act of perceiving myself as a perceiver. It is yet one more intractable infinity loop that cannot be resolved by logic or experience. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Seven of An Aversion to Ladders

Mind is transcendental but not strictly noumenal by our perspective, as it has phenomenal reality in the dimension of time: ideas in a forward* succession as thought. Regardless, these ideas do not have necessary or determined order as they appear to our consciousness, which means that which instigates their arrangement (a willing reason) does not itself adhere to the laws of causation, which would determined a cause-and-effect temporal sequence. This is to say, the interplay of ideas and ideas, and ideas and actions—displays free association that is not simply transcendental but also noumenal.

“For since reason itself is not an appearance and is not subject at all to any conditions of sensibility, no temporal sequence takes place in it even as to its causality, and thus the dynamical law of nature, which determines the temporal sequence according to rules, cannot be applied to it.” ~Immanuel Kant

Therefore, the will of mind, like mind itself, cannot be found in the black box of the brain.

Let us put this in scientific terms: If one proceeds from a purely physical model in replicating the brain, one would not have consciousness. More than that—one would not have any means of making sensate data and intuition intelligible and self-executing in the mind. Mind exists (persists) in time as a fact, but the “matter” of our individual thoughts, so to speak, cannot be shown to exist in space. In the Kantian/Schopenhauerian view, mind is not something separate from its physical incarnation (brain matter), but another dimension of the brain that cannot account for itself in spatial representation. This is why science cannot—nor will it even be able to—show not only how mind as a thing-in-itself emerges from neurochemicals, but also how it materially structures understanding.

“Man’s practical occupations are as cataloger and mapmaker. The science of the brain is itself a glorified form of mapmaking, for the brain is not so much the point of departure for our understanding as the point of arrival. Psychology, beyond positive pharmacology, is barely a second cousin to neurophysiology. Whereas the latter must make do with maps, the former must make do with postcards. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Thirteen of An Aversion to Ladders

(*The emphasis on forward is to underscore the idea that phenomenal time has direction. Yet ideas-in-themselves, as things that have reality and persist in their reality, may have non-directional time. [I will explain what I mean by this in the section where I present my own spin on Transcendental Idealism.]) (5/20/10)

Automobile, Futurist painting by Balla

Where Metaphysics and Physics Overlap
One of Schopenhauer’s great insights was in explaining how it was mind and matter can function so seamlessly together, as when an acrobat’s will and body move as a single thought through space, and without requiring the acrobat to be conscious of any one body part and its location throughout the gesture.

For Schopenhauer, as mind and matter are one in the same as a transcendental concern, so are causation and matter. As mind wills matter, matter wills mind, the two cannot be separated in a cause and effect relationship. The causal component evolves out of the transcendental unity of mind and matter and not in their separation. English philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, characterized this enigmatic state of affairs as “the ghost in the machine,” although the idea originates with Schopenhauer.

Causation is never perceived in objects. As I have said, it is only conceived in the mind synthetically as arising out of actions where objects are involved. Perceptually, we do not conceive causation where we see static objects, although at a subatomic level, matter as energy is always active. Indeed, at this level of activity our concepts of space and time begin to break down, for there is no larger differentiated context (apart from measuring radioactive deterioration of specific particles) in which we can even detect a time flow.

Here we begin to see in an empircal sense what Schopenhauer means by matter being causation-in-itself. Causation-in-itself is only a way to describe the potentiality latent in matter, as causation cannot arise prior to matter assuming a mode of action in space and time. Before space and time are applied, what will become causation in experience exists in matter noumenally (outside experience) as will. At the place where we join the event as spatial/temporal/causal witnesses, will has become energy. Thus, in much the way energy and mass are physically one in the same, will and matter are metaphysically one in the same.

One must remember Schopenhauer hit upon this idea in the century before Einstein came up with his famous equation for mass and energy. (5/21/10)

Problems with a Matter-based Universe
The primary difficulty with a matter-based view of reality (which all reductive science insists is the case) is that one need remove only one brick from the edifice for the entire structure to come tumbling down.

Einstein said that if we remove matter, space and time would cease to exist. However, we need not appeal to Kant to undermine this matter-centric view of the Universe; quantum physics does it for us. By expanding our definition of reality to include mind, it is not a question of removing space and time with matter but removing them with mind. Space and time may indeed go away with the phenomenal concept of matter, but they were never real in themselves to begin with. And in removing matter, we are only removing its ideation, not its noumenal identity.

We know from quantum physics that an observer, as a thinking, perceiving subject, effects the state of subatomic particles by the very act of his observation of them. Mind, by this god-like demonstration to alter the underlying structure of matter at a microcosmic level, is therefore something that cannot be left out of a complete account of reality at a macrocosmic level. Its inclusion renders the materialist view insufficient in understanding the nature of the Universe, as well as its beginning, evolution, and projected demise.

The mind/matter is not simply a paradox in our experience and logic, but, scientifically speaking, it undermines the materialist’s desired goal to join quantum physics and gravity in a unified field theory. This unity of reality does not arise from seeing the Universe as being wholly matter-based, but as a co-creation of mind and matter, which is a transcendental unity that can never be scientifically demonstrated.

The best argument for mind being a principle player in reality lies not merely in its quasi-mystical nature, but in the strength and creativity of the very ideas it generates. From the discovery of the processes of the Natural World to the intricacies of self-creation found in mathematics, technology, philosophy, and the arts, it boggles the mind when it pauses to consider its own accomplishments. As Hegel would agree, we see not only structure in history through these ideas, but also a kind of identity to the ideas themselves—an ontology that, once brought to light, seems to have always been with us. (6/29/10)

Space and Time versus Ontology
“Regardless, what limits our knowledge on one level binds our souls on another. Schopenhauer and Kant provided a metaphysical foundation for something the Buddhists had known from antiquity: Everything in the Universe, from every atom to every galaxy, is—transcendentally speaking—the one same thing. We perceive this thing as being something other than ourselves, but this is only an accident of our birth. As children of Prometheus, we pay a price for having stolen fire from the gods: amnesia every time we go to look for ourselves in our thoughts. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Seven of An Aversion to Ladders

Above the level where quantum entanglement occurs, one wonders what role space and time play in defining or limiting the identity of living organisms.

I am reminded of a story I once heard about the discovery of an ailing plant long believed to be extinct. As it was the only specimen of its kind, a cutting was removed from it and flown to the other side of the world, in hopes the sample could be nursed back to health and the species saved. Some time past with little progress, and then one day a researcher came into the lab to discover the cutting had bloomed a flower. Shortly thereafter, those in charge of the effort learned that the plant on the other side of the world had likewise revitalized and bloomed—and at precisely the same time!

This mystery can be locally appreciated in the behavior of groups of organisms, as when birds in flight move in step, resembling a flag rippling through the air, or ants behave as though a single organism with a single mind.

It can be argued from a Schopenhauerian view of Kant, that particles as waves, or waves as energy, or energy as matter, is all that exists as a physical fact,* and whether that energy is measurable, as with electromagnetism, or immeasurable, as with dark energy, the space this energy occupies is only an illusion. Put another way, nothing cannot exist, for what we perceive as being nothing (or empty space) is in fact noumenal. All matter/energy, whether as real or virtual particles, shares the same undivided identity.As the processes of phenomena builds up from the molecular level to the level of organic and inorganic compounds, and then finally to living organisms that achieve a degree of consciousness, this single identity is never fully abandoned or forgotten; and no amount of space and time can cloak the intuited truth of it.

(*In The Standard Model of quantum mechanics, this is indeed true: empty space cannot exist because it is filled with a Higgs field, which has physical reality in space without a physical force.)  (6/29/10)

You Are Here
if one holds that the Copernican Principle is true in denying man any special standing in the Universe, then what manner of explanation can account for a complexity that is as delicately balanced as it is higher?

The Anthropic Principle comes in two versions: a weak form that emphasizes the unlikely fact we should live in an agreeable neighborhood in a Universe favorable to the emergence of life. It can be put as follows where: “conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist.” In the strong form of the principle, the emphasis is on the uncanny fact that the laws of physics governing our Universe favor the emergence of life: For example, were the strong nuclear force to be two-percent stronger, then stars would burn through their fuel in minutes and not millions of years, and resultantly life could not have emerged. From the just-so stability of atomic particles to the “Golden Age” of the Universe we presently find ourselves in, two competing camps have found common cause in using the Anthropic Principle to point out these improbable states: theistic advocates for Intelligent Design, and nontheistic advocates for multiverses.

For the multiversers, it is less about emphasizing how the Universe is fine tuned or how our situation requires special accommodations within it, but, rather, the Anthropic Principle comes into play simply as the result of there being a multitude of other parallel universes; and as all possible combinations of physical constants would be exhausted, our favorable combination would exist at any rate. We, therefore, are lucky to wind up here.

Intelligent Design (far less complicated) simply posits a designer and lets it go at that.

Against these camps, we have defenders of the Copernican Principle, which holds that, if the Universe is cosmologically constant and homogeneous, then we geographically occupy no privileged place in it. In reaction to the strong Anthropic Principle, Copernican reductivists must also add a class of counterarguments that emphasize the chance in chance rather than the luck of chance; yet this is done not so much to inject scientific sobriety into the debate as construct a backdoor escape hatch.

In one counterargument, we have the puddle analogy, where it is argued that a puddle would think itself special by virtue of itself being a puddle. Although this may be true given the retroactive nature of causal thinking, it does not undercut the miraculous fact of a thinking puddle in the first place. (Such ontological and epistemological givens are always left out of the equation.) Regardless, what we have in this debate between accident and no-accident is a self-reinforcing tautology, albeit one coming from two different directions. All things being equal, weight must be given to the tautology’s very existence, which, as a fact, favors the Anthropic Principle.

Reductive science has never made a convincing case for the reality we experience being the sole product of the lowest common denominator of randomness, and though many in the anthropic camp have their own materialist agendas in pointing this out, they have nevertheless turned a spotlight on the weakness of the case. This being said, our just-so Universe is not the result of a coin toss, or a lowest common denominator of randomness. It is the outcome of a self-directed metaphysical will, which, because it is immaterial, creates frustrating and unsatistfying tautology for the materially minded. (7/25/10)

Will, Élan Vital, and The Limits of Ontology in Science
“In truth, Lovelock’s principle* has merit, though as a science it has few facts on the ground to support it, much like the giant who is too large to get under a microscope but is nevertheless appreciated for providing shade at picnics. ” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Twenty-six of An Aversion to Ladders

Kant, in positing will in reason, barely grazed its consequences, although Schopenhauer seized on.

Though indirect, something of the thing-in-itself can be determined within the confines of empirical experience: namely, will. From Schopenhauer’s perspective, this will is blind in noumenal form. As animate or inanimate matter, it can provide metaphysical motivation for all the Laws of Nature, but it can not produce intended outcomes, as physical outcomes are determined by Laws of Nature themselves. As mind, will gives living organisms limited autonomy, but since the will is the only will, the nature of all living organisms is bound by it. The crucial aspect of Schopenhauer’s concept of Will is, however, its noumenal dimension.

Henri Bergson’s ideas paralleled much that had been explored earlier by Schopenhauer, as with how immediate experience and intuition were equal to rational and scientific thought. This is keenly demonstrated in aesthetics experiences, which, by Bergson’s measure, strike closer to underlying reality as a qualitative experience than what science gets at through a quantitative experience. The difficulty in Bergson’s concept of élan vital (vital impetus or force) lies in where he centered it: namely, as something deducible from physical processes of organisms. He was right in thinking his force linked to consciousness, yet the invisibility of his élan vital, emerging as it did in an age of growing scientific prowess, was belittled as unnecessary.

However, this does not negate what is demonstrated by organisms but not shown to be in organisms: that is, an ontology that accounts for both an impetus to be and an impetus to do or create. As will will never be found in matter as a physical force, since it is, in fact, a metaphysical force, this presents science with one more conundrum it will never be able to solve.

(*Lovelock’s Gaia Principle is a holistic view to ecology, and attempts to explain the balance between biological organisms and the ecosystems they share. This balance arises from cooperation that is not reductive or atomized, though the scientific nature of this cooperation is not clear. The Gaia Principle is one more attempt to account for a fine-tuning of natural phenomena that science must otherwise chalk up to happy-go-lucky coincidence. [Again, this mechanism is attributable to metaphysical will.]) (6/7/10)

Design by Another Name
The whole is noumenal, while the parts are phenomenal, so science concerns itself only with the latter, as phenomena are observed and display causal connectivity. The whole does not cause its parts, for the parts share causality only among themselves. Resultantly, causation is circular as a phenomenal matter, and no first cause can be deduced or discovered from the parts and their relationships.

The whole prefigures causality. It cannot be found as a thing-unto-itself in either physical means or ends, as these components are directed by physical law, which the Noumenon cannot violate. Still, as the immaterial whole, the whole’s relationship to its parts is not simply that of neutral medium or container, but as its willing half. This willing interface is a function of the whole and not its parts, and therefore it will never be found within the framework of causality.

An analogy can be made between body and being: We will our bodies, but we do not cause our bodies, or any of their internal operations. And yet, as we will our bodies, our bodies, through their internal operations, clearly will unconscious aspects of us, like our breathing and heartbeat. Still, our bodies are made of parts, which cannot collectively or individually direct our being. If we extend this analogy from body and being to matter and mind, we can grasp the profundity of the relationship even more: Does mind reflect the will of matter, from which we perceive it to emerge physically? Or does mind direct matter as an object of its own will? As we previously discussed, no cause-and-effect relationship exists between mind and matter since cause and effect do not emerge from mind and matter’s separation but their unity.

The question remains: Even though physical laws are deducible and applicable for all physical phenomena, does this mean they are (paradoxically) as unintended as they are necessary in explaining phenomena?

We see and hear the individual instruments in the orchestra, and what they are playing is harmonious to our ears. Reductive science tells us there has never been a musical score from which they play, and that what we hear is only harmonious because it is the balance of what remains after time and optimizing Evolution have worn away the unneeded dissonance. We may call what we hear ordered and even beautiful, yet these judgments are conditioned in us by a blind process that intended nothing in making noise. The whole, therefore, cannot be a score of any kind, for the parts could not have intended it.

Even if you accept this as true, why should instruments want to make noise even if they did not want to make music? (7/11/10)