Universal Intelligence (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, December 18, 2009, 15:02 (5453 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George has drawn our attention to an article by Ajita Kamal and Vinod K. Wadhawan, responding to Robert Lanza and Deepak Chopra. Despite the following criticisms, I'd like to thank both George and David for constantly pointing us towards the latest developments in different fields.-Kamal and Wadhawan start by quoting Steven Weinberg, who says humans can't resist the belief "that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents." Their own belief in a chain of accidents underlies most of their arguments, but first they rightly (in my view) demolish Lanza's conclusion that "everything we perceive is created by the act of perception". Is Lanza a reincarnation of Bishop Berkeley (even down to using the example of colour)? I wonder how such people cope with life if they're convinced that the only "reality" is what's inside their heads. -However, the co-authors then move to the anthropic principle, and from now on the whole article seems to me like an exercise in foot-shooting. They quote Dawkins' list of essential planetary conditions for life, and admit that the probability is very low. This list is followed by "another highly improbable set of phenomena" ... the chemical events that led to the "emergence of a mechanism for heredity" ... and a third: "Like the origin of life, another extremely improbable event (or a set of events) was the emergence of the sophisticated eukaryotic cell (on which the life of humans is based)." In each case, they invoke the anthropic principle "to say that, no matter how improbable such an event was statistically, it did indeed happen; otherwise we humans would not be here." What sort of reasoning is this? Lanza's argument is: "There are over 2000 physical parameters within the solar system and universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose that they are random." Kamal and Wadhawan's answer is to describe one set of improbable events after another, and then to tell us we exist, as if somehow that proved it was all "a chain of accidents". -Our authors go on to give a useful summary of various theories about the universe. Everett's multiverse theory or Gell-Mann's theory of many alternative histories of the universe might expand the time scale way beyond the Big Bang, while string theory apparently "defines a near-infinity of multiple universes". These would vastly enhance the probability factor, of course, but as our authors do have the grace to admit, "many physicists feel uncomfortable with this unconfirmed world view". Hawking's idea that "the string theory landscape is populated by the set of all possible histories" can be tested through prediction "of specific fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and in the early spectrum of gravitational waves." Unfortunately, "gravitation waves have not even been detected yet." I'm not objecting to the theories, and I'd even agree with George that they are "intriguing", though as a non-scientist I have no idea how feasible they are. But I do understand the difference between unproven theories and scientific fact, and to my mind the former do not provide a basis for any sort of belief. -The next subject is consciousness. "In scientific terms, consciousness is a 'hard problem', meaning that its complete subjective nature places it beyond objective study." The authors quote Lanza, who acknowledges advances made in understanding structure and function, but says that the theories and observations "tell us nothing about how the performance of these functions is accompanied by a conscious experience" ... the problem being "how a subjective experience emerges from a physical process." You could hardly ask for a clearer exposition. Our authors respond: "This criticism of the lack of a scientific consensus on the nature of consciousness is empty, considering that Lanza himself proposes no actual mechanism for consciousness, but still places it at the centre of his theory of the universe. [...] There is no need to view consciousness as such a mystery." If someone says there's a mystery, but he himself doesn't propose a solution, does that mean there's no mystery? Our authors then explain how they (and Daniel Dennett) think consciousness works, but of course they don't explain how "a subjective experience emerges from a physical process." They can't. No-one can. I'm not arguing for a universal consciousness ... that, I agree, creates a whole new set of problems ... but I find it singularly unedifying when one form of faith launches irrational attacks on another.-They finish by quoting some searching questions posed by Chopra and Lanza about aspects of evolution. According to our authors, "all these quotes [...] demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of biology, let alone the theory of evolution by natural selection." To claim that arguments show a lack of understanding, and then not to explain why, is as unedifying as to claim that we're here and so we must have got here by accident. Sadly, one can only assume that these authors are writing for readers who share their faith in chance, so I doubt if anyone on the Dawkins website will dare to challenge them. After all, that's what the Master himself believes.