He thinks it is significant that materialism completely fails to explain consciousness:
Some consciousness researchers see the hard problem as real but inherently unsolvable; others posit a range of options for its account. Those solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. Regardless of the direction ‘more’ might take, the unresolved democracy of quantum interpretations means that our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case.
The closer you look, the more the materialist position in physics appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground.
Adam Frank, “Minding matter” at Aeon
Frank is an expert on the final stages of the evolution of stars like the sun. His computational research group has developed advanced supercomputer tools in order to study how stars form and die. So he would incline to a materialist view, surely? But no, he says, quantum physics blew all that away. And some neuroscientists just haven’t caught up.
He’s right but materialism dies hard. University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank is the author of Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth (2017).
See also: Four researchers whose work sheds light on the reality of the mind The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot, says Michael Egnor. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple
So not neuroscience or any other study of the mind and the brain, then.
You do NOT have to be in “neuroscience or any other study of the mind and the brain” to know that materialism cannot explain consciousness. Materialism can’t even account for the existence of living organisms. It can’t account for stars.
Materialism is a non-starter.
‘You do NOT have to be an expert in any field, full-stop,’ ET.
In fact, the very title of the thread, ‘Replies to “Astrophysicist Adam Frank: Materialism is on shaky ground” sounds as if it belongs to a knock-about satire – in no way relating to any field of learning. The title of a Monty .Python sketch, for instance.
‘Shaky ground ‘? What ‘ground’ ?
Quantum physics is a materialistic theory as far as I can tell. Unless by materialism we mean only ‘matter’ and not energy and information. In which case, materialism was disproven long ago once we introduced energy into our physical equations.
Ground is not as shaky as immaterialism.
I too wondered why an astrophysicist was commenting about consciousness. But then he wrote, “There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. ” Positing the expansion of physics to include some aspect of mind is indeed radical, but at least lets a physicist take a kick at the can. I doubt if anyone takes his remarks as authoritative. If Biologists and computer experts can speculate about consciousness, why not astrophysicists?
EricMH claims,
Interesting claim. Aside from consciousness itself being integral to properly understanding quantum theory, exactly how do you so easily bridge the gargantuan divide between that which is immaterial information and that which is thought to be material. i.e. How much does a bit weigh? How many millimeters long is the meaning of this sentence? Is the number 4 closer to Nebraska or to Texas? How fast does the alphabet go? Is the charge of punctuation positive or negative?
“Information is information. It is neither matter nor energy.” Norbert Weiner
EricMH:
Max Planck, father of quantum theory, once said:
Again to EricMH’s claim:
Let’s see if we can help EricMH tell a little better?
As to the falsification of realism, i.e. the belief that a material reality exists independent of our observation of it:
In the following article entitled “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality” it is stated that “Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues,,, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality.,,,” “Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.” And that in order to have a more complete description of quantum mechanics, “You would,, have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.”
And in the following extension of the Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment, an experiment that was done with atoms instead of with photons, one of the lead researchers stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
As leading experimentalist Anton Zeiliger states in the following video, and, “Every object has to be in a definite place is not true anymore.,,, The thought that a particle can be at two places at the same time is (also) not good language.
The good language it that there are situations where it is completely undefined where the particle is. (and it is not just us (we ourselves) that don’t know where the particle is, the particle itself does not know where it is). This “nonexistence” is an objective feature of reality.,,, ”
And the following video also shows, in greater detail, that fundamental defining attributes of consciousness, i.e. free will and ‘the experience of the now’, are extremely tightly correlated with the experimental results that we are now getting from quantum mechanics
To quote Heisenberg again,
And as Zeilinger stated in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
These sorts of claims seem to be mixing concepts. What does it mean to say that information is a fundamental part of reality? That seems to be what quantum physicists claim, ‘it from bit’, but what exactly does that mean? Susskind claims there is a ‘quantum information’ that can neither be created nor destroyed, and he seems to think the universe is perfectly reversible.
But, this notion of information, while it is not the same thing as a material rock, still seems to be a sort of materialism.
Really, what I think we mean when we say materialism is actually monism, that there is a single kind of ‘stuff’ that all of our reality is made of.
Originally this ‘stuff’ was just billiard balls bumping into each other, such as the original atomists’ theories.
Then we added a second kind of ‘stuff’ and called it energy.
Now we have a third kind of ‘stuff’ we call information.
But, all three still seem to be a sort of ‘materialism’ inasmuch as I could create a computer program that simulates these three concepts and how they interact. There is still a single underlying thing that can produce all the results, i.e. the program code. Maybe we call this code the information and say it generates everything in reality. If so, I don’t consider the code to be a significant leg up on the billiard ball atomist view, but most likely I do not understand what is being said.
So, ignoring the quote mining and condescension, it is unclear to me how quantum physics has eliminated materialism.
I also don’t get the idea that reality doesn’t exist unless it is observed. If the observer is part of reality, then the observer cannot exist without being observed. Thus, for every observer we need yet another observer, resulting in an infinite regress. Plus, if I close my eyes, I still bonk my head when I try walking through the wall. So, some part of reality seems to stick around if I don’t observe it.
paraphrase “Golly gee whiz, distinctions are useless, its just all some sort of material stuff no matter what you call it.,,, Oh yeah, infinite regress of observers.,,, look I bonk my head and it hurts, so the experimental falsification of realism must be false.”
Face palm! I’m embarrassed for you.
@BA77 what do you hope to accomplish with your response?
You have made some interesting claims, and I do not understand them, so I am outlining my misunderstanding as well as I can in the hope that you can help me understand.
EricMH, you are trying to defend materialism and undermine theism with a hodge podge of murky self-refuting ‘misunderstandings’ of your own making. For instance you stated,
And yet, all ‘immaterial’ program codes that we know of come from immaterial mind. There is not one counter example that you can point to. And yet materialism explicitly denies the reality of immaterial mind, especially denying the reality of the Mind of God. Thus your very own analogy of ‘the program code,,, generates everything in reality’ refutes itself and specifically refutes your claim that the ontology that most properly defines reality “still seem to be a sort of ‘materialism’.”
As George Ellis stated in the following article, “The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities.”
Of further note, here is a refutation of your claim that reality is ‘just’ a computer simulation:
Here is a simple argument which decisively refutes a naturalistic/materialistic world view:
[*Not all “naturalists” believe they are “materialists,” however, all materialists concede they are naturalists, since they believe that natural causes alone are sufficient to explain our existence. Of course this is all really just a matter of semantics.]
Eric, could you please email me at DerekDiMarco@outlook.com?
Bornagain77@ 7
I have to agree with EricMH, quantum physics is a materialist – or physicalist if you prefer – theory in that it describes the nature of the physical world at the vary smallest scales
As for immaterial information, show me information of any sort which is not instantiated in some sort of physical substrate and you may have a point. Otherwise it is more like a conceptual error similar to assuming that beauty is a property of the object so described when it is actually a response to and an evaluation of that object by the observer.
John_a_designer@ 15
Agreed.
Agreed.
Agreed.
But, if the products of a naturalistic/materialistic model are successful theories in science and successful technologies which we all employ and even enjoy, then that is evidence for the truth of the nat/mat model.
Would very limited knowledge of a computer enable you to explain exactly how that video game runs on your screen? But we know that, without the hardware, there is no video game. You could write the exact code down on sheets of paper but that knowledge would not allow you to play the game.
You’re confused, as usual. Show me the information in the ink of a dictionary. Show me the information in the material- show me material that doesn’t require information to exist.
Is the information the radio waves? No.
@Seversky: QFT (of which QM is a special case*) is the most accurate theory we have, and as Hugh Everett realized seven decades ago, if you take the Schrodinger equation literally, it basically insists the Many Worlds hypothesis is true. Because the observer (more accurately called the decohering interference) is also a quantum system. Many Worlds is right there in the Psi function.
(*QM is a special case of QFT in almost the exact same way that Newton’s equations of motion are special cases of the SR equations, which is to say, when v<<c)
Oh goody, the long time atheistic troll of UD, Seversky, tries to come to Eric’s defense and states that,
First off, there are no purely materialistic and/or physical scientific theories. Period! Every scientific theory that is rigid enough to be formulated in the language of mathematics and tested for accuracy necessarily presupposes that miracles are possible. Both Wigner and Einstein are on record in regards to holding it to be a miracle that the universe can be accurately described with mathematics:
Moreover, Wigner and Einstein hold the applicability of mathematics to the universe to be ‘miraculous’ for very good reason. Although the Naturalistic and/or Materialistic worldview holds that “only matter is real, that the world is just physical and that there is no supernatural (or metaphysical) existence, or that if there is, it has no impact on our physical world.,,,”
,,, Mathematics (and logic) itself, which provides the backbone for all of science, engineering and technology in the first place, exists in a transcendent, beyond space and time realm. A beyond space and time realm which simply is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation.
This transcendent mathematical (and logical) realm that accurately describes the physical universe has, since the ancient Greeks, been referred to as a Platonic mathematical world.
Plato was a Theist.
And Plato was a Theist for very good reason. As David Berlinski states in the following article, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics.”
Thus once again, there are no purely materialistic and/or physical scientific theories. Period! Every scientific theory that is rigid enough to be formulated in the language of mathematics and tested for accuracy necessarily presupposes that miracles are possible.
On top of all that, the claim that quantum mechanics in particular is a purely materialistic scientific theory is even more absurd than atheists trying to claim that some other theory of science can be reduced to purely materialistic explanation. Quantum non-locality, which is one of the most verified aspects of quantum theory, simply refuses to be reduced to any possible materialistic explanation. As the following article states. “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
And as the following article states, “We must explain space and time as somehow emerging from fundamentally spaceless and timeless physics.”
Atheists simply have no cause that they can appeal to in order to explain, beyond space and time, quantum non-locality. Whereas, on the other hand, Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to in order to explain the non-locality of quantum correlations:
ba77 @ 14 – do you realise that Eric is actually on your side, and is a theist?
^^^^
LOL, regardless of whatever he personally thinks himself to be, I can only address the arguments that he presented. His argument that quantum mechanics is materialistic is refuted.
Moreover, contrary to what many people have been falsely led to believe about Intelligent Design being a pseudo-science, the fact of the matter is that all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism (as atheists try to a-priorily falsely presuppose).
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science itself, (namely that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality),
,,, to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves,,, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results themselves, from top to bottom, science itself is certainly not to be considered a ‘natural’ endeavor of man.
Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever found just laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analyzed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial logic and immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.
Again, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism.
In fact, it would be hard to fathom a worldview that turns out to be more antagonistic towards modern science, indeed more antagonistic towards reality itself, than the presumption of methodological naturalism has turned out to be.
Bottom line, without God nothing turns out to be truly real in the atheist’s worldview. Not even the atheist himself turns out to be truly real in his materialistic worldview. Much less are beauty, meaning, and purposes for his life to be considered real in his naturalistic worldview.
Verse:
Needless to say, a worldview that is devoid of any real meaning, beauty, or purpose for life is a severely impoverished, even severely depressing, worldview for anyone to have to hold.
I personally can’t see how atheists tolerate such rancid garbage as their basic belief system.
Bob O’H:
So what? That doesn’t mean he cannot post bad arguments.
Do all atheists agree on everything? Doubtful. I know that evos have disagreements even though they all hold to the same basic concept.
I think the problem is equivocation about what ‘materialistic theory’ is referring to. BA77 seems to think ‘materialism’ refers to the origin of the theory, so since a mathematically orderly universe can only come from an immaterial mind, then all of science is therefore not materialistic. I agree with BA77 on this point.
What I am calling materialistic is the causal forces a theory deals with. And quantum physics seems to only mathematically describe forces that are computable, hence ‘materialistic’ in my computational definition of the term.
However, in both of our discussions this sort of finer distinction gets lost, so it may not be worth continuing.
“And quantum physics seems to only mathematically describe forces that are computable, hence ‘materialistic’ in my computational definition of the term.”
Really??? And what exactly is the ‘materialistic’ force that is computable that is behind, i.e. the cause of, instantaneous wave collapse?
Here is an interesting quote about the infinite dimensional Hilbert Spaces in quantum mechanics:
Moreover, we find that the infinite dimensional Hilbert space takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.
The history of the square root of negative one is particularly interesting to look at. Descartes had rejected complex roots and coined the derogatory term “imaginary” to describe the square root of negative one. Whereas, Gauss, who was the mathematician who finally clearly explained the higher dimensional nature behind the square root of negative one, suggested that complex magnitudes be called “lateral” instead of “imaginary” magnitudes since they represent a dimensional extension of the continuum. Gauss also proposed that complex magnitudes be awarded “full civil rights.”
The author further comments, in the language of Plato’s allegory of the cave, complex numbers represent “forms” from a higher dimension casting “shadows” on the real number line.
And in quantum mechanics, we find that the square root of negative one is necessary for describing the wave packet prior to measurement.
As should be needless to say, the preceding findings are very comforting to overall Christian concerns and are completely inexplicable to the concerns of Atheistic materialists.
a few more notes on the non-materialistic nature of quantum theory:
ET @ 24 –
True. But it does mean that he’s probably not “trying to defend materialism and undermine theism” as ba77 suggested in comment 14.
Well Eric, the fact that you have the atheistic trolls Seversky and Bob O’H, who make notoriously bad arguments themselves, defending your present argument ought to, number 1, send a chill down your spine, number 2, give you considerable pause to reevaluate your argument.
Bob O’H:
He, EricMH, definitely does NOT appear to know what materialism entails.
@BA77, while Bob and Seversky do make plenty of bad arguments, some of their arguments are not bad. Alternatively, while I agree with many if not most of the conclusions you argue for, I do not always agree with the argument you use to get there. A correct conclusion does not a good argument make. And if Bob or Seversky successfully defeat a bad argument, that does not mean they’ve defeated the conclusion. In fact, they’ve rendered us a service by sharpening our reasoning.
At the end of the day, ID may well be wrong, and if we are using bad arguments to get there, then we are just fooling ourselves and others. If we think ID is true, then we need to make the best arguments we can to reach the conclusion. Which also means we need to be even better at making arguments against ID than our opponents.
Eric, for crying out loud, instead of arguing generally that their/your materialistic arguments may be bad or good, it might greatly help you if you get far more specific than your gross generalizations and state, with specific examples, exactly what their/your exact materialistic argument for quantum theory is suppose to be.
You have not even touched the myriad of references that I have laid out that have, in no uncertain terms, directly undermined your claim that quantum theory is materialistic in its formulation.
I could care less what your personal opinion is as to what you think quantum theory is in a general philosophical sense, and only care what you can prove by reference to empirical evidence. Thus far, you have cited NONE!
For instance, in further undermining your claim that quantum theory is materialistic in its formulation, I can also reference advances in quantum information theory that show, in no uncertain terms, that quantum theory is completely antithetical to your, Bob’s and Sev’s, materialistic presuppositions. As the following article states, “James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence,“Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
That statement about entropy being a property of an observer who describes the system, for anyone involved in the ID vs. Darwinism debate, ought to send chills down their scientific spine.
Simply put, these developments go to the very heart of the ID vs. Evolution debate and directly falsify, number one, Darwinian claims that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from some material basis. And number two, these experimental realizations of the Maxwell’s demon thought experiment go even further and also directly validate a primary claim from ID proponents that an Intelligent Designer who imparts information into a biological system is necessary in order to circumvent the second law. As William Dembski himself stated in 1999, “It is CSI (Complex Specified Information) that enables Maxwell’s demon to outsmart a thermodynamic system tending toward thermal equilibrium”
And as David Abel stated, ““A kinetic energy potential cannot be generated by Maxwell’s Demon from an ideal gas equilibrium without purposeful choices of when to open and close the partition’s trap door.” And he even uses that as a benchmark for a null hypothesis.
And again, ‘purposeful choices’ are built into the foundation of quantum theory:
Eric, if you want to claim that free will in quantum theory is materialistic in its formulation, it is useless talking to you.
Supplemental note:
ba77 – read Eric’s post at 11. He provides a specific argument. And I can think of a couple of ways he could be right and yet materialism still be false. So I think it’s worth engaging with what he wrote, as it helps delineate where materialism might end.
Bob, and I refuted his absurd claim in 11 that information is basically just materialism:
at 7
Claiming information is ‘just’ materialism is absurd, and commits the scientific sin of overly gross generalization to the point of complete incoherence.
You can state that immaterial mind and immaterial information have causal effects in the real world, but the one thing you cannot retain in your ‘scientific worldview’, as far as immaterial information itself is concerned, is a materialistic ontology wherein cause and effect are always ‘bottom up’
@BA77 I agree code comes from mind. But, the operation of code is not intelligent. Same with quantum physics. The operations the equations describe is not intelligent. Maybe wave collapse requires an immaterial mind, which seems to be what your quotes are claiming. At that point I could maybe agree quantum physics implies an immaterial reality, but quote mining isn’t sufficient for me. I’ll have to see the specific theoretical reason why they think a mind is necessary. But even then, the equations themselves do not describe intelligent activity, since I can write a computer program that simulates the behavior of quantum physics, and computer programs are not intelligent.
A science that mathematically describes intelligent activity is what I would consider truly non materialistic, because it is describing the very operation of the universe with causal forces that cannot be reduced to a computer program. Currently, the only such science is Dembski’s ID work, and right now it is in the negative stage of showing chance and necessity cannot account for information, but not a positive stage of describing what can actually create the information.
@eric sorry for the delay in responding to you, Outlook is having some cloud issues. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. 🙂
Bob, again you are being far too general,
“I agree code comes from mind. But, the operation of code is not intelligent.”
That is a general and blanket claim that simply does not hold up.
In so far as the immaterial code is, in top down fashion, purposely directing the actions of a system towards a end-directed goal, it is operating in a teleological fashion. i.e. It can be said to be intelligently directed towards a goal.
Teleology simply does not fit within the materialistic philosophy. In fact, teleology is denied within materialism. You may say that the code is deterministic and even say that it lacks free will, and I would agree with you in that regards that it is not intelligent, but you are going much further than that and are claiming that the immaterial program itself falls under the umbrella of materialism. That claim is false.
as to:
“Same with quantum physics. The operations the equations describe is not intelligent.,,, I can write a computer program that simulates the behavior of quantum physics, and computer programs are not intelligent.”
That claim is also false, You cannot write a computer program with free will. If you think you can write a computer program with free will, submit your proposal to the Noble committee.
And free will, especially with the recent closing of the free will loop-hole by Zeilinger and company, is now shown to be integral to quantum theory.
as to
“A science that mathematically describes intelligent activity is what I would consider truly non materialistic, because it is describing the very operation of the universe with causal forces that cannot be reduced to a computer program”
LOL, again you let me and the Noble committee know when you write a computer program with genuine free will.
@BA77, that’s my point, programs cannot have free will. Free will is essentially what distinguishes the spiritual and intelligent from the material. So, as long as I can write a program that simulates whatever scientific theory under consideration, it remains a materialistic theory.
EricMH and what part of free will being integral to quantum theory do you not understand?
Moreover, you completely ignored the fact that materialism denies teleology and yet the program itself is teleological.
In fact, a rather interesting falsification of Darwin’s materialistic theory arises from the teleological language that Darwinian materialists are forced to use:
The biologist J. B. S. Haldane observed that, “Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.”
In the following article, Stephen Talbott challenges Darwinists to “pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness.”
And as Denis Noble notes “it is virtually impossible to speak of living beings for any length of time without using teleological and normative language”.
This working biologist agrees with Talbott and Noble’s’s assessment, “in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology–we simply cannot avoid them.”
You simply, because of the teleology involved, cannot redefine a computer program as being under the rubic of materialism.
of related note: