If My Eyes Are a Window, Is There Anyone Looking Out?

Given their premises, materialists must believe the brain is a sort of organic computer, in principle very much like the computer on which I am writing this post.

Objection, your Honor! Mr Arrington is telling his opposition what they must believe as opposed to providing the evidence pertaining to what they actually do believe.

Materialists are obliged to believe that every aspect of human behavior is determined – that it was selected for by evolutionary processes.

Objection! Your Honor, Mr Arrington is taking liberties with his opposition's position.

Materialists are, therefore, obliged to believe that humor conferred on humans some reproductive advantage that was selected for by natural selection.

Your Honor! That happens to be true. Making girls laugh gets ugly guys laid. And making guys laugh gets ugly girls laid- well just talking to some guys will do that. You see your Honor, there are many different advantageous traits- some physical and some behavioural. We're down with that. All it takes is one person observing and reproducing another person doing something (successfully) and the trend spreads. The ability to see, recognize what you see and remember what you have seen, would be advantageous to survival. And the vision system is just a set of controlled chemical reactions which we have studied and understand quite well. All matter, energy and their interactions. And that is how it arose, many trials with condensed matter and the vision system emerged, was useful, kept and refined. Just sayin'... Joe

"Cleave to the good, abstain from the very appearance of evil . . . " kairosfocus

Barb @ 17 Paul likewise said in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 "Test all things; hold fast what is good. " bb

Even when someone with vastly superior knowledge presents a carefully crafted and seemingly unassailable argument, a listener need not believe a foolish conclusion simply because he cannot disprove it at the time. The student was actually following a very practical Bible principle found at 1 John 4:1—not to believe too quickly everything you hear, even when it appears to come from an authoritative source. This does not mean that you should stubbornly stick to preconceived ideas. It is a mistake to close your mind to information that could adjust mistaken views. Barb

This post makes me realize just how badly designed the human visual system is. It's just too complicated and so many parts make it so much more likely that one of them will fail and compromise my vision. The DFSCI/O of the eye alone is immense - and then there's the (according to wikipedia): optic nerve, chiasma, and tract; lateral geniculate body; optic radiation; visual cortex; and visual association cortex all combining to do what Barry's window does with a single pane of glass or BA77's brain dead patient does by turning everything off. steveh

WJM wrote at #13: You ask the question, what would a (fill in the blank) find to be a sound argument against their position? ... What they require to change their mind is beyond the capacity of reason to reach. I have found through long experience that the best way to interact with such people is not to present any arguments, sound or otherwise, but rather to sincerely and tactfully ask probing questions and listen intently and respectfully to the answers. Then change the subject after a while and eventually part ways on friendly terms. You've planted a seed. If the person has any life of the mind that seed will germinate. cantor

Dr F: I hear you. In fact the inherent, irretrievable self-referetnial incoherence (and worse) of materialism has been exposed on record at least since Plato. If true mind in the context0of genuine agency is not, there is nobody there behind the window of the eyes; which holds just as much when the materialist tries to argue for his materialism as on any topic where he tries to dismiss those he opposes. (Cf. my recent discussion here.) Of course, something as starkly self-refuting as Crick in his The Astonishing Hypothesis of 1994:

. . . that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.

. . . is usually disguised under ideas like compatibilism and emergence etc. But, when probed, we soon see games being played, often fast and loose at once games, with the laws of thought and of causality. Then, the projection is made that it is the one correcting who is wrong, and besides look at the serried ranks of august eminences on "our" side. They couldn't be wrong, right. Wrong, that is little more than a naked appeal to authority. And to the enforcement tactics behind it. Emergence is little more than an appeal to magic by poof out of nothing for no reason. Compatibilism tries to straddle freedom and non-freedom and falls between stools. But, when such is politically correct and institutionalised, there is a lot of history that error can be entrenched and that it is dangerous to be right when the establishment is wrong. (E.g. I just now see the EU appeals system just decreed open season on conscientious, Bible-believing Christians in the workplace in not just the UK but the whole EU. All those wonderful sounding provisions on how conscience is a cherished right mean nothing when enough of a radical coalition is pushing and has succeeded in marginalising a scapegoat group. Might and manipulation make 'right' and 'truth.' Just as Plato warned against. ) We are at Fair Havens, AD 59, and the majority have just voted to sail out if they can get a nice wind. Never mind that silly fellow in chains warning that this late in the season that is folly. It is going to take a storm and severe shocks and obvious dangers to wake people up out of such bewitchments. Let's get it straight: we are enconscienced morally governed intelligent creatures living in an ordered worlds that works by intelligible principles. The right will show itself right by conforming to principles of value that are coherent and echo with that candle within. If, we have not snuffed it out. Just to start, if we are acting as though we are some elite who have a right to get our way regardless and to turn others into objects to use to our ends, we are in the wrong. If what we propose to do parasites off that people do not normally or cannot normally live like that, it is wrong. If we are not respecting and treating neighbours as we would be done by, that too is wrong. Similarly, the truth will accurately reflect reality. It will not mislead about reality, and it will not seek to profit from a continued misrepresentation. And more. Understanding reality starts with recognising distinct things: W = { A | NOT-A }, and with realising that if A is, we may properly ask and seek to answer why. Thus leading to possible vs impossible beings, contingent beings and necessary beings. Where also Royce's Error exists is true is seen to be true by all, and is undeniably true to absolute certainty. That is truth exists, knowledge exists and the first key truth is that we are sometimes wrong. I can easily add that just the FSCO/I of this post and the sea of possibilities it comes from, show how agency and design have a very different capacity from blind chance and mechanical necessity. Those who seek to obfuscate such betray their incoherence every time they post a comment to make their talking points, and not by making a farm full of monkeys type at random to produce same. And more. Knock knock, who's there . . . ? KF kairosfocus

Dr. Ford @ #11: As I wrote recently in my blog:

Most people do not come to their beliefs by a deliberate process. They are influenced into believing things by the happenstance of their lives - what part of the world they are born in, who their parents are, the teachers they interact with, what various figures of authority, friendship, love and respect tell them. They are influenced by the course of events in their lives. Mostly, they are guided in their beliefs by emotional attachments and through emotional events, and by the structure of whatever local society exists around them. That's not to say that they adopt the consensus beliefs around them, but rather that those local group structures serve as the grounding for however their particular belief structure assembles as time goes on, pro or con. One might rebel against their local beliefs, but then those local beliefs are still the basis for their rebellion. And, usually, this is not a deliberate process, but rather just a happenstance collection of views that are usually not very well thought out. Which usually ends up with people committed to hypocritical, self-conflicting, unsupportable and/or even disabling views, committed to them on a deep, emotional level where their beliefs become a large part of their sense of self. Challenge their beliefs, and you've attacked them personally.

You ask the question, what would a materialist find to be a sound argument against their position? To be fair, it's not just materialists that hold unsound positions, but it is my opinion that if one can look at what is going on in a single cell, or understand the fine-tuning necessary for the universe, and walk away not believing in the probability of a designer of the universe and life, there is no rational argument capable of changing their mind. What they require to change their mind is beyond the capacity of reason to reach. William J Murray

Barry: Wonderful post, on the most important issue at all. I have always argued that the whole ID theory is based on the issue of consciousness. That's why so called "strong AI theory" (the idea that consciousness arises from the structure of software) is a dogmatic premise of reductionist materialism. In the order, the following false statements are the foundation of reductionist materialist ideology: a) Consciousness arises from the structure of software in matter (in particular, the brain structure). Let's call that "strong ID theory". b) There is no free will (determinism or compatibilism). c) CSI can emerge without the intervention of caonsciousness (neo darwinism). It's all related. The opposite statements, IMO, are true and scientifically sound: a1) Consciousness is an empirical observable, and must be treated as a fact, and thyerefore include as such in any scientific theory of the world. As far as we know, there is no way to explain consciousness in terms of objective events, least of all the software structure of matter. This is a perfectly valid scientific approach. b1) Free will, as far as we can observe, seems to be a distinctive experience in consciousness. We have at present no objective way to prove or deny free will, so it is reasonable to accept it as a strong possibility, based on our cosncious intuitions. c1) There is a lot of empirical evidence that CSI cannot emerge witjout the intervention of a conscious intelligent being. Therefore, any where we observe CSI, the best explanation is the intervention of a conscious intelligent being. On this basis, I will simply answer some of the "questions" in billmaz's post: Suppose I imagine man has created a computer that has, in the future, completely duplicated the exact neuronal interconnections of the brain. People are working on that very issue right now though they are very early in their ability to do so. But you know that at some point that will happen. What will the experience of that computer be? That is very easy: none. The computer will have no conscious experience at all. This brings us to the point of what consciousness is, and that is still an open question. Is it the product of biological “materialistic” functions, or is it something else, like some quantum physicists proclaim: a force outside of time and space? The simple answer is: we don't know what it is, but we know it exists. It is a fact- Moreover, there is no reason to believe that it can be explained in "objective" terms, indeed there are all the reasons to believe the opposite. So, the only scientific attitude towards consciousness is probably to study its properties and laws, and not to explain it away by things that cannot explain it. The fact that you and I have a subjective experience does not, in and of itself, prove that there is an “I” that experiences that, even though we may believe it is. Wrong. "I" is exactly the word we have created to describe a subjective principle that perceives. Therefore, if a subjective experience exists, the I is there. The brain can simply be looking upon itself, believing that “someone else” is looking in. There is no way to actually prove the experience one way or another. Wrong. The brain is simply matter. It cannot "look" at anything, because matter has not conscious experiences. And the subjective experience need not be "proved" in any way. It is a fact, an observable. Facts need not be "proved", indeed they cannot be "proved", only observed. This is a very common categorical error in epistemologic discussions. The point is that your, and my, subjective experience has no necessary true basis in reality. Wrong. Subjective expereinces are certainly part of reality. They exist. We know that a fly or a dog or a turtle has a different experience of reality, depending on their biological abilities, and they each have a different subjective view of our world. And so? The dog's experience is as much a part of reality as mine. gpuccio

This subject goes to the heart of the questions I’ve been puzzling on recently and has resulted in the few comments I’ve made here at UD. It starts with the question, “Why don’t people accept sound arguments?” The answer appears to be that their worldview will not allow it. If that’s the case, how did they accept their worldview in the first place? Was it the result of a better argument or something else? The arguments presented in Barry Arrington’s post and all over this site seem to preclude the possibility that materialists arrived at their position through sound reasoning. Granville Sewell’s point that “some people just like to believe and say counterintuitive things because they think it sets them apart from the average Joe,” might counts as an additional motivation but probably not the primary one. The primary motivation for the materialist worldview appears to be an immeasurably strong desire for there not to be a designer. The reasons for this, as I’ve written on other posts here, is that a designer entails the possibility of being judged. The aversion to being judged is so strong that the materialist’s first principle of reason must be “no designer or any entity who might possibly judge and hold me accountable.” If this is the case then no ID argument, no matter how well founded, will persuade a materialist. So what would persuade a materialist? It would have to start with changing that first assumption. Dr.Ford

billmaz - "Suppose I imagine man has created a computer that has, in the future, completely duplicated the exact neuronal interconnections of the brain. People are working on that very issue right now though they are very early in their ability to do so. But you know that at some point that will happen." This is what I mean. Its hard to argue against people who believe things so self-contradictory, improbable, and contrary to the evidence. I mean its downright idiotic to make the statement "..you know that at some point that will happen." NO. I know for a fact that will not happen. I can list a few easy to understand reasons. 1. We know the brain does not stay in one single wiring state, but has a great amount of "plasticity". So arranging a complex circuit to be exactly wired as some wiring diagram reflecting the current state of the brain, is not the living brain. 2. Even if we could duplicate the wiring diagram of a current state of the brain, the outputs of a complex circuit is not solely due to its wiring diagram. Undoubtedly, any circuit with same complexity as the brain, would be extremely non-linear and would be dependent on a very large set of inputs. We know from the small set of simple non-linear equations that are actually tractable, that the solution to non-linear equations varies greatly not only on the relationships of the variables, but also according to the initial conditions. Even if the wiring diagram exactly duplicated the brains circuitry, there is just no way to figure out all the complex initial conditions. 3. We know that no person can invent a program that disobeys its own programming. It is beyond our abilities. The best we can do is psuedo decision making or pseudo randomness. That is not will. 4. There is absolutely no evidence that consciousness comes about by the chaining together of necessary events and random events. Unfortunately those are the only events available to materialism. Materialists are impossible to argue with because they actually believe that the above argument proposed by billmaz is an argument. What billmaz presented is a non-sensical hope we could do this some day. AND... to top it off with an ironic twist, even if it was possible, and a man CREATED a computer that has "...exact neuronal interconnections..." and figured out how to put in the inputs, you would just end up proving that a fantastic intelligence can construct another intelligence. This is an argument for Intelligent Design, not materialism. It would not prove anything about materialism at all because the behavior of the created brain would still need active control of the inputs. JDH

The question in the title of this post is: “If my eyes are a window, is there anyone looking out?” The materialist must answer this question “no.” That the materialist must give an obviously false answer to this question is a devastating rebuke to materialism.

Barry, I think some people just like to believe and say counterintuitive things because they think it sets them apart from the average Joe. Believing that I am just a machine has got to be the MOST counterintuitive thing I could possibly believe. It's possible that you are just a machine, I can't be sure about that, but I'm sure I'm not and, and as you say, any theory that provides the wrong answer to this question will not get serious consideration from my (average) mind. Granville Sewell

bornagain, I said I agree with the near death experiences. You don't have to convince me of that. All I am saying is save your powder, make the best arguments you can, not ones that can be easily rebutted by materialists. Your intellectual ally. billmaz

I disagree billmaz,,, I find the hemispherectomy testimony to be powerful, and to be very antagonistic towards what would be expected in the atheistic/materialistic worldview, but then again, although I am well aware of the just so stories that atheists are famous for making up, I did not offer the hemispherectomy evidence as a stand alone piece of evidence but offered it in the context of the blind from birth NDE testimony.,,, Moreover, to provide more context, I agree with the way Dr. Lommel has brain/mind interaction pictured,, A Reply to Shermer Medical Evidence for NDEs (Near Death Experiences) – Pim van Lommel Excerpt: So we need a functioning brain to receive our consciousness into our waking consciousness. And as soon as the function of brain has been lost, like in clinical death or in brain death, with iso-electricity on the EEG, memories and consciousness do still exist, but the reception ability is lost. People can experience their consciousness outside their body, with the possibility of perception out and above their body, with identity, and with heightened awareness, attention, well-structured thought processes, memories and emotions. And they also can experience their consciousness in a dimension where past, present and future exist at the same moment, without time and space, http://www.nderf.org/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm bornagain77

I would like to play the Devil’s Advocate for a moment. There is no point in having a blog if everyone agrees. It’s boring. So here goes: My first response is to Barry Arrington: In his thought experiment he says: “Suppose I say “Oh, what a beautiful sunset” at the precise moment the computer is printing out the same statement according to the program. Have the computer and I had the same experience of the sunset? Obviously not. The computer has had no “experience” of the sunset at all. It has no concept of beauty. It cannot experience qualia. It is precisely this subjective experience of the sunset that cannot be accounted for on materialist principles.” Suppose I imagine man has created a computer that has, in the future, completely duplicated the exact neuronal interconnections of the brain. People are working on that very issue right now though they are very early in their ability to do so. But you know that at some point that will happen. What will the experience of that computer be? This brings us to the point of what consciousness is, and that is still an open question. Is it the product of biological “materialistic” functions, or is it something else, like some quantum physicists proclaim: a force outside of time and space? The fact that you and I have a subjective experience does not, in and of itself, prove that there is an “I” that experiences that, even though we may believe it is. The brain can simply be looking upon itself, believing that “someone else” is looking in. There is no way to actually prove the experience one way or another. Humor is another thing. There IS an evolutionary advantage to having humor. You can imagine that an individual, or a species, that has humor, and is thus able to take all the vicissitudes of life in stride, will be able to survive better than those that take everything to heart. There is also a possible materialistic explanation of the experience of God. If you remember, there was such a thing as the “God gene” that was supposedly discovered discovered in 2004 by the geneticist Dean Hammer from the National Cancer Institute. He described a gene named VMAT2 involved in regulating levels of brain serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. People with this gene were found to be inherently more spiritual, to have feelings of transcendence and oneness with the world, and to believe in the existence of God. Now, I know that his findings were never vetted in a peer-reviewed journal, but nevertheless, what if that were found to be true? A species that has acquired the ability to know of its own mortality will necessarily be anxious about it. If it develops a way of explaining to itself that God exists and that there is an afterlife, it will be able to survive and procreate better that one that sees only doom and destruction. The point is that your, and my, subjective experience has no necessary true basis in reality. We know that a fly or a dog or a turtle has a different experience of reality, depending on their biological abilities, and they each have a different subjective view of our world. Now, with regard to bornagain’s argument that if a part of the brain is destroyed the whole person remains intact, that is also a false argument. We know that memory, and “personality” if one can actually define what that means, is spread out throughout the brain. It is not isolated in one segment of the brain. The brain is an interactive mesh of neuronal impulses that spread the “data” throughout the many segment of the brain. We also know that if large segments of the brain are destroyed a person loses all knowledge of oneself or of reality. We have a whole encyclopedia of neuronal dysfunctions of people losing one ability or another, even the ability to form new memories, or the ability to recognize faces or a whole myriad of other dysfunctions. That is a fact. Let me make myself clear, however. I have read a lot of the literature of near death experiences and have actually had patients who have told me about them. I believe them. There have been actually millions of people who have had these experiences, including people who have been able to describe what was going on in other parts of the hospital while they were “dead” and including a relative of mine who does, on occasion, without her control, fly above her body and can actually describe what is going on miles and even thousands of miles away (while visiting her husband in Europe). The point I am making is that one has to be very careful in the arguments one makes. The stuff you are describing is easily explained by materialists (of which I am not one) and thus weakens the argument. billmaz

We are souls looking out. We are not a machine understanding merely whats been seen. I suspect/speculate that we really are souls and read our memories or rather sight goes straight into our memory and so we read it. We watch a memory of what our mechanical eye recorded however quick. Just thinking. I think laughter is just a part of the spectrum of sounds we make to express our thoughts. laughter or screaming just show our thoughts are so stimulated in a instant that we can't segregate the sounds into words. A full heart expressing itself like a crying baby. Laughter just shows the truth that sounds we make Just express thoughts. Laughter repeats itself because the thought was so funny and enduring. We are souls and the brain is just a middleman and things like laughter hint at this. Robert Byers

"If My Eyes Are a Window, Is There Anyone Looking Out?" One of the more fascinating branches of Near Death Studies have been the studies of people who were born blind who have had NDE’s, who could see for the first time in their life during their NDE. This simply has no explanation within the materialistic framework, whereas, in the theistic framework, this is expected: Blind Woman Can See During Near Death Experience (NDE) - Pim von Lommel - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994599/ Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper (1997) conducted a study of 31 blind people, many of who reported vision during their Near Death Experiences (NDEs). 21 of these people had had an NDE while the remaining 10 had had an out-of-body experience (OBE), but no NDE. It was found that in the NDE sample, about half had been blind from birth. (of note: This 'anomaly' is also found for deaf people who can hear sound during their Near Death Experiences(NDEs).) http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Ring/Ring-Journal%20of%20Near-Death%20Studies_1997-16-101-147-1.p also of note: If the mind of a person were merely the brain, as materialists hold, then if half of a brain were removed a 'person' should only be ‘half the person’, or at least somewhat less of a 'person', as they were before, but that is not the case. The ‘whole person’ stays intact even though the brain suffers severe impairment: Miracle Of Mind-Brain Recovery Following Hemispherectomies - Dr. Ben Carson - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994585/ Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics' Lives: Excerpt: "We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child's personality and sense of humor,'' Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining; In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study: "Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications." http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One - May 2007 Excerpt: Most Hopkins hemispherectomy patients are five to 10 years old. Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and personality develop normally. ,,, Another study found that children that underwent hemispherectomies often improved academically once their seizures stopped. "One was champion bowler of her class, one was chess champion of his state, and others are in college doing very nicely," Freeman says. Of course, the operation has its downside: "You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost," Freeman says. Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. ,,, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole The preceding is confirmation of what is known as the 'argument from divisibility: Case for the Existence of the Soul - (Argument from Divisibility) - JP Moreland PhD - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SJ4_ZC0xpM&feature=player_detailpage#t=2304s I ran across this following 'spooky' article the other day, and it certainly is inexplicable to the materialistic/atheistic framework: Memory transference in organ transplant recipients - 2011 Excerpt: Case 3: murder mystery involving donor is solved by an organ recipient An eight year-old girl, who received the heart of a murdered ten year-old girl, began having recurring vivid nightmares about the murder. Her mother arranged a consultation with a psychiatrist who after several sessions concluded that she was witnessing actual physical incidents. They decided to call the police who used the detailed descriptions of the murder (the time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what the little girl he killed had said to him) given by the little girl to find and convict the man in question (2). http://www.namahjournal.com/doc/Actual/Memory-transference-in-organ-transplant-recipients-vol-19-iss-1.html bornagain77

Barry - Your genes made you write that! DonaldM

Big shaggies! I love the reference to True Grit, one of the greatest tales of our Old West. Great commentary, by the way. This is one of many sharp swords of logic that pops the materialist bag of wind. OldArmy94

I really seriously do not understand how anyone can believe materialism. This makes it awfully difficult to argue with materialists. How do you argue against someone who does not see the obvious self-contradiction in the statements - "I choose to believe in materialism". "I choose not to believe in free will." To believe these statements takes denial of basic logic. Theists believe some things which are difficult to believe. Materialists believe things which can not possibly be true. JDH