Bill is a mad scientist who has invented a remote control device that allows him to take complete control of another person's body. All he has to do is point it at someone, and instantly he can control them with his mind. You are a philosophy student. One day, you are in class about to take a test. It is a logic test - you know, the kind with questions of the following sort:

If all wuzzles are buzzles, and some fuzzles are wuzzles, which of the following must be true?

A) All buzzles are fuzzles
B) Some fuzzles are buzzles
C) All fuzzles are buzzles
D) A and B above
E) None of the above

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I am reading the latest attack on intelligent design, written by the world's leading scientists and thinkers, and it's chock-full of hillarious quotes. Apparently, the world's leading scientists and thinkers seem to have bought into a lot of sloppy reasoning. Like in this quote, from Nicholas Humphrey, "School Professor at the London School of Economics", on why consciousness must be an illusion:

"Our starting assumption as scientists ought to be that on some level consciousness has to be an illusion. The reason is obvious: If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world. So while we should concede that as conscious subjects we do have a valid experience of there being something in our minds that the rules of the physical universe doesn't apply to, this has to be all it is - the experience of something in our minds."
Nicholas Humphrey, "Consciousness: The Achilles Heel of Darwinism? Thank God, Not Quite", in John Brockman (ed.), Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement (Vintage, 2006), pp. 58-9. Original emphasis.

I don't think professor Humphrey does much work around the house. Hitting your own finger with a hammer is enough to convince most people that although pain is only an "experience of something in our minds", it is not an illusion.

Richard Dawkins wasn't the only one to tell Edge about his "dangerous idea". Here's cognitive scientist, Donald Hoffman, on why a spoon is like a headache:

Suppose I have a headache, and I tell you about it. It is, say, a pounding headache that started at the back of the neck and migrated to encompass my forehead and eyes. … Of course no one but me can experience my headaches, and no one but you can experience yours. But this posed no obstacle to our meaningful conversation. … Suppose I hand you a spoon. It is common to assume that the spoon I experience during this transfer is numerically identical to the spoon you experience. But this assumption is false. No one but me can experience my spoon, and no one but you can experience your spoon. … Is there a "real spoon," a mind-independent physical object that causes our spoon experiences and resembles our spoon experiences? This is not only unnecessary but unlikely. It is unlikely that the visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped to permit survival in a particular range of niches, should miraculously also happen to resemble the true nature of a mind-independent realm. Selective pressures for survival do not, except by accident, lead to truth. … There are no public brains, only my brain experiences and your brain experiences. These brain experiences are just the simplified visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped for survival in certain niches.

I only have one question: Are the images of brain scans that Hoffman and other cognitive scientists talk with each other about "mind-independent physical objects" Or are they also just "simplified visual experiences of homo sapiens" [sic]?

I have previously blogged about developments in the philosophy of science, per Nancy Cartwright's equation of "Laws of Nature" with "Laws of God." I have also blogged about the science of mind and Causal Consciousness - the current multidisciplinary quest to quantify the nature of consciousness.

Here I would like to introduce mathematical physicist Paola Zizzi's "Big Wow" theory, accessible from LANL's mirrors under General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology as Emergent Consciousness: From the Early Universe to Our Mind [pdf]. This paper, published in the journal NeuroQuantology in 2003, supports the Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR model of consciousness.

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Much is being made of the Intelligent Design "revolt" against a scientific materialist worldview. With the Dover trial, articles and op-ed pieces in the press, and even the US President coming out for discussion in schools, public awareness of this worldview "battle" has been heightened.

Apparently, however, there is another quiet "revolution" going on along the same lines that most people may not be aware of. It is happening in philosophy, the philosophy of mind. Unlike the frenzied mess of emotion, spin, and often questionable tactics within the ID debate, this debate has all the earmarks of an open, rigorous but civil discourse. It has this despite the presence of strong challenges to a strict materialist metaphysics.

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One of my particular interests of late has been the scientific study of consciousness. Consciousness studies have in the past decade and a half moved well beyond the reductionist ranks of cog-sci and neuroscience, thanks to a large influx of dedicated funding and the participation of some leading lights in a number of pertinent fields. Quantum physics plays a large role in the developing theoretical framework, participating along with optical physics, molecular and cellular biology, biophysics, medicine, field dynamics, nanotechnology, information theory (and subs, including cryptography), nonlinear sciences, and even computer science - in the role of quantum computational theory and engineering.

There are some very interesting developing theories out there, providing reason to think we just might have a workable understanding at some point [optical physicist Stan Klein predicts 200 years for a clear consensus definition]. I'd hope for sooner, but it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that the quest is engaged. It'll proceed in fits and starts, as all of science does.
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Michael Ruse in a recent interview with the Boston Globe said:

"While scientists and creationists often square off over the scientific evidence for evolution, the source of the ongoing dispute is deeper. This is not just a fight about dinosaurs or gaps in the fossil record, is a fight about different worldviews."

If this is true, and I think it is, there is a lot more going on and at stake than the peripheral issues would suggest.

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