Many years ago I had the pleasure of attending a public lecture on cosmology by Martin Rees, one of the leading theoretical astrophysicists of our time and a wonderful speaker. For the most part his choice of material was unimpeachably conventional, but somewhere in the middle of explaining the evolution of the universe he suddenly started talking about the possibility of life on other planets. You could sense the few scientists in the room squirming uncomfortably — this wasn’t cosmology at all! But the actual public, to whom the talk was addressed, loved it. They didn’t care about fussy academic boundary enforcement; they thought these questions were interesting, and were curious about how it all fit together.
Since then, following Martin’s example, I have occasionally slipped into my own talks some discussion of how the particular bit of science I was discussing fit into a larger context. What are the implications of quantum mechanics for free will, or entropy for aging and death, or the multiverse for morality? To (what should be) nobody’s surprise, those are often what people want to follow up on in questions after the talk. Professional scientists will feel an urge to correct them, arguing that those aren’t the questions they should be asking about. But I think it’s okay. Science isn’t just about solving this or that puzzle; it’s about understanding how the world works. The whole world, from the vastness of the cosmos to the particularity of an individual human life. It’s worth thinking about how all the different ways we have to talk about the world manage to fit together.
That idea is one of the motivating considerations behind my new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, which is being released next week (Tuesday May 10 — I may be visiting your area). It’s a big book, covering a lot of things, so over the next few days I’m going to put up some posts containing small excerpts that give a flavor what what’s inside. You can get a general feeling from glancing at the table of contents. I also can’t resist pointing you to check out the amazing blurbs that so many generous people were thoughtful enough to contribute — Elizabeth Kolbert, Neil Shubin, Deborah Blum, Alan Lightman, Sabine Hossenfelder, Michael Gazzaniga, Carlo Rovelli, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
This book is a culmination of things I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I’ve loved physics from a young age, but I’ve also been interested in all sorts of “big” questions, from philosophy to evolution and neuroscience. And what these separate fields have in common is that they all aim to capture certain aspects of the same underlying universe. Therefore, while they are indisputably separate fields of endeavor — you don’t need to understand particle physics to be a world-class biologist — they must nevertheless be compatible with each other — if your theory of biology relies on forces that are not part of the Standard Model, it’s probably a non-starter. That’s more of a constraint than you might imagine. For example, it implies that there is no such thing as life after death. Your memories and other pieces of mental information are encoded in the arrangement of atoms in your brain, and there’s no way for that information to escape your body when you die.
More generally, ontology matters. What we believe about the fundamental nature of reality affects how we look at the world and how we choose to live our lives. We should work to get it right.
The viewpoint I advocate in TBP is poetic naturalism. “Naturalism” being the idea that there is only one world, the natural world, that follows the laws of nature and can be investigated using the methods of science. “Poetic” emphasizes the fact that there are many ways of talking about that world, and that different stories we tell can be simultaneously valid in their own domains of applicability. It is therefore distinguished from a hardcore, eliminativist naturalism that says the only things that really exist are the fundamental particles and forces, and also from various varieties of augmented naturalism that, unsatisfied with the physical world by itself, add extra categories such as mental properties or objective moral values into the mix.
Along the way, we meet a lot of fun ideas — conservation of momentum and information, emergent purpose and causality, Bayesian inference, skepticism, planets of belief, effective field theory, the Core Theory, the origin of the universe, the relationship between entropy and complexity, free energy and the purpose of life, metabolism-first and replication-first theories of abiogenesis, the fine-tuning argument, consciousness and philosophical zombies, panpsychism, Humean constructivism, and the basic finitude of our lives.
Not everyone agrees with my point of view on these matters, of course. (It’s possible that literally nobody agrees with me about every single stance I take.) That’s good! Bring it on, I say. Maybe I will learn something and change my mind. There are plenty of things I talk about in the book on which respectable good-faith disagreement is quite possible — finer points of epistemology and metaphysics, the connections between different manifestations of the arrow of time, how to confront radically skeptical scenarios, the robustness of the Core Theory, approaches to the mind-body problem, interpretations of quantum mechanics, the best way to think about complexity and evolution, the role of purposes and causes in our ontology, free will, moral realism vs, anti-realism, and so on.
The point of the book is not to stride confidently into multiple ongoing debates and proclaim that I have it All Figured Out. Quite the opposite: while the subtitle correctly implies that I talk about the origins of life, meaning, and the universe itself, the truth is that I don’t know how life began, what the meaning of it all is, or why the universe exists. What I try to advocate is a particular framework in which these kinds of questions can be addressed. Not everyone will agree even with that framework, but it is very explicitly just a starting point for thinking about some of these grand issues, not the final answers to them.
There will inevitably be complaints that I’m writing about things — biology, neuroscience, philosophy — on which I am not an academic expert. Very true! I’m pretty sure nobody in the world is an expert on absolutely everything I talk about here. But I’m just as sure that different kinds of experts need to occasionally wander outside of their intellectual comfort zones to discuss how all of these pieces fit together. My primary hope in TBP is not to put forward some dramatically original view of the universe, but to work toward a synthesis of a wide variety of ideas that have been developed by smart people of the course of centuries. It is at best a small step, but if it helps spark ongoing conversation, I’ll consider the book a great success.
So from people who don’t read the book very carefully, I’ll no doubt get it from both sides: “Knowing physics doesn’t make you an expert on the meaning of life, how dare he presume?” and “I read the whole book and he didn’t tell me what the meaning of life is, what a cheat!” So be it.
One thing that I meant to include in the Acknowledgements section of the book, but unfortunately it slipped my mind at the last minute: I should have mentioned how much my ideas about many of these topics have been shaped and sharpened by interacting with commenters on this very blog. Longtime readers will recognize many of the themes, even if the book presents them in a different way. I’ve definitely learned a lot from questions and arguments in the comment sections here (even if I’m usually too busy to participate very much myself). So — thank you, and I hope you enjoy the book!
Regarding the discussion on life after death: while I agree with you and many other commenters in that I don’t find life after death very plausible in the usual sense, there are some implications that modern physics has on this theme that I hope you, Prof. Carroll, would touch on at some point.
Take a kind of “Boltzmann brain immortality”: if memories and the mind are purely something that is encoded in the matter of the brain, then in an infinite universe (supposing that Boltzmann brains are actually a thing, which I think you’re somewhat sceptical about), some time) after a person has died (a long time), a Boltzmann brain similar to their brain will spontaneously appear, with memories that are a continuation of their memories. Because the content of those memories is random, in some cases those BBs will even perceive themselves as being in an environment that closely resembles religious conceptions of heaven or hell.
Since I believe that the mind is essentially an algorithm, the same applies to afterlife simulations, as well: in an infinite universe, it seems guaranteed that someone will eventually decide to run an afterlife simulation of your mind (maybe they find your mind in the first place by running a huge number of ancestor simulations).
Whether you consider these an actual form of “afterlife” depends on your philosophical stance towards the concept of identity, but I would like to point out that to the Boltzmann brain that’s kind of irrelevant: they will, nevertheless, feel like a continuation of an old consciousness (and the old consciousness should perhaps expect to experience a continuation in a variety of Boltzmann brains or simulations, because they can never experience non-experience).
Then there is quantum immortality, where death from a first-person point of view seems like an impossibility to begin with (again, whether this is actually a form of immortality is subject to interpretation, since most copies spread throughout many-worlds will perish, but it does seem to suggest that subjectively you should expext to live forever), discussed by Max Tegmark in Our Mathematical Universe, for example.
Overall, the subject of life, death and life after death seems to me to be a lot more complicated in the light of our current understanding of physics. What do you think of this, Professor Carroll?
Your teaching company courses lecture on dark matter dark energy the dark side of the universe was my first introduction to physics and to what I consider the best professor I have ever listened to.
Since then I purchased 15 courses including your latest
on the Higgs. I love science and I love learning .
Looking forward to your book.
Loved you’re debate with William Lane Craig.
Will you be doing more debates to promote your book?
Thanks! No debates scheduled, but I am giving some talks.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/news/
Found your site, S.C., on a search related to energy densities, and specifically vacuum energy density. I think your remark is wise: “In a universe where 96% of the energy density is in a dark sector (dark matter and dark energy), it’s worth keeping an open mind about what kinds of physics may be lurking therein.” I wonder then why you’d write: “the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die” a comment which evidently was written in 2011, before even the Higgs Field/boson were verified. There could be quite a lot “lurking” in all the fields of the universe, perhaps far, far beyond the threshold of any scientific discovery endeavor. Is there going to be a triple-sized LHC in the near future? Doubtful. I grew up a naturalist but in the ’70’s I abandoned that worldview for theism. If there is no ultimate restitution for human injustice, then we do not live in a “preposterous” universe, but in a cruel, capricious universe. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-childbride-idUSBRE98910N20130910
First impression on a naive observer is that “Big [Picture]” title and chosen framing seems to have the Templeton Foundation imprint all over it.
Second impression is that I find it impossible to analyse a practical subject in a philosophic framework. What is called “poetic naturalism” is what I would call “practical experimenting” or “science”. Having different overlapping theories (process descriptions) means having different analyses. (But not “ways of talking” as long as science is coherent, and it has an unfortunate resonance with creationist erroneous blurb “ways of knowing”.)
It is impossible to capture astrobiology – as practical experimenting – in a single analysis framework. Those descriptions – more like untestable hypotheses – are dated, I think to the late 90’s/early 00’s.
The newest development here is – in my interested laypeople impression – that there has crystallized two main competing and testable theories. I would tentatively call them “soup” vs “vent” theory, but others would have other names. The consensus “soup” theory would mostly but not exclusively map to a “replication-first” hypothesis, the much more testable “vent” theory would mostly but not exclusively map to “metabolism-first”hypothesis.
I think the LHC sufficient completion of Core Theory makes such violations impossible.
We can be conservative and believe that a signal can be picked up from equal power noise, and that each synapse is previously mapped so an observer only needs to know if a synapse is activated, a 1 bit yes/no question. This is the case since there is no coding and timing enabling signal retrieval out of overpowering noise, due to evolution contingent nature. Even so the number of synapses in the human brain forces an interaction that would show up in the observed CT quantum vacuum interaction strengths, which by its properties _record all interactions with CT particles_, with a factor 3 orders of magnitude.
New results likely adds another oom, since it seems synapse size constrains nerve interactions, and the sizes involved falls roughly into ~ 10 categories.
But 3 or 4 oom deficit, nothing outside CT interacts with the living human brain,
The ad hoc claim of “no [testable] demonstration” seems to be rejected by LHC observations, see above.
And it would be very odd if a simple question can’t be tested. Besides continuity, such extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, but there is no evidence supporting it at all.
Further, who says the question of ” a supernatural-world” is open? Thermodynamics, which was the first to observe whole closed systems, suffice as a no-go test since 2 centuries. Not only would the 1st law et cetera seen to be impossible 2 centuries ago if there were a sector of nature not observed, there is now sufficient examples of entirely “one sector” systems observed that a binomial test rejects it. (If memory serves we need ~ 4 000 such examples for a minimal test at 3 sigma. My guess is that chemistry alone would put those up.)
@khazz:
I am not Sean, but in my laypeople opinion as soon as you invoke a universe infinite in space and/or time, the possibility to do physics – likelihoods – goes out the window. You can imagine anything. But what would be the testable facts?
If you instead look at testable local systems, it is eternal states such as eternal life that becomes impossible. [See my previous comments why I think that is.]
@William: There is no mystery, no inconsistency, here. Sean very carefully worded it “everyday life”.
Say, if DM are WIMPS, we would be heated by a collision with an atom in our body about once per year. But the temperature spike would be virtually unobservable, and of no practical consequence.
DE does not affect objects in local space at all.
“If there is no ultimate restitution for human injustice,” nothing extraordinary would happen, You are born, you live, you die, as every other organism, as ordained by nature. Enjoy life while you can.
What of it? Besides having no evidence where extraordinary evidence would be needed, personal phobias for death or the seeming injustice in an impartial universe where life is driven by the mechanism of ‘selfish’ genes to be “red in tooth and claw” is not a basis for a sound analysis.
I was happily reading the so much entertaining and enlightening above page from Sean when I hit the dreadful downer that I reproduce below:
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“That’s more of a constraint than you might imagine. For example, it implies that there is no such thing as life after death. Your memories and other pieces of mental information are encoded in the arrangement of atoms in your brain, and there’s no way for that information to escape your body when you die.”
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I couldn’t help halting at once. And then, those dreadful words that have long haunted me throughout my internet career of trying to deal with “non believers” (non believers in the afterlife or such; since year 2002) came back to my mind as a hurtful splinter: “ignorance of the subject matter”; “lack of intellectual honesty”; “nonempathic disregard for other people’s beliefs, needs, feelings, and worldviews”; and then I just cannot help, too, addressing Sean a very personal question now:
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Sean, even though I know you will not answer me (although I do not really know why you will act so), I must ask you WHY YOU DECIDE TO SPOIL SUCH GOOD WORK ( ACTUALLY: IMMENSELY PRECIOUS WORK ) WITH UTTERLY IRRELEVAND AND UNWARRANTED “INFORMATION”? (or should we more properly call it: ideological agenda?).
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I will put my usual humbleness aside and go direct to the point here. I myself am, still, a “believer in the afterlife.” I am ASTRONOMICALLY more qualified than YOU to talk about these matters. Yet, I just cannot, due to strict intellectual honesty and to deep empathy towards my fellow humans, say either that THERE IS an afterlife or that THERE ISN’T an afterlife.
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I will try to continue reading this page of yours after I recover from this shock. There is a good possibility (probability) that I will by this book of yours. I must say that I dread to think that the rather long and sad history that I had with late physicist Victor Stenger will get repeated. The fact that I have to give, again and again, very low rating reviews to works that are filled with marvels but that, sadly, fail miserably in crucial aspects, is something that has always made me sick. You could at least have spared me this, after these so many years of suffering.
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Anyway, I hope some good will come out of it. I really feel you are a good guy, just like I felt regarding late Victor Stenger. If I, either directly or indirectly, can help make any flaw in your works less troublesome, then it will be one tiny bit of brightness to join in this precious fugue.
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Yours Sincerely,
Julio Siqueira
juliocbsiqueira2012@gmail.com
http://www.criticandokardec.com.br/criticizingskepticism.htm
Ok. Managed to get over my state of shock. Will order the book, read, review and rate it. Let’s see where it leads. Seems to be very good stuff.
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Best Regards,
Julio Siqueira
Came across this further comment from Sean:
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“The point is not ‘physics shows that life after death is impossible’; it’s to highlight how much of a dramatic and unsupported alteration of known physics is required to make such a thing work.”
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This above sounds like a refreshing sober note for my heart and mind (the splinter, for now at least, is relieved and removed. 🙂 ).
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Further down, I read from Maurice:
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“Also your claim (fond hope?) that consciousness can be explained on the basis of the known laws of physics is doubted with (for me) comprehensible reasons by eminent experts”
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I guess Sean will be slipping miserably in this area too, *consciousness*. The possibility of an afterlife and the issue of consciousness are two points where I expect rather big blunders from this work. Hope I’m wrong…
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Best Wishes,
Julio Siqueira
This seems to be the most misunderstood part of Dr. Carroll’s thesis. He’s not saying that it’s impossible for a supernatural world to exist. He’s saying that there’s no evidence for it. There’s nothing that needs to be explained by it. Naturalism is the conclusion of hundreds of years of science looking for answers and discovering that supernaturalism isn’t needed to provide any. If there is life after death then science is wrong or at the very least incomplete. And there’s no evidence to support either of those claims. At least that’s what I have gathered from his writings. Apologies if I misunderstood.
@Torbjörn Larsson:
“I am not Sean, but in my laypeople opinion as soon as you invoke a universe infinite in space and/or time, the possibility to do physics – likelihoods – goes out the window. You can imagine anything. But what would be the testable facts?”
You can indeed imagine pretty much anything, but I do believe some physicists think that is a conclusion we have to accept; Max Tegmark, I think, is one of them (although he has expressed doubts about the infinite part, he essentially believes that all mathematical structures exist in reality), and maybe our host here would agree. The universe being infinite in possibly both space and time is quite a reasonable idea, and many would claim that an infinite multiverse is a straightforward prediction of inflation (a well-accepted theory), string theory (not much direct evidence for it, but many would say that it still has a good chance of being correct) and many-worlds (quite possibly the most sensible interpretation of quantum mechanics that we have).
Hi Rich Baker,
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You say:
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“This seems to be the most misunderstood part of Dr. Carroll’s thesis. He’s not saying that it’s impossible for a supernatural world to exist. He’s saying that there’s no evidence for it. ”
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Good. And I believe the Easter Bunny. But the important thing is not what I believe (e-bunny) or what Sean believes (no afterlife/ghosts, etc). The important thing is WHY we believe that. YOU are saying that Sean says there is NO evidence for a supernatural world. This is what YOU say. But what does HE say? I do not know. If he says the same as you, then we are in deep problem, because of two main reasons: first, the very idea of supernatural is a self contradictory notion, just as impossible as a four-sided triangle. Anything, truly anything, that exists is NATURAL. God, ghosts, the boogie man, the Easter Bunny, or honest Richard Nixon (or honest Brazilian ex-president Lula, to get down to my own backyard). Second: as to there being or not evidence for these things (I will limit the issue here to the afterlife), Sean must understand that he knows almost nothing at all about it. Why misinform his readers? Why not get informed first, and then debate brilliantly afterwards. A very splendid case can indeed be made AGAINST the possibility of an afterlife and AGAINST the existence of true evidence supporting it. But it can only be made by INFORMED debaters. Not by people that (often even honestly but carelessly) think they know what they actually know not.
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I suggest you (Rich) take a careful look at my site, just for a starter.
http://www.criticandokardec.com.br/criticizingskepticism.htm
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Best Wishes
Julio Siqueira
juliocbsiqueira2012@gmail.com
I will only make new comments after I read The Big Picture. I am trying to download it now from amazon dot com.
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See you all soon.
Julio
When a scientist fixes his framework that only matter/ energy is real in space and consciousness is non existant or fake, then nothing can make him realize that universe is guided by the act of consciousness.He always looks at the universe in form of quantum probabilities but can not explain why only one outcome. He proudly talks about laws of physics i.e. matter/energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. But he doesn’t try to understand the philosophy of universe that consciousness, a dynamic reality ever existing in all space, can neither be created nor be destroyed. That’s why he can not explain purpose of universe, meaning of life, free will & behavioural trait of humans & other species.
Hi Julio,
I have never met Sean Carroll. I’m a big fan, but don’t feel comfortable speaking for him or extrapolating. So, I’ll just tell you what I understand. If there is a supernatural realm that in anyway has an effect on the natural world then we should be able to measure it. If consciousness for example was partly goverened by the supernatural then when we examine consciousness we should find that the natural world isn’t enough to account for it. There must be a missing piece of the puzzle. If we saw there was a puzzle piece missing then there might be a way for the supernatural to affect it. And currently, one could make the argument that since we don’t perfectly understand consciousness in natural terms that there may be a supernatural element to it. However, I don’t see any reason to jump to that conclusion until we’ve studied consciousness further. In history many times we thought something natural was affect by the supernatural and then discovered a natural process was affecting it instead. Anything from the motion of the planets to evolution.
I may be misunderstanding you, so please forgive me if I am, but if you’re saying that there’s absolutely no way for us to know anything about a supernatural world then what I would say is that there is also no way for that supernatural world to affect us. I can’t see how something could have any real affect without at least some hint of measurability.
To be fair, I’m not sure if I’m actually responding to your comment or not, because after reading it a number of times I don’t understand what you’re saying.
For example, when you say, ‘first, the very idea of supernatural is a self contradictory notion’ are you agreeing there’s no such thing as the supernatural?
And I don’t see the reasons to back up the statement, ‘Second: as to there being or not evidence for these things (I will limit the issue here to the afterlife), Sean must understand that he knows almost nothing at all about it. ‘
How can you say that he or anyone ‘knows almost nothing about [life after death]?’ That seems like an accusation with no foundation. Am I missing something? The only argument that I can see is if you were to say, ‘you can’t know about life after death because you haven’t died.’ If that’s your argument, all I can say is that I know a lot about activities I’ve never done and places I’ve never been. So, my guess is that you mean something different.
Hi Rich,
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I will comment on some of your points above in a while. Right now I just want to make a brief comment, since I took a deep breath and finally read Sean’s blog page “Physics and the Immortality of the Soul” (May 23, 2011. Sean put a link to this blog page in this new page we are discussing now, “The Big Picture: What it’s All About” – May 6, 2016).
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Trying to be brief but precise: the physics in that article is not completely misguided (though mostly so…). The rest is below any reasonable rating scale… I may, in some days or weeks, make a deeper analysis of it in my site.
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Best Wishes (to all, and to Sean too),
Julio
juliocbsiqueira2012@gmail.com
Hi again, Rich,
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I will comment on your post. I will be putting words in capital letters, but please don’t take this as if I am shouting. I never use capital letters on the internet to mean shouting; I only use them to mean stressing instead.
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I can’t say that I am a big fan of Sean’s. But I do have the highest regards for probably the vast majority of his views.
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I’d say that if there is a “supernatural realm” that in anyway has an effect on the natural world, then it should never be called or considered *supernatural*. The very use of this term reflects an agenda and a prejudice (as a matter of fact both from disbelievers and believers alike…). Why use this term SUPERnatural. Isn’t the natural that we do know already SUPER enough? Take for instance the Superman. Is he stronger (more Super) than the Strong Nuclear force? Definitely not. Even God, if he exists, may not be stronger than the Strong Force. So what is the point in all this talk of super this super that? Well, the point is not scientific discourse. The point is not sound philosophical reasoning. The point is either halleluiah talk from the part of the believers who use it, or derogatory talk from the part of the disbelievers. Both ways what we have is a misnomer that misleads our sober and sound thinking about this matter.
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The issue of consciousness (subjective experience) is actually one that is very seldom understood by people who try to deal with it. Consciousness IS the pin in the butt of Science (and, as a matter of fact, of most religions too). It is not that we don’t perfectly understand it in “natural” terms (by the way, why people keep unwarrantedly hijacking the word “natural” I do not know…). We do not have absolutely ANY understanding of it whatsoever (i.e. we cannot fit it into our knowledge of physics, biology, or any other area of objective knowledge). People (scholars in the relevant fields) are beginning to come to this view more and more over the last decades. But it must be stressed that this fact does not lend ANY help to the belief in the afterlife ( 🙁 ). These two (consciousness and the afterlife) are completely separate issues; and establishing one (or improving our understanding in regards to one) will not help establish the other. Few people realize it (Sean included…).
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I don’t say that “there’s absolutely no way for us to know anything about a supernatural world.” What I do say is that “supernatural” is a misnomer. Further, I think that all that can really matter to us are things that either: 1- CAN be detected or, 2- CANNOT be detected but are part of immensely robust theories (physical theories, like Quantum Mechanics; what I mean is this: imagine if, say, quantum theory predicts that some particle does exist but cannot be detected and will never be detected). I do not know any example of 2. There may be. Anyway, the afterlife must conform both to detectability and theorizing. And, granted, we believers in the afterlife are zillions of light years away from meeting these demands.
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I did not mean to say that Sean knows nothing about the afterlife, that is: I don’t criticize him for knowing nothing about the afterlife. Thanks goodness he knows nothing about it, and I hope it remains so for many decades! 🙂. I, too, know nothing about it. That was not the issue. What I was saying (as you correctly quoted me) was that: regarding *there being or not evidence for it*, Sean seems to know too little about it. Sean seems to believe that the evidence for the afterlife comes from silly, sloppy sources only. This is very wrong. Until he understands this, and until he starts correcting this, his work will suffer terribly from this lack of proper information. I must say that I do not see in him an inkling of good will to meet these demands. Bad for him. Bad for us…
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Very best wishes,
Julio Siqueira
juliocbsiqueira2012@gmail.com
http://www.criticandokardec.com.br/criticizingskepticism.htm
P.S. I think I will now really only post messages AFTER reading Sean’s new marble.
A long time follower of your blog and your work.
I appreciate that you are taking time to sum up all that you have learned over the years and I am glad you take the time to do this grounding. I have seen many of your colleagues take this stance to sort of get to where they are coming from, and share possible point of views with which to think about things.
The Big picture,( interesting metaphor in following video) speaks too, as you relate it. I hope that maybe one day, the views may change about life after death, but until then, thanks for all your sharing over the years.
https://youtu.be/rhcJNJbRJ6U
Best,
Of course, one can agree that the universe is entirely ‘natural’, without believing that it’s ultimate nature is physical 😉
I note that there’s really 3 quite different ways of looking at the world, and it’s striking just how different the language and concepts used are for each of the 3 viewpoints:
Mental, Physical and Mathematical.
Which of the above 3 properties should we take to be the fundamental (base) building blocks of reality?
Option 1: Mental (consciousness is reality). It seems to me that this is basically equivalent to the supernatural view. It’s basically the postulate of most religions and idealist philosophies ; the belief that mental properties can somehow float free independently of physics and mathematics, and has power over them.
Option 2: Physical (physics is reality). This seems to be the view that Sean holds. Basically materialism, that physical properties form the foundation of reality (particles, forces and fields).
Option 3: Mathematical (mathematics is reality). This is my favoured view, and in my option , it’s a perfectly viable naturalist alternative to (2). It’s actually an ancient idea dating back to Pythagoras, the idea that ‘all is number’ was most coherently argued by Plato, who postulated a ‘Platonic realm’ beyond space and time where abstract entities reside, hence the view is known as ‘Platonism’).
Platonism is strongly argued for by Max Tegmark in his book ‘The Mathematical universe’ and is understandably popular with many mathematicians.
Option 3 implies some interesting things. According to Sean, mental properties are just a ‘higher level’ language that we use to describe certain complex arrangements of matter. But if Platonism is correct, then the physical world itself suffers the same demotion as mental properties! Materialism itself would just be a ‘useful language’ we use to describe certain emergent mathematical properties, which would be the true reality.
Certainly, the exact nature of the relationship between mental, physical and mathematical properties remains highly perplexing, and clarifying this relationship is likely to be the key to understanding the big picture!
Mr. Carroll, I have read through Chapter 39 of your book. It has been a challenge because of your tendency to “bait and switch” in your arguments. You continuously say that science can prove nothing and then try to use science to prove that God does not exist and neither does anything that is not material. By definition, science is concerned only with what it can observe and measure. Your book is not science; it is metaphysics and philosophy. In many of your arguments, you claim to know the mind of a God in whom you do not believe.
You say we should give less credence to the existence of God because there is evil in the world and because of inconsistencies in how various religions conceive of God. I would counter that if God did not exist we would not view anything as evil, only as less useful, giving more credence to His existence. I would also argue that the fact that so any human cultures have some concept of a creator lends more credence to that belief, not less.
You argue that something that is not material cannot influence anything that is material. That cannot be proven. It cannot be proven that the human mind is not a combination of the immaterial connected with our material brains via immaterial thoughts. What I mean is that the material brain is necessary, but not sufficient, to account for our human minds. We communicate our immaterial thoughts to others through our brains. We need our brains to communicate with other people. If our brains are damaged, we cannot communicate, but we can still think with our immaterial minds. The electrical activity of the brain that you discuss can be an indication of the interface between our immaterial minds and our physical brains. It is unlikely, if not impossible, for science to prove otherwise.
I will finish your book, but only out of a sense of duty, not pleasure. I always finish what I start, no matter how long it takes.
It is clear that your belief in “poetical naturalism” is based on faith.