Problems with the Paradigm of Exploitation

 Mind and Cosmos: Impossible to erase subjectivity

The failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.  In his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False Nagel writes:

“Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything. If we take this problem seriously, and follow out its implications, it threatens to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture.“

Subjective Reality Exists

Nagel’s atheism doesn’t prevent him for advocating for consciousness, mental or subjective reality. He reasons that the ocean of perceptions, ideas, and emotions in the human mind are more than the sum total of synapses and electrical brain impulses. Nagel determines that consciousness exists and is just as real as any physical thing.

According to Nagel, even if we could map out neural firings in the brain that may be responsible for the panoply of thoughts in the network of awareness, our map could only show us where thoughts take place. But thought itself is a distinct reality; it is different from the locations of electrical impulses and the movements of neurons. We don’t feel electric patterns in our brains; our thoughts are a superior reality. This mental awareness, or consciousness is a special realm of being and must be understood and studied as such. Nagel argues that the study of consciousness should be considered primordial, just as biology takes into consideration elements that cannot be found in physics.

Altered Paradigms

If mental phenomenon and consciousness are a distinct realm of existence, obviously we must alter the paradigms of science to include them. Materialistic and purely physical theories about the origins of life are inexact. The materialist Neo-Darwinian conception of nature, then, is almost certainly false.

If consciousness exists as an independent phenomenon, life cannot have originated in a an undefined primordial chemical reaction.  Natural selection cannot account for the evolution of consciousness, or for the development of language in human beings.

Nagel concludes that Biology, is a distinct scientific field from from physics. Where physics deals with velocity and movement, Biology studies an phenomenology that exists beyond the purely physical. If pointing out the limits of reason was the preoccupation of Kant, Nagel wants to put limits to the imperialism of physics and its determination to exclude consciousness from the life sciences.

Half-baked Theory of Everything

Stephen Hawking has the hubris to call his half-baked speculations “A Theory of Everything.” Even if his highly speculative views have some value, their exclusion of life, consciousness, language, mind, emotion, will, and the entire phenonemon of subjective reality hardly qualifies as a theory of everything.

As Nagel points out, “subjective consciousness, if it is not reducible to something physical, … would be left completely unexplained by physical evolution—even if the physical evolution of such organisms is in fact a causally necessary and sufficient condition for consciousness.” Since physics hasn’t the slightest pretense of explaining consciousness as a reality it can hardly be said to explain everything.

Deeper Understanding of Universe

So Nagel calls for a deeper understanding of our universe, one that takes up the big questions and delves into the nature of consciousness. Nagel’s views are, of course, heresy for those who have embraced Neo-Darwinistic positivism as their religious point of view, as he himself acknowledges:

“The argument from the failure of psychophysical reductionism is a philosophical one, but I believe there are independent reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in biology. Physico-chemical reductionism in biology is the orthodox view, and any resistance to it is regarded as not only scientifically but politically incorrect.”

The idea of Evolution as Religion is not new. Indeed, in the book by that name, Mary Midgley ascribes religious fervor and intensity to the devotees of Darwin and his disciple Dawkins. Here’s Dawkins comparing animals to machines while ascribing personality to inert matter:

“The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.”

Inert and inorganic matter is here compared to creative gods by the eminent evolutionary biologist.

“Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived...”

While it is certainly imaginative and charming to compare chains of ribo-nucleic acid with Al Capone, this is hardly “science.”

Dawkins continues, “...in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes.”

Note the tenuousness in his argument. Having ascribed gangster personalities to inert genetic materials Dawkins exhorts us to “expect” this gangster-like quality.

“I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness...” Genetic material, being inorganic, has no consciousness or self. Why would a scientist attribute selfishness and even ruthlessness to inorganic matter?

Of course, Dawkins is not a scientist when he adopts this language. He is using “colorful language” as a charming “popularizer” of science. Attributing personality to genes while denying the existence of the self is quite a trick. He even goes so far as to attribute immortality to the gene:

“It does not grow senile; it is no more likely to die when it is a million years old than when it is only a hundred.”

Of course, the gene is not living material, so it can neither live nor die. But never mind, this is no longer science, but a flight of fancy:

“It leaps from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends, abandoning a succession of mortal bodies before they sink in senility and death. The genes are the immortals.”

(Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene Oxford University Press, 1976 p2-3)

Dawkins would deny the very existence of the self, and yet is celebrated for a book on “Selfish” genes. Since genes are inorganic material it remains to be seen how they can be “selfish.”

Philosopher Mary Midgley in her book Evolution as Religion focuses on the paradox that while modern scientific atheists want to exclude faith from science, they end by having faith in reason. Faith refuses to die, so it is applied towards materialism. Surely science will give us the answers we need--in the future. Never mind that Social Darwinism explains that the survival of the fittest has selected the white race to dominate the weaker races. Never mind that Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and Racism are only a few of the byproducts of rampant materialism.

Darwinism as Religion

Dawkins’s Darwinism itself is a form of religion argues Midgely: “Though this idea [of the Selfish Gene] has no place in science, it is extremely suggestive to the religious sensibilities. Worship, as we have already seen, is not only something carried out in Gothic buildings by people singing Hymns A&M. It has many other forms and can be entirely informal. It is certainly the mood most strongly suggested by Dawkins’s discussions of the gene. Sociobiological thinking, then, seems to conduct, side by side with its perfectly respectable attempt to account for the inheritated co-operative tendencies of plants and animals, a very different and far less respectable myth-making activity.”

Midgely points out that it is common in the literature of socio-biology to ascribe motives to inanimate material such as genes, or to the process of natural selection itself.

Thus Midgely, on the animistic tendency in sociobiological literature : “There is a constant colourful invocation of non-human, but purposeful-sounding beings--usually the genes or DNA. These are treated as real calculating agents, manipulating human beings and other animals, who may suppose that they have purposes of their own, but are deceived in this, being in fact only ineffectual pawns, puppets or vehicles of these ‘hidden masters.’” Midgely objects to this personification: “The effect is, of course, to produce bad science,” she says.