Chapter 7
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Chapter 7 OTHER SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF PERSONALITY
I. Introduction. There are many other reasons for supposing that philosophical naturalism is fallacious. Some of those reasons are beyond the scope of this essay, such as the reasons for regarding the Bible as a reliable record of the events it describes. Though it would be a mistake to treat that subject as outside the realm of science properly conceived, one has to draw the line somewhere. But there are three subjects within the realm of science, more traditionally conceived, which I want to address because of their great interest, but only in passing because my understanding of these subjects will not permit more than sketches. These subjects are the theories of special and general relativity, quantum mechanics and the problem of consciousness. I. Relativity. Stephen Hawking holds Isaac Newton's chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in London. He is widely regarded as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein and has made major contributions to the advancement of our understanding of astrophysics generally and black holes in particular. He has become a figure of popular renown as a result of the sale of nearly 10 million copies of his book, A Brief History of Time1 In Brief History, Hawking describes Albert Einstein's theory of relativity as one of the two "great intellectual achievements of the first half of this [the twentieth] century."2 (The other is quantum mechanics.) Relativity must be the most surprising idea ever conceived by man; and its apparent validity shows the universe to be a most mysterious place indeed. It could be argued that a discussion of relativity does not belong in an essay about the scientific evidence of design in nature; for as far as I can tell, relativity offers no direct evidence of design. I do think relativity is important for our purposes, however, not merely because light and time, being mysterious, preclude hasty conclusions - naturalistic or otherwise - about the nature of the universe, but also because they whisper to us of something personal beyond themselves. Even so, it could still be argued that no discussion of relativity belongs in this essay, or any essay by this author, because I do not pretend to understand it very well. What I have learned has been through self-directed study, and in my case at least, that is simply not adequate for this subject. One source tells of the reporter who, while interviewing a famous physicist, mentioned that he understood he was one of only three people in the world who understood relativity (Einstein was still living). After a brief silence, the physicist said, "I'm trying to think who the third person might be." If I have been able to understand anything about relativity, the reader may judge. But in the discussion below I have attempted not to go beyond the little that I believe I have understood, and my intention is merely to offer additional support for the idea that deterministic naturalism offers an inadequate description of reality. The theory of special relativity is the one expressed in the famous Einsteinian equation, "E = mc2" (energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light). Special relativity applies only in cases of objects which are moving at constant velocity with respect to each other, and it has the following consequences: 1. Energy and mass are equivalent. 2. As an object is accelerated, its mass increases, and it takes more energy to continue accelerating it. As it approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity and the amount of energy it takes to accelerate it further also approaches infinity. 3. Hence, no massive object can reach the speed of light. Why the velocity of light should be the same to all observers is apparently unknown. It may have something to do with the fact that in space there is no absolute frame of reference; there is no object which can be said to be stationary such that all other objects must be said to be moving with respect to it. Take Einstein's famous railway carriage: is it moving with respect to the ground, or is the ground moving with respect to it? We are accustomed to thinking the former, but what if the train is moving westward with a velocity equal to the rotational velocity of the earth? Then the train will remain stationary with respect to the sun, while the earth rotates beneath it. Even the stars have no fixed frame of reference: since all the galaxies are moving away from each other - and the farther apart they are, the faster they are moving away from each other - it is impossible to say in which direction lies the center of the universe. Thus, there is no way to establish that any object in space is a more valid frame of reference than any other. Regardless of the reason, I find it fascinating and mystifying that the speed of light is an absolute, just as I find it fascinating and mystifying that time should be relative. Imagine a man with a rifle on a moving train. If he shoots the rifle in the direction in which the train is moving, the velocity of the train will add to the muzzle velocity of the bullet in relation to the ground, because the rifle, too, is moving with respect to the ground. If he shoots out the end of the caboose, the speed of the train will, for the same reason, be subtracted from the muzzle velocity as measured from the ground. Light is not like that. Imagine a pair of comets in space at a constant distance of 700 million miles from each other (which is about the distance light travels in an hour), and moving past a planet from left to right at a speed (relative to the planet) of 350 million miles per hour, and imagine observers on the planet and on each comet. Suppose that just as the comet on the left moves past the planet, the observer on that comet shines a light toward the other comet. To the observers on each of the comets, the light travels the same distance at the same rate of speed, and hence it takes the same amount of time: about one hour. However, the observer on the planet does not agree with the observers on the comets as to the distance the light has traveled. In an hour's time as measured on the planet, the comets have traveled about 350 million miles away from the planet; so the light, in order to reach the second comet, must travel 1,050 million miles from the first comet's original position. But the speed of light is the same to all three observers; so the elapsed time as measured on the planet would be 1.5 hours! It should be apparent from this illustration that the relativity of time is a consequence of two circumstances: that the speed of light is finite, and that its velocity is the same to all observers. If the speed of light were infinite, it would take no time for the light to reach the second comet, and that would be the measurement given on the planet and on the comets. The speed of light is not infinite, but that does not fully account for the relativity of time. In order for time to be relative, it is also necessary that the velocity of the comet must not be additive with the speed of light - that is, it must be the same to all observers; for if it were additive (if the speed of light were affected by the motion of its source in the same way that the speed of the bullet is affected by the speed of the moving train), then the speed of the light from the comet as seen from the planet would be increased by the velocity of the comets with respect to the planet, and as seen from the planet, it would take the light an hour to reach the second comet despite the increased distance which it must traverse within the planet's frame of reference. The light would reach the second comet in the same amount of time, as measured on the planet and as measured on the comets. According to Hawking, special relativity has been "confirmed by accurate measurements."3 The theory of general relativity is at least as astonishing as special relativity. (To the best of my understanding, it is called the theory of "general" relativity because it applies equally to objects which are being accelerated with respect to other objects, which is to say, to all frames of reference, and not just to objects moving at constant velocities with respect to each other.) Einstein sought to understand the apparent inconsistency between special relativity and the Newtonian concept of gravity. In the 18th Century, Isaac Newton discovered that massive objects attract each other with a force which is stronger the closer they are together. Thus, if one of the objects moves, the change in its gravitational pull is felt by the other object immediately, irrespective of the distance between the two objects. But special relativity shows that nothing can propagate faster than the speed of light. How can gravity have an immediate effect upon a distant object? Einstein's theory of general relativity answers this question by positing that massive objects do not propagate gravity by emitting particles or waves, but by producing a curvature in space-time (space and time being not separate entities, but a single entity which Einstein called space-time). In its orbit of the sun, for instance, the Earth only appears to follow an elliptical path; actually, it follows a straight path through a space-time continuum warped by the mass of the sun. (I have found it difficult to visualize this concept. To my relief, Hawking says that it is impossible to do so.) In a way, the notion that space and time should be aspects of the same thing makes a certain sense. In order for anything material to exist, it must have height, breadth, depth and duration; for if it lacks any of these things, it does not exist. If it has height but no width or depth, it is a line. If something has height and width but no depth, it is a plane. Neither a line nor a plane has any volume; hence there is nothing there. If an object has height, width and breadth but no duration, then it still does not exist because in order to come into existence at all, it must have some duration, even if it is the smallest conceivable fraction of a nanosecond. Thus, space and time have no independent existence, but are properties of matter; and when once any physical object comes into existence, space and time come with it. Or, rather, when the universe came into existence, time and space came with it. As we have seen, special relativity shows that as an object approaches the speed of light, time slows. If an object were to attain the speed of light, time would stop. Thus, for an object at or near the speed of light, even the slightest instant of existence would be stretched toward eternity. Did someone say, "A day to the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day"? What apparently is not understood is how or why massive objects cause the curvature of space-time. That they do so has also been amply verified experimentally, however. For instance, light, which has no mass and cannot be affected by "gravity" as Newton conceived it, nevertheless follows a curved path when it passes near a massive object. Further confirmation of the general theory comes from relativity's greater success in predicting the orbits of the planets of our solar system. Says Hawking: The mass of the sun curves space-time in such a way that although the earth follows a straight path in four-dimensional space-time, it appears to us to move along a circular orbit in three-dimensional space. In fact, the orbits of the planets predicted by general relativity are almost exactly the same as those predicted by the Newtonian theory of gravity. However, in the case of Mercury, which, being the nearest planet to the sun, feels the strongest gravitational effects, and has a rather elongated orbit, general relativity predicts that the long axis of the ellipse should rotate about the sun at a rate of about one degree in ten thousand years. Small though this effect is, it had been noticed before 1915 and served as one of the first confirmations of Einstein's theory. In recent years the even smaller deviations of the orbits of the other planets from the Newtonian predictions have been measured by radar and found to agree with the predictions of general relativity.4 One could speculate as to the theological implications of relativity. What is the significance of the fact that it is light which is absolute, and not time or space? Why would the Creator say of Himself, that He is light? What is the nature of time, and what are its relations with God's mode of existence, considering that God pre-existed the Big Bang - that is, "before" time? What are our own relations with time? What sort of beings will we become at the end of the age? Will time come to an end? Or will we instead become beings of light, for whom time stops? Later in this Chapter, we will consider the nature of the soul as an immaterial substance. If time and space are properties of matter, and the soul can and may exist apart from the body, then there would seem to be nothing to bar a timeless existence for humans. But that is speculation. Our purpose here is to explore the implications of relativity for scientific naturalism. None of the principles of relativity appear to be directly contradictory to a naturalistic view; as far as we can tell, the relativity of time and the warping of space-time could be parts of an impersonal universe. However, as far as we call tell, the opposite could also be true. Unless and until we penetrate these mysteries, it would be premature to base any conclusion, whether personal or impersonal, on relativity alone. Any naturalist who claims otherwise has his thumb on the scale, and is not practicing good science. And yet, if one should conclude, on the basis of other evidence, that the case for design in nature is compelling, then the theological implications of relativity become of more immediate concern; for then we know that relativity really is telling us something about God. But what is it telling us? Perhaps all we can presently say is that although to a certain extent God has made Himself known, in His creation, His Word, and His Son, as an Intellect too sublime for words, to a great extent He is unknowable by us altogether, in our present state. The more we learn about the nature of the Creation, the vaster seems God's genius. While we may begin to make sense of the behavior of biomolecules, the behavior of the large structures of the universe suggests an infinite Mind. II. Quantum Mechanics. Did I say we might begin to understand the behavior of biomolecules? I hate to disappoint, but when we turn our gaze from the heavens to phenomena lying even farther below the surface of living things than the molecular biologists' proteins, we again encounter impenetrable mystery. The atoms and the even smaller particles comprising those proteins are, like time and light, unknown. What's more, it appears they are in principle unknowable. The physicists do not know the nature of matter; more amazingly, they do not expect to find out. In the 19th Century, physicists were mystified as to why stars do not emit energy at an infinite rate. They reasoned that since light can be emitted in any wavelength, it can therefore be emitted in an infinite number of wavelengths. Hence, if stars were to emit light of all wavelengths, they would have to emit an infinite amount of energy. But they don't. In 1900 Max Planck offered a solution to this problem which precipitated a revolution in scientific theory. He proposed that light cannot be emitted in arbitrary amounts, but only in certain "packets" which he called quanta. At that time, scientists already understood that the shorter the wavelength of light, the higher its energy. Every star would be limited in the amount of energy it could make available at a given moment for the production of one quantum of light, and would therefore be unable to emit light of a wavelength shorter than a certain minimum. That would place a limit on the rate at which energy was being emitted by the star. This led to the understanding that it is sometimes more helpful to think of light as a wave, propagating in a manner similar to a wave through standing water, and sometimes more helpful to think of light as a particle. It became really interesting, however, when it was realized that electrons and other subatomic entities traditionally understood as being particles, sometimes behave as waves. Hawking describes the famous double-slit experiment in which light is shone at a partition with two parallel vertical slits in it. If the slits are at different distances from the light source, the light passing through one slit will be out of phase with the light passing through the other slit (the "crests" of the light waves will not coincide) and will create interference patterns, which will result in alternating light and dark vertical bands on a screen beyond the partition. (The same effect can be observed if the partition is placed in a tank of water and a wave is propagated toward the partition. A new wave begins at each slit, and the two waves create interference patterns on the surface of the water on the other side of the partition.) The surprising thing is that if, instead of light, one shoots electrons at the partition, the same thing happens. Says Hawking: It seems the more peculiar because if one only has one slit, one . . . [gets] . . . a uniform distribution of electrons across the screen. One might therefore think that opening another slit would just increase the number of electrons hitting each point of the screen, but, because of interference, it actually decreases it in some places. If electrons are sent through the slits one at a time, one would expect each to pass through one slit or the other, and so behave just as if the slit it passed through were the only one there - giving a uniform distribution on the screen. In reality, however, even when the electrons are sent one at a time, the [light and dark bands] still appear. Each electron, therefore, must be passing through both slits at the same time!5 The water is further muddied by the brilliant work of the famous American scientist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. He posited that subatomic particles do not take a particular path from one place to another, but "every conceivable path concurrently, and it's the paths that interfere. ". . . [N]o one understands what this 'means' either, as Feynman himself would be the first to acknowledge," says Satinover, "even though the mathematics work out perfectly."7 Thus, waves are particles. No, particles are waves. But what's a particle? What's a wave? We do not really know: most likely, quanta are neither waves nor particles; we employ these terms partly because they enable us to form mental categories for our subjects by imagining that light, or electrons, are like really, really small BB's, or like the waves that propagate in water. It is true that light "waves" oscillate between crests and troughs as waves in water do, but what is the medium in which they propagate, and what is the medium in which electrons propagate around the nucleus of an atom? What does it mean to say that "atoms are both waves and particles at the same time"? No one knows. "I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics," Feynman wrote.8 According to Niels Bohr, subatomic particles "could have a place in both space and time as solid objects and yet [be] infinitely spread out as ripples in the fabric of some undetectable medium. . . ."9 Says Satinover: ". . . [I]t seems that at the foundation of matter lies not mere 'stuff' but pure 'information.'"10 Nor is that all. Although the behavior of matter is highly predictable when we are dealing with large numbers of particles, the behavior of individual particles is completely unpredictable. One experiment involves a half-silvered mirror which transmits half the light directed toward it (i.e., half the light passes through the mirror) and reflects the other half. If one directs one photon at the mirror at a time, half the time it will be transmitted, and half the time it will be reflected; but it is impossible to predict which photons will be transmitted, and which reflected. Yet the photons are all identical. Satinover discusses the significance of this quantum indeterminacy: The most mysterious part of all this, however, is the fact that no matter how precise and mechanically perfect may be the equations that govern the distribution of probabilities for quantum events, the actual event itself - which one of the variously likely or unlikely possibilities that becomes actual and real - is, within these probabilities, completely random. It is "caused" (i.e., selected from among the possibilities) by absolutely nothing in the universe: no force, no collision, no prior events - nothing. It just happens for no reason whatsoever. This is not the seeming randomness of a coin toss. When we flip a coin the outcome is totally determined ahead of time, it's just we aren't interested in and practically speaking couldn't gain access to all the determining causes - the trajectory of our thumb, friction with the coin, air resistance, and so on. But quantum randomness is absolute. "Chance" had for the first time entered the quantum processes. . . . [I]n a sense, a . . . quantum is left to itself to decide when and in what direction it exits." Einstein was fully aware of what this meant: "'Chance' undermines causality and thus topples the framework of classical physics [where] . . . from a given initial state, a system develops over time with unambiguous regularity, in such a way that all its future states are determined." [Citation omitted.] It can hardly be exaggerated how disturbing is this quantum portrait of a world where particles go where they will, undetermined. "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it," said Bohr. . . . Has physics given up? According to Feynman, "Yes! Physics has given up. We do not know how to predict what would happen in a given circumstance, and we believe now that it is impossible - that the only thing that can be predicted is the probability of different events. It must be recognized that this is a retrenchment in our earlier ideal of understanding nature. It may be a backward step, but no one has seen a way to avoid it."11 The one thing you do have to reckon with . . . is that there is something going on, everywhere, that creates the particular world in which we live, a creation that occurs not just once, at the beginning, for all time, but always, just as moment to moment it sustains who we actually are in that world. To my mind, it is as big a misreading to claim that science tells us that this something cannot be God as to assert that science tells us it must be. The world may be pregnant with hope and meaning and purpose beyond our brief, selfish lives, or it may be meaningless - random to a previously unimagined degree. But one thing it is not: mechanical.12 III. Consciousness. A. Introduction. In the decades since that famous case, scientists have acquired very sensitive tools for studying the brain, and have determined that numerous mental functions are associated with particular structures of the brain. These discoveries have encouraged many to suppose that human personality is either a physical process or is at least caused by a physical process. To say that many scientists are highly receptive to such a notion would be an understatement. To a naturalist, who views all events as parts of a closed system of physical causation, no other conclusion is possible. "All events" includes mental events - our thoughts, beliefs, fears, hopes, purposes, loves and hates. It is a strictly necessary logical inference from this premise that the virtually universal human sense of freedom, of moral gravitas, of dignity and inherent value, is illusory, as William Provine has so boldly stated (Chapter 1). Despite success in brain mapping, however, the view that human personality is reducible to brain function entails certain problems which so far have proved insoluble, and which Provine carefully ignores. Among these problems are our first-person sense of identity; language; reason; and the non- physicality of mental states. B. First-Person Sense of Identity. We have reason to believe our sense of freedom to be authentic because we observe our decision-making and it appears to be autonomous. We have the capacity of self-awareness, and we observe that our appreciation of art, our admiration of nobility, and our passion for justice, all appear to be warranted, in that they are commensurate with, or appropriately correspond to, the esthetic or moral merit which the things we contemplate objectively possess. Physicalism cannot account for this: how can a mere collection of atoms recognize the merits of Rembrandt or show compassion for a child in need? This inner sense is entitled to some weight. As stated by J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, in seeking to understand human nature, We should . . . be guided by commonsense beliefs we inevitably hold, especially those due to our own first- person awareness of ourselves and our inner states. We ought to preserve these beliefs if possible. We agree with philosophers Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, who say that "if entities of a certain kind belong to folk ontology [the ontological presuppositions of our commonsense conceptual scheme], then there is a prima facie presumption in favor of their reality. . . . Those who deny their existence assume the burden of proof. In this way, [we follow] the advice of philosopher Roderick Chisholm: "I assume that, in our theoretical thinking, we should be guided by those propositions we presuppose in our ordinary activity. They are propositions we have a right to believe, or, somewhat more exactly, they are propositions that should be regarded as innocent . . . until there is positive reason for thinking them guilty."13 C. Language and Reason. Similarly, for the naturalist, language cannot be relied upon to communicate anything, for language is seen as mere strings of oral or written symbols - phonemes or letters whose utterance or inscription also results from impersonal, mechanical causes. If there are no persons conversing, then nothing is communicated except the symbols themselves, and not the informational content - which we only imagine they carry. The noises or scribblings we make have a mechanical effect in the brains of our auditors and readers, and their response - regardless of its apparent rationality - has nothing at all to do with any "understanding" they have gained, because that "understanding" is another illusion. But no mechanism has been identified, or even imagined, whereby language might affect a human in ways that are appropriate to its "meaning," without positing a mind, a person, distinct from her brain, whose intellectual, moral and esthetic sense which she brings to bear on the material in question, is somehow of surpassing importance. Until a plausible naturalistic explanation of this phenomenon is offered, the apparent power of reason and language to move not atoms, but men and women, must be taken seriously. Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that language is specifically complex. Each letter in a sentence must be selected from the available alternatives one-by-one in order to form the meaning which the communicator wishes to express. This is information, and information entails mind. Why, the probability that the symbols required for this paragraph alone would result from any chance process is unthinkably infinitesimal: it is a smaller number than 1.585 x 10-1435 (a decimal, followed by 1,434 zeroes, followed by the number 1585!).14 The naturalist must argue that a mindless, mechanical, physical cosmos produces language in prodigious amounts continuously, and even occasionally produces literary works of genius, by a process which is either accidental or completely mysterious. Is this plausible? It is not. Is there any evidence that language can be produced in such a way? There is not. The only "evidence" of such a thing is the naturalist's presupposition that since the universe is an impersonal, mechanical, physical system, language must be produced by an impersonal, mechanical, physical system somehow. But obviously, that begs the question, which is, Is the universe an impersonal, mechanical, physical system? And the apparent existence of mind, which is shown to exist by the reality of language, is powerful evidence for a negative answer to that question. D. The Non-Physicality of Mental Events. One of my most memorable learning experiences occurred in the summer of 2000 listening to Moreland in Strasbourg, France demonstrate conclusively that the mind is different from the brain. Along the way I learned that there is much more to philosophy than I had ever imagined. Moreland reasoned that if something is purely a physical entity, then it should be possible to describe it completely by stating all of its physical properties. Physical properties are easily recognizable: they include such things as: spatial extension 1. Perceptual sensations. E.g., not the redness of the apple, but our awareness of it. Perceptual sensations are experiences of states of awareness, mediated by the senses while one is in the body. 2. Non-perceptual sensations. Emotions, e.g., a state of fear, an itch or a pain. 3. Thoughts. Thoughts can be true or false, and are the content of declarative sentences. A thought is not the same thing as the sentence. "Snow is white" can be seen on a blackboard; but the thought itself is not sense- perceptible. Sensations are not thoughts. They can be inaccurate but not false. You can say of a thought, that it is hateful; but you cannot say that of a brain event. 4. Beliefs. A belief is one's view of what is true with at least a 51% conviction. Beliefs are not sensations. Sensations are not true or false. Beliefs are not thoughts: thoughts only exist while you are having them. 5. Desires. A desire is an experienced inclination toward or away from something. 6. Volitions. A volition is an exercise of active power toward a goal. When we explain our choices, we appeal to goals or purposes. The goal is not the efficient cause but the final cause. The efficient cause is a person. Your reason is your goal. The desire and the goal did not cause the volition: you did. What's more, the methods for knowing mental events and physical events are mutually exclusive. We know mental events by first-person introspection only; whereas, we can know physical events through sensory perception only. (First-person introspection is not unscientific. Where necessary, science will rely upon first-person introspection. For instance, it is only through first-person introspection that we know that rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is associated with dream states.) Moreland says that the soul is an immaterial substance. In common parlance we use the term "substance" to refer to physical things; but the term itself is taken from the Latin substantia, meaning merely, "to be present, to exist," and is defined, firstly, as "the real or essential part or element of anything; essence; reality; matter."15 In philosophy it can refer to anything - physical or not - which can remain itself through change. Substance dualism is the view that human nature is dualistic: the human person is not identical with the body. If it is not identical with the body - if Moreland has shown that it is not - then no naturalistic explanation of human personality can be complete. Moreland tells of a young girl who asked her father why she could not see God. He asked her to look at her mother and tell him whether she could see her. "Is that Mommy, or is that only her body? Where is Mommy herself? If we cut into her brain, would we find her?" "No," answered the child. "Your problem," said the father, "is not that you've never seen God, but that you've never seen a person." Endnotes 1Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988, 1996). © 2000 Thomas O. Alderman |
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