Scientism, Physicalism, Materialism

Some people, such as philosopher Bertrand Russell, have taken the view that not only is science a powerful way to model the Universe but that science is the only way in which we can obtain knowledge. This view is sometimes called physicalism, materialism or scientism

For instance:

“Whatever knowledge is attainable must be attained by scientific methods, and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know”  

Bertrand Russell.

In fact this is self-refuting because the statement is itself not a scientific statement.

A view which is commonly held goes even further than that by saying that anything which is not discoverable by science cannot exist.

Despite its wide acceptance, there is no justification for this and there is a whole array of arguments against.

It is a highly restrictive view because it consigns anything to which the scientific method cannot be applied to the category of the “supernatural” where it is considered meaningless or not real.

However such a distinction says more about science and about an over-inflated view of humanity than about the Cosmos or what is real.

It excludes many things which are our everyday experience even though they are not normally considered as “supernatural”.

Conscious experience challenges physicalism

Ian Ravenscroft in his book [Ravenscroft 2005] expresses his belief that phenomenal consciousness is a physical event of the brain but admits that there is no way to prove that and there are reasons to believe that is not the case:

“Phenomenal consciousness does not, in my view, give us grounds for abandoning physicalism: there is little reason to doubt that episodes of phenomenal consciousness are physical events in the brain. However I find the arguments offered by Levine [Levine1993] to support the existence of an explanatory gap worrying and I follow Ned Block in thinking that, at present, nobody has come anywhere near bridging the gap [Block 1994]. We have nothing that even remotely looks like an account of how the brain gives rise to phenomenal consciousness, nor do we have many proposals about where we should begin to look for such an account”

[Ravenscroft 2005]

The following video presents the case against the assumption of physicalism.

Although much work has been done, science has no explanation of what consciousness is or what could give rise to it. All the neuroscience, psychology and information technology that can be done gets us no nearer to providing one. The best we can do is say that consciousness is seen to be associated with brains and correlated with brain states but that is not an explanation. Neither does it tell us whether brains are necessary and sufficient for consciousness or whether other substrates are possible.

David Chalmers describes the question of consciousness as the “hard problem” since even neuroscience is “easy” in comparison. Others, such as Joseph Levine, would say that, not only is it a hard problem but that it is an impossible one for us. There is an unbridgeable chasm, an explanatory gap, between what we can know about the brain ( a physical object ) and what we can know about the nature of conscious experience (a non-physical phenomenon) affirming the inadequacy of physicalism to explain what we observe.

This is a good thing, as we shall see when we look at the implications of materialism.

The following videos go into more detail about the problem of consciousness and why it is “hard” and a challenge to the belief that the only thing that is in the Universe is material. The contributors have different views on the implications of this but they agree that it implies that there is more to the Universe than material or, at least, material as we know it.

The first video gives a short overview of the issues involved while in the second video, David Chalmers gives a more detailed and prosaic description

There are several well known arguments against physicalism although it seems to me that the inadequacy of physicalism is almost self-evident. David Papineau [Papineau 2002] is someone who strongly disagrees.

A major objection to physicalism is that it cannot explain the existence of consciousness. Since consciousness indisputably exists (as shown by the fact that you are now conscious of reading this) physicalists can only assert that somehow consciousness “emerges” in “sufficiently complex” physical systems from the atoms, subatomic particles and electromagnetic radiation which is all that a physicalist allows to be real. In the words of Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), “Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain.” (Italics in the original.) Physicalists thus label consciousness as an “emergent property” of complex physical systems (they have to italicize “emergent” so as to slip this past one’s critical faculties). But to label it in this way is not to explain how this “emergence” could possibly occur.

Physicalists can talk as much as they like about neural structures, resonant patterns of brain activity and the like, but in fact they have no explanation for the “emergence” of consciousness from “complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain.” This is actually an article of faith, comparable to Christians’ faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A Christian who understands their faith says, “I have chosen to believe in Jesus resurrected from the dead.” A physicalist also chooses to believe, that consciousness “emerges” from complex networks of neurons, but is usually not aware that they have chosen to believe.

Attempts by physicalists to explain consciousness are actually attempts to explain it away. “Consciousness explained” by a physicalist is really “consciousness denied”. Physicalists must accept the dilemma that either consciousness does not “really” exist or that the existence of consciousness is inexplicable. Neither horn of the dilemma is satisfactory. If, however, consciousness is a fundamental and irreducible quality of reality (so that a form of consciousness goes all the way down, even to molecules and atoms) then the existence of conscious beings such as ourselves is not a total mystery. But if a physicalist allows the possibility that physical reality is inherently conscious (which idea most physicalists would reject) then the way is open to the idea that there is some reality beyond physical reality (that is, beyond the existence of atoms, subatomic particles and electromagnetic radiation), and to move in this direction is to abandon physicalism.

Science is not incompatible with the spiritual view if by science is understood a quest for knowledge of what is real. If there is a non-physical reality then a true scientist will wish to know about it. Modern natural scientists often assume that physicalism is true, and thereby exclude the possibility of knowledge of a spiritual reality. Such natural scientists are thus not true scientists. A natural scientist may state that only physical reality is of interest to him, but he is not justified in claiming that science can properly concern itself only with physical reality.

Peter J. Meyer, “Physicalism: A False View of the World” [Meyer July 2008]

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Onwards to “What can we know?”