This game really does allow for creativity but a lot of it ends in frustration

References available at: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/198/20/E780

When I went to high-school, I learned about Philosophy as a precursor of Science. In other words, before we knew better, people used to discuss abstract concepts as if that was useful. However, eventually someone came along the way and invented this thing called the scientific method, which consists on conducting experiments to prove a given hypothesis. Something that differentiate science from its precursors is that whenever we make a claim, we do so because we have tested it.

Everything was pretty clear to me until I decided to pursue a PhD (literally a Doctor of Philosophy) and was forced to attend this seminar on “Philosophy of Science.” High-school me thought this was a bit counterintuitive (for the reasons I outlined above), but maybe this was not quite literally a merging of the two concepts, rather, it was something like saying “human primate.” We acknowledge where we come from although clearly we have gone above and beyond.

It turns out I was wrong. The overall lesson from this seminar was, basically, that we collectively made a practical choice: if there are things we cannot measure, there is not much we can do about it, we might as well focus on what we can apprehend. Materialism then was born out of this non-primordial soup of thought. What happened to the unmeasurable? It is still there as we know our instruments evolve over time and that boundary might change.

What is the Physical?

Then came Einstein, who proved that our cherished three-dimensional matter was actually intimately close to time, like two sides of the same coin, and we happily rebranded materialism as Physicalism because we needed to account for that, too. “Everything that exists, including mental states—writes Professor of Philosophy Massimo Pigliucci—is either physical or fully dependent on the physical.”

Now, whenever someone presents this argument, I always ask “what do you mean?” I dare to ask because I am very confused about it. Most people tell me the physical is “whatever the Physicists say.” However, when you ask Physicists they find it hard to define their own subject. In his book On Physics and Philosophy, Bernard d’Espagnat explains that the current “shut up and calculate” approach in quantum physics pretty much derives from our inability to connect the calculations with corresponding “states” or “particles” as we normally understand them.

Such disconnection actually infuriated Einstein because he thought a theory should explain reality. Rather, we were left with this “something” that makes our spacetime, and this something can be grasped by probabilities that cannot be meaningfully conceived as individualities. Rather, says d’Espagnat, one might say that the universe is one whole thing that keeps tabs on its elements no matter where they are. “Clearly—he writes—these ideas are either barely or not compatible with the notions of multiplicity and locality.” Multiplicity being the word for independent particles and locality referring to their inability to act beyond the speed of light.

In view of these arguments, I asked Massimo Pigliucci whether he endorsed local-realism. In other words, did he believe that the cause of a physical change must be local while simultaneously believing that the properties of objects are real and exist in our physical universe independent of measurement? This was, of course, a trap, because quantum mechanics forces to let go of at least one of those. The author of Figs in Winter liked my comment (digitally, that is) but did not reply. He wrote that it was only fair that he would answer to his paid subscribers.

Of course, I understand little about the economic principles of Substack, but I do appreciate the irony of people preaching “the physical” avoiding the metaphysical implications of their most advanced math.

Physicalism, what is it good for?

I will take a step back here because I need to acknowledge Pigliucci was not talking about the whole universe. Rather, he was writing about something slightly more concrete: human consciousness. In his view, the physical is good enough to explain it. His evidence was a bit shaky, but we will take a look:

"Decades of research in neurobiology have uncovered a large number of neural correlates of consciousness. Every mental state we’ve examined—and we’ve examined a lot of ‘em!—has a physical correlate, meaning an area of the brain that seems to be causally linked to it."

I think anyone can spot the lie here because science rarely admits absolute truths. While there is cumulative information about neural correlates of cognitive states (and those can be probabilistically linked to the state of the brain), it is simply not true that every single state of mind has a physical correlate we can examine. Just to name a few, there is no reliable neural correlate for near-death experiences, we have no clue on how to assess a patient in vegetative state to find out if they are unresponsive but aware, and we have no explanation whatsoever for people who exhibit lucid states after years of dementia (what has been termed terminal lucidity), only hours before departing.

While I find value in the study of the brain to understand consciousness, I think Massimo is deluding himself by thinking we have sorted everything out. So, I am going to allow myself to act as Moses and clearly split the waters. I fully acknowledge the usefulness of Physicalism and all of the problems it has helped us solve. At the same time, there are a few unresolved mysteries that we cannot explain with our current neuroscientific explanations.

Expanding on my previous examples, near-death experiences often provide examples of impaired brains producing consciousness in ways that are not compatible with what we expect from an starved brain. Even if current science catches up on that and finds a plausible mechanism, it still will fail to explain how such a state allows for anomalous cognition of things occurring in adjacent rooms that would not be accessible to the person, even if they were fully awake.

Similarly, the cases of terminal lucidity are an example against his assertion that “damage to specific brain regions produces specific, predictable changes in experience.” This is mostly truth, but how then do patients with terminal lucidity overcome these limitations to deliver speeches after years of having the same neural correlates that tell us they should not be able to?

Will Physicalism ever be defeated?

In the second part of his Physicalism and consciousness essay, Pigliucci somehow acknowledges the limitations of neuroscience (despite having written in absolute terms in the first part). He does so to distinguish between the need for “epistemic humility (we don’t fully understand consciousness yet) from metaphysical panic (therefore non-physicalism).”

He often complains about the unfalsifiability of competing metaphysical models. Yet, this implies we can falsify physicalism. Can we? I think this question has multiple answers and Pigliucci is not going to like either of them.

1. Whereas we are given a definition for “Physicalism,” the ambiguous meaning of “physical” is rarely addressed, making this ontological claim unfalsifiable. So far, this has been my experience in online debate.
2. If we consider old definitions of “the physical,” Physicalism has already been falsified, which is why Quantum Physics abandoned local-realism, and both concepts are essential to what most people understand by Physicalism.
3. Physicalism can be falsified under a strict definition. I will give an example: If any given definition of Physicalism forbids anomalous cognition (like acquiring information without direct help of the senses or inference), Physicalism would be falsified in the presence of such evidence.

Just to add to the many examples I have already written about in my substack, ICU anesthesiologist Jean-Jacques Charbonier (case 3.1 in “The Self Does not Die,” by Rivas, Dirven, and Smith) described a case in which a woman somehow learned about what was going on in the room next to her in ways this hypothetically defined Physicalism can not explain (therefore non-physicalism):

“I operated on a woman under general anesthetic. And when she woke up, she described her operation [and] the operation that took place in the next theater, the amputation of a leg. She saw them put the leg in a yellow bag. She described it as soon as she woke up. I checked afterwards and the operation had indeed taken place in the next theater. A leg had been amputated at the very same time that she was under anesthetic, and thus totally disconnected from the world.”

Science is an ever-evolving heuristic, not the truth

Anomalies against any given scientific framework are bound to emerge at some point, or that has been the case throughout history. Typically, “science” is the word we use for the heuristics that help us make sense of the world. They are models we use to predict outcomes. Yet, these models are often incomplete and it often happens that, at the edges of our knowledge boundary, we find anomalies that cannot be accounted for.

For example, Newtonian mechanics works extremely well for everyday motion and even for planetary orbits, but it failed to fully explain the precession of Mercury’s orbit. That small discrepancy became one of the early hints that a more complete framework—general relativity—was needed. Similarly, classical physics could not explain blackbody radiation; it predicted an “ultraviolet catastrophe,” where energy output would become infinite at high frequencies, which clearly did not match experimental results. Resolving that anomaly helped give rise to quantum theory.

A one-off anomaly can often be ignored, but persistent anomalies signal a limitation of the heuristic. In many cases, the heuristic can be refined to account for the anomaly, as when corrections were added to classical models in thermodynamics and optics. In other cases, a new model needs to be built which replaces the existing ones, as happened when quantum mechanics supplanted classical physics at microscopic scales.

This is the reason why the emergence of new models (including ontological models) are independent of how good existing models are to predict reality within the knowledge boundary they actually predict. Rather, the universal applicability of these models should be evaluated in function of how they perform outside this boundary area. In terms of consciousness, other examples from biology where Physicalism is shaky include worms that seems to “recall” better when you chop their head and they regenerate it, butterflies that seem to “recall” their ancestors’ experiences, plants that seem to “see” without any obvious detection system, and so on.

Adapt or Perish?

When I attended the end-of-life symposium organized by Bial Foundation, I comfortably sat to enjoy Jim Tucker’s lecture on past life experiences. I have read his books and a lot of his papers. Plus, Jim has officially retired as head of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. So, I was not expecting anything new (although he did deliver new findings). My plan, instead, was to pay attention to Physicalist scientists who attended the lecture to check their reactions.

Predictably, many of these scientists stared at their phones as the lecture started. In many cases, you were there mainly to present your work and listening to these paranormal lectures was a matter of courtesy rather than a result of scientific curiosity. Yet, as the lecture advanced, these scientists started trying to make sense of what they were learning. Suddenly, they were using their phones not to distract themselves but to take pictures of the slides because the CORT data is simply irresistible.

The next day, I had the opportunity to have breakfast with Jim and we talked a bit about paradigm shifts. After all his years of experience, he does not think that any amount of evidence will convince the scientific establishment to change their mind. Instead, he thinks the reincarnation phenomena will become more visible through the internet in such a way that people eventually will get used to the idea.

My view was that perhaps change will come from an unexpected and emergent field: quantum biology. Until now, anything related to quantum and the brain has been framed as “woo,” and with good reasons. As Churchland wrote in “How Parapsychology Could Become a Science,” the main weakness of experimental approaches in the field was the lack of testable predictions. Yet, the quantum brain theory has started doing exactly that by tinkering with the alleged mechanism of quantum consciousness, the microtubules.

Of course, there are alternative explanations of why this would be the case and we are far from having proof of nonlocal mechanisms within the brain. However, I think this would be a plausible pathway to “reform” Physicalism. One which would incorporate anomalous cognition within scientific standard theory, including veridical perceptions during near-death experiences and the memories of children who seem to recall past lives (a phenomenon that intrigued the late Carl Sagan).

Sadly, a few scientists have taken the opposite approach: saying these things do not happen because they are impossible (as if science has settled). This is rather unscientific because it implies anomalies cannot exist and we have surpassed any knowledge boundary. Whereas doubting the veracity of independent reports is good practice, the cumulative evidence seems to suggest these anomalies are real, making it clear that we indeed have a need for metaphysics, despite living in the 21st century.

References in the original source at CMAJ: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/198/20/E780

It took me a few attempts, I thought this rail would also bend and once I was up I sort of panicked

Bonus: the ramp

This is a video interview of psychologist Jesse Bering, who historically has been on the skeptic end against Parapsychology talking about his upcoming book exploring the life of Ian Stevenson (who researched reincarnation). Michael Shumer is on the receiving end. Guess what he found when he read the most strict parapsychological studies.