Alethia Eleutheroo

Matter and Particles -What is Real?

We have seen in the previous posts on Matter and on Mass that both are really only understandable in terms of power, forces and energies, that the seemingly solid world of our immediate bodily senses consists of a complex of such forces, held together in the physical by a combination of the four forces (electrical, magnetic, strong and weak nuclear), such that it present itself out of the universal field for out sense perception, and held apart from other similar complexes (bodies) by the dynamic polarity of gravity working through the inherent resistance (both to resist other force complexes and to draw others towards it) or mass.

It would seem that physics could just concern itself with pure powers, forces and energies, as the seemingly solid matter has effectively disappeared as an independent entity, other than to designate a power-force complex. However, the human mind has a materialistic bias because our current perception and awareness is very much linked to our sense experiences and impressions. We started with seemingly solid objects, and we continue, even as the solidity recedes as disturbingly as the Cheshire Cat, to cling to the notion of materiality, that is, of things and objects, or bodies by means of the concept of particles. These are sub-units of greater particles or atoms. In both cases, these particles are only identifiable as a formula, or a movement or change in location, or as a blip or sound on an instrument. And yet, the mind persists in considering these as somehow material, as things, rather than as again, complexes, albeit infinitesimal, of forces and energies. This would not affect the laws of physics themselves at all, but be more in accord with what physics is telling us is actually the case.

Just as physics talks of the macro and quantum level, we could say that there is a physical level of reality that is at one level material, that is, with seemingly solid objects, or at least power complexes that strongly resist any change or penetration by other such bodies, and another level where this materiality cannot present itself to the human bodily senses, except indirectly. We could term this level the physical which exists on its own as the underlying foundation for the material world, but is also part and parcel of the very existence of a material world. This also means that the human body is similarly a complex of forces and energies more or less resistant to outer influences working both at the macro and quantum levels.

Since man is both subject and object, these physical power complexes act on him to produce sense-impressions, mediated by the bodily sense organs. Such impressions can be tracked in terms of their effects at the human macro-physical level, through the sense organ, via the nerves and chemical reactions to the brain.

The argument of material science is that the resultant perceptions in the human mind (leaving aside what that is exactly, whether reducible to brain or not,  as mass is not reducible to weight) are simply the effects of sense-impressions mediated through physical and bio-chemical processes, themselves a part of the physical or sense world. There is no reality beyond the sense world; any such claim is to claim a non-sense reality, which is deemed “nonsense,” a word that has taken on a pejorative meaning, rather than being simply a factual description.

Thus, the results of sense-impressions are considered as secondary or subjective in nature. For example, the leaf is not green as such, but provides a sense-impression based on atomic and sub-atomic motions producing vibrational frequencies of particles (acting as particles or waves) that then generate a physical-chemical response in the sense organ, delivered to the brain, which results in the perception (where exactly is not clear) of “green.” “Green” is seen as a subjective quality not inherent in the object, leaf, but an effect in man of a sense-experience triggered by an object, or body. It is the object that is considered real, as well as the physical properties that give rise to a certain sense-impression, not, however, the perception. Mind (usually reduced to brain) is considered a resultant of the physical world (usually reduced to matter).

This presumption leads logically to the position that the perception itself is not real, and only a representation of the mind, and may or may not be a faithful reproduction or reflection of the object perceived. Science is then left with the use of commonly agreed perceptions as a way to describe what is real – most people who see leaves see the same thing and given a choice of colors, will choose green as its color.  The logic of the materialist position, given its presumption, is that nothing exists except the motion of particles, and everything else is a product of effect of such motions. If this is the case, then perceptions and conceptions have no independent reality. They are dependent on the random and rather chance whirlings of particles. All ideas are the epi-phenomena of particle collisions and interactions and essentially illusions, except to the extent that we have a shared representation of reality; but that is all it is, a shared illusion that we agree to deem reality if only to avoid the logical sentence that we are all seeing illusions, dreamers caught in the same dream.

If ideas are not real in themselves, then so are values only relative and dependent on group consensus – a kind of democracy of what constitutes good and what bad (community values), changeable and variable over time and place. One value is inherently as good as another, though we use beliefs to try to impose a deemed set of values as being higher and governing. There is really no liberty of choice, but only a strange, contradictory random determinism.

As Steiner in a 1890 essay on Atomism concluded,

…If there is nothing in the real world except swinging atoms, then there cannot be any true objective ideas and ideals. For when I conceive an idea, I can ask myself, what does it mean outside of my consciousness? — Nothing more than a movement of my brain molecules. Because my brain molecules at that moment swing one way or another, my brain gives me the illusion of some idea. All reality in the world then is considered as movement, everything else is empty fog, result of some movement.

If this way of thinking were correct, then I would have to tell myself: man is nothing more than a mass of swinging molecules. That is the only thing in him that has reality. If I have a great idea and pursue it to its origin, I will find some kind of movement. Let us say I plan a good deed. I only can do that if a mass of molecules in my brain feels like executing a certain movement. In such a case, is there still any value in “good” or “evil”? I can’t do anything except what results from the movement of my brain molecules.

The problem here lies in the presumption that the only reality is sense-based, that the concept green is not part of sense-reality but only an effect on the mind/in the brain. This can be looked at differently.

Let’s use an analogy: Someone sends a message using letters (particles) in various combinations to someone. He has a sense experience or impression, and a perception of letters in combination and also experiences the thought that is the same or very similar to that created by the author.  Can I say that the thought was simply created as a result or effect of the letter combinations? That is not true, as the same or similar thought was and is also in the mind of the author. The letter combinations reproduced the thought or idea and are just the transmitters of the thought. The thought is in the mind of the author and then embedded in the letter combinations, but is not the letter combinations.

We could argue that the particles and waves are simply the transmitters or conveyers of the color which is contained in the leaf as a reality, then reciprocally invoked in the preceiver through the generation by the color green of certain vibrations or frequencies. So qualities become properties of bodies.

We must assume “green” as a quality of bodies. This “green” causes a vibration of 589 billion vibrations per second, this vibration comes to the optic nerve which is so constructed that it knows: when 589 billion vibrations arrive, they can only come from a green surface. (Steiner)

Thus, equally, all mental representations derived from sense experience are the result of ideas already in nature herself. Sense experience is necessary, however, for us to access these ideas or thoughts of nature (language of nature). Without our engagement of nature, these would remain as potential, dormant in nature. However, it is not enough to have a sense experience; this experience must be meaningful, that is,it must involve a mind and consciousness that can comprehend the thought or idea hidden in nature’s sense code (sense-data).

If mind is nothing but a series of physical and chemical reactions in the brain based on sense experience, can such a “mind” comprehend anything on its own? We know from history and from the study of mind that thoughts can come independent of sense experience, in deep mediation, the self shut off from the outside world. The more we cut ourselves off from sense experience, the more we find ourselves confronted with thoughts and ideas.

The two givens of man are sense experience and the inner experience of thinking. These are real. Can the same be said for particles? For modern physics, all qualities are due to motion. Thus, what itself moves, the particles, do not have qualities. But, by the earlier logic, it is the qualities that must be pre-existing, so if particles have no quality, they are not real. What is real is motion, the dynamic, and its interaction with other qualities (excitation).

Can I make such an assumption about moving atoms? If motion occurs, there must be something that moves. By what do I recognize motion? Only by seeing that the bodies change their place in space. But what I see before me are bodies with all qualities of color, etc.

So what does the physicist want to explain? Let us say color. He says: it is motion. What moves? A colorless body. Or, he wants to explain warmth. He again says: it is motion. What moves? A body without warmth. In short: if we explain all qualities of bodies by motion, we finally have to assume that the moving objects have no qualities, as all qualities originate in motion.

To recapitulate. The physicist explains all sense-perceivable, all sense-perceptible qualities by motion. So, what moves cannot yet have qualities. But what has no qualities cannot move at all. Therefore, the atom assumed by physicists is a thing that dissolves into nothing if judged sharply.

So, the whole way of explanation falls. We must ascribe to color, warmth, sounds, etc., the same reality as to motion. With this, we have refuted the physicists, and have proved the objective reality of the world of phenomena and of ideas. (Steiner)

June 17, 2010 Posted by pleromic | Science | 1 Comment

Mass and Matter

The concept of mass is intrinsically tied to that of matter, as mass is considered in physics to be a property of matter, that is, something that matter just has or is. So what is mass? In essence, it is a property of resistance. Resistance to what? In physics, to motion, which itself is only possible to the extent that a force is applied.

Quantitative measure of inertia, or the resistance of a body to a change in motion. The greater the mass, the smaller is the change produced by an applied force. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Mass is constant, unlike weight, which is variant depending on the force being applied (gravitational force) to an object.

Unlike weight, the mass of an object remains constant regardless of its location. Thus, as a satellite moves away from the gravitational pull of the Earth, its weight decreases but its mass remains the same. In ordinary, classical chemical reactions, mass can be neither created nor destroyed. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Mass is not restricted to objects, but also to particles, and even to energy.

Albert Einstein‘s special theory of relativity shows that mass and energy are equivalent, so mass can be converted into energy and vice versa. Mass is converted into energy in nuclear fusion and nuclear fission…

…However, relativity adds the fact that all types of energy have an associated mass, and this mass is added to systems when energy is added, and the associated mass is subtracted from systems when the energy leaves. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Finally, mass is involved in the phenomenon known as gravity, in the sense that mass can generate as well as resist gravitational force (from other bodies). This means that mass is polaric, with a positive and negative pole. That which resists motion can also generate motion.

A body’s mass also determines the degree to which it generates or is affected by a gravitational field. If a first body of mass m₁ is placed at a distance r from a second body of mass m₂, the first body experiences an attractive force F given by

where G is the universal constant of gravitation, equal to 6.67×10⁻¹¹ kg⁻¹ m³ s⁻². This is sometimes referred to as gravitational mass

Inertial and gravitational mass have been proven in physics to be equivalent, that is polaric.

Repeated experiments since the seventeenth century have demonstrated that inertial and gravitational mass are equivalent; this is entailed in the equivalence principle of general relativity. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

We can also then say that gravity is polaric, having a negative and positive pole. Or in terms of dynamic functionalism, we could say that Gravity, as the common functioning principle is a antithetical unity consisting of negative gravity and positive gravity, or rather, centrifugal force (which from the perspective of an outside observer, we could call an upward pulling force or “levitation”) and centripetal force (gravity, or “gravitation”).

In conclusion, mass is a property of matter (which is essentially now only comprehensible as a field of force) that both resists the forces of other fields and generates its own force applied to other fields, as that is also the same force that it uses to resist.  The greater the mass of a field, the greater the force that it generates, the more it will, as a result, resist being moved by other fields, and the more it will be able to exert force to act on (shift, influence) other fields.

The issue we still have to address is that of the concept at the base of all this, matter, or the more usual term in physics, body, but since we have already addressed this, we have to come to terms with the deeper underlying concept in physics of particles, which are presumed to now be what is meant by matter.

June 17, 2010 Posted by pleromic | Science | Leave a Comment

Clinical Trials – Heterogeneity Problem

The fundamental methodological problem of RCT for drug testing is that of the evident and clear variability in human metabolism operating within an approach that depends on homogeneity of test subject population.

Anatomists have long known that there is little homogeneity in the shape of organs even in apparently healthy persons, and that the drawn shape of organs is an artificial ideal or representation of reality, not reality itself. More recently, biochemists and physiologists have discovered that each person has a range of metabolic functions and markers that differ, sometimes widely, from those of others. Apparently “normal” persons manifest very different metabolic patterns.

While healthy young men of the same height and weight may resemble one another in their overall oxygen consumption, specific chemical reactions may take place, under basal conditions, five or ten times as fast in one individual as in another. Perhaps the most direct extensive evidence on this point is based upon differences in enzyme levels and enzyme efficiencies. Perhaps next to this in importance is the fact that there are wide individual differences among “normals” with respect to several endocrine activities, and there is also anatomical evidence of substantial differences in endocrine patterns … The overall conclusion seems clear that, while the body chemistry of each individual is subject to some change with environmental conditions, each individual would, if subjected to the same stress and given the same food, exhibit a highly distinctive metabolic pattern. This pattern is genetically determined and undoubtedly correlated with his distinctive set of organ weights and activities. (Roger Williams, quoted from Coulter, The Controlled Clinical Trial).

Williams further claims that likely less than 3% of persons deemed “normal” need the presumed “minimum daily requirments” of nutrients. There is actually no normal in an absolute sense; instead, normal is defined effectively as the average of individual variability, meaning that the person who actually fits the artificially created “normal” regarding biochemistry is less common than those who are apparently healthy and don’t fit the statistically defined norm; indeed, Williams claims that “we have never found [a subject for clinical trials] who exhibited a pattern which was free from distinctive variations from the average.”

This is the problem of human individuality. It extends from fingerprints, to biochemistry to thought processes. Human heterogeneity is greater than that of animals species. Metabolism also varies with age, sex, diet, seasons, dirunal cycles, emotions, etc.

A critical heterogeneity for RCT relates to “immune globulins.” These are involved in reacting to any poisonous materials, including drugs, which are essentially poisons (RCTs were not so much intended by health authorities to measure efficacy, but safety, thus, in essence, whether any efficacy outweighs adverse effects, which is deemed to constitute “safety”).  “Even the reaction of the same individual to the same antigen can vary with circumstances” and the number of antibodies one individual can generate seems to be endless. (Coulter, The Controlled Clinical Trial)

As Coulter concludes, while there are clearly things in common, “human variety is the fundamental issue” in RCTs, and such a procedure will only be valid “if it can accomodate and allow for, the heterogeneity of human sickness.” For the very basis of the RCT is a presumed “homogeniety” that must be there, or at least produced, screening for the evident and widespread heterogeneity:

…that there are significant similarities among the diseased patients which we can recognize and group into diagnostic categories [which] are meaningful [such that] patients presenting the same medical condition will respond to the drug in a similar fashion.” (Theodore Greiner, MD, 1965, quoted in Coulter)

And yet, the statistics show that most drugs tested only work for less than half of the patients they are prescribed for, as revealed by the head of research at one of the largest pharnaceutical companies. (https://www.rejuvenation-science.com/n_drugs_performance.html)

Thus, the very nature of human difference is what undermines the effectiveness and validity of the RCT.

The conflict is demonstrated in the fact that to the extent that a RCT takes into account the heterogeneity as much as possible, it will produce more valid knowledge of human biology of a given disease condition, but at the cost of reducing the validity of the findings for the efficacy of treatment. Another is that the more the patient group is narrowly defined to account for commonalities, the smaller the number of patients will be found for the trial, as expressed in the so-called “Lasagna’s Law” named after the medical educator, which states that “it is worldwide experience that the supply of case material is in inverse proportion to the facilities for studying it.” (quoted in Coulter) One observer stated that sample sizes are too small to reach a conclusion in most studies. (Curtis Meinert of the John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, quoted in Coulter).

Despite the best efforts to make the process filter out and account for the differences, in order to find any commonalities, there are still severe methodological problems that cannot be overcome. Part of this is due to human nature itself (physician and patient biases) and part due to significant epistemological issues involving a test which seeks to remove human difference to test a drug which then must be applied to humans who will react as much if not more on their individual biochemistry as on what they might have in common. The low success of drug treatment, and the fact that they work only slightly better than placebo, and the very problem of modern medicine – so-called side-effects, or rather unwanted poisoning effects – is itself a function of this innate and deep human individuality.

Another major problem is reproducibility, which is one of the hallmarks of the physical scientific method, as clinical trials are often not reproducible or even comparable with one another.

If the clinical analyses of one doctor and another, of one medical center and another, or of patient groups within the same medical center are to be comparable, then the populations must be identified and divided according to their pertinent clinical properties … Without such identifications, subgroups of patients cannot validly be compared. Without the identifications, unreproducible clinical investigations are perpetuated and increased… Neither the experience of many clinicians, the reports and surveys of the medical literature, nor the data now being enthusiastically stored in computer programs have been arranged with consistent uniform classifications for differentiating precisely among clinical subgroups. Whether stored in clinician, literature, or computer, the data of one system or source often cannot be compared with those of another; physicians in one location may find they cannot rely on interpretations made elsewhere; statistical and computational analyses, therefore, yield precise but useless generalities, often inaccurate, and often valueless in application to individual patients. (Alvan Feinstein, M.D., 1976) (quoted in Coulter)

Epistemologically, it would make more sense to design a test that worked with and on the basis of human heterogeneity than a test – RCT – that works despite and against this heterogeneity, like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

June 13, 2010 Posted by pleromic | Science | Leave a Comment

Randomised Clinical Trials in Medicine

Western medical science is based on the use of randomized clinical trials (RCT) to determine whether a particular medical procedure is effective or not. This approach was introduced in the 1950s and has since become the dominant means, the so-called “gold standard,” such that it is the very foundation for the more recent move to “evidence-based” medicine. Prior to this, medicine was based essentially on observation by the skilled clinician (the art of medicine).

At the heart of the rather meteoric rise of the RCT in medicine is the issue of causality. Causality as an issue implies lack of knowledge or doubt regarding what one has observed. This problem of the split between what has been observed and to what extent it represents what actually occurred goes back to the dawn of rational thought in human history, the Ancient Greeks. This dawn brought with it a reciprocal darkness or veil regarding the essence of reality. This was not a problem experienced before. Even within Greek philosophy, the problem did not arise as such until the time of Aristotle, who turned from the world of Platonic Ideas, to be discovered and understood through an internal thought process, to the world of nature, that is, the external world. Here, one is thrown back on observation of events which must then be interpreted.

Aristotle identified levels of cause which meant that causation was a complex, and not simply reducible to “A causes B.” This he did because for him, reality existed beyond the material, external plane. Thus, while he included the more modern definition of cause (efficient cause), as that external entity from which the change commences, he also included a formal cause, which is the plan or Idea of the thing, such that we can understand the context of the emergence of B. He also included the final cause, which is the purpose or end of the thing, what today we only find in the humanities in the form of motive. Thus, for Aristotle, A is the efficient cause of B, but not the formal cause, nor the final cause. Aristotle also included the various parts of an event or thing that were necessary for it to happen. We can understand these levels of causation by considering that a movie is produced by an author, working from an original Idea (final cause), put into effect by a producer (formal cause) working from a script, then effected by a director (efficient cause) who needs actors (material cause), locations, sets, etc to make it all come together.

Because of the reduction of natural science to the material plane, only the second two causes were retained. Out of the one came the view that there must be a link between A and B as per the following (as regards the efficient cause):
1. That laws exist in nature whereby the occurrence of B (effect) is dependent on the occurrence of A (cause).
2. That the occurrence of A is prior to, or at least simultaneous, and not after B.
3. That there is a continguity, or chain of events that connect A to B, or B to A. (Wikipedia – Causality)

and that there could be necessary, sufficient and contributing causes at the level of material cause.

However, the advance of quantum physics since the 1920s has forced a reconsideration of this rather simplistic approach to the issue of causality.  What happened is that causality became a matter, not of determination but of probability. Prior to the last half century, the efficient cause was considered to be of greater importance than the material cause, thus seeing causality in deterministic terms.  Now, however, the order was reversed. Further, the problem of the non-neutrality of the observer presented by psychology and quantum physics, along with the problems in Western philosophy regarding any clear judgment as to the link between what is observed and what is real, led to a a need for a different approach, one that worked with uncertainty, but provided a degree of certainty, that is, that could manufacture order out of seeming randomness.

The problem was particularly acute in medicine, long considered more of an art dependent on the clinical skills of the physician, which, in the modern era, produced a medical empiricism, in which what was used worked, often simply because what worked was what was used, meaning that the beliefs of the physician often determined the positive judgement regarding a medical procedure.
The change from the observational approach in medicine came about because of the work of one man in particular, A.B. Hill, who had trained as a doctor, but had to cut short his medical career for one involving research. He used a training in economics to devise a means to try to screen or control for various possibly biases. Initially intended simply to allow for a better judgment as to whether a factor was causal in nature or not, his list of criteria became essentially fixed as to what was causal or not. He then devised an experiment involving the random selection of test subjects to try to minimize the problem of operator bias.

Lacking any clear basis any more for asserting causality, Hill decided that causality could be expressed as a probability, namely by the probability of event B (effect) occurring in the presence or absence of event A. He himself admitted the problem of dealing satisfactorily with the issue of causality itself as a concept (“I have no wish, nor the skill to embark upon a philosophical discussion of the meaning of ‘causation.’” – Hill AB: The environment and disease: Association or causation? Proceed Roy Soc Medicine – London 1965, 58:295-300.)

This approach, termed “counterfactual causality” derives from the works of David Hume in the 18th Century. Humes scepticism about knowing anything lent itself to the use of statistics with their probability, which was seen as the closest one could get to determining causality in the modern era. The idea of randomisation was invented by R.A. Fisher and applied to agriculture in the 1920s and 1930s. Fisher was a good friend of Hill, though he later strongly criticised the Hill’s research on the link between smoking and lung cancer.

The counterfactual outcomes have no objective criteria of measurement. Thus, “the best option is usually to estimate population average effects.” (http://www.ete-online.com/content/2/1/11#B6) To overcome the bias effect due to clinical observation, Hill adopted the randomised selection process.

Hill’s approach was increasingly adopted in medicine as a solution for a growing epistmological problem, that of the problem of determining causality in a world of relativity and growing complexity due to rapidly growing biochemical discoveries about the processes of the body as well as the nature of disease (in this latter case, from the rather simple causal model of infectious disease as reflected in Koch’s postulates, to the more complex situation of modern chronic disease conditions where, as Hill himself held, several if not many factors were involved in one condition, or the reverse, one factor involved in several conditions).

However, Hill himself was undecided as to the value of his approach to determine causality: “None of my nine viewpoints can bring indisputable evidence for or against the cause-and-effect hypothesis.” and the cautionary notes he actually made were essentially tossed to the winds (http://www.ete-online.com/content/2/1/11#B6) And as other commentators on the issue of causality have stated, there really is no longer any causal criteria at all in epidemiology: “Causal inference in epidemiology is better viewed as an exercise in measurement of an effect rather than as criterion-guided process for deciding whether an effect is present or not.” (Rothman KJ, Greenland S: Causation and causal inference in epidemiology. Am J Publ Health 2005, 95:S144-150.)

Another careful observer of Hill’s work has argued that “the application of seven of [his] nine considerations…involve comprehensive causal theories…If complexity becomes very large, the uncertainty regarding whether or not to apply a given consideration can be expected to approach a decision made by coin toss. Thus, with increasing complexity, the heuristic value of Hill’s considerations diminishes.” (http://www.ete-online.com/content/2/1/11#B6) Indeed, Hill’s considerations were essentially treated a causal criteria. (Phillips CV, Goodman KJ: The missed lessons of Sir Austin Bradford Hill. Epidemiol Perspect & Innov 1965, 1:3.)

Thus, we have today a situation where a probability analysis is used to stand in for a true causal analysis, but also where that probability analysis is itself subject to increasing complexity in the light of advances in biochemistry, neurology, psychoneuroimmunology, genetics and epigenetics to mention a few areas, which complexity diminishes the validity of any such analysis given the inherent scope for bias due to the nature of the human mind. The very system that was designed initially to reduce operator bias and error is not capable of dealing with increasing complexity. The state of affairs is such that any drug tested is usually barely better than placebo, and there can be as many studies showing a negative outcome as positive. As one medical researcher commented: “So the FDA conducted an analysis of antidepressant drug trials and found that of 38 trials for which the evidence appeared favorable, 37 had been published. Whereas of 36 trials for which the evidence did not appear favorable toward antidepressant drugs, 22 were not published at all, and 11 were published in a way that misleadingly conveyed the outcome as though it was favorable.” (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/06/12/beatrice-golomb-interview.aspx) This certainly reduces the value of conventional medicine’s claim to knowledge based on published studies.

While there are indeed influences from drug companies to bend studies their way, and there are tremendous conflicts-of-interest in that most drug trials are funded, at least in part, by pharmaceutical companies, and the problem of the regulators becoming captured by those they regulate, there is a fundamental problem at the heart of the RCT which makes it a very poor tool for determining the efficacy of drugs or vaccinations. The RCT has severe methodological and epistemological flaws.

June 12, 2010 Posted by pleromic | Science | 1 Comment

Materialism-Idealism

The basic position of most practical scientists is that mind and consciousness are derived from and manifestations of matter. Matter is assumed, that is, it’s nature is assumed to be known and science is asserted to be limited to the systematic inquiry of the material universe.  Here are a few preliminary thoughts on this.

The reality of self-aware existence is that I, as an individual, know only two things from the start: that I am, and that there are things out there that are as well, but are not me. These things are objects and I am the subject of my existence as a self-conscious being. Next, at a second level of immediate knowledge, my existence as subject is also divided between my internal awareness of self as a conscious being (mind) and my awareness of my physical body as object – what is often referred to as the mind-body problem.

This innate knowing of every self-aware person that there is self and other, subject and object, mind and body, leads to three fundamental propositions around which all speculation about existence (ontology) turns: 1. that existence is derived from that which is subject; 2. that existence is derived from that which is object; 3. that existence is a dynamic polarity between subject and object.

The first two propositions are more familiarly known. The first is the basis for the view that the true or pure subject – mind – is the source of the things, which is often referred to as idealism (from the Platonic position that there exist Ideas or spiritual archetypes that are the cause of physical manifestations (objects), such that such manifestations have not independent reality. The second is the basis of the view that objects are the source of all that is subject, that is, mind and anything that is a product of mind. This is referred to as materialism, because objects are deemed to consist of matter, and thus, matter is deemed to be the cause of mind.

Current science is essentially based on the materialist viewpoint, denying an independent reality to mind and anything that is not matter, that is, anything that is a quality – feeling, thought, color, etc. – meaning anything that cannot be expressed in terms of quantitative measures involving space, time and motion (all things deemed “subjective,” meaning not within the proper scope of science). In fact, mind itself is reduced to the brain.

The foundation of reality for modern science is matter and physics, backed up by the quantitative analysis supplied by mathematics, is considered “true” science. This has so influenced all areas of systematic human inquiry that almost all have sought to model themselves on the physical sciences, using quantitative measurement methods by means of statistical analyses.

What precisely is this matter that is presumably the basis of all existence and reality, including mind? While matter seems obvious and solid and is essentially taken for granted, once examined it becomes more like the Chesire Cat, leaving only a grin behind. “The nature and definition of matter have been subject to much debate.” (Wikipedia – Materialism)

The long-standing atomic theory of matter holds essentially that it is highly divisible into minute, essentially invisible “particles” while it is also highly resistant, giving us the “hardness” of matter, whether in gas, liquid or solid state. These two things would seem logically incompatible. At the same time, quantum physics reveals that particles can also act as waves, and field theory from the 19th century to today holds that energy and matter are interchangeable, and more recently, only about 5% of matter in the universe is considered to be traditional “matter,” the rest being “dark matter” or “dark energy” but “with no agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of.” (Wikipedia – Materialism).

To get around the problem of the term “matter” some philosophers of science have started to refer to “physicalism” in place of materialism. Physicalism seeks to define reality as that which is explainable on the basis of physics.

Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. The term was coined by Otto Neurath in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote:

“According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical objects.”

In contemporary philosophy physicalism is most frequently associated with philosophy of mind, in particular the mind/body problem, in which it holds that the mind is a physical thing in all senses. In other words, all that has been ascribed to “mind” is more correctly ascribed to “brain”. Physicalism is also called “materialism”, but the term “physicalism” is preferable because it has evolved with the physical sciences to incorporate far more sophisticated notions of physicality than matter, for example wave/particle relationships and non-material forces produced by particles.
The ontology of physicalism ultimately includes whatever is described by physics — not just matter but energy, space, time, physical forces, structure, physical processes, information, state, etc. Because it claims that only physical things exist, physicalism is generally a form of monism.

In effect, matter has now disappeared, to be replaced by physical powers, forces and energies, though the view is still that only that which can be explained in terms of space, time and motion is real, that is has an independent existence or reality. Thus, the mind is reduced to the brain, behavior to chemistry, physiology to biological processes, disease to germs, inheritance to genes, medical treatment to chemicals and surgery, etc. Physicalism is materialism in a new guise. Both represent the position that reality is “objective” in nature and that everything else is derived from and an effect of the motion of physical objects in space.

The whole of the history of Western philosophy has underlined that the knowledge of things or objects in terms of their quantitative or outer appearances is not certain knowledge, that is, cannot be proven to be reality itself as opposed to simply a representation of reality.

Western science has been itself limited to the world of objects, the so-called “objective”position. The problems of looking at reality and knowledge from the point of view of the object are such that it is only supportable to the extent that the philosophical problems are ignored and science simply considered an empirical exercise. This is fine when it comes to the results of such inquiry about nature and man, but it is less than fine when those who wish to so inquire also then insist that inquiries about man and nature that go beyond the “objective” position are invalid and non-scientific.

The knowledge derived from the examination of the material or physical, that is, quantitative aspects of reality is valid as far as it goes, but this knowledge is refracted and corrupted when it is assumed that it can be used to explain all of reality, and if not now, then eventually, though this is simply an assertion, a dog-in-a-manger attitude. This is essentially Hempel’s Dilemma.

Hempel’s Dilemma attacks how physicalism is defined. If, for instance, one defines physicalism as the universe is composed of everything known by physics, one can point out that physics cannot describe how the mind functions. If physicalism is defined as anything which may be described by physics in the future, one is saying nothing. (Wikipedia – Physicalism)

The problem with the materialist, and the more recent physicalist, position is that it is epistemologically unsound, being based on assertion only in terms of its claim to knowledge, and the only true knowledge at that. The only thing that man can be certain of, that he cannot deny without at the same time affirming the opposite, is the fact of his own being and self-awareness, that his is and that he is aware that he is. The world of objects of things “out there” beyond and apart from that awareness of being – I am – is, but is open to doubt as to whether it is real. While we might conceivably not be real, being just a dream of some deity, any science has to start from the acceptance of the fact of self-awareness as being real. This tells us that it is subject or mind that is the basis of reality and that mind is not reducible to an object, or to that which can be defined physically.

At the same time, the idealist position is no more tenable, as it essentially argues that the physical or material world is only an appearance or construct of mind, and not real, that is maya in the ancient Indian philosophy. The very physical nature of the world outside of our mind argues that it is real, even if the knowledge about its outer appearances is not necessarily reality.

Thus, we are left with the undoubted reality of mind and consciousness, as well as the reality of the physical world, though in some doubt as to what its true nature is. This is the starting point for the dynamic philosophy – that mind is the motive reality and the world of objects the manifested reality, and that valid knowledge of reality goes beyond the physical sense world. Mind is capable of evolution, whereas an object (matter) is not, and mind influences the nature of objects and their manifestation. Mind is also not limited or reducible to the brain, nor are feelings reducible to chemistry, though they can affect body chemistry.

June 6, 2010 Posted by pleromic | Science | Leave a Comment