http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_oh_to_be.html

http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/winter02/polwin02-5.htm

It seems we agree on the dilemma I mentioned.

“Materialism – is it a minority viewpoint among physicists?”

I think I harmed Aruns argument – I simply meant that he was correct that it is shocking “if anything but a minority of physicists confuse everything that we can study scientifically, with everything that there is.”

Torbjorn, you’re right that it takes two to communicate. If we want to assign blame, it’s mostly the fault of the religious right. On this issue, as on evolution, they’re generally not interested in communicating. I wasn’t trying to assign blame, though; I was just trying to address the question of what makes them see things the way that they do.

Curiously, when people are in us-versus-them situations, it seems that they are reluctant or even hostile to the idea of trying to see things from their enemy’s point of view. The tendency instead is to shut off that line of enquiry by declaring that the enemy is bad or stupid and there’s nothing more to it. Here in America,the most extreme example is the way that most people seem quite content to believe that the terrorists who attack them are motivated by pure evil or hatred of freedom. In discussions of the foundations of quantum mechanics, each combatant simply declares his opponents to be crackpots. I think it can never do any harm to be able to see things from one’s opponent’s point of view, and an inability to do so puts one at a disadvantage.

On abortion, maybe I have it wrong. Perhaps among the various articles and columns out there pushing the pro-choice viewpoint there are many that address the questions about foetal neural development. I haven’t seen even one of those, though, while I’ve seen many that studiously avoid the question.

Materialism – is it a minority viewpoint among physicists? Sean wrote an article in which he suggested that not only was he a materialist, but that the scientific method actually leads to materialism. Of course it does not, but I’d wager that Sean wasn’t thinking about subjective experience when he wrote that. Anyway, as he indicates, materialism is very common among scientists.

But if you want evidence that materialism isn’t confined to a small minority, go and ask a few physicists the following question: “Do you believe that the physical world is all that exists?”

Got that. But a communication has two agents, ‘us versus them’ not withstanding.

“Torbjorn, you say that the answer is that they shouldn’t worry and everything is fine. Maybe, but the point is that they appear to be hiding something.”

No, I did not. I must confess to being naive about US abortion politics. But I said that maybe pro-choicers do not discuss the point of feeling pain because there is no such point. If someone raise the point and are willing to listen, it seems easy enough to answer, at least as of todays knowledge. But here you are the expert.

On materialism I did not understand your first post, probably because this must be a minority point of view, as Arun says.

But, at one time, I was a physicist, and I’d never do this. Maybe that has something to with why I’m no longer a physicist .

“Ask a physicist do people have souls and he’ll say that that’s a ridiculous notion comparable to the idea of ghosts or spirits. “

And I’d be shocked if anything but a minority of physicists confuse everything that we can study scientifically, with everything that there is. I doubt very much that among male physicists anyone has approached “She loves me/she loves me not” as a scientific problem!

Physicsts will say that what we can know with some reasonable degree of objectivity and certainty is almost completely within the realm of what we can study scientifically. There may be some that say they don’t care about anything beyond that realm; but I doubt many will say that that is all there is.

Here are two links of physicists talking about something other than physics:

http://www.sawf.org/Newedit/edit03192001/musicarts.asp

http://www.sawf.org/Newedit/edit02192001/musicarts.asp

-Arun

First, you both missed my point. I believe this is because of “us versus them” thinking, where you see that I’m not giving the established party line and identify me as somebody who needs to be convinced to be less critical of scientists and more critical of religious people. I am actually a physicist and an athiest and I’m working on theoretical neuroscience. I also advocate abortions for all (OK, well not quite).

What I’m trying to do is point out a communication failure. Ask a physicist do people have souls and he’ll say that that’s a ridiculous notion comparable to the idea of ghosts or spirits. Now think about how that sounds to somebody who identifies the soul with subjective experience. It sounds like the physicist is saying that people don’t have experiences. That makes the physicist seem a little deranged.

Now once again, what I’m not trying to do is say that physicists are bad and religious people are good, so please don’t try to convince me that physicists are good and religious people are bad.

With regard to abortions, you both missed the point there as well. I am not saying that religious people are good or that the poor little babies have an unpleasant experience. I am saying that if you go to, for example, prochoice.org, with the intention of finding out what these people have to say about the experience (or lack of it) that the foetus might have, you will find that they studiously avoid the subject. They will appear, to a religious person for whom that may be the most important question, to be avoiding giving an honest answer. Torbjorn, you say that the answer is that they shouldn’t worry and everything is fine. Maybe, but the point is that they appear to be hiding something. To go along with the pro-choice bandwagon, you have to deliberately ignore that question, and that is why these people appear dishonest in comparison to the anti-abortionists.

‘But if neuroscience can describe parts of the mechanism in the brain without discovering a ‘mind’ it can only truthfully say so.’

Yes, but as Sean mentioned in his article, most scientists are materialists. There is a difference between saying “Subjective experience cannot be subjected to scientific study” and “Science has discovered that the mind doesn’t exist.” The first statement is true and the second is false. In fact, the second statement is absolutely ridiculous. Materialism happens when we confuse what “everything that we can study scientifically” with “everything that there is”. Specifically, the basic statement of materialism, namely that the physical world is all there is, is quite obviously wrong because we have experiences.

It is because we, as scientists, spend so much time investigating the physical world that we forget that there is such a thing as experience. Having forgotten that, it is easy to say that the physical world is all there is.

And that “the pro-choice people talk about choice but try to avoid the central issue – namely that it involves killing something which might feel pain” must be wrong. I remember vaguely that it is observed (this year?) that such young foetuses pain signals does not even reach what is to become a brain. The mechanisms for feeling and especially feeling pain are not there yet. So there is no issue to avoid.

“Usually when I try to present these arguments people react by trying to insist that pro-choice people or scientists don’t make the mistakes that I’m talking about.”

No doubt.

“That is irrelevant, though. The point is that an open-minded religious person will see things the way that I describe, and the battle for hearts and minds will have to be won by being honest and eliminating dogmatism.”

But from the point of view of science it is honest. And since it is willing to observe and change, the dogmatism must be on the other side. It is a dilemma.