Taking on Descartes and Dawkins

A friend of mine has a clever quote on her IM profile that says, "The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up." That quote has no doubt given inspiration to many a hopeless procrastinator, myself included, who can't seem to find the early motivation to stay caught up. I hate that dumb idiom. "Caught up". It's a completely arbitrary figure of speech. Who decided that combination of words-- "caught": past tense of verb To Catch, and "up": preposition denoting relative location--would signify something that involves neither catching nor a directional vector.

Let's say you substitute comparable synonyms, and decided to ask a classmate if they were "snagged skyward" in school this week. They would probably A) Be offended and reply, "No, as a matter of fact I was NOT blazin the chronic before Phys, you son of a bee!" B) Give you a dirty look for insinuating an indecent sexual escapade involving an astronaut, or C) Chuckle awkwardly to appear privy to the meaning of your hip lingo, mentally taking note to google it later for the answer.

Ehh, what's the point in ranting against figures of speech/idioms/literary devices anyway. They are so plentiful in the English language they practically grow on trees, fall from the sky, run rampant, dot the countryside, outnumber the stars, etc. Besides, speaking a language inevitably involves the use of idioms. They're here to stay. How many of you have shaken hands with a "wet noodle", had someone "rain on your parade", "cashed a three" playing basketball, "drank like a sailor", known someone with a "chip on her shoulder", ridden a "crotch-rocket", and the list goes on. Most of the idioms I find myself utilize natural phenomena, movie quotes, irony, sports slang, exaggeration, comparisons, and sarcasm. This is to be expected, b/c I tend to think of things along those lines (sports, sarcasm, outdoors, witty movies) and also because it's easier for me to convey an idea by describing a mental pictures of things. "A picture is worth a thousand words" is completely true of my mind.

My point is that a fair amount of what we speak and write literally doesn't make sense (pure definition of literally here, as in "considering words at original face value"). Consider this: Learning English must be a bitch to someone who grew up speaking a different language. That last sentence would make zero sense to someone learning English as a second language, and I hope you can see why. What am I getting at? Well, if what we say literally isn't what we mean, then where is the meaning found?

If I say "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," you'd probably interpret that to literally mean "He's really hungry." But, let's say you're from a part of the world where eating horse meat is quite common, east asia for example, you might interpret my phrase, "He's hungry, especially for horse meat." The meaning was not contained in the words I used. The actual words were just the tools I used to get an idea across. It’s conceivable that I could have used an intricate system of blinking or skillful smoke signaling if that were a normal way to communicate in modern society. Obviously they are not for good reason.

In that mock interaction, meaning was conveyed b/c the listener heard the words I said and then made an interpretation about what I meant in those words. Before making a final conclusion, the listener integrated the actual words I used with the tone of my voice, the look on my face, how well he/she knows me, the context of the situation...you get the idea. But, "meaning" never existed inherently in the words or sounds I made, nor was it magically created by my mind and then transferred to the listener's. Rather, two people exchanged information so as to understand something external to themselves: namely, the idea of being hungry. Meaning is recognized and comes to life in the human mind; but it doesn't intrinsically arise from the mind any more than the human voice intrinsically arises from your mobile phone.

This post hasn't been too helpful yet. Lots of questions to answer. Where is meaning found? What is it? Where does it come from?

First things first. More specifically, I think meaning dwells in the ideas and thoughts and feelings and memories and desires and wills and needs of people who are responding to the world they find themselves in. From a medical standpoint, these phenomena occur via complex cognitive processes that are carried out, in simplest terms, by neural signaling (which is essentially millions of coordinated bioelectrical impulses that cause certain biochemical and physiological responses in the body). Wait a second, you say, how then can a biochemical event or physiological process create an abstraction like meaning? What would that mean about meaning? Can it?

Of course it can't. Physical material can't create nonphysical material. Matter and energy can't be destroyed or created, the Laws of Thermodynamics tell us as much. Interactions of molecules and energy can never give rise to anything but more interactions of molecules and energy. At best, physical things can only allow the perception of nonphysical things. And perceptions can be misleading, as we all know.

I’ll go a step further and say that I believe that things of a nonphysical nature – e.g. a reality beyond space, time, light, gravity, matter – cannot even be perceived unless one does actually exist. Let me explain. When you perceive something through your senses, say the smell of cookies, there may or may not be freshly-baked cookies nearby. You may be smelling a new candle your roommate bought, and you may get pissed b/c you were given false hopes. So the senses are faulty.

BUT, and this is my point, freshly-baked cookies do exist somewhere in your sensory experience. It may have not even been a direct experience, as in you may have never even smelled cookies before. But you at least have been exposed to the idea of freshly-baked cookies. You simply could not have thought you were smelling something that you didn't even know existed. Perceptions, whether true or not, arise from things that pre-exist the perception. Cookies must pre-exist the smell of cookies. How’s that for a philosophical statement.

So let's review. Reality is evaluated through the senses and the brain, but it is not created by the senses. The brain and the senses serve somewhat like physical chauffeurs of the abstract, transporting information from outside to inside where it can be interpreted. Here's the key to the analogy: if you drive a limousine, you can chauffer the wrong person. But you can't chauffer someone who doesn't exist. Because you'd only be driving yourself, which negates the definition.

Maybe you see where I'm going with this. Physically, concepts such as "truth" and "justice" don't exist. You can't quantify them, or look at them under a microscope, or write formulas about them. They are nonphysical, of no physical substance. But they certainly exist. Trying to argue that abstract concepts like the meaning of life, truth, and justice are literally composed of atoms borders on insanity. So the question is not whether they exist, but rather where the nonphysical comes from and how the brain is able to perceive it.

Finally, the philosophical heart of the matter: 1) Is there a discrete nonphysical – supernatural if you will – reality superimposed upon the natural, physical universe? 2) Or is the nonphysical reality that we perceive only an explainable extension of the natural universe, hence merely physical reality in disguise? If it isn’t starkly apparent already, I believe in a resounding Yes to #1, and a forceful No to #2. If you recall my oh-so-clever fresh-baked cookies analogy, I contended that literal existence must pre-exist perception of existence. I believe the perception of a non-physical, supernatural reality is proof of its existence. This is a massively simplified form of the ontologic argument against strict Naturalism.

On the contrary, Naturalism (aka Physicalism) contends that the universe contains only physical material. It asserts that the perception of the supernatural is an illusion that emerges from the sheer complexity of the human mind. This is completely unsatisfactory to me. Arguing against the absolute existence of the nonphysical is self-defeating. Why? Because the Naturalist (capital N to distinguish from one who enjoys nature) must appeal to Truth, and Logic, and Reason, b/c these are the foundations of scientific Naturalism. He must say, "Naturalism is true/logical/proven based on X,Y and Z, and Theism or anything else that believes in the supernatural is false."

But remember - according to Naturalism - Truth (and Life, Logic, Justice, Love, Reality, Emotion, Courage, Morality, as well as everything else for that matter) is ultimately the derivative of nothing more than completely random, chance interactions of atoms, molecules, electrons, energy, super-strings, light, subatomic particles, and gravity over the course of billions and trillions of years. Thus, "Truth" is nothing but chance! Life is an arbitrary chemical state! Logic is illogical! Love is mechanical improbability! Justice is survival! Morality is scientific practicality! If everything that exists is the result of chance, nothing is meaningful. Naturalism appeals to scientific truth and rationality after undermining these things as complete chance. A rational argument does not appeal to chance to prove an important point, much less the most fundamental question of the universe. Naturalism rests on a theoretical framework that unavoidably deconstructs its legitimacy.

Still lots of unanswered questions. We'll leave that for future posts. For now, it's definitely time for me to stop talking. Besides, still need to get "caught up" on some completely random, chance occurrences in my life that happen to include the USMLE Step 1 on Wednesday.

On second thought, maybe I'll just go play some tennis and then drink some wine.