A couple of months ago The American Scholar, the official magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, published "A New Theory of the Universe," an article by Robert Lanza arguing for a new paradigm called "biocentrism." Basically the idea is that new developments in physics have rendered 19th-century materialism obsolete and that a new approach, stressing the central importance of the consciousness of living things, is required.
I felt that the article, though interesting, tended to overreach by incorporating too many different elements of physics, including some very controversial interpretations. There was not much in the piece that would come as news to readers of this blog, but it was interesting to see a mainstream, academically conservative publication giving its imprimatur to these radical ideas.
Now, in the latest issue of the same magazine (Summer, 2007), several readers have responded to Lanza’s article. A couple of them are enthusiastic, but most are critical. The critical comments indicate how deeply the materialist paradigm is entrenched, and how difficult it is for people to think "outside the box" of their accepted belief system.
One writer opines,
An electron that was struck by a photon 13 billion years ago most assuredly "observed" (reacted to) the event, with no help or a validation from a "consciousness" that would not even exist for most of those 13 billion years.
This comment rather obviously begs the question. An advocate of the central role of consciousness in manifesting existence could argue, among other things, that a) the mind of God, which has always existed, makes the observations or that b) the observations are made only when living, conscious beings come into existence, and these observations then retroactively actualize one particular storyline in history, extending all the way back to the Big Bang.
The same writer concludes that we need to segregate "the individual self from the rest of its vast universal environment that created us, supports us, and functions and has functioned very well with and without us." Again, we do not know for sure that the universe has functioned without us. We may assume that it has, but we don’t know. All we can know is what we process with our consciousness. Anything outside of our consciousness is by definition unknown and unknowable.
I remember something Matthew Cromer once said to me. Try to imagine a parallel universe in which there is no consciousness of any kind. No God, no sentient beings, no minds, no perceptions. In what sense can that universe be said to exist?
Another reader says confidently,
I’ve walked in woods and parks, seeing trees that have fallen without my observation. I know that they made a noise when they fell. I know that if I walk from the kitchen into the living room, the kitchen is still there. I know that these perceptions are true … I will not be deceived by disingenuous argument.
Actually, even from a strict materialist standpoint, a tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear it does not make any noise. It only produces sound waves which, lacking any receiver to pick them up, dissipate uselessly. But the more serious issue is whether this reader can really be so sure that the kitchen is "still there" when he’s not perceiving it. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. There’s really no way for him to know. How could he know? What possible method of proof could he employ?
A third reader criticizes Lanza’s statement, "What we interpret as the world is brought into existence inside our heads." The reader objects,
But that can’t be true. What exists in our head is a brain, with all that makes up a brain.
This strikes me as almost willfully missing the point. Lanza’s statement is literally true and unobjectionable, pertaining as it does only to what we interpret as the world. Obviously our interpretation is the product of our thought processes. What else could it be? This does not mean that the world itself is a product of our thought processes. It also does not rule out such a possibility.
The actual relationship between consciousness and physical reality is mysterious. Physical reality may be a manifestation of conscious thought (idealism), or consciousness may arise from physical antecedents (materialism), or consciousness and physical reality may both arise from a common source (neutral monism), or consciousness and physical reality may arise independently of each other and interact somehow (dualism).
What is equally unclear is the nature of the interaction of the two. Does consciousness merely perceive reality or does it create reality or does it modify a pre-existing reality? And when we talk about consciousness, do we mean the consciousness of the individual or of the human species or of all living things or of God? If consciousness creates or modifies reality, is this reality a whole or partial product of individual consciousness or of collective consciousness or of divine consciousness? And so on.
I don’t pretend to have answers to these knotty questions. What surprises me is that so many other people are so sure that they do.