Because of occasional software problems, I have moved my blog.

It's now at:

http://zarbi.posterous.com

I'd like to go over again an argument I have posted in my blog that I find really interesting, because it highlights why what might seem a rather moderate position, that what happens in our brains may not be all there is to us, is really very strange when you look at it closely.

Most people seem to think that we can't be all physical. That our experiences of the world clearly can't be all just the activities of nerve cells in our heads. That there is some extra quality to our mental lives that a physical explanation can't provide or explain.

Some people hope to explain what is going on in consciousness using quantum mechanics. An example is the work of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff. The use of quantum mechanics to explain consciousness fails for two reasons. First, the spooky effects of quantum mechanics just don't apply to the operation of the brain, as the appropriate bits of circuitry are just too large and too warm. There is almost certainly no place for the kind of quantum computation Penrose considers. Second, there is the “so what” problem. Consciousness seems spooky and quantum mechanics seems spooky. But two spooks don't add up to an explanation.

So what are we left with? What we are left with is trying to explain not the phenomenon of consciousness, but the reason for the belief that it is strange.

There is a good reason for this belief. It is that we can't sense our own brain cells at work. We can't perceive the mechanisms by which our thoughts arise.

Let's try and imagine we could. This is not an absurd suggestion. It is a reasonable suggestion that within the near future we will be able to model a brain through a combination of software and hardware. We will be able to model the activity of all those nerve cells, and all their synapses, and all their stored state. Imagine we have such a model of a brain, and that model thinks... “consciousness is weird”. We will know why it thinks that. We will know precisely where that thought comes from. We can follow every belief, every idea, every thought. When this model brain wonders about subjective experience, or the sensation of colour, we will know precisely which synaptic firings have lead to that thought.

But here's the problem for the dualists. In knowing how the brain ends up with the belief, following synapse by synapse how the thought arises, what more is there to add? Where does the magic come in? If the belief that there are weird subjective experiences can be entirely determined by the physical properties of neurons, what does that mean for that belief?

There's an argument that doesn't really work for me. It's the “one god further” argument. It goes something like this:

(An atheist to, say, a Christian) “You don't believe in Thor, in Zeus, in Bael, in Poseidon. You are an atheist about all those gods. I just go one god further”.

Why doesn't it work? It doesn't work because it doesn't recognise what belief is about, and what it feels like.  This can be seen if you try this out this kind of argument in other areas of life, not religion.

Vegetarian to typical British carnivore: “You don't eat bear, or badger, or snake. You are vegetarian about those meats. I just go a few meats more.”

Or perhaps this works better:

Teetotaller to typical drinker: “You are teetotal with respect to mead, and grog, I just go a few drinks further”.

That's probably closer, given the somewhat drug-like nature of some religion.

So what exactly are the problems with the “one god further” argument?  The first is in the same way as being teetotal is nothing like choosing one drink over another, atheism is nothing like rejecting one set of gods for another. Nothing at all.  The second is that reasons for rejecting one belief system in place of another aren't like the reasons for going all the way to atheism from theism. There may be deep, sometimes violent, differences between religions, but when pushed, believers do tend to say that it's important to believe in something spiritual, no matter what it is. And that's the key thing. What tends to be shared by theists are the beliefs that there is something out there, that we are important in the scheme of things, that morality comes from something higher than us, and that we survive death. All or most of these beliefs are common to all theism, be it worship of Thor or Allah. Theists believe in a spiritual supernatural world, and can hold the view that different theisms are either mistaken views of that world, or worship different aspects of that world. And that's the vast gulf between believers and atheists. It is the vast gulf that the “one god further” argument does not recognise.

If we are going to deal with religion in debate, and politically, it's important to understand why people are religion, and what belief means to them. The “one god further” argument, clever though it is in some ways, fails to deal with those matters.

So what do we use in it's place? One option (one of many) is to point out that over a billion people in this world are labeled as religious, have a foundation for morality, and most have some sort of idea of continuation of something after death. They are called Buddhists. There is no need for a supernatural dictator in order to have those comforting beliefs. If that step is made, then the need for supernatural beliefs of any kind could perhaps be dealt with.