A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy. *** If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value? *** If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic? *** Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.
Sean Carroll's video about mouse fur coloration in those mice which live on lava flows is apparently being used in schools to demonstrate that "science has an example of evolution, crystal clear, in every detail".
Really? EVERY detail? That's a majestic claim. Let's take a little look.
The assumptions come fairly early in the video:
The "four chemical letters in gene MC1R" are different in the dark mouse from those in the light mouse. Then comes the leap to the conclusions: a) this controls color; b) the color conveniently matches dark lava; c) the four changes are "mutations".
If four letters must change to get color differences, then there must be 4*2*4 = 32 [1] different color possibilities, and possibly more depending upon the rest of the gene. Why just one, four element mutation? Why to dark coloration?
Further, the probability of four simultaneous mutations, all suddenly leading to a single, beneficial outcome, is functionally zero.
What are these actual probabilities? Who knows? Carroll does not. These are ignored.
Carroll assumes one mutation to dark color in 100,000 mice. But those births don't always occur in lava flows. So predation would take those born on tan sand. And tan mice would be predated heavily in lava flows, so dark mice would be unlikely to have been born in the lava. Further, the single dark mutation likely would get lost quickly in the gene pool, despite their graphics claiming otherwise.
The probabilities decrease yet again.
Are these even mutations at all? Or distinct classes of pre-existing types? As Cornelius Hunter points out [2], this is an example of
"..."theory-laden observation." Science can get into trouble when the measurements and observations themselves, rather than being theory-neutral and independent of the theories which explain them, are in fact intertwined with those theories."
Further, this is a specific error in logic:
"This can become circular very quickly, and this desert mouse case is a good example of that. Evolutionists assume the genetic differences arose from random mutations, and then claim the evidence as a powerful confirmation of evolution."
The theory-suicide occurs at 8:10 - 8:53, where dark mice from other lava flows are examined for DNA mutations. The same mutation is not - NOT - found. Undeterred, they conclude that there must be many ways to make a dark mouse out of a light mouse. Of course, the proper conclusion is that they do not know what they are talking about, and they are faking their way through the fatal flaw in their theory: their assumption of color control by MC1R has been falsified. So any conclusions based on that false assumption are also false. Make that - FALSE.
It is clear that Carroll's "mutation" is a presupposition, not a conclusion as is advertised. And it also is not "proof" of evolution - especially not actual macroevolution which produces complex organs, metabolic machinery, feedback communication and control systems, languages, timing functions, multiple information over-coding of DNA molecules - or even the precursors: 20 left-handed proteins, oceans of enzymes, the many RNAs, the DNA molecule itself.
Like the Peppered Moth fraud, the mouse coloration claim is not - NOT - in any manner "proof" of evolution by mutation/selection. The claim that "when a dark mouse occurs, that is 'usually a mutation event'" is totally unfounded. It is presumed, presupposed, and not proven, and even disproven in their own video.
"In their "honest moments," as Stephen Jay Gould once put it, even evolutionists admit that random mutation isn't enough, and that adaptation mechanisms are not enough, to explain the kind of large-scale change evolution requires.
Mice changing fur color does not demonstrate how metabolism, the central nervous system, bones, red blood cells, or any other biological wonder could have arisen through random mutations coupled with natural selection.
This is an old technique evolutionists have exploited ever since Darwin. Demonstrate biological change, any biological change, no matter how trivial, and claim victory. Evolutionist Steve Jones once claimed that the changes observed in viruses contain Darwin's "entire argument." That is a gross misrepresentation of the science, and only serves to mislead audiences.
In the above video, biologist Sean Carroll states that thanks to these mice, "science has an example of evolution, crystal clear, in every detail" (6:42-48). It would be difficult to imagine a more absurd canard. Mice changing color is not a crystal clear "example of evolution ... in every detail." Not even close."
Sean Carroll has not proven susceptible to any of Gould's "honest moments".
NOTES:
1. 4 locations, 2 letters/location, 4 possible letters.
I have transcribed the entire 10+ minute speech (after 1:40). I thought it necessary, because he doesn't present a single, coherent argument, he presents a welded series of assertions which are necessary to view as a whole. In that same sense, he doesn't present a single empirical data point, but uses the meta-concept of empiricism as a weapon. So any analysis needs to be against his meta-narrative, and that meant that the entire narrative must be viewed in order that the overall truth value can be mined from it. I have made comments throughout, but the analysis is after the end of the speech, below.
Carroll:
(1:40) "Something we learned by doing science for 400 years is something called “Naturalism”, the idea that there is only one reality; that there are not separate planes of the natural and the supernatural; that there is only one material existence; that we are part of the universe and do not stand outside of it in any way. And the way that science got there is by basically realizing that human beings are not that smart. You are not Vulcans, you are not Mr. Spock, you are not perfectly logical.
We as human beings are subject to all sorts of biases and cognitive shortcomings. We tend to be wishful thinkers and to see patterns where they are not there and so forth. And in response to this science developed techniques for giving ourselves reality checks, for not letting us believe things that the evidence does not stand up to.
[Pure Scientism with unrestricted intellectual range]
One technique is simply skepticism which you may have heard of. Scientists are taught that we should be our own theories harshest critics. Scientists spend all their time trying to disprove all their favorite ideas. It’s a little bit counter intutitve, a different way of doing things, but it helps us resist the lure of wishful thinking.
The other technique is empiricism. We realize that we are not smart enough to get to knowledge of the world just be thinking about it. We have to go out there and LOOK at the world. And what we done by looking at this for the past 400 years is to realize that human beings are not separate; that the world is one thing, the natural world, and that it can be understood.
It is all very counterintuitive; it is not very obvious, this Naturalism claim. When you talk to a person, they have thoughts and feelings and responses. When you talk to a dead person, a corpse – a bit morbid here – you don’t get those same responses, the same thoughts and feelings. It’s very natural, very commonsensical to think that a living person possesses something that a corpse does not, some sort of spirit, some sort of soul or animating life source.
[But science can’t detect it so it cannot exist]
"But this idea does not stand up to closer scrutiny. A big step toward realizing this was made back in the 1600’s by a remarkable woman named Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. They made princesses differently back in the seventeenth century. Elisabeth carried on a year-long correspondence with Rene Descartes, the (unintelligible) theory of mind, body and dualism. And Elisabeth said, “I really don’t understand what you said, because if you really believe that my mind is a separate realm from the body, it’s my mind that makes a choice to lift my arm but it’s my body that does it. [4:09] How does an immaterial mind which you say doesn’t exist at a location in space, how does it act causally on the body? How does it interact with the stuff of which you are made? And Descartes never came up with a reliable, believable response to these objections.
[Why is this not “thinking without looking directly at it and measuring”?]
"Of course, these days the objections are enormously stronger. We say, “you are made of atoms. You’re made of molecules, you’re made of cells, you’re made of atoms, and as (unintelligible), WE KNOW HOW ATOMS BEHAVE. The laws of physics covering the behavior of atoms are COMPLETELY understood. You put an atom in a certain set of circumstances, and you tell me what those circumstances are, and as a physicist, I will tell you what the atom will do.
[pure devotion to determinism and his own ability to predict human behavior, based on determinism]
"If you believe that the atoms inside your brain and your body act differently because they are in your body as opposed to being in a rock or a crystal, then what you are saying is that the laws of physics are wrong…
[But, of course, no one is saying that]
"…that they need to be altered because of the influence of a spirit or soul or something like that. That may be true. We can’t DISPROVE that. But there is no evidence for it. [5:12]
[Of course not. Science has LIMITS, as anyone who has read Popper knows. Refusal to acknowledge the known limits of physical science is obtuse, especially for a scientist promoting metaphysical claims]
[Presupposition of the naturalist dichotomy:
"Either empirical proof for X,
Or X = superstition.
i.e.
Either there is “evidence” for X,
Or, X = superstition.
“Evidence” is defined as material/empirical, under Naturalism.
But Carroll does not apply this principle to his own belief set; only to metaphysics. That demonstrates the lack of actual "evidence" which exists for direct support of metaphysical Naturalism, and Carroll fails to reveal that to the audience.]
[5:12]
"You get a much stronger explanatory framework by assuming that it’s just the laws of physics.
[Where’s the empirical data when you need it? Must we "assume" without such data? Of course we must; there is no data.]
"That kind of reasoning is a big step toward Naturalism.
[Yes, it would be, if you actually believe it without proof].
"Another big step also happened in the 1600s, when Gallileo came across the idea of conservation of momentum. You might say, “Why does conservation of energy get in the way of (unintelligible) and God, but it does. Before Gallileo came along, physics was described by Aristotle, and Aristotle said something that, again, was very obvious and commonsensical – that if you want something to keep moving, you need to push it. Things naturally come to rest, left to their own devices. But if you look at the world, you realize that things are moving all over the place. So Aristotle very logically eventually concluded that you need to invoke the existence of an unmoved mover, which can be identified, of course, with God.
But then of course Gallileo comes along and says, “actually the natural behavior of matter is to keep moving at a constant velocity. Motion is perfectly natural. When things stop, it is because you are acting on them through friction or air resistance or dissipation.
And then Isaac Newton comes along with an elaborate edifice of mechanics which explains the world beautifully in purely material principles. And it’s very, very interesting; once that happened, you realize that the prime mover argument doesn’t work as well, and you can actually see a change in the theological literature of the time.
Before Newton and Gallileo, there was emphasis put on ideas of prime movers and first causes, arguments from cosmology, contingency and so forth; after Newton and Gallileo, the arguments emphasized something else, the argument from design. People would say, “sure you can explain all the planets moving, that’s easy, but all the life forms, the marvelous diversity of life here on earth, that had to be made by some guiding external intelligence. In fact, in the 1700’s Immanuel Kant said, “there will never be an Isaac Newton-made blade of grass”. Then of course in the 1800’s we GOT an Isaac Newton for a blade of grass, his name was Charles Darwin.
Darwin showed how material, matter, all by itself, without guidance, without purpose, without an aim, just by the natural motions of ordinary things can lead to the marvelous diversity of organic life that we see here on Earth. Another huge step in the direction of Naturalism.
[Darwin has been debunked 150 years later. Notice how the words imply that first life is solved without actually saying so.]
Now of course I could go on, we could talk about modern cosmology and the origin of the universe, we could talk about neuroscience and what consciousness is and so forth, but I don’t want to do that right now, we can maybe talk about that later. I don’t want to do it right now, basically because it’s kind of boring.
[actually these are unanswerable; he's wise to avoid them as he so easily dances around them].
"And the reason that it’s kind of boring is that the argument is finished. The debate is over. We’ve come to a conclusion. Naturalism has won. If you go to any university physics department, listen to the talks they give or the papers they write; go to any biology department; go to any neuroscience department; any philosophy department; people whose professional job it is to explain the world, to come up with explanatory framework that matches what we see, no one mentions God. There is never an appeal to a supernatural realm, by people whose job it is to explain what happens in the world. Everyone knows that the Naturalist explanations are the ones that work.
And yet! Here we are! We’re having a debate. Why are we having a debate? Because, clearly, religion speaks to people for reasons other than explaining what happens in the world.
Most people who turn to religious belief do not do so because they think it provides the best biology or cosmology. They turn to religious belief because it provides them with purpose and meaning in their lives. With a sense of Right and Wrong. With a community. With hope.
[He has the massive hubris to declare why theism is accepted by "most people", merely in Naturalistic terms, as if he actually knows that. He most emphatically does not. It has something to do with the resonant ringing of truth value on the one hand vs. personal attachment to a blank, void ideology being declared as empirical truth without empirical proof on the other hand.]
"So if we want to say that science has refuted religion, we need to say that science has something to say about those issues. And on that I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that the universe does not care about you. (laughter) Qua universe. The universe is made up of elementary particles that don’t have intelligence, don’t pass judgment, don’t have a sense of Right and Wrong. And the fear is, the existential anxiety is that if that purpose and meaningfulness is not given to me by the universe, then it cannot exist. The good news is that that fear is a mistake. That there is another option: that we create purpose and meaning in the world.
[Really? I thought we were deterministic, just a bunch of atoms ruled by physics with outcomes predictable by Carroll himself.]
"If you love somebody, it is not because that love is put into you by something outside, it is because you created that from inside yourself. If you act goodness (sic) to somebody, it’s not because you are given instructions to do so, it’s that it’s a choice that you made. In the very scary world, you should be affected at a very deep level [Should? Is that the empirical ‘should’?], by the thought that the universe doesn’t care, does not pass judgment on you, but it’s also challenging and liberating [Atheist freedom of the VOID] that we can create lives that are worth living.
I have never met God. I have never met any spirits or angels. But I have met human beings; many of them are amazing people. And I truly believe that if we accept the universe for what it is, if we approach reality with an open mind and an open heart, then we can create lives very much worth living.
Thank you.
An Analysis of the Content of the Speech:
Carroll is at least consistent. He presumes that science can, in fact, disprove the existence of non-physical reality. He said so up front, and in these words:
” Something we learned by doing science for 400 years is something called “Naturalism”, the idea that there is only one reality; that there are not separate planes of the natural and the supernatural;”
This is, of course, entirely false. Under Popper's falsifiability demarcation, science is limited to the pursuit of physical questions which can be disproven during the attempt to prove them. That eliminates metaphysical issues from the scientific mix. They cannot be tested, physically, experimentally, independently replicated for data comparison. To eliminate the falsification requirement eradicates the ability to declare any unfalsifiable principle to be "objective knowledge". Such unfalsifiable principles are subjective, and are suspect at best. What Carroll has presented is of two kinds: false association (metaphysics conflated with physical phenomenon), and circular (presupposing the conclusion in the premises).
Further, it is easily shown that theism does not address the physical realm, and when ecclesiasticism attempts to do so, it frequently but not always, fails, a point which Carroll attempts to bend into a refutation. But theism is not about the physical realm, and attacking it based on that premise will fail to address the essence of theism altogether. Carroll's case does not extend that far, because empiricism doesn't go there.
So how does he form his argument? What is the basis of his proof? His proof for that assertion is not empirical; it is an Appeal to Authority (famous scientists) and an associated False Association (conflating non-physical with physical, which is also a Category Error). So he compounds at least three logic errors into a support structure for his Scientism and Naturalism, right at the start, making the entire speech circular.
One must assume that Naturalism is the case if it is asserted that Science can disprove metaphysical existence. That’s because science can disprove X only if science can test for X. To say that science has the ability to test for and disprove X, is to say that science has X-abilities. To conclude that science has X abilities, but cannot find X, is a hazardous statement, because it does not prove that there is no X. To say that would be to commit the Inductive Fallacy.
And if science has X abilities, then X is presumed to be physical (because that’s what science is). So the redefinition is implicit: X is physical by definition, and if X is then designated as "metaphysical", then metaphysical is physical by the redefinition of science. By this circular reasoning, either physical existence is actually metaphysical (not what he believes), or metaphysical existence is actually physical (also not what he believes), or metaphysical existence does not exist due to the definitional problems encountered within Naturalism (this is what he believes, although without specifically tumbling to it). So metaphysics is defined not to exist, due to this logical morass.
The convolutions in this logical train wreck are painful to observe, and astounding to watch as they are proposed without critical analysis.
Carroll does not provide the science which proves his "scientific" convictions; that's because there is no experimental data on X. What he does instead of providing empirical scientific data for a disciplined direct experimental assault on metaphysics is to claim that the increased knowledge of the universe and its physical characteristics somehow proves conclusively that there is no existence which is not available for scientific, physical analysis. How does he justify this? He does not; he presupposes it. He slides his argument into a position of Scientism - I'll predict your behavior from your atoms - in order to support his metaphysical Naturalism, which he has already presupposed, a spectacular error of circular reasoning.
He invokes Gallileo and Newton and Darwin, and winds up using their observations of cosmos, forces, and finches to conclude that they had disproven metaphysical existence. But he does that by invoking changes in ecclesiastic theory, not basic theism. Basic theism is totally unaffected by the findings of these men, or by the natural laws governing the cosmos, forces, and finches.
None of these famous scientific findings bear on metaphysics in even the remotest empirical fashion. They all describe physical characteristics, not metaphysical existence, metaphysical truths, or origins – not even Darwin’s Origins discusses actual life origins and how life came to be, merely from inanimate and rather stupid minerals obeying the laws of physics. And of course, Darwin’s premises, all of them, are now discounted fully by evolutionists themselves, who are groping for hope in meta-meta-principles for the salvation of evolution.
What Carroll preaches is metaphysical Naturalism. But science uses only methodological naturalism and abjures metaphysical Naturalism because it is (a) a physically unprovable metaphysical claim, and (b) an ideology, not an empirical conclusion, not even contingently. The idea that physical science can disprove the existence of nonphysical reality is a Category Error, and is absurd in the logical sense.
Also, Carroll repeats his idea that humans are nothing but atoms, atoms are deterministic, we know the physics and laws that govern the behavior of atoms. And yet he also asserts that humans are agents, creative, intelligent and moral. His explanation for that internal contradiction is: none.
And as a finale, he dodges consciousness and other non-physical characteristics of actual life by declaring them trivial, and the war against metaphysics to have been won… by metaphysical Naturalism.
That is hardly the case. One cannot achieve a victory in war by ignoring the atomic bombs still in the adversary's rockets and merely declaring victory any way.
This entire speech is a metaphysical, philosophical and ideological statement in support for the presumption of the omniscience of science (Metaphysical Scientism), which presumptively disproves metaphysics, philosophy and ideologies (which are anti-science and are superstitions).
The self-refutation and non-coherence are obvious.
Sean Carroll and the Argument From Quantum Field Theory against life after death; although he refers briefly to QFF, much of the speech is otherwise. I suggest that the reader view the speech and analyze it fully before reading my own analysis, below; that would be great exercise for the cranial logic machine. We could then compare our analyses. But it is quite an investment in time. I don't like having to work from video, because I can't use a search tool to find some point I remember being somewhere in the middle, and also because I have to type up his words in order to present his argument here. The advantage of video, though, is that it does allow the speaker's attitude to shine through. Scientists are supposed to hold their opinions conditionally, with skepticism. You are encouraged to judge for yourself.
We have here a physicist making a physical case; so we should look for sophisticated empirical solutions in the approved format for producing the objective knowledge which supports his claim: falsifiable hypotheses, experimental design and implementation, open data and data analysis, history of replication and falsifying/supporting results.
We should understand that this is not a forum for rigorous detail; still, when analyzed, the arguments should be grounded in either disciplined empirical content, or deductive premises grounded in First Principles; otherwise they should not be accepted.
1. First Argument:
p1. The mind is the brain;
P2. The brain is atoms;
P3. We know how atoms work;
(He cites quantum field theory and shows a complex equation containing “all” of the possible influences on the atoms in the brain. They are, he says, completely known, and no other influence is possible, or they (physicists) would know about it. Since they know all that, they also know that, after death, there is no possibility for the information contained in brain atoms to continue to exist.)
C. Therefore, there is no way for “you” to persist after death.
Carroll asserts that the premises are all agreed on, therefore the argument is scientifically true.
Premise P1:
With a little rhetorical prestidigitation Carroll has gotten the audience (100% Atheist) to consent to premise 1 as if it were axiomatically self-evident, a necessary Truth of the Universe and beyond. With the consent that premise 1 is axiomatically a First Principle with no actual empirical proof necessary, Carroll is not tasked with dealing with it, nor with the logical consequences of a Reductio Ad Absurdum performed on it. And without premise 1 as axiomatically True, the entire argument collapses into rubble. Premise 1 will need a Reductio, at minimum.
So let’s look at premise P1 and its necessary consequences, one of which is determinism. The entire argument hinges on the reductive physicalist notion that the mind is purely physical, is driven by purely physical phenomena (the four physical forces), and produces purely physical effects. Thus the principle of initial conditions comes into play, meaning that the outcome of any change is a result of forces acting upon initial conditions and states. That produces a completely determinable outcome with complete physical predictability, and is thus subject to physical measurement for confirmation.
So if the mind is the brain and Philosophical Materialism/Naturalism is valid, and the universe is comprehensible by scientific analysis, then every mental change or neural transaction is predetermined by its initial atomic and subatomic state and the known physical forces (irreducible forces are: electromagnetic, strong, weak, gravity). The premise, being a physical claim, should be fully testable experimentally.
Both the initial state and the influence of any force are fully predetermined in a causal chain going back to a time just after the Big Bang. This means that the mind, being merely the brain, produces nothing that cannot be attributed to this full causality, and therefore the mind is fully deterministic as well.
But, as many philosophers of mind have pointed out, and Carroll is not such a being, the effects of the mind are observably not causal, not deterministic and therefore are not the products of the brain initial states and physical forces alone. This has been called the “Hard Problem” of mind theory, an appellation most recently attributed to philosopher David Chalmers, but actually going back at least a century before. Bertrand Russell acknowledged it with the thought that a “different kind of substance” must exist which is causally involved in consciousness, agency and qualia, in his “Nine Lectures on Mind”.
The Hard Problem, aka “the mind-body problem”, has not, contra Carroll, been resolved in favor of Quantum Field Theory. And Carroll has not claimed that it has been resolved; he merely presupposes that when he asserts the validity of Premise 1.
Premise P1 cannot be accepted without being grounded in either empirical data or universal First Principles. Further, it is most likely false, due to the Hard Problem which presents the internal non-coherence which inheres.
Ideological Dependency:
Further, Carroll’s argument presumes that a specific ideology is incorrigibly True: Philosophical Materialism. However, PM fails for a very obvious reason. It cannot prove what it claims under its own provisos. In other words, it cannot be proven – physically, empirically – that its central tenet (which that there is no non-physical existence) is a true concept. So it cannot be a known, objectively provable, empirically replicable sentence of objective knowledge that PM is true. The claim is a Category Error due to attempting to make a metaphysical claim using only physical resources, and the ideology itself cannot be shown to be logically true under the First Principles. Thus the use of Philosophical Materialism as a premise, even (especially) an unstated, presupposed premise, nullifies the truth value of the argument.
Methodological Opaqueness:
The next problem with Carroll’s argument is that the entire argument, being a Materialist argument made by a scientist, should lead to testable hypotheses which result in affirming or negating data under the disciplined rules of empirical testing. But the argument cannot be tested, because it requires testing a state which is totally inaccessible to physical sensors. (Category Error, as shown above). This also fails Popper's demarcation criterion of falsifiability.
That physically inaccessible state is the specific claim being made: the existence of non-physical mind, untethered to physical constraints – including the constraints of the initial conditions of atomic and sub-atomic states in the brain, the four forces of physics, the presupposed need for physical neural hosting. Any claim made for or against that specific state cannot be either validated or falsified using physical instrumentation. Therefore, any counter-claim to have falsified it materially cannot be either true or valid. And that leaves any claims made by physicists for their physics as valid premises for non-physical claims, out in the cold, even and especially from a rigorous empirical standpoint.
Conclusion regarding Carroll’s syllogism:
What Carroll actually has is just this: rhetoric which he uses with flourishes to cover for the numerous reasons that his own premises are not valid, either empirically or logically. It amounts to a shell game posing as a logic argument, even including ridicule.
2. The False Dichotomy.
He progresses to this False Dichotomy, which he presents as much as ridicule as an argument:
”What to make of the evidence for an afterlife?
Options:
Some ill-defined metaphysical substance, not subject to the known laws of physics, interacts with the atoms of our brains in ways that thus far eluded every controlled experiment in the history of science,
OR
People hallucinate when they are nearly dead.”
The first horn of this dilemma presents some false statements regarding an actual metaphysical theory:
a. The use of the term “substance” is prejudicial and incorrect. Substance strongly implies a physical existence, even when modified by use of the term "metaphysical". No physical substance would be involved. It’s use is a leading bias toward the physicalization of metaphysics, and thus the empirical testability of metaphysical entities. That bias is false, (Category Error) and prejudices the remainder of the statement.
b. The expectation that “every controlled experiment in the history of science” is the repository for all possible knowledge is ideological (again Philosophically Materialist and Scientismist). That expectation is used, however, as a faux grounding for the first horn, giving it an aura of respectability by its Appeal To Authority.
c. The appeal to hallucination is absurd, because Carroll has no material evidence to support that claim.
Despite the blatant imagery of the authority of Scientism and Philosophical Materialism, Carroll ignores all of the issues raised above – universal determinism vs. non-deterministic life; Category Error of underlying ideologies; lack of falsifiability or testability of either horn; and in addition, the Equivocation Error in the false use of the term “substance” (the same logic error made by Russell a century earlier).
Thus the Carroll dichotomy is ungrounded, with prejudiced language attempting to bias toward Scientism, is untestable and unfalsifiable empirically, and is meaningless as either objective knowledge or a truth statement.
3. The Circular Definition.
Next he makes the classic logic error of circularity within the very question he asks:
”We can ask, OK, given that we are made of atoms, we understand what the atoms are doing, what is LIFE, what is this complex, non-fundamental phenomenon that arises out of the motions and interactions of the fundamental particles of which we are made.”
12:46
He has poisoned the well by asking for a definition, but then making a constraining definition himself which is purely Materialist/Physicalist; that prevents others from providing their own definition as he asked. By placing the desired answer inside the question he has reduced the issue to a circular tautology, defined only by himself (but with supreme confidence), without opportunity to challenge his presuppositions.
Further, he has no evidence, material or otherwise, to support the claims upon which the “definition” is declared. The definition is presented as tautological necessity, a new First Principle, a Truth statement upon which he will continue his non-empirical arguments. There are many definitions of life that precede and supercede his definition.
4. Invoking Schroedinger and negentropy.
Carroll moves on to Erwin Schroedinger and his theory of “negentropy”, as he presented in his book, “What Is Life”. Negentropy is the concept that open systems can receive extra energy from external sources, and that extra energy overcomes the lossy-ness of the system thus providing for the possibility of anentropic emergence rather than degradation. That principle is controversial among physicists, and requires some background and analysis.
Entropy is a descriptive observational law of the effect of loss in physical systems (open or closed); it is not a prescriptive causal law. Thus negentropy is not a prescriptive causal law, either. Especially since it is a terminology ploy which does not even exist physically or logically, as will be discussed below.
Says Carroll: the Sun is “low entropy energy”.
Sunshine is modulated energy, with a seasonally variable duty cycle. The type of receiving systems determine whether it is high energy or averaged energy, depending upon the duty cycle of the receiving system vs the duty cycle of the sunshine.
Entropy is defined by the excess energy transfer from the "hot reservoir" to the "cold reservoir". Energy in photonic form is the currency of entropy and the photon is not a system which incurs entropy. The entropy of energy is a meaningless concept, because entropy applies to processes and systems, not raw energy.
For sunshine energy and earth systems, entropy in our context applies to the receiving systems here on Earth. There are three possibilities for those open systems on Earth:
(a) those which require more energy still in order to avoid rundown due to internal system energy loss being greater than the input energy;
(b) those which receive exactly sufficient energy for maintaining operation indefinitely, because input energy equals energy loss in the system; or,
(c) those which must either shed the excess energy received, or face destruction due to receiving more energy input than system energy loss can shed.
Adding excess energy to an open system on Earth does not produce a negative version of entropy which might be interpreted as increasing orderliness. It cannot happen. All that happens is that excess energy must be shed in order to avoid destruction. The ideal case, where input energy equals energy loss produces a maintenance condition, not new information. Other types of loss in the system (friction, oxidation, etc.) still will lead ultimately to system disorder, randomness, and non-reducibility to algorithmic information.
Note that the discussion centers on energy loss, not system design, construction, or information loss. A pendulum that moves in ever shorter arcs is losing energy, not design, construction, or information. So adding energy to the system does not add anything to information. Adding just enough to keep the pendulum moving does not add information. Adding too much energy to the pendulum will cause it to either shed the excess energy or ultimately be destroyed by it, but no new information (algorithmic or semantic) will emerge.
The idea, “negentropy”, thus is not a process for adding useful complexity or semantic information, either universally or locally; there is no negative entropy because the systemic losses still exist, even in the presence of added energy to open systems. And in fact, too much added energy causes destruction, which is positive entropy, not negative entropy.
The use of entropy as a factor in complexity emergence is a fallacy because increased energy does not produce increased semantic information; a pre-existing mechanism for creating information must be in place, a system which utilizes energy in order to produce information. The fallacy is that of non-comprehension of systemic entropy in open systems.
5. History of the Universe: Big Bang to universal death:
At 23:00 into the video, Carroll presents a “Complexity” graph. it's a sort of Bell Curve or at least a parabola. According to Carroll, complexity in the universe starts at zero, gradually rises toward a parabolic peak at mid-life, then decreases to zero at the end of life and universal death.
Complexity is declared to be equivalent to life, based on that graph. 23:15
Carroll actually defines complexity in terms of order:
”But complexity, the organization of the stuff that is going on, is a completely different thing than [linear] entropy.” And, “It is in between [Beginning and end] that the universe becomes complex, forms planets and stars, and galaxies and living organisms.”
The terms, complexity and order (or "organization" as Carroll calls it), are not interchangeable. And the historical items of the universe he listed are not created by similar causal actions. The difference is in the information content. Because information content is not related to orderliness, the two terms are mutually independent. For example, a Shakespeare play has no rule for order of the letters of the alphabet to appear, yet it has semantic meaning (information) and is non-compressible to an algorithm. On the other hand, a repetitive sequence of 1,7,3,1,7,3,1,7,3,1,7,3… (three characters repeated for the same length as the Shakespeare play) has order, but little or no semantic meaning or information, and is easily reduced to a simple algorithm.
Here is an example of order migration vs state change, with complexity actually in complete stasis:
Water progresses from vapor (disordered individual molecules), to liquid (non-compressible with definable distance boundaries between molecules), to crystalline (ordered physical relationship with respect to other adjacent molecules), to Bose-Einstein condensate (disorder), to atomic collapse (fully disordered). This is the same curve that the universe lifetime would follow, with “ordered” in the middle. But ice contains no more information (complexity) than does vapor. Complexity does not change throughout the phase changes. That's because the behaviors of each phase are determined by the same set of algorithms (set of physical laws).
Complexity is inversely related to orderliness.[1] The most orderly is the least complex; the least orderly is the most complex. Stated differently, the most orderly requires the smallest algorithm (1,1,1,1,1,1… n=n-1, for n=2 to infinity); the least orderly requires the most difficult algorithm (random output; irreducible system).
In the physical universe, order increases as atomic bonds are made and elements combine into molecules. The algorithm for this process is not created by the process, nor is it created by the molecules controlled by the algorithm. Further, the molecules do not contain algorithmic coding for the creation of the process. The information (laws of physics) are external and stable and have been since shortly after the Big Bang.
Until, that is, first life occurred with a dramatic, singular increase in information, stored in and used by molecules in the metabolism and replication of life. With the creation of first life, local complexity instantaneously increased to far beyond the original physics algorithms. The non-living universe, however, remained at the low complexity, high orderliness level.
The information in the universe is not a curve as is shown by Carroll’s complexity parabola; information and complexity is a huge step function going from the stasis of physics laws for eons, then stepping in a singular jump immediately to the incredibly high complexity of the information required for first life, finding stasis at that level, then jumping very rapidly into the Cambrian Explosion, and then increasing gradually over time to the present.
The complexity curve should be this sort of step function, which describe life only, and NOT the universe of minerals, molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles:
______
_____________-------------- ^ | ^ Humans
Infinity | Complexity of all phyla
| |
| |
| ___________|
| | ^
| | Single cell complexity(high)
| |
| | Complexity of mineral universe (low)
_v_______________| _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ V _ _ _
^ ^ ^
t=0 First Life Cambrian Explosion
So the entropy curves given by Carroll are equivocations in terminology, resulting in incorrect interpretation. Complexity does not peak in the middle of entropic degradation. Complexity peaks locally, not universally. Complexity will vanish from the universe the instant that life is extinguished. The complexity argument placed by Carroll is seriously flawed, because it misinterprets complexity and confuses it with orderliness, its exact opposite: Equivocation Fallacy; and it mislabels the increase in complexity as "universal", when it is actually restricted to life and living things, while the remaining non-life universe remains in complexity stasis. Reductio: If this were not the case, then the laws of physics would be changing in complexity over time; physics actually depends on that not happening.
5. Michael Russell, Geochemist at Jet Propulsion Laboratories:
Russell is quoted as giving the meaning of life: “to hydrogenate carbon dioxide.” at 24:55
Carroll: Entropy “required” the increase of complexity to get from CO2 to methane, and the “sloshing about of all the complex reactions produced life – that’s what life is”.
No. Entropy does not "require" anything; it is not a force, nor is it a prescriptive law of causation. This is a continuation of misconstrual of order vs. complexity.
Next, no: methane is not an increase in complexity, it is a continuation of existing chemical laws which apply when the environment (temperature, pressure, concentration, mobility conditions, etc) allows. It is like crystallization in that it is a reduction to a lower state, one of increased order but not increased complexity.
And NO. That is not what life is. Life has specific requirements not deducible from chemistry or physics. To be defined as life requires that separate but necessary sub-systems are all activated to work in concert toward mutual goals (metabolism and replication) for no known activation cause; when they coincidentally are programmed to cease to function in concert toward mutual goals, death occurs (programmed death).[2]
Life is not a substance, not a natural force, not an energy, it is a self-animated, autonomous, self-contained process. End of life is the end of the process: “extinguishing the candle; you don’t GO anywhere. You stop happening”. The reaction stops. Ultimately we will all reach equilibrium.
6. Ridiculing heaven.
I'll just briefly acknowledge the completely non-empirical ridiculing of the concept of heaven, as if that is satisfactory proof for Carroll.
"Heaven is a bad idea, because you reach thermal equilibrium and nothing happens."
He charges though a list of non-science, nonsense, non-empirical ridicules:
Happiness is a bad idea. Heaven fetishness iconizes perfect happiness. Hedonic treadmill, in psychology: happiness is unchanging regardless of circumstances.
He even refers to the catacombs of skeletons in Paris, for proof of what, is not clear.
But he finally addresses a significant question: free will (42:30 – 43:25):
“Depends on your definition of free will. If by free will you mean that somehow you are able to override the laws of physics, no you can’t do that. You are made of atoms; if we knew the state of your brain to arbitrary accuracy, and we knew all the laws of physics to arbitrary accuracy, and we had infinite computational power, we could predict what you would do. But the point is that we don’t have any of those things. So this is a fact, and not a very relevant fact to how we should treat actual people in the actual world. The way I like to think about free will is that it is an emergent phenomenon. The right way to think about people, since we don’t know where all there atoms are and we can’t do the math, is as rational, hopefully rational, agents that have the ability to make choices.”
So yes: the mind is deterministic; and yes, people have both rationality and agency.
No internal contradiction is noticed, at least visibly, and he rapidly leaves.
As for "emergent phenomenon", this has become a very popular phrase which is code for: "it just started to happen, coming out of nowhere, for no apparent reason - it just... emerged, because: negentropy... or something complicated, here, look at my equations."
There's not much that is more entertaining than watching a physicist try to disprove metaphysics with his own metaphysics.
In Summary:
1. Empirical content of the subject matter, life after death: none. 2. Failure to produce a proper understanding of the science of complexity and information. 3. Building syllogistic arguments on false premises.
Conclusion:
Complete failure to produce empirical, objective knowledge regarding the proposition of non-physical consciousness, intellect, qualia, etc., being detached from material host and continuing after host death.
No objective knowledge or empirical data regarding the actual subject was produced or discussed, and much inference and innuendo was produced with the apparent intent of using that as if it were objective knowledge for the discussion of the continued existence of the non-physical consciousness, intellect, etc., when detached from the physical tether of the living organism.
NOTES:
1. The order/complexity scale is presented by Hubert Yockey, "Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life", Cambridge University Press, 2005; p169:
"Information is a measure of complexity. Complexity is a scale with orderliness at one end and randomness at the other."
Orderliness/small information content<--less---complexity---more-->Randomness/large information content.
Orderliness is reducible to small algorithms and contains little information. Randomness, and semantic information are irreducible to small algorithms and contain large information content.
2. Cells don't just die, they are programmed to undergo a managed death and dismemberment process, called apoptosis.
Cooper and Hausman; "The Cell; A Molecular Approach"; Sinauer, 2013; p682 - 689.
