Of Men and Mousetraps

Of Men and Mousetraps

Does a mousetrap perceive the mouse it traps? No, it is simply actuated by the mouse.

If the mousetrap had a million parts, would it then perceive the mouse? Does the number of mechanical steps involved change a mechanic chain reaction into perception?   Between each step of action there is only one step of actualization.  If no single step of actualization can constitute perception, then no long chain of single steps could produce perception either.   Thus the number, or complexity of the steps involved is irrelevant.  The trap is actuated and it produces the effect predicated by the physical laws governing the material that makes it.  In fact the simplest mousetrap, when viewed from a molecular level, is made of billions of parts all interacting with each other anyway. 

What if the trap uses a high definition camera linked to a powerful computer which scans the image a thousand times per second, analyzing the image so as to snap at the precise time when death would be most likely and would not snap on the hand of the setter, or anything else that wasn’t a mouse - would it then be said to perceive the mouse?  If the image of the mouse is the actuator and not the physical touch of the mouse, can we then say the trap perceives the mouse?  When dealing with images it is often tempting to project perception upon the machine that captures or utilizes imagery - vision being our primary perceptive mode - but doing so projects a human, extra-natural essence onto the image.  The “image” as processed by the device has no such extra-natural essence and is simply another form of material actualization.   The light bouncing off of the mouse hits the cameras sensors creating a specific profile on the sensors inside the camera.  That impulse is then relayed through some ingeniously written software that either suppresses the chain of action or allows it to continue based entirely on mechanical principles.  It is still actuation for it is an entirely mechanical chain of reactions, no matter how long or circuitous it is.  We can trace the exact chain of mechanical process, right down to the molecular patterns on the hard drive plates making up the magnetic codes which, given the correct series of electronic impulses from the camera sensors, would allow the actuation to continue and let the mouse trap snap.   Although a salesman may use verbiage that personifies the machine – “The Ratslap 3000xl sees the mouse and then decides whether or not to strike,” – in fact the process is as mechanical and free from perception and decision making as a simple, spring-loaded mousetrap.   What we personify as decision-making ability and image perception is really all physical inevitabilities and chemical mechanics.

Are humans just a complex mousetrap?

To many in the secularized West, possibly a majority, would say that man is the material that makes up his body and nothing more – so, for them, the answer to that question would be “yes!”  If a human sees a mouse, for example, the light bouncing off of the rodent enters the eye, actuating a material process involving the parts of the eye (lens, retina, rods, cones, etc.) and the nerves of the ocular system (optic nerve, crux, Cerebral cortex, etc.).  This chemical chain reaction ends in the sight centers of the brain, where they are interpreted.  The final step between the physically actuated chemical process and the phenomenon we experience as sight is usually bridged by some statement akin to: “the stimuli of the optic nerves are interpreted and that is how you see.”  Likewise, if the interpretation of said light signals indicates that an action needs to take place, say to slap the mouse silly, the brain actuates a nervous impulse that carries through the correct channels of nerves to the muscles of the arm and hand, and other balancing muscles of the body, hopefully with enough coordination and speed to actually slap the rat.   Hence the brain is the end-of-the-line interpreter of incoming sensations (perception) and the beginning-of-the-line propagator of outgoing signals (purposeful action).  Everything in the human experience is explained by material cause and effect, and the human is only a very complex machine.  A priceless, precious, and much-loved machine, mind you, but a machine nonetheless.

This is the mentality that predominates the secular west.  Man is the material that makes him and nothing more.  Yet, this ultra-materialist mentality rests on several illogical assumptions.  First, even for the ultra-empiricist, perception can only be explained by an existential duality, for it states that two separate processes are involved in seeing (or hearing, or tasting etc.) – a signal has to be properly relayed, and an interpretation must be made of that signal.  To be conscious of something is to be separated from it, at least in part. The ultra-materialist then illogically cordons off the brain as the necessary second entity of perception.  Furthermore, it acknowledges that the signal relayed to the brain is not sight; rather, the interpretation of that signal is sight, thus imbuing “sight” with an extra-material, or extra-natural essence, and undermining its own primary materialist assumption. By this logic the brain is conferred an unstated magic – a fantastic place where consciousness is distilled and bottled with a medulla oblongata cork.   And yet there is no magic line crossed when the signal enters the brain.  It continues in a ongoing chemical chain reaction. Is the brain not made of cells just like the rest of our body?  Are those cells not made of the same carbon based organic molecules that the rest of the body is made from?  They differ slightly to be sure, just as a bone cell differs from a skin cell, but the relevant point is that the chain of actuation is still a material/chemical process inside of the brain, and as pointed out earlier, complexity of a chain reaction is not a sufficient explanation for consciousness.

The assumptions are even more clearly out of logical alignment when we reverse the direction of the impulse.  Everything that a person does, the people with this secularist mindset may say, is theoretically traceable back to some material cause.  Often times the brain is given as an answer to the question, “what is that material cause in human decision and action.”  Presumably, a brain cell (or set of them) actuates whatever it is we are doing, thinking, or experiencing at any given moment.   For example, if I choose to write the letter ‘f’, what is the impetus that actuates the physical process which ends in my finger pushing the letter ‘f’ on my keyboard.  If I answer “the brain” I am again cordoning off the brain as something other than the body and giving it the inexplicable ability to self actuate (and not at random either).  It is as if the ultra-materialist has decided that an uncaused cause inside the brain is in perfect logical harmony with their own materialist principles when in fact it deeply contradicts it.  (See posting “Metaphysical Man”).

 The ascent of the brain to emperor of existence is understandable.  The empirical facts show that all externally actuated sensations end in the brain.  It is also true that all internally actuated signals to the body come out of the brain (with the exception of certain reflex bundles).  Thought and imagination both begin and end inside the brain.  All signs point to the brain as the terminus of perception and the propagator of thought and action.  While this seems in sync with the facts, a bit of further thought shows it to be spurious.  In order to resolve the flaws in this logic the brain must be understood to be a nexus.   The brain is simply that last material link in the externally activated chain of perception, and the first material link of internally caused signals.  In the case of thought/imagination, it is the first and only material link.  Thus the brain is part of the body and is part of the physical process, a very important part, but it is not the locus of either perception, or the impetus of movement and thought.  I am the source of perception. I am the impetus.  My brain doesn’t see – I see through my brain.  My brain doesn’t move my fingers; I move my fingers by way of my brain.  My brain doesn’t think; I think with my brain.  While the Western world believes that man is the material that makes him and nothing more, I maintain that reason just as easily indicates that man is the material that makes him and a little bit more.

But what is this ‘little bit more’?

That will have to be another posting, on another day. 

The Metaphysical Man

If a stone sits atop a hill, it will either roll down or stay balanced there according to the immutable laws of physics. As the ground around it erodes slowly, the rock will eventually tilt and then tumble at the exact moment in which the gravitational pull on the mass of the rock becomes greater than the force of the earth holding it in place. There is of course no choice whatsoever on the part of the stone in the matter. The cause of the stone rolling down the hill, and the direction it takes is purely a function of natural law and, were we able to collect perfect data, and virtually infinite amounts, the exact moment of its fall and the course it would take down the hill could have been predicted years, or even ages before it happened. The end effect of the stone rolling down the hill is just a tiny link in a chain of causes and effects stretching back to the beginning of the earth and beyond. In fact the fate of the rock was set irrevocably in place from the very moment of material creation. The laws of physics determined the size shape and atomic mass of its elements millions of years ago and when it fell down the hill it was those same rigid, unchanging laws of physics which determined the precise moment and direction of its plummet. A person observing the rolling stone may not understand all the laws of physics causing it to move, nor have been able to keep track of the infinite variables involved in guiding its course, but this is irrelevant to the fact that the forces moving it are real and do not need his understanding to work. The causes and effects of its motion are fixed and will carry out their processes to their final end, understood by some human observer or not.

If a man sits atop a hill, will he walk down it or stay put according to the same such laws? Or will he walk down the hill in the direction which he chooses?

If the man is nothing more than the material he is made of then he, like the stone, MUST leave the hill in accordance with the laws of physics which control that material. Yes, the equation is infinitely more complex than the relatively simple one determining the direction of the rolling stone, but it is in the end a function of chemical certainty which way the man will walk down the hill. We may not understand all of the chemical processes of the brain, and its decision making process. We may not be able to track and compute the subtle chemical differences between the man who walks down the north side compared to the man who walks down the south side. We may not be able to discover the relationship between sight, sound, touch, or taste and the final decision of the subject, but, if the man is wholly material, our ignorance as to the causes are irrelevant to their certainty. The man’s perception of choice is only a natural effect of the chemical processes which cause it.

The scenario can be reduced to a simple logical syllogism: If all motion and interaction of all material in the universe is circumscribed by the laws of physics, and if the human being is entirely material in nature, then all the motions and interactions of human beings are circumscribed by the laws of physics. Humans have no free will and are absolute slaves to the despotic laws of physics.

But if there is something more to mankind than just the material they are made of…

For free will to exist we must carve out of the human being a vacuum in which it may reside. It cannot exist in our material. If it does exist it can only exist in the nonmaterial, "metaphysical" element of the human soul.
Here is an extremely simple example of purposeful human motion to further illustrate the point: my fingers moving across the keypad of the laptop in front of me. j - There it is. My index finger on my right hand extended slightly and pushed the 'J' key. Why? What is the ultimate original cause of it? The tendons in my finger tightened along the rigid but hinged bones of my finger and this caused the tip of my finger to move downward and out slightly thus depressing the J key of my computer. Well what caused the tendons to tighten? The muscles of my hand and forearm flexed. That motion was in turn caused by neuro-electro stimuli being applied by the nerves which end in those muscles. That small stimuli was coordinated in the Madula Oblongata of the brain so that the needed muscles would flex in the correct order and intensity in order to produce the exact motion needed. The individual stimuli propagated from various parts of the brain involved in fine motor skills, working together with those parts which are responsible for sight, proprial receptors, and hand eye coordination. This is as far back as modern medicine can track the chain of causes, so we continue in the abstract. The material, or chemical chain of causes and effects can only go back so far before reaching a point where the previous cause either lies outside of the human being, or we are forced to assume an uncaused cause within the human being. For those who assume the former the chain of material causes will eventually reach back, as with our rolling stone, to the origins of matter itself. This is the positivists ontology. This is the course of Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Weinberg.

There is however that second assumption; that there is an uncaused cause within the individual which accounts for the ultimate propagation of the neuro-electro stimuli coming from my brain and making my fingers move. Just like Aristotle's unmoved mover argument for the existence of God, any purposeful movement can be traced backward to a metaphysical unmoved mover inside the human - which is the ultimate cause of my finger pushing the J key. The metaphysical action (thought) proceeds and creates the physical action (pushing the key). That unmoved mover of the individual is the “I”. I am the unmoved mover of my soul. I am the god of my choice. I am the ultimate cause in my life. I chose to push the J key, that is why my finger moved. This is the Romantic ontology. It is the course of Plato, Emerson, Henley, and Barfield.

Here is the real kicker in this. The chain of causes leading to the stone rolling down the hill also implies a metaphysical reality. The creation of matter, which to the true positivist is the ultimate origin of all subsequent causes, is explained by theoretical physicists as being the result of a "quantum flux." Far be it from me to attempt an explanation of what that is precisely but as Charles Schroeder has pointed out, the only way that a quantum flux can occur is to have the laws of physics in existence before there was matter to govern. In other words, the principles which govern the material interactions of our universe existed before there was material. So the metaphysical proceeded the physical (as it always does). And so to does the microcosm of the mind mirror the macrocosm of the universe, which is a very Medieval and yet profoundly modern thought.

Which ever version of the chain of causes we pick at this point in our ontological case study is only done on an arbitrary basis. We are at this time still only assuming one version over another without any real reason to do so. But when the question comes to a chain of effects entering from the outside, I think that one version becomes clearly preferable to the other. This is where the relevancy of Barfieldian epistemology really comes clear.

When light enters the eye it sets off a chain reaction of biochemical stimuli much like the one we were discussing above, only in the opposite direction. Instead of propagating in the brain and then exiting it to cause something to happen, this chain of neuro-electric pulses is running from the sensory organs into the brain. The first effect is that the rods and cones transform the light of the visible spectrum into neuro-elctric waves which are transmitted via the optic nerve to the sight centers of the brain. Again this is as far as we are able to ride modern medicine. From here the positivist says "and then we see," as if stating where the nerves lead to is the final bridging step from chemical reaction the phenomenon we call sight. There is no mediating step between the chemical reactions and the sensation humans call sight. I find this to be a great lacuna in the Positivist's epistemology.

Barfield, and many before him as well, said that from that point of chemical stimulation, the imaginative brain must then create a mental metaphor representing what the stimuli is indicating and it is these mental metaphors that we actually "see", or are the end effect which bridge the gap between chemical reactions and actual sight. This goes for all of the five senses in fact. The imaginative mind must create a mental metaphor for the stimulus coming from the ears and this mental metaphor is what we actually "hear" and ditto the senses of taste, smell and even touch. To the Romantic, or Barfieldian, there is no such thing as unmediated perception of any kind. It was with this mediating step, between the material chain of effects and the end effect of sight, which Barfield concerned most of his philosophical writing.

I, as you have probably guessed, believe that the Barfieldian epistemology is much more convincing. However, something is implied in it, though never stated, and I think it bears mentioning. If there is a mediating step between the neuro-electric chain of stimulus and sight, then there must be something to which it is being mediated. Mediation naturally implies a second entity. In fact, if everything we perceive is really a mental metaphor does this not imply that there is something else interpreting these metaphors.

I believe that the very act of perception is itself a powerful argument for the reality of a metaphysical element to the human being.  It is this very real nonmaterial entity which is the self, or I.  It is the originator of our purposeful actions; the fount of our character, thought, and decisions; and it will not dissipate when the flesh fails and molders away.




Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.


         --William Ernest Henley