The Relentless Logic Of Mechanical-Materialism

It Pervades The Understanding Of The World That Scientists Work Within

Of the wide array of philosophical positions, including what I will call mechanical materialism in this essay, all of them, as abstract philosophies, are counter to the real world that we live in. That is, these philosophies are abstract conceptual ideas, whereas the real world in which we live is encountered experientially.

Bernardo Kastrup, the idealist philosopher: when you criticize ‘physicalism’ there are two ways that word is taken: a colloquial meaning “that refers to the very obvious hard stuff you’re sitting on, walking on, that makes up the trees, rocks, earth, etc. Anyone who denies that physical stuff exists is obviously nuts and not to be taken seriously as a philosopher.” And then there is the philosophic meaning that refers to “whatever the mysterious stuff is that underlies all that we perceive and conceive. If you took away the “feeling” of hardness, roughness, solidity, etc., and analyzed away all the qualities of experience — color, sound, sensations, etc. — and all the conceptual quantities we measure in science — mass, spin, force, etc. — what’s left is “physical.” Yet, there is a relentless logic associated with the mechanical materialism that pervades the understanding of the world that scientists work within.

Perhaps an example will help to understand what I mean when I point out what is obvious to me, but which can get overly abstract when trying to explain it. I don’t want this to be just another version of Abstractism.

I will just add my reflection that if ‘how reality works’ can be modeled very successfully via mathematics, for example, that doesn’t mean that this view of how reality works is correct. Nor does an explanation of lived events that is derived from a mechanical-materialist understanding of our experiences mean that this explanation is correct either.

A contemporary of René Descartes’, Lady Anne Conway, was the first to point out both the mechanical nature of Descartes’ philosophy, calling it the Mechanical Philosophy, and its shortcomings in dealing with a living nature:

Although it cannot be denied that Descartes taught many remarkable and ingenious things concerning the mechanical aspects of natural processes and about how all motions proceed according to regular mechanical laws, insofar as nature itself, that is, creation, is very wise and has an intrinsic mechanical wisdom (given by God, who is the source of all wisdom) by means of which it functions. For truly in nature there are many operations that are far more than merely mechanical. Nature is not simply an organic body like a clock, which has no vital principle of motion in it; but it is a living body which has life and perception, which are much more exalted than a mere mechanism or a mechanical motion.⁠ (“The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy,” by Anne Conway, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press,1996, pg 64)

We can be completely wrong about the how of how reality works, but that has no influence on what is actually happening in reality. Which is another way of saying that Abstractism, or any -ism, because they are all abstract, only has an effect on how we understand something. It does not, as is so often asserted nowadays, impose any requirement on reality that it actually is working that way. This understanding that we may be working from, is the ephemeral ‘truth’ of science which insists that each new theory and its set of evidence is true, whereas, in the past, before Galileo, theories were just as we colloquially take that word to mean — an attempt to explain (save) the appearances. Nothing more.

And of course, the thing that is often overlooked at any particular point in our lives, is that how we see reality working changes, often over very short durations of time. A scientifically derived understanding is still just an abstract model of some phenomena, and although effective in modeling it (to the limits of our understanding at that moment), is replaceable with a new understanding that comes with further developments, or just that comes from further contemplation of our model of reality. This is the heart essence of scientific research.

I acknowledge a deeper resonance between mathematics and all the abstract understandings of the ‘working of reality’: abstract knowledge and mathematical formalisms have the same underlying structure — they are structurally based in quantitive suppositions, rather than a qualitative ‘whole’ (even our normal way of speaking of ‘wholeness’ is an abstraction from a qualitative whole.

And by ‘qualitative’ I mean feeling in a particular sense (meaning 3-a in the unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary): “the undifferentiated background of one’s awareness considered apart from any identifiable sensation, perception, or thought.” I call this feeling that underlies (and is coterminous with) each of my sensations, perceptions, and thoughts) an imperience, rather than the more complex and somewhat confusing labels given to it elsewhere: nondual perception, immediate experience, etc.

I often use a Necker Cube to illustrate what I mean when I say that how we view things, doesn’t in any way change what those things actually are. It only changes our understanding of them, or colloquially how we ‘see’ them, and we may be completely wrong in our understanding!

A Necker Cube, named after Louis Albert Necker, is an optical illusion that has no ‘depth cues’, and so our mind fills that in, in one of two ways.

This is one way that we can ‘see’ the Necker Cube. The dotted lines are behind, and the full square, made up by four solid lines, is the front of the cube (as we see it) and it is oriented to the viewer’s left, in a downward angle:

This is the other way to ‘see’ it. Now the full square, made up by four solid lines, is again the front of the cube, but it is oriented to the viewer’s right, in a upward angle:

I ask that you bear this in mind as you read the following official transcript of a short National Public Radio program about the discovery of a part of the brain that “triggers out of body experiences,” published on their website on July 3, 2023 (https://www.npr.org/2023/07/03/1185864132/scientists-have-found-part-of-the-brain-that-triggers-out-of-body-experiences)

Headline: Scientists have pinpointed a special part of the brain that, when stimulated, appears to produce out-of-body experiences.

Note that the assertion in the headline is that this part of the brain, when stimulated (either with electricity or chemically as will be mentioned later) produces an out-of-body experience (OBE). Note also, that it is a conditional statement. It appears to be the case that this part of the brain produces the OBE. This, then, appears to be the function of this part of the brain. But let’s see how that conclusion — without the conditional “appears to be” — is reached.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Certain drugs can produce an out-of-body experience, so can a pulse of electricity if it’s sent to the right place in the brain. NPR’s Jon Hamilton reports on a brain area that seems to keep us attached to our physical selves — well, most of the time.

Note that we have quickly moved on from OBEs to talking about a different function of the not yet identified part of the human brain — that of keeping “us attached to our physical selves.” This function seems to be the opposite of the OBE function mentioned in the headline, but this difference is not acknowledged.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE:

A few years ago, Dr. Josef Parvizi got a visit from a patient with epilepsy. The man told Parvizi about some very strange symptoms.

JOSEF PARVIZI:

My sense of self is changing, almost like I am a third observer to conversations that are happening in my mind that I’m not part of. Plus, they just feel like I’m floating in space.

This might appear to be a description of an OBE, except that the patient doesn’t describe being out of his body, but merely feeling like he was “floating in space.” OBE experiences involve actually experiencing being out of one’s body, often looking at one’s body from a perspective outside of it, not just a feeling of “floating in space.” Floating above one’s body, looking down at it, is an often described part of an OBE. An experience of floating without being outside of one’s body is more similar to the disorientation experienced when suffering some inner ear damage.

HAMILTON:

Parvizi, a neurology professor at Stanford, was intrigued. He figured the man’s seizures must be affecting an area of the brain called the PMC (premotor cortex).

Note that now the OBE is described as a seizure. A seizure is a period of symptoms due to abnormally excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. This would not be the word to describe a function of an area in the human brain, but rather a malfunction. So the disorientation of feeling like one’s words in a conversation were those of a third person, and feeling like one was floating, are clearly a malfunction of the part of the human brain, the PMC, being focused on by the researcher, Josef Parvizi.

PARVIZI:

It’s hidden in-between the two hemispheres in the back.

HAMILTON:

The PMC helps create what’s known as our narrative self, a sort of internal autobiography that helps us define who we are. So Parvizi figured the PMC was also responsible for our physical self, which tells us that our body and thoughts belong to us, not someone else.

Parvizi’s first hypothesis is that the PMC also has the function of creating a sense of identity with the ‘narrative self’, making this the second function described for this area of the brain. It doesn’t seem like much of a difference: building a narrative and identifying oneself intimately with that narrative. This is normally termed a mental illness though, depending on whether the created narrative is veridical — conforming with reality to some degree — or is completely disconnected from reality. For example, someone who identifies themselves as the president of the United States, when they are not, is suffering from a mental illness.

PARVIZI:

As you are sitting in your chair, you have an understanding that it is you looking at me, your point of view in space and in your environment.

HAMILTON:

That sense of being anchored in your body disappears when you have an out-of-body experience, like the man with epilepsy.

This is an interesting move by the interviewer. He does a number of things with this one statement.

The first, and most easily overlooked, is that he co-opts the function of consciousness.

The ‘sense of being’ something or someone is the epitome of the function of consciousness as normally defined. If consciousness is real at all, this is its most noticeable function. But the assertion above is that this is the function of a small part of the human brain. So, without being hyperbolic at all, the PMC, which Parvizi described as “hidden in-between the two hemispheres in the back,” is also now the source of consciousness in the human brain.

The second is that the initial description by the patient that he has a feeling of floating in space once again is equated to the experience of actually being out of your body, which the patient did not describe as being the case.

The third thing is that the reformulated symptom description, from floating in space to being out of one’s body, is then reaffirmed as being what the patient was actually experiencing.

HAMILTON:

Parvizi and a team were able to recreate the man’s symptoms by electrically stimulating the PMC. Then they tried the approach on other volunteers. And Parvizi says it became clear that a person’s physical self was tied to one particular spot in that special part of the brain.

In order to recreate the seizure effect in the PMC, the researchers applied electrical current. The result, skipping over what must have, hopefully, been a lot of concentrated discussion on the results of inducing seizures in the PMC, is that the function of the PMC is identification with one’s “physical self.”

Note here that it is not the ‘narrative self’ which was the original function of the PMC, it is the ‘physical self’.

What is the ‘physical self’? Well, normally, if we are speaking about the felt embodiment of being a human being, it is the sum total of all our proprioceptive sensations — the position and geometry of our body in space — plus our interoceptive sensations of the state of the organs, muscles, ligaments, and other connective tissues within the body. This then is also the function of the PMC.

At this point, the PMC has been asserted to be responsible for all of the aspects of being a conscious human being. This entire ‘scientific’ exercise has been a textbook example of a mereological fallacy conflating the parts of the brain with the whole brain — indeed, with the whole body.

PARVIZI:

What we discovered is that towards the front, there is this sausage-looking piece of brain called the anterior precuneus (aPCu).

It sounds reasonable that what is described as a ‘sausage-looking piece of brain’ could be responsible for all the aspects of being human, but only within the reductionist mindset of the restricted Mechanical-Materialist world view of scientists and science journalists.

HAMILTON:

Parvizi’s team stimulated the area in eight patients.

PARVIZI:

And, lo and behold, everybody has changes in their sense of what we call the physical self.

HAMILTON:

The results appear in the journal Neuron, and Parvizi says they suggest that the anterior precuneus is critical to understanding that something is happening to me, not another person.

This almost seems to introduce yet another function of the aPCu: that of clearly distinguishing that my sensations, perceptions, and thoughts — the collection of all our mental events — are not yours, but it only says that understanding the many functions of the aPCu is critical to understanding how we distinguish our sensations, perceptions, and thoughts from those of someone else. What is overlooked in this assertion is the awkward truth that we don’t have access to anyone’s sensations, perceptions, or thoughts, but our own. In case that matters.

CHRISTOPHE LOPEZ:

We think this could be a way for the brain to tag every experience in the environment as mine.

The wonder of it! Our conscious experiences, from our physical perspective, are ours only because of this one process of the human brain, so that what has until now been impossible to find in the brain overall, is now asserted to be simply the functional output of this one little sausage-like area hidden in the brain.

The question this assertion raises in my mind, is what is it that is ‘tagged’ onto each experience that the experience doesn’t already contain fully? Remember, this was originally about the reported symptoms of feeling a change in the ‘sense of self’ almost like being a third observer to conversations that are happening in the patient’s mind that he is not seemingly a part of, feeling like he is floating in space.

HAMILTON:

Christophe Lopez says that makes sense. He’s a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in France (CNRS). Lopez thinks that our physical self comes in part from the inner ear, which senses motion and the body’s position in space.

Lopez is speaking of proprioceptive sensations of our orientation in space generated in part by the inner ear. This at least makes sense, to the extent of accounting for the feeling of ‘floating in space’, based as it is on identifiable brain activity correlates that accompany the inner ear’s sensory input to the brain.

And he says Parvizi’s team found evidence supporting that view. Lopez says the anterior precuneus appears to act as a hub for signals coming from the inner ear.

This, again, is a new function of the aPCu: a signaling hub for inner ear sensations. In any case, that is an explanatory overreach, as it is merely a hypothesis.

LOPEZ:

When they stimulate these anterior precuneus, you can evoke that the body or the self is floating in the room, like the body is rising or the body is falling like freefall.

Just a small point here: the description given does not meet the criteria for an OBE. And a larger point: the symptom description here is not what Parvizi has described, so there is a bit of poetic license in what Lopez is saying.

HAMILTON:

As a result, the inner ear may be saying the body is moving while the eyes say it is stationary. Lopez says that’s confusing for the brain.

Even more confusing is the fact that our vision of the environment around us as a whole is fixed in place, even though we are moving our head and swaying while we walk, and yet that doesn’t confuse the brain. We should be seeing the world around us with the chaotic motion that video cameras used to produce, but we are not ‘seeing’ that because the brain stabilizes the visual image.

LOPEZ:

Sometimes the best solution, which is found by the brain, is to think that you’re somewhere else out of the body.

Interesting. The brain finds solutions that it then instantiates into a physical component of itself to take on that function. I thought that was the job of natural selection. Or perhaps he just meant rewiring neuronal networks. But I am not sure of what we are talking about now. Is it the function of creating a ’narrative’ that we identify with? Or the consciousness of all of our sensations, perceptions, and thoughts? Or the malfunction caused by seizure that makes us feel distant from our own conversations? Or is it a problem with the inner ear that makes us feel like we are floating? All of them?

HAMILTON:

It’s not just electrical stimulation that can confuse the brain, so can the mind-bending anesthetic ketamine. Patrick Purdon, a researcher at Harvard, has been studying the drug’s effects on the brain. He says it acts a lot like brain stimulation when it comes to the anterior precuneus.

PATRICK PURDON:

Ketamine seemingly is producing this kind of artificial rhythm that is disrupting function of that area.

So, creating the reported symptoms is not a function of this part of the brain, but a malfunction, as we would expect. This is important because it brings out the limitations of the worldview of scientists and the relentless logic of Mechanical Materialism: if the malfunction of a part of the brain is accompanied by certain symptoms, those symptoms must be a result of that malfunction. This seems unquestionable, given the researchers understanding, but it undermines the need for the aPCu’s function, if its malfunction is so enjoyable — given that people widely abuse ketamine for its effects nowadays.

But what if the symptoms are not the result of the malfunction of the aPCu, but were the reason why the aPCu function was needed? This may be too subtle a point, so let me rephrase it: what would a human brain be like if it did not have a aPCu, or the aPCu did not have this/these function(s)?

The aPCu does not have to distinguish the sensations, perceptions, and thoughts between ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ because our brain only comprises those that are its own. It does not matter if there is a felt difference between being involved in a conversation, or merely listening in to it, because that is a subjective feeling in either case and makes no objective difference. Only if it interferes with the brain’s ability to engage in speech, would it make a difference, and queens and kings throughout history and across cultures have never had a problem speaking without the subjective framing.

Clearly, in any case, whether functioning or malfunctioning, the aPCu has not been shown to have any involvement in actual Out of Body Experiences, which was the headline assertion of this piece of journalistic misinformation (or misdirection). So the only functions left standing are the unsubstantiated assertion that the aPCu is a signaling hub for the inner ear, and the gloss over it also being responsible for our being conscious of our sensations, perceptions, and thoughts. The latter is absurd, the former awaits evidence.

HAMILTON:

Purdon says that means it might be possible to use electrical pulses in place of anesthetic drugs like ketamine.

PURDON:

You could get the specific brain areas that you want without having to cause a brain wide and system-wide effect that might carry with it a lot of side effects.

Now this sounds like a promising new technology, but I have not seen an explanation for how the electrical stimulation of certain brain areas will have a sedative effect, when it clearly causes seizures and over-excitation. Perhaps he is glossing over the difference.

HAMILTON:

Purdon says stimulating the precuneus might even reproduce ketamine’s powerful antidepressant effect, though that’s never been tried. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

Purdon seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth here: electrical stimulation can be used to cause local overstimulation and global sedation. The latter being complete pie-in-the-sky nonsense that calls into question why National Public Radio would subject its listeners to such drivel. What is worse, is the inculcation of unfounded assertions into its listeners understanding, causing them to become confused about actual and evidenced human experiences, and those that are not, while asserting that the listeners are nothing more than the output of a little sausage-like structure in their greater brain. No wonder we have become a people who have lost sight of what is important, and what is real.