Tom Wolfe: Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died

Tom Wolfe in His
Characteristic
White Suit

Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (1930 – 2018), was a New Journalistic, and prolific author who wrote, to name a few, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,  The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities,  A Man in Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons,  and Back to Blood. Here is what he had to say about modern brain science and how human beings may soon perceive themselves as without free will, a self, or a soul.

“Brain imaging was invented for medical diagnosis. But its far greater importance is that it may very well confirm, in ways too precise to be disputed, certain theories about ‘the mind,’ ‘the self,’ ‘the soul,’ and ‘free will’ that are already devoutly believed in by scholars in what is now the hottest field in the academic world, neuroscience. . . .

“Already there is a new Darwin, or perhaps I should say an updated Darwin, since no one ever believed more religiously in Darwin I than he does. His name is Edward O. Wilson. . . . Every human brain, he says, is born not as a blank tablet (a tabula rasa) waiting to be filled in by experience but as ‘an exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid.’ . . .

“Feminist protesters invaded a conference where Wilson was appearing, dumped a pitcher of ice water, cubes and all, over his head, and began chanting, ‘You're all wet! You're all wet!’ The most prominent feminist in America, Gloria Steinem, went on television and, in an interview with John Stossel of ABC, insisted that studies of genetic differences between male and female nervous systems should cease forthwith.

“But the new generation of neuroscientists are not cautious for a second. . . . they express an uncompromising determinism.

“They start with the most famous statement in all of modern philosophy, Descartes's ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ ‘I think, therefore I am,’ which they regard as the essence of ‘dualism,’ the old-fashioned notion that the mind is something distinct from its mechanism, the brain and the body. (I will get to the second most famous statement in a moment.) This is also known as the ‘ghost in the machine’ fallacy, the quaint belief that there is a ghostly ‘self’ somewhere inside the brain that interprets and directs its operations. Neuroscientists involved in three-dimensional electroencephalography will tell you that there is not even any one place in the brain where consciousness or self-consciousness ( Cogito ergo sum ) is located. This is merely an illusion created by a medley of neurological systems acting in concert. The young generation takes this yet one step further. Since consciousness and thought are entirely physical products of your brain and nervous system--and since your brain arrived fully imprinted at birth--what makes you think you have free will? Where is it going to come from? What ‘ghost,’ what ‘mind,’ what ‘self,’ what ‘soul,’ what anything that will not be immediately grabbed by those scornful quotation marks, is going to bubble up your brain stem to give it to you? I have heard neuroscientists theorize that, given computers of sufficient power and sophistication, it would be possible to predict the course of any human being's life moment by moment, including the fact that the poor devil was about to shake his head over the very idea. . . .

“Since the late 1970s, in the Age of Wilson, college students have been heading into neuroscience in job lots. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1970 with 1,100 members. Today, one generation later, its membership exceeds 26,000. . . .

“Why wrestle with Kant's God, Freedom, and Immortality when it is only a matter of time before neuroscience, probably through brain imaging, reveals the actual physical mechanism that sends these mental constructs, these illusions, synapsing up into the Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain?

“Which brings us to the second most famous statement in all of modern philosophy: Nietzsche's ‘God is dead.’ The year was 1882. . . . ‘The story I have to tell,’ wrote Nietzsche, ‘is the history of the next two centuries.’ He predicted (in Ecce Homo ) that the twentieth century would be a century of ‘wars such as have never happened on earth,’ wars catastrophic beyond all imagining. . . .

“A hundred years ago those who worried about the death of God could console one another with the fact that they still had their own bright selves and their own inviolable souls for moral ballast and the marvels of modern science to chart the way. But what if, as seems likely, the greatest marvel of modern science turns out to be brain imaging? . . .

“This sudden switch from a belief in Nurture, in the form of social conditioning, to Nature, in the form of genetics and brain physiology, is the great intellectual event, to borrow Nietzsche's term, of the late twentieth century. . . . .

“Meantime, the notion of a self--a self who exercises self-discipline, postpones gratification, curbs the sexual appetite, stops short of aggression and criminal behavior--a self who can become more intelligent and lift itself to the very peaks of life by its own bootstraps through study, practice, perseverance, and refusal to give up in the face of great odds--this old-fashioned notion (what's a boot strap, for God's sake?) of success through enterprise and true grit is already slipping away, slipping away...slipping away...

.” . . . Where does that leave self-control? Where, indeed, if people believe this ghostly self does not even exist, and brain imaging proves it, once and for all? Orthodoxy Today

A Physicist's Proof of God's Existence: Point and Counterpoint

Point. Physicist Amit Goswami "is convinced, along with a number of others who subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to exist, requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an observer, he claims, it only exists as a possibility. And as they say in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling evidence from recent research in cognitive psychology, biology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the ancient mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case for a new paradigm that he calls 'monistic idealism,' the view that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is."A professor of physics at the University of Oregon and a member of its Institute of Theoretical Science, Dr. Goswami is part of a growing body of renegade scientists who in recent years have ventured into the domain of the spiritual in an attempt both to interpret the seemingly inexplicable findings of their experiments and to validate their intuitions about the existence of a spiritual dimension of life. The culmination of Goswami's own work is his book The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. Rooted in an interpretation of the experimental data of quantum physics (the physics of elementary particles), the book weaves together a myriad of findings and theories in fields from artificial intelligence to astronomy to Hindu mysticism in an attempt to show that the discoveries of modern science are in perfect accord with the deepest mystical truths. (Link gone. Formerly at homepages.ihug.co.nz) Another link can be found here.

Counterpoint. "My main objection to Goswami's philosophy is that he has defined consciousness in such a way that it no longer has its normal meaning of mental consciousness, but instead is supposed to refer to something non-mental. We might call this 'Goswamian consciousness' or 'quantum consciousness', as opposed to 'mental consciousness'. He says, for instance:

...consciousness transcends both matter and mind ... [Hard Questions, Sect. II]

Conventionally, Western philosophers attribute properties of consciousness - experience and choice - to the mind. This has been corrected in quantum functionalism in which consciousness is defined to transcend both matter and mind. [Hard Questions, Sect. VI]

In so far as Goswami's philosophy is a monism at all, it is therefore a neutral monism, not a mental monism (or 'monistic idealism' as he calls it). As I have argued elsewhere, any neutral monism is actually identical to a version of physical monism, just because the physical world is already as neutral as a world can be. . . . You will not, for instance, spot any electrons by looking out of the window of the Clapham omnibus*: we are acquainted with the basic constituents of the physical world only through the propositions and formulae of physics. So, those extrinsic properties are the only properties possessed by those entities. Hence, physicalism itself is 'neutral' in the relevant sense. Therefore, to say that a metaphysical theory such as Goswami's is a 'neutral' monism is just to say that it is a 'physical' monism." (Link gone. Formerly at easyweb.easynet.co.uk) 

*(The man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical ordinary and reasonable person, used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted as a reasonable person would – for example, in a civil action for negligence. He is a reasonably educated, intelligent but nondescript person, against whom the defendant's conduct can be measured.)

My comments. In the counterpoint, an experiential approach is used. (Looking out the window of the Clapham omnibus.) For whatever it is worth, a different kind of experience consistently supports monistic idealism. All the accounts of mystics, be they Christian, Hindu, Buddhists, Sufi, share a pattern of description in terms of monistic idealism. People who report their experiences under hallucinogens also reveal a pattern of monistic idealism.

For a different perspective, I offer William James' classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience:

"Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. . . . And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined. . . . "

"According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to . . . scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see "the liver" determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. . . ."

"To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one has already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our DIS-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of its possessor's body at the time."

Poppa Neutrino is Underway

From the Mexican province of Baja California, David Pearlman, known as Poppa Neutrino, with his raftmate Joel, left Rancho Percebu on his raft, Island Rooster. On 26 February 2006, the raft headed south out of the Sea of Cortez, and into the Pacific. With weather perfect, and naturally warm, the sea was calm, and windless, so Island Rooster could not sail, but had to use its motor. Many people showed up to see him off. He waved to a crowd of well-wishers as he left shore with the noon tide.

Poppa Neutrino's raft is made of scrap wood. He plans to sail Island Rooster to China. His plans include a stop at Loreto in Baja California, on his way to Cabo San Lucas, at the foot of the Baja peninsula. In Cabo San Lucas he will make final preparation for the voyage to China as beyond Cabo lies the immense and unfriendly Pacific Ocean.

Neutrino has been written about in New Yorker magazine and National Geographic has done a special on him. Ebay has a page wherein a company is working to get sponsors for his trip.

A friend, Arie Taal, had this to say about him, "It was great to see the old sea gipsy again, 72 years old now and still crazy." Of his trip to visit Neutrino Taal wrote, "The Sea of Cortez is blue and beautiful. The landscape is desert-like. This place has the largest variety of cacti in the world. What surprised us was the huge number of cars that went off the road down into the ravine. They seem to leave them there as a warning for other drivers. Our bus driver did not seem impressed. He drove so dangerously, overtaking other cars in corners with no view at all, that we decided to stop watching him, and look the other way." More

For other Mind Shadow links to Poppa Neutrino, see below.

8/4/05
Poppa Neutrino: 72 Year Old To Cross The Pacific On A Raft of Scraps

9/15/06
Poppa Neutrino Update & Chronology of Events

2/5/09
Poppa Neutrino: The Happiest Man In The World?

4/6/06
Poppa Neutrino is Underway


5/19/11
Poppa Neutrino Is Dead

The Matterhorn and Its First Ascent by Edward Whymper

    The Matterhorn

At 14,693 feet (4,478 meters), the Matterhorn is almost a pyramid with four faces aligned according to the cardinal points of the compass, each tremendously steep, each with avalanches frequently tumbling snow and ice into glaciers. As mountaineering became a sport in the Nineteenth Century, other peaks in the Alps were scaled, but the Matterhorn remained unconquered.

It became the ultimate challenge because it demanded great technical skill, and because fear rose in the gut of would-be climbers gazing up at its sheer, slick faces. On the border between Switzerland and Italy, it towers over Zermatt on the Swiss side, and Breuil-Cervina in Italy. The Zermatt approach was long considered impossible. The rock was too steep, too sheer, too unforgiving. High mountain weather is forever unpredictable, with sunny skies followed by raging storms. Again and again climbers tried to scale the Matterhorn and failed.

It became an obsession for many, including Englishman Edward Whymper, a wood-engraver’s son. Whymper, an artist commissioned to make drawings of the Alps, wanted to become the first man on the summit. In July 1865 he ascended the easiest route, the Hornli Ridge, and stood atop the mountain, looking out over range upon range of mountains fading into the horizon, with freezing wind roaring in his face, and storm clouds racing overhead, and Zermatt tiny in the valley below.

On the descent, four of seven men plunged down the face to their deaths. Charles Hadow, a Cambridge student, slipped on ice, unbalancing a Chamonix guide Michel Croz, which yanked a father and son, old and young Peter Taugwalder, both guides, as well as Charles Hudson and Lord Francis Douglas, leaving the entire party of seven hanging by a rope over an abyss.

Whymper and two guides threw their weight into holding the others from falling and helped check the fall, but there the men hung, dangling as they watched the rope straining against all its weight.In 1865 pitons—spikes driven into rock to anchor sections of rope—had not yet been invented. The rope broke, and the lower four plunged to their deaths in a glacier almost a mile below. These were Croz, Hadow, Hudson, and Douglas. Except for Lord Douglas, all the bodies were later found. Today, the graves can be visited in a Zermatt cemetery.

In 1931, the difficult north face was finally climbed by two unemployed brothers from Munich, Franz and Toni Schmid. At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Art Competitions and Exhibition, Toni and Franz were awarded a Gold Medal, Merit for Mountaineering, for the first ascent of the north slope. Toni’s medal was posthumous. He died that same year, age 22, in a climbing accident seventy five days before the Games began. His brother Franz died in 1992, age 87.

Even today, the Matterhorn counts among mountains having the highest number of deaths. Because of the many ascents since the 1950s, long lengths of fixed rope and ladders encourage more climbers than is safe. The traffic makes the mountain dangerous. Unlike Whymper’s time, today climbers on the Hornli ridge have the advantage of a hut, really a solid building, before the steep ascent on that slope. Farther on, they have the Solvay Hut, also well made. Despite these conveniences deaths are frequent. In August 1997, two Americans died climbing the Matterhorn from the Swiss side. That same year, an Idaho woman and a Californian died climbing it from the Italian. They fell to their deaths roped together on the East Ridge. Also in August 1997 seven other climbers died, including a 22 year old who fell into a crevasse and perished from exposure before climbers could reach him. In 2005, an Australian lost his footing and when his body was located he could not be identified because his head and face had been severely disfigured as he bounced off precipices and crags. In March of 2006 DNA confirmed his identity.

Until his death in 1911, Edward Whymper grieved over his lost companions, never forgetting the tragedy of the very first Matterhorn ascent. For the would-be climber, his words remain true today. “Look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”