Reductionism bumping up against its limits?

 Biochemist Begins to Sense Limits of Materialism

Denyse O Leary

Irish biochemist William Reville has been the first Officer for the Public Awareness and Understanding of Science at University College, Cork — the sort of post Richard Dawkins had at Oxford. Reville, author of Understanding the Natural World: Science Today (Irish Times Books 1999), informed us last week that “There is every reason to believe that consciousness will eventually yield to scientific analysis just as the general nature of life yielded”.

I was somewhat taken aback. What does he mean by the “general nature of life” yielded to scientific analysis? True, we now know vastly more than we used to about life in all its forms. But, as James Tour’s ongoing debates with fellow scientists attest, no one has any idea how life began.

“Deep Ongoing Mysteries”

It is the same with physics. Just yesterday at IAI.TV, Oxford theoretical physicist Tim Palmer acknowledged that “we are in dire need of some new paradigms in physics, and seemingly unable to arrive at them. We are yet to solve the deep ongoing mysteries of the dark universe and still haven’t convincingly synthesised quantum and gravitational physics.”

The “general nature,” both in physics and in life sciences, is precisely what hasn’t yielded. Thus the current state of affairs in science is hardly a very strong basis for optimism that something ethereal like consciousness is going to “yield” to a physicalist or other naturalist explanation.

Reville hopefully tosses up emergence theory:

Most scientists and philosophers think that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. Emergent phenomena arise in complex systems, such as the human brain. The “wetness” of water is a simple example of an emergent property. Water is composed of water molecules (H2O). There is nothing about the fundamental properties of hydrogen or oxygen that predicts wetness but when countless H2O molecules congregate together, wetness emerges.

Similarly, the human brain contains 86 billion neurons. Individual neurons are not conscious but the emergent phenomenon hypothesis predicts that the collective properties of these 86 billion neurons and their interactions produce consciousness.

WILLIAM REVILLE, “WILL SCIENCE BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS?” IRISH TIMES, JANUARY 4, 2024

But why should 86 billion non-conscious material neurons working together produce consciousness? Dr. Reville can believe in such an origin of consciousness if he wants but calling it science is arbitrary when no mechanism is proposed.

Considering Panpsychism

He then considers panpsychism. Panpsychism, unlike eliminative materialism, concedes the existence of immaterial consciousness, provided it is shared with all life forms or the universe in general:

Philosophers who support panpsychism believe there is an open explanatory gap between the physical and the mental. As Norwegian philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch notes: “If you knew every last physical detail about my brain processes, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like to be me.” And philosopher Yanssel Garcia, University of Nebraska Omaha, declares “physical science is incapable, in principle, of telling us the whole story”.

REVILLE, “EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS?”

All true. But in the real world, the Hard Problem of Consciousness is unique to humans. If electrons or sea cucumbers are in some sense conscious, it’s just not the same kind of thing and raises no similar issues.

Reville senses something may be afoot:

But, the apparent difficulty of the task facing science of elucidating how inanimate matter forms conscious minds must not deter scientists from patiently and systematically pursuing the matter in the traditional manner. Of course, if consciousness eventually turns out to be completely resistant to explanation by science, then we are into, as they say, “a whole new ballgame“. Either way, exciting times lie ahead. 

REVILLE, “EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS?”

In Pursuit of “Traditional Methods”

He somehow senses a duty to continue to pursue the “traditional methods” (materialist research) indefinitely. But he is at least willing to consider the possibility that they will continue to fail. And, it is true, as he says, that exciting times lie ahead.

Materialist science has got about as far as it can go and progress will only be made if we are willing to contemplate non-materialist approaches. It won’t be easy; for one thing, progress won’t even necessarily look like the same thing. A better understanding of consciousness, for example, may mean a clearer picture of how it relates to the environment but will not mean showing that it doesn’t really exist or is somehow a physical thing.