Guest Blogger: Response to "Act As If"

From Barbara Searle, WES Member and Alert Reader!

I am far from qualified to argue with neuroscientists, but nevertheless I think there's a fatal flaw in the kind of argument you reported. The underlying assumption seems to me to be that if we can't find a scientific explanation for a phenomenon now (or can't even imagine a conceptual framework within which an appropriate explanation might be developed) then the only possible recourses are either to adopt a non-scientific explanation (God, or god or whatever) or to deny that the phenomenon exists. There are many serious scientists who are strictly deterministic -- they believe that since such experiences as free will and consciousness must arise in the brain, and they can't imagine how something that arises in the brain could produce such experiences, they don't exist. (Another camp accepts that they exist, but holds that such things are beyond human understanding, an equally useless position, in my view, since if true there's no point in even looking.)

This is very reminiscent of the way many biological observations have been treated in the past. To take just one example, many reputable scientists in the early 20th century denied the reality of genes because they couldn't imagine either how they were constructed or how they could carry out the functions attributed to them. It took both new tools (to allow appropriate experiments to be carried out) and new conceptual frameworks, for it to become obvious that genes are real. (Sort of -- but that's another story altogether!)

In my view, not only is behaving 'as if' a reasonable way to go, but it is betting on the right side!