Jul 14 2023

Picturing the Unique Nature of Consciousness

In the previous essay, I discussed the possibility that the brain is necessary to consciousness but that it is not sufficient. In other words, that there seems to be something needed beyond our current understanding of the physical. History, however, shows that science has often been challenged with such paradigm shifts.

Sometimes metaphors can help us see beyond such biases and preconceptions, so in this essay we’ll consider a picture that may illustrate why consciousness is so unique, and why it’s too early to start limiting options for explaining it.

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Jun 23 2023

Sufficient Reality

The nature of consciousness is generally considered to be a big mystery. Is it the result of only physical, material processes, or is there something immaterial involved? Many experiments show a strong relationship between material and mental processes and a common viewpoint is that these correlations indicate that the material processes cause the mental processes. In other words, there is an implicit assumption that material processes are sufficient for generating the mind, that nothing else is needed beyond the material.

Of course, it’s well known that correlations do not mean causation – just because two items seem highly related, that does not mean that one must be causing the other. One reason for this is that the same thing can occur when one item is necessary for the system to function, even if it is not sufficient.

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Jun 5 2023

Human Identity and the Uncertainties of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently a hot topic that’s being talked about in many media outlets as it continues to roll out. It still remains to be seen whether this activity will begin to cool off, as often happens with new technologies, or truly start to transform society.

Even a brief look at the ways that AI is being used makes it clear that there are enormous possibilities for both good and evil. This is certainly true in the short term, because people will find both good and evil things to do with it like we do with virtually all new tools.

There are even greater uncertainties in the long term, however, when we will start to deal with things like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which may be able to solve problems that humans cannot, and machine agency and consciousness, which will raise the possibility of AIs acting on their own in ways that may not be good for humanity.

A common theme across all these possibilities is the great uncertainty about what will happen. One of the sources of this uncertainty is the level of mystery in our understanding of how both machine and human intelligence works. It’s common to hear how current AI developers are surprised at the things that their creations are able to do. This uncertainty is mirrored by the amount that we still don’t understand about the human mind, which is often the primary model for designing these systems.

Consciousness, for example, still remains a great mystery even though all humans experience it. Despite this universal experience, and many different investigations, it still isn’t clear whether consciousness can be fully explained with strict materialism. This has resulted in a growing number of researchers proposing additions beyond the current materialist models that enable consciousness. They do this in ways that avoid having to resort to the supernatural, yet still point to something beyond the physical.

In other words, there seems to be a persistent metaphysical aspect to consciousness that has not yet been explained. Our lack of understanding of consciousness extends to its most fundamental nature, illustrating our lack of understanding of the nature of reality itself.

While such immaterial viewpoints are actively rejected by many researchers, it’s also well-known that there is a deep human need for the metaphysical, for transcendence. So while there is still this uncertainty regarding the mind, we need a story that allows us to remain human in this way, that allows us to accept the personal experience of self as something real and not just a tricky behavior of matter.

We need to keep open the possibility of a fundamental difference between humans and machines.

Apr 20 2023

Complex Motives

Discussions of the weakness of religion sometimes end up attempting to address God’s motives with questions that start with an observation about God’s character, then question that observation based on what is seen in the world.

These challenges often take the form of: “Why would a loving God allow…?” or something similar.

The idea being that the characteristic in question, in this case a loving nature, is incompatible with what we see in the world around us.

One of the common responses to this from Christians is essentially that God’s ways are unfathomable to us, so we should not expect to understand why some things happen. However, this approach is often rejected, being seen as something of a copout – avoiding the question altogether rather than addressing it.

However, note how reasonable this answer seems when talking about human behavior. It’s well known that we need to be careful when trying to understand someone else’s motives because there are so many factors we don’t know.

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Feb 23 2023

Seeing Confirmation Bias

Photographers often strive to find new ways of seeing the world. In a sense, this involves looking for new information, which is a healthy way to live. Unfortunately, we tend to avoid this due to our innate tendency for something called “confirmation bias”.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. –Wikipedia

Confirmation bias makes it harder for us to adopt new perspectives, perhaps even to learn new ideas, because we will tend to avoid information that could lead us to change existing beliefs.

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Jan 26 2023

Ways of Thinking

If there are limits to rational thinking, does that mean that there are limits to what we can know at all or just limits to what we can know rationally? In other words, are there ways of discovering and knowing things, perhaps even truths, other than rationally?

If so, we would need other ways of thinking that can still produce improved understanding. So then, if reasoning isn’t available, what other ways of thinking might be helpful?

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Jan 6 2023

The Science-Faith Debate

There is an ongoing debate about the relationship between science and faith. Many believe that they are incompatible, that they are at “war” with each other. Others contend that they have nothing to do with each other, an idea sometimes expressed by describing them as “non-overlapping magisteria” — the idea that they only apply to unrelated aspects of reality and human experience.

However, an underlying assumption with both views is that we understand the universe well enough to be certain about our assessments. However, what if this isn’t true? What if it’s better to take a more humble position and admit that we cannot make a clear enough assessment, and therefore need to continue exploring the issues?

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Dec 15 2022

Implications of Consciousness


The overall theme of this blog is that we don’t know enough to be certain of metaphysical truths.* Because of that, and the fact that metaphysics deals with things beyond physical reality, we need to think about those topics using tools other than science, and move discussions away from trying to prove one view or another, to comparing differences and explaining our preferences.

A good example of this is our limited understanding of consciousness. Although many believe that consciousness is only a physical phenomenon, that view is by no means universal even among secular researchers. Other possibilities, such as the philosophical idea of panpsychism, have been proposed and seem to be growing in popularity.

Given the diversity of viewpoints among subject matter experts, the only rational position to take is some level of agnosticism regarding this topic. In other words, we need to acknowledge the possibility of immaterial minds even if that’s a viewpoint with which one personally does not agree.

To me, it seems that the possibility of an immaterial mind, whatever that might look like, has significant implications for an overall understanding of reality.

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Nov 23 2022

Dance of the Thorns

Sometimes beautiful forms emerge from collections of harsh things, like this set of prickly weeds. Individually they look thorny, but together they evoke graceful movement.

As I’ve pondered my Christian faith and the reasons that it seems like the best answer to life’s deepest questions, a similar pattern has emerged.

It’s easy to get lost in troubling details when thinking about the faith, where some things seem thorny, difficult to deal with. Apparent contradictions, senseless violence, archaic social values, and historical events like the Crusades, can make the history uncomfortable.

And yet, like the weeds in the picture, these individually uncomfortable things seem to be part of something larger that is beautiful, even graceful.

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Nov 13 2022

Seeing Better

An easy trap to fall into is to become complacent in our beliefs, to not pay attention to the full depth of a topic. Instead, it’s easy to stop with a limited understanding, form opinions that we like, then reinforce them by finding sources that agree with us. This tends to further solidify our thinking.

The reality is that some topics, such as those related to metaphysics*, have many different dimensions that are continuing to be explored. Our understanding of fundamental physical reality is so nascent, still so evolving, that to claim any certainty, especially without constant learning, is simply arrogant. Thus, it seems the proper posture is one of humility and continual learning rather than dogmatic certainty.

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