A Physicist Endorses Biocentrism, But Does He Understand It?

When you do a Google search for "Big Think," the first thing you get is a search result linking to www.bigthink.com, one with a single tagline of "Actionable lessons from the world's greatest thinkers and doers."  Such runaway egotism does not sound like we will read the writings of humble students of nature. It's the same kind of thing you see with the Science 2.0 site at www.science20.com.  When you do a Google search for that site, you get a crowing tagline suggesting that it is written by "the world's best scientists."  You will be unlikely to recognize any of the authors if you do a random check of the site. 

Very recently at the www.bigthink.com site there was an article which does not quite sound like something written by one of "the world's greatest thinkers." It is an  article by physicist Marcelo Gleiser, one entitled "Enlightenment 2.0: We need another Age of Reason to save our civilization." That's a grandiose title that does not closely match the content of the article. Other than platitudes, Gleiser does not seem to offer any tips on how to save our civilization.  He mainly offers a sales pitch for some philosophy he calls Humancentrism. Suggesting the term his own creation, he says, "I have suggested elsewhere that modern astronomy offers a new vision for humanity, which I called Humancentrism." In Gleiser's description of this philosophy, we hear no very interesting or original-sounding ideas. 

First, Gleiser describes Humancentrism as an inversion of Copernicanism, which he describes as something which "states that the more we learn about the Cosmos, the less important we become." Copernicanism does not state any such thing. Copernicanism is simply the belief that Earth is not the physical center of the universe. Later, very strangely, Glesier states that "Humancentrism is a branch of Biocentrism." This statement is rather  laughable, because biocentrism (at least in its 2016 form) is a form of idealism, a philosophy that is the exact opposite of the materialism that Gleiser advocates. 

In his article Gleiser seems to show no understanding of what biocentrism is. "Biocentrism" is a term introduced by Robert Lanza MD in his 2010 book "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe." Biocentrism is described in my 2016 post "The Big Hole in Lanza's Biocentrism," a post I wrote after reading the book "Beyond Biocentrism," by Robert Lanza MD and his co-author Bob Berman. In that book biocentrism was described just as if it is a form of idealism, the belief that only mind exists. 

Idealism is the philosophical position that matter has no independent existence outside of minds that perceive matter. An idealist is someone who believes that the universe is just a collection of minds. An idealist is someone who thinks that instead of our minds existing inside the solar system, it's the other way around: the solar system is merely something that exists as a perceptual regularity inside of minds such as ours.

To someone who is not used to thinking as an idealist, idealism may initially seem absurd. But the case for idealism was advanced in a surprisingly forceful way in the eighteenth century, by British philosopher George Berkeley. In his classic philosophical work The Principles of Human Knowledge (which can be read here), Berkeley argued for immaterialism, the idea that matter has no existence outside of minds that perceive matter. His classic slogan was: to be is to be perceived.

On page 125 of Beyond Biocentrism, the authors say, “The world we see is the visual perception located in our head.” On page 137 the authors say, “There is nothing 'out there' beyond the reality constructed in our minds.” On page 186 the authors say, “We start by seeing that there is no real world 'out there' beyond us.”  These seem rather clearly to be statements of idealism, the position that only mind exists. The comparison I made in my 2016 between Berkeley's idealism and Lanza's biocentrism is echoed on a page of Lanza's site promoting biocentrism.  In an undated article he wrote in American Scholar, Lanza sounds like an idealist when he states this:

"Without perception, there is in effect no reality. Nothing has existence unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived further influences that reality."

If you look for a "Look Inside" preview on amazon.com of Lanza's latest book on Biocentrism (entitled The Grand Biocentric Design), you will see on page 16 this statement: "The fact that everything seen, heard, thought about, or remembered is,  first and foremost, a manifestation of human awareness means that consciousness is so close and intimiate it is usually overlooked." This is not a statement of fact, but a statement you might expect from an advocate of the philosophical viewpoint called idealism. The average physicist would deny that the Andromeda galaxy is "first and foremost, a manifestation of human awareness." Later on page 19 Lanza lists as a "first principle of biocentrism" the idea that "space and time are not independent realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind."  On page 20 Lanza lists this as a "third principle of biocentrism."

"The behavior of subatomic particles -- indeed all particles 

and objects -- is inextricably linked to the presence of an

observer. Absent a conscious observer, they at best exist 

in an undetermined state of probability waves." 

On the same page Lanza lists this as a "fourth principle of 

biocentrism": 

"Without consciousness, 'matter' dwells in an undetermined

state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded

consciousness only existed in a probability state."

In the next paragraph he clarifies what he means by referring to "an undetermined state of probability" by mentioning a "

"a sort of blurry probability state that physicists call 

'an uncollapsed wave function.' "

When I wrote my earlier 2016 post on biocentrism, that philosophy was in a weak state. Lanza seemed to be teaching a position of idealism, but his philosophy lacked the key part that allowed George Berkeley to propose a credible-sounding version of idealism. An idealist has to have a good answer to the question: how do I know that the people I see have an existence outside of my mind? If an idealist does not have a good answer to that question, then idealism can lead to the morally disastrous position of solipsism, the position in which someone claims no one exists outside of himself. One problem with solipsism is that you should always expect someone to act immorally once he has adopted that position.  Show me a man named John who does not believe anyone really exists except John himself, and I'll show you a man who may be prone to murder, rape and theft, while believing that he is not doing any real harm by such acts. 

George Berkeley had a pretty good answer to the question, "How do I know that the people I see have an existence outside of my mind?" His answer is that our perceptual regularities come from some divine mind who causes us to perceive certain regularities. So, according to Berkeley, when we look up at the sky and see the sun fairly often, it is not because there exists a physical sun independent of minds; it is instead because a divine mind is causing such perceptual regularities in our mind. According to Berkeley, when you see a body corresponding to some person, there must be a mind corresponding to that person, because the perceptual regularity comes from God, and God is not a deceiver.  

Another question that must be answered is: where do human minds come from? An idealist cannot give an answer of "from the brain," because the idealist does not believe in any matter independent of mind.  Berkeley's answer to where human minds come from is that all human minds come from a divine mind (God), not from matter. 

Although it takes some "getting used to," Berkeley's form of idealism or immaterialism was a surprisingly coherent philosophical position. But in his 2016 book, Lanza seemed to be missing the part that won Berkeley many philosophical adherents.  Lanza seemed to be teaching that all that existed are minds, but he seemed to have no explanation for how such minds arose. Nor did he seem to have any explanation for the regularities of human perception. Why would all humans be seeing a sun if the sun did not have an independent material existence? Berkeley had an answer, but Lanza apparently did not. 

What is rather laughable is that in the Big Think article by physicist Marcelo Gleiser, Gleiser (a materialist) tells that his philosphy of Humancentrism "is a branch of Biocentrism." But biocentrism is an idealistic philosophy (or at least it sure seemed to be as of 2016). So we seem to have in the Big Think article a materialist claiming that his philosophy is a branch of biocentrism, a philosophy of idealism. Idealism is the exact opposite of materialism. Materialists say that only matter exists, and idealists say that only mind exists. 

Some questions I have are:

(1) Did Gleiser actually read Lanza's books advocating biocentrism?

(2) If he did read them, did he note well the sentences in which Lanza claimed that matter has no existence outside of mind?

I have not read Lanza's latest book on biocentrism outside of the first twenty pages you can read by using the  "Look Inside" preview on www.amazon.com. But studying that, I seem to detect some evidence that Lanza is kind of waffling around and wavering about and watering down the idealist position he seemed to state in 2016. Now instead of saying that matter did not exist before mind, Lanza seems to be saying that matter may have kind of half-existed before mind as a kind of shadowy not-fully-there "uncollapsed wave function."  

As to the question of whether brains create minds, Lanza cannot seem to get his story straight. In 2016 he seemed to be teaching idealism, saying things such as the quotes I gave above, which included the statement, “We start by seeing that there is no real world 'out there' beyond us.”  But on page 20 of his new book Lanza states that "basic biology make it clear that what appears 'out there' is actually a construction -- a whirl of neural-electrical actvity -- occurring in the brain." Biology does not make any such thing clear, and neuroscientists have failed to provide any convincing evidence for their dogma that minds come from brains, a dogma that is contradicted by very much evidence documented by neuroscientists themselves. On page 17 of his new book Lanza incorrectly claims that neuroscience has "progressed impressively" by "exploring how complicated networks of neurons encode concepts." No such thing has actually occurred, and no neuroscientist has a credible explanation of how concepts are encoded in neurons. Indeed, the utter inability to credibly explain how brains could either give rise to abstract concepts or store abstract concepts are two of the very many reasons for rejecting claims that minds are created by brains. 

On this issue Lanza seems inconsistent and wavering, sounding in one place like he thinks minds come from brains, and elsewhere like he completely rejects such a doctrine. My impression after reading the first twenty pages of his latest book is of a thinker who is awkwardly trying to get something like a shotgun wedding between quantum mechanics and philosophical idealism and the boasts of neuroscientists, without realizing how often he is contradicting himself and failing to advance a position that holds together as an internally consistent worldview.  It is quite possible in the modern age to hold to a consistent, coherent and credible worldview of idealism, but you've got to "break some eggs" to do that, by defying some of the unproven dogmas of scientists, rather than parroting all their speech customs.  

As for Gleiser's use of the term "Humancentrism," it seems like a superfluous attempt to establish a new word that we don't need. There already exists in the English language the word "humanism," which seems to mean the same thing as what Gleiser means by "humancentrism." 

On page 7 of his first book on biocentrism, Lanza stated the 

following:

"Why are the laws of physics exactly balanced for animal

life to exist? For example, if the Big Bang had been one-part-

in-a-million more powerful, it would have rushed out too fast for the galaxies and life to develop. If the strong nuclear force were decreased 2 percent, atomic nuclei wouldn't hold together, and plain-vanilla hydrogen would be the only kind of atom in the universe. If the gravitational force were decreased by a hair, stars (including the Sun) would not ignite. These are just three of more than two hundred physical parameters within the solar system and universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose that they are random -- even if that is what standard contemporary physics baldly suggests. These fundamental constants of the universe -- constants that are not predicted by any theory -- all seem to be carefully chosen, often with great precision, to allow for the existence of life and consciousness." 

It was good that Lanza discussed such teleological-seeming cosmic fine-tuning. But Marcelo Gleiser is a cosmic fitness denialist, whose misstatements on this topic I discuss in my post "Stubbornly Denying the Evidence For Cosmic Fitness." On page 232 of his book A Tear at the Edge of Creation, Gleiser most incorrectly states, “There is absolutely no evidence that our Universe is fit for life.” This is a statement contrary to the statements of very many physicists and cosmologists who have emphatically asserted the exact opposite. And in his latest Big Think  article Gleiser points out his philosophy has no place for teleology.  So again I may wonder: what is going on with Gleiser claiming that his philosphy of Humancentrism is a branch of biocentrism? Did he actually study Lanza's works? 

I myself think that both idealism (the idea that only minds exist) and dualism (the idea that mind exists apart from and in addition to matter) are credible possibilities, neither of which can be ruled out. I reject materialism (the idea that only matter or only mass-energy exists), for many reasons mentioned on this site and my site here. 

Postscript: In a video link emailed to me by someone at NASA, we hear Donald D. Hoffman (Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California) talking like an idealist around 1:18:09 in the video, and the next two minutes. 

The Big Think site is mainly a materialist indoctrination site. Recently at that site we have another essay by Marcelo Gleiser.  Arguing that life on Earth has no purpose, Gleiser states this:

"If we changed one or more of the dramatic events in Earth’s history — say, the cataclysmic impact of the asteroid that helped eliminate the dinosaurs 66 million years ago — life’s history on Earth would also change. We probably would not be here asking about life’s purpose. The lesson from life is simple: In Nature, creation and destruction dance together. But there is no choreographer."

So from the alleged fact that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid 66 million years ago (something that seems to have been favorable to the eventual appearance of human civilizations) we have a lesson that life on Earth has no purpose? This is some of the worst reasoning I've ever heard.