Materialism Raises Fears You're a Soon-to-Die Boltzmann Brain

Let us imagine a disorderly universe consisting only of atoms randomly bouncing about. Materialists believe that minds and beliefs arise from certain combinations of matter in brains. If a disorderly universe existed for enough time and had enough mass, it might happen (under the assumptions of materialism) that some random combination of atoms might produce a self-conscious brain.

In the simplest case we can imagine, this might result in a mere flicker of self-consciousness that lasted only a few seconds. But in a more complicated case, the transient brain formed from random atom combinations might actually include beliefs and sensations that briefly persisted. Even though it might be surrounded by pure disorder, like a chunk of chicken in a big pot of soup, this short-lived brain could conceivably involve some random arrangements of atoms that might briefly convince the brain that it was viewing an orderly external world. The term philosophers and physicists use for such a hypothetical brain is a Boltzmann brain.

A Boltzmann brain is a hypothetical brain that arises from a random combination of atoms somewhere in space. A Boltzmann brain has internal states which make it seem like there is an orderly external world that doesn't exist. Just as a television playing a DVD can show a stream of images even when it is not receiving external television signals, a brain could conceivably have a set of internal states that might convince it that observations of an orderly external world were occurring, even though the brain was not actually getting light signals from such an orderly external world, and was actually surrounded by disorderly atoms bouncing around like the particles in a soup.

Let us imagine the brief appearance of a Boltzmann brain. First let us imagine a disorderly universe consisting not of planets and stars, but just random particles bouncing around. Because of some very improbable combination of atoms, some neurons come into existence, which create a consciousness that includes what seems like memories and perceptions of an external world. But the memories are false, and do not correspond to anything that happened. And the perceptions are also false, and do not correspond to anything in the external world.

Now, you may say that we can rule out such a possibility immediately, because it would just be too improbable that there could be so unlikely a random combination of atoms. One argument against the possibility is that there hasn't been enough time for there to be a significant chance of a Boltzmann brain, because the universe has only existed for about 13 billion years. But this does nothing to argue against the possibility that you may be a Boltzmann brain, because if you are a Boltzmann brain, the universe could really be far older than 13 billion years old (perhaps infinitely old); and your belief that the universe is 13 billion years old could simply be a belief that very recently appeared when random atoms combined to make your brain.

You may say think to yourself something like this:

I know in my mind so many things – all those things I learned in school. And I have so many memories – all the memories of a lifetime. It is way too unlikely that any random combination of atoms could ever produce a brain with all this knowledge and all these memories.

But there is a reason why such an argument is not convincing under materialist assumptions. Let us consider a possibility that we may consider a minimal Boltzmann brain. The minimal Boltzmann brain merely consists of the following:

1. A brain with a sense of self-hood.
   
2. A brain with the belief that it has lots of knowledge learned during years of life, and the belief that it has a lifetime in memories.
   
3. A brain that merely has the thoughts, recollections and sensations that you had during the past 30 seconds.
   

Now, under the assumptions of materialism, this minimal Boltzmann brain would be sufficient to account for your mental experience during the past 30 seconds. And under the assumptions of materialism, it could be that your mind is really only 30 seconds old, having arisen 30 seconds ago from a random combination of atoms in a disorderly universe, one that produced a minimal Boltzmann brain.

Assuming that memories can be stored in brains, it would require a most improbable combination of atoms to give you a Boltzmann brain with thousands of detailed memories. But it might require a vastly less improbable combination of atoms to give you a Boltzmann brain that did not really have all those memories, but merely had the belief it had thousands of detailed memories, and that merely had whatever memories you had recalled in the past 30 seconds. Under materialist assumptions, you could be such a Boltzmann brain, perhaps one that could have arisen only 30 seconds ago, from a random combination of atoms in a disorderly universe.

Now you may say that in regard to the possibility of a Boltzmann brain that had arisen only a few seconds or minutes ago, and one that didn't really have a lifetime of memories and knowledge but only the belief that it had a lifetime of memory and knowledge, it would still be too improbable that such a rare combination of atoms would occur by chance. So, you may reason, you can still believe in materialism and still think it is most improbable that you a recently formed Boltzmann brain. But such an argument is not a very convincing one. For while it is clear that while your recent appearance as a Boltzmann brain would be very improbable, it is not clear that it would be less improbable than your existence (under materialist assumptions) if you are not a Boltzmann brain, and everything you see around you is real.

The type of situation that we supposedly live in is one that is also fantastically improbable to occur by chance. Having an external universe like ours that is habitable with life (and with just the right fundamental constants allowing life to exist) requires a long series of coincidences, and some have estimated that the likelihood of all of these coincidences happening is less than 1 in ten to the hundredth power (much less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Then there is the origin of life, which seems to have required luck with a likelihood of less than 1 chance in 10 to the two hundredth power. Then there are all kinds of improbabilities in getting large multicellular organisms such as humans.

So under materialist assumptions the total unlikelihood of any intelligent organism such as you existing in a physical universe like the one we see around us may be less than 1 in 10 to the 300th power. And while it would be very unlikely that atoms combining in space would combine to briefly give you an illusion of perceiving an external world that does not exist, it is not at all clear that this would be less likely than 1 in 10 to the 300th power. It therefore seems that if you regard your consciousness as being caused by a brain, then you should have no great confidence about whether the external world exists, and should think there is a significant chance that you are merely a Boltzmann brain who originated a short time ago from a random combination of atoms in a disorderly universe, your sensations being merely illusions created by random states in your random brain.

It has often been said that from a thermodynamic standpoint, a Boltzmann brain in a disorderly universe is far more likely than a universe as orderly as ours. The most likely thing from a thermodynamic standpoint is a universe consisting of a gas of fairly uniform temperature. Deviations from such a thing are called statistically unlikely, and it said that the higher the deviation, the higher the unlikelihood. A Boltzmann brain would seem to involve a thermodynamic deviation relatively small, and might be potentially much more likely than a universe such as ours, which is a gigantic thermodynamic deviation.

On page 316 of his book Fashion Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, cosmologist Roger Penrose says, “One can make a very rough estimate of the probability that life, as it now exists on Earth, with all its detailed molecular and atomic locations and motions, came about simply by chance encounters from particles coming in from space in, let us say, six days!” Penrose then estimates that such a thing would have a probability of about 1 in 10 to the ten to the sixtieth power. That is a probability not anything like the microscopic probability of 1 in 10⁶⁰ but instead an almost infinitely smaller probability. It's the probability you would have if you started out with one tenth and then kept multiplying by one tenth a total number of times equal to a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times. But then Penrose tells us that this fantastically unlikely event (a life-filled Earth like ours suddenly forming from random collisions of particles) would be far more probable than the existence of a universe as orderly as ours, saying it “would be a far 'cheaper' way of producing intelligent beings than the way in which it was actually done!” He's indicating that the incredibly improbable sudden formation of a life-stocked planet like ours would actually be much more likely than the chance of you getting a universe such as ours accidentally.

In light of such a calculation, under materialist assumptions an individual should perhaps suspect that he is merely a Boltzmann brain recently formed from random atomic collisions, as that might be far more likely than for him to be a regular brain in a universe such as ours.

Physicist Sean Carroll has written about Boltzmann brains, and seems to have the idea that the concept is mainly an issue in physics or cosmology. He seems to think we can get rid of the specter of Boltzmann brains by picking the right cosmology model, such as one that doesn't generate too many Boltzmann brains. Such ideas are not correct. Properly considered, Boltzmann brains are mainly an issue in the philosophy of mind rather than physics or cosmology. The real issue is whether random combinations of matter can briefly produce someone who had the same thoughts, beliefs and sensations you had in the past 30 seconds. If that is so, it is very troubling, and you cannot remove your worry about this by assuring yourself that the universe is too young to have produced Boltzmann brains. The very belief that the universe is only 13 billion years old is one that merely could have popped up a few seconds or minutes ago in your Boltzmann brain formed by a random combination of atoms. So under materialist assumptions it could still be true that the universe might have existed forever, and there would have been time for countless trillions of Boltzmann brains to have arisen, no matter how improbable they are.

Now, in response to this a materialist may say something like, “I don't care too much about such a possibility because it makes no practical difference, and my life will be the same regardless of whether I am or am not a Boltzmann brain.” But this isn't true at all. If you are a Boltzmann brain, it has the greatest immediate consequences, because if you a Boltzmann brain it is extremely likely that you will die today.

The longer a Boltzmann brain persists while seeming to have sensations of an orderly external world, the greater an unlikelihood is required. After all, brains presumably need blood, but a Boltzmann brain is presumably just a brain floating about that doesn't have a surrounding body to keep pumping it blood (although it may have a sphere of blood around it for a while). So it is overwhelmingly likely that any Boltzmann brain will have existed less than a day, and will continue to live for less than a day. Under materialist assumptions, your memory of experiencing things a long ago time does not rule out the idea that you are a Boltzmann brain that arose from chance combinations of atoms a few minutes ago or hours ago in a chaotic universe, for when that Boltzmann brain arose it could have simply included such memories.

So if you are a materialist, you should fear that you a Boltzmann brain that is going to die today, living only the very, very short typical lifespan of a Boltzmann brain. Another thing you should be terrified about if you are a materialist is that today you will either go blind and deaf, and experience no more sensations for the rest of your life, or that you will experience nothing but unintelligible visual noise and auditory noise for the rest of your life. After all, each second of sensations experienced by a Boltzmann brain (in which it seems merely by chance atom combinations to experience an orderly external world) requires a great coincidence in which random particle movements conspire to resemble a meaningful, orderly reality. Every minute that something so improbable continues is like an additional minute at the roulette table in which you are betting all your winnings on Red 14, and continuing to win (and actually far more improbable). Such luck is very unlikely to continue for very long.

So it seems that if you are a materialist, you should be quite terrified that you a Boltzmann brain, and that you will either die today or that today you will stop having any more meaningful sensations, experiencing either blindness for the rest of your life, or meaningless noise sensations perhaps resembling what you see when you look through a kaleidoscope.

You can never prove that you are not a Boltzmann brain by having some long stream of sensations or recall experiences that you think are “too long and complicated for a Boltzmann brain to have.” Because once you start thinking along the lines of Boltzmann brains, you lose confidence that you actually had such a long stream of experiences and recall experiences. It could be that a few seconds ago you appeared when some random atoms combined in space, and that your belief that you recently had this “long stream of sensations and recall experiences” is merely a belief that arose a few seconds ago when your Boltzmann brain originated.

You may think: we can rule out the idea of Boltzmann brains, because it's too improbable that an organ as complicated as a brain would appear by a random combination of atoms. But because of the Boltzmann brain scenario, as a materialist you could not be confident that you actually have some very complicated brain. If you believe that consciousness and something like human mentality can arise from mere combinations of atoms, then you cannot rule out a scenario like the following:

1. Your mind arose after a relatively simple combination of a small number of atoms, forming only a very simple, tiny brain.
   
2. It could be that the mental state that arose after this relatively simple combination of a small number of atoms includes the untrue belief that mental experience like your present experience requires a very complicated brain.
   

If you are one of those persons who believes in a multiverse (an incredibly vast collection of universes), then if you are a materialist you should be particularly worried that you are a recently formed Boltzmann brain, because under materialist assumptions the more universes that exist, the more Boltzmann brains should be created.

Although the concept of a Boltzmann brain may sound silly, it is a serious philosophical problem for anyone who believes that consciousness can arise from combinations of matter. It seems that anyone who has such a belief can have no great confidence that everyone he observes at this instant really exists. And when you are lying with your eyes closed on your bed, waiting to fall asleep, experiencing no complex sensations, that is when (under materialist assumptions) you should be most afraid that you are merely a very recently formed Boltzmann brain who will not live another hour. For in that state you cannot say, “It is too unlikely that I would have such detailed sensations of the world if it did not exist, and I were just a Boltzmann brain that very recently appeared from random atom combinations.” For lying awake with your eyes closed, you are not having any complex sensations at all.

Is there some way to rule out the Boltzmann brain scenario, some way to slay this nasty specter? There is. The answer is to switch from the philosophical position of neuralism to the philosophical position of nonneuralism. Once we do that, the whole Boltzmann brain issue disappears.

We may use the term neuralism for the doctrine that minds come from brains. Although sometimes sold as science, neuralism is a philosophical position, not science. Scientists have no proof that minds are produced by brains, and the type of evidence they sometimes present to try to back up such a claim does not hold up well to critical scrutiny. The claim that brains make minds is a speech custom of neuroscientists rather than anything they have good evidence for believing.

An alternate position is that minds do not come from brains, and cannot come from brains or any other combinations of matter. We may use the term nonneuralism for this position. Nonneuralism is a non-sectarian position in the philosophy of mind that may be held without contradiction by Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, philosophical theists, agnostics or atheists, regardless of whether they do or not believe in Darwinism. Nonneuralism itself does not involve any specific belief about the source of human minds, although some nonneuralists may suspect such a source is cosmic or metaphysical or spiritual or transcendent rather than some local biological source.

Once you adopt the position of nonneuralism, Boltzmann brains are no longer a possibility that troubles you. If you believe minds cannot arise from brains, and cannot arise from any combination of matter, then you will believe that Boltzmann brains cannot possibly exist.

There are many reasons for adopting the position of nonneuralism. Explained in detail at this site, they include the following:

1. The fact that no one has ever advanced a credible explanation for how any type of matter (whether it be neurons or anything else) could produce self-hood, consciousness, thoughts, ideas or beliefs.
2. The fact that there is no credible theory of how a brain could be converting human mental experiences and sensations so that they can be stored for years as neural states.
3. The fact that there is no credible neural theory of how brains could achieve the instantaneous memory recall that humans have (which would be an "instantly finding a needle in a mountain-sized haystack" trick for a brain to perform).
4. The fact that there is no credible theory of how humans could be neurally storing memories that can last for 50 years, given the extremely short lifetimes of the protein molecules that make up synapses.
5. The fact that brains sometimes undergo enormous damage (such as loss of between 50% and 80% of their neurons through hydroencephaly or hemispherectomy) while showing only small changes in memory or cognition.
6. The fact that many people have vivid near-death experiences while their brains have electrically shut down during cardiac arrest, as the brain does within 30 seconds after the heart stops, such experiences suggesting our minds are not generated by our brains.

An additional reason for adopting the position of nonneuralism is that if you adopt such a position, you will not think there is any possibility that you are a Boltzmann brain, and that you will not suspect that maybe the people you see in front of you are mere illusions who will disappear (as you will disappear) a few minutes or hours in the future when your Boltzmann brain (floating about in a disorderly universe) dies. The nonneuralist can consistently say to himself: Boltzmann brains can never exist because brains by themselves do not and cannot produce minds.

More Poor Answers at the "Ask Philosophers" Site

The “Ask Philosophers” website (www.askphilosophers.org) is a site that consists of questions submitted by the public, with answers given by philosophers. No doubt there is much wisdom to be found at this site, although I found quite a few answers that were poor or illogical – such as the ones listed in my previous post. Below are some more examples.

Question 464 is an excellent and concise question: “Is it more probable that a universe that looks designed is created by a designer than by random natural forces?” In reply to this question, Stanford philosopher Mark Crimmins gives a long answer that is poor indeed. He tries to argue that it is hard to exactly calculate just precisely how improbable it might be that a universe was designed, no matter what characteristics it had. Using the term “designy-ness” to apparently mean “resembling something designed,” Crimmins then states, “the mere 'designy-ness' of our universe is not by itself a good reason for confidence that it was designed.”

This doesn't make sense. If we find ourselves in a garden that appears to be designed, with 50 neat, even rows of flowers, that certainly is a good reason for confidence that the garden was designed. If we find ourselves in a structure that appears to be designed, with nice even walls, nice even floors and a nice convenient roof, that certainly is a good reason for confidence that such a structure was designed. And if we find ourselves against enormous odds in a universe with many laws favoring our existence, and with many fundamental constants that have just the right values allowing us to exist, this “designy-ness" would seem to be a good reason for confidence that such a universe was designed. If you wish to escape such a conclusion, your only hope would be to somehow specify some plausible theory as to how a universe might accidentally have such favorable characteristics by chance or by natural factors. It is illogical to argue, as Crimmins has, that the appearance of design in a universe is no basis for confidence that it is designed.  I may note that confidence (which may be defined as thinking something is likely true) has lower evidence requirements than certainty. 

As for his “it's too hard to make an exact calculation of the probability” type of reasoning, anyone can defeat that by giving some simple examples. If I come to your backyard, and see a house of cards on the back porch, I can have great confidence that such a thing is the product of design rather than chance, even though I cannot calculate precisely how unlikely it might be that someone might throw a deck of cards into the air, and for a house of cards to then appear. And if I see a log cabin house in the woods, I can have very great confidence that such a thing is a product of design, even though I cannot exactly calculate how improbable it might be that falling trees in the woods would randomly form into a log cabin.

In question 24743, someone asks the question, “How can a certain bunch of atoms be more self aware than another bunch?” The question is a very good one. We can imagine a shoe box that has exactly the same element abundances of the human brain, with the same number of grams of carbon, the same number of grams of oxygen, and so forth. How could a human brain with the same abundances of elements produce consciousness, when the atoms in the shoe box do not? We can't plausibly answer the question by saying that there is some particular arrangement of the atoms that produces self-awareness.

Let us imagine some machine that rearranges every 10 minutes the element abundances in the human brain, producing a different combination of positions for these atoms every ten minutes. It seems to make no sense to think that the machine might run for a million years and not produce any self-awareness, and that suddenly some particular combination of these atoms would suddenly produce self-awareness.

The answer to this question given by philosopher Stephen Maitzen is a poor one. He merely says, “There's good evidence that the answer has to do with whether a given bunch of atoms composes a being that possesses a complex network of neurons.” There is no such evidence. No one has the slightest idea of how neurons or a network of neurons could produce self-awareness. If you try to suggest that somehow the fact of all of the atoms being connected produces self-awareness, we can point out that according to such reasoning the connected atoms in a crystal lattice should be self-aware, or the densely packed and connected vines in the Amazon forest should be self-aware.

A good answer to question 24743 is to say that there is no obvious reason why one set of atoms in a brain would be more self-aware than any other set of atoms with the same abundances of elements, and that such a thing is one of many reasons for thinking that our self-awareness does not come from our brains, but from some deeper reality, probably a spiritual reality.

In question 4922, someone asks about the anthropic principle, asking whether it is a tautology, or “is there something more substantive behind it.” The anthropic principle (sometimes defined as the principle that the universe must have characteristics that allow observers to exist in it) is a principle that was evoked after scientists discovered more and more cases of cosmic fine-tuning, cases in which our universe has immensely improbable characteristics necessary for living beings to exist in it. You can find many examples of these cases of cosmic fine-tuning by doing a Google search using either the phrase “anthropic principle” or “cosmic fine-tuning,” or reading this post or this post.

The answer given to question 4922 by philosopher Nicholas D. Smith is a poor one. Smith says the anthropic principle “strikes me as neither a tautology nor as something that has anything 'more substantive behind it.' " Whether we can derive any principle like the anthropic principle from the many cases of cosmic fine-tuning is debatable, but clearly there is something enormously substantive that has triggered discussions of the anthropic principle. That something is the fact of cosmic fine-tuning. If our universe has many cases of having just the right characteristics, characteristics fantastically unlikely for a random universe to have, that philosophically is a very big deal, and one of the most important things scientists have ever discovered – not something that can be dismissed as lacking in substance.

Against all odds, our universe got many "royal flushes"

In question 40, someone asks a classic philosophical question: “Why does anything exist?” The questioner says, “Wouldn't it be more believable if nothing existed?” The answer to this question given by philosopher Jay L. Garfield is a poor one. After suggesting that the questioner read a book by Wittgenstein (the last thing anyone should do for insight on such a matter), Garfield merely suggests that the question “might not really be a real question at all.” That's hardly a decent answer to such a question.

An intelligent response to the question of “why is there something rather than nothing” would be one that acknowledged why the question is an extremely natural one and a very substantive question indeed. It is indeed baffling why anything exists. Imagining a counter-factual, we can imagine a universe with no matter, no energy, no minds, and no God. In fact, such a state of existence would be the simplest possible state of existence. And we are tempted to regard such a simplest-possible state of existence as being the most plausible state of existence imaginable, for if there were eternal nothingness there would be zero problems of explaining why reality is the way it is. We can kind of get a hint as to a possible solution to the problem of existence, that it might be solved by supposing an ultimate reality the existence of which was necessary rather than contingent. But with our limited minds, we probably cannot figure out a full and final answer as to why there is something rather than nothing. We have strong reason to suspect, however, that if you fully understood why there is something rather than nothing, you would have the answer to many other age-old questions.

In question 3363, a person very intelligently states the following:

When I think about the organic lump of brain in my head understanding the universe, or anything at all, it seems absurdly unlikely. That lump of tissue seems to me more like a pancreas than a super-computer, and I have a hard time understanding how organic tissue is able to reach conclusions about the universe or existence.

We get an answer from philosopher Allen Stairs, but only a poor one. Stairs claims, “Neuroscientists will be able to tell you in a good deal of detail why the brain is better suited to computing than the pancreas is.” This statement implies that neuroscientists have some idea of how it is than a brain can think or create ideas or generate understanding of abstract concepts. They have no such thing. As discussed here, no neuroscientist has ever given a remotely persuasive explanation as to how a brain could understand anything or generate an idea or engage in abstract reasoning. A good answer to question 3363 would have commended the person raising the question, saying that he has raised a very good point that has still not been answered, and has at least brought attention to an important shortcoming of modern neuroscience. Philosophically the point raised by question 3363 is a very important one. The lack of any coherent understanding as to how neurons could produce mental phenomena such as consciousness, understanding and ideas is one of the major reasons for rejecting the idea that the mind is purely or mainly the product of the brain. Many other reasons are discussed at this site.

In question 4165 a person raises the topic of near-death experiences, and asks whether philosophy has an opinion on this type of experience. The answer we get from Allen Stairs is a poor one. He attempts to argue that “it's not clear that it would do much to support the idea that the mind is separate from the body,” even if someone reported floating out of his body and seeing some information that was taped to the top of a tall object, information he should have been unable to see from an operating table. This opinion makes no sense. Such evidence would indeed do much to support the idea that the mind is separate from the body. This type of evidence has already been gathered; see here for some dramatic cases similar to what the questioner discussed (verified information that someone acquired during a near-death experience, even though it should have been impossible for him to have acquired such information through normal sensory experience). 

Stairs states the following to try and support his strange claim that people repeatedly reporting floating out of their bodies does not support the idea that the mind is separate from the brain:

How would that work? Does the bodiless mind have eyes? How did the interaction between whatever was up there on top of that tall object and the disembodied mind work? How did the information get stored? How did the mind reconnect with the patient's brain? The point isn't that the mind must be embodied. The point is that a case like this would only amount to good evidence for minds separate from bodies if that idea gave us a good explanation for the case. As it stands, it's not clear that it gives us much of an explanation at all, let the best one.

Stairs seems to be appealing here to a kind of principle that something isn't an explanation if it raises unanswered questions. That is not a sound principle at all, and in general in the history of science we find that important explanations usually raise many unanswered questions. For example, if we were to explain the rotation speeds of stars around the center of the galaxy by the explanation of dark matter, as many astrophysicists like to do, that raises quite a few unanswered questions, such as what type of particle dark matter is made up of, and how dark matter interacts with ordinary matter.

As for Stair's insinuation that postulating a mind or soul separate from the body is “not much of an explanation at all,” that's not at all true. By postulating such a thing, it would seem that we can explain many things all at once. By postulating a soul as a repository of our memories, we can explain why people are able to remember things for 50 years, despite the very rapid protein turnover in synapses which should prevent brains from storing memories for longer than a few weeks. By postulating a soul as a repository of our memories, we can explain why humans are able to instantly recall old and obscure memories, something that cannot be plausibly explained with the idea that memories are stored in brains (which creates a most severe “how could a brain instantly find a needle in a haystack” problem discussed here). By postulating a soul as the source of our intelligence, we can explain the fact (discussed here) that epileptic children who have hemispherectomy operations (the surgical removal of half of their brains) suffer only slight decreases in IQ, or none at all. By postulating a soul, we can explain how humans score at a 32 percent accuracy on ganzfeld ESP tests in which the expected chance result is only 25 percent (ESP being quite compatible with the idea of a soul).  And by postulating a soul apart from our body, we can explain why so many people have near-death experiences in which they report their consciousness moving out of their bodies. So far from being “not much of an explanation at all” as Stairs suggests, by postulating a soul separate from the body, it would seem that we can explain quite a few things in one fell swoop.

Some Poor Answers at the “Ask Philosophers" Site

The “Ask Philosophers” website (www.askphilosophers.org) is a site that consists of questions submitted by the public, with answers given by philosophers. No doubt there is much wisdom to be found at this site, although I found some answers that were poor or illogical. Below are some examples.

In Question 27225 someone asks the excellent question “if Order and Reason are a part of Nature” or if “this is simply how humans view things and try to make sense of things.”

Philosopher Peter S. Fosl answers this question by saying this:

For myself, I think the traditions of philosophical skepticism have raised serious doubts about whether or not this question can be finally answered. It seems, given the apparent lessons of those traditions, that it wisest to suspend judgment on the question but nevertheless to keep inquiring and to remain open to the chance that we might figure it out.

Given what we know about the fine-tuning of the universe's fundamental constants and the laws of nature, this answer is a poor one. We live in a universe with astonishing order and fine-tuning. To give one example of many, each proton in the universe has the same mass, a particular mass 1836 times greater than the mass of each electron. Despite this mass difference, the absolute value of the electrical charge of each proton is precisely the same (to more than fifteen  decimal places) as the absolute value of the electrical charge of each electron. Were it not for this “coincidence,” which we would not expect in even 1 in a trillion random universes, life could not exist in our universe, for (as discussed by the astronomer Greenstein) the electromagnetic repulsion between particles would be so great that planets would not be able to hold together. As we live in a universe that has many such “coincidences” necessary for our existence, the wise way to answer question 27225 is to say that order and reason seem to be abundantly manifest in our universe.

Galaxy NGC 1398 (Credit: NASA)

In question 3435 someone asks the following:

I really don't understand what the big deal is with the apparent 'fine tuning' of the constants of the universe, or even if 'fine tuning' is even apparent! The conditions have to be just right for life to emerge, sure, but so what? Conditions have to be just right for many things in the universe to occur, but we don't always suspect an outside agent as responsible.

This answer is given by philosopher Jonathan Westphal:

Suppose human life is extremely improbable. What does that show? Alas, again the answer is, absolutely nothing at all. The improbable sometimes happens, although, of course, not very often! We should thank heaven that it did!

This answer is a poor one. We use probability all the time to reach conclusions about what happened and who was responsible for it. The more improbable something is, the more justified we may be in judging that something more than mere chance was involved. You do not justify ignoring an appearance of intention or design by evoking a principle that “the improbable sometimes happens.” Such a point is easily dismissed by pointing out that something that serves a favorable functional purpose virtually never happens by chance.

If human life appeared despite enormous odds against it (such as the odds of throwing a pack of cards into the air and it forming by chance into a house of cards), that would seem to be an extremely important clue to the nature of reality, and not at all something that should be dismissed as something that means “absolutely nothing at all.” If you were walking in the woods, and saw a garden with 40 long neat rows of flowers, with an equal space between each row, you would be absolutely justified in assuming that some design and purpose led to this arrangement; and you would chuckle at the very bad judgment of anyone who claimed the arrangement had occurred by chance, on the grounds that “the improbable sometimes happens.”

In Question 221, a person asks the following:

I heard about the analogy of a computer and the mind, but I'm fuzzy about the connection. Please help!

We then get an answer from Peter Lipton that includes the following:

What makes the analogy attractive is the thought that mental states might also be functional states. Thus the same kind of thought might be 'run' on or 'realized' in different physical states on different occasions, just as the same program might be run on different types of computer hardware. One attraction of this idea is that it seems to capture the intuition that mental states are not simply identifiable with lumps of matter, while avoiding any suggestion that they are spooky non-physical stuff.

This answer is a poor one. It seems to encourage the very erroneous idea that the mind is like a computer by arguing that software (a computer program) is somehow like thought. A thought is vastly different from software. Rather than trying to argue for the mind being like a computer, the answer should have stressed that the two are drastically different. A computer is a physical thing, but a mind is a non-physical thing. A mind has life experiences, thoughts, feelings, and ideas, none of which a computer has. So it makes no sense to say the mind is like a computer. It is not like any computer that we know of. Also, Lipton erroneously suggests we should avoid thinking of mental states as non-physical, which makes no sense, because mental states are non-physical.

Question 317 is this question:

How do thoughts exist in our brains? How are they stored? Is this a chemical or electrical process?

The answer provided by Louise Antony is a poor one. She states, “The most plausible proposal about what kinds of states these might be is, in my view, the view that says that thoughts are actually sentences in a 'language of thought', expressed by means of some kind of neurological code, on analogy with the 'machine language' employed by computers at the most basic level.” This idea is not plausible at all, and there is no evidence for it. Antony gives no neuroscience facts to support it.

The idea that our thoughts could be stored using some neurological code involves a host of problems. One problem (discussed at length here) is that there is no place in the brain that could serve as a plausible site where memories could be stored for decades. The leading theory of memory storage in the brain is that memories are stored in synapses. But that theory is completely implausible, for we know that the proteins that make up synapses have average lifetimes of less than two weeks. Another problem (discussed here) is that we can imagine no plausible scheme by which our thoughts could ever be translated into information that could be stored in the brain using some neurological code. A study of how computers store information will show that such a thing involves all kinds of sophisticated translation systems such as the scheme by which letters are converted into numbers (the ASCII system), and another scheme by which such numbers are converted from decimal to binary. Such translation is easy for a computer, but it is all but inconceivable that such translations could be going on in our brains, which never got anything like the ASCII system contrived by human designers. Then there is the huge "instantly finding the needle in the haystack" problem (discussed here) that we know of no way in which a brain could ever instantly retrieve memories if they were stored in brains, the brain lacking any of the things we have in computers that allow for fast information retrieval (things such as indexing, sorting, and hashing). If there was a “neurological code” by which the brain stored information, we would have discovered it already; but no such thing has been discovered.

Far from being “the most plausible proposal,” the possibility mentioned by Antony is a very implausible proposal, and an idea that no one has ever been able to sketch out in any detailed and credible way. Difficulties such as I have mentioned should have been been mentioned in Antony's answer, and she should have said that because of such reasons, we do not know that our memories or thoughts are stored in our brains, and do not know that our thoughts exist in our brains. Our thoughts may exist as part of our souls rather than our brains, or our thoughts may have a non-local existence apart from our body, just as the number pi exists independently of any circle. 

In Question 2354, someone asks, “Is telepathy possible or is this just a magician's trick? We get a poor answer from Allen Stairs. Very inconsistently, he says, “I suspect that it is not possible,” but then mentions ESP experiments using the Ganzfeld protocol in which “receivers are able to pick the correct target at a rate significantly above chance.” He doesn't mention the numbers, but in the Ganzfeld experiments the average success rate is about 32% (as discussed here), compared to a rate of only 25% that someone would get by chance. Given such overwhelming evidence for ESP, why would anyone say that telepathy “is not possible”? Later Stairs says “while there is some evidence on behalf of telepathy, it's very far from making a strong case.” But why would anyone claim something “is not possible” on one hand, and that “there is some evidence” for it? That makes no sense. The evidence for telepathy and other forms of psi is extremely strong. The Ganzfeld experiments would by themselves be adequate evidence for ESP, and there are many other experiments (such as these done by Joseph Rhine with Hubert Pearce) in which the success rate was so high that it constitutes overwhelming evidence for telepathy, very much making exactly the strong case that Stairs denies.

In Question 5176 someone asks, “Is it a common view among philosophers that human beings are simply biological computers?” Eddy Nahmias answers us by telling us, “There are few substance dualists (who think the mind is a non-physical entity).” This is not accurate. There are many philosophers who think the mind is a non-physical entity.

Question 24702 asks the following:

Assuming that the multiverse account of the universe is true -- and every possible reality is being simultaneously played out in an infinite number of parallel universes -- am I logically forced into accepting a nihilistic outlook on life? Or is it still possible to accept the truth of the multiverse account and still rationally believe that the pursuit of life goals is both meaningful and valuable, despite the fact that every possible outcome -- or potential reality -- is unfolding somewhere in another parallel universe?

In response to this question, philosopher Stephen Maitzen gives a poor answer. He states the following:

The beings very similar to you who inhabit other universes are at best "counterparts" of you, which leaves open the question "What will you do with your life?" It may be well and good if one of your counterparts works hard to achieve wisdom, promote justice, or whatever, in some other universe. But his/her hard work isn't yours and doesn't occur in your universe.

Instead of this lame answer, Maitzen should have pointed out the lack of any empirical basis for believing in any universe other than our own. He should have asked the user: why are you assuming the truth of an infinitely extravagant claim for which there is no evidence​? 

In my next post I will discuss some additional examples of poor answers given at the "Ask Philosophers" web site. 

Postscript: Today's "Question of the Day" on the "Ask Philosophers" site is a question that ends by asking, "What then, prevents any layman from calling himself a philosopher a priori and considering himself equal to you?"  The answer by philosopher Allen Stairs is an answer ringing with a sound of superiority and elitism. He says this:

You may still wonder: what does it actually take to make someone a bona fide philosopher?...People who have several publications in respectable philosophy journals would count, for example. So would people with PhDs in philosophy who have positions in philosophy departments at accredited universities. Such folk are paradigm cases of philosophers (at least, in the early 21st century in the west.) People recognized as philosophers by paradigm-case philosophers will count. People similar to paradigm-case philosophers are candidates for being counted as philosophers; the stronger the similarity the stronger the case. 

This is a poor answer. A good answer to the question, "What then, prevents any layman from calling himself a philosopher a priori and considering himself equal to you?" is: nothing at all.  To philosophize is the birthright of every human, and anyone who thinks deeply on any complex topic has every right to call himself a philosopher. Philosophers should strive for humility, rather than mounting some high horse and calling themselves "paradigm-case philosophers."  There is no reason why we should be more inclined to accept or reject a philosophical argument of a PhD than to accept or reject the philosophical argument of a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker.  All are equal on the battlefield of philosophical argumentation. 

We Need Philosophy, But Do We Need Philosophy PhDs?

Philosophy is a very good and necessary thing for any civilization. It is untrue that we do not need philosophy because we have scientists to guide us to the truth. For one thing, a large part of philosophy is ethics, and science is a morally neutral thing that gives no guidance in regard to ethics. For another thing, what is taught by scientists is often a mixture of fact, dogma, and speculations. In many cases the dogma consists of ideas that are not proven, but which have simply become popular in scientific communities. In such cases it is extremely useful to have a philosophical thinker around, regardless of whether such a person has any philosophy credentials. A philosophical thinker can act as a kind of referee or watchdog, alerting the public when scientists are making truth claims that they have not proven by observations or experiments.

Then there is the fact that our scientists are fond of saying that large classes of statements are forbidden to their kind, such as statements about the existence of the supernatural or some higher power. Since so many scientists are taking “hands off” attitudes towards such things, we need non-scientists such as philosophers to help us sort out the logic or lack of logic about truth claims in such an area, and to help sort out whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant beliefs about the supernatural.

The very idea that philosophy and science are completely separate things is erroneous, in the sense that scientists will often engage in philosophical activity as part of their jobs. For example, when a physicist starts speculating about a multiverse, he has strayed into metaphysics. It is appropriate at such times for a philosopher to comment on whether good metaphysics is going on, or poor metaphysics. And when scientists start spouting metaphysics, they sometimes spout the worst kind of metaphysics (violating the philosophical principle of Occam's Razor in the worst way). To give another example, when a scientist starts saying “This type of statement is forbidden to a scientist,” he has strayed outside of science itself into what is known as philosophy of science. At such point we need philosophers of science to give input on whether the scientist's statement is an appropriate rule.

So philosophy is very necessary indeed. And philosophy is still a good subject to be taught as an undergraduate major. For a large fraction of employers, a bachelor's degree is today largely a screening device, mainly serving the purpose of showing that a student is smart enough (and has sufficient writing and thinking skills) to pass a four-year program of study. There are countless employers who will hire any new college graduate with a good GPA, and many of them don't particularly care whether you have a degree in philosophy or French literature or history. Such employers often require employees to use skills they can only learn at their company.

But what about graduate programs in philosophy? Do we have any great need for philosophy PhDs? There is no tremendous need for people to have doctoral degrees in philosophy, and we could certainly get along with far fewer philosophy PhDs. Consider the literary output of a typical academic philosopher. Such a person will largely write for philosophy journals that almost no one reads. A typical philosophy journal will have its content behind a paywall, meaning there will be few Internet readers. And you probably won't be able to read the journal at your local library. 

You can get an idea of the small readership of philosophy papers by going to the website Philpapers.org, which allows you to see the abstracts of a vast number of philosophy papers. If you look at the full abstract for a paper, you will see a graph showing how many people have downloaded the paper. A typical result will be maybe two downloads a month.

The papers written in philosophy journals are typically papers about philosophy written by philosophers purely for the sake of other philosophers. Such papers are often very obscure and written in jargon that only other philosophers can understand. The cultural impact of such technical papers tends to be very slim. When philosophers start writing mainly for other philosophers, they tend to produce forgettable content that has little cultural impact.

There is a general reason why a university environment may be a poor environment for a philosopher. Part of the proper role of a philosopher is to criticize unwarranted or illogical claims from other people, regardless of their status in society. But a university can set up scientists as almost kind of local gods. The biologist or physicist may be a local celebrity at his university, enjoying fame, funding and a large building that may totally dwarf that of some philosopher at the university. This creates a situation in which the philosopher at such a university may have a strong tendency to kowtow to such an authority figure, and take his pronouncements as gospel truth. But such a philosopher may not be doing his job if he does that. Part of a philosopher's role is to expose poor logic and unwarranted claims of authority figures.

 

Will a philosopher at Central University be willing to criticize the unwarranted dogmatism or unjustified statements of Scientist Jones, when Central University is paying Scientist Jones $300,000 a year to secure the services of this well-known figure, and doing everything it can to build up his reputation and status? Probably not. A university environment may not be an ideal environment for a philosopher, just like the Pentagon may not be an ideal environment for an editorial writer analyzing the moral rectitude or logical sense of current US military policies.

There is no clear and obvious reason why we need to have philosophy PhDs. It may be that you can't do much microbiology unless you work at a university with fancy expensive laboratories, or a corporate lab with similar equipment. But anyone can write philosophical content even if he or she is not in a university. People who write philosophical content and place it on the Internet will probably get far more readers than those writing in philosophical journals.

A good deal of a philosophy curriculum involves studying the past works of philosophers. Such a study does not need to be perfect. It's very important that there be nuclear engineers who get things just exactly right, so that nuclear power plants can be built safely; and it's very important that there be geneticists who get things just exactly right, so that gene-splicing activities be done just right, and with minimum risk. But it isn't so terribly important that philosophy teachers get things just exactly 100% right when describing the teachings of past philosophers such as Plato, Kant, or Hegel. The main reason for studying such figures nowadays is perhaps to get a few ideas that someone might find useful in developing his or her own philosophical viewpoint. For such a purpose, it works just fine to have a fairly good knowledge of some past philosopher's ideas, rather than a crystal clear knowledge of that.

It seems that the philosophy departments of universities could serve their purpose well enough if all instruction in philosophy was done by only people with master's degrees rather than PhDs (and an accelerated master's degree would probably be sufficient for teaching philosophy at a university). Since the philosopher should be ever-ready to challenge the thinking of authorities in all fields (government officials, religion authorities, scientists and other philosophers), perhaps philosophers should be in no hurry to set themselves up as authorities with doctoral degrees in philosophy. 

The idea that you have to undergo many years of specialized study before you can call yourself a philosopher is misguided. It is the birthright of every human to philosophize, and any person who thinks deeply on any abstract philosophical topic may rightfully call himself a philosopher. 

Some Try to Super-Shrink the Self, But Others Try to Balloon It to Infinity

Explaining the human self is a problem for materialists. Under their assumptions, there is no particular need for you to be a you. From a Darwinian standpoint, things would work just as well if each of us were just a kind of Pavlovian stimulus-response system, with no sense of a personal self. So why do you have a self, particularly a self capable of introspection, philosophical curiosity, spirituality, and other higher human capabilities?

Faced with such a difficulty, many materialists have resorted to a strategy that we might call “shrink the self.” The idea is to describe the self as a kind of illusion. Such thinkers claim, very implausibly, that we are just a kind of stream of brain blips, and that our brains fool us into thinking this is a self. It's an idea which makes no sense, for how could a self be fooled about selfhood unless there was a self to begin with?

But a recent book by Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos takes an opposite approach, an approach that we may call “balloon the self to infinity.” Their book is entitled You Are the Universe: Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters. 

A profound insight or runaway ego-tripping?

The book often contains enigmatic prose that leaves you wondering whether the authors are speaking literally or metaphorically. There are many statements that seem to be written in a kind of Zen Buddhist style. For example, we are told on page 241, “To claim that there was nothing before the big bang is just as correct as saying that everything existed before the big bang.” On the next page we are told, “It is permissable to see the universe as perfectly designed, perfectly random, a mixture of the two, or, as some mystics would declare, mere dream stuff with no substantiality at all.” Then we have this cryptic passage on page 243:

Choosing to call the soft green moss on a rock a living thing while denying life to the rock is merely a mind-made distinction. In reality, everything in the universe follows the same path from its origin (dimensionless being) to a state that consciousness chooses to create out of itself. Since they follow the same path from the unmanifest to the manifest, a rock and the moss that clings to it share life on equal terms.

On page 95 the book tells us, “If we can look past the illusion created by clocks, the race against time comes to an end, and the fear of death is erased once and for all.” But on page 253 we are told the following:

Death is the termination of a particular qualia program (the life program of an individual). The qualia return to a state of potential forms within consciousness, where they reshuffle and recycle as new living entities. The consciousness field and its matrix of qualia are nonlocal and immortal.

At this point in the text the reader may be forgiven for saying, “Cold comfort!” Apparently the authors think that the self is not immortal, but that death brings some “return to a state of potential forms” and a reshuffling in which little parts of your self (qualia) are thrown into the vat, ending up perhaps as parts of some new person. That sounds for all practical purposes just like death not followed by any meaningful survival of the self. So if someone believed that his fate at death was such a fate, I don't see why it would be a situation that “the fear of death is erased once and for all.”

Qualia, incidentally, are transient “this moment” mental events experienced by a self, so it would seem to make no sense to speak of the qualia of one person being reshuffled and recycled into “new living entities.”

We may skeptically ask: if “you are the universe” as their book title asserts, why can't you at least have at death some fate better than just being reshuffled and recycled, like some tin can ending up at the recycling center? Like forty other statements at the end of the book, the statement quoted above is delivered in an oracular and dogmatic manner. The book discusses scientific findings, but the discussion is just window dressing for metaphysical conclusions that are derived through philosophy rather than scientific inference.

The authors make no mention of paranormal phenomena or psychic phenomena, which anyone should be studying before he pontificates on the fate of the soul. Such phenomena suggest a fate more hopeful than the “recycling center” fate the authors imagine.

The subtitle of the book is “Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters.” But the book fails to explain much in the way of any implications of their philosophy that matter. They describe some mysterious consciousness field giving rise to consciousness, but this conclusion doesn't seem to have any implications for mankind's future. They depict this consciousness field in such an impersonal way that it's hard to imagine such a thing taking much interest in the fate of man. The book's description of “qualia recycling” upon death doesn't seem to be any news flash that would cause anyone to think: now that really matters.

I think “you are the universe” is a poor way of expressing whatever truth the authors were trying to express by making such a claim. How could each one of us be the universe when there is such a difference between individual minds? Whether it is mainly material or mainly mental, the universe is something vastly more than any one of us.

Visualizing a Top-Down Theory of Mind and Cosmic Connectivity

Conventional thinking has been that the human mind is a bottom-up kind of thing. The idea is that your mind is produced solely by some combination of neurons in your brain. The thinking is kind of like this: your consciousness is like some juice, and your brain is the juice maker.

But there are some good reasons for thinking that this “bottom-up” assumption is quite false. For one thing, we have no understanding of how mere neurons (physical things) can produce the wonderful thing we call consciousness (a mental thing). Imagining that a mere grapefruit-sized blob like the brain can produce the human mind (a totally different type of thing) seems rather like imagining that a stone can be squeezed so that blood will drip out of it. We also have no understanding of how brains can store human memories that last for 50 years. As discussed here, rapid molecular and structural turnover in synapses should make it quite impossible for brains to be storing memories for longer than about a year. The speed with which we can recall memories seems inexplicable given any theory that memories are stored in brains, for reasons discussed here. Then there is the fact documented by the physician John Lorber that some humans can retain fairly normal minds and memory even though most of their brains have been destroyed by disease. Then there are near-death experiences, in which people undergoing cardiac arrest often report floating out of their bodies, sometimes reporting accurate details of the medical efforts going on while their heart was stopped. Such a thing should be impossible if the human mind is merely a bottom-up effect produced only by our brains.

But if the human mind is not a bottom-up kind of thing, maybe it is a top-down kind of thing. Maybe the human mind is an effect produced by some cause outside of the human body. Maybe instead of something coming from inside our bodies, the human mind is instead coming mainly from outside of our bodies. Such an idea seems very abstract and philosophical, but perhaps we can take a stab at trying to make it more understandable, by the use of some imagery. The images I will offer are quite schematic and speculative, but they may at least serve as a kind of crude device to help clarify a particular philosophical possibility. To be visually displayed adequately, a model like the one I will present would require a sophisticated animation; but not being an animator, I'll have to make do with some rather crude diagrams.

Let us start by imagining that there might be some cosmic source of minds, which may be the source of human minds and other types of minds (possibly also minds on other planets). We can visualize this mind source as being rather like a giant balloon filled with either hot gas or a warm fluid. 

Now let us imagine that your mind and the mind of each of us is like a little protrusion or bump on the surface of this giant balloon. We normally think of balloons as being spherical, but a balloon can have lots of little bumps and protrusions (for example, in one of the big balloons used in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, there may be little bumps corresponding to the nose or ears of some cartoon character). We can imagine that there might be billions or trillions of little bumps on the huge balloon of the cosmic mind source, and that each little bump might correspond to a particular person.

In the schematic diagram below, we see two little balloon bumps or protrusions corresponding to particular persons. They exist on the circumference of the great sphere of the cosmic mind source, and are some of billions of similar little bumps or protrusions on that sphere. 

I use red and blue in this diagram simply to illustrate different persons. But the idea is that the mind substance or consciousness fluid inside your little balloon bump is very much the same mind substance or fluid that is flowing around inside the huge balloon of the cosmic mind source. The same mind substance or fluid is flowing around inside your mind and all other minds that exist as little bumps on the circumference of the balloon. Under this model your mind does not arise from your brain, but from the cosmic mind source. So instead of there being a million different mind sources for a million different humans (each being a brain), there is instead a single mind source for these million human minds.

If you got your mind in such a way, by being a little protrusion off of the circumference of the huge balloon of the cosmic mind source, you might think of your mind as originating from inside your body. But in this model your mind does not at all originate from your body. It comes from the cosmic mind source. In fact, under this model the only way in which any mind can exist is by being inside the great balloon of the cosmic mind source, or as a kind of protrusion on the circumference of that balloon.

But notice that there is a little neck that connects your little bubble with the vastly greater bubble of the cosmic mind source. That little neck may be almost totally closed, or it may be more widely open. When that little neck is almost totally closed, you may feel no connection whatsoever with some great higher reality beyond yourself. But when that little neck is open wider, you may feel more of a sense of being in touch with some great reality beyond yourself. Perhaps mystical experiences or paranormal psychic experiences occur when this little neck opens much wider than normal. Under this model there is a direct line that can be traced between any one mind and any other mind, with no more than distance and bottlenecks inhibiting communication. So the potential for connectivity is almost limitless.

The diagram below illustrates this idea. The second person (shown in blue) is much more prone to spiritual or psychic or mystic experiences, because the neck-like opening at the base of his little bubble is much wider. In this model, all minds are inside the same vast balloon of mind-fluid. So when the neck like opening widens, a person may have greater connectivity with other minds, which may or may not correspond to minds inside bodies. In the visual below, I illustrate this idea, borrowing a line from one of the Star Wars movies.

In conventional bottom-up models of the mind, ESP is impossible. But in this model something like ESP is quite possible. Below is a diagram illustrating what happens. There is a path that can be traced from any given mind to another, since no mind exists outside of the huge bubble of the cosmic mind source. In the diagram below, we see ESP occurring between two minds.

When a person undergoes a near-death experience, it may be a little like depicted in the visual below. Such a person may undergo transcendent experiences, as he starts to move outside of the little bubble like protrusion that he has been previously confined to.

And what about when a person dies? It may be like the diagram below. Inside the great cosmic mind balloon may be trillions of minds, some corresponding to what we may call “the living,” and others corresponding to what we may call “the dead.” The main difference between the living and the dead is simply when you are living, you are isolated in a little protrusion on the circumference of the great cosmic mind balloon. When you exist in such an isolated little protrusion, you have little feeling of connectivity with other minds. But when your mortal life ends, you are no longer in that protrusion. Then you may have a great connectivity with a horde of other minds floating around inside the huge cosmic mind balloon.

Now you may ask: in this model, what is outside this vast balloon of cosmic mind fluid? The answer is: no mind at all. In this model, there are no little bubbles at all floating outside of the great cosmic balloon of mind fluid. Every single mind exists as a protrusion on the circumference of this balloon, as shown in the diagrams below, or in a more central position inside the balloon. The result is that all minds in the universe have a real degree of connectivity. For minds that exist within the main part of the balloon, and not its outer circumference, there may seem to be a tremendous degree of connectivity. If you are such a mind, you might easily or instantly be able to connect with many other minds, perhaps in something like mind-reading or thought-reading.

The images I have presented here are extremely crude. Do things work exactly as I have diagrammed here? Probably not. What I have discussed is a kind of crude schematic visualization designed to make you think about radically different ways in which reality could work, rather than an attempt to describe exactly and literally some alternate way in which reality works. The visualizations I have presented are kind of metaphorical, but there may be strong similarities between these metaphors and the way in which consciousness works.

But what is fascinating here is how easy it is to create a top-down idea of mind, under which various types of anomalous phenomena fit in naturally. Under a bottom-up theory of mind, things such as ESP, apparitions sightings, mystical experiences, and near-death experiences may seem like unthinkable abominations. But such things fit in easily and naturally once we move to a top-down theory of mind.

The biggest failure of all bottom-up theories of human mentality is not their failure to account for fairly rare paranormal phenomena but their failure to adequately account for the everyday reality of the human mind. We cannot account for our minds or our very long-term memories neurologically. Brains seem to have no functionality that can account for either the storage or the instant retrieval of very old memories, for reasons discussed here and here and here. The idea that there is some special combination of cell connections that can cause something like the lofty thoughts of philosophy to emerge from mere neurons does not seem credible, and seems hardly more credible than the idea that some combination of vines, roots, and trees in a dense Amazon jungle would cause that jungle to become conscious. Nor can we account for the origin of our minds using Darwinian ideas. As argued here, the human mind has many “luxury item” characteristics (such as math abilities, musical abilities, artistic creativity, abstract reasoning, and spirituality) that are not things that increase an organism's chance of surviving in the wild, and which therefore cannot be accounted for by using the explanation of natural selection (which is merely the threadbare, thimble-sized idea that fit stuff prospers, and unfit stuff doesn't).

But if we develop a top-down theory of the mind's origin, then all of the marvels of the human mind may become easily explicable. If human minds come top-down from some cosmic mind source, we would indeed expect that our minds should have every wondrous ability they have ever displayed.

Let us imagine an extraterrestrial planet on which the skies were always covered with thick clouds. Imagine that on such a planet the clouds are so thick that you can never see the sun in the sky. Intelligent beings on such a planet might wonder: how is it that their planet is lit up with light during the day? Unaware of the sun above them, such beings might come up with a bottom-up theory of illumination: that the dirt and rocks and the trees give off light during the day, which keeps the land illuminated. Such beings might think that such a theory was a certainty, and say to themselves, “Of course, it must be true; where else could light be coming from?” But they should instead be considering a top-down theory of illumination – that the illumination of daylight comes from a great unseen source above them.

Similarly, the average scientist holds to a bottom-up theory of consciousness, that our consciousness bubbles up from little neurons in our head. He says to himself, “Of course, this theory must be true; where else could our consciousness be coming from?” But such a person should be considering a top-down theory of consciousness, that our minds come mainly from some great unseen source. Just as it seems farfetched that rocks or dirt or trees could illuminate a planet, it seems farfetched that the great universe-pondering effect of human mentality could possibly arise from a little blob of protoplasm inside our skulls.

Postscript: Scientist Bernard Carr stated the following:

The existence of telepathy also suggests that our minds are part of a communal space rather than being wholly private. This "Universal Structure", as I term it, can be regarded as a higher dimensional information space which reconciles all our different experiences of the world. It necessarily incorporates physical space but it also includes non-physical realms which can only be accessed by mind.