By elevating human experience above the remainder of the universe, dualist beliefs can impede efforts to move past modernity—which I believe must end whether we wish it or not. Therefore, it seems important enough to devote some time to the matter. The first question one might ask is: “Am I a dualist?” A crude test involves answering the following questions:
- Is matter real (not a creation of mind), obeying physics independent of consciousness?
- Is mind/consciousness its own phenomenon, not a product of known matter and physics?
Here’s how I would label the results: Y/N is materialist (like me: mind is matter); N/Y is idealist (mind is everything); Y/Y is dualist (mind and matter separately real), and N/N is too bizarre for me to confront. “Maybe” answers are okay, too, but perhaps this series will result in greater clarity.
The topic of dualism is too important and too stealthily integrated into modern worldviews to be handled in a post of ordinary length. Maybe a book would be better, but I’m going to be lazy and parcel it out as a series of posts. I recognize that what I am attempting is very tricky, and probably insufficient to persuade anybody—we do get set in our beliefs (although I was once a default dualist, and still squirm at some of the implications of abandoning this comfortable, safe, and culturally reinforced position). All the same, I will try to anticipate failure modes and navigate around them before they seize the reader.
The larger effort here benefits from first establishing a starting position before even getting to the main topic of dualism. I hope it helps build a coherent framework, perhaps establishing deep resonance, connection, and trust before trying to extract the toxins. Of course, I may lose some people even in trying to establish a foundation, but I find I’m most interested in building something among those who start off with admiration for the universe we are lucky enough to inhabit. The others may be beyond reach.
The motivation for starting with an exaltation to the living world is mainly that I will ultimately be making the case that we find ourselves in a material universe, and that the only non-dualistic way to take this seriously is to have microbes, fungi, plants, and animals (including humans, of course) be entirely material beings. For many, this elicits distaste over the notion that humans and animals are “just machines,” and thus don’t deserve any more regard than a calculator. This hasty conclusion misses something enormous, and I thought it important to begin by expressing complete admiration for Life (which I even tend to capitalize, mimicking the convention for God). If being “only” material would seem to make a living being worthless, I hope by the end of the series the reader will understand this to be a failure of scope and not at all a necessary conclusion.
Exaltation Inoculation
We start with a full-throated expression of awe and wonder for the world we inhabit. This is important grounding for what follows, since a key part of what preserves dualism is a misunderstanding or fear of the implications of strict materialism. Such objections are manufactured to fill the void that removing “the toxin” creates, which is where it can quickly go wrong. So, the goal here is to pre-load what the view becomes (or remains) after the procedure is complete. If, in future installments, it seems that the implications run counter to what is presented here, just know that they are indeed fully compatible, and that reactions to the contrary might not have all the pieces in place, yet. In other words, don’t rush to judgment until the operation is complete. At that point, it should be possible to return to this post and make connections that otherwise might seem at odds with the intermediate stages.
The Universe
What a universe, huh? On cosmic scales, it’s got stars, galaxies, dust clouds, stellar nurseries (nebulae), dense star clusters, neutron stars, black holes, cosmic voids, filaments of galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and loads more in the menagerie. An untold number of PhD dissertations—including my own—can concentrate on any one of these entities.
At the small end, the universe is full of photons (light), neutrinos that sail through Earth as if it isn’t there, quarks bound in nuclei, electrons gluing atoms together, and a smattering of more exotic actors that continually enter and exit the stage unannounced. But the previous sentence perpetrates a huge misunderstanding by focusing on the nouns: the particles. The truly astounding bit is the set of interactions: the relationships. That’s what you’ll find dominating the pages of physics books: all the crazy, complicated actions these actors get up to when allowed to ad-lib. Just like improvisational actors who are encouraged to create a cooperative flow by following the rule of “yes, and” (rather than “no, but”), the rules of physics are simple enough to express, yet quickly turn into jaw-dropping, brain-busting behaviors that defy our ability to fully track, describe, or predict. That said, persistent effort is often able to decode key features of the dance, and no known exceptions operate outside of the minimal set of rules.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, here. For the purposes of this introduction, I simply intend to express wonderment at the stage upon which our lives are set. It’s not an impoverished, sterile backdrop of “dead” matter, but a richly tangled and diverse cast of grabby actors and complex phenomenologies that are worthy of marvel. Just because rainbows are understood as light refracting, reflecting, and dispersing in spherical droplets acting like prisms does not make them any less beautiful to behold (for some, such knowledge can enhance appreciation and awe). What luck that our universe allows a seemingly infinite number of such amazing spectacles!
We don’t understand why there even is a universe, and never will—except in story. Why there is something rather than nothing is not answerable by science. So what? It is the way it is—not at all concerned with how we might wish it to be arranged. Likewise, we don’t understand why the particles are what they are (why they have the masses, charges, and spins they do), or why the interactions behave as they do (why the fundamental forces are as they are, and have the strengths they do), or why the expansion of the universe is accelerating (cosmological constant; dark energy). That’s just what’s being served. Sometimes physics research does manage to make deep connections that link previously-disconnected pieces together, like electricity and magnetism (electromagnetism), space and time (spacetime), electromagnetism and weak nuclear force (electro-weak), and other revolutions that stick words together (see: physics isn’t hard!). But we have no basis to expect every property to be explained: sometimes things just are as they are.
In any case, we can count ourselves lucky because it would not take much variation in relative strengths of gravity vs. electromagnetism, nuclear vs. electromagnetic strength, mass ratio between protons and electrons, or strength of the cosmological constant to utterly wreck our universe’s ability to even make stable atoms, create chemistry, have stars or galaxies, or either blow itself apart too rapidly to form lumps of matter or collapse violently soon after formation. We appear to enjoy a Goldilocks scenario, on so many fronts at once!
Now, this is easily chalked up to a selection effect—especially in the context of multiple instances of universes (multiverse). And why wouldn’t there be more? Anyone’s distaste for the idea is not powerful enough to prevent occurrence, and if one universe can be made, others (forever causally disconnected from our own) are welcome to exist. Anyway, we simply could not have found ourselves (as we are) in a universe without chemistry, without stars, without billions of years of relative stability to cook up complex organisms through evolution.
The point is that we inhabit a fabulous universe that we did absolutely nothing to create, and are lucky for it. I suppose if you’ve ever felt awe when looking at a dark sky full of stars, I need say no more.
The Sun
None of us could exist without the sun, so let’s take a moment to appreciate its existence and qualities. The sun is mostly made of primordial hydrogen and helium, created in the Big Bang. Gravity pulls this material together in an effort that would crush it if carried to an extreme, but because the sun has enough mass (12 times more than the threshold limit, in fact), the internal temperature from this crushing influence is just enough to barely trip fusion of hydrogen into helium, releasing about 10-million times more energy per mass (calories per gram, for instance) than the chemical energy in your food. This energy manifests in the form of light (photons) trying to push out through the plasma (charged electron/proton gas)—a process that can take a million years as photons pinball around the plasma. The slowly-escaping photons exert an outward pressure balancing the gravitational pressure to achieve stability. Negative feedback establishes an equilibrium: too much light (fusion) expands the star, lowering temperature and thus fusion and thus light until it shrinks again; too little light would cause additional contraction, thus increased temperature and fusion and light until it re-balances. It’s a great trick that we don’t need to worry about.
The sun is powerful enough to deposit copious energy on Earth, but not temperamental in terms of flares and hiccups. Not all stars enjoy the stability that our sun exhibits. The sun deposits enough energy on Earth to maintain water in a liquid state, but not enough to evaporate oceans (a Venus scenario). This also derives from proximity, of course, in addition to intrinsic solar properties, but I’ll keep it in the “sun” column for the purposes of this post.
Again, many of these attributes are selection effects: humans could not exist—as we find ourselves—around other stellar types or at the wrong distances. It’s no less special for having happened, though. We’re lucky!
The Earth and the Moon
This is a huge one, of course. Our type of life could not exist on a gas giant, and it’s not clear any complex organisms could emerge in such places. Regardless, we—as we are—need a rocky body with sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere for us to breathe. We could not survive on other known bodies: certainly not as naked apes, but probably not for any long duration (even a single human lifetime) using techno-tricks. None of the thousands of planets discovered outside the solar system are habitable (much of which is itself a selection effect on what we’re sensitive enough to observe, but not entirely so).
Anyway, Earth has—for us—the perfect gravity, perfect atmosphere, perfect temperature (on average), and perfect ecology. Yet again, this is almost entirely selection effect, in that we are perfectly adapted to the planet as it has been for the past few million years—climate cycles and all.
The moon’s presence is important as a stabilizer of Earth’s orientation, providing a regularity that favors evolution of complex life. Yes: we need the moon, too.
Life!
As if all that weren’t enough, what really takes the cake is Life. We can’t know how rare or ubiquitous self-replicating ability might be in the universe, but we also can’t easily conceive billion-year timescales over which molecules might bump together in novel and fascinating ways. All it takes is one lucky hit and then the capability is locked in like a ratchet, at which point selective influences kick in to shape fitness.
Amazing as that step is, what happens from there is truly remarkable. Patient—but effectively blind—experimentation operating in feedback quickly acts to favor advantages and disfavor disadvantages. It’s a simple concept that can’t be prevented from operating. Lifeforms cleverly utilize the materials and physics and chemistry available to them in novel ways, then propagate those capabilities to their descendants. Some of the solutions to life’s hardest problems are beyond genius—in that our human geniuses can’t even come close to touching it in terms of effective creativity.
Our many impressive abilities—metabolizing; building cell walls; contracting muscle cells; sensing light and chemicals; replicating cells and ourselves—all were developed by single-cell organisms and copied down the line, used by every one of us every second of every day, billions of times over.
Let’s pause from the usual self-congratulation at our cognitive prowess and acknowledge that humans would not be possible without billions of years of heritage, and that the things we’ve built by pushing matter around absolutely pale in comparison to even a “simple” amoeba. I’m guessing that almost anything we believe we invented, Life did first in some way, and did better (in that Life’s inventions are self-replicating, self-healing, 100% recycling, ecologically integrated).
I’ll just point out that it is perfectly possible for a strict materialist to be tremendously fond of and respectful toward all life. Every microbe, plant, and animal is a genius—performing tasks we haven’t the foggiest clue how to contrive. I adore the newts that slowly tromp around my local area, and do all that I can to protect them from undue harm.
Ecology
Life is not a collection of isolated feats of evolution, but a tangled set of interacting, inter-related entities in constant relationship. The situation is not as crisp as we are tempted to make out in our heads. A bunch of largely-overlapping genetic code is distributed across dynamic and often-overlapping groupings we compulsively delineate as species, all evolving in perpetual entanglement with others and with the ever-changing “inanimate” world. Evolution is always co-evolution: never in isolation. It’s not a competition establishing victors over the vanquished: it’s not survival of the fittest, but survival of the best-fitting in an ecological context. Relationship matters.
Two ways to appreciate the non-competitive overall view: 1) biodiversity tends to increase over time (between catastrophes), rather than whittle down in single-elimination competition; 2) a barren new volcanic island in the ocean builds enormous ecological wealth rather than early victors eating it away in competition.
Ecology refers to the myriad relationships binding a Community of Life together. We will never know the full story, and in fact as members of modernity are individually more ignorant than in times past when it comes to ecological relationships. But we can begin to recover our place by living in awe of the uncountable dependencies that have emerged over deep time.
Experience
All that we can know as individuals involves our experience, and that experience is marvelous—or can be, anyway. A toasty blanket on a crisp night; the silence and beauty of a fresh snow; a cobalt-blue sky; the refreshment of a summer plunge; the taste of our favorite food; the aroma of spring flowers; the babbling of a brook—these and many more form unique sensations that we can relish.
Of course, we also experience pain, grief, and unpleasant sensations. But they always have their place, and we might at least appreciate that we can feel in these ways. After all, can we truly know joy without sorrow to provide contrast?
As hard as it is to know the experiences of a person of the same species (is my red the same as your red?…certainly not if one is colorblind), it becomes nearly impossible to relate to experiences of other beings.
A common tendency has been to deny that other beings have analogous experiences/feelings at all, which seems utterly ridiculous—especially in light of a continuous evolutionary heritage. I would be foolish (and lack the authority) to put it past an amoeba to have a thoroughly happy “vibe” when coming across an abundant delicacy, or a cell-pervading sensation of panic and fright that prompts flight from danger. Something tells the amoeba what to do, and at some level it must be represented as reaction to conditions—as in a valanced assessment of “good” or “bad” situations (because responses to each differ dramatically: it has no difficulty differentiating). Sure, an amoeba’s way of experiencing will not be like our way, but that doesn’t mean it’s not experience, or that it lacks meaning to the amoeba.
Modern humans are talented at claiming a monopoly on any superlative or “higher” function, like love, humor, compassion, empathy, altruism, and the like. Given lack of access to the experience of others, such assertions have no possible evidential basis. If not encumbered by a supremacist lens, experiments can easily show or at least make ample room for these traits in other species. It would be rather bizarre if these states are somehow mysteriously absent from the entire evolutionary tree, when every other sense and capability is shared and often exceeded in the living world (plus others we simply do not possess at all). This is not to say that an amoeba has equivalent experiences, or analogs to all these feelings, but it seems a reasonable starting point to assume some version—however alien— exists in many or most forms of life (plants and fungi included), rather than the unjustified starting point that only humans experience them. Though we tend to stress and amplify differences, similarities abound.
Mystery and Other Ways of Knowing
Post-Enlightenment scientific discoveries notwithstanding, it seems safe to assume that mysteries will always remain. As hinted above, science is not capable of answering all questions. An amoeba knows how to do things that we haven’t caught up to yet, intellectually. We’re always learning, and there are clearly other ways of knowing. The Community of Life is chock-full of other ways of knowing: pieces of knowledge that we not only don’t know ourselves, but don’t even recognize as missing (or classify as knowledge, by our narrow and self-centered definition in the neural domain).
Starting most simply, an electron knows how to behave in reaction to its surroundings instantly and perfectly—even in intractably complex arrangements that would defy our best supercomputers to get right. Stars knew how to perform fusion well before we figured it out—and still beat the pants off our flailing experimental attempts. A spore or seed knows when conditions are favorable to open for business, even if we don’t. An amoeba knows which way to go for food. A hummingbird knows how to weave a strong nest out of spider webs and moss and feathers and mud and lichen and spit in ways that we would fail to replicate if we tried. Most of these ways of knowing are alien to us. That doesn’t make them any less real or amazing.
Lucky Us!
I’ll close this introductory segment with acknowledgement that we’re awfully (awe-fully?) lucky to be a part of this grand show. Equivalently, one might appeal to a selection effect: the fact that we’re here means that all the dice had to fall favorably to allow it to happen. Either way, the appropriate reaction is humility and gratitude.
Why did I start this way in a series on dualism? I want to make it clear that I am smitten by the richness of the lives we get to experience. What follows can strike some as depriving life of the qualities I and others cherish—and that are clearly present no matter how we account for them. It is important to start this process recognizing that all these marvelous attributes of the universe as we find it are still awe-inspiring even from a different starting point. In fact, my own experience is that it all becomes rather more incalculably stupendous as a result of shifting away from a dualist perspective.
