Can nature explain reason?

I think there is so much we are still discovering about the brain and how it works that all the data is not yet in on what is brain and what is mind. By which I mean that there is a scientific explanation for rationality.

I disagree with Lewis’ premise that atoms and chemicals are not rational. They do, in fact, behave rationally according to their laws—the laws of physics.

He’s essentially saying “Things are very complex, so it must have been a creator.”

It doesn’t matter how you say it, it’s the same argument.

Yes, all of these chemicals and cells are neutral, but together they make things that have various functions.

Edit: We don’t know why cells divide (or at least I don’t lol), they just do. Just because we don’t know exactly why organisms feel the need to survive doesn’t mean it’s a god.

Huh? It sounds like Lewis is asserting reason to be an object and then using the watchmaker argument to argue first cause. As I understand it, reason is a human faculty. Right? I mean, isn’t it the ability we have to draw conclusions from premises and observations? If so, how is this any different from any other quality we have that exists as a mere product of evolution?

Sounds also like, “how can physical matter be conscious…?”

Yes, nature can explain reason. It is evolutionary advantageous for a brain to be able to organize and “reasonably” respond to incoming stimuli. We can even trace the evolutionary history of such brains and nervous systems. We know it probably started with something like a starfish, a loosely organized set of neurons that can weakly respond to stimuli. Fish and other vertebrates were able to evolve more complex brains, and so on.

Moreover, Lewis is simply committing the fallacy of composition. And you’d think he would know better because you can say the same about any tissue or organ. The individual cells that make up your heart cannot pump blood throughout the body, but your whole heart can. The molecules that make up a lens cannot individually refract light to magnifiy objects, but a whole magnifying glass lens can. And so on.

@Qingu You always say things better than I can.

I know right? I wish @Qingu could wirelessly transfer all his knowledge into my brainz.

Plus, maybe Lewis addresses this in some way, but human behavior is very often not rational at all.

Wow, I hate circular logic.

Seriously, how could you even listen to a guy who wrote Narnia-? Lol. Resurrected Aslan my ass.

Naturally, nature alone may not explain everything. That’s why humans resort to fiction. Like Narnia.

Narnia made complete sense. Its explanation of the origin of evil is the best ever. Evil exists on Narnia because a couple of children from another parallel world happen to free an evil sorceress—this one from yet another parallel world—who then comes to Narnia and pollutes the innocent Narnians with evil prideful thoughts against their creator.

Good question!

First, let’s examine mutations. They are random: Some are good, some are bad and some have no effect. Mutations that allow someone to live easier should also mean that person can procreate more. The mutation is handed down to the offspring.

Second, mutations are slow for the most part. Many generations have to live and procreate to make that mutation a part of the general gene pool.

Thirdly, complexity. One does not create an eye, say, overnight. First you have a cell or cells that responds to light. This might help the simple lifeform survive than those with out. Next, a number of cells might become photosensitive. Eventually, after a long time, you get the complexity of a human eyeballs. Unlike the claims by creationists that the eye is too complex to have been anything less than a god, the eye has been independently evolved 5 different times. As above, it happens slowly.

That brings us to the mind. The same argument applies here. The more connections a brain can make the greater the possibility is that that brain will let its owner survive more than those with smaller brains.

And, finally, here comes the really cool stuff, IMNSHO. The human mind processes so much information that the brain had to evolve consciousness once the information flow is so high. Those that can say “If this happens then that happens and then my mammoth will be dead” is infinitely better than, say, someone who can only make observations: “Fire bad!”

The ‘if/then’ statement above is incredibly powerful. Our brains continuously tries out new ‘if/then/ possibilities. In effect, we are creating fictional stories that we then evaluate for truth. It probably starts with something like: I ate a red berry and I killed a mammoth, they must be connected. When the next day you don’t kill a mammoth you throw out that if/then (hopefully) and try something new.

Your brain does this all the time during dreams. Not very practical in some ways: dreams are like garbage collection. We bring up various memories (often triggered by what you did in the last few days) which then gets weight depending on whether we need that information or not. The stuff that isn’t gets thrown away or thrown into a mental ‘garbage pit’.

And now we can make the case for rational thought. The rational person has a much better chance of surviving. She gets to spread her genes around and, over long time, it becomes part of the collective gene pool.

I see the ‘if/then’ process as a story writing itself.

Keep in mind, being rational may not win in all ways. The history of the human race is littered with virtually non-stop killings based on irrational concepts. One of the big fears is that one irrational person will start WWIII by pressing the button to launch nuclear weapons.

However, barring that, the rational may soon indeed win out.

I can appreciate many arguments against atheism, including the one I ponder the most: Where did all of the “stuff” of the universe come from?

Regardless of how life began and evolved, how did all of the matter in the universe come to be?

Even if a Creator magically created everything from nothing, it doesn’t help to explain the Creator by saying that.

Emergence plays a role here in explaining how a phenomenon like reason can arise from unreasoning elements. The typical example is the ant colony. Each ant is pretty dumb; it has a very limited repertoire of responses to stimuli. It behaves in completely scripted fashion. No single ant knows how to run an ant colony (or “knows” anything, for that matter). It just reacts. But if you put enough ants together, all of those interacting dumb ants form a collective that begins to exhibit intelligent behavior. It’s not that the ants themselves get smarter. The “smart” belongs to the colony.

Neurons are pretty dumb. They, like the ant, behave in strictly scripted fashion, firing only under prescribed conditions. The mechanisms are fairly well understood. Put enough of them together, though, and intelligent behaviors emerge. You get the foundations of reason: symbolism, memory, pattern recognition.

Of course. We are a product of evolution. We have evolved to be able to reason.

@CWOTUS, there is no “where” apart from the universe.

At the quantum level, what we call “existence” appears to be a statistical fluctuation. Stuff is said to “exist” when the underlying wavefunctions collapse. An electron’s wavefunction, for example, doesn’t “exist” in the sense that we commonly use the word—but if you take that wavefunction and square it, you get the probability that an electron will exist at that point in space and time.

What are wavefunctions and where do they come from? I think this is probably like asking why do these function lines converge into what looks like a big hole or attractor? It’s a question where the only satisfactory answer is likely deeply mathematical and completely removed from our everyday experience of cause and effect.

Thanks, @Qingu, but my wording could have been better, I suppose. I meant a more metaphorical, less literal “where”, and not “what place”. To ask the question relative to your response, I could ask “How did electrons, waveforms, energy, time, probability – everything, including our awareness – come to be?” “How is the apparency of existence even possible?”

I don’t believe that God or any being passing for God could have said “Let there be light” and, hey presto, there it is… something from nothing. (I can – theoretically – understand light coming from an energy source generated by a material transformation into energy, but that still doesn’t explain where the material came from in the first place.) There seems to be “something” here, and I wonder how it got to be here, aside from magic, that is.

Well, here’s how I look at it. You are asking this question in terms of causation. There must be some cause or reason for this stuff to exist… otherwise it wouldn’t. That is the premise you are assuming by asking the question, and I don’t think that assumption is warranted.

At the most fundamental level, the universe seems to be best thought of in terms of mathematics. And mathematical statements aren’t true because of any external “cause” or “reason.” They just are. “1+1=2 is true” is a consequence of the structure of mathematics. There is really no way for it not to be true.

This isn’t to say there aren’t open questions in physics. They include more precise formulations of your question (“why is there stuff”):

• Why is there an asymmetry between matter and antimatter?
• Why is the beginning of the universe so low-entropy?
• Why do things have mass? (About to be answered, apparently, by the LHC)

But even these questions are fundamentally mathematical. They deal with asymmetries, a mathematical concept. And the only real way to explain an asymmetry is with math showing the nature of that asymmetry. At a certain level of math, there is no “why” or “causes.”

Typical argument from ignorance. “I do not know, therefore God”. Just like the “irreducible complexity” nonsense in ID.
And yes, nature can explain reason. Reason is a thought process, which in turn emerges from neural activity. Neural patterns depend on a neural net, which is partially defined by the individual’s the DNA.
DNA is subject to mutation, natural selection and evolution. The ability to reason is an evolutionary advantage, meaning “nature”, after “creating” individuals with slightly better reasoning ability via mutation, selects for better and better ability to reason.

Why should anything exist at all? And once existing, why should it display the complexity, persistence and predictability that it does. Why is the world the world. I think we mislead ourselves in thinking science explains such things.

@flutherother: “I think we mislead ourselves in thinking science explains such things.”

What possible other method provides us a better chance at understanding the universe than science?

Funny question if you center it only towards humans. I’m agnostic, so I can look either way if there is sound information. All this time we discuss the human mind, but what about the countless animals that exhibit high levels of intelligence of mental awareness? Most birds have been shown to be able to learn up to a 3rd grade level with some able to reach a 8th grade level. Dogs learning how to recognize things and being able to link that skill with learning words and numbers. There are a lot of theories I can get into that “they” won’t try to explain and they pull back to “man/human’ evolution. The theory of life involves all life forms, not just us. The mind evolved due to the creation of fire, this is a proven fact. Everything else is conjecture of a topic we don’t understand.

“The mind evolved due to the creation of fire, this is a proven fact.”:

Really? Sounds like nonsense to me. When and by whom was this fact proven?

I first questioned religion and religious ideas when I looked into an epilectic’s eyes immediately after having a grand mal seizure. She was actually “sleeping” and I, not knowing what had happened, tried to awaken her. When I managed to get her to sit up for a second and open her eyes, I saw none of the qualities of a person that we normally associate with looking into a person’s eyes. I was looking into the eyes of an animal, and I was absolutely startled by that. Obviously, something was happening to her brain that eliminated her humanity.

That said, the question you pose is of course unanswered and, perhaps, unanswerable – at least in this lifetime. No amount of reason can be applied that absoutely confirms that all of consciousness is physical – science has not reached such a point. One can be persuaded to accept that consciouness is physical and that eventually, science will prove that consciousness is purely physical – but no person can today prove rationally, that it is the case and having answered every question that might arise concerning consciousness. So, it s not irrational to believe otherwise.

Now, I know you ask specifically if nature can explain reason, not consciouness. IMHO, reason can be applied to explain and understand nature, at least to the extent that we are able to understand nature at all. Reason has developed tools such as mathematics that enable us to better understand nature. But, to say that mathematics establishes nature is very much the same as making an ontological argument – e.g., God exists because I can conceive of God.

Finally, we ask only the atheists for their opinion? While I questioned the question, most atheist’s would in some form support (if perhaps also clarify) the question. Not trying to be a rabble rouser folks.

@Qingu The creation of fire was the event that gave way for free thought, a way of thinking outside of natural response.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_the_discovery_of_fire_affect_peoples_lives
http://earlyhumans.mrdonn.org/fire.html
http://www.digonsite.com/drdig/earlyman/31.html

Fire opened more opportunities for early man to “think” as we say. If they kept going on living the way they did then the cultural evolution we had would have either slowed or never happened.

I agree that fire was an important invention. Along the same lines, so was agriculture. We would not have civilization without agriculture.

That’s very different from saying that we would not have conscious thought without fire or agriculture.

I mean, have you ever owned a pet? Do you really think that dogs and cats don’t have minds, and lack conscious thought? They did not develop fire. They’re at least as mindful as our pre-fire ancestors.

@tom_g Science is great way of trying to understand the universe and I am not knocking it but there are limits to science. It doesn’t explain everything and I don’t think it can. You could even say it has never explained anything. It replaces one explanation with another but never gives an ultimate explanation for anything. Do we really have to choose between God and science? I don’t think so. There is mystery in science and in God’s mysterious workings there is science.

@flutherother, are you saying there are non-scientific explanations for the gaps you perceive in science?

Because I don’t think “God did it” actually counts as an explanation for anything.