This blog is supposed to be about the maddening frequency of science types saying that evolution created anything.
First of all, let me point out the irony of a man named Noe trying to explain away the existence of all life on earth.
But this NPR story on the author and "philosopher" (are there any mis-sophists out there?) Alva Noe must be commented on.
It starts off with a stunning admission. "Science has produced no standard account of the origins of life."
I don't know about you, but I was fed standard primordial soup fare in my high school biology class, and I'm sure that passed as a "standard account" for any malleable mind who desired an acceptable explanation for the Godless advent of life on earth. But Noe admits that quasi-explanation doesn't cut it.
The story goes on to admit that there is no explanation for consciousness, which to me is less of a problem than the emergence of life. I guess one can argue that life is the inevitable consequence of the right combination of dendrites. (That is pretty much that Kantian argument cited at the end of the story. But the story implies that the same argument applies to the life question in the same way it applies to the consciousness question, but it clearly does not. The life question is a question of science. We see machines called cells on earth and have thus far seen them nowhere else. How did they come about? Life is not a "cognitive illusion.")
How those nerve cells came about in the first place is the real conundrum.
The core of the story is a call to arms by Thomas Nagel in his book Mind and the Cosmos. Nagel argues that we need a new way of thinking, outside of the traditional scientific model, that can explain the conundrums of life and consciousness. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yes, the answer is shockingly simple for the vast majority of mankind who have ever lived, looked around and said, "Hey, someone must have put us here."
Alas, that is not a good enough answer for the science types.
In explanation of the reticence of philosophers to search for this "new" non-scientific solution to life and consciousness, this amazing statement appears: "we don't want philosophers washing science's dirty laundry in public in a way that runs the risk of allowing anti-naturalistic religious dogmatism to get a foothold." (Italics his)
So here's what Noe is saying. "Science hasn't come up with a good explanation of the existence of life and consciousness. So we have to sit around and guess up a new solution. But if we do that, those pesky religionists will come around with their 3.5 millienia old solution that a Higher Power designed us. Phooey on them."
I wonder if the irreligious, philosophizing, science-types they will call their invented solution for the existence of life and consciousness the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
