The ID Report

By Robet Deyes
ARN Correspondent

If we were to think of the height of the Eiffel tower as representing the age of our earth then the existence of humanity would be nothing more that the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob. This was the opening perspective offered by Professor of Philosophy Sean Kelly whose inaugural lecture at this year's Annual International Bioethics Forum on the science of consciousness kick started a series of talks by a preeminent cast of academic thinkers and speakers. Kelly's ensuing factual inventory set the tone for others to follow. During their brief history, humans have become a force that has incontrovertibly impacted our planet. 95% of that skin of paint of human existence occurred before the advent of agriculture. And during that time humans have shown that they are the only beings with a capacity not only for complex language but also for storing information outside of themselves in the form of books and multimedia. No other species dwells upon historical time like we do. University of Minnesota ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, who spoke immediately after Kelly's 'opener', concurred. Complex language, he noted, depends on synesthesia-style relationships between spoken words and a corresponding set of symbols that imbue our daily experiences with meaning. When this phenomenon emerged no one knows for sure although the deepest historical evidence to-date, that of the Blombos Cave in South Africa, suggests that it may have existed as early as 75,000 years ago.

University of Wisconsin cognitive scientist Antoine Lutz later presented his summarization of Rene Descartes' Dualistic theory as part of his much-awaited talk. And his delivery of the historicity of cognitive philosophy was received with rapturous applause by an expecting audience. Descartes considered the pineal gland in the brain to be the center of integration of both the body and the non-material mind. Modern science has of course dismissed Descartes' vision of this much-trumpeted 'seat of the soul' by showing the brain to be a highly distributed system of separate functions and reciprocal connectivities. In fact the 'global work space' of the human brain is made of 10exp9 neurons with 10,000 connections. Current neuro-imaging techniques provide a very approximate sketch of this work space which is thought to perform thousands of neurological processes every second. With all of its neuroplasticity, the brain is evidentially built to change in response to experiences. Hot off the press in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences this week is a paper outlining how the brain acts "like a carpenter digging through a toolbox to pick a group of tools to accomplish the various basic components that comprise a complex task" (1,2) (Although I would add at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than any carpenter could ever hope to reach).

Throughout this year's forum there was a noticeable disquiet over how best to define consciousness in terminology that could be assimilated into a scientific framework. Historically Immanuel Kant was the first to argue rationally that the human mind puts forward 'categories of understanding' that define how we view the cosmos. Over a century later the German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote of the Axial age- a 400 year period of grand synchronicity when philosophers and sages across the globe pondered over the existence of transcendent meaning and spirituality in our world. Forum speaker Sean Kelly chose to talk about consciousness as the permeable boundary that separate us from our surroundings while British author Peter Russell focused on the inherent self-awareness that characterizes consciousness in humans and, to a much lesser extent, monkeys and dolphins. During the panel discussions some merely posited that consciousness inevitably emerges as an evolutionary phenomenon. Of course this latter end-point does nothing to satisfy the explanation-ravenous appetites of the truly scientifically-minded. We may rightly ask why evolution would produce conscious beings that are able to engage in religious experiences?

Functional MRI and contemporary biochemistry are telling us a lot about brain function and providing foundations for understanding at least the molecular facets of consciousness. Purdue University Distinguished Chair of Medicinal Chemistry Robert Nichols took the forum rostrum in earnest and supplied us with a compendious examination of how the brain thalamus processes our senses and gates information that is then sent to columns of pyramidal cells in the frontal cortex. A region of the brain known as the Locus Coeruleus acts as a 'novelty detector' that focuses our attention at any given moment to the events happening around us. We can now map out regions of the brain involved in sensory gating by using a class of compounds called entheogens such as psilocybin that act on serotonin 5HT2A receptors in the frontal cortex. Entheogens also shut down that Raphe region of the brain stem which during our 'awake' hours is rapidly firing electrical impulses and selectively releasing serotonin. Entheogens, noted Nichols, break the mental framework and therefore help the brain to temporarily live 'outside the box'. Some Silicon Valley scientists are rumored to have used similar compounds to achieve new heights of innovative thought.

How have entheogens further aided consciousness research? Johns Hopkins behavioral biologist and Bioethics Forum speaker Roland Griffiths has used psilocybin in his own attempts to mimic mystical experiences. In 1962 Harvard psychiatrist Walter Pahnke performed his famous 'Good Friday' experiment from which he concluded that psilocybin occasioned mystical mimetic experiences. Griffiths revisited Pahnke's work in an investigation involving 37 test subjects who were in one sense or another involved in religious practices. Interestingly all individuals reported experiencing feelings of awe, peace, and ineffable joy. 70% of these test subjects reported that the ingestion of Psilocybin had given them one of the top five most memorable and positive moments of their lives. Psilocybin treatment leads to a preferential processing of positive emotional expression (eg: happy faces) and therefore presents a therapeutic avenue for treating clinical depression.

In 1964, Eric Kant became the first to use entheogens to treat depression in advanced-cancer patients. Later Pahnke showed that these same compounds could be used to improve the psychological outlook for the terminally ill. More recently Franz Vollenweider, the serving Director of the Heffter Research Centre for Consciousness Studies in Switzerland, documented some of the altered states of consciousness (ASCs) that subjects have described as part of his own pioneering experiments. Descriptives such as oceanic self boundlessness, oneness and unity with the universe form part of the eleven ASC dimensions that are commonly found in the associated peer-reviewed literature. Vollenweider's presentation at the forum was perhaps the most data-rich of all showing, amongst other things, how the intensity of ASCs is significantly affected by underlying personality traits.

At a fundamental level consciousness is a phenomenon that is deeply mysterious and to-date has escaped even the most concerted attempts at a simple explanation. According to Peter Russell we are in the throes of a revolution in thought not unlike that which caused the rejection of Ptolomeic epicycles during the Copernican era. The meta-paradigm that exists in science today views the world as one that is fully explainable through recourse to space, time and matter. And yet, notes Russell, this meta-paradigm of materialism through which we are epicycling in no way predicts the advent of conscious beings such as ourselves. Truth be told Russell's own brand of pan-psychism, a doctrine that holds that even the atom is in some lesser degree conscious of itself, is little more than a fanciful cerebration with a materialistic flavor. Thankfully there have been formidable intellectual resistances against it.

Further Reading
1. Sign Language Study Shows Multiple Brain Regions Wired For Language, Science Daily, April 30th, 2010

2. A.J.Newman, t. Supalla, P. Hauser, E.L. Newport, D. Bravelier (2010) Dissociating Neural Subsystems For Grammar By Contrasting Word Order And Inflection, Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, Vol 107, p. 7539

Full details of seminars and presenters who attended the 9th Annual International Bioethics Forum:
Taking the Measure of the Magic Mirror, held on April 22-23, 2010 can be found at: http://www.btci.org/

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Many here will remember Antony Flew as the prominent atheist philosopher who was convinced by design in the universe and life that "There IS a God," the title of his subsequent controversial book.

Here is the New York Times's obituary on the death of Antony Flew, from which we learn:

Although rumors had been circulating for several years that Mr. Flew had begun to question his atheism, “There Is a God” came as a shock. For Christian apologists, it was a welcome counterblast to recent antireligious best sellers like “God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris.

Some reviewers found Mr. Flew’s reasoning less than impressive. “Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God,” Anthony Gottlieb wrote in The New York Times Book Review, the book “rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.”

A long article in The New York Times Magazine by Mark Oppenheimer suggested that Mr. Flew, his mental faculties in decline, had been manipulated by his co-author and other Christian proselytizers. Mr. Flew, in a statement issued through his publisher, reaffirmed the views expressed in the book, which did not include belief in an afterlife.

“I want to be dead when I’m dead and that’s an end to it,” he told The Sunday Times of London. “I don’t want an unending life. I don’t want anything without end.”

Now, my favourite line is Anthony Gottlieb wrote in The New York Times Book Review, the book “rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.”

Did someone really say that? I can understand not believing in the existence of God, but if I am not going to believe in the existence of Antony Flew, whose work I studied forty years ago, I might as well not believe in the existence of the dry cleaning establishment about 30 metres from my home. Admittedly, I would need to come up with an alternative explanation for how people run in with cash and come out with plastic wrapped garments, but ... not being a materialist atheist, I am just not as creative as some people.

No wonder legacy mainstream media is tanking in ratings.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Speaking as an editor, I would say that, in general, it is best to be either an upper or a downer, and stick to it. When editing English, being a downer pays off much better, for practical reasons. It is simpler to ask why a phrase should be capped than why it shouldn't be.

"Intelligent Design" doesn't work for me because ID is not an institution. It is an idea and/or a community of thinkers who are not organized into an institution, and probably could not be so organized.

To see what I mean, consider Free Trade Agreement, vs. free market ideology. The former is an international agreement signed by at least four sovereign countries (United States, Canada, Mexico, and Chile) So that's why I use the caps. The latter is an idea, one that likely resulted in the Agreement, but it is not in itself an individual agreement or institution.

Other examples, of the sort of which I have ruled from my editor's chair:

"northern Canada" - a geographical region, generally north of 60. No assumptions are made about its culture or institutionalization, so "northern" is not capped. "Canada" is a recognized sovereign country, therefore an institution, so its name is, of course, capped.

On the other hand, a place can be cultural and historical, as well as geographical, so we get concepts like "the North" or "men of the North". Or, in the United States, it might be "the South".

"men of the north" just would not convey the same idea because the cultural concept has dropped out with the cap.

Similarly, the Deaf Community (I mean the American Sign Language centre down the road, and that is its actual name) vs. "the deaf community" (people who struggle with serious hearing loss).

Of each cap, I ask, why? And I recommend this approach to editors.

Now, with respect to intelligent design, it is a linked series of propositions about the nature of our universe, propositions like "irreducible complexity", "specialized complexity, and "priviledged planet." I have never noted evidence that ID has been institutionalized beyond the level of a community interested in such propositions, pro or con.

Of course, there is a claque of lobby groups and legacy media anxious to cap the phrase to create the impression that something is happening that basically isn't happening. But if you want to believe them, why not just read the tabloids instead?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Hey, lucky taxpayer, you will soon get a chance to fund "evolutionary psychology" in English literature departments too:

At a time when university literature departments are confronting painful budget cuts, a moribund job market and pointed scrutiny about the purpose and value of an education in the humanities, the cross-pollination of English and psychology is providing a revitalizing lift.

Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said "it's a new moment of hope" in an era when everyone is talking about "the death of the humanities." To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and frequently arcane theories that energized departments in the 1970s, '80s and early ’90s — Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis — has faded. Since then a new generation of scholars have been casting about for The Next Big Thing. (Patricia Cohen, "The Next Big Thing: Knowing They Know That You Know", New York Times, March 31, 2010)

You guessed it, the "Next Big Thing" is the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology, which promises to explain "the root of people's fascination with fiction and fantasy."

How about: We like to be entertained and instructed after a hard day's work, and there is nothing better at the fireside than a hot beverage and someone else's story, provided it is well told and interesting. It will be a pity if English literature is derailed by yet another invasion of publicly funded quacks.

Now, here, I must disillusion some readers: Most good storytelling depends on technique. Homer knew this three thousand years ago, and doubtless many knew it before him, before stories came to be committed to writing.

If one must be a storyteller, the alternative to good technique is morphing into target practice for public insults, if not rotten tomatoes. The proper knowledge base of the literature department is the analysis of the techniques actually used in written and oral literature. As to how they ultimately originated, well, let's just say that anyone can make up stuff and insist that it is "science".

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).