Physicist Brian Greene’s Apologetic, Yet Strong, Physicalism

The theoretical physicist Brian Greene upholds a very strong physicalism, as well as a “deep-seated reductionist commitment” too.

Religious People and Anti-Materialists

It’s the case that many religious people, anti-materialists, spiritual idealists, romantics, etc. aren’t against reductionism and “materialism” in the abstract: they’re against such isms only when they trespass on the sacred realm of human persons, as well as on the related notion of human consciousness.

This essay keeps away from the subject of consciousness because that’s a can of worms to be tackled separately. However, Brian Greene himself tackles it in detail. In terms of physicalism and consciousness, this is how he sums up this subject:

“We are physical beings made of large collections of particles governed by nature’s laws. Everything we do and everything we think amounts to motions of those particles.”

In any case, Greene is extremely upfront about his physicalism, even if, at the very same time, he’s seemingly at pains to justify himself to religious people, anti-materialists, romantics, etc.

Greene is upfront about being a reductionist too. For example, he says that he has a

“deep-seated reductionist commitment, which holds the view that by fully grasping the behaviour of the universe’s fundamental ingredients we tell a rigorous and self-contained story of reality”.

Note Greene’s words “self-contained story of reality”. That isn’t the same as claiming reductionism tells the only true story of reality. However, it is a vital and important story. This is a theme that Greene often comes back to. As seen, he uses the word “story” in exactly the same way in which another American theoretical physicist, writing about the same subjects, does. That physicist is Sean Carroll. (See my ‘The Physicist Sean Carroll on (Scientific) Emergence’ and the next essay.)

In another passage, Greene states both his reductionism and his physicalism. He tells his readers that he

“can envision a future when scientists will be able to provide a mathematically complete articulation of the fundamental microphysical processes underlying anything that happens, anywhere and anywhen”.

Surely that statement must apply to all the big subjects and issues, such as consciousness, free will, war, love, hate, etc. Or does it? Note that Greene uses the word “underlying” (as in “underlying anything that happens”). This is an important caveat. Why? It’s because saying that X underlies (or underpins) Y isn’t the same as saying X “is identical to” Y, or that X can “tell us everything” about Y. In fact, if those two interpretations were true, then the word “underlying” simply wouldn’t be accurate. All this makes a big difference, despite the endless conflations uttered by some religious people and nearly all anti-materialists.

Greene goes on to tell his readers more about what his word “underlying” means, and he does so through the example of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. He quotes Democritus stating the following:

“‘Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.’”

Greene says that Democritus’s point is that

“everything emerges from the same collection of ingredients governed by the same physical principles”.

What’s more,

“those principles, as attested to by a few hundred years of observation, experimentation, and theorizing, will likely be expressed by a handful of symbols arranged in a small collection of mathematical equations”.

At first, Greene stated that “fundamental microphysical processes underlie[] anything that happens, anywhere and anywhen”. Then, through the voice of Democritus, he states that “everything emerges from the same collection of ingredients”. These two expressions more or less state the same thing, if from two different angles. In other words, X can underlie Y, and Y can emerge from X. Neither formulation implies or entails that X is Y. Of course, the concepts of underlying and emergence need to be explained and justified too.

Greene on Human Persons

Greene himself does trespass on the sacred realm of human persons mentioned earlier. He writes:

“Yet, maintaining our physicalist stance, you and I are nothing but constellations of particles whose behavior is fully governed by physical law.”

Oh yes!

Greene uses those terrible two words: “nothing but”! This, of course, echoes the very often-quoted passage from Francis Crick. Here it is again! —

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”

This all hinges on what the words “nothing but” really mean. In a past essay (2019), ‘Francis Crick’s Deliberately Provocative Reductionism’, I argued that Crick was being provocative when he used these words. Moreover, it’s hard to know what they could even mean when taken literally.

Just to take one example. If you and I were nothing but constellations of particles, then we would be indistinguishable from other constellations of particles, such as heaps of shit or rocks. So Greene is being poetic and provocative too, just like Crick. That’s because he’s already told us what he really means: particles, fields, laws, etc. underlie/underpin you and I. Alternatively, you and I emerge from particles, fields, laws, etc.

Greene on Reduction, Emergence and New Laws

Greene mentions emergence, at least indirectly, when he writes the following:

“Although voluminous data confirm that we have a deep understanding of the laws governing individual particles (electrons, quarks, neutrinos, and so on), perhaps when a hundred billion billion billion particles are arranged into a human body and brain, they are no longer governed, or at least not fully governed, by the fundamental laws of the microworld.”

This means that Greene fully acknowledges the possibility of new laws. He may even do more than merely acknowledge it.

It’s worth asking here where that (to use Greene’s own phrase) “line in the sand” is when we see a miraculous move from old laws to (possible) new ones. Greene writes:

“It’s not as though the universe comes equipped with a line in the sand separating things that are properly described by quantum mechanics from things properly described by general relativity. Dividing the universe into two separate realms seems both artificial and clumsy.”

In crude terms, why does the change need to come when we reach a hundred billion billion billion particles and not a hundred billion particles? What about a billion particles? Why not a million or even ten particles? We’d need to explain how and why higher numbers alone bring about new laws.

Greene, like many other physicists, basically states that Laplace’s Demon doesn’t actually exist. He happily concedes that "admittedly, no one has ever carried out the mathematical analysis required to make predictions for the lawful progression of particles” when it comes to large objects and systems. What’s more,

“[e]ven predicting the motion of a far simpler object like a pool ball can elude us because small inaccuracies in determining the ball’s initial speed and direction can be exponentially amplified as the ball ricochets off the banks of the table”.

All that doesn’t really concern Greene, at least not in this context. He concludes:

“So my focus here is not on predicting your next move. My focus is on the existence of laws that govern your next move.”

Greene isn’t concerned with “unexpected and impressive phenomena” (such as “typhoons and tigers”) here either. He believes that it’s still the case that

“all evidence suggests that were we able to work out the math for such large groups of interacting particles, we would be able to predict their collective behaviors”.

In a sentence. The issue here isn’t prediction: it’s the emergence of new laws.

So Greene is well aware of the limitations of reductionism. For example, he says that he

“would be stymied, of course, in trying to explain many other things in staunchly reductionist terms, from Pacific typhoons to raging volcanoes”.

However:

“But the challenge presented by these happenings, and a world chock-full of examples like them, is solely that of describing the complex dynamics of a fantastically large number of particles.”

Finally: “If we could surmount that technical hurdle, we would be done.”

On the surface, Greene seems to be ruling out emergence here, or at least ruling out strong emergence. After all, isn’t the argument from emergentists that new laws and features emerge at “higher levels”? Even so, such higher-level laws and features would still be underpinned by particles. Alternatively, they would still emerge from particles. Still, Greene doesn’t mention this. Instead, he boils the problem down to “complex dynamics” and “a fantastically large number of particles”.

If new laws and features do truly emerge, then surely this means that Greene’s ideal prediction, or ideal reduction, would still be impossible… Unless these two things can exist together. In other words, can we have an ideal prediction, or an ideal reduction, even if new laws and features do occur at higher levels?

Greene on Information

I wonder if the ideal reduction, or ideal prediction, is affected by the introduction of information into this story, as Greene does. In the following passage, we see Greene stating his reductionist and physicalist position again. Yet, this time, with the added ingredient of information:

“To describe the state of the world now, I provide information that specifies the configuration of all the dancing particles and undulating fields permeating space. The laws of physics take that information as input and yield as output information that delineates the state of the world later on. Physics, according to this framing, is in the business of information processing."

It’s worth noting that in this specific context Greene brought up information and processing in response to the position of the philosopher David Chalmers on consciousness and “inner experience”. However, it’s clear that he adopts an informationalist position generally. (Basically, one that’s in tune with the ideas of John Archibald Wheeler.)

What work is the word “information” doing in the quoted passage above? That can be asked because often when I read people talk about information, it seems to have little purpose: it’s a needless addition. Or worse, such people are referring to information as if it’s a… well, physical thing.

Take the words of the physicist Christopher Fuchs:

“‘It is amazing how many people talk about information as if it is simply some new kind of objective quantity in physics, like energy, but measured in bits instead of ergs. You’ll often hear information spoken of as if it’s a new fluid that physics has only recently taken note of.’”

Of course, in an everyday sense, physicists have always dealt with information, just as Tom, Dick and Harry have. However, information in these contexts means much more than that.

Analysing Rupert Sheldrake's Tests on the Paranormal

 

---

This essay is on Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion. It exposes the faulty logic, lack of evidence, and philosophical errors in his tests.

Image created by Chat GPT on a prompt by the writer.

In his book The Science Delusion, the biologist and paranormal researcher Rupert Sheldrake cites many tests — some of which are his own — of telepaths and paranormal phenomena. I noted the lack of evidence for many of his claims about these tests, as well as faulty logic and philosophical mistakes. Sheldrake and his defenders will (or may) argue that the hard detail and data can be found elsewhere in various papers and surveys. However, many believers and sympathisers (who read this book) won’t go elsewhere. So I read The Science Delusion as a book that should stand on its own, just as non-sceptics will have done so.

---

Sheldrake on Mainstream Science

Rupert Sheldrake frequently argues that “mainstream science” ignores his own work, as well as paranormal phenomena generally. Yet he himself cites examples which show that this isn’t true. For example, the University of Virginia, Goldsmiths (University of London), Lund University (Sweden), the University of Edinburgh, etc. all tackle paranormal phenomena. For Sheldrake, the problem here is that these are all specialist parts of the aforementioned universities, not parts of existing science departments. That isn’t enough for him.

Sheldrake isn’t happy that there are parapsychology laboratories or research units at some universities … and then there are scientific laboratories. In other words, he argues that parapsychology has been pushed aside and into a niche. It’s clear that Sheldrake wants parapsychology to be mainstream, and that’s why he’s very critical of what he calls “mainstream science”. For Sheldrake, it’s not enough that there have been trials and tests in “fringe” parapsychology laboratories. There should be trials and tests in scientific laboratories.

Sheldrake is demanding a lot!

Sheldrake on Card-Guessing

Sheldrake tells us that “[m]any card-guessing trials were carried out at the famous parapsychology laboratory at Duke University, North Carolina” (now called the Rhine Research Center). Sheldrake writes:

“By chance subjects would have been right 20 per cent of the time. In hundreds of thousands of trials, the average hit rate was 21 percent, only slightly above the chance level, but highly significant statistically because of the large number of trials.”

A difference of 1 percent may not seem much. As it is, 1% may well be “significant”. Does this 1 percent difference become significant statistically because of “the large number of trials”? Surely given a larger the number of trials, one would expect a larger percentage difference if this parapsychological phenomenon were real. Moreover, Sheldrake treats the 20% mathematical probability as a baseline for human behavior. The 20% refers only to numbers and cards in the abstract, not to human persons guessing the next card.

If telepaths can guess which cards will come next, then why can’t they guess them every time, and in many different contexts?

After saying that a 1% difference is significant, Sheldrake goes on to say why the difference wasn’t actually wider:

“Unfortunately, the experimenters’ desire to follow rigorous scientific procedures led them to adopt procedures far removed from the way telepathy occurs in real life. These repetitive, boring laboratory tests between strangers using abstract stimuli were about as unnatural as it was possible to be.”

Sheldrake often makes the point that the procedures used in the tests of the paranormal are more rigorous than in (much?/all?) mainstream science. He appears to be saying that here too.

It’s not clear why telepathic skills can’t be displayed in unreal life. Sheldrake may have reasons for saying this. However, saying that the tests were “repetitive”, “boring”, etc. doesn’t seem adequate.

Sheldrake concludes that

“[i]n the 1960s, a new generation of researchers tried to find ways of doing research that were closer to the conditions under which telepathy occurs spontaneously, particularly in dreams”.

Here’s the important point to extract from all this. Sheldrake argues that these tests (under supposedly “controlled conditions”) aren’t like what “occurs in real life”. Does that mean that telepathy is at its strongest when no scientists or sceptics are around to witness them? Do only believers witness them?

Sheldrake on a Boxing Match and a Dead Rat

Sheldrake provides some more cases. For example,

“one subject dreamed about buying tickets for a boxing match while the sender was looking at a picture of a boxing match”.

Why couldn’t this be a coincidence? It’s not even as if the sender was looking at a picture of people buying tickets for a boxing match. He was looking at a picture of a boxing match, and the subject was dreaming about buying tickets for a boxing match. Sure, there is indeed a connection. But it could be a coincidence.

Sheldrake’s next example is even weaker. In this case,

“the subject dreamed of a dead rat in a cigar box, while the sender was looking at a picture of a dead gangster in a coffin”.

Sheldrake admits that the “connection was more symbolic”.

It’s not clear that this connection is actually symbolic. The dead rat in a cigar box needn’t have symbolised a dead gangster in a coffin, just as a dead gangster in a coffin needn’t symbolise a dead rat in a cigar box. It is indeed odd to dream of a dead rat in a cigar box. Yet many dreams are weird. Why didn’t the subject dream of a dead gangster in a coffin if such telepathy is a real thing?

Sheldrake concludes that “[i]n a total of 450 dream telepathy trials, the overall results were very significantly above the chance level”. Since Sheldrake himself brought up symbolism, then that changes much. Anything can symbolise anything. If a subject dreams about a sausage, and the sender is looking at a picture of a farm, then that dream can be taken to symbolise that farm because pigs exist on farms, and sausages are made out of pork. With symbolism, you have free rein. That means that one experimenter may see y as symbolising x, whereas another experimenter doesn’t.

Sheldrake presents another case that seems obviously flawed. As ever, he can claim that the details are supplied elsewhere. Most readers won’t go elsewhere. This is Sheldrake:

“[W]hen emotional images were *about* to appear, the increase in electrodermal activity began *before* the picture appeared on the screen, three or four seconds in advance.”

The flaw in this seems so obvious that I can’t help thinking I’m missing something. The increase of electrodermal activity might have been due to the expectation of seeing “emotional images”, even if it were possible that “calm pictures” might have been selected by the computer. After all, psychologists tell us that rehearsing an emotional, fearful, sad, etc. situation often brings about the exact same physical symptoms that would occur during an actual situation. (See here.)

Sheldrake on J.W. Dunne and Precognition

Now read the following sentence from Sheldrake:

“[J.W. Dunne] found he often dreamed about events that were about to happen, but usually forgot these dreams.”

What’s wrong with it?

If the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J.W. Dunne “usually forgot these dreams”, then how did he know that they were dreams about events that were about to happen? It can be supposed that the word “usually” (as in “usually forgot these dreams”) may be doing some work here. Is it? If Dunne usually forgot these dreams, then that must mean that sometimes he didn’t forget them. However, Sheldrake uses the words “these dreams”. The dreams he forgot were supposedly about events that were about to happen.

Perhaps Dunne retrospectively worked out that his forgotten dreams were about events which were about to happen. This may make sense in the context of Sheldrake’s claim that

“[o]nly by keeping careful records of his dreams, writing them down as soon as he awoke, did the phenomenon become clear”.

Is this what happened?

When Dunne began to keep careful records of his dreams, did he then realise that his dreams were about events that were about to happen? Yet that only applies to the dreams which occurred after he started to keep records. What about the dreams which occurred before Dunne started to keep records? Did he still dream about events that were about to happen, but later forgot them?

Interestingly, Sheldrake doesn’t offer his readers evidence that Dunne’s dreams did accurately foretell events in the future. Instead, he tells them that Dunne “made an astonishing discovery” about his dreams.

Of course, this can be tied into déjà vu, and Sheldrake does the tying himself. Dunne “found that he sometimes had experiences that seemed familiar”. It may well be the case that Sheldrake supplies examples elsewhere. Readers can consult Dunne’s book An Experiment With Time to get details. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that the details aren’t actually in Sheldrake’s book. So that surely means he expected most of his readers to accept his words as they stand. Indeed, readers need to accept Dunne’s words, as well as Sheldrake’s words about Dunne’s words.

Sheldrake on Telephone Telepathy

Sheldrake tackles what he calls “telephone telepathy”. He continues:

“Hundreds of people told me that they had thought of someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang in a way that seemed uncanny. Or they knew who was calling when the phone rang before they looked at a caller ID display or answered.”

Sheldrake says that “some people simply accepted that it was telepathic or intuitive”. He then cites some rather obvious arguments against this. What he concludes is the interesting bit. Sheldrake writes:

“I searched the scientific literature to find out if these standard arguments were supported by any data or observations. I could find no research whatever on the subject.”

What kind of data, observations or tests is Sheldrake talking about here? How would scientists test the cases in which people “thought of someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang”? This seems almost impossible to test. It would require a scientist to know when a person randomly thought about someone, and then that someone ringing them. No matter how ingenious such a test is, I still can’t see how this could be done.

The other thing is that if this test were done by “sceptical” scientists, then they would only do so in response to Sheldrake’s claims. Perhaps that’s precisely Sheldrake’s point. No such test would ever be carried out by sceptics unless the paranormal claims were themselves being tested. There is indeed little chance that a scientist would test something as obscure as placing people in experimental situations in which they have a random thought about someone, and then that someone phones them.

Sheldrake above talked about the lack of “data or observations” from sceptics. His own data, on the other hand, was a “series of surveys in Europe and in North and South America”. This was the result:

“On average, 92 per cent of the respondents said they had thought of someone as the telephone rang, or just before, in a way that seemed telepathic.”

Now that is indeed data. However, it’s not an account of a scientific test or experiment. To be fair to Sheldrake, perhaps he would accept that and say that’s precisely why we need tests on this topic. And, yes, he did devise his own test. The problem is that his test was very artificial, as well as being divorced from the account he gave of hundreds of telepaths. In simple terms, Sheldrake’s test seems to have been designed to bring about only positive results. Here, Sheldrake will say that this often happens in science. The problem is, when it happens in science, Sheldrake criticises it.

Firstly, Sheldrake only tested subjects “who said they quite frequently knew who was calling before answering the phone”. It can be supposed that people who don’t think they are telepathic wouldn’t have been tested at the same time. Still, this is an odd test.

As stated, these tests were so artificial (as, I suppose, many scientific tests and experiments are) that it’s hard to know where to start. However, it’s worth focussing on one sentence from Sheldrake:

“None of the subjects was right every time, but they were right much more than they should have been if the chance coincidence theory were true.”

Is it now unfair to ask the following question? —

Why weren’t these subjects right every time?

If telepathic skills or abilities are real, then why weren’t the telepaths right every time? Sheldrake may cite test conditions which may have interfered with their telepathic skills. After all, when referring to another test, he claimed (as quoted earlier) that

“the experimenters’ desire to follow rigorous scientific procedures led them to adopt procedures far removed from the way telepathy occurs in real life”.

In the case of telephone telepathy, the test conditions and procedures could have interfered in a positive way too! In other words, if “rigorous scientific procedures” dampen down the effects of telepathy, then a lack of such things can do the opposite. Of course, in the telephone telepathy case, Sheldrake will claim that he did use rigorous scientific procedures. Did he? It certainly has the outward appearance of a scientific test. However, once you scrape the test’s surface, that’s not the case at all. It’s as if Sheldrake believes that by simply using the jargon and supposed procedures of scientific tests, his tests become scientific.

Sheldrake may believe he’s on safe ground here because he’ll probably say that all scientific tests and experiments are artificial in many ways. Artificial, yes, but also bogus?

Sheldrake on Sceptics

I wonder if Sheldrake would see me as being a “self-appointed vigilante”. He uses these words about the “members of skeptical organisations”. I’m not a member of a sceptical organisation, so Sheldrake may see me as a lightweight who can be safely ignored. The problem here is that Sheldrake takes issue with critics precisely because they’re members of sceptical organisations. This would mean that Sheldrake has set up a no-loose situation for himself.

What about these self-appointed vigilantes?

If they didn’t appoint themselves, then who would appoint them? And why, exactly, are they vigilantes? (Sheldrake does explain this.)

Again, I wonder if I fit into the artfully selected sceptics whom Sheldrake cites. It can be admitted, it wouldn’t look good for sceptics if readers were to rely exclusively on Sheldrake’s own words about them.

Take the case of the developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster Lewis Wolpert, whom Sheldrake mentions a few times in separate places. (Wolpert died in 2021.) He was well known (perhaps even among “materialists”) for being opinionated and sometimes rude. (Take Wolpert’s critical words on philosophy too.)

Sheldrake tells his readers that he had

“summarised evidence for telepathy from thousands of scientific trials and showed a video of recent experiments”.

How did Wolpert react to all this?

According to Sheldrake, he “star[ed] ahead, tap[ped] a pencil on the table, sighing as if bored”. Moreover, “[h]e did not turn around to see the evidence behind him”. Wolpert might well have been bored with the (supposed) evidence. However, he went along to a debate on this subject. So, if Sheldrake is telling the truth, Wolpert’s behaviour was embarrassing. What’s more, it seems like Sheldrake was telling the truth because this debate was covered by the journal Nature (‘Telepathy debate hits London’). In that article, it’s said that “[m]any in the audience variously accused Wolpert of ‘not knowing the evidence’ and being ‘unscientific’”. This may depend on people taking “the evidence” as genuine evidence. However, that still doesn’t excuse Wolpert’s tubthumping behaviour.

Sheldrake tackles the sceptics again. He writes:

“Sceptics often argue that such impressive collections of data are misleading, because researchers may publish only positive results, and leave negative studies unpublished in their files, the so-called ‘file-drawer effect’.”

Then comes the important line:

“This objection is plausible, but it applies to all branches of science, including physics, chemistry and biology, where most data go unpublished.”

Okay. Let’s say that the file-drawer effect does occur in physics, chemistry and biology too. That still means that it occurs in research on the paranormal. So how does the case of physicists, chemists and biologists hiding negative results help Sheldrake’s own case?