Consciousness and the Conservation of Energy

This just over the transom:

 I've been reading your blog recently and find it to be very good. [. . .] Since you question mortalism, a doctrine I've had some doubts about myself, I thought you might find a use for some ideas of mine on the matter.

Posting on machineslikeus.com,  I encountered someone who argued that belief in a 'future state' (Hume's term, not his) was irrational. His illustration was telling:

'We never ask, "Where did the 60 Miles Per Hour go after the car hit the cement pylon?"'
This got my attention because I have suspected for a while that belief in a future state may be like belief in potential energy; no-one can SEE potential energy, but various rational concerns suggest that it completes what we see. Just as we have confidence that potential energy always 'completes' the evident kinetic energy in a closed system, we should also believe that our consciousness, being truly real, cannot be annihilated. Each time I hear mortalism stated, the arguments used seem to agree with my analysis; mortalists often claim that they expect to be annihilated or to 'cease to exist'. Hume himself, I think, is credited with expecting 'annihilation' at death. Doesn't basic physics suggest that this is impossible, however? No-one speaks of this happening to energy, so why should it happen to consciousness?

Here is the relevant part of my response from the site:

'We never ask, "Where did the 60 Miles Per Hour go after the car hit the cement pylon?"'

That's not a very good example. We do, in fact, ask where the '60 Miles Per Hour' went, in the sense of asking questions about the transfer of kinetic energy. As most people know, when a car slows down its kintetic energy is transferred into heat, sound, energy in other bodies and so on. Asking 'where the speed went', or, more accurately, where the energy went, is a legitimate question.

If anything, your example highlights something important by a mistake that erodes your case. When people wonder 'where did the consciousness go?' they are implicitly appealing to the Principle of Conservation in much the same way that a scientist appeals to it when they wonder about energy being transferred. There's nothing immediately stupid about that.

Given this, I think that we face a stark choice about consciousness as follows:

1 Consciousness is real and the Principle of Conservation is universal. Therefore, consciousness is permanent and is always conserved in some form, though not necessarily a visible or obvious form. Just because we cannot see consciousness after death doesn't mean it no longer exists; our trust in the Principle of Conservation should override this.

2 Consciousness is real but the Principle of Conservation is not universal. It only applies to certain things. (Which things, and why?) Therefore, consciousness is not necessarily conserved.

3 Consciousness is not real. It never existed in the first place.

Since my thoughts on the topic are still developing, I'd be interested in your input.

I agree that it makes perfectly good physical sense to ask where the energy goes when a car smashes into a cement pylon.  And it is certainly true that Conservation of Energy is one of the fundamental principles of classical mechanics.  It can be said to be universal in that it holds throughout nature as nature is conceived in classical (Newtonian) physics.  And it is also undeniable that consciousness is real.  The proof of the reality of consciousness is available to each person via introspection.  But that "consciousness is permanent" does not follow from these premises.  To have a valid argument you need the further premise that consciousness is a form of energy.  But I see no reason to accept this further premise.  It is either false or not sufficently clear to be assigned a truth-value.  Energy is a concept of physics.  Roughly, it is the capacity to do work.  Work is a function of force and distance.  Force is a function of mass and acceleration, and so on.  These concepts have no application to consciousness.

More importantly, the question of whether or not the death of the body spells the annihilation of the conscious person concerns the survival or non-survival of an individual being, not the survival or non-survival of a quantity of energy -- even if we assume that consciousness is a form of energy. The question is whether I survive bodily death, not whether a quantum of energy survives in some form or other.  If I throw an egg at a wall, the kinetic energy at impact is not lost, but this fact does not do the egg any good.  That individual egg ceases to exist.  So even if consciousness is a form of energy and is not lost when my body dies, that doesn't do me any good.

I hope this helps.  The ComBox is open on this post in case you want to respond.

Comments

[Kenneth Dunlop]

I'm honoured to be featured on your blog. Your main suggestion, it seems, is that the Principle of Conservation only applies to energy, and therefore not neccessarily consciousness. For the Principle of Conservation to apply to consciousness, it would have to be a form of energy.

I which case, I would propose a rather bolder principle that applies not only to energy, but to reality itself. Let's call it 'The Law of Permanence'. It goes:
'All real things are permanent things, and all permanent things are real things. Temporary things are only fragmented signs of the permanent ones.'

Simple, eh? But why believe it? I would argue that this is a rational, a priori principle rather like other 'modes of cognition' (Kant's phrase), including space, time, causation, order and so on. I'd also argue that the Law of Conservation of energy is but the Law of Permanence applied to energy; it has wider uses. But why should we believe it in the first place? I'll try to explain my views.

Why would scientists get so excited about qualities like 'energy' and 'mass'? Because they are the qualities that remain the same. Consider equations. We use them to create models of the world that are consistent; that is, timeless and permanent. The more timeless and the more permanent, the better. The whole project of science is implicitly one of overcoming temporality and reaching an understanding of the changeless, permanent underlying substance, whatever that is. We believe in these things because they are permanent, not the other way around. Permanence is the implicit criterion underlying all of science; no-one claims that the Grand Unifying Theory is one of change. To my mind, that is to postulate a kind of 'mad God' at the centre of everything.

Why are Brahman, God, good art, the Grand Unifying Theory and so many other ultimate objects of our contemplation permanent? It seems more than a coincidence. Searching for the permanent, and believing that it is there, seems inextricable from being human.
(Yeah, I know, preachy stuff, eh?)

Some might argue that there is actually empirical evidence that the 'Law of Permanance' is true, too. Look at how useful it's been for us, for instance. Being rather the rationalist, I'd argue that while it's nice that this is true, it's not required for the rationality of the belief. This doesn't seem very important, though. Let's just be glad that there are a priori AND empirical reasons to believe it.

So long as the Law of Permanence is true (or rational, perhaps) I think it can be applied to us, whatever we are, so long as we ARE. I think it follows that 'whatever I am is permanent.' Of course, this leaves wide open the question of what I am, but I can be sure that I am not nothing, because my existence, if nothing else, it transparent to itself. Besides, if I'm not allowed to believe that I exist, what CAN I believe?

Of course, it may be that I am not what I think I am. If I think I am bound to the body, I may be wrong. If I think I am conscious, this may be an illusion. My point is only that identity cannot fully be an illusion, because nothing can be. All appearances tell us something, however little, about reality. I don't know what I am, but I know THAT I am.

This seems to overlap with the doctrines of every afterlife theory. According to Christianity, for instance, you are your soul. This is the reason that it is permanent and transcends death. I am arguing, it seems, for something similar, a kind of I-know-not-what that transcends apparrent annihilation. And no, I don't think that not knowing what something is makes us unable to say THAT it is.

This kind of thinking also supports the idea that death is a time when illusions are stripped away and we become (or return) to a simpler, truer self. Exactly which parts of our experience are the illusions remains to be seen. Whatever the case, it seems that I have nothing to fear except the loss of my illusions.

I'm confident of one thing, at least; the talk from most mortalists of expecting to be 'annihilated' seems misleading at best.

[Bill Vallicella]

Kenneth,

I can see from your response that there is no point in discussing this further with you. But I did want to give you a chance to respond.