Typical phenomena in the physical world can be portrayed as chains of simple action-reaction events. Apply heat, for example, to ice, and it melts. These reactions are entirely predictable, based on our (adequate) knowledge of what water is and how it behaves in various conditions.
With organisms the same paradigm can be observed, but with greater complexity. The basic format is one of stimulus and response. Apply heat to an amoeba, and we can observe one of several possible responses, depending on the environment and its internal state. These responses are almost entirely predictable, based on our (probably adequate) knowledge of what an amoeba is and how it behaves in various conditions. The amoeba presumably has a signalling system that sorts out what kind of stimulus is being applied and what response is appropriate, given all the other factors in play.
The more complex the organism, the greater the range of possible responses. Apply heat to a dog and . . . there may be too many variables to calculate. We can make some plausible predictions, but the level of certainty is now only probable (and probably inadequate).
Apply heat to a human being, and the first question will be, ‘What do you even mean by that?’ The frame is indefinite, and the range of possibilities and interpretations is so great as to render prediction useless. Nor can we begin to fathom the complexity of signals involved when we observe any one of a vast and contradictory field of results. Clearly, a method and framework that function perfectly or quite well in the physical or simple biological realm become irrelevant or ludicrous when blindly applied to fields beyond their proper range.
Still, despite all this incalculable, incomprehensible data, the physicalist will insist that a measurable physical stimulus produces a measurable physical response. Man is a machine, albeit incredibly intricate in its workings, and the physicalist frame remains intact. Evolution can proceed by environmental cues and random mutations to produce, somehow, the entire range of human behaviour . . . theoretically, at least. While the process may never be known, physicalism asserts that it is knowable. All we need to function as a human machine is a system of digital signals, like commands in a computer program. Nature is quite capable of the complex administration of signals necessary for us to survive, as is evident in animals and in our own reflex reactions and pre-conscious responses to sudden events.
Ultimately, then, according to the physicalists, every event, including the contents of our lives and our brains, is reducible to an action-reaction paradigm, which can subsequently be explained in terms of particle physics and the fundamental ‘laws of nature’. This version of reality remains the dominant lamp on the streets and in the schools where we are forming the minds of future generations.
But when we confine our investments and investigations to this small circle of enquiry, what is motivating us? The ring we lost – the ring of truth. Is it there, in the laboratory, the observatory, or the algorithm? No – we get nothing but the occasional gleam from the hard particles that surround that particular lamp post. At best, we obtain a panoramic view of the entire lamplit circle where we are standing. But why are we standing there? We claim to be searching for the truth, but secretly we know that it is somewhere else, and definitely not where our senses work best and our intellects love to shine. We wishfully think that somehow, someday, the darkness will be dispelled by some amazing technical singularity or logical extrapolation from those scintillas that lie within the range of our materialist vision, but meanwhile we live, love, age, and die . . . in darkness.
Or so we have come to consider it. But if we were to come home to ourselves, we would soon find another kind of light, and plenty of clues to where the ring of truth is to be found. That blush of unspeakable delight at the beauty of a sunset. That thrill of gratitude upon seeing a magnificent mountain vista. The sheer amazement of realizing the unfathomable immensity of the universe, and appreciating the intricate detail in every one of its tiniest particles. That sudden swell of emotion upon hearing a particular phrase or motif in a song or symphony. Some people – a hardened few, mostly rare (thank goodness) – claim to get no special pleasure from any of these. But as for those who do – why all this useless, intangible joy? Why so many evolutionary dead ends? Are they spandrels, accidental by-products of our otherwise efficient signalling system? Or do we misconceive them by looking for nothing more than their material utility? In other words, why is mere mechanical Nature so non-parsimonious, so unshaven by Occam’s razor when it comes to humans?
There is a ‘raw feel’ element of our subjective experience that is both undeniable and incompatible with a strictly physicalist paradigm of reality. Yet if we try to conceptualize it, to pin down and name ‘it’, it is no longer subjective but an object, a memory, and so amenable to systematization. The enemy of the physicalist system is not complexity, but the pure simplicity of that felt moment which then becomes a memory. The physicalist system pounces on that datum, and waves away the ineffable experience before it – an instant that to elucidate is to betray.
There is a difference here between map and territory. No physicalist would deny that he is offering only a map. What he cannot offer is a sense of territory, namely the experiential instant before we attempt to say what ‘it’ is. ‘Something’ is there before the act of attention ‘names’ it. To name it is to identify it, to interpret it, and to objectify it. In the same way that physicalism posits something real being present before our maps objectify it, consciousness encounters something present before our ability to identify it.
Some physicalists have tried to explain experiences as merely part of the factual map, but that is a category error. They are not the same. Facts are ‘about’ experiences; they interpret them. But the experience itself, before we objectify it, is both unique and undeniable. Experiences are not facts because facts are what we argue over; there is nothing arguable about experiences (as long as we do not try to explain or identify them). They occupy a category all their own.
Some philosophers have tried to explain what is irreducible and unique about experience, and the physicalists can always respond by attacking its lack of objectivity. And that is precisely the point. It is not objective; it cannot be ‘proven’. We are certain, but we cannot say how. We are, in our innermost being, face to face with the same dilemma we have when discussing GOD. This is the nature of AL-LAH by which mankind was opened up (Q30:30).
Science depends on numbers and measurement. But the concepts it uses cannot be measured. The mass of a particular star can be counted or calculated, but the star itself cannot, nor can the word for it. There is no way to inductively derive the concept “star” from the equations that describe a star. Rather the concept came first, and the calculations come in afterward to break it down, like maggots around a corpse. Science cannot proceed without such concepts, while our daily lives have been getting along just fine for thousands or millions of years without the precision of science. So which is primary and which is derived? Which is necessary and which is expendable? Which expresses GOD (absolute) and which expresses His creation (dependent)?
Physicalism tells us that physical things, i.e., matter/energy, came first, but the assertion itself is not material. Informational realism (referring back to the second text box in Chapter 22) tells us that information came first, but that statement is not reducible to purely digital information. What is ‘information’ as a concept in an informational system? Just like ‘materialism’, it can reduce everything to its frame but itself.
The ring of truth still lurks ‘in the back of our minds’, that uncanny source of our concepts, our values, our experiences, and our very subjectivity. We think we can find it under the street lamp, but that circle on the ground is altogether too small, and too dependent on things outside its delusively bright ambit. We are seeking – we need – an absolute, infinite, self-subsistent frame/framer – the One Who forged His link to us and left it thoughtfully where we are not wont to look. We need GOD.
The GOD You Already Know 