RE: origin of beliefs

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Aug 16 2001 - 00:21:09 MDT


The post-moderns like narratives, so this is my "narrative" of how I came
to be a materialist. I'd like to read how others came by their beliefs.

In 1967, at the age of 19, I had an opportunity to evade the usual
boring History classes at the University of California at Riverside.
Revolution was in the air, and four professors decided to hold a
class comprised of fifteen carefully chosen students who would,
amidst general investigations of philosophy and culture, confront
the crisis that was overtaking institutions of higher learning in
general, and all the college campuses in the nation including ours
(or so it seemed) in particular. My ticket to this class turned on,
I believe, one key sentence that I included in an essay that we had
to write in order to gain admittance. My sentence was: "I do not
understand why everyone is not a scientific materialist." I knew
that in an effort to create a diverse body of fifteen students, my
statement would make me stand out quite uniquely. I was right.
Except for two of the four professors (one of biology, and a very
sharp history professor), I was alone in that class in holding
that at the lowest level, there is a mechanistic, scientific,
materialist explanation of everything.

This view seemed quite uncommon. I dare say that there wasn't
a single "scientific materialist" in the entire philosophy
department. Back in our special class, we had one very old professor
emeritus visit on several occasions. His name was Philip Wheelwright,
and he'd written a few books and was a well-known philosopher.
He and I squared off right away. Soon I made a couple of trips
to his office where we debated some rather fundamental philosophical
positions. It was the first time, but not the last, that although
arguing with someone much more sophisticated and intelligent than I,
I knew I was right and he was wrong. Our debate finally broke up
over an irresolvable difference concerning human memory: I contended
that there were physical operations in the brain that were responsible
for human memory (it's even conceivable that I had read a little of
Penfield's experiments by this time). But to me, it simply *had* to
be true! Surely all the atoms in one's head obeyed the same laws of
physics as atoms everywhere. Well, he wasn't buying it. He
absolutely refused to concede that human memory might one day
be explained by purely physical brain processes.

Today, it may be hard for you to believe that this was the typical
stance of many well-educated people in 1967; but I swear it's true!
Incidently, the situation had improved by 1975: at Riverside, one
new young philosophy professor, Larry Wright, was a materialist
par-excellance. A younger friend of mine took courses from him,
and I visited his office with my friend on several occasions. By
now, I would guess, (if I had to), that in America better than half
of a typical philosophy department's faculty would today consist
of people who I called "scientific materialists". I also think
that most people reading this list fall into that category too.

But how, by age 19, had I come to be such a resolute materialist?
It happened this way. As a sincere Christian, I read at age 15
with some dismay the attacks on my hero Euler at the hands of the
atheist Diderot and his droogies back in St. Catharine's court.
Voltaire had said, "if the planets move in their orbits according
to fixed law, then how can we expect a little creature only five
feet tall to do as he pleases?". I remember reading---although
have never been able to find the passage---a key phrase concerning
"the dynamics of the particles of the brain". Perhaps it was only
a passing thought on my part. But my faith began to crumble, and
by age 17 I was a complete atheist. Yet I was still haunted by
that phrase; if all the particles in my brain inexorably follow
physical law, then what am I? I was lucky to meet a fellow chess-
player at about this time, who was ten years older and much wiser.
He was an atheist and a "scientific materialist"; I can even remember
two years before resenting his smug atheism. Tim Delaney was a big
help in solidifying my materialist beliefs about then.

Shortly after turning 18, I happened to ponder this: if I am just
a collection of atoms, then what would happen if a machine were to
make an identical set of atoms? Tim said, "well, we know that all
carbon atoms are identical, according to quantum mechanics". But
that was all the interest I could get from him (at this time). Soon,
however, I was severely troubled by the idea: if an exact molecular
copy of me existed, then which one would I be?

This question has haunted me ever since, for thirty-five years now.
I confess that in a moment of mathematical persuasion, I decided that
the answer surely was that I had to be both of them equally. Complete
symmetry had to reign, because if there was no soul, then what,
objectively, could possibly distinguish the two? But this raised
a terrible problem. I finally convinced Tim that the problem was
real, when I happened to think about how you'd feel if in a teleporter
experiment, there was a minute or two delay between the arrival of
the duplicate in the distant teleporter station, and the disintegration
of the original at the sending station. During that minute, the original
soon-to-be-disintegrated would anticipate... what? His death? But no,
*he* is already at the remote station also! By sheer force of logic, or
so it seemed to me, those feelings of imminent demise *must* be illusory.
The remote duplicate, BY THE FAITH OF A PHYSICIST also had to be me! I
would survive! Despite any feelings of impending doom that the original
might entertain.

These arguments only solidified my materialism further. Ultimately,
physics accounts for everything. There was no room for soul, or
(for a short while) even higher order abstractions. But I soon came
to realize that patterns have objective existence too; in fact the
key to the "identity paradox" was to realize that I was a *pattern*,
certainly not a particular collection of atoms.

So that's how I became a "scientific materialist", or as some would
say today, a "functionalist". A functionalist I remain (except for
the small interesting problem of lookup tables).

I'd be interested in anyone else's narrative of how they came to
acquire their early, decisive beliefs.

Lee Corbin



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