"We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization"
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Shermer’s sentence is a quiet rebuke to the dead-end certainty of reductionism: the reflex to treat the brain like a pile of parts and assume the whole story will obediently fall out. By insisting we explore consciousness “at the neural level and higher,” he’s drawing a boundary around what counts as a serious question. Neurons matter, yes, but so do the patterns neurons create when they swarm into networks, feedback loops, habits, and—eventually—minds. The key phrase is his “arrow of causal analysis,” a metaphor that smuggles in an argument about directionality: explanation doesn’t only drill downward into smaller mechanisms; it can legitimately point upward into organizing principles that aren’t visible in the microscopic view.
The subtext is also disciplinary politics. In the long-running consciousness wars—philosophers sparring over qualia, neuroscientists hunting correlates, AI researchers building models—“emergence” and “self-organization” function like a bridge language. They let Shermer sound scientifically hard-nosed while sidestepping both mystical handwaving and purely philosophical stalemates. He’s signaling allegiance to complexity science: the idea that certain phenomena become intelligible only when you stop treating them as the sum of their parts and start treating them as systems.
Context matters: Shermer’s brand is skeptic-inflected humanism, wary of supernatural explanations but also wary of simplistic “nothing but neurons” takes. This line positions consciousness not as magic, but as a natural product of organized complexity—demanding new levels of description, not new realms of being.
The subtext is also disciplinary politics. In the long-running consciousness wars—philosophers sparring over qualia, neuroscientists hunting correlates, AI researchers building models—“emergence” and “self-organization” function like a bridge language. They let Shermer sound scientifically hard-nosed while sidestepping both mystical handwaving and purely philosophical stalemates. He’s signaling allegiance to complexity science: the idea that certain phenomena become intelligible only when you stop treating them as the sum of their parts and start treating them as systems.
Context matters: Shermer’s brand is skeptic-inflected humanism, wary of supernatural explanations but also wary of simplistic “nothing but neurons” takes. This line positions consciousness not as magic, but as a natural product of organized complexity—demanding new levels of description, not new realms of being.
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| Topic | Science |
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