Design Without A Designer?

My previous riff on the possibility of a designed universe considered what that might say about the designer. Would that be a First Cause that created the physical laws that seem to have governed the Big Bang and subsequent evolution of the universe, or perhaps a “programmer” using a preexisting set of tools to design a very elaborate simulation? Thomas Nagel offered instead the concept of a design without a designer, one arising through a somehow ordered process of mutation and natural selection. He opposed this to a teleologic explanation (such as divine intervention or creationism) or a merely material and chance elaboration of physical law. His alternative include “the constitutive possibility, in the character of the elements of which the world is composed, of their combination into living organisms with the properties of consciousness, action, and cognition which we know they have.” (pg 93) This “constitutive possibility” is in the same category as mathematical truths. They are just are, embedded in reality. The same can be said for moral truths – such as the imperative not to harm other sentient creatures – that are facts, he says, that we call values. These are accessible to consciousness. “We exist in a world of values and respond to them through normative judgements that guide our action…. The response to value seems only to make sense as a function of the unified subject of consciousness…. Practical reasoning and its influence on action involve the unified conscious subject who sees what he should do.” (pg 114-15 ) This gives consciousness a hook by which to express free will. We chose right or wrong. Nagel calls the whole process – the evolution of life, rise of consciousness and emergent perception of right and wrong – as one “of the universe gradually waking up.” (pg 117)

The emergent ability to perceive good and evil doesn’t mean an automatic tendency toward the good. “No teleologic principle tending towards the production of a single outcome seems suitable. Rather, it would have to be a tendency toward the proliferation of complex forms and the generation of multiple variations in the range of possible complex systems.” (pg 122) According to Nagel, teleology can be restated as “a cosmic predisposition to the formation of life, consciousness, and the value [of what is good for each creature] that is inseparable from them.” (pg 123)

I like all this, it echoes Plato and his notion of the Forms as the basis of reality, perceivable through reason. But it begs the question of how and why there should be any “constitutive possibilities” pre-baked into the creation of the universe. Nagel, a self-declared atheist, wants to avoid the notion of any Devine Designer. But it seems to beg the question of how to posit a design without a designer. It violates Occam’s Razor. So I return to the question of what sort of designer would set this universe spinning. Perhaps Nagel here can point in the right direction. There does seem to be a moral order to the universe as well as a governing set of physical and mathematical laws (which we are still discovering). We can, in fact, know good from evil. (Mere good and bad may vary according to the individual, group or civilization.) We also have the free will to ignore this distinction and clearly human history is full of examples of those who did and do.

A while back, near the start of my ruminations, I suggested that perhaps the designer was a kind of cosmic Shakespeare, setting up the grandest possible stage on which a myriad of actors could perform. Or perhaps, out of loneliness, it formulated an elaborate simulation it could inhabit in the form of individual conscious agents, bound by time and space. I don’t know but it’s been fun, at least for me, ruminating on it. In the end, my own, I may, or may not, find out.

Moments in Time and Consciousness

Attended the symphony today.  Instrumental music does not hold my attention as well as a play -- especially Shakespeare -- would.  I enjoyed the program but without words (lyrics), it didn't pin down my thoughts.  So they just wandered.

I wondered about exactly why I could not focus on the assembly of notes as I would on an assembly of words.  That made me think about just how these notes add up to music anyway.  The basic length of time in a conscious moment must be long enough for a series of notes to be assembled in the mind into a bit of music.  If we only perceived note by note -- or word by word for that matter -- we'd never make sense of anything.  The basic unit of conscious perception apparently is 2-3 seconds. Our now is this long.  Short term memory -- what is held in consciousness readily available as context for each moment -- is some 10-15 seconds.  We can perceive a much denser reality in each moment than simply one "thing."  Events can enter our consciousness that linger only some 40 milliseconds.  Indeed, each note is made up from a number of vibrations in the air and a symphony has lots of instruments making each note.  So each conscious moment is a highly sampled chunk of passing time.  The point is, however, not this but the apparent fact that our consciousness grasps this moment in its entirety.  It spans the stream of quantized time.  (The smallest unit of time is the Planck time, 5.39x10 to the -44th seconds.)  Consciousness seems to exist outside the flow of time.  We do not observe, think, exist in time but somehow alongside it.  The "ghost" in our machine provides a stage large enough for an assembly of actors to play their parts so that we can experience each moment of the world.

Consciousness and Creation

In the beginning there was someone, someone in the sense of consciousness, in the sense of intending or being able to intend. Either one of many such or alone, though if one of many, only this one having been the cause of our universe and being knowable by us. This consciousness caused or is coterminous with what we understand, looking back at it, as the Big Bang and the quantum substratum from which it emerged and from which emerged the material universe of which we are part. Act of creation itself, of the material universe, must be considered, from the point of view of the universe as a whole, as being timeless. For consciousness, everything that was or will be was present simultaneously. The physical manifestation of this is that the first light of the Big Bang, traveling at the speed of light, and therefore from that perspective without time duration, fills everywhere along its path instantaneously and simultaneously and thus exists at the very moment across eternity and everywhere. Within that context, creation is an act of constructing a grand cosmic stage for consciousness to enter into and play a myriad of parts as it buds off each individual consciousness, as it became particularized. Shakespeare presented the world as a "stage" in exactly this way. Perhaps he too is in some sense a “son of god”, someone with direct access to the larger perspective of the grand consciousness, giving us insight into the perspective of the one consciousness of which all others are pieces of. Raises too, then, the possibility that the whole universe is a diversion, a very complicated diversion to keep One occupied for all eternity, whatever that means. Nevertheless, leaves us particulars the traditional question of the meaning of life, our lives. Western culture suggests meaning is created and purpose is to understand, master, control and change reality. Other cultures see nature as something to be venerated, respected, and/or entered into in a cooperative manner. What accounts for the West’s distinctive answer to this question? Is our approach good or bad, verdict is still out. But if our world is this diversion, then we in the West -- in being ourselves intent in writing the play -- are more active participants in it. We give this diversion its spice. If “god” can be said to speak more clearly, more “actively” at the micro-level in which we live in the West -- from the Jews and Greeks on -- it is also true that we perhaps more needed the message of the other “son”, Christ, of love and concern for others, to rein us in and draw our attention to the good. Maybe the one consciousness has made many or all possible stages.