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Monday, January 28, 2019

How Could Mind Emerge From Mindless Matter?

Complexity theory and emergence point the way to understanding consciousness.

Posted Jan 28, 2019 
By Ralph Lewis, M.D.
Original link:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/finding-purpose/201901/how-could-mind-emerge-mindless-matter 

Cherezoff | Dreamstime
Source: Cherezoff | Dreamstime
 
I’m a psychiatrist, working at the interface of brain and behaviour. Should I understand my patients as the products of neuronal firing and wiring—chemistry and biology? Or as psychological beings with rich inner mental lives living in relationships with other individuals and society? The medications I prescribe operate at the chemical and biological levels, while the psychotherapy I practice and the environmental changes I advise operate at the psychological and social levels. Bridging these levels in a truly integrated way can be challenging in formulating a complete understanding of people.

The matter of souls

Most people, even in 2019, still assume that the mind and the self possess some sort of spirit or soul that is not merely the product of physical particles. While neuroscientists may scoff at such quaint folk psychology, regarding it as based on antiquated religions dreamed up by pre-scientific people who were still trying to figure out where the rain came from, it is actually completely understandable that intelligent people would still believe such things. After all, the mind and subjective self-aware consciousness bear no qualitative resemblance whatsoever to the physical properties of matter. A reductionist scientific approach of explaining the functioning of the brain in purely material terms based on circuits, neurons and neurotransmitters, while incredibly interesting and illuminating, has not yet solved the mystery of why or how it feels like something to be a conscious self.

Still, here’s the thing: everything we know from science confirms that we and the world are composed purely of physical matter and energy. There is absolutely no way compatible with science for a spiritual realm to exist in anything other than our imagination. For spiritual phenomena such as souls and supernatural or paranormal forces to be real, most of science would have to be wrong. If we wish to reach a different conclusion, we must be prepared to reject a sizable proportion of the entire body of scientific knowledge and evidence, and start over (consider that this is the same knowledge and evidence-base that makes your cell phone work—it would not work if the science was wrong).

Scientific reductionism—nothing but the sum of its parts

Nevertheless, the traditional scientific method of reductionism— understanding complex things by identifying and analyzing their smallest elements or parts of the system, provides an incomplete explanation for the human mind and the brain that produces it. The traditional approach of scientific reductionism would suggest that the functioning of the brain or mind is nothing but the sum of its parts—circuits of nerve cells made of molecules made of atoms made of elementary particles, interacting with each other according to the simple laws of physics.

Is that all there is?

Scientific reductionism is a crucial and elegant approach to understanding the world including the brain, and it has yielded astonishing insights, but it can feel unsatisfying and disheartening to some people. If everything is ultimately reducible to particles and physics, then everything may ultimately appear meaningless and pointless. Is that all there is? If so, where does our humanity come from? We need to understand where we fit into such a universe, with our complex subjectivity.

Complexity and emergence—greater than the sum of its parts

In the last three decades or so, an influential new interdisciplinary science called complexity theory (the science of complex systems) has developed. It is focused on devising models to explain how properties of complex systems emerge from the interactions of simpler constituents. Complex systems acquire properties that differ both quantitatively and qualitatively from their simpler constituents—properties that are not inherent to their constituents and cannot be inferred or predicted from them. Such novel properties of the complex system are referred to as emergent phenomena. Emergence is the opposite of reductionism. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There is no ‘magic’ involved here, just complex physical interactions. Emergence is a spontaneous, bottom-up, self-organising phenomenon of complexity, with no external cause required, no top-down design and no centralized control of the system.

Complexity science doesn’t replace the standard approach of reductionism. It complements it. Reductionism is still an extremely useful and powerful method of understanding complex systems.

Emergence: novelty can enter the universe

Consider the properties of water as a very basic example. Water has several emergent properties, such as cohesive behavior, ability to moderate temperature, and expansion upon freezing. Even more simply, consider the ‘wetness’ of water. The individual hydrogen and oxygen atoms that comprise H2O do not possess any of these properties and behaviors; the properties cannot even be predicted or inferred from the properties of the individual atoms—they are emergent.

Water is a simple example. Much more magnificent novelty than that has emerged—all of nature, really. Think of it as the universe’s spontaneous, unguided creativity—all the more marvelous for its complete lack of conscious intention.

The brain is the most complex of complex adaptive systems

Clearly, the brain is a phenomenon in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and its product, the mind or subjective sense of self, is radically different qualitatively from its parts—an emergent property.

Actually, this is not just the case for the brain, but for any complex adaptive system, of which there are myriad examples in our world. To name just a few: individual organisms, systems within an organism such as the immune system or brain, colonies of social insects, bird flocking, herd migration, traffic flows, cities, financial markets, the internet, ecosystems, and climates. Each is a system with a network of many agents / constituents interacting.

Complex adaptive systems, which produce emergent phenomena, are considered complex in that they are dynamic networks of interactions between their component parts. They are considered adaptive in that they change and self-organize in response to their changing environment.

Consciousness emerged in the universe as a radically novel phenomenon. So did life.

The human brain is the most complex adaptive system known to us. And consciousness as a phenomenon is the most radically different from physical matter of all phenomena known to us. But of course, don't forget that consciousness is not always highly rich and complex—it occurs in gradations in different species and in different states of brain health in humans; there are many kinds of minimal and simple states of consciousness.

Other than consciousness, the next most radically different phenomenon known to us that has emerged from ordinary matter is life itself. It used to be assumed that living things must surely possess some sort of mysterious animating essence, some kind of vital force (‘élan vital’) that non-living matter lacked. But the mystery of what makes a thing alive was solved in the twentieth century. What makes a thing alive is the organization of its atoms.

Spontaneous self-organization of complex adaptive systems and the rules that govern them

Living things are a special class of complex adaptive systems. A central characteristic of complex adaptive systems is organization. Remarkably, these systems form by self-organization or a process of spontaneous order. They create overall order from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process does not require design or control by any external agent, or any centralized control.

Miwainoz | Dreamstime
Termite mound.
Source: Miwainoz | Dreamstime

The ‘rules’ governing the interactions of constituents of a complex adaptive system are usually very elementary and operate at a local level between the individual constituents. Complex adaptive systems emerge in ways that are analogous to grassroots political organization that arises at a local level from interactions between neighbors. The simple local rules of interaction enable self-organization. No one is ‘in charge’—the process is bottom-up rather than top-down. But the complex whole system resulting from these interactions, with its new emergent properties, does have a constraining effect on the individual constituents, acting back down on them. Reciprocal or reverberating feedback loops between the constituents and the whole are established—for example, between individual termites and the colony as a whole, or between individual neurons and the brain as a whole.

So ‘clever’ that they seem designed

Complex adaptive systems in nature can be exceedingly intricate and can seem so ‘clever’ that one can be forgiven for thinking that they must surely have been intelligently designed according to some blueprint or master plan, carefully guided through their assembly process. But complexity science provides explanations for how all this occurs through natural, spontaneous, self-organizing processes—entirely unguided. (Feel free to invoke a Higher Power as Intelligent Designer, but doing so is entirely redundant, and given the imperfections, failures and inefficiencies of the processes, the Designer unfortunately could not be all-powerful, all-knowing or all-good).

Even human-made complex adaptive systems with constraints imposed on them by design cannot be completely controlled or predicted by their human designers (predict the financial markets, anyone?).

In the case of living organisms, the well-understood processes of evolution by natural selection and sexual selection play a huge and powerful additional role in further sculpting the marvelous and intricate complexity we see in nature, greatly reinforcing the appearance of intelligent design. But the self-organizing processes of complex adaptive systems occur independently of evolution and apply to both living and non-living systems. They also almost certainly played a central role in the initial origin of life, before evolutionary forces took hold in driving increasing complexity.

We’ve only just begun the scientific study of how consciousness emerges

Complexity theory provides important clues to scientists regarding the form that an eventual theory of consciousness might take. Complexity theory is now integral to neuroscience’s quest to understand how information processing and circular control operate in the brain’s neural networks. Those networks operate as cybernetic loops, with no single region in complete control.

To be sure, we are still very far from a scientific explanation of consciousness. Serious scientific attempts to explain consciousness only really began in the 1990s—before that, consciousness was considered too intractable and was regarded as more of a philosophical question than a scientific one. Indeed, neuroscience itself is only a few decades old as a discipline.

When I started training in psychiatry in the early 1990s, we studied mind and brain as more or less parallel subjects, often unsure how to fully integrate them. Since then, the science of the mind-brain relationship has made enormous advances, aided by new technologies like sophisticated neuroimaging: neuroscientists are steadily unlocking the mystery of how perceptions, thought processes, and the subjective sense of self all emerge from the immensely complex interactions of billions of neurons, each with thousands of connections, forming complex networks and feedback loops, shaped by hundreds of millions of years of unguided natural selection pressures.

We have really only just begun the process of explaining consciousness scientifically, and despite astounding advances and fantastic new insights (far beyond the scope of this blog), there are still large explanatory gaps to fill. But wagering that a particular gap will not eventually be closed by science would be an unwise bet.1

References

1. Parts of this article were adapted from: Ralph Lewis, Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even If The Universe Doesn’t (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2018)

About the Author

Ralph Lewis, M.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, a psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and a consultant at the Odette Cancer Centre in Toronto.
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New Atheism (updated)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
New Atheism is a term coined in 2006 by the agnostic journalist Gary Wolf to describe the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. This modern-day atheism is advanced by a group of thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever their influence arises in government, education, and politics. According to Richard Ostling, Bertrand Russell, in his 1927 essay Why I Am Not a Christian, put forward similar positions as those espoused by the New Atheists, suggesting that there are no substantive differences between traditional atheism and New Atheism.
 
New Atheism lends itself to and often overlaps with secular humanism and antitheism, particularly in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. Some critics of the movement characterize it pejoratively as "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism".

History

Early history

The Harvard botanist Asa Gray, a believing Christian and one of the first supporters of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, commented in 1868 that the more worldly Darwinists in England had "the English-materialistic-positivistic line of thought". Darwin's supporter Thomas Huxley was openly skeptical, as the biographer Janet Browne describes:
Huxley was rampaging on miracles and the existence of the soul. A few months later, he was to coin the word "agnostic" to describe his own position as neither a believer nor a disbeliever, but one who considered himself free to inquire rationally into the basis of knowledge, a philosopher of pure reason [...] The term fitted him well [...] and it caught the attention of the other free thinking, rational doubters in Huxley's ambit, and came to signify a particularly active form of scientific rationalism during the final decades of the 19th century. [...] In his hands, agnosticism became as doctrinaire as anything else--a religion of skepticism. Huxley used it as a creed that would place him on a higher moral plane than even bishops and archbishops. All the evidence would nevertheless suggest that Huxley was sincere in his rejection of the charge of outright atheism against himself. He refused to be "a liar". To inquire rigorously into the spiritual domain, he asserted, was a more elevated undertaking than slavishly to believe or disbelieve. "A deep sense of religion is compatible with the entire absence of theology," he had told [Anglican clergyman] Charles Kingsley back in 1860. "Pope Huxley", the [magazine] Spectator dubbed him. The label stuck." —Janet Browne

Recent history

The 2004 publication of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, a bestseller in the United States, was joined over the next couple years by a series of popular best-sellers by atheist authors. Harris was motivated by the events of 11 September 2001, which he laid directly at the feet of Islam, while also directly criticizing Christianity and Judaism. Two years later Harris followed up with Letter to a Christian Nation, which was also a severe criticism of Christianity. Also in 2006, following his television documentary series The Root of All Evil?, Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, which was on the New York Times best-seller list for 51 weeks.

In a 2010 column entitled "Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism", Tom Flynn contends that what has been called "New Atheism" is neither a movement nor new, and that what was new was the publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, read by millions, and appearing on bestseller lists.

On 6 November 2015, the New Republic published an article entitled, Is the New Atheism dead? The atheist and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson wrote, "The world appears to be tiring of the New Atheism movement.." In 2017, PZ Myers who formerly considered himself a new atheist, publicly renounced the New Atheism movement.

Prominent figures

"Four Horsemen"

The 'Four Horsemen of Atheism': clockwise from top left: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris.
Dawkins has said, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
 
On 30 September 2007, four prominent atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett) met at Hitchens' residence in Washington, D.C., for a private two-hour unmoderated discussion. The event was videotaped and titled "The Four Horsemen". During "The God Debate" in 2010 featuring Christopher Hitchens versus Dinesh D'Souza, the men were collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse", an allusion to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. The four have been described disparagingly as "evangelical atheists".

Sam Harris is the author of the bestselling non-fiction books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, as well as two shorter works, initially published as e-books, Free Will and Lying. Harris is a co-founder of the Reason Project. 

Richard Dawkins is the author of The God Delusion, which was preceded by a Channel 4 television documentary titled The Root of All Evil?. He is the founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He wrote: "I don't object to the horseman label, by the way. I'm less keen on 'new atheist': it isn't clear to me how we differ from old atheists."

Christopher Hitchens was the author of God Is Not Great and was named among the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. In addition, Hitchens served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. In 2010 Hitchens published his memoir Hitch-22 (a nickname provided by close personal friend Salman Rushdie, whom Hitchens always supported during and following The Satanic Verses controversy). Shortly after its publication, Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which led to his death in December 2011. Before his death, Hitchens published a collection of essays and articles in his book Arguably; a short edition Mortality was published posthumously in 2012. These publications and numerous public appearances provided Hitchens with a platform to remain an astute atheist during his illness, even speaking specifically on the culture of deathbed conversions and condemning attempts to convert the terminally ill, which he opposed as "bad taste".

Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Breaking the Spell and many others, has also been a vocal supporter of The Clergy Project, an organization that provides support for clergy in the US who no longer believe in God and cannot fully participate in their communities any longer.

"Plus one horse-woman"

After the death of Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who attended the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, which Hitchens was scheduled to attend) was referred to as the "plus one horse-woman", since she was originally invited to the 2007 meeting of the "Horsemen" atheists but had to cancel at the last minute. Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, fleeing in 1992 to the Netherlands in order to escape an arranged marriage. She became involved in Dutch politics, rejected faith, and became vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her books Infidel and The Caged Virgin. Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the film Submission, for which her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest. This event resulted in Hirsi Ali's hiding and later immigration to the United States, where she now resides and remains a prolific critic of Islam. She regularly speaks out against the treatment of women in Islamic doctrine and society and is a proponent of free speech and the freedom to offend.

Others

Perspective

Many contemporary atheists write from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis, having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. The late Victor Stenger proposed that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests, and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the origin of life, the existence of different species, and the inner workings of the brain and consciousness. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. New Atheists reject Jesus' divinity.

Scientific testing of religion

Non-believers (in religion and the supernatural) assert that many religious or supernatural claims (such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the afterlife) are scientific claims in nature. For instance, they argue, as do deists and Progressive Christians, that the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is a question of scientific inquiry, rather than "values" or "morals". Rational thinkers believe science is capable of investigating at least some, if not all, supernatural claims. Institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke University are attempting to find empirical support for the healing power of intercessory prayer. According to Stenger, these experiments have thus far found no evidence that intercessory prayer works.

Logical arguments

Stenger also argues in his book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, that a God having omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes, which he termed a 3O God, cannot logically exist. A similar series of logical disproofs of the existence of a God with various attributes can be found in Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier's The Impossibility of God, or Theodore M. Drange's article, "Incompatible-Properties Arguments".

Views on non-overlapping magisteria

Richard Dawkins has been particularly critical of the conciliatory view that science and religion are not in conflict, noting, for example, that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. In a 1998 article published in Free Inquiry magazine and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins expresses disagreement with the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), each existing in a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution". In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. Dawkins contends that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion: "It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims."

Science and morality

Popularized by Sam Harris is the view that science and thereby currently unknown objective facts may instruct human morality in a globally comparable way. Harris' book The Moral Landscape and accompanying TED Talk How Science can Determine Moral Values propose that human well-being and conversely suffering may be thought of as a landscape with peaks and valleys representing numerous ways to achieve extremes in human experience, and that there are objective states of well-being.

Politics

New Atheism is politically engaged in a variety of ways. These include campaigns to draw attention to the biased privileged position religion has and to reduce the influence of religion in the public sphere, attempts to promote cultural change (centering, in the United States, on the mainstream acceptance of atheism), and efforts to promote the idea of an "atheist identity". Internal strategic divisions over these issues have also been notable, as are questions about the diversity of the movement in terms of its gender and racial balance.

Criticisms

Accusations of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism

The theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "the evangelical nature of the New Atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible." They believe they have found similarities between New Atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities.

Sociologist William Stahl said, "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists."

The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse has made the claim that Richard Dawkins would fail "introductory" courses on the study of "philosophy or religion" (such as courses on the philosophy of religion), courses which are offered, for example, at many educational institutions such as colleges and universities around the world. Ruse also claims that the movement of New Atheism—which is perceived, by him, to be a "bloody disaster"—makes him ashamed, as a professional philosopher of science, to be among those holding to an atheist position, particularly as New Atheism does science a "grave disservice" and does a "disservice to scholarship" at more general level.

Paul Kurtz, editor in chief of Free Inquiry, founder of Prometheus Books, was critical of many of the new atheists. He said, "I consider them atheist fundamentalists... They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, they're very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good".

Jonathan Sacks, author of The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, feels the new atheists miss the target by believing the "cure for bad religion is no religion, as opposed to good religion". He wrote:
Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science.

Political biases

The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci contends that the new atheist movement overlaps with scientism, which he finds to be philosophically unsound. He writes: "What I do object to is the tendency, found among many New Atheists, to expand the definition of science to pretty much encompassing anything that deals with 'facts', loosely conceived..., it seems clear to me that most of the New Atheists (except for the professional philosophers among them) pontificate about philosophy very likely without having read a single professional paper in that field.... I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement (and, by implication, a good number of their followers) with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor."

Atheist professor Jacques Berlinerblau has criticized the New Atheists' mocking of religion as being inimical to their goals and claims that they haven't achieved anything politically.

Major publications

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Brights movement (updated)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bright Logo.png
Formation2003; 16 years ago
TypeNon-profit
PurposePromotion of naturalism and the bright label
Region served
Worldwide
Official language
English
Co-Directors
Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell
Websitethe-brights.net

The Brights Movement is an international intellectual movement, whose members refer to themselves as Brights and hold a naturalist worldview.

Most Brights believe that public policies should be based on science (a body of knowledge obtained and tested by use of the scientific method). Brights are likely to oppose the practice of basing public policies on supernatural doctrines. Brights may therefore be described as secularists.

The most politically active Brights frequently and openly advocate scientocracy, the practice of basing public policies on science. They look forward to living in an era when the best available scientific evidence provides a foundation for the humane and compassionate operation of human societies.

Terminology

The Bright movement has proposed the following terminology:
  • super (noun): someone whose worldview includes supernatural and/or mystical elements;
  • bright (noun): someone whose worldview is naturalistic (no supernatural and mystical elements);
  • Bright: a bright who has registered on the Bright website as a member of the movement.

History

Paul Geisert, who coined the term bright and co-founded the bright movement is a one-time Chicago biology teacher, professor, entrepreneur and writer of learning materials. In deciding to attend the Godless Americans March on Washington in 2002, Geisert disliked the label "godless" because he thought it would alienate the general public to whom that term was synonymous with "evil". He sought a new, positive word that might become well-accepted and improve the image of those who did not believe in the supernatural, in the same way that the term "gay" did. A few weeks later, Geisert came up with the noun "bright" after brainstorming lots of ideas. He then ran into another room and told his wife: "I've got the word, and this is going to be big!".

It was also co-founded by his wife, Mynga Futrell. Futrell and Geisert remain co-directors of the organization to this day.

After coming up with the term they pitched their idea to friends and decided to unveil their idea at an Atheist Alliance International conference in Tampa, Florida. They called the organizers and got permission to present the idea.

Geisert and Futrell made their proposal in Spring 2003 at an atheist conference in Florida which was attended by Richard Dawkins. They launched the Brights' Net website on June 4, 2003. The movement gained early publicity through articles by Richard Dawkins in The Guardian and Wired; and by Daniel Dennett in The New York Times.

The movement continued to grow and experienced accelerated registrations following media debate around New Atheism prompted by a series of book releases in late 2006 including The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, God Is Not Great, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. The movement has grown to be a constituency of over 78,000 Brights in 204 nations and territories.

Brights

Many, but not all, brights also identify as atheist, antitheist, humanist (specifically secular humanist), freethinker, Objectivist, irreligionist, naturalist, materialist or physicalist, agnostic, skeptic, or even naturalistic pantheist. Even so, the "movement is not associated with any defined beliefs". The website Brights' Net says its goal is to include the umbrella term bright in the vocabulary of this existing "community of reason".

However, "the broader intent is inclusive of the many-varied persons whose worldview is naturalistic", but are in the "general population" as opposed to associating solely with the "community of reason". Thus, persons who can declare their naturalistic worldview using the term bright extend beyond the familiar secularist categories as long as they do not hold theistic worldviews. Registrations even include some members of the clergy, such as Presbyterian ministers and a Church History Professor and ordained priest.

Dawkins compares the coining of bright to the "triumph of consciousness-raising" from the term gay:
Gay is succinct, uplifting, positive: an "up" word, where homosexual is a down word, and queer, faggot and pooftah are insults. Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like "gay"[,] [...] a noun hijacked from an adjective, with its original meaning changed but not too much. Like gay, it should be catchy: a potentially prolific meme. Like gay, it should be positive, warm, cheerful, bright.
Despite the explicit difference between the noun and adjective, there have been comments on the comparison. In his Wired article, Dawkins stated: "Whether there is a statistical tendency for brights [noun] to be bright [adjective] is a matter for research". 

Notable people who have self-identified as brights at one time or another include: biologists Richard Dawkins and Richard J. Roberts; cognitive scientist Steven Pinker; philosophers Daniel Dennett and Massimo Pigliucci; stage magicians and debunkers James Randi and Penn & Teller; Amy Alkon; Sheldon Lee Glashow; Babu Gogineni; Edwin Kagin; Mel Lipman; Piergiorgio Odifreddi; and Air America Radio talk show host Lionel.

Contrasted with supers

Daniel Dennett, in his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, suggests that if non-naturalists are concerned with connotations of the word bright, then they should invent an equally positive sounding word for themselves, like supers (i.e. one whose world view contains supernaturalism). He also suggested this during his presentation at the Atheist Alliance International '07 convention. Geisert and Futrell maintain that the neologism has always had a kinship with the Enlightenment, an era which celebrated the possibilities of science and a certain amount of free inquiry. They have endorsed the use of super as the antonym to bright, although this term makes the assumption that anyone not a bright necessarily subscribes to notions of supernaturalism.

Symbol

The Brights' avatar represents a celestial body viewed from space. As there is no up or down or right or left in outer space, the arrangement of planet and darkness and starlight is changeable. Although the symbol is open to the viewer's interpretation, it is generally meant to invoke transition and a sense of gradual illumination. The intentional ambiguity of the avatar is meant to symbolically reflect an important question: Is the future of humankind becoming luminous or more dim? The Brights aspire "to take the promising route, whereby the imagery brings to mind a gradually increasing illumination for this earth of ours, an escalation of enlightenment". This optimistic interpretation of the Brights' symbol is summarized by the motto "Embrightenment Now!".

Name controversy

The movement has been criticized by some (both religious and non-religious) who have objected to the adoption of the title "bright" because they believe it suggests that the individuals with a naturalistic worldview are more intelligent ("brighter") than non-naturalists, such as philosophical skeptics or idealists, believers in the paranormal, philosophical theists, or the religious. For example, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry published an article by Chris Mooney titled "Not Too 'Bright'" in which he stated that although he agreed with the movement, Richard Dawkins's and Daniel Dennett's "campaign to rename religious unbelievers 'brights' could use some rethinking" because of the possibility that the term would be misinterpreted. The journalist and noted atheist Christopher Hitchens likewise found it a "cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called 'brights'".

In response to this, Daniel Dennett has stated:
There was also a negative response, largely objecting to the term that had been chosen [not by me]: bright, which seemed to imply that others were dim or stupid. But the term, modeled on the highly successful hijacking of the ordinary word "gay" by homosexuals, does not have to have that implication. Those who are not gays are not necessarily glum; they're straight. Those who are not brights are not necessarily dim.
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Skeptical movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The skeptical movement (British spelling: sceptical movement) is a modern social movement based on the idea of scientific skepticism (also called rational skepticism). Scientific skepticism involves the application of skeptical philosophy, critical-thinking skills, and knowledge of science and its methods to empirical claims, while remaining agnostic or neutral to non-empirical claims (except those that directly impact the practice of science). The movement has the goal of investigating claims made on fringe topics and determining whether they are supported by empirical research and are reproducible, as part of a methodological norm pursuing "the extension of certified knowledge". The process followed is sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry.
 
Roots of the movement date at least from the 19th century, when people started publicly raising questions regarding the unquestioned acceptance of claims about spiritism, of various widely-held superstitions, and of pseudoscience. Publications such as those of the Dutch Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij (1881) also targeted medical quackery.

Using as a template the Belgian organization founded in 1949, Comité Para, Americans Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), in Amherst, New York in 1976. Now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), this organization has inspired others to form similar groups worldwide.

Scientific skepticism

Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is an epistemological position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term is most commonly applied to the examination of claims and theories that appear to be beyond mainstream science, rather than to the routine discussions and challenges among scientists. Scientific skepticism is different from philosophical skepticism, which questions humans' ability to claim any knowledge about the nature of the world and how they perceive it. Methodological skepticism, a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, is similar but distinct. The New Skepticism described by Paul Kurtz is scientific skepticism. For example, Robert K. Merton asserts that all ideas must be tested and are subject to rigorous, structured community scrutiny (as described in Mertonian norms).

An important difference to classical skepticism, according to religious history professor Olav Hammer, is that it is not directly aligned with classical pyrrhonian scepticism, which would question all sort of orthodox wisdom, as well as the one established by modern science. According to Hammer, "the intellectual forebears of the modern skeptical movement are rather to be found among the many writers throughout history who have argued against beliefs they did not share."

The following are quotations related to scientific skepticism:
Briefly stated, a skeptic is one who is willing to question any claim to truth, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence. The use of skepticism is thus an essential part of objective scientific inquiry and the search for reliable knowledge.
— Paul Kurtz in The New Skepticism, 1992, p. 9
What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and, especially important, to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premises or starting point and whether that premise is true.
— Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World, 1995, p. 197
Science is [...] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.
— Carl Sagan
Scientific skepticism (is) the practice or project of studying paranormal and pseudoscientific claims through the lens of science and critical scholarship, and then sharing the results with the public.
— Daniel Loxton
A skeptic is one who prefers beliefs and conclusions that are reliable and valid to ones that are comforting or convenient, and therefore rigorously and openly applies the methods of science and reason to all empirical claims, especially their own. A skeptic provisionally proportions acceptance of any claim to valid logic and a fair and thorough assessment of available evidence, and studies the pitfalls of human reason and the mechanisms of deception so as to avoid being deceived by others or themselves. Skepticism values method over any particular conclusion.
— Steven Novella
"Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas—no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position."
— The Skeptics Society
The true meaning of the word skepticism has nothing to do with doubt, disbelief, or negativity. Skepticism is the process of applying reason and critical thinking to determine validity. It's the process of finding a supported conclusion, not the justification of a preconceived conclusion.
— Brian Dunning
With regard to the skeptical social movement, Loxton refers to other movements already promoting "humanism, atheism, rationalism, science education and even critical thinking" before. He saw the demand for the new movement—a movement of people called "skeptics" — being based on a lack of interest by the scientific community to address paranormal and fringe science claims. In line with Kendrick Frazier, he describes the movement as a surrogate in that area for institutional science. The movement set up a distinct field of study, and provided an organizational structure, while long-standing genre of individual skeptical activities lacked such a community and background. Skeptical organizations typically tend to have science education and promotion among their goals.

Overview

Scientific skeptics maintain that empirical investigation of reality leads to the truth, and that the scientific method is best suited to this purpose. Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence. Skeptics often focus their criticism on claims they consider to be implausible, dubious or clearly contradictory to generally accepted science. Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds—rather they argue that claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena should be critically examined and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity. From a scientific point of view, theories are judged on many criteria, such as falsifiability, Occam's Razor, Morgan's Canon, and explanatory power, as well as the degree to which their predictions match experimental results. Skepticism in general may be deemed part of the scientific method; for instance an experimental result is not regarded as established until it can be shown to be repeatable independently.

The skeptic spectrum has been characterized as divided into "wet" and "dry" skeptics, primarily based on the level of engagement with those promoting claims that appear to be pseudoscience; the dry skeptics preferring to debunk and ridicule, in order to avoid giving attention and thus credence to the promoters, and the "wet" skeptics, preferring slower and more considered engagement, in order to avoid appearing sloppy and ill-considered and thus similar to the groups all skeptics opposed.

Ron Lindsay has argued that while some of the claims appear to be harmless or "soft targets," it is important to continue to address them and the underlying habits of thought that lead to them so that we do not "have a lot more people believing that 9/11 was an inside job, that climate change is a hoax, that our government is controlled by aliens, and so forth -- and those beliefs are far from harmless."

The movement has had issues with allegations of sexism. The disparity between women and men in the movement was raised in a 1985 skeptic newsletter by Mary Coulman. The skeptic movement has generally been made up of men; at a 1987 conference the members there discussed the fact that the attendees were predominantly older white men and a 1991 listing of 50 CSICOP fellows included four women. Following a 2011 conference, Rebecca Watson, a prominent skeptic, raised issues of the way female skeptics are targeted with online harassment including threats of sexual violence by opponents of the movement, and also raised issues of sexism within the movement itself. While she received some support in response to her discussion of sexism within the movement, she later became a target of virulent online harassment, even from fellow skeptics, after posting an online video that equated a man showing interest in her with misogyny. This became known as "Elevatorgate", based on Watson's discussion about being propositioned in a hotel elevator in the early morning after a skeptic event.

Debunking and rational inquiry

The term "debunk" is used to describe efforts by skeptics to expose or discredit claims believed to be false, exaggerated, or pretentious. It is closely associated with skeptical investigation or rational inquiry of controversial topics such as U.F.O.s, claimed paranormal phenomena, cryptids, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, or exploratory or fringe areas of scientific or pseudoscientific research.

Further topics that scientifically skeptical literature questions include health claims surrounding certain foods, procedures, and alternative medicines; the plausibility and existence of supernatural abilities (e.g. tarot reading) or entities (e.g. poltergeists, angels, gods—including Zeus); the monsters of cryptozoology (e.g. the Loch Ness monster); as well as creationism/intelligent design, dowsing, conspiracy theories, and other claims the skeptic sees as unlikely to be true on scientific grounds.

Skeptics such as James Randi have become famous for debunking claims related to some of these. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell cautions, however, that "debunkers" must be careful to engage paranormal claims seriously and without bias. He explains that open minded investigation is more likely to teach and change minds than debunking.

A striking characteristic of the skeptical movement is the fact that while most of the phenomena covered, such as astrology and homeopathy, have been debunked again and again, they stay popular. Frazier reemphasized in 2018 that "[w]e need independent, evidence-based, science-based critical investigation and inquiry now more than perhaps at any other time in our history."

The scientific skepticism community has traditionally been focused on what people believe rather than why they believe—there might be psychological, cognitive or instinctive reasons for belief when there is little evidence for such beliefs. According to Hammer, the bulk of the skeptical movement's literature works on an implicit model, that belief in the irrational is being based on scientific illiteracy or cognitive illusions. He points to the skeptical discussion about astrology: The skeptical notion of astrology as a "failed hypothesis" fails to address basic anthropological assumptions about astrology as a form of ritualized divination. While the anthropological approach attempts to explain the activities of astrologers and their clients, the skeptical movement's interest in the cultural aspects of such beliefs is muted.

According to sociologist David J. Hess, the skeptical discourse tends to set science and the skeptical project apart from the social and the economic. From this perspective, he argues that skepticism takes on some aspects of a sacred discourse, as in Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life—Science, seen as pure and sacred (motivated by values of the mind and reason), is set apart from popular dealings with the paranormal, seen as profane (permeated by the economic and the social); obscuring the confrontation between science and religion. Hess states as well a strong tendency in othering: both skeptics and their opponents see the other as being driven by materialistic philosophy and material gain and assume themselves to have purer motives.

Perceived dangers of pseudoscience

While not all pseudoscientific beliefs are necessarily dangerous, some can potentially be harmful. Plato believed that to release others from ignorance despite their initial resistance is a great and noble thing. Modern skeptical writers address this question in a variety of ways. Bertrand Russell argued that some individual actions based on beliefs for which there is no evidence of efficacy, can result in destructive actions. James Randi often writes on the issue of fraud by psychics and faith healers. Unqualified medical practice and alternative medicine can result in serious injury and death..Skeptical activist Tim Farley, who aims to create catalogue of harmful pseudoscientific practices and cases of damage caused by them, estimates documented number of killed or injured to be more than 600.000. Richard Dawkins points to religion as a source of violence (notably in The God Delusion), and considers creationism a threat to biology. Some skeptics, such as the members of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast, oppose certain new religious movements because of their cult-like behaviors.

Leo Igwe, Junior Fellow at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies and past Research Fellow of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), wrote A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa, which received endorsements from multiple public activists in Africa, as well as skeptical endorsers around the world. He is a Nigerian human rights advocate and campaigner against the impacts of child witchcraft accusations. Igwe came into conflict with high-profile witchcraft believers, leading to attacks on himself and his family.

In 2018, Amardeo Sarma provided some perspective on the state of the skeptical movement by addressing "the essence of contemporary skepticism and [highlighting] the vital nonpartisan and science-based role of skeptics in preventing deception and harm." He emphasized the dangers of pseudoscience as a reason for prioritizing skeptical work.

Pseudoskepticism

Richard Cameron Wilson, in an article in New Statesman, wrote that "the bogus sceptic is, in reality, a disguised dogmatist, made all the more dangerous for his success in appropriating the mantle of the unbiased and open-minded inquirer". Some advocates of discredited intellectual positions (such as AIDS denial, Holocaust denial and climate change denial) engage in pseudoskeptical behavior when they characterize themselves as "skeptics". This is despite their cherry picking of evidence that conforms to a pre-existing belief. According to Wilson, who highlights the phenomenon in his 2008 book Don't Get Fooled Again, the characteristic feature of false skepticism is that it "centres not on an impartial search for the truth, but on the defence of a preconceived ideological position".

Scientific skepticism is itself sometimes criticized on this ground. The term pseudoskepticism has found occasional use in controversial fields where opposition from scientific skeptics is strong. For example, in 1994, Susan Blackmore, a parapsychologist who became more skeptical and eventually became a Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) fellow in 1991, described what she termed the "worst kind of pseudoskepticism":
There are some members of the skeptics' groups who clearly believe they know the right answer prior to inquiry. They appear not to be interested in weighing alternatives, investigating strange claims, or trying out psychic experiences or altered states for themselves (heaven forbid!), but only in promoting their own particular belief structure and cohesion ...
Commenting on the labels "dogmatic" and "pathological" that the "Association for Skeptical Investigation" puts on critics of paranormal investigations, Bob Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary argues that that association "is a group of pseudo-skeptical paranormal investigators and supporters who do not appreciate criticism of paranormal studies by truly genuine skeptics and critical thinkers. The only skepticism this group promotes is skepticism of critics and [their] criticisms of paranormal studies."

History

Historical roots

According to skeptic author Daniel Loxton, "skepticism is a story without a beginning or an end." His article Why Is There a Skeptical Movement claims a history of two millennia of paranormal skepticism. He is of the opinion that the practice, problems, and central concepts extend all the way to antiquity and refers to a debunking tale as told in some versions of the Old Testament, where the Prophet Daniel exposes a tale of a "living" statue as a scam. According to Loxton, throughout history, there are further examples of individuals practicing critical inquiry and writing books or performing publicly against particular frauds and popular superstitions, including people like Lucian of Samosata (2nd century), Michel de Montaigne (16th century), Thomas Ady and Thomas Browne (17th century), Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin (18th century), many different philosophers, scientists and magicians throughout the 19th and early 20th century up until and after Harry Houdini. However, skeptics banding together in societies that research the paranormal and fringe science is a modern phenomenon.

Daniel Loxton mentions the Belgian Comité Para (1949) as the oldest "broad mandate" skeptical organization. Although it was preceded by the Dutch Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij (VtdK) (1881), which is therefore considered the oldest skeptical organization by others, the VtdK only focuses on fighting quackery, and thus has a 'narrow mandate'. The Comité Para was partly formed as a response to a predatory industry of bogus psychics who were exploiting the grieving relatives of people who had gone missing during the Second World War. In contrast, Michael Shermer traces the origins of the modern scientific skeptical movement to Martin Gardner's 1952 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

In 1968, the French Association for Scientific Information (AFIS) was founded. AFIS strives to promote science against those who deny its cultural value, abuse it for criminal purposes or as a cover for quackery. According to AFIS, science itself cannot solve humanity's problems, nor can one solve them without using the scientific method. It maintains that people should be informed about scientific and technical advancements and the problems it helps to solve. Its magazine, Science et pseudo-sciences, attempts to distribute scientific information in a language that everyone can understand.

CSICOP and contemporary skepticism

Influential North American skeptics: Ray Hyman, Paul Kurtz, James Randi and Kendrick Frazier
 
In 1976, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) since November 2006, was founded in the United States. Some see this as the "birth of modern skepticism", however, founder Paul Kurtz actually modeled it after the Comité Para, including its name. Kurtz' motive was being "dismayed ... by the rising tide of belief in the paranormal and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims."

Kurtz was an atheist and had also founded the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. While he saw both aspects as being covered in the skeptical movement, he had recommended CSICOP to focus on paranormal and pseudoscientific claims and to leave religious aspects to others. Despite not being the oldest, CSICOP was "the first successful, broad-mandate North American skeptical organization of the contemporary period", popularized the usage of the terms "skeptic", "skeptical" and "skepticism" by its magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, and directly inspired the foundation of many other skeptical organizations throughout the world, especially in Europe.

These included Australian Skeptics (1980), Vetenskap och Folkbildning (Sweden, 1982), New Zealand Skeptics (1986), GWUP (Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 1987), Skepsis r.y. (Finland, 1987), Stichting Skepsis (Netherlands, 1987), CICAP (Italy, 1989) and SKEPP (Dutch-speaking Belgium, 1990).

Besides scientists such as astronomers, stage magicians like James Randi were important in investigating charlatans and exposing their trickery. In 1996 Randi formed the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) and created the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, where anyone who could demonstrate paranormal abilities, under mutually agreed-upon controlled circumstances, could claim the prize. After Randi's retirement in 2015, the Paranormal Challenge was officially terminated by the JREF with the prize unclaimed:
Effective 9/1/2015 the JREF has made major changes including converting to a grant making foundation and no longer accepting applications for the Million Dollar Prize from the general public.
Other influential second-generation American organizations were The Skeptics Society (founded in 1992 by Michael Shermer), the New England Skeptical Society (originating in 1996) and the Independent Investigations Group (formed in 2000 by James Underdown).

After 1989

After the Revolutions of 1989, Eastern Europe saw a surge in quackery and paranormal beliefs that were no longer restrained by the generally secular Communist regimes or the Iron curtain and its information barriers. The foundation of many new skeptical organizations was as well intending to protect consumers. These included the Czech Skeptics' Club Sisyfos (1995), the Hungarian Skeptic Society (2006), the Polish Sceptics Club (2010) and the Russian-speaking Skeptic Society (2013). The Austrian Skeptical Society in Vienna (founded in 2002) deals with issues such as Johann Grander's "vitalized water" and the use of dowsing at the Austrian Parliament.
 
The European Skeptics Congress (ESC) has been held throughout Europe since 1989, from 1994 onwards co-ordinated by the European Council of Skeptical Organizations. In the United States, The Amaz!ng Meeting (TAM) hosted by the JREF in Las Vegas had been the most important skeptical conference since 2003, with two spin-off conferences in London, UK (2009 and 2010) and one in Sydney, Australia (2010). Since 2010, the Merseyside Skeptics Society and Greater Manchester Skeptics jointly organized Question, Explore, Discover (QED) in Manchester, UK. World Skeptics Congresses have been held so far, namely in Buffalo, New York (1996), Heidelberg, Germany (1998), Sydney, Australia (2000), Burbank, California (2002), Abano Terme, Italy (2004) and Berlin, Germany (2012).

In 1991, the Center for Inquiry, a US think-tank, brought the CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH) under one umbrella. In January 2016, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science announced its merger with the Center for Inquiry.

Notable skeptical projects

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

Susan Gerbic of GSoW and four other CSI fellows in 2018: (left to right: Kendrick Frazier, Ben Radford, Mark Boslough, and Dave Thomas)
 
In 2010, as a form of skeptical outreach to the general population, Susan Gerbic launched the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project to improve skeptical content on Wikipedia. In 2017, Gerbic (who was made a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 2018) and her GSoW team received an award from the James Randi Educational Foundation which "is given to the person or organization that best represents the spirit of the foundation by encouraging critical questions and seeking unbiased, fact-based answers. We are pleased to recognize Susan's efforts to enlist and train a team of editors who continually improve Wikipedia as a public resource for rationality and scientific thought."

In July 2018, Wired reported that the GSoW team had grown to more than 120 volunteer editors from around the world, and they were collectively responsible for creating or improving some of Wikipedia's most heavily trafficked articles on skeptical topics. As of July 2018, GSoW had created or completely rewritten more than 630 Wikipedia articles in many languages, which together have accumulated over 28 million page visits.

Notable skeptical media

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