I would say that whilst evolution and anthropology can explain the origin ethics, they cannot justify particular ethical/moral propositions. "You cannot derive an ought from an is."
How is it that the collection of molecules making up our brains, acting under physical laws as currently understood, comes to have such "gestalt" subjective artistic experiences?
Well, I cannot agree there is nothing in the brain showing that it is affected by quantum forces. It is beyond current technology to model, at a quantum physical level, vastly complex systems such as human neuronal activity. And we know from complexity theory that tiny perturbations in complex systems can result in huge consequences. Therefore, I believe such is at least possible, albeit perhaps less than probable.
In any case, to state our choices are random really is, in my view, an inadequate answer to the problem of free will. The only evidence we have on the question is subjective experience, and our choices don't seem random to us.
Assuming your position that choices are random and free will doesn't exist, why would evolution adapt our "sense of free will" to fool us with an illusion that is the complete opposite of reality? What would be the purpose?
Neuroscience is discovering many things, including much larger vistas of unexplored territory than we imagined. Can we build electronic machines that are truly self-aware, creative and free-willed? I doubt it, but if we could, would they have rights and duties? Probably the answer to that would depend upon how sure we were they had subjective experiences similar to ours. But how could we possibly be sure about that?
But we have actually reached a point in quantum mechanics where there are no more "hidden variables" to discover. Reductionism has only taken us so far, and no further. Perhaps a new approach is needed.
Well, I'm not suggesting just believing in things because they feel warm and fuzzy. I'm only suggesting that where a materialist, reductionist approach is not fruitful, other approaches to understanding the world may be warranted, and thus are not inherently a "crock", as per the OP.
Cheers and regards
S.
If you don't mind, I trimmed your post slightly since we're getting into the infinite inflation cycle. :-D I admit it's mostly my fault and I'm trying to work on fixing that.
The thing with evolution is that it not only explains the origin of a quality, but also it's reason. Very few qualities in animals exist without reason, including molars, appendix, and tonsils. Ethics exist because they provide a competitive advantage to social groups, one could argue that you cannot have a social group without ethics. Different species show differing ethics, and this makes sense since a certain set of ethics is valuable under certain conditions- for instance, it's been shown that certain species of primates will trade meat for sex, is this prostitution or is it a competitive advantage? Humans at the same time have historically been predominantly patriarchal and so trading sex for goods has been frowned upon, the reason for this is that the male having sole access to the female is advantageous to the male while the female mating with anyone with meat is not advantageous. This is also why rulerships have had a tendency to maintain multiple female mates while at the same time making monogomy easier on those below them. (Mideast empires, harems, Rome) So as you can see, biological reasons for basic morals to exist, and their purpose can be derived both through a study of natural advantages. Their origins are explained by their creation to gain these natural advantages. This in and of itself is a discussion of high complexity that I'd be interested in having with you, but there are a lot of neat topics in your post and I dunno which I want to narrow it too. :-(
A bit of semantics on #2, the molecules construct the neurons, but it's more constructive to talk of the brain as a structure of neurons and synapses as the functional parts. This is a question we are working on answering. We will have an answer to this eventually, so there's no point in jumping to a supernatural conclusion because we don't have an answer right at this moment. Rather, we should devote resources to answering the question instead of assuming an illogical answer.
There are two frames of thought on how the brain works right now, a simple summation model and a complex calculator model. I used to be int he simple summation camp, and for raw cognitive and computational processes this may still be the case, but there is a distinct body of evidence that an individual neuron can indeed perform complex calculation. I personally am working on mathematically modeling the decay of neurotransmitters from the post-synaptic cell vs the decay of electrical potential both before and after impulse to perform complex frequency calculations. It's really awesome stuff! But as I said before, there is significant similarity between my subjective experience as a conscious entity and the results of experimentation with artificial neural networks- I have the most experience with hopfield neural networks.
An organic brain is both a digital and an analog system. The impulse down the axon is digital in that it is either always off, or +30mV, there is no variation, but it is also analog in that the threshold value varies from -60mV to -40mV even though the resting state is always -70mV. It's also analog in the fact that synaptic weights are not either 0 or 1, but range in value from negative values (GABA) to positive values (Glutamate) with other neurotransmitters that perform the same function or other different functions such as modifying gene expression. I believe the reason for the varying number of neurotransmitters is to allow group action by hormones, indeed, certain neurotransmitters are used inside the blood-brain barrier while others are not. (Glutamate inside the barrier, acetylcholine outside it) There are other reasons why certain groups of neurons would use different neurotransmitters dealing with uptake, contamination issues, and decay rates as well. Anyway, the point of this is that the digital aspect of the brain acts as a filter, any random 'noise' generated by the analog parts is filtered out by it, this is somewhat similar to analog and digital TV, the analog gets lots of noise and snow, but with digital it's either there or it's not, the noisy signal is filtered out. It would take a group of neurons exhibiting quantum effect enough to cause these neurons to fire for it to have any effect upon us.
The rest of your description fits in rather snuggly with the rest of my beliefs. I believe that our brains are chaotic systems, we are effected by 3 things: Our neural structure, Our past experiences and their effects upon the current state of our brains and our neural structure, and our current experiences interacting with the last two. This produces a highly complex, chaotic system, but not a random system. It's important to note that chaos is not random. If you want a deeper explanation of this then ask me. And no, I never said our choices were random, I implied that a source of randomization is necessary for true free will to exist. Without this source then we can only act in response to our stimuli albeit in a highly complex and unpredictable fashion.
It's important to note that evolution is not a conscious agent, it doesn't choose things for a particular reason. Rather, things arise in an evolutionary system due to chance mutation plus the path of lease resistance to advantage. This is beside the point, however. You're question makes no sense to me, it's like asking 'if you're in a round round room in a square structure, how can you tell the structure is square?' You're not being lied to by the round room, the room is just round, but until you develop the tools to measure outside the box, you can't tell it's a box. In the same notion, we haven't had the capacity to measure outside our own consciousness till recently and therefore we've developed incorrect ideas as to what the outside of the box is. In this case we perceive our actions as being separated from our environmental stimuli because we are chaotic systems, and so we develop the idea of free will to express this misunderstanding. In the same way we used to believe weather was random, until we discovered that it was a chaotic system itself.
I believe that we will someday have AI. I personally think that any intelligent entity deserves the same rights and responsibilities as humans. It's also important to note that purpose-built intelligence will probably have different grades of free-will, an AI written to compare astronomic data may only ever care about astronomic data while one designed to associate with humans may have a deeper sense of free will. If we gain an understanding of the science behind consciousness, then the technology may eventually exist to allow the transferral of consciousness between different physical states and thereby blurring the boundary between human and machine all the farther. This is the core of the transhumanist philosophy, and I am a transhumanist.
There's always something to discover! Never say we've reached the end of research, because you never know when you'll be proven wrong. We used to believe that the atom was the end, now we're talking qubits and quantum foam! And reductionism in terms of the smallest parts is indeed a science of diminishing returns, but I am not a reductionist. If we define reductionism as "a theory that all complex systems can be completely understood in terms of their components" Then you must understand that the study of neural networks is both a study of the individual parts (neurons) and of the whole (the network) and so while reductionism is critical (decay of neurotransmitters, dendritic spikes, neural shape, axonal thickness and it's relationship to myelin) it serves to add to the study of the whole, where the holy grail of cognizance research lies.
I'm sorry if I offended, but when people tell me that religion is good because it provides answers without proof, all I can think of it how much I wish I could have pirate's gold in my backyard without the proof. If I tried to take out a loan on my pirate's gold, I'd be labeled a crock and laughed out, if I tried to base my science on faith, I should rightfully receive the same treatment. As per materialist, I think this is the valid route to go, we are material entities, all things that matter to us are material, such as atoms, particles, energy, etc. If something is not of a material nature it cannot be measured, if it cannot be measured it cannot be interacted with, if it cannot be interacted with then it's mental masturbation to believe in. Reductionism as stated earlier is "a theory that all complex systems can be completely understood in terms of their components" and it has value in science for understanding things we do not comprehend, like neurons, but it is not the only method used. As stated earlier scientists also study groups and systems to gain understanding, not just reductionism.
As a side note, we're really getting large with this discussion and it's my fault. Mind if we narrow the discussion to one topic? I vote for materialism and congizance, since I can talk all day long about neural structures and computational neuroscience.
