Non-Physical Epistemologies Are Solipsistic Frauds

Robert Lanza, MD, a pioneer in cloning and regenerative medicine, is proposing to rip up the scientific frame in favor of his pet hypothesis of “biocentrism.” He proposes that one day we will discover that time and space are both products of consciousness, and will be able to move through them at will:

Sometime in the future science will be able to create realities that we can’t even begin to imagine. As we evolve, we’ll be able to construct other information systems that correspond to other realities, universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time.

Immanuel Kant declared in 1781 that space and time were real, but only indeed as properties of the mind. These algorithms are not only the key to consciousness, but why space and time, indeed the properties of matter itself – are relative to the observer. But a new theory called biocentrism suggests that space and time may not be the only tools that can be used to construct reality. At present, our destiny is to live and die in the everyday world of up and down. But what if, for example, we changed the algorithms so that instead of time being linear, it was 3-dimensional like space? Consciousness would move through the multiverse. We’d be able to walk through time just like we walk through space. And after creeping along for 4 billion years, life would finally figure out how to escape from its corporeal cage. Our destiny would lie in realities that exist outside of the known physical universe.

Go read the whole article. It really doesn’t get any better (worse). Just another breathless fantasy to help us escape from the unshakeable reality of our universe. We have short lives, over which we have very limited control, and we must spend them on a small insignificant planet, and we die all-too-soon. Boo-hoo.

I find the article extremely vague and unconvincing–it’s downright intellectually offensive. If so-called “biocentrism” is true, let Dr. Lanza define the parameters of his new world in a testable format, so we can replace the “standard model” of the universe and put all those useless cosmologists out of jobs. We don’t need physics, apparently. Dr. Lanza can simply enlighten us–show us all how to take advantage of “expanded awareness” and “travel through time in three dimensions.”

Predictably such wild claims got mixed reviews. From the Wikipedia entry on Biocentrism:

Lanza’s biocentric hypothesis met with a mixed reception.^[38]Nobel laureate in medicine E. Donnall Thomas stated that “Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work. The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole.”^[1]Arizona State University physicist and antitheist activist Lawrence Krauss stated: “There are no scientific breakthroughs about anything, as far as I can see. It may represent interesting philosophy, but it doesn’t look, at first glance, as if it will change anything about science.”^[1] In USA Today Online, astrophysicist and science writer David Lindley asserted that Lanza’s concept was a “…vague, inarticulate metaphor…” and stated that “…I certainly don’t see how thinking his way would lead you into any new sort of scientific or philosophical insight. That’s all very nice, I would say to Lanza, but now what?”^[39]Daniel Dennett, a Tufts University philosopher and eliminative materialist, said he did not think the concept meets the standard of a philosophical theory. “It looks like an opposite of a theory, because he doesn’t explain how [consciousness] happens at all. He’s stopping where the fun begins.”^[1]

Until he can cough up the goods, it’s just another fantasy conjecture by a self-aggrandizing “frame ripper.”

“The most explosive event in history.”

“Everything you think you know is wrong.”

Where have we heard that kind of talk before? Such sweeping claims are the province of cult leaders and snake-oil salesmen. They distract the gullible and they muddy the waters of what we do actually know about the universe. It’s so nice that he’s laid it all out for us in one small essay, having overturned centuries of cosmology with a single master-stroke, and dashed our quaint little naive scientific understanding.

He’s as wrong as can be about the implications of quantum theory, and everything else. People who don’t know very much about science think that it is conscious observation that changes the behavior of particles.

Two points about that:

• Even if thoughts could affect the position of particles, any real-world object has so many particles that the effects of any number of conscious real-world observers would null out. For example, one gram of carbon has 12 x 602,214,150,000,000,000,000,000 carbon atoms (Avogadro’s number). And that’s in just in a smidgen of carbon the size of a pinch of salt.
• It is not “looking at” a particle that changes its position or velocity. It’s bombarding it with another particle or wave This is what Heisenberg meant when he said “observe.” It doesn’t mean consciously “look at.” It means “bounce another particle off of,” stealing or adding energy or momentum.

Lanza’s also wildly wrong about dreams. Dreams are simulations our brains create, very similar to the ones we create while awake. When we walk into a room in a waking state, we mostly see what our brain predicts about the room. The human visual system can only take in a very small amount of detail at once (from the tiny area of the retina called the fovea), which is why we often don’t notice small changes in our surroundings if they happen slowly.

So here we have someone with demonstrated ignorance about both quantum theory and the nature of dreams. And we’re supposed to believe his proposal for a new theory of time?

Lanza might as well be that medieval town crier (previous article) talking about how in the future announcements and music would travel thousands of miles through thin air. I wouldn’t have bought airtime from him, or invested in his radio station without understanding the science of radio waves, would you? If there are frames to be ripped, and new understandings to be had in science, they will have to be painstakingly verified. The very first way that happens, is through peer review. Robert Lanza won’t find any such support.

There is an underlying reality described by the standard model in physics. It’s governed by the interaction, of matter and energy and space and time. The standard model may be incomplete. But it’s the best method we have for understanding. And it’s been through about a century of testing. That reality, even if it’s imprecisely described, even when we stop believing in it–doesn’t go away. All credit to Philip K. Dick for that alliteration.

What Lanza is proposing isn’t remotely new. It’s solipsism, an old philosophical saw. Which falls apart under the most basic analysis.

If we create our own realities, why don’t we live in a perfect world of our own choosing? Why don’t all the men have harems and the women Prince Charmings? Why don’t we all live in castles like kings? Why is there hunger or disease? Why do children in the developing world not get a say about whether they are killed by malaria, or crushed by flimsy construction when there’s an earthquake? Why aren’t people in war zones magically protected if they just think about safety? Why don’t all these victims’ minds create a better reality for them? Are we really to blame their faulty thoughts for their horrible predicaments?

It’s a cruel irony.

So much of this philosophical bollocks rests on a misunderstanding of the subjective-objective divide. In a subjective sense, in our memories and imaginations, and even conscious awareness, we do see what we want to see. We do indeed create our own private ‘realities,’ and we can indeed move through time and visit the past.

But let’s not confuse our own interior subjective experience with the exterior objective universe, mmkay? All life on Earth could be snuffed out by a giant solar flare tomorrow or any other day of the week. The universe wouldn’t even blink at our non-existence.

That unflinching universe is the one I’m interested in learning about. With all the conscious beings still in it, naturally. And the implacable vast universe doesn’t care one solitary whit, about the fantastic mental contrivances of Robert Lanza, MD. He may be a genius at regenerative medicine. But when it comes to philosophy and the nature of existence, he’s a fool, and a fraud.

To really understand Lanza’s target audience, it’s interesting to note that fellow charlatan Deepak Chopra gushed with praise: “Lanza’s insights into the nature of consciousness [are] original and exciting” and that “his theory of biocentrism is consistent with the most ancient wisdom traditions of the world which says that consciousness conceives, governs, and becomes a physical world. It is the ground of our Being in which both subjective and objective reality come into existence.”

Consciousness. Ancient wisdom. Ground of being. Sounds like rehashed Buddhism to me.

Grab your wallet, and run. Because extraordinary scientific claims require extraordinary evidence.

Update: Since 2010, Robert Lanza has published several books expanding on his “Biocentrism” claim. It seems the world of cosmology has barely taken notice, being occupied with actual research at the Large Hadron Collider, and spectacular new images being downloaded from the James Webb Telescope. Amazon lists an upcoming sci-fi novel by Lanza, called Observer, scheduled to be published in 2023. And that’s how this whole concept should have been explored all along–as fiction.