I discussed in a previous post the arguments over whether science plus the philosophy of scientific materialism are enough to explain the universe and our presence as conscious beings in it. Alternatively, is “something more” that specifically addresses consciousness needed? A significant percentage of scientists do believe “something more” is needed, and there is even an association of “post-materialist” scientists. But a large number of scientists, perhaps the majority, still believe materialism is enough, and if there is anything not explained now, it will be in the future (this is known as “promissory materialism”).
David Gibbs, Md, was one such scientist, and his enjoyable memoir The Death of Materialism describes his journey from skepticism to belief.
Dr. Gibbs has many years of experience in emergency medicine. He describes himself as a believer in hard science and materialism. Even in his pre-med studies he encountered troubling concepts like “consciousness collapses the wave” in quantum mechanics, but he had no time for them. Learning enough to get into medical school was the priority. As he put it, he filed anomalies away as “not relevant to the MCAT exam”. Then he studied hard in medical school and went through the ordeal of internship and residency, which solidified his skepticism. But his practice over the years in emergency medicine had some troubling non-material experiences. A fascinating example was what it is like working as part of a team trying to save the life of someone in cardiac arrest. The team is in frantic movement, trying various things like defibrillation and drugs. Sometimes the patient could not be saved, and there always seemed to be a moment when the team realized is it intuitively. That moment comes before the instruments show things like a flat-line on an EKG.
Another example was a time when a patient appeared OK based on the routine examination and tests any doctor would do based on the symptoms. Dr. Gibbs was about to discharge him, but “something didn’t feel right”, and he ordered an extra CT scan that is not standard procedure in this case. The results showed the patient needed emergency surgery, and probably would have died if he’d been discharged. In both cases, where did that intuition come from?
Finally enough examples like this occurred and Dr. Gibbs was motivated to go down a rabbit hole of research on unexplained phenomena like psi (formerly called esp) and the placebo effect. His skepticism accompanied him on this odyssey, but he still found there are phenomena that are not explained by materialism but have very small odds of being caused by chance (like one in a trillion). There are, for example, placebo-like examples of healing caused by belief in a treatment at rates that exceed those of FDA-approved medicines. Eventually enough of these non-dismissable anomalies piled up and he decided scientific materialism is missing something. The remainder of the story was how this affected how he practices and lives his life. A highly-recommended read.
As far as the subtitle, as I pointed out in my previous post on this topic, panpsychism is one of several alternative theories that try to explain what materialism cannot. Which theory in particular works fits reality the best is currently a matter of debate. But I think it matters less which explanation makes the most sense to us and it matters more how acting on this belief positively changes our lives. That is covered nicely in the last part of Dr. Gibbs book.
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