Can one overcome adversity without free will?

I recently read a book titled being (no capital) written by a father and daughter (Ross G. Menzies and Rachel E. Menzies), both academics in psychology, albeit at different institutions in Sydney. The subtitle is Why It’s Harder To Be A Human Than A Hamster Or A Herring, which I think is a little misleading, and probably unnecessary.

For me, the title, being, says it all, because it’s a category on my blog. ‘Being’ is literally about being human, with all that entails, including the fact that we are a complex social species who thinks in a complex language, which is akin to software in that it’s hard to imagine thinking without it. That alone differentiates us from all other species, but, having read their book, I really don’t think that’s what it's about.

 

The book has a strong existential flavour, because it’s really about how to take control of your inner self and therefore your life. And perhaps that would have been a better subtitle, and even shifted more books. But perhaps the authors wanted to differentiate themselves from the plethora of self-help books on the market, and I can understand that, because I don’t think this book fits that genre either. It’s more Oliver Sacks than Oprah Winfrey. In particular, they provide examples of case studies (like Sacks did in his seminal tome, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), which are all extreme cases, yet illustrate their points.

 

I found myself identifying with a lot of what they described, and perhaps others will too. In particular, they explain how we all have an inner voice that can be our biggest critic and can inhibit us. I’m really not sure how widespread this is: I can’t imagine narcissists having a critical inner voice; I imagine their inner voice never stops telling them how exceptional and brilliant they are. Just listen to Donald Trump’s public exhortations of his own genius.

 

Basically, the authors are saying this inner voice can have pathological consequences, and I know mine never shuts up. They make the point that it was probably fostered in childhood, and I can certainly testify to that. But here’s the thing: I’ve come to see it as a positive, because it helps to keep my ego in check, and I agree with Socrates’ maxim about the unexamined life. It was also a feature of Confucius’ philosophy: that self-examination is a bulwark against our propensity to blame others for our shortcomings. Note that they both lived around 4-500 years before Christ.

 

The book includes a couple of questionnaires, which the reader is invited to try, and I complied.

 

One was about one’s search for purpose or meaning. It was only 10 questions but it was cleverly designed to ascertain 2 parameters: how strong is one’s search for meaning; and how strong is one’s sense of having acquired meaning or purpose. They are meant to be complementary in that a high score on one should be reflected by a low score on the other. I scored high on both: 29 out of 35.

 

They don’t address that anomaly, but my takeaway is that my sense of purpose is probably a lot higher than it was when I was younger; yet I’m still searching, in the belief that there is no final destination. I think this blog encapsulates both of those.

 

The other one was a measure of regret with only 5 questions, and I scored 9 out of 35, which is roughly what I expected. The questions were about reflecting on outcomes and considering what-ifs.

 

They reference Carl Rogers and, in particular, his mostly unacknowledged influence on the relationship between psychologists and their clients. In particular, in creating a non-judgemental environment. I remember that Carl Rogers was barely mentioned when I studied psychology, yet I’d read about his ‘client-centred therapy’ external to my studies.

 

Given their book has an unapologetic existential influence, I was surprised by their views on free will. Basically, they take the very strong scientific position that it’s a fallacy.

 

Following a chapter titled The Forks in the Road, which is about decision-making as the title suggests, there is a chapter titled The Illusion of Freedom, headlined by a quote from Sam Harris: You can do what you decide to do – but you cannot decide what you will decide to do. And that sums up what they talk about for the next 28 pages.

 

But let me backtrack momentarily to The Forks in the Road where they discuss something called the ‘Indecisiveness Scale’ devised by Robert Frost and Deanna Shows at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in the 1990s. To quote the authors:

 

This simple, fifteen-item scale has been used by researchers around the globe for decades and has revealed just how destructive to wellbeing indecisiveness really is. (My emphasis)

 

Across investigations, high scores on the Indecisiveness Scale have been linked to high levels of negative emotion, worry, depression and rumination.

 

One section of this chapter was subtitled, Maximising versus satisficing, and basically, giving examples, the authors explain how satisficing is better than maximising as a life enhancing strategy. Basically, maximising means always seeking and demanding the optimum outcome, and satisficing means making compromises and accepting the best outcome in a given situation.

 

Possibly, you can see a connection to the notion of free will, given we associate decision-making to the attribute of personal agency. Therefore, the Illusion of Freedom was like a bucket of cold water, in the face of what went before.

 

Essentially, they argue we are nothing more than ‘biological machines’. They quote from a previous book of theirs (which I haven’t read):

 

The decisions we believe we’re making ‘freely’ are all in fact determined by a dense thicket of crisscrossing cogs and causes – biographical, physiological, cultural, psychological, neurological and environmental… We are incredibly complex creatures, entwined in incredibly complex situations, which makes our choices often seen baffling and unpredictable, but we are nonetheless, ultimately, biological machines that obey the laws of physics just like everything else. (my emphasis)

 

That last sentence reminds me of Sabine Hossenfelder, and in fact, they reference her book at one point, Existential Physics (which I have read). But the main problem I have with their thesis is how they reverse the norm when it comes to dealing with failures. They give the example of Italian soccer player, Roberto Baggio, who famously (or infamously) missed a penalty goal in the 1994 FIFA World Cup final against Brazil, held in Pasadena, California. Other than the personal shame and humiliation, it effectively curtailed a brilliant career. The authors argue that the way he should have dealt with it, was to acknowledge that he had no free will.

 

I find this such a self-defeating attitude. Does that mean that all the brilliant successes he’d had up to that point in his star-studded career were also just a product of being a robotic ‘biological machine’? My point is that if you’re going to take responsibility for your triumphs you also need to take responsibility for your failures. Anything else is a cop-out. It’s why Socrates’ famous aphorism: The unexamined life is not worth living; is so resonant throughout the ages. We only examine our lives when we fail, and Socrates had failed to prevail against the Senate and paid for it with his life.

 

To provide a counter perspective, I watched a 97m YouTube video provided by Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s Closer to Truth channel, titled, Big Questions in Free Will. It covered a four-year project (so not a one-week seminar as you might expect), with experts in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and theology. The theology component was separate and is covered at the end, and assumes free will, but discusses the apparent contradiction with having an omnipotent and omniscient God with human free will, which I won’t discuss here. I read a book on that topic by Clifford A Pickover (The Paradox of God And the Science of Omniscience), which I discussed in another post.

 

Overall, Kuhn’s video is an excellent exposition on the topic, based on interviews with various experts, and it revealed that free will is more nuanced than what many people claim, including myself. Basically, there are a lot of thoughts, impulses and ideas that come into your mind that you don’t have conscious control over. I think the most obvious example is when one dreams. In a dream, there is a sense that we don’t have control over events, even though I believe there is a conscious interaction. But anyone who has done something creative is aware that there is a strong subconscious component – we literally don’t know where it comes from.

 

Of all the participants (over 20), there were 2 in particular, who came closest to expressing my beliefs: Eddy Nahmias, Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University, and Peter Tse, Professor of Psychology at Dartmouth College. Both expressed the view that decisions requiring detailed cognitive analysis with potentially life-changing consequences, like getting married or changing careers, were not solely the result of subconscious impulses. My own view, not expressed by any of the participants, is that consciousness can act as a feedback loop and modify a subconscious decision. Peter Tse alluded to this without calling it a loop. Douglas Hofstadter coined the term, ‘strange loop’ to describe this experiential phenomenon.

 

Peter Tse’s interaction with his colleague, Thalia Wheatley (Associate Professor of Psychology at Dartmouth College) was most interesting and informative, because Thalia held the view that free will is a chimera (my term, not hers), the same as Rachel and Ross Menzies. At one point, Tse mentions the role of imagination, which I’ve argued before is the key to free will – an idea I’ve borrowed from Raymond Tallis (neuroscientist turned philosopher).

 

I’ve long argued that consciousness without free will makes no evolutionary sense. If consciousness simply makes us aware of decisions already made, then what’s the point? On the other hand, consciousness can access memory and mentally time travel – hence the role of imagination – because that’s what imagination does. The ability to mentally time travel, especially into the future, allows us to consider the far-reaching consequences of events like getting married or changing careers or any other life-changing decision.

 

Getting back to the Menzies’ position and the subtext of their book, which is really about trying to live a more fulfilling life. I’ve spoken about this before, but I went through a phase in my life where I felt I had no control and I became a fatalist – believing that everything was caused by fate. Not surprisingly, I became very depressed. The fact that I overcame this, I put solely down to free will – the belief that one can change one’s circumstances, by taking control and responsibility for one’s decisions.

 

The authors don’t mention impostor syndrome, but I suspect I’ve suffered from a version of that my whole life, although I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I think it gives one perspective and stops one from being full of themselves. Ex New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said she suffered from imposter syndrome, but gave the impression that it helped her because it imbues humility in the face of dealing with significant events. It’s not lack of confidence, as she was quick to point out, but it requires self-examination, which requires a feedback loop.

An excursion into the absurd with Camus as a guide

Someone lent me a book on Camus, titled Albert Camus and the literature of revolt. It was written by John Cruikshank, ‘the first professor of French at the University of Sussex; founding the French studies department at that institution in 1962’ (Wikipedia). It was first published in 1959, but I believe the edition I had was the ‘third Galaxy printing, 1963’, even though the copyright says 1960 just to confuse everyone.

 

Camus died 4 Jan 1960, but the author references him consistently as still alive, which is what you’d expect if it was written in 1959. It’s a very dense read, even for an academic. I’m not exaggerating when I say I found Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason an easier read (mind you, that was over 25 years ago).

 

I read 2 of Camus’ novels in high school (in the 1960s): The Plague (in English) and L’Etranger (in French). The Plague had quite an effect on my fertile brain at the age of 16, because it challenged a short lifetime’s indoctrination in Christianity. To be fair, I was already challenging the concept of God I had been raised on, so I think my mind was ripe. I’ve read it twice since, which says a lot. I saw the recent movie, The Stranger, based on the novel, L’Etranger, and I have to say I thought it was very well done, even down to the use of black-and-white visuals to capture the period, and found it very true to my memory of it.

 

Camus is famous for his philosophical position on the absurd, which is effectively the subject of Cruickshank’s tome over 224 densely worded pages. Having said that, I believe Camus’ position is often misrepresented and Cruikshank appears to agree, so a large portion of his text deals with disabusing us of the widely held belief that Camus’ entire philosophical position was that life is absurd and we have no choice but to accept it. Many cite his treatment of the Myth of Sisyphus as evidence of this position (refer next paragraph). In reality, Camus seems to have spent his entire intellectual life looking for a resolution to the absurd condition, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

For those who don’t know, The Myth of Sisyphus is Camus’ literary essay on a Greek mythology concerning the punishment given to Sisyphus: ‘who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again just as it nears the top. The essay concludes, "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."’ (Wikipedia)

 

Also, according to Wikipedia, ‘The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the "unreasonable silence" of the universe in response.’ As an aside, many scientists seem to take this position by default. In fact, Paul Davies, whom I often cite on this blog, refers to this position by most scientists as the ‘absurd universe’ without any hint of irony. In response, Davies argues that humanity is in the privileged position of being able to ‘unravel the plot’ (his phrase), but that’s perhaps too much of a diversion for this post, though I may return to it later

 

I have my own thoughts on the myth of Sisyphus in that it’s like a time loop, which of course, is not what Camus had in mind. In fact, I think the Marvel movie, Dr Strange (starring Benedict Cumberbatch) alludes to the myth towards the end, when Dr Strange traps his nemesis in a time loop – a point I make in my online review. The thing about a time loop is that you’d have no memory of the previous loop, in the same way that, if you were reincarnated, you’d have no memories of your previous incarnation. And, logically, that’s the only way one could deal with eternity.

 

I remember as quite a young child (pre-teens) lying in bed one night trying to grasp the concept of infinity or eternity and you literally look into the abyss. You realise how impossible it is to conceive – it’s a mind-fuck in the real sense of the term. In other words, we are not meant to comprehend it – it’s literally beyond our conception let alone perception. I’ve long argued that only in mathematics, does infinity have a home – in fact, it’s built into its foundations, despite the efforts of many to get rid of it.

 

So, with that in mind, the myth of Sisyphus is another way to look at eternity and show that it’s truly absurd to a human consciousness. It renders eternity into an activity that we can comprehend and viscerally feel. I know that’s not the absurdity that Camus had in mind, but that’s my take-home lesson. The truth is that we couldn’t live with immortality even if it was offered.

 

A detour. Now back to the main theme: Camus’ attempt to deal with the intrinsic absurdity of life without resorting to metaphysics. Early in his book, Cruikshank discusses a quote from The Myth of Sisyphus that brings Camus’ preoccupation with the absurd into focus.

 

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

 

In fact, Cruikshank discusses this at length, but basically Camus is asking us: if life is absurd, why not end it? In conclusion, Camus contends that suicide is not an escape from the absurd but giving into it, and it’s hard not to agree with him. But this begs another question: how does one live with the absurd if that’s all the universe has to offer.

 

Camus argued that we need to revolt but seemed to struggle with how that can be achieved without revolution, especially when revolutions invariably involve violence. One suspects this is a major reason for Camus rejecting Marxist communism, which led to a falling out with his contemporary French philosopher and writer, Jean-Paul Sartre. Anyone who has read Marx and Engel’s treatise on communism will know that revolution is a key step in its inception.

 

Right towards the end of Cruikshank’s book, when he discusses Camus’ plays, there is a very lucid and insightful analysis of his play, Les Justes, which is about the plotting and assassination of the Grand-Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (referred to as Grand-Duke Serge). Camus had this to say about its historical veracity:

 

However strange some situations in this play may appear they are nevertheless historically true… All my characters really existed and behaved in the way I describe. I have simply tried to give probability to what was already true.

 

Cruickshank makes the point that, in his view, this play is far superior to others Camus wrote in the depiction of the characters and the tensions between them. The reason I feel it’s worth discussing is because it seems to address the inherent tension between idealism and terrorism, personified by 2 of the main characters, that seems to arise ineluctably when people combine political ambition with violent means.

 

There is another quote by Camus in a completely different context, which I feel is relevant:

 

"But practically, I know men and recognise them by their behaviour, by the totality of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by their presence."

 

Camus was involved in the French resistance, and would have observed the best and worst in men, as did my father in a German POW camp. They both would have appreciated better than most of us, how our moral compass can become distorted in a war environment. Both Camus, based on his writings and stated beliefs, and my father, based on what little he was willing to tell me, were very principled in the face of brutal conflict. One could argue that war is the absolute epitome of the absurd, yet men can sometimes find something abstract to hang onto so that they survive, not only physically but mentally.

 

Camus rejected existentialism, according to his own testimony, yet the one strand that runs through the novels I read and the one movie I saw, Far From Men (based on a short story) is the protagonists’ authenticity, though I suspect Camus would have loathed that term. Cruickshank repeatedly makes the point that Camus was a product of 2 environments: European France and Mediterranean Algiers. In both, I suspect, he felt an outsider and that’s a recurring theme in the fiction I am familiar with.

 

I will end by going off on a completely different tack, as is my wont. Early in his text, Cruikshank said something that caught my attention, which was an allusion to ‘truth’. This is the quote out of context:

 

Camus claims that reason is powerless and he offers no comparable alternative to truth.

 

Now, one assumes that Camus is talking about metaphysical truth or the absolute truths that religious texts claim they provide. After all, I believe this is Camus’ biggest bone of contention: that metaphysics in the form of so-called religious truths can’t deliver us from our absurd condition.

 

However, I have a counter argument. The obvious answer to me is mathematics. What’s more, I claim that mathematical truths transcend the universe therefore are metaphysical. There are 2 dictionary definitions of ‘metaphysical’, both relevant to mathematics in my Platonist view.

 

1.     Based on abstract reasoning

2.     Transcending physical matter or the laws of nature

 

Here’s the thing: given that the Universe follows mathematical rules that transcend the universe, at both its deepest level and its cosmological scale, how can it be intrinsically absurd? What would be absurd, is a universe without consciousness. It’s our very presence that makes the Universe not absurd, and I feel that’s what Camus missed, though it was staring him in the face.

 

Since I started writing fiction, I realised that nearly all fiction is about relationships. There are exceptions – Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea springs to mind. The subtext of all the fiction I’ve written is about relationships and companionship; and all that entails, including separation, betrayal and redemption. It’s in relationships that we find meaning in this short interval of existence, with or without metaphysical purpose.

Arguments for and against human exceptionalism

 This was triggered by an article I read in Philosophy Now (Issue 171, Dec 2025 / Jan 2026) by Adam Neiblum who authored Rise of the Nones: The Importance of Freedom from Religion (Hypatia Press, 2023). I don’t normally mention the publisher, but I find it interesting that they are named after the famous female Librarian of Alexandria, Hypatia (pronounced hi-pay-shia) who was infamously killed by a Christian mob in AD 414. I’ve written about her elsewhere.
 
The article was titled, Evolution or Progress, and asks “what the difference is and why it matters”. Not really a question, though one is implied. Basically, he’s arguing that evolution is not teleological (though he doesn’t use that term). Instead, he discusses the erroneous belief that most people associate evolution with progress, which is a symptom, not just of anthropocentrism, but our religious heritage. I think these are actually 2 different things, while admitting, for many people, they are connected.
 
I want to start by challenging his premise that the association of evolution with progress is not as erroneous as it appears, depending on how one defines or describes progress. My dictionary has 2 definitions:
 
1: forward or onward movement towards a destination
 
2: development towards an improved or more advanced condition
 
By the first definition, I think he’s right, but not by the second definition. If one looks at the historical evidence, going back not just millions but billions of years: the increase in complexity and sheer diversity from the most simple cells to animals with brains, I’d argue surely applies to definition 2.
 
To emphasise my point, I’ll quote from Neiblum’s essay, who provides his own definition of progress:
 
A)    An ideal or goal – literacy, or justice, for example.
B)    A gap between this ideal and the real-world state of affairs.
C)    A process of movement – individually, collectively, or even species-wide – towards that goal or ideal.
 
We can see these are not the same ideas. Evolution is neither purposeful nor intentional, it has no ideal, aim, or end-point.
 
One can see how this aligns with my dictionary definition 1, but not definition 2.
 
To be fair to Neiblum, he does address my criticism, in as much as he acknowledges evolution results in increased complexity. But he also points out that so-called primitive lifeforms (my words, not his) like insects, crocodiles, sharks (and other so-called living fossils) still thrive. But the reason they thrive, is that they have become part of an eco-system (the same with gut bacteria, for example). Evolution never applies to a species in isolation; just look at the fact that we all can’t exist without plants processing the carbon dioxide we expire as part of the extraordinary process called photo-synthesis.
 
Neiblum then goes on to discuss the role of religion, and specifically the Christian religion, in distorting or exaggerating (again, my terms) our anthropocentrism. But I’ll return to that specific point later.
 
I would like to point out that humans are not the only examples of exceptionalism in the animal kingdom. To give just 2 examples: the peregrine falcon can literally fly through the air at 200mph (in a dive); and the sperm whale can dive down to 2-3km and stay underwater for up to 45 mins.
 
But human exceptionalism is unusual and unique in the sense that, to quote Paul Davies: ‘We can unravel the plot’. I admit I tend to get annoyed when people tend to dismiss our unique ability to comprehend the universe to the degree and extent that we’ve managed to achieve. I recently watched an excellent series titled HUMAN, presented by paleo-anthropologist, Ella Al-Shamahi, which is very extensive and comprehensive for a lay-audience, and one of the things that stood out was how ‘break-throughs’ (for want of a better term) in cognitive abilities, seem to happen virtually simultaneously in different parts of the globe; the use of written script being a good example.
 
So, our cultural evolution, has tended to happen in jumps. And, in this sense, it is synonymous with progress to which Neiblum would undoubtedly agree. In his next-to-last sentence, he states that evolution has endowed us with the unique capacity to progress (emphasis in the original) using “evidence, reason and science”.
 
Personally, I think it is our unique grasp of mathematics that has been the most salient feature in propelling our advance in knowledge and comprehension of the natural world. To quote Eugene Wigner:
 
It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here… or the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.
 
This was from his famous essay, The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. And this is arguably the only reason, as Davies asserts, ‘we can unravel the plot’.
 
In my last post, I briefly talked about language, as well as imagination. Now, I actually believe that imagination is not unique to humans, in the sense that it allows us to mentally time-travel, and I suspect other creatures can do that as well, which we see in their ability to co-operate and act towards a goal. Implicit in that ability is the capacity to imagine that goal before it’s actualised. To the extent that other creatures can do this, I contend they have free will.
 
But humans take imagination to another level, because we can mentally time-travel to worlds that don’t even exist, which we do every time we read or watch a story. And this entails that other superpower we have, which is language. To quote from my last post:

…we all think in a language, which we learn from our milieu at an extremely early age, suggesting we are ‘hardwired’ genetically to do this. Without language, our ability to grasp and manipulate abstract concepts, which is arguably a unique human capability, would not be possible. Basically, I’m arguing that language for humans goes well beyond just an ability to communicate desires and wants, though that was likely its origin.
 
And this is the thing: these abstract concepts include mathematical equations, scientific theories and engineering designs (including, by the way, the theory of evolution, which is central to this discussion). But more than this, we ‘download’ this language from generation to generation at an age when these concepts are well beyond our cognitive abilities. And it’s this unique facility that has allowed us to create entire civilisations and build the scientific enterprise that we all depend upon and take for granted (if you’re reading this).
 
I’ve spent a lot of time belabouring a point, because my arguments thus far have nothing to do with religious beliefs.
 
Religion implies that there is a purpose and we are central to that purpose. I think purpose has evolved, and I’m unsure if Neiblum would agree. I’ve argued before that the Universe appears to be pseudo-teleological or quasi-teleological in that there is no end goal, yet the very mathematical laws that we have the cognitive capacity to ‘unravel’ seem to allow for a goal, even if it’s open-ended. Possibly, I’m subconsciously influenced by my ability and passion as a storyteller, because I prefer to write a story without knowing what the ending is. I’m not the only writer who does this, though there are others who won’t start a story without knowing the ending in advance.
 
I’ve always struggled with the concept of a ‘creator’ God, which is not dissimilar to the more recent belief that we live in a simulation. In a recent episode of an Australian satirical programme called The Weekly by Charlie Pickering, one of his guests, Rhys Nicholson, did a skit on this, even citing Nick Bolstrom, who is an academic proponent, but also comparing it to the widely held belief that there is a God pulling the strings behind the scenes (metaphorically speaking). Paul Davies in his book, The Goldilocks Enigma (highly recommended) also argues that the ‘simulation hypothesis’ is just a variation on ID (Intelligent Design).
 
I also like to cite Jordan Ellenberg from his excellent book, How Not to Be Wrong; The Power of Mathematical Thinking, where, among many other contentious topics, he discusses the ‘Bayesian inference of the existence of God’, whereby he shows that the Universe being a computer simulation has at least the same probability as it has being a divine intervention.
 
The thing that has struck me about all the Gods in our combined histories is that they all have cultural origins, including the Abrahamic God, and they are all anthropomorphic. I’ve long agreed with 19th Century philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, that ‘God is the outward projection of man’s inner nature’. God is something internal not external, though, of course, that doesn’t rule out an external source.
 
Personally, I’m attracted to the Hindu concept of Brahman (as was Schrodinger) as a collective mind that could be the end result of consciousness rather than its progenitor. I’m not proposing this as a definitive resolution, but it would provide a goal that Neiblum considers anathema to science.
 
All that aside, I think there is another aspect to seeing ourselves as ‘exceptional’ in the animal kingdom here on Earth, because it gives us a special responsibility. We are effectively the guardians of spaceship Earth by default. However, it’s a two-edged sword: we have the unique capability to destroy it or to safeguard it. Which one we do is dependent on all of us.

Reality, metaphysics, infinity

 This post arose from 3 articles I read in as many days: 2 on the same specific topic; and 1 on an apparently unrelated topic. I’ll start with the last one first.
 
I’m a regular reader of Raymond Tallis’s column in Philosophy Now, called Tallis in Wonderland, and I even had correspondence with him on one occasion, where he was very generous and friendly, despite disagreements. In the latest issue of Philosophy Now (No 169, Aug/Sep 2025), the title of his 2-page essay is Pharmaco-Metaphysics? Under which it’s stated that he ‘argues against acidic assertions, and doubts DMT assertions.’ Regarding the last point, it should be pointed out that Tallis’s background is in neuroscience.
 
By way of introduction, he points out that he’s never had firsthand experience of psychedelic drugs, but admits to his drug-of-choice being Pino Grigio. He references a quote by William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleaned, then everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” I include this reference, albeit out-of-context, because it has an indirect connection to the other topic I alluded to earlier.
 
Just on the subject of drugs creating alternate realities, which Tallis goes into in more detail than I want to discuss here, he makes the point that the participant knows that there is a reality from which they’ve become adrift; as if they’re in a boat that has slipped its moorings, which has neither a rudder nor oars (my analogy, not Tallis’s). I immediately thought that this is exactly what happens when I dream, which is literally every night, and usually multiple times.
 
Tallis is very good at skewering arguments by extremely bright people by making a direct reference to an ordinary everyday activity that they, and the rest of us, would partake in. I will illustrate with examples, starting with the psychedelic ‘trip’ apparently creating a reality that is more ‘real’ than the one inhabited without the drug.
 
The trip takes place in an unchanged reality. Moreover, the drug has been synthesised, tested, quality-controlled, packaged, and transported in that world, and the facts about its properties have been discovered and broadcast by individuals in the grip of everyday life. It is ordinary people usually in ordinary states of mind in the ordinary world who experiment with the psychedelics that target 5HT2A receptors.
 
He's pointing out an inherent inconsistency, if not outright contradiction (contradictoriness is the term he uses), that the production and delivery of the drug takes place in a world that the recipient’s mind wants to escape from.
 
And the point relevant to the topic of this essay: It does not seem justified, therefore, to blithely regard mind-altering drugs as opening metaphysical peepholes on to fundamental reality; as heuristic devices enabling us to discover the true nature of the world. (my emphasis)
 
To give another example of philosophical contradictoriness (I’m starting to like this term), he references Berkeley:
 
Think, for instance of those who, holding a seemingly solid copy of A Treatise Concerning the Principle of Human Knowledge (1710), accept George Berkeley’s claim [made in the book] that entities exist only insofar as they are perceived. They nevertheless expect the book to be still there when they enter a room where it is stored.
 
This, of course, is similar to Donald Hoffman’s thesis, but that’s too much of a detour.
 
My favourite example that he gives, is based on a problem that I’ve had with Kant ever since I first encountered Kant.
 
[To hold] Immanuel Kant’s view that ‘material objects’ located in space and time in the way we perceive them to be, are in fact constructs of the mind – then travel by train to give a lecture on this topic at an agreed place and time. Or yet others who (to take a well-worn example) deny the reality of time, but are still confident that they had their breakfast before their lunch.
 
He then makes a point I’ve made myself, albeit in a different context.
 
More importantly, could you co-habit in the transformed reality with those to whom you are closest – those who accept without question as central to your everyday life, and who return the compliment of taking you for granted?
 
To me, all these examples differentiate a dreaming state from our real-life state, and his last point is the criterion I’ve always given that determines the difference. Even though we often meet people in our dreams with whom we have close relationships, those encounters are never shared.
 
Tallis makes a similar point:
 
Radically revisionary views, if they are to be embraced sincerely, have to be shared with others in something that goes deeper than a report from (someone else’s) experience or a philosophical text.
 
This is why I claim that God can only ever be a subjective experience that can’t be shared, because it too fits into this category.
 
I recently got involved in a discussion on Facebook in a philosophical group, about Wittgenstein’s claim that language determines the limits of what we can know, which I argue is back-to-front. We are forever creating new language for new experiences and discoveries, which is why experts develop their own lexicons, not because they want to isolate other people (though some may), but because they deal with subject-matter the rest of us don’t encounter.
 
I still haven’t mentioned the other 2 articles I read – one in New Scientist and one in Scientific American – and they both deal with infinity. Specifically, they deal with a ‘movement’ (for want of a better term) within the mathematical community to effectively get rid of infinity. I’ve discussed this before with specific reference to UNSW mathematician, Norman Wildberger. Wildberger recently gained attention by making an important breakthrough (jointly with Dean Rubine using Catalan numbers). However, for reasons given below, I have issues with his position on infinity.
 
The thing is that infinity doesn’t exist in the physical world, or if it does, it’s impossible for us to observe, virtually by definition. However, in mathematics, I’d contend that it’s impossible to avoid. Primes are called the atoms of arithmetic, and going back to Euclid (325-265BC), he proved that there are an infinite number of primes. The thing is that there are 3 outstanding conjectures involving primes: the Goldbach conjecture; the twin prime conjecture; and the Riemann Hypothesis (which is the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics at the time of writing). And they all involve infinities. If infinities are no longer ‘allowed’, does that mean that all these conjectures are ‘solved’ or does it mean, they will ‘never be solved’?
                                                                                                                    
One of the contentions raised (including by Wildberger) is that infinity has no place in computations – specifically, computations by computers. Wildberger effectively argues that mathematics that can’t be computed is not mathematics (which rules out a lot of mathematics). On the other hand, you have Gregory Chaitin who points out that there are infinitely more incomputable Real numbers than computable Real numbers. I would have thought that this had been settled, since Cantor discovered that you can have countable infinite numbers and uncountable infinite numbers; the latter being infinitely larger than the former.
 
Just today I watched a video by Curt Jaimungal interviewing Chiara Marletto on ‘Constructor Theory’, which to my limited understanding based on this extract from a larger conversation, seems to be premised on the idea that everything in the Universe can be understood if it’s run on a quantum computer. As far as I can tell, she’s not saying it is a computer simulation, but she seems to emulate Stephen Wolfram’s philosophical position that it’s ‘computation all the way down’. Both of these people know a great deal more than me, but I wonder how they deal with chaos theory, which seems to drive the entire universe at multiple levels and can’t be computed due to a dependency on infinitesimal initial conditions. It’s why the weather can’t be forecast accurately beyond 10 days (because it can’t be calculated, no matter how complex the computer modelling) and why every coin-toss is independent of its predecessor (unless you rig it).
 
Note the use of the word, ‘infinitesimal’. I argue that chaos theory is the one phenomenon where infinity meets the real world. I agree with John Polkinghorne that it allows the perfect mechanism for God to intervene in the physical world, even though I don’t believe in an interventionist God (refer Marcus du Sautoy, What We Cannot Know).
 
I think the desire to get rid of infinity is rooted in an unstated philosophical position that the only things that can exist are the things we can know. This doesn’t mean that we currently know everything – I don’t think any mathematician or physicist believes that – but that everything is potentially knowable. I have long disagreed. And this is arguably the distinction between physics and metaphysics. I will take the definition attributed to Plato: ‘That which holds that what exists lies beyond experience.’ In modern science, if not modern philosophy, there is a tendency to discount metaphysics, because, by definition, it exists beyond what we experience in the real world. You can see an allusion here to my earlier discussion on Tallis’s essay, where he juxtaposes reality as we experience it with psychedelic experiences that purportedly provide a window into an alternate reality, where ‘everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite’. Where infinity represents everything we can’t know in the world we inhabit.
 
The thing is that I see mathematics as the only evidence of metaphysics; the only connection our minds have between a metaphysical world that transcends the Universe, and the physical universe we inhabit and share with innumerable other sentient creatures, albeit on a grain of sand on an endless beach, the horizon of which we’re yet to discern.
 
So I see this transcendental, metaphysical world of endless possible dimensions as the perfect home for infinity. And without mathematics, we would have no evidence, let alone a proof, that infinity even exists.