Questioning Assumptions about the Nature of Our Own Being By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof August 16, 2015 Majoring in philosophy had already made me fairly skeptical thirty years ago, even as I was preparing for the Southern Baptist ministry at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas (the heart of the Bible Belt). I openly professed my disbelief in miracles, for example, and challenged those who disagreed by asking them to simply point one out. One day, while walking across campus with a friend who suffered terrible back pain, we met Charles Doolittle, a Pentecostal student who insisted God continues to work great miracles to this day. He told my friend that if he only had enough faith his back would be healed. Now it happens that Charles had come to HPU on an athletic scholarship but injured his leg so badly the first season that he walked with a severe limp and could no longer play sports. I was bothered that he blamed my friend s chronic pain on his lack of faith, so I asked, If that s all it takes, why don t you use it to heal your leg? Don t you have enough faith? Charles snapped back, Let me tell you something, this leg may not look healed, but this leg is healed because the Bible says it s healed! He then turned and limped away. Charles response, odd as it may seem, represents the usual solution to what is referred to in Philosophy as the mind/body problem; to the unanswerable questions, do both mind and body really exist? If so, how do they differ? If they are completely different, how can they interact at all? 2400 years ago, Plato resolved the problem much like Charles Doolittle, with his mind over matter philosophy of Idealism. He suggested, in brief, that an ideal realm exists apart from and is superior to the material realm, because the latter contains only imperfect reflections of perfect ideals. The individual trees we encounter in the material realm, for example, are all flawed likenesses of the perfect Tree that exits in the ideal realm, just as Charles injured leg was but a chimerical distortion of the leg that had already been healed in his mind. His stiff leg was but a materialistic illusion. Those of us who were not spiritual enough, or did not have enough faith, in his terms, could not perceive his real leg. Plato s Idealism became the foundation of Hellenistic society and the dualism that continues to influence and underlie our own cultural mindset. The a priori assumption that mind and body, matter and spirit, are separate realities, and that the ethereal is superior to the mundane, is so paradigmatic in our culture that it almost goes without saying. We don t think about it anymore than we think about the air we breath. It s just how we generally tend to look at things, with no thought of its potential folly until we re presented with examples so outrageous we can t help but notice.
The idea that the mind is a nonmaterial reality was made even more commonplace by the 17 th century philosopher, Rene Descartes who famously questioned every assumption he had until he found one he could not doubt, cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. For Descartes the material realm may be nothing more than a dream, he can t be sure, but he cannot doubt the existence of the dreamer. Whatever else, he was sure his consciousness was real. Of course, he could not be as certain the consciousness of others are real, which has led to an extremist view called, solipsism, the belief that other minds don t exist at all. It s not a very commonly expressed belief, although far too many seem to act like they agree with it. The main point here, however, is that Cartesian Dualism, right or wrong, considers the mind not only something altogether different than matter, but the only thing we can be sure of. It wasn t that Descartes didn t have perceptions; he just didn t know how to be sure his perceptions weren t just a dream or an illusion. Since sensual perceptions cannot be trusted, he built a philosophy based upon his one indubitable premise, the existence of mind. He rejected Empiricism to become the father of Rationalism, the notion that true knowledge is to be derived from reason alone, from the mind. When put in these terms, it seems almost strange that anyone could dismiss the existence of empirical reality, and most of us don t. What we do accept, however, is Cartesian duality, that mind and matter are separate things and that mind, reason, spirit, or what have you, are superior to the physical world. Again, from my perspective, our cultural paradigm remains dualistic with this mind over matter preference. In addition to being the father of rationalism, Descartes is considered the father of modern philosophy. In other words, modern philosophy is Cartesian. Western religion also has a history of shunning science in favor of dogma, of empirical evidence in favor of its theological ideas and arguments. It also maintains a disdain for what it considers a fallen world and sinful bodies, along with a preoccupation for saving souls trapped in flesh so they can be resurrected in a perfect heavenly afterlife (Idealism). Today, especially, pundits and politicians who openly ignore hard facts in favor of their unfounded ideas are often extremely popular and successful. It may look like the Earth is heating up, but Global Warming isn t real because my mind says it s not real! It may look like Obamacare is working, but it s not working because my mind says it s not working! It may look like Supply Side economics has destroyed the Middle Class and given everything to the top one percent, but making the rich richer and the poor poorer still works best for everyone because my mind says it does! And, by the way, please don t dispute what I believe because beliefs are sacred and disagreeing with me makes you intolerant of others, and intolerant people should be silenced and shunned. This leg may not look healed, but this leg is healed because the Bible says it s healed! In addition to these negative environmental, social, economic, and ideological consequences of dualistic ignorance, the philosophical problem remaining to be resolved is how, if mind is nonmaterial something that can exist without a brain how is possible for two things that are so fundamentally different to influence each 2
other at all? How, if Mind is totally cut off from the physical world, can it interact with the brain? In philosophy this is called the interaction problem and it has been tackled in some ways that are as peculiar as a man with an obvious limp who claims he s been healed. Descartes argued the pineal gland is the point of interaction between mind and matter, functioning kind of like a transmitter and receiver between the two realms. In his Treaties on Man, he said people, are composed of a soul and a body. First I must describe the body on its own then the soul, again on it s own [there s the dualism]; and finally I must show how these two natures would have to be joined and united in order to constitute men who resemble us [there s the interaction problem]. 1 His explanation of how these two natures are joined and united is just plain weird. He believed the pineal gland to be the seat of the soul, surrounded by ventricles in which animal spirits continually flow in and out, creating physical impressions, ideas, and memories. Subsequent solutions to dualism are equally as strange, and are as theological as they are philosophical, if not more so. Occasionalism, for example, suggests God is the link between the body and mind. In his book, Philosophy of Mind, Edward Feser says, observing that light from the cheeseburger has impacted your retinas and set up a series of neural firing patters in your brain, God causes your mind to have an experience of seeing the burger; observing that that experience has led you to decide to eat the burger, he then causes a set of neural firing patterns to occur in your brain that result in you picking up the burger, putting it in your mouth and eating it. 2 In addition to making God extremely busy, this has the same problem as Descartes pineal gland theory; neither actually answers the question as to how two things that are so utterly different can interact. Parallelism, another solution to the problem, is no less bizarre. It suggests that body and mind, the material and the mental realms, run beside each other like parallel tracks, but never interact. It s just that God, the master clock maker, has made them run with such perfect timing that when the light from a cheeseburger does strike our retinas and stimulates our neurons, the image of a cheeseburger just so happens to come to mind at that precise moment. The image isn t caused by the light, it just coincides with it. By now your probably wondering, with feeble explanations like these, how dualism continues to be such a predominant paradigm in our culture. It may help you to know that a majority of philosophers today have made and about face by turning from dualism to Materialism. Materialism responds to dualism by rejecting it entirely. In other words, the materialistic view is that there is no problem because the mind is not separate from the body, but is part of the physical processes of the brain, that, without a brain, mind cannot exist. Materialism is, as Feser explains, the theory that reality, or at least human reality, consists of purely material or physical objects, processes, and properties, operating according to the same basic laws and thereby susceptible of explanation via physical science. There is, in short, 1 Descartes, Rene, Treaties on Man, (AT XI:119, CSM I:99) 1662. 2 Feser, Edward, Philosophy of Mind: A Beginners Guide, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 2006, 2011, p. 41. 3
no such thing as immaterial substance, or soul, or spirit, nor any aspect of human nature which, in principle, eludes explanation in purely physical terms. 3 This definition is precisely why, in my opinion, despite its absurd explanations, so many of us prefer dualism to materialism today, because we cannot bare the thought we aren t somehow spiritual beings or nonmaterial souls unbound by our physical limitations. This leg may not look healed, but this leg is healed because the Bible says it s healed! And just think what would happen to our society if we all suddenly had to give up our purely mental concepts, like the value of money, borders between nations, race, religion, and so on? What would happen if we had to admit that Descartes likely got it wrong, that mind, in fact, is the stuff our dreams are made of, not physical reality? Nevertheless, instead of mind over matter, materialism sees mind as matter. There aren t two realms, a material and a mental realm, only the physical realm of which consciousness is a part. Consciousness is as much a physical reaction as is the creation of carbon dioxide resulting from the chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar. This makes a lot more sense than claiming a limp leg has been mended despite all appearances, or that God puts the image of cheeseburger in our minds every time certain photons hit our retinas, or that it s image is entirely coincidental. Maybe that s why materialism dominates the field today. Even so, materialism has many problems, the foremost of which is that it s unable to prove the mind, the existence of which it doesn t deny, is entirely physical. How does reducing everything to physics explain the existence of mind? How does objective reality explain subjective experience? In fact, the world, we know from science, Feser says, [is] composed ultimately of fundamental particles which have none of the features presented to us in experience, but are colorless, odorless, tasteless, and best described in the abstract mathematical language of science. 4 Materialism, he says, claims, the mind is identical to the brain, 5 yet, as Bertrand Russell argued, there is a gap between appearance and reality, all perception remains subjective and what the physiologist sees when he looks at a brain is part of his own brain, not part of the brain he is examining! 6 So materialism, while seemingly more rational, ironically, than rationalism itself, remains an unproven solution to the mind/body problem. There have been a few other attempts to resolve it, especially in recent years, but most of them fall between these two extremes, dualism and materialism. Dualism claims mind is different than anything in the material realm and exist independently from it, and is the only thing we can be certain really does exist. Materialism is the view that mind, or consciousness, is but an adaptive result of evolution that occurs from physical 3 Ibid., p. 51. 4 Ibid., p. 15. 5 Ibid., p. 63. 6 Ibid., p. 127. 4
interactions between particles like those comprising neurons in the brain, and that a mind cannot exist without a brain. I personally favor a materialistic view to a dualistic one, although the arguments for and against both remain unconvincing. My intuition that Materialism is more correct, bares not more weight than another s intuition that Dualism is true. I also hold many beliefs and have had experiences of my own that would contradict a strictly materialistic view of reality, and would support the existence of nonlocal, disembodied mind. During the past few years, with advances in neuroscience, the Science of Consciousness has become an enormous field, for both philosophers and scientists finally hoping to solve the mind/body problem. In fact, the University of Arizona has a Center for Consciousness Studies that has been hosting an annual Science of Consciousness Conference for the past twenty years. Yet, today, nobody seems any closer to resolving the problem. During the most recent conference, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, host of the TV show, Closer to Truth, interviewed two of its most prominent participants, Deepak Chopra, for the dualist side, and, renowned philosopher, Daniel Dennett, for the materialist side. I m going to quote what each had to say at length, beginning with Deepak Chopra: As people have tried to solve the so-called, hard problem through neuroscience they end up being stymied, they get frustrated. The two most open questions in science; number one, what is the stuff of the universe, what is it made of? And number two what s the biological basis of Consciousness? So my response [is that] the stuff of the universe is non-stuff and it is consciousness. And the answer to the second question, what is the biological basis of Consciousness, is the wrong question. Biology is an emergent property of Consciousness. There are only two experiences, two things we can say categorically, which I think no one can deny, number one, there is existence, number two, there is awareness of existence. Could they be the same thing? There is only consciousness. The universe is consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Where is imagination? Where is intention? Where is insight? Where is intuition? Where is creativity? Where is time? These are very fundamental questions and you can t get behind the fact these are experiences in consciousness. We have no theory today that tells us how we experience anything. And here s what Dennett had to say: We re working on very good theories of Consciousness that don t consider consciousness to be the ultimate distinction in the whole universe, which I think is a bit of anthropocentric hubris if ever there was one a struggle by smart people not satisfied with a biological explanation. It would be foolish of me to just give the back of my hand to them and say they can t possibly be right, they could. I just think they re under-motivated. What motivates them is a sort of moral anxiety with what they see as the poverty of a straightforward conservative scientific theory of Consciousness. They don t want that to be the case. Why don t they want that to be the case? Because they re afraid that if it s the case then life has no meaning or 5
morality will disappear. I think that s a poverty of imagination on their part. I find that more and more of my time is trying to show people that the amount of free will and love and dignity and emotion that you get from the conservative scientific materialistic approach is plenty rich. It s predictive. It s explanatory. [Yet] people say, Then we re just meat machines. We re the most fantastic meat machines you can imagine! [They] have an impoverished view of the possibility of meat machines. In truth, I resonate with both these explanations even though it s difficult to imagine how both can be true. But none of this has been about resolving the mind/body problem, something our best thinkers have been unable to accomplish for centuries. It s not about finding an answer, but owning the question. It s about getting out of our paradigms and assumptions about the nature of our existence so that, by admitting we can t be sure, we become more open to other possibilities. Today, our mind-over-matter bias, that there is an invisible reality better than our material experience, and that there s something inferior, flawed, and untrustworthy about our bodies and the Earth, and that our ideas are sacred and cannot be questioned and are of more value than people and other beings, and that they should be maintained no matter their consequences upon the mundane physical world, has caused too many of us to ignore what s really happening around us. Like Charles Doolittle, we re walking around with a limp but think that everything is perfectly okay, at a time in human history that requires the full attention of our minds, no matter what they are, on issues that are entirely down to Earth. In his book, Explaining Consciousness, Daniel Dennett says, Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. 7 I don t know if it s one of those mysteries best left unsolved, but until any of us can know for sure, let s keep the question open. 7 Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained, Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 1991, p. 21. 6