Mind the Gaps
Ben posted a little about the conscious mind here and what makes it what it is. I’m not going to treat that subject here (there are libraries full of everything from theology to neuroscience on this topic), what I am going to treat is Ben’s comment about various acts of a conscious mind:
“The desire to call to mind a specific memory for no reason. The desire to ask a question out of the blue. The desire to desire. Such examples find no answer in biology; they do not evidence the patterning, causality, and predictability found universally within biological systems.”
It fits nicely with Cartesian duality here, doesn’t it? The body is biological, but the mind is different, it’s special. The reality is we still have a staggering amount to do to decode the human brain. The other reality is that we one day might. This whole topic reminds me of Pete Rollins (I know I already quoted him in, like, the last 24 hours) on Bonhoeffer:
“Interestingly, Bonhoeffer does not attack religion as such. However he reflects that in the 20th century (though he sees it beginning in the 17th century) religion has become possible for less and less people because it has been problematical. Not because it has changed but because human beings have entered into a different epoch (my words not his, he talks of “man come of age”). In this new historical situation a religious expression of Christianity places God at the edges of human life as the Deus ex machina. Why? Because religion, for Bonhoeffer, is the belief in a metaphysical absolute from which everything hangs (onto-theology), and as human knowledge increases the more things in our existence do not require this metaphysical explanation. Religion is now exposed as advocating a God of the gaps. In addition to this the God of religion is only for those who feel a need to ask the metaphysical question, “Why”, and in a ‘world come of age”, this question is asked by fewer and fewer (a Nietzschian point par exellence).”
As human knowledge increases, I have no reason to doubt that the gaps in question will become rather narrower. Every time we latch on to some mystery in the natural world and say “Aha! This is a proof!” we risk being shown up as simply jumping the gun. Ben may be correct in asserting that there is currently no biological explanation for every aspect of consciousness, but that does not preclude a future explanation.
Hey thanks for reading.
You might very well be right – we can’t ultimately know. But what I’m getting at, essentially, is the soul.
The Intender and the foundation of consciousness, I believe, lies in the realm of soul.
But who knows, maybe the soul is physical in a way we can’t understand – we tend to think it’s rather Ghost like, but perhaps it’s not. Still, my intuition is that this part of us is supernatural (as the Father is, as the Spirit is, and though incarnate, as the Son is). That we share in an Otherness that does not cooperate too kindly with microscopes and spectrometers.
*cross posted comment*
A paraphrase of something that I wrote in my posts about Kenneth Miller’s views:
* * * * *
If sin and free will are matters for the body, then being a Christian is a waste of time, as the soul is nothing but myth, and there’s nothing Christ needed to save us from.
If sin and free will are matters for the soul, but the soul develops naturalistically, then the burden of proof is on the Naturalist to prove that the soul even exists, and how it comes to be. He will then have the difficult task of explaining how it is this naturalistic soul can even be saved unto a supernatural paradise, or why this naturalistic soul even needs saving at all (as death would simply be the end, with no eternity to worry about).
Christians must believe in the supernatural (Christ being God, rising from the dead, ascending into heaven), and I would argue that not believing in the supernatural would pose an immovable barrier. How could the skeptic accept the very basics of the faith?
One cannot interface the supernatural in us with the natural in us – one cannot make sense of what the Scriptures say about us – unless we concede that some of what makes us human is inscrutable by science; I firmly agree with Gould’s Nonoverlapping Magisteria.
In some ways this discussion ignores the real issue. The real issue is not whether one can account for the soul scientifically, nor is it whether or not there is or could be an empirically adequate account of human consciousness. The real issue here is whether one can determine the issue apart from empirical evidence.
Can we point to some feature (such as intentionality) and claim (using philosophical reasoning alone) that it cannot be a mere mechanism? I believe that we can. Dan’s comments entail that we cannot. Dan’s writing assumes that this dispute was settled in his favor. Perhaps he would be willing to provide the evidence?
I have done no such thing, I’ve made very clear that there is much that we do not know about the mind. How you could interpret this as the same as saying that the mattered is settle in “my” favour is frankly baffling.
I will explain what I mean then. You point out that there is currently no biological explanation of consciousness. You also point out that much of the brain is not currently understood. So far, we are in agreement. You then suggest that there is no reason to suppose that there is not a fully biological explanation of consciousness. That is where we disagree. There is “no reason” only if we have already excluded the claims of philosophy. That is the dispute that you are assuming is settled in your favor.
The evidence I am looking for is evidence that mere philosophical reasoning alone cannot provide us with a reason to believe that the mind is not based on mere biology. You need that evidence in order to make the claim that there is “no reason” to believe that future biology might be able to fully explain consciousness. So where is the evidence?
So more precisely, I’ve not ruled out any type of explanation but you’ve ruled out a purely biological one.
That might sound nice, but that isn’t what I am claiming. I am claiming that philosophical evidence can rule against purely biological explanations. You require that it cannot. At this point, neither one of us has ruled out any kind of explanation.
I have not ruled out any kind of evidence, but you have ruled out philosophical evidence.
Where have I done such a thing? Here are what seem to be the pertinent sections of the original post:
Narrower, I didn’t pretend to close them, I have no idea what the limit of our understanding is.
This is about the mentality that many have that we are approaching the outer limits of our understanding.
I don’t see how any of this means that I’m dismissing philosophical evidence of any sort.
Good discussion.
What’s interesting to me is that these “gaps” are our invention. 700, there were no gaps — not in quite the same way that there are gaps today. What’s even more interesting, is that our gaps are not necessarily shrinking. We are filling some in, but new ones are appearing all the time, and much wider ones – in fact, the kinds of physics used to explain what happens at the smallest and largest sizes often seem quite religious as humans try to fill in these gaps.
If we’re using naturalistic faculties and criteria, we’ll only ever get naturalistic answers. I’m not sure how we could ever assert, no matter how much knowledge we’ve acquired, that anything could have a completely naturalistic explanation.
For example, let’s say we manage to unravel consciousness, explain it, and even synthesize it. We still cannot rule out something supernatural behind humanconsciousness. We cannot disprove that there maybe an Intender from which the Will proceeds.
Any disproof would have to be philosophical.
This is what I was getting at initially. I believe we can deduce, philosophically, that human intention is completely aberrant against the backdrop of the rest of the universe, and it seems quite likely that human intention is distinct from it. This is is not a proof, simply an idea that is worth throwing around.
“Narrower, I didn’t pretend to close them, I have no idea what the limit of our understanding is.”
The problem is that this equates our understanding with our scientific understanding. Our scientific knowledge of the brain is all that you referred to when pointing out “gaps”. The idea that these might not be gaps because our philosophical knowledge might fill them out was not even considered.
“I don’t see how any of this means that I’m dismissing philosophical evidence of any sort.”
There are philosophical arguments to the effect that intentionality cannot arise from mere matter in any form. If you are not dismissing these arguments, then there may be evidence right now that a purely biological explanation is impossible.
There have been lots of arguments and evidence (your words) supporting hypotheses that later failed, so accepting that these arguments exist and may prevail does not mean that I exclude the possibility that other arguments exist and that they may prevail. It may also be the case that some other arguments/evidence yet to be formulated/discovered may prevail too.
True. However I am speaking of something more than the mere epistemic possibility that Cartesian dualism (or another kind of dualism) may be true. I am also claiming that we have no reason to:
1) Give priority to scientific knowledge when determining when gaps are in our knowledge
2) Give lesser weight to impossibility proofs than to the possibilities denied by them
If one were to accept my claims, then one cannot merely point to the ignorance of neuroscience. One would also have to claim that we have better reason to believe a merely biological explanation of consciousness than a dualist one.
Matthew,
Could you provide a more expanded view of this argument (or a link to the same)?
Science in contingent. We we appeal to its superordinate to:
- form parameters that actually define what makes for valid science
- form arguments in the absence of science
- form arguments where science is not applicable
I don’t think it’s very difficult to prove this is the case. I think it’s fairly obvious that science is not the last stop on the epistemic train.
Ben,
I think I know what you are saying. I am going to restate it and then you can tell me if it is right. We need philosophy to tell us what good science is and form arguments in those cases that science cannot/does not give the answer.
I would also add that philosophy tells us what questions are within the domain of science.
Dan,
Which argument are you looking for? My impossibility proof for dualism or my proof for 1) and 2)?
The whole shebang if it’s not to much trouble.
Matt, yes! That and more. For example, “science” as a discipline (not the objects of study, as they are) is also contingent on sensation. Is contingent on certain kinds of causality. Is contingent on existence. Philosophy is not contingent on these things (and if so, at least not in the same way).
You said it well, philosophy tells us what good science even is. We cannot have science without, first having philosophy. That means then, science being contingent, it is secondary to philosophy. Dependent on it.
This is possibly is a component of what you arguing.
For example, before something is created, there must be a creator. There is a certain sequence that prevents the derivative from being superior to or separate from the source. For science to be science, it must lean on philosophy, and in doing so, is contingent on it. This relationship cannot be loosed, or science would cease to be science.
And yes, philosophy tells us what a scientifically valid question even is. This implies two things, simultaneously:
1) some questions are invisible to science
2) questions that are invisible to science are visible to philosophy