I’ve been talking on the other thread about spirituality and psychological correlations in the other thread The transcendent: Is it all in our heads? I still intend to investigate questions with you all there, but I want to hone in a bit more on some growing concerns I have with the way I’ve begun to think about my own mind.
Due to my interest (perhaps a better word is obsession) with the aforementioned topic, I’ve sensed my beliefs shifting from embracing a separate substance called a “soul” to being more convinced of our concept of self and consciousness being produced by the brain… at the very least, I am unsure what to think about our possession of “spirit”. This is very saddening to me, as I said in the other thread, I’m having a hard time grasping how a spiritual God can have a relationship with something physical, and how I can perceive him if I am physical in my entirety. He may communicate by inducing psychosis through our practices and everyday life, but then I’m not sure how to interpret that or how to view it as anything more than mere “psychosis”.
I’ve become very hyper-aware of my own thought processes in all of this. I notice when thoughts come into my head without my conscious prompting, which makes me wonder if all of my thoughts are just products of a subconscious that I am unaware of. I notice myself reducing every idea and feeling to neural networks and firings. In notice when my beliefs start to shift despite my desire to have control over them. I notice how poorly I remember things, and how helpless I am to do anything about the things I cannot recall. I really have begun to just feel like squishy, slimy machine—a brain.
It would be cool if Biologos would produce more resources on CSR and the mind-body-soul conversations, though their primary topics of interest are also important. But given the very robust and understandable explanations of secular science to reduce religious experience down to epiphenomena of culture and mental evolution, I am sure many religion-curious minds find that to be as much a sticking point as the way we should approach Genesis (maybe I’m of a minority here, but I found the ability to change my opinion on that fairly easy once good reasons were provided).
Anyway, for those here who embrace non-reductive physicalism (or dual-aspect monism, etc.), how do you keep physicalism from stripping your confidence in your sense of reality and ability to connect with God? And for those that are not physicalists, what keeps you from dismissing a spiritual attribute of humans (or living things)? Viewing ones’ self as an advanced biological computer can be demoralizing, if you haven’t been there before
When you say “physicalism,” what do you specifically mean by it?
Do you mean simply that human consciousness is deeply dependent on the brain and embodied life, or do you mean something stronger—that human thoughts, experiences, morality, spirituality, and sense of self are nothing but physical processes?
I ask because people use the term in very different ways, and I suspect some of the emotional weight you’re describing may attach more to reductionism (“nothing but matter”) than to embodiment itself.
E.g.
some physicalists are reductive (“mind = brain activity”)
some are non-reductive (“mental states are real but fully embodied”)
some are emergentists (“consciousness genuinely emerges from physical systems”)
some Christians are physicalists while still affirming soul-language, resurrection, divine action, meaning, and personhood.
P.S. The Shema shows that Jesus and his fellow Jews used a biblical vocabulary in which “soul” was a normal way of speaking about the whole living person before God. That does not by itself require a later Platonic doctrine of the soul, but it does mean that “soul” language cannot simply be dismissed as foreign to Jesus’ world. At death, however, the language shifts. Jesus commends his “spirit” to the Father, and Stephen asks the risen Jesus to receive his “spirit.” So, whatever precise metaphysics we assign to “soul” and “spirit,” the New Testament appears to preserve both embodied human life and personal continuity beyond bodily death.
I handle physicalism easily. In my mind it is self-defeating. It is also woefully inadequate at accounting for the most important things in life. It does well with mathematical abstractions and provides a framework or skeleton view of things. It provides no value, oughts or meaning to life. In fact, if physicalism were true, there is no real reason to discuss it. Or not discuss it.
Well I consider this nonsense. Pixels on a screen only have meaning because an external mind gives that to them. Calling the brain a computer (or rather human consciousness a computer which is what I think you meant) is completely backwards and philosophically inept. The intellect and concepts like triangularity cannot be reduce to purely material processes.
Mindless atoms and brute force fields can never lead to value and meaning on their own. No matter how many bricks you stack in a circle, they will never just become a sphere.
I’m sad that you continue to wrestle with this issue. But looking at this logically, can you not see that what you say here is by definition self refuting? If it really is the case that all my thoughts are only neurons firing, then that thought is also meaningless because it is no more than neurons firing.
The key word in your quote above is “just”. Your thoughts about God are just neurons firing. My view is that of course my thoughts about God can be explained at one level as activities of the brain, because that’s where all my thoughts take place. But to say an explanation at one level proves there are no other levels is irrational.
Let’s imagine I am looking at a pretty flower. My perception of the flower can be explained at one level in terms of light rays, optic nerves and so on. But it’s nonsense to argue from that explanation that the flower doesn’t exist. In the same way, if I find pleasure in looking at the flower, an explanation of how my brain processes pleasurable feelings doesn’t rule out the possibility that I really did find pleasure in that moment. It’s not one or the other.
And finally, if the thought pops into my mind that “Aren’t I clever, making a world in which you can enjoy looking at beautiful flowers”, well the fact that this can be explained at one level by neurons firing doesn’t prove anything. At a different level it can still be God speaking.
The latter is the one that I find concerning, if that’s what you’re asking.
I have a difficult time differentiating these positions. If consciousness emerges from physical systems, or if mental states are fully embodied, don’t those also mean “mind = brain activity? Or does “mind = brain activity” break the dividing line that distinguishes mental states and consciousness from the brain?
The New Testament may do that, but my concern is the scientific evidence. A holy book can say anything, but one would become skeptical of the truth of a passage if it doesn’t align with the observable world (A famous example around these parts: Genesis 1-2). Would there be anything about us that would even require a spirit? I know that it’s flawed to say “Science will explain everything we don’t know yet eventually,” but it does seem that ground keeps getting taken from dualists when it comes to the soul.
I see your point there. My life does mean something to me, and I’m under the impression it means something to my loved ones. Things mean something to me. Still, one could say that this is somehow a biological illusion we have used to help us survive and connect.
But maybe that’s a pointless rebuttal. Arguments and counter-arguments could be made over and over until we die. I am currently persuaded of that idea, “If our ‘selves’ are just an illusion, nothing ‘we’ talk about or believe seems to matter.” That’s most likely why I care so much about this!
Correct, which is why the concept is so troubling. It reduces even the anxieties and the thoughts I have about thoughts to nothing, which makes the world seem like an impersonal, indifferent place a the foundations. Of course, a lifestyle with such presuppositions is near unlivable, so we’re better off living with the idea that meaning has substance and transcends our physical mechanisms. But it would be hard to see past the idea that it’s all still a lie we tell ourselves.
Part of where I struggle to fully embrace more levels essentially has to do with Occam’s razor. Are other levels needed? I know we can’t disprove other levels, but what need do we have for assuming another level(s)?
So others may disagree but for me this is plain evidence that physicalism is at odds with my experiences. I believe humans have value and meaning, I believe there is right and wrong, evil and good. I believe Hitler did very bad things and Mother Theresa did very good things. I’m not even inclined to justify them. These are tautological axioms to me. People who think otherwise are fractured. People who act otherwise are really broken.
I always say to doubt your doubts. If your physicalism has you doubting whether or not your children have real or illusionary value, throw it in the trash where it belongs. Don’t be an intellectual slave to a worldview because it seemingly requires you to prove your children have value using empirical means which is impossible to do. It’s asking you to find bones in the sand with a metal detector.
What reason is there to assume Occam’s razor or parsimony is true other than we can’t figure things out without it? We also can’t live without value and meaning either. So take them to be as certain as Occam’s razor if needed.
I think what Vinnie is saying makes a lot of sense.
Let’s ride the train of physicalism to the end of the line and see where it takes us (as an aside, I’m not certain if you’re a reductive or non-reductive physicalist. I think non-reductive physicalism is an unstable position, but that’s a somewhat different topic).
One aspect of a consistent physicalism is the denial of the intentionality or “aboutness” of thoughts. For example, when I think of the Eiffel Tower, the electrical signals in my brain do not physically resemble it. There’s no tiny screen in my head displaying an image. So where is it? Naturalists like Alex Rosenberg argue that physics can provide no “aboutness” and so intentionality simply doesn’t exist. We think our thoughts are about things, but that must be rejected.
Now, I think that position is so completely self-undermining that it falls apart at this stage. If you need to deny the very thoughts that are establishing your belief in a worldview, then I simply don’t see how such a worldview can even get off the ground.
But let’s keep going. At this point our thoughts aren’t about anything. They are just electrical transmissions going about the routine actions described by physics. We could ask why they continue to display regularity (after all, there’s nothing controlling them in this worldview) but let’s stick with the mental aspects of the situation. Does “reason” exist for us to use to determine the truth? No, physics and reason are two different things, and in this world it’s physics all the way down. We may think we’re having rational thoughts about things, but physicalism denies that is possible. All we have are electrical signals and illusions (although if reason and intentionality are illusions, how did we establish we have neuroelectric transmissions to begin with?).
So, at this point we have no intentional thoughts and no rationality. Can we establish that physicalism (or anything else) is true? I don’t see how – at least in the correspondence understanding of truth.
I think you have two choices. You can acknowledge God as the Lord of all knowledge, truth and reality, or you go with chaos and old night. There’s not a third option.
That doesn’t mean our thoughts aren’t things, and doesn’t mean our thoughts aren’t about things.
An electrical transmission is a physical thing. The Eiffel tower is a physical thing. So an electrical transmission that encodes an image of the Eiffel tower is a thing about a thing.
What does “encode an image” mean in the context of mental images within the nervous system? What “decodes” the signal and displays the image?
Saying “Electrical transmissions are physical things. The Eiffel tower is a physical thing. Therefore, physicalism does not deny the intentionality of thoughts” isn’t a valid argument.
