mikereflects.com
Mind-Body Harmony in Neutral Theism
Synopsis: After introducing the notion of a mind-body problem and presenting the possibility of mind-body harmony, I seek to summarise some aspects of the philosophical mind-body problems and a few of the attempted solutions. I then move on to consider how what I call neutral theistic monism is compatible with a ‘functionalist’ approach and has the potential to explain mind body harmony before drawing my own conclusions.
1 Introduction
The mind presents a problem to all who try to assimilate the rational for its existence and nature into their philosophical paradigms. Materialists (including most Atheists) and philosophically dualist believers in God (including most Christians) can’t satisfactorily explain how the mind fits their paradigms. There is however a philosophical paradigm of existence (the Theistic monist paradigm) which explains how the human mind and brain can co-exist in harmony. This discussion has bearing on philosophical questions ranging from whether it might ever be possible for a machine to possess a mind, to whether it is possible for there to be life for the human mind after death.
I will first consider our understanding of ‘consciousness’ and human ‘intentionality.’ An important question to any paradigm for the existence of mind is where does my consciousness of ‘myself’ and my ‘aboutness’ actually reside? In his book, neuro-psychologist Paul Broks (1) indicates that it is too simple to say ‘it resides in my brain’, because self-consciousness does not appear to be located in any particular part of the brain. Nor does it depend on the whole brain since people can be just as conscious of themselves as a single unity with only part of their brain functional (Broks, ibid, part 2).
Neurosurgeons have mapped all the highly intricate complexities of the human brain, but in reality all they ever find is live brain meat, i.e., intricate arrangements of neurons firing in response to various stimuli. There is nothing in this firing neuron machinery that in itself has the potential of intentionality, i.e., being about anything other than apparently supporting our conscious experience and yet it appears that you can’t have a living mind without its human brain.
Yes the brain is a complex tool, but in my perspective a tool without an operator does not respond purposefully of its own accord to anything. Philosopher John Searle argues that a computer can’t possess self-conscious experience (and never will! - Ref. Appendix 1 for further thoughts on this): however the conscious human mind is always about something, e.g. we fear we might be killed if we don’t shift out of the way of a moving car, or we choose a particular career, or we mix with others to discuss philosophy because we enjoy doing so, or we write poems or play golf or write computer programs for recreation. In all these mental states of consciousness we ourselves are always about something (our minds have semantics), whereas our brains are only ever providing the substrate and machinery for our consciousness to act on.
Our conscious minds can’t be equated with programs, and and our non-primitive brains can’t be equated with computers. If our brains have evolved from inanimate Materialist matter as Science leads us to believe by purely blind processes relating to survival, then we might expect all brain processes to function without self-awareness and not to have independent purpose even if they appear to have. However it is evident from human society at least that our intentionality is neither random nor blind, we interact with each other in purposeful and meaningful ways which we are all aware of as fact – these social interactions are not illusions of organisation – they are provably real non-Material relationships!
Our empirical experience tells us that our consciousness normally moves around with our body. Despite the fact that we may have rare out-of-body experiences, nevertheless we do return to our bodies in order to be able to report such experiences! So we may reasonably conclude that consciousness does depend on the presence of our physical brain as far as we can tell, but as neurologist Paul Broks states it ‘may not be the case that the brain is sufficient cause for the existence of consciousness’ (ibid, p95).
There are many unanswered questions relating to consciousness, for example consider the brain coma; where does consciousness depart to and sometimes for years before returning suddenly and usually without regard to external stimuli? Or in other comatose people the brain may at some point permanently switch off and die, but again without external stimulus. It could be that the brain is not the only determinant of consciousness. Could it be that each self-conscious individual exists and needs a body to exist, but that this body is not sufficient in itself for that individual to exist? We come back to two questions, ‘what is material existence?’ and ‘what is self conscious experience?’ Or perhaps more pertinently, ‘Is material existence sufficient in itself?’
Materialists (by whom I mean those philosophical monists who believe that all existence reduces to a ‘material’ entity and no more) by definition will claim that material existence is sufficient in itself. Hence Materialists must ultimately claim that the mind is nothing more than the brain, by which they will not necessarily mean the mind is identical to the brain, but that the mind totally comprises some sort of brain energy function, i.e. it is a material entity.
Paul Broks is a Materialist, he states, ‘I am a materialist, I believe the world and everything in it is made of physical stuff’ and, ‘whatever the origins of the universe, we are the natural product of its material evolution’ (ibid, p143). However in this statement of his Materialist paradigm, the words, ‘whatever the origins of the universe’ betray a lack of logic, since if the origins of the universe turned out to be other than what the Materialist paradigm claims, if they are of a non-material God for example, then we would not be merely the ‘product of its material evolution.’ Materialists might also argue that there is no evidence to support the proposition that material existence is insufficient in itself. But this would be a circular argument, since by the Materialist paradigm all evidence is of necessity material: thus the proposition that the ‘material existence may not be sufficient in itself’, is not a question the Materialist paradigm can address!
In this essay I will argue that material existence is not sufficient in itself and that for this reason alone our brains are not sufficient cause for our consciousness to exist, which is what Broks hints may be the case based on his research. I am coming from a neutral monist position, but with a theistic paradigm and my evidence as such will not be limited to material evidence, since I hold a very different paradigm to the Materialist. But first I will address the ‘limitations of science’ and the ‘traditional mind body’ philosophical problems.
2 The Limitations of Science
Science is not the prerogative of Materialists, indeed the scientific method was pioneered by men who firmly held to the theistic paradigm. Before getting into the meat of this paper, I first wish to challenge any who believe the physical Sciences to be the all encompassing tools by which the truth of everything will one day be known.
Paul Broks is a thorough going ‘materialist’ neurologist (refer ibid, p143), yet he defends the reality of the limitations of science, for example, he states:-
‘Consciousness poses a forbidding challenge to science. What makes science strong as a means of understanding the outer, material world – objective, third-person observation - is precisely what makes it ineffectual when it comes to understanding the “inner world” of consciousness.’ (ibid, p139).
‘Phenomenal consciousness is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so.’ The feel of our private experience is by definition subjective – ‘whereas science by definition adopts an objective stance. You can’t be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness from the inside’, or you view ‘various configurations of neural activity and patterns of behaviour’ from the outside. (ibid, p140)
‘Robert Frost said that “Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.” Likewise, consciousness is lost in translating from first-person experience to third person description of brain states.’ (ibid, p141)
Science is inherently incapable of dealing with private-ness, and ‘private-ness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness.’(ibid, p140); therefore science is limited, unable to address the whole of human conscious experience. Further it can’t address our social interaction which is generally what is most relevant and meaningful in life to each of us.
Another limitation of science, relates to its inherent inability to begin to address any understanding of metaphysics, and questions such as, ‘is there a God who upholds the material universe?’ are quite outside the remit and scope of the scientific method and enquiry!
Science has undoubtedly improved the lives and/or prospects of humanity, however that these areas of our conscious enquiry (human consciousness, social interaction and metaphysics) are unable to be addressed by the scientific method, should set our minds to firmly against making ‘science’ into a new ‘god,’ and determine our acceptance that science will never be able to find the answers to everything.
So for the above reasons, I hold that the question I have raised in my introduction, viz., ‘Is material existence sufficient in itself?’ is not a question that ‘science’ is capable of addressing. We need to find philosophical and means other than ‘science’ to address this question even though the question impinges on the material!
3 The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Philosophical Mind-body problems
Plato and Aristotle both held that the intellectual mind must be eternal and of a totally different nature to the body because mind can’t be spatially subdivided in the way that all material bodies can be (this insight is supported to some extent by modern science). Descartes, who is generally recognised as the father of modern day of reasoning, skilfully proved the certainty of the existence of mind and in his Meditation 6 sought to then prove the existence of God and the material universe and to explain the relationship of mind to body. Descartes held to the paradigm (also held by Plato and Aristotle) that God exists and is eternal and is the author and completer of the material universe. Descartes believed in what is called ‘Two-Substance Dualism’, by which he meant that God and our minds are entities that are of one kind of essence and that this essence is radically different to the essence from which the entities of our bodies and of the material universe are derived.
I shall assume that we do not here need to prove the material existence of our bodies, nor the more certain proof of the existence of our minds and so I will just remind us of what I call the ‘old’ mind-body problem advanced by Descartes’ critics, viz., that, ‘If the mind is a different substance to the brain each emanating from totally different essences, how is that they can interact?’
More recently philosophers holding a Materialist world view such as Sydney Shoemaker, have seen the mind-body problem less as a two substance Dualist problem, but more as a Materialist problem, viz., ‘If we are to understand our brains and bodies have evolved from the purely material universe, how can our consciousness and the intentionality of our minds and the subjectivity and the qualia we experience all be explained by the Materialist paradigm?’ In the Materialist paradigm, the ‘material’ world totally reduces to ‘energy’, ‘forces’ and ‘space’. However our conscious human minds are characterised by human ‘experience’, ‘purpose’ and ‘choice’. In strict Materialist terms, ‘energy’, ‘forces’ and ‘space’ can’t have the properties of human ‘experience’, ‘purpose’ and ‘choice’, so I argue that the Materialist paradigm is wrong and that our brains are not sufficient cause for our minds, since our brains derive from purely biological (material) processes.
Functionalism is a more recent attempt to get round this modern Materialist casting of the Mind-body problem by categorising the mental states in terms of their function (what do they do that makes them ‘mental states’ rather than ‘physical states’), however this philosophy has a very long way to go to even begin to rationally explain how the subjective aspects of our minds exist. For example we are usually fully aware of our own thoughts and beliefs, but we don’t experience them as functional processes. As Broks points out, we can’t even directly observe such mental states in other people’s minds; the most a neurologist can see in a live brain is the physical substrate of patterns of brain neurons firing or the release of associated chemical communicators.
Though holding to the Materialist paradigm, Shoemaker nevertheless concludes from his research that the mind can’t just be reduced to the brain states per se, i.e., mental phenomena can’t be described in purely physical terms (Robert Wilkinson, 2007), p66. It may be that somehow the mind we experience rides on a number of brain functions, but can’t be scientifically related to any particular physical process; nevertheless, the mind we experience does require the physical brain processes.
But the most serious objection for the Materialist paradigm is the problem of mental intentionality or ‘about-ness’ viz., our mental activity is always about something, but this aboutness can’t be explained in purely Materialist terms because physical matter does not have the capacity to be about anything – it can’t by any Materialist definition have inherent purpose!
The Functionalist approach is the most favoured by Materialists even though as yet it does not provide any certain explanation as to how our minds can be explained in purely physical terms. However it is widely acknowledged (Wilkinson, p57) that this approach would also be compatible with any Monist paradigm, i.e., even to radically non-Materialist views of existence such as Ideal monism (whose paradigm is that all existence both material and mental is reducible to mind). For this reason I will return to consider the Functionalist approach later in this paper. There is still much debate about the mind-body problem today, but chiefly in respect of the Materialist paradigm. However I will leave this brief overview of old and new mind-body problems here and move on to consider possible non-Materialist monist solutions.
4 Non-Materialist Monism
As indicated in my introduction I hold to what amounts to a Neutral Theistic Monist explanation of the mind and body. Hence I would assert that Cartesian Dualism is flawed and that Material Monism is also flawed and each for the reasons I have briefly sought to outline above under ‘the philosophical old and new mind-body problems’ heading. Also under that heading I indicated that Functionalism would be compatible with other Monist philosophical positions. So I will now outline these other Monist paradigms before explaining further what I mean by Neutral Theistic Monism. A monist philosophy states that all existence comprises only one sort of essence, whatever that is: be it material, mental or spiritual all that we experience and all that the universe consists of comes from a single essence.
Berkeley was the pioneer of what is labelled ‘ideal monism’, or Idealism. He saw the mind and brain as distinct, but held that all existence ultimately reduces to the realm of universal mind. However this is tantamount to saying that the brain reduces to universal mind, which is the exact opposite to the Materialist position. Materialists claim that the mind is totally reducible to the brain and the material universe and not vice versa. The logical problem here is that in themselves both these opposing monist positions hold equal weight and both statements can’t be true, unless neither brain nor mind really exist!
So what is meant by Neutral Monism? This term was coined to represent the philosophical position espoused for example by Spinoza who stated there is only one sort of essence, but that what we take as material is not just physical. Spinoza believed that God and the universe is the same and that all matter has at least two aspects, i.e., a non-perishable spiritual or design aspect and a perishable material aspect. The single fundamental ‘essence’ has many modes, the ‘physical’ and ‘design’ and ‘mental/ spiritual’ modes being two we associate with creation. Hence to Spinoza there was no mind-body problem! Mind and body are two modes of the same essence and each mode is therefore compatible with and can interact with all other modes. A rudimentary illustration of this might be the steady state existing between liquid water, solid ice and water vapour. The essence of each mode is the same and each mode can interact with each other mode and can change from one to another (as happens with H2O determined by temperature). Spinoza held that God is the essence of the universe and his view of God was pantheistic (God is to be equated with the universe) and subject to determinism rather than being deterministic, hence his followers were often equated with atheists (Wikipedia, accessed July 2010).
5 Neutral Theistic Monism (Neutral Theism)
So what do I mean by Neutral Theistic Monism? By Neutral I mean neither being necessarily wholly physical (Material) nor being necessarily wholly non-physical (Spiritual). By Theistic I mean to claim that God is Pan-en-theistic (viz., God is both other than and the essence of matter) rather than merely Pantheistic (identified with the essence of matter). How does my explanation differ from the other non-material Monist explanations? And crucially, does my explanation still remove all the mind-body problems I have summarised in this essay? And does it address my introductory question, ‘Is the material existence sufficient in itself?’
My first premise is that, as far as science can tell us, the material existence we experience has generated itself from zero material existence. I also hold the philosophical premise that it is impossible for a totally self sufficient material entity to generate itself from a non-material existence. However we empirically find ourselves (at least partly if not wholly) in a material existence, therefore it stands to reason that a purely material existence can’t be self-sufficient! Therefore there must exist some other non-material entity or existence from which the material universe is derived. So what other explanation for our derived existence is reasonable?
Let me engage in a mind experiment and postulate the possibility that the material cosmos is merely a particular distinct expression of supra-cosmic essence or Mind and that our consciousness or ‘self,’ is at least partly also a distinct expression of that same non-cosmic essence or Mind. However this ‘essence’ possesses at least the qualities of purpose and aboutness that we ascribe to the biological minds of higher animals; for that reason I use the term Mind rather than essence. By supra-cosmic I mean non-temporal, viz., external as well as internal to the cosmos. An entity which is external can also be internal if what is internal is merely one aspect of the external, thus a true essence of all existence can be both non-temporal and temporal, since temporality can be merely an aspect of non-temporality.
Thus by the term ‘supra-cosmic Mind’ I mean mind existing non-temporally at the same time as temporally, and which has purpose, but is not dependant on any material existence, be it organic or inorganic. In this scenario, the material cosmos requires non-cosmic Mind to complement its sufficiency. However we know that cosmic matter has evolved to produce material bodies and brains capable of supporting our conscious minds or ‘selves’. Thus the cosmic expression of supra-cosmic Mind has produced our self and biological mind.
By this argument our material brains are not sufficient in themselves for our self to exist, since to exist we also require the existence of the supra-cosmic Mind. It also follows that our ‘self’ and biological mind are also cosmic expressions of the supra-cosmic Mind. Hence our ‘conscious mind’ or ‘self’ is also dependent on supra-cosmic Mind for existence, but may not be dependent in the same manner as our material brains are. So now suppose you have a brain disease and part of your ‘conscious mind’ is adversely affected (you can’t remember who you are, or can’t feel your emotions, or whatever), but your sense of self is undiminished despite your feeling of loss, confusion or whatever – you as a person are still there. Does this show that you are only temporal after all? Yes and No! Neutral Theism never denied you are temporal, but it claims your temporality is included in the non-temporality of existence, so yes you are affected by the diseases of and eventual the disintegration of the brain, but since to exist, your mind is not sufficient in itself but depends on both the temporality of the brain and the non-temporality of the supra-cosmic Mind, then neither can you as a self be totally temporal! I will explore this aspect later in the paper.
In this experiment the mind-body problem arising from the need for Cartesian Dualism to explain mind-body interaction is no longer a problem; and the Materialist mind-body problem of explaining ‘aboutness’ of mental states or of purpose in the minds of higher animals at least, is also no longer a problem. Both of the current insurmountable problems relating to these common paradigms drop away and they don’t drop away by denial of the existence of either the physical or the mental or for that matter the spiritual aspects of existence, since all are acknowledged as aspects of the same essence or Mind! Also it is worthy of note that a ‘functional’ analysis of brain states would be quite compatible with such a non-materialist paradigm, but not necessarily producing the whole picture. This philosophical non-materialist, but neutral monist paradigm I have labelled ‘Neutral Theism’ because it is described by a transcendent creative Mind (i.e., the traditional Unique transcendent God), but is a more comprehensive explanation that Spinoza’s deist concept.
I have argued that material existence in not sufficient in itself for existence by reason that it is impossible for a purely material existence to generate its own existence, and that the Neutral Theistic paradigm provides an adequate explanation as to how and why we exist in an apparently material existence and without recourse to a mind-body problem. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that material existence is not sufficient in itself, but is compatible with a Neutral Theist paradigm. If the essence of existence is ‘material’, then the brain comprises a complex material structure that supports the biological mind, but the existence of this mind is not satisfactorily explained in terms of its essence. If the essence of existence is non-material Mind, then the brain is a complex material structure that produces the biological mind which is explainable in terms of its essence. The non-material monist paradigm is therefore the simpler paradigm, and so I conclude that the non-material monist paradigm is true and the materialist paradigm false.
6 Mind-body Unity (Functionalism in Neutral Theism)
So how do mind and body relate in the Neutral Theistic paradigm I have just outlined? Well allow me to return to the Functional model. How might this work? I will start with the humble Venus Fly-trap. This plant is a carnivore, but we are told it possesses no brain. It has apparently evolved to trap and digest flies and other bugs in order to provide it with the nutrients it lacks in the soil. Its carefully constructed trap is triggered on the next strike of a fly on one of the plant’s hairs following a 20 second delay from the first strike. So the Venus possesses a timing mechanism and a plant muscle which it uses with lightening speed, and then releases the muscle once a meal is digested, but it still it has no brain. We say it has no brain because we can’t find a nervous system in the plant; but what is a nervous system if it is not a biological function by which internal communication occurs? So when a plant communicates internally by means of a chemical system and one that that builds in a time delay device as well as a muscle strike device, do we have the beginnings of a pseudo-brain? Perhaps so, but it is not ‘conscious’, it doesn’t have a mind.
Now consider a computer controlled car plant assembly. This is programmed to perform many sophisticated functions with delaying mechanisms, sensing devices, internal electronic communication systems, computer hardware and software, all of which might be described as totally physical in nature, but self-co-ordinated to achieve its task. However it doesn’t have a mind (and for the reasons discussed earlier), in that it is not aware of its own centre of being and thoughts nor can any man-made computer ever possess the self-consciousness and the free-will to choose to follow what-ever actions or non-actions it likes. Thus the higher biological brain is so constituted as to allow the independent function and choices of the self-conscious mind that it harbours. I understand that brains of lower vertebrates and parts of our brains that are incapable of harbouring such self-consciousness might be described as ‘primitive’ brains. Thus we possess a primitive and higher brain.
Our primitive brain controls functions such as our digestive system, our blood circulation system, our breathing system, our temperature control system, our flight mechanisms, etc. However empirically we are not able to be directly conscious of these systems even though we may be conscious of the consequences of their mal-function or failure. Other ‘higher’ function systems such as language, we are directly conscious of when we choose to be. According to Paul Broks, the domains of perception, memory, reason, emotion, language, motivation and action are all (broad) mind functions that to some degree can function independently of each other (ibid p.124). Some of these broad mind functions such as reason and language are very much more developed in humans than in any other living species, however I would argue that the seeds of all these ‘function domains’ exist in most if not all species.
By simple introspection we realise we are capable of consciously focusing on several function domains at once or of switching our consciousness from one function to another without any necessary loss of function. For example we can read a page of script out loud fully conscious of what we are doing, or we can read the same text just as well with our minds elsewhere! What is happening? We may have reason to be motivated to read, be emotionally and physically ready and so decide to read aloud, and we can do this even though we may perceive a lack of interest in ourselves to take notice of the content of what we are reading.
While reading aloud, we can have visual, reading, translation, speech, sound review, meaning and content review functions taking place, as well as various memory types (I suggest deep, instant, long & short) – this whole exercise can involve (either unconscious or conscious) visual recognition of word symbols and (conscious) meaning and review of words and then (conscious) understanding and review of content.
This reading out loud exercise also involves (unconscious or conscious) memory recall of the sounds of those words, which is a different function to recall of meaning because we can recall the sound of a word without having any memory input as to the meaning of the word. Next is involved our speech functions as we (unconsciously or consciously) recall the sound that we associate with each word, (unconsciously) engage our vocal mechanisms that make the sounds and before we engage a sound review function. As the words are pronounced our hearing review function is (unconsciously or consciously) checking that our instant memory of the sound matches our (unconscious) deep memory recall for that sound.
If we are consciously reading out loud and are not sure of the sound match or experience a conflict, we may then recall a long or short term memory of an external correction made to that sound. However we can unconsciously read the whole script perfectly and have no recall as to the content (i.e., meaning of) what we have read. In this case a mismatch in our (unconscious) sound review function can summon our consciousness back to what we are doing and we may be able to recall the mismatch before the instant memory of what we had read fades. However we will not recall any of the meaning or content of what we have just read aloud (unless we had short or long term memory of the content of the text stored from a previous reading).
This optimal use of our consciousness applies to any activity, but is more obvious when we undertake what may become less captivating to our immediate interests. So for example if we are enjoying talking to a passenger or thinking through a work problem while driving a car, we can drive for hundreds of miles without any consciousness of where we have been or where we are going or of the driving functions we have undertaken.
We have a choice of conscious focus when we are awake and we generally have a choice as to when we allow our conscious mind to go to sleep. When we are asleep our higher brain functions can still be working and resolving problems. Our more primitive brain functions will of course continue regardless of our state of consciousness, their genetic brief being the survival of the vital organs. However I think that in severe cases of shock, our primitive brain can shut down those organs. I also believe this ‘death’ can also be instigated by our unconscious higher brain functions and even in rare cases of fear or shock by our conscious choice.
In this discourse on what I have sub-titled ‘mind-body unity’ I have been considering the functional explanation of the mind and body. My claim is that none of this explanation is incompatible with a Neutral Theist paradigm, since my thesis is that consciousness, mind and body each have their interfaces both with each other and with the essence of everything.
So I would contend that at some time in our evolutionary past, the primitive brain (which was essentially about survival) evolved the possibility of consciousness and choice which initially provided a boost to survival. However under the Neutral Theism paradigm that evolutionary step took us one step further towards the creation of individual minds that are independent of the God-Mind by free choice that was gifted by the Supra-cosmic mind in the creation of the universe and as I will argue in the next section Supra-cosmic mind would have purpose and this might logically be the possibility of Mind-mind relationship.
7 Concept Difficulties with Neutral Theist Paradigm
There is an apparent difficulty with my mind experiment in that I may appear to have deliberately separated material existence from my so-called ‘ultra-cosmic Mind’ and yet I am claiming that the material is not sufficient without this Mind. However this separation is an artificial distinction I have introduced in order to develop the concept of Mind underpinning the material cosmos. I have argued that all the material cosmos is merely an expression of the One Mind, hence it follows that my so called ‘ultra-cosmic’ Mind is in fact very much cosmic as well as also being beyond cosmic! I might have used the expression ‘non-materially dependent Mind’, but that would have weakened the concept of all the material cosmos as described by science, being an expression of the One Mind.
A further difficulty for some could be my assumption in the above discourse that ultra-cosmic Mind can be equated to God, i.e., that this One Mind may be co-incident to the divine who comes by the name of God in English, Allah in Arabic, and/or by other names in other languages. Clearly each religion will want to claim that their concept of ‘god’ is much more than the concept/ entity I have argued as essentially existing and expressing/ underpinning the material cosmos we experience. However I think that no religion could argue that their ‘god’ does not fulfil such a role as I have postulated for the One Mind! And so I am happy to equate the One Mind I have been discussing with the Creator God.
If my thesis is correct and the material universe is an expression of what I have called the One Mind, and if our understanding of the material universe is correct that it has evolved from a zero material origin, it follows that the material universe (and our part in that), are a deliberate expression of the One Creator Mind (viz., Creator God). I can claim this because it is clear that the ‘expression’ of the universe we can observe and study is very much integrated and cohesive. That our most brilliant scientists are ever seeking to discover the single underlying universal law to the material universe, demonstrates their belief at least that our universe is so constituted. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the One Mind has deliberately purposed universal material existence.
Since it is reasonable to conclude that the material universe, and particularly the evolution of minds as we experience them, has a One Mind purpose, it follows that postulating what that purpose might be, is a much more pertinent and dynamic question than the scientific quest for the one universal law! However here science has left us, because it can’t follow further than its remit, which is the study of the material cosmos and no more! So at this point we must enter those philosophical and possibly religious realms which are beyond the scope and reach of ‘material’ evidence.
A further difficulty posed by some, may be that in my discourse so far I have not used or applied the words ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual’ to the Neutral Theist paradigm I have elaborated and since this will be very pertinent for some in relation to my use of the word ‘Theism’ and ‘God’, I will address the concept in the following section.
8 How does the ‘Spiritual’ fit the Neutral Theist Paradigm?
Since this Neutral Theist paradigm is theist (as opposed to Deist) where or how does the ‘spiritual’ element come into the picture? We are happy enough to think of body, mind and self-conscious identity, but do we also have a ‘spirit?’ You may be surprised when I answer that I don’t think our spirit is any separate entity to our mind and conscious self. I am a strong theist, but struggle with the traditional term spirit: the word derives from the Latin ‘spiritus’ which means ‘breath.’ So when the ancients spoke of the spirit of God or the spirit of a man or woman, they were saying the ‘breath of God’ or the breath of a man or a woman. By this term and depending on the context, they might have meant either the ‘life of’ (which is demonstrable in breathing), or the literal breath of a person. Applied to God, they just meant the ‘living life of God.’ So the theist considers God to be the self-aware consciousness of the essence all existence – of which the material universe is merely a partial expression or aspect. Thus biologically created selves are naturally capable of relating to this ultra-cosmic self-conscious Mind who we call God. This conscious or less than conscious communications of human self with the God Mind we call spiritual, but for humans is merely the proper functioning of our minds and self-consciousness.
Hence I claim that there is nothing mystical about spirituality – we are all naturally spiritual (if we are alive!) and this is expressed in our social interactions with other people and if we so choose, by our interaction with the God-Mind. Interaction or relationship with God is normally expressed in what is called prayer and this should be based on the presumption that since (by the Theist paradigm) our existence is purposed by God and we are derived from God and naturally possess the conscious ability to relate to the God-Mind, we may therefore develop a creaturely relationship where our status can be similar to a courtier friend of an emperor. In Christianity for example, what is being denoted in the description of the ‘Holy Spirit’ (as the third person of the Trinity of the One God, or similar confusing expression), may simply be understood as ‘the living God’, i.e., God’s attribute that may be discerned within a person or community in the present.’
I will not here stray further into the Christian concept of Trinity which is outside my current remit and which can admittedly be very confusing (and sometimes sound complicated when put by traditional Christians), however the point of my raising this terminology here is to show that the term, ‘God is Spirit’ (in most religions) and the term ‘God the Holy Spirit’ (in Christianity) are all compatible with the Neutral Theist paradigm, viz., that The essence of everything is the One Mind, or Creator God, who is both other than and the essence of everything material, mental and conscious. Human beings at least in their capacity to relate to God by their minds and consciousness can interface with God’s non-material modes even though by their free will they may not choose to do so, or have become estranged from the possibility.
A further possible objection to my analysis has been raised that relates to the notion that belief in God requires ‘faith’ and not reason, and that ‘faith’ may one day be shown to be related to a particular human gene that may be more prevalent in some than in others. My response to this is that reason can take us all the way to being convinced that a particular relationship (e.g. between a young man and a young lady he is attracted to, or vice versa) is possible, is desirable and is workable and in our best interest, however reason can go no further than persuade us to take action and start building that relationship. Faith in God is essentially, taking the action of building a relationship with God, and this requires no other genes than those we need to build a human relationship: reason can only take us as far as being reasonably convinced as to the possibility and desirability of such a relationship, but action (or faith) commences such a relationship.
9 Life after death?
How does Neutral Theism explain death and the possibility of life after death? I will endeavour to explain. Death is a normal cosmic process. Inanimate objects such as stars are birthed and eventually die. However animate bodies also are birthed (from pre-existing seeds) and eventually die. But what triggers that death? For a body with a nervous system, it might be unbearable pain (under which I would include neurological starvation and brain injury) that triggers death, or it might be severe shock that triggers death. Plants also can also die from starvation or from shock. Self-consciousness itself does not normally trigger death; however in rare human cases at least, extreme fear can trigger death in self-conscious beings (there are recorded cases where healthy brains and bodies have died as a result of acute fear). Since fear and self-consciousness are intimately related, it follows that self-consciousness may occasionally trigger physical death.
So what happens to the self-consciousness mind in my thought experiment when the body dies and disintegrates? As far as the cosmos is concerned the mind ‘dies’ (cosmically) with the brain. However it is reasonable to suppose that each ‘cosmic mind’ that departs from life is retained in the ultra-cosmic Mind, since besides the organic brain hardware, each mind was also dependent on the ultra-cosmic Mind (i.e. God) for its existence. I commenced with the postulation that all cosmic matter is but an expression of the ultra-cosmic Mind (i.e. is an expression of God) from which it would follow that previous cosmic minds now residing in the ultra-cosmic Mind may be capable of being regenerated from God into a new material or other creation (if this is God’s purpose), which neatly arrives at the conclusion that there can be ‘life after death!’
10 Conclusions
In this paper I have addressed the Mind-body genesis possibly hinted at by the neurologist Paul Broks in his statement ‘It may not be the case that the brain is sufficient cause for the existence of consciousness’ (ibid, p95) and I have shown that by adopting a non-Materialist paradigm (rather than the Materialist paradigm held by Paul), the traditional mind-body problems raised on the one hand by Cartesian dualism and on the other hand by the modern Materialist paradigm may be overcome by recourse to reason. Because the Neutral Theist paradigm explains our total experience in terms of its essence and this can’t be done under the Materialist paradigm, I have further concluded that Neutral Theism has strongest claim to truth and Materialism the weakest.
I have outlined the limitations of the scientific method and argued it is not competent to answer the kinds of question raised in this paper. I have shown how and why the Neutral Theist paradigm is compatible with the universe as we experience it and provides a reasonable basis for understanding the spiritual aspect of our minds and bodies that can’t be addressed by neuroscience alone.
I conclude that neither our brains nor the material universe are sufficient cause for the existence of our conscious experience, but both the material universe and our conscious experience are compatible with the Neutral Theist paradigm of the existence of the ultra-cosmic Mind (or traditional creator God).
Mikereflects 2010
References
Robert Wilkinson: Minds and Bodies, 2007, the Open University, Milton Keynes
Paul Broks: Into the Silent Land, 2003,
Appendix 1
Further thoughts on whether machines can ever replace minds. Can artificial intelligence can ever truly be called ‘mind’. In rebutting those who have postulated that artificial intelligence and robots may one day be developed with the same attributes, particularly of conscious thought, as human minds, John Searle author of works on the philosophy of language and on the philosophy of the mind used what has become known as the Chinese room argument. This argument is designed to rebut the claim that the human ‘mind is to the brain as the program is to the hardware’ (Wilkinson, p204). The claim is put by some Artificial Intelligence researchers (Churchland et al) who argue that computers can think by virtue of implementing a computer program and that in particular if a computer could be made such that an observer was not able to distinguish between the answers to questions given by the computer and those given by a human (the Turin test), then we would have a computer that can really think.
In his thought experiment Searle asks us to imagine that a non-Chinese speaker, who is ignorant of the meaning of Chinese characters, is put in a room with various baskets of slips of paper with Chinese characters inscribed on them. He is also given a rule book in English which tells him that when he is passed a set of characters by Chinese people outside the room, he is to match up the characters passed into the room with a corresponding set of Chinese characters from the basket as directed by the rule book and then to pass out these answers to the Chinese people outside. He acts in effect as a human computer, the rule book is the computer program and the people who wrote the book are the ‘programmers’. The baskets of symbols are the data base, the bunches of Chinese characters handed in are the questions and the bunches handed out are the answers. The rule book may be so well written that an observer could not tell the difference between the quality of answers given by the non-Chinese person computer in the room from those given by a native Chinese speaker. This experiment demonstrates that computers merely manipulate symbols according to program rules, whereas a Chinese speaker understands the meaning of the Chinese characters and does not simply understand Chinese on the basis of running a computer program. The same goes for all other cognitive processes.
Searle’s premises are that a computer program manipulates formal symbols according to rules, this is described as a ‘syntactic’ process and involves zero semantics, whereas the human mind has been shown to give meaning to input and so understands by means of a ‘semantic’ process (that are generally devoid of conscious syntax). Syntax is not sufficient for semantics, therefore programs are not sufficient for minds (Wilkinson, p202) and a running program does not equate to thinking (ibid p205).
This has little to do with the subject of this paper, and so I have not here given any flavour of the counter arguments to Searle, but only mention it to provide an introductory taster to one small aspect of the highly complex modern philosophical argument, otherwise labelled ‘the mind-body problem’
Where does my consciousness of ‘myself’ and my ‘aboutness’ actually reside? It is too simple to say ‘it resides in my brain’, because self-consciousness does not appear to be located in any particular part of the brain (ref. neuropsychologist Paul Broks’1), nor does it depend on the whole brain since people can be just as conscious of themselves as a single unity with only part of their brain functional (Broks, ibid, part 2). Neurosurgeons have mapped all the highly intricate complexities of the human brain but in reality all they ever find is live brain meat, i.e., intricate arrangements of neurons firing in response to various stimuli. There is nothing in this firing neuron machinery that in itself has the potential of intentionality, i.e., being about anything other than apparently supporting our conscious experience and yet it appears that you can’t have a living mind without its human brain.
1 Paul Broks, Into the Silent Land,2003, Atlantic Books
Yes the brain is a complex tool, but in my perspective a tool without an operator does not respond purposefully of its own accord to anything. Searle argues that a computer can’t possess self-conscious experience, but the conscious mind is always about something, e.g. we fear we might be killed if we don’t shift out of the way of a moving car, or we choose a particular career, or we mix with others to discuss philosophy because we enjoy doing so, or we write poems or play golf or write computer programs for recreation. In all these mental states of consciousness we ourselves are always about something (our minds have semantics), whereas our brains are only ever providing the substrate and machinery for our consciousness to act on. Thus our minds can’t be equated with programs, and nor can our brains be equated with computers.
If our brains have evolved from inanimate Materialist matter as Science leads us to believe by purely blind processes relating to survival, then we might expect all brain processes to function without self-awareness and not to have independent purpose even if they appear to have. However it is evident from human society at least that our intentionality is neither random nor blind, we interact with each other in purposeful and meaningful ways which we are all aware of as fact – these social interactions are not illusions of organisation – they are provably real non-Material relationships!
Our empirical experience tells us that our consciousness normally moves around with our body. Despite the fact that we may have rare out-of-body experiences, nevertheless we do return to our bodies in order to be able to report such experiences! So we may reasonably conclude that consciousness does depend on the presence of our physical brain as far as we can tell, but as neurologist Paul Broks states it ‘may not be the case that the brain is sufficient cause for the existence of consciousness’ (ibid, p95).
There are many unanswered questions relating to consciousness, for example consider the brain coma; where does consciousness depart to and sometimes for years before returning suddenly and usually without regard to external stimuli? Or in other comatose people the brain may at some point permanently switch off and die, but again without external stimulus. It could be that the brain is not the only determinant of consciousness. Could it be that each self-conscious individual exists and needs a body to exist, but that this body is not sufficient in itself for that individual to exist? We come back to two questions, ‘what is material existence?’ and ‘what is self conscious experience?’ Or perhaps more pertinently, ‘Is material existence sufficient in itself?’
Materialists (by whom I mean those philosophical monists who believe that all existence reduces to a ‘material’ entity and no more) by definition will claim that material existence is sufficient in itself. Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 3 of 12
Hence Materialists must ultimately claim that the mind is nothing more than the brain, by which they will not necessarily mean the mind is identical to the brain, but that the mind totally comprises some sort of brain energy function, i.e. it is a material entity.
Paul Broks is a Materialist, he states, ‘I am a materialist, I believe the world and everything in it is made of physical stuff’ and, ‘whatever the origins of the universe, we are the natural product of its material evolution’ (ibid, p143). However in this statement of his Materialist paradigm, the words, ‘whatever the origins of the universe’ betray a lack of logic, since if the origins of the universe turned out to be other than what the Materialist paradigm claims, if they are of a non-material God for example, then we would not be merely the ‘product of its material evolution.’ Materialists might also argue that there is no evidence to support the proposition that material existence is insufficient in itself. But this would be a circular argument, since by the Materialist paradigm all evidence is of necessity material: thus the proposition that the ‘material existence may not be sufficient in itself’, is not a question the Materialist paradigm can address!
In this essay I will argue that material existence is not sufficient in itself and that this explains how it is that that our brains are not sufficient cause for our consciousness to exist, which is what Broks hints may be the case based on his research. I am coming from a neutral monist position, but with a theistic paradigm and my evidence as such will not be limited to material evidence, since I hold a very different paradigm to the Materialist. But first I will address the ‘limitations of science’ and the ‘traditional mind body’ philosophical problems.
2 The Limitations of Science
Science is not the prerogative of Materialists, indeed the scientific method was pioneered by men who firmly held to the theistic paradigm. Before getting into the meat of this paper, I first wish to challenge any who believe the physical Sciences to be the all encompassing tools by which the truth of everything will one day be known. Paul Broks is a thorough going ‘materialist’ neurologist (refer ibid, p143), yet he defends the reality of the limitations of science, for example, he states:-
‘Consciousness poses a forbidding challenge to science. What makes science strong as a means of understanding the outer, material world – objective, third-person observation - is precisely what makes it ineffectual when it comes to understanding the “inner world” of consciousness.’ (ibid, p139)
‘Phenomenal consciousness is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so.’ The feel of our private experience is by definition subjective – ‘whereas science by definition adopts an objective stance. You can’t be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness from the inside’, or you view ‘various configurations of neural activity and patterns of behaviour’ from the outside. (ibid, p140)
‘Robert Frost said that “Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.” Likewise, consciousness is lost in translating from first-person experience to third person description of brain states.’ (ibid, p141)
Science is inherently incapable of dealing with privateness, and ‘privateness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness.’(ibid, p140); therefore science is limited, unable to address the whole of human conscious experience. Further it can’t address our social interaction which is generally what is most relevant and meaningful in life to each of us. Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 4 of 12
Another limitation of science, relates to its inherent inability to begin to address any understanding of metaphysics, and questions such as, ‘is there a God who upholds the material universe?’ are quite outside the remit and scope of the scientific method and enquiry!
Science has undoubtedly improved the lives and/or prospects of humanity, however that these areas of our conscious enquiry (human consciousness, social interaction and metaphysics) are unable to be addressed by the scientific method, should set our minds to firmly against making ‘science’ into a new ‘god,’ and determine our acceptance that science will never be able to find the answers to everything.
So for the above reasons, I hold that the question I have raised in my introduction, viz., ‘Is material existence sufficient in itself?’ is not a question that ‘science’ is capable of addressing. We need to find philosophical and means other than ‘science’ to address this question even though the question impinges on the material!
3 The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Philosophical Mind-body problems
Plato and Aristotle both held that the intellectual mind must be eternal and of a totally different nature to the body because mind can’t be spatially subdivided in the way that all material bodies can be (this insight is supported to some extent by modern science). Descartes, who is generally recognised as the father of modern day of reasoning, skilfully proved the certainty of the existence of mind and in his Meditation 6 sought to then prove the existence of God and the material universe and to explain the relationship of mind to body. Descartes held to the paradigm (also held by Plato and Aristotle) that God exists and is eternal and is the author and completer of the material universe. Descartes believed in what is called ‘Two-Substance Dualism’, by which he meant that God and our minds are entities that are of one kind of essence and that this essence is radically different to the essence from which the entities of our bodies and of the material universe are derived.
I shall assume that we do not here need to prove the material existence of our bodies, nor the more certain proof of the existence of our minds and so I will just remind us of what I call the ‘old’ mind-body problem advanced by Descartes’ critics, viz., that, ‘If the mind is a different substance to the brain each emanating from totally different essences, how is that they can interact?’
More recently philosophers holding a Materialist world view such as Sydney Shoemaker, have seen the mind-body problem less as a two substance Dualist problem, but more as a Materialist problem, viz., ‘If we are to understand our brains and bodies have evolved from the purely material universe, how can our consciousness and the intentionality of our minds and the subjectivity and the Qualia we experience all be explained by the Materialist paradigm?’ In the Materialist paradigm, the ‘material’ world totally reduces to ‘energy’, ‘forces’ and ‘space’. However our conscious human minds are characterised by human ‘experience’, ‘purpose’ and ‘choice’. In strict Materialist terms, ‘energy’, ‘forces’ and ‘space’ can’t have the properties of human ‘experience’, ‘purpose’ and ‘choice’, so I argue that the Materialist paradigm is wrong and that our brains are not sufficient cause for our minds, since our brains derive from purely biological (material) processes.
Functionalism is a more recent attempt to get round this modern Materialist casting of the Mind-body problem by categorising the mental states in terms of their function (what do they do that makes them ‘mental states’ rather than ‘physical states’), however this philosophy has a very long way to go to even begin to rationally explain how the subjective aspects of our minds exist. For example we are usually fully aware of our own thoughts and beliefs, but we don’t experience them Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 5 of 12
as functional processes. As Broks points out, we can’t even directly observe such mental states in other people’s minds; the most a neurologist can see in a live brain is the physical substrate of patterns of brain neurons firing or the release of associated chemical communicators.
Though holding to the Materialist paradigm, Shoemaker nevertheless concludes from his research that the mind can’t just be reduced to the brain states per se, i.e., mental phenomena can’t be described in purely physical terms (Robert Wilkinson, 2007), p66. It may be that somehow the mind we experience rides on a number of brain functions, but can’t be scientifically related to any particular physical process; nevertheless, the mind we experience does require the physical brain processes.
But the most serious objection for the Materialist paradigm is the problem of mental intentionality or ‘aboutness’ viz., our mental activity is always about something, but this aboutness can’t be explained in purely Materialist terms because physical matter does not have the capacity to be about anything – it can’t by any Materialist definition have inherent purpose!
The Functionalist approach is the most favoured by Materialists even though as yet it does not provide any certain explanation as to how our minds can be explained in purely physical terms. However it is widely acknowledged (Wilkinson, p57) that this approach would also be compatible with any Monist paradigm, i.e., even to radically non-Materialist views of existence such as Ideal monism (whose paradigm is that all existence both material and mental is reducible to mind). For this reason I will return to consider the Functionalist approach later in this paper. There is still much debate about the mind-body problem today, but chiefly in respect of the Materialist paradigm. However I will leave this brief overview of old and new mind-body problems here and move on to consider possible non-Materialist monist solutions.
4 Non-Materialist Monism
As indicated in my introduction I hold to what amounts to a Neutral Theistic Monist explanation of the mind and body. Hence I would assert that Cartesian Dualism is flawed and that Material Monism is also flawed and each for the reasons I have briefly sought to outline above under ‘the philosophical old and new mind-body problems’ heading. Also under that heading I indicated that Functionalism would be compatible with other Monist philosophical positions. So I will now outline these other Monist paradigms before explaining further what I mean by Neutral Theistic Monism. A monist philosophy states that all existence comprises only one sort of essence, whatever that is: be it material, mental or spiritual all that we experience and all that the universe consists of comes from a single essence.
Berkeley was the pioneer of what is labelled ‘ideal monism’, or Idealism. He saw the mind and brain as distinct, but held that all existence ultimately reduces to the realm of universal mind. However this is tantamount to saying that the brain reduces to universal mind, which is the exact opposite to the Materialist position. Materialists claim that the mind is totally reducible to the brain and the material universe and not vice versa. The logical problem here is that in themselves both these opposing monist positions hold equal weight and both statements can’t be true, unless neither brain nor mind really exist!
So what is meant by Neutral Monism? This term was coined to represent the philosophical position espoused for example by Spinoza who stated there is only one sort of essence, but that what we take as material is not just physical. Spinoza believed that God and the universe is the same and that Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 6 of 12
all matter has at least two aspects, i.e., a non-perishable spiritual or design aspect and a perishable material aspect. The single fundamental ‘essence’ has many modes, the ‘physical’ and ‘design’ and ‘mental/ spiritual’ modes being two we associate with creation. Hence to Spinoza there was no mind-body problem! Mind and body are two modes of the same essence and each mode is therefore compatible with and can interact with all other modes. A rudimentary illustration of this might be the steady state existing between liquid water, solid ice and water vapour. The essence of each mode is the same and each mode can interact with each other mode and can change from one to another (as happens with H2O determined by temperature). Spinoza held that God is the essence of the universe and his view of God was pantheistic (God is to be equated with the universe) and subject to determinism rather than being deterministic, hence his followers were often equated with atheists (Wikipedia, accessed July 2010).
5 Neutral Theistic Monism (Neutral Theism)
So what do I mean by Neutral Theistic Monism? By Neutral I mean neither being necessarily wholly physical (Material) nor being necessarily wholly non-physical (Spiritual). By Theistic I mean to claim that God is Pan-en-theistic (viz., God is both other than and the essence of matter) rather than merely Pantheistic (identified with the essence of matter). How does my explanation differ from the other non-material Monist explanations? And crucially, does my explanation still remove all the mind-body problems I have summarised in this essay? And does it address my introductory question, ‘Is the material existence sufficient in itself?’
My first premise is that, as far as science can tell us, the material existence we experience has generated itself from zero material existence. I also hold the philosophical premise that it is impossible for a totally self sufficient material entity to generate itself from a non-material existence. However we empirically find ourselves (at least partly if not wholly) in a material existence, therefore it stands to reason that a purely material existence can’t be self-sufficient! Therefore there must exist some other non-material entity or existence from which the material universe is derived. So what other explanation for our derived existence is reasonable?
Let me engage in a mind experiment and postulate the possibility that the material cosmos is merely a particular distinct expression of supra-cosmic essence or Mind and that our consciousness or ‘self,’ is at least partly also a distinct expression of that same non-cosmic essence or Mind. However this ‘essence’ possesses at least the qualities of purpose and aboutness that we ascribe to the biological minds of higher animals; for that reason I use the term Mind rather than essence. By supra-cosmic I mean non-temporal, viz., external as well as internal to the cosmos. An entity which is external can also be internal if what is internal is merely one aspect of the external, thus a true essence of all existence can be both non-temporal and temporal, since temporality can be merely an aspect of non-temporality.
Thus by the term ‘supra-cosmic Mind’ I mean mind existing non-temporally at the same time as temporally, and which has purpose, but is not dependant on any material existence, be it organic or inorganic. In this scenario, the material cosmos requires non-cosmic Mind to complement its sufficiency. However we know that cosmic matter has evolved to produce material bodies and brains capable of supporting our conscious minds or ‘selves’. Thus the cosmic expression of supra-cosmic Mind has produced our self and biological mind.
By this argument our material brains are not sufficient in themselves for our self to exist, since to exist we also require the existence of the supra-cosmic Mind. It also follows that our ‘self’ and Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 7 of 12
biological mind are also cosmic expressions of the supra-cosmic Mind. Hence our ‘conscious mind’ or ‘self’ is also dependent on supra-cosmic Mind for existence, but may not be dependent in the same manner as our material brains are. So now suppose you have a brain disease and part of your ‘conscious mind’ is adversely affected (you can’t remember who you are, or can’t feel your emotions, or whatever), but your sense of self is undiminished despite your feeling of loss, confusion or whatever – you as a person are still there. Does this show that you are only temporal after all? Yes and No! Neutral Theism never denied you are temporal, but it claims your temporality is included in the non-temporality of existence, so yes you are affected by the diseases of and eventual the disintegration of the brain, but since to exist, your mind is not sufficient in itself but depends on both the temporality of the brain and the non-temporality of the supra-cosmic Mind, then neither can you as a self be totally temporal! I will explore this aspect later in the paper.
In this experiment the mind-body problem arising from the need for Cartesian Dualism to explain mind-body interaction is no longer a problem; and the Materialist mind-body problem of explaining ‘aboutness’ of mental states or of purpose in the minds of higher animals at least, is also no longer a problem. Both of the current insurmountable problems relating to these common paradigms drop away and they don’t drop away by denial of the existence of either the physical or the mental or for that matter the spiritual aspects of existence, since all are acknowledged as aspects of the same essence or Mind! Also it is worthy of note that a ‘functional’ analysis of brain states would be quite compatible with such a non-materialist paradigm, but not necessarily producing the whole picture. This philosophical non-materialist, but neutral monist paradigm I have labelled ‘Neutral Theism’ because it is described by a transcendent creative Mind (i.e., the traditional Unique transcendent God), but is a more comprehensive explanation that Spinoza’s deist concept.
I have argued that material existence in not sufficient in itself for existence by reason that it is impossible for a purely material existence to generate its own existence, and that the Neutral Theistic paradigm provides an adequate explanation as to how and why we exist in an apparently material existence and without recourse to a mind-body problem. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that material existence is not sufficient in itself, but is compatible with a Neutral Theist paradigm. If the essence of existence is ‘material’, then the brain comprises a complex material structure that supports the biological mind, but the existence of this mind is not satisfactorily explained in terms of its essence. If the essence of existence is non-material Mind, then the brain is a complex material structure that produces the biological mind which is explainable in terms of its essence. The non-material monist paradigm is therefore the simpler paradigm, and so I conclude that the non-material monist paradigm is true and the materialist paradigm false.
6 Mind-body Unity (Functionalism in Neutral Theism)
So how do mind and body relate in the Neutral Theistic paradigm I have just outlined? Well allow me to return to the Functional model. How might this work? I will start with the humble Venus Fly-trap. This plant is a carnivore, but we are told it possesses no brain. It has apparently evolved to trap and digest flies and other bugs in order to provide it with the nutrients it lacks in the soil. Its carefully constructed trap is triggered on the next strike of a fly on one of the plant’s hairs following a 20 second delay from the first strike. So the Venus possesses a timing mechanism and a plant muscle which it uses with lightening speed, and then releases the muscle once a meal is digested, but it still it has no brain. We say it has no brain because we can’t find a nervous system in the plant; but what is a nervous system if it is not a biological function by which internal communication occurs? So when a plant communicates internally by means of a chemical system and one that that Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 8 of 12
builds in a time delay device as well as a muscle strike device, do we have the beginnings of a pseudo-brain? Perhaps so, but it is not ‘conscious’, it doesn’t have a mind.
Now consider a computer controlled car plant assembly. This is programmed to perform many sophisticated functions with delaying mechanisms, sensing devices, internal electronic communication systems, computer hardware and software, all of which might be described as totally physical in nature, but self-co-ordinated to achieve its task. However it doesn’t have a mind (and for the reasons discussed earlier), in that it is not aware of its own centre of being and thoughts nor can any man-made computer ever possess the self-consciousness and the free-will to choose to follow what-ever actions or non-actions it likes. Thus the higher biological brain is so constituted as to allow the independent function and choices of the self-conscious mind that it harbours. I understand that brains of lower vertebrates and parts of our brains that are incapable of harbouring such self-consciousness might be described as ‘primitive’ brains. Thus we possess a primitive and higher brain.
Our primitive brain controls functions such as our digestive system, our blood circulation system, our breathing system, our temperature control system, our flight mechanisms, etc. However empirically we are not able to be directly conscious of these systems even though we may be conscious of the consequences of their mal-function or failure. Other ‘higher’ function systems such as language, we are directly conscious of when we choose to be. According to Paul Broks, the domains of perception, memory, reason, emotion, language, motivation and action are all (broad) mind functions that to some degree can function independently of each other (ibid p.124). Some of these broad mind functions such as reason and language are very much more developed in humans than in any other living species, however I would argue that the seeds of all these ‘function domains’ exist in most if not all species.
By simple introspection we realise we are capable of consciously focusing on several function domains at once or of switching our consciousness from one function to another without any necessary loss of function. For example we can read a page of script out loud fully conscious of what we are doing, or we can read the same text just as well with our minds elsewhere! What is happening? We may have reason to be motivated to read, be emotionally and physically ready and so decide to read aloud, and we can do this even though we may perceive a lack of interest in ourselves to take notice of the content of what we are reading.
While reading aloud, we can have visual, reading, translation, speech, sound review, meaning and content review functions taking place, as well as various memory types (I suggest deep, instant, long & short) – this whole exercise can involve (either unconscious or conscious) visual recognition of word symbols and (conscious) meaning and review of words and then (conscious) understanding and review of content.
This reading out loud exercise also involves (unconscious or conscious) memory recall of the sounds of those words, which is a different function to recall of meaning because we can recall the sound of a word without having any memory input as to the meaning of the word. Next is involved our speech functions as we (unconsciously or consciously) recall the sound that we associate with each word, (unconsciously) engage our vocal mechanisms that make the sounds and before we engage a sound review function. As the words are pronounced our hearing review function is (unconsciously or consciously) checking that our instant memory of the sound matches our (unconscious) deep memory recall for that sound. Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 9 of 12
If we are consciously reading out loud and are not sure of the sound match or experience a conflict, we may then recall a long or short term memory of an external correction made to that sound. However we can unconsciously read the whole script perfectly and have no recall as to the content (i.e., meaning of) what we have read. In this case a mismatch in our (unconscious) sound review function can summon our consciousness back to what we are doing and we may be able to recall the mismatch before the instant memory of what we had read fades. However we will not recall any of the meaning or content of what we have just read aloud (unless we had short or long term memory of the content of the text stored from a previous reading).
This optimal use of our consciousness applies to any activity, but is more obvious when we undertake what may become less captivating to our immediate interests. So for example if we are enjoying talking to a passenger or thinking through a work problem while driving a car, we can drive for hundreds of miles without any consciousness of where we have been or where we are going or of the driving functions we have undertaken.
We have a choice of conscious focus when we are awake and we generally have a choice as to when we allow our conscious mind to go to sleep. When we are asleep our higher brain functions can still be working and resolving problems. Our more primitive brain functions will of course continue regardless of our state of consciousness, their genetic brief being the survival of the vital organs. However I think that in severe cases of shock, our primitive brain can shut down those organs. I also believe this ‘death’ can also be instigated by our unconscious higher brain functions and even in rare cases of fear or shock by our conscious choice.
In this discourse on what I have sub-titled ‘mind-body unity’ I have been considering the functional explanation of the mind and body. My claim is that none of this explanation is incompatible with a Neutral Theist paradigm, since my thesis is that consciousness, mind and body each have their interfaces both with each other and with the essence of everything.
So I would contend that at some time in our evolutionary past, the primitive brain (which was essentially about survival) evolved the possibility of consciousness and choice which initially provided a boost to survival. However under the Neutral Theism paradigm that evolutionary step took us one step further towards the creation of individual minds that are independent of the God-Mind by free choice that was gifted by the Supra-cosmic mind in the creation of the universe and as I will argue in the next section Supra-cosmic mind would have purpose and this might logically be the possibility of Mind-mind relationship.
7 Concept Difficulties with Neutral Theist Paradigm
There is an apparent difficulty with my mind experiment in that I may appear to have deliberately separated material existence from my so-called ‘ultra-cosmic Mind’ and yet I am claiming that the material is not sufficient without this Mind. However this separation is an artificial distinction I have introduced in order to develop the concept of Mind underpinning the material cosmos. I have argued that all the material cosmos is merely an expression of the One Mind, hence it follows that my so called ‘ultra-cosmic’ Mind is in fact very much cosmic as well as also being beyond cosmic! I might have used the expression ‘non-materially dependent Mind’, but that would have weakened the concept of all the material cosmos as described by science, being an expression of the One Mind.
A further difficulty for some could be my assumption in the above discourse that ultra-cosmic Mind can be equated to God, i.e., that this One Mind may be co-incident to the divine who comes by the Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 10 of 12
name of God in English, Allah in Arabic, and/or by other names in other languages. Clearly each religion will want to claim that their concept of ‘god’ is much more than the concept/ entity I have argued as essentially existing and expressing/ underpinning the material cosmos we experience. However I think that no religion could argue that their ‘god’ does not fulfil such a role as I have postulated for the One Mind! And so I am happy to equate the One Mind I have been discussing with the Creator God.
If my thesis is correct and the material universe is an expression of what I have called the One Mind, and if our understanding of the material universe is correct that it has evolved from a zero material origin, it follows that the material universe (and our part in that), are a deliberate expression of the One Creator Mind (viz., Creator God). I can claim this because it is clear that the ‘expression’ of the universe we can observe and study is very much integrated and cohesive. That our most brilliant scientists are ever seeking to discover the single underlying universal law to the material universe, demonstrates their belief at least that our universe is so constituted. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the One Mind has deliberately purposed universal material existence.
Since it is reasonable to conclude that the material universe, and particularly the evolution of minds as we experience them, has a One Mind purpose, it follows that postulating what that purpose might be, is a much more pertinent and dynamic question than the scientific quest for the one universal law! However here science has left us, because it can’t follow further than its remit, which is the study of the material cosmos and no more! So at this point we must enter those philosophical and possibly religious realms which are beyond the scope and reach of ‘material’ evidence.
A further difficulty posed by some, may be that in my discourse so far I have not used or applied the words ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual’ to the Neutral Theist paradigm I have elaborated and since this will be very pertinent for some in relation to my use of the word ‘Theism’ and ‘God’, I will address the concept in the following section.
8 How does the ‘Spiritual’ fit the Neutral Theist Paradigm?
Since this Neutral Theist paradigm is theist (as opposed to Deist) where or how does the ‘spiritual’ element come into the picture? We are happy enough to think of body, mind and self-conscious identity, but do we also have a ‘spirit?’ You may be surprised when I answer that I don’t think our spirit is any separate entity to our mind and conscious self. I am a strong theist, but struggle with the traditional term spirit: the word derives from the Latin ‘spiritus’ which means ‘breath.’ So when the ancients spoke of the spirit of God or the spirit of a man or woman, they were saying the ‘breath of God’ or the breath of a man or a woman. By this term and depending on the context, they might have meant either the ‘life of’ (which is demonstrable in breathing), or the literal breath of a person. Applied to God, they just meant the ‘living life of God.’ So the theist considers God to be the self-aware consciousness of the essence all existence – of which the material universe is merely a partial expression or aspect. Thus biologically created selves are naturally capable of relating to this ultra-cosmic self-conscious Mind who we call God. This conscious or less than conscious communications of human self with the God Mind we call spiritual, but for humans is merely the proper functioning of our minds and self-consciousness.
Hence I claim that there is nothing mystical about spirituality – we are all naturally spiritual (if we are alive!) and this is expressed in our social interactions with other people and if we so choose, by our interaction with the God-Mind. Interaction or relationship with God is normally expressed in what is called prayer and this should be based on the presumption that since (by the Theist paradigm) our Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 11 of 12
existence is purposed by God and we are derived from God and naturally possess the conscious ability to relate to the God-Mind, we may therefore develop a creaturely relationship where our status can be similar to a courtier friend of an emperor. In Christianity for example, what is being denoted in the description of the ‘Holy Spirit’ (as the third person of the Trinity of the One God, or similar confusing expression), may simply be understood as ‘the living God’, i.e., God’s attribute that may be discerned within a person or community in the present.’
I will not here stray further into the Christian concept of Trinity which is outside my current remit and which can admittedly be very confusing (and sometimes sound complicated when put by traditional Christians), however the point of my raising this terminology here is to show that the term, ‘God is Spirit’ (in most religions) and the term ‘God the Holy Spirit’ (in Christianity) are all compatible with the Neutral Theist paradigm, viz., that The essence of everything is the One Mind, or Creator God, who is both other than and the essence of everything material, mental and conscious. Human beings at least in their capacity to relate to God by their minds and consciousness can interface with God’s non-material modes even though by their free will they may not choose to do so, or have become estranged from the possibility.
A further possible objection to my analysis has been raised that relates to the notion that belief in God requires ‘faith’ and not reason, and that ‘faith’ may one day be shown to be related to a particular human gene that may be more prevalent in some than in others. My response to this is that reason can take us all the way to being convinced that a particular relationship (e.g. between a young man and a young lady he is attracted to, or vice versa) is possible, is desirable and is workable and in our best interest, however reason can go no further than persuade us to take action and start building that relationship. Faith in God is essentially, taking the action of building a relationship with God, and this requires no other genes than those we need to build a human relationship: reason can only take us as far as being reasonably convinced as to the possibility and desirability of such a relationship, but action (or faith) commences such a relationship.
9 Life after death?
How does Neutral Theism explain death and the possibility of life after death? I will endeavour to explain. Death is a normal cosmic process. Inanimate objects such as stars are birthed and eventually die. However animate bodies also are birthed (from pre-existing seeds) and eventually die. But what triggers that death? For a body with a nervous system, it might be unbearable pain (under which I would include neurological starvation and brain injury) that triggers death, or it might be severe shock that triggers death. Plants also can also die from starvation or from shock. Self-consciousness itself does not normally trigger death; however in rare human cases at least, extreme fear can trigger death in self-conscious beings (there are recorded cases where healthy brains and bodies have died as a result of acute fear). Since fear and self-consciousness are intimately related, it follows that self-consciousness may occasionally trigger physical death.
So what happens to the self-consciousness mind in my thought experiment when the body dies and disintegrates? As far as the cosmos is concerned the mind ‘dies’ (cosmically) with the brain. However it is reasonable to suppose that each ‘cosmic mind’ that departs from life is retained in the ultra-cosmic Mind, since besides the organic brain hardware, each mind was also dependent on the ultra-cosmic Mind (i.e. God) for its existence. I commenced with the postulation that all cosmic matter is but an expression of the ultra-cosmic Mind (i.e. is an expression of God) from which it would follow that previous cosmic minds now residing in the ultra-cosmic Mind may be capable of Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 12 of 12
being regenerated from God into a new material or other creation (if this is God’s purpose), which neatly arrives at the conclusion that there can be ‘life after death!’
10 Conclusions
In this paper I have addressed the Mind-body genesis possibly hinted at by the neurologist Paul Broks in his statement ‘It may not be the case that the brain is sufficient cause for the existence of consciousness’ (ibid, p95) and I have shown that by adopting a non-Materialist paradigm (rather than the Materialist paradigm held by Paul), the traditional mind-body problems raised on the one hand by Cartesian dualism and on the other hand by the modern Materialist paradigm may be overcome by recourse to reason. Because the Neutral Theist paradigm explains our total experience in terms of its essence and this can’t be done under the Materialist paradigm, I have further concluded that Neutral Theism has strongest claim to truth and Materialism the weakest.
I have outlined the limitations of the scientific method and argued it is not competent to answer the kinds of question raised in this paper. I have shown how and why the Neutral Theist paradigm is compatible with the universe as we experience it and provides a reasonable basis for understanding the spiritual aspect of our minds and bodies that can’t be addressed by neuroscience alone. I conclude that neither our brains nor the material universe are sufficient cause for the existence of our conscious experience, but both the material universe and our conscious experience are compatible with the Neutral Theist paradigm of the existence of the ultra-cosmic Mind (or traditional creator God).
References
Robert Wilkinson: Minds and Bodies, 2007, the Open University, Milton Keynes
Paul Broks: Into the Silent Land, 2003, Atlantic Books Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 2 of 12
Where does my consciousness of ‘myself’ and my ‘aboutness’ actually reside? It is too simple to say ‘it resides in my brain’, because self-consciousness does not appear to be located in any particular part of the brain (ref. neuropsychologist Paul Broks’1), nor does it depend on the whole brain since people can be just as conscious of themselves as a single unity with only part of their brain functional (Broks, ibid, part 2). Neurosurgeons have mapped all the highly intricate complexities of the human brain but in reality all they ever find is live brain meat, i.e., intricate arrangements of neurons firing in response to various stimuli. There is nothing in this firing neuron machinery that in itself has the potential of intentionality, i.e., being about anything other than apparently supporting our conscious experience and yet it appears that you can’t have a living mind without its human brain.
1 Paul Broks, Into the Silent Land,2003, Atlantic Books
Yes the brain is a complex tool, but in my perspective a tool without an operator does not respond purposefully of its own accord to anything. Searle argues that a computer can’t possess self-conscious experience, but the conscious mind is always about something, e.g. we fear we might be killed if we don’t shift out of the way of a moving car, or we choose a particular career, or we mix with others to discuss philosophy because we enjoy doing so, or we write poems or play golf or write computer programs for recreation. In all these mental states of consciousness we ourselves are always about something (our minds have semantics), whereas our brains are only ever providing the substrate and machinery for our consciousness to act on. Thus our minds can’t be equated with programs, and nor can our brains be equated with computers.
If our brains have evolved from inanimate Materialist matter as Science leads us to believe by purely blind processes relating to survival, then we might expect all brain processes to function without self-awareness and not to have independent purpose even if they appear to have. However it is evident from human society at least that our intentionality is neither random nor blind, we interact with each other in purposeful and meaningful ways which we are all aware of as fact – these social interactions are not illusions of organisation – they are provably real non-Material relationships!
Our empirical experience tells us that our consciousness normally moves around with our body. Despite the fact that we may have rare out-of-body experiences, nevertheless we do return to our bodies in order to be able to report such experiences! So we may reasonably conclude that consciousness does depend on the presence of our physical brain as far as we can tell, but as neurologist Paul Broks states it ‘may not be the case that the brain is sufficient cause for the existence of consciousness’ (ibid, p95).
There are many unanswered questions relating to consciousness, for example consider the brain coma; where does consciousness depart to and sometimes for years before returning suddenly and usually without regard to external stimuli? Or in other comatose people the brain may at some point permanently switch off and die, but again without external stimulus. It could be that the brain is not the only determinant of consciousness. Could it be that each self-conscious individual exists and needs a body to exist, but that this body is not sufficient in itself for that individual to exist? We come back to two questions, ‘what is material existence?’ and ‘what is self conscious experience?’ Or perhaps more pertinently, ‘Is material existence sufficient in itself?’
Materialists (by whom I mean those philosophical monists who believe that all existence reduces to a ‘material’ entity and no more) by definition will claim that material existence is sufficient in itself. Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 3 of 12
Hence Materialists must ultimately claim that the mind is nothing more than the brain, by which they will not necessarily mean the mind is identical to the brain, but that the mind totally comprises some sort of brain energy function, i.e. it is a material entity.
Paul Broks is a Materialist, he states, ‘I am a materialist, I believe the world and everything in it is made of physical stuff’ and, ‘whatever the origins of the universe, we are the natural product of its material evolution’ (ibid, p143). However in this statement of his Materialist paradigm, the words, ‘whatever the origins of the universe’ betray a lack of logic, since if the origins of the universe turned out to be other than what the Materialist paradigm claims, if they are of a non-material God for example, then we would not be merely the ‘product of its material evolution.’ Materialists might also argue that there is no evidence to support the proposition that material existence is insufficient in itself. But this would be a circular argument, since by the Materialist paradigm all evidence is of necessity material: thus the proposition that the ‘material existence may not be sufficient in itself’, is not a question the Materialist paradigm can address!
In this essay I will argue that material existence is not sufficient in itself and that this explains how it is that that our brains are not sufficient cause for our consciousness to exist, which is what Broks hints may be the case based on his research. I am coming from a neutral monist position, but with a theistic paradigm and my evidence as such will not be limited to material evidence, since I hold a very different paradigm to the Materialist. But first I will address the ‘limitations of science’ and the ‘traditional mind body’ philosophical problems.
2 The Limitations of Science
Science is not the prerogative of Materialists, indeed the scientific method was pioneered by men who firmly held to the theistic paradigm. Before getting into the meat of this paper, I first wish to challenge any who believe the physical Sciences to be the all encompassing tools by which the truth of everything will one day be known. Paul Broks is a thorough going ‘materialist’ neurologist (refer ibid, p143), yet he defends the reality of the limitations of science, for example, he states:-
‘Consciousness poses a forbidding challenge to science. What makes science strong as a means of understanding the outer, material world – objective, third-person observation - is precisely what makes it ineffectual when it comes to understanding the “inner world” of consciousness.’ (ibid, p139)
‘Phenomenal consciousness is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so.’ The feel of our private experience is by definition subjective – ‘whereas science by definition adopts an objective stance. You can’t be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness from the inside’, or you view ‘various configurations of neural activity and patterns of behaviour’ from the outside. (ibid, p140)
‘Robert Frost said that “Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.” Likewise, consciousness is lost in translating from first-person experience to third person description of brain states.’ (ibid, p141)
Science is inherently incapable of dealing with privateness, and ‘privateness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness.’(ibid, p140); therefore science is limited, unable to address the whole of human conscious experience. Further it can’t address our social interaction which is generally what is most relevant and meaningful in life to each of us. Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 4 of 12
Another limitation of science, relates to its inherent inability to begin to address any understanding of metaphysics, and questions such as, ‘is there a God who upholds the material universe?’ are quite outside the remit and scope of the scientific method and enquiry!
Science has undoubtedly improved the lives and/or prospects of humanity, however that these areas of our conscious enquiry (human consciousness, social interaction and metaphysics) are unable to be addressed by the scientific method, should set our minds to firmly against making ‘science’ into a new ‘god,’ and determine our acceptance that science will never be able to find the answers to everything.
So for the above reasons, I hold that the question I have raised in my introduction, viz., ‘Is material existence sufficient in itself?’ is not a question that ‘science’ is capable of addressing. We need to find philosophical and means other than ‘science’ to address this question even though the question impinges on the material!
3 The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Philosophical Mind-body problems
Plato and Aristotle both held that the intellectual mind must be eternal and of a totally different nature to the body because mind can’t be spatially subdivided in the way that all material bodies can be (this insight is supported to some extent by modern science). Descartes, who is generally recognised as the father of modern day of reasoning, skilfully proved the certainty of the existence of mind and in his Meditation 6 sought to then prove the existence of God and the material universe and to explain the relationship of mind to body. Descartes held to the paradigm (also held by Plato and Aristotle) that God exists and is eternal and is the author and completer of the material universe. Descartes believed in what is called ‘Two-Substance Dualism’, by which he meant that God and our minds are entities that are of one kind of essence and that this essence is radically different to the essence from which the entities of our bodies and of the material universe are derived.
I shall assume that we do not here need to prove the material existence of our bodies, nor the more certain proof of the existence of our minds and so I will just remind us of what I call the ‘old’ mind-body problem advanced by Descartes’ critics, viz., that, ‘If the mind is a different substance to the brain each emanating from totally different essences, how is that they can interact?’
More recently philosophers holding a Materialist world view such as Sydney Shoemaker, have seen the mind-body problem less as a two substance Dualist problem, but more as a Materialist problem, viz., ‘If we are to understand our brains and bodies have evolved from the purely material universe, how can our consciousness and the intentionality of our minds and the subjectivity and the Qualia we experience all be explained by the Materialist paradigm?’ In the Materialist paradigm, the ‘material’ world totally reduces to ‘energy’, ‘forces’ and ‘space’. However our conscious human minds are characterised by human ‘experience’, ‘purpose’ and ‘choice’. In strict Materialist terms, ‘energy’, ‘forces’ and ‘space’ can’t have the properties of human ‘experience’, ‘purpose’ and ‘choice’, so I argue that the Materialist paradigm is wrong and that our brains are not sufficient cause for our minds, since our brains derive from purely biological (material) processes.
Functionalism is a more recent attempt to get round this modern Materialist casting of the Mind-body problem by categorising the mental states in terms of their function (what do they do that makes them ‘mental states’ rather than ‘physical states’), however this philosophy has a very long way to go to even begin to rationally explain how the subjective aspects of our minds exist. For example we are usually fully aware of our own thoughts and beliefs, but we don’t experience them Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 5 of 12
as functional processes. As Broks points out, we can’t even directly observe such mental states in other people’s minds; the most a neurologist can see in a live brain is the physical substrate of patterns of brain neurons firing or the release of associated chemical communicators.
Though holding to the Materialist paradigm, Shoemaker nevertheless concludes from his research that the mind can’t just be reduced to the brain states per se, i.e., mental phenomena can’t be described in purely physical terms (Robert Wilkinson, 2007), p66. It may be that somehow the mind we experience rides on a number of brain functions, but can’t be scientifically related to any particular physical process; nevertheless, the mind we experience does require the physical brain processes.
But the most serious objection for the Materialist paradigm is the problem of mental intentionality or ‘aboutness’ viz., our mental activity is always about something, but this aboutness can’t be explained in purely Materialist terms because physical matter does not have the capacity to be about anything – it can’t by any Materialist definition have inherent purpose!
The Functionalist approach is the most favoured by Materialists even though as yet it does not provide any certain explanation as to how our minds can be explained in purely physical terms. However it is widely acknowledged (Wilkinson, p57) that this approach would also be compatible with any Monist paradigm, i.e., even to radically non-Materialist views of existence such as Ideal monism (whose paradigm is that all existence both material and mental is reducible to mind). For this reason I will return to consider the Functionalist approach later in this paper. There is still much debate about the mind-body problem today, but chiefly in respect of the Materialist paradigm. However I will leave this brief overview of old and new mind-body problems here and move on to consider possible non-Materialist monist solutions.
4 Non-Materialist Monism
As indicated in my introduction I hold to what amounts to a Neutral Theistic Monist explanation of the mind and body. Hence I would assert that Cartesian Dualism is flawed and that Material Monism is also flawed and each for the reasons I have briefly sought to outline above under ‘the philosophical old and new mind-body problems’ heading. Also under that heading I indicated that Functionalism would be compatible with other Monist philosophical positions. So I will now outline these other Monist paradigms before explaining further what I mean by Neutral Theistic Monism. A monist philosophy states that all existence comprises only one sort of essence, whatever that is: be it material, mental or spiritual all that we experience and all that the universe consists of comes from a single essence.
Berkeley was the pioneer of what is labelled ‘ideal monism’, or Idealism. He saw the mind and brain as distinct, but held that all existence ultimately reduces to the realm of universal mind. However this is tantamount to saying that the brain reduces to universal mind, which is the exact opposite to the Materialist position. Materialists claim that the mind is totally reducible to the brain and the material universe and not vice versa. The logical problem here is that in themselves both these opposing monist positions hold equal weight and both statements can’t be true, unless neither brain nor mind really exist!
So what is meant by Neutral Monism? This term was coined to represent the philosophical position espoused for example by Spinoza who stated there is only one sort of essence, but that what we take as material is not just physical. Spinoza believed that God and the universe is the same and that Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 6 of 12
all matter has at least two aspects, i.e., a non-perishable spiritual or design aspect and a perishable material aspect. The single fundamental ‘essence’ has many modes, the ‘physical’ and ‘design’ and ‘mental/ spiritual’ modes being two we associate with creation. Hence to Spinoza there was no mind-body problem! Mind and body are two modes of the same essence and each mode is therefore compatible with and can interact with all other modes. A rudimentary illustration of this might be the steady state existing between liquid water, solid ice and water vapour. The essence of each mode is the same and each mode can interact with each other mode and can change from one to another (as happens with H2O determined by temperature). Spinoza held that God is the essence of the universe and his view of God was pantheistic (God is to be equated with the universe) and subject to determinism rather than being deterministic, hence his followers were often equated with atheists (Wikipedia, accessed July 2010).
5 Neutral Theistic Monism (Neutral Theism)
So what do I mean by Neutral Theistic Monism? By Neutral I mean neither being necessarily wholly physical (Material) nor being necessarily wholly non-physical (Spiritual). By Theistic I mean to claim that God is Pan-en-theistic (viz., God is both other than and the essence of matter) rather than merely Pantheistic (identified with the essence of matter). How does my explanation differ from the other non-material Monist explanations? And crucially, does my explanation still remove all the mind-body problems I have summarised in this essay? And does it address my introductory question, ‘Is the material existence sufficient in itself?’
My first premise is that, as far as science can tell us, the material existence we experience has generated itself from zero material existence. I also hold the philosophical premise that it is impossible for a totally self sufficient material entity to generate itself from a non-material existence. However we empirically find ourselves (at least partly if not wholly) in a material existence, therefore it stands to reason that a purely material existence can’t be self-sufficient! Therefore there must exist some other non-material entity or existence from which the material universe is derived. So what other explanation for our derived existence is reasonable?
Let me engage in a mind experiment and postulate the possibility that the material cosmos is merely a particular distinct expression of supra-cosmic essence or Mind and that our consciousness or ‘self,’ is at least partly also a distinct expression of that same non-cosmic essence or Mind. However this ‘essence’ possesses at least the qualities of purpose and aboutness that we ascribe to the biological minds of higher animals; for that reason I use the term Mind rather than essence. By supra-cosmic I mean non-temporal, viz., external as well as internal to the cosmos. An entity which is external can also be internal if what is internal is merely one aspect of the external, thus a true essence of all existence can be both non-temporal and temporal, since temporality can be merely an aspect of non-temporality.
Thus by the term ‘supra-cosmic Mind’ I mean mind existing non-temporally at the same time as temporally, and which has purpose, but is not dependant on any material existence, be it organic or inorganic. In this scenario, the material cosmos requires non-cosmic Mind to complement its sufficiency. However we know that cosmic matter has evolved to produce material bodies and brains capable of supporting our conscious minds or ‘selves’. Thus the cosmic expression of supra-cosmic Mind has produced our self and biological mind.
By this argument our material brains are not sufficient in themselves for our self to exist, since to exist we also require the existence of the supra-cosmic Mind. It also follows that our ‘self’ and Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 7 of 12
biological mind are also cosmic expressions of the supra-cosmic Mind. Hence our ‘conscious mind’ or ‘self’ is also dependent on supra-cosmic Mind for existence, but may not be dependent in the same manner as our material brains are. So now suppose you have a brain disease and part of your ‘conscious mind’ is adversely affected (you can’t remember who you are, or can’t feel your emotions, or whatever), but your sense of self is undiminished despite your feeling of loss, confusion or whatever – you as a person are still there. Does this show that you are only temporal after all? Yes and No! Neutral Theism never denied you are temporal, but it claims your temporality is included in the non-temporality of existence, so yes you are affected by the diseases of and eventual the disintegration of the brain, but since to exist, your mind is not sufficient in itself but depends on both the temporality of the brain and the non-temporality of the supra-cosmic Mind, then neither can you as a self be totally temporal! I will explore this aspect later in the paper.
In this experiment the mind-body problem arising from the need for Cartesian Dualism to explain mind-body interaction is no longer a problem; and the Materialist mind-body problem of explaining ‘aboutness’ of mental states or of purpose in the minds of higher animals at least, is also no longer a problem. Both of the current insurmountable problems relating to these common paradigms drop away and they don’t drop away by denial of the existence of either the physical or the mental or for that matter the spiritual aspects of existence, since all are acknowledged as aspects of the same essence or Mind! Also it is worthy of note that a ‘functional’ analysis of brain states would be quite compatible with such a non-materialist paradigm, but not necessarily producing the whole picture. This philosophical non-materialist, but neutral monist paradigm I have labelled ‘Neutral Theism’ because it is described by a transcendent creative Mind (i.e., the traditional Unique transcendent God), but is a more comprehensive explanation that Spinoza’s deist concept.
I have argued that material existence in not sufficient in itself for existence by reason that it is impossible for a purely material existence to generate its own existence, and that the Neutral Theistic paradigm provides an adequate explanation as to how and why we exist in an apparently material existence and without recourse to a mind-body problem. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that material existence is not sufficient in itself, but is compatible with a Neutral Theist paradigm. If the essence of existence is ‘material’, then the brain comprises a complex material structure that supports the biological mind, but the existence of this mind is not satisfactorily explained in terms of its essence. If the essence of existence is non-material Mind, then the brain is a complex material structure that produces the biological mind which is explainable in terms of its essence. The non-material monist paradigm is therefore the simpler paradigm, and so I conclude that the non-material monist paradigm is true and the materialist paradigm false.
6 Mind-body Unity (Functionalism in Neutral Theism)
So how do mind and body relate in the Neutral Theistic paradigm I have just outlined? Well allow me to return to the Functional model. How might this work? I will start with the humble Venus Fly-trap. This plant is a carnivore, but we are told it possesses no brain. It has apparently evolved to trap and digest flies and other bugs in order to provide it with the nutrients it lacks in the soil. Its carefully constructed trap is triggered on the next strike of a fly on one of the plant’s hairs following a 20 second delay from the first strike. So the Venus possesses a timing mechanism and a plant muscle which it uses with lightening speed, and then releases the muscle once a meal is digested, but it still it has no brain. We say it has no brain because we can’t find a nervous system in the plant; but what is a nervous system if it is not a biological function by which internal communication occurs? So when a plant communicates internally by means of a chemical system and one that that Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 8 of 12
builds in a time delay device as well as a muscle strike device, do we have the beginnings of a pseudo-brain? Perhaps so, but it is not ‘conscious’, it doesn’t have a mind.
Now consider a computer controlled car plant assembly. This is programmed to perform many sophisticated functions with delaying mechanisms, sensing devices, internal electronic communication systems, computer hardware and software, all of which might be described as totally physical in nature, but self-co-ordinated to achieve its task. However it doesn’t have a mind (and for the reasons discussed earlier), in that it is not aware of its own centre of being and thoughts nor can any man-made computer ever possess the self-consciousness and the free-will to choose to follow what-ever actions or non-actions it likes. Thus the higher biological brain is so constituted as to allow the independent function and choices of the self-conscious mind that it harbours. I understand that brains of lower vertebrates and parts of our brains that are incapable of harbouring such self-consciousness might be described as ‘primitive’ brains. Thus we possess a primitive and higher brain.
Our primitive brain controls functions such as our digestive system, our blood circulation system, our breathing system, our temperature control system, our flight mechanisms, etc. However empirically we are not able to be directly conscious of these systems even though we may be conscious of the consequences of their mal-function or failure. Other ‘higher’ function systems such as language, we are directly conscious of when we choose to be. According to Paul Broks, the domains of perception, memory, reason, emotion, language, motivation and action are all (broad) mind functions that to some degree can function independently of each other (ibid p.124). Some of these broad mind functions such as reason and language are very much more developed in humans than in any other living species, however I would argue that the seeds of all these ‘function domains’ exist in most if not all species.
By simple introspection we realise we are capable of consciously focusing on several function domains at once or of switching our consciousness from one function to another without any necessary loss of function. For example we can read a page of script out loud fully conscious of what we are doing, or we can read the same text just as well with our minds elsewhere! What is happening? We may have reason to be motivated to read, be emotionally and physically ready and so decide to read aloud, and we can do this even though we may perceive a lack of interest in ourselves to take notice of the content of what we are reading.
While reading aloud, we can have visual, reading, translation, speech, sound review, meaning and content review functions taking place, as well as various memory types (I suggest deep, instant, long & short) – this whole exercise can involve (either unconscious or conscious) visual recognition of word symbols and (conscious) meaning and review of words and then (conscious) understanding and review of content.
This reading out loud exercise also involves (unconscious or conscious) memory recall of the sounds of those words, which is a different function to recall of meaning because we can recall the sound of a word without having any memory input as to the meaning of the word. Next is involved our speech functions as we (unconsciously or consciously) recall the sound that we associate with each word, (unconsciously) engage our vocal mechanisms that make the sounds and before we engage a sound review function. As the words are pronounced our hearing review function is (unconsciously or consciously) checking that our instant memory of the sound matches our (unconscious) deep memory recall for that sound. Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 9 of 12
If we are consciously reading out loud and are not sure of the sound match or experience a conflict, we may then recall a long or short term memory of an external correction made to that sound. However we can unconsciously read the whole script perfectly and have no recall as to the content (i.e., meaning of) what we have read. In this case a mismatch in our (unconscious) sound review function can summon our consciousness back to what we are doing and we may be able to recall the mismatch before the instant memory of what we had read fades. However we will not recall any of the meaning or content of what we have just read aloud (unless we had short or long term memory of the content of the text stored from a previous reading).
This optimal use of our consciousness applies to any activity, but is more obvious when we undertake what may become less captivating to our immediate interests. So for example if we are enjoying talking to a passenger or thinking through a work problem while driving a car, we can drive for hundreds of miles without any consciousness of where we have been or where we are going or of the driving functions we have undertaken.
We have a choice of conscious focus when we are awake and we generally have a choice as to when we allow our conscious mind to go to sleep. When we are asleep our higher brain functions can still be working and resolving problems. Our more primitive brain functions will of course continue regardless of our state of consciousness, their genetic brief being the survival of the vital organs. However I think that in severe cases of shock, our primitive brain can shut down those organs. I also believe this ‘death’ can also be instigated by our unconscious higher brain functions and even in rare cases of fear or shock by our conscious choice.
In this discourse on what I have sub-titled ‘mind-body unity’ I have been considering the functional explanation of the mind and body. My claim is that none of this explanation is incompatible with a Neutral Theist paradigm, since my thesis is that consciousness, mind and body each have their interfaces both with each other and with the essence of everything.
So I would contend that at some time in our evolutionary past, the primitive brain (which was essentially about survival) evolved the possibility of consciousness and choice which initially provided a boost to survival. However under the Neutral Theism paradigm that evolutionary step took us one step further towards the creation of individual minds that are independent of the God-Mind by free choice that was gifted by the Supra-cosmic mind in the creation of the universe and as I will argue in the next section Supra-cosmic mind would have purpose and this might logically be the possibility of Mind-mind relationship.
7 Concept Difficulties with Neutral Theist Paradigm
There is an apparent difficulty with my mind experiment in that I may appear to have deliberately separated material existence from my so-called ‘ultra-cosmic Mind’ and yet I am claiming that the material is not sufficient without this Mind. However this separation is an artificial distinction I have introduced in order to develop the concept of Mind underpinning the material cosmos. I have argued that all the material cosmos is merely an expression of the One Mind, hence it follows that my so called ‘ultra-cosmic’ Mind is in fact very much cosmic as well as also being beyond cosmic! I might have used the expression ‘non-materially dependent Mind’, but that would have weakened the concept of all the material cosmos as described by science, being an expression of the One Mind.
A further difficulty for some could be my assumption in the above discourse that ultra-cosmic Mind can be equated to God, i.e., that this One Mind may be co-incident to the divine who comes by the Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 10 of 12
name of God in English, Allah in Arabic, and/or by other names in other languages. Clearly each religion will want to claim that their concept of ‘god’ is much more than the concept/ entity I have argued as essentially existing and expressing/ underpinning the material cosmos we experience. However I think that no religion could argue that their ‘god’ does not fulfil such a role as I have postulated for the One Mind! And so I am happy to equate the One Mind I have been discussing with the Creator God.
If my thesis is correct and the material universe is an expression of what I have called the One Mind, and if our understanding of the material universe is correct that it has evolved from a zero material origin, it follows that the material universe (and our part in that), are a deliberate expression of the One Creator Mind (viz., Creator God). I can claim this because it is clear that the ‘expression’ of the universe we can observe and study is very much integrated and cohesive. That our most brilliant scientists are ever seeking to discover the single underlying universal law to the material universe, demonstrates their belief at least that our universe is so constituted. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the One Mind has deliberately purposed universal material existence.
Since it is reasonable to conclude that the material universe, and particularly the evolution of minds as we experience them, has a One Mind purpose, it follows that postulating what that purpose might be, is a much more pertinent and dynamic question than the scientific quest for the one universal law! However here science has left us, because it can’t follow further than its remit, which is the study of the material cosmos and no more! So at this point we must enter those philosophical and possibly religious realms which are beyond the scope and reach of ‘material’ evidence.
A further difficulty posed by some, may be that in my discourse so far I have not used or applied the words ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual’ to the Neutral Theist paradigm I have elaborated and since this will be very pertinent for some in relation to my use of the word ‘Theism’ and ‘God’, I will address the concept in the following section.
8 How does the ‘Spiritual’ fit the Neutral Theist Paradigm?
Since this Neutral Theist paradigm is theist (as opposed to Deist) where or how does the ‘spiritual’ element come into the picture? We are happy enough to think of body, mind and self-conscious identity, but do we also have a ‘spirit?’ You may be surprised when I answer that I don’t think our spirit is any separate entity to our mind and conscious self. I am a strong theist, but struggle with the traditional term spirit: the word derives from the Latin ‘spiritus’ which means ‘breath.’ So when the ancients spoke of the spirit of God or the spirit of a man or woman, they were saying the ‘breath of God’ or the breath of a man or a woman. By this term and depending on the context, they might have meant either the ‘life of’ (which is demonstrable in breathing), or the literal breath of a person. Applied to God, they just meant the ‘living life of God.’ So the theist considers God to be the self-aware consciousness of the essence all existence – of which the material universe is merely a partial expression or aspect. Thus biologically created selves are naturally capable of relating to this ultra-cosmic self-conscious Mind who we call God. This conscious or less than conscious communications of human self with the God Mind we call spiritual, but for humans is merely the proper functioning of our minds and self-consciousness.
Hence I claim that there is nothing mystical about spirituality – we are all naturally spiritual (if we are alive!) and this is expressed in our social interactions with other people and if we so choose, by our interaction with the God-Mind. Interaction or relationship with God is normally expressed in what is called prayer and this should be based on the presumption that since (by the Theist paradigm) our Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 11 of 12
existence is purposed by God and we are derived from God and naturally possess the conscious ability to relate to the God-Mind, we may therefore develop a creaturely relationship where our status can be similar to a courtier friend of an emperor. In Christianity for example, what is being denoted in the description of the ‘Holy Spirit’ (as the third person of the Trinity of the One God, or similar confusing expression), may simply be understood as ‘the living God’, i.e., God’s attribute that may be discerned within a person or community in the present.’
I will not here stray further into the Christian concept of Trinity which is outside my current remit and which can admittedly be very confusing (and sometimes sound complicated when put by traditional Christians), however the point of my raising this terminology here is to show that the term, ‘God is Spirit’ (in most religions) and the term ‘God the Holy Spirit’ (in Christianity) are all compatible with the Neutral Theist paradigm, viz., that The essence of everything is the One Mind, or Creator God, who is both other than and the essence of everything material, mental and conscious. Human beings at least in their capacity to relate to God by their minds and consciousness can interface with God’s non-material modes even though by their free will they may not choose to do so, or have become estranged from the possibility.
A further possible objection to my analysis has been raised that relates to the notion that belief in God requires ‘faith’ and not reason, and that ‘faith’ may one day be shown to be related to a particular human gene that may be more prevalent in some than in others. My response to this is that reason can take us all the way to being convinced that a particular relationship (e.g. between a young man and a young lady he is attracted to, or vice versa) is possible, is desirable and is workable and in our best interest, however reason can go no further than persuade us to take action and start building that relationship. Faith in God is essentially, taking the action of building a relationship with God, and this requires no other genes than those we need to build a human relationship: reason can only take us as far as being reasonably convinced as to the possibility and desirability of such a relationship, but action (or faith) commences such a relationship.
9 Life after death?
How does Neutral Theism explain death and the possibility of life after death? I will endeavour to explain. Death is a normal cosmic process. Inanimate objects such as stars are birthed and eventually die. However animate bodies also are birthed (from pre-existing seeds) and eventually die. But what triggers that death? For a body with a nervous system, it might be unbearable pain (under which I would include neurological starvation and brain injury) that triggers death, or it might be severe shock that triggers death. Plants also can also die from starvation or from shock. Self-consciousness itself does not normally trigger death; however in rare human cases at least, extreme fear can trigger death in self-conscious beings (there are recorded cases where healthy brains and bodies have died as a result of acute fear). Since fear and self-consciousness are intimately related, it follows that self-consciousness may occasionally trigger physical death.
So what happens to the self-consciousness mind in my thought experiment when the body dies and disintegrates? As far as the cosmos is concerned the mind ‘dies’ (cosmically) with the brain. However it is reasonable to suppose that each ‘cosmic mind’ that departs from life is retained in the ultra-cosmic Mind, since besides the organic brain hardware, each mind was also dependent on the ultra-cosmic Mind (i.e. God) for its existence. I commenced with the postulation that all cosmic matter is but an expression of the ultra-cosmic Mind (i.e. is an expression of God) from which it would follow that previous cosmic minds now residing in the ultra-cosmic Mind may be capable of Mind - Body Genesis and the Neutral Theist Paradigm
Paper by Mikereflects – published July 2010 page 12 of 12
being regenerated from God into a new material or other creation (if this is God’s purpose), which neatly arrives at the conclusion that there can be ‘life after death!’
10 Conclusions
In this paper I have addressed the Mind-body genesis possibly hinted at by the neurologist Paul Broks in his statement ‘It may not be the case that the brain is sufficient cause for the existence of consciousness’ (ibid, p95) and I have shown that by adopting a non-Materialist paradigm (rather than the Materialist paradigm held by Paul), the traditional mind-body problems raised on the one hand by Cartesian dualism and on the other hand by the modern Materialist paradigm may be overcome by recourse to reason. Because the Neutral Theist paradigm explains our total experience in terms of its essence and this can’t be done under the Materialist paradigm, I have further concluded that Neutral Theism has strongest claim to truth and Materialism the weakest.
I have outlined the limitations of the scientific method and argued it is not competent to answer the kinds of question raised in this paper. I have shown how and why the Neutral Theist paradigm is compatible with the universe as we experience it and provides a reasonable basis for understanding the spiritual aspect of our minds and bodies that can’t be addressed by neuroscience alone. I conclude that neither our brains nor the material universe are sufficient cause for the existence of our conscious experience, but both the material universe and our conscious experience are compatible with the Neutral Theist paradigm of the existence of the ultra-cosmic Mind (or traditional creator God).
References
Robert Wilkinson: Minds and Bodies, 2007, the Open University, Milton Keynes
Paul Broks: Into the Silent Land, 2003, Atlantic Books
Mikereflects 2010
