Duelling with dualism
08Jan. 09
Not all skeptics are full blown materialists, but few would fail to recognise a consistent idea that can be identified behind some, if not most, supernatural belief. That idea is dualism (Cartesian dualism to be precise) – the concept that the brain and the mind are two distinct and separate things, the former material, and the latter immaterial. The notion, once accepted, supports religious belief, belief in reincarnation, ghosts, psychic phenomena, and so on. Actually, it would be better to say that these beliefs are very much dependent on dualism, because without it, the ‘self’ is nothing but matter, and so it can’t float about after death or come back as a frog or whatever. It’s no surprise then, that the notion is so widespread. Consciousness is deeply mysterious, so mysterious that it seems absurd that our subjective experience can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. There must be more to it, right?
The materialist must reject this idea. Without getting too philosophical about it (which I’m rubbish at anyway), one must assume that there is an objective reality, that everything in that reality is made of ‘stuff’, and that science is our best way of explaining and understanding said ‘stuff’. On the surface this almost seems like a belief, since it can’t be known for sure that non-stuff doesn’t exist. But it doesn’t require belief to dismiss a claim based on bad or no evidence. If good evidence were to come along, one should always be prepared to adjust their world view accordingly, but here’s the thing: the non-material is by definition untestable. Evidence would have to arrive in the form of observed phenomena of the natural world, at which point it would cease to be non-material, and therefore fail to support a non-material (and therefore supernatural) hypothesis.
Some see this as a stale mate, and I agree only to the extent that the existence of dragons is also a stale mate (Russell’s teapot). As baffling as the problem of consciousness may seem, it is of no help to defer to a non-material explanation, because you are left having to explain the existence and nature of the non-material phenomena. Despite this, some are now attempting to use the mystery of consciousness as the new battleground against atheism and materialism.
I say bring it on. Rather than tackle the various manifestations of the assumption of dualism (everything from creationism to tarot cards, it could be argued), it may be better to aim our sights at one of the foundations, as it were, of these beliefs. After all, there is some indication that a decline of religious belief is inversely correlated with other superstitions, suggesting that some folk simply replace one supernatural idea with another. Would it not be better to go for the jugular, and take on one of the core concepts behind supernatural belief?
I will go ahead and assume that your answer is: “Totally, Fuller, yeah dude, radical!” (because in my head you sound like a surfer from the 90’s). So how would this be done? Well since we can’t directly disprove dualism, as you cannot prove a negative, the most effective method is logical argument, and evidence that indirectly supports materialism.
Let’s assume for a moment that ‘mind’ is something non-material. What would we expect to see, if this were the case? For one thing, we would expect to see consciousness holding firm even after the material brain has started to break down in old age. If they were independent of each other, why would the non-material mind decay at the same rate as the material brain? It wouldn’t. But this is not what we see, instead we observe a direct correlation between physical deterioration of the brain and a loss of consciousness (for example with Alzheimer’s). This is consistent only with the materialist’s view that consciousness is made of ‘stuff’ like everything else.
That’s just one example anyway. You won’t be surprised to hear that I’m no expert on these topics, so I won’t delve too deeply into subjects I have only a rudimentary understanding of. But I don’t think that materialism is beyond the comprehension of your average meatbag (my usual rule of thumb is that if I can grasp it, almost everyone should be able to). And if its logic can be more readily understood, it can provide a valuable immunisation against unscientific ideas.
Tags: Brain, Consciousness, Dualism, Pseudoscience, Religion, Skeptic
January 9th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
The functional MRI studies on consciousness and decision-making are generally held to be positive evidence in favour of the materialist hypothesis. The Neurologica blog has extensive back postings which explain the whole scientific perspective of these studies, and why neuroscientists favour the materialistic hypothesis. In a nutshell, the scientific evidence such as it is shows that materialism produces testable hypotheses which have some experimental support, whereas dualism has no experimental support and has not made any predictions which are capable of being tested using FMRI or similar technologies.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
No, not really. If the view is that consciousness is akin to an immaterial soul, in other words that is has an existence separate from the matter of the brain in a real sense, not a conceptual one, then that is substance dualism.
Property dualism does allow consciousness/mind to be separated from the brain in the sense that the mind is an aspect of the brain’s activity which is not reducible to specific brain activity. In other words, the mind is a property of the brain which is not accounted for by brain activity alone. In other words the mind is an emergent property of the brain.
To get even more complicated, we can also consider predicate dualism, which might actually be closer to what you meant than property dualism. It’s the idea that even though there is one underlying substance (i.e., the brain is made out of matter), there may be aspects of the brain’s functioning which can’t be described using language which describes the way that matter interacts. In other words there’s no way to describe the mind using only the language of physics or chemistry, even though the mind is an aspect of the brain, and the brain is a physical thing.
For a much better (and far more detailed) coverage of dualism, try this page: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
We do need the physical capacities to cognitively comprehend experiences but I feel a common misconception is the idea that knowledge and thought are the same thing. If we recognize the differences between the two, we can appreciate both a materialistic and dualistic perspective. Both perspectives rely upon and utilize one another to function. The issue with a strictly dualistic approach to consciousness is it seems to lack an explanation as to how non-physical (consciousness) and physical (evolution/natural science) can interact with one another if there is no connection between the two. We must be able to consciously perceive new experiences and thought through the physical development of cognition. The concept of thought must have a means to manifest itself, and the means is generally though physical attributes. Dualism dies not give an explanation as to how we are able to think, just that we do think. Likewise, materialism it seems, fails to explain scientifically the differences between cognitive functions and consciousness. There have been no significant tests setup to measure or test consciousness, and can only test the physical attributes that are involved in processing consciousness Materialists seem to explain how consciousness works, but fail to answer the question as to what consciousness actually is. There seems to be a tremendous gap in our scientific understanding of primal physical processes and mental activities and existential phenomena. Like dualism, materialism has rendered untestable thus far, as the test only concludes the physical attributes involved in the process. In order to further our understanding of consciousness I feel it is essential we do not get to caught up in ideologies we are comfortable with, maybe we should consider a new perspective instead of just debating why one idea is more significant than the other; maybe both ideas are wrong and we continue to try to explain a concept with no avail. Materialism gives us comfort, as we feel some control over ourselves and our environment; it is comforting to know we can strip away the essence of something by putting it in a test tube and calling it something that helps us sleep better at night. Likewise, dualism provides a completely surreal environment in which we can ignore the significance of physical interactions and can retreat back into a world of fairytale and mystery. If we reframe from an extremist approach I think we can better further our understanding of the notoriously ambiguous concept of consciousness.