Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 13: God: My Response

In my last entry I said that would respond to Prof McGinn's attempts at tearing down three prominent arguments for the existence of God.  I'm not certain how I want to organize this response so I apologize if this seems illogically arranged.  So here goes.

First, lets focus these arguments, Prof McGinn says at least a couple times in the lecture that these arguments are not intended to give cast-iron epistemological certainty that there is such a thing as God, just that the point is to test to see if the concept of god is logical.  One other key hole in his arguments is this, he says that the whole point of the discussion is to attempt to show if the concept of god is logical.  However, throughout his lecture he keep referencing the religious definitions of God.  Here's the way I see it, Prof McGinn is setting up a straw man in attacking each argument separately then offering red herrings in trying to make us chase after the traditional religious concepts of god rather than the basics of the argument.

Here's a recap of the arguments, the argument from design, the cosmological argument, and the ontological argument.  I'd like to take these and turn them around like Ravi Zacharias does in The End of Reason; A Response to the New Atheists as he borrows from Prof Dallas Willard (now passed on, May 2013) and use a more complete and powerful argument for the existence of God than this strawman Prof McGinn has torn down.

First, comes the what is commonly referred to as the cosmological argument; the way Mr. Zacharias words the argument, "no physical entity explains its own existence."  Now, that could be confusing because I'm a physical entity and I can sit here and explain my existence.  Obviously that's not the way those terms are intended to be used, it's along the lines of, no physical entity contains a complete explanation for its own existence.  It makes sense to also word this part of the argument as, no physical entity can create itself.  Biological life can reproduce, but that's not itself, that's a copy of itself.  In the Google+ conversation about the last entry +James Hooks said it this way, "everything in the universe has a cause, or everything that begins to exist has a cause."  Those kinds of statements are backed up by empirical observation.  These theories of something from nothing are so wildly speculative it's laughable.  Again, this is NOT 100% mathematical proof of an uncreated creator (UCC), just a rational statement about the plausibility.  Here's another thing Prof McGinn does throughout his lecture, after he presents the cosmological argument he claims that it doesn't logically follow that this UCC somehow has the attributes often claimed in religion, namely omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness.  Prof McGinn is implying that those qualities are a non sequitur, and he'd be right if  the argument was solely based on cosmological cause.

The actual best answer is to follow the cosmological cause argument with another powerful argument for a god.  That is the argument from design.  In that aforementioned Google+ argument +Andreas Geisler asked if one could recognize the undesigned.  A valid question but one that seems obvious from common sense.  There are so many examples of design in the universe that for all of them to come together in exactly the right way would take odds that are beyond astronomical.  I've read that the odds were calculated somewhere around 10,000,000,000^2,000+. That's ten billion to the two-thousandth plus power!  So, design is evident all around us and yet Prof McGinn throws evolution at the concept like it's the silver bullet that will slay this argument.  What he's failing to see is the most basic form of biological design, the DNA/RNA structure cannot be explained by evolutionary process.  So, the red herring Prof McGinn expects the creationist apologist to chase after in this argument is the design of life as it is right now.  That's not the basic design that we're looking at, though a committed Young Earth Christian would say that the literal six days of creation show God's handiwork in the complexities of life as we study it.  But, again... that's not the argument in question.  The question is, is there design evident in life as we see it?  It seems obvious that the resounding answer must be, YES.  Again, this does not get us to the Christian God, as Prof McGinn seems to want us to make that leap, though we do have some characteristics that fit, namely powerful omnipotence, that is powerful beyond all imagination the ability to will the material into existence.  It would require that kind of power to bring all the universe into existence and then order it into a coherent design and put together the incredible complexity that is life (even the most basic forms of life).  Which leads us to another characteristic of God, omniscience, that is all knowing.  A God that exists outside the influences and rules of this universe and orders the entire universe must have knowledge beyond all human imagination.

There are two incredibly powerful arguments that Prof McGinn has neglected that will flesh out the rest of the characteristics of God.  The first comes from one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis.  In Mere Christianity Lewis makes a powerful argument from morality that shows how just the idea that all cultures throughout the entire history of mankind have had a shared concept of morality.  That isn't to say that all cultures agree with what is right or wrong, but at least they all agree that there is such a thing as right and wrong.  In response to the Euthyphro problem, which is often thrown at this argument, I've answered it before twice, but this writeup puts it quite well, "Thus the dilemma can be shown to be a false one.  God indeed commands things which are good, but the reason they are good is because they reflect God’s own nature.  So the goodness does not come ultimately from God’s commandments, but from His nature, which then results in good commandments.  As Steve Lovell concluded in ‘C.S. Lewis and the Euthyphro Dilemma’ (2002)."  So, we have more attributes of God, on top of omnipotence and omniscience, we have goodness.

Last but certainly not least is the argument presented in the life of Jesus Christ himself.  There are some that claim the life of Jesus is a myth.  People that claim that are intentionally turning a blind eye to more than enough evidence that Jesus really did live when the Bible claims He did, and the Bible itself has more than enough textual evidence to verify its trustworthiness.  Jesus' claim of divinity is unique among all religions, though I've seen arguments that say Jesus doesn't claim to be God, but I don't think they hold water.  I don't have time to go into that all right now, but suffice it to say, that Christianity is unique.  Our Lord is also our servant, and our sacrifice.  We cannot do anything to earn God's forgiveness or favor, all other religions have some form of working or doing something to gain forgiveness.  Not so with biblical Christianity; there are certain groups of people claiming to follow Jesus' teachings but they teach that you have to do this or do that contrary to biblical teaching, that's not the Christianity that Jesus died and rose again to create in us.

A word on Prof McGinn's use of the problem of evil as a counter argument to the existence of God.  First, it's a false pretence.  He claims to be arguing against the logical possibility of God, but in reality he's only arguing about one particular characteristic of a being that he doesn't believe exists.  As he's so fond of using to describe other philosophical ideas, now he's the one that's "putting the cart before the horse," and arguing about characteristics of a being that he hasn't shown to exist at all.  His argument about the existence of evil has been responded to in many ways but the best way I see to respond, is to call into the argument the idea that morality in general shows that we're designed by a moral being.  In the atheist purview there's no sanctity of life.  According to evolution and natural selection the weak are meant to die so that the strong can survive.  According to Peter Singer a pig is worth more than a disabled child; does that sound like morality can be found in science?  According to mathematics the world would be a much better place to live if there were about fifty percent less humans living here, according to that logic, we should initiate and promote holocausts to eliminate the weak, sickly humans.  The argument of the existence of evil doesn't work with purely scientific logic, because logic and science cannot tell you what is good/bad, right/wrong, good/evil, science just tells what is.

A word on Pascal's wager, I've never liked the idea, but Ravi Zacharias in the book I've already mentioned, puts it backwards from the typical reading of the wager.  It's not, you should believe because in the end if you're wrong what's the harm and if you're right you stand to gain tremendously.  I agree that's a hollow, relationally empty way to approach God.  Instead one should look at it like this, I believe and it enriches my life, if in the end I'm wrong and there is no God, what have I lost?  Nothing.

Lastly, I must say something about the ontological argument because that seemed to be Prof McGinn's favorite argument.  This seems odd to me, because though I can't point to any specific fallacy or flaw in the ontological argument, it seems like just wordplay.  A tautology of sorts, to say that the perfect conceivable being must exist because existence is more perfect than non-existence.  I don't think the argument is wrong to come to the conclusion that God exists, I just don't think it goes about it in a logical manner.

To sum up this incredibly long post (sorry about that):  I don't think this was Prof McGinn's intent but listening to this lecture actually made me more secure in my belief in God.  His futile attempts at breaking down these arguments only made me more sure that he's wrong and that it is logical to believe in a creator.  As it stands, his attacks at each argument doesn't really show anything, just that each argument has counter-arguments.  There isn't an argument out there that doesn't have a counter-argument (like that double negation?), there are skeptics for everything.  With the combination of all the arguments together it is easy to conclude that it is logical to believe that God created and cares for us, His creation.  Though that wasn't the original goal of the argument, all we wanted to prove was that it is indeed logical to believe that some form of creator being exists, and we've gotten so much farther than that when it's all said and done.

Another shot from Cape Zanpa

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 13: God: Can the Existence of God Be Proven?

Continuing the series second-to-last (sort of) for this interesting lecture series on the big questions of philosophy, can the existence of God be proven?  The reason I say sort of second to last, is I plan on writing at least one extra entry rebutting this lecture and possibly one to sum up the whole series.

One interesting note before I get into Prof McGinn's attempt at dismantling three arguments for the existence of god, I've been using the study guide to facilitate writing these essays and the "recommended reading" for this lecture is Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.  That kind of gives away what his conclusions will be right off the bat.  In this lecture Prof McGinn attempts to disprove the existence of god by arguing against three traditional arguments for god, the "argument from design," the cosmological argument, and the ontological argument.  Each one he takes in turn and goes through the basics of each one then pokes holes through their weaknesses.

The argument from design.  The argument is pretty obvious, the earth and all life as we know it, has the features of design.  And if one were walking through the desert and found a watch, one would certainly assume there was a watchmaker somewhere that made this thing.  It would be foolish to assume that somehow the swirling atoms and molecules accidentally fell together in the intricate design of a watch.  The supposed weakness in this argument is the idea that natural selection can result in what appears to be design and that evolution has been proven and is a verifiable truth and that no one except devout creationists don't believe in evolution.

The second argument is often called the cosmological argument or first cause argument.  Aquinas was a prominent proponent of this type of argument.  Basically it goes like this, everything in the universe has a cause and its cause has a cause.  In order to avoid an infinite regress there must be a "first cause," or as Aquinas said, an "unmoved Mover."  Prof McGinn's response to this argument is the classic, "who made god?" argument.  He also points out that saying there's a first cause doesn't mean that it has to be god, it could very well be the Big Bang that is the first cause.  There's no need to postulate god as the first cause.

The third argument is new to me, it's called the ontological argument.  This is the most difficult one of all to spell out, and apparently the most difficult to refute.  Basically it goes something like this, the existence of god is proven in the very definition of god.  That is, god is the most perfect conceivable being, and a being that exists must be more perfect than one that doesn't exist.  McGinn claims that this is a beautifully deep and complex philosophical argument and he doesn't have too much to refute it.  Though he does talk about a way to refute this claim is to say, what makes existence "more perfect" than nonexistence?  Take a devil (interesting that he chooses something I'm sure he doesn't believe exists), is the existence of a devil better than the nonexistence of a devil?  Presumably not.  Also, he points out the difficulty of the term "perfect conceivable being."  Just what is the most perfect conceivable being?  We can't even use that terminology dealing with everyday things like mustaches (I beg to differ).

Photo credit here.

After poking holes in these three arguments Prof McGinn brings up his most powerful argument against the existence of god, the problem of evil.  The basic idea is this, if god exists, then why is there great suffering, death, and disasters in the world?  One of the arguments sometimes used against the problem of evil is the idea of free will like what was discussed in lecture eight.  This doesn't work in this argument because there are so many times when the suffering and death of innocent people has happened because of natural disasters.  If god is good, as the typical religious views claim, then why doesn't he step in and intervene.  We would never call a person good if they could easily intervene to save the life of an innocent child but by inaction let that child be killed.

Another point that Prof McGinn brings up is blind faith.  He claims that many who believe in god will answer contravening evidence by claiming faith.  That it doesn't matter what evidence there is, either for or against the existence of god, they just believe anyways.

The final point of the lecture goes into what is commonly referred to as "Pascal's Wager."  It's the idea that if believing in god won't hurt you, and you stand to gain eternal bliss then what's the harm?  There are two options here and the option of belief works out either way, either god exists or he doesn't exist, if he does then believing gains you eternal bliss if he doesn't you're not at any great loss.  So hedge your bets and believe so that it's a win-win situation.  One of Prof McGinn's answers comes from something he has said many times throughout these lectures, that one cannot force oneself to believe something that they know not to be true. I don't disagree with that particular statement and I said in a recent assignment for my apologetics class and I truly believe that "Pascal’s Wager is an intellectually void and relationally bankrupt reason for belief."

More on that in my next entry wherein I will rebut each of Prof McGinn's strawman and red herring arguments.  I have so much more to say in response to all these things but I'll save my responses for next time.

Such a Beautiful Sunset

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 12: The Self: Who Am I?

Continuing the series, twelve of fourteen... Who am I?  What is the "self"?  Either Prof McGinn prefers philosophy of the mind to other parts of philosophy, or these really are the most important questions of philosophy.  In a way I find it a bit off-putting that he only devotes one lecture to the question of God (that's next).

So Descartes had apparently proven that the self exists with his, cogito ergo sum, but, there's still more to be said than just that 'I' exist.  Things like why does the self seem to change significantly over the course of one's life, but at the same time, it persists despite these changes.  What sort of thing can the self be?

According to the lecture there are three primary theories about the self.  The simple ego theory, which falls neatly within the dualist framework, says the self is like an indivisible immaterial mental substance not unlike the soul or spirit.  The self goes beyond the mind and the body, like the peg that your mental states and personality are hung on and taken off of at different times and ways.  Prof McGinn talks about the issues with this concept, how can the self be something that is nothing.  This thing that's not a thing at all, loosely related to the mind.  So, this thing that is quintessential to my existence is something about which nothing can truly be said, since it's some indescribable mental substance.

Then there's brain/body theory which falls within the materialist framework.  The self is nothing more than the brain which is a complex physical substance, not a simple immaterial substance as the dualist would hold.  Therefore, when a materialist refers to the self, it's just a part of the brain construct that retains one's identity.  There are many difficulties with this theory and several interesting thought experiments, many of which have been shown in various science-fiction movies/books.  Pretty much any way of transferring one's brain, memory, or thoughts into a different person or body.  Like in the third movie in the Matrix trilogy, the Neo character transfers his consciousness into the machine construct/computer.  Did that mean that he was dead?  What about if you could transfer all your memories and/or brain into an assembly-line body?  Is that no longer the same person?  Presumably yes that is now you.  So, the body is not the self and neither is the brain.  Based on these thought experiments, it seems clear that the self has little or no relation to the body or the brain.  The most difficult one is the idea of splitting your brain.  There is some interconnectedness in the brain hemispheres, suppose one could divide your brain between two bodies.  Would you cease to exist?  Presumably no, if anything it would be multiplying yourself.

Lastly, the mental connectedness theory, basically the idea that there is no self as a bearer of mental states, just the mental states themselves, a stream of consciousness.  There really is no continual self, it's an illusion borne of a flow of mental states.  This may seem to fit, but there are difficulties with this idea as well.  Like the previous example of splitting the brain, the same problems with the brain/body theory apply here, if this were possible it would show that there must be a self to experience the mental states that one has.  That's a complicated example of a breakdown in this theory.  A much simpler issue with the theory arises when one has no mental state going on at all.  During certain parts of the sleep cycle there's basically nothing going on mentally.  Or getting knocked out.  We're not talking brain-dead, I'm relatively sure everyone would agree that is death.  But, what about when the stream of consciousness is interrupted?  Is the person dead?  Presumably no.  Whatever the case, it doesn't seem like this is a sufficiently strong theory either.

So we're left with another deep mystery much like the mysteries of the mind-body problem and consciousness coloring our experience of the world around us.  As usual, I don't really have an answer to this problem.  I'm comfortable with the simple ego and it's consistency with dualism and theology, but I don't want to just cop out saying, "well, this is the way I believe even though there's no way to prove it."  Though, since there's no way to prove any of these theories that might be the answer everyone has to give.

Faith and Philosophy Blog Carnival, July 2013, 6th Edition

Not as many entries this month as last month.

Tom Parker presents Out of the Darkness posted at Surprising Joy.

Justin Allison presents When Old Tech Dies posted at bible-tech.com.

insert@insert.gr presents Happiness in life. Do it your way. posted at Personal motivation for thinkers.


Britt McCrimmon presents What is the Gospel: Sin, A Just God and His Law posted at Salt Formation.


Carolyn presents What is Success? posted at The White Hindu.

Joshua Tilghman presents A Simple Kundalini Meditation posted at The Spirit of the Scripture.



Personal Growth Project presents Optimism vs Idealism: Keeping Your Dreams in Touch With Reality posted at Personal Growth Project_PGP Blog.

Jana presents Wisdom Ink Blog : Wisdom Ink Magazine posted at Wisdom Ink.



Jennifer presents A Technique to Release Fear, Anxiety and Worry posted at Jennifer Mele.

AlexWagman presents The Little Things posted at thebucketlistblog.

As always I'll continue to update this edition as entries come in.  Also, the standard caveat applies, I don't necessarily agree with all the ideas presented but I hope you all enjoy reading the various perspectives regarding faith and or philosophy. Next month's edition will be posted here on the 6th of August.

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 11: Mind and World: Are Objects Really as They Appear?

After lecture ten I've pretty much burnt out on philosophy of the mind, but Prof McGinn keeps going so will I.  This lecture is about the relationship of reality and one's perception of it.  The goal (though I think it can never be attained) is to resolve the problem of appearance and reality.

Say with sight, I'm seeing a table.  Am I seeing it as it is?  Or, is it colored or altered by my mind.  The question is not if the table exists, as the skeptic would ask.  The question is how it appears to me in my senses.  It is actually there but how do I perceive it?  The first argument is from illusion.

In this argument, one person is actually seeing a black table, and a second person is seeing an illusion of a black table.  The person "seeing" the illusory table is not really seeing a table he/she is seeing the sense datum of a table, and the assumption that the person seeing the actual table is actually seeing the table.  The problem is, that the person that is actually looking at the table, is also only able to see via sense data.  There are a couple attempts to answer this problem.  One says that the person experiencing the illusion of the table, is seeing nothing.  This cannot be the case, because to see nothing would mean that he/she isn't seeing a table, he/she is seeing nothing and nothing cannot be seen.  The second (and better answer to my mind), is that the person experiencing an illusion is seeing an object that doesn't exist.  One issue in this is just in terminology.  The person isn't actually "seeing" a non-existent object, it could be said that the person is experiencing the illusion of seeing a non-existent object.

After talking about that argument, Prof McGinn moves on to a secondary argument within the concept of the relativity of sensation.  He uses two specific examples, sugar being sweet/bitter, and the color being red/green.  Is there a case such that sugar can be bitter to a specific person/sense-group?  It seems plausible that scenario could exist.  So, we have to revise how we say, such and such is sweet.  We must say, such and such is sweet to me.  Tastiness is a much easier issue.  One person may say that a particular dish is tasty, and another may take the exact same dish and say it's disgusting.  Obviously there is a relativism in the perception of taste.

Next, color.  Take the color red.  "This ball is red."  Say a particular set of people (Prof McGinn uses martians for both of these arguments) see red as green.  Again, it ends up saying, such and such looks red to me/us.  They're relative to the observer.  This isn't an attack on truth, it's not making truth relative, it's just pointing out that certain properties are relative to the perceiver.  Prof McGinn sums colors are response-dependent properties.

NOT all properties are response-dependent.  His example is shape.  Round vs. square, that cannot be a subjective property.  To accept this as a response-dependent property, we'd also have to give up on the notion that objects have particular properties.  So, we have to divide different properties into categories of response-dependent and objective properties.  Flavor and taste is obviously response dependent, as is attractiveness/sexiness, what about humor?  These all seem obvious to me that they are completely response-dependent.  Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

This distinction is often called primary qualities as opposed to secondary qualities.  Secondary qualities are like color, taste, sound, beauty, smell, etc.  The primary qualities are in the realm of physics, shape, mass, size, number/quantity, etc.  This is basically the same concept as what are manifest images or conceptions verses the scientific images or conceptions.  The way we can think about this is to imagine what the universe looked like before anyone or anything was around to perceive the universe.  IF color is a mind-dependent quality then the universe would be shades of gray or the abstract conception of the universe without a perceiver to give it the mind-dependent qualities.

Two polarizing views, realism-the universe is real as it is but it doesn't have perception-dependent qualities and idealism-objects are not these abstract images that we think they might be they are actually ideas within the mind of God and we receive them in our mind.  All of these discussions concerning the mind and it's relationship with the universe and perception all lead up to the next lecture on what is the self.  Because all of these issues with the mind revolve around the idea of there being a self to experience these things.

That's what Prof McGinn said (at least as I understand it), now for what I think about it...

First off, I want to clarify that I don't know for sure anything that I'm about to say, but it seems much more logical to me than how Prof McGinn describes the different types of perceptions and their categories.  The biggest issue I have with Prof McGinn's delineation of senses (and I'm sure others would agree with him) is color.  We might all perceive colors differently.  We definitely name colors differently between different people.

Does that change the differences in light wavelength that makes different colors in the first place?  Colors should not be put on the relative side of the perceived properties scale.  Color is subjective in that it's a specific wavelength of light.

From Wikipedia, 1 Million colors

One possible arrangement of some primary and secondary qualities:

Primary Qualities	Secondary Qualities
Color	Flavor
Size	Attractiveness
Shape	Smell
Frequency/pitch	Goodness of sound
Mass	Feel (smooth, rough, etc.)
Atomic makeup	Everything else…

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 10: Consciousness: Can the Mystery Be Solved?

To be perfectly honest, this is really more like a continuation of the last lecture on the mind-body relationship, and it seems like this is Prof McGinn's favorite topic.

First, Prof McGinn mentions two specific types of consciousness, simple and self.  Simple consciousness is just the consciousness of objects, and other simple senses, though they're not really all that simple.  The self-consciousness is the ability to be conscious of the simple consciousness and to have a sense of self.  Simple consciousness isn't really all that simple if you think about the case of a person blind from birth. He or she would have no conception of sight, or in the case of a bat's echolocation or the platypus' electroreception, we as humans, have no consciousness of what it's like to sense things in those ways.  The simple consciousness is part of the subjectivity of consciousness, they are for a particular subject.  For you, in the case of your sensations.

The next part of consciousness is its intentionality, that is the object of a sense or consciousness.  Even sense experiences are based on intentionality, I'm sensing with my eyes/sight the table that's across the room from me.  I'm sensing with my ears/hearing the airconditioner fan blowing.  Consciousness has to be about something.  One cannot sense nothing, that's not consciousness.  Even in the self-consciousness, it's a reflection on 'I.'  There's no way to think about nothing.  Even if one is thinking about nothingness, that's still thinking about something.

Consciousness is special to the human experience in that it's the only thing that we know completely without any doubt.  As we talked about in skepticism in lecture one, even though we cannot be absolutely sure of the existence of anyone or anything.  We can be certain of our own thoughts and therefore our own consciousness is the only thing that is fully transparent to each person.  So, next time your male significant other answers the question, "What are you thinking about?" with, "Nothing." or "I don't know."  You can know he's lying.  We as conscious beings are always in the know about our own consciousness.  (To be fair, one could answer, "I don't remember." because even though we always know our own consciousness we don't always remember everything we ever think about.)

Prof McGinn is quick to point out that dualism doesn't really help in this issue of brain/mind disconnection, which he refers to as a consciousness gap.  I (somewhat) agree, because there's no good way to define how an etherial non-material substance can/does influence the material brain/body.  My personal input on this is just because we don't know how the non-material can influence the material doesn't mean that it doesn't or can't.  The existence of a non-material-based consciousness that can influence and be influenced by the material fills the consciousness gap quite nicely.

Prof McGinn's "answer" here is that it's a deep mystery.  First, we need to understand what he means by this...  It's not some spiritual answer.  Not some ethereal non-existent soul or spiritual answer, it's simply beyond human means of understanding.  Like the theory of relativity to a dog.  Even many people can't claim that they fully understand it, think about what that would be like to a dog, that's what it's like for humans to try to understand the consciousness.  Incidentally, he thinks this type of explanation might also fit well with free will and determinism.

My answer to this type of claim is that it seems like a copout like I mentioned before about zen being able to cheat the laws of non-contradiction.  It seems like rather than addressing these mysteries with faith in the non-material, he just says that we cannot know these things.  Now, at least he leaves it open to the possibility that we may someday evolve to knowing/solving these riddles, but that we don't know what that evolution could entail or what kind of change it will require.  It's so far beyond us that it might take as many years of evolution in the future that we've had already.  Obviously I don't disagree that it's a mystery, but my response to the mystery is to believe that there must be something more to existence. The dualism idea does fill the consciousness gap albeit mysteriously.

I just restarted college courses, I'm taking two classes, Education 200 and Apologetics 104.  It looks to be a fairly easy semester.  The reason I bring this up is I'm thinking of featuring my essays that I write for class on my blog.  Since I'm taking the classes I won't have as much time to write so that'll give me stuff to write about that'll be useful for my classes and something interesting that I can share with you.  Obviously I'll only post stuff that'll make sense to you or give you some context from which I'm writing.

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 9: Mind and Body: How Are They Related?

Continuing the Discovering the Philosopher in you series here with part nine of fourteen.  This lecture's unanswerable  problem is about the differences (if there are any) between the mind and the body/brain.  Like the lecture I'll try to layout the two (main) ideas, without commentary, then comment on the weaknesses and what I think about each side.

First dualism.  Made famous by (though arguably not original to him) Descarte came up with this idea and fleshed out the logical arguments behind how the mind is separate, distinct, and different than the body/brain (for the remainder of this entry when I say 'body' just understand that I'm [more than likely] referring specifically to the brain as the controlling organ of the body).  For one of his main arguments he used for dualism Descartes used identity property laws.  The essence of the mind is in thought, which isn't a measurable substance.  You can't measure the size of an idea or concept.  I am thinking of a white elephant right now (bet you are too) and you cannot tell me how big that thought is.  It cannot be measured in pounds or inches or any other system of measurement.  The human brain (head) is eight pounds (thanks cute kid from Jerry MacGuire) and even the electrochemical impulses in the brain can be measured using electroencephalographs and other tools.  Therefore based on the properties of identity, they cannot be the same thing if they are different essential characteristics.

Now materialism.  This is a much easier to explain idea because the idea of materialism is simple, the brain is all there is.  There is no mind-body problem, there's no such thing as the mind as a distinct thing from the body.  The reason we say 'mind' and other mind-related terms, is simply a difference in terminology.  Saying, 'mind' is the same as saying 'brain' and saying, "I feel angry." is the same as saying, "there's a certain state of chemicals in my brain."  The only dualism is in terminology.

Now, both have their problems, and to be perfectly honest I don't have any answers.  I feel that both sides are intractable and cannot offer all the answers.  For dualism the primary problem is in the interaction between mind and body.  If the mind is intangible then how does or how can it influence the body?  Is it a two-way street?  Is it a one-way?  Is there no interaction?  None of these seem possible.

On the other hand, materialism just kills all conception of the mind.  As hard as one might try, one cannot get rid of the mind, thoughts cannot be simplified to just chemical processes.  Even knowing that one's brain is mainly a complex system of electrochemical reactions to stimuli doesn't make me think of those processes while I'm thinking.  It seems to be obvious that thought is beyond just the chemical processes that go on inside your skull.

Really this discussion boils down to atheism and theism.  Either there is something more than just the material or there isn't.  If you believe there is no such thing as god, then there must be no such thing as the mind/soul/spirit.  If you believe there is something more than just the material, then there is some form of mind distinct from the body.

Here's my personal problem in this question, I think it's indubitable that there must be something more than just our bodies.  I'm a dualist (I'd say that any theist is and must be), but I have absolutely no idea how the two different parts interact.  From theology it's obvious that God is (in some ways) immaterial and spirit, akin to soul or mind, but man isn't God.  Now my theological answer is that God has made man in His image in that our souls can interact and influence the material to a limited extent like his Spirit is active in our lives and world.  I don't have any better answer than that.

Discovering the Philosopher in You: Part 8: Morality and Blame: Are We Free?

Continuing on the topic of morality lecture eight of the fourteen lectures on the big questions of philosophy.  Inherent in the concept of morality are the concepts of praise and blame.  When we say something is good we're assigning praise to that object or action and vice versa.  However, praise or blame only holds if the person that did the good/bad action was free to do it.  If a person were forced to murder (technically that wouldn't be murder so, bad example), say someone was forced to steal.  Would we blame that person?  Presumably no.

The problem is, what does it mean to be free to do something?  Determinism (and to some extent the laws of physics) says that everything has a cause, which makes sense, so if we could freeze a slice of the universe in time we would see the cause(s) behind every decision.  Also, behind even the simplest of decisions there's a physiological component; a genetic predisposition, and there's a sociological component; a way one is raised.  The example Prof McGinn uses is the choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, which I'll continue to use throughout this entry.

Here's the real kicker though...  You might say, "but everything isn't caused by something else, especially at the sub-atomic level."  There are super tiny particles that are as unpredictable as far as we understand it.  They appear to be random and have no governing principles.  There are two issues with this.  One, there might be some governing principle or law that determines how these sub-atomic particles move/act.  Or two, even if they truly are random, that's still not freedom.  Look at it this way, if you have to choose chocolate, vanilla, both, or none, and you have to roll a die to decide, you don't get a choice in the matter.  You have to randomly choose every time you make a decision, therefore you really don't have any choice in the matter.  So either way, regardless if the universe is deterministic or indeterministic there's no way to have free choice (we'll go more into that later, but that's the way it's looking so far).

Don't worry, I'm not trying to say there's no such thing as free will or freedom of choice.  The problems (at least to some extent) stem from the logical link between the universe being deterministic and that relation to free will.  The logic seems to say that if every instant of the universe is somehow determined by the previous instant, then there's no such thing as free will.  And, as I've said even if it's not determined by the previous instant, that's not truly free will either.  How can we reconcile this issue?  I'll give you a hint, I don't think there will be a resolution.  Prof McGinn doesn't seem to think there will ever be a resolution either.

Some seem to think that free will is somehow compatible with determinism.  I don't see how that can be but I can see that one has to draw a line somewhere.  Let's try to come at this from a different angle.  Let's continue to use the chocolate/vanilla decision, starting at the end and working backwards.  The very last instant is your hand picking up whatever ice cream cone you choose.  In the instant immediately preceding that a signal went from your brain to your arm/hand to reach out and take whatever you've decided.  Is that a decision in itself?  I don't think anyone would say that it is; though it stands to reason that the brain can still be indecisive and change and choose a different option even after the signal has been sent to the arm/hand to pick up the ice cream.  You could even touch one of the cones and then change your mind and pick something different.  Then, just before the signal is sent from the brain to the hand, there's processing in your mind.  Maybe you're weighing the options...  Chocolate, yum, vanilla, yum, both?  I'll get fat.  Neither?  But I really want ice cream.  When I was talking to my wife about this her answer was hilarious, "stop thinking and just take both."  So we're somewhere in the brain making the decision now.  Determinism would say that you're genetically predisposed or raised to make whatever decision you do end up choosing.  But wait, can't you go against that?  Especially now that you've (hopefully) considered all these determining factors?  You know you've got a terrible sweet tooth, but you're trying to cut back so you decide none.  Or, your parents liked to reward you with chocolate sweets for good behavior when you were young, but you know that so you decide to go against the grain and pick vanilla.  So, where did the original decision come from?  Is it from the person who set the ice cream in from of you?  Maybe that was the inciting incident, but that certainly isn't a determining factor or a decision in itself.

The next lecture is going to cover more of this intractable issue when it comes to the mind-body problem.  But here's the question, where do thoughts, in general, come from?  I'm not talking about observations of things within the world, that's mostly self-explanatory.  I'm talking about just thoughts in general.

One important point Prof McGinn says in the lecture that I disagree with on the same grounds I disagreed with him on skepticism and epistemological ignorance.  He says that we cannot just flippantly dismiss the notion that we don't have free will.  I say, why not?  Let me put it to you this way, if we all understand that there exists such notions as free will and praise and blame for actions but we cannot ever follow the rabbit hole all the way down will that change the way we behave?  Not for me.  I believe God gave us free will as incomprehensible as that can be at times I believe God set up the universe with laws and logic and that we fit into that design in an important way, but that we have the free choice to ignore that plan and attempt to go our own way.  There's another thing I'd like to point out...  This concept of determinism is determined (pun intended) by the ability to do things that only God could do anyways.  Things like freeze time and look at one instant, neurons fire so fast it's measured in milliseconds and multiple neurons fire at once, so to be able to see the deterministic characteristics in the human brain, would take a much more accurate accounting of the brain than we have (or every will have, to my estimation).  Then there's a universality to it, one would have to have the power to read genetic code and understand genetic predisposition as well as a thorough understanding of the decider's history of how he/she was raised.  Only God could have such abilities so I would say we need not trouble ourselves (too much) over not being able to completely understand these things.  I would say, we don't know, and we never will so don't get too bent out of shape about not knowing.  Keep calm and eat ice cream.