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Details:

In this podcast, J. Warner examines the evidence for the existence of the mind (and inferentially, the soul) as he looks at six classic philosophical arguments. Jim also briefly discusses Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos and discusses the limitations of physicalism.

The MP3 file is here. (67 MB, 72 minutes)

Topics:

Atheist Thomas Nagel’s latest book “Mind and Cosmos” makes the case that materialism cannot account for the evidence of mental phenomena

Nagel writes in this recent New York Times article that materialism cannot account for the reality of consciousness, meaning, intention and purpose

Quote from the Nagel article:

Even though the theistic outlook, in some versions, is consistent with the available scientific evidence, I don’t believe it, and am drawn instead to a naturalistic, though non-materialist, alternative. Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.

When looking at this question, it’s important to not have our conclusions pre-determined by presupposing materialism or atheism

If your mind/soul doesn’t exist and you are a purely physical being then that is a defeater for Christianity, so we need to respond

Traditionally, Christians have been committed to a view of human nature called “dualism” – human beings are souls who have bodies

The best way* to argue for the existence of the soul is using philosophical arguments

The case:

The law of identity says that if A = B’ if A and B have the exact same properties

If A = the mind and B = the brain, then is A identical to B?

Wallace will present 6 arguments to show that A is not identical to B because they have different properties

Not everyone of the arguments below might make sense to you, but you will probably find one or two that strike you as correct. Some of the points are more illustrative than persuasive, like #2. However, I do find #3, #5 and #6 persuasive.

1) First-person access to mental properties

Thought experiment: Imagine your dream car, and picture it clearly in your mind

If we invited an artist to come and sketch out your dream car, then we could see your dream car’s shape on paper

This concept of your dream car is not something that people can see by looking at your brain structure

Physical properties can be physically accessed, but the properties of your dream care and privately accessed

2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies

Common sense notion of personhood is that we own our bodies, but we are not our bodies

3) Persistent self-identity through time

Thought experiment: replacing a new car with an old car one piece at a time

When you change even the smallest part of a physical object, it changes the identity of that object

Similarly, your body is undergoing changes constantly over time

Every cell in your body is different from the body you had 10 years ago

Even your brain cells undergo changes (see this from New Scientist – WK)

If you are the same person you were 10 years ago, then you are not your physical body

4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects

Physical objects can be measured (e.g. – use physical measurements to measure weight, size, etc.)

Mental properties cannot be measured

5) Intentionality or About-ness

Mental entities can refer to realities that are physical, something outside of themselves

A tree is not about anything, it just is a physical object

But you can have thoughts about the tree out there in the garden that needs water

6) Free will and personal responsibility

If humans are purely physical, then all our actions are determined by sensory inputs and genetic programming

Biological determinism is not compatible with free will, and free will is required for personal responsibility

Our experience of moral choices and moral responsibility requires free will, and free will requires minds/souls

He spends the last 10 minutes of the podcast responding to naturalistic objections to the mind/soul hypothesis.

*Now in the podcast, Wallace does say that scientific evidence is not the best kind of evidence to use when discussing this issue of body/soul and mind/brain. But I did blog before about two pieces of evidence that I think are relevant to this discussion: corroborated near-death experiences and mental effort.

You might remember that Dr. Craig brought up the issue of substance dualism, and the argument from intentionality (“aboutness”), in his debate with the naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, so this argument about dualism is battle-ready. You can add it to your list of arguments for Christian theism along with all the other arguments like the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, stellar habitability, galactic habitability, irreducible complexity, molecular machines, the Cambrian explosion, the moral argument, the resurrection, biological convergence, and so on.