Totally Deserving -- Congratulations to Nancy Pearcey whose book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity has won the 2005 ECPA Gold Medallion Award for best book in the category of "Christianity and Society." (Tim Challies has the details.) Those who've enjoyed Pearcey's excellent book will want to keep an eye out for her guest blogging at Intellectuelle.
Blogging Basics -- A few days ago an otherwise tech savvy fellow asked me to explain the term "blog." At first I surprised that someone could be familiar with the Internet and still not be aware of blogging. But then I read today that Brad Williams, a Baptist pastor who has been blogging for almost a month, just realized how to add URL links in his posts. When bloggers don’t even seem to understand the fundamentals of blogging I guess we shouldn’t take for granted that everyone we encounter understands the phenomenon. (Then again Brad describes himself as "a transplanted Alabama hillbilly working among Cajuns" so maybe it’s just a problem among non-Texan Southerners.)
Teleporting the Soul -- The news that some scientists are trying to harness teleportation may intrigue fans of Star Trek but Zeitgeist vs. Nomos is a bit more skeptical:
They've got a few problems centered around the question, Am I my body? That is, is everything about me a physical thing. All my desires, hopes, dreams, memories, or thoughts and beliefs, are these things part of my body? The prevailing message coming across from the scientific community in the popular media and press is yes. We are our bodies. To put it bluntly, we are computers made of meat with some extra meat in the right places to move the computer around. If this is true, then I don't see any problem for the potential of some future super computer having the ability to keep the relations of "a trillion trillion atoms" all sorted out once they are broken apart and then being able to put them back together again. Given the exponential rate of processing speed and memory storage advancing the way it is (remember your old 8088 or 286 - it wasn't that long ago) that time will probably not be too far off. If everything about me is my body, a physical thing, then all my memories, emotions, states of mind, etc. are just combinations of atoms or electrical charges in my brain. We can take them apart and we can put them back together. Well, maybe we can't but I'm sure the Dr. McCoy of the future can (Bones. Star Trek. Get it).
The problem is that we are not our bodies. We have bodies. But we, the things that make us us, our ego, self-consciousness, beliefs, memories, states of mind, all these things are not physical. They are part of our souls, the souls that animate our bodies.
The Great Evangelical Disaster? -- Phillip Johnson argues that evangelicalism is in crisis:
My own assessment would be that evangelicalism's spiritual condition at the beginning of the twenty-first century is reminiscent of the medieval church just prior to the Protestant Reformation.
No, I take it back. Things are much worse among evangelicals today than they were in the Catholic Church in those days. Modern and postmodern evangelicalism is just like medieval Catholicism was -- only more superficial.
While I will be the first to agree that evangelicalism is in need of a spiritual overhaul, I think Phil is overstating it just a bit. I was only a child during the 1970s but I can still remember the situation being much, much worse (remember when abortion wasn’t a major concern of evangelicals?). Also, including Jan Crouch, TBN, Benny Hinn as examples of "evangelicalism" is quite a stretch. Falwell and Robertson are on the fringes but those other clowns have slipped completely out of the tent.
Having grown up in the real South, on behalf of all the "non-Texan Southerners," I take exception to your analysis and will follow up that if you ask any one of us, the only real Southerners are non-Texan Southerners (Texas just happens to be located in the geographical region). ;-)
The problem is that we are not our bodies. We have bodies. But we, the things that make us us, our ego, self-consciousness, beliefs, memories, states of mind, all these things are not physical. They are part of our souls, the souls that animate our bodies.
So what would happen if a Star Trek like teleporter was used on a person? Would his body be teleported but his 'ego, self-consciousness, beliefs, memories, states of mind etc' be left behind without a body? What would walk out of the other end of the teleporter? Would the person drop dead? Would the person that walked out be a philosophical zombie, i.e. a simulation of the 'true' person?
One proposal I had a while ago was that there is no reason I see to say God could not have created a materialistic universe. In other words, our souls are in fact made up of the 'meat' in our brains.
The analogy I like to use is a video game that has been saved on a computer. The game is both a combination of the atoms that make up the hard drive and their relationship to each other. It's the relationship, though, that makes up the guts of what the game is. If the original computer was destroyed the game could be 'resurrected' if you knew the exact state it was saved in. In fact I remember a few games there used this exact mechanism for 'saving'. If you wanted to save your game the program would give you a number. To 'restore' your game you simply entered that number at the start of a new game. You could, therefore, 'restore' your game even on a different system that you never touched. In principle why couldn't God be using the same system with the universe?
The problem is that we are not our bodies. We have bodies. But we, the things that make us us, our ego, self-consciousness, beliefs, memories, states of mind, all these things are not physical. They are part of our souls, the souls that animate our bodies.
Unfortunately, most of this is known to be false, and the rest is almost undoubtedly false.
It is true that memories, beliefs, and other mental states are not "physical" in the sense of being physical objects; they are certainly physical in the sense of being states of, or operations of, a physical system (i.e., the brain). The proof is obvious: when we make changes to the physical system, we change these mental states. Brain damage results in obvious, and often extremely specific, changes in memory, personality, beliefs, and other mental states or mental operations. Stimulation of the brain with low electrical charges triggers memories and emotions, and can erase memories that already exist. Drugs can alter memory functions, moods, personality traits, and other mental states or mental operations. And severe loss of, or failure to develop, a robust physical system (through brain damage or birth defect) results in the loss of, or failure to develop, the mental processes and capacities associated with a functioning physical system.
So mental states and mental operations are physical states and physical operations of a physical system. They are specifically not part or, or a function of, non-physical systems like a "soul". The proof again is obvious: they exist when the physical system functions in its typical fashion, and not when it does not. The physical system (the brain) and its functions are all that are needed to explain the resultant states and operations of that system. We never refer to anything outside that system to explain the mental states and operations associated with the system, and there are no such states or operations known that require explanations that do not refer to the functioning of the system. Like God, "the soul" is an unneeded hypothesis.
Kevin,
It is true that memories, beliefs, and other mental states are not "physical" in the sense of being physical objects; they are certainly physical in the sense of being states of, or operations of, a physical system (i.e., the brain). The proof is obvious: when we make changes to the physical system, we change these mental states.
Let’s see, if we start with the question-begging premise that only physical states can affect physical states then I guess we would have to accept your conclusion. But before we are forced to do so you might want to explain (without begging the question) how mental states are physical. Also, can you provide evidence that we have empirically detected the actual mental state (not their effect, but the state itself)? That should be easy if they are truly physical.
Let's turn the question around Joe, suppose that mental states are not physical. If you assume mental states can affect the physical (that one's mental states can cause a person to actually make decisions about what to do with one's body such as drive to Church, punch someone who is annoying, drink Pepsi etc.) then something must happen to the physical matter in the body/brian that cannot be explained by the known laws of physics and chemistry? Correct?
Boonton,
…then something must happen to the physical matter in the body/brian that cannot be explained by the known laws of physics and chemistry? Correct?
Yes, I think that’s true. But I also think that is true of a purely physicalist answer. There are no known laws of physics or chemistry that allow “emergent properties” to turn around and cause unique effects on the very entity that they emerged from. Even if Kevin is ulimately correct, his claims are not backed up by current cognitive science.
So both ways of asking the question are correct but which is easier to ask? Emergent properties violate no known laws of physics or chemistry yet they are difficult to calculate if you tried to do so by modeling every element of a population (whether it's a population of atoms in a brain or cell or the population of Europe). However a non-materialistic explanation would require a positive violation of the laws of physics/chemistry.
There's only so many places this violation can happen if you maintain that mental states can actually impact the real world (if your thoughts let you actually control your body). All roads point to the brian which greatly narrows the place to look for something outside of the known laws of nature. No doubt further research will narrow the field to even smaller areas of the brain.
Joe to me this is starting to look like the God of the gaps explanation in creationism.
Memories are quite physical. I've given you links to some Scientific American articles on memory before but I guess you either didn't look at them or didn't believe them. Or maybe you just forgot. ;-) I'm not going to go look them up for you again, you can do a search yourself at:http://www.sciam.com/ You will only be able to look at the abstracts for free. But then sometimes enlightenment has a cost.
Frankly I don't see what the fuss is about, why can't the brain record thoughts and memories? Why is it a requirement that this function only reside in the soul? Can't it be both? You can only have faith that a soul exists. Memory however, is an observable physical process. I never understand with spiritual matters why you can't just leave it at "I have faith it exists", rather than, "I can prove it exists". Is it really too much of burden or too scary to have faith in something you can't prove? And admit it? So what? Nothing wrong with having a little faith. And if you are wrong, you will find out eventually, right?
If a hard drive is gouged is the software gouged as well, or is it just prevented from manifesting itself on that hard drive? The software seems to work fine on other hard drives, but not ones with gouges.
Let’s see, if we start with the question-begging premise that only physical states can affect physical states then I guess we would have to accept your conclusion. But before we are forced to do so you might want to explain (without begging the question) how mental states are physical. Also, can you provide evidence that we have empirically detected the actual mental state (not their effect, but the state itself)? That should be easy if they are truly physical.
I'm not sure how anything I said depends on the premise that "only the physical can affect the physical" - but if you think the opposite is true, go ahead and demonstrate it. Produce some observable physical effect in the world using non-physical means. There could be a million dollars in it for you (but be forewarned: everyone who's tried it so far under controlled conditions has failed miserably).
At any rate, as to "how mental states are physical" - they are physical in the same way that other states are physical. A "state" is merely a configuration or "set up" of a system that corresponds to one of (usually) many possible such configurations. (The range of all possible configurations is called a "state space"; when a system is in one particular configuration it "occupies that point in the state space". The state space of a single ordinary gambling die is the numbers 1 - 6; when you roll the die it then settles on a particular "state" corresponding to whichever number is on top. Similarly, when you turn the ignition key on in your car it enters the "running" state, and when you turn it off it enters the "parked" state.) Your brain is an extremely complex physical object with untold trillions of active connections between pieces of the system (neurons). The particular pattern of connections and synaptical firings in the brain at any given moment is its state at that moment. The brain continually changes its state as synapses fire in differing patterns; at a somewhat higher level it changes states more slowly as entire large areas of the brain become more or less active. These neuronal firings are purely physico-chemical - they occur as flows of ions across cell membranes under very specific conditions, which then trigger "firings" of nearby cells through chemical effects on cell-surface proteins. Thus, the brain's state is a physical state corresponding to the physical structure and processes within it. These patterns of brain activity also correspond to "mental" events - to sense processing, memory, motor commands, etc. We know they do, because it is possible to follow the processing of mental events experimentally: the firing of single visual-cortex neurons, corresponding to very distinct patterns exhibited in front of the eyeballs, has been tracked in cats, and a general map of the visual cortex has been produced showing that different neurons fire in response to different stimuli; again at a larger level, blood flow and energy processing in different parts of the brain can be correlated to differing mental activities using fMRI and PET scanning. Therefore, mental states - specific configurations of the neuronal system of the brain - are physical states, and change in response to physico-chemical processes in the brain, and from the rest of the body, which themselves are purely physical.
In precisely analogous ways, the rest of the body has its own physical states and changes between states (protein contractions in muscle cells, enzyme production in the stomach or liver, etc.); these structures are purely physical systems and their states are physical states. The brain is the same. There is one thing different about physical states of the brain, however: they have a kind of subjective quality that physical states of the rest of the body do not have. We "feel" and "experience" states of the brain - memories, emotions, desires - in ways that we do not feel "digestion" or "contraction" (and the feelings we do get from our peripheral bodies - pain, tiredness, hunger - we characterize as being part of our emotions and experiences, that is, as brain states, notwithstanding that they are prompted by conditions elsewhere). We call brain states "mental" states because they have a conscious aspect - which we call "mind" - that is not found in other kinds of physical states. This difference is the primary motivation for mind/body dualism - the fact that "mind" "feels" different from the non-consciously-experienced events of the body led many people to assume that the mind itself was in fact a different entity from the body.
But this once-common misunderstanding is clearly false. For one thing, the assumption that drives it is clearly illogical - the fact that some physical states are consciously "experienced" is no evidence that they are not in fact physical. For another, there is no evidence in favor of that claim - there is nothing that indicates the mind is an entity in itself distinct from the body. More importantly, we have the evidence that I mentioned in my original post that proves the contrary - the mind is in fact indistinguishable from (part of) the body. When we alter the physical system in which "mind" occurs (when we change or damage our brains), we alter the conscious experience of its physical states (we alter our minds and personalities).
When thinking about the transporter concept, I wonder about concepts like time and space similar to the warp theory.
If the soul exists in a different dimension of space (since we can't touch, taste, see or feel it), I propose the transporter would leave you with a steaming pile of goo that formerly resembled a human being and a soul departed.
The body would collapse, since to transport molecules, they would have to surpass the speed of light and then be reassembled elsewhere. Correct?
Joe,
It sounds like Kevin is suggesting that as we get more advanced, scientists will be able to measure and read all of the physico-chemical states in our brains and determine exactly what we are thinking and the content of all of our emotions, beliefs, and desires (ect.) are at any given time in EXACTING detail. Sounds pretty neat. Oh... and impossible too.
1. If a non-physical soul exists it must somehow be able to 'follow' the matter of the physical body. Otherwise, everytime you get up from a chair and walk away you're soul might end up 'left behind' floating in space.
1. a. If a non-physical soul can somehow follow the physical body then it may be able to follow the body thru a transporter. If it can then the transporter would be no problem. If it can't then the person stepping outside the transporter would have no soul. What would that look like? What it would be is finally some physical evidence for the existence of the supernatural.
2. This assumes the idea is that a non-physical soul actually controls the body in some sort of meaningful way. An alternative idea is the "Being John Malkovich" one....the soul is trapped inside the body but it doesn't control it. It is just a passenger along for the ride and perhaps the impression of control is just a clever illustion of some type.
2. a. How would that work? Well imagine a physical body whose actions are synchronized with the decisions a soul would make if it could control the body. The soul might think it is running the body just like a child with a toy steering wheel may think he is driving the car when it is really his mother. This implies no true free will, though, since the soul's decisions would have to be deterministic ahead of time. In this case the soul may very well get booted from the body but we'd never know about it since the person whose soul gets booted will act and look the same.
Finally here's another issue. AS far as we can tell a transporter would be less like turning someone into a radio wave and sending him somewhere else than it would a fax machine that would assemble a copy on the receiving end.
Like a real fax machine, though, there's no need to destroy the original that is 'beamed' out. What happens when you have an exact copy? Does the copy have a soul? If not is it ok to harm it? Harvest its organs?
In my humble opinion this article underestimates both the intelligence and the spiritual acumen of both Falwell and Robertson. To put them on the "fringe" makes for better writing than sense. In some ways it may be like a mouse calling two Elephants "small".