Thinking Christian

There is a lively debate going on regarding two views of the mind: dualist vs. materialist. Last month’s New Scientist article, “Creationists Declare War Over the Brain,” prompted responses from several quarters, including one of my own. Dr. Steven Novella wrote a two-part response (Part One, Part Two), taking the opportunity especially to make swipes at Michael Egnor of the Discovery Institute who has written on the topic more than once.

Drs. Egnor and Novella are both physicians, Egnor a neurosurgeon, Novella a neurologist. Novella’s scathing disdain for Egnor is, shall we say, not well disguised (here, for example). So it may be rather audacious for me to jump in with my own thoughts, but here I go anyway.

The question, to borrow terminology from Dr. Novella, is whether every physical effect has a physical cause. That’s one useful definition of materialism. Alternatively, it’s the view that nothing exists except for matter and energy, and their interactions in space and time. While it is not technically identical with naturalism (the view that nature is all that exists; there is no supernatural), for all practical purposes the two may be treated synonymously. Novella’s position can be summarized thus: we don’t know whether materialism is an adequate description of ultimate reality (philosophical naturalism), but science must proceed on the assumption (methodological naturalism) that it is.

The opposing position holds that materialist/naturalist explanations are insufficient for at least some of what we know about reality; dualism, which allows for nonnatural reality of some sort, provides better explanations of at least some phenomena. In this case, it is the mind and brain that are the realities in question.

It goes without saying that materialism is atheistic in practice at least, if not in ultimate principle. If every physical thing in the world can be traced back to just physical causes, then there is no God, or at least no God who does anything in the world. There are theists who are not dualists in the sense Novella, Egnor, and I understand the matter (there’s more to discuss there than we have time for), but there are no theists who are materialists. So you can easily guess on which side of the question I stand.

Novella uncorks the big guns in his two articles: dualism is anti-science, he says.

It is crystal clear . . . that this is about ideology, not science. ID proponents feel that their spiritual ideological world view is threatened by the findings of modern science, and so have decided to undermine it. They want this to be an ideological and cultural war, because in the arena of science they lose. So they claim that science (at least those sciences with which they feel uncomfortable) is nothing more than the ideology of materialism. They want to frame the conflict as that between the traditional, moral, and god-fearing spiritualism on one side, and cold, amoral, mechanistic materialism on the other. This is an emotional fight they feel they can win.

He later tells us how hopeless the fight is:

Does science require methodological naturalism? Yes. This is the real debate going on between mainstream science and various ideological groups who wish to promote a non-naturalist belief system. But this philosophical fight was fought in centuries past - and the naturalists won. The fight is over. But the anti-materialists (really anti-naturalists) want to resurrect this fight, and since they cannot win it in the arena of science they want to fight it in the arena of public opinion and then the legal and academic realms.

But is it really over already? Not on the strength of Novella’s arguments. He treats cavalierly the relation between philosophical and methodological naturalism:

[M]ethodological naturalism posits that nature is all the we can know, regardless of whether or not it is all that there is (which by definition we cannot know).

What does he mean by that parenthetical clause? Is it that we cannot, by definition, know all that there is? That’s a safe statement? Or is he saying that nature is all that we can know, and if there is anything else, we cannot know it? Clearly he means it in the latter sense. Following an extended quotation from the Dover decision, he writes,

The last paragraph is key - the anti-materialist/naturalist movement is really about changing the ground rules of science (re-fighting the fight they lost in the past) to include supernatural explanations, but this is impossible within the necessary framework of science.

The “necessary framework of science,” to Novella, is obviously two things at once: the framework of naturalism is necessary to science; and science is the necessary framework for all of knowledge. The same attitude dominates the first Novella passage I quoted above. If it is “about ideology, not science,” the reason that’s such an awful thing is because anything that is not of science is of the devil. Ideology is of course a highly loaded term; Novella could have substituted the word philosophy to make the same essential point, though with less of a rhetorical jab. Indeed ID proponents would agree that this is a question of philosophy (also of science). Novella’s implication is that if it isn’t about science, it isn’t about knowledge. If it isn’t science, it isn’t knowledge.

The trap there is as obvious as it could be: If it isn’t science, it isn’t knowledge purports to be a knowledge statement, but it cannot claim to be a statement of science. It is a self-defeating proposition.

Science is not the only route to knowledge, and there is no scientific reason to believe that nature is all there is to reality or causation. But for many, including Judge Jones of Dover fame, that’s the way it must be. I referred earlier to Novella’s quote from his decision. It ends with this:

It is notable that defense experts’ own mission, which mirrors that of the IDM itself, is to change the ground rules of science to allow supernatural causation of the natural world, which the Supreme Court in Edwards and the court in McLean correctly recognized as an inherently religious concept. Edwards, 482

Apparently the ground rules of science do not allow supernatural causation of the natural world. God has been ground-ruled out of existence. Science came along and made him non-existent. And now the ID movement comes along and (gasp!) argues that science might not have that power after all. (Ironically, even if it did have that power, it would have it by virtue of philosophical argument, not lab work.)

In closing (quickly, before the Michigan State-Penn State football game begins) let’s replay part of the first Novella quote I presented above:

They want to frame the conflict as that between the traditional, moral, and god-fearing spiritualism on one side, and cold, amoral, mechanistic materialism on the other.

Rhetorical dismissiveness aside, what’s wrong with framing the conflict in non-scientific terms? Novella wants to frame the conflict as being between the good guys, the guys who trust only science, and the bad guys who let other thinking into the fray. But we’ve already seen he cannot do that; he cannot play the game as if there were a side that trusts only science. As an ID proponent, I’m perfectly comfortable with letting other ideas enter the discussion. Novella is doing it too, he just doesn’t seem to recognize that he’s doing it. “Science is non-ideological,” he says. Ideally that’s true. He wants us also to believe “Novella is non-ideological.” There are none so blind…

Dualism is not dueling with science. Its gauntlet is laid down strictly with materialist science, especially materialist science that claims it is the only source of knowledge of reality.

Amanda Gefter wrote in New Scientist on October, 22,

Could the next battleground in the ID movement’s war on science be the brain?

[Link: Creationists declare war over the brain - brain - 22 October 2008 - New Scientist]

Some key excerpts:

The article is riddled with words like “worry,” “attack,” “war,” “threat.” Gefter tried to make it seem such language comes from the non-material side primarily, but the effect of it all on materialist scientists shows clearly.

Clearly, while there is a genuine attempt to appropriate neuroscience, it will not influence US laws or education in the way that anti-evolution campaigns can because neuroscience is not taught as part of the core curriculum in state-funded schools. But as Andy Clark, professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, emphasises: “This is real and dangerous and coming our way.”

He and others worry because scientists have yet to crack the great mystery of how consciousness could emerge from firing neurons. “Progress in science is slow on many fronts,” says John Searle, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley. “We don’t yet have a cure for cancer, but that doesn’t mean cancer has spiritual causes.”

Gefter’s last word is,

What can scientists do? They have been criticised for not doing enough to teach the public about evolution. Maybe now they need a big pre-emptive push to engage people with the science of the brain - and help the public appreciate that the brain is no place to invoke the “God of the gaps”.

What can scientists do? Let’s back that question up a step. What can scientists do for what? What are they so concerned to protect? Just this, it seems: science’s hegemony on knowledge; its ownership of all explanations; its insistence that it is the sole source of information. Other than that, what threat does this pose science?

Well, yes, there’s more. Philosophy of mind “threatens” to show that material explanations are not entirely sufficient. That opens the door another crack for the dreaded Intelligent Design to enter.

Be afraid, materialist science. Be very afraid.

I’ll add this before closing: the Evangelical Philosophical Society has also responded to Gefter’s article on their blog, including several corrections of factual errors, and this from J.P. Moreland:

The simple truth is that in both science and philosophy, strict physicalist analysis of consciousness and the self have been breaking down since the mid-1980s. The problems with physicalism have nothing directly to do with theism; they follow from rigorous treatments of consciousness and the self as we know them to be. The real problem comes in trying to explain its origin and for this problem, naturalism in general and Darwinism in particular, are useless. In my view, the only two serious contenders are theism and panpsychism which, contrary to the musings of some, has throughout the history of philosophy been correctly taken as a rival to and not a specification of naturalism.

Angus Menuge also corrected Patricia Churchland’s assertion that non-material views of mind come from an argument from ignorance:

At any given time, scientists should infer the best current explanation of the available evidence, and right now, the best evidence from both neuroscience and rigorous philosophical analysis is that consciousness is not reducible to the physical. Churchland’s refusal to draw this inference is based not on evidence, but on what Karl Popper called “promissory materialism,” a reliance on the mere speculative possibility of a materialistic explanation. Since this attitude can be maintained indefinitely, it means that even if a non-materialist account is correct (and supported by overwhelming evidence), that inconvenient truth can always be ignored.

A new study just reported from Germany concludes that “Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain…. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.”

This echoes a previous study by Benjamin Libet, which had similar results though with a shorter time interval. Many interpreted Libet’s study as refuting free will, since in some sense the brain apparently decided before the conscious mind did. The current study’s authors are more cautious:

Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: “Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed.”

[From Unconscious decisions in the brain]

Regardless of whether those “prepared” decisions can be reversed, however, free will may still exist. First, there are still massive philosophical absurdities associated with its denial. Bill Dembski just blogged on one of those yesterday. Second, is there any requirement that free choices be entirely conscious choices? Why would that be so? Third, it’s unclear from this report in just what way the unconscious aspects of the decision are fed and influenced by conscious thinking. Fourth, if free will is not operating in the decisions this team studied, just how are decisions made? Do they have any explanation for that at all?

Such an explanation would have to jump a significant hurdle. The one providing it would have to show that he or she believes it not because of deterministic necessity, but because there are good reasons to believe it. The distance between the two is enormous.

Language Log takes frequent note of strange things science journalists say. Their most recent is about the neuroscience of mothers watching children in distress. Here is part of what LL’s Mark Liberman’s had to say:

It’s rhetorically interesting that Ms. Parker-Pope takes the existence of brain differences observed by fMRI as evidence that the reactions in question are “hard-wired”, i.e. innate. No doubt the ability to recognize one’s children and the impulse to empathize with them have a substantial evolved biological substrate. But the fact that the psychological states in question are distinguishable in fMRI scans tells us nothing whatsoever about the balance between Nature and Nurture, in this case or in any other.

….

I guess that it’s the bizarre inference from observation in fMRI scans to innateness that makes this story at all newsworthy.

This is akin to the inference neuroscientists have made (examples here and here) that because they see no soul in their scans, therefore there is no such thing. (The Language Log posts notes later that the researchers themselves were partly guilty for the “bizarre inference.”) There’s an unjustified logical leap in both instances.

In the case of the soul, I suspect this reflects a bias that “if it isn’t science, it isn’t true,” or at least, “if it isn’t science, it isn’t knowledge.”