Transcript The Sacred Cosmos: Christian Faith and the Challenge of Naturalism

The Sacred Cosmos:
Christian Faith and the
Challenge of Naturalism
4. Human Nature: Embodied Self and
Transcendent Soul, Part 1
Sunday, January 31, 2010
10 to 10:50 am, in the Parlor
Presenter: David Monyak
Primary
Reference

The Sacred
Cosmos: Christian
Faith and the
Challenge of
Naturalism,
Terrence L. Nichols,
Brazos Press, 2003.
(Reissued Jan 2009
by Wipf and Stock)
Primary
Reference

The Sacred
Cosmos: Christian
Faith and the
Challenge of
Naturalism,
Terrence L. Nichols,
Brazos Press, 2003.
(Reissued Jan 2009
by Wipf and Stock)
Dr. Terrence Nichols
is Professor of
Theology at the
University of St.
Thomas, St. Paul
Academic History
Ph.D. - Marquette University
B.A. - University of
Minnesota
The Sacred Cosmos
Christian Faith and the Challenge of
Naturalism



Jan 3. God and Nature
Jan 10: Origins: Creation and Big Bang
Jan 24: Evolution: The Journey into God
 Jan
31: Human Nature: Embodied
Self and Transcendent Soul, Part 1

Feb 7: Human Nature: Embodied Self and
Transcendent Soul, Part 2. Conclusion: A Sacred
Cosmos
O God, you made us in your own image
and redeemed us through Jesus your Son:
Look with compassion on the whole
human family; take away the arrogance
and hatred which infect our hearts; break
down the walls that separate us; unite us
in bonds of love; and work through our
struggle and confusion to accomplish
your purposes on earth; that, in your good
time, all nations and races may serve you
in harmony around your heavenly throne;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
For the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer, p. 815
This Week:
4. Human Nature:
Embodied Self and
Transcendent Soul,
Part 1
Introduction:
Naturalism
Introduction
The Challenge of Naturalism

Naturalism is the philosophical theory about
reality that declares:
nature is all that exists,
 there is no reality that is greater than and
independent of nature,
 there cannot be any hope of an afterlife, nor any
means to really transcend our natural condition.

Introduction
Can Naturalism Explain the World?


How well can Naturalism actually explain the world
and humanity?
We have been considering naturalistic versus
Christian explanations for:



the origin of the universe (Jan 10)
evolution (Jan 24)
human nature (today).
What is a Human
Being?
What is a Human Being?
Do We Have Souls?


We can distinguish two primary perspectives on
the human person:
1. “Dualism:” we are beings composed of a
body and a soul
body: material and mortal
 soul: non-material; can survive the death of the
body


2. “Monism:” we are “psychosomatic” unities

A single, purely material being, with a thinking
brain
What is a Human Being?
Do We Have Souls?

Christianity, Judaism and Islam have
traditionally affirmed that we have an
immortal soul that:
survives after the death of our body
 that will someday be reunited to a new resurrected
body


Modern science however holds we are
psychosomatic unities, single purely material
beings.
What is a Human Being?
A Psychosomatic Unity


There are two camps in the view we are
psychosomatic unities:
1. Reductionism:
there is nothing in the person that cannot be
explained by physics, chemistry, and biology
 since physics, chemistry, and biology are largely
deterministic, free will is suspect, an illusion

What is a Human Being?
A Psychosomatic Unity


There are two camps in the view we are
psychosomatic unities:
2. Emergentism
Complex systems like the human brain, develop
qualitatively new properties, properties of the whole
 In particular: a consciousness with true freedom of
action.
 Such emergent properties are “causally effective:”
they can influence and change their component
parts (“top-down” causality)

What is a Human Being?
A Psychosomatic Unity


Note you can be a Christian and still believe we
are psychosomatic unities, without a soul.
We profess in the Creed not a doctrine of an
immortal soul, but a doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead.
What is a Human Being?
Outline


Review biblical and historical views of the nature of
human beings.
Review modern views of human nature, including:



Review problems with the view that we are
psychosomatic unities:



modern science’s account of the evolution of human beings
results from neuroscience
problems with the Reductionist view
problems with the Emergentist view (in Part 2)
Lastly look at how we might view ourselves as beings
with both a body and soul in the 21st century (in Part
2)
Biblical and Historical
Views
Biblical, Historical Views
Ancient Israel

The general consensus of modern scholars is
that the Hebrews thought of the human being as
a totality, a psychosomatic unity.
There was no separated soul to carry the personality
after death.
 There could be no person without the body
 The only hope for immortality was the resurrection
of the whole person, such as in the book of Daniel.

Biblical, Historical Views
Ancient Israel


Nichols notes he disagrees with this modern
consensus, and sides with Old Testament scholar
James Barr, who writes:
… it seems probable that in certain contexts
the nephesh is not, as much present opinion
favors, a unity of body and soul.... It is rather,
in these contexts, a superior controlling
center which accompanies, expresses, and
directs the existence of that totality, and one
which, especially, provides life to the whole …
nephesh = Hebrew for “living being (breathing creature).” In
the Greek Septuagint, nephesh is mostly translated as psyche
(psyche in English = breath, spirit, life, soul)
Biblical, Historical Views
New Testament


The general consensus of modern scholars: the
New Testament view is that the human person
is a psychosomatic unity, a unity of soul, body,
flesh, which together constitute the whole man.
The New Testament teaches the resurrection of
the body as the hope for a future life:
Jesus’ teachings (Matthew. 22:23-33 and parallel
passages),
 Paul (1 Cor. 15 and elsewhere)

Biblical, Historical Views
New Testament



Nichols again disagrees with this consensus and makes
a case New Testament views are more diverse.
He again quotes James Barr (The Garden of Eden and
the Hope for Immortality):
The New Testament certainly says little
directly and specifically about the immortality
of the soul; but it has a reasonable degree of
mention of immortality, and it certainly has an
awareness that things of the body and things
of the soul could take different directions.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition


Justin Martyr 100-165 AD
(martyred in Rome under the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius)
In early Christian tradition, the
survival of a soul after death seems
to have been presumed.
The early Christian apologist
Justin Martyr wrote in his
Dialogue with Trypho that after
death, the souls of the righteous go
to some “better place,” and the
souls of the wicked to some “worse
place,” to await judgment.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Justin Martyr


Justin Martyr 100-165 AD
(martyred in Rome under the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius
Justin notes that the soul is not
naturally immortal (as in the
Greek philosophy Platonism)
Rather, God gives the soul life:
“the soul shares in life,
when God wants it to
live.”
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Augustine


Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 AD
Augustine wrote that the
human being is a “rational
soul using a body” and
was convinced of the
immortality of the soul.
The powers of reason and
understanding are present in
the soul from infancy, and
awaken and develop as the
child ages.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Augustine


Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 AD
Augustine argued everything God
made is good, including the body.
The corruptible body is a load on the
soul (as written in the book of Wisdom
9:15), but that is only because of the
sin of Adam (= “original sin”):
The soul is weighed down not by
the body as such, but by the
body such as it has become as a
consequence of sin and its
punishment
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Augustine



Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 AD
Augustine never solved the
problem of how the soul was
related to the body.
The soul, he thought, was a
substance, yet the body was also
a substance. And yet the human
being was a single composite
substance.
He realized that this caused
philosophical problems, but he
could not resolve them.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas argued that the
human person was a unitary
substance, a unitary being,
composed of two principles:



Thomas Aquinas,
1224-1274 AD
1. the soul
2. the matter of the body.
The person was a soul-body
composite, in which the matter
of the body was “formed” or
organized by the soul.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Aquinas



Aquinas felt the soul was the
“Aristotelian form” of the body.
The soul or form was the dynamic
internal organizing principle for the
body.
The soul or form contained within it a
final end or goal which the organism
strives to fulfill.


Thomas Aquinas,
1224-1274 AD

In the case of a human, this intrinsic end or
goal was to know and love God.
Without the soul or form “informing” the
body, the body would have no form or
organization of its own.
This form could exist on its own, apart
from the body.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Aquinas


Aquinas did not think that the
human soul was created at
conception.
He suggested the developing
embryo first had a simple plant
soul, then an animal soul, and
only in the last months, after the
brain had been formed, a fully
human soul.

Thomas Aquinas,
1224-1274 AD
Aquinas opposed abortion because
it interfere with God’s will that an
embryo become a human person,
killing it before God could give it
a human soul.
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Protestant Thought


John Calvin, 1509-1564
John Calvin taught that the soul was
immortal:
… there can be no question that
man consists of a body and a
soul; meaning by a soul, an
immortal though created
essence, which is his nobler
part.
The Westminister Confession,
following Calvin, affirms that the
soul is immortal, is judged
immediately upon death, and goes to
heaven or hell, there to await the
resurrection of the body
Biblical, Historical Views
Christian Tradition: Protestant Thought


Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Lutheran confessional
documents say little
about the state after
death.
Luther does suggest, in
the Smalcald articles,
that the saints in heaven
might pray for us
(article 2).
Modern Views
Modern Views
Rene Descartes


Rene Descartes, 1596-1650
Modern conceptions of the
human person are usually
said to begin with Rene
Descartes.
Descartes rejected
Aquinas’s Aristotelian
view of form and final
cause, and embraced the
new atomic and
mechanistic theory of
matter.
Modern Views
Rene Descartes



Rene Descartes, 1596-1650
The body, he said, was
governed by simple
mechanical principles.
The mind however, could
make free decisions, and
so was not governed by
mechanical or physical
principles.
The mind therefore must
be an immaterial
substance, free and
immortal.
Modern Views
Rene Descartes

There are two substances,
in the human being:



Rene Descartes, 1596-1650
1. the material body,
characterized by extension
in space, a res extensa
(extended thing),
2. a mind, which is not
extended in space, but
which thinks, a res cogitans
(thinking thing).
This is “Cartesian” “mindbody dualism”
Modern Views
Problem with Mind-Body Dualism


The great problem faced by any such mindbody dualism is:
How does the substance of the mind interact
with the substance of the body?
That is: How can the immaterial mind affect the
material body?
Decartes suggested there was a connection in
the pineal gland.

Somehow, the mind affected the pineal gland,
which in turn affected the body.
Modern Views
Problem with Mind-Body Dualism

A later follower of Descartes, Nicholas
Malebranche, suggested the only connection
between the soul and the body was God.
When the soul decided to do something, God
caused the body to do it.
 Every occasion was caused by God, hence this idea
was known as occasionalism.

Modern Views
Twentieth Century


Descartes’s dualism, which separated the mind and the
body, lasted down to the late twentieth century, when it
lost credibility:
Evidence from modern science seemed to support the
view we are psychosomatic unities, pure material
unitary beings:

1. Evolutionary science showed human beings emerged by
degrees from primate ancestors.


We different from animals only in degree, not in kind.
2. Modern neuroscience strongly reinforced the scientific
conviction that the mind has its roots in the brain.
The Evolution of
Human Beings
Evolution of Human Beings
18 to 12 Million Years Ago

18 to 12 million years ago (Middle Miocene
geological Epoch): the basic anatomical form
of large hominids (= biological family that
includes extinct and extant human beings,
chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) first
appears in Africa.
Evolution of Human Beings
8 to 5 Million Years Ago

8 to 5 million years ago
(Late Miocene
geological Epoch): treeloving, apelike animals
with long arms and legs
abound in east Africa.
Evolution of Human Beings
6 to 5 Million Years Ago

6 to 5 million years ago
(during Late Miocene
geological Epoch):
chimpanzees (our closest
living relative) diverge
from the common
ancestor shared with the
line from which human
beings will rise.
Evolution of Human Beings
5 to 3 Million Years Ago


5 to 3 million years ago: African climate
becomes drier. More open savannas encourage
endurance, high mobility, bipedalism.
Several pre-human species identified from this
period in East Africa:
Ardipithecus ramidus (4.5 million years ago)
 Australopithecus anamensis (4.2 to 4 million years
ago)
 Australopithecus afarensis (3.5 to 3 million years
ago)

Evolution of Human Beings
5 to 3 Million Years Ago
The Australopithecus
afarensis creature
discovered in 1974 named
“Lucy” lived 3.18 million
years ago
Evolution of Human Beings
5 to 3 Million Years Ago

3.5 million
years ago: two
Australopithecus
afarensis
creatures walked
over a layer of
soft volcanic ash
in what is
modern day
Tanzania,
leaving
footprints that
hardened and
were preserved.
Evolution of Human Beings
5 to 3 Million Years Ago

They
walked
upright,
with a
rolling,
slowmoving gait,
hips
swiveling at
every step
Evolution of Human Beings
3 to 2 Million Years Ago

3 to 2 million years ago: Australopithecus
afarensis) diverges into several new species:
Australopithecus africanus
 Australopithecus robustus
 Homo habilis (“handy person”), the first stone
toolmaker

Evolution of Human Beings
3 to 2 Million Years Ago

3 to 2 million years ago:
Homo habilis




About 4 feet, 3 inches
Brain 600-700 cc
(modern humans: 1200
cc)
Used a stone hammer to
shear sharp stone flakes
off from stone cobbles
Carried the tools around
so that the stone flakes
could be manufactured
when and where they
were needed (to butcher a
freshly killed animal)
Evolution of Human Beings
2 million to 500,000 years ago


About 2 million years
ago: the earth enters the
Pleistocene geological
Epoch, the last ice age,
and begins a long period
of continued climatic
fluctuations between
warmer and cooler
conditions.
At 780,000 years, the
earth’s magnetic field
abruptly reversed, causing
greater variations in
weather patterns.
Evolution of Human Beings
2 million to 500,000 years ago




About 2 million years
ago, a new human species
appears, Homo erectus
(earliest forms also called
Homo ergaster)
Brain: 775 to 1300 cc
(modern humans: 1200
cc)
About 5 and a half feet
tall.
Larynx structure suggests
Homo erectus not have
the ability to produce a
great variety of sounds.
Evolution of Human Beings
2 million to 500,000 years ago


12 year old
Homo erectus
boy
Body of Homo erectus is
remarkably modern in
appearance; skull and jaw
more primitive.
Stone toolmaking much
more sophisticated:
“Acheulian hand axes”
developed
Evolution of Human Beings
2 million to 500,000 years ago

At some point,
Homo erectus
learned to
domesticate
fire.
Evolution of Human Beings
2 million to 500,000 years ago

Also, at some
point between 1.5
million to
500,000 years
ago, Homo
erectus followed
mass migrations
of mammals from
Africa and
colonized Europe
and Asia
Evolution of Human Beings
2 million to 500,000 years ago
Evolution of Human Beings
500,000 to 100,000 years ago

About 400,000 to 300,000 years ago: a more
advanced human form appears in Europe,
arising from Homo erectus and foreshadowing
the later Homo neanderthalensis (the
Neanderthals)
Evolution of Human Beings
500,000 to 100,000 years ago



About 300,000 to
200,000 years ago:
Homo
neanderthalensis
(the Neanderthals)
appears in Europe.
Brain: 1100 to
1200 cc (modern
humans 1200 cc)
First to make
composite tools
(e.g. stone spears
on wooden shafts)
Evolution of Human Beings
500,000 to 100,000 years ago


The Neanderthals were
felt to have speech,
although they were not as
articulate as modern
humans.
They were skilled
hunters, using clubs and
spears, pursuing game of
every size.
Evolution of Human Beings
500,000 to 100,000 years ago



The Neanderthals buried
their dead, although there
is no evidence of
accompanying grave
goods.
The Neanderthals died
out about 30,000 years
ago, unable to compete
with the influx of
modern humans Homo
sapiens sapiens
DNA extracted from a
Neanderthals thigh bone
showed sufficient
differences with modern
human DNA to conclude
the two species could not
interbreed.
Evolution of Human Beings
500,000 to 100,000 years ago



Meanwhile, in East Africa
Homo erectus was evolving
About 200,000 years ago: a
new species, an archaic form of
Homo sapiens arose.
120,000 to 100,000 years ago:
modern humans, Homo sapiens
sapiens appeared in East Africa,
and soon after began to spread
into Europe and Asia.
Evolution of Human Beings
100,000 to 15,000 years ago

Over the next
85,000 years,
Homo sapiens
sapiens, spread
to every
continent of the
world,
culminating
with their
colonization of
the Americas
about 15,000
years ago.
Evolution of Human Beings
100,000 to 15,000 years ago


Around 60,000 to 50,000 years
ago, Homo sapiens sapiens
appears to have had an “aha”
moment, with a sudden
flowering of tool technology,
art and symbolic thinking.
The Homo sapiens sapiens in
Europe – called Cro-Magnons
– were making personal
ornaments such as necklaces
by 40,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Evolution of Human Beings
100,000 to 15,000 years ago



Cro-Magnon paintings dating to 31,000 years ago were
found in the Grotte de Chauvet cave in SE France in
1994.
Human art was global by 25,000 years ago
At a 28,000-year-old site of in Russia, three individuals
have been found buried dressed in clothing sewn with
more than three thousand ivory beads. In addition, they
had carved pendants, bracelets, and shell necklaces
buried with them.

This burial of the dead with grave goods suggests a belief in
afterlife.
Cro-Magnon Art in the Grotte de Chauvet cave
Cro-Magnon Art in the Grotte de Chauvet cave
Cro-Magnon Art in the Grotte de Chauvet cave
Evolution of Human Beings
Summary


The human evolutionary process is usually
viewed as supporting the view we are
psychosomatic unities, have emerged gradually
from primate ancestors, differing from them only
in degree, not in kind.
However one can also read it as a process guided
by God with the creation at some point of a
human soul, the source of the religious
consciousness exhibited by early humans and all
modern cultures.
Neuroscience
Neuroscience
Mind and Brain



A connection between the mind and brain has always
been appreciated – a knock on the head makes that
clear.
Modern neurosciences however has re-enforced that
connection with an enormous expansion of knowledge.
Many functions can be localized to a particular area of
the brain:



the ability to understand speech
the ability to recognize faces
the ability to voluntarily move a particular part of the body
Neuroscience
Mind and Brain

Brain damage can dramatically alter emotions, social
and moral behavior:

Case of Phineas Gage:




in 1848, an exploding charge sent a tamping iron through the front
part of his brain, entering his left cheek and exiting through the top
of his head.
he remained conscious, however afterwards his personality changed.
He had been efficient and capable, but now became feckless and
irresponsible, and his likes and dislikes, his aspirations, his ethics
and morals were altered
The brain deterioration caused by Alzheimer’s disease can
have profound effects on a person’s personality.
Neuroscience
Mind and Brain


Most neuroscientists believe that all mental events are
directly explainable by brain processes.
Neuroscientist Michael Arbib writes:
Mind has properties (self-consciousness,
wonder, emotion, reason) that make it seem
more than “merely material.” ... Nonetheless, I
believe that all of this can be explained in
terms of the physical processes of the brain.
Reductionistic
Naturalism
Reductionistic Naturalism
Definition


One response to the psychosomatic unity of the
person is “Reductionistic Naturalism”
“Reductionistic naturalists” believe that the
person can be completely explained by the
action of her parts.
The human person is fully the product of his or her
genes, chemistry, and physics.
 There is no soul or vital force or anything in the
person.

Reductionistic Naturalism
We Are Neural Nets

Francis Crick, 1916-2004,
Co-discoverer of DNA
Francis Crick writes in his book,
The Astonishing Hypothesis:
The Astonishing Hypothesis
is that 'You', your joys and
your sorrows, your memories
and your ambitions, your
sense of personal identity
and free will, are in fact no
more than the behavior of a
vast assembly of nerve cells
and their associated
molecules.
Reductionistic Naturalism
We Are Neural Nets

Crick maintains:




There is no real “I” behind the eyes of a person, only
sophisticated neural nets which determine our behavior
“I” is an illusion
Free will is an illusion
Crick is contemptuous of philosophy and especially of
religion; the only satisfactory method of explanation is
natural science:
The aim of science is to explain all aspects of
the behavior of our brains, including those of
musicians, mystics, and mathematicians.
Reductionistic Naturalism
We Are Neural Nets

A corollary of Cricks position is that we should
be able to construct “thinking” machines that
are also “conscious.”
Emergentism
Emergentism
Definition



The other response to the psychosomatic unity
of the person is “Emergentism”
Emergentists agree with reductionists that the
action of the parts of the human affects the
whole.
They agree that there is no immaterial soul, and
therefore that humans only differ from animals
by degree.
Emergentism
Definition


But emergentists hold there are unique
properties that emerge at the level of the whole,
properties that are not predicable of the parts.
These new emergent properties (such as
consciousness) can be sources of causation –
they can effect their parts and their environment
in a top-down causality.
Emergentism
Definition


Ian Barbour writes:
I take emergence to be the claim that in
evolutionary history and in the development
of the individual organism, there occur forms
of order and levels of activity that are
genuinely new and qualitatively different. A
stronger version of emergence is the thesis
that events at the higher levels are not
determined by events at lower levels and are
themselves causally effective
Emergentism
Consciousness


Consciousness cannot simply be reduced to the
brain or to its parts.
In philosophical language, mental events are
said to supervene on physical events but are not
identical with them.

That is: they depend on the physical events of the
brain but also transcend those events.
Emergentism
Causally Effective



Emergent properties, especially consciousness, can
effect causal changes in the neuronal networks of the
brain, and can therefore initiate free decisions.
Nobel laureate Roger Sperry writes:
As a brain scientist, I now believe in the
causal reality of conscious mental powers as
emergent properties of brain activity and
consider subjective belief to be a potent
cognitive force which, above any other,
shapes the course of human affairs and
events in the world.
Emergentism
Emergentism and Christianity



There are many emergentist who are Christian.
They believe emergentism can preserve what is
most preciously human: the subjective aspect of
our consciousness, our freedom, our sense of
moral responsibility, our sense of being in
relation with God.
There is no immortal soul, so for an
emergentist, our only hope for an afterlife is a
belief in bodily resurrection.
Criticism of
Reductionistic
Naturalism
Criticism of Reductionism
There is No “I”?
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Can we really think of ourselves as nothing but
neural networks that respond in a deterministic
fashion to whatever stimuli are presented to us?
Is it really true, as Crick writes:
“I” do not decide; it is the neuronal
networks in my brain that react, as they
have been programmed to do.
Criticism of Reductionism
Free Will

Free will is the freedom to choose and to act
freedom from external constraint
 freedom from internal constraint
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We cannot live without daily making
“decisions,” and it seems that the belief in free
will is implied in the very act of our
deliberation in making decisions.
Criticism of Reductionism
Can One Idea Lead To Another?

The whole process of argument, in philosophy,
law, and natural science, presumes that one idea
leads to another, and so causes it.


“Doctrine of mental causation”
Yet if every idea is correlated with a particular
state of a neural network, and that state is
caused by a previous state of the same network,
it is hard to see how ideas can “cause” other
ideas.
Criticism of Reductionism
Loss of Moral Responsibility


If free will is an illusion, it logically means
there cannot be moral responsibility.
No person has the freedom to do other than
what he or she in fact does.

Thus those who have sexually abused children in
their care are not culpable, for they could not have
done otherwise.
Criticism of Reductionism
Problem of Qualia

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It is not clear that Reductionism can explain the
problem of qualia.
Qualia are the subjective, experienced contents of
consciousness.
Example: everyone is able to picture things in their
minds, say a familiar face, a landscape, or a simple
object, like a red bowling ball.
But there is no screen in the brain on which such an
image appears. The data encoding for an image of a
red bowling ball might exist in the brain. But where
does the mental image exist?
Criticism of Reductionism
Problem of Qualia



A computer can store the data encoding for an
image of a red bowling ball, but cannot produce
the actual image without projecting it on a
screen.
So how can we “imagine” visual images in our
minds?
What we experience, and the physical network
that encodes it in the brain seem to be entirely
different, not just by degree but in kind.
Criticism of Reductionism
Problem of Qualia

To put it another way: how is it that I
experience an image, when (according to the
Reductionist like Crick) there is no “I” to see
the image?
Criticism of Reductionism
Hard Problem of Consciousness

The problem of qualia is part of what has been
called the “hard problem of consciousness”:
How do physical processes in the brain give rise to
subjective experience?
 Why are these physical processes accompanied by
conscious experience at all?

Criticism of Reductionism
Hard Problem of Consciousness

A thought experiment proposed by philosopher David
Chalmers:





Suppose that Mary, a neuroscientist, knows everything about
the brain processes responsible for color.
But also suppose Mary has lived in a black and white room
all her life, and has never experienced color.
She knows all about the physical and neural processes
responsible for color, but she has never had the subjective
experience of color.
It follows there are facts about conscious experience that
cannot be deduced from physical facts about the functioning
of the brain.
Reductionist naturalism, therefore, cannot explain
subjective, conscious experience.
Next Time (Feb 7):
5. Human Nature: Embodied
Self and Transcendent Soul,
Part 2.
Conclusion: A Sacred
Cosmos
Sources of Graphics Used in
This Series
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Dark Energy Dark Matter: The Dark Side of the Universe, Sean Carroll, The
Teaching Company
Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe, Mark Whittle, The Teaching
Company
Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition, Alex
Filippenko, The Teaching Company
Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations, Brian M. Fagan, The Teaching
Company
Biology: The Science of Life, Stephen Nowicki, The Teaching Company
Understanding Genetics: DNA, Genes, and Their Real-World Applications, David
Sadava, The Teaching Company
Evolution, Douglas J Futuyma, Sinauer Associates
History of Christian Theology, Phillip Cary, The Teaching Company
Wikipedia
Astronomy Picture of the Day
HubbleSite
Millennium Simulation Project
The Equations, Icons of Knowledge, Sander Bais, Harvard University Press, 2005