Category: Philosophy

Who Are You?

On March 12, 2023

Who are you? And why does it matter?

These two questions may be the most significant and meaningful questions we can ask. In my previous post, I briefly explored the question of the grounding of human value. We seemed to arrive at the conclusion that our value is grounded in capacity for consciousness. But this leaves many questions unanswered.

What is consciousness? Conscious experience seems fundamental since by it we perceive and interact with the world, this leads to a more foundational question, what are we?

We are material beings. But are we merely material beings? Is the phenomenon of “what is like to be something” reducible to physical processes? And if I am merely an object composed of physical parts, how do I remain, well, me?

In the current cultural climate, both academic and popular, the consensus seems to be that we are physical beings made up of physical constituents and governed by the natural laws. We are that and nothing more. Francis Crick captures it well: “you, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”¹ This view is often dubbed as physicalism.

Or is it possible that we are more than matter? Traditionally, many religions including Christianity have held that humans are something like a soul. We are not merely matter, but body and soul. This family of views has sometimes been called substance dualism. Is the drive to search for an explanation of our nature beyond matter, merely misguided religious wishful thinking in desperate of an afterlife? As philosopher John Searle says “It is a consequence of substance dualism that when our body is destroyed our soul can continue to survive; and this makes the view appealing to adherence to religions that believe in an afterlife. But among most of the professionals in the field (philosophy of mind), substance dualism is not regarded as a serious possibility.”²

Misguided motivations (if one thinks of course that these are misguided) does not immediately mean that the results are wrong. We still remain with the question that can not be ignored, as David puts it bluntly, “How could a physical system such as a brain also be an experiencer?”.³ Is it possible after all that we are, as Richard Swinburne asserts “essentially non-physical beings?”⁴

Stuffing consciousness into the box of physical facts may seem appealing. But it often does so at a cost, either outright denying this fundamental feature of reality or failing to account for important features of consciousness. It is not merely a data point that we are too accounted for, it is fundamental to our knowing. If your account of human nature fails to account for consciousness, it fails.

Perhaps the door to the soul is not yet closed. The light that glimmers through, invites us to explore further.

Our quest is to set sail and explore these important questions. Of course no guarantee that we can find final answers but we may find clues as to what may lay at the destination.

Are our sensations (experience of pain) and emotions (joy and sorrow) merely the firing of neurons or are they something else entirely, something that cannot be reduced to the physical? And if they are non-physical, what does that have to say about the type of thing that has those sensations or emotions? And how is it that we retain our identity through time? In other words, what makes the 5 year old Marcel and the 25 year old Marcel the same person. In some respects clearly I have changed, but hopefully I remain the same person. Perhaps, our answers to the persistence of our identity may shed light on identity beyond the dark veil of death. There is also an additional consideration that merits our consideration. If I am merely a physical being, how can I have the type of freedom traditionally ascribed to human beings? I would merely be another physical thing caught up in a causal chain, unable to alter what came before. But if I am essentially non-physical, then perhaps I have the kind of power necessary to alter the course of events. Moral responsibility and freedom remain intact.

In the blog posts that follow, I hope to explore these questions briefly, and capture the main arguments for the positions on offer. These are dualism and physicalism. I wish to take into account not only philosophy but data points from theology. Naturalists aren’t the only ones who seek to account for human nature within the boundaries of physical facts. For many Christians, souls smack of platonism, leaving physicalism as a paradigm to be embraced. If Scripture and tradition are trustworthy then they too will offer important insight into the nature of what we are.

These questions matter, because what they are will give us a window into what we are here for. If we are explainable solely in terms of physical stuff, it seems that this life may be all there is. Nihilism threatens to shatter our search for ultimate meaning. If however we are “body and souls” it may be that this life will not have the final word. Various forms of life beyond death remain open to us, including the hope of physical resurrection. It is to these questions that we the turn remembering that “from dust you are, and to dust you will return (Gen. 3:19)” yet not forgetting dignifying words of the psalmist to guide us, “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour (Ps. 8:4-5).”

The door to possibility awaits.

***

[1] Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994

[2] John Searle, Mind, Oxford University Press,2004

[3] David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 1994

[4] Richard Swinburne, Bodies and Souls, Oxford University Press, 2017

Consciousness, Value and Experience of God

By Marcel Heiberg

On January 28, 2023

In Philosophy, Reflections

Recently I have been spending most of my time on the subject of philosophy of mind. Questions concerning the nature of human beings are fascinating but have immense ramifications for our value and teleology.

Paramount to any morally and intellectually sensitive person is this: what makes a human being valuable? Human beings are evidently material beings. Theists and non-theists may go back and forth on whether that tells the entire story about human beings. Nevertheless from our basic epistemic starting point, we are material beings made of the physical stuff that comprises the world. But we have no reason to think that material things or organisms bear inherent value. That is to say, it is not clear that physical stuff should be deemed inherently valuable.

What then makes a human being valuable? We may rephrase this: what grounds the value of human beings? If you’re not clear on what this means, perhaps envision a thought experiment where the lives of human beings are at stake. You are tasked with saving the lives of these people. One would go great lengths, think through various possibilities, and weigh the costs of what it would take to save those lives. The question remains why?

For a non-theist answers may be grounded in rationality, or capacity for loving relationship, capacity to experience pleasure or pain. Typically, for theists, both Jewish and Christian this question finds its answer in doctrine of the imago dei. Human beings are created in the image of the divine. But does this answer the question? It remains in dispute what the image of God actually is, positions can be roughly divided into functionalist and structuralist camps. Functionalist accounts describe the image of God as a vocation or function that is carried out. Structuralist accounts describe it as some feature of human nature (freedom, moral agency, rationality etc…).

Notice however all these play an important part in human nature as much as they feature in our conscious experience. I take it as self-evident that conscious experience is valuable in and of itself.¹ Our power to exercise freedom (to make the world other than it would have been), or power to exercise moral agency (to bring about good or perform a moral duty) are conscious acts. These require deliberation and apprehension. We should be clear that these are distinct from consciousness itself, and so while they require consciousness to make them realizable they cannot be collapsed into consciousness.² In the way of speaking, everything we take as immediately real, we do so because it plays a role in our conscious experience.

But can consciousness itself ground human value? Most can agree that consciousness is supremely valuable. But it cannot ground human value. Suppose I am knocked unconscious or fall into a dreamless sleep. Surely I have not lost my value! This helps sharpen our observations. For in those moments, I retain the capacity for consciousness. This is what is common for all human beings, despite whether they are able to make important moral choices or are significantly hindered in exercising freedom. It is our capacity for conscious experience and action that grounds our value not conscious experience or action itself.

Most people recognize that the experience of going for a fall hike, or enjoying a delicious steak, or receiving an act of kindness are goods in themselves. However in Christian theism boldly claims that there is a good that outstrips all of these.³ It is a conscious experience of God. Participation in God or union with God is under girded by conscious experience of God. Perhaps this is what grounds human value as exceptional,⁴ our capacity for conscious experience of God.

These thoughts are by no means novel, and are more of a rough plotting of an idea than a final answer. But I believe they touch on something that is fundamentally true. Neither do they remain to be some abstract philosophical pondering. For how many people have wondered in their darkest moments, what makes us valuable? You may even be at the end of the road, thinking, why am I valuable? Because you have a supreme gift, the capacity for conscious experience. That is no small thing. And above that, you have the capacity for conscious experience of God. That above all, makes life supremely worth living.

* * *

[1] This also leaves out whether consciousness is something which can be accounted for by physical facts or must be something non physical. It does require that mental properties are real, contrary to the eliminativists.

[2] Think for instance of an artificial intelligence that is created to perform all of the same tasks that human beings can. Maybe it looks exceptionally human too. Not only this, but it is programmed with the same responses appropriate to those situations. It seems that human beings remain much more valuable. The differentiating factor is that we have a mental life, whereas the machine does not.

[3] Obviously this may apply to theism more broadly, but Christian theism focuses on union with or knowing God. This is especially accentuated in the idea of theosis.

[4] Surely the same would follow for other beings who might have the same capacity.