Who Are You?

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.

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[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