Christianity, Human Freedom and Scientific Materialism By Brian Simpson

I have just read three heavy papers in scientific philosophy by Professor Raymond Tallis

• “What Consciousness is Not,” The New Atlantis, Fall, 2011, pp. 66-91;
• “What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves,” The New Atlantis, Fall, 2010, pp. 1-25;
• “How Can I Possibly Be Free?” The New Atlantis, Summer, 2010, pp. 28-47.

 The papers are available on the net, and readable for non-specialist who have time to put in on a Saturday night rather than decaying in front of the TV. The issues related to debates, at the time, but as far as I know, still ongoing, attempting to account for the nature of mind, human mind, in the universe. In particular, philosophers have heartburn attempting to explain how mental experience fits into the universe. From a scientific materialist perspective, we could be zombies, having the neural activity we do now, but no consciousness, This leads hard-core eliminative materialists to reject the existence of consciousness itself. But, this merely begs the question, since by the same “logic,” we could argue the other way and reject the existence of material objects, in favour of only perceptions as Bishop Berkeley apparently did.

Then there is the problem of free will in a world of causes. If there is a cause of my activity, traced to a neural event, then that event has a cause, and so in a regress of causes going back before my existence. So, how could I be free to do otherwise if all my activities are ultimately caused? That problem has been discussed by the greatest minds since there were great minds, with the problem is unresolved. For if determinism is true then this applies to reasoning as well, so that if freedom is an illusion then so is reasoning. But then there is no reason to accept anything as true, including the argument leading to determinism!

I think that the Christian response to this is that the problem of free will and determinism, and the mind/body problem cannot be resolved within a materialist world view, and thus indicate that scientific materialism is false. Freedom is perfectly explicable in a world with a Christian God, and demanded too, and so  is a non-material soul and mind. We do not know how these things work in fine structural detail, but too bad, mature people accept mysteries. It is just part of the faith. Thus, I have little patience with the philosophers, who set out to define problems so that no solution is possible. I guess it keeps them in a job.