Q&A: Determinism
Determinism
Question
Why can’t mental phenomena be explained as properties of the physical state of the brain?
In your book The Science of Freedom you explained that this explanation has no connection to the explanation in physics that describes the formation of the macro-state out of the micro-state.
But in any case, we could still say that even if we don’t have a physical explanation, this is a physical property of the brain’s state.
Why assume that there is a component of soul, when we have never detected a soul with empirical tools, but only physical things?
And our intuitive sense of a soul that wants or loves or gets angry is itself a physical matter for which we still do not even have the beginning of an explanation.
But that is still preferable to positing the existence of a soul, since that does not really explain the feelings or how they are created; at most it says that there is something that the laws of physics do not govern and that cannot be defined in physical terms.
So according to the principle of the razor, it is preferable to assume that there is no soul, because that does not really explain any more than the explanation that physics fills the whole world.
I would be happy for an explanation.
Answer
I explained this at length in my book. Here I’ll mention just one point. You assume that our knowledge of the existence of matter is well grounded, while spirit is doubtful. But the truth is exactly the opposite. It is spirit that apprehends that matter exists (Descartes’ cogito, which opens my book The Science of Freedom). Matter knows nothing. So when you speak about empirical tools, you are speaking about spirit that operates them.
I’ll give another analogy for this. You see water that is red in color. Why assume that there is some concentrate in it? Maybe under these circumstances the water turned red on its own. It’s a property of the water. A reasonable person would prefer the explanation that there is some concentrate here, because water has no color.
Discussion on Answer
I would be happy for an explanation.
P.S. The book is really wonderful!
The existence of the soul does not explain the feelings, in the sense of clarifying the way they are formed. That is not a scientific explanation. But the feelings definitely testify that there is something more here (the concentrate), since matter is not endowed with feelings.
As for the cogito, if you want to assume what is in question, you will always reach the conclusion you already hold. That is certainly true. If you assume that inanimate matter has feelings, then there is no argument and no problem. But you yourself also agreed that this does not seem to be the case. You are only wondering whether it might not be more reasonable to give up that assumption. I say no. And therefore the required conclusion is that apparently there is something else here (non-material).
I didn’t understand why I am assuming what is in question.
After all, the whole cogito proved the existence of the feeling of thought, and even so there are still two possibilities: either there is a soul, or matter has feelings through the phenomenon of emergence. So how can one decide on the basis of the cogito?
I explained it. You too agree that the simple assumption is not like that—meaning that matter does not feel and think. So there is no reason to assume that just in order to reject the cogito. That is the assumption of the conclusion that I was talking about.
Thank you very much for the explanation, but I think there is still some evasion here.
The existence of the soul does not really explain the feelings or how they are created; at most it says that there is something that the laws of physics do not govern and that cannot be defined in physical terms.
And so we have avoided the need to understand the process physically, but we have not really explained anything.
So why arrive at spirit? After all, if we remain only with physics, then even though we haven’t explained it, at least we haven’t assumed the existence of some additional entity. Unlike the concentrate, which physically explains the current state of the water.
And regarding Descartes’ cogito—that itself is the point under dispute. Maybe the feeling of consciousness is only a property of the physical brain in a certain state.