Defending Dualism

 As I recently posted, there are only three basic views of the human mind. Atheists, materialists and most relevant scientists assume that the mind is what the physical brain does, full stop; there is no immaterial realm, no spirits of supernatural. Idealism takes the other extreme: there is no material reality at all and everything is just mental activity. That may be pan-psychic or supernatural, with God playing a big role in maintaining reality in mental space. The third option, and my own belief, is dualism: that a human is a integrated combination of material body and brain (physical substance), and a non-physical spirit or soul (immaterial substance), working together as an embodied mind. I won't repeat the evidence against materialism, nor argue against idealism here, although I have done both. Moreover, there is much evidence in favour of dualism and the existence of the human spirit which I also will not present in any detail. Rather, in this post I will mostly investigate some supposed problems plaguing the dualist view of human consciousness.

Rene Descartes was the first to describe dualism in detail as a model for human beings. He wrote that we are made of two very different substances: a material body and an immaterial spirit, working together. There are various flavours of dualism, but his substance dualism is the most basic. It has been both attacked and expanded on by others through the centuries. Most Christians are implicit dualists, believing in our material bodies, yet with non-physical spirits, which survive our physical death in some form. It seems that most people and even young children intuitively default to a dualist belief about human beings. Indeed, materialists complain that children need to be carefully instructed and raised to talk them out of their inherent dualism, while idealism requires even more explanation and convincing, even for adults. Thus dualism seems natural to most, notwithstanding the various arguments against it (more on that below).

While we are all familiar with physical substances, including our own bodies, it is often tricky to specify what the spiritual substance of our minds or souls actually is, often derided as "the ghost in the machine". Most of us however, instinctively know that there is some aspect of ourselves that is not material. Without that spiritual part, a human would be just an advanced animal, capable of doing a lot but without higher mental functions such as abstract reasoning, intentionality, true language, analysis and introspection. While some of the higher animals seem to have subjective inner mental experiences, there remains a large gap between them and us, which points to our spiritual selves. 

Dualism nicely accounts for various aspects of being human, including our subconscious minds. Our conscious minds, spirit-based, look after high-level thinking: purpose, planning, our will, assessment, introspection and other high-level mental activity. The subconscious can be understood as the immaterial mind directing, working with and training the physical brain to accomplish its purposes. In return the brain provides perceptions (sensations), memories, words, connections and associations to the mind for consideration in its thinking. Learning to walk or ride a bicycle, dream sequences, putting together and speaking sentences, searching for memories or words, and most other human activities all involve both the physical and immaterial aspects of the mind, and in my opinion, make most sense in the dualist model. 

The dividing line in functionality between the two substances making up a human person remains vague. Some aspects like muscle control and sensations are clearly physical, while higher mental functions cannot be located in the brain and so may be deemed largely spiritual. In between are things like emotions, memories, habits, etc. which may involve both substances working together. As in any discussion about human consciousness, there is more uncertainty and assumption than well-understood explanation and established knowledge. As a result, there is lots of room for speculation, hypothesis, story telling and disagreement, as we see in the literature. 😊

The major argument against dualism is the "interaction problem"; how does a spiritual, supernatural "substance" interact with physical reality, including the brain? How does sensory data coming in through eyes, ears, touch, etc. via nerves to the brain get perceived by a non-material spirit? And in the other direction, how do decisions and intentions made by said spirit cause neurons in the brain to activate nerves in the body, causing muscles to contract to lift arms, walk, speak, and do any other physical action? If the dual substances are so different, what could they have in common to work so seamlessly together? Such is the complaint.

This has seemed to be a major problem and has been used by materialists (and idealists) to pooh-pooh the idea of dualism. None or the four fundamental forces known to physics appear to be involved with or directly affected by mind alone or spiritual influences. And there is very little scientific evidence in support of a mind directly affecting matter, as via various parapsychological phenomena such as psycho-kinesis, for instance, notwithstanding a long history of anecdotal evidence in its favour.

Nevertheless, there are several hypotheses floating around suggesting how an immaterial mind (spirit) could influence matter via the brain as an interface, as well as some evidence for immaterial spiritual observation of physical reality without material intervention. I offer the following ideas and facts:

1. The brain acts as an "antenna" for the mind-body connection, something like the way a radio receives and transmits electromagnetic waves. Somehow the brain is able to do that;  a physical brain tuned to a  specific immaterial mind for life. Notwithstanding scientific disclaimers, evidence for psi-activity is widespread, albeit difficult to prove: telepathy, prescience, remote viewing, ESP, etc. Some people claim there are information fields all around us that the brain can sometimes tune into. 

2. Roger Penrose has proposed Orchestrated Objective Reduction, a theory about microtubules in brain's neurons as the source for mind within the brain interface, based on supposed quantum effects at the molecular level. Although primarily intended as a materialist explanation for mental ability, it could in principle provide a spiritual interface to the brain. 

3. There are other quantum speculations involving probabilistic uncertainty, superposition or entanglement at the subatomic level inside neurons. This would allow subtle tweaking of the collapse of wave functions in synaptic quantum states one way or other in response to spiritual (mind) control, thereby providing the mind-brain interface. Somehow -- subconsciously presumably -- this mysterious connection provides bi-directional transfer of information at some level.  Robert Spitzer's quantum hylomorphism in Science at the Doorstep to God is one such example. Much about these speculations sounds like grasping at poorly-understood straws to bolster favoured ideas, but maybe there may be something in it.

4. In near death experiences (NDE's) people, clinically dead as in life-saving operations or resuscitations, report moving about outside the body and observing things they could not see from their body's position. This is not physical action, but non-physical perception and activity without material cause or involvement, yet physically remembered and reported once life has returned. There is strong and wide-spread evidence of these events, which on the surface appear to support the existence of immaterial consciousness, and hence, dualism (or idealism). 

5. Or maybe there is simply some fifth force unknown to physics, involving mind interaction with matter. That would not be part of any normal physics experiments, although there was a time when scientists tried to test such things: spiritism, Ouija boards, levitation, psychokinesis, etc.; lots of weird stuff a century ago, never proven scientifically. Perhaps such a force is strictly limited to closely-connected, intimate spirit-brain associations at the intracellular level in neurons, which would make it difficult to test in the lab.

In short, \ there are many possibilities, some evidence and doubtless other ways to look at a dualistic mind-body interface. Any one of these could help explain the material-immaterial interaction implicit in dualism. Saying we don't know doesn't mean it is impossible. Anyway, who says that immaterial things cannot interact with material objects? Where is that proved? Other unknowns in science are taken as rational concepts: dark matter, gravity waves, imaginary numbers, infinities, event horizons, etc. Moreover, immaterial objects like Maxwell's equations clearly affect material objects via minds applying them to construct apparatus utilizing electromagnetic fields (back to the radio idea). 

Note that the "problem" is only a problem if materialism is assumed; that only materialist forces, causes and effects are allowed on matter. But that is largely a philosophical assumption rather than a solid scientific understanding. If that unwarranted assumption is removed, the problem may disappear altogether. Just because matter and spirit are different substances does not automatically mean they cannot interact somehow. More fundamentally, we all know that our minds and bodies do interact together, so there must be some such mechanism.

As a second complaint about dualism: just what is this spiritual substance, what is the soul that supposedly survives death of the physical body? What is "spirit" anyway? Descartes called it a separate "substance", perhaps the same substance as God in Christian belief.  It is not matter or physical energy, so cannot be detected or studied by normal physics experiments. But there is lots of evidence that it is "real", and like dark matter, some attributes or properties of it can be deduced from its apparent behaviour, our own introspection, and any spiritual experiences we may have: NDE's or other out-of-body experiences, visions and spiritual encounters, and perhaps miracles.

In particular, NDE's seem to demonstrate an immaterial (spiritual) ability apart from the physical body: thought, perception, movement, memory, interactions, etc. The human spirit is a self, a person, in continuity with its body, in lose association via an individual's brain. The spirit has no apparent mass, shape or size, and seemingly cannot be measured with physical instruments -- at least so far.

Your spirit is attached to or associated with your brain/body for life. Before birth, the spirit is likely a minimal person/self: just basic interaction abilities, with nascent learning and thinking skills. Your spirit develops along with your body through sensations, interactions, experiences, memory, discernment, thinking, language, logic/reasoning, mental skills, personality, and so on, becoming a full human mind in adulthood, while still developing. Then the spirit carries on after physical death somehow, or so most people believe. That has been hard to discern, but NDE's provide some evidence.

Wrapping up, most of this talk about minds and spirit is hypothetical or speculative, there being few scientific results that are widely accepted. Clearly something about us seems to be more than material, but beyond the labels, theories and minimal evidence, there is little definitive, widely-accepted knowledge. Some research areas apart from collecting NDE's and other experiences have been suggested, often with a focus on supposed quantum effects. But unless scientists will look beyond their self-imposed materialist assumptions and limits, we are unlikely to discover much more about the human mind and consciousness. 

Against Idealism

There are only three fundamental ways to view human consciousness and mind: 

a) Materialism: everything is only matter and energy, there is no spiritual or immaterial realm. your mind is what your brain does. This is the default belief of all atheists and many scientists.

b) Dualism: humans are a combination of a material body/brain and an immaterial soul or spirit. The mind has a brain but is more than a meat computer. This is the default position of most religious people, even if they don't express it.

c) Idealism: all of reality, including humans is immaterial, there is no matter or "real world" aside from ideas or thoughts in our entirely immaterial minds. This view takes some getting used to but is strongly held by many, and especially some religious people.

Those appear to be the only possibilities. Each of these views exists in various forms, differing only in subtleties, but all versions of any one have the same basis. Many people have critiqued materialism as inadequate to account for the whole of reality, so I won't go there right now. Instead, in this post I will critique idealism.

Idealism as a theory of mind or human consciousness arose from several philosophers, notably Berkeley, Hume and Kant.  they correctly explained that we never perceive or interact directly with the world or "external reality", but rather, solely through our senses, nerves and brains; that is, only via sensations or signals coming into or leaving our minds. We do not know the "real world", whether it exists at all, or what it is truly like. The only thing we know for certain and thus, all that for sure can be said to exist is our thoughts and ideas! Hence idealism: only thoughts and ideas are real, everything else is an illusion! While initially difficult to absorb and counter-intuitive, idealism is unfalsifiable - it cannot be disproved, even in principle. Nevertheless, my intent here is to offer some counterarguments to undermine the claim that idealism is the best way to explain all of reality. 

My previous post on "mental reality theory" was a first attempt at doing that. Since then however, I have studied idealism, especially through a couple of chapters by Bruce L. Gordon in the book Minding The brain, in particular, Chapter 20, which is free to read at: https://www.discovery.org/b/minding-the-brain/  The chapter is extremely dense and an ambitious undertaking, collecting concepts from various sources to apply to the author's idealist thesis. Gordon offers arguments from quantum physics, neurology and psychology, as well as philosophy and theology. My critique will therefore look at each of these in turn.

Gordon claims that quantum research demonstrates that, at the most fundamental level, matter does not exist. Based on the famous dual-slit and quantum-eraser experiments using photons, electrons, atoms and even molecules, when physicists dig down, subatomic particles are not real; they are just uncertainties, superpositions and probabilistic wave functions.  As Gordon writes, "Unobserved quanta do not exist anywhere in space ... apart from measurement." And, "There are no mind-independent microphysical substances." The perception of reality occurs when an observing mind collapses the wave function. Yet even then, the "reality" is only in the mind, "none of the superposed states are materially substantial — they are mere phenomena ... of conscious awareness", Gordon says.

This unreality builds up to the macroscopic scale of supposedly real physical things and the entire external world.  In our "phenomenal experience" everything we think we see, feel, hear, smell around us is just immaterial ideas, including our own bodies and brains. The perception in the mind is merely mental activity (ideas).  So we think we interact with what is around us, when in truth, there is nothing physical and we are just minds thinking thoughts and exposed to ideas. Moreover, there is no physical causation because matter does not exist. Rather, all events and seeming physical occurrences are just mental perceptions of the phenomenal reality in our minds.  As I said, this takes some getting used to, but it is consistent when you think it through.

Gordon places a lot of weight on quantum physics: concepts like Heisenberg uncertainty, superposition, entanglement, the measurement problem and even Schrodinger's cat, to get where he wants. I have some non-expert doubts in places about his usage of these, with unsubstantiated logic leaps and seeming hand waving assertions. For example, yes, small macroscopic quantum superpositions are possible; e.g. with care these quantum effects can be seen in large molecules. But the larger the objects become, the more fragile they are to set up, display, measure and maintain in those states! So the quantum nature fades as things get larger, shifting toward our classical physics of real physical objects, fields, interactions and causes! Yes, there are uncertainty and probability at the subatomic scale, but as things get larger, the statistics of large numbers comes into play, those uncertainties shrink and the probabilities tend toward certainty and solidity at the collective level! Gordon can't hide behind uncertainties at the microscopic level to claim nonexistence at macroscopic scales!

As an analogy, a cloud is real and exists even if you cannot identify its molecules and edges precisely! A gold atom exists and has mostly well-defined properties, whether I observe them or not. And together with many other such atoms, makes up my wedding ring, for example, which is very real and well defined to 99.99+% certainty; close enough to unity for all practical purposes. And so, despite microscopic uncertainty, real macroscopic objects do exist and seem to interact causally, notwithstanding David Hume's (and Gordon's) concerns about induction and causation.

Moreover, the wavefunction is just a model of the quantum state, and is rarely determined mathematically for anything real, anything beyond simple subatomic examples. And those wavefunctions must be collapsing all the time without any measurement or human observation; as during the myriad fusion reactions occurring inside the sun for example.

Even if we accept the view that "matter = fields = quantum information = thought", that does not mean matter does not exist! Not knowing everything at the micro level does not mean knowing nothing, and statistical properties of what we do know or can assume lead to valid knowledge at the macro level, which fits our observations or measurements except in extreme cases. Moreover, models of physical cause and effect work for the most part, so how can it all be mere mental illusion? Why have a complicated illusion of physical reality if there is no such thing?

Along the way, Gordon shifts into philosophy and so I have some philosophical doubts as well. For instance, are physical laws mere human descriptions of reality or the actual laws governing it?  Quantum theory, despite its predictive and explanatory accuracy, is a model or description of reality, not necessarily its controlling prescription. Quantum outcomes may be indeterminate yes, but they are still highly constrained and are predictable within limits! For example, the carbon atoms in my cells are mostly fixed in place, each one with six electrons nearby, used to bond to other atoms. Without that arrangement and assurance, chemistry (and my body) wouldn't work! 

Moreover, the apparent need for an "observation" to collapse the wavefunction is rather vague. What level of observation is needed one wonders, a detailed science experiment, a casual glance by any human (or non-human), or God himself? Also, what size or level of observation is sufficient: atomic, cellular, macro, or cosmological? Science studies what exists in the natural world and how things interact. If all of that is unreal, what value can be placed on any scientific findings? 

One major concern of mine is Gordon's invoking quantum mechanics to demonstrate that physical reality does not exist! He's using materialist quantum physics and lab experiments using material apparatus on material entities, including biology and neuroscience to bolster a view that entirely denies material existence and matter! Am I the only one to see something fishy with that? How can quantum physics be used to show that quanta do not exist? How can exploring matter at the deepest levels produce the claim that matter does not exist? 

Gordon includes some neurological arguments as well, saying, "the phenomenology of our brain-states is subject to empirical study just like every other aspect of experiential reality". "The neurophysio-logical correlates of our phenomenological experience are subject to proximate causal analyses." (Try saying that five times!) For instance, a damaged or chemically changed brain can affect the access, control and perception from the immaterial mind, since they correlate with each other. He goes on, "In the brain-coupled state, memory is stored in neuronal configurations subject to less-than-perfect information-retrieval." Does brain function involve coherent quantum information processing? Gordon thinks yes, referring to analyses and theories on how to apply quantum effects to neurons and cellular processes in the (phenomenological) brain. This seems to me to be a tangent, unimportant to the idealism thesis. Basically he is trying to explain how the illusion of having neurons and a brain can work consistently in an idealist world.

A robust idealism without God seems to be impossible; Berkeley, Gordon and others sooner or later call upon God to get idealism to work, so we now move into the theological/metaphysical. God is needed to provide coherence and continuity to the phenomenological world we experience together. Mere human minds cannot observe everything all the time, so Gordon writes, "Causal closure is achieved by a transcendent immaterial cause that is always active, not by contingent postulations introduced in a futile effort to make nature autonomous." Hence God's role is to maintain the phenomenological world we experience in our minds! Moreover, "all causal appearances in inanimate nature simply are the result of divine action," says Gordon, tying it together with, "Theistic informational idealism and theistic conscious realism thereby seamlessly unite as corollaries of theistic quantum idealism."

In short, without God's presence, the world would not exist when we are not watching, and even our watching is incomplete and distorted, yet the world seems solid and stable to us, all via God's thinking. To me, including God in the background, yet without his clear presence to us -- as perhaps through direct mental contact -- seems dodgy and self-serving for idealists; rather like magic or slight of hand. Gordon goes on to claim a Biblical warrant, with, "God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28), and "the one who is before all things, and in whom all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). I somehow doubt that Gordon's interpretation is what St. Paul had in mind in those passages!

The following seems to be how reality works in idealism. The human mind is an individual immaterial substance, separate from others, yet fully known to God. Each human mind has memories, personality, abilities, language, thoughts, etc. all collected through life. This sequence describes how things happen in this mental-only reality:

1. a human mind has a thought or intent and decides to "act", with only a mental output.

2. God knows the human's thought, understanding it completely and instantly.

3. God adds his own models and constraints about "reality" to accommodate the human thought, including his models of any physiological limits of sensation or control that the human has. He also accounts for other "natural" processes and other humans' thoughts and intentions.

4. God combines all these inputs into his resulting changes to the adjusted "reality" model; the complete set of modified mental states for all involved.

5. God sends the resulting relevant reality attributes as perceptions, back to each human mind accordingly, as thoughts (that is, perceptions, impressions, sensations). He adjusts the perceptions for each perceiving mind's (human or otherwise) particulars.

6. the human mind then perceives what "happened" in that event from his own mental perspective, having received the mental feedback from God.

7. then the clock ticks onto the next set of unsynchronized thoughts and mental states, looping forever to maintain the experience (and illusion) of reality!

This step-wise process of idealist causation seems grossly unparsimonious and hugely inefficient: all actions and perceptions occur indirectly through God, in the background, and unknown to us. What is the purpose of this complex, distorted, indirect, and delusional imaginary material world? If mental substance is everything, why not simply have a mental world, with direct mental interaction among participants, divine, human or otherwise? Other doubts and questions arise; for instance, how finely divided must be this control loop to support the ongoing illusion of humans acting together in a real material world: every second, millisecond, or Planck time steps?

Notice that, in this idealist scheme God does ALL the nitty-gritty work according to our every thought and intent, to synchronize the phenomenal reality we experience with his model and our every non-material perception and action. That seems to put God at our beck and call, making God our puppet, thereby inverting our roles! Moreover, God's ongoing reality adjustments directly enact ALL the sin, harm, damage and degradation in the world! He becomes the true author, directly responsible for all natural disasters, sickness, accidents, violence, murders and other evils! And of course, it definitely seems as if God is deluding us, as in The Matrix movies; the world we experience is not real, just a complex detailed mental illusion!

Does God really control every quantum interaction in the Universe, while carefully maintaining the statistical, probabilistic nature of their wavefunction collapses? Controlling every hydrogen atom in space and every fusion event in every star! Is that part of his plan and role?  It all seems boring and pointless to me. How is the idealist model better than a dualist model of a real, existing, material world having multiple autonomous actors (some immaterial), true physical causes and effects, and with God elevated to his proper director and supervisory role, befitting his ultimate power? Just asking! 

Regarding the neurological, it is well known that human physiology limits, constrains and distorts our senses. We cannot see infrared, ultraviolet, in the dark, or behind us. Our hearing is non-linear and of limited frequency range. In addition, our muscles have limited strength and range of motion. Why should the non-material phenomenological experiences imposed on us by God apply such constraints and inabilities? Why provide human minds with distorted, incomplete, faulty interfaces in a mental-only reality? Again, why this elaborate delusion for human minds? 

Getting back to quantum theory and the double-slit and quantum-eraser experiments, there is another seeming contradiction. If the wavefunction only collapses when observed, while God is observing everything, why doesn't the wavefunction collapse when God sees it, even if we don't?  How can both be true? If God knows and sees everything, how can quantum superposition and coherence happen at all in a lab experiment? It feels like Gordon is pulling the quantum wool over our eyes to draw us into his thesis, which seems unreasonable and surreal to me.

Finally, I have problems with Gordon's dismissal of dualism, and his doubtful arguments against it. Genesis 1 says, "and God said let there be ... and there was ...": to BE is to exist, to become real! A material reality came into existence at God's word! So an immaterial God can and did create matter. Gordon's argument from parsimony -- one real substance instead of two (matter and spirit) -- is quite unconvincing given the convoluted unparsimonious model required to operate his illusory immaterial idealist universe. 

Clearly I do not buy into idealism. However, I am not entirely against Gordon's perspective. He makes good arguments against materialism for instance, and some of his related explanations are helpful. However, in my opinion material reality exists whether it is being watched by us or not!  But then I am also biased: I remain a dualist! And now I feel the need for another post defending dualism! Stay tuned.