RE: TE,souls, and freedom

John E. Rylander (rylander@prolexia.com)
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:17:31 -0500

I too can't spend much time on this, but simply to toss in my two cents
worth: I think something akin to "non-reductive physicalism" is promising
(philosophically at least; perhaps someday scientifically), but it's very
important to realize that if this "non-reduction" is to amount to anything,
it must be more than the trendy but specious "functionalism" that still
abounds.
In a crude nutshell, functionalism says that "consciousness is as
consciousness does", a sort of behaviorism: the next generation approach
that comports well with reductionistic science, and -thinks- it comports
well with a common-sense notion of consciousness because it has simply
redefined the word to fit with reductionism. (E.g., something like
"consciousness of pain is -by defn- [NB: is identical with, NOT merely
"caused by", or "relying upon", or "correlated with"] a pattern of brain
states that gives rise to anguish behavior and internally stored
representations of this behavior".) But while it then can keep the word, it
doesn't keep anything like the ordinary meaning of the word. So
functionalism gives us the words of common sense combined with the content
of eliminative/reductionistic materialism -- a very slippery combination.
(But they often see anything else as mushy headed superstition, an
abandonment of science. This seems silly to me, but it's a free country.)

If, on the other hand, the non-reductionism is deemed a feature of reality
and not simply of our language about reality, then I think this may
eventually go somewhere.
But if you leave out common sense and intuition and their judgements about
the reality of consciousness, i.e. if you stick with just the "hard data"
that science knows how to measure objectively and is explicable on current
scientific theory, this non-reductivism will, like dualism, be untenable.
Indeed, the scientistic will deem such non-reductionism simply another form
of dualism; and I think they'll be somewhat right (these "real" NRPs perhaps
seeing mind arising from "dual-aspect substance monism" instead of
"single-aspect substance dualism"). For those who accept scientism,
eliminative materialism (or functionalism, which is in all but language the
same thing) seems the only coherent option.

There's a lot of speculation in this field now from the more philosophically
inclined physicists and biologists. The nature of consciousness -might- be
simply beyond science in principle; it certainly seems well beyond it today.
The speculative hypotheses tossed about now are either extremely vague or
implausible. But assuming science can eventually get a grip on
consciousness -- a huge assumption, but probably a -pragmatically- proper
one to make science do it's best -- one day, one of the wild speculations
will turn out to be right. (It's a lot like the lottery: you know someone
will win, but you also know that each individual hypothesis has about zero
chance.) And it wouldn't shock me if we then have another true revolution
in physics and biology on a par with Newton's, Einstein's, or Darwin's.

BTW, has anyone on this list read Swinburne's The Evolution of the Soul? I
should have, but haven't. :^[ As I understands it, he advocates a
sophisticated version of substance dualism tightly linked with evolutionary
theory.

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: evolution-owner@udomo3.calvin.edu
> [mailto:evolution-owner@udomo3.calvin.edu]On Behalf Of David J. Tyler
> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 9:33 AM
> To: evolution@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: TE,souls, and freedom
>
>
> Andrew wrote:
>
> > So I was wondering how the diverse advocates of TE on this list think
> > about either souls or freedom in light of science.
>
> As I have a few posts still to reply to, so I do not want to exchange
> thoughts on this topic at the moment. However, a conference report
> of mine is very relevant to Andrew's question. There are a
> significant number of TEs in the US and in the UK who have abandoned
> any thought that the "soul" is other than material in origin. They
> have been advocating the hypothesis of "non-reductive physicalism".
> Man is entirely physical, and "soul" is an emergent property of
> matter.
>
> The ASA/CiS conference last year had most of one day devoted to this
> topic, and the relevant section of my report is headed: Portraits of
> Human Nature. The opening para reads:
>
> "The symposium was introduced first by Charles Harper of the
> Templeton Foundation. A contrast was drawn between dualistic views of
> human nature (which were linked to Greek philosophies) and monistic
> views (which were associated with the Hebraic mindset). Current
> thinking in the neurosciences supports monism and emphasizes the
> naturalness of religious experience. This is an opportunity for
> Christians to rethink their own perceptions of human nature and there
> is good potential for ãengagementä with the world of scholarship.
> Further introductory comments were then made by Malcolm Jeeves
> (Andrews University) and Warren Brown (Fuller). This is a three-year
> project based at Fuller, undertaken in the belief that a major
> ãknotty problemä for the future will be concerned with the nature of
> humanity. It is becoming increasingly difficult to hold to
> traditional views of the ãsoul.ä This is because more and more
> ãsoulishä traits have been linked to neurophysiological states and
> because there has been a complete failure to develop any insight into
> the mode of interaction between soul and body. The hypothesis
> explored in the project is that the soul (and mind) is
> physiologically embodied. This is a monist view of humanity which the
> project team describe as ãnon-reductive physicalismä (NRP). That is,
> every aspect of man is ultimately related to his 100% physical
> makeup, but human behavior is not amenable to reductionistic analysis
> because the soul and other distinctively human traits are ãemergentä
> properties of his physical being."
>
> For the rest, please see:
> http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od192/confreport192.htm
>
> I will add that not all TEs think like this. One prominent TE here
> in the UK told me that this position is "incoherent". I
> would like to see TEs debate this - with particular reference to how
> biblical revelation informs our scientific work. This seems to me to
> be a classic area where the complementarity principle does not work
> well.
>
> Best regards,
> David J. Tyler.
>