An Amalgamation Story
Denny Thomas became a believer in Jesus Christ at the tender age of nine. He reports that even at that young age, he realized that he was a “bad boy” who needed someone to forgive him of his misdeeds. As the years progressed, Denny attended church, read his Bible, and grew in his relationship with God. In college, Denny was interested in psychology and philosophy, so he majored in psychology—assuming that one could make a living in that field over philosophy.
While in college his relationship with God was not only maintained, but it thrived. Various challenges to his faith came through intellectual discussions and debates with both some of his professors and some of his fellow students. This, for Denny, was like putting water on a thirsty plant. Equipped with some formal study in philosophy and personal research in both theology and apologetics, Denny made a lasting impact upon some of his opponents, even converting a few of his fellow students along the way.
Once armed with his M.S. in Clinical Psychology from Washington State University, Denny applied for a counseling position at a counseling center that was run by a psychiatrist. There were eight counselors already working at the center, and all but the director were psychologists. On the extensive application forms, Denny was surprised to see questions that asked about personal beliefs in God. He happily revealed that he was a believer who attended church on a regular basis and prayed to God nearly daily.
In the next step of the hiring process, Denny was asked to have a face-to-face interview with the director. At first the interview was about general things, his college background, his thoughts about Freudian and Rogerian psychology, etc. Soon, however, the psychiatrist made a point of noting Denny’s response to the questions about God and telling Denny that he himself was “neutral when it came to issues about God.” Denny asked what that meant, and the doctor said that he’d never given much thought to the things of God; therefore, he had never come to any personal conclusions about the divine. Then, the director asked Denny if when he prayed to God, did God ever respond to him, i.e., “speak to him.” Denny said, “Yes, God speaks to me.” To this the director said that Denny was mistaken. “God does not talk to people,” he said, with some pompous semblance of authority. Denny thought for a moment, and said, “Sir, not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t believe that you’re qualified to make that assessment.”
Science is Not Qualified to Make that Assessment
In the mind and body problem, some have attempted to pontificate on the mind from the perspective of mechanistic science. But, I don’t believe that science is qualified to make that assessment.
One of the things that separates the hard sciences from the soft sciences is that the former relies on experimental, repeatable, quantifiable data based in objectivity and accuracy regardless of the personal opinions of the observer. In contrast, the soft sciences, e.g., consciousness studies and psychology, do not have these objective, verifiable procedures. One's personal experience is directly observable only by the person in question. Of course, this in no way implies that a person’s personal experience leads to truth simply because no one else can verify or deny it; it is only to state that others cannot fully experience what is a unique story. Gregory Koukl states it this way:
What the scientists know has to do with the brain. But my discussion now is not principally about the brain, it is about the mind. There is only one person who has access to your mind. You. No one else knows your thoughts. No one else knows your feelings. No one else knows what it is like to be you. Technically, it is called de se knowledge. In other words, you have entirely private, first-person access to your own consciousness (Koukl).
However, if the brain/mind were just a physical organ with no transcendent thoughts, then objective viewers would be able to have access to one’s mind. However, since each person’s experience is private, it is intimately observable only to the person who does the experiencing, and only superficially observable by anyone else. For example, an individual may experience love and may act out in such a way that others can see he is in love. He might purchase the object of his desire flowers or jewelry. He might speak of his beloved in rapturous terminology. While others may objectively observe his behavior and conclude that he is “in love,” they cannot feel exactly what he feels. Even if an observer is also in love, he is not in love in the same exact way, nor with the same intensity, nor with the same object, nor with the same personal psychological context. In brief, his amorous feelings are his, and his alone.
While some believe that the human mind can be assessed as one may assess the brain of a machine (e.g., a robot), what distinguishes the brain of a robot from the mind of a person is meaning. In the “Parable of the Chinese Room,” John Searle expresses it more than adequately.
If my thoughts are to be about anything, then the strings [of thought] must have a meaning which makes the thoughts about those things. In a word, the mind has more than a syntax, it has a semantics. The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is only syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content (432).
While a robot can be programmed to purchase flowers or jewelry or speak in rapturous terminology, it cannot experience the sentiments that are the impetus for the human’s actions. In short, a machine is not conscious because it does not have a mind, i.e., there is no semantics. It has a brain, which can be programmed, but it is not conscious or self-aware, and it does not have a mind that can understand why it is purchasing the flowers or jewelry. To be conscious, a machine would have to have a mind (semantics) by which to comprehend its own actions, as does a person.
Some however, argue against the existence of consciousness (mind) upon the basis of a reductionist methodology that attempts to interpret everything mental in terms of behavior. In this case, the lover and the robot both purchase flowers or jewelry based upon nothing more than a mechanistic function of programming. Granted, they allow for a different impetus for each, but the function is the same. However, as stated above, this does not answer the why of the action. While the robot’s why is sheer mechanical programming, the human’s why is love. Even if one argues that the love is the programming, it does not account for the person’s ability to think through his actions and to reflect upon his object’s response. “I’m doing this to win her affection. I wonder if she will respond to me in love as well, or if my heart will be broken?” These thoughts go beyond mere programming and reach a consciousness that a robot does not (indeed, cannot) have.
Science fails precisely at this point. There are no scientific tools to measure one’s thoughts, desires, or intentions. While electrodes connected to a human brain can register activity within the brain when the subject is told to envision a mental image of his sweetheart, those electrodes only reveal a brain function; they do not disclose the actual picture of the woman in the man’s mind. While science believes that the realm of the mental must be explained in terms of the physical, it is simply impossible to do so. This is a category mistake. It is no different than asking how long the color blue is, or what color an inch is. It is simply absurd, meaningless jargon.
Scientific explanations function only in the context of a materialist paradigm. The mind, while a function of the brain, transcends this paradigm. The deficiency in physical science that prohibits it from properly assessing the mind in distinction from the physical brain is its inability to measure meaning or intentionality.
Humans Have Souls
Then, meaning and intentionality lead inexorably to the reality of consciousness, self-awareness, and, I would argue, soul, which transcends a mere mechanistic function of the brain.
In the words of the poet, John Keats, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
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Works Cited
Searle, John, in Burr, John and Goldinger, Milton, Philosophy and Contemporary Issues (9th Edition). Prentice Hall, 2003.
Keats, John. “Ode On A Grecian Urn," May, 1819. 22 March 2007 <http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html>
Koukl, Gregory, “All Brain, No Mind” [2005, Stand to Reason ARR.] 22 March 2007 <http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5474>
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