Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, August 20, 2012, 20:44 (4477 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: This researcher categorically rejects the concept of dualism, and so I'm afraid I find his arguments incoherent. Without dualism how can you avoid the conclusion that the brain is the source of the mind, of which the will is just one part? -DAVID: Please educate me: what is your definition of dualism?
I have used the Stamford Philosophical definition:
"In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the 'default option'. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world." -The crucial part of this "definition" is that dualism suggests a reality that is NOT simply part of the physical world (I would add "as we know it").
 
DAVID: This neurophysiologist appears to accept consciousness as an emergent property of the brain and wants to find out how the brain does this. How does that rule out dualism for him? -You need to ask him, but his opposition is quite clear: "Most willusionists' [= people who think free will is an illusion] assume that, by definition, free will requires a supernatural power of non-physical minds or souls [...] Based on this definition of free will, they then conclude that neuroscience challenges free will, since it replaces a non-physical mind or soul with a physical brain. But there is no reason to define free will as requiring this dualist picture. Among philosophers, very few develop theories of free will that conflict with a naturalistic understanding of the mind—free will requires choice and control, and for some philosophers, indeterminism, but it does not require dualism."-This is also my own concept of dualism ... that the body is distinct from the mind/soul ... as per your Stamford definition. (NB, this does not mean I believe in it. I am explaining my argument, as requested.) He goes on to say: "...what people primarily associate with free will and moral responsibility is the capacity to make conscious decisions and to control one's actions in light of such decisions." Exactly. But what Nahmias does not know any more than the rest of us is where the capacity for conscious decisions and control might come from, and that is the crux of the problem. If it is a product of the physical brain, we are what our brains make us and we cannot be free from our brains. Exit free will.
 
DAVID: He seems to be saying that a material brain is producing a non-material mind. Isn't that a form of dualism? And why are we beholden to dualism? Van Lommel of NDE fame thinks the brain is a radio receiver on a quantum wavelength. That is a form of dualism I guess.-Not as I understand it. If the brain is a RECEIVER, what does it receive, and from where? NDEs provide the perfect illustration of dualism at work. If the brain is clinically dead, what produces the will/consciousness/identity of the brain-dead patient? In all Van Lommel's examples, the patients are still themselves, are still aware, and even have feelings and wishes (e.g. not to return to this life). If you are prepared to give credence to such episodes, you must also be prepared to give credence to the idea that there is a form of conscious energy that is independent of the brain cells. For you, who believe in a universal intelligence, I would have thought this was absolutely central ... unless you think God's intelligence "emerges" from a physical brain.-The idea that the physical brain actually produces something non-physical, which then becomes independent of the brain and is able to control it, is way beyond my powers of imagination, though frankly the whole business of consciousness is so incomprehensible that all scenarios seem unlikely. But I would say yet again that until we know the source of consciousness, we cannot make any definitive pronouncements on the subject of free will. If the source of consciousness and all its manifestations is the brain cells, I would agree with the "willusionists". If the source is an unknown form of energy that sends its signals to Van Lommel's "receiver" brain, then free will is a possibility, in accordance with the degree of the will's independence from the body and from influences past and present outside its control. But without the Stamford/Nahmias/Cartesian form of dualism (mind distinct from body), free will doesn't seem to me to have a philosophical leg to stand on.