Questions of Truth and Quantum Theory (Religion)

by John Clinch , Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 15:36 (5523 days ago) @ David Turell

Yes, indeed there is a huge gulf between human and non-human animals which needs to be explained. I am reading James leFanu's "Why Us?" which argues that the failure of genetics and neuroscience to explain this enormous gulf points to the existence of the soul. This chimes with the "new mysterian" view that the hard problem of consciousness will never be explained in scientific terms. Antonio Damasio, though, had a jolly good go with his brilliant "The Feeling of What Happens", the best book I have read on the dissection of self-awareness. It's a problem science takes very seriously and is trying to get to grips with. It may require a new paradigm, a fresh way of thinking. And it may have nothing to do with quantum theory. - It's an enormous challenge to materialists like me and I don't wave it away. Equally, it's so easy to be daunted by the hard problem and so easy to claim that, at last, we have a gap into which we can slip God that will remain inviolable from the encroachment of science. But, beware - history shows that plugging a gap in knowledge with supernature is doomed to be short-lived. - The consensus neuroscientific view is that mind is simply what the brain does. I don't dismiss lightly the huge problems we have in explaining how that happens. Instinctively, most people respond to this with dualism. Children are natural dualists and most people never grow out of it. Indeed, it is tremendously comforting for them to be so since you need to be a dualist to belive in an afterlife, the great consolation of religion. But believing something because it makes you feel good is a poor basis for belief. - Me? I like Daniel Dennett's quote: "Yes, we have a soul and it's made up of tiny robots." I'm a monist.