"In this materialistic age, dualists are often
accused of smuggling outmoded religious beliefs back into science, of
introducing superfluous spiritual forces into biology, and of venerating an
invisible "ghost in the machine." However, our utter ignorance concerning the
real origins of human consciousness marks such criticism more a matter of taste
than of logical thinking. At this stage of mind science, dualism is not
irrational, merely somewhat unfashionable."
Nick Herbert, Elemental Mind.
The strongest arguments against the existence of an
afterlife are those that deny the possibility of consciousness existing apart
from the biological brain. These arguments derive their strongest force from
common and undeniable facts of experience, and from their supposed association
with the findings of modern science. But in fact, these arguments have an
ancient history.
The Greek atomists were the first to define the soul in terms of material atoms.
Epicurus (342-270 BC) defined the soul as ‘a body of fine particles …most
resembling breath with an admixture of heat.’ He stressed the complete
dependence of soul on body, so that when the body loses breath and heat, the
soul is dispersed and extinguished. The Roman poet Lucretius (99-55 BC) took up
the arguments of Epicurus, and continued the atomist tradition of describing the
mind as composed of extremely fine particles. Lucretius wrote one of the
earliest and most cogent treatises advancing the arguments that the relation
between mind and body is so close that the mind depends upon the body and
therefore cannot exist without it. First, he argued that the mind matures and
ages with the growth and decay of the body; second, that wine and disease of the
body can affect the mind; third, the mind is disturbed when the body is stunned
by a blow; and finally, if the soul is immortal, why does it have no memories of
its previous existence?
Similar arguments, to the effect that the mind is a function of the brain, were
taken up with greater force nineteen centuries later, in the work of men such as
Thomas Huxley.
More recently, Corliss Lamont, former president of
the American Humanist Association, has written one of the most extensive
statements of the materialist positions in his book The Illusion of
Immortality, the title of which speaks for itself. He tells us in the
preface that he started out as a believer in a future life, but does not give us
the reasons why he held the belief against which he reacted so strongly.
Lamont rightly contends that the fundamental issue is the relationship of
personality to body, and divides the various positions into two broad
categories: monism, which asserts that body and personality are bound together
and cannot exist apart; and dualism, which asserts that body and personality are
separable entities which may exist apart. Lamont is convinced that the facts of
modern science weigh heavily in favor of monism, and offers the following as
scientific evidence that the mind depends upon the body:
-
in the evolutionary process the versatility of
living forms increases with the development and complexity of their nervous
systems
-
the mind matures and ages with the growth and decay
of the body
-
alcohol, caffeine, and other drugs can affect the
mind
-
destruction of brain tissue by disease, or by a
severe blow to the head, can impair normal mental activity; the functions of
seeing, hearing and speech are correlated with specific areas of the brain.
-
thinking and memory depend upon the cortex of the
brain, and so ‘it is difficult beyond measure to understand how they could
survive after the dissolution, decay or destruction of the living brain in which
they had their original locus.’ (page 76)
These considerations lead Lamont to the conclusion
that the connection between mind and body “is so exceedingly intimate that it
becomes inconceivable how one could function without the other … man is a
unified whole of mind-body or personality-body so closely and completely
integrated that dividing him up into two separate and more or less independent
parts becomes impermissible and unintelligible.”[1]
[1] Lamont, 1990, pages 86-108.
Lamont briefly considers the findings of psychical research, but contends that
they do not alter the picture, because of the possibility of other
interpretations, such as fraud and telepathy. However, Lamont’s portrayal of
psychic research is extremely superficial, and contains several incorrect and
misleading statements. For a trenchant critique of Lamont’s book, exposing a
mass of inconsistencies and non-sequitur, see
chapter XIII of A
Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death, by C. J.
Ducasse.
In summary, the various arguments against the possibility of survival are: the
effects of age, disease, and drugs on the mind; the effect of brain damage on
mental activity, and specifically, the fact that lesions of certain regions of
the brain eliminates or impairs particular capacities; and the idea that
memories are stored in the brain and therefore cannot survive the destruction of
the brain. The inference drawn from these observations is that the correlation
of mental and physical processes is so close that it is inconceivable how the
mind could exist apart from the brain. Except for the appeals of the modern
writers to the terminology of neuroscience, the arguments advanced in favor of
the dependence of the mental on the physical are essentially the same as those
advanced by Lucretius.
The Issues at Stake
There are really two separate issues here: one is
the logical possibility of survival, and the other is the empirical
possibility. The post-mortem existence of consciousness is at least a logical
possibility – that is, there is no self-contradiction in the assertion that
consciousness may exist in the absence of a brain. Then the question becomes
whether or not survival is an empirical possibility – that is, whether or not
the idea of survival is compatible with the facts and laws of nature as
currently understood.
Implicit Assumption Behind the Empirical Arguments
Against the Possibility of Survival
All the arguments mentioned above that are opposed
to the empirical possibility of survival are based upon a certain assumption of
the relationship between mind and body that usually goes unstated. For instance,
one of the arguments mentioned earlier starts with the observation that a severe
blow to the head can cause the cessation of consciousness; from this it is
concluded that consciousness is produced by a properly functioning brain, and so
cannot exist in its absence.
However, this conclusion is not based on the evidence alone. There is an
implicit, unstated assumption behind this argument, and it is often
unconsciously employed. The hidden premise behind this argument can be
illustrated with the analogy of listening to music on a radio, smashing the
radio’s receiver, and thereby concluding that the radio was producing the
music. The implicit assumption made in all the arguments discussed above was
that the relationship between brain activity and consciousness was always one of
cause to effect, and never that of effect to cause. But this assumption
is not known to be true, and it is not the only conceivable one consistent with
the observed facts mentioned earlier. Just as consistent with the observed facts
is the idea that the brain’s function is that of an intermediary between mind
and body – or in other words, that the brain’s function is that of a
receiver-transmitter – sometimes from body to mind, and sometimes from mind to
body.
The idea that the brain functions as an intermediary between mind and body is an
ancient one. We have seen how Hippocrates described the brain as “the messenger
to consciousness” and as “the interpreter for consciousness.” But, like the
materialist theory, this ancient argument also has its modern proponents - most
notably
Schiller,
Bergson, and
James.
Ferdinand Schiller was an Oxford philosopher in 1891 when a book titled
Riddles of the Sphinx appeared which, according to the cover, was written by
a ‘Troglodyte’ (cave-dweller). This troglodyte turned out to be Schiller, who in
his book attacked the prevailing materialism of the late nineteenth without
revealing his name in order to avoid ‘the barren honours of a useless
martyrdom.’ Schiller likened himself to the man in Plato’s Republic who
has glimpsed the truth but finds that his fellow cave-dwellers simply do not
believe his accounts, and so consider him ridiculous.
In his book Schiller proposes that ‘matter is admirably calculated machinery for
regulating, limiting and restraining the consciousness which it encases.’[2] He
argues that the simpler physical structure of ‘lower beings’ depresses their
consciousness to a lower point, and that the higher organizational complexity of
man allows a higher level of consciousness. In other words,
[2] Lorimer, p. 131.
Matter is not what produces consciousness but
what limits it and confines its intensity within certain limits … This
explanation admits the connection of Matter and Consciousness, but contends that
the course of interpretation must proceed in the contrary direction. Thus it
will fit the facts which Materialism rejected as ‘supernatural’ and thereby
attains to an explanation which is ultimately tenable instead of one which is
ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation the possibility of which no evidence
in favour of Materialism can possibly affect.[3]
[3] Lorimer, p. 131.
As for the effects of brain injury, Schiller argues
that an equally good explanation is to say that the manifestation of
consciousness has been prevented by the injury, rather than extinguished by it.
With regard to memory, he thinks that it is forgetfulness rather than memory
that is in need of a physical explanation: pointing out the total recall
experienced under hypnosis and ‘the extraordinary memories of the drowning and
dying generally’, he argues that we never really forget anything, but rather are
prevented from recalling it by the limitations of the brain.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson held similar ideas to those of Schiller,
although it is unclear if he ever read Riddles of the Sphinx. Bergson
attempted to reconcile physical determinism with the apparent freedom of human
behavior by proposing a theory of evolution whereby matter is crossed by
creative consciousness: matter and consciousness interact, with both being
elemental components of the universe, neither reducible to the other.
According to Bergson the brain canalizes and limits the mind, restricting its
focus of attention and excluding factors irrelevant for the organism’s survival
and propagation. He assumed that memories have an extra-cerebral location, but
that most are normally screened out for practical purposes, and in support of
this, refers to near-death experiences in which the subjects’ entire life
histories flashed before their eyes. The brain is therefore both ‘the organ of
attention to life’ and an obstacle to wider awareness. He speculates that
if the brain is a limiting obstacle, filtering out forms of consciousness not
necessary for the organism’s biological needs, then freedom from the body may
well result in a more extended form of consciousness, which continues along its
path of creative evolution.
In 1898 the American psychologist and philosopher William James delivered the
Ingersoll Lecture. At the start of the lecture he first remarks that ‘Every one
knows that arrests of brain development occasion imbecility, that blows on the
head abolish memory or consciousness, and that brain-stimulants and poisons
change the quality of our ideas.’ He then makes the point that modern
physiologists ‘have only shown this generally admitted fact of a dependence to
be detailed and minute’ in that ‘the various special forms of thinking are
functions of special portions of the brain.’
James then explores the various possibilities for the exact type of
functional dependence between the brain and consciousness. It is normally
thought of as productive, in the sense that steam is produced as a function of
the kettle. But this is not the only form of function that we find in nature: we
also have at least two other forms of functional dependence: the permissive
function, as found in the trigger of a crossbow; and the transmissive function,
as of a lens or a prism. The lens or prism do not produce the light but merely
transmit it in a different form. As James writes
Similarly, the keys of an organ have only a
transmissive function. They open successively the various pipes and let the wind
in the air-chest escape in various ways. The voices of the various pipes are
constituted by the columns of air trembling as they emerge. But the air is not
engendered in the organ. The organ proper, as distinguished from its air-chest,
is only an apparatus for letting portions of it loose upon the world in these
peculiarly limited shapes.
My thesis now is this, that, when we think of the law that thought is a function
of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are
entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this, the
ordinary psychophysiologist leaves out of his account.
James then raises an objection to the transmissive
theory of the body-mind relationship: yes, the transmission theory may be a
logical possibility, but isn’t it just unbridled speculation? Isn’t the
production hypothesis simpler? Is it not more rigorously scientific to take the
relationship between brain and mind to be one of production, not transmission?
But as James points out, from the standpoint of strictly empirical science,
these objections carry no weight whatsoever. Strictly speaking, the most we can
ever observe is concomitant variation between states of the brain and states of
mind – when brain activity changes in a certain way, then consciousness changes
also. The hypothesis of production, or of transmission, is something that we
add to the observations of concomitant variation in order to account for it.
A scientist never observes states of the brain producing states of
consciousness. Indeed, it is not even clear what we could possibly mean by
observing such production.
And as for the objection that the transmission hypothesis is somehow fantastic,
exactly the same objection can be raised against the production theory. In the
case of the production of steam by a kettle we have an easily understood model -
of alterations of molecular motion - because the components that change are
physically homogenous with each other. But part of the reason the mind-body
relationship has seemed so puzzling for so long is because mental and physical
events seem so completely unlike each other. This radical difference in their
natures makes it exceedingly difficult to conceptualize the relationship between
the two in terms of anything of which we are familiar. It is partly for this
reason that even though it has been more than a century since James delivered
his lecture, in all that time neither psychology nor physiology has been able to
produce any intelligible model of how biochemical processes could possibly be
transformed into conscious experience.
It has been pointed out many times that there is no logical requirement that
only ‘like can cause like’ – or in other words, that only things of a similar
nature can affect each other. But this consideration has not removed the mystery
from the mind-body relationship. As James wrote, the production of consciousness
by the brain, if it does in fact occur, is “as far as our understanding goes, as
great a miracle as if we said, thought is ‘spontaneously generated,’ or ‘created
out of nothing.’”
The theory of production is therefore not a jot more simple or credible in
itself than any other conceivable theory. It is only a little more popular. All
that one need do, therefore, if the ordinary materialist should challenge one to
explain how the brain can be an organ for limiting and determining to a certain
form a consciousness elsewhere produced, is to ask him in turn to explain how it
can be an organ for producing consciousness out of whole cloth. For polemic
purposes, the two theories are thus exactly on a par.
In short, James elaborated lines of reasoning laid out earlier by Schiller, and
argued that the dependence of consciousness on the brain for the manner of its
manifestation in the material world does not imply that consciousness depends
upon the brain for its existence. At the end of his book The Varieties of
Religious Experience he admits to being impressed by the research of
Myers and other members of the Society for Psychical Research, and concludes
that the issue of survival is a case for the testimony of the facts to settle.
James wrote these works around the turn of the nineteenth century, but since
then these arguments have been endorsed and developed by several more recent
philosophers and psychologists, such as philosophers Curt Ducasse and David
Lund, and psychologist Cyril Burt. The latter elegantly summarized the position
set forth earlier by Schiller, Bergson, and James:
The brain is not an organ that generates
consciousness, but rather an instrument evolved to transmit and limit the
processes of consciousness and of conscious attention so as to restrict them to
those aspects of the material environment which at any moment are crucial for
the terrestrial success of the individual. In that case such phenomena as
telepathy and clairvoyance would be merely instances in which some of the
limitations were removed.[4]
[4] Cyril Burt, 1975, p. 60.
The argument in its essence is that the transmission
and production hypotheses are equally compatible with the facts materialism
tries to explain - such as the effects of senility, drugs, and brain damage on
consciousness - but that the hypothesis of transmission has the advantage of
providing a framework for understanding other phenomena that must remain utterly
inexplicable on the basis of the materialistic hypothesis. The materialists
simply deny that these other phenomena even exist, as they rightly realize that
the existence of these phenomena threatens their ideology with extinction.
Note:
The above article is published on this website
with the author's permission. It is due to appear in his forthcoming book which
will be a critical examination of the arguments of the sceptics of
parapsychology.
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