The existence of Mind presents one of the greatest problems for atheists. In attempting to understand the universe, Descartes began with what most certainly exists \u2013 I think, therefore I am \u2013 and then used the ontological argument to demonstrate the next most certain thing to exist: God.<\/p>\n
Materialist atheists, though, start with the assumption that all that exists is the material; mind must be explained as a result of the material. Although some softer atheists like Christopher Hitchens like to claim that the material, in producing Mind, has created the numinous, the Dawkins breed of atheist would not agree \u2013 and, indeed, Hitchens\u2019 position doesn\u2019t make much sense. So the atheist is left with this problem:<\/p>\n
If God does not exist:<\/p>\n
Mind is the product of the material
\nNo thought can exist that is not the product of the material
\nBelief in God is a thought
\nSome people believe in God
\nThe material creates thoughts that are unreliable
\nThought that claims to explain the working of the universe is unreliable<\/p>\n
Another way to look at this – although it doesn’t solve the above problem – is\u00a0 that without the transcendent, to explain conciousness we have to resort to something called panpsychism; if Mind is real and there is nothing other than the material, then the material must contain consciousness and all things must posses a degree of being conscious. Thus the atheist\u2019s never ending quest to seek the least likely explanation for existence reaches new depths of unbelievability<\/a>:<\/p>\n Daniel Dennett is a panpsychist. He wouldn\u2019t admit it in public, and he might not even realize it. Yet Dennett, one of the foremost materialists in the early part of the 21st Century, advocates views regarding consciousness, biology, and philosophy that unavoidably lead to that most ridiculous of philosophical views: that all things have some degree of consciousness, otherwise known as panpsychism.<\/p>\n For those who don\u2019t know, Dan Dennett is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. I had the good fortune of meeting Dennett recently and found that he is in fact a very pleasant man, courteous and with a great sense of humor.<\/p>\n Dennett has written numerous books, including, most recently, Breaking the Spell<\/em>, an anti-religion screed that places him firmly among the \u201cnew atheists\u201d school of thought. The new atheists, which include Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others, take as their primary target the traditional view of God as a creator and patriarch who exercises an ongoing role in his creation. This traditional view, known as theism, is quite hard to defend for anyone who has scientific or philosophical training. But Dennett and the rest of the new atheists go too far, rejecting most notions of divinity as part and parcel of their rejection of traditional religion.<\/p>\n Dennett has also written books on Darwinian evolution (Darwin\u2019s Dangerous Idea<\/em>) and consciousness (Consciousness Explained<\/em> and Brainstorms<\/em>, among others). He is, with the British biologist Dawkins, probably the best-known proponent of what I call \u201ccrude materialism.\u201d Crude materialism is the hardcore \u2013 some would say dogmatic \u2013 version of materialism. It is the view, in essence, that the universe is all just matter and space, there is no God, and all things can in principle be explained fully through human inquiry and theorizing.<\/p>\n Crude materialists believe, to speak very generally, that mind (consciousness) is \u201cmerely\u201d what brains do. Once we explain the brain\u2019s various functions we have then explained all that there is to explain. Explain the brain and we have explained the mind.<\/p>\n Dennett has acknowledged, however, that \u201csubjective experience\u201d is real. The phrase subjective experience refers simply to the first-person perspective (I, we) as opposed to a third-person (he, she, it, they) perspective. It is the sense of being here\u2014right here, somewhere behind my eyes and between my ears, or so it seems. When philosophers talk about explaining consciousness, or when they speak of the mind-body problem, this is what they are trying to explain.<\/p>\n Dennett has also argued forcefully against the idea of conscious experience being something fundamentally different than what is simply matter. Dennett seems to be most opposed to what is called \u201cdualism.\u201d Descartes was the best-known dualist and he argued that there is physical stuff and there is mental stuff. There is also some organ in the body, most likely the pineal gland at the base of the brain, which allows these two different stuffs to interact. For Descartes, only humans had mind, so all other animals were considered mere automatons devoid of any kind of consciousness or spirit. Dualism is not a common position today among philosophers or scientists, but it\u2019s still fairly common in religious views of the world which refer to \u201cspirit\u201d or \u201csoul\u201d as something separate from mindless matter.<\/p>\n Dennett often mentions the history of \u201cvitalism\u201d in biology, as an argument by analogy, to show why dualism is wrong. Vitalists argued that there is something special, some \u00e9lan vital<\/em>, imbuing certain kinds of matter with properties that make it \u201calive.\u201d Vitalism was a fairly common view until the early 20th Century. This argument has long since been (rightly) discredited because we have found that there is nothing else to explain about \u201clife\u201d once we explain the functions of living organisms. In other words, according to anti-vitalists like Dennett, \u201clife\u201d isn\u2019t a quality or a thing, it\u2019s just a label we give to certain types of matter that exhibit more complex behavior than what we generally think of as being not alive. But there\u2019s not a clear dividing line between life and non-life.<\/p>\n Now here\u2019s my main point, though it’s admittedly a fairly subtle point. If Dennett is a materialist, and he admits that subjective experience is real\u2014and<\/em> he is an anti-vitalist and anti-dualist\u2014then he must also be a panpsychist. This is the case because if materialism is true, and at the same time subjective experience is real, then matter must include subjective experience\u2014consciousness itself.<\/p>\n If anti-vitalism is true, life does not suddenly appear where it was not present before. It must exist in a continuum from the simplest forms of matter through the chain of being all the way to us, human beings. As an anti-vitalist, Dennett can\u2019t argue consistently that consciousness materialized at some arbitrary point in the history of the universe. Ergo, life and consciousness are present, in some amount, in the simplest forms of matter as well as the most complex forms we know of today. In other words, all things are alive to some degree, and all things are conscious to some degree. This is panpsychism.<\/p>\n A difference between what we consider to be \u201clife\u201d and what we consider to be \u201cconsciousness\u201d is that explaining the functions of consciousness does not<\/em> explain consciousness itself. The various functions<\/em> of human consciousness, such as sight, dreaming, etc., we may explain, but these functions presuppose a first-person point of view, subjective experience. We must explain this first-person point of view if we\u2019re seeking insight into the nature of the universe\u2014or \u201cmerely\u201d of consciousness.<\/p>\n I have in recent years come to the position that panpsychism is the best explanation we have of mind, matter, and spirituality, after pondering these issues for over 20 years. The best-known panpsychists in western history include Spinoza, Schopenhauer, William James, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, J.B.S. Haldane, David Bohm, and many others. Unfortunately, panpsychism is still not taken seriously by most scientists or philosophers. But it should be.<\/p>\n So why does all of this matter (pardon the pun)? It matters because it shows that crude materialism, an increasingly common worldview in the Western world, holds inherent contradictions, the surest sign that a theory or paradigm is problematic.<\/p>\n And it shows that consciousness is not, as materialists generally argue, a property particular to complex forms of matter (such as human beings). Consciousness is in fact a property of all matter. As matter has complexified, through the process of evolution, consciousness has complexified. This can form the basis for not only a satisfying and consistent philosophical and scientific worldview, it also forms the basis for linking science and spirituality in a rational framework that incorporates areas more traditionally left to faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The existence of Mind presents one of the greatest problems for atheists. In attempting to understand the universe, Descartes began with what most certainly exists \u2013 I think, therefore I am \u2013 and then used the ontological argument to demonstrate … Continue reading