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SCIENCE and PHILOSPHY (4 of 5)

John R. Searle, lecturing at U.C. Berkeley.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

A difference between believers and godless non-believers is the following: believers see spirit, mind, soul as unconnected to (or apart from) the materiality of human chemistry, and they tend to believe in an eternal soul that survives death; the godless (atheists and agnostics) see the mind, human emotions and human chemistry as interconnected, or at least do not assume a disconnection, and they believe that when the body dies, the mind dies.

This brings us to the work of John R. Searle, Professor of Philosophy at U.C. Berkeley since 1959. In 2004, Searle wrote a book, published by Oxford University Press in 2004, entitled Mind: A Brief Introduction. In it Searle criticizes the seventeenth century philosopher Descartes for his dualism: Descartes' assumption that (1) there is a physical reality and (2) there is also a spirit-mind reality. In other words that we are ghosts (spirit) in a machine (materiality).

Searle writes that Descartes' kind of dualism appears inconsistent with modern physics:

Physics says that the amount of matter/energy in the universe is constant; but substance dualism seems to imply that there is another kind energy, mental energy or spiritual energy, that is not fixed by physics. So if substance dualism is true then it seems that one of the most fundamental laws of physics, the law of conservation, must be false. (p. 42)

Searle writes that, "According to substance dualism our brains and bodies are not really conscious. Your body is just an unconscious machine like your car or your television set... there is no consciousness to your body. Rather, your conscious soul is somehow attached to your body and remains attached to it until your body dies, at which time your soul departs." (p. 43)

Regarding the philosophy of the mind, there is "substance" dualism and "property" dualism. Property holds that although Descartes was wrong and the world is not divided basically into two substances (the physical and the soul), there are two kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Searle goes on to the question of materialism regarding human psychology: methodological behaviorism, logical behaviorism, physicalism, identity theory, and functionalism. Searle speaks of humans intending rather than just being conscious, an element beyond the mind as mere biology. What matters about the mind, he writes, is its "capacity for information processing." He adds: "Materialism is trying to say that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force. Dualism is trying to say that there are irreducible and ineliminable mental features to the world, consciousness and intentionality, in particular."

Searle does not try to resolve these two conflicting points of view. He recognizes the role that neurobiology plays in memory, consciousness and intentionality. Your body tells your brain that you are thirsty, you become conscious of it and get a drink of water. But he refuses to take that big step into assuming that consciousness belongs wholly in the realm of matter or that there is an absolute separation between consciousness and materiality. Searle wants to leave the claims of the old materialism as old history. He is suspicious of isms. Rather than leap into assumption and reductionism, he is agnostic on the issue of matter and consciousness.

Searle, in my opinion, does not make the mistake of claiming knowledge that he does not have. Searle confesses a lack of knowledge regarding whether our choices are determined by physical interconnections as opposed to freedom to choose. He believes in science and that this is one of those questions that science and mathematics cannot answer. He writes that we don't know how free will in the brain "could possibly work," and he adds:

But we also know that the conviction of our own freedom is inescapable. We cannot act except under the presupposition of freedom. (p. 234)

Searle believes in freedom of choice insofar as he believes in intentionality.

Searle does address the problem of quantum mechanics in association with free will. He separates the two. He writes: "Free will is not the same as randomness. Quantum mechanics gives us randomness but not freedom." (p. 231)