Here's Daniel Engber at Slate.com in an article on neuroscience and the brain:
Let me be clear: I'm a dyed-in-the-wool materialist. I believe that each and every aspect of our minds derives from the firing patterns of neurons in our brains.
Here's a question for Mr. Engber. How do chemical reactions, such as constitute a firing neuron, produce things like self-awareness, memories, intentions, desires, regrets, disappointments, guilt, thankfulness, appreciation of beauty, forgiveness, desire for peace, enjoying a good book, deciding, doubting, worrying, or believing?
Even more, how do chemical reactions generate the content of our decisions or our beliefs? How is what I believe about who should be ranked in college football's top five teams produced by a series of molecules shuffling about among the cells of my brain?
Perhaps there's a purely dyed-in-the-wool material explanation for such things, but, if so, I hope Mr. Engber shares it with the rest of us. A lot of people would love to have an answer to these questions. Or perhaps there is no purely physicalist answer, and Mr. Engber's Kierkegaardian committment to materialism is just a blind leap of religious faith in inanimate matter.
