My classes will be discussing this week the philosophical debate between dualists - those who believe that human beings are comprised of both a material body and an immaterial mind or soul - and materialists who maintain that we are purely material beings. I thought it'd be helpful to rerun this post that I first put up a couple of months ago to help clarify some of the issues.
The debate is especially acute with regard to our cognitive activity with dualists arguing that thinking involves the integration of our material brains with an immaterial mind and materialists maintaining that the brain is all that's involved in our cognitive experience.
The materialist insists that the brain can account for all of our mental phenomena and that there's no need to posit the existence of an immaterial mind or soul. Moreover, given that brain function is the product of the laws of physics and chemistry, materialists argue that there's no reason to believe that we have free will.
For materialists mind is simply a word we use to describe the function of the brain, much like we use the word digestion to refer to the function of the stomach. Just as digestion is a function and not an organ or distinct entity in itself, likewise the mind is an activity of the brain and not a separate entity in itself.
As neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses in this fifteen minute video, however, the materialist view is not shared by all neuroscientists and some of the foremost practitioners in the field have profound difficulties with it.
Egnor explains how the findings of three prominent twentieth century brain scientists point to the existence of something beyond the material brain that's involved in human thought and which also point to the reality of free will.
His lecture is an excellent summary of the case for philosophical dualism and is well worth the fifteen minutes it takes to watch it:
There's a lot at stake in this debate. If materialism is true it not only becomes harder to believe in free will, it's also harder to believe that human beings have dignity, that objective moral obligations exist, that we have a self or identity which perdures through time and that there's a meaningful individual existence beyond the death of the body.
Most materialists accept that none of these beliefs are true, Most dualists believe, or at least hope, that they are. Whether you agree with the materialist or you hope the materialist is wrong you'll want to watch Egnor's video.