In yesterday's Viewpoint post I argued that sensations like color, sound, taste, fragrance, pain, etc. are not objectively real but are rather the products of the interaction of electrochemical stimuli with the brain/mind complex.
In other words, were there no perceivers with sensory organs, a brain, and a mind, there'd be no color, just as there'd be no color if there were no light. We create the sensation of red out of the electromagnetic energy that impinges on our retinas. Red doesn't exist independently of someone seeing it.
But why posit a mind as part of the apparatus responsible for these phenomena of our daily experience? Why not just attribute them to our physical senses working together with our brains?
After all, we know that if a brain ceases to function, as in death, we cease to have sensory experience. Moreover, we know we have brains, we can see them, measure them, observe various parts of them become active on brain scans. But why think we also have a mind that can't be observed, can't be described and can't even be located?
The answer is that the material, physical brain, taken alone, seems to be an inadequate explanation for certain facts about consciousness, among which are the sensory experiences we talked about in the first paragraph above and in the previous post.
The problem is that the brain is material, the processes that occur in the brain are chemical or physical, but the sensations we experience are immaterial. There's no known bridge between an electrical impulse generated between neurons and, say, the taste of sweet. How does an electrochemical reaction among molecules produce the experience of sweetness or the sensation of sound or color or pain?
It's not just that no one knows how these amazing events happen, it's that no one knows how it even could happen. A miniature scientist traveling throughout someone's brain while the person was looking at a red car would not see red anywhere in the brain, or the image of a car, for that matter. Where does the red come from? What exactly is it? How does a chemical reaction produce the immaterial sensation of red in a person's brain?
The apparent inadequacy of matter to explain the immaterial phenomena of our experience is one piece of evidence - there are others - that something immaterial is involved in the creation of these phenomena. This immaterial entity is what philosophers call the mind or soul.
Of course, many philosophers, those called materialists, resist the idea that we have an immaterial mind separate from, and in some ways independent of, the brain. They resist the idea because they're wedded to the conviction that all that exists in the universe is matter and energy. Their ontology doesn't allow for mysterious immaterial entities that play a role in thinking and experiencing.
Once such entities are admitted, the materialist fears, the door will be open to other such mental entities like souls and ultimately, God.
In order to keep the Divine Mind from intruding Itself into the world, the materialist believes, all independent immaterial entities, especially those such as minds which are conscious and intelligent, must be excluded, but then we're left with what seems to be an insoluble mystery. How does a material brain generate the immaterial sensations we experience every moment of our waking lives and what exactly are those sensations?
Answer those questions and you'll win a Nobel Prize.
