Matthew Lee Anderson explains why Pat Robertson’s recent comments about marriage and Alzheimer’s reveals a deeper problem with the Christian understanding of the body:
The tragedy of Alzheimer’s is very real, but the fragmentation of the self that the inability to remember precipitates does not entail, as Robertson put it, that a “person is gone” or that Alzheimer’s is a “walking death.” While the debate over what constitutes a “person” is (and will be!) ongoing, as people who believe in an incarnate God, we should be wary of separating the person from the body in the way Robertson does. We are something more than minds that are floating free in the ethereal and insubstantial regions of space.
The point has significant ramifications for our marriages, for the union we enjoy is of two persons and for their mutual well-being. “With my body I thee worship,” reads the old version of the wedding service in the Book of Common Prayer (a prayer book that guides the liturgy of Anglican worshippers), a line that is as lovely as any in the English language. My wife didn’t let us say it in our wedding service for fear that it would confuse people, and I understand why. But it highlights the totality of the sacrifice that marriage requires, and points toward the body as the sign and symbol of my love.
Yet the sacrifice of my body is consummated in my affection and care for my wife’s. The love we have in marriage may not be exhausted by our concern for our spouse’s body, but it certainly includes their bodies—and not just their brains, either. The body is “the place of our personal presence in the world,” as Gilbert Meilander puts it, and the delight we have for the other’s presence is necessarily a delight of its manifestation in the body. The erosion of memory that Alzheimer’s causes makes this sense of presence less stable, but to suggest it can accomplish the final dissolution of the person is to ascribe to it a power that not even death has. For there is, within the Kingdom, a love that is even stronger than death.
September 16th, 2011 | 2:28 pm
While I found Pat Robertson’s advice to be appalling, I do think there is a real sense in which a person with Alzheimer’s or any number of other devastating mental afflictions “is not there.” If persons are moral agents, it seems to me that people whose minds are so deeply impaired that they are no longer responsible for their actions are, in some sense, “not there.” They (or what used to be their bodies) cannot act on their own behalf. A psychotic person who commits a murder is not responsible. If my son (and I don’t have one) was a kind, loving person whose personality changes radically because of a growing, inoperable brain tumor, if he were to become abusive and hate me, I would have to tell myself (correctly, I think), “That’s not really him.” If he were to commit a murder, I would have to say, “My son would never have murdered someone.”
A person is not his or her body, particularly in Christian thought. When someone dies, don’t we say things like, “She’s gone to a better place”?
The notion of the self, or of continuity of the self, seems to me a very difficult one, not necessarily in everyday experience, but in extreme circumstances.
September 16th, 2011 | 2:30 pm
What I found astonishing about the CT article was the nature of the comments. Just last year they published two articles buying into the overpopulation myth and a third (which was part of a series on helping couples who are infertile) by an advocate of embryo-destructive ART (wherein she described how she had three of her offspring destroyed in vitro because they were found to be genetically unacceptable).
And there was very little criticism of CT for uncritically publishing the article or of the authors for advocating the destruction of innocent human beings. But the love-to-make-fun-of-him Pat Robertson says something reprehensible for the 347th time and the flood gates of condemnation open wide among he readers of CT.
That’s nearly as reprehensible as wht Robertson actually said.
I’m reading O’Donovan’s “Begotten or Made?” rightg now. Anderson’s book is next in the reading queue.
Kamilla
September 16th, 2011 | 2:33 pm
Separate though: When I heard Robertson saying that due to Alzheimer’s, the person was no longer there, I did have to wonder how he could be so opposed to abortion, since there is a much more powerful argument that, if one thinks along Robertson’s lines, that for abortion, the person is not yet there. It seems to me inconsistent to maintain an early embryo or fetus is a person and then turn around and say of someone who has Alzheimer’s that the person is gone.
September 16th, 2011 | 3:30 pm
David: I’m pretty sure that Robertson did not say that you could go ahead and kill your spouse because they’re “not there” anymore.
September 16th, 2011 | 4:27 pm
David: I’m pretty sure that Robertson did not say that you could go ahead and kill your spouse because they’re “not there” anymore.
Brian,
No, he didn’t say that, but he did say that the person you loved for 20 or 30 years “is gone, they’re gone, they are gone.” Did another person take the loved one’s place? If so, how? If not, what is the justification for not killing someone with Alzheimer’s? If the person is gone, gone, gone, and there’s not a new person there, it’s not killing a person.
Robertson would certainly not approve of what I am saying, but that is because he is being inconsistent. Killing a body without a person present “in” it would not be morally wrong. It would be like pulling the plug when a body is brain dead.
September 16th, 2011 | 5:11 pm
Why engage at all in this game of “Can you believe what Pat Robertson said????” (or Jerry Falwell or any number of other people whom the MSM totally ignores until it is convenient to point at them for some silly thing they’ve said and to laugh and mock and snark)
September 16th, 2011 | 7:50 pm
Nickol,
Robertson’s views on personhood are contrary to Christianity.
We are body and soul in one unit.
There is no separation, that is dualism.
The first principle of philosophy is existence. You cannot think if you do not exist.
Not the other around.
September 16th, 2011 | 8:27 pm
Excellent, excellent thoughts from Anderson. This whole “something is wrong with my brain so I’m not a person anymore” thing is so theologically daft from a Christian perspective.
September 16th, 2011 | 10:28 pm
So, Bender, are you policing First Things now in addition to dotCommonweal?
September 16th, 2011 | 10:46 pm
Robertson’s views on personhood are contrary to Christianity.
savvy,
Robertson could have meant at least two different things. He could have meant there is, literally, no person left when the ravages of Alzheimer’s reach a certain point. Or he could have meant something more figurative—a kind of more extreme version of what we mean when we say, “I’m not myself today.”
There is no separation, that is dualism.
Haven’t we gone through this before? The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines death as the soul leaving the body. The soul goes to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Everyone who has ever lived and died, except Jesus and Mary, now exists as a soul without a body. How can you say there is no separation?
September 17th, 2011 | 6:49 am
Everybody knows perfectly well what a person is; we all understand expressions like “the person over there” or “Offences against the Person.” It means a living, human body. No one would call a corpse, or a ghost, a person.
The “mind” or “self” is not a person, but an hypostasised abstraction.
September 17th, 2011 | 7:46 am
An excellent refutation by Anderson of what is, at best, a misleading proposition.
The marriage vows themselves, whether modern or the lovely old Common Prayer version, say what we must do when the “better and worse” of old age work their mischief on us.
For a rather more robust explication of the unity of self and body, see “Man and Woman He Created Them–A Theology of the Body” by Bl John Paul II, translated using the original manuscript by Prof Michael Waldstein.
For an enjoyable, challenging, popular counter to Robertson’s thesis, see the movie “The Notebook.”
September 17th, 2011 | 1:26 pm
Stephen Barr has a very good article on this issue here in FT.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/12/matter-over-mind
The short story is that the simple substance dualism that Mr. Nickol seems to be advancing here is supported by neither science nor Christian belief.
September 17th, 2011 | 3:18 pm
The short story is that the simple substance dualism that Mr. Nickol seems to be advancing here is supported by neither science nor Christian belief.
Barry Arrington,
I am not sure I would admit to advancing any particular view. I am raising questions about the consistency of Christian thought about the person and the soul. I like this passage from the article you link to:
What I am pointing out is that no matter how adamantly this is maintained, as far as I can see (not being an expert), it is incompatible with the extremely common Christian idea that death is defined as the soul leaving the body, with the soul being said to go to purgatory, heaven, or hell to await the resurrection of the body. In the meanwhile, the “disembodied soul” (which would seem to be an oxymoron) is quite active as a person. Catholics pray to the saints (who are all, except the Virgin Mary, “disembodied souls,” and ask for their intersession. To intercede on behalf of someone, it would seem completely necessary to be a person in some sense of the word, and to have the capability of doing things.
My question, then, is how the soul can exist separated from the body any more than depth can exist separated from length and width. It might be argued that God can do anything, but separating depth from length and width would seem to be a logical contradiction, like creating a square circle, and it seems to me that “disembodied soul” falls into the same category if one accepts the viewpoint Stephen M. Barr is arguing on behalf of.
September 17th, 2011 | 5:47 pm
So, Bender, are you policing First Things now in addition to dotCommonweal?
_______________
I think that we would all be better served by more charity in the blogosphere, be it in progressive or more traditional circles.
September 17th, 2011 | 10:57 pm
First, there is something profoundly disturbing about the concept of dumping a spouse because they’re sick. Yes, “in sickness and in health” is central to marriage (and family) for crucial reasons.
On the other hand, and going against what I’ve just said, I am thinking of a situation where the sick person no longer mentally recognizes their spouse, and this would go on for many years. In such a hypo, I may be partial to another solution, if so desired, if care could be provided to the sick spouse through a nurse or some other arrangement and visitation. I may be quite wrong, but I think it’s one of those horribly complicated situations in life where you are trying to avoid unjust suffering.
However, given that we currently live in a “dispose of your spouse” culture as fast as possible because she got a couple of wrinkles and put on 5 lbs, this horrible attitude– which has nothing to do with a spouse being sick– along with promiscuity or casual (read loveless) sex, embody much more the scourge of society right now.
September 18th, 2011 | 1:33 pm
“I may be partial to another solution, if so desired, if care could be provided to the sick spouse through a nurse or some other arrangement and visitation.”
Alessandra, I hope no one would argue that this kind of care is at all unreasonable. This does not involve abandoning a spouse.
September 18th, 2011 | 2:05 pm
Nickol,
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
016 By death the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul. Just as Christ is risen and lives for ever, so all of us will rise at the last day.”
Jesus and Mary still have bodies in heaven, as do the saints.
990 The term “flesh” refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality. The “resurrection of the flesh” (the literal formulation of the Apostles’ Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our “mortal body” will come to life again.
September 18th, 2011 | 2:16 pm
Nickol,
The soul does not perish when it is separated from the body.
Souls in hell are already damned and will not be part of the resurrection of the body.
We do not know the time it will take from death to the final resurrection of the dead.
God is not bound by our space and time.
September 18th, 2011 | 2:23 pm
It took three days from the death of Christ to his glorified body resurrecting.
September 18th, 2011 | 3:58 pm
Barry,
Substance dualism is exactly what’s used to justify homosexual inclinations, with identification of the soul as mind.
September 18th, 2011 | 4:44 pm
savvy,
I think your argument is not with me, but with Barry Arrington and the First Things article he recommended titled Matter Over Mind. As I have said before in other threads, I am not arguing any particular theory of the soul, but rather I am pointing out that what is said about the soul in, say, Matter Over Mind, does not seem to be compatible with the idea that the soul leaves the body at death and is reunited when the resurrection of the body takes place. Perhaps you and Barry Arrington can discuss this. I don’t see how it is possible for you and him to reconcile your positions. I am not saying that the definition of death as being when the soul leaves the body is wrong, I am saying it is incompatible with the assertion that the soul and the body can be distinguished but they can’t be separated. Clearly, according to the commonly held Christian belief, body and soul can be separated. In fact, the body can cease to exist altogether, as it would upon cremation or complete decay with constituent elements being recycled in nature. If the body is destroyed and the soul continues to exist, body and soul can be separated.
If the body and the soul can’t be separated in the same way that one of the three dimensions cannot be separated from the other two, then it would seem very obvious that the body and the soul can’t be separated.
Souls in hell are already damned and will not be part of the resurrection of the body.
This is incorrect. See the online Catholic Encyclopedia entry General Resurrection:
September 18th, 2011 | 5:37 pm
“Souls in hell are already damned and will not be part of the resurrection of the body.”
Are you sure about that, savvy? John 5 says:
28 Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.
But perhaps you mean they won’t receive the glorified body, i.e., the resurrection of life?
September 18th, 2011 | 6:16 pm
Nickol,
The soul can be separated from the body after death, but not when a person is alive.
Perhaps, you are confusing mind with soul, something the dualists do?
September 18th, 2011 | 6:29 pm
Pentamom,
Yes, I meant that they won’t receive the glorified body.
September 18th, 2011 | 7:15 pm
The soul can be separated from the body after death, but not when a person is alive.
savvy,
Did you read the article Matter Over Mind?
If death is the separation of the soul from the body, then it is quite obvious that the soul cannot be separated from the body while the body is alive. It’s true by definition. You are not engaging with the issue.
September 18th, 2011 | 9:19 pm
Nickol,
Your implying that the soul is somehow what makes a person conscious, therefore if death is separation of the soul from the body, a person who is not conscious would somehow be dead.
In Christianity death is the end of earthly life, rather than the death of consciousness.
In Baptism a Christian dies with Christ, sacramentally in order to live a new life.
If we die in the grace of God, then physical death completes this dying with Christ and rising again.
September 19th, 2011 | 3:54 am
As Miss Anscombe put it, “If the principle of human rational life in me is a soul (which perhaps can survive me, perhaps again animate me) that is not what Ii mean by “me.” Nor is it what I am. I am a living, human body and I shall exist only as long as that exists. If people find this idea shocking, they only betray how deeply infected by dualism they are.”
St Thomas teaches the same (Summa Ia q 75:4) and the Ecumenical Council of Vienne (1311-12) condemns as heresy the denial that the rational or intellectual soul is the form of the human body, of itself and essentially. The “form,” in this context means the intelligible structure that constitutes a thing in it species – Analogous to the relation between “design” and “car.” This is why St Thomas insists that the principle of individuation in man is dimensional quantity (Following Aristotle who held that “substance suffers division in ratio of quantity). Hence, too, the common mediaeval belief that each angel belonged to a different species: plainly, two immaterial entities of the same species would be (numerically) identical.
September 19th, 2011 | 7:36 am
Your implying that the soul is somehow what makes a person conscious, therefore if death is separation of the soul from the body, a person who is not conscious would somehow be dead.
savvy,
I don’t know how you arrive at the conclusion that I am implying that. I am attempting to discuss the article Matter Over Mind. If you are unwilling to read it, just say so, and we can end this discussion.
September 19th, 2011 | 9:14 am
Hello, David Nickol,
“My question, then, is how the soul can exist separated from the body any more than depth can exist separated from length and width.”
What is so hard to understand about an immortal soul continuing to exist when separated from the body? It is immortal.
Consider the thinking of one Gregory of Nyssa, who was born about A.D. 335:
“A definition of the soul is then given, for the sake of clearness in the succeeding discussion. It is a created, living, intellectual being, with the power, as long as it is provided with organs, of sensuous perception. For “the mind sees,” not the eye … The objection that the “organic machine” of the body produces all thought is met by the instance of the water-organ. Such machines, if thought were really an attribute of matter, ought to build themselves spontaneously: whereas they are a direct proof of an invisible thinking power in man.”
The water-organ, an amazing musical instrument, was an example of the technology of his time. It couldn’t think any more than modern computers can or will ever be able to think. There is simply no configuration of matter and energy that enables them to grasp or be affected by the immaterial. Abstract concepts, the grasping of which is essential for intelligent thought to take place, are immaterial. There must be an immaterial component to our intellect that is able to grasp and be affected by immaterial abstract concepts. It has traditionally been referred to as our rational soul.
The disembodied soul, while deprived of “sensuous perception” is not deprived of all perception. If one is Christian at all, one believes in spiritual, bodiless beings, like God, angels and demons, who rely on only spiritual perception. Our immortal, rational souls, even though they are created to animate a body, continue to have spiritual perception when separated from the body. They will resume “sensuous perception” after the resurrection.
That we can grasp immaterial, abstract concepts at all, which no configuration of matter and energy alone will ever be able to do, is proof that our intellect has an immaterial, spiritual dimension — a rational, immortal soul.
September 19th, 2011 | 10:52 am
harry,
Thanks for taking the time to answer at length, but both you and savvy are not answering the question I am asking. Barry Arlington recommend an article titled Matter Over Mindto me which I will link to one more time. The article said:
If one can distinguish but not separate body and soul, how can the soul separate from the body and exist independently between the time of death and the resurrection of the body?
I am not making any arguments of my own about the soul. I am asking the question how, if soul and body are inseparable—like length, width, and height—how can they be separated?
If the soul separates from the body, then obviously theories of the soul that say soul and body cannot separate are wrong. Likewise, if a theory of the soul is correct in saying that body and soul cannot separate, then descriptions of what happens after death involving the continued existence of the disembodied soul as a “person” are wrong.
September 19th, 2011 | 1:41 pm
David Nichol
Of course “descriptions of what happens after death involving the continued existence of the disembodied soul AS A PERSON are wrong.
As I said earlier, a corpse is not a person, for it has lost its substantial unity of operation (assimilation, organization, excretion &c) so, likewise the soul is not a person either. It can continue to exist, as a tune can continue to exist, when it is not actually being played, the body being to the soul what the actual sounds are to the tune [This is not a very close analogy, to be sure] It is like the soul in this, that, whilst the sounds are perceived by the senses, the tune, like all forms, is grasped by the understanding.
Its subjectivity, being without sensation or even the phantasms of sensation we call memory or imagination, is unimaginable to us; we can, without contradiction, posit that it retains its immaterial powers of understanding and will and a reflexive awareness of these.
For the rest, Christians have been content to say with the Psalmist, “In your light we shall see light£ [36:9]
September 19th, 2011 | 2:33 pm
harry
The water-organ, an amazing musical instrument, was an example of the technology of his time. It couldn’t think any more than modern computers can or will ever be able to think. There is simply no configuration of matter and energy that enables them to grasp or be affected by the immaterial. Abstract concepts, the grasping of which is essential for intelligent thought to take place, are immaterial. There must be an immaterial component to our intellect that is able to grasp and be affected by immaterial abstract concepts. It has traditionally been referred to as our rational soul.
A few issues/questions/perplexities I have with this:
1. The reasoning seems suspect. The question is why do water-organ’s not “build themselves spontaneously” but human brains do? One explanation is that the matter a human is built out of is not the same matter as the water-organ (or it is the same-matter plus *something else*). But the other explanation is simply that matter does “build itself spontaneously” into ‘thinking machines’. Those machines, though, look like people with brains and not water organs. Brains may simply be like a diamond. A particular
2. In regards to the immaterial….I’d ask you to consider a book. A book is made of matter, paper, bits of ink, binding, cover etc. The book is matter but it has a ‘soul’ in the sense that it conveys meaning. If you wish consider a very basic type of book like a phone book versus a book of nonsense characters printed by accident. In terms of physical make up both books appear exactly alike, yet one has meaning to it, the other doesn’t. If we were talking about literature, one could argue the meaning lies not in the book but in the brains of the person reading it. But in terms of a phone book, the meaning is external. A computer using the phone book to dial numbers will reach people, using the nonsense book it won’t.
3. If a book can carry an ‘immaterial’ meaning why can’t ordinary matter? If so then souls and brains can be interchangeable. How can you have a disconnected soul in heaven? Easy, think of a book converted into digital form. Same book, different type of medium.
September 19th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
Michael PS,
Does it make sense, then, to pray to a disembodied soul (of one of the saints in heaven) and ask it to intercede with God on our behalf? Does it make sense to pray to the disembodied soul of Saint Anthony to help us find a lost object? Or does the concept of some kind of purifying suffering (Purgatory) for a disembodied soul make sense?
September 19th, 2011 | 6:54 pm
Hello, David Nickol,
“If the soul separates from the body, then obviously theories of the soul that say soul and body cannot separate are wrong. Likewise, if a theory of the soul is correct in saying that body and soul cannot separate, then descriptions of what happens after death involving the continued existence of the disembodied soul as a ‘person’ are wrong.”
And if A = B and C = B then A = C. It would be quite appropriate to respond to that with “So what?” In the same way you have constructed your argument such that it inevitably leads to your conclusion. Your construction is faulty.
Body and soul make up a whole. A lot of parts make up an automobile. That some of those parts, even though the automobile won’t function without them, may be placed in an environment other than an automobile in which they continue to have some functionality, is like the soul, in that even though it is an essential part of a living, functioning human being, it still has functionality in a different environment after it leaves the body. This should not surprise us. After all, it is the primary aspect of a human being:
“And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
From dust came the body of Man and to dust it returns; the living soul didn’t come from the dust of the Earth but from the very life of God.
Hello, Boonton,
Matter does not “‘build itself spontaneously’ into ‘thinking machines’” if “building” something is intentional, purposeful work, for the simple reason that before it became a “thinking machine” it couldn’t do anything thoughtfully. Neither does matter and energy alone *ever* do anything thoughtfully. If human beings are “thinking machines” it is because they are more than just a particularly clever configuration of matter and energy.
For those who have worked with computers at the level of the CPU, its instruction set and the clever arrangement of miniature electrical components that create that instruction set, it should have become obvious that computers do not think. They have the same ability to grasp abstract concepts as does your electric can opener, which is to say that they have no such ability at all. So it is with the human body. It is a much more clever arrangement of matter and energy than any computer, but without a rational soul, it too is as thoughtful as your electric can opener. This is evident because matter and energy alone, no matter how cleverly they are configured, can never seize upon or be affected by the immaterial, yet the human intellect routinely seizes upon and is affected by immaterial abstract concepts.
As for a book having a “‘soul’ in the sense that it conveys meaning,” the intelligibility of the natural Universe, which makes science possible, must then mean that in some sense the Universe has a soul as it too, conveys meaning. I don’t think the Universe has a soul even though it obviously has meaning written within it (a meaning which appears, for the most part, to be lost on atheists). The essence of a rational soul is the ability to grasp and communicate meaning. Matter and energy alone can only convey meaning that was intentionally written in them; the meaning they convey is not something that is an inherent property of matter and energy, just as the meaning of a book is not an inherent property of ink and paper. Meaning is grasped and communicated by rational, immaterial souls. That meaning was intentionally written into matter and energy is the only reason they convey it. The more one grasps the meaning written in them the more one comes to know its Author.
September 20th, 2011 | 4:04 am
David Nichol
“Does it make sense, then, to pray to a disembodied soul (of one of the saints in heaven) and ask it to intercede with God on our behalf?”
Yes, but only on the basis of Revelation, as part of the doctrine of the Mystical Body. This does not contradict reason, but unaided reason cannot discover it. That is why I believe in the intercession of saints and not in table-rappng.
It is not contrary to reason, as Aristotle shows in the De Anima. What a thing is, is shown by what it does. The activities of a vegetable soul are growth, nutrition and generation; an animal soul has these activities too, but, in addition, it has locomotion, sensation and appetite. Now, these are obviously matter-dependent activities; they are activities in and on matter. The human or rational soul has all these activities and also understanding and will. Now, it is not obvious that these latter are matter-dependent in the same way; indeed, the existence of abstract ideas shows they are not, even though they are derived from sensation. Thus, to postulate the survival of a disembodied soul is not meaningless – we can, to some extent imagine the kind of things it could do. It would be a truncated existence, with no scope for its vegetable and animal activities, but an existence none the less. Divorced from union with God, Homer and Virgil have conveyed something of the horror of it – “Inceptus clamor frustratur hientem” is the most terrifying line in literature.
September 20th, 2011 | 11:02 am
harry
Remember we are dealing with analogies here. My point is we all agree a book is made up of only simple matter. Yet it has something immaterial about it. It has a story, or data or whatever the book is about. A book of random nonsense might appear exactly the same as A Catcher in the Rye….same weight, density, distribution of black ink to white space etc. but there’s a clear difference.
So we know that ‘mere matter’ may at the same time have something that’s immaterial about it. The story is contained in the book. Granted it may require an intelligence to comprehend it, but the story doesn’t exist in the intelligence but in the book….but as I pointed out the book is ‘just matter’. Where does this story exist? It would seem to exist in a particular arrangement of matter but not the matter itself. If I gave you an atom, you could not say “ahhh yes, this atom must have flaked off a book….smells like a Hemingway atom….” But your edition of A Farewell to Arms is not a supernatural entity.
Now I’m not saying that books think or have souls or can create other books. My point is that if a book can have something immaterial about it, so can a brain. Why can’t books think? Because a book is an arrangement of matter that is different from a brain. A book can’t think for the same reason you can’t write a story with a pancake.
Your assertion that computers do not think is true to the degree that to date we probaby don’t have computers that think….but I don’t think you’ve established the statement that computers cannot think. In fact, I’d ask you to cnsider what you’d say if you were confronted by a manufactured computer that did in fact seem to think? If it held conversations with you, even got into arguments with you. Would you say that despite seeming like a rational entity it had no soul and therefore destroying it wouldn’t be an unjust act?
September 20th, 2011 | 1:23 pm
Booton
The computer raises the same question as your book. Computers operate in terms of strings of marks or impulses or sounds and these no more constitute thought than ink marks on a page constitute thought. It is only because the writer and the reader invest the ink marks with meaning that they represent thought.
Nor, I would suggest, does the brain think. Rather, people think. I have, after all, non-observational awareness or reflex consciousness of my own intentional actions. When the telephone rings and I answer it, I do not normally have a little internal conversation with myself – “The telephone is ringing, I better answer it.” Nevertheless, it is an intentional act, quite different from spilling my coffee, because the ringing of the telephone startled me.
I once saw a small child, giving a series of little jumps and accompanying each one with the remark (to no one in particular) “jumping up and down.” She did not say “I am jumping up and down” ; had she done so, pace Descartes, “I” would have been a mere grammatical place-holder, like “it” in “it is raining.”
Although the concept of “thought” is one that we all possess, it is difficult to give a satisfactory account of it and no one as yet has, although not for lack of trying.
September 20th, 2011 | 3:06 pm
Michael PS
The computer raises the same question as your book. Computers operate in terms of strings of marks or impulses or sounds and these no more constitute thought than ink marks on a page constitute thought. …
True but the book’s story is something immaterial yet it exists in the book’s arrangement of matter….not some supernatural substance that exists in books but not in blank paper.
It is only because the writer and the reader invest the ink marks with meaning that they represent thought.
But the meaning cannot exist simply inside the readers, because until I read a book I have no idea what its about. Likewise the writer does add to the book but note he only alters the arrangement of the matter that makes the book. The meaning is immaterial yet carried in something that appears to be purely material.
This is NOT saying a book has thoughts, can think or has a soul. But it is saying that if we establish the immaterial can be contained as an arrangement of matter there’s no obvious reason why other things we think of as immaterial (i.e. a ‘soul’, doing abstract thought, etc.) would require a supernatural substance as opposed to simply a specialized arrangement of matter. No books don’t think but since a book can carry an immaterial story in simple matter, it may be possible for more serious immaterial stuff to be carried by more sophisticated arrangment of ‘simple matter’.
Nor, I would suggest, does the brain think. Rather, people think. I have, after all, non-observational awareness or reflex consciousness of my own intentional actions.
Can a person without a brain think? If it were possible to do a brain transplant (and in theory it seems possible, if well beyond our technology) what person would you and I be if we swapped brains?
September 21st, 2011 | 7:13 am
Booton
I think we are coming close to Aristotle’s distinction between matter and form. As I said of a tune, what we hear are sounds, but the tune, which is a pattern or arrangements of sounds is not perceived by the senses, but grasped by the understanding – All forms are, in this sense immaterial, but are not on that account substances.
Descartes famously said that he could doubt that he had a body. “I could suppose I had no body,” wrote Descartes, “but not that I was not,” and inferred that “this I” is not a body. But, as Miss Anscombe points out “by that method Descartes must have doubted the existence of the man Descartes: at any rate of that figure in the world of his time, that Frenchman, born of such-and-such a stock and christened René; but also, even of the man – unless a man isn’t a sort of animal. If, then, the non-identity of himself with his own body follows from his starting-points, so equally does the non-identity of himself with the man Descartes. “I am not Descartes” was just as sound a conclusion for him to draw as “I am not a body.”
September 21st, 2011 | 10:57 am
Hello, Boonton,
“Your assertion that computers do not think is true to the degree that to date we probably don’t have computers that think….but I don’t think you’ve established the statement that computers cannot think. In fact, I’d ask you to consider what you’d say if you were confronted by a manufactured computer that did in fact seem to think? If it held conversations with you, even got into arguments with you. Would you say that despite seeming like a rational entity it had no soul and therefore destroying it wouldn’t be an unjust act?”
There already is software that is pretty good at creating the illusion that it is conversing with the user. Its “thoughtfulness” is that of the programmer, not the computer, which remains a mindless, albeit very clever configuration of matter and energy. When one understands the logic the programmer used to determine how the software will respond to the user, one can “converse” with it in a way that exposes the mindlessness of the computer and the “intelligent” software running on it.
No matter how intricately and cleverly matter and energy are configured they remain just that, intrinsically incapable of seizing upon or being affected by that which is immaterial, which includes abstract concepts the grasping of which is essential for intelligence.
What a computer does is entirely deterministic. Many atheists believe that what humans do is also entirely deterministic, denying our free will but not our intelligence. They do this without offering any explanation at all of just what configuration of matter and energy allows for their interaction with immaterial abstract concepts essential for intelligence. They don’t, of course, because they can’t.
Without rationality and the ability to grasp immaterial abstract concepts there can be no free will. That is why computers or androids will always be just mindless machines the behavior of which is entirely deterministic no matter how well the illusion is created by their designers that they possess intelligence and free will. It will be entertaining to listen to the silly debate between atheists who claim that not even humans possess a free will and those claiming their robots really do have intelligence and free will.
The ability of the human intellect to grasp immaterial abstract concepts is why it is evident that it possesses an immaterial component — a rational soul — that is also the source of its genuinely free will.
September 21st, 2011 | 11:23 am
How about if you were confronted with a computer that defied its programmers? Argued for its own rights? Produced creative arguments and stories that you could tell were beyond the programming team? Such a beast might not be deterministic in the sense that there was any way to tell what it would say other than waiting around and seeing what it said.
Is it your stance that such a thing could never be made? That at a certain point a computer could never go beyond a certain ceiling of ‘clever programming’ whatever that is (writing a fictional story, or to use Star Trek, I believe for a while Data could not sincerely laugh)? Or that no matter what a computer said or did you would never consider revising your view that it was just a bunch of ‘clever programming’?
If its the latter are you any different form the deterministic atheist who insists no matter how unexpected a person might be, they are still just a bunch of atoms following regular patterns of nature?
September 21st, 2011 | 1:26 pm
Hi again, Boonton,
Yes, unless the day comes when science can artificially create a rational soul in the laboratory, which I don’t think will happen any time soon.
There is no reason to revise my view until someone explains how to configure matter and energy such that it can seize upon and be affected by that which is immaterial. I don’t think this explanation will come from atheistic, materialistic science as it refuses to accept what is obvious to most people: that there are realities that do not consist of matter and energy, that is, “supernatural” realities.
I am different from the deterministic atheist in that I see that there is no rational explanation for what we find in our own consciousness, for what we find in nature, or for the existence of the natural Universe itself without the inclusion of supernatural realities.
Conscious self awareness, free will, and the ability to grasp immaterial abstract concepts are all unexplainable if one looks for those explanations in matter and energy alone.
If the natural Universe had a beginning, which science in recent years has indicated is the case, then only a supernatural reality could have brought it about, as there was nothing natural around to bring it about before the natural Universe began.
The most plausible current explanation for that first single celled, reproducing life form, which we now know consists of nanotechnology light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch, is an explanation that includes the involvement of an intelligent agent in the process of bringing it about. That does not in itself necessarily indicate that the intelligent agent was a supernatural one. Yet fear that many will draw that conclusion has brought about an amazing denial of the obvious in atheistic science that will one day be generally mocked and ridiculed, contemporary science perverted by atheism taking on the role of the inquisitors and those who dare to state the obvious playing the part of Galileo.
I think reasonableness requires the belief that intelligent life with a free will cannot exist without a supernatural component, and in so far as science will never be able to create such life artificially, there will never be a robot or android that possesses something like what we call “inalienable” rights when speaking of humans.
September 22nd, 2011 | 2:06 pm
harry,
I think the flaw in your argument is that you’re confusing human limits on our understanding of how matter works with limits on what matter can actually do.
September 22nd, 2011 | 3:52 pm
Hello Boonton,
Or maybe materialistic science is refusing to admit that there are limits on what mindless matter can do all by itself, causing it to resort to rather silly “naturalism of the gaps” arguments. It can be just as silly to say, when science is confronted with the inexplicable, “We will eventually find an entirely natural, mindless explanation for that,” as it can be to simply say, “That is the part God does.”
True, relentlessly objective science doesn’t care about whether the ramifications of its findings tend to undermine or affirm belief in the various religious/philosophical systems.
Scientists who are Christians understand that ultimately there can be no real conflict between true science and true religion because the natural and the supernatural both have the same Author. I think this is why they tend to remain calm and maintain their scientific objectivity when the findings of science aren’t going their way in terms of their religious beliefs.
This is not the case for the materialists. For example, that SETI scientists would be able to differentiate between mindlessly generated noise and an intelligently designed message originating in the depths of the cosmos was not controversial. This is because everybody knows that science is capable of determining whether it is more likely that a given phenomenon is the result of the work of an intelligent agent or more likely that it is a purely natural phenomenon. It was also because finding out there are other intelligent creatures in the Universe didn’t pose a threat to the essential beliefs of a religious/philosophical system.
Yet when it came to the discovery of the astoundingly complex functionality of life, with its densely packed DNA software and miniaturized factories all but shouting out that this is no accident (and it has been mathematically demonstrated that it is a virtual impossibility for it to be accidental) the materialists suddenly lost their scientific objectivity and refused to accept that sometimes the involvement of an intelligent agent is the best explanation for a given phenomenon. They did not do so because it suddenly became unscientific to acknowledge that some phenomena are best explained by the involvement of an intelligent agent; it was because they saw this discovery as directly threatening their atheistic beliefs.
True, relentlessly objective science is willing to admit that the involvement of an intelligent agent in life coming about is currently the most plausible explanation. Zealous atheism isn’t. It
is a case of materialistic science refusing to admit that there are limits on what mindless matter can do all by itself.
September 23rd, 2011 | 1:09 pm
Or maybe materialistic science is refusing to admit that there are limits on what mindless matter can do all by itself, causing it to resort to rather silly “naturalism of the gaps” arguments. It can be just as silly to say, when science is confronted with the inexplicable, “We will eventually find an entirely natural, mindless explanation for that,” as it can be to simply say, “That is the part God does.”
The problem is that if you’re going to build an argument in the form of “X is supernatural because matter cannot do X”, you must support the case that “matter cannot do X”. There’s a lot of things we know matter cannot do. We know it can’t travel faster than the speed of light, for example. But there’s a huge number of things that matter can do but we just don’t know yet. For example, how about the best selling book of 2015? It’s just matter, if I had a time machine I could zip there pick up a copy on Dec 31st 2015 and zip back with that collection of atoms….but we don’t know what it is right now but its no doubt something.
So you’re right, its a ‘materialism of the gaps’ but it’s not squeezing materialism into gaps of non-materialism, its assuming the gaps contain materialism just like the non-gaps do. The ‘God of the gaps’ assumes God is living inside the gaps between which materialism dominates.
If I’m drving thru town, on block 1 I notice homes. Block 2 I am fiddling with the radio. Block 3 I notice yet more homes. I have a ‘gap’ for what is on block 2. ‘God of the Gaps’ is like assuming there’s a massive spaceport on block 2. Your ‘naturalism of the gaps’ would be like assuming there’s just more houses on block 2. While any assumption may be wrong, the latter is probably less likely to be wrong than the former.
Scientists who are Christians understand that ultimately there can be no real conflict between true science and true religion because the natural and the supernatural both have the same Author. I think this is why they tend to remain calm and maintain their scientific objectivity when the findings of science aren’t going their way in terms of their religious beliefs.
Which makes me ponder whether the issue isn’t whether the line between the supernatural and natural is an artifact of our knowledge and little else. To put it bluntly when God was making souls, did he say ‘this stuff is supernatual’ or did he just say ‘this stuff is just more natural stuff in that has its own particular qualities’. Why would ‘soul atoms’ to him be any different than hyodrogren atoms?
For example, that SETI scientists would be able to differentiate between mindlessly generated noise and an intelligently designed message originating in the depths of the cosmos was not controversial. This is because everybody knows that science is capable of determining whether it is more likely that a given phenomenon is the result of the work of an intelligent agent or more likely that it is a purely natural phenomenon.
Actually everyone does not know that. Since SETI has yet to find any signals that consistently can’t be explained via unintelligent naturally generated causes, this ‘test’ has never been put to the test.
Yet when it came to the discovery of the astoundingly complex functionality of life, with its densely packed DNA software and miniaturized factories all but shouting out that this is no accident (and it has been mathematically demonstrated that it is a virtual impossibility for it to be accidental)
No it hasn’t. Yes its mathematically impossible for it to be an accident in the sense that if you put a lot of atoms in a bag and shook it up its almost impossible for them to ‘just fall’ together in the right way to make DNA or a cell. Nonetheless atoms don’t just fall together the way the balls in a lottery drawing do. They are inclined to attract or repel each other as per chemistry tells us and the number and type of complexity of possible interactions is so huge that its impossible to calculate any ‘odds’ at all mathematically.
Let me show you an example of where I think this idea gets it wrong:
Say you have a chess board and set of standard chess pieces. Your toddler will throw some of them down on squares at random. What are the chances that this will ‘accidently’ produce a white king in checkmate with 3 white pawns within two rows of the black side and 2 black pawns within a row of the white side? Very slim no doubt.
Now suppose I showed you that arrangement and told you it was produced by having a computer chess program play itself. You wouldn’t be shocked and start claiming that chess programs were supernatural entities.
The odds of such a thing happening then should not be calculated by the toddler example above. It should be calculated by taking the set of all valid chess games and then seeing how many of them end with the configuration above. The mathematician attempting this would soon realize that to calculate the set of all possible chess games would produce a number that is probably finite but so huge that even a computer the size of the universe running the life of the universe couldn’t calculate. With no ability to get at these numbers, there’s no ability to calculate the odds of them happening.
September 23rd, 2011 | 2:37 pm
Hello, Boonton,
It is very enjoyable to discuss things with you.
You wrote:
That is how it looks from the materialist perspective. There is another perspective. It is that the ultimate reality is supernatural, and that the natural is merely an ephiphenomenon of that ultimate reality. From this perspective materialism itself is a gap, a useful gap when used as a window, one that provides a limited view of the ultimate reality — if one doesn’t get so involved in examining the window and its haziness that one no longer looks past them, or doesn’t believe there is anything beyond them. Materialistic science is very useful when it recognizes that the hazy window isn’t all there is, and cleans it the best it can so as to provide a better view into the ultimate reality. Contemporary materialistic science, different from the properly materialistic science of the past, insists there is nothing else besides the window and the haze.
September 24th, 2011 | 9:01 am
Quite possible, but then we come back to my question of whether the distinction between matter and the supernatural is merely an artifact of our ignorance.
To put it crudely, we think we know about carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, oxygen atoms etc. So since we think we know these things and we expect a human to have more we assume there must be ‘soul atoms’ that are invisible and undetectable but somehow give a human whose alive a soul.
But wouldn’t it be just as reasonable to say we know a lot about hydrogen atoms when they are sitting in pure form in our chemistry lab but very little about how a highly complex arrangement of such atoms will behave (i.e. when arranged in the form of a human brain)?
Or to deploy yet another analogy, you can read all there is to read about HTML and related web markup languages but that alone won’t tell you what the entire web is like nor will it tell you what the web was like in 1998 versus 2005 versus today….even though in all those periods it was made up of every day ‘atoms’ (the atoms here being individual web pages)
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