At 08:53 AM 11/14/2001 -0700, John W. Burgeson wrote:
>The question posed is this: "Is consciousness real?"
>
>The philosopher Michael Polanyi posits the reality of consciousness, and
>advocates its ontological irreducibility to physics and chemistry by
>appeal to the concepts of emergence, boundary conditions and the like.
>
>And the physicist-clergyman Polkinghorne asked this question, "If
>chemistry is physics writ large, can we be as sure that biology is
>chemistry writ large."
>
>The question of consciousness then follows; "Is consciousness biology
>writ large?"
>
>While there are certainly orthodox Christian theologians who would answer
>Polkinghorne's question with a "yes," Van Till being one, I believe, I am
>not aware of any that would assent to the second question. It would
>appear that the atheistic community, represented in this case by Dawkins
>and Weinberg, would assert a "yes" to both questions.
>
>My own view is that both questions deserve a "no" answer, or at the very
>least, the first is "probably no" and the second an "absolutely no."
>
>Comments anyone?
This question has been chewed over by philosophers (and others) for a very
long time now, in one way or another, going back to the ancient Greeks. I
think the debate over consciousness -- particulartly in its contemporary
incarnation -- needs to be unpacked a little more. For one thing, I think
that discussions of consciousness need to be related to current
investigations in brain science -- modularlity, neural networks, and the
like -- rather than to the traditional conundrum of mind-body dualism.
Some folks, like the non-atheist John Searle, have been arguing for a
generation that neither dualistic nor monistic approaches to understanding
the mind-body problem work very well when applied to the problem of
consciousness, and that new insights from neurobiology is the place to
begin our inquiry into the nature of consciousness. In other words,
consciousness is not a new version of the mind-body problem.
I suppose I would find myself at the opposite end of the spectrum from
Burgy on this matter. I don't know enough chemistry to answer the first
question with any confidence. But with regard to the second question --
"Is consciousness biology writ large?" -- my answer would be, "In all
liklihood, yes." It seems to me that there is more contemporary evidence
suggesting a neurobiological basis for consciousness than there is evidence
supporting some other mode of explanation. As the evidence changes, so too
would my answer to this question.
But I am curious as to why you are so emphatic in saying "absolutely no" to
the possibility that consciousness is grounded in biology, Burgy. Can you
say more about the firmness of your conviction on this matter?
Tom Pearson
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2001 - 12:31:01 EST