Atheism and the Mind

Primacy of the Mind

One of the primary ideas within Atheism is the primacy of the human mind in a mindless universe. There being no organizing or creating intelligence, the human mind becomes the object of reverence, the ticket to eliteness. But the very complexity of the mind presents a serious threat. If the complexity of the mind self-assembled through the principles of evolution, then are the ruminations of the mind of any value, beyond just survival of the fittest?

Darwin’s Horrid Doubt

Even Darwin feared the answer to this:

Darwin wrote: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value at all or trustworthy.” [1]

Darwin’s Horrid Doubt has spawned much philosophical debate about the nature of the mind, versus the nature of the brain. If the brain and mind are not the same thing, a concept called “dualism”, then Atheism itself is called into serious question because the Naturalism that supports Atheist philosophy would be falsified. If the mind and the brain are one and the same, then Atheist philosophy is safe from this particular assault. So Atheists have devised a great many arguments in support of “monism”, the idea that mind and brain are the same thing. Monism allows the idea that the human mind gradually assembled through the processes of evolutionary theory.

Theories of the Mind: Turing

These ideas have gelled somewhat into a loose knit, widely debated “Theory of the Mind”. One of the first issues is to determine exactly “what is a mind?” Alan Turing famously proposed a test that would determine the characteristics of a mind. According to Turing, if a questioner were to present questions blindly to two responders, one a human and one a computer, when the responses obtained from the computer were indiscernible from the responses from the human, the computer could be said to have a mind.

Theories of the Mind: Searle

This proposition has been satisfactory to Artificial Intelligence artificers, but did not satisfy John Searle. Searle proposed a challenge called the “Chinese Room”. In the Chinese Room test, two responders would take sentences from the questioner and translate them into Chinese. The human would have access to the same codified rules that the computer used to perform the translation. Searle maintained that the computer could not understand Chinese any better than he could, that the equivalency was determined on a purely manipulative basis: both responders merely performed manipulations, requiring no understanding or comprehesion.

It has been said that the debate surrounding Theories of the Mind revolves around the attempts to falsify Searle’s Chinese Room, and to restore Turing’s test to the position of power.

Identity Theory (Monism)

Identity Theory, like so many others, fragments into sub theories and schools. The main position is built around the idea that the mind is composed only of brain states. It is not too far to jump to the idea that consciousness is a series of brain states and all of these were produced by evolution.

However, the sensibility of pain as separate from sensibility of neuronal discharge leads to questioning consciousness as merely neuronal discharge. Also, the questions of intentionality, introspection, abstraction such as an “idea of an idea”, or the “meaning of meaning”, non-identical responses to identical stimuli (for two individuals receiving the same stimulus, or even within the same individual on different occasions) have put considerable pressure on the monistic theory. Monists have been forced into the Post Hoc mode of creating improbable stories in support of monism.

Monism, Consciousness and Proprioception

If you have ever gone somewhere on autopilot, absentmindedly driving while thinking about something entirely different and not conscious of the trip itself, then you have engaged Proprioception. Proprioception is a proposed brain state to explain the brain’s knowledge of the position of body parts, even when the eyes are closed. It is a brain state above and beyond sensory perceptions. Now,

…suppose that the Proprioception occurs in an in practice negligible time after the process propriocepted. Then perhaps there can be proprioceptions of proprioceptions, and proprioceptions of proprioceptions of proprioceptions, and so on up, though in fact the sequence will probably no go up more than two or three steps. The last Proprioception in the sequence will not be propriocepted, and this may [sic] help explain our sense of the ineffability of consciousness [the feeling of separateness].[2]

This more than just circularity, it is nested Post Hoc story telling at it most blatant. It is for this reason that “theories of the mind”, are not called “Laws of the mind”. These imaginings are in no way supported by empirical data. In fact, nested Proprioception seems to remove itself completely from the arena of empirical testing by virtue of existing in “negligible time” presumably nested within more “negligible time”.

Qualia and Proprioception

“Some philosophers hold that though experiences are brain processes they nevertheless have fundamentally non-physical, psychical, properties, sometimes called ‘qualia’.” [3]

Some think that maybe qualia can be nested, too. And perhaps Proprioception is used by the brain to view qualia, in effect to view itself. So maybe qualia do exist as separate non-material mind-parts.

It is not really necessary to dwell too long on these concepts; they are philosophical, not empirical. Whether they will ever be tested is not known. For now the mind cannot be empirically determined to be identical to the brain, as opposed to the brain hosting the mind as a separate entity. The deterministic aspects of a brain developed to serve the pursuit only of the fittest fails to include the abstract abilities mentioned above, including the brain – mind scrutiny of itself. As Einstein said, it is possible to be overly parsimonious when the truth is simplified into the regions of falseness:

"This is an interesting example of the fact that even scholars of audacious spirit and fine instinct can be obstructed in the interpretation of facts by philosophical prejudices."[4]