Destroying Descartes' Dualism

Science of the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing Force

. . . as evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists peer ever deeper into the brain, they are discovering more and more genes, brain structures and other physical correlates to feelings like empathy, disgust and joy. That is, they are discovering physical bases for the feelings from which moral sense emerges — not just in people but in other animals as well.

The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes’s dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” loses its force.

René Descartes', lacking the knowledge that science offers us, conjured up another unsuccessful version of the ontological argument in which he conceived of a body-mind dualism connected at the pineal gland.

I'm never sure whether dualists interpret the evidence so as to exclude reductionist materialism because it is counterintuitive or because they wish to believe in the possibility of the continuance of their personal consciousness after physical death. I expect that it is both, and I think that their assumptions are unfounded.

I'll illustrate with a simple example. If your family doc taps your patellar tendon below the knee to test your 'knee-jerk' reflex, the neurophysiological and muscular responses are quite simple and could easily be fully 'tracked' in an animal model. (patellar reflex)

There is no need to invoke a 'knee-muscle-spirit' to explain what has happened. Your experience, though, is not directly of stretch of the Golgi tendon organ, neuronal firing, and actin-myosin sliding. You feel the tap and feel an involuntary muscle contraction. Modern dualists would undoubtedly accept the physical explanation for this experience without even thinking that a spirit-mechanism need be invoked.

However, dualists conveniently ignore the fact that this simplest reflex lies on a spectrum of neurophysiological activity/experience that extends up to consciousness. They ignore the extremely high likelihood that experiences that result from the complex, emergent system that is our plastic, input-programmed brain represent the same types of phenomenology.

They ignore the fact that the brains of different individuals become active in predictable neuroanatomical areas when those individuals engage in equivalent behaviors. If our brains were mere antennas for the mind, then we should expect to see idiosyncratic neuranatomic responses.

They conveniently ignore Occam's razor, which indicates that the most parsimonious, not necessarily the simplest, explanation is always to be preferred. They usurp the fact that highly complex physical phenomena are difficult to tease apart, and they distort this techical 'uncertainty' into metaphysical argumenta ad
ignorantiam that permit the desired conclusion.

Scientific methodology was 'invented' to counteract precisely such wishful unthinking. For my comments above, Sam [Harris] might join Lee Siegel in declaring atheism damaging to imagination. However, I think that trying to conceptualize how things and people really function is more difficult than simplistic, intuitive, flights of fantasy. That's what makes it interesting!

~ salient, here. [I have added italic emphasis and links]

biological evolutionbiologybraincognitiongenesmoralityneuropsychologyneurosciencephilosophyresearchsciencesociobiologyRene Descartes

Religious Indoctrination and Child Abuse

I've decided to answer this comment as a post rather than burying it in the comments section:

Cephalis said...
"Shouldn't religious indoctrination of children be considered child abuse?"

Interesting question . . .

I'd say that holy-roller type inculcated fear could definitely have long-term emotional impacts. However, I think that including all religious indoctrination under the category of child abuse would broaden the definition of child abuse too much to be practical.

From a neuropsychiatric viewpoint and for the purposes of active intervention, I think that only physical and sexual abuse should be included in the category of child abuse. It is well established (despite denials by the usual collection of naysayers) that early, prolonged, severe physical and sexual child abuse have long-term developmental sequelae severe enough to require prolonged psychotherapy.

I have recently read a number of personal accounts by recently-come-to-atheism individuals who have experienced a sense of loss in losing their inculcated beliefs in the Loving Parent in the Sky. Many of those people talk more of the loss of the Church community and ritual rather than the actual belief. Of course, gradual awareness of lack of belief is not necessarily traumatic because it is a gradual, intrinsic progression, so the difficulties lie mostly in losing the social perquisities.

Reading of Mother Theresa's anguish over her crisis of faith might seem to prove an exception to the above. I think, though, that her case actually illustrates one of the drawbacks of religion in general. Assuming that Mother Theresa had some other, earlier reason for seeking comfort in religion, then she was seeking comfort and healing in entirely the wrong place (because there is no God to help those in emotional pain). Even if she had no early reason for seeking comfort, religion clearly failed her.

Religion fails dismally as a form of therapy because it offers ineffective affirmations and useless prescriptions (forgive and forget) rather than true growth. Thus, an individual in severe emotional pain will never find a way out of their pain solely through expectation that faith in God will fill the emptiness. In this sense, I think that religion further abuses adults who have suffered the classic forms of child abuse. Churches amplify this problem by cautioning their congregation not to seek help from secular therapists. (Churchpeople fear that secular therapists will attempt to destroy belief.)

Emotion and Religiosity

We humans have all inherited remnants of the “reptilian brain”, by which I refer to the autonomic/emotional core that is found throughout the animal kingdom. (Technically, in the triune brain concept, the reptilian brain is the earliest, autonomic evolutionary development; the limbic, came later (mammals and above) and deals with emotion; and the latest, primate, neocortex deals with cognition.) The primitive elements of our brain can come under the influence of the rational, cortical brain, yet strong emotions can escape logical control. If they could not, we would probably never fall in love!

The apes that ultimately evolved into humans enjoyed survival advantages over those of their cousins who had not inherited genes for the Great NeoCortical Leap Forward. That is, in hominid evolution, those apes with the greatest cognitive advantage were able to survive, proliferate, and outnumber their rivals.

The persistence of religion, despite the far greater explanatory power of scientific knowledge, relies upon this emotional side of human nature. However, those who wish to impose their religious views on society are also well aware that the Idea of God must be instilled into children while they are still stuck in the magical-thinking stage. Let any child, even a child of average intelligence, grow to adulthood before attempting to convince them that some old book holds more “Truth” than empirical facts, and that mind will most likely have escaped religion’s clutches. Only early indoctrination can keep the synagogues, mosques, and churches filled with individuals willing to put an inculcated obsession ahead of humanity.

Catch ‘em young and many of them will never outgrow magical thinking because some are not genetically endowed with the cognitive powers to overcome illogic. Religionists seem unwilling to grasp the fact that atheists have escaped religious indoctrination through the operation of critical thinking rather than that atheists are victims of scientific cultism, naturally immoral, or incapable of emotional response.

Religionists, however, are scared of scientific knowledge because at some deep level that they are too scared to admit science refutes the creation mythology in Genesis. Religionists are so scared of knowledge that many, such as the creationist family in “God’s Christian Warriors”, are home-schooling their children to ensure that they cannot bite the forbidden fruit of secular knowledge. If the facts supported religionist beliefs, then creationists would not need to attack or defend against knowledge.