Dueling with Dualism
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through the pineal gland and link up with awareness. For modern man in the
twenty first century, this proposal sounds extravagant and a little bit comical: A
magic portal between body and mind! However, Descartes’ idea that there are
two realms—the material and the mental—cannot be easily dismissed, and no
philosopher since Descartes has failed to tackle the problem. The doctrine that
claims there are two separate realms of reality—a material one and a mental
one—is know as dualism.
Contemporary philosophy is dominated by a materialist way of thinking
strongly influenced by physics. The idea that there might be a non-material
world with the power to separately influence reality is rejected with an intensity
of feeling that is rare in academic circles. Most philosophers are fundamentalists on this issue. People friendly to dualism are mocked as “religious” and
“mysterians”.
Bear in mind that Descartes was a man of the seventeenth century, and
though he was a talented scientist in his own right, the pineal gland hypothesis
seemed plausible in his time. Today one would approach dualism very differently: Important scientists such as Roger Penrose and Eugene Wigner have
suggested that quantum phenomena seem to bridge the gap between matter
and thought. Moreover, modern science is very young, and it is likely that there
are properties of matter that have not yet been discovered.
From our current knowledge about visual experience, as noted above, the
brain constructs a coded representation of the visual array, and the numerous
strands of this representation are widely distributed over the cerebral cortex.
Somehow all this information comes together in awareness to yield the experience of a unified and coherent image. There is no known physical mechanism
which could achieve this unification.
It may be that a major barrier to finding a solution to the binding problem
is the revulsion of scientists to accept the possibility of dualism. With some
form of scientific dualism, it might be that the binding problem would vanish.
We could begin by modestly admitting that by some unknown mechanism,
inaccessible to present-day science, neurophysical activity in the brain gives
rise to mental Gestalts. As an analogy, it’s a little like the motion of a magnet
inducing an electric current in a loop of wire: Seventeenth Century science
found electrical induction to be quite inexplicable and spooky, based on the
knowledge of the time.
23
through the pineal gland and link up with awareness. For modern man in the
twenty first century, this proposal sounds extravagant and a little bit comical: A
magic portal between body and mind! However, Descartes’ idea that there are
two realms—the material and the mental—cannot be easily dismissed, and no
philosopher since Descartes has failed to tackle the problem. The doctrine that
claims there are two separate realms of reality—a material one and a mental
one—is know as dualism.
Contemporary philosophy is dominated by a materialist way of thinking
strongly influenced by physics. The idea that there might be a non-material
world with the power to separately influence reality is rejected with an intensity
of feeling that is rare in academic circles. Most philosophers are fundamentalists on this issue. People friendly to dualism are mocked as “religious” and
“mysterians”.
Bear in mind that Descartes was a man of the seventeenth century, and
though he was a talented scientist in his own right, the pineal gland hypothesis
seemed plausible in his time. Today one would approach dualism very differently: Important scientists such as Roger Penrose and Eugene Wigner have
suggested that quantum phenomena seem to bridge the gap between matter
and thought. Moreover, modern science is very young, and it is likely that there
are properties of matter that have not yet been discovered.
From our current knowledge about visual experience, as noted above, the
brain constructs a coded representation of the visual array, and the numerous
strands of this representation are widely distributed over the cerebral cortex.
Somehow all this information comes together in awareness to yield the experience of a unified and coherent image. There is no known physical mechanism
which could achieve this unification.
It may be that a major barrier to finding a solution to the binding problem
is the revulsion of scientists to accept the possibility of dualism. With some
form of scientific dualism, it might be that the binding problem would vanish.
We could begin by modestly admitting that by some unknown mechanism,
inaccessible to present-day science, neurophysical activity in the brain gives
rise to mental Gestalts. As an analogy, it’s a little like the motion of a magnet
inducing an electric current in a loop of wire: Seventeenth Century science
found electrical induction to be quite inexplicable and spooky, based on the
knowledge of the time.