I cannot speak for all materialists, only myself. The idea that the materialistic worldview is that the universe is an empty, cold place with no purpose, no God, and no morality is brain boggling. Overwhelming. This means that I am on the same level as a determined rock or a determined chimp in a determined universe full of determined beings and events. Cogito ergo sum is useless.
I just wasn’t able to follow this - I thought you were a theist and a Catholic? By definition, no theist is a materialist - the philosophy of materialism holds as its core tenet that nothing exists except for matter. This means that there is no God. Was this sarcasm? If so, it is appreciated - materialism is indeed nonsensical.
It was not sarcasm. I was speaking from the trenches, i.e., the real world. One can be very comfortable with the idea that the only thing which can be known for sure is matter. It is o.k. to believe in music, altruism, and the wonders of nature because they do not need to be proved. When it comes to the Supernatural Being and religion, one can employ faith as a worldview.
No-one can argue that chimpanzee or other non-human animal cognition is equal to that of humans. It is clear that human cognition exceeds that of all other living creatures by a large degree. The question, however, is whether human cognition can be explained as arising from neuro-physiological processes or whether it requires us to invoke some sort of non-physical supernatural domain. Humans are unique in their ability to use back-fire, but I don’t see why that would compel us to regard human cognition as having its roots in a non-material base.
With all respect to your arguments which are well made, I think that you miss the point of the Desmurget study. If the aim was to explore the exercise of free will in an unconstrained situation, then clearly one wouldn’t design an experiment relying on direct cortical stimulation. So far, you are absolutely right. But the aim of Desmurget et al was to explore the neurophysical basis for the experience of free will. What they showed was that the experience that we have of willing an action can be physically stimulated in the parietal cortex and that stimulation can induce the subject not only to feel that an action is intended but to believe that an action has been carried out even where this is not the case.hecd2:
Not only is a person affected by a huge range of external factors, but at times, these factors will hinder free will. If research is being done on actual free will action, then the conditions surrounding the experiment have to be free of inhibiting factors such as force…
The patient’s experience of the stimulation, intention, motor awareness and motor activity was essential for the ultimate success of the surgery. Given the circumstances and external factors, one realizes that the patient was not in control. This means that true free will was not exercised as part of the Desmurget project. This does not mean that the faculty of free will is absent. “Free will” exists as part of the spiritual soul of the human being.
Indeed you are correct - the intellect and will is absolutely limited by the “boundaries of the corporeal brain”. This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the proposition that the mind’s attributes (cognition, abstract thought, intellect, free will, memory, moral consideration and all the other hypothetically non-physical properties of the spiritual person) arise from physical processes in the brain. The fact is that all of these attributes are utterly dependent and bounded by the operation of the brain. None of them can operate in its absence, and every single one of them can be and are profoundly influenced by various physical, biological or chemical stimuli. The spiritual soul does not have the freedom of existence or action that you suggest.
OK - I agree that definitions are important. So how does conscious intention differ from free will? If you consider these to be two different concepts, how do you define them, and how does a demonstration that conscious intention is a consequence and not a cause of neural activity differ from the proposition that free will is a consequence of neural activity?
Wow! When you get on a roll with numerous posts, you really stretch my mind, wherever it is at the moment.
But I hold that the intellect and the will *are *limited by our corporeal being, in the ways that I described before.
Just so, we agree on that; but the question is whether the soul (or to be precise within the limits of this thread, the mind) is existentially dependent on the neural processes or ontologically distinct and separable from them. There is nothing that the mind does that it can do without the brain; and there is nothing that the mind does that can be shown empirically or logically to require other than a neuro-physiological foundation.
Perhaps so. I have no idea how one would begin to undertake such a demonstration, because none of these attributes actually do appear to transcend the brain, but it would, of course, be very interesting were such a project possible.
Thank you for returning to the discussion of this exciting research paper. It contains so many interesting nuances regarding free will and I am sincerely interested in your opinions regarding these. Perhaps our various opinions will eventually merge. If not, they will certainly present viable possibilities regarding the mind/body situation.
Would you please define conscious intention and how it operates when I get back to town? It would be easier for me to start with your definition as a base. Regarding free will, I will define it from the Catholic perspective and then give some practical applications when I get back. The mind and soul thing should also have working definitions. Volition apparently is used in reference to free will and to motor activity in the body–at least that is how I read it. I may be wrong on that. I would offer that many of these words need the context in order to determine meaning.
Somewhere along the line, I said I would get back to this post. The above books would be very interesting. I do not discount them; but time wise, animal and human morality, social organization, etc., are toward the end of my priority list.
I may be the only student in the history of my high school biology class to have insisted on being taught how to skin the rat before dissecting it so I could bring the pelt home. It was my way of honoring the inherent beauty of the animal. The nun yielded to my request. Even at the university, a professor set aside the requirements for being in his honors art appreciation class, so that I could sit in and learn on my own.
I would like to understand more of what you are saying.
But it seems to me that there could be a benefit to look at “mental” attributes to see how far they do go beyond the basic matter of the brain. It certainly would be very interesting if such a project/demonstration were attempted.