more god is dead

paul bloom came to speak today as part of an ongoing series of neuroethics talks. i've followed his work in an on-and-off kind of way over the years, mostly because he's a very compelling writer (and you should, if you get the chance, read descartes' baby, which is excellent), so of course i had to go.

bloom's central thesis is that human beings have an innate sense of dualism (in the sense of cartesian dualism) that allows us to understand and appreciate the conceit of works like kafka's metamorphosis or freaky friday, even though there is obviously no real-life precedent for these happenstances. further to that, he believes that this dualistic sense arises very early in development. i'm not fond of developmental psych (you can go and harass doscas for that), but suffice it to say that there have been bunches of experiments done where simple cartoons are shown to babies of "helpers" and "hinderers" (little animated shapes that either help another shape up a slope or push him down), and babies like the helpful guys (showing that they understand intentions and goal-direction even at 9 months of age).

where he goes from this premise is a bit more interesting. he claims that because laypeople see the mind as being divorced from the brain, they (sorry, not 'we' this time) have seen what has come out of neuroscience research over the past decade as astounding news. that you can actually see bits of the brain light up in an mri scanner when you're thinking of something is incredible -- simply because it's such an entrenched belief that mental processes need not have physical correlates. in actual fact, this ought to be the most natural thing in the world. cognitive faculties, behavior and personality can change after brain insult, and many mental disorders result in (or are caused by) abnormalities in cortical structure -- mind is inextricably tied to brain, and yet most would completely disregard this evidence and cling to the familiar -- and very comforting -- belief that the two are separate and dissociable.

so far, so good. now, the inevitable conclusion (for a lot of psychologists and neuroscientists) after accepting all this is that god is dead -- if we reject cartesian dualism, we reject the idea that we have a soul, and god is subsequently meaningless/non-existent (take your pick). although we accept dualism as a heuristic (and this is because it is so deeply ingrained, through evolutionary processes, bloom argues), it is not actually true. (incidentally, as an aside to this, we can segue nicely from here into jy's thesis about torture, because now when it comes to how we treat each other "sentience" becomes irrelevant as a moral arguement against corporal punishment and all that matters is whether an organism can suffer. but that's a different story). nothing survives us after death, but because it so unacceptable for us to think that, we cling to our intuitions because they make us happy (or invoke pascal's wager, take your pick).

there are numerous unappealing ways to squirm out of this, one of which is matthew 22, the catholic doctrine, which i accept (reluctantly, because i do find it gross). philosophers have said it all over the past few centuries, but suffice it to say that personally, considering the mind-brain problem in isolation, i believe that cognitive function, or the "mind", has to be lumped under the package of accidence, and that ones essence, or soul, must not contain this. yes, this leads to a whole lot of vexing questions about the resurrection, or what we are "like" in heaven, but honestly, it's a lot better than bringing down the whole house of cards that is christianity (the best explanatory paradigm, imho, for matters of faith, on which psychology has no bearing). and really, who the heck knows what the second coming is going to be like anyway?

(sorry for the terrible writing.)