Theologians postulate an Eternal Mind as the first cause. This eternal mind is offered as an alternative to the unpalatable idea of eternal matter. Unfortunately, the presumption that an eternal mind is more plausible than eternal matter is not merely wrong; it is backward. Matter existed 13.8 billion years ago, maybe earlier, and still exists as of this writing. Matter is potentially eternal, if not in our universe, then in others.[1]
Among the world’s most long-lived animals, and therefore among the animals with the most enduring minds, is the Aldabra giant tortoise, native to some islands north of Madagascar. There are longer-lived species—clams, sea urchins, plants—but the tortoise alone possesses a conscious mind that at least vaguely resembles a human mind. The most long-lived member of this tortoise species is estimated to be roughly two hundred years old.[2]+ If we compress the age of the universe to one year, the longest-lived humanlike mind, that of the tortoise, persisted less than half a second. On this compressed timescale, the lifespan of a dog or cat would flash by so quickly that you might not even notice it.
Matter is more persistent than mind—no surprise, since minds are just one of the many products of matter. If you question whether mind is a product of matter, contemplate (but please do not conduct) the following experiment: Scramble part of the human brain. If you identify which region of the brain you intend to damage, a neurologist will be able to predict what mental functionality will be sacrificed.
For example, scramble a clump of neurons the size of a matchbook located in the region of the brain’s left hemisphere known as Broca’s area. The subject will lose the ability to speak, yet will still understand what others are saying. Scramble the two suprachiasmatic nuclei, tiny knots of tissue each the size of a sesame seed, located at the central base of the brain (in the anterior hypothalamus); the subject’s circadian rhythm will be disrupted.[3]+ Scramble the whole brain thoroughly, and the subject’s mind will be extinguished.
If brain-scrambling is too violent for your tastes, ponder developmental changes within the brain, and consequently in consciousness, as we progress from infancy to maturity. Witness cognitive effects associated with Alzheimer’s disease, intoxication, sleep, or electroconvulsive therapy. Read the case study of the respected forty-year-old man who became an obsessive pedophile. He complained of headaches and was found to have an egg-sized tumor in the right lobe of his orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region that influences social behavior and impulse control. Surgically excising the tumor alleviated both his sexual deviancy and his headaches.[4]
Cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Bor notes, “All brain scanning experiments to date have shown that even the subtlest of changes in consciousness are clearly marked by alterations in brain activity.”[5] Brain scanners detect neural activity linked to a decision even before subjects become consciously aware of their having made the decision.[6] Neurophysiologist Marcello Massimini of the University of Milan invented a method to detect the pattern of neural activation that correlates with a state of consciousness. His team of researchers can also measure the degree of consciousness.[7]
Admittedly, countless mysteries remain. How matter propagates mind, what mind is, and why we even have minds are puzzles yet to be solved.[8]+ But that mind emerges from matter and is dependent on matter is beyond reasonable doubt. In his essay “The Myth of the Soul” Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney in the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, wrote:
Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality still tell themselves and others that neither side of the question is susceptible of proof. Just what can these hopeful ones believe that the word “proof” involves? The evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as the evidence of gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire. If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible of proof.[9]
Consciousness is produced by particular configurations of soma cells, specifically neurons and glial cells. Body begets psyche. Meat makes mind. Yet, according to the Gospel of Thomas (saying 29), Jesus gasped, “If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.”[10] No, the marvel of marvels is that popular opinion is so radically out of tune with the evidence.
The demise of the flesh, and thus of consciousness, cancels all weekend plans, conversations with our pets, and leisurely cups of coffee at sunrise. Every fiber of our being rebels against our not being. Who among us has not absurdly fantasized about watching his or her own funeral ceremony?[11]+
The misconception that consciousness is ontologically more foundational than matter traces back to 1637 with René Descartes’s dictum cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”).[12]+ A century later, the Anglican bishop George Berkeley suggested that since we have present to us only our conscious thoughts and perceptions, we merely infer the existence of physical objects outside our consciousness. Unfortunately, he went further, saying esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”), meaning that only what is perceived (by us, Jehovah, or Brahma) is real. Berkeley, followed by Deepak Chopra, Julia Mossbridge, Donald Hoffman, and others, drew the illogical conclusion that mind is somehow more “real” than matter.
The underlying fallacy is that if we can experience only mind-stuff, then everything ultimately must be mind-stuff, as though the beginning point of our intellectual journey must also be its destination. In Theory of Knowledge (1913), Bertrand Russell flung the following retaliatory barb: “When people begin to philosophize, they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.”
[1] Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (New York: Knopf, 2014), 65.
[2] One reason turtles and tortoises (and lobsters) live so long is that they don’t degrade their telomeres the way humans and most other animals do. Telomeres are the material that terminates the ends of strands of DNA, analogous to the little plastic tips on shoelaces (called aglets). Material is pulled from telomeres to repair damaged DNA during replication. Once the telomeres are exhausted (after about fifty replications), the DNA can’t be as readily repaired, so we accumulate damage as we age.
[3] Distributed throughout your skin are light-sensitive cells. These cells communicate with your suprachiasmatic nuclei to help regulate your circadian rhythm. That’s why it’s important to sleep in a dark room. Don’t just wear one of those sleeping masks that shields your eyes from the light.
Here’s something else about your brain that might surprise you. Distributed across the temporal lobes of your brain is a sensory map of your body. One section of your brain lets you feel your nose, another lets you feel your fingers, and so forth. Toes and genitals happen to be mapped to adjacent parts of the brain. Signals from these two regions occasionally encroach on one another, resulting in crossed sensations experienced by some people who have foot fetishes.
[4] Charles Choi, “Brain Tumour Causes Uncontrollable Paedophilia,” New Scientist, October 21, 2002. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2943-brain-tumour-causes-uncontrollable-paedophilia/.
[5] Daniel Bor, The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 6.
[6] Patrick Haggard and Benjamin Libet, “Conscious Intention and Brain Activity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8, no. 11 (2001): 47–64.
[7] Makiko Kitamura, “Brain Shaking Technique Offers Measure of Consciousness,” Bloomberg, August 14, 2013, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-14/brain-shaking-technique-offers-measure-of-consciousness.
[8] Philosopher David Chalmers explored “the hard problem of consciousness.” That is the question of how and why animals have conscious experiences rather than operating as mindless robots (aka “philosophical zombies”). Philosopher Thomas Nagel, author of a famous paper on consciousness (“What Is It Like To Be a Bat?”), suggests that humans may never understand how brain structure causes consciousness. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote, “Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain’s simulation of the world becomes so complex that it must include a model of itself.” Some cognitive experts say consciousness is an epiphenomenon. This means that consciousness, caused by the brain, does not in turn causally influence the brain. In other words, causation runs in only one direction.
Folk wisdom holds that if I decide to perform an action, perhaps pick my nose, my conscious desire to pick my nose, through a labyrinthian chain of causal events, culminates in my arm reaching up toward my nostril and my finger being extended. Epiphenomenalists say that, to the contrary, my decision to pick my nose and my limb motions are both dictated by my neural architecture. My “decision” was a side effect of my neural firings, much as heat emanating from my skin is a side effect of my being warm-blooded.
But if conscious thoughts and intentions are merely side effects that don’t alter physical brain states, why are we conscious? Why aren’t we mindless zombies? After all, natural selection is frugal, breeding out talents or traits that don’t contribute to survival. If consciousness is incidental, why has it been bred into so many species? These questions presume that it would be biologically more efficient to eliminate consciousness. That may not be so. In the case of skin, radiating heat can be beneficial or detrimental, depending on environmental circumstances, so it is subject to selective pressure, giving rise to different body shapes, subcutaneous fat layers, sweat glands, and hair. But if consciousness does not influence brain states, it has no such implications for our fitness; it is beyond the reach of natural selection. Traits not subject to selection typically drift, but consciousness may be stabilized indirectly by selection on the brain itself.
Some critics say epiphenomenalism is incompatible with our having thoughts about our thoughts, at least without the original thoughts (the ones being thought about) having a material effect on the brain. This objection to epiphenomenalism arises from a failure to grasp that brain wiring produces all thoughts directly, without a feedback loop that traces from consciousness back to neurons and then back to consciousness. What we call a conscious thought is merely one property of the underlying event. Another property is the neural activity. Epiphenomenalism holds that the neural wiring is complex enough, featuring enough feedback mechanisms, to generate conscious thoughts that are mutually intertwined. Therefore, this criticism of epiphenomenalism is easily defeated.
During sleep, our brains replay/store memories: snippets of scenes that occurred during the day. The left hemisphere narrator shoehorns all these memories and mental confabulations into a story—although the story may be chaotic and downright whacky. The point is that dream narratives are epiphenomena, which at least establishes the plausibility of the theory of epiphenomenalism. Our consciousness appears to be the daytime equivalent of nightdreams, differing in that (1) perception and (2) higher cognitive functions are more active. (And motor control is not disabled during wake periods.) Emails exchanged between Emerson Green and me on this topic are available on the home page of my website, religionrefuted.com.
Philosopher Colin McGinn, a self-professed “mysterian,” observes that consciousness is not reducible to physics as currently understood. He is pessimistic that we will discover a solution soon, if ever. Philosopher Jerry Fodor said we don’t even know what a theory of consciousness would look like.
[9] Clarence Darrow, Verdicts Out of Court, Arthur and Lila Weinberg, ed., published by Ivan R. Dee, Inc., Chicago, 1963, p. 417.
[10] Beate Blatz, “The Coptic Gospel of Thomas,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson (Cambridge: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991).
[11] Religion is especially prominent during funerals. Most funeral ceremonies consist of 10 percent praise for the deceased and 90 percent praise for the deceased’s religion. This fact assures me that my own funeral will be brief. Whoever presides over my funeral will say, “Well, he was a decent fellow, I suppose, give or take a few incidents. He’s dead now, though. Okay, so, I guess that’s it. Drive safely.”
[12] Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with questions about what things exist and what their nature is. When we speak of trees, heat, neon, and abstractions such as bravery and numbers, we’re discussing ontology. If I ask about your ontology, I am asking you to describe the stuff you think exists. To say something is ontologically foundational is to suggest that it is the building block or the source of something else. For example, to say that consciousness is ontologically more foundational than matter is to say that matter arises from consciousness. Conversely, to say that matter is ontologically more foundational than consciousness is to say that matter gives rise to consciousness.