Neuroscience and the Soul by Crisp Thomas M.;Porter Steven;Ten Elshof Gregg A.;

Author:Crisp, Thomas M.;Porter, Steven;Ten Elshof, Gregg A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

CHAPTER 12

Saving Materialism from a “Souler” Eclipse

Kevin Corcoran and Kevin Sharpe

The Dependence Objection

In “Neuroscience and the Human Person,” we argued that were dualism true, we would not expect to find the radical, fine-grained causal dependence of consciousness on the physical structures revealed by the neurosciences. In their response, LaRock and Collins repeatedly insist that no dualist has ever denied that mental states are dependent on brain states. This is true, but it’s the fine-grained causal dependence that we believe is at issue. And while it’s true that no dualist has ever denied that mental states are dependent on brain states, it’s beside the point in the current context. What’s at issue in this context are the predictive resources of dualism. Our argument was that were dualism correct, we’d expect to find a much greater degree of mind/brain independence than what we do in fact find; and given this expectation, there’s a tension between what we find in the neurosciences and what dualists say about the nature of the mind and mentality.

It’s at just this point that LaRock and Collins remind us that traditional Cartesian dualism is not the only brand of dualism on offer and that alternative formulations may have greater predictive and explanatory resources. On one such alternative, naturalistic “entity dualism,” the soul is “an irreducible entity that is generated by, and thus causally dependent on, neural properties.” Since this conception of the soul “entail[s] the neural dependence of our conscious lives on the physical,” it leads us to expect exactly the sort of dependence revealed by neuroscience.

We wish to make two points here. First, when it comes to Hasker’s emergent dualism, which LaRock and Collins cite in this regard, while the soul is dependent on the brain for its emergence it’s not dependent on the brain for its continued existence and functioning. For, as Hasker has it, the immaterial souls that we are can continue to exist in the absence of material brains. So while the soul may be causally dependent on the brain, that causal dependence is only contingent. And this seems to us very odd indeed. But even if emergent dualism is a significant advance over the standard Cartesian varieties of dualism, and goes some distance toward undermining earlier versions of the argument from neural dependence, we don’t think it’s adequate to the neurobiological data. Naturalistic entity or emergent dualism may well lead us to expect general patterns of dependence not underwritten by Cartesian dualism, but it doesn’t lead us to expect the sort of fine-grained dependence exemplified by (say) visual systems like ours in which aspects of conscious visual experience (e.g., color perception) depend on highly specialized neural structures (e.g., the V4 area of the visual cortex).

Similarly, coupling naturalistic entity dualism with theism will not do the trick either. It may well be that the value of vulnerability would give God a reason to “hard-wire” the soul to the brain. Yet as there are many different ways for God to achieve the goods associated with

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