October 6, 2011

Professional skeptic Michael Shermer's new book The Believing Brain is typical of the mind=brain, thoughts=chemistry genre. The approach is, of course, not new, but goes back to the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes who declared that all human thought was the result of a chain of mechanical reactions that begins in the sense organs, runs through the nerves, and finally makes its way "inwards to the Brain, and Heart." Shermer's book adds new ammunition from the latest neuroscience to this centuries old argument. If there is a great load of ammunition from the latest "brain science" supporting the materialist, reductionist position that our thoughts are merely neuro-chemistry, shouldn't we give the palm of victory to the likes of Hobbes and Shermer?

No. And the reasons for it being "no" are inadvertently given by Shermer himself (as they were by Hobbes). The first reason is that every materialist argument about thoughts and beliefs being reducible to chemistry would itself be reducible to chemistry. There would no longer be truth as we understand it, just chemistry.

The second, related reason is that the materialist, reductionist position of Hobbes and Shermer is not the result of science; it is their starting point, their paradigm, their fundamental unquestioned belief that defines and determines their view of science.

Let's look at Shermer's argument and see how the materialist position undermines itself (and ultimately the existence of the very materialist who puts it forth).

"For a materialist such as myself," declares Shermer, "there is no such thing as ‘mind.' It ultimately reduces down to neurons firing and neurochemical transmitter substances flowing across synaptic gaps between neurons, combining in complex patterns to produce something we call mind but is actually just brain." This account accords with what he calls "the principle of reductionism," which Shermer declares "is such an integral part of science."

Note. Shermer assumes the principle of reductionism. The reductionist assumption then determines what he means by science. Reductionism therefore declares that there is no such thing as mind, for the mind is the brain. And the brain, in Shermer's words, "is a belief engine."

A belief engine? Precisely. Just as Hobbes declared over four centuries ago, Shermer asserts that it all begins with sensory data flowing in. The brain "looks" for patterns in the data, but as it turns out, the brain seeks only what it wants to find. What it wants to find is caused by "subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological" factors derived from "the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large," and of course, from the DNA handed to us by evolution—all of these determine how the circuitry of our brains are "wired" for particular beliefs.

We don't actually "look" for the truth, then. Rather, our brains look for whatever will confirm our beliefs. As Shermer states, "after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow. I call this process belief-dependent realism, where our perceptions about reality are dependent on the beliefs that we hold about it."

Shermer also happily admits that science is based upon belief as well. All attempts to figure out reality are rooted in beliefs, he argues, and all evidence gathering, even in science, begins with a set of beliefs that define what counts as evidence.

Shermer's own materialist, reductionist starting point is, by his own admission, a belief, which he then seeks to defend, justify, and rationalize with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations.

That well describes Shermer's book, the full title of which is The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. He doesn't want there to be religion. He doesn't want there to be a mind, and hence a soul which could exist after death. Therefore he spends the entire book rationalizing his unbelief—unbelief is, after all, another kind of belief.

Shermer realizes, of course, that the gun he's fashioned and is aiming at religious believers can just as easily be turned upon himself. His only defense is that, while "we cannot escape this epistemological trap," we can say that "science is the best tool ever devised for fashioning provisional truths about conditional realities."

Agreed. But is a reductionist, materialist view of science the only one possible, or is it merely the one that supports his unbelief? To put it another way, is Shermer blind to scientific evidence against his unbelief?

For example, Shermer dismisses Jeffrey Schwartz' The Mind and the Brain, that like many other recent books of its kind, provides evidence that patients can make conscious decisions to will something that actually changes their neuronal circuitry. Hence, Schwartz and a growing number of other scientists argue that the mind is not the brain, but something which can change the brain, mind over matter.

Shermer's response? "But what does it mean to ‘will' something, or to ‘intend' it, or to have ‘purpose'? Like mind, these are just words used to describe thoughts and behaviors, which are all driven by neural activity—every single one of them."

In other words, there can't be evidence that the mind isn't the brain because the mind is the brain. Ah yes, belief-dependent realism. Nothing is real unless it supports his materialist assumptions.

So, there can't be free will. If there were, then there would be something that his materialist reductionism couldn't explain—and he can't have that.

Or take another interesting instance. Shermer takes on the evidence that arises from near death experiences. He makes a clever case that all the interesting, ethereal experiences (like floating, the presence of a blinding light, or feelings of blissful peace) that patients have reported in near death experiences are identical to situations in which there is, for example, oxygen deprivation but not a near death experience. Therefore, near death experiences can be entirely explained as the result of brain chemistry.

But Shermer leaves out something from near death experiences that has been scientifically verified and entirely contradicts his materialist, reductionist unbelief: in a significant number of cases, patients who were clinically dead were able to describe exactly what went on in the room as doctors were trying to bring them back to life—down to the smallest visual details and from the vantage point of floating several feet above the gurney or operating table.

The mind is not the brain? Was the brain, unnoticed by those below, floating above the gurney? If not, who or what is doing the perceiving above the operating table? What is this "I" that describes its out of body experience, and what is happening to its body and its brain?

But Shermer can't allow an "I," be it near-dead or fully alive. According to Shermer's argument, there isn't even a "self" or an "I" or an agent that does the acting in a body, any more than there is in a machine. In other words, Michael Shermer himself is reducible to his brain. "We now have a fairly sound understanding of the machinery [of the brain], thereby rendering the theater of the mind an illusion. There is no theater, and no agent sitting inside the theater watching the world go by on the screen."

We believe that there is an "I" doing the acting, freely willing this or that action, but even that feeling of being a person, and "I," an acting agent, is an illusory belief. In fact, it is this illusory belief that brings us to attribute "agenticity" to others, and even more, to a God above and beyond nature. But all this is bosh, asserts Shermer. There is only matter. No minds. No real persons. No God. No Michael Shermer. And no you.

Now we know why people turn to the Christian faith in the face of such nihilistic materialism. They simply can't believe such a limited view of life.