Monday, November 12, 2012
If the soul is ineffable....
"Two recent defenders of dualism, the philosopher Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate John Eccles, made an appearance in chapter 7. Let me repeat a point I made there when discussing their views on Libertarian free will. The dualism they advocate, in which the mind forces the brain to do its bidding, is unsatisfactory for the reason that the 25-year-old Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia had already pointed out to Descartes three centuries earlier-by what means does the immaterial soul direct the physical brain to accomplish its aim? If the soul is ineffable, how can it manipulate actual stuff such as synapses? It is easy to see causality flowing from the brain to the mind, but the reverse is difficult. Any mind-to-brain communication has to be compatible with natural laws, in particular with the principle of energy conservation. Making the brain do things, like messing with synapses, takes work that the soul would have to perform and that has to be accounted for."
Labels:
Neuroscience
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