An Argument for Dualism

[Dimmesdale]

Let us start out with the default materialist position that consciousness, or "mind" if you will, is an epiphenomenon of the brain.

Where is this epiphenomenon located? Or is it located at all (I'm sure many will point this out - but the validity of the question remains, as I will explain further)? Does it reside as a unified field of electrical impulses throughout the brain and extending into the nervous system? If so, one may ask: is it of a unitary nature, or is it merely a conglomeration of separate electrical events, which merely appear to be a singular self? Is it, in that case, of a sporadic inconstant nature?

If the materialist goes the latter route, as I think he has to, I feel there are some problems. But first let me say that it is highly counterintuitive to the average person to think that his self is not unitary in direct experience. We all say "I" when referring to ourselves, and we feel there is weight behind this statement. We are, after all, individuals. One may say that it is because of association with a body that is discrete from other bodies that we come to this conclusion. But this is only a supposition that is far from proven. We feel ourselves often as moral agents with integrity, and this causes us to transcend bodily concerns such as in the case of sacrificing our life for a cause. Be that as it may, I will not dwell on this point.

If we say that individuality, or personal unity as I would like to call it, is an illusion, then there is no locus or "center" from which the self could be organized. If we ourselves could organize it by dint of our own misperception, that would seem superhuman, almost divinely fanciful. We do not at some stage in our existence 'decide' to identify as mere 'I', and to think that we simply derive this from our misperception also requires some sort of background as to the 'how.' I suppose the standard derivation would be via evolution. But how could impersonal biological processes lead to a personal predisposition to identify as 'I'? Why not identify as random processes, without consciousness? Why does consciousness say 'I' at all? Why are we not insentient? Is it because of survival, the will to 'be' - what Spinoza termed the conatus? Perhaps, perhaps not.

If there is no established explanation forthcoming for why selfhood is an illusion, one ought to, therefore, default to the common sense position that what we feel (and some would go so far as to say know) means that we do in fact have a self.

And that raises the problem of where this self is located.

For, if we are reducible to our bodies, then so is this self. Perhaps not like an appendage (though some amputees may very well feel dramatically changed after losing a limb) but as a unitary field of being co-hereing with the body.

And how would a materialist model trace that exactly? Where do we exist, for instance, in sleep or in a coma? We are not "there", at least not fully, although technically we are alive nonetheless by conventional standards. Even if we are not unconscious, how would you measure consciousness? A neuron more or less? If our bodies, including our brains, are constantly in flux, with cells dying at various rates, how is this united field allowed to perdure and persevere?

To me it seems that, in order to avoid chaos and incoherence and incongruity, one would have to admit that this field of awareness, the self, is not dependent on the fickle changes of the body, but in fact transcends it as a separate category. Otherwise, if the body changed - even if ever so minutely, then this unitary field would shatter, would not be the same field as it was previously. It would be a completely new entity, in which case I as Tom at 11:01 PM would cease to exist, and a new entity would immediately hijack his body. There has to be some kind of enduring substance that is not at the mercy of what are many, many changes in the body happening all the time.

But one might take an example from the planet. "Well, the earth has a magnetic field, does it not?" I would say "yes" but this magnetic field is simply something we ourselves measure rather than something we ourselves are. The earth's magnetic field is not a subject or experiencer. There lies the difficulty. There is no way to know the knower except to be the knower. And so material examples are inadmissible. They cannot prove what is the case.