Interesting article by David Barash, an evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology at the University of Washington. Hard problem in the following paragraph refers to consciousness:
I write this as an utter and absolute, dyed-in-the-wool, scientifically oriented, hard-headed, empirically insistent, atheistically committed materialist, altogether certain that matter and energy rule the world, not mystical abracadabra. But I still can’t get any purchase on this “hard problem,” the very label being a notable understatement.
Cogito ergo sum may well be the most famous phrase in Western thought, yet I am convinced that Descartes’ renowned dualism is nonsense, that mind arises from nothing more nor less than the actions of the brain. I am also nearly as confident that some day, we’ll understand how. But in the meanwhile, I can’t help appreciating Ambrose Bierce’s reformulation: cogito cogito ergo cogito sum—“I think I think therefore I think I am,” which Bierce noted might actually be as close to truth as philosophers, at least, have ever gotten.
He should try out the image on the Shroud of Turin. Full article: The Hardest Problem in Science? – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education
As the great Neo-Darwinist geneticist, J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964), realised, that “if my mind is a mere by-product of matter” then “I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true”:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” (Haldane, J.B.S., “When I Am Dead,” in “Possible Worlds: And Other Essays,” [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209).
And one of those beliefs is “that mind arises from nothing more nor less than the actions of the [material] brain.” In other words, as C.S. Lewis pointed out many years ago (e.g. in his 1947 book Miracles), Materialist statements like, “mind arises from nothing more nor less than the actions of the [material] brain” is self-refuting.
While I appreciate Prof. Barash’s candour (and nothing I write here should be construed as a personal attack on him or his ilk), nevertheless, Materialists have for decades (if not centuries) been making promises like, “I am also nearly as confident that some day, we’ll understand how.” It even has a name, “Promissory Materialism“!
Stephen E. Jones
In the Latin “cogito, the final “o” implies a first person subject speaking… to prove the first person is (“sum”/am). The “demonstrative logic ” is just SPECIOUS!
Cogito ergo sum
OR BETTER
To be AND not to be, THAT is the ANSWER
or to be? or not to be? What what the question?
So much for the THATNESS of the question!