Can Science Prove Intellect is Material?
by: Mark A. McNeil
The incredible accomplishments of science in recent centuries sometimes have the effect of causing people to think that science and its methods are able to solve every mystery of the human person and that human thought and experience are all reducible to material cause and effect relationships.
In this brief reflection, I would like to object to this position and argue that science is limited in its explanatory power. Additionally, I will suggest that there are strong reasons to believe there are facets of human experience that are fundamentally different from matter and its properties and therefore must be spiritual or immaterial.
What Do We Know?
Although rarely emphasized in the study of modern “science,” there are presuppositions assumed by scientists and non-scientists alike in their approach to reality. These approaches can be multiplied seemingly forever but can in fact be placed into several broad categories.
Human knowledge seems to begin in a flood of sensory data. Colors, shapes, sounds, textures all provide the experiences from which general ideas and conclusions drawn from them will emerge. What one concludes about the nature of the “world” of sensation will largely depend on the account of the knowing process itself that is accepted. Some have claimed that sensory knowledge itself is secondary in the discovery of “truth.” This is based on various observations that sense experience can be misinterpreted or that scientific interpretations of experience have often been misleading or erroneous although seemingly persuasive for long periods of time. On the other hand, there are other ways humans think that seem to ignore or at least abstract from sense experience that cause greater certitude and exhibit greater stability (e.g., math). This approach is often called Rationalism and may be seen in philosophers like Plato. The emphasis on non-sensory knowledge tends to result in a devaluation of sciences built on sense data.
Another “extreme” approach to human knowledge insists that all facets of human experience and knowledge derive from sense experience and that we need not think that any of our intellectual acts are anything more than objects of sense experience construed in a variety of ways. David Hume was perhaps the greatest of these Empiricists who denied that there is any need at all to suggest that knowledge is anything more than sense impressions variously arranged.
A third approach considers both of the above perspectives correct in a limited way but denies that either is a complete account of human knowledge. This approach, perhaps correctly labeled “dualism,” argues that human knowing is closely tied to sense experience but that it is able to go beyond sense experience to general concepts that do not directly correspond to anything "experienced.” Aristotle would be an example of this approach.
Perhaps a fourth approach can be identified and that would be Skepticism. There have always been persons who have seen the various problems associated with human knowledge and have essentially grown “sour” in the pursuit of answers. Their conclusion is that it is impossible for us to know the nature of our own knowledge and they then spend their time either ignoring the problem or casting doubt on those who defend one or another of the above positions.
Whatever position one takes, it is important to note that this position is not capable of “proof” from science. In other words, the “truth” about the nature of human knowledge must rest upon introspection and reflexive self-analysis and not from some external source or method of analysis. Perhaps one could find results of a scientific demonstration supportive of an already assumed position but it is not possible to scientifically prove a basic theory of knowledge in the modern sense of “scientific.”
It does not take much to show the truth of the preceding paragraph. Consider a Rationalist and an Empiricist in dialog. The Empiricist insists that the workability of science “proves” his approach is sound. The Rationalist, however, simply shows that the Empiricist is assuming his principles. If such an assumption were not made, the argument would disappear. Perhaps the results of a scientific test or procedure “work” or make sense very much like features of our dreams make sense but do not tell us anything about an external world existing apart from our own minds. For centuries, one might argue, men believed the world was flat. There was much empirical evidence to support such a position but it, of course, turned out to be wrong. Who’s to say that we will not equally discover ourselves in error? Also, how is it possible to show that the world of “sense” is not merely a projection of our own minds and that matter is not real at all?
I am not agreeing with the Rationalist here. My point is merely that one will find it very difficult to argue with one who has accepted contrary presuppositions unless he is able to go to a pre-scientific stage of philosophical reflection and show the inadequacies of another’s approach to knowledge itself.
I would like to now suggest some features of human experience that every reader should be able to recognize and suggest ways in which these features argue for an explanation of human knowledge that requires more than matter or sense experience.
First, there is the issue of general concepts and scientific knowledge itself. It is not enough to say that the “brain” is able to explain human knowledge. One must show how a material organ is able to mysteriously reflect upon materiality. One must show how the human person is able to contemplate the nature of everything and not merely those things pertaining to my sense organs.
Take, for instance, the human eye. It has, as its proper objects, color and shape. The ear has for its proper object, sound. We may do the same with each of the sense powers. Once we finished with all the means by which humans seemingly apprehend the world about us, we will not have discovered any physical sense organ that has for its proper object being itself, love, and any object of scientific consideration. Science does not primarily focus on this man but rather on all men or humanness. In other words, the workings of science itself depend on the ability of the mind to move beyond the consideration of objects immediately available to the senses and to reflect upon the shared characteristics of all in a class or general group. No bodily organ is oriented towards all of a category or, better yet, everything. This is in fact, however, what the human mind is able to do. We are able to think about the nature of the brain. This ability to think about our bodily processes and, potentially, about everything and its nature, suggest we are in some respect distinct from any particular part of the material world. Particularity in the case of matter is restrictive while universality and unlimitedness suggest immateriality.
A second consideration in human experience pertains to the freedom of the will. We are all conscious of ourselves as self-determining creatures. We are conscious of our power to choose between “goods” or objects of desire placed before us. From this fact flows our sense of moral duty or obligation. Without it, our talk of morality and punishment for crimes done lose their force. Without freedom we can no more “condemn” a man or woman than we can condemn a lion for killing a man. Freedom is not only something of which we cannot doubt due to its immediate presence in our experience but it is also something of which we dare not doubt since it would destroy the very foundations of a just society.
The problem for the materialist or extreme view of science and its abilities to explain things, is that freedom and materialism are absolutely irreconcilable. Material cause and effect relationships are subject to science precisely because of their predictability. If we could not predict an effect based on a knowledge of causes in certain situations, science would cease. Science works on the presupposition that effects are necessary and that if one has sufficient knowledge, the effect is entirely predictable.
This position, usually called Determinism, reigns in the world of science on the level of human actions. Found in both “hard” and “soft” forms, scientists of all sorts are searching for “genes” and other such factors in order to “explain” human actions. This is entirely consistent with the scientific mentality, especially when it is convinced that everything is the result of matter in motion. There is no room for material causes producing entirely unexpected and “free” effects. Freedom has no meaning in this context.
Sometimes materialists will disagree here and suggest Quantum Physics as a possible source of hope. This is difficult to understand since the gist of the claim is that the randomness of quantum particles at a subatomic scale is a nice parallel for freedom. Randomness and unpredictability are not what we mean by “freedom,” however. To the contrary, I am not free if my actions are entirely random or, in every way, unpredictable. No, by freedom we mean an effect that is caused by my will and self-determination and therefore not random but that the effect is not necessarily caused. In other words, although my act was truly caused by me I truly could have done otherwise. That mysterious understanding of freedom, of which we are all conscious, is incompatible with scientific explanations.
In conclusion, I have suggested the claim that science is able to “prove” we are nothing but material creatures and that human thought and actions can be explained by material cause and effect relationships is unacceptable. It is unacceptable first, and more negatively, because it suggests a view of science that is truly beyond what a scientist can prove. In other words, it is not possible to show a priori that everything must be capable of a materialist interpretation. That must be proven and it cannot, on the most basic level, be proven since one’s approach to knowledge is more basic than the scientific method.
Secondly, the scientific assumptions themselves are not able to account for features of human experience of which we are all aware. We are able to wrap our minds about the entirety of reality and think in all-inclusive terms about facets of our universe that are not the immediate object of sense powers and therefore must belong to an “organ” or power that is capable of that kind of thought. Since the objects of thought I have in mind here are “universal” and therefore not limited to any one or even all material objects (shown by my ability to consider spiritual realities as well), the power considering such objects must be spiritual or immaterial since it must be commensurate with its objects.
Finally, human freedom, too, provides an ability of which I am immediately aware that is incompatible with a materialistic world-view. That this is the case is shown by any cursory look at the literature available on the subject. Human freedom is perhaps the first casualty of a consistent materialism. The only problem is that this assumption not only contradicts our immediate awareness of ourselves, but it also is most often made with the conviction that could only be the result of one assuming he has freely chosen the “right” position and you have chosen the “wrong” position. Right and wrong, however, are moral categories that lose all meaning in a universe of determinism and material causality where freedom is lost.
Mark A. McNeil
11-18-01