Let’s have some fun with theories of mind and matter.  Here are the four main theories.

 

1. Reductive Materialism.  The universe consists of matter alone.  To the extent consciousness exists, it’s a property emerging from, and reducible to, the material parts.

2. Idealism.  Matter is a construct of the mind.  Real things are out there, but we have no access to them; we only have the flickering images inside our skulls.

3. Panpsychism.  The universe consists of matter alone, but consciousness is a quality inherent in matter. 

4. Dualism.  The universe consists of mind and matter, neither reduced to the other. 

 

If I tell you my underlying belief, can you figure out which theory I prefer?  I believe that mind and matter are inseparable yet distinct.  I show this in my essay, Mind and Matter.  What’s my favorite theory?  I’m a dualist like my intellectual hero, Freeman Dyson.  I lean towards an Aristotelean dualism, though, where mind inheres in matter not as a separate thing but as a something-more (see Grandma Embodied).

 

Regarding materialism: I respect it.  Materialism gets things done in the world of It, especially science and technology.  This computer device is built on materialism. Materialism works… but it’s a defective theory of reality.  Materialism is defective because it pretends that mind doesn’t exist, but you and me experience mind in every waking moment of our lives.  Mind is real.  Materialists like to say that consciousness is an illusion, but that’s silly because only a conscious mind can have an illusion.  Rather, the belief in reductive materialism is an illusion of the mind.

 

Regarding idealism: it’s insane.  Which is probably why it’s fashionable in the world of quantum mechanics.  Niels Bohr is said to have said, “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”  By this, Dr. Bohr meant that we can’t understand reality in itself; we can only describe what our limited brains can perceive and process of reality.  This is modern idealism, and it’s defective because it puts everything in our heads with little reference to outside reality.  I have no faith in a theory that discounts the reality of the world around me.  In fact, I consider idealism to be a failure of responsibility: our job is to go into reality, see it, understand it, make the best of it. 

 

Regarding panpsychism: It’s a fun mistake.  A panpsychist sees consciousness as a property of matter, like an extra dimension of spin on an electron, or like the electron has a little pocket where it keeps a particle of consciousness.  But panpsychism can’t explain how this extra dimension of mind works in a material particle.  Worse, panpsychism can’t explain how the trillions of mini-consciousnesses in the atoms in my brain physically combine to create my unified experience of consciousness. 

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All four theories must solve the bridging problem, which is the question of how mind and matter interact.  Matter is located in space and time and has physical properties like size and weight, whereas an idea is a ghost outside space and time.  How does a ghost position itself inside my skull and interact with my body?  How do the billions of individual neurons in my brain come together to create one, unified experience of consciousness?  Mind and matter do interact, but we don’t know how they do it.  Here is how each theory addresses the bridging problem between mind and matter:

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1. Materialism solves the bridging problem by pretending that mind doesn’t exist, which is as silly as me denying that I'm thinking right now.  This is a bad solution. 

2. Idealism solves the bridging problem by pretending that, for practical purposes, matter doesn’t exist beyond our perceptions of it.  Another bad solution. 

3. Panpsychism solves the bridging problem by stating flatly, without explanation, that mind is a property of matter so they don’t have to interact.  Panpsychism doesn’t solve the bridging problem, it just hides it.  In a particle, we still don’t know how the material part and the consciousness part interact with each other, and we still don’t know how the gazillions of atoms in my body combine with each other to form a unified consciousness.

4. Dualism admits ignorance of how mind and matter interact. 

 

Dualism, in all its ignorance, makes the best of the bridging problem.  Dualism explains best the together but distinct natures of mind and matter.  Mind and matter live together but don't reduce to one another; instead both modes are true and we toggle our perspective between them. 

 

Recall that panpsychism is a fun mistake: it’s fun because of its mistake.  A panpsychist tries to squeeze consciousness into the worldview of reductive materialism.  He can’t deny the fact of consciousness, but he can’t give up his worldview, so, without explanation, he combines the two incompatibles.  He says that mind is a property of things, or maybe mind is a thing within another thing.  Nah.  Mind isn’t a thing and its properties are utterly anti-thing.  

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Mind is real, but a materialist worldview can’t accept it... and when reality and worldview conflict, I advise revision to the latter.  Here’s my revisive attempt. Down here on the ground, in our world of space-time, mind lives on a meat platform and mind needs matter to exist, but mind is distinct from matter.  If metaphysics was a movie playing in my head, I'd never see both mind and matter in the same shot at the same time.  Instead I'd see either one or the other.  Imagine a neurosurgeon jabbing his own brain with an electrode.  He can see portions of his brain light up on a computer screen attached to the electrode, and thereby he sees matter.  He also feels the feeling that he's feeling when he feels himself being jabbed by the electrode, and thereby he experiences mind.  The two modes of being run simultaneously but separate and they'll never be on the same screen together.

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Mind lives on a meat platform, and neurons must fire for meaning to exist, but the firing of neurons is not meaning.  My ear senses vibrations in air and passes the perception along neural chains, and somewhere somehow, I hear melody and I feel its meaning. Melody is not the sounds, it’s the meaning of the sounds, and there’s no good reason to deny the existence of either sound or melody.  We live in two worlds: It and Thou, matter and mind, and both are true.