Some scientists, mainly biologists, believe that the thoughts and feelings within our mind are physical objects like the brain itself. Or even that they are a physical part of the brain. It can not be true. The mind interacts with the brain but has no physical properties and is therefore beyond the laws of physics. Objects like apples, jet engines, brains, or fingernails have physical properties (weight, shape, length, surface texture, visibility) and therefore must obey those laws. On the contrary, you cannot subject a person’s mind to laboratory experiments; you can only study brain activity from him, it’s not the same at all. However, thoughts and feelings are very real: love, pain, jealousy, hunger, pleasure, pride, shame, what happened yesterday, what we intend to do tomorrow, memories of our past life: these are our very essence. They are the most important part of what constitutes you; and only you have the experience of them. The other big part of you, your brain and your body, is part of the external physical world that scientists can observe.
Before the scientific age, people spoke of the ‘soul’ as the essence of a person. But the soul could not be immobilized within the body and the word is out of date. Today we talk about the ‘self’ or ‘personal identity’, scientifically more acceptable words than the word ‘soul’; but the concept is no different. Those biologists who do not distinguish between mind and matter have adopted the sterile philosophy of materialism: everything in the universe, including human behavior, can be reduced to atoms, electric currents, light waves, etc. They see people as robots. Clearly, our minds are influenced by the physical state of the body, such as when we feel hungry or are given an anesthetic. But Mind is not Matter.
(No living person knows for sure what happens to the self or soul when the body dies. It can be like a deep sleep or waking from a dream. Only those who have died can know.)
There’s something uncomfortable about being human, something that doesn’t bother other animals. It is sometimes called ‘The Human Condition’ but this is a phrase that is never properly defined. I prefer to call it ‘The Human Dilemma’, which is this: we are doomed to keep asking ourselves questions that seem to make sense but have no easy answers. Questions like: Who are we? Where we go? does it matter? What is correct? What is the point? Most of the time we follow our instincts and interests: work hard, make friends, fall in love, play, take care of children; in short, we ignore the dilemma. But it can jump on us when we’re not ready and make us feel unhappy or disturbed.
A small child is not bothered by the Human Dilemma. He or she accepts everything he finds as real: first her mother’s breast, then her parents, her own body, her siblings, the world in general. But after growing up, being educated, learning to think, an intelligent child will realize that there is a difference between the reality inside his head and everything else. The difference is something philosophers have argued about for a long time. My own conclusion is that my thoughts and experiences are real and that they are only things of which I have direct knowledge. And also that there is a physical world acting on my senses that is also real. That physical world includes my own body and the world around me, but not my weightless mind. Nor the minds of other people of whom I cannot have direct knowledge.
Biologists of all people should be able to see humans in the context of Darwinian evolution. We have a greater ability than chimpanzees to understand and control our environment, but like them we have our limitations. We have evolved by chance to become the creatures we are, possessing minds and five senses that connect us to the outside world. There is no reason to suppose that these five senses are enough to allow us to perceive and understand everything that happens in the universe and to discover everything there is to know. People who experience the human dilemma may have a greater sense of their human limitations than those biologists who mock them.
