Are Thoughts Material?

John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale

A selection from Questions of Truth (Westminster John Knox, 2009).

I viewed a recent discussion on the topic of whether our thoughts are material. The Christian holds that the process of thought is material but thought itself is not. Atheists generally hold that all processes and outcomes of thought are solely material. They claim that all neuroscientists would agree. What are the implications for the Christian if our thoughts are wholly material?

Beale: This is a complex topic that we address in some detail in an appendix to the book. Let’s try and give an outline of our position here.

First, even computer software isn’t “material” in any normal sense. Consider a piece of software like Firefox, the open-source Web browser. Where is it? It is installed in millions of computers worldwide. It is downloaded thousands of times a day. While it is being downloaded each copy may pass through twenty or more computers. Master copies of the software are stored on a number of different servers, and within each server they may be striped across several physical disks, so that no single material failure can destroy the software. These disks will be backed up repeatedly. We’re not, of course, suggesting that there is anything supernatural about computer software; we’re merely pointing out that it is not “material” in any normal sense of the word. The only coherent language to use is to say that it has representations in or on material objects, but it is not to be identified with any particular set of representations.

Now consider something like Hamlet or J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor. No manuscript of Hamlet survives, and there are three distinct printed sources that differ in detail. Almost every performance uses a slightly different text: there are at least fourteen different editions, and performances are generally cut. It is absurd to identify any individual material object with the play itself. Furthermore, even if all the paper copies of Hamlet were destroyed, there are still innumerable copies on CDs, DVDs, and tapes and in cyberspace. There is an original manuscript of the Mass in B Minor, but there are emendations thought to be by Bach’s son. Therefore, there are significant differences in the various printed editions. Each performance of the Mass in B Minor is different, and there are hundreds of recordings and millions of copies of these. Again, it makes sense to say that various material objects are representations of the Mass in B Minor, but we deny that the Mass in B Minor is itself a material object. It transcends its particular representations.

If we grant the point that works of music, art, and literature can exist without being “material” objects, it is logical that works of music, art, and literature can be seen as instances of ideas. And it makes much more sense to consider thoughts to be ideas rather than material objects. Thoughts have many of the properties of music and literature that we discussed, and considering thoughts as ideas allows for the possibility of two persons having the same thought in different places, which is tricky for a material object. Furthermore, because brains are hypercomplex systems and truly subject to chaotic dynamics and quantum effects, they are not fully predictable at a physical level and thus ripe for being subject to causation from “active information.” Since our knowledge of matter and physics comes from our minds and thoughts, one would need overwhelming evidence to show that minds and thoughts don’t really exist but that physical objects and matter do.

This is not to say that all forms of physicalism are contradictory—such a strong result, alas, never occurs in philosophy. But physicalists have to deny the real existence of many more entities that are generally taken as existing than thoughts, and the only remotely compelling reason that might be offered for accepting physicalism—namely, that “science has shown that all our thoughts are determined by physical laws”—can now, for reasons we discuss in an appendix to the book, be seen to be incorrect.

Polkinghorne: Of course, thinking is an activity that has a material substrate, but I believe that the relationship of mind and brain is best understood in terms of the view of dual-aspect monism, linking the material and the mental to form a complementary relationship, rather than through a fallacious attempt to reduce the mental to the material.

This excerpt from Questions of Truth (Westminster John Knox 2009) is used by permission of the authors. For more information, see the web site for the book, questionsoftruth.org. See also Nicholas Beale's article for Provocations, “The Selfish Gene Delusion.”

2 Responses (comments are closed) • Provocations, Being Human, Science and Technology, Mon 23 Feb 2009