Mind over Matter: Soul vs. Brain

To me, it seems plausible that the mind could be explained by the brain, but it seems equally plausible (and to my metaphysical mindset, far more likely) that the mind is not explained by the brain, at least not fully. Bridging the gap between the physical and the non-physical has always fascinated me. It seems impossible to explain one by the other, as they seem to be two fundamental starting points or principles of reality. Even if the brain can explain the mind, the soul is not thereby explained away, nor is man fully explained.

Crick asserts that since the brain can explain the mind, then there is no need for a soul. But thinking and consciousness is not all that the soul does; hence the traditional distinction between mind and soul. How does one explain the difference between life and non-life, from the smallest bacterium to the largest mammal? The neuronal functionings do not seem to explain the life/non-life problem, while the soul, an anima-ting principle, does. Crick’s assertion would need to further answer the life/non-life problem in order to adequately show that there is no need for soul. He has only shown that there is no need for mind. The need for a soul cannot be explained away by the brain.

Fundamentally, there is a jurisdictional problem at play in this entire debate. The subject of our discourse is man qua man, a subject with immaterial and material elements, intellect and emotions, will and instinct. Modern academia has divided itself into disciplines with very specific jurisdictions and expertise areas, overall a positive development, unless such disciplines fail to interact with one another. Just like the Western intellectual movement towards individualism and the total self-sufficiency and independence of the individual from the group, each discipline has become wholly dependent upon itself, thereby assuming that its methodology—that which distinguishes one discipline from the others—is capable of explaining all of reality. But man is incredibly complex and intricate, an essentially interdisciplinary being. Hence any meaningful discourse on man must incorporate all the disciplines, for ultimately, all disciplines relate essentially to man. Man cannot be explained merely by metaphysics, nor can be explained merely by science. Man must be examined by a dialectic of all the disciplines. Only by such a dialectic can the essentially interdisciplinary being receive an adequate explanation.[1]

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[1] Originally a Biology 402 final, 6 May 2015.

Eros as Revelation

Revelation and response as the cycle of love. ‘I have seen your beauty; I have seen you as you are; would you allow me to be in your life?’

The unconditional gift of love, the total gift of self as a response to the revelation of who the beloved truly is. 

Agape presupposes eros; precedes eros. Eros is the condition of agape.

God sees us as we are for He made us. God gives Himself to us absolutely unconditionally. We image Him as best we can. This is how we grow in love.  This is the intrinsic structure of love. 

In a postlapsarian world, the eros of the lover towards the beloved is a revelation of the goodness of the beloved to the beloved herself, who is blinded by the effects of original sin from fully seeing the truth of whom she is and who cannot behold the "truth of her being" without the revelation of the lover.[1]

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[1] Originally notes from 24 Jan 2018, 7:55AM-9:49PM

Baroque Music and the Paradox of Tragic Beauty

J.S. Bach's Violin Concerto #1 in A Minor (BWV 1041) expresses perfectly one of the special properties of Baroque music generally and Baroque violin in minor key specifically. It captures a sense of beauty, with the high notes of the violin deeply moving the soul; at the same time these high notes have a sense of tragedy; of a piercing wound, not of the body, but of the soul. As the piece reaches the highest point, the other instruments become lighter allowing the violin to come to the forefront and emphasize the deeply personal nature of the tragic emotion. In a special way, Baroque music is able to capture the paradox of tragic beauty.[1]

 

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[1] Originally an assignment for Music 201, 30 August 2013.

Makeup and Unmaking

I have long held plastic surgery procedures that irrevocably alter a person’s visage or other bodily features for no other reason than the person’s disdain for their natural appearance to be fundamentally immoral (in contradistinction to reconstructive surgeries that restore the creative work of God to its original beauty, in a manner akin to the restoration of an Old Master painting to its original beauty after it had been damaged by fire or flood). Makeup practices are non-permanent and therefore far less drastic than plastic surgery, but the same corrupt notion is at play—the hubristic presumption to ‘correct’ God’s masterpiece, as if a 5^th grader assumed the artistic competence to pass corrective judgement upon a masterwork of Michelangelo.

Makeup as such cannot be deemed immoral, anymore than wearing beautiful clothing or cutting one’s hair in an accentuating style can be. Vestis virum reddit—“Clothes make the man”. Makeup is like a frame on an Old Master painting; no one goes to an art museum to view the frame, but without the accentuation of the golden wood surrounding the art itself, the piece would appear less luminous. Makeup qua accentuation of Divine Beauty inherent in the created physical person is indeed a morally commendable, though optional, act in adornment of the Temple of the Holy Spirit. But when makeup becomes a true ‘remaking’—a deconstructive practice whose specific goal is the desecrative correction of Divine Creation—it takes on the character of an impermanent pseudocosmetic unweaving of the Cosmos. Cosmetology for its own sake partakes of Satan’s repugnance for the created order and echoes the Satanic ‘Non serviam’.

Philosophiæ Doctor a Scientist Doth Not Make

Must one be a Doctor of Philosophy to be a Scientist? A philosophical question.

An engineer of '90s PBS Kids fame by the name of Bill Nye “the Science Guy” has recently made many controversial headlines, contrapositioned by those within the “Scientific Community” who dismiss him and his statements as the simple opining of a mere engineer (pronounced with a lethal dosage of vitriolic venom). While this post takes no position with regard to the specific content of Mr. Nye’s statements, the recent controversy occasions a brief inquiry into the nature of what precisely constitutes the nature of “Scientist”—must one have been degreed a Philosophiæ Doctor (Ph.D.) to be a Scientist properly so called?

The Scientific Method prescribes certain criteria for a theory of natural phenomena to be held as generally valid, including rigorous and independently reproducible hypothesis testing. Such methodology necessarily presupposes peers of specialized, professional competence; hence the relegation of Natural Philosophy to the See of Academia, possessing plenary and exclusive jurisdiction over the theologians of “all things visible”.

With science thus wholly professionalized, all those lacking degreed credentials regulated by authority of the Academic See were henceforth declared anathematized. The scientific writings of non-scientists were systematically declared heretical by the Censor Scientiæ, and those claiming the title “Scientist” without the sanctioned ordination of the Academic See were declared excommunicated latæ sententiæ, notwithstanding the validity of specific truth-claims so advanced.

Those who dare defy the monopolistic power-grab of the Scientific Community are henceforth declared schismatic pseudo-scientists, wolves maliciously misleading the flock of secular citoyens.

But in the beginning it was not so.

The term scientist has a recent etymological gestation, brought to birth by the quasi-pontifical high priest of secular social theory Auguste Comte in the 1800s. Long before the Christian Era up until the dawn of the Modern, Natural Philosophy was the area of philosophic enquiry whose specific content encompassed the workings and wonders of the natural world. Natural Philosophy predates the Scientific Method, originating in Presocratic Greece, refined by Medieval Scholastics, and systematically developed by Renaissance thinkers of Neoplatonic Keplerian ilk.

Paradoxically, in the age of tyrants, monarchs, emperors and autocrats, the domain of licit scientific inquiry remained open to all persons, while in our own egalitarian age of parliaments, republics, populists and popularizers, democratic claim to legitimate science has been all but eradicated by the crippling totalitarian clutches of academic autocracy.

Natural Philosophy maintains no monopoly on the practice of systematic inquiry into the nature of the Cosmos; sed contra the ranks of natural philosophers are by nature open to any lover of wisdom who sincerely pursues the truth of physicality.

But in our New Dark Age, the democratic light of natural philosophy has now been all but extinguished, for a Ph.D. constitutes the prerequisite for attaining the rank of “Scientist” from which Academe grants no dispensation. Remedially, the Weltanschauung of Natural Philosophy must be restored to its rightful claim as definitional defender of those who profess the work of "Scientist", for if a genuine philosophia were again demanded of those declared Teacher of the Love of Wisdom, the swelling ranks of pseudo-scientific sycophants would surely begin to thin. 

 

 

 

(Mostly written 4 June 2017, 5:30pm; completed 2 December 2017, 6:30pm.)

Some Thoughts on Love

My love for her becomes my love for myself; my love for God becomes my love for her; my love for her becomes my love for God; my love for God becomes my love for myself; the two become one in spirit and body; the love for myself, for her, and for God forms an intrinsic unity in an image of Trinitarian Love.

Philosophical Methodology vs. the Modus Vivendi of Authentic Philosophy

I’ll probably edit and expand this later, but I had this thought a few days ago[1] and just wanted to put it out there. Have a blessed Easter Sunday!

Academic “disciplines” are defined and constituted by their methodologies,^[2] but philosophy does not have a “methodology” as such; it is a way of life, a modus vivendi ("mode of living"), a pursuit of truth in the broader sense, or the “love of wisdom” in the ancient and restricted etymological sense. Wherefore philosophy is not a “discipline” since philosophy as such transcends methodology qua modus vivendi.

“Schools of philosophy” may be considered “disciplines” since very often “schools” are defined not just by their founder or his works, but by his methodology, or by the methodology of extracting his thoughts and his way of thinking from his texts.

But such a narrowly-construed “philosophy” is dubitably philosophical, for in so reducing Philosophy to this-or-that methodology—and thereby creating a “philosophical discipline” properly so-called—the movement away from the “mode of living” has already been completed, for Philosophy is relegated to the solitary confinement of the academic department, cut off from communication with the broader world of wanderers, tourists, and pilgrims on their journey to the truth.

Only a way of living in pursuit of truth that transcends academic disciplinary methodology is worthy of the name Philosophy.

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[1] Original fragment composed 25 March 2016, ~12:55-1:17am PST (Good Friday).

[2] This was a notion I argued for and discussed in my Theology 401 final essay, reproduced on Philosophical Living as “The Propriety of Magisterial Authority in Academic Theological Discourse”.