In the ambitious effort to approach the Truth by means of understanding psychology, I want to first describe cognition as it emerged from early biological phenomena. In doing so, we can see what is fundamental about what it means to be embodied thinking beings. However, this method too easily gives the impression that cognition is reduced to a mere result of biological processes. To remedy this error and others like it, we must agree upon some foundation of reality. In this article, I present one of the great conundrums of philosophy and use it to flag off the trap of materialism that we tend to fall into while taking a scientific approach to understanding ourselves. That conundrum is the mystery of consciousness.
It has become more and more apparent that our view of reality is splitting at the seams. In one sense we believe that reality is a place of material things and physical properties, where biological, and therefore psychological, life can be explained by the emergence of patterns and accidents of an otherwise dead world. On the other hand, we continue to act, not as if reality were indifferent, but as if our actions had greater significance, yet if we were to be interrogated as to whether our actions really have meaning, we would be at a loss, because intellectually we have accepted the materialist worldview.
This problem needs reconciling. We cannot be meant to live in this hypocritical state where our actions and beliefs are always in conflict, and we cannot we continue to participate in a meaningful life while our intellect continuously undermines it. We cannot hold that, as Christian de Duve puts it, “truth is important as long as we don’t know or believe it.” This article will be a first step into another view on nature of reality.
Our Current State of Materialism and Meaninglessness
In the past couple centuries, the notion that life has a real purpose or meaning has been under assault. Scientific methodologies, which require removing one’s particular perspective, seems not only to have shed light on many mysteries of the physical realm, but it also seems to promise that all mysteries, including spiritual ones, will one day be fully understood in the light of the empirical scientific process.
The assumption that part of reality exists beyond all human bias has had great utility in getting to many truths about the world and has allowed great advances in technology. While advancing in understanding of natural processes is good, our assumption that truth is accessed only at the removal of subjectivity is a costly one, both intellectually and pragmatically. This view I will call materialism; however, it may also be called “physicalism” or “naturalism” in other circles.
Materialism, rather than being an outcome of good science, is an overgeneralization of the technique of empirical science; it is more of a philosophical position than a conclusion that follows from science. Scientists, in their work, say “let us for the moment distrust our perceptions and intuitions, so that we may understand how nature works independently of our biased projections.” The materialists then see the mighty work of science and presume that the lens scientists look through is a lens on all of reality. But this claim of objectivity, a “view from nowhere,” is like looking through a microscope, claiming that what you see is the true reality, and denying the fact that you are using a particular apparatus to even see that truth. That apparatus for materialism is metaphysics, which cannot be proven or disproven scientifically.
Though materialism has this weakness it continues to pervade our lives and undermine our meaningful experience. This should indicate to us that, ironically, it serves a spiritual purpose. This is especially the case in the fact that rarely does anyone who thinks materialistically will concede its inevitable conclusion of nihilism, and still fewer will deliberately act out this nihilism. Instead, materialism is used as a spiritual weapon, sometimes against others and sometimes to diminish the significance of one’s own sins. Materialism is a removal of meaning, not as an act of humble openness to being proven wrong, but as a rationalization for a preexisting spiritual position.
“My soul had for a long time now been used to seeing in nature nothing but a dead desert covered by a veil of beauty, worn by nature like a mask that deceives.”
– Sergei Bulgakov
A materialist uses as its ammunition the term “merely” to deflate any serious experience of significance. Every tender moment, every awesome sunset, every joyous revelation is “merely” an event of material principles and mechanisms which give the appearance of meaning. It is not incorrect to understand emotions’ relationship to bodily changes, but to see that emotions say nothing outside of their physical manifestations is the error of materialism.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Let’s assume the starting position that reality is merely material, that a dead world gave rise to things which only seem as if there is life and meaning. Is there anything which cannot be understood according to a bottom-up causation? What anomalies can we not account for with this view? And are they significant enough to undermine it?
In fact, what this position cannot explain stares us right in the face: consciousness. By consciousness here I do not yet mean the self-reflectiveness sort, but a more primordial being-ness, that there is something it is like to be me, just as there is something it is like to be you, and those two are never confused. Simply put, there are points of subjectivity which observe but are themselves unobservable. All further definitions of consciousness presume this and build off this basic fact.
This is what David Chalmers calls the “hard problem of consciousness.” This “hard problem” describes the situation where philosophers of mind have struggled to place the existence of minds into the materialist framework. While we can peer from the outside at every physical correlate of consciousness, we seem to get no closer to seeing what it is actually like from the inside.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Qualia” says,
“For no matter how deeply we probe into the physical structure of neurons and the chemical transactions which occur when they fire, no matter how much objective information we come to acquire, we still seem to be left with something that we cannot explain, namely, why and how such-and-such objective, physical changes, whatever they might be, generate so-and-so subjective feeling, or any subjective feeling at all.”
Materialism posits a world where the measure of reality is in whether or not objects interact with other objects, and can produce observable and measurable outcomes. What is real must have potentially detectable effects. So, if we were to posit something that has no effect in the material world, the materialist would consider it as good as non-existent. Consciousness, however, is such a “thing.” Though it is the foundation of all observation, it itself is not observed directly as if a part of the physical world, making any attempt at discovering a physical effect of it impossible, without reducing it to something physical.
It is what sees, rather than what is seen. And for that reason, we should grant a reality which not only includes the seen and observable but also the unseen and undetectable yet somehow true. While science provides an epistemology for the observable material world, we need an epistemology for how we understand that which is not observable, but is meaningful. How do we approach the unseen world?
Meaning and the Intuiting of Minds
By the fact and mystery of consciousness, we know that there are phenomena which cannot be observed by the senses and measured, yet have just as much claim on reality as those that are. Although our perceptions of a mind are closely tied to the perception of a physical human, it is not a bottom-up event. We do not build up a sentient human being by ensuring all the anatomical parts are present and properly arranged. We first experience another mind irreducible to its parts. What then characterizes this experience?
The encounter with another person is an event which deserves volumes of discussion; I do not hope to fully describe it here. But I do wish to put forward a fundamental fact of social life: that the experience of an other and the experience of meaning and purpose are inextricably bound together. Perceiving goal-directed behavior in another person or object is how we intuit that something is animate or intentional, but not that there is an immaterial mind. It is the feeling of added weight to my actions and purpose in my life that convinces me that I am somehow seen by another.
Developmental psychologists have long seen the importance of “being seen” in the process of early development of the sense of self and purpose. Among them, Robert Kegan suggests that recognizing and being recognized is a lifelong activity of meaning. “Meaning depends on someone who recognizes you. Not meaning, by definition, is utterly lonely. Well-fed, warm, and free of disease, you may still perish if you cannot “mean.”
William James also understood the true significance of others even in adulthood.
“No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof…”
We are dependent on others not only to give us physical life, but to give us identity or purpose. The connection between the faith-like belief in the existence of others as subjects and the faith which moves us forward into meaningful life seem to both be tied together as a trust and participation in what is not seen. The Catholic Church sees that we cannot act both in faith and isolate ourselves from our social nature. The Catechism says, “faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone. You have not given yourself faith as you have not given yourself life.” (CCC 166)
Our Father: The Source of all Significance
Symbolically it is the mother that provides the body from which we are made, and it is the father who supplies the identity or purpose. I’ve made the case that to experience meaning, a personal relationship is required. Now we can finally understand why the quest for a purposeful life is like a growing relationship with an invisible father whom others, made in his image, make present on earth.
In the Gospels, Christ continually draws the tight link between God and one’s neighbor, most notably when he puts the command to love God and love neighbor high above the other commandments (Mt 22:34-40) demonstrating the non-competitive nature of God. When we see another person as a subjective being, we see an image of the invisible source of meaning, it is by loving God as the Divine Subject, as St. John Paul II puts it, that we are able to truly love others in their mystery.
The materialist, who denies the reality of the unseen and therefore the faith which perceives it, puts all his interest in what is observable and pragmatic. To him, the mysterious encounter with another subject is only defined by the behaviors which follow from it, the fact of the two subjective experiences of the people couldn’t be less interesting to the materialist. The foundation of relationship is proper technique, not an honoring of the subjective person.
The parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32) demonstrates this position. But not in the character we are familiar with; it is in the older brother who stayed working in the fields of his father. He saw his actions to be what made meaning, not in receiving the grace of his father in repentance. So, he remained in a practical exchange relationship with his father. He stayed physically close, not for spiritual closeness, but out of a practical concern that his labors would be noticed and rewarded, and life will be stable. He says after seeing the celebration of the return of the prodigal, “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.”
Being unable or unwilling to see the love of his father as the source of meaning, he cuts himself off from the participation in meaning. He has hardened his heart causing the relationship to be one merely of indifference and exchange. What is internal is unimportant, for that is invisible, unproveable, and unlikely to be rewarded. We can act rightly while we protect ourselves from true commitment; but to truly believe is to be opened up in the heart, to be vulnerable, to be seen by someone that means something to you.
The older son feels this hurt when he sees the prodigal, who did everything wrong, bearing his heart out in repentance and in return the loving attention of the father being poured out to him. His need to actually be in relationship with the father becomes apparent, and his inadequate faith wounds him, and it becomes infected with resentment. How familiar is this feeling to those who do all the right things technically, but lack the joy of the simple man who has far less.
The father in response says, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” He had always been in the gaze of his loving father, which gave him in every moment the opportunity to love him. This is not unlike the atheist who seeks the meaningful life. He ordered his actions around noble goals, and even in success, he finds not meaning, but frustration for he has cut himself off from the loving gaze of the Father, who, by holding all things in his gaze, makes meaning possible in all times and all places, even in suffering. The invitation to the heart of the Father is always there, but it takes faith, a trust in the unseen, to receive the invitation, and repent.
Having made the argument that there is a source of meaning that is akin to a heavenly Father, who is unseen is a similar way as the mind of another person is unseen, we move forward to more spiritual principles that will be necessary once we take on the more biological approach to human cognition.
