We started out with discussing whether the mind is separate from the body, which is an interesting idea from the perspective that it, unlike many philosophical questions, seems to have an easy answer. Yes; the brain is connected to the rest of the body. Our biological functions wouldn't work otherwise. But that's the brain. What about the mind? That's the interesting question. Of course you have to pose the question: what is the mind? For our purposes, we defined the mind to be the sum of our perceptions and higher cognitive though. Our emotions and what we see. Descartes would posit that they are separate. This speaks to the ideal that we have a soul which is not a physical part of our "biological" body. He distinguished the soul as the seat of self awareness and consciousness and the brain as the seat of intelligence. The Mechanist point of view posits that the mind and the body are one, contiguous thing with consciousness and intelligence existing together in the brain. For the Mechanist position, one member of the club brought up a scientific experiment by which scientists connected a subject's brain to a neuroimaging device which allows them to see a rough outline of anything the subject looks at constantly in another room. This experiment speaks to the idea that the brain and the mind are one; there must be electrical impulse to render for the image to be present. This image of perception is not a concrete part of a person's intelligence, which indicates that perception, or the mind, coexists with the brain. If you can create images of the "soul" from measuring the impulses of the brain, they must be in someway connected.
As our hour of discussion went on, our talk of perception and understanding led one of our number to bring up the idea of theodicy. One of the more common metaphors for the theodicy idea is that of the stool. I found this image which explains the idea pretty well:
Photo Credit: http://unreasonablefaith.com/2011/07/02/theodicy-and-the-three-legged-stool/
According to this idea, humanity is presented with three options regarding the nature of any conceivable god:
- Break the benevolence leg: God is kind of a dick
- Break the omnipotence leg: God can't control everything simply because He does not have the power to
- Break the omniscience leg: God has other things on his mind
Wonderful entry and comic! Makes my wish my own school's philosophy club were still around.
ReplyDeleteStill, I'm not 100% sure which I'd pick. Probably, I'd go with a non-all-powerful God. Not going to lie, I really like the image of God watching the Universe like a scientist watches a simulation he has set up: he knows what's going to happen thanks to his research and calculations, but he can't really do anything about it after he's typed in the parameters and clicked "display". He's just watching it all unfold before him.
But of course, since it's God we're talking about here, that prompts another question: Why didn't he set it up to work perfectly from the beginning?
Then, you could say that he did, but Satan mucked it up. However, that gives Satan pretty much God-like powers and implies that God might not have created him, because if He did, Satan would not be evil. Aaargh, this is getting too complicated for my sleep-deprived brain!
Which God would you rather have?