An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Have you ever thought about thinking? Why do we think? How do we think? Just what is thinking? Is it just so much chemical activity in our brain, so many firing neurons? And how do our answers to these questions inform our idea of personhood? What is it to be us? Can all this be explained in purely naturalistic terms?
Okay, these are not the questions that keep most of us awake at night, but they are important questions nonetheless. And our answers have profound theological implications with regard to human identity.
I’m Fred Zaspel, editor here at Books At a Glance, and we’re talking today with Dr. Sharon Dirckx who takes up these kinds of questions in her fascinating new book, Am I Just My Brain? It’s a great read, and we’re glad she can talk with us today.
Sharon, welcome, and congratulations on your new book.
Dirckx:
Thank you.
Zaspel:
First, explain your title for us – Am I Just My Brain? What is the issue you’re addressing here?
Dirckx:
The heart of this book is really asking a question of identity. What exactly am I? And it fits within an era in which neuroscience has really accelerated, particularly over my lifetime, over the last few decades. And we are now able to look inside the human brain in incredible ways. We see all of these maps of brain activity appearing on our screens and documentaries and films. This is an incredible understanding of the human brain that we didn’t necessarily have historically. But, alongside that has arisen the view, “well, perhaps we are explained by our neurons, entirely.” When some people ask the question, “what exactly am I,” the response from some scientists and philosophers is “well, you are your biology; you are your neurons; you are your brain.” And so what I do in this book is ask the question, “is this really the best way to describe the human person, or does it lead to a diminished view of the human person?” In fact, this view, if it’s true, has huge implications for meaning. I mean, if I am just my brain, then how can I read anything into the things that it outputs, if I’m just driven by forces beyond my control? And obviously alongside that there are huge implications for free will and even for religious beliefs. Obviously, what you believe about the human brain and its relation to the mind, which we’ll get onto later, has implications for the kinds of things you believe will be possible with AI. And so, although at surface value this may not seem to be the foremost question, it actually impacts quite a lot of daily life for all of us.
Zaspel:
Tell us something about your own background that brings you to address this question.
Dirckx:
I come to this with a PhD in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging from the University of Cambridge in the UK and over a decade of experience in this area of brain imaging. So, I come to it, not simply as an observer of science, but a practitioner of it. I’m not currently a scientist, but I have spent a long time in it and so I have this firsthand experience of both the beauty of what neuroscience can tell us, but also what it can’t tell us. And when, sometimes, people extrapolate the discoveries of science to make a worldview claim, a belief claim, that the data isn’t necessarily doing. And so I’m able to bring that background and that expertise into this book.
Zaspel:
Talk to us about concepts such as consciousness and self-awareness and how these indicate that the mind is something more than just the brain.
Dirckx:
Yes. Maybe you will remember I describe a coffee shop scene where you’re queuing for a flat white on a Monday morning or something and you hear a baby screaming in the corner, you smell the coffee, you’re aware of what you need to do that day. Well, all of these things are…you don’t experience eight different things, you experience one thing as a whole, and it’s not simply an acquisition of coffee, it’s an instance of consciousness. Consciousness is kind of everything on your radar, it’s your knowledge that you have a past and it’s the same you here today and that will be in the future. Philosopher Thomas Nagel in a very famous paper, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Basically, says to be conscious is for there something that it is like to be you, there is something that it is like to be you that no one else quite knows in the same way, even if they happen to know you very well. There is a first-person experience of the world that is unique to you. And, actually, at the heart of this conversation really is if it’s true that you are your brain, how on earth do you get from neurons to what it is like to be you. This has been coined the hard problem of consciousness by David Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy in Australia. He talks about easy problems being determining what brain parts are involved in different states of consciousness and perhaps moving from one state to another, such as wakefulness to sleep and vice versa. But the hard problem of consciousness is accounting for experience. How on earth do you get from neurons to what it is like to be you. This obviously has been debated for centuries by philosophers and in some ways we are still no closer to solving this problem.
Zaspel:
Okay, the central question you take up in your book: What, then, is the connection between the brain and the mind?
Dirckx:
That’s a really important question. In a sense this is the million-dollar question because we’re all clear that we have this mushroom-like structure sitting between our ears with all of its neurons and chemicals and electrical activity and hormones; but we also have this thing known as the mind which plays into this whole notion of consciousness. You have memories, emotions, feelings, thoughts. How do you get from, what is the relationship between, neurons and thoughts. How do you get from the activity of your brain to this thing, the mind. I propose… well, the view that you are your brain essentially says there isn’t anything such as the mind, there is only the brain and all of its mechanics. And I obviously pick apart that view to show that actually that doesn’t seem to make sense within its own framework. It doesn’t seem to make sense of the world – we live as though there is something that it is like to be us, that we have a unique perspective. There’s a lot of things we can say about that view to call it into question and I respond by offering alternatives. One being that the brain generates the mind, but the mind itself ends up being more than the sum of its component parts. Which is a view held by many in philosophy and science, Christians and non-Christians. And then there’s a view that perhaps the mind is beyond the workings of the brain. Could it be that there is a physical brain and a nonphysical mind that actually interact very closely together but are distinct entities. I discuss these in chapters three and four when I talk about are we just machines or are we more than machines.
Zaspel:
And so what is the soul?
Dirckx:
I think it depends who you ask. Some would say in this discussion that the mind and the soul are synonymous, or consciousness and soul are synonymous. Others might say the mind is a property of the soul and consciousness and the will are properties of the soul, and the soul is kind of the umbrella under which everything else fits. I guess it is, at its most fundamental level the word soul, nephes, means life, or life principle. It’s the life blood, the life sauce of things. Perhaps we often go to Plato when we think soul, which would lead us to review that the soul is this immaterial thing that can occupy a physical body but does not need to. And sometimes in Christian circles we have brought that into our Christianity and think of ourselves as ultimately nonphysical beings that will eventually one day float off to be with God and view perhaps heaven as this slightly woolly nonphysical place. But actually that isn’t in line with the Hebrew concept of soul, because actually the Hebrew notion of soul predates the Platonic view of soul and the ancient Greek view. And the Hebrew concept, although you do see it represented in different ways in different places, does seem to speak to the whole person. When the Psalms say, “praise the Lord, my soul,” they mean all of me. Heart and soul are all different ways of referring to this inner part of the person but which is very much integrated to your physicality. In other words, we are physical and spiritual beings, soulish beings, but we are physically integrated in this life and in the life to come. The new heaven and the new earth will be physical as much as it is spiritual. And so, I think we really need to come back to Scripture about our understanding of soul. It’s obviously very different to the spirit, the Holy Spirit. Everyone has a soul and not everyone has the Holy Spirit; you receive the Holy Spirit by professing faith in Jesus Christ. That is a different layer that I believe can impact the mind and the body and the soul, but it’s another distinct factor in all that we’re discussing here.
Zaspel:
Okay, sketch out for us a Christian perspective on all this. How do we explain consciousness? How did it come about? And then, what is the purpose of consciousness? What’s it for?
Dirckx:
Well, the essence of what I try to say in this book is that many people are trying to explain human consciousness by starting with the physical building blocks. We live in a physical world; it’s taken as a given that it’s a natural place to start. But what if we turn that on its head and make consciousness primary and fundamental and start there and try and work a case back to the physical building blocks? I ask the question, “what if consciousness is fundamental to the cosmos?” And we could ask the question, “what are the origins of consciousness?” The view you have of the world, of course, impacts how far back you look, but if God exists, if the triune God of the Bible exists, then consciousness has always existed in the Godhead as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a conscious community, a mutually loving community. And this same God has made people in his image and has imparted some of his qualities. And therefore, consciousness is something that has been given to us, in a sense, and not simply just for being aware of ourselves. Of course, that’s really important, but also to be aware of signals from our world, and also from perhaps beyond the physical world.
Experimental psychologist Justin Barrett describes the human consciousness in a way a bit like the antenna of a radio. All of the physical sciences are kind of looking at the workings of the radio, but human consciousness perhaps sits more in the realm of the antennae that is picking up signals. And just because we understand beautifully the workings of the radio doesn’t mean there isn’t someone out there signaling. Could it be that consciousness exists, not only because God exists, but because we are made to know him. God is a first-person experience, a person that can be known, not simply observed and studied in history but a being that can be known. And we know him through our consciousness, our conscious awareness of self, of ultimately our need of something beyond ourselves, our need of forgiveness and our need of relationship. And so, ultimately, I believe that we are conscious because God is conscious, and we are made to be in friendship and relationship with him.
Zaspel:
Before we sign off, perhaps you can give us a brief overview of your book so our listeners can know what to expect.
Dirckx:
Absolutely. I’ll give you a rundown of the chapter headings. Chapter 1, I talk about “Am I really just my brain?” Where I just lay the groundwork and say a bit about my background. Chapter 2, I ask the question, “Is belief in the soul out of date?” Where I look at it through the lens of what is the soul? I say a bit more than I’ve said in this interview about the different views out there. Chapter 3, “Are we just machines?” That’s where I really start to get into consciousness and address the idea that there isn’t really anything that it is like to be you, and I really call that into question and respond. And then Chapter 4, I ask, “Are we more than machines?” That’s where I lay out some of the alternatives to what human beings might be and what the relationship between mind and brain might be. Chapter 5, I look at “Is free will an illusion?” I look at the question of free will and the implications. Chapter 6, “Are we hardwired to believe?” If we are simply our brains, then are we just hardwired, those of us who are religious, were we always going to be, because we’ve got a particular wiring? Chapter 7, “Is religious experience just brain activity?” When we come to belief and when we experience God, is that just our brains going into overdrive or is it something genuine that is happening? And then I finish by asking this question, “why can I think?” Perhaps you can get into a philosophical stalemate trying to discuss what the mind is, but perhaps it is more helpful to ask, “why do we have one?” So, I finish with that question, and I guess the overview is to say, no, you are not just your brain. There is so much more to a human brain than neurons. We are not simply machines; we are made with all of these other facets; and we are made, ultimately, to know ourselves and to know God, the God that made us.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Sharon Dirckx, author of the fascinating new book, Am I Just My Brain? It’s an important contemporary question, and you’ll find the book insightful, enlightening – and very well-informed yet entirely accessible.
Sharon, thanks so much for your good work and for talking to us today.
Dirckx:
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Editor’s Notes:
You can view the brief trailer below:
You may also be interested to see this related interview with J.P. Moreland about his book, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters.
