Book Review
Matter & Humanity
The Mind and the Machine: What It Means to Be Human and Why It Matters
by Matthew Dickerson
Brazos, 2011
(258 pages, variously priced, paperback)
reviewed by J. Daryl Charles
Ours is a most intriguing age. It bears the mark of schizophrenia yet stridency, of epistemological uncertainty yet deep-seated incorrigibility, of ethical ambiguity yet stunning intransigence. What consensually has been assumed by both ancients and moderns—namely, that the species Homo sapiens (literally, the knowing, wise, or rational species) is unique among all living forms, capable of dignity and depravity, of moral splendor and moral degeneracy, and that human beings are significantly free (and thus self-responsible) moral agents—is increasingly challenged today. This thoughtful volume, written by a professor of computer science and environmental studies at Middlebury College, responds to the present challenge by investigating the roots and ramifications of a post-consensus "physicalist" understanding of human nature.
What does it mean to be human? And what does it mean to have a human mind? Is the mind, in all its intricacy, only a complex machine, at bottom reducible to a computational model? If, as Matthew Dickerson contends, we as a culture really believe that "spirit" is not real, then "whether we consciously decide to act on this or not, what ultimately becomes important to us is the state of our body" and nothing more (xxi).
The Mind and the Machine explores and contrasts two very different approaches to the question of the human mind. The first half of the book is devoted to the assumptions and implications of a physicalist or strictly naturalist conception of human nature; the second half probes the inferences of a "supernaturalist" understanding of the human person. The result is a philosophical treatise that is at once insightful and accessible.
Three Difficulties of Physicalism
In Part 1 Dickerson underscores what he considers to be inescapable difficulties that issue out of the naturalist's Weltanschauung. Three strike him as worthy of reflection: human creativity, human ecology and our outlook on nature, and the reliability of human reason.
Human creativity—that is, "the ability to bring into being something new, which does not proceed entirely from what has gone before or what already exists" (43)—is causative in nature; because humans bring forth what is original, creativity expresses intention and purpose. The Achilles Heel of the physicalist perspective is that it denies not only "free will" but also "any real possibility of human creativity or human heroism" (46), and thus, self-sacrifice and moral greatness. In the end, this determinist framework—and its negation of free will—simply cannot account for human creativity; rather, "creativity" becomes nothing more than a synonym for randomness. A computer thus cannot legitimately be considered "creative" in any sense of the term.
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The physicalist worldview, moreover, carries with it enormous ecological ramifications. Once we have replaced our brains—and recall that these are thought to be mere computers—why would we need our bodies at all? This, Dickerson believes, is no idle question. After all, in "virtual reality," given the premise of humans needing to be free from the limitations of their physical bodies, physical bodies are no longer necessary; in fact, they become hindrances, given their inherent imperfections and restrictions. The devaluing of the body in our time, which Dickerson observes at many levels (both popular and theoretical), has enormous consequences for thinking about the moral life and about caring for others.
It follows, then, that if physicalism is true, reason itself cannot be considered normative or trustworthy or pursuant of "truth"; rather, it is "accidental" (98). Neither can reason be used to truly "know." Hence, the very presuppositions of science, assumed by theists and non-theists alike, would seem to undermine physicalism, since the cosmos, with its material and non-material causes, exists outside the human mind and is consistent and ordered, a reality that human reason can observe. The implications of these "scientific" realities, for Dickerson, are worth further exploration (Part 2).
J. Daryl Charles is the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including Retrieving the Natural Law (2008), Natural Law and Religious Freedom (2018), and, most recently, Just War and Christian Traditions (forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God's Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 3 (2020). He is a contributing editor to Touchstone.
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