Is the mind a machine, or is it a soul? This is the fast emerging modern debate - which began slowly with the materialist world view but has accelerated in the era of Artificial Intelligence. At the end of this road, lies Jesus - who has set the archetype for what it means to be human - fully human. It is immensely helpful to consider this debate over the course of its history - and in this talk, this history is what Ron lays out.

1. The “Hard Problem”
David Chalmers
Is there a Ghost
in the Machine?
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2. 2

3. Mirror, mirror on the wall, is there anyone there at all?
Our sense of who we are and our feelings are a product of biological
processes in the brain. The London Times 20 Sept 2005
Look at your own reflection. What do you see other than machinery. Your face
is an animated device attached to the outer surface of a bony box. Concealed
bands of fibre tug the surface tissue this way and that. You may imagine that
the thinking, feeling “you” is somewhere inside the bony box. But if you
looked inside, you’d just find more machinery.
The gelatinous substance of the brain is a dense matrix of billions of robotic
cells. Inside the cells are other intricate machines. There’s no one in there. So
how does the conscious you clamber from the darkness of the box out into
the bright arena of subjective experiences?
No one has yet fathomed how the material substance of the brain can
conceivably give rise to conscious awareness. This is known as the “Hard
Problem”. Neuroscientists remain upbeat about a solution, but some
philosophers have given up the ghost. Transmutation of meat to mind is
alchemy beyond the scope of human intellect.
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4. But when it comes to the neural circuitry of the self we arrive at a conflict
between our natural intuitions of selfhood (that mysterious essence
occupying the space behind the face) and the facts of brain science (the
vacant machinery).
We recoil from images of ourselves as soulless machines, yet we often equate
“the self” with the machinery of “the body”. We all own a body and claim
sovereignty over it, but when we speak of the self we usually have something
else in mind – a bundle of thoughts, feelings and emotions, overseen by an
ethereal, observing “I”.
The brain is revealed to be precisely what we are – and precisely what we are
not. The grey, materialist picture I have painted of the brain as vacant
machine merely provides the backdrop to the real stuff of the self, which is
story telling and imagination. We are not that soggy mass of robotic cells,
although we depend on them. We are, rather, the tales they tell.
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5. Pythagorean Atomism
c. 570 – c. 495 BC
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6. c.460 — c.370 BC
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7. Aristotle 384-322 BC
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8. Epicurus 341-270 BC
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10. “The crucial thing is being able
to move the earth without
creating a thousand
inconveniences.” Simplicius
from Galileo’s Dialogue
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11. Newton Finishes the Job.
1643-1727
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Celestial motion is merely terrestrial rectilinear
motion with a gravitational force added.
Calculus allows calculation of most forms of motion.

12. John Donne 1572-1631
“And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it.
And freely men confess that this world’s spent
When in the Planets, and the Firmament
They seeke so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies.
‘Tis all in peeces, all cohaerrence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation.”
John Donne
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13. Thomas Hobbes 1588 - 1679
An English philosopher contemporary of Galileo,
understood immediately the profound effect of the
Galilean dynamics:
“Thus mind will be nothing but the motions of
certain parts of an organic Body”
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