Chemicals in the brain

My recent discussions of nature and ethics with a couple of friends (see also the three posts before this one) brought up one other interesting topic. One of them introduced it like this.

He began by saying, "You are probably aware that there are psychologists who claim to have proved that free will is an illusion because all our choices are ultimately determined by a preponderance of electrochemical activity, or whatever.  Others have claimed to know the origin of religious belief in brain activity, in one version due to certain interrelationship between the lobes of the brain.  They say that you can produce a religious experience by the right stimulation of the brain with electrodes or drugs; therefore, the inference that God is the cause of these experiences is invalidated." And he asked, if these results were confirmed in a reliable way, wouldn't that have huge consequences for us?

As a piece of rhetoric, of course they might. But the deduction that starts from the experimental results and ends by explaining away God is logically invalid.

Suppose a few of us were sitting in a room talking over a cup of coffee or a mug of beer. And suppose some psychologist were busy studying my brain, all the while. What's he going to see? Well, the optic nerve will transmit electrical impulses into my brain, which will respond with electrical charges here and a production of certain brain chemicals there. The auditory nerves will bring in more electrical impulses, as will the nerves that run from my fingers as they feel the mug or my mouth as it tastes the drink. All in all there will be a veritable symphony of electrical impulses and neurological chemicals. And if we hypothesize that for some reason all this man can see is my brain, he might therefore conclude, "You see? Those so-called friends don't really exist. This whole experience that Hosea thinks he's having is caused by the electrical impulses and the brain chemistry." What's more, the second half of his statement is actually true! It really is true that the reason I think the others exist is (in this hypothetical case where we are all sitting around a table together) that the electrical impulses in my brain give me the sensation of seeing and hearing them. But to jump from that correct observation to the conclusion that none of them really exists is absurd.

Why can't it be the same with God, or the gods? Just because the brain is reacting this way and that is no proof that what it thinks it sees is unreal ... because the only way we can see anything is for our brains to react this way and that. It's an erroneous inference.

The only difference between the example I just gave and the case of someone experiencing theophany is that in real life the psychologist can probably see my friends around the table but he might not be able to detect the divinity because his equipment isn't designed for it. But that's hardly my problem.

My friend then went on to ask, "Could we go on talking about will, habit, virtue, etc. as Aristotle did if we believed that our minds, souls, emotions, beliefs, decisions, etc. were constituted as these modern scientists say they are?  Could we say, 'It doesn’t matter what modern science discovers about the human mind, will, decision-making, emotions, etc. – Aristotelian moral theory will remain a permanently true analysis of human nature'?"

Yes, I think we could. To argue this brings we have to give a little consideration to scale.

The thing is, at a microscopic scale it might turn out that our thoughts and feelings are made out of chemicals and electrical impulses, but that is different from saying that they are meaningless. It's easiest to see this with examples, so let me talk briefly about romantic love. We all know what it feels like to be in love, right? What Joni Mitchell called "the dizzy, dancing way you feel"? It's a physical sensation that interacts in complex ways with our thoughts and feelings and hopes and longings. And I am certain that, at a physiological level, this feeling can be explained in chemical terms: certain hormones are activated and they cause certain reactions in our brains' limbic systems, etc., etc., etc. So what? That doesn't mean love is unreal. It doesn't mean people will stop reading novels about lovers, or stop seeing tear-jerker movies. And it doesn't mean that, when your heart is broken, you go ask a doctor or a pharmacist to make it all better. Because while yes, at a microscopic scale the sensation is made of chemicals and electricity, we don't live at that scale! The only avenue we have for interacting with the phenomenon of romantic love is at a human scale. And at a human scale, romantic love can't be approached by studying chemicals and electricity in the brain; it's approached through novels and movies and poetry and long conversations. And honestly, when it is a question of falling in love or of feeling your heart break, all the electricity and chemicals in the world can just go hang because they won't do you a bit of good.

I had a couple other examples, but they sound flat and pedestrian after this one so I'm going to let them go for now.

A little farther on he put the question another way by asking, "What kind of moral theory would flow from a view of human beings as basically automata?" And really I don't think such an account changes anything, because even if someone thinks he's proven it, nobody really believes it ... I mean, not "seriously" as the Straussians are fond of saying. Nobody lives their life in accordance with this teaching, because it is impossible.

My first argument is just to quote the impish remark I ran across recently, "Even people who think that everything in life is predetermined look both ways before they cross the street."

My second argument is almost as flippant: on the scale of philosophical seriousness, arguing that human beings are automata is no different from arguing that none of this is really happening because I'm just dreaming it. (Or because you are, I guess.) The answer to such a claim has to be, "OK, now what?" If this is a dream it's a pretty lifelike dream. So after I check whether I can fly (because sometimes in my dreams I can fly) -- nope, just tried, that didn't work -- all I can do is to act as if it's all real. Likewise even if you believe you are an automaton, that doesn't mean you can stop paying your bills or ignore traffic signs. You have to go right on living the way you lived before ... which means acting as if you are a moral agent with free will. Like with my earlier remarks about why the Human Good is compulsory, you really don't have a choice about it. And when you need guidance about how to live as a moral agent with free will, ... well it's like what I said about love: the only useful advice is what's written at a human scale, not a microscopic one. And what advice do we find at a human scale? That's where Aristotle and Plato and Cicero and all the others come into their own.

We are stuck at this level. Pretending that the norms of this level -- this scale -- don't apply to us because it's all just meaningless chemicals is a great way to spend undergraduate bull sessions. But if you try to live that way, you get Leopold and Loeb. Or, to say it differently, nobody can live that way. Not really, and not in the long term. No matter what the guys in the laboratory tell us they have proven.