Three Metaphysical Questions Without Answers (maybe)
There are three questions which have vexed me for at least 10 years, almost half my life. I am Freddie Plato and my twenty-fifth birthday is March 9, 2013. (No presents, please, but thanks anyway). First, I wonder why I am me and you are you and Joe Shmo is Joe Shmo. Consider: Billions of people have been born, and most have died. At conception you have two cells merging into one and later dividing to become a person, a bunch of stuff called DNA, chemicals, all that. And all this adds up to what I call 'me'. But how did this consciousness which I call 'myself' connect with --- reside in --- my brain rather than in one of the other billions of brains in other bodies, now and all the way back in time and all over the world? All the other billions of bodies and brains belong to others. How and who decided that this particular brain and body would house this particular mind, soul and consciousness that I call "myself".
Second, Am I the same 'me' that I was yesterday, five years ago, 10 years ago? How do I know? If we assume continuity of personality, as I do, isn't that a straw in the wind indicating that there is some Great Mind behind all this? Otherwise we could be a robot remembering the past, not a person who was actually in the past.
Third: The brain is physical --- a bunch of cells arranged in a complex way. You can dissect it all you want without finding any person --- any 'me' --- there. (Wait until I'm dead, please). Yet we know that the physical world and the mind are intimately related. A blow on the head, alcohol, anesthetics , Alzheimers, arteriosclerosis --- all these alter thought and personality, and at death the mind or soul goes out. (It may survive death, as Christians like myself and some others maintain but that is another matter). How do we explain something which is obviously immaterial and yet altered, even radically, by material, physical events and things? William James, the philosopher, agreed with atheists that thought is a function of the brain, but he went beyond that to maintain that, yes, thought is a function of the brain but it is more than that. It is a transmitting function, like a radio or TV transmitter and receiver. In other words, his difference with atheists was that he did not believe that thought is only a function ot the brain. It is the 'only' or 'merely' idea which separates a religious philosophy from and atheistic, materialist one. That is how william James believed that he was able to combine functional physical brain with a limited life and an immaterial soul which is capable of surviving death.
And while I have pondered these three questions for at least ten years, I really don't have any very good answers --- or at least any better answers than the ideas of William James. I am a Christian, but there we get into the subject of faith and that's not what this is about. It is a much more imporant matter, but it is another matter. Why think about these things? Because God gave us minds inside of brains and it is good to use His gifts.
