Materialism and intelligent design
Michael Egnor makes the following argument on "Evolution News & Views", an Intelligent Design website:
The brain is a material substance. It has location, dimensions, weight, temperature, and energy. It also has parts; it has a superior surface, a medial boundary, a left side and a right side. As such, it can interact with other things that have similar properties- things that have matter and parts and energy….
Altruism, in contrast, has no matter or energy. It has no location, no weight, no dimension, no temperature. It has no properties of matter. Altruism entails things like purpose and judgment, which aren’t material. Altruism has no parts, in the sense that there is a left-side of altruism and a right side of altruism…
There is no shared property yet identified by science through which brain matter can cause mental acts like altruism. Material substances have mass and energy. Ideas have purpose and judgment. There is no commonality.
Of course, this argument is, taken another way, the reason that people are materialists about the idea of a human soul.? There is no way that a material brain and a non-physical "soul" can interact; ergo only the material exists.
There are a few ways that?Egnor’s argument is problematic for his position (that of an omniscient and omnipotent God creating, designing and upholding the material world).? First, here’s his argument in summary:
P1 The brain is physical
P2 Altruism is mental
(P4 The mental is non-physical)
P5 The physical and the non-physical cannot interact causally
Therefore, altruism is not caused by the brain, but "immaterial causes."
Egnor disproves ID
But isn’t the argument below also valid and sound, based on what Egnor is saying?
P1 The?world is physical
P2 god is spiritual
(P4 The?spiritual is non-physical)
P5 The physical and the non-physical cannot interact causally
Therefore, the world is not caused by god, but material causes.
Oops.? That’s a problem.? I suppose the way out for him would be to deny P1 (unlikely), deny P4 (also unlikely) or to construe the relationship between the spiritual and non-physical differently.? That would mean changing P5: rather than all physical and non-physical things being unable to interact, there may be certain kinds of non-physical things (such as the spiritual) which can.
But the?justification for P5 is "[The mental]?shares no properties in common with matter", implying that only things with shared properties can interact.? To support intelligent design, we?have to find some kind of property that god shares with matter.? Perhaps spatio-temporal location?? If god is co-located with matter (omnipresent), then he could interact with it.? But if god is co-located with matter, then what is the difference between god and matter??
Why is altruism "mental"?
The other problem for Egnor is that he simply helps himself to the idea that altruism is an non-physical thing. The way we describe altruism does involve attributing purpose, judgement and other mental capacities to behaviors. Yet if he is driving at (which I’m not sure that he is–his conclusion is unclear to me) the argument that humans have souls, or something immaterial that causes altruism, he’s proven too much.
Purpose and judgement are displayed among animals–is he arguing that non-physical realities cause their behaviors? Is the altruism in chimpanzees because they have a chimp soul?
Connected with this is his complaint that altruism doesn’t have a "left side" or "right side"–it isn’t material or located in space and time. But is this true? If I am altruistic, doesn’t that occur in relationship with physical beings at a specific time and place? Altruism is a behavior. We call certain actions "altruistic" based on a background of concepts. And yes, it’s tough to delineate that definition (just as it is difficult to say what counts as a game compared to a sport…) However, this doesn’t mean that altruism is mysteriously immaterial.
And, more to the point of Egnor’s argument, behaviors are caused by chemicals, by physical processes, by muscles and by neurons. Yes, it’s mind-boggling to think of our mental processes in terms of these causes, but that isn’t a reason to deny it (PZ Myers has noted the famous Phineas Gage episode in connection with the science of Egnor’s assertion).
It cuts both ways
Finally, if altruism is such a "mental" thing, unable to interact with anything physical, then how is it that acts of altruism impact our brains? Why can we see chemical changes in response to the actions of others, or thinking about our own actions, which contain the mysterious elements of "purpose" and "judgment"?
Chimp image from JaneGoodall.org