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The Implications of the Mind in Matter: The Prospect of Oblivion

The mind is an inherently fascinating and difficult subject to pin down. Philosophers have been musing over the mysteries of the mind for thousands of years but it is, without doubt, the scientists who find it the most frustrating to study. The subjective nature of the mind makes it ill suited for scientific scrutiny, but scientists have found ways to pursue the matter indirectly. While some scientists have probed the frontier of the mind through behavioral psychology, others have focused their attention on the body and the brain. Many of these scientists are confident that they will inevitably discover the cause of consciousness, a physical explanation for the creation of the mind. Although this is possible, it leads to a conclusion that no one should be in a hurry to embrace. If the mind is created and sustained by the body, a person's existence ceases at death.

Fortunately, that may not necessarily be true. While any argument for the existence of the mind independent of the body might be considered an appeal for the existence of the soul, that may no longer be outside the bounds of scientific possibility.

As of yet, neuroscientists have not found a physical basis for consciousness, in spite of encouraging data. Nor is there a specific imperative to disprove the possibility of the independent existence of the mind. The scientific objection to the existence of spirits or souls is based on the dualistic assumption that if they exist they must be phenomenon entirely separate from the physical universe, and thus beyond the scope of scientific scrutiny. There is nothing more frustrating than having to search for something that is not there by definition.

The problems accessible to normal science are all those about mental functioning. How does the brain integrate data from different sources? How do long-term and short-term memory interact? What are the effects of damage here or there in the brain? What are the causes and limits of blindsight or of synaesthesia? Any question framed in terms of human perceptual functioning, or motor or other functions, is in principle accessible to scientific understanding, just as the engineer can relate the functioning of the computer chip to its internal architecture. (Blackburn, 2004).

The integration of mind and body allows researchers to probe beyond the limits of the brain, and neuroscientists are not the only ones trying to unlock the secrets of consciousness. Efforts

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