Donald MacCrimmon MacKay

This book was written in 1980 by a Christian neuroscientist who attempts to deal with the questions of a materialistic mind. Even though he attempts to keep a lot of research details out because he knows the field is changing so rapidly, there is a lot of the book that has to be disregarded now, even some of his points about what a created system can or cannot do.

There were two important ideas I gained from this book. First, he emphasized the that there are different "viewing distances" when observing or studying the brain/mind. Just because there are neural correlates for everything that we experience as a human does not mean that our subjective experiences are less real than the neuroscientific viewpoint. Our "I-story" as he calls it may be grounded in the "O(bserver)-story", but that by no means excludes understanding ourselves as a unified and conscious person. Even within the scientific understand there are different levels- cellular, molecular, systems, etc.

The most interesting point that he made was in regards to determinism. I won't go into all his details, but he divides the idea into three claims:

1 - All physical events have physical causes
2 - All events in our space-time owe their being to the upholding creative will of God
3 - The future - and in particular my future actions - are inevitable. If only I knew it, I have no real options, and my sense of freedom in choosing is an illusion based on lack of information.

He only has a problem with the third claim and proceeds to show that the first two claims do not necessitate the third. The first two are descriptions of the same reality. The third begs the question of "inevitable for whom?" Other people may be able to predict my actions, but if I know those predictions, my actions may change because they are affected by what I believe about the outcome of those actions. He uses an example of passing a test. Other may be quite certain that I will pass and think it an inevitable reality, but what if I was the type of person who, because I assumed I was going to pass, became overconfident and didn't study hard enough.

But what if someone was able to predict my change in behavior based on what I knew about the situation? The only problem is that if he told me what my actions would be, that would be based on false information because he was assuming that my actions would change because of what he told me. So, he predictions are up to my choosing, still.

He follows up by saying that the brain is so complicated that it is hardly likely we'll ever get to such a point anyway.

How does one reconcile the sovereignty of God with free will? I think one of the main problems lies in what exactly the definition of determinism really is.… (mais)