In her new book, Am I Just My Brain?, published by The Good Book Company, Dr Sharon Dirckx looks to the body, mind and soul as she seeks to answer one of the enduring questions for mankind: what exactly is a human being?
As a scientist with a PhD in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge and a committed Christian working for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, she is well-versed not only in the scientific approaches to this question, but why they cannot give us the full answer we are looking for.
She talks to Christian Today about the limits of the popular idea that we are little more than a series of chemical reactions and why the evidence stacks up for a more meaningful explanation.
CT: What inspired you to write this book?
Dr Dirckx: I really wanted to write Am I just my brain? because the question 'what does it mean to be a human being?' is fundamental to so many of the questions we are asking today in areas like artificial intelligence, how we care for an ageing population, or beginning and end of life issues.
The question of 'what is a human being?' is fundamental to how we deal with these other contemporary issues and at the heart of that can lie the question: 'what makes us us'?
Into that narrative, there are neuroscientists who say that you are your brain, you are merely a physical being. This view has implications for all of these areas I mention above. It's a question of identity.
In my book, I really wanted to get at the heart of this discussion about the mind, brain and consciousness but in a way that is accessible to the every-day reader. I also wanted it to be accessible to somebody who might not believe in God but who might read it and be taken on a journey.
CT: Your book is quite timely because one of the bestselling writers at the moment is Yuval Noah Harari [author of Sapiens and Homo Deus] and he takes a very different position from you, arguing that we can be reduced to biochemistry. Why do you think that perspective is limited?
Dr Dirckx: It's limited for many different reasons. First of all, at the heart of this question is what's known as the mind-brain problem.
There are two things at play - your physical brain with all of its neurons, chemicals and hormones and then your mind with all of its thoughts, feelings, emotions and decisions. And the million-dollar question at the heart of this is: what is the relationship between the brain and the mind?
To chalk it all down to a physical basis is by no means a foregone conclusion, despite the impression Harari likes to give. He's actually a historian but is making these sweeping statements about issues that have occupied philosophers for centuries and despite the brightest minds being thrown at the problem, there is no consensus on what the relationship between mind and brain is.
It's really a hard problem to solve because you're talking about two entirely different things. You might cut your finger chopping vegetables and note that there would be all kinds of neurons firing in your brain and between your nerve fibres and your skin receptors back to your brain, but at the same time you experience pain.
How do you get from neurons and brain chemistry to what it is like to be you? The relationship between physical processes and your first person experience is disputed. And so for Harari to say that a firm conclusion has been reached is simply not the case.
This view says the forces of nature in your head drive and decide everything. In its strongest form it says there isn't something that it is like to be you.
In response we could ask three questions:
First, is this view internally coherent? In short, no, and there are big implications for meaning. If the forces of nature drive everything then how can we be sure everything we do, say or think is not simply a product of the forces of nature?
Second, does it have explanatory power? Does it explain and make sense of the world we live in? Not at all. It doesn't seem to explain the inner 'me'. When I think of who I am, simply chalking it all down to cell voltages, neurotransmitters and blood flow changes doesn't seem sufficient. A large part of who I am comes from the unseen inner world of thoughts, memories, emotions, decisions and feelings.
Third, can it be lived? According to theologian Francis Schaeffer, true beliefs can be lived out. Do we live as though we are our brains? No. We live as though we do the thinking - not our brains! We live as though we have a unique first-person perspective on the world.
Mindfulness, autobiographies, the urge to help in humanitarian crises all presume the first person perspective is genuine and unique.
Even the notion of post-truth defines truth by experience. We live as if there is far more to us than simply our brains.
CT: It does seem to be a bit of a fashion at the moment to minimise the spiritual dimension of human beings. Where does the spiritual dimension - or the soul - the part of us that cannot be explained by the physical - come into this debate about the brain-mind problem?
Dr Dirckx: Soul means 'life' and is essential to every human being. It is inherent in all of us, related to the breathing in of God into humanity, and is part of what it means to be made in the image of God. It is also not simply a non-physical entity that is disconnected to the body and will one day float off to be with God! That's an ancient Greek understanding of soul.
But the Hebrew understanding of soul predates the Greek and refers to the whole person. For example, in the Psalms, where it says "praise the Lord, my soul", the psalmist is talking about his whole self. There's something about the physical person and the inner person together praising the Lord.
Some would say that everyone has a spirit with a small 's', but to be a Christian is to receive the Holy Spirit. We could depict this as being like a deflated balloon that when you become a Christian, is inflated into something much bigger that has an impact on your mind, your body, your consciousness and everything.
You could argue that everyone has a spirit, but the full work of the Holy Spirit is something that happens when people turn to Christ and are filled with the Spirit of God.
CT: Does that then contradict the theory in the mind-brain debate that the brain comes first and influences the mind? Does Christianity reverse that?
Dr Dirckx: Well, in the book, I'm not really trying to argue from the Christian notion of the person primarily. I'm trying to build the argument based on neuroscience, clinical science, medicine and philosophy.
If it's true that we're not just biochemistry, that there's more to us, then we ought to see this in the scientific and clinical data, and there would be philosophical reasoning that would stack up as well.
What we see is that there is so much more to a person than simply their biochemistry. You only need to look at 'downward causation', where the mind is powerful in its effect on the body. We see this in things like the placebo effect where if you believe that a drug has a therapeutic benefit, it will have some effect on your pain relief.
The mind is powerful in its effect on the body and there are some incredible studies that have shown that, in some cases, the mind is working even though the brain is damaged. A small proportion of persistent vegetative state
(PVS) patients have demonstrated levels of consciousness. This was seen in a study conducted by Professor Adrian Owen and published in Science in 2006. He described such responsive PVS patients as those with "intact minds buried deep within deeply damaged bodies and brains".
If we were merely our brains and no more, we wouldn't see this kind of data.
We don't initially even need to adopt a theological argument to show that we are far more than our brains. Neuroscience and medicine already point in this direction.
CT: All of this has implications for the near future, with the advent of AI and robots. You have talked in the past about how robots are almost seen as an "upgradeable" version of humans. If we are just our minds does that devalue us in some way?
Dr Dirckx: Yes, if you are just your brain, then your brain networks can be replicated artificially and therefore conscious human robots are possible in theory.
But in my book, I talk about the Chinese Room Argument developed by John Searle. It describes a scenario where a person is outside a room passing Chinese symbols to someone inside a room. The person inside the room does not know Chinese but has a book enabling them to decode the Chinese symbols and construct a response and pass it back out of the room. To the person on the outside of the room, it appears that the person on the inside speaks Chinese. That is actually not the case, they just have the capacity to process the symbols.
There is no question that AI has greatly served humanity already with its capacity to process, to increase efficiency, to increase performance in all kinds of areas of life - and to much benefit.
But whether or not androids will eventually possess human levels of consciousness is an entirely different question and there is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. If indeed it is true that we are far more than our brains and we have a non-physical dimension, then robots will never possess human levels of consciousness.
CT: Going back to Harari, you commented that he is making very sweeping claims. In the world of science that you are such a part of, what's your perception? Are scientists receptive to these ideas that we are more than our brain and what we can see? Does that view get a fair hearing or is there a dominant interpretation at the moment?
Dr Dirckx: My experience was that big picture beliefs are not discussed all that much in the lab because scientists are predominantly interested - understandably - in the part of the natural world that they're studying.
But what you often find - and this is my own experience not having always been a Christian and having become one in my time as a biochemistry student - is that actually a lot of scientists are not taught philosophy and are not taught necessarily to think about where a scientific fact ends and where a philosophical belief begins and very often we see these areas being blurred.
If scientists could spend more time thinking about philosophy or combining the teaching of scientific practice with philosophy, I think that would help the cause of science and the discussion of these issues.
CT: There has been the suggestion that science is 'against' faith. Is this an accurate depiction of the scientific world or do you think this depiction of a 'one or the other' duel is overstated?
Dr Dirckx: It depends on what area of science you are in and where you are. I did know other Christians in my working environment as a scientist, but we were definitely in the minority. But it really depends.
I think there are disciplines in which you're more likely to find Christians than in others. But it is clearly not the case that science and religious belief are pitted against each other because there are scientists who believe in God and there are scientists who don't. We see this through history and we see it today. So, it can't be that these two things are incompatible.
It really comes down to your view of the world and how you make sense of science and interpret the data you are generating and where you think it all comes from. That is actually driven by a person's beliefs or worldview. But you can make a case that if God exists then science makes more sense even as a discipline than if He doesn't, because how do we account for the very fact that we think rationally and logically and how do we account for the very fact that our world seems to be ordered such that we can repeat experiments and test things? There's an underlying order there.
A nontheist would chalk this down to unguided evolutionary processes. But is this the best explanation for the incredible orderliness that we see? Or does it make more sense to posit that a rational, ordered Being has overseen this process and has undergirded nature with all of its laws and regularities?
I was a scientist for 10 years and I love science but what is the inference to the best explanation as to why science is even possible? I think there is a strong case that the existence of God is the best explanation for why we even set foot in the lab.
CT: You did a PhD in brain imaging. How has your own hands-on time in the lab, doing the science, influenced your own faith and shaped your belief in God and humans as His creation?
Dr Dirckx: It has shown me that God is the God of the detail as well as the big picture. My undergrad was in biochemistry and I was doing that in the 1990s when the field was expanding and growing.
For example, the human genome project was getting going. Scientists were discovering that where they thought intricacy and detail had stopped, a whole new level of understanding opened up at the molecular level.
To see the beauty right down to the tiniest of molecules and to know that there are trillions of chemical reactions going on in any one cell in your body at any one time is just extraordinary.
This increased my sense of wonder and awe: that God has made things such that the sustaining of life hinges
on activity at the microscopic level that we are simply not conscious of.
On a bigger scale and slightly different note, I became a Christian while studying biochemistry and so I know what it is like to study a scientific discipline both without knowing God and later knowing Him - I changed my mind about God at the age of 20.
As I was studying
for my PhD, I learned again that the Creator of the universe cares about
the details of life and the stresses and pressures of trying to
complete a research project. I learned in a new way that He was someone
to whom I could pray and ask for help and strength to complete the work I
had to do in the lab.My life as a scientist was shaped by a sense of awe and wonder at nature, and also by gratitude that this God that created both DNA and the stars also cares about my life. Holding these two things together was very significant for me as a scientist - Colossians 1:17, "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
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