It is the central mystery of existence, the one toward which all other mysteries converge. The 17th-century French philosopher Descartes often gets credit for posing it first, but Socrates pondered it millennia earlier, as did Buddha and other Eastern sages. I’m talking about the mind-body problem, which encompasses the riddles of consciousness, the self, free will, morality, and the meaning of life.
Modern scientists and philosophers often make the mind-body problem seem hopelessly esoteric, a topic only for experts. Some hard-core materialists insist it is a pseudo-problem, which vanishes once you jettison archaic concepts like “the self” and “free will.” Actually, the mind-body problem is quite real, simple, and urgent. We face it whenever we wonder who we really are, can be, and should be, individually and as a species.
Long before I heard of it, I was obsessed with the mind-body problem. I touch on it, directly or indirectly, in my previous four books, even The End of War, the epilogue of which is called “In Defense of Free Will.” Writing hasn’t been cathartic. The more I write about the problem, the more it grips me.
For thousands of years, prophets, poets, and philosophers have told us stories about who we really are. But these stories conflict with each other, and we have no way to decide which one is true. We choose one story over another out of personal preference, or taste. You like Christianity, I prefer Buddhism or neo-Platonism.
Now science is converging on a definitive, objectively true solution to the mind-body problem, backed up by hard empirical evidence — or so some science enthusiasts believe. I once shared this belief, but no longer. In 2015, after attending a workshop on a bizarre new theory of consciousness, I started looking at the mind-problem in a new way. I decided that our responses to the mind-body problem will always be emotional as well as rational, a matter of taste as much as truth.
Science has told us a lot about our minds and bodies, but in the end it’s just giving us more stories that we choose for subjective reasons, because we find them consoling, or beautiful, or meaningful. Science will never discover an objectively true solution to the mind-body problem, which tells all of us once and for all who we are, because that solution doesn’t exist. We can’t escape our subjectivity when we try to solve the riddle of ourselves.
This thesis has an upside. If science can’t solve the mind-body problem, that means all of us are free to decide for ourselves who we are and what life means. I have spent three years fleshing out this perspective in a book, Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity & Who We Really Are. I explore my thesis by delving into the professional and personal lives of nine mind-body experts, including a neuroscientist, a psychologist, an evolutionary biologist, an economist, a philosopher, and even a novelist.
The book is, I admit, odd. It offers my subjective takes on my subjects’ subjective takes on subjectivity. I didn’t want an agent, editor, or publisher to second-guess me, so I wrote the book without a contract. I want to be read more than I want to make money, so I posted the book for free at mindbodyproblems.com.
My hope is that Mind-Body Problems will provoke reactions from readers. Send yours to me at jhorgan@highlands.com. If your comments meet minimal standards of civility and intelligibility, I’ll post them in my book’s discussion section. Who knows, you might even get me to change my mind, again, about the mind-body problem.
Mind-Body Problems is dedicated to my students here at Stevens, who keep me on my toes.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters.
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