Editor’s note: This is a long but important question with an even longer answer!

Question:

Kind of a tough question here that has been on my mind for a couple years now…   I’ve been reading up about free will, philosophy of mind, and neuroscience and am having trouble reconciling these things with the Christian faith/ the idea of a soul.  I’ve come up with the following ideas:

1. The concepts of morality, (libertarian) free will, and Christianity are intimately connected. It’s hard to conceive of any of them without the other.

2. In order for humans to have free will, there needs to be some sort of immaterial component to the person such that it’s not just a person’s physical brain acting and reacting solely based off of physical law and deterministically (or randomly) producing action.
The immaterial agent/ part of the person needs to (I believe) have meaningful causal influence over the physical brain or else it is just a passive observer to what the body does (pretty much property dualism).

3. Saying that this immaterial mind is emergent from the brain doesn’t seem to help since its behavior would be entirely dependent on physical brain states/ components. This again seems to fall into the trap of a non-causal mind; no free will.

4. I think a sort of substance dualism, where there is mutual interaction between the mind and brain, would give free will the best chance of existing. Property dualism just sounds like physicalism.

5. The biggest objection to substance dualism is the “interaction problem”: How does an immaterial substance causally influence the physical?

I should also be clear that I don’t find the Libets experiments to be particularly compelling in either direction. It is definitely jumping the gun in terms of concluding epiphenomenalism.

Okay, now that some context is provided, I can ask my question:

Is there any way that you can think of that would even in principle solve this so called “interaction problem”?  I was thinking maybe quantum mechanics since that breaks the deterministic mold that a lot of people presuppose, but that probably sounds speculative saying an immaterial agent is “harnessing” that power. (Though, I suppose any theory of how to solve this would be speculative)  This is one of those things that I have come across where it feels like an atheist has the upper hand. I would think that if there is some sort of immaterial agent impacting brain states and therefore decisions that this would have been detected by now through observation of its effects when studying the brain. Of course, I am no scientist, so you can correct me if I’m wrong about how much neuroscientists really know about how the brain works. I realize the field is not nearly as mature as physics.

There is, of course, the “hard problem of consciousness” which I agree is a cracking problem to solve (and I think is much more expected under theism) but I don’t think there is anything in the problem that necessitates that the subjective experience alone would definitely have a causal role.  That being said, I think intuition/ lived experience, the Kalam, and simply considering the other worldviews on the table heavily supports Christianity. The neuroscientific arguments are a tough nut to crack though.

TLDR: I was just curious about if you had any ideas about how in immaterial agent could influence the brain and therefore decisions. Some sort of idea to “solve” the interaction problem based on our current understanding of how the world works.

Thanks

Answer:

My first impression is that you are looking for fairly clear-cut and well-defined, philosophically defensible answers to these VERY important questions.  I am afraid that such an answer will not be available.  Philosophers do what they should do, which is to devise comprehensive systems of ideas and well-defined terms, but what makes us human persons will probably defy all such descriptions.  I believe that your search for these answers, and you attempt to look for the best and most helpful approach to answering these questions is, nevertheless a very good and noble search.  I really appreciate that you are thinking deeply, and asking skeptical questions. All very good in my opinion.  But… because I feel that the question is too squishy, I have a feeling that you may not really like my answer.  However, I will do my best.
We have to ask ourselves, what is the starting point for our inquiry.  Do we start from ground zero and only accept answers from a materialist perspective?  Do we begin by assuming that the only things which are real are things which can be observed and measured?  If so, then we are a materialist, and I believe our search will be hopelessly lost, as we are beginning with an assumption which is simply not true.  There is a supernatural reality.  There is a God.  There exist realities which cannot be measured.  If we begin with wrong assumption, we are bound to reach wrong conclusions.
Or we can begin by reading the Bible, deciding what it tells us about people and about physical reality, and to heck with science and what it tells us about brains, and the discoveries of neuroscience.  I believe that this would be a more fruitful approach than the first, because it at least does not begin the search based on a patently false assumption.  However, history has taught us that in talking about physical matters, it is a mistake to begin with purely religious texts.  Ask Galileo.  The problem with your question, of course, which makes it one of the hardest possible questions, is that it concerns things which apparently have both a physical and a non-physical component.  These questions are inherently sticky.
So, let me start by carefully considering our starting point.  My starting point would be to ask what are some things we know before we delve into the actual question.  Here are some things I know.
God is real.  There is a Creator, and that Creator is not a physical person.  Exactly what God is, I am not sure, but he does not have a brain.
I am made in God’s image.  Exactly what that means, I am not certain, but it involves things which cannot be fully described by physical and repeatable observation.
I am a physical person who has a brain.
I have a thing that the Bible calls a soul and a spirit.  These things may or may not have a physical aspect, but they are certainly not purely physical.  In fact, they have a nature which is “above” the physical (exactly what that means I am not sure) in that my soul and my spirit continue after I die.
All of these things I know for a variety of reasons.  Due to evidence for biblical inspiration, due to the Kalam Cosmological argument, due to the teleological and moral arguments, and due to my own “religious” experiences, I know that God is real, and that the universe was created.  My knowledge of science is in agreement with these things, but it forms only a fairly small part of the reasons I am convinced these things are true.
I know that I am made in God’s image, both because the inspired Word of God (and I have a TON of evidence for biblical inspiration), and because my own human experience tells me that important parts of what I am agrees with this statement.  This includes that I am a person.  I am conscious.  I have free will.  I believe that these statements are not circular reasoning, but I can understand how an atheist might believe that they are.  But there you go.
I know I have a physical brain because science tells me so.
I know that I have a soul and a spirit.  I know this principally because the inspired Bible tells me so, and the resurrected Jesus tells me so, but everything I know, even from neuroscience, tells me that I am not just a bunch of chemicals, neurotransmitters, and neural networks.
These truths inform my answers to your questions.  These are the things that I already know, and they VERY strongly inform my answers, as they should.  For example, any conclusion which we think we come to based on natural science which contradicts these things I know to be true, I will be EXTREMELY skeptical of these things.
OK, I am ready to answer your question, but I just ran out of time, so I will send and I will get back to you.
Beginning with what I know to be true, then my philosophy of mind must fit what I know to be true and not the reverse.  So, what is the relationship between conscious self/mind/soul and brain?  I believe that monism does not work, because I have a body and because Lazarus was raised from the dead on the fourth day.  Also, strict dualism does not work either.  Of the models you propose, I believe that substance dualism comes closest to describing the reality.  We are not “brains on sticks.”  Strict DeCartian dualism (I think, therefore I am) does not describe reality well.  There is some sort of brain/mind/self interaction.  You seem to want to know what that mechanism is.  Well, I have no idea.  I am not sure the term “mechanism” even applies.  I know what I know, which is that I am not a body.  I have a body, but I do not exist apart from my body.  This seems to be something like what you are calling substance dualism. There is an interaction between conscious self/soul and brain. The way I like to think of it, the human brain is a God-experiencing machine.  It is well designed so that a person can be connected with both God and body.  It is designed so that persons can have feelings, including feelings about our Creator and one another.
You mention quantum mechanics.  I have a PhD in chemical physics, and one of my specialties is in quantum mechanics.  It is my experience that those who invoke quantum mechanics in philosophical questions about free will are not physicists.  Quantum mechanics is very important–indeed absolutely necessary–to describe the nature of atoms and molecules.  It does seem to defeat a strict determinism, but I do not believe that it can explain the nature of free will.  To me, I do not need a physical or even a philosophical defense or explanation of free will.  A good friend of mine, John Beggs, a physicist and neuroscientist has given a lecture: Neuroscience: Room for the Soul several times (you can find a version at my web site).  He demonstrates conclusively that neuroscience cannot disprove the soul or free will.  To me, free will clearly exists.  It is a common sense statement about reality,  I will let the philosophers do what they want with this, and I will admit that I cannot give a mechanistic explanation of how mind/soul can override body/brain so that we have free will, but one thing I know:  I have free will!  I know it because the inspired Word of God tells me so (Deuteronomy 30:19-21) and my own human experience tells me so in any case.
Sure, there is a hard problem with consciousness.  What is it?  How can a brain support this thing we call consciousness, which determinists call a mere epiphenomenon.  Well, I have bad news for you.  I cannot solve this problem.  But one thing I know–consciousness exists.  I exist.  Let me say it again–I exist. I love my wife. I am not merely chemicals and electrical signals.  I cannot solve the consciousness problem, which is perhaps a bit disappointing, but, in the final analysis. I exist.  I am.  When I say that “I” want to go to the store, this is not a nonsense statement.  “I” cannot be explained by purely physical phenomena.  Again, I will let the philosophers do with this what they will.  I am not a philosopher. I am a scientist. But one thing I know, and any philosophy which does not agree with this is wrong. Period.  I exist.  I have a relationship with others and with God.
I hope you are not disappointed that I have neither solved the interaction problem, nor have I solved the consciousness problem. But I do not need to because there are some things I know to be true, and any theory which does not allow this to be true is proved wrong a-priori.
John Oakes

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