This ties in to some extent with my previous thoughts on my thanatophobia, or at least it does in my mind anyway.

There are two main views of consciousness. One, Cartesian duality, suggests that the mind is a separate and non-physical construct which influences the brain. In this case, the mind could easily be considered to be the equivalent of a soul, and so this option tends to be preferred by people who believe, or want to believe, in an afterlife.

The second view is a more materialistic view, and it is that what we perceive as and understand as consciousness is entirely a construct of the physical brain and without this brain there can be no consciousness. This certainly seems to be the more scientific approach and indeed is the approach favoured by a number of prominent scientists, such as Richard Dawkins. This is generally the default atheistic postion.

And then of course you’ve got the agnostic position to add on top of that: which in a restatement of the famous cogito ergo sum declares that I know my consciousness exists now, but I have no way of knowing whether or not that consciousness will exist after my physical brain no longer exists, if I do find out, it will mean that it does, but if it doesn’t, then I won’t be here to know otherwise.

Are you still with me so far?

Now I’m not an expert on either position, so I may be mis-representing one or both positions, but there are to my mind problems with both. With the dualism theory, you need a mechanism by which the incorporeal “mind” can influence the physical world in terms of the brain, for which we have no adequate explanation.

And with the purely materialistic theory, we’re left with the certain knowledge that there’s no such thing as free will, and that what appears to be free will, including my decision to write this article about free will, is actually deterministic.

I guess I’d better explain that, right?

Firstly, the materialistic argument is explicit that there is no “external” mind; our consciousness is entirely a product of the chemicals, electrical impulses and so on that rattle around in our brains. This means that the thoughts we are thinking are generated not because of some external mind, but because of a particular state of electronic impulses and chemical balances. Right?

Now take a step back.

If there’s no such thing as an “external” mind, then nothing has ever had an external mind. The earliest life forms to develop what could be termed “thoughts” (whether actually conscious thoughts or just impulses) were determined purely by their environment, because there’s nothing external to that that could have come into play. At this point, it all comes down to physics.

Your thoughts are therefore purely a product of your internal physical environment .The idea of “nurture” is redundant. Why?

Okay, another step back.

Let’s recap: the first creature to have thoughts was having them purely on the basis of it’s physical environment. So what influences the thoughts that the descendants of this creature have? Genetics, which can be considered part of the organism’s historical environment. It’s upbringing — which is down to the physical environment it’s parent was inhabiting because we’ve accepted the parent did not have thoughts independent of it’s own environment, and then the organism may have thoughts created by its own physical environment.

At no point can any organism stop and act in a way contrary to it’s genetic nature (historical environment), it’s nurture (historical environment) or it’s immediate physical environment, because any thoughts it has must be caused by one of these.

That’s not to say the future is entirely deterministic: events that are truly random may still influence others, so radioactive decay, genetic mutation and so on may all change the story of the planet, but, according to this logic, every thought that everyone has and every decision that everyone makes, and therefore every action that everyone takes can theoretically be traced back to some form of physical root.

This is the materialist view, like it or lump it.

Which presumably means that if I were to commit a series of crimes, it might appear that I’d made some conscious decision to do this — and I may even have felt that I made such a decision — but instead it would have been an inevitable consequence of my internal physical environment, which I have not at any point in time been able to exert any free will over — because I simply haven’t had any, despite the fact that I may have believed otherwise — because I’m not able to think thoughts that aren’t created by my internal or external physical world.

I’m not saying that this theory is nonsense. I’m just pointing out that if you hold to this theory, you must be prepared to take it to its ultimate conclusion. It could certainly be argued that the decisions and opinions I arrive at are those that a cleverly programmed computer fed with the same or similar information could arrive at. Possibly a sufficiently sophisticated computer could become self-aware. At this point would it still be running a set of programs, or would it be conscious? If we’d term it conscious, then is that consciousness simply a result of a sufficiently sophisticated set of programs?

… and let’s leave The Matrix out of this!

In which case, the whole of human achievement is a fallacy: it was something that has been derived by a combination of the physical environment and by random factors and nothing else.

So we’re left with two unsatisfactory options:

• Body and mind are separate; the mind is a separate and non-physical entity such as a soul which can exert influence over physical entities; or
• The mind is a product of the body and physical environment and there is therefore no such thing as free will

I’m not saying that either of these options is inherently more right than the other. All I’m saying is that these are the only two options, take your pick.

… and yes, this is what it’s like to live inside my head.