Spooky Essay!

Part of an essay on the “spookiness” of abstract thought in a physical world

Dualism is ostensibly supported by the immateriality of conscious states versus brain-states.  Brain-states are a function of a brain that logically must occupy a particular area in space; however, one would think that spatial position is unrelated to any abstract thought.  This reality would seemingly conflict with Leibniz law – no two objects share exactly the same properties.  The disembodied nature, or immateriality, of thought itself is a concept that is seemingly fundamental to the dualist philosophical perspective.  Is this just too ‘spooky’ to reconcile as a viable philosophical stance, given the eeriness of a supernatural world?  What if that world then acts alongside (or in coordination with) physical reality?

In a sense, physical immateriality is irreconcilable with a physical world – assigning a spatial locus to an abstraction is itself unreasonable.  To assume conjunction with the metaphysical, one must address the fundamental untenability of a non-physical world that doesn’t have a particular locus in regards to any given state of consciousness.  “Spookiness” is a term that warrants further context.  

This apparent conflict seems to hinge on a philosophical repulsion that, under scrutiny, is merely aesthetic.  It’s unreasonable to claim that “spookiness” bears any critical response.  In effect, spatial position is unrelated to any mental process, implying or necessitating a disconnect between consciousness and the physical laws that dictate everything else.  In order for one to accept this disconnect, one needs to pull a roster of arbitrary and non-empirical governing principles to replace/ supersede physical law; the alternative to this preternatural realm, is an untethered, eerily enigmatic, and ultimately supernatural realm without any rhyme or reason – and, surely, this is too spooky a conceptualization of existence to consider seriously.  The ‘ghostliness’ of dualistic philosophy is most readily apparent in the unpredictability of the laws that might govern that world.  

One could instead approach thought as binary truth.  Consider a cold: though a medieval peasant with a cold has no concept of the virus which causes a cold, a cold is a cold nonetheless.  One either has a cold, or one doesn’t; any further description is superfluous.

One naturally assumes that it is non-sensical definitionally to ascribe a physical position to thought.  Though the location of a thought is syntactically valid, some (i.e. the writer of this essay) don’t consider it necessary or even warranted to clarify.  Clearly a conscious state is simply a brain-state, and vice-versa.  Again – consider a common cold; with sufficiently close insight into the natural world, a cold can easily be positionally described in terms of the microscopic viruses that cause a cold’s symptoms.  Or perhaps, depending on the specificity of one’s questioning of a cold’s locus, a cold could correspond to the entire host of the virus; or the physical symptoms of the cold; or any one of a host of possible specifications that should satisfy even the most persistent skeptic.

Civilization has collectively divested thousands of years of scientific contemplation and research into the complex and beautiful mechanics of the physical world around us; to disregard this effort in favor of a dualistic reality is to accept a world that is, in essence, strung together by magical – i.e spooky – thinking.