Even today, cognitive scientists struggle to understand how consciousness arises from matter, though few doubt that it does.
But we still can't explain how mind arises from matter or how, in turn, mind acts on the brain.
I would say that quite a few scientists, both inside and outside the neurosciences, do doubt that consciousness arises from matter.
Jason Bregman Delray Beach, Fla. Adam Kirsch, in his review of Anthony Gottlieb's book "The Dream of Reason," writes, "Even today, cognitive scientists struggle to understand how consciousness arises from matter, though few doubt that it does" ("What Makes You So Sure?," September 5th).
Moreover, I would question whether counting is a good way to assess the validity of belief, since the idea that consciousness arises from matter is not a scientific finding but a dogma based on acceptance of the same Cartesian world view that Kirsch describes so nicely in his review.
This note of macabre camp doesn't suit a man who eschewed all forms of egoistic fuss as he solved the most important logic problem of his time, saved countless lives by defeating a Nazi code, conceived the computer, and rethought how mind arises from matter.
Clearly, then, in so far as we have any idea of causation as it exists in the world, we must conclude that thought and consciousness can indeed arise from matter and motion (as the materialists maintain).
Objective science has failed to explain how consciousness arose from matter.
In brief, the materialistic position becomes "We have found all the data that can be found, and from our findings the conjecture that mind arose from matter is as reliable as it can be.
One of the limitations of our study is arising from the subject matter itself.
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