Human Dignity and Bioethics

The Mystery of the Human Soul | 71
the order of the universe is not an accident but a necessary rational
order with intelligent beings at the top. I believe these two points
can be plausibly defended using the insights of modern philosophers
such as John Searle and Paul Davies, but they remain speculative and
are at best probable truths.
John Searle supports Aristotle by showing that the mind’s relation
to the brain is like an embodied rational soul. In his recent book,
Mind, he argues that the debates about mind and body have reached
an impasse because “neither dualism nor materialism is acceptable,
yet they are presented as the only possibilities.” Materialism is inadequate
because it dishonestly denies the real existence of conscious
states by trying to reduce them to motions of the brain. Yet, consciousness
is just as real as the physical particles of a table because all
it claims to be is a mental state of inner awareness that is capable of
causing bodily actions (e.g., when I tell my arm to go up, it goes up).
Searle also rejects dualism because the mind is not a different substance
from the brain and can be explained by neurological processes,
a view he endorses under the label “biological naturalism.” 15
Searle’s primary argument is that mental states arise from the neurons
and synapses of the brain but operate on a different level. This
is a distinction of “levels” not of substances, like the different states
of molecules in a table which are in motion at the micro level while
being “solid” at the macro level in their lattice structures. By analogy,
the brain cells that fire across synapses at the physical-chemical level
are the same cells that produce conscious states at the mental level—
which means that conscious states are “features” of the brain (like the
table’s solidity) that are more than just motions of the brain. Despite
this clever analogy, Searle has to admit that the precise causal relation
of consciousness to neurological processes is “largely unknown” 16 and
“we really do not know how free will exists in the brain.” 17 If he were
a bit more humble, Searle might also admit that calling the mind a
“feature” of the brain is really what Aristotle meant by a rational soul
united to a human body or an embodied rational soul.
We may still ask, however, why the rational soul confers a special
moral status on man and is worthy of dignity and respect. It would
deserve respect only if the natural universe exists as a rational order
with intelligent beings at the top for some necessary reason—a view
that can be derived from a remarkable essay by Paul Davies entitled,