Somehow, the complexity of the brain engenders consciousness. All there is, they would say, is matter, protons, neutrons, and electrons interacting with one another, making up molecules, neurons, and dendrites. Materialists would dismiss the existence of the soul or avoid attributing anything nonmaterial as the source of human consciousness. How, then, could it interact or affect matter? If thoughts were somehow caused by the soul, how would they cause the brain to act? This is sometimes called the binding problem: how does soul bind to the brain?
(Philosophers would say soul and matter were two ontologically different substances.) Being immaterial, the soul had no physical properties. The challenge for Descartes was the different nature of the soul-stuff. Descartes took Plato’s lead and ran with it, becoming the father of modern dualism, placing soul apart and before body (or matter): “I think, therefore I am,” means that thought precedes material existence. Aristotle, on the other hand, would not separate the two. Plato was a dualist, believing that the soul inhabited the body for a short time before returning to its heavenly home. The discussion goes back thousands of years. “How we know we are” remains profoundly confusing, notwithstanding the remarkable progress in cognitive neurosciences and computer science. This level of complexity invites mystery. But for all that we currently know, the brain is it. Granted, there may be other, more complex, entities somewhere in the vastness of our cosmic bubble, such as an AI civilization in a galaxy billions of light years away.
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