Bob,
When you contrast your view of "the mind as a bogus concept” from Cartesian dualism, you are setting up a false alternative. Objectivists do not accept Descartes’ view that the mind is a fundamentally separate substance from the body—i.e., that they are somehow inherently opposite in nature. This way of thinking led to the mind-body dichotomy, which is manifested in so many destructive forms—e.g., that the spiritual realm is somehow “superior” to the material, or that brute savages are better equipped to deal with the real world than intellectuals.
Objectivists reject that view totally. We see mind and body as fundamentally harmonious, and consider that the mental is dependent on the physical, although distinct from it. Most Objectivists consider that the mind, or consciousness, is an evolutionary development, which emerged at a certain point in the increasing biological complexity of life forms. Descartes viewed the mind as a unique nonphysical “substance,” comparable to the mystical concept of God.
You appear to be advocating a viewpoint known as hard reductionism—that all phenomema of biology, including consciousness, are ultimately reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry. (Hard reductionism differs from soft reductionism in that the soft reductionist does not claim the same level of certainty about this issue.) The fact is that we do not have such knowledge, either about biology or about consciousness. We are not omniscient. Until we have a complete understanding of those phenomena, we cannot say that the laws of physics and chemistry are sufficient to explain them. Our level of knowledge is not yet at that point where we can say that there are no fundamentally different scientific principles which apply to living as opposed to inanimate phenomena. The only way to assert such a belief is through blind faith, or pure mysticism.
Psycho-neural identity theories which posit a one-to-one correlation between mental events and neural events in the brain do not “prove” that the mental is equivalent to the physical—they establish the opposite conclusion. To correlate phenomena is to establish the existence of separate phenomena, so they cannot be identical. Psycho-neural parallelism may well have some scientific validity—but it is obviously only a step in the direction of acquiring a full understanding of the operations of consciousness.
In addition, your view of the brain does not account for the phenomenon of volition. Unless there is something more than status quo physics and chemistry involved here, all mental events would require some type of antecedent stimulus. Are you prepared to dispense with the concept of free will? Because if you are, you will also need to dispense with any claim for the validity of your beliefs, since—based on present knowledge--all the contents of your thinking must be dictated by prior physical-neural events. In other words, since your mind is not in your control, neither are any of your conclusions.
And once you acknowledge that some additional scientific explanation is needed, you are admitting to ignorance about what that explanation may eventually involve. It could be an extension of physics and chemistry, but it could also be something entirely new and as yet undiscovered.
Materialism and physicalism are often understood to be equivalent, but the latter term implies that the laws of physics and chemistry are all science will ever need, and that is an unwarranted claim. Science is a long, long way from being able to understand the ultimate nature of material reality. For you to say that the laws of physics and chemistry will eventually explain everything is an entirely unsubstantiated leap of faith, and makes YOU the mystic.
(For a detailed explanation of these issues, please see Robert Efron, “Biology Without Consciousness—And Its Consequences,” The Objectivist, February, 1968)
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Never let man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul! Any other issue is doubtful; the evil effect on himself is certain.
