Epigraph

And among His Signs is your sleep by night and day, and your seeking of His bounty. In that surely are Signs for a people who hear. (Al Quran 30:23)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

If you knew, like James Al-Khalili, Professor of Quantum Physics in Surrey university, or me after collecting everything on the subject here, how the Western civilization and all of it’s sciences, are built on the Muslim heritage and the Muslim civilization of Damascus and Cordoba in Spain, having come to this paragraph, you will not quit midstream.

When we wake up from deep anesthesia we do not know how long we were unconscious or absent. We could have been hibernating for weeks or months, but, we feel a continuity with our past. The holy Quran describes deep sleep and resurrection in a similar manner.

Allah takes away the souls of human beings at the time of their death; and of those also that are not yet dead, during their sleep. And then He retains those against which He has decreed death, and sends back the others till an appointed term. In that surely are Signs for a people who reflect. (Al Quran 39:42)

The materialists or physicalists like Daniel Dennett and even Anil Seth or John Searle not only deny Afterlife, but, also revelation from the All Knowing God, for formation of their theory of human consciousness, therefore, their theories will always remain incomplete. There is no empirical direct evidence for Afterlife but there is for revelation. Tanya Luhrmann, professor of psychology and anthropology, nicely summarizes some of the evidence for revelation in her 15 minute presentation starting at minute 28 in the following video. I am endorsing only her fifteen minutes first presentation in the following longish video:

I am most thrilled by her description of revelation of the Quran. The Christians, Jews or atheists may not be impressed. For their benefit, here, I will not become an apologist for the Quran or Muhammad, but would merely quote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who has been called as one of the greatest Germans of all times: “As often as we approach the Quran, it always proves repulsive anew; gradually, however, it attracts, it astonishes, and, in the end forces admiration.”[1]

But, my case is not built merely on the God of Muhammad, rather on the God of Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Moses, David and Jesus. This is not to exclude the God of Buddha, Confucius and Krishna. According to a Hadith of Muhammad, God sent 124,000 prophets to different parts of the world over the millennia to guide mankind. Many Muslims may now think of revelation through angel Gabriel. But, to me revelation is a biological phenomenon, except for the interface where human mind meets the Transcendent God, or the finite meets the Infinite.

There is something transcendent about our consciousness. That is the domain where the Transcendent God can interact with us at the interface. Be it quantum phenomenon of whatever kind or something else, but will remain beyond our scientific inquiry.

I have written about the biology, history and philosophy of dreams before, explaining intuitions, dreams and revelations, based on information about sleep and sleep disorders:

Neurobiology of Dreams and Revelation

Al Aleem: The Bestower of true dreams

True Nature of Divine Revelations

We Dream, Therefore God Is!

My main suggestion to the open minded readers is to read on and in the words of Sir Francis Bacon, “Read not to contradict … but to weigh and consider.”

The last presenter in the above video, Rupert Sheldreake, speaking around minute 47-48, makes a case for fields like gravitational fields by talking about why detectives do not gaze at the person they are chasing. The psychic staring effect (sometimes called scopaesthesia) is the claimed extrasensory ability of a person to detect being stared at.

Another phenomenon is extrasensory perception. But, I will stay with the revelation of the prophets. As I do completely believe that the holy Quran was word by word revealed to prophet Muhammad, by the All Knowing. I can quote Sir William Muir to defend my concept about the Quran being a literal revelation. An article, the Quran and the non-Muslims, is added at the end in references. Islam does suggest that true dreams are 1/16 or 1/46 part of prophethood. Some of the Westerners may believe in Nostradamus but I will argue for the scientists’ who learnt about their science in their dreams or a poet getting his poetry as a revelation.

In the rest of the article, I will explain the mainstream ideas and describe my insights under the headings:

1. My Dualism and Transcendence of human soul
2. Epilogue: How can my ideas be falsified

The Marvel of consciousness

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In the above video, Robert Lawrence Kuhn is most in alignment with Raymond Talis a philosopher and a medical doctor, who he begins to interview around minute 16-17 of the above video.

Materialism

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Refuting materialism:

According to the Muslim theology materialism is not complete. There is more to reality than merely the physical things. Materialism obviously not only denies human soul and Afterlife but also God. The Quran is filled up with mention of the Creator God, Who has numerous other attributes and repeatedly highlights Afterlife and how the human souls will find an eternal life there. I have written dozens of articles about God the Creator: The Muslim Times, Perhaps the Only Medium Presenting the Creator God of the Holy Quran.

In addition to theology what else can be said against purely materialistic understanding of human consciousness? Some of it we will cover in the last section of Epilogue.

In refuting materialism as explanation of consciousness, I am not going to present God of the gaps. I mean to refute materialism on the basis of what we know or at least, what we are trying to demonstrate that we know.

Revelation from a transcendent source if established rules out materialism. To allow black and white thinking momentarily, either the materialists are deluded or those who believe and vouch for revelation from the All-Knowing. Consider the metaphor of a radio and radio station. If radio is being studied, it cannot be completely known and understood without knowing that it is picking up some external messages from some external radio station.

Idealism

Metaphysical idealism asserts that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental in nature. Essentially, at the foundation of reality, we find purely transpersonal processes or, more technically, aperspectival and unconditioned consciousness. In Western philosophy, the concept has a long history going back to Plato, with notable proponents being George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer, while important tangential contributions can be found in the thinking of René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and David Hume.

But surely, today, idealism seems like a bit of a silly idea. Considering that we understand the material basis of reality, proposing an ontological relevance for consciousness appears like mystical or esoteric woo and certainly not a serious concept to entertain. Moreover, we suspect that the brain creates consciousness. Remarkably, however, idealism is experiencing a renaissance in science and philosophy. How can this be possible?

To me it makes sense in as far as God is the Creator and Sustainer of this universe and by His sheer will He has created the universe.

Panpsychcism

Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West, and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. For its proponents panpsychism offers an attractive middle way between physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. The worry with dualism—the view that mind and matter are fundamentally different kinds of thing—is that it leaves us with a radically disunified picture of nature, and the deep difficulty of understanding how mind and brain interact. And whilst physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature.

Philip Goff is one of the presenters for panpsychism.

The above video of a panpsychist, namely Philip Goff is more helpful in understanding why materialism is not complete rather than why panpsychism is right.

Against Panpsychism

In a Closer to Truth video, John Rawls jokingly says that panpsychism means that his watch has consciousness and his belt has an understanding that today he has put it on too tight!

The only truth I see in panpsychism is if it were to be extended to the mystery of the Divine creation in general, for example, All that is in the heaven and the earth glorifies Allah and Everything is a Miracle According to the Holy Quran and Albert Einstein.

Dualism

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In the philosophy of mind, mind–body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical,^[1] or that the mind and body are distinct and separable.^[2] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, as well as between subject and object, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism, in the mind–body problem.^[1][2]

The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil – or God and the Devil – are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain – are, in some sense, radically different kinds of things. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.

Dualism is closely associated with the thought of René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysical—and therefore, non-spatial—substance. Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence.^[8] Hence, he was the first documented Western philosopher to formulate the mind–body problem in the form in which it exists today.^[9] Dualism is contrasted with various kinds of monism. Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of materialism, but property dualism may be considered a form of emergent materialism or non-reductive physicalism in some sense.

The short video of David Bentley Hart above under materialism is the best refutation of emergent materialism.

My Dualism and Transcendence of human soul

Firstly, let me have the well known cosmologist, who rubbed shoulders with the great minds like Stephen Hawking and Fred Hoyle, Paul Davies, lay out the prelude to my understanding of dualism:

I am a big fan of Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who has made dozens of videos on the subject of human consciousness and has expressed his obsession with God, Afterlife and mystery of consciousness. He seems to be a believer in dualism and also in Quantum Physics, but, occasionally he silences the interviewees on these subjects. But, he did not do that to Paul Davies in the above segment, given his stature on both the subjects. If I could enjoy some of the same indulgence I could completely present my thesis for kind consideration by the reader.

Nicholas Humphrey uses the word transcendence for human consciousness in the first part of the following video. But, as he is a materialist, when he does not understand the mystery he calls it an illusion:

Another philosopher in the above video calls consciousness real but the continuity that we feel an illusion and he is an agnostic, whether we will be ever able to fully demystify consciousness. He sets limits to human knowledge, because after all we are only evolved apes. I like his agnosticism better than the triumphal predictions of complete success of many a materialist philosophers like Daniel Dennett.

Tanya Luhrmann, professor of psychology and anthropology, makes a case for revelation in the following video in her 15 minute presentation in the following video:

To a believer consciousness not only explains Afterlife, but, also dreams, revelation and consolation that God can provide in our lives. To a Muslim theist it also draws attention to the Quranic verse about the human soul:

And they ask you concerning the soul. Say, ‘The soul is by the command of my Lord; and of the knowledge thereof you have been given but a little.’ (Al Quran 17:85)

My physics, especially quantum physics, is similar to that of David Chalmers and Paul Davies:

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Epilogue: How can my ideas be falsified?

What Hubert Dreyfuss is suggesting is explained in more detail by John Searle in the following video:

Around minute 32, John Searle argues that can human create a thinking machine and tells us that right now we absolutely cannot but one day we may.

I build on his claim that we cannot do it right now and beg to differ about the future. I am convinced by his prior arguments for 31 minutes and my reading of the Quran that it will never happen. For the believing Muslim readers, my conclusion among others is based on the following verse about human soul or consciousness:

And they ask you concerning the soul. Say, ‘The soul is by the command of my Lord; and of the knowledge thereof you have been given but a little.’ (Al Quran 17:85)

If you can copy the consciousness and memories of any person and put it in a matrix of computer or some other metallic robot and confirm memories from the original flesh consciousness and computerized copy, then science has demystified human consciousness and I am proved wrong. Otherwise, the tall claims of the atheists are merely premature and robust triumphalism.

I am in good company. Robert Kuhn has made a similar case in the video below, but, he says that in some sense he is on the fence and is 50/50, even though he hopes that consciousness defeats materialism. I am not on the fence. I am voting 100 to zero that consciousness defeats materialism:

In the above video Kuhn interviews William Dembski, who has won some notoriety for Intelligent Design movement, but, is not ready to put his seal on human consciousness. So, in this sense Muslim theology can contribute more than Intelligent Design theology in suggesting that consciousness will defeat materialism.

In the above video towards the end, Kuhn lays down 5 possible ways for materialism to be true and two non-material ways. One of these is a non-material component. I suggest that our physical bodies have an interface with the non-material reality. It is this interface that generates our free will and an entry point for God’s Providence, true dreams or revelations.

I believe that this interface of the finite mind with the Infinite transcendent God, will always be beyond the scope of human knowledge, especially science and we will have access to this domain only as much as God wills to reveal through revelations:

Such is Allah, your Lord. There is no God but He, the Creator of all things, so worship Him. And He is Guardian over everything.

Eyes cannot reach Him but He reaches the eyes. And He is the Incomprehensible, the All-Aware. (Al Quran 6:102-103)

I do believe consciousness leads to God. Dream content that human subconscious could not know is one reason. The marvel of creation and the Quran saying that they will never know enough about human soul or consciousness are some of my other pointers that lead me to God.

Reference

1. RVC Bodley. The Messenger. Double Day and Company Inc, 1946. Page 237.

The Muslim Times has saved the videos in this post here as well to ensure their longevity: Collection of videos for my Consciousness article.