Materialists believe that the only reality is the physical reality accessible to our senses. They tell us that belief in consciousness independent of the brain is unscientific and infantile, mere wish fulfilment. They cite the widespread conviction among neuroscientists that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, i.e., it emerges from brain processes. No brain activity, no consciousness – lights out for good.

There is, however, a good case, based on logic and observation, that the materialist view is exactly backwards from what is true. Consciousness – exclusively private subjective experience, immediate awareness — does not have a physical origin; instead, it exists independently of the brain.

What is this case and does it have empirical support? Besides our physical bodies, what makes you “you” or me “me” is our consciousness which we know exists because we experience it. But, consciousness itself cannot be shown to be a physical phenomenon. Each of us has a unique, totally private, unitary “I” that witnesses what we are thinking and feeling, and what we perceive. This “I” cannot be decomposed into, reduced to, or arise from physical functions or anything material. It is completely inexplicable in physicalist terms. The abyss between qualitative , subjective awareness and physical causes is unbridgeable. The laws of physics explain how physical processes work but can tell us nothing about the most important aspects of any human or animal – namely, consciousness and intentionality (the intent of a mind to achieve a purpose). Even though they are non-physical, existing only in the realm of the mind, our awareness and our purposiveness are indisputably real. Otherwise, we could not experience them and act in response. Unlike anything material, they don’t and can’t emerge a piece at a time. They are either there or they aren’t.

A conscious being’s body is its way of being a particular mind present at this particular moment in the physical continuum, but its soul, to use an old-fashioned term, does not depend on a strictly material body to exist. One’s body is an expression of mind, not its source. Mind is the foundational reality. Matter is a facet of thought.

Somehow each “I” takes the prodigious volume of sensory inputs – photons for vision, sound waves for hearing, molecules for taste and smell, pressure, temperature and vibrations for touch – and converts them into the unified awareness each of us experiences. This awareness matches the physical conditions of the world external to each individual such that the results of what we do usually match our expectations, and if they don’t, we have the ability to learn and adapt. This capability means that the world is intelligible to us, but intelligibility is not possible without some organizing intelligence. Intelligibility itself is not a physical attribute.

In sum, reason and observation can indeed give us hope, if not total conviction, that what is most real about each living organism (humans, animals) are non-physical qualities of mind – consciousness, intentionality, unity and indivisibility of apprehension (we integrate perceptions into a unified whole). Our experiences and actions confirm that these immaterial qualities exist. We also know that they cannot be reduced to a composite physical system nor can they emerge from anything physical. Since we and our pets are not solely physical, it follows that the death of a body does not necessarily mean that the observing “I” of that conscious being no longer exists. To say the least, I find this encouraging.

The Evidence

Careful reasoning is well and good, but if the conclusions reached are not supported by empirical observation, then the reasoning is wrong. So what is the evidence that conscious minds are not merely the product of physical processes?

If I am wrong, and the world of stuff is all there is — then all life on Earth quite literally will eventually be cooked. Astrophysicist and Christian apologist Hugh Ross tells us that about 34.5 million years from now, the Sun will be too bright for humans to survive. He further warns that a solar superflare is likely to occur somewhere between 400-500,000 hears from now.

https://www.amazon.com/Designed-Core-Hugh-Ross/dp/1956112014

The heat death of our material world is just a matter of time.

If, however,

1. we and other living organisms truly are embodied consciousnesses;
2. mind is fundamental, the substrate of all reality; and,
3. matter is an aspect, a manifestation of mind,

then all is not lost. Fortunately, our knowledge of physics does not contradict this view.

Scientists who have studied what physical reality is like at its most fundamental level have discovered that it does not consist of gritty “stuff”. As theoretical physicist David Tong describes in his lecture “Quantum fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVQfWC_evg the elementary particles that matter is made of (quarks, leptons) are not irreducible little nuggets. Instead, they are excitations in fields. Tong defines a field as “a fluid like substance that pervades all of space”. While the effects of the interactions among fields is indisputably real, the fields themselves seem abstract and insubstantial. Matter is looking more and more like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat. The closer we look, the more it seems to fade into something immaterial. This characteristic does not support the materialist view that physical reality is the ground from which everything else emerges.

Even a hard core materialist has to grant that what looks solid and substantial really isn’t. All physical matter consists of atoms. Atoms are mostly empty space.

Take a hydrogen atom for example. If its nucleus, a single proton, were the size of a basketball, its lone electron would be found about two miles away. Materials, e.g., our bodies, by volume are mostly empty space.

Perhaps the best description of the true nature of the material world comes from Shakespeare:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1

What we have learned about the physical world is suggestive of the idea that mind is fundamental and matter is derivative, but by no means is it conclusive. Is there direct, carefully documented evidence that human consciousness can exist independent of one’s body? It takes just one fact to disconfirm an entire body of theory. It turns out that there are thousands and thousands of facts disconfirming the theory that consciousness arises from the brain and therefore is obliterated when the brain ceases to function.

Although largely ignored, there is a large and credible body of cases where people were conscious of themselves and their surroundings while their brains were completely incapacitated. The leading source of research on the relationship between brain and consciousness is the Department of Perceptual Studies, a research unit within the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences a University of Virginia’s School of Medicine. Its focus is  “[rigorous evaluation of] empirical evidence that suggests consciousness survives death and the mind is distinct/separable from the brain”. If you want a carefully researched, honest presentation of evidence for this assertion, you can do no better than look here. Here are a couple of links showing what is available.

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/category/all/

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/resources/recommended-books/

I find the empirical evidence conclusive and overwhelming that events such as near death experiences (NDEs), out of body experiences (OBEs), after death communications, etc. do occasionally occur, but nobody has any idea how or why they happen. There are many mysteries I can’t even formulate much less understand, but what logic and evidence I have been able to muster does not disconfirm the idea that the consciousness – the being – of people and animals we love may endure even though the physical bodies through which their souls became manifest and by which we knew them are no longer their home. There is hope.