The mind-body problem is the fact that our minds are not physical entities. They are intimately linked with our brains and bodies, yet they are in no one particular place. Our bodies (including our brains) and our minds - sometimes calledd our consciousness - together make up our experience of ourselves.

Materialists (scientists who believe that the material world is all there is) try to solve the mind-body problem by arguing that the mind does not really exist. Although they cannot now disprove its existence, they are sure that they will eventually succeed. For now, we should accept their view on faith. They have faith that materialism is true and so should all thinking people, especially scientists.

That’s called promissory materialism*, after the idea of a promissory note (a promise to pay on a future date). Except that this particular promissory note is not dated.

The "hard problem" of consciousness

In a recent podcast with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discussed the mind-body problem:

Dr. Egnor, professor of neurosurgery at SUNY, observes:

... materialism has not been able to answer the "hard problem of consciousness." Instead, ... it claims that materialism as a theory will eventually be able to explain what it has yet to explain at all.

So far, materialists have had very little luck with understanding consciousness, which is why it is called the “hard problem.”

In a materialist setting, consciousness must be explained as an illusion. But whose illusion? If there is an "I", a subject of the illusion - the conscious person whose illusion it is - the argument falls apart.

Evidence against materialism "unscientific" by definition? Why? 

Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I talk about some of the other problems with promissory materialism in general in The Spiritual Brain:

... if we adopt it, we are accepting a promissory note on the future of materialism. Promissory materialism has been immensely influential in the sciences because any doubt about materialism—no matter what the state of the evidence—can be labeled “unscientific” in principle. (P. 24)

Essentially, materialists understand science as applied materialism. The purpose of science is to confirm materialism. So scientists find evidence that supports materialism. If not, they must just keep looking.

For example, when intelligent design theorist Michael Behe pointed out evidence against unguided Darwinian evolution in Darwin's Black Box, Richard Dawkins, a materialist, said Behe should just keep looking until he finds a materialist explanation. But Behe disagreed because the problems he was finding were fundamental, like the hard problem of consciousness. They signaled that something was wrong with the materialist approach.

What should scientists do if they find evidence that does not confirm materialism? There is quite a lot of that in neuroscience, including the hard problem of consciousness and the placebo effect.

(The placebo effect occurs when patients get better after taking a pill, even if the pill was only sugar. It demonstrates the active role of the mind in the management of our health.)

Under promissory materialism, scientists are expected to ignore or explain away evidence that doesn't support materialism.

In fact, materialist explanations are to be preferred to non-materialist ones even if they make less sense and account less well for the evidence. The idea is that some day scientists will come up with better materialist explanations.

Materialist efforts to account for spirituality, often take this approach, and The Spiritual Brain sets out many examples.

So when, exactly, does the promissory note cash?

The problem with promissory materialism is that, like any promissory note, its value depends on whether it will be repaid. And there is no date on the note. So if there is no materialist explanation for the mind decades from now, there is still no point at which we can say, "Let's look at other options."

For the materialist, who knows by faith that materialism is true, that is not possible. There are no other options. Science exists only to find evidence for materialism.

That is why materialists may accuse anyone who looks at other options, as Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells do in The Design of Life, of being "anti-science."

What Dembski and Wells actually are is non-materialist. They are engaged in the currently controversial task of assembling the evidence for design and purpose in our universe that does not fitthe materialist worldview. This includes evidence from the study of the human mind-brain complex (see Chapter 1).

It is not surprising that many famous neuroscientists, including Wilder Penfield, John Eccles, and Charles Sherrington, have been non-materialists.

*The term promissory materialism was first coined by philosopher of science Karl Popper.