The problem of human intentionality

A few weeks ago I had in another blog a debate that confronted me with three militant atheists who stood for materialist monism, which holds, among other things, that we are determined by our neurons, that consciousness is an irrelevant epiphenomenon and that free will is an illusion. In another post in this blog I have touched on that topic, mentioning the four philosophical theories that try to explain the conscience, one of which is materialist monism.

This is the argument I offered to defend dualism against materialistic monism:

Let’s tackle the problem of human intentionality. When I say: I'm going to lend money to the bank, so I’ll be paid interest, I’m saying that the reason why I’ll lend money to the bank is to get interest. This is the kind of cause that Aristotle called a final cause, because it is the goal toward which my action is directed, something that is located in the future. On the other hand, materialist monism says that the only cause of our actions is in the electric discharges of our neurons. This is what Aristotle called an efficient cause. Therefore, to explain the same phenomenon (my lending money to the bank), we are suggested two different causes: my intention and the sparks in my neurons, this second located in the present, the first in the future. Is this possible?

Time A or Time B?

J.M.E. McTaggart, who in 1908 coined
the terms "A and B-theories of time."

Human beings seem to have an innate tendency to think that what we do not like or cannot explain does not exist. Thus in Hinduism and Buddhism, reality itself is considered an illusion (maya), something that must be discarded to achieve liberation. According to this philosophy, since it is an inseparable part of physical reality, time should also be considered as an illusion. In the Hindu Brahman and the Buddhist Nirvana, time does not exist.

In Western philosophy and science, the idea of ​​time has traditionally been quite different. Until the eighteenth century, nobody put in question the reality of reality. As an inseparable part of reality, time was absolute. In Newtonian mechanics, time plays that role. According to his theory of gravitation, the course of time is independent of the motion of the observer. Hence one can deduce the principle of relativity of classical mechanics: when several bodies are subjected to uniform rectilinear motion (at constant speed) it is impossible to distinguish which one is at rest and which is moving.