by Paul Singh
We have now come to the end of our reflections on the brain and the mind. The study of the brain is still in its infancy, but a lot is now known. Everything indicates that free will, consciousness, and the self are illusions—that is, they are completely determined by brain processes. There is no Cartesian self that can exercise free will. We will always, of course, have the feeling that we are acting freely, and, in fact, we are acting freely in so far as we do what we want to do. And our brains are so infinitely complex that we have the ability to resist certain desires and encourage other desires. Our brains do in fact give us free will, the experience of consciousness, and the sense of a self. These are simple facts. But we must never forget that it is the brain that does all this. It is an illusion to think that free will, consciousness, and the self are something other than the brain. This is what Francis Crick described as “the astonishing hypothesis,” and he was right. It is absolutely astonishing.
Further Reading
Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Hawking, Stephen, and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
Hooft, Gerard‘t. How a Wave function Can Collapse without Violating Schrodinger’s Equation and How to Understand Born’s Rule. N.p. 2012.
Hooft, Gerard‘t. On the Free-Will Postulate in Quantum Mechanics. N.p. 2007.
Mlodinow, Leonard. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. New York: Vintage, 2009.
Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
About the Author
Paul Singh is a biochemist, mathematician, surgeon-physician and a urogynecologist. He is also a scholar of eastern and western intellectual traditions. He is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the College of Medicine at the University of Science, Arts and Technology in Montserrat, British West Indies. He is the author of Discovering Our World: Humanity’s Epic Journey from Myth to Knowledge.
Singh has held memberships and fellowships of organizations such as the American Medical Association, The American College of Surgeons, The American Society of Lapro-endoscopic surgeons, California Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a member of the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society and their technical divisions of Chemical Physics, Quantum Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry. He also is an active member of Doctors without Borders and Chemists without Borders.
Paul Singh is the founder and president of Singh Global Initiatives, a philanthropic organization and a 503 (1) (c) public charity. Humanitarian projects around the world are operated by volunteers under the umbrella of Singh Global Initiatives, making health and science education accessible to all. Among these projects is a Pediatric Sleep Disorders Foundation. The foundation provides free medical advice and support to children around the world who suffer from narcolepsy and other incurable sleep related disorders.
Dr. Singh commenced his lifelong pursuit of science education at Manhattan College and the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. Pursuing majors in Chemistry and Biochemistry, he graduated summa cum laude in 1990. Paul Singh went on to pursue a degree in Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology. Subsequently, he earned an M.D. and a PhD.
He studied Obstetrics and Gynecology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, an affiliate of the State University of New York. In 2000, he traveled to California to finish his post-doctoral studies including Chief residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Kern Medical Center, a UCLA residency program. He went on to specialize in Urogynecology and Female Pelvic Reconstructive Surgery. Throughout his early medical career, Paul Singh did research projects and fellowships at Cornell, Yale, and Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
During his medical career, Singh has received several honors and awards for excellence in science from various institutions, such as the Pew Foundation, College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City, and the Kern Medical Center in California. He lives in Menlo Park, California, with his wife and three children.
