The classic Mind-Body Problem concerns how consciousness (‘mind’) can be produced in a material system such as the brain (‘body’). That remains a mystery to this day, though much has been written about it. There is another, closely related question, perhaps as elusive. That again involves the relationship between thought (‘mind’) and natural reality (‘body’). In particular, what are the limits of analysis, theory, scientific model-building, and simulation in regard to the complexity of nature? Thought and theories, like machines, are artificial constructs, finite conceptual systems, perfectly knowable in essence. There is no guarantee that nature corresponds to human definitions or models, which are always simplified idealizations. Whatever the relationship of map to territory, it is not one-to-one.
The philosophy of mechanism trades on the effectiveness of simplified idealizations, which are themselves a sort of conceptual machine. It has produced our technology and modern understanding of the universe. However, this very success has brought us to the brink of ecological collapse and perhaps self-destruction. Getting too smart for our own good raises again the question of the relationship of mind to matter, but in a different sense. The question is not how consciousness could arise in a physical world, but how it can sustain itself there if it is it inherently self-destructive. In other words, is there something self-contradictory about consciousness—and thus about us?
Indeed, we are full of contradictions. We now admit to being part of the natural world—animals——yet resist this status. The whole drive behind technology and mastery of nature—as behind religion—is to not be part of the natural world. We build houses and cities so as not to live in the wild, build theories to not be bewildered, imagine spirituality to not be brutes. Mind consists of ideas, which stand as literally ideal in stark contrast to material reality. Rather than saving us, however, this antagonism between thought and reality could kill us. Consciousness does not fit well within the scientific world, in whose terms it resists explanation. Could it also render us unfit to live in the natural world, alien to it? If so, that leaves the apparent option of living within a completely man-made world. But that is a contradiction in terms, since even outer space is still part of nature, along with the matter of which any environment must be made.
Some post-humanists advocate migrating to cyberspace—that is, to upload your consciousness to a supercomputer, where you can live disembodied and be finally liberated from the constraints and messiness of biological existence. Except that this supercomputer, upon which cyber-life would depend, must be an actual physical machine, perhaps as subject to breakdown as other machines. You would no longer depend on the health of your physical brain and body, but would (like the “world” you would live in) depend on the untroubled operation of a computer in the real world, over which you would have no control and to which you would entrust your life. Or, perhaps mind will triumph over matter to create a more perfect body for itself, over which it has control we can scarcely now conceive. Murphy’s Law and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics render all bets off. Still, we are the creature with a foot in two worlds, and there seems no going back.