Mind cannot be reduced to brain
Something I’ve been considering for a while is the mind-brain relationship.
Given that there is enough evidence from the medical literature that the mind can still act and perceive in states without any brain activity; it’s a foregone conclusion to me that the mind cannot be reduced down to the brain.
Here’s some theses to consider:
• The mind can exist independently of the brain.
• The mind can effect the body and conversely, the body can effect the mind.
• Obviously, the mind isn’t an emergent property of neural structures.
• The mind must originate from elsewhere than the brain.
• The brain is some sort of interface system between the brain and the body.
For me, several questions arise:
• What is the mind?
• What is being measured in brain scans like MRIs?
To answer the first point, I say that the mind is the ego; the I as it meant in the original Latin. Cogito ergo sum as Rene Descartes said. Past that, I’m not sure what to state of the mind. Beyond that it’s massless, formless and seems to operate with a much more fluid and “ softer “ set of psychophysical laws than the hard laws of physics that govern the material world.
The second point I answer is: Saint Thomas Aquinas states that the soul is primarily focused on the body. That being said, Saint Thomas was also Aristotelian and there’s always potentas and actualitas.
So, what I believe is being measured in brain scans is the mind’s energeia upon the brain; because I believe the brain houses the mind and acts as it’s interface with the body.
Given that there is enough evidence from the medical literature that the mind can still act and perceive in states without any brain activity; it’s a foregone conclusion to me that the mind cannot be reduced down to the brain.
Here’s some theses to consider:
• The mind can exist independently of the brain.
• The mind can effect the body and conversely, the body can effect the mind.
• Obviously, the mind isn’t an emergent property of neural structures.
• The mind must originate from elsewhere than the brain.
• The brain is some sort of interface system between the brain and the body.
For me, several questions arise:
• What is the mind?
• What is being measured in brain scans like MRIs?
To answer the first point, I say that the mind is the ego; the I as it meant in the original Latin. Cogito ergo sum as Rene Descartes said. Past that, I’m not sure what to state of the mind. Beyond that it’s massless, formless and seems to operate with a much more fluid and “ softer “ set of psychophysical laws than the hard laws of physics that govern the material world.
The second point I answer is: Saint Thomas Aquinas states that the soul is primarily focused on the body. That being said, Saint Thomas was also Aristotelian and there’s always potentas and actualitas.
So, what I believe is being measured in brain scans is the mind’s energeia upon the brain; because I believe the brain houses the mind and acts as it’s interface with the body.
Comments (52)
Cite?
Dr Bruce Greyson of University of Virginia. His YouTube talk: “ Consciousness Independent of the Brain. “
And the case of Pam Reynolds as investigated by Dr Michael Sabom
Considering these guys, among others; have been studying them since the mid 60s with strong rigor; I don’t knock it. Plus, psychiatrists are some of the hardest scientists out there. Academic psychologists and psychiatrists are loathe to even consider non materialistic explanations for the soul.
Respectfully speaking, what’s your objections?
How do you figure?
These experiences happen with no brain waves at all. It should be impossible for anyone to perceive and know anything.
As long as the brain is warm it can make experiences
I see your point.
But:
You haven’t answered the question, IMO; of: If the mind stems from the brain, how can anyone experience anything in a brain dead state?
Also: Consider the verifiable details these experiences provide. The detail and knowledge is impossible to otherwise know.
It's called dead by fallible doctors. When death happens is debatable. The brain has many avenues for consciousness that science can't reach yet. If you want to get all Thomistic where activity and passivity are the prime factors AND believe that matter is less holy than spirit, that's ok. That stuff is fun. But it's not the only way to interpret reality. I believe I am pure matter, and yet maybe, I wonder, my consciousness will coalesce somewhere in my body at death and I can go to a warm fuzzy and cozy place in the quantum realm. All as my body ceases to be me :)
As Saint Thomas said: Follow where the truth leads.
What makes a materialistic answer better than a non materialistic answer?
That being said, may I ask you: Why do you believe you’re only matter?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1980/evidence-of-consciousness-surviving-the-body/p1
Can you summarize his arguments and evidence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QYBhzi67NY
There is a guy who was sceptic about near death experience and decided to debunk it. However, while investigating he became less sceptic and eventually organised an investigation to be conducted across many hospitals by placing signs or pictures on top of furniture, so if a dying patient indeed gets to float out of the body near the ceiling they would be able to see and later describe what it was.
I think this was in the UK around 5 years ago, but I can’t find any follow up on that story, possibly because the result was negative. But even if it was positive the debate would remain with all the questions still open - what does it mean, why and how it works.
The most specific and pragmatic categorisation in the scope of our current understanding is that mind is a program, a virtual reality simulation within the nervous system, a kind of virtual machine. No ghost, just another machine in the machine, but it is software or virtual machine.
Brain scans measure flow of signals, indirectly, just like we could measure flow of signals between the logic gates and other circuits inside a computer by placing ampere / volt meters around the motherboard, but raw signals are themselves only indirect representation of which program is running and what program is doing within itself, i.e. inside virtual reality simulation.
So, a mind needs a brain like a program needs a computer, but that does not necessarily mean a mind can not exist in some other kind of “brain”, it means that is actually a likely possibility.
That is true, in a way, but is just a play with words, substituting one phrase with another having equally no any grounding. By “grounding” I mean empirical connection, a kind of information that actually matters in some way.
Ego, soul, self, ghost, integrated information, quantum collapse, illusion, hallucination… as is described by the most prominent thinkers of today. It’s all over the place, children would have come up with more coherent “consensus”, and yet all those words point to what the mind is, in some way, allegorically, but none are really describing it. More or less those are just empty labels, too vague and ambiguous to carry any useful meaning.
I’ve heard of this guy. Interesting fellow. I disagree that there’s no ghost in the machine and the mind is only a virtual machine program.
Each mind is an individual with it’s own idiosyncrasies, tendencies and personality. Not a tabula rasa with an OS.
I saw that in my sons as they were babies.
I would argue that the ego/mind isn’t a purely socially conditioned thing. Every human being IS an individual that interacts with others; while retaining autonomy.
My question for you is:
If materialistic science is correct and no ghost in the machine exists; how can there be any psychic abilities like what you’re proposing as a solution to how the mind can exist separate from the brain?
Most people even today would consider software to be "immaterial” rather than virtual, and “ghost” was actually a pretty good description of software just until several decades ago, in a sense that, at the time of execution, you can not see software, you can not quite point where it is, nor what it is, and yet it makes the machine do things.
I have no objection to call my program, that is my self, a ghost, especially since I plan on uploading myself out of this body into Earth’s magnetic field, to walk around naked and transparent, go through walls, scare little children, scream at night and engage in other ghostly entertainment activities.
I'd answer your question in saying that the Buddha was right. Nothingness is holy, the root of matter. Positing spiritual entities makes things worse
Consider the possibility that the "soul" is a potentially conscious entity that is insufficiently powerful to achieve consciousness without guidance, and is integrated with a human brain for assistance in the process. Thus, what we think of as "mind" is the result of soul and brain working together, a function rather than an independent entity.
Quack.
It would be silly since it leaves out the intestines, for example. But oddly, and I mean from a purely physicalist, non-dualist perspective, people often talk about brains thinking as if it is the only part of the body involved. Like, say, not the endocrine system, not the large neuronal networks around the heart or in the gut. In fact there is a tremendous tendency to focus on neurons alone, since people don't seem aware of all the research on glial cells and cognition. Next time I encounter that kind of unjustified reduction I am going to use your nice quote here. With credit, here, anyway.
Cognitive Neuroscientists are the one’s on the forefront of this field not psychiatrists. Psychiatry is a discipline involved with treating brain disorders/illnesses with drugs - which most pharmaceutical companies have pretty much given up pursuing because they cannot make a profit from them due to the carpet bombing effect on the brain (depending on the person, or even some specific period of time for a person, the effects of drugs can be completely different).
If we lock someone in a room with minimal stimuli would they cease to be ‘conscious’ much like a cellphone in a tunnel? There are studies on sensory deprivation.
Ignore the fool, but explore the question as a ‘what if’ question.
So, what if the brain isn’t responsible for consciousness? What if the brain is merely a conduit for ‘consciousness’? How far can we stretch our imagination and what do we find of substance from doing so?
I am pretty sure the pharmaceutical companies are still making a lot of money off of psychotropics.
adderall
Xanax
Alprazolam
are all up there with the most common prescriptions total in medicine, for example.
The other part is that brains can surive a lack of external stimulus while continuing to experience. Sensory depirivation can even be experienced as stimulating over short periods of time. That was a bit of a tangent, but mainly I was responding to what seemed to be implicit that the brain's stimuli only come from outside the brain.
I’ve heard several people say the exact opposite recently regarding funding for such treatments - because it’s seriously unpredictable (essentially there is more profit elsewhere).
Note: ‘people’ being professionals in or related to the field - podcasts mainly.
Quoting Coben
I said a brain with no input does very little. That is true. Deprived of any sensory input from birth the brain would die quite quickly. The comparison made in the video I was pointing out as ridiculous was the simplistic comparison of a brain to a cellphone.
Anyway, at best a brain in a vat deprived of sensory input would die quickly enough because most the neurons would be redundant. Remember we have the most neurons at birth. They die out if they are not used - simple efficiency.
In simpler terms you cannot imagine what something looks like if you’re born with no eyes.
The mind could be strongly emergent, in a systems theoretic sense, for example, without postulating a separate immaterial entity such as a soul.
The issue is the brain is complex and what works for one person does the opposite for others. Psychotropics are certainly the way to imo, but the kind of substances that have a lot of potential have been illegal to research until recently - psilocybin, DMT and other substances are interesting avenues to explore.
That is the core of classical Buddhism, which treats soul as an epiphenomenon initially created by a brain, yet capable of retaining consciousness after the brain's demise, whereupon it finds and merges with another brain in the fetal stage or shortly after birth so as to resume whatever passes for a normal life.
A.I. people have been trying unsuccessfully to get some manifestation of consciousness out of computers, since the sixties. I imagine that some of them try it with serious supercomputers. So the theory you reference has yet to be implemented in practice, after a half century of work by many brilliant researchers, each eager to earn the inevitable Nobel prize and eternal place in the history of science that must follow a success.
No doubt you've examined Chalmer's "Hard Problem." Would you share your thoughts about it?
So I used to be much obsessed with the mind-body problem (Chalmer's hard problem). I favoured a kind of idealist-cartesian perspective as it suited my intuitions about the hegemony (free will) and autonomy of consciousness. When I immersed myself in systems philosophy last year, I became aware that the problematic nature of the mind-body phenomenon is a function of the reductionist approach. By taking the system as fundamental (in a paradigm-shifting sense) all events are comprehended in situ, specifically, insofar as they are elements (holons) within hierarchically nested systems. So the mind-body problem just isn't something that gives me pause anymore. There are psychological entia, intersubjective entia, empirical entia. They all participate in the operation (and self-reorganization) of the complex adaptive systems that constitute our reality. I'm finding Popper's scientific realism really works well with this perspective, especially his three worlds and critical objectivism. Habermas' theory of communicative action too, as it also carves experience up into subjective/social/objective realms which mutually interpenetrate.
Thank you!