Oct 15 2007
Mind and Brain, Soul and Consciousness, Religion and Science
In an earlier post, “Do Atheists Believe in the Existance of a Soul,” I discussed the difference between soul and consciousness. My take is that a strong atheist will not believe in the soul as a untangible entity that defines a person, and exists independent of the body, the body being just a vessel for this soul. In the Socratic tradition the soul is equated to consciousness as a product of the mind.
In a Salon interview philosopher Rebecca Goldstein and her husband, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker discuss why neuroscience’s concept of consciousness as a pure reflection of brain’s functions is threatening to religious beliefs:
Virtually all religious believers think the mind cannot be reduced to the physical mechanics of the brain. Of course, many believe the mind is what communicates with God. Would you agree that the mind-brain question is one of the key issues in the “science and religion” debate?
PINKER: I think so. It’s a very deep intuition that people are more than their bodies and their brains, that when someone dies, their consciousness doesn’t go out of existence, that some part of us can be up and about in the world while our body stays in one place, that we can’t just be a bunch of molecules in motion. It’s one that naturally taps into religious beliefs. And the challenge to that deep-seated belief from neuroscience, evolutionary biology and cognitive science has put religion and science on the public stage. I think it’s one of the reasons you have a renewed assault on religious beliefs from people like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.
The neuroscientific worldview — the idea that the mind is what the brain does — has kicked away one of the intuitive supports of religion. So even if you accepted all of the previous scientific challenges to religion — the earth revolving around the sun, animals evolving and so on — the immaterial soul was always one last thing that you could keep as being in the province of religion. With the advance of neuroscience, that idea has been challenged.
20 responses so far
I agree…religious believers need the idea of a soul — first, to defeat their fear of death; second, to give clerics control of people’s lives (and their cash) in exchange for the comfort just mentioned.
John Searle calls the brain-mind unity “biological naturalism.” The brain produces consciousness and one’s sense of self. There’s no mystery as to where it happens — just how.
shalom,
Alan
Alan, thanks for the comment. “give clerics control of people’s lives (and their cash) in exchange for the comfort just mentioned” Doesn’t this give a whole new meaning to “selling one’s soul”?
My thoughts…
(1) I disagree with Alan that religious believers NEED the idea of the soul. It depends upon how one philosophically approaches their religious tradition, and what religious tradition they belong to. For example, Buddhism explicitly states that there is no enduring soul.
If one is a Cartesian dualist, then you’re right, they need the soul. However if one follows Kant, then they do not think they can any knowledge of metaphysical entities like the soul. Finally, one can be influenced by Heidegger and reject Cartesian dualism outright, and yet hold firmly to theological tenets.
Painting all religious believers and even all Western believers with one big brush is a sloppy way of making religious critiques.
(2) Virtually all religious believers think the mind cannot be reduced to the physical mechanics of the brain.
The vast majority of contemporary naturalist/atheist philosophers do not think that the mind can be “reduced” to the brain. In fact, the reductionist theories in the philosophy of mind have all but died out. This means that most (materialist) philosophers accept some form of “dualism” that is consistent with naturalism or that they reject talk of the mental completely.
(3) The relation between the physical and the mental is the domain of metaphysics NOT physics.
In the 17th century Leibniz argued that if you investigated the brain it would “resemble” a machine. The details change and neuroscience becomes much more complex, but the problem of squaring our mental life with a mechanistic world remain the same. So talk of the ‘neuroscientific worldview” is just blown up rhetoric for materialism. Of course if one assumes that materialism is true, then the vast majority of western religious doctrines are false! Such a statement is so obvious it isn’t even worth stating.
To put my problem clearly, one of the largest problems FOR MATERIALISM is explaining our mental experience in purely mechanistic terms. There is not one widely accepted philosophical theory that explains this phenomena. The “mind/body problem” is a PROBLEM for materialism, not proof for it!
Of course for someone, like me, who is influenced by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics, the question of the relation between the mind and the body, is really a non-issue, regardless of one’s religious beliefs.
Thanks for commenting Johnny. I believe Alan was referring to soul as define by me in post, an entity that survives beyond death, and even the Buddhists believe in such an entity.
As for point #2 I don’t see you disagreeing with Goldstein and Pinker.
For point #3 I’m not sure where mental is mentioned, but if you’re referring to the mind here you’re defining mental in a metaphysical way thus your point–I see it as a circular argument. Goldstein and Pinker refer exactly to this definition of mental/mind as going against what we learn through neuroscience, that “the mind is what the brain does.” So I’m not sure here you’re disagreeing with Goldstein and Pinker either.
Unless I’m expecting you to disagree and you aren’t so I just tripped myself because of my misplaced expectations
As for point #2 I don’t see you disagreeing with Goldstein and Pinker
Pinker says the following, “The neuroscientific worldview — the idea that the mind is what the brain does…”
This is simplistic and there is hardly a philosopher who would agree here. I am disagreeing with Pinker’s view of the mind/body relationship expressed here, it is too simple. The reason this criticism is important is because once we get beyond these clearly false formulations the point that Pinker wants to make is not half as easy to support or clearly true. Pinker’s attempt to over-simply masks a deep problem that he is not addressing. But, in fairness to Pinker, I am saying a more complex version, although not clearly true, is defensible.
(3) I’m not sure where mental is mentioned, but if you’re referring to the mind here you’re defining mental in a metaphysical way thus your point–I see it as a circular argument.
No, I am saying that the question, “What is the relation of the “mind” to the body” is a metaphysical question, and cannot be answered empirically. In other words, no amount of scientific research into the brain will answer this question. There is no circularity in this because I am not assuming the “mind” IS a supersensible entity. One does not need to be a dualist in order to see this as a metaphysical question. Materialism, upon which this question is often based, is itself a metaphysical, though not a dualistic, position. My point is that it is not possible for neuroscience to tackle this question, it is the domain of philosophy, not science. No circularity.
My main point is this: Using neuroscience to demonstrate the falsity of religious worldviews is an entirely backwards way of approaching the question. It is backwards because the project is designed to show that physics can fully explain our experience, when this is neither obvious, nor clearly definsible. The real question for materialists is, “How can technicolor phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?” The burden of proof is on the materialist to give a philosophical explanation how, and why, this is possible.
To Johnny, I apologize for sloppy thinking. Better: the influential world religions, the ones that seek political power, believe in the soul. I don’t pretend to know what all religions believe.
But “metaphysical” is sloppy language use, as a grab-bag synonym for “things we can’t explain.” There is only the physical world. Where else is the mind, as well as the character and personality, if not in the brain?
We may never know (i.e., put into words) how gray matter produces consciousness and all its wonderful and hideous results. But we know where to look. Somehow neurochemistry becomes subjectivity.
My main point was that the soul is needed for powerful political reasons, as a fundamental piece of the architecture of religious fantasy. It keeps clerics in charge.
While there is a tremendous amount of thoughtful writing and thinking in the ’sphere, I am concerned with what will cause change in the real world. What will roll back the progress of destructive religious myths and their awful consequences?
Shalom to all,
Alan
www.thejewishatheist.com
But “metaphysical” is sloppy language use, as a grab-bag synonym for “things we can’t explain.”
I wasn’t really clear about the way I was using the word metaphysics. Contrary to the popular usage I was using the word was as a sub-discipline in philosophy. Basically, metaphysical questions are just those about what exists, fundamentally speaking. So a materialist, i.e. one who believes only material entities exists, still holds a metaphysical view. The way I am using it, “metaphysics” doesn’t entail any mysterious entities.
We may never know (i.e., put into words) how gray matter produces consciousness and all its wonderful and hideous results. But we know where to look. Somehow neurochemistry becomes subjectivity.
It seems the point here is, “materialism can’t explain how consciousness is possible, but so what?”
So what? Well, if there is a fundamental feature of reality that materialism does not explain, then it is a much less persuasive account of the universe. Consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality that is not explained by materialism. Thus, materialism is is a much less persuasive account of the universe.
David Chalmers, a contemporary philosopher, published an article in Scientific American recently. I think it does a good job highlighting why the existence of consciousness constitutes a problem. http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
“Using neuroscience to demonstrate the falsity of religious worldviews is an entirely backwards way of approaching the question.” Johnny, I don’t think anyone claimed neuroscience is used to demonstrate falsity of religious views. Pinker says the neuroscientist view that the mind is what the brain does threatens religious believes that have dependencies on the concept of soul.
Here are two areas where you have no backing:
1. “I am saying that the question, “What is the relation of the “mind” to the body” is a metaphysical question, and cannot be answered empirically. In other words, no amount of scientific research into the brain will answer this question.”
You are taking a very extreme stance here. While you have a grasp of philosophical arguments you don’t seem to be aware of the progresses in neuroscience. I’d recommend you read the transcripts, or watch the videos from the Columbia Brain and Mind Symposium to get an idea of the scientific progress that has been made in the area of consciousness, as well as to see some scientists discussing philosophical arguments.
2. “The burden of proof is on the materialist to give a philosophical explanation how, and why, this is possible.” It is you who challenged the statement that the mind is what the brain does, so theoretically you hold the burden of proof. It is very easy to attack a scientific argument with a philosophical one, or to expect a scientist to bring philosophical proof to a scientific question. While this scientist vs philosopher debate continues, neroscientists, and cognitive scientists are making progress in understanding “what the brain does.” Here’s an example of what the brain does when it comes to memory storage: “a signaling system that involves, importantly, the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase activates genes, they give rise to the growth of new synaptic connections, and a modulatory system is importantly recruited to trigger the long-term process.” (Eric Kandel).
McGinn’s technicolor question is more of a metaphor I’m sure, and a bad one at that. The scientific version of this issue is the study of color-blindness. However, most cases of color-blindness are not of the mind but of the eye… the retina misses certain color photoreceptors. Cases of color agnosia ( a break in neural communication between the eye and the brain) are generally due to damage (induced or congenital) in the posterior occipital or temporal lobe.
I’ll quote Pinker in closing, “Progress in our understanding ourselves as part of the natural world is intellectually exhilarating, conducive to human flourishing, and probably unstoppable.” This is why scientists will continue to purse a biological understanding of consciousness regardless of the expectations of prescribed philosophies.
Reply to Johnny: Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Materialism can’t explain consciousness…YET (not “so what?”; you finished my sentence for me
).
My understanding is that the inquiry into how we know things is “epistemology.”
Mana,
I am REALLY impressed by your articulate and thoughtful reply. I couldn’t have said it better (or as well). You are much more well-informed than I.
You have added support to my idea that the soul-folks give up too easily, taking refuge in “metaphysics” and “philosophical questions.” It’s all in your head. We must persevere to uncover the astonishing secrets of how neurochemistry becomes subjectivity, memory, and all the rest.
Figuring out how the brain does what it does will be very hard, but perhaps not impossible. One cognitive scientist even said, somewhat paradoxically, “If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we might be too stupid to understand it.” Certainly, using computers to replicate consciousness (as opposed to the appearance of it) is a lot harder than people thought.
shalom,
Alan
Alan M. Perlman, PhD
Secular Humanist Author and Speaker
www.thejewishatheist.com
“Believing in God is only religion if you are intimidated by God. If…you stand up straight and refuse to surrender you may be a humanist… Denouncing God is not very useful. Pursuing dignity is.”
Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine
Johnny, I don’t think anyone claimed neuroscience is used to demonstrate falsity of religious views.
ummm…so why did Pinker say this?
And the challenge to that deep-seated belief from neuroscience, evolutionary biology and cognitive science has put religion and science on the public stage. I think it’s one of the reasons you have a renewed assault on religious beliefs from people like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Clearly the implication is that nueroscience is a very devistating challenge to traditional religious worldviews.
You are taking a very extreme stance here. While you have a grasp of philosophical arguments you don’t seem to be aware of the progresses in neuroscience.
I am sure that I don’t have as good of a grasp on contemporary neuroscience as I would like to. But, that doesn’t mean that I am ignorant of the fact that neuroscience has greatly advanced and become much more complex. However, just because we are now able to understand what neural circuits give rise to certain behaviors, it doesn’t follow that we understand how the brain gives rise to conscious experience. In fact, you don’t need a PhD in nueropshyiology to understand that gaining more and more precise knowledge of the workings of the brain won’t solve the question of conscious experience arises from brain tissue. I don’t think my position is extreme in fact, i think it is pressupposed by everyone who does philosophy of mind. So (1) it is not extreme. (2) It is not unsupported. You should read that link I put from Chalmers which supports my position entirely.
It is you who challenged the statement that the mind is what the brain does, so theoretically you hold the burden of proof.
Me? Well I am not that smart. Fortunately, the theory of the mind you are using here has been severly criticized by others more intelligent than I. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
It is very easy to attack a scientific argument with a philosophical one
What are you talking about? I can’t even imagine a philosophical argument that should be taken seriously that contradicts an scientific truth. So I don’t even understand what you are saying here. I am NOT posing a philosophical argument against a scientific one. I am giving a taxonomy between empirical and philosophical areas of investigation. To say that the mind is nothing other than what the brain does IS a philosophical argument. It is making a claim about the existence of the mind that CANNOT be verified empirically! Try it. We could do all sorts of experiments (as researchers are doing right now) and find out to an immesurable degree the relationship between certain brain functions and their attendent conscious experiences, but it does not follow from that information that conscious experience is nothing more than brain function! There are more assumptions involved in that conclusion and these assumptions cannot be empirically tested. You are the one conflating empirical and ontological claims, not me.
“Clearly the implication is that nueroscience is a very devistating challenge to traditional religious worldviews.” This is exactly what I said, read up again–”Pinker says the neuroscientist’s view that the mind is what the brain does threatens religious believes that have dependencies on the concept of soul.”
So Johnny, why are you disagreeing with me?
“In fact, you don’t need a PhD in nueropshyiology to understand that gaining more and more precise knowledge of the workings of the brain won’t solve the question of conscious experience arises from brain tissue.” That is very precise because it’s not the neuroscientists who deny the connection (of course here I’m assuming you mean mind, as defined earlier, not as “subjective experience,” which is a highly debated topic). So yeah, if you don’t have a PhD in one of the scientific fields involved with studying the brain you will probably not be concerned with investigating the connection between brain and mind.
If you read the scripts from the Symposium I recommended you should see that many scientists are concerned with philosophical arguments and they do not discount them. However, philosophical arguments cannot be used to replace a microscope in the lab. Scientists will continue to formulate theories and test them scientifically.
“It is very easy to attack a scientific argument with a philosophical one.” What are you talking about?
I’m talking about comparing apples to apples. But you’re right I should have explained clearer. What I thought of was that scientists have entire studies made up of biological facts, that amount to proving or disproving a theory. These studies take sometimes decades to complete. Susan Green published a short uncomplicated review of her studies on the brain and the mind, and even short as it is it’s filled with data accumulated through years of research. To break down her argument, the science in these studies should be taken apart piece by piece. Throwing philosophical arguments at her one-page article is not going to truly touch the studies that she quotes.
And I think I’m done with this topic. However, I will start a “What will the atheist say…” series. Second question in the series is “What will the atheist say when you sneeze?” The first question was “What will atheists say about the existence of a soul.” Which I think we debated enough for now. So sneezing as a topic should be much more simple.
Johnny stated, “The vast majority of contemporary naturalist/atheist philosophers do not think that the mind can be “reduced” to the brain.”
My response… what fallacy is that? Appeal to popularity? How about this… if mind can be reduced to the brain what does it do to philosophy?
Without the brain there is no mind.
Johnny stated, “The vast majority of contemporary naturalist/atheist philosophers do not think that the mind can be “reduced” to the brain.”
My response… what fallacy is that? Appeal to popularity? How about this… if mind can be reduced to the brain what does it do to philosophy?
Its one thing to commit the fallacy ad populum. It is another to allude to a large body of philosphical research that has proved convincing to the vast majority of scholars, that a reductionist theory does not work. Appealing to the majority of informed scholars is a form of an appeal to authority, but a legitimate one. Here is just one argument against areductionist theory of the mind. (there are many others)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/#ArgAgaRedMinBraIdeThe
“A large body of philosphical research.”
Large bodies are often wrong, 1800’s, 1960, 500 BCE etc. Doesn’t matter. Dozens of wise men on a sinking ship won’t convince me to jump aboard.
Multiple Realizability i think oversimplifies and I have a hard time agreeing with its starting point. “All mental kinds are multiply realizable by distinct physical kinds” How can anyone quantify this? How can a “mental kind” be proven to be the same? “A given psychological kind” with regards to pain across species or even people isn’t verifiable other than the words we use to describe it. It is as untenable as someone trying to convince me in proof of god because they “felt” his presence. Even within our species pain is experienced very differently person to person and even within the genders. It is different qualitatively and quantitatively. Why because our brains and bodies are different. Personally, I don’t even experience something the same way twice. The physical makeup, structure and chemistry changes even after experiencing something once. You hold the same flame up to my left and then my right finger at two different times I will experience the pain differently. My argument is that no to mental states are ever completely the same. I take complete opposition to the word “identical.”
Every moment in my life is distinctly different from the next… even Deja vu. Why? Cause the first time it wasn’t Deja vu!
Pain or anything is experienced differently due to… different brain chemistry… person to person, species to species.
The language we use to describe pain is simplified and is the only thing close to being the same.
Hilary Putnam is a reductionist. He is a reductionist when it comes to mental state of pain.
Large bodies are often wrong, 1800’s, 1960, 500 BCE etc.
I don’t even know what you are referencing here. Suffice it to say, that there are multiple arguments against the reductionism of the mental to the brain, and there are good reasons to be critical of it. Which is WHY most philosophers don’t hold to reductionism. If you really think reductionism is the right way to understand it, then you answer the many criticisms leveled against it. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/#Lat
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/identity.htm#H2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theory
Besides there are much better naturalistic theories of the mind body relation to put to rest the original identity theory. Functionalism is a much better theory and doesn’t have the problem of multiple realizability.
It is as untenable as someone trying to convince me in proof of god because they “felt” his presence.
It is clear that you do not understand what Putnam is saying, nor what the identity theory is .
According to Leibniz’s law if something is identical to another thing, then it must share all the same properties. So if pain=Brain State X, then if one has pain, then by necessity, they have brain state X. In other words, it is not logically possible to be in pain and not have Brain state X. All multiple realizability says, is that it is logically possible to have the same experience of pain, without brain state X. Therefore, the identity theory fails. Why because it fails to conform to Leibniz’s law.
A large body of philosophical agreement still does not rest with me as “true” “more true” or “more believable” sorry.
No thing is identical to another thing… even if “identical” they occupy a different space. Different space, different reference. Did Leibniz work in an ideal setting or a real setting?
I am not making arguments for reductionism… I am saying merely Putnam is overly simplistic and you have to take a leap of faith to accept his premises.
My argument is this Putnam is generalizing. Pain is subjective. This is the real world, no two pains are alike. I don’t accept his premises. Not only bad arguments but bad science, no verifiability, no repeatability.
“Brain state” is an absurd concept. You can never throw a rock into the same river twice man… never.
“All multiple realizability says, is that it is logically possible to have the same experience of pain, without brain state X.”
I don’t believe “the same experience of pain” ever exists with or without brain state X.
All right I give up. Anytime I bring up a point from a philosophical perspective its dismissed out of hand. That makes me believe you guys don’t really care about the philosophical issues involved in any of these debates, which makes my comments irrelevant. So that’s cool. Good luck with your blog.
Dismissed out of hand I think is off the mark. I think I made valid counter arguments which you won’t even seem to comment on.
I have a problem with Putnam not you, try relax. Who exactly are “you guys?” Sorry but I am speaking from my own exclusive brain state not anyone else’s.
let me ask you some simple questions… Do you genuinely believe that two brain states can be identical?
Is pain subjective?
Is it measurable?
** Turning mind inside out **
‘Mind’ is the last immaterial bolt hole for ’soul’. ‘Body’ is a misleading abstraction. Zombies are animated bodies. (Neuroscience deals only with zombies.) Human beings are not animated bodies.
‘Human being’ is a misleading abstraction. A society consists of persons living in nature, sharing a common highly artificial, abstract web of interactions called a culture. Outside of culture there are no persons. Inside of nature there are no machines, no plans, no purposes, no aims.
Whatever can be expressed by language, including my experience of so-called “private” perceptions, belongs solely to culture, not nature. Language is our interactive collective consciousness. ‘Mind’ disappears into language.
‘Body’ is merely an abstraction from ‘person.’ Specifically, a failed attempt to account for the difference between a living person and a dead body.
One of xianity’s darkest gifts is its focus on the so-called individual soul. Western philosophy gets nowhere by having been theology’s lickspittle. Explanations drawn from neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary biology can not be expected to provide a full account of culture. They were not designed to do so; they will not do so.
Persons, language, and culture arose simultaneously. In that sense culture is irreducible; it is the given.
There are no minds. There are no bodies. There is nothing to interact.
bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007