Does the Brain Produce the Mind?
What is the real you? When your body is lying in the morgue, brain within, will you have ceased to exist? The concept of “self” has inspired much thought and debate among people for hundreds of years. The fact that human beings are complex and stand apart from the rest of the animal world is generally agreed upon in the worlds of science, philosophy, and spirituality. However, terms such as self, mind, spirit, consciousness, and free will have been hotly debated in these communities. Trends such as Psychoanalytic Theary, Behaviorism, and Cognitive science, have all contributed to the discussion around these terms. At a basic level, it has boiled down to two sides of thinking, each with nuanced sub-categories.
Monism, or materialism, defines the mind as merely a result of brain activity, nothing more. On the other side is dualism, the philosophy that the mind is separate from the brain. Both theories offer a robust argument and both contain problematic assertions that have not and may never be fully understood.
Monism/Materialism
Paul Churchland, an analytic philosopher of cognitive science argues that the mind is simply a result of the brain and he is a proponent of the philosophical doctrine of eliminative materialism, which claims, among other things, that mental processes or mental states such as believing do not exist. Additionally, many biologists who argue that the brain with its structures, cells, and neural connections, will eventually identify the mind. Mental processes can be identified with purely physical processes in the central nervous system, and human beings are just complicated physiological organisms, and no more, according to materialism (Tang, 1999).
Churchland argues that a first-person mental experience does not prove that it is nonphysical in character and offers seven criteria of neuroscientific theory of consciousness which are (1) short-term memory; (2) independence of sensory inputs; (3) displays steerable attention; (4) has the capacity for alternative interpretations of complex facts; (5) disappears in deep sleep; (6) reappears in dreaming; and (7) holds the contents of several basic sensory modalities within a single experience. In other words, these criteria support the idea that, “The brain is the self,” according to Churchland. And like a computer, the human is simply a symbols manipulator, unable to intentionally assign meaning to the world around them (Tang, 1999). Advances in AI research make it possible to model distributive processing similar to the brain, providing support for the materialist view.
Mind-Body Dualism
In the classical position of mind/body dualism, the mind is considered to be the origin of thought and reason, often called the “seat of the soul” by philosophers. Cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Caroline Leaf puts it this way, “The mind is energy, and it generates energy through thinking, feeling, and choosing. It is our aliveness, without which, the physical brain and body would be useless.”
“By making the human being merely an organism, one has stripped the uniquely personal and idiosyncratic dimensions of selfhood down to biology,” according to researcher, Jon Mills. Two problems that arise from materialism is the existence of individual consciousness, accessible only to that person, and the existence and definition of free will. Mills argues that there are specific dangers in the materialistic view, one of which is an overly simplistic conclusion that psychic reality must be directly observable and quantifiable. Abstract theories are complex and require a higher level of energy, but this does not confirm that the simplest explanation is the truth, necessarily. To say that if something is not measurable, it does not exist is excessively elementary where the mind is concerned. Even though experiential changes in brain states are observable with modern technology, it is a gross overreach to claim that it cannot be than a physical occurrence.
Freedom and autonomy is also at stake in this debate. Mills points out that if the human is a purely physical system which cannot possess independent mental powers, then humans also cannot possess independence such as free choice just as a computer cannot. The evidence of self-conscious activity which governs the intentions and behaviors of people is clearly observational and supports the theory that the non-physical part of us is not exclusively dependent on the physical.
Along with free will, the concept of “self” must become solely a social construct with no actual definition, a mere illusion. Self-reflection is reduced to a second-order perception and thoughts are a product of natural laws (Dennett, 1991). While the physical system is dynamic and functionally sophisticated and ultimately the part doing the behaving, we cannot define the human experience as a function of atomic particles without losing the definition of selfhood, reports Mills.
Perhaps the most glaring questions that are not adequately addressed in materialism are those surrounding ethics and the notion of life after physical death. Concerning ethics, the logical conclusion of people being simply biological machines is that values and ethics would fade and disappear altogether. Logically, according to monism, the sick and weak should be exterminated to unburden society and all manner of experimentation should ensue in the name of progression, regardless of ethics. Moreover, how human values came to exist at all and why they vary so dramatically in mankind remains mysterious in the scope of physicalism.
Spiritualism, supernaturalism, and any appeal to mystical experience or faith are impossible in the theory of materialism. However, consider the increasing evidence through studies of the near-death-experiences. Dr. Bruce Greyson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia has studied thousands of patients of NDEs and discovered that these “experiences go beyond neurophysiological or cultural interpretations.” And a large study of over 2000 NDEs by University of Southampton found that of the patients, “2% described awareness with explicit recall of ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ actual events related to their resuscitation. One had a verifiable period of conscious awareness during which time cerebral function was not expected … [and] other recent studies that have indicated consciousness may be present despite clinically undetectable consciousness.”
In summary, the theory of materialism claims that the mind and brain are the same and that the concept of self is an illusion. Materialists posit that humans are nothing more than a system of physical functions with no more self-actualization than a computer.
Body-mind dualists defend that the mind is separate from the body though intricately comingled and influenced by it. Dualism leaves room for intangible notions, that in my observation are self-evident, such as love, autonomy, personal values, and spirituality. Furthermore, there is growing scientific support for out-of-body experiences in NDEs which support the claims made in the Bible concerning the eternal nature of the human soul. My conclusion aligns with dualism in that the brain and mind are not synonymous and for the reasons listed here.
To remove personal identity, uniqueness of self, and the higher faculties of our existence is to remove value, purpose, and hope from humankind. Humans are wired for hope and purpose, and the natural course of this robbery will bring violence, oppression, and suicide on a catastrophic scale. Perhaps it is more appropriate to ask what Intelligence facilitated such a beautifully complex organism, the human mind.
