Brain, Mind & Neuroscience

[prodigalson2011]

Well, certainly, the study of “free will” is fraught with problems. There is no question that this is so. The mind “studying itself”, indeed, presents challenges inlike any other area of inquirey. Nonetheless, science is the only discipline which possess tools sufficient to tackle the issue ( i.e. honest observation, repeatable methodogies, peer review, for example). Philosophy lacks these tools, although I do not mean to demean the value of the reflective reasoning which philosophy supplies to the formation of any given hypothesis…

I contend that science’s tools are insufficient. The subjective nature of thought life renders it impenetrable by objective scientific analysis. This attitude that says everything must be subject to scientific verification reeks of naivety. It is like a mechanic claiming that all problems can be solved with a monkey wrench. It assumes that everything is limited to the precepts of one’s particular practice. This is a decidedly unscientific presumption.

Thus, while a scientific study is onerous, it nonetheless is the only reliable means by which we will ever know or by which we can hope to know.

I don’t see any reason to think that the physical sciences are a reliable means to understand the mind.

Further, even if we are not free in that classical sense to which your faith subscribes, I think the needs of society will continue to compel the punishment and correction of misdeeds and offenses, and, the means by which rights and obligstions are defined. In other words, I would not spend time worrying about the implications for the survival of civilization.

As a final note, I know Sam Harris to be a conscientious scientist. His orientation is soundly based in science as is his methodology. Although he reaches conclusions which are inconsistent with people of faith, I don’t thank doing so renders him prejudiced by any means. After all, wouldn’t it be unfair of me to suggest that your views are biased because you arrive at findings which depart from my own?

Despite the fact that history does not bear out your vision of society (societies whose moral boundaries drift are notoriously prone to collapse), that’s not what I was getting at. I put forth the thought simply as a reminder that even scientists have personal reasons for believing what they do which are not strictly scientific.

In regards to your final note, every human being alive is prejudiced to some extent. You would be entirely correct to suggest that my views are biased. Everyone lives by some philosophy, and that philosophy cannot be derived completely from cold, material observation. The great lie in today’s climate of scientism is that the worldviews put forth by individuals such as Mr. Harris are totally objective and scientific when they are not. There are equally valid interpretations of the results of such studies as Harris’ that paint radically different pictures. Not a scientist alive is immune to their own philosophical bias. The problem is that they want to hide behind the shield of science instead of engaging in rational debate.

There is a reason why Mr. Harris got his rear-end handed to him by William Lane Craig, and it’s the same reason Dawkins refuses to debate him: they make claims that overstep the bounds of their profession and go into Craig’s, and when they step into his arena, he eats them alive.

 

[tonyrey]

I contend that science’s tools are insufficient. The subjective nature of thought life renders it impenetrable by objective scientific analysis. This attitude that says everything must be subject to scientific verification reeks of naivety. It is like a mechanic claiming that all problems can be solved with a monkey wrench. It assumes that everything is limited to the precepts of one’s particular practice. This is a decidedly unscientific presumption.

I don’t see any reason to think that the physical sciences are a reliable means to understand the mind.

Despite the fact that history does not bear out your vision of society (societies whose moral boundaries drift are notoriously prone to collapse), that’s not what I was getting at. I put forth the thought simply as a reminder that even scientists have personal reasons for believing what they do which are not strictly scientific.

In regards to your final note, every human being alive is prejudiced to some extent. You would be entirely correct to suggest that my views are biased. Everyone lives by some philosophy, and that philosophy cannot be derived completely from cold, material observation. The great lie in today’s climate of scientism is that the worldviews put forth by individuals such as Mr. Harris are totally objective and scientific when they are not. There are equally valid interpretations of the results of such studies as Harris’ that paint radically different pictures. Not a scientist alive is immune to their own philosophical bias. The problem is that they want to hide behind the shield of science instead of engaging in rational debate.

There is a reason why Mr. Harris got his rear-end handed to him by William Lane Craig, and it’s the same reason Dawkins refuses to debate him: they make claims that overstep the bounds of their profession and go into Craig’s, and when they step into his arena, he eats them alive.

Coincidentally I have just stated on another thread that science cannot possibly be philosophy because it is based on metascientific principles - which were established by the philosophy of science…

 

[Sair]

It is hard to follow.

Because we take granted our ability to “refer”.

Philosophy majors worry about such.

And, I agree, there is a temptation to reifiy “being” because we are so oriented to “beings”.

Yet there is a distinction at work. You might call it the “thereness” of things.

Somehow, we are aware when something is “there” or “not there”, “present” or “absent”.
.
“Being there” and “not being there”, “presence” and “absence”, are internally related, like “north” and “south”. We only know about “being there”, “presence”, because we know about “not being there”, “absence”.

And this is a segue into Heidegger. He says we are familiar with the “there” of things, because we know that we are not always going “to be there”. It is awareness of our impending death that motivates awareness of the “there”, “presence”, “not being there”, “absence”.

Ah, the pleasures of philosophy.

Sorry for the digression.

Not sure it’s really a digression, but a branch of how minds relate to other entities.

I’m sure most people have had the experience of walking into an empty room and then, without necessarily seeing or hearing it directly, have become aware of the presence of another person who walks into the room - it might be just an extremely subtle awareness of the disturbance in air pressure and sound absorbence, or something - I can’t claim to know the precise physics involved - but awareness of other entities is something so fundamental to our experience that it’s hard to conceive of circumstances in which we would lack such awareness. Indeed, it might be the case that our awareness of ourselves as entities is directly related to our awareness of other entities external to our own skin - especially if Daniel Dennett’s hypothesis of the intentional stance is valid.

On the other hand, I don’t think this requires a separate awareness of the “thereness” of things, apart from our mental concepts of them - other entities are either within our field of perception or they are not. If our senses evolved to perceive things that might affect our immediate survival, the assumption of “thereness” must be automatic, in order to elicit the appropriate reaction.

Just throwing these ideas out there, really - I don’t know that there isn’t a separate human faculty that homes in on existence as separate to any other feature…

 

[Viviphilia]

Can anyone here refer me to some books recently written that explains the difference between the brain and the mind? If I’m understanding the topic correctly, we are to believe that the brain and mind are entirely two different entities, yet, with the little I know about neuroscience, and I’ll admit, I know very little, this seems to be an impossibility. I’m trying to understand this and am doing a poor job of it.

I just heard about this book, which the author claims to be an attempt to solve the Binding problem “for a very limited case.”

The binding problem is one of a number of terms at the interface between neuroscience and philosophy which suffer from being used in several different ways, often in a context that does not explicitly indicate which way the term is being used. Of the many possible usages, two common versions may be useful anchor points. Firstly, there is the practical issue of how brains segregate elements in complex patterns of data. This can be illustrated by the question “When I see a blue square and a yellow circle, what neural mechanisms ensure that the sensing of blue is coupled to that of a square shape and that of yellow is coupled to that of a circle?” Secondly, there is the more fundamental problem of “how the unity of conscious perception is brought about by the distributed activities of the central nervous system.”

by Legéndy (2009)Circuits in the Brain

 

[Viviphilia]

I just heard about this book, which the author claims to be an attempt to solve the Binding problem “for a very limited case.”

Circuits in the Brain by Legéndy (2009)

Just watched a video synopsis of the book by Legéndy. This is the most sophisticated description I’ve seen of how stimuli are perceived by the brain and made available for cognition. While the average person might have difficulty with these concepts, the author appears to do an excellent job of making his theories approachable to those with a basic understanding of neuroscience.

The Circuits in our Brain – The new way to study brain signals

 

[Faith1960]

Just watched a video synopsis of the book by Legéndy. This is the most sophisticated description I’ve seen of how stimuli are perceived by the brain and made available for cognition. While the average person might have difficulty with these concepts, the author appears to do an excellent job of making his theories approachable to those with a basic understanding of neuroscience.

The Circuits in our Brain – The new way to study brain signals

Where does the mind come in, if it’s different from the brain?

 

[Faith1960]

My understanding of this is that the body/soul are united. The faculties of the soul include intellect, passions, etc…those things you attribute to mind are faculties of the soul…this is from Aquinas…

This links explains this

psyking.net/id46.htm

Are Catholics bound to believe in Aquinas’ theories of the soul, mind, brain? If so, what if he was wrong?

 

[Faith1960]

There is a great book on the topic written by Ramond Tallis (who is a neuroscientist) called Aping Mankind. In the book, Tallis criticises what he calls ‘neuromania’, or the obstinate insistence of some pseudo-scientists who keep equating the brain and the mind.

Tallis provides very compelling arguments from both philosophy and neuroscience explaining why the brain and mind are different (one of the main ones being rooted in the law of non-identity),

What makes Tallis’ book so interesting is that he is not religious, not does he have a religious agenda. His arguments are rigorously scientific. I had the pleasure of hearing him in a conference too recently and he is persuasive in convincing disparate audiences that the mind is not a physical thing.

amazon.com/Aping-Mankind-Neuromania-Darwinitis-Misrepresentation/dp/1844652726

Sounds good. IMO, it’s always best to use an unbiased source.

 

[Faith1960]

I wish I knew what people mean when they refer to the soul. I understand “brain”.I even understand “mind” as it means the disposition of the brain’s activity (eg. “to change one’s mind” or to" make up one’s mind" about this or that proposition.)

That being said, what exactly is a soul? Doesn’t all functioning simply shut down at death? What is there that survives death? Certainly you can’t seriously believe that one’s personality survives death anymore than it can survive Alzheimer’s or a frontal lobotomy—hence, don’t you agree that all mental processes shut down at death? And don’t you then have to agree that “soul” has no real referent?

I really wish someone could answer your questions in a simple way, a way that actually makes sense.

 

[davidv]

I really wish someone could answer your questions in a simple way, a way that actually makes sense.

Some questions don’t have simple answers. Here is a short excerpt from the Catechism that may give some clues that this particular question demand far more than a simple answer.

**“BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE” **

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore *willed *by God.
363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human *life *or the entire human person.230 But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.
364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232
Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 233

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.235
367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people “wholly”, with “spirit and soul and body” kept sound and blameless at the Lord’s coming.236 The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.237 “Spirit” signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.238 368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.239

 

[WillP]

I don’t see any reason to think that the physical sciences are a reliable means to understand the mind.

1. Do you understand the mind well enough to know what tools are required to understand it?

There is a reason why Mr. Harris got his rear-end handed to him by William Lane Craig, and it’s the same reason Dawkins refuses to debate him: they make claims that overstep the bounds of their profession and go into Craig’s, and when they step into his arena, he eats them alive.

1. i am certain there is some element of subjectivity mixed up somewhere in those cold harsh observations.

 

[Viviphilia]

Where does the mind come in, if it’s different from the brain?

That’s like asking where the movie comes from if it’s different from the movie projector.

Cognition is the emergent activity of the brain, similar to the film being projected onto the screen, only far more complex. The (old fashioned) movie projector has functions like spinning the film strip through the device and shining a light through the film to project the images on the individual cells of the movie onto the screen. It does this at a very fast speed to create the illusion of continuous action. Similarly, the brain is a bunch of neurons organized in a highly complex way. As electro-chemical impulses are transmitted by the neurons, they process organizations of data, similar to a computer. As you get information from around you and you think about it, you get ideas. The way that happens is very complex and researchers are constantly researching it to find out more.

You’re asking a question that people spend their entire lives and careers trying to figure out. There is no easy way to explain it. You’ve got to read some of the links posted earlier if you want to begin to understand, and understanding won’t come easy. In my experience, most people give up asking the question before they get satisfying and fulfilling answers. Basic ideas about philosophy of mind would be a good place for you to start if you’re serious.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

 

[Faith1960]

You’re asking a question that people spend their entire lives and careers trying to figure out. There is no easy way to explain it. You’ve got to read some of the links posted earlier if you want to begin to understand, and understanding won’t come easy. In my experience, most people give up asking the question before they get satisfying and fulfilling answers. Basic ideas about philosophy of mind would be a good place for you to start if you’re serious.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

It appears that the truthful answer is that no one knows for sure if the mind and the brain are the same thing or not. Everybody has an opinion, none are found to be THE answer, no position is definative. So, why all the arguing about this topic on CAF? Does our Catholicism require us to believe that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, and if it does, and since it can’t be proven true or false why adhere to that belief instead of simply admitting we don’t know?

 

[tonyrey]

It appears that the truthful answer is that no one knows for sure if the mind and the brain are the same thing or not. Everybody has an opinion, none are found to be THE answer, no position is definative. So, why all the arguing about this topic on CAF? Does our Catholicism require us to believe that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, and if it does, and since it can’t be proven true or false why adhere to that belief instead of simply admitting we don’t know?

If the mind is not a separate entity from the brain all our activity is determined by physical events and we are biological computers without free will and without responsibility for our thoughts, words or deeds…

 

[Faith1960]

If the mind is not a separate entity from the brain all our activity is determined by physical events and we are biological computers without free will and without responsibility for our thoughts, words or deeds…

I disagree.

 

[GEddie]

It appears that the truthful answer is that no one knows for sure if the mind and the brain are the same thing or not. Everybody has an opinion, none are found to be THE answer, no position is definative. So, why all the arguing about this topic on CAF? Does our Catholicism require us to believe that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, and if it does, and since it can’t be proven true or false why adhere to that belief instead of simply admitting we don’t know?

The faith holds that our minds continue beyond bodily death; which is impossible if the mind is identical with the brain, as no brain activity is possible once the blood leaves the human head.

I like the movie-projector illustration presented earlier. Clearly, if you are watching the movie, the projector is running. If it breaks down, there is no movie. But the movie film remains in existence, to be shown on a new projector or at a later time.

No one would argue that film and projector are the same.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Viviphilia]

I like the movie-projector illustration presented earlier. Clearly, if you are watching the movie, the projector is running. If it breaks down, there is no movie. But the movie film remains in existence, to be shown on a new projector or at a later time.

Heh. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I like that!

 

[tonyrey]

I disagree.

Without reasons?!

 

[Sair]

Some questions don’t have simple answers. Here is a short excerpt from the Catechism that may give some clues that this particular question demand far more than a simple answer.

It’s quite true that not all questions can be answered simply, and that sometimes a simple answer fails to give all the information required. If asked, “What is the mind?” I could respond with an answer like, “It’s what the brain does,” which, while it may be superficially true (at least as far as we know) really doesn’t go the distance.

On the other hand, it’s often a good idea to be wary of answers that seem overly complex and ponderous, since they may actually be avoiding the crux of the question, dressing up a lack of knowledge in swathes of obscurantist verbiage. The catechism answer you quoted to the question “What is the soul?” seems to veer between, “It’s another term for the mind; It’s a metaphor for our deepest emotional dispositions; It’s a platonic form of the body/person” - always avoiding the fact that we actually don’t know how to define a soul, let alone determine whether or not such a thing exists.

And it has to be said that for much of the field of study that is neuroscience, “I don’t know” remains the most honest answer available.

 

[Faith1960]

I disagree.

I thought I made my opinion clear earlier, when I said that I wanted explanations that made sense (to me.)