RE: Modal Argument: The Mind is Not the Brain
October 22, 2013 at 1:21 pm
(This post was last modified: October 22, 2013 at 1:22 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
The close interaction between mind and body (brain) has been well established, long before modern neuroscience. You use of the word “coincident” is entirely appropriate. However, you carry the idea one step too far if you consider the body logically prior to the mind.
Everyone knows that psychoactive drugs, head trauma, and direct electrical stimulation cause changes, sometimes very dramatic, in human consciousness. You could easily conclude that brain processes and operations of the mind are one and the same. The substance dualist position I advocate accommodates this evidence without over-determination, falling into epiphenomenalism, or denying consciousness altogether.
According to dualist theories, the brain does not generate consciousness. Instead there are two interacting entities: the material brain and immaterial mind, or knowing subject. One provides signs; the other interprets the meaning of signs. The relationship between the two is analogous to that between a scoreboard and its operator.
The scoreboard electronics, its lights and dials, is like the material body. The operator serves as the knowing subject. The lights on the scoreboard are just lights until the knowing subject interprets their meaning. Like brain damage, if some of the lights are burned out the knowing subject will not have anything to interpret from scoreboard. Like mental illness, if the connections between the controls and the panel are faulty the operator cannot control the results. Like drugs, if you spill water on the wiring…you get the idea. Most brain functions are unconscious, invisible to the knowing subject. Likewise the operator does not need to see or understand the electronics between the controls and the scoreboard. Pattern recognition is a brain function. Interpreting and assigning meaning to those patterns belongs to the mind.
This is not to say that substance dualism doesn’t have its own problems. Fortunately these are not as fatal as they appear on first blush. The main objection to this theory is the so-called interaction problem, i.e. the lack of an apparent means by which immaterial and material substances can interact? This is an argument from ignorance. And an means of interaction, like the Penrose-Hamerhof theory of micro-tubules, is conceptually possible. The fact that such a means has not yet been found is not sufficient reason to dismiss dualism.
Everyone knows that psychoactive drugs, head trauma, and direct electrical stimulation cause changes, sometimes very dramatic, in human consciousness. You could easily conclude that brain processes and operations of the mind are one and the same. The substance dualist position I advocate accommodates this evidence without over-determination, falling into epiphenomenalism, or denying consciousness altogether.
According to dualist theories, the brain does not generate consciousness. Instead there are two interacting entities: the material brain and immaterial mind, or knowing subject. One provides signs; the other interprets the meaning of signs. The relationship between the two is analogous to that between a scoreboard and its operator.
The scoreboard electronics, its lights and dials, is like the material body. The operator serves as the knowing subject. The lights on the scoreboard are just lights until the knowing subject interprets their meaning. Like brain damage, if some of the lights are burned out the knowing subject will not have anything to interpret from scoreboard. Like mental illness, if the connections between the controls and the panel are faulty the operator cannot control the results. Like drugs, if you spill water on the wiring…you get the idea. Most brain functions are unconscious, invisible to the knowing subject. Likewise the operator does not need to see or understand the electronics between the controls and the scoreboard. Pattern recognition is a brain function. Interpreting and assigning meaning to those patterns belongs to the mind.
This is not to say that substance dualism doesn’t have its own problems. Fortunately these are not as fatal as they appear on first blush. The main objection to this theory is the so-called interaction problem, i.e. the lack of an apparent means by which immaterial and material substances can interact? This is an argument from ignorance. And an means of interaction, like the Penrose-Hamerhof theory of micro-tubules, is conceptually possible. The fact that such a means has not yet been found is not sufficient reason to dismiss dualism.
