PZ quotes newscientist.com :
"From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material."PZ's rejoinder:
"That makes no sense. The perception of mental activity is associated with detectable changes in the activity of the brain; that is not evidence for dualism. Would it be evidence for the idea that the mind is the product of the brain if our most sensitive instruments revealed that while people composed sonnets or solved calculus problems or daydreamed about Tina Fey nude, their brains were as inert as large lumps of cold silly putty? I think not. These data are exactly what we'd expect if thought were the product of brain activity, that we'd see brain activity while people were thinking. We even have experimental evidence of correlated brain activity preceding individual awareness of conscious thought…again, as we materialists would expect." [emphasis added.]
PZ's argument, stripped of sarcasm, seems to be that if the mind were not identical with the brain, then no brain activity would be necessary for the mind's operation; the brain would sit idle, like a lump of silly putty. Therefore, if there is brain activity, then the mind is the same as the brain, and monism is justified.
Could we say that the heart is the same as blood, using the same comparison? Of course the heart moves the blood, but is not itself identical with the blood. The blood needs the heart, but is not the heart. The same goes for the brain. The mind uses the brain, but is not identical to the brain, which this data shows full well. The plasiticity of the brain shows that the mind both moves about on the brain, and that the mind can actually cause the brain to rewire itself.
Brain plasticity is an area of increasing research, including recent experiments with monkeys which showed that an artificial parallel connection between a random brain neuron and the monkey's hand could result in manipulation of the hand within 30 minutes. In other words, the mind shifted the neural activity around on the brain and rapidly found a new pathway to connect the mind to the hand. What could be more clear than that the mind is not hardwired into the brain: the brain is not the mind, any more than hardware is software.
As for pre-conscious thought activation of the brain, does a computer require booting (initializing in preparation to perform logical operations) before it can run useful software? (answer = yes). And is the software identical to the microprocessor that runs it? (answer = no).
PZ has chosen a conclusion based on his desire for an outcome, a process known as rationalization.
For a more balanced view of the brain activity than PZ uses for his examples, I suggest the MIND(sci-am) magazine article this month written by skeptic Michael Shermer. Shermer, an inveterate materialist, eviscerates the argument that all the brain scans vs. thought processes has any real meaning in the monism - dualism debate. He gives empirical reasons why the brain scans are more like phrenology (cranial bumps as locators of thought) than they are science: it is what is technologically available at the moment, so it's what gets done, gets published, and gets called science. But the statistical trimming of unwanted data, coupled with questionable averaging techniques, is rampant, and Shermer concludes that no meaningful conclusions should be based on such stuff.
PZ, however has used this type of information erroneously in drawing an unwarranted conclusion: if the brain is active during a thought, it is the thought. While this is a necessary conclusion for Philosophical Materialism, it is in no way a necessary conclusion from the data. PZ places more importance on the former, than on the latter.
3 comments:
The perception of mental activity is associated with detectable changes in the activity of the brain; that is not evidence for dualism
PZ identifies mental activity and its brain correlation with causal production and identity. If A is correlated with B, does it mean that A=B (or that A is caused by B)? (By the way, how could the same identical thing be associated with itself? The concept of association suppose a relationship between two or more things)
PZ ignore that evidence of neuroscience is consistent both with materialism and interationist dualism.
In his Ingersoll Lecture, William James addressed that question like this: "Everyone knows that arrests of brain development occasion imbecility, that blows on the head abolish memory or consciousness, and that brain-stimulants and poisons change the quality of our ideas. The anatomists, physiologists, and pathologists have only shown this generally admitted fact of a dependence to be detailed and minute. What the laboratories and hospitals have lately been teaching us is not only that thought in general is one of the brain's functions, but that the various special forms of thinking are functions of special portions of the brain"
James, like all dualist, admited the correlation between brain functioning and mental activity.
But James pointed out the following:
"When the physiologist who thinks that his science cuts hope of immortality pronounces the phrase, "Thought is a function of the brain," he thinks of the matter just as he thinks when he says, "Steam is a function of the tea-kettle," "Light is a function of the electric circuit," "Power is a function of the moving waterfall." In these latter cases the several material objects have the function of inwardly creating or engendering their effects, and their function must be called productive function, just so, he thinks, it must be with the brain"
James then added the important and esential point for the discussion of mind-body problem: But in the world of physical nature productive function of this sort is not the only kind of function with which we are familiar. We have also releasing or permissive function; and we have transmissive function.
The trigger of a crossbow has a releasing function: it removes the obstacle that holds the string, and lets the bow fly back to its natural shape. So when the hammer falls upon a detonating compound. By knocking out the inner molecular obstructions, it lets the constituent gases resume their normal bulk, and so permits the explosion to take place.
In the case of a colored glass, a prism, or a refracting lens, we have transmissive function. The energy of light, no matter how produced, is by the glass sifted and limited in color, and by the lens or prism determined to a certain path and shape. Similarly, the keys of an organ have only a transmissive function. They open successively the various pipes and let the wind in the air-chest escape in various ways. The voices of the various pipes are constituted by the columns of air trembling as they emerge. But the air is not engendered in the organ. The organ proper, as distinguished from its air-chest, is only an apparatus for letting portions of it loose upon the world in these peculiarly limited shapes.
My thesis now is this: that, when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this the ordinary psychophysiologist leaves out of his account."
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/articles/james/immortality.htm
For a sound critique of materialist monism, the paper of philosopher Peter Williams is a must read:
http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_whynaturalistsshouldmind.htm
ZC
zetetic chick,
As always, great comment, thanks very much. I haven't spent much time with James, and I definitely need to.
It's interesting also that in quantum physics, there is an apparent connection between mind and matter, as in an observation being necessary in order to collapse the probabilities of the Schroedinger equation into actualities. While this sort of thing is just embryonic, and no worldview should be based on such, it is still more valid than the conclusion drawn by PZ and the standard Philosophical Materialist.
Philosophical Materialism is of no use to science and could well overly restrict the ability of scientists to reach farther and farther into the real unknown. It is unreasonable for scientists to reject any pursuit on the basis of an unprovable restriction such as Philosophical Materialism.
Nice blog, Stan. Your critical examination of atheism and philosophical materialism is very compelling.
Keep the good work!
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