Category Archives: Mind and brain

Neuroimaging

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I’ve been meaning to write a post in this for a while, but as usual, Barry Arrington has prompted me into action (I’m really very grateful to Barry sometimes :))  (Golly, just checked – it’s already half way down the UD page!  Does Barry really want his posts buried quite so rapidly?  We are going to see fossilisation at this rate!)

Anyhoo….  Neuroimaging is one of the things I do.  Here is one of my favorite images (probably the most reproduced fMRI image of all time), by Fox et al, 2005:

Although it may not have the form that some readers might be more familiar with, as it’s plotted on a “flat[ish] map” of the cortical surface.

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Gpuccio on compatibilism and moral responsibility

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Gpuccio has written a couple of comments intended for the impressive RDFish.  RDF hasn’t responded – I suspect because he/she is concentrating on responding to StephenB on another thread.  I find it  disconcerting that GP, who is a nice chap, should get so emotional and dismissive of a respectable (and in my view correct) view of free will. So I am going to dive-in in RDF’s absence and hope GP sees this.It is over 1000 words and repeats some rather well known things about compatibilism. I wouldn’t waste your time reading it unless you think compatibilism is self-evident rubbish.

To see the strength of GP’s feelings on this here are a couple of quotes:

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Naturalism, Normativity, and Nihilism

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Hopefully it will not be seen as an abuse of posting privileges if I share some thoughts I’ve been developing over the past few years.   But I’ve been prompted to share them by JLA’s assertion at Uncommon Descent that naturalism entails nihilism — an assertion that seems unquestioned in that forum. I think that that assertion collapses on closer inspection.

The problematic I’m concerned with here is about the relations between naturalism, normativity, and nihilism.  Each of these terms avails itself of a straightforward articulation, but I’ll be explicit: by ‘naturalism’ I mean that all real phenomena have a spatio-temporal location and participate in causal relations with other spatio-temporally locatable particulars.  By ‘normativity’ I mean that thought and action for at least some intelligent beings are governed by norms or rules of what counts as correct or incorrect, valid or invalid, good or bad.  And by ‘nihilism’ I mean that there is nothing of any real, genuine value, meaning, purpose, or fact in the world.

Now, does naturalism entail  nihilism?   It does, I submit, if — and only if — one has an a priori commitment to the further view that normativity is non-natural.  Put otherwise, if normativity is non-natural, but the natural is all that there is, then there isn’t any normativity — not really.   And nihilism follows as a result.

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Split-brain patients and the dire implications for the soul

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Note: I have changed the title of this post for the benefit of readers who are unfamiliar with the term ‘substance dualism’.

Many of our readers – especially among the regulars at Uncommon Descent – are substance dualists.  That is, they believe that each of us has an immaterial mind or soul that constitutes our true self, and that the body, including the brain, is merely a vehicle “inhabited” and controlled by the mind or soul.

There are many problems with this idea, which is why it is rejected by most neuroscientists and philosophers.  One of the most striking is the problem posed by the strange characteristics of split-brain patients, as described in this video by VS Ramachandran:


 

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Dr Nim

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It has struck me more than once that a lot of the confusion that accompanies discussions about stuff like consciousness and free will, and intelligent design, and teleology, even the explanatory filter, and the words “chance” and “random” arises from lack of clarity over the difference between decision-making and intention.  I think it’s useful to separate them, especially given the tendency for people, especially those making pro-ID arguments, but also those making ghost-in-the-machine consciousness or free will arguments, to regard “random” as meaning “unintentional”.  Informed decisions are not random.  Not all informed decisions involve intention.

This was my first computer:

It was called Dr Nim.  It was a computer game, but completely mechanical – no batteries required.  You had to beat Dr Nim, by not being the one left with the last marble, and you took turns with Dr Nim (the plastic board).  It was possible to beat Dr Nim, but usually Dr Nim won.

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Things That IDers Don’t Understand, part 3 — We still make choices, even if free will is illusory

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Over at UD, Salvador Cordova criticizes a statement by Jerry Coyne that appeared in a USA Today column:

So if we don’t have free will, what can we do? One possibility is to give in to a despairing nihilism and just stop doing anything. But that’s impossible, for our feeling of personal agency is so overwhelming that we have no choice but to pretend that we do choose, and get on with our lives.

There are a lot of problems with Cordova’s post (which we can address in the comments), but I do agree that Coyne’s statement is problematic and warrants criticism. Ironically, Coyne’s misunderstanding is shared by many ID proponents — hence the title of this post.

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Philosophy of Mind: A Taxonomy

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I consider the following to be a “work in progress,” and will make changes as others here contribute corrections and suggestions.

The so-called “mind-body problem”, as bequeathed to us by Descartes, has invited various solutions over the centuries.  In the classical version, the basic positions were dualism, materialism, and idealism — each of which has its sub-varieties.

What is meant by “mind”?  Well, there are characteristically mental phenomena have been presented as candidates for what is essential to mindedness: rationality, intentionality, subjectivity, volition, or consciousness.  (That these don’t all overlap can be seen by asking, “are there unconscious mental states or processes?”, “what sorts of minds do non-rational animals have?” “are there purely qualitative, non-intentional mental states, e.g. pains?” and so on.)

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A materialist defends substance dualism

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At UD, Vincent Torley links to an odd little paper by William Lycan, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina, entitled Giving Dualism Its Due.

The abstract reads:

Despite the current resurgence of modest forms of mind-body dualism, traditional Cartesian immaterial-substance dualism has few if any defenders. This paper argues that no convincing case has been against substance dualism, and that standard objections to it can be credibly answered.

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Reductionism

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Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched

It’s what many scientists are accused of by those who condemn science as “evolutionary materialism” and “evolutionary materialism” with “atheism”.

But what is “reductionism” supposed to mean?  Evolution News and Views has an article up today (h/t to bornagain77 at UD) that is a critique of an article on “neuroaesthetics” in PLOS biology.

The EnV article begins:

Evolutionary materialists must believe, at some level, that the experience of beauty can be reduced to actions of neurons in the brain

(my emphasis)

Well, I guess I’m an “evolutionary materialist”, and I’m also a neuroscientist.  But I was also trained in the arts, and spent most of my life as a musician.  Do I think that “the experience of beauty can be reduced to actions of neurons in the brain”?

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Is purpose necessary to acquire any apparently purposeful effects?

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For purposes of this discussion.

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Chance = non-teleological causes that happen to result in particular effects via regularities referred to as “lawful” and stochastic in nature.

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Purpose = teleological causes that are intended to result in particular effects; the organization of causes towards a pre-defined future goal.

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My question is: can chance causes generate all of the effects normally associated with purpose,but without purpose? IOW, is purpose necessary to produce all, most, or some apparently purposeful effects, or is purpose, in effect, only an associated sensation by-product or side-effect that isn’t necessary to the generation of any particular effect normally associated with it?

Libertarian Free Will

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The concept of Libertarian Free Will (and the contextualizations that must accompany it) is really just too big to tackle all at once, so I’m going to begin with a thread to serve as a basic primer about my view of Libertarian Free Will (LFW) – what I posit it to be, ontologically speaking, and how I describe it.

The basic difference between compatibilist free will and libertarian free will is that compatibilist intents are ultimately manufactured effects of unintentional brute processes. No matter how many layers of “pondering” “meta-pondering” one adds, or how many “modules” or “partitions” are added to the mix, it all still ultimately boils down to intentions being sufficiently explained as effects of brute (unintentional) forces. That is the root of all will in the compatibilist view; ultimately, humans do as they will, but do not will as they will, regardless of how many pre-action “intentions” they put in the chain.

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Intention and action

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The subject of intention and action has come up few times, so I thought I’d start a thread.

From my point of view as a cognitive neuroscientist,  decision-making (which action to take) is best conceived of as a kind of winner-take-all arm-wrestling competition, in which competing programs (represented as networks of active neurons) of action exert a mutually inhibitory effect on on the other, while each receives excitatory input from various other other networks, each of which in turn are engaged in a kind of subsidiary arm-wrestling match with some networks and a mutually cheer-leading match with others.

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Conching

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The problem of consciousness is, notoriously, Hard.  However, it seems to me that much of the hardness is a result of the nature of the word itself.  “Consciousness” is a noun, an abstract noun, derived from an adjective: “conscious”.  And that adjective describes either a state (a person can be “conscious” or “unconscious” or even “barely conscious”) or a status (a person, or an animal, is said to be a “conscious” entity, unlike, for example, a rock).

But what must an entity be like to merit the adjective “conscious”?  What, properties must it possess?  Merriam-Webster gives as its first definition: “perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation doing, or be capable of doing”.  In other words, the properties of a conscious thing refer to its capacity to do something.  And, indeed, it is derived from a latin verb: the verb scire, to know.   In other words, “consciousness” may be better thought of as an abstract noun derived not from an adjective that describes some static attribute of an entity, but from one that implies that that entity is an agent capable of action.

And so, I will coin a new verb: to conch.  And I will coin it as a transitive verb: an entity conches something, i.e. is conscious of something.

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