Why does the soul need the brain seems like a logical question especially in the context of the belief held by the leading ID proponent of the Discovery Institute Michael Egnor. He has written extensively on the theme of the immaterial soul that, in his view, is an independent entity, separate of the human body. What Dr. Egnor consistently fails to acknowledge is the obvious connection or interdependence between a functioning brain and self-awareness or consciousness. I wrote about it here.
If certain parts of human brain are damaged or disabled, just like in case of general anesthesia, the human brain loses the sense of consciousness or self-awareness either permanently or temporarily. The immaterial soul fails to make up for the damaged or disabled brain…
Dr. Egnor’s personal experiences (and he has many) as a neurosurgeon convinced him that many people, including many of his patients, with the great majority of their brains missing have developed and function normally. Egnor is convinced that an immaterial soul makes up for the loss of brain mass that is responsible for normal brain function in people with normal brain size or no damage to any of the brain parts.
It appears Dr. Egnor believes that unlike a computer software that can’t function without the computer hardware, human brain has an ability to make up for the loss of the hardware with the computer software – the immaterial soul.
Is Dr. Egnor’s view consistent with the readily available facts?
I personally see Dr. Egnor building and supporting a strawman by his selective choice of facts…Hey! That’s my opinion and that’s why we have this blog full of experts to disagree with me or Dr. Egnor…(I kinda like the guy though).
Let’s see…First off, not all cases of patients with missing parts of their brains experience the supposed miraculous saving powers of the immaterial soul. It appears that the amount of the missing part of the brain mass doesn’t seem to matter… What seems to matter more is which part (s) of the brain is missing and not how much of the brain mass is actually missing. Some parts of the brain seem essential for consciousness and self-awareness and others do not.
However, the main point of this OP is:
<strong> Why does the soul need the brain? Or why would human body need a brain at all, if the immaterial soul has an ability to compensate for the brain losses?
If the software (the soul) can operate without the hardware (the brain) why do we even need the brain in the first place?</strong>
It seems like a faulty or at least a wasteful design to me…
As far as I’m concerned, any mention of “mind” is metaphorical.
OK, in your opinion are brain and the mind and the self the same thing??
peace
Piccinini has a whole book explaining that definition that addresses the vagueness issue (among many others). Also many online articles that I can cite if you are interested.
I’m not sure what KN meant, but I understand your concern is that the only way to talk about states of the world is when we already have a conceptual system in place. So to avoid that, we need a theory that avoids that assumption and builds representations from a reasonable genetic inheritance plus bottom up sensorimotor perceptions.*
Predictive Processing has been advanced as addressing that issue. I found these articles helpful.
Predictive Processing and the Representation Wars
Predictive coding and representationalism
Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Intentionality
(KN also cited that last one as I recall in other posts).
These articles detail how PP (a form of Bayesian modelling) addresses the issues with representation, including the issue I understand you to be concerned with. Roughly, it involves building structural representations with a structure that maps to a reliable ( not the) causal structure of the world which is relevant to the perceivers evolved environmental niche.
Of course, you also need to show how neural processes implement PP/can be explained by PP and that too is ongoing work.
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* I think Fodor solved this issue by claiming concepts were in innate, at least at one point career
So in your opinion the mind is a fiction.
Do you think it’s the same for the self?
peace
My mistake, actually.
As far as I know, the NY Times does not paywall “The Stone”. Or, at least, I have never had a problem there.
That’s an excellent collection. I also think the articles by Kukla and by Huebner extend the Dennettian project in really powerful ways.
I’ve been thinking about the Piccinini article on the cognitive neuroscience of intentionality and how it relates to my Sellarsian worries.
The shortest version is that I think the way to “naturalize intentionality” is by giving a naturalistic explanation of socio-linguistic practices (as Joe Rouse and Mark Okrent do in their work), and that intentionality can be naturalized but not (if you will) “neuralized”. The role of picturing as distinct from intentionality is to explain the cognitive role of neural representations without taking them as symbols, concepts, meaningful tokens, etc.
The impossibility of assigning intentional states to neurocomputational states the main reason why I reject the mind-brain identity thesis. It’s also my main complaint against Fodor and Churchland, who only disagree about architecture of neurocomputational states (classical vs. connectionist).
I apologize if you thought I was attributing mind-brain identity theory to you. Rest assured, I was not taking you to be asserting that mind-brain identity is true! I only responded at length as I did — giving my own reasons for rejecting mind-brain identity — because I wanted to clarify my own position, not argue against yours.
Kantian Naturalist,
NP. Thanks for the clarification.
Okay, that’s a fair enough summary.
No, that would not solve the problem. That would only attempt to explain away the problem.
What we need, is a theory about how we build a useful conceptual system.
I’ve looked through the articles that you linked. I don’t see them as solving the problem. Or, to say it differently, I see them as attempting to explain away the problem.
In some sense, they are arguing for “The Systems Reply” to Searle’s “Chinese Room” argument. While I agree with “The Systems Reply”, I don’t see those articles as successfully making the case that what they propose could be implemented and would perform in the way that is needed for “The Systems Reply.”
The issue is intentionality. There’s the old saying “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Likewise, all philosophers talk about the intentionality problem, but none of them does anything about it.
On my understanding of Dennett’s thoughts on Brandom, Dennett takes the bottom up view (ie explain content and intentionality bottom up first via Millikan telesemantics, then bring in language) whereas Brandom takes view that intentionality (or at least human intentionality) can only be understood by starting with language and the social practices which make it possible. ( I probably need some more weasel words to cover my on that opinion, like “on my very rough understanding”).
I think that is a right vs left Sellarsian sort of thing.
These days, I am not really sure whether Dennett’s embracing of PP means he is now closer to a realist about intentionality, or whether he is sticking to the anti-realism (?) of at least his initial take on the intentional stance.
As for mind-brain identity, that reminds me I need to cover my behind on my exchange with FMM on that.
What do you take “doing something” about intentionality to consist of? What is “the intentionality problem”, and what would “solving” it look like?
I ask because I’ve written a good deal on intentionality (one article and one book) and I don’t see intentionality as being a “problem” to be “solved”. I’m curious as to why you do.
I prefer “metaphor” to “fiction”.
Roughly speaking, “mind” is supposed to be the thinking organ. In my view, it is the whole person that thinks, not some part of the person.
OK, thanks for the response. I guess I am not clear on why you say “explain away” rather than (make a start at) a scientific explanation That is, why the “away”. What is missing?
FWIW, I see PP as more akin to the Robot reply and with more details about the how the robot would work. But even better, the structural representation approach is trying to dissolve Searle’s issue by refusing to separate syntax and semantics.
I’ve left out something important in my input on this mind/brain stuff.
Many physicalists would deny that the mind supervenes only on the brain. Many would demand that the body be included as well as the brain. Externalists about meaning or phenomenality would want to add the environment. And those that wanted to use history as well, eg for teleosemantic approaches to representation and meaning, might add those events in the past light cone of the environment, although that attempt can definitely lead to arguments in my past experience at TSZ.
However, for the sake of the history of our discussion, we can stick with mind supervening only on brain.
That all seems right to me.
I think that Brandom is very difficult in his methodology. At times he’ll say, “look, I’m doing philosophy the way David Lewis did — start off with the simplest set of assumptions you can get away with, then see how far you can get with them.” But then it’s pointed out to him what his account leaves out that needs to be explained, and he just says, “oh, I don’t see why we need that.” We can see this in his response to Dennett: Dennett objects that Brandom’s treatment of intentionality leads him to treat the discursive community as one big skyhook, and Brandom just shrugs his shoulders.
I can see Brandom’s point that the human form of intentionality (“sapience”) is constituted by involvement in socially instituted linguistic patterns. But he denies that non-human minds (“sentience”) have a kind of intentionality, and he doesn’t have to.
Yes, that’s right.
I’m happy that Dennett has embraced a version of PP but I don’t know if this makes him any clearer about realism vs anti-realism about intentionality.
I think there’s a worry to had here about whether predictive processing can be an explanation of intentionality. If intentionality is constituted by socio-linguistic practices, then predictive processing cannot be an explanation of intentionality.
It can be a model of the kinds of representations that brains need to implement in order for them to contribute to cognitive processes — which is valuable in roughly the same way that you need to have a model of what a transmission does in order to explain how cars work.
Maybe. I think that a good deal of cognitive neuroscience has gotten confused because it tries to answer Searle’s challenge. I don’t think that the syntax/semantics distinction is a helpful way of understanding what cognitive neuroscience, even predictive processing, is actually doing.
Even if it’s helpful to model brains as Bayesian hierarchies, that’s a far cry from what Searle had in mind when he talked about “syntax”: he was talking the symbols printed on the tape of a universal Turing machine.
It’s helpful to point out that the Chinese room is supposed to be an illustration of the syntax/semantics distinction. But in the formal presentation of the argument, the syntax/semantics distinction is a premise. Searle doesn’t argue for it. The Chinese room is supposed to be an intuition pump that gets us to see that the syntax/semantics distinction is obvious.
The argument itself, formally presented, is rather this.
1. Syntax is neither necessary nor sufficient for semantics.
2. Computer programs are syntactical structures.
3. Mindedness involves awareness of meanings.
4. Therefore, no program could be a mind.
That’s definitely the direction in which I’d want to go.
That all sounds right to me.
Cool, I agree.
If you were a physicalist do you expect that you would think two identical brain/bodies would constitute one mind or two?
Peace
None of that is important for the thought experiment.
It it stipulated that the two brain/bodies are indistinguishable. From the perspective of the observer that would entail that their environment and history would be indistinguishable as well.
one mind or two??
same person or not??
peace
My hopes would be to go with Boone and Piccinini’s* multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms in The Cogntive Neursoscience Revolution These mechanisms extend beyond the individual so as to model individuals as components in the mechanism of social-linguistic practices. That aligns with your car metaphor as I understand it
Then use PP to explain the causal interactions of the components of the mechanisms in individuals.
But I don’t know if that sort of hope can be given any sort of solid philosophical or scientific basis. Clark gestures at some of it in section 9.5 of his Surfing book.
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* Yes him again. I admit to playing favorites in my reading.
That would be exactly my strategy, too. In fact it’s pretty much the strategy that Sellars advocated, if my interpretation of him is correct.
It might interest you to know that Bryce Huebner has some worries about whether predictive processing can really do the work of picturing as I argue. I think his worry is that predictive processing separates out the hierarchy into levels too strictly, so that it would have to be the case that each level is a separate picturing of the levels below it. But he’s waiting on me to publish my piece before he publishes his criticism.
I’m not sure that even makes sense.
For two brains/bodies to be physically identical, they would have to both be in the same physical location (exactly the same, not just adjacent). So how could they be two if they are in the same location?
I’m okay with the Robot reply. But it does need details on how the robot would work, and I’m skeptical that enough detail is given.
Umm, I already answered that and I have not changed my mind
(or my brain in such a way that would have changed my mind) in the last day or two.
Two, not.
What about my post asking you to provide a complete argument rather than asking me to define stuff like mind and self and, as part of that, to explain why you see any contradiction in the physicalist position.
I will be happy to comment further once I see such an argument.
ETA: add more “humor” and mind/brain stuff
I won’t argue with that type of skepticism. It’s definitely still a work in progress on many fronts, and there are competing research programs in both science and philosophy.
My view is that if I can argue with FMM about the quantum immortality thought experiment, I will not quibble regarding such details on this one.
Look how far I have got with that approach to FMM discussions!
You might need to ask walto about this one.
It has something to do with a Symmetric universe or the multiverse or the many worlds hypothesis.
The point is that there was a paper demonstrating that it was possible so we need suspend disbelief and follow through with the thought experiment.
😉
peace
Giving an account of how language statements connect to reality.
Most science does this well for the specific instances that the science deals with. However, String Theory in physics seems to have completely failed here and that is why it often criticized.
The general problem is that connecting statements to reality typically involves ad hoc pragmatic decisions, and it has an unavoidable subjective component.
I’ve been posting on this on my own blog, since around January this year.
I don’t have complete argument.
I have an impression that claiming that the mind is nothing but the brain/body and at the same time that two identical brain/bodies will yield two different minds is a brazen logical contradiction.
You claim it’s not so I assume I’m confused as to your definitions of mind or self.
hence I need to ask for clarification
peace
Ok, understood. I am bowing out now.
Good luck with your work. I’d be interested in reading once published so please let us know.
So you won’t clarify your position until I provide a complete argument as to why it’s wrong??
Does that approach prove fruitful very often?
peace
Interesting
That seems to be a popular tactic lately. At least you refrained from spouting nonsense syllables and mocking Christianity.
That is something I guess
peace
I am not at all asking for you to show my position is wrong. I am asking you to state a position and argue for it. I don’t want to continue to elaborate mine in dribbles until I understand what you are arguing for. I promise to be constructive in my reply: I want to show where we differ, not simply argue against whatever you post.
I tried to help by providing sources for the definitions you might use but I cannot help you formulate a position and justify it; in fact, I am not even sure if you have presented something explicit on the issue of physicalism, mind, and brains.
Yes, in the type of discussion that interest me, I believe it is fair to ask the person I am having a discussion with to provide some attempt at definitions of terms as premises and then to present a clear argument for a position they are defending.
Those are certainly the standards that I see implied by in the Mertonian Norms and that is the approach one sees in the philosophical and scientific literature I read.
That’s my encore and now I am definitely bowing out.
Bruce:
fifth:
…says fifth, who is hiding behind his Ignore button.
fifth,
The brighter folks recognize that there is no contradiction, much less a “brazen” one.
I’ve explained your error here.
BruceS to FMM,
I thought about this and decided maybe I was asking you to do something I had not done, at least not as explicitly as I could have. So:
1. Physicalism says all that exists is physical or supervenes on the physical.
2. Brains are physical. Minds supervene on brains.
3. Your thought experiment postulates two brains which are not numerically identical.
4. Hence there must be two minds as well.
1. Personal identity is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one.
2. The philosophy I am familiar with would say personal identity depends on brains and causal history (and maybe bodies, but maybe not). Of course, depending on brains means minds are there too from the above argument.
3. Since your thought experiment postulates separate brains and causal histories, and in particular there are no complications like splits or fusions, then I think most philosophers would agree there are two persons.
I don’t see the concept of self as relevant to the argument and I see no value in adding it.
Over to you.
fifthmonarchyman,
Depends. I don’t think Neil is too sympathetic with possible world talk. You, otoh, apparently just can’t understand it.
BruceS,
It’s good that you point out to fmm (for all the good it will do) that the two bodies would not be numerically identical, whether they are discernible or not. And it takes a particularly weird world for that to take place–i.e., weird enough, apparently, that neither fmm nor his omniscient buddy can fathom it.
keiths,
Seems right to me.
Now perhaps we are getting somewhere. Yes that is correct.
From what I understand “Numerically identical” is an attribute that would not be of any interest to the physicalist.
Since for the physicalist all that exists is the physical, physically identical is in fact identical.
As far as I can tell numerical differentiation would only come into play if there was a corresponding physical difference. Am I missing something?
Again unless I’m mistaken,
The physicalist is not concerned with different causal histories unless there is a corresponding physical difference.
If things like numerical identity and an objects particular causal history are important here we are clearly moving beyond the physical and what ever supervenes on the physical.
Do you disagree? If so, why?
peace
BruceS,
BruceS,
I think you need to keep in mind that it was you who brought up the idea of physically identical brains as a potential way to falsify dualism.
I am only pointing out that such a thing is more of a problem to physical monism than it is to dualism.
peace
Hmmm…
Did the limit of the speed of light proposed by Einstein in the theory of special relativity change when Einstein proposed the general theory of relativity? Is that what you are insinuating?
Or, you just wanted to write at least something to appear as if you understood the issues discussed here…
The latter seems more likely to me…
Yes.
Numerical identity is just identity simpliciter. Numerical distinction means you’ve got two things, not one. None of it has anything at all to do with physicalism.
I’m glad you’ve changed your mind about math because Einstein wasn’t that good at math at all…at least initially… He had other mathematicians work out his math for him…
What Einstein had was a great imagination; he could think in pictures just like most people with Asperger’s can…
There are many QM interpretations and just as many, if not many, many more, of those confused about what those interpretations mean if they mean anything at all…
For the physicalist to say we have two things there needs to be a physical differentiation between them.
In this case there is none.
That is the point
peace
What’s a differentiation? Numerical differences don’t imply qualitative differences. Furthermore, there’s no reason for physicalists to take a position on metaphysical– even scholastic–issues of that sort. Most of them would just snort at the entire matter. In my experience, they don’t give even a shit and a half about possible world scenarios.
That is my experience as well.
If I was having a conversation with an actual consistent physicalist I would be taking another tact entirely.
I find that folks like that (and there are several here) rarely engage in philosophical or theological discussions except to poke fun at those who of us who actually do give a S@$t.
peace
I don’t expect them to take a position.
I expect the rest of us to realize the inconsistency and contradictory nature of their worldview in this regard. That is all.
peace