A rebuttal: The False Dichotomy between the Mind and Brain.
This article is a rebuttal to Samuel Mack-Poole’s ‘The False Dichotomy between Mind and Brain’. It will outline and argue against two key claims in his article. Firstly that the mind is part of the brain, and secondly that thought is a physical process. I will then briefly outline what is empiricism and why empiricism can be used, not to refute mind, but to prove mind. Poole answers the question ‘what is mind’ using the following dictionary definition, “...the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges,...1.” So the mind is a thing that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges. Poole does not reject this definition, but says that it may be broadened. I don’t necessarily disagree here, but he doesn’t give an alternative definition so I will work with this one. He embeds mind in brain by favouring the following definition of brain. “The brain is a centre of thought, understanding, mind and intellect.”
So here, the mind is a: reasoning, thinking, feeling, willing, perceiving, judging thing and this thing is part of a material thing which is a centre of thought, understanding, mind and intellect. The first question which arises out of this picture is, how can a brain have a mind? How can a brain be the centre of mind? How does the mind orbit the brain if you will? Poole does not offer a causal account of mind and brain, but only that the brain seems to be the central substance. The phrase ‘the centre of’ here is a bit ambiguous. It is already very complicated at this stage and challenges the view that only people are thinking things.
In ‘Neuroscience and Philosophy’, Hacker and Bennett attack the field of Neuroscience by accusing Neuroscientists of being conceptually confused. It is people who think, feel, perceive and all those other things. They called these kinds of activities that people do ‘psychological predicates’ which can only be ascribed to people, for example ‘Fred is thinking about his cat’ or ‘Jay is remembering his anniversary’. It is not brains that understand, or parts of the brain, but people.
This same theme crops up in a paper on ‘The Distinction Between Mental and Physical Illness’, where Kendell argues that it is not the body that is sick, nor is it the mind that is ill, but the person. These types of critiques are based on Wittgenstein’s later works in the ‘Philosophical Investigations’ where he argues that it is the job of philosophers to see when people from different language games are importing the rules of another language game and say to them, ‘hey, you are operating outside of your language game’, or ‘you are breaking the rules of your own language game’; which is what Neuroscience is doing. Neuroscience can here be accused of stealing the language from what Poole argues, stems from a fantastical history. If Neuroscience is to be strictly scientific, that is base its conclusions on observations, than why is science still employing mind, or concepts that stem from a fantastical period? ‘Poole goes on to assert that thought, something which has brain as its centre, is a physical process. Now what is a physical process? A physical process isn’t a fixed state, but something that is comprised of parts which are causally linked through the dimension of time. This can get complicated here, but we will leave thinkers like Hume to the side at the moment. If we employ the term thought as a physical process, as Poole states is proved by science, then surely science should be able to show us thought. Well, can they? Can Science prove thought? I went ‘in my mind’s eye’ to a live operation by which the person was alive2. The clever surgeons carefully sawed through the subjects head in a semi circle and lifted up part of thesubject’s skull, like a skull cap. Underneath the blood and flesh we saw the brain, in the white light. Wow, amazing. Yet through the disgusting yellow and grey matter – where, Dr. Scientist, can you shown me this subject’s thoughts? The scientist then points to a bolt of electricity that momentarily makes the brain light up. ‘There it was- a thought’ exclaims the Scientist. But, to beg the question, is that a thought? Is a thought a flash of lightening in the brain? Ironically we may use lightening as a metaphor when we say we have been struck with an idea, but do we mean it literally? No. A bit of brain lighting up is not a thought.
Moreover, if I was to see someone’s thought, would it still be a thought, as usually what we mean by thought is something private, that only I can experience and not you. The scientist, by this qualification, could never show a thought for as soon as another observed ones thoughts it would cease to be a thought as it is no longer private, but publicly seen.
I think the definition of thought as physical process is wrong, yet a physical process may be a part of thought. I do not know if this is actually the case, but would suggest here that science does argue this – and even sometimes is as bold to give some kind of casual account which usually lands flat on its arse again. But thought is not electricity in the brain; it is not only a physical process.
The only other thing I will point out is the contradiction in his sentiments concerning empiricism. Empiricism –simply- is the doctrine which holds a number of arguments for the position that knowledge comes from experience. Now I won’t go into these arguments here as they are not important here. Poole implies in his article that if it is not in your experience or stemming from it then there is no proof. Besides from the fact that I can argue for mathematical or logical proofs as being alternative forms of proof, I will merely say that my experiences are only experienced by me, and your experiences are only experienced by you. They are idiosyncratic. Within my experience there are tables, chairs, trees and flowers, but there are also thoughts and feelings, memories and ideas. So, we do have empirical proof that thoughts and feelings exist, but these things are based on my experiences and not yours. I think Poole really wants to argue for a notion of truth called ‘endoxon’, truth is consensus. But this is naïve and depends on a correspondence theory of truth which can only be asserted and has no sufficient proof as of yet, nor will it ever. As, in order to prove a correspondence theory of truth, which quite simply states that if I can point to it, it is real, depends on us transcending our own self. We can only have our own experiences of something and cannot, as Kant argued, know something beyond the realm of sense data and the categories of the mind. I would go on, but I think I have successfully tackled two of the main problems in Pooles article. Firstly, by identifying the conceptual confusion, using Hacker and Bennett and latter Kendell, present in Poole’s article by ascribing psychological predicates to the brain. Secondly, by arguing that empirical proof is based on the account that only I can experience my experiences, and if experience is a sufficient criteria for truth then we can still have thoughts, memories and all those other things as different aspects of experience which do not have a material quality. There are a number of other confusions in the article which I have left, like the two definitions he compares and states are synonymous, are by definition not. The part is not the whole, the part in this case being mind and the whole the brain.
1. Whether other animals have mind, which is not what should be focused on here.
2. Let’s not for the time being argue qualifications of life as it will distract from the issue again at hand, albeit an interesting one.
By Elliott, E. 2012
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Mind & Body' Issue 35
