False Argument #34: John W. Loftus On Mind/Brain
Posted in Consciousness, False Arguments, John W. Loftus on | 6 minutes | 25 Comments →
A while back, I asked:
…shouldn’t an atheist limit themselves to belief in brains only?
John W. Loftus took a stab, and here’s what he concluded:
Science repeatedly disconfirms that there is a mind.
Does it? I wish John would define his terms and cite evidence to support his claims. As we’ve seen elsewhere, why does he show such a penchant for bare assertion and undefined language? His claim seems ambiguous, and contradicts his statement that we should ask for positive evidence for that which we accept as true. As I’ve demonstrated several times before, why does John W. Loftus hold himself to a different standard? At any rate, if by mind he means something like “what the brain does,” then his claim is obviously false. Will anybody really agree that science has disconfirmed what the brain does? Since the answer is–or at least should be–an unequivocal no, I submit that John appears to be using mind analogously to the dualist soul, in the sense of an immaterial entity that either communicates and/or interacts with a physical entity.
Moving along, I noticed that he travels the road countless atheists and skeptics travel in this discussion:
Drugs, strokes, electromagnetic probing, and a nail through the brain can and does change a person’s emotions, ideas, thinking patterns, and a man’s personality itself.
A man’s personality? What about a woman’s? More to the point, so what? All of the time? This is a crucial question. Atheists like Loftus, dguller, Ebonmuse, Luke Muehlhauser, Sam Harris, et al. seem to misunderstand that this is not incompatible with dualism. Similarly, damaging hardware can and does alter software function. Does that mean software doesn’t exist, or that there’s no need for hardware? Folks, if there is a link between brain and mind–a premise I support–then it should be expected that brain damage can alter mental function. Loftus has not provided any evidence against the mind, and he attacks a straw man: no dualist I know claims that changes to the brain shouldn’t affect mental function. However, there is a subtle detail that needs to be parsed out.
In my experience, conventional materialist theories predict that brain damage necessarily alters mental function. Dualism, on the other hand, predicts that brain damage can alter mental function, but does not do so necessarily. IOW, if conventional materialist theories are true, it would seem that we should never find an instance where brain damage doesn’t alter mental function. If dualism is true, it would seem that we should find instances where brain damage alters mental function, but we should also find instances where brain damage does not alter mental function. Indeed, this is what we find. While this in no way proves dualism, it puts burden on the materialist to explain when and why brain damage shouldn’t alter mental function. Of course, all of this is subject to revision, but the take-home point is this: if the mind is what the brain does, why would the effect of brain damage on mental function be sporadic? To simply say that we don’t know enough about the brain seems like a cop-out, not to mention a tentative defeater for proponents of materialism. Consider the following remarks from John R. Searle, both taken from the same paper:
…we really do not understand how brain processes cause consciousness.
The key points of disagreement are that I insist that from everything we know about the brain, consciousness is causally reducible to brain processes… [Why I Am Not A Property Dualist]
I can’t help but chuckle, and ask: if we really don’t understand how brain processes cause consciousness, on what grounds can we sustain the presumption that brain processes cause consciousness? Back to Loftus:
In fact, as neurologist Sam Harris has said, if there is a mind there is no reason for God to have created us with brains.
First off, how about a citation? How do we know that John paraphrased Sam Harris accurately? Even if we presume he charitably interpreted Harris, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Why should we accept this as true? Because Sam Harris can’t think of a reason? The argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy that essentially relies on a lack of imagination in the audience. This is an argument from incredulity, and, again, Loftus contradicts himself by failing to provide any positive evidence for that which he accepts as true.
If the mind tells the brain what signals to send to the arm then it can by-pass the brain altogether and simply send signals to the arm.
This is another bare assertion with no evidence to support it. Where’s that positive evidence you demand for every claim a theist makes, John?
The burden of proof is on the theist to show why unnecessary things were created.
Incorrect. The burden of proof is on John to show why the brain is unnecessary given dualism. That John lacks the imagination to conceive of a need for the brain is not evidence of its contingency. This is another argument from incredulity. Literally, it’s fallacy after fallacy here, from he who fancies himself on the intellectual highground.
If there is a mind we do not need our senses. Get it? If there is a mind that can interact with the brain then it can control the brain. If it can control the brain then it knows what the brain is doing. How it does this is left unexplained, but if we take that position seriously it can. Now if it can sense the brain then it can sense the outside world and so we do not need the five senses.
Yes, I get it: John can’t think of a reason for X, therefore X is not necessary. Again, John simply leaps to his conclusion. Can you count the unsupported assertions there? Nearing the end of his piece, John’s conclusion is a perfect example of the fallacious reasoning that supports so many of his arguments:
The mind supposedly has the characteristics of memory storage, critical thinking, decision-making and so on. What need then of a brain? I simply don’t see it based on theistic grounds.
Yet another argument from incredulity, rinsed, washed, and repeated. That John W. Loftus can’t wrap his head around a concept is neither evidence nor cogent argument against that concept.
So, to wrap it up: it is false to argue that since brain damage can alter mental function, dualism is false. Materialists need to burn the straw here.
dguller
says...>> If dualism is true, it would seem that we should find instances where brain damage alters mental function, but we should also find instances where brain damage does not alter mental function. Indeed, this is what we find.
I read that article, and I am not too sure that it shows that “brain damage does not alter mental function”. In fact, there was significant brain damage following the traumatic head injury, and there was subsequent cognitive impairment in the form of being unresponsive to stimuli. Sure, there was still ongoing brain activity, but so what? The person was not brain dead after all. All that this case report can show is that brain activity is ongoing despite an inability to respond, and that some areas of the brain that are important for the processing of intentional activity continue to activate in response to stimuli. That does not provide support for dualism, I think.
>> if the mind is what the brain does, why would the effect of brain damage on mental function be sporadic?
There could be a couple of reasons for this.
First, the brain has the capacity to reorganize itself over time via neuroplasticity. That is how stroke patients are able to regain some function despite brain damage. We have redundant neural connections that can be recruited with the more well travelled neural connections have been damaged. It’s kind of like taking a back road when the main road is damaged.
Second, just because one part of the brain is damaged does not mean that all cognitive function is impaired, only that part that is affected by the region of brain damage. For example, just because the visual cortex is damaged does not mean that one’s speech is non-functional. Different regions of the brain are responsible for different activities, after all.
>> if we really don’t understand how brain processes cause consciousness, on what grounds can we sustain the presumption that brain processes cause consciousness?
What about in the 19th century when chemistry could be understand by the behavior of atoms and molecules? At that time, quantum theory was not established and so it was a mystery why exactly the atoms and molecules behaved as they did. Would it be true to say that since the scientists at the time did not understand how atoms and molecules worked, then they could not presume that atoms and molecules explained chemical reactions? It was pretty clear that they did, and that more had to be learned about how they did so. No contradiction there, I think.
>> it is false to argue that since brain damage can alter mental function, dualism is false. Materialists need to burn the straw here.
That is true. It does not logically refute dualism, but it does put the burden of proof upon the dualist to explain how a mind that is tightly wedded and integrated into the brain and body can persist to function independent of its physical substrate. That seems like a difficult thing to demonstrate, but then again, physicalist accounts of the mind have difficulties, as well. I just think that they explain more than dualist accounts.
dguller
says...And John is just wrong that science has disconfirmed the existence of the mind. Minds exist, but they may not be what some people think they are. They are not disembodied entities that are substantially different and independent of the physical world. If THAT is what you mean by “mind”, then yes, minds do not exist. Fortunately, that is not what is needed to talk about minds in general. A scaled back, garden variety version is just fine without the metaphysical and fantastical elements.
cl
says...Well, I’m glad we’ve finally got that cleared up.
Her mental function was found to be similar or the same as a normal person’s. This is suggestive of sound conscious awareness despite severe traumatic brain injury. This is more what dualism predicts than what materialism predicts.
John is wrong whether he means “what the brain does,” or “soul,” and I like that you don’t make excuses for him.
According to your own criteria, I should treat this claim with a “very low” probability of being true, as you’ve not supplied any evidence whatsoever to back it up. Now that you can’t pull the brain damage card anymore, what, exactly, is the evidence for your claim?
dguller
says...Cl:
>> Her mental function was found to be similar or the same as a normal person’s. This is suggestive of sound conscious awareness despite severe traumatic brain injury. This is more what dualism predicts than what materialism predicts.
First, her mental function was NOT found to be similar as a normal person’s. They could not assess her mental function at all, because she was not verbally responsive to their prompts. All they did was measure her brain activity. There is a difference.
Second, look at what they found in a single subject:
(1) middle and superior temporal gyri activation in response to verbal sentences. This makes sense, because the temporal lobe is where the auditory cortex is located.
(2) additional activation in left inferior frontal region in response to ambiguous sentences. This makes sense, because the frontal lobe is involved in more complex processing of information.
(3) when told to imagine playing tennis, the SMA was active. This makes sense, because the SMA is involved in planning of intentional activity.
(4) when told to imagine walking through her home, the the parahippocampal
gyrus, the posterior parietal cortex, and the lateral premotor cortex were active.
All of this activity was comparable to healthy controls. But so what? All that this proves is that these areas are necessary for her to verbally respond to questions and to intentionally plan physical activities, but they are not sufficient, and that is why she is not verbally responding or physically moving. There are OTHER areas of the brain that are likely damaged, which are preventing her from doing these activities. It is possible that one must have these additional brain regions to be functional in order to have consciousness at all, and thus we just do not know if she is conscious at this time.
A good way to look at this is to remember that the brain operates as a functional unit in which its subsystems must be functional. However, just because a subsystem is functional does not mean that the brain overall is fulfilling its general function. For example, if the occipital lobe is activated in the primary visual cortex, then is the person seeing anything? Not necessarily, because seeing requires the primary visual cortex to pass information to the temporal and parietal lobes to be further processed and analyzed, for example. Similarly, just because certain brain regions that we know are important for consciousness are activated in the subject does not mean that she is conscious, because there may be other important regions that are not.
>> According to your own criteria, I should treat this claim with a “very low” probability of being true, as you’ve not supplied any evidence whatsoever to back it up. Now that you can’t pull the brain damage card anymore, what, exactly, is the evidence for your claim?
The fact that perception requires a perspective, which requires a body to be oriented in a particular direction within space-time, is one important point. One finds that our conscious experience is saturated with information from our bodies, whether for visual perception, auditory sounds, physical bodily awareness, proprioception, interoception, and so on. The idea of a disembodied mind is just incorrect, because the mind is saturated with bodily information, which is best explained by the fact that our mind is generated by the brain-body-environment interaction, and cannot be made sense of except on the basis of this context.
And I can pull the brain damage card. It is still the most parsimonious explanation that the brain-body-environment generates the mind rather than the mind existing as an independent entity. The fact that dualism is logically consistent with brain damage does not say much. Invisible leprechauns generating our minds by banging magical Lucky Charms within our neurons is also consistent with brain damage, but you wouldn’t take this seriously, I hope.
cl
says...I still don’t see a single shred of evidence for your claim. You’re basically just saying, “X makes more sense to me, and I find Y incredible.”
If the mind is what the brain does, and the brain was functioning similar or identical to that of a normal person, how is it not accurate to say her mental function was similar or identical to that of a normal person? I’m not saying the expression of that function was similar or identical; but the function itself.
That just sounds like an ad hoc “maybe” type of explanation to me. Did you investigate the case further to establish this? Or, are you just kinda wingin’ it there?
I grant that, but, technically, we can’t know if anybody is conscious ever. It can only be assumed. I would agree it’s a safe assumption in a normal, healthy person, but in brain damaged subjects, stating anything with confidence seems tricky. Would you agree?
Where is the evidence for this claim?
I think what you really meant there was, you can’t make sense of this except on the basis of this context, but I’m under no compulsion to accept an argument from incredulity.
No you can’t. Not if you were speaking honestly when you said changes in mental function via brain damage don’t logically refute dualism.
Oh come on. Let’s not start going that route again…
dguller
says...Cl:
>> I still don’t see a single shred of evidence for your claim. You’re basically just saying, “X makes more sense to me, and I find Y incredible.”
Not too sure what claim you mean.
>> If the mind is what the brain does, and the brain was functioning similar or identical to that of a normal person, how is it not accurate to say her mental function was similar or identical to that of a normal person? I’m not saying the expression of that function was similar or identical; but the function itself.
Okay. I just wanted to make sure that although cognitive function depends upon brain function, the study in question only described brain function via brain imaging. It did not mention any cognitive functions, because none of these could be assessed due to the fact that the subject could not communicate. But this is probably just semantics.
>> That just sounds like an ad hoc “maybe” type of explanation to me. Did you investigate the case further to establish this? Or, are you just kinda wingin’ it there?
It is not ad hoc at all. The fact that she was not able to communicate verbally despite the fact that her brain appears to have been able to process some information just means that some other part of her brain must be malfunctioning. They did not mention whether Broca’s area, for example, was functional. This area is important for speech production. They also did not mention whether her primary motor cortex in the precentral gyrus was functional, which would be essential to any motor activity at all. I think that it is fair to say that unless that study found that these areas were fully functional, then that would be something intriguing, but also not conclusive, because it is not just enough to show that some areas light up on an imaging study.
Conscious awareness is something that emerges from a complicated series of parallel processes in the brain that have to occur in a certain harmony. Much like a symphony is more than just individual players, but emerges when their play harmonizes in the right frequency and way.
>> I grant that, but, technically, we can’t know if anybody is conscious ever. It can only be assumed. I would agree it’s a safe assumption in a normal, healthy person, but in brain damaged subjects, stating anything with confidence seems tricky. Would you agree?
Sure, it’s tricky, especially without any kind of communication. We do not know enough about the brain in sufficient detail to be able to predict with any degree of certainty whether certain events captures on brain imaging map accurately to subjective phenomena.
>> Where is the evidence for this claim?
Why is it that our perception appears to come from where visual input enters the eye? That is because our brain generates a visual experience on the basis of information from the eyes. And that is why our perspective requires a body, because without a body, which would have to include eyes, we would not see anything, and therefore would not have a perspective at all. Furthermore, our perspective requires a proprioceptive and interoceptive sense of bodily orientation in space, which also contributes to our felt sense of being in the world. Without a body to provide sensory information for our positional senses, we would not have them. If you want to read an excellent lay account of this, read “The Body Has A Mind Of Its Own” by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee.
>> I think what you really meant there was, you can’t make sense of this except on the basis of this context, but I’m under no compulsion to accept an argument from incredulity.
Be my guest and try. Sure, one can imagine or conceive of it happening, but one can imagine or conceive of Harry Potter, too. Empirical studies point to the fact that our mind is embodied, embedded, and extended. That is just how it works in the world. Imagining away important features of this in philosophical thought experiments does not change this. Be my guest and explain how we can have phenomenal experiences independent of a brain and body. How can one have a visual perspective or bodily positional sense without eyes to see or a body to feel?
>> No you can’t. Not if you were speaking honestly when you said changes in mental function via brain damage don’t logically refute dualism.
I was speaking honestly. Logical possibility does not interest me here. Lots of things are logically possible that you would not consider, like my leprechaun example. If all you have is logical possibility, then you are just a step above logical impossibility, which is not saying much. You have to take logical possibility and then ground it in the empirical world to gain any traction. Otherwise, it’s all just science fiction and fantasy.
Crude
says...Conscious awareness is something that emerges from a complicated series of parallel processes in the brain that have to occur in a certain harmony. Much like a symphony is more than just individual players, but emerges when their play harmonizes in the right frequency and way.
No, no, you did the rain dance wrong. If you did the rain dance right there would be rain right now. The rain emerges from the rain dance, but only when the rain dance is right.
As for the symphony example, it’s not good to explain consciousness and emergence by an analogy which is largely consciousness-dependent.
Empirical studies point to the fact that our mind is embodied, embedded, and extended.
Not really. Empirical studies indicate, if we accept a pretty standard metaphysics, that the brain is involved in the mind. That’s nothing new, either to substance dualists, idealists, or others. There’s plenty of interpretation, and accounting for subjective experience (other than “It emerges”, which is just another way of saying “I have no idea. Must be magic.”)
“The mind emerges from the brain, somehow” is more open to the charge of science fiction and fantasy, considering one of the more popular renditions of “emergence” is “it just happens, period, there’s no explanation, the universe is just like that”.
That’s one hard lesson for people to learn. Magic and fantasy doesn’t cease to become magic and fantasy just because one changes vocabulary. Magic is magic, even if someone calls it emergence. And leprechauns are still leprechauns, even if empirical evidence is cited for them.
cl
says...dguller,
This one:
You can’t require me to provide rigorous and replicated evidence to sustain my claims, then turn around and nudely assert yours. If I have to play by the rules, so do you.
Why not? Because that’s what your intuition tells you? Lest you be tempted to call it “common sense,” how many times has common sense been wrong before? We have documented case after documented case of veridical perception from vantage points outside and even miles away from the resident body, even in individuals suffering from congenital blindness. If even one of these cases represents a genuine phenomenon, this falsifies your claim.
Mere assertion.
That’s outside the scope of what’s going on here. You saying, “I can’t make sense of this” is not a sound argument or valid evidence for your claims. That means you need a sound argument or valid evidence, else, by your own criterion, I should assign your claim a “very low” possibility of being true.
What “important features” and what “philosophical thought experiment” are you talking about? If anything, it’s *you* who’s imagining away the growing body of evidence which challenges your claim. To date, the entirety of your objections have taken two basic forms. The first was the “brain damage” card, but you can no longer use that given your previous concession that it does not refute dualism. The second was the “logical possibility” card, in which you simply cast doubt on the veracity of the various anecdotes and evidences supplied. If you can show me a single objection that doesn’t take one of those approaches, please do.
I agree, and that’s why I think your objections–though logically possible–are wholly bogus. The “logical possibility” that the participants in the Lancet study “might have misremembered” their experiences is just as weak as your leprechaun trope. The “logical possibility” that Marianne George’s experiences might have been the result of chance is just as weak as your leprechaun trope. The “logical possibility” that veridical observations “might have been the result of unconsciously heard remarks” is just as weak as your leprechaun trope. So, unless you can take these “logical possibilities” and ground them in specific empirical evidence pertinent to each case, all you’ve got is science fiction and fantasy and I have no choice but to dash them on the rocks of your own criterion.
Crude,
Bravo to that. I wholeheartedly agree with you that “it emerges” is quantitatively the same thing as saying, “it’s magic.”
Yes. Thank you. Yours is a conservatively stated claim that does not assume the conclusion being debated. I’ve told dguller this several times, to no avail. My specific wording has always been, “science has shown neural correlates to consciousness,” and, as you correctly point out, that’s nothing new any of those people. Both materialism and dualism predict neural correlates to consciousness, so, as I said in the OP, materialists need something more than “but brain damage can alter mental function” to make their case.
tmp
says...I don’t think there is currently enough evidence to really conclusively say for one way or another. That is, if you are a dualist you cannot find evidence that conclusively shows that dualism is wrong. And if you are a materialist, you cannot find enough evidence to falsify materialism.
I’m personally materialist as a matter of Ocham’s Razor: either consciousness emerges from neural activity, which we know exists but do not fully understand, or there is an entirely new phenomenon(immaterial mind/spirit/soul). And one should not add new entities where a simple answer would suffice.
But, this is something we will hopefully be enlightened on. Neurological research will (I hope) either show how consciousness emerges from brain, or will prove it impossible to happen with brain alone. There is some research being done on NDEs and the like, I think, and they’ll hopefully gather some good evidence for either yea or nay.
“‘it emerges”’is quantitatively the same thing as saying, ‘it’s magic.'”
That is an odd statement. My ability to write this post is at least partially an emergent property of my computer. And the internet. Are those magical? They might seem so, to some. Of course, since we don’t know HOW consciousness emerges, it’s not accurate to say ‘it emerges’. Perhaps ‘I see no reason why it couldn’t emerge’. The claim may be wrong, of course, but it is hardly magic.
Crude
says...That is an odd statement. My ability to write this post is at least partially an emergent property of my computer. And the internet. Are those magical? Of course, since we don’t know HOW consciousness emerges, it’s not accurate to say ‘it emerges’.
First, there’s a distinction between strong emergence and weak emergence to note. Second, if we don’t know how consciousness emerges, and we haven’t shown that consciousness emerges, then “it emerges” and “it’s magic” are on equal footing.
In the case of strong emergence, which has been suggested as a serious candidate for ‘explaining’ consciousness (Fodor comes to mind), it’s very hard to tell the difference between emergence and magic. Both “just happen”, period.
Crude
says...I’m personally materialist as a matter of Ocham’s Razor: either consciousness emerges from neural activity, which we know exists but do not fully understand, or there is an entirely new phenomenon(immaterial mind/spirit/soul). And one should not add new entities where a simple answer would suffice.
Incidentally, to add to this comment: We aren’t even clear on what “matter” is anymore. We’ve revised our concept of matter and nature multiple times throughout the history of science (Cartesian contact physics gave way to newtonian clockworks and action at a distance, which gave way to quantum understandings of matter.)
To quote Chomsky on this subject: “There is no longer any definite conception of body. Rather, the material world is whatever we discover it to be, with whatever properties it must be assumed to have for the purposes of explanatory theory. Any intelligible theory that offers genuine explanations and that can be assimilated to the core notions of physics becomes part of the theory of the material world, part of our account of body. If we have such a theory in some domain, we seek to assimilate it to the core notions of physics, perhaps modifying these notions as we carry out this enterprise.”
Which is why ideas like panpsychism, which once were regarded as dualism all the way down, are being quietly moved into the materialist column. And self-described naturalists are entertaining the notion of strong emergence, or neutral monism, or similar.
tmp
says...“First, there’s a distinction between strong emergence and weak emergence to note.”
This doesn’t seem relevant. Obviously I can do things with my computer. It even does things when left alone and powered. It doesn’t seem terribly magical to me that a brain could do things also.
“Second, if we don’t know how consciousness emerges, and we haven’t shown that consciousness emerges, then ‘it emerges’ and ‘it’s magic’ are on equal footing.”
Yes, but there is a measurable correlation between brain activity and consciousness. It seems unfair to compare ’emerges from brain activity’ to ‘rain dance’.
And isn’t dualism magic also? There is an entity that we can’t measure, don’t know what it is or how it works, only that it influences our brains. Like magic.
dguller
says...Cl:
>> You can’t require me to provide rigorous and replicated evidence to sustain my claims, then turn around and nudely assert yours. If I have to play by the rules, so do you.
Okay. We have already been over this. There is an enormous amount of evidence that brain events cause conscious experience. When the brain is damaged, the mind is damaged. Do I really have to cite studies that show that brain damage results in cognitive impairment? When the brain is functional, the mind is functional. Do I really have to cite the innumerable studies where mental activities are correlated to brain activity? There is even evidence that the brain introduces elements into conscious experience that are not, in fact, there, such as filling in our blind spot, hallucinations, phantom limbs, extra limbs, and so on.
The only evidence that you have to support your thesis of a disembodied and substantially independent mind is your paranormal studies, which I have already criticized.
>> Why not? Because that’s what your intuition tells you? Lest you be tempted to call it “common sense,” how many times has common sense been wrong before? We have documented case after documented case of veridical perception from vantage points outside and even miles away from the resident body, even in individuals suffering from congenital blindness. If even one of these cases represents a genuine phenomenon, this falsifies your claim.
First, it is not common sense. Just look at the computer right now. See it? Now move your eyes to the right. See how your entire perspective shifted to the right? Is that intuition or empirical evidence?
Second, there are underlying neurobiological pathways that are a part of this conscious experience of having a perspective. Certainly, it makes sense that they can be activated in atypical situations and contexts, just as phantom limb experiences occur, because of activation of somatosensory neurons independent of the existence of a limb. So, it seems parsimonious to me that these paranormal experiences that you cite are likely parasitic upon the normal function of the brain being activated in abnormal circumstances. And the veridical component could just be luck.
>> Mere assertion.
Nope. Basic neurology. Study peripheral sensory nerves and their transmission to the central nervous system. It is all an integrated system.
>> That’s outside the scope of what’s going on here. You saying, “I can’t make sense of this” is not a sound argument or valid evidence for your claims. That means you need a sound argument or valid evidence, else, by your own criterion, I should assign your claim a “very low” possibility of being true.
No, it is within the scope. I am saying that I cannot make sense of this. Help me make sense of this. If you cannot make sense of this, then doesn’t it follow that maybe it does not make sense in and of itself?
>> I agree, and that’s why I think your objections–though logically possible–are wholly bogus. The “logical possibility” that the participants in the Lancet study “might have misremembered” their experiences is just as weak as your leprechaun trope. The “logical possibility” that Marianne George’s experiences might have been the result of chance is just as weak as your leprechaun trope. The “logical possibility” that veridical observations “might have been the result of unconsciously heard remarks” is just as weak as your leprechaun trope. So, unless you can take these “logical possibilities” and ground them in specific empirical evidence pertinent to each case, all you’ve got is science fiction and fantasy and I have no choice but to dash them on the rocks of your own criterion.
Nope. The leprechaun is a logical possibility, i.e. not logically contradictory. The mistaken memories, unconscious processing of sensory information, and chance events are empirical possibilities, i.e. having been demonstrated to occur in the physical world. My objections are rooted in the latter, not the former. That is why I dislike logical possibility. Yes, it is logically possible that all the mountains of empirical data that show a strong correlation between the mind and the brain are consistent with dualism, but the fact that there is more evidence in support of the brain –> mind relation than the mind –> brain relation shows that the former is more likely to be true.
dguller
says...Crude:
>> No, no, you did the rain dance wrong. If you did the rain dance right there would be rain right now. The rain emerges from the rain dance, but only when the rain dance is right.
Does the rain dance always cause rain? If it doesn’t, then it’s a poor analogy.
>> As for the symphony example, it’s not good to explain consciousness and emergence by an analogy which is largely consciousness-dependent.
So what? A conscious awareness of a pattern requires a consciousness, but that does not mean that the pattern itself depends on consciousness.
>> Not really. Empirical studies indicate, if we accept a pretty standard metaphysics, that the brain is involved in the mind. That’s nothing new, either to substance dualists, idealists, or others. There’s plenty of interpretation, and accounting for subjective experience (other than “It emerges”, which is just another way of saying “I have no idea. Must be magic.”)
If by “magic” you mean “I have no idea how it happened”, then yes, consciousness emerging from the brain is “magic”. I prefer to say that we currently do not know how it occurs, but are diligently studying the matter to figure it out.
>> That’s one hard lesson for people to learn. Magic and fantasy doesn’t cease to become magic and fantasy just because one changes vocabulary. Magic is magic, even if someone calls it emergence. And leprechauns are still leprechauns, even if empirical evidence is cited for them.
Except that emergence is something that is well-known in nature. In other words, complex and sophisticated patterns of behavior can emerge from the actions of simpler organisms. Look at bee hives, ant hills, V-shaped birds in flight, for example. None of the organisms has a goal of developing a hive, hill or flight formation, but follows simple genetic instructions from which these complicated organizations emerge. I do not think that it is unfair to say that the mind may emerge from the brain in the same way.
cl
says...Hey all. Thanks for the comments. I’ll get to each as time allows. For now:
dguller,
We have. The problem is that you keep waffling between positions.
No, there is not. There is an enormous amount of evidence suggesting neural correlates to consciousness, which dualism predicts. Therefore, you need evidence of something besides neural correlates to consciousness in order to make your case for materialism. Please, tell me you understand this, because until you do, we’re at an impasse.
Sometimes, sometimes not. Besides, this is wholly irrelevant because you have already conceded that this fact is not a disproof of dualism.
When I refuse to accept “disembodied minds don’t make sense to me” as a sound argument, then ask you for the evidence for your claim that “disembodied minds don’t exist,” it is inappropriate you to respond by asking me to make sense of what you can’t. I can make sense of it, and we can explore my proffered mechanism another day. RIGHT NOW, you need to put up the evidence for your claim. That I can see to the right of my computer screen is not relevant. It’s just another neurophysiological correlate to consciousness.
The problem is, you haven’t provided one shred of evidence for the proposition that brain causes mind. You’ve alluded to evidence that consciousness has neural correlates, which I haven’t once denied because such is a prediction of dualism.
So, again: do you have evidence for your claim that does not boil down to contradicting yourself by pulling the brain damage card or citing the “logical possibility” that every single OBE and NDE might be false? I have not asserted a single proposition that is logically contradictory, unless of course one simply assumes the truth of materialist theories of consciousness–which is what you seem to be doing.
dguller
says...cl:
>> When I refuse to accept “disembodied minds don’t make sense to me” as a sound argument, then ask you for the evidence for your claim that “disembodied minds don’t exist,” it is inappropriate you to respond by asking me to make sense of what you can’t. I can make sense of it, and we can explore my proffered mechanism another day. RIGHT NOW, you need to put up the evidence for your claim. That I can see to the right of my computer screen is not relevant. It’s just another neurophysiological correlate to consciousness.
I have mentioned how the mind is intrinsically related to information that is provided by a body interacting with a world. There as aspects of our conscious experience that refer to our bodies, such as our perceptual perspective, our internal sense of proprioception and interoception, our tactile sensations, and so on. They make sense, because this information is received in the peripheral nerves and sent to the central nervous system where they are processed into body maps, for example, which are actually quite flexible. Certainly, some of these experiences can occur without bodily interaction, but those experiences only make sense as parasitic upon normal brain-body-world relations. The most parsimonious explanation is that the mind is intrinsically related to the brain-body-world interaction, and that is why a disembodied mind makes no sense.
Now, can you explain how our visual perspective can make sense without the brain-body-world relationship? Can you explain how proprioception and interoception can make sense without the peripheral nervous system sending information to the central nervous system? Can you explain how our conscious awareness intrinsically contains information and experiences of our bodies in the world if it is disembodied? I have explained why my position makes sense to me, and I would like to hear how yours makes sense to you.
>> The problem is, you haven’t provided one shred of evidence for the proposition that brain causes mind. You’ve alluded to evidence that consciousness has neural correlates, which I haven’t once denied because such is a prediction of dualism.
What about the fact that our visual experience appears to be of a unified perspective, but actually cannot possibly be so? There is information that is filled in by the brain, because we have a blind spot, and our eyes move in sacchadic movements, inevitably missing bits and pieces of the visual field. The reason why we do not experience a blind spot or a fragmented visual field is because the brain fills in the missing information, which shows that the brain causes conscious experience, at least in this case. When you add other phenomena, such as phantom limbs, hallucinations, alien hand syndrome, third limb syndrome, and so on, then it appears that we have experiences in the absence of real sensory information, which means that the brain is supplying those aspects of our conscious experience.
Perhaps your account of a disembodied consciousness can explain these phenomena better than a neurobiological and physical account of an embodied, embedded and extended mind? If it can, then go for it.
>> So, again: do you have evidence for your claim that does not boil down to contradicting yourself by pulling the brain damage card or citing the “logical possibility” that every single OBE and NDE might be false? I have not asserted a single proposition that is logically contradictory, unless of course one simply assumes the truth of materialist theories of consciousness–which is what you seem to be doing.
I mentioned my evidence above, and would appreciate your comments on it. Furthermore, I see that you have ignored – again – my criticisms of OBE and NDE evidence as “logical possibility”. I stated that I do not criticize them on the basis of logical possibility, but empirical possibility. It is not just because it is not logically contradictory that OBE and NDE evidence may be false, but because there are well-known empirical phenomena that may be confounding that evidence, and therefore must be addressed. This is what scientific investigations are all about. If you deny this, then I’m afraid that you have no idea what science is all about at all.
Imagine you walk upon a murder scene, and find a dead body, stabbed, and a man standing beside the body with a bleeding knife. What would you do? Would you condemn that mind right then and there, and inflict capital punishment, or whatever? Of course not. You know that there are possible confounding factors that must be addressed before condemning the man. Maybe the bleeding knife is not really bleeding at all? Maybe he was in a nearby restaurant, and that is ketchup? Maybe the knife that killed the body is different from the knife that the man had? Maybe the man just picked up the murder weapon after arriving on the scene just now? Maybe the person actually died of a gunshot wound from the murderer, and the man just stabbed the dead body?
Would it make sense for someone to say, “Well, those are all just ‘logical possibilities’ that make no difference at all to whether he killed the victim. I say we should just throw him in jail or execute him on the spot!”? Because that is essentially what you are saying in defense of your NDE and OBE evidence. You are REFUSING to consider alternative empirical possibilities, and ridiculing them by saying that they are just “logical possibility”. The fact is that they are genuine possibilities on the basis of psychological research, and is why scientific studies of high quality struggle to control for multiple confounding factors to minimize the chance of getting things wrong. For you to object to this is to invite bias and distortion in your conclusions. You might as well say that logic and reason are just parlor games that should not be taken seriously when discussing the truth of some matter.
I mean, this is all just basic to the rules of inquiry, in general, and I have a hard time believing that you are being serious about your criticisms here. You are too smart for that, I think.
Crude
says...Does the rain dance always cause rain? If it doesn’t, then it’s a poor analogy.
Always and without fail. When you do it right.
The rain dance is a very delicate case. It will not emerge unless it is done properly.
So what? A conscious awareness of a pattern requires a consciousness, but that does not mean that the pattern itself depends on consciousness.
Except when it does. If I see a pattern in the material world, does a pattern really exist? And asserting that patterns ‘really exist’ in the material world opens up interesting problems for materialism.
If by “magic” you mean “I have no idea how it happened”, then yes, consciousness emerging from the brain is “magic”. I prefer to say that we currently do not know how it occurs, but are diligently studying the matter to figure it out.
Diligently studying magic is still the study of magic.
Except that emergence is something that is well-known in nature. In other words, complex and sophisticated patterns of behavior can emerge from the actions of simpler organisms. Look at bee hives, ant hills, V-shaped birds in flight, for example. None of the organisms has a goal of developing a hive, hill or flight formation, but follows simple genetic instructions from which these complicated organizations emerge. I do not think that it is unfair to say that the mind may emerge from the brain in the same way.
And how do we know none of the organisms have a goal, singularly or collectively? Nor did I say the claim was ‘unfair’. I said it was magic. You’re saying “we have no idea how it happened” but seem to think saying “emergence!” draws away from that. And strong emergence is so close to magic you can practically see the top hat on any guy proposing it.
cl
says...What evidence? Summarize it for me. Thus far–and I’m talking about the entire scope of our conversation over the past weeks, not just this thread–this is what I see as the totality of your evidence for your claim that disembodied minds can’t exist:
1) You can’t make sense of it.
2) Brain damage can alter mental function.
3) We have a blind spot in our vision, and you believe the brain fills in the missing information.
4) The brain can perceive things that you believe are not there, i.e. phantom limbs.
5) All the evidence for dualism may be subject to cognitive errors, bias, and confounding factors.
1 is an argument from incredulity, so we can toss that right in the basket. As you’ve conceded, 2 is of no import to dualism, so, we can toss that right in the basket, too. 5 is applicable to any scientific claim, so, without SPECIFIC reasons for doubting SPECIFIC cases, right in the basket. That leaves us with 3 and 4.
Is that it? Or, do you have more evidence I need to address? Let’s get everything out on the table.
dguller
says...Crude:
>> Always and without fail. When you do it right.
And how do you know when it is done right? Why, when it rains, of course! And how do we know that the Bible is true? Because it tells us so!
>> Except when it does. If I see a pattern in the material world, does a pattern really exist? And asserting that patterns ‘really exist’ in the material world opens up interesting problems for materialism.
It depends on the pattern. The pattern of monetary value, for example, does not exist independent of us. The pattern of the moon’s orbit of the earth does exist independent of us. However, it takes us to become consciously aware that such a pattern exists, but we are not the measure of all things.
>> And how do we know none of the organisms have a goal, singularly or collectively? Nor did I say the claim was ‘unfair’. I said it was magic. You’re saying “we have no idea how it happened” but seem to think saying “emergence!” draws away from that. And strong emergence is so close to magic you can practically see the top hat on any guy proposing it.
First, do you believe that an ant has the conceptual design of an ant-hill in its brain? Do you think that when it responds to its environment that it knows its role in the overall plan of the ant-hill? Isn’t it more likely that the individual ant behaves according to a simple algorithm, and that when hundreds of thousands of them behave together according to the same algorithm, then a new complexity can emerge from their collective behavior?
Second, emergence is not magic. Again, it is a well-known natural phenomenon. There is no reason not to pursue a research program under the assumption that the mind emerges from the brain. It may turn out to be a useless model, but it should be pursued, because we know that consciousness does occur in conjunction with the collective interactions of billions of individual neurons.
dguller
says...cl:
My case for embodied cognition is based upon the fact that, first, we all have bodies within which our brains exist. Our brains and bodies develop together over time, and are in a symbiotic relationship in which each is fully integrated into the other. Our brain receives input from the body via sensory neurons from our external senses (i.e. vision, hearing, touch, etc.) and our internal senses (i.e. proprioception and interoception), as well as from changes in hormone levels in the body. Our body receives input from the brain via efferent neurons that send signals to our internal organs to behave in different ways, to our endocrine glands to secrete hormones, and to our extremities to move. I mean, this is not disputed, I hope.
Next, there is the fact that within our conscious awareness, there are intrinsic elements that refer to our bodies, whether due to sensory input via our vision (which comes from visual input into our eyes) or hearing (which comes from sound waves impacting our tympanic membrane), or due to our bodily sense of our bodily orientation and location in space via proprioception and interoception. That is just part of our sensory experience. I also specifically mentioned the fact that our visual perception is rooted in the perspective in which visual input enters our eyes and is then processed by the brain. That is why when you move your eyes, your visual experience changes. (How do you explain this if your mind is disembodied?) These experiences best make sense by looking at my description in the previous paragraph about how our brains and bodies are fully integrated units that exist in a symbiotic relationship.
My points about phantom limbs, alien hand syndrome, extra limb syndrome, and our lack of awareness of our visual blind spot is not related to our discussion of embodied consciousness. They are relevant to my claim that the brain generates our conscious states. They are relevant, because they are examples of where we experience something that does not exist in the world. Where did these experiences come from? My contention is that they are generated by the brain functioning in an abnormal fashion. Phantom limbs, for example, occur because the sensory neurons for the absent limb, being inactive on their own, are invaded by surrounding sensory neurons and activated by them. Your contention is … I do not know, because you never provided me with what you believe about these abnormal experiences.
And as for my criticisms of your paranormal studies, I did offer SPECIFIC reasons to reject them at this time. You just don’t like them. I’m sorry that you dislike that science requires ruling out confounding factors, and the factors that I mentioned COULD explain the phenomena in question, and therefore, must be ruled out in future studies. To show that they conclusively do not requires a study that explicitly makes attempts to rule them out, and if they are ruled out, and the phenomena is preserved, then you have a solid case.
cl
says...dguller,
I am specifically interested in the evidence for your claim that disembodied minds don’t exist. You write:
IOW, there is a connection between brain, body, and environment. Since I have not once disputed this, and dualism also predicts it, in the can it goes.
IOW, during normal waking state, our mind is embodied. Since I have not once disputed this, and dualism also predicts it, in the can it goes.
Okay, so, points 3 and 4 are not relevant to our discussion of embodied consciousness, therefore, in the can they go.
So then, again: what evidence do you have that IS relevant to our discussion of embodied consciousness? If none, then, again: by your own criteria, I should assign your claim that “disembodied minds don’t exist” a very low probability of being true.
Right?
dguller
says...cl:
>> So then, again: what evidence do you have that IS relevant to our discussion of embodied consciousness? If none, then, again: by your own criteria, I should assign your claim that “disembodied minds don’t exist” a very low probability of being true.
I have provided my case for why our minds are embodied. In fact, you AGREE with this case when you wrote: “IOW, during normal waking state, our mind is embodied. Since I have not once disputed this, in the can it goes.” Good, so we agree that the mind is embodied under normal circumstances.
I suppose that we disagree whether in abnormal conscious states, our mind is disembodied. Well, there are two possibilities here:
(1) Our mind is still embodied, but that it appears to be disembodied by virtue of abnormal activity in the brain.
I think that this is most likely, because there are a number of abnormal mental states that occur due to changes in the brain, whether by virtue of trauma, infection or psychotropic drugs, and none of them require that our minds have detached from the body and reached a separate realm, or whatever. And if they did, then how does LSD cause the mind to detach from the brain and body?
Furthermore, the fact that we experience something does not necessarily imply that it is really happening. I perceive my visual experience to be unified, but the visual input itself has a blind spot and is fragmentary due to saccadic eye movements. In addition, I may have a vivid memory of X, but X never occurred. I may be vividly experiencing X right now, but am hallucinating it, which does not mean that it is really there, in some mysterious and spiritual sense. It is NOT there at all. This is also backed up by a wealth of psychological and neuroscientific studies.
(2) Our mind is actually disembodied during these states.
Your evidence for this is (a) logical possibility, and (b) poorly controlled case reports and one prospective study.
Do I have this right?
cl
says...Apparently, you’re still not getting this: What is the evidence for your claim that “disembodied minds don’t exist?”
dguller
says...Cl:
>> Apparently, you’re still not getting this: What is the evidence for your claim that “disembodied minds don’t exist?”
Because every instance of a mind is of an embodied mind, and when someone has a subjective experience of a disembodied state, such as during an OBE or NDE, then it is likely due to an underlying brain state, because there is a wealth of data about abnormal conscious experiences that are due to brain dysfunction.
Now, what is your evidence that disembodied minds DO exist? Oh, I remember. It is logically possible that they happen, and the uncontrolled case reports and single prospective study. Is that about right?
Thinking Emotions
says...cl, some general questions about your beliefs on dualism.
When you say dualism predicts neural correlates to consciousness, are you implying that dualism is not incompatible with neural correlating to consciousness (I agree) or that a specific dualist philosopher predicted, before science established so, that neural would correlate to consciousness? If the former, then I don’t think predict is quite the right word. Either way, I really doubt dualism predicted this before science established it as a fact. I feel like you’re adding it as a prediction after the fact via hindsight bias. When atheists try to rebut dualism by saying neural correlates to consciousness, they are arguing out of favor for parsimony, not logical possibility.
Let’s say I apply a force to a block to move it one meter. The reason the block moves is due to my force primarily, but concepts such as friction and mass are related as well. For the sake of argument, I say the relationship between my force applied to the block and the block moving was merely correlative. Is this not analogous to your argument about brains and minds? My example is awfully simplified, but imagine that argument taking place way before physics had working concepts such as force, friction, and energy. Neuroscience is a young field, and while we may never be able to conclusively prove that brain causes mind, we may eventually get to the point where it is silly to think otherwise (like in my block example). Doesn’t this concern you?
Now, please keep in mind that I’m not trying to argue for materialism. I think dualism has some evidential merit (near-death experiences are bizarre given naturalism) and I’m inclined to agree with you when you slam naturalists for using the “it’s just a coincidence” card.