Neurotrash or Consciousness Unexplained

[2bsirius]

I've just launched a video series on YouTube which I'm calling "Mapping the Matrix." I posted the first video in the series yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UrBR0efac4

In it, I referenced an article by Raymond Tallis which appears in the current [November/December] Philosophy Now magazine...After I uploaded the video I discovered that the article isn't up yet. So I posted instead a link to really interesting article Tallis wrote for the New Humanist, "Neurotrash." The contention of the article [a contention that I agree with], is that " If neuroscience has very little to say about the individual persons, or even bits of consciousness, it unlikely is unlikely to have anything valid to say about society and policies that may help those within it to flourish." He points out the inherent logical fallacy of prefixing "neuro" to an area of cultural study or scientific research and claiming that this neologism is in fact a new discipline [i.e., neuor-jurispudence, neuro-economics, neuro-evolutionary theory, etc.]
Here's a link:

http://newhumanist.org.uk/2172/neurotrash

SO I guess I'm interested in kicking around this idea that consciousness can't be reduced to mere physical brain function and chemistry.

What do you think? Are you neurobeliever or a neurosceptic?

[boriqa]

Greetings

Betrand Russell wrote in his short essay "Do We Survive Death?" (found in Why I am Not a Christian but first published in a book entitled The Mysteries of Life and Death, 1936):

"Our memories and habits are bound up with the structure of the brain, in much the same way in which a river is connected with the rived-bed. The water in the river is always changing, but it keeps to the same course because previous events have worn a channel. In like manner, previous events have worn a channel in the brain, and our thoughts flow along this channel. This is the cause of memory and mental habits. But the brain, as a structure, is dissolved at death , and memory therefore may be expected to be also dissolved. There is no more reason to think otherwise than to expect a river to persist in its old course after an earthquake has raised a mountain where a valley used to be."

[Mike Strand]

Thanks for the invitation. I, too, am interested in the mystery of consciousness. I haven't solved it, but I like to speculate.

While natural selection/evolution impresses me greatly as an explanation for the emergence of life forms like ourselves, I still wonder why I keep asking questions such as, Who am I? Why am I me, as (or maybe trapped inside) this particular individual specimen of homo sapiens, and not as or inside another human being, or an ant, or a plant, at another time or place in the universe? Are my personal feelings or impressions of being more than my living body just natural but extraneous side-products of human self-awareness and ability to interact with surroundings? Or do I have an identity, or soul that can exist separately from my biological makeup?

[Mike Strand]

The quote from B. Russell is persuasive. The experiences I have in life build my memory, which can be viewed as neural-electrical-chemical patterns stored in my brain and which are part of my awareness, along with my surroundings. I experience myself day after day in my surroundings, and this creates my memory, which can be viewed as my very identity as perceived by me. I can think about my remembered experiences (another natural brain function) and refine or even revise my memory/identity. And my identity may change as I continue to live and experience myself in my surroundings. Of course, other people who see, remember, or record aspects my life also build their own idea of what my identity is, which may disagree with mine in many areas.

A severe blow to the head or other physical event that damages or shakes up my brain tissue can damage memory, hence cause me to loose part of my sense of who I am. If my identity were not part of my body (i.e. if I had a "soul"), why should a physical event like a blow to my head affect my ability to know myself? To find out again who I might be, I would have to study records or ask other people what are their memories of me, in order to regain awareness of who I am. If my own former memory doesn't come back (i.e. if the brain damage is not repaired - maybe it never can be perfectly repaired), then the idea I have of my own identity will never be what it was. Again, this seems to contradict the idea of "spirit" or "soul", which, one would like to assume, is indestructible, or at least not affected by events which apparently should only affect brain tissue.

[Mike Strand]

It would be great to see the thoughts of others on this, but here are more of mine -- this is a great topic!

I finally read Tallis's article, "Neurotrash". I liked his description of the human individual as an "independent centre of action and judgement", but I'm not completely on board with his characterization of the "human world" as "unknown to nature". Like the ants, bees, and wolves, we are, despite our high opinion of ourselves, part of nature, no matter how advance and complex we view our interactions with each other in families, society, etc. We like to make the distinction between human settlements with water and sewer and electrical and transportation and communication and food distribution systems, on the one hand, and a bee hive or ant hill on the other, but all of these are "natural", having been developed by the activity of animals.

One can argue that in some ways human beings are superior to chimps, but in other ways it is not so obvious, and one might at least jokingly speculate which branch leading from our common ancestor is the better branch: We or the apes? Human beings, for one thing, are very clever at coming up with ways of killing each other purposely, both close-up and at a great distance.

This skepticism aside, I agree with Tallis's basic stand that it is a bad idea to get into social or other kind of human engineering based on what we know about the brain. Even if someday we know perfectly how the brain, body, and the body's surroundings work together, let's not forget John Stuart Mill (also featured in the current issue of Philosophy Now) and his great book, "On Liberty". If the human individual is even partly free to learn of and build and expand her own identity, and what is more, feels free to do so, despite scientific or philosophical arguments against free will, making us the robots of a group of "neuro-engineers" is a bleak thought. Who would appoint such a group, or how would it be formed? No thank you!

The knowability of the human brain is irrelevant. With luck, we'll never know it well enough to be tempted to control it, but if we ever do, I hope we'll remember Mill.