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Is there any difference between the mind and the brain?

Theo Clark

Scientific knowledge suggests that the world is inanimate, purposeless, made up of material

things which operate on a cause and effect basis; yet the mental world seems to involve

consciousness, planning, desire etc.1 It would seem paradoxical that one world is the product

of another. Yet this is the conclusion we are faced with if we are to make any sense of the

evidence at hand and resolve one of the major questions of all time. “Do the electronic

processes of the brain 'create' or 'give rise to' the mind; or is it that the electronic processes

are the mind?” The ratiocination of this question is essentially philosophical, but by necessity,

it is grounded in the world of empirical science.

The brain is the organ of soft nervous tissue which fills the cranium of humans and other

vertebrates. The mind, on the other hand, is the element of a person that enables them to be

aware of the world and their experiences in it; it is the faculty of consciousness and thought.2

With these typical definitions for the brain and mind, how can the brain be the mind at all? I

will argue that the mind is an ‘emergent property’ of the brain. Moreover, the mind comes

after the brain – mental events are the subjective experiences of the physical events which

occur in our brains. As a consequence, the mind is nothing more than the feeling of ‘being me

now’.3

There are two vantages from which one can study the mind.4 The first-person account ("I see

red") and the third-person ("He says he sees red when certain pathways in his brain

encounter a wavelength of six hundred nanometres").5 This can be broadly labelled as

'Introspectionism' and 'Behaviourism' respectively.6 As one cannot directly see into another's

head, methodological problems arise using Introspectionist techniques, a result of which can

be seen in the foibles of much introspective psychology (such as Freudianism). Behaviourism

holds that any mental events are outside the realm of empirical science;7 ergo, it is now the

brain which is the focus, as opposed to the mind.8

As pointed out by Ramachandran and Blakeslee, if in the scheme of empirical science the first

person account is disregarded, the implication is that consciousness doesn't exist.9 (It is a

figment of our imagination, if you will – though of course none of us have an imagination!).

Even if mental events are not among the data of science, this doesn't mean they can't be

studied. Black holes are not among the data (in that we can’t observe them directly), but we

do have good scientific theories for them.10

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As Daniel Dennett explains, human consciousness is an experience of phenomena. There are

various items of conscious experience that have to be explained. For this he uses the term

phenomenology. Phenom, our experience of phenomena, can be classified as three distinct

types: [1] experiences of the 'external' world – sights, sound, smells, positions of our limbs,

textures etc; [2] experiences of the internal world – fantasy images, daydreaming,

recollections, bright ideas; and [3] experiences of emotion or 'affect' – bodily pain, hunger,

thirst, anger, joy, lust, pride, fear etc.11 It is the job of any materialistic 'theory of mind' to be

able to do these phenom justice.12

Historically, we can see this problem began with Descartes, who considered the body and

soul to be ontologically separate yet interacting through the pineal gland at the base of the

brain.13 The body (in our case the brain) is physical and the soul (the mind) is non-physical.

There are various philosophical problems associated with this. For example, how do

immaterial substances affect material substances? Dualists, those who hold such a belief,

have various answers to these problems which are generally found lacking; but the biggest

problem would seem to be an empirical one. Looking at one particular part of the brain to see

its affect on the mind, it becomes evident that we don't really need an immaterial mind when

we can explain it as a material one quite well.

The amygdala is an almond-shaped area of the brain that is responsible for the sense of

fear.14 When an individual is frightened, the neurones in their amygdala are highly active. If

the amygdala is lesioned, the individual looses their sense of fear. For example, monkeys with

damage to the amygdala have a dramatic drop in fearfulness and rats with targeted amygdala

damage loose their fear of cats.15 Here we can see that tampering with the brain,

inadvertently or not, most certainly affects the mind. Adding the further hypothesis of the

immaterial mind is without any sound scientific point. As William of Ockham said, "It is vain to

do with more what can be done with fewer."16 Of course, a material mind has its own

associated problems.

The Problem of Phenomenology

Cast your mind back to the last brilliant sunset you saw. Imagine the delicate pink, orange,

yellow and red hues of the clouds. This is a personal item of your own phenomenology. How

can science explain this? "Nothing could be less like an electron, or a molecule, or a neuron,

than the way the sunset seems to me now – or so it seems... How could anything composed of

material particles be the fun I'm having now?"17 As mentioned earlier, a good theory of mind

should be able to explain this. Consider another example.

The version of a classic thought experiment I will now consider involves the colour-blind

'super-scientist' (call him Dr. Grey) and the normal colour perceiving subject (call him Mr.

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Pigment) of the scientist's investigation.18 Dr. Grey is a 'super-scientist' as he has complete

access to, and an understanding of, Mr. Pigment's brain. Dr. Grey's brain is of normal

function, it is his eyes – which are missing cones – that are the cause of his colour-blindness.

Mr. Pigment can see a blue sky, red and green apples, yellow bananas etc. To Dr. Grey, they

are all just shades of grey, so he wants to find out what Mr. Pigment means by these terms.

Dr. Grey points a spectrometer at the surface of a red apple. The wavelength of the reflected

light is six hundred nanometres. Because he can't experience it himself, he still has no idea

what colour this might correspond to. He then studies the workings of Mr. Pigment's eyes and

brain, until he has a complete description of the laws of wavelength processing. His theory is

now able to outline the process of the light reflecting from the apple into Mr. Pigment's eyes,

turning into the information that goes into Mr. Pigment's brain, where he is able to monitor

the neural activity antecedent to Mr. Pigment saying 'red' when asked to describe the colour

of the apple. Thus Dr. Grey completely understands the 'laws' of colour vision. He is able to

tell, in advance, what word Mr. Pigment will use to describe the colour of an object, without

actually being able to 'see' the colour himself. Dr. Grey can represent the whole process with

a diagram, but is that enough?

"This is you seeing red," says Dr. Grey, showing Mr. Pigment the diagram.

"Sure that's what is going on in my brain, but I also see red. Where is red in your

diagram?" protests Mr. Pigment.

Dr. Grey, somewhat confused, responds, "What are you talking about, what do

you mean?"

"Red is the part that is the actual, ineffable experience of seeing colour, which is

impossible for me to convey to you, because you are colour-blind."

The conclusion we can draw from this reasonably probable conversation, is that the data, no-

matter how good it gets, cannot even in theory describe our own phenom to another person.

I.e., we can say when we feel fear, to use a previous example, "I'm experiencing high activity

in the neurones in my amygdala." But this is inadequate, as it doesn't convey the essential

qualitative features of our first-person perspective. We aren't aware of the physical fact that

we are undergoing high activity in our amygdala. We are aware of our experience of fear. The

only way to convey this accurately to another individual would be to give them the same

experience. Or, in the case of Dr. Grey, replace his deficient eyes with new working ones.19

This is why the mind is an important concept. Perhaps, in the end, this is just a matter of

semantics, but it is semantically important. In fact, if we accept that the electronic processes

are the mind, then the term 'mind' becomes redundant. Only a modest amount of

philosophical or linguistic acumen is needed to see the unfavourable result of such a move -

as distinct concepts, mind and brain allow us to think clearly about the physical processes

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which are the causes of mental events. If we use the term mind to mean phenomenological

experiences, 'being me now', for this reason alone 'mind' is a useful term.

Being Me Now

As an elucidation, not as a conclusive 'proof', the structure and operation of a computer is an

apt metaphor for the argument that the brain gives rise to the mind. Brains are the hardware,

the patterns of neural activity in the brain are the software, and the mind is the 'virtual

machine', or the output on the monitor, of the human computer. The hardware and the

software that make up a computer, combine to produce the image on the computer screen.

By analogy, the brain and its associated activity, combine to produce the experience of the

mind. The mind cannot do anything, just as the image on a computer screen cannot do

anything. The mind is, as Susan Blackmore puts it, "What it is like to be me now",20 just as the

image on the screen of a computer is a representation of what the computer is doing now.21

It is important to understand what I am not saying about the mind. The mind comes after the

brain, not before. If the mind is something that is given rise to by the brain, as I believe it is, it

does not follow that we have 'a mind of our own'. The mind is our experience, or, the way in

which we perceive the three different kinds of phenom – inputs from the external world,

inputs from the internal world and experiences of emotion or 'affect'. But as the brain is a

physical object, it follows that it obeys the laws of physics. Laws of physics (except for

quantum processes, perhaps) are based on cause and effect. If we sufficiently understand

these laws, and have the required data (specifically the data of the causes) we can then work

out the effect before it occurs. A particular lottery result isn't a chance event, in that if we had

all the required data concerning the conditions of all the forces and matter involved just

before the draw, we would be able to ascertain the winning numbers by plugging the data

into a powerful enough computer. The reason we don't know the result until it happens is

because we lack perfect information and the required computing power, not because lottery

balls disobey physical laws of cause and effect. The same applies to our brains. They obey

physical laws of cause and effect. In this sense our brains are merely responding to stimuli -

the three kinds of phenom.

'You' are not in charge. As counter-intuitive as this may seem, it is the conclusion we are left

with if we follow the above reasoning to its logical conclusion. Not only this, but considerable

empirical evidence is congruous to this conclusion.22 Thoughts, ideas, feelings, attitudes and

other phenom, are produced by the unconscious processes of the brain. It is only later that

we become aware of them, when they become outputs and enter our consciousness – our

minds. Consciousness appears too late to affect the outcome of mental processes, or rather,

the physical processes that cause (or at least are directly correlated to) our mental

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experiences.23 Conscious awareness comes, but after the unconscious decision has been

made. Before we 'feel' pain, we remove the hand from the flame.24

Micro and Macro Levels of Explanation

John Searle has advanced, what seems to me, the clearest and simplest solution to this

philosophical conundrum. He begins with a more than acceptable materialistic premise:

Mental phenomena, all mental phenomena whether conscious or unconscious,

visual or auditory, pains, tickles, itches, thoughts, indeed, all of our mental life,

are caused by processes going on in the brain... mental phenomena are just

features of the brain...25

Searle goes on to explain that a common distinction made in physics is that of micro and

macro-properties of systems. Water, he uses as an example, is composed of micro-particles. It

has features at many different levels: molecular, atomic and sub-atomic. It also has the

macro-property of liquidity, which is an emergent property of the physical system.26 Many

such emergent properties can be explained by the behaviour of their constituent parts at the

micro-level. The liquidity of the water is explained by the interactions between the H2O

molecules. Here we have a macro-feature which is causally explained at the micro-level. This

reasoning directly applies to the mind-brain problem. The micro-level interactions (activity of

neurones etc.) cause, or in other words, give rise to the mind. There is a cause and effect

relationship, but the emergent property (the mind) is just a higher level feature of the system

whose behaviour at the mirco-level (the constituent parts of the brain) causes the those

features.27

Conclusion

Philosophical discourse is about meaning and justification, “What are you saying?” and “How

do you know that?”28 Adhering to this approach, my argument has been that the electronic

processes of the brain give rise to the mind – the experience of ‘being me’ (or ‘being you’) at

this point in time. We know this, as there most certainly is a first person experience of

existence, even if it can only be ascertained by Descartes famous maxim – cogito ergo sum.

But we also know that Descartes was wrong with respects to his ontology of mind and brain.

Unlike Descartes, we aren't being mystical about it, we can say that physical processes in the

brain give rise to the subjective experiences we call our mind. But the answer cannot be that

the electronic processes in the brain are the mind; because if we accept Dennett's criteria for

what makes a good 'theory of mind' – that it should be able to explain our various phenom

(which seems to be a valid criteria) – then this answer (as previously argued) is evidently

lacking.

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Consciousness is either generated by brain activity, or, is brain activity. In this sense

experimental evidence doesn't favour one hypothesis over the other. But at the very least it

does favour the conclusion that the brain comes before the mind. In other words, the

processes of the brain give rise to the mind, such that the brain 'acts' and the mind 'observes'.

If we consider the anecdotal evidence (and certainly there is a lot of it), that every single

conscious human being ever asked has some sort of mental awareness, then we are forced to

conclude that the mind is simply the macro-level of explanation – it is an emergent property.

For these reasons, as a concept, it has a definite value; but of more importance is the fact that

as an experience, it is undeniable.

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Bibliography

Blackmore, S. (1999) The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press: Oxford

Chambers, J. (1983) The Achievement of Education. University Press of America: Lanham

Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained. Penguin: New York

Halligan, P. & Oakley, D. (2000) "Greatest Myth of All" in New Scientist. 18 November, pp 34-

39. Reed Business Information: London

Popkin, R. & Stroll, A. (1993) Philosophy. Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd:

Oxford

Ramachandran, V. & Blakeslee, S. (1998) Phantoms in the Brain. Forth Estate Ltd: London

Russell, B. (1946) History of Western Philosophy. (2000 edition) Allen & Unwin: London

Searle, J. (1984) Minds, Brains and Science. Harvard University Press: Cambridge

Society for Neuroscience. (1998) "Fear and the Amygdala" in Brain Briefings. On the Society

for Neuroscience web site - http://web.sfn.org/content/Publications/BrainBriefings/fear.html

Wilson, E. (1998) Consilience – The Unity of Knowledge. Abacus: London

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References and Notes (Clarifications and Other Points) 1 Popkin & Stroll, 1993: 123. 2 These definitions are based on the New Oxford English Dictionary 3 In order to sidestep the unnecessary confusion that is brought about with the discussion of other species, I have assumed that ‘the mind' is the subjective experience of consciousness that only developed humans (for the sake of argument, say older than 3 or 4) have. 4 It is important to note that these descriptions of Introspectionism and Behaviourism are not archetypes of particular scientific paradigms, but rather, distinct classifications of the two ways of thinking about this question. In this sense it could be argued that they are ‘straw-men’ (as very few scientists and psychologists would strictly adhere to one particular view only), but for the sake of this discussion these classifications have been granted. 5 Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998: 229. 6 Dennett, 1991: 70. 7 ibid 8 Extreme views of this kind are often advanced as unwarranted ideological principles: mental events don't exist at all ('barefoot behaviourism'); mental event exist but have no effects, so science cannot study them; and mental events exist and have effects, but those effects can't be studied by science. (This is a pseudo dualism, as apparently the mind is not the brain - but exists - and we can only study the latter.) ibid: 71. 9 Satire is often the best way of revealing the absurdity of a belief, and in such a vein Ramachandran and Blakeslee go on to say, "... the behaviourist who, just having made passionate love, looks to his lover and says, 'Obviously that was good for you, dear, but was it good for me?'" Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998: 229. 10 Dennett, 1991: 71. 11 Of course these three types of phenom are highly integrated, and one is unlikely to be completely separate from another, but this taxonomy is helpful nevertheless. ibid: 45-46. 12 ibid: 65. 13 Popkin & Stroll, 1993: 124-125. 14 The brain also stores epigenetic rules (innate biological predispositions/prepared learning) associated with fear, such as a fear of snakes. Wilson, 1998: 86. 15 Society for Neuroscience, 1998: web site.

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16 Cited in Russell, 1946: 462. 17 Dennett, 1991: 65, italics in original. 18 This thought experiment was based on Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998: 229-230. 19 Of course the problem may not actually be resolved with this solution, for how do we know that what Dr. Grey is now able to see as red, is phenomenologically the same as Mr. Pigment’s experience of red? How do we know they are both experiencing the same ‘qualia’ – the quality – that is associated with the phenom of red? Our brains may process the visual information of 600nm so we both say 'red' when we see it (which is testable), but what looks red to me, might in fact look blue (or any other colour) to you. While there is no real reason to believe this is the case (and using Ockham's razor I assume that it isn't), there is no way we can be epistemically sure one way or the other. 20 Blackmore, 1999: 238. 21 Halligan and Oakley (2000: 36-39) argue that our subconscious (level 2 in their terminology) processes all the available sensory input (our three kinds of phenom). Within the level 2 processing is a 'central executive structure' (not a Cartesian Theatre) which is some kind of 'decision-making' device which selects the most important subconscious information for level 1, to produce our experience of consciousness. Using the computer metaphor, there are countless programs and computations running continuously in the background (or level 2) of a computer anytime it is on. But the output on the screen (level 1) is that which is pertinent for the user at that particular point in time. Just as there are countless subconscious processes going on in a brain continuously, but the conscious experience is generally that which is pertinent to the person at that particular point in time. 22 One example of such evidence is the following: hold out your arm in front of you, flex your wrist of your own free will. Do it a few times as spontaneously and consciously as you can. The question to now ask yourself is, "What began the process that lead to that particular action, was if you?" This formed the basis of experiments where the subjects had electrodes on their wrists and scalps to measure electrical activity. Three things were timed, the start of the action, the moment of the decision to act and the start of the readiness potential (a particular brain wave pattern seen just before any complex action is undertaken – it is associated with the brain 'planning' the sequence of elaborate movements to be carried out). Which comes first, the decision to act or the readiness potential? Based on the prior reasoning, it is no surprise that the readiness potential is first. The 'decision' to act comes after the readiness potential. Blackmore, 1999: 227 23 Halligan & Oakley, 2000: 36 24 Blackmore, 1999: 227. 25 Searle, 1984: 18 26 Searle uses the terms 'surface feature' or 'global feature' which I prefer less and as such have avoided. 27 Searle, 1984: 20-22. In regards to the micro/macro distinction, Searle goes on to point out: “… though we can say of a system of particles that it is 10 degrees C or it is a solid or it is a liquid, we

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cannot say of any given particle that this particle is solid, this particle is liquid, this particle is 10 degrees C… In exactly the same way… though we can say of a particular brain:… ‘This brain is experiencing thirst or pain’, we can’t say of any particular neuron in the brain: ‘This neuron is in pain, this neuron is experiencing thirst’. Ibid: 22 28 Chambers, 1983: 1.