Can the Brain Explain Your Mind? On V.S. Ramachandran

"Is studying the brain a good way to understand the mind? Does psychology stand to brain anatomy as physiology stands to body anatomy? In the case of the body, physiological functions—walking, breathing, digesting, reproducing, and so on—are closely mapped onto discrete bodily organs, and it would be misguided to study such functions independently of the bodily anatomy that implements them. If you want to understand what walking is, you should take a look at the legs, since walking is what legs do. Is it likewise true that if you want to understand thinking you should look at the parts of the brain responsible for thinking?

Colin McGinn: Between The Brain and The Mind

Blame it all on Descartes. The mind/body split, I mean. How do you get from "in here" to "out there"? How do you get from something subjective, mind, to something objective, brain? A mind stops being a mind as soon as it is taken from the skull and placed on a table to examine it. At that point it becomes a brain. You can dissect a brain and look at it under a microscope, but you are no closer to that subjective experience of what it feels like to be an "I."

And how about getting from "in here" to "out there"? Is there a little person inside each of us and this person acts as stage director between the inner and the outer? I speak here of what has been traditionally called the self, that which interacts between our thoughts and the world.

Recent research in neuroscience has many believing that soon we will have a working model for the gap between the brain and the conscious mind. Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett believe that we have made too much of the gap, and that it is really not that big a problem. Think of consciousness as emergent from matter, the brain, and somehow the problem is no longer insoluble. Well, okay.

Not so fast, says Colin McGinn, who holds that we can never bridge the gap between mind and brain. He has this to say about that:

"There appears to be what Wittgenstein called an "unbridgeable gulf" between the brain and the conscious mind. The paradox of the mind-body problem is that the explanatory causes of consciousness in the brain are not discoverable by inspecting the brain, and introspection cannot reveal the rootedness of consciousness in brain tissue. Our modes of knowing about the mind-brain nexus don't home in on the glue that binds the two together." More

Colin McGinn on Faith and Reason

Colin McGinn on Faith & Reason. McGinn currently teaches at U. of Miami. Each segment below is relatively short. Part 1. A rough sketch of some of his comments: (1) People don't believe in unicorns, but we have good psychological reasons to believe in God that don't apply to unicorns; (2) We have moved from the Old Testament God of Wrath to an abstract God largely devoid of human characteristics; (3) A question is, How much is the longing for God part of human nature, and how much enculturation? (I will some day discuss Andrew Newberg, who hypothesizes a God Factor wired into the brain.); (4) McGinn dropped God from his life and sees no difference in it; (5) Religion, not indoctrination, can serve in schools as an important access to vital questions on the meaning of life and human values.



Part 2. A rough sketch of some of his comments: (1) In the dialogues between faith and reason, too much emphasis is given to faith, not enough to reason. (2) Intellectuals have told the world that truth and objective systems are all illusions. Ergo, we should accept subjectively-based systems and opinions as merely another way of thinking about the world. (3) A popular perspective is that because all things are relative, we are politically incorrect when we criticize the incoherence of somebody else's opinions or faith. Watch here.

Part 3. The story of Jesus is a powerful story. It has many ingredients, including injustice and justice . . . Watch here.

Colin McGinn On The Zealots of Science

We all know about those on the religious right and their evangelical beliefs; in today's media nothing is said about the evangelists for science. Formerly an Oxford professor, Colin McGinn currently teaches at the University of Miami, and he has taken issue with both sides. I like what he recently said about those who beat the drums for all to be explained by science. We regard science as reasonable and so it is, but these people are enemies of thought, as termed by McGinn.

Essentially, he pondered "who is more deplorable among us: the superstitious zealots who limit their knowledge to what the Bible tells them or the scientists who are unable or unwilling to take any question seriously which has no scientific answer--which includes most of the questions I as a philosopher spend my time on. "

His comment can be found here.