MIND-BRAIN

RELATIONSHIP
By Reah Ghoshal (Psychologist)
 The Relationship between Mind
and Brain: The Main Positions
In modern times, before the 20th century, the most popular interpretation of the mind-
brain relationship was some version of dualism. It claims that mind is essentially non-
physical. The brain is the place where this nonphysical reality interacts with physical
reality. The reason why you cannot “see” the mind when you inspect the brain is that
the methods of inspection are adapted to the observation of material phenomena, and
not to the observation of immaterial phenomena like e.g. thoughts. So what you can
inspect using the methods of the natural sciences, is at most the correlates of
consciousness, not the conscious itself. In the 20th century, a series of materialist, or
physicalist, alternatives to dualism have been developed. The main positions are
(philosophical) behaviourism, the identity theory, functionalism and eliminativism.
Behaviourism
According to (philosophical) behaviourism
the mind is simply the behaviour, or
dispositions for behaviour, that an
organism exhibits. The brain is not the
mind, but the mechanism that enables
mind – i.e. the underlying mechanism that
enables the complex behaviour which is
the mind. And the reason why you cannot
observe mind by simply observing the
brain is not that mind is something
immaterial. The reason is that you are so
to speak looking in the wrong place – at
the mechanism that makes mind possible,
not at mind (the behaviour) itself.
Identity Theory
A frequent objection to behaviourism is
that we think of mind not as the behaviour
itself but as what causes and regulates
behaviour. And what causes and regulates
behaviour are brain states; so mental
states are brain states according to the
(neural) identity theory. This mind-brain
identity must be accepted as a kind of
scientific truth, comparable to e.g. the
identity of light and electromagnetic
waves. So the states that you inspect when
you inspect the brain are (some of them)
mental states – it is only that you will not
recognise them as mental states until you
have developed the right ‘theoretical
spectacles’.
 Functionalism
An objection to the identity theory is that mental phenomena, e.g. pain, can be realised
in the brain in many different ways, depending on what kind of organism we are talking
about.
According to functionalism, mind is not brain states, but something more abstract –
namely the functional states the brain can be in. Anything (e.g. a complex robot, or an
extraterrestrial being) with inner states that performed the right functions would have a
mind, even if it did not have a biological brain.
In functionalism the relationship between brain and mind is often compared to the
relationship between hardware and software. And the reasons why you cannot observe
mind by just observing brain processes, is that you are not focusing on a sufficiently
abstract level – you are like an engineer who does not understand a computer because
he only sees the electronic hardware and not the software (i.e. the set of programmed
functions) that runs on this hardware
 Eliminative Instrumentalism
What is common to behaviourism, identity-theory and functionalism is a belief that
mental phenomena are real phenomena that can, in the end, be described in terms
taken from the natural sciences (including biology) – either as behaviour, or neural
states, or functional states. Eliminativism maintains that this is not the case – our
common sense conception of mind is a theory of mind (“folk psychology”) that is
basically wrong, so that nothing corresponds to mental phenomena “in the real world”.
A correct theory will only refer to brain states and behaviour, not mind. Mind is at most
a useful fiction (instrumentalism); and the reasons why you cannot observe the mind by
observing the brain, are simply that the mind does not exist – there is no mind to
observe. None of the theories mentioned above have been generally accepted among
philosophers working on the mind-brain relationship. Many look on themselves as
some kind of materialists (or “physicalists”). Few are fully-fledged dualists, but elements
of such a position can also be found in contemporary philosophy – notably the
following two points:
Consciousness and the Brain Process
Traditionally philosophers have thought of the relationship between mind and matter
either in terms of identity (‘the mind is nothing but brain states and/or behaviour’) or in
terms of causality (‘mind is different from brain states, but somehow caused by brain
states’)
Mental states supervene on brain states if it is impossible to have a change of mental
states without some change in brain states
individual mental events (e.g. the pain that I feel just now) can be identical with
individual brain events (e.g. the firing in C-fibres going on just now) without the
properties of mental events necessarily being identical with neurological properties
the pain I feel is in fact token-identical with some brain event, while it has properties
(e.g. ‘being a throbbing pain’) which cannot be identified with neurological properties
(though they probably supervene on such properties). Such a view often called non-
reductive physicalism, and may be considered a kind of compromise between a
physicalist and a dualist position
 Selection of Behaviours
Animals such as simple worms have a limited sensory capacity and an equally limited
repertoire of behaviours.
Animals such as dogs have a much more sophisticated sensory capacity and a
corresponding increase in behavioural options.
Primates, including humans, have even further developed sensory capacity and
behavioural complexity.
Thus, as sensory and motor capacities increase, so does the problem of selection both
of information and of behaviour.
Furthermore, as the brain expands, memory increases, providing an internal variable in
both stimulus interpretation and response selection. Finally, as the number of sensory
channels increases, the need to correlate the different inputs to produce a single
“reality” arises
sensorimotor capacities expand, so do the processes of attention and consciousness.
In broad terms, consciousness is, at a primary level, synonymous with awareness and,
at a secondary level, with awareness of awareness. The clear implication is that
consciousness is not a dichotomous phenomenon; rather, a gradual evolutionary
increase in consciousness is correlated with the ability to organise sensory and motor
capacities. The most evolved organiser is language, which implies an increased capacity
for the processes of attention.
Thank you!