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#1
03-01-2006, 10:47 AM
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How biased are we in thinking the mind is in the brain?
I suspect it has to do with where our eyes are located and how thought seems to be localized in the head. But every now and then I can sense things lower down in my body, not necessarily in the area of the heart, but certainly not in my head.
Brain exploration, mapping, surgery and all those scientific studies make a strong case for the brain being the center of our nervous system, where memories are stored, where motor activities originate and all that sort of thing. But do we have anything concrete that associates mind with brain? 
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#2
03-01-2006, 10:54 AM
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Well, if I amputate other parts of your body, it won't affect your mind. But if I start to amputate parts of your brain, your mind is going to be affected profoundly.
Also, if your mind isn't the "center of our nervous system, where memories are stored, where motor activities originate and all that sort of thing", then what the hell is it?
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#3
03-01-2006, 11:37 AM
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#4
03-01-2006, 11:42 AM
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#5
03-01-2006, 12:15 PM
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Maybe my question/proposition isn't clear. I'm not saying the brain doesn't do all the controlling, storing, organizing physical things that science has found that it does. Amputating various parts of the body before the mind is affected still brings up the issue of just how far one can go without losing consciousness when organs are removed or incapacitated. I suspect the heart's contributions will be as life-sensitive as the brain's, for instance.
What I was really driving at is the idea that somehow the physical nature of the brain gets interpreted as the basis for thought, creativity, sensibilty, talent, and all those non-physical attributes we human beings are alleged to possess. It seems reasonable, up to a point, to ascribe those things to various brain functions. But do we have real evidence that this is truly where mind is located? And just how are mind and spirit and self and other such terms confined to brain?
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#7
03-01-2006, 12:31 PM
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You seem to be missing it, Zeldar -- cutting off body parts doesn't agffect the mind. Even setting aside the heart altogether for a time, or replacing the heart with another heart doesn't affect the mind.
But physically altering the brain does affect nt only memory, but personality, creativity, and other things that we tend to see as essential parts of a person's personality. It's not bias -- it's observation and experience, coupled with a bit of Occam's Razor. Why believe that something eklse is required when assuming that the mind is harbored in the physical brain accounts for observed effects. All "explanations" for the mind are essentially metaphors. People used to compare it to Flame or Wind. he latest metaphor is the software associated with a computer, which actually seems to fit reasonably well. If that's true, then the mind is not the brain, but it is certainly located in the brain as much as my software is located on my hard drive. Perhaps someday we can store this and reconsitute it in a new vessel, but until that time it seems likely that our minds are inextricable from our hardware brains.
__________________
"You know nothing, Sergeant Schultz"
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#8
03-01-2006, 12:34 PM
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The only real hope your....ideas have left is that the algorithmns that govern basic behavior including memory are poorly understood. Brain science is still primitive in that way but that doesn't mean that functions are at least isolated to the cranial cavity. That was done ages ago and is like disputing that the heart is the seat of blood pumping. We can easily take apart this strange car and point to the parts that do what while puzzling over some interconnected functions. We can't engineer a similar car from scratch but this is much, much more basic.
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#9
03-01-2006, 12:48 PM
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I'm confused about what definition is being used for "mind." I was using it to mean all conscious and unconscious function and thought but if you're thinking of the soul (which cannot be proven to exist under laboratory conditions) then this question becomes very vague and nonscientific.
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#10
03-01-2006, 01:00 PM
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#11
03-01-2006, 01:09 PM
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The answers so far are doing a decent job of getting at what I was after. It's just that mind and brain are so often used more or less interchangably that I've had the impression that little separation is allowed in discussing what the brain does from what the mind (whatever it is) does.
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#12
03-01-2006, 01:28 PM
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Freud left little scientific legacy to the field. He was merely an overly famous crackpot that confuses laypeople today. You might as well talk about what your senile neighbor's views on the mind are.
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#13
03-01-2006, 02:56 PM
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Zeldar, you do know we've done complete heart transplants on people, and when they wake up their minds are the same. We've even REMOVED hearts completely and replaced them with mechanical pumps. People with artificial hearts could still talk, remember, move, think. Their minds still functioned.
Where else could the mind be located, if not the brain? The legs? No, we can amputate those. The arms? No, we can amputate those. The intestines? No, we can amputate those. The kidneys? No, we can transplant those, and people with complete kidney failure can still think, talk and remember. The lungs? We can remove one lung completely, and it doesn't affect thinking. We can transplant lungs between people, and their minds are unaffected. You'll die without a liver, but you can get a complete liver transplant. However, the minute I take a scalpel to your brain and start carving off chunks of it, or start passing electric currents through parts of your brain, your thoughts, memories, behaviors, ability to speak, and many other abilities are suddenly profoundly affected. It isn't like somebody one day woke up and said "I know, the brain is what makes us think!", and we've all been repeating that dogma since then. The opposite is true...ancient people believed that the heart and liver were important, but we've proved conclusively that theory was false. Read Oliver Sack's amazing book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", about the sometimes bizarre behavioral changes his patients experienced from brain damage.
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#14
03-02-2006, 01:22 AM
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Speaking as a man: I totaly get what your saying!!
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#15
03-02-2006, 01:39 AM
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I'm not sure what you mean by mind exactly, but mental activity reported by a person, or observed, seems to be correlated with specific brain activity. I don't know what evidence could be clearer than that.
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#16
03-02-2006, 01:44 AM
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Even if we posit that a "psyche" exists. That the mind can somehow extend beyond our cranium that could get us into things like telepathy, astral projection or wherever the mind goes on a really good acid trip the mind still ultimately resides in our skulls.
Think of it like an electric generator. There is a magnetic field that extends beyond the generator itself. In this respect there is more to the generator than is immediatley apparent. It seems you are asking where the magnetic field resides. While it extends beyond the generator it is still ultimately a part of the generator. If you dismantle the generator the magnetic field doesn't just pack up and find somewhere else to hang out. It disappears. No generator, no field. No brain, no mind.
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#17
03-02-2006, 10:22 AM
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My best friend has frontotemporal dementia. I've watched over the last several years as her brain died, bit by bit. She was a successful manager and a great mom, and sharp as a razor. Now she can't talk, can't read, can't understand much of anything, can't find her way to her room, wears diapers, and doesn't know who her daughter or sisters are.
The mind is a function of the brain. Period.
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#19
03-02-2006, 10:55 AM
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#20
03-02-2006, 10:57 AM
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I would argue that when you cut a man's dick off, it significantly alters his mind. So is it part of the mind? Judging from experience, I'd say its the ultimate remote control.
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#21
03-02-2006, 02:20 PM
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One useful model is that the mind is a process hosted by the brain (very similar to the software analogy mentioned by CalMeacham). There used to be a model of the "little man inside" that sat in some throne of power, that's your mind. But it just deferred the issue. Any attempt to explain the mind as nonphysical invites the question of how can something nonphysical interface with something physical? The answer is that it's all physical. There's not consensus of what consciousness is, however. The mind is reasonably well understood to be an aspect of the brain, although it is still not understood what makes me experience me as me, and makes living beings different than a computer that also takes in sensory input, performs calculations, and produces output. Maybe ultimately a philosophy problem.
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#23
03-02-2006, 11:30 PM
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Oh. lordy.
CNS: Central Nervous System: The stuff in your cranium. The CNS has a couple of bits to it: The Thinking Bits, also known as the Cerebral Cortex, the wrinkly outer layers. The Other Stuff, including the Autonomic Nervous System, which manages the automatic functions like breathing and such, and other stuff that coordinates sensory input and feedback, and memory processing. The Spinal Cord... PNS: Peripheral Nervous System: the stuff outside the skull, that hooks up to and feeds back into the spinal cord. There are also a few organ-local nerve thingies like the nerve bundle that manages cardiac function and rythym. All current evidence points to the Cerebral Cortex as being the actual center of awareness. Continuing research actually images the cortical functions as people think: it's gotten pretty advanced and clear. Moreover, non-CNS neurodegenerative diseases don't generally affect awareness: only CNS-specific damage affects observable awareness. Note also the menagarie of CNS diseases that attack specific parts of the CNS, with specific impacts on the awareness and function. Note also the clear correspondance of cognitive and motor deficit that goes with speciifc types and severities of traumatic brain injury and stroke. Note also the CNS-specific affects of extreme hypoglycemia. There is simply no evidence to suggest that any other organ systems host cognitive function or awareness. Don't even start me on the correspondance of cognitive and motor deficits and CNS birth defects. As for the "seat of the soul"? This is a nonempirical, nondebatable question. Empirically speaking, you are your brain.
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#24
03-08-2006, 10:17 AM
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Hey, amazing, finally a thread where I may have something to chip in with...
In the modern day and age, the best clue that the 'mind' (whatever it is) resides in the brain is indeed the observed effects on the personality of more or less severe brain damage. However, in earlier times the connection was not always so clear. In the days before modern medicine, any blow to the head serious enough to cause lasting brain damage was usually also enough to kill you. Our old friends the ancient greeks had different ideas on the subject, competing with the brain-centric theory. From at least Homeric times and onwards, our thoughts, beliefs as well as emotions and states of mind like anger, courage, fear, pride etc. were supposed to be located in the torso- usually in heart or in the belly. If you think about, it makes a kind of sense, and this way of thinking does hang on to this day. After all, you still love someone with "all your heart", and you have a "gut feeling" about something. When you're scared, you get an upset stomach and your heart starts pounding rapidly. One representation of the belief that though is located in the belly, is found in the myth of the swallowing of the goddess Metis by Zeus. Metis was the goddess of wisdom and Zeus' first wife, and Zeus had been warned that she would bear a daughter, whose son would overthrow him. When she became pregnant, Zeus swallowed her to avoid this. However, this rather gross attack of the munchies also had an added perk for Zeus. According to Hesiod, he lodged Metis in his belly, so that she may advise him. The name Metis indeed means wisdom, and by swallowing her he incorporates wisdom into himself, and puts her right where she needs to be for him to think with her. This makes perfect sense if the belly is the seat of thought, and by extension of wisdom. (On the other hand, of course, the myth of the birth of Athena, the child of Zeus and Metis and another goddess associated with wisdom, states that she was born through Zeus' forehead. So, it's complicated...) The cardiocentric theory, that the mind is found in the heart, was the one that became dominant in antiquity and remained so to a large extent in the middle ages, and was held by many medical writers and physicians, as well as the Stoics. One proponent of this view was Aristotle. He regards the heart as the primary seat of emotions and sensations, as well as the seat of bodily heat and the central part in the body's hierarchy of bits. It's also the "central sense organ", which coordinates the input from the other organs, to which it's connected through the blood stream, and that issues commands and decisions back to the other body parts. In other words - the heart does for Aristotle what we the brain does for us. So, if Aristotle assumed that we think with our hearts, what the heck did he figure the brain was for? Well, he seems to think that it's just a kind of heat management system, a kind of fridge, balancing the body heat. On the other hand, other writers like Plato and Hippocrates did come closer to getting it right and locating the brain as the seat of the mind. Hippocrates firmly states that conciousness is located in the brain. Plato actually wants to have it all three ways at once. He sees the soul as composed of three parts - mind, spirit and desire - which he assigns to being located in respectively the brain, the chest and the belly. So, we think with our brains, but still feel with our hearts and want stuff with our bellies. A more scientific view on it came about in the third century BCE in Alexandria, when physicians started dissecting bodies and discovered the nervous system. This was further buildt upon by the Roman physician Galen, who did experiments on animals and established the brains as centre of conciousness and sensation. Needless to say, though, this didn't convince all Aristotelians and Stoics for quite a while yet.
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#25
03-11-2006, 01:07 AM
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These are questions
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Separately, is "cognitive function" an overly narrow characterization of "mind"?
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#26
03-11-2006, 05:34 AM
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#27
03-14-2006, 08:28 PM
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How biased are we in thinking the mind is in the brain?
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Drain the blood from the body and the mind goes with it!
__________________
Do nothing simply if a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful spingears
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#28
03-15-2006, 01:40 PM
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#29
03-15-2006, 10:27 PM
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Well, I think there is a point to be made that the physical seat of the psychological complex we think of as "our minds" or "ourselves" is in fact the body as a whole, not just the head. While the bulk of cognitive function is clearly in the brain, the brain is connected to the rest of the nervous system, & affected by the hormones of the endocrine system. So, I think Zeldar is partly right. Parts of our experience originate outside the skull.
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#30
03-21-2006, 12:25 AM
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I am about to read this book soon, but I'll advertise it nonetheless.
Neither Brain nor Ghost: In this highly original work, Teed Rockwell rejects both dualism and the mind-brain identity theory. He proposes instead that mental phenomena emerge not merely from brain activity but from an interacting nexus of brain, body, and world. The mind can be seen not as an organ within the body, but as a "behavioral field" that fluctuates within this brain-body-world nexus. If we reject the dominant form of the mind-brain identity theory -- which Rockwell calls "Cartesian materialism" (distinct from Daniel Dennett's concept of the same name) -- and accept this new alternative, then many philosophical and scientific problems can be solved. Other philosophers have flirted with these ideas, including Dewey, Heidegger, Putnam, Millikan, and Dennett. But Rockwell goes further than these tentative speculations and offers a detailed alternative to the dominant philosophical view, applying pragmatist insights to contemporary scientific and philosophical problems. Rockwell shows that neuroscience no longer supports the mind-brain identity theory because the brain cannot be isolated from the rest of the nervous system; moreover, there is evidence that the mind is hormonal as well as neural. These data, and Rockwell's reanalysis of the concept of causality, show why the borders of mental embodiment cannot be neatly drawn at the skull, or even at the skin. Rockwell then demonstrates how his proposed view of the mind can resolve paradoxes engendered by the mind-brain identity theory in such fields as neuroscience, artificial intelligence, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Finally, he argues that understanding the mind as a "behavioral field" supports the new cognitive science paradigm of dynamic systems theory (DST).
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#32
03-21-2006, 02:25 AM
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What about brain and world? I am wholly ignorant of cases of say, quadriplegics with hormonal deficiencies. Anybody know about this?
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#33
03-21-2006, 03:41 AM
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Interesting, Gyan - I don't think I'd have too many problems with such an interpretation (after all, you'll recall that when looking at light of wavelength 565 nm I suggested that the very light itself was a crucial element in the whole computational process I called "experience"). If a 'mind' is a computational process on physical hardware, then of course those physical inputs from 'the world' are part of that process. This 'behavioural field' sounds a little fishy but it would, at least, be a big step away from the ludicrousness of positing conscious hydrogen atoms.
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#34
03-21-2006, 07:03 AM
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Gyan's cite has it about right, IMHO.
"The Mind" is an emergent property of systems organization as an organism identifies (and constantly reupdates) "self" from "nonself" using its cognitive and emotional apparatii in the context of an identified external world and subject to the nonlinear influences of that external world and the body's other systems and a constantly changing entity of "self". It doesn't exist anywhere anymore than the quale "wetness" exists anywhere in particular: it emerges out of the system dynamics which primarily reside in the brain.
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#35
03-21-2006, 07:30 AM
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I'd also add that I don't think Rockwell's sounds much different to the dominant philosophical view: heck, most neuroanatomists accept that eg. the retina might as well be considered 'part of' the brain, so why not go ahead and let the light incident on the retina into the club as well? It all seems like rather inconsequential semantic thresholding to me, but if it makes physicalism more attractive to some, so be it.
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#36
03-25-2006, 09:57 AM
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My wife and I began discussing the issues in this thread and how they have evolved over the course of this month. I read the entire thread aloud to her and we paused every so often to discuss various issues and sidetracks as they came up. I had decided way back not to engage in the debate but just to watch as it developed and see where things would go without my participation. But the rereading has made me decide to come back for some follow-up comments.
First, for me the key concept in the OP is the word "biased." Whether it was clearly stated or not, my main issue is not that the brain and mind may indeed be one and the same. It was more a matter of why we would allow that interpretation. What would persuade us to believe such a thing? Until the last few posts I was pretty much convinced that people's attitudes toward the issue were heavily "biased" by a tendency toward "reductionism" or whatever the latest term for Science Worship may be. If things cannot be explained through "Science" then they don't exist -- sort of thing. (The people who tend to believe this will probably stop reading right here and label my post as too naive to continue.) The post that persuaded me to return to this thread for additional questions/comments was the one posted by II Gyan II. It and the subsequent responses have dealt more with the issue of "bias" and I would like to see if that concept can be examined further. I can't quote the source, nor even when I must have read it, but some reading I did a decade or more ago made the observation that at roughly the time of Descartes and his philosophical ramblings along the "I think therefore I am" chain of reasoning, along with the developments in the Scientific Method that were concurrent with that, that there was some form of pact made with The Church. Whether it was a real document or just a tacit agreement is unimportant. What was important was that The Church became owner of The Soul and Science became owner of The Body, and never the twain would be discussed in the same terms again. (If somebody has better citations for where and when I would have encountered this notion, please make that known.) The notion of Paradigms has been intriguing ever since I ran across it back in the 80's (or whenever). To know that the zeitgeist of our era is predominantly one of Science Rules, with progressively stronger attacks by the faction that prefers God and other Non-Science explanations bringing Science into question, I think it is worthwhile to investigate our biases. If you can't admit to your own biases, what kind of bias is that?
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#37
03-25-2006, 12:15 PM
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2)Incidents like Phineas Gage, where strong personality changes are manifest upon brain trauma. Also see Michael Gazzaniga's observations of hemispheric disconnect. Basically, noticing changes in mental attributes and performance that follow directly after brain changes. What Rockwell, author of above cited book, is questioning is whether mind can be localized to the brain. I've just started reading the book. Will report when done.
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#38
03-25-2006, 05:54 PM
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Just yesterday, I read a big piece in Rolling Stone called Inside Scientology. The writer told of an agent of the church who endeavored to show that the mind was not in the brain. Now, a few hours later, I'm getting a feeling of deja-voodoo.
Please tell me, good Zeldar, that you aren't pushing the works of the late science fiction writer Elron. I'd like to know where we stand, okay?
__________________
Time is a paper frog. It won't croak, and it won't jump, even if you wind it. Do you believe it will catch paper flies? How about fly paper?
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#39
03-25-2006, 06:11 PM
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I have no dog in this hunt beyond the desire to call a spade a spade and to say that bias affects how we receive information, and how we reject it. Some things "make sense" and other things don't. I'm just asking if we allow the issues to be expressed before we reject them. Is it simply a matter of fashion as to what we're really willing to listen to?
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#40
03-26-2006, 07:03 AM
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Shagnasty, I found this comment from you in
another thread and it seems more open than what you have posted here. Quote:
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#41
03-26-2006, 07:41 AM
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http://www.discoveryhealth.co.uk/tv/...storyid=118984
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#42
03-27-2006, 10:34 AM
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Among the general public, I don't believe there is that much bias toward thinking that the mind lives only in the brain. The English language is peppered with signs to the contrary. A good, generous person has a big heart. If she follows a hunch, she's going with a gut feeling. If he has a pang of conscience, he has heard a small, still voice. John Hiatt sings, "I'm so easily led when the little head does the thinking." A coward is told to show some backbone. One who shows audacious chutzpah really has some balls/ovaries. Ads for Barry Goldwater said, "In your heart, you know he's right."
I'm pretty sure our experts don't know much about how the brain works, let alone the mind. Still, they're probably more biased than the rest of us.
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#43
03-27-2006, 11:31 AM
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Whether the "21 grams" experiment proved anything or not, it's still unsettling to admit that the "life force" is just some byproduct of our corporeal beings. And yet, I don't know what else to attribute it to. And I don't think Science does either. One of the most unsettling things to think about is why the dictionary (no matter which one) exhibits the tightest "circular definition set" when it comes to life and death and the offshoot words associated with each. It just seems that after 2000-plus years of dealing with the issue(s) we're not all that much further along (outside of fiction) in defining what it is that makes us tick. I do sense a bias toward the scientific efforts to explain. It seems so reasonable in a way to go that route. Something about that approach, however, concerns me in that we seem to be leaving so much else unexplained from our culture. That may be a good thing that's just very hard to adjust to.
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#44
03-27-2006, 12:45 PM
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 ! Is this article referring to the diffuse neuroendocrine system (full text available!) or perhaps some spinal ganglion?
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#45
03-27-2006, 02:16 PM
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In reguards to the Bias side of the OP, it is my experience that most bias comes from pride. We, as both individuals and collective society, seem to hang on to what ever vestiges of pride we can find (or are led to believe). I have no idea why this is and nothing to back it up, it's just an observation. But, people who have a bias into disbelief of extra-terrestrial life for example, possess the tendency toward pride in that we are the only sentient creatures in the universe. The same seems true with bias toward and against religion, creationism, evolution, etc... Name any bias and I can counter with a pride that stands behind it. The bias that the mind is in the brain, I would theorize, arizes from the pride that we understand the physical aspects of the human body, either that or that we are a random and fortunately sentient collection of mass and neurons with no outside input or source other than our own origin. Again, this is just an opinion, but I would say we are inherently biased toward this way of thinking simply because we are inherently, and egotistically, drawn toward pride.
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