Emergence of Mind and the Death of Descartes

So, there has been an age old debate that many of us don't participate in.  Like many philosophical debates, it has involved one ivory tower man yelling at another.  For the sake of visualisation, we will call one of them Tweed and they other Paisley.

Tweed has the stance that the mind, and its "thoughts" are not materialistically real, rather they are an anomalous phenomenon that we can not track physically.  Typically, this ends up divulging into one of two arguments, neither or which are satisfactory for a scientific, or naturalistic, study of the mind. 

A) The Descartian Stop.  This "stop" as I call it, is a full stop. They say that the mind exists because humans have them and there is no connection (as far as physical causation is concerned) with the brain.  This, my friends, regardless of what they say, is dualism.  If the mind is anything else but the brain and the output of its functioning, you have a problem in that it is not compatible with materialistic reductionism- and that is the basis of science.

B) The Emergent Argument.  This argument states that that the mind is the result of the brain, but there is no direct correlation between the brain and its outputs.  Usually this is a cop-out because a philosopher hasn't received any training in complex systems theory and they are suffice to say that "the sum is greater than its parts."  This simply is not good enough.  To say that the sum is greater than the parts is bad math.  What the philosophers are forgetting to factor into their equation is the mechanisms by which the thoughts and "mind" result from the processes of the physical brain. 

Paisley, on the other hand, denies A flatly, and appends B.  Paisley believes that the mind is simply the output of the brain.  Enough said.  We can put brain under a microscope, the pineal glad (contrary to Descartes) is not the seat of the soul, there is no soul, and mind = brain.

Paisley is basically right here.  Scientifically speaking, if we adhere to exclusive materialism, the mind has to be the brain. But Tweed B is not completely wrong.  We can also say that what we designate as the "mind" is more than just the brain because as the brain is a muted, physical, object, we deny its "life" (so to speak) by limiting it to its physical structure.  Given its activity, and boy is it active, it is greater than its physical self.  This, mind, is not (I repeat NOT) emergent.  It is the result of physical structure as well as mechanistic causation.

For example, to go canoeing, you need water, paddles, and a canoe.  If you paddle one way and your friend paddles the opposite you will turn in place, if the water is going upstream it will effect the behaviour of a canoe, the shape of a canoe also effects the behaviour of your little flotilla.  However, the water, the paddle, and the canoe alone are not sufficient to explain what happens to your boat trip.

In short, the brain is necessary but not sufficient for "mind" and non-materialistic emergence leaves you up shit creek without a paddle.

Lightbulbs, Brains, and Mind Control

Ha! Well this is interesting indeed. Researchers, in their always-hilarious inability to understand things like, metaphors, jokes, and analogies, have struck again. Now, the cultural image of a light bulb turning on when someone has an idea has become a reality (apparently the fMRI just wasn’t enough).

Harvard researchers (of course) have found a way to control neurons using lasers. Now, no conspiracies yet please, they can only do this in genetically modified nematodes so barring some Stargate type Goa’uld parasite nematode this doesn’t usher in a new mind control technique… although it would make for a good spin-off or maybe another Stargate SG-1 movie? Please?

Anyways, this technique is one of many new ways of exerting control over the brain. For instance, through the use of bacteria and algae, some found in high-alkaline, high-salt, lakes in Egypt, we can trigger the firing of certain neurons. This can cause a noted effect in the brain because specific algae react to stimulation of red or blue lights thus inhibiting the little electric sparks in our brain that keep us ticking (more-or-less like clockwork).

Another new technique, with the greatest pun in contemporary cognitive science, is the brainbow. Now, before people either (A) extend this pun to Dorothy and Yellow Brick Road songs or (B) go looking for gold remember that most people hate puns and if you make a pun about a pun you wont have any friends. That being said, this technique allows researchers to stain individual neurons different colors through the use of florescent proteins. Some, more savvy, or bored intro to biopsych students may think, “Oh, you mean like a Golgi stain?” Well, yes. A really sweet Golgi, on acid. Ok not acid but XFPs instead of Potassium dichromate.

BUT ANYWAYS. This Brainbow technique allows people to see the neurons in vivo which is a science-term for Technicolor. No, just kidding don’t say that at a party you’ll look stupid, it’s a Latin term that means “in the living”: classics rocks. The greatest thing about this technique is that it works in transgenic mice. Meaning, these mice were genetically modified after birth, not a special breed of mice that may as well be termed Peromyscus Timothylearis. Oh the pun, that hurt.

The newest technology, yes technology, to incorporate the light show of the mind is the CoLBeRT system. Yes, named after Stephen Colbert. The technology uses lasers, directed at specific neurons to control the nervous system. This can cause the organism (so far limited to nematodes) to lay eggs, speed up, stop moving, or have the feeling of touch in certain areas of the body, a sort of somatosensory manipulation of the body through light. We’ve come quite a ways since the days of Pink Floyd, or maybe not.

Evil mind control through lasers? Hardly. What might be the greatest thing about the CoLBeRT system is the fact that you can find it all online. Even some cool videos like the one below showing the ability of the CoLBeRT program to induce paralysis through inhibiting (shutting down) the nervs in the ventral nerve chord (the important one).

Read the origional article: HERE

And yet, after all of this, I still can’t watch Daily Show and Colbert Report in the UK. What is up with that?




Inducing paralysis by shutting down motor neurons in the worm's ventral nerve cord from Samuel Lab on Vimeo.