During the 1950’s the brilliant neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield began extensive research into the mind-brain phenomenon. His goal was to explain how consciousness emerged from the physical matter of the brain. After 40 years of exhaustive study, Penfield admitted that he had failed. In Mystery of the Mind (Princeton University Press, 1975), a remarkable book detailing his decades of research, Penfield wrote:
"The mind seems to act independently of the brain in the same sense that a programmer acts independently of his computer, however much he may depend upon the action of that computer for certain purposes. But who-or what-is that programmer?"
Seeing as how a brilliant neurosurgeon spent 40 years looking for this physical evidence unfruitfully, I think this is very good evidence that the mind and body are distinct from one another. Any thoughts?
Absence of proof for one theory is not proof for the opposite theory
I think that the analogy is perfect, though not for the reasons espoused by Penfield or yourself because the two are not independent. Computer programmers have to think like computers and computers themselves are only imitations of their creators…
There’s a lot to mind-body dualism, out of interest what led you to this comment/writer in particular?
Science wants knowledge of the mind and control over it. Complete mastery, the way that we have mastered the microchip. If the mind is not part of the body, not part of the natural world, such control can never be obtained. Therefore scientists will never accept mind-body duality. Like the Intelligent Design movement, mind-body duality is a hypothesis whose sole purpose is to halt a certain method of inquiry: in this case, whether we can understand/control conscious processes the way we understand/control ordinary matter.
Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has written an article, Is God an Accident?, that suggests mind-body dualism is a sort of hard-wired human way of thinking about cognition. So most people will continue to trust their gut feeling about mind-body distinction.
The “mind-body problem” is ill-posed. We will never make any progress on it because the ‘problem’ is really the conflict in our minds between the gung-ho ambition of science and hard-wired traditional ways of thinking. I would suggest a closely related and probably easier question: will scientists ever be able to manipulate conscious activity with the level of control we can manipulate ordinary matter with, like steel or silicon? And if it comes to pass that the human mind becomes programmable like an ordinary computer, will the mind-body “problem” be settled?
The mind-body questions are a long way from finding answers. Involved in this lies the question of what is soul? Another possible issue is what is spirit? Does mind contain all?
How the brain functions is still not very well understood, even as scientists make declarations only to have them supplanted by new research on a constant basis. Until we can explain precisely how the brain functions(and that may never happen) there is no way to explain or even posit possible explanations of what is mind. Regardless the leading edge of research, the answer is that we just don’t know.
I’m betting that we never will know. Of course, that won’t stop science from trying…
Science may deny consciousness for many but being mechanical in nature, I cannot see how it could manipulate consciousness. The mistake IMO is normal unconscious human reaction is taken for consciousness. These reactions are I believe programmable. It is done all the time as in advertising and PC thought for example. No reason why a type of scientific mind control apparatus couldn’t be established on people’s brains making all of us dead happy “good citizens.”
When this happens the mind-body problem will be settled since without the call to consciousness, we will be spiritually dead. In Anthroposophy for example, this is Ahriman’s influence which is to attach the psych of man to the more gross levels of materialism making the body and reactive, unconscious, associative, mind “One” with no soul, potential soul and spiritually dead.
nderf.org/vonlommel_consciousness.htm
Consciousness may infact be relative to virbations in our dna, and the wave portion of these molecular vibrations exist within phase space, making thought creation possible.
But the mind and body are one. Philosophies that seporate and sever elements of a wholistic structure, are probably also scape-goating and judging their way into a false sense of wisdom…
