What is thought to be mind? Whence from it
cometh? Whither does it go? In what relation to the corporeal organism does it
exist? What are, if any, the physical and physiological bases for the mind to
emerge? And does it do so as a differentiated organ of the body itself, i.e. is
it merely identical with brain or is the unmistakably distinct 'qualia' of mind
sufficient reason to consider it a phenomena of its own accord?
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| Reductionist view: Mind=Mechanics of the Brain |
It should be theoretically profitable to consider
all these questions as occupants of certain positions on a continuum, at one
end of which is a conception of mind-body relation as a strict dichotomy to
reconcile, i.e mind and body as 'separate things', the other end of which
condenses around the mind-body relation conceived as only an 'illusion of
separatedness' and as such (being only an illusion) is to somehow be explained
away to establish that mind=brain. The latter view is commonly ascribed the
label 'monism' (often 'material
monism') and the former 'dualism'.
While 'dualism' has been very explicit since Plato in theology and in the
popular imagination, the reductionistic
Monist view has gained philosophical legitimacy in the scientific age. Though
patent limitations of both the positions, when conjured simplistically in the
absolute, have launched a frenetic academic search since at least the
mid-twentieth century for a viable alternative to the two extremes.
Though, lest it be mistakenly presumed, it is not
my intention to merely add one to the number of adherents of either position
here on this blog. What I am to humbly attempt, while trying my best to
navigate the intellectual mine-filed of historically-established positions, is
to present my own view, that of mind and body being two categorically distinct
'emergent' phenomena of the same underlying physical 'complex system'
within a materialist-monist
framework.
Human body is scant more than a metastable atomic
configuration of an endothermically
balanced open energy system
- which is to say that it is a set of processes encapsulated in a vessel which
continuously needs to consume energy to self-perpetuate, else it
decays. It is just as subject to the universal tendency to chaos, i.e.
thermodynamic entropy, as anything else is. Entropy, as the initiated
would know, is a measure of disorder in any system, and for a system that is
isolated (as human body is from its surroundings) it ALWAYS increases.
Any system then, including the human body, will sustain only as long as the
systemic entropy is overpowered by a net positive consumption of energy, which
happens recurrently in our bodies as we burn organic compounds (mostly compound
sugars) begotten from oral, and on rare occasions of illness, intra-venous
consumption. All elements of any ordered arrangement, including our bodies,
were put in such an arrangement, in the first place by a net consumption of
energy. Though through entropic impulsion they would much rather be in a more
stable, lower energy inorganic free elemental state (perhaps in the
atmosphere). They would duly be granted that wish once entropy takes over -
upon the intervention of death and cessation of all bio-chemical reactions that
overcome the tendency to chaos.
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In reality, the
boundaries of all systems hugely overlap
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The brain is very much, incontestably, a
constituent part of the body. The 'Brain' is a convenient label for a set of
bio-physical systems, the core of which all, is co-located in cranial cavity of
the human body. This is despite the fact that functionally the 'brain-system'
well distends into every section of the human anatomy through the peripheral
nervous system. It is in fact quite an arduous task to precisely point out the
'systemic boundaries' that separate the 'brain' in the human body from all that
is 'not the brain' in the human body. Just for instance, there are coagulated
bunch of neural circuits dispersed and decentralized throughout the body, which
perform many computational, regulatory, reflexive and sensory functions, just
like a brain - a simple example being the 'ganglia' cells behind the
retina which pre-processes the visual input in a basic fashion before it
reaches the cerebral
cortex for higher processing. More so, the central core of the brain
(the one locate in the head) is also inseparably tied to other bodily systems
like the endocrine network, the lymph network et cetera. While the ganglia-type
'mini-brains' are scattered throughout the body, the functioning of the various
other bodily-systems too is so profoundly entangled with the core of the brain
that when considered collectively, the two facts above very convincingly gnaw
at the very premise of the compartmental definitions that most among us are
given in to thinking in terms of, mostly on account of sloppy school
curriculum. So the brain then, is better thought of as a "control
system" that isn't nearly as localized in the skull as the common
imagination would have it be. It is a physio-chemical "coordinator"
between the electronic, chemical and physical control systems of the human body
(represented by the nervous system, endocrine-lymph system and the skeletal
muscles respectively). The problem of mind-body relation is thus better
considered a problem of mind-brain relation.
Now mind, or the contemplation of it in the light
of the foregoing arguments, appears considerably parsimonised if we may
think of it like (mind)=(brain+consciousness). This is so because the brain, as
an electro-physio-chemical control system is in-itself a common feature in the
design of most planetary life but we do hesitate in concluding that worms,
insects or other lower forms of animals do have a mind so to say, as they
appear to lack an evolved symbolic self-consciousness. So if we are to
encounter a system that possesses all the attributes of a brain and the quality
of self-consciousness, we may satisfy ourselves at having chanced upon a
variant of 'mind'. The problem of mind-brain then, will reduce to a problem of
explaining the possibility of the 'emergence' of consciousness in the mind-brain
symbiosis, so conceived as by my article so far.
Consciousness, i would argue, is an 'emergent'
property of a strictly deterministic dynamical system that is the brain, with
various sub-systems composed by the thermodynamics, electrodynamics & magnetodynamics
of the brain. Emergence,
a concept most readily identified with chaos theory, is the way "complex
systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple
interactions - order out of apparent chaos. Nature abounds with 'emergent'
properties of phenomena. Now since consciousness is an 'emergent' property -
like the shape of a hurricane, structure of foam froth, the mold of an anthill
or the contours of the grand canyon - it is not predictable even while being
fully deterministic (just like hurricane, anthill, foam froth and the grand
canyon). In a phenomenological sense, consciousness is nothing but the
subjective aspect of the objective 'emergence' of patterns in the complex-dynamical
system of the extended-diffused brain. (I say extended-diffused brain as
even pure sensation is a level of consciousness that 'emerges' from the parts
of the brain system represented by the sensory-nervous circuits)
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Mandelbrot
Fractal: An simple 'emergent' with few
parameters. Click on the image to see full size
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As to the question of the incredible complexity,
refinement and apparent creativity of the higher mental functions - the best
description I have discovered in my study of frontier cognitive neuroscience so
far - is that of quantum interference in the micro-tubules within the inter
neuronal axons in the brain. These structures are only 100 Angstroms wide, and
thus subject to quantum interference and consequently to be an eligible system
for incredibly complex, copious and varied 'emergent' properties to appear. Magnetoencephalogram
studies done thus far have lend some support for this hypothesis. (***By no
means is it implied that this cannot happen without operating down at the
quantum level, it just adds unimaginable 'scale' and 'scope' to the system, if
we conceptualize it at the nano-est possible level***). We register countless
quanta of energy changes from our environment every moment from all sense
modalities. There are countless quanta of energy changes from inside our brain
too - every moment. These are sufficient initial conditions for the dynamical
system to undergo a state change wherein there are literally countless initial
parameters, and nothing will be able to 'predictably' and 'exactly' account for
the decrease in entropy (decrease in entropy - emergence of order from
'apparent' chaos) when the process occurs and is experienced as 'partial
awareness' of thought. So every individual instance of cognition, if
possible for it to be considered this way, is a 'chaos cycle' in which a
pattern 'emerges' and is experienced as a unit of consciousness.
Now we might ask ourselves as to how
does this ‘emergence’ of order in the chaos of our neural-networks lead to
'self-awareness' or consciousness, as even a nematode appears to possesses the
basic apparatus for the ‘chaos cycle’ to eventuate and commence, but it
certainly is not self-aware in the way humans are?
We may allay such doubts with a
consideration of the lack of the colossal cerebral cortex in the lower-order
animals that is present in humans. Dwarfed massively also, is the general
complexity of the lower-order nervous systems in comparison with the sapient
ones like ours. Their ‘connectome’
(the aggregate network of neural connections which, in principle, represents
the processing capacity of the system) is hugely impaired in comparison to us.
So to an extent, it becomes a matter of scale and degree, but not of scale and
degree alone; as a change in scale and degree, as there are many times greater
a number of qualitatively different neurons in our brains than in simple
nervous systems; and a change in scale and degree juxtaposed with the
qualitatively varied matrix of neurons... forms the basis on which qualitative
changes “emerge” and the subjective experience of that very emergence is what
constitutes a 'unit' of consciousness. So if I present you a visual stimulus
consisting of some symbols, like
1 + 1 = ?
....then each of the individual
symbols, along with causing specific excitations peculiar to the stimulus
characteristics, get "conjoined" with practically infinite
pre-existing excitations in the neural circuits of your brain and a ‘chaos
cycle’ ensues.. as an ‘outcome’ of which, the answer
2
....is
what ‘emerges’ from the
aggregate excitation when that neural activity is mapped onto the symbol
2 stored in the conceptual networks of our memory. And when the
force-fields associated with the emergence
cross an ‘activation threshold’ you become conscious of it (the answer
pops
into your head from nowhere). 'Activation threshold' here is a physical
property of your nervous apparatus and is likely to be about the minimum
energy
required for the system as a whole to achieve an order-of-excitation
that
causes emergence. (Of course, it has to then be replicated in another
neural
circuit to be articulated in human language by the subject)
When the associated 'energy field' of the
interactions (not atomic interactions themselves but the net resultant force
field) crosses the "activation threshold" we experience the systemic
"state change" as consciousness, other wise it remains unconscious.
It can give the illusion of 'creativity' or 'free will' or simply
'non-determinism' as it would phenomenally
"appear out of nowhere". It is only the capacity for symbolic thought
that makes consciousness look 'wonderful' or 'mysterious', but that is'nt so as
the 'apparently creative' patterns that it takes are always 'supervinient' on
pre-existing patterns in the brain intertwined with new set of practically
infinite parameters governing the 'chaos cycle' in every fresh
run. It 'seems' as if its a probabilistic (freewill-ish) system even
though it is strictly determined by initial conditions and successive
iterations - just like the shape of the grand canyon is and are other
'emergent' phenomena. The idea of "creative consciousness" is only an
after-the-fact perception, EX POST FACTO, an epiphenomenon (as Behaviorists would also
have us believe). This arises essentially because of the severely limited
information that the 'stream-of-consciousness' makes available to us, regarding
the inner workings of the brain. What we 'experience' is only a small sample of
'end-products' sorted by energy levels.
Thus is complete our picture of the mind and the
body as phenomena deriving from the same underlying foundation in reality,
which need no expostulation of 'the distinct realms of material and
immaterial things' . This is my humble submission.
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