Russell's argument for the mind being created by the brain

Bertrand Russell (a famous 20th Century philosopher) once said:

"The mind grows like the body; like the body it inherits characteristics from both parents; it is affected by disease of the body and by drugs; it is intimately connected with the brain. There is no scientific reason to suppose that after death the mind or soul acquires an independence of the brain which it never had in life".

Something can be dependent on something else without being created by that something else.  For example, when someone is in a building their ability to see the sky is dependent on windows and the glass in them being relatively clean and so on. But such a dependence only applies when inside the building.  It doesn't depend on the window if they were to venture outside.  Their view of the sky would be, if anything, enhanced.

So Russell needs to say more to justify that the mind or soul couldn't have such an independence.  The mind-body correlations are insufficient in themselves to establish there is no afterlife.

Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife

The following essay is essentially an expanded and updated version of a previous blog post I've written called: Why are we all so convinced the brain produces consciousness?

1. The arguments for the thesis that the brain produces consciousness

To believe in an afterlife, at least in the form of a soul dwelling in some afterlife realm, is to suppose our consciousness can exist independently of our bodies.  However, there appears to be a crippling obstacle to holding such a view, namely the apparent dependence of our mental states on a properly functioning brain. For example, our capacity to understand written and spoken words and the capacity to speak are impaired or even eliminated with injuries to certain regions of the brain. Damage to the hippocampal and thalamic areas of the brain can destroy one's ability to store new long-term memories. More radically, injury to the brain can result in significant personality change; the most famous example here being undoubtedly Phineas Gage.  To top it all off, we could also point to the fact that drugs have a propensity to affect our emotions, attitudes, and dispositions. Indeed, even alcohol and caffeine do this. Taking all this into account, it seems more or less certain to many people that it is the brain that somehow or other gives rise to our consciousness – that is it is the brain that gives rise to all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and so on.  Hence, how could our consciousness possibly survive the death of our bodies and brains?

In my experience, proponents of an afterlife appear to largely ignore these facts.  Instead, they counter with the evidence for an afterlife such as NDE’s, mediumship, recollections of alleged previous lives, and so on.  The problem here is that if it is indeed the case that the mind-brain correlations makes it more or less certain that the brain produces consciousness, then such evidence, no matter how apparently powerful, cannot possibly point to an afterlife.   Hence, for example, NDE’s, interesting as they may be, cannot possibly represent any sort of encounter with some afterlife realm.  They must somehow be hallucinations produced by the brain. 

2. Reasons to question this thesis

Let’s consider the following argument:

It surely must be obvious to everyone that eyeglasses actually create vision. Changing the lenses affects the vision in certain characteristic ways. One can make one's vision worse, or better. One can make one be able to see in the distance, but not close up; or conversely, to see close up, but not at a distance. We can invert peoples' vision. We can make people see everything in blue, or red, or green; you name it. Or all blurry. By painting the lenses black we can even eliminate one's vision completely! And all these effects are consistent across different people.

Of course, we know that eyeglasses don’t create vision. Indeed, we know in principle that eyeglasses could not create vision all by themselves since there is no appropriate mechanism, or conceivable causal chain, whereby vision could be created. Extra ingredients are required; namely eyes and the part of the brain dealing with vision.

Other examples apart from eyeglasses can be considered. Thus, consider a prism. The mixture of coloured lights obtained is not wholly produced by the prism all by itself. Something extra is involved, in this case, the white light that enters the prism. Or consider a TV set. The internal components all by themselves do not produce the programmes. Similar to the prism something else is involved, in this case, TV signals.

How can we be so confident that the relationship between our consciousness and our brains (and more generally our bodies) is not of a similar nature to these examples?  Perhaps our conscious states are merely affected by our brains?  Perhaps the brain merely either facilitates or inhibits the ability to perceive, think, feel, deliberate and so on, not creates them?  Is this plausible?

The unreflective view is that consciousness is supposed to come into being as the end consequence of material chains of causes and effects.  Such causes and effects are cashed out completely in the form of processes that we can measure; namely particles with physical properties such as charge, momentum, spin and so on.  Each link in the chain of causality follows as a direct result of these properties.  But, at the end of such causal chains, we get a sudden abrupt change, a radical disconnect from these measurable processes to subjective experiences such as the greenness of grass, the warmth of love, the smell of roses and so on.  These subjective experiences do not have physical properties, so we cannot, seemingly in principle, derive them from the prior physical causal chains.  

So, if consciousness is indeed produced by the brain, then it seems it just suddenly springs into existence.  I am not able to understand how this differs in any substantive manner from supposing eyeglasses could actually create vision rather than merely modifying it, or prisms actually produce colored light rather than merely modifying existing white light, or the innards of TV sets actually create the programs shown rather than merely modifying and changing TV signals.  Of course, in these other examples, we know how the end phenomenon comes about.  Yet, if we lacked this knowledge, we surely would not, for example, suppose that the innards of a TV set, all by themselves, could produce TV programs with their storylines.  It would be miraculous.  Why should the supposition that the brain creates consciousness be considered to be different, to be any less miraculous?  Why reject the more plausible alternative that consciousness exists all along, with the brain merely serving to facilitate or inhibit conscious states?  

3. The Materialist Option

People are aware of this problem of how the brain creates consciousness, or at least philosophers are.  By far the most common solution, at least amongst the scholarly community, is to adopt a position called materialism.   Modern materialism is essentially the position that science, or at least some ideal science, investigates the totality of reality.  Since science investigates reality via its measurable aspects, modern materialism holds that only these measurable aspects of reality exist.

In section 2 I mentioned that subjective experiences are supposed to come into being as the end consequence of material chains of causes and effects.  Materialism denies this.  Since modern materialism holds that only these material chains exist, there can be no additional facts in the form of subjective conscious experiences that we cannot measure. Instead, conscious experiences are typically either conflated with appropriate material processes within the brain, or conflated with the causal role that such material processes play.

It’s hard to get across how radical materialism is.  It is far more than simply saying the brain somehow produces consciousness.  Rather, strict modern materialism asserts there is only the brain and processes within it, and consciousness -- at least in terms of qualitative subjective experiences -- is somehow illusionary, that it has no real concrete existence at all.  I do not regard such a position as tenable and I go into detail why I believe this here and here.  However, even if one were to argue that it is tenable, why on earth believe it?  I have argued that although consciousness is affected by the brain, it is not necessarily produced by it.  In fact, it seems the only way it could be produced by the brain were if some variety of materialism is correct.  But we were never forced into supposing the brain must produce consciousness in the first place.  Hence, even if -- contrary to my own position -- it were possible to argue modern materialism is a viable position, there is no need to adopt such an uncommonsensical position.

4. An Objection

It is often argued that we lack any enduring nature since we change so much over time.  Hence our moods, demeanour, interests, intelligence, and so on change throughout our lives.  Compared to when we were children we now have a much increased intelligence, we have differing interests, we have differing memories, our emotional reactions are very different. Even during the course of one day, our moods can change significantly.  And just consider how much people change after a few alcoholic drinks.

This being so, if there’s an afterlife, what survives?  Myself as a child at 7 years of age, or as a young adult at 21, or when I’m an old man at 81?  Or some other age? When drunk or sober? Does the impossibility of answering this question suggest that the brain must somehow produce consciousness?

This issue pertains to personal identity.  What is it that makes me the very same person from one decade to the next, or indeed one day to the next?  If we cash out personal identity in terms of intelligence, interests, memories and so on, it seems we do not literally survive from childhood to adulthood.  This entails that not only is there no afterlife, but given that I’m now an adult, my 10 year old self has now quite literally ceased to exist.  And when we imbibe lots of alcohol our sober selves quite literally cease to exist, even if only temporarily. 

But why subscribe to such a radical uncommonsensical notion of personal identity?  Perhaps what constitutes the self is not my interests, intelligence, memories and so on.  Perhaps what constitutes my self is that sense of me-ness that has endured since I was a child, to when I'm drunk, to what I am now.  Consider a table.  Depending on what it is made of, it might acquire certain types of scratches as it grows older.  But, no matter how many scratches it acquires, it is still the very same table.  The scratches do not comprise the table, even though what the table is made of determines the type of scratches and how easily it acquires them.  In a comparative manner, maybe my interests, intelligence, memories and so on do not comprise my self even though my self influences them.  Going back to the eyeglasses, my vision can be altered in a variety of ways by trying on differing eyeglasses.  Nevertheless, that does not alter the fact that there is an unaided vision which remains unchanged throughout my life, even though we may never experience it.  It might be the case likewise for my self, and it is this self that survives should there be an afterlife.

5. Conclusion

It seems to me that the mind-brain correlations argument against an afterlife is significantly less compelling than people think.  If the afterlife hypothesis is to be regarded as an extraordinary one, then it is my position that other arguments or evidence, apart from the mind-body correlations, need to be appealed to.  However, I am not aware of any other such arguments. Of course, even if it is not regarded as an extraordinary hypothesis, it needn’t be true either.  Implausible that it might be, perhaps consciousness does suddenly appear with a functioning brain, even though we lack any conceivable causal chain as to how this could happen.  Philosophical speculation can only take us so far.  We also need to look at the evidence for an afterlife – NDE’s, memories of past lives, mediumship and so on – before reaching any provisional conclusions.

P.S. I attempted to get this essay published in a magazine called Philosophy Now.   It was rejected, moreover it was rejected within approximately 5 minutes after I had sent it.  I cover what happened here.

Why are we all so convinced the brain produces consciousness?

Most people seem to take it for granted that the brain produces consciousness and they surmise this because when the brain is damaged, the person’s mind is also damaged. Such damage not only can result in the diminishing of one’s mental capacities, it often seemingly changes the actual personality. The obvious conclusion is that the brain produces consciousness, otherwise why should the mind be affected?

Proponents of an afterlife almost invariably ignore this argument.  Instead they counter with the evidence for an afterlife such as NDE’s, mediumship, recollections of alleged previous lives, and so on.  It seems to me that implicitly, therefore, they are conceding to the skeptic that this mind-brain correlations argument is a very powerful one indeed and to be avoided. However, it is my contention that there is no need for the proponent to avoid addressing this argument head-on since, as I shall argue, it appears to be considerably less powerful than it is often thought. 

Let’s consider the following related argument: 

It surely must be obvious to everyone that spectacles (i.e. eyeglasses) actually create vision. Changing the lenses affects the vision in certain characteristic ways. One can make one's vision worse, or better. One can make one be able to see in the distance, but not close up; or conversely, to see close up, but not at a distance. We can invert peoples' vision. We can make people see everything in blue, or red, or green, you name it. Or all blurry. By painting the lenses black we can even eliminate one's vision completely! And all these effects are consistent across different people.

Of course, we know that spectacles don’t create vision. Indeed, we know in principle that spectacles could not create vision all by themselves since there is no appropriate mechanism, or conceivable causal chain, whereby vision could be created. Extra ingredients are required; namely eyes and the part of the brain dealing with vision.

Other examples apart from spectacles can be considered. Thus, consider a prism. The mixture of coloured lights obtained is not wholly produced by the prism all by itself. Something extra is involved, in this case, the white light that enters the prism. Or consider a TV set. The internal components all by themselves do not produce the programmes. Similar to the prism something else is involved, in this case, TV signals. 

So it cannot be that the mind-brain correlations all by themselves establish that the brain creates consciousness, for how are we in a position to rule out that the relationship of consciousness to the brain is not of a similar nature to the forgoing examples where there is an extra ingredient involved; namely what we would call a self or soul?  In fact, I would go further and maintain that the brain- consciousness relationship is indeed of a similar nature to these examples. That is to say, similarly to the complete implausibility of expecting vision to be created from spectacles all by themselves, likewise it is similarly implausible to expect consciousness to be created from brains and the processes within them all by themselves. 

Consciousness is supposed to come into being as the end consequence of physical chains of causes and effects.  Such causes and effects are cashed out in the form of processes that we can measure; namely particles with physical properties such as charge, momentum, spin and so on, and their interactions. But at the end of such causal chains we get a sudden abrupt change from these measurable processes to subjective experiences such as, for example, the greenness of grass, the warmth of love, the smell of roses and so on. It seems we have an unbridgeable yawning ontological chasm between the termination of such physical causal chains, and such raw experiences. There is no appropriate mechanism, or conceivable causal chain, whereby such qualitative experiences could be created. The sensible conclusion then is to surely suppose that consciousness was there all along, and the processes within the brain merely affect its manifestation.  Compare to the spectacles example.  Spectacles affect vision, they can even block our vision completely if we paint the lenses black, nevertheless the unaided vision exists all along.  The spectacles do not, and could not, create vision.

An Objection

 

It is often argued that we lack any enduring nature since we change so much over time.  Hence our moods, demeanour, interests, intelligence, change throughout our lives.  Compared to when we were children we now have a much increased intelligence, we have differing interests, we have differing memories, our emotional reactions are very different. Even during the course of one day our moods can change significantly.  And just consider how much people change after a few alcohol drinks.

But all this just means that if we should find ourselves surviving the death of our bodies, then it is the underlying self that survives. What constitutes my self is that sense of me-ness that has endured since I was a child, to when I'm drunk, to what I am now. The fact that our interests, intelligence, demeanour change etc, is ultimately no more significant than, for example, the fact a table acquires scratches as it ages. Or to use the spectacles analogy, it is the unaided vision that is comparable to the self and survives.

None of the foregoing entails that there is an afterlife.  But I do think that the mind-brain correlations argument against an afterlife is significantly less compelling than people think it is.

Does the evidence entail the brain creates the mind?

Does the fact that mental capacities vary according to the intricacy and condition of one’s brain show that consciousness, or the mind, could not exist without the brain? Most of the scholarly community appear to think so. But it seems to me that this is not correct. Indeed, I submit it is quite a glaring error. To try and illustrate this I'll expand upon an analogy I've used before (the analogy was originally employed by J. M. E. McTaggart in "Some Dogmas of Religion" p105):

If a man is in a house, he can see the sky by looking out of a window. But he can't see the sky if the curtains are drawn, or if no windows exist in the house. Would that mean the ability to see can't be intrinsic to the man? That's clearly nonsense since he could go out of the house and have an unrestricted view of the sky!

Nevertheless, we get the -- let's call them "housists" -- who insist that it simply must be the case that the windows somehow create our visual experiences. For, after all, slightly closing the curtains restricts one's ability to see the sky outside, and indeed, drawing the curtains completely totally destroys one's ability to see the sky outside. And what if the house had no windows at all? So it simply must be the case that the windows somehow creates one's visual experiences.

But how? This is the visual-house problem, and it's a problem that's fiercely been debated for millennia with no solution in sight. All the housists, all the great "intellects", the "experts", believe that somehow windows create vision, but they all propose different solutions as to how this is achieved. They vehemently attack each others "solutions" to this problem. And, indeed, their attacks on each other are all valid. And this is because it's not possible for windows to create vision! And it's an obvious impossibility because there is nothing about windows that could magically conjure up a visual experience from nothing. It would be miraculous. But try telling that to the "experts"!

It's obvious to us that the windows themselves do not create the man's visual experience of the sky. They merely enable him to see the sky. But the actual ability to see the sky resides within him.

But it seems to me the exact same argument applies to the self and brain. Whilst my self is "housed" by the brain, then the brain can affect many abilities of the self (perceiving, thinking etc). But it's just as implausible that the brain creates such abilities as windows create visual experiences.  See my essay where I explain this http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/neither-modern-materialism-nor-science.html

It should be noted that this doesn't mean there's a life after death. Unlike the materialists, I think there must be something non-physical, a non-physical self even. And it is this self that has the innate ability to see, think, etc.

Nevertheless, maybe this self cannot exist outside the brain. But I think there are many reasons to suppose it does.

How could we see, hear, taste, touch and smell during an "out of body experience" (OBE)?

Someone in a Facebook group who has had a near-death experience was stumped when a nurse asked him how he could see, hear, taste, touch and smell without their five sense organs during their OBE.

Clearly the nurse, and indeed many others, think that from the fact that damage to one's eyes or visual part of the brain leads to a reduction in vision or even blindness, that both one's eyes and one's brain are crucial to being able to see. The same argument applies to the other four senses.

It seems to me though that this argument is without merit. Here is an analogy. If one is in a house, the transparency of the glass within the windows is an essential condition for being able to see the sky. However, this only applies whilst we are in the house. If we were to venture outside, the windows are an irrelevance. We would have an unrestricted view of the sky.

I suggest exactly the same could be the case during an OBE. Let's suppose the ability to see and hear and smell are intrinsic aspects of a non-physical self or soul. In that case, during an OBE we should have unrestricted vision; maybe even vastly enhanced vision and the ability to see in all directions at once. But, whilst the non-physical self or soul is "housed" within one's body, we can only see, hear and smell by virtue of a functioning brain and unimpaired senses. Here, though, the brain and senses are only playing a similar role as the windows do within our house in the analogy outlined above.

For many of those who believe in an afterlife, the hypothesis is that the brain suppresses or filters conscious experiences rather than creates them. A properly functioning brain will allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell. And indeed, come to that, a properly functioning brain can allow us to be able to perceive, think, feel, and deliberate too. Contrariwise, a dysfunctional brain might reduce or completely suppress our senses and mental capacities just as dirty windows or drawing the curtains can impede or completely obscure our view of the sky.

None of this of course entails that the brain does play such a role. But the fact our five senses and mental capacities can be impaired, if not eliminated, due to a dysfunctional brain does not in itself entail that all these abilities could not be had by non-physical selves or souls. And indeed, should the above reasoning be correct, one might expect that a disembodied self or soul might well have enhanced senses and an enhanced mental capacity. This can be compared to having a greater view of the sky once we have exited from a house.