Topics Mind

Question Has not science (more specifically, neurobiology) resolved the mind-body question? For example, we know that when the pleasure center(s) of the brain are stimulated the person experiences pleasure. Once again, we know that when we affect one certain part of the brain, this causes the person to lose consciousness. Many thanks, Todd T.

Accepted:
December 30, 2008

Comments

Others on this panel might well have more to say, but briefly, what you point to are correlations between mental states and brain states. How certain sorts of goings-on in the brain give rise to or amount to, for example, the sensation of tasting chocolate or seeing a rainbow is surely a further story. Even someone (like me) who believes that the mind is, roughly, the workings of the brain/body can admit that we're still pretty far from understanding how we get from brain events to full-blown conscious experience.

By the way, for a detailed discussion of the so-called "explanatory gap," you might want to get hold of Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness, by AskPhilosophers.org panelist Joseph Levine.

Long before the advances of neurobiology, people recognized that certain mental states were correlated with certain physical states. Contemporary science has been able to discover more and more correlations, with more and more precision, but there are still many different understandings of what such correlations indicate. (1) Some think that these correlations reveal just how closely synchronized mind and body can be despite their very different nature. (2) Others think such correlations establish the identity of mental states and physical states. (3) Still others think that the relevant correlations show us the physical causes of mental states. There are scientists as well as philosophers who belong in each of these camps. It is not possible to decide between these (and various other options) without making controversial assumptions (implicitly if not explicitly) about the nature of identity, the nature of causation, and the determination of necessary versus accidental correlations; so sorting out the 'mind-body question' ultimately depends on sorting out one's view of these other things.

It should also be noted, however, that neuroscience has not established any strict correlation between pleasure and the activation of a particular area of the brain. There are many different sorts of pleasure (including intellectual pleasure, for example) that are correlated with many different brain activities; and the pleasure that is correlated with some particular brain events can be overridden by pain that is correlated with other brain events. Likewise, there are many different brain interventions that can cause one to lose consciousness, and the activation of just one part of the brain is never sufficient for consciousness. This leads many scientists and philosophers to suspect that mental states are correlated with broadly-based functions of the brain -- functions that could also be carried out by non-animal brains (or machines). And it leads some philosophers and scientists to wonder whether it would be better to eliminate mental talk altogether in favor of more precise physical descriptions of what our brains and bodies are doing.

So, you can see that there are still many substantial disputes that remain -- and even intensify -- as neurobiology advances.