“There are philosophical arguments that go something like this: the human mind can do things that it is inconceivable for a brain to do. Therefore, the mind is not the brain. But couldn't it be that it is the brain, itself, which is inconceivable?”

If this is true, then we couldn't come to a logical conclusion. We have to presuppose an understanding of the brain in order to assert anything about it. If we lack that understanding, we can only make an epistemological claim that points to the limits of our understanding, and not the ontological relation between the brain and the mind.

That is not to say I don't agree with your statement regarding our categorical error when we refer to the brain, though.

“We have to presuppose an understanding of the brain in order to assert anything about it.”

Hmm. I wonder about that, if I say “the human brain weighs 1200g” that doesn't assume I understand the brain, it just means I can weigh it. Or if I say “the brain is composed of 100 billion cells that communicate via synapses” all that assumes is that I can (as it were) cut the brain up into its components.

I agree that some kinds of statements about the brain do assume understanding e.g. if I say “the brain can” or “the brain can't” do X, then I am assuming that I understand it.

But it's just that kind of statements that I think we ought to avoid.

I think this leaves us open to make lots of other statements, not perhaps as many as certain philosophers would like, but that's my point 😉

We are what we know ourselves to be – ie we are a model. The brain is obviously a huge part of that model, and for good reason, for if we destroy parts of the brain we know that we destroy parts of us. Most importantly we destroy the ability to create those models – us.

The mind is not the brain in the same sense that the operating system is not the computer. For that reason, it seems silly to say that the mind can do things that it is inconceivable for a brain to do. Would we say that the operating system does things that it is inconceivable for a computer to do?

That something is at a higher level of conceptual abstraction does not mean that it does not depend upon or is not part of the lower levels. Concretely: if anything that exists inside a computer can do something, the computer can do that something… because it IS doing that something.

My impression of Chopra is that he's just a mesmerizing talker, to some. Charming man, no doubt, but ultimately only talking about talking.

“I think many philosophical puzzles would lose their edge if we could somehow get a feel for all that; if we could replace the accurate, but misleading, yellowy lump picture of “the brain” with one that captures the complexity and dynamism of the thing: a city, a hive of insects, a vast machine.”

My suggestion is that the new “yellowy lump” is, and has been from early on, Language and the built-in prejudice/blindness of a brain selectively evolved because of, and for it. I like what I think was one of Pinkers' statements, that language is not the same as thought. Well, moving on ( within the limitations of language), thought/consciousness is not the same as either brain or mind. The sensation itself may in fact be a biological dead end by product of an evolutionary event: Language. Just say'n…

Want to write a post for the neuro times on the disease of neuro-nihlism?

I am surprised that 'the brain is a hardwired machine is still a believed or popular concept. It seems that almost every popular neuroarticle recently is structured something like: “Scientists used to think that the brain/memories/neurons were fixed, but recent work by so-and-so shows it's actually plastic and changable” so many articles that it seems trite and my usual reaction is “scientists haven't thought the brain was fixed for like 50 years” get with the program Chopra.

“the brain is useless without a functioning peripheral nervous system, connected through the spinal cord. “

Not so. Christopher Reeves did some valuable campaigning after losing the connection with his spinal cord. His brain was definitely not useless.

DC

The brain is more dynamic than even most neuroscientists realise.

http://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/abstract/S0166-2236(10)00002-0

To clarify that last comment: the other day I added some new RAM to my computer.

So you could say that my computer's RAM is plastic. I can buy new RAM modules and install them, or remove old ones.

The same is true of most other parts of my computer, I could buy a new graphics card or hard drive etc. Those are all plastic.

But – that kind of “structural” plasticity has nothing to do with my computer's functional plasticity or flexibility, i.e. the fact that it can run any of millions of different pieces of software.

Those are two very different kinds of plasticity and I wonder if, in the brain, we tend to mix them up, because we have this idea that the brain is static (which implies that any 'software' change must be preceded by a 'hardware' change).

Stephen T Casper: Thanks. I'll have to decline for now because I have been trying to write a post for like that for a while & haven't quite worked out how best to do it… but I will let you know if & when I do!

I think the main question is “what is life itself?” Why living brain become a dead brain? Why there is a process of “dying” which starts from the birth.

Perhaps I am being simplistic when I say that the whole meaning of Chopra's message would be viewed differently if he had added one or more other words, for example: you are not 'only' your brain.

I am not a particular fan of Chopra's or any of these people who make a lot of money sending out a simple message. On the other hand, many find it comforting to think of ourselves as more than just a brain…and I say brain, not thinking of it as a yellow mass that sits within my skull, I say it with an understanding (albeit a layman's understanding)that it is me in the sense that I function in almost every way because of it. Many people are currently more informed about the brain and its processes – for example Horizon put out a series dedicated to neuroscience. Example anyone who saw: the one which asks “are we in control”

Chopra simply puts forward an idea that there is/may be something beyond the solid; the flesh, blood, bones and brain…something unseen; something beyond the understanding of science. It is unfortunate that words and how we use them change what we mean by them.

Richard Gipps: “Neuroskeptic wonders if it may be the brain, rather than the mind, that is ‘inconceivable’. Presumably Neuroskeptic is using the term 'inconceivable' metaphorically, since we don't normally say that bodily organs are either conceivable or inconceivable. But how are we to treat the metaphor?”

What I mean is that we cannot adaquately conceive of brain activity; we can of course conceive of 'the brain' as a physical organ but because we can't conceive of how it works (its activity) this conception of the brain is a misleading one.

“Also: we are told that the mind can 'do things' – but whilst minds, like brains, have properties, it is not obvious to me that they act – is that any less the mereological fallacy?”

My point is that there is no mereological fallacy (at least with regards to the whole brain; I'm not defending ascribing actions to parts of brains.)

Brains do act. That seems odd, yes. Because we can't adaquately conceive of the living brain. So it seems like a fallacy, but it's not, it's a failure of our intuitions about what “seems odd” (this is what I meant when I said the problem is with our 'sense').

How do I know brains act? Well, imagine your brain was surgically removed, placed in a vat, and wired up such that you could get visual input from a camera (connected to your occipital lobe) and send output through a robotic arm (connected to your motor cortex).

This is not that far fetched. You could probably do it to a monkey if you could keep the brain supplied with oxygen etc.

So your brain is in the vat, and it could act. It could, for example, try to take revenge on the people who put it there, by choking them with the robot arm. Or it might decide it can't face life in a vat, and pull the plug on itself, so to speak. Or it could do something else.

Now I think you could rewrite that last paragraph, replacing “your brain” with “you”, and it would mean exactly the same thing.

Hence, brains act.

At any given instant, billions of cascades of orderly molecular mechanisms are in progress in your body (including your brain). They are all happening in parallel in the same space, somehow, and they continue to function in orderly and repeatable ways for decades in an astonishingly reliable way.

We have almost no understanding of what is happening in your body at that level of specificity. At the molecular level, what is the entire sequence of events that lead to the blink of your eyes when you are surprised?

Whenever I hear anyone in the medical profession brag about how much we know, and how reliable our present drug testing methods are, and how wonderful our tools are, I know that he or she is exhibiting his or her profound ignorance of our profound ignorance. It will be many years before we even have the tools to figure out how a brain works. Or how the tip of a finger works. And years before we have the computational power to assemble all that new information into something humans can understand.

So – yes, it is all exciting, yes, we are learning wonderful new things daily, yes we are much more advanced than we were a hundred years ago – but biology is in it's early infancy, and we know almost nothing yet.

So, I like this discussion a lot. But I'm still a bit puzzled. 1. Neuroskeptic says, in response to my post: “How do I know brains act? Well, imagine your brain was surgically removed, placed in a vat, and wired up such that you could get visual input from a camera (connected to your occipital lobe) and send output through a robotic arm (connected to your motor cortex).” But here you have, we will all agree, a system of which the brain is only a part. (Perhaps its a bit like an animal, really, except with a non-fleshy arm.) Neuroskeptic was wanting to come up with an argument that would show how it isn't wrong to say, in the regular case of the brain in the context of that system that is the human being, that the brain acts. But how are we supposed to be convinced of the falsity of the idea that a mereological fallacy is being committed in the one case by committing (as the mereological fallacy believer would have it) the same fallacy in the hybrid case? (This isn't an argument for the correctness of the idea that it is unclear how to talk meaningfully of organs including brains possessing personal-level properties – it is only an argument against a proposed argument against the argument that brains are not meaningfully described as acting, thinking, seeing, hearing etc.)

And so we need an argument to say that it is the brain that acts here, rather than the system of which the brain is but a part. It is the arm that moves – the brain doesn't itself move. And so just as it has been alleged that it is a mereological fallacy to say that a human brain acts when a person acts by moving her arm, so too I can imagine saying that it is the odd robo-brain system that is acting in this case and that it would be a misuse, or a merely metaphorical, use of 'act' to say that only the one part of the system acts.
2. On another matter, Neuroskeptic says “What I mean is that we cannot adaquately conceive of brain activity; we can of course conceive of 'the brain' as a physical organ but because we can't conceive of how it works (its activity) this conception of the brain is a misleading one.” I'm still – sorry about this! – unsure of how 'conceive of' is being used here. In what sense is it inconceivable that the brain has the functions it does (it subtends a whole variety of organismic functions like the movements of the body, anxiety regulation, helps with homeostasis, and so on and on and on for a very long list). I'm presuming that it isn't being assumed from the outset that the brain is to be conceived of as performing a range of activities that only people perform – that really would make for something inconceivable! (But the problem would not be a failure of either empirical or reflective thought, so the Wittgensteinian argument goes, but would instead be a product of a conceptual confusion needing philosophical therapy.) It's a bit odd to be writing about not understanding the understanding that Neuroskeptic takes him/herself to have in claiming to not understand something – but that just is where I'm stuck!

Yeah, well, where is the seat of consciousness located? Inside the brain, we do not have a body, we are the body. That include the organ we call the brain. Deep-crap choprah is full of it or shit. Remove the brain form the body and see who is present to say 'I am' or be aware of any activities. Funny that this idiot looks to ancient Indian religious non-sense and call that garbage wisdom… PS. He claims that human being can reach 'enlightenment', unfortunately an historical 'Buddha' i.e “enlightened one' never existed, just another made up religious fairy tale created by story tellers and poets. The phenomena of consciousness which includes self-awareness or self-hoodis the emergence of Life and the animal brain (human) evolution.