think, and which does not require any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist. Accordinglythis ‘I’ – that is, the soul by which I am what I am – is entirely distinct from the body, and indeed is easier to know than the body, and would not fail to be whatever it is even if the body did not exist.
If this were true, the mind would be a spirit within a machine, but it is not, because there is no separate and distinct place called “mind” in the brain. That would be about as absurd as, for example, imagining a place called “university” separate and distinct from buildings, streets, lawns, and people.
‘Neuroscience has now established that neither feelings nor complex mental functions can be separated from the structure and activities of the biological organism. If they could, neuroscientists attempting to understand the workings of the mind would have no need to examine regions of the brain, mark electrical connections, or identify chemical substances. Of course one cannot claim to have identified the mind simply by pinpointing a brain region and listing a couple of substances. Human consciousness is the product of the body’s interaction with its environment. To understand our mind, we have not only to situate it in the brain instead of in a disembodied space, but also to find a way of understanding it as part of the organism as a whole. Our senses, our nerves, and our neurons all act in concert with the outside world, with what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The question of how I know who I am can thus be answered along these lines: I know who I am because my senses relay signals to neurons in the brain, where they extend along complex circuits, so complex that something wonderfully complicated and abstract results: insight into my own thinking and a notion of my existence.’
That is how the modern neuroscientist in Boston sees the matter, but his worn-out predecessor from the Thirty Years War has one final ace up his sleeve: Did the neuroscientist really answer the question of how I know who I am? To fathom how my brain functions, and to describe how my senses and my neurons convey a picture of myself to me, I have to think these thoughts. All thesethings, no matter how concrete, thus originate as thoughts and ideas in my head. From that point of view, there really is something to the statement ‘I think, therefore I am,’ but not because thinking constitutes my being or that the only thing that counts is thinking, which is incorrect. But it is correct to say that my thinking is the only window into my existence.
So the road to self-discovery has two separate paths. I can start with my thinking and figure out where my certainties come from. This is the path that Descartes, and hence modern philosophy, has chosen. This path of self-observation led to a highly reflective way of looking at things that brought claims about the world to their subjective origins and examined them. As scientific epistemology, however, this path has come up against its limits, and there is little new ground left to be broken. The second path explores man as though the observer and highly personal perceptions and ideas are not the crux of the matter. This is the path of the modern natural sciences. While less reflective, it is now producing exciting new results. The kinds of insights these two paths yield could hardly be more divergent.
Many neuroscientists claim that their route of access to the mind is the only valid one. Neurobiology seeks to assume the place philosophy once held. If man wants to know who he is, the logic goes, he has to understand his brain, and brain research replaces speculations about human emotions, thoughts, and actions with rational scientific research. But many neuroscientists tend not to notice that they are not on the path to an absolute truth either. Any science is itself a product of the human mind that it seeks to investigate with its own means, and the cognitive
If this were true, the mind would be a spirit within a machine, but it is not, because there is no separate and distinct place called “mind” in the brain. That would be about as absurd as, for example, imagining a place called “university” separate and distinct from buildings, streets, lawns, and people.
‘Neuroscience has now established that neither feelings nor complex mental functions can be separated from the structure and activities of the biological organism. If they could, neuroscientists attempting to understand the workings of the mind would have no need to examine regions of the brain, mark electrical connections, or identify chemical substances. Of course one cannot claim to have identified the mind simply by pinpointing a brain region and listing a couple of substances. Human consciousness is the product of the body’s interaction with its environment. To understand our mind, we have not only to situate it in the brain instead of in a disembodied space, but also to find a way of understanding it as part of the organism as a whole. Our senses, our nerves, and our neurons all act in concert with the outside world, with what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The question of how I know who I am can thus be answered along these lines: I know who I am because my senses relay signals to neurons in the brain, where they extend along complex circuits, so complex that something wonderfully complicated and abstract results: insight into my own thinking and a notion of my existence.’
That is how the modern neuroscientist in Boston sees the matter, but his worn-out predecessor from the Thirty Years War has one final ace up his sleeve: Did the neuroscientist really answer the question of how I know who I am? To fathom how my brain functions, and to describe how my senses and my neurons convey a picture of myself to me, I have to think these thoughts. All thesethings, no matter how concrete, thus originate as thoughts and ideas in my head. From that point of view, there really is something to the statement ‘I think, therefore I am,’ but not because thinking constitutes my being or that the only thing that counts is thinking, which is incorrect. But it is correct to say that my thinking is the only window into my existence.
So the road to self-discovery has two separate paths. I can start with my thinking and figure out where my certainties come from. This is the path that Descartes, and hence modern philosophy, has chosen. This path of self-observation led to a highly reflective way of looking at things that brought claims about the world to their subjective origins and examined them. As scientific epistemology, however, this path has come up against its limits, and there is little new ground left to be broken. The second path explores man as though the observer and highly personal perceptions and ideas are not the crux of the matter. This is the path of the modern natural sciences. While less reflective, it is now producing exciting new results. The kinds of insights these two paths yield could hardly be more divergent.
Many neuroscientists claim that their route of access to the mind is the only valid one. Neurobiology seeks to assume the place philosophy once held. If man wants to know who he is, the logic goes, he has to understand his brain, and brain research replaces speculations about human emotions, thoughts, and actions with rational scientific research. But many neuroscientists tend not to notice that they are not on the path to an absolute truth either. Any science is itself a product of the human mind that it seeks to investigate with its own means, and the cognitive
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