Brain/Mind.

There have been more theories of the way the mind operates than one can go through in a timely manner - I certainly won't be going there right now. However, as touched upon in my previous post, reductionist materialism is enjoying a lot of support these days, and I certainly can't claim that it isn't for quite arguable reasons. With that having been said, however, I can't really bring myself to be alright with the two entities of 'brain' and 'mind' being thrown about as though they were interchangeable. This isn't something you only encounter under heavy deliberation - in fact, I'm currently taking a course titled "Brain, Mind, and Behavior" which (while the instructor may not be nearly as dogmatic) features a textbook that takes this concept completely as given. Why might this be done, and what problems are there with this view?

It's obvious that the brain and one's mental state are intertwined to such a degree that one seems to imply the other (note use of the term imply, in that they are related and not mutually referential). The brain regulates every activity of the body in some form or fashion, and is clearly capable of influencing cognition and behavior. Speaking empirically, a person may be so affected if any other organ in the body is manipulated or removed, but the brain is currently understood to an extent that one can produce reliably expected outcomes. For example, we have clearly identified sensory pathways within the brain, and we have identified regions of the brain which control and respond to motor functions - any structural abnormalities which may occur in these regions will produce dysfunctions of which, given the precise location, we can predict and explain with reasonable accuracy. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex is thought to house emotional and normative faculties, and a great deal of evidence supports this idea (this is often used to explain why young children, with the aforementioned brain region being underdeveloped, throw temper tantrums and very seldom make any value judgments).

Here, however, lies the trouble. These things prove that the brain provides a foundation upon which the mind can operate, but they do not deterministically prove that the brain and the mind are different names for the same thing, nor do they prove that the mind is to be found within it. This view is pushed all-too-enthusiastically by Thomas Szasz, a philosopher whose work I am currently being graded to evaluate, who actually holds that the term 'mind' refers to nothing biological or even physical, but rather to an attribution - an imaginary entity created upon which to base our moral judgments. Indeed, the terms 'mind' and 'brain' do seem intuitively to belong to two entirely different groups of ideas, and I believe that Szasz is correct in attributing the former to normative (value-laden) conversation and the latter to positive (matter-of-fact) conversation. His weaker arguments nonwithstanding (and believe me, there are plenty of them), he raises an important question of our fundamental understanding of 'mind'. Does it exist independently of our willingness to attribute our thought processes to it? Do we have minds, or do we simply mind things; in other words, do we have a particular thought-bank which ultimately comprises our personality, or do we merely think from one moment to the next (mind you, this doesn't exclude disposition of temperament, which no one is in any positino to deny - rather, it expresses the possibility that 'mind' just refers to our collection of thoughts, which Szasz believes to be just that and nothing more).

This is interesting, to me, from an evolutionary standpoint. As all higher life forms on this planet appear to have developed from a number of ancestors, and that 'intelligence' in the form that humans possess has taken some notable leaps in the course of our known (or understood) history, we can perhaps infer that 'mind' itself is an emergent property, and develops like wings or opposable thumbs. Some take the view that animals have no minds to speak of, and others disagree (I certainly do); however, regardless of one's stance here, I doubt many would (or could) reasonably compare the mind of a human being to that of a dog. Would we, then, compare the mind of a modern human to that of his/her 4 million year old ancestor? I highly doubt it - we would likely find what we would think of as 'deficiencies' in nearly every area, from emotional regulation to logical reasoning, though I would wager that they would have a far more developed sensory-orientation and more motor control. What can we take from this? Well, it seems obvious to me that one sporting either type of 'mind' would have certain strenghts and certain weaknesses, comparatively. But this, again, suggests that the mind is not a static thing, but develops as the brain and the habits of the host do (which would quite seemingly shoot down Plato's idea of the mind as eternal, static, and immortal, barring several complications).

But wait a minute...did I just attribute the mind to the physical brain? Yes - kind of. I, personally, am of the opinion that the existence of the mind independent of the brain is an absurd concept, and a hopeful confusion. Many among us certainly (and understandably) find the idea of consciousness after physical death appealing, but there is quite simply no good logical reason to believe this (sorry, Plato). Additionally, if the best one can do in providing a good reason is to appeal to the perfection and eternal being that is the idea of a 'God', suffice it to say I'm not convinced (sorry, Descartes). Mind seems to me locked inside and doomed to croaking alongside the body - but hey, it can have a good time while the candle's burning, right? With all that having been said, is the mind the brain (or is it to be found there)? No - I find this proposition equally as absurd. Why? 'Mind' does not refer to any physical entity or process, and thus equating it to or looking for it within one is a fundamental confusion. Does the mind exist? Yes - I believe it does. One can make the claim that it's simply a name we give to the process of attending to our sensory information from the outside world, and while I find this account to be somewhat appealing in its simplicity, I find it also a bit too simple. Judgment and abstract reasoning elude this hypothesis - love certainly does.

I see myself as, by and large, a fairly logical person. I often dismiss mysticisms on the very basis of their requiring faith, and find structured, sound arguments appealing (though often taken with a grain of salt). However, the 'mind' appears to me to be in a category all its own, sharing characteristics with macrocosmic biological processes such as evolution and with mysterious and inexplicable ones such as spontaneously choosing to reverse maladaptive behaviors. I see the mind as one of the very few 'magical' things left for we humans to experience, and perhaps the single, very last thing that science will never have the opportunity to objectify.

Freedom of the Will: To Has, or Not To Has?

Alright, so maybe this is a bit oversimplified, but it made me giggle.

The thing is, though, that the issue of free will has been, is, and probably will always be just that - an issue. "Free Will" can be defined as "...a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives," though perhaps a more concise, to the point definition can be taken as "freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention." In any event, I'm sure the vast majority of individuals of average circumstance in the developed world have considered this problem at some point and to some degree, and are at least somewhat familiar with it. It is difficult, truly, to discuss this issue at length without (unfortunately) resorting to highly technical terminology, but I will avoid this where possible, and where I don't, I will do my best to explain away potential confusion.

What we should first examine, I think, is the way one's view on this matter may arise and develop. Often, many of one's philosophical opinions arise necessarily from antecedent views - namely, metaphysical or epistemological ones (a metaphysics can be very roughly defined as a theory of reality, and an epistemology as a theory of knowledge...though even a superficial examination will show that one often bleeds into the other). The two most evident cases are the ancient Greeks on the side of our having free will, and most modern metaphysicians on the side of our not having it.

Plato (which I will perhaps erroneously take as representative of a large portion of ancient Greek thought) posited that the will is free as a result of his metaphysical theory of Forms, which holds (crudely put, mind you) that physical reality is governed by and partakes of Forms - pure, idealized, abstract objects exemplifying their properties. The physical world is imperfect, and cannot achieve the perfection of the Forms, but in striving to do so produces the eternal motion of the cosmos - we may think of this as the cycles through which things move and exist, be it life/death or universal expansion/contraction (or entrophy). Mind, or consciousness, is one of these pure substances, and is in fact taken as among the highest and most influential in his metaphysics. In his view, body is enslaved by the manipulative, willing capacities of mind just as the physical world is so controlled by the Forms, though the mind is somewhat blinded and corrupted by the nature of bodily wants/needs/desires, and as such cannot achieve true purity until death. The pursuit of pure knowledge and truth, however, is a choice one can make. To Plato, mind can and will exist separately from the body upon biological death because of its very nature (he has an argument for this, which I'll discuss if anyone happens to be interested). This first bit is actually quite intuitive, I think - for we can easily consider a situation as simple as deciding to move one's arm as apparently evident of this view, and may be quite tempted to interject that one did this because he/she willed it.

A modern metaphysician, however, would contend that Plato's stream of causation is completely the opposite of what is really happening. To such thinkers, consciousness arises directly from the body - the brain - and is simply a survival tool, an emergent property, of it. In the case of one's deciding to move his/her arm, this action was not willed, but necessarily performed as a result of bodily processes: willing it to happen is simply a consequence - an illusion. This view is notably less mystical than the Platonic view - it arises, indeed, from modern science (roughly beginning in the late 17th Century, and going stronger than ever before through modernity). The more information about the universe (and the human body in particular) that we gather, the more things we've come to tend to feel as though we can explain away. This tendency gave rise to materialism - the view that the only thing that exists is matter, nothing more or less, and that all events are a result of material interaction. This metaphysics had obvious epistemological consequences - many have come to hold that consciousness is itself a result of the sequence of biochemical/electrical/structural brain states experienced by a given individual. Remember when you wanted Cap'n Crunch instead of a Pop-Tart this morning? That was influenced by every event through which your body has gone since conception - your conscious mind had nothing at all to do with it. Buying this? The vast majority of modern scientists and philosophers of metaphysics alike do, and it's gotten a lot of reinforcement from ongoing developments in neuroscience. Certainly, the undeniable relationship between tampering with a human brain and producing expected results seems to be pretty clear evidence. The pervasive view, in summation, is that given enough knowledge about the physical world, we can potentially explain any and every event - we just aren't there yet. Is this intuitive, though? Do you feel as though every thought that runs through your head - every decision you make - could simply be body-language translated into the illusion of meaningful consciousness?

I'm not going to offer any solutions. Of that, you can be certain. I shall, however, point out a few implications and issues that arise from either view.

I'll first pick on the 'no free will' side. First and foremost, quantum physics lies in direct opposition with a deterministic view - on a subatomic level, things do appear to have a lack of predictable governance. A strike against this view, for sure, though these very same researchers often turn around and posit determinism once again once you climb high enough up the complexity scale (in other words, things are only nondeterministic at the subatomic level - we still don't have free will). One of the most obvious questions raised against this view is this: if we indeed have no capacity to make free choices, how is it that anyone can ever be responsible for an action? Anyone can see where this is going - where is the room for praise or blame? This has some serious moral consequences (which would drive Kant nuts, as his views on freedom of will arose directly from his ethics)...in this materialistic view, there really is no such thing as 'morality' at all, but rather sets of sociocultural norms which one can follow or not (this is commonly referred to as Moral Relativism, a la Nietzsche). If you agree that there is no such thing as freedom of will, blaming a mass murderer for slaughtering handfuls of people is bare-bones hypocritical. Are any of us really willing to live with this consequence of eliminating personal responsibility? Very few, I'd wager. Indeed, some have tried to reconcile this view with our gut notions of morality, but it hasn't been too successful. Also, on a lighter but just as poignant note, if we are truly hardwired from birth to behave in a certain pattern, why is it that we think in any discernable way at all? Why are we not, for lack of a better term, just machines?

The 'free will' side of things isn't faring much better. First and foremost, there is no logical proof for the existence of free will, and there never will be (I say 'logical proof' because an empirical proof is quite out of the question). The existence of consciousness independent of a body is something that hasn't been and likely can't be proven, either. There have been some compelling arguments made, but none really hold enough water. Furthermore, in light of the sort of work being done with the brain and its obvious tie to things such as memory and particular talents, appealing to the possible array of different particular tastes one might have won't get anyone very far. Many use the word 'mystical' (as I did in describing Plato's view) in reference to arguments for freedom of will, and it's not entirely unwarranted - you can't appeal to empirical data, which is what those interested in knowledge in this day and age want to hear. Most of us probably think that our actions are chosen, but the burden of proof falls naturally on the one making the more unsupported claim, so we're left with very little to work with. In actuality, one can't really make the claim anymore that mind controls body entirely - take a chunk out of my hippocampus and I'll forget I just met you, what I did last night, and so on.

So where does 'god' fit into all this? Anywhere you want to fit one, basically. Considering the problem, it's not difficult to see that either side of the story can work a god concept in. In the case of free will, one can argue that we have it as 'god-given,' though I don't suggest such a silly and weak argument be taken seriously. If one were to explain that free will exists to necessitate the existence of dynamism and variance of character from person to person, however, things get a bit more interesting. After all, we have a capacity to think to ourselves, often quite abstractly and about things that do not pertain to our experience at all...if we were mere programmed machines, what would be the reason for this? This is what people can formulate into a 'god concept,' not in speaking of a Christian sort of god (big bearded man in the sky), but of a principle which gives things the purpose and capacity to differ toward some end (this is called a 'teleology,' from the Greek word 'telos,' translated as 'purpose'). A no-free-will advocate could claim, however, something to the note of the 'watchmaker' theory of god, holding that a first principle set everything in motion according to a particular plan, which will play out exactly as it was meant to regardless of what seems to be the opinions/drives/wants of its components. This could go on and on, but the main thing I meant to be taken from it is that the idea of a god doesn't really pull either side out of the holes they dig.

So what do you think - did you read all of this because you chose to, or was this determined?

Politik

You know, I've never been anything more than suspiciously and reservedly lukewarm toward any politician I favored, though I can't even count the number of political figures who have made my stomach turn. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, and based on conversations with my fellow citizens, I can fairly confidently project this trend onto much of the nation at large.

Lately, I've been wondering why this is - why we so easily develop an active distaste for a public officer with whose opinions we disagree, but can't bring ourselves to 'like' those with whom we agree. Granted, being only twenty years old, I've been around for a relatively short amount of time in terms of the s0-called political scene...though if you're ready to take that aim, I'll have you recall that the U.S. is itself an infant in the world of global polity. Think about it for a second. Think back to most any political conversation or debate you've heard - be it between professionals or buddies - in as long a period as you can remember: were the talking heads discussing how great their favored individual was, or were they rather bashing the other guy? I'll bet you a dollar against a doughnut that it was the latter of the two. But let's assume someone was in fact speaking solely in favor of their pick. Now, I ask you: were they truly discussing the person in terms of positive qualities, agreements with particular views, and capacity to do good, or were they just doing the sort of 'shameless plugging' that you hear on FOX or CNN (depending on whether you prefer Republicans or Democrats, respectively), notoriously arguing not for the candidate, but for Person A relative to the supposedly inferior Person B?

You can take my perspective or leave it, but I still urge you to ask yourselves this: based on this last presidential election (since it's still pretty fresh in everyone's memories), when you voted for McCain or Obama, did you do this because you truly liked your candidate, or because he was "better than the other guy?"

And make no mistake - there is a very big difference between liking and trusting the candidate and liking a handful things he or she represents or stands for. By this, I refer to a number of voters who throw all favor toward a candidate because of, say, his or her views on abortion or stem cell research. These are big issues, undoubtedly, but not the only ones by any stretch of the imagination (and given the state of the economy, I can't fathom why these sorts of issues would trump something like a candidate's stand on fiscal policy). How many of you voted for McCain because of his and the Republican party's outspoken favor of Christianity? How many against him because of this? How many of you voted for Obama because you felt that the rights of homosexuals would be better supported? How many against him because of this? Put bluntly, how many of you voted the way you did because of one single, solitary factor? The trouble in voting for a single thing your guy stands for is that upholding that thing may not be much of a priority to that person at all. I'll bet for most among us, economic policy and foreign relations - things that can and do affect every single, last one of us - were afterthoughts. Why? Because we are self-centered. Particularly Americans. In the words of John Lennon, "I, me, mine."

It may not be too difficult to see where I'm going with this, but in case it's been altogether ambiguous for those with whom I'm acquainted, I'll lay it out. This two-party system of government is absolute, utter horse shit, and needs to be done away with. It's divisive, old, tried, broken, and corrupt. I and anyone else could spend days on end expounding the differences between modern Republicans and Democrats, but in the end, it all boils down to the same scenario: a complete misunderstanding of principles and the necessary perversion of them that ensues. You go ask anyone favoring either party to tell you why, get a clear, intelligible answer free of B.S. party jargon, and I'll show you a purple, 30-foot leprechaun. Both political entities have their heads so far up their own and each other's asses that they can no longer make intelligent decisions - they're bound by their own dogmas (which, sadly, has largely degenerated to the incredibly immature position of merely opposing what the other group says or does). We need a third party, and I'm hoping against hope that come 2012, we'll have ourselves one.

I suppose all this criticism may lead one to ask just where I stand on these issues. I adamantly refuse to associate myself with a 'party,' but I tend to side with the Democrats a large portion of the time. Why? For one, they aren't quite as arrogant and blatantly rude as Republicans, by and large. For another, I'm nonreligious, and entirely too many policies typical of Republicans revolves around the very specific Christian faith. Here comes the tricky part: ideally...ideally, in a world where right was right, fair was fair, and systems could exist free of big-wig swindlers, I would most certainly side with Republicans and favor a laissez-faire economy. The free market is an excellent tool for managing an economy. Until it crashes. Why does it crash? Any number of reasons, to be sure...but these days, we've got too many snakes in the grass. Too many political heavyweights with their claws in the market. To any who might claim that allowing for the government to 'officially' control the market would be a bad thing - I have a two-part response: 1) for the most part, I agree...BUT 2) wake up and smell the coffee - this has been the case for a good while now. The market isn't free, and it hasn't been for a very long time - it never will be again. For this reason, I support market regulation. Not straight "socialism," mind you (and my, how fond the more ignorant among us have become of throwing that word around), but something closer to a social democracy, a la modern European states. If we assign the government a clear and distinct role in our economy, it will be much, much easier to hold them accountable for it (as opposed to the current situation, where we all know it's going on and attempt to push it out of mind to simply makes us feel better about the whole thing). It's working out pretty well for Europe. And if you think our quality of living here trumps theirs outright, think again. The U.S. media machine would have us think modern Europeans live in envy of us - they don't. And at the end of the day, despite the higher tax rates, most working-class Europeans wind up with more cash-in-hand than most working-class Americans. All this on top of things such as free healthcare and extremely affordable higher education. Don't believe me? Look it up, though I'm sure, as previously mentioned, that this isn't altogether unfamiliar.

The U.S. is all about progression and hurdling toward the future, is it not? Well, guys, the world has been moving on without us for a number of years now. Industrialization was a necessary step for progressing into modernity, but things are different now, and there's little sense in clinging to old guns. Changing times and changing circumstances call for changed policies, and I think it's about time we moved on.

Signs of the Times...

I wonder fairly often what future anthropologists will have to say about our current time period. There area always certain aspects of an era which seem to solidify it and, in many ways, define it. Examples may vary (greatly) with one's own personal tastes - e.g. one with a musical bend may remember the 1960's in the U.S. for the British Invasion just as easily as one with political interests may think of the ongoing Civil Rights movement - but things generally tend to run together, or at the very least may swirl around the recognition of a similar general sentiment. The development of civilizations, overthrows of leaders, technological revolutions, the words of great thinkers, wars, and collapses of societies all bring to mind what a particular time period means to us, and what we can learn from it. What will they take away from us?

I suppose one might dismiss this curiosity, and perhaps rightfully so. My generation will likely be old and over with by the time any solid conclusions are drawn. My point, however, is that it may be difficult to point to any one thing, or even any group of things, that can be said to define this era. The "war" in the middle east will probably come to be widely recognized as the faux-witch-hunt exercise in futility that it really is. Politically, the U.S. is divided as if with a scalpel, though people are deviating from the extremes...perhaps we'll see the re-emergence of a formidable third party. The political systems of many states have had power shifts occurring faster than the citizens could learn the new leader's name. Pop culture has spiraled out of any sort of control, becoming one gigantic cluster-fuck of increasingly banal modes of entertainment (the same can largely be said for music, though it's seen something of an upswing in the past several years). In the words of Bruce Springsteen, "Fifty-seven channels and nothing on." Where's the cream filling? The goddamned substance? (And speaking of substance, there aren't too many of what one might be inclined to call "thinkers" expounding any particularly substantial ideas at the moment.) All in all, cultures around the world are losing their sense of identity and meaning. American culture seems to have this loss built into its very system, with its "melting pot" emphasis. Maybe this is a good thing, even to a great extent, but the expansion of the global economy and the supposed global community has made us as human beings, regardless of nationality, feel far more alone than adjoined. And I think it goes without saying that the internet isn't helping any of this.

Technology comes to mind, and will be the likely answer, though (to be a bit of a cynic) perhaps not in an entirely positive sense. With every technological advance comes the unspoken fear that we're coming only that much closer to being able to "play God." No one except iron-willed naturalists will put up much of a fight against, say, nanotechnology and advanced experimental procedures in curing and treating illnesses, but there are other areas of research which seem to incite the wrong kind of curiosity. As I understand it, the biggie here is genetic manipulation (e.g. cloning). There are certain moral dilemmas we find ourselves faced with: though I doubt many would picket a lab growing cloned tissue for a skin transplant, we've got serious ethical snags with replicating an entire human being. From the spiritual (does it have a soul?) to the secular (is it a person?), tough questions clutter the entire issue of cloning. Even cut-and-dry genetic manipulation causes a good deal of furrowed brows here and there - what sort of implications does it have that we might be in a position to select the genetic features of our children? I, for one, am largely indifferent as to what any mad scientist type breeds and cage-fights in his laboratory. He/she(/it?) can have at it, and even sell tickets if he/she(/it?) wants to. But even a more or less live-and-let-live sort such as myself can take issue with the last example: when and if we begin crafting super-humans, cherry-picking the wants and don't-wants toward ideal human beings, will not the very "humanity" vanish from us? What meaning will "human being" then take on? If our entire species becomes an enormous laboratory experiment, we flirt with violently upsetting the evolutionary forces that brought us here, kicking and screaming, from shape to shape, trait to trait, for millions of years. I'm not suggesting that we would not weigh these consequences (some certainly more carefully than others), but expressing my doubt that we would, in the heat of our excitement and self-importance, take them quite seriously enough. What do you think? Are we too far along, too smart, too highly-evolved to bury ourselves with such an obvious blunder?

Just look at how much of the planet we've managed to cover in our trash in a mere century.

The Obligatory Introduction

I have no doubt that the vast majority (if not the entirety) of those who happen across this site will be fairly good friends of mine answering an invitation to peruse my ideas and interject their own.  Whether this is done begrudgingly or enthusiastically is not my concern...that I leave entirely up to you, my guest.  The lack of interest this site will likely receive is something of a concern, though perhaps not quite what one might expect: I've come to note the convenience of keeping an online journal as opposed to a pen-and-paper scenario (resources and such, though my love of the written word is truly in no danger), but am peeved by the idea of advertising my most intimate of ideas onto other media such as Myspace or Facebook.  I hate to sound like a snob - let's face it, I sort of am - but the sort of attention I'd be getting there is not the sort I'd want; moreover, posting "private" entries is just kind of silly and fan-clubish.  In summation, what I write here is fair game.  If you happen to stumble across this corner of the internet, you are free to judge me and my words.

What will be posted onto this site is anyone's guess.  Though one may be inclined to suspect that it will all be dry and serious, I assure you that I have a sense of humor, and that it is regularly exercised.  I will likely post many things related to philosophies and philosophers because I find them interesting, though this will most definitely not comprise the whole of what I'm likely to throw out there.  I've also got quite the investment in the realms of music, so I'll probably throw that sort of thing out there often.  Hell, there aren't many things I don't get some degree of a kick out of.  I suppose this will assume more structure as it develops.

Cheers.