From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 14:14:34 GMT
Hi John,
--- John Maher <jozabad2001@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> but the explorer who bridges a cultural
> (philosophical) gap and brings
> back ideas to those of us struggling in the dark of
> Cartesian Dualism."
>
> Not even that really; dualism has been dead for over a
> century.
In the neurosciences few would admit they are dualists in the Cartesian
sense. But what about the NCC: the so-called Neural Correlate of
Consciousness? For instance, Francis Crick (yep, the one from that
double-helix DNA-molecule) and Chris Koch have suggested that 40 Hz
oscillations in the brain (that is, simultaneous firing of millions of
neurons of about 40 times a second) is the NCC. They proposed this over
10 years ago, and although today they have weakened their claim,
researchers like Andreas Engel, Wolf Singer and all still believe in
this hypothesis, publishing in Nature and all.
In general, most neuroscientists believe that the NCC consists of
millions of firing neurons: waves of influx and outflux of ions in the
long fibers of neurons called axons (most admit, however, that e.g.
dendritic processing is important too for the NCC, but still most still
believe the firing neuron is fundamental).
Thus, those neuroscientists talk about perception of colored triangles
on the one hand, and firing neurons on the other. Now, should that not
be properly called 'dualism'?! A professor of mine talks about mind and
brain being two sides of the same coin, and one can think of a name for
that: 'dual property monism' or whatever you want. Everyone knows
'dualism' is a foul word in the neurosciences, but in practice they sure
seem dualists to me.
Some neuroscientists and philosophers like Dan Dennett say that once we
have figured out the complexities of the neural brain, the consciousness
or 'qualia'-problem dissappears, and mind and brain REALLY turn out to
be one and the same thing. I heard a researcher remark once that the
source of the EEG (electrical brainwave-measering device) probably
matches '100 %' with our consciousnesses. He seemed to believe in a
one-to-one relationship between electrical potentials of neurons and
mind.
Thus, a lot of neuroscientists believe in some kind of monism (or call
it functionalism, cognitive neuroscience (note that this name mixes mind
(cognitive) and brain (neuro) in one term!) or dual property.
To me this is just a word-game. What researchers in reality do is
correlate cognitive events with brain events. Seems like dualism to me.
I'm less familiar with the philosophical trends nowadays, than with the
neurosciences, John. What is your state-of-the-art opinion about the
mind-matter problem?
You further wrote:
> Pirsig pointed out what others have said for
> many years and brought it to a mass (non
> philosophical) audience. The quality of the art
> remains, but let us not fool ourselves into thinking
> that this is either original or ground breaking in a
> philosophical sense.
Hm, don't you agree that most philosophers frame their deep thinking in
a SOM-view? Besides Pirsig, I only know of Nishida ("There is not
experience because there is an individual. There is an individual
because there is experience.") who's come up with a philosophy that
transcends the subject-object split, at least in a clear-cut sense.
With friendly greetings, Patrick.
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