OM 3-2: A Nondualistic Approach

Another school of thought, monism, proposes that the mind and the brain are one and the same. There are a number of monistic models-some deny consciousness and others identify it with the physical structures of the brain.

One such school of monistic thought holds that matter inherently possesses the attribute of consciousness. This view, which can be termed panpsychism, is historically identified with the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who stated, "Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus, animata sunt"-that everything in existence is to one degree or another animate, or conscious.19 Spinoza believed in one universal substance, each part of which has both physical and psychic properties. According to this view, even an atom would have some dim atomic awareness, and as more complex organizations of matter developed, then correspondingly more complex forms of consciousness would emerge.

Such ideas are useful for biologists, who almost without exception believe that life has evolved from matter by physical laws. Given this mechanistic assumption, there arises the problem of explaining the origin of consciousness. Panpsychism, which attributes some degree of consciousness to even disorganized matter, provides a possible evolutionary explanation. One proponent of this approach is German zoologist Bernhard Rensch. He posits, in addition to the physical properties of matter, what he calls "parallel psychic components," such as consciousness. "Molecules and atoms should also be credited with basic parallel components of some kind," he states. "These parallel processes can be recognized as such only after the respective molecules have become part of the psychophysical substance (nerve and sense cells) of an organism, so that the parallel components form a complex of conscious phenomena that can be 'experienced.'"20

A major difficulty with this approach to panpsychism involves the unity of consciousness. If every atom is separately conscious, then what mechanism integrates their awareness? Why should a carbon atom in a human brain, for instance, feel any different than when it is in a piece of wood? And since the brain is merely a combination of various atoms, why is the brain's consciousness unified and not just a mere sum total of all these atomic consciousnesses? This difficulty has been recognized by Nobel-laureate neurobiologist John C. Eccles, who wrote, "Hitherto it has been impossible to develop any neurophysiological theory that explains how a diversity of brain events comes to be synthesized so that there is a unified conscious experience of a global or gestalt character. The brain events remain disparate, being essentially the individual actions of countless neurones that are built into complex circuits."21

Scientists such as Rensch, attempting to overcome this problem, have offered the explanation that patterns of matter also have consciousness, and that we are merely one set of these patterns. But if this is so, then two conclusions follow. First, there must exist complex metaphysical laws governing the production of consciousness in response to the presence of certain patterns. Second, the consciousness of the pattern must be-in comparison with the individual consciousness of each element of the pattern-an entirely new metaphysical entity, a "higher" consciousness capable of accounting for our unified human experience. At this point we would have within the human body a rather complicated metaphysical apparatus consisting of varieties of conscious entities (trillions of semiconscious atoms, patterns possessing higher unifying consciousness) and laws governing their appearance. It would be simpler, however, to revive the concept of the soul-a single irreducible unit of consciousness capable of functioning as the integrator of experience with the body.

John C. Eccles and philosopher Karl R. Popper propose something like this in their book The Self and Its Brain. Recognizing the shortcomings of monistic theories, they formulate a version of interactionism between the mind and brain. Eccles states, "The experienced unity [of consciousness] comes, not from a neurophysiological synthesis, but from the proposed integrating character of the self-conscious mind .

Popper gives several strong arguments for the nonphysical nature of the mind, pointing out that conscious awareness is real and directly experienced by the conscious self, yet inexplicable by our concepts of matter. He points to the difficulty in all attempts to attribute sophisticated behavior, such as elaborately purposeful action, to intermolecular forces, and explains how such behavior can easily be understood in relation to a mind endowed with purpose and desire.

Although entertaining dualistic ideas concerning the mind and body, Popper and Eccles still cling to the notion that the mind has a material origin, suggesting that it somehow emerges from matter and then interacts with it. But as we have previously observed, such a totally unpredictable appearance of a distinct, nonphysical mind from matter raises, to say the least, severe difficulties-most specifically, how could it happen? Popper and Eccles don't know.

Popper himself admits, "From an evolutionary point of view, I regard the self-conscious mind as an emergent product of the brain. … Now I want to emphasize how little is said by saying that the mind is an emergent product of the brain. It has practically no explanatory value, and it hardly amounts to more than putting a question mark in a certain place in human evolution."23 Those who advocate the emergence of consciousness thus find themselves in the same position as the cosmologists who propose that the universe pops out of nothingness. In each case something qualitatively new unpredictably pops up.

The great majority of scientists, however, continue to insist that all mental phenomena are functions of the physical brain and nothing more. One of their most common objections to the idea that the mind could be fundamentally different from the brain is that if you alter the brain the mind is also altered. It has been observed that when the speech center of the brain is damaged, a person may become unable to speak, and that by injecting drugs into the body, mood changes and hallucinations may result, etc. People therefore frequently conclude that the mind must be manifested from the physical brain, for otherwise brain states would not affect mental states.

This is not the only possible interpretation. Such a correlation could be due to a nonphysical mind using the brain to carry out various functions, in a manner similar to an operator using a computer. This view was held by renowned neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, whose extensive investigation of brain functions led him to conclude that "it is, in a sense, the mind with its mechanisms that programs the brain."24

The mind may become seemingly dependent upon the brain, just as a businessman engaging a computer for inventory calculation may rely on the computer for his work. Should the computer become damaged, the businessman would certainly become impaired in his ability to function; and if the section of the computer memory dealing with inventory reports is wiped out, he would be entirely unable to review his stock. If the brain is such a computerlike instrument, then in cases of brain damage or chemical disturbance we would expect to see an impairment of the mind's functional capacity even though the mind is an entirely separate entity.