Materialist neuroscientist Dr. Steven Novella, in a post that reflects the sour, dyspeptic rhetorical style typical of materialists who are unaccustomed to having their worldview challenged, makes several claims about what we should expect in the relationship of mind and brain if materialism is true. He states:
If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain then:
- There will be no mental phenomena without brain function.
- As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered.
- If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.
- Brain development will correlate with mental development.
- We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity - no matter how we choose to look at it.
He is arguing, for example, that damage to the brain will produce impaired mental function and that this is strong warrant for the belief that the mental world is completely reducible to material processes. Dr. Novella is simply wrong about this.
If the mind and brain work in tandem to produce mental phenomena something like a television signal works with a tv set to produce an image on the screen, then nothing really follows from Dr. Novella's claims. In other words, substitute "screen image" for "mental phenomena" in the above claims and substitute "television set" for "brain".
It's true, then, that there will be no screen image without a properly functioning television set, but that doesn't mean that the set is all there is to the production of the image. The signal is a necessary part of the production of the image even though its presence is not apparent to the person viewing the set.
It's true, too, that as the television's settings are altered, the image will be altered, but it doesn't follow that the set is all that's controlling the image.
Moreover, if the set is damaged the image will be disrupted, but it doesn't follow from this that the set is all that's involved in generating the image. In other words, it is one thing to say that the brain, like the tv, is necessary for mental experience, but it is quite another to say, as Dr. Novella does, that it is also sufficient to account for that experience. Neither he nor anyone else has ever come anyhere close to demonstrating that.
Dr. Michael Egnor replies to Novella's argument in a different and interesting way. He cites a 2006 study done on a woman in a persistent vegetative state who had seriously impaired brain function, but whose mental function, as assessed by MRI tests, was indistinguishable from that of subjects who had no impairment.
Egnor's discussion of this study is fascinating and his reply to Novella is very strong. I urge readers interested in the mind/brain controversies in general and the relationship of consciousness to matter in particular to check it out.
RLC
