Minds, Brains, Souls, and Gods: A Conversation of Faith, Psychology and Neuroscience – Part 3, Chapter 3: How Free Am I?

We continue the series on the book, Minds, Brains, Souls and Gods: A Conversation on Faith, Psychology and Neuroscience.

Today Part 3, Chapter 3: How Free Am I?

Malcolm’s student raises the question; since the brain is a physical system made up of atoms and molecules, how can there be any room for the top-down processes you have described that enable us to make choices and decisions?  Malcolm begins by discussing how this is a problem for the legal system.

• The Royal Society in London convened a forum in 2011 with neuroscientists and lawyers to discuss neuroscience and the law.
• The Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation has invested several millions of dollars to fund research in this area.
• In 2009 in Italy a women was convicted of murder and her legal defense neuroscientist demonstrated that she had structural brain anomalies and a geneticist demonstrated she had genes (the MAOA so-called warrior gene) predisposing her to violence. The judge reduced her sentence from life to 20 years.

Malcolm notes it is a genuine issue.  It is well documented that people with brain tumors have seemed to lost control over their actions and lie, damage property, even in extreme rare cases commit murder.  The individuals simply lose the ability to control impulses or anticipate the consequences of choices.  Whereas, prior to the tumor they did not have those problems.

The solutions proposed to justify our conviction that we have free will fall into two groups:

1. The “compatibilists” who argue that determinism is compatible with free will.
2. The “libertarians” who argue that free will requires a fundamental indeterminism in nature, and in particular in the way the brain functions. In order to justify the required indeterminism, most of those who invoke the libertarian view depend heavily on what in physics is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

He notes that for the Christian is the further question of how each of these approaches relates to what the Bible teaches about our responsibilities to choose wisely.  How many sermons have you heard on “Choose you this day whom you will serve…” or “If anyone is willing… then…”  Can we really choose?

He then give a synopsis of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for his student and notes that most scientists argue that the Heisenberg effects are much too small to affect even the most sensitive physical changes in the brain, such as the concentration of synaptic calcium.  Most of those who attempt to free the brain from determinism using the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle have yet to convince fellow scientists, who are aware of the smallness of the uncertainty involved, of the cogency of their case.  I would tend to agree with the critics here.

Malcolm then points out there is increasing evidence that leads us to believe that systems made up of elements obeying the laws of physics nevertheless embody forms of causation that seem to transcend the determinism of the atomic, physical and chemical laws.  The two concepts that we come across most often in these discussions are emergence and a more sophisticated version of what he called “top-down effects”, which is actually top-down causation.  If you put these things together, a scientifically plausible picture emerges of one possible way in which mental processes and moral agencies can remain the real causes of behavior even though embodied with a physical/biological system.  He says:

The concept of emergence helps to describe how complex entities like biological organisms can have properties that do not exist within the elements, such as molecules, that make up the organism.  Even simple organisms like an amoeba, which is a complex organization of molecules, manifest properties that don’t exist in the molecules themselves. The behavior of the amoeba depends upon the current state of the organization of the molecules, not the molecules themselves.  In this sense the activity of the amoeba is an example of an emergent property.

In the scientific literature another term for emergence is dynamical systems theory.  Application of this theory helps explain how new causal properties, such as the behavior of humans can emerge in complex systems characterized by a high level of nonlinear interactions between their elements.  A perfect example of this is the human cerebral cortex.  The millions of neurons and their millions of interconnections form an ideal dynamical system.  From this point of view, the elements of human neurobiology in the form of the cerebral cortex produce the cognitive properties of a whole person.

These higher level emergent properties are similar to what Jeeves said about top-down effects.  Looked at in this way, thinking, believing, and remembering can be seen as represented by shifting patterns in the dynamical neural system, and these patterns create top-down influences on the lower-level neuropsychological phenomena that are the substrate of, and that support, the mental activities themselves.

What this amounts to is that the description of the mind-brain in terms of its physical properties is compatible with a description of the same system in terms of mental concepts like thinking, believing, and remembering.  Both levels of description are necessary to give a full account of the whole unbelievably complex system.

Well, as I finish typing these words, I hear the faint drumbeat of the determinists, the reductionists, and the empiricists as they mass their tribes for the attack.  Fine.  Bring it.  I chose this book (see what I did there) knowing that it would be a great controversial conversation generator, and on issues that are important for a faith-science dialogue.  But know this; without these higher-level mental conceptual tools, we cannot even talk about and debate these issues, and in this sense, any attempt to reduce them to the chattering of interacting neurons at once empties them of all logic and meaning.  That argument is self-contradictory and therefore self-defeating.

And, only if absolutely necessary, in extreme situations…

Minds, Brains, Souls, and Gods: A Conversation of Faith, Psychology and Neuroscience – Part 2, Chapter 2: “What is the Relationship Between the Mind and the Brain?”

• • •

We continue the series on the book, Minds, Brains, Souls and Gods: A Conversation on Faith, Psychology and Neuroscience.  Today Part 2, Chapter 2: “What is the Relationship Between the Mind and the Brain?”

The question on the mind of Malcolm’s student is; are all mental experiences reduced to the activity of a brain circuit?  Jeeves quotes Professor John Stein, a leading Oxford neuroscientist from a 2011 article:

“Claims are being made about brain research that just aren’t true, and they are being accepted uncritically by the press, the public, policy makers, and even the courts…” and warning about the increasing dominance of reductionism: “…scientists are picking off the relatively easy tasks of working out how little bits of the brain work molecularly and hoping that knowing about these nuts and bolts will eventually tell us how the complex system works as a whole.”

He then recounts the excitement about developing techniques for imaging the brain.  Researchers are increasingly able to see which areas of the brain were most active when volunteers were doing all sorts of tasks such as looking at art, listening to music, showing maternal love, meditating and praying.  Some scientists suggested that the first decade of this century should be called, “The Decade of the Mind and Brain”.  The American Psychological Society set up a group in 2009 to discuss and write papers on where they saw the science of psychology going in the near future.  Certainly neuroscience has made great strides in new treatments for ADHD in children and Parkinson’s disease.

Ben (the typological student of Malcolm) then raises the question of the meaning of mind in different contexts.  His lecturers regularly use the term but don’t really define it, nor did his course textbook.  Then there are the Bible’s various uses of the term:

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.   

Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…

1 Peter 3:8 Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous…

He notes that none of his lecturers seem to regard the mind as a separate entity; but rather as a shorthand for mental processes like thinking, remembering, perceiving, and so on.

Malcolm notes that for the Bible there is the issue of various translations and the meaning of the words in the original languages.  Again, he warns his student not to attempt to use the Bible as any sort of textbook of science.  In the modern neuroscience use of the word, he says, that mind is most often used as a shorthand for “the mental aspect of a psychobiological unity” while most scriptural contexts refer to an attitude or shared set of attitudes and beliefs.  I think that is a pretty fair summation.

Ben then asks the money question:

Does the accelerating pace of research in psychology and neuroscience mean that all our talk about mental processes will be reduced to talk about what is happening in the brain?  That seems to be a shared assumption among some of our lecturers, if only we could understand how our mental processes depend upon (and quite a lot of them seem to assume originate in and reduce to) to the specific workings of different parts of our brains.

For example, in my evolutionary psychology lectures we were told a lot about what is called “mind-reading behavior”—how in our social interaction with other people, we tend to try and read what our friends are thinking (“read their minds”).  It seems there is evidence of similar behavior in monkeys.  But we were told that this capacity for mind reading depends upon the functioning of a particular group of cells in the brain.

So my question is, how do think about the relation of the mind and the brain in a way that ultimately does not reduce the mind to the brain and reduce psychology to neuroscience and evolutionary biology?  And how have views about the relation of mind and brain changed over the centuries?

Malcolm then launches into a fascinating review of the history of mind-brain relations.  The philosopher Empedocles in the fifth century BC theorized that the soul, which was the Greek word for the mind, was to be found in the heart and the blood.  After all if you thought exciting thoughts your heart raced and your blood pumped; if you thought peaceful thoughts, your heart rate and blood pressure calmed down.  It was called the “cardiovascular theory”.  Around the same time Alemaenon of Croton claimed the mental functions are located in the brain; the “encephalic theory”, as did Hippocrates.  In the fourth century BC the conflict between the encephalic and cardiovascular theories was exemplified by Plato and Aristotle.  Plato seemed to want it both ways; he located the immortal soul in the brain but the passions in the heart.  Aristotle unambiguously localized the mind in the heart, but since the brain was moist to the touch he concluded it refrigerated the blood.

Aristotle’s views were adopted by many of the church fathers, Tertullian for example.  The encephalic view survived through Galen, one of Rome’s outstanding physicians.  By the time Galileo was bringing forth his new ideas, Vesalius was using the results of his careful dissection of the human body, including the brain (which had previously been forbidden on theological grounds) to bring empirical evidence to the table that raised questions about mind-body theories.  Vesalius dissected not just humans but apes, dogs, horses, sheep, and other animals and found they all had ventricles in the brain, not just humans.  That caused a major shake-up in the theory of the uniqueness of where the human soul or mind were located.  By Shakespeare’s time you have 3 competing theories that he refers to in his various plays.

The point of this historical digression, Malcolm says, is to remind us of the dangers of reading into the data beliefs that we bring from some other sphere of knowledge, such as Christian belief.  The temptation to read into the text of Scripture is always with us.

To get to the point of answering the money question, he notes that modern imaging and computer aided tomography has enabled researchers to map, in much greater detail, changes in mental processes to verified changes in the structure and activity of different parts of the brain.

He then brings up the now iconic understanding of the left-right cerebral cortex hemispheres; left brain specialized for language, logical thinking, mathematical and analytic processing; right brain specialized for emotional expression, intuitive thinking, facial and musical recognition, parallel processing and visual-spatial encoding.  In short the left is verbal, logical, rule bound; the right intuitive and creative. However, to complicate matters, he notes, recent research has also discovered a top-bottom division to cortical brain functions as well.  The bottom line is, contrary to popular mythologizing of the left-right brain divide, the brain is a very complex organized system that is well integrated in all its functions, and the two sides of the brain are intricately co-dependent.  Jeeves says:

I prefer to think about mind and brain as two aspects of one complex system.  In this sense, in complementary fashion, mental activity and behavior depend on the physically determinate operations of the brain, itself a physiochemical system.  When that system goes wrong or is disordered, there are changes in its capabilities for running the system that we describe as the mind or mental activity.  (In that sense the psychotherapist will also be alert to any possible identifiable brain changes that she ought to aware of).  Likewise, if the mind or the mental activity results in behavior of particular kinds, this in turn may result in temporary or chronic changes in the physiochemical makeup and activity of the brain, its physical substrate.  Thus this ever-tightening link does not minimize the importance of the mind or brain in this unitary complex system.

Malcolm then notes that the temptation to slip into unthinking reductionism is not only resisted by Christian thinkers but cites the atheist humanist neuroscientist Raymond Tallis who has highlighted the dangers of what he calls “biologism” in his book, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity .  He calls those reductionists who believe our greatest human conceptual abilities can be reduced to neural firings in our brains- “neuromaniacs”.  He is equally critical of those who seek to minimize human differences from other animals by, on the one hand, anthropomorphizing animals, or, on the other hand, “animalizing” humans, in entirely unjustified ways.  This Tallis calls “Darwinitis”.   

Malcolm cites the study by Eleanor Maguire that London taxi drivers, by virtue of their disciplined training to understand the complex road system, over the course of their training altered the hippocampus in both size and shape from the matched controls.  In her more recent experiments, she asked volunteers to view three short films while they were lying inside an fMRI scanner.  A computer program then studied the patterns in the volunteer’s brains, and the researchers were asked to identify, if they could, which film the volunteer was recalling purely by looking at the pattern of their brain activity.  The remarkable thing was that it was possible to tell which film they were thinking of.  In effect, by modifying thinking and behavior, brain processes were also modified in a top-down effect.  Jeeves concludes:

Various people have tried to formalize all this in succinct statements.  You may come across some of them.  It seems to me that certain things stand out.  As I said earlier, we are a psychobiological unity.  The evidence currently available demonstrates a remarkable interdependence between what is happening the physical substrates in the brain and body, and what is happening in terms of mental processes.  This interdependence seems to be evident every time studies take place.—in other words, for me, they seem to be a part of the way the world is, so I tend to think of this interdependence as what I call intrinsic interdependence, or naturally inherent.  It also seems to me that we cannot reduce the mental to the physical any more than we can reduce the physical to the mental.  In this sense there is an important duality that we need to recognize between the mental and the physical, and I don’t believe this duality requires us to believe in two kinds of substances or a dualism of substance, and that makes me a “dual-aspect” monist.