Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Homunculus pilots the brain & body
Post 50.August 28, 2018 continued . . .
Modular Mind vs Unitary Self The Ghost in the Machine
To make his point about mute modules running the show, he discusses Benjamin Libet's experiment3, which found that the brain stimulus for a body movement preceded the person's conscious decision to make that motion. "Whatever is making a decision to move the wrist, it's a module of some sort, and for certain it's part of the brain. . . . A module has to have some physical existence. If it didn't, it would be . . . A "ghost in the machine"." However, I prefer to zoom-out and take a broader, more inclusive, view. The mind must first imagine a future state of the body, before any brain signal for physical motion occurs. That teleological image, plus a conscious choice, serves as a non-physical motivator & director, an act of Will. Which triggers a cascade of chemical & electrical potential to actualize in the form of a wrist movement. The lab experiment couldn't detect that non-physical choice, so it missed the metaphysical cause. Imagination4 is not a physical module, it's a mental action5 — not a part of the machine, but its function. Libet was looking for a physical embodiment of Will. But willpower is an immaterial Cause6 of material effects.
Kurzban says he prefers to avoid the messy philosophical topic of Consciousness7"I don't think we know what the function of consciousness is, or even if it's reasonable to talk about consciousness having a function." I assume he's talking about a physical operation. But I have concluded that the function of Consciousness is to represent Me to myself, the whole to the collective. The brain modules piece together various bits of incoming information into an abstract map of the outside world. Then it places a self-symbol on the mental map8 with a label : "you are here". That token represents the Self in relation to the non-self out there. Practical psychologists may not need that hypothesis, and the self/soul symbol is indeed imaginary & non-physical, but it's of the utmost importance to Me, myself & I.
The author dismisses the notion of a self-conscious Self apart from the modular brain, in part because it’s not necesary for him to do his job, and partly to avoid opening the spiritual can-of-worms associated with Descartes’ dualistic body & soul. As a scientist and clinical practitioner, a Psychologist’s job is to analyse the patient’s emotional problems into physical modules that he can treat with drugs and therapy. So he describes your emotional issues in somatic terms and prescribes pills for your chemical deficiencies. But a Philosopher’s mission is to syn-thesize patchwork parts into a meaningful whole. And a friend’s function is to know me as a person, not as a jigsaw puzzle.
Materialists object to talk of metaphysics because they assume their domain-specific language of physics & chemistry is sufficient for their practical purposes. Even the biology of living beings requires only a bit more holistic terminology because of its complexity. Yet, human-specific fields of psychology, sociology, religion, & history are pointless without the language of Metaphysics. How could you discuss politics, without the language of non-physical ideas & ideals? Apparently, psych-ologists, such as Kurzban, have been influenced by “physics envy” to limit their investigations to phenomena that can be reduced to a pile of parts and measured in modular increments.
4. Imagination : The word implies an “act” of creating mental images. But it’s not a physical action. Instead, it’s a metaphorical metaphysical change of mind, with no physical movement of matter. But somehow the mere image of a preferred future state triggers a sequence of body events intended to make it happen : an act of Will.
6. Kinds of Causation : Physical Causation is one-way change from past to now to future via exchanges of energy. But meta-physical (mental/ mathematical) Choice works by exchanges of Information. However, mental events are subject-ive, and not observable by others. That’s why the only causation we actually see in the world is the billiard ball transfer of energy by direct deterministic contact. Acts of Will must be inferred by intuition or reason to explain observed effects.
8. Mapping : A map is an abstraction from reality. It uses symbols to represent things out there. The graphic symbols trigger associations in the mind. Symbolic meanings are not physical things. “ The map is not the territory” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
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