Is the Mind Created by the Brain? (Like H20 and Wetness) #27

Question:

What are some of the better objections against the mind being an irreducible entity? Are there any knockdown arguments to suggest that the mind is created by the brain under the naturalist/materialist/reductionist worldview?

Response:

For those unfamiliar with the argument for the irreducibly of consciousness (video of the argument here), it is roughly the position that matter cannot produce Jesus puzzleconsciousness. In other words, gathering a hundred puzzle pieces will give me a whole, complete puzzle, but gathering 100,000,000 brain cells, although it may give me a brain, will not produce consciousness. Thus, consciousness cannot merely be the byproduct of matter interacting with more matter. At the end of the day, matter plus matter just gives you more matter, NOT consciousness. So, what’s the matter? (sorry I couldn’t resist)

Well, an atheist would simply say that we are committing the fallacy of composition (addressed in this video here). Their justification for this is commonly alluded to by pointing to water as having the emergent property of being wet. Water, as we all know, is H20. However, hydrogen itself does not have the property of being wet and oxygen does not have the property of being wet. BUT (says the atheist), if you combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water, PRESTO, you now have a new, emergent property, “wetness”.

So it is true, says the atheist, that a single quayea sciencerk cannot contain consciousness, but neither can hydrogen and oxygen by themselves contain wetness. Therefore, much like wetness, consciousness is an emergent property on the brain as a whole. Thus, the theist argument that consciousness cannot emerge as a byproduct of the brain is false and the physicalist was right all along. No soul. Just brains and bodies.

Objection to H20 and wetness as an argument

splash

Well not so fast. There are quite a few problems with that objection, so allow me to object to the objections with a few objections of my own.

  1. Faulty Analogy

First of all, the theist argument is NOT saying that there can be NO physical emergent properties. It is simply saying that the physical base properties cannot produce new NON-physical properties like consciousness. No more than asking how PBS Remix-Happy Painter
many strokes of blue does it take to get the taste of banana? It is simply a category fallacy, and a metaphysical impossibility.

So we do not deny that physical base properties could produce new, physical emergent properties that aren’t found in them to begin with (like wetness on hydrogen and oxygen).  Again, hydrogen and oxygen don’t have the property of being wet, but when combined, we get the new, emergent property of being wet. That’s fine. Physical bases could produce new physical properties. I don’t lose sleep over that.

  1. Wetness is still a physical property…

However, the very heart of the objection implicitly accepts the premise that consciousness is NOT physical. How so? Because at this point, the objector is NOT necessarily saying that consciousness is physical, but rather, that consciousness is DEPENDENT on the physical even if it is itself is nonphysical. (Let’s not even get into how the existence of immaterial things would be an unnatural fit for the atheistic naturalist to take. But never mind consistency)

If consciousness is implicitly accepted by both parties as nonphysical, then we could grant for the sake of argument that consciousness is an emergent property. We could even grant for the sake of argument that it is dependent purely on the physical. So why does the H20 and wetness analogy still fail? Because if consciousness is immaterial, then it simply becomes question begging to point to an emergent, PHYSICAL property, and then just assume that the same process applies to a NONPHYSICAL property such as consciousness.

In other words, wetness ismoreland shirt NOT an example of the emergence of a nonphysical property via the physical. Wetness is still a physical property, consciousness is not. Therefore, the objector has STILL failed to demonstrate how a nonphysical property, such as consciousness, could be reduced or produced by purely physical base structures. Simply pointing to an example of the physical producing more physical stuff does nothing to prove that this could equally apply to the emergence of NON-physical stuff. Thus, the argument could still stands that mind cannot come from matter.

  1. Structural Properties Only

On the emergent view, ONLY, and I do mean only, new structural properties are available as a possibility. But what is a structural property? Allow me to illustrate. A pile of 10 wooden boards do NOT have the property of being raft or a kitchen table. However, if you rearrange the structure of the pile, then sure, you can get a new structural property of being a table or a raft. That is perfectly acceptable because physical rearrangements can produce new physical, STRUCTURAL properties.

But here’s where the ultimate defeater comes for this objection toward my argument. If NEW emergent properties can only come from a new structural re-arrangement of the base material, then that would imply that consciousness would brain cubebe a byproduct of rearranged matter. Let’s take the base particle- a quark. Rearranging and adding quarks together to form electrons and protons, protons and electrons to make atoms, atoms to make molecules, molecules to make cells, and finally, cells to make a brain… Then what? POOF! Like magic we all of a sudden get consciousness?

But why? How many cells did it take? If we took 3 cells away would we still have consciousness? What if we added 3 more? How about just 1? Is this dependent on the amount? Then what? The structure? Moreover, how is it that other animals can have different shapes, sizes, and structures of brains from us humans, and yet, still be consciousness too!? Clearly this is absurd.

Further, this is NOT at all analogous to a pile of boards becoming a raft or hydrogen and oxygen combining to get wetness. After all, you can look wilsonat the raft and see how the structure works. You can look at how the hydrogen and oxygen bond and you can see the emergent property of wetness. You can even touch it! But if you were to look at your brain…could you touch your thought that “Today is Friday?” Could we look at the brain structure and conclude what you’re thinking or how your brain produced the belief that the brain produces beliefs? Or even, disassemble your thought that today is Friday like you could disassemble a raft? Not at all. These are category fallacies that are simply metaphysically impossible.

Conclusion:

No, consciousness is not at all analogous to the new structural property of wetness on hydrogen and oxygen. Thus, one cannot argue the example of an emerging, new physical properties and simply assert by faith that the same applies to the emergence of a nonphysical property. The objection that water and wetness is the same as molecules to mind clearly fails.

Therefore, the argument stands that mind is not reducible to matter. Consciousness is an immaterial faculty that has its grounding in the only logical option available: the existence of the soul.

-Eric Hernandez


 

Related Articles:

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LIBERTARIAN FREE WILL AND MIND/BODY INTERACTION?
DO ANIMALS HAVE SOULS?


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3 thoughts on “Is the Mind Created by the Brain? (Like H20 and Wetness) #27

  • March 1, 2016 at 12:13
    Permalink

    I think you’re nitpicking at the analogy. Water doesn’t have the exact same properties as the mind, but that doesn’t entail that the analogy is wrong. All analogies break down somewhere, at some point it becomes trivial to the argument. I don’t see why someone would have to hold that you should be able to touch a belief if you open someone’s brain, because under an emergent view, the mind is a new physical emergent property FROM the brain. The aren’t the same thing.

    Furthermore, the mind may depend on the physical structure, but you are mistaken in assuming this means it can only be dependent on one token or type of structure. So of course animals and maybe even aliens can have different types of brain structure or even material.

    I also don’t see why irreducibly necessarily means rejecting physicalism. You can hold that the mind is emergent from the brain and believe that it is irreducible.

    Reply
    • March 1, 2016 at 12:13
      Permalink

      Thank you for your feedback, Jeff. Yes you are right, no analogies are perfectly analogous. But there is a difference between nitpicking an analogy and outright claiming that something is disanalogous or dissimilar. So my argument is not that the water analogy fails because they do not have the same property and the mind or brain, but rather that this is a completely different type of emergence from a base structure or parts. In other words, when wetness comes from the structure of its base parts, there are no new, what philosophers call, sui generis properties, meaning a genuinely new kind of thing or property.

      With the brain and consciousness, you have a property that it sui generis that is not necessitated from its base structure and thus, unlike the water analogy, there is no physical thing that entails that this particular property, consciousness, should arise. This is something that all philosophers of mind recognize. So its not that the water analogy works only with respect to this and not that, but rather that this is no at all analogous seeing how this is not an example of a sui generis from the physical. Its still physical properties coming from physical structures. But if the mind is not physical, then it is not analogous to the water-wetness example.
      Well it all depends on what view of the mind/soul that you hold. There are 2 general categories of dualism and then you have the physicalist view which there are at least 5 different forms. However, some of these alleged physicalist views are a property dualist view. My article was against any view that is not a dualist view and hence, all things must be physical, thus, beliefs would be a physical thing. So it depends on what kind of emergence you are talking about. As I said in the article, a physical property could supervene/emerge, like wetness, and could be felt.

      So if you mean that the mind is a physical, emergent sui generis property “FROM” the brain, then I’m assuming you are implying that it is a nonphysical property coming from the physical. If that is the case, then that is an entirely different topic and article. But again, it is still a dualist perspective.
      I am neither assuming nor is it my position that the mind is dependent on one token-type structure. In fact, this is one of the five physicalist alternatives to dualism so clearly this would not be a position I take. So what you are describing is the “problem of multiple realization” which is actually an argument in favor of my view. So by admitting that different token-type structures can be correlated with the same mental state is only further evidence that backs up my argument for this article.
      Yes, I am aware that you could hold that “the mind is emergent from the brain and believe that it is irreducible”. But anyone can hold anything these days. You are treading into some interesting areas that I would probably have to write an entirely new article on in order to address your questions. However, I unfortunately could not do that anytime soon and have been trying to keep my focus on finish a book that I am writing. But if I do get a chance to, I’ll certainly let you know.

      For now, suffice it to say that physicalism leads to other conclusions, not mentioned in the article, that make it false, absurd and self-defeating. So this article was not aimed at addressing why one should reject physicalism, though I think one should, but rather at the emergent argument via water in comparison to the mind and brain. Here is a short clip from my debate in November on the existence of the soul where I address, in short, the logical price tags and absurdity that the physicalist view would lead to.

      Here is the link:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuyJWCyF4O4&list=PLnCn8rYSOiBFguq5MPrIXAtV5MtOKMPO_

      Reply
  • May 6, 2016 at 12:13
    Permalink

    What do you mean by wetness? Wetness doesn’t come about simply by virtue of their being a water molecule. There needs to be a water molecule that is adjacent to some other thing. So it is this arrangement that is necessary for ‘wetness’ to emerge.

    Also let’s look at something like traffic. Traffic is often called an emergent property of cars and the road system and all that. This requires the matter (the cars), to be in a particular arrangement (bumper to bumper) AND moving in some direction (otherwise you have a parking lot). Sometimes you need a behaviour or an act for the matter to create some emergent property.

    So what do you mean by consciousness? If someone suffers from a traumatic brain injury and they aren’t able to think or act the same way, doesn’t that show that consciousness is emerging from the physical aspects of the brain? Not just the matter that makes up the brain, but the arrangement of that matter and the way that matter behaves or acts.

    Otherwise you are saying that consciousness independent of the brain, but it is inextricably linked to the brain. This seems contradictory.

    Reply

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