The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My lead author on the book The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul, Mario Beauregard, has an article coming out in Progress in Neurobiology , and as soon as I can link to it, I will. It describes a number of studies in non-materialist neuroscience.

(Non-materialist neuroscience = the mind exists and uses the brain but is not the same thing as the brain.)

Neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can now show the ways in which people reorganize their brains by changing their minds. However, their ability to do this is in direct conflict with materialist theories of mind, according to which the mind either is simply the brain at work or is a side-effect of brain processes - or perhaps does not even exist. As Beauregard writes,

The results of the neuroimaging studies reviewed here call in question the psychophysical identity theory and epiphenomenalism. For the psychophysical identity theory, mental processes (including intentional ones) are identical with neural processes (Feigl, 1958). For epiphenomenalism, mental processes are causally inert epiphenomena (side-effects or by-products) of neural processes. These findings also challenge eliminative materialism (or eliminativism). According to this view, mental processes and functions (e.g., consciousness, intentions, desires, beliefs, self) can be reduced entirely to brain processes. These mental processes and functions are pre-scientific concepts that belong to unsophisticated ideas of how the brain works (sometimes called "folk psychology"). Eliminative materialism further proposes that all common language or "folk psychology" descriptions of mental experience should be eliminated and replaced by descriptions using neuroscientific language (Churchland, 1981). For these materialist views (psychophysical identity theory, epiphenomenalism, eliminative materialism), physically describable brain mechanisms represent the core and final explanatory vehicle for every kind of psychologically described data. These views are extremely counter-intuitive since our most basic experience teaches us that our choice of perspective about how we apprehend our mental states makes a huge difference in how we respond to them (Schwartz et al., 2005).With regard to this issue, we agree with Glannon (2002) that the tendency of modern neuroscience and biological psychiatry toward neurobiological reductionism, i.e., the reduction of persons to their brains (a form of "neural anthropomorphism"), is ill-advised and socially hazardous. We must keep in mind that the whole human person, not merely a part of a brain, thinks, feels, or believes. Indeed, the human person cannot be reduced to neural processes and it is difficult to understand a whole person without understanding the sociocultural context in which the person lives.

Okay, if you are not a neuroscientist, you might prefer to read The Spiritual Brain. My job is to write like a journalist, and I did.

Also at my non-materialist neuroscience blog Mindful Hack:

Alcoholics: Spirituality corks the bottle of spirits

Artificial intelligence: Making the whole universe intelligent?

Theories of Everything: A theory of everything must address consciousness, says prof

Neuroscience watch: Another controversial new finding about nerves

Also, new at the Post-Darwinist:

Dilbert cartoonist: Fossils are bull----
em>Note: I also put up something at the Post-Darwinist on the impact of Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind's jail term for tax evasion.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).