IS IT A BRAIN OR A MIND?

Do we mean something different when we talk about "brains" and "minds", or are
these two words simply synonyms? The history of Western philosophy would sug-
gest that "brain" and "mind" are linguistic equivalents of the dualism between
"soul" and "body". A "brain" is something physical with scientific rules of operation.
"Mind", on the other hand, is a far less clear concept with its subjectivity and
emotions. Philosophers have been known to make such claims as: "Mind is as wide
as the universe itself". Now quite clearly, it is not the bundle of cells in our heads
that is being referred to here, but something far more expansive: in a nutshell, it
is the ability of human beings to formulate abstract thought accompanied by the
most profound feelings. Of course, it is a fairly recent phenomenon for humans to
locate the essence of their being inside their skulls. For millennia, wise men and
philosophers preferred to believe that the seat of the emotions and abstract
thought lay inside the heart. This fact can still be observed in our use of language
today: we learn something "by heart"; a cruel person is "heartless"; a courageous
person has a lot of "heart"--and so on. The Egyptians were so convinced that the
soul lay in the heart, that they carefully embalmed and preserved that organ
when preparing a corpse for burial. The brains, in contrast, were regarded as
mere stuffing for the head and were unceremoniously hooked out through the
nose! In the present day, our knowledge has grown concerning the functions of
the brain, but neuro-scientists are still largely in the dark when it comes to ex-
plaining the functionality of the billions of neurons that are continually firing in-
side our heads. On the other hand, everyone knows what mind is like (or at least
they think they do!) "Mind" is the process of thought and emotion through which I
am able to connect with other humans and the world in general. It is possible to
explain our thoughts and emotions, the things we think and the things we feel, in
the knowledge that these experiences are also shared by other "minds". However,
neuro-science is only just beginning to understand some elementary things about
the ways in which our "brains" give birth to the thoughts, ideas and emotions of
our "minds". Much has been understood about the visual cortex and how the eyes
and brain react together to give us sight. Furthermore, the posterior parts of the
brain that deal with motor function have also been studied intensely. However,
the connections between the brain's frontal lobes and the abstract thoughts and
emotions of "mind" remain almost completely unaccounted for--and this inability
to understand how the "brain" gives us the abilities of "mind" goes a long way to-
wards explaining the continuing dichotomy between these two concepts.

Another problem concerning "brain" and "mind" is the way we have invented two
different sciences for explaining them. The activities of the human "brain" is stud-
ied by the neuro-biologist, but the "mind" is the territory of the psychologist. Evo-
lutionary psychologists try to link the two together, but continue to explain their
theories with flow charts and diagrams that are totally unrelated to the physio-
logical structures of the brain. Chomsky and Steven Pinker have told us, for ex-
ample, that language is (respectively) an "innate" gift and an "instinct"; yet nei-
ther has produced any evidence linking their ideas to specific functions and areas
of the brain--another clear sign that they are dealing with the "mind" rather than
the "brain". There is something decidedly pre-Socratic about the way, psychia-
trists and psychologists allow themselves to blithely talk about the "mind" without
any real understanding of the human "brain". The evolutionary psychologists tend
to be equally deductive when speaking about the importance of human genes:
everything (they say) can be explained by genes--but many of these psychologists
have an ignorance of the human genetic make-up that is only equalled by their
lack of knowledge concerning the human brain! For instance, we are continually
given the old fact that the human genetic make-up is more than 99% the same as
that of a chimpanzee. However, we rarely hear that dandelions share 35% of their
genetic make-up with humans! Perhaps, then, the important point would be to
try and understand why a disparity of less than 1% between humans and chimpan-
zees make us so profoundly different.

The present dualism that exists between "brains" and "minds" is certain to con-
tinue until more profound connections are made between the functioning "brain"
and the "mind" that thinks and feels. In the final analysis, it is likely to be neuro-
science that makes these essential connections rather than the more pretentious
but less effective "science" of psychology.