How to Think
About the Mind
Steven Pinker
Newsweek. New
York: Sep 27, 2004.Vol. 144, Iss. 13;
pg. 78, 1 pgs
EVERY EVENING
OUR EYES TELL US THAT THE SUN SETS, WHILE we know that, in fact, the Earth is
turning us away from it. Astronomy taught us centuries ago that common sense is
not a reliable guide to reality. Today it is neuroscience that is forcing us to
readjust our intuitions. People naturally believe in the Ghost in the Machine:
that we have bodies made of matter and spirits made of an ethereal something.
Yes, people acknowledge that the brain is involved in mental life. But they
still think of it as a pocket PC for the soul, managing information at the
behest of a ghostly user.
Modern
neuroscience has shown that there is no user. "The soul" is, in fact,
the information-processing activity of the brain. New imaging techniques have
tied every thought and emotion to neural activity. And any change to the
brain-from strokes, drugs, electricity or surgery-will literally change your
mind. But this understanding hasn't penetrated the conventional wisdom. We tell
people to "use their brains," we speculate about brain transplants
(which really should be called body transplants) and we express astonishment
that meditation, education and psychotherapy can actually change the brain. How
else could they work?
This resistance
is not surprising. In "Descartes' Baby," psychologist Paul Bloom
argues that a mind-body distinction is built into the, very way we think.
Children easily accept stories in which a person changes from a frog to a
prince, or leaves the body to go where the wild things are. And though kids
know the brain is useful for thinking, they deny that it makes them feel sad or
love their siblings.
The disconnect
between our common sense and our best science is not an academic curiosity.
Neuroscience is putting us in unfamiliar predicaments, and if we continue to
think of ourselves as shadowy users of our brains we will be needlessly
befuddled. The Prozac revolution provides an example. With antidepressant and
anti-anxiety drugs so common, critics wonder whether we're losing the ability
to overcome problems through force of will. Many an uncomprehending spouse has
asked, "Why don't you just snap out of it?" But depressed people
don't have lazy souls. The parts of their brains that could "snap out of
it" are not working properly. To depressed people it is objectively
obvious that their prospects are hopeless. Tweaking the brain with drugs may
sometimes be the best way to jump-start the machinery that we call the will.
Prozac shouldn't
be dispensed like mints, of course, but the reason is not that it undermines
the will. The reason is that emotional pain, like physical pain, is not always
pathological. Anxiety is an impetus to avoid invisible threats, and most of us
would never meet a deadline without it. Low mood may help us recalibrate our
prospects after a damaging loss. But just as surgeons don't force patients to
endure agony to improve their characters, people shouldn't be forced to endure
anxiety or depression beyond what's needed to prompt self-examination.
To many, the
scariest prospect is medication that can make us better than well by enhancing
mood, memory and attention. Such drugs, they say, will undermine striving and
sacrifice; they are a kind of cheating, like giving the soul a corked bat. But
anything that improves our functioning-from practice and education to a good
night's sleep and a double espresso-changes the brain. As long as people are
not coerced, it's unclear why we should tolerate every method of brain
enrichment but one.
In Galileo's
time, the counter-intuitive discovery that the Earth moved around the sun was
laden with moral danger. Now it seems obvious that the motion of rock and gas
in space has nothing to do with right and wrong. Yet to many people, the
discovery that the soul is the activity of the brain is just as fraught, with
pernicious implications for everything from criminal responsibility to our
image of ourselves as a species. Turning back the clock on the ultimate form of
self-knowledge is neither possible nor desirable. We can live with the new
challenges from brain science. But it will require setting aside childlike
intuitions and traditional dogmas, and thinking afresh about what makes people
better off and worse off.
PINKER is the
Johnstone Family Professor in the psychology department at Harvard. His books
include "How the Mind Works" and "The Blank Slate."
Letters To The
Editor
Newsweek. New
York: Oct 11, 2004.Vol.144, Iss. 15;
pg. 17, 4 pgs
IN "HOW TO
THINK ABOUT THE MIND," Prof. Steven Pinker states that there is no
"Ghost in the Machine" and describes "the soul" as an
"information-processing activity of the brain." His opinion is not a
scientific fact as he would suggest, but rather a philosophical question. Many
philosophers and scientists would disagree with him, and the question is far
from answered.
RACHEL ZIRLIN
BEVERLY HILLS,
MICH.
PSYCHOLOGIST
STEVEN PINKER DEclares that, whereas many of us are inclined to believe that
the brain is a sort of "pocket PC" for a "ghostly user"
(i.e., an immaterial soul), "[m]odern neuroscience has shown that there is
no user." Not only is this claim false-it is irresponsible. Granted, the
view that there is no soul is widely shared among neuroscientists,
psychologists and philosophers of mind; and our best empirical theories of the
mind make no mention of immaterial souls. But that hardly constitutes a
demonstration that there are no souls, or that, as Pinker says, the soul is the
"activity of the brain." The fact is, any "argument" for
Pinker's conclusion would have to invoke substantive and controversial
metaphysical premises-premises that, by all accounts, would fall well outside
the provenance of any natural science. What's most disturbing, though, is not
that a Harvard scientist like Pinker would blithely claim scientific authority
for some overtly metaphysical doctrine he holds dear, but that a magazine that
purports to be a news source would allow such a claim to slip by.
MICHAEL REA AND
ALVIN PLANTINGA
Dept. of Philosophy,
University of Notre Dame
NOTRE DAME, IND.