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Antonio Damasio
Mario Beauregard
Natalia Bekhtereva
Laurence Tancredi
Nina Slanevskaya
Alexander Krel

Philosophy of Mind, Neuroscience and Society

Philosophy is the activity directed at putting up and rationally solving the general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as human existence, knowledge and world phenomena. Philosophy of Mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain (the debates between dualists and monists have been lasting since the times of Ancient Greek philosophy). The answer to the question what is the nature of consciousness and mind (mind is based on neuron firing for monists, but for dualists - mind cannot be reduced to neurons due to its ontologically distinct character) will define the direction of the social policy apart from changing the scientific paradigm. Theories of Mind are connected with ethical and even law issues such as free will and the responsibility of man for his behaviour. Studying the brain work neuroscience can perform scientific revolution if neuroscience manages to solve mind-body problem, especially in social sciences. The findings in neuroscience can serve as empirical evidence for social, political, economic, aesthetic, ethical, law, psychological and theological theories.  You will find both monist and dualist approaches in the following extracts.

I. Antonio Damasio

Professor of Neuroscience Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese neuroscientist working in the USA, University of Southern California where he directs the Brain and Creativity Institute. Besides being a well-known researcher in several areas of neurology, he is a best-selling author of books which describe his scientific thinking.

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain is his book in which the author presents the argument that emotion and reason are not separate but, in fact, are quite dependent upon each other, that the body is the genesis of thought, and René Descartes’ error was the dualist separation of mind and body, and artificial dichotomy between rationality and emotion. According to Damasio’s study rationality does not function without emotional input. His somatic-marker (‘soma’ is a body) hypothesis  proposes a mechanism by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior, particularly decision making; that mind is not even ‘embrained’ but rather ‘embodied’ because the body participates in decision making. Brain and body is one organism, the brain thinks what the body feels, or sometimes the body decides by itself after acquired experience or due to its biological needs. In evolution people had first a body and a very simple way of thinking which became more complicated later. This is his treatment of the controversial ‘mind/body’ relationship.

The quotations from the book Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by A.Damasio, Vintage Books, London, 2006:

1. p. 248. Taken literally, the statement (Descartes: I think therefore I am – N.S.) illustrates precisely the opposite of what I believe to be true about the origins of mind and about the relation between mind and body.

2. p. 248. At some point in evolution, an elementary consciousness began. With that elementary consciousness came a simple mind; with greater complexity of mind came the possibility of thinking and, even later, of using languages to communicate and organize thinking better. For us then, in the beginning it was being, and only later was it thinking.

3. p. 256.  The Cartesian-based neglect of the mind in Western biology and medicine has had two major negative consequences (Damasio means Cartesian separation of mind from body and neglect of mind while treating a sick body – N.S.). The first is the realm of science. The effort to understand the mind in general biological terms has been retarded by several decades, and it is fair to say that it has barely begun.

4. p. 257. (about the second consequence- N.S.) The problem with the rift between body and mind in Western medicine has not yet been articulated by the public at large, although it seems to have been detected. I even suspect that the success of some ‘alternative’ forms of medicine, especially those rooted in non-Western traditions of medicine, is probably a compensatory response to the problem.

5. p. 198.  Since many decisions have an impact on an organism’s future, it is possible that some criteria are rooted, directly or indirectly, in the organism’s biological drives (its reason, so to speak).

6. p. 200. The automated somatic-marker device of most of us lucky enough to have been reared in a relatively healthy culture has been accommodated by education to the standards of rationality of that culture. In spite of its roots in biological regulation, the device has been tuned to cultural prescriptions designed to ensure survival in a particular society.

7. p. 250. Interestingly and paradoxically, many cognitive scientists who believe they can investigate the mind without recourse to neurobiology would not consider themselves dualists.

II. Mario Beauregard

Mario Beauregard, Ph.D., University of Montreal (Departments of Psychology and Radiology, Neuroscience Research Center), more than 100 publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. Because of his research into the neuroscience of consciousness and groundbreaking work on the neurobiology of emotion and mystical experience he was selected by the World Media Net to be among the "One Hundred Pioneers of the 21st Century." In 2006, he received the Joel F. Lubar award for his contribution to the field of neurotherapy.

In his book  The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul , drawing on evidence Beauregard argues that his own work with Carmelite nuns and various other scientific studies show that merely physical explanation for religious experience are insufficient and the self or soul is not simply locked inside the skull. He also claims that materialistic approach has become a prevailing ideology which has been leading the war against ‘psi’ research (research on knowledge or action at a distance, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, or telekinesis) for decades, because any evidence of psi’s validity, no matter how minor, is fatal to their materialistic ideological system.

The quotations from the book  The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul  by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, New York, HarperOne (An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2007:

1. p.xi. The brain, however, is not the mind; it is an organ suitable for connecting a mind to the rest of the universe. By analogy, Olympic swimming events require an Olympic class swimming pool. But the pool does not create the Olympic events; it makes them feasible at a given location.

2. p.xii. But other challenges to materialism exist. Matrerialism must believe that their minds are simply an illusion created by the workings of the brain and therefore that free will does not really exist and could have no influence in controlling any disorder. But nonmaterialist approaches have clearly demonstrated mental health benefits. (…) Jeffrey Schwartz, a nonmaterialist UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles – N.S.) neuroscientist, treats obsessive-compulsive disorder – a neuropsychiatric disease marked by distressing, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts – by getting patients to reprogram their brains. Their minds change their brains.

3. p.xv. Materialism is apparently unable to answer key questions about the nature of being human and has little prospect of ever answering them intelligibly. It has also convinced millions of people that they should not seek to develop their spiritual nature because they have none.

4. p.xv. Materialist neuroscience has long regarded the placebo effect as a problem, but it is one of the best attested phenomena in medicine. For nonmaterialist neuroscience, it is a normal effect that can be of great therapeutic value when properly used.

5. p.155. Many near-death experiences (NDEs) have been reported of varying degrees of credibility. Ram Reynolds’s case is unique for two reasons. First, she had the experience at a time when she was fully instrumented under medical observation and known to be clinically dead. (…) Second, she was able to recall verifiable facts about her surgery that she could not have known if she were not in some way conscious when these events were taking place. (…) Pam Reynolds’s case strongly suggests that: (1) mind, consciousness, and self can continue when the brain is no longer functional and clinical criteria of death have been reached; and (2) RSMEs can occur when the brain is not functioning. In other words, this case seriously challenges the materialist view that mind, consciousness, and self are simply by-products of electrochemical brain processes, and RSMEs are delusions created by a defective brain. (RSMEs – religious, spiritual, mystic experiences- N.S.)

III.  Natalia  Bekhtereva

Natalia P. Bekhtereva  (1924 -2008) was a well-known Russian neuroscientist and physiologist who developed neurophysiological approaches and contributed a lot to the development of Russian neuroscience. She was the founder of the Institute for Human Brain in St.Petersburg where she headed the neurophysiological department of Mind, Creativity and Consciousness, operating under the Academy of Sciences, of which she was elected a member. She had a number of Russian and foreign awards.

In her book The Magic of the Brain and Labyrinths of Life N.Bekhtereva tells us about the achievements and difficulties, which she faced while studying  healthy and sick brains for  many years, and that creativity transforms not only the world but the brain of a creator. The author writes about the attempts to find out the mechanisms of healthy and sick brains activities and about the application of the findings not only to medicine but also to the social life in the state. The author puts up the questions about the essential human characteristics, and what helps people to recover from serious diseases which are difficult to cure, and how the study of the brain can help to answer these questions.

The quotations from The Magic of the Brain and Labyrinths of Life by N.P.Bekhtereva  (Магия мозга и лабиринты жизни, Н.П. Бехтерева, Москва-С.Петербург, изд-во Сова, 2007), (the translation by N.S.).

1. p. 224. A middle-aged woman was being operated (…). There had been no indications that she could die from that particular operation. However, a clinical death happened while she was being operated. The doctors managed to bring her back to life and she did not know anything about her short ‘death’. After waking up she told all that she had had a wonderful dream. She dreamt that she left her body and was watching her body from above. She saw her body and doctors around it and she realized that probably she was dead. She got frightened for her mother and daughter: she had not told them about the operation because she had wanted to tell them about it when it would be over. And having thought about her relatives she suddenly got home. Her daughter was trying on her blue polka-dot dress.  The neighbour came in and said “ Liusenka would like it” (Liusenka was the name of an operated woman. – N.S.) (…). The psychotherapist suggested that he should go to Liusenka’s home to calm her relatives. His suggestion was gratefully accepted by Liusenka and he immediately went to her home. Liusenka’s mother and daughter were greatly surprised when he mentioned the blue dress and the neighbour. They could not understand how he knew about the things which according to ‘all laws of nature’ he could not know. Who told him that?

2. p. 225. Now from ‘that place, from which no one comes back’ returned the whole army of people, that is about 10% (different statistics give different figures)  who describe rather similar ‘dreams’, validity of the evidence is increased by  (1)  the fact that the subject describes the events in his ‘dream’ which took place in a real life but which he could not see, and by (2) the fact of similarity of dreams seen by people having near- to- death experiences in different parts of the world, at least  in its typical variant. It should be emphasized that these people with near-to-death experiences were questioned by different people which also (3) increases the validity of similar events.  

3. p. 226. In the analysis of the phenomenon it is important that a person tells about what he heard or saw not on behalf of the ‘body’ but on behalf of the ‘soul’, which left the body. And the body does not react, it is dead clinically. Who thinks (sees, hears) when the person is alive then?

4. p.  227. We know very well that the damage to the vision and hearing organs, and their neuropaths to the brain, their main part, is necessarily followed by the damage to the vision and hearing abilities respectively. How the soul which has left the body can see and hear? It is quite a reason to say: it cannot be because it can never be and it is a real “Behind the mirror” situation (Bekhtereva uses the term “Behind the mirror” for paranormal phenomena – N.S). That is the problem, the difficulty of which, its solution and responsibility, will force many to refuse from being involved. 

5. p. 233. I know how dangerous it is to go “Behind the mirror”. I know that it is safe to stay on the wide road of science, and in this case  the ‘index of quotation’ will increase and the risk of inflicting unpleasant events will decrease - such as scathing criticism, sometimes with unpredictable threats and even actions. But I think, that everyone on this earth must fulfill his duty as well as he can. (Bekhtereva  means that a scientist must seek for the explanation of the phenomenon if it exists and must not pretend that it does not, see pp. 225-226 –N.S.)

6. p. 271.  These two extremes in the brain activities –  the aspiration to cognize the diversity of the world and the automation – optimally form the functional human brain, where the basic stereotyped activity makes free the territories of brain for non stereotyped activity, and the non stereotyped activity uses the stereotyped one as its foundation.

7. p. 273. If the stereotypes serve first of all for the stabilization and preservation of individuals and society, the human creative activities, though performed with the same tasks, are at the same time a natural guarantee and the only one, for the development and prosperity of our planet.

8. p. 273. The creative human abilities should be revealed and developed for the prosperity of the society.

9. p. 91. My longing for believing into something different from the present conventional belief prevailing in the scientific community and related to the origin of the brain and consequently the origin of man is based exceptionally on the complexity, or as it is thought now the excess of sufficiency of the brain. (Of course, there could have been the mutation of this type, but what could preserve this particular one? And at the same time we could ask where that planet is on which the original requirements to the brain were by many orders higher?)  These thoughts have not withered in me with the years of neurophysiological work with a live brain. (Bekhtereva means that there has not been the development from a simple brain to a complex brain as a result of a more complicated activity according to the theory of evolution, but vice versa we have the fact of non use of the ‘over excessive’  brain potential - N.S.) 

 IV. Laurence Tancredi

Laurence Tancredi is a noted physician and Professor of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, as well as the author of several books on law, ethics, and psychiatry. He
writes about the neural roots of human morality. As a lawyer, Tancredi has consulted in many legal cases involving the effects of toxins on brain function and behavior, as well as criminal cases involving assault, rape, and homicide.

In his new book Hardwired Behaviour: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality, Tancredi poses such questions as: Are the brain and the mind separate? How does the physical brain work to develop moral decisions? Are specific moral rules innate? How important is free will? Neuroimaging and genetic studies have revealed specific brain images that correlate with discrete gene dysfunction to produce a child who is very likely to become highly violent and antisocial as an adult. Imaging studies of true psychopaths, who lack empathic abilities, are demonstrating structural and functional abnormalities in some of these key areas of the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. Tancredi thinks that neuroscience is forcing us to rethink the extent of our personal control over our choices. But how many of us would accept the idea that our personal choices in life are influenced, even determined, by brain biology? Understanding how parts of the brain work and can affect our thinking and behavior may eventually transform our beliefs about personal identity and free will. Our objective should be to use neuroscientific information - including diagnostic measures such as imaging technologies - to address rationally the responsibility of those who commit ‘bad’ or criminal acts. Tancredi examines the role of genetics and early changes in brain biology, and the environmental factors that supplement brain biology to trigger moral versus immoral decision-making. He explains how brain structure and function influence the processing, content of our thoughts and the actions that result in creating a highly original and readable syntheses. If we are indeed ‘hardwired’ for morality, then we may someday have the power to rehabilitate even those who today seem to stand completely outside our moral community, such as the serial killer on death row whom Tancredi interviewed for the book. He claims that due to the rate of new discoveries in brain biology it will become possible to intervene at the most fundamental biological level to affect moral development.

The quotations from Hardwired Behaviour: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality by Laurence Tancredi, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

1. p.11. With more research we are likely to find that other behaviours proscribed in the Ten Commandments or in the Deadly Sins are also influenced by biological factors. Such findings do not suggest that those afflicted with strong biological pressure are without responsibility for their behaviour. But in some cases the biological influences may be so intense as to preclude restraints of behaviour through free will. Neuroscience findings that are supporting the power of biology have been forcing a reexamination of the morality of much behaviour, as well as the importance of handling abnormalities through medicine rather than guilt, shame, and criminal sanctions.

2. p. 13. Could it be possible that we are assigning too much power to “free will” and blaming the perpetrator, who may instead be a “victim” of his or her own biology?

3. p. 20. The biological capacity to react in specific ways may be transferred genetically or result from changes in the biology of the brain brought on by very early conditioning. What seems most likely is that there is usually in operation a combination of selection factors, or the genetic capacity for transferring the trait, and instruction, which refers to an environmental event that may trigger the innate capacity present in the genes.

4. p.25. Although we have yet to discover biological evidence that when a specific physical action or biochemical reaction occurs in the brain it relates in some consistent way to a specific form or dimension of mental activity, the mind-body association is close enough that many researchers in neuroscience believe that a dichotomy between mind and brain does not exist, but that they are one and the same.

V. Nina Slanevskaya

 

Nina Slanevskaya, Ph.D. in Political Science, Director of St.Petersburg Centre for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, Research Director of CEDIMES-St.Petersburg within the French International Research Network of the CEDIMES Institute, her website   

N. Slanevskaya in her article “Moral Agency under Globalization” considers the role of moral agency in the social system in the global context. The author claims that there is a tendency of connecting the findings of cognitive neuroscience with ethical questions (‘moral brain’) which is due to globalization because only neuroscience can produce the empirical evidence of a common human basis in moral thinking which is the prerequisite for the formation of common values (moral agency) necessary for furthering global interconnectedness and creating a global society (global system).

The quotations from “Moral Agency under Globalization” by  Nina Slanevskaya,  pp. 37-58 (from Systems, Structures and Agents under Globalization: European and Russian Tendencies, ed. by Nina Slanevskaya, St Petersburg, Asterion, 2008).

1. p.49. If our moral objective thinking is based on uncontrollable inherited biochemical work of the brain, the conclusion is that no person is responsible for his behaviour and our duty is to help him to improve his moral judgment by pharmaceutical means (…). If society chooses this path, then no doubt a new powerful lever will be used politically. (…) The morality of society does not necessarily coincide with innate moral individual intuitions. In the course of history there has never been any perfect society that has not needed improvement. The prospects of social practice based on ethical intuitionism and Jones’ dualism look like being less gloomy. A human being endowed with spirituality and consciousness which is distinct from material substance can control his behaviour, irrespective of the inherited properties of the brain. Cognitive neuroscience demonstrates that our mind can control brain activity, i.e. the material substance. Thus everyone is responsible for his actions though bad or good surroundings also matter due to human mirror-neuron system and neuroplasticity. The way of improvement is engagement in art, philosophy, religion, meditation, self-hypnosis, treatment through images and so on. (…). However, a person of high moral virtues in the background of an immoral societal system would hardly be successful, so the question is of creating good surroundings in the basis of which lies an adequate political and economic system.

2. p.58. The theoretical interpretations of empirical findings usually find their way in social practice, i.e. applying findings in the way we understand them. Cognitive neuroscience cannot escape this tendency because knowledge, on the whole, is a cultural phenomenon. Thus, contending theoretical approaches presented in the paper demand social and political assessment. The insufficient study of paranormal psychological phenomena by the scientific community hinders the discovery of a new perspective for explaining of what mental states are, why thoughts can change brain waves, how thoughts can be transmitted by telepathy and what moral intuitions are and so on. >>>(.pdf)

VI Alexander A. KREL

Alexander A. Krel ( 1938-2008), a well-known rheumatologist, the author of 300 scientific publications, Academician, the Chief Rheumatologist of St.Petersburg, creates the rheumatic association “Antera” in 1990 (later “Antera, the Institute for Clinical Medicine and Social Work named after M.P. Konchalovsky”), because after many years of his medical practice he arrives at the conclusion that the biological approach used by official medical establishments  leads to an impasse, especially in the case of chronic diseases. Professor A. Krel developed a holistic approach consisting of the following components: the achievements of traditional medicine, psychological help, a patient’s creative, spiritual and religious activities, and the support of the community of people suffering from similar chronic diseases.

In his article “Conception of Holistic Theory (on the basis of experience of 45-year medical practice)”, based on the conference report first published in 2007, Alexander A. Krel  presents his conception of holistic therapy.

The quotation from “Conception of Holistic Theory (on the basis of experience of 45-year medical practice)”, in the journal “Holism and Health”, 2009, No 1, St.Petersburg, pp.4-7 (in Russian).

(p.5) “As a result we managed to get the clinically confirmed recovery or complete clinical-morphological remission lasting for many years for more than one third of our patients including those who were considered to be not curable. In spite of using all significant clinical-biological methods of research and the help from mathematicians, programmers and other specialists during the following years of research and analytical study, we did not get the definite answer: why in a number of cases which seemed to be hopeless we managed to reach wonderful therapeutic result and in other cases under equal conditions the result was rather poor. Later, we understood that the future long lasting success of treatment from chronic rheumatism depends on a patient’s spiritual and mental characteristics.” >>>(web page)