Nicole Rust on Nostr: Why a (reductionist) statement from a popular undergrad neuroscience textbook is ...
Why a (reductionist) statement from a popular undergrad neuroscience textbook is misleading
"In neuroscience, there is no need to separate mind from brain; once we fully understand the individual and concerted actions of brain cells, we will understand our mental abilities."
Bear, Mark; Connors, Barry; Paradiso, Michael A.. Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, Enhanced Edition (p. 24).
The problem with this statement is that "more is different".
https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf
In that classic paper, Anderson explains why, in broad strokes, all of science doesn't just boil down to physics if elementary physical laws govern all happenings in the universe. The answer is that "the ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe." This is because new properties emerge from collective behavior of the parts. Because of it, we need chemists, biologists, psychologists and sociologists (not just physicists).
In principle, one could infer the collective behavior of a system by exhaustively studying its parts and all their interactions; this is indeed where emergent properties come from (they are not mystical). In practice, this is not how science works; rather, when studying a complex system, one begins with the phenomenon that needs to be explained and then investigates its mechanism. For instance, if you want to understand the collective behavior of birds flying, you begin with an understanding that they flock (and some description of it); you don't begin by studying the rules that govern the flying decisions of one bird and then two and then three and the build a model of collective behavior that suggests flocking (and then, for the first time, take a peek).
The problem with the Bear et al statement is that it implies that the order of operations is to exhaustively investigate the brain alone before taking a peek at the mind/behavior. It's precisely the fallacy that Anderson wrote about in 1972. (Note: I suspect the authors don't really believe it and it's just badly worded; I suspect that what they intended to argue against was a non-material soul that causally influences behavior; but I don't know.)
"In neuroscience, there is no need to separate mind from brain; once we fully understand the individual and concerted actions of brain cells, we will understand our mental abilities."
Bear, Mark; Connors, Barry; Paradiso, Michael A.. Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, Enhanced Edition (p. 24).
The problem with this statement is that "more is different".
https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf
In that classic paper, Anderson explains why, in broad strokes, all of science doesn't just boil down to physics if elementary physical laws govern all happenings in the universe. The answer is that "the ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe." This is because new properties emerge from collective behavior of the parts. Because of it, we need chemists, biologists, psychologists and sociologists (not just physicists).
In principle, one could infer the collective behavior of a system by exhaustively studying its parts and all their interactions; this is indeed where emergent properties come from (they are not mystical). In practice, this is not how science works; rather, when studying a complex system, one begins with the phenomenon that needs to be explained and then investigates its mechanism. For instance, if you want to understand the collective behavior of birds flying, you begin with an understanding that they flock (and some description of it); you don't begin by studying the rules that govern the flying decisions of one bird and then two and then three and the build a model of collective behavior that suggests flocking (and then, for the first time, take a peek).
The problem with the Bear et al statement is that it implies that the order of operations is to exhaustively investigate the brain alone before taking a peek at the mind/behavior. It's precisely the fallacy that Anderson wrote about in 1972. (Note: I suspect the authors don't really believe it and it's just badly worded; I suspect that what they intended to argue against was a non-material soul that causally influences behavior; but I don't know.)