Dionysus Forums Archives - John Eccles on Mind and Brain

#21

10-09-2004, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digital Cuttlefish

Since you do not believe in coincidence, this is not surprising. (BTW, your link is not working for me.)

Sorry, I transcribed the numbers wrong. Here is the correct link.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#22

10-09-2004, 12:32 PM

The Self and Its Brain

Well, after reading this person's review of The Self and Its Brain at amazon.com, it apparently didn't dissuade them from believing either Eccles or Popper were dualists.

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This is a book in three parts. The first, is on the self; written by philosopher of science Karl Popper. The second is on the brain; written by neurologist John Eccles. The third part is transcript of dialogues between the two. But here's the thing. They are both body/mind interactionists, or shall we say, dualists living in a world of materialism.

First, my obligitory disclosure. Eccles section is slow going if you are not well familiar with brain science, so my review focuses on section one and three. (I tried to read Eccles section, but it proved too much.)

Popper starts off by distinguishing three 'worlds' (not literal, but metaphorical) of things. World 1 is the world of physical matter; world 2 is the world of subjective thought; and world 3 is that of objective thought (thought translated into language, creative product or something else 'apart' from your subject. He then tackles what he regards as mistaken philosophies in the traditions of materialism and paralellism. As the book was written in 1977, most of the views he tackles - like the behaviorist assertion that mind doesn't really exist but as impulses - no one really believes anymore. As a result, much of this is not very exciting.

Both his section and the final section of dialogue between Eccles and Popper are very slow going in that Popper, in particular, rehashes his views on mind/brain interaction, the 3 worlds of thought and other previously published scientific views without explaining them or their relevance to his dualism as well as he could have. In the end, I was left wondering a.) is what Popper and Eccles wrote here all that interesting?; and b.) is it at all contreversial? In the end, I answered "no" to the first question - after all, even those of us who profess materialism are, in daily life, practicing dualists. To the second question, I answer "yes". Much of what Popper has to say is going to strike the reader as contreversial. I just don't think it - particularly his 'three worlds' theory - will strike her as relevant or accurate.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#23

10-09-2004, 12:56 PM

How the Self Controls Its Brain

A couple of more amazon.com reviews regarding his more recent book, How the Self Controls Its Brain.

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Editorial Reviews
Book Info
Psychological research on the nature of consciousness and mind-brain interaction. For psychologists and neuropsychologists. Illustrated.

Book Description
In this book the author has collected a number of his important works and added an extensive commentary relating his ideas to those of other prominent names in the consciousness debate. The view presented here is that of a convinced dualist who challenges in a lively and humorous way the prevailing materialist "doctrines" of many recent works. Also included is a new attempt to explain mind-brain interaction via a quantum process affecting the release of neurotransmitters. John Eccles received a knighthood in 1958 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology in 1963. He has numerous other awards honouring his major contributions to neurophysiology.

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The soul found by a neurologist, January 4, 2003

This book is a unique example of a scientific trying to go further of the materialistic approach that prevails in the scientific community.

After the book he wrote with Karl Popper (The brain and its mind) sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize in the 60's, wrote this one, described by him as "the book he had been trying to write during his entire life". Actually, he passed away soon after writing it.

This book is about the search of way to allow the mind to control the brain, and so allowing the very reality of the free will. The main adversary here is the energy conservation law. That law expresses that the total energy in the universe is constant. The problem with free will is that it needs the possibility of a movement (Finally energy) triggered by the mind. He finally found that way, bases in very small cells in the brain whose response to electrical stimulus falls under the laws of quantum mechanics.

The book is in many occasions difficult to follow if you are not a neurologist, but is so well written that you can assess the quality of the arguments even when you can't catch all the technicalities. This book is a must for everyone interested in the relationship between mind and brain, and is the perfect gun, in the battle against a materialistic reductionism of the mind, for those who still believe in the free will and the real existence of the soul.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#24

10-09-2004, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iacchus32

Well, after reading this person's review of The Self and Its Brain at amazon.com, it apparently didn't dissuade them from believing either Eccles or Popper were dualists.

Note, in your third paragraph, that the three "worlds" are metaphorical, rather than literal. One interpretation of this, which is consistent with Eccles, is one I have heard from a few research psychologists: The "mind" is an emergent property of the brain, but as such is a useful level of analysis. At that level, it is true that mind effects brain and brain effects mind, but there is no existence of the mind independently of the brain.

This view is consistent with modern neuroscience and psychology, is consistent with the book reviews you cite, is consistent with the short biographical essays on Eccles that I linked...but is not consistent with Pratt's essay. Now, it could be that Pratt is the only one that gets Eccles right, but I continue to doubt, with more reason now.

*****

A question. Did you find these book reviews before or after you wrote that you had "ascertained by other means" that Eccles had been accurately quoted?

#25

10-09-2004, 07:19 PM

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Originally Posted by Digital Cuttlefish

Most people seem to be under the impression that he was a dualist and, that the two books he wrote, especially the second, was written to support this.

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A question. Did you find these book reviews before or after you wrote that you had "ascertained by other means" that Eccles had been accurately quoted?

No, in fact I just looked them up this morning.

__________________
So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#26

10-09-2004, 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iacchus32

Most people seem to be under the impression that he was a dualist and, that the two books he wrote, especially the second, was written to support this.

There are different definitions of "mind", for those who consider dualism to be "mind and body". The example I gave in my last post would be read by dualists as supporting dualism, and read by materialists as supporting materialism. I get the feeling from reading your posted reviews that he was trying to reconcile dualism with the materialism inherent in his object of study.

Quote:

No, in fact I just looked them up this morning.

Thanks. Um...did your "other means" include any additional reading beyond Pratt's article? If so, could you point me to it? I would sincerely want to see anything that supports Pratt's interpretation.

#27

10-10-2004, 01:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digital Cuttlefish

As I mentioned before, if you followed the corrected link? this is what started it all ...

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This is what started it all, the reference to this excerpt from the previous article The Case for the Existence of God ...

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In the past, atheists suggested that the mind is nothing more than a function of the brain, which is matter; thus the mind and the brain are the same, and matter is all that exists. However, that viewpoint is no longer intellectually credible, as a result of the scientific experiments of British neurologist, Sir John Eccles. Dr. Eccles won the Nobel Prize for distinguishing that the mind is more than merely physical. He showed that the supplementary motor area of the brain may be fired by mere intention to do something, without the motor cortex of the brain (which controls muscle movements) operating. In effect, the mind is to the brain what a librarian is to a library. The former is not reducible to the latter. Eccles explained his methodology in The Self and Its Brain, co-authored with the renowned philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper (see Popper and Eccles, 1977). In a discussion centering on Dr. Eccles� work, Norman Geisler discussed the concept of an eternal, all-knowing Mind.

So here we have Bert Thompson who wrote the article, as well as Norman Geisler who he mentions in the article (which Yahweh refers to on the same thread at the JREF Forums). I had also looked up a couple of other references, a Wikipedia reference and something that looked very similar (if not the same) to the first one you posted, neither of which produced much results. While here's a Wikipedia reference I found this morning, regarding Eccles' second book ...

Quote:

How the Self Controls Its Brain is a book by Sir John Eccles, proposing a theory of philosophical dualism, and offering a justification of how there can be mind-brain action without violating the principle of the conservation of energy.

Eccles calls the fundamental neural units of the cerebral cortex "dendrons", and proposes that each of the 40 million dendrons is linked with a mental unit, or "psychon", representing a unitary conscious experience. In willed actions and thought, psychons act on dendrons and, for a moment, increase the probability of the firing of selected neurons, while in perception the reverse process takes place.

See also: Dualistic interactionism

__________________
So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#28

10-10-2004, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iacchus32

As I mentioned before, if you followed the corrected link? this what started it all ...

Thank you for correcting that. First--no, Eccles's work which won him the Nobel Prize has absolutely nothing to do with his explorations of dualism (sorry, but this was implied in the link. I should have addressed it then, but did not.) His Nobel prize was for helping to discover the mechanism of nerve impulse and synaptic transmission. Ironically, his methodology (which was better than that of his opponents) was used to prove his idea (which had less support than that of his opponents) to be wrong...at least, provisionally wrong. (I say provisionally because Eccles had the idea that synaptic transmission was electric rather than chemical. Research using his superior methodology proved that it was chemical. Now, new evidence suggests that a very small number of synapses may actually have electrical transmission! Eccles was both right and wrong...and more importantly, his methodology was able to show when each type of transmission took place. Very, very impressive work.) So, when your link says that Eccles's Nobel Prize-winning research supports dualism, that is absolutely untrue. It does not deny it either; it does not address it at all.

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Thanks--a quick check, and I find out that our library has this book available. I doubt that is good news for you, but hey--I have already admitted I was wrong twice to you, and I am perfectly willing to do so again. Hmmm...will you accept my evaluation of Eccles, as you did Pratt's? Or if I disagree with Pratt, will you be forced to actually read it yourself? Or...who knows?

#29

10-10-2004, 02:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digital Cuttlefish

So, when your link says that Eccles's Nobel Prize-winning research supports dualism, that is absolutely untrue. It does not deny it either; it does not address it at all.

No, we don't know for a fact that the body of work for which he received the Nobel Prize did not include research along these lines. Now, just because it was not mentioned (maybe it was deemed less significant?), does not mean it was not there.

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Which book, the first one, The Self and Its Brain? or, the second one, How the Self Controls Its Brain? Actually it's the second book that Pratt was referring to here. My mistake. With similar titles, I thought he was referring to the same book mentioned in the first article.

As for me accepting your evaluation of Eccles, if I don't agree with it, I would probably be inclined to read the book. However, since I am not into neuro-science, and versed in all the complexity it entails, the likelihood of that happening anytime soon is next to nil. Or, even if it was likely, it probably won't change my views one way or another which, are not based upon these findings. I tend to concur with the whole cosmological argument presented by Bert Thompson of which this was only one aspect of.

__________________
So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#30

10-10-2004, 03:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iacchus32

Well, given the date of his Nobel Prize-winning research, it would be a remarkable thing indeed for that work (which is cited in psychology, biology, neurology, neurochemistry and other books) to include such things as Pratt claims it does (based on the fact that such things do not appear in the books I mention above). Indeed, since the prize was awarded for a relatively small mechanistic thing (the nature of nerve impulses and synaptic transmission) rather than this much larger thing (the dualistic notion of mind-brain action), I think we can be relatively certain that the body of work for which he won the prize does not include the ideas Pratt gloms onto. Far more likely (though, as always, I stand ready to be disproven) is a scenario in which Pratt reads Eccles, finds a couple of sentences which can be quoted out of context, and suddenly there is a Nobel Prize lauriate who seems to support this wacko view.

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Which book? Actually, I just closed that browser window...but it was the most recent of his books. I will let you know.

Oh, I have no doubt it will not change your views. I think that is the case no matter how it applies to your theory.

As for Thompson, he begins jousting with strawmen in his second paragraph. I will, of course, continue to read it, but this is not an auspicious start. (logically, I need not continue, if his entire argument is based on false premises...but it might be, as they used to say, a hoot.)

#31

10-10-2004, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digital Cuttlefish

In looking back at the original post, Pratt doesn't mention that Eccles won the Nobel Prize for this. He just refers to him as the Nobel Prize winner who rejects Dennet's notion about the "identity theory." It's the other article that makes such a claim.

__________________
So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

#32

10-10-2004, 04:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iacchus32

I agree. But Pratt does note that he is a Nobel Prize winner, and I doubt (but of course, could be wrong) that Pratt would have given the time of day to Eccles had he not been a Nobel Lauriate. When you are dropping names, you don't include nobodies.

Anyway, we shall soon see. Not, as you say, that it will change your opinion.