The Modern Paradigm of Mind

Dr. Sarfaraz K Niazi (e-mail: niazi@niazi.com)

I think, therefore, I am. RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650). Principes de la Philosophie. Bk. i, sec. 7.

The Big question remains: who am I? What is it that makes me act myself? Who or what controls my actions and make me do things that perpetuate my race? What is the material nature of I? Is I in me or outside me? Philosophers have long tried to answer these questions since man began to think, or I was created. Modern theories of science have continued their assault on the question and though we haven't found the answer, we have come a long way.

The mind or soul was for long considered an integral part of the body. The mind resided in different parts of our body, the most popular being the heart, as the Bible says. There was apparently no problem accepting this concept until about about three hundred years ago. In the seventeenth century came Rene Descartes who at the tender age of 24 proved to be one of the most influential philosophers. Before the time of Descartes, mind and body were considered one and it was sacriligous to cut open or take apart a cadaver. Descartes suggested that mind is separate from the body and that God is the mediator between the two.The dichotomy created by Descartes-Cartesian Dualism-gave the philosophers of the last three centuries sufficient to dwell on. Numerous theoretical extensions of Descartes' theory were presented but all appeared incomplete until recently.

Psychobiology, the science of mind's attempt to know itself through the study of the brain has opened new horizons for our brain to explore. Diane Hales writes, "The cause of our vulnerability may lie not in our stars or in the twist of the fate, or in roving pathogens, but in ourselves." We are now rediscovering that in God's world everything is one and mind can not be separated from body. Notice the word mind, not brain. Brain remains the physical site where most of the body's activities and functions originate or are controlled. Mind, on the other hand, is the totality of what makes us human. But they are integral to each other.

Is brain same as mind? The more we learned about brain, the more this question became difficult to answer. To material scientists only matter is real, nothing else. For them mental phenomena or what we call mind are all products of material phenomena. Logical Positivism asserts the primacy of observations in assessing the truth of statement of facts. Arguments not based on observable data are meaningless. To these philosophies, separation of mind as a non-material entity is not possible. Gregory Bateson puts his theory of unification of mind and brain elegantly, "Mind is no more separate from body than velocity is separate from matter. Or than accelaration is separate from velocity." This is in contrast to Descartes' concept or Cartesian Dualism where the observer (you) is separate from the observed (the rest of the universe).

The modern description of mind is derived after the brilliant philosophy of Max Planck. Proposed on December 14, 1900, his theory of quantum physics states that energy is emitted in bundles or quanta. It also states that the dualism of observer and observed is an illusion. I and the universe are one. Literally. To a Westerner this concept may seem strange, to a Sufi, Taoist or Buddhist it is but natural.

Fred Alan Wolf in his book, Taking The Quantum Leap, suggests that "mind" is a property of all matter or energy, right down to peptides, atoms, electrons and quarks. The molecule's "mind" makes the random choice. For example, if the choice is "up" the molecule will fit into receptor and inhibit a function; if the choice is "down," opposite will happen. Neurons receive hundres of signals every millisecond leading to either on or off state of the neuron or whether to fire or not to fire-withuot question! There are therefore trillions of decisions made every millisecond inside the 3 pound mass of cells we call brain. And all these choices by molecular and atomic centers combine to what we call our mind or sense of awareness or self-consciousness or I. And that's the theory of reality-relatively speaking. The quantum theory describes a probability of something happening-happening suddenly and thus declares dependence of mind on brain than otherwise. Therefore, the modern science discards the dualism concept of Descartes. But unlike pre-Descartes monistic paradigms, it proposes the theory of all-in-one with no concept of any perpetual components; the dilemma of desecration of soul therefore does not arise because it is an epiphenomenon of brain.

The scientific paradigm of human brain is that it is an electrochemically powered organ. The mind or I either resides in brain or around it and it is most likely a creation of brain, of its electrochemical activity, like the static current around objects.

The energy required for mind to function comes during waking hours through the brain mechanisms. The mind vanishes when the brain mechanisms cease to function due to injury or due to epileptic intereference or anesthetic drugs or even during sleep. Apparently some specialized brain mechanisms switch off the power that energizes the mind each time it falls asleep. It switches the power on upon awakening-a means of relieving fatigue of brain. In either alternative, the mind has no memory of its own. The brain, like any computer, stores whatever it learns during its lifetime. The recorded data are, however, instantly available while awake and perhaps in a distorted manner during asleep--what we call dreams.

The epiphenomenon or the semi-monistic paradigm of mind and brain supported by the current scientific theories leads to speculation that I can indeed be found in the brain since it is a creation of the brain. Dr. Wilder Penfield, the famous neurosurgeon in the 1930s tried to locate "mind" in the brain. Hundreds of surgeries performed by Dr. Penfield showed that brain itself has no sense of perception and feels no pain. Surgeries performed in conscious subjects showed that there was no "mind" in the brain but there were areas in brain to which mind interacted with. Dr. Penfield discovered these centers in 1943. These brain centers however did not qualify as mind to Penfield, who suggests that mind and brain are two different forms of energies.

Based on Penfiled's observations question arises what happens to mind when the brain goes to sleep? Two hyopotheses are now possible when mind vanishes. First, the mind no longer exists since it is only a function of brain action. It is recreated each time the highest brain-mechanism goes into normal action. In the second case, the dualistic concept, mind is viewed as a basic element in itself, a medium, an essence, a soma which has continuing existence. Therefore, when mind vanishes, it goes silent, it has no longer any connection to brain but it exists and takes control when the highest brain-mechanism go into action.

The problem in raising questions about the vanishing mind are elusive since the answer, we assume, would be presented in a language understood by us. Our concept of energy is based on principles of physics which may well be modified in the near future. The understanding of matter and the understanding of truth may not be complimentary. The paradigms of reality, human brain and positivism are only paradigms not realities, as we best define the word. Perhaps what we see around us is only a reflection of our own vision, happening because we are trying to visualize us from outside. Perhaps whatever is around us does not even exist.

More perplexing than the thought of whether we exist or not is the reality that something, material or otherwise, is our master, regardless of the independence of our actions and our "thoughts." All humans, regardless of their intelligence or other attributes are forced to perform similar functions that promote survival and perpetuation of race. As if we have been programmed like slaves. All species perform functions dictated by their brains or mind. From where does our mind or brain get the blue-print of our actions?

If mind does have dimensions other than what we know then mind must know the answer, how it came into existence. Why doesn't it communicate with our brain. One possibility is that we need further evolution to understand it and the second, more fearsome, is that if we are told, we may refuse to obey. One day, sometime in the future, say a few million years from now, we will come to know all the answers. On that day, paraphrasing Penfield, all prophets will smile.

[14 September 1990 The Daily Dawn]