Confusing the Mind with the Brain
Posted: 31 August, 2011
By Fikayo Adeyemo
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It has always been common in general conversation to speak of the brain and the mind in interchangeable ways, practically rendering them as synonyms. To go a step further, some scientists modify this position by claiming that the mind is the "function" of the brain. Yet, no concept can be further from the truth. As rightly pointed out by Lars N. Dahle (1896), equating the brain with the mind or making the mind a function of the brain is "confusing the worker with his machine" The issue has now become quite heated in light of many recent advances made in the different fields of the neuro-sciences, especially the identification of physical and chemical explanations for intellectual functions. In the wake of these, many scientists are even imagining that there is no such thing as the mind after all. They reason that what was called the mind is really the brain at work. In a word, according to them, we have, quite literally, lost our minds. But the question remains as to whether such discoveries mean that the mind is an attribute of the brain. The answer, of course, is a resounding NO. Let us now see the true picture in the light of the truth, the Word of God. To the believer, there is a spiritual mode of existence and there is life after physical death. That post-death life is associated with the mind and all its functions - memory, cognition, etc. The lengthy conversation between the certain rich man who just died and Abraham who had been long dead as recorded in Luke 16:22-31 is very instructive. Now, we all know that the brain does not survive physical death but is recycled to dust. Therefore, these deep intellectual activities in the post-death state between the two men could not have been possible if the brain is the same as the mind, or the mind is an attribute or function of the brain - since the presumed source of the activity had been destroyed. So, what is the real situation? We humans are created as trichotomous beings, consisting of spirit, soul and body. The body, of which the brain is a part, is composed of matter which is physical substance while the spirit and the soul are made of another substance called "spirit" which is immaterial. Our consideration here is on the body and the soul. Now, the faculties of the soul are the Intellect (mind), the Volition (will) and Emotion. This is to say that contrary to the misconceptions of some scientists, the mind is spiritual and not physical at all. It is the seat of intellect and it is the "worker" in the above analogy while the brain is its "tool". The mind merely expresses itself through its obedient servant - the highly sophisticated material and mortal brain. Comparisons with the Computer A more contemporary analogy is the relationship between the software and the hardware in computer systems. The centrally- stored software is the mind of the computer while the Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the brain. While we may be very impressed with the enormous power of today's microcomputing hardware (processor speed, RAM size, Hard disk size, networking connectivity specs, etc) the real credit belongs to the software in which the "intellectual logic" is resident. Without the software, the hardware, with all its fanciful specifications, remains a piece of useless assemblage of silicon, wire and plastic. This is exactly the same way the brain too, is absolutely inconsequential to us without the direction and oversight of the mind. Another plausible analogy is the relationship between a business software and its associated Report Viewer. Scientists are like a group of company Board members beholding the impressive printouts of analytic corporate performance for the current fiscal period. So impressed are they with the ability of the ReportViewer in producing different stunning and informative documents that they begin to give great kudos to the ReportViewer - even refering to it as "the computer" or "the software" in statements such as "The software was able to identify all the Receivable accounts ...". The truth of the matter is that it was not the ReportViewer that identified the Receivables - nor does it even have any intellectual logic to do it. That credit goes to the actual accounting software which did all the work and passed the results to the ReportViewer to do its fanciful presentations. Yes, that is all that the brain is doing - Presentations. It is the mind that performs the underlying intellectual work, which is a spiritual issue. But lest we are mistaken, we must stress that even the work of "presentation" is serious work indeed. It requires its own sophisticated abilities. This is why the brain is so complex. All we are saying is that just as the ReportViewer is not the originator of the business information that it so competently presents, so is the brain not the originator or controller of intellectual capacity but an exhibitor of what it has been directed to do. Therefore, if brain research now discovers physical and chemical explanations of intellectual functions, let there be great restraint in concluding that these discovered molecules and processes are the directors of intellectual capacity. The truth is that they are the obedient executors of the instructions given by the mind, which is spiritual and beyond the scope of material scientific instruments of observation. Proper Role of Science Science was never designed to investigate spiritual entities like the mind and thus, its tools are not only inadequate, they are abyssmally inappropriate. Nonetheless, brain reasearch should continue to be intensified for at least three reasons: First, there is great merit in knowing the full range of the functions that the mind passes to the brain to execute. Of course, there is no guarranty that what science will discover necessarily defines the whole scope of the capacity of the mind. Rather, it will be the subset that is deemed needful for the attention (and capacity) of the brain. Second, there is much to learn from the intricacies of how the brain performs its servant role, and how it can be helped to do it better. Third, it would be interesting to know, if at all possible, the manner of functional communication that exists between the mind and the brain, and the implication of communication for psychological and psychiatric phenomena. No, we have not lost our minds: we have only been looking for it where it does not exist - in the lowly room of its servant rather than in its exalted mansion which physical science doesn't have the required access to. Fikayo Adeyemo |
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