Does neuroscience show that the mind is just an illusion?

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Eliminationists generally believe that many common sense psychological concepts, such as desire, belief, and mind, are illusory because they have no corresponding neural basis connections. For example, we can explain the entire mechanism of human eyes seeing red from the perspective of neuroscience and physics, but we cannot explain the subjective feelings after seeing red. Similarly, what exactly is the mind we are talking about? According to Wikipedia's definition, "(it) refers to a series of cognitive abilities that enable individuals to have consciousness, perceive the outside world, think, make judgments, and remember things." Here, only in terms of self-awareness, is the "mind" our brain?

Or, we can ask, does the mind have a material basis? According to Buck's "blind brain hypothesis", the so-called self, mind, etc. are just illusions constructed by the magician - the brain. In other words, those are the reality that it (the brain) wants you to believe. This is different from the strong reductionist claim, which emphasizes that those human spiritual experiences are real, but they can all be detected through neural correlates. There is a group of scientific believers who expect science and technology to render religion useless not only in theory but also in practice. Afterlife systems will be worthless in the eyes of the intellectual elite, theology will be nothing more than ancient relics, and ordinary people will be intoxicated by the natural charm of technology. The new prophets are science fiction writers, who dramatize the consequences of various illusions, including religious beliefs, and folk psychology (also known as folk psychology, editor's note), the naive but always useful self-image - believing that they are conscientious, free and rational, and full of meaningful beliefs and desires.

The end of the world no longer depends on some indisputable divine verdict but on the diligent work of cognitive scientists who deconstruct brain function and explain once and for all who we are and who we have always been.

Some of these believers, known as “eliminativists,” are leading the way, arguing that we can realize now that we are not who we think we are, rather than waiting for a day when all-powerful technology (like downloading your mind into a computer to achieve immortality) becomes available to the masses and scoffs at the old religious confidence.

Buck's blind brain hypothesis

For example, Scott Bakker has proposed the so-called “blind brain hypothesis,” which holds that what common sense and common-sense psychology considers the mind to be can be explained as an illusion that arises from the brain’s external orientation and its blindness to its own nature.

The brain only uses existing functions and uses exploratory learning (best guess) to shape the brain into a "mind", but the information obtained by this model is very limited compared to science, just like an "illusion" - once the truth comes out, this trick will be exposed and no longer work.

We already know the most basic truths, Buck said, and the idea that we are the mind is too naive. We are not the mind, but the brain. The brain is extremely complex. To simplify the problem, we assume that the brain is a self or person with thoughts and feelings. We assume that we have meaningful mental representations because we use these carriers of thoughts and consciousness to represent an object. We also have values ​​and perfect standards that guide us to be good. We believe that we can also think rationally and have a certain degree of self-control, which distinguishes us from robots that are bound by program updates and animals that depend on the environment. We perceive the world from a subjective perspective, and the level of consciousness is both real and immaterial.

But based on what we know about the brain, the whole self-image is an illusion. The brain is our essence (if we have an essence at all), and it is very different from naive notions of self, person, mind, or soul. So, Buck suggests, none of this self stuff is real. The brain "thinks" it is a person because, for millions of years before the scientific revolution and the advent of evolutionary biology, the brain was not in a good position to observe its true essence.

© Singularity HubAfter all, the brain's primary senses are used to detect opportunities and threats in the environment. The brain cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch itself. It is locked inside the skull, tethered behind the blood-brain barrier. Meaning, values, conscience, rationality and free will are just stories told by neurobiologists, not psychological common sense.

Those so-called spiritual qualities are just the brain's perception before it has a deep understanding of itself. At that time, science had not yet provided a third-party objective perspective or the study of other people's brains.

In Buck's words, the "unexplainable" sense of existence, unity, and personal identity is best understood as a "magic trick" that the magician, the brain, performs on itself. "All magic depends on what is called information horizon: the magician is essentially using illusions to manipulate what information you can and cannot access. The audience is isolated, meaning that the information around them appears to be abundant, but it is not."

But once you understand how the magic works, the “magic” disappears. Likewise, cognitive scientists have learned enough about the field of consciousness to recognize how blunt and boring the magic of consciousness and intentionality is. The more we learn about the brain, the harder it is to take low-information mode neuronal processing for granted.

If the magic analogy holds, Buck said, “Subjective phenomena are like magic, they are just things the brain believes in the absence of actual causal relationships. In other words, people only believe in something when some information is missing.”

Even now, Buck cautions, before transhumanism is finalized, we should put our faith in science and realize that even if the illusion of mind persists, we fundamentally know that this self is not real; we know that we will eventually explain our subjective self as something else entirely, or as a misinterpretation of a neural network.

The causality and reality of illusion

Let's go back to the magic analogy. Imagine you are an audience member in a theater, and the magician on stage is performing a simple magic trick. He holds a coin between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, and covers it with his right hand, making it look like he is taking the coin, but in fact he has just hidden the coin somewhere else in his left hand. Therefore, if the audience is asked to guess where the coin is, they will definitely say that the coin is in the right hand, but they will be wrong.

Buck emphasized that the audience made mistakes because they did not get enough information. If the audience stood on the second floor behind the magician, they would see the principles of the magic clearly and would not be misled by the clever hand movements.

There is something wrong with this analogy, however. Theater and magic are designed to mislead the audience. It is no accident that the audience is not allowed to inhabit the stage or to stand behind the stage curtain and peer in. In the terms of common sense psychology, the magician's goal is to mislead the audience, and the audience wants to be misled for the purpose of entertainment.

Specifically, the magician knows exactly what he wants the audience to see and what steps need to be performed to achieve his goal. The illusion created by magic is not just the difference between the scene the audience sees and the actual scene on the stage. The action of hiding the coin is just a means to bring about the expected picture. The illusion is not accidental, but the overall result of everyone being somewhere in the theater.

Now, common sense psychology’s mental representations, magic tricks, and choices to mislead or be misled are what Buck wants to eliminate in line with the development trend of cognitive psychology. Science, based on background conditions, can only show how the causal sequence of similar systems may unfold. Therefore, in order to complete the above analogy, Buck also has to replace ordinary references to the beliefs and motivations of magicians and audiences (such as conscience, subjectivity, and psychological state) with objective, causal, technical descriptions of the scenes performed in the theater.

Suppose we have such a scientific explanation. Please note that this explanation does not contain any negative evaluation of the scene that the audience sees. The "illusion" of the magician taking the coin with his right hand is not false, but the objective effect at the end of a carefully arranged causal chain.

In short, the trick is this: the magician is able to do two things at once, one of which is unknown to the audience and the other is in front of them, so that his delicate hand movements make it appear that he has hidden the coin with his right hand, but in the eyes of the audience, he has indeed hidden the coin with his right hand, because from the audience's limited perspective, this is the real action they see.

Buck wants to show that the audience has a limited perception of "information content," and that this is just a non-compliant way of sneaking semantic distinctions through the back door. The audience's perception of the magic trick is not a distraction compared to the signal of where the coin actually is. The magician sends two signals, one that he wants the audience to receive, and the other that the coin sends to the world itself, because the magician cannot really perform a miracle.

Therefore, anyone standing behind the magician will find out where the coin is, but the magician carefully arranges it to bring an exciting performance, making people feel that he has super powers on the stage. The two signals are equal in information content. The difference is that the signal received by the audience does not reflect the true location of the coin, and both the stage setting and the brain's neural connections help the magician mislead, causing the audience to be willing to be deceived.

Once again, the scientific description follows a similar logic: the brain, skills and "intention", along with the arrangement of the theatre (the stage is separated from the audience) come together to produce the picture of the coin miraculously passing from the right hand to the left hand. From the perspective of the larger real-world system, the coin never leaves the left hand, and this is the scientific explanation.

However, there is no scientific distinction between illusion and reality, only objective cause and effect. The "illusion" caused by magic is a real effect brought about by a carefully arranged system. This effect is: the magic coin. In the system that most people in the theater cannot see, there is another effect: the coin is an ordinary entity, but the magician uses a clever trick to deceive the audience into believing it.

Two systems, two causal chains, and finally two effects. This is the scientific explanation.

The incoherence of pragmatism and eliminativism

Compared with the deeper reality, the discussion of illusion requires the presupposition of real semantics, the representation or misrepresentation of facts by symbols. If common sense psychology is wrong, and subjectivity, consciousness or semantics do not exist, then illusions will not exist. Illusions can only be the real product of a specific system.

If you dip a stick into the shallow end of a lake, the stick will appear to bend because of the interaction of light and the ripples on the lake; if we embrace science and discard common-sense psychology, then there will be no illusions or errors, because there will be no mental representation of the stick and therefore no right or wrong.

© Imgur There are two systems here: the first is the stick in the water, in which case the water usually cannot bend the stick on its own; the second is the stick and the water, and the observer's brain - receiving the light reflected back from the water to the eye, and producing an image of the underwater wavy object.

This image is not false, nor is it an illusion or low-information. It is what happens naturally in this or that scenario. That's all the scientists say. There is nothing deeper here unless we assume the difference between what is true and what is false in common sense psychology.

Let us add a pragmatic point: some models are more influential than others, but this is of no use to the eliminativist approach to magic. The two systems that apply in the theater affect both the magician and the audience. The magician studies his craft and earns money for his tricks; the audience gains entertainment and an experience full of shock and wonder by suspending disbelief and surrendering to the magician's tricks, because from the audience's perspective, the magician is performing miracles.

But the eliminativists argue that miracles are fake, that one description of events is superior to another. Only the magician knows what is really going on, and the audience is the object of the dupe. But when we look only to science for objective facts in the theater, these evaluations cannot be made.

The social function of the concept of “obsolescence”

It should also be noted that if neuroscience ends up being just a re-description of common-sense psychological concepts such as subjectivity, consciousness, meaning, truth, etc., then eliminativism also fails. If the models of neuroscientists can be translated into the language of common-sense psychology, there is no obvious reason to abandon the latter, because both are just different ways of saying the same thing. One or another language/model may be more useful in different contexts, but this does not mean that common-sense psychology is useless and can only be explained by neuroscience.

This is different from some concepts that have been eliminated by science, such as the theological concept of witches in Christianity. This concept is not only a simplification of a certain socio-biological phenomenon in nature, but also a tool of theocracy to control the people by persecuting non-believers. The witches in the Christian concept may not be real, but the social role they carry is not false. They are indeed a tool to strengthen people's faith and make them obey authority with fear. Monsters may not be what we simply think they are, but the concept of monsters has certain social functions.

© BritannicaThe Christian concept of witches became obsolete not because science refuted theology, but because liberalism and capitalism overthrew theocracy and feudalism in Europe. Modern people are no longer as keen on obeying ancient creeds as they were in the past, but are focused on freedom and making money in an era of scientific and technological development. Why burn people when you can sell them things and make money?

The idea of ​​a mind or person, the eliminativist wants to say, is as empty as a witch or a goblin. But given that witch is a simplified way of referring to a wayward, epileptic, or unlucky foreign woman, the concept is not empty. It is repugnant and deeply unfair, but not completely meaningless. Similarly, if the naive concept of the self is a simplified way of talking about the brain, the most complex object in the universe we know of, then the concept of a conscious subject is meaningful.

The degree to which each research method is useful varies from topic to topic. If cognitive science can provide an alternative/more accurate tool for the self and a new society where common sense psychology is no longer useful, then pragmatism defeats eliminativism.

The unusual reality of the Anthropocene

We have another problem with eliminativists. Suppose we all agree that the naive conception of the mind is false, as nonexistent as witches, vampires, and unicorns. Would eliminativists stop implicitly using common-sense psychological concepts to explain the Anthropocene?

After all, it seems that the brain’s shortsightedness produces what eliminativists call conscious “illusions” that are objective rather than having an observable effect in the real world. Specifically, our species has conquered the Earth—with hubris and self-destruction, and not the slightest bit of wisdom or responsibility, as you can see in the documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet.

Eliminationists must explain the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, or else they must explain the objective fact that human activity is so profound that it changes the brain at a neural level and affects geology, without using scientific models that implicate common sense psychology.

© Dog Section PressBut all animals have some kind of neural control center, and the human brain is particularly similar to that of chimpanzees. In any case, while the neural architecture of some other species, such as octopuses, crows, and dolphins, has produced moderate levels of intelligence, these animals clearly haven’t broken through the biological barriers that we have.

Eliminationists should therefore consider whether differences between human and animal brains explain their different impacts on the planet.

© Postcognitive Topics Chaos theory tells us that small changes in initial conditions can bring about very different and huge effects. But this still cannot explain why humans have such abnormal effects when there are only small differences between the brains of humans and animals. The question is whether neuroscience is enough to explain why we do not maintain dynamic balance in a certain ecological niche like animals, but instead wantonly occupy every corner of the planet, disrupting the ecological balance and seemingly causing the sixth mass extinction.

Transhumanism and hubris

From what we know, the best explanation for that anomaly is that we overcame the limitations of our brains and biology by developing language and culture to give ourselves psychological and social identities.

The common-sense psychology concept of the self is an essential part of this causal chain. Our clever way of thinking about ourselves makes us behave like humans, like masters of the earth, rather than animals. To use Barker’s magic analogy, just as a magician sets up a stage and stages a supernatural scene, the brain tricks itself into invoking the mind, and the brain either intentionally or unintentionally creates a non-animal lifestyle.

Either way, the concept of self is not optional, because it has important consequences for the real world. Likewise, if we want to explain how the Christian theocracy works, we need to understand concepts of witches and demons. To be sure, if you’re interested in what exists and doesn’t exist in nature, then you know that these theological concepts are long outdated. But the eliminativists don’t have any scientific explanation for reality, because reality is closely tied to supposedly outdated common-sense ideas around meaning and truth.

If we adopt pragmatism, two views can only refute each other if they serve unrelated purposes. In the pragmatist's world of scientific philosophy, the search for reality, facts, or truth is futile.

© Pinterest Even if we move away from this pragmatism, the eliminativist faces the awkward question of whether neuroscience can be explained by physics. Is the brain also unreal, an illusion created by chemical reactions, just as the mind is seen as an illusion created by the brain? If so, the scientific explanation that the eliminativist holds is tantamount to a kind of mysticism, since it regards everything we perceive in the world as unreal. Instead, science is a useful means that enables us to understand the world well enough to control it.

Science itself thus presupposes the egotism and hubris of common-sense psychology. Perhaps transhuman thinking will develop into a metaphysical explanation for why we ignore everything we currently take to be real, both mental and physical, and perhaps this will change not only consumer society but also the instrumental advantages of science. In that case, eliminativism and common-sense psychology are just the pot calling the kettle black.

By Benjamin Cain

Translated by Yord

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