On Brain Science & Philosophy
Much needs to be rewritten
As humans evolved the intellectual capacity for narrative and self, we likely immediately started passing down stories of why. These stories evolved into religion. It seems like the Greeks were the first to have the luxury of time for developing systematic philosophical thinking AND write it down.
Philosophy, in turn, developed well before any understanding of the brain. Without any kind of concepts to draw from, philosophers who even recognized some of the seemingly non-thinking parts of the brain had to kind of dismiss them. In the 17th century, Rene Descartes talked about the mind-body problem and how the mind housed consciousness and self-awareness completely separate from the physical brain. He proposed the mind as a immaterial, non-spatial substance. Talk about woo-woo. The Stoics approached emotions as judgements to be overcome through rational thought with passions (anger, fear, excessive joy, distress) being disturbances that the wise person should eliminate.
As we learned about the brain and began studying it, we finally saw the complex dance inside between rational thought, emotions, instincts, and patterns instilled through experience. Everything needed to be questioned - thought and free will up to the still hotly-debated theories of consciousness. I had this friend in my engineering program, who literally lived in a van down by the river, introduced me to what I call (tongue-in-cheek) ‘philosophy-of-doubt.’ He shared stories of f-MRIs debunking philosophical truisms and spiritual guidance. One example was when they put a master transcendental meditation practitioner in an f-MRI and learned what they did to achieve their “state of timelessness” was turn off the part of their brain that tracks time, our internal clock.
This friend was particularly skeptical of all things and didn’t believe anything he couldn’t understand. I have always tried to approach studies rationally with the acknowledgement that I am bound by my brain’s ability to perceive the world around me and it’s interpretations of such. Much of our neural processing capacity is dedicated to survival. We’re really just a few thousand years past a reality where we could be killed at any moment, so truly understanding mystical interactions between organisms and even the ever-present gravity (we can measure it, but we still don’t know what holds us down) is apparently still out of reach for our survival-wired brains.
Recent philosophers, like Patricia Churchland, who I learned about during a recent visit to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, have pioneered the application of neuroscience to philosophy. Applying neuroscience to philosophical questioning creates radical revisions to seemingly timeless arguments. When I had my traumatic brain injury in my twenties I was extremely worried some of my cognitive deficits would be permanent (including my memory loss) so I dug into any research I could find on healing the brain. I landed on the recently-discovered-but-now-universally-accepted concept of neuroplasticity and found Jill Bolte Taylor and her book My Stroke of Insight. Neuroplasticity proves our brain can reorganize itself structurally in response to experience, impacting how we undestand knowledge and learning (epistemology) and even the nature of mind and body, shattering the long-accepted duality of the two.
All this is to try and say that while philosophers seem like a pipe-smoking bunch in libraries full of leather-bound books that smell of rich mahogany the entire frameworks of philosophy itself are wide open for new interpretations and conclusions. We all have the opportunity to contribute to schools of philosophy, all the way up to Ontology (the study of being and existence). Nobody knows for sure what we’re all doing here and why. And just as neuroscience is truly opening a new door for philosophical direction, AI will barge in to influence and reshape all of it again. I love using The Puzzle framework to organize my thoughts on these things and apply deep and heavy concepts to my every day life for more joy and fulfillment. chop wood. carry water.