Dr. Steven Novella's 'proofs' of the materialistic theory of the mind

Philosophically-challenged materialist Dr. Steven Novella is at it again. He has a rambling post in response to a blogger who challenged his bizarre assertion that 'every single prediction of the materialist theory of the mind has been varified by science.'   He and I had a rather protracted blog debate about this a couple of years ago.  One would think that after his silly assertion was demolished that he would be reluctant to revisit it. Well, no. He again raises the issue.  He put together six assertions that he claims are proven scientifically and thus prove his theory that the mind is caused entirely by the brain. 

It's not even clear what he means by the "cause" of the mind. Novella is philosophically incompetent, and seems to have little engagement with the massive literature on the mind-brain problem in philosophy, which has probably been the most active area of analytical philosophy during the last century. For example,  Novella believes that the problem of how subjective first-person experience can be explained by objective science is a "non-problem".  He believes that intentionality and qualia are trivially explained by biology. Succinctly, he doesn't even understand the questions that the mind-body problem raises, let alone the answers.

His six questions are nonsense, because the inability of materialist ideology to explain the mind is a logical inability, a priori.  Materialism can't explain the mind, because the mind is not material.  I'll elaborate in future posts,  but for now let's take a look at Novella's six 'criteria' that "prove" that the mind is caused entirely by the brain, whatever he means by that.

Novella:

Just how is it clearly established that the brain causes mind?


If the brain causes mind, then:




1- Brain states will correlate to mental and behavioral states.

The correlation is quite poor. Using all available methods of brain assessment-- CT, MRI, fMRI, PET scanning, EEG, MEP, SSEP-- we still cannot correlate even a single thought (mental state) to a brain state with any reliability or reproducibility.  Not one. Of course, activation in certain regions of the brain is seen with fMRI, but the correlation is very loose, and there is nothing even approaching a 1:1 reduction of a mental state to a brain state.

We can't scan you and tell what you're thinking, no matter how we image your brain. Period.

Interestingly, the only way we can tell what you're thinking is by... asking you, and listening to your answer. That is, the only correlation we have is between a mental state and a behavioral state, which is variably reliable.

So the evidence from Novella's first "proof" is that we can't correlate any discrete mental state with a brain state. There are some perceptual states (i.e. visual) that can be correlated very roughly in a few instances, but no sane neuroscientist would say that we now have actual evidence that any discrete mental state (a discrete propositional thought) can correlate with a discrete brain state.

Novella's statement suggests abject ignorance of the state of the science, or willful misrepresentation.

2- Brain maturity will correlate with mental and emotional maturity.

What does Novella mean by "brain maturity"? Mylenation? If so, then there is a vague correlation. Babies are immature, and their brains are incompletely mylenated. What else could he mean by "brain maturity"? Size? Dendritic complexity? Anatomical (gyral) complexity? None of those brain states correlates in any reliable way with mental and emotional maturity. There are mentally/emotionally mature people with brains of all sizes and shapes and structures. There isn't the least bit of correlation.

Gross disease states can correlate, somewhat. A patient with advanced Alzheimers will have brain changes at autopsy that would lead the pathologist to predict that the patient was "immature" in behavior. But aside from gross obvious brain pathology, there is no consistent correlation.

Contra Novella, you can't do an MRI of your prospective spouse to determine how mature/immature he/she is.

I honestly have no idea what Novella means by "brain maturity will correlate with mental and emotional maturity."

It's just a stupid assertion.

3- Changing the brain’s function (with drugs, electrical or magnetic stimulation, or other methods) will change mental function.

Sometimes yes, most times no. There are all sorts of induced changes in brain function that have no effect whatsoever on mental function. I've had MEP stimulation as an experimental subject, and while it made my arm twitch, it had no effect on my mental function. Magnetic fields change brain states, without necessarily changing mental states. Anti-epileptic drugs change brain states, and often do not change mental states (they are often well-tolerated by patients).  Some seizures change brain states on EEG without discernible changes in mental states (so-called occult electrographic seizures). EEG testing is often used to detect occult seizures because there are no changes in mental states that would aid in diagnosis. Electrical stimulation during epilepsy surgery sometimes changes mental states, many times not.

Another stupid assertion by Dr. Novella.

4- Damaging the brain with damage the mind – producing specific deficits that correlate to the area of the brain damaged.

I see damaged brains on a daily basis-- trauma, tumors, stroke, etc. Sometimes I cause the damage myself (by placing a catheter in the brain to drain fluid). The specific mental deficits are highly variable, not the least predictable and very often there are no deficits at all. I've personally inserted at least 3000 catheters into patients' brains, and I've not once seen a change in a mental state from a catheter insertion that passes deep through brain tissue.

Certain areas of the brain (the speech areas, the motor areas, the visual areas, the brain stem) do have functions that are reliably interrupted by injury. Injury to most areas of the brain (association areas) does not reliably cause a change in mental states. I've removed major portions of fronal lobes for epilepsy and tumors in patients who were awake and talking to me while I was operating (under local anesthesia). I've never seen a discernable change in mental state during such surgery.

Notably, the least predictible associaton between brain damage (state) and neurological function is in mental states, what we normally think of as the mind.

Yet another stupid assertion by Novella.

5- There will be no documentable mental phenomena in the absence of brain function.

I don't know, and neither does Novella. There have been tens of millions of people (at least) who have had near-death experiences in which they had mental experiences during cardiac asystole and lack of brain perfusion.

This is a heterogenous group, and some of the experinces many have been due to drugs, endogenous neurotransmitters, etc. However, a substantial minority of these patients have corroborated experiences, in which the reality of the experience seems to check out.  For example, the patients recount detailed conversations or events in the hospital room during their cardiac arrest.

I know of two patients (of colleagues of mine) who claimed to have watched their brain surgery from outside of their bodies. One patient watched while she was in full cardiac arrest (done intentionally to repair an aneurysm), and after the surgery could identify in detail the instruments that she saw being used.  Another patient (a five year old boy) described watching his own complex skull surgery in detail to the surgeon who performed it (I know the surgeon personally).

I don't know if any of these are real. Neither does Novella. But his statement that there are "no documentable mental phenomena in the absence of brain function." is rank b.s. There are tens of millions of people who've had these experiences, and many have been documented and corroborated.

Are they all nuts? Are they all lying? Are they all deluded? Dr. Novella thinks so, but his opinion is based on his bias, not on any evidence.

Novella's asserts that "there will be no documentable mental phenomena in the absence of brain function." He couldn't be more wrong.  There are thousands of meticulously documented near death experiences, and there's even a scientific journal devoted entirely to their study. One of course can raise all sorts of questions about these experiences, but they are very well documented in the scientific literature.

Novella's no fool. He is as aware of this as I am.

Novella's assertion-- "no documentable mental phenomena"-- is simply a lie.

6- 

When the brain dies, mental function ends.

Ditto.  If Novella has scientific evidence proving that there is no afterlife,  I'd love to see it.

Novella:

Three through six are specific to the brain causes mind hypothesis and are not predicted by the mind causes brain hypothesis. There are now countless experiments and cases in which it is clearly demonstrated that doing something to the brain reliably results in a change of the mind. The arrow of causation is clear.

What tripe. Novella's "proofs" are sophomoric materialist boasts with no basis in medicine, science, or even reason. If one is to take these silly proofs seriously,  they suggest that the brain does not "cause" the mind, in any sort of proximate causation.

What then is the relationship between the mind and the brain? I'll explore this fascinating question in future posts. Succinctly: I believe that Thomistic dualism is the most plausible theory of the mind.

As for Novella, his "proofs" are a tangled mess of scientific ideological assertions that actually make the case opposite the one he thinks they do... if they are to be taken seriously at all, which they shouldn't be.

Several of his claims, coming from a practicing neurologist, are simply lies.