Mirror Neurons, Consciousness, and an Irreducible Self

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future. [00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Andrew McDermott. Today's episode comes to us from our sister podcast, Mind Matters News, a production of the Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. You can learn more about the show and access other episodes at mindmatters. AI. [00:00:24] Speaker C: Greetings and welcome to Mind Matters News. I'm your bearer, co host, Robert J. Marks. We'll find out what that means in a little bit. To me, consciousness is a squishy sort of thing to talk about. It's a hard thing to define, but all of us have an idea of what consciousness is and that idea that we share is enough for us to talk about it. And along with mirror Neurons, that's what we're going to talk about today with our guest, Dr. Murray Tuguta. Mind Matters News and this podcast is a product of the Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute. A new podcast of Mind Matters News has dropped every Thursday except the last Thursday of the month. Last Thursday of the month we post what we call a binge cast where multiple episode interviews from the past are fused into a single podcast. So welcome to Mind Matters News and thank you for listening. My co host today is Brian Kraus, who is a bagpipe playing co editor of the book Minding the Brain. Hey, Brian. [00:01:32] Speaker B: Hey, Bob. It's good to be here. I didn't bring my bagpipes. [00:01:35] Speaker C: You didn't bring your bagpipes? I was going to ask Brian his favorite bagpipe joke, but he didn't think bagpipes were funny. [00:01:42] Speaker B: It's very, it's very serious business, so it's very serious. [00:01:46] Speaker C: Okay, I have a bagpipe joke. A gentleman is somebody who knows how to play the bagpipes but doesn't. What do you think? Is that pretty good? Well, I laughed, so I guess it was okay. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. [00:01:57] Speaker C: Yeah, but it was a polite laugh. It wasn't a deep belly laugh, but yeah, that was okay. Look at my matters news. We've been interviewing authors featured in the book Minding the Brain, edited by Agnes Minouj, Brian Kraus and myself. The book delves into the age old question, is the mind more than the brain? This debate spans centuries. What was once solely a philosophical and metaphysical discussion has attracted the attention of science and is a much more serious area of study. For more information about this book, visit mindingthebrain.org that's mindingthebrain.org Our guest today is Dr. Murray Tuguta, who wrote the chapter in Minding the Brain entitled Mirror Neurons, Consciousness and The bearer question. Now, if you're like me before you read the chapter, you have no idea what a mirror neuron is. You have no idea what the bearer question is. But we're going to find out as we talk to Dr. Gutta. Dr. Gutta teaches analytic philosophy at Biola University and Isuzu Pacific University. He's an associate fellow at the center for Bioethics and Human Dignity at Trinity International University. He got his PhD in Philosophy from Durham University and he's the co editor of some books. One of them is titled Selfhood, Autism and Thought Insertion. And he's the editor of another book called Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties. We're going to provide links to those books for those interested in the podcast notes. Dr. Guttel, welcome. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Thank you so much. It's good to be here. [00:03:38] Speaker C: Okay. It's great to have you back. We, Angus and I did a great interview with Dr. Gutta on another one of his chapters. He contributed two chapters to minding the Brain. So I've been talking a long time. So let me turn the floor over to my co host, Brian Kraus. Brian? [00:03:54] Speaker B: Yes sir. All right. I'm looking forward to talking to you about this topic today. Marietu. I know we've had some, plenty of conversations about this before and it's pretty fascinating. Before we get going, let me just give the listeners a quick overview to position where your chapter fits in our our anthology as a whole. In case you haven't heard much about the book as a whole, we are talking about this, this issue of the Mind and the Brain, but we're trying to talk about it from, from a philosophical perspective, specifically considering several different non materialist, non matter based models of mind. And then we're also considering a lot of how in the latter half of the book especially we consider how the philosophy of these non materialist models of mine interact with different empirical sciences, whether it's neuroscience or computer science or psychology and several others. And this chapter is kind of right in the middle of the book and it deals with both the philosophy and the neuroscience very directly. And that's one of the things I really like about this chapter is that you have expertise in both areas areas. Given that overview, let's just dive into it. Could you help us, Dr. Gutta, understand first what is a mirror neuron? [00:05:17] Speaker A: So a mirror neuron is really nothing but you know, the brain cell and we can use it in this plural form. So we've got at the least 100 billion neurons in our brain. Our brain weighs about 3 pounds and each neuron actually makes at least 10,000 connections with other neurons. And the number of synapses in your brain, in my brain, exceed 100 trillion. So the network is breathtaking and it's extremely fascinating. There's a lot going on in our brain, and the stimuli neurons are somehow cordoned off, so to speak, as kind of a special kind of brain cells because they behave in a kind of distinctive way. And as I've argued in my chapter, there are two properties that researchers have identified based on their experimental work. One would be something that has to do with what we call action execution. So when I, for example, pick up something from the ground, the so called brain, you know, those special cells called mirror neurons get activated. And if I see someone doing the same thing, which is in the context of observation, they also get activated. But researchers do not directly use mirror neurons in relation to humans. And as I've argued in this chapter, they would rather kind of prefer to use the phrase mirror system. Like they talk in terms of system language as opposed to mirror neuron language. So basically, these are literally brain cells. They just get activated. But in this chapter, I do not necessarily assume that, you know, mirror neurons actually do exist. I do not also assume that they do not exist. But in this chapter, if they, if assuming that they exist, if we grant that premise, what should follow, what should be in place to make sense of these kinds of brain cells? That's exactly what I'm arguing in this chapter. But I think in a nutshell, these are just ordinary neurons with some sort of kind of unique properties. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Dr. Gude, if I could ask you, this is my interpretation as somebody who is not a philosopher. If I see somebody sitting next to me and they're slicing cucumbers and they cut their finger, and I look at that and it gives me a chill and I feel, oh my gosh, you know, I kind of feel that in my finger where he cut it. That's my mirror neurons reacting. Is that right? Am I getting it kind of correctly? [00:08:11] Speaker A: So, yeah, the analogy could be disputed, but I think that's precisely what's happening according to researchers. So they say that these kinds of kind of cells, brain cells respond or fire, for example, when some, when you reach out to something yourself or when, when you observe someone doing the same thing. So when someone is doing the same thing while you're observing, these brain cells will be activated in your brain, and when you yourself do the same thing, they will also get activated. So they actually use, as I've argued in this chapter, like action execution, and observation or action understanding. So later on we'll discuss about, like, how these cells are taken to play distinctive roles when it comes to, you know, such phenomena like empathy, or in the case of associative learning, imitation and so on. Yeah, I think the analogy, Bob, might be disputed in some contexts, but that's the gist of what you said is accurate in terms of kind of describing the role of these kinds of brain cells. [00:09:20] Speaker C: Okay, thank you. Yeah. In other words, you relate to what other people are doing. [00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. When it comes to empathy, for example, the notion of empathy is literally taking someone's perspective. Like you try to place yourself in someone's shoes and try to do your best to understand and see that particular thing from that person's perspective. Which means you're taking the second person perspective, not the first person perspective, not the third person perspective, but the second person perspect. So the second person perspective is somehow taken to be a kind of a unique kind of perspective relative to the first and the third. The second one kind of helps you to be part of, so to speak, what that person is experiencing. So if you are trying to sympathize with someone emotionally, you are engaged. And so the emotion is going to give you a kind of a unique raw perspective as to what that person is kind of undergoing at any given time. So this is very, very much familiar to all of us. For example, consider these hypothetical parents. They lost their son in a car accident. And also think of like real parents who literally lost their son through accident and so on. So the hypothetical parents can understand what the real parents are undergoing, you know, kind of going through because of this kind of extremely heartbreaking grief and so on. But if a person has never experienced anything, a person can have a head knowledge, theoretical knowledge about something, but it will be incredibly difficult for that person to imagine and emotionally engage in someone's pain and see things from that person's perspective. So empathy, which is what psychologists say, the second person perspective on someone's experience kind of helps you to participate in what that person is actually going through. It feels as though you yourself is kind of going through that kind of experience. But I have some skepticism about the second person, third person perspectives. In fact, I am reductionist about these perspectives because I don't believe, to be honest with you guys, second and third person perspectives actually exist. They exist in grammar, but they do not exist in metaphysics or ontology. In other words, they do not have a metaphysical basis whatsoever. The only perspective that exists is first person perspective. So when you participate in someone's, let's say, pain experience, when you try to imagine what it would be like for that person to be in that kind of situation, when you are trying to kind of imagine that you are doing that from your own first person perspective, there's no kind of unique perspective where you can pick it up and replace it by first person perspective. There's just one perspective you try to imagine from your own perspective. But technically speaking, grammatically speaking, you can say the second person perspective, but these perspectives do not exist. The only perspective that exists is the. Just a first person perspective. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So wrapping my mind around, what's this, what's so interesting about these mirror neurons? So we don't need neuroscience to tell us that as humans, we know how to empathize with other people's experience, because we all do that. Or even to learn from someone else's behavior by watching them. We all do that. So is what's exciting about this mirror neurons idea to the proponents of mirror neurons, is it that they've identified specific networks of neurons that fire and have some kind of activation patterns while someone is. I guess, if you're talking in the human case, or I guess they also study it in monkeys. Right. That's the other place they've studied this. But if they see these neurons firing in networks while those kind of empathetic or, or action, observation, cognitive processes are going on, that's an exciting thing, I suppose, for the proponents because they're saying, hey, look at these, look at this physical thing doing something while this mental operation is going on of this particular kind. [00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Historically, just to paint a perspective, the yeast research was done first on macaque monkeys in Italy. A group of neuroscientists in Italy, in perma, Italy, in 1980s and and 90s, they carried out this research and they claimed to have observed unique brain cells behaving in a very distinctive manner when certain things happen. In other words, when monkeys observed experimenters picking up, let's say, a very tiny object from the ground at the same time concurrently, like they buried already microelectrodes in their brain and cells actually reacted in a certain way. And when monkeys were trained to do the same thing, and at the same time, when experimenters observed what was happening in the brains of these monkeys, these cells also get activated. So the research was actually done first on macaque monkeys, not on human beings. Now, inference was made. Actually what was true in the case of monkeys might also be true in the case of human beings. But the research on human beings actually Takes so many things for granted because you can't, for example, play with human brain as you would play with monkey's brain. You can actually record single neurons in monkeys brain, but you can't do that in human brain because it's is very gruesome. And you know, for obvious reasons, you can't really kind of treat human being as if a kind of a laboratory kind of guinea piggy. I mean, it's just rat. So there are so many hurdles, legal, moral, and so on. So the imprints was completely kind of made. Okay, these are things that we've observed in the brains of monkeys. Probably the same thing is true when it comes to human brains. In the case of human. Humans, researchers have used, you know, brain imaging techniques, for example, tms, transcranial magnetic stimulation method, where you can actually specifically activate or kind of poke certain regions in your brain. And then you can make a person to twitch his or her fingers against his or her will. And you can use PET scan, for example, positron emission tomography, you can use fmri, functional magnetic resonance imaging and so on. So in the case of humans, brain imaging techniques have been used actually to see in real time what was happening in the subject's brains. When subjects, for example, observe other people doing like let's say motor, engaged in motor activities, picking things up from the ground, or do different kinds of motor engaging activities. And also when they themselves have been given an opportunity to do different kinds of motor engaging activities, these cells get activated. The conundrum in the case of human beings, these brain cells are distributed throughout human brain and they occupy different regions and you can't cordon them off just as you would do in the case of monkey's brains. You can't do that. So researchers have said like, okay, let's use the term mirror system as opposed to kind of mirror neurons and so on. So yes, so we moved from monkeys to humans. We started on monkeys. We think the same thing is true of human brains. I think there are so many things that you can kind of raise by way of questions whether that would justify or not. But we're simply assuming here if this is true, then, okay, what should be in place? What would it take to accept this argument seriously? [00:17:41] Speaker B: Right, right, Because I know you, you move on. You're not really trying to settle this question of whether this mirror neuron theory is correct. You're more analyzing how are they proceeding in their research or what's the assumptions, what's the unspoken assumptions that they're bringing while, while they're trying to do their research, how are they going to draw their conclusions? But before we get into that though, I'm just curious, like, what is the state of this research today? Like, is this a controversial proposition that these mirror neuron systems exist or is it widely accepted? Why are people excited about it? How are they applying it, this kind of thing? [00:18:20] Speaker A: I think it's, I can generally say, like there is kind of a parallel argument that you can make as to the popularity of how popular these sales are. Most neuroscientists really think that such sales actually exist and there are not too strong objections against them. But there is a neuroscientist whose work I actually interacted with, Gregory Hickok. He actually published a book length argument against mirror neurons. In fact, his book is entitled the Myth of Mirror Neurons. He thinks that both of those two properties that I mentioned earlier in our talk, let's say action, execution or observation, these two things actually are not true of the so called mirror neuron cells. And he kind of raises so many counterexamples in his book. He actually argues from the standpoint of view of his own research. He is not critiquing, like philosophically, he is not treating these cells in the way that I am critiquing. But what he is saying is I have a lab, I have done research myself as a neuroscientist. I have not gotten the kind of result that defenders of mirror neurons are actually touting when it comes to these cells. So he raised a very, very serious objection, in fact, a number of objections. His entire book is premised upon the fact that most of the things that we've been told about mirror neurons, in fact those things are not true of mirror neurons. So he's kind of, no apology is being asked. So he is, I think his work is the only work that I come across by way of like a book length objection against these kinds of cells and things that other neuroscientists actually associate with these cells. He mentions more than 29 different things that, that are said that mirror neurons are responsible for, including what political parties that you favor, for example. So it comes down to some of the things that he lists are a bit laughable. So if you, if you favor Democratic party or Republican party, so mirror neurons have played some sort of role. Let's suppose I'm the mohan if I'm Democratic party defender. If you are a Republican party defender, how can we justify that brand sales literally are behind that kind of decision? I mean, it comes down to kind of, it trivializes the whole thing, but people go to that extent, to that extent actually. So here's what I can say, Brian. They are still very, very popular things, but there are very minority skeptics out there. [00:21:21] Speaker B: Okay. And it sounds like maybe in the popularization, maybe some people are, are kind of running with it maybe a little bit beyond what the evidence would support to, you know, linking it to things like your political attitude. [00:21:35] Speaker C: Just really quickly, how did they dismiss the, the biological results on the monkeys and the discovery of mirror neurons in the monkeys? [00:21:44] Speaker B: How does Gregory Hickok do that? [00:21:47] Speaker A: Hickok, what he does in his book is like he comes up with this counter examples when it comes to human beings. Like he says, like you can actually there's no experimental, empirical evidence that shows as far as he's concerned that when you observe someone or doing something or when you yourself do something, he says like there's no such phenomena like that's unique that can be observed in your brain. So he, he brings up so many counter examples, you can, you can actually do something without understanding and you can also execute things without what mirror neuron theorists are telling you would happen in your brain when you do such and such. So he is, what he is doing is like, no, there's no empirical evidence that shows us that action, execution and observation somehow would activate certain kinds of brain cells in our brain or something like that. Sometimes there's nothing happening there, but while you're doing something, while you're observing someone doing something and something like that. So he is saying there's a serious exaggeration here and inconsistencies and it's overblown and there's no good reason for us to take what the so called experts are saying about these mirror neurons to the extent that they are actually kind of preaching their, their uniqueness to us. [00:23:23] Speaker B: Interesting. So, so now getting back to what you mentioned earlier, Morettu, your interest in this chapter is not so much to settle this active neuroscience research topic one way or the other, but to come alongside the people thinking about this and point out that hey, you're, you, you might not be thinking about this in a robust way. Like there might be some philosophical challenges with how you're approaching this problem in total. And you, you, in your chapter, you, you introduce three, three problems. You call, call them the easy problem, the hard problem, and the hardest problem. Could you tell us what these observations are about, what your critique is of how they're going about trying to sort out this question of mirror neurons. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Exactly. So the easy problem, the hard problem, the hardest problem is directly related to what I have introduced earlier with respect to the question of neural correlates of the functional properties of mirror neurons. So there is correlation involved in it. So let's suppose mirror neurons exist and their job is being activated, which means whatever that you associate with those cells when they are activated while you're doing a certain kind of task, it's nothing more than correlation. So that's number one. No one is talking about that. When mirror neuron theaters talk about mirror neurons, they literally treat them as if they are conscious, like they are knowing. It sounds like they are saying, oh, these cells actually know. These cells actually are empathizing with you, or something like that. There's no, there's no metaphysical infrastructure in place. There's no ontological infrastructure in place. There's a. There's a very serious conceptual confusion as well. So how am I supposed to understand when they say that action execution and observation activates these cells? And who's doing the knowing, by the way? Who is doing the realizing? There's no explanation? In the research, if you read the literature, it's all about touting how these cells are unique and they are magical, they are miracle, and so on so forth. So my job is, okay, let's kind of hold our horses a little bit here. Let's calm down. Let's work through like this conceptual, metaphysical, ontological and empirical infrastructure. First, let's make this clear. First, let's clear this bush a little bit so that there's no exit. Like, I don't know how to exit into this territory. So one, let's talk about correlation. And then after correlation, we need to also be clear with the question of a causal profile. Do these nerve cells actually cause anything? You know, when, for example, you observe someone doing something, they get activated. Does that mean that they are causing something to happen? Do they have any causal profile? Can we attribute any role of causation being played by these kinds of roles? So the first one is correlation, causal profile, and the third one is whether or not the very existence of these kinds of properties require consciousness and the bearer. So when it comes to correlation, it's. I call that easy problem because you can easily kind of run empirical experiments. [00:26:56] Speaker B: Can I inject real quick Maretu, just to make sure I'm tracking here? So when you're talking about correlation, you're talking about, okay, they're in the lab, they're watching someone who is like, let's say watching someone else do a task. So they know they're thinking about the other person doing a Task. And they're trying to correlate that. That thinking of someone else doing a task with this particular firing of neurons. [00:27:18] Speaker A: Exactly. Yes. [00:27:19] Speaker B: Whatever tool. Okay. So then they're trying to make that correlation between these particular neurons and this cognitive thing. Those are happening at exactly the same time. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Yes. So I call that relatively easy problem because you can do that. So correlation is what neuroscientists actually do all the time. [00:27:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:37] Speaker A: They have their subjects, they give them a set of instructions. Their subjects are supposed to follow those instructions strictly to the best of their abilities. And then you observe what's happening concurrently in those subjects brains. And then you come up with your own interpretation of what the implications of those kind of phenomena are. So you have to interpret that. [00:28:00] Speaker B: Is it like when these mirror neurons, researchers see that correlation and then they tend to make this conclusion maybe too quickly or not carefully enough, where they say, hey, there's this correlation that means these neurons are, are causing this cognitive process, or these mirror neurons themselves are observing, and they sort of attribute the consciousness to the neurons themselves. And that's. That's what you're objecting to. [00:28:24] Speaker A: Exactly. So there's lack of clarity, by the way. They don't really distinguish. Oh, we are correlating here. We're not assuming causation and that, that's. That language you can hardly find. They're not saying that. It's so vague, it's all over the place. So now you ask yourself, like, what exactly is happening here? So many things have been attributed to these kinds of cells. So what are they exactly talking about? So I raised three questions. One correlation, as you said. The second one is a causal profile, and the third one is consciousness and is better. So I call the correlation easy problem and the causal profile stuff the hard problem as we. I'll explain this later on. And then the consciousness. And the better question is the hardest problem, because it's literally the hardest one. So in this chapter, eventually I'll answer like, why I said easy problem, why I said hard problem and hardest problem. Because the intensity of difficulty increases from the easy all the way up to the hardest. [00:29:30] Speaker B: I see, I see. And so, okay, so when you're talking about the easy problem, this is the problem of correlation. So now do you. Are you saying that you're seeing issues in the way they're going about this correlative study? [00:29:42] Speaker A: Yes. One problem that I'm noticing there is often correlation is just. It's a bit vague. So sometimes it seems like there are blending it with, lumping it with causation. Sometimes they tend to kind of, it seems like they are kind of vaguely aware of. They are not talking about causation when they talk about correlation, but the entire gamut of what they say for the most part doesn't give you clarity at all. So you are entitled to understand them to be saying, well, when they talk about correlation, they are at the same time giving you implications that they are also talking about causation. The problem here is the two notions are completely distinct. Correlation has nothing to do with causation. For the most part. Causation and correlations are two different things. They play two different roles, so we can't lump them. So that's one problem that I've noticed in the literature. [00:30:39] Speaker B: Okay, okay, that makes sense. So there's an idea that you introduced in the chapter that I thought was very interesting, but I just want to make sure that I understand it. Maybe you can explain it to me. So had a fancy name. Leibniz's law of the indiscernibility of identicals. What is that and how does that come into play with any of this? [00:30:58] Speaker A: Right. So I raised this stuff where I talk about psychoneuro correlations, philosophers of mind who defend the view called physicalism. Human beings are nothing but physical beings. Brain states are the same thing as mental states. Mental states are the same thing as brain states. There are no ontological distinctions between mental states and brain states. We're really using two different descriptions to talk about the same property, which is a physical property. So Leibniz law of indiscernibility of identicals is one of the laws associated with the 17th century philosopher. German philosopher by the name Gottfried Leibniz simply helps you as a test to show whether a strict numerical identity obtains or not between two given things. Let me explain this. Suppose, for example, you have two identical cups. Exactly identical cups. They have been manufactured at the same place. They have the same color, they have the same shape, they have the same size. Every single thing is exactly like each other. Okay, so you have two cups. How many cups actually do you have here? So in terms of quality, one to one, you can match one quality with that. Another quality, one to one. But how many cups do you have? You might say sometimes, well, I have two cups. Some philosophers will say, you have only one cup because all the properties, all the qualities match one to one with each other. Therefore you don't have two cups. And so on. Well, let's apply this rule called indiscernibility of identicals. This rule can be stated as follows. For all A and for all Y. If X is identical to Y, then there is a property P such that X has P if and only if Y has P. This might sound very mouthful expression, but let me unpack it in a way anyone can understand that. So the two cups that we've talked about, if you say one cup, the shape of one cup is exactly like the shape of the other cup. The color of one cup is exactly like the color of the other cup. Okay, but in terms of the space that the two cups are occupied, there is a distinction. So you at the least you can say one thing about each one of these cups that you cannot say about both of them at the same time. So you can say cup one occupied space A, cap B, occupied space B at the least. Now they are not entirely identical, regardless of how similar to each other in all other respects. So you can invoke this law and say, okay, what is two of cup A? That occupied space, location A. That fact is not true of cup B because cup B occupied location B, not location A. So at least you have one fundamental difference when it comes to a spatial relation. Therefore, identity doesn't hold between two of these cups, regardless of other similarities. [00:34:28] Speaker B: They're not the same cup. Okay? [00:34:30] Speaker A: Yes. So therefore one thing is true of one thing that's not true of other thing. In this case, the location B is not the same thing as location A. Therefore that fact is only true of B because B is only occupying location B. A is occupying location A. At least you can mention one fact that's not true of each one of these caps. Therefore they are not identical. If you had not been able to do that, then you would have been in a position to say that you we are only talking about one object. [00:35:03] Speaker B: Okay, that makes sense in terms of. But how do we apply this to this topic of the mirror neurons? [00:35:09] Speaker A: Excellent. So the mirror neurons are functional properties as I've described them. Functional properties. By functional properties, I'm not also kind of confusing them with the functionalist view of a mind. So there's a kind of a similar name. The functionalist view of human mind is a view according to which mental states do not have intrinsic values. The job of mental states is just simply to play the input output role. If you take pain, pain is not an elemental property. It doesn't have its own intrinsic nature, such as painfulness. But what pain does to you is when you experience really kind of forces you to react in a certain way. You might say, you might scream, or you might remove your hand from the hot stop or something like that. All there is for pain is literally the way you just acted. In other words, you got the input, the input being whatever that caused that pain, and then you removed your hand very violently and just forcefully. That's the output. That's it. What is pain? Input and output interaction. It has no other kind of unique intrinsic nature. So when you take mirror neurons, remember that neuroscientists have attributed action execution and observation and so on and so forth. So the properties are not physical. The properties associated with mirror neurons are non physical properties, the mental properties or cognitive properties. Therefore the Leibniz law directly applies to that. For example, take again pain. Pain is not only like pain. I have inner awareness of how painful my headache experience is. So I know the qualitative nature of a headache experience. I know that from my own first person perspective. So I have sort of like a inward insight into how I awful that pain experience is. But I do not have any insight whatsoever into my neuronal pharynx. If you ask me now, which part of my brain is lighting up where oxygen flow is increasing, where my brain is consuming glucose so much, because that part is very active, I have no idea. But I can introspect, let's say into my headache sensation. I can introspect a host of other kind of mental related phenomena, so I have insight into those things. I can tell you what it feels like to have that headache sensation and so on and so forth. But I cannot be in a position, and I had never been in a position to have any insight into my brain states. Neurons fire, Action potential builds. There are very complicated chemical and electrical processes that really happen at the physiological level inside your brain for action potential to develop and also neurotransmitters to also build themselves and so on. But look, we don't have insight, so I am not applying indirectly Leibniz indiscernibility of identical flaw. So one thing is true of mentalistics, such as their qualitative nature, my own awareness of those kind of qualities and the ability to even like have my own story to tell you what those qualities felt like to me in the case of a very nasty headache that I get, I often get when I don't drink, for example, coffee. You ask me the same thing about my action potential, I have no idea. Ask me about my dopamine level or serotonin or other neuromodulators or mainstream neurotransmitters and so on. I have no insight whatsoever. So therefore chemical processes, electrical processes are not the same thing as Mental states, because mental states have their own unique qualities. However, the two work in sync and in harmony. Because the reason why I'm having headache is because at the physiological level, something is happening inside my brain. So there is a contribution, but at the same time there's enigmatic feature to it, enigmatic aspect to it, because I don't have insight into the physical, physiological process, but I do have insight somehow, in a very clear provable sense, what, what it feels like for me to have that kind of mental phenomena of different kind. So therefore the two cannot be the same. [00:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think I'm tracking. So, so, so, so from tracking you, you. We're talking about the, the mirror neurons researchers doing this correlative work. And it seems that maybe, maybe they're not very conscious of this whole discussion. But, but, but they might have a tendency with the language to want to try to identify when they see the correlation, they might have a tendency to want to identify the mirror neurons, cognitive mental functions like the recog, the empathy, or the recognizing another action. They want to identify that with these specific neurons firing. And you're saying no. If we apply, if we're more careful about this concept of identifying two things, we can say, hey, there are properties that these two things don't share, specifically, like in your example of pain, the feeling of pain, or on one side, or the chemical attributes of the neurons on the other side. And so these things aren't identical. Even if they're correlated, they're not identical. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. So you mentioned a very good point, Brian, because correlation is neither causation nor identity. So I mentioned that specifically in my own chapter. So that's exactly why the literature on mirror neurons is supremely confusing if you approach it from philosophical, metaphysical and ontological standpoint. And neuroscientists sometimes are not all, but some are cynical when it comes to metaphysics and ontology and philosophy and so on. They think that these disciplines have nothing to contribute and so on. So the outcome is a perfect confusion. This is why we need to take philosophy very, very seriously. Because in the absence of a careful philosophical analysis and a careful philosophical application, what you will be left with is utter confusion. For example, here's one, a very, very concrete example. Suppose, for example, if I peer into your brain and let's say, look at the visual motor activities. So usually mirror neurons are associated with something that kind of, you see, and motor activities and so on. They are often associated with those kinds of things because observation kind of necessitates the visual apparatus to work very well. Because you're perceiving and seeing and then the movement has to activate motor cortex in your brain and so on. So let's suppose I observe, you know, I peer into your brain using brain imaging techniques. For example magnetic resonance imaging or Petroscan or you know, positron emission tomography and so on. Okay, I'm watching, I'm not interacting with you. What conclusion can I draw about what's happening inside your brain? Are you empathizing with someone? What can I say? Literally like I'm seeing all this physiological interesting activities, blood flow dependent oxygenation, dependency level and the rest. Okay, I'm observing all of that in real time. But if I don't engage with you as a researcher, if I don't ask you what is happening, what are you thinking about, how is this appearing to you and so on. What can you do on your own, like you, without engaging with me? So the physiological data wouldn't reveal a thing to you when it comes to what it feels like for me to have this experience as opposed to that experience or what is happening at that particular time in my, let's say mind. So you're just. This is exactly why I'm very, very skeptical. [00:43:27] Speaker B: Yeah, the only insight you have into what's going on in their mind is what they're telling you about in their mind. You don't have that direct access to their first person experience. [00:43:37] Speaker A: That is literally aspect of the experience that we have. That is almost, that should be taken like as a black hole in my view. Or a black box. Okay, let me use a softer kind of term here. Black box. Okay, so the black box is a black box, which means it's not accessible to the third person party. You can't observe, peer into my brain and assume that this is literally what's happening in this person's mind. You can't say that. You have to engage with the person. The person is the one who has got the key to unlock, at least to let you know. This is exactly what's happening currently in my mind. And the person has an ability to introspect the person's own like inner mental life. This is a very controversial suggestion. And so many people are cynical about this. They are cynical about this because they are coming from the physicalist kind of view standpoint. Like they are physicalists. They think that science has to unravel, science has to unlock, science has to reveal this mystery somehow. And outside of this science stuff, we shouldn't really take any help, let's say from disciplines like philosophy or metaphysics. Or ontology. We have to. We have to crack this nut somehow. It might take time, but we will get there. Well, good luck. That's where the problem is. [00:45:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying they, they kind of come in almost assuming that they're going to find this identity between the nerve, nervous system activity and the mental functions, or they'll find that causation. And so they're less bothered by the fact that someone has to report subjectively what's going on because they, they expect they're going to see that in there. It has to be in there. On their assumptions. Is that what you're saying? [00:45:27] Speaker A: There are books. I teach philosophy of neuroscience, and I have used one book published by Oxford University. And that book, there is a chapter where one author was arguing that before you accept the reality of your own pain, you have to consult with experts. Experts should tell you whether you're having that kind of pain or not. What does that mean? Like, your doctor is not expert on your subjective experience or experiences. Your doctor cannot correct you when it comes to your subjective experiences. [00:46:04] Speaker B: Just a quick recap. We. We were discussing this interesting neuroscience theory about mirror neurons, these neurons that, that fire when. When monkeys and humans watch others do actions. And it might be part of our ability to empathize with others. And these mirror neurons, researchers have identified what they think are networks of neurons that, when we're, when we're doing these cognitive tasks of observing actions and mirroring those actions that these particular neurons are firing. And Maretta, we were talking about. You're not here to settle this empirical question about whether the science is correct, but more, you're talking about. You're trying to. Trying to get some improved philosophical clarity of concepts that are involved in the way they're approaching this in the first place. And we went through the topic of. Well, we're first talking about what you call the easy problem, which you distinguish from the hard and the harder problem, which we haven't gotten to yet. But in. The easy problem is really about how these researchers are correlating the nervous system's behavior with these cognitive functional properties, as you call them, the action recognition and empathy and things like this. And so under this banner of correlation, you noticed, okay, let's be careful, because there's a tendency to jump straight to identity, saying, hey, when we see a correlation, we're saying that, therefore these nerves are the same thing as those cognitive properties. And also we have to be careful that. Let's see. I guess we talked a little bit about causation, but I know, there's something in your chapter that was an interesting thing to discuss under this banner of correlation, which you called the mirror neuron activation pattern principle. So maybe that's a good place for us to pick up and go forward. Tell us about what does that mean and why is that relevant? [00:47:56] Speaker A: Yeah, so mirror neuron activation pattern principle. I have come up with this kind of, I've pointed myself, this is not something that I took from someone's work or something like that. I've been thinking about this for some time. Let's say your neurons are firing all the time. So neuroscientists talk about the resting state of neurons when they are at the resting state for very limited time. Mirror neurons can be measured like in a negative sense. Like they might have, let's say in the resting state, they might be, let's say minus 70 millivolt or something like that, the electrical property of this mirror neurons. But it will never be zero. They are always firing. There's activity going on, no matter how small, how insignificant it might be. So the activation principle, when you are slipping, your neurons are more restful and there isn't much activity going on. When you wake up, you know, the whole thing kind of blows up up because, you know, everything is like so active and jittery and so on and so forth. But the activation pattern principle brings in two important things. One is when we observe the behavior of neurons we're observing, for example, in, in the case of when they are active, we can actually correlate with a specific neuronal firing. Certain activities, for example, can be correlated with specific neuronal activities. Okay, when we do that, what about the aspect and the region of a brain where neurons are still firing? But those are not part and parcel of our research project. So we somehow kind of ignore those. I call those, for example, correlation unspecified neuronal firing. When neuroscientists who work on mirror neurons, when they carry out their research, they're always focusing on correlation specific neuronal firing. [00:50:08] Speaker B: So they've like, if I'm understanding right, they've picked out a set of neurons that they're focusing on and then there's other neurons that they're just not focused on. [00:50:16] Speaker A: Good. When that happens, there are also correlations that can happen without the specification. So stuff is happening at the background. So when you conclude something about the properties of mirror neurons just based on only correlation specific neuronal firing, your work is what I call under determined. It doesn't give you a fuller picture. Right. You haven't covered Everything that needed to be covered. And in principle you could do that practically, you can't do that. Like it's impossible to know everything that happens at any given time throughout your brain. We all know that brain is incredibly complicated organ, right? The most complicated organs that we have known up to date. So this brings like the problem of under determination. So whatever the neuroscientists are telling us about mirror neurons, probably they are really telling us what is kind of half baked fact about what these cells are doing in our brain, if they do exist. Which means that without kind of getting into details, so the observation that leads you to some sort of data, which you will end up analyzing it and based on your analysis, which you will end up interpreting and then based on that interpretation, you end up concluding something about, let's say mirror neurons is now called into question. You see, because this principle, I don't see how it can perfectly be implemented. It's very, very difficult to implement this principle effectively. [00:51:58] Speaker B: So it's just a, if I understand this is just a pragmatic problem of the brain is just so complicated that you can't exactly go in and I mean, how many neurons does the brain have? It's like 10 billion or something like that. [00:52:11] Speaker A: 100 billion at least. Like estimation, 100 billion. But each neuron makes 10,000 connections with other neurons. The synapses are going to be more than 100 trillion. [00:52:25] Speaker B: And each of those could be something that you would have to correlate with to understand how. [00:52:31] Speaker A: Of course. [00:52:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's just a, it's just a very pragmatically challenging problem computationally. [00:52:38] Speaker A: Computationally, let's suppose you have, you have control, like some way to control computationally, like what's happening at the physiological level. That would still leave out what's happening at the non mental level. Like, okay, as a result of what's happening here, you end up perceiving something in a certain way and having a certain kind of sensation of headache and so on. That's not going to be part of the computation. Computation is not going to tell you anything about the qualitative nature of headache sensation. The headache sensation is literally cannot be rid of the neuronal cells itself. [00:53:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you're 100% like we were talking about in the last episode, you're 100% reliant on their subjective report of their mental state, which could just not be very accurate. And I've got all kinds of timing issues there too. Like, like their report is after they experience it. So how do you correlate the Timing of when it occurred, when that happened before the report with whatever neural things were happening at the same time. Sounds very hard. [00:53:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Brian, you raised a very, very good point here. We can use some example from quantum physics, the Heisenberg's uncertainty problem. So we all know that you can't know the position and the momentum of electron all at the same time. So if you have an information, let's say a piece of information about the momentum, then you've automatically lost information about the position and vice versa, right. So the same thing is happening in your brain. Let's say if you use this brain imaging techniques, let's say fmri, it gives you probably like excellent time resolution, but a special resolution might be poor. Let's say EAG might give you a very good, you know, time resolution. You know exactly what's happening like at any given time. But then you have no idea where signals are coming from. So a spatial resolution is poorer. Right. So you can't have both time resolution, a perfect time resolution and a perfect spatial resolution all at the same time, as you would not be able to get even in physics when, when you want to measure the momentum and the position of elementary particle. So these are like, in my view, these are not technical problems. I think just the reality is such that it's just the way it is. At least in the case of, you know, Heisenberg's uncertainty problem. It has nothing to do with technological advancement. It just you just can't have both information at the same time. Something like that could be true of, you know, mirror neurons as well. [00:55:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:55:12] Speaker A: And in JP's book, by the way, the new book that the substance of consciousness. [00:55:18] Speaker B: J.P. moreland, you mean? [00:55:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, J.P. moreland. I have a chapter that I contributed, like appendix actually, where I come up with a kind of a quasi equation that I suggested based on Heisenberg's uncertainty problem. I use that equation and I kind of flip it upside down and kind of apply it to the time resolution and spatial resolution problem in neuroscience. So we run into the same kind of problem here. So I take that problem not something that has to do with technological lack of like advanced technology. Probably we will never be able to tell like both information at the same time, just as we would not be able to do the same thing when it comes to uncertainty problem. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Okay, that makes sense. Okay. So all this just to remind our listeners all this are problems that we fall under the easy problem, which is this task that the mirror neuron scientists are engaged in, which is trying to do this correlative work. But this isn't the only problem. So maybe the way to get at the next problem, we could say, let's grant that they could do a rough correlation or a decent amount of correlation, and let's say they were able to do some of that, there's still the hard problem. Or the next problem has to do with can you go from that correlation to causation? Can you say that these things that we're seeing happening in the neurons are causing the mental properties? So why don't you talk to us about that hard problem now? [00:56:50] Speaker A: So the hard problem has to do with the problem of the functional properties of mirror neurons, which means that the psycho correlation seem kind of. If you take psycho correlations in general, they seem to imply there is some sort of causation going on. [00:57:08] Speaker B: Psycho correlations. You mean you're, you're correlating like something mental with something with the nerve nervous system? [00:57:13] Speaker A: Physical. Okay, physical, yeah, physical, yes, psycho correlations are all about that. So it seems at the surface that kind of one thing is causing another thing to happen. The problem with correlation, correlation wouldn't do that kind of stuff. So the best example to illustrate this point is to talk about an 18th century philosopher, British philosopher called David Hume. David Hume was incredibly skeptical about causation. So he came up with a theory. What we call causation is something that we project into things when we observe sequence of events. If you see like 10 sequence of events, one after the other, like lined up intuitively and commonsensically, the first reaction you would have would be like to say, oh yeah, event one is causing event two, event two is leading to event three, and so on, so forth. But he said, no, what we're witnessing here is a spatiotemporal contiguity. One event is next to the other event, another event in another event, and one event might actually succeed another event, or precede another event. If you take cause, cause actually precedes effect. Effect, for example, succeeds cause, temporally speaking in terms of time and what David Hume actually concluded from this, it's a very by the way detailed theory. I'm just watered down this kind of in an unfair way. But anyway, it works, I think. So he said when we look at type of event A, for example, followed by type of event C, all we're witnessing here is constant conjunction. At no point we can be in a position to say that event A caused event B and so on so forth. So look, we don't have to agree with David Hume. Probably there might be a link A causal link between any given two events. But his model is very much applicable to research that neuroscientists often carry out based on correlation. Based on correlation, we can use David Hume's model to show that correlations are simply a sequence of events. One thing is correlated with the next event, next event, next event. It doesn't guarantee at all one event is causing the next event. So let's suppose in the case of mirror neurons, let's take for example a brain region called Broca area. Let's suppose Broca area is a language production area. And let's say that area causes, let's say language production lp. So we can generate what David Hume said about causation, okay, B is spatiotemporally contiguous to LP language production area. So the Broca area is the population of neurons, okay? If they are said to have caused language production, then we automatically assume that, okay, this population of neurons are literally causing your non physical capacity called language faculty. Like ability to produce language or something like that. Well, you can say that language production succeeds Broca area in time and all events of type B are regularly followed by or constantly conjoined with events of type LP language production. Look, this doesn't guarantee that Broca area is literally causing the capacity you have to produce language. What the Broca area is actually helping us to see. Somehow your non physical capacity to produce language is correlated with populations of neurons in prefrontal lob in an area called Broca's area. So you can't say convincingly those population neurons are causing this non physical capacity. But what you can say is when that region properly functions, when it doesn't malfunction, you always have this capacity to produce language. When that part malfunctions, you will lose this capacity. But that doesn't mean that region is causing this capacity. But this is precisely what meter neuron researchers are assuming. So somehow those regions of brain where mirror neurons are believed to have existed are doing all this magic even to the extent of causing your political party or what kind of drink you want to drink, Pepsi or Coca Cola or American hamburger versus like Mexican food or something like that. Like the list goes on and on and on and on. So when they say that, there's nothing that you can do other than assuming that they are assuming that the population of neurons are causing those kinds of preferences. But this seems to be extremely unconvincing. How can you saying is one thing showing is totally a different thing. And I can confidently assert that no neuroscientist whose work I have Read so far has given me any evidence of neurons having this kind of capacity to create non physical phenomena, such as my preferences for something over another thing and so on. So these are generally the huge problems that you, you see in the literature. [01:03:03] Speaker B: That makes sense. That makes sense. So they see the, they take the correlation and they attribute directly to causation. And I'm sure that probably like this might lead us to your last hardest problem. Actually that this probably is connected to some metaphysical assumptions that they may or may not even be aware of or considering, which is if you assume that the brain explains the mind entirely and that's all there is, then they might assume, okay, well this is if you see activity corresponding to some, something like language production in a particular area of the brain. Well, that's it, that's what it is. But to your point, if you're careful about your analysis, the correlation doesn't equal causation if, if the language production is what happening somewhere else. I suppose. [01:03:51] Speaker A: Right. [01:03:51] Speaker B: So this, as you, as you get into talking about the hardest problem, I think now this is, this is connected to the idea of the bear. We're finally getting to the rest of your, your chapter title, which is about consciousness and the bearer. And, and, and I know you talk about something called the location problem and the misidentification problem. Does this have something to do with this, this assumption of whether everything is reducing to the brain or whether there's something more than the brain? [01:04:18] Speaker A: Yes. So the misidentification problem is the problem of let's say, taking mental states in general and identifying them with nothing but brain states. Okay. Reducing them to brain states. So physiological processes inside your brain. This doesn't really work because you asked me earlier about liveness and discernibility of identicals law. Right. So we've already established like I can say something about my headache sensation that I cannot say about my physical state. Let's say the physiological process. The physiological process doesn't have any quality. Phenomenal quality. But my headache sensation does have phenomenal quality. [01:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So by that Leibniz principle, they can't be identical. [01:05:10] Speaker A: Identical. Yes, exactly. But when you commit the mistake of, when you make the mistake of misidentifying, that's precisely what you do. For example, mirror neurons are non mental properties in my view. But then when you read the literature, the mirror neurons are completely identified with brain states. So that's what the brain is doing. Those are population of neurons anointed in a special way to carry out such and such tasks. So what you see is what is True, of those population of neurons, you are not supposed to make any distinctions. You have to accept for what it is. What that means is they are identical, which means that mental state is the same thing as brain state. Okay? So mirror neurons are nothing but what the population of neurons are doing in that region that I call a misidentification error, because that cannot be the case for so many reasons. So how can we solve the misidentification problem? And that's exactly where the bearer issue comes in. That's where the consciousness issue actually comes in. The hardest problem of the functional properties of mirror neurons has to do with where to locate these properties in the brain or in something that's not brain, but that works with brain, you know, in a very closely kind of very interwoven sense. Right. So we cannot locate in the brain. If we were to locate these properties in the brain, then we. We've got to produce the evidence, the evidence of, okay, these things are identical with physiological processes or electrical processes or chemical processes, but they do their magic. But then the qualities do not fit the brain to be the source of these things. So as physicalists, they have to assume that burden of proof. I'm not saying that they can't do that if once they assume, they have to show us mirror neuron researchers, they don't talk about these issues. They just literally just talk about as if everything is kind of completely taken care of and no questions being asked. Okay. They just talk about these mirror neurons, how awesome they are, how amazing they are, how they saved our lives, they saved civilizations, they even linked them up with civilizations. By the way, they are responsible for human. Human civilizations. I have no idea what that means, but they say that in a written form. So, yeah, that's where like, locating is like the problem of, like, where is their house, where is their home? Like, where should. Where should they be housed? [01:08:00] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a neat quotation that you had that I think is to this topic. If you don't mind, I could read this. This is by Bennett and Hacker. And let's see, I know one of them was the neuroscientist, one was the philosopher, which. Which I'm getting them back. Which was the philosopher. Is that Bennett? [01:08:18] Speaker A: I think Bennett is the philosophers. Okay. I think so. Yeah. [01:08:21] Speaker B: But they wrote a book together that's quite well known and. Yes, and so one's a neuroscientist, one's a philosopher. Okay, this is what they said. Do we know what it is for a brain to see or hear, for a brain to have experiences, to know or believe something? Do we have any conception of what it would be for a brain to make a decision? Do we grasp what it is for a brain, let alone for a neuron to reason, no matter whether inductively or deductively, to estimate probabilities, to present arguments, to interpret data and to form hypotheses on the basis of its interpretations. So this is kind of what you're getting at, right? Like you have, the researchers might use this language that's attributing to the brain these just directly, these, these concepts that really belong to the mental, but they just, they just sort of conflate them and don't maybe, maybe not even conscious they're doing that. [01:09:13] Speaker A: Exactly. So a Bennett and hacker, they are not necessarily assuming like some sort of non physical self being the bearer of these properties, but they are saying like we should attribute these properties to the person as a whole, not to the person, part of that person, such as the brain. So they call that mere logical fallacy. So the brain is not a kind of organ that's capable of doing these kinds of things. In fact, they are absolutely right on the money when they say that. Do we even have any conception of that? I think my answer is none whatsoever. But unfortunately researchers always talk as if the brain is doing this, the brain is doing that, and psychologists talk about that. No one is asking how can like group of neurons actually do such a thing, like what does it even mean? [01:10:04] Speaker B: But they just, they sort of just jump to that conclusion because, because of this correlative research, jumping right to the idea of causation. And, and, and I guess, yeah, you just, you, they're just, they're just locating these mental properties within the neurons themselves. [01:10:19] Speaker A: When they locate mental properties within, within the brain, by the way, they are not just locating them as a distinct properties relative to the brain properties. What they are saying is they are part and parcel of the same thing. That's it. There's no distinction. They are not saying, oh, here are mental properties, we're locating them. And on the other hand we have also brain estates. That's not what they are saying. They are saying we have one property in general which is physical. Even if it gives you an impression that's an extraordinarily complicated property. Still, it's just nothing but what the brain is doing. It's just everything is just the same. Ultimately it's physical. So they are not making that conceptual distinction or ontological distinction. They are just saying you cannot really kind of talk about anything being distinct from what the brain is doing. So what the brain is doing is all there is about reality when it comes to human nature. [01:11:20] Speaker B: Okay, that makes sense. And then what you want to do is you want to say, okay, now that we're conscious of, hey, what we really are doing is locating these mental properties here. You could say, well, and they don't fit, they don't fit with these things for the reasons we've talked about already. It raises the question, okay, where do we locate these mental properties problems? [01:11:40] Speaker A: That's precisely the question that I try to answer. And then the answer that I give is these properties, the functional properties of mirror neurons are non physical properties, mental properties. Therefore they are part of consciousness. Consciousness is sort of like an umbrella term. So all these mental properties in one way or another are under this bigger umbrella that we call consciousness. Okay, now you have to also ask another deeper metaphysical question. So consciousness cannot exist all by itself. Consciousness is not something like that can have its own house up in thin air. Consciousness must be born by its own bearer. Without this bearer, the kind of consciousness that you and I have cannot exist. So it's not an independent properties, thoroughly dependent property, because it's thoroughly subjective property. A subjective property cannot exist without subject. So if you locate and bring all of these functional properties of mirror neurons under the umbrella of consciousness, if you lump them with consciousness or part of consciousness, then you have to answer the second leg of the question, which is, what is the bearer of consciousness and in general, what's the better mental properties? So what we have, what makes this problem the hardest problem, is not only to make sense of how mirror neurons are related to consciousness, but it's kind of to push the issue one step ahead, you know, and say, well, okay, we've got what we want, so what is the better of all of these things? So now you have to talk about the nature of the bearer and the properties that are being born by this bearer. That makes it extremely, extremely hard. Many people who work on consciousness research, they do not really bother about answering these kinds of questions. They just treat consciousness somehow. Okay, it's a complicated property. Let's understand what it is. Blah, blah, blah. So the bigger issue is almost something that I push, something that JP pushes. And we both believe very strongly in Brandon Recaba. And actually I can say EJ Low, there are minorities actually who think that consciousness actually needs its own unique bearer. So that complicates our job so much because we have to work through it. And it even complicates even more the empirical research. Empirical research doesn't have access to, let's say to the bearer of consciousness. You know, if you take the bearer of consciousness to be distinct from the brain or the body, you need to depend on metaphysics, you need to depend on ontology, not necessarily on empirical research. [01:14:40] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:14:41] Speaker B: Okay, so this, my understanding, you write this bearer, it's sort of, it's the, the grounding of. Well, it's the location, as we talked about, of consciousness more generally, but specifically in the mirror neurons context, it's these, the mental functions that are attached, that we are attaching to the mirror neurons. That these are where they're, it's located in this bearer. So is this. And it's non physical. Where are you, are you saying that much that this bear must be non physical? [01:15:10] Speaker A: Yes. So the bearer idea is extremely controversial, as you guys might know, because there are philosophers who think that we are nothing but our brains or we are nothing but our bodies, and others would say that the bearer is a fictional entity. We have to assume, just like a mathematical axiom, and then drive some sort of theorem. It doesn't have to be true, it doesn't have to be grounded in reality, but it helps us as a formal notion to make sense of other things. Let's say Immanuel Kant, for example, proposed the self as a formal notion to understand the nature of phenomenology or experience and so on. Other philosophers give different kinds of interpretations, but people like JP EJ Lo, myself included and others, we take the self to be a concrete, non physical force entity that is metaphysically needed to bear mental, you know, mental properties. And we need brain so that the brain bears physical properties. So it's completely distinct. [01:16:16] Speaker B: Yes, because it has to, it can't just be a, like a helpful concept, like a frame, you know, something we, we use to help our description of what's going on. It has to have some kind of like ontological substance in order to be a location, the sort of the source of these things like consciousness. Is that right? [01:16:36] Speaker A: Absolutely. So if you know David Chalmers, with whom I have had so many opportunities to interact face to face about these issues, he writes a lot on consciousness and he's one of the world's leading thinkers on the problem of consciousness. And he doesn't really talk about the better of consciousness and he doesn't kind of write about it. You doesn't raise the issue. But he talks about the consciousness being non physical. It's irreducible. We cannot reduce consciousness to physiological processes in our brain. Consciousness is extremely unique kind of property in its own right. But it, it resides and it, it's located in this physical universe. But that's the scientific laws that we have discovered so far are unable to help us kind of 100% understand the nature of consciousness. So we need to have another like brand new scientific laws to make progress. And he does very interesting works. So David Chalmers takes consciousness as a non physical property, but at the same time he doesn't propose a unique metaphysical better for consciousness. He definitely rejects physicalism in all its forms, but he's not dualist. He is a kind of a naturalistic, what he calls naturalistic dualism, his version of dualism. This is a very complicated issue because it really takes us back to kind of a thick literature discussion on philosophy of mind. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't really establish in this chapter, I don't argue for any particular position on dualism, but it's implied there. So I take this bearer as a non physical entity distinct from the brain, distinct from the body. So I am willing to be labeled as like let's say a substance do list of some kind. I'm okay with that. [01:18:30] Speaker B: Good, good. Okay, that's helpful. And certainly you're, you know, I mean, that's where you land, but you landed there because you're really trying to get conceptual clarity on these things like identity, causation versus correlation, the location for mental properties. It has to be a proper location to support the kind of properties they are. And then that's led to you to say, hey, this bear must be this real, ontologically real substance to ground this consciousness. And so once we've done that, how do you think, let's assume you had a cadre of mirror neuron scientists that, that went with that. How do you think that would change their work on mirror neurons? [01:19:12] Speaker A: I think it will change in so many different ways. First of all, it will bring conceptual clarity. Conceptual clarity is very important because they would have to modify so many assumptions that they've already made. For example, some of the things that we've talked about earlier, okay, Mirror neurons have been taken to be literally like mirror neuron. There's brain cells that really kind of help you make decisions to both for one party over another or something like that. Like this. This seems to be kind of a bit unclear to me. It's in fact, to be honest with you, it's a bit nonsensical. Like I don't think mirror neurons have any way of making us do that kind of stuff. So all of the mistakes, all of the confusions Lack of conceptual clarity that we attribute to mirror neuron researchers will be automatically, I think, be improved in my view if they really kind of adopt a sort of, kind of modest suggestions that I've made in this book. And look, one problem that I often notice in scientific research when I read the literature is the tendency to from the get go we have to solve this problem. That's it. If we can't solve this problem, then we have to assume this must be the case. Okay, you don't have to assume from the get go physicalism, nor should you assume from the get go dualism whatsoever. Like just approach the issue on a neutral ground. And if the data leads you to one way or another, just simply follow the data. Easier said than done, I understand that. But this kind of in principle pre cooked like conclusion about how things should be, if they are going to be taken as if like true things, it always kind of affects the quality of your research. So I think the suggestions that I've made in this chapter are all very, very modest. I think it will improve so many things. Like all the problems that I've raised, I think they will be out the window in my view. It doesn't mean that neuroscientists should agree with me. I'm not saying that my arguments are perfect, but at least there are good reasons why we should approach this issue by bringing philosophy, metaphysics, ontology and science. So we both have to work together like for a common good, for a common goal. But if we are in our own cubicles doing our own thing, the outcome is always very, very bad because it's just all about confusion after confusion. I think that would be like one payoff, Brian, as I think about this issue. [01:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. There's another quotation, a short one from Dennis Noble in your chapter, who I know is not a dualist, but I'm sure you would agree with him on this. The quotation is the first step to scientific progress is to ask the right questions. If we are conceptually confused, used will ask the wrong questions. That sounds to me like what you're, you know, really what you're, what you're getting at is if you are making mistakes about identif, identifying mental and neural things directly or causation, where you just really know correlation then and jumping to the conclusion that the mind must be located in the brain, these sorts of things, then, then it's going to be difficult for you to make proper scientific progress because you'll, you'll assume things that aren't true and we'll ask the right questions. [01:22:47] Speaker A: Absolutely. So the tendency to kind of is, that kind of science has got like the key to unpack any mystery that we are struggling to understand. I think that's not the case. That's. That's automatically false. I mean, science makes its own contributions, and it has made immense contributions. It's making varied contributions. It will continue to do so. So therefore, philosophy and other disciplines as well, in their own context. So reality is one gigantic huge stuff. And a piece of a slice here, a piece of a slice over there can be studied by different domains of human inquiry. And I don't think we have to anoint scientific approach as the only approach or the only kind of successful approach to understand things. I mean, if you take this chapter, I mean, it should demonstrate very clearly I am not a medical person and I read neuroscience a lot and I teach philosophy of neuroscience. Look, my expertise is extremely important for this project. You see, if I were to team up with mirror neuron scientists, I would give them ideas about what they conclude as a result of their experimental work. Because their experimental works kind of, you know, consists of observation, data analysis, interpretation and conclusion and so forth. All of those steps, by the way, are not scientific steps. They immediately involve philosophical reflections. Interpretation is a philosophical enterprise. You are interpreting, you're reasoning about what you've observed, you reasoning about the data you've collected, you're analyzing the data you've collected, and so on. All of those things are philosophical activities. Even neuroscientists might not know that to be the case. I'm pretty sure most neuroscientists do know that, but they quickly forget that, oh, they are only doing science, and so on. I think that kind of a silly mistake has to be improved and has to be eradicated completely for us to be able to make good progress in what we do. I think that's a kind of a often an issue. Oh, science is just uniquely equipped to unpack the mystery of reality. I think that's. Even that claim itself is not scientific. It's a philosophical assumption about what science is supposed to do or believed that science has a capability to do. I think our perception of science, our perception of philosophy should be a little bit kind of tweaked a little bit. So philosophers, they should respect science. Scientists, they should respect philosophical contributions. I think we need to come together, we need to work together, and I think the outcome will be awesome. And we should not necessarily solve mysteries. I don't think that should be our task. I think if you are predetermined like if you convince yourself from the get go, I have to solve this. The problem is when you fail to solve that problem, you will cheat actually in so many different ways. Like you, you will bring this outrageous assumptions. I have to make this thing work. I have to make this thing work. Then you don't follow the truth. As a result of that, you just, you will be kind of very rebellious in your attitude toward what you're doing. So I think this is a part of like a sort of like a mini preaching. But I think it's very important to remind ourselves. So it's about that. [01:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It sounds to me like what you're saying is you're not, you're not pitting one against the other. You're saying that you know, to do the best science, you need to do good philosophy. Because that's all about conceptual clarity, clarity in your thinking, not jumping to conclusions, you know, not making assumptions prior to seeing where the data leads you. So that makes, that makes a lot [01:26:36] Speaker A: of sense to me and Brian. One thing I should add, Bennett and Hocker actually have a misguided view or conception of philosophy and they think that philosophy's job is nothing but clarifying concepts. I think that's completely an understudger. Philosophy metaphysics absolutely reveals the nature of reality. And there are a ton of other ways to show and substantiate that claim. But I think philosophy is not just a tool where it's kind of clear. Philosophy is not a linguistic enterprise. Philosophy is a very serious thinking about very serious things. [01:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah, because like, I mean, as an example of that in your chapter here is that you used the philosophical clarity to think about the mental properties and their distinctions from the physical properties. And when you think about, well, they have to be located somewhere. This is leading you to make a inference about the nature of reality. There has to be some non physical grounding for consciousness. And that's the bearer. [01:27:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. So the issue of, by the way, the issue of consciousness. Consciousness, the nature of consciousness and its bearer. These things cannot be resolved on the basis of empirical research alone. If anyone thinks otherwise, good luck. Take me to any laboratory anywhere in the world where scientists would show me, here is the bearer. The bearer looks like this. Here's the nature of consciousness. You can't show me, you can't draw blood from my body and just show me what these things look like. These are metaphysical issues, highly abstract issues. But what neuroscientists can do. The facts that neuroscientists helped us to see about the physical organ what we call brain and how it works and what happens inside our brain when we do certain things, their expertise immensely contribute to our understanding of how brain actually functions. And when answering questions like the bearer question, the nature of consciousness, and so on, there is nothing that the lab work really shows me to understand any of these things. So you need a metaphysician, you need a philosopher to come alongside and say, okay, you've shown me this from the empirical side. Let me show you from the non empirical side. Let's, you know, do combo and, you know, crank out like what works out of that exercise. You see, we can't get away with this cheap claims that philosophy is irrelevant to this project. [01:29:01] Speaker B: That's great. And this is probably a great, great point to stop on too. I think we've done a great job covering your very interesting chapter. And I think this chapter really exemplifies what we're going after with the anthology as a whole, which is to explore the interaction between philosophy and empirical sciences around this topic of the nature of the mind and the brain. [01:29:24] Speaker C: Well, thank you, guys. I've been sitting here listening and learning a lot, not contributing at all because my mind is just a big sink sucking everything in. So thank you very much. Brian Kraus has been talking to Dr. Maretu Gutta, and Dr. Gutta teaches analytic philosophy at Biola University. Brian has been talking about his chapter Mirror Consciousness and the Bearer Question in the book Minding the Brain, and it's edited by Angus Minouche, Brian and yours truly. For more information about the book and to read Dr. Gude's chapter, visit mindingthebrain.org that's mindingthebrain.org I'm Robert J. Marks, and until next time on Mind Matters News, be of good cheer. [01:30:11] Speaker B: Foreign. [01:30:19] Speaker C: This has been Mind Matters News with your host, Robert J. [01:30:24] Speaker A: Marks. [01:30:25] Speaker C: Explore more at MindMatters AI. That's MindMatters AI. Mind Matters News is directed and edited by Austin Egbert. [01:30:38] Speaker A: The opinions expressed on this program are [01:30:41] Speaker C: solely those of the speakers. Mind Matters News is produced and copyrighted by the Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute.