Ernest Dempsey - The mind-body discussion in psychology, or philosophy of mind, dates back to ancient times where it diffuses into the philosophical issue of matter-spirit dichotomy. In the realm of psychology, contemporary neurobiological approaches are getting ever closer to the roots of perception in the central nervous system. Michael S.A. Graziano is a well-known neuroscientist whose research work has been published in topnotch science journals including Nature and Science. Professor of neuroscience at the Princeton University’s Neuroscience Institute, he is also a novelist.In his latest book God Soul Mind Brain, Michael Graziano explains the social circuitry of the brain involved in social perception and development of a belief system. His book illustrates the neurological pathway that leads to more abstract concepts like god, soul, and beliefs. In the following conversation, he tells more about the topic.
Ernest: Hello Michael and thanks for taking this interview with me! Your book God Soul Mind Brain is short and yet quite substantial, inviting so many questions. To start with, you tell that only neuroscience has seriously challenged the dualistic view of the universe. What accounts for this claim, or fact as you see it?
Michael: It's a pleasure to chat with you. Philosophy has gone back and forth and around in circles on the questions of the mind, with little or no progress. There is a recent trend for philosophy to borrow from neuroscience—to re-state neuroscience couched in layman's terms—and call it a new philosophy. To me it's just neuroscience. There are basically two positions on the mind/body problem. First, the view of a spirit world in which the mind is a non-physical entity that can float free of the body. Second, the view of neuroscience in which the mind emerges from the functioning of the brain. The only objective evidence comes from this second approach.
Ernest: Reality is always subjective and no more than a bundle of perception, we learn from your book. Is your position on reality perfectly in line with the empiricist notions of Bacon and Hume?
Michael: My point is not at all that reality is a subjective construct of the brain. There is a reality. It is out there. But our perception of it is like a story that the brain tells itself, and that story may be quite inaccurate. I think the classical empiricists failed to understand how much our minds reconstruct the reality around us. It has taken modern neuroscience to fully appreciate the distinction between the reality out there, that is being perceived, and the perception of it that is constructed in the brain. A good example is color. In reality, white light is a mixture of all other colors, but we do not perceive it that way. The brain constructs its own version of reality in which white light is fundamentally different from, and purer than, other colors. That is not to say that we can intentionally make our brains construct any perception we want. We can't remake our perceptual world at will. Perception is constrained both by what is really out there and by basic unconscious mechanisms in the brain that function in a certain way whether we want them to or not.
Ernest: We have several different centers in the brain for controlling specific perceptual, cognitive, and motor functions. Is there any central command within the brain that keeps close coordination between all these brain centers so as to render what we consider “sane” or “normal” behavior?
Michael: Whether there is a central command module in the brain is controversial. Some regions, such as the prefrontal cortex, may partly fill that role. But many of the general control functions, like making a decision to do A instead of B, are probably the result of dynamic, constantly changing interactions among many brain areas.
Ernest: The essence of God Soul Mind Brian is the phenomenon of modeling of mind – whether of others or one’s own – which constructs the social reality for us as we know it. Are there any genetic/biological factors known to be influencing the modeling process significantly?
Michael: The way humans model other minds, and the brain basis for that, is not well understood yet. It may be that autism is an example of a biological deficit in that ability. But autism is not well understood either.
Ernest: Michael, one important point I get from your book relates consciousness – that it’s a process not a thing. Would you explain it a little in the context of its importance for our understanding?
Michael: This may be a semantic distinction. When you run a race, is running a process or a thing? It isn't a physical object. It's something you do. Just so, consciousness seems to be something we do, a verb, a process of computing information in certain ways in the brain.
Ernest: With perception enjoying primacy over cognition in the nervous system, as we learn from your book, do we need to put the long-held belief in cognitive therapy to question?
Michael: In therapy, the golden rule is if it works, use it. It's all results-based. So I wouldn't want to dump a therapy method on the basis of a theory. I am not sure that perception trumps cognition. Both are present, and there is a fuzzy border between them. My book certainly focuses on social perception and has less to say about social cognition.
Ernest: At about the end of the book, we read about Richard Dawkins’ meme theory and that religion, never cent percent truly in our service, keeps propelling itself onward through the human race like an evolving organism does through nature. But then you say that people, not religions, are responsible for brutality or decency. Aren’t these two positions incompatible?
Michael: I certainly subscribe to both of those positions, and don't think they are incompatible. Yes, I think religion is culturally grown, and propagates, and evolves in a way that tends to protect itself, because religions that didn't wouldn’t survive. I also think that, objectively, there is not a whole lot of evidence that religion causes either brutality or peacefulness. One can find the same vast range from human brutality to peacefulness whether you look at religious people or atheists. There are some religions that are used in the service of war. But religions tend to be used in the service of whatever people are doing at the moment. A bit like music.
Ernest: With morality regarded as a physical construct of the brain in your book, and morality itself coming through imitation, what is the dominant or primary force that constitutes our belief system?
Michael: I believe morality evolves. It is partly influenced by genetically determined organization in the brain and partly the result of cultural evolution. It definitely changes over time and across cultures, and yet some of it is relatively constant. Some elements of morality, apparently, can even be found in the way chimpanzees interact with each other.
Ernest: There are lots of questions coming in here Michael, but let’s wrap it up with one about computers. As we continue to promote our social networks, with an advanced machine mediating between us and others, where do you see our psychological evolution going?
Michael: If it’s possible to construct a computer that plays chess, and now a computer that plays Jeopardy, I think a computer that is conscious and moral in the same sense as humans is not too far away. Whether that is good or bad, and what impact it will have on us culturally, I have no clear idea.
Ernest: Many thanks Michael! It’s been really wonderful discussing with you an interesting topic!
Michael: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss!
