This online article, excerpted from a book, offers one interpretation of "how the brain works." This is from The Immortal “I” - A Unified Theory of Psychology, Neurology, and The Perennial Philosophy by Eugene B. Shea, originally published by University Press of America.
Here is the fundamental thesis of the article:
We need a new paradigm of the human brain, as a brain which starts out physiologically and functionally identical to that of the chimpanzee,And now, without further interruption, here is the article:but is transformed into what can now be defined as a “mind” by virtue of our metafaculties of metacognition, imagination, and commitment, as well as by the thousands of self-adopted Loves and Beliefs and their concomitant Desires and Fears which become wired into our Reticular Formations as we “mature.”
A multidisciplinary systems analysis:
the psychology/neurology/cybernetics of mind/brain/behaviorEugene B. Shea
Neuroscientists around the world are working day and night with their brain scans to analyze the activities of individual neurons and segments of the brain in hopes of learning how the brain works, and eventually, arriving at an understanding of human behavior. Many neurologists, biologists, physiologists—even some physicists and mathematicians—are exercising their truly prodigious powers of imagination to justify their conviction that consciousness, reasoning, decision-making, etc., - all our “higher” faculties - must be functions of the cortex.But since this article will take strong exception to the direction of their research, I must devote the following portion to explaining why I believe the great majority of cognitive neuroscientists and neuropsychologists are on the wrong track.
First however, I want to clearly and largely exempt Bernard J. Baars, Ph.D., and Nicole M. Gage, Ph.D. from my criticism, based on their marvelously lucid and carefully researched new textbook, Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience - Academic Press, 2007. Indeed, I am deeply indebted to them for much of the factual neuroscience cited in this article. I think every serious student of cognitive neuroscience should have a copy of this excellent book.
The major problem facing neurocientists and neuropsychologists is that the chimpanzee's DNA is now known to be 99+% identical to our own, so most “scientismists” thought this proved we were only a branch of the chimp family, and that the <1%>
But now they have found that the remaining <1%>
Our DNA is not similar to that of the chimpanzee, it is, to all intents and purposes, identical.
Then how come we're so different? Never at loss for figments, most scientists have concluded that our differences, or “higher faculties,” must be found in the cortex, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, both of which are much larger than that of the chimp, imagining that a larger but physiologically identical brain, must account for our superiority.
So hundreds of researchers are expending millions of people-hours, centering all their efforts to locate human faculties of consciousness, reasoning, decision-making, imagination, voluntary action, etc, in some as yet undiscovered faculties of the human cortex.
Professor Sebastian Grossman, Ph.D., Emeritus Chair of Bio-Psychology, University of Chicago, points out "... neuropsychologists' proclivity to 'localize' higher faculties such as consciousness in that part of the brain that has undergone the most obvious evolutionary change. . .” (in a letter to the author)
Note the good Professor's precise use of the word “proclivity,” and quote marks around the word localize. In other words, they arbitrarily posit our higher faculties in the cortex, not on the basis of any scientific evidence, but because that’s where they want them to be.
(And, as we now know the larger brain is not at all “evolutionary,” having appeared on the planet in an instant of geological time.)
Nor is there any validity to the “triune” nature of the brain, as composed of evolutionary development from reptilian to mammalian to primate brains. The so-called “reptilian brain” is not a brain at all, since it only represents a portion of the reptile brain, which is comprised, like ours, of brainstem, midbrain, and cortex. Nor, for the same reason, is the mammalian brain a brain. And as we shall see, our derogation of these so-called lizard and mammalian brains in favor of the cortex has led researchers to only a perfunctory analysis of their marvelous functions, without which we would be vegetables shortly before our demise.
And neuroscientists are admittedly struggling with a “binding problem.” The various visual characteristics of an object―color, shape, size, motion, etc.―are registered and interpreted in different parts of the cortex. So, they wonder, if I see something red, round, baseball-size, in motion, where in the cortex do all of those percepts come together to instantly alert me to the fact that I’m going to get hit in the face with a tomato? The famous binding problem.
Read the whole article.
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