Knowledge of the physical brain is essential to its understanding. This includes the biology and physics of neurons, neurochemicals, dendrites, synapses, neural networks, neural ensembles, large scale neural synchrony and coordinated neural oscillation.
But the physical is only half the story. The other half is the subjective. The mind after all resides and operates within the physical brain. Any type or instance of perception, recognition, thought, thinking (understanding, analyzing, synthesizing, constructing counter-arguments, planning…), the self, executive control, goals, attention, prediction, intention or learning occurs within it. Or any combination of the above. The brain’s main function is to enables our mental states and processes.
The mind, both conscious and unconscious, is a very real phenomenon. It’s active every moment of the day. With any task (mundane & routine or new & exciting) perception, identification, motivation, working memory, intention and many other aspects of it are active; continually or intermittently.
What does the existence of the mind, inside the brain, have to do with brain understanding? It provides a pathway to that understanding. Given the brain’s main function is to create or at least enable the mind, and the mind operates from inside the brain, a model of the mind (its function through space and time) allows the brain’s activity to be modeled as well.
In other words, brain activity can’t be encoded or decoded absent a set of subjective categories of mind that confer meaning to it.
The lack of attention the mind receives hinders many aspects of brain science. One example is brain signal decoding. It’s well known decoding is in its infancy. This is no surprise. How could a given brain signal, or its underlying neural activity, be understood — without an accurate listing of the components of the mind it corresponds to?! How could it be understood and properly labeled (decoded) without not only listing, but connecting and weighing these mental components?
Unfortunately a myth has developed that the subjective mind isn’t necessary to understand the brain. Being able to define the aspects of mind at play during a task is not given much attention. After all, isn’t consciousness and the mind an immaterial entity? Does it even exist in the first place?
The neurophilosophy of materialism supports the idea the mind can be safely ignored. The immaterial isn’t physical and therefore isn’t “real.” It doesn’t really exist. The (unreal) mind can be “reduced” to the (real) brain. Once reduced, it can now be ignored altogether. And good riddance! After all, how can a mental state or process exist ANYWHERE in the physical universe, including the brain? How could it connect to neurons, synchronous neural oscillation, functional neural networks or any other aspect of it?
In short, the brain is physical and therefore real; the mind is non-physical and therefore an illusion, hallucination or epiphenomenon. Or maybe it doesn’t exist at all.
Materialism is compelling — until the focus is shifted from the brain to the mind. First, awareness, conscious experience and the mind do exist — as immaterial phenomena. The sound of a dog barking, smell and taste of coffee, or decision to reconsider an idea are well-documented, understood and widely-agreed upon subjective phenomena. Everyone who is awake and conscious sees, hears, feels, thinks etc. We do so every moment of the day. (The only people who might disagree with this, ironically, are brain scientists who become overly-focused on the brain).
For example, consider reading. Without visual perception, or at least unconscious sensation, the activity of reading would be impossible. Recognition of letters and words depends on it. Also word and phrase meaning, related thoughts and thinking, questions, counter arguments etc. could not be evoked by word percepts without (intellectual) mental states and processes. The reader could neither read nor understand anything read without the mind.
It’s easy to test the hypothesis consciousness doesn’t exist. Grasp a heavy object, place your other hand flat on a hard surface, and strike as hard as you can. Do you feel anything? Or, try biting into a delicious piece of chocolate cake. Do you feel or taste anything?
It’s clear both the subjective AND the physical are critical to the brain. This is good news for the quest to understand how brains work. If mind and brain are very closely connected, the activity of the former can then be used to functionally map, label, and understand the latter.
For example, say a person thinks “lift my right hand slowly, about six inches diagonally to the right then straight up.” This intention creates the exact neural activity, and efferent brain, signal necessary to cause that action. How could the intention to move in a particular way cause a corresponding movement — other than it being connected to corresponding brain activity? The motor signal (from the motor cortex & basal ganglia) mirrors a person’s movement intentions, and can do so with incredible accuracy and precision.
Given the brain signal mirrors not only intention and rest of the mind, how might they connect? Dual aspect monism elegantly explains this. Here mind and brain are essentially the same phenomenon, seen from two different perspectives. The intention “reach my left hand to my chin” is the first person subjective view. The (coordinated, large scale, synchronous) neural ensemble activity corresponding to it is the third person objective view — of that same intention (and accompanying imagination, inner speech, prediction…).
What if the mind were understandable? What if there was a viable path toward a mind model: its components and their function through space and time, in the brain? What if clear, precise and accurate definitions of the mind could be obtained? Then, it would make a lot of sense to focus on the mind.
That the subjective or experiential is poorly understood and minimized is actually great news. It represents tremendous potential. Once defined accurately, “it” can then be connected to the brain. This enables accurate labeling of the corresponding coordinated neural activity (functional neural networks), and brain signal.
A lot of great work is currently being done in the brain sciences. Valuable experimental data, knowledge, skills and technology are being accumulated daily. The missing piece of the puzzle is the subjective mind — taken seriously, understood and defined accurately. This enables a significantly more accurate mind-to-brain encoding, and brain-to-mind decoding. Right now the focus is 95% brain study; then extrapolating from brain activity (during a task) back to the mind, in order to define “it” in neural terms. I argue this approach is extremely limiting, and unnecessary. A much more effective one is to look to the mind first — to understand both it, and the brain. Applied neuroscience – BCI, neuroprosthetics, AGI, knowledge representation, CNS biomarkers etc. — and brain science generally would benefit tremendously.