298. Against brain reductionism

There still is debate on whether ‘we are our brain’. Can our choices and thoughts be ‘reduced’ to what happens in our brain? This is one example of the perennial debate on reductionism. It is silly to argue whether choice is rooted in brain activity or in conduct and interaction with other people. Of course both apply.

While choice and thought are based on activity in the brain, we cannot, at least not yet, understand and explain conduct by looking at neural circuits or firing patterns in the brain.

Similarly, while causality ‘ultimately’ is based on atomic and subatomic phenomena, we cannot understand it by looking at that level. Molecules are composed from atoms, which in turn arise from underlying forces, but chemical knowledge cannot be reduced to quantum mechanics.

We knew about Boyle’s law of the pressure of a gas in a vat as proportional to temperature and inversely proportional to volume of the vat before we knew that pressure was caused by gas molecules bumping into the walls of the vat.

                                                                                                            
We know about laws of supply and demand without explaining the psychology of choice.

How a car works enables and constrains how it can be driven, but we cannot understand driving behaviour by looking at the motor of the car. But electrical failure that causes the motor to stall can explain an accident.

To understand choice we need to see how choices are made in action. To understand cognition and language we need to see how it arises in action. However, while these phenomena cannot be reduced to how the brain works this does not make it irrelevant to look at how the brain works. A renewed discussion of the old issue of free will arose from the experimental finding in brain research that awareness of choice often comes after the choice rather than before it, as a rationalization after the act. Does this prove that ‘we are our brain’ and there is no free will?

As I argued in item 5 of this blog, subconscious choice is fed by conscious deliberation and the execution of choice is based at least in part on conscious deliberation.

So, what is the relation between brain activity and action in the world? Earlier in this blog I adopted the perspective of ‘neural Darwinism’, from the work of Gerald Edelman, that neural networks develop from felt success of activities triggered by neural networks. They guide choice but are  also formed by its results. In this way what happens in the brain reflects experience.

Looking at actions helps to understand how the brain works, and looking at the brain helps to understand how choice and action work. This fits well in the pragmatist perspective that I take: ideas orient action, but action feeds back in formation of ideas.