The Mind.

             Mind Brain Identity Theory is the theory that mental events, like thoughts, feelings, ideas and so on, are nothing more or less than our experiences of brain events, such as activations and interactions of brain structures and other specific combinations and sequences of neurological activity. It's important to notice that the identity theory doesn't really say that the mind is the brain in the sense that you left hand is the hand at the end of your left arm. Rather, the identity theory says that there is nothing about the mind that cannot be accounted for by looking at the brain. An analogy would be the rain-atmosphere identity theory, which I just made up. The rain-atmosphere identity theory says that there is nothing about rain that cannot be accounted for by processes occurring in Earth's atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere contains a mixture of gases, water in various forms, and various kinds of dust. This mixture is unevenly heated by the sun, stirred about by Earth's rotation and moves about in various directions over and around Earth's seas and landforms. Various energy-dissipating processes occur in the atmosphere, and some of them result in rain. According to the rain-atmosphere identity theory, when we experience what we call "rain" we are experiencing one aspect of a complex process that occurs in the atmosphere, and that this experience does not require anything other than atmospheric processes to explain it.
             Think of a chipmunk. There, you just experienced a neurological event. This event, which you could name "thinking of a chipmunk," occurred inside your brain. A certain number of neurons in your brain fired in a certain sequence of patterns while other neurons did not fire. Have the same thought again. Well, it's pretty difficult to have exactly the same thought over again, but if you managed it, exactly the same set of neurons that fire the first time would fire again in exactly the same way that they fired before. So the phrase "thinking of a chipmunk," exactly refers to the firing of these neurons in this way. This does not mean that your thought of a chipmunk, however you experienced it, didn't exist. It did exist, as that event in which those neurons fired in that way.
             It's true that when you experienced that neurological event, it did not feel like neurons firing, but that doesn't matter. Things very rarely feel like what they are. Take the phenomenon of a phantom limb. Sometimes, people who have had a limb amputated feel the missing limb as though it is still attached and healthy. Sometimes the phantom limb even has a phantom itch, which is very annoying because is no such thing as a phantom scratcher. What is going on here? Well, what is happening is that a certain set of neurons firing in a certain way. Specifically,the set of neurons that told this person where his arm was when it was still attached is now firing in pretty much the same way that they did before, even though the arm is no longer attached. To the person experiencing the phantom limb phenomenon, it again does not feel like neurons firing, it feels like his arm itches.
             The mind-brain identity theory thus has both an epistemological and an ontological aspect. The ontological aspect is the claim that neurological events occur, and that nothing else is necessary to account for mental events, which exist as our experiences of those neurological events. The epistemological aspect is the understanding that mental events feel a certain way. You know your experience of a certain neurological event as "thinking of a chipmunk," and you do not experience it is anything like a set of neurons firing. Instead, it comes to you as, say, a certain mental image, perhaps attached to a certain emotion.
             Imagine that somebody could open your skull and expand your living brain to such a scale that the operations of individual neurons could be seen as they occurred. Imagine that your brain has been so expanded, and that your neurons have been treated with magic pixie dust so that they glow brightly when they fire. Now imagine that someone is watching your brain when you think of a chipmunk. When when the watching person sees the same pattern of activation again, he says "you just thought of a chipmunk." Now the two of you have reached experienced the same event in a different way. The watcher sees your brain from the outside, and sees the pattern of activation that constitutes a certain thought as a set of neurons glowing and then fading in a certain sequence of patterns. You also experience that pattern of activation, but you don't experience it the way the watcher does.
             The main ontological claim of the mind brain identity theory is that, in so far as we are trying to account for the existence of mental events as we experience them, we don't need to believe in anything other than the human brain. The mind brain identity theory will only be proved wrong if it turns out that something more than the brain is needed to explain mental events.

The Argument for Mind-Brain Identity Theory.

             Donald Palmer says something that I find rather strange. He alludes to the fact that, in 1959, J. J. C. Smart thought that the mind brain identity theory could not be proved to be true. I find this strange, because I would've thought that in 1959 we had more than enough evidence to prove the mind brain identity theory. But Donald Palmer speaks of Smart's "admission" in the present tense, as if the mind brain identity theory cannot be proven to be true today. And I find this utterly bizarre! There is overwhelming evidence that absolutely every significant mental event ever experienced can easily be accounted for by neurological events, we have absolutely no reason to think that any other theory about the relationship between the mind and the brain can explain anything at all, and so the mind brain identity theory, in my view, is proven far beyond any reasonable doubt.
             Consider the way that lightning was proved to be an electrical discharge. Absolutely the only evidence we have ever had that this is so is that various phenomena associated with lightning behave in a manner that is consistent with lightning being electricity. Before Benjamin Franklin figured out that lightning was a form of electricity, nobody had any idea that this could be so. Because dry string does not conduct electricity, and wet string does, he flew a kite with a wet string in a thunderstorm. A key hanging from the string exhibited the kind of phenomena you would expect if lightning had something to do with electricity. After he decided that lightning was electricity, Franklin came up with a theory to explain why the ringing of church bells during a thunderstorm occasionally resulted in the fiery death of the bellringer. He also thought that, if lightning was electricity, then a metal rod placed at the top of a church steeple attached to a stout copper cable that led down to the ground would conduct electricity around the bellringer instead of through him. (Church authorities rejected Franklin's invention at first, allegedly because they thought that installing a lightning rod indicated that they did not trust god. Or perhaps, they just didn't like bellringers. However, after enough bellringers had died to satisfy them, they grudgingly adopted Franklin's invention, implicitly admitting that they didn't trust god, at least as far as bellringers are concerned. And so Benjamin Franklin settled the age-old question of how god feels about bellringers. Apparently, he doesn't like them.)
             Now consider the way the water was proved to be H2O. Again, if you observe water under various conditions, and treat it in various ways, say by running an electrical currents through it, or dipping things in it, water behaves the way it would if it was composed of molecules each of which consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. There is no phenomenon associated with water that does not occur in the manner one would expect if water was H2O. This knowledge was gained by a process of observation, theory and experimentation. Nobody looks at a glass of water and sees a mass composed of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. Rather, we see water, and believe it to be H2O because of a theory we developed based on our observations and experiments. To put it another way, water is our experience of H2O.
             The mind is proved to be the brain in exactly the same way. A truly staggering number of observations of both mind and brain have been made, with the result that there is absolutely no function or experience off the mind that cannot be explained as the operation of some specific part of the brain. The most striking piece of evidence that the mind is the brain is that, if parts of the brain are damaged, corresponding parts of the mind disappear. Lesions in Broca's and Wernicke's areas result in the loss of various abilities associated with language use. Lesions in the striate cortex in the occipital lobe result in loss of part or all of the visual field. And so on, and so on. The evidence is overwhelming that the brain is entirely responsible for the mind, and there is no evidence whatsoever for any other hypothesis. From a scientific point of view, the mind brain identity theory has been proved to the highest standard possible.
             Donald Palmer mentions three philosophers who object to the mind brain identity theory's claim to be scientific by asking exactly what facts would have to be discovered to prove the identity theory true. My answer to that is simply to say that those facts have already been discovered, and that anyone who is interested can go to the library and read up on the history of brain anatomy and neuroscience. The level of evidence for mind brain identity theory is comparable to the level of evidence for Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and any other well-established scientific theory. It is certainly on a level with the evidence we have for the functions of other organs, such as the liver, kidneys and spleen.
             The important thing to remember, is that if you use the standard of proof that is commonly accepted in science, the mind brain identity theory is true. If you say that some other, stricter standard of proof is necessary, one that the mind brain identity theory doesn't meet, then you would have to accept that no theory in science meets this stricter standard, so if the mind brain identity theory isn't true, nothing else is.


Identity

             One of the nice things about this unit is that it allows me to discuss the issue of identity, which I shall do before I go on to discuss Jerome Shaffer's objection to the mind brain identity theory.
             The phrase "the morning star is the evening star" is a rather odd one, as the cartoon on page 135 indicates. Do you ever seen the morning star in the evening? Do you ever see the morning star at the same time you see the evening star? The answer to both questions is no, absolutely not. Whether it's the morning star or the evening star depends on whether it's morning or evening when you see it. If you see it in the morning, it's the morning star. If you see it in the evening, it's the evening star. This is because the phrases "seeing the morning star" and "seeing the evening star" name different experiences. Seeing a bright star just above the horizon in the morning is called "seeing the morning star," while seeing a bright star just above the horizon in the evening is called "seeing the evening star." How do you tell the difference between these two experiences? Imagine that you woke up in semidarkness one day and, at that time, had no idea whether it was morning or evening. You look out the window and you see a bright star just above the horizon. Is it the morning star or the evening star? You wait a bit, and the sky gets a little bit lighter, which makes that star the morning star. Suppose one of your roommates wakes up at that time, looks out of the window and says "hey look, the evening star!" Given the definition of "the evening star," he would be wrong. He is not seeing the evening star, because he is not looking at it in the evening.
             Given the absolute dichotomy between the morning star in the evening star, how can anybody ever say that the morning star is the evening star? Well, we can do so by changing the meaning of the word "is." And it turns out that there are two distinct ways that we can change the definition of the word "is," creating two distinct, and important kinds of identity.
             The first kind of identity is identity of shared explanation. Two things may be considered identical, in this sense, if they are both explainable as manifestations of the same thing. We cannot say that the morning star is the evening star in the sense that when we experience the morning star we are also experiencing the evening star. Those experiences are mutually exclusive. But we can say that the morning star is the evening star in the sense that both are explained as manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon or theoretical entity. Consider the fact that visible light, static electricity, and magnetism are all manifestations of electromagnetic energy. Light is not static electricity, static electricity is not magnetism, but all three are explained as electromagnetic energy appearing in various circumstances. When electromagnetic energy appears as photons in a certain energy range, is visible light. When electromagnetic energy appears as a cloud of free electrons, it is static electricity. And when electromagnetic energy appears in the form of a field of force, it is magnetism. Similarly, we explain our experiences of the morning star and the evening star by pointing to the idea of a large ball (call it "planet Venus") going around the Sun in an orbit somewhat inside our own. We can say that the morning start is the evening star in the same sense that we can say that light is static electricity. That which is true of the morning star is not always true of the evening star, and vice versa, but it is true that the best way to explain both of these experiences is to hypothesize the existence of planet Venus. Thus, if we are comfortable using a definition of identity that allows us to say that static electricity is magnetism, and so on, we can say that the morning star "is" the evening star in the sense that both of these two distinctively different experiences are explainable by pointing to a hypothetical large ball of rock we call planet Venus.
             A second kind of identity is identity of experience with explanation. Two things may be considered identical, in this sense, if one thing is explained by the other. Magnetism is electromagnetic energy, but not in the sense that everything that is true about magnetism is also true about electromagnetic energy, and vice versa. There are things that are true of magnetism, that are not true of electromagnetic energy, and vice versa. No, magnetism is electromagnetic energy in the sense that we explain magnetism by pointing to established facts about electromagnetic energy. Notice that this is a "one direction" kind of identity. It makes sense to say that magnetism is electromagnetic energy, but it does not make sense to say that electromagnetic energy is magnetism. Similarly, the morning star is not planet Venus in the sense that everything you can say about the morning star can also be said of planet Venus, and vice versa. No, the morning star "is" planet Venus in the sense that a morning star is best explainable as a manifestation of this hypothetical ball of rock going around the Sun in an orbit slightly smaller than our own.
             Notice again that it makes perfect sense to say that the morning star is planet Venus, but it doesn't make much sense to say that planet Venus is the morning star. Indeed I cannot think of any circumstances when a serious question about planet Venus would be adequately answered by the statement "it's the morning star." In fact, there is only one question that can be meaningfully answered with that phrase. To understand this relationship, first imagine that you are looking at a bright star just over the horizon one cloudless evening. You ask a reasonable and knowledgeable friend "what's that" and he replies "it's the morning star." You remind him that it is evening, not morning. Would a reasonable person say "I know it's evening, but that doesn't matter, because that's the morning star?" Or would a reasonable person say "oops, I meant the evening star?" Similarly, think about looking at Venus through a telescope without knowing what it was. Would a question about this experience be adequately answered by the statement "you're looking at the morning star" or would it be much better answered with the sentence "that's a large ball of rock orbiting the sun inside our own orbit, we call it planet Venus?" In fact, there is an enormous variety of experiences that can only be adequately explained by claiming that they are experiences of planet Venus, and there is exactly one experience that can be adequately explained by claiming it is an experience of the morning star, and that is the experience of looking at a bright light just above the horizon in the early morning.
             I should point out that identity of shared explanation is not a commonly accepted form of identity. If we adopted shared explanation is one of our rules of identity, we would be forced to accept things like "magnetism is static electricity" and "ice is steam." Since I for one do not want to accept that kind of identity, I reject that rule, which means that I reject the only rule under which it makes sense to say "the morning star is the evening star." I'm perfectly willing to say that the morning star is Venus, that the evening star is Venus, but I'm not willing to say that the morning star is the evening star. In fact, I'm not really willing to say that Venus is the evening star. Imagine you ask me "what's Venus?" and I reply, "It's the evening star!" Would you think that was an adequate answer? Would it be okay with you that I left out the fact that Venus is a planet? Saying "it's Venus" is a good answer to the question "what's the evening star?" but saying "it's the evening star" is not a good answer to the question "what's Venus?"
             To put it in terms of "sense" and "reference," identity of shared explanation says that two words mean exactly the same thing when they have the same reference, even if they do not have the same sense. Thus, identity of shared explanation is a cheap and easy form of identity, depending only on shared reference.
             At this point, I would like to draw your attention to the curious fact that we have not yet discussed any form of identity between two objects in which whatever is true of one object is also true of the other objects. Identity of experience with explanation certainly does not fit this model. Not even identity of shared explanation, which I think goes a bit too far, has this feature. So I want to point out that we are able to make perfectly coherent identity claims without having to meet the criterion that what it true of one object is also true of the other object. Let me repeat that. We can make identity claims, such as "the morning star is Venus" in which something is true of one side of the identity (the morning star only appears in the morning) but not true of the other side, (Venus does not only appear in the morning).
             There is perhaps one kind of identity in which whatever can be said of one object can also be said of the other object, but this is actually the kind of entity where the "other" object is not really "other." I referred to what might be called identity of difference in name only, in which the and is used do not designate different experiences, but are merely different names for the same experience. Let us compare the experience of "getting tanked up" with the experience of "getting legless." Both of these terms refer to the experience of getting drunk. In fact, any experience that can truthfully be described as getting tanked up can also equally truthfully be described as getting legless. Therefore it follows that whatever is true of getting tanked up is also true of getting legless, and vice versa, but this is an utterly trivial result. This kind of "identity" only exists when we are considering the identity of two different terms for the same experience. It certainly does not hold between two terms that describe distinctly different experiences, such as seeing the morning star and seeing the evening star.
             Having laid out the various kinds of identity, let us consider the various identities that are discussed in our textbook. Donald Palmer lists the following identities: 1. Lightning with electricity, 2. Water with H2O and three, the morning star with the evening star. It should be clear that none of these has the kind of identity under which whatever can be truly said of one can also be truly said of the other. Lightning is electricity in the sense that we can explain lightning by discussing electricity, but electricity is not lightning, and we can say things that are true of electricity but not lightning, and vice versa. Water is H2O in the sense that we explain water by discussing molecules consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, but hydrogen and oxygen are not water, and the H2O molecule is not wet, or sparkly, or anything else that we can say about water. Lightning with electricity, and water with H2O, seem to me to be reasonable kinds of identity. But to accept that the morning star is the evening star means accepting a rule of identity that requires us to also accept such statements as "light is static electricity" and "steam is ice," which I for one, am not willing to do.

Shaffer's Stupid Objection.

             Jerome Shaffer's objection to the mind brain identity theory is not the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a philosophy book, but it's certainly in the top ten. I'm frankly amazed that anybody takes it seriously. I certainly find it hard to take it seriously, but I will do my best.
             According to Donald Palmer, Shaffer claims that for the mind brain identity theory to be true a certain kind of identity, which Palmer calls "strict identity," must hold between mental events and brain events. Under this rule, in order for the mind brain identity theory to be true, everything that is true of some mental event must also be true of the corresponding brain event, and vice versa. Shaffer claims that this kind of strict identity holds between the morning star and the evening star. If you observe the morning star, and find it to be 64,000,000 miles from the sun then, if you also observe the evening star at the same time, you will find that the evening star also turns out to be 64,000,000 miles from the sun when you observe it. If you weigh the morning star, or estimate its weight from how it looks to you when you observe it, its weight must come out to be exactly the same as the weight of the evening star when you observe the evening star at the same time. If your observations of the morning star do not match your observations of the evening star, the morning star is not the evening star. Similarly, if such strict identity holds between mind events and brain events, that whatever can be truly said of a given might event, must also be true of the corresponding brain event, and vice versa. Thus, if the mental event of remembering what you did last night is embarrassing, then the corresponding cascade of firings of certain groups of neurons must also be embarrassing. Similarly, if the cascade of neural firings responsible for remembering a particularly pungent German obscenity traces out a certain shape, let's say a spiderweb, in your cerebral cortex, it must also be true that the mental experience of remembering that German obscenity traces out that certain spiderweb shape. But it doesn't make sense to say that a cascade of neural firings is embarrassing, especially since, from the point of view of an observer studying your brain from the outside, one cascade of neural firings looks pretty much like another. Indeed, the only way to distinguish between different patterns of neural firings is to pay attention to where they happen, how they are spatially related, and in what order they occur. If you wince, and explain the facial expression by telling your coworker that you just remembered what you did last night, it would be absurd for your coworker to ask if that realization took the shape of a spiderweb. To quote Shaffer, "it makes no sense to talk about a thought's (sic) being located in some place or places in the body." Remember that Shaffer is talking about mental events here, not brain events. He accepts that brain events take place in the brain. He accepts that brain events have spatial and temporal features. He accepts that the firings of neurons that we associate with mental events take place in intricate sequences of intricate patterns, but his point is that thoughts, which are supposed to be identical to brain events, clearly do not have these spatial and temporal features.
             Donald Palmer says that it is difficult to evaluate Shaffer's view. Palmer says that Shaffer's "argument has some weight because it certainly does seem odd to talk about thoughts, feelings, hopes, expectations, beliefs, and intentions using the vocabulary of three-dimensional physical objects." At this point, I want to point out that nobody who believes in the mind brain identity theory goes around talking about mental events using the vocabulary of three-dimensional physical objects. Shaffer might do that, but he doesn't have to.
             Let us examine Shaffer's argument point-by-point. His key claim is that "strict identity" must hold between two objects before you can say the one of them is the other. If this is true, then the morning star is not evening star, and neither of them is the planet Venus. The most important fact about the morning star is that it is visible in the morning. If you can see the morning star, it's morning. Since it has to be evening in order to see the evening star, if you are seeing the morning star, you know you're not seeing the evening star. What about the idea that the morning star can be 64,000,000 miles from the sun at the same time that the evening star is 64,000,000 miles from the sun? What would it mean if somebody said "that's the morning star, it's currently 64,000,000 miles from the sun?" The only thing that this could truthfully mean is that the speaker is explaining the little light hovering over the horizon in the morning by describing a scientific theory in which it is held that there is a very large ball of rock orbiting the sun at that distance which accounts for the experience that we call "seeing the morning star." If the speaker also said "Venus is also the evening star," he would be offering the same explanation for a different experience, one which neither of you were having at the time of the conversation. Before astronomers decided that there was a ball of rock out there 64,000,000 miles from the sun, did anybody ever look up at the morning star and say "hey, that thing is 64,000,000 miles from the sun?" Suppose someone points in the evening star, and tells you how it is 64,000,000 miles from the sun, and you ask him how he knows. Will he say "just look at it?" Or will he say he looked it up in a book? In terms of strict identity, neither the morning star nor the evening star is the planet Venus. Let us say you take a trip to that ball of rock. Let us say you observe the surface of the planet Venus from orbit. Let us say that one of your companions points down and says "that's the morning star. I know that, because it is appearing just above the horizon in the morning." Would that make any sense whatsoever? The terms "morning star" and "evening star" only make sense on the surface of the earth. The term "planet Venus" makes sense everywhere. There are things that are true about planet Venus, that are not true about either the morning star or the evening star, and vice versa. So if we take Shaffer's view of identity seriously, the morning star is not the evening star, and neither of them are Venus.
             The mind brain identity theory requires us to believe that the mind is the brain in the same way that water is H2O, lightning is electricity, and the morning star is planet Venus. In all three cases the phenomena named by the first term is explained by the theoretical entity, structure or process named in the second term. The appearance of the morning star is explained by reference to planet Venus, the properties of water are explained by reference to a molecule containing two items of hydrogen and one of oxygen, and the properties and experiences of the mind are explained by reference to the anatomy and functions of the brain. (This, by the way, is exactly what J. J. C. Smart said!)


Sense and Reference and Shaffer

             Remember the distinction between the set of ideas ("sense") evoked by a term and the physical object ("reference") that is thought to bring those ideas into existance. (The sense of Ali G is a smug and ignorant white suburbanite trying to be a black journalist, the reference of Ali G is a talented and thoughtful Jewish actor called Sacha Baron Cohen.) This distinction may give another way to explain what I think is wrong with Shaffer's objection.
             Now, what is the sense of the term "mind?" Well, if you think of your own mind, you will think of all the perceptions, thoughts and feelings that you have. If you think of my mind, you think of a stream of perceptions, thoughts and feelings that are presumably associated with my body. (Mine is the only face I have to use a mirror to see, I'm the only one it goes dark for when I close my eyes, and so on.) Now, if you were to use the term "Young's mind," in conversation, the sense of that phrase will be the stream of mental events you presume is going on somewhere, and which accounts for the things I say and do. But what is the reference here? Well, when you use the term "Young's mind," the reference depends on what you think accounts for the existence of that stream of thoughts and feelings. If you think it's my brain, then the reference here is my brain. If you think it's some kind of an immaterial object that magically creates my thoughts, then that's the reference. If you think it's a comittee of purple monkeys living under an overpass in Bangkok who make those thoughts by juggling poorly conceived consumer products, that's the reference. And if you haven't thought about it, the term doesn't really have a reference.
             Now, how is this related to Shaffer and the MBIT? Well, one way to interpret MBIT is to think that when a holder of MBIT uses a term like "Shaffer's mind," the sense of the term is the stream of perceptions, thoughts and feelings that Shaffer is experiencing, while the reference of the term is Shaffer's physical brain. Similarly, when we use the term "Shaffer's thought of a chipmunk," the sense of that term is whatever Shaffer thinks and feels whenever his mind has that thought, while it's reference whatever physical events go on in his brain to make him have that thought. Since the sense of a term doesn't have to meet exactly the same description as its reference, there's no problem with being able to say things about thoughts in the brain that we can't meaningfully say about brain events.
             Crucially, Shaffer relies on his claim that identity only exists between two objects when whatever is said of one object can equally sensibly be said of the other object. By this criterion, Borat is not Sacha Baron Cohen, water is not H2O, lightning is not electricity, the morning star is not the evening star, and neither of them is the planet Venus. In fact, the only identity relations that ever meet this criterion are the utterly trivial cases of absolute synonyms. The identity "an aerodrome is an airfield" only meets Shaffer's criterion because "aerodrome" is just an old word for "airfield." As far as I know, there is not even one, single, solitary interesting identity that meets Shaffer's requirement. What this says to me is that Shaffer is simply moving the goalposts here. Mind-Brain Identity Theory meets every logical criterion for a real identity, but Shaffer comes up with a new criterion that no actual non-synonymic identity has ever met, and says MBIT fails for not meeting his new criterion. It doesn't wash. Shaffer is wrong.


The Stupid Correlation Objection

             Perhaps the stupidest objection to mind brain identity theory is the criticism that the identity theory is neither empirical nor scientific because even strict correlation is not identity. My answer to that is, if strict correlation isn't identity, what the hell is?
             As presented by Donald Palmer, the "correlation" objection goes as follows. Even if it were established that absolutely every time you have a brain event, such as wondering why any human being would ever pay money to see Eddie Murphy in a movie, the same particular arrangement of nerve fibers fires in the same particular sequence of patterns, that would not prove that mental states are brain states. The most it would prove, according to the correlation objection, is that mental states are correlated with brain states, and correlation, even strict correlation, is not identity. Palmer writes that "[e]ven with the most advanced technological equipment, it would be impossible to establish that just because thoughts are always correlated with events in the brain, they are identical with those events." So, he claims, even if the mind brain identity theory were true, it could never be known to be true. He follows this up with the claim that the mind brain identity theory is unfalsifiable in that no evidence could possibly exist that would tend to establish its truth or falsity, and concludes that this fact certainly detracts from the identity theory's claim to be scientific.
             Given that an enormous number and variety of mind events have been shown to strictly correlate with corresponding brain events, and that absence or malfunction of various brain individual structures always results in a loss or distortion of some corresponding mental capacity, I think it's pretty clear that the evidence in favor of a strict correlation between brain events and mind events is overwhelming. In this context, it follows that Palmer's argument amounts to the following. 1. Correlation, even strict correlation, is not identity, and therefore the established strict correlation between mind events and brain events does not prove that mind events are identical to brain events in any sense of the word "identity." 2. There is no machine, no matter how advanced, that could establish that strict correlation proves identity. 3. From the these two facts, it follows that, even if the mind brain identity theory is true, it could never be proved to be true. 4. The mind brain identity theory is unfalsifiable, which means that no one could come up with any kind of hypothetical situation in which hypothetical evidence would exist that would prove the mind brain identity theory false. So, given that all real scientific theories are falsifiable, it follows that the mind brain identity theory is not scientific, and therefore not empirical.
             In making these four claims, Donald Palmer is of course completely out of his mind. For anyone who knows anything at all about science, each of these four claims is utterly ludicrous. Together, they add up to a big hot fudge sundae of ludicrousity. Let me take these claims one by one, in descending order of dumbness.
             The dumbest claim is of course, claim number four. Is there anyone out there who can not imagine some set of circumstances where the mind brain identity theory would be proved false? What if somebody and his brain completely removed, or was born without a brain, and yet had all the mental capacities that anyone else had? Wouldn't that proves the mind brain identity theory false? It sure would! It would kill the mind brain identity theory stone dead. Suppose it turned out that mind events did not correlate with brain events? Well, that would prove mind brain identity theory false too! The falsifiability criterion invented by Sir Karl Popper distinguish real scientific theories, like quantum mechanics and natural selection from what he considered to be pseudoscience, like astrology and Freudian psychology. Since there was no imaginable human circumstance that could not be accommodated by Freudian theory, it follows that Freudian theory was actually meaningless, and therefore should not be considered scientific. Consider the difference between being falsifiable and being falsified. The mind brain identity theory is falsifiable, but it has not been falsified. That is to say, we can imagine circumstances that would clearly prove it false, but such circumstances have never actually happened. The mind-spleen identity theory, which I just made up, is both falsifiable and falsified. We can not only imagine circumstances that would clearly prove it false, such as removal of spleen without removal of mind, but such circumstances have (presumably) actually happened, proving the mind-spleen identity theory false. So the mind brain identity theory is clearly just about as falsifiable as any other scientific theory, and in fact, more falsifiable than most because it is much easier to imagine circumstances that would prove mind brain identity theory false than it is to imagine circumstances that would prove quantum mechanics false.
             Now that I think about it, maybe the dumbest claim is claim number two. "Even with the most advanced technological equipment, it would be impossible to establish that just because thoughts are always correlated with events in the brain, they are identical with those events." Another way to put this is to say that no matter what equipment you have, you cannot establish that the strict correlation between mind events and brain events proves an identity between those events. The first thing I want you to note about this is that Donald Palmer is saying that technology cannot prove a logical rule. Notice that he's saying that no conceivable equipment can establish that strict correlation proves identity. The rule in question is "strict correlation proves identity," and Palmer says that no conceivable equipment can prove that this is a logically valid rule. Well duh! Technology never proves logical rules, and nobody is saying that it does! This is like arguing against a mathematical claim by pointing out that observation of distant galaxies cannot prove things about simple arithmetic. It is true, but it is massively beside the point! Nobody is arguing that technology, by itself, proves anything about logic. (I find myself hoping that Donald Palmer was trying to say something like "even technology that proved an absolute one-to-one correlation between mind events and brain events would not prove mind brain identity theory true, because, as an independent rule of logic, even strict correlation does not prove identity." This would still be wrong, but it wouldn't be as stupid as what he did say.)
             Claim number one is of course the heart of Palmer's argument. He claims that, because strict correlation is not identity, strict correlation therefore does not prove identity in the sense that the term "identity" is used in "mind brain identity theory." This leaves me wondering what he thinks would prove an identity, if strict correlation cannot. Let us reexamine the identities he references in our text. First, there is morning star-evening star identity, or the claim that the morning star is the evening star. How is this claim established? Palmer says that this is a "strict identity." In fact, he claims that the mind brain identity theory would be absurd if it turned out that it doesn't have the same kind of strict identity that exists between the morning star and the evening star. How does Palmer prove that the morning star and the evening star have this strict identity? He doesn't. He assumes it. He just says that it exists. And in fact, of course, it doesn't exist. The morning star is not the evening star in the sense that whatever is true of one is true of the other. The morning star "is" in the evening star in the sense that both of them are explained by claiming that each one is a different manifestation of the planet Venus. How do we come up with that explanation? Well, we do so by paying attention to the fact that appearances of the morning star and appearances of the evening star, which are never correlated with each other, but are correlated with the calculated expected positions of the planet Venus in the night sky. When we see the evening star, we can look up the expected apparent position of Venus, and see if they match. Since they match every time we look, the evening star is very well correlated with Venus. The same goes for the morning star, and so we say that the evening star is the morning star, not because they have any correlation with each other, but because both are correlated with the expected apparent position of Venus.
             The second kind of identity that Palmer references, and which he also calls "strict identity," is observation-explanation identity, which is the kind of identity that exists between the morning star and Venus, the evening star and Venus, between lightning and electrical discharge and between water and the chemical compound of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. How are these identities established? Let us look at lightning-electricity identity. This identity is established by the fact that every observation of lightning that is taken by means that would detect the presence of electricity, finds that electricity is present in the lightning. This means that every instance of lightning experienced as a certain kind of flash of light in the sky is strictly correlated with electricity experienced as appropriate readings on equipment configured to detect electricity. In other words, lightning is held to be electrical discharge on the basis of a correlation, and nothing else. Similar considerations apply to the identity between water and H2O. Whenever water is observed under conditions where its behavior can be compared to the behavior of H2O, it behaves in exactly the way we you would expect a compound of hydrogen and oxygen to behave. This is a correlation. For instance, the passing of an electrical current through water, whenever it is carefully observed, is always seen to correlate with the appearance of hydrogen at one electrode and oxygen at the other. So again, the identity between water and H2O is established entirely on the basis of a correlation.
             Palmer's remaining claim, the claim that even if mind brain identity theory is true, it cannot be proved true, again makes me wonder at his criteria for proof. I am assuming that he uses the word "true" in a way that is sensitive to the fact that no empirical claim can ever be proved with absolute certainty, and the fact that scientific theories are only ever at best proved to be highly probably true, so that the term "true theory" in science is thus just a slightly imprecise way of saying "theory that is so well supported that it is at this time accepted by all competent scientists" or perhaps "theory that has been proved to the highest standards." The question then is whether or not the mind brain identity theory has been proved to the same standard as well accepted scientific theories. And, of course, it has. The mind brain identity theory does not rest merely on the fact that mind events are strictly correlated with brain events. It rests on that fact combined with our old friend Occam's razor. Mind brain identity theory is simply the only even remotely reasonable explanation for the observed mental and neurophysiological facts. Mind brain identity theory explains the observed facts very, very, very well, and it is clearly the only theory that even begins to explain these facts.
             The bottom line for the correlation objection is that it falsely claims that mind brain identity theory rests only on the strict correlation between mind events and brain events. It ignores the fact that, like any other scientific theory, mind brain identity theory also rests on Ockham's Razor. The correlation objection implies a standard of proof under which the correlations that exist between the morning star and Venus, lightning and electricity, and between water and H2O, would not be sufficient to prove that the morning star is Venus, lightning is electricity, and water is H2O. If we took a correlation objection as embodying the correct rule of logic for proving identities, then we would have to hold the absolutely no identity could ever be proven to be true. And that would be no fun whatsoever.
             Before I move on, I want to mention that this is another opportunity for critical reading. Look over my presentation of the correlation objection, and compare it to the account given in our textbook. Have I gotten it right? Or is there an important part of Palmer's argument that I have completely missed? After all, my complaint against Palmer is that he has misunderstood the relationship between correlation and identity, and failed to consider the role of Occam's razor in establishing empirical claims. But maybe it's me that has missed the point! Maybe there is something in Palmer's account of the correlation objection that I am just failing to see. One possibility for error on my part would be the existence of some other method of proof besides correlation and Occam's razor. If there was another legitimate method of proof that was available in the case of lightning and water, but not available in the case of the mind, and this alternative method of proof actually proved things, and correlation plus Occam's razor didn't, that would make me wrong. Think about it. Is there anything that could make me wrong, and Palmer right here?

Copyright © 2010 by Martin C. Young