Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Non-dualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory (review)

Rockwell argues in this broad-ranging text that mind ought not to be identified with the brain. More generally, Rockwell argues for the rejection of "Cartesian materialism," his term for any attempt to identify mind with any particular part of the "brain-body-world nexus." It is the partitioning of that nexus that is problematic. Rockwell argues first that, given the inseparability of brain and body processes, mind is not confined to "neurons in the skull" but is pervasively present throughout the body; he then argues that mind cannot be bounded by the skin, either, given the organically necessary interactivity of "inner" processes with "outer." Mind is thus only to be identified with the entire brain-body-world nexus.

One problem with the thesis is that the key concept, mind, remains unexplicated. Given this, it is impossible to give an unqualified yea or nay to Rockwell's thesis. It is plausible, indeed, necessarily true, that when "mind" is understood in precisely the way required by his thesis, it is exactly as Rockwell describes it to be. A different conceptualization of mind—say, as a certain set of capabilities of an organism—would lead to a different conclusion, and we are given no compelling and independent reasons for taking the concept of mind in Rockwell's chosen holistic sense.

Rockwell rejects pan-psychism; it is only that portion of nature in close interaction with the organism, its "world," that participates in constituting its mind. However, since any narrowly described portion of nature is itself in intimate interaction with larger portions, it would seem by parity of reasoning that we cannot unarbitrarily confine an organism's mind at all. If this admittedly unpalatable consequence is to be avoided, limits to "mind" there must be. The fundamental question is conceptual—Which delimitations should we decide to place on the use of the term "mind"?—rather than, as would appear from Rockwell's treatment, empirical—What does contemporary science tell us about the nature and location of mind? But Rockwell construes the problem as empirical, in his calls for experiments "that are expressly designed to falsify the claim that the mind is the brain," without which "we cannot say that this claim has been scientifically established" (18) and his claim that "a non-cranial mind is a genuine empirical possibility"(19).

Yet even fundamental conceptual decisions should be informed by the strongest of contemporary science. Pragmatists will agree and will find Rockwell's adoption of a version of Deweyan pragmatism and commitment to Dewey's "empirical method" of doing philosophy a strength of the work. Rockwell's exposition of the relevant neuroscience is welcome, but ultimately disappointing. There is a disconcerting naivete in Rockwell's admonitions that the brain should not be privileged as the sole embodiment of mind, that it has "no right" to be so construed given that neuronal activity occurs elsewhere in the body; the brain is not strictly isolated from the rest of the body; it is not "autonomous"; it does not possess "intrinsic powers" making it causally independent; it is not a "closed system"; and it is thus not "entirely responsible" for an organism's mental states. These observations are true—no one biologically informed would suggest otherwise. But Rockwell is doing ardent battle with a straw man, for, though he attributes the view to "modern physicalists," it's unlikely that anyone actually holds the "Cartesian materialist" view of an independent substance-like brain that he argues against.

Accepting that the brain is not autonomous, it is still puzzling that Rockwell pays so little heed to the stunning level of sheer complexity of the neuronal activity occurring "in the skull." Rockwell is derisively dismissive about the brain, while curiously mystical about the mind. Consciousness, Rockwell holds, is a dynamic and abstract pattern that emerges from brain-body-world interactions, a pattern that can be "embodied by...