Poetry -- and law -- are about matters of the mind and the brain, not just the brain

As I have blogged about in the past both here and at Brains on Purpose™, a debate continues among neuroscientists about whether or not there is a difference between the mind and the brain. The materiaIists do not distinguish between the two. After much research, thought, and conversation, I do.

I believe the mind is not the same as the brain so sighed long and loudly when reading a column written by David Brooks. He was writing about the recent Social and Affective Neuroscience Society’s conference. From "The Young and the Neuro" (New York Times):

Since I’m not an academic, I’m free to speculate that this work will someday give us new categories, which will replace misleading categories like ‘emotion’ and ‘reason.’ I suspect that the work will take us beyond the obsession with I.Q. and other conscious capacities and give us a firmer understanding of motivation, equilibrium, sensitivity and other unconscious capacities.

The hard sciences are interpenetrating the social sciences. This isn’t dehumanizing. It shines attention on the things poets have traditionally cared about: the power of human attachments. It may even help policy wonks someday see people as they really are.

Oh, dear. Were life and love ever in the future to be so clear and easily reduced to the organ inside our skull. I say, no, never.

I was glad to read this in the column:

[The research] also suggests that even though most of our reactions are fast and automatic, we still have free will and control.

And

[C]onsciousness is too slow to see what happens inside, but it is possible to change the lenses through which we unconsciously construe the world.

That change would be one of the roles of the mind. As Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz has said, "The brain puts out the call, the mind decides whether to listen."

Many of the materialists do not believe in free will. (See, for example, the first link below.) This reductionist lens can be insulting to the human spirit. In the legal profession, it can be dangerous

as I have written about before. For more about the perils of neurolaw, read my posts linked to below.

• Neurolaw: Leaving out a big piece of the puzzle
• Neurolaw and some of its potential dangers
• Not guilty! I'm only a neuro-person and my brain made me do it
• Would there be more crime if we all thought we lacked free will? Different results in negotiatons?
• Do you suffer from Brain Overclaim Syndrome? Here's a cure and some resources on neurolaw
• Neurolaw another branch of neuromythology? Free will? Free won't?
• Some hard questions about neurolaw: If you are interested in law and neuroscience, read this article
• Not guilty! I'm only a neuro-person and my brain made me do it

Unfortunately this materialist point of view, this reductionist notion about people, is showing up in many arenas, including mediation training. A lot of bad science out there. More on that soon.

Note: Related article: "The Future of Neuroimaged Lie Detection and the Law" (Akron Law Review).