Mind or Brain?

As I was sitting at Logan airport on Saturday waiting for my wife to arrive on her flight from Milan, I had plenty of time to finish reading the mind and body section of the 1/29/07 special issue of Time. I definitely recommend reading it if you have any interest in how the brain works.

The last article in the section on the brain, "The Power of Hope," was written by Scott Haig, M.D., an assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He narrates the story of a man who had very advanced cancer of the brain and whose distraught family had gathered around him on what was to be his last day. a scan of his head the previous day had revealed that "there was barely any brain left." As Haig notes, "Tumor metastases don't simply occupy space and press on things, leaving a whole brain. The metastases actually replace tissue."

The next morning a nurse reported to Dr. Haig, "He woke up, you know, doctor--just after you left--and said goodbye to them all. Like I'm talkin' to you right here. Like a miracle. He talked to them and patted them and smiled for about five minutes. Then he went out again, and he passed in the hour."

From a strict materialist position this is impossible, because there is no differentiation between mind and brain. In this accounting of life, consciousness is merely a by-product of brain activity. The problem concerning this patient is that there was not enough functioning brain to explain the his last five minutes of lucidity.

Haig writes,

What woke my patient that Friday was simply his mind, forcing its way through a broken brain, a father's final act to comfort his family. The mind is a uniquely personal domain of thought, dreams and countless other things, like the will, faith and hope. These fine things are as real as rocks and water but, like the mind, weightless and invisible, maybe even timeless. Material science shies from these things, calling them epiphenomena, programs running on a computer, tunes on a piano. This understanding can't be ignored; not too much seems to get done on earth without a physical brain. But I know this understanding is not complete, either.

I found this article a breath of fresh air and a necessary counterweight to many of the other articles which clearly are written from a materialist point of view. He concludes the article this way:

But many think the mind is only in there--existing somehow in the physical relationship of the brain's physical elements. The physical, say these materialist, is all there is. I fix bones with hardware. As physical as this might be, I cannot be a materialist. I cannot ignore the internal evidence of my own mind. It would be hypocritical. And worse, it would be cowardly to ignore those occasional appearances of the spirits of others--of minds uncloaked, in naked virtue, like David's goodbye.