Monkey Monkey-Brain Business
Several researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University recently succeeded at producing prosthetic arm control using a direct interface with cortical signals–according to an article they jointly published in Nature. In other words, scientists connected sensors to some monkeys’ brains and the monkeys learned to control a machine-arm in just about exactly the way they would control their own arms. Yes, it sounds creepy. But that success has huge practical implications for amputees in the near future, and for everyone–endless anticipated conveniences for optimists, endless anticipated conspiracies for everyone else. The synopsis of the article in Nature is carefully worded to avoid the misleading statement that scientists have found an interface between pure consciousness (or thought) and a machine. (I do not yet have access to the full article, but I suspect there may be some attempts at creating such a connection in it since one of the contributors is with the “Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.”) The New York Times reports on the story here.
Without doubt, some will interpret the story without such caution, making the claim that scientists have found the interface between machine (or matter) and thought. Such a claim is profoundly errant and important to recognize as such.
What scientists have done is as purely physical as it is remarkably significant. But there is no more interaction between their machine and thought than there is between me picking up a pencil and “mind over matter.”
Here are the things to keep in mind when reading stories like this one. First, the mind and brain are not the same thing. The mind harbors thought. The brain harbors biological, physical, and chemical reactions.
Second, thought is not the same as bio-physico-chemical activity. As obvious as this separation is, it is amazing how many journalists and even otherwise intelligent scientists confuse the two with claims that “a thought has been seen on an MRI” and such. Think about the color green. It is easy to speak metaphorically about that thought being “in the head,” but it obviously is not. Neurons may be firing off in the head when green is thought. There may be bio-chemical reactions in the brain when green is thought. But what of the thought itself could be found in the brain? Nothing! Where is “what is thought of as green” (called “qualia” by some) in the brain? Dissecting the brain yields nothing green anywhere. None of the reactions yields anything “green” whatsoever. They may be related, but they are not the same thing.
A Christian worldview must never compromise the fact that reality extends beyond the material realm. That is, there is more to reality than matter. Pretending to reduce thought to a biological process ignores that distinction. Fortunately for the Christian worldview, such a reduction is as impossible (yes, impossible even at the theoretical level) as it is derogatory to the core of Christianity.
So the headline, “Monkey Moves Machine with Brain” is worthy of some attention. But the headline, “Monkey Moves Machine with Thoughts” would be no more interesting than the headline, “Man Decides to Move Machine and Pushes It.”
Here’s an example of exactly the kind of journalistic hyperbole (being polite) I mentioned above in the post. Every reference to “thought” and “mind” is an exaggeration of what the scientist is actually studying.