Title : The neuroscience of mental disorders and the nature of consciousness
Abstract:
In this talk I first review and discuss empirical evidence regarding brain damage and neural abnormalities associated with some psychopathologies and cognitive deficits, such as hemispatial neglect, agnosia, schizophrenia, amnesia, somatoparaphrenia, akinetopsia, Capgras syndrome, simultanagnosia, alexithymia, out-of-body and near-death experiences, and others. It becomes clear just how closely normal conscious mental functioning depends upon normal brain functioning as well as how some very specific mental changes occur when, and only when, very specific brain damage occurs. As a philosopher, I then also explore the implications of these results with respect to the nature of the so-called “mind-body problem,” consciousness, and the problem of personal identity. In particular, I examine the plausibility of materialism, roughly the view that mental processes are brain processes, in light of the evidence discussed and in contrast to a dualist conception of the mind (whereby mental states are not physical in some sense). For example, how should we interpret the empirical results in terms of the mind-brain connection, e.g. as a correlation, cause, or as an identity relation? I then also briefly examine the prospects for a conscious afterlife based both on the brain evidence adduced and the other considerations discussed. For example, even if conscious mentality merely depends upon proper neural function, does it then stand to reason that all of one’s conscious mental activity ceases when all neural functioning ceases?
Audience Take Away
- The audience will better understand how specific brain damage affects various specific mental abilities in often rather strange ways
- Attendees can be helped in terms of their teaching and research by becoming more aware of how neural abnormalities bear on the nature of consciousness and personal identity
- Examining brain damage and its effects can also aid research in the search for the so-called “neural correlates of consciousness” and in the attempt to solve the “binding problem”
- It can also help one to think about the philosophical implications of some brain research, e.g. to what extent conscious mental activity can continue after brain injury or damage (or even after brain death)
