The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism 1st Edition

Popper, who may in this century, rightfully become known as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, is a pleasure to read. Reading him really is good for your mind. He writes clearly and intelligently about a wide range of knowledge fields. His mixture of cosmology, evolution, epistemology, humanism, critical rationalism and psychology produces a unique philosophy that may well be a key part of the solution to the problems humanity is facing in the 21st century. Read this guy yourself, don't trust academic philosopher's assessments of his work. He is not widely known because his work has been so poorly accounted for by intellectuals. This may be because, as William Bartley the American philosopher one said, if Popper is on the right track, then most professional philosophers in the modern era, wasted their careers.

It arrived in a good situation

Obviously I do not have to mention the structure of this very old thick book first published in 1977. It seems that this book on the body-mind problem is already a classical one and almost fading out of the mind, or more appropriately, out of the brain, of current mainstream neuroscientists. The ideas of these dualist authors appear not favorable to the following authors, for example:
(1) Daniel Dennett in his book "Consciousness Explained (1991)" rejected the idea of Dualism from the start of his book based on the first law of thermodynamics: the law of conservation of energy.
(2) In his book "The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (1994)," Francis Crick cited this classical book only in the further reading list, saying: "I myself have little sympathy with either of their points of view. They would probably say the same of mine."
(3) No reference to this classical book in Antonio Damasio's recent two books of (1) Descartes' Error (1994), and (2) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010).
I would like to mention only one point which was discussed in the dialogs of the two authors (in Dialog X) in the last part of the book: Would the dualistic idea of theirs violate the first law of thermodynamics: the law of conservation of energy?
In the history of physics there were times when the violation of the law was suspected by physicists. The examples cited by the authors are: (1) on the occasion of the discovery of electro-magnetism after the establishment of Newtonian mechanics, (2) in the process of radioactive beta-decay of nucleus before the discovery of neutron and the theoretical hypothesis of neutrino in the 1930s. These suspicions were eventually removed based on the development of novel physical theories.
Based on these historical facts and also referring to the physicist E.P. Wigner's idea, the philosopher Popper says "I think that this is only to say, in a different way, that physics is open to something as yet unknown." Popper's idea is that the physical dimension (World 1 in their terms) would be open to World 2 (the world of subjective experiences), though he never says that World 2 belongs to some non-physical dimensions. The two authors discussed further the interaction between Worlds 1 & 2, which might violate the law of conservation of energy, possibly in such a very minuscule amount as being difficult to detect.

Now, what I, just a curious reader of this book, wonder is that why all these scientists and philosophers do not mention the problem of "soul": does it have a physical weight, something like the amount 21 g? Or I should scientifically put it as follows: Is there really an unaccountable energy balance in the life-to-death transitions of human? If the 21 g (one of the reported four missing weights) is confirmed authentic, this means that the cherished law of conservation of energy is violated in the transition! I repeat the simple question: why don't they mention this problem? One may say that the experiment conducted by Dr. Duncan MacDougall published in 1907 is not any scientific experiment at all, but it was a scientifically uncontrolled sloppy one. Was it really so? Although physics Prof. Robert L. Park states in his book (Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science (2008)) to the effect that the missing weights are the result of MacDougall's wishful thinking and superstitious nonsense, no scientist has ever "scientifically" either refuted or confirmed the missing weights. Rather, recently a paper was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2010 Spring Issue (Vol. 24, No.1, pp. 5-39: Rebuttal to Claimed Refutations of Duncan MacDougall's Experiment on Human Weight Change at the Moment of Death. [This Vol.24/No.1 is on sale at amazon.com.]), which supports MacDougall's experiment being scientifically sound on a basis of theoretical simulations of the weighing experiment.

Karl Popper's section of this book (the only section I read) was very thought-provoking and erudite. Popper was a real polymath, equally at home in modern science and the history of philosophy. His non-essentialist, conjectural approach to knowledge is refreshing. When discussing the question of what "mind" really is, Popper admitted he had no idea, but then noted that no one knows what "matter" really is, either. And when taking up the question of how mind can interact with matter, Popper noted that modern physics is replete with examples of non-like things interacting with each other. His notion that reality is made up of Worlds 1 (matter), 2 (thought) and 3 (theories, culture) seems like as good a conjecture as any, once one starts to think about it. That said, I felt dissatisfied when I got to the end of Popper's section. Parts of the argument are sketchy and undeveloped, and the whole thesis would have been more persuasive if Popper had gone into greater metaphysical detail -- however speculative -- about the natures of World 2 and 3 and how they interact with each other (and with World 1). As for the rest of the book, the middle section (written by John Eccles) is a review of brain science circa 1975. Obviously, the field has moved on since then. The third and final section consists of edited transcripts of conversations between Popper and Eccles. If I were less lazy, I'd have read it, but I didn't see the point since I hadn't read the middle portion. No doubt the loss was mine.