Georg Northoff - The Spontaneous Brain: From the Mind--Body to the World--Brain Problem

2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Northoff, Georg, author.

Title: The spontaneous brain : from the mindbody to the worldbrain problem

/ Georg Northoff.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017053687 | ISBN 9780262038072 (hardcover : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262346955

Subjects: LCSH: BrainPhysiology. | Mind and body. |

NeurosciencesPhilosophy.

Classification: LCC QP376 .N679 2018 | DDC 612.8/2dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053687

ePub Version 1.0

1. Figure 8.2bNeuro-ecological continuum and worldbrain relation.

How can we address the question of the existence and reality of mental features? Philosophers have long argued about the existence and reality of the mind when raising the metaphysical question for its relation to the body, the mindbody problem. This conundrum, especially in recent times, is complemented by the neuroscientists search for empirical answers, that is, neuronal mechanisms in the brain with the neural correlates of such mental features as consciousness, self, free will, and othersfor the neuroscientists the mind is nothing but the brain. Despite the conjoint efforts of both philosophy and neuroscience, no conclusive answer to the question of the existence and reality of mental features has yet been proposed.

I do not aim here to provide yet another answer to the question of the mindbody problem as such by making yet another suggestion regarding how the mind is related to the body. Instead, I question the question itself. I argue that the question regarding the mind and its relationship to the body is simply the wrong question to address the existence and reality of mental features: the question of the mind and its relation to body is wrong, as it is implausible on empirical, ontological, and epistemological-methodological grounds. Therefore, I consider the mindbody problem to be the wrong path by which to tackle the question for the existence and reality of mental features.

How can we raise the question about mental features in a more plausible way? I argue that it would be better to raise the question of the existence and reality of mental features in terms of the brains relation to the world, the worldbrain relation, as I call it. Empirical evidence suggests that the brains spontaneous activity and its spatiotemporal structure are central for aligning and integrating the brain within the worldthe worldbrain relation; hence, the main title of this book. Moreover, I argue that that very same relation, the worldbrain relation, can also address the question of the existence and reality of mental features such as consciousness in an empirically, ontologically, conceptually more plausible way than the mindbody problem.

The ideas and arguments in this book have a long history in my search for introducing the relevance of the brain into philosophy without rendering the latter merely empirical. My first attempts in this endeavor were published in German (The Brain: A Neurophilosophical State of Art, Northoff, 1999) and followed up in English in Philosophy of Brain: The Brain Problem (Northoff, 2004). Since then, brain imaging technology has strongly advanced, which has allowed me to explore the brain and its relationship to mental features like the self and consciousness in empirical termsthese subjects and the development of a novel model of brain in terms of its coding and spontaneous activity as well as a neurophenomenal account of consciousness are well documented in various papers (see www.georgnorthoff.com) as well as in my two-volume work Unlocking the Brain, vol. 1, Coding, and vol. 2, Consciousness (Northoff, 2014a, 2014b).

On the philosophical side, I reread Kants Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, 1781/1998) and considered it in the context of the brainthis, modifying Kants famous quote with respect to Hume, awakened me from the dogmatic slumbers of the mind and its chains by means of which it constrains philosophy. In conjunction with the empirical data and the development of a novel model of brain (Unlocking the Brain), I became more and more convinced that the mindbody problem is an ill-posed problem if not altogether a nonsensical one. That possibility was raised rather implicitly in my textbook Minding the Brain (Northoff, 2014d) especially in the critical reflection sections of the volume.

This neuro-philosophical reevaluation sent me searching for a viable alternative. Any rejection of a framework is only complete when one can provide a better alternative. For that reason, I ventured into different philosophical territories including process philosophy, phenomenological philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind (and even Chinese philosophy as in the Chinese translation of my textbook Minding the Brain). I found such an alternative in what I describe as the worldbrain problem, which is mentioned briefly for the first time in my more popular and general audience book Neurophilosophy and the Healthy Mind. Learning from the Unwell Brain (Northoff, 2016e). The present book now presents a more detailed philosophical elaboration of the worldbrain problem as a basic ontological problem and then posits how it can replace the metaphysical mindbody problem as paradigm for the existence and reality of mental features.

I am grateful to several people. Lucas Jurkovics (Ottawa, Canada) was very helpful in editing chapters 13 and parts of chapters 5 and 6. Beni Majid (Iran) deserves great credit for introducing me to structural realism and extrapolating my empirical work on the self to a philosophical context. He must also be thanked for helpful criticism of chapters 15. I am also very thankful to Kathinka Evers (Uppsala, Sweden) for her excellent critique of chapters 1315 and the suggestion of replacing vantage point from without brain with vantage point from beyond brain. Moreover, Takuya Niikawa (Sapporo, Japan) deserves a great thank you for reading and amending chapters 911 in an extremely nice, constructive, and very helpful way, part of which we discussed during a wonderful day of hiking in Hokkaido, Japan. I am also grateful for excellent help by Ivar Kolvaart and Federico Zilio in correcting the proofs.

The various members of my research group in Ottawa, Canada (most notably Zirui Huang, Pengmin Qin, Niall Duncan, Paola Magioncalda, Matteo Martino, Jianfeng Zhang, Takashi Nakao, Annemarie Wolf, Marcello Costandino, Diana Ghandi, Stefano Damiano, and Fransesca Ferri as well as colleagues Heinz Boeker, Kai Cheng, Szu-Ting, Tim Lane, Peter Hartwich, Andre Longtin, Hsiu-Hau Lin, and Maia Fraser) on brain imaging of mental features and psychiatry must also be thanked for providing wonderful data and inspiring discussion about how the brain works and how it is related to mental features such as consciousness and self. Thank you also to the Institute of Mental Health Research and its director Dr. Zul Merali as well as the Canada Research Chair, Michael Smith Chair for Neuroscience and Mental Health, and the Institute of Mind and Brain Research at the University of Ottawa for providing both resources and time to enable me to write this book.