June 26, 2013
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Mind over Matter: What was the problem again?
A lot of skeptics and rationalists are very, well, skeptical about the idea of “mind over matter”, the idea that the mind can influence the brain and techniques such as meditation, biofeedback, and visualization can have real somatic effects.
They do so even in the face of documented evidence that mental techniques and psychotherapy can be effective in the treatment of not only depression and anxiety (which seems obvious) but also pain after surgery, migraine, fibromyalgia, prostate cancer, heart disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Why would they be resistant to this idea? My guess is that they wrongly associate it with truly ludicrous claims made by a lot of “alternative medicine” supporters, such as “all disease is caused by the mind” or “positive thinking can make you wealthy, healthy, and happy” or, my favorite, “through alternative medicine you can achieve perfect health” (yes, perfect).
But the world’s greatest idiot can say the sun is shining, and that doesn’t make it dark outside.
Skeptics seem to base their criticism of mind-body medicine on the fact that there is no spiritual realm, the world is made of physical matter—that is, materialism. The mind is the functioning of the brain, nothing more. There is no spirit, no soul.
But here’s what’s weird about that: Mind-body medicine actually makes far more sense on a materialistic, identity-monist view than it does on a dualistic view. Mind over matter? The mind is made of matter! Of course matter can affect other matter!
The shoe is on the other foot here! The main problem with dualism all along—recognized since at least Descartes—was explaining how this “immaterial substance” could interact with the physical world. Obviously it needs to, or else the fact that Descartes is writing “Cogito ergo sum” couldn’t have anything to do with his mind actually thinking or believing it exists. Hand-waving explanations abounded in the Enlightenment (Leibniz, Malebranche, etc.); but ultimately this was what led us to realize that dualism is a fool’s errand.
No, it is under materialism that you can explain how the mind interacts with the body, as it obviously does. The “spiritual forces” that the likes of Deepak Chopra talk about don’t even make sense on their own theory.
Indeed, skeptics don’t seem to have a problem with the body affecting the mind—they believe that alcohol makes you drunk, that being injured hurts, that sexual stimulation is pleasurable. Their problem only seems to be when you go the other direction, and allow the mind to affect the body. They are, in short, epiphenomenalists.
But epiphenomenalism is literally the worst of both worlds! It has all of the problems of dualism, and none of the appealing features! Not only do you need to explain this weird, mysterious interaction between substances, now you need to explain why it is unidirectional, which literally nothing else in the universe is.
Yes, literally nothing in the universe. You see, we have laws like Newton’s Second Law, the Conservation of Energy and the Conservation of Momentum. No, quantum mechanics doesn’t remove this; in fact, it adds to it, with the Conservation of Wavefunction Current (often called “probability current” due to the tyranny of the Copenhagen Interpretation). Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, energy in equals energy out.
Therefore, epiphenomenalists are asking us to postulate something that physics does to non-physics (whatever “non-physics” is!), and furthermore violates some of the most basic symmetry laws upon which physics is based. Meanwhile, we identity-monists are talking about hardware-software interaction…
Indeed, when you hear “meditation helps in the treatment of diabetes” you shouldn’t hear it as “positive thinking will magically make you rich!”; instead you should hear it as “excess demand on the graphics card may lead to overheating.” Excess stress in the autonomic nervous system may reduce insulin production.
The brain is intimately connected with the body; this makes good evolutionary sense, as there isn’t much point in having a brain if it’s not going to help you run your body.
Now, this doesn’t prove any particular claim about mind-body medicine, and obviously they should be investigated just as we would investigate any other medication or therapy. Plenty of plausible treatments have turned out to be completely ineffective. But you shouldn’t reject treatments as preposterous simply because they involve mind-body interactions—we know that mind-body interactions occur.
And I reiterate: It is precisely under materialism, the theory that we are beings of crude matter with no luminous immaterial souls, who wither and die to become food for the worms… it is under that theory that we would expect (at least some) mind-body medicine to work.
