The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World

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Summary: Do we have souls?
Review: Colin McGinn's central claim in this brilliant and fascinating book is that the "question of the relationship of mind and body is perfectly genuine, but our minds are not equipped to solve it, rather as the cat's mind is not up to discovering relativity theory..." On that central claim, McGinn fails to make his case.

The fundamental problem is that McGinn's concept of an adequate solution is simply too demanding: "The solution would also, I think, have to take the form of a statement of what consciousness is, and that statement would have to be conceptually necessary...It would have to be as obvious that consciousness could arise from the brain as it is obvious that bachelors are unmarried males."

That is too high a demand to place on scientific theories: even our best theories in physics (relativity, quantum field theory, etc.) come nowhere near reaching such an elevated bar.

And yet, in explaining lucidly and in detail why it is so hard to come up with any sort of reasonable speculation as to how the mind and brain are related, McGinn does shed a great deal of light on the basic issue.

McGinn explains the fundamental problem: "Suppose I know everything about your brain of a neural kind: I know its anatomy, its chemical ingredients, the pattern of electrical activity in its various segments. I even know the position of every atom and its subatomic structure. I know everything that the materialist says your mind is. Do I thereby know everything about your mind? It certainly seems not. On the contrary I know nothing about your mind. I know nothing about which conscious states you are in -- whether you are morose or manic, for example -- and what these states feel like to you. So knowledge of your brain does not give me knowledge of your mind."

As a Ph.D. in theoretical physics myself, I will attest that McGinn is absolutely right. It is not just that physics has not yet succeeded in elucidating the nature of consciousness; rather, it is that, in constructing all of our theories in physics to date, we physicists have intentionally chosen to eschew any whiff of the "interior" perspective provided by consciousness and have only allowed the exterior perspective of materialism to enter into the structure of our theories. We've done this for very good reasons, of course -- it has worked wonderfully in explaining the physical world, and we've figured that the issue of consciousness and its interior perspective is someone else's problem.

McGinn argues that to understand consciousness this perspective of physics simply must be widened (and he doubts we humans have the mental power to do the widening): in his words, "My thesis is that consciousness depends upon an unknowable natural property of the brain...It follows that physics, construed as the general science of matter, is incomplete, because the general properties of matter that the brain exploits to produce consciousness are currently unknown." He even speculates that there is some humanly unfathomable dimensional structure to space-time and matter that leads to consciousness.

Maybe.

But I think McGinn underestimates how well we physicists understand the structure of molecules, atoms, and the electrons, protons, and neutrons of which they are comprised. We know how these things work to an almost unbelievable level of accuracy in a wide variety of situations. Physically, the brain is just a straightforward aqueous solution, no more complex at the level of elementary particles than a can of chicken soup.

It's hard to believe there is important missing physics there.

Indeed, we physicists have for several decades actually been following McGinn's advice to explore extra trans-dimensional space-time structures of all sorts (e.g., the currently popular ten and eleven-dimensional superstring and super-p-brane theories). We still see no hint of the "interior" perspective provided by consciousness.

McGinn is right that physics does not explain consciousness; there is no sign that his own ideas or any other ideas can expand physics so as to encompass consciousness. What is missing must therefore be something non-physical: to put it provocatively, we must have souls (not necessarily immortal ones, sad to say).

The conclusion seems obvious from McGinn's argument, but McGinn rejects it, mainly by pointing out that it raises some questions to which he has no good answers. And yet, the best defense of this "dualist" thesis I have seen is by...Colin McGinn! In a brilliant essay, "Consciousness and Cosmology," published in 1993 in Davies" and Humphreys' "Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays," McGinn offers a breathtakingly convincing case for a mental realm distinct from the realm of matter. In that essay, he explains that he is simply offering a picture of what a mind-body dualism would be like if it were really true, but that he himself does not really accept that it is in fact correct.

Yet, the speculative dualism of his 1993 essay seems more solid, more akin to normal scientific theories, that the airy trans-dimensional pseudo-physical speculations offered in "The Mysterious Flame." I am tempted to believe that McGinn himself knows this but found it more professionally prudent to present the obvious conclusions of his arguments as mere speculations in the 1993 essay.

Space prevents discussion of the other brilliant and provocative ideas McGinn tosses out in this book. Although I think his central thesis that humans can never understand the nature of consciousness is mistaken, any scientist who wishes to prove McGinn wrong by actually producing such an explanation of consciousness would do well to familiarize himself with McGinn's work.

"The Mysterious Flame" should surely be read together with McGinn's 1993 essay, "Consciousness and Cosmology." The two together comprise the most readable, insightful discussion of the mind-body problem which I have yet had the pleasure to read.

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Summary: Two Different Sides Of The Same Coin: Conscious and Brain
Review: Colin McGinn's The Mysterious Flame inspired me in both a scientific and philosophical view of the world. From my experience of reading many other philosophical books, this one stood out because of its unique style of getting the point across. The book is written so everyone can enjoy it, even though it addresses a complex idea. McGinn attempts to explicate the idea of consciousness within a world of materialism by using many examples and similes. He views the concept from a scientific view as well as a hypothetical perspective. By the end of each chapter, the reader grasps of one's own view and is left eternally thinking. McGinn's well organized and constituted form approaches the reader gently with the idea, so it doesn't seem very confusing or disturbing at first. Then as the reader is well developed about the objective, McGinn progresses to more in depth. This book disputes the very perplexing notion between consciousness (something we can't see) and our brain, a peace of meat (something visible). He mentions how if a human brain were placed in a monkey's environment, it would come out with a monkey's mind. This is the basic concept of how the mind is adopted by the brain's atmosphere. The relationship between the mind and the brain is a very extensive sentiment, and it is remarkable how McGinn successfully establishes the argument. Astonishingly never was I confused about anything in any of McGinn's chapters. Since he took time to explain each factor of consciousness independently, there were no mix-ups with other aspects of consciousness. McGinn rather accomplished his goal of seeking the reader to continue reading. It is very possible-especially for philosophical books such as this-to become tedious and the reader to simply discontinue reading. McGinn writes this book for people who just enjoy reading and not for special scientists or high league philosophers. That is what makes this book so special, that the average person could read it, and understand a concept not so average. Just the title alone attracts the common book shopper. The Mysterious Flame represents how it is impossible to find the truth about the relationship between the brain and the mind. This is why it is so mysterious, and we can only argue about it. In fact McGinn does mention our intelligence is not enough and we are incapable to unravel the mystery. McGinn discusses possibilities of consciousness in machines to illustrate how if mindfulness could exist in a meat matter, it is conceivable that it may also exist in springs, gears, and pulleys to assist us in various tasks. He doesn't leave out anything that would ever concern consciousness, it's what makes this book so complete. There is a limit of how much realism and imagination a philosophical book such as this should contain. Another aspect of what creates this book such a success is how McGinn well balanced the amount of realistically versus the imaginative fantastical things. Just because a book is theoretical, it doesn't mean there is no limit of how much sense it has to make. Even though McGinn discusses issues that are never possible or unrealistic, it makes sense. All and all, McGinn's accomplishment of The Mysterious Flame was a success. Like two different sides of the same coin, are the brain and the mind. McGinn analyzes the relationship of consciousness and materialism from every perspective, a chapter for each angle of view. This book is for the average Joe as well as it is for a philosophy professor. Satisfaction and enjoyment is guaranteed.

Rating:
Summary: Strawberry Fields Forever
Review: McGinn is clever. If you read the text backwards you'll discover that he reveals his most sincere conclusions on breaking the human barrier to understanding consciousness: can't be done, unless you've gobbled down dozens of hits acid or plugged yourself into ketamine nirvana (nibbana in the Pali lingo). If you read the text in the usual fashion you realize that McGinn makes the persuasive case that human consciousness is not really worth talking about and that he'd rather be in the Finger Lake region of New York tasting wine or digging fossils from the fossiliferous lakeside shale. On the other hand, one could walk away from the text realizing that a remarkable event has taken place in the philosophy of consciousness: it is no longer the stronghold of drunken, chain-smoking Frenchmen who cannot decide if they are writers of great literature or the pensmen of cheesey, methedrine inspired rants while blowing time in French cafes.

In short, The Mysterious Flame is one heck of a mysterious book, though I'm still not sure if consciousness is as combustible a thing as McGinn makes it out to be. This book is suitable to those who enjoy impressing people at the beach that you are capable of purchasing and bringing a book about a deep philosophical subject on a vacation.