Na+/K+ ATPase and You

“I did not need to make such an assumption.”

-Pierre-Simon Laplace, on the lack of a deity in his astronomical theories

How many times have you heard ‘give 110%’ or said it yourself? Or heard about someone ‘fighting’ or ‘battling’ cancer with a good attitude? Or take the fallacy that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Einstein only used 12% or 15%; aside from the implicit separation of mind and body is the idea that our minds if properly applied exceed the bounds of physiology. I find the Cartesian split so fascinating and frustrating precisely because our brains are amazing physiological organs.

I think Descartes was trying to provide a serious framework for believing things he seriously wanted to believe. I feel no shift in the text where his reason has modified and discarded something he wanted to believe in already. I think his attempt to elevate the mind beyond the physical world is no longer needed to provide a satisfying account of ones own existence. Perhaps I am unconvinced for the same selfish reason.

But to me self, mind and brain should be considered as synonyms. We are our brains. Our bodies are to a degree isolated from our consciousness, but that consciousness still resides in a bodily organ from which it is not separable. The fact that the brain can urge the body to do tremendous things seems to be convincing manifestations of its fundamental functionality, and indeed the brain receives feedback from the body and is affected in profound ways.

In the face of scientific evidence religion has largely abandoned empirical claims about cosmology and biology and retreated to metaphysical arguments with the occasional miracle thrown in. I see a similar process happening with mind-body dualism. Neuroscience, I think, has forced any discussion of the mind and consciousness to include an explicit account of the role of the brain. When we talk about modern mind-body dichotomies, it seems that we are really discussing a sort of implicit trichotomy with the mind and body diverging in the foreground and the brain lurking as a mysterious mediator.

Science has revealed our place in the cosmos and in the animal kingdom and made it possible to abandon religious accounts of creation for what to me are even more awe inspiring accounts. I think the further investigation of the function of the brain will make it easier and easier to abandon a dualist account of a mind for one which the mind is all the more amazing because of its emergence from the physiology of the brain.