Читать книгу Bioethics - Группа авторов - Страница 79

Do humans have immaterial minds or souls that are the basis of all their mental states and capacities? The answer is that this is a deeply implausible view, since there are facts about human beings, and other animals, that provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that the categorical basis for all mental states and capacities lies in the brain. First of all, there are extensive correlations between the behavioral capacities of different animals and the neural structures present in their brains. Secondly, the gradual maturation of the brain of a human being is accompanied by a corresponding increase in his or her intellectual capabilities. Thirdly, damage to the brain, due either to external trauma, or to stroke, results in impairment of one's cognitive capacities, and the nature of the impairment is correlated with the part of the brain that was damaged. As I have argued elsewhere (Tooley et al. 2009, 15–19), these facts, and many others, receive a very straightforward explanation given the hypothesis that mental capacities have as their basis appropriate neural circuitry, whereas, on the other hand, they would be both unexplained, and deeply puzzling, if mental capacities had their basis not in the brain, but in some immaterial substance.