Notes on Some Fundamental Questions in the Humanities Based on Progresses in Brain Research.

The rapid and strong development of brain research in the recent decades necessitates a re-thinking or re-awaking of some classical questions in the humanities, which may have significant effects on our society. As neuroscientists we would like to share with our colleagues from the humanities our points of view concerning these questions. Our points presented in this paper concern three important issues: (i) essence of the human mind, (ii) consciousness and unconsciousness of the brain, and (iii) free will. Ad (i) Our fundamental point of view is that the classical body-mind dualism has disappeared with the new development of neuroscience and should be replaced by a brain-monism. The mind is the result of our 100 billion brain cells working together, and is thus a product of the brain. The mind is produced by the brain by action potentials, neurotransmitters and synaptic changes, resulting in changes in the activities of the brain cells, and interactions of the brain areas. The results of brain work are objective since they are solely the consequences of the changes in transmitter release and activity of nerve cells in particular brain areas. There are also good neuroscientific explanations for the so-called "subjective" properties of one's personality or character. It is the genetic background, early brain development, and remodeling of the brain caused by later developmental experiences playing together to make each brain unique. These mind-differences can be explained on the basis of differences in brain structures and functions and they are purely objective. Ad (ii) Most of our brain work is unconscious and it can very well carry out complex tasks this way. Such unconscious processing of the brain is also one of its objective properties. In addition, the brain (= I) does have the unconscious wish to survive, which has developed during evolution and that during evolution the wish for food and reproduction are strongly coupled to our brain reward systems has proven to be an extremely efficient mechanism. These basic wishes are sublimated in the human being into products of work, science and art. Ad (iii) Scientific experiments have shown that our brain makes decisions before we are conscious of them. These observations seriously question whether we have any degree of free will. The unconscious will takes split-second decisions on the basis of what is going on in our surroundings, a process that is importantly determined by the way our brains were formed during development and by what we have learned since then (= memories). That the feeling of "free will" is an illusion has gained support of many experimental data, although the final answer to this important question should come from future experiments. Our current knowledge of neurobiology shows that many inherited factors and environmental influences during early development affect the structure and functioning of our brains for the rest of our lives. This means that along with all kinds of potentials and talents, we have many built-in limitations, including a given level of aggression, our gender identity and our sexual orientation, and a greater or lesser tendency to develop brain disorders such as ADHD, borderline personality disorder, depression or schizophrenia. Finally, we think that developments in neuroscience not only promote our penetration into the essence of human beings, but also significantly inspire the improvement in our social ethics and mechanism, as for example, in the case of how we should fairly and efficiently punish the offenders who have psychiatric disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]