In one of this year’s bionic breakthroughs, a paralyzed woman carried out her own superhuman feat: Using an implanted brain chip, she controlled a robotic arm with her mind. [1]
Scientists jumped to the roof out of joy.
But what are we to celebrate here?
The “with her mind” is the key sentence. Is it the mind who controls the brain? Or is brain and mind the same thing alltogether?
Such breakthroughs are often misinterpreted as a “proof” of the materialistic nature of consciousness or thought. But how “many electrons” constitute a thought? How much “heavy” is a… thought?
These experiments show that our brain can control something which gets current as input. We are made out of cells which create energy like an electrochemical cell does. All of our cells are small powerplants of electrocity. And if our brain sends the right signal, then it can make something move. However that does not answer questions with have to do with the mind-brain debate. We are not able to know whether it is the brain which creates these signals because… random movements happened in it (?), or whether the mind of the person under investigation gave the order to the brain cells to function that way.
Too often we misinterpret what we see based on what we believe.
If only philosophical questions were solved so easily…
