A Strange Mix of Brain and Mind
Comic books were never a fascination for me as a child mainly because my parents refused to purchase them. “Waste of money” they would declare or “They’ll rot your brain” they would exclaim. For pulp entertainment, I was left to rummage through copies of Mad magazine belonging to my two much older brothers.
Out of pity for my growing sense of unsupervised irony, a step-cousin slipped me a stack of Avengers comics so I at least had enough childhood knowledge about Iron Man not to look culturally deficient when Robert Downey, Jr. brought his story to film.
Beyond the Avengers and a few Haunted Tank issues, I had no further interest in comics until I stumbled upon the magnetic duality of Calvin and Hobbes during my late teenage years. I never took the time to discover the one comic superhero who was endowed not with superhuman abilities but with a gifted intellect.
That comic-book hero was Dr. Strange, a neurosurgeon turned mystic defender of the universe. I probably would have ignored Dr. Stephen Strange anyway because who cares about a neurosurgeon, comic book version or otherwise, when you are a teenager? Little did I know what lay in the future.
After my involuntary induction into the Parkinsonian Society almost two decades ago (my description of being diagnosed with young onset Parkinson’s at age 39), I did what every American does upon receiving life changing medical news: I searched the Internet and scared myself silly. Then I began a sporadic study of Parkinson’s and the fascinating field of neuroscience. A little knowledge of Dr. Stephen Strange might have been beneficial then.
Having slept through previous biology classes during my student days, I finally learned what most people already knew – that our brain and nerves are our electrical system. Instead of wires, we have neurons that carry electrically charged command signals from our brains to various body parts in a symphonic manner. When certain neurons die and disrupt the electrical flow, we have movement disorders develop such as Parkinson’s along with a set of much more debilitating neurodegenerative diseases that I remain grateful for not having.
Beyond gaining a basic understanding of how the brain and nervous system function on the biological level, my limited ramblings into neuroscience exposed me to the philosophical conflict between the notions of the “brain” versus the “mind.” An excellent introduction to this debate is Thomas Nagel’s Mind & Cosmos: Why The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.
Thomas Nagel, University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, uses the term “psychophysical reductionism” to describe the claim that the physical/biological sciences can provide a theory of everything. He uses “antireductionism” to describe those features that cannot be explained by a biological process. These features include consciousness, intentionality, meaning, purpose, thought and value.
Unlike other doubters of the non-material such as Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and former University of Oxford Professor for Public Understanding of Science, Nagel opens his mind to the possibility of something beyond the physical. Though he does not believe in a theistic deity, Nagel asserts that there are unknown and unseen nonphysical forces at work that interact with our physical brain to create the mind. He believes a great age of discovery lies ahead as humans attempt to discover how these nonphysical interactions work.
I have a choice at this juncture. I could continue muddling the complex arguments presented in Nagel’s book and risk boring even myself. Or I can greatly simplify the main conflict to a point that even I can understand by returning to the story of Dr. Strange. In this case, I refer to the 2016 film rather than expecting you to have the necessary comic book laying about.
Dr. Strange begins the film as an arrogant but gifted surgeon who loses himself when he loses his physical ability to operate. (Believe me, when your muscles won’t do what they are told, it can be disconcerting.) When given the opportunity to learn about a spiritual path towards healing, he scoffs, “No, I reject it because I do not believe in fairy tales about chakras or energy or the power of belief. There is no such thing as spirit! We are made of matter and nothing more. We’re just another tiny, momentary speck in an indifferent universe.” That quote could have come straight from Dawkins. In his helplessness, Dr. Strange finally opens his mind to the spiritual.
After a few hard lessons Dr. Strange discovers that there are, indeed, other worlds than these and entities that we can see only through a glass darkly. He discovers that his gifts reside in his mind and not in his hands. At the moment of his greatest challenge as he struggles with his ego, his teacher says to him what we all need to be reminded of, “It’s not about you.”
Dr. Strange ends his lessons as a humble and gifted neurosurgeon who faces the choice to heal himself physically and return to his old life or continue his spiritual growth for the protection of all humanity. He chooses to protect the world and finds the forces of evil arrayed against him.
I’ll leave you with the best quote of the film. Exasperated over his early arrogance, Dr. Strange’s teacher confronted him with “You think you know how the world works? You think that this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts form reality.”
Thoughts form imagination and belief, just two of the many complex features of human consciousness. Can we have reality without interaction with physical matter? What is reality? Dare we say “spiritual” rather than “non-physical?” Too many deep questions for this surface skimming post.
Nagel concludes by stating that we may be incapable of discovering the brain/mind nexus wherein lies our consciousness. Not incapable because of a lack of knowledge but inherently incapable due to the non-physical or spiritual nature of the nexus.
But that does not mean that we should not try.
The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak - Matthew 26:41