No Access

Artificial Intelligence’s Novel “Mind-Reading” Capabilities through Neuroscience: A Challenge for Mind–Body Dualism?

Institute of Philosophy, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland

Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Fribourg, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland

Institute for Management & Digitalization, Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland

E-mail Address: yoshija.walter2@kalaidos-fh.ch

https://doi.org/10.1142/S2705078524500036Cited by:0 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

This paper explores a philosophical problem at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI), and the potential impact of these novel AI “mind-reading” technologies on various forms of mind–body dualism, including substance, interaction, property, predicate, and emergent dualisms. It critically examines how AI’s ability to interpret and predict mental states from neural patterns challenges traditional dualistic theories, which have historically posited distinct relationships between the mind and body. The paper analyzes each dualistic theory in the context of AI advancements. Substance and interaction dualisms are scrutinized for their claims of mind–body independence and causal interaction, respectively, in light of AI’s capabilities to correlate mental and physical states. Property dualism’s assertion of unique mental properties emerging from physical processes is tested against AI’s potential to map mental phenomena to brain activity. Predicate dualism’s linguistic and conceptual distinction between mental and physical realms is challenged by AI’s ability to bridge these domains. Similarly, emergent dualism, which views mental states as novel phenomena, confronts the possibility of their reduction to physical brain processes. Despite these challenges, the paper argues for the adaptability of dualistic theories to integrate AI insights, suggesting a re-evaluation rather than a negation of dualism. It highlights the enduring relevance of philosophical inquiry into the nature of consciousness and mind–body relationships in the age of AI, suggesting that such technological advancements invigorate rather than terminate the philosophical debate.

Keywords:

References

Baker, L. R. [1987] Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ). Google Scholar
Benchetrit, Y., Banville, H. and King, J.-R. [2023] Brain decoding: Toward real-time reconstruction of visual perception, Preprint, arXiv:2310.19812 [eess.IV], doi:10.48550/arXiv.2310.19812. Google Scholar
Bob, P. [2011] Brain, Mind and Consciousness: Advances in Neuroscience Research (Springer Science + Business Media, New York). Crossref, Google Scholar
Braddon-Mitchell, D. and Jackson, F. [1996] The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition: An Introduction, F. Jackson (ed.) (Blackwell, Malden, MA). Google Scholar
Chalmers, D. [1995] Facing up to the problem of consciousness, J. Conscious. Stud. 2(3), 200–219. Google Scholar
Chalmers, D. J. [1997] The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford). Google Scholar
Chen, Z., Qing, J., Xiang, T., Yue, W. L. and Zhou, J. H. [2023] Seeing beyond the brain: Conditional diffusion model with sparse masked modeling for vision decoding, Preprint, arXiv:2211.06956 [cs.CV], doi:10.48550/arXiv.2211.06956. Google Scholar
Churchland, P. M. [1981] Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes, J. Philos. 78(2), 67–90. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil198178268 Google Scholar
Churchland, P. M. [1985] Matter and Consciousness (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). Google Scholar
Churchland, P. S. [1986] Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (MIT Press, Boston, MA). Crossref, Google Scholar
Corbí, J. E. and Prades, J. L. [2000] Minds, Causes, and Mechanisms: A Case Against Physicalism, Aristotelian Society Monographs Series, Vol. 17 (Blackwell, Oxford). Google Scholar
Cornman, J. W. [1968] On the elimination of “sensations” and “sensations”, Rev. Metaphys. 22(1), 15–35. Google Scholar
Corradini, A. [2008] Emergent dualism, in A. Antonietti, A. Corradini & E. J. Lowe (eds.), Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Lexington Books, London), pp. 185–209. Google Scholar
Denk, T. I., Takagi, Y., Matsuyama, T., Agostinelli, A., Nakai, T., Frank, C. and Nishimoto, S. [2023] Brain2Music: Reconstructing music from human brain activity, Preprint, arXiv:2307.11078 [q-bio.NC], doi:10.48550/arXiv.2307.11078. Google Scholar
Descartes, R. [2008] Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, M. Moriarty (trans.) (Oxford University Press, Oxford) [original work published in 1641]. Google Scholar
Eccles, J. C. [1980] A dualist-interactionist perspective, Behav. Brain Sci. 3(3), 430–431. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00005811 Crossref, Google Scholar
Gibb, S., Hendry, R. F. and Lancaster, T. [2019] The Routledge Handbook of Emergence (Routledge, New York). Crossref, Google Scholar
Goff, P. [2017] Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (Oxford University Press, Oxford). Crossref, Google Scholar
Han, J., Gong, K., Zhang, Y., Wang, J., Zhang, K., Lin, D., Qiao, Y., Gao, P. and Yue, X. [2023] OneLLM: One framework to align all modalities with language, Preprint, arXiv:2312.03700 [cs.CV], doi:10.48550/arXiv.2312.03700. Google Scholar
Hasker, W. [2016] Do my quarks enjoy Beethoven?, in T. Crisp, S. L. Porter & G. A. Ten Elshof (eds.), Neuroscience and the Soul: The Human Person in Philosophy, Science, and Theology (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids), pp. 13–40. Google Scholar
Horgan, T. and Woodward, J. [1985] Folk psychology is here to stay, Philos. Rev. 94(2), 197–225. https://doi.org/10.2307/2185428 Crossref, Google Scholar
Jackson, F. and Pettit, P. [1990] In defence of folk psychology, Philos. Stud. 59(1), 31–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00368390 Crossref, Google Scholar
Jacquette, D. [2011] Kripke’s argument for mind-body property dualism, in M. Bruce & S. Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments (Wiley-Blackwell), pp. 301–303. Crossref, Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. [1984] In defense of intentional psychology, J. Philos. 81(2), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.2307/2026024 Crossref, Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. [2018] The Monadology (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, London) (original work published in 1714). Google Scholar
Macpherson, F. [2006] Property dualism and the merits of solutions to the mind-body problem: A reply to Strawson, J. Conscious. Stud. 13(10–11), 72–89. Google Scholar
Marsh, M. N. [2010] Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality? (Oxford University Press, Oxford). Crossref, Google Scholar
McLaughlin, B. P. and Cohen, J. [2023] Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind (John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ). Crossref, Google Scholar
Nagel, T. [2016] What Is It Like to Be a Bat?/Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein? Englisch/Deutsch (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, Ditzingen). Google Scholar
O’Connor, T. [2021] Emergent properties, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Stanford), pp. a–b, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/properties-emergent/. Google Scholar
O’Connor, T. and Churchill, J. R. [2010] Nonreductive physicalism or emergent dualism? The argument from mental causation, in R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism, 1st ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford), pp. 261–280, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199556182.003.0013. Crossref, Google Scholar
Reardon, S. [2023] Mind-reading machines are here: Is it time to worry?, Nature 617(7960), 236. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01486-z Crossref, Google Scholar
Reti, I. [2015] Brain Stimulation: Methodologies and Interventions (John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ). Crossref, Google Scholar
Robinson, H. [2023a] Dualism, in E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Stanford), pp. c–d, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/dualism/. Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. [2007] Evolution and epiphenomenalism, J. Conscious. Stud. 14(11), 27–42. Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. [2018] Epiphenomenal Mind: An Integrated Outlook on Sensations, Beliefs, and Pleasure (Routledge, New York, NY). Crossref, Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. [2023b] Epiphenomenalism, in E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Stanford), pp. e–f, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/epiphenomenalism/. Google Scholar
Rogers, A. K. [2018] The Parallelism of Mind and Body From the Standpoint of Metaphysics (FB&C Limited, London). Google Scholar
Rozemond, M. [2009] Descartes’s Dualism (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). Google Scholar
Santoro, R., Moerel, M., De Martino, F., Valente, G., Ugurbil, K., Yacoub, E. and Formisano, E. [2017] Reconstructing the spectrotemporal modulations of real-life sounds from fMRI response patterns, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 114(18), 4799–4804. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617622114 Crossref, Google Scholar
Schneider, S. [2012] Why property dualists must reject substance physicalism, Philos. Stud. 157(1), 61–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9618-9 Crossref, Google Scholar
Skirry, J. [2005] Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature (Thoemmes-Continuum Press, London and New York). Google Scholar
Stango, M. [2017] Understanding hylomorphic dualism, Proc. Am. Cathol. Philos. Assoc. 91, 145–158. https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc2019102295 Google Scholar
Stich, S. P. [1983] From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief (MIT Press, Boston, MA). Google Scholar
Takagi, Y. and Nishimoto, S. [2023] High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity, bioRxiv, 2022.11.18.517004, doi:10.1101/2022.11.18.517004. Google Scholar
Tang, J., LeBel, A., Jain, S. and Huth, A. G. [2023] Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings, Nat. Neurosci. 26(5), 858–866. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01304-9 Crossref, Google Scholar
Walter, Y. and Altorfer, A. [2023] Autonomous neural network activation during religious worship experiences using heart rate variability measurements, Relig. Brain Behav., https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2217238 Crossref, Google Scholar
Walter, Y. and Koenig, T. [2022] Neural network involvement for religious experiences in worship measured by EEG microstate analysis, Soc. Neurosci. 17(3), 258–275, https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2022.2083228. Crossref, Google Scholar
Walter, Y. and Koenig, T. [2023] The induction of religious experiences and temporal lobe activation: Neuronal source localization using EEG inverse solutions, Psych 5(4), 1191–1206. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych5040079 Crossref, Google Scholar
Walter, Y., Dieguez, S., Mouthon, M. and Spierer, L. [2020] Brain structural evidence for a frontal pole specialization in glossolalia, IBRO Rep. 9, 32–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibror.2020.06.002 Crossref, Google Scholar
White, S. L. [2009] The property dualism argument, in R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism: New Essays (Oxford University Press, Oxford), pp. 89–114. Google Scholar
Xie, H. [2023] The promising future of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, Nat. Rev. Psychol. 2(4), 202. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00170-3 Crossref, Google Scholar
Young, B. D. and Jennings, C. D. [2022] Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, New York). Crossref, Google Scholar