The "brains make minds" dogma is so entrenched in academia that many scientists feel afraid to challenge it, on the grounds that becoming a heretic is not a good career move. What often happens is that scientists will get some observational result that is inconsistent with the dogma that brains make minds, and such scientists will try to repackage this result as a "brains make minds" result. Examples of this can be found in the discussion of humans who think very well and have good intelligence despite having lost half, most or almost all of their brains because of disease or surgery to stop severe seizures. Rather than listening to what nature is suggesting by such cases (that the brain is not the source of the mind), our scientists may try to repackage such results as something like "evidence of the amazing plasticity of the brain, which can work well even when most of it has been lost." Similarly, if someone claims your teeth produce your mind, and you lose most of your teeth, he may say, "Well, isn't that amazing: it requires just a few teeth for you to be smart!"
In today's science news, we have an example of such repackaging of results to fit the standard narrative (even when the results suggest that narrative is wrong). It is a news story entitled "Surprise! Complex Decision Making Found in Predatory Worms With Just 302 Neurons." No evidence has been produced that such decision-making occurs through neurons. We read, "Instead of looking at actual neurons and cell connections for signs of decision making, the team looked at the behavior of P. pacificus instead – specifically, how it chose to use its biting capabilities when confronted with different types of threat." We read about the worms taking "two different strategies" when biting, one involving "biting to devour" and the other involving "biting to deter." We read this:
"By observing where P. pacificus worms laid their eggs, and how their behavior changed when a bacterial food source was nearby, the scientists determined that bites on adult C. elegans were intended to drive them away – in other words, they weren't simply failed attempts to kill these competitors. While we're used to such decision making from vertebrates, it hasn't previously been clear that worms had the brainpower to proverbially weigh up the pros, cons, and consequences of particular actions in this way."
If we knew such worms produced such "complex decision making" by the action of neurons, would we then be entitled to say, "Complex decision making can arise from only 302 neurons"? No, not at all. Very many or most of the neurons of any organism are presumably dedicated to things such as muscle movement, sensory perception and autonomic function. We should presume that 90% of the neurons in such worms are tied up in such things. If you then wanted to claim that complex decision making came from the neurons of such worms, you would have to presume that a mere 30 or so neurons were producing such complex decisions.
Such a claim would be laughable. Humans have no understanding of how billions of neurons in a human brain could produce any such thing as thinking, understanding or decision making. To claim that complex decision making can come from only a very small number of neurons in a worm seems absurd, rather like thinking that someone with only a few dozen muscle cells could lift an air conditioner up above his head.
The writer of today's new story should have recognized that these results conflict with claims that minds are produced by brains. Instead, the results were repackaged to conform with the "brains make minds" dogma. So the beginning of the news story read like this:
"As scientists continue to discover more about the brain and how it works, it can help to know just how much brain matter is required to perform certain functions – and to be able to make complex decisions, it turns out just 302 neurons may be required."
See here for another example of complex thought from tiny animals (ravens). An article in Knowable Magazine suggests that tiny spiders are capable of complex thought. We read this:
"There is this general idea that probably spiders are too small, that you need some kind of a critical mass of brain tissue to be able to perform complex behaviors,' says arachnologist and evolutionary biologist Dimitar Dimitrov of the University Museum of Bergen in Norway. 'But I think spiders are one case where this general idea is challenged. Some small things are actually capable of doing very complex stuff.' Behaviors that can be described as 'cognitive,' as opposed to automatic responses, could be fairly common among spiders, says Dimitrov, coauthor of a study on spider diversity published in the 2021 Annual Review of Entomology."
In one test of intelligence, tiny mouse lemurs with brains 1/200 the size of chimpanzees did about as well as the chimpanzees We read this:
"The results of the new study show that despite their smaller brains lemurs' average cognitive performance in the tests of the PCTB was not fundamentally different from the performances of the other primate species. This is even true for mouse lemurs, which have brains about 200 times smaller than those of chimpanzees and orangutans."
This result is what we might expect under the hypothesis that brains do not make minds, but not at all what we would expect under the claim that brains make minds.
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