"Am I just a piece of matter ? ", asked the Swedish astronomer Gustaf Strömberg (please see his "Soul of the Universe").Since some people just must have some kind of Authority for everything, please note that Strömberg's work was endorsed by another astronomer, Eddington, by the mathematician Einstein, and by several other writers of considerable authority within the scientific circles.
That alone might not prove anything in particular. Strömberg may have not produced some ultimate, final and complete answer (which he did not claim) — but he may have been reaching in the right direction. In the direction of some workable answers.
One principle which can be demonstrably applied in any circumstances is the economy of terms ; it was, I believe, mentioned by Eddington too. This was known to any self-respecting scientist and philosopher (without quotation marks) following William of Ockham and the nominalist trends.
"If the sign is not necessary then it has no sense ; that is the meaning of Ockham's razor" (interpretation by Wittgenstein — roughly from my memory).
Historically, there has been much discussion on such subjects as, the seat of the feeling, the seat of emotions, the "organ" of thinking and the like. Some said it was the stomach, others said it was the heart, some glands were sometimes also considered. Thinking has been often associated with the brain.
There is no denying that brain is vital for operating with the body — as it were the center of communications in some institutions (I do not mean the lunatic asylums but any human institutions who have some kind of communications center). One question can be posed : who or what it is that makes the decisions.
A sort of 'physical bases of consciousness' schools have offered extremely lengthy and complicated proofs that one "cannot understand the" subject.
(Were that to be true, one would at least wish that the proofs were of some less length and were less convoluted.)
Please note that it is usually very unclear, is the brain, or is it the mind, that those authors do not understand.
The proposition that it is the brain that does the thinking has been in effect already disproved by the 'physical bases etc.' writers themselves, who have by now proved, it seems, conclusively, that this "cannot be understood".
If one does not assume that brain and �mind� are �the same�, the answers might become possible.
I for one have examined several immaterialist authors and in some of them I found answers which can satisfy two conditions : (a) no assumption is made that you cannot understand the mind, and (b) the fundamental propositions are simple.
I would not expand on this beyond informing the reader, beware of the writers who confound the �brain� and the �mind� (the main purpose of this site being counter-disinformation, not spirituality.)
The issue is inevitably connected with �materialism�, and by default with the attempts by the late Soviet Union at undermining �imperialism� — which did include corrupting the American psychiatry.
The Old Bolsheviks may be no more but the world-wide havoc wrought by them will not "just go away" of its own accord. In addition, the 'materialist' schools have had a long tradition even before the fall of Russia in 1917 and there had been many a 'philosopher' busy with arm-chair classifications of non-existent 'illnesses' — which practice seems to have no end in sight.
The 'physical bases etc.' theories, although in effect disproved by the very authors who had belaboured them the most, provide the pseudo-scientific bases for physical pseudo-remedies in the form of various best-selling pills.
The validity of this or that theory can be the last thing considered by people who stand to make money on something that would sell. This does not always, or not necessarily imply ill will — although considerable amounts of just that quality can be seen in some quarters.
But this does imply a rather large problem, world-wide. Please, make up your own mind, the reader.
WPT