If I were to be eaten by a shark, I'm pretty sure the worst part would be not the pain or the mutilation or the actual dying and so forth, but rather the thought balloon over my head with the words, "I'm being eaten by a [expletive] shark!"

Joel Achenbach has written an opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News about the proposal for a "Decade of the Mind" to follow the "Decade of the Brain" of the 1990's. The idea seems to be to put $4 billion toward solving the mystery of consciousness (the so-called "hard problem"). Though the article presents a number of highlights in current philosophy of mind research, it remains unclear just what the objectives for the decade of the mind should be. Answering the question "How does a brain generate consciousness?" Or how about just "What is consciousness"? The actual proposal seems much less philosophical.

In a letter published this year in the journal Science, 10 scientists said that a Decade of the Mind would help us understand mental disorders that affect 50 million Americans and cost more than $400 billion a year. It might also aid in the development of intelligent machines and new computing techniques. A breakthrough in mind research, the scientists wrote, could have "broad and dramatic impacts on the economy, national security and our social well-being."

Given the direction this decade is supposed to go and the suspicion some philosophers have about the concept of mind anyway (Achenbach reports briefly on Dennett's work), it sounds to me that a "Decade of the Brain: Part 2" is a more reasonable label. Exploring the mind is not like going to the moon, which you're pretty sure is there. Achenbach seems to recognize the issues.

Cracking the code of the mind may be ultimately impossible. My guess is that a century from now, scientists and philosophers will still be arguing about the what, where and how of it all.

But we should still take a whack at it. Ten years and $4 billion: That's a reasonable cost. The evolution of the human mind is arguably the most important biological event in the history of our planet since the origin of life itself.

We should try to understand how the brain makes the mind. And then we can make up our minds about what to do with ourselves.

Yes, let's take a whack at it. The more work we do toward understanding the brain, the easier it will be to get a clearer understanding of the questions we should be asking.

What makes up my mind? | Dallas Morning News

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