Letters

摘要

We are amazed by the claim by Mario Beauregard and Jeffrey M. Schwartz that Andy Clark's reaction to the claims of non-materialist neuroscience betrays a "fundamental lack of knowledge of mind-brain interactions" (29 November, p 23).rnThey claim that neuro-imaging provides copious evidence of minds changing brains - for example, when a subject's deliberate shift of attention alters their brain state in a way detectable by a scanner.rnBut this would lend support to the proposition that minds are non-material - in the strong sense of being beyond the natural order - only if we were to accept the assumption that thoughts, attending and mental activity are not realised in material substance.rnFor if they are, then all we are seeing is that one set of physical changes can lead to another. Their argument thus assumes that which it sets out to prove.