Information and the Brain

Information and the Brain

It has become routine to speak of neurons as “transmitting information”, usually without any definition of “information”. This talk is highly misleading. We can use wires and waves to transmit information to other people, because we have knowledge we can communicate in this way; but if the “information” is not sent and received by conscious knowing beings, the idea becomes unsustainable. A neuron, or gaggle of them, can’t send information in this sense, since it isn’t a conscious knower or communicator. It doesn’t have any information to send. Messages are sent intentionally as a result of knowledge, but neurons by themselves are not volitional cognitive beings. If the brain were not associated with a mind, we would not be tempted to describe it in informational terms, limiting ourselves to electrochemical descriptions. The only way to make sense of this kind of talk would be to identify persons with clumps of neurons; then we can say that the persons who send messages are just such clumps. What is not permissible is to suppose that neurons send information without being persons. They are biological cells like other cells, and cells don’t engage in speech acts. If neurons transmit information, then hearts and kidneys must do so too, in virtue of their causal powers. But then, this notion of information has nothing to do with the ordinary notion of information transmission, i.e., people sending messages to each other; and we would want to know what the intended notion is.

It is clear to me that what encourages this way of talking is the picture that a genuine conscious agent is using his neurons to send information to similar beings—as he may use a machine to do that (say, a phone). In this sense we may find ourselves saying that I use my neurons to send messages to my muscles when I act intentionally—I use them as information transmitters. I have no objection to this usage, because it doesn’t violate the principle that information must come from conscious cognitive beings and be received by them; it doesn’t come from the neurons that are being so used. Maybe I use my neurons this way unconsciously—for I don’t seem to be conscious of doing so in the normal course of events. And maybe I am just a clump of neurons, but still a knowing clump of neurons. I could in principle use many things to send messages to my muscles, say transplanted liver cells or silicon chips; neurons are not essential. But the means I use are not themselves sending messages—anymore than telephone wires send messages (independently of human users). In fact, it seems to me true that I use my neurons to send messages to other parts of myself—my limbs, my memory, my emotions—but it is not true that my neurons themselves send messages in any sense independently of my will. Neurons in themselves don’t send messages or transmit information; this is a confused way of talking. If I am a clump of neurons, then this clump sends messages to other clumps; but not otherwise. If you are a dualist, you can’t say that neurons send messages, though you can say you use them to send messages. What we have discovered in neuroscience is that persons use neurons to send messages to other neurons and to various bodily parts—they don’t use other types of cells or no cells at all. The brain is indeed the organ that the mind uses to carry out its will. The mind may itself be the brain, so that the brain uses neurons to execute its wishes; but individual neurons don’t have a mind and will of their own. They are not capable of sending messages.

This means that we can’t use them to provide a theory of the mind, specifically the informational mind; for there are not already informational. In effect, we are conceiving of the brain via consciousness not providing an explanation of how brains get to be conscious. The only sense in which brains are informational systems is that the brain is the organ of the mind and it is an informational system. It is mere metaphor to suggest that the brain itself transmits information (unless it is the mind). But I am quite happy to affirm that people use their brain to transmit information—literally. I use my neurons to carry out my will all day long, even though I may not be aware of doing this. I am acting neurally, as I act muscularly or retinally. This is a sound addition to the philosophy of action.[1]

[1] I don’t think the error I have identified casts doubt on the prospects of cognitive science; it can survive expunging the error. But it is an unfortunate use of language which can only muddy the waters. The trouble is that this is a confusing area in which conceptual mistakes are easily made. I would recommend writing out the sentence “Neurons don’t transmit information” one hundred times and frowning when anyone else talks this way. It is really a mystifying turn of speech with no place in serious science. I was taught as a student to speak this way myself and I now renounce it.