Abstract
This article deals with the difficulties of the yet intuitive causal interpretation of the mind–body connection emphasized by metaphysical, theoretical and experimental considerations. It shows that a decisive contribution to determining the nature of this connection can be provided experimentally. This experimental test is designed within the framework of a general systems theory capable of representing the concepts of complementarity and entanglement that are involved in the description of the mind–body connection.
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Notes
Such a physical basis of any mental event must be supposed by materialism to ensure that mental events are always dependent and even determined by physical events.
Originally, Cannon assigned this role to the thalamus and Bard to the hypothalamus, but now this role is assigned to the whole limbic system that groups all the subcortical structures involved in by the generation of emotions (MacLean 1949).
Wegner has shown on experimental basis that the feeling of causal responsibility of our conscious decision is generated by the satisfaction of three conditions: its temporal anteriority on the action (but not a too long one), its consistency with it and the apparent exclusion of any other potential cause of it (Wegner and Wheatley 1999).
This experimental test must not be understood as assessing “one-to-one” relationships between specific emotional variables and specific bodily variables, because it is a statistical one that involves many couples of mental–physiological observables and many subjects. Consequently, it can provide a very significant general information on the nature of the mind–body connection, and, in particular, on the validity of its causal interpretation.
The concept of generalized entanglement, which is here assigned to the mind–body connection, generalizes that of quantum entanglement introduced by Schrödinger (1935) to characterize the nature of the correlations between two particles having interacted in their common past.
These values are given in the section “Results”, sub-section “Cardiovascular Reactivity” of this article of Kassam and Mendes.
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Appendix: An Example of Compilation of Experimental Results [Drawn from (Uzan 2017)]
Appendix: An Example of Compilation of Experimental Results [Drawn from (Uzan 2017)]
In an article by Kassam and Mendes (2013), the section entitled “Cardiovascular Reactivity” (pp. 6–7) reports the mean change scores < ΔYi > of six cardiovascular variables Yi that are associated with two emotional conditioning (Fear and Anger) resulting from the realization of mental tasks, in the case the subjects report their emotion and in the case they do not report their emotion. The cardiovascular observables measure the ΔYi while the corresponding emotional observables measure the degree of anger and shame experienced by a subject. Due to the reliability of the method of conditioning (p. 5, section “Behavioral Coding”, second paragraph), the measurement of a cardiovascular observable in a specified emotion can be considered as a joint measurement whose value of the emotion observable is 1 (state of “pure” emotion). These authors study the physiological effects of measuring emotion, showing that the act of reporting an emotion has an impact on the body’s reaction.
However, like in the reference (Uzan 2017), we will here only focus on the case where the subjects do not report their emotion and use the corresponding data to compute the CHSH correlation factor for the different couples of cardiovascular–emotional observables. This article reports the change in HR (heart rate—in bpm), CO (cardiac output—in L/mn) and PEP (pre-ejection period—in ms), while the emotional observables under consideration are denoted by A (Anger) and Sh (Shame).
To compute R for all the couples of observables, we have first to compute the cardiovascular values normalized to unity. Table 1 provides the values and standard errors (SE) of the cardiovascular reactivity for the two possible emotional conditioning Anger and Shame.Footnote 6 The extremal values of cardiovascular variables that are needed for the normalization of these variables are also mentioned in the right column of this Table 1.
From Table 2, we can compute the normalized value Ŷ corresponding to each emotional conditioning (A or Sh) by using the following formula: Ŷ = Y – Y0/│Yextr − Y0 │, where Yextr and Y0 are, respectively, the extremal value of the variable Y and a reference value of Y (baseline value or a value corresponding to a ‘‘neutral’’ conditioning).
For example, the normalized value of < ΔHR > A, which is the maximal value of the two reported values of HR (in A- and Sh-condition) is < ΔĤR > A = 1, while the normalized value of < ΔHR > Sh is < ΔĤR > Sh = < ΔHR > Sh/│ < ΔHR > A│ = 10.13/15.51 = 0.653. For PEP, we can read that < ΔPEP > A = − 11.29 and < ΔPEP > Sh = − 5.51; consequently, the corresponding normalized values are < ΔPÊP > A = − 1 and < ΔPÊP > Sh = − 5.51/∣−11.29∣ = − 0.488.
With these normalised values, the correlation factor R can be computed for all the couples of cardiovascular–emotional observables. For example, for the two couples (A,Sh) and (HR,PEP), R = <ΔĤR > A+< ΔPÊP > A+< ΔĤR > Sh − <ΔPÊP > Sh = 1.141.
The 12 values of R for this experiment are reported in the Table 3.
The last step consists in comparing the values of the CHSH correlation factor R obtained in this table with the Bell bound and the signaling bound β, as explained in Sect. 3.2. In this small part of the meta-analysis (12 trials on a total of 164), one can read that 9 values of R satisfy the Bell bound and then the signaling bound (∣R∣ ≤ β) while 3 values violate the Bell bound (but could also violate the signaling bound β, which has not be computed here). As reported in Sect. 3.2, the global result (on 164 trials) shows the quasi-impossibility to interpret causally the studied psychophysical correlations with a high confidence level.
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Uzan, P. Mind–Body Connection and Causation: Conceptual and Experimental Advances. Found Sci 26, 901–915 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09709-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09709-6