Science and Moral Priority: Merging Mind, Brain, and Human Values

Sperry argues that consciousness is an 'emergent functional property' of brain processing that exerts downward causal control over neural events . This is a monist position—mind is not a separate substance—but it is not reductive materialism either, because mental properties are not merely epiphenomenal or a 'subset of brain events' [citation:3]. He draws an analogy with a television program controlling the electron-flow pattern in the receiver, though he qualifies that the brain is largely self-programming [citation:3]. A Nature review noted that Sperry appears torn between claiming consciousness is not reducible to neural events and claiming that it is [citation:1]. His own 1964 'awakening' to this position is presented as a conceptual breakthrough.

Sperry states that his concern with value theory came 'only secondarily as a spinoff of work on mind-brain relations,' but that 'soon the humanistic implications of my work became apparent, and the tail began to wag the dog' [citation:16]. His split-brain experiments showed that each disconnected hemisphere behaved independently, with specialized functions, which led him to reject both dualism and reductionism in favor of emergent mentalism. From the premise that mental states are causal, he concluded that values—which are mental states—determine behavior, and therefore that a science of values is conceivable [citation:11]. Kirkus Review summarized the trajectory: from split-brain findings to the hope that 'mind will be used in the conscious creation of a science of moral values' [citation:12].

Critics widely rejected the prescriptive claim while acknowledging Sperry's scientific prestige. Kirkus Review concluded that 'Sperry's moral science seems rather to be an amalgam of humanism, ethical culture, and perhaps some of Teilhard de Chardin's mysticism. Moral, yes; science, no' [citation:12]. A Nature review noted that Sperry admits his thesis has 'no empirical support' and that the 'only consequences he specifies turn out to be vague promises' [citation:1]. The Harvard Crimson called the book 'laughable—in its own dangerous way,' arguing that Sperry overestimates science's ability to answer value questions [citation:7]. A library reviewer warned that 'Sperry's inheritance arguments are not successfully secured against possible charges of racism' [citation:14].

Downward causation is the mechanism by which emergent mental properties exert control over the neural events from which they emerge. Sperry argues that 'mind and consciousness push and haul around the physiological and the physical and chemical processes as much as, or more than the latter processes direct them' [citation:3]. He accepts that at the physical level the laws of causation 'are nowhere broken,' but argues they are 'superseded' by higher-level forces [citation:3]. A reviewer noted the confusing terminology: Sperry seems to presuppose that to recognize mental efficacy, one must deny 'purely physical determinacy' and speak of 'causal interaction' [citation:3]. The concept is central to his rejection of materialist reductionism.

The book is a late-career philosophical synthesis that extrapolates from Sperry's split-brain research to metaphysics and ethics. Kirkus Review noted that his research 'showed that when the cerebral hemispheres were disconnected, each half behaved independently,' and that from this he 'came to think of mind and consciousness as emergent causal forces' [citation:11]. However, a critical review observed that Sperry 'does not address' hemispheric differences in this book, focusing instead on the general mind-brain problem . The connection is genealogical rather than technical: his Nobel-winning experiments provided the scientific authority for his philosophical speculations, which reviewers found to be more assertive than demonstrative [citation:4].

Sperry proposes an ethic based on the interdependence of all living things and the biosphere as a whole, in which 'protection of life and the planet from war, overpopulation, and depletion of resources would be axiomatic' [citation:11]. This scientific ethic would replace 'the narrow earth-centered or man-centered myths and religions (and Marxist ideology)' [citation:12]. He writes that the new ethic 'will make it sacrilegious to deplete natural resources, to pollute the environment, to overpopulate, to erase or degrade other species, or to otherwise destroy, demean, or defile the evolving quality of the biosphere' . Critics noted that this reads as a secularized version of religious moralism, with the scientist replacing the prophet.