In the March–April edition of American Scientist, neuroscientist Alan J. McComas offers a fix for the famously “Hard Problem of consciousness”: The Road to Reductionism

His article embodies many of the standard assumptions about consciousness that neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and I challenge in The Immortal Mind (Worthy June 3, 2025). I want to unpack three of them.

They are conveniently listed for American Scientist readers in the form of three “quick takes”:

1. Reduction of the immaterial to the material is certainly possible.

Quick take: ● The reductionist view argues that consciousness requires no mystical explanation but rather is a function of the brain, an organic machine that we can understand through research.

From the article:

It’s no wonder, then, that many ancient priests and philosophers took the mystical view that consciousness is conferred upon us or somehow arises from outside the body. What is more surprising is that such views continue despite enormous advances in neuroscience. Their persistence deepens the need for a clear exposition of a reductionist approach,” which views consciousness as a function of the brain — a biological machine whose workings can be understood by an examination of its parts.

In reality, modern neuroscience continues to be baffled by consciousness despite having pursued a reductionist path throughout. There is no good reason to believe that ramping up the reductionism will help and some key figures in neuroscience are beginning to move — controversially — away from it.

2. There is no free will.

Quick take: ● Though we seemingly choose our actions, studies show that neural firing occurs prior to awareness and that activity in the brain’s memory areas precedes our knowledge of self.

In the article, McComas references the pop science interpretation of the research of Benjamin Libet (1916–2007) in the 1980s, supposedly disproving free will:

Surprisingly (though perhaps not to Libet), the negative readiness potential appeared some 350 milliseconds before the subject became aware of the intention to tap. This timing appeared to indicate that neural activity had preceded conscious awareness, at least where “spontaneous and quickly performed acts” were concerned. Understandably, Libet’s results caused a sensation and my colleagues still debate them today, but to many they are added evidence that humans do not possess free will.

Again, this is a rather deficient account of the matter. First, as we discuss in The Immortal Mind, Libet — who apparently did not agree with the pop science interpretation — did other research that supported free will.

In any event, the whole topic has become problematic due to conflicting interpretations of what Libet’s readiness potential even means. Neuroscientist Cristi L. S. Cooper summarizes the state of the field, noting “although the vast majority of neuroscientists believe in a deterministic view of free will, many of them do not believe that Libet’s experiment can be shown to do away with free will.”

Readers might want to take note of the fact that the article in American Scientist leans on Libet’s 1980s research, ignoring what happened thereafter, up to the present day…

We will find human consciousness in what we share with animals

Quick take: ● The seat of consciousness may not be the cerebral cortex but rather ancient brain areas that manage memories and concepts—areas humans share with other animals.

From the article:

Many assume consciousness results from the integrated activity of exceptionally large populations of neurons in humans, activity that continues during waking hours and is controlled by will, attention, and memory recall. In contrast, the reductionist views the great enlargement of the human cerebral hemispheres as arising from a major evolutionary event that resulted in a surplus of neurons … The reductionist view is built on compelling evidence from scattered areas of the brain; it remains for a more complete theory to assemble these pieces into a coherent picture of how the brain achieves the myriad aspects of consciousness.

See what is happening here? The reductionist has no more information than anyone else about the origin of human consciousness and isn’t making any better sense of the evidence we do have.* Instead, he is invoking promissory materialism, the idea that one day One Big Theory will explain it all. We have been hearing that for a century and a half now. Meanwhile, more and more evidence is building up that reductionist materialism offers an incorrect picture of the human mind.

But there is still the awkward problem…

The awkward problem is that these bedrock materialist assumptions are very difficult to challenge on the basis of evidence because of an underlying assumption: An explanation that does not reduce the mind to merely the functions of the brain “wouldn’t be science!”

Let’s ponder what that means for a moment: If the evidence supports free will or the independence of some aspect of the mind from the brain, then that evidence cannot be taken at face value. No matter how much evidence there is or how consistently it is confirmed, it must be set aside in favor of the endless pursuit of a material origin for our immaterial thoughts.

A question now looms: Is science about following the evidence or about confirming a materialist ideology about science? This is shaping up to be the big neuroscience question of our century.

• It doesn’t help that for most of human history no one wrote anything down. We are left with conjectures, shrewd or otherwise.

Here’s Michael Egnor’s response to McComas: Looking for consciousness in all the wrong places. Reductionism is nonsense, and “consciousness” is not nestled in clusters of neurons. The higher human ability to think abstractly — to reason and will freely — are not physical abilities and do not come from the brain.