Brain is not Human

There is a line of materialist thought which argues that brain chemitsry, structure and function is what unlies human experience and behaviour. This is wrong.

If for example we wish to investigate "Love" we would collect a sample of people and study their brain chemistry and structure for patterns. We would also need to ask them whether they were in love or not in order to make sense of our findings.

Love then is not something that we can "find" in the brain. It has an emotional and linguistic meaning that must be calibrated with brain patterns.

Once this calibration is made we can then quite accurately tell people from their brain chemitsry whether they are in love.

However - and this is the point - humans can tell they are in love independent of knowledge of brain analysis and further this other knowledge is of no real use to them. If we had to go to a researcher to find out if we were in love I can assure you no-one would bother because a piece of paper with a test result on it which distinguishes us from other people is meaningless. It is the experience and implications of being in love which makes it human, not the knowledge. And it is that human quality which the researches will always have to return to in order to make sense of their test results.

Thus test results and knowledge of brain function while true are not meaningful by themselves. They lack any human qualities.