This is some of the glaring errors that i see in this article:
Your brain doesn’t determine your mind.
As demonstrated by the countless experiments that show how even subtle manipulations of brain clearly affects the so called mind.
Brain and mind are recreating each other with every act of perception.
No mechanism is mentioned for how the "mind" is "recreating" the brain and the brain is "recreating" the "mind" with every "perception". No proof is offered to this assertion and it leaves important parts, such as "mind" and "recreating", undefined.
His whole article is filled with this.
The brain-as-computer idea can be exploded by asking, has a computer ever been curious? Has a computer ever been in love? Has it ever had urges or given into temptation? These aspects of mind are innate in human beings and are not computational.
This idea can be eviscerated by pointing out how it fails to define "curious", "love", "urge" and "temptation". We are implicitly supposed to use vague and naive common sense definitions that are implied to exist in humans and again no proof is offered for the assertion that computers can't have "curiosity" and that the "mind" and people are able to have it.
So your genome – the sum total of your genetic inheritance - is not sufficient to code for the entire structure of your digestive tract.
Actually it is. Chopra is conflating the structure of the digestive tract with what is inside of it. It's the same as saying that the blueprints of a house can't describe the structure of said house because it does not account for the occupants that are now inside of it.
You are alive because of your connection to the outside world; indeed, there is no boundary between you and the outside world’s abundance of life.
This is both wrong and right and the same time. In a sense there is no boundary between me and "the outside world". However because of my convenience i will make such an arbitrary boundary. The boundary is not "real" in any physical sense but it is useful for me and most other people.
This realization changes the picture of genes, too. They code for your cells, tissues, and organs; moreover, genes code for the interactions between your cells and the neighboring bacteria, with biomolecules being passed back and forth. The biochemistry of digestion is a shared project between your body and bacteria, a basic fact acknowledged for decades, but by implication, without bacteria there can be no you.
Yet again a pointless tautology.
This observation can be extended in every direction.
Down the rabbit hole we go! Better stock up on drugs and hot-pockets before we leave!
Without trees breathing in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen, you couldn’t breathe – the forests are part of your lungs.
Yet again he is committing the fallacy of composition. There is a clear and logical difference between the plants in a forest and the product of their photosynthesis. If a consumer consumes something produced by a producer does not mean that the producer is a part of the consumer.
Your body is the world, and by extension, so is your brain, since you share with the world every molecule, chemical reaction, and electrical impulse that constitutes the brain.
This is your mind on post-modern philosophy.
What is your body now? It’s no longer just a human body.
In this statement we are apparently supposed to come to the sudden and incredible realization that human concepts and notions are not sensible and only superficial connected with reality when they are vaguely defined and poorly constructed.
Bravo mr Chopra. Now only he could keep himself from doing the same error himself.
One intelligence binds micro-organisms and “higher” life forms. There is no sharp dividing line between “smart” creatures and the “dumb” micro-organisms that evolved alongside them.
Yet again he fails to define what "intelligence" is and how it "binds" me together with micro-organisms.
