O Verdadeiro Criador de Tudo (2020)

Miguel Nicolelis (1961) é um médico formado pela universidade de São Paulo e professor de neurobiologia na Universidade de Duke, EUA. A sua carreira tem sido recheada de prémios, reconhecimentos e louvores. Tornou-se popular com o projeto "Andar de Novo”, criado para a abertura do Mundial de Futebol 2014 (Brasil), que por meio de um exosqueleto, interfaces cerebrais e inteligência artificial permitiu a um paraplégico andar, chutar e marcar um golo. O projeto fez correr muita tinta, dentro e fora da academia, mas o principal resultado está neste seu livro "The True Creator Of Everything. How The Human Brain Shaped The Universe As We Know It" (2020), sob a forma de uma grande teoria sobre a realidade e o cérebro. 

Nicolelis abre o livro com a discussão do “Projeto Andar de Novo” focando-se sobre algo que parece um detalhe, mas que se torna central na discussão subsequente. No momento em que Juliano Pinto chuta a bola e marca golo, ele não grita “golo”, mas grita “I felt the ball! I felt the ball!”. O projeto pretendia criar um sistema de apoio artificial à locomoção da pessoa, que por ser tetraplégica deixou de controlar as suas pernas porque simplesmente não as sentia. Com este projeto, e com a tentativa de por meio de interfaces cerebrais colocar o cérebro a mexer as pernas por via de motores, o cérebro do paciente parece ter ido além, tendo conseguido realocar as sensações das pernas por via do sistema providenciado (ver imagem abaixo). 

Os exemplos disto são muitos, Nicolelis numa entrevista explica como o podemos fazer nós mesmos:

“coloque uma venda em uma pessoa normal como eu e você, e deixe passar  10, 15 minutos. Depois pegue um aparelho de ressonância magnética e peça a pessoa vendada para fazer uma tarefa tátil com as pontas dos seus dedos. [Com esse experimento] vamos detetar respostas táteis no seu córtex visual já. Isso sugere que existe uma conectividade entre o sistema sinestésico e o sistema visual (...) A gente encontra esse crosstalk de funções cerebrais por todo o lugar do córtex.”

O autor parte depois para uma discussão sobre a criação e seleção natural do nosso cérebro que teve impactos não apenas na morfologia mas no seu funcionamento em concreto, a partir do que vai iniciar a apresentação da sua proposta com o novo conceito de “informação godeliana”. Este tipo de informação, segundo Nicolelis, aproxima-se da informação digital, segundo descrita por Claude Shannon, com a diferença de ser analógica, mas mais do que isso, dada a sua imbricação natural com os tecidos, não formalizável, seguindo Godel. Mas é exatamente por possuirmos esse sistema de informação, que podemos reutilizar o cérebro de inúmeras formas diferentes. Ou seja, não existem área específicas para executarem funções no cérebro, elas podem ser realocadas, migradas, transformadas, em função da informação que recebem, abrindo espaço à “Teoria do Cérebro Relativístico”.

Com esta ideia estabelecida Nicolelis parte para discussão do cérebro enquanto criador da realidade que conhecemos. Imbuído do sistema de “informação godeliana” que permite construir a realidade nas nossas mentes de uma forma determinada, dá conta da impossibilidade desta informação ser replicada informaticamente e do modo como diferiria de uma qualquer espécie que tivesse surgido noutro qualquer planeta. O relevante desta proposta é que sustenta ideias discutidas pela filosofia desde a Alegoria da Caverna de Platão, para o que Nicolelis se suporta em Godel e contrapõe a ideia de que a matemática ou física sejam capazes de explicar algo além daquilo que o nosso cérebro possa compreender. 

Para o efeito transcreve um diálogo delicioso entre Albert Einstein e o Nobel da literatura, Rabindranath Tagore, ocorrido em Berlim a 14 julho 1930, que passo a transcrever:

Einstein: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: (1) The World as a unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as a reality independent of the human factor. 

Tagore: When our universe is in harmony with Man. The eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as beauty. 

Einstein: This is the purely human conception of the universe. 

Tagore: There can be no other conception. This world is a human world—the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it Truth, the stan- dard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences. 

Einstein: This is a realization of the human entity. 

Tagore: Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize it through our emotions and activities. We realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our limitations. Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of Truths. Religion realizes these Truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of Truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to Truth, and we know this Truth as good through our own harmony with it. 

Einstein: Truth, then, or Beauty is not independent of Man?

Tagore: No.

Einstein: If there would be no human beings any more, the Apollo of 

Belvedere would no longer be beautiful.

Tagore: No.

Einstein: I agree with regard to this conception of beauty, but not with regard to Truth.

Tagore: Why not? Truth is realized through man.

Einstein: I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion.

Tagore: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the  Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, through our illuminated consciousness—how, otherwise, can we know Truth? 

Einstein: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean Theorem in geometry states it is something that is approximately true, independently of the existence of man. Anyway, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a Truth relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first engenders a negation of the existence of the latter. 

Tagore: Truth, which is one with the Universal Being must essentially be human, otherwise whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth—at the least the Truth which is described as scientific and which can only be reached through the process of logic, in other words, by an organ of thoughts [the brain] which is human. According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which can- not be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by word but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance—that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called maya or illusion. 

Einstein: So according to your conception, which may be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of the individual, but of humanity as a whole. 

Tagore: The species also belongs to a unity, to humanity. Therefore the entire human mind realizes Truth; the Indian or the European mind meet in a common realization. 

Einstein: The word species is used in German for all human beings, as a matter of fact, even the apes and the frogs would belong to it. 

Tagore: In science we go through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus reach that com- prehension of truth which is the mind of the Universal Man. 

Einstein: The problem begins whether Truth is independent of our consciousness. 

Tagore: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man. 

Einstein: Even in our everyday life we feel compelled to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet the table remains where it is. 

Tagore: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess. 

Einstein: If nobody would be in the house the table would exist all the same—but this is already illegitimate from your point of view—because we cannot explain what it means that the table is there, independent of us. Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack—no primate beings even. We attribute to truth a super- human objectivity; it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind—though we cannot say what it means. 

Tagore: Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centers of electric force, also belongs to the human mind. In the apprehension of Truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried out in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing. It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the sequence of things happens not in space but only time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such a conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings. 

Einstein: Then I am more religious than you are! 

Tagore: My religion is the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being. 

** In a second meeting, on August 19, 1930, the extraordinary dialogue continued. **

Tagore: I was discussing... today the new mathematical discoveries, which tell us that in the realm of the infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character. 

Einstein: The facts that make science tend towards this view do not say goodbye to causality. 

Tagore: Maybe not; but it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, that some other force builds up with them an organized universe. 

Einstein: One tries to understand how the order is on the higher plane. The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence; but in the minute elements this order is not perceptible. 

Tagore: This duality is in the depths of existence—the contradiction of free impulse and directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly scheme of things. 

Einstein: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds look one [way] from a distance, but if you see them near, they show themselves in disorderly drops of water. 

Tagore: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and de- sires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization? 

Einstein: Even the elements are not without statistical order: ele- ments of radium will always maintain their specific order now and ever onwards, just as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the elements. 

Tagore: Otherwise the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is the constant harmony of chance and determination, which makes it eternally new and living. 

Einstein: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however that we cannot look through it. 

["Science and the Indian tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore", (2007), Gosling, David]

O mais paradoxal de toda a apresentação do livro, e que dá conta também de alguns dos problemas do trabalho do autor e nomeadamente do relacionamento com outros cientistas, surge nas previsões relativamente catastróficas que faz para o futuro do humano, nomeadamente a partir da ligeireza com que discorre sobre os efeitos dos media, dos computadores e nomeadamente das redes sociais. 

Deste modo, quando fechei o livro fiquei a pensar: quanto do que li é tão novo como o autor nos quer dizer? Se gostei de ler, e ter contacto com as décadas de experimentos neurocientíficos de Nicolelis, também me questionei sobre quanto destas propostas não tinham já sido amplamente discutidas em profundidade pela filosofia, depois psicologia e agora pelas neurociências? O que liga Platão, Descartes e Godel se não exatamente esta ideia de que o cérebro é o criador de tudo? 

Aquilo que se pode dizer é que Nicolelis acrescenta à teorização os modos efetivos de funcionamento do nosso cérebro que suportam essa ideia. Mas que o cérebro modelo e filtra a realidade, e nos faz ver de uma forma particular, acho difícil ter hoje dúvidas disso. A questão que se coloca é antes perceber, de que é então feita a realidade externa a nós, além da simulação mental que criamos? Claro que aqui batemos contra a parede da impossibilidade de sair fora do nosso espartilho cerebral, e talvez por isso mesmo tenhamos de concluir que somos apenas aquilo que o nosso cérebro nos permite que sejamos.