That mental processes are correlated with neural processes in the brain, in no way affects the status of
consciousness as a unique and irreducible primary. It is a species of what philosophers term "the reductive fallacy"
to assert that mental processes are "nothing but" neural processes—that, for example, the perception of an object is
a collection of neural impulses, or that a thought is a certain pattern of brain activity. A perception and the neural
processes that mediate it are not identical, nor are a thought and the brain activity that may accompany it. Such an
equation is flagrantly anti-empirical and logically absurd.
As one philosopher observes:
[Reductive materialism] maintains that consciousness is a form of brain activity;—that it is either some fine and subtle kind of
matter, or (more commonly) some form of energy, either kinetic or potential.... To say that consciousness is a form of matter or
of motion is to use words without meaning.... Argument against any given position must regularly take the general form of the
reductio ad absurdum. He therefore, who chooses at the beginning a position which is as absurd as any that can be imagined is in
the happy situation of being armor proof against all argument. He can never be "reduced to the absurd" because he is already
there. If he cannot see that, though consciousness and motion may be related as intimately as you please, we mean different
things by the two words, that though consciousness may be caused by motion, it is not itself what we mean by motion any more
than it is green cheese—if he cannot see this there is no arguing with him.^2To quote another philosopher:
We speak of an idea as clear or confused, as apposite or inapposite, as witty or dull. Are such terms intelligible when applied to
those motions of electrons, atoms, molecules, or muscles, which for [the reductive materialist] are all there is to consciousness?
Can a motion be clear, or cogent, or witty? What exactly would a clear motion be like? What sort of thing is a germane or cogent
reflex? Or a witty muscular reaction? These adjectives are perfectly in order when applied to ideas; they become at once absurd
when applied to movements in muscle or nerve....
On the other side, movements have attributes which are unthinkable as applied to ideas. Movements have velocity; but what is the
average velocity of one's ideas on a protective tariff?