Quote from Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso Rinpoche

Some people, who think of themselves as scientifically minded, believe that the mind is the brain or a function of the brain and that for this reason there is no essential mind/matter dichotomy. According to their view, everything can be explained in terms of the material world. They choose to overlook the qualities of the mind that have no relation to matter, such as subjective experience, thoughts and emotions. Although they would not take seriously the story of Pinocchio, where a simple piece of matter, a stick, inexplicably develops a mind experiencing hopes and fears, pleasures and pain, and so on, they would not find it strange if sub-atomic particles, atoms or molecules started to produce thoughts and feelings. However, not only is there no scientific evidence whatever that such a phenomenon is possible, but it represents a semantic confusion of categories. Linguistically there is a category `mind' and what is not mind i.e. matter. Matter, or the material world is what exists `out there' beyond the senses. If it does not exist independent of the senses, how can it be categorized as material? How can a material world that exists outside the senses also be the senses that sense and experience it? Such a theory does not answer anything. It does not even begin to address itself to the question of what conscious experience is, let alone to the question of what might or might not exist external to it. -from "Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness"