Does Christian faith require belief in brainless minds?

[Luminous]

Knowing about 'God' is like knowing if the universe is flat.
you canot know for sure that the universe is flat, but you can 'know' if it is curved.
::you canot know that GOD does not exist, but you can [think]IT does.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Perhaps objects such as rocks and plants don't have a consciousness like we do, but they are still "animate" forms of energy. They have a force which causes their molecules to "vibrate" with energy. Just like quartz has vibational energy. I think it is called piezoelectric energy. Perhaps that is all thought or consciousness is, some sort of "vibrational" energy. As humans, our brains are able to pick up that "vibrational" energy from different things and translate it into "thought". But I am no scientist, sorry.

I believe that the human "spirit" is just another form of this energy. The "animate" energy of life. Life and consciousness is mysterious, but I don't believe it is supernatural. To me the energy world which we don't see, the "spirit world" is perfectly natural and exists.

 

[Copernicus]

Runewolf, I sense that we really have a fundamental disagreement on the nature of souls and energy. Souls have always been associated with cognitive properties, and it really is puzzling to me how modern Christians deal with the problem that our cognitive functions seem deeply rooted in the physical structure of our brains. You are not a Christian, so our disagreement lies elsewhere, I think. I certainly share some of your sentiments about enjoying nature, although I tend to put a very different spin on the nature of nature.

 

[Copernicus]

But this is also central to my objection to assertions that we can know for sure that we don't have a soul. We do not yet have a solid grasp of the mind except to say that no brain = no mind...

RM, I do think that we know enough to draw the conclusion that earlier Christian beliefs about souls were as mistaken as their earlier views on the nature of cosmology and the divine origin of species. Most Christians even today believe that they will survive death with all of the memories and cognitive abilities intact, and they associate those mental functions with their immaterial soul. I am certainly not asserting that we know for sure that we don't have a soul, but I do question whether we can define "soul" in a way that meaningfully distinguishes it from "mind". I am not demanding that we must treat them the same, but I am asking why we should not.

Well, it was purely speculation, but no, I'm not saying the soul would double up on mind functions. I suggest something deeper, something more primal in force, something that reacts to input but which must have inputs shaped and processed and converted for it, recieving from the mind and returning commands to the mind but in base notions only. I think character is born at some hidden base level, not as a result of any higher arrangement of circutry. For example, when people say "I just know deep down that it's right", that to me may be tentatively classed as an attempt by the mind to interpret the strainings of something at a mysteriously deeper level, maybe a soul. But of-course I am speculating.

Fair enough. I have an alternative view of the foundation of human cognition. I see it rooted entirely in bodily experiences, which ultimately provide us a means to assimilate new experiences by means of analogy to old ones. This view has sometimes been referred to as the "embodied mind". (George Lakoff has been a longtime proponent of this view of the mind, which he has also called "experientialism" and has written a number of books on it, starting with Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.) If we were to talk about a "base level" of experience or "base notions", I would attribute them to our earliest direct bodily experiences. Fundamental to Lakoff's work is his long and deep interest in the nature of linguistic metaphor.

The general point I want to make here is that with current technology a soul-less body where the mind does everything would be hard to distinguish from soul-full body, in that a soul need not understand whether there is awakening, or sleeping, or old age, or young age, or memories: all such fripperies can be handled by the mind, the soul has more important things to support, such as the very essence of the sense of self, the good or bad nature of the self, the sheer willingness or determination that sometimes boils up from deep within us, and so on...

OK, you attempt to separate out some aspects of cognition and attribute them to the soul: sense of self, good or bad nature, willingness and determination... These are qualities that tend to be associated with personalities, and I wonder what multiple personality disorders have to tell us about this concept of soul. I still cannot imagine one single aspect of our personalities that is not governed by the physical activity in a brain. We certainly know that many of the cognitive functions that have always been associated with souls throughout history are really the same as those we now associate with physical activity in brains.

...I'm glad you mentioned alcohol, for it does seem to change our character by changing our brain, but I would like to point out that for some it changes their character not at all. I believe that if there is a soul then whatever character tendencies are buried deep within it will simply be borne out in available ways by the mind, depending on what chemical pathways are open to it's execution. I also think the potential of a soul would amount to being able to interface with something far more complex than our brain, if ever there will be such a thing, ie: the brain can limit a soul, but not vice-versa. But I ramble.....

But one would expect an impaired brain also to retain a lot of core functionality that is grounded purely in the physical. It is certainly true that alcohol has different effects on different people, but I think it still reasonable to ask what is left of the mind that cannot be changed or affected by physical changes to a brain. I see compelling evidence that minds are controlled by the condition of a brain, but no evidence that there is anything other than brain activity involved in our behavior and experiences.

Which leads me back to the OP. You ask if Christian faith requires belief in brainless minds. Ignoring the many varaitions and interpretaions of beliefs amongst Christians, I would argue that the answer can possibly be 'no'; but that rather the situation may be more one of accepting 'mindless' souls, for want of a better term...

That is the concept that I am trying to make sense of. How do we understand the distinction between mind and soul? It seems that we always come back to trying to categorize aspects of mental function--sense of identity, mood and demeanor, moral behavior, etc. Regarding the Christian faith, though, it has been traditional to assume that the soul had the same mental properties that exist in the spiritual deity--those that we now know to be so strongly correlated with brain function. To me, it seems that once again science has whittled away at traditional Christian assumptions and forced many adherents to reinvent the belief system to try to accomodate more recent discoveries. Just as we have a 'God of the Gaps' historical trend, we have this 'soul of the gap' offshoot. The soul becomes anything that we cannot quite pin down to discretely identifiable brain activity.

...I'm loath to quote scripture but indulge me: Jesus said "He who has an ear, let him hear" - figure of speech or not, the situation for Christians is currently based on receiving 'words' and then believing them. This clearly relies on physical input, and yet in Matt10:28 Jesus arguably claims the soul and body are seperate, so I think the Christian soul would have to be of the kind I have speculated...

I don't see that in this or any other scriptural reference that I have read. These passages are fully consistent with mind-body dualism, in which the mind is thought to be a spiritual essence that continues to function mentally after the body dies.

...It would not in and of itself understand the words, but it would comprehend the base 'concepts', as interpreted by the mind, and any resultant responsive urges coming the other way would be shaped and even partially judged by the mind at more practicable levels. That's the 'input' and 'ouput' sides in action, and I think the assertion from Galations that Gods soul(spirit) can produce effects in the physical realm is a good example of the 'output' side also, for those who believe such things.

Again, you think of the soul as having the ability to process information and control the brain-grounded mind. Those are functions that computers can at least simulate. What Galatians and other biblical references seem to point to is a rather straightforward mind-body dualism, not a mind-soul dualism. The latter, it seems to me, is a necessity for Christians if their belief system is to survive the findings of modern neurophysiology. So scripture finds new interpretations that were not perhaps intended by the original authors.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Runewolf, I sense that we really have a fundamental disagreement on the nature of souls and energy. Souls have always been associated with cognitive properties, and it really is puzzling to me how modern Christians deal with the problem that our cognitive functions seem deeply rooted in the physical structure of our brains. You are not a Christian, so our disagreement lies elsewhere, I think. I certainly share some of your sentiments about enjoying nature, although I tend to put a very different spin on the nature of nature.

I just don't see what disagreement you are talking about. Do you believe that everything that exists is some form of energy in one way or another? If not, then what is it? What magical fairies or Gods created this existence? I don't believe in anything that is not a form of energy in one way or another. When I use the term "spirit", I see it as just another term for "energy". Energy is "animate. Spirit is "animate". I don't perceive a difference. But that's just me.

What is consciousness? It is a form of perception or awareness. With our brains, we perceive things such as smell, taste, pain, pleasure, thought, sound, and various emotions. What are these things? What makes us "sense" anything. I see it as just a response to some form of stimuli. Something "stimulates" our senses and our brain generates a physical response. How is any energy any different? All energy has some form of response. A rock has a response to being dropped does it not? It breaks in half or chips and creates a noise when it hits the ground. Therefore, that rock responded or reacted to some form of stimulus. Through the change of energy it reacted and gave a response. I think human consciousness is a reflection of this, it is merely another form of response or reaction. What makes us "aware" of anything? The fact that something happened to us and we were able to respond to it. A rock doesn't have the capacity or "brain" to formulate a different response to something, it merely responds with a specific reaction. The human brain is like an energy calculator. With our senses we are able to pick up "stimuli" and our brain receives it and is capable of generating different responses based from that information. I don't think any form of energy is really all that different. It is all a matter of action versus reaction. We as humans, as energy-bodies, just have a more sophisticated way of dealing with energy. This is why I believe that spirits and ghosts can and do exist because I believe they are just disembodied forms of energy. A kind of "ectoplasm". The energy that was their emotions, thoughts and reactions or "consciousness" did not get destroyed, it just changed form. They can still respond and react like we do, just not with their physical bodies. But that is just my opinion. Feel free to criticize.

The reason why scientists can't pin-point the actual energy of a ghost is because it is not a constant energy that stays in one place. Ghosts can move around just like humans do, whereas the energy of something like radiation from the sun or gases in the atmosphere are constant and always there to analyze. It's hard to analyze something that is there one minute and gone the next and is not visible through ordinary means. Scientists may never be able to pin-point it.

 

[rocketman]

Fair enough. I have an alternative view of the foundation of human cognition. I see it rooted entirely in bodily experiences, which ultimately provide us a means to assimilate new experiences by means of analogy to old ones.

Yes, Lakoff's work is excellent. At least I know that you understand what I meant about base notions working their way through, even if we are looking at different driving sources. It's good to be discussing this with someone who knows his stuff.

I don't see that in this or any other scriptural reference that I have read.

I see. Have you read Matthew 22:37? "Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind'" I'm told 'heart' there means emotions, but there does seem to be a distinction made between soul and mind. When I add these words of Jesus to the others I quoted to you earlier, I see a scriptural picture forming that has the mind, soul and body concepts all reasonably distinct from one another. Recall that I myself am not taking a specific stand on scripture, but rather speculating that a 'no' response may be possible to the OP title. I would point out that there have been three major views since the early Christian days, those being: Immortal soul, Reconstruction and Shadow man. I myself, having moved through many Christian churches as a youngster, was often taught variations on the three, but more often than not that the mind is not the soul, but that the soul will 'know' the new mind in the new body in the next life, thus a cloned mind would be no different than a cloned eye, while the 'self' remains just as is. Your mileage will no doubt have varied.

Again, you think of the soul as having the ability to process information and control the brain-grounded mind.

No, not to process information, but to react in an instinctual way, pushing out impulses, which are then channelled and formed into practicable levels of usefullness by the mind. Whether it is a soul that sits behind the mind or Lakoff-like physical drivers, something is back there doing the base-level pushing. Is this wishful thinking or a soul of the gaps? Well, the mind itself is not considered to be physical and is certainly not fully understood, and because we are dealing with something that is not fully subject to empirical measurement, we have something of a mind of the gaps going on as well, for now anyhow. Looking at what we do know, I see that base identity does not rely on memory, I see that base understanding does not rely on specific knowledge, and so on.

The following is probably a poor analogy, but bear with me. Think of a mirror being struck by beams of light. The light can be any number of frequencies, and it will bounce off the mirror in certain ways. If there is smoke in the atmosphere the light hitting the mirror will be different, and the reflected light will be different, but the mirror has not been modified. If we perform a corpus-callosum on the light by separating out the sources into more than one, or if we inflict it with multiple personality disorders and begin pushing multiple light sources at the mirror, we will get some strange reflections. But the mirror has not been modified. The mirror of-course being the soul and the light the mind in that analogy. I'm suggesting therefore that the soul would be something very deep indeed.

For the sake of argument I have been speculating a certain kind of mind-free soul and a certain view of scripture. Whatever the case with regard to individual views about such things, the reality remains, as you correctly point out, that there is "no evidence that there is anything other than brain activity involved in our behavior and experiences." This is most true, but only from our current scientific point of view. I must once again offer the counter observation that if there were a soul involved there would be no distinguishing that either. One day when we have fully explained the apparant random firing of neurons, when we grasp the mechanism of how the mind can change the brain, and so on, then we may be able to account for all brain-mind activity by physical phenomena only.

 

[adelpit346]

there is tare and there is wheat
a tare has an unwilling spirit
that is heart
a wheat has a willing spirit
heart
now the wheat imitate the tare soulfully but their heart is willing
all have a soul
both tare and wheat
now the tare is for the testing
tribulation
and while they outwardly resemble the original human
that is THeLORd1JESUs
they are only people
and the wheat for the sin in their souls are only 1/2 human
but THeLORd1JESUs will save their souls for the sake of their willing hearts
now who is such a man/wheat
it is anyone that can utter JESUsISTHeLORd1
and that is why saul was changed into paul
iamnothing0

 

[Runewolf1973]

there is tare and there is wheat
a tare has an unwilling spirit
that is heart
a wheat has a willing spirit
heart
now the wheat imitate the tare soulfully but their heart is willing
all have a soul
both tare and wheat
now the tare is for the testing
tribulation
and while they outwardly resemble the original human
that is THeLORd1JESUs
they are only people
and the wheat for the sin in their souls are only 1/2 human
but THeLORd1JESUs will save their souls for the sake of their willing hearts
now who is such a man/wheat
it is anyone that can utter JESUsISTHeLORd1
and that is why saul was changed into paul
iamnothing0

What?

 

[challupa]

There is no apparent reason for sessile life forms such as plants to evolve self-awareness. I certainly don't think that it's worth trying to stimulate plant growth by playing music and talking to them, although I understand the urge we have to personify everything in our environment.

This might be something of interest. There have been experiments with plants to see how if at all they may be conscious of other plants for example. What they did was burn the leaf of one plant while monitoring the other plants in the room with sensitivity equipment. There was a reaction from every other plant in the room when the leaf of one was burned. They also tried this with the one plant being in a seperate room and the effects were the same, the other plants responded and showed signs of stress when the one plant was burned. So this indicates there is some sort of connection. What that is I don't know, but I found it quite interesting.

 

[Muffled]

The concept of intelligence outside of the human mind is present from the very beginning of time. God (who is a spirit) created the universe with intelligence. That intelligence was expressed (The Word) and the Word became flesh (physical entities).

Since we are crearted in God's image we are spirits also and have intelligence in the spirit as well. So that when a spirit is in a body, it has the intelligence of the mind and the intelligence of the spirit and the two are connected by a physical gateway.

 

[Troublemane]

Copernicus! (great name btw)...in my understanding, there has been much confusion between the terms 'mind' and MIND, soul and spirit, so much so that they are used interchangably. Heres what I believe:

Spirit is the ground of being. Existence itself. As such, spirit doesnt have an intellect or a personality, though it may be said to represent the underlying basis upon which all potential things may exist. You could replace the term spirit with "Potentiality", so when we speak of a person's spirit we are in effect talking about what they are as well as as what they could be.

The Soul is the spiritual shadow of the person, the image of them and the sum total of who they are. Its the bridge between the spirit and the mind. The soul is often summed up as the True Will of the person, what their main goal in life is. If the goal in life is not accomplished, it may be that this part will remain in "limbo", trying to accomplish it, or will "reincarnate" to see it done. In terms of heirarchy of complexity, I would put the soul as more complex than the spirit, because is closer to an idea of "personhood".

The Mind is divided into the lower mind (sensation), the middle mind (perception/volition) and the higher mind (conception). Perception and Volition are positively related, as it is impossible for a person to interact consciously with the world if he cannot correctly perceive his actions. The best analogy is like the airplane pilot: if his instruments are off, and he's trying to land in a dense fog, he's going to crash the plane. So while I agree that brain damage will affect a person's Mind (their ability to interact with the world) and also their Soul (because it is a nonlocal, living record of everything that person experiences in life), it cant be said that such an experience does anything at all to the spirit, as such a being has no form or intellect as such. It simply IS.

I suppose you could say it is Intellect itself, not an intellect.

Anyways, the spirits I have met have no problem getting along without bodies. I expect we shall all get to join them when our bodies fall off us as well. :angel2:

 

[Not Bob]

Maybe just some place to store it I guess. All energy changes form and takes new form. The physical bodies or brains we have now happened just as a result of another change or transformation of energy. How does the energy of what makes rain "remember" how to turn back into clouds and form more rain after it hits the ground? How do birds with such small brains know how to fly south for the winter? How does the energy of what makes diamonds "remember" how to make diamonds? I believe that all energy has some form of memory. Even our own energy has this conscious memory.

As another example of memory despite the brain, you can look to the research of Paul Pietsch. In his work Shuffle Brain (Harper's Magazine, vol. 244, No. 1464, May 1972), he says of his experiments on salamanders,

"In more than 700 operations, I rotated, reversed, added, subtracted, and scrambled brain parts. I shuffled. I reshuffled. I sliced, lengthened, deviated, shortened, apposed, transposed, juxtaposed, and flipped. I spliced front to back with lengths of spinal cord, of medulla, with other pieces of brain turned inside out. But nothing short of dispatching the brain to the slop bucket --nothing expunged feeding!"

 

[Jeremy Mason]

Here is my claim: if it is true that a human mind requires a physical brain in order to exist, then Christianity is probably a false religion. Minds must be able to survive death in order for Christian doctrine to make sense. Do you agree? If not, then what is meant by "everlasting life"?

For the sake of your analogy, God has the restore disc and upgrades for the new brain.

Now, a consequence of this theory is that all evidence that suggests a mind cannot exist independently of a physical brain is evidence against Christianity (and other religions that have a brainless mind requirement). Lack of evidence that minds can exist independently of physical brains is further lack of evidence that the Christian faith is a reasonable belief system.

Christianity, whether you believe it's true or not, bases it's faith on more than one aspect of the physical death process.

This is a little idea i thought was interesting...

YouTube - What the bleep do we know? Down the rabbit hole. part 5

Now apply that in a spiritual way.

 

[Muffled]

As another example of memory despite the brain, you can look to the research of Paul Pietsch. In his work Shuffle Brain (Harper's Magazine, vol. 244, No. 1464, May 1972), he says of his experiments on salamanders,

"In more than 700 operations, I rotated, reversed, added, subtracted, and scrambled brain parts. I shuffled. I reshuffled. I sliced, lengthened, deviated, shortened, apposed, transposed, juxtaposed, and flipped. I spliced front to back with lengths of spinal cord, of medulla, with other pieces of brain turned inside out. But nothing short of dispatching the brain to the slop bucket --nothing expunged feeding!"

This only indicates to me that there may be some memory in the neurons. I have seen fish twitch their tails after the head was severed and chickens also retain movement after their heads are severed. That probably describes the brainless people that live on psychotic responses and neural memory as running around with their heads cut off. As far as I know there is no way the spirit can work in the body except through the connection to the brain unless it has learned how to affect the material from the spiritual state and I suppose poltergeists would fall in that category.

 

[tomspug]

In my life, I have witnessed the changes in cognition--consciousness, awareness, moods, emotions, memory, reasoning ability, etc.--that can occur with brain damage. I saw its effects in my father after he came out of a coma after an automobile accident, and I saw it in my mother as she gradually succumbed to minor strokes and aging factors that damaged her brain. These experiences and others have led me to recognize the intimate relationship between the condition of a physical brain and mental cognition. Indeed, there is no mental function that seems unaffected by the physical condition of a brain.

Now the brain-body connection has religious implications. Virtually every religion on Earth assumes that the mind or spirit can exist independently of the physical body. Belief in immaterial ghosts, spirits, and demons, seems to flourish in just about every culture. In traditional Christian culture, the soul is somehow supposed to survive death and come to reside in heaven, hell, purgatory or some spiritual realm where non-physical beings can exist. God himself is thought not to have a physical brain (except perhaps among Mormons). So the idea of a mind that can reason, remember things, feel emotions, etc., is theoretically possible even without a brain. The ability of the mind to survive death seems fundamental to Christian doctrine, as it is to so many non-Christian doctrines.

Here is my claim: if it is true that a human mind requires a physical brain in order to exist, then Christianity is probably a false religion. Minds must be able to survive death in order for Christian doctrine to make sense. Do you agree? If not, then what is meant by "everlasting life"?

Now, a consequence of this theory is that all evidence that suggests a mind cannot exist independently of a physical brain is evidence against Christianity (and other religions that have a brainless mind requirement). Lack of evidence that minds can exist independently of physical brains is further lack of evidence that the Christian faith is a reasonable belief system.

To my knowledge, the only evidence that we have for minds existing indpendently of human brains is a report of either an out-of-body (OOB) experience or near-death-experience (NDE), but neither of these types of experience has been shown to be compelling evidence because they appear to be related to the cutoff of oxygen to a living brain that subsequently recovers.

As usual, the question revolves around whether or not there is more than simply the physical world.

 

[Copernicus]

Yes, Lakoff's work is excellent. At least I know that you understand what I meant about base notions working their way through, even if we are looking at different driving sources. It's good to be discussing this with someone who knows his stuff.

Thank you for the compliment, but I do take Lakoff's position to be that all "base notions" are derived from direct bodily experience. His thesis is about how cognition grows from scratch, so I'm not sure that it would make much sense to try to bring a "soul" into the mix. Our entire cognitive framework hangs on how the brain "grows" a mind through perception of, and analogy with, bodily experiences. He is a kind of agnostic in Huxley's original sense, in that he denies our ability to actually know reality except by analogy with bodily experience. Even math and logic are subjective constructs for him. They only make sense to an embodied mind.

I see. Have you read Matthew 22:37? "Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind'" I'm told 'heart' there means emotions, but there does seem to be a distinction made between soul and mind. When I add these words of Jesus to the others I quoted to you earlier, I see a scriptural picture forming that has the mind, soul and body concepts all reasonably distinct from one another...

Perhaps so, but I don't see that as a very strong case for your position. It could just be a common turn of phrase, such as "kith and kin" or "lord and master". (These doublets were created during the Middle English period to help readers blend native English with Norman French usage.) Not being an expert in Greek usage as it existed in those days, it is hard to say what the author of the passage intended to convey. And it is certainly the case that most Christians throughout history have believed that their memories and personalities would be preserved after death. That is the promise that most believers still see in the Christian concept of "everlasting life"--a real mind surviving death. However much Christian philosophers and theologians may split hairs over the subject, the broad masses of Christians tend to see no real distinction between a mind and a soul.

Recall that I myself am not taking a specific stand on scripture, but rather speculating that a 'no' response may be possible to the OP title. I would point out that there have been three major views since the early Christian days, those being: Immortal soul, Reconstruction and Shadow man. I myself, having moved through many Christian churches as a youngster, was often taught variations on the three, but more often than not that the mind is not the soul, but that the soul will 'know' the new mind in the new body in the next life, thus a cloned mind would be no different than a cloned eye, while the 'self' remains just as is. Your mileage will no doubt have varied.

That still begs the question of just what gets preserved of a person's life when the "new body" is fitted with its "soul". Are memories intact? False memories corrected? Mental illnesses cured? Personality disorders removed? Does my mother get to remember that she was a devout Episcopalian her whole life and not a Methodist in her childhood? These ideas about minds, bodies, and souls were formulated when people were much more ignorant about the connections between brain activity and mind, although there was still plenty of evidence there for those who cared to open their eyes. The connection between head injuries and aberrant behavior has always been there, and rudimentary brain surgery reportedly existed even in ancient Egypt.

Recall that the OP was not so concerned with whether souls COULD exist as spiritual entities. My question has always been more of what is likely, rather than merely possible. We can speculate all we like about how Santa Claus COULD exist, but that still isn't going to get us free toys on Christmas morning. In the end, the evidence isn't there for Santa, and it still doesn't appear to be there for immaterial souls that can exist independently of a functioning brain.

Again, you think of the soul as having the ability to process information and control the brain-grounded mind.

No, not to process information, but to react in an instinctual way, pushing out impulses, which are then channelled and formed into practicable levels of usefullness by the mind. Whether it is a soul that sits behind the mind or Lakoff-like physical drivers, something is back there doing the base-level pushing...

I'll say it again: you think of the soul as having the ability to process information and control the brain-grounded mind. An entity cannot "know" anything at all without processing information. That is part of the meaning of "know". And what do words like "impulse" and "push" mean if no element of control is there? The brain has two basic functions: it integrates information from sensors and controls actuators to help the body achieve its goals. The idea that some spiritual entity needs to perform similar functions seems superfluous to me.

...Is this wishful thinking or a soul of the gaps? Well, the mind itself is not considered to be physical and is certainly not fully understood, and because we are dealing with something that is not fully subject to empirical measurement, we have something of a mind of the gaps going on as well, for now anyhow. Looking at what we do know, I see that base identity does not rely on memory, I see that base understanding does not rely on specific knowledge, and so on.

Minds are immaterial, but it seems clear that most, if not all, immaterial mental functions are generated by material brains. If you split a brain by severing the corpus callosum, you get two different minds operating in the same body. Is one soul now reacting to information processed by two minds and sending "impulses" to two minds? When the person with the split brain dies, does he get resurrected into a body with a split brain in order to restore both minds? The idea seems mind-boggling to me.

The following is probably a poor analogy, but bear with me. Think of a mirror being struck by beams of light. The light can be any number of frequencies, and it will bounce off the mirror in certain ways. If there is smoke in the atmosphere the light hitting the mirror will be different, and the reflected light will be different, but the mirror has not been modified. If we perform a corpus-callosum on the light by separating out the sources into more than one, or if we inflict it with multiple personality disorders and begin pushing multiple light sources at the mirror, we will get some strange reflections. But the mirror has not been modified. The mirror of-course being the soul and the light the mind in that analogy. I'm suggesting therefore that the soul would be something very deep indeed.

Yes, one can construct such a metaphor to express the idea, but we are talking about individual personalities, not reflected light. And, again, what gets preserved when the soul is resurrected in a new body? Which personality? All of them? Only one?

For the sake of argument I have been speculating a certain kind of mind-free soul and a certain view of scripture. Whatever the case with regard to individual views about such things, the reality remains, as you correctly point out, that there is "no evidence that there is anything other than brain activity involved in our behavior and experiences." This is most true, but only from our current scientific point of view. I must once again offer the counter observation that if there were a soul involved there would be no distinguishing that either. One day when we have fully explained the apparant random firing of neurons, when we grasp the mechanism of how the mind can change the brain, and so on, then we may be able to account for all brain-mind activity by physical phenomena only.

I have no doubt that we will come to understand minds better by studying neurophysiology, but my purpose here has not been to assert that souls cannot possibly exist. It is that it is not necessary to posit their existence. We lose nothing by failing to posit them other than perhaps the hope that we can escape mortality. That is an age-old dream that predates Abraham's religion. The survival instinct tends almost always to dominate all others.

 

[DallasApple]

Yes...Christians have no brain....I certaintly dont...

Love

Dallas

 

[rocketman]

We seem to be discussing several overlapping lines of thought Copernicus, and I am unsure which you want to dispense with, given that we both keep addressing them . But I will attempt to focus in on your most repeated issues, rather than address every individual point.

I'll say it again: you think of the soul as having the ability to process information and control the brain-grounded mind.

What I think is that reactions and processing are two different things, control a third. I fail to see that the essence of oneself needs to bother with the endless minutaie that the brain deals with. The deeper self cannot read nor write and so on, it's domain is base concepts. If it does do any 'processing' it is on a whole different level, but that's not the word I would choose to describe it. Whether it's a soul or a deeper part of the mind is too hard to show at the moment; it will be interesting when future work probes into this issue. I can see that I am probably not going to be able to articulate the kind of distinction between mind and soul that would seem satisfactory to a thorough reductionist such as yourself Copernicus, except perhaps to refer back to Eccles work and hope that he makes more sense than I do.

And, again, what gets preserved when the soul is resurrected in a new body? Which personality? All of them? Only one?

Even in a corpus callosum job there is still only one base 'person', even if they can't relate it straight away. The different personalities are more like exotic versions of what you and I might encounter as 'moods'. There is still an underlying sense of self beneath the turbulence. It may be that it is a result of the fact that while the two hemispheres can be separated, the base brain cannot. I doubt that there can ever truly be two minds at work in one brain, even where there are many personalities. We often complain that we 'weren't ourselves' due to certain influences, and in my experience people with severe disorders do that between bouts of turbulence too.

I think the questions about what personality, or for that matter what age, what mood, even what favourite colour and so on survive death, are good questions but ultimately are all of minor and secondary nature to the bigger picture. I think that if in the next life you had to show up here again on earth in a human body, say, as Jesus did a second time, then I'm sure the appropriate soundly functioning brain/mind would be made available, but if you were to go somewhere else in some other form, a different processor (mind) would be required. Perhaps there is a higher place where the soul is free of reliance on such accessories altogether.

I have no doubt that we will come to understand minds better by studying neurophysiology, but my purpose here has not been to assert that souls cannot possibly exist. It is that it is not necessary to posit their existence.

Well of-course it is not necessary for you Copernicus . Stepping outside of practical reductionism for a moment, if just even one miracle or one spiritual event in the history of mankind is true, then the picture changes. So we have two groups of people: Those who believe they are likely right, and those who believe they are likely right . So what is most likely? For now the answer is up to the individual. How does it all work if it is true? I don't know, but I can imagine many ways it might. For example, if I wanted to adopt the view that you say most Christians believe, then I could say that perhaps the soul does know what the mind knows, perhaps the soul itself is what is experiencing this very moment: as supplied by the brain and senses - how can we know? I don't see a logical argument about souls, minds and brains that makes Christianity any less probable, yet.

 

[Copernicus]

I'll say it again: you think of the soul as having the ability to process information and control the brain-grounded mind.

What I think is that reactions and processing are two different things, control a third. I fail to see that the essence of oneself needs to bother with the endless minutaie that the brain deals with. The deeper self cannot read nor write and so on, it's domain is base concepts. If it does do any 'processing' it is on a whole different level, but that's not the word I would choose to describe it. Whether it's a soul or a deeper part of the mind is too hard to show at the moment; it will be interesting when future work probes into this issue. I can see that I am probably not going to be able to articulate the kind of distinction between mind and soul that would seem satisfactory to a thorough reductionist such as yourself Copernicus, except perhaps to refer back to Eccles work and hope that he makes more sense than I do.

You keep tossing around the word 'base concept' without really explaining what you mean by it. Nevertheless, I do not think I am jumping to an unwarranted assumption that the soul, as you describe it, is capable of processing information and causing effects in the material world on the basis of information that it receives. If souls are to be associated with right and wrong decisions, then they surely must have some ability to process information.

I am not the strict reductionist that you accuse me of being, by the way. I have already pointed out my view that the mind is an emergent property of a chaotic system of brain activity. The concept of emergence is not strictly speaking reductionism. You have been speculating about what it might mean to make a distinction between mind and soul, and I have been arguing that the distinction doesn't really make much sense. I cannot prove the nonexistence of souls, but I can ask what it buys us to assume their existence. How might one go about showing that it is reasonable to believe in their existence? So far, I'm not getting clear answers from you on this, and I sense that you haven't got any to give. We are still trying to figure out just what role the soul plays in human behavior.

Even in a corpus callosum job there is still only one base 'person', even if they can't relate it straight away. The different personalities are more like exotic versions of what you and I might encounter as 'moods'...

Moods are mental conditions that can be directly affected by serotonin re-uptake inhibitors such as Prozac. They have a physical basis. A personality is a collection of mental functions that manifest themselves as predictable behavior. What the corpus callosum operation proves is that two independent cognitive beings with different experiences can by created by cutting off communication between the two halves of the brain. That is just one piece of evidence that the mind is somehow grounded in physical reality.

...There is still an underlying sense of self beneath the turbulence. It may be that it is a result of the fact that while the two hemispheres can be separated, the base brain cannot. I doubt that there can ever truly be two minds at work in one brain, even where there are many personalities. We often complain that we 'weren't ourselves' due to certain influences, and in my experience people with severe disorders do that between bouts of turbulence too.

Right, but I'm not of the opinion that cognition is simple. What we think of as our 'selves' really changes a great deal over time. What makes me the same person as what I was two or three decades ago is really just a set of shared memories and habits. Beyond that, I think that the concept of 'self' is largely an illusion generated by the brain. When we die, the complex set of associations that collectively defines each of us simply ceases to exist. That is a terrible thing to contemplate, but it really is no different from what happens to some degree when we lose consciousness in sleep every night.

I think the questions about what personality, or for that matter what age, what mood, even what favourite colour and so on survive death, are good questions but ultimately are all of minor and secondary nature to the bigger picture. I think that if in the next life you had to show up here again on earth in a human body, say, as Jesus did a second time, then I'm sure the appropriate soundly functioning brain/mind would be made available, but if you were to go somewhere else in some other form, a different processor (mind) would be required. Perhaps there is a higher place where the soul is free of reliance on such accessories altogether.

Perhaps, but we have no good reason to think so. I think that you are too dismissive of the minor things that really make each of us our unique selves. But this business of reincarnation is a tricky one, because we are so many people at different stages of our lives. I certainly have different attitudes now than I did as a teenager, and I might well become a very different person before I die, as my mother did. It is all well and good to imagine that we are reincarnated as a sort of 'optimal' self, but what is really optimal in any of us? Can such a thing even be calculated? What about babies that die? Would they be reborn as babies who then grow up in the afterlife to become full-fledged adults? There are so many questions that one might ask oneself about just what it means to say we are reincarnated in an afterlife, and I sense that most Christians are very reluctant to ask themselves those questions lest the extra scrutiny damage the credibility of the entire belief system. Too much is at stake to examine it too closely.

I have no doubt that we will come to understand minds better by studying neurophysiology, but my purpose here has not been to assert that souls cannot possibly exist. It is that it is not necessary to posit their existence.

Well of-course it is not necessary for you Copernicus . Stepping outside of practical reductionism for a moment, if just even one miracle or one spiritual event in the history of mankind is true, then the picture changes...

That would be true for Christians as well, wouldn't it? Especially if the "true" miracle or spiritual event were in support of an alternative religious doctrine.

...So we have two groups of people: Those who believe they are likely right, and those who believe they are likely right . So what is most likely? For now the answer is up to the individual. How does it all work if it is true? I don't know, but I can imagine many ways it might. For example, if I wanted to adopt the view that you say most Christians believe, then I could say that perhaps the soul does know what the mind knows, perhaps the soul itself is what is experiencing this very moment: as supplied by the brain and senses - how can we know? I don't see a logical argument about souls, minds and brains that makes Christianity any less probable, yet.

I still believe that we ought to ask ourselves if our beliefs are really reasonable, given all the alternative possibilities. All experiential knowledge is provisional. We cannot prove any truth beyond a shadow of a doubt, yet we come to have very strong convictions about the structure of reality in our daily lives. We do not acquire that knowledge randomly, but through a basic assumption of materialism. Normally, we do not believe in unnecessary hypotheses. We are simply content to say that we do not know things that are of little consequence to our lives. I do not know what color shirt you are wearing, or even if you are wearing a shirt, but it is of little consequence to me.

Gods and souls are different. Whether or not we believe in them is very consequential. In the US, anybody who openly claims not to believe in God can forget about winning public office in an election. People with not much money spend enormous amounts of their income on evangelical preachers and their movements. Religious belief drives all sorts of public and social policies, not to mention its factor in fomenting acts of charity and terrorism. So I think that we ought to have good positive evidence for belief in gods and/or souls. Religious belief is not harmless. It is serious business.

 

[Jeremy Mason]

I have no doubt that we will come to understand minds better by studying neurophysiology, but my purpose here has not been to assert that souls cannot possibly exist. It is that it is not necessary to posit their existence. We lose nothing by failing to posit them other than perhaps the hope that we can escape mortality.

Hebrews 6:16-20 (NIV)

16Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. 17Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. 19We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

That is an age-old dream that predates Abraham's religion. The survival instinct tends almost always to dominate all others

Survival instincts are Jesus' strong suit.