How can the immaterial (Soul) affect the material (brain)

[greylorn]

Hey Greylorn,

I made a thread earlier called “Mental Illness and the Soul”. I’m not sure if you had a look but this post answered a lot of my questions on the issue, on a different thread too!

I missed your other thread, and am glad that these comments were helpful. I have to limit the number of threads to which I attend, so won’t go back and check that one out unless you request it. Or, you could post a relevant question here. The physics of brain-soul interactions applies to mental illness, but I’ve not studied that field much, except for personal experiments on multiple-personalities and the occasional neurosis.

I’d be curious to know the question I managed to answer! Would you please direct me to the relevant post page and number if you’re not up to detailing it? Thanks!

 

[Windfish]

Greylorn— The enemy of the enemies of your beliefs.

Works for me!

 

[Pieman333272]

I missed your other thread, and am glad that these comments were helpful. I have to limit the number of threads to which I attend, so won’t go back and check that one out unless you request it. Or, you could post a relevant question here. The physics of brain-soul interactions applies to mental illness, but I’ve not studied that field much, except for personal experiments on multiple-personalities and the occasional neurosis.

I’d be curious to know the question I managed to answer! Would you please direct me to the relevant post page and number if you’re not up to detailing it? Thanks!

Well, I basically questioned why, if the soul was a part of the mind (or the mind itself) so significant, it couldn’t override problems the brain developed - why you couldn’t heal yourself of Bipolar or Schizophrenia (brain disorders which affect the mind) and think clearly again because the soul is there, and not affected by the disease as the brain is.

 

[greylorn]

Well, I basically questioned why, if the soul was a part of the mind (or the mind itself) so significant, it couldn’t override problems the brain developed - why you couldn’t heal yourself of Bipolar or Schizophrenia (brain disorders which affect the mind) and think clearly again because the soul is there, and not affected by the disease as the brain is.

Glad I asked and that you replied. IMO the specific disorders you mentioned are indeed curable by the soul.

My (limited) understanding of them is that both are diseases of dissociation, and both involve the brain-soul interface. The trick to curing them is in recognizing their nature,

In the normal b-s relationship, only soul is conscious. Brain is its link to matter based sensory information, from which it derives consciousness. Rarely do individuals recognize the difference between brain and soul, because the pair are tightly integrated.

Sometimes the brain develops an epiphenomenal consciousness of its own (probably with the assistance of a confused soul) and this pseudo-consciousness fights the soul for control, often winning. I think that this is the condition known as bipolar disorder. Easily curable. I’ve taught one such individual to take charge and kill off the brain’s pseudo-personality.

From what I’ve read, schizos seem to be the same kind of problem except that the soul allows the development of multiple epiphenomenal personalities. I’ve never worked with such a person. My sense is that in them, soul could be too weak to even want to participate, which would render a real cure impossible. But I don’t know.

The trick in all such cases is getting soul to identify itself as the primary conscious component of the mind-brain menagerie, then interest it in becoming the only conscious component.

All such fixes require soul to be “home.” This is not always the case.

 

[4Horsemen]

How can the soul and brain work together? If the soul is neither energy nor matter, how can it work with matter?

The rational soul is to a great extent dependent on matter for the way in which it operates. So it includes the nutritive parts and sensory parts as well as the higher parts, which are intellect and will. The latter is why the rational soul is superior to that of plants and animals; its essence is above all other creatures on earth, and it is capable of grasping the essences of other creatures. Therefore, it has at its end the understanding of truth and the world, its discovery of morality and use of free will to make choices.

Reason informs our minds of universals that exist, like triangularity, numbers, colors and virtually all forms or essences that describe objects in real time. The concept of a universality, for example triangularity, is not material in the sense of some physical representation in the brain like in the firing of a neuron or something similar. No such physical representation could count as the universality of a triangle. It would just be a particular material thing among others. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense that thought is a purely material operation of the brain.

However, when the intellect decides a certain course of action and the will determines it, the body begins to move in a way that begins the action – firing of the neurons, stretching the muscles, etc . . . are material causes. Even though the intellect operates on its own without necessarily a bodily organ, it does depend on the senses from which it understands universals and essences.

 

[razredge]

What bothers me is that in the case of people who are mentally retarded, is their conscious mind exactly like a normal person? And they just appear slow because their brain is faulty and unable to translate their thoughts properly?

It would seem that is not the case, so people who are intellectually disabled unfortunately have far more limited cognitive abilities that normal people - which leads to the question will their souls also be similarily limited?

Is the soul the seat of consciousness?

 

[greylorn]

What bothers me is that in the case of people who are mentally retarded, is their conscious mind exactly like a normal person? And they just appear slow because their brain is faulty and unable to translate their thoughts properly?

It would seem that is not the case, so people who are intellectually disabled unfortunately have far more limited cognitive abilities that normal people - which leads to the question will their souls also be similarily limited?

Is the soul the seat of consciousness?

Soul is the only conscious component of the human mind. Descartes is worth a study.

Most people come at this question from the limited perspective that souls are created by God, serve one lifetime in a human body (whether 10 minutes or 100 years), and are then done with it, to be sent off to judgment or some kind of ethereal waiting room. The complexity of information and human experience surrounding the issue of intelligence is best answered from a broader perspective.

To begin with, assume that souls spend time in a variety of different bodies, over different times and cultures, so as to gain enough experience to be interesting. From this perspective, one might differentiate between young (and stupid) souls and old (wiser, more intelligent souls). One can also translate the concept of “limbo” into, another life in a different body.

Within that range of possibilities, include that of brains damaged by accident, mom’s drinking habit, or drugs. An old soul connected to such a brain, with the potential to be a rocket scientist, would be like a star athlete with a severed spine.

Generally, intellectually inferior people are just normal brain-body systems in the control of a very young soul who’s here to learn, just as you were 50 lifetimes earlier. (And you are not ready to graduate just yet.)

But the mind is a thing with two separate mechanisms. Look around universities and you will find many instances of people with Ph.D’s who are effectively imbeciles. Their brains have amassed lots of information, enough to pass multiple-choice exams and doctoral exams administered by their own kind. Armed with advanced degrees, they go through life dominated by an information laden brain, understanding nothing of consequence and teaching accordingly. Unlike individuals of obvious low intelligence, these folks are dangerous because their brains are programmed by society, not the soul.

 

[shaky]

What bothers me is that in the case of people who are mentally retarded, is their conscious mind exactly like a normal person? And they just appear slow because their brain is faulty and unable to translate their thoughts properly?

It would seem that is not the case, so people who are intellectually disabled unfortunately have far more limited cognitive abilities that normal people - which leads to the question will their souls also be similarily limited?

Is the soul the seat of consciousness?

This is how i understand things.

The Human Spirit is the seat of Consciousness=Higher SELF >This in turn is connected to you Soul which is the Lower SELF > This in turn is connected to your Flesh=Body.

Your Human Spirit can either be Connected to the Evil spirit of the Devil or connected to the Holy Spirit of God.

 

[Betterave]

Not at all. The human bodies that do not have rational activities have a physical, material impediment. Someone with severe retardation has a very definite physical cause for their problem; one that is, in principle, curable, if only we have the technology.

I don’t see how that squares with your original hylemorphism. In what you write here it sounds like the soul is a kind of entity which has its own status, independently of the body, since it is something which can be impeded in its operation by the body, and so it is hard to see how it could simply be the form of the body, as you claim.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

One theoretical possibility is that the synapses of the brain were designed to be especially susceptible to quantum randomness. The soul could then interact with the physical brain by manipulating quantum outcomes, that we understand as random. This way the laws of physics aren’t broken, but spirit can affect matter.

 

[4Horsemen]

This is how i understand things.

The Human Spirit is the seat of Consciousness=Higher SELF >This in turn is connected to you Soul which is the Lower SELF > This in turn is connected to your Flesh=Body.

Your Human Spirit can either be Connected to the Evil spirit of the Devil or connected to the Holy Spirit of God.

Soul and spirit are often used interchangeably. However, we can think of each person as a “soul” in which are encapsulated spirit and body. Part of that person (soul) is spiritual (spirit having intellect and will) and part is material (sensory, nutriment, growth, motion).

 

[4Horsemen]

What bothers me is that in the case of people who are mentally retarded, is their conscious mind exactly like a normal person? And they just appear slow because their brain is faulty and unable to translate their thoughts properly?

It would seem that is not the case, so people who are intellectually disabled unfortunately have far more limited cognitive abilities that normal people - which leads to the question will their souls also be similarily limited?

Is the soul the seat of consciousness?

We can think of the soul as the essence of a human being. “Seat of consciousness” would also be correct as the soul is where intellect and will come into play which belong to the spiritual aspect of a human being. St. Thomas Aquinas refers to the idea of “essence” as “Form.” Because soul and body are so inseparable, in the here and now, when the part of the body that is the brain is affected by neurological misfirings or other associated problems, the whole person is affected, including often intellect, memory and even sensory perception. If a person has dementia or Alzheimer’s, we can see that s/he begins to deteriorate due to the “dying” of cells in the brain. A neurophysicist may be able to explain the phenomenon.

I can only relate my thinking on this subject through the experience of caring for my elderly mother who had dementia. I tried to research the different stages and connect them with my mother’s decline including personality changes. Here’s a link exposing the cognitive difficulties:

simplesite.com/MotherMary/2926945

Nonetheless, I don’t think the will is affected and a person still knows right from wrong. At least that seemed to be true in my mother’s case. However, she never cognitively reached the final stages.

Actually, I think I have the OP turned around. I was talking about the material brain affecting a person (soul) rather than the other way around as the OP asked. In trying to respond properly to the OP, I would venture to say the immaterial soul affects the brain by using its cells in particular areas to reason, to remember, to imagine, to will, to move, to feel. It’s like a person (soul) is driving a car (body). Explaining how is the question!

 

[greylorn]

One theoretical possibility is that the synapses of the brain were designed to be especially susceptible to quantum randomness. The soul could then interact with the physical brain by manipulating quantum outcomes, that we understand as random. This way the laws of physics aren’t broken, but spirit can affect matter.

The problem with this scheme is that it requires the soul to behave digitally, and to operate at the level of billions of individual neurons. Too complex a job, and the soul has no training for it.

Moreover, it would require the soul to operate by laying in wait, anticipating quantum events which may or may not occur so as to interfere with them in advance. Yet the very nature of a quantum event is that it cannot be precisely anticipated.

Since the acts involving universe creation would seem to violate the laws of physics (according to every Catholic on CAF who has addressed the issue, anyway), what is the problem with violating a law of physics at the soul-brain interface level?

 

[shaky]

Soul and spirit are often used interchangeably. However, we can think of each person as a “soul” in which are encapsulated spirit and body. Part of that person (soul) is spiritual (spirit having intellect and will) and part is material (sensory, nutriment, growth, motion).

So each person is a soul with part of his soul connected to the material part of his body and brain which affects his movements and memory.
So if any part of the material brain or body is damaged this part of the soul loses memory and movement.

The other part of the soul is connected to your spirit>So when you die!! Can this part of the soul retain memory without a brain and movement without a body?

 

[shaky]

The problem with this scheme is that it requires the soul to behave digitally, and to operate at the level of billions of individual neurons. Too complex a job, and the soul has no training for it.

Moreover, it would require the soul to operate by laying in wait, anticipating quantum events which may or may not occur so as to interfere with them in advance. Yet the very nature of a quantum event is that it cannot be precisely anticipated.

Since the acts involving universe creation would seem to violate the laws of physics (according to every Catholic on CAF who has addressed the issue, anyway), what is the problem with violating a law of physics at the soul-brain interface level?

If you think about it when you look at ‘‘light’’ it seems immaterial. But you can certainly see it with your ‘‘eyes’’ by looking at it. Also you can certainly feel it with your ‘‘eyes’’

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Hi Greylorn,

The problem with this scheme is that it requires the soul to behave digitally, and to operate at the level of billions of individual neurons. Too complex a job, and the soul has no training for it.

Why do you say this is too complex for the soul? As an anlogy, our biological processes are also very complex, and one could pick any microscopic biological process and declare 'thats too complicated for the body, with no training for it". How is this different? Couldn’t the soul have complicated low-level behaviours that make the high-level behaviours work?

Moreover, it would require the soul to operate by laying in wait, anticipating quantum events which may or may not occur so as to interfere with them in advance. Yet the very nature of a quantum event is that it cannot be precisely anticipated.

In the physical world, quantum events are not predictable. But couldn’t a power that transcends the physical world predict and affect those quantum events?

Since the acts involving universe creation would seem to violate the laws of physics (according to every Catholic on CAF who has addressed the issue, anyway), what is the problem with violating a law of physics at the soul-brain interface level?

There just isn’t any evidence that there is anything in the human body that violates physics and chemistry. This theory is meant to make the theory of the soul compatible with a physical body that completely obeys the laws of physics.

 

[4Horsemen]

So each person is a soul with part of his soul connected to the material part of his body and brain which affects his movements and memory.
So if any part of the material brain or body is damaged this part of the soul loses memory and movement.

The other part of the soul is connected to your spirit>So when you die!! Can this part of the soul retain memory without a brain and movement without a body?

First of all, let me clarify something. The problem is definition of terminology. From reading a few of the saints’ writings, I’ve understood them to mean “the soul” as the whole person. Like saying, “He’s a happy soul!”

That’s what we essentially are: living, breathing (as in the breath of life – God breathed into Adam His spirit) rational creatures, or as some say “souls” meaning unity of soul and body. St. Thomas Aquinas in explaining the soul writes, “It could not be said that the part of the body having life which is called body is the soul. For by soul we mean that whereby the thing having life lives. . . The body which receives life is rather the subject or matter than what exists in a subject.”

So the body doesn’t exist in a soul but a soul animates the body giving it life. We can’t talk about parts of the soul "connected to the material part of his body and brain . . . " If any part of the brain or body is damaged, a human being is still the person God created having a soul in a damaged body. An oak tree may be stunted in its growth for whatever reason, but we still know it is an oak having the form of an oak even if it does not instantiate that form perfectly.

Think of Terri Schiavo, who was brain damaged but, nonetheless, still a rational creature with an impairment. She was a person who just needed food and water. Modern philosophers abandoned the idea of personal identity saying that there are no formal causes, so the soul is not the form (or essence) of the body.

I just want to say that the soul cannot be split up to operations of the brain. The soul is spiritual and is not harmed by defects of body or brain and cannot lose memory, will and intellect.

(Maybe some Thomists can help out here! And the Cartesians can argue otherwise! )

 

[greylorn]

Hi Greylorn,
Why do you say this is too complex for the soul? As an anlogy, our biological processes are also very complex, and one could pick any microscopic biological process and declare 'thats too complicated for the body, with no training for it". How is this different? Couldn’t the soul have complicated low-level behaviours that make the high-level behaviours work?

Neil,
Our biological cells are little machines which operate autonomously to a large degree. They come into existence with “what to do” built in, programmed within the DNA, and are full of microscopic substructures, tiny machines in their own right, which exceute the programming.

You seem to be proposing that the soul comes equipped with similar, but even more complex mechanisms. Now you can make up whatever you want to in support of your theory, but the history of science suggests that the more cumbersome an explanation becomes, the more worthless it becomes. Do you know of any reason why making a theological/metaphysical explanation more complex would produce better results?

Then, does your theory fit Catholic dogma? You are proposing that the soul is an entity which must, by definition, be physical. (My competing theories propose the same thing.) Yet the soul is supposed to be a spirit. Haven’t you blurred some distinctions?

In the physical world, quantum events are not predictable. But couldn’t a power that transcends the physical world predict and affect those quantum events?

Get back to my last question. You’ve defined the soul to be physical by virtue of proposing that it has an intimate two-way relationship with the brain. You don’t get to claim in the next breath that the soul transcends the physical world.

Actually that’s not true. You can claim whatever you want, if you are operating under the assumption that your hypothesis is so correct that it transcends mere common logic. Or that the word physical means whatever you need it to mean, to suit the immediate argument.

I don’t get the sense that this is really your style of thinking, but that you are seeking understanding. Can’t get it by redefining words.

There just isn’t any evidence that there is anything in the human body that violates physics and chemistry.

This is quite untrue. You might want to read some of Dean Radin’s books, or do some serious research on parapsychological phenomena. I’ve seen some material on OOB (Out of Body) experiences on a few documentary channels as well, but the literature has more detail. Uri Geller’s repeatable demonstrations of metal bending are not explicable in terms of normal physics.

While we’re at it, let’s note that “quantum mechanics” explains absolutely nothing. Its mathematical framework describes certain discontinuous behavior at the atomic level, but only in a probabilistic manner. Physics does not explain the more interesting question— Why are all energy transfers quantized?

This theory is meant to make the theory of the soul compatible with a physical body that completely obeys the laws of physics.

How do you feel about a theory of the nature of God which has him obeying, let’s say, the first law of thermodynamics? It would seem that unless you do that, the old “made in God’s image” clause puts the soul in a physics-free zone as well.

I greatly admire your efforts in attempting to connect the soul with the physical world. Few have the courage to do that. I disagree with your particular conclusions, but think that it is more important that you are trying to accomplish something which needs doing. Thank you for that.

 

[4Horsemen]

It is important to make a firm distinction between material and physical. Everything in the universe is, by definition, physical

 

[yppop]

greylorn;7843478:

In what way is God immaterial and at the same time physical?

4H,

Good question. I am waiting with bated breath for Greylorn’s answer. In the meantime I will give my answer: God is in no way “physical”. depending, of course, on how you define physical. I agree with Greylorn’s view of physical in that everthing material is physical, but not everything physical is material. To me "physical’ includes the four elements of objective reality: matter, energy, space, and time. So where does the spiritual come in? Greylorn seems to include God and hence includes the spritual in his definition of “physical”, which needs some explaining. However, having read and critqued Greylon’s thesis I have no doubt that he can come with an answer.

Greylorn, old buddy, can you enlighten us or are you still going to plead anonymity?

Yppop