Philosophy: Has brain science made the human soul a relic of the past?

[freesoulhope]

Starting with out any assumptions; can we prove or at least find something suggestive of a soul? And if there is no soul, can one prove that there isn’t by the study of the brain?

It is my argument that, the information in are brains, no matter how much is stored in any one space, cannot become self aware in its self, just by having the nature of information, and being circulated round an organic structure. It is not logical that we our the sum of the information of are brains; I believe that it is apart of who we our, such as are personalities, since we need to store memory to develop such things; this is true. However, even though we rely upon an organic substance in order to function rationally in a material world of which moves from one moment to the next, You, as in the “viewer” of the information that is stored from experience, is not a product, an cannot be rationally thought of as a product of unthinking, unconscious, purposeless atoms.

Take for instance, people who loose there memories.

I see experiences as software that is automatically being stored in to the brain, and it is from this, that helps us build a sense of “rational” self, as in understanding; but we need a hard drive (the brain) on which to live and rationally understand, and communicate, within the physical world. So if you lose your memories, can it be said that you are no longer you, but a different person? It is true that we can develop different personalities by having different experience; but that doesn’t mean that “one’s self” is defined purely by our personalities and memories, otherwise you could never be one person at any one time; but instead many different people at any given experience depending on the reaction. So if you were to lose you memories, (asumming your personal self is reliant upon these memories and past informations), then this would mean that are intellectual self would die constantly every time we lost are memories, and we would be replaced by a “new person”. And lets assume that new person regains past memories stored in the brain? How could the “new person” regognise experiences it never had; yet we know of people who remember who they were, or rather what they had done in the past? How can this be possible if your just a brain? I dont see how the vewier could possibly be a product of material information.

So does a part of me die, when I forget something that happened to me?
No! I am free-soul-hope, not brain matter.

Plus can we truly think that a pattern, or structure, of atoms located in the brain can be held logically accountable for self awareness? Or is it more likely to be the case that these self arranged atoms are merely apart of what it is to be rationally aware within the physical world.

Are we more then the sum of are parts, or are we just a rational product of an irrational world?

I can’t wait for a response, start typing now!

 

[freesoulhope]

If somebody crammed you personal life, everything you would identify as yourself in to my mind; I would remember experiences, but i would not recognize them as my own. I know personally that I had a particular experience, not because I went through it, but because I “remember” and recognize it as my own, even if I had forgotten it for a long time. But as for you memories, I would not recognize them, because I am not the real experiencer of those memories, because they are not personal; they not me; it is the memories of a complete stranger; not to mention that, even if I had you memories and your personality, you could not be experiencing life through me, because it is just information; it is not you, as if to say, the “experiencer”.

If you were to put all my memories in a machine, no matter how advanced, I would not be conscious, and the machine would not recognize the memories as its own unless it was programmed to; and how does one recognize something? If I am just memories, how does a memory recognize another memory? Where is the conscious recognition in the memory? Unless Recognition is not just a matter of memory but is dependent on the experience of the viewer. My memories are simply stored information from “my” experiences as a personal individual viewer; the viewer has to be there first before any memory can be recognized as personal, and be reflected upon in a rational manner.

So if it is true that we are just carefully knitted together bits of memory, then we do not truly have a self, but rather have an illusion of self, since somebody could insert new experiences in to my brain, and I would think that I had experienced them, since experiences would be merely a matter of information, not a matter of recognition or of any personal experience.

The only reason I know I experienced something is because I have a memory of it, not because I was actually their; but why do I “recognize” that experience as if I was there? What is the recognizer if it is not the memory information that is stored in the brain? The remeberer is not the memory, since it selects the memory; so it can’t be the case that we are just memories or information gathered from the world around us. That is apart of it, but it can’t logically be all of it. If we are just brains, all we can be is information; but how do we regognise it as are own personal information, if we are the information it self?

I may have totally lost the plot here, but it’s worth the try, and its fun just to talk about it

 

[Ani_Ibi]

This thread is getting lost on the second page of the thread list. But I think it is a good topic. (Further to Heidegger’s ‘being’ and ‘a being.’ Bwa-ha-ha! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!) I don’t have time to reply right now. Can anyone carry the ball for a bit?

:bounce:

 

[john_doran]

Starting with out any assumptions; can we prove or at least find something suggestive of a soul? And if there is no soul, can one prove that there isn’t by the study of the brain?

there are a few arguments for the soul (or at least an immaterial component for rational beings):

A) even if you everything about the brain of another person and all of the neurophysiological processes responsible for behaviour - all of the neuronal firings and what they signify - there would still be something you didn’t know: what it was like for that person to have those experiences. that is, the subjective experience of any given sensation will always be irreducible to neurobiology. as an example, imagine that you are a scientist living 100 years from now when our neuroscience is complete, and that you have never heard the sound of a violin; if you were to identify and document the memory and experience of, say, a concert violinist, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like actually to hear a violin. which means that there’s something to consciousness that is not superevenient on physical brain-states.

B) there are other examples of this same phenomenon: we can conceive, for instance, of a possible world where the individuals in it have exactly the same brain-states as our own, but who have different conscious experiences, whether it’s because they experience the color red when they are looking at blue objects, or middle c when they heard b-flat; it is also possible to conceive of a world where there are people physically identical to us who actually have no conscious experience accompanying/causing their behaviour. which, again, entails that brain-states and consciousness are not identical.

C) we are acquainted with propositions - i.e. we know that propositions like “seventeen is a prime number”, and “no proposition can be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect”, are true. propositions are abstract objects - i.e. they have no spatiotemporal location. we could not be acquainted with propositions if our intellectual faculties were purely physical. therefore there is some immaterial principal of knowing in us.

D) we are morally responsible for our actions. we could not be morally responsible if we are determined to do what we do. but if human beings are purely physical beings, then they are subject to exhaustive physical laws, which would determine their behaviour. which means that we*** cannot*** be purely physical beings - there must be some immaterial component to us that allows us to avoid determination by physical laws, and make free choices that are morally (un)recitifiable.

of course, none of these arguments entail the robust christian concept of the soul, but they’re a starting point.

 

[whowantsumadebo]

There’s a book I’m reading called “the mind and the brain;” it makes a distinction of course. It focuses on people with OCD who can physically change the overactive parts of their brain using “mind-power!”
Although mind doesn’t neccessarily correlate to soul, I think this book is pertinent to our discussion.

 

[jack_hawkins]

“neurotheology” does not and will never IMO prove anything about the spiritual world - yes it may explain certain phenomenon like certain “revelations” that are false (I read a paper recently diagnosing Muhammad with temporal lobe epilepsy) and near-death experiences (which are due to cerebral hypoxia)
yes there is a religion centre in the brain, just as there is a visual centre - yet no one would say vision is a figment of the imagination
we experience the glory of the world through seeing it, and this employs a certain part of the brain
we also perceive certain spiritual matters, and there is a certain part of the brain for this - it doesn’t make it any less real

 

[cpayne]

A very good recent book on this subject from a Thomist is In Defense of the Soul by Ric Machuga. Yep—even if EVERY SINGLE THOUGHT we have is directly correlated with a brain event, that correlation in itself cannot prove causation. All the sensory (name removed by moderator)ut into our brains cannot add up to cognition, any more than it does in a camera. Cognition requires a mind.

 

[Riley259]

Starting with out any assumptions; can we prove or at least find something suggestive of a soul? And if there is no soul, can one prove that there isn’t by the study of the brain?

It is my argument that, the information in are brains, no matter how much is stored in any one space, cannot become self aware in its self, just by having the nature of information, and being circulated round an organic structure. It is not logical that we our the sum of the information of are brains; I believe that it is apart of who we our, such as are personalities, since we need to store memory to develop such things; this is true. However, even though we rely upon an organic substance in order to function rationally in a material world of which moves from one moment to the next, You, as in the “viewer” of the information that is stored from experience, is not a product, an cannot be rationally thought of as a product of unthinking, unconscious, purposeless atoms.

Take for instance, people who loose there memories.

I see experiences as software that is automatically being stored in to the brain, and it is from this, that helps us build a sense of “rational” self, as in understanding; but we need a hard drive (the brain) on which to live and rationally understand, and communicate, within the physical world. So if you lose your memories, can it be said that you are no longer you, but a different person? It is true that we can develop different personalities by having different experience; but that doesn’t mean that “one’s self” is defined purely by our personalities and memories, otherwise you could never be one person at any one time; but instead many different people at any given experience depending on the reaction. So if you were to lose you memories, (asumming your personal self is reliant upon these memories and past informations), then this would mean that are intellectual self would die constantly every time we lost are memories, and we would be replaced by a “new person”. And lets assume that new person regains past memories stored in the brain? How could the “new person” regognise experiences it never had; yet we know of people who remember who they were, or rather what they had done in the past? How can this be possible if your just a brain? I dont see how the vewier could possibly be a product of material information.

So does a part of me die, when I forget something that happened to me?
No! I am free-soul-hope, not brain matter.

Plus can we truly think that a pattern, or structure, of atoms located in the brain can be held logically accountable for self awareness? Or is it more likely to be the case that these self arranged atoms are merely apart of what it is to be rationally aware within the physical world.

Are we more then the sum of are parts, or are we just a rational product of an irrational world?

I can’t wait for a response, start typing now!

Read Anthony Rizzi’s The Science Before Science - he explains how consciousness isn’t just simply the result of material processes alone.

 

[cor]

there are a few arguments for the soul (or at least an immaterial component for rational beings):

A) even if you everything about the brain of another person and all of the neurophysiological processes responsible for behaviour - all of the neuronal firings and what they signify - there would still be something you didn’t know: what it was like for that person to have those experiences. that is, the subjective experience of any given sensation will always be irreducible to neurobiology. as an example, imagine that you are a scientist living 100 years from now when our neuroscience is complete, and that you have never heard the sound of a violin; if you were to identify and document the memory and experience of, say, a concert violinist, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like actually to hear a violin. which means that there’s something to consciousness that is not superevenient on physical brain-states.

Your very last statement doesn’t follow because A supervening on B doesn’t necessarily mean that A reduces to B. So the fact that A (conscious experiences) do not reduce to B does not entail the fact that A doesn’t supervene on B. Here’s a good link for those not familiar with the terminology:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience

Apparently a few philosophers argue that supervenience does entail reduction, but I would disagree with that view.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/#3.3

I’m not sure if I agree or disagree with the notion of mental states supervening on physical states. I don’t think that human beings in the wayfaring state during their earthly lives are able to exercise the faculties of their soul without the co-operation of their body, especially their brain – but if this belief does not entail supervenience.

B) there are other examples of this same phenomenon: we can conceive, for instance, of a possible world where the individuals in it have exactly the same brain-states as our own, but who have different conscious experiences,

I tentatively agree that it is possible. I don’t think it’s possible for the experiences to be radically different though.

whether it’s because they experience the color red when they are looking at blue objects, or middle c when they heard b-flat; it is also possible to conceive of a world where there are people physically identical to us who actually have no conscious experience accompanying/causing their behaviour. which, again, entails that brain-states and consciousness are not identical.

I’m not sure your examples about colors and notes are possible but I do think there can be subtle differences in conscious experience despite identical brain states. As for your example of “people” physically identical to us – I assume you mean zombies, biochemical organisms without souls. In that case they wouldn’t be people and one could stipulate that the supervenience is only between mental states and physical states of human persons (as opposed to zombies). Your example does prove though that mental states do not supervene on physical states of biochemical organisms (zombies inclusive)

C) we are acquainted with propositions - i.e. we know that propositions like “seventeen is a prime number”, and “no proposition can be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect”, are true. propositions are abstract objects - i.e. they have no spatiotemporal location. we could not be acquainted with propositions if our intellectual faculties were purely physical. therefore there is some immaterial principal of knowing in us.

But what about computer programs (purely material) that exhibit artificial intelligence with respect to propositions? (like programs that prove a mathematical proposition for example)

D) we are morally responsible for our actions. we could not be morally responsible if we are determined to do what we do. but if human beings are purely physical beings, then they are subject to exhaustive physical laws, which would determine their behaviour. which means that we*** cannot*** be purely physical beings - there must be some immaterial component to us that allows us to avoid determination by physical laws, and make free choices that are morally (un)recitifiable.

One could hold that the laws of physics are not deterministic. But moral responsibility still requires a subject of moral responsibility and it’s not clear how a personal subject can arise out of a physical state.

Thanks for your post.

 

[Ghosty]

One of the Dominican Brothers at my parish did his thesis on this question. You can read it here:

opwest.org/Archive/2006/FadokThesis.doc

Having spoken to him about it since, he says he’s modified his views a little bit (he’s now more convinced than when he wrote the paper that the Thomistic approach answers the problems), but he’s still studying the matter. I offer this not as an answer, but as an opportunity to read what a fellow traveller has researched and discovered.

Peace and God bless!

 

[john_doran]

Your very last statement doesn’t follow because A supervening on B doesn’t necessarily mean that A reduces to B. So the fact that A (conscious experiences) do not reduce to B does not entail the fact that A doesn’t supervene on B.

depends on what you mean by “supervene” (and, as i shall argue, “reduce”):. i’m talking about logical supervenience, where B-properties logically supervene on A-properties if there are no possible worlds identical with respect to their A-properties, but distinct with regard to their B-properties (i.e. it is logically impossible for A-properties to obtain without B-properties). in other words, facts about A-properties entail facts about B-properties.

so, if B-properties are logically entailed by A-properties, knowledge of the appropriate A-properties entails knowledge of the appropriate B-properties.

but knowledge of A-properties does not entail knowledge of (at least) the B-property of “subjective experience”. which means that B-properties of consciousness do not (all) supervene on the physical A-properties of neurobiology.

but that, of course, means that B-properties do not reduce to A-properties, either explanatorily or ontologically; if there is some logically possible world that has A-properties identical to those in the actual world, but B-properties that differ from those here, then that entails that the B-properties are independent of the A-properties, such that once god created all of the A-properties in a world, he would still have extra work to do to set the B-properties.

cor:

Here’s a good link for those not familiar with the terminology:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience

i don’t really like that article, as it doesn’t give a good general overview of supervenience simpliciter - it focuses on reductive explanation, and even then, only on a certain kind - the kind espoused by donald davidson (it was funny, actually: as i read the opening paragraphs, i thought to myself, “this sounds just like davidson”, and then lo - i reach the picture of the man himself).

what davidson says, in fact (and he says the same thing about the language of causation), is that the facts of consciousness do reduce to the facts of neurophysiology as a matter of ontology; what they don’t do is reduce to the language of neurophysiology. in other words, though davidson is a materialist when it comes to mind (all mental events are identical to some brain event), he thinks that there are no strict laws governing the relation between the two, and thus that there may be no way to relate propositions like “i really want to go to the movies tonight”, to some proposition(s) about brain-states.

that’s the kind of reduction davidson (and the wikipedia article) reject, not the kind i’m talking about.

cor:

I tentatively agree that it is possible. I don’t think it’s possible for the experiences to be radically different though.

why not?

cor:

Your example does prove though that mental states do not supervene on physical states of biochemical organisms (zombies inclusive)

that’s all i wanted it to prove.

cor:

But what about computer programs (purely material) that exhibit artificial intelligence with respect to propositions? (like programs that prove a mathematical proposition for example)

they are not acquainted with the propositions - they simply reproduce tokens of those propositions as they are programmed to do by beings who are acquainted with propositions.

cor:

One could hold that the laws of physics are not deterministic.

which is the standard quantum-virtual-particles response to my argument. and it’s terribly weak: trying to avoid my conclusion by making a simple and incredibly tenuous connection between the free choices of macroscopic biological organisms and the (allegedly) uncaused (and ridiculously brief) existence of sub-microscopic virtual particles, seems desperate at best and disingenuous at worst.

 

[jack_hawkins]

A very good recent book on this subject from a Thomist is In Defense of the Soul by Ric Machuga. Yep—even if EVERY SINGLE THOUGHT we have is directly correlated with a brain event, that correlation in itself cannot prove causation. All the sensory (name removed by moderator)ut into our brains cannot add up to cognition, any more than it does in a camera. Cognition requires a mind.

excellent point:thumbsup:

 

[Ani_Ibi]

john doran:

what davidson says, in fact (and he says the same thing about the language of causation), is that the facts of consciousness do reduce to the facts of neurophysiology as a matter of ontology; what they don’t do is reduce to the language of neurophysiology…

I am wary of my own instinct to reduce this question to a formula. So let me start with what I read last week: John Colapinto, “A Reporter at Large: The Interpretor”, April 2007: The New Yorker, Journeys. (link below)

The Piraha, Everett wrote, have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art, and no common terms of quantification. His most explosive claim was that Piraha displays no evidence of recursion, the linguistic operation of embedding one phrase inside another. Noam Chomsky has argued that recursion is the cornerstone of a “universal grammar” shared by all languages…

Everett became convinced that culture played a far greater role in linguistics than Chomsky’s theory accounted for…

Everett’s Cultural Anthropology article stresses that the Piraha do not think, or speak, in abstractions.

Here is the abstract.
Everett’s website: Some articles: Newton, Gehirn & Geist, Your Manchester, BBC, Toronto Globe and Mail, Science

Living without Numbers or Time
The small hunting and gathering tribe, with a population of only 310 to 350, has become the center of a raging debate between linguists, anthropologists and cognitive researchers…

Indeed, the debate over the people of the Maici River goes straight to the core of the riddle of how homo sapiens managed to develop vocal communication…

His findings have brought new life to a controversial theory by linguist Benjamin Whorf, who died in 1941. Under Whorf’s theory, people are only capable of constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words…

He explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: “Live here and now.” The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment…

Very reminiscent of Barfield, The Evolution of Consciousness

Listen gotta run. Catchup with yall later.

 

[cpayne]

My reading list keeps getting longer and longer. :hypno:

 

[I_A]

Have you ever heard the SaintCast? It’s a podcast about saints. The host is actually a neurosurgeon and in one episode actually dealt with the “Seat of the Soul.”

You can find it here, with a great flash images rendering Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

This isn’t a new debate.

web.mac.com/pcamarata/iWeb/SaintCast/Podcast/FF0D8028-7B6F-45BA-8DEE-2341A8CD483C.html
From the Summary:

Did Michelangelo leave a secret at the center of the great Sistine Chapel ceiling? Should we call it the “Buonarotti Code?” Join us as we explore what might be the great Renaissance artist’s conception of the ‘endowment of the soul’ and the intellect of man rather than “The Creation of Adam.”

 

[Ani_Ibi]

My reading list keeps getting longer and longer. :hypno:

Tell me about it. Maybe I can sleep less. Drink more coffee.

 

[cor]

depends on what you mean by “supervene” (and, as i shall argue, “reduce”):. i’m talking about logical supervenience, where B-properties logically supervene on A-properties if there are no possible worlds identical with respect to their A-properties, but distinct with regard to their B-properties (i.e. it is logically impossible for A-properties to obtain without B-properties). in other words, facts about A-properties entail facts about B-properties.

I would still say that even in that case supervenience doesn’t entail reduction in the ontological sense. Because the A-properties and B-properties despite their supervenience could still be ontologically, qualitatively distinct in nature from one another. You might expect that the two kinds of properties being qualitatively different would mean that there wouldn’t be the supervenience you specified, but the unexpected could be so.

It appears as though the wikipedia article used “reduce” in a different sense then the one I used above. I must confess I didn’t read the whole article despite my calling it “good” in the post.

why not?

It seems to me that mental states are “realized” in the brain and related organs in some way. So if the eye and the nerves and the neural system associated with color-perception is working without defect, the colors perceived should be about the same. I admit the possibility that the perception could be different due to a qualitative difference between the souls perceiving the color – but since they are perceiving the same object, it must be substantially the same perception, even if it is affected by their spiritual perspective.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I admit the possibility that the perception could be different due to a qualitative difference between the souls perceiving the color – but since they are perceiving the same object, it must be substantially the same perception, even if it is affected by their spiritual perspective.

Hhhhhmmmm. I want to follow you there, but you haven’t persuaded me. Let me see if I understand you. Let us say that there is one phenomenon called blue. And in fact there is. It is defined by a certain wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum.

But Bobby Jim sees aquamarine when he looks at blue. And Maggie Sue sees ultramarine when she looks at blue.

Some folks don’t see blue at all. Their language has no word for blue. Some folks don’t have to look at colour to see colour, they can hear sound. Joni Mitchell and Prince for example see colours when listening to music.

When I look at blue, I see any number of component pigments – I actually see them in my mind’s eye. Moreover, blue can evoke an emotional response in me. Mark Rothko used colour fields to express spiritual realities. Not images. Only colours.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know the extent of brain mapping. I know that we have found a religion centre and a music centre in our brains. But what does that mean? Is my soul in my brain?

Roman Polansky made a film (sorry I forgot the name) wherein the protagonist asks what part of him houses his soul. If he cuts off his leg, does he lose himself? What about his arm? His hair? His eyes? Am I my leg? My arm? My eyes?

Can I attach an electrode to my brain and trick myself into thinking I am Oprah Winfrey?

You are saying that, as long as everyone as a social unit agrees that something is blue, it is doesn’t matter what blue means to them as individuals. So meaning is socially determined.

What about folks who look at blue and don’t see anything? Again my story about the Euros coming in big ships and the First Nations not being able to see them because they had no experience of men in big ships.

When and how do I know I am a child of God made in His image? When and how is that self-evident?

 

[john_doran]

I would still say that even in that case supervenience doesn’t entail reduction in the ontological sense. Because the A-properties and B-properties despite their supervenience could still be ontologically, qualitatively distinct in nature from one another. You might expect that the two kinds of properties being qualitatively different would mean that there wouldn’t be the supervenience you specified, but the unexpected could be so.

i’m not sure how you’d motivate an argument like that: if A-facts entail B-facts, then once god actualizes the A-facts, the B-facts simply follow. i mean, it’s hard to understand how B-properties could be a different kind of being/entity if their existence is logically impossible without the existence of A-properties. it seems to me that B-properties would simply be redescriptions of A-properties in that case (which is kind of what davidson’s anomalous monism suggests).

i guess i just can’t think of a plausible example of such a thing.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Just putting in a reply so I can find this thread easily again. As you were.