Soul or brain

[catholic1seeks]

But doesn’t neuroscience show that there is a tight correlation between our thoughts and brain activity? It does indeed. So what? If you smudge the ink you’ve used to write out a sentence or muffle the sounds you make when you speak it, it may be difficult or impossible for the reader or listener to grasp its meaning. It does not follow that the meaning is reducible to the physical or chemical properties of the sentence. Similarly, the fact that brain damage will seriously impair a person’s capacity for thought does not entail that his thoughts are entirely explicable in terms of brain activity.

Aristotle and Aquinas, though they regarded the human intellect as immaterial, would not have been surprised in the least by the findings of modern neuroscience. Indeed, they would have been surprised had neuroscience not turned up the correlations it has. This will sound surprising if you take Descartes as your paradigm of a philosopher who affirms the immateriality of the human mind. But defending Descartes is exactly the reverse of what I have been doing. For it was Descartes who substituted the real, concrete human being—a seamless unity of the physical and the mental, the bodily and the immaterial—with a bizarre patchwork of abstractions of his own devising. Materialists have followed him ever since. Materialism is just a riff on Cartesianism, not its opposite…

biologos.org/blogs/archive/rediscovering-human-beings-part-1

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Thought of red apple is manifestation of brain tissue activities.

Thought involves brain activity but that doesn’t mean that brain activity controls thought as opposed to correlating with it. Given that the fact that ‘thought’ has distinct aspects from the brain, that it’s objectively unobservable or unobserved, and the lack of scientific explanation on this matter, I’d say that the brain may just simply be a medium for the mind to act in. This is no different than the relationship between software and hardware, although I think the mind is more than just a software. More important, this is no more different than the relationship between an immaterial god and the physical universe(s).

One cannot have a single thought if the tissue is damaged.

I question this given the many subjective experiences that people report when certain brain function should be impaired via medication (e.g. anesthesia) or cardiac arrest. This is not to say that near-death experiences and anesthesia awareness are real beyond the mind, but it still shows that experiences tend to persist even if it is imagined…dreams or hallucinations are still constitute as being mental subjective activity. These experiences used to be denied by scientists but now the issue is not about these experiences not happening at all.

We haven’t built a model which can explain consciousness but that doesn’t mean that we should have a doubt on emergence of mind from brain activities since there is a strong correlation between brain activity and conscious experience.

I actually don’t doubt the connection between the mind and brain, but rather once the mind emerges it is no longer under the complete control/dependence of the brain. The study that I referenced about ‘self-directed’ neuroplasticity supports my point. Brain activity is not merely just neurons firing, but rather that process is supposed to govern how we behave and think in order for your view to hold water. For example, lets take an OCD patient whose brain is wired to have OCD symptoms as commonly understood. But that person WANTS (in thought/feeling) to recover from OCD. If brain wiring determined thought/behavior then the person could not change their OCD using just their brain or mind. But my study shows that when patients try to act on their WANT by using thought/behavioral therapy, a change in brain FUNCTIon (not just mere brain activity) occurs and it reflects the WANT (non-OCD wiring) leading to less or no experience of OCD symptoms. Last I checked in mental health, biologically based disorders were treated with meds/surgery as opposed to using thoughts/behaviors. Seems the brain is not under complete control in the case that I cited.

However, my study shows that the wiring of the brain for OCD patients can be adapted using cognitive therapy to the point that the patient experiences little to no OCD symptoms and their brain function reflects that. It seems that how a person wants to think/behave, while also involving neurons firing, does not reflect the wiring

Something which is unobservable, mind, cannot have any observable effect.

Logically, that sounds sound, but empirical evidence says otherwise. We have something that is unobserved such as certain qualitative aspects of the mind, e.g. the thought of a red apple. Yet, as I brought up before, we have that same thought experience being able to change a physical system.

Why bother calling mind immaterial if there is an interaction between mind and body?

We can not explain it but experience suggests that the interaction occurs.

 

[STT]

Thought involves brain activity but that doesn’t mean that brain activity controls thought as opposed to correlating with it.

I agree that mind is not completely under control of brain. For what regards thought, I think we have two sort of thought, subconscious and conscious, where the former is processed by brain the latter is processed by mind.

Given that the fact that ‘thought’ has distinct aspects from the brain, that it’s objectively unobservable or unobserved, and the lack of scientific explanation on this matter, I’d say that the brain may just simply be a medium for the mind to act in. This is no different than the relationship between software and hardware, although I think the mind is more than just a software. More important, this is no more different than the relationship between an immaterial god and the physical universe(s).

That is not correct to my opinion. We have subconscious thought. We experience them when they pop up into our mind.

I question this given the many subjective experiences that people report when certain brain function should be impaired via medication (e.g. anesthesia) or cardiac arrest. This is not to say that near-death experiences and anesthesia awareness are real beyond the mind, but it still shows that experiences tend to persist even if it is imagined…dreams or hallucinations are still constitute as being mental subjective activity. These experiences used to be denied by scientists but now the issue is not about these experiences not happening at all.

I cannot comprehend that.

I actually don’t doubt the connection between the mind and brain, but rather once the mind emerges it is no longer under the complete control/dependence of the brain.

That I fully agree. To me we have two minds, subconscious and conscious, which both are the result of the brain activity with the difference that brain does not have full control on conscious mind once it is emerged.

The study that I referenced about ‘self-directed’ neuroplasticity supports my point. Brain activity is not merely just neurons firing, but rather that process is supposed to govern how we behave and think in order for your view to hold water. For example, lets take an OCD patient whose brain is wired to have OCD symptoms as commonly understood. But that person WANTS (in thought/feeling) to recover from OCD. If brain wiring determined thought/behavior then the person could not change their OCD using just their brain or mind. But my study shows that when patients try to act on their WANT by using thought/behavioral therapy, a change in brain FUNCTIon (not just mere brain activity) occurs and it reflects the WANT (non-OCD wiring) leading to less or no experience of OCD symptoms. Last I checked in mental health, biologically based disorders were treated with meds/surgery as opposed to using thoughts/behaviors. Seems the brain is not under complete control in the case that I cited.

However, my study shows that the wiring of the brain for OCD patients can be adapted using cognitive therapy to the point that the patient experiences little to no OCD symptoms and their brain function reflects that. It seems that how a person wants to think/behave, while also involving neurons firing, does not reflect the wiring.

That is interesting.

Logically, that sounds sound, but empirical evidence says otherwise. We have something that is unobserved such as certain qualitative aspects of the mind, e.g. the thought of a red apple. Yet, as I brought up before, we have that same thought experience being able to change a physical system.

I think we just need to accept the fact that mind owes its existence to brain activity but it is not fully under control of brain.

We can not explain it but experience suggests that the interaction occurs.

Yes, if it is material.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I cannot comprehend that.

My point in bringing up near-death experiences and anesthesia awareness is to point out the persistence of consciousness during times that the patient should be rendered unconscious. Scientists today usually don’t dismiss these experiences as being made up as they did in the past. Now the talk about these experiences tend to be about hallucinations of a dying brain vs. a real world experience. This is why I question your claim that brain damage causes all thought (subjective experience) to cease.

Yes, if it is material.

I don’t call it material unless there is evidence that subjective experiences are completely material. So far, we can only know about a person’s thoughts indirectly using EEGs, fMRI, computer programs to decode brain activity (still in development), or by simply asking the person. To me it is a mystery that’s similar to the interaction between an immaterial God and the physical universe.

 

[PluniaZ]

STT raised an interesting question about damage to certain brain locations always coinciding with damage to certain mental functions. How do we Catholics reconcile this if the seat of all our rational thought is not the brain, but the soul?

Also, I have heard that it is accepted that there are brain cells in the heart and the solar plexus that play an important role in our behavior and overall mental state? Does that have any bearing on this discussion?

 

[goout]

Hmmmm
Soul?
Or brain?

I’ll have the soul please. With onions. Mushrooms. Lightly tossed in melted butter.
But don’t burn it !!!

 

[John_Martin]

STT raised an interesting question about damage to certain brain locations always coinciding with damage to certain mental functions. How do we Catholics reconcile this if the seat of all our rational thought is not the brain, but the soul?

Also, I have heard that it is accepted that there are brain cells in the heart and the solar plexus that play an important role in our behavior and overall mental state? Does that have any bearing on this discussion?

As I wrote in a different thread, rational thought is not in the soul - that is a material process moved by the soul in the brain’s activities. Rational thought that we experience in the brain is for constructing a “phantasm” of an intelligible object, that can be recognized and known in a universal unmoving (perfect) form by the intellect, Knowing without thought process, understanding simply, rather than attempting to understand, is the act of the intellect. The thought processes of the temporal movements of the brain work to present this final image to be seen by the eyes of the intellect and “Aha, I understand”.
"Neither do we have a “stream of thought” in our intellect. It is simply the place of understanding or knowing, something similar to the material event of just staring at the one you love, knowing that person and being known, but not processing any thoughts.

Our intellect is like that, simply delighting in the understood thing, knowing also that we understand, so delighting in ourselves.

So, how can a husband and wife be “personal” when they just enjoy staring at each other without a stream of thought processing? It is very easy, and the object of the staring is a person as is the one seeing…

A stream of thought is the human way of consciously constructing (over time) a full image in the imagination of what the intellect knows in a single unmoving knowing as a whole object known. "

 

[PluniaZ]

As I wrote in a different thread, rational thought is not in the soul - that is a material process moved by the soul in the brain’s activities. Rational thought that we experience in the brain is for constructing a “phantasm” of an intelligible object, that can be recognized and known in a universal unmoving (perfect) form by the intellect, Knowing without thought process, understanding simply, rather than attempting to understand, is the act of the intellect. The thought processes of the temporal movements of the brain work to present this final image to be seen by the eyes of the intellect and “Aha, I understand”.
"Neither do we have a “stream of thought” in our intellect. It is simply the place of understanding or knowing, something similar to the material event of just staring at the one you love, knowing that person and being known, but not processing any thoughts.

Our intellect is like that, simply delighting in the understood thing, knowing also that we understand, so delighting in ourselves.

So, how can a husband and wife be “personal” when they just enjoy staring at each other without a stream of thought processing? It is very easy, and the object of the staring is a person as is the one seeing…

A stream of thought is the human way of consciously constructing (over time) a full image in the imagination of what the intellect knows in a single unmoving knowing as a whole object known. "

So the intellect belongs to the soul, and consists of an unmoving (immutable?) understanding of a phantasm, whereas all the work of creating the understanding of that phantasm is a material process that takes place in the brain?

What about losing consciousness when we sleep? What is our soul doing then?

 

[STT]

As I wrote in a different thread, rational thought is not in the soul - that is a material process moved by the soul in the brain’s activities. Rational thought that we experience in the brain is for constructing a “phantasm” of an intelligible object, that can be recognized and known in a universal unmoving (perfect) form by the intellect, Knowing without thought process, understanding simply, rather than attempting to understand, is the act of the intellect. The thought processes of the temporal movements of the brain work to present this final image to be seen by the eyes of the intellect and “Aha, I understand”.
"Neither do we have a “stream of thought” in our intellect. It is simply the place of understanding or knowing, something similar to the material event of just staring at the one you love, knowing that person and being known, but not processing any thoughts.

Our intellect is like that, simply delighting in the understood thing, knowing also that we understand, so delighting in ourselves.

So, how can a husband and wife be “personal” when they just enjoy staring at each other without a stream of thought processing? It is very easy, and the object of the staring is a person as is the one seeing…

A stream of thought is the human way of consciously constructing (over time) a full image in the imagination of what the intellect knows in a single unmoving knowing as a whole object known. "

Mental processes are the result of movement of matter by itself. Matter does not need soul to move. Your description of mind body interaction resembles Cartesian dualism which has problems, one of them, how a immaterial thing can cause a movement in material thing.

 

[Aloysium]

Mental processes are the result of movement of matter by itself. Matter does not need soul to move. Your description of mind body interaction resembles Cartesian dualism which has problems, one of them, how a immaterial thing can cause a movement in material thing.

If you knew some people with Alzheimer’s you would be able to appreciate the efforts we make to get our minds in order when we start losing our faculties. I guess you don’t see the person in his struggles. Yep, there’s more than cell membranes, the switching of potassium and sodium across them, dopamine, GABA, norepinephrine, serotonin, and a slew of other neurotransmitters, Krebs cycles, RNA and DNA, and everything else that makes up the physical body, that is involved in any action, perception and knowledge. The spiritual does not move the material; they are one in the person who thinks and moves. Stop and consider that you are one being.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

STT raised an interesting question about damage to certain brain locations always coinciding with damage to certain mental functions.

I get that the brain can affect mental processes but mental processes can also control brain FUNCTION. In saying ‘mental processes’, I’m not referring to mere electrochemical activity in the brain but rather using our subjective aspect of thought (mental imagery, qualitative aspects, etc) to cause the change in brain function. As scientists are beginning to noticed that the brain structure and function can change throughout a person’s lifetime, there’s no saying how much more we’ll find out that the cause is mental or CAN be an active mental process. So it seems that the direction of causation for mind-brain function points both ways.

Another point is that while brain function impairs some cognitive function but interestingly consciousness still exist. That’s what I gather from people who remember having awareness during anesthesia and cardiac arrest.

How do we Catholics reconcile this if the seat of all our rational thought is not the brain, but the soul?

I believe Catholics are attributing too much to the soul. The ‘soul’ is probably synonymous to just being awareness or consciousness. All other attributes beyond that, like rationality, are gained from our experience with our brain and the environment rather than being inherent in a soul.

 

[STT]

If you knew some people with Alzheimer’s you would be able to appreciate the efforts we make to get our minds in order when we start losing our faculties. I guess you don’t see the person in his struggles. Yep, there’s more than cell membranes, the switching of potassium and sodium across them, dopamine, GABA, norepinephrine, serotonin, and a slew of other neurotransmitters, Krebs cycles, RNA and DNA, and everything else that makes up the physical body, that is involved in any action, perception and knowledge. The spiritual does not move the material; they are one in the person who thinks and moves. Stop and consider that you are one being.

Unity is a property of consciousness granted by neurobiological activities.

 

[davidv]

Unity is a property of consciousness granted by neurobiological activities.

Base on what, exactly?

 

[STT]

Base on what, exactly?

What do you mean?

 

[Aloysium]

Unity is a property of consciousness granted by neurobiological activities.

I understand the individual words, but this makes no sense.

 

[STT]

I understand the individual words, but this makes no sense.

I meant, the neurobiological process which leads to conscious experience is unified. We hear, see, smell, etc. at the same time and these are manifested as a single experience rather than separate experiences.

 

[Aloysium]

I meant, the neurobiological process which leads to conscious experience is unified. We hear, see, smell, etc. at the same time and these are manifested as a single experience rather than separate experiences.

So, how do you think that this happens?
What possible physical process makes this so?
What is the organizing factor that moulds consciousness into its multitude of forms?
The way that this is phrased suggests that the person is merely passive. We direct attention and act. Who does all that?
And, what is the connection between the person and what is outside them? Our senses reach out into the world; our intellect perceives the order that underlies the surface appearance. Our feelings enjoin us to interact. We love and hate. Pretty awesome stuff.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Good questions Aloysium. You eloquently expressed the problem of interaction that applies not just to Christians but also to materialists, as well. How do the electrochemical processes in the brain give rise to consciousness or subjective experience?

I’d also like to know what ‘consciousness’ is because so far it seems to be nonphysical.

 

[Vonsalza]

This is really difficult to me to believe that there is no life after death. Soul is believed to be animator of body but with the recent scientific progress in area of neurobiology it becomes more and more clearer as time passes that the animator of body is only brain. We know that any damage can affect our beings even our identity. People use medicine to cure many psychiatric maladies. The scientists can read our decision in advance and influence them (wiki). So everything to me seems physical, the result of neurobiological process. What is the use of neurobiological process in our brain otherwise? What is the use of soul?

Hey STT, I apologize as I’m late to the discussion.

Here again, you make a fine presentation of the hyper-reductionist and deterministic rationality where nothing can reasonably exist outside of the empirically proofed - an approach to life championed by the famous Mr. Hitchens. I watched his jaded, disaffected view of the world blossom more and more toward full-blown philosophical nihilism with every additional publication. Poor guy. It’s hard to live “con brio” when all things “humanist” are probably void of objective meaning…

Anywho, you may want to revisit your sources. While the brain is absolutely the chief vehicle of neural control over our biological bodies, the concept of consciousness is still quite the mystery, as even Sam Harris (also of Four Horsemen fame) will enthusiastically attest. And even as we come to understand that more, the soul doesn’t have a biological component to which it corresponds. This is because it is a metaphyical idea. Like love.

This is quite a far cry from “scientists” being able to predict our actions before we do them. Neurologists can observe in real-time the electrical activity of the brain and can then deduce some response that is being concurrently manifested - although in a very generic way. They still lack the capability of predicting what you’ll pick at the vending machine today

I do find some bemusement from your approach though. When I saw the Winged Victory of Samothrace, I’m delighted to realize that I wasn’t moved by a masterpiece of ancient Greek art - it was only an collection of chisel marks and polishing on a chunk of old rock. Similarly, Picasso’s Starry Night is only a mish-mash of inert chemicals splattered on canvas. And my emotional reaction to them was as predictable as the seemingly stoic reactions of others beside me - as these things are obviously deterministic in a thus semi-predictable manner, right?

After all, “scientists” from a Wikipedia article said so (as the academic in me cringes at that citation). Do you at least know if the cited material came from “Fruit Salad Enthusiast Monthly” or from something maybe a bit more scientifically reputable as an authentic peer-reviewed publication (that usually cost money to access)? That’s not a jab at you - it’s an authentic hazard of using wikis (and why universities don’t accept them as citations).

That is not true. The concept of soul is disappearing as science progress more. What functioning in our life is left that we can assign it to soul?

This is, essentially, a “God of the Gaps” approach to religion, which is used by virtually no intelligent religious person that I personally know. When religious people learn that the matter in God’s universe is made of atoms (or, more recently, strings) the religious simply amend their view of “Matter Comes from God” to “Atoms/Strings Come from God”. This isn’t a “shrinking” of God’s role in the existence of “matter”. It’s merely updating our views to the latest scientific data - which is a rational thing to do. And the “Big Bang”? As far as I’m concerned, God’s method of creation. It is written nowhere that God just snapped his fingers and poof it was all here.

Essentially, my God doesn’t just rule over the gaps. He rules over the things that abut the gaps as well. Expanding this idea to the soul should be something you can do with no hand-holding from me…

As to the function of your soul? It’s you. Your soul is you. If you suffer catastrophic brain injury, your metaphysical soul is untouched because it’s not a physical thing. Just like your affection for the people you love is not a physical thing.

Sure, your “love” may be coincided with chemical releases in your noggin as the way to affect your love. But let me ask you this - which caused which? Did the feeling of love release the serotonin or did the release of serotonin cause you to feel love?

If you think you have a 100% provable answer to that, you’re smarter than any neurologist currently living (including Sam Harris) and you’re sitting on a publication that will be worth billions because you will have inadvertently solved a key riddle of consciousness. So please publish and let us examine

And keep in mind, God will be the God of that, too

 

[John_Martin]

So the intellect belongs to the soul, and consists of an unmoving (immutable?) understanding of a phantasm, whereas all the work of creating the understanding of that phantasm is a material process that takes place in the brain?

What about losing consciousness when we sleep? What is our soul doing then?

When you sleep, your body is too tired to work at examining or analyzing the apprehended images (of dreams, if dreaming). The images are there, and you are often aware of them, of a flow of events and images, but they are simply experienced as happening, yet not evaluated as they appear. No phantasms are available then to the “eyes” of the intellect because you are not reasoning. Your body’s weakness (needing rest) is stronger in ignoring phantasms that may be presented than your will is in moving the brain to notice them. Even though there is recognition of a flow of events and images, there is no rational analysis. And then there is no added knowing during sleep.

It is when we wake up that we may reason about the content of a dream, and sometimes it appears to our consciousness that “Ahh, I understand.”.