Soul or brain

[STT]

So, how do you think that this happens?

This is an emergent phenomena and it is not the only one in nature, superconductivity for example.

What possible physical process makes this so?

What we call subjective experience or consciousness is manifestation of electromagnetic field which is resulted from neurobiological activities.

What is the organizing factor that moulds consciousness into its multitude of forms?

There are different area of brain which each is specialized in one mode of consciousness. These area are intertwined and this allows us to have a unique experience.

The way that this is phrased suggests that the person is merely passive. We direct attention and act. Who does all that?

That is true. Neurons are intertwined and this allows the feedback. This means that consciousness which is the result of neurobiological activity has the same property. In the simple world it is not passive and can provide feed back.

And, what is the connection between the person and what is outside them?

There is no self or person. What we experience as Iness is manifestation of neurobiological activity which provides us an framework to perform our activities.

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.

Yes, I agree with you but I believe that all these can be explained in term of neurobiological activities. We simply know that we lose these properties once the related neurobiological activity is disrupted.

 

[STT]

…It’s hard to live “con brio” when all things “humanist” are probably void of objective meaning…

Lets please put meaning aside because I don’t think that anybody knows what meaning is. It is of topic.

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.

To me consciousness is a mere emergent phenomena. You can look at this for examples. You can find a good discussion about emergentism in here.

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

That is only your opinion and I think you need to support your opinion with what exists in scientific finding. You can also provide an argument for that so we can discuss it.

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?

Yes.

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).

I checked the wiki page and all the result which is discussed in this thread are peer-reviewed publications.

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.

I don’t believe on Big Bang (nothing to something). There is an argument for that: Universe has a beginning (this is the result of the fact that we cannot reach from eternal past to now with finite waiting). There is no point before beginning (this is the result of the fact that time is a part of universe). Therefore there is no Big Bang.

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…

That is a claim. You need to provide an argument or evidence for that.

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.

The fact that our functioning is subject to brain indicates that these functioning is the result of brain activities. The correlation between them is just too strong to ignore it. What does your soul offer when there is malfunction? Nothing. So why bother?

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?

It is both way. Chemical cause what we experience and our consciousness can affect chemical.

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

There are bunch of publication on this area, emergent phenomena and consciousness. I provide one. You can google and find and study the rest.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

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.

Good points. The sentiment you described tends to arise when we forget about how much we don’t know and how much of what we claim to know can be wrong and be replaced with new observations. We should’ve learned this from history where people thought they had it all figured out just to find out from later scientific observations that some of their paradigms being were wrong or incomplete. Such materialists tend to never fail at trying to make science into a worldview rather than letting it be the “tool” that it was meant to be.

With that said, where is the scientifically replicated peer-reviewed empirical studies that show that the brain produces/controls consciousness? It seems that all I ever get from materialist who are so ardent on the issue are theoretical explanations which amounts to PHILOSOPHY (not science) unless there is empirical evidence for any asserted claims/conclusions. I’ve actually provided scientific studies/points to support my case for the mind is not being totally controlled by the brain.

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
…
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).

There are several critiques about the studies that STT referenced in post #1, especially Libet’s studies. One of the best comprehensive responses I’ve found are from Dr. W.R. Klemm, professor of neuroscience. You can read here. For anyone interested, I started off with the section titled, Twelve Interpretive Issues (esp. points 6, 7, and 8) , where the Dr. Klemm goes over some of the fallacies and assumptions of experiments like Libet’s and others then I went on to read the rest of the article. As I mentioned before, there are different types of choices and not all of them are consciously willed, e.g. choices made out of habit. These researchers may very well be measuring habitual choices, especially when it involves simple repetitive tasks.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . 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.

Keep an open heart and mind. Accept nothing less than reality itself. The depths of the mystery are fathomless, utterly, totally amazing!

 

[Vonsalza]

Good points. The sentiment you described tends to arise when we forget about how much we don’t know and how much of what we claim to know can be wrong and be replaced with new observations… …These researchers may very well be measuring habitual choices, especially when it involves simple repetitive tasks.

I was going to respond and you did it for me. You also did a better job than I would have.

Thank you and bravo.:clapping:

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Aloy and Vonsalva,
Thank you!

What we call subjective experience or consciousness is manifestation of electromagnetic field which is resulted from neurobiological activities.

I’m not sure if you’re saying that conscious experience is a result of brain activity or that it is the same as brain activity itself. If the former, then any definition of consciousness must account for this effect (e.g. mental imagery) as opposed to just defining it in terms of its cause. And when we take the effect into account, we’re left with unobserved and/or irreducible phenomena, e.g. subjective experience, awareness, mental imagery, etc.

If you’re saying that conscious experience is brain activity or that the two are identical, then every aspect of ‘thought’ must also apply to brain activity, but yet this is not the case logically speaking. Thoughts can involve perception of color, gender, feelings, etc, and we would NOT use these attributes describe an “electromagnetic field”. Therefore, brain activity and ‘thought’ are not same, by definition.

The fact that our functioning is subject to brain indicates that these functioning is the result of brain activities. The correlation between them is just too strong to ignore it. What does your soul offer when there is malfunction? Nothing. So why bother?

Yes, it is true that every action we do shows brain activity, but that alone does not prove the direction of causation. In order for the materialist position to be true, the direction of causation must involve the brain being in control, as in controlling thought and behavior. However, a big hole in the materialist worldview is that subjective experience has not been reduced to physical properties since we have only been able to measure it indirectly, and also the fact that our thoughts can also control brain functions.

 

[STT]

I’m not sure if you’re saying that conscious experience is a result of brain activity or that it is the same as brain activity itself.

Consciousness is an emergent phenomena therefore it is the result of brain activity.

If the former, then any definition of consciousness must account for this effect (e.g. mental imagery) as opposed to just defining it in terms of its cause. And when we take the effect into account, we’re left with unobserved and/or irreducible phenomena, e.g. subjective experience, awareness, mental imagery, etc.

Consciousness as you rightly suggest is an irreducible phenomena. In simple world, it is not the result of mere one neuron activity instead is the result of bunch of neurons which fire in a coherent manner. Needless to say that neurons simply fire electrons which this cause an current and finally the current results in a electromagnetic field.

If you’re saying that conscious experience is brain activity or that the two are identical, then every aspect of ‘thought’ must also apply to brain activity, but yet this is not the case logically speaking. Thoughts can involve perception of color, gender, feelings, etc, and we would NOT use these attributes describe an “electromagnetic field”. Therefore, brain activity and ‘thought’ are not same, by definition.

Yes, the brain activity and thought are not similar yet we cannot have any thought without any brain activity. You need a something which creates consciousness. There are system of thoughts which claim that consciousness is primary other claim that matter is primary. To me we cannot prove which one is correct one but all the related phenomena can be explained well in both systems.

Yes, it is true that every action we do shows brain activity, but that alone does not prove the direction of causation. In order for the materialist position to be true, the direction of causation must involve the brain being in control, as in controlling thought and behavior.

It is conscious mind, which is the result of brain activity, which control conscious activities. That is a kind of weird thing but conscious mind is able to self-cause an act depending on the current content of conscious mind. The content however is mostly delivered by subconscious mind but we are able to create new content consciously.

However, a big hole in the materialist worldview is that subjective experience has not been reduced to physical properties since we have only been able to measure it indirectly, and also the fact that our thoughts can also control brain functions.

Conscious mind is the result of brain activity yet it can affect brain itself.

 

[John_Martin]

Consciousness is an emergent phenomena therefore it is the result of brain activity.
.

No, it is not. Brain activity, all of it, is moved intentionally toward and end, just as a hammer and saw are wielded by a carpenter toward an end. Hammer and saw are not self moved, nor aware of the house being built, yet move with a participated intelligence.
.
All physical movement, whether neural or positional, is understood and caused by an agent habitually capable of such.
The body is “learned” by the soul during growth (the habits ordering potential), and the soul knows intimately how to move individual bodily potentials to specific actualities via these habits, whether that be walking or consciousness.

As I understand it, emergent phenomena are in reference to individual objects somehow forming a type of structure together without being a whole, but remaining individual in the structure.

But the body, with the soul, is an individual substance, including neural potential for a variety of actualities, that are causally ‘connected’ to the whole, and never function independently of the life of the whole in its causal (and vocational) relatedness.

 

[Autumn_Smoke]

Reading a few articles that say thought and memory may be stored at the cellular level-not 100% in the brain. There are stories of people receiving various organ transplants who suddenly take on characteristics of the donor.

Like a man who received a woman’s heart who now gets urges to do the ironing.

And a woman who received a heart and lung transplant who said she was getting cravings for beer, when she never enjoyed it before.

Here’s some other interesting stories.
listverse.com/2016/05/14/10-organ-recipients-who-took-on-the-traits-of-their-donors/

 

[Aloysium]

Re: body memory.

I cannot take the article seriously. I would hate to discount it entirely, but without any reference at all as to where the stories originate, it can only remain in my category of interesting and weird things that people say.

From other readings, what I understand to be bodily memory has to do with conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, where the chaos of a moment that brings one in touch with death, is cut off from other elements of one’s consciousness. One may subsequently suffer psychosomatic symptoms related to the trauma, which remains unconscious. In psychotherapy, meditation or perhaps during a course of physiotherapy, a focus on the symptom may open up the experience which can then be explored and put together as an extremely painful, but one of the multitude that belong to the past. This is not what the article is talking about.

The cases do pique the imagination and cause one wonder how things actually are. I imagine most of us would find ourselves trying to explain the phenomena based on what we know. So, it may be helpful as an exercise as to how we construct our understanding of the world and the assumptions that we make.

TLDNR: Kul story brah.