The human mind is not limited by the brain and can even exist outside of it

[tlimon]

I have two simple contributions to this thread.

When I studied endocrinology briefly during my undergrad, it became obvious that organs, some organs more than others, secrete and respond to hormones. So, we all know that old adage, “You’re thinking with your other ‘mind.’” Well, yeah, you are thinking with another mind.

On an experiential note, I have experienced my mind meld with an animal. I was an atheist then so I just discounted the experience. Long story short, I was driving a truck along a country road at night. I spotted a raccoon in my head lights. I swerved to to avoid hitting the animal and I succeeded. However, during that spit second my unknowing, I actually felt, not my fear, but the raccoon’s fear. It was primal, I was not scared for my life but I felt the fear of the animal scared for its own life. An extreme altruistic biological response? Maybe. Looking back, though, I think it was more than that.

 

[James1215]

Interesting! There’s another thing your contribution has made me remember - experiments in which participants are made to perceive that their consciousness resides in the body of another. This ‘mistaken’ identification is so strong as to cause them to flinch when the other body (image, reflection or something) is about to be hit.

Do you think that the best explanation of your examples is actually that the mind resides outside the brain? With hormones, I can accept the extension of the thinking parts of the body to outside just the head - because hormones clearly affect the mind - but not outside the remit of materialism. But as to raccoon-empathy…? How would this show that you didn’t just experience a moment of anthropomorphising care under stress, from within your own brain?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…one can say “That seems awful strange given the small percentage of the total mass of the observable universe that we have examined.” The mass of a human brain doesn’t bear much relevance here…

I use the mass of the human brain because we know for sure that we think we experience free will. If free will is an emergent property based on indeterminate quantum events, then every 3 pounds of material in the universe has just as many quantum events as our 3 pound brains do. If all it takes is 3 pounds of material, then where is the evidence of that quantum indeterminacy causing free will anywhere else? The math is mind bogglingly against the argument even if we only use this solar system at 1.989x10^30 kg. That’s a whole lot of free will agents that the argument implies, but does not produce a single solitary sign of.

…I’ve not constrained that to requiring a certain arrangement of matter. …

You stated “Simply put rocks don’t have any type of processing ability.” If there are things that do not have the configuration needed to possess free will, the necessary corollary, is that there are configurations needed for free will. That looks like a requirement to me.

 

[tlimon]

Do you think that the best explanation of your examples is actually that the mind resides outside the brain? With hormones, I can accept the extension of the thinking parts of the body to outside just the head - because hormones clearly affect the mind - but not outside the remit of materialism. But as to raccoon-empathy…? How would this show that you didn’t just experience a moment of anthropomorphising care under stress, from within your own brain?

I think categorization becomes an issue as some point. What do I mean?

Well, like I said before, our body is in a constant hormonal call an response with various organs throughout our body. The question becomes: why are our hormones sending these messages or, rather, what informs them to send the messages that they send?

We know that they are responding, at least in part, to external stimuli outside our own bodies. We see a lion and our adrenaline secretion increases. For some animals, they smell a human and their adrenaline increases. So, if one species produces a hormonal secretion that translates into an excretion that another animal can smell, which in turn causes that other species to preceive that excretion as a potential threat thus causing an increase in adrenaline contributing to the emotion of “fear,” then haven’t we bridged a causal gap of some kind?

Sex pheromones are an excellent example. If I’m picking up what she is throwing down, as far as my sexual urges are concerned, where do I begin and where does she end? This is what I mean by running into a categorical problem.

Teasing apart the interrelated issue of extended consciousness outside of the remit of materialism is tricky. Everything I just mentioned is entirely within the remit of materialism. That said, I do not disavow the “materialistic” explaination. Rather, I embrace the experience and the material reality as having an ultimate meaning. It’s kind of like the difference between “a rose” and “a beautiful rose.” So, to harken back to my last post, this is why I said that the experience “was something more.” The scope of what I meant by that is farely narrow. Cormac McCarthy poses my quandry better than I can. Perhaps someone may want to comtemplate the passage below, it’s from McCarthy’s “The Road”:

“The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satallite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.”

 

[ThinkingSapien]

If free will is an emergent property based on indeterminate quantum…

That’s probably best directed to James1215 as it’s not a view that I either hold or defend (and remember I said it’s not a part of my response).

You stated “Simply put rocks don’t have any type of processing ability.”

Yep, and I also said:

I’m not going to say with absolute certainty that they don’t…For now I’m holding the position that rocks don’t think because it isn’t supported by any evidence (if you have evidence that they do think feel free to present it).

Refer back to that post for more information on why I hold an evidence based view.

If there are things that do not have the configuration needed to possess free will, the necessary corollary, is that there are configurations needed for free will. That looks like a requirement to me.

I guess it’s best to accept that as a comment. But I want to ensure that it is also known that I’ve neither stated nor implied the that a certain physical configuration be present by drawing attention to what I said in a previous response:

No, I have not asserted that free will requires a certain configuration of matter. I have asserted that an agent with free will be capable of acting within its environment, gathing information about that environment, and being able to process that information in some way.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

That’s probably best…

Okay thanks for your comments then.

 

[James1215]

Woah yes, I need to add a comment on this.

‘James had raised an argument from quantum indeterminacy from something he had read. Dennett I think he said’

Yes I have read Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, but I would be terribly misrepresenting him to say that he argues from quantum indeterminacy to free will. He argues that it is not randomness, chance or escape from causality which provides for free will but inclusion within causality. My point was that even total descriptions of the state of every atom are necessarily inclusive of probability/error, and my suggestion is that predictions based on these necessarily permit options for the future rather than absolute certainties. This is due to the fact that the more one knows about the position of a quantum thing, the less one knows about its velocity (I believe). If this is accepted, then determinism is not intuitively barren for the possibility of reconciling it with free will in the original context in which I made my point, which was on a comparison with a dumb computer chip governed by physics. Yes computer chips always produce the same result from the same starting point (as we measure them) but given quantum indeterminacy, we could not be so certain about all atoms in general. Add free will to existing complexity/chaos and quantum indeterminacy, and surely one ends up with a situation we’re all familiar with - determinism, free will and unpredictability, rather than the logical conclusion that we have to be like computer chips if what Dennett says is true.

That is one half of the problem, it assumes of course a sort of free will that operates within causality, but from there Dennett can get to a variety of free will worth wanting, as he says.

 

[roselily]

A woman in my city underwent drastic surgery. The neurosurgeon and his team reduced her temp to near freezing. They emptied her body of blood. She was flatlined completely – no brain activity, no heart function – she was, by every medical definition, “dead.” Following a very delicate and difficult brain surgery, the processes were reversed and she was restored to life – heart pumping, brain waves seen on the monitors, etc. In recovery, she reported to the neurosurgeon what she had experienced – she watched the operation, heard the conversation and was able to repeat it, went on a journey. Obviously, her “mind” – her “ultimate reality.” her “self” – what would be the correct term? – functioned apart from her body. The physician said the medical profession needs a new definition of “dead.”

I saw this on a TV report of Near Death Experiences.

Jim Dandy

But I thought it was her soul-spirit functioned apart from her body, and we have mind, body and soul. That when body or brain die, the mind will die also, and soul and spirit is something else, and that it will come out of body.

 

[James1215]

Tlimon,

I reckon that the perception or identification of beauty is still materially caused (sounds horrible, doesn’t it?). But would it be possible to regard two materially identical roses as of differing beauty?

Anyhow, I see what you mean with widening where the mind is conceptually situated. It seems very convincing! I think that while we’re social animals and therefore bound to be influenced by others’ hormones, there could be meaningful boundaries set up in relation to whose body the hormones are serving. The human and animal are entwined at the moment the human is detected by the animal, but the arousal of the one biological system would have purposes specific to that system. The purpose may be to excite fear in the animal, so in effect to create what would be a ‘conflict of interests’ if we were all regarded as one entwined mind. Plus the fact that the human may be oblivious to this one-way connection.

 

[GEddie]

But I thought it was her soul-spirit functioned apart from her body, and we have mind, body and soul. That when body or brain die, the mind will die also, and soul and spirit is something else, and that it will come out of body.

No, your mind is a “part” (or function) of your soul. When you are dead, your mind will stay with your soul, but since a human mind needs a human head to live in, you will go into abeyance, until you receive a pneumatikon soma.

ICXC NIKA!

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Woah yes, I need to add a comment on this.

‘James had raised an argument from quantum indeterminacy from something he had read. Dennett I think he said’

Yes I have read Dennett’s Freedom Evolves…

You raised quantum indeterminacy and Dennett post #12-15. I know what we are talking about, its a very common idea, that’s why I had an immediate reason to reject it in post #13. I very rarely hear a new argument anymore.

 

[roselily]

No, your mind is a “part” (or function) of your soul. When you are dead, your mind will stay with your soul, but since a human mind needs a human head to live in, you will go into abeyance, until you receive a pneumatikon soma.

ICXC NIKA!

Your mind is not part of your soul. We have mind(heart), body and soul.
I mean that since you can see two side of it: Religion and Science, then you can consider it, that soul is something else, chemical can change your mind; and it can not change your soul.

 

[tlimon]

I reckon that the perception or identification of beauty is still materially caused (sounds horrible, doesn’t it?). But would it be possible to regard two materially identical roses as of differing beauty?

I doesn’t sound horrible. Material causation is beyond the point. I have always thought so. Pointing out that a series of biological reactions makes it so that I perceive a rose as beautiful is a simple truism. The material universe serves a function for my spirituality like my spoon serves a function for eating peas off my dinner plate.

Catholicism does not contradict the material and neither do I. Explainations originating from material(ism) will always be insufficient. The quote I offered up is a pretty decent paragraph long summation of my belief.

There is a beauty that exists beyond what is materially determined. A bloated corpse that washed up on the banks of a river is not lacking in beauty merely because it smells bad and looks atrocious.

This very conversation is a perfect example where the sidewalk ends as far as apologetics goes.

And for conflicts of interest… Well, I can imagine having conflicts of interest within our own “self containted system” - self mutilators come to mind.

 

[James1215]

Yes I have read Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, but I would be terribly misrepresenting him to say that he argues from quantum indeterminacy to free will. He argues that it is not randomness, chance or escape from causality which provides for free will but inclusion within causality.

As to familiar Dennett arguments, they’re not easy to be familiar with - his work is spread over decades and this book alone crams a lot in. I would definitely recommend it!

 

[Newbie2]

Depends on whether or not you’ve seen “Ghost in the Shell” or the “Matrix” movies.

 

[GEddie]

Your mind is not part of your soul. We have mind(heart), body and soul.
I mean that since you can see two side of it: Religion and Science, then you can consider it, that soul is something else, chemical can change your mind; and it can not change your soul.

The soul has no “parts”, but it produces your mind. However, a human head is needed for the soul to do so. Change the head’s operating conditions and you change the mind.

Until the psychological revolution ca. 100 years ago, it was generally assumed that our mental operations began in our soul (although the head needed to be working). That is in fact why we still say psychology (study of psyche, soul), rather than noology (study of nous, mind).

If your mind does not survive death there can be no “you” to experience a next life. Losing consciousness and your human body, your mind and memories are all that can be recovered from your being.

ICXC NIKA

 

[roselily]

The soul has no “parts”, but it produces your mind. However, a human head is needed for the soul to do so. Change the head’s operating conditions and you change the mind.

Until the psychological revolution ca. 100 years ago, it was generally assumed that our mental operations began in our soul (although the head needed to be working). That is in fact why we still say psychology (study of psyche, soul), rather than noology (study of nous, mind).

If your mind does not survive death there can be no “you” to experience a next life. Losing consciousness and your human body, your mind and memories are all that can be recovered from your being.

ICXC NIKA

I do not know it, but one day we will sure know this, that, and many things.

May God bless dear GEddie and all dear brothers sisters.

 

[levinas12]

No, your mind is a “part” (or function) of your soul. When you are dead, your mind will stay with your soul, but since a human mind needs a human head to live in, you will go into abeyance, until you receive a pneumatikon soma.

Do you mean by “pneumatikon soma” the resurrected body?

If so, I’m not sure my “mind” goes into abeyance immediately after death but before the resurrection of the body.

At the moment when I die, God will supernaturally maintain me as a person (in the absence of my body).

I will continue to be aware of myself and others until I receive my body back at the general resurrection at the end of time.

Of course, “person” and “body” are naturally inseparable, because “person” is the expression of the “body”.

Maintenance of the person after death is “not natural”. It requires an explicit supernatural intervention.

Just like the resurrection of the body is “not natural” and requires an explicit supernatural intervention.

 

[roselily]

Your mind is not part of your soul. We have mind(heart), body and soul.
I mean that since you can see two side of it: Religion and Science, then you can consider it, that soul is something else, chemical can change your mind; and it can not change your soul.

I see soul; I knew that soul is live in the heart.

 

[GEddie]

I see soul; I knew that soul is live in the heart.

I don’t agree. Folks who get heart transplants don’t change their soul.

ICXC NIKA