PET scans can show areas of the brain activated when hearing a word or even thinking a word.No, PET scans merely show the presence of metabolic activity in certain areas.
In any case, PET scans do not show thought; they show metabolic activity. We may infer thought. (But that in itself requires thought from us, doesn’t it?) And yes, brain stimulation can do many things.PET scans can show areas of the brain activated when hearing a word or even thinking a word.
Also, people who have shock treatments, the stimulation of the brain helps alleviate their depression and causes memory loss.
Psywww.com/intropsych/ch2_human_nervous_system/pet_scan.html
We don’t learn it from scripture, we learn it from Catholic philosophy. That, for example: the human soul is a spiritual substance; it has the faculties of intellect and will, by which we can know, and love, and make decisions.I do not know where in scripture we learn that the mind is automatically 100 percent immaterial. In my view brain and mind are interchangeable. Body vs mind refers to mere insentience versus vivified matter (LIFE!) by God; as in the creation of man and the Lord’s sending of the Holy Spirit (along with its gifts).
I really don’t know what all of that means. The mind is the brain vivified? The soul is by its nature that which vivifies the body—the whole body. But body and soul are a unity. We can’t separate them except by death.Not produces it; but is itself a more holistic, encompassing conceptualization of the brain, taking into account creative and as yet understood aspects of its physical capacity.
Mind is brain vivified by the Holy Spirit’s understanding and other gifts see Isiah, Romans and Corinthians and Catechism (?); Else we are left with a brain that is insentient matter. Mind is brain proper. You can wear a hat on your head, but no need for one on your mind.
You confuse knowledge with the objects of knowledge; the latter are sensory data, as an example.
It’s true, two or more people can certainly agree on what’s out there, they can communicate. What they can’t do is observe the workings of anyone’s mind (not brain) except their own.Where two or three are gathered in his name,
That’s a measure that people can agree upon, and a gift of God that proves you exist. You find yourself in community with other believers agreeing about the only thing that can be known with true agreement, Jesus presence, pure truth the same today and forever.
Everyone with a computer and 30 seconds can look up any word. Isn’t that how you learn? And isn’t learning the point of discussing subjects like the brain/mind.Since minds and heads are things we all possess, but most of us are nonphilosophers, it would help to avoid words like “qualia”.
I look up words I don’t understand; not everybody has that much discretionary time, energy or eye strength.
ICXC NIKA
If your comment means that the brain is not the final arbiter, but a mediator of mind activity, I would counter that we simply are yet unable to decode the PET scan activity.
Here’s a piece of research which bowled me over. Sheila Nirenberg wants to bring sight to the blind by using prosthetic eyes. In a sighted person the eyes (a) pick up light, (b) encode what is seen, and then (c) send the encoding to the brain. Blindness is often caused by a failure at (a) or (b), while (c) would still work if it got (name removed by moderator)ut signals.My point was simply that it is the mind which infers the meaning of the results of the scan. It is the mind which does the inferring. It is the mind which ponders the meaning of any type of sensory data a human being receives. It is the mind which thinks about what all this means and then composes scientific papers about it.
Well, it certainly wasn’t his body. That was lying dead in a unit some miles away. I just did a check via Google Maps, and the distance is 17.4 kilometres if he hitched an invisible lift in the back of a late night driver’s car. As the crow flies, I suppose it’s a couple of kilometres less.When your father appeared and the two of you interacted, did you get a sense of which aspect(s) of him were present?
Mind/body/soul etc?
I have not has such an experience and I wonder which part of the person manifests and which part of the viewer perceives the manifestation.
Thank you for sharing your powerful experience.
I. THE PARTICULAR JUDGMENT
1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ.592 The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. The parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul–a destiny which can be different for some and for others.593
1022 Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification594 or immediately,595 – or immediate and everlasting damnation.596
I see no conflict between what happened that night, and the catechism. I fail to see how my cruel, bad tempered, stupid and vindictive father would have made it to heaven, or even purgatory. I think I just happened to be given the opportunity to see it, which most people don’t.At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.597
We don’t learn it from scripture, we learn it from Catholic philosophy. That, for example: the human soul is a spiritual substance; it has the faculties of intellect and will, by which we can know, and love, and make decisions.
.
I really don’t know what all of that means. The mind is the brain vivified? The soul is by its nature that which vivifies the body—the whole body. But body and soul are a unity. We can’t separate them except by death.
EDIT: I suppose I might take the phrase, “the mind is the brain vivified,” to mean something like “the mind is the brain with all the matter extracted from it, leaving only immaterial essences.” That might come close to what I am saying.
The mind produces ideas. How do ideas get into our mind? First we need sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. I see a person in front of me. I can’t get the actual person into my brain. I can get the sensory impressions of the person into my brain from many different sense organs. That’s still just a lot of biological activity. How does it become an idea of a person in my mind? How do I generalize it into a universal idea of what a person is? The brain doesn’t do universals. The mind does. The mind is immaterial. For lack of a better term, let’s say it extracts (or abstracts) the essence of what is in the brain. That’s just philosophical psychology, but obviously nobody can observe the mind extracting data from the brain, since both the mind and the ideas it produces are non-material. And yes, I am Catholic. This is the sort discussions we once had in a Philosophical Psychology course I took at a Catholic university.
It’s true, two or more people can certainly agree on what’s out there, they can communicate. What they can’t do is observe the workings of anyone’s mind (not brain) except their own.
I’m sure others have proposed their own epistemology. Neuroscience has made great strides in studying the brain. I don’t know that it equates the brain with the mind. Maybe it does. But as I say, if that is the case, we are only matter; and both our intellect and will is nothing special.
Lots of people have developed the idea, which is magnificent in itself.Here’s a piece of research which bowled me over. Sheila Nirenberg wants to bring sight to the blind by using prosthetic eyes.
So the brain doesn’t see the color red, it receives a stream of off/on pulses. The brain doesn’t see a baby, it receives a stream of off/on pulses. The same applies to hearing and the other senses. The brain doesn’t hear the baby gurgling, it receives a stream of off/on pulses.
It’s nothing new, and the idea has awaited technology’s advancement to fructify. The mathematics and the processing are what make it brilliant, and the laborers well deserves their wage. But seeing red delves deep into nothing unusual. It’s what red means. That is like the spirit vivifying the brain. Meaning and understanding come from the Holy Spirit. They are its gifts. You can code it however you want, the sequence can be unique – the theology that explains “experience” is super resilient. It is full proof, ironically, because of the reason JimG has pointed out several times – you can’t see the brains holistic formation of concepts with scans except through time slices in a linear, step by step fashion. And even if you can decode a word, a color, a form, even make immense strides towards knowing what it means for an individual in terms of associations, related concepts, etc., there is no way to know the ultimate destiny of that meaning’s coherence and stability over time, over a lifetime.It seems that those who claim the mind is separate from the brain, or that there are things called qualia, now have to explain how this could work when the only (name removed by moderator)uts are streams of off/on pulses.
On second reflection, this statement of yours is disturbing to me. Why can’t the language we use to tell what’s on our mind be taken as its workings? Haven’t you ever had the experience of talking with someone who eventually “gets what you mean”. Doesn’t this imply a shared experience, most profoundly in fellowship with other Christians?It’s true, two or more people can certainly agree on what’s out there, they can communicate. What they can’t do is observe the workings of anyone’s mind (not brain) except their own.
So for obvious reasons I’m a dualist. I KNOW the mind and soul outlive the body. But I also KNOW there’s a judgement. I remember the sheer terror as my father screamed just before he disappeared again. Someone like Richard Dawkins could swear on a stack of Humanist Manifestos that there’s no God or judgement or whatever, and I’d just tell him he’s an idiot.
But he’ll find out in due course. We all will.
From the Catholic Catechism -
I might just add a comment regarding my post above, and the last line I quoted from the Catechism as shown.… At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.597
Jesus said that if your right hand offends, cut it off. He said no such thing about the brain or its encasement. If the brain isn’t bad, why do you say it can’t have a conscience (which involves memory, does it not when examined?)The brain isn’t aware of itself, cannot grasp abstract concepts or moral principles, doesn’t have a conscience or free will and is an impersonal lump of tissue incapable of unselfish love.
This quoting is getting messy and confusing JimG. But i used the term as a noun phrase, ie., brain vivified; whereas you made it a verb, ie., soul vivifies (v.t.) the body, the whole body.I really don’t know what all of that means. The mind is the brain vivified? The soul is by its nature that which vivifies the body—the whole body. But body and soul are a unity. We can’t separate them except by death.
EDIT: I suppose I might take the phrase, “the mind is the brain vivified,” to mean something like “the mind is the brain with all the matter extracted from it, leaving only immaterial essences.” That might come close to what I am saying.
It proves activity.But PET scans do prove the subject is thinking, it’s that activity and more that the PET scan is highlighting.
Whether the (name removed by moderator)ut to the brain is a device built by man or if it is a part of the body functioning as it should matters little to the brain/mind relationship.It seems that those who claim the mind is separate from the brain, or that there are things called qualia, now have to explain how this could work when the only (name removed by moderator)uts are streams of off/on pulses.
Faith1960 - from the above, I think your OP author has got it right.
Well, no… Because while you could amputate one of your limbs and remain alive, to self-behead would be the mortal sin of suicide!Jesus said that if your right hand offends, cut it off. He said no such thing about the brain or its encasement.
Is the brain aware of itself, capable of unselfish love, grasping **abstract **concepts and understanding universal moral principles? Does it have free will and personality?Jesus said that if your right hand offends, cut it off. He said no such thing about the brain or its encasement. If the brain isn’t bad, why do you say it can’t have a conscience (which involves memory, does it not when examined?)
Yes, of course. There is nothing in that description of brain activity that I don’t agree with. It was actually my point. We don’t perceive the outside world directly, but through sensory (name removed by moderator)ut encoded to the brain.Here’s a piece of research which bowled me over. Sheila Nirenberg wants to bring sight to the blind by using prosthetic eyes. In a sighted person the eyes (a) pick up light, (b) encode what is seen, and then (c) send the encoding to the brain. Blindness is often caused by a failure at (a) or (b), while (c) would still work if it got (name removed by moderator)ut signals.
Nirenberg has the blind person wear a pair of cameras connected to a chip which does (a) and (b). It then transmits the coded signal to the cells at the back of the eyes (c), allowing the person to see.
She explains it in layman’s terms in this short video - youtube.com/watch?v=GDEbsrpnntY
Which is magnificent in itself. But what bowled me over is that to do this Nirenberg had to decipher the code, and the code is basically binary and nothing like what is being seen (see figure 2 on page 3 of this pdf - physiology.med.cornell.edu/faculty/nirenberg/lab/papers/PNAS-2012-Nirenberg-1207035109.pdf).
So the brain doesn’t see the color red, it receives a stream of off/on pulses. The brain doesn’t see a baby, it receives a stream of off/on pulses. The same applies to hearing and the other senses. The brain doesn’t hear the baby gurgling, it receives a stream of off/on pulses.
It seems that those who claim the mind is separate from the brain, or that there are things called qualia, now have to explain how this could work when the only (name removed by moderator)uts are streams of off/on pulses.
Faith1960 - from the above, I think your OP author has got it right.
A cat is not a rational animal and does not have a spiritual soul. It has a material soul. Thus, while it has consciousness, it does not possess a rational mind, as do human beings.
If all minds have the capacity to produce ideas as you say, then why doesn’t my cat appreciate that by not feeding him every time he meows, I am trying to keep his weight and health in check? Why didn’t I heed my parent’s advice to not cross the street unless they were there? If the idea comes from the mind’s production, than really, reductio ad absurdum, there is no need for a brain and body to have data, the mind could just produce its own ideas? You say not exactly? Tell me how then does the mind utilize data to produce ideas? What is the data is flawed. As in hearing a lie.
We are much more than matter even in the case that the mind and brain are the same. Reason being, our bodies are given life only by the spirit. It’s the best I can offer to give meaning to the saying of His, that apart from Jesus you can do nothing. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his very soul … (to the vortex of mere brain power unenlightened by scriptural data, and the experience of life this latter leads us gently to).