The soul and split-brains

[XndrK]

So there’s this disorder called split-brain which occurs when the bundle of nerves connecting the left and right sides of the brain is cut (which can happen as the result of an accident or a last-ditch attempt to control epilepsy), and it is weird. The YouTube channel CGP Grey did a treatise on it which serves as a nice summary. There’s also a video from the '90s of a series of experiments.

For those who don’t like clicking links, the left and right sides of the brain control separate functions within the brain and also controls one half of the body (left controls right, right controls left). The left side of the brain (hereafter, LB) is the one which controls speech functions; the right (RB) controls things like facial recognition. When the two are cut, they act more independently, and things get weird.

For example, if the left and right eyes are prevented from seeing the same things (face against a divider or something), but the left and right hands can interact, then if a researcher tells someone to pick up an object with their left hand, then RB will instruct the left hand to do so, but when the researcher asks the subject what they are holding, they will respond, “Nothing.” However, the researcher can say, “Put what’s in your left hand in your right”, and they will do so just fine, and when asked what they are holding, the patient will respond, for example, “a box.” However, when asked why, they will make something up, like “I am going to put some stuff in it”, rather than the actual reason, because LB, without RB’s information, has to make a guess.

Also, LB and RB can disagree on stuff; e.g, a researcher can line up blocks of different colors down a line and ask a split-brainer to grab their favorite color, and their hands will simultaneously grab two different colors, and if the blocks are shuffled, LB will always pick LB’s favorite color and vice versa.

So do we have two minds at once?

 

[Ad_Orientem]

Mind ≠ brain.

The mind is immaterial, the brain material. Physically to alter a brain affects the functioning of the mind, but it does not alter the mind in a like manner. If I divide a brain in half, there are not two minds, because that which is immaterial is simple and indivisible.

 

[ynotzap]

The soul is the form of the body, that is, it makes the body what it is a living body, with the faculties of the soul, which are intellect and will, (actions of knowing and willing)It’s our actions that clue us in as to their source. The soul because it is not a material substance, but an i mmaterial substance, a spiritual one is not dependent on matter for it’s existence, but created directly by God and infused into the body. Since man is not just body, and not just soul, but body and soul, two co-principles co-existing together , it is said that man is a rational animal, in a separate category of species. So every action of man is one of a combination of physical and non-physical, or immaterial action. The intellect (or mind) is extrinsically dependent on the brain to supply it with information from the objective world outside of the mind through the senses… If the brain, the center of the nervous system, is injured, it presents to the mind a distorted image, and the mind is unable to relate to the objective world through this distorted image. I had a stroke, a clot in the brain. The images I received were out of touch with reality, the room was spinning when it wasn’t, sound was tinny, not stereo, vision was altered. Yet today, things are improved, and almost back to normal except for equilibrium. My mind is functioning, and it always was capable, it didn’t lose it’s capability, but it wasn’t able to function through the medium of the brain, until a physical healing took place.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Under a hylemorphic view the soul is the form of the body, including the brain, and therefore intrinsically linked to it. In fact the soul and the body make one substance. Thus, under this view such things as brain disorders affecting the mind is what we would expect to see. It is more difficult to explain such things if you are a Cartesian dualist where the soul and the body are separate substances.

 

[GEddie]

There are not two minds, there is one mind whose body-interface i.e. brain is severely impaired.

Therefore, the mind is impeded from vocalizing things it does with the left hand, in your visual divider example, but the person can still use both hands.

There was one of those experiments in which the subject was told not to raise his left hand, then an electric shock was applied to his right brain to make the limb move on its own. The subject used his right hand to hold the left hand down.

ICXC NIKA

 

[ynotzap]

Under a hylemorphic view the soul is the form of the body, including the brain, and therefore intrinsically linked to it. In fact the soul and the body make one substance. Thus, under this view such things as brain disorders affecting the mind is what we would expect to see. It is more difficult to explain such things if you are a Cartesian dualist where the soul and the body are separate substances.

The soul is a spiritual substance, and the body a physical or material substance, the soul is the immanent principle of activity that makes the body, a living body. When the body can no longer function as a body, eg. the heart fails, the soul can no longer function through the physical medium of the heart. The body then decomposes, and ceases to be a body, but the soul is spiritual and can not decompose, and still exists. The soul is EXTRINSICALLY dependent on the body, not intrinsically dependent. The soul does not need the body to function, but the body needs the soul, the body is intrinsically dependent on the soul to be a body. Soul and body are co-principles, they are separate, but exist together, they do not mix, they are two separate substances. They form a union, but are not mixed. God creates the soul directly, not the body, except through secondary causes which ultimately lead to Him as the ultimate cause

 

[Exiled_Child]

So there’s this disorder called split-brain which occurs when the bundle of nerves connecting the left and right sides of the brain is cut (which can happen as the result of an accident or a last-ditch attempt to control epilepsy), and it is weird. The YouTube channel CGP Grey did a treatise on it which serves as a nice summary. There’s also a video from the '90s of a series of experiments.

For those who don’t like clicking links, the left and right sides of the brain control separate functions within the brain and also controls one half of the body (left controls right, right controls left). The left side of the brain (hereafter, LB) is the one which controls speech functions; the right (RB) controls things like facial recognition. When the two are cut, they act more independently, and things get weird.

For example, if the left and right eyes are prevented from seeing the same things (face against a divider or something), but the left and right hands can interact, then if a researcher tells someone to pick up an object with their left hand, then RB will instruct the left hand to do so, but when the researcher asks the subject what they are holding, they will respond, “Nothing.” However, the researcher can say, “Put what’s in your left hand in your right”, and they will do so just fine, and when asked what they are holding, the patient will respond, for example, “a box.” However, when asked why, they will make something up, like “I am going to put some stuff in it”, rather than the actual reason, because LB, without RB’s information, has to make a guess.

Also, LB and RB can disagree on stuff; e.g, a researcher can line up blocks of different colors down a line and ask a split-brainer to grab their favorite color, and their hands will simultaneously grab two different colors, and if the blocks are shuffled, LB will always pick LB’s favorite color and vice versa.

So do we have two minds at once?

There is at least one religion which conceives of human beings possessing three brains or minds, which correspond to our intellectual, emotional and physical aspects. There’s also a rather convincing theory that the human gut constitutes a second brain.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut%E2%80%93brain_axis

There’s another theory which I think you’ll find interesting, called Bicameralism, which was a hypothesis by a very famous American psychologist named Julian Jaynes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology

amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

My own belief is that the human soul occupies the human body and human brain, but is altogether separate at the same time. If the brain or body becomes damaged in the course of life our soul isn’t affected. It might be compared to a driver operating an automobile which is somehow damaged or functioning differently, and so the driver simply learns to compensate with his vehicle/body by operating it it in a new way.

 

[Exiled_Child]

There is at least one religion which conceives of human beings possessing three brains or minds, which correspond to our intellectual, emotional and physical aspects. There’s also a rather convincing theory that the human gut constitutes a second brain.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut%E2%80%93brain_axis

There’s another theory which I think you’ll find interesting, called Bicameralism, which was a hypothesis by a very famous American psychologist named Julian Jaynes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology

amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

My own belief is that the human soul occupies the human body and human brain, but is altogether separate at the same time. If the brain or body becomes damaged in the course of life, our soul isn’t affected. It might be compared to a driver operating an automobile which is somehow damaged or functioning differently, and so the driver simply learns to compensate with his vehicle/body by operating it it in a new way.

And that’s a great video, by the way, XndrK.

 

[Beryllos]

The brain performs many functions at the same time. Did you ever drive a car while having a lively conversation with your passenger, and later on you couldn’t remember any details of driving the last 50 miles or so? It’s like you expended no conscious effort to drive, but you know that it must have required quite a lot of attention and action. It sure happens to me. Different parts of the brain were thinking at the same time.

 

[GEddie]

There is at least one religion which conceives of human beings possessing three brains or minds, which correspond to our intellectual, emotional and physical aspects. There’s also a rather convincing theory that the human gut constitutes a second brain.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut%E2%80%93brain_axis

There’s another theory which I think you’ll find interesting, called Bicameralism, which was a hypothesis by a very famous American psychologist named Julian Jaynes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology

amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072

My own belief is that the human soul occupies the human body and human brain, but is altogether separate at the same time. If the brain or body becomes damaged in the course of life, our soul isn’t affected. It might be compared to a driver operating an automobile which is somehow damaged or functioning differently, and so the driver simply learns to compensate with his vehicle/body by operating it it in a new way.

And that’s a great video, by the way, XndrK.

I don’t hold to that about the gut, however, in Judaism, there are three aspects or levels to the soul (nephesh, ruach, neshamah), with neshamah, or the human mind, at the top.

In fact, supposedly there are **five **levels to the soul, but the two above neshamah do not fit into our bodies; but in the spiritual body we will experience them.

ICXC NIKA

 

[GEddie]

The brain performs many functions at the same time. Did you ever drive a car while having a lively conversation with your passenger, and later on you couldn’t remember any details of driving the last 50 miles or so? It’s like you expended no conscious effort to drive, but you know that it must have required quite a lot of attention and action. It sure happens to me. Different parts of the brain were thinking at the same time.

In fact, driving a car takes a whole lot more out of our head/mind than we perceive (eyes control, processing by the visual head, coordination of reflex movements of the limbs, etc).

Our head is just masterful at pushing habitual operations into the subconscious.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Beryllos]

In fact, driving a car takes a whole lot more out of our head/mind than we perceive (eyes control, processing by the visual head, coordination of reflex movements of the limbs, etc).

Indeed. It has been said, and I believe there is much truth in it, that the main function of the brain is to control our movements. Perception and thought are just higher level functions for controlling our movements.

 

[GEddie]

Indeed. It has been said, and I believe there is much truth in it, that the main function of the brain is to control our movements. Perception and thought are just higher level functions for controlling our movements.

Indeed, although the perception itself takes a lot of head-room; the eyes, for example require a huge amount of bra(name removed by moderator)ower.

Movement is life; on a living human body, there is always something moving, if only the fingers, toes, neck, eyelids or ribcage.

There is no bra(name removed by moderator)ower in the plant kingdom. Bra(name removed by moderator)ower began with the ability to move, and our vaunted human mind is piggybacked on the body’s autopilot.

ICXC NIKA

 

[ynotzap]

The brain performs many functions at the same time. Did you ever drive a car while having a lively conversation with your passenger, and later on you couldn’t remember any details of driving the last 50 miles or so? It’s like you expended no conscious effort to drive, but you know that it must have required quite a lot of attention and action. It sure happens to me. Different parts of the brain were thinking at the same time.

The human soul knows that it knows, it can communicate with someone, and, at the same time be aware of driving, and that is a spiritual action, the soul can reflect back on itself, be aware of itself, and of others at the same time. Robots, machines programed by people, will never be able to be self-aware, and make personal decisions, and only do what they were programed to do. This is not the brain, but the spiritual intelligence in action, the brain is physical incapable of thought. An animal does not reason, or reflect as human do, but operates by instinct and senses programed by the Divine Programmer There is no spiritual soul in the animal.

 

[fisherman_carl]

The soul is a spiritual substance, and the body a physical or material substance, the soul is the immanent principle of activity that makes the body, a living body. When the body can no longer function as a body, eg. the heart fails, the soul can no longer function through the physical medium of the heart. The body then decomposes, and ceases to be a body, but the soul is spiritual and can not decompose, and still exists. The soul is EXTRINSICALLY dependent on the body, not intrinsically dependent. The soul does not need the body to function, but the body needs the soul, the body is intrinsically dependent on the soul to be a body. Soul and body are co-principles, they are separate, but exist together, they do not mix, they are two separate substances. They form a union, but are not mixed. God creates the soul directly, not the body, except through secondary causes which ultimately lead to Him as the ultimate cause

I hear what you are saying, but that is not the hylemporphic view according to my understanding. It is more the cartesian dualist view. Here is an interesting excerpt from New Advent on the matter:

… Man is not a body plus a soul — which would make of him two individuals; but a body that is what it is (namely, a human body) by reason of its union with the soul. As a special application of the general doctrine of matter and form which is as well a theory of science as of intrinsic causality, the “soul” is envisaged as the substantial form of the matter which, so informed, is a human “body”. The union between the two is a “substantial” one. It cannot be maintained, in the Thomistic system, that the “substantial union is a relation by which two substances are so disposed that they form one”. In the general theory, neither “matter” nor “form”, but only the composite, is a substance. In the case of man, though the “soul” be proved a reality capable of separate existence, the “body” can in no sense be called a substance in its own right. It exists only as determined by a form; and if that form is not a human soul, then the “body” is not a human body. It is in this sense that the Scholastic phrase “incomplete substance”, applied to body and soul alike, is to be understood. Though strictly speaking self-contradictory, the phrase expresses in a convenient form the abiding reciprocity of relation between these two “principles of substantial being”.

Man is an individual, a single substance resultant from the determination of matter by a human form. Being capable of reasoning, he verifies the philosophical definition of a person: “the individual substance of a rational nature”. This doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas (cf. I.75.4) and of Aristotle is not the only one that has been advanced. In Greek and in modern philosophy, as well as during the Patristic and Scholastic periods, another celebrated theory laid claim to pre-eminence. For Plato the soul is a spirit that uses the body. It is in a non-natural state of union, and longs to be freed from its bodily prison (cf. Republic, X, 611). Plato has recourse to a theory of a triple soul to explain the union—a theory that would seem to make personality altogether impossible (see MATTER). St. Augustine, following him (except as to the triple-soul theory) makes the “body” and “soul” two substances; and man “a rational soul using a mortal and earthly body” (De Moribus, I, xxvii). But he is careful to note that by union with the body it constitutes the human being. …

newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm