The Soul and the Brain

[Angels_Unaware]

The limited articles I have read on experiments like these showed that while people saw and did certain actions while their brains were being stimulated, they were aware that they were being manipulated and not consciously making the choices. Not being a doctor, I don’t have the same scope of information open to me, but it actually wouldn’t change my point.

No, that’s incorrect. nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html?ei=5090&pagewanted=all

For the connection between the mind/soul and the brain to have any point, the brain has to be under at least partial, sometime control of the soul. There is no other part of us that responds to moral questions other than the brain, so if the soul is controlling anything it must be the brain.

If not, then the soul seems a meaningless concept, not rooted in anything other than wishful thinking(which for all I know, it might be).

If the soul is not at all responsible for moral decisions, why would it be what is held accountable when we die?

Ok, I don’t think you are 100% wrong, it’s just the way you are trying to conceive this is illogical, and is better explained in a different conceptual form.

You are proposing a material information-processing machine, which is similar to a computer, in some ways, yet “runs the programs” with carbon, that has a ghost controlling it that doesn’t respond to the same laws of cause and effect that the machine responds to.

What I am saying is that is illogical. There cannot be some circumstances where “wiring” took over, and others where the “soul” stayed in control, because both instances took place in the same dimension of the universe where the same physical laws were operating.

(And actually, this is really where the problem becomes interesting, because it points to the real issue, which is that we are within the boundaries of time and subject to the domination of time. Did you know that in Roman and Greek mythology Saturn represents both Satan and Time? That’s an entirely different thought, though, so I will not go off on that tangent)

What I am saying is that to resolve that physical problem, we have to conceive of the soul/mind (I will use the two terms to denote the continuity of experience, consciousness, and personality through linear time) as an irreducible, intangible, information network that is projected from the material brain.

When we see the soul like this, then we see how intimately connected it is to the brain, but we realize that we have more than one level of immateriality.

In the Bible, we are told that even the soul and the spirit can be separated. They are two different things.

I think that the soul is not always conscious. That is how I resolve the moral problem of attributing evil to mentally ill people (it cannot be done, no matter how hard you try to justify it to yourself). The spirit is pure consciousness, and is born from God. But the soul does not always behave like the spirit that is within the person. Sometimes, the true spirit of a person is overshadowed, and I think there are probably higher spiritual purposes to experiencing life like that.

I quite agree that treating the mentally ill unfairly is wrong. And as I said in my post, I don’t think God would judge someone’s soul for the actions of their malfunctioning physical brain. But sin is still sin. It’s not any less so for someone who lacks the ability to know better. It’s just more excuseable. And only God will know at the end what was really sin, and what was just behavior society didn’t like. We won’t know to what degree the soul actually had a part in every act of decision making.

No. This completely wrong, but unfortunately reflects the attitudes of at least 80% of people who just don’t bother to think very deeply about these things. You don’t understand sin if you think “sin is just sin”.

John 9:41 Jesus told them, “If you were blind, you would not have any sin. But now that you insist, ‘We see,’ your sin still exists.”

 

[HelenaMT]

nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html?ei=5090&pagewanted=all

Ok, I read this article and found nothing in it referring to outside stimulation of the brain fooling a person into believing they were making choices. Rather, it tried to explain away free will by demonstrating that these people were physically committing to actions before they thought they were choosing to do them, therefore demonstrating that we only *think *we are choosing action, while in reality we are only reacting to purely physical, material compulsions.

That the conscious knowledge of the decision followed the start of the action does not rule out the soul having stimulated the process first, unrecorded by the instruments. But who knows?

What I am saying is that is illogical. There cannot be some circumstances where “wiring” took over, and others where the “soul” stayed in control, because both instances took place in the same dimension of the universe where the same physical laws were operating.

This whole thread has some inherent "illogic " in it. We’re speculating on something that can’t be demonstrated in any real way. Who knows that the soul and the “wiring” are in the same dimension? Do we know with absolute certainty that soul and matter would co-exist in the same dimension? Is the Holy Spirit not operating on us in our dimension? If so, why could our souls not operate through us the same way?

I’m just enjoying the topic, I’m not married to one particular concept. I just like mine at the moment.

What I am saying is that to resolve that physical problem, we have to conceive of the soul/mind (I will use the two terms to denote the continuity of experience, consciousness, and personality through linear time) as an irreducible, intangible, information network that is projected from the material brain.

If it’s projected from the material brain, how was it “born from God”?

In the Bible, we are told that even the soul and the spirit can be separated. They are two different things.

I think that the soul is not always conscious. That is how I resolve the moral problem of attributing evil to mentally ill people (it cannot be done, no matter how hard you try to justify it to yourself). The spirit is pure consciousness, and is born from God. But the soul does not always behave like the spirit that is within the person. Sometimes, the true spirit of a person is overshadowed, and I think there are probably higher spiritual purposes to experiencing life like that.

What is the difference between spirit and soul, in your opinion?(And please stop thinking I want to attribute evil to the mentally ill -it’s really misunderstanding my point-which is actually just the opposite. If a person *truly *cannot tell the difference between a good or bad action, he cannot truly be accountable-or evil-and if he knows, but *can’t control *his behavior, same deal)

You don’t understand sin if you think “sin is just sin”.

John 9:41 Jesus told them, “If you were blind, you would not have any sin. But now that you insist, ‘We see,’ your sin still exists.”

I was actually agreeing with Jesus here-if the person was unaware of the sinfulness, for whatever reasons, he is not accountable. But the action doesn’t become a good action just because it doesn’t count as sin for the person. Murder is murder, rape is rape, theft is theft. I really don’t know what you think I was trying to say.

 

[JimG]

Is the Holy Spirit not operating on us in our dimension? If so, why could our souls not operate through us the same way?

Exactly. The Holy Spirit is pure spirit–not matter. Yet he is able to operate in the realm of matter as well as the realm of mind. Our soul is also spirit. Spirit can not be said to inhabit a particular location in the same way that matter does. Rather, a spirit is where it operates. And our soul is intimately united with our body, where it operates.

 

[greylorn]

HelenaMT and Angels Unaware,

You gals are great! I appreciate your exchanges. I’ve thought about stepping in, but the last time I tried to break up an exchange between two females, I limped home.

Here is one neutral comment which may prove helpful. Forget the New York Times piece, which I did not read, since I do not regard that newspaper otherwise than as an atheistic propaganda forum. (Besides, they gave my book a dreadful review.)

The original and definitive experiments on electrical control of the brain and the human will were performed by Dr. Wilder Penfield in 1948. They are quoted in Strong and Elwyn’s “Human Neuroanatomy.” This is all old material, developed before
current atheistic spins of the evidence, before the Intelligent Design movement, etc.

Wilder could stimulate a point in the brain which made the patient involuntarily move a finger. He then asked the patient to suppress that motion. The patient could do so, until Wilder increased the current at his probe.

Presuming that Wilder was controlling (to some small extent) the brain but speaking to the “soul” normally in control of the brain, the conclusion is simple. Soul can control the brain. The brain clearly has over-ride potential.

Many of the Church’s teachings given to me as a child were about avoidance of the “occasion of sin.” I did not understand these teachings, for they were incompetently explained. Today I would interpret them simply as saying that it is your job to stay in control of your brain.

Drugs, whether methamphetamines or prescribed pharmaceuticals, affect the brain. Some of these have powerful effects, powerful enough to “increase the current.” A soul which allows its brain to be influenced by drugs, or by dumb ideas, is as responsible for the consequences as a parent who gives his kid the keys to his car and twenty bucks for a twelve-pack.

 

[Angels_Unaware]

Ok, I read this article and found nothing in it referring to outside stimulation of the brain fooling a person into believing they were making choices. Rather, it tried to explain away free will by demonstrating that these people were physically committing to actions before they thought they were choosing to do them, therefore demonstrating that we only *think *we are choosing action, while in reality we are only reacting to purely physical, material compulsions.

That the conscious knowledge of the decision followed the start of the action does not rule out the soul having stimulated the process first, unrecorded by the instruments. But who knows?

You know, I’m sorry you don’t know how to read. Why don’t you try again.

In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.

The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.

In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done.

 

[Angels_Unaware]

The original and definitive experiments on electrical control of the brain and the human will were performed by Dr. Wilder Penfield in 1948. They are quoted in Strong and Elwyn’s “Human Neuroanatomy.” This is all old material, developed before
current atheistic spins of the evidence, before the Intelligent Design movement, etc.

Wilder could stimulate a point in the brain which made the patient involuntarily move a finger. He then asked the patient to suppress that motion. The patient could do so, until Wilder increased the current at his probe.

Presuming that Wilder was controlling (to some small extent) the brain but speaking to the “soul” normally in control of the brain, the conclusion is simple. Soul can control the brain. The brain clearly has over-ride potential. .

In the excerpt I posted above, the volunteers were told to voluntarily move their fingers, they were not being stimulated artifically. I may have actually mis-stated the point originally, I would have to go back and read what I said.

Regardless, the post above was the point. Conscious perception of free will *followed *a deterministic mechanism.

That’s why I personally think the philsophical problems are really more complex than the construction of the soul controlling the brain.

That’s why I think of the spirit as being outside of time, and the soul as being bound by time and all of the laws of physics.

 

[Benadam]

No, that’s incorrect. nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html?ei=5090&pagewanted=all

What I am saying is that to resolve that physical problem, we have to conceive of the soul/mind (I will use the two terms to denote the continuity of experience, consciousness, and personality through linear time) as an irreducible, intangible, information network that is projected from the material brain.

 

[greylorn]

Exactly. The Holy Spirit is pure spirit–not matter. Yet he is able to operate in the realm of matter as well as the realm of mind. Our soul is also spirit. Spirit can not be said to inhabit a particular location in the same way that matter does. Rather, a spirit is where it operates. And our soul is intimately united with our body, where it operates.

This is the kind of comment that causes in me, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

What is “spirit,” other than a meaningless word which allows mystics to dodge questions from the real world?

Anything which operates in the realm of matter and energy is, by the definition of physical, physical itself.

Handwaving but meaningless assertions like these do nothing to contribute to the forwarding of understanding.

Your contribution could begin with a clear and unequivocal definition of spirit, or the admission that it’s just a dodgy word that means nothing in the context of physical reality. Or, invent something else.

Comparing spirit’s relationship to space to that of matter is ambiguous. Which theory of matter do you refer to? Pre-Newtonian? Pre-Einsteinian? Quantum mechanics does not have a rigorous handle on the relationship between matter and space. Electromagnetic theory has developed some equations which might be applicable— but only to energy forms, not to “spirits.”

I wonder if, if you could remove yourself from belief in concepts which have no root in the physical world but which are in some way related to things which physics has yet to discover, you could assist in their discovery?

This would entail tangifying your beliefs.

 

[greylorn]

You know, I’m sorry you don’t know how to read. Why don’t you try again.

In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.

The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.

In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done.

If your description of this experiment is accurate, the experiment is irrelevant. The word idiotic comes to mind, but if the worthy professor has a Ph.d from Podunk U, he could sue me for such an assertion.

You cannot tell a person to make a random motion.

People make quasi-random motions. For example, I have a damaged foot. My brain has learned to twitch it periodically to assist circulation and relieve pain. These twitches are not truly random because they come as a response to pain, but insofar as I am unconscious of them, for the purpose of the above experiment they would be considered random.

However, once I am told to “randomly” twitch my foot, the process is non-random. Analogously, this would be like telling the girl at the lottery ball machine to randomly reach in an pick an 8 ball.

If the experiment is as you have described, it is an experiment done by someone who does not understand consciousness, on someone who knows even less, and interpreted in terms of concepts (the conscious and sub-conscious minds) which have no basis in physical reality.

(Meaning. The locations of the conscious and sub-conscious minds are not indentified in any map of the human brain. They were not in 1970 and are not today.)

By way of an analogous experiment, I might as well ask a pair of toddlers to roll some balls around the carpet and come up with Newton’s laws of mechanics. The information is there, but the competency level is not.

I believe that if you peruse your post 65 and the excerpted material, you will find that HMT’s comments are totally consistent with your excerpt of the experiment. Must have been a misunderstanding of some sort. Luckily that never happens to me.

 

[HelenaMT]

You know, I’m sorry you don’t know how to read. Why don’t you try again.

Wow, a little uncalled for. I hope the rudeness was just due to some random physical glitch, not a conscious choice to insult someone trying to have an intelligent conversation.

In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and** told the volunteers to make random motions**, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, **while he noted the time on a clock. **

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.

The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.

In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done.

Nowhere does this say he was stimulating any part of their brains, just recording the times it took to register their thoughts against their actions. Which doesn’t really seem to prove much.

I was actually a lot more interested in you answering my questions as to how you define soul and spirit, and differentiate between the two, and how you explain the origin of the soul as being from God if you also say it emanates from the physical brain.

I was actually interested in hearing your thoughts, not getting into an internet tiff. That’s why I asked for some clarification of your ideas, so as to better understand them.

 

[HelenaMT]

…Conscious perception of free will *followed *a deterministic mechanism.

That’s why I personally think the philsophical problems are really more complex than the construction of the soul controlling the brain.

That’s why I think of the spirit as being outside of time, and the soul as being bound by time and all of the laws of physics.

Why is the soul bound by time and the laws of physics but not the spirit?

Which one is held accountable for our behavior in our bodies?

Do either have a function or relation to our conscious mind and if so, what?

Do either exert any force or influence over it?

Which part lives on, the soul or the spirit?

If both, how are they related ?

After reading your posts, I figured I should try to understand your ideas a little more, since as I said, I am not married to my initial concepts and am open to changing my interpretation if someone elses makes more sense.

If you have fleshed out answers to any of my above questions, I would love to hear them (seriously).

 

[HelenaMT]

… I’ve thought about stepping in…

By all means, step in. I would love to hear your take on the relationship between brain and soul. You seem to think the soul controls the physical brain in some way as well, as I have been leaning to believe. I have a hard time believing in a soul that has no actual role in determining our actions. Why else would anyone think it could be judged for what our body/brains do?

AngelsUnaware poses some great points to contemplate, though, about how this might impact the souls of the mentally ill, or those who have suffered brain damage.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

[greylorn]

In the excerpt I posted above, the volunteers were told to voluntarily move their fingers, they were not being stimulated artifically. I may have actually mis-stated the point originally, I would have to go back and read what I said.

Regardless, the post above was the point. Conscious perception of free will *followed *a deterministic mechanism.

That’s why I personally think the philsophical problems are really more complex than the construction of the soul controlling the brain.

That’s why I think of the spirit as being outside of time, and the soul as being bound by time and all of the laws of physics.

AU

The atheistic practitioners of pseudo-scientific arts are working to fool you. Consider your assertion, “Conscious perception of free will *followed *a deterministic mechanism.”

The perception of free will is not necessarily free will. In the experiment above, subjects were told to make random motions. Their making of those motions is no more an act of free will than a God-fearing churchgoer’s attendance at Sunday Mass. The participants’ free will stopped at their choice to participate, which may itself have been dictated by economic circumstances.

The only participant demonstrating free will in the experiment was the guy who opened up a Daffy Duck comic and waited for his body to randomly twitch. Was his name cited? Bet not.

It looks to me as though you are coming from a competent understanding of, and sympathy with, the human psyche, and are trying to fit your perceptions into a belief system which cannot accommodate them.

Formal belief systems cannot change to accommodate mere information. Based upon something called divine revelation, they can only change in response to revelation, or ideas which they agree with and can pass off as revelation. .

But the Catholic Church has done something powerful. While it is not ready to actually embrace ideas outside its dogma, it is willing to tolerate members who think outside that dogma. Else such an open and fairly moderated forum as the CAF would not exist. The CAF provides a doggy door, around back of the cow barn, for the introduction of new concepts into traditional thinking.

In this context, consider the philosophical problems you alluded to. An old but short and erudite book which you might appreciate is Thomas Kuhn’s “History of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn is a philosopher, and his points apply to philosophy as much as to science. Among them is the observation that when arguments about a fundamental idea become complex, this is an indication that the idea is faulty.

The history of science bears him out. The great ideas of science in the last several centuries have been few, and they have all been simple. Each has overturned preceding ideas which appeared simple at first expression, but which generated considerable debate and argument.

For example, note that scientists and non-scientists of all stripes are still at odds over Darwinism, but that Newton’s laws of mechanics are not a point of discussion.

I promise you that if you can address and resolve the concept of the interaction between the soul and the brain, in the simplest possible terms, and in a manner consistent with the principles of physics, you will take the first huge step towards resolving the conflicts between science and religion.

First you must define your entities. Soul, spirit. What are the properties of each? Are they truly different?

 

[greylorn]

By all means, step in. I would love to hear your take on the relationship between brain and soul. You seem to think the soul controls the physical brain in some way as well, as I have been leaning to believe. I have a hard time believing in a soul that has no actual role in determining our actions. Why else would anyone think it could be judged for what our body/brains do?

AngelsUnaware poses some great points to contemplate, though, about how this might impact the souls of the mentally ill, or those who have suffered brain damage.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Yes, I do.

 

[ilovekittens]

If your description of this experiment is accurate, the experiment is irrelevant. The word idiotic comes to mind, but if the worthy professor has a Ph.d from Podunk U, he could sue me for such an assertion.

You cannot tell a person to make a random motion.

People make quasi-random motions. For example, I have a damaged foot. My brain has learned to twitch it periodically to assist circulation and relieve pain. These twitches are not truly random because they come as a response to pain, but insofar as I am unconscious of them, for the purpose of the above experiment they would be considered random.

However, once I am told to “randomly” twitch my foot, the process is non-random. Analogously, this would be like telling the girl at the lottery ball machine to randomly reach in an pick an 8 ball.

If the experiment is as you have described, it is an experiment done by someone who does not understand consciousness, on someone who knows even less, and interpreted in terms of concepts (the conscious and sub-conscious minds) which have no basis in physical reality.

(Meaning. The locations of the conscious and sub-conscious minds are not indentified in any map of the human brain. They were not in 1970 and are not today.)

By way of an analogous experiment, I might as well ask a pair of toddlers to roll some balls around the carpet and come up with Newton’s laws of mechanics. The information is there, but the competency level is not.

I believe that if you peruse your post 65 and the excerpted material, you will find that HMT’s comments are totally consistent with your excerpt of the experiment. Must have been a misunderstanding of some sort. Luckily that never happens to me.

The experiment is not irrelevant, and I think is misunderstood by you. Libet showed that the conscious “decision” to perform a simple, not random, act like pressing a button was preceded by brain activity, suggesting that the brain had already decided to initiate the activity before the “decision” was consciously made. The same sort of phenomenon has since been replicated with functional neuroimaging techniques. These experiments are important because they suggest that free will is an illusion.

I think the whole topic of this thread - how the soul controls the brain - is a little too much like a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” argument. Souls and spirits, if they exist, are immaterial, supernatural phenomena, whose existence we take on the basis of faith, alone. The workings of the brain are enormously complex, but are being understood increasing by cognitive neuroscientists. Nowhere on functional brain MRI scans, EEGs, etc, has the signature of the soul been found, and it never will be. We Catholics can believe in its existence, but thinking too much about the issue, mixing up the tenets of faith with the objective findings of experiment and science, is I think a misunderstanding of the issues at hand.

 

[JimG]

This is the kind of comment that causes in me, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

What is “spirit,” other than a meaningless word which allows mystics to dodge questions from the real world?

Anything which operates in the realm of matter and energy is, by the definition of physical, physical itself.

You asked for a definition of spirit. My definition is that spirit is a real entity not composed of matter-energy. (I was going to say a real substance, simple in nature, and not composed of matter and energy, but the word “substance” might be misconstrued as referring to physicality.)

I don’t expect that definition to be satisfying to you from the point of view of physics. Yet in reviewing the thread, I find little in the way of definitions of terms, such as “soul” or “spirit” that would be satisfying from a physicists point of view. You and others have indicated that anything with a physical interface must be physical. If that’s the definition of physical, ok, but most theists would not accept the definition.

It would seem that several of the posters are not only theists, but believers. My response was to HelenaMT’s comment about the Holy Spirit operating in our dimension, so I thought that Helena believes in the Holy Spirit, presumably as one of the Persons of the Godhead. God is commonly taken to be spirit, not matter, and yet to interact with creation, which is material. Theologians would quibble about defining Him as physical simply because he is able to interact with the physical.

The soul has been variously described here as an “information network projected by the brain,” as a possible epiphenomenon of the brain, or as more likely the inverse of an epiphenomenon, operating on the brain as a controller rather than an emanation of it.

So if my definition of spirit is found lacking, it is no more so than other attempts at definitions found here.

If humans have a soul, and if it can be said to at some point be freed from the body, then there must be a non-bodily aspect to our natures.

 

[JimG]

I think the whole topic of this thread - how the soul controls the brain - is a little too much like a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” argument. Souls and spirits, if they exist, are immaterial, supernatural phenomena, whose existence we take on the basis of faith, alone. The workings of the brain are enormously complex, but are being understood increasing by cognitive neuroscientists. Nowhere on functional brain MRI scans, EEGs, etc, has the signature of the soul been found, and it never will be. We Catholics can believe in its existence, but thinking too much about the issue, mixing up the tenets of faith with the objective findings of experiment and science, is I think a misunderstanding of the issues at hand.

I pretty much agree with this, especially the bolded part. The soul will not be found through experimentation, only through extrapolation and self-reflection, which is how the self knows itself. The human animal is said to be a rational animal capable not only of consciousness but of being conscious of its own consciousness.

 

[dkdempsey]

I was raised Catholic, but now I’m non-religious. I still believe it is possible for a soul or life after death, but I really have no clue for sure. In regards to life after death, I’m an optimistic “don’t know”

 

[dkdempsey]

Perhaps it’s best to focus more on ones conduct in life here and now, rather than worry about what comes after it, if anything. Just a thought.

 

[MindOverMatter]

Perhaps it’s best to focus more on ones conduct in life here and now, rather than worry about what comes after it, if anything. Just a thought.

Why would anybody want to do that? If there is no God and afterlife, then we are all going to cease to exist, in which case what does it matter what we do in this life? It all just becomes irrelevant an irrational. Morality is irrelevant if there is no such thing as moral truth.