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Faith1960
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I think I’d agree with that.
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GEddie
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No. Conscious recollection does.This makes no sense to me.You just said recollection resides in the head.
But the memory remains, although in an abeyance, even when the body is prevented from being conscious.
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GEddie
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I think what he meant was that there are no literal lights going on in the head, although they are simulated by the scanner software
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Aloysium
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What he said.I think what he meant was that there are no literal lights going on in the head, although they are simulated by the scanner software
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Positron emission tomography involves the detection of radiation, usually from radioactive glucose, by multiple sensors. The signals are then processed to provide an image of where the sugar is going in the brain. It goes to where it is most needed at the time. These would be the areas related to the particular activity the person is being asked to carry out.
What happens in the brain is an increase in the metabolism of sugar to obtain the energy needed in relation to the wave of changing polarity between the inside and outside of the neuron as it travels from the area where the neuron was stimulated to where it communicates with others. There are changes happening within the cells and between the cells. The production of proteins and such, the release and reuptake of neurotransmitters all require energy. In themselves these purely physical changes are not sufficient to explain how we initiate and direct a memory. “Mind” explains the meaning of what is going on. When the physical is damaged, the person loses the pieces which he puts together when he remembers. I would say that the soul has the memory and requires, in life, an adequately intact nervous system in order to actualize the memory.
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GEddie
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Good explanation. I had heard that oxygen-15 was the tagging agent.
Positrons are a form of antimatter, that is released from some radioactive atoms. When injected into the head, and taken up immediately by neurons needing oxygen, these positrons instantly release precise bursts of energy that allow mapping out where exactly the oxygen is being used.
It’s incredible technology, but as we **already **know that using our heads requires oxygen, I am not at all sure how the PET scanner is supposed to disprove the rational soul.
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Faith1960
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Its brain activity.I think what he meant was that there are no literal lights going on in the head, although they are simulated by the scanner software
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Faith1960
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Again, its brain activity.
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JuanFlorencio
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Are you comparing now human beings with machines?
Certainly!, I was struggling. Last time you took good care offering no interpretation at all. I had to guess what you wanted to convey.I get the feeling you were struggling a bit there. Anyway, it didn’t quite work.
Yes, it might be comforting to believe that granny’s mind is still working perfectly, it’s only her “interaction modes” which are suffering dementia. Alternatively, it might be horribly discomforting, given that it would mean granny’s mind has to live day after day trapped and devoid of any dignity due to failing “interaction modes”.
In other words there’s a moral dimension to speculating about the existence of occult things for which there is no evidence, since it compromises granny’s treatment. The speculative “there’s more things in heaven and earth, etc.” kind of philosophy has its place, but it takes away any urgency to finding more effective treatments for granny and all the others.
When I say that our interaction modes are affected if we suffer damage to our brain I don’t intend to mean that our mind will continue working perfectly while our behavior shows something else. You are debating a conception of mind (or soul) as a kind of quasi-independent homunculus inside your body; and I don’t share such conception (though, at the same time, I have to say that the examples you have proposed so far do not refute it).
Several years ago I had to be anesthetized for a surgery. There was no remedy. So, I at least wanted to take advantage of it paying attention (as much as it were possible) to what happened to me during the process. The day of the surgery the doctor asked me to count from one to ten while he injected me. I couldn’t complete the count. I lost consciousness completely. It was not even like when I was sleeping. It was a region of absolutely no experience. So, if I say that many of my interacting modes were affected by the anesthesia I don’t mean that I was kind of observing everything which was going on around my body. Instead, I mean that I was temporarily but dramatically diminished in my capacities, though I certainly did not feel any discomfort (and that absence of discomfort was actually one of the aspects of my diminished condition).
From what you have been saying in your past posts, you seem to be a person concerned with human sufferings. I know many persons who share the same concerns and act accordingly (just as you surely do), working to contribute to the benefit of their fellow men; and those persons believe that we are corporeal-spiritual beings. The urgency to contribute finding solutions to our problems is not taken away by their beliefs. From what I have seen, it is quite the opposite.
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Faith1960
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What does everyone think the brain does?
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Linusthe2nd
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Aloysium
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Given that CAF is Catholic rather than Cerebrum Answers Forum, this would seem a more appropriate question.
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Micosil
Guest
And to answer that question, as I stated previously in the thread, I think Fr. John Hardon’s definition can be assessed:
The last part, bolded out by myself, seems relevant.
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inocente
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The difference isn’t about science. A priori means independent of experience - “no bachelor is married” is always true everywhere, by definition. Whereas a posteriori depends on experience - “I see the Sun set every day” would not be true if you lived above the Arctic Circle. All laws of nature must be a posteriori, since they rely on reasoning based on objective evidence of what is always experienced in our world, and may not be true in other possible worlds.
Whereas you’re trying to invent a new category of laws of nature which is not based on objective evidence, which is illogical. And that wouldn’t be allowed in departments of philosophy.
We could not only drive a coach and horses through your change of position, I reckon we could get a jumbo jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier through it as well.
Hang on. Not only have you invented a new kind of law of nature, and a new type of reasoning you call philosophical reasoning, but now a new type of truth you call philosophical truth, as if philosophical truth can contradict the usual kind of truth, and to top it off you say that memory sticks block this philosophical truth from the modern mind.
Again, that’s your personal belief. The communication taking place on these forums proves there is communication going on. It doesn’t even prove that the communication is taking place between humans, you could be the Cheshire Cat or a HAL 9000 for all I know.*Not scientific evidence, no. But all the communication taking place on these forums proves we have a soul. We are engaged in intellectual ( loosely understood) operations, and intellecual acts are immaterial ( spiritual ) acts. A spiritual act must be sourced in an intellectual ( spiritual ) substance. We call this substance a soul. God breathed life into man, giving him a living, intellect, a human soul. *
In modern terminology, we have a central nervous system.
I’d ask for the schematics showing how this immaterial spiritual substance interfaces with the material brain, but somehow doubt there’s any funding for such research. Well, there you go, the modren mind, blocked as you say from philosophical truth, only gets funding to research the brain, the mere interface to the soul, and nada, zilch, zippo for researching immaterial spiritual substances. This modernity is madness I tells you, madness!
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Aloysium
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There is no interface between the spirit and the body.
They are united forming a new being - the human person.
A person acts and thinks.
We can understand human action and thought using the paradigm of “body/brain” or “spirit/mind”.
Same one person, different perspectives on what is going on.
To repeat Fr Hardon’s quote above regarding the soul (Thx Micosil):
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inocente
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I was going for something else: A thousand years ago, philosophers must have struggled to imagine how something like a moving image could be remembered in the mind. How in heaven’s name could a moving image be recorded in static material substance? Well, obviously it can’t, it’s impossible, it must be supernatural, some kind of immaterial spiritual substance.
Whereas we all have a mobile phone which can make and remember a movie. If mobile phones can do it without any immaterial spiritual substance, so can our minds. (Another way to look at this is that immaterial spiritual substance turned out to be what we now call electricity, but I digress
).On your last point, agreed but I doubt that those scientists and medicos preface every decision by worrying about whether they are proving or disproving pre-scientific philosophical dogma, since doing so would just get in the way of their work. Btw, I’ll deny this conversation ever took place since on CAF I’m constantly being told that all scientists are naughty materialists and there cannot possibly be any Catholic scientists, no sirree, don’t come here with such nonsense, etc., etc.
I don’t believe the mind is a homunculus, although that does seem to be a popular folk belief. To me that’s similar to the belief in qualia, and to the belief in immaterial substance. Each of these starts with an assumption that the mind is a thing which can be isolated. Then, when it’s nowhere to be found, hey presto it must be in an immaterial substance, which perfectly explains why it’s nowhere to be found. But the initial assumption is wrong. We can isolate functions, but we can’t isolate the mind. The mind emerges from the components, the mind is greater than the sum of its parts.
Interestingly, the religion of Bokononism starts with us formed from mud rather than the dust of Genesis:
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait…
To find out for certain what my wampeter was…
And who was in my karass…
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.
[karass = a group; wampeter = a purpose; prayer from Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut]
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Faith1960
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Aloysium
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I don’t know why you are asking Linus; he’s pretty smart but this area isn’t his forte.
I know a lot about the brain and have forgotten more.
Now, there’s a 360 some page book sitting on one of these shelves that was a best seller 30 years ago entitled The Brain.
For some reason I don’t think you’d be interested in reading it. If you are I will look for a link.
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Linusthe2nd
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I’m a slow learner, you will have to explain what you mean, I don’t get what you are trying to say.
Linus2nd.
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Linusthe2nd
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The brain is a tool for the rational soul. Without the rational soul, the brain does nothing, without the rational soul man is a dumb animal. So the brain, as well as the rest of the body, lives only so long as the soul is present, works only so Long as the soul is present The brain does not think or reason, it is the soul that does that. The brain processes the information coming in from the outside world, but it is the rational soul that makes sense of that information and by which man learns about anything at all. And in my humble opinion it is the rational soul which stores memories for later recollection. But it is also true that without the brain, or when it is damaged or asleep, the soul cannot think - but it can still keep man alive and functioning physically.
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Aloysium
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Your question about the soul is more appropriate than one about the brain given that this Forum is dedicated to the Catholic faith.
The question to which you were responding, which was about brain function, would be better answered on a forum dedicated to the Central Nervous System.
The Internet is the new Tower of Babel, imho.
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