Spirits, Souls, and Science

[ENIGMA]

In the Science and Faith thread, I posted:

Science could examine the viability of such a prospect by considering what properties such a hypothetical "spirit" entity would have and see if such properties are compatible with our current set of knowledge.

There are several properties that a spirit/soul is claimed to posess, such as being permenant, that it retains the identity or the essential essence of a person, that it is an indivisible unit (One cannot have 2.84% of their soul judged and sent to hell for instance), etc. From these properties, one can begin to examine whether such a construct is compatible with our knowledge.

What constitutes the identity or essential essence of a person? Presumably memory and personality come into it at some point since one would be hard pressed to argue that someone who went to sleep with a normal disposition and memories of being a computer programmer and woke up with a strong desire to erradicate Jews and memories of being a failed artist, getting imprisoned, writing a book, getting into German public office, and invading Poland, remained the same person through the night (or a person with the same essential essence) in any real sense.

The usefulness of such thought experiments of such breakdowns is that they provide cases to determine what the underlying structure is as opposed to just what the "black box" outputs. The illusion that one is blasting aliens on a distant planet becomes rather shattered when the "Blue Screen of Death" pops up and freezes one's computer in the middle of your game.

Actual cases of such breakdowns provide a ground on which to test such hypotheses. There are numerous cases where brain damage in certain areas of the brain dramatically changed personality, wiped out long term memory, prevented the synthesis of short term memory into long term memory (placing those who suffer such damage in a perpetual loop of sorts, since they are unable to retain any knowledge, even about the existence of their condition, for any significant length of time), and several even odder effects.

When brain damage causes memory loss, on what basis can one consider that brain destruction (the inevitable result of death) reverses the process. When brain damage causes dramatic personality change, what personality is really the "underlying essence" and how does brain destruction lead to such a result? Etc.

While one could construct conceptualizations that fail to trip these questions, such as having the brain not hold any of these things but just serve as a transmitter of such items from the "spirit world" here, even the alternate conceptualizations have their own problems. The notion that there is a single underlying spirit entity to manage our behaviors and actions through our brain is challenged by the findings of neuroscience where it has been determined that severing the corpus callosum (the brain connection between the two halves of the brain) the result is ultimately two seperate co-brains that can only "communicate" through common input (whether from the outside world or from analyzing bodily changes made by the other). Show just the emotional side of the brain a picture of Hitler and the person gets angry or upset to some degree. Ask them why they are angry or upset and (the verbal/logical side) of the brain is unable to give a real explanation since it didn't see the real stimulus.

The above scenario implies that splitting the brain by severing corpus callosum splits the underlying "self" of the person. If one considers that underlying self is the indivisible spirit or soul, then the notion simply falls apart.

...which was never really addressed.

So, with the above in mind, is there any concept of the soul/spirit of a human being that is consistent both with the experimental results mentioned and with what the religions teach?

If so, what is it?

If not, then how do those who believe in such entities reconcile this problem?

[QED]

I've presented much the same argument here myself. It seems to me that there are no end of thought experiments like this that confirm the most suggestive interpretation of what happens to "being" when death finally comes. People never seem to worry about "where they were" before they were born. What's obviously precious is the accumulated memories of experience and the acquired habits of worldly interaction. In this existence these things are clearly fragile and conditional on the integrity of the biological structures supporting them.

Yet we are asked to believe that we continue in some essential way after death. However we know, from less major traumas than death, that continuity of being can be disrupted while still living. As you say, some might believe we have backups in some heavenly data-warehouse waiting to be restored on our reaching heaven but, as I've pointed out before, people can go on to develop an entirely new personality with an entirely new set of relationships with the world after brain trauma. What then happens to their former personality? The two might not be sufficiently compatible to be reunited and could genuinely deserve to be "judged" separately as two different people -- like identical twins with different histories. But how would they get on in heaven? What if they still had the same wife?

If we take these logistical and technical difficulties and put them together with the incredibly strong motives to wish for (and threaten some with!) such a thing as an afterlife -- it becomes very difficult to see it as having any reality outside of human imagination. I also realise that this is compounded by the assumption that living things (or sometimes we are told only humans) have some vital essence which provides our consciousness -- our ability to look out through our eyes and sense the world. This they see as something apart from the rest of the world because they doubt that it can be an experience brought on by the physical constituents of that same world. Yet it is only a doubt, there is never a compelling explanation offered as to why it must be so.

Loss of consciousness (something we all get to experience one way or another if we sleep or don't watch where we're going) can also be a direct result of disruption of these same physical constituents and the sensation is (or has been for me at any rate) perceived as a skip in time. It seems very natural to me contemplate an indefinite skip taking place eventually for everyone.

[jjg]

The mind's power to understand the static, abstract, universals concepts of science itself out of the concrete, particular and changing world of the senses is proof of a reasoning soul in itself.

[Confused]

In the Science and Faith thread, I posted:

Science could examine the viability of such a prospect by considering what properties such a hypothetical "spirit" entity would have and see if such properties are compatible with our current set of knowledge.

There are several properties that a spirit/soul is claimed to posess, such as being permenant, that it retains the identity or the essential essence of a person, that it is an indivisible unit (One cannot have 2.84% of their soul judged and sent to hell for instance), etc. From these properties, one can begin to examine whether such a construct is compatible with our knowledge.

What constitutes the identity or essential essence of a person? Presumably memory and personality come into it at some point since one would be hard pressed to argue that someone who went to sleep with a normal disposition and memories of being a computer programmer and woke up with a strong desire to erradicate Jews and memories of being a failed artist, getting imprisoned, writing a book, getting into German public office, and invading Poland, remained the same person through the night (or a person with the same essential essence) in any real sense.

The usefulness of such thought experiments of such breakdowns is that they provide cases to determine what the underlying structure is as opposed to just what the "black box" outputs. The illusion that one is blasting aliens on a distant planet becomes rather shattered when the "Blue Screen of Death" pops up and freezes one's computer in the middle of your game.

Actual cases of such breakdowns provide a ground on which to test such hypotheses. There are numerous cases where brain damage in certain areas of the brain dramatically changed personality, wiped out long term memory, prevented the synthesis of short term memory into long term memory (placing those who suffer such damage in a perpetual loop of sorts, since they are unable to retain any knowledge, even about the existence of their condition, for any significant length of time), and several even odder effects.

When brain damage causes memory loss, on what basis can one consider that brain destruction (the inevitable result of death) reverses the process. When brain damage causes dramatic personality change, what personality is really the "underlying essence" and how does brain destruction lead to such a result? Etc.

While one could construct conceptualizations that fail to trip these questions, such as having the brain not hold any of these things but just serve as a transmitter of such items from the "spirit world" here, even the alternate conceptualizations have their own problems. The notion that there is a single underlying spirit entity to manage our behaviors and actions through our brain is challenged by the findings of neuroscience where it has been determined that severing the corpus callosum (the brain connection between the two halves of the brain) the result is ultimately two seperate co-brains that can only "communicate" through common input (whether from the outside world or from analyzing bodily changes made by the other). Show just the emotional side of the brain a picture of Hitler and the person gets angry or upset to some degree. Ask them why they are angry or upset and (the verbal/logical side) of the brain is unable to give a real explanation since it didn't see the real stimulus.

The above scenario implies that splitting the brain by severing corpus callosum splits the underlying "self" of the person. If one considers that underlying self is the indivisible spirit or soul, then the notion simply falls apart.

...which was never really addressed.

So, with the above in mind, is there any concept of the soul/spirit of a human being that is consistent both with the experimental results mentioned and with what the religions teach?

If so, what is it?

If not, then how do those who believe in such entities reconcile this problem?

I am not sure such a resolution could be possible. We know that damages to certain areas of the brain induce perosnality changes. To be specific, brain injuries that effect the frontal lobe produce very substantial personality changes. Some good and some bad. That man across the street who used to smile every time he came out to get his mail now curses and throws things at you. That child who was a straight a student who never misbehaved, now fails all his classes, calls every female a whore and every male a faggot. We also know that frontal and parietal lobe damages lead to personality changes as well as decreased inhibition control.

I can't say that the soul or spirit is related to the brain at all. Hormones and chemical reactions take place all throughout the endocrine system. Any changes in this system can affect personality or the soul as well.

I dont know how science and religion could ever agree on what makes up the soul or if one even exists.

[McCulloch]

I dont know how science and religion could ever agree on what makes up the soul or if one even exists.

Science generally does not assert the existence of something until there is reason and evidence that such a thing exists. Thus far, nothing has been presented to tempt science to postulate the soul hypothesis.

[ENIGMA]

I am not sure such a resolution could be possible. We know that damages to certain areas of the brain induce perosnality changes. To be specific, brain injuries that effect the frontal lobe produce very substantial personality changes. Some good and some bad. That man across the street who used to smile every time he came out to get his mail now curses and throws things at you. That child who was a straight a student who never misbehaved, now fails all his classes, calls every female a whore and every male a faggot. We also know that frontal and parietal lobe damages lead to personality changes as well as decreased inhibition control.

I can't say that the soul or spirit is related to the brain at all. Hormones and chemical reactions take place all throughout the endocrine system. Any changes in this system can affect personality or the soul as well.

The problem, at least for those that believe in immortal souls and the afterlife, is that many (if not all) of the functions that the soul is said to be able to maintain independently (memory, personality, identity, "oneness", etc) can be significantly disrupted/destroyed due to certain changes to that system. A major class of such changes is brain damage.

The several different results of studying the results of such brain damage above are readily consistent with the physical brain performing/maintaining all aspects of our mind, with the obvious final result being that once the brain dies, the mind dies with it.

I have yet to see an account of the results above that is explained in a manner consistent with a soul (or essential essence) of a person functioning in a manner such that the mind survives beyond the brain's physical death.

Judging from the responses on the thread, I somewhat suspect that neither has anyone else on the forum.

I would be interested in being proven wrong on this point. It makes the rest of the discussions on the notion of personal deities a bit superfluous, no?

[QED]

The problem, at least for those that believe in immortal souls and the afterlife, is that many (if not all) of the functions that the soul is said to be able to maintain independently (memory, personality, identity, "oneness", etc) can be significantly disrupted/destroyed due to certain changes to that system. A major class of such changes is brain damage.

Right, so ENIGMA, Confused and I have all said pretty much the same thing. But are we all thrashing a straw-man? Perhaps someone who finds it possible to accept the continuity of "self" beyond material extinction is seeing this in some other way. I'm at a total loss to see how, given a clear demonstration of the clinical dependence of the "self" upon the material host during life, the same "self" can cheat death and somehow be restored thereafter. I sometimes get the feeling that people aren't thinking about this argument because it never seems to get answered, yet people press on with their beliefs regardless.

[Cathar1950]

The problem, at least for those that believe in immortal souls and the afterlife, is that many (if not all) of the functions that the soul is said to be able to maintain independently (memory, personality, identity, "oneness", etc) can be significantly disrupted/destroyed due to certain changes to that system. A major class of such changes is brain damage.

Right, so ENIGMA, Confused and I have all said pretty much the same thing. But are we all thrashing a straw-man? Perhaps someone who finds it possible to accept the continuity of "self" beyond material extinction is seeing this in some other way. I'm at a total loss to see how, given a clear demonstration of the clinical dependence of the "self" upon the material host during life, the same "self" can cheat death and somehow be restored thereafter. I sometimes get the feeling that people aren't thinking about this argument because it never seems to get answered, yet people press on with their beliefs regardless.

I just don't think there is an answer until we can verify we are communicating with dead people. I have yet to understand how any idea of the self continues. That does not mean it doesn't. But we have no way of knowing. Maybe confused is right or even as some songs and books say; we are all just one big soul.
Maybe death is waking up and remembering being everyone and everything? I like that one because I imagined it after reading weird but great books.
Yes people do press on with their beliefs regardless but even more interesting and rewarding is that people press on with their lives regardless.

[bernee51]

I have yet to understand how any idea of the self continues. That does not mean it doesn't. But we have no way of knowing. Maybe confused is right or even as some songs and books say; we are all just one big soul.

It is easy to get your head around if you think of it being the Self (root consciousness) and the self (the sense of the individual). The latter dies with the body the former is extant in all and identical in all.

[Cathar1950]

I have yet to understand how any idea of the self continues. That does not mean it doesn't. But we have no way of knowing. Maybe confused is right or even as some songs and books say; we are all just one big soul.

It is easy to get your head around if you think of it being the Self (root consciousness) and the self (the sense of the individual). The latter dies with the body the former is extant in all and identical in all.

That is why I like the "one big soul" concept and the idea of us waking and remembering being everything and everyone. We should start our own religion. T-shirts and everything bernie.