Why does the soul need the brain seems like a logical question especially in the context of the belief held by the leading ID proponent of the Discovery Institute Michael Egnor. He has written extensively on the theme of the immaterial soul that, in his view, is an independent entity, separate of the human body. What Dr. Egnor consistently fails to acknowledge is the obvious connection or interdependence between a functioning brain and self-awareness or consciousness. I wrote about it here.
If certain parts of human brain are damaged or disabled, just like in case of general anesthesia, the human brain loses the sense of consciousness or self-awareness either permanently or temporarily. The immaterial soul fails to make up for the damaged or disabled brain…
Dr. Egnor’s personal experiences (and he has many) as a neurosurgeon convinced him that many people, including many of his patients, with the great majority of their brains missing have developed and function normally. Egnor is convinced that an immaterial soul makes up for the loss of brain mass that is responsible for normal brain function in people with normal brain size or no damage to any of the brain parts.
It appears Dr. Egnor believes that unlike a computer software that can’t function without the computer hardware, human brain has an ability to make up for the loss of the hardware with the computer software – the immaterial soul.
Is Dr. Egnor’s view consistent with the readily available facts?
I personally see Dr. Egnor building and supporting a strawman by his selective choice of facts…Hey! That’s my opinion and that’s why we have this blog full of experts to disagree with me or Dr. Egnor…(I kinda like the guy though).
Let’s see…First off, not all cases of patients with missing parts of their brains experience the supposed miraculous saving powers of the immaterial soul. It appears that the amount of the missing part of the brain mass doesn’t seem to matter… What seems to matter more is which part (s) of the brain is missing and not how much of the brain mass is actually missing. Some parts of the brain seem essential for consciousness and self-awareness and others do not.
However, the main point of this OP is:
<strong> Why does the soul need the brain? Or why would human body need a brain at all, if the immaterial soul has an ability to compensate for the brain losses?
If the software (the soul) can operate without the hardware (the brain) why do we even need the brain in the first place?</strong>
It seems like a faulty or at least a wasteful design to me…
Neil:
Mung:
That’s actually true. Hold that thought, Mung!
Are near death experiences among clinically death people the evidence of a separate entity not requiring the brain, like a soul?
Now I’m going to have a lie down. The concept of my bad back is starting to play up.
Bruce:
keiths:
walto:
What are you pissed off about? It’s the truth. Bruce’s argument failed, so there’s no point in rehashing the discussion unless he can come up with a better one this time around.
That’s right.
I simply imagined the person and I imagined the paper and I imagined the map and I imagined Middle Earth and all that I have of them are my representations. Just because my representations are real and physical it doesn’t follow that what they represented is real and physical.
Perhaps you can tell me how the allegedly physical and real map came to exist physically and really in my brain absent a representation of them existing in my brain.
I find it absolutely fascinating that I can take something that does not exist and turn into into something physical and real. How do I do that? Where’s the interface!
Remember, there is no interface between the non-physical and the physical. If there are truly imaginary and non-physical “things” out there, how can our brains possibly get at them. Well, that one’s easy. These things really are physical! And therefore they really are real.
ETA: Remember, everything is, at least in principle, reducible to physics. So Middle Earth is just as real and physical as anything else that keiths can think of.
Mung,
The map in question is a printed piece of paper, Mung. Remember?
It hasn’t been wadded up and inserted into your brain. (Though that might explain some things.)
🙂
So you agree that all I have to work with are representations. And my representations are physical and real. But from that fact I cannot deduce that the thing represented is either physical or real. This is precisely what you have been arguing. Yet you can then ask:
Are you really unable to determine that the map is physical, and that it is real?
Pray tell. How?
I suspect that keiths is a dualist and just doesn’t know it.
Mung,
You are hopelessly confused about the difference between representations and their referents. The topic is simply too difficult for you. Why keep banging your head against it when it only upsets you?
Wouldn’t you rather watch cartoons instead?
BruceS,
Bruce,
I’m sorry I haven’t had time to pick up on points you’ve raised. (Another tie, another venue, perhaps) but let me just suggest you have a look at this brief animated TED talk by Iain McGilichrist.
Iain McGilChrist
That’s what philosophers have called “intentional inexistence.” Many of the (hard to fathom–for me, anyhow) posts by KN are about the “naturalization of intentionality.”
It may not be simple–but it still needs to be figured out! I mean, Missouri is really a place, Middle Earth isn’t–even though we can think about and refer to them both.
If he agrees with this, I don’t mind your post. Otherwise, fuck off.
Musta missed that one.
Dayum!! X>{
But I don’t think that it has changed. A tetrahedron is a simple geometrical form. People may disagree about the nature of concepts in general but the concept of the ideal tetrahedron is not something that people would disagree about.
Thinking about black swans invokes in us concepts which are less certain and have not always been agreed upon. If someone believes that black swans are just mythical creatures then I would say that their concept is false and needs to be amended. The concept of a swan is connected to so many other concepts, bird, animal, flight, organism, swimming, eukaryote, growth, evolution and so on. It’s no wonder our concept of a black swan changes as we grow in our experiences.
walto:
keiths:
walto:
What’s relevant is whether it failed, not whether Bruce agrees that it failed.
walto, to Mung:
Mung is discombobulated by the fact that a representation can exist even if its referent doesn’t:
It’s not odd, Mung. Ever seen a drawing of Superman? The drawing is a representation, and it’s real. Superman isn’t.
That’s what I am doing.
You’re the great educator, educate me. How is a physical system able to create a representation of a referent that doesn’t exist? And if that referent does exist, where does it exist? How is it that they both do not exist in the brain, they are not both equally physical, and equally real?
You still have the “interface problem,” which is why I call you a dualist. You still have to have a way to get at this non-physical entity, wherever it is, in order to create a representation of it.
Oh, I don’t know about that. Maybe you think the isosceles tetrahedron is the ideal tetrahedron. Maybe I, on the other hand, think that the semi-orthocentric tetrahedron is the ideal. Maybe Walto thinks the isogonic tetrahedron is the ideal.
Man, that ethereal realm of possibly-ideal things is really crowded. isn’t it?
We don’t compare concepts. We use them. We may compare how we use them. But we don’t compare concepts.
Interesting question. How about you make a representation of something that does exist, and then make a small change to the representation. That results in a representation of something that does not exist.
Mung,
No. I know a hopeless task when I see one.
Easily. Artists can draw Superman, Mung, and — SPOILER ALERT — Superman doesn’t exist.
There is no interface problem. The referent doesn’t exist and exerts no causal influence on anything else. It doesn’t have to interact with anything.
Mung:
Mung’s idiot twin:
CharlieM,
Do not allow any of the bored to death narcissists here to influence your health…
Just take your time… I really appreciate your thoughtful comments even though I don’t necessarily agree with them all the time… I really appreciate your deep feelings involved…
Not really.
referent: the thing that a word or phrase denotes or stands for.
So you say it’s a thing but it doesn’t exist. That’s what discombobulates me. In my world, things that do not exist are not things. They have no existence. They are no thing.
I would say that when Tolkien conceived of Middle Earth that he brought into existence something which had not existed before. You would say he did no such thing. According to you Middle Earth has never existed, yet here we are talking abut it. How odd.
Are you even aware that you constantly repeat yourself? To what end? You’ve said the same thing here that you said about Middle Earth. That’s repetition, not argument.
Superman is real. Haven’t you seen the movies?
Couldn’t do it. You see, the representation exists in my brain, it is physical, and it is real.
Now you’ve got it! Hold that thought!
So, you have never, ever changed your mind?
Fair Witness, to Mung:
I think Mung’s problem is that there’s never been anything there for him to change.
“The contents of Mung’s mind” refers to one of those nonexistent entities.
If I were to mention that there can be real representations of nonexistent representations of real referents, what do you suppose would happen to Mung’s brain?
It’s a real Turing test, isn’t it – for us to try and figure out what kind of entity we are conversing with.
You see keiths, before superman existed, someone had to conceive of superman. In their brain (where else). Superman, who never existed before, became something physical and real, in their brain. Somehow their brain, a physical thing, managed to reach into the realm of non-existence and create superman from nothing. What interaction problem?
Or, a bunch of physics and chemistry happened, and superman was born. Fully physical. Fully real. In someone’s brain. What part of it involves things that don’t exist or are not physical or are not real? Do tell.
Brain. No, I’ve never changed my brain. I’m a reductive physicalist, you see. It’s just physics, or in principle reducible to physics. I don’t know where these ideas of things that are not physical and not real and don’t really exist come from.
I have observed that you use glibness as a defense mechanism whenever someone actually tries to teach you something about reality that may threaten your belief system.
Like the Hitler Diaries !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries
Mung,
No, Mung. Superman is not real. He has never existed, and he never became “something physical and real” in anyone’s brain.
Whoever came up with the idea of Superman formed a representation of Superman in their brain. The representation is not the referent. This is simple and obvious. I doubt that you’ll ever grasp it.
Why on earth would their brain have to “reach into the realm of non-existence”?
Does the Tesla factory have to reach into the realm of non-existence in order to pluck out every Model S?
Seriously, Mung — you’re simply not bright enough for this topic, and grappling with it is only frustrating you.
Look! Scooby Doo is starting on the Cartoon Network!
Look keiths, let me simplify it for you.
There’s no room in your reductive physicalist world for non-physical entities. If it is physical, it exists, and is real. You haven’t even begun to explain how your “physical things only” world produces these non-physical things that are not real and do not exist.
Why you would even try is a mystery to me.
Whatever the physical world produces is physical, and real. Including superman and middle earth.
Bite me. keiths is trying to teach me about things that ARE NOT REAL.
Mung:
Shorter Mung:
Mung, you are truly one of the stupidest people on the Internet. Bill Cole is starting to look intelligent by comparison.
Are you actually suggesting that “fake witness” and keiths are not the same person?
keiths:
But J-Mac isn’t.
I am flattered that you think I might be keiths, but I am not. You will have to take my word for that.
Sorry about that! I’m not the best of communicators!
But it’s also a really difficult problem — not at least of which because there are various competing accounts “on the market” about how to naturalize intentionality, and there are real conflicts between them. And those conflicts arise due to deep-seated disagreements about how to understand what kind of phenomenon ‘intentionality’ is!
I suppose this is where I see the value of following Sellars’s lead, and distinguishing between (i) what we can talk about and (ii) what we can interact with.
Brentano characterizes intentionality at times in terms of “aboutness” (what we can talk & think about) and at times in terms of “directedness” (the ways in which beliefs and desires are directed at the world).
The more I think about all this stuff, the more inclined I am to think that the clue to “naturalizing intentionality” is distinguishing between these and giving separate naturalistic accounts of each: a naturalistic account of language and culture and a naturalistic account of enactive cognition.
A source of great many difficulties in Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Meinong and Husserl, arise from the confusion of these two.
In other words, the difference between Middle-Earth and Missouri is that even though we can talk about both (and indeed make true and false claims about them, relative to the language-game), we can causally interact with Missouri but not with Middle-Earth; Missouri is integrated into our perceptions and actions in a way that Middle-Earth cannot be. A map of Missouri can be used to get there and what you can expect to see when you do; a map of Middle-Earth cannot be.
Not necessarily!
I suppose for someone who has never heard of Missouri, has no idea where on the planet it might be, has never seen a map and wouldn’t be able to make sense of it if she did, Missouri might as well be like Middle-Earth to her if someone were to tell her about it.
I suppose I’d have to say something like “functionally integrated into a family of possible and actual perceptions and actions” in order to get around this objection.
Growing up in Australia, it is hard to see how that was much of a difference. It is only since moving to the USA that the difference becomes important.
Fair enough, but it’s not crucial to my account that the difference between an actual place like Missouri and a fictional place like Middle-Earth is equally salient to everyone at all times.
KN,
Is that a dig at the fine state of Missouri? I assure you it’s real. I’ve even been there!
Damn, that’s one hell of a typo! Fixing now!
OT: Chance, determinism and the classical theory of probability
I have on my Middle Earth goggles!