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…
It has been published, and in any case there’s nothing illegal about quoting from unpublished manuscripts.
Relax, Alan.
Mung,
Here’s a suggestion. Why not ask God to explain to you how the brighter folks know the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist? Then, when he doesn’t answer, you can get pissed at him.
KN,
And as I keep pointing out, you don’t need to ask me for a definition. You have dismissed physicalism, comparing it to theology. For you to so confidently dismiss physicalism means that you already have definitions in mind. (You wouldn’t foolishly dismiss something you didn’t even understand, would you?) Use those definitions to answer walto’s question. He is asking about your position:
His question is relevant, and it gets to the heart of the issue. You are clearly looking for excuses to evade it.
Yeah. (Although keiths has corrected me on what I must have been really truly asking about.) Anyhow, I thought he blew that exchange pretty badly. (Or at least I think I think that. Really should confer with keiths on the matter before saying any more. Could be lying again for all I know!)
walto,
Then by all means make your case. Quote the exchange and show where I went wrong.
I’m sure you must know best what I think.
Be brave, walto.
Support your claim.
This is worth a repost:
Do you see your mistake, Mung? It’s obvious.
Too lazy to go back. But think about it–it was a dumb challenge from mung, imo. And you just ducked it about 50 times. Kinda pathetic, I thought. Easy-peasy question–why not just answer it instead of running away like that?
walto:
I think it’s fear more than laziness. You’d look stupid trying to support your claim.
I knew you’d know best!
Anyhow I’ll leave it to you and mung to hash out. You’re both much more industrious when it comes to hunting down and linking old confabs. And maybe it’ll be clear that you’re right. Maybe you WERE better off ducking him 50 times like a little baby.
CharlieM:
No. I might have been the first to use the word, but you had already introduced the idea:
Your claim is that the physical tetrahedron changes, while the ideal tetrahedron is changeless.
It’s quite simple. If you can put in words your definition of a triangle without adding any features that are non-essential, then we can compare our definitions to see how our concepts match.
My definition is that a triangle is a two-dimensional shape with three sides and three angles.
It’s more about our thinking activity. What do we need to do to hold the concept triangle in our minds without it becoming a mental picture of a specific triangle. It takes mental effort on our part.
Fair enough. So long as by gone bananas you mean transplanted to a higher dimension 🙂
Oh for god’s sake, they’ll basically match if we were taught the same language–as will our definitions of banana. Now, for the sixth time: So freaking what? Why wouldn’t they?
Utter cobb salad.
I have already gave my reasons for not liking the word “changelessness”, and “remains the same for all time” is not much better. They both imply a static condition. Maybe atemporal would have been a better word.
It’s not so much that any physical tetrahedron changes, it is more that they are non-permanent temporary structures, they come and go.
And do you agree that I was talking specifically about basic geometric forms here and not any other aspect of reality? Your counterexamples were inappropriate because they did not take this into account.
Do you really think that Darwinists, young earth creationists, materialists and people who hold all the other world views you can think of would all have the same definition of “banana”?
And how much mental effort did that reply take? 🙂
I did not ask you how you know the Easter Bunny does not exist.
I know the Easter Bunny does exist because I flipped a coin and it came up heads.
keiths,
The key difference being that walto asked me to clarify a position I don’t hold using terminology I don’t use, and I’ve asked you to clarify a position you do hold using terminology you do use.
I made it perfectly clear on multiple occasions that
(1) I don’t find a useful distinction between “the physical” and “the non-physical”;
(2) I do find a useful distinction between “fundamental physics” and all the rest of empirical science;
(3) I regard all actual entities as concrete particulars on philosophical grounds;
(4) the best metaphysics that our science can give us right now is that concrete particulars are dynamic processes;
(5) scientific practices functionally disclose dynamic processes at various ranges and scales, hence dynamic processes can be taken as quantum fields, metabolic reactions, cognitive activity, currency fluctuations, and the birth and death of stars.
(6) I take it that this is sufficient to also explain real manifest-image phenomena such as hopes, dreams, wishes, shadows, rainbows, holes, anxiety, and finger-snaps — especially if one accepts something like the Buddhist doctrine of the Two Truths.
All this is stuff I’ve said countless times before, so pretending it’s new is just disingenuous.
In addition I also think that
(7) physicalist ontology as understood by philosophers like J. J. C. Smart, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, David Lewis, and Alex Rosenberg, regardless of whether it is “reductive” or “non-reductive”, always treats actual physics and philosophy of physics at arm’s length; it takes physics as metaphysics without ever taking any time to learn enough physics to be entitled to do so;
(8) physicialist ontologists never think about what their metaphysics implies for their epistemology: how, given their account of what is real, to explain our cognitive grip on what reality is?
(9) by taking for granted the deliverances of physicists (in a suitably watered-down format), not being able to account for the epistemology that their own metaphysics requires, and being unable to account for their own cognitive grip on reality, physicalism is in the exact same position as theology.
This too is also all stuff that I’ve said before.
In any event, I’m going on vacation for two weeks and I don’t have WiFi access, so I won’t be able to log onto TSZ.
I’d say that I’d miss this place, but that would be a lie.
Waiting for you to admit you were wrong.
So I think you’re referring to the exchange that began as a result of this post by keiths.
I wasn’t really doing that either. I was just musing to myself, really.
Ah, understandable. To be sure, the whole business about how to understand the relation between the manifest image and the scientific image is central to my thinking. And I do think that the scientific image — unlike the manifest image — gives us a nominalistic metaphysics.
I just don’t see what philosophical work is being achieved by using the word “physical” to insist that all concrete particulars are physical. Does it mean that all concrete particulars can be explained in terms of fundamental physics? Does it mean that no concrete particulars can have properties that violate fundamental physics?
Not only is no one here willing to tell me, but then I’m accused of being insufficiently informed about the profession of which I am active member for asking questions that are being asked by actual philosophers of physics (Don Ross, James Ladyman), philosophers of science (Ian Hacking, Karen Barad, Joseph Rouse), and process ontologists (Johanna Seibt, Alicia Juarrero).
Wow, I’m really not going to miss this place.
Have a great vacation, KN.
You may not miss us, but some of us will miss your participation.
Although each could have different reasons for that feeling.
Since I mentioned Crane, I’ll assume that was meant for my possible reply.
It seems original, but for me to decide on informedness, I’d need a reference to work and page number.
So accused only by one person, I think. I’m inclined to ignore much of what that one person says.
Enjoy your vacay!
Right. It was this stuff, and all the ducking and weaving that followed it:
As can be seen, it occurred in a simultaneous discussion on another thread. I’ve obviously got to work harder to keep all the keiths kerfluffles straight (unless keiths is right that I really DO keep them straight but have a (to me, obscure) reason–involving enjoying lying–for pretending not to).
Anyhow, be all my many and serious character flaws as they may, I don’t think your challenges to keiths about model specification were so tough or that they warranted all the running and hiding he did. It seems to me you were just engaging in a blatant and improper attempt to burden shift.
W
So you caught me acting like keiths again. crap.
Yes, of course we have the same basic definition. If we didn’t we couldn’t understand each other when we talked about bananas. Do you know what a definition is? We don’t have to share world views to have the same concept of banana. Just like triangles. You think they’re eternal forms; KN says they aren’t, but if you didn’t understand each other you couldn’t sensibly argue about the matter.
Anyhow, what point are you trying to get across, exactly? We both have the same general understanding of what triangles are. So what? What do you think follows from the fact that we are both English speakers?
More than it was actually worth.
Or Facebook! 🙂
Have a good holiday and let me endorse Bruce’s sentiments. You moved me from a philosophical ignoramus to a poor first year student!
KN is good company, insofar as I recall discussions of de re and de dicto and concerns with Plantinga’s correct understanding of the concepts.
Has anybody ever considered a third possibility, something connecting the brain and the “soul” whatever that is?
Some pretty respected scientists in the field of physics, but especially in quantum mechanics have suspected that there is some kind of a hidden “force” or “variable” that tricks all the experiments that have ever been conducted in QM to get the results IT wanted… Could the brain/soul issue be the same?
J-Mac,
The metaphysical possibilities are endless once you start folding non-physical entities into the mix. A layer between the brain and soul? Why not seventeen layers, several of which loop back onto earlier layers?
The question, of course, is “What, if anything, do you gain in explanatory or predictive power by adding more metaphysical complexity?”
Take your hypothetical three-layer model. What does that extra layer between brain and soul do, exactly, and what can a three-layer model explain that a two-layer or one-layer model cannot?
blah, blah, blah… which means only one thing keiths… right? I’m tired…so long… You have serous issues, keiths and I’m not going to feed them even further… cioa!
Anyone else out there who thinks there’s merit to a three-layer model and is willing to explain why?
KN,
False. He asked you about a position you do hold, and the question he asked was (and is) relevant to that position. You’ve been trying to evade it ever since, in a remarkable display of intellectual cowardice and dishonesty.
You’ve told us that you reject physicalism, which in your confusion you take to be equivalent to reductive physicalism. (They’re not equivalent, of course, because if they were, it would mean that nonreductive physicalism isn’t physicalism at all — a nonsensical implication.)
Yet you embrace the idea that everything is “physical-1”, a category that by your definition includes all “spatio-temporal concrete particulars”. At the same time, you deny that everything “physical-1” is also physical. (That’s because admitting as much would undermine your earlier rejection of physicalism.)
So where does all your weird terminology and CYAing lead? It follows from your statements that there must exist non-physical spatio-temporal concrete particulars. Walto recognized this and asked you the obvious question:
So yes, he asked you about a position you do hold, and his question is highly relevant. Stop dodging it.
I am not talking about a basic definition of the word, I am talking about an accurate definition which fully explains and encompasses all the essential features of the entity defined.
In what way do you think the concept “triangle” is different between us and someone who is unilingual only in Mandarin or isiZulu?
Haha. This is so silly. There are good definitions, which encompass necessary and sufficient conditions and, presumably no more, and poorer ones that either under- or over-shoot. And, of course, if one wants the Mandarin to be talking about the same thing we are, they’d have to have (at least roughly–see Quine) the same concept of triangle–or banana that we do. What could be more obvious? We are either talking about the same stuff or we aren’t. If the Zulu really means all plane figures when we mean what is denoted by our “triangle” in ordinary English, or she means only rotten bananas when we mean all bananas, then we’re not communicating very well.
Charlie, please. This is very boring and repetitive. What the hell are you trying to get at with these platitudes about definition? What does any of it have to do either with brains, souls, universals, or, really, anything else of any interest whatever?
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY????
There’s no such thing.
Sometimes there probably are. “Unmarried man” for “Bachelor” may be the most famous example argued for. But again, if those people are right–so fucking what?
{Sorry, but I’m really losing my patience with this guy. What the hell is he trying to say? What does he think would follow from this even if true?}
I tend to disagree about that. As I see it, “unmarried man” has to do with a contractual arrangement, while “bachelor” has to do with a life style. So they aren’t quite the same thing.
Your mistake is to try to take him seriously. I suggest that you instead consider him a source of amusement.
Good advice. Worth a try.
The soul is that which we experience directly, the brain is a concept we arrive at through thinking. So when we speculate about the connection between soul and brain our starting point should be the thinking soul and not the brain.
The brain isn’t a concept. The concept of the brain is a concept. The brain is meat.
That IMO you are getting caught up in linguistics and are ignoring the entity itself.