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…
No. But I know a few psychiatrists who might take on the challenge of a closeted gazzman… Let me know when you are ready… 😉
And the soul gets restrained by general anesthesia… Who would have thought?
We? You got a mouse in your pocket?
LeBron is part of the physical manifestation of the team. The putting the ball in the hole more than his opponents is his job. Drafting him to obtain his genetics was a mechanism, providing high quality teammates is a mechanism. Physical to physical.
Back to my question” what mechanism does the fictional legal enitity use to manipulate the physical manifestation of the team at the quantum level?
That would depend if you were talking about the physical manifestion of the team or the legal documents in which the legal entity resides. Last I checked fans to not go to the arena to stare at legal document of opposing teams.
I got it, in the case of an incorporated team a fictional legal substance.
The corporation is the team both legally and physically , the owner is the mechanism controls the corporation through which he controls the physical and legal entities of the team.
Ship of Perseus.
No no no no no. WjM presupposes something wonderful happens in the magical land of quantum, I just wondered how it works. But now you bring it up how does it work in your view?
Only in your immaterial mind Fifth.
Yes,just one clarification if LeBron took a leak in the meadow would he then be the meadow? A pantheistic viewpoint?
peace
Ship of Theseus
/Pedant
newton:
The “hole”?
Come on, newton. It’s a “basketball ring”. Just ask Ted Cruz.
Alan:
Pedant fail.
ETA: Heh. He fixed it.
There are lots of things that exist that aren’t substances. It would help if you had read any philosophy at all before commenting on it.
Does Egnor say this?
Now it’s your turn to read what 17th century (and earlier) philosophers have to say about this.
Only if you think that there is an interaction problem. There isn’t.
For substance dualists there are two substances, as if one thing and another. As I said, if one thing is next to another, then why would they NOT interact? In this perspective, you have to try harder to make the interaction problem an actual problem.
For monists to whom the immaterial is primary and matter is derivative, the “interaction” follows straightforwardly due to the derivative and secondary nature of matter. No interaction problem in this case either.
I suppose you are right.
So you agree the immaterial entity interacts with mater using it’s physical manifestation.
It works exactly the same way with the immaterial soul.
That wasn’t so hard now was it.
Teams and corporations and meadows and rain showers are only fictional to materialists.
The rest of us have no problem understanding that they actually exist and interact with matter.
So you are saying that corporations are fictional entities yet can interact with funds.
This is the sort of confusion that results from your worldview.
correct
The owner is not the team but the owner has a job that he performs on behalf of the team
Now replace owner with brain or neuron and team with person you get an idea of how the immaterial soul interacts with matter using it’s “physical structure”.
simple is it not?
peace
yes and they are all immaterial.
ie not consisting of matter
It would help if you did not try and use philosophical terminology as way to obscure and avoid the obvious.
peace
Because the immaterial may lack certain properties that would enable it to do so, like mass. What are the properties of immaterial substance, and which ones allow it to interact with matter?
KN … things that exist that aren’t substances
Such as ?
I’ve seen that type of argument, but it is usually applied to the minds in psychology versus brains in neuroscience. Roughly, the mind supervenes on the brain and mental properties get their causal efficacy from that relation to brains.
So are you saying that souls are the same thing as the minds of the science of psychology? If not, what is the difference between minds and souls and how does that difference relate to brains?
There is a modern and different metaphysical issue with substance dualism that Kim has presented in his Pairing Problem:
What, no Youtube videos?
My concerns are already provided in my previous posts. GlenDavidson in another thread and Timothya’s latest posts are also helpful.
And he kept the lady talking and conscious, to help him determine what he might be damaging with that surgical removal.
Thanks , but I did my Ph.D dissertation on one. I’m done.
Erik,
As explained, they can’t be ‘next to each other’ (except, maybe in the pineal gland).
BruceS,
That’s good stuff, thanks. Re Rovelli, I read his latest and picked up the more detailed one before that. Also, on your recommendation, picked up the new Becker, which seems really fun. Dunno when I’ll get to that stuff though. I’ve been concentrating on political theory lately–mostly some old stuff by Harry Eckstein.
When you can tell me how one object makes another move towards it (what we call gravity) without resorting to a descriptive model of the observed behavior itself, you’ll have a point of distinction between matter magically affecting matter and the immaterial magically affecting matter.
I don’t know…but if he isn’t aware of the fact that general anesthesia disables the soul and causes total unconsciousness, he’d better stop writing non-sense about the immaterial soul being independent of human body…
Who needs a soul that survives death if by stimulating the gular gyrus in the right cortex of the brain causes out-of-body experiences that clinically death people report when they come back to life?
Exactly!!! What kind of damage can be done, among other things, when certain parts of the brain are removed? Do you know?
The patient becomes an unconscious vegetable… The soul gets permanently disconnected with the brain, which brings us to the theme of this OP…
This is very damning to you, because “it’s nowhere” is obviously false. Or maybe damning to your university.
And as explained, there cannot be any special need for interaction either. Existence suffices.
This is kinda biggie. When you dispute someone’s concept of soul, you’d better know how the concept works. I don’t care about Egnor specifically, but every proponent of the concept I know of would see general anesthesia as liberating for the soul instead of restraining. And death would be eye-opening for an average soul.
Do you see how helpful it is when you read the material again? 😉
And you wanted me to spoon-feed you…
I will address some of the issues brought up on by Glen and others on this thread in another OP. It is easier than addressing more or less the same issue individually…
Again, for those who are curious about how QM might work, I suggest reading Hameroff’s easy to understand (for most) slide show…
https://quantumconsciousness.org/
In your view does mater affect the immaterial as well as the reverse?
So basically you couldn’t care less what the evidence shows…
You still want the soul to exist…
You and BA77 are the same 😉
I’m glad we have this out of the way…
There is no matter, no time, no change, no force. There is only the universal wave function in the block universe.
Concepts like time and matter are appearances which emerge from human perception of structure and pattern.
So asking for an explanation of these emergent qualities is getting things in the wrong order. Rather, it is explanation itself from which they emerge.
—————–
Note for those of limited mind: Yes, I know that the block universe is based on Special Relativity and work needs to be done to integrate QM and General Relativity. I leave these niggling details for the reader; I prefer to entangle myself in contemplation of deep reality.
Well… don’t this seem like a contradiction BruceS?
It seems obvious to those with an open mind
that either general relativity or QM is wrong…
I’m going to be the one with limited mind and say the General Relativity must be wrong…
This transition to me is similar to the Newtonian>Einstein one…
Some aspects of Newtonian physics still work… some aspects of Einstein’s relativity can and will work…
But QM is changing everything…There is just no stopping to it…
I am not sure what slide show you are referring to, but I have read his joint paper Consciousness in the universe: a review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory..
I don’t think that paper means what you think it means
Specifically, he is not explaining QM and how it might work; rather, he is claiming that cognition results from quantum computations in microtubules. Whether that explanation works is very much in doubt; see the criticisms in the same issue of the periodical. Hameroff and Penrose’s view is certainly very much a minority position in neuroscience and physics.
By the way, as far as I can tell, Penrose and Hameroff remain physicalists. For one thing, they rely on standard QM as applied in the experiment they reference to provide indirect evidence of coherence and quantum events in the microtubules. For another, while it is true that Penrose’s Orchestrated Reduction would be an extension to current QM, extending QM to solve the measurement problem is a well-recognized possibility in philosophy and physics, as in the GRW approach which changes Schrodinger equation to enable spontaneous collapse.
“I keep pitchin’ ‘em and you keep missin’ ‘em”
ETA fix link issue
Erik,
I’m sorry, but your post is completely wrong, erik. Descartes is actually pretty clear on this in the principles. Whatever is in space is divisible, minds are not divisible. Therefore, minds are not in space.
Pretty simple stuff, but you have to be (i) willing to read something; and (ii) not a know-it-all. So, alas.
Quick! Someone get the Acme Disentangler 3000!
You have made QM your god.
Too late, for I and all my counterparts have reached a state of perfect coherence in the wave function of the universe.
On another note, I recall a posts of your where you seemed concerned with philosophical sophistication of Rovelli. Van Fraassen has a paper Rovelli’s World where he examines Rovelli’s relation interpretation of QM. I’ve only given it a quick read, but it seemed to me van Fraassen was impressed with its philosophical sophistication.
As well, Rovelli co-wrote the SEP article on his interpretation.
I’m not saying his interpretation is correct; I’m only giving evidence for his philosophical bona fides.
Thanks, that’s interesting. It may just be that the book of his I read, The Order of Time, is intended for a pretty unsophisticated audience. (I mean I AM that, except in philosophy.) The one I just picked up, Reality is not what it seems looks somewhat meatier (i.e., fewer anecdotes about the Italian personaity), but, as said, I don’t know when I’ll get to it. The Becker book looks more engaging, actually.
I know the topics aren’t really the same, but to me it’s all, you know, physics for dummies.
Here’s a partial list off the top of my head:
colors, sounds, currency fluctuations, waves of political unrest, techniques, policies, laws, values, numbers, beliefs, space-time distortions, concepts, desires, intentions, stories, theories, actions, holes, shadows, trends, averages, musical rhythms, literary genres, explosions.
These are all things that we talk about, and that are clearly part of our shared public world (so we’re not even talking about borderline cases like delusions, hallucinations, and illusions). These all obviously, unproblematically, exist. But none of them are things. A revolution is not a thing, and neither is a trend or a currency fluctuation.
(This all assumes, by the way, that there are going to be any substances or things at all in our fundamental ontology. I don’t think that there are any substances at the most basic or general way of describing reality, so neither “material” nor “immaterial”.)
Yes, I think his books are intended as popularizations and I agree they are light on details, even for popularizations.
I think most of his academic publications are physics, although the SEP lists a couple from 90s in journal Foundations of Physics which sounds somewhat philosophical. Also, he is still affiliated professor in Department of History and Philosophy of Science at University of Pittsburgh, for what that is worth.
While searching for a list of his recent publications, I came across this one, which should warm the hearts of you and other people here. Or at least 1/2 it will.
Physics Needs Philosophy. Philosophy Needs Physics.
Bruce:
I like it. It’s a lot easier than typing out “J-Mac, colewd, fifth, Erik, Byers…”.
It can even be abbreviated as “TOLM”.
This gets at why I find rhetorical appeals to “physics” to be at best philosophically useless, regardless of who is making them.
First, appealing to “physics” doesn’t distinguish between fundamental physics and physics that is not fundamental. Second, we have at least two theories of fundamental physics — QM and GR — that are conceptually incompatible. (I say “at least” because there’s also the question whether thermodynamics is fundamental or emergent.) Third, there are multiple “interpretations” of QM that are logically incompatible and empirically indistinguishable.
Be that as it may: with respect to life and cognition, what matters is far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. (E.g. Juarrero’s Dynamics in Action.) So the relation between far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics to QM, or GR, or whatever theory succeeds either or both, is at best tangentially relevant and at worst an unnecessary distraction.
I recently saw a ranking of university philosophy depts according to which Pitt was #1, ahead of such longtime powerhouses as Princeton, Harvard and Stanford in the US and Oxford and Cambridge in England. I mean all these kinds of rankings are pretty subjective, but still….
Rutgers also was surprisingly (to me) high up on the list.
Good to know, although it was really the “affiliate” bit that was bothering me. I am not sure if that means he is actually doing work in Philsophy or if it just that Physics dept had its quota of affiliates already.
I did find his resume. His publications are mostly physics, but there are a few papers on history (Greek Physics mostly it seems) and philosophy of physics.
They’re rankings of perceived prestige, not of merit, and should be taken as such. We have compelling reasons to believe that prestige is not a reliable indicator of merit, so we should take these rankings as rankings of prestige, and not of merit. (The point is not that prestigious places don’t have merit but that non prestigious places don’t lack merit.)
Be that as it may, Pittsburgh has been a very good philosophy department for many years — they have Brandom, McDowell, Nicholas Rescher, Michael Thompson, Anil Gupta, and Mark Wilson all in Philosophy, and a whole separate Department of History and Philosophy of Science that has (among others) James Lennox (who has written extensively on Darwin), Edouard Machery (who works on philosophy of neuroscience), and Sandra Mitchell (philosophy of biology).
Rutgers has been one of the top-ranking analytic programs for a long time — even with Fodor now gone, they still have Alvin Goldman, Ernest Sosa, Ernie Lepore, Stephen Stich, Susanna Schellenberg, Ted Sider, and Elizabeth Camp — all very big names in philosophy of language and mind. I use Camp’s work a lot in my stuff on non-linguistic representations.
Says the guy who only read Descartes. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t even read Descartes directly, but what others write about him.
But this is not the main problem with you. The main problem is that you really don’t comprehend what immaterial (as substance) is and you don’t want to. As a PhD, you should feel obligated to.
Erik,
Your ideas about the immaterial don’t work, as several of us are explaining to you.
Get a clue.
I thought of your interests when reading this 2018 paper Rethinking Causality in Biological and Neural Mechanisms by Bechtel. It updates his description of mechanisms to account for constraints, controllers, dissipative systems, free energy, autonomous life and other topics in that neighborhood.
I liked Juarrero’s book but found to Deacon’s Incomplete Nature, which covered the same topics and more, to be almost unreadable. I saw a nasty review of by Fodor which said the same thing.
Dennett cites the Deacon book approvingly in From Bacteria to Bach and makes some remarks about the claim Deacon plagiarized the main ideas from Juarrero at the end of his review of Deacon’s book.. From the evidence online that I saw, the plagiarism claim was supported.
And, of course, the Wallace quote about emergence is a version of Dennett’s real patterns, and Wallace calls it “Dennett’s criterion” in the book.
Well, that footnote was meant mostly in jest, which I tried to flag by saying the GR/QM integration was a “niggling detail” which I would leave to the reader.
I find a lot of J-Mac’s posts to be incomprehensible. I suspect almost everyone at TSZ finds my (attempts at?) humor to fall into the same category.
But, no worries, for as far as I know there is no rule at TSZ against humor so obscure that it is not funny.
We can discuss evidence as soon as you stop jumping to conclusions.