science is not in principle committed to the idea that there's no afterlife or
that the the mind is identical to the brain right or that materialism is true
science is completely open to whatever in fact is true everything about your
mind can be damaged by damaging the brain you can cease to recognize faces
you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of
tools and what we're being asked to consider is that you damaged one part of
the brain and the mind something about the mind and subjectivity is lost you
damaged another and yet more is lost and yet if you damage the whole thing at
death we can rise off the brain with all our faculties intact recognizing grandma
and speaking English so what gives rise to consciousness are we just matter or
there is something non-physical or immaterial about our mind that gives
rise to consciousness what does science say about it and what can we learn from
it that will help us in our own lives
in 1907 dr. Duncan MacDougall published a scientific study concluding that
humans have a soul that is supposed to give rise to our consciousness and it
weighs about 21 grams he took six dying patients and replaced their bed with an
industrial-sized scale when they were just about to die one of the patients
showed a loss of 21 grams just after his death of course this experiment was
heavily criticized as a case of selective reporting first of all it had
an extremely small sample size and in that - only one patient see result were
taken as a conclusion the other five patients were ignored as they did not
show any significant loss in weight and surprisingly one of the patient lost
some weight and then gained it back again dr. MacDougall believed that only
humans have soul not animals he repeated this experiment on 15 dogs he poisoned
15 dogs and found no decrease in weight of dogs after death following the
publication of the experiment in American medicine physician Augustus P
Clark criticized the experiments validity Clark noted that at the time of
death there is a sudden rise in body temperature as the lungs are no longer
cooling the blood causing a subsequent rise in sweating which could easily
account for MacDougall's missing 21 grams Clark also pointed out that as
dogs do not have sweat glands they would not lose weight in this manner after
death physicist Robert L Park has written that MacDougall's experiments
are not regarded today as having any scientific merit and psychologist Bruce
wood wrote that because the weight loss was not replicable or reliable his
findings were unscientific pop culture was quick to pick up on the conclusion
of the experiment and played a huge role in popularizing the myth of this 21 gram
soul
however now let's talk about this thing called Sol which dr. Duncan MacDougall
believed in he certainly believed that the soul that gives rise to
consciousness is a physical object as he was testing a physical property weight
now this physical soul can definitely not be matter cuz we would have detected
its presence long ago as soon as it left the body especially with the current
modern technology so if Sol is a physical object then it has to be in the
form of pure energy sadly we have a bad news for this pure energy Sol it's
called the second law of thermodynamics according to it
energy spontaneously disperses from being localized to becoming spread out
if it is not hindered from doing so so if we assume that such soul exists as
soon as this pure energy will leave the body there will be no hindrance to stop
it from being spreading out and this energy will spread out across the entire
universe and will be converted to unusable forms like heat and so it will
no longer exist as a soul but according to most definitions souls are supposed
to be immortal hence it is a proof by contradiction that Sol in the form of
pure energy cannot exist however you might still wonder that we all have
energy and energy can neither be created nor destroyed
so where does this energy go after we die but when you die where do you go
isn't energy conserved don't you have energy and you doesn't it go somewhere
and the answer is that life is not an energy a force a spirit substance it is
a process there's a chemical reaction and the end of a life is putting out a
candle when you put out a candle the energy doesn't go anywhere the reaction
stops when you die you don't go anywhere your that your atoms are still there but
you stop happening that is what it is what it means to die that pretty much
sums up why a physical soul cannot exist but what about a non-physical
or immaterial soul or some other immaterial as
of mind it is the most popular concept of a soul however if you define a soul
like this then you also run into a problem
how does an immaterial soul interact with material or physical body this is
called the mind-body problem and no one who believes in an immaterial soul has
come up with a satisfactory solution to this problem but let's ignore this
problem for now assuming that there might be some mechanism that we are
still not aware of which connects the physical and the non-physical world if
you define something to be immaterial and put it out of the domain of science
it becomes difficult to test its validity however in this case also
science can help us if we can somehow scientifically show that hypothesis of
an immaterial soul is useless and the material world itself is sufficient to
explain the consciousness then there is no good reason to believe that something
like an immaterial soul exists first let's address the elephant in the room
or should I say the elephant in the cranium the brain what is it that the
humans do that the brain itself cannot explain and some people think that there
is a need to define something like an immaterial soul why can't consciousness
be explained by the brain alone is it the personality we have or the emotions
we experience like happiness love compassion etc whatever it is there must
be something that physical brains can't do for which we will need the immaterial
soul hypothesis otherwise it will be a useless hypothesis recently in last few
decades there has been a huge breakthrough in the field of
neuroscience and lots of things that was thought to be the result of the soul was
found out would be the product of human brain even compassion has been found to
be the product of physical brain says there is the empirical question of there
are 100 billion nerve cells in my brain little wisps of jelly fire firing away
how does this activity of the cell give rise to the whole spectrum of abilities
we call human nature human consciousness and I like to focus on a system of
neurons called mirror neuron in the front of the brain these neurons
are called motor command neurons at a subcategory of motor car manuals motor
command neurons are involved in orchestrating a sequence of muscle
twitches to reach out and grab a cup so there's one neuron or a good small group
of neurons in the frontal lobes and the premotor cortex that fires away when I
reach out and grab a cup orchestrating the sequence of muscle twitches but it
turns out that a small set of these neurons identified in the last ten years
will fire not only when I reach in grab a cup that when I watch you reach out
and grab a cup the sounds astonishing sounds psychic but it isn't these
neurons are called mirror neurons so what's a mirror neuron doing when I saw
this paper it jumped off my seat because it's what well the neuron is signaling
to the higher areas in the brain is higher areas are saying the same neuron
is firing now as would fire when you reach and grab a cup therefore that's
what that person is intending to do it's a mind-reading neuron
it's a neuron that's creating a virtual reality simulation another person's mind
and and empathizing with the other person so this produces a basis of
compassion after all so it allows you to take look at the world from the other
person's point of view certain head injury leading to complete change in
personality of a person your nervous system makes you you let me tell you a
story The Curious Case of Phineas Gage in 1848 genial chap named Phineas Gage
was working on the railroad tamping gunpowder into a blasting hole with an
iron rod when the Gunpowder ignited the resulting explosion caused the rod to
shoot like a bullet up through his left cheek and out the top of his head
there's brain in between those two places by the way amazingly he stood up
after the accident and walked over to a cart described what had happened and
then they drove him back to his house Oh while he was conscious so the doctor
came to examine him and refused to believe that a rod had in fact passed
through his head understandably until Phineas started coughing and an amount
of brain that the doctor described as a tea cup full fell out of his head and
the doctor had to accept indeed what had happened after a few months of
convalescing he was pretty much healed up and moving around like he used to but
some of his friends were saying that Phineas was no longer himself yes he had
his memories and mental abilities and he
walked and talked and looked the same - an eyeball but whereas the old Phineas
was mild-mannered and soft-spoken the post spiked to the brain Phineas was
surly and mean-spirited and vulgar people started to describe him as no
longer gage or certain head injury causing person's inability to feel
certain emotions there is one extraordinary syndrome called Capgras
syndrome which is so rare that even most neurologists have not heard of it this
refers to patients who are otherwise normal sometimes in a psychiatric
setting but sometimes just after a head injury the guy's been in a car accident
and maybe he's been in a coma for a couple of weeks and then comes out of
the coma seems quite normal fluent in conversation not emotionally
disturbed not hysterical in any obvious way seems quite normal except that he
has one profound delusion he looks at his mother and he says doctor this woman
looks exactly like my mother you know it looks exactly but she's not my mother
she's an impostor she's pretending to be my mother and then I thought maybe
there's a simpler explanation for this syndrome namely we know that in the
temporal lobes as an area called info temporal cortex which is concerned with
just processing faces recognizing faces but that's damaged you get plus a buck
nose yet you can no longer recognize people's faces but when you look at any
object in the world it's processed there and then it gets sent to the amygdala
and to the limbic system you said the emotional centers of the brain so you're
emotionally aroused by what you're looking at if it's a slide projector
obviously you're not emotionally aroused if it's if it's you know a light there
you're not aroused but if you look at a mother you say wow it's my mom you know
there is this there is this warm glow or this terror as the case may be okay when
you look at your mother when you look at somebody else who you've never seen
before there is no emotional arousal so what are settles maybe what's wrong with
this guy is maybe the face area is normal that's why he can still say yeah
it looks like my mother it is my it looks like my mother but the message
doesn't get to the amygdala because this wire is cut
because of the head injury so you looked at his mother and he says if it's my mom
why don't I feel anything must be some something weird here it
must be some other strange woman that's the only explanation that makes sense to
him given his this disconnection I'm talking about
and also brain injury leading to loss of memory all this indicates that mind
might just be the product of human brain however the believers of immaterial soul
explain it like this they say that the brain acts as a window to the world for
the immaterial soul in certain parts of the brain get damaged the soul can't
access that part of the brain now this explanation can be countered in a lot of
ways but here is one of the strongest counter-argument supported by an
experiment it's called vs Ramachandran split brain experiment one group of
patients we have studied is split brain patients or commies or semi patients
these are people whose corpus callosum has been cut and anterior commissure and
masa intermediate whenever encountered so essentially you're taking doing a
karate chop right through the head and creating two human beings in one body in
one skull two spheres of consciousness now many experiments of Donald's been
done on these people and I ask myself a very simple question okay you've created
two people here what about their personalities do they have different
personalities what about their aesthetic preferences there's one like blondes and
the other like brunettes for example one like chocolate and the other like
vanilla what what happens so we tried these experiments and what we did was we
have to first train the right hemisphere to communicate with us in fact the right
hemisphere can read simple commands simple words simple sentences and then
you ask a question and say point to a box yes no I don't know because it can't
talk the items we cannot talk but it can comprehend simple semantics simple
questions love thomassie of course can talk so he can present boxes yes no I
don't know so we asked for example are you at
Caltech and the right hemisphere pointed to yes are you on the moon it said no
okay so now comes the big question what if you ask do you believe in God so I
said do you believe in God and the right hemisphere went straight to yes right
that's the same the left hemisphere yes no I don't know
it went to no right so here's a human being whose right hemisphere is an
atheist and left hemisphere and I had believes in God and this finding should
have sent a tsunami for the theological community but barely produced a ripple
because it raises all kinds of profound theological questions if this person
dies what happened does one him does one
hemisphere go to heaven and the other go to hell
in this experiment vs Ramachandran studied split brain patients whose two
hemispheres of the brain has been split which gives rise to two independent
centers of consciousness the left and the right brain behaves as two
independent people in one body with different personalities and beliefs
definitely an immaterial soul cannot be split physically at most you can say
that the immaterial soul has taken shelter in one of the hemisphere but
that just means the other hemisphere is able to have personality beliefs and all
the other features attributed to the soul without a soul now this proves that
brain can give rise to these features without an immaterial soul making soul a
completely unnecessary hypothesis so does that mean that the physical brain
is the only thing responsible for consciousness and there is no other
immaterial aspect to it well that's most likely the conclusion
according to the science with the development of psychology and
neuroscience scientists have weighed in as well
many modern scientists reject the idea that there's any distinction between the
mind and body neuroscience suggests that our bodies
along with their physical senses are deeply integrated with the activity in
our brains to form what we call consciousness from the day we're born
our mental development is formed through our bodies interaction with the external
world every sight sound and touch create new maps and representations in the
brain that eventually become responsible for regulating our experience of self
there has been certain objections to the idea that consciousness is only the
result of the brain the molecules and atoms in our body gets replaced over
time so if we are just physical matter then how do we remain the same person
the cells in the tip of our finger also gets replaced over time but the
fingerprint itself doesn't change so if the fingerprint also some immaterial
thing of course not the key here is the arrangement of matter we are not matter
we are certain arrangement of matter with energy in the form of nerve
impulses flowing through it in certain way it can also be stated that we or our
consciousness is not matter but a process that is being carried out by
physical matter consciousness is not a noun but a verb this allows us to answer
some of the other important objections to the brain being only the center of
consciousness like how can unconscious matter give rise to consciousness as
already stated consciousness is not matter but the product of process
carried out by these matter arranged in certain way when these processes stops
the consciousness ceases to exist and we call it death consciousness is an
emergent property of neurons just like wetness is an emergent property of water
each neuron is not conscious just like one single molecule of water is not wet
also at certain number of molecules of water the property of wetness emerges
similarly at certain number of neurons the property of consciousness emerges
hence we can say that the mines are what the brains do now thinking that mine
cannot give rise to consciousness alone and we need something else to explain it
is kind of an insult to the supercomputer sitting on the top of your
head with hundred billion neurons the brain is capable of extremely powerful
processing humans invented the concept of the soul when they had no idea about
the capability and power of the brain many people are just reluctant to the
idea that we are just made up of material stuff the thing is people feel
that consciousness being a product of physical processes somehow undermines
our existence but in fact it makes our consciousness and its components like
emotions and feelings more real if you believe that there is an immaterial soul
then letting go of the belief will not somehow make you less emotional or less
conscious but will make you more aware of the reality and your ideas of the
human consciousness will be based on something much more solid called science
can you still love people while viewing them as part of this vast fabric of
causality and I find that that there is no sacrifice to the good stuff I mean
it's not it first of all things have to be a sort of situationally appropriate
I'm not constantly looking at my daughter thinking about she's just a
part of the physical universe and wow you know neurotransmitter is giving rise
to all this cuteness
I mean that's that's not the mode I'm in but even even to think in those terms
it doesn't cancel the desire for her happiness
it doesn't can't I mean that the love survives the truth it doesn't love but
love is not vulnerable to knowing how things are arising and knowing how
things are arising sudden doesn't nullify all the distinctions about the
differences in the possible differences in human experience that we care about
we still care about living good happy easy positive lives and it's what else
could we care about consciousness emotions feelings happiness love
everything is still real it's just that the nature of reality is not what you
thought it to be in fact this understanding makes all of
these even more real by making them scientifically verifiable along with
being subjectively perceivable but what do we learn from this that one day you
will die and most likely that will be the ultimate end of your consciousness
there is no component in the brain that will allow the survival of your
consciousness after your death does this make you scared that one day you will no
longer exist well you did not exist from the time of the beginning of the
universe up until your birth if that does not bother you then why not
existing after your death up until the death of the universe does the existence
of your consciousness will be for a very short period of time and that's what
makes it more valuable you will not live forever rather you will live for a very
short period of time compared to the age of the universe and this idea makes your
each second more valuable and too precious to waste one more thing that we
learned is that if our mind and consciousness is what the brain does
then this three-pound fatty sponge in our head is who we are and we need to
take utmost care of it get proper sleep get proper nutrients meditate do
everything to prevent it from any kind of damage
lastly we learn to acknowledge mental conditions and mental illness in a
proper way since physical brain is all that is and
there is no magical immaterial component to it these conditions are the result of
physical and chemical changes in our brains and requires proper treatment or
therapy for example depression is caused by actual chemical changes in the brain
so you cannot think the depression of it
and seeing people with depression that it's all in your head is like shooting
someone in the legs and saying it's all in your legs and also it is nothing to
be ashamed of and people should be open-minded about it like any physical
illness when someone's legs get fractured we don't think that he is so
weak he broke his legs neither the person hides it to prevent judgment from
the society sadly due to lack of understanding and vague ideas about our
consciousness and the brain people can't acknowledge mental conditions in the
same way what are your thoughts about consciousness did you always believe
that it is the product of the brain or you believed in an immaterial soul was I
able to change your mind or do you have a better argument for the existence of a
soul let me know in the comments and let it evolve into a discussion
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