Rahvin writes:
If one or more components of human cognition are caused by "nonphysical elements," then we would expect one or more of the following predictions to be true:
1) If motor control or bodily regulation is controlled by some "nonphysical element" and not exclusively the physical brain, then we should expect to see body functions and motor control continue to work even when the brain is damaged, exposed to chemical influences, afflicted with disease, etc.
We would agree that is the work of the brain.
Rahvin writes:
2) If memory is controlled by some "nonphysical element" and not exclusively the physical brain, then we should expect to see memory function regardless of brain damage, chemical influences, or disease.
I don’t see memory as being controlled by any nonphysical element. I think that somehow memory becomes part of our consciousness but the brain is still a necessary part of the equation to be able to retrieve information.
Rahvin writes:
2) If emotion is controlled by some "nonphysical element" and not exclusively the physical brain, then we should expect to see consistent emotional reaction regardless of brain damage, chemical influences, or disease.
Our brain is part of our physical body and just like any other part of our physical body it can become impaired. The brain controls our body, emotions, thoughts etc. The brain receives inputs and then reacts to those inputs and if the brain is impaired the reactions are not going to be the same as when the brain is not impaired
.
Rahvin writes:
3) If personality is controlled by some "nonphysical element" and not exclusively the physical brain, then we should expect to see consistent personality elements regardless of brain damage, chemical influences, or disease. Personalities do change over time naturally, but we should not expect sudden, drastic changes after an incident affecting the brain.
The same reply that I had for emotions.
Rahvin writes:
5) If thought processes, the internal voice in your head, the images you visualize in your mind, are controlled by some "nonphysical element" and not exclusively the physical brain, then we should expect to see that those elements of cognition continue to function unperturbed in the incidence of brain damage, disease, or chemical influence.
You continue to use the word control. I do not see non-physical elements controlling our thoughts, emotions, memories etc. What I do believe is that somehow we have instilled in us the still small voice of God that provides input to our thoughts, along with all of the other natural inputs, but in no way controls them.
Rahvin writes:
6) If language and communication is controlled by some "nonphysical element" and not exclusively the physical brain, then we should expect to see that the ability to communicate, if not specifically to speak verbally, continues to function unperturbed in the incidence of brain damage, disease, or chemical influence.
It is the same answer again. The brain controls our language and communication.
Rahvin writes:
I'm making these predictions on the basis of 'nonphysical elements;" some component of a person that is not dependent on the physical body. You believe in an afterlife - that means that you believe that all or some part of you, your personality, your identity, possibly your memories and emotions and so on, go on working even after the physical brain has died and rotted to dust. If ghosts or souls or spirits can speak or understand language, then you would expect even a brain-damaged person to be able to speak and understand language as long as they retain other prerequisite physical abilities. If ghosts or souls or spirits can remember their lives, then you would expect a person with severe brain damage to also remember - forgetfulness would not be a function of the brain, but of the soul or spirit. I don't know which of those components is supposed to survive death, but the predictions above should let us test at least some of them.
With questions like this all I can do is branch into the speculative. I don’t know what the afterlife is like. I do believe that ultimately there will be a re-creation of all that is and that we will exist in resurrected bodies. I don’t know what happens between death and then or I’m not even sure if on a personal basis there is a time between now and then. It is my sense that in order to function we do need some kind of physicality. I don’t know if we slip into unconsciousness until this act of re-creation or if we have some other bodily form in another dimension/universe or whatever. As I said, this is all just speculation on my part. I figure all of that will take care of itself when the time comes.
So yes, I do believe that our personality etc lives on past this life but I’m inclined to think that it won’t be a disembodied existence.
Rahvin writes:
1) Not many would claim that motor control is actually performed by "nonphysical elements." I included it for the sake of completeness. But the observation is that brain damage absolutely affects motor and other body function. Severing the spine in the right spot can eliminate even autonomous functions like breathing. Damage to the brain itself can cause a loss of motor control (though some individuals are able to re-learn how to use their bodies...but this is also correlated with the observation of brain plasticity and the shifting of function from the damaged area to a new one). This prediction is strongly contraindicated. It is highly unlikely that motor control or body function are driven by "nonphysical elements;" it is highly likely that these functions are controlled solely by the physical brain.
2) One word: Alzheimers. If a degenerative brain disease can result in extreme memory loss, it is highly likely that memory is solely a function of the physical brain. Memory loss is also observed in other cases of brain damage. Neurology has identified those places in the brain which process the formation of memory, and which store it, and by what process memory is stored. A recent study in mice allowed memories to be induced from one mouse to another - literally the experience of one mouse was transferred to another mouse, the memory itself was copied. We have also observed the incidence of an inability to form new memories - individuals with particular brain damage who are trapped at a certain moment of memory while the world changes around them, who can never grow or learn. If memory were controlled even slightly by "nonphysical elements," we would expect memory to continue functioning without change regardless of disease or brain damage. This prediction is very strongly contraindicated by direct observation. It is unlikely in the extreme that "nonphysical elements" are responsible for any function regarding memory, whether retrieval, storage, or formation.
3) We have observed emotional impairment due to brain damage of a variety of different sorts. Perhaps the most striking example is one I brought up previously: the man who accused his mother of being an imposter. This is a rare condition as it requires very specific damage to just one part of the brain, and it has just a few variations. The man man this particular example was unable to recognize his mother...but in a particular way. He could visually identify that the woman in front of him looked exactly like his mother. She acted like her, had all of her mannerisms, could respond to any personal query...yet he accused her of being an imposter. Investigation revealed that, if his mother called him on the phone, so that he couldn't see her, he would immediately identify her as his mother. Further examination of the neurology involved revealed the cause: there are neural links in our brains between individual sensory centers and a small part of the brain that associates that sensory input with appropriate emotional import. When you see your mother, you feel the bond of love you have for each other. In this man's case, that connection was broken, and so even though visually he recognized her face, her mannerisms, her responses to questions, it didn't feel right because the emotional response was not being factored in. He accused her of being an imposter, because that couldn't be his mother. Yet when he simply heard her over the phone and could not see, the emotional impact was correctly linked - each sensory input has its own connection, and so only the visual response was impaired because only that link was broken.
This case, and others like it, strongly contraindicates the prediction that emotions are driven by "nonphysical elements." If you can go on feeling emotions without any brain at all, then brain damage shouldn't impair your ability to feel love when you see your mother. It is highly unlikely that "nonphysical elements" are associated with any sort of emotional process (other than the emotional attachment to the idea of "nonphysical elements" itself, of course).
4) We have observed multiple cases of strong personality changes due to brain damage. Just from Wiki:
quote:
TBI may cause emotional, social, or behavioral problems and changes in personality.[116][117][118][119] These may include emotional instability, depression, anxiety, hypomania, mania, apathy, irritability, problems with social judgment, and impaired conversational skills.[116][119][120] TBI appears to predispose survivors to psychiatric disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder, substance abuse, dysthymia, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders.[121] In patients who have depression after TBI, suicidal ideation is not uncommon; the suicide rate among these persons is increased 2- to 3-fold.[122] Social and behavioral symptoms that can follow TBI include disinhibition, inability to control anger, impulsiveness, lack of initiative, inappropriate sexual activity, poor social judgment, and changes in personality.[116][118][119][123]
What's more, the ability of medication to affect personality is the entire basis pf psychiatry. I've seen this one first hand - extreme personality changes as a result of the onset of mental illness, followed by still more changes every time a new medication regimen was started.
I agree and have no trouble acknowledging all of that but it is all about the output from the brain. The brain receives input from our ears, eyes, nose etc, it gathers intelligence from numerous sources and then all of that data is processed and controls our conclusions and our actions. I am only suggesting that in addition to everything else there is also the influence of the still small voice of God as well, jumbled up with everything else.
Rahvin writes:
5) and 6) Watch this TED talk. It features a neurologist who also happens to have experienced an actual stroke. Please remember that everything she describes is an analysis of her feelings...but pay special attention to how she, in detail, describes the internal experience of her mind as her brain suffered a physical trauma. The internal voice went silent for certain periods. She lost the ability to think in words at times. She suffered memory impairment. She felt strange sensations of euphoria coupled with extreme alterations in perspective with a direct causal relationship to the stroke happening in her brain. Her personal observations mesh well with the current neurological models for how the brain processes thoughts.
I really enjoyed Jill BolteTaylor. I found her talk really interesting and watched the whole thing twice. Thank you so much. Actually her talk is more philosophical than anything else and she certainly ties in her philosophy of what happened to her with her stroke with her neuro-science.
She stated that we are the life force power of the universe, which I find interesting as this coincides with the view that consciousness is fundamental to the existence of our universe. She explains that the right hemisphere is what gives us our sense of connectedness with each other and all that is. She even went so far as to say that when the left side ceased to function her physicality still existed but there essentially ceased to be no boundaries to it, and that everything was in the now without thought of past or future. She says that the left side provided her with sense of the individual self and as the side that deals with all of the various inputs, memories etc that allow us to make decisions on our future based on past experiences.
I gather from the talk that essentially she is Buddhist. When her left side ceased to function she was largely unaware of her physicality but in a state that she calls nirvana. She talked about it being in a place of peace, where the whole world was beautiful and filled with beautiful, peaceful, loving compassionate people. As she thought she was dying she called her death the moment of transition.
Also in her
interview with Oprah she goes into a little more detail and she essentially describes watching herself on her exercise machine having something of an out of body experience. Her views on Tom seem to be a cross between Buddhism and pantheism.
Here is a web site is very critical of what she has to say.
A Critique
Undoubtedly the brain eventually controls our thoughts and actions. After listening to Taylor’s account I might suggest that the still small voice is an input into the right hemisphere whereas all of our sensory inputs are sorted out in the left side prior to being presented to the right side for modification. That is just something that occurs to me from listening to what she had to say.
Rahvin writes:
I'm going to describe a little bit of brain function for you, now. There are specific regions of the brain that control certain functions (the occipital lobe processes visual input from the optic nerve, for example). But one of the distinguishing characteristics of mammal brains (and human brains in particular) is the formation of groups of neurons that form a hierarchy of pattern-matching structures. We've used lessons from analyzing the brain to improve the way things like Siri and other computer pattern-recognition systems work. These are purely physical functions and we know that because we've managed to replicate those functions in purely physical computers.
When those structures are impaired or destroyed, you can lose the ability to recognize words as distinct from random shapes (which is one of the things described in the TED talk). Your ability to "think" in abstract language is driven by the hierarchical abstraction process of these neural groups. Each level up the hierarchy becomes more abstract, less specific, more general. You go from recognizing and processing individual syllables to recognizing words to associating those words with potentially many meanings and then assembling those words with meanings into sentences and so on...until you and I, right now, are communicating in abstract language. I'm writing what I'm thinking, basic stream of consciousness. Your brain is using its own pattern-matchers and hierarchy of abstraction to read my words and reassemble them into abstract language so that you comprehend the thoughts I'm sharing with you. When your brain is damaged, those functions stop. I'm reminded (again, those pattern-matchers, recognizing things in my memory that match the pattern of the abstract ideas I'm thinking about) of the book The Dead Zone, by Stephen King, where the main character undergoes a psychological exam after a traumatic brain injury, and they find that he's utterly unable to visualize a canoe on the side of a street by a stop sign. That story was fictional, of course, but it does accurately represent the effects of brain damage on internal visualization, the internal voice, and our basic ability to think.
If nonphysical elements drive our internal visualizations, our inner voice, our comprehension of language, our association of abstract concepts, we would expect all of those things to continue right on working regardless of whether we had a stroke or suffered other brain damage. Yet we see that this impairment does occur. The final two predictions are strongly contraindicated. It is highly unlikely that any "nonphysical elements" play a part in thought or communication. It is highly likely that thought and communication are purely physical functions of the physical brain.
This has all been very educational. Thank you so much.
The brain is certainly a fascinating organ. I have no argument with any of the science, not that I have the background to disagree with the science. However, as we can see from that other link there isn't complete agreement amongst scientists about Taylor's views.
I’d like to try another way of looking at it. I go back to what Jill Bolte Taylor said about consciousness. She talked a lot in the early part of the talk of consciousness being energy, and that we are energy beings. She talked about information coming to the brain as energy.
Aside from the fascinating talks on the brain and the differences between the right and left hemispheres I did take a couple of notes. As opposed to calling us physical beings she referred to us as energy beings and said that information comes to us in the form of energy. She talked about the interconnectedness of the energy of our right hemispheres with each other so that we are all one human family
The following is from reading books on popular science so cut me a little slack but here is how I understand things. Everything is made up of particles. Some theories suggest that a particle is dimensionless while string theory suggests that particles are uni-dimensional strings. For us to perceive something as being physical requires it to take up space by having 3 dimensions. In the end then, no matter how powerful a microscope we would be unable to view a particle. So, what is actually physical? We certainly perceive things including the brain as physical but if we break it down into its smallest components is it still physical? My understanding is that everything that we perceive as being physical is really made up of bits or fields of energy.
We know how to measure energy, we know how to use energy, we can create energy, we see the effects of energy etc but we can’t directly perceive energy.
Here is a definition of energy from this site.
About.com Physics
quote:
Definition: Energy is the capacity of a physical system to perform work. Energy exists in several forms such as heat, kinetic or mechanical energy, light, potential energy, electrical, or other forms.
According to the law of conservation of energy, the total energy of a system remains constant, though energy may transform into another form.
The definition then is that energy is capacity to do work. We define it that way as we don’t really know what energy is. We measure gravity but what is gravity? I have no doubt that science will learn more and maybe with the Higg’s they will find a gravitational field. None of that is directly perceptible to us. Is it physical or not?
So, Jill Bolte Taylor tells us that consciousness is energy, and the definition tells us that the total energy of a system such as us is constant. If our consciousness is a system of energy then it seems a reasonable hypothesis that our consciousness remains constant even if in another form.
Science theorizes about branes, parallel universes and other dimensions. I understand that they aren’t looking for anything metaphysical but if they are correct is there anything to say that we couldn’t just slip into another universe/dimension after our time here. Who knows? Tangle would say that it is all woo.
Rahvin writes:
I've gone on at length in this reply already, so I'll leave this for you to ponder for now. Please do take an honest look at the predictions, observations, and conclusions. Please do let me know if I'm taking any liberties with logic, from fallacies to simple non sequiturs. I would very much like to be convinced that there is a rational basis to believe that someday I'll be able to meet my dead grandmother again, that we'll be able to laugh about our mutual memories and that "goodbye" could really have been "goodbye for now." I really would like to live forever, and that's not a problem if we have some immortal "nonphysical elements" really running the show.
But the world doesn't appear to work that way. Whatever I'd like, it looks like the only element of my grandmother that survives is my own memory of her...which is itself a purely physical and unfortunately alterable process within my physical brain.
I think that you have followed it all through logically and I even agree with most of your conclusions. I think we agree that we do have a conscience or a sense of morality. Even if that sense of morality evolved naturally it does not answer the question of whether or not it evolved due to some intelligent agency (Tom), or if it just happened mindlessly. Personally of course I believe in Tom but in addition I believe that Tom continues to interact with us with imperceptible inputs into our minds and imaginations, but that part of my belief isn’t necessary to the idea that our consciousness does not die with our bodies.
I believe that you will be united with your grand-mother and I can’t prove that it isn’t just wishful thinking. In the end we will believe what we believe. Thanks so much for your thoughtful informative post.
Cheers
Greg
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
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