Brain and soul : seperate or the same?

I would like to introduce a discussion of the mind of human beings. Who here equates the human mind in some fashion as the harbour of the soul and do you think that the soul is something entirely seperate from the mind?If you do,then may I ask how we are able to verify this within ourselves {a soul aseperate from the brain}or rather how do you verify it within yourself.Are any people here familiar with Capgras Syndrome,synesthesia, or phantom limb and the research being done on these anomolies of the brain?I am trying to see if people are aware of just how much is understood within the field of neuroscience and what they think the implications are for how they and others view the world around them.Check out this site BBC - Radio 4 - Reith Lectures 2003 - The Emerging Mind and let me know what you would dispute about the findings presented and what you yourself thought was consistent with what you thought to be the case concerning the human mind.This message has been edited by sidelined, 10-31-2004 09:15 AM

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

There was a program on television in england a few weeks ago about synethesia. It covered many different forms, from people who see different letters in different colours, to a guy who could physically taste words. Other people could physically see number lines around themselves, and could use them for counting etc. It certainly is amazing what goes on in the brain.I personally don't consider there to be any part of me seperate to the body, or a part of my consciousness seperate to the brain. Even if there is a part of us that is seperate I'm not sure how it could ever be detected, since we're so heavily grounded in the physical senses. If i'm wrong I guess i'll find out when I die

sidelined,I've just started reading the lectures you linked to. Thanks for the great information. Antonio Damasio's books also offer rich insight into consciousness and brain function.I think you've hit on the most important avenue of scientific exploration for illuminating age old religious and philosophical problems.Taking Christianity as an example (specifically because it appears to be the most represented of theistic belief systems on this forum) the major unexamined concept that is fundamental to it is the notion that there is a self(soul). This notion does not hold up under critical observation. The question that Christianity seems incapable of answering is "Who or What is saved?". Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta offer a much more profound approach to this question. The naive experience of ego self is so strong however that it is simple assumed as real by most people and so the notion that the "I" is saved for an eternity of pleasure, or of pain is accepted as plausible.The teachings ascribed to the Buddha demonstrated 2500 hundred years ago that there was no permanent self but only an illusion of a self.
Buddha's methods were introspective observation and philosophical examination. I think the current brain work is developing these insights into scientific evidence.The conscious awareness of existing remains for me the most fundamental mystery of the universe and it is the most central as it is how we know we are and the universe is."Soul" is an early explanatory concept of life,ego/personality and this self awareness of existence. I find it very interesting that in the real world amnesia is a permanent condition and the organism that was so severely injured develops a new personality that can be quite different from the original. Major changes in personality can also be seen with brain damage.Buddhism is a religious system that in some ways anticipated these latest findings and it is a system that can adapt its wisdom and ethical teachings to these new discoveries of the brain. The Hindu adaption of Buddhism in Advaita Vedanta offers a deistic/theistic approach to the same issues essentially agreeing with the Buddha but seeing consciousness and it's source as the singular SELF of the universe which is a single system of interdependent causation.There is just beginning studies of the neurological basis of self/other subject/object and the falling away of that experience into
a state of non duality. In this state many of the key dilemmas of religion simply disappear. This is also along the lines of Wittgensteins approach as I understand it.On the other hand as is often made clear here, many people need the traditional stories of religion to deal with their anxieties and social issues and that will the case for centuries to come.lfen

GmailFrom the second lecture on the site you listed.This caught my attention as it seems to discribe what fundamentalist do with the discrepancies in their Holy Scriptures and their beliefs. They just don't see that there is a problem, or if forced to face the problem they see it as only a small things easily explained. Religion as a left brain coping mechanism?lfen

The following paragraph from the link caught my attention as it seems to discribe discrepancies in the thinking of evolutionists that NS could possibly create, maintain and coordinate 100 billion brain neurons, each making a thousand to ten thousand functional contacts with other neurons so as to make the brain function as it does in a manner so wonderfully complex in the hundreds of billions of people who have lived on earth."The human brain, it has been said, is the most complexly organised structure in the universe and to appreciate this you just have to look at some numbers. The brain is made up of one hundred billion nerve cells or "neurons" which is the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. Each neuron makes something like a thousand to ten thousand contacts with other neurons and these points of contact are called synapses where exchange of information occurs. And based on this information, someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity, in other words the numbers of brain states, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe."

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The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buz

What discrepancies did you find in the quoted passage? The neuron count and the connection possibilites are acceptable to you it seems. How does that not fit with natural selection and evolution?lfen

buzsawI hope you are not implying that this makes us special in some way because it does not. From this website http://mickey.utmem.edu/papers/NUMBER_REV_1988.html#1 We get this data. And in further humbling of our species.From the same site we have this. So an elephant has a greater number of neurons and therefore a higher number of connections that exceeds humans.No big deal.And to think that simple creatures as the metazoans have neurons just as we do speaks to the survival advantage gained by the possesion of such a trait Hmmm?Not enough to humble you? How about this. From this website http://www.explorepdx.com/help.html Just imagine!Those birds so far below our lofty positon in the world have an experience of vision that we have no conception of and can never share.We are not special.And that is not the only example of such sensory superiority in the animal world.We simply are not special.

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[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together

It continually suprises me how people never bring up the collapse of the wave function when discussing whether or not the conciousnessis independant of the brain......what better proof exists for the seperation of brain and conciousness than the majority scientific opinion that the human mind actually calls electrons into existance?

Ah, a popular misconception. Although QM talks about an 'observer' that is a misnomer - the wave function will collapse when something interacts with it in the right way. There is no need for consciousness for it to do so.

If you are 'Clinically brain dead' where does your mind go? If the mind exist independant of the brain then where does the mind reside once your brain ceases to function?

Bump to allow others to comment.

Yes, that "something" being an observer.......and an observer being, by definition, concious.

Speaking as one of the "Christian creationists", although I believe in some evolution...just that god started it all...anyway...
Man is Body, Soul, and Spirit.
1) Body=Flesh. Bones. Nerves. Guts.Muscles and blood.the gray blob of Brain is part of the body.
2) Soul- The soul is also split into three parts.
a) The mind-what we think.
b) The will- what we seek.
c) The emotions- what we feel.
3) The Spirit- is what exists after we die. A Christian surrenders
his spirit to Gods Holy Spirit who then fills him. This message has been edited by Phatboy, 11-04-2004 02:42 AM

From this I infer that you think that after we die, we don't think anymore, we have no will anymore, and we have no emotions anymore. Pretty much what I'm thinking myself, though for different reasons, no doubt. What I can't understand is why this is something to look forward to. If you think things through a little (while you still can), then you should seriously question the quality of the promised afterlife. Maybe you should just savor the here and now, as I do. With what exactly? If I were you I'd like to be very sure it doesn't say "molten lead" in the small print.But seriously, why are religious people always being so vague about stuff?

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"It's amazing what you can learn from DNA." - Desdamona.