Body and Soul

The central problem in modern philosophy is the mind/body problem. What exactly is the mind and how is it related to (and how does it interact with, if indeed it does interact with) the physical body?

On this question, most modern philosophers, not to mention most scientists, part company with most everyone else. Popular culture (or folk wisdom as academic philosophers derisively call it) is very fond of substance dualism. The body is physical and material. The mind is non-physical and immaterial. Most modern Christians, at least in the developed world, accept the Walt Disney interpretation. The mind is some tethered to the body during life, and floats free in a vaporous (but usually clothed) form at the last moment.

This view has its advantages. It gives hope for the afterlife in the face of the scandalous fact that, so far as we can establish, no one's physical body has ever gone anywhere after death except into dust. It explains ghosts. It explains the fact that human consciousness can be real yet immeasurable and invisible.

There are dualist philosophers, but unfortunately for their theory they have never been able to explain what a non-physical, immaterial substance might be or how it could interact with physical matter.

This may be one of the rare cases where science will decide the issue. Split brain patients have the corpus callosum cut. This is the thick cable that allows the two halves of the brain to communicate. Experiments have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that, once the corpus callosum is severed, the two halves of the brain are unable to communicate with each other. If the patient sees an object with his right eye alone, he can name it. That's because the information is transferred to his left brain, where the language center is located. If he sees the object only with his left eye he cannot name it, but he can draw it. That's because his right hemisphere lacks the language module but does have modules for processing visual images.

This seems to me to be devastating for dualism. If there was a non-physical locus of consciousness that receives information from the brain (both hemispheres) and body and commanded the same, shouldn't that consciousness be able to relay information from one hemisphere to the other? It can't. The split brain patient is, for all functional purposes, two people. If the non-physical mind can be split in two by cutting a trunk of nerves, in what meaningful sense is it non-physical?

Colin McGinn, writing in The New York Review of Books, has more evidence.

We begin with phantom limbs—the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body. Such limbs can arrange themselves intransigently into painful positions. The doctor touches the patient's body in different parts with a cotton swab, eliciting normal responses; then he touches the patient's face and elicits sensations in the patient's phantom hand, finding an entire map of the absent hand on the patient's face. Why? Because in the strip of cortex called the postcentral gyrus the areas that deal with nerve inputs from the hand and face happen to be adjacent, so that in the case of amputation some sort of neighborly cross-activation occurs—the facial inputs spill over to the area that maps the phantom hand.

Human consciousness, otherwise known as the mind, is not some metaphysical addition to the physical brain anymore than a landscape is something over and above the hills, trees, meadows, and roads of which it is constituted.

Lest you think that I am arguing for base materialism, let me set the record straight. Dualism fears for the soul and tries to save it by detaching it from the physical world. Accordingly the physical world is then viewed as dead and inert in any important sense. I think that a big mistake was made when modern philosophers substituted the word "mind" for the better word "soul".

Soul is the Anglo Saxon equivalent of the Latin anima and the Greek psyche. Aristotle's psyche was the information and energy that informed and energized the physical matter of the body. You can't have form without something (material) that is formed and so you can't have soul without a body. Just as certain, you can't have a living, breathing body without the information and energy that is the soul.

Modern neuroscience is coming to understand this. Every living thing has what Aristotle called psyche. If ghosts do not float free of matter, neither is matter always dead. That human consciousness can emerge from a physical brain tells us that matter is much more alive, at least potentially, than materialist science had once imagined. For those who are interested in such things, we are living in very interesting times.

Comments

[larry kurtz]

You sound like you're saying humans are god's chosen species, Ken. Seems like speciesism gone rogue. How many birds were killed in the Japan event? Probably not many.

Find me a particle, then we'll talk: http://www.physorg.com/news193551675.html

[Bill Fleming]

Good overview, KB. Larry, I don't see where he's being species selective. He just hasn't carried to it's logical conclusion what we really mean what we say' 'body.' He was probably waiting for you to do that, mon.

[Miranda]

So in your estimation, can humans change something physical about themselves to make themselves more moral?

[larry kurtz]

I don't differentiate mind and body, Bill. Cell processes in a phosphate-based life form do not a mystery make.

[Ken Blanchard]

Miranda: Of course. If you write a paragraph it may be a good one or a bad one, but it isn't a paragraph at all unless you write it down. Wriiting isn't writing unless it physically changes some medium; the same is true for thinking.

On a deeper level: could you make a person better by altering the brain through surgery or chemistry? We know very well that you can make a person worse in this way. The example of Phineas Gage and more recent cases show that injury to certain areas in the brain can have profoundly unfortunate consequences for moral emotions and character. Logically, I suppose, if you could reverse the damage you might make those people morally better. I think it would be more accurate to say that you would restore a capacity for moral behavior that was taken away from them by the injuries. Much the same is true of severely emotionally damage patients who respond to medication.

If you're worried about a morality pill, I wouldn't be. Trying to make people better by acting directly on the brain (except in pathological cases) would be like trying to change the information in a computer by switching out the hard drive rather than simply downloading a file.

[Ken Blanchard]

Larry: my whole point was against mind/body dualism. Sorry if the photons sailed over your head.

Anyone who says that "Cell processes in a phosphate-based life form do not a mystery make" has no flippin' idea what he is talking about. There are a multitude of mysteries here. I just don't that substance dualism helps unravel any of them.

[larry kurtz]

Sorry, that it has taken you 70 years to get there, Ken.

[larry kurtz]

Catholicism is not your friend.

[Miranda]

I am not worried about a morality pill. But what I am curious about is whether or not we can blame our moral choices on our physical makeup. I remember your references to Gage in class - but did the damage actually affect his morality or did it just affect his ability to act according to his principles? Or, rather, did it affect his moral reasoning or did it only affect his desire to be moral?

[larry kurtz]

Genetics, genetics, genetics: "Each kind of animal is furthermore guided through its life cycle by unique and often elaborate sets of instinctual algorithms, many of which are beginning to yield to genetic and neurobiological analyses. With all these examples before us, we may reasonably conclude that human behavior originated the same way." -Edward O. Wilson via the Atlantic. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/the-genetics-of.html

Mind is an organic process only.

[larry kurtz]

Do we know it all? Not yet: Here's a film for your Netflix queue, Ms. Flint.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C01E7DD1030F936A35752C1A961958260

[Miranda]

Mr. Kurtz: Added! But Doctor Who comes first!

[Ken Blanchard]

The damage to Mr. Gage's brain certainly damaged his ability to act morally. Patients studied more recently show a dysfunctional lack of certain moral emotions. Moral principles, like moral logic, are effective only in so far as they shape and guide moral emotions. Moral emotions do seem to be centered in certain parts of the brain.

The question of blame and praise is likely to become very thorny in the near future. Already some neuroscientists are challenging the very concept of responsibility. I think this is unlikely to change much. Some persons are clearly so mentally dysfunctional that they cannot be held responsible for their behavior. That has long been recognized. Neuroscience will allow us to fine tune the standards. Of course, any legitimate defense can be misused.

[Miranda]

That makes sense. So how about the other way around. If we decide that the soul and the body are inseparable, can someone become so morally damaged that their body stops functioning properly?

[Ken Blanchard]

Interesting question. Moral thought and action are higher levels of organic function. As such, they do not affect more basic functions like breathing and digestion. So in that sense, no, it doesn't work the other way around. However, one of the most amazing things about organisms is how often a gene or a strip of neurons or an organ does many things at the same time. In that sense, damage to the moral organs may do damage to the more basic functions of the body.

More germane, perhaps, is the fact that moral dysfunction almost always renders a person less fit to take care of himself. The same instincts that tell us to rescue a child in distress tell us to get out the building when its on fire.

[larry kurtz]

Fixing someone to be well enough to stand trial for a capital offense seems a bit Vonnegutian yet it is already being done. Here's the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competency_evaluation_(law)

[Miranda]

Interesting. Maybe that's why, so much of the time, it seems like those who kill others stop defending themselves.

Thanks for the link, Mr. Kurtz.