1. The Basis of Qualia in Neurology: The Brain Is The Inner Us
In Neuroscience, professors Bear, Connors and Paradiso (1996, p4) introduce the book with a little history of research into the brain. Several Greek scholars in the 4th centuryBCE, 2400 years ago, believed that the brain was the center of sensation. Hippocrates, the great pagan philosopher and physician (called the 'father of medicine'), correctly believed and taught that not only was the brain our sensing organ, but it was also the seat of our intelligence. But since then, a progression of religions and cultures have asserted that the heart is the source of mind - the Christian Bible is full of such references. Christians in history were even to be found repeating Aristotle's (394-322BCE) belief that the brain was a radiator.
Since then, biologists, neurologists, doctors and psychologists have amassed a wealth of evidence that tells us clearly and comprehensively that the physical brain is the center (and producer) of intelligence, creative thought, emotions, willpower and moral thinking.
Our brainstem controls the impulses that are sent to our body. Our muscles, glands, hormone secretions, skin sensitivity, organ action, heart rate and thousands of other actions are all controlled by our nervous system, which is managed by our brains. So, if we damage a part of our brain we can impair our ability to control our bodies. If we damage our medulla, our physical co-ordination can be lost, if we damage our frontal lobes, our personality can be changed. This is because the brain controls the body and emotions. The cause and effect is clear: physical damage to the brain damages our soul.
Conversely, even if things happen to our bodies that we do not choose (such as the progression of Alzheimer's disease, which causes senility and dementia)1, we are forced to change our behaviour and feelings as a result of changes to the structure of our brain during medical procedures. Psychosurgery, including lobotomies or leucotomies, became used regularly from the 1930s for severely disrupted patients. Since then highly accurate and specific stereotactic tractotomies, stereotactic limbic leucotomies and the like have been developed, allowing the destruction of very small parts of the brain, normally locating particular pathways between one part and another in order to change specific aspects of behaviour and symptoms. For example, a cingulotomy is occasionally used against obsessive and compulsive patients by destroying 2-3cm of particular white matter. An amygdalotomy destroys the brain's neural connection between the amygdala and the hypothalamus and is normally used on patients who suffer from episodes of unstoppable violence and terror.2. What all this shows is that the physical structures and chemistry of the brain can control large portions of our chosen behaviours, experiences and feelings.
If the soul experiences some of the same things that our brain experiences, then, souls must have ways of 'measuring' what neurones are firing in our brains. If we can stimulate neurones with electrodes, which causes us to experience certain memories or feelings, then, if the soul has a "use" then it too must experience some of these things too. If our soul "sees" things, then, it must have eyes. No-one says that the soul sees over 360 degrees; so it must have forward-facing eyes like ours. How can a soul have all these observational tools? Why would the soul be restricted to feeling exactly the same as what we feel as a result of biochemistry? If our medulla is damaged, or our brainstem, why can't the soul control our body? If we have a serotonin imbalance as the result of disease, why does our soul suffer depression and mood disorders? It seems that the soul is highly physical.
“A small amount of damage [...] might even cause rather dramatic changes in your personality. Why? Because your brain is the seat of your self-awareness, the locus of your intelligence, your compassion, and your creativity. All of your mental activities - your thoughts, emotions and feelings - and all your bodily processes are affected by the functioning of your brain.”
"Understanding Human Behavior" by James V. McConnel (1986)3
What is the point of calling our minds souls when we know that all our experiences derive from the physical actions of neurones, neurotransmitters and hormones? Not only that, but they very formation (and loss) of memory is purely physical in nature. Brain damage results in loss of memory; it must be that the soul either doesn't have any memories, or doesn't use them.
“Our memories and habits are bound up with the structure of the brain, in much the same way in which a river is connected with the river-bed. The water in the river is always changing, but it keeps to the same course because previous rains have worn a channel. In like manner, previous events have worn a channel in the brain, and our thoughts flow along this channel. This is the cause of memory and mental habits. But the brain, as a structure, is dissolved at death, and memory therefore may be expected to be also dissolved. There is no more reason to think otherwise than to expect a river to persist in its old course after an earthquake has raised a mountain where a valley used to be.”
"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell (1957)4
Russell's watery metaphor highlights the fact that there is no apparent mechanism for a soul to influence the brain, or for the brain to influence a soul. It is as if they don't exist, and they apparently carry out no function. If the soul copies memories that are imprinted on to the brain, then, brain damage that effects memory will also effect the soul, and it appears that brain death itself would also remove the memories of the soul. The resolution of such philosophical problems lead to an immensely complex and improbably theory of how souls work. It is much more realistic to admit that the idea of a 'soul' makes no sense: Neurology and science has enabled us to understand the brain to such an extent that such an ethereal concept is no longer needed to explain anything.
If we suffer brain damage, take drugs, or if we are injected unknowingly with hormones by an experimenter, our feelings can be altered. This must mean that a soul is a reader of our experiences, but not a cause of them.
“If you take a couple of drinks, or smoke some pot, YOU become intoxicated. It is easy to understand how the chemicals in alcohol and cannabis can affect the ticking of your nerve cells. But how can physical reactions in your brain cause the psychological or spiritual YOU to get high? If your mind controls your body how does it do so? When you drive a car, you sit in the driver's seat, you push on the pedals with your feet, and you turn the wheel with your hands. If you consider your body to be a biological machine "driven" by your mind, where does the driver "sit"? And how does your purely spiritual or psychological "mind" pull the biological strings that make your neurones fire and your muscles move?”
"Understanding Human Behavior" by James V. McConnel (1986)5
It seems that whatever role our 'soul' has, it is not directly linked to the control of our physical bodies, and it is not directly a cause of our experiences.
* In addition to physical feelings, our emotions are deeply tied to biochemistry and neurology. Neurological causes (especially in the limbic system) precede emotions, and that cognitive events precede conscious awareness of feelings and emotions. This means that our qualia and fundamental experience of life results from our brain chemistry.
2. The Physics of the Soul
2.1. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
If the soul was able to interact physically with the body, or to view the world, it must have some physical structure and recording mechanism. Yet, despite attempts, no evidence for the 'mass' of soul has been found6. An object cannot be mass-free and physical; it cannot react with energy without having energy. In order to react with the brain it must have mass, but in order to be invisible it must be mass free. In order to see it requires photoreceptors and energy measuring devices which need to interact with the physical world. All such interactions are detectable. If souls interact with the world, they would be scientifically detectable in the world, but, scientific studies published properly in peer-reviewed journals have found no signs of souls or spirits.
2.2. The Fog of Death
Another serious problem is death ... the soul in its highly resilient fashion would always survive body death and there would be a huge build up of these slightly-physical souls. With billions upon billions of them each using up slight amounts of energy each, we would experience a literal fog of souls covering the whole planet! We would have to say that the soul decays over time, that eventually it does break up: these contradictions are telling us that the whole idea of a 'soul' is misguided.
2.3. Evolution
There is another major problem with the idea that a soul is required for some parts of the brain to function... the fact that all the individual parts of the brain obey normal biological and chemical rules. Animals and such evolved through a long process of gradual complexification. At no point in the history of the evolution of the nervous system has a soul became necessary. The soul itself must have evolved with us, within us. Growing with us from birth. It is as if our 'soul' is our brains, and nothing more. Or in other words, the evolution of our brain shows us that we have merely mistaken some of the emergent properties of consciousness to be a soul, somehow different from the brain itself. Now we know enough neurology to say for sure that this isn't true. In short there is only one sensible conclusion: Souls do not exist.
http://www.humantruth.info/physical.html
