What is the scientific probability of the human subconscious being mistaken for a soul?
Whatever you call it, even after we've long given up the idea of an after-life or all-knowing force guiding our fate, even atheists have a hard time giving up on the idea of 'self.'
It's pretty strange to face the idea that we are not this any one thing, but really a very complex combinations of biological and neurological reactions. Chemicals that are released in our brains make us feel he way we do. Our perception is really 90% interpretation. Can you swallow the idea that we don't have filters, but we ARE the filters?
To say that 'you' is 'you' and nothing more than organic matter takes a pretty complex understanding of anatomy and neurology. Probably should add in a good dose of psychology and psychiatrics, as well. And yet...and yet we still pretend that if our loved one suffers a traumatic head injury and survives, they are still the same person just by still retaining a pulse.
A total fucking vegetative state is only just now legally debatable as even being alive. How then can something so ambiguous and yet so fundamental as personality be overlooked?
Traumatic head injuries that result in major demeanor shifts sometimes quite literally means that the person you once knew no longer exists. No, it isn't a gray area of supernatural, but how else can we explain it? It isn't hyperbole to call these people 'ghosts.' Their brains no longer function in a way resembling that of what they were prior to trauma. Legends of demonic possession came about for a reason. Once damaged, the reconstruction of the human brain can now be even more radically different. Why? Because as technology advances, so does the survival rate of extremely severe injuries. Our medicine keeps getting better, so a head injury that would have been lethal a decade ago simply isn't more than a few extra weeks in the hospital and routine scans.
The god of gaps grows ever smaller with the constant erosion of the human supernatural as we learn more an more about what IS natural.
And yet, some regions of the brain remain barely explored.
Can you, do you believe that there is some thread within us that makes us really 'us?'
I'm not talking about energy or divinity or anything woo here.
I mean some purely unique neurological impulses that could be identified as the center of self. Explained by science, accepted by medicine, explained by Multiverse theory....whatever.
Tags: brain, human, matter, ponderings, soul, subconscious
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on -
there seem to be two questions here (it's hard to tell after reading this twice).
1. the title of the thread.
my answer would be that this seems to already be the case with a great many people. they already mistake our consciousness for a soul. they do so in error of course.
2. do you believe that there is some seat of consciousness, some center in the mind from whence consciousness comes?
in a word: no. i suggest Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained on this topic. there is no seat of consciousness. consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. if what we mean when we refer to consciousness is the essence of what makes the individual the individual then modern neuroscience has fairly well disproved the notion that there is any kind of center of the mind where this essence of self resides. as you pointed out already, brain injuries can radically effect a person's personality. (Sam Harris referred to this to great effect in his recent debate on the afterlife. also see a recent essay in Slate by Jesse Bering). we know that consciousness doesn't reside in one place in the brain because injury or disease effecting one region of the brain can radically change a person's personality and their facilities. on the theory that consciousness resides in some center of the brain we should expect that injury and disease might change someone's faculties but that the essence of who they are would remain unchanged. this is not the case.
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Permalink Reply by Michael on -
What constitutes consciousness still remains a scientific mystery but many theories abound.
I am in favor with it residing in the electro magnetic field that is a product of the flow of neuro-transmitters as oppose to being the static construct of the neurons themselves. But since neurons tile space, a-periodically, this leads to complex mathematical constructs in terms of modeling. I believe that Roger Penrose's concepts, in his "Emperor's New Mind", may be at play also. Specifically, quantum mechanics and chaos theory. In short neurons tile space more complex then quasi-crystals, which are little understood by conventional models of crystal grows and introduce the impossible five fold symmetry in defiance of conventional wisdom. Thus Penrose conjectures that a quantum mechanical wave existing in Hilbert space collapses and give rise to crystals knowing where they are going before they get there. Thus actually have a physical testable system to demonstrate that there is a higher reality to existence that we are oblivious of. Event space in which we live, thus is not the absolute perception of reality.
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