THE INSTITUTE FOR CRITICAL INVESTIGATION

PRESENTS

NEUROBIOLOGY OF THE SOUL

Concepts in philosophy, religion & science

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThis interdisciplinary seminar will reflect on a theological understanding of personhood convergent with human biology and cognitive neuroscience.

The “soul” has been understood in:1. Biblical & Theological perspectives2. Philosophical perspective3. Scientific perspective

Aproposal for an interdisciplinary theological perspective for a neurobiology of the soul - persists in an postmortem abiological afterlife

POPULAR IMAGE OF A SOUL

FLAWED THEOLOGCIAL GYMNASTICS

MORE GYMNASTICS

EVEN MORE GYMNASTICS

1. THE BIOLOGICAL SOUL?

The soul refers to the moral, spiritual and personal qualities (qualia) of human nature.

To be spiritual is to be cognitively aware of the transcendent nature of our existence, beyond the biophysicality of the carbon-based shell called the human body. 

The soul relies on the body to express itself just as consciousness relies on the brain to persist.

GREEK MYTHOLOGY ON SOULS

2A. INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

The quest for an interdisciplinary concept of the soul: Human spirituality in our embodied neurobiology, i/e., our ability to sense and think, is rooted in our carbon-chemistry.Revelation reveals Creation: Our interpretation of the Bible must always find convergence with all aspects of the universe’s created order. Exegesis of the Soul: The biblical notion of the Soul refers to meta-consciousness (awareness of one’s awareness)Proposal: Nonreductive Physicalism

2B. NONREDUCTIVE PHYSICALISM

Historical attempts to explain the soul

1. Dualism: Body and Soul are separate entities (pineal gland)

2. Monism: Body and Soul are one (matter & mind)3. Nonreductive physicalism: Duality without dualism.

Avoids the intractable problems of determinism and reductionism.

The biblical notion of the soul refers to the metaconsciousness of a biological brain. This 3rd order awareness of one’s awareness goes beyond the 2nd order called theory of mind (TOM), in which a mind recognizes the existence of another independent mind that is not its own.

GREEK SOUL, HADES & THE AFTERLIFE

3A. SOUL = CONSCIOUSNESS?

The modern word psychology derives from the Greek psyche (soul) and logos (knowledge) – study of the soul

The prescientific and biblical word soul refers to consciousness

What consciousness is not- An innate property of matter. - Merely the process of learning. - Required for a number of complex processes.

3B. SOUL = CONSCIOUSNESS

What consciousness is- Conscious focus is required to learn or execute a task. But after a skill is mastered, it recedes into the world of the unconscious. A great deal of what is happening to you right now is not part of your consciousness until you draw attention to it. - We cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.- Knowledge and creative epiphanies appear to us without our control.

3C. EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Bicameral Mind evolved into the Conscious Mind?In the 1970s, Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes introduced the notion of the bicameral mind that evolved consciousness just 3000 years ago.

“Consciousness is a thin rime of ice atop a sea of habit, instinct, or some other process that is capable of taking care of much more than we tend to give it credit for.”

“There could have existed a race of men who spoke, judged, reasoned, solved problems, indeed did most of the things that we do, but were not conscious at all.”

3D. DO ANIMALS HAVE SOULS?

“A nun had told us that dogs didn't go to heaven because animals didn't have souls. Humans are animals, too. How does she know there are no other animals in heaven?"

Is metaconsciousness a necessary condition for the afterlife? What about those who died with compromised capacities for consciousness?

THE WEIGHT OF A HUMAN SOUL

In 1901, Dr. Duncan "Om" MacDougall (c. 1866 – October 15, 1920) measured the weight of 6 patients as well as 15 dogs at their deaths. No change in weight for dogs. But the humans lost about 21 grams at death. His conclusion: The soul weighs 21 grams and flies away at death and animals have no souls.

Expectations drives scientific conclusions

21 GRAMS

3E. CONSCIOUSNESS OF PARTICLE PHYSICS

Consciousness is fundamental to the Universe. We consist of inanimate quarks. Therefore, we are all interconnected, every particle, animate or inanimate. This has a profound impact to the way we think of ourselves and fellow beings.

Compassion and empathy for others arise when we realize how co-dependent (food & health) and interdependent (security) we are, through cycles of creation and dissolutions, ad infinitum.

We are recycled matter, once alive, then dead, then alive again. Are our constituent particles of matter also conscious before they become a unified us?

3F. CONSCIOUS BELIEFS, CONVICTIONS & KNOWLEDGE

1. Religion is not found in any scriptures such as the Zoroastrian Avesta, the Hindu Vedas and Vedantas, the Judeo-Christian Bible or the Muslim Quran. Religious faith consists of the evolving geohistorical interpretations of these scriptures. All existential contingencies change the interpretations.

2. No religious conviction is static but changes over time in response to human understanding of nature. Beliefs and convictions are a function of knowledge.

3. Beliefs are not evidential, convictions are phenomenological and knowledge is provisional.

4A. PHYSIOLOGY & MORALITY

1. What are the ramifications for those who inhabit physiologically compromised bodies due to genetic mutations or traumatic events that lead to physical and even moral deficiencies?

2. Is it the mind or the body that sins?

3. Since the mind is made up of the same matter that makes up the body, where lies the culpability of sin?

4B. THE MIND’S DEFAULT STATE

“…all poetry and music …begins in the regions of the brain where once the gods made themselves heard” S. Faulks, Human Traces, 453. Here the writer suggests that in its default bicameral state, the prehistoric mind can ‘hear’ God but with the emergence of consciousness, God’s voice is silenced.

Q: Will future study of the brain affirm the nonexistence of God?

A: No, the scientific method will provide new epistemological knowledge but cannot breach the ontological ignorance endemic in the issue of whether the human brain can verifiably detect God.

4C(I). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS FROM NEUROBIOLOGY

Spiritual insights based on Contingencies of Existence which question the universality of salvific doctrines.

1. Geohistorical:a) Where, when & to whom we were born makes a

huge difference to our opportunities in life. b) Advances in science, technology & medicine

determines our very biological survival.c) Economic – the vagaries of finance and economics. d) Legal & Political – the type of government where you

live shapes the opportunities you have.

4C(II). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS

2a. Neurological: Cognitive failure –inability to understand and think.Memory loss and false memory registration.Personality disorders – multiple & changing.Hallucinations & Schizophrenia.Many neurological diseases rob the person of true volitional and nolitional powers to make decisions. Under such circumstances, Christian teaching ought to rethink its doctrinal interpretation of the Bible’s authority.

4C(III). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS

2b. Neurological:

Human behavior and cognitive abilities are reflected In the developmental state and the degenerative state of our neural structures. Thus, developmental neurobiology and neural degeneration affirm how much our moral lives depend on our biochemistry.

Differences in brain structures affect not just our cognitive capacities but also our social and interpersonal relationships. Emotions and mood swings respond to therapeutic chemicals.

This brain-body interdependence shows that our brain biology shapes our spiritual sense of the divine.

4C(IV). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS

2b. Neurological:

Brain damage affects our experiences of self-identity, which in turn affect our spiritual lives.

1. Emotions are affected by chemical processes.2. Morality are affected by how alcohol shapes our

consciences.3. Mental processses such as memory and

intelligence degenerate with physical deterioration

4C(V). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS

2c. Neurological:

There is an irreducibly intrinsic interdependence, i.e., necessary, normal and complementary relationships, which reflects a duality but not dualism of substance.

This is nonreductive physicalism, a nondualistic duality.

Consciousness is so important that it is the phenomenon by which God’s creation of the universe as it exists is made known.

4C(VI). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS

3. Psychophysiological:

Sexual dimorphism - prenatally determined. Children born with sexual dissonance are minds trapped in the bodies of opposite genders. The prenatal ratio of estrogen and androgen hormones irreversibly determines the sexual brain.

Sexual orientation - Jesus made no mention of it but the Church’s adoption of Paul's focus on orientation as a salvific criterion paved the way from salvation by grace to salvation by cognitive volition and nolition merit.

4C(VII). SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS

4. Biblical:

We became modern humans 200,000 years ago.We started to believe in God 100,000 years ago.We learned to speak languages 50,000 years ago.We learned to write on bone & clay 5,500 years ago.We learned to institutionalize religions 3,000 years ago.

Our Bible was written, edited, selected and continues to be interpreted alongside the development of theologies.

Plurality of Christian traditions & biblical compositions raise important questions for a Biblical authoritarian singularity.

4D. CONSCIOUSNESS-BIOLOGICAL OR CULTURAL EVOLUTION?

1. What philosophers call "meta-consciousness" or "meta-awareness", i.e., awareness of awareness, thinking about thinking, desires about desires, beliefs about beliefs. This form of reflection is distinct from the kinds of "deliberations" seen in other higher animals insofar as it is dependent on linguistic cognition.

2. Lower animals could learn from experience but this was not introspective metaconsciousness.

3. Humans were not reflectively meta-conscious and operated by means of automatic, nonconscious habit-schemas, constituted by the "bicameral mind".

THE BICAMERAL MIND

EVOLUTION OF SPEECH & WRITING

5A. SALVATION OF THE SOUL

In the Christian tradition, the whole point of a soul is everlasting life, i.e., salvation. The criteria CANNOT be:

1. Cognitive or permissive acquiescence of a normal mental state – this denies salvation to those with neurological deficits.

2. State of knowledge – the number and meanings of doctrines evolve over time, e.g., the Trinitarian formula was accepted in the 4th century, those who lived and died before AD 325, from 325-381, and after 381 would have different thresholds of qualified knowledge.

3. Complete state of knowledge and/or understanding.

5B. RELATIONALITY OF THE SOUL

1. Our soul/identity is our self-conscious relationality. We are more than our biology-the human body is not biologically static. All our cells are replaced throughout our lives and our synaptic connections are shaped by our experiences, with neural correlates based on our interpretation of reality (experiences, relationships & the physical universe).

2. Death is biologically final.

3. The afterlife requires re-embodiment, NOT rescue from the cosmos but transformation for a non-embodied conscious existence.

5C. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

The immortality of the Soul is not based on a biological persistence of awareness but rather, a nonbiological postmortem consciousness sustained by God.

The Christian teaching of the immortal consciousness (soul’s everlasting life) is based on a nonbiological system that will emerge from a renewal of the cosmos.

Distinguish between

1. Resuscitation – temporary extension of life2. Reincarnation – cyclical Samsara of birth, life & death3. Resurrection – permanent spiritual/bodily (Pauline)

RESUSCITATION- LAZARUS

SAMSARA - REINCARNATION

RESURRECTION - NT

5D. PERSISTENCE OF THE SOUL

Proposals for the mechanics of this eventuality include:1. Mathematical patterns of information that do not

need a physical substrate to function may be the heaven we expect (Superman 2).

2. Physical renewal of the universe with more dimensions of spacetime (String theory).

3. Replacing failing organs indefinitely and storing mental functions in electronic circuits dispenses with any biological substrate (Vanilla Sky).

4. The sharing of consciousness (Star Trek’s Borg) as in slime mold may do the trick.

5E. THE SOUL & BIBLICAL DUALISM?

According to Jaynes, only humans HAVE souls

According to the Bible, all animals ARE souls.

The Hebrew understanding of death and the afterlife underwent major changes during the Greek and Roman periods.

The biblical narrative has not worked out a philosophically satisfying understanding on the nature of physical existence in life, death and the afterlife.

Conclusion: The Bible does not require a dualist view.

CONCLUSION

1. Soul refers to the consciousness of ALL animals.

2. Humanity as the imago Dei is characterized by our vocation as God’s partners in creation here and in the thereafter.

3. Cognitive neuroscience shows that our biology affects our spirituality.

4. Interdisciplinary theology shows that our humanity rests in our capacity to experience love and express compassion beyond our biological advantages.

EXTRA: FOR THE 2016 MASTER-CLASS Julian Jaynes

Consciousness is based on language The bicameral mind The dating The Double brain

MADNESS & THE MIND OF BICAMERALISM BRAIN

What does it mean to be human? Are we at the mercy of our inner, unconscious drives, a product of incomplete evolution - caught halfway between the new brain and the old brain, a work in progress?

Are people who hear voices crazy? Or, do they retain an ancient ability to talk to the gods, throwback to a previous version of us?

"You cannot have humanity without psychosis.” Human Traces, S. Faulks, 2005

HUMAN TRACES, S. FAULKS, 2005Once "hearing voices" was both common and a good thing. Witness Noah, Abraham, and Moses of the Old Testament.

As humans developed, concomitant with the development of writing, their brains evolved, their self-consciousness expanded and became increasingly refined, most no longer heard voices.

Poetry and music "strike us with this awful longing for what once was ours", because they begin "in regions of the brain where once the gods made themselves heard.”

Those who do "hear voices" - schizophrenics or psychotics - are either throwbacks or those who have suffered some sort of genetic mutation or misfortune.

HUMAN TRACES, S. FAULKS, 2005

“Darwinian theory of natural selection holds that people with that sort of handicap would slowly die out (saddled as they are with a reproductive disadvantage), unless the genetic flaw they suffer from is an evolutionarily ineradicable variant of the superior brain that gives most humans such an advantage in the world.”

”…the same `genes' that drive us mad have made us human. You cannot have humanity without psychosis." And thus, the mad - or many of them - bear a burden imposed by biology and genetics in order that the rest of us humans can be the sentient creatures we are.”

HUMAN TRACES, S. FAULKS, 2005

The overwhelming irony is that the super-refined consciousness of humans has now "robbed us of any privileged place in creation. There is no god and there is no consolation for us, only death."

That leaves humans today with a dilemma: "To conceive of ourselves as fragmentary matter cohering for a millisecond between two eternities of darkness is very difficult, because our lives do not feel like that. Either, therefore, that is not the reality, or there is something wrong with the way that we register reality."