Seat of the Soul?

Jason Booy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0000

I believe in a soul. I believe there is more to “me” than a body. Neurons, blood cells, respiratory gases; physical matter – certainly I rely on these to function, but they do not control me. I am not merely physical, a puppet to the unyielding forces of physics and chemistry.

Which leads me to the interesting, and unavoidable question: where is the interface between body and soul?

Human cultures have long asked this question. The Ancient Egyptians believed that the bodily residence of the soul is in the heart. Emotions, thoughts, and choices all take place within the heart, they thought. Although we’ve since discovered that these are actually functions of the brain, even today we still carry some vague association between the physical heart and the emotions of passion.

Also in the running for seat of the soul, historically, is the pineal gland. Its heavily-protected, highly vascularized location deep within the centre of the brain has led many new-agers, and occultists to wonder about whether it has a metaphysical role.

In the US at the beginning of last century, there were physicians who would weigh bodies shortly before death, and then immediately afterwards. The idea was that the difference between the two readings could give an approximate value for the weight of a human soul. The idea strikes me as strange, since my bias is to consider the soul immaterial (and hence weightless) by definition.

With the advent of modern psychology/psychiatry/neurology, I think we’ve since narrowed down the quest for the soul’s resting place to the brain. The brain is where decisions are made, emotions are experienced, and consciousness is maintained. Of course, the brain is an awe-inspiringly big place, with a lot of complicated activity. Where exactly is does the soul have its influence? And what form does that influence take?

Let’s say I that I make a conscious decision (any decision – the content doesn’t matter). As a proponent of free will, I would suggest that my decision is not simply the net result of neurons firing in my brain. Rather, in some place, and at some point in time, my immaterial soul must initiate a material effect on the stuff of my brain to exert its willpower.

What does this event look like? Does a particular neuron fire without stimulus? Are new neurotransmitters created from nowhere to initiate a decision-cascade? You may protest that these events break the laws of electrochemistry, and the conservation of matter (the laws of nature). But that’s precisely the point. Any decision-making mechanism that is bound by the laws of nature, would be incapable of making free decisions.

Yet more unanswerable questions distracting me from what I should be doing: studying neurology. Sigh.

Haldane on Materialism

Jason Booy — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:58:58 +0000

For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

-J.B.S. Haldane, “When I am Dead”

Every now and then, I like to toy with a little bit of philosophy. Recently I’ve been thinking about materialism, which is the belief that the universe consists of only physical material (atoms) and nothing else. All events – including human thoughts and emotions – are then determined necessarily by interactions between those atoms.

Materialism is often encountered in fields of science. As scientific knowledge continues to explain the physical workings of the world, our bodies, and even our brains, materialism seems ever more plausible. Before continuing, however, it’s important to clarify that materialism is a philosophical tenet, not a scientific one. The statement that nothing exists apart from matter is not a statement that can be tested experimentally, nor ever demonstrated through experience. It is inaccessible to the scientific method. There is a philosophical “leap” required to go from the scientific view that some things have an atomic explanation to the worldview that all things have atomic causes and no other cause.

J.B.S. Haldane was an influential biologist who made comments about materialism – one of his published comments is quoted above. It’s a quote that certainly makes me smile. It has a cheeky, circular, playfulness to it! But is there truth in it? Can such a simple argument dismantle materialism?

My personal knee-jerk response, is to invoke Darwinism. Haldane supposes that a purely material world couldn’t construct the organized sophistication of a brain that has “true” thoughts. But Darwin’s beautiful idea demonstrated how natural selection is certainly capable of creating sophisticated things. Maybe brains that thought “true” beliefs helped the bodies that they lived in to survive better. In time, through selection, our human brains got pretty good at believing “true” things.

But my Darwinian refutation isn’t enough. Haldane wasn’t saying that the world doesn’t have physical explanations. It does. And Darwin’s physical explanation is appropriate for our brains, just as much as for the rest of our bodies. What Haldane meant is that physical expanations aren’t the whole story.

To explain, I’ll try to re-phrase his argument differently. If materialism is true, then I could never know that it is true. That’s because, all of the “knowing” happening in my brain would be determined completely physically. And that doesn’t leave any room for what’s actually true to influence that which I know.

Wow, that was convoluted. Here’s an illustrative story. Suppose that I believe in materialism. My friend believes that immaterial ‘fairies’ exist, somewhere far away. If both our brains contain nothing but atoms, then we arrived at these beliefs necessarily, as determined by atomic interactions. Now consider those fairies. Do they exist? Because I’m a materialist, I don’t believe that they do. But I have no reason to judge that the atoms in my head somehow yielded a true belief, while the atoms in my friend’s head did not. What is truth to atoms? So as a materialist, I cannot say whether fairies exist. Or: as a materialist, I cannot say whether the immaterial exists. Or: as a materialist, I cannot be a materialist. Therein lies the contradiction.

I’ve been seeking to understand this elusive argument against materialism of Haldane’s for awhile. Even still, I eye it suspiciously, not confident that it holds water. What do you think? Can you see any difficulties?

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Seat of the Soul?

Haldane on Materialism