I don't believe that there's such thing as a spirit

[tJjohnstone]

Hi, there

I'm not entirely sure where to post this, so please forgive me if this is the incorrect area to post in.

So, I've been studying a bit on psychology, physics and other areas too. I don't believe that there's such thing as a spirit or soul, I think that's part of your body, but I was wondering if anybody had any research that supports the idea that the spirit or soul isn't separate from your body, but rather what the brain does - if you get what I mean.

Thanks!

 

[jmatejka]

The Society for Scientific Exploration explores these topics. Their papers are peer reviewed. Here is a link to some PDF abstracts:

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/articles.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Note that the Society for Scientific Exploration is not an accepted mainstream source. It may only be used here anecdotally with no references to studies or theories.

A list of journals that may be used are found here:
http://scientific.thomson.com/index.html

I have no idea what the op is asking.

 

[nismaratwork]

I think the OP is stating that he is a materialist, but asking if there is some scientific evidence of dualism. The obvious answer is that with current technology, and probably until we die as a species, there will never be a scientific answer to that question, rather it is a matter of philosophy.

LJ, note that materialism in this context means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialist and that dualism means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind )

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Thanks, I didn't recognize the context.

I know there are a number of schools of thought on this matter - no doubt many being fringe or crackpot - but I don't know if there is any scientific basis for these ideas. I will leave the thread open for any papers suggesting that the mind cannot be explained solely in terms of brain function.

Please note that we are interested in scientific papers and evidence, not personal or internet theories.

 

[loseyourname]

I actually think he's asking for the opposite, for scientific evidence that mental phenomena are entirely caused by the brain.

 

[tJjohnstone]

Thanks for your replies! :), I'm checking out those links now.

Yes, loseyourname understood what I meant. I'm looking for scientific studies that prove or suggest that dualism highly improbable or impossible, studies that do NOT work in the favour of dualism.

Though, I'd actually also be interested if there are studies that DO support dualism, but from what I can gather so far is that dualism is considered incorrect (if incorrect is the correct term :P) in the scientific community and I pretty much just want to know why. I'm very interested in the topic.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

That seems like a backwards question: I would think that nearly every bit of our understanding of the mind and brain function would qualify as the desired evidence. The exception to the rule would be something suggesting otherwise. I don't know if there are any examples.

Moving to philosophy.

 

[Pythagorean]

The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Francis Crick

Basically, the modern word for soul is consciousness.

 

[nismaratwork]

The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Francis Crick

Basically, the modern word for soul is consciousness.

That is the explanation that works for me, and beyond that I think my capacity to understand the topic with current technology is at an end.

tJohnstone: Sorry that I got your intent off kilter!

 

[skippy1729]

Hi, there

I'm not entirely sure where to post this, so please forgive me if this is the incorrect area to post in.

So, I've been studying a bit on psychology, physics and other areas too. I don't believe that there's such thing as a spirit or soul, I think that's part of your body, but I was wondering if anybody had any research that supports the idea that the spirit or soul isn't separate from your body, but rather what the brain does - if you get what I mean.

Thanks!

You might want to look at:

The Emerging Physics of Consciousness - edited by J. A. Tuszynski - Springer 2006

which covers several materialistic approaches, some classical, some quantum.

Skippy

PS Although it is not what you are looking for, there is some scientific research being done by the University of Virginia, School of Medicine, Division of Perceptual Studies on apparent cases of reincarnation. They are continuing the work of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson. http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/home-page.

 

[Boy@n]

Until I, or whoever, understands how you can make a computer, or whole internet (since it's even more complex than the brain itself), aware of itself (and also have true feelings), I'd be inclined, and very much so, that there is something beyond this physical realm we scientifically can understand and/or prove.

So, yes, in my experience, we, humans, have souls. Or rather, souls enable us to be aware and feel while existing in this physical bodies which are governed my natural laws, but via souls, free-will is possible, not just consciousness, pain and pleasure and other "human" qualities.

 

[nismaratwork]

Until I, or whoever, understands how you can make a computer, or whole internet (since it's even more complex than the brain itself), aware of itself (and also have true feelings), I'd be inclined, and very much so, that there is something beyond this physical realm we scientifically can understand and/or prove.

So, yes, in my experience, we, humans, have souls. Or rather, souls enable us to be aware and feel while existing in this physical bodies which are governed my natural laws, but via souls, free-will is possible, not just consciousness, pain and pleasure and other "human" qualities.

This is analogues to a demand by pre-space civilization that until they see that the Earth is roughly spherical, they will assume it is flat.

 

[Pythagorean]

The Emerging Physics of Consciousness - edited by J. A. Tuszynski - Springer 2006

That's a good summary of the general topics of neurophysics! I've been looking for a text like that for a while.

 

[apeiron]

That's a good summary of the general topics of neurophysics! I've been looking for a text like that for a while.

Actually it is quantum consciousness crack-pottery...

 

[Pythagorean]

Take a closer look. Quantum is only one topic. It covers several approaches.

 

[Evo]

Until I, or whoever, understands how you can make a computer, or whole internet (since it's even more complex than the brain itself), aware of itself (and also have true feelings), I'd be inclined, and very much so, that there is something beyond this physical realm we scientifically can understand and/or prove.

Your lack of understanding means nothing. If you knew how simple the internet was you'd be too ashamed to post here again.

So, yes, in my experience, we, humans, have souls. Or rather, souls enable us to be aware and feel while existing in this physical bodies which are governed my natural laws, but via souls, free-will is possible, not just consciousness, pain and pleasure and other "human" qualities.

This is nonsense.

 

[apeiron]

Take a closer look. Quantum is only one topic. It covers several approaches.

OK, apart from Scott, which isn't a crackpot approach?

 

[Pythagorean]

OK, apart from Scott, which isn't a crackpot approach?

Well, Scott's approach is the only one I'm actually familiar with (as in, I've done hands on research in the subject) and it's necessarily classical (i.e. not quantum).

But there's other non-quantum approaches in the book that represent the general neurophysics (and not just to conscoiusness, btw, neuroscience in general):

JohnJoe McFadden
Avner Priel, et al
Christopher Davia
Nancy J Woolf

Who have all been productive in neuroscience research and have little to no mention of QM.

Anyway, there's no reason QM somehow shouldn't be applied to neuroscience in general. It already successfully has. "Quantum Consciousness" as developed by Penrose is what largely receives the criticism, but that's a very narrow scope and shouldn't represent all things QM + neuroscience. Pretty much all of the chemistry that is done in neuroscience would be meaningless without it's recent developments through QM.

 

[Pythagorean]

Though I must admit, I'm disappointed to not see a thermodynamics chapter.

 

[apeiron]

JohnJoe McFadden
Avner Priel, et al
Christopher Davia
Nancy J Woolf

You can't have read these authors before coming to that opinion.

All these researchers are part of a crackpot subculture organised by Hameroff.

 

[Pythagorean]

You can't have read these authors before coming to that opinion.

All these researchers are part of a crackpot subculture organised by Hameroff.

Well, no, I don't know the authors. I was looking at the subjects:

microtubules, computational properties of dendritic cytoskeleton, metabolism, etc, are all valid topics in neuroscience. I have no idea about their applications to consciousness, but I'm starting to steer clear of the direct topic of consciousness more and more lately.

 

[apeiron]

Well, no, I don't know the authors. I was looking at the subjects:

microtubules, computational properties of dendritic cytoskeleton, metabolism, etc, are all valid topics in neuroscience. I have no idea about their applications to consciousness, but I'm starting to steer clear of the direct topic of consciousness more and more lately.

OK, if you ever read the research , you will see it is indeed all quantum consciousness crack-pottery...

 

[Pythagorean]

OK, if you ever read the research , you will see it is indeed all quantum consciousness crack-pottery...

Ok... let's look at each author and what they've contributed to the field of neuroscience:

Nancy Woolf:

http://nwoolf.bol.ucla.edu/

yep, bonified neuroscience research topics.

Christopher Davia:

http://www.psy.cmu.edu:16080/~davia/mbc/4start.html

Davia hasn't done anything productive that I can find. He only has this very informal proposal that's based on a dynamical systems view. I won't judge him so quickly.

Johnjoe McFadden, let's look at his paper contributions:

http://www3.surrey.ac.uk/qe/pdfs/papers.pdf

His papers are boring and very obviously not crackpottery... But the books he writes for the public... yeah, ok, he's a little out there.

Avner Priel:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?r...q=Avner Priel&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=ws

Has been productive in biophysics with similar titles to those presented in this book.




So, besides JohnJoe McFadden, would you please explain to me why the others are crackpots?

 

[apeiron]

So, besides JohnJoe McFadden, would you please explain to me why the others are crackpots?

Yes, some of these guys have day jobs. When you have read more than the contents page of the book, get back to me...:zzz:

 

[brainstorm]

Could the idea of spirits represent a premodern attempt to describe certain kinds of cultural processes where people's subjectivity comes to function in terms of subconsciously learned cultural parameters? This might be something like the way physicists used to try to explain the propagation of light with reference to a fictitious medium, "ether."

 

[nismaratwork]

Could the idea of spirits represent a premodern attempt to describe certain kinds of cultural processes where people's subjectivity comes to function in terms of subconsciously learned cultural parameters? This might be something like the way physicists used to try to explain the propagation of light with reference to a fictitious medium, "ether."

Certainly there have been examples of this, where "infestation by devils" and other variations were blamed for deviations from the norm, illness, and more. It's very common to ascribe to an external force, effects caused by mechanisms that we don't understand.

 

[apeiron]

Could the idea of spirits represent a premodern attempt to describe certain kinds of cultural processes where people's subjectivity comes to function in terms of subconsciously learned cultural parameters? This might be something like the way physicists used to try to explain the propagation of light with reference to a fictitious medium, "ether."

The connection between the notions of mind (as a spiritual substance) and aether are in fact much closer than you perhaps realize.

Anaxagoras, for example, based his philosophy on the (Anaximander-derived of course) dichotomy of chaos and nous. Chaos was the "heavy materials", the mixed ball of atomistic substance. Nous was then the organising principle, the mindful swirling motion that set up a process of disruption and aggregation.

The "stuff" the nous was made of was the aether - the most rarified form of substance. And nous later became more clearly identified with reason and human insight, psyche and consciousness.

Plato and Aristotle eventually managed to make a comple(ish) break with materialism by treating form as an ontic category all of its own. But the idea that everything that exists must be some kind of substance (whether weighty or rarified) has persisted.

Hence the view, if there are souls, they must be made of some kind of actual stuff (a spirit) - a vital or animating substance.

And this is EXACTLY the mistake that the quantum crackpots make in seeking the secret of consciousness in some kind of material process. They say, well classical materialism does not seem to explain how brains have minds, so we will have to dig down to an even more fundamental level and find how brains harness the special properties of QM, like superposition and nonlocality.

Mind studies is plagued by this kind of beginner's metaphysics. Systems arise as the interaction of substance and form - local construction and global constraints. Or chaos and nous as Anaxagoras put it.

So consciousness has to be modeled in terms of substance and form, not crude substance and rarified substance. (And the kinds of forms we are talking about are shaping purposes like the need to anticipate the world, to model reality).

 

[nismaratwork]

The connection between the notions of mind (as a spiritual substance) and aether are in fact much closer than you perhaps realize.

Anaxagoras, for example, based his philosophy on the (Anaximander-derived of course) dichotomy of chaos and nous. Chaos was the "heavy materials", the mixed ball of atomistic substance. Nous was then the organising principle, the mindful swirling motion that set up a process of disruption and aggregation.

The "stuff" the nous was made of was the aether - the most rarified form of substance. And nous later became more clearly identified with reason and human insight, psyche and consciousness.

Plato and Aristotle eventually managed to make a comple(ish) break with materialism by treating form as an ontic category all of its own. But the idea that everything that exists must be some kind of substance (whether weighty or rarified) has persisted.

Hence the view, if there are souls, they must be made of some kind of actual stuff (a spirit) - a vital or animating substance.

And this is EXACTLY the mistake that the quantum crackpots make in seeking the secret of consciousness in some kind of material process. They say, well classical materialism does not seem to explain how brains have minds, so we will have to dig down to an even more fundamental level and find how brains harness the special properties of QM, like superposition and nonlocality.

Mind studies is plagued by this kind of beginner's metaphysics. Systems arise as the interaction of substance and form - local construction and global constraints. Or chaos and nous as Anaxagoras put it.

So consciousness has to be modeled in terms of substance and form, not crude substance and rarified substance. (And the kinds of forms we are talking about are shaping purposes like the need to anticipate the world, to model reality).

The killer is, consciousness may be largely illusory... just a level of complexity we as humans recognize, but not a significant plateau... and in the midst of this the genuine question of whether or not classical or quantum processes play a factor in such an emergence (if there is such a thing) is choked with supposition. It could very well be that the brain uses some quantum processes, but that wouldn't mean that those processes are the magical seat of the "MIND". I'm reminded if Ivan_Seeking's complaint about UFO skeptics and believers; both are blinded by their preconceptions, so the real science that could occur takes a backseat on both sides of the equation.

Photosynthesis seems to make use of QM, but that doesn't mean plants are magical. In the same way, it may be that a search for the mind emerging from the brain is a fruitless thing. In fact, the only way it CAN yield results is if one works with the assumption of a physical or spiritually tangible result that can be found, and by necessity that presupposes a very inaccurate view of human consciousness.

 

[Pythagorean]

Yes, some of these guys have day jobs. When you have read more than the contents page of the book, get back to me...:zzz:

Fair enough.

I don't really read science books geared for the public. I'm more likely to judge a scientific author based on their peer-reviewed published works.

What I've been looking for though is a text that covers the general topic of neurophysics (both theoretical and applied). I'm not going to be bias about which ones I like and don't like. As long as someone is making a falsifiable statement it should be included.

For now, all I've been able to do is look around to different neurophysics departments to see what kind of research they're doing. Some of the major topics I've found so far are:

Quantum approaches (you obviously know the theoretical aspect already, but there's also an applied medical aspect that's wholly removed from it and has been productive.)

Classical approaches:

dynamical systems, which is a study of behavior and relationships more than the variable or observable itself. (membrane potential and relaxation variable are popular, but there's also volume transmission to consider). Theoretical and practical applications.

thermodynamics (free energy principle, 2nd law), both theoretical and practical applications.

electromagnetics (action potentials, field interactions), both theoretical and practical.

This neurophysics group has a variety of research publications, not necessarily pertaining to any of the above categories:

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/neurophysics/neurophysics/Publications.html

Here's the Institute of Theoretical Neurophysics:

http://www.neuro.uni-bremen.de/~web/index.php?id=2&link=publications.php

At some point, some of these publications veer more towards the computational approach, so I'm still trying to make sense of the field and haven't been able to find a summary of the different approaches (this table of contents from the above book are the closest I've found). Perhaps you have an alternative suggestion?