Comments on: Of Souls and State Machines

By: doug

doug — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:33:37 +0000

Ah! Thank you.
Here is a great TED lecture by Dr. Ramachandran regarding phantom limb:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k

By: magdalene

magdalene — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:40:27 +0000

That’s an interesting idea, and of course the non-brain corpus has influence and interacts with the brain. But applying a little logic here, if you lose your arm, you’re still Doug. If you lose both feet — still Doug. You retain awareness of your Doug-ness. Lose certain parts of your brain — not so. However, yes, your brain would stop receiving stimuli from from aforementioned lost feet. Does degradation occur? I don’t know. Seems plausible, though with brain plasticity, it also seems plausible that shifts rather than degradation occur (or perhaps some of each?). And since we’re talking about brain/body, here’s a fascinating article about representations of the (non-brain) body in the brain (i.e., the sensation of having a body occurs in the brain):

http://tinyurl.com/24apt5

By: doug

doug — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:05:13 +0000

“There’s no evidence to indicate that the experience of consciousness, self-knowing, personality, might arise from the kneecaps or the toes, but quite a bit that suggests it arises from the brain.”
Yes, but I think what we are driving at is that consciousness doesn’t “arise” from the brain so much as it collects in the brain, all of the physical aspects being integral components. I am not exactly certain (and I don’t have the motivation search sources just now), but I believe I read that there is evidence of brain degradation associated with prolonged sensory deprivation. I would be shocked if such was not the case, but I’m not certain if there has been any solid studies. The relevance to the topic here should be obvious…

By: magdalene

magdalene — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:16:32 +0000

The brain isn’t some wifty ethereal blob; it’s also a “physical component”. Though I am loath to concur with anything Doug says, I agree with his assertion that the separations we tend to make between brain and the rest of the body may be erroneous (at least in part). Even if one could assert that the brain and spinal column appear to be somewhat separate from the rest of the body, from there the peripheral nervous system extends and winds throughout the entire body. [So the idea that emotions can be “generated” in the (non-brain part of the) body could have some merit; emotions being, in gross and in part, patterns of neuronal firing and neurotransmitter action. Though I think it’s safe to say that interpretation & attribution of such “body” emotions occur in the brain.] Even so, while I’ll wager research will continue to result in support for a more holistic model, there’s got to be some specificity: There’s no evidence to indicate that the experience of consciousness, self-knowing, personality, might arise from the kneecaps or the toes, but quite a bit that suggests it arises from the brain.

To return to the original topic, and the “purpose for insisting on the existence of a soul”, anyone who has experienced the fear of annihilation of the self or even garden variety death anxiety should be able to answer that. Regardless of the lack of objective evidence, the idea of a soul is comforting (to some). Though I myself have fluctuated between “Shit, I’m going to die and that’s it!” to “Maybe there’s more. Ah, that’s comforting.” to “But wait, that doesn’t make any sense. Eww.”

By: doug

doug — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:09:36 +0000

It’s interesting, William, that you intuit that it’s “the proverbial horse that leads the cart” (assuming you’ve not read the material I’ll cite). Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote a book titled Descarte’s Error that I think you’d find helpful. He states that the “mind is embodied… not just embrained”, meaning that this common perception of a separation of mind and body is inaccurate. Emotions, it seems, are generated by the body – or, rather, the physical and mental are too dependent upon one another for the idea of a separation to be useful. After all, what would terror be without an increased heart-rate and adrenaline rush? A good description of this can be found in Jonah Lehrer’s book Proust Was a Neuroscientist in the first chapter.
Damasio did an experiment in which subjects were given two decks of cards to draw from. One was heavily stacked to be advantageous to the subject, given the rules of the game, and the other was negatively stacked. Damasio found that physical response long preceded conscious realisation of which deck was which. The hand grew increasingly electric and “nervous” when reaching toward the negative deck well before the subject’s brain seemed to understand the game. “The hand,” says Lehrer, “led the brain.”
Perhaps more relevant to the question of the “soul” is Damasio’s research demonstrating our emotions play an integral role in our general reasoning. Brain damage to the frontal lobe has sometimes rendered its victims incapable of proper emotional response, while their general skills of logic seem unharmed. These people tend to make horrible decisions, lose friends, and end badly.
“Soul” suffers from a lack of real definition, but often I believe that there is an idea that our souls are our “true selves”, our inner nature, while our brains are rational computers. Character-changing brain injuries would seem to disprove that notion.

By: william

william — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:56:05 +0000

If we are moving forward with the idea that self awareness is a result of the interplay between complex systems then I would argue that the physical component is just as much part of the “memory” as the reaction in the brain. In fact, in some instances, it may be the proverbial horse that leads the cart.

By: magdalene

magdalene — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:26:52 +0000

The term ‘storage’ in reference to memory is itself interesting. Evokes the file cabinet or computer analogies. I’m not satisfied with ‘storage’ as a descriptor for what is going on.

As for so-called body memories, I’d guess that there is no “memory”, per se, that is actually being “stored” in the eye, knee, or integument proper, but that a replication of a salient sensation in the eye (knee, whatever) might trigger certain patterns of neuronal activation *in the brain*, resulting in the experience of remembering (whether conscious, self-aware autobiographical memory, or the trigger of related emotional states without conscious awareness of recall).

By: Loki der Quaeler

Loki der Quaeler — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:29:55 +0000

Ya sure… it wasn’t really an article about memory specifically – but indeed, if one defines memory as a capturing of state, then just about everything in the body can be thought to store memory. Further, as you say, the brain is in the interpreter of a lot of those ‘memories’.

For example, i do my knee in nicely while playing soccer; not only is there at least temporary state (memory) of that injury stored in the knee, but the feedback sent back to the brain about degrees of freedom, pain, etc. allows for further interpretation of the knee’s ‘memory’ when plotting and performing actions.

By: william

william — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:37:01 +0000

I find it interesting that people assume that memory is only stored in the mind. I think every sense organ is capable of storing memory in one form or another. Indeed some of these physical memories are the most profound. In this case I wonder if the brain isn’t the storage device, but rather, the interpreter.

By: magdalene

magdalene — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:56:09 +0000

Eh, probably more accurate to ask, “when will thinking people stop using ‘the soul’ as filler for everything we do not understand about human experience?”