A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 10: A Personal Example of Soul and Body in Action

[See here for introductory comments.]

 

             In this entry, I want to use a personal example to bring together a few of the ideas presented so far.  This example will combine the "noodles for reins" analogy [here] with the fundamental principle that most of what we do follows the pattern of "dog activity" [see discussion here].  When you put these two things together, you realize that the soul's influence might be pretty rare and is certainly weak.  The question that arises then is "when is the soul ever active?"  I want to provide an initial answer to that question using the following personal example.

 

Personal example of soul in action

             As an undergraduate, I was always on the thin border of being able to afford college.  In order to make ends meet, I needed to get scholarships, grants, work study jobs, and regular jobs.  I was constantly worried about whether I was going to be able to make the next tuition and room & board payment.  My dad worked, but my parents were not in position to help me substantially with college and, in fact, they lost their house during my freshman year of college. 

             After my first year of college, I gained a better understanding of how the federal financial aid system worked.  In my first year, the financial aid package included some amount that was supposed to come from my parents, but they were not able to do that.  During that year I learned that if I could qualify to be an "independent" on my taxes, then my parent's income would not factor into the financial aid calculation.  That seemed like a good plan to me, but I had to meet all of the criteria.  I don't remember all the details, but I recall there were three criteria and I met two of them easily.  But the third criterion was something like "you can't live with your parents for more than six weeks during the past year."  I had attended summer classes, so I hadn't lived at home during most of the year.  But when I added up the total time I had lived at home, it was something like eight weeks - just exceeding the official limit to qualify to be an independent.

             At the time, I was trying to "live by faith" and believe that God would provide sufficient funding for school.  I had already experienced a couple of miracles in that regard - someday I will have to relate that story.  But, miracles or no, I was constantly worried that I was not going to be able to pay the next bill and I'd have to take whatever money I had left and take the 48-hour Greyhound bus ride back home. 

             When it came to doing my taxes that second year, I struggled.  I almost met the criteria to be an independent.  Two out of three I easily met.  The third I was sooo close.  And if I could be an independent, I would get so much more aid.  I could pay for school.

             So...I lied on my taxes that year.  I claimed I met all three criteria and was an independent.

             What I want to do in this entry is relate my actions to the different components of my theory of the soul.  The decision to lie on my taxes was a moral decision, but driven strongly by the rational and emotional aspects of my mind.  There was an emotional component of the decision:  fear and anxiety.  I was certainly fearful about not being able to pay for school and fearful that if I wasn't declared an independent, I wouldn't get enough financial aid to pay for school.  And there was a rational component to the decision:  it seemed like a small thing because I was really close to qualifying.  And, besides, how could the IRS ever find out anyway?  There was no track record of where I lived during the past year (this was long before cell phones with GPS), so how could it ever be proven?  And what were the odds that the IRS would ever audit a poor college student?

             I used the term "mind" in the previous paragraph because I wanted to be vague.  Now let me break this down into the spiritual and physical realms - soul and body.  First, let me say this:  although I certainly believe the soul and physical body are different and distinct things, I think it is very hard for us to discern where one ends and the other begins.  The soul and body are intricately linked and I think it is hard to separate some of our actions into physical and spiritual categories.  I'll dive into this more when I talk about anger, which is certainly one of those characteristics of humans that resides in both the body and the soul.  But despite the difficulty in separating our actions into soul and body, I'm going to give some general thoughts regarding this situation that I hope will shed light on my theory of the soul.

             First, there are plenty of aspects to my decision to lie on my taxes that were purely physiologically-based.  But, since I don't think dogs lie on their taxes, there must be some aspect of my actions that was soul-based.  The fear of not being able to pay for college was strongly physiological.  We know that there are areas of the brain that are active when we are afraid or anxious.  There are also general physiological responses to fear that, to a greater or lesser extent, further heighten our sense of fear.  There is a positive feedback loop that can sometimes be detrimental to us.  I think the desire to extract ourselves from any situation that produces fear or anxiety - the "flight" of the autonomic nervous system - is nearly all driven by our physiology and can happen without the intervention of our soul.  Dogs avoid fear.  The things that cause human beings fear, such as not being able to pay for college, are certainly more abstract than what dogs fear, but that doesn't change the fundamental fact.  I think our physical brains are capable of extensive abstraction, allowing us to respond in fear to all sorts of rational and irrational concepts.  I think the drive to avoid fearful situations and find a place of calm and comfort is a very strong physiological drive.  Going back to the "noodle reins" analogy, trying to keep the horse from jumping when it hears a rattlesnake rattle is an almost impossible task for the jockey. 

             But fear alone was not sufficient to cause me to lie on my taxes.  I also needed the rationalization that 1) I was very close to qualifying and 2) I wouldn't be caught.  Our ability to rationalize must be one of those things that requires both the physical brain (mostly frontal cortex, I'm assuming) and the soul.  The ability to rationalize seems to me to require a broad, unified view of the situation we are in.  Specifically, it seems that rationalizing requires consciousness.  Since consciousness resides in the soul, then the soul must be involved in rationalization.  But I also think there is a lot of "computation" to rationalization which probably takes place in the physical brain.  Where does "thinking" lie?  In the physical brain or in the soul?  At the very least, our awareness of our thinking lies in our soul.  But the thinking itself?  I don't know for sure.  I think it could be that most of our thinking takes place in our brain and our conscious awareness of it is mostly in the sense of a spectator.  We are aware of our brain thinking.

             So, coupled with my fear, I rationalized that lying on my taxes was not that big of a deal.  It was "not that bad" I reasoned.  But, of course, I'm not the only one to lie on my taxes.  There are some who intentionally don't even pay their taxes.  I could have just not filed taxes, or any of a number of other equally wrong actions.  Where is the "setting" for how much of a lie on my taxes was "not that bad"?  I believe it is within the soul - the will - where these kinds of personal standards are established.  With my soul I decided to go ahead with filling out my taxes in a way that was not true.  Actually, "decided" is too strong of a word here.  In reality, based on my fears and rationalizations, I was fully prepared to claim I was an independent.  But ultimately my soul did not put the brakes on that action.  My soul let it happen.  But, even further, it's not like my soul was strongly opposed to proceeding.  My character, embodied in my soul, is pretty typical of most people, I think.  I generally want to do the right thing, but I also place a bit of a limit about doing the right thing and I have a very fuzzy border between right and wrong.  So, in the case of this particular action, my soul was complicit.  I didn't work that hard trying to keep myself from proceeding!

             So, I filed my taxes, claiming I qualified to be an independent.  And, it worked.  I was declared an independent.  My college financial aid was calculated based on my income alone and my college aid was maximized.  To be honest, I'd like to say I felt bad for doing it.  I'd like to say that I felt guilt over being dishonest on my taxes.  But I didn't really.  I felt uneasy, but it was the unease that you feel when you think you might get "caught".  That was it.  I made the same claim in the remaining years of my undergraduate schooling, but in later years I hadn't lived with my parents in excess of the maximum number of weeks, so I really did qualify.

             Let me just note here, before I go on, that when you ask the question "so, what part of you is responsible for lying on your taxes?  Your body?  Your brain?  Your soul?  Your will?"  I think there is only one good answer:  "I was responsible."  Though I am a dualist at heart, and therefore I think there really is a difference between body and soul, physical and spiritual, I also see each human being as a cohesive whole.  I'm not two separate people, i.e. a body-self and a soul-self that just happen to hang out together.  I'm one person.  We can't use the concept of dualism to start justifying any concept that "you" can separate from the guilt of your physical self.  Sorry - it's not that easy.

             Well, quite a few years later, when I was in graduate school, something happened that caused me to face my guilt about lying on my taxes.  I say "something happened" because I actually can't remember.  It may have been my own personal study of the Bible.  Or it might have been something someone said to me about living a life pleasing to God.  Regardless, I saw clearly that lying on my taxes was just plain wrong, regardless of whether it was "not that bad."  I was guilty.

             I rebelled against this idea with every fiber of my being.  But it didn't change the facts.  I had to admit guilt and make it right.  How could I do that?  I had no idea, but I had to try.  So, you may laugh, but what I did was to write a letter to the IRS, explain exactly what I had done on the specific year of taxes in question.  I didn't know if the IRS even had a mechanism to receive and act on a letter like that.  I can't imagine they get many letters from people admitting they lied on their taxes!  But they actually did read the letter because I received a response from the IRS in which they asked for some additional documents, which included a copy of my parent's taxes for that year.  It was rather embarrassing for me to have to ask my parents for a copy of their taxes from a few years earlier.  Although, come to think of it, why did the IRS need a copy of anyone's taxes - don't they have copies???  Anyway, I sent the required documents and never heard anything further.  That was more than 30 years ago.

             So why do I relate this "Part II" to this story?  Because I believe it illustrates a deeper component of my theory of the soul.  My action to admit my guilt and write a letter, while carried out by my physical body, was driven by my soul.  Actually, not even my soul.  I believe it was driven by the Holy Spirit.  If I use the horse and jockey analogy, this was one time when I let go of my "noodle reins" and let the Holy Spirit use his "steel reins."  As I said at the beginning of the previous paragraph, I "rebelled against this idea with every fiber of my being."  By that I mean that my body and my soul were united in rebellion against any suggestion that I should make this situation right or even that I was really guilty.  This situation was not just a physical response to inputs or past memories.  This was years after the event.  It was certainly not something I obsessed about in the intervening years.  In my opinion, this was purely an act of the Spirit.  If you don't believe in a spiritual realm, then of course you will claim there was a physical explanation for why I suddenly felt guilt and took steps to do something that I really didn't want to do.  Good luck with that!

             I don't expect it will ever be possible to do this experiment, but this is a case where, if you could read the entire set of neural activity in my brain, you would have found at least one neuron acting in a way that was not entirely consistent with all of its inputs.  This would be the influence of the Spirit via the soul upon my physical brain.  That is one of the fundamental claims I make in my theory of the soul, and I believe it has to be a fundamental claim any dualist (or similar) must make.  But these events are rare and can't be prescribed.  As I look back over my life, the event I relate here, where the soul and Spirit are clearly involved, seems to be pretty rare.  That is why it is so difficult to do an experiment to demonstrate this basic principle.

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 9: Running away with the horse and jockey analogy

 [See here for introductory comments to this general thread.]

             I can't resist running with the noodles and thorns analogy just a bit further.  After all, this is my blog, so I can do what I want.

             The basic premise of "noodles for reins" is described in the previous blog [here].  Briefly, the analogy I am using to describe the soul-body interaction is to imagine a jockey on a horse, where the horse represents our physical body (especially the brain) and the jockey represents our soul (especially the will and the "efferent pathway" connecting the soul to the brain).  Further, I said that the jockey has soft spaghetti noodles for reins and the reins have handles covered in razor sharp thorns.  Yes, it is a strange picture.  If that analogy didn't resonate with you, then you might want to skip this entry and go to a more concrete personal example [here].

             What I want to do now is extend this to a broader view in which I use this analogy to compare the "commonly-accepted academic view" of the body-soul condition vs. what I consider the common Christian view of the body-soul condition.  Granted, there is a lot of variability with respect to either one of those views, so please treat my use of those labels loosely!

             First, I'm going to start with the Christian view, then present the Common Academic view.  This analogy has helped me to visualize the stark differences in these two ways of thinking, so I'm hoping it helps you as well.  Also, I will just note that I think the typical view of the "average non-academic, non-Christian" falls somewhere in the middle of the two views I will be presenting.  For example, I think most people believe that each person has a soul of some sort even if they do not ascribe to any particular religious view.  In that sense, I think the "average person" would be surprised at how completely and overwhelmingly the academic world has jettisoned any concept of a human soul.  It's pretty clear that neuroscientists do not write song lyrics!

             The Christian view of the human condition has to be split into two separate conditions.  This is because Christians hold to the concept of "salvation", or, as Jesus said, "you must be born again."  Thus, there are humans who are in the condition of having been born once, and there are humans who are in the condition of having been born twice.  First, let's consider the "born once" case.  Here is a summary of the features of that condition (again, this is just an analogy):

 

•        Christian view of the Born-once Human Condition

•        Like a jockey guiding a horse in a race

•        Horse is our physical body

•        Jockey is our will/mind/heart…or soul

•        Jockey has spaghetti noodles for reins

•        The reins have thorns on their handles

•        The horse and jockey are riding in darkness

•        The jockey is embarrassed about the state of his reins

•        Side note:  the Biblical “self” is both horse and jockey together

 

       In contrast, for the Christian, to be "born again" means that God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, in some manner "indwells them." [Rom 8:9]    Jesus even refers to being born again as being "born of the spirit." [John 3:5-8]  It is clearly a transformation that occurs in the soul because we know that the physical body of Christians is no different after being "born again."  So...what are the key features of the analogy for this born-twice condition?

 

•        Christian view of the Born-twice Human Condition

•        Like a jockey guiding a horse in a race:

•        Holy Spirit now also riding on the horse

•        Holy Spirit has steel reins

•        The Holy Spirit can see clearly the path ahead

•        Jockey can still try to use the noodle reins

•        Holy Spirit only uses his steel reins when the jockey lets go of the noodle reins and puts his hands on the Holy Spirit’s “hands”

 

             Now I want to talk about these two conditions and draw out some thoughts.

             First, the Born-once condition.  The jockey tries hard to control the horse, but with noodles for reins, it is a hopeless task.  With effort, sometimes the jockey can control the horse, but it is clear that, at any point, the horse could overpower the jockey.

             The horse is really a horse in this analogy.  It is living.  It "makes decisions" so to speak, but it does not have free will.  It responds.  It seeks what is good for itself.  It is selfish.  It seeks comfort and pleasure.  It avoids pain.  It is a living, breathing animal.

             The jockey is the locus of free will.  I acknowledge that, with respect to this part of the analogy, all I'm doing to represent a human being with free will is just substitute a specific human (a jockey) with free will.  It's not much of an analogy, but that's because there is nothing else in the entire universe that is analogous to a human soul other than another human soul (in my opinion).

             Here's where self-help comes in.  By hard work, it is possible for the jockey to learn to control the horse somewhat.  The jockey can train the horse to respond in a more or less repeatable way to the weak tug of the noodle reins.  Thus, building positive habits is useful in changing our actions.  With repeated effort we can break bad habits.  This is why there is a whole world of self-help books and ideas, and they really do work to improve our behavior.  But every attempt at improving human behavior will fail in a major way:  the reins are still noodles.  So, despite all the repeated effort by the jockey to train the horse and keep it under control, the horse can, at any time, overpower the jockey and suddenly go back into bad habits.  I believe this analogy describes our collective human experience.  With effort we can be better, but it is always so tenuous and we always end up doing things we regret.  Our human efforts can make things better, but those efforts do not transform the fundamental situation and the fundamental problem that we have as human beings. 

             The jockey has to go where the horse goes.  Thus the jockey is strongly affected by the decisions made by the horse.  The jockey is embarrassed by his inability to control the horse, and so he often tries to act as if he really is in control with his noodle reins.  He tries to justify, in his own mind (and to whoever will listen), that wherever the horse goes is "where I wanted to go in the first place."  This is why we have such a strong tendency to justify the actions of our natural bodies.  This is a downhill spiral.  Things that bothered us initially - our reactions to events, words we speak, thoughts we think - eventually start not to bother us.  And then eventually we give in and rationalize why those actions are "ok" and then "good".  In that way the horse influences the jockey and changes the jockey.  This is what happens to us.  The more we keep "doing the things we don't want to do", the more we get worn down and then we give up and we give in.  And then we are embarrassed by giving in and we try hard to figure out how to say "it is good" or "I meant to do that".   

             As Jesus describes, the horse and jockey are also riding in darkness.  Thus, even in those rare cases when the jockey has the right desires, and has trained the horse to respond properly, the jockey still has no hope of staying on course because he can't see the course.  The horse and jockey end up hopelessly lost and, worse yet, don't even know they are lost.

 

             Second, in the Born-twice condition, the fundamental transformation that occurs is that the Holy Spirit comes and sits behind the jockey.  The Holy Spirit has reins of steel and certainly is capable of fully controlling the horse.  But the horse is still the jockey's horse.  The Holy Spirit waits for the jockey to drop their noodle reins and hold onto His hands as He drives and directs the horse. 

             The problem in this condition is that the jockey can still pick up the noodle reins and go back to old, failing habits.  The steel reins of the Holy Spirit are still there, but are limp as the Holy Spirit waits for permission from the jockey.  The practice of "living by the spirit" [Romans 6-8] is learning to drop our noodle reins and hold on to the Spirit's powerful hands. 

             The jockey may feel like he is guiding the horse via the Holy Spirit's steel reins.  When the jockey is in sync with the Spirit, it is hard to sense who guides who.  This describes the struggle Christians have in trying to describe whether the Christian life is lived by faith or by effort - a struggle that is described beautifully by Paul in the last half of I Cor 15:10  "...I worked harder than all of them-- yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."

             Why doesn't the Holy Spirit just take control?  Well, if the Holy Spirit just displaced the jockey, then the horse and jockey would no longer be a "self".  All you would have is the Holy Spirit controlling a horse that is temporal and destined for death anyway, and so what would be the point?  The idea of a continuing self would be lost in that scenario.

             At some point, we physically die.  This represents the loss of the horse with all its ingrained habits and problems.  The jockey survives and is united with a new horse [I Cor 15:35-55].  With the new horse comes real reins.  And the new horse does not have the old habits.  But, at this point we have stretched the analogy well beyond its usefulness, so I must stop.

             This analogy has holes in it, of course, and, for example, it doesn't address the manner in which the Holy Spirit transforms the soul [e.g. Rom 12:1-2].  But I have found this analogy helpful as I think about my own behavior and as I think about how my spiritual and physical self works together.   I have found it helpful in visualizing how to "live by the Spirit."  Therefore I wanted to put it out there for consideration, in case the concept is helpful to others.

             Now let's turn to what I called the "Common Academic View."  Here's how I would summarize that condition:

 

•         “Common Academic” view of the human condition:

•        Humans are just the horse – no soul/will/mind beyond the material brain

•        Horses are just grazing – no ultimate purpose, no race, no goal

•        The Horse believes it is “in the light”

 

             In this view, the horse is just wandering in the meadow, distracting itself with amusement until it dies.  Granted, there are some awesome, powerful, and fast stallions in the meadow.  The meadow has some beautiful flowers in it.

             But the end is the same.  Death[1].

 

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[1] As I mention elsewhere, this condition is clearly illustrated in Tolstoy's "A Confession".

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 8: Noodles and Thorns

 [See here for introductory comments.]

             We've now introduced the basic components of the soul that comprise my theory of the soul (see:  input, output, processing), but there is one more general point I want to make before we dive into some specific applications of the theory, and I'm going to make this point by way of an analogy.  I want to make use of this analogy in future entries, so I want to present it now before we proceed any further.

             The purpose of this analogy is to provide an intuitive sense of the characteristics of the connection between the output component of the soul (will/self/agent of the soul - see here) and the physical brain.  The analogy is this:  imagine a jockey on a horse, where the horse represents our physical body (especially the brain) and the jockey represents our soul (especially the will)[1].  That's hardly much of an analogy, since jockeys are just humans with wills and horses are living, fully physical beings with physical brains.  It's kind of circular, I know.  But the key point of the analogy is this:  the jockey has soft spaghetti noodle for reins and, further, the reins have handles covered in razor sharp thorns.

             I know this analogy seems odd and almost goofy, but this is just meant to be a tool for conceptualizing the link between the spiritual and the physical.  Humor me for a moment and let me pull some thoughts out and see if this analogy is a useful tool for you.  First, note that the horse can go on its merry way without waiting for the jockey to do anything.  In the same way, our physical brain can function without the will.  This was the point of "A Dog's Life."  Second, note that the control the jockey has over the horse is via a tenuous, weak connection that I've illustrated as wet noodles.  The horse can overpower the jockey at any time.  It is a constant struggle for the jockey to exert control over the horse because of the condition of the reins.  It is not impossible, just difficult.  It is possible, with patient training, for the jockey to train the horse to respond to the wimpy reins, but it is always a tenuous situation.  There are frequent failures in which the horse goes off on its own and ignores the jockey.

             At least for me, this helps to understand the perplexing human condition that free will presents us with.  As I have stated elsewhere, I am convinced that humans have free will <here for example>.  I believe we can make decisions (we "could do otherwise") and we can be held responsible for our decisions.  But there is also this very odd thing that we all experience:  we don't always do what we "want" to do.  We make mistakes that we claim are "out of character".  We say things that we instantly regret.  We look back on our life and say "I should have made a better decision" in any number of situations.  We know we could have made a better decision.  We wanted to make a better decision.  But we didn't!  What kind of free will is that?  Well, I would submit to you that it is free will implemented via wet noodles!  We absolutely can make correct moral and ethical decisions, it's just really hard for us.

             This part of the analogy is also meant to illustrate the "slow response" and "training" aspects of our free will.  The noodles exert a wimpy influence, and therefore significant training is required to get the horse to respond to the reins.  Good luck if the jockey suddenly decides he wants to pull the horse up short.  It won't work.  Instead, the jockey has to anticipate the need of stopping and spend considerable time training the horse to respond to the wimpy pull of the reins and obediently come to a halt.  This has to be done in advance.  It's difficult to do, but possible with patient training.  The point is this:  when we are faced with a sudden major important moral decision, our actions are influenced by our past training and not so much by our soul's immediate influence at that moment.  Let's say I am suddenly faced with the time-limited opportunity where a "little white lie" will gain me $1000.  My "horsey self" will surely go for that - why not?  My "jockey self" must pull back on the reins if I am to do the right thing and speak the truth.  But if I have not already "decided", in the past, that I want to be a "truth-teller" and have, therefore, trained myself to refrain from lying, then my "jockey self" will have no chance to stop my "horsey self" and I will lie and get the money.  Later I might say "I shouldn't have done that."  That is the enigma of the human moral experience.  Our free will is a wonderful, powerful force implemented through a weak, wimpy, and decidedly un-wonderful pair of reins.  We humans are a conundrum in that way.

             The third component of the analogy is the sharp thorns on the handles.  I know that reins don't always have handles, but these do.  And the problem is that when the jockey uses them, it hurts.  The harder the jockey has to pull, the more it hurts.  There is a personal "cost" to pulling on the reins and trying to control the horse.  Thus, from the jockey's perspective, there is always a bias towards just letting the horse run free.  At every turn, every change in speed, every jump, the jockey has to decide "do I really need to try to change course, or can I just let it go?"  It hurts to control the horse, so the jockey only exerts control when necessary.

             What's the point of this part of the analogy?  I'm trying to use this to illustrate the fact that we generally pick and choose when to exert our true free will.  I have stated elsewhere that free will is primarily exerted in important moral decisions [here].  I don't believe it has to be that way.  I don't believe our free will is limited to only a few moral decisions.  We could decide to stand up right now.  We could decide to turn left instead of right.  But, in general, we don't exercise our free will in those situations because they are not worth the cost.  The jockey evaluates the importance of each choice and decides that squeezing yet again against the thorns is not necessary.  I'm not saying we don't make a decision in those cases.  Instead, I'm saying that the jockey lets the horse go where it will.  How does the horse decide?  Like any other physical, material system:  decisions are based on the inputs, past history, emotions, environment, etc.  I also think that there are decisions that get relegated to random selection within our brain.  If we are faced with a decision that really doesn't matter (as far as we know), then why spend the energy and effort to decide?  Flip a coin. 

             I have said elsewhere that designing a scientific experiment to demonstrate free will is very difficult and I hope this analogy helps you see why.  Particularly in relation to the "thorny handles", it is very hard to really put human beings into an experiment where they will, in fact, exercise their true free will.  Asking people to decide whether a number is high or low, or whether a color matches the word, or even whether a hypothetical moral decision is right or wrong, is just never going to be worth the cost of grabbing those thorny handles.  The human subject in those experiments is fully aware that the situation is not important.  Why engage free will?  Let the horse do what it will.  Let the horse react.  Maybe engage the random number generator.  Thus, free will is not exercised.  To design an experiment that really forces human beings to engage their free will would require, at the very least, significant deception regarding the fact that they are part of a scientific study.  Ethically, such experiments are generally not acceptable even if it were possible to design them.

             I hope you will find this analogy helpful as we go through a more detailed discussion of the soul.  Think about it in your own personal experience.  I'm sure you have freely chosen to do things that you didn't want to do.  That statement is such a total contradiction that it makes no sense, yet it is somehow true!  I hope the analogy helps you see how such a statement can be illogical yet true. 

             Finally, I think I should clarify that the "self " should be considered to be the entire horse, jockey, and reins conglomerate.  It is a mistake, I believe, to say that the "true me" is just the jockey.  It's also a mistake to say that the true me is just the horse.  In this analogy, "we" are the whole package.  We are responsible for the decisions made by the entire conglomerate.  And, therefore, the struggle is real!  I really like how the Apostle Paul expressed it:  "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-- this I keep on doing."   [Rom 7:15, 19]

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[1] Note that this is not the same as Plato's Chariot Allegory, although that allegory also deals with how we make decisions and the difficulty in doing so.  This also is not the same as Freud's horse and rider analogy.  I might need to explain this further, but suffice it to say that, in my analogy, the horse has all the features of a real horse.  It responds to inputs and makes decisions.  In Plato, and then Freud, the analogies only use certain features of a horse (strength and power, for example).

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 7: Soul 101, Class #3

[See here for introductory comments.]

 

             I theorized that the soul is composed of at least three major components that I referred to generally as Afferent System, Efferent System, and Processing & Memory [see here].  This entry is about the Processing & Memory component of the soul. 

 

The Processing & Memory of the Soul:  The "Soul as Brain"

             An important foundational principle of my theory of the soul is that the soul is complex [see here].  In a very real way, the human brain is the most complex thing in the physical universe.  When I refer to the processing and memory component of the soul with the phrase "Soul as Brain," I am not suggesting that we have two brains.  Rather, I am emphasizing the complex operations that occur in the soul, and I suggest that they are at least as complex as the operations that occur in the human physical brain.  The importance of this feature of the soul is a required element (in my view) in order to understand and explain how the brain and soul work together in observable phenomena, from something as simple as "what happens to the soul when you sleep?" to "How can hemi-neglect be explained if consciousness resides in the soul?"  In this entry, I just want to introduce this general concept, but we will have to explore this concept much deeper in the future.

             First, when I use the term "processing" to describe a feature of the soul, I mean that the inputs and outputs in the soul are manipulated in a variety of ways.  This is analogous to what happens in the nervous system.  Sensory signals in the periphery are processed in the central nervous system so that some inputs are enhanced and other inputs are diminished.  For example, the nervous system uses a processing technique called "surround inhibition" to enhance the sensation of edges in a manner analogous to the "increase contrast" function in photo editing software.  There are also recurrent networks where the output of a neuron feeds back on itself and produces the quality of persistence.  Some inputs are combined together to create a new output with properties distinct from any of the inputs.  Memories are combined with current inputs.  I could go on, but the point is that all of these processing methods should be considered available to the soul as well.  In fact, we should expect that the soul, being spiritual in nature, should have even more unique processing capabilities than the human brain, or any other physical system.

             I will give a "simple" example of the type of processing that occurs in the soul and how we experience it.  We have already established that consciousness - the real awareness of what is happening right now - is part of the soul.  As a starting point, we could imagine that the soul senses every synapse in the brain and combines that information to produce a unified awareness of the present moment.  The problem is that we know, by experience, that we are not conscious of every sensory input into our brain.  In fact, we are only conscious of a subset of things going on in and around us.  But we also know, by experience, that we can change our conscious focus at will and seemingly instantly.  For example, I may be deep in thought about some task I have for the day while I am driving in to work.  Most of my conscious perception is absorbed by the task I am thinking about.  But if the car in front of me suddenly slams on their brakes, my conscious focus is suddenly ripped away from the tasks of the day and into the moment at hand.  How can that happen?  How can attention be switched to a completely different set of inputs?  This example compels us to propose that our soul reads the sensory inputs from a variety of places in the brain, but processes them in a manner that creates a conscious perception of a small subset of those inputs and, further, the soul must have some means of instantly switching from one set of inputs to another (a "channel switching function" if you will).  This is just one of many examples that we will need to explore as we address the experimental results of studying normal and pathological brain function.

             Thus, although we don't have a means of dissecting the soul to determine its composition, we do have our experiences as soul-driven human beings, and this allows us to make some inferences about the composition of the soul.  We will have to rely on this approach again and again in developing our theory of the soul.  It's not the ideal approach, but we are limited to measurements made in and about the physical world.  Despite this limitation, I think there is a lot we can reasonably infer about the working of the soul.

             The other "half" of this third component of the soul is "memory."  I probably should have split processing and memory into two different components, but they are strongly connected and there is at least some sense in which memory is just one type of processing, although a rather unique type (for example, internal persistence is a basic form of memory).  Also, I figured that the idea of the soul having "memory" was a fairly unique insight, but, as usual, "there is nothing new under the sun."  I found that the idea is definitely not new and even Augustine discussed the idea extensively.  Of course Augustine didn't have all of the anatomical and physiological evidence for memory in the brain, so he figured that the soul was the repository of all memory.  It is important for me to clarify this point up front:  I am not at all suggesting that all of our memory resides in the soul and not in the brain.  In fact, it is clear from medicine and neuroscience that the physical brain stores our memories, and they are stored in a physical manner within the neurons, and those memories can be triggered by a variety of very physical means.  So, when I suggest that the soul has a memory, I am suggesting the soul's memory is a "second memory" if you will.  Importantly, there is no reason, as far as I can tell, to think that the memory that resides in the soul is exactly the same as the memory that resides in the physical brain.  In fact, the content of the soul's memory could be (and I think probably is) quite different.

             Why do I propose that both the brain and the soul have memory?  First, memory is certainly necessary for making moral decisions, which is what the soul does, and it seems a bit inefficient if the soul has to keep accessing the brain's memory in order to make moral decisions.  But the more important consideration is this:  memory seems to me to be absolutely necessary for the continuity of the "self", at least as that continuity is expressed in Christian belief.  The soul persists beyond death.  The fleshly memory that resides in the brain does not.  The brain obviously decays after death and whatever physical memory was stored in the brain's neurons is lost as the body decays.  It is clear, based on my reading of scripture, that human beings know at least something of their past after they die.  When Jesus gave illustrations of people in their afterlife, His illustrations always implied that people could remember something of their former life on earth.  Also, it just makes logical sense:  if we are the same "self" after we die, then something of ourselves has to persist after death.  That is the soul (in my opinion).  But if the soul has no memory, or imprint of our nature and experiences, then it hardly seems that we would really continue to be the same self.  I know that there is a whole body of philosophy regarding the continuity of self even in our physical life (e.g. from baby to adult).  I would not say that memory is the sole component that guarantees the continuity of self, but, to me, it is a critical component.  As a result, I include a "soul memory" in my theory of the soul. 

             Finally, for now, with respect to "soul memory", we have to use the term "memory" loosely.  When we think of our own physical memories, we are generally thinking of something akin to a "videotaping" of our life that is stored in our brains.  That storage can be faulty and it fades over time, but we can still "play it back" to remember past events.  A key thing about physical memory is that it is all about the past and the passage of time.  The soul, being fundamentally spiritual in nature, isn't tied to the passage of time in the same way and I'm not sure the "past" has the same meaning.  Therefore, the soul's memory must be different, as it is more about maintaining who we are, what we are like, and how we have changed.  It's not necessarily the same as "storage of past events."  The soul's memory is more about what kind of a person we are.

             At the end of the book of Revelation, it says that God "will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."  [Rev 21:4]  I take this to mean that, among other things, our memories of the past will be wiped clean.  But we are still "us" and so something of our character has to remain.  I know the whole concept is a topic of longstanding debate.  I suppose you could say that God wipes away all of the bad memories and leaves only the good memories, but that seems difficult to reconcile.  Sometimes our good and bad memories are mixed.  Also, for me personally, at the top of most of my best memories are memories that I have shared with my wife over our years of being married.  Yet we will not be married in heaven, so it seems like there would be a twinge of sadness there.  Will we remember that we were married?  I don't know - it seems that we would not have that kind of memory of our past - I mean even now I can't remember most of my past and certainly not the first five years or so of my life.  But I still know who I am and what kind of person I am.  Regardless, I still can't help but think there will be some small twinkle when my wife and I pass by each other in heaven! 

 

             So, that is a basic overview of the three mains parts of the soul as I see them:  Afferent System, Efferent System, and Processing & Memory.  I think it is now time to go back to my "Explanatory Features List" and start showing how my theory of the soul fits (or doesn't fit!) into these features.

 

 

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 6: Soul 101, Class #2

[See here for introductory comments.]

 

             I theorized that the soul is composed of at least three major components that I referred to generally as Afferent System, Efferent System, and Processing & Memory [see here].  This entry is about the Efferent System of the soul. 

 

The Efferent System of the Soul:  The Will

             The efferent, or "motor system", of the soul is basically what we might generally refer to as "the will".  This is where free will is generated and implemented.   The efferent system is where the interaction between the spiritual "soul-world" and the physical "flesh-world" happens.  The efferent system is, at least in my view, the most mysterious component of the soul and probably the most mysterious thing in the entire universe.  To me, the entire mystery of the soul really comes down to this component.  

             There are at least two major parts to the Efferent System of the soul.  One part is the aspect that performs the mechanics of the "spiritual-physical link."  Somehow the decisions made by the soul have to produce an influence on our physical actions.  How in the world is it possible that some non-physical entity could impact what we do?  In fact, as I've discussed elsewhere [here], we can narrow it down much further:  at some point, this action has to affect one or more neurons in the brain.  How?  There will be a lot more on that in future entries.  The other part is the actual decision-making component.  This component is the entity that generates an uncaused cause [see here].  This is the entity that generates a decision that is unpredictable, but not random.  And, just like the unity feature of consciousness [here], there is nothing else in the universe (that we know of) that is like this.  There is no other force or condition or outcome that is not either "caused" or "random".  As a result, it is impossible to come up with an analogy without introducing human will into the analogy, thus creating some circular logic.  Some would say that the uniqueness and downright craziness of thinking there could be something that appears random (i.e. unpredictable) and yet is not random, should drive me to doubt the idea of free will.  But, as I have discussed elsewhere, for me, free will is a given - it is the starting point - because I experience it moment by moment.  I do not throw it out just because it is conceptually difficult, if not impossible, to fully describe.  I can't explain why bumblebees fly either, but I see them flying so I don't entertain the possibility that "since I can't make sense of it, they must not be flying."

             I actually don't know if it is right to call the efferent component, "the will."  There are a lot of terms used for this concept, often poorly defined.  I think this component might also be analogous to what some refer to as human "agency".  Or, from a spiritual standpoint, it might be proper to call it the "spirit" of a person.  Or even "heart."  Whatever you call it, it is the seat of moral responsibility.  The existence of "the will" is why we can hold human beings responsible for their own actions in a manner different than a dog or a computer.  The general direction of our moral decision-making (what kind of a person we are), and the implementation of those moral decisions, is established in this component.    

             How is "the will" or "agency" established in each human?  Are we born with it?  Is it set by God or by random chance?  This line of thinking, which ends with the idea that you'd have to create your own self in order to have free will, is, in my opinion, a very tough argument for libertarians like me to counter.  It's a body blow that I have to absorb because I can't answer that question.  I take some solace in the fact that the concept of God has the same issue.  Did God create Himself?  If not, then how did He come into being and who decided what God's character was going to be like?  When it comes to God, of course, we simply say that God had no beginning - He always was.  There is no question that God has free will.  So did God freely choose His character?  There's no answer to that.  I have an idea about the infinitesimal "beginning" of our free will, but that will have to wait for some future entry.  But I don't reject the idea of God because of this argument because, in many ways, this whole mystery (how did God create Himself?)  is exactly what makes God, God.  In the same way, the conundrum of "creating yourself" is exactly what makes free will, free.  I like this mystery.  To me it is exciting.  More mysterious and exciting and even "spooky" than quantum entanglement!

             I will just say one thing with respect to the question "are we born with it?" in relation to our free will.  I think there are a lot of reasons to believe that this part of the soul grows and matures, roughly analogous to physical development.  I think that the maturing of the soul could provide an explanation for the "age of accountability" for humans.  This is a common difficulty in raising kids.  At what point are they responsible for their own actions and should be punished or praised accordingly?  There is certainly nothing that suddenly happens outwardly that indicates a sudden transition from "not accountable" to "fully accountable."  At some age, kids are "tried as adults."  We pick ages (5...12...18...etc.) for this "transition" because we have no other means of making a decision.  Some kids seem to mature quicker than others.  And what about kids with mental disabilities?  These are all good questions and a soul - specifically a "will" - that grows and matures over time provides a framework for understanding how to address these questions.

             Remember that in my theory of the soul, the efferent system is generally sparse, infrequent, and weak.  This is partly what I was trying to point out in "It's a Dog's Life."  The brain can run on its own without requiring input from the Efferent System of the Soul, and, I think most of our life operates "physically."  Thus, when we start digging into how the soul actually influences the brain, the mechanics of this influence have to take the "weak and infrequent" nature into account.  However, when we focus on character qualities that are uniquely human - say something like forgiveness or even altruism - we expect the soul is involved.  That's where we should expect to see the action of the soul on the brain.

             I'm going to stop here with this initial description because this takes me back to my purpose:  to present a theory of the soul that is consistent with neuroscience and scripture.  The key thing is that the Efferent System of the soul is the one concept where science could have real explanatory power.  Specifically, I claim the soul exists in each person and is influencing neurons (albeit infrequently).  That concept can theoretically be subjected to experiment.  It is a repeatable condition of every human being that is acting in the present day.  Neuroscience will have a lot to say about how and where this effect could or could not happen.  This is in contrast to many other aspects of Christian doctrine or even many other aspects of the soul.  Many of the other important Christian doctrines, such as miracles and/or history, are things that cannot be repeated and they happened in the past, which can't be "rerun."  I suppose the other Christian doctrine that relates to the present day (i.e. not history) is the ongoing existence of God, but that is very difficult to subject to experimentation!  (Though I have tried - see here!)

             And now on to the third major component of the soul:  processing and memory.