A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 4: A Dog's Life

[See here for introductory comments.]

 

             In this entry, I want to discuss another key assumption that underlies my thinking about the soul in a manner similar to the idea that the soul is a complex organism.  This key assumption is that humans are the only creatures in the universe that have souls.  I discussed this issue from a scriptural standpoint previously [here].  I acknowledge that there is probably considerable disagreement about this assumption.  For me, the concept of the soul is strongly tied to the concept of "responsibility for one's own actions."  I actually haven't met anyone who believes that any non-human animals are responsible for their actions in the sense that they should be praised and punished for their actions even if there is no useful outcome of the praise or punishment (i.e. no training effect, protective effect, etc.).  Instead, I think those who would put humans and at least some other animals (non-human primates for starters) on the same level, do so by reducing the responsibility of humans.  That's a wrong approach, in my opinion, but I'm not arguing the point here.  For the purposes of this entry, the uniqueness of the human soul will be considered a given.

 

             I think that if past thinkers had started with the principle that dogs and monkeys do not have souls, but humans do, they would have come to some different conclusions about the soul.  In my view, past theories of the soul should have anticipated some of the significant arguments that have been levied against the existence of the soul that have arisen from the study of the brain, neuroscience, and medicine in the past century or so.  For example, a major reason people give for rejecting the concept of the soul is the observed change in behavior of humans who have some kind of brain damage.  "If the soul is responsible for our behavior, then why would damaging the brain cause any change?" they ask.  If the earliest theories of the soul had taken into account that "dogs don't have souls", the whole issue of brain damage would have been addressed from the beginning.  I hope you can start to see why I say this by the end of this entry.

 

             Here's the biggest point I want to make:  if dogs don't have souls, then everything that dogs do is a result of material, natural forces.  By implication, human activity that follows the pattern of "dog activity" should not be attributed or allocated to the soul.  It does not make sense to me that every non-human animal does an action through natural ("non-soul") means, like seeking food for example, but humans would do these same actions through a different means.  I suppose there could be exceptions with respect to certain actions, but as a fundamental principle, I don't think it makes sense to attribute anything to the human soul that is clearly observable in a dog (or any other non-human animal[1]).

 

             This is a very important principle.  Dogs can be trained to respond to commands.  Dogs learn to avoid certain activities.  The actions that dogs take can be very complicated.  Humans also have these characteristics.  Humans respond to training.  Humans remember things and avoid activities that caused pain in the past and seek activities that caused pleasure in the past.  Thus, as a simple first pass, it should be clear to even the most staunch dualist (I count myself in that group) that the soul is not necessary for activities as advanced as memory and learning.  Even emotions like anger and fear, which dogs clearly exhibit, must not require the soul (although it will be necessary to dive deeper into an emotion like anger in a future entry).

 

             If you start to think this through and compare your own daily activities to a dog's daily activities, you'll realize that your "uniquely human" activity shrinks down to very few things.  In fact, I believe we have phrases for those cases where we are simply acting as a complex living organism without the need for the involvement of our soul.  When we say things like "I was just going through the motions" or "I've just been on autopilot" or "I know I drove in to work this morning but I really don't remember anything about the trip," I think that indicates a whole series of actions that were "dog-like" and lived purely through natural, material, brain-driven means.  We don't need a soul for those actions.  I think we could go a whole day and only do and respond in a manner identical to a dog.  For such days, I suggest that our soul was never engaged.  In fact, I expect there are times in our lives where we go for long periods of time essentially going through the motions and, for all intents and purposes, we are soul-less humans.  Maybe another way to think of it is that if dogs looked like humans and could learn to speak a few phrases like "How's your day?" and "I'm fine", I'll bet you could work next to a dog and not know they weren't human.  Could a dog pass the Turing Test if there was a bark-to-English translator?

 

             OK.  By now many of you are saying "then what in the world does the soul do?"  In my theory of the soul, the soul is responsible for everything that makes humans unique from all other animals, but probably nothing more than that.  What are those things?  There are at least two things that I identify as unique to humans:  1) moral decision-making influencing the actions of the will, and 2) creativity when it can be classified as a true creative action [an introduction to this concept is described here].  In short, humans are responsible for their own actions and they are capable of true creation.  Dogs are not.  Therefore, it is the human soul that is responsible for those two activities.  We obviously will have to delve into this idea much more deeply as we go forward, but I wanted to get this idea out there now because it is so fundamental.

 

             Here's an interesting implication of this fundamental principle:  consciousness could be an epiphenomenon in the material realm.  I'm talking about real consciousness - the awareness of being aware and the unified stream of consciousness that is so difficult for science and philosophers to grapple with.  I don't think dogs are conscious in this way and therefore, by further implication, consciousness is not necessary for all of the kinds of actions that dogs and humans have in common.  Again, I go back to the common phrases we use.  When we say we acted "on autopilot", I think we are implying that we did the action unconsciously or, at the very least, we didn't engage our consciousness in that activity.  Thus, I say that consciousness could be an epiphenomenon because it is not necessary for us in order to live the "dog's life."

 

             What is the point of consciousness then?  In my theory of the soul, the purpose of consciousness is to inform our moral decision-making process.  I will come back to this point again and again, but for now I will say that most of our actions could be rightly classified as "reactions."  We respond to inputs and act according to our learned patterns in the brain.  These don't require consciousness.  Thus, even though I think that the "Libet-style" experiments don't show what they are often claimed to show, it doesn't matter to my theory of the soul if our conscious perception actually occurs after our decision-making.  I would say "dogs make decisions all the time without consciousness at all, so why would it be necessary for similar decisions when made by humans?"  But dogs don't make moral decisions.  And, frankly, I don't think humans make many moral decisions either.  But the key thing is that humans make at least some moral decisions, and that makes all the difference in the world.  In fact, if you only make one moral decision over your entire life, that separates you from every other being or object or thing or stuff in the entire physical universe.

 

             Don't think that just because we only make a few moral decisions that therefore these decisions are not that important.  Importance is not measured by number or volume in this case.  A single moral decision made by a single human is of more value than all the decisions made by all the dogs, monkeys, cats, pigs, cows, etc. that ever lived or ever will live. 

 

             The last point I will introduce is the idea that proper moral decision-making and free-will decision making is the one human quality that requires the awareness of the global context that our consciousness provides to us.  Neural networks don't need an awareness of the global context.  Each neuron only knows what its own inputs are and knows what to output.  No neuron in the brain ever sees the broad picture. Every neuron sees a very, very narrow picture of what is happening and can only respond in a very constrained manner.  Complex behavioral responses are accomplished because there is a huge network of individual neurons each taking care of their own little part of the overall response.  That's how a dog's brain works and that's how a human brain works.  My contention is that the reason consciousness is necessary is because of our need to make moral decisions and decisions of the will.  These kind of decisions uniquely require the global, unified awareness of our current situation in the context of our knowledge of the past.  In short, they require consciousness.

 

             I think I've given enough food for thought in this entry, so I'm going to stop here.  I've introduced many concepts that are going to require a deeper dive in the future.   Hopefully I've piqued your interest in this topic.  

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[1] I'm using dogs just as an example.  Dogs seem to the be most human-like of all of the animals that humans have regular interaction with.  Non-human primates are probably even more human-like, but most people don't have personal experience with them on a daily basis.  A lot of people treat dogs as if they were humans, but that really is a topic for another day!  And sorry cat-lovers, cats aren't human either.

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 3: No Ghost in the Machine

             As mentioned in the first entry of this series [here], my goal with this series of entries is to present a theory of the soul that is consistent with both the Bible and current scientific understanding of the brain and how it functions.  In this entry, I want to put forward one of the important principles that underlies my theory of the soul:  the soul should be conceptualized as a living organism.

             I titled this entry "No Ghost in the Machine."  That's a favorite phrase of detractors of dualism.  Neuroscience has looked into the brain and found no "soul" living inside.  Thus they love to say there is no magical, mystical, mythical, and childish spiritual component of human beings.  This is then simplified into the derision equating the soul with a ghost.  I take offense at this statement for two reasons, which I will address in the subsequent paragraphs.

             First, the idea that you could crack open the skull and find a little soul running around inside the brain is pretty ridiculous when you think about it.  There are a couple of really fundamental problems with that concept and I really don't think scientists make their derisive comment seriously anyway.  If we're talking about anatomical exploration in a cadaver, of course the soul isn't found - it left the body long before the dissection began.  If we're talking about exploration of the brain during surgery (i.e. when the person is alive), then there are even more obvious problems.  You can't do a complete exploration of the brain in surgery, so it's pretty hard to rule anything out.  But really now, what instrument do you use to observe the presence of a soul that is spiritual?  Visual observation?  X-ray?  MRI?  PET scan?  Electrical stimulation?  An electromagnetic field meter?  Listen for the soul to yelp when you poke it?  There is no tool you can use to directly measure the existence of a spiritual soul.  I'll talk about this more in a future entry, but I'm pretty sure every scientist who expresses the "no ghost" derision knows that they don't have the tools to measure the presence of a soul.  But it makes such a fun soundbite that it is hard to resist saying it.

             However, the more important reason I take offense to this statement is the impression it leaves regarding the "composition" of the soul.  The soul is equated to a ghost.  I suppose there's something to that connection, as I guess ghosts are generally considered to be the disembodied souls of those long dead.  I have no idea if disembodied souls hang around and cause havoc or try to communicate with the living.  My problem is the way ghosts are portrayed does a great disservice to the concept of the soul.  I guess there are all kinds of styles of ghosts in the media and in reports.  But a common portrayal of a ghost is as a semi-transparent somewhat human-shaped blob.  For my purposes, the important thing is the semi-transparent aspect.  Specifically, ghosts apparently don't have...brains, muscles, bones...guts.  The point is, it makes you imagine that a ghost is kind of all one substance - like smoke or jello.  And then, by implication, we imagine that the soul - if the soul and ghost are the same - is also "one substance."  This is a major problem to me and, in my opinion, leads down a long pathway of wrong-headed thinking about the soul from the very start.

             One key aspect of my theory of the soul is that the soul is complex.  By complex, I mean that the soul has many parts.  I consider the spiritual realm to be more advanced than the physical realm.  If so, it makes sense to consider that the soul could be at least as complex as the physical body.  The soul could have organs.  It could have systems, like a nervous system.  I don't mean to suggest that the soul has an actual brain or heart.  I just mean that the soul ought to be considered in a very complex way, not as some homogeneous substance.  For example, the body has a brain with complex interconnecting neurons in it.  The soul could also have complex interconnecting "circuitry" in it and thus could  interact with the body in very complex ways.

             I can understand why this concept might be uncomfortable to some.  Of course, for those who don't think a soul exists to begin with, to hypothesize a complex soul seems further off course.  I can't argue that point, although I would just say that some of the reasons that people reject the idea of the soul is because of claims made about the soul that arise from the mistaken (in my opinion) view that the soul is homogenous.  I'll bring up one of those issues at the end of this entry.  But for those who are staunch dualists, the idea that the soul is complex may seem disconcerting.  This is partly, I think, based on the fact that the Bible doesn't provide any details about "parts" of the soul.  That is definitely true, although terms like "mind", "heart", and sometimes even "mouth" or "feet" seem to have some reference to the soul or functions of the soul.  But to those who come at dualism through their belief in the Bible, I will just offer that my theory of the soul, while it must be consistent with what the Bible teaches, is, by necessity, going to include a lot of details that are not described in the Bible.  This is analogous to the anatomy of the physical body.  There are many principles of physiology, such as the oxygen exchange in hemoglobin or the filtering characteristics of the kidneys, that have no link to the Bible.  The same is going to be true for my theory of the soul.

             I want to give a quick example of the implication of the "soul as organism" idea.  This idea will need to be fleshed out in future entries.  As part of my theory of the soul, I propose that the connection between the soul and the brain (and/or whole body) is complex and can include principles like the lateral inhibition we observe in neuronal circuits.  Lateral inhibition describes a neural circuit where the inputs to one or more neurons cause neighboring neurons to be inhibited or less excitable.  This is kind of like the "high contrast" function in a drawing program.  It has the effect of emphasizing edges and points.  If the soul has something like lateral inhibition in its connection with the brain, it means that even if the soul connects to multiple points in the brain (for example), it might emphasize - or attend to - only certain aspects of the brain and down-regulate attention to other aspects.  I propose that this is part of the reason why your conscious attention has a focus to it and also why and how you can switch the focus of your conscious attention so quickly.  We'll obviously have to come back to that concept and dig much deeper into it, but I just put it forward as an example where the idea of a homogenous soul does a great injustice to any reasonable theory of the soul.  If consciousness resides in a homogeneous soul, how could our conscious awareness have a specific focus to it?  And how could that shift to something else?  In my theory of the soul, a fundamental aspect is that the soul can be, and likely is, at least as complex as the physical body.

             By the way, I believe this should also have an implication about what we think about God.  Since most people's conception of God is that God is spiritual and, even, "spirit", I think the "transparent ghost" thinking sometimes gets applied to God.  God is surely not a homogeneous ethereal thing.  God is not a lump of lead or even a beautiful diamond.  God is surely at least as complex as the creatures and universe He created.  There must be "parts" to God.  After all, God is living.  Does God have organs?  Who knows.  But surely God is the ultimate example of a complex organism, not a homogeneous substance.  This has implications, among other things, to how we think about the idea that "God is changeless."  That's an important Biblical concept.  But we think of a changeless living organism very differently than we think about a changeless lump of lead.  Anyway, food for future thought.

             I mentioned earlier that the idea of a homogeneous soul has led to some concepts that ultimately resulted in many to reject dualism.  Here is one of those key concepts:  the indivisibility of the soul.  I don't know if Descartes started this idea or if he borrowed if from others, but he said, for example "we cannot conceive of half a soul, as we can in the case of any body."  This was a big mistake, in my opinion.  In my theory of the soul, it is absolutely possible to imagine a "damaged soul" or a soul with a "lost or damaged part."  A "soul amputee" if you will.  Can you cut the soul in half and create two souls?  Haha - it will take us a long while to get to that issue.  But in my opinion, any theory of the soul must allow for the soul to grow and change and be damaged, yet survive.  I don't really know if the word "organism" can rightly be applied to the soul (or if we need a new word for it), but, at least for starters, it is a useful concept.  In the same way that the body has parts, and can exist without some parts but not others, I propose that the soul is the same way.  Of course the soul is not damaged by a bullet or a baseball bat like the physical body would be.  But it can be altered, even damaged, by activity in the spiritual world. 

             The complex "soul as organism" can develop habits.  The soul can learn.  The soul can grow.  All of these concepts are important.  A homogeneous soul is difficult to fit into any of these concepts, yet it is clear from the observation of human behavior, and the growing understanding of the neuroscience of the brain, that if there is a soul, it must have some or all of these features.  Those who have rejected dualism because they were forced to consider the soul as homogeneous and indivisible were right to reject that kind of dualism, in my opinion.  But if that is the only reason you rejected dualism, then I ask you to reconsider.  Consider a dualistic view of the human being where the soul is just as complex as the body.  I think you will find that it is much more difficult to dismiss such a concept out of hand.  At the very least, maybe I will intrigue you enough that your curiosity will force you to keep reading!

 

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