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.

 

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 5: Soul 101, Class #1

[See here for introductory comments to this series.]

             In my earlier entries on the theory of the soul, I have put forward some foundational principles about the general concept.   Now it is time to actually start presenting my theory.  I'm going to start with some broad brush strokes to provide an overall view of the concept, but there will be much more digging into the details of this theory as we go forward.  Remember that the goal of this theory is to show that a Christian view can be reasonable in light of neuroscience and still consistent with scripture.  The concept of the soul comes from scripture, but the details of my theory generally do not.

             I theorize that the soul is composed of at least three major components.  These three components are very much analogous to three components you might ascribe to the human nervous system, or, for that matter, even to a computer.  Specifically, I am talking about how the nervous system has: 1) an "afferent" or sensory system, which is composed of all of the inputs going into the brain, 2) an "efferent" or motor system, which is composed of all of the outputs going out to the muscles and organs to cause action of some sort, and 3) processing and memory, where the sensory inputs are combined with internal inputs and memory to influence or produce the output.  I am not suggesting that the soul has "neurons" like our nervous system, nor am I suggesting that the soul can be mimicked by a computer in an artificial intelligence kind of way.  What I am suggesting is a point I made earlier:  the soul is complex, not homogenous.  All I am really doing is putting forward the general application of that concept.  Thus, I'm not claiming that the idea that the soul is composed of at least three components is particularly insightful, because any system, living or otherwise, that "does something" almost always has an "input", "output", and "some control system in the middle."  However, what I think might be more enlightening is to dig one level deeper and consider how each of these three components might be described when considered as part of the soul.  In this entry I'm going to introduce the "Afferent System of the Soul."

 

The Afferent System of the Soul:  Consciousness

             The first component of the soul is the afferent, or "sensory system", of the soul.  In my view, the sensory system of the soul is human consciousness.  When I use the term "human consciousness", I'm talking about the sense of being aware of what is around us and also being "aware of being aware."  I theorize that this awareness "resides" in the soul, not in the physical brain.  In my theory, consciousness is the combined summation of the soul's sensory information that it receives from the brain (and possibly other organs as well).  Thus, consciousness itself does not "do" anything - it is only the bringing together - unifying - of what it senses from the activity in the brain.

             All analogies become circular when it comes to the soul, but I will give an analogy nonetheless.  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a means of imaging the brain that shows areas in the brain with high activity and areas with low activity, and so on.  The brain of someone can be imaged using fMRI while they are doing various tasks and the resulting fMRI image will show the areas of the brain that were more active during that task.  I'm guessing that experienced researchers who examine fMRI images of a lot of people's brains doing a lot of different tasks can make a pretty good guess about what a person is doing just by looking at the image.  For example, I'm pretty sure they could tell the difference between an fMRI image when someone is moving their hand vs. when they are watching a movie.  But the important thing for this analogy is that fMRI doesn't cause anything to happen in the brain.  fMRI just scans or "observes" the whole brain and, ultimately, produces a complete image or series of images that show us what is happening.  In the same way, consciousness senses what is going on in the brain in great detail, but it does not affect the brain in any way.  That is why there is no way to "observe" consciousness in the physical brain of an individual.  It is exactly like someone asking you to open up someone's brain and show them where the fMRI image is.  There is no image in the brain - it is created from the "sensing" of the MRI machine and is totally separate from the brain.  I say that consciousness is like that.  There is more detail, of course, but, for starters, let's just say that consciousness has the capacity to sense the status of every synapse in the entire nervous system and combine that information into a single image, presented continuously as long as you are awake and aware.  That is consciousness.  More to come on that.

             As a brief aside, I call these analogies circular because, ultimately, it is not the fMRI machine that combines the sensed brain activity into a single image.  All it does is produce an image that is composed of many many pixels of colored spots.  The combining of the image comes together into a unified picture only when we look at the organized collection of pixels.  The picture is not a unified thing - it is just a bunch of pixels - it is only our visual perception of the picture that is unified.  And, actually, our visual perception is just a large parallel set of impulses from the retina that are sent to our visual cortex.  And, further, in the visual cortex they don't get combined into a single image.  They get processed and combined into more parallel signals in complex neural networks, but there is never a place in the brain where one neuron sees the whole picture.  So how do we see the fMRI image as a whole?  That's our consciousness!  ...and that's why I call the analogy circular.  We're trying to describe consciousness, but we end up forcing consciousness into our description.  I challenge you to come up with an analogy of consciousness that does not, at its very core, include consciousness within the analogy.

             So, back to my original purpose:  is the concept of consciousness as an afferent system of the soul consistent with neuroscience?  I will use the analogy of a radio receiver.  The receiver senses the radio waves and produces an output, and therefore is analogous to consciousness.  But, as far as the radio station that generates the original signal, it has no way of detecting whether there is a receiver out there listening to it.  So, in the same way, if you assume that consciousness, in the act of sensing the status of the brain, doesn't leave any physical trace behind, then I think it is consistent with neuroscience.  If these conditions are an appropriate description, then there is nothing physical to measure with respect to consciousness.  Of course, those who reject the existence of the soul will say that this concept is unnecessary and conveniently "creates" a soul out of nothing that leaves no trace behind, and therefore is not scientific.  I would agree with that statement:  the soul is not scientific (although wait until we get to the efferent system!).  As I have stated before, the theory is not developed with the goal of creating a scientific proof.  The soul is a given from Christian belief and the question is, can a theory of soul be developed that is consistent with neuroscience findings.  As far as an efferent consciousness, I suggest this part of my theory does not violate any principles of neuroscience, and therefore meets the criteria.  I think it can go deeper than that when we consider the concept of unity of perception (i.e. the binding problem), but that is for a future discussion.

             Does this theory of consciousness as the afferent system of the soul violate Scripture?  In my reading of Scripture, it is pretty vague about the composition of the soul and, as far as I can tell, consciousness is assumed but never described in Scripture.  So, when it comes to these kinds of underlying details, I think there is a lot of room for "creative" thinking.  As far as I can ascertain, this concept is consistent with Scripture.

             Well, on to the "efferent" system of the soul, which is going to be much more difficult to explain.  As I have mentioned before, neuroscience refers to the "hard problem of consciousness", but I consider the efferent system of the soul to be diamond compared to the afferent system's talc.  That's next.