I like Hasker’s emergent dualism, but I also have sympathies with the idea that the soul and the body come into existence at the same time (it’s more orthodox AND Orthodox).
What do you think of the idea of the soul EVOLVING with the body?
If bodies can evolve, why not souls along with them? This seems to me less chaotic than the creationist position of God creating a soul out of nothing at the moment of everyone’s conception. We know next to nothing about minds or souls so I see no reason why this should be impossible.
I think Robin Collins, Keith Ward and others have provided good arguments for the mind so I’m not really in doubt of it.
And we cannot observe or detect them when the brain IS functioning. We cannot detect the mind at all. The only reason we know it’s there is because we each experience it. If we didn’t there’d be no way of knowing it’s there.
I don’t have a problem with the idea that the mind is separate from the brain, though I wouldn’t use “separate” there. I’m inclined to see the mind as a metaphor or a fiction, while the brain is real. But I’m not at all sure what @Jeremy_Christian means by “the mind”. I’m guessing that he would not agree that it is a useful fiction.
Yes, exactly. Through tracing oxygenated blood flow we can see what regions of the brain are active. And anything you physically experience is going to have correlating brain activity as that’s what you’re feeling. The brain is doing that.
When the mind recalls memories or uses the prefrontal cortex to imagine potential outcomes, there is brain activity. The brain is in use.
But there is no evidence whatsoever for the actual mental experience. And nothing that says it’s actually being created by this brain activity. Only that there’s brain activity at the same time. Is the mind causing the brain activity, or is the brain activity causing the mind? Don’t know. Can’t tell. Can’t empirically confirm one way or the other.
This must be clearly understood. If there’s a neuroscience authority in this community that can be included that would be fantastic.
Here’s the way I understand it. By tracing the activity of the brain we can correlate certain functions to certain things.
For example, the tests done to show how it can be determined what image a test subject is “picturing in their mind”.
These test subjects are part of a controlled experiment where they’re shown a set of images. As their eyes/brain process the images their brain’s are monitored.
When that subject is later asked to picture one of those images those same pathways are retraced. Match the same pattern to which when the images were first seen and you’ve got a winner.
The brain appears to store data in spatially specific regions of the brain. And when recalled, those same pathways are retraced to retrieve that information.
This does not mean the mind was observed. Only brain activity.
As best I can tell, when people talk of “the mind” they are talking of “that which does the thinking.” And, in my opinion, that which does the thinking is the whole person. So the idea of a mind, as an organ for thinking, does not actually make sense to me. But it’s okay as a metaphor or as a useful fiction. In reality, though, it is people who think.
Thinking is part of it. Recalling memories, imagining possible outcomes, contemplating what to do, these are all the mind. The willful ‘self’ that’s driving the body.
It’s not a physical thing or an organ, but it most certainly exists. The question is whether or not it is a construct generated entirely by a physical brain.
Yes, a thought exists because it is a series of specific synaptic firing in the brain of the person having the thought. No synaptic firing sequence, no thought.