Delving into a bag of books and magazines yesterday, I pulled out a 2013 issue of Skeptic. Thumbing through it, I found a highlighted article that must have been the reason I saved the magazine.
Good title: "What Science Really Says About the Soul," by Stephen Cave. Being fairly short, I'll include the piece in its entirety at the end of this post, after sharing some selected quotes.
His arguments against the existence of some sort of non-material bubble of divine consciousness are pretty darn good. I've made most of them myself in my own highly-persusive blog posts during the past 10+ years.
They're difficult to refute.
One is what I like to call the Baseball Bat Argument. If an eternal non-physical conscious soul is our genuine essence, why doesn't some sign of it manifest when the brain is injured, like after the head is hit with a baseball bat?
Cave says:
The evidence of science, when brought together with an ancient argument, provides a very powerful case against the existence of a soul that can carry forward your essence once your body fails.
…every part of the mind can now be seen to fail when some part of the brain fails.
…But if we each have a soul that enables us to see, think and feel after the total destruction of the body, why, in the cases of dysfunction documented by neuroscientists, do these souls not enable us to see, think and feel when only a small portion of the brain is destroyed?
…But if the soul can see when the entire brain and body have stopped working, why, in the case of people with damaged optic nerves, can’t it see when only part of the brain and body have stopped working? In other words, if blind people have a soul that can see, why are they blind?
…In fact, evidence now shows that everything the soul is supposed to be able to do—think, remember, love—fails when some relevant part of the brain fails. Even consciousness itself—otherwise there would be no general anesthetics.
Cave goes on to present an oft-heard explanation for why damage to the brain results in malfunctioning consciousness: soul consciousness is like electromagnetic waves, and the brain is like a television. The waves are separate from the television, but can't be received/perceived without a TV as long as we are alive.
Not a good argument, as Cave demonstrates.
Most believers expect their soul to be able to carry forward their mental life with or without the body; this is like saying that the TV signal sometimes needs a TV set to transform it into the picture, but once the set is kaput, can make the picture all by itself. But if it can make the picture all by itself, why does it sometimes act through an unreliable set?
…Second, changes to our bodies impact on our minds in ways not at all analogous to how damage to a TV set changes its output, even if we take into account damage to the camera too. The TV analogy claims there is something that remains untouched by such damage, some independent broadcaster preserving the real program even if it is distorted by bad reception. But this is precisely what the evidence of neuroscience undermines.
…Which suggests we are nothing like a television; but much more like, for example, a music box: the music is not coming from elsewhere, but from the workings within the box itself. When the box is damaged, the music is impaired; and if the box is entirely destroyed, then the music stops for good.
Not good news. But reality isn't set up to deliver what humans prefer. Reality is what it is. Understanding that "it is" is the goal of science, whereas religion specializes in "what we'd like to be."
For many years, 35 or so, I managed to be semi-scientifically-minded while still holding to a belief in soul and spirit. Why? Because it felt good to do this.
I didn't like the idea of dying and being gone forever (still don't, for that matter).
So I embraced the feel-good stories told by a mystical Indian teaching and rejected the evidence of science in this regard. Now, though, I resonate with Cave's final paragraph.
There is much about consciousness that we still do not understand. We are only beginning to decipher its mysteries, and may never fully succeed. But all the evidence we have suggests that the wonders of the mind—even near-death and out of body experiences—are the effect of neurons firing. Contrary to the beliefs of the vast majority of people on Earth, from Hindus to New Age spiritualists, consciousness depends upon the brain and shares its fate to the end.
The full Cave article can be found in a continuation to this post.
What Science Really Says About the Soul
by Steven Cave
Nathalie was hemorrhaging badly. She felt weak, cold, and the pain in her abdomen was excruciating. A nurse ran out to fetch the doctor, but by the time they arrived she knew she was slipping away. The doctor was shouting instructions when quite suddenly the pain stopped. She felt free—and found herself floating above the drama, looking down at the bustle of activity around her now still body.
“We’ve lost her,” she heard the doctor say, but Nathalie was already moving on and upwards, into a tunnel of light. She first felt a pang of anxiety at leaving her husband and children, but it was soon overwhelmed by a feeling of profound peace; a feeling that it would all be okay. At the end of the tunnel, a figure of pure radiance was waiting with arms wide open.
This, or something like it, is how millions imagine what it will be like to die. In 2009, over 70 percent of Americans said they believe that they, like Nathalie, have a soul that will survive the end of their body. That figure may well now be higher after the phenomenal success of two recent books describing vivid near death experiences: one from an innocent—the four year old Todd Burpo—the other from the opposite: a Harvard scientist and former skeptic, neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander. Both argue that when their brains stopped working, their souls floated off to experience a better place.
This is an attractive view and a great consolation to those who have lost loved ones or who are contemplating their own mortality. Many also believe this view to be beyond the realm of science, to concern a different dimension into which no microscope can peer. Dr. Alexander, for example, said in an interview with the New York Times, “Our spirit is not dependent on the brain or body; it is eternal, and no one has one sentence worth of hard evidence that it isn’t.”
But he is wrong. The evidence of science, when brought together with an ancient argument, provides a very powerful case against the existence of a soul that can carry forward your essence once your body fails. The case runs like this: with modern brain-imaging technology, we can now see how specific, localized brain injuries damage or even destroy aspects of a person’s mental life. These are the sorts of dysfunctions that Oliver Sacks brought to the world in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. The man of the title story was a lucid, intelligent music teacher, who had lost the ability to recognize faces and other familiar objects due to damage to his visual cortex.
Since then, countless examples of such dysfunction have been documented—to the point that every part of the mind can now be seen to fail when some part of the brain fails. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has studied many such cases. He records a stroke victim, for example, who had lost any capacity for emotion; patients who lost all creativity following brain surgery; and others who lost the ability to make decisions. One man with a brain tumor lost what we might call his moral character, becoming irresponsible and disregarding of social norms. I saw something similar in my own father, who also had a brain tumor: it caused profound changes in his personality and capacities before it eventually killed him.
The crux of the challenge then is this: those who believe they have a soul that survives bodily death typically believe that this soul will enable them, like Nathalie in the story above, to see, think, feel, love, reason and do many other things fitting for a happy afterlife. But if we each have a soul that enables us to see, think and feel after the total destruction of the body, why, in the cases of dysfunction documented by neuroscientists, do these souls not enable us to see, think and feel when only a small portion of the brain is destroyed?
To make the argument clear, we can take the example of sight. If either your eyes or the optic nerves in your brain are sufficiently badly damaged, you will go blind. This tells us very clearly that the faculty of sight is dependent upon functioning eyes and optic nerves.
Yet curiously, when many people imagine their soul leaving their body, they imagine being able to see—like Nathalie, looking down on her own corpse surrounded by frantic doctors.They believe, therefore, that their soul can see. But if the soul can see when the entire brain and body have stopped working, why, in the case of people with damaged optic nerves, can’t it see when only part of the brain and body have stopped working? In other words, if blind people have a soul that can see, why are they blind?
So eminent a theologian as Saint Thomas Aquinas, writing 750 years ago, believed this question had no satisfactory answer. Without its body—without eyes, ears and nose—he thought the soul would be deprived of all senses, waiting blindly for the resurrection of the flesh to make it whole again. Aquinas concluded that the body-less soul would have only those powers that (in his view) were not dependent upon bodily organs: faculties such as reason and understanding.
But now we can see that these faculties are just as dependent upon a bodily organ—the brain—as sight is upon the eyes. Unlike in Aquinas’s day, we can now keep many people with brain damage alive and use neuroimaging to observe the correlations between that damage and their behavior. And what we observe is that the destruction of certain parts of the brain can destroy those cognitive faculties once thought to belong to the soul. So if he had had the evidence of neuroscience in front of him, we can only imagine that Aquinas himself would have concluded that these faculties also stop when the brain stops.
In fact, evidence now shows that everything the soul is supposed to be able to do—think, remember, love—fails when some relevant part of the brain fails. Even consciousness itself—otherwise there would be no general anesthetics. A syringe full of chemicals is sufficient to extinguish all awareness. For anyone who believes something like the Nathalie story—that consciousness can survive bodily death—this is an embarrassing fact. If the soul can sustain our consciousness after death, when the brain has shut down permanently, why can it not do so when the brain has shut down temporarily?
Some defenders of the soul have, of course, attempted to answer this question. They argue, for example, that the soul needs a functioning body in this world, but not in the next. One view is that the soul is like a broadcaster and the body like a receiver—something akin to a television station and a TV set. (Though as our body is also the source of our sensory input, we have to imagine the TV set also has a camera on top feeding images to the distant station.)
We know that if we damage our TV set, we get a distorted picture. And if we break the set, we get no picture at all. The naive observer would believe the program was therefore gone. But we know that it is really still being transmitted; that the real broadcaster is actually elsewhere. Similarly, the soul could still be sending its signal even though the body is no longer able to receive it.
This response sounds seductive, but helps little. First, it does not really address the main argument at all: Most believers expect their soul to be able to carry forward their mental life with or without the body; this is like saying that the TV signal sometimes needs a TV set to transform it into the picture, but once the set is kaput, can make the picture all by itself. But if it can make the picture all by itself, why does it sometimes act through an unreliable set?
Second, changes to our bodies impact on our minds in ways not at all analogous to how damage to a TV set changes its output, even if we take into account damage to the camera too. The TV analogy claims there is something that remains untouched by such damage, some independent broadcaster preserving the real program even if it is distorted by bad reception. But this is precisely what the evidence of neuroscience undermines. Whereas damage to the TV set or camera might make the signal distorted or fuzzy, damage to our brains much more profoundly alters our minds. As we noted above, such damage can even change our moral views, emotional attachments, and the way we reason.
Which suggests we are nothing like a television; but much more like, for example, a music box: the music is not coming from elsewhere, but from the workings within the box itself. When the box is damaged, the music is impaired; and if the box is entirely destroyed, then the music stops for good.
There is much about consciousness that we still do not understand. We are only beginning to decipher its mysteries, and may never fully succeed. But all the evidence we have suggests that the wonders of the mind—even near-death and out of body experiences—are the effect of neurons firing. Contrary to the beliefs of the vast majority of people on Earth, from Hindus to New Age spiritualists, consciousness depends upon the brain and shares its fate to the end. 
References
- What People Do and Do Not Believe In, The Harris Poll, December 15, 2009
- Burpo, T and Vincent, L. 2010. Heaven is For Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back. Thomas Nelson Publishers; Alexander, Eben. 2012. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. Simon & Schuster.
- Kaufman, L. 2012. “Readers Join Doctor’s Journey to the Afterworld’s Gates.” The New York Times, November 25, page C1.
- Sacks, Oliver. 1985. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam Publishing.
- Descriptions of heaven also involve being able to see, from Dante to Heaven is For Real, cited above.
- Aquinas’s views on the soul can be found in his Summa Theologica and elsewhere. Particularly relevant to the question of the soul’s limited faculties are Part 1, question 77, article 8 (“Whether all the powers remain in the soul when separated from the body?”) and supplement to the Third Part, question 70, article 1 (“Whether the sensitive powers remain in the separated soul?”), in which he writes: “Now it is evident that certain operations, whereof the soul’s powers are the principles, do not belong to the soul properly speaking but to the soul as united to the body, because they are not performed except through the medium of the body—such as to see, to hear, and so forth. Hence it follows that such like powers belong to the united soul and body as their subject, but to the soul as their quickening principle, just as the form is the principle of the properties of a composite being. Some operations, however, are performed by the soul without a bodily organ—for instance to understand, to consider, to will: wherefore, since these actions are proper to the soul, the powers that are the principles thereof belong to the soul not only as their principle but also as their subject. Therefore, since so long as the proper subject remains its proper passions must also remain, and when it is corrupted they also must be corrupted, it follows that these powers which use no bodily organ for their actions must needs remain in the separated body, while those which use a bodily organ must needs be corrupted when the body is corrupted: and such are all the powers belonging to the sensitive and the vegetative soul.”
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Another example of pseudo-science.
“Most believers expect their soul to be able to carry forward their mental life with or without the body.”
“Most believers” Now that’s a scientific survey if ever there was one. So a soul is whatever a popular vote among “most believers” says?
Maybe the opposite is true. Maybe mental life disappears with the brain’s passage. But consciousness and awareness expands!
As long as we are tied to the limited and varying physical brain, we are blinded, and biased, and unable to see correctly.
And the more that brain prison cell is injured, the more poorly it functions.
But free of it, perception is instantaneous and expansive.
Where brain doesn’t exist, consciousness does!
Your author does not site all the meditation studies supporting this.
Indeed, control over bodily functions, amazing degrees of control, and hyper subtle degrees of awareness of those functions, take place when a person learns to consciously shut down portions of the brain.
There are decades of that research, and in recent years conducted at Yale, UCLA and Princeton.
But anyone trying to make claims about soul and God on the basis of modern “science” is no true scientist, certainly they are reaching outside their profession, their respect for the scientific method, and their good judgement.
So why do people keep doing it? It is the religion of Atheism.
And your evidence for consciousness surviving the death of the brain/body is…?
(please fill in the blank)
As long as we are tied to the limited and varying physical brain, we are blinded, and biased, and unable to see correctly.
As long as we are tied to the belief that we are not “the limited and varying physical brain, we are blinded, and biased, and unable to see correctly”.
Blogger Brian write:” And your evidence for consciousness surviving the death of the brain/body is…?”
A while back you were enthusing about the theory that consciousness is a fundamental constituent of the universe like space and time, in which case, consciousness would definitely survive death. But, hey, that was days ago.
Dear Brian:
You wrote:
“And your evidence for consciousness surviving the death of the brain/body is…?”
The evidence I provided demonstrates that less brain usage = greater awareness / consciousness.
That evidence completely dismantles the notion that consciousness grows or lessens due to the brain. Now, the brain’s ability to handle complex tasks, and to build a more complete sensory mileau is most certainly proportional to the complexity and functionality of the brain.
But consciousness is a different animal, Brian. And there is quite a bit of research about it, that I have referred to above, which you have ignored.
Instead, you’ve chosen to argue against spirituality by asking about evidence of consciousness after death.
For that, and it’s very specious, I refer you to the NDE anecdotal accounts.
But it’s unscientific. You’re asking about a realm of measurement that is not currently developed. And you know this. That is creating a circular argument.
And then you make the fatal and common flaw of folks who are themselves not scientists when they try to use science.
No scientist looks at a dark room and claims “There is nothing there”. That’s what a circular argument is.
That is your approach.
Newton had to deal with the same many times.
He said “I frame no hypothesis”.
He invented a concept, “Gravity” to explain how bodies tend to be attracted to each other. But even today no one can actually detect gravity waves. Two bodies in space. Nothing connects them. They start moving towards each other. Why? How? No one knows.
Your logic would it can’t be “gravity” but must be something else…those bodies must have been pushed in the past.
No, Brian. All science disproves your thinking. Even the most fundamental things cannot actually be measured. We must infer causal variables from their actions on other things. Most science deals with postulating invisible forces. Yes, that’s what science does!
That’s the limitation of this physical world. A limitation which every scientist accepts as they work to refine their instrumentation and observation skills.
But the relgion of Atheism rejects that. A dark room is an empty room to those who hold that faith.
It’s unscientific.
Ancient Geek, actually there is no contradiction between Koch’s view that consciousness is a fundamental property of the cosmos, and human consciousness being dependent on the brain.
Here’s a Koch quote:
“You and I find ourselves in a cosmos in which any and all systems of interacting parts possess some measure of sentience. The larger and more highly networked the system, the greater the degree of consciousness. Human consciousness is much more rarified than canine consciousness because the human brain has twenty times more neurons than the brain of a dog and is more heavily networked.”
The more material networking, the more consciousness. In this view, for example, a thermostat has a very minimal degree of it, not anything approaching self-awareness.
So when we die, the atoms that constitute us will, in Koch’s view, continue to manifest their very minimal sentience, but we won’t any longer — because the complex integrated information made possible by the physical human brain won’t exist anymore.
Brian, you wrote:
“Ancient Geek, actually there is no contradiction between Koch’s view that consciousness is a fundamental property of the cosmos, and human consciousness being dependent on the brain.”
Brian, I concede the first point. Yes, the entire creation is conscious: To the extent that the fields of energy that occupy it are in fact part of the whole that make up all things. That’s largely a matter of some science, particularly atomic physics. It isn’t particulary new or cutting edge.
But the second point is wrong. Consciousness does not depend upon the brain. Consciousness has been chained to it and constrained by it. However, like wearing a heavy pack or thick boots, it is a necessity for functioning in this cave of iron and smoke.
What you see as physical matter is largely empty space.
What you see as space is largely a concept.
So long as there must be an intermediary between item and perception, there is thought.
But when no intermediary is necessary, there is simply perception. No thought at all. But a much larger consciousness!
You might say there is no thought without the brain container. But conscious, immediate awareness of that…capturing that in an instant is what some have called hyper-conscious. Or “Extra-Sensory Perception.”
To become “One” with the object of perception is to eliminate the intermediary, therefore no thought, no brain is needed. But absolute perception and awareness.
Because then the individual sees, feels, understands all in one step in a multi-dimensional moment what their linear, bio-chemical one cylinder brain pumping out one-dimensional thought pellets like a rabbit that ate too much of the wrong stuff, kind of thinking. And what is the destination of that thinking? Comprehension.
So the thought isn’t the consciousness. It’s the Comprehension at the end of it. And that’s generally after the thought, or in tiny increments along the way. That part is instantaneous. That’s how the biochemical brain works.
The human brain generates linear, sequential thinking over increments of time, along a single dimension of time, a single track to reach a moment of comprehension. And with direct perception, “Extra-Sensory Perception”, that klunky process is simply replaced with comprehension. That’s why meditation is so difficult for a while. How to fit A into B. But A has to be set aside. The B is, like a curtain pulled back to reveal well…see for yourself.
A is entirely unnecessary for comprehension and consciousness. But only someone versed in B knows this, and only for themself.
Good news, Track B is available to everyone. It’s like those magic eye books. You have to apply just a little discipline to get there.
Then, you can go test it all for yourself. You can see whether that comprehension is just memory, imagination or something that really is direct, and has nothing to do with “thinking.”
Does it replace what your senses report? No. It’s different. But the two are connected!
One is flawed, the other isn’t. So, naturally, they look entirely different!
At best the mind understands in concept the construction it has made. But that is not actually apprehending reality.It is apprehending your own artificial, gooey, crayon-drawing brain-created image.
Apprehending reality is direct perception, not thought.
Do you need senses for that?
Since you are immersed in those fields of energy, no.
Senses measure gross and separate items. An object is 10 feet away. Your eyes see it, they create a flawed but functional image in your own brain. That’s your connection to the item. You perceive that image as the object. It’s upside down, pock marked, discolored and curved in your brain. Your brain straightens it out, turns it right side up, fills in the pock holes, adjusts the color evenly, even before “you” see it.
You still aren’t seeing “it”. You are in your brain prison cell contemplating the crappy drawing your brain has handed to “you” through the prison bars.
From a Quantum perspective, in terms of fields of energy, “YOU” and the object ten feet away are entirely connected. You aren’t separated at all.
There is a field of energy between you and the object and the two are simply nodes configured differently.
Without any senses, it is possible to “know” that object and yourself instantaneously as parts of one whole.
And atomic physics, even before quantum physics, revealed over 100 years ago how these fields occupy space…all space. And how we with our gross senses, we perceive only portions of it, as distinct matter. We perceive it wrong mostly…just right enought to function physically. It’s a gooey chemical process. So it’s not a wise idea to use those limited perceptions to extrapolate anything beyond. They don’t describe the true reality that, say, sub-atomic and nuclear physics describes, at all.
So, does consciousness disappaer when the brain goes? Does thinking disappear?
The two are not the same, Brian.
I think a good scientist would investigate that before concluding one way or the other.
They wouldn’t say “I don’t really know, so I’ll say NO.” Or “No one has any evidence yet, therefore I say NO.” Poor Einstein, Bohr and Fermi had to contend with a good deal of that flawed thinking. That isn’t scientific.
Be the scientist you long to become.
Spence, I’m not sure how it would be possible to know that consciousness exists without a brain. Everybody who is alive has a brain, and those who are dead can’t communicate with those of us who are alive.
Sure, I like the idea that consciousness is independent of the brain, since this implies that consciousness survives bodily death. This seem an unprovable idea, though, since it isn’t possible to live without a brain.
consciousness is so easy to prove
just listen to that tiny sweet sound of your Self
might take a quarter of an hour to un-think Shakespeare’s
“dream, thought by an idiot, signifying nothing !”
777
rather special that Gopals Jap Ji translation says :
“a SHEIK, a PIR Divine, , , even the blind will see the Path Sublime
Dear Brian:
You wrote:
“Sure, I like the idea that consciousness is independent of the brain, since this implies that consciousness survives bodily death. This seem an unprovable idea, though, since it isn’t possible to live without a brain.”
What I spoke about was testable hypotheses.
For example, while Newton Hypothesized about Gravity, he could only indirectly test “gravity’s” effect on physical objects.
No scientist has yet been able to measure “Gravity waves” or “Gravity particles”. They have no actual clue as to what physically connects two entirely separate objects floating in space, to bring them together. It’s unnecessary. You don’t need to go into outer space.
Your argument is that because you can’t go into outer space, gravity apart from the earth can’t exist. In your logic, it only applies to the earth because you can only measure the effect of the earth on other local objects.
Newton had to have other data. He had to formulate another means, a more sensative means, to test his hypothesis that gravity wasn’t unique to the earth.
That’s what science does much of the time. It hypothesizes things you can’t actually measure or see directly. But you form a hypothesis about how that dynamic force effects things you can measure.
And usually that requires setting up a controlled experiment to test forces that are not testable in the normal world without such heightened levels of control.
What I wrote about was testing your own ability to perceive things beyond the physical senses, and to be able to consciously witness how your own mind functions.
If you can see and be aware of how your own mind functions while IT is operating separately, that certainly is one hypothesis you can test.
If your brain is shut down, if all sensory input is shut down, if thinking is shut down but YOU find yourself entirely aware of things you had no access to before…first and foremost watching your brain and thought itself function, then you have evidence that consciousness may exist separately from what you are calling the brain.
At least you have evidence of a level of conscious awareness that you have not yet experienced before. And if it’s “real” whatever that heightened awareness is, you can repeat that experiment over and over again to further test what it is you are perceiving.
At least you have evidence that whatever consciousness is, it isn’t quite as dependent upon those things you currently know to be the brain.
You can test that, if you are willing, like any good scientist, to conduct that experiment.
But, satisfied to read other people’s opinions isn’t science.
You have to want to conduct some experimentation in consciousness for yourself to be in a position to understand the strengths and limitations of what you are reading. If you can’t actually alter your level of conscious awareness, you can’t claim to have scientific understanding of consciousness.
It’s that simple. Science is about controlling variables, not merely conjecturing about them.
Brian, you’ve lost that fundamental scientific concept in all the philosophy.
It’s always better to actually see microscopic things through a microscope, not conjecturing about what they might or might not be with no actual interest in personal verification, as you gaze across the heavens.
You might as well conjecture that the sun rotates around the earth because that’s how you see it, and what others have written for thousands of years. With no interest in better instrumentation, control and real experimentation, that’s as far as one will get.
Thank goodness, someone chose to apply some hard criteria and test that themselves upon their own measurements of the heavens.
They were truly curious. Really interested in facts, not opinions.
How they must have sounded to pragmatists. Eliptical patterns? The geometry of celestial movements? Why all that complex explanation for something that was much easier to believe: The sun rotates around the earth, period.
Really, can’t we get beyond that thinking into some really testable science?
If you want to understand consciousness at all, control it. Learn to raise it.
Then let’s talk about what you find.
It’s going to be difficult to prove anything about the soul if it exists at a layer of reality more fundamental than the mind, as proofs are just more mind machinations: dull, dead and lifeless. The soul is all about love, intuition and joy whereas the mind is just a computer.