Interaction between body and soul
The main problem I see with the idea of the soul (as an entity that can survive the death of the physical body) is how does this soul interact with the physical body while eluding the observation of physicists. If the soul interacted with the body via a very weak force, it might elude the observation of physicists but its influence on the body would seem insignificant. If on the other hand the soul interacted with the body via a relatively strong force, this force should be detectable by physicists.
One possible answer could be that the soul interacts with the body via a relatively strong force that results in measurable changes in brain activity but the soul's influence on the brain would normally be within the usual variance of human behavior and due to the rather limited level of detail at which we can measure complicated brain processes (fMRI, EEG...) and the myriad external influences on the brain, it would be difficult to tell whether the measurable changes in brain activity are or are not entirely caused by known physical forces.
The problem with this answer is that the brain consists of the same elementary particles that physicists observe with high precision in particle accelerators and there they have failed to detect a force other than the known physical forces. A relatively strong force should be detectable in particle accelerators. So if the soul influences the brain in a significant way, this influence would seem to be limited to the brain and maybe to some other complex physical objects where it would be difficult to differentiate this influence from the known physical forces. Why would the soul influence only brains or other complex objects? The only reason that comes to mind is that the soul would want to hide from detection, which seems rather questionable.
So I have searched for a different possible mechanism of interaction between the body and the soul and have come up with a combination of weak force and resonance: the soul might interact with matter via a very weak force and that's why it has not been detected even in precise observations in particle accelerators, but it would be able to influence the brain in a significant way via resonance. Resonance is a familiar physical phenomenon in which a periodic external force or vibrating system drives another system to oscillate with greater amplitude at specific frequencies. Thus the effects of a weak force would be amplified, theoretically without limit if the driven system had no resistance. It might be that only highly complex structures like neural networks provide patterns that can resonate with the soul and so the otherwise weak interaction between soul and matter would be difficult to detect outside the brain.
The interaction between the soul and the brain could also go the other way: via resonance, brain activity would influence the soul, and thus the soul would be able to receive information from the brain, including information that encodes perceptions of the sensory system of the physical body. After the death of the physical body, the soul could continue to exist and hold consciousness but would lose access to further information provided by brain activity.
As a layman in physics, I don't really know if this idea is possible, specifically whether it is possible that a weak force would be able to induce significant resonance on the scope of neural networks without being detected in our current particle accelerators, or whether perhaps gravity could do the job of the weak force. More serious/rigorous physics forums like physicsforums.com and Physics Stack Exchange censor such ideas as too speculative or vague.
If you have any comments on this resonance idea or other proposals for interaction between a putative soul and the body that might be consistent with known physics, share here.
One possible answer could be that the soul interacts with the body via a relatively strong force that results in measurable changes in brain activity but the soul's influence on the brain would normally be within the usual variance of human behavior and due to the rather limited level of detail at which we can measure complicated brain processes (fMRI, EEG...) and the myriad external influences on the brain, it would be difficult to tell whether the measurable changes in brain activity are or are not entirely caused by known physical forces.
The problem with this answer is that the brain consists of the same elementary particles that physicists observe with high precision in particle accelerators and there they have failed to detect a force other than the known physical forces. A relatively strong force should be detectable in particle accelerators. So if the soul influences the brain in a significant way, this influence would seem to be limited to the brain and maybe to some other complex physical objects where it would be difficult to differentiate this influence from the known physical forces. Why would the soul influence only brains or other complex objects? The only reason that comes to mind is that the soul would want to hide from detection, which seems rather questionable.
So I have searched for a different possible mechanism of interaction between the body and the soul and have come up with a combination of weak force and resonance: the soul might interact with matter via a very weak force and that's why it has not been detected even in precise observations in particle accelerators, but it would be able to influence the brain in a significant way via resonance. Resonance is a familiar physical phenomenon in which a periodic external force or vibrating system drives another system to oscillate with greater amplitude at specific frequencies. Thus the effects of a weak force would be amplified, theoretically without limit if the driven system had no resistance. It might be that only highly complex structures like neural networks provide patterns that can resonate with the soul and so the otherwise weak interaction between soul and matter would be difficult to detect outside the brain.
The interaction between the soul and the brain could also go the other way: via resonance, brain activity would influence the soul, and thus the soul would be able to receive information from the brain, including information that encodes perceptions of the sensory system of the physical body. After the death of the physical body, the soul could continue to exist and hold consciousness but would lose access to further information provided by brain activity.
As a layman in physics, I don't really know if this idea is possible, specifically whether it is possible that a weak force would be able to induce significant resonance on the scope of neural networks without being detected in our current particle accelerators, or whether perhaps gravity could do the job of the weak force. More serious/rigorous physics forums like physicsforums.com and Physics Stack Exchange censor such ideas as too speculative or vague.
If you have any comments on this resonance idea or other proposals for interaction between a putative soul and the body that might be consistent with known physics, share here.
Comments (61)
I think the issue here is the soul is being treated as if it is just another object in the world, acting on other objects/being acted upon. The soul is more 'prior' to objects in the world - it's very existence is a condition for there being an appearance of the world of objects in the first place. In other words, rather than there being a world of objects 'out there', with the soul being merely one of these objects. You instead have a world of objects being presented before a soul. Sure, you have a world of objects 'out there', but 'out there' only exists in relation to the apprehension of a soul.
The movement of information should be consistent with known laws of physics though...
The idea of the soul has inspired passions for millennia. You don't solve the problem by saying that there might be no such thing as a soul.
I assumed the idea of a soul as a conscious individual who can incarnate in a physical body.
So the soul disappears when one goes to sleep?
I don't mean weak nuclear force, rather a weakly acting force in general. Maybe even gravitational force.
Maybe just goes into a temporarily suppressed mode.
The story of the soul involves a juxtaposition of the physical and the mental; and then spends its time looking for a way to explain volition and drunkenness. The simplest solution is to deny the underpinning juxtaposition.
Well the laws of physics might be different outside the machine, but what would be more relevant is the laws of the computer(s) hosting our virtual universe.
Moving data between universes maybe possible depending on the architecture of the computer(s). Imagine two virtual universes running on the same computer. Memory could be moved by adjusting a pointer and relocating someone into another universe. Once you in another universe your information could be transformed somehow into a new you.
There are various arguments to say Time was created by an entity or entities. If time was created, how? I can only think that you could go about creating a dimension virtually... can’t think of any other way. So whilst ‘The Matrix’ type scenarios are unlikely, I don’t think they can be discounted completely?
Odd, that this corresponds so closely with changes in the brain...
The laws of physics might indeed be different outside the laws of physics!
It has effects on neuronal firings which may combine with effects of the soul.
First I should say something about what I believe the meaning of the word to be. I think 'the soul' simply refers to the totality of the being; more than simply the physical body, but also more than the ego or 'conscious thinking self'. To me the idea of 'soul' includes what would be called by modern medical science the sub-conscious and unconscious, and also talents, latent dispositions, memories, hopes, and everything else that comprises the being.
Whether the soul is an entity, is one question; but another question is, is the soul something that can be known or perceived objectively, as the body can be. And my inclination would be to say 'no' to that. I think the problem with trying to work out 'how the soul interacts with the body' is one of reification - of trying to understand the soul by treating it as an object of perception, something we can know in the third person. But I don't think we can do that.
See this post for an outline as to why.
Which lands you smack bang in old school materialism again, by exactly the means it was arrived at in the first place. First through Descartes' division of the mind and the body, and then by the argument that the mind cannot be shown to exist in any objective way. The ghost in the machine all over again.
Though, the soul as quality, may literally be part of the physical body, but its contents are inexplicable physically in principle, and objective.
If the soul is an object in spacetime that is subject to causation or exchange of energy, we may regard it as "physical". It seems that popular notions of the soul fit into this picture. It is just a different kind of physical object.
But the information is inside the universe, in the objects inside the universe, no? So it should follow the laws of physics.
They could leave a copy of your information in this universe so that nothing is disrupted and move your original information to the new universe.
According to quantum field theory all fields are physical objects whose local energy excitations are particles. So if you regard the soul as a field, it is a physical object which interacts with other physical objects according to laws of physics.
I don't think particles have any ultimate reality. In fact, I think that is one of the indisputable findings of physics.
Furthermore, what I'm suggesting is the idea of biological fields, which are not recognised by mainstream science at all, and that Sheldrake's morphic field theory could be understood to account for the persistence of memories from one life to the next. (One thing you need to appreciated to understand that is the content of Ian Stevenson's research into children who recall previous lives - for which see this column.)
The morphic resonance idea actually seems similar to my idea of the soul as a vibrating object that may influence brain activity via resonance but may otherwise have very weak interaction with other (non-resonant) physical objects and thus elude scientists' detection.
That is one for the scrapbook.
By way of contrast, Daniel Dennett, poster-boy for materialism, insists that the first-person reality of being is itself an illusion. It is, he says, the net result of the ‘unconscious competence’ of millions of cellular transactions which are themselves purely physical in nature, but which give rise to the persuasive illusion which we know as ‘being’. About which Thomas Nagel remarks:
So Dennett’s kind of ignorance - that is, what he is prepared to ignore - in the attempt to deny the apodictic nature of the first-person perspective, unwittingly serves to illustrate the fact that the reality of the first person is not explicable in scientific terms. In other words, in making his case, it becomes evident to almost everyone apart from himself that he doesn’t have a case. So there’s no use trying to explain or understand the ‘nature of being’ in scientific terms. But regrettably, for many people, those are the only terms in which we can think about it.
Why not? An object is anything, including a field. And if an object induces oscillations via resonance in another object, it exerts influence via a force.
According to quantum field theory all matter is fields that are locally excited in the form of particles. The soul might be just another type of field/particle and thus fit naturally into an expanded specific form of quantum field theory.
These qualities however are linked together by mathematical relations and therefore form mathematically (and scientifically) describable structures. Just the simple fact that you have two different qualities instead of one automatically puts qualities into a numerical structure. If the soul is made up of qualities, it also has a mathematical structure, just as the world of which the soul is a part. Science deals with the description of the structure of the world.
Being is an immanence that cannot realize itself, an affirmation beyond affirming, an activity that cannot act, because it is glued to itself. (Sartre)
I think that is a reification. A field is ‘a region in which each point is affected by a force’. It occupies space and contains energy. But I don’t believe it is correct to characterise fields as ‘objects’.
Quoting litewave
One major consequence of modern scientific method is to exclude the qualitative - exactly because it CAN’T be quantified or objectively assessed.
[quote=Thomas Nagel]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
(Mind and Cosmos, pp. 35-36)
Whereas, the mind, in the sense of first-person awareness, is never among the objects of perception at all, but is that to which the quantitative data appears. This is something that was analysed at length by the philosopher Edmund Husserl.
Insightful quote.
Well, I don't know what the word "object" means for you but I use it simply as a synonym for "something", as opposed to nothing. So in this sense, unless a field is nothing, it is something, an object, an entity. And it exists in the way it is defined.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that a quality cannot be quantified but it cannot exist without quantitative/mathematical relations to other qualities. For example, any two qualities constitute a set with cardinality 2. Qualities thereby necessarily constitute relational structures that can be mathematically described. Causal relations are a type of quantitative/mathematical relations among qualities too.
Quoting Wayfarer
Does the mind not perceive itself? Is it not conscious of itself?
I don't agree. Descartes split asunder that which is one. Choosing between materialism and idealism inherently involves accepting that split and taking one side; reject the false dichotomy.
When I said external I meant "not you" that's it. As in "there exists something that is not under your conscious control". Whether you call that thing material or other minds I do not care because either way, you are referring to the same thing. An external entity that is consistent. In other words, whether you say "that table exists" or "that table is a reflection of God's mind" you are saying the same thing. To demonstrate, try to define "material" and "mind" (not your own) differently
So would you say you're a neutral monist?
HOW are they different? HOW is mind not matter and matter not mind? Every time I try to define them differently I fail. I'd like you to try
Matter: An external object that exists consistently and has certain effects on materials.
Mind: An external entity that exists consistently and has certain effects on minds.
See the problem here?
I guess you could say neutral
So what are some schools or authors that avoid dualism, that are not explicitly or implicitly materialist? What kinds of current philosophy accomodate the kind of holistic view that this hints at?
Quoting khaled
"Defining" might be very difficult, but there's an obvious difference between a conscious living subject and a dead body. Part of that difference is that a conscious living subject is capable of thought and language, but a body is not. Furthermore only h. sapiens appears capable of fully-formed language and rational thought; animals don't exhibit those abilities. So both those are indications of ontological distinctions between body and mind, and between animals and humans.
Ultimately, the immaterial is that which is not material. Mind could be a species of the immaterial or it could be synonymous with immaterial. Depends on the culture we're talking about.
Material is ultimately that which is not immaterial.
It's kind of like: ultimately, up is that which is not down. They're defined with relation to one another.
Oh really? Would you mind highlighting that difference between a dead body and a conscious being? That is literally impossible since you cannot confirm the consciousness of anything other than yourself. Is sufficiently complex AI conscious? Are animals conscious? Is anyone other than me conscious? It seems odd to me to claim an ontological difference when none of these questions has been answered
:up:
Hi, you've mentioned 'external consistencies' with reference to mind and matter, but I'm curious, what would an 'internal consistency' be, if there's such?
The simple answer is that I don't know. But I offer the observation that what you say about the soul could easily be said of the conscious mind. It also eludes the observation of physicists. I'm sure there are other examples too.
This is a difficult question to consider properly, perhaps because "properly", in this context, is itself vague and ill-defined? :chin:
Quoting litewave
Your theory might be possible. There are other theories that might be possible too. How shall we choose between them? I see no obvious criteria that we could usefully use. Can anyone else? :chin:
You can only observe something other than you by the effects of its interaction with you. By observing the soul I mean observing the effects of the soul's interaction with physical particles and thus ultimately with physicists (who interact with the physical particles by observing them). The problem is that if the soul can survive the death of the physical body, it must be something else than familiar physical particles, because familiar physical particles constitute the physical body that stops working and cannot hold consciousness anymore after its death. But physicists have not observed the effects of anything else than of familiar physical particles.
What other theories? The theory should be consistent with known physics and explain how the soul can interact with the physical body without being detected by physicists.
I realise that. But the arguments you present concerning the soul also seem to apply to the conscious mind. Physicists can't find them either. :chin:
Quoting litewave
I imagine most such theories would be constructed on the basis of currently-unknown particles, forces, or something similar. To create a theory that might be possible is easy. To show that it is likely, or even correct, is more difficult, as (I know) you are well aware. :wink: So how do we choose between them? Or how do we evaluate them individually? :chin:
All you have offered so far is the observation that physicists can't detect souls, with which we all surely agree. :chin:
If the conscious mind is just familiar physical particles then physicists have detected it - they have detected the particles, the effects of the particles on their measuring instruments. But such a mind wouldn't survive the death of the physical body.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
The theory also needs to explain why those unknown particles or forces have not been detected by physicists. I have suggested that they have not been detected because they interact very weakly with familiar physical particles but they can have a significant impact on the brain by interacting with it quite strongly via resonance, which is however difficult to detect too because such an influence is difficult to distinguish from myriads of other influences from familiar physical particles inside and outside the brain.
This theory needs to be further specified and I am not aware that anyone has done it.
So you offer the possibility that the conscious mind has been unknowingly detected, more or less by coincidence, and this is your answer to why physicists can't seem to find the conscious mind, just as they can't seem to find souls? :chin:
Quoting litewave
No, perhaps not. I do not claim that the soul and the conscious mind have anything more in common with one another than the simple observation I made: just like souls, physicists can't detect conscious minds either. I think there are other things too, that physicists can't detect. In some cases, that will surely be because these things don't exist. But in all cases? It seems unlikely....
At this point I can't rule out that the conscious mind is wholly constituted by familiar physical particles and there is no soul that survives the death of the physical body. I am just considering the possibility that there actually is such a soul and how it would work.
Wittgenstein, Davidson...