Globe and Mail
Give this problem a shot before you keep reading, but don't feel badly if you get it wrong.
Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan. But she is looking at Pablo. Bob is married. Pablo is not.
Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The answer could be (a) yes, (b) no or (c) cannot be determined.
Roughly 80 per cent of people choose (c), but it is not the correct answer, says Keith Stanovich, a professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto.
He studies why smart people do stupid things - or, in more scientific terms, how intelligence is distinct from rationality. His work offers insight into important cognitive abilities that are not measured by IQ tests. It also suggests that deficits in real-world reasoning can be corrected, whether in adults or in children.
He says most people get the Bob-Susan-Pablo problem wrong because they tend to be "cognitive misers" - they put as little mental effort as possible into solving a problem. In this case, they quickly jump to the conclusion that they don't have enough information rather than making the effort to see if they do.
Showing posts with label Cognitive Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cognitive Science. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Dysrationalia: Why smart people do dumb things
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Collective Religious Rituals, Not Religious Devotion, Spur Support For Suicide Attacks
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Ian Hansen from the New School for Social Research along with psychologist Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia conducted a series of experiments investigating the relationship between religion and support for acts of parochial altruism, including suicide attacks.
...This study indicates that religious devotion does not cause support for suicide attacks or other forms of parochial altruism. However, the findings suggest that regularly attending religious services may make individuals more prone to supporting acts of parochial altruism (suicide attacks). The researchers theorize that collective religious rituals and services create a sense of community among participants and enhance positive attitudes towards parochially altruistic acts such as suicide attacks. Although, the researchers note, the greater sense of community, developed via religious services, may have many positive consequences. They observe, "Only in particular geopolitical contexts is the parochial altruism associated with such commitments translated into something like suicide attacks."
Friday, December 18, 2009
Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-Believers
Belief reduces the ability to self-correct. What good is believing in a God that wants you to be moral when belief in a God disrupts the mechanism needed to know when to change behavior?
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers.
Their findings show religious belief has a calming effect on its devotees, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a "double-edged sword" which is at times necessary and helpful.
"Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you're paralyzed with fear," he says. "However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we're making mistakes. If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Craving Hinders Comprehension Without You Realizing It
So we must only have a percentage of Free Will based on our physical resources.....
ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009)
A new University of Pittsburgh study reveals that craving a cigarettewhile performing a cognitive task not only increases the chances of aperson's mind wandering, but also makes that person less likely tonotice when his or her mind has wandered.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Bacteria Provide New Insights Into Human Decision Making
ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) — Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.
...
Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.
...
This has applications to human society because many people encounter similar dilemmas during their own lives. For example, should people ignore side effects and vaccinate against a new potentially lethal virus or should they not vaccinate and take the risk of being infected with the possible consequences?
Friday, December 11, 2009
Brain Activity Exposes Those Who Break Promises
ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2009) — Scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered the physiological mechanisms in the brain that underlie broken promises. Patterns of brain activity even enable predicting whether someone will break a promise.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Where Does the Soul Fit?
Abstract: The concepts of the "Soul" and "Free Will" are tightly coupled and are misunderstandings of emergent properties of complex biological systems due to fallacious causal oversimplifications and are, in effect, a phenomena analogous to a rainbow. In the case of a soul that is separate from the self it would be judged by God for actions it did not condone. In the case of the soul as the self, the soul is locked into the body every night during REM sleep and is catastrophically impaired by malfunctions of the body it resides in. While religions are divided on whether animals have souls and/or spirits, with or without them, animals have some of the same types of cognitive abilities as humans and they get along well within their biological limitations. The philosophical soulless zombie as the null hypothesis for souls fits with established knowledge better than the "soul" described in unauthenticated bronze age "divinely revealed" texts.
Dream Killer
Scientific
American, "The Will to Power--Is Free Will All in Your Head?"
[Figure 1. I made the diagram on the right to go with the SciAm article as a visual aid. It is a simplified functional block diagram made to represent the complex system of processes that result in a movement. Click on the image to enlarge.]
We think we are in control of our actions. We have intent and we act.
When we have intent and act we are considered responsible.
What is it We Have Intent About?
Where does that initial idea that we have intent about come from? Sometimes ideas come after careful deliberation, or a bit of consideration, and those are the ones we focus on but the majority of our ideas "just pop into our head" don't they?
Where do Our Dreams Come From?
The way dreams appear to us, the process is analogous to a loosely organized data retrieval and presentation, but whatever it is, it is automatic. It happens whether we want it to or not. And to ensure we are a captive audience, some areas of the brain are supposed to be deactivated to prohibit voluntary movement, but a disease called automatism (aka sleep walking) is caused by the areas remaining active. So, in effect, every time we go to sleep, our self is locked into our body until we awake.
Where Does Intention "Fit" in the Mental Process?
In Figure 1, intention seems to fit between "desire/need" and "decision".
However, the SciAm article above shows us that by manipulating brain tissue, "intention" can be bypassed and an action can be caused. Additionally, an intention can be artificially generated and the rest of the mental process will continue as normal. The brain can be fooled about its own intentions, and it can be made to do things that it had no intention about.
But Who is Doing the Fooling?
If a person is not undergoing brain surgery, how could someone perform some act against their free will?
There are thought experiments in Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology that depend on being fooled by someone or being fooled by a demon. The Dream Killer seems to have been fooled by a demon, someone else, or by something inside his brain. The court is convinced it is a disorder, which means it must be a faulty biological process going on in his brain that he is unaware of. He dreamed he was attacking intruders, his voluntary movements were not paralyzed as they should be during sleep and he killed his wife instead. The idea to fight the intruders was not based in reality, it just "popped into his head" and he carried it out like he was a Zombie, or an automaton. It was automatic. It happened whether he wanted it to or not, and the court found him not guilty.
Where Do "I" "Get" "My" Ideas?
Do they have minds of their own?
Are they given to me?
If they are given to me, who gives them to me, a homunculus?
Who could give them to the homunculus?
Are they auto-generated in my brain?
Are any of them caused by signals coming from areas within my brain or any of my other organs?
Humans are Only Aware of a Small Percentage of What is Going on in Their Body and Their Brain.
The brain has many other automatic background process going on besides consciousness such as synchronizing and communicating with the organs, intuition, unconscious decision making, bias, prejudice, emotion, mood, too many to mention in fact. Like dreams, the way thoughts appear to us is analogous to a loosely organized data retrieval and presentation system, but whatever it is, it is automatic. It happens whether we want it to or not even if "we" can guide the process and even if "we" can't explain how "we" are guiding the process.
The problem of controlling thoughts was recognized 2500 years ago and a solution was proposed by the Buddha using the then ancient method of Meditation. Meditation is used as a way to gain more control of those "wild" thoughts "running" around in our head. Typically, "we" are only partially in control. In economic terms, we feel as though we have a controlling interest, but just like in finance, a change in the context of circumstances will erode that interest. Some of "us" with "mental disorders" don't have a controlling interest and can't effectively guide the process. There is something wrong either biologically or in HOW "we" GUIDE the PROCESS. Lately, Psychiatry and Psychology address these issues which have been traditionally been handled by Religious leaders, Shamans and such.
Was it Intentional?
Typically, historically and traditionally, society thinks that once an idea appears, and we take action then we are culpable, but there is a missing qualifier in that sentence. Was it an intended action? In Law, (in the "west" anyway [whatever that means]) there is a concept of "intent". If "intent" to commit a crime can be shown then the defendant is culpable. In other cases if negligence can be shown on the part of the defendant, then the defendant can be culpable to a lesser degree.
Naturally Occurring Process Deviance, aka Mistakes
[Figure 2. Click on the image to enlarge]
Well, why would we need a distinction like "intent" if it were not possible to carry out a harmful act against our will? Sure accidents happen, but accidents are usually thought of as "things that happen to us" which are out of our control. But mistakes related to how we perform (such as errors in judgement, decision making or physical "malfunctions") also happen. So in law, "intention" can be used as a defining criteria of culpability in cases such as accidental shootings. But something that is not recognized, at least in my culture, is that the majority of the day, we do things that we don't intend. Yet my culture insists that we are reasonably accountable for EVERYTHING that we do. I don't know how many times a day I have to remind people that "We don't intend to make mistakes". Using terminology borrowed from complexity science, "mistakes" are naturally occurring deviance in processes. Figure 2 is an even more simplified functional block diagram encompassing Figure 1. It is a diagram of a complex system within a complex system. Living things are autonomous complex systems made up of complex systems of which every component has the potential to perform poorly or malfunction.
Nothing is Perfect, Neither is this Rough Method of Estimating Reliability In A System
All the elements in figure 1 and 2 are functioning less than perfectly to some degree. This deviance from perfect performance accumulates throughout the system leading to less reliability. While the math involved in assessing the reliability of a system is beyond the scope of this article, we can get a rough idea for the purpose of illustrating the interdependence of components if we assign a value of 10 to each element when it is working perfectly and a value of nine when it is working normally. Not all the elements in Figure 1 should get a value, so without listing the elements, I have chosen 14 of them, which gives the cumulative value of a perfectly operating system in figure 1 of 140. But in our "virtual reality" each element is going to be operating at 90% so in normal operation we have 9 * 14 elements = 126. Now the reliability value of our normally operating system is 126. So at 126/140, the system as a whole is operating at 90% of perfection.
So How Tolerant is the System? How Well can it Resist a Catastrophic Failure?
If one of the elements stops working it gets a zero, then our operating value becomes 9 * 13 = 117. 117/140 is 83.5% so the value at which we reach a catastrophic failure is likely to be around 83.5%. So if the average value of all the elements reaches 83.5% of perfection, we can expect a catastrophic failure. So now, in the case of a mistake, we can say that something or group of somethings in the process caused the system to go below 83.5% tolerance resulting in the accident or mistake. [On the other hand, an accident or mistake can lead to a result that is not a catastrophic failure but is beneficial. This is known as "serendipity" or a "happy accident" and is one of the mechanisms underlying evolution.]
Reality is a web of systems within systems each an input and an output to something else.
How can One Justifiably be Held Absolutely Responsible for Anything?
How can the causes and effects of mistakes and accidents be differentiated from the causes and effects of intentional actions when they are interconnected causally? How is it justified to hold one accountable after death for their actions on this earth when the actions were outcomes of a mesh of interconnected events some of which are out of ones control? Since actions are cumulative and a persons intentional actions and mistakes make up a network of causes and effects, no one is completely responsible for their actions and it is unjustifiable to be held accountable as the religions of the world propose. Remediation, instead of punishment is the only rationally justifiable outcome for "the afterlife". Hinduism comes close to this idea. But the idea that fits best with established knowledge is that the self ceases to exist when the body dies because its existence depends on the functional quality of the body.
I Don't Know How I Breathe, I Just Do
[Click on the image to enlarge]
I don't know how I raise my arm, I just do.
I breathe whether I want to or not.
I jump when I'm startled with no intent whatsoever.
I blink my eyes when something comes at them with no intent whatsoever.
I put my arms out in front of me when I fall with no thought whatsoever.
Maybe "intuition" plays a role. It seems like sometimes we can learn something, and then we have unconscious, instantaneous, automatic access to it.
But there are somethings we don't have to learn. A baby doesn't learn how to reach out, it just does.
When I want to lift my arm, it lifts, but who does the work in the background to get it to go up? Is there a little crane operator in my head working the controls taking orders from "me" when I want him to lift my arm?
"...And There's A Little Yellow Man In My Head." (The Kinks, "Destroyer")
No. Its a process that happens that I can't describe because I don't know anything about it, and once it gets started, the only way I can stop it is to "issue" the order to stop. I can't interrupt the electrochemical interactions that enable it. It SEEMS as though there is an intelligence outside our consciousness built into our bodies that takes care of operating the "controls" analogous to the crane operator. So does that "intelligence" have consciousness? Does it think about where the commands to reach out come from? Does it wonder why it has to manage the position of the hand and strength of grip so precisely? Does it wonder if there is some intelligence that is guiding it? It seems as though there are two intelligences at work here in addition to naturally occurring deviance (aka mistakes).
The Mind Body Problem
Rene Descartes wrote about this concept in his Passions of the Soul and The Description of the Human Body. Basically he said the body and the mind were distinct from each other, leading to the affirmation that when the body dies, the mind can continue just as some Theists says it does. This supports the Judeo-Christian concept of Justice, punishment and culpability. Fortunately over time, the justice system has recognized some exceptions to that rule and included the qualifier of "intent". The Justice system realized that "dualism" was an oversimplification, it was a faulty model, it was a faulty analogy, it was ignoring disqualifying facts.
A Principle of High Reliability Organization is A Reluctance to Simplify Interpretations.
Oversimplification results in a model that is no longer analogous to the situation. Trying to use a faulty analogy increases the likelihood of mistakes whether its in engineering or discussions. In my view, many philosophical problems suffer from oversimplifications and "The Mind Body Problem" is one of them. There comes a time when one should just admit that they don't have enough information to make a decision, and set about looking for the missing information. Free Will, Consciousness and Epistemology are some other philosophical problems that I think suffer from oversimplification.
The Zombie Problem
The Philosophical Zombie is a concept used in thought experiments in the Philosophy of Mind. Zombies are used in rejoinders to Physicalist and Behaviorist arguments that mental states such as consciousness, thoughts, beliefs, intent, etc are certain types of behavior. According to Physicalist arguments a human being with no consciousness that is indistinguishable from a human being with consciousness should not be possible. I think that the Zombie problem generally is a problem of a faulty analogy. It presumes to make claims in argumentation about consciousness when consciousness doesn't have any clear scope and definition, however, the concept of Zombies does seem to have some merit. In some cases the body acts outside the scope of the self's free will, such as in the case of reflexive actions (the processes handled by the autonomous nervous system) and some aspects of thinking. Clearly the phenomena of Automatism supports the concept of "Zombies".
What We Know About Behavior from Brain Surgeries
Two areas of the brain have been identified that have a relationship to our behavior, perception, and memory. [Refer back to Figure 1.] When manipulated by a surgeon, the posterior parietal cortex can cause a person to feel a desire and/or a need. A higher degree of electrical stimulation can cause the ILLUSION of movement. The presupplementary motor area, when stimulated by a surgeon can cause a person to feel a desire or a need and cause an ACTUAL movement. Additionally we know that faulty brain matter will cause various degrees of reduced capability and involuntary movement such as seizures. It seems that now we have a mechanism for getting the person to want or need to do something, to actually do something or believe they've done something.
"Locked-in" Syndrome
Locked-in syndrome is similar to dreaming with respect to inhibition of voluntary movement. When there is a malfunction somewhere in the brain, voluntary movement in the body (most of the time with the exception of the eyes) is inhibited. The consciousness becomes a "prisoner" of the body.
Consciousness is tightly coupled to the body. When the interface between consciousness and the body fails, consciousness gets "locked in" and any "free will" previously enjoyed by that consciousness is inhibited. It would be as if we removed the posterior parietal cortex and the presupplementary motor area cortex blocks in Figure 1 preventing the consciousness or soul from having access to them. These patients are at risk of having life support removed if it cannot be determined that they are not brain dead.
Am I and My Soul the Same Thing?
We can see how the consciousness can be prevented from access to the body, but the soul? How can the soul be prevented from doing anything? Can damage to brain tissue prevent the soul from having access to the body? With regard to traditional religious understanding of the concept of the soul, that seems absurd, so my soul and I must be two different things.
What Does the Soul Do; Inform about Morality?
Does the soul inform the consciousness? What sorts of things could it inform consciousness about? Moral Questions? But a lot of moral questions fit nicely into economic game theory models, are quite rational and follow logical principles when all things are considered. But supposedly humans get judged on their moral behavior during their time on the earth. Do they get judged by how well they follow economic game theory decisions? If a soul "informs" it must not make decisions for us, it must simply present options. That's all well and good in a properly functioning biological system, but what purpose does a soul have in a "locked-in" person, or even a naturally aborted fetus for that matter? If I don't listen to my souls moral advice, does it pay the price for me in the afterlife? Since animals make decisions, do they have souls too? Some religions say they do, or at least have "spirits" but as far as I know, the terms "soul" and "spirit" are so ambiguous they are indistinguishable.
In the Case "Locked-in" People Doubt God, Is It Justified?
I wonder if someone "locked-in" ever has doubts about the existence of a loving caring God and if its justified? If a soul informs, how would it inform the consciousness and would it be compelling? I am sure locked-in people obsess over "why" it happened and what the "meaning" and "purpose" is. If someone is locked-in, and the care-givers are allowed to remove life support, and the person is aware of it, if they have a soul, and if they happen to be exceedingly angry and desperate, are they responsible for any doubts they experience as they die?
Since We Know This Much About Human Behavior, Where Does the Soul or Free Will Fit In?
Where does the soul fit in a functional block diagram like Figure 1? Assuming that "we" and "our souls" are the same thing, It seems like the soul would fit where the blocks for the surgeon or seizure are or would be connected laterally so as to at least have some influence. If that's the case, since we can see how important a physiological interface between consciousness and the body is, then the souls function must be to present options and ideas by manipulating the biological material that makes up the brain. But its not justifiable to punish the soul for our actions unless it is responsible to some degree.
But then Where does Automatism (aka Sleep Walking) fit into that?
It would mean that the "soul" or "we" do not have complete control over the body and therefore in some cases not responsible. But does the body have any sort of control over "us" or "our soul"? Why, yes it does. As we have seen it can be catastrophic in the case of locked-in patients, and to a lesser degree aggressive behavior has undeniable biological causes (monoamine oxidase A, MAOA gene). So if our consciousness can be manipulated by the body, and our soul is coupled to our consciousness then the soul can be culpable for UNINTENTIONAL acts and it would be crippled when the body dies, so that flies in the face of most religious texts. So, again, the soul must be independent of the Body.
The Concept of the Soul is Incoherent, not "A Mystery".
If it is absurd that the soul as the self is affected by the body, and if it is absurd that the soul is independent of the self yet gets punished for what the self does, then the concept of the soul is incoherent. Refer to Figure 2. In reality what we have is is the appearance of two intelligences (the mind and the body) reacting to environment and chance events with religion claiming that based on the end result we will get a reward or be punished. However, since we can see that the mind influences the body, and the body influences the mind, and environment affects them both, the appearance of two intelligences is an illusion in human perception caused by a misunderstanding of the complex system that makes up a human. "Dualism" is an illusion.
The Idea the People Continue to Exist After They Die Seems to be Hundreds of Thousands of Years Old.
There is evidence that at least two of the early human lineages (Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens) believed that people continued to exist after they died (Evolutionary Origins of Religions). There are paleolithic burial sites with flowers, the bodies placed in a fetal position and tools. This recognition of other minds and speculation about what happens to them after they die can be shown to exist as early as 500,000 years ago. Obviously this is an idea that developed in the youth of our species, but as we can see, we are hard pressed to see where the soul fits into all this. Similarly we are hard pressed to find anything frightening in our childrens rooms when they ask us to look under the bed. These undetectable "other minds" are a fundamental misconception caused by immaturity, lack of knowledge, inability to comprehend complexity and/or willful ignorance.
"Souls" are Poorly Defined, Weakly Supported, Weakly Justified, Weakly Persuasive and Weakly Relevant.
Stipulating for a moment that souls exist, they must be loosely coupled to consciousness and the body somehow. I say loosely coupled because it can be easily demonstrated that the body operates outside of consciousness but consciousness working outside the body cannot be so easily shown. Like it or not, the facts supporting the claim for consciousness without a body are ambiguous, equivocal and few. So if we say that the support for "out of body" consciousness is weakly supported, then we can say it is weakly justified, and weakly justified arguments are only weakly persuasive, and therefore only weakly relevant. In fact, if we look at the history of belief in souls, we can see that people believe that animals and even rivers have "spirits" which should equate to souls. How is the spirit of a river is relevant to anything?
Who's "Driving" Animals or Rivers?
Animism is the term for the belief that objects other than humans have spirits or souls. But if souls are uniquely human, then animals must not have them. Yet we can see that they seem to get along fine within their capabilities without them. They can reason according to logical principles and communicate in a rudimentary fashion and recognize human language to a small degree. If animals don't have souls, then that makes them analogous to the Soulless Zombie of Philosophy of the Mind.
The Soulless Zombie as a Null Hypothesis
If the claim is that souls operate outside of physical parameters and it does not manipulate the brain physically, then this type of claim desperately needs support outside of the realm of possibility, speculation and allegedly divinely revealed information to be taken seriously. If Theist A claims the soul exists because its written about in their sacred texts, then Theist B of another religion is quite justified in not accepting Theist A's claim on the grounds that the authenticity and authority of Theist A's sacred text hasn't been established.
The fact that humans have inferred the existence of souls in humans, animals and the environment is irrefutable, as is the fact that humans have yet to agree on a the scope and definition of the soul or spirit even though "divinely revealed" texts depend on their existence. However, the soul cannot be detected, only inferred and indirectly perceived, that's what makes it so hard to define. But if we were to say that the soul is a misunderstanding of a natural phenomena that emerges from complexity, then all of the above would make sense. Usually things that can not be detected, measured or defined don't exist. Since souls are imperceptible, we must all be soulless Zombies.
The Soul Like The Rainbow
The rainbow exists, of that there is no doubt. But the rainbow exists only as a perception of the complex interaction of sunlight and water droplets in the atmosphere. When the physical components that it depends on go away, the rainbow goes away. Under certain, reproducible conditions a rainbow "happens". As we can see from the various examples above, animation in rivers, animals and humans "happens". It "happens" with or without a soul. And since no "divinely revealed" text has posited as compelling an explanation for a rainbow as science has given us, then the principle of emergence as the cause of the rainbow should be considered the leading hypothesis for "who's driving" our bodies as well. Our bodies are driving themselves around, and our consciousness emerges from interaction of the various processes that enable that to happen. The soul, like the rainbow is a misunderstanding of an emergent property of a complex system of components.
Dream Killer
The prosecution said that at 0349 the next morning, Mr Thomas made a 999 call, which was later played to the court, in which he said he had killed his wife because he had mistaken her for an intruder in a dream.
...
The court heard that tests commissioned by both the prosecution and the defence were carried out on Mr Thomas as he slept following his claims of a sleep disorder.
Both sleep experts agreed his behaviour was consistent with automatism, which meant at the time he killed his wife, his mind had no control over what his body was doing.
Scientific
American, "The Will to Power--Is Free Will All in Your Head?"
[Figure 1. I made the diagram on the right to go with the SciAm article as a visual aid. It is a simplified functional block diagram made to represent the complex system of processes that result in a movement. Click on the image to enlarge.]
The take-home lesson is that the brain has specific cortical circuits that, when triggered, are associated with sensations that arise in the course of wanting to initiate and then carry out a voluntary action. Once these circuits are delimited and their molecular and synaptic signatures identified, they constitute the neuronal correlates of consciousness for intention and agency. If these circuits are destroyed by a stroke or some other calamity, the patient might act without feeling that it is she who is willing the acting!So, Who's Driving?
We think we are in control of our actions. We have intent and we act.
When we have intent and act we are considered responsible.
What is it We Have Intent About?
Where does that initial idea that we have intent about come from? Sometimes ideas come after careful deliberation, or a bit of consideration, and those are the ones we focus on but the majority of our ideas "just pop into our head" don't they?
Where do Our Dreams Come From?
The way dreams appear to us, the process is analogous to a loosely organized data retrieval and presentation, but whatever it is, it is automatic. It happens whether we want it to or not. And to ensure we are a captive audience, some areas of the brain are supposed to be deactivated to prohibit voluntary movement, but a disease called automatism (aka sleep walking) is caused by the areas remaining active. So, in effect, every time we go to sleep, our self is locked into our body until we awake.
Where Does Intention "Fit" in the Mental Process?
In Figure 1, intention seems to fit between "desire/need" and "decision".
However, the SciAm article above shows us that by manipulating brain tissue, "intention" can be bypassed and an action can be caused. Additionally, an intention can be artificially generated and the rest of the mental process will continue as normal. The brain can be fooled about its own intentions, and it can be made to do things that it had no intention about.
But Who is Doing the Fooling?
If a person is not undergoing brain surgery, how could someone perform some act against their free will?
There are thought experiments in Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology that depend on being fooled by someone or being fooled by a demon. The Dream Killer seems to have been fooled by a demon, someone else, or by something inside his brain. The court is convinced it is a disorder, which means it must be a faulty biological process going on in his brain that he is unaware of. He dreamed he was attacking intruders, his voluntary movements were not paralyzed as they should be during sleep and he killed his wife instead. The idea to fight the intruders was not based in reality, it just "popped into his head" and he carried it out like he was a Zombie, or an automaton. It was automatic. It happened whether he wanted it to or not, and the court found him not guilty.
Where Do "I" "Get" "My" Ideas?
Do they have minds of their own?
Are they given to me?
If they are given to me, who gives them to me, a homunculus?
Who could give them to the homunculus?
Are they auto-generated in my brain?
Are any of them caused by signals coming from areas within my brain or any of my other organs?
Humans are Only Aware of a Small Percentage of What is Going on in Their Body and Their Brain.
The brain has many other automatic background process going on besides consciousness such as synchronizing and communicating with the organs, intuition, unconscious decision making, bias, prejudice, emotion, mood, too many to mention in fact. Like dreams, the way thoughts appear to us is analogous to a loosely organized data retrieval and presentation system, but whatever it is, it is automatic. It happens whether we want it to or not even if "we" can guide the process and even if "we" can't explain how "we" are guiding the process.
The problem of controlling thoughts was recognized 2500 years ago and a solution was proposed by the Buddha using the then ancient method of Meditation. Meditation is used as a way to gain more control of those "wild" thoughts "running" around in our head. Typically, "we" are only partially in control. In economic terms, we feel as though we have a controlling interest, but just like in finance, a change in the context of circumstances will erode that interest. Some of "us" with "mental disorders" don't have a controlling interest and can't effectively guide the process. There is something wrong either biologically or in HOW "we" GUIDE the PROCESS. Lately, Psychiatry and Psychology address these issues which have been traditionally been handled by Religious leaders, Shamans and such.
Was it Intentional?
Typically, historically and traditionally, society thinks that once an idea appears, and we take action then we are culpable, but there is a missing qualifier in that sentence. Was it an intended action? In Law, (in the "west" anyway [whatever that means]) there is a concept of "intent". If "intent" to commit a crime can be shown then the defendant is culpable. In other cases if negligence can be shown on the part of the defendant, then the defendant can be culpable to a lesser degree.
Naturally Occurring Process Deviance, aka Mistakes
Well, why would we need a distinction like "intent" if it were not possible to carry out a harmful act against our will? Sure accidents happen, but accidents are usually thought of as "things that happen to us" which are out of our control. But mistakes related to how we perform (such as errors in judgement, decision making or physical "malfunctions") also happen. So in law, "intention" can be used as a defining criteria of culpability in cases such as accidental shootings. But something that is not recognized, at least in my culture, is that the majority of the day, we do things that we don't intend. Yet my culture insists that we are reasonably accountable for EVERYTHING that we do. I don't know how many times a day I have to remind people that "We don't intend to make mistakes". Using terminology borrowed from complexity science, "mistakes" are naturally occurring deviance in processes. Figure 2 is an even more simplified functional block diagram encompassing Figure 1. It is a diagram of a complex system within a complex system. Living things are autonomous complex systems made up of complex systems of which every component has the potential to perform poorly or malfunction.
Nothing is Perfect, Neither is this Rough Method of Estimating Reliability In A System
All the elements in figure 1 and 2 are functioning less than perfectly to some degree. This deviance from perfect performance accumulates throughout the system leading to less reliability. While the math involved in assessing the reliability of a system is beyond the scope of this article, we can get a rough idea for the purpose of illustrating the interdependence of components if we assign a value of 10 to each element when it is working perfectly and a value of nine when it is working normally. Not all the elements in Figure 1 should get a value, so without listing the elements, I have chosen 14 of them, which gives the cumulative value of a perfectly operating system in figure 1 of 140. But in our "virtual reality" each element is going to be operating at 90% so in normal operation we have 9 * 14 elements = 126. Now the reliability value of our normally operating system is 126. So at 126/140, the system as a whole is operating at 90% of perfection.
So How Tolerant is the System? How Well can it Resist a Catastrophic Failure?
If one of the elements stops working it gets a zero, then our operating value becomes 9 * 13 = 117. 117/140 is 83.5% so the value at which we reach a catastrophic failure is likely to be around 83.5%. So if the average value of all the elements reaches 83.5% of perfection, we can expect a catastrophic failure. So now, in the case of a mistake, we can say that something or group of somethings in the process caused the system to go below 83.5% tolerance resulting in the accident or mistake. [On the other hand, an accident or mistake can lead to a result that is not a catastrophic failure but is beneficial. This is known as "serendipity" or a "happy accident" and is one of the mechanisms underlying evolution.]
How can One Justifiably be Held Absolutely Responsible for Anything?
How can the causes and effects of mistakes and accidents be differentiated from the causes and effects of intentional actions when they are interconnected causally? How is it justified to hold one accountable after death for their actions on this earth when the actions were outcomes of a mesh of interconnected events some of which are out of ones control? Since actions are cumulative and a persons intentional actions and mistakes make up a network of causes and effects, no one is completely responsible for their actions and it is unjustifiable to be held accountable as the religions of the world propose. Remediation, instead of punishment is the only rationally justifiable outcome for "the afterlife". Hinduism comes close to this idea. But the idea that fits best with established knowledge is that the self ceases to exist when the body dies because its existence depends on the functional quality of the body.
[Click on the image to enlarge]
I don't know how I raise my arm, I just do.
I breathe whether I want to or not.
I jump when I'm startled with no intent whatsoever.
I blink my eyes when something comes at them with no intent whatsoever.
I put my arms out in front of me when I fall with no thought whatsoever.
Maybe "intuition" plays a role. It seems like sometimes we can learn something, and then we have unconscious, instantaneous, automatic access to it.
But there are somethings we don't have to learn. A baby doesn't learn how to reach out, it just does.
When I want to lift my arm, it lifts, but who does the work in the background to get it to go up? Is there a little crane operator in my head working the controls taking orders from "me" when I want him to lift my arm?
"...And There's A Little Yellow Man In My Head." (The Kinks, "Destroyer")
No. Its a process that happens that I can't describe because I don't know anything about it, and once it gets started, the only way I can stop it is to "issue" the order to stop. I can't interrupt the electrochemical interactions that enable it. It SEEMS as though there is an intelligence outside our consciousness built into our bodies that takes care of operating the "controls" analogous to the crane operator. So does that "intelligence" have consciousness? Does it think about where the commands to reach out come from? Does it wonder why it has to manage the position of the hand and strength of grip so precisely? Does it wonder if there is some intelligence that is guiding it? It seems as though there are two intelligences at work here in addition to naturally occurring deviance (aka mistakes).
The Mind Body Problem
Rene Descartes wrote about this concept in his Passions of the Soul and The Description of the Human Body. Basically he said the body and the mind were distinct from each other, leading to the affirmation that when the body dies, the mind can continue just as some Theists says it does. This supports the Judeo-Christian concept of Justice, punishment and culpability. Fortunately over time, the justice system has recognized some exceptions to that rule and included the qualifier of "intent". The Justice system realized that "dualism" was an oversimplification, it was a faulty model, it was a faulty analogy, it was ignoring disqualifying facts.
A Principle of High Reliability Organization is A Reluctance to Simplify Interpretations.
Oversimplification results in a model that is no longer analogous to the situation. Trying to use a faulty analogy increases the likelihood of mistakes whether its in engineering or discussions. In my view, many philosophical problems suffer from oversimplifications and "The Mind Body Problem" is one of them. There comes a time when one should just admit that they don't have enough information to make a decision, and set about looking for the missing information. Free Will, Consciousness and Epistemology are some other philosophical problems that I think suffer from oversimplification.
The Zombie Problem
The Philosophical Zombie is a concept used in thought experiments in the Philosophy of Mind. Zombies are used in rejoinders to Physicalist and Behaviorist arguments that mental states such as consciousness, thoughts, beliefs, intent, etc are certain types of behavior. According to Physicalist arguments a human being with no consciousness that is indistinguishable from a human being with consciousness should not be possible. I think that the Zombie problem generally is a problem of a faulty analogy. It presumes to make claims in argumentation about consciousness when consciousness doesn't have any clear scope and definition, however, the concept of Zombies does seem to have some merit. In some cases the body acts outside the scope of the self's free will, such as in the case of reflexive actions (the processes handled by the autonomous nervous system) and some aspects of thinking. Clearly the phenomena of Automatism supports the concept of "Zombies".
What We Know About Behavior from Brain Surgeries
Two areas of the brain have been identified that have a relationship to our behavior, perception, and memory. [Refer back to Figure 1.] When manipulated by a surgeon, the posterior parietal cortex can cause a person to feel a desire and/or a need. A higher degree of electrical stimulation can cause the ILLUSION of movement. The presupplementary motor area, when stimulated by a surgeon can cause a person to feel a desire or a need and cause an ACTUAL movement. Additionally we know that faulty brain matter will cause various degrees of reduced capability and involuntary movement such as seizures. It seems that now we have a mechanism for getting the person to want or need to do something, to actually do something or believe they've done something.
"Locked-in" Syndrome
Locked-in syndrome is similar to dreaming with respect to inhibition of voluntary movement. When there is a malfunction somewhere in the brain, voluntary movement in the body (most of the time with the exception of the eyes) is inhibited. The consciousness becomes a "prisoner" of the body.
Consciousness is tightly coupled to the body. When the interface between consciousness and the body fails, consciousness gets "locked in" and any "free will" previously enjoyed by that consciousness is inhibited. It would be as if we removed the posterior parietal cortex and the presupplementary motor area cortex blocks in Figure 1 preventing the consciousness or soul from having access to them. These patients are at risk of having life support removed if it cannot be determined that they are not brain dead.
Am I and My Soul the Same Thing?
We can see how the consciousness can be prevented from access to the body, but the soul? How can the soul be prevented from doing anything? Can damage to brain tissue prevent the soul from having access to the body? With regard to traditional religious understanding of the concept of the soul, that seems absurd, so my soul and I must be two different things.
What Does the Soul Do; Inform about Morality?
Does the soul inform the consciousness? What sorts of things could it inform consciousness about? Moral Questions? But a lot of moral questions fit nicely into economic game theory models, are quite rational and follow logical principles when all things are considered. But supposedly humans get judged on their moral behavior during their time on the earth. Do they get judged by how well they follow economic game theory decisions? If a soul "informs" it must not make decisions for us, it must simply present options. That's all well and good in a properly functioning biological system, but what purpose does a soul have in a "locked-in" person, or even a naturally aborted fetus for that matter? If I don't listen to my souls moral advice, does it pay the price for me in the afterlife? Since animals make decisions, do they have souls too? Some religions say they do, or at least have "spirits" but as far as I know, the terms "soul" and "spirit" are so ambiguous they are indistinguishable.
In the Case "Locked-in" People Doubt God, Is It Justified?
I wonder if someone "locked-in" ever has doubts about the existence of a loving caring God and if its justified? If a soul informs, how would it inform the consciousness and would it be compelling? I am sure locked-in people obsess over "why" it happened and what the "meaning" and "purpose" is. If someone is locked-in, and the care-givers are allowed to remove life support, and the person is aware of it, if they have a soul, and if they happen to be exceedingly angry and desperate, are they responsible for any doubts they experience as they die?
Since We Know This Much About Human Behavior, Where Does the Soul or Free Will Fit In?
Where does the soul fit in a functional block diagram like Figure 1? Assuming that "we" and "our souls" are the same thing, It seems like the soul would fit where the blocks for the surgeon or seizure are or would be connected laterally so as to at least have some influence. If that's the case, since we can see how important a physiological interface between consciousness and the body is, then the souls function must be to present options and ideas by manipulating the biological material that makes up the brain. But its not justifiable to punish the soul for our actions unless it is responsible to some degree.
But then Where does Automatism (aka Sleep Walking) fit into that?
It would mean that the "soul" or "we" do not have complete control over the body and therefore in some cases not responsible. But does the body have any sort of control over "us" or "our soul"? Why, yes it does. As we have seen it can be catastrophic in the case of locked-in patients, and to a lesser degree aggressive behavior has undeniable biological causes (monoamine oxidase A, MAOA gene). So if our consciousness can be manipulated by the body, and our soul is coupled to our consciousness then the soul can be culpable for UNINTENTIONAL acts and it would be crippled when the body dies, so that flies in the face of most religious texts. So, again, the soul must be independent of the Body.
The Concept of the Soul is Incoherent, not "A Mystery".
If it is absurd that the soul as the self is affected by the body, and if it is absurd that the soul is independent of the self yet gets punished for what the self does, then the concept of the soul is incoherent. Refer to Figure 2. In reality what we have is is the appearance of two intelligences (the mind and the body) reacting to environment and chance events with religion claiming that based on the end result we will get a reward or be punished. However, since we can see that the mind influences the body, and the body influences the mind, and environment affects them both, the appearance of two intelligences is an illusion in human perception caused by a misunderstanding of the complex system that makes up a human. "Dualism" is an illusion.
The Idea the People Continue to Exist After They Die Seems to be Hundreds of Thousands of Years Old.
There is evidence that at least two of the early human lineages (Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens) believed that people continued to exist after they died (Evolutionary Origins of Religions). There are paleolithic burial sites with flowers, the bodies placed in a fetal position and tools. This recognition of other minds and speculation about what happens to them after they die can be shown to exist as early as 500,000 years ago. Obviously this is an idea that developed in the youth of our species, but as we can see, we are hard pressed to see where the soul fits into all this. Similarly we are hard pressed to find anything frightening in our childrens rooms when they ask us to look under the bed. These undetectable "other minds" are a fundamental misconception caused by immaturity, lack of knowledge, inability to comprehend complexity and/or willful ignorance.
"Souls" are Poorly Defined, Weakly Supported, Weakly Justified, Weakly Persuasive and Weakly Relevant.
Stipulating for a moment that souls exist, they must be loosely coupled to consciousness and the body somehow. I say loosely coupled because it can be easily demonstrated that the body operates outside of consciousness but consciousness working outside the body cannot be so easily shown. Like it or not, the facts supporting the claim for consciousness without a body are ambiguous, equivocal and few. So if we say that the support for "out of body" consciousness is weakly supported, then we can say it is weakly justified, and weakly justified arguments are only weakly persuasive, and therefore only weakly relevant. In fact, if we look at the history of belief in souls, we can see that people believe that animals and even rivers have "spirits" which should equate to souls. How is the spirit of a river is relevant to anything?
Who's "Driving" Animals or Rivers?
Animism is the term for the belief that objects other than humans have spirits or souls. But if souls are uniquely human, then animals must not have them. Yet we can see that they seem to get along fine within their capabilities without them. They can reason according to logical principles and communicate in a rudimentary fashion and recognize human language to a small degree. If animals don't have souls, then that makes them analogous to the Soulless Zombie of Philosophy of the Mind.
The Soulless Zombie as a Null Hypothesis
If the claim is that souls operate outside of physical parameters and it does not manipulate the brain physically, then this type of claim desperately needs support outside of the realm of possibility, speculation and allegedly divinely revealed information to be taken seriously. If Theist A claims the soul exists because its written about in their sacred texts, then Theist B of another religion is quite justified in not accepting Theist A's claim on the grounds that the authenticity and authority of Theist A's sacred text hasn't been established.
The fact that humans have inferred the existence of souls in humans, animals and the environment is irrefutable, as is the fact that humans have yet to agree on a the scope and definition of the soul or spirit even though "divinely revealed" texts depend on their existence. However, the soul cannot be detected, only inferred and indirectly perceived, that's what makes it so hard to define. But if we were to say that the soul is a misunderstanding of a natural phenomena that emerges from complexity, then all of the above would make sense. Usually things that can not be detected, measured or defined don't exist. Since souls are imperceptible, we must all be soulless Zombies.
The Soul Like The Rainbow
Video, Temporal Lobes and Religious Experience
These are some youtube videos that have evidently been extracted from the longer BBC mini-series "Phantoms in the Brain" (Episode 1, Episode 2) featuring Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. They demonstrate the correlation between the brains temporal lobes and religious experience. Click "Read more >>" to access them.
God and the Temporal Lobes, part 1.
God and the Temporal Lobes, part 2.
God and the Temporal Lobes, part 1.
God and the Temporal Lobes, part 2.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Religious Experience Found in Multiple Categories of Neurologic Disorder
Professionals.epilepsy.com
Other changes highlighted in the literature include increased religious beliefs and a heightened concern for morality. Religious and moral themes tend to predominate when patients display hypergraphia, an increase in the volume of written material the person produces and a preoccupation with details within the content. The association of these behaviors to epilepsy, including TLE, is controversial.
Since the publication of such reports, a number of authors have questioned the linking of these personality changes with TLE. Indeed, various authors have indicated that such changes are not specific to patients with epilepsy but are also identified in other neurologic disorders. Furthermore, a recent review pointed out that patients with frontal lobe epilepsy are more likely to present these personality changes than those with temporal lobe epilepsy.
Video, Neurologist Discusses Seizures And Experiencing God
A Grand mal seizure is the most familiar type of seizure. It causes a complete loss of motor control, uncontrollable shaking, loss of consciousness, etc during the seizure. Some seizures do not cause loss of motor control but only occur mentally. These types of seizures sometimes result in a "God Experience". This video features Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. Click "Read more >>" to access it.
Video, Split Brain Patient, One Side is Theist, Other Side is Atheist
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist discusses split brain patient that has the hemispheres of their brain separated, creating two personalities, one a theist, the other an atheist. Click "Read more >>" to access it.
Video, Neurologist Talks About Inconsistency in Belief
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist describes how a brain damaged person thinks that their left arm belongs to someone else, but then will grab it to do a task with it when asked to. Click "Read more >>" to access it.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Video, "Phantoms in the Brain" Episode 1
This series is presented by Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. It shows the strange results of brain injury and interviews the patients.
Click on "Read more >>" to access them.
Episode 1.1
Episode 1.2
Episode 1.3
Episode 1.4
Episode 1.5
Click on "Read more >>" to access them.
Episode 1.1
Episode 1.2
Episode 1.3
Episode 1.4
Episode 1.5
Video, "Phantoms in the Brain" Episode 2
This series is presented by Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. It shows the strange results of brain injury and interviews the patients.
Click on "Read more >>" to access them.
Episode 2.1
Episode 2.2
Episode 2.3
Episode 2.4
Episode 2.5
Click on "Read more >>" to access them.
Episode 2.1
Episode 2.2
Episode 2.3
Episode 2.4
Episode 2.5
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Decision-making May Be Surprisingly Unconscious Activity
ScienceDaily.com
A team of scientists has unraveled how the brain actually unconsciously prepares our decisions. Even several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. (Thanks to Scott.)
So what does this mean for passages such as Matthew 5:21?
"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.'
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
In light of this research, that seems extreme. How is one accountable for "Flash" Anger? How does one prevent "Flash" Anger? If a large percentage of your action or decision is prepared in the "background" how much of that are we in control of? I'll stipulate that we have the final choice, but how we feel about it is quite another thing. The brain is like a modular unit. Its made up of modular circuitry that have processes that run in background of which we are not aware. Any poor performance in any one of those circuits could cause us to do something or feel someway we wouldn't normally. For example lack of sleep and the resultant crabbiness that accompanies it. It seems extreme to put our fates in the hands of a three pound meatball that is so easily influenced to operate outside of "specifications"
Excerpts from the article.
A team of scientists has unraveled how the brain actually unconsciously prepares our decisions. Even several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. (Thanks to Scott.)
So what does this mean for passages such as Matthew 5:21?
"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.'
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
In light of this research, that seems extreme. How is one accountable for "Flash" Anger? How does one prevent "Flash" Anger? If a large percentage of your action or decision is prepared in the "background" how much of that are we in control of? I'll stipulate that we have the final choice, but how we feel about it is quite another thing. The brain is like a modular unit. Its made up of modular circuitry that have processes that run in background of which we are not aware. Any poor performance in any one of those circuits could cause us to do something or feel someway we wouldn't normally. For example lack of sleep and the resultant crabbiness that accompanies it. It seems extreme to put our fates in the hands of a three pound meatball that is so easily influenced to operate outside of "specifications"
Excerpts from the article.
This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.
More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet’s experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view, it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person’s conscious mind. Libet’s experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.
In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts -- even up to 7 seconds ahead of time -- how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Video, Stroke Induced Spirituality
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke which allowed her to study the brain from the inside out. In this 20 min talk she describes how she was able to call for help and the feelings of spirituality that came over her as the left side of her brain was malfunctioning.
More links of interest:
from epilepsy.com
Famous religious figures with symptoms of epilepsy.
They include St. Paul, Joan of Arc and Soren Kierkegaard
From ScienceDaily
Out of body experience induced in the lab
From Debunking Christianity
Reasonable Doubt About The Soul
More links of interest:
from epilepsy.com
Famous religious figures with symptoms of epilepsy.
They include St. Paul, Joan of Arc and Soren Kierkegaard
From ScienceDaily
Out of body experience induced in the lab
From Debunking Christianity
Reasonable Doubt About The Soul
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Reasonable Doubt About The Soul
This article expresses doubt about the existence of the soul on the grounds that since the brain is so obviously a biological platform for computing, and since it can be incrementally "disabled" in ways that decrease the performance of body and mind, and if there is a correlation between mind and soul, then this degradation of performance should be experienced by the soul. Since this idea is obviously unacceptable, I do not think it likely that the soul exists. This article also introduces three series of recurring follow on articles tracking Brain Physiology as it relates to the concept of the soul, Biological Bases for Behavior and Animal Cognition.
It is a fact that smaller components can make something more complex. Among other disciplines, Engineering, Science, Information Technology and even the phenomena of Language take advantage of this fact. This fact is a key element in the Principle of Evolution, and it also describes how the brain works. This article attempts to be brief but informative on what the brain is how it works and how there is no noticeable mechanism to support a soul.
Above all the Brain is an organ. It is the control center of the central nervous system and it is made up of more that one hundred billion neurons. It is where our behavior originates from. It is made of up of interdependent systems and these systems can found in in other species in various stages of development working in much the same way. In some cases these systems actually compete with each other. One result of this competition can be seen in the disciplines of Economics and Behavior. In these disciplines, some of the problems that they try to solve are why people consistently make irrational decisions. FMRI scans show that when these types of decisions are being deliberated in the brain, the emotional and rational or executive areas of the brain are extremely active. The theory that seems to describe the outcomes is that the two areas are in competition for control.
The brain is similar to the heart in one respect. It is like the heart in the fact that some consider it to be the place where the soul resides. I presume that since the soul is supposed to be our essence, survives after our death and is what will get rewarded or punished by God that it correlates to our consciousness, behavior, decision making and our desires. What does it mean to say that a person is going to hell if we are not talking about their consciousness? They should be aware that they are in hell to make it meaningful. Then there must be a correlation between consciousness and the soul.
Consciousness is a topic that has been debated since before recorded history so I am not going to discuss it too much as a philosophical topic (aka "The Mind-Body Problem") but will discuss the correlative mechanisms and its known constraints. In fact, I think I can state that the study of consciousness as a result of physical mechanisms has gone so far as to cast serious doubt on "Dualism" however, the last vestige of dualism that I can see that survives is the phenomena of "meaning". We can get machines, using artificial intelligence to act like biological organisms, but the problem of getting them to understand what they are doing and at what point they become self aware still remains. Many people think that self-awareness and consciousness is what make human beings unique, it is what it means to be made in Gods Image. How much to consciousness and the soul correlate?
What does consciousness mean? How do you measure it? There are various forms of artificial intelligence programs being developed that can handle various problems of intelligence, and they are getting better every year. There is a test called the Turing test which is the standard for machine intelligence that has not been passed yet. Every year there is a competition and the "second place" prize is awarded, but none have been able to pass it. If one does, then I suppose we will be seeing a revival of discussions on machine consciousness. However, if you look at the definition of "conscious", you can see that it could be applied to sophisticated computers, however, I don't think anyone would say that a machine is conscious yet. The definition of "conscious" is a sliding scale. I think a machine can be made to be as conscious as a person in a vegetative state, and we all know that not everyone agrees on when a person in a vegetative state is conscious. What is going on with the soul in a person in a vegetative state?
Where does consciousness come from, what are its mechanisms? One way to understand how something works is to compare a version that is broken to a version that works. It is called reverse engineering. There are many ways that a brain can be broken, in fact in my view, there is no perfectly working brain, there is only an average of similar functionality between brains that is labeled "normal". In my view, everyone is "broken" in one aspect or another. Brains get broken by things such as Trauma, degradation, contamination and in some cases they are born broken. Some of the smallest components that result in a Brain and of organisms in general are genes. There are genes that have been identified as "markers" for higher risk of cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and autism and for behavioral traits such as aggression and temperament. If the fundamental components that make up a brain are defective, the brain will likely wind up defective. These diseases adversely affect consciousness, our desires, our decisions, our behavior and how well our autonomous systems function such as heart beat and motor functions and breathing. In fact the autoimmune system is responsible for a few neurological diseases. The body attacks itself because its algorithm is flawed. The brain is made up of 100 billion neurons with each one connecting to between 1000 - 10,000 other neurons which make up a matrix. Each of these neurons are made up of smaller pieces. The omission or interruption of any of these pieces results in poor performance. Seizures and anxiety attacks are examples of how the body and mind react when these little pieces malfunction and send out unregulated signals that result in "electrical storms". The state of our brain at any give time determines our personality, attitude, feelings, emotions, decision making capability and thoughts. Quantity of stress, sleep, oxygen, blood, quality of physical infrastructure, presence or absence of foreign bodies, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, perceptual stimulus, sound, Electromagnetic fields, alcohol and drugs etc. all have an affect our our cognitive abilities.
Some examples of biological bases for behavior.
When discussing consciousness, the fact that consciousness originates in the brain, is much more appealing than the fact that so does the desire to go to the bathroom. When people have to go to the bathroom, they will say "I have to go to the bathroom" rather than "My bladder needs to be emptied". They concentrate on the "I" and the "My". People want to concentrate on the interesting things such as "why am I here", "How did I get here?", "Why do I dream?", rather than wondering, "What controls my arm?","why do I like chocolate?", "How do I know when my bladder is full?", "Why do I get sad when this or that happens?", "Why does my finger or eyelid sometimes tremble?". It all originates from the same place. The seat of consciousness is also the seat of body control. Similarly when you have a malfunction in one aspect of your neurological makeup that affects your motor functions, you can have malfunction that affects your cognitive abilities. So, there are brain and neurological diseases that affect how the body works and how the mind works. The common denominator is the brain.
But what about factors that affect consciousness that are not pathological? Sleep is one factor. We need sleep. If things are working normally, we go to sleep automatically. All we can really do is prepare ourselves for it and be ready when it happens. We can take steps that make it happen when we prefer it, such as "bed time" but sometimes it won't happen no matter how much we want it to. It is something that we cannot will to happen, but can prepare for. It is a state that the brain reaches on its own, and "I" can't control it, "I" can only postpone it. A neuroscientist said there is a place in the brain where it gets "switched on", as if there is a toggle in there somewhere. However "I" can force it to "switch on" with Drugs and anesthesia. The Study of Consciousness and Pain is central to the field of anesthesiology. So what is going on with the soul when we go to sleep? How is the soul affected under anesthesia?
In Brain Surgery, in many cases the patient needs to be awake. There are no pain receptors in the brain, so the surgeon is free to apply some local anesthetic and get to work. According to the The Mayo Clinics Web Site"Without this option, patients with brain tumors or epileptic seizures in the functional brain tissue would be unable to have surgery or would face a significant risk of losing function as a result of surgery." It is used when removing tumors or brain tissue that causes seizures. That loss of function doesn't just extend to speech, it extends to personality as well. In some cases, loved ones of patients with brain diseases, trauma, stroke, surgery state that the patients personality has changed and that they are not the same person. Is there a correlation between the soul and personality? If a persons personality changes as a result of brain surgery, trauma or stroke, how does that affect the soul?
In the lab, researchers do experiments on animals attempting to 'reverse engineer' the brain. I don't know anyone that thinks animals have souls so it may not be relevant to the discussion, however animals do have some of the same brain functionality that humans do. The type of Brain Mapping done on animals can only be done on humans in the context of treating a disease, and "reverse engineering" is out of the question. But by extrapolation, we can surmise that it would be possible to 'reverse engineer' the brain. It would be possible to 'disable' a small area of the brain and see how it is affected, to see how it affects motor skills, perception and those soul related properties behavior and personality. How would that affect the soul? Since our perceptions and motor skills originate in the brain, are they part of the soul as well? If a stroke affects personality and motor skills, has it affected the soul? How much similarity between the brains of Animals and Humans does it take to correlate to a soul?
Some examples of Animal Cognition
Michael Shermer, in an article for Scientific American in which he reviewed several books on consciousness sums it up as follows.
The brain is an organic machine, it can be reverse engineered, it shares features with other species and it can be mimicked by solid state machines. While we refer to computing machines as hardware, we should refer to our brains as "wetware". So what is it the demarcation point between humans and other species or Artificial Intelligence? The soul? Cognitive Ability? Our definition of intelligence and consciousness is not objective. We define it around our parameters. If we had a more objective way to define it or measure it, we might find that we are acting immorally to animals. In the past two centuries, western culture has expanded its application of morality and ethics and it has come to accept "outsiders" as belonging to the human race. The abolition of slavery was a result of applying our definition of consciousness and self-awareness to slaves. As we learn more about the brain and how it works in other types of outsiders, western culture may find itself once again expanding its application of morality and ethics to other "outsiders" such as other species or machines. If and/or when that happens, the question of whether or not they have souls will arise. Can humans decide? I say no. And I say that this idea, as well as many others, never occurred to the writers of scripture. And if one of the writers of scripture was omniscient, it is is a pretty grave oversight.
Listed below are some links to reference material on the topic of the brain and for the rest of my time at DC, I will post links supporting a Reasonable Doubt About The Soul.
* The Soul, A Rational Belief?
* Artificial Intelligence utilizing neural networks, (metastability)
* Metastability in the Brain
* Wikipedia Mind and Brain Portal
* Wikipedia Neuroscience Portal
* Wikipedia article on Human Brain
* Wikipedia Cognitive Neuroscience approaches to Consciousness
It is a fact that smaller components can make something more complex. Among other disciplines, Engineering, Science, Information Technology and even the phenomena of Language take advantage of this fact. This fact is a key element in the Principle of Evolution, and it also describes how the brain works. This article attempts to be brief but informative on what the brain is how it works and how there is no noticeable mechanism to support a soul.
Above all the Brain is an organ. It is the control center of the central nervous system and it is made up of more that one hundred billion neurons. It is where our behavior originates from. It is made of up of interdependent systems and these systems can found in in other species in various stages of development working in much the same way. In some cases these systems actually compete with each other. One result of this competition can be seen in the disciplines of Economics and Behavior. In these disciplines, some of the problems that they try to solve are why people consistently make irrational decisions. FMRI scans show that when these types of decisions are being deliberated in the brain, the emotional and rational or executive areas of the brain are extremely active. The theory that seems to describe the outcomes is that the two areas are in competition for control.
The brain is similar to the heart in one respect. It is like the heart in the fact that some consider it to be the place where the soul resides. I presume that since the soul is supposed to be our essence, survives after our death and is what will get rewarded or punished by God that it correlates to our consciousness, behavior, decision making and our desires. What does it mean to say that a person is going to hell if we are not talking about their consciousness? They should be aware that they are in hell to make it meaningful. Then there must be a correlation between consciousness and the soul.
Consciousness is a topic that has been debated since before recorded history so I am not going to discuss it too much as a philosophical topic (aka "The Mind-Body Problem") but will discuss the correlative mechanisms and its known constraints. In fact, I think I can state that the study of consciousness as a result of physical mechanisms has gone so far as to cast serious doubt on "Dualism" however, the last vestige of dualism that I can see that survives is the phenomena of "meaning". We can get machines, using artificial intelligence to act like biological organisms, but the problem of getting them to understand what they are doing and at what point they become self aware still remains. Many people think that self-awareness and consciousness is what make human beings unique, it is what it means to be made in Gods Image. How much to consciousness and the soul correlate?
What does consciousness mean? How do you measure it? There are various forms of artificial intelligence programs being developed that can handle various problems of intelligence, and they are getting better every year. There is a test called the Turing test which is the standard for machine intelligence that has not been passed yet. Every year there is a competition and the "second place" prize is awarded, but none have been able to pass it. If one does, then I suppose we will be seeing a revival of discussions on machine consciousness. However, if you look at the definition of "conscious", you can see that it could be applied to sophisticated computers, however, I don't think anyone would say that a machine is conscious yet. The definition of "conscious" is a sliding scale. I think a machine can be made to be as conscious as a person in a vegetative state, and we all know that not everyone agrees on when a person in a vegetative state is conscious. What is going on with the soul in a person in a vegetative state?
Where does consciousness come from, what are its mechanisms? One way to understand how something works is to compare a version that is broken to a version that works. It is called reverse engineering. There are many ways that a brain can be broken, in fact in my view, there is no perfectly working brain, there is only an average of similar functionality between brains that is labeled "normal". In my view, everyone is "broken" in one aspect or another. Brains get broken by things such as Trauma, degradation, contamination and in some cases they are born broken. Some of the smallest components that result in a Brain and of organisms in general are genes. There are genes that have been identified as "markers" for higher risk of cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and autism and for behavioral traits such as aggression and temperament. If the fundamental components that make up a brain are defective, the brain will likely wind up defective. These diseases adversely affect consciousness, our desires, our decisions, our behavior and how well our autonomous systems function such as heart beat and motor functions and breathing. In fact the autoimmune system is responsible for a few neurological diseases. The body attacks itself because its algorithm is flawed. The brain is made up of 100 billion neurons with each one connecting to between 1000 - 10,000 other neurons which make up a matrix. Each of these neurons are made up of smaller pieces. The omission or interruption of any of these pieces results in poor performance. Seizures and anxiety attacks are examples of how the body and mind react when these little pieces malfunction and send out unregulated signals that result in "electrical storms". The state of our brain at any give time determines our personality, attitude, feelings, emotions, decision making capability and thoughts. Quantity of stress, sleep, oxygen, blood, quality of physical infrastructure, presence or absence of foreign bodies, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, perceptual stimulus, sound, Electromagnetic fields, alcohol and drugs etc. all have an affect our our cognitive abilities.
Some examples of biological bases for behavior.
* Dopamine
* Dopamine and Addiction
* Seratonin
* Brain Systems Become Less Coordinated With Age, Even In The Absence Of Disease
* Eleven million Americans will have strokes this year. But they won't know it.
* Genes and Aggression
* Temperament and Character Profiles and the Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene in ADHD
When discussing consciousness, the fact that consciousness originates in the brain, is much more appealing than the fact that so does the desire to go to the bathroom. When people have to go to the bathroom, they will say "I have to go to the bathroom" rather than "My bladder needs to be emptied". They concentrate on the "I" and the "My". People want to concentrate on the interesting things such as "why am I here", "How did I get here?", "Why do I dream?", rather than wondering, "What controls my arm?","why do I like chocolate?", "How do I know when my bladder is full?", "Why do I get sad when this or that happens?", "Why does my finger or eyelid sometimes tremble?". It all originates from the same place. The seat of consciousness is also the seat of body control. Similarly when you have a malfunction in one aspect of your neurological makeup that affects your motor functions, you can have malfunction that affects your cognitive abilities. So, there are brain and neurological diseases that affect how the body works and how the mind works. The common denominator is the brain.
But what about factors that affect consciousness that are not pathological? Sleep is one factor. We need sleep. If things are working normally, we go to sleep automatically. All we can really do is prepare ourselves for it and be ready when it happens. We can take steps that make it happen when we prefer it, such as "bed time" but sometimes it won't happen no matter how much we want it to. It is something that we cannot will to happen, but can prepare for. It is a state that the brain reaches on its own, and "I" can't control it, "I" can only postpone it. A neuroscientist said there is a place in the brain where it gets "switched on", as if there is a toggle in there somewhere. However "I" can force it to "switch on" with Drugs and anesthesia. The Study of Consciousness and Pain is central to the field of anesthesiology. So what is going on with the soul when we go to sleep? How is the soul affected under anesthesia?
In Brain Surgery, in many cases the patient needs to be awake. There are no pain receptors in the brain, so the surgeon is free to apply some local anesthetic and get to work. According to the The Mayo Clinics Web Site"Without this option, patients with brain tumors or epileptic seizures in the functional brain tissue would be unable to have surgery or would face a significant risk of losing function as a result of surgery." It is used when removing tumors or brain tissue that causes seizures. That loss of function doesn't just extend to speech, it extends to personality as well. In some cases, loved ones of patients with brain diseases, trauma, stroke, surgery state that the patients personality has changed and that they are not the same person. Is there a correlation between the soul and personality? If a persons personality changes as a result of brain surgery, trauma or stroke, how does that affect the soul?
In the lab, researchers do experiments on animals attempting to 'reverse engineer' the brain. I don't know anyone that thinks animals have souls so it may not be relevant to the discussion, however animals do have some of the same brain functionality that humans do. The type of Brain Mapping done on animals can only be done on humans in the context of treating a disease, and "reverse engineering" is out of the question. But by extrapolation, we can surmise that it would be possible to 'reverse engineer' the brain. It would be possible to 'disable' a small area of the brain and see how it is affected, to see how it affects motor skills, perception and those soul related properties behavior and personality. How would that affect the soul? Since our perceptions and motor skills originate in the brain, are they part of the soul as well? If a stroke affects personality and motor skills, has it affected the soul? How much similarity between the brains of Animals and Humans does it take to correlate to a soul?
Some examples of Animal Cognition
* Animal Cognition from Wikipedia
* Animal Communication from Wikipedia
* Emotion in Animals
* Fish Logic
* Monkey Math
* Bird Grammar
* Dogs Can Classify Complex Photos In Categories Like Humans Do.
* Like Humans, Monkey See, Monkey Plan and Monkey Do.
* Young Chimps Top Adult Humans In Numerical Memory.
Michael Shermer, in an article for Scientific American in which he reviewed several books on consciousness sums it up as follows.
Koch and his colleagues, for example, discovered a single neuron that fires only when the subject sees an image of President Bill Clinton. If this neuron died, would Clinton be impeached from the brain? No, because the visual representation of Clinton is distributed throughout several areas of the brain, in a hierarchical fashion, eventually branching down to this single neuron. The visual coding of any face involves several groups of neurons--one to identify the face, another to read its expression, a third to track its motion, and so on. This hierarchy of data processing allows the brain to economize neural activity through the use of combinatorics: "Assume that two face neurons responded either not at all or by firing vigorously. Between them, they could represent four faces (one face is encoded by both cells not firing, the second one by firing activity in one and silence in the other, and so on). Ten neurons could encode 210, or about a thousand faces.... It has been calculated that less than one hundred neurons are sufficient to distinguish one out of thousands of faces in a robust manner. Considering that there are around 100,000 cells below a square millimeter of cortex, the potential representational capacity of any one cortical region is enormous." Given that the brain has about 100 billion neurons, consciousness is most likely an emergent property of these hierarchical and combinatoric neuronal connections.
The brain is an organic machine, it can be reverse engineered, it shares features with other species and it can be mimicked by solid state machines. While we refer to computing machines as hardware, we should refer to our brains as "wetware". So what is it the demarcation point between humans and other species or Artificial Intelligence? The soul? Cognitive Ability? Our definition of intelligence and consciousness is not objective. We define it around our parameters. If we had a more objective way to define it or measure it, we might find that we are acting immorally to animals. In the past two centuries, western culture has expanded its application of morality and ethics and it has come to accept "outsiders" as belonging to the human race. The abolition of slavery was a result of applying our definition of consciousness and self-awareness to slaves. As we learn more about the brain and how it works in other types of outsiders, western culture may find itself once again expanding its application of morality and ethics to other "outsiders" such as other species or machines. If and/or when that happens, the question of whether or not they have souls will arise. Can humans decide? I say no. And I say that this idea, as well as many others, never occurred to the writers of scripture. And if one of the writers of scripture was omniscient, it is is a pretty grave oversight.
Listed below are some links to reference material on the topic of the brain and for the rest of my time at DC, I will post links supporting a Reasonable Doubt About The Soul.
* The Soul, A Rational Belief?
* Artificial Intelligence utilizing neural networks, (metastability)
* Metastability in the Brain
* Wikipedia Mind and Brain Portal
* Wikipedia Neuroscience Portal
* Wikipedia article on Human Brain
* Wikipedia Cognitive Neuroscience approaches to Consciousness
Friday, January 18, 2008
Reasonable Doubt About the Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering As A Test
This article builds on the argument that the Problem of Evil/Needless suffering is caused by the process of Creation initiated in the article Resolved! God Caused The Problem Of Evil/Needless Suffering. (I should point out that "the process of creation" is a euphemism I am using for "Chance". With or without a God, Stuff Happens.) Its conclusion is that if the Problem of Evil is a Test, then there should be no biological bases for handling stress or decision making, it should all be a mysterious function of the soul and there should be no biological price to pay for it.
The problem of evil/needless suffering causes harmful stress. People are poorly 'designed' to handle stress and it negatively affects their decision making in some cases creating a negative feedback loop of decisions and consequences. People have varying degrees of stress tolerance. I have seen some people come unglued for what I consider to be nothing. I know people with Bi-Polar disorder and I spend quite a bit of time every week calming a person that has panic attacks because he/she dreads going to work. Two people in my family committed suicide, and a third was believed to be suicidal and they were all three Christians. Why would Christians commit suicide? If Christianity is true, it doesn't follow. But don't take my word that situations cause harmful stress in people, at the bottom of the article there are some lists I got from the Mayo Clinic.
The PoE causes harm to the subject of the test and can actually break them. If the PoE were actually a test, this variable should be controlled for. We should be more robust or equally robust in handling stress.
God won't give us anything we can't handle? It makes sense, and that's what I was always told. God is a strong tower. If someone can't handle it, its their fault, not praying hard enough, not living right, not waiting long enough, not humble enough, not patient enough, whatever excuse in the world could be thought up to put the blame on the person. The fact is that God won't give us more than we can handle because he doesn't have anything to do with it. He's not there. Christians get more than they can handle all the time. Sometimes with tragic consequences.
I think I stopped believing in God on Sept. 11, 2001 when I heard the newscasters say "we have reports that people are jumping out the windows of the towers, presumably to avoid being burned alive". If I had been on the towers on Sep. 11, instead of watching it on TV, and looked out the window and felt the fire behind me and had to make a decision of how I wanted to die, pain for a second or pain for some minutes, I probably would have lost my faith then too. If not before I jumped, then probably on the way down as I realized that I really was going to hit the ground and that the last most important prayer in my life was not going to be answered. I would have prayed that if I can't float down like a feather, then at least take me before I hit. Would I have gone to hell for losing my faith? Or maybe from committing suicide? Would the last act of my life have been a sin? Am I going to go to hell now because I empathized so much with those people that I don't believe that God could have anything to do with any of it or because this situation doesn't support my belief that the God of the Bible would not allow someone to be put in this situation? What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do? What was Jesus thinking?
My "Belief Balance" tipped the other way that day.
I hear it from Christians all the time "Why this and Why that?" "This must be some type of punishment." etc. A key concept in punishment is rehabilitation and without that aspect punishment doesn't make sense. If punishment without rehabilitation is the goal then it is more like revenge. If there can be no rehabilitation then the offender should be removed from society, and at that point, logically, it doesn't matter if they live in a prison or a luxury hotel. There is no evidence of a principle of rehabilitation in the doctrine of Hell, just retribution.
If the problem of Evil is a test, why is it so inequitable? Why do some people get born in impoverished unstable countries to struggle their whole life and others a born relatively affluent and hardly have much to complain about? It just doesn't make sense. It seems to be more a result of chance. Why are some people more able to handle stress than others? Why does stress break some people and it doesn't break others? Why are there biological bases of stress tolerance rather than a function of this mystical soul we are supposed to have and be punished or rewarded with. It seems to be more a result of chance. If the Problem of Evil is a Test, then there should be no biological bases for handling stress, it should all be a mysterious function of the soul.
When we feel stress we feel uncomfortable. We naturally want to feel better. I assert that all of our motivations are initiated from a desire to feel good rather than anything spiritual or moral. The 'spirituality' and 'morality' are the self-justifications that follow to help us maintain that feeling.
Some symptoms of stress and effects on our bodies are as follows. These lists were taken from The Mayo Clinic Website but it left some things out such as schizophrenia and multiple-personality disorder.
On your body
* Headache
* Chest pain
* Pounding heart
* High blood pressure
* Shortness of breath
* Muscle aches
* Back pain
* Clenched jaws
* Tooth grinding
* Stomach upset
* Constipation
* Diarrhea
* Increased sweating
* Tiredness
* Sleep problems
* Weight gain or loss
* Sex problems
* Skin breakouts
On your thoughts and feelings
* Anxiety
* Restlessness
* Worrying
* Irritability
* Depression
* Sadness
* Anger
* Mood swings
* Job dissatisfaction
* Feeling insecure
* Confusion
* Burnout
* Forgetfulness
* Resentment
* Guilt
* Inability to concentrate
* Seeing only the negatives
On your behavior
* Overeating
* Undereating
* Angry outbursts
* Drug abuse
* Excessive drinking
* Increased smoking
* Social withdrawal
* Crying spells
* Relationship conflicts
* Decreased productivity
* Blaming others
Monday, January 14, 2008
People Can't Choose To Believe, Therefore Christianity is False.
The Following is a contribution from The Dude in the Atheist RFC for Empirical Evidence... I think it is brilliant.
Christian salvation doctrine clearly stated in the bible dictates that in addition to good deeds, a "saved" follower must, above all else, choose to believe with no doubts. If one does not utilize the "free will" given to him by god and choose to believe, they will be banished to an eternity of hellish suffering upon death. No amount of good deeds over a lifetime will save a person if they do not choose to believe in the biblical god/Jesus.
The problem with this biblically-stated doctrine is that humans are naturally unable to choose to believe in anything, as belief is the result of biochemical/neurological processing of evidence in the human mind, and how information is processed is biologically unique to every individual. The way an individual processes information is absolutely out of their control - one cannot simply choose to accept evidence, it must be processed and evaluated by the brain, and the result of this processing is either non-belief or belief. Humans are born with specific genetic tendencies beyond their control that dictate how to process information, which can then nurtured or suppressed based on outside factors such as parenting, education, social influences - all of which are not within the control of the individual.
With this premise laid forth, the biblical requirement for salvation based on choosing to believe goes out the window, and thus in my mind dismisses the entire doctrine as jibberish.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Solomon Asch Conformity Experiments
Watch YouTube Video
This article is intended to show how people will conform to peer pressure against their own convictions and in what conditions. It is relevant to the influence exerted in the church community among its members. There is significant pressure in the church to prevent the expression of doubt or critical questioning of the properties of the religion. People would rather conform than go against the group. Since people are evolutionarily tuned to be social animals, the perceived benefit of belonging to the group should outweigh the benefit of dissension. I am grateful to Matthew, one of our readers, for submitting this and his kind sentiment. Click on the Link above to show a short video documentary on them. Click on the Link below to read a short summary from Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia
Solomon Asch "became famous in the 1950s, following experiments which showed that social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect.
The way he did this was through an experiment in which participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with 3 lines on it labeled a, b, and c. The participants were then asked to say which line matched the line on the first card. At first, the subject would feel very at ease in the experiment, as he and the other participants gave the obvious answer. Shortly after, the "participants" in front of the subject would start all giving the same wrong answer. Solomon Asch thought that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong, but the results showed that an alarming number of participants gave the wrong answer. See Asch Conformity Experiments"
REFERENCES
Debunking Christianity
The Role of Persuasion and Cognitive Bias In Your Church
The Role of Persuasion in the Question of The Holy Spirit
Suspension of Disbelief
All Lee's Persuasion Articles
Wikipedia
Solomon Asch
Asch Conformity Experiments
YouTube
Asch Conformity Experiments Video from YouTube
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