Christianity, the Soul, and Brain Damage

I was watching a program on TV the other day about psychology, they recounted an incident that I once went over in psychology course way back. There was this fellow who suffered severe trauma after the spike of a Jackhammer broke and essentially speared him through the skull. By a miraculous fluke it left him alive and conscious even though the spike had pierced through his brain.Anyway, after some miracle surgery and treatment the man was able to resume life as normal. Except that his family and children noticed a distinct personality change in the person. He was less sensitive, more prone to anger and depression. He would lash out and behave irrational. His family didn't know who he was anymore.Eventually his marriage broke up, the man had bouts with alcoholism etc.Anyway, as the story goes the neuro-scientists reexamined the guy and learned that a specific part of the brain thats involved with the regulation of temperament was severely damaged by the accident. They prescribed drug therapies and treatment but as I understand it the person never managed to regain the stability he once had, or indeed, become the same person he was before.Another story recently featured on NPR addressed hormones and the role they play in human personality. The show focused particularly on the hormone testaterone. The feature interview was with a fellow who had a rare condition where his body stopped producing testaterone altogether, his story was very strange indeed.He recounted how he lost all desire, pain, pleasure, or want. As it turns out testaterone is the hormone in the body which affects want and desire. So he recounted how he would lay in bed for hours staring at the sealing, or be perfectly content eating wonder-bread and mayonnaise. Looking back on the whole ordeal the gentleman was disturbed by it observing that he was literally "a different individual" when he was affected by that condition.Now my question revolves around Christianite's view of human individuality, personality, and the well being of the soul. If the entire salvation model revolves around a persons behavior in this world, it is essential that a persons behavior be tied directly to the soul. That is, a persons mind and soul are one.This is evident in the Bible where spirits of the dead are often represented as the individuals they were in life. Personalities are seen to remain consistent before and after death. So when we come to judgment it is believed that we come as we are, before our judge.But as evidenced by the story above, personality, and behavior are very closely related to a specific organ, the human brain. Damage to the brain causes personality shifts in the world. So if I were brain damaged and became a bad person, is my soul at fault?How does Christianity reconcile the strong physical corelation between mind and behavior? If a few hormones can make think and act different, then how can our immortal soul be held accountable?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

That was me in 1990, before Prozac. I had days when I came closer to being functional, but only occasionally.I have an astounding paper at the house on MRI (or PET??) scans of the brain when people make "challenging" moral decisions. I'll post a reference tonight. It goes right along with your topic.

Cool! Ya I find this stuff fascinating.In that same psychology class I wrote this great paper on pschizophrenia! The teacher loved it, gave me an A+ Anyway, if you want to hear about people changing personality due to phisiological malfunction, pschizophrenia is a perfect example. Depending on how this thread goes I may past some of the case studies I researched.

Not really "brain damage," but a very interesting article, in my opinion. From J. Greene, et al., Science, 293, 2105-2108, (2001): What Greene and co. did was pose questions such as these to subjects who were in an MRI machine that was scanning activity in their brains. They found a very strong difference in which parts of the brain were active when "moral-impersonal" (the trolley) versus "moral-personal" (the footbridge) were posed to the subjects: (footnotes removed)Now what does this mean? If moral dilemmas give rise to electrical signals from chemical reactions in our brains - signals that vary according to how "hard" the dilemma is to resolve - what does that say about morality being some airy-fairy absolute imposed by some supernatural entity like the Christian God? Doesn't it suggest that morality is, instead, some not-quite-absolute that works about the same way in people with "normal" brain chemistry? That sociopaths really might function and think in different way than us standard boring good citizens? That if your Brodman's Area 39 has lesions, you might not adhere to conventional standards of right and wrong?

It's getting late. I gotta go outta town tomorrow...But My topic needs a bump. so ummn...*BUMP!*hehehehCoragyps:That is realy interesting! I have never seen any studies speaking about where morality is processed. How does this play for the whole "morality is within the soul" crowd?This message has been edited by Yaro, 05-13-2004 03:41 AM

I am really interested in the christian perspective on this.Where does the soul fit in when human behaviour is so closely tied to phisyology?Anyway...Sorry to bump so much, but my topic keeps flying to the bottom I guess if no one takes it this time, this will be my last BUMP.k

Hi Yaro, there very well may be no soul in which to be held accountable. If the brain dies but the body lives on where is the soul? If someone gets in a car wreck and the brain dies but body functions remain..where is that same person that was laughing, and eating lunch prior to the accident? Does the soul sort of "hover" over the body like a vulture waiting for the body to perish? where does the "mind" go? I am beginning to believe that if your organ of input perception and sensorium is damaged then the mind is also gone. The sense of a SELF perhaps is an illusion of all ones memories and expieriances. I would like to believe there is a individual soul that trancends the body post death but it seems unlikely to me. Rather I now believe that this concept of a soul is simply a supernatural/ metaphysical wishful thinking. JMHO.

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"One is punished most for ones virtues" Fredrick Neitzche

Sorry Yaro, but I don't have a christian perspective for you for obvious reasons.My view on the soul is I don't care if it's there or not. There is no way for me to find out, so why bother? Since I am not someone that is driven by faith, the existence of the soul is not a priority on my list.

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The Laminator

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again... as far as body, mind, and soul go, the last two are just increasingly abstract ways of describing what goes on in the first.

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"As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?"
-Holly

Yaro,
You will have to get back to me on this after we all understand how to use macrothermodynamics. I had some ideas on "condensation" prior to reading Georgi's work that orginated during the same time (late 70s) as my own on seeing Roger Penrose on TV and reading Broca's brain and Scientific American. Gladyshev suggests, "The discussed model should not provoke any opposition from physicochemists. It is in accord with brain plasticity as interpreted by Penrose, who regards the brain as a formation that resembles a computer which is continually changing, taking account of the feedback that arises between the system proper and the environment. Also, using physciochemical terminology, the existence of critical values, such as levels of supersaturation are assumed. Needless to say, to understand how the brain functions, one has to take account of the feedback, since it is not enough to factor in only the minimzation of Gibbs function caused by the brain recieveing signals from the external environment. The emergence of thought, that is, conscious thinking, is connected "with resolving out alternatives that were previously in linear superposition"(17,p438) Penrose believes "that this is all concerned with unknown physics (processes not laws- G.G.) that governs the borderline between U and R and which...depends on a yet-to be discovered theory of quantum gravity"(Gladyshev p182 in Progress in Reaction Kinetics 2003 Vol28. p157-188)which may not address directly your issue of "soul" unless you had for my spelling mistake Poilkinghorne's idea that science can not distiguish Bohm's idea from Borh's. I have not formulated a nonchanging opinion of the application of macrothermodyanics in the nervous system as of yet and am just now working only any comparmentalization (if in vertebrates) haveing to do with the midline of bilateral symmetric forms only applying this to the apical ridge developmentally as of yet.If macrothermo-- is more important than is currently recognized it might be possible to link ECOLOGY (but LESS BEHAVIOR) with these linear alternatives (but that reading depends on use of Galelio I have not seen in any current literature)leaving beyond behavior as to the branching that goes on no matter what bracketing of time the recombination princple of genetics applied macrothermally resolves (more on this later). This would not BracketOUT as "off topic" suggestions of the sould but recognizes materiality such that beyond it temporally may be (by lack of compenetrance (Bosocovich?)a personal opinion of the soul and behavior good or bad. If the relation between ecology and behavior is NOT how I have suggested it still may be condesation-avalache that makes an infinite limit an actual infinity over ordertypes where the the right side of GOD may be but if my text ever gets here Cries arise on EVC. They should not. My own pre-Gladyshev days involved speculation of chemical kinetics and gravitational waves but this domain seems to be being superceeded (epistemologically) in my own mind by the place of application of macrothermodynamics no matter the ontology.

I'm Catholic. I'm not sure I have more than a handwaving argument, but you are presupposing that the fact that human consciousness does indeed have a physiological realization, necessarily implies that it is wholly material. A legitimate argument if you presuppose philosophical materialism, but of course I'd debate the point.I'm not sure the evidence for this is unambiguous. We don't know all the processes involved in the generation of consciousness, but AFAIK there is some emergent element to it.Maybe someone better versed in the current science of the topic will jump in.-p

I can't say I have a definate answer, but I can propose some Christian thoughts, so everyone can slam me again What really happens to the man with the jack hammer in his head, would only be known by God and himself.Question, did he feel trapped in his own body, or did he feel normal?Also, I have witnessed a few miracles of close friends. It is entirely possible that God could have cured him, had the circumstance be right between him and God. Even medical institutions reconize documented miracles.I have no abnormalitys that I know of, but yet after I became born again, my whole demeanor changed. People have taken notice of this and say things to me like, you are so lovely now, and patient. Also people have said that I look ten years younger, what have you done to yourself. This is my own testimony that could be taken as a sign of what God can do to a person. Possible offering another hope for that poor guy.

I think most skeptics would be suspicious of an answer that relied on personal testimony. It can be, and has been unreliable, or at least subjective in the sense that different religious traditions draw different conclusions. E.g. we could find Turks who would give personal testimony about how Islam has changed their lives. It could be merely the salutary effects of group social support in each case.That said, my rejoinder to the original question is still "why do you think human consciousness is wholly material" ?Hopefully this topic will generate more discussion.

Hola, paisano!Though I lean pretty hard toward the materialist point of view, I certainly agree that being able to measure voltages and positron emissions in a brain doesn't have to mean that consciousness is wholly material. I find it very interesting, though, that the same bits light up in an MRI of a chimp brain as in a human brain under a variety of stimuli. We less-hairy apes have much better-developed brain parts for speech, yes, but chimps and even monkeys have analogous structures that are activated by analogous situations.I'm a rank amateur on this subject - I've only read the occasional paper on brain scans and the like - but I very strongly feel that human consciousness differs from chimp or even woodchuck consciousness only in degree. We've got bigger frontal lobes, but we can't smell for nuthin'!I'll look for some links to other brain studies tonight and/or tomorrow. They actually want some work out of me here today.