…and this is a 
The Spiritual Brain
Category: Books • Kooks • Neurobiology
Posted on: October 2, 2007 8:00 PM, by PZ Myers
I tried. I really, honestly, sincerely tried. I've been struggling with this book, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, for the past week and a half, and I've finally decided it's not worth the effort. It's just about completely unreadable.
The writing is aggravating. It is constantly broken up with strings of quotes — 3, 4, 5, or 6 at a time — that are just plopped out there to speak for themselves, and often the authors don't even bother to address the points brought up in the quotes. It's like, presto, John Eccles said it! Or Steven Weinberg said it! Or some random guy on the internet said it! It begins to wear on the reader, and you start to assume you can just skip over the stupid quotes, and then they refer to something in one that you need to know to understand what the heck they're talking about. You just can't trust that it's only filler, even though it is 95% of the time.
Trust is a big problem here. Look, this is a book that advocates pure woo, that the brain is some kind of receiver for supernatural forces, and it quotes Carl Sagan in several places. Carl Sagan would not have been on their side. Quote the man to argue against him, but don't quote him to pretend that his remarks bolster your argument—yet that's precisely what the authors do. The reader quickly learns suspicion, that since they're quoting out of context on the material we already know, maybe everything else is suspect, too.
And then there are the errors…stupid, piddling errors. Can you tell what is wrong with this paragraph from the book?
The average neuron, consisting of about 100,000 molecules, is about 80 percent water. The brain is home to about 100 billion such cells and thus about 1015 molecules. Each neuron gets 10,000 or so connections from other cells in the brain.
Even my slow and sluggish brain, numbed by a preceding volley of quotes from B.F. Skinner, Ray Kurzweil, Gerald Edelman, and Francis Crick, responded to that with rising incredulity. 100,000 molecules? Total? What? That can't be right. Visions of clathrin complexes, chains of microtubules, actin filaments, and neurofilaments spun through my head, and then I hit the comment about 10,000 synaptic connections to a single cell and wondered why the authors didn't see the obvious: you mean there are about 10 molecules, total, for each synapse? That's complete nonsense. You can't even make the contents of a single synaptic vesicle with that.
And when I noticed that 105 molecules in 1011 cells would mean a total of 1016 molecules, and they couldn't even get the basic math in their own estimate right, I had to put the book down and leave it to rot for a few days.
What was the point of this calculation? Merely to generate incredulity that a bunch of big numbers could "produce our identities". The paragraph went on, after a two-page interruption of a section on "The Brain as a Complex Computer" in big gray boxes with quotes from Steven Pinker, Mark Halpern, and Richard Selzer, to explain that "Within each neuron, the molecules are replaced approximately 10,000 times in an average life span. Yet humans have a continuous sense of self that is stable over time."
AAAAAAIEEE. Yes? So? The function of the neuron and the brain is not tied in any way to the single molecules of which it is made, but the pattern and identity of the bits and pieces. I could re-shingle the roof of my house, strip out the drywall and replace it, and replace the floors, but it would still be my house — bits would be shinier and do a better job of keeping out the rain, but it would still be the same place. Heck, if I were made of money, we could replace the wiring and plumbing and much of the framing, jack it up, remodel the basement, rotate the whole house 90°, and put it back down. As long as we redid it piece by piece, there'd never be an instant where I'd say, "this is not my house."
Oh, and I don't believe that number "10,000". In fact, I don't believe any numbers in the book anymore.
It doesn't help that this dull nullity of a statement is then followed by a quote from Dean Radin that is supposed to help us recognize its importance.
All of the material used to express that pattern has disappeared, and yet the pattern still exists. What holds this pattern, if not matter? This question is not easily answered by the assumptions of a mechanistic, purely materialistic science.
Uh, yes it is. An intact brain and a brain that has been run through a blender are two different things, even if they do contain exactly the same molecules. The organization of the brain is the important element; you can swap out components gradually while still retaining the order…and order and organization are not supernatural properties. This isn't that hard to understand.
The subsequent quotes from Steven Pinker, Thomas Huxley, Francis Crick, V.S. Ramachandran, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Michael Lemonick in the next page and half don't help either. Nor do the quotes from Daniel Dennett, Tom Clark, and Steve Pinker (twice) on the next page. (Steve Pinker is very popular in this book. He ought to ask for a cut of the royalties — he seems to have written whole paragraphs for the authors.)
You get the idea. The format of the book is to throw out some briefly stated "fact" about the awesome power of the brain which the authors purport is unexplainable by natural processes, followed by hammering the reader with the weight of multiple authorities in quote after quote, and it doesn't matter whether said authority actually supports the issue in contention…toss 'em out there! In fact, reading this book is quite comparable to my previous example of running a brain through a blender. Your brain. Beauregard and O'Leary are the motor. The blades they're spinning are semi-random quotes from any damn source lying about.
I skimmed ahead. Later, they cite near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences as evidence for an external source for the mind, and credulously state that psychic powers like telepathy and telekinesis are real. There is a longish chapter (Many quotes! Blocks of text with biographies of Carmelite nuns!) That describes fMRI studies of nuns experiencing, they say, mystical feelings of various intensities. The results: their brain activity during these episodes is complex, therefore the materialists are wrong when they assign simple causes (which is news to me; who thinks mystical brain states would be simple? Raise your hands) and that the "hard problem" of consciousness won't be solved by materialists. Who will solve it?
But that hard problem ceases to be a problem once we understand the universe itself as a product of consciousness. We might expect living beings to evolve towards consciousness if consciousness underlies the universe. Consciousness is an irreducible quality.
We are all in the middle of a Great Floating Galactic Brain! All we have to do is realize that everything is conscious, and the problem of consciousness goes away! It's a variant of the "goddidit" answer so dear to creationists: "godisit".
I set the book aside again to decay a bit for a few days, in the forlorn hope that the cosmic consciousness would infiltrate my cranium and give me the power to cope. But then, this morning, I read a review of the book by Bryan Appleyard.
You have to understand something here. I utterly detest Bryan Appleyard. He's a fan of Intelligent Design; as an interviewer, he's a pretentious twit; he didn't like Steven Berlin Johnson's Mind Wide Open (a book I've used in my neurobiology class before) because it treated the mind as "the deterministic workings of mere chemistry". He seems like the male British counterpart to Denyse O'Leary, with ideas that would be perfectly aligned with each other. I dreaded the possibility that they might meet, fall in love, and together hatch a swarm of anencephalic pod-children who'd all go to church three times a day. If there was one reviewer on the planet for whom this book was written, it's Bryan Appleyard.
And he gives it a critical review.
Sure, he goes rah-rah over the anti-materialist spirit of the book, and he clearly wants to like it — most of his review ignores the work and consists of sniping at scientists, which is typical Appleyard — but then he says that their "conclusions are speculative" and "evidence is patchy" and that the religious experiences described are not "demonstrably different in kind from anything encountered in material science" ("None of which devalues the overall message of this book," he then says, which is again classic Appleyard. Who needs solid evidence?) And he also highlights the clumsy pattern of cobbled-together quotes that characterizes the writing.
Whoa. Bryan Appleyard has reservations about the book. That tells you how bad it has got to be. If you show your new baby to your sister, and she doesn't scrunch up her face and say "OOOH, she's cute widdle one!" but instead starts talking about the miracles plastic surgery can do, you know you've got a really ugly baby. This book is one ugly baby. It's the baby that would inspire your sister to get her tubes tied to prevent the possibility of repeating your mistake.
Don't buy this book. Stick your brain in a blender first. If you want a short, safe feel for what the whole thing is like, Beauregard has an article online (it opens with a quote, but only one, thank Waring), but I'll say nothing more — I've read half his book, a sufficiently painful experience. Fortunately, Shelley skewers him with a sneer. Read that instead.
Shelley also uses the word "crackpottish," not me.
I disagree. That pot ain't cracked, it's pulverized and powdered. It's a smear of dust. It's gone to the Great Kiln in the Sky. It's a non-pot. It has ceased to hold soil. It is soil. You could point a gentleman to the spot with the pot, and he'd have to use his imagination—and even at that, the best he'd be able conjure up in his head would be a loose pile of gravel. You know the phrase, "He hasn't got a pot to piss in"? That's this pot. This pot is fractured, splintered, split, shattered, blown to flinders, smashed, demolished, obliterated.
So no, I'm not going to make the mistake of calling this a work of crackpottery.
Life Science
Comments
Why do they feel the need to mention the (asserted) fact that neurons are 80% water? This (asserted) fact doesn't seem to have any relevance to the (incorrect) calculations that follow.
Or is it just because they think people will learning that the brain is mostly water and fat, and conclude that those very common things can't possibly be involved in generating the mind? It's only water, after all...
Posted by: Caledonian | October 2, 2007 8:08 PM
Come on man, don't sugarcoat! Tell it like it is!
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 2, 2007 8:18 PM
Here's a take on O'Leary:
http://thestubborncurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2007/08/soul-mam.html
Posted by: John Danley | October 2, 2007 8:21 PM
I'm confused. Why did you even start reading a book on Neuroscience co-authored by Denyse O'Leary?
Posted by: Brain Hertz | October 2, 2007 8:25 PM
Sounds like a train wreck of a book. Which reminds me of one of my all time favorite quotes, from Frank Zindler:
To believe that consciousness can survive the wreck of the brain is like believing that 70 mph can survive the wreck of the car.
I'll bet it didn't make it into the book.
Posted by: Ken Cope | October 2, 2007 8:29 PM
Brian Appleyard is beneath contempt.
But I take your point, yes... ouchie.
Posted by: Peter Hollo | October 2, 2007 8:32 PM
The Comic Sans MS! It buuurnnns!
Posted by: Simba B | October 2, 2007 8:35 PM
He seems like the male British counterpart to Denyse O'Leary, with ideas that would be perfectly aligned with each other.
Much as I like your general thoughts, please be a little more circumspect before throwing out insults like this, after all you are only a mere colonist who has misused not only the continent you have taken over but totally abused the natives and is now intent on polluting the whole world. By the way, a scrophulous merkin would improve your MPB. ;)
Posted by: Acleron | October 2, 2007 8:44 PM
Sorry, missed out ther closing bold tag.
Posted by: Acleron | October 2, 2007 8:46 PM
Why do they feel the need to mention the (asserted) fact that neurons are 80% water?
Isn't it obvious? It must be because the mind is homeopathic, right?...
(How much would you have to dilute a mind before it became omniscient? And how many more days do we have before this level of dilution is reached in the the developed world?...)
Posted by: SMC | October 2, 2007 8:49 PM
I now regret that I promised a friend I would read this book in exchange for him reading I Sold My Soul on E-Bay. He got a book he enjoys. I get dregs.
Friendship. What a pain in the ass.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | October 2, 2007 9:04 PM
Does this mean the authors are going to sue you now? :)
Posted by: Hemant | October 2, 2007 9:08 PM
Ahem.
That's from Cosmos (1980), p. 278.
You know, Carl Sagan would never have called Denyse O'Leary a demented fuckwit. But a few of you have met me, and you can all agree that I am no Carl Sagan.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 2, 2007 9:09 PM
AAAAAAIEEE.
I hear your pain.
Posted by: John Morales | October 2, 2007 9:10 PM
I specifically said I wouldn't call it a work of crackpottery! So they can't sue me.
At least not for that.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 2, 2007 9:11 PM
What a beautiful line.
Posted by: MAJeff | October 2, 2007 9:13 PM
"Later, they cite near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences as evidence for an external source for the mind, and credulously state that psychic powers like telepathy and telekinesis are real."
-Funny, doesn't sound like they cited Dr. Susan Blackmore who gave up her studies in near-death and after-life studies after reading and understanding Darwin and Dawkins.
Posted by: Rick Schauer | October 2, 2007 9:14 PM
SMC-- you totally just used your telepathic powers to steal the joke I was going to make.
Posted by: markp | October 2, 2007 9:16 PM
Sounds like they're not even familiar with the basic arguments presented in a philosophy of mind section of an Intro to Philosophy class. I suppose I may have to look at it at some point though (have to keep an eye on those folks).
I liked this from the web article:
.So if the neuro-research had shown that nothing happens during "mystical" states, then our anti-materialist would have concluded that these states don't exist? A perfectly good conclusion, says I. But not a very good dualism! (Which is why you shouldn't oughta be a dualist, says I.)
Posted by: Physicalist | October 2, 2007 9:17 PM
As far as negative book reviews go, this is one of the most enjoyable I've read in a while. I think it's actually better than PZ's take on Pivar; it's up there with Geoff Pullum's review of The Da Vinci Code.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 2, 2007 9:19 PM
The brain in a blender thing is sort of funny, because I thought the same thing in response to Deepak Chopra's "if I say Quantum Mechanics, do I win a prize?" review of Dawkins' God Delusion. This Spiritual Brain book basically sounds like the extended version of the Choprawoo that so disappointed me.
It's just so frustrating that people like O'Leary can get away with claiming that "materialism" cannot explain this or that, but when it comes time for them to give THEIR big solution to the problem, it turns out it's all just inexplicable magic.
I mean, I read books to discover neat things I could have never thought of myself: insights and surprises at rally neat solutions to mysteries. Now I'll fully admit that we don't have any good answers as to what conscious experience is, and only hints of how it works, but "don't worry about it, everything is conscious and it's like, totally awesome! Even Steven Pinker maybe thinks so!" is just so darn DISAPPOINTING.
Posted by: Bad | October 2, 2007 9:22 PM
It always surprises me when dualists cite the complexity of the brain as evidence that mind and consciousness must come from somewhere else. You can kind of understand using that sort of argument for design -- this brain is sooo complicated it couldn't have built up by gradual stages -- but not for refuting materialistic theories of mind/brain physical dependency.
If, when examined, the brain turned out to have the ornate complexity and structure of a potato, then theories which invoked spiritual forms of dualism would be pretty much inescapable. There's nothing there to do any work. A potato-brain would have been strong, clear evidence against materialism.
But the more complicated the brain is, the more likely it is that all that stuff in there is actually doing something complicated. How the heck could they not see this obvious connection? They can't have potato-brains because nobody does.
Posted by: Sastra | October 2, 2007 9:32 PM
PZ, why do I feel this quote is going to appear on O'Leary's next book "I could re-shingle the roof of my house, strip out the drywall and replace it, and replace the floors, but it would still be my house -- bits would be shinier and do a better job of keeping out the rain, but it would still be the same place."
Didn't you just admit the brain is "irreducibly complex" and designed like a house? No, you didn't but that won't stop someone else...
Posted by: JNR | October 2, 2007 9:36 PM
Infuriating on so many levels! I'll grant that there's validity to the idea that science has not quite answered the "self" question. I'll even grant that the tendency of some scientists to wave the question away as a meaningless semantic argument is frustrating. But you know what's even more frustrating? Flaky pseudoscience!
It all comes down to tedious this game of "Gotcha!" that religious idiots love to play. Stung by the unceremonious disembowelment of their beloved god, they try to fight back, saying "Science might have improved our lives in countless ways and led us to a deeper understanding of the universe, but oh hoh! Science can't explain ..." blah blah blah.
Inevitably, the supposedly unanswerable question falls into one of three categories:
1. Something science hasn't explained yet.
2. Something science has explained. Repeatedly.
3. Not actually a real question.
Many would say that the "self" question belongs to the third category, and in some ways it does. It is suspicious that nobody seems to be able to pose the question in a way that can even be tackled scientifically. But if there is a real question here, someone will eventually find a way to ask it, and given science's track record, I think it's fair to assume that science will eventually find an answer.
Why are the "faithful" so goddamned pessimistic?
Posted by: mcow | October 2, 2007 9:53 PM
It's a small world...
Just yesterday, I stumbled upon Mario Beauregard while sighing over the website of new woo-ish institution : the Institute for Research on Extraordinary Experiences, that just opened up in Paris and is "dedicated to the study of currently unexplainable human experiences".
I noticed him because he is one of the two neuroscientists in th support commitee, and googled him a bit. So your review comes as no surprise !
Posted by: Abie | October 2, 2007 10:05 PM
mcow:
I'm totally stealing that.
Posted by: John Marley | October 2, 2007 10:17 PM
"It is suspicious that nobody seems to be able to pose the question in a way that can even be tackled scientifically."
Heck, if someone could pose it in a way that was intelligible even philosophically, that would be something. But even philosophers don't seem to have any good idea how to talk about it or think about "how" it functions. They've invented a lot of cutesy names like "Qualia" and come up with some intriguing thought experiments about bats and zombies, but no one has even explained what an "explanation" of subjective experience would look like in even a general sense, whether naturally, supernaturally, or whatever the hell you want to try.
Posted by: Bad | October 2, 2007 10:22 PM
This post was 4360 X more enlightening than average.
However, it was a bit long, running at over ONE BILLION words, which took me 2.314 seconds to read.
(All of the above figures were checked (1^329)-1 times.)
Posted by: Christian Burnham | October 2, 2007 10:25 PM
So it must have taken you 1.13 seconds per word to read? I think my math is correct on that one.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 2, 2007 10:35 PM
This post is so rich with commentable sections that I just don't where to start. So, I won't and just say this. The book you had difficulty reviewing sounds like more directed obfuscation. You picked up on this and many rational, as I suspect many clear-thinking, rational folks would, and have the same reaction. Barf.
No. This book is aimed at people who don't know any better, who are impressed by lots of important looking quotes and purported facts they neither have the time nor the subject matter expertise to refute.
Thanks PZ! I'm new to your site and I plan to keep tabs on it from time to time. This was an inspired piece. Hopefully, the first of many I'll read by your hand.
Posted by: Spartacus | October 2, 2007 10:40 PM
So, um, was this "book" a better or worse read than, say, Edge of Evolution or Darwin's Black Box?
Posted by: Stanton | October 2, 2007 10:47 PM
The latest (and worst) example of chemistry math I have seen was a description of Halon in a computer security course:
Halons are combinations of the following chemically related elements: Carbon, Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine.
Halon 1211 is a combination of the ratio 1:2:1:1 of the above elements
Sure, just throw all those chemicals in a jar in the right ratio and shake well.
Posted by: Theo Bromine | October 2, 2007 10:49 PM
Shel-ly's gonna get su-ed...
That "c" word again! I know of a good publicist...
Posted by: PalMD | October 2, 2007 10:58 PM
Behe's trash is as wrong as Beauregard's/O'Leary's, but at least has the virtue of being written professionally and with a consistent voice. The Spiritual Brain is worse because its awesomely bad style makes it impenetrable, but it's also better because its awesomely bad style means it will die a quick death and be buried in remainder bins everywhere.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 2, 2007 11:00 PM
In that case, I will schedule an appointment with my dentist to scrape my gums with a steel wool sponge before I shell out money to buy this book.
Posted by: Stanton | October 2, 2007 11:06 PM
All of the material used to express that pattern has disappeared, and yet the pattern still exists
Uh, DNA?
Ever heard of it?
Posted by: natural cynic | October 2, 2007 11:37 PM
This seems to be a common aspect of most types of pseudoscience. Scientific writing in general does not use many quotations. If you refer to research done by others you paraphrase the relevant finding (readers will be annoyed if the paraphrase does not correspond to the data in the paper". Pseudoscientists look for quotes that can be taken out of context and appear to support their position. The quotes are supposed to "speak for themselves" and divert responsibility from the pseudoscientist. It is intended to create a veneer of objectivity to something that is clearly a subjective belief
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 2, 2007 11:44 PM
Posted by: Eric Davison | October 2, 2007 11:45 PM
That has to be the funniest, and the most damning way of not calling someone a crackpot i've ever seen...
Posted by: Graeme Elliott | October 2, 2007 11:47 PM
Sounds like O'Leary's books are as hard to read as her blog posts.
By the way, she's been a busy little beaver on the publishing front recently:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-two-childrens-science-books-just.html
Pity the poor students who end up with these books to study.
Posted by: tacitus | October 2, 2007 11:51 PM
"All of the material used to express that pattern has disappeared, and yet the pattern still exists. What holds this pattern, if not matter?"
This is just.... ERRRR!
Okay. Deep breath. My favorite analogy for showing why this is wrong: English country dancing. Last month I did some English country dances that were originally written and a danced a couple of centuries ago, by people who are long dead. But the pattern -- the dance -- remains, and will continue as long as there are people doing English country dancing.
Is there any need for a dualist/ spiritualist/ woo explanation for this phenomenon? No, there is not. It's very straightforward. The dances were written down. People passed them down from generation to generation. Not rocket science.
The fact that patterns remain when the original physical material used to express that pattern is gone is hardly surprising. For heaven's sake, that's what patterns DO, from dress patterns to recipes to musical notation to blueprints. That's what makes it a pattern and not an object.
And as natural cynic points out: DNA. Like, duh.
Posted by: Greta Christina | October 2, 2007 11:59 PM
I haven't read Chopra, so it sounds to me as if the authors studied at Mr. Kent Hovind's school of rhetoric: "Spit ideas like watermelon seeds. Throw in random quotes. Who cares if they're relevant. If the facts don't fit, make some up. Confusion to teh enemy!"
Posted by: Monado | October 3, 2007 12:02 AM
I think it can make sense to talk of a soul as long as we are not taken to commit to the existence of some weird dualistic "soul-stuff". This more minimalist conception of the soul supervenes on the brain, the body, and perhaps other physical things and events if one is inclined toward a wide-content interpretation of mental states.
Please note that this conception of the soul is perfectectly materialistic. Smash the brain and the soul is gone without the intervention of currently impossible technologies. As Nietzsche said: "Your soul will be dead even before your body."
Posted by: bacopa | October 3, 2007 12:07 AM
We already have the term 'mind', and it matches what you've suggested for 'soul'.
What do we need 'soul' for, then? It would seem to be a redundant synonym for mind.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 3, 2007 12:10 AM
Assigning someone credulous to review this book is sadly in keeping with the Inquirer's book reviews, which tend to slant toward the conservative and Christian (which is odd, since the Inky is not an especially conservative paper otherwise). A month or two ago, they had a theologian review Behe's book ... without identifying him as a theologian.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20070819_Pa__scientist_again_attacks_evolution.html
Posted by: Shem | October 3, 2007 12:38 AM
Is there something equivalent to TalkOrigins for this kind of stuff? I'm asking, because I periodically get into arguments with my boyfriend (I'm the hard-headed one around here) about this stuff. His way of summing it up was, "You must believe that there's something else other than just biology that makes us really alive!" and I said, "Why?" Personally, I'm kind of like a Wobbly -- body, mind, it's all just One Big Union. I'd really like to be able to, when he brings up the next dipshit point, go, "Uh, no, and see..."
It seems so obvious to me, being handicapped and all, and watching how changes in my neurochemistry affect my behaviour, and how, no matter how hard I try, that "mind over matter" stuff really isn't going to make the effects from the brain lesion(s?) go away; the only things I can practically do basically involve a "matter over matter" approach -- retrain the neurons that took over for the damaged portions, and things get better. Stop practicing, and they might get worse again. From the way it looks behind my eyes, there's no God of the Gaps here; there aren't even any gaps. There's just stuff for which we don't currently have a good explanation.
I guess that's the part that must bother some people, that if we can't currently explain it, then it must be supernatural or something.
Posted by: Interrobang | October 3, 2007 12:42 AM
Lucky God exists or people couldn't make books!
Posted by: Tulse | October 3, 2007 12:42 AM
"I've been struggling with this book, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul, by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, for the past week and a half"
I wouldn't read a book that had even been positively blurbed by Denyse O'Leary, never mind co-authored, without having been sentenced to do so by a court of competent jurisdiction and having exhausted my appeals, and I'm religious.
Posted by: Mike | October 3, 2007 12:44 AM
amazing how people who talk about the hard problem of consciousness are never able to clearly describe the hard problem of consciousness. Effectively, it amounts to "I can think of a problem that's too hard for you to solve, but I'm not going to tell you what it is"
I'm glad it was you not me. Most times I'm unfortunate enough to read a few paragraphs of Denyse, I'm filled with an urge to kill
Posted by: snaxalotl | October 3, 2007 1:06 AM
"But the more complicated the brain is, the more likely it is that all that stuff in there is actually doing something complicated. How the heck could they not see this obvious connection?"
Because they're stupid stupid STUPID AAAARRRGH
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 3, 2007 1:26 AM
This is the difficulty of the question. You try to phrase it using existing words and they come out as synonyms for things that have already been explained, but which aren't quite what you mean. The "soul" or "self" or "ego" or whatever you want to call it is more of an aspect of the broader concept of the "mind" than a synonym or a separate concept. I personally sympathize with the desire to have an explanation for this, although until the question can actually be defined, trying to find an answer is ludicrous.
This is the best way I can think of to ask the question, but it's still not very good:
Science tells us that I am essentially a fairly sophisticated biological computer running highly adaptable software which is capable of logical analysis and decision making based on perceived input, past experiences, genetics, and a handful of other parameters. Cool, that explains my behavior, my emotional responses, etc. But why am "I" here experiencing it? Why isn't this program just running its course, churning through its routines, executing the behavior, preserving the organism. Why am "I" in here watching the whole thing play out?
Some claim that the "self" is merely a natural consequence of the complexity of the software. But that's a pretty non-specific answer. Like I said above though, this isn't a question that science can't answer. It's just a question that science hasn't yet answered.
Posted by: mcow | October 3, 2007 1:32 AM
Ohhhhh, yeah.
How preternaturally astonishing that she can write that sentence on HER computer, and I can read it on MINE.
A Mollyworthy phrase, though surely disqualified from consideration. ;-)
Posted by: Kseniya | October 3, 2007 1:42 AM
I suspect there are some DC3s flying around that have almost no original parts left in them, but are still DC3s. Do they think everything gets replaced at once in the brain? Maybe the authors actually have potato brains.
Posted by: Freddy the Pig | October 3, 2007 1:55 AM
Yes, and 8 of them are H20! Now that's some serious intelligent designing there.
Posted by: melior | October 3, 2007 2:24 AM
Sir, I think you are judging their science far too hastily! In your rush to condemnation, you discount their claim of " 1016" molecules in the brain..., which is 80% water. Being generous, this means that Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary estimate that their own brains have average masses of 0.37 μg, each. I, for one, applaud them for their refreshing honesty and candor in these matters. It probably was not easy for them to make the decision to admit this in print (or any decisions at all, for that matter), and I would not tear them down as quickly as others might.
How cheap and callous. I say good day to you, sir...
Posted by: j.t.delaney | October 3, 2007 2:29 AM
Here's my take on the Neural Correlates of a Mystical Experience in Carmelite Nuns study by Beauregard and Paquette (2006).
It's most relevant to note that the nuns weren't actually having a mystical experience in the scanner, they were remembering one. And it's also interesting to note the similarities between brain activity in the Mystical and Control conditions, not only the differences.
Posted by: The Neurocritic | October 3, 2007 2:45 AM
You must believe that there's something else other than just biology that makes us really alive!
Try irony!
"Yes, of course I believe in the magical undetectable ghosty-wosty that though completely immaterial somehow influences and directs my otherwise zombified bag of brains and bones without leaving a single trace. Why wouldn't I?"
Posted by: Sam | October 3, 2007 4:44 AM
Thanks PZ, better your brain through the blender than mine. :-P
I think we will need a new description for this one. "Quote bomb"[*] is taken, so I will go with:
Weapon of Mass Quotation.
[* I learned a new expression today: "someone being quoted because they're having a discussion. Quote bombs are quotes which spread the page and are quoting like 5000 things." **]
[[** Redirected through tinyurl since ScienceBlogs refused the muchmusic.com board link. @#$! spam filters.]]
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 3, 2007 5:33 AM
Leading Darwinist baffled by stunning new theory!
Panning the book without reading the whole thing? Censorship! Repression! Dogma!
Picks on irrelevant trivia, while ignoring the substance!
Ha!
Typical barbaric Darwinist. We'll all end up in the gulags if they take power.
But even he, ultimately, is forced to agree with us!
This response brought to you by the WayForward machine - predicting creationist drivel until 2387. And I, for one, welcome our cephalobot overlords.
Posted by: MartinM | October 3, 2007 5:36 AM
Oh, and this:
So the IDC neuroscientist isn't satisfied with explaining the mind? The same old irreducible strategy.
Interrobang:
I don't now of any specific site for skeptic analyzes of soul woo. The worst socio-political movement to threat science or society lately has been creationism. But it could be a good idea, as the web increases exposure to pseudoscience and woo.
Meanwhile, there are a few specialized sites that have material and link lists.
If parapsychology is on your mind, you should probably try CSICOP directly, but their site was down when I write this.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 3, 2007 5:55 AM
Hmmm, let's see. The brain is 80%, water, is it? (Actually, I think it might be closer to 70%, because parts of nerve cells have thick myelin sheaths, and myelin is a hydrophobic substance). A typical human brain weighs about 900 g (roughly). If it's 80% water, that's 720 g of water. The molecular weight of water (taking typical isotopic composition) is 18.015 grams per mole. (You can see where I'm going with this, can't you?).
Thus, a typical brain contains 39.97 moles of water. Each mole comprises about 6.023 x 10^23 molecules. So, using Beauregard and O'Leary's own figures (and a typical estimate of human brain mass), the brain has roughly 2.407 x 10^25 molecules just of water. Then there's all the proteins, lipids, phospholipids, saccharides, polysaccharides, nucleic acids, coenzymes and cofactors, not to mention amino acids and, oh, let's not forget the neurotransmitters. Or the ions that transmit nerve impulses along axons*.
So, their estimate for the number of molecules in the brain is off by at least 10 orders of magnitude.
* My neurophysiology is a bit of a dim and distant memory, so I'm not sure how many of the nerve cells in the brain actually have axons of significant length. But ions are still needed to transmit nerve impulses through and across nerve cells.
Posted by: Nigel D | October 3, 2007 6:09 AM
It doesn't help that this dull nullity of a statement is then followed by a quote from Dean Radin that is supposed to help us recognize its importance.
All of the material used to express that pattern has disappeared, and yet the pattern still exists. What holds this pattern, if not matter? This question is not easily answered by the assumptions of a mechanistic, purely materialistic science.
Parapsychologist Dean Radin, "Senior Scientist" at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, is a blithering idiot. Long ago, the Greeks noted that,if you replace the handle of your axe, it's still your axe, and if you then replace the head of your axe, it's still your axe, yet it shares no material with the original axe. This raises philosophical issues about the nature of identity, but in no way challenges "the assumptions of a mechanistic, purely materialistic science".
Posted by: truth machine | October 3, 2007 6:19 AM
But that hard problem ceases to be a problem once we understand the universe itself as a product of consciousness. We might expect living beings to evolve towards consciousness if consciousness underlies the universe. Consciousness is an irreducible quality.
This is beyond idiotic, aside from being a series of non sequiturs. The "hard problem" is to explain how physical processes can produce subjective experience; what we might expect about the evolution of consciousness is utterly unrelated.
Posted by: truth machine | October 3, 2007 6:27 AM
Hope no one here believes in intellectual osmosis. If it's true we just all got a bit stupider.
Posted by: Felicia Gilljam | October 3, 2007 6:51 AM
Funny, doesn't sound like they cited Dr. Susan Blackmore who gave up her studies in near-death and after-life studies after reading and understanding Darwin and Dawkins.
Actually, she gave it up after spending decades looking for "paranormal" phenomena and finding nothing.
Posted by: truth machine | October 3, 2007 6:54 AM
But why am "I" here experiencing it? Why isn't this program just running its course, churning through its routines, executing the behavior, preserving the organism. Why am "I" in here watching the whole thing play out?
People who ask this sort of thing are much like those who ask why there aren't any transitional fossils -- ignorant of the scientific literature. I suggest "The Illusion of Conscious Will" by Daniel Wegner and "The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness" by Antonio Damasio.
Posted by: truth machine | October 3, 2007 7:23 AM
I periodically get into arguments with my boyfriend (I'm the hard-headed one around here) about this stuff. His way of summing it up was, "You must believe that there's something else other than just biology that makes us really alive!"
Don't live a life of misery -- dump him and find an intellectual equal.
Posted by: truth machine | October 3, 2007 7:31 AM
PZ wrote: "[T]hey...credulously state that psychic powers like telepathy and telekinesis are real....[W]ho thinks mystical brain states would be simple? Raise your hands...."
Better yet, anyone who thinks telekinesis is real, raise my hand.
Posted by: Jud | October 3, 2007 7:42 AM
So The Ford Motor Company has some kind of supernatural, non-material "soul"? Well, there's a surprise!
Posted by: Dunc | October 3, 2007 8:36 AM
ROTFLMAO! We have three new Molly nominees!
(How many people have I promised to nominate for Molly in the last week?)
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 3, 2007 8:40 AM
The line about telekinesis is a very old one, Mr. Marjanović.
Still, I suppose they're oldies but goodies.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 3, 2007 8:46 AM
Is it worth pointing out that one of the things that leads to a subjective experience is that it's happening to you, as opposed to that guy over there?
Posted by: Stephen Wells | October 3, 2007 8:50 AM
caledonian wrote regarding David Marjanović's amusement at my (admittedly) old joke about telekinesis: "The line about telekinesis is a very old one, Mr. Marjanović."
True enough. The juxtaposition of telekinesis and hand-raising in a single paragraph of PZ's post was a set-up too good to resist.
Posted by: Jud | October 3, 2007 9:00 AM
"Like I said above though, this isn't a question that science can't answer. It's just a question that science hasn't yet answered."
Well, it just might be a question that science can't answer - to state otherwise is an act of faith.
That said, even if it IS a question that science can't answer doesn't mean there are supernatural agencies involved. It simply means that it's too complicated, subtle and tricky for us talking monkeys to figure out. This is a possibility. I am a realist and a materialist, but I can't see why there can't be processes and relationships that humans can't wrap our minds around. Doesn't imply godz or supernatural stuff.
And it doesn't mean that science shouldn't be trying to answer it.
Posted by: sgage | October 3, 2007 9:22 AM
Egads: Denyse has hair, but it's not the same hair she was born with, because it keeps growing at one end and being chopped off at the other. Yet she's always had hair on her head, and may even have had the same hairstyle for decades. So according to Denyse's logic, she must be some kind of receptor of noncorporeal hair radiating in over the hair waves, right? What else could explain it?.
Posted by: N.Wells | October 3, 2007 9:28 AM
Oh yes, our brains are ready to receive messages from the big outside. The synaptic connection comes