HYPOTHESIS: The Brain cannot perceive itself, so it creates a fictional, self-perceiving "Soul." Your thought?

Question

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The brain cannot discern its own functioning. (For example, try to watch your brain decide when to inhale & exhale.)

However, humans perceive themselves behaving, as if from an external self.

Neurologists have hypothesized this perceiving self ("soul") as a fictional creation of the brain itself, and it has been shown to disappear when the brain is damaged and people no longer see themselves AS themselves.

If evidence continues to build for such a hypothesis, thereby explaining via natural phenomena why we perceive our "self" as separate from the body, what impact would this have on the religious discourses on the "soul?"

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Reference:
Scientists simulate out-of-body experiences.
Virtual-reality experiments give subjects that disembodied feeling.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20411858/

The above reference is only the most recent one that I've read, and can provide a starting point. The discussion of this issue has arisen at various points on a number of atheist blogs and yahoo-groups.

Wording the question well within 110 characters is difficult, so perhaps it was a bit confusing. However, I think the answers have some interesting qualities, even if some of them missed the gist of the topic.

Therefore, I'll put it to a vote.

Answer 1

Ive never believed in the "soul". Its always so abstract and new agey that I can never take it seriously.

Answer 2

How could the brain create an identity to express that which it cannot perceive, and of which it must thus be ignorant? That's rather like saying that I could love or hate someone that I don't know even exists. How could I feel either emotion for a person that I am not aware of?

If the brain could not perceive itself to begin with, then there would be no such thing as self-awareness, and, therefore, no need to create any fictional identities by which to express the concept.

Answer 3

As usual I find your Q's interesting. I think it is very likely that the brain does generate some sort of image/icon to discern who they are. However to call this 'soul' may be a bit distorted. As Bodhidave says I personally don't attach such a condition to words like 'soul'. I believe that we are 'One' anyway, so I try to see things differently. In other words NOT see myself as an individual. However it is a difficult exercise. I keep hanging on to this ideal image of myself. Maybe I am brain damaged...LOL
In terms of the religious discourses on the 'soul' I have no opinion on this matter. I don't connect the definition of 'soul' as a separate entity. However I agree that we do create an image of ourselves in order to discern ourselves.

Thank you for the Q once again.

Answer 4

That would seem to be a medical/scientific definition of the word soul, but it's superfluous. We already have more accurate words to describe the "self" generated by our brains... the ego, the personality, the persona, the individual, consciousness, sentience, etc.

I suspect this view of the word soul has little correlation to what theistic people see as a "soul." In their minds, the soul transcends human experience (which conveniently explains why there is zero evidence for it.)

Answer 5

Whatever, and way too circuitous a hypothesis for me. The older I get, the simpler explanation ( if any) I seek. Despite or maybe because of being raised Catholic, I don't claim any knowledge of souls. Although I firmly believe that we once kept a pet rat who had one. Despite what science claims to "prove" ,the faithful will continue in their cognitive dissidence, and the rest of us heathen will probably totter to our tombs doubting everything.Despite religious/spiritual faith or lack thereof, no one truly KNOWS anything for sure about a so called soul. And that may never change.

Answer 6

"The fact that man produces a concept 'I' besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything."

Answer 7

The logic's a little skewed here, I think. The fact that conscious thinking cannot account for how it is itself generated suggests very matter-of-factly that there is more to us than our thoughts. That's not "fictional."

Through practice and study, especially of contemplative traditions (like meditation), it very much appears to me that a great deal of religious language is a poetic way -- a necessarily poetic way -- to refer to experiences that are more existentially immediate than conscious thinking. (There are indeed experiences "without" words, because they are more simple than words and before words.)

The problems, of course, come when we take such artistic speech only literally.

If you take religious language literally, you are not taking it seriously enough.

I personally am very religious (I'm a minister). And the core of my spirituality is the insistence that we "operationalize" religious terms -- attending to the actual practices and experiences that ground those terms. It makes for so much more productive an approach to ask not "Do I judge this term to be true or false," but rather, "How does this idea work for people in their lived experience?"
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Answer 8

I find this very interesting. I think that AI has this conundrum in common with our chemical computers (brains). Can the perception of one's own self ever be as complex or as accurate as the physical self? Oreo.

Answer 9

To be honest, what is meant by the soul is a dubious definition at best, and it is often intermingled in that definition with the perception of our own minds (which also may be a fallacy).

Answer 10

I think it sounds very silly.

Even if it were to be true...how would you explain all those who don't see they have a soul? Where do they fit in? Is something wrong with their brain?

I think it's just another lame attempt to explain something unexplainable.

Answer 11

I was just talking to somebody on here the other day about subject/object dichotomy. Fascinating. Is that Samsara?