Split-brain patients and theology (1 Viewer)

[Enteebee]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DCSJdhy3-0

Pretty interesting. So theists what do you think, what happens when someone with a split brain dies and one half is an atheist and the other is a theist?

p.s. Ramachandran is kinda amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg

 

[Enteebee]

Actually that's fairly straightforward; if they're two independent consciousnesses and we take a literal interpretation of christianity the unbeliever consciousness will go to hell and the belee ver will go to heaven! PRAISE BE TO GOD

So we can by manipulating the brain split one soul in two or does one soul die and we create two others? It appears to be quite a problem for anyone who believes in a soul...

 

[Admiral Nelson]

This is one of the few times I'm actually wishing I had a theologian to converse with.

 

[KFunk]

I'm having a lazy arvo so I'm going to repost something I put up in the abortion debate thread -

Technical issues regarding souls:

- As Kwayera mentioned (in the abortion thread), identical twins start off as a single zygote. Do two seperate souls simply occupy the one zygote at once? Does a single soul split into two? Does a second soul simply appear at the time of spliting?

- Split brain cases are troublesome for those arguing for a unitary immaterial mind/soul. In many documented cases the seperate hemispheres, after having the corpus collosum severed, exhibit contrary goals and aims, e.g. the right hand will try to pick a blue shirt out of the wardrobe while the left hand picks a green shirt, or one hand does up a zipper while the other hand undoes it. In other words the hemispheres seem to lack unity, as though there are now two persons coinhabiting one body. I am unsure how this phenomenon can be explained with recourse to 'the soul'.

- Neurological syndromes due to focal damage are also problematic. E.g. it is possible to loose colour vision, or the ability to recognise faces, or the ability to acknowledge the 'left side of the world', or one's social inhibitions. Note, then, that physical lesions can create major deficits in a person's experienced world. Essentially, all the things which seem to make a person a person, e.g. memories, beliefs, capacity for reason, temperament, moral conscience and so forth, seem to be susceptible to erasure by means of physical damage. Thus any theory of the soul which views such human capacities as dependent on the soul needs to be able to explain how such physical lesions can entirely interupt these supposedly 'immaterial' capacities.

 

[Snaykew]

Imagine the two consciousnesses specialising in two different things. They can switch between each other to treat patients.

I wonder if the two sides can communicate with each other within themselves?

 

[Slidey]

Fucking epic thread. I love you guys.

I'm waiting, Inasero!

 

[Enteebee]

This thread has caused me to do hell of reading instead of Uni work but this is trés intriguing. Woo consciousness, agency etc. discussions.

was it you that'd read "freedom evolves" ?

 

[KFunk]

P.S. Ramachandran is super cool. Anyone interested in hearing him at length should check out the 2003 BBC Reith Lecture series that he did:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/

In particular I found lecture 4 on the connections between neuroscience and aesthetics to be quite interesting.

 

[mythical chaos]

This is obviously a conspiracy theory which I will prove to be incorrect very shortly.

PS You are all noobs LOL.

 

[Enteebee]

This is obviously a conspiracy theory which I will prove to be incorrect very shortly.

PS You are all noobs LOL.

Noobs?

I've read ramachandran's books for about 4 years now I just hadn't really come accross the implications of split-brain patients for dualists.

 

[Slidey]

Since human cloning is possible, whose soul would it be? Cloning happens naturally, too, so if the soul of the 'hosts' genetic material is diminished, that implies twins have less of a soul, too.

But likewise, if twins have full, distinct souls each, then that implies a human-created clone would also have a full, distinct soul, no? So humans are able to create new souls?

 

[stazi]

since i cant watch the video at work: could someone explain in easy to understand english what the implications are? what is the significance of split-brain patients.

 

[katie tully]

Since human cloning is possible, whose soul would it be? Cloning happens naturally, too, so if the soul of the 'hosts' genetic material is diminished, that implies twins have less of a soul, too.

But likewise, if twins have full, distinct souls each, then that implies a human-created clone would also have a full, distinct soul, no? So humans are able to create new souls?

But what is a soul?

 

[stazi]

But what is a soul?

Here's the best way of describing it, imo

 

[katie tully]

Here's the best way of describing it, imo

alternatively
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_(fish)

 

[stazi]

alternatively
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_(fish)

alternatively:

www.cumonmybigfathairynutsack.com

 

[P_Dilemma]

So if u split ur brain, at least half of you gets to go to heaven... i like the odds

 

[darkliight]

Ok .. but what if both halves are atheists? Does that mean they get double the suffering in the afterlife?

 

[KFunk]

Firstly, don't get the idea that the hemispheres are physically separate just because of the lack of a CC. It is rare for a corpus callosum to be completely severed (often only a portion of it is removed in surgery), meaning some information can still travel across the two hemispheres by this pathway. Also, the corpus callosum isn't the only fibre to cross the hemispheres - there is the anterior and posterior commissure and (for a number of females and some males), the masa intermedia of the thalamus (which is a powerhouse for a shitload of information processing). They may call people without a CC 'split-brain' but that isn't entirely true - the two hemispheres can (and do) still communicate with each other by other means.

Fair call, but your objection depends, in part, on the number of important corticocortical fibres running through the ant./post. commisures and the massa intermedia respectively. I haven't studied the massa intermedia, but if it only allows crossing of spinocortical or corticospinal fibres then it isn't much of a counter-example since in the first instance (bottom-up) it is like a case of shared information (two different people, but with extremely similar sensory input) and in the second (top-down) it is like a case of shared control (think two different people with joysticks controlling the same videogame). The sparing of the anterior commisure is a more relevant objection, especially given temporal lobe and amygdala connections (it would be interesting to see fMRI studies in split-brain patients looking for bilateral amygdala stimulation in response to anxiety stimuli).

However, I would still contend that you would still loose cross-hemispheric integration of a lot of the core processes that help constitute that amorphous entity we call 'the self'. Think, in particular, capacities like reasoning, executive control, moral decision making and emotional regulation. Granted, the amygdala is important in emotional regulation and moral reasoning is quite broadly distributed, but I think it is still an important point that connections between key, relevant processing centres are obliterated in split-brain patients.

There is a potentially very interesting thought experiment here where you slowly decrease the integration of information between the two hemispheres to the point where they are entirely independent. At what point is one self split into two? The mere possibility of such a thought experiment seems to create issues for the notion of a self as a categorical entity - it is interesting to ask what becomes of the self (or the soul!) if it instead exists on a spectrum.

 

[KFunk]

A relevant bit of recent literature - Uddin et al (2008) Residual functional connectivity in the split-brain revealed with resting-state functional MRI. Neuroreport

The abstract reads [alas, I lack journal access]:
Split-brain patients present a unique opportunity to address controversies regarding subcortical contributions to interhemispheric coordination. We characterized residual functional connectivity in a complete commissurotomy patient by examining patterns of low-frequency BOLD functional MRI signal. Using independent components analysis and region-of-interest-based functional connectivity analyses, we demonstrate bilateral resting state networks in a patient lacking all major cerebral commissures. Compared with a control group, the patient's interhemispheric correlation scores fell within the normal range for two out of three regions examined. Thus, we provide evidence for bilateral resting state networks in a patient with complete commissurotomy. Such continued interhemispheric interaction suggests that, at least in part, cortical networks in the brain can be coordinated by subcortical mechanisms.