Science and the Soul

Syke

No not really, but I have just finished reading the book Spook by Mary Roach and I was interested in some of the work by Gerry Nahum on Information Theory and Thermodynamics.

Basically, he has a different take on the largely debunked work of Duncan McDougall who experimentally suggested that the soul ways 21 grams.

His assertations is that our conciousness exists as information which is held in our brains. At the very least, this exists as some sort of matter or energy. More than likely, given the nature of how our brain works, our conciousness is going to exist as energy. Either way, as energy has a mass, so our conciousness should have some tangible existence.

If our conciousness exists as an energy form then we don't simply cease to be when we die, seeing as the first law of thermodynamics states energy can't be destroyed.

Personally, its a bit of a simplistic view as portrayed by me here and to a lesser extent in the book.

Might make an interesting debate though.

hamiltron

But if the medium on which the information is stored (in this case the brain storing our consciousness in the form of electrons) is destroyed, the information is not automatically transferred elsewhere. If a hard drive containing files degrades, the files do not float around in the air. The charges on the discs simply discharge...

iamhunted

energy, apparently, cannot be destroyed - so if the soul is made up of energy and the person dies, then the soul has to still exist as energy. I'd say thats the theory anyway

6th

I once convinced someone that a DVD weighed more when you burnt info onto it. Then again I could look really dumb if one of you smart folk come on and tell me it does, in my defence I made out it was a noticeable difference!

Quackles

6th wrote: »

I once convinced someone that a DVD weighed more when you burnt info onto it. Then again I could look really dumb if one of you smart folk come on and tell me it does, in my defence I made out it was a noticeable difference!

It'd be the opposite, wouldn't it? The laser burns tiny pits on to the surface of the disk, ergo the space that had filled those pits disappears, and the disk weights less!

6th

Yes it would be a tiny bit lighter I imagine but for a lauagh go find someone really stupid (someone who smells of gravy) and try get them to believe that the info you put on a CD, DVD actually weighs something

Syke

6th wrote: »

Yes it would be a tiny bit lighter I imagine but for a lauagh go find someone really stupid (someone who smells of gravy) and try get them to believe that the info you put on a CD, DVD actually weighs something

A DVD doesnt have informaton stored on it the same way a HD does so there is the flaw in that thinking.

Quackles

6th wrote: »

Yes it would be a tiny bit lighter I imagine but for a lauagh go find someone really stupid (someone who smells of gravy) and try get them to believe that the info you put on a CD, DVD actually weighs something

Gonna try that with my technologically challenged father... Bet you anything he'll believe it.

CodeMonkey

Actually a blank cd-r and a cd-r with data on it weighs the same. A cd-burner doesn't actually burn the cd, the writing laser just changes the transparency of a dye layer in the cd.

Gonna try that with my technologically challenged father... Bet you anything he'll believe it.

The irony here is probably lost on most believers. A technologically challenged person will believe in these stories just like how a sceptic thinks someone who can't reason logically or doesn't understand the science as well as he/she does will believe in a paranormal theory/story...

stevenmu

hamiltron wrote: »

But if the medium on which the information is stored (in this case the brain storing our consciousness in the form of electrons) is destroyed, the information is not automatically transferred elsewhere. If a hard drive containing files degrades, the files do not float around in the air. The charges on the discs simply discharge...

An interesting analogy, in almost all cases of hard drive failure the data actually remains intact, usually what fails is some electronic component or else a mechanical one. In fact in the IT security world it's notoriously difficult to destroy data on a hard disk.

stevenmu

This does make for an interesting debate. I suppose the two side have to be a: that our brain is a machine which encapsulates everything about us and that when it dies we are no more, and b: that there is something more in addition to that.

To try to decide which is the truth, we have to understand more about ourselves, and specifically what our sentience entails. I studied AI in college which turned out to be an incredibly interesting subject. To try to create an artificial intelligence, you first have to try to understand how our own works by breaking it down and analysing different aspects of it.

Unsurprisingly it turns out that much of our intellect can be directly mapped to functions of our brain. This makes sense, when you think about it so many of our thoughts and daily functions are based around our senses, our inputs which take in information about the physical world around us. Many more of our thoughts are taken up by required biological processes, eating, breathing, mating etc. Aspects like the ability to learn (and perception, pattern matching, prediction etc) can be seen in the formation of neurons, their connections and their firing patterns. These can be replicated with varying degrees of success within a computer system and support the brain machine idea.

But their are equally aspects which can not be explained in such mechanical fashions, there is our self-awareness, our ego. To have the ability that we do to not only be aware of ourselves bu to be able to examine and reason about ourselves is quite odd, and no one can understand it or how it came about. Another aspect is emotion. There are strong links between emotions and chemical processes in our brains but I believe it's still unproven as to whether the chemicals are completely responsible for an emotion, or if they are a by-product of the emotion, or some mix of the two. I know that many people claim that chemically induced emotions are different to 'genuine' emotion. My only personal experience that I can think of right now is when I received adrenaline as part of a local anesthetic before some very minor surgery. It naturally triggered a bit of a panic reaction in me, I was pretty tempted to jump out of a second story window, I wasn't aware initially that the shot contained adrenaline but I did feel that it was different to a standard fight-or-flight panic.

Another major unexplained aspect of our intellects is what is sometimes called emergence. It is the ability we have to construct a completely new idea without having any prior basis for it. This is most easily seen in art or music, altough all too often today both have become rehashes of past works . But it is also seen in invention and science. It can not be explained how we has humans can create something completely new without it merely being a construct of our experience and evolution.

These aspects, to me at least, weigh in favor of us having something more than a purely mechanical brain which contains our totality.

Of course it's possible that at some point each of these will be easily explainable, in another thread PSI mentions the preternatural which seems apt here. But without a firm definition of what our soul actually is it may be impossible to ever prove if it exists or not, and whether or not it survives after physical death.