Mind, Brain and the Search for God - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Mind, Brain and the Search for God

Alasdair Coles

CiS

conference, The

King’s Centre,

Osney

Mead, OxfordSlide2

Body

Soul / Mind

Material

Immaterial

My starting position: Platonic dualism

Eternal

DecayingSlide3

Body

Soul / Mind

God

Material

Immaterial

Immaterial

My starting position: dualismSlide4

Body

Mind

Material

Current consensus in neuroscience:

reductive monism

Methodological reductionism

Versus

Ontological reductionismSlide5

Out of body experiences

Blanke. Brain 2004; 127: 243Slide6

Cross-over trial of 36 volunteers

psilocybin (30 mg/70 kg) (mushrooms 5HT2a,cR)

methylphenidate hydrochloride (40 mg/70 kg)

All volunteers had some knowledge of religious activities…. Half on a daily basisAssessed by 32-item questionnaire “Mysticism Scale”

Magic mushrooms and God

Griffiths

Psychopharmacology (2006) 187:268–283

Drug 1

Drug 2

Test 1

Test 2Slide7
Slide8
Slide9

Acquired paedophiliaSlide10

Acquired paedophilia

Burns JM,

Swerdlow

RH, Arch

Neurol

2003.Slide11

Norman Geschwind

Boston

“Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Personality”

In between seizures:

Hyposexuality

Hypergraphia

Hyper-religiosityWaxman SG & Geschwind N. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1975;32:1580-6.Slide12

“You are all healthy people,

….but you have no idea what joy that joy is which we epileptics experience the second before a seizure...

I do not know whether this joy lasts for seconds or hours or months, but believe me, I would not exchange it for all the delights of this world.”

Dostoyevsky

1821-1881

Mystical seizuresSlide13

“All of our behaviour can be traced to biological events about which we have no conscious knowledge.” - Sam Harris

“We feel we choose, but we don’t,” says Patrick Haggard, a neuroscientist at University College London.

“You may have thought you decided whether to have tea or coffee this morning, for example, but the decision may have been made long before you were aware of it.”

Our brains are in control not usSlide14

Soon… Haynes Nat

Neurosci

. 2008 May;11(5):543-5

The Haynes experiment….Slide15

Soon Nat

Neurosci

. 2008 May;11(5):543-5Slide16

Soon Nat

Neurosci

. 2008 May;11(5):543-5Slide17

NMDA receptor activated

Hippocampal activity

Finding

Osney

Mead

Long-term

potentiation

Spatial navigation

Molecular event

Altered activity in specific pathway

Changed behaviour

Change in electrical activity

Altered network activity

Bottom-up reductionismSlide18

The effect of musical training on brain

structure

Gärtner

H,

Brain

morphometry

shows effects of long-term musical practice in middle-aged keyboard players. Front Psychol. 2013 Sep 23;4:636

Professional musicians

Music teachersSlide19

NMDA receptor

hippocampus

behaviour

Long-term

potentiation

Spatial navigation

Top-down processing as well as bottom-upSlide20

Sachin

Tendulkar

Versus

Shoaib

Akhtar

400msec to plan and execute

Past deliberation embodied in automaticitySlide21

Character

Molecular event

Altered activity in specific pathway

Changed behaviour

Change in electrical activity

Altered network activitySlide22

Collision of bottom up and top-down:

the human predicament

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ….. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Romans 7Slide23

Body

Soul / Mind

God

Material

Immaterial

My current position: non-reductionist

physicalism

The importance of emergenceSlide24

God in the Synapse in the Vatican garden

John Eccles and Karl Popper

The Self and its Brain

1984Slide25

The chair and “nothing but”Slide26

“nothing but”Slide27

The chair and “nothing but”Slide28

“nothing but”Slide29

The chair and emergenceSlide30

Old Testament (

nepes

)“Life” itself, as in Gen 2:7 “man became a living soul [being]”

No suggestion of immaterial separate soulLittle suggestion of afterlife

New Testament (

psyche)At the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and

we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on

imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." (

1Co 15:51-54)Jesus replied

, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

(

Luk

23:43

)

Biblical

position on soulSlide31

Life after death

may be as an immaterial soul before the new body resurrected

for a dualist requires a resurrected body for a

physicalist. So where is the continuity?

Views of the bodyA dualist may despise the flesh

A

physicalist must respect the body

Pastoral consequencesSlide32

Many Christians are implicit dualists

This is problematic for

neuroscientists

Monist accounts of brain tend to be reductionist and exclude God

A non reductive physicalist leaves space for

God

Most behaviour is immediately determined by our biology

Our behaviour may alter brain structure

There is a dynamic interaction between brain and mind

SummarySlide33

Nancey

Murphy and

Warren S. Brown

Did My Neurons MakeMe Do It?: Philosophical

And NeurobiologicalPerspectives On MoralResponsibility And

Free Will2007.Slide34

Maguire EA Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Apr 11;97(8):4398-403

Change in brain structure with use: London taxi

driversSlide35

Karen Armstrong

Aged 17,

entered Catholic convent.

7 years later: left. Tried to teach. “Fainting episodes”. Went to “hell”.

Seven years later: diagnosed with epilepsy

Author of

Through the narrow gate

The spiral staircaseHistory of GodSlide36

Karen Armstrong

“Certainly just before I have a

grand mal

fit I have a 'vision' of such peace, joy and significance that I can only call it God……….

What I can say, however, is that if my 'visions' have sometimes let me into 'Hell' they have also given me possible intimations of a Heaven which I would not have been without.”Slide37
Slide38

The lesson of Ulysses ……