Physics and the Immortality of the Soul

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Cosmic Variance - Physics and the Immortality of the Soul (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/23/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/)


...
Among advocates for life after death, nobody even tries to sit down and do the hard work of explaining how the basic physics of atoms and electrons would have to be altered in order for this to be true. If we tried, the fundamental absurdity of the task would quickly become evident.

Even if you don’t believe that human beings are “simply” collections of atoms evolving and interacting according to rules laid down in the Standard Model of particle physics, most people would grudgingly admit that atoms are part of who we are. If it’s really nothing but atoms and the known forces, there is clearly no way for the soul to survive death. Believing in life after death, to put it mildly, requires physics beyond the Standard Model. Most importantly, we need some way for that “new physics” to interact with the atoms that we do have.

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there can’t be a new collection of “spirit particles” and “spirit forces” that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments. Ockham’s razor is not on your side here, since you have to posit a completely new realm of reality obeying very different rules than the ones we know.
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As well as the physics angle discussed by the above article, there is also the biochemical angle to consider. Genetic factors, drugs and physical trauma can greatly affect pretty much any aspect of personality and consciousness. We know that the brain undergoes changes throughout the human lifespan, and I think it's fair to say that the person one was ten years ago is not the same as the person one is today. Even psychology tells us that we are more susceptible to outside influences than we may initially realise.

Of course, one could argue that the body only mediates the soul, but that then raises the question of how that mediation physically manifests itself - if the human brain is something akin to a television tuned to a particular channel (one's soul), then why haven't we detected any "soul-waves" or the like?

[Zostrianos]

The interesting thing is that some near death experience studies do seem to point to the possibility of consciousness as being independent of the body. The most famous one was Dr Pim van Lommel's fascinating study of brain-dead cardiac arrest patients, published in the Lancet:

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Mediaskeptics/vanLommel.html

So we have to conclude that NDE in our study was experienced during a transient functional loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem. It is important to mention that there is a well documented report of a patient with constant registration of the EEG during cerebral surgery for an gigantic cerebral aneurysm at the base of the brain, operated with a body temperature between 10 and 15 degrees, she was put on the heart-lung machine, with VF, with all blood drained from her head, with a flat line EEG, with clicking devices in both ears, with eyes taped shut, and this patient experienced an NDE with an out-of-body experience, and all details she perceived and heard could later be verified. (8)

There is also a theory that consciousness can be experienced independently from the normal body-linked waking consciousness. The current concept in medical science states that consciousness is the product of the brain. This concept, however, has never been scientifically proven. Research on NDE pushes us at the limits of our medical concepts of the range of human consciousness and the relationship between consciousness and memories with the brain.
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So we need a functioning brain to receive our consciousness into our waking consciousness. And as soon as the function of brain has been lost, like in clinical death or in brain death, with iso-electricity on the EEG, memories and consciousness do still exist, but the reception ability is lost. People can experience their consciousness outside their body, with the possibility of perception out and above their body, with identity, and with heightened awareness, attention, well-structured thought processes, memories and emotions. And they also can experience their consciousness in a dimension where past, present and future exist at the same moment, without time and space, and can be experienced as soon as attention has been directed to it (life review and preview), and even sometimes they come in contact with the “fields of consciousness” of deceased relatives. And later they can experience their conscious return into their body.

Michael Shermer states that, in reality, all experience is mediated and produced by the brain, and that so-called paranormal phenomena like out-of body experiences are nothing more than neuronal events. The study of patients with NDE, however, clearly shows us that consciousness with memories, cognition, with emotion, self-identity, and perception out and above a life-less body is experienced during a period of a non-functioning brain (transient pancerebral anoxia). And focal functional loss by inhibition of local cortical regions happens by “stimulation” of those regions with electricity (photons) or with magnetic fields (photons), resulting sometimes in out-of-body states.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The interesting thing is that some near death experience studies do seem to point to the possibility of consciousness as being independent of the body.

If that is true, then why can similar experiences be induced chemically with ketamine (http://www.lycaeum.org/leda/Documents/Using_Ketamine_to_Induce_the_Near-Death_Experience.9260.shtml)?

Personal testimony (also known as anecdotes) are not a reliable form of evidence, due to various factors such as confirmation bias. We have evidence that NDEs and NDE-like experiences happen, but by themselves they do not provide evidence of the independence of consciousness from the body, due to the simple that they are being reported by living people with functioning brains.

[x-punk]

Stuff like this is fascinating. As the article says, there is no current scientific evidence to support the theory of a soul. But as our scientific knowledge expands who knows what will be found. Its certainly an exciting thought that we could have an immortal soul but whether this is the case is really just a big question mark.

I guess we will all find out eventually.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

If this element of ourselves called the soul continues beyond our physical death...what function does the physical serve? Why would there be these two parts; that which occupies the physical universe and is affected by the laws we currently know of and this ethereal (sp?) part that is somehow beyond the physical?
Religious folk have some ideas, I'm sure.
In any case, hope it's not true, the idea of a soul and all that it could entail is quite scary to me. I prefer atoms, physical world, tangible, measurable.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

In any case, hope it's not true, the idea of a soul and all that it could entail is quite scary to me. I prefer atoms, physical world, tangible, measurable.

Interesting you should say that, since I've never understood how a belief in souls is meant to be comforting. What's comforting about the possibility that one's consciousness could be ripped wholesale from one's body, to hang blindly in some kind of senseless limbo or even worse?

Whatever one might say about the limitations of mortal flesh (and I would be among the first to point out that there are many), I find the notion that this collection of atoms and molecules and cells and tissues is what I am, to actually be comforting. It makes me feel grounded, an integral part of the universe.

I don't need to become one with the universe because I'm already there.

[Zostrianos]

Whatever one might say about the limitations of mortal flesh (and I would be among the first to point out that there are many), I find the notion that this collection of atoms and molecules and cells and tissues is what I am, to actually be comforting. It makes me feel grounded, an integral part of the universe.
I don't need to become one with the universe because I'm already there.

I have to disagree. When I see how desolate and fallible this world is, all the hardships we have to go through in these fragile, disease-prone bodies of ours, on a planet that just seems to go from bad to worse in every way, it's comforting to hold on to a higher ideal, to wonder "what we have an immortal soul, untainted by the imperfections of matter?", "what if there is another world beyond this dark, virtually lifeless abyss we call our universe?"

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I have to disagree. When I see how desolate and fallible this world is, all the hardships we have to go through in these fragile, disease-prone bodies of ours, on a planet that just seems to go from bad to worse in every way, it's comforting to hold on to a higher ideal, to wonder "what we have an immortal soul, untainted by the imperfections of matter?", "what if there is another world beyond this dark, virtually lifeless abyss we call our universe?"

If there are no such things as souls, that this tiny collection of substance is all that I am, then the absolute worst that could happen to me at the end of my material existence is an unthinking, unfeeling state of complete and utter oblivion. Indeed, when I die in such a case, the worst would be over.

But if that is not the case, if there is something that continues after death, then what reason has anyone to believe that what comes after will be good in any way? How does one know that what comes after won't be even more fucked up?

Further, if it turns out that what comes after is better, then would it not be an objective improvement for everyone to die as soon as possible so that we can all enjoy the better world that comes next? Would that not constitute a major discouraging effect on improving this material universe, if something so much better is known to be just a painless death away?