The Human Brain an Interface or More than?

[Metis_LDS]

When I was much younger I always thought the brain was just an interface for our spirits to dwell and control our bodies.  In my sixties now I am not so sure anymore.  I now feel that the our brains are more than an interface and gives us much more than we had as just spirits (apart from the body of course).   What think you?

[OGHoosier]

6 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

When I was much younger I always thought the brain was just an interface for our spirits to dwell and control our bodies.  In my sixties now I am not so sure anymore.  I now feel that the our brains are more than an interface and gives us much more than we had as just spirits (apart from the body of course).   What think you?

I used to have the same opinion to but then I realized it was a bit of an unnecessary holdover from Descartian dualism. My opinion is that when they say that the spirit and body make the soul of a man, they mean it. They fuse in order to bring forth us. Our soul, the element of us that makes decisions and acts, is both spiritual and physical, primordial spiritual element fused with mortal flesh. That sort of explanation also helps me understand why it's so important to overcome the natural man and temptation. 

[Metis_LDS]

1 minute ago, OGHoosier said:

I used to have the same opinion to but then I realized it was a bit of an unnecessary holdover from Descartian dualism. My opinion is that when they say that the spirit and body make the soul of a man, they mean it. They fuse in order to bring forth us. Our soul, the element of us that makes decisions and acts, is both spiritual and physical, primordial spiritual element fused with mortal flesh. That sort of explanation also helps me understand why it's so important to overcome the natural man and temptation. 

Wow that is some great writing. 

[Ahab]

22 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

When I was much younger I always thought the brain was just an interface for our spirits to dwell and control our bodies.  In my sixties now I am not so sure anymore.  I now feel that the our brains are more than an interface and gives us much more than we had as just spirits (apart from the body of course).   What think you?

When we die we will still know and remember things so the idea that our brains are our control centers is obviously false.  It is our spirit that gives life to our body, so without our spirits our bodies are just a combination of lifeless body parts.

I do wonder about people who have some sort of brain damage, though.  If a spirit is in a body that has brain damage, and the spirit isn't able to do much with that body because of that brain damage, what is the spirit doing in there?  Is it like being in a room with no way to get out and no way to interact with the outside world until the body dies?  That doesn't seem pleasant to me, unless maybe the spirit has a whole lot to think about and isn't really concerned about going anywhere or doing anything else but think while it is in there.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Ahab

[Metis_LDS]

When I was much younger I worked for a company that sold a highly complicated piece of medical equipment.  After the hospitals purchased these some want extra available software options.  Well guess what every software option was already installed from the factory.  So when the hospitals paid for options we would swap a chip to let them access the extra options.  Are human brains so big because everything is already installed waiting to be unlocked.  It is said that the most complex thing we know is the human brain.

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Metis_LDS said:

When I was much younger I always thought the brain was just an interface for our spirits to dwell and control our bodies.  In my sixties now I am not so sure anymore.  I now feel that the our brains are more than an interface and gives us much more than we had as just spirits (apart from the body of course).   What think you?

Given that we are "added upon" with them, and given that they are part of our bodies which on the whole generate the "continuation of the seeds," I think they they make us more like God (a basic tenet in the plan of happiness is the we obtain bodies like God).

[Ahab]

1 minute ago, Metis_LDS said:

When I was much younger I worked for a company that sold a highly complicated piece of medical equipment.  After the hospitals purchased these some want extra available software options.  Well guess what every software option was already installed from the factory.  So when the hospitals paid for options we would swap a chip to let them access the extra options.  Are human brains so big because everything is already installed waiting to be unlocked.  It is said that the most complex thing we know is the human brain.

Since the brain without the spirit will simply not work, I think any potential "mind" power a person might be able to attain would come from the power of their spirit.  I usually consider the mind and the spirit to be pretty much the same thing.

Maybe when we receive a fullness of celestial glory we will be able to do things that a telestial level mind is not able to do.  To understand things and visualize things that a telestial mind simply can not understand.

I now understand the glory of God to be intelligence, so it makes sense that a person with a telestial level mind can't understand things that require a celestial level mind/mentality.  

[OGHoosier]

58 minutes ago, Ahab said:

When we die we will still know and remember things so the idea that our brains are our control centers is obviously false.  It is our spirit that gives life to our body, so without our spirits our bodies are just a combination of lifeless body parts.

I do wonder about people who have some sort of brain damage, though.  If a spirit is in a body that has brain damage, and the spirit isn't able to do much with that body because of that brain damage, what is the spirit doing in there?  Is it like being in a room with no way to get out and no way to interact with the outside world until the body dies?  That doesn't seem pleasant to me, unless maybe the spirit has a whole lot to think about and isn't really concerned about going anywhere or doing anything else but think while it is in there.

My personal thought is that the human spirit is not some sort of second personality inside us. It's difficult for me to articulate what I want to, but I believe that our human consciousness is composed of our spirit consciousness (the consciousness we have always had since the premortality) and a lot of interference, if you will, which comes from the spirit being fused into a temporal form and thus subjected to temporal constraints such as lusts, brain architecture, etc. 

I think that the existence of behavioral disorders in humans, especially those relating to brain damage, proves that the physical brain has a role in how we formulate our actions. Behavioral disorders aren't a matter of the body being unable to obey the commands of our consciousness, rather they involve brain structure at the level of intentional decision-making. Furthermore, cases of personality changes after traumatic brain injuries are well documented, wherein somebody's very personality is altered in correlation with damage to their brain structure. Therefore, the brain can't be viewed, IMO, as simply a control console that a perfectly sovereign spirit somehow uses, though I don't claim revelation on this point at all. I could be wrong, but that is what reason and the available facts lead me to believe. I think the functional center of our experience in mortality is the brain. Even spiritual inspiration, to me, is an embodied experience. 

I believe that it's useless to try and draw distinctions between spirit and body. Joseph Smith taught that the spirit and body form the soul of a man and that spirit and body, inseparably connected, bring a fullness of joy. When God breathed life into Adam, he became a living soul, not just a fleshy robot driven by an internal spirit. I think our spirits and bodies are completely fused. There's no separation at all. Our brains are the architecture, the mainframe, that our Father has built to be our command center in this body. That's why we don't remember anything of premortality; God has given it to our brains to be the center of memory and function in this life. We are here in this earth to learn how to live righteously as dual beings so that we can be perfected dual beings in eternity. I believe in Eternal Man as a unified whole where body and spirit are fused into one perfect being, uniting the best of both body and spirit to the point that they can be separated no longer because they are not functionally different. 

[Ahab]

8 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

My personal thought is that the human spirit is not some sort of second personality inside us. It's difficult for me to articulate what I want to, but I believe that our human consciousness is composed of our spirit consciousness (the consciousness we have always had since the premortality) and a lot of interference, if you will, which comes from the spirit being fused into a temporal form and thus subjected to temporal constraints such as lusts, brain architecture, etc. 

I think that the existence of behavioral disorders in humans, especially those relating to brain damage, proves that the physical brain has a role in how we formulate our actions. Behavioral disorders aren't a matter of the body being unable to obey the commands of our consciousness, rather they involve brain structure at the level of intentional decision-making. Furthermore, cases of personality changes after traumatic brain injuries are well documented, wherein somebody's very personality is altered in correlation with damage to their brain structure. Therefore, the brain can't be viewed, IMO, as simply a control console that a perfectly sovereign spirit somehow uses, though I don't claim revelation on this point at all. I could be wrong, but that is what reason and the available facts lead me to believe. I think the functional center of our experience in mortality is the brain. Even spiritual inspiration, to me, is an embodied experience. 

I believe that it's useless to try and draw distinctions between spirit and body. Joseph Smith taught that the spirit and body form the soul of a man and that spirit and body, inseparably connected, bring a fullness of joy. When God breathed life into Adam, he became a living soul, not just a fleshy robot driven by an internal spirit. I think our spirits and bodies are completely fused. There's no separation at all. Our brains are the architecture, the mainframe, that our Father has built to be our command center in this body. That's why we don't remember anything of premortality; God has given it to our brains to be the center of memory and function in this life. We are here in this earth to learn how to live righteously as dual beings so that we can be perfected dual beings in eternity. I believe in Eternal Man as a unified whole where body and spirit are fused into one perfect being, uniting the best of both body and spirit to the point that they can be separated no longer because they are not functionally different. 

Regarding the part I highlighted, yes, but I think those actions we see are based on how our spirits communicate and use our bodies.  Take the spirit away and the body goes back to a lifeless combination of various body parts.

Let's start there. Let's start with a body which has no animation, no life in it at all.  And then let's put the spirit in it, and see what we see from that point on.  But let's suppose the body the spirit goes into has some kind of brain damage which prevents the spirit from using some part of the brain, let's say the part of the brain the spirit uses to control the arms and the legs of that body.  After careful analysis the arms and legs appear to be fine, just no function in them at all.  They won't move and as far as can be told there is no sense of feeling in them either, although blood is flowing though them.  I'm no doctor, but I'd say that is caused by some kind of brain damage.  I don't think the problem is caused by that person's spirit.  I don't think there is some portion of that person's spirit that isn't sufficiently fused to that brain in that body.  To fix that problem I think we would have to fix that person's brain, making it function as it should, and until then the spirit in that body is stuck with a body that has some kind of brain damage.

[OGHoosier]

19 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

My personal thought is that the human spirit is not some sort of second personality inside us. It's difficult for me to articulate what I want to, but I believe that our human consciousness is composed of our spirit consciousness (the consciousness we have always had since the premortality) and a lot of interference, if you will, which comes from the spirit being fused into a temporal form and thus subjected to temporal constraints such as lusts, brain architecture, etc. 

I think that the existence of behavioral disorders in humans, especially those relating to brain damage, proves that the physical brain has a role in how we formulate our actions. Behavioral disorders aren't a matter of the body being unable to obey the commands of our consciousness, rather they involve brain structure at the level of intentional decision-making. Furthermore, cases of personality changes after traumatic brain injuries are well documented, wherein somebody's very personality is altered in correlation with damage to their brain structure. Therefore, the brain can't be viewed, IMO, as simply a control console that a perfectly sovereign spirit somehow uses, though I don't claim revelation on this point at all. I could be wrong, but that is what reason and the available facts lead me to believe. I think the functional center of our experience in mortality is the brain. Even spiritual inspiration, to me, is an embodied experience. 

I believe that it's useless to try and draw distinctions between spirit and body. Joseph Smith taught that the spirit and body form the soul of a man and that spirit and body, inseparably connected, bring a fullness of joy. When God breathed life into Adam, he became a living soul, not just a fleshy robot driven by an internal spirit. I think our spirits and bodies are completely fused. There's no separation at all. Our brains are the architecture, the mainframe, that our Father has built to be our command center in this body. That's why we don't remember anything of premortality; God has given it to our brains to be the center of memory and function in this life. We are here in this earth to learn how to live righteously as dual beings so that we can be perfected dual beings in eternity. I believe in Eternal Man as a unified whole where body and spirit are fused into one perfect being, uniting the best of both body and spirit to the point that they can be separated no longer because they are not functionally different. 

I'd like to add an amendment in that I don't think that our spirits have no role. I believe in free agency and I don't see a way in which a deterministic computer brain operating solely on computational impulses could ever turn against addiction, for instance. Yet it has been done. The brain can be rewired and we can choose to do things which rewire it. Free will is not an illusion. I believe our spirits have a great role to play in our consciousness and in our agency, but they do so by interacting with the brain and the brain with them. 

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I'd like to add an amendment in that I don't think that our spirits have no role. I believe in free agency and I don't see a way in which a deterministic computer brain operating solely on computational impulses could ever turn against addiction, for instance. Yet it has been done. The brain can be rewired and we can choose to do things which rewire it. Free will is not an illusion. I believe our spirits have a great role to play in our consciousness and in our agency, but they do so by interacting with the brain and the brain with them. 

Or it all could be circular question-begging semantic confusions based on different definitions of "brain" and "free will" and "consciousness", "agency" etc.,  and presuming that all these are independent forces or entities or things other than different productions of the brain

One could simply postulate that these are all just different functions of the brain including fighting addiction- surely an addict and an addict's brain can be able to see that addiction is not among those behaviors which lead to happiness.

After all, addicts kick the habit without a brain transplant on a regular basis. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

Edited November 6, 2019 by mfbukowski

[CV75]

12 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I'd like to add an amendment in that I don't think that our spirits have no role. I believe in free agency and I don't see a way in which a deterministic computer brain operating solely on computational impulses could ever turn against addiction, for instance. Yet it has been done. The brain can be rewired and we can choose to do things which rewire it. Free will is not an illusion. I believe our spirits have a great role to play in our consciousness and in our agency, but they do so by interacting with the brain and the brain with them. 

The spirit and the brain are both matter, just at different levels of fineness or purity. They are connected (separably in mortality, inseparably in the resurrection) and become one new kind of matter unique to either of the former constituents.

If the spirit alone directed the body, a spirit hand would animate the physical hand, and it doesn't work that way. Neither the spirit nor the body could do anything related to the soul's salvation in this world without the other. Such a spirit, or the Holy Spirit, or even a devil, might communicate messages to the living, but that is the extent of its action (the mortals are doing the work of picking up and incorporating the message).

So I see it not as an interaction between spirit and body, but a union into an entirely new substance than either was before.

Edited November 6, 2019 by CV75

[Calm]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

The spirit and the brain are both matter, just at different levels of fineness or purity.

Meaning what?  How would you define fineness or purity?

[Meadowchik]

15 hours ago, Metis_LDS said:

When I was much younger I worked for a company that sold a highly complicated piece of medical equipment.  After the hospitals purchased these some want extra available software options.  Well guess what every software option was already installed from the factory.  So when the hospitals paid for options we would swap a chip to let them access the extra options.  Are human brains so big because everything is already installed waiting to be unlocked.  It is said that the most complex thing we know is the human brain.

I would think so. Our genes seem to work this way, so it can follow that our brains have analogous algorithms.

[longview]

15 hours ago, Ahab said:

Since the brain without the spirit will simply not work, I think any potential "mind" power a person might be able to attain would come from the power of their spirit.  I usually consider the mind and the spirit to be pretty much the same thing.

Maybe when we receive a fullness of celestial glory we will be able to do things that a telestial level mind is not able to do.  To understand things and visualize things that a telestial mind simply can not understand.

I now understand the glory of God to be intelligence, so it makes sense that a person with a telestial level mind can't understand things that require a celestial level mind/mentality.  

Abraham 3:26 And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.

D&C 138:50 For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage.

Blue highlight:  I consider the "second estate" body (the carnal telestial physical body) to be the clay tabernacle that houses our spirit.  Jesus described the clay tabernacle to be the temple (we must be faithful in caring for it and make it look comely).  I believe the spirit person to be the core of our self identity and self awareness.  But the physical mortal body gives us additional attributes and capabilities that we did NOT possess in the pre-existence.

Green highlight:  When we die, we will become acutely aware our loss of certain capabilities and will yearn to be reunited back with physical bodies.  Even though our core self awareness and being is still centered in our spirit bodies.

Orange highlight:  But we will NOT be resurrected with plain earthly mortal bodies.  Instead we will acquire immortal glorified bodies in the resurrection.  Most to the Telestial Kingdom, some to the Terrestrial and a few to Celestial Glory.  Each level being orders of magnitude greater than the previous.  Our mental and intellectual powers will be MUCH greater (beyond our abilities to speculate).  All wonderfully integrated and seamless.

[Metis_LDS]

Some facts about the brain (hopefully accurate)                                                                                                     An adult brain weighs about 3 pounds.   About 75 percent of the brain is made up of water. This means that dehydration, even in small amounts, can have a negative effect on the brain functions.  The human brain will grow three times its size in the first year of life. It continues to grow until you’re about 18 years old.  Information runs between neurons in your brain for everything we see, think, or do. These neurons move information at different speeds. The fastest speed for information to pass between neurons is about 250 mph.  The brain can’t feel pain. It interprets pain signals sent to it, but it does not feel pain.  The human brain gets smaller as we get older. This usually happens sometime after middle age.  Your brain uses 20 percent of the oxygen and blood in your body.

[Ahab]

48 minutes ago, longview said:

Abraham 3:26 And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.

D&C 138:50 For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage.

Blue highlight:  I consider the "second estate" body (the carnal telestial physical body) to be the clay tabernacle that houses our spirit.  Jesus described the clay tabernacle to be the temple (we must be faithful in caring for it and make it look comely).  I believe the spirit person to be the core of our self identity and self awareness.  But the physical mortal body gives us additional attributes and capabilities that we did NOT possess in the pre-existence.

Green highlight:  When we die, we will become acutely aware our loss of certain capabilities and will yearn to be reunited back with physical bodies.  Even though our core self awareness and being is still centered in our spirit bodies.

Orange highlight:  But we will NOT be resurrected with plain earthly mortal bodies.  Instead we will acquire immortal glorified bodies in the resurrection.  Most to the Telestial Kingdom, some to the Terrestrial and a few to Celestial Glory.  Each level being orders of magnitude greater than the previous.  Our mental and intellectual powers will be MUCH greater (beyond our abilities to speculate).  All wonderfully integrated and seamless.

I agree with everything you said here, and I was looking hard for anything I might not agree with.  I still can't really imagine what it will be like for me to not have my physical body, though. I will need to experience what it is like to lose it to be able to understand what that is like, I think. I'm sure I'll still see and hear and know the things I know now, unless maybe we have another experience like when we came here where we won't remember what we did in this life.  I doubt we'll go through that again, though. I think we'll remember everything about what we were like here, and what we experienced here, and then compare the differences to see what it is like without our other body then.

I'm also pretty sure that the differences between orders of glory are primarily differing degrees of intelligence, so receiving more glory than we have now will mean receiving more intelligence than we have now.  Knowing more, including knowing how to do more. If knowledge is power, as I believe it is, then the more we know the more we understand and the more we can do, including things we can't even imagine right now.  Like how to fly, or go up into the clouds and then come down again, like our Lord and our Father have done on some occasions. It doesn't make sense to me now unless maybe there is some sort of transporter beam that beams them up and down, but that doesn't really make much sense to me either.  But they have indeed moved through the air, or at least it has looked that way.  I'm kind of excited to find out how they do that. And how they create planets, too. Lots of good stuff to look forward to knowing and doing, for those who become that intelligent.

[Metis_LDS]

3 hours ago, CV75 said:

So I see it not as an interaction between spirit and body, but a union into an entirely new substance than either was before.

You said sometime powerful there. It has always been in my face but I never saw it before reading your words.  So when we became premortal (whatever that process is) we became a new entity a new being. When we got our bodies we again became something new.  In the resurrection we will become new again.  Making new seems very important to God and of course ourselves.

[Ahab]

2 hours ago, Metis_LDS said:

You said sometime powerful there. It has always been in my face but I never saw it before reading your words.  So when we became premortal (whatever that process is) we became a new entity a new being. When we got our bodies we again became something new.  In the resurrection we will become new again.  Making new seems very important to God and of course ourselves.

I suppose it depends on what you and God have in mind when you use the word "new".  I would say we are some reproductions of our parents, some duplications with some differences, rather than something new, but I suppose I could understand why someone might use the word "new" to refer to another edition or version of something.  God does use the word "new" on occasion but some wise guy was fond of saying "there is nothing new under the sun" so I suppose it just depends on what someone means when they say something.  Nothing wrong, necessarily, just something else of something whatever the something happens to be.

[Ahab]

2 hours ago, Metis_LDS said:

Some facts about the brain (hopefully accurate)                                                                                                     An adult brain weighs about 3 pounds.   About 75 percent of the brain is made up of water. This means that dehydration, even in small amounts, can have a negative effect on the brain functions.  The human brain will grow three times its size in the first year of life. It continues to grow until you’re about 18 years old.  Information runs between neurons in your brain for everything we see, think, or do. These neurons move information at different speeds. The fastest speed for information to pass between neurons is about 250 mph.  The brain can’t feel pain. It interprets pain signals sent to it, but it does not feel pain.  The human brain gets smaller as we get older. This usually happens sometime after middle age.  Your brain uses 20 percent of the oxygen and blood in your body.

I wonder how much air weighs.  Air something like the breath of life.  Air usually isn't just nothing, there are particles in air and the particles must weigh something.  Maybe too little to notice or measure but those particles of matter must weigh more than nothing.

So when our spirit merges with our physical body, how much extra does the body weigh then, and how much weight does that body lose when that spirit leaves that body?  I'm just wondering.  I don't know if any of us know the answer to that or how to find out since the weight of a body when the spirit leaves may change for some other reason than just because the spirit has left that body.  

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

Meaning what?  How would you define fineness or purity?

D&C 131

Quote

 

7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All aspirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by bpurer eyes;

8 We cannot asee it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all bmatter.

 

I suggest you ask whoever wrote this.

[Metis_LDS]

41 minutes ago, Ahab said:

So when our spirit merges with our physical body, how much extra does the body weigh then, and how much weight does that body lose when that spirit leaves that body?  I'm just wondering.  I don't know if any of us know the answer to that or how to find out since the weight of a body when the spirit leaves may change for some other reason than just because the spirit has left that body.  

Yeah this has been tried even to the point of having beds on scales before death. As far as I know no real difference in weight was seen at the point of death.

[Ahab]

5 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

Yeah this has been tried even to the point of having beds on scales before death. As far as I know no real difference in weight was seen at the point of death.

So from that I would conclude that spirit matter doesn't weigh very much, unless maybe you put a WHOOOOOLE LOT OF IT together in one place.

Now my follow-up question is how much will a resurrected physical body weigh?  Or just a resurrected brain?   Still only 3 pounds?  If spirits won't ever separate from their resurrected bodies (which would be death) I suppose we may never know for sure.

Still, though, somehow, I would like to find out.

[CV75]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

Meaning what?  How would you define fineness or purity?

I would say finer matter and purer matter, the more fundamental building blocks of material as we have been able to scientifically observe and theorize so far.

6 hours ago, Metis_LDS said:

You said sometime powerful there. It has always been in my face but I never saw it before reading your words.  So when we became premortal (whatever that process is) we became a new entity a new being. When we got our bodies we again became something new.  In the resurrection we will become new again.  Making new seems very important to God and of course ourselves.

Yes, even the “passing through” of one substance through another changes both forever. In some quantum theories, even time is shown to be a substance on an extremely fine and pure level.

[Calm]

Just now, CV75 said:

the more fundamental building blocks of material as we have been able to scientifically observe and theorize so far.

So you are guessing spirit may be quarks or something that makes up quarks?