BaseOnAc1d
04-23-2008, 7:52 PM
So this is a paper I wrote on free will and the soul (lack of) and I thought it could spark some discussion here. It's a bit long, but I promise it's good.
Also, I'm turning this in (might just be my last high school paper if I can drop english next year,) so if you want to critique it feel free. I promise that's not why I'm posting it though.
Through the last several millennia man has constantly conceived myths or gods to explain phenomena that they did not understand. Pagans attributed the weather to various deities; with the advent of satellites we now understand its cause and have even begun to predict it. Since the origin of man was still unknown, the concept of creationism took hold in many religions. It was a puzzling mystery to society and could only be explained by divine intervention, until the theory of evolution. Religion still serves a similar role in today’s society. A conundrum that has irritated philosophers since pre-historic times is that of free will and the human spirit. We wonder what separates us from other animals, and why we have progressed to the point where we can ask such a question. The common approach to this problem is to introduce the soul. Saint Augustine, dictating what would become the widely accepted definition of the soul, once described it as “a certain substance partaking in reason and suited to rule the body.” The soul plays a similar role in the manifestation of free will as God does as the creator of time and space. It is a simple answer that fails to actually give an answer.
Some say that the soul, a metaphysical structure, is exercising free will and humans are the vessels to carry out its actions. Consider the following situation, a stray photon hits the retina, stimulating a cone cell, less than a second later a man lifts his hand. Whatever image he read from his retina is irrelevant; it caused the man to raise his hand. Between these two events is a chain of reactions; a specific path of neurons takes in the wave, processes it, and transfers it to a muscle somewhere else. There is a distinct cause (photon) and effect (muscle twitch), but the development to this is still unclear. However, in order for a human to twitch a muscle just the right charges must be manipulated in the brain, causing an impulse to travel down the arm. Therefore, a soul, or any manifestation of free will for that matter, must have some tangible aspect to it: the energy and means to move ions anywhere in the brain. This could effectively bring the brain out of a clockwork cycle destined to a certain outcome by the infallible laws of physics set by God. As no such force has been detected, it seems unlikely that this force exists at all.
A generally accepted, and rather intuitive postulate of physics states that if one has knowledge of every particle in a system as well as every physical law governing them, it would be possible to calculate properties of every particle at any future time (Quantum Mechanics has, in some ways, refuted this claim, but the postulate can be edited to allow leeway for probability over determinism.) Therefore, unraveling the details of what happens between the photon impact and the muscle twitch would reveal when, and if, free will interferes with the predictable chemical reactions of the brain. Our knowledge of this process is limited by the resolution of functional MRI brain scans, which are themselves limited by how much energy we can safely focus on a human. However, we can often predict the actions of a human or even alter them (through medicine or magnetic waves.) We do know that this process often takes place without the knowledge of the consciousness. All instinctual and even many informed decisions are made several seconds before humans are consciously aware of them. Such decisions are similar to those knee-jerk reactions of the spinal cord in that the human is only conscious of them after they are made. These findings seem to attribute more powers of free will and the human spirit to the physical brain.
The soul has introduced the concept that the mind is separate from the body; this line of thinking requires free will to manifest as a metaphysical entity. Accepting consciousness and personality as aspects of the brain itself makes it seem more plausible. Aristotle once argued that the soul is “an actuality of a living body.” That is, it is tied to and comes from, the corpus. As the body dies, the soul follows suit, it is the part of a human that grants free will. In other words, free will is simply the function of the brain that facilitates intelligent decision making. Evidence to this lies in neurological disorders. Changes to sectors of the brain can often translate to changes in the actions and personality of a human. For example, damage to the temporal lobe can result in increased aggression and social regression while damage to the frontal lobe often results in juvenile behavior. This indicates that the human spirit is entirely human and is tied to physical aspects of the brain. Otherwise, why would a free will, which would remain unaffected by changes of a physical variety, choose to act differently after an accident?
A major problem in our understanding of the brain stems from our inability to objectively interpret how we think. Words like thought or emotion reveal the fundamental difference between the mechanics of the brain, and our perception of its outcome. As we understand the intricacies of neural networks better, these words, which allow room for spiritual rationale, will give way to physics. Even derived from physical law, free will retains an identical control over the human as a soul. In any given situation, it reacts based on the sum of its external influences, psychological experience and current physical state. In this case however, the human spirit has been normalized with its surroundings; it is no longer an unexplainable phenomenon.
Also, I'm turning this in (might just be my last high school paper if I can drop english next year,) so if you want to critique it feel free. I promise that's not why I'm posting it though.
Through the last several millennia man has constantly conceived myths or gods to explain phenomena that they did not understand. Pagans attributed the weather to various deities; with the advent of satellites we now understand its cause and have even begun to predict it. Since the origin of man was still unknown, the concept of creationism took hold in many religions. It was a puzzling mystery to society and could only be explained by divine intervention, until the theory of evolution. Religion still serves a similar role in today’s society. A conundrum that has irritated philosophers since pre-historic times is that of free will and the human spirit. We wonder what separates us from other animals, and why we have progressed to the point where we can ask such a question. The common approach to this problem is to introduce the soul. Saint Augustine, dictating what would become the widely accepted definition of the soul, once described it as “a certain substance partaking in reason and suited to rule the body.” The soul plays a similar role in the manifestation of free will as God does as the creator of time and space. It is a simple answer that fails to actually give an answer.
Some say that the soul, a metaphysical structure, is exercising free will and humans are the vessels to carry out its actions. Consider the following situation, a stray photon hits the retina, stimulating a cone cell, less than a second later a man lifts his hand. Whatever image he read from his retina is irrelevant; it caused the man to raise his hand. Between these two events is a chain of reactions; a specific path of neurons takes in the wave, processes it, and transfers it to a muscle somewhere else. There is a distinct cause (photon) and effect (muscle twitch), but the development to this is still unclear. However, in order for a human to twitch a muscle just the right charges must be manipulated in the brain, causing an impulse to travel down the arm. Therefore, a soul, or any manifestation of free will for that matter, must have some tangible aspect to it: the energy and means to move ions anywhere in the brain. This could effectively bring the brain out of a clockwork cycle destined to a certain outcome by the infallible laws of physics set by God. As no such force has been detected, it seems unlikely that this force exists at all.
A generally accepted, and rather intuitive postulate of physics states that if one has knowledge of every particle in a system as well as every physical law governing them, it would be possible to calculate properties of every particle at any future time (Quantum Mechanics has, in some ways, refuted this claim, but the postulate can be edited to allow leeway for probability over determinism.) Therefore, unraveling the details of what happens between the photon impact and the muscle twitch would reveal when, and if, free will interferes with the predictable chemical reactions of the brain. Our knowledge of this process is limited by the resolution of functional MRI brain scans, which are themselves limited by how much energy we can safely focus on a human. However, we can often predict the actions of a human or even alter them (through medicine or magnetic waves.) We do know that this process often takes place without the knowledge of the consciousness. All instinctual and even many informed decisions are made several seconds before humans are consciously aware of them. Such decisions are similar to those knee-jerk reactions of the spinal cord in that the human is only conscious of them after they are made. These findings seem to attribute more powers of free will and the human spirit to the physical brain.
The soul has introduced the concept that the mind is separate from the body; this line of thinking requires free will to manifest as a metaphysical entity. Accepting consciousness and personality as aspects of the brain itself makes it seem more plausible. Aristotle once argued that the soul is “an actuality of a living body.” That is, it is tied to and comes from, the corpus. As the body dies, the soul follows suit, it is the part of a human that grants free will. In other words, free will is simply the function of the brain that facilitates intelligent decision making. Evidence to this lies in neurological disorders. Changes to sectors of the brain can often translate to changes in the actions and personality of a human. For example, damage to the temporal lobe can result in increased aggression and social regression while damage to the frontal lobe often results in juvenile behavior. This indicates that the human spirit is entirely human and is tied to physical aspects of the brain. Otherwise, why would a free will, which would remain unaffected by changes of a physical variety, choose to act differently after an accident?
A major problem in our understanding of the brain stems from our inability to objectively interpret how we think. Words like thought or emotion reveal the fundamental difference between the mechanics of the brain, and our perception of its outcome. As we understand the intricacies of neural networks better, these words, which allow room for spiritual rationale, will give way to physics. Even derived from physical law, free will retains an identical control over the human as a soul. In any given situation, it reacts based on the sum of its external influences, psychological experience and current physical state. In this case however, the human spirit has been normalized with its surroundings; it is no longer an unexplainable phenomenon.