Tuesday, August 7, 2012

A Brain without Spirit


It has been possible to broadly study the anatomy of the brain. The way the chemicals influence the personality demystifies the dark matter of human anatomy which is the study of the brain. Despite leaps in the scientific approach to the study of the brain there is a fundamental aspect which holds the most important organ in darkness. It is the existence of mind. There are diverse definitions of the mind. One is that it is a stored warehouse of emotions and thoughts that could not be expressed over time. Another definition points out that the mind is tantamount to consciousness without which the brain would be rendered numb. There are dualistic theories and materialistic theories of the mind. The dualists liken the mind to the spirit while the materialists hold the hypothesis that the mind can be reduced to organic terms, which supports 'Medical Science'. If the mind were to be a spirit then the phenomenon of memory defies it. If the mind were to be a spirit then why is it that some people lose memory when they are alive? It has been testified as one grows older that memory becomes weak in many cases because the brain maybe decaying. This contradicts the dualistic theory.


Let us take the materialistic view where the mind is supposed to be reducible to matter. If the mind is nothing but a physical component then what triggers the flow of chemicals? Why is there something called ‘personality’? Why are there individual differences in the consequence called ‘personality’? There are answers to these questions. Chemicals, personality and differences are explained by the materialist in that they are consequences of a complex process of conditioning. This conditioning is the result of responses to stimuli from the environment. They start off as instinctive responses in infants and are later expressed with sophistication which is the result of the norms that are observed. As emotions get more and more channelized and as there are many responses possible a person reacts in a predictable manner which is the result of self-programming.


The fact that personality is a complex mechanism is because it has taken years to construct it in the first place. We do not have the means to factor in the number of variables that go into the formation of personality. But it is not the result of involuntary calculation. It is more to do with manipulation which the determinists hold to be predictable due to predispositions which have nothing to do with the existing life time. In this manner they account for the existence of a spirit which is beyond the brain. But this to me is not convincing as the spirit cannot be conscious without a brain on one hand and it cannot have any personality to carry forward to a brain because memory itself is prone to destruction in the same lifetime. There are enough reasons to account for personality in one life time. Just because it is complex does not mean that there is a spirit beyond the brain. At the same time we cannot jump to the conclusion that there is no spirit at all. Why is that? The spirit itself can be the consequence of the way a human being finds himself forced to manoeuvre his way through the events of the world. The spirit can be that very personality which is the result of a defense mechanism. It is deeper than ‘ego’ and more subversive than matter but it does not precede matter.  It could be in other words the last stage of the evolution of matter. It could be a creative product of the limitations of matter. 


A brain can still function without the existence of the spirit but the spirit cannot exist without the brain. The spirit can be thought to be an abstract reaction to the experience of existence. It is the seat of personality as the latter can be observed while the former can only be inferred. Whether this inference is valid or not cannot be determined by the existing instruments of Science as neither memory nor abstract experience can be observed by them. But what can be inferred is that there is a creative response at some point where instinctive reaction is curbed and diverted. Scientists are still grappling with the phenomena of creativity and do not have access to the variables in question. Or maybe they are just limited by what they know. There is some unlearning required without which the education that we undergo itself can be an enemy to progress.