Why We are Not Our Brains, but Beings with Souls By Brian Simpson

 The ordinary person probably does not think much about this except on Sunday, perhaps, but philosophers and theolgicians have pondered the nature of the human mind and conscious experience, since, well, probably as long as pondering was made. Most intellectuals are materialists, especially those in the natural sciences, seeing the mind as part of nature and explicable by neurology. This is known as scientific unification, the idea that physics supplies the basic ideas about the fundamentals of reality and the rest of the sciences and philosophy fill in the gaps. There is no room for the immortal soul, or God as distinct from the physical world here.

There are vulnerabilities to this world view, mainly coming from the foundations of physics, with the fundamental theory of subatomic matter, quantum mechanics, seemingly requiring an observer to make sense of the abstract formalism. This is highly technical and beyond my grasp. But then there are the facts of conscious experience, that does not seem to be reducible to brain processes. This is called the "hard problem of consciousness," and academics across the fields are working to show that consciousness can too be reduced to the material. But, not all thinkers.

Dr Heidi Klessig, author of The Brain Death Fallacy,accepts an alternative view which philosopher Callie Joubert describes it this way: "…the soul is an agent, and the body and its parts the instruments the agent uses to accomplish things in the world. In Romans 6:13 it is written: '[A]nd do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.'" [Emphases in the original.]

The materialist identity theory implies that people who are brain dead, are just that, dead. But Dr Klessig has noted cases where so-called brain-dead people have still responded to human interaction in a minimally conscious way. Thus, we are not our brains, but something more, as the scriptural verse quoted above indicates. We have a soul.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/we_are_not_our_brains.html

"In my book, The Brain Death Fallacy, I quote neurologist James Bernat: "How the brain generates conscious awareness remains the most intractable mystery of and the greatest remaining challenge to neuroscience. As of 2018, neuroscientists have mapped many of the important connections necessary for human consciousness, but the essential neurophysiological and neurophilosophical problem of how brain tissue yields human subjective experience remains almost completely unknown."

In Consciousness and Human Identity, philosopher Jerry Fodor puts it more bluntly, "Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness."

The traditional view of humankind is that we have a dual nature as a body-spirit unity. We have a physical body which is directed by an immaterial soul or spirit. Very few people are pure materialists, believing we are just "meat in motion." But strangely, the notion continues that with just a little more research, we will discover how the physical brain imagines, rejoices, fears, or is ashamed. And the relatively new concept of "brain death" is the result of equating people with their physical brains. If we are our brains, when our brains stop functioning, we cease to exist.

A human person is an amazing amalgamation of thoughts, feelings, memories, insights, and perceptions. A brain is an organ that allows us to translate these spiritual qualities into actions. We are not our brains.

In his book, Erasing Death. The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, resuscitation expert Dr. Sam Parnia posits that the brain isn't like the hard drive on a computer (which actually stores memories in itself), but is rather like the Random Access Memory (RAM), which uses items found on the hard drive to perform tasks and functions.

Philosopher Callie Joubert describes it this way: "…the soul is an agent, and the body and its parts the instruments the agent uses to accomplish things in the world. In Romans 6:13 it is written: '[A]nd do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.'" [Emphases in the original.]

If the brain is who we are, suffering a stroke causes not only the loss of physical function, but the loss of part of our humanity. None of us would deny the humanity of a stroke victim, but this same logic leads to categorizing people with severe brain damage as being somehow "dead." Conveniently, this removes their civil rights and allows their bodies to be plundered for their valuable, viable organs.

Dr. Robert Truog wrote about "brain dead" patient Jahi McMath in the American Medical Association (AMA) Journal of Ethics:

For readers unfamiliar with what patients who are brain dead look like, it is likely that Jahi looked very similar to other sick children in the intensive care unit (ICU): her eyes were closed, she did not respond to her mother's voice, and she needed a ventilator to breathe. Visually, it would not seem unreasonable for Jahi's mother to question why clinicians were telling her that Jahi was dead; other children in the ICU that looked just like Jahi were getting better. Nevertheless, when Jahi's mother asked about the discrepancy between what she saw and what she was being told, one clinician allegedly responded, "What is it that you don't understand? She's dead, dead, dead." This response seemed to imply that Jahi's mother was simply unable to understand what was obvious to everyone else. In fact, however, Jahi's mother was perceiving the situation clearly.

Jahi McMath went on to live for nearly five more years, and began responding to her mother's voice and following commands. Before her death, two neurologists testified that even though she had been "correctly" diagnosed according to the brain death guidelines of the time, she was no longer brain dead but in a minimally conscious state."