dr. egnor continues:

“consciousness is not a spot, a lobe, or even a process in the brain. . . . the widely accepted recent theory that consciousness resides in the prefrontal cortex . . . has come under serious challenge. scientists at the allen brain institute reported on a multi-year study testing . . . the two leading materialistic theories of consciousness. . . . materialistic theories of the mind that each posit a different kind of brain socket (or cpu or whatever) for consciousness, although both theories posit that the prefrontal cortex [is] the region of the brain . . . essential to consciousness. [these research scientists report that] the prefrontal cortex supports neither theory. . . . you don’t need a prefrontal cortex, or any cortex at all, or even brain hemispheres, to be conscious. you need brain parts to do some mental things - to see, to move, to feel, to remember, etc., but consciousness is not made of meat. you need a soul . . . to be conscious. . . . consciousness is the ability conferred by our . . . soul to have experience [or an awareness] - the means, not the object, of our thoughts. . . . the search for consciousness in the . . . prefrontal cortex or anywhere in the brain is, and will always be, a fool’s errand.”

Dr. egnor describes a “spiritual soul” in this article. i have chosen to delete “spiritual” since in my writings, my books and blog posts, i differentiate between the human soul (mind, will, emotion, conscience) and the human spirit “breathed into man at his creation which is the means for personal communion with the holy spirit of the triune god the father and his son jesus christ. it is the portal through which communion occurs with the human soul.

i look forward to discussing elements of the book by egnor and o’leary, the immortal mind: a neurosurgeon’s case for the existence of the soul, due to be released june 3, 2025. it should provide compelling support for dualist interaction between the immaterial mind of god and of man and the material components of the brain’s neural synaptic networks.

i continue with the following excerpt:

“[egnor defines] consciousness in a simple way: it is the means by which we have experience. by ‘experience’ i mean the spectrum of the mental powers we use - moving, perceiving, remembering, emoting, imagining, understanding, judging, willing, etc. by ‘means’ i mean that consciousness is the instrument that enables experience. but it is not something that can be known itself.”

(I parenthetically add that the experience also involves an awareness, a cognitive function of the immaterial mind/soul.)

egnor continues:

“. . . consciousness is a power of our soul that is always invisible to us, because it is the instrument, not the object, or our knowledge. it is the means by which we experience, not what we experience. thus we can’t ‘find’ it in the brain.”

Dr. egnor has written a very challenging article entitled “Why much current consciousness research is a fool’s errand,” dated may 4, 2025 IN MIND MATTERS. I will be posting selected excerpts from this article in the blogs to come.

i begin with the following comment, “modern neuroscientists still search the brain for the center of consciousness. it is no longer understood as a socket because these neuroscientists are mostly mATERIALISTS AND THUS REJECT THE VERY EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. Rather, they seek a sort of consciousness CPU, AS IF THE BRAIN WERE a meat computer. . . . the fundamental problem with the present-day neuroscience of consciousness is that neuroscientists struggle even to define the term. consciousness is not synonymous with AROUSAL - YOU CAN BE CONSCIOUS OF DREAMS WHILE ASLEEP AND THUS VERY UN-AROUSED. at least 40% of people in the deepest level of un-arousal (persistent vegetative state) are conscious, as shown by careful testing. this inability to even define consciousness with clarity is emblematic of the conceptual mess that modern neuroscience hAS BECOME. ENTIRE DISCIPLINES OF SCIENTISTS ARE FEVERISHLY STUDYING THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SOMETHING THEY CAN’T EVEN DEFINE.”

MORE TO COME. PLEASE STAY TUNED. THANK YOU.

i continue to search for articles that support the immateriality of the human mind. Michael egnor and denise o’leary have coauthored a book entitled the immortal mind. i plan to discuss their points in the future while awaiting its arrival at my doorstep. in the meantime, i wish to review the material presented by dr. egnor in an earlier blog post. this material is compelling for dualist interaction.

michael egnor has authored a review of gray matters: a biography of brain surgery, authored by theodore h. schwartz, (2024). dr. eGnor quotes dr. schwartz, “as a brain surgeon . . . i’ve severed the brain in two and watched in amazement as my patients wake up feeling like their complete and undivided selves.” (february 17, 2025) . . . after split brain surgery, patients wake up feeling completely unified, like just one person, despite the surgical disconnection of the two halves of their brain. . . . the split-brain patient’s sense of a unified self is real, not an illusion. . . . there is clear neuroscientific evidence for unified consciousness in patients with split-brains. . . . there remains a genuine unity to the human mind.”

dr. egnor cites neuroscientist justine sergent who “studied split-brain patientS and found that while some perceptual abilities are indeed split - for example, the right side of the visual field is seen via the left hemisphere and vice-versa - there remains a genuine unity to the human mind. sergent showed images of different objects to each of the two split hemispheres, and found that patients could compare the objects reasonably accurately, even though no part of the brain perceived both objects.” she went on to state, “. . . even when the two disconnected hemispheres receive different information, the commissurotomized brain works as a single and unified organism.” neuroscientist yair pinto and his colleagues “found the same thing.”

dr. egnor states that “sergent and pinto found that patients with split-brain surgery did have subtle perceptual disabilities associated with the split nature of their brains, but they nonetheless were capable of integrating the split information and remained one conscious individual,” [demonstrating cognitive perceptual integration].

egnor continued, “the normal sense that split-brain patients have that they are one person with one center of consciousness is not an illusion. they are, in fact, one person with one mind, even after splitting the brain hemispheres. this means that there is an aspect of the mind - ‘soul’ is perhaps a better word here - that is not split by the neurosurgeons’ scalpel. . . . each of us is a physical creature with a single spiritual soul, which is immaterial and cannot be split with a knife. this is not only the perennial teaching of the great religions, but the evidence of the best neuroscience.”

this discussion provides further, compelling evidence for dualist interaction between the immaterial HUMAN mind (and mind of god) and the material synaptic components of the human brain, A BIDIRECTIONAL INTERACTION DISCUSSED IN MY BOOKS AND BLOGS.

In addition to the bidirectional interaction between the immaterial mind of Man and Mind of God, his Holy Spirit, via the material components of the synaptic networks of the human brain, we are also learning that an awareness of the human mind and soul persists beyond the physical networks of the human brain as is the case of NDE and OBe. As the writings of Dr. EGnor state, the human mind and soul are not reducible to the human brain but exist, are active, beyond it! The human body and its brain are material and are not everlasting, but the mind/soul of Man are not temporal but persist beyond the earthly life of man. Is it possible that God is giving us clues, or progressive revelations, if you will, of the everlasting life to come?

in my writings i have endeavored to present compelling evidence for the immateriality of the human mind, created in the image of the mind of god, interactive in a causal sense with the material synaptic networks of the human brain. over a lifetime waveforms of electrochemical activity are instantiated within linguistic neural codes that are archived in memory, providing for a bidirectional personal communion between the mind of god and the mind and soul of man. my last blog post discussed this issue. in my next post i shall expand on this topic.

I include an article cited by Dr. egnor confirming dualist interaction in split brain patients. It was presented in Mind Matters.

A prominent neurosurgeon writes of his “amazement” at discovering that the patient with a split brain is still a single individual

Michael Egnor

February 20, 2025 

Dr. Theodore Schwartz is a prominent Cornell University neurosurgeon. In addition to publishing many scholarly articles, he is the author of Gray Matters: a Biography of Brain Surgery (2024). He’s a very thoughtful guy and his recent essay at Psyche, “What removing large chunks of brain taught me about selfhood”, caught my attention.

Dr. Schwartz: “As a brain surgeon…I’ve severed the brain in two and watched in amazement as my patients wake up feeling like their complete and undivided selves.” (February 17, 2025)

I’ve had the same experience. After split brain surgery, patients wake up feeling completely unified, like just one person, despite the surgical disconnection of the two halves of their brain. A few patients have transient disorders like “alien hand syndrome” but this is rare. By and large, these people are normal in ordinary activities of life.

Dr. Schwartz: “When I first did this type of operation, I had fantasies that they might suddenly refer to themselves as ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. Thankfully, this never occurred…the patient’s sense of a unified self is the illusion.”

That’s not true. The split-brain patient’s sense of a unified self is real, not an illusion.

I say this for two reasons.

1. It makes no sense to say that two people have an illusion that they are one person. To have an illusion presupposes that the subject with the illusion is one person. Two people would have two illusions, or they would have similar illusions, or share illusions, or conspire to claim to have the same illusion, etc. But having an illusion— even an illusion that I am one person after having my brain split in two— presupposes that I am a single person that has the illusion.  The claim that two people have one illusion— not just share similar illusions, in which case they are just two people with two similar illusions— makes no sense.

• There is clear neuroscientific evidence for unified consciousness in patients with split-brains. Neuroscientist Justine Sergent studied split-brain patients and found that while some perceptual abilities are indeed split— for example, the right side of the visual field is seen via the left hemisphere, and vice versa— there remains a genuine unity to the human mind. Sergent showed images of different objects to each of the two split hemispheres, and found that patients could compare the objects reasonably accurately, even though no part of the brain perceived both objects:

From her paper: “[We found] the coexistence of perceptual disunity and behavioural unity, and they suggest that, even when the two disconnected hemispheres receive different information, the commissurotomized brain works as a single and unified organism.”

Neuroscientist Yair Pinto and his colleagues, who extended Sergent’s work, found the same thing:

Across a wide variety of tasks, split-brain patients with a complete and radiologically confirmed transection of the corpus callosum showed full awareness of presence, and well above chance-level recognition of location, orientation and identity of stimuli throughout the entire visual field… These findings suggest that severing the cortical connections between hemispheres splits visual perception, but does not create two independent conscious perceivers within one brain.

Sergent and Pinto found that patients with split-brain surgery did have subtle perceptual disabilities associated with the split nature of their brains, but they nonetheless were capable of integrating the split information and remained one conscious individual.

In other words, the normal sense that split-brain patients have that they are one person with one center of consciousness is not an illusion. They are, in fact, one person with one mind, even after splitting the brain hemispheres. This means that there is an aspect of the mind— “soul” is perhaps a better word here— that is not split by the neurosurgeon’s scalpel.

Our conscious unity, even after split-brain surgery, is not an illusion. Each of us is a physical creature with a single spiritual soul, which is immaterial and cannot be split with a knife. This is not only the perennial teaching of the great religions, but the evidence of the best neuroscience.

Michael Egnor

Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Michael R. Egnor, MD, is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, has served as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, and is an award-winning brain surgeon. He was named one of New York’s best doctors by the New York Magazine in 2005. He received his medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. His research on hydrocephalus has been published in journals including Journal of Neurosurgery, Pediatrics, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Research. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association in the United States and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

in mind matters, february 21, 2025, there is reference to an article at quanta that cites anil ananthaswamy, who states “that chatbot developers are beginning to face up to the fundamental limitations of their products.” their objective is to create technology that can “do anything that any human can do.” some in the field maintain that artificial general intelligence (AGI) “is already here.” however, the article continues relating that “plain-vanilla [chatbots] will not lead to AGI because they do not understand the text they input and output or how this text relates to the real world. they consequently cannot distinguish between fact and fiction or between correlation and causation - let alone engage in critical thinking.”

at the end of the article an obstacle is identified that is “seldom discussed: most consequential real-world decisions involve uncertainty. [chatbots] can’t help when key decisions don’t feature objectively correct probabilities but rather subjective probabilities that need interpretation.”

the point made in this article is consistent with the concept of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind of humans and the material components of the synaptic networks of the brain. the cognitive human mind can deal with subjective probabilities and interpret them. specified information (which is itself probabilistic) transmitted within neural codes requires interpretation that is learned over a lifetime and archived in memory. chatbots do not have this capability. i suggest that this is an article that should give one pause.

cook’s article provides a strong rationale for consciousness being an immaterial attribute of humans that cannot be reduced functionally to the material brain and the synaptic networks therein. I offer that a key word in his article is awareness, consciousness being defined by cook as “awareness of self, others, and the environment along with the ability to think, reason, and make moral choices. it encompasses not only intellectual and sensory awareness but also the spiritual awareness that connects humans to god.”

cook ties consciousness “to the soul and spirit of humans.” in my writings i have differentiated the human spirit from the soul (Hebrews 4:12), the latter being defined by mind, will and emotion along with elements of the conscience. both are immaterial aspects of humanity, and i have documented how the soul interacts with the synaptic networks of the human brain in a bidirectional manner, transmitting specified information via neural codes established within the action potential waveforms of neural networks. throughout the lifetime of humans the immaterial soul, specifically the cognitive mind, learns to interpret the meaning of codes which are linguistic entities, unique to humans. the human spirit created by god is an avenue for communion with the holy spirit by repentant saints in christ, promising eternal life.

regeneration is described by cook as a renewed spiritual consciousness. i offer that fallen humanity has lost the intimate and personal communion, the indwelling, with the holy spirit. regeneration of people in repentance restores the indwelling by the holy spirit within the human spirit as counselor and helper. the bidirectional interaction between the mind of god and the mind of man is restored. yes, there is an awareness of the indwelling holy spirit who directs the saved in christ to live in righteousness and sanctification.

i see in cook’s excellent article a “lumping” of spirit and soul in consciousness as he has described it. i am merely suggesting that awareness is an aspect of consciousness and in turn of spirit and soul. even the unsaved have awareness. to be sure, an unsaved person living to self in sin can still be conscious, though without the personal indwelling of the holy spirit with its relationship with the soul.

so, i summarize as follows: consciousness is an attribute of the human spirit and soul, an immaterial reality of awareness interactive with the material synaptic networks of the human brain and the neural codes. it cannot be reduced to or based in the material components of the brain. consider that in previous blog posts it was pointed out that in near death experiences there is an awareness that transcends the human body and brain.

it is not my intent to discredit cook’s comments, but to suggest an elaboration stemming from my own research. i thank dr. cook for his contribution to clarifying “the hard problem of consciousness.”

in my last blog, reference was made to the “hard problem of consciousness.” i came across an article written by dr. steven r. cook that was presented on linkedin dated january 14, 2025. the author asks what consciousness is, including a focus on how the bible describes it. i am including several quotations from his thought-provoking article. neuroscience is working to define consciousness, based so often on a materialist perspective, reducing it to the workings of the material brain. i shall offer some thoughts after the quotations from cook’s article in my next blog post.

“from a biblical perspective, consciousness can be understood as the awareness [Italics added] of self, others, and the environment, along with the ability to think, reason, and make moral choices. it encompasses not only intellectual and sensory awareness but also the spiritual awareness that connects humans to god.

“being made in god’s image includes the capacity for rational thought, moral understanding, spiritual perception, and relational interaction.

“consciousness is also tied to the soul and spirit of humans. . . . the ‘breath of life’ (heb. neshama) is often understood to represent the spiritual component imparted by god, making humans distinct from other living creatures. the ‘living being’ (heb. nephesh) signifies a soul with self-awareness, emotions and intellect.

“the origin of consciousness lies in god’s creative act. it was directly imparted to humans when god breathed life into adam. . . . humans possess a spiritual dimension that allows for higher reasoning, creativity, moral decision-making, and communion with god.

“. . . through regeneration, believers are given a renewed spiritual consciousness, enabling them to understand and receive spiritual truths (1 Cor 2:14-16) and have fellowship with god (john 14:26).

“conclusion

“consciousness . . . encompasses intellectual, moral, relational, and spiritual awareness, distinguishing humans from all other creatures. its origin is found in god’s creative act, where he imparted life and a soul to humanity. though marred by sin, consciousness can be restored and elevated through a relationship with god and a renewed mind.”

in my next blog i shall offer a critique of cook’s comments, my thoughts stemming from my research and writings over more than 25 years. in the meantime, i suggest the reader give prayerful thought to cook’s comments and the cited scriptures. he has certainly stimulated my thoughts and enabled me to add to the perspectives i have reached over this lengthy time of study.