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.