In the fifth chapter of my book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, I cited Mortimer Adler’s discussion of the mind’s relation to the material brain. He stated that the intellectual mind is superior to matter and cannot be reduced to it. It is an immaterial component of human nature. He said, “The intellect cannot normally function without dependence on the activity of the brain, but the brain is not the physical organ of intellectual thought.” (1) According to Adler human behavior consists of two substances, mind and physical brain, and the two interact with one another.
Neural impulses are the same in electrochemical character. They consist of action potentials transmitted across and through neural synaptic networks as spike trains with distinctive frequencies and amplitudes, as we shall see. Neural structures are histologically and anatomically similar, or even identical. Distinguishable concepts that reflect intellectual and cognitive processes cannot be embodied in matter that is so similar or identical! The power of conceptual thought must be an immaterial energy, and energy is expressed as waves. We are aware that light and sound are transmitted by waves. Likewise, waves are transmitted across synaptic clefts by quantum tunneling with specified frequencies, amplitudes and trajectories. Going further, it is now recognized that elementary particles at the atomic level, electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces are . . . waves. Even space consists of unique vibrational signatures! In this and my subsequent blog I will discuss the flow of waves within and across our brains.
One more point merits emphasis. John C. Eccles maintained that the human mind is not causally closed to nonmaterial stimuli as claimed by materialists. The neural synapse is considered to be a frontier across which information flows in both directions. (2) The billions of interconnections between neurons and trillions of synapses in neural networks constitute an information processing system. William A. Dembski has stated that matter itself is reducible to the information instantiated within its design, construction and function. It is energy that causes information to undergo such dynamic transformations. Energy is inferred from information and is called by Dembski the “causal glue.” (3) Werner Gitt stated that information is a fundamental entity on equal footing with matter and energy. It is required for the start of any controlled process whether energy or matter. Gitt identified the one prerequisite of information, that it must be in coded form. (4) Information itself is preceded by the prime source of all information, a mind. In John 1:1-3 it is said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”
The electrochemical activity of neural networks translates into the riches of the human mind. James Le Fanu presumed that there has to be a code within the patterns of the activity, ensuring that the firing of the visual cortex, for example, gives rise to the perception of trees and birds seen from one’s window. (5) The neural code requires an intelligence to establish the rules of syntax, meaning and purpose, human or divine. Anything with high information content must be interpreted by the intellect of a mind. It is the immaterial mind that interacts cognitively with encoded information within the spike trains of neural synaptic networks. It is a perceptual process by which linguistic neural codes are interpreted by a human mind with the unique capacity for expressing and understanding advanced language.
The application of increasingly sophisticated technologies to the study of the human mind has generated more understanding of waves that are transmitted through the brain. Initial observation of brain waves was by electroencephalography which recorded waves transmitted across the skull with relatively poor resolution and no directional components. Human brains can now be studied by electrocorticography (ECoG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging. ECoG applies to direct studies of live neural tissues in responsive patients such as those undergoing neurosurgery for epilepsy. Multiple monitors can be placed over larger surfaces of the brain itself to study the characteristics and routes of neural transmission. In Part Two of this blog I will share what I have learned from more current neuroscience literature. There is yet a dominant perspective that the human mind is not immaterial and can be reduced to the functional activities of the physical brain. Much of the literature of neuroscience does not acknowledge the human mind with causal and cognitive power but equates the function of the brain to computation. The mind is considered to be an epiphenomenon by some. By reviewing points I make in my books in the paragraphs above I have provided an introduction that shows the merit of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material brain and its neural networks. I will soon post Part Two of this blog. In the blog that follows, “Minds in Communion,” I will focus on the dualist interaction between the mind of Man and the Mind of God.
References
1. Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Collier Books, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1990)
2. John C. Eccles, How the Self Controls Its Brain (Berlin, New York, London: Springer-Verlag, 1994)
3. William A. Dembski, Being As Communion: A Metaphysics of Information (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014)
4. Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information: A Scientist Explains the Incredible Design in Nature (Green Forest, Arizona: Master Books, 2007)
5. James Le Fanu, Why Us? How the Self Controls Its Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009)
Part Two
In preparation
As I work to complete the text of “Part Two, Waves in Our Brains,” I will be regularly posting brief blogs that relate to the content of the blogs posted on and after August 1, 2020 and in my two books listed under Products. I will also post brief excerpts from articles I am referencing for “Waves in Our Brains.” By reading these blog posts and my books you will derive a deeper understanding of the message I am conveying through my website about the reality of the living Holy Spirit and how He communes with us.