It is important to explain the relationship between the mind and the soul. In my writings I have defined the soul as consisting of the mind, the will and the emotion expressed by the living human being. Yes, there are “soulish” animals, such as dogs and horses. If you have ever ridden a horse (as I have on many occasions over 35 plus years) you have been exposed to its emotions and its will, such as when it has tried to rub you off its back against a fence or beneath a low limb! It is with its mind that it expresses its will or intention to get you off of its back! But, to the best of our theological knowledge “soulish” animals have no spirit, as does Man, and it is not known if “soulish” animals have immortal souls. But how about Man? Is the soul of Man immortal? Scripturally we have reason to believe that indeed the soul of Man IS immortal, as is his spirit.

Michael Egnor wrote an article on January 31, 2021 that speaks to this issue. It appeared in “Mind Matters.” (https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/your-soul-has-no-off-switch/) Egnor states that “Man has a soul, and the mind is several powers of the soul - sensation, perception, sensus communis, imagination, memory, sensitive appetite, reason, and will.” He continues saying, “But there is no evidence - either philosophical or scientific - that the mind or the soul (of which the mind is an aspect) has an “on switch” or an “off switch.” The most reasonable scientific inference is that we are never “unconscious,” nor are we “conscious” in any meaningful sense. Our mental life is a composite of abilities - arousal, sensation, perception, locomotion, reason, etc., and these abilities appear to subsist in modified form despite dramatic changes in the body and brain….Even after death, we often seem to retain awareness that can be verified, and even have heightened awareness, as the massive literature on near death experiences demonstrates….Our minds are never off; we just have states in which one or more powers of the mind - sensation or perception or memory etc. - are temporarily inactive….Most egregiously, the concept of “consciousness” perpetuates the lie that we are extinguished at death. There is every reason - philosophical and scientific - to infer that man has an immortal soul.” Our mind is an immortal reality.

Throughout my writings I have referred to quantum wave functions and to wave forms that vary in frequency, amplitude and shape. In “Waves in Our Brains,” Part Two (to which I referred in a very recent blog on March 1, 2021) I have shared that wave forms now appear to be generated by the immaterial mind of Man (and by the Mind of God, I would add) that transmit specified information to and through neural synaptic networks. The term wave function consists of all the information wave forms can assume in a probabilistic manner. W. A. Dembski has referred to the “small probabilities” that describe the specification of information that can be transmitted between a sender and recipient. Wave forms, if you will, are expressions of “small probabilities” by which wave functions can be specifically manifested, for example within linguistic neural codes.

But are quantum wave functions real? Colbeck and Renner have addressed this question and have found that they are elements of reality in a one-to-one correspondence. (https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/ColbeckRenner2012_2.pdf) The authors maintain that the wave function corresponds to an element of reality that objectively exists, and it does not depend on whether it is measured or not. Colbeck and Renner’s claim is that “…the wave function includes all information that is in principle available about the system….” So we can justifiably assume that wave forms correspond to specified elements of reality.

My research and writing have emphasized the reality in our time of the indwelling by the Holy Spirit in people who are in repentance and desire to live Christ-like by the Counsel of the Holy Spirit. It is a reality that was made possible by the sin sacrifice of Jesus Christ by God’s grace and boundless love for Man with whom He wants a dualist interactive relationship restored, lost at the Fall of Adam. It has been my goal to identify a compelling explanation for the “how” of this relationship drawing upon current neuroscience in concordance with Scripture.

I recommend the ministry of Joyce Meyer who bases her teaching points on Scripture and a personal experience with the indwelling Holy Spirit. Though she does not explain the “how” of the interaction, she speaks clearly how Counsel by the Holy Spirit is manifested in a person’s life.

I have referred to my blog, “Waves in Our Brains,” Part Two, several times since it was posted on October 3, 2020. I invite your review of it to refresh your understanding of dualist interactionism between the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks of the human brain. In that blog I referenced an important and exciting study that provides compelling confirmation of this interaction. I am copying the work of the authors of that study here that I summarized in that blog. It will serve as the basis for my subsequent blogs that will expand on their findings. My research continues investigating how the mind exerts an energy expressed as wave forms that transmit information through synaptic networks of the brain within linguistic neural codes.

THE NEURAL CODES OF OVERT AND COVERT SPEECH

THROUGH PART TWO OF THIS BLOG REFERENCES HAVE BEEN MADE TO COGNITION, ATTENTION AND INTENT, AND WE HAVE SEEN THAT WAVES ARE TRANSMITTED INTRINSICALLY THROUGH NEURAL NETWORKS TO BRING ABOUT SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS SUCH AS TO MOVE AN EXTREMITY.  WHAT IS LEFT IS TO ADDRESS THE QUESTION RAISED ABOVE, HOW DOES THE IMMATERIAL MIND RELATE TO THESE PROCESSES IN A DUALIST INTERACTION?  DOES THE HUMAN MIND GENERATE WAVES EXTRINSIC TO THE BRAIN ITSELF THAT CAN ACT CAUSALLY ON IT?  STEPHANIE MARTIN AND EIGHT COWORKERS PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE IN FRONTIERS IN NEUROENGINEERING THAT ADDRESSES THIS QUESTION WITH EXCITING FINDINGS. (17)  I CONCLUDE THIS BLOG WITH A DISCUSSION OF THEIR FINDINGS.

THE MODEL USED WAS ECOG IN SEVEN EPILEPTIC PATIENTS WHO PERFORMED AN OUT LOUD AND SILENT READING TASK.  SUBJECTS READ SHORT STORIES THAT WERE PRESENTED TO THEM BOTH ALOUD AND SILENTLY.  A HIGH GAMMA (70-150 HZ) NEURAL DECODING MODEL WAS BUILT “TO RECONSTRUCT SPECTROTEMPORAL AUDITORY FEATURES OF SELF-GENERATED OVERT SPEECH.”  THE DECODING MODEL TRAINED FROM OVERT, SPOKEN SPEECH WAS USED TO DECODE THE NEURAL ACTIVITY OF COVERT, SILENTLY READ SPEECH (WHICH DID NOT INVOLVE AUDITORY SENSORY INPUT, ONLY INPUT FROM MENTATION!). SPECTROGRAMS WERE GENERATED IN CONTROLS AND IN SUBJECTS WHO USED OVERT AND COVERT SPEECH TO RECONSTRUCT NEURAL RESPONSES WITH A HIGH STATISTICAL ACCURACY.  EVIDENCE WAS PROVIDED THAT SHOWED THAT REPRESENTATIONS OF OVERT AND COVERT SPEECH COULD BE RECONSTRUCTED SHARING A NEURAL SUBSTRATE.  IN OTHER WORDS, OUT LOUD SPEECH AND READ TEXT COULD BE RECONSTRUCTED IN NEURAL NETWORKS MONITORED VIA ECOG.  NO WIRES CONNECTED THE TEST SUBJECTS TO THE CORTICAL MONITORS, INDICATING THAT THE CEREBRAL NETWORK RESPONDED TO WAVES GENERATED BY THE MIND OF THE TEST SUBJECTS.  THE HIGH GAMMA BAND RELIABLY TRACKED NEURONAL ACTIVITY AND CORRELATED WITH THE SPIKE RATE OF THE UNDERLYING NEURAL POPULATION.  THE KEY TEST OF RECONSTRUCTIVE ACCURACY, ACCORDING TO THE AUTHORS, WAS THE ABILITY TO USE THE RECONSTRUCTION TO IDENTIFY SPECIFIC SPEECH UTTERANCES.  THIS WAS POSSIBLE ESPECIALLY FOR OVERT SPEECH.

My cataract procedures have gone extremely well. It is wonderful to have such clear visual acuity back! Please stand by. I have resumed my reading research and already have about ten articles to discuss on my blog as my studies of dualist interactionism resume. Thank you.

For the month of February I have had to markedly reduce posts on my blog site since I am having cataract surgery. I will be able to resume my posts in the early part of March. Thanks to all who are following my posts. I invite you to stand by for when I again share what I learn going forward in my research into dualist interactionism between the Mind of God and the mind of Man by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Complex specified information refers to patterns embodied in physical structures. But if the designer is not a physical structure, the designer, though capable of bringing about complex specified information, would not in turn exhibit complex specified information. . . . The designer responsible for the complex specified information in nature is, as best we can tell, not an event, object, or structure. . . . Who is the designer? . . . Design inferred from complex specified information in nature is compatible with Christian belief but does not entail it. This is as it should be. Nature is silent about the revelation of Christ in Scripture. At the same time, nothing prevents nature from independently testifying to the God revealed in the Scripture. . . . An information-theoretic design argument therefore removes us from the paths of atheistic materialism that lead away from God and takes us a modest distance toward an intelligence behind nature who, from the vantage of Christian theology, can be no other than God. In this way, information theory (ap)proves the existence of God. (W. A. Dembski)

. . . when natural systems exhibit intelligence by producing complex specified information, they have in fact not created it from scratch but merely shuffled around existing information. Nature is a matrix for expressing already existing information [e.g. acorn to an oak tree]. . . . the ultimate source of that information resides in an intelligence not reducible to nature. (W. A. Dembski)

The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is choice. “Intelligent” derives from two Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning between, and the verb lego, meaning to choose or select. Thus, according to its etymology, intelligence consists in choosing between. For an intelligent agent to act is therefore to choose from a range of competing possibilities. . . . Actualizing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the rest, and specifying the one that was actualized encapsulates how we recognize intelligent agency, or equivalently, how we detect design, (W. A. Dembski)

Complex specified information . . . requires a dual ruling-out of possibilities, one by an intelligent agent who identifies a pattern [such as a linguistic neural code with structure, meaning and purpose] and one by physical processes that induce an event [such as spike trains of action potentials that transmit neural codes through neural synaptic networks to bring about specific actions]. Provided these coincide, the probability is small, and the pattern can be identified independently of the event, we say the event exhibits complex specified information. Complex specified information reliably detects design. (W. A.Dembski)