Foster states the following:

“although the basic subjects involved in human mentality are wholly non-physical, each subject is, at least for a certain phase of its history, intimately linked with a particular biological organism. it is this link which makes it appropriate to speak of the subject as having a body, or as embodied. . . . but what, then, is the nature of this link? what is the connection between the non-physical subject and the biological organism which embodies it? . . . anything approaching an adequate answer to this question . . . would become the business of the neuroscientist. . . . to begin with, it is clear that the connection between the non-physical subject and the biological organism is, fundamentally, a functional one: it is a matter of there being a psychophysical arrangement whereby each partner is equipped to have the right sorts of direct causal influence on the other. this arrangement will be secured by the respective natures of the two entities concerned, together with some framework of physical and psychophysical laws.”

my research has dealt with Foster’s last two sentences in this excerpt. the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks of the human brain possess specific “natures” and functions which I endeavor to identify and explain, including waveforms, quantum tunneling, action potentials, neural codes and the like!

I cite foster who stated, “whether we are dualists or materialists. . . we presumably have to accept the existence of psychophysical causation.” he asks, “why should the fact that mind and body are so different in nature make it difficult to understand how there could be causal relations between them? . . . typically, when one physical event causes another, the two events are either spatially contiguous (or coincident) or are connected by a spatiotemporally continuous series of events through which the causal process passes. this feature of physical causation may make it seem that causation has to operate by means of spatial contact - that spatial contact is the essential mechanism for causal contact. and, of course, once this is accepted, causation between physical and non-physical events is automatically excluded, simply because the non-physical events have no spatial location. . . . but if there is no conceptual difficulty in envisaging causation-at-a-distance in the physicAL REALM, THEN DUALISTIC CAUSATION SHOULD NOT BE EXCLUDED, OR REGARDED AS CONCEPTUALLY PROBLEMATIC, PURELY ON THE GROUNDS THAT THERE IS NO SPATIAL CONTACT BETWEEN THE NON-PHYSICAL MIND AND THE BODY. . . . ON THE DUALIST VIEW, WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND HOW PSYCHOPHYSICAL CAUSATION OPERATES; WE SIMPLY HAVE TO ACCEPT IT AS A BRUTE FACT, WITH NO FURTHER EXPLANATION, THAT CERTAIN TYPES OF NEURAL EVENT DIRECTLY CAUSE CERTAIN TYPES OF MENTAL EVENT, AND VICE VERSA.”

AND IT IS THIS VERY “BRUTE FACT” THAT HAS BEEN AND IS THE OBJECT OF MY RESEARCH, USING THE NEURAL SYNAPSE AS THE MODEL FOR INVESTIGATION OF DUALIST INTERACTION BETWEEN THE IMMATERIAL MIND AND THE MATERIAL SYNAPTIC NETWORKS OF THE human BRain. and ”mind” includes the mind of god!

Foster identifies the five claims of dualism:

there is a mental realm

the mental realm is fundamental

there is a physical realm

the physical realm is fundamental

the two realms are ontologically separate

foster states that “human beings of sufficient maturity have minds. . . . and some will accept the existence of non-embodied minds, such as those of God, angels, and departed spirits. . . . mentality is not reducible to something else. . . . the mental and the physical realms are ontologically separate. roughly, what this means is that the entities which feature in the one realm are entirely different from those which feature in the other - that the class of mental-realm entities and the class of physical-realm entities do not overlap.”

in the book’s preface foster states the following: “my aim in this book is only to examine and defend the dualist account of the mind, and, in particular, to argue for its cartesian . . . version, which assigns the immaterial contents of the mind to an immaterial mental subject.”

in the next several blogs I will be posting excerpts from the book written by john foster entitled the immaterial self: a defence of the cartesian dualist conception of the mind. foster is a fellow in philosophy at brasenose college, oxford.

the back cover includes the following: “dualism holds that the mind is wholly non-physical and that mental phenomena are not reducible to anything else. the immaterial self examines and defends this thesis, and in particular argues for its cartesian version, which assigns the non-physical ingredients of the mind to a non-physical subject. the book exposes the inadequacies of the materialist and reductionist accounts of the mind which have become so fashionable in recent years.”

foster’s writing is that of a philosopher, and the reading can be challenging. I recommend this resource to those who seek a “systematic and uncompromising” defense of the immateriality of the mind.

i have posted blogs that address traveling waves. i came across an article that is quite current, appearing in 2021 and entitled “low frequency traveling waves in the human cortex coordinate neural activity across spatial scales.” Vishnu sreekumar and coauthors are associated with the NIh.

the authors stated that there was no direct link established between traveling waves and neuronal spiking in humans. their studies “found that macro-scale waves co-occurred with micro-scale waves, which in turn were temporally locked to single unit spiking. this temporal coordination between traveling waves at different spatial scales and between waves and neuronal spiking in the human brain suggests a role for traveling waves in neural communication. . . . traveling waves may also play an active role in information processing by influencing the probability of neuronal firing. . . . traveling waves propagating across brain regions could provide a mechanistic account for how such communication and coordination of neuronal activity could arise.” the authors “examined traveling waves while participants were attentive and repeatedly engaged in the same behavior in order to explore the potential role of traveling waves in human cognition.”

i reference this article since it shows how neuroscientists are coming closer to understanding if (and how) cognition itself generates waveforms that transmit specified information through synchronous, coherent synaptic networks to bring about selected actions. this information would open the door to accepting how the holy spirit communes with us in our time.

Thilo womelsdorf et al published an article in science, 2007 jun 15; 316(5831):1609-12 entitled “MOdulation of neuronal interactions through neuronal synchronization.” In the abstract it is stated, “brain processing depends on the interactions between neuronal groups. those interactions are governed by the pattern of anatomical connections. . . . [the authors] found that the mutual influence among neuronal groups depends on the phase relation between rhythmic activities within the groups. phase relations supporting interactions between the groups preceded those interactions by a few milliseconds, consistent with a mechanistic role. these effects were specific in time, frequency, and space, and [it was proposed] that the pattern of synchronization flexibly determines the pattern of neuronal interactions.”

pascal fries describes “activated neural groups [that] oscillate and thereby undergo rhythmic excitability fluctuations that produce temporal windows for communication. only coherently oscillating neuronal groups can interact effectively, because their communication windows for input and for output are open at the same times, [subserving] our cognitive flexibility.” Fries, P.: “a mechanism for cognitive dynamics; neuronal communication through neuronal coherence.” trends in cognitive sciences 9, 474-480, november 2005.

in previous blogs and my books i have discussed the importance of waveform coherence and synchronization in the transmission of specified information through synaptic networks. by these actions direction is given to spike trains of action potentials in which neural codes are incorporated within waveforms to bring about specified actions. it is a most complex activity which is slowly becoming understood as more advanced technology is becoming available to neuroscientists.

i will be citing several articles in the next blog posts that speak to coherence and synchronization in neural communication. it is important that this neural activity is documented as it relates to dualist interaction between the immaterial cognitive mind and the material components of neural synaptic networks. these are actions created by God to provide personal bidirectional communion with him.

in chapter 6, section 5 of his book, how the self controls its brain, john c. eccles describes how the concentration of “attention causes neural activity in rather large areas of the brain, as is revealed by the rcbf technique (regional cerebral blood flow). . . . one can concentrate attention to a finger tip in order to detect a minimal touch that is expected,” and it is this focus of attention that results in the neural activity. “in this technique, radio-xenon . . . is injected into the internal carotid artery through a cannula that has been inserted for a clinical investigation. a battery of 254 geiger counters is mounted in a helmet applied over one side of the scalp. the brief injection causes a pattern of increased radioactivity, as observed by the counts of the geiger assemblage. this increase in counts signals an increased blood flow, which in turn gives a quantitative measure of the subjacent cortical activity. the counts are done in the control resting situation and then during the chosen mental task which . . . was a concentrated attention on the finger tip in anticipation of a just recognizable touch.” eccles’ study gave “a clear demonstraTION THAT THE MENTAL ACT OF ATTENTION CAN ACTIVATE APPROPRIATE REGIONS OF THE CEREBRAL CORTEX.”

THE STUDY OF AKGUL ET AL DISCUSSED IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG DREW UPON A BASIC TECHNIQUE USED IN THE 1990’S BY ECCLES. ECCLES’ WORK DID NOT RELATE TO WAVEFORMS AS DOES THE STUDY CITED IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG POST. tHE STRONG SUGGESTION IS THAT COGNITION ITSELF HAS THE CAPACITY TO GENERATE FOCAL CORTICAL BLOOD FLOWS COUPLED WITH WAVEFORMS THAT TRANSMIT INFORMATION THROUGH SPECIFIED SYNAPTIC NETWORKS TO ACHIEVE SPECIFIC ACTIONS. DUALIST INTERACTIONISM IS AGAIN GIVEN SUPPORT.