Brave Humans

When I was about 7 or 8, I visited my Aunt and Uncle, who had a summer cabin on a lake in Minnesota. One day my Uncle took me fishing, and with patience and a little help I caught myself a fine little bass. I was terribly excited to know that my fish would be part of dinner that evening, so when it came time for the fish to be cleaned, I was eager to watch. My Uncle was an expert with a knife, and I watched with morbid fascination as my flopping little fish was quickly reduced to a couple of white filets. As I hurried my filets to my Aunt for frying, I couldn’t help but wonder, where did the fish go? Of course I knew exactly where the fish went. I had watched the whole thing. And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been had. A living, breathing fish had been reduced to parts, and something had been lost.

Last time, I discussed how our understanding of the brain is incompatible with the idea that we are souls in machines. I also hinted that things are not quite as clear as they seem. This lack of clarity has to do with parts and wholes. Like the fish mentioned above, when we reduce the brain to parts, something seems to go missing. We call it consciousness.

The biggest difficulty with consciousness is that it is an internal experience. We know when we are conscious ourselves, and we can reasonably assume others experience consciousness in the same way, and yet consciousness cannot be objectively seen, measured or quantified in any precise way. When we observe brain function as a whole, we are reduced to watching people’s behavior in the hopes of inferring the inner workings of the mind. With MRIs we can watch regions of the brain light up when we engage in certain behaviors. As a result, we understand how different regions of the brain generate various functions and behaviors.

When we reduce the brain to parts, we understand things extremely well. The brain consists of neurons, which connect to each other via synapses. We have about a hundred million neurons, and more than a quadrillion (10¹⁵) synapses in our brains. We understand how neurons and synapses work. We understand how neurons communicate with each other. What we’ve found is that thoughts are sparks of electricity traversing a vast neural network. Ideas flow from one region of the brain to another. What we think, what we feel, and who we are is a lightning storm of sparks.

How then do we go from simple neurons to a conscious being? The short answer is we don’t know. This is not to say we know nothing. We actually know a great deal about how the conscious brain works. For example, we can watch the brain shift from rational problem solving to unconscious. fear-driven survival mode. We have learned that consciousness is not an on or off state, but rather comes in varying degrees.

But when we go from whole to parts, whatever it is that “we” are seems to go missing.

There are some who look at this mystery and declare that there lies the human soul. But to take such a position is to declare that the human soul is trapped by ignorance. It is slowly killed off as science discovers new pieces to the puzzles of the mind. A “soul of the gaps” isn’t very satisfying. Neuroscientists are convinced that mind and brain are one of the same. Our thoughts, feelings and personality are all emergent properties of neurons and synapses. There is mystery to the brain, but no magic. There is no ghost in the machine.

But of course, evolution tells us that we are not machines. We are organisms connected to the world around us. In the same way, neuroscience tells us our brains are not computers. We do not follow blind programming, following some sort of decision tree. Instead our brains process information holistically, and the choices we make are likewise holistic. There is no single switch which makes us choose option A over option B. Our brains also do something computers generally don’t. Because the connections between neurons strengthen and weaken depending on how they are used. This means the structure of our brains are affected by the ideas flashing around our head. Our brains shape our thoughts, and our thoughts shape our brains.

It is a subtle and beautiful picture of ourselves. Not machines, not computers, but sentient living creatures connected to the world around us. Still this is small comfort to those who seek a soul which transcends the physical world. We may not be machines, and yet science still seems to tell us that in the end we are no more than flesh and blood. Atoms, molecules, neurons, synapses. Parts.

And yet that isn’t what we are at all.

Growing up, I spent most of my summers at that lake in Minnesota. One of my favorite memories is when I would take the canoe out on the lake around twilight. Usually, in that hour between light and dark, the lake would take on a glass-like calm. It was then that you could paddle out onto the lake, gliding through the water with the only sounds being the whoosh of your oar, the occasional glup of a fish eating at the surface, and the lonely calls of distant loons.

When you paddle through calm water, the water rushes in behind your oar creating vortices. This always happens. It is basic physics. But in calm water you can see these spirals of water clearly, and they can last a very long time. The interesting thing about these water spirals is how they spin through the water. You can watch them form, drift slowly, and die as if it is a single entity.

But in reality, these spirals are a form the water takes. The spiral is made of water, but not the same water for its whole existence. Water molecules are caught up by the spiral, make a swirling dance within it, and then return to the stillness of the lake. The spiral moves on, flowing through the calm.

Humans, as with all living things, are much the same. Our bodies are a dance of atoms and molecules. We move through the world as a single pattern. But the physical world flows through us. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, becomes a part of us for a time. They join us in our dance only to leave after a time. We flow on until, like spirals of water, we fade into the calm.

We are not simply atoms and molecules, neurons and synapses. We are a form the physical world takes. Break us down into parts, and you will find nothing but parts. But to do so means losing our form. It is this form which represents the essence of who we are.

Our souls are not hiding in our bodies. Our souls are our bodies. Our souls are spirals in the universe.

But if this is so, what happens when our spiral fades back into oblivion? Is it possible for our form to survive beyond our fading? This is a question philosophers and theologians have pondered throughout the centuries. It is a philosophical rabbit hole, and like Alice we could pursue the white rabbit down the hole if we wish.

Or perhaps to find out where we are going, we need to look at where we’ve been. For that, we need to go back to the beginning. But that is for next time.

Be Brave. Be Human. Flow.