Introducing the brain: skin prick instant sensation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 24, 2021, 15:00 (1120 days ago) @ David Turell

Libet again:

https://mindmatters.ai/2021/03/what-if-only-part-not-all-of-your-brain-were-transplanted/

"...neuroscientist Benjamin Libet became famous for his work on free will. But his most fascinating research was on perception. He pricked volunteers’ fingers and measured the nerve impulses from the finger to the brain and timed everything. Libet found that it took about a half second for any electrical activity to register in the brain after the finger prick. But the volunteer reported feeling the finger prick the moment it happened. In other words, the volunteers felt the prick a half second before the brain showed any activity corresponding to it.

"This response floored Libet, who couldn’t explain how someone could feel something a half second before the brain got the message. He actually a theory — he called it “post-dating” — according to which the volunteer didn’t feel the prick when it happened, but only when the brain responded, and that the brain tricked the person into thinking he felt it at the moment it happened. (See Mind Time, Chapter 2, Harvard University Press, 2004)

"The post-dating theory is unnecessary if we adopt the philosopher Aristotle’s view of the self/soul. Sensations occur in the sense organ and occur when the sense organ is stimulated. The skin, in this case, is the sense organ. The volunteers felt the prick the moment the sense organ was pricked. The brain is where perception occurs, which is the interpretation of the sensation. That took a half second to get started. So the sensation at the skin was instantaneous and the perceptual understanding in the brain took a little longer. That explains Libet’s results beautifully.

"But then we must drop the implicit belief that the soul “lives” in the brain (somewhere near the pineal gland, according to another philosopher, René Descartes). The soul lives where we live, where we act. There is nothing more to it than that.

"According to this view, sensations and perceptions occur in sense organs and perceptual organs.

***

"Organs that are transplanted do what they ordinarily do. Transplanted hearts pump blood, transplanted kidneys excrete urine, transplanted eyes/hemispheres perceive vision. But note one key difference:

"Perception has a power that blood circulation and urine excretion lack: There’s an “I” to perception. If Aristotle is right, the “I” that perceives after the transplant wouldn’t change.

***

"Aristotle’s principle that the soul is the set of powers of a living organism and that the powers act where the organs that mediate them act provides a framework, however uncomfortable, for dealing with these devilish thought questions. If we listened to Aristotle, 90% of our conundrums in neuroscience would disappear.

"I also believe that the central nervous system is designed specifically to preserve personal identity — that’s why it (unlike other body parts) won’t heal when cut. We are not permitted by our Creator to mess with souls."

Comment: Egnor is a believer in the soul. Perhaps he is right, and the soul does more than simple studies of how the brain works seem to show.