Is the Soul Real? Exploring the Philosophical Debate

"I almost believed you, Rabbi," began a young man, addressing me earnestly.

"Too bad," I replied, "I've always asked you not to just believe me. You can check everything, why just believe?"

"Yes, in yesterday's class you talked about the soul, you said it's what makes us human, that having emotions is something spiritual - happiness, hope, the desire to do good, all these things. Luckily, after I got home, I read some material, listened to a great podcast by a well-known brain researcher, and he shows, as you say, that it can be tested, that it's not like that."

"Interesting, how did he show you that?"

'He demonstrated how every thought, every emotion, everything happening in our brain that you call a soul, is actually electrical currents of different types. There's a machine that detects these currents, it's called an FMRI. You connect to the machine, and even if you're silent and don't say anything, as long as you're thinking something – the machine says: he's happy, he's sad, he wants chocolate. More than that, using electricity we can make ourselves feel anything we want. Add serotonin, and poof – a person comes out of depression and anxiety, he's happy. If you reduce serotonin, not pleasant. Dopamine gives us energy. Our desires are just hormones, which can also be suppressed with the right substance. It's all like a computerized system. If you control the chemical substances – you control the emotional world and desires of a person. Therefore, said the brain researcher, the story of a soul – that's a belief, good for the naive, but we, who know how everything works, don't need to talk about a soul, and can't talk about one. If the activity of the 'emotions' is identified and characterized by physical means, and can be turned on or off by physical means, then we are computers. Complex ones, but think of artificial intelligence. It's okay to be a sophisticated computer."

"Well, my friend, I understand you've started looking into it, but you probably haven't finished yet."

"I'd be happy to continue the investigation."

"Alright," I said, "you're claiming that if the computer detects the electrical activity of 'happiness' for example, or 'wants chocolate', this proves that this activity is physical, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so I'll explain to you now why this activity cannot be physical, and why what you consider proof is not proof at all.

"Why can't this activity be physical? Because an inanimate object cannot feel its existence, want something, feel pain, happiness and more. Artificial intelligence is a code written by humans, and it's software capable of forming sentences based on self-study of sentence formation rules, but it's clear the computer writing it doesn’t feel its existence, even though the software has the technical ability to craft sentences about emotions. Just as a graphical editing software code has no artistic sense."

"But, Rabbi, we are not inanimate objects."

"Exactly. Our lives are something non-physical. Not the part about eating, drinking, walking etc., that's entirely physical. Sophisticated, but it operates on physical systems. The emotions we have are not physical, they cannot be a feature of physical matter, which in its nature is inanimate. Inanimate, no matter how complex, the most advanced computer in the world, of course, does not feel it exists, cannot feel pain, desire. It's just a collection of electrical and magnetic currents, it's like a human brain without emotions."

"So how can the machine detect emotions as an electrical current?"

"The machine doesn't detect the emotions, it detects their results, the way they activate us. Think of every time I'm happy, I clap my hands, and then my two-year-old says: 'Dad is happy.' Is he reading minds? Is my happiness clapping? It's just the result. The same thing if when I open the candy cabinet the child says 'Dad wants chocolate.' He's not reading minds here either, he's seeing their results. He saw the previous time that when I opened the cabinet I came back with a shining chocolate square. Clearly, our thoughts operate in the body, in the brain, and every emotion eventually broadcasts to the entire body in an electrical current. This current is the clapping of happiness, it's not the happiness itself."

"How do I know this is true? And not the brain researcher's explanation?"

"Very simple. Think about your emotions, say – anxiety. How does it manifest physically? Heart palpitations, say. Is your anxiety a pump pumping faster? Is that what you feel? Of course not. That's the physical symptom of anxiety. Anxiety is an emotion, something that has no place in the physical world, and that you can't define physically. Say there's an electrical current somewhere in the brain – is that the emotion of anxiety? Is fear electricity? It's a feeling that's not physical."

"If so, how do chemical substances cause anxiety or its absence?"

"Just like in the example of clapping hands. If I prick myself, it causes pain, a feeling in my consciousness. Is the feeling 'a needle stuck in flesh'? Take meat from the fridge and stick a needle in it. It's the same, but there's no feeling. The feeling is pain, something unexplained physically, but it's caused by a physical action. The same with chemical medications. The balance of the mind depends on the balance of the body. As if you cut off organs the mind would become crazed with pain, so too if you take substances essential to body function, the mind goes crazy. Put hard drugs in a person, they act like a madman. Clean their blood – they're back to normal, was what happened before 'a specific substance in the blood'? What was before was madness of the mind because it was in an unbalanced body. And yes, if you take all the serotonin from a person, they might feel anxiety. But is our anxiety 'the absence of a substance'? No, it's horrible and terrible thoughts of fear. Anxiety doesn't come from substance absence. You can influence it with a surplus of substance, like aspirin easing pain is a substance with which you overcome pain, but a person in pain isn't defined as suffering from 'absence of aspirin.'

"You know, even in the computer example, artificial intelligence needs a functioning computer. If you damage the computer's cooling, it will heat up, and it might 'talk nonsense.' If you damage the voltage, it won't be able to supply electricity properly, and its activity will decrease. But all this is unrelated to the software code. These are basic aids without which it can't function."

"Well, I'll try to contact the podcast creators and get their response"...

Awaiting.