You are still having a hard time accepting what I had to say about mind in the last letter. You are still enchanted with the powerful myth that you are matter and nothing else because the evidence seems so conclusive. I would say that it is not that the evidence is so conclusive but that you have been enchanted with the spirit of the age. Let us take a closer look at the evidence.

First of all, it is general knowledge that there are many patients who have lost significant amounts of their brains and yet function normally without impediments. There is a case of a girl born with two-thirds of her brain missing but is still enjoying her life as a normal teenager.

Recently we celebrated the 127th. birthday of the famous Canadian Wilder Penfield who contributed so much to the study of the brain. Penfield noticed that he could stimulate various regions of the brain which would give various responses such as involuntary sensations and movements, and even emotions. However, he could not find an area that accounted for the identity of the person undergoing the procedure. There seems to be no region that controls abstract reasoning (and we will see why this is important, in the next letter). There is no region of the brain which when stimulated produces second derivatives in calculus.

Another interesting experiment carried out by Penfield involved inducing temporary aphasia loss of speech) in a patient. Before the induction, the patient would be shown a series of cards and would successfully name the objects depicted on the cards. After the electrodes were applied in the region of the brain affecting speech, the patient was shown a card depicting a butterfly but could not come out with the word for it. He tried and eventually snapped his fingers in frustration. When the electrode was removed, he spoke immediately: “Butterfly. I couldn’t get that word butterfly, so I tried to get the word moth.”

The man understood with his mind what the card portrayed but his speech center was blocked. He was searching for an alternate word for butterfly, but he was stymied here as well.

The mind and the brain are two different things. The speech center mechanism is not the same thing as the mind but it is directed by the mind. Words are expressions of thoughts and not the thoughts themselves.

We take for granted many of our experiences which are harbingers of a mystery that cannot be explained on a strictly materialistic basis. Consider vision which gives us a three dimensional picture of the world outside us. This is truly a miraculous event.

Suppose we look at a tree and through our eyes we actually see the tree. There are three components to this process. First, there is the actual physical stimulus which is the photons being sent to the eye, the sense organ. Take away all light, and our eyes will not see the tree. The eye then sends a nerve impulse to the brain through a coded pattern of nerve impulses. These impulses arrive at the brain and are decoded into the image that we sense.

The world of sense depends on the world of physics and biochemistry but this is not the whole story, as is claimed. A simple illustration will make the point. Consider a book which consists of paper, the glue, and the ink. Obviously, without these constituents, there would be no book. But these components do not completely and satisfactorily explain the book. There is another level to understanding what a book is which goes beyond the physical material explanation. The book, for example could exist in the mind of the author even without paper and print.

Old Science can speak of light wavelengths, of chemical and biochemical processes and various physical changes in nerves and in brain activity. However, materialism – the prevailing dogma of scientism that there is only matter and nothing else – does not have a handle on sensory data such as smelling, hearing, tasting, hearing. It stops short of what is at the heart of sensory data and that is its significance, its reality for us. For us, colors fragrances, sights, sounds, tastes carry a lot more meaning and significance than a merely technical description in terms of photons or wavelengths or whatever else is invoked as an attempt to describe something ‘scientifically’. But of course, the position of materialists is totally understandable if there really is no ‘you’ as they claim.

A richer and more satisfying explanation is one that posits that we are not only a material substance but we also consist of something which is not matter and which we call mind.

We notice that plants, through growth reach with their roots for water and with their branches for sunlight and amazing as this seems, they do not know what it is they are doing. Animals go one step further because through their senses they strive for certain goals such as, for example, constructing a nest. But even here, the birds are operating on instincts and on physical laws because their reactions are triggered by certain stimuli which produce hormones that result in activities such as nest building. We have shown this by injecting birds with estrogen and they start to build nests even out of season. Animals do things but what they lack is the answer to the question why.

Penfield was able to build a map of the brain areas responsible for movement, for speech and other functions. But, neither the mind nor the will could be located by prodding the brain with electrodes. The brain is not an organ of the will or the intellect and researchers after Penfield have not been successful in locating the areas of the brain that control these identifying features of humans. Even the simplest levels of reasoning cannot be evoked by prodding the brain. The electrodes can provoke the body to make certain movements but it cannot make the patient want to do it. He moves against his will and not because he wants to. The will and the intellect seem to be beyond the control of matter but this point is often ignored because it goes contrary to the accepted dogma of the brain ruling everything.

The central challenge to neurophysiology is the fact that thoughts can result in physical actions. Having failed to come up with an explanation so far, it shows how primitive our understanding is of the interaction between mind and body. In some way beyond our understanding, our thinking changes the operative patterns of neuronal activities in the brain. Many studies, for example, have shown that meditation can impact blood pressure and have other effects on our physical body, again underlining the fact that the mind can and does impact the body.

Going back to my finger illustration – watch me move my finger whenever I will it to – we now see that thinking controls the discharge of impulses from pyramidal cells of our motor cortex and so, eventually, the contraction of the muscles that results in the movement of my finger. We cannot explain this simple action of moving a finger on a strictly materialistic basis.

The proposal that it is matter and nothing else that controls and runs things in our universe – a proposal claimed to be based on science and rigorous experimentation – is, in fact, totally inimical to science. If only matter dictates the story of science, then the question what is true would have to be replaced by the question what are we preconditioned to believe. Freedom is a pre-requisite for science and experimentation. Only where our actions and thoughts are not determined by circumstances, urges, or customs, or by certain biochemical processes, but by my free will, can I make experiments.

Sperry, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology, writes: “The higher cerebral properties of mind and consciousness are in command. They envelop, carry and overwhelm the physico-chemical details. They call the plays, exerting downward control over the march of nerve-impulse traffic.” Penfield adds to this: None of the actions that we attribute to the mind has been initiated by electrode stimulation or epileptic discharge. There is no place in the cerebral cortex where electric stimulation will cause a patient to believe or decide. Yes, electrical stimulation can evoke sensations and memories but it cannot go beyond this. There are no doubts about the ability to evoke certain responses in patients by electrical exploration of their brains because this has been shown time and again but there is a limitation to the significance of these experiments.

It has also been shown that patients who are missing large areas of their brains – whether through operations or being born this way – still can function in a normal and productive manner and even achieve excellence in their chosen fields.

Roger Sperry (another Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology) conducted experiments on patients who had undergone surgery to disconnect the hemispheres of the brain. This operation had been carried out in an attempt to control seizures in the patient. Yes, there were changes in certain of the patients’ behaviors but all the patients retained the unity of their personhood – they retained a unified intellect and will. In other words, this is further evidence for the existence of something which oversees the brain and is central for the identity and functioning of a person.

Sincerely,
Bar-Abbas