A split mind, a split soul?
Hello,
I listened to your lesson from the Free Choice series. I have a question about your analysis of split-brain syndrome. This syndrome seriously undermines the idea of free choice.
I adapted your chart on the libertarian position to the case of a split brain.
Let’s take the experiment that shows:
- For the right hemisphere – an image of a snowy roof, to which the subject associates an image of a shovel for loading snow.
- For the left hemisphere – an image of a chicken leg, to which the subject associates an image of a chicken head.
The subject is unable to explain why he chose the spoon, and states that the spoon was intended to clean the chicken coop.
If your diagram is correct, then in step 3 the soul receives the information of the image of the snowy roof.
Why can’t the soul transmit this information to the left hemisphere of the brain?
Why can’t the soul force the left hemisphere to say:
“I chose the spoon because I saw a snowy roof”?
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I have no idea how the connection between the soul and the brain works. But you don’t need to get to this special case. In any brain injury you can ask why the soul doesn’t use another part of the brain to take care of the matter instead of the injured part. The fact is that the different functions are done in specific parts of the brain, meaning that there is a functional division of the brain’s functions between its parts. You are actually wondering about this yourself. Why doesn’t the soul do what it wants in any part of the brain it wants, or even through the brain.
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You avoid the fact that the soul is not local and that each party in itself acts well.
That is, 2A and 2B act properly.
Therefore, we would expect at least a difference between making a decision and giving an explanation.
Honorable Rabbi Michi, I think my question is more subtle. I understand that there are brain injury situations:
In stage 2: The information transferred to the brain is incorrect. Like John Nash (in the movie), who sees imaginary people.
In stage 3: The soul decides something, but the instrument (the brain) is not working correctly.
But in my question, the brain is working correctly. There is only a problem in transferring information between the hemispheres. As a Libertarian, you need to say that the soul has the correct information (because if it didn’t have it, on what basis would it decide?) via the right hemisphere (i.e., that the person saw the snowy roof), and you also need to say that that same soul decided to say (via the left hemisphere) “I chose the spoon because it was intended to clean a chicken coop.”
I asked: Why didn’t the soul decide to say “I chose the spoon because I saw a snowy roof”?
I wrote that I don't know exactly how the connection between the soul and the brain works. It is certainly possible that the connection between the data in the world is made by the soul through the brain. You assume that in your drawing the soul in the center also makes the connections between the data and the interpretation of the entire picture. But it is possible that this is also done through the brain.
In another way, less likely in my opinion, the problem could also be in the right part of the drawing, that is, in the output. The soul is unable to explain to another person the (correct and complete) picture it has, since the act of explanation itself is done through the brain.
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