Re: [asa] Sam Harris: Your Brain on Faith

> I do not think that this is a valid conclusion. What Harris showed is
> that objective and subjective beliefs are very hard to distinguish in
> the brain.

In fact, the results not only of the present work but also of the
proposed work tell us nothing relevant about the existence of souls or
the nature of religious belief. Instead, it merely tells what parts
of the brain operate in various functions. I suspect there may be
significant interpersonal variation as well-certainly religious
beliefs have much more emotional content in some people and much more
intellectual content in others, corresponding to their personalities
(neither is necessarily better, but they probably don't use exactly
the same brain regions).

Thus, the conclusion of the article is invalid: "But that is not what
Harris expects to find."

Having strong expecations in advance is always dangerous, though often
hard to avoid.

"that conclusion, he admits, may put him at loggerheads with familiar
foes. No one, he says, could accuse him or anyone else of trying to
disprove God's existence on the basis of an fMRI."

Um, that seems to be exactly what he's doing.

"People who feel that religious faith is a singular operation of the
brain - if they admit that it's an operation of the brain at all -
would object to what I'm doing, since it may show that faith is
essentially the same as other kinds of knowing or thinking. The whole
thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we have immaterial souls
running around in our bodies."

All that he can validly show is whether religious faith uses similar
neurological circuits to other kinds of thinking-whether it is
essentially the same or not is a much larger question than what
neurons are involved. He's also assuming that religious people are
afraid of the data-why should he not equally object to what he's
doing, because it may show that faith is unique (ignoring for now the
problem that "faith" is a ridiculously broad category)?

Anyone who thinks logically will think that Harris's whole argument
seems fishy. If we have immaterial souls affecting our decisions,
there's no reason to assume a) that they do not interact with the
brain b) this interaction is entirely unconstrained by the physical
circuitry c) their interaction is exclusively related to topics of
"faith". In fact, more monistic models of the nature of body and soul
could suggest that the brain and soul are tightly interconnected. Of
course, there are plenty of folks in both the faith and anti-faith
categories who will probably get excited about his claims.

None of this is meant to suggest that his work is deficient as as a
scientific investigaiton of brain functions (except possibly the issue
of problematic categories of types of thought); it's the claim that
this ought to worry non-materialists that is wrong.

Conversely, finding that religious beliefs had unique neuronal aspects
would not provide evidence in favor of some sort of spiritual
existence; in fact, I'd expect Harris et al to try to spin it as proof
that they were different from logical thought.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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