My point is really very simple and so should not be at all difficult to grasp: The brain is not the thinker. It is an instrument which facilitates the thinker's thinking.
Evidently you think this nebulous thing called soul is a fiction because it is immaterial and therefore undetectable by the scientific method. Does this mean that you believe the scientific method is the sole test of what is real? There are many, many immaterial things which are parts of reality. Though they themselves cannot be directly observed according to the methods of science, we know they are real because we observe their effects.
The great American psychologist and philosopher William James has written that this thing called "soul" (which is not a term the pragmatist, agnostic James uses — he called this area of intrasubjective reality "Thought," with a capital "T" — he refrains even from calling it "self" or "I"), this "entity" — whatever you want to call it — is a real phenomenon for reasons already alluded to above. That is, it produces effects that can be directly observed.
If you don't like the word "soul," we can just call it "mind" if you prefer; but not brain — brain is physical, mind is not; they are distinctly different things. Soul would be the more general term, mind being the articulation of a principle of the soul which the Italian philosopher Antonio Rosmini calls the intellective principle; the other major principle is the sentient principle. The two principles are unified in substantial, fundamental feeling, which is the essence of soul.
The feeling is, of course, intrasubjective: We never "see" feelings, as if they were objects in the world of reality external to us. Yet according to Rosmini, the intangible soul can indeed be found by means of introspection. If that's true, then scientists are looking for it in all the wrong places: They think it must be something "out there," observable and testable, or it does not exist.
Perhaps it would be easier to speak of what we mean by the word myself — which is the "given" of soul, the permanent center of our own unique personality and consciousness. Here's a little thought experiment:
...I find I have a great number of sensations, including those which have their source in the body, and the memory of previous sensations. Moreoever, I have many cognitions and think many thoughts. But I find that all my sensations, present and past, and all my thoughts are distinct from one another. In fact, if two sensations or two thoughts were not distinguished from one another in some way, they would not be two, but one. On the other hand, I see that I am always the same. Its is I myself who think, perceive and do all these things. If it were not I, the same myself, who carries them out, I could not compare two sensations or two thoughts and come to know their diversity. This myself, therefore, is not the sensations and the thoughts [e.g., is not reducible to brain activity]. These differ; myself, on the other hand, is one. Myself is the subject who possesses the sensations and the thoughts. Myself considered in its own proper nature, is independent of sensations and thoughts which are accidental and vary continually, without however being able to make myself vary.I have actually carried out this thought experiment. I won't go into a whole lot of details, but simply say that what was involved was the utilization of a meditation technique that goes by the name of "clearing the mind" of all thoughts. It is very difficult to do this (just try it!), but not impossible. I actually succeeded, and was able to hold this state of "empty" consciousness for an extended period of time, ~20 mins.If I now begin to remove mentally some particular thought or sensation, I soon realise that I am not destroying myself; I feel that myself remains. If, therefore, myself remains identical when I take away from it any particular sensation or thought, it is clear that even if I were to remove all accidental sensations and thoughts one by one, I would not have taken away myself, the essence of which suffers in no way from being deprived of its accidental sensations and thoughts. Myself remains, even when deprived of all modifications. In this way, I come to form for myself the idea of the feeling which I express by the word myself, pure and simple.
— Antonio Rosmini, Psychology, Vol. 1: Essence of the Human Soul, D. Cleary and T. Watson, eds., Durham, U.K.: Rosmini House, 1999, p. 66
My takeaway from this experience: With thoughts banished, the rate of brain processing must have been reduced commensurately. Thus my brain was relatively "quiet." Yet the most astonishing thing about this experience was that never before in my life had I ever had such an intense experience of myself, "pure and simple." It amounted to a perception of essential being. Since my brain was "quiescent" through this period, it seems highly unlikely to have been the cause of this particular state of consciousness. Indeed, it was the other way around: the state of consciousness "told" the brain to be quiet.
Well, I don't know what you'll make of any of this, VoiceofXmasPast; but that's my report on the reality of soul. I won't even get into the theory of soul which states that soul is the form of the body. That is to say, human beings are not "bodies" which happen to have souls. They have bodies because they have souls: On this theory (articulated by Thomas Aquinas and others), the soul is the specifying essence, a sort of "blueprint" of the individual human person in both the spiritual and physical dimensions.
In conclusion, philosophers take the soul very seriously, and have done so for millennia. The only thing science can do with the soul by its own methods (given its phenomenal intangibility) is to try to prove a negative. And as you know, this is logically impossible.
Thank you so much for writing, VoiceofXmasPast!
Is he seriously denying that the ability to drive lies in the car?
< /s >
Anything that has effects that can be observed can be studied by the usual and customary methods of science. That includes most of the phenomena stucied in particle physics and in cosmology. Things that are really constructs based on observed effects, but which cannot be directly observed.
Gravity, the evos favorite theory for comparison with the ToE, being one such example.