Metaphysicist

Looks like mind reading machines will be a reality sooner rather than later.
Where will the soul hide once we have the brain mapped?

Until this experiment, which was reported last month in Current Biology, nobody had ever tried to take a picture of free will. One reason is that fMRI is too crude to distinguish one abstract choice from another. It can only show which parts of the brain are demanding blood oxygen. That's too coarse to distinguish the configuration of cells that signifies addition from the configuration that signifies subtraction. So, Haynes used software to help the computer recognize complex patterns in the data. To dissect human thought, the computer had to emulate it.

I once had a telling argument with TJIC about neurobiology and the soul. He’s a firm believer in the latter, so I kept pushing his understanding of the boundary between which decisions were based on neurology and which were "free will" and therefore subject to "sin". It’s completely demonstrable that you can injure a brain and affect behavior, even predictably. If the brain, an analog computer subject to bugginess, can adversely affect consciousness, where does the soul and free will begin and end?

It was an interesting argument and he created a model which was neither biblical nor scientific but he used to highlight the difference. He analogized the brain as a radio and the soul a broadcast station in heaven which sent signals to the brain about decisions. In this model, neurological damage detuned the radio so the reception was imperfect and the brain did things the "soul" didn't intend. It's an elaborate, fascinating model without a shred of doctrinal or scientific evidence to support it, but I suspect if mind-reading machines come into widespread use you'll see some version of this to explain the soul, continuing to tuck the mystery away in the gaps. I did have an opportunity to ask a (non-catholic)priest about this particular model, he pointed out that it causes all sorts of problems around redemption and sin and isn’t a “remotely defensible position”. His position was along the lines that “God knows what’s actually going on” and makes the right decisions about the disposition of souls.

Personally, I think Occum’s Razor still holds.