I'm intrigued by your question, mainly because I don't quite see why exactly anyone should want to know the answer to it. Though I'm not a neurophysiologist, I think it's pretty safe to say that it is very unlikely that there is a particular area of the brain "linked" to metaphysical questions, simply because the category is so broad and fuzzy that it encompasses all sorts of very different questions. Why should they all be linked, whatever that means, to the same area in the brain? And even if they were, what would follow from that? Even if you could trigger certain responses ("Yes, there is a God!" - "No, there isn't!) by doing something to or in that area, what would that tell us. Would we then know whether or not there is a God? Or would we know that our beliefs are biologically induced rather than based on any reasons? So again, why do you want to know?

Brain is composed by several "levels", some of them dedicated to deal with biological issues, others with the rational side of human being... die, birth, etc., are biological acts, but thinking on them, the conceptualization of death, birth, reasoning about them, these abstractions are only human. Here you found an old question: Biological vs. Social. What is your point of view?

yes, France, this kind of reasoning should be located in the neocortex =].

Thank you very much for your answers.

Michael in most cultures we can observe that at an early age the metaphysical needs appeared and involved the construction of religions or at least a spirituality. Those culture were at the origin isolated from each other we can make the assumption that they are maybe the expression of something specific to human, maybe "genetic", innate... So I was wondering if a specialised part of brain was involved.

Maybe i did not formulate correctly my question, i wanted to give example of metaphysical questions, but i was thinking generraly of this human's tendency to spirituality..

Rey I'm not sure to understand well your question, do you mean that every acts programed by the brain have biological (natural) goals, and the conceptualization of all the fundamental steps of human's life are a social product?

Joachim thank you so much for all your references, it's exactly what i was looking for !

The question is: are abstract concepts and reasoning functions, like dead, birth, etc., and deduce, induce, etc., a result of biological functioning or, are they the result of human activities (included communicational) in the context of social relations, where they live and solve problems, related with their material and espiritual needs? Or may be both?

Loneliness?

An internal state of necessity or a lack of something, reflecting social external relations, or the the equivalent stimuli received by communicational means. It should take place only among gregarious species.

Interesting question, France. See if you can get hold of the book The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'leary. It presents the best treatment of the subject that I am aware of.

In short there is no anatomical area that deals with metaphysical thoughts. The idea of self etc... can be defined in proprioception (e.g. motor and sensory cortex) where location of appendages in 3d is mapped in the brain. The tendency for spirituality is strictly a social concept (IMOP). There have been several cases of children being reared in isolation and when they were integrated into society they had no concept of higher spiritual being (having never been exposed to it). But in terms of interactions, there is a neat concept in neurophysiology (and neuroanatomy). When one thinks of the brain, one sees it as the sum of its most basic parts (neurons, neural networks etc...). However the brain interacting with other brains forms larger networks that allows for the development of 'greater' thoughts. Think of it like the internet. The individual peice of the internet is the CPU in your computer, group that with other components and you have an individual computer able to store and process some information. however, if you link several computers together, the processing power and speed increases allowing for actions to be done that a single computer is not able to do. Thus take society and several brains interacting with each other you get group thinking wich moves away from the simple "eat, defend, reproduce' concepts and lead to the development of metaphysical questions as "why am I here or what happens when I die".

J

Hi, I was very interested by this DVD which bare on neurimages of mystic experiences... Very clever indeed/

Le Cerveau Mystique

Le Cerveau Mystique

DVD ~ Isabelle Raynauld

Prix : EUR 17,99

Ce DVD est un documentaire d'excellente facture relatant un domaine de recherche, encore juvénile, extrêmement intéressant et qui rompt avec les stéréotypes et préconceptions sur la science, la philosophie, le matérialisme et l'expérience mystique.... Si la science définit son objet d'études, ses moyens et ses méthodes, elle s'intéresse à tout, tout ce qui appartient à notre monde, voire au-delà... Entendons-nous bien. Il n'est pas question ici d'être en quête d'une validation quelconque de la religion, ou d'une religion. Comme le dit Mathieu Ricard, toute expérience de l'esprit, d'état modifié de conscience, doit s'accompagner de modifications cérébrales. Et c'est la raison pour laquelle il collabore avec Richard D. Davidson (professeur et chercheur en neurosciences affectives). Cela ne l'étonne pas que la méditation, ou un certain degré de certitude intérieure ait un certain degré de corrélation avec la science, et ce n'est pas une question de foi. D'ailleurs le Dr Mario Beauregard collabore avec des nonnes carmélites, qui, elles aussi, ont une pratique contemplative... Ce dernier chercheur avec l'aide de Vincent Paquette notamment, expose avec beaucoup d'intelligence et de justesse de ton combien cette recherche pour innovante qu'elle soit, est délicate et complexe ...

Les explorations utilisent toutes les techniques modernes (EEG, IRM, stimulations magnétiques transcrâniennes ...) et mobilisent bien des esprits qui trouvent leur voie entre les écueils que génère un sujet aussi sensible ... On croise au cours du documentaire, outre les trois personnages cités plus haut, le philosophe D. Dennett (auteur de la conscience expliquée), Le Dr Esther Steinberg, Dr jeffrey Schwartz, Michael A. Persinger entre autres ...

Au passage, et pour bien faciliter la compréhension il y a quelques documents d'archives avec le père de l'homonculus éponyme, Rasmussen Penfield, l'inventeur du concept de Stress, Hans Selye, tout deux de Montréal....

Et c'est toujours un plaisir immense d'être témoin d'une expression vivante de personnes qui ont marqués leur temps et que l'on est trop jeune pour les avoir connu ...

En somme un excellent document, riche et informatif, qui, tout en restant simple et accessible, précise les enjeux et ne tombe pas dans les chausse-trappes idéologiques...

Thank you all for your participation.

Rey I think that general concepts and reasoning functions are the response social needs, but where does the social need come from ? Probably from the choc between individual need (biological) and the life in society. I mean they come from the impossibily to fullfill individual needs that would be dangerous for the society, or at least they are an alternative, a compromise that promote all forms of communication. So in some extent biological as influence on social.. And at the same time, concepts, way of reasoning and thinking have an impact on the brain, we are conditionned in return but we are not passive, there can be struggles... So it's propably the result of waterfalls of interactions between biological and social life.

Tobie thank you for your reference I will look for this book.

Daniel I understand the importaqnt issue you raise, but I think that as every translations there are a marge of errors.. If we want to begin to understand we have to generalize, the temporary "less false" is necessary to go further.

Josef thank you a lot for your clever answer, I would be interested to read about your example of children being reared in isolation, please could you share the studies references ?

Jérôme je vous remercie pour votre conseil cinématographique de scientifique, enfin un documentaire qui semble sortir de la masse de reportages sectaires qui tournent sur le web tentant d'instrumentaliser la science.

I both agree and disagree with Josef Buttigieg: the society is probably a very strong factor for the emergence of higher self-consciousness of human beings, but I disagree in the sense that this sole explanation cannot fully justify the emergence of those high abstract concepts, because else we would see a similar emergence from other highly social animals such as the ants (which by the way are even much more social than humans).

On the other hand, we can see that other limited-social animals such as a few primates and dolphins can also get some concepts of self-consciousness, while their society (and thus the influence of their society) is a lot more limited.

Thus, I would not deny that society helps in the emergence and the construction of higher abstract concepts of consciousness, but there IS an underlying brain mechanism that allow this to happen. It maybe was not designed for this purpose (just like our basic contour recognition is "pervated" for the purpose of reading and writing alphabets), but this (these?) mechanism is a fundamental component for the emergence of higher abstract concept, which should explain why animals that are devoid of this mechanism cannot construct these higher abstract concepts even with the help of a big society.

Also as a side note, we should also note that thank's to recent discoveries, it seems that the brain is already working in a way similar to the propagation of ideas and concepts in society: one neuron may trigger some kind of response, but then the other neurons won't necessarily follow, there is some kind of "debate" happening which by the way may explain some features that allows for the concept of choice, and thus the construction of higher abstract concepts (because, in a way, we can choose what we think, or at least maneuver a bit our thoughts).

Actually Stephen your example of ants (or other colony forming insects e.g hymenoptera or formicidae) exactly proves my point. The nervous system of arthropods is very simple. There is only a simple ventral nerve and several ganglia, which are almost the same capability of that of the brain. Thus they are relegated to simple reflexive actions (e.g. follow food, determine friend or foe etc...). Yet collectively they are able to perform higher thought actions. E.g. take down larger insects, migrate, build vary complex structures, go to war). Thus from a simple brain, using a network of nodes (other members of the society) many complex or abstract processes can form. Which is my point with the human brain. Yes it is more complex than an ant (well at least in most cases...re some of my students : ), but put a bunch together and new things happen that wouldn’t in isolation. E.g. more abstract thoughts of self, inventions etc....). Come to think of it sites like Research Gate or Facebook may accelerate this ? Just me musing.

Regarding the reference of the feral children. Here are a couple references (mind you, one must be careful as many were proven to be hoaxes, so I am sticking to recent factual well studied cases).

Curtiss, S (1977). Genie: a psycholinguistic study of a modern-day "wild child". Boston: Academic Press.

Two others that I found interesting, but for the life of me can’t find the initial reference where I read them the first time were:

John Ssebunya (lived with chimpanzees)

And a famous case in the Ukraine (Oxana Malaya)

I read about a good relation right and left hemisphere give a logical and imaginative thought, and a high number of neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin).

One could also name mirror neurons. They are given to us from birth and they help us to copy not only what we see, but also what we should feel. When a mother smiles at her child, it imitates this smile or even bursts out in laughter, even though it has noch concept of laughter, it enjoys the feeling it gets. Thus, mirror neurons could also be a reason for metaphysic questions, even though we don't know why we are here, we learn from other people how it fells and looks like if you ask yourself metaphysic questions, we copy it and hand it on.

We are billions and billions of particles interacting in 11 dimensions. Language is what binds us.

To can live in the truth is important.

Metaphysical questions are closely related to the concept of consciousness, and the processes underlying those two are for the moment quite mysterious and unknown, thus you won't be able to have any clear-cut answer before at least some decades.

That said, the latest and most interesting theories about the subject are the Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness by Uriah Kriegel and the closely related concept of Strange Loops by Douglas Hofstadter (in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach).

About the Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness, you can find an excerpt here:

http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/NewShtHasComeToLight.pdf

I wish I could draw you the picture Mr Kriegel has drawn at the 12th Forum Des Sciences Cognitives in Paris, but to convey the big picture: instead of having special meta-thoughts describing thoughts, thus with an infinite number of meta-thoughts (since you then ought to have meta-thoughts about meta-thoughts etc...), Mr Kriegel propose that any thought can in fact meta-describe any other thought, including itself. Thus, there are no more a distinction between conscious (meta-)thoughts and unconscious meta-thoughts (which was a hard thing to do: at which level can you firmly say that thoughts above this level are unconscious and below are conscious?); but instead all thoughts are conscious but some parts of the processing are unconscious, unless explored (via meditation for example).

Another closely related concept is the one of Strange Loops by Douglas Hofstadter. Strange Loops happen in tangled hierarchies, where you go down repetitively and then at some moment you stumble on the same node of the hierarchy you were at the beginning before going down.

A good example is the Chicken or Egg paradox, or the Drawing Hands by M.C. Escher. You can find more examples and a good compilation of the arguments around Strange Loops in the dedicated Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop#Strange_loops_in_cognitive_science

Basically, Strange Loops are when concept A is defined by concept B, but concept B is defined by concept A. Of course, you can have a longer chain: A defined by B, B defined by C, C defined by D, D defined by ..., ... defined by A.

Douglas Hofstadter affirms that this concept would imply that the subjective "I"/ego is in fact fictional, a narrative fiction, and defined by a retro-deduction from the events (the events are happening to who? Noone else, that must me "I"), and then this fictional "I" may then be used to define other facts ("downward causality"), without ever defining clearly what is "I" since it is a self-representational loop, or strange loop (hence why as you try to define who is "I" and try to get closer, you in fact get farther and farther without having any more answers other than maybe a bit more meta-data about what you like that were unconscious before).

Lastly, NDE (Near Death Experiences) provide a few other glimpses about what may be consciousness and how meta-physical reasoning appears. But one of the most interesting facts about NDEs is that they are completely different experiences from dreams: in dreams, you may never die, because your brain can't possibly imagine what it feels like to be in nothingness (it may trick you by showing a "black screen" but you can still think, or just wake up at the moment of dying), just like meta-physical reasoning tries to define concepts that are unaccessible from our brains, it seems to be just yet another narrative fiction tangled in strange loops.

Finally, to answer the original question, if the self-representational theory and strange loops prove to be true, this would mean that this ability to experience consciousness and meta-physical reasoning would both be:

- an atomic functionality of thoughts (every thoughts are able to derive a meta-thought reasoning)

- and also involve large areas of the brain in the process (by referencing other thoughts which may derive other thoughts from other areas, etc...).

Why feelings feels lower in dreams? It can be like a film, or like another person. Virtual life seems soft.

When I use modafinil (prescription medicine used to improve wakefulness in adults who experience excessive sleepiness) my dreams become very lucid. This allows me to dream from the moment I go to bed, to the time I wake up.

When adding escitalopram (SSRI) once daily I additionally become delirious. It is very pleasant and I often wake my wife in the middle of the night with laughter in my sleep.

This are spiritual metaphysical experiences to me. They can however be greatly increased by taken the drugs in groups. Telepathic interactions between group members in dreams are very common. Maybe I should refer to it as group think.

It is my humble opinion that experiences are not provoked by a 'metaphysical part of the brain'. Instead we may conclude that the brain itself has metaphysical properties. The self-representational theory and strange loops will likely be proven true.

I think brain must function completely in big feelings, and metaphysicals moments need this.

And we need "moments" because wears and tired.

We know this need to laught and move in the dream, like "night terror" in medicine.

(I feel this many time when I was young). The dreams was very strong, and return their meaning in the future, remembering and understanding they completely. (Only the meaning).

They was so clear and I feel they like real life or premonition. (They was not good, not bad, was both, complet feelings).

Thank you all for your answers. Michiel Versteeg i'm verry interesting in your point of vew. I recently lived a psychedelic experience and I realized the same thing, as you said, brain has definitly metaphysical properties. The question is now why the metaphysics need has a variable importance in people's life expectations. And If all brains are able to live such experience, why is this potential hiden by the "normal" consciousness ?

Hi, Josef.

You stated: "There have been several cases of children being reared in isolation and when they were integrated into society they had no concept of higher spiritual being (having never been exposed to it). " Can you provide specific examples or sources for further research? This is something I've been interested in exploring for some time.

Thanks!

Pat

Hi Pat & Josef,

Children who grew up in isolation from 'metaphysical or spiritual community' do develop less religious/spiritual vocabularies. I have met many adults who relayed a similar experience based on their up-bringing.

However, that does not mean they do not have personal unresolved issues or questions, which 'spiritual arena' has provided answers to; or used as platform for dialogue when eventually introduced to a 'spiritual community.' There is a hunger in human, which 'spiritual things' seem to meet. Discerning 'the absolutely correct and right package' has been the major hindrance to many seekers I have met in recent time.

My study of the Novum Testamentum Graece by Nestle Aland with a particular attention on dating corresponding with Flavius Josephus; and a couple of other related works on New Testament Exegetical methods have helped me a great deal on the authenticity of the Historicity of Jesus (Yehoshua) Christ, who was seriously persecuted for His claim of being equal with God, among other things. My study of the Book of Hebrews in the Bible also provided me with a clue to why Jesus' crucifixion was unavoidably necessary for mankind's reconciliation with God. Interested individual can search and read Hebrews chapter 1 - 13 in BibleGateway on the Internet.

Ms France Helou,

Some basic (philosophical/theological) questions sometimes introduce people to metaphysical questions like who am I?; how did I get here?; what will happen to me after my physical death, is that the end of me?; is there anything I need to do better and how do I get the ability to do it as it seems difficult to do what I know to be right sometimes (many things are beyond me/my abilities)?; Am I responsible to anybody else? and etc. These and many other similar questions introduce people to 'spiritual' things as you rightly suggested in your question.

So, there is no particular part of the brain that specifically deals with 'metaphysics.' Since it is meta-physics, then it must be beyond the physical, the brain. Although the starting point would be part of the general thinking process like any other issues mankind wrestle with for their daily activities, meta-physics (the beyond-ness) itself is a part of the BELIEF SYSTEM, and not restricted to a particular or a 'unique part of the brain'.