In 1998, a scientist and a philosopher made a bet. Neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that science would uncover the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness within the next 25 years.

The 25 years were up this June. Koch lost; Chalmers won. At the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, they both agreed that we have not yet found a satisfactory mechanism to describe how consciousness emerges from the brain. Koch came with the case of wine he had wagered and handed over the goods.

Now I’m receiving emails and texts telling me “they’ll never figure it out,” and “eventually, they’ll have to realize there’s a soul.”

Which all seems rather misguided. First of all, is this really all the soul is—an invisible cog in the system? Or, as the skeptic Richard Dawkins would mockingly say (quoting Gilbert Ryle), “a ghost in the machine?” That’s Cartesian mind-body dualism, quite foreign to traditional Jewish concepts of body and soul.

Aside from that, in a set of six independent studies conducted in the shadow of this wager, the two major competing theories fared surprisingly well.

Now I’m receiving emails and texts telling me “they’ll never figure it out,” and “eventually, they’ll have to realize there’s a soul.”

These theories push the frontiers of scientific theory. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) associates consciousness with information structures in your brain that are “integrated”—meaning, they cannot be reduced to their parts. That’s a good description of a living organism, or any particular system within such an organism—an organ, cell, organelle, etc. It’s also a good description of chunks of language, such as words, sentences, and well-crafted paragraphs and essays. In all of these, the whole cannot be reduced any further than by a description of what each of its parts is doing.

IIT postulates that when you are conscious of something, a corresponding integrated structure forms in your brain’s posterior. It also postulates a recursive loop of sorts, by which your brain is registering its own structures.

Global Network Workspace Theory (GNWT) is similar in many ways, but more concerned with how information is distributed throughout the brain—since consciousness seems to involve multiple elements. Instead of locating the information in one area, GWNT proposes that it is broadcast by the prefrontal cortex, at the front of the brain, to other areas of the brain through an interconnected network.

The neat thing about these theories is that they generate predictions that can be falsified or verified to some degree. We can observe your posterior or prefrontal cortex and check what sort of structures form when we switch the object of your consciousness.

And indeed, the fMRI scans came through for both of them on several key points. That wasn’t enough, however, because both also contain predictions that failed. So some revisions are necessary. Or perhaps a better theory.

So, rather than a disappointment for science, this is stunning progress that has important implications in our understanding of consciousness within other species.

Rather than a disappointment for science, this is stunning progress that has important implications in our understanding of consciousness within other species.

Body and Soul Are One

Let’s put this in perspective. We’re dealing with only one facet of a much bigger question that keeps returning in many different costumes. I’m a student of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, that’s where I look for guidance on issues of Torah and science, so let me quote him writing on this many years back.

In 1956, a certain Dr. D. Elkana penned a letter in Hebrew attempting, among other things, to enlighten the Rebbe to the science of happiness—it being, of course, nothing more than the “hormonal secretions of certain glands transported via the circulatory system to the brain.”

Dr. Elkana likely figured he was dealing with an old-world chassidic rabbi ignorant of scientific progress. The Rebbe gave him a run for his money. He had studied the sciences and philosophy of science at the University of Berlin, attending multiple courses from such giants of 20th century science as Johnny von Neumann, Erwin Schrodinger, Walter Nernst, Hans Reichenbach, and Wolfgang Kohler.1 His response demonstrates that he had put a lot of thought towards contrasting materialist reductionism to traditional Jewish notions, especially as they appear in Chabad thought.

The body and soul are truly integrated and united as a single whole, therefore anything that occurs in the soul will cause some corresponding phenomenon in the body.

An excerpt from the Rebbe’s response (my translation):2

Allow me to point out that since the body and soul are truly integrated and united as a single whole, therefore anything that occurs in the soul will cause some corresponding phenomenon in the body.

I trust you will agree with me that the concept of oneness within the microcosm of the human being—which serves as an analogy and example of the true oneness of the macrocosmos—is not aligned with the pantheistic view that all that exists is nature and matter. Quite the contrary, all that exists is spiritual. Yet further, everything is divine.

Applied to the problem of consciousness, this would translate as saying: Of course consciousness will have some material manifestation in the brain. Body and soul are one. Nothing can occur in the soul without some corresponding occurrence in the body, and nothing happens in the body unless it is occurring in the soul. The body resonates with the soul because the soul is not a distinct entity from it. Rather, the soul is the fundamental reality of the phenomena of life.

Indeed, there is only a single dynamic, that of divine thought playing itself out upon the stage of human observation.

The Hard Problem or the Wondrous Problem

Now, that appears to be the inverse of the language Chalmers and Koch are using. Their wager frames consciousness as an emergent property of neural activity in the brain. The Rebbe sees it the other way around: The neural activity is an emergent phenomenon of something happening in the soul.

Both present a hard problem: Even if Chalmers was satisfied that some theoretical model accurately aligned brain activity with states of consciousness, he would still be hard put to explain how something as non-material as the experience of consciousness, even “knowing that you exist,” emerges out of electrical charges passing between neurons. That’s something he will readily admit, and that’s why he called it “the hard problem of consciousness.”

But the Rebbe, on many occasions, also openly admitted to being faced with the opposite question: How do material phenomenon emerge out of a purely non-material state we call a soul?3

But the Rebbe, on many occasions, also openly admitted to being faced with the opposite question: How do material phenomenon emerge out of a purely non-material state we call a soul?

He would note that every morning, Jews say a blessing thanking G‑d for connecting their bodies with their souls that concludes, “Blessed are You…who heals all flesh and works wonders.” Why “works wonders?” R. Moshe Isserles writes in his gloss on Shulchan Aruch (the Code of Jewish Law) that connecting a spiritual entity to a physical entity is absolutely wondrous.4 Which makes, the Rebbe would continue, everything in our world absolutely wondrous.

The Soul as an Underlying Reality

Nevertheless, I would assert that the Rebbe’s view is more reasonable and consistent with the standard scientific approach than that of Koch and Chalmers.

When Newton provided a simple mathematical formula to describe such diverse phenomena as the orbits of the planets and the falling of an apple, neither he nor any of his colleagues proposed that gravity emerges out of the interaction of physical bodies. Rather, they understood gravity to be a universal force that is manifest in the relationships between masses.

Similarly, when Maxwell wrote his famous equations that unite many diverse phenomena into a single spectrum of energy, no one came forward to propose that electromagnetism emerges out of these many phenomena. Rather, there’s something called electromagnetism, and out of this force emerges many phenomena.

In other words, when we see a pattern occurring in multiple situations, we assume the existence of a more fundamental reality that generates these phenomena. Not a third, spooky entity butting in, but a deeper way of understanding that which we already know.

Just as electricity is a more fundamental way of describing what is going on when you hit the switch and the light comes on, and gravity is the fundamental element behind your phone falling to the ground when you let go, so consciousness is the fundamental element that explains certain activity in a conscious brain, and the soul is the fundamental element behind all the phenomena that comprise life within an organism.

That’s all we mean when we say we have a soul: Just as electricity is a more fundamental way of describing what is going on when you hit the switch and the light comes on, and gravity is the fundamental element behind your phone falling to the ground when you let go, so consciousness is the fundamental element that explains certain activity in a conscious brain, and the soul is the fundamental element behind all the phenomena that comprise life within an organism.

In fact, that is how Chabad thought explains the statement of the Ari, R. Yitzchak Luria, that even rocks have souls.5 There were those who explained that rocks must have souls because they have healing properties. Or because they act as charms. Rabbi Schneur Zalman, founder of the Chabad school, wrote that a rock must have a soul because it exists.6 Existing is an activity. Any activity, existing included, requires an underlying force to sustain it. That force is the soul of the rock.

Today we might say that the rock requires the forces that bind its atoms and molecules and endow it with its particular density, hardness, etc. And those atoms themselves require a force to hold them in existence. And there’s nothing wrong with calling that force the soul of the rock.

Is the rock conscious? Is the matzah ball in your soup aware that you are about to eat it? There’s no such implication, and that’s where theories such as IIT and GNWT or their successors come in useful. Perhaps they will open our eyes to have a little more awe and reverence for some of the other complex structures in our universe—which is, after all, awe and reverence for their Creator.

The Flat Universe Paradigm

Yes, I know there are philosophers of science who reject this notion of reality and prefer to live in a very flat universe. They insist that all that exists is that which we can observe.

In a talk on the subject in 1969,7 the Rebbe discussed how scientists are capable of seeing a tremendous unity behind the workings of the cosmos. All the phenomena of the universe can be reduced to only a small number of forces, and those forces appear to work as one—even if we don’t yet completely understand how. Even matter and energy work as a single whole.

And yet, he continued, many of these same scientists refuse to acknowledge the reality of these forces, claiming they are simply convenient abstractions. In this way, he explained, they avoid acknowledging the transcendent.

So yes, you could deny that gravity is a real thing, and the same with electromagnetism, or the nuclear forces. You could claim they’re just manners of speaking.

That seems rather arbitrary. What makes an electromagnetic field more real than the force of electromagnetism? Neither can be directly observed or measured. Indeed, electrons certainly don’t behave in any way similar to the physical objects with which we are familiar. Yet who would claim that these fields and these electrons are any less real than the chair you are sitting on?

Nevertheless, let’s say you want to take that approach. But are you ready to claim that consciousness is not real? That it’s just an abstraction? That our experience of consciousness is nothing but a delusion of the collection of atoms that comprise a human being?

Let’s say you won’t go that far. You’ll add consciousness to the collection, along with energy and matter. So why refuse to acknowledge it as a deeper reality, one that is capable of playing out through a sufficiently integrated structure in the human brain?

So why refuse to acknowledge it as a deeper reality, one that is capable of playing out through a sufficiently integrated structure in the human brain?

Souls In Meat

A simple question that’s important to ask: What’s achieved by the soul’s inherent power of consciousness resonating through your brain cells?

We might say that the force of gravity resonates with mass to manifest as physical motion. We could also say that we the force of electromagnetism resonates within a physical dynamo and circuit to manifest an entire spectrum of physical activity. What exactly is accomplished by your brain resonating with this fundamental called consciousness?

That has a simple answer: The result is a distinct experience of consciousness in a tangible, corporeal world so that the human being is conscious of existence within a physical body and a physical world and knows all things from this perspective.

If so, lo and behold, we’re really not as far from Chalmers, Koch, and the entire ASSC as we had imagined. If we’re speaking of our experience of consciousness, we all agree that this can only occur once there is neurological activity. That experience does indeed emerge out of physical activity.

All we are adding is that your neurons are not the primal origin of this experience. Your brain is only harnessing a fundamental element of the universe and limiting it within the playing field of our reality as we know it. And that’s what makes you a denizen of this hard, high-definition reality.

Is the activity in your brain consciousness? As much as the printed words inside a book are a story, or the notes played by the piano are music. The story comes clothed within words, the music comes clothed within sounds, and the consciousness of your soul comes clothed within electrical activity in the brain.

So Who Wins?

What would suffice to falsify the notion of a soul as we have presented it here? Is it possible to falsify someone’s view of reality? This is a little beyond my pay grade. What I can say with certainty is that whatever would support the Cartesian vitalist notion—that ghost-in-the-machine idea—would chalk one down for our very non-dualist view of the universe.

Are we on the path to proving or disproving the existence of the soul?

As we come to observe this deeper, more unified substrate as it is sharply manifest in the wondrous patterns of the observable world, we come closer to recognizing that matter and spirit are one, because their Creator is one.

I believe we are on a good path, one which allows us to better clarify and articulate that which every human being intuitively knows, even when in denial: That there is a deeper reality behind all we see. As we come to observe this deeper, more unified substrate as it is sharply manifest in the wondrous patterns of the observable world, we come closer to recognizing that matter and spirit are one, because their Creator is one.

As the Rebbe continues in that letter:

In truth, not only is there no contradiction, but quite the contrary: This is the logical outcome of the absolute truth of the oneness of the Creator.

By oneness, I mean that G‑d is one and there is none else besides Him—not simply that there is no other divinity besides Him, but that there is literally nothing else, no existence aside from His.

Indeed, this is one of the most fundamental ideas of the teachings of chassidut, as explained in The Portal of Unity and Faith by the Alter Rebbe.