Soul

We are all interconnected.  That connection is in the infinite.  The infinite is God and our part of that infinity is called our soul. All else is finite.
My brain is an anatomical structure. It’s an advanced animal model but insects have a rudimentary brain as well.  Some people have bird brains but they look human. Others are quite brainless but thanks to a soul they to are human.  Being human means having a soul.  Being homo sapiens means having a brain at least.  People with bigger and more efficient brains are smarter and more clever.
The mind can be best understood as the brain with soul. Wisdom is a coupling of the separate finite individual computer brain system with the infinite.  
The heart is an organ for pumping blood throughout the system.  The heart was once thought to be the seat of the soul. This is the ‘nous’.  We continue to refer to the ‘heart’ in the sense of the nous despite using the same term for a structural anatomic organ. Just as we vaguely associate the brain with wisdom so we associate matters of the heart with the heart.  It’s the ‘centre’ or in Eastern terms the chakra or energy centre associated with love.  People described being heart broken and loss of a loved one can cause death through heart attack or myocardial infarction.  The autonomic nervous system relates to the chakra system and to the acupuncture meridians.
It’s an intuitive centre and is associated in history with emotions.  The emotions today are understood however in the brain in the limbic system, i.e. the amygdala, hyppocampus, thalamus, cingulate gyrus etc. But even a child would more likely point to their chest when asked where love is, or where to you feel, rather than pointing to their brain.
The heart is mostly associated with love.  The love referred to when we speak of the heart is that of brotherly, sisterly love and agape, the highest love. Erotic love is thought a combination of heart love and the love of the loins or lust.  In eastern systems there is a lower chackra centre and acupuncture addresses loin issues in this region which coincides with another junctional area of the autonomic nervous system.
Oswald Chambers famous meditational book was called “My Utmost for His Highest”.  These were his ’soul’ thoughts.  Theology has had much to do about the rational ideas about God whereas religious ‘rituals’ and “practice’ have more to do with heart matters.   The best known 'practices' are prayer and meditation.  Scientifically they have been shown repeatedly as highly beneficial.
The soul is eternal.  When we die it’s thought that all that is organic dies, of course, but our soul goes on.  In computer terms this is considered as a program that will join a greater program intact like a usb stick memory drive or an ‘iCloud’ memory.  There is no reason to believe that we don’t continue.  It’s not essential to intelligence or advanced science to conceive of a non material core being of ourselves persisting with immortality.  Increasingly sciences sees the world as energy matrix and communication.  Religions collectively speak to this ‘after life’.  It is the soul, already a part of the immutable, a part of God, that persists.
With the soul goes love and wisdom.  Those who have near death experiences, and these have been post death of heart and ceasing of brain waves.  No one knows where the ‘self’ or ‘consciousness’ has gone but it comes back. These individuals report experiencing their whole life much like we would a memory card. What they were fearful about here was in that post death state somewhat silly because of the eternal all loving nature of existence as they now understood it.  So fear is temporal. Fear is finite while love is not.
This is why we say we are spiritual beings living in a material world. This is the perennial story. This is the central journey.

Miracles

I believe in miracles.  I believe that events in history have occurred which were apparently 'supernatural' which we now know by the study of science to be 'merely' 'extraordinary'.  In this understanding the 'eclipse of the sun' by the moon is explained today by science as the moon crossing before the sun whereas in the past it was understood as the sun being taken away and returned.  I also believe that man's ego is such that he tends to project his present into the past and believe that the events of yesteryear were as he understands them today. I consider this 'retrospective falsification'.
Understanding this I still believe in Miracles as in 'God events'.
I have a theory about the events of the "Big Bang" but I don't 'know' the Big Bang as I know my own fingers.  However as a scientist today I know the limitation of my own 'belief' in my knowledge of my fingers.  I know the quantum physics explanation of the existence of my fingers and the vast limits of my understanding and perception of even my own fingers let alone matters of distant past. Neuropsychiatry has at once humbled and expanded my understanding of perception.
I believe that there are supernatural forces that we today do not understand so would call their 'effect' miraculous. I believe in a whole list of such forces as telepathy and levitation.  I believe that as all is now and the external material world is a bubble on the vast ocean of the spiritual world which itself is a mystery at the surface regarding the centre and depth I can know only in a limitted sense because that is the nature of this incarnation and the nature of this 'world'.
As theology teaches 'many houses' science teaches many 'dimensions'. There are multiple parallel universes. My perception may 'switch' from one universe to another.  Would I know this.  Subjectively I have a sense of points in history where I came to 'cross roads' of 'potential' and perhaps experienced the 'road less travelled" . I have a sense of these 'nodal' points in time when a confluence of events gives rise to a course which leads me in a certain direction but which might well lead alternatives of self, a multiplicity of perception, in another direction. I am left with what I wake to each day.  I can not in good faith knowing what I do of the potential of this world or of God that more is not possible.  I, for all I know, am the 'rate limitting' step.  I believe an infinitude of events is happening in God's time and God's 'spiritual' domain but that I 'see but through a glass darkly' in my life.  If it was God's will for me to fly in this world I'd fly with or without wings.  Now God  wants me to walk  or my own fear limits me to walking as Peter could not walk on water as long as Jesus did because of his lack of 'faith'.  Peter did walk on water though whereas the other disciples didn't.   I pray to fly and might in time be in a world or dimension where I can fly.  Alternatively I might 'miraculously' buy a ticket on a child guided Canadian made spaceship with a propulsion system conceived and designed by women alone.
I believe that our 'faith' is made stronger in this world as our beliefs are increased from the chaotic childhood fantasy world to the 'reality' of the 'collective' to the miraculous potential of the future.  Cellphones would have been considered miraculous once.
I believe that there are other planets inhabitted by human like forms and other aliens and other interdimensional beings. I imagine that if one can imagine something it exists in some form somewhere.  Unicorns and fairies and trolls all may exist but that I am not to be distracted in my spiritual journey by the fanciful and 'magical' but am to be devoted to the goal of coming closer to God , the true light, the word that was with Jesus as John tells us.
I believe that Jesus, the son of God, has given us the clearest vision of human potential on earth, which is in the 'love' he shared and the 'sacrifice' he made.  I think that whether a person uses a spear or a nuclear device to kill they are still primitives whereas Jesus was God like in his command to love your enemy.  That said I might well kill my enemy because I'm a 'sinner' but I wouldn't promote "killing' as the 'Way".  I believe that there have been many prophets and saints and that where their teachings meet there is the greatest likelihood of navigational truth.  
Albert Schweitzer realized that all was alive and that killing couldn't be avoided and as a doctor I am unable to be 'silly' about  death and my complicity  but must realize that it matters where my heart is too.  The scriptures tell me that I will need to see like a child again but this 'child like' innoscence is not the ignorance of children but rather the 'wisdom' that comes with experience.
I believe I have experienced miracles and witnessed miracles in my life but my tendency is to 'normalize' and 'deny' these.  Truthfully though I have no other better explanation despite my experience and training.  I consider all life is a miracle and sacred and that there are these events that are 'more' miraculous and more sacred.  They speak to the glory of God.
I do not need to 'deny' a 'virgin birth' out of 'arrogance' but can 'believe' it.  It's not really been much of an issue for me and may well be 'made up' by theologians but then everything can be seen through 'cynical' eyes.  The critic can destroy all.  If a person today claimed to be pregnant and a virgin I'd be most interested in looking at the DNA as I'd expect 'god stuff' perhaps.  Again what happened in the yesterday' has a different relevance to me 'today'.  I have no 'disbelief' that the seas opened for the fleeing Moses tribe but I also know stories 'exaggerate' with time and commonly in the past people said a thousand people were killed in a war when only a dozen were. That's at least the case in the Scottish tribal fights that I studied.  But that's History and history by convention is just an approximation of the truth for the collective imagination.  I wasn't there in this incarnation in the past as the story is told.  I don't know with certainty if there once was an age of Atlantis and we have devolved or if we are evolving moving from the Old Jerusalem to a New Jerusualem. I really don't know. It's all a matter of belief. I am suspicious of those who 'insist' that I 'believe' what they believe as if they 'need' my belief to be the same as theirs as this is what fanatics, insane people and some political leaders have been like.  I may well be wrong and they are right but I shy from 'bullying' .
Events have occurred in my life especially those times when I thought I was near to death and felt a presence of God and somehow there was a reversal of events and I lived.  The same has occurred in the process of healing.  There has also been an association between prayer and the miraculous.
I can easily 'argue' as a 'critic' and am highly trained to 'debate' the opposite, that is a purely 'material' world without 'miracles'.  I am glad for that training. It's the same training that Saint Paul had and then he was blinded and regained his sight and came to believe in miracles in a personal way.
I consider this a personal journey. I share my perception of that journey and I surely will be highly skeptical about anyone who claims to be able to levitate but I will not exclude the possibility. I'd gladly levitate alongside him.  But the fact is  I'm too much a  'doubting Thomas'.
I am a scientist and a theologian.  To me scientific theologian or theological scientist is not an oxymoron. Such was the case for most of the greatest scientists of all time as it was for Einstein and Newton.  There are a  few scientists and theologians today, who I tend to believe are simply 'lazy', and  won't  take the trouble to play three dimensional chess in a multi dimensional universe so insist that we all believe their reductionist perspective because it's self aggrandising in some way.
I remain open minded but don't believe in having such an open mind that my brains fall out. I also don't want to be so close minded that I have only a brain unmindful of the miraculousness of mind which connects us with others and with God.

Psychiatric Bio Ethics 2012

Ethics is defined as the moral principles that rule the conduct of a person, class or group.

eth·ics

[eth-iks]  

plural noun

1.

( used with a singular or plural verb ) a system ofmoral principles: the ethics of a culture.

2.

the rules of conduct recognized in respect to aparticular class of human actions or a particulargroup, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.

3.

moral principles, as of an individual: His ethicsforbade betrayal of a confidence.

4.

( usually used with a singular verb ) that branch ofphilosophy dealing with values relating to humanconduct, with respect to the rightness andwrongness of certain actions and to the goodnessand badness of the motives and ends of suchactions.

-web based dictionary

As is common with definitions, further words within the definition also need defining.

Hence:  the word moral.  What does that mean exactly. At first I think, simply that mean's 'right or wrong' but looking to Wikipedia I see my simplification met with a whole article on morality encouraging one to truly think outside the box of one's own limitted sense of the meaning of the word in today's society. (from wikidictionary)

Morality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Appropriate" redirects here. For other uses, see Appropriation (disambiguation).

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and those that are bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. The adjective moral is synonymous with "good" or "right." Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.^[1][2][3][4]

The morality and ethics of my family, as a smaller unit in a greater community, might include the notion, 'don't kill what you don't eat', 'coupled with cannibalism is frowned on."  However as anthropologists have shown us, a family of  'cannibals' don't necessarily share this lofty notion but rather simply their lives by saying it is wholly permissible to kill that which you don't eat, eat that which you kill,  and indeed you can eat all but your immediate blood relations.

Further complicating this is the notion of "moral relativism', 'ethnocentricity, and power politics.  Einstein showed that the position of an object altered the nature of it's mass, velocity or time relative to another.  From this 'scientific hypothesis', arts students jumped to the conclusion that ideas were like the objects of physics and the position of a premise might well alter the positive or negative of a conjuction.  Hence to the moral relativists it might be okay to eat one's neighbour on bad days but not good days.

Ethnocentricm was the phenomena whereby a person perceived themselves and their culture as the centre of the universe and showed rather limitted understanding of their neighbours.  Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake' was such a statement of ethnocentricity that upset the French masses of history and almost restored cannibalism to that nation which had hopefully shook off that tendency hundreds of years before her reign.

Power politics suggest that while a variety of positions may exist for defining an action if a person has a gun pointed at their head and is being told what to do they are more likely to choose a solution appealing to their immediate master.  Marie Antoinette lost her head to a guillotine.

A principle is another 'slippery' word in what might otherwise seem a rather benign definition.

Wikidictionary has this to say about principle:

principle

[edit]English

Wikipedia has articles on:

Principle and Principle (chemistry)

[edit]Etymology

From Old French principe, from Latin principium (“beginning, foundation”), from princeps (“first”); see prince.

[edit]Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈprɪnsɪpəl/, /ˈprɪnsəpəl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: prin‧ci‧ple
• Homophone: principal

[edit]Noun

principle (plural principles)

1. A fundamental assumption.

   We need some sort of principles to reason from.

2. A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem.

   The principle of least privilege holds that a process should only receive the permissions it needs.

3. (usually plural) Moral rule or aspect.

   I don't doubt your principles; you are clearly a person of principle.

   It's the principle of the thing; I won't do business with someone I can't trust.

4. (physics) A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied.

   Bernoulli's principle

   The Pauli Exclusion Principle prevents two fermions from occupying the same state.

   The principle of the internal combustion engine

5. A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality.

   Many believe that life is the result of some vital principle.

   Cathartine is the bitter, purgative principle of senna. — Gregory.

6. (obsolete) A beginning.

   Doubting sad end of principle unsound. — Spenser.

[edit]Usage notes

Principle (moral rule) is often confused with principal (most important). Consult both definitions if in doubt.

The confused may care to remember that 'The principal alphabetic principle places A before E' as a reminder of the relative spelling.

[edit]Synonyms

• (moral rule or aspect): tenet

[edit]Derived terms

[show ▼]Derived terms

[edit]Related terms

• prince
• principal
• principality
• principled

[edit]Translations

[show ▼]fundamental assumption

[show ▼]rule to solve a problem

[show ▼]moral rule or aspect

[show ▼]rule of nature

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.

[show ▼]

Note that the definition of principle gives rise to the need for translation of 'fundamental assumption', 'rule to solve a problem' and 'moral rule or aspect'  and 'rule of nature".

Inherrently then we see the beginning of a circular reasoning in the very definition of ethics and morality because increasingly as we dissect the parts we see subdivisions defined again by the part or whole already believed addressed.

At this point we haven't even got to the individual principles or the rules or morals that might be applied to a group.  As a fundamental assumption it might be advantage for cannibals not to eat their children.  But given the behaviour of fish this is not necessarily a rule of nature.

More importantly rules and principles and ethics have been shown to have a 'hierarchy'.  It follows from this that there is such a thing as 'first principle'.

Clearly the first principles of various philosophies are vastly different.  The deconstructionists believed that their first principle was that everything could be deconstructed however their critics demonstrated rather humorously that indeed the first principle of deconstructionism was that everything but deconstructionism can be deconstructed.  Faced with deconstruction the deconstructionist said 'this is our God and thou shalt have no other Gods but mine".  Opposing philosophers using the tools of deconstructionism deconstructed deconstructionism regardless.

Humanism has argued that 'man is the measure of all things'.  In contrast theism has stated that man is a product of the creator.  It sounds like a mute point but Gallileo nearly died for suggesting that the Earth revolved about the sun rather than vice versa.  To show a judge in his court that he is wrong is to face his wrath almighty when the infantile ego of a judge is fragile and easily threatened by opposing arguments. The same judge might be a rather pleasant and reasonable sort if met in the cafeteria of a psychiatric asylum.

Dr. Johnson, as quoted by Bob Dylan said, "steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king'.  As conquerers make the rules the rules serve principally to maintain the status quo and the reformer is anyone who is an enemy of the status quo.

The rules then of groups in a society serve to keep outsiders out and insiders in.  Indeed 'secrets' and 'changes of rules' serve to keep those furthest from power identified as such.  As one black feminist said, "we got your honky ass so tied up in knots you can't even talk about us without offending while we can call you whatever crackerjack chauvinist name we want to".    Cannibals by contrast to modern more complicated and refined society had less appetising ways of resolving disputes about 'whose in, and whose out' , the courtly questions that amused  King Lear and his daughter Cordelia.

Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy. It also includes the study of the more commonplace questions of values ("the ethics of the ordinary") which arise in primary care and other branches of medicine. (Wikipedia)

I won't even begin to define these 'controversial' terms here or get into a discussion of what is ordinary to a schizophrenic homeless person as opposed to dilletante judge who only uses cocaine 'recreationally'..

Bioethics purports then to address the questions which a patient or physician might encounter and philosophise about.  Indeed philosophy itself is an arm chair monday morning quarter back profession that serves to 'criticize' deeds of others.  Ideally, with the assumption, even the fundamental assumption, that an ounce of prevention can save a pound of cure.  The study of bioethics might well equip a physician or patient better for their mutual dance with the reality of life and death decisions, a reality infinitely far from classrooms, court rooms and academic discusions which usually focus only on sex and money. .

Having studied logic in undergraduate school and learned the nature of rhetoric and fallacies in later education I personally found that it was immensely beneficial to have this knowledge for my own edification as it helped me appreciate the extent of illogicality among those who would claim to be most rational.  Indeed the field of psychiatry developed in some ways to explore scientifically the failings of philosophy especially the rationalist explanations of the day.

Psychiatry has been creditted with the invention of the conscious and unconscious.  Many philosophers remain as unconscious of psychiatry today as they are unenlightened by religions.   Philosophy has been called secular religion and ethics the rituals deprived of incense.

Having read many books on bioethics, attended conferences and listened to ethics philosophers I have personally been impressed by their arrogance.  I have reflected on why these wordsmiths have so often sauntered with such surety and certainty when mortals such as myself quiver before the disease of nature, the tears of patients and the irrational politics of man.

So much of philosophy is an after thought that sounds so like the confabulations of the demented.  The bioethicists in a committee hide behind the collective unity of a group believing in the superiority of a committee decision themselves, never having studied the dynamics of 'group' behaviour or how even sunlight alone can affect trade on global stock exchange. Being a member of a committee makes it easier to plan parties and make shopping lists while others talk about you. Words like deniability and due diligence supplant such outdated concepts as accountability.

But one must tread softly before the fragile egos of philosophers today.  Administrations are toppling everywhere in the Dessert Spring that overturned the middle east and tyranny and it's Goebbels proponents are in terror screaming as Kurtz once did "the horror, the horror".  Kurt Vonnegut in his earth shattering novel Gallipagos has the world as we know it ending because of a random gene error on a strand of DNA and the tendency of politicians to eat so much, especially at lunch, that their decision making is severely impaired in the afternoon.

Psychiatry finally is defined:

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities. The term was first coined by the Germanphysician Johann Christian Reil in 1808, and literally means the 'medical treatment of the mind' (psych-: mind; fromAncient Greek psykhē: soul; -iatry: medical treatment; from Gk. iātrikos: medical, iāsthai: to heal). A medical doctor specializing in psychiatry is a psychiatrist.

What becomes excruciatingly tedious is that philosophers in general argue over the existence of the brain, routinely deny the existence of a soul, and certainly are not in any agreement about the existence of the mind. This leaves it impossible for them to agree on mental disorders, the very concept of abnormality, given the morality of the normal, and whether, what and when treatment is needed.   This is further complicated by Psychology that upstart branch of Philosophy which clincally can always refer dangerously difficult patient to a psychiatrist thereby passing the buck and like a committee escaping accountability while physicians and especially psychiatrists breathe sleep and eat accountability, the latter only if they are not a blood relation.

I was priviledged to study philosophy in the Elysium of Arts undergraduate years when universities were still relevant and had not been supplanted by private sector institutions. The philosopher I studied under contributed the most to writing of the Mental Health Laws of Canada.  He was a humble and wise man.  He knew little freedom though in his tenured cage and often seemed trapped in the class room with dubious students such as myself, when his true joy was to be alone in books and papers where he could play his Hessian "glass bead game'.  He liked me as well as he liked any human, I suppose.


Finally psychiatric bio ethics is limited by the stupidity or genius of the year 2012.  This is the year of the Chinese Dragon, two centuries at least since philosophers killed Jesus, long after Buddha ran away from Maya and Mohammed spoke for Allah.  No physician could heal the Healer's wounds.  Jesus was indeed told "physician heal thyself".  Socrates, pressaging Christ, drank the hemlock given him by the State committee. Buddha at least knew virgins galore, seeming a rather sated baccanalian, compared with Mohammed who still lusted for jehad.

The Mayan Calendar said the world would end in 2012. All hope lay with the Mars expedition, the Moon havin losts its romance. Fetus killing patriarchal Chinese Intelligence outsmarts sterile Matriarchal Western Intelligence still searching for the sperm of Wiki leaks founder Julian Assange, since Clintons was reclaimed from Monica's sweater.

War is daily imminent/eminent.  Israel threatens to invade Iran,  'the best defence is an offence'.  Political boundaries are membranous as ideas. Power dictates new philosophies and sometimes just sprays Febreeze on the old.  Cannibals are hungry.  In Canada we are facing austerity.
The latest "info entertainment" facebook video shows children armed with AK47's.

Hallelujah! Praise Plato and pass the ammunition.

So begins Psychiatric Bioethics 2012.