Q34
Consciousness: can matter explain the mind?
The question, at its strongest
"Every year neuroscience explains more. Damage one part of the brain and a person loses the ability to recognise faces; damage another and their personality changes. Anaesthesia switches consciousness off in minutes. Drugs change mood, memory and even moral judgement. If the self can be dimmed, split and altered by chemicals and injuries, then the self is the brain. 'Soul' is a word for what we have not yet explained — a soul of the gaps that will shrink as science grows. And if a machine one day acts conscious, the soul will have nothing left to do."
Why people ask it
Neuroscience and artificial intelligence are in the news every day, and many people meet the question in a psychology or biology course. Others meet it at a hospital bedside, watching dementia take away a parent's memory.
Short answer
The evidence that the mind depends on the brain is strong, and no honest answer denies it. What science has not explained is why any of this brain activity is experienced at all — what the philosopher David Chalmers called "the problem of experience", or the hard problem. The leading scientific theories are still being tested, and in a 2025 test neither of the two main theories passed all its predictions. Among philosophers, about half accept physicalism and about a third reject it (PhilPapers 2020). The Quran says that the rūḥ (spirit or soul) "is of the affair of my Lord" and that human knowledge is "a little" (17:85); classical scholars such as Ibn al-Qayyim held that the soul is created and depends on God, and is joined to the body. Dependence of the mind on the brain fits that view too: a soul joined to a body acts through it. The hard problem does not prove a soul; it shows that "matter explains the mind" has not been shown either.
The full answer
9min read
For the heart and mind
If you are watching someone you love lose their memory to dementia, or lose consciousness at the end of life, this question is not abstract. The Islamic view is that a person is more than what the illness takes. The Quran describes God taking souls in death and in sleep, keeping some and releasing others (39:42); in that picture, a person whose brain is failing has not stopped being someone before God. You can keep speaking to them, reciting, holding their hand. Ask the care team about palliative and memory-care support, and about support for carers; caring for someone with dementia is exhausting, and asking for help is not failure.
If the question itself makes you anxious — "am I just chemistry?" — notice that you are asking it. The fact that there is someone asking is what the hard problem is about.
What the Quran says
The key verse. "And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the soul. Say, 'The soul is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind have not been given of knowledge except a little'" (17:85). Saheeh International translates rūḥ here as "the soul"; the Arabic min amri rabbī is rendered "of the affair of my Lord". The word amr means both "affair, matter" and "command".
Its setting. Sura al-Isra is Meccan, but the best-known report places this question in Medina. Ibn Masʿud (ra) reports that the Prophet (pbuh) "passed by a group of Jews and some of them said to the other, Ask him (the Prophet) about the spirit", and others said: "Do not ask him, lest he should tell you what you dislike" (Bukhārī 7297 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound); also Bukhari 125). Ibn Kathir notes the problem — a Meccan sura, a Medinan question — and suggests either that the verse was revealed a second time in Medina, or that the Prophet (pbuh) was inspired to answer with a verse already revealed. He also cites a report from ʿIkrima (via Ibn Jarir) in which the questioners say they have been given the Torah, and the reply is that their knowledge is little compared with God's.
What rūḥ means here. The abridged Ibn Kathir read for this page discusses the rūḥ as the human soul; it reports al-Suhayli describing it as "light and soft, like air", and treats the nafs (self) as the rūḥ joined to the body. Other classical readings of rūḥ in this verse (as the angel Gabriel, or as the Quran) are reported by other commentators but has not yet been checked.
Other verses. God says of Adam: "when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My [created] soul" (15:29) — Saheeh adds "[created]" to make clear that the spirit is not a part of God. And: "Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep" (39:42).
What the verse does and does not say. It says the spirit belongs to God's amr and that human knowledge is limited. It does not describe how the spirit relates to the brain, and it does not forbid studying the mind. Reading it as a statement about the hard problem is a modern application.
How scholars have understood it
Ibn al-Qayyim's Kitāb al-Rūḥ. Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350), a Hanbali scholar and student of Ibn Taymiyya, wrote Kitāb al-Rūḥ (The Book of the Spirit), the best-known classical work on the soul. According to Hussin (2026): he used nafs, rūḥ, qalb (heart), ʿaql (intellect) for the soul and "argued that the difference between the terminologies is its attributes, not entity" (p. 174); the soul "is created by Allah" (p. 174) and is "self-standing and independent of the physical body" (p. 175); in sleep "the soul does not entirely leave the body, unlike when one is dead" (p. 175); after death it returns to the body in the grave for questioning (p. 175). An IslamWeb summary adds that he held "the souls are not like the bodies".
Are rūḥ and nafs the same? For Ibn al-Qayyim, they name one thing under different descriptions (Hussin, p. 174). Ibn Kathir's abridgement similarly treats nafs as the rūḥ joined to the body. Other scholars distinguished them; that range has not yet been checked.
Kalam debates. Muslim theologians disagreed on whether the soul is a subtle body, an accident of the body, or (with the philosophers such as Ibn Sina) an immaterial substance. These positions have not yet been consulted in primary sources.
Does Islam require a soul separate from the body? Islam teaches that the person continues after death and will be raised (39:42; the afterlife page). That requires that the person can exist and be restored by God. It does not, by itself, settle how the soul relates to the brain in this life. Some classical theologians held views closer to "the soul is a subtle body"; Ibn al-Qayyim held it is created and self-standing. A Muslim who accepts that the mind depends on the brain in this life is within that range, as long as he affirms that God sustains the person and raises them. Limit: a view that says the person simply is the brain and ends with it contradicts Islamic teaching on the afterlife.
What science says
The mind depends on the brain. Established (.) Koch, Massimini, Boly and Tononi (2016) review the evidence: damage to the brainstem and thalamus is tied to loss of consciousness; a combined TMS–EEG measure can tell whether a person is conscious — awake, in deep sleep or under anaesthesia — "at the single-person level". They locate the best candidates for the brain areas that underlie experience in "a posterior cortical hot zone that includes sensory areas".
But not in the simple way people assume. [Moderate.] The same review cites a patient with near-complete removal of both frontal lobes who was "clearly conscious", and a patient born without a cerebellum who lives a normal life. In a study of two split-brain patients (whose brain halves were surgically separated), Pinto and colleagues (2017) found that perception was split but the patients did not behave like "two separate conscious perceivers" (Brain). These findings make the picture more complicated, not less physical.
The hard problem, in plain words. Established (as a problem; Debated as to its solution.) Chalmers (1995) separated the "easy problems" — explaining "the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli", "the reportability of mental states", "the focus of attention" — from the hard one: "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience." The easy problems "are easy precisely because they concern the explanation of cognitive abilities and functions": explain the mechanism and you have explained the function. But you could explain every mechanism and still ask: why is it like something, from the inside, to be this brain?
The theories, and their status. Debated (.) The Cogitate Consortium tested two leading theories in a preregistered study of 256 people in seven laboratories, using fMRI, MEG and intracranial EEG (Nature, 2025, as reported by the Max Planck Institute). Integrated Information Theory predicted sustained synchronisation in posterior brain regions; "the data did not support this". Global Neuronal Workspace Theory predicted a burst of activity ("ignition") when an experience ends; this "could not be confirmed". One researcher noted: "There are over twenty theories of consciousness out there. We've tested two." These theories try to say which brain activity goes with experience; they do not claim to have solved why there is experience at all.
What philosophers think. [Survey data.] In the 2020 PhilPapers survey of 1,733 philosophers, 51.93% accepted or leaned to physicalism about the mind, 32.08% to non-physicalism, and 16.56% chose "other". The same survey found 18.93% theists and 66.95% atheists — so many philosophers who reject physicalism are not religious.
The reasoning
Why dependence does not settle the question. A radio's sound depends on its circuits: damage them and the sound distorts or stops. That does not show that the music is made by the radio. The analogy is imperfect, and physicalists reject it, but it shows that "A depends on B" and "A is B" are different claims. The evidence from lesions and anaesthesia supports the first. Whether it supports the second depends on whether the hard problem can be solved in physical terms.
The interaction problem. If the soul is not physical, how does it move the body? A common version says a non-physical mind acting on the brain would break the conservation of energy. Cucu and Pitts (2019) argue that this objection fails a priori: conservation follows from a symmetry that holds only where nothing else acts, so "energy is conserved when and where minds do not act on bodies, but is not conserved when and where minds act on bodies". They add that "a decent objection to interactionism should be a posteriori, based on empirically studying the brain." Limit: this answers the energy objection only; it does not explain how interaction works, which remains unexplained.
The Islamic angle on interaction. For an occasionalist (see "Miracles vs natural laws"), the problem looks different: no created thing causes anything by its own power, so the soul does not need a mechanism to move the body; God creates the movement in line with the soul's will. Limit: this moves the question to God's action rather than answering it in terms a scientist could test.
The strongest objection, and the reply
"Brain damage, anaesthesia and drugs change who we are, so the mind is the brain." Reply: they show dependence, which Islam accepts: the soul in this life is joined to the body and acts through it (Ibn Kathir on nafs; Ibn al-Qayyim). They do not show identity, and the hard problem — why the activity is experienced — remains open (Chalmers). Limit: a physicalist will reply that the hard problem is a confusion or will be solved, and that is a live view held by about half of philosophers.
"The soul is a soul of the gaps." Reply: a "gap" argument says "science can't explain X, so God did it". The hard problem is different: it is a question about what kind of explanation could work at all, raised by philosophers many of whom are atheists. Limit: if a physical explanation of experience were found, this reply would lose its force. The Islamic belief in the soul does not rest on the hard problem, but this page's argument does.
"If AI seems conscious, the soul has nothing left to do." Reply: seeming conscious is one of the "easy problems" — behaviour and report. Whether a machine experiences anything is the hard problem again, and no current theory can settle it (Cogitate, 2025). Limit: no Islamic source read for this page addresses machine consciousness directly, and Muslims hold different views on it.
The range of views
- Physicalism — the mind is a physical process (51.93% of philosophers, PhilPapers 2020).
- Non-physicalism (dualism and others) — experience is not fully physical (32.08%).
- Ibn al-Qayyim — the soul is created, self-standing, one thing under the names rūḥ and nafs (Hussin, 2026).
- Interactionists such as Cucu and Pitts — energy conservation does not rule out a mind acting on the brain.
Questions readers ask next
What exactly is the "hard problem"?
Why brain activity is experienced — why it feels like something from the inside — as opposed to how the brain performs its functions (Chalmers, 1995).
Could a Muslim accept that the mind comes from the brain?
A Muslim can accept that the mind depends on the brain in this life. Islamic teaching on death and resurrection requires that God preserves and restores the person; a view that the person simply ends with the brain contradicts it.
What do rūḥ and nafs mean?
Rūḥ: spirit or soul. Nafs: self or soul. Ibn al-Qayyim held they are the same thing described in different ways; Ibn Kathir's abridgement treats the nafs as the rūḥ joined to the body.
What does amr mean in 17:85?
"Affair" or "command". Saheeh International renders it "of the affair of my Lord"; the verse places the soul in God's domain and says human knowledge of it is little.
If AI one day seems conscious, what would that mean for the soul?
That it behaves as if conscious. Whether it experiences anything is an open question that neither science nor this page can answer today.
Who was asking about the soul in 17:85?
In Ibn Masʿud's report, a group of Jews in Medina (Bukhārī 7297 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound)).
Key verses
وَيَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلرُّوحِ ۖ قُلِ ٱلرُّوحُ مِنْ أَمْرِ رَبِّى وَمَآ أُوتِيتُم مِّنَ ٱلْعِلْمِ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا٨٥
Transliteration: wayasalūnaka ʿani l-rūḥi quli l-rūḥu min amri rabbī wamā ūtītum mina l-ʿil'mi illā qalīlan
And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the soul. Say, "The soul is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind have not been given of knowledge except a little."
Translation: Saheeh International
Sources
- Saheeh International via the site's Tanzil data — 17:85, 15:29, 39:42.
- Ibn Kathir, Tafsir (abridged English), on 17:85, https://quran.com/17:85/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir.
- Quran.com, hadith listed for 17:85, https://quran.com/en/al-isra/85/hadith — Sahih al-Bukhari 7297 (Ibn Masʿud).
- David J. Chalmers, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", Journal of Consciousness Studies 2:3 (1995), pp. 200–219, https://consc.net/papers/facing.html.
- PhilPapers Survey 2020, results, https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all.
- Christof Koch, Marcello Massimini, Mélanie Boly and Giulio Tononi, "Neural correlates of consciousness: progress and problems", Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17 (2016), pp. 307–321, https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.22.pdf.
- Cogitate Consortium, "Adversarial testing of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theories of consciousness", Nature (2025), via the Max Planck Institute press release, https://idw-online.de/en/news851431 (the paper itself not yet consulted).
- Yair Pinto et al., "Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness", Brain 140:5 (2017), pp. 1231–1237, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28122878/ — abstract.
- Cucu and Pitts, "How Dualists Should (Not) Respond to the Objection from Energy Conservation", Mind & Matter 17:1 (2019), https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.13643.
- Rahimah Hussin, "Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah: Conception of the Soul and Its Relevance to Contemporary Psychology", IIUM Journal of Human Sciences 8:1 (2026), pp. 162–180, https://journals.iium.edu.my/irkh/index.php/ijohs/article/download/413/296/2897.
- IslamWeb fatwa 325312, "Contents of Kitaab Ar-Rooh by Ibn Al-Qayyim", https://www.islamweb.net/en/printfatwa.php?id=325312.
- Chalmers (1995)
- Bourget & Chalmers (2023)
- al-Mīzān 13 (WikiFeqh)
- Ibn al-Qayyim, Kitāb al-Rūḥ
- Nagel (1974)