The Soul

[Archaeopteryx]

Various religious traditions and philosophical systems hold diverse interpretations of what constitutes a 'soul'. On the basis of my own awareness I shall surmise however that we could possibly agree that most have assumed the soul to be: (a) Immaterial. (b) Immortal. (c) Immutable.
The idea of the soul as being essential to personal identity has long led to many inquirers believing that an aspect of themselves, immutable and not subject to the laws of the material universe, shall survive beyond corporeal existence in some version of an after-life. Doubtless, this idea of one's identity surviving beyond one's death has given comfort to many throughout the ages. Psychologists have called it terror-management, wherein we avert the fear of our non-existence by hypothesising some aspect of our existence surviving, or even at least the memory of our existence.

However, many philosophers have indicated that because the soul is generally accepted to be immaterial, its existence can be neither proven by any material measurement that we possess, neither can it be detected by the senses, nor observed, nor examined. Why then, they ask, should we believe in the existence of something immaterial when we can only experience the material world? It seems rather precarious to place one's hope for continued existence in a vessel (the soul) that cannot possibly be proven to exist.

Furthermore, if the soul cannot be proven to exist, nor detected and measured, then how can we confirm our assumptions of its characteristics, namely that it is immaterial, immortal and immutable? Are they not just assumptions then, no more relevant that the opposite assumption that the soul is mutable and mortal, if it even were to exist?

And where does the soul fit in our paradigm of the universe, in which our psychology is based entirely on our biology, which is itself based on chemistry set upon the foundations of physics. Is the soul the emergent quality of our mind? If that is so then should we really believe that the soul is immortal given that if you remove the biological foundation then the psyche will itself collapse including the apparent soul built upon it. Is the soul then at the base of this tower of foundational being, from which emerges the physics of the universe? But hang on, does that even make sense? Perhaps it does make sense to contemplate the material emerging from the immaterial (which we believe souls to be), but can that be true and would be name such a phenomenon 'soul' simply because we believe it to possess one of the qualities of a soul? And if that is so, then still the soul does not harbor any hope of a continued personal identity after death, does it?

Anyway, what do you think of the soul? Is it a useful criteria for personal identity? Where does it fit in the grand scheme of things? Where does come from? And is it subject to the ordinary changes that our shape our personalities and form our character? In essence, what do you think or believe about the entire idea of the 'soul'?

 

[Legion.As.One]

I'm a simple science person. I also, however, believe that someone's soul is just an illusion created by someone's mind. (This is is also my belief on deities). If you believe you have a 'soul' then you have one, to me its just an illusion.

A soul can't be used to identify someone if you can't see it. You can't judge someone until you really know them (which I think is impossible). So you can't definitly identify them.
A 'soul' is a completely human concept, which is what makes it fascinating.
In short - 'souls' are ideas that happen during life, and are expected to carry on in some kind of afterlife. While I'd like to believe that my 'soul' is immortal, I'm 99.99% sure it isn't.
And that's what I think, simple and relitively useless.

 

[TeddyKGB]

If my immaterial soul contains all the stuff that makes me me, why do I need this fragile, resource-hogging, meat brain?

 

[-Vincent-]

Yes we are souls. As you get older you are likely to encounter evidence for your own soul and for the souls of others. My father and my cousin have both communicated, with my brother beyond death. This solves the mortality problem, and seems to indicate that a living material body is not necessary for the survival of the soul.

There are less dramatic activities of souls which you should someday discover....

 

[Vigilante]

Yes we are souls. As you get older you are likely to encounter evidence for your own soul and for the souls of others. My father and my cousin have both communicated, with my brother beyond death. This solves the mortality problem, and seems to indicate that a living material body is not necessary for the survival of the soul.

There are less dramatic activities of souls which you should someday discover....

Not being sarcastic?

 

[Suggestion Box]

Hurray for physicalism. Ok this is something I've sorta been pondering and studying lately, so this is long, but I promise it correlates.

So the notion of a soul could very well have arisen from the brain's comfort of believing that it's not gonna completely parish.

Or it could be real... like you guys said, there is no - and cannot possibly be any - scientific proof either way.

That being said, there is also no scientific proof that there is any "biological foundation" or any other scientific foundation exists. In fact, if you think about it, the most logical assumption would be that there is no foundation of physics.

Physicalism wants to champion the idea of 'completeness of physics', that there are basic laws governing everything, that everything can be reduced to some basic laws. Current scientific theory has these 'basics' nailed down to, i guess gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear force, maybe one or two more. But to me that just doesn't seem final. Shoot, 400 years ago they thought the 'basic' elements were earth, water, wind, fire, and... ether?

How can the universe, and science, be anything but infinite (in scale and in all dimensions)? Is the universe some sort of dimensional loop? That makes even less sense, but the following argument still applies. If it's infinite, then there can be no basic human assumption to judge whether the soul exists. Every argument we can make is based on some underlying assumption. It's all relative.

Example: the soul does not exist because it cannot be seen.

What is sight? Is it not based on some underlying physical law? But if physics is indeed infinitely small, then there is no basis for making that argument. It is important to realize that all of science is relative. It is useful to us in the sense that we take the science of what is a few levels smaller in scale (i.e. the study of biology) and apply it to something in our lives (i.e. medicine). But in answering questions about eternity, the soul, or anything metaphysical, science is utterly useless.

Conclusion: if there is a soul, the proof of it lies in something else that's metaphysical (metaphysical = outside the physical realm). I'm an advocate of the mind. Are your thoughts really thoughts, or are they physical properties of your brain? If you have real, free, thoughts, i.e. a mind, then can those thoughts not count as a sense, just as sight is a sense in what we see as the physical world?

This is why I think historical evidence, combined with gut feeling, can create just as strong an argument for having a soul, as sight can argue for having a foot.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Example: the soul does not exist because it cannot be seen.

It's not necessarily just that the soul cannot be seen; it cannot be sensed, touched or detected using any measurement or craft that we here possess, since it is characteristically immaterial. This poses both a problem and advantage for soul advocates. The problem is you can't prove the soul exists because it is immaterial and therefore beyond our measurement. The advantage is the same, you can't not prove it exists - though immaterial, it's possible.

Conclusion: if there is a soul, the proof of it lies in something else that's metaphysical (metaphysical = outside the physical realm). I'm an advocate of the mind. Are your thoughts really thoughts, or are they physical properties of your brain? If you have real, free, thoughts, i.e. a mind, then can those thoughts not count as a sense, just as sight is a sense in what we see as the physical world?

But we have no reason to believe that the mind is not anything more than an emergent quality of the brain. The correlation is strong: you knock out the brain you disrupt if not totally knock out the mind.

 

[Suggestion Box]

It's not necessarily just that the soul cannot be seen; it cannot be sensed, touched or detected using any measurement or craft that we here possess

aye. just an example. i understand that all the senses count as well.

This is why I think historical evidence, combined with gut feeling, can create just as strong an argument for having a soul, as sight can argue for having a foot.

^my reason to believe that the mind is more than just a reduction of the brain.

i understand that the 'gut feeling' part seems inconclusive. but my belief in a soul arises from my belief in God, which comes from historical, not scientific or logical, evidence. I merely use the 'cant prove it either way' argument to refute the logical evidence contradicting the historical evidence.

 

[TeddyKGB]

I merely use the 'cant prove it either way' argument to refute the logical evidence contradicting the historical evidence.

Except your blanket statement is false. At the very least, the various -asias and -osias associated with site-specific brain damage are strong evidence that the 'soul' is not meat-independent.

 

[Suggestion Box]

@Teddy

elaborate.
and which blanket statement?

 

[TeddyKGB]

@Teddy

elaborate.
and which blanket statement?

The "can't prove either way" position that implies that without deductive certainty, we have no way of reasonably deciding between options.

 

[Suggestion Box]

forgive my ambiguity in naming my argument... it's hard to state my opinion sometimes in words. i am not of the opinion that, since nothing can be proven 100%, nothing can be known. i do realize that enough conclusive evidence can constitute knowledge enough to reasonably decide between actions.

now i think the only way to progress here and still stay on topic is to present evidence for and against the soul. i apologize, but i'm gonna have to bring God into this; i realize that there are some preassumptions that tend to occur here, but hey i mean we're talking about a concept that, I feel, is closely related to the idea of God.

here's an article i found on google for historical evidence. i agree with most of it.
www .xenos.org/classes/papers/doubt.htm (no spaces... it won't let me put the link otherwise)

 

[-Vincent-]

Not being sarcastic?

If I can interpret your sentence fragment correctly, no, my relpy was not sarcasim...

My reply is based on actual experiences, it is an empirical response to the problem.

 

[Vigilante]

Yeah, that was my question. I asked because I have a few friends who claim to have seen ghosts. One of them said the phenomenon became visible at the same place and time every night like clockwork. (It was in the house he was staying in.)

I obviously can't vouch for any of it.