Discussions on the Soul

[Sotha]

Obviously what is the soul of a woman is also a very important question.

But is a woman's soul the same thing as a man's soul?

My feminist female friend always wants to insist they are not the same...

 

What is a soul and what information does it contain? How is the data stored, conveyed and used? To what end?

 

If it is immeasureable and undetectable, surely it does not exist? It becomes a matter of faith and then everyone are free to have whatever opinions they want on the topic and nobody can rationally challenge or dispute them. Everyone are correct, or alternatively, everyone are wrong. Everything melts into fuzzy and shapeless ill-defined words without exact meaning or purpose. Attempts to dig up some crystals of truth from that amorphic mess are futile.

 

IMO the "soul" is no more or less than consciousness, which is an analog simulation of percepts in coded form presented to the volitional-selection systems through attentional mechanisms, for them to ignore, notice, or act on in selecting "intended" projects of action at multiple levels of scale from global to local (cf. Glimcher's "neuroeconomic" work on the LIP brain area for the connection between visual percepts and volition), in a flow of countless discrete presentation moments, a theory called functionalism, and more particularly HOT [higher order thought] theory. Functionalism means you could recreate the same consciousness in a completely different physical set-up, if the same functional structure of operations is preserved.

 

The long sentence with the many commas is difficult to comprehend due to, well, too many side sentence trapdoors (and brackets). That kind of overcomplex language is exactly the fuzzy stuff I was talking about earlier. The topic is so complex it is not really understood by anyone, and the words describing it don't do really good job conveying ideas.

 

Are you are saying "soul equals consciousness?" One must be careful with definitions before embarking onto the discussion. Are we talking about the soul or the consciousness? Why do we use the word 'soul' if the word 'consciousness' could be used instead? I'm not sure they are exactly the same thing. Using 'consciousness' reduces the problem into simpler level:

 

Regarding men and women, of course each and every individual have an unique consciousness. The reality has to be subjective and it is based on the experiences of the one experiencing the reality. Hence, it is silly to debate whether men souls are the same as women souls: no two souls (or consciousnesses) are the equal, albeit certain similarities can be present on some areas.

 

Since consciousness has to be based on individual's experiences (and maybe genetic traits, who knows?), you can measure and analyze consciousness via the actions of an individual. If they were once attacked and lacerated by a dog once, they are likely to be careful around such creatures later in life. If the person has spent time contemplating the reality and the world, they are likely to have interesting input into a topic like this.

 

That's what consciousness is for: simply an awareness that makes you able to function. Not the same thing as soul, which usually is categorized as an immortal essence of a person, but that probably depend from which culture you originate (experiences, that is).

[jaxa]

Humans are machines.

[stumpy]

its probably locked into your dna, but according to ufo reports (if you believe in that type of thing) they have a device that can show your soul and its a grey pulsating ball that follows you around above your head. although this ball is above all living things, so all living things have a soul, even spiders.

[RPGista]

@ Stumpy - You've got to be joking, right?

 

Discussing the soul is the same empty exercise as discussing any other myth - a completely farbricated product of collective imagination, that is perpetuated throughout time and culture, assumed as an accepted fact apriori, and then dissected and made to conform to a vague logical system. The soul, as any myth, has no connection whatsoever with reality or logic, it comes from tradition and is clearly based on a naiive antropocentric view of our place in existence (which must be, of course, special).

 

This simple question should be made:

 

"Man, after having gratuitously supposed himself composed of two distinct independent substances, that have no common properties, relatively with each other; has pretended, as we have seen, that that which actuated him interiorly, that motion which is invisible, that impulse which is placed within himself, is essentially different from those which act exteriorly. The first he designated, as we have already said, by the name of a SPIRIT or a SOUL. If however it be asked, what is a spirit? The moderns will reply, that the whole fruit of their metaphysical researches is limited to learning that this motive-power, which they state to be the spring of man's action, is a substance of an unknown nature; so simple, so indivisible, so deprived of extent, so invisible, so impossible to be discovered by the senses, that its parts cannot be separated, even by abstraction or thought. The question then arises, how can we conceive such a substance, which is only the negation of every thing of which we have a knowledge? How form to ourselves an idea of a substance, void of extent, yet acting on our senses; that is to say, on those organs which are material, which have extent? How can a being without extent be moveable; how put matter in action? How can a substance devoid of parts, correspond successively with different parts of space? But a very cogent question presents itself on this occasion: if this distinct substance that is said to form one of the component parts of man, be really what it is reported, and if it be not, it is not what it is described; if it be unknown, if it be not pervious to the senses; if it be invisible, by what means did the metaphysicians themselves become acquainted with it? How did they form ideas of a substance, that taking their own account of it, is not, under any of its circumstances, either directly or by analogy, cognizable to the mind of man?" (The System of Nature, Vol. 1, by Baron D'Holbach)

[ungoliant]

I kinda lost faith in the concept of a soul after seeing the report that upon dying you lose whatever, .5g or something from your body, and it must be your SOUL, and then I realized that its just a post-mortem fart.

 

Yeah, i'm bringing the classiness to this thread.

[Sir Taffsalot]

I kinda lost faith in the concept of a soul after seeing the report that upon dying you lose whatever, .5g or something from your body, and it must be your SOUL, and then I realized that its just a post-mortem fart.

 

Yeah, i'm bringing the classiness to this thread.

 

Lol! That wouldn't have made any sense anyway as that would have implied that a soul has physical properties and by it's very definition it does not.

[elwing]

Humans are machines.

 

QFT

[Tels]

Not wanting to delve to deep into souls vs.definition etc. But have you considered that a soul could be the "metaorganism/metacharacter" part?

 

Consider an ant. It doesn't do much. Now consider an ant hill and all the ants in it. (These are usually counted as one organism-in-distributed-manner by Biologist I heard). The ant colony certainly has more properties than just the sum of the ants.

 

Likewise with all humans, you could consider humanity an entire "meta organism". Parts of it went to space, parts of stay always where they are, but the sum of all humans is more than just a single human.

 

With all these "organisms", their meta properties die, when all (or most) parts of the organism die.

 

A collection of cells like a human could be seen like that, too. With my luck, I guesss some philospher at 2000 BC covered that topic already and I just didn't read his papyrrus

[Sotha]

Not wanting to delve to deep into souls vs.definition etc. But have you considered that a soul could be the "metaorganism/metacharacter" part?

 

Consider an ant. It doesn't do much. Now consider an ant hill and all the ants in it. (These are usually counted as one organism-in-distributed-manner by Biologist I heard). The ant colony certainly has more properties than just the sum of the ants.

 

Likewise with all humans, you could consider humanity an entire "meta organism". Parts of it went to space, parts of stay always where they are, but the sum of all humans is more than just a single human.

 

With all these "organisms", their meta properties die, when all (or most) parts of the organism die.

 

A collection of cells like a human could be seen like that, too.

 

That's a fun and a fresh view: the soul of the humanity would be some kind of integration over various features and effects of the whole species. Likewise such an integration over the features of an individual could be called 'the essence' of the person, which is the generally used definition of the soul. But the problem, again is the inexactness: which properties to include and which to exclude from the integration. Including youtube videos, comments and general internet discussion would not give a very flattering image of the soul of humanity. I'd rather be an ant.

 

With my luck, I guesss some philospher at 2000 BC covered that topic already and I just didn't read his papyrrus

Yes, typically, when one gets a fresh idea and checks if it is entirely new idea, it is found someone already thought about it earlier, just using slightly different words or maybe viewing the thing from a slightly different perspective. My guess is that this is most likely one of the reasons why the discussions the typical modern person takes part are very shallow, superficial and often related to the immediate or primary needs.

[elwing]

hum.

 

Soul ?= Society

 

interesting view...

 

 

on a side view our father karas said that mechanic is life, no?

[Tels]

That's a fun and a fresh view: the soul of the humanity would be some kind of integration over various features and effects of the whole species. Likewise such an integration over the features of an individual could be called 'the essence' of the person, which is the generally used definition of the soul. But the problem, again is the inexactness: which properties to include and which to exclude from the integration. Including youtube videos, comments and general internet discussion would not give a very flattering image of the soul of humanity. I'd rather be an ant.

 

I think the point is you can't limit the "metacharacter" to only parts. The bacteria living in the gut of the human are as much part of every human as are the retrovirus parts of the DNA, each living cell, virus living in your skin (warts, and so on) etc. They all form a whole, and the whole is more than just the sum.

 

For instance, gut bacteria have little influence of your movement, probably don't even recognize it at all. And yet, w/o them, you'd probably never be.

 

Likewise for humanity, some humans might not even know about space exploration, and yet, they might contribute (mining rare materials). Humanity itself can be consider "a whole organism", and at that complexity level, it becomes hard to tell which parts are nec. and which parts are superflous, esp. if they all influence each other with unknown means and channels.

 

A strike in the rare-earth mines might bringt half of humanity to a stand-still. Or not, who could predict this?

 

Also to consider is that when the organism dies, not every part of it might die. The fungus living in your skin might carry on, but then, it could also be said that it isn't part of your organism - already the line is blurring what is part and what is guest.

 

Interesting topic.

[7upMan]

Thinking of my soul as being the collection of my warts and viruses kinda makes me sick.

[demagogue]

Hmm, internet has been down here so didn't have a chance to see this until now. I was just writing off the cuff before, not really being too careful.

 

I do think there is a difference between the mechanism of "consciousness" and what a person might call their personal "essence" (what historically they might call their soul), which is something they experience through their consciousness, but isn't the mechanism itself. I wouldn't say that essence is a "thing" like a physical rock, but I wouldn't say it's entirely unreal either. The philosopher Dan Dennett said that this kind of essence has reality like a center of gravity, it's a property of how the physical mechanism operates you can describe that's really there, but it's not like a single actual thing you can point to in itself, which has a certain logic to it.

 

So a good theory of what consciousness is is something like the network theories you get from some cognitive scientists. You have a kind of analog simulation of features (codings for colors and lines and relative placements, etc, for visual experience), then you have that networked to downstream systems acting on it & that's where the magic happens... where you "recognize" a blue chair and decide to touch it or sit on it or ignore it even. You need both sides of that system for consciousness.

 

As for the personal "essence" part, the cognitive science approach that I liked spun around Bogdan's book Predicative Minds. So the idea here is that "meaning" starts from intrinsic "project-making systems" (that we share with animals), built out of them or parasitic on them, I mean like we start with instinctive projects like hunting for food or sex, traversing a rocky terrain, etc, and then there are some "personal" instinctive projects towards oneself, like self-grooming, etc. So, the way humans are special is that this "project" system can turn on itself and nest in a way animals don't. (So the theory goes.) What that means is now you can have projects about projects (where the idea of meaning being "parasitic" comes in). This gives a hook for language and meaning. What creates it is a long socialization process children learn from their mothers, where there's this "project" or "game" of connecting these instinctive projects with arbitrary symbols (words), and encapsulating the whole native project with that word (which the mother & child shared in their attention when making the connection; I mean like the mother is pointing at the picture of the lion, so the child & mother have it in shared attention and tag it under "lion" (as if they were sharing the experience in the same sort of "collective mind", people have characterized it as a "social consciousness" or "Platonic form" or the "Mind of God" or "logic of nature", but the point is it's experienced as if it's an eternal meaning "out there" we all have access to & recognize in ourselves after that period of learning. I mean concepts are "objective". This isn't "my lion", this is a "lion" for everybody.)

 

And then of course as you build this lexicon, then you can start having words and phrases about these words and phrases and start nesting them to increasingly arbitrary concepts, as far as you want to go down the rabbit hole (I mean a "lion" is connected pretty directly to a tangible world object, but "democracy" is much further down the line & abstracted away from specific world objects, but ideally you could deconstruct it into the learning process back to the collective tangible experiences that gave it content) and that's meaning & language. So under this theory, reflecting on those instinctive self-projects and encapsulating & tagging them with meaning would effectively become the "project or essence of self" that people could talk about like a soul that, again, exists "objectively", beyond just the experience but in that "collective mind" space, or "out there & eternal" space, or heavenly essence... It's not just "me for me", it's "me" for everybody. Which of course has a grain of truth because you could preserve & restore that essence within a new body, and it (and everybody else) would still recognize itself as itself (which all the religions involving an afterlife or reincarnation have an intuitive sense about in terms of a soul I think. Different body; same soul). Well that's how that theory might play out.

 

As for what's actually going on at the cognitive level -- you want to get away from the ambiguity & wishy-washy language -- for that you'd want to be very clear exactly what cognitive systems were at work, doing what work contributing to the process. We're talking about mothers teaching their infants a new word while they're getting an fMRI scan (a future one that can go into much greater detail & in real time), and then you could point to the specific brain areas such as the visual images of "lions" is getting processed, their logical features (inherits "4-legged animal" or "type of cat" upstream, has daughters like "male or female lion" or "Lion King" downstream, etc), and the shared (collective) attention of the "self" & "mother", triangulated to the world object (picture of the lion) so this concept "lion" is getting represented as a public concept or meaning that humans share, in the collective self-other-world "objective" space (as opposed to only a custom me & mom share, or a word I made up for this world object no one else recognizes, you need all 3 pieces represented for it to be an "objective" meaning), then how it's actually getting stored in long term memory as a lexical item (Wernickie's area?), along with the grammatical rules for construction, etc (there isn't a fine line between grammar, syntax, & semantics in this theory).

 

What else? Oh yeah, when you start representing things inside yourself, like your "personal essence", once you're representing it through the parasitic language system you've now got developed, you still need that 3-element structure, self-other-world, so it's naturally representing "personal essence" as an "objective" world-item that other people can recognize (that happens to be "inside" your own experience, or "somewhere" anyway that your inside has access to). That is to say, under this theory, you can't really conceptually represent your "self" without it already being conceptualized as an objective world-item (like the picture of the lion) with its own "space". It's sort of natural to see why the concept of a distinct objective soul is built-in, and if you just got rid of it, then you would miss how the mind is really representing it in experience. It's part of being human, like someone was saying, that animals don't have. They don't do this 3-element conceptual triangulation because they don't have this period of social learning & shared mother-child experience. A chimpanzee mother does not teach its child the world, the child just watches and picks up features in its own terms, so the mother-child link is broken. There isn't an "objective world of things" that "I share with the other chimps". There's just "my feelings" and my projects to the "world" -- at best I can only mimick what other chimps do, but not understand the world like they do, much less objectively -- and most importantly there's no objective concept of "me" that I or other chimps can recognize objectively as such. This is why we tend to think "animals do not have souls like humans", although we could say they are conscious of experiences like we are. They apparently really don't have an objective essence of self like humans do; they don't have a concept of soul, and humans need that concept to recognize a self as such (even if they don't like admitting that's how the concept works).