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I'll put aside the question of a soul and say, the brain is explicitly something our consciousness makes up (based on data so consistent we justifiably call it "reality").
Materialism is how we see the world. Our consciousness gives a better clue to what the world really is. My consciousness is what it's like to actually be this part of the world.
Yeah, kind of. I mean, I believe that we're in a simulation, so the mind's apparent dependency on the body is illusory given the body is just a configuration of information too.
That said, I don't think there's anything magical to it other than the persistence of information and the continuity of a relative perspective.
But I see no reason why that information and perspective couldn't continue on after we die and there's a number of reasons I expect that it will do just that.
There’s a pattern of energy that you control at least in part with your thoughts and intentions that the neurons in your brain use to make patterns. You can take chemicals that change these patterns in radical ways, including psychedelics that can unweave those neural connections.
Matter and energy are always conserved though transformed. We know what happens to the physical body. What happens to the energy pattern that animated and controlled the body?
Our body generally stores its biological energy in the form of matter. That's food in your tummy, blood sugar in your blood, fat on your hips etc.. It needs to be brought to a chemical reaction to be turned into physical energy, which generally happens ad-hoc. This biological energy decays like the rest of your body.
And then a tiny bit of physical energy is always present in your body:
- Potential energy: You'll collapse and transfer it as movement energy into the ground, where friction will turn it to heat.
- Movement energy: You might be swinging your arm as you die. It will likely bump into another object or your body and also be turned into heat by friction.
- Electromagnetic fields: Your brain cells and nerves will be blasting lightnings at each other. Those will fizzle out within a few moments, and again turn into from the friction of the electrical resistance where they impact.
- Heat: The heat from these other processes, as well as your general body heat, is transferred to its surroundings via conduction and infrared radiation.
don't see any reason that our consciousness and our so called "soul" would be any more then something our brain is making up
I mean, yeah, and? Brain and body are hardware, soul and mind are software. Software that's hardware-limited, to be specific. I am, my soul is, the decision-making process. Maybe that process will be copied onto a different platform, after this one fails, by an omniscient and loving God... and maybe it won't. It's no less real, I'm no less real, if my operating window is only temporary.
Yes, but not by the definition of a spirit within me. I believe a soul is more like self awareness combined with our own neural connections in our brain (everyone's different).
No, I believe soul is an abstract concept we like to define with our ego after misinterpreting a bunch of ancient people with a unique writing style that doesn't translate well into our age.
I found exploring alchemy better defined what the soul meant for me.
Animate is the closest word I can get to soul. It can be attributed to non living things as well. It's just complex energy structures within a certain blanket - an embodied aura if you will.
i took a wet crap in gods mouth
No and no. Physics is pretty thoroughly buckled down at this point, leaving only some very extreme situations unaccounted for, and it doesn't really provide a way for us to not be made of meat.
That goes for any other form of mind-body duality and as a result any afterlife, as well.
This is what I told my 7yo when he asked recently.
Since ancient times, people have explained the difference between a living body, and an identical dead body. One moment someone is alive, the next they are not, nothing else seemed to have changed. The animating force has left the body, this is what they call the soul.
I didn't go on to say, that religions have used this concept to further their agenda. The philosopher's who came up with this explanation didn't tie the soul to religious beliefs.
That's a very broad question that can mean different things to different people. Answering it and understanding each other is hard due to the semantic complexity. It also contains an emotional dimension that cannot be described analytically.
Here's my take: Yes I do believe that everyone has a soul and it comes in two intertwined flavors; the nonlocal and the local soul.
The local soul is local in space and time. It's what makes you unique. For example your beliefs, thoughts, actions and so on.
The nonlocal soul isn't localized in space or time, but rather exists on a fundament level just like say quantum fields seem to do.
Within all of us exists a dynamic between the two, from rejection to enlightenment. One isn't better than the other, it is simply a duality that exists and that is meaningful to all of us in some way.
I also believe that time and space are an illusion. Our perception is supervenient on entropy. For example when someone dies they seem to be gone, but they are actually still alive in the past. And so this unifies the local with the non local.
Looking forward to replies.
Do you believe that we all share one nonlocal soul? Also the terms local and nonlocal doesn't really make sense if you don't believe in space and time, but it doesn't really matter (:
Your first question is intriguing. The short answer is yes, but maybe not the way you imagine.
Imagine you could instantly copy yourself. Since there are two people now each with their own subjective experience, which is changing them over time, you can say that there are now two local souls. If one dies, something is lost, even if the other keeps living. That what is shared between them is the non local soul. It isn't really a thing, but rather the quality of awareness.
That's spatial locality and it's the same for temporal locality. Say the current you vs the you 5 minutes ago. They both have different local souls in a certain sense, and their own subjective experience.
You could also imagine that with the multiverse, where every possibility splits off like branches on a giant tree, and so you are constantly split off into countless versions of yourself.
So space and time exist and introduce locality. However at the end of the day it all comes from the same fountain, and each droplet just lives in its own grand illusion. That is not to say that it has no meaning, mind you.
I would say look into near death experiences. Now i understand most think that these experiences are just DMT trips the brain takes, which is why I recommend looking into the case of Dr. Eben Alexander, specifically, a neuro surgeon that had a highly documented near death experience. He had a near death experience while his brain was non functioning and non responsive, monitored by his fellow neurosurgeons, his brain wasn't functioning to release the DMT, and shouldn't have been able to retain any memory at all, and yet had a near death experience that he remembered during the time of documented brain death.
Also, there are quite a few videos on YouTube interviewing him.
There's zero evidence for a soul
If you were literally the only person in the history of all people, to have a soul... would it suck? And if all that happens to a soul is that it fades away after death, like a ghost, would that make having a soul better, or worse?
I think so, but, to be fair, it simply isn't a question that science could ever actually answer.
It seems like life is a vehicle for allowing matter, and by extension the universe, to comprehend itself in some limited fashion on an individual scale. I believe that this comprehension is an unfolding process of increasing universal awareness generated by an ever increasing number of points of view through every living entity.
It seems to me that most actions are heavily governed by pre-determined mechanical processes that are geared towards survival and reproduction, but there are also actions that can be chosen that are not exclusively determined by biology or circumstance. I refer to that impulse as Will.
I think the function of Will is essentially a course correcting ability of the universe that is bound in an infinitely interlocking series of experiences, giving the emerging consciousness of the universe the ability to “steer” its destiny a little bit, on both the individual and eventually macro level. I think that various mindfulness, meditation, health, and aspirational techniques can gently raise your awareness of this process within yourself and in the exterior world, which makes it all seem a bit less random—essentially attaining an enlightened perspective on life.
In the sense that I am a part of this universal process that is bound together in infinite complexity, and that I have the opportunity on occasion to effect events in such a way that essentially “leave my mark” on spacetime, I would say that I believe I am connected to a universal soul along with all forms of life.
i like to think that consciousness is a necessary illusion similar to early 'parallel processing' solutions running on a single threaded processor.
If consciousness is an illusion, then what is it that's experiencing that illusion?
prolly the same thing listening to that tree fall in the forest
There is no such animal.
My understanding is that there's our physical bodies and there is the lightning of spirit that is our divine selves and when the two are combined together we become a soul.
I don't envision the soul as something that is separate from the body. Just each of us are one.
Like if you were turned into a computer program and run on a universe computer, your soul would be whatever happens to actually be actively being computed by the CPU and existing in ram at the moment.
The hard data saved on the hard drive would be your body and the electricity coursing through the CPU would be your spirit but only what is actually happening when the two combine is a soul.
In the way that almost everyone uses that term, no, I don’t believe I or anyone else has a soul. Some people use it different, and in that case, I would withhold an answer until they explain what they mean by soul.
Based on your post and use of language I don’t because you’re probably a bot.
Provide for me the reclamation and the that gen that propore:: Thanks then you’ll need to know snaking g guy the thought about it though and maybe we can do Kant ideas though. A soul though, who can really know.
What do you think about that? Do we have ?
Yes, I believe humans and animals have a soul. Certainly believe so after reading books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
I haven't read any of her works. Any recommendation on where to get started?
The book that inspired me a lot was a translation of On Life after Death by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first published 1984. I've got another book by her but that is very different and more focused on research.
Everyone believes that they have a soul, the contention is the nature of the soul. You have an intangible essence which inhabits your body, and you identify with your "self". Some people think it's some kind of immortal ghost that gets to live in the clouds with other immortal ghosts when the body dies, some people think it's an emergent phenomenon of some variety which disappears when the body dies. These are differences in explanation, secondary to the ontological question of existence.
The "I" in your statements is proof of your soul, any disagreement is really just pedantic quibbling over terminology because you believe the term has been tainted by explanations you don't agree with. Even if your brain is "making it up", it's still a phenomenon. Your subjective internal experience is made of "soul", your concept of self is made of "soul". The entity asking the question and reading the responses is your soul, simple as.
The "I" in your statements is proof of your soul
It's proof of consciousness. If you're using "soul" synonymously to "consciousness", well, certainly not everyone does so.
In the use of language I learned, "soul" is the superstitious concept that religious people use, and since I don't believe in superstitions, I certainly don't believe that I have a soul.
I definitely possess consciousness, though, in the sense that I recognize contiguous piles of atoms as "objects" and one such object is my own body.
In turn, I would not say that my consciousness asks questions and reads the responses. My body does that. My 'mind' and 'consciousness' are just characteristics of my body. And "I" is my body, too.
Of what substance is your consciousness composed? Certainly your body is made of chemical matter: proteins, lipids, water, etc. Is consciousness itself, the subjective experience you identify as yourself, made of matter? Perhaps there are regions of the brain which fire in conjunction with a sensation, but is the sensation synonymous with the meat in which it resides? I'm speaking internalistically, how "you" "feel" from the inside.
A computer program can be likened to the electrical activity in the hardware. It is not itself the hardware, though it's certainly linked. Your body is the hardware, your consciousness is the program. Are "you" also organized electricity, or something similar? Does that imply that electricity can have the same subjective experience as you?
I think you have it backwards. You're prescriptively deciding that souls are superstitions, so you don't believe in them. I think descriptively, that we certainly observe souls, and it merely falls to us to discover their nature. Certainly some people ascribe superstitions to them, but tying superstitions to the weather or the sea or salt doesn't make any of those things less real. Why subjugate your own fundamental observations to someone else's superstitions?