If it could be proven that we do have souls then the consequence of such proofs would mean that we are immortal in a sense. Immortality does not just hinge on the existence of a permanent immaterial soul but the existence of god too. If god does indeed exist then by virtue of his attributes we are immortal as we are inseparable from him.
Various philosophers like plato and Aristotle believe in souls but those are claims without any rigorous proof. On the other hand materialism rules out souls completely noting that the activities of the mind are produced by complex workings of the brain.
Typically in order to prove the existence of a soul one needs to invoke Descartes substance dualism and Qualia. Neuroscience (materialism) however tries to undermine the existence of soul by instead proposing that all experiences occur in our brains and that souls have nothing to do with conscious experience.
This may be right it may be wrong. If it’s right and the conclusion is that souls don’t exist then we wave goodbye to the concept of immortality.
There’s hope for immortality though but not through proof of the existence of soul but that of god. The arguments for/against god are inconclusive as to gods existence therefore one remains hopeful that the we may be immortal after all.
What do you guys think … do we have soul or is it just a lot of unscientific hogwash ?
Despite reservations I lean towards Buddhist anatman (no self). The evidence for souls is slender - a few anecdotes of reincarnation in some obacure Sri Lankan village, etc. - or simply nonexistent. These didn’t withstand serious scientific probing.
Judaism and Christianity didn’t have a soul section. They were impurities from Greek philosophy that seeped in, sometimes arbitrarily and other times for a specific reason, one being Jesus as a no show. The second coming though taught to be imminent didn’t materialize and so the program had to moved to a new locus - heaven - and that meant an afterlife which obviously required souls.
If memory serves soul refered to a breathing thing, like us. The body and soul were considered mutually dependent - there was no disembodied soul that could float up to the ceiling and make observations as often depicted in NDE literature. A dead body, a corpse was referred to as a dead soul. One person even suggests that ancient people didn’t know about air.
The word ‘soul’ is the translation of the Greek ‘psuche’ which is nowadays rendered as ‘psyche’ (as in ‘psychology’) and generally translated as ‘mind’. So - do you think you have a mind? (And, as incredible as it may seem, there are those who will dispute that we do.)
I think so, though I can see the grounds for its denial, kind of. Simplifying it using Descartes I think therefore I am, I guess presupposes the medium where this thinking occurs, for where else could it occur but in the mind. The brain could be a simulation that is, provides the illusion that it is organic when in fact the processing could be happening in a supercomputer somewhere.
The soul is more or less defined as all emotions and personal character put together, of every decision made in someone’s life. Emotions are subjective, therefore the soul is subjective. There is no evidence for ordinary emotions, in the sense that it cannot be stated as fact what emotional state someone is in. Emotions are instead identified with a chosen opinion.
So the soul chooses, and the soul is identified with a chosen opinion. To believe someone has a soul, is to choose to believe that all emotions of every decision that someone makes in life belong together. It was also common to talk of people having several souls, an intellectual soul, an instinctive soul, grouping the spirit of different kinds of decisions together. In marriage 2 souls are joined as 1, which means that the couple chooses as one.
It’s like with the hard problem - no one has won a Nobel. Peter Higgs sat down one day, crunched the numbers and predicted the God particle. Billions of dollars and countless man-hours later it was discovered at the CERN supercollider. He won a Nobel. The same can’t be said of souls and God. What’s a soul anyway?
A quick google search reveals this: the immaterial essence, spirit, or animating core of a human being that is distinct from the physical body
Not a bad working definition, it’s the ghost in the machine so to speak, as after all we are but biological machines with an animating spirit that is perhaps veiled from day to day experience. But there’s no solid proof apart from mere conjecture. For how could it be proven, scientifically probably not.
How do you suppose Buddhists arrived at anatman?Interdependent origination - the soul is like a lego puzzle, it’s assembled, can be disassembled and vanish. Ajita Kesakambali (6 heretical teachers) taught the nonexistence of souls and the afterlife. Death is finito, bye bye.
And you’re right, as I am, not a jot of evidence for souls or even God.
I’m not too keen on the idea of spirit, per se, but gotta admit to some kind of immaterial something-or-other, else we left with no ground for explaining to ourselves, what science doesn’t properly explain for us.
It’s hard to quantify the soul, it is elusive if not non existent. Having briefly read the synopsis of the book suggested by Wayfarer it seems that the whole soul concept was dismissed during the age of enlightenment instead being replaced by mind.
It may help or it may not to equivocate the soul with mind, perhaps the same thing by a different name. If we do grant the mind soul status then we’re faced with the fact that minds are perishable by fact that they’re produced by organic based brains.
Thus no immortality, death is the end when consciousness ceases. When we’re not aware we are dead so to speak as in when we’re asleep. Death then is permanent sleep, or permanent non awareness. This is not a big deal because awareness exists in other subjects. So in effect the universe is still alive when there’s minds.
If we could prove some kind of objective eternal awareness then our death would not be the end but just that our limited subjective awareness has ended.
The consequence of this is that we’re immortal, however there’s simply no proof that such objective awareness exists (god etc)
One must then look at the origins of life itself which arose from inanimate matter. And this I believe gives a hint as to the nature of spirit soul etc. the ability to animate dead matter from a rock into a fully fledged consciousness residing in man, animal etc.
Which is something we have never known nor ever could. We know of the death of others but never ourselves. And again if soul is just an old-fashioned word for mind, then the fact that it is an archaic term ought not to come into it.
As for Descartes - his ‘division of mind and body’ has left a deep imprint on today’s culture. The ghost in the machine is an apt image, but it’s also entirely wrong. Aristotle’s dualism was of matter and form, not mind and body. The soul is the ‘form’ of the body. Which is nothing like its shape but its organizing principle. But that is just a starting point.
What is form according to Plato/Aristotle … what do they have to say on this ? If form guides matter to actualise then that’s a good starting point indeed.
This would rely on the assumption that forms/ideas are eternal but we have matter eg universe so how do the two shape each other. Is it idea → matter … is it one way or bi-directional. I think it’s one way that is idea->matter.
Actually, I think that sometimes, in the realm of spirituality, it’s always a matter of probability, never a definitive statement or affirmation. On the other hand, believing or not believing both have their positive and negative aspects. The question is, whichever feels more favorable to you, just believe in that, and be prepared to accept the disadvantages.
That is the basis of classical metaphysics. Technically it is called hylomorphism where ‘hyle’ is matter (literally ‘lumber’) and form is morphē (which lives on in English as ‘morphology’). But to elaborate the details would take a lot of explanation (and I’m not an expert).
What I will add is that the ‘ghost in the machine’ image has been so persuasive that it was generally abandoned leaving only the machine - ‘organism as machine’ being the prevailing myth of modernity. But that is under challenge also in many aspects of current philosophy. And there still are those who never abandoned belief in soul.
If consciousness doesn’t describe the ‘I’, but hovers around it with ‘ness’ suffix, then the ‘I’, rather than being called the ‘I’, is the spirit/soul.
There is a difference between spirit and soul, the original post refers to the spirit. The soul is an incoming/outgoing thing while the spirit is a neutral/fulfilling thing.
The soul is the cause and first principle of the living body. The words cause and first principle are used in several separate senses. But the soul is equally the cause in each of the three senses which we have distinguisheda; for it is the cause in the sense of being that from which motion is derived, in the sense of the purpose or final cause, and as being the substance of all bodies that have souls. (1) That the soul is the cause in the sense of substance is obvious; for substance is the cause of existence in all things, and for living creatures existence is life, and of theseb the soul is the cause and first principle. Also the actuality of that which exists potentially is its essential formula.c (2) Clearly the soul is also the cause in the final sense. For just as mind acts with some purpose in view, so too does nature, and this purpose is its end. In living creatures the soul supplies such a purpose, and this is in accordance with nature, for all natural bodies are instruments of the soul; and just as is the case with the bodies of animals, so with those of plants. This shows that they exist for the sake of the soul. (“That for the sake of which” has two meanings—“that for the purpose of which” and “that for the benefit of which.”) (3) Lastly, the soul is the primary source of locomotion; but this capacity does not belong to all living creatures. Change of state and growth are also due to the soul; for sensation is held to be change of state, and nothing feels which has not a soul. The same is true about growth and decay; for nothing decays or grows in nature without nourishment, and nothing has nourishment which does not share in life.
—Aristotle, De Anima, Bk 2, 415b10, translated by W.S. Hett
The word “first principle” does not convey the agency of the Greek word ἀρχή. That word also means the “beginning” and the “ruler.” The footnote for the “three senses of cause” says:
Cf. Metaph. 983 a 26 “the word cause is used . . . (1) as the essential nature, (2) as the source of movement, (3) as the final cause.”
It is important to note that in this account, mind is a part of life, not the other way around. In Book 3, The mind is said to be possibly separable from the growth and decay of living creatures. That is a country mile from saying the “mind” belongs to a person. All the functions of memory and perception were attributed to the mortal creature.
There are, of course, other accounts that are not constrained by the primacy of Nature received by Aristotle.