Well, ‘rebuttal’ could be read like that, but fair enough. Having located those passages again, I will try and find time to read them again.
You might be interested in this OP An Immaterial Philosophy of Mind which is about this exact point. It is based on an argument from The Phaedo, which is principally concerned with Plato’s discussion of the soul.
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How about the reality of free will then? Does this serve as proof of the soul?
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Very well,then. I do not claim a special understanding of the gap
Truth be told my knowledge of souls is limited to Christianity, where as I said they became part of an afterlife chapter.
However, there are religions that have a strong reincarnation element to them. I believe there are certain tests a child/adult has to pass before they’re recognized to be the reincarnation of so and so. These tests are, of course, secret and conducted in a quasi-scientific controlled environment involving experts and highly accomplished masters. There’s a large degree of uncertainty in the process, very iffy and a lot of buts, which is a bummer. To my reckoning following the established protocol would mean the probability hovers between 51% and 60%, no more.
I think that looks too “proof”-like.
All religions have an apologism. Some of them take the form of proofs and since reality cannot be proven to be this or that way I tend to take that as a false statement, even if it comes out of a True Faith.
Science isn’t the only means of proof, but I agree trying to prove we “have” souls is misguided. Under my conception at least, the “soul” is not a thing any more than the subject is a thing. You find things in the realm of the physical, but in order to locate e.g. a subject, you need to look at the relation of the physical with the symbolic (the subject as a relation is typically Kierkegaardian—the self is that relation that relates itself to itself).
And, personally, I think it’s useful to separate the terms “subject” and “soul” with the subject being the process of interaction of the physical and the symbolic as experienced through awareness—the subject is the self that consciously feels and acts—and the soul being the principle that governs this process in each of us.
This makes the “self” a combination of an underlying principle “soul” and its expression in a process “subject”, which I suppose is a combination of Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and maybe there’s some Spinoza in there (what do you think @180Proof?).
Clearly, the term “soul” has religious connotations which may conflate things, but being a romantic, I like the term.
Yes, “time” is of the world, the soul may be transcendent, free of “time”.
Yes, there’s lots of uncertainty in the business of reincarnating souls. That’s why you don’t see that many takers. Even those systems that affirm the phenomenon are, in some way, simply fumbling around in the dark. However, some of these institutions are centuries old. Surely, if they were serious about it, they’d have picked up a few tips and pointers by now. Something that could improve the odds to even slightly better than a random guess would translate into more hits than misses.
Yes, if the soul is the organizing principle of temporal being, then it’s not only outside time but productive or creative of time, with the subject as process being the “happening” of the soul.
Quite, it could be best described as angelic. The vessel through which grace is bestowed. Perhaps the moulding of dust into being is an act of grace.
Coming back to the philosophical rather than the theological. We really don’t have the foggiest idea. We don’t know the basis of the reality we find ourselves in. So the best we can do is perhaps refer to the being as a whole, something which is closely affiliated with mind.
I find “mind” to be a very vague term with no romantic compensation and a slippery philosophical conception that typically leads to pointless diversions into realism vs idealism etc.
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Very much so, in my previous post I referred to grace, which is this process in action. I can’t put it any better than you without using theological language.
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Below is an excerpt from The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, Chapter 1, The Divine Nature: Being and Goodness, Scott McDonald. This passage is distinctly Platonist, discussing ‘intelligible objects’ — ideas or principles that are only perceptible to the ‘eye of reason’ and not to the senses. I take it he is referring to such things as logical principles, arithmetical proofs, and related concepts.
Intelligible Objects
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Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate. Augustine concludes from these observations that intelligible objects must exist independently of individual human minds.
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Intelligible objects must be incorporeal because they are eternal and immutable. By contrast, all corporeal objects, which we perceive by means of the bodily senses, are contingent and mutable. Moreover, certain intelligible objects for example, the indivisible mathematical unit (prime numbers?) – clearly cannot be found in the corporeal world (since all bodies are extended, and hence divisible). These intelligible objects cannot therefore be perceived by means of the senses; they must be incorporeal and perceptible by reason alone.
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Intelligible objects must be higher than reason because they judge reason. Augustine means by this that these intelligible objects constitute a normative standard against which our minds are measured (lib. arb. 2.5.12 and 2.12.34). We refer to mathematical objects and truths to judge whether or not and to what extent our minds understand mathematics. We consult the rules of wisdom to judge whether or not and to what extent a person is wise. In virtue of their normative relation to reason, Augustine argues that these intelligible objects must be higher than it, as a judge is higher than what it judges. Moreover, the intrinsic nature of these objects shows them to be higher than reason. They are eternal and immutable; by contrast, the human mind is clearly mutable. Augustine holds that since it is evident to all who consider it that the immutable is superior to the mutable (it is among the rules of wisdom he identifies), it follows that these objects are higher than reason.
In the Confessions Augustine reports that his inability to conceive of anything incorporeal was the “most important and virtually the only cause” of his errors. The argument from De libero arbitrio (on Free Will) shows how Augustine managed, with the aid of Platonist direction and argument, to overcome this cognitive limitation. By focusing on objects perceptible by the mind alone and by observing their nature, in particular their eternity and immutability, Augustine came to see that certain things that clearly exist, namely, the objects of the intelligible realm, cannot be corporeal (i.e. material or physical). When he cries out in the midst of his vision of the divine nature, “Is truth nothing just because it is not diffused through space, either finite or infinite?” (FVP 13–14), he is acknowledging that it is the discovery of intelligible truth that first frees him to comprehend incorporeal reality.
I interpret this to be saying that such ideas as mathematical proofs are real but incorporeal, i.e. not physically existent. Which does not sit comfortably in today’s cultural milieu, in which what is real is generally identified with what exists in a material sense.
In most cases where the ‘mind’ term is used, I think the matter of fact is that it’s brain or heart.
I think mind is highly misunderstood.
The fulfillment of the senses, creating sense-experience, is what I refer to as heart-space, and the body control experience(the abstraction of control) is a brain-matter thing.
Excuse my esoteric language, and I think you’ll find I’m right.
Simply I’m saying people use the term mind, when the term that should be used is brain/heart.
Mind is collusion of heart/brain, creating a partition.
In a sense, I think you’re onto something, but I think there is better terminology available, such as symbolic vs sentient vs physical. The realm of language and abstract thought / the realm of awareness and senses / the realm of the physical body. This can be related to systems theory (e.g. Luhmann), classical aesthetic theory (e.g. Schiller), and contemporary cultural theory (Berardi’s “semiosphere” etc).
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It certainly does although free will can perform incorrect actions which leads me to think that the soul being pure etc does not perform evil, wrong etc.
The ability to perform evil is intrinsic and necessary to free will. This produces the question which has perplexed many philosophers, notable Socrates, Plato, and Augustine, ‘what inspires one to do good?’.
Some ancient Greek sophists claim to be able to teach virtue, insisting that virtue is knowledge. Socrates and Plato took exception to this, asking how it could be possible that one could know what is the good thing to do, yet still choose to do what is bad, if virtue is knowledge. The argument was that virtue must be based in something other than knowledge. Augustine questioned this principle extensively, ‘what inspires one to do good?’.
Empathy mostly. Relating to the struggles of your fellow man and providing guidance or simply being there.
So, “Souls” and “subjects” are not physical.
But you’re assigning location to the non-physical and that confuses me. I can locate the physical and the symbol would be within the subject, but the relationship between the two can’t be located can it?
The self is related to itself by being itself. Why did that have to be stated?
Breaking this down:
The subject is the process of the body experiencing symbols in the world.
The subject is also the self that feels, which would be the experiencer.
The soul is a process that mechanically (in a non-physical way) governs how the process/subject works.
Alright, so as a non-physical “subject” I have a relationship with the world of symbols. The “subject” is the creator of and the experience of those symbols. My self relates my self to myself, which I suppose means I can symbolize my self to myself (??). The “soul” encompasses the subject and the whole rigamarole of activity going on within the subject and self that is us?
When I say I have a soul, I mean that I am an experiencer of the world with a governor that controls that experience. If I don’t have a soul, I’m just an ungoverned subject experiencing the world, or how would that work?
Do I have this right?