What soul?
Neuroscience provides the hard evidence for the assertion made by previous posters that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain; changes (as caused by disease and trauma, for example) in specific regions of the brain change the expression of consciousness in predictable, verifiable ways (there is a great deal of easily attainable literature on the brain and the results of changes in it, check the science section of your local bookstore). Since this is so, we can state confidently that consciousness ends with the death of brain. No room for an afterlife there.
If you thought with your soul, not your brain, this wouldn’t matter. QED.
BTW, your cpu - database analogy two pages ago is extremely broken. I’m an expert on how microprocessors fail - if you want me to tell you why your analogy is bad, I can.
I think with my brain. I am my soul, but my brain is what I (that is, my soul) use to think with (just as my eyes are what I use to see with). Or at least, that’s one conceivable way to look at it.
When I’m tired, or drunk, or unwell, it feels to me as though the thing that I use to think with isn’t functioning up to full speed, but that I am still I. This feeling doesn’t prove anything, but it at least suggests to me how there might be more to my essential self than my physical brain.
Of course it’s possible. Perhaps at brain death, the field that is consciousness, that has been maintained and regulated by the brain collapses down (or expands upwards) to another form* of consciousness.
To address claims that death is like sleep or non-consciousness:
The lack of awareness of our consciousness while asleep or unconscious may simply be a creation of the brain, as it apparently causes all (or most) of our conscious perceptions while in its “grasp”.
That we are asleep or unconscious does not necessarily mean our consciousness has ceased to be, rather it indicates the possibility that the brain, which controls our sensations during our mortal tenure, has created a sensation of lack of experience.
As most of us cannot escape the control of the brain while it is alive, we cannot determine what other states of consciousness may or may not exist outside of the brain’s control. Of course, various religions postulate ways of escaping the control of the brain, but my brain doesn’t allow me to seriously consider such things… at least in this stage of my mental development, and I’m sure it looks to many as if Diogenes the Cynic lacks this ability as well, but I wouldn’t be a cynic myself if I didn’t think he was leading by bad example, driving the stubborn among us towards true knowledge by appearing as a stubborn ignorant mule, while really knowing the truth.
- The other form could be something readily detectable such as the extremely complex gravitational field of the milky way galaxy, or an equally complex (albeit orders of magnitude smaller) quantum field… or something very simple.
Thudlow: all it shows is that the process of thought is inherently self-referential and subject to strange loops.
Nope. Emergent properties cannot transferred. Everything about consciousness, namely sense and memory, exist only in the specific, unique physiology of each individual brain. It’s part of the meat. The meat is the consciousness.
We do not lack awareness or consciousness while we are asleep.
Yes we can. We can and have determined that all human consciouness is an emergent property of the physical brain. There is no other consciousness.
This is all gibberish. There is no such thing as “beyond the control of the brain.” The brain is all there is. There are altered states of consciouness, and it is possible to experience a sort of underlying consciousness underneath the ego consciousness (I’ve done it), but that is still the brain. Calling people “stubborn” and “ignorant” because they don’t believe in magic is not an argument for magic.
First, “Supernatural” is simply a convenient term. Until we had the tools to observe and measure, boatloads of things were believed to be supernatural. We may find someday that there is a scientific means of observing, detecting, measuring the soul. Time and space are not at an end, nor is our knowledge of them, so it could very well happen.
But in order for me to answer your question, I need to understand it a little better. So help me out by answering the question yourself as though you were talking to me during the time long before we were able to observe it and understand its effects. LONG before, not when we already had some data pointing us in that direction. Pick something which, in our darker days, we thought of as magical or supernatural that we ultimately understood scientifically.
Then I might be able to answer your question better.
THanks.
You’re talking about people once positing supernatural explanations for actual observed phenomena. An “afterlife” does not explain any observed phenomena. It’s not the same thing. It’s like saying, “people once thought evil spirits caused disease, there it’s possible that smurfs exist.” It’s a complete non-sequitur.
Mmm… not really.
And before I go further, everyone keep in mind that I’m a seeker here. I DO NOT have a fixed belief about any of this, one way or another, and I find interesting, thought provoking possibilities from every perspective, so I’m not “arguing” necessarily, I’m simply throwing up things that present themselves as possible, I’m not attached to anything except the best understanding I can get, via the most rigorous, yet entirely open-minded examination I can make. Because all I care about is the knowledge or understanding itself, not what the knowledge or understanding turns out to actually be.
So, having said that, it seems that the breakdown in understanding regarding the operation of the brain is a microcosm of the whole question itself. Yes, the brain is what makes a living human being “conscious”… but what “activated” the brain to begin with?
It seems clear to me that those who believe in the existence of a soul believe (with varying degrees of specificity and detail and extra chazerai, non of which makes a difference to the central point I’m about to make) that the nature of the soul is akin to the nature of electricity. It is the energy that makes the body alive.
As I understand it, energy has no beginning or end, it only changes form. Electricity does not stop existing because my computer was smashed and is no longer equipped to receive and use that electricity.
Well, soul-believers believe that the soul operates the same way. It’s something that exists with or without a body, just like electricity exists. When the body is too broken for the soul to continue using it, the soul doesn’t stop existing, it just stops existing inside that body.
Which is even easier to appreciate if you consider the soul as only a part of something larger, a kind of a collective soul, if you will. Electricity flowing in your house an through your cables into your computer is part of a pool of energy that is just “visiting” with you and your house anyway.
And hell, computers are another analogy of soul/self vs. meatbrain:
Memories, skills, abilities, personality… all of these are the programs and software of the brain. Like the computer, the brain can “break” and not be able to run those programs anymore…but the programs and software can exist in other computers and work perfectly well there. The software and data are not the computer itself and are not dependent on it for their existence, only their existence inside that particular computer.
To take the analogy further (and the computer one is good for the reincarnation believers) the data and programs don’t have to continue their existence consistently whole…they can be transferred in bits and pieces, across wires and wirelessly, and reassembled elsewhere.
So, via means that we do not yet understand nor are able to observe and measure, could the soul exist, like electricity or computer data, having an existence that continues separate from the meat of the body it was present in during life.
Whether you accept or believe that or not…it’s certainly plausible. I haven’t yet seen or heard of anything that rules it out, and merely asserting, without any proof, that the meatbrain creates us and we die with it, isn’t convincing, any more than asserting that the data in my computer or the electricity that runs it is created BY the computer and ceases to exist in any and all ways if my computer breaks.
And before anyone starts tearing into this with complicated comparisons with computers or electricity to “prove” that souls can’t possibly operate exactly the same way… I didn’t assert they did. But as an analogous means of viewing the way the soul COULD exist, they are pretty effective.
And it is because this does make sense to me that I do not entirely reject all possibility of anything existing beyond this reality, though I’m not attached to any of it. Just curious.
Stoid, you mention the idea of the soul being the energy that animates the body. But we already know the chemical and electrical processes that do that - there is nothing missing that requires a soul. If there were a gap where a soul were needed, then yes, we could assume one existed. That’s how it works in science - find the hole in the theory, them come up with testable hypotheses to correct it. When there’s nothing missing, one doesn’t go looking for it.
You also ask me to address your question as though we had no science - why? If you want me to say that, with no data, any theory is valid, then fair enough. But I don’t accept that in this case we have no data.
Do you have a fixed belief about the existence of smurfs or are you a “seeker” about those too?
What do you mean by “activated?” Consciouness emerges as part of fetal development. In the simplest terms possible, it’s just chemicals sloshing together.
Energy is material and detectable. This idea that the “soul” is “energy” is fatuous and is only presented by people who have no idea what the word “energy” actually means. It’s not just a filler you can use when you really mean “magic.” Energy has a physical definition and a physical existence. Calling a magic spirit “energy” doesn’t give you an escape from immateriality, and doesn’t give you a plausible scientific hypotesis. It’s just nonsensical misuse of the word.
This is scientifically meaningless drivel. It doesn’t amount to an explanation of anything, just a pointless expansion of the “magic spirit” hypothesis, which khas already been proven to be impossible.
This is factually incorrect. The “software” is completely dependent on the brain (that’s what “emergent” means) and ceases to exist without it. It is not “stored,” and has no existence without the meat.
Except, in the case of human consciousness, it can’t be transferred. it’s not physically possible.
The answer is no, it can’t.
No, it isn’t plausible, because it isn’t physically possible. The thing you don’t seem to be able to grasp is the complete inseparability of consciousness from the neurogical activity of the brain. The meat IS the consciousness. This is a proven fact. Consciousness cannot exist without a physical medium to produce, hold and perpetuate it. Positing that maybe our brains don’t really cause consciouness is like positing, for no reason, that maybe we don’t really see with our eyes. It’s just as ridiculous.
But looking at it another way, go back 800 years and again, what obvious evidence was there of the existence of x-rays or neutrinos? It’s not necessarily about explaining observed phenomena, it’s about finding stuff we *can’t *currently observe.
There was exactly the same evidence there is now. That people couldn’t see it is a practical, not theoretical, matter.
You mistook the point. I wasn’t saying that the soul is the substitute, I was saying that the soul may operate in a fashion similar to the operation of electricity.
Think of it like this:
[ul]
[li]Computer & built in firmware = Brain[/li][li]Electricity/Electrical processes = a living brain[/li][li]Operating system = Soul[/li][li]Software, interface, documents and data = Personality, skills, abilties, knowledge[/li][/ul]
And a human being is built the same way. The body/brain is a core machine that is built with basic firmware and can be booted up. Add the operating system after the machine is booted (say the soul enters the body in the womb at some point after the heart starts.) The operating system is just a framework that allows everything else to be added and operated and built on to create the personality that we are as living beings.
My “belief” (if I have one, and I’m not sure, as stated) is that*** if we do*** have souls, they are not our personalities. If life exists after death, it’s not like we see in the movies, the personality and life experience persisting exactly, just ethereally. More like we revert to something more fundamental and collective.
There are spiritual teachings that we are all one, all God - so perhaps we are like a creosote bush or other “collective” life forms in that our souls are all one soul that just takes up different forms to experience being alive, and when a body dies, the part of the collective soul that inhabited it returns to the whole, and the individual aspects of the personality that was formed while in the body that is now dead are in fact “dead” apart from the memories of the still living.
Which…if you accept this idea, means that we actually DO live on in a manner of speaking, because if we actually are all one, then when we die individually, the personalities still living are accessible via the souls inside the bodies, and the memories of the people who have died are accessible to the collective soul.
Wow…I think we’re the Borg! Cool.
Anyway…to complete the thought: if this is how “spirit” functions, then we can be certain that there is no such thing as evil. Nor is there any such thing as good. There is only experience.
And I can explain that further, but I’m going to let you all sit with it for awhile and ponder it. If you do, you can see for yourself why it would be true.
What is your definition of evidence? Not for any particular thing, but generally, since you seem to have one.
I was using it to mean the facts that are used to determine whether or not a theory is sound. That is, in scientific terms, not yet falsified.
In response to your other post, well, I don’t understand the workings of computers well enough to refer everything to your analogy. I will ask, why do you think there needs to be an OS added from outside to a human? How is it any different from saying, for example, we are controlled by invisible puppeteers with intangible strings?
Did you happen to read the OP, Dio? I’m thinking its very possible you just skimmed and you think you know what the discussion is about. But you obviously don’t.
What Has been presented as “proof” that we can KNOW, in a scientiifically sound way, whether souls are real or existence of some kind can continue after the death of the body is the plain, inarguable fact that if the brain is broken, the person in possession of the brain is also “broken”, but that’s really no more “proof” that an afterlife is possible than death itself is proof! After all, we “die” when our brain is dead, it’s obvious that a broken but less than dead brain can affect us, and doesn’t prove anything one way or another about whether a soul can or does exist. No one since the dawn of humanity has ever contended that our brains are just taking up space and we can continue to be function in exactly the same way we did before no matter what happens to the brain, so how does saying that getting conked ont eh head makes you act like someone completely different rate as proof that there is no possibility for any kind of afterlife?
It doesn’t, anymore than messed up computer being unable to open a document means the document itself no longer exists. It only means the computer, being “broken” displays the document as a bunch of gibberish. The document isn’t gibberish, the mechanism operating on the document is broken.
You play MP3s through an Ipod on speakers that are screwed up so the music sounds scratchy and terrible…is the MP3 itself damaged, or the speakers?
???
Examples, because I don’t understand, at least, not when I look at how you used it.
I dont’ think their needs to be - I was presenting it as an example of how a soul could operate, as an analogy.
People didn’t used to know about X-rays, therefore smurfs might exist.
Discovering something previously unknown is fine, but there’s no reason to posit the existence things for which here is no evidence, no explanatory value, and no actual physical possibility.