# Is acknowledgement of a spirit reasonable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 13, 2008, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529 "2008-11-13T14:20:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/21 "2008-11-13T16:14:08Z")
> [@nd\_n8](#): > > Why not? Because I’m not 100% sure. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/22 "2008-11-13T16:18:39Z")
Doesn’t science also tell us that the copy, will not, in fact, cannot be a perfect copy? I’m not sure how that would affect the discussion at hand, really, but doesn’t the uncertainty principle say that we could never really have a true, identical, copy of an object down to the atomic level? ---
**Author:** ![nd\_n8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/439d5e/32.png) [@nd\_n8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nd_n8)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/23 "2008-11-13T16:19:38Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > Even if you could prove a soul comprises particles of matter, you would still have to prove that it has consciousness or some quality that separates it from a kidney or a thigh bone. The mere existence of a soul isn’t enough. It has to do tricks, too. That’s just it, I cannot conceive a soul that comprises particles of matter, or a God that is made up of matter either. If the soul were matter it would have been replicated in the transporter as all other matter was. This places the soul into a different, as yet undefined but in my opinion not as unreasonable as often claimed, catagory. As to the transporter itself, if a human has a soul and is reproduced and deconstructed then that soul, not having been reproduced and no longer having a meat sack to reside in, has cast off this mortal coil and gone on to whatever awaits. If a human has no soul then the deconstructed person simply ceases to exist as does his experience (or specifically his capacity to experience). The reconstructed person contains the sum of knowledge and experience\* as the original but the original capacity still ceases to exist. In either case it means the death of “me” as I understand myself and the creation of “someone else”. \*Of course it could also pass that the sum of knowledge and experience cease when the individual ceases. A parallel would be a computer RAM chip. Perhaps the electrical and bio-mechanical reactions are there and they are what stores the experience information but once they are reproduced and eliminated the new copy is a blank slate. Do memories physically exist? The electrical functions behind the chemical reactions exist but do these physically comprise a memory or do they just store the data? As these memories persist across time, and the chemical reactions change or fade away so the reality of these memories fade away, are they still there and just not as easily accessed or do they indeed rely on the chemical reaction to exist at all? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/24 "2008-11-13T16:26:03Z")
What bothers me most in these discussions is the equivalency drawn — wrongly, in my view — between rational proof and scientific proof (or actually, scientific evidence, there being no such thing as scientific proof). I can provide a rational proof, in the form of testimony from personal experience, that I dreamed about our old house last night. But I cannot provide any scientific evidence whatsoever for it, despite that it is true. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/25 "2008-11-13T16:32:24Z")
> [@nd\_n8](#): > > That’s just it, I cannot conceive a soul that comprises particles of matter, or a God that is made up of matter either. If the soul were matter it would have been replicated in the transporter as all other matter was. This places the soul into a different, as yet undefined but in my opinion not as unreasonable as often claimed, catagory. That’s only true if the soul actually exists and isn’t duplicated by the process we are speaking of, and there is no evidence of either. > [@nd\_n8](#): > > As to the transporter itself, if a human has a soul and is reproduced and deconstructed then that soul, not having been reproduced and no longer having a meat sack to reside in, has cast off this mortal coil and gone on to whatever awaits. If a human has no soul then the deconstructed person simply ceases to exist as does his experience (or specifically his capacity to experience). The reconstructed person contains the sum of knowledge and experience\* as the original but the original capacity still ceases to exist. In either case it means the death of “me” as I understand myself and the creation of “someone else”. Why ? If a soul doesn’t have any detectable effect on the material world, then it simply isn’t important. If souls exist and don’t interact with the brain so we can detect them, then they are essentially just . . . there. They aren’t us in that scenario, but just something loosely associated with us. > [@nd\_n8](#): > > Do memories physically exist? The electrical functions behind the chemical reactions exist but do these physically comprise a memory or do they just store the data? As these memories persist across time, and the chemical reactions change or fade away so the reality of these memories fade away, are they still there and just not as easily accessed or do they indeed rely on the chemical reaction to exist at all? All evidence is that memories are physically part of the brain, yes. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/26 "2008-11-13T16:33:34Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > What bothers me most in these discussions is the equivalency drawn — wrongly, in my view — between rational proof and scientific proof (or actually, scientific evidence, there being no such thing as scientific proof). I can provide a rational proof, in the form of testimony from personal experience, that I dreamed about our old house last night. But I cannot provide any scientific evidence whatsoever for it, despite that it is true. Blame the limitations of present day brain scanners. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/27 "2008-11-13T16:34:33Z")
But that you do not possess the scientific evidence currently does not mean that we could not assemble it, or that it doesn’t exist to be assembled. If we had the technology we might still be able to access the experiences that made up your dream. Current scientific thinking doesn’t have memory working like a hard drive, so we might not be able to access a “video recording” of your dream, but the set of data that was assembled in your brain to create it, might be accessible. And even if we couldn’t do that with the dream you had last night, perhaps it could be done with one you will have in the future. What I’m trying to say is that just because we don’t currently have scientific evidence of something, doesn’t mean that that evidence does not exist. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/28 "2008-11-13T16:51:20Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Blame the limitations of present day brain scanners. Then perhaps you should work on your God scanners as well. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/29 "2008-11-13T16:56:50Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#): > > Doesn’t science also tell us that the copy, will not, in fact, cannot be a perfect copy? I’m not sure how that would affect the discussion at hand, really, but doesn’t the uncertainty principle say that we could never really have a true, identical, copy of an object down to the atomic level? More or less; but then, it seems highly unlikely that one is necessary. It’s useful to specify something for a thought experiment; but for copying a mind you probably don’t need anything like that resolution. > [@Liberal](#): > > Then perhaps you should work on your God scanners as well. Lacking anything to scan, or any reason to think that God is even **possible** , there’s nothing to work on. You might as well ask me to work on necromancy detectors. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/30 "2008-11-13T17:06:00Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Lacking anything to scan, or any reason to think that God is even **possible** , there’s nothing to work on. You might as well ask me to work on necromancy detectors. Yet you trust that I dreamed about our old house last night, despite lacking any of what you call evidence. (Unless you think I’m lying, of course, which is a completely different matter.) ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/31 "2008-11-13T17:25:15Z")
Wait, so now you are saying that we lack scientific evidence for the general phenomena of dreaming? I don’t see how you can believe that. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/32 "2008-11-13T17:28:32Z")
> [@Ludwig Wittgenstein](#): > > The human body is the best picture of the human soul. This about sums it up for me. > [@nd\_n8](#): > > If they are different individuals but 100% identical in every physical manifestation there that difference must not be physical. Whatever exists in each of us that cannot be measured or analyzed, whatever exists beyond our physical and chemical selves, whatever makes us an individual despite of however many exact duplicates we replicate, that is our individual metaphysical properties. That is what I think a soul is and that is my arguement. It seems to me that you have merely put forward a bit of a development of when someone is considered identical with someone else, and your answer is, “Never.” I’m not sure you need a soul to explain this. Perhaps you could say that at time _t_ they were identical but 1) while the identity of an individual is preserved with respect to time, 2) identity relationships between entities (molecules, people, cars) is not necessarily preserved with time. If you wish to call the “symmetry breaking” force a “spirit”, be my guest, but I’m not sure it’s anything but a misleading use of the word. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/33 "2008-11-13T17:54:16Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#): > > Wait, so now you are saying that we lack scientific evidence for the general phenomena of dreaming? No, not me. I’m saying what I said: you have no scientific evidence that I dreamed about our old house. You can’t just leave out words and rearrange what’s left to quote me as saying that you have no evidence that people dream. I mean, you can, but it doesn’t help either of us. You have general evidence of dreaming, just as you have general evidence for religious experience. (Google phrases like “God and the limbic system”.) But you have no evidence, of the scientific kind, for any specific God or any specific dream. Once you’ve gotten the assertion straight, we can discuss. But you can understand that I have no interest in defended an assertion I did not make. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/34 "2008-11-13T18:38:10Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > No, not me. I’m saying what I said: you have no scientific evidence that I dreamed about our old house. Big claims require big evidence. Small claims do not. Just about everyone has had dreams, knows about them, accepts them, etc. Claiming that you had a dream, even a specific one, is trivial. Nothing rides on your being correct. Claiming that everyone has a soul is different. It doesn’t fit science’s current laws, and would change a lot of things. A soul is not a trivial claim, and so evidence is asked for before the claim can be accepted. > [@](#): > > You have general evidence of dreaming, just as you have general evidence for religious experience. (Google phrases like “God and the limbic system”.) But you have no evidence, of the scientific kind, for any specific God or any specific dream. Why would we need evidence of a specific dream? Who cares? It doesn’t affect anything. But evidence is most certainly required for a claim of there being something like a god. They are not equivalent claims. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/35 "2008-11-13T18:56:32Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > Big claims require big evidence. I don’t think bumper-sticker slogans make for a good argument. Any claim requires exactly as much evidence as is necessary. Some big claims require very little and some small claims require a lot. Einstein’s paper on energy and mass equivalence is very short, as is Godel’s paper on undecidable propositions. And Gettier stunned the world with his very brief paper knocking down two thousand years of acceptance that knowledge is justified true belief. Meanwhile, Russell and Whitehead, in _Principia Mathematica_, used 362 pages to prove that 1+1=2. > [@](#): > > Just about everyone has had dreams, knows about them, accepts them, etc. Does that mean you are prepared to accept popularity as evidence? If so, I can offer you links contrasting the number of faithful with the number of nonbelievers. (I eagerly await hearing how it’s different in one case versus another.) > [@](#): > > Why would we need evidence of a specific dream? Who cares? It doesn’t affect anything. But evidence is most certainly required for a claim of there being something like a god. They are not equivalent claims. But I have evidence, the evidence of my experience — same as the evidence I have for what I dreamed. Now, you might not care about my experience, and you might think my experience does not amount to a hill of beans. But I think differently. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/36 "2008-11-13T19:25:27Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Blame the limitations of present day brain scanners. Brain scans wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to have mapped out the contents of Lib’s memory, and thus know that a stimulus at a certain neuron would produce an image of his house. I think a lot of sf on this subject assumes that there is some sort of hologram being constructed in your brain - I think it is a lot more complicated than that. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/37 "2008-11-13T19:32:14Z")
> [@nd\_n8](#): > > Focusing on just the moment of transmission, you say that at that moment they are the same person. To clairify, what location in space does this single person occupy? Looking at the deconstruct / reconstruct scene the single person could, in theory, occupy the beam transmitting from one location to the other. But as I put forth, the end result is the same, the beam is the same, in the non-deconstruct / reconstruct scene, at the moment of transmission, the individual would occupy both the beam and the transmitter pad. One person, one moment, two locations. > > Either that or the occupant of the beam itself in raw data form is already a different person and there are two people in two locations at one moment. This sounds more reasonable to me. The beam in raw data form is no more a person than a corpse is. It doesn’t think or sense anything. My take on your example is basically the same as **DerTrihs** , but here is another scenario for you. In the Many Worlds hypothesis, the universe branches into two universes at every event. We’ll make it simpler. Say tomorrow morning I go to work in one universe, but I can also decide to stay home, which creates a second universe. Am I the same person in both? Do I not have a soul in one universe, but do have it in another? What about if in the first universe I have the soul but get killed on the way to work? Does my soul pop into my second body? Repeat for all possible decisions. You become a different person every time you make a decision from the person you would have been if you had chosen the other way. You are using the soul as a kind of marker to distinguish the “real” you. No such marker is necessary, and one you is no realer than the other. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/38 "2008-11-13T19:38:41Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Yet you trust that I dreamed about our old house last night, despite lacking any of what you call evidence. (Unless you think I’m lying, of course, which is a completely different matter.) There are lots of things in this world that can’t be or are unlikely to be proven. What did Caesar have for breakfast a week before he got stabbed? I can more or less prove that you’re dreaming, but not about what. You might give an accurate report, or you could lie, or you could give a confused report because the dream has become blurry. The problem with the soul argument is that the soul isn’t well defined, and at the moment I can’t tell if I’m seeing the soul or not. In the OP’s example, even assuming there was a soul to begin with, there could be two souls at the end, or one, or none. He doesn’t give any way of deciding, or of detecting the soul. I’d guess that both individuals would handily pass a Turing test, so that won’t help. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/39 "2008-11-13T19:44:17Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > What bothers me most in these discussions is the equivalency drawn — wrongly, in my view — between rational proof and scientific proof (or actually, scientific evidence, there being no such thing as scientific proof). I can provide a rational proof, in the form of testimony from personal experience, that I dreamed about our old house last night. But I cannot provide any scientific evidence whatsoever for it, despite that it is true. I don’t consider that rational proof, actually, though I agree with your general argument. ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529/40 "2008-11-13T19:46:14Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > I can provide a rational proof, in the form of testimony from personal experience, that I dreamed about our old house last night. But I cannot provide any scientific evidence whatsoever for it, despite that it is true. I’m not so sure that there is no “scientific evidence whatsoever”. For example, if you were lying about what you dreamed about, there are some techniques in questioning that tend to trip up liars more than truth tellers. There are things like so-called “lie detectors” that seem to be able tell lies in some situations and with some people. Additionally, we might monitor your sleep and when you enter REM sleep (am I correct in remembering that this is when dreams occur?) we could wake you up and ask what you’re dreaming about. You’re probably less likely to lie reliably on a spur of the moment question coming out of a dead sleep. These things are hardly hard evidence, in fact they’re thin as hell. But I think they could be said to constitute _some_ evidence, and if done rigorously for large enough groups may lead to some fairly good statistical evidence about what kinds of things people dream about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-acknowledgement-of-a-spirit-reasonable/472529.md?page=3)