Interesting video. I love almost all Ted Talk videos… I really wasn’t sure what her point was going to be and was a bit relieved that she ended on the notes that she did. It was almost a… ummm… spiritual point she was trying to make - tho completely within a materialist standpoint.
Interesting juxtaposition.
Thanks for the link!
I’m not sure how anything on that list is supposed to contradict my claim. Those are all general areas of the mind, not specifics. It looks to me like it supports what I said.
But in any case, to address questions about the human soul we would obviously have to investigate the healthiest individuals (healthy in the sense of mind and spirit as well as body) rather than those with physical damage to the brain.
That metaphor is completely wrong. The caveman knows nothing about the supercomputer. I, on the other hand, know a great deal about my mind, since I’m the one who thinks with it. And there are others who have pursued the control of their own minds much more closely, and they know even more about their minds than I know about mine. If they believe in the soul in a religious sense–and I think they generally do–then I see no reason not to trust them.
And what are they doing that no other group of chemicals can do, pray tell? Surely you don’t mean the ‘I think therefore I am’ self-aware viewpoint, since we don’t even know how that works, and can’t detect it even in humans (except by the accident of behavior), and therefore cannot really prove that any given collection of chemicals does not have such a viewpoint for itself.
And if not that, then what could you possibly be referring to?
How do you know this?
It seems rather hard to prove… y’know?
So people with mental disturbances don’t have a soul?
Really? Tell us why you dream the way you do. If your subconscious ever comes up with answers for you, tell us how that works. Tell us how you can drive a car without focusing on doing so. Tell us why optical illusions work.
People have stimulated memories using electrical probes. No one claims to understand all of the incredibly complex brain yet.
If you had a program on a computer with no backup, then destroying the computer would indeed destroy the program. So much for that argument. We also don’t understand the fundamental building blocks of matter yet - that doesn’t mean that matter doesn’t exist.
I don’t know how introspection could possibly tell you whether your thoughts are the product of synapses firing or a soul operating. What would the introspective difference be, pray tell?
Neuroscientists have done that, too, using brain imaging techniques to see things like fear originating in the amygdala. Scientists have found hundreds of such correlations, even though the science of the brain is still very primitive. I (and every living neuroscientist) believe that the best explanation for these correlations is that the brain is responsible for these specific mental functions.
So the soul is the answer to ‘what is consciousness?’ The problem with the soul explanation is that it creates more questions than it attempts to solve. It’s not a solution, it’s a bundle of more problems.
At what point in human evolution did we start having souls? At what point in our development as individuals do we start having a soul? How is a new soul created or are there a finite number of pre-existing souls? Do souls reincarnate? Is it possible to destroy a soul? Is the soul physical? Can it be observed? Measured? If not, how do we know it exists? What is the mechanism for a soul affecting a body? Can the physical world affect a soul? How? Do souls get tired? Do they need any sort of sustenance? Do other animals have souls? How can we be sure? Does the soul continue to exist after the death of the body? How can we be sure? Lots of questions. Very little data.
I take your point, though, that neither the physcialist nor the soul camp have produced a complete answer. Which horse is the better bet? The physicalists say they’ll someday be able to explain the processes of the brain that produce consciousness. The pro-soul folk posit some additional substance AND that they’ll someday be able to explain their processes. (Or worse, they hide behind some obscurantist fog of ‘it can’t be explained.’) I’d suggest one of these positions is more parsimonious and therefore preferable. I’d also suggest the the physicalists are way far ahead in bridging their gap. What data would you like to point to on behalf of the soul? If we need to posit something non-physical as an explanation, what makes a soul better than any other non-answer we could dream up?
I can think of two ways of addressing this, but to keep it out of the clouds I think the simple solution is to take your own words literally.
As a brief introductory note though, I’d like to say that you do not have an innermost self. Not you personally — you seem nice enough — but as a human.
Even if you have secrets that no one else knows or feelings you can’t share with others… or maybe more pertinently, if you ‘act’ a certain way at work or on the bus or at family events when you “can’t be yourself.” Is the feeling of “not being yourself” a part of “yourself?” When you ‘act’ a certain way under those circumstances are you less yourself than at other times? Is there some part of you that is your midway self?
The point is that it is inexpressible. People with better language skills than I have struggled to catch a corner of it. Unutterable describes the situation well enough, though I suspect that we just get tired of hearing other people’s utterances from their innermost self.
The intense “something” you describe has led people into an untenable duality since well before Descartes. The separation is an illusion and it doesn’t matter what you call the illusory pieces or whether you call the spiritual side the side that likes church or the side that loathes sermons and suits and singing.
Having different levels of attentiveness, focus, concern, interest and emotional response does not require different internal structures.
Ok… let’s see… While I get that every action is an authentic action - even if I chose to lie, I really did chose that option, therefore it is authentic.
I do think we have some… sense of who we are. I know that if I do somethings it just won’t feel right to me. There are some things that just aren’t typically part of my personality - and don’t feel right. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned some of that those things are and I avoid them. I just don’t like what doesn’t feel “authentic” it somehow seems less than honest.
That sense of what is TRULY us… what is that then? Some inner portrait of self that we rather like and nurture?
Some emotions seem to run deeper than others. This seems to touch on the innermost self, does it not?
I’m confused; you’re not actually arguing that we don’t have a self, do you?
By my thinking, it’s obvious that we have a self. (Or at least, I have a self. I don’t know about you lot.)
A little less obvious is that that self is ‘innermost’; that is, that it’s entirely and completely housed inside the workings of our brains, rather than being some kind of poorly-conceptualized external soul thingamajig, janking our puppet strings with inexplicable voodoo magic. Not as obvious; you actually have to read a little to learn this.
Our self image. And our built in instincts.
Which reminds me of another assumption that generally goes unquestioned in discussions like this; this idea that the soul, assuming it existed, is somehow ‘higher’ than the materiel self/brain; that having one would be beneficial. Assuming that souls exist, and that they affect your self and emotions, how do you know that they are what’s responsible for your positive qualities ? You could just as plausibly claim that our materiel selves are the source of our more noble impulses, and all our nasty or irrational desires are from the soul.
Why would an ensouled brain be nobler than a soul free brain ? Why should we assume that having souls is even desirable ? People talk about how awful it would be if we don’t have soul, but there’s no reason to assume that having souls is beneficial. And even assuming they exist, why should they be considered “higher”, more important than the materiel self ?
Is logic physical?
Less animal. Not that I accept that answer… I do think we like to see ourselves as other-than-animal and the soul notion is a way of distancing ourselves from the idea of us being sophisticated, social animals.
Logic is not a thing, so it is not amongst the set of every thing, the members of which are all physical.
Every thing is physical, or imaginary. Logic is imaginary. However, it’s imaginary in a very consistent and useful way, so we don’t mind.
While I must defer to any explanation Contrapuntal offers for their post, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that they were saying everything has a source in the physical.
And I would easily submit that logic arises from the structures of the brain - as does any abstract.
I would like anyone to feel welcome commenting in the thread. I would, however, encourage any posters to ADD to the conversation.
Such a beautiful experience, it explains everything in a new and different way I had not heard before, and since we now have evidence of consciousness continuing to live after the death of the brain, it brings the reality of spirit just that much closer to us all.
Are you attempting to say that the woman who delivered the speech was brain dead? Because… if so, you really didn’t understand the video.
Or… I’m misunderstanding your use of the word “spirit.” A concept separate from “soul”…
'Scuse me? Could I trouble you to astral project back into your body and cite where you came up with that bubbling cauldron of shit? Remember, you said evidence. Not some primitive goat fucker wrote it down on a scroll awhiles back. Evidence. Let’s see it please.