Deleted. I try again later.
I’m not quite understanding what you’re saying. Are you saying that anything–a rock, for instance–could be self-aware and we just don’t know it? If so, I don’t find it a convincing argument. If you’re saying something else, please feel free to clarify.
I use observation and reason. I don’t see any chemical collection capable of doing anything life what the human brain does, so I conclude that none such exists. Of course there’s a slim possibility that such a collection might be out there, just as there’s a slim possibility that Bigfoot may be lurking undiscovered in some remote area.
What criteria other than externally observed behavior do you use to ascertain self-awareness? Because if that’s all you use, I expect you to declare that my Furby has a soul soon. Similarly, I expect you to declare that a sleeping person is soulless.
The same is true for many of the most important discoveries in history.
Some of those questions, like the first one, may be interesting to those with intellectual curiosity but are not relevant to this debate. The important questions have been tackled at great lengths, and there is no shortage of reading material if you want the answer. We’re discussing one such book right now if you’d like to join in.
Let me see if I understand what you are saying. Please correct me if I get anything wrong.
The sense of “I” is the soul/spirit. The “I” is not impaired by things like drugs or damage that may happen to the body. The analogy is that the soul is like a TV transmitter and the body a TV set (a receiver). But whenever the “I” does experience impairment, “I” am mistaken because “I” cannot be affected by such physical things. Except that “I” am affected. The experience “I” have is of being affected. But you say I am not. Is it just a coincidence then that the experience “I” am having just happens to match what is happening to the body? One is not the effect of the other? This is like you throwing a brick through your TV set and the camera lens at the station coincidentally shattering. The great number of such coincidences would seem unreasonable to me.
None. Self-aware beings behave in certain ways that show self-awareness. For instance, only a self-aware being can analyze why his or her own emotions.
Go right on expecting, then.
The difference here is that the soul answer doesn’t provide ANY answers. It only serves to move the questions one level further out of reach.
I disagree and apparently so do you. It is your position to base your belief in a soul on the best data you have right now. If you have no data relevant to the questions similar to my quick list, what data do you have?
How about you support your participation here with a taste of the data you’re talking about here. It occurs to me that you’re using data instead of evidence. Is that an important distinction?
I see one–the human brain.
I note an interesting double-standard here, that one side of the debate is constantly asked for cites while from the other side, we’re expected to accept at face value any description of what “scientists” say. Personally I feel that it’s possible for a person, no matter how intelligent, to be mislead about what they read about scientific discoveries. It’s also possible for the media to incorrectly report scientific discoveries. And it’s also possible for scientists to be wrong. Consequently I take what I hear about science with a grain of salt.
I love how you put ‘scientists’ in scare quotes. And you claim to be a science teacher. How depressing.
First, science, unlike theology and ‘soulology’, produces results that can be replicated by other scientists. So I’m not just taking the word of some random scientist, I am reporting on research being done broadly in the field. So we are giving cites. You, on the other hand, are unable to give cites because there is no replicable research project that could support your view of the mental. Do you see the asymmetry?
Second, we are not talking about one isolated result here. We are talking about thousands of results, discovered correlations between brain activity and mental activity. The obvious explanation is that mental activity is brain activity. For example, as I noted above, heavy drinking during pregnancy can result in specific, measurable changes to the brain which in turn result in predictable mental shortcomings. The obvious explanation for this is the alterations to the brain cause the mental impairment. You would have to come up with some explanation for how drinking damages the (immaterial, non-physical) soul. You might be able to tell a coherent story, but of course you would have no evidence for it. The simple answer is that you don’t have any evidence to back up any story you would tell. You just don’t know. Scientists know something (in fact, they know a hell of a lot, given the relatively short amount of time that brain imaging technology has been available to researchers), and they are learning more all the time. In cases like this, it’s pretty clear which horse you ought to back.
ITR champion, I would think that any mood-altering or cognition-altering drug would be singlehandedly enough to prove that the “I” is espoused in the brain. Messing up the brain chemistry would not alter the speed of your thinking, your ability to recall things, or your emotions, unless the brain was the source of each of those those things. Messing up the transmitter wouldn’t do it.
So, do you deny the existence of such drugs? Of alcohol, say?
Actually it is personal experience that gathers those so-called “facts,” I have noticed there is a tendency to confuse theories with facts here.
I think I’ll take experimental laboratory results over the word of a person whose theory of the world comes via a woman who channels Seth.
The “I” you experience is always there, there is never a time when you do not experience it. You can change everything in your identity and still know the “I” that you are. To lose the “I am” would be to disappear, vanish. The “I” is not affected by drugs or injuries or anything that happens to the body, you still know that you are you. This is a very important understanding, to find out just who and what the “I am” is which will lead to self-discovery. Listen to the video again carefully, there is no moment she doesn’t feel the “I”.
I respect your choice.
Incorrect. (And an unusual statement for someone who values personal experience so highly.) There was a 30-minute or so period during my surgery when there was no experience of “I”. There was no experience at all. It was in no way similar to the experience I’m having right now of there being an “I”. There was an effect on the experience of the “I” was there not?
No, it wouldn’t
“Scientists”??? Umm… why the quotes? Are you really attempting to say that some of the more nuanced and educated research into the workings of the human brain - research that could well save your life or the life of a loved one - is not being performed by scientists? What Sophistry and Illusion said is very accurate. And well documented.
Please, stop poisoning the well and argue from strength. Not an attempt to discredit what is… only discredited with other scientific research. Our minds lie to us. In important ways. They are very good and important lies - shortcuts in cognition. But no amount of introspection that doesn’t include science and it’s gadgetry will ever reveal how the brain works - nor how it creates “mind,” if it even does that.
You watched the video, yes?
Ever get goosebumps in church as the personal boundaries of self peeled away? The “I” might be nearly always available, but that doesn’t mean we are always using it. Same could be said of other devices like logic, emotion, love, whatever - it’s available, but not always used.