I’d also like to see a definition of soul. But I agree with the view expressed by TVAA.
This is all going to be very upsetting to THE IRON GIANT
I’d like to point out that even influences below the level of minimum quantum uncertainty can potentially be detected. Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of bodies in terms of a probability distribution. The nature of a probability distribution can be determined by taking a large number of trials from that distribution.
If we suspect that the soul or some other supernatural agency is affecting the behavior of some material entity, we need only observe the behavior of that entity. If its behavior is not subject to outside influence, then we can determine to any desired level of confidence that its random behavior does in fact follow the distribution given by quantum mechanics by observing what it does in a sufficiently large number of trials. If some outside agency is causing it to behave in a manner different from that dictated by quantum mechanics, however small the difference, then a sufficiently large number of trials can uncover this influence using the normal methods of statistics.
This leaves the possibility of an influence which does not cause an object to behave in a manner different from that given by a quantum-mechanical probability distribution. Such an influence would do nothing, so would in fact be no influence at all.
Quantum physics differs in some important ways from classical physics, but it doesn’t throw all rules out the window. The only type of violation of the laws of physics that could not be detected is one that occurs only a finite number of times and is sufficiently small in magnitude that observations of this violation could not be distinguished from chance in that number of trials. If the effect of the soul is of this type, then it must do so little as to be completely negligible.
Huh, go and play first-person shoo-, uh, I mean, surrogate body simulators for a few hours and next thing you know, you’re an instrumental contributor in a thread you’ve never seen before. Ain’t life grand!
For a definition of soul, let’s consider a few things:
- The thing that embodies a person’s (or thing’s) cognition, self-image and perspective on the world.
This, nobody’s gonna argue about but the heavy philosopers a la Descartes. For practical purposes, if you have the capability to discuss it, you’ve got one.
More likely the real debate on (most) everyone’s mind is “Is my soul separate from my body (and reasonably permanent)?” The obvious hope being that after you kick the bucket, you get to stay in the game.
Obviously, if your soul is the “mere” manifestation of the electrochemical activities of your brain (which is what the evidence points to) this isn’t gonna make everybody happy. However, if you want to argue in favor of a non-corporeal soul, you’re going to have to take into account the fact that your body sure seems to be moving at the behest of the brain.
I’m with JasonFin; if the soul is pulling the body’s strings then we should have seen some sign of it by now. Granted that we do not have a 100% understanding of the operation of the brain, but I believe that most brain functionality is based in relatively large things, like nerve cells and complex chemicals, and if quantum uncertainty were masking a driving soul, surely somebody would have noticed the abnormally large effects required to adjust the natural course of the chemistry up there.
I do restate that there’s no evidence that something else (ie: God) isn’t observing our thoughts via ‘reading’ our brain chemicals. Such observation wouldn’t necessarily leave fingerprints behind for us to see, so we would have no way of telling it was occuring or not. So, watch those dirty thoughts!
But, if our bodies are merely puppets to our souls, we should be able to figure out were the strings are attached. Wether or not the strings operate in a way beyond our current understanding.
Then you are equating the words “consciousness” and “soul”. The problem is that “soul” implies additional characteristics, such as surviving the death of the body. Just because a phenomenon is not fully explained does not logically allow us to call it something else and attach fanciful characteristics to it willy-nilly. It’s like saying: “I don’t understand how an engine works, so my car can reasonably be called an interdimensional time-machine”.
I disagree. For a container-based analogy, once I put my hands in gloves I never know what silk feels like to my fingertips. This would in no way demonstrate the non-existence of silk. It may demonstrate the inability to know silk though my fingertips-in-gloves.
The crime suspect in the interrogation room with one-way glass cannot observe the man in the other room, but the man in the other room can observe the suspect, and through other agents can in fact affect this suspect, though the suspect could never learn about his mysterious watcher through these agents (in principle).
There are several helpful analogies that motivate the principle of a soul that can watch (I think the word should be used loosely) and affect but which cannot be studied (from within the confines of etc). This, of course, is only meant to motivate the discussion, not serve as a pure demonstration.
What would it take to rule out a soul? We would have to prove its
- logical impossibility; or,
- non-existence by looking everywhere.
I await either.
What is the meaning of the word “soul”? —knowing the arguments on meaning TVAA and I have had in the past I prefer to not go that road or address that issue.
Because there have been times in my life when I have prayed, and I have felt the presence of God, and He has interacted with me in a way that touched something that was not merely my mind, but was, for lack of a better word, my soul.
I can’t prove it, or even convincingly describe it.
But it left no doubt in my mind. Of course, there are possible alternate explanations; I could have been experiencing a convincing hallucination. But while I cannot ask you to form conclusion based on my experience and senses, it’s perfectly valid for me to form those conclusions.
- Rick
Lotsa replies…I have to go home and eat now, but this should cover me for a while.
By “I am concious” I don’t just mean “I am awake”.
I mean that I have a theatre of the mind, an internal monologue, a sense of my own identity, things like that. begbert’s working definition of “soul” encompasses much of the same thing.
Now first note that none of those things can be detected by an outside observer. How do you know I have an internal monologue or a sense of my own identity? How do you know I’m not just a collection of cellular systems which reacts to stimuli in the same way that an entity with an internal monologue would react? You can’t; the hypothesis that I have an internal monologue and the hypothesis that I don’t are both unprovable and unfalsifiable by anyone not living in my skull.
This is a subtle point. What kind of logical conclusions can I draw about conciousness, aside from its existence? I agree with you that there’s really nothing to imply that there’s no physical explanation for conciousness that we haven’t discovered yet. But there’s also really nothing to imply that there is such an explanation, either. The fact is, I have no data upon which to form a hypothesis, other than my own personal sensory experience. Based on that data, I’ve made the hypothesis that conciousness is the result of an unmeasurable entity. If someone ever does find a physical explanation for these phenomena, then my hypothesis will be disproved. But until then it’s as valid as any other scientific hypothesis.
I note that you seem to be assuming that there is a physical explanation for a phenomenon unless there’s a reason to assume otherwise. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) Clearly I am not making this assumption.
I’m really not certain how this is a question. The fact of my conciousness (as I’ve crudely defined it) is conveyed to me directly by my perceptions. How much more valid of a reason do I need? What’s the standard for “validity” in this context, anyway? Obviously I can’t point to a part of my brain and say “there…that’s the conciousness nerve; that conveys my perception of my identity”, in the same way that I can point to the optic nerve and say it conveys my perception of colour. But that’s just reasserting the fact that there’s currently no physical explanation for the phenomenon.
Sure. But what if the distribution is uniform over some set of outcomes? And what if in turn those random variables act as inputs to a chaotic system?
What if the mind behaves at least in part like Plinko, or water percolating through soil? Even if we can determine the distributions of the random variables affecting those phenomenon, that information doesn’t help us determine the resulting chaotic behaviour. We can observe patterns in the output after the experiment has been run, but at no point can we say “here, the Plinko chip went this way because the thermal state of the pegs it hit on the way down was exactly like this”.
(It’s Orbifold, by the way, not Orbifield.)
I freely admit the existence of conciousness does not imply the survival of the soul after death, and I would not assume that survival after death is a necessary part of the definition of a soul. We’re clearly arguing about ill-defined terms here, but for the record I make no hypotheses about the nature of this extra-physical thing I call a “soul” other than that it exists.
Observation from an indetectable thing is fine. Being affected by it is not. At the very least, we should have an unexplained set of ‘causes’ which may or may not be attributable to a soul.
And as long as the silk does not attempt to modify your behavior in any way, you cannot detect its existence. However, the minute your behavior is effected (the silk screen prevents your hand passing through, you experience a force of unexplainable origin. Attempts to meddle are potentially detectable.
[quote]
The crime suspect in the interrogation room with one-way glass cannot observe the man in the other room, but the man in the other room can observe the suspect, and through other agents can in fact affect this suspect, though the suspect could never learn about his mysterious watcher through these agents (in principle).
[quote]
The suspect would have no way to know that the man in the room was there, but he would be able to detect the effect upon him of the other agents. He could track the influence back through the agents, and being unable to explain their actions through a consistent model without outside interference, perhaps could deduce the existence of the man behind the curtain (though in fact he would not know it there was one man or a collective of minds behind his interrogation, or a computer, or whatever. He would merely know that the behavior of the agents that he was aware of was apparently being enfluenced by some external thing.
(Deja-vu! :))
Back in the good ol’ days, the human brain was a black box; if not its entire head; there was a mass of lumpy grey matter up there which was behaving in a manner rather unlikely of an organic grey sponge. This unlikely behavior was without explanation; as it was clearly not being puppeted by anything detectable. The undetectable driving force of a person needed a name; why not soul?
We’re a bit more educated bow, and the brain is no longer a closed box. Now, we don’t know how the gears and sprockets in there exactly produce the effects they do, but we’ve had a close enough look to see that the internal workings, at least, are not behaving in an unlikely manner. Everything in there appears to be in order; there’s no place for a metaphysical extension cord to plug in and send that electrochemical impluse down the arm in time to catch the ball.
The propenderance of evidence is now against metaphysical intervention on our grey matter. It is now the responibiility of the promoters of souls to deomnstrate their existence, or at least demonstrate how it would be possible for a human brain to be influenced by a soul and still have demonstrated no detectably abberrant neural behavior. Not on the proponents of the observed lack of unexplained interverntion to prove that the unlikely is impossible.
- I can’t think of any explanation for conscious experience (we say “physical” explanation, but really, that’s an empty term, since we don’t know what the set of all “physical” explanations even contains)
- Therefore there can’t be any explanation (again, physical explanation, but again: what does that substantively add or detract from anything?).
- Therefore there IS an explanation… we don’t know what it is either, but we know that it can be called a “soul!”
I would say that it’s an unfair parody, but that really seems to be the logic at work. I do, however, blame the “physical” stuff inherent in the first part on zealous philosophical materialists and naturalists for clouding the issue.
—I make no hypotheses about the nature of this extra-physical thing I call a “soul” other than that it exists.—
This is like saying that I make no hypothesis about blorgnarg, other than it exists. You have to make SOME hypothesis of it’s nature to even know what it is you’re talking about as distinct from all other things.
—The propenderance of evidence is now against metaphysical intervention on our grey matter.—
Well, I would argue that evidence isn’t relevant to this sort of claim of metaphysical intervention. You can continue to claim it even when there is a perfectly good intelligible process explanation already: the evidence makes the resort to metaphysics in that respect unecessary, but didn’t rule it out. That’s why it’s sort of a red herring.
What’s the difference between “physical” and “metaphysical” explanations? They’re both explanations of events.
The distinction is arbitrary.
No. One is a physical event of which we can measure with the laws of physics. The second is a potentially nonphysical event which for which the laws of physics would not apply.
TVAA, are you being deliberately obtuse? You cannot by definition disprove something not measurable with science. You assume and won’t let go of the idea that that a soul mst have a measurable, quantifiable part. Which I reject. Power of God and all that.
If we consider the brain as a network of simple neurons, and consider the process of making a decision.
The brain receives a large number of external physical stimuli (senses) that effect the brain’s state at the point of decision.
There are also a large number of internal stimuli (memories) that effect the brain’s state at the point of decision.
Both these sets of stimuli interact with themselves and each other in an extremely complex way (complexity due to the very large number of neurons involved).
This leads to a set of ‘possible’ decision results which have a measure (or a set of measures) of the favourability of each ‘possible’ decision.
We don’t know how any one of those possibilities is chosen over the others. We can guess:
- The favourability values are summed, and the possibility with the highest favourability is always chosen (hence all the other ‘possibilities’ weren’t possible, the reason I used ‘’ marks above)
- Some random (or at least indeterminable) process chooses one of the possibilities with the chance of any one being selected determined by the favourability of that possibility.
- Some external ‘soul’ chooses the possibility that it ‘prefers’ taking into account of the favourability of each possible decision.
Now, I would expect 1 would lead to decision making of a person being highly predictable, and a person in an absolutely identical situation would always chose the same way. It seems to me unlikely that such a system would produce the feeling of conciseness, as all decisions are predetermined by the persons state of being. So I tend to think of 1 being an unlikely case.
Now in both 2 and 3 consciousness would be expected to be felt by the person. The person would ‘feel’ that they made a decision based on their state of being, but not controlled by it.
We have no way to distinguish 1, 2 or 3 by measurement at the moment, both require the finding of the point or points in the brain where a decision occurs. Once the place that the decision occurs is pinpointed then observation would lead to a discovery of which process 1,2 or 3 is predominant.
Even then, if 1 or 2 prove to be predominant it would not preclude the possibility of a soul that either very rarely intervenes, or else which is only an observer.
I’ve said enough for now, Cheers, Bippy
smiling bandit don’t worry. no one is being obtuse deliberately.
Any non-physical event which causes no physical change at any level can be said to not exist within the physical universe.
If it causes any physical change at any level then that physical change could be measured (a good definition of physical is measurable).
In considering the Soul and the body, and assuming their existance.
The soul exisits and interacts within the non-physical (spiritual) world.
The body exists and interacts within the physical world.
For the body and soul to act on one another there must be a juncture between the physical and spiritual at which the act occurs, and at least a part of that juncture must be physical in nature. The physical part of that juncture would be at some level measurable.
What we might measure at that juncture is uncertain, one possibility I mentioned in my above post.
Cheers, Bippy
Actually, no. The Fallacy known as 'shifting the burden of proof" is what is being done here. “The burden of proof is always on the person making the assertion”. The OP claims “souls do not exist”, thus, it is up to him & his supporters to prove this. All the other side has to do is lean back & smile, until the 'anti-soul" side comes up with a decent proof. Of course they can’t. However, the “pro-soul” side would be in as deep of hole if they made the assertion “souls do exist”. I- since I am on the “I have no fucking idea” side- have a pretty good shot, however. 
The OP also commits the Logical Fallacies of Reification & Hypostatization. 
** We don’t “measure” events by the laws of physics, we explain them by referencing rules we’ve created that seem to describe what happens. You’re confusing the actual laws of physics with our models of the world.
If something is fundamentally not measurable, then it doesn’t exist: existence is possessing the property of interacting with other things (specifically, the world we’re in).
If the Power of God is not quantifiable, it couldn’t interact with the world: the world wouldn’t know how to act.
If you require magic to explain a phenomenon, you haven’t actually explained it at all.
Simple: I demonstrate that various concepts considered to be essential to “souls” are mutually contradictory. Thus, no such things can exist.
I have a high level of certainty that the soul exists, and personally believe that it can’t be measured yet. There are two problems with the argument against the soul:
-
You cannot use Occam’s Razor to disprove it’s existance until you’ve covered all the bases. Good luck.
-
You cannot assert that it would be measurable until the ability to measure it is there. You can, however, use it’s current immeasurability to refute the existance of souls for yourself, and presumably no one can prove otherwise without showing you how they can be measured, and examples of such measurements.
Unfortunately, even with direct proof the odds of belief in their existance is slim, as it causes a fundamental shift in your current belief system(Provided you do not believe in them).
The shock that such an understanding might provide for a non-soul believing person would be just as great as the apparent shock to those who believe in souls. Either way, this becomes a belief based argument.
It doesn’t change my argument if souls can be measured, but the tools for doing so don’t exist.
My point is that, if souls are measureable at all, they obey certain (possibly unknown) principles – and this means that they can be interfered with, created, and destroyed. Just as we can in principle construct a cell, and will eventually have the knowledge and technical ability to do so, we’ll eventually be able to create and destroy these “souls”.
If they’re not measureable in principle, then there’s no meaningful way in which they can be said to be real. They don’t exist.
Measurability does not add up to creation and destruction, TVAA. Very well though, I will say that they could be measurable.