Yes it does. If they’re measurable, they can be interacted with, which means that they can be induced to change. If they can be changed, they can be destroyed. It might not necessarily be easy; after all, the sun can in principle be destroyed, but it would take technology and resources far beyond our current understanding. But, it can be done.
TVAA, where on earth did you come up with the idea that being able to observe something means being able to destroy it or create it? If physics is right, for example, you cannot ever hope to create an electron by itself, nor can you hope to destroy it. Nor can you change its mass, charge, and so forth. Your inability to create it or destroy it or change any of its meaningful properties hardly invalidates its existence!
I’m actually still trying to find this argument of yours. Have you made it in this thread yet?
Very well, if one were to present souls in such a manner as the concept of time, I would agree with you on that as well.
You change the state of the electron every time it’s observed, g8rguy.
More importantly, an electron is currently thought to be a fundamental particle: it can’t be reduced to more particles. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be changed.
And they can be destroyed.
I’m not merely claiming that there’s currently no physical explanation for consciousness. You claim that the fact of your consciousness is conveyed to you directly by your perceptions. I claim that this is not possible; that what you mean by consciousness, if it were to exist, would not be such a thing as could be perceived; and that thus you must be misinterpreting your perceptions. This bears indirectly on the OP insomuch that if one does not believe in a subjective consciousness independent of physicality, much of the motivation for belief in a soul disappears.
I tried for a little while to write a rigorous argument to this effect, but ran into the problem that I don’t really know what is meant by consciousness. By one definition a conscious person is awake and reacts to his or her surroundings, but this is clearly physical. I think what you are referring to is a consciousness that is entirely subjective rather than objective, that is distinguished by the existence of “qualia,” and that cannot be demonstrated to any being other than oneself. It seems to me that a good word for this type of phenomenon is “imaginary,” but it is pictured as being quite real, objectively real, which contradicts my definition above. I can’t come to an understanding of what I think you and others mean when they talk about “consciousness” in this way that does not contain contradictions.
In debates about consciousness, I have noticed that people tend to divide into two camps, which one might call “spiritualists” and “realists” (terms I just made up on the spur of the moment). Among atheists the realists seem to have a slight advantage while among theists and agnostics the spiritualists overwhelmingly dominate. I apologize in advance for any straw-men I may construct in attempting to describe both positions.
To spiritualists it is self-evident that there is something truly extraordinary about personal consciousness that is not present in any measure in the inanimate world. It is clear to them that qualia exist and are non-physical; that, for instance, the experience of seeing red is a completely different thing than the neural pathways in the visual cortex that fire upon seeing something red.
To realists this is not obvious. Realists see consciousness as an aspect of the world that can be described and studied in a similar fashion to other aspects of the world. To realists, consciousness is best described in terms of its ability to react to the world, process information, compose an internal narrative, and other tasks. Subjective experience seems like another way of talking about the same thing. If a realist considers the hypothetical existence of the soul, he or she imagines it as playing a role similar to some part of the brain, and one which does not rely in a crucial way on being non-physical. Given that physical processes in the brain seem satisfactory for the generation of phenomena, a soul, if it were to exist, would seem redundant.
Let me try a bit of parody to perhaps get my point across better.
–A spiritualist’s thought process might go, “I know that I am conscious. It is clear that no material mechanism could produce this type of phenomenon. Thus it must be produced by something non-material, and we might as well call the source of consciousness the soul.”
–A realist’s thought process might go, “I know that I am conscious. My thoughts and actions are clearly very complex. Whatever produces them must have a complex mechanism that can store and recall information, process external input, and have a variety of other properties. It seems that the human brain has those properties. Consciousness seems to be an attribute of the brain, and by studying the brain we might be able to better understand consciousness.”
I suspect that the distance between spiritualists and realists cannot be bridged. Both views are set up internally such that the other view seems obviously flawed, and no amount of reasoned argument can address these flaws because we are starting from very different axioms about the nature of conscious experience. The best that can be done is to spread an awareness that the chasm exists.
I think of myself as a realist, and I’m trying to understand why some people seem to see consciousness largely the way I do and others see it as something completely different. I’d be glad to hear of any problems people see with this system.
I don’t see any problem with you’re statements JasonFin. I’ve always said that the best way to solve this dispute is to wait until we all die and see who’s still arguing.
The problem with the spiritualist perspective is that it eventually has to include the “physical” universe.
How do qualia interact with the nervous system? People report sensations, so there must be a point where the spiritual model can interface with physicality. Of course, the spiritual model finds it difficult to explain why “experiences” are at least superfically able to be generated by brain stimulation…
In medieval times, people considered light to be fundamentally different from the world of matter. Matter traveled through space, while light was instantaneous. Matter was heavy, while light had no weight. Light revealed the nature of things, which was why it was considered to be an aspect of knowledge and understanding itself: it was directly connected with the divine.
Now we understand that light’s properties are not fundamentally different from “matter”: both are forms or manifestations of the same thing, and can even be changed into each other.
The same will happen with the soul.
TVAA, I’m not sure what you’re planning on doing with souls when you find them, but as they may be indicative of a larger strata, you may want to refrain from experimenting. Also, prognostication is not an argument. I’d never trust someone to see the future if they had no soul. 
Yes, quite; being a physicist, I realize this. What you’ve missed is my point, however. You can change nothing fundamental about an electron; it is what it is. You can change it’s location, you can change how fast it’s moving, or what have you. But you can’t change any of its intrinsic properties whatsoever. All you can do is change what state it’s in.
In other words, there are some things that exist which we cannot change in a meaningful way. And if some things about one object can’t be changed, why should we assume that all things about some other object can be?
(And no, they can’t be created or destroyed; electron-positron pairs, for example, can be created or destroyed. Electrons by themselves can’t. I see no reason to assume that we must be able to make something in order for it to exist.)
And it would really help me understand your argument if you would, you know, point me in its general direction. I mean, “I have proven that souls don’t exist by a proof by contradiction” isn’t really helpful until I actually see such a proof, and to be honest, I’m not seeing it here.
Nuh-uh! Counterexample: You can look at a photograph. (Assume you’re in decent heath.) The photo is effecting you; you are a different person after looking at it, if only in the contents of your memory. Good luck getting destroyed by looking at a photo.
If souls exist in a supernatural way, and interface with the body, then there is no guarantee whatsoever that you can force things through the interface that weren’t meant to go. That limitation’s kinda the hallmark of a intelligently designed interface, and if we’re talking about souls, “intelligent design” takes on new meaning…
I always preferred 4) The brain accepts inputs which have effects that percolate throughout the entire brain in continuous waves, according to the metal proceessing system that the brain uses. The mind of the human runs on the wiring of the brain like a program on a computer, with no need to reflect or be aware of the physical operations that underly the mental processes. (I doubt it’s as simple as summing favorability; that’s not how I think.) You can with quite a lot of justification call the mental state being simulated on the brain’s biochemistry a ‘soul’, but it’s not going to outlive you. (Unless God backs it up or something…)
-
Thats’ funny, I thought that Occam’s razor could never prove anything, but rather gave a good base for choosing which is right until the next round of arguments come in.
-
You can, though, take the existing laws of physics as we have developed them on things that don’t seem to have souls, and see if they accurately model the behavior of things inside the brain. For a supernatural soul to have any effect, then it must be altering things inside the brain from their natural pathways. Surely we would have heard something from the researchers by now if any such supernatural tamperings were occuring.
There is the possibility that supernatural tampering is occuring, but has not yet been detected. That is all well and good, but this is a comparison between physics and magic. I’m not going to assume the magic is happeing until I see or hear something that is even vaguely indicative of it. This is where I use Occam’s razor; science beats faith every time in questions of physical effects.
The minute I am given some kind of subtantiated proof that physical laws are being bent in the human brain, I will again consider the possibility of a metaphysical human soul. Until then there’s just no avenue for it to work.
Ack! That was “mental processing”, though the “metal processing” might be applicible depending on what music you listen to. 
The “intrinsic properties” are simply those that cannot be changed.
Souls cannot simultaneously control human thoughts and behaviors without being able to be affected in turn, which means that they can be disrupted. If they’re so basic that they can’t be disrupted, we must still consider how they’re able to affect the physical world.
I really don’t think comparing souls to elementary particles is going to work. In order to be repositories for memories and experiences, they’d have to be able to change in some ways if not all; those memories and experiences can therefore be erased if they’re able to be made.
This contradicts the general concept of soul; thus, nothing described by that concept can be said to exist.
Actually, Occam’s Razor can prove where I left my car keys. Souls, perhaps not. You are also assuming that the natural pathways of the brain would have to be altered, or that physical laws would have to be bent.
[hijack]
Can we create, destroy, and fundamentally alter quanta? I thought that there was a ‘smallest unit of anything’ that everything else was supposed to be made of. IANAPP, though.
[/hijack]
TVAA a simplistic version of the concept of a soul is hardly indicative of disproving the concept has validity.
Challenge accepted. The pattern on the photo is such that it generates a massive feedback in your visual processing center’s neural networks. You have a massive epileptic fit and die.
There’s no way to design a pattern of interactions such that they cannot be disrupted. Go read Godel, Escher, Bach for the full explanation (be sure to read the story about the tortoise’s record player).
Perhaps it would require the total energy output of a galaxy to disrupt a soul; it doesn’t really matter to the argument.
Souls can be disrupted, continue.
A simple conceptualization requires a simple rebuttal.
The general concept of a soul: a preservation of mind and experience that directs decisions but cannot be affected by the material world.
This is contradictory. Therefore it is wrong.
There may well be something that preserves the human mind after the brain is dead, but there’s no way it can be eternal. There may well be something that’s eternal, but it can’t preserve the human mind.
Therefore they’re not immortal. Immortality is a basic aspect of what people mean by “souls”.
I’m not disputing that there’s nothing to which the name “soul” can be applied, I’m disputing the idea that the concept currently belonging to that word is possible.
Ah, then I agree with your argument. Your concept of the soul is invalid.