I strongly suspect that you are exactly right, though I would have said “It’s also used as a vehicle to not bring justice to the downtrodden (and live off the sweat of their backs while doing it).”
Not that this proves there aren’t immortal souls. But if there aren’t, I’m betting mankind would have thought of them anyway.
I don’t know what to say other than I disagree.
And I don’t believe I said they do. We were talking about souls, and the claim that they are not observable, to which I make the statement: “…any non-observable characteristic that you claim knowledge of HAS to be imaginary, because any knowledge of said characteristic imparted to you would constitute an observation.”
I don’t follow you. Are you saying that is the only equation that can use i? Because I thought it was possible to solve equations containing irrational numbers in which the irrationals cancel out, and you are left with a real answer. Did I get that wrong? Are you saying it’s all mental masturbation and irrationals have no useful purpose?
Were that the case (and I suspect it is not), then couldn’t such concepts indeed be described as “imaginary”?
I had no idea that so many people were sitting around solving meaningless equations with no applications, and considering that to be knowledge.
Seems that the problem in explaining the existense of a soul is in how it interacts with the physical body.
I offer a theory:-
“Souls” do not exist in reality in our dimension. They are recordings of our experiences and identities which are being used to formulate beings in ‘another’ dimension/universe/etc.
The reason that there doesn’t seem to be any connection to our physical bodies is that our bodies are not directly linked and transmited to these recordings.
The recordings and creation of these beings in another dimension are being done by a separate entity which has the ability to successfully observe, understand and record our innermost thoughts, experiences and emotions (which has ‘emmisions’ [physical or metaphysical] that can be detected by the entity).
This entity may exist as what so many have described as ‘metaphysical’.
Once again, our bodies are not affected because the information is transmited one way. The affect is also generated ‘one way’ which is towards the ‘entity’ (entity gains knowledge from us, proceeds to react by recording in the other dimension) Entity may also have other ‘helpers’ to do the recording. (Example: When we observe a picture, the picture doesn’t change, but it is we who are changed by having the image recorded in our brain)
Sometimes this entity may not be satisfied with just being an observer and thus, in rare occasions affect the physical way which doesn’t seem to make sense in the physical world.
Only when the entity reacts back, will tests and experiments at that current affected location and individual will yield results. But the entity is intelligent enough to thwart such attempts. (Pretty hard to outsmart someone who knows ALL of our thoughts and itentions)
Also the entity may have influence the brain patterns or attempt to communicate with specific individuals to convey it’s intentions, messages, etc or write some books.
But only in very rare cases does this ‘entity’ ‘affects’ the physical world. This is so that the recording can stay as ‘original’ as possible. Thus there isn’t enough residual evidence (espeacially so, since it’s tremendously hard to leave ‘metaphysical’ evidences.)
Maybe this entity is quite intelligent and powerful. The entity might not want to create beings that are not up to ‘par’ (destructive, evil, etc) in the other dimension/universe and thus made specific requirements that must be met by us.
Also this entity might even have decided to even be active (being emotionally involved) to reward and punish according to its standards.
Was this entity involved in the creation of our universe or was it merely a passerby?
The recording is complete once we cease to be able to provide further info (being dead). Thus our ‘souls’ are then used to infuse and generate the new being. The entity might also make some ‘alterations’ (upgrades, some filtering, tweaks here and there, not too much to retain much of the recordings originality) to the recording before infusing.
Does this sound logical? I would appreciate any feedback as I hope to understand and explore this theory more.
Crowblood;
This entity- if it can detect events in our reality, can it be affected/destroyed by events in our reality?
also, if it is editing the souls it reproduces in the other reality (‘upgrades, some filtering, tweaks here and there, not too much to retain much of the recordings originality’), could it create a good version of Hitler? The Platonic Ideal of Pol Pot?
Would it want to?
is there any way to find out?
blowero, I’ve been watching your conversation with gr8guy for a while, and have you considered that
is false because it imbues false value to a false claim. If a person claims to have seen a characteristic that they could not have, then they are making a false statement. Thus, you know nothing more than you did before. You can debunk as many proponents of a thing as you want, but while the debunkings are worth taking into account, a proof they do not make. Even if you can debunk all claims of ghost sightings, that does not invalidate the theoretical existence of ghosts. maybe they’re shy. Fake psychics do not eliminate the possibility that there are real ones, and the fact that we seem unable to take photos of souls does not on it own mean that they don’t exist.
Oh, and once we spent half of an upper-level college class going over a symbolic system that could represent natural numbers. Theoretically interesting. Mathematically redundant, and so verbose it would never ever be used. (10 was 0’’’’’’’’’’. 25 was 0’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’. Picture balancing your budget with this.) Yes indeedy, these guys spend time with purely theoretical things. The hope is to increase their understanding of math in general (and, presumably, to stumble across newer and better models for stuff in the real world).
I’m pretty sure that i was made up to complete the rule for square roots, the same way that rational numbers were made up to complete the rule of division and negative numbers were made up to complete the rule of subtraction. The usefulness of each of these things was not always understood (Roman numerals lacked all three). In each case, the massive hole in the rule was “fixed” and, like the ‘positive’ half of the rule, the ‘negative’ half was found to be handy for modeling things.
It’s always been my understanding that, after counting numbers, the rules were made up for the sake of filling out or completing the system, and the “practical” applications were for justifying the tenure.
And, as to crowblood’s scenario, what are the souls you’re talking about? The puppetmaster in the middle obviously isn’t what makes me decide to buy 2% milk instead of 1%, or wether or not to lie, cheat and steal (since I’ve managed to do all three, in years past), so it doesn’t seem to qualify for the job of my soul. I’d call him “god”. The scenario seems to propose physically-grounded non-eternal souls (from which eternal copies might be made, by removing natural biodegredation and all people who like to swing sledgehammers at people’s heads, and, presumably, bad luck).
eburacum45: There’s no reason to think that the “god” would be vulnerable to the reality that it, presumably, had the capability of creating, since it’s making another one. (No proof against it either; maybe God IS dead! When the prayers-per-second count crossed the million mark, his head exploded!)
The answers to your other questions are we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know, and by the scenario, no: we never end up in a position to ask him.
That’s a perfectly valid stance, but obviously I don’t believe that it’s hardly the only valid stance.
**
Perhaps I’m confused. My impression is that what you’re saying can be boiled down to the claim that knowledge comes only through observation. Is this true, and if so, what precisely constitutes an observation?
**
No. I’m saying that this is the equation which defines i. But if one believes in things like fundamental theorems of algebra and the like, that equation has to have a solution. In fact, my understanding is that i was invented, conceptually at least, as an aid in solving cubic equations. That is, a cubic equation has to have three roots, of course, and two of them can be complex (assuming purely real coefficients, of course). So if you want to be able to solve these equations, which they did, you need imaginary numbers.
Later, it was found that imaginary numbers could be used in all sorts of real-world applications, as you say, provided that at the end of the day, you only get real numbers as your answer. But that’s not why they were made up.
I guess I don’t know what you mean. The concepts are abstract, certainly.
I believe that some version of a “soul” exists inside a person. I have often wondered how it is that I can think about the thinking process. What is that conscious part of me that thinks and reacts and has feelings? Emotions are a huge part of human life; but where do they come from? Some essence of who I am must exist somewhere, even if it isn’t eternal.
I find it hard to believe that all of what most people consider “souls” to be are just functions of a part of the brain. Having the feeling of being detached from yourself, but still in complete control is an example of what I believe to be a soul. Can brains really process that feeling? As complex as the human brain is, I think it is not entirely the cause of such feelings. Still, I might just be another hopeful person looking for reasons I can understand better than science.
** Apos**
We = observer
Of course the observer can observe its own observations, but it can’t observe itself, that’s the point!
Whatever I think or imagine awareness to be, that’s not it, because the awareness is observing it. It cannot be both subject and object.
I am saying awareness is nothing. It’s not a percept. It’s not a thought. It can’t be seen, felt, smelt, tasted, heard or thought of.
From a nondual perspective, consciousness IS what it is aware of. The subject—object split is a lie. ( a relative truth or illusion) There is no distance between the object and the subject because if the subject as awareness is nothing there is nothing for the object/thought to be separate from. Yet this awareness or soul is beyond all perceivables. Yet it is also here, yet it is nothing.
—Of course the observer can observe its own observations, but it can’t observe itself, that’s the point!—
Why not? I seem to be able to recognize that I am here observing things. I have a sense of myself. Of course, the language I have to express this may be ill-formed (with its subject, verb, object construction).
—Whatever I think or imagine awareness to be, that’s not it, because the awareness is observing it. It cannot be both subject and object.—
Why not? I already presented a refutation to your claim that this cannot ever happen, and you have yet to respond other than to re-assert the middle claim.
—I am saying awareness is nothing. It’s not a percept. It’s not a thought. It can’t be seen, felt, smelt, tasted, heard or thought of.—
Ok, you’ve said it. Now explain and justify it.
—Yet this awareness or soul is beyond all perceivables. Yet it is also here, yet it is nothing.—
This is exactly why I don’t understand your point. Mystcal language does not convey intelligible information to me that I can evaluate.
Well, I wasn’t trying to construct a proof that souls don’t exist; that was TVAAs bag. What I was trying to get at was this notion that a soul is “unobservable” to us, but to simultanously claim knowledge of any characteristics of the soul. The claim is not merely that we don’t see them, but that it is in fact impossible to observe them in any physical way. I agree with you that it is not impossible for us to guess at a characteristic of a soul, and for said characteristic to be true in whatever realm these souls ostensibly exist. But the fact that we ascribed a particular trait to the soul that we admit we cannot possible know from our vantage point, and the fact that it might be true in this other realm that is admittedly unaccessible to us, would be happenstance.
But what I gather is being said by others is that we can’t rule out the possiblity that characteristics of the soul might be deduced, so that while the knowledge may not be available to us through observation, it could be available through logical deduction. So we might know about souls in the same way that Godel was able to derive information about set theory through sheer intellectual means. And to be honest, I don’t understand Godel’s stuff at all. It seems to me that such mathematical theorems do not describe actual physical phenomenon, and wouldn’t be analagous to what a soul is claimed to be, but I’ll just bow out here and concede that the subject has become too philosophically abstract to make any sense to me.
The other way that souls might be said to exist, if I’m understanding the argument correctly, is that they would be defined into existence, in the same way that i is defined to be the square root of a negative number, or a perfect circle is defined as being perfect. So the question this seems to raise is: Can we really say that we know a thing “exists”, simply because we defined it as such? Again, it gets way too abstract to be interesting to me, but feel free to have fun with it.
Apros
All the objects/thoughts in our awareness are not the observing self, they are not the observer they are the observed. The sense of self of body are the observed not the observer.
What refutation? No matter how many systems or observers there are it ends up with an unobserved observer.
Can you to state what awareness is without referring to what it is aware of, i.e. thoughts/images/objects etc?
If I may interject:
I would state that awareness is a verb masquerating as a noun. Awareness is the condition of being aware; it does not necessitate that there actually be anything to be aware of, though having such thing is your first good clue that you are in fact aware.
Def: Awareness is the condition in which something may effect you.
More complicated definitions presume on self-awareness to draw a distinction between different kinds of effect.
That depends on how strictly you define the observer; I have observed the tint of my eyelids when I closed my eyes against the light. My eyes were the tools of observation; my eyelids are physically connected to my eyes, and can as reasonably called the same thing as the eye, as the eye can be called “a thing”. If one allows for a bit of distance on the unbroken physical object, my body can observe itself when my eyes look at my arm.
It has now been demonstrated that there exist cases that an object can indeed percieve itself. (Pressing your hand against a wall is another; the skin cells are observing the amount of pressure they are bearing, and report on their own condition.)
Perhaps it is clearer now wht Apros requires additional convincing of your point of view.
Has anyone else noticed the similarities between arguments for the existence of souls, and the existence of God? They both rely heavily on simple belief on something defying reason and our current knowledge of our world, making it “unknowable” to man, and thus every argument against one of the two ultimately results in a “well what we’re suggesting isn’t possible to know, so you can’t deny it”. Pitiful 
This thread has meandered around some pretty impressive words, concepts and implications, but somehow the point was missed.
I think it was TVAAA who (quite profoundly, I thought) posited that souls came about in ancient times, when people needed some way to explain the mysteries of the mind to themselves - in much the same way God (or multiple gods and other spirits) explained the world around them, yet as always, humans were something special and thus demanded their own special explanation. At the same time, that ever-present desire for immortality was met - as has been suggested, humans have a fundamental problem accepting that they do not, in fact, live forever, in this world or in nether fairy-lands.
One can explain away this idea (that souls as a concept is childishly simple, dated and unreasonable) with all the fancy metaphysical pseudo-scientific arguments there are, but it still begs a few questions.
Which I would like to now ask of the “souls exist” crowd:
Do animals have souls?
If so, do they work the same as human souls? are they interchangeable? could I be a beetle’s soul in human form? or is there only one kind of soul that doesn’t care what kind of life it attaches itself to?
Where do souls come from? If I accept the weak argument that souls cannot be destroyed, how does this idea affect their “birth” (side-note - if they can’t be destroyed, they’re immortal… bonus!)? Were they created or were they just in existence (like God?) from the get-go? If they can be destroyed, or in more regular terms, die, what would cause this? can souls age?
Are there an infinite number of souls waiting for a physical life to join to? or do they recycle? if so, would that mean that there are some lives which truly are souless, as there literally aren’t enough souls to go around? can they reproduce?
What energy drives them? I think it’s fair to say that any kind of being requires energy to exist, particularly if said being has any kind of power (whether it be observational, influential, or the power of memory), so where do souls derive their energy from? do they produce any waste?
Souls supposedly carry memories and knowledge of prior “lives”/hosts, yet they seem to impart precious little to their current “lives”/hosts… so what is their purpose? Similarly, their influence seems well-guarded and very indirect (this all sounds so familiar), so what is the actual point of their existence?
(obvious answer - so the little humans can sleep better at night… hehe)
Finally, I noticed a few of the soul crowd smugly offering the “well we’ll see who’s right when we die” story. Come now. If there are souls, whether we (the non-believers) believe or not won’t change the fact that they do or don’t exist (soooo familiar), and obviously the same applies to you. Our souls may be a little pissed at our attitude, but to them I say “show yourselves or deal with it”. 
** begbert2**
You as in body/brain? The affect, condition is not the awareness.
Your eyes are the tools of observation but they are not the observer, they don’t perceive anything, the awareness does.
The eye lids and the eyes are not they same thing.
The body doesn’t observe itself. It is observed by consciousness/awareness.
Completely wrong.
The skin cells do not observe, neither does a telescope.
Iamthat, you don’t have to be a jerk. I am not “completely wrong”: remember this?
Notice the qualifier? The thing is, in the remainder of my post I’ve been using the definiton of observer that most people are likely to use. A video camera can be an observer (and it’s attacked boom mike can be in-shot). The eye sure acts like an observer; it will react “on its own” to a flash of bright light, by closing up the iris somewhat, and this without conscious direction from whatever it is that you are calling “the observer”.
What I think we’re all trying to say is, you are not using a commonly understood definition of the word. Now, by your definition you might be right, but you haven’t bothered to explain what the heck your definition is or how you came by it as a reasonable stand-in for the usual definiton. And until you do, you’re not sounding like a sage, you’re sounding like a nut. You might be a sage, but until you explain yourself, we’ll never know.
Here’s another example for you: A photoelectric cell. When light is upon it, it is aware of the fact; we can tell this fact because when light hits it, is gets so excited that it starts shoving electrons down that wire we attached to it, for “study”. Now, please explain why this is not awareness.
As for Swoop, souls differ from God in that while there might only be occasional reports of God, there is this pesky thing called consciousness that continually needs to be accounted for, and in the good old days, it was not thought that that lump of juicy grey matter up there could have possibly been making a person act like a person. So, in the same way that God explained seemingly unnatural events, the soul explained the personal unnatural event of existence.
We haven’t got all of nature figured out yet, but we’ve reclaimed enough of the contested territory to be able to sustain atheists.
We haven’t got all of cognition figured out yet, but we’ve reclaimed enough of the contested territory to be able to sustain, uh, assoulists. :dubious:
If the term “soul” is applied to brain-wave activity, then the word has meaning, if a bit too much. IF it is the case that there is no metaphysical interference with the brain’s interaction with the body, then your questions are answered like this:
Yeah, but their “souls” are constrained to the size/complexity of the brain (or in some cases, “brain”) that they are “running in”.
No, particularly not the beetle; there’s barely even a “brain” there. Doubtful, but maybe large brains are backwards-compatible; there should be plenty of space in that big old human brain to simulate a beetle’s whole body. Doubtful; do you go around trying to act like a beetle (if so, you’re a very well-spoken beetle) (and I would like to note that a human mind could not be packed into a beetle’s nervous system, so you couldn’t “reincarnate” the other way). And in comclusion, no; differerent brains means different so-called souls.
Don’t accept the argument. The soul starts when the brain activity fires up to the point of being aware of its surroundings; go ask the abortionists.
As was said, they’re made shiny new in each lifeform with sufficient complexity to interact with its surroundings. How would they die? Well, there’s always that sledgehammer. And I don’t know if “age” is the right term; their existence certainly increases in duration as time passes, and the effects of this time passing may be recorded in the brain, but in theory, the soul will last as long as the hardware it’s running on is sound (though if alzhemers is shown to be independent of malfunctioning brain chemistry, I may want to revise that).
Uh, no. Welcome to the mythos of souls.
Well, the soul is driven by the brain, which drinks blood (bwahahaha!) and emits, well, you know, whatever it emits. (Note: IANABiologist/Doctor/Anyone who would know.)
Sorry, my model doesn’t support the claims of “past lives”; fortunately for my model, such claims are relatively rare. As to the purpose? Eat, drink, and be merry, but keep in mind that being obese, inflicted whith an addiction and liver disease, and having unwanted childred to take care of (and/or society around you pissed off at you) aren’t very conduscive to long-term happiness. Worry, to stave off future sorrow, but not so much as to preclude all happiness now. Oh, where did I put that “sappy platitudes” desk calendar?
I cheerfully await some theist’s answers, plus anybody else with a different take on it.
begbert2 we are talking about ‘soul’ as consciousness or awareness and I have said that awareness cannot be observed.
A photoelectric cell may or may not have awareness but that’s not the point, as its awareness can no more be perceived then I can perceive or be aware of your qualia or consciousness. I can perceive your behavior and actions but not the awareness that you are. (nor your feelings or experiences)
And I cannot observe the awareness that I am because it is doing the observing. If all knowledge is acquired through a subject—object relation then the subject never encounters itself, because it is always the observing subject never the object of observation.
If I say, “I just am” or “I am” or I have a bodily, intuitive sensation of ‘being’, that too is being observed. This observer transcends all observables because it itself is not observable, or an observable or an it. If it is not observable then it is nothing observable, or ‘nothing’ in terms of any observable existent. It can’t be thought of or represented because there is nothing (no observable) to represent. Anything that can be observed is not it; is not the seer, observer, witness, awareness or consciousness because it is being observed by the seer, observer, witness, awareness, consciousness etc. The seer is not the seen. It witnesses all these objects, feelings, thoughts etc., but it is not one of them.
You appear to have “that which observes, cannot be observed” as an axiom. I don’t. Rather I think it is intuitively false. In the photoelectric cell, we can in theory study and completely understand -by various methods of observation- the physical process by which it detects and reacts to light. In doing this, we have observed an observer. Similarly, if a robotic arm is programmed to play ping-pong via a camera and computer program, it is obviously observing and reacting, and the entire process can be observed via a terminal (if the programmer bothered with such output).
As I’ve said, I believe that the currently available evidence points to our own perception being as mechanical an operation as that of the robotic arm. If this is the case, your assumption is false. So I’m balancing your assertion against the laws of physics, the same as I am for the metaphysical soul (which yours would seem to count as). Occam’s razor would suggest caution.
So, by whay line of reasoning did you come to the invariable conclusion that
Because unless you can give me the straight dope on why you believe this with such conviction, I just ain’t gonna buy into it.
Oh, and I nearly forgot:
No, it would not seem to be existing at the level of a thought. My vote is it exists at the level of your body, it being your brain. Awaiting your reply…
begbert2
ob·serve
v. ob·served, ob·serv·ing, ob·serves
v. tr.
To be or become aware of, especially through careful and directed attention; notice.
To watch attentively: observe a child’s behavior.
To make a systematic or scientific observation of: observe the orbit of the moon.
To say casually; remark.
To adhere to or abide by: observe the terms of a contract.
To keep or celebrate (a holiday, for example): observe an anniversary.
v. intr.
To take notice.
To say something; make a comment or remark.
To watch or be present without participating actively: We were invited to the conference solely to observe.
ob·serv·er
n.
One that observes: an observer of local customs; observers of religious holidays.
A delegate sent to observe and report on the proceedings of an assembly or a meeting but not vote or otherwise participate.
An observation requires an an observer. It’s a slippery slope to claim that a photoelectric cell or a video camera constitutes an observer.
A recording, a memory aid, is a lot different then something observing.
Light/photons enter a lens and create some form of mark or record on a disc or tape. Did the lens observe the light? No. Did the tape or disc observe the light? No. It’s just cause and effect, there is no observer present. A rolling rock may bear the scares, as scratches and chips, of the terrain that it passed over and in that sense they are a recording, evidence of it’s journey but they are not evidence of an observer.
Our perceptions may be mechanical, but so what.
Perceptions don’t even exist. You can’t observe perception.
Eyes don’t see anything, in the same manner that a telescope doesn’t ‘see’. The awareness is behind the eyes observing in the same way that awareness as subject is at one end of the telescope ‘observing’.
Iamthat, the definition “To be or become aware of, especially through careful and directed attention; notice.” would seem to include the actions of a photoelectric cell, a camera, and a human eye, because they certainly aren’t failing to notice the appropriate stimuli.
The example of the eye which i gave involved its reaction to light, not the data which was translated into another medium. I specifically avoided referring to “no-reaction pass-through” data; and even the message that was recieved as light is translated into nerve impulses on the output. The unresponsive, barely-translating telescope is therefore a deceptive analogy. Though if it has some kind of auto-fucus, it might be salvaged somewhat.
You have ignored the example of the computer that plays table tennis. In the case that the human brain is as mechanical as the computer, then the definition of observer applies equally. In this case, you appear to be arging that nothing observes, not the eye, not the computer, not the brain, not the “soul”, not nothing.
That slope seems pretty slippery too. The problem is, it slides right into assuming that “observation” has no meaningful definition, which I wouldn’t think would be a popular view.
This seems inherently contradictory. If the word “perceptions” does indeed apply to mechanical processes, which do exist, then they can be observed.