Does man possess a soul?
Is this view somehow compromised by the current scientific model depicting the functioning of the universe?
I would take the soul to comprise of the spirit, will, intellect, and essential self.
For the pusposes of this thread, the definitions of the component parts of what I believe constitute the soul, are unimportant. I would like to hear from anyone who claims to refute the existence of the soul.
Are you defining the soul as an object capable of surviving the corporeal death of the individual.
You have to define a soul in order for people to either agree or disagree. I can’t say souls exist and expect people to refute it, because everytime they do I could say, “well that’s not what I meant by soul”.
I believe in souls, out of religious necessity, however I don’t think their is any scientific evidence of them…
I totally think James Brown has soul, yeah, baby.
As for anything that exists beyond my living body and mind? Nope.
Well, I think we would have to define those terms (“spirit, will, intellect, and essential self”) in order to have any meaningful discussion. Do “essential self” or “intellect” include memories and emotions and “personality” (in the sense of disposition or temperment–“temperment” is to “emotions” as “climate” is to “weather”)? Are things like ones perception of one-self as an entity or various abilities to process information included?
Chemical or physical changes to the brain can affect all of the things I’ve mentioned. Brain injuries have been documented to change people’s temperments; there is the famous case of Phineas Gage, who had an iron bar shot through his skull in an construction accident; afterwards, his personality was so radically altered that people who had known him said he was like a different person. People who have suffered brain damage from trauma or illness may lose all or part of their memory, they may have altered perceptions of who they are, they may be emotionally different, they may have different convictions and ideals and desires. How does the hypothetical “soul” relate to the brain, and the apparent correlation between all these things and specific areas of the brain?
are you asking if there exists something that is part of each person, capable of non-physical causation?
there’s been entire threads on the possibility of non-physical causation. my personal view is that if you believe the world is necessarily physical, there can be no such thing as non-physical causation, as any interaction it had with the physical world would either a) be physical, or b) cause the world to be non-physical. one of those doesn’t make sense to me.
as far as whether or not i believe there exists something that is part of me that isn’t part of my body, i would have to say that if there is, then no one else has the same thing (i.e. all causes are mental).
Libertarian and I discussed this briefly recently, even though it was somewhat OT at the time (my fault!). http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154914
My supposition was that, at some point in future, all observable aspects of sentience, consciousness, personality and emotional experience might have a “satisfactory” scientific explanation, this being equivalent to explaining the motion of the planets using Newton’s laws (although it surely will never be so “cast iron”). However, this would not prove the non-existence of the spirit or soul, any more than Newton disproved the existence of planet-pushing angels. Such would merely become unnecessary.