# What constitutes a soul? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2009, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704 "2009-07-21T01:41:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![snailboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/1 "2009-07-21T01:41:10Z")
Here’s a question for the spiritual people. I’m agnostic so I don’t have much of a belief in this topic. I’m curious what religious people think about this though. Let’s define the soul as the part of you that remains after you die and your body decays. So what’s it made of? Without your physical body, what do you have left? We know that physical damage, chemical imbalances, and other physical conditions of the brain affect pretty much everything about the way you think and feel. Brain damage and reduce your intelligence and change your personality. Hormones can have a big effect on your mood. So if you die and your brain ceases to function, what do you have left? Perhaps some will say that you become omniscient after death. If that’s so, what distinguishes your soul from others? It won’t be your memories since everyone knows everything and thus share memories. It’s hard to believe you’d have emotions without the brain and hormones thus preventing a personality. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/2 "2009-07-21T11:51:44Z")
I’m just as qualified (or inaptly qualified) to respond as anyone who believes in such things, so I’ll take on a few of your points just to get the debate going. I’ve not heard that one becomes omniscient after death, even from believers, but hey, why not? Just because you know everything everyone else will or can know doesn’t necessarily mean you lose your sense of self. Also, shared knowledge doesn’t mean shared memories. If you’re stipulating that the soul exists it seems to me the link between the chemical/hormonal interactions in your brain become unimportant, only being necessary while one is alive and all. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/3 "2009-07-21T15:21:12Z")
The soul, or rather, consciousness, is an emergent property arising from the organization of neuronal pathways (representing memories, knowledge, personality, social connections) in the brain. When brain death occurs, that organization is broken, and the soul ceases to exist. It’s like a house of cards; when it finally falls down, the house is gone even though all the cards are still there. I’m not religious, but I do use the word ‘soul’ occasionally in conversation, and this is what I mean by it. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/4 "2009-07-21T18:35:44Z")
I asked sort of this question a couple of weeks ago: [What \*is\* a soul? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=522512) FTR: I think souls are just badly defined fairy tales. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/5 "2009-07-21T20:15:58Z")
I’ll repeat what I said in **Superfluous Parentheses** ’s thread: > [@](#): > > I don’t know about other religions, but in Judasim, at least, the difficult part about discussing concepts like “soul” or “heaven” or “God” is that we literally don’t have any frame of reference for purely spiritual entities. So people are reduced to shallow metaphors and negative definations. It’s a lot easier to say “the soul is not a physical body” than “the soul is a type of spiritual energy that we cannot comprehend while we are alive because we live in a physical”. > [@](#): > > It’s nearly impossible to discuss the nature of a soul without assuming for the purposes of discussion that the supernatural exists. So let’s just take “there are some things that the laws of physics don’t cover” as a given for now, and debate how that can be possible in another discussion. > > The following is my understanding of the traditional Jewish view on the soul, as well as my chain of reasoning on the matter: > Okay, so assume that there is material matter and spiritual matter. Physical matter is perceived by the senses- sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, kinesthesia, etc. Spiritual matter is perceived by… other senses. We don’t know exactly what those senses are, because while the soul is in the body, the bodily senses dominate the spiritual ones. We would have no ability to detect spiritual matter, any more than a blind person can detect color. Once the soul- the is, the core consciousness and personality of the person- is seperated from the body, the person would no longer see, hear, etc, but they would perceive reality by other means. Given that they would no longer have a brain, they would probably think differently, too. ---
**Author:** ![snailboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/6 "2009-07-22T02:59:01Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > I’ve not heard that one becomes omniscient after death, even from believers, but hey, why not? Just because you know everything everyone else will or can know doesn’t necessarily mean you lose your sense of self. Also, shared knowledge doesn’t mean shared memories. How can you possibly know everything without knowing what it was like to be other people at all times? Knowing that is having their memories. > [@](#): > > If you’re stipulating that the soul exists it seems to me the link between the chemical/hormonal interactions in your brain become unimportant, only being necessary while one is alive and all. I personally am not saying it exists. I’m asking those who believe it exists what qualities it could possibly have when seemingly everything about us is controlled by our physical body. > [@DrCube](#): > > The soul, or rather, consciousness, is an emergent property arising from the organization of neuronal pathways (representing memories, knowledge, personality, social connections) in the brain. When brain death occurs, that organization is broken, and the soul ceases to exist. It’s like a house of cards; when it finally falls down, the house is gone even though all the cards are still there. > > I’m not religious, but I do use the word ‘soul’ occasionally in conversation, and this is what I mean by it. I’m not religious either, and I specifically defined soul in the first paragraph so there wouldn’t be any confusion. I never use the word myself when speaking from my own beliefs. I just use consciousness for what you call a soul. > [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > I’ll repeat what I said in **Superfluous Parentheses** ’s thread: You say there that the soul is the consciousness and personality of a person but those can be affected by the physical condition of the body. How can the supernatural soul consist of something that the physical brain controls? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/7 "2009-07-22T16:43:05Z")
> [@snailboy](#): > > Here’s a question for the spiritual people. I’m agnostic so I don’t have much of a belief in this topic. I’m curious what religious people think about this though. Let’s define the soul as the part of you that remains after you die and your body decays. So what’s it made of? Without your physical body, what do you have left? > > We know that physical damage, chemical imbalances, and other physical conditions of the brain affect pretty much everything about the way you think and feel. Brain damage and reduce your intelligence and change your personality. Hormones can have a big effect on your mood. So if you die and your brain ceases to function, what do you have left? > > Perhaps some will say that you become omniscient after death. If that’s so, what distinguishes your soul from others? It won’t be your memories since everyone knows everything and thus share memories. It’s hard to believe you’d have emotions without the brain and hormones thus preventing a personality. I’ve never, ever heard that we’ll become omniscient after death. That we’ll gain perfect recall of our own memories, yes. (Curiously that was phrased as basically a _bad_ thing.) But omniscience, no. So I shan’t address it. Regarding the ‘affect the brain, affect the mind’ aspect of it, I’ve actually seen that _denied_ on this message board. (Guess by who.) Seriously speaking, I myself see no way to reconcile eternal souls with the fact that messing with the physical brain can mess with the mind. I literally see that as a complete disproof of eternal souls - at least, of eternal souls that have anything to do with the consciousnesses of living persons, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/8 "2009-07-23T00:19:14Z")
According to the Planetary Guide, the soul is actually ammunition for siege engines used by Gods. How you live your life determines which God gets you to use for ammunition. Your denouement in the afterlife as ammo is highly unpleasant. Fortunately, you can opt out of the whole thing. It turns out that the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion destroys your soul too, when it kills you. Vote for peace in the afterlife. Ride a nuke in this one. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/9 "2009-07-23T00:56:21Z")
> [@snailboy](#): > > You say there that the soul is the consciousness and personality of a person but those can be affected by the physical condition of the body. How can the supernatural soul consist of something that the physical brain controls? I understand it as being sorta like wearing sunglasses. You are not your sunglasses, and your being is not in any way affected by them. But if you put them on, it will effect your perception. Likewise, a physical body and brain don’t define who you are, but they affect your perception of reality. I hope I’m making sense to you? If not, tell me and I will try again. > [@](#): > > I’ve never, ever heard that we’ll become omniscient after death. That we’ll gain perfect recall of our own memories, yes. (Curiously that was phrased as basically a bad thing.) But omniscience, no. So I shan’t address it. I’ve heard it. I’m trying to remember the exact logic here- I know I read something about this in Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s _If You Were God_, but some of the details are fuzzy. IIRC, the logic goes like this: 1. The soul is a part of God. 2. God is omniscient. 3. When the soul returns to God, it becomes less human and more God-like. 4. Therefore, dead people are omniscient. Looking over at what I wrote, it does not appear to make much sense. I’m going to have to reread _If You Were God_ and try this again. The whole omniscience thing seems logical to me in general. If souls exist outside of time and space, there’s nothing to stop them from watching everywhere and everywhen. Interestingly enough, the omniscience concept is a key component to verifing if someone is posseed by a _dybbuk_, according to a book I have. One of the first things an exorcist-rabbi would ask the supposed spirit was “Tell me something that the victim couldn’t possibly know”. If they couldn’t come up with anything, the rabbi would declare it a hoax or a case of mental illness. ---
**Author:** ![snailboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/10 "2009-07-24T02:17:35Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > I understand it as being sorta like wearing sunglasses. You are not your sunglasses, and your being is not in any way affected by them. But if you put them on, it will effect your perception. Likewise, a physical body and brain don’t define who you are, but they affect your perception of reality. > > I hope I’m making sense to you? If not, tell me and I will try again. I think I get what you’re saying. You’re saying the physical body doesn’t cause these attributes such as intelligence, emotions, etc. You’re saying it limits them. I guess there’s some logic to that. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/11 "2009-07-24T16:24:51Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > I understand it as being sorta like wearing sunglasses. You are not your sunglasses, and your being is not in any way affected by them. But if you put them on, it will effect your perception. Likewise, a physical body and brain don’t define who you are, but they affect your perception of reality. > > I hope I’m making sense to you? If not, tell me and I will try again. I understand this argument. However, it fails to take into account the effects of esoteric chemicals that effect not only perception, but the personality and thought processes themselves. (Esoteric chemicals, like for example booze.) After a while you find yourself attributing so many of the attributes of humanity to “perception” that the sunglasses become essentially opaque - there is nothing left about us that can be attributed to the soul, which forces us to conclude that even if there _is_ a soul behind the curtain, it remains the case that we _are_ the sunglasses. > [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > I’ve heard it. > > I’m trying to remember the exact logic here- I know I read something about this in Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s _If You Were God_, but some of the details are fuzzy. > > IIRC, the logic goes like this: > > 1. The soul is a part of God. > 2. God is omniscient. > 3. When the soul returns to God, it becomes less human and more God-like. > 4. Therefore, dead people are omniscient. > > Looking over at what I wrote, it does not appear to make much sense. I’m going to have to reread _If You Were God_ and try this again. Actually, that _does_ make sense to me. Of course, the issue that then arises is which of the following two cases is occuring: 1) the identity of the dead person is consumed and, thus, obliterated as part of the assimilation of its matter back into the singular personage of God, much like when I eat a hamburger, it becomes part of me, but ceases to be a hamburger, or 2) the identity of the dead person was always merely an act - the omniscient entity was role-playing being a limited human, but in fact never actually was at all. Regarding the latter option, the “the universe is a role-playing game” is an interesting theory, which I believe stands up to most objections that most religions fall prey to. Of course, the somewhat problematic thing about it is, we aren’t real - and if the soul stops playing our character, we essentially cease to exist. An avatar or player character is not the same entity as a player, and regardless of what the soul goes off and does next, we dead people end up inert on a shelf, lifeless forever. > [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > The whole omniscience thing seems logical to me in general. If souls exist outside of time and space, there’s nothing to stop them from watching everywhere and everywhen. > > Interestingly enough, the omniscience concept is a key component to verifing if someone is posseed by a _dybbuk_, according to a book I have. One of the first things an exorcist-rabbi would ask the supposed spirit was “Tell me something that the victim couldn’t possibly know”. If they couldn’t come up with anything, the rabbi would declare it a hoax or a case of mental illness. Well, there’s omniscience, and then there’s omniscience. I might theoretically know everything knowable about, say, the Harry Potter universe, but that doesn’t mean I know everything about _everything_. Depending on your ghost mythos a conventional ghost might be free to wander the world and observe everything that happens, but I don’t think that anybody would consider that to be the same thing as omniscience. It still wouldn’t know the future, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/12 "2009-07-24T17:32:30Z")
Outside of space and _time_. Yes it would. Oh, and I finally found _If You Were God_, so I can cite the relevant passage: > [@](#): > > There is another dimention of immortality discussed in the Talmud. It asks: Do the dead know what is happening in the world of the living? > After an involved discussion, the Talmud concludes that they do have this awareness. The Kaballistic philosophers explain that the soul achieves a degree of unity with God, the source of all knowledge, and therefore also partakes of His omniscience. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/13 "2009-07-24T17:34:23Z")
Whoops, missed the rest of your post. I’ll have to think on your first objection. I think I have an explanation, but I don’t have the words to put it into yet. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/14 "2009-07-24T18:00:18Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > Outside of space and _time_. Yes it would. Well, there’s outside of time, and then there’s outside of _time_. Regardless of their relationship to mortal time, an entity must exist within _some_ timestream in order to have the ability to change its state from ‘moment to moment’ - which is to say, to be able to move, act, think, etc, you have to have have a future and a past of your own to operate in. And being omniscient would meant that you know _that_ future as well. To put this in more concrete terms, I am “outside of time” with respect to the Harry Potter universe. By flipping pages I can look at the time when he was thirteen, and then flip to when he was sixteen, and then back to when he was fourteen, reviewing any and all moments in any order and as frequently as I like. However, I still exist in my own separate time, and not being omniscient I do not have access to the details of my _own_ future. (Also worth noting, if _anyone_ is “outside of time” with respect to our reality, it pretty much puts a bullet into most conventions of free will. But that’s a separate debate - in this one it’s just an interesting detail.) > [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > Oh, and I finally found _If You Were God_, so I can cite the relevant passage: Ah. Depending on what precisely is meant by “achieve[ing] a degree of unity with God”, then this could be a reasonable example of souls gaining omniscience. That is, there’s a certain amount of middle ground between “You are not God and thus not privy to God’s omnscience” and “God eats you” - for example “I stay a separate entity from God but he lets me log into his mind and access his omniscience at will.” Presuming this telepatic (or whatever) connection was constant enough and close enough (but not _too_ close), a person could retain their identity and still be reasonably called “omniscient”, based on their borrowed ability. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/15 "2009-07-26T15:49:27Z")
I just want you to know I was asking a rabbi at [askmoses.com](http://askmoses.com) about your question, and just about everything that could have gone wrong with the chat session did, including my computer crashing twice in a row. I’ll try again later, but right now I’m too dispirited. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/16 "2009-07-30T01:58:03Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s hard to believe you’d have emotions without the brain and hormones thus preventing a personality. Well believe it or not, it’s possible. I read a case study of a little boy who has NO brain (hydranencephly) but is essentially “normal” I’ve noticed a tendancy on these boards to almost…worship science/medical science as thou it has ALL the answers. Science only has a very vague idea of how the body works…and I can’t tell you HOW freaking conservative it is. The docs in Boston told me that I couldn’t possibly have a genetic disorder b/c I didn’t match the desciptions in their sacred textbooks. There’s a tendancy to treat the sciencetific method as thou it Has All the Answers…but a lot of times the scientific method can be too freaking conservative or selective ignore something odd of note b/c it doesn’t fit in with preexisting hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-constitutes-a-soul/503704/17 "2009-07-30T16:43:59Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Well believe it or not, it’s possible. I read a case study of a little boy who has NO brain (hydranencephly) but is essentially “normal” > I’ve noticed a tendancy on these boards to almost…worship science/medical science as thou it has ALL the answers. > Science only has a very vague idea of how the body works…and I can’t tell you HOW freaking conservative it is. The docs in Boston told me that I couldn’t possibly have a genetic disorder b/c I didn’t match the desciptions in their sacred textbooks. > There’s a tendancy to treat the sciencetific method as thou it Has All the Answers…but a lot of times the scientific method can be too freaking conservative or selective ignore something odd of note b/c it doesn’t fit in with preexisting hypothesis. Technically, when oddities are selectively ignored (rather than being investigated and discounted for, you know, a _reason_), that isn’t the scientific method. That’s conservatism for conservatism’s sake and a _violation_ of the scientific method. I’m always a little leery of admitting this happens, because there are people who will take this inch and run it for a touchdown by claiming that _all_ of science is based _only_ on faith or something. But yes, scientists, doctors, and atheists are humans too and have been occasionally observed breaking the rules in favor of retaining their own current beliefs. This is a problem, but not a problem with the scientific method itself.