What is the difference between life and soul?

Great Debates
61

I don’t think there is proof in the scientific sense. People makes decisions about what they believe based on their own experiences, and background. Years ago I interpreted a certain experience one way but now I can look back and see why i did and realize that today I would interpret a similar experience differently.
Perhaps we can’t know what may be beyond the physical from within the ohysical. Perhaps the experience is a hint at our potential. For whatever reason we go a bit beyond where most of humanity is to a place where evolution may take us. We access more of the brains potential than we normally do. Perhaps that is part of evolution and the sense of well being and peace comes from the insight into the future of mankind rather than the future in an afterlife. If that is the case I am still amazed at the incredible vision of folks like Jesus and Buddha who grasped so much so long ago. I suppose I’ll find out when I get there {or not} One of the coolest things is realizing that whatever the truth may be concerning an afterlife, it doesn’t have to change what we do in the here and now. Trying to live up to our potential as humans and find a unity is something people from any belief can do.

Sometimes the insight comes from focusing on spiritual things but not always. In a personal example it came in a moment of emotional crisis. I went from despair to an incredible sense of peace understanding and well being after a vision of sorts. What still amazes me was the profound insight into human interaction and how personal choices, even the unpleasant ones that lead us to places of utter despair, are a natural part of our growth together as people. The 2nd part of that revelation came later and in a more subtle way. To quote Don Henly, I think the heart of the matter is forgiveness. We don’t have to wait to be forgiven by placating an angry or jealous god. We must actively and sincerely forgive ourselves and in seeing our own need for forgiveness, and our connection to others, we extend that forgiveness to others. It requires some and focus. Our culture doesn’t really teach us that. But I digress.

I believe you are correct. The question is do we have that by chance of evolution or is it a part of spiritual growth we cannot comprehend. I tend to believe in reincarnation and in my limited understanding the details of our lives and what our spiritual aptitude is or isn’t directly relates to our growth in a previous life.

I do wonder how what we refer to as lower life forms relates to the big picture spiritually speaking. I’ve seen lots of animals exhibit very human like traits that I wouldn’t expect from a creature running on instinct. I’ve had plenty of experiences such as you describe. Even musically, when doing a song on stage that I’ve done a thousand times and find a bit dull, I can think of other things while still hitting all the notes. The song ends and I barely remember doing it. I do wonder about the different characteristics of animals. Why are cats more independent? Is that higher or lower? This is going to sound cruel {or simply crazy} but could it be that animals have a higher percentage of themselves unconscious? I’ve met humans that seem to have far to much of themselves totally oblivious of higher concepts. In them it seems only the ability to speak separates them from a really good dog or cat.

62

I would think if a soul is responsible for the good things I mentioned, it is also probably just as responsible for hate, jealousy, and all the other horrible things people do to people but the basest animal doesn’t do to others of their kind.

63

I’ve always agreed that C and thoughts are not the same. But we still come back to the need for definitions. I see the opposite - dogs think, but are not conscious. I can see my dog (half border collie, so very smart :slight_smile: ) reason things out. We have to be thinking when we drive - no one can drive on pure instinct alone. Do we have thoughts about driving while we’re doing it? I don’t know - I can’t remember any. So dogs think and reason, but they don’t have thoughts in the sense that thoughts are a function of self-awareness. If your definition of thought is different, you might disagree. I know when I have a thought, but I don’t necessarily know when I’m thinking - that is close to my definition.

Hmm - do dogs experience existence?

64

Tangible: Possible to be treated as fact; real or concrete.

65

You cannot touch life.

66

Fear: Wow. You could have argued that we should stick to the old definitions of words, that words should have a single, precise meaning (see just about all my posts in this thread for arguments for the latter), but backing up your claim with a link to a dictionary that also includes “2 : capable of being precisely identified or realized by the mind <her grief was tangible>” as a definition… wow. Now that’s THOUGH.

Voyager: well, you did write “that consciousness helps refine and improve the process of thinking, by thinking about thoughts.”. That’s quite obviously a definition of c. at odds with mine, because it is active. Although I do my best to argue in favor of my definition, you are free to use your own, just don’t argue against me as if I were using your definition.
I’ve no more reason to suppose dogs don’t experience existance than to suppose you don’t. But since it seems commonly assumed they do, I used dog c. as yet an example to show that I don’t mean the same by consciousness as I mean by conscious thoughts. The latter being thoughts on a higher level that the brain somehow bothers to output to the c. I guess c. thoughts is a term I should have brought in earlier, but what the hey.

A rehashing of definitions might do:

Consciousness: The ability to percieve one’s environment. (My supposition here is that it is a (the) basic property of atoms (greek) to be conscious, and somehow, some atoms contained in brains receive enough meaningful information to create an illusion of a greater self (the body). Stones would also be made up of conscious atoms, but there wouldn’t be any neural network (or presumably, nothing analogous to that) so they could “realize” this. If this paranthesis is too hard to swallow for whatever reason, just ignore it.)

Thoughts: Mental processes, which if formed in some language (however crude), presumably would be the meaningful input for consciousness, along with senses (Although senses ALSO send information around the brain, leading to further thoughts, in turn sent back to consciousness)

Awareness of self: Thoughts that acknowledge (or rather, assume), and to some extent describe, the existance of some self, mostly a body. It should follow from this that awareness of self also is awareness of own thoughts, and thus, thoughts about thoughts.

67

My point was, using your definition, the “soul” is tangible to those who believe in it. I think for the purposes of of debate, “life” is no more tangible than “soul”.

68

What I’m really saying is that the self awareness that I consider a part of consciousness also leads to the improvement I’m talking about as a side effect, which is what makes consciousness something with survival value. I’m not sure if I’d consider it as active or not.

Okay. This is helpful. I don’t agree with this definition, of course, but let’s go with it. First of all, under this definition, dogs are definitely conscious. Now, what does “perceive” mean? The only thing I can think of is that the input perceived causes some change in the thing perceiving it. Definitely true for a dog. A paramecium may not be able to perceive light, but it can perceive chemical gradients in its environment. I don’t think a rock can perceive anything. You shine a light on a rock, and you have exactly the same rock when you turn off your light.

Is language crucial? If so, dogs and the like, without language, cannot have thoughts, which works for me. Did language precede thoughts, thoughts precede language, or did they appear at exactly the same time? I think the latter is the case.

This is what I’d call consciousness. When you’re driving on autopilot, you’re not really aware of yourself. Neither is a dog. Now self awareness, as you say, requires thoughts, which is how they are related - but it is not the same as thoughts.

69

It’s active if it changes anything through changes in itself.

Well, it only changes the c. As stated before, the c. ONLY receives input, it doesn’t send anything back. It is the final stage, PURE experience. Senses “percieve” light and such, too, but don’t necessarily experience it, they just pass the information on so the brain can make its thoughts/ calculations. This doesn’t mean I believe all senses are subconscious (what’s left for my c. then, eternal bliss?), but PREconscious. First you percieve, then you experience the perception while your brain calculates, then you experience what your brain calculated.
Or, ALL mental activity ORIGINATE in the brain and are EXPERIENCED in the c.
A rock wouldn’t get anything meaningful out of c., but for some atoms to be c., I believe all must be (how can anything have distinguishable qualities if they’re not made up of smaller parts?). Thus a rock is also c., or you could say potentially c., as it doesn’t use it for much (or so it seems).

Language, no matter how crude. You know, humans aren’t the only animals who communicate, though our languages probably are far more sophisticated than any other on this planet.

If I’m thinking about myself, even my own thoughts, how is that not thinking thoughts?

70

Consciousness certainly isn’t a thing. Is it even a process, or is it just the tag we give to a certain class of mental process with feedback? I don’t know.
[quite]
Well, it only changes the c. As stated before, the c. ONLY receives input, it doesn’t send anything back. It is the final stage, PURE experience. Senses “percieve” light and such, too, but don’t necessarily experience it, they just pass the information on so the brain can make its thoughts/ calculations. This doesn’t mean I believe all senses are subconscious (what’s left for my c. then, eternal bliss?), but PREconscious. First you percieve, then you experience the perception while your brain calculates, then you experience what your brain calculated.
Or, ALL mental activity ORIGINATE in the brain and are EXPERIENCED in the c.
A rock wouldn’t get anything meaningful out of c., but for some atoms to be c., I believe all must be (how can anything have distinguishable qualities if they’re not made up of smaller parts?). Thus a rock is also c., or you could say potentially c., as it doesn’t use it for much (or so it seems).

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Senses transmit information without their state changing, so I wouldn’t call that perception, anymore than a window perceives the light that passes through it. Once it hits the brain, however, the signal becomes a memory, and thus changes the state of the brain, and is thus perceived. So, senses aren’t thoughts at all, but are totally different. All mental activity originates in the brain? I can buy that. Note how the brain can play back sensory information it has recorded (or even generate things that seem like sensory information.) Is everything experienced in the C.? Maybe - depends on what you mean by experience.

However, optical illusions and other distortions of perceptions indicates that we never experience sensory input directly - it is always processed by the brain in one way or another. My wife has bifocal contact lenses, with one eye for near and one for far. The brain can mix the signals in some way. She is also recovering from a detached retina, and her good eye now has compensated, and can handle the job. As she gets sight back in her other eye things are changing back. The New Yorker recently had an article by Oliver Sacks on people who have no depth perception, then suddenly get it back - again, from the brain processing things.

Finally, I don’t buy that rocks perceive anything, or are c. That X has some property P does not imply that the components of X also have this property.

The “language” of animals (except maybe dolphins and whales) is not really language, but an encoding of information, hard wired. Look at bees, for example. This evolved into larger vocabularies, then finally became true language, perhaps through a mutation involving that gene the absence of which destroys language. There is a continuum, but we need to distinguish human type languages from animal type encodings.

That’s thinking, and thoughts, and C., of course. But in the examples I gave your thoughts are totally not involved with your actions, and some of your thinking. Nine years ago, when I was new to cellphones, I was driving from Santa Barbara back to Silicon Valley after a conference. I was looking for a new job at the time, and a recruiter called me. I spoke to her for 1/2 hour as I navigated heavy traffic on US 101. When I got done I had no idea of where I was. All my thoughts, all my conscious thoughts, were tied up in the call. (I seldom use my phone when driving anymore because of this.) I was no more conscious of driving than my dog is conscious of what he does. The comedian, Lord Buckley, had a routine called “Unconscious Mind” about this. Our C. does not run the show nearly as much as it thinks it does. Haven’t you had similar experiences?

71

Look, I hate to do this, but it’s no good trying to explain my definition of consciousness if you keep mixing in yours. You can have yours, sure, but I’m trying to explain mine here.

“Consciousness certainly isn’t a thing. Is it even a process, or is it just the tag we give to a certain class of mental process with feedback?” No feedback! None!
“That’s thinking, and thoughts, and C., of course.” No thoughts!
“Is everything experienced in the C.? Maybe - depends on what you mean by experience.” And not really, it could depend on my definition of c.

72

Well, my discussion of perception was based on your definition. But I think it is reasonable to test anyone’s definition for reasonableness. If your definition of C includes rocks, whereas most people’s doesn’t, we might wonder how useful yours is.

To repeat your definition

Let’s forget atoms. By this definition, just about anything from an amoeba on up is conscious. Is this what you mean to say, and does this match the common meaning of the word? If reacting to the environment involves perceiving it, then all life is conscious almost by definition. Is this your meaning?

73

Not using your definition of conscious.
You see, your view of my definition of c. includes your definition. You’re saying I define consciousness as something that makes everything have a consciousness by your definition.

“If reacting to the environment involves perceiving it, then all life is conscious almost by definition. Is this your meaning?”
More definitions:
“I”, “Me”, “Self” (Not “Greater-self”): Your closest concievable “adress”, ie. if you lose an arm, you’re still “you”, so you cannot be your entiry body. In fact, whatever body part you lose, you’re still “you”, except supposedly if you lose your brain. (Hearts could be replaced). Now, you can lose some of your brain, except possibly some percieved “consciousness centre”. Now, zooming in on what I consider primary attribute (meaning I could lose any number of other attributes and still be me (people grow slower and dumber, so losing all your wits would just be growing dumber faster)), I suppose we will end up with a single atom (In the greek sense, as smallest concievable unit), this atom being the conscious “you”, the only atom you couldn’t “lose” control of and stay “yourself”. Since atoms are the smallest unit, they can’t have more than one attribute (How would it be defined if not by smaller units?), and I’d even suppose that attribute can’t be on or off.
“Greater Self”: The body most people concieve as themselves, with all the ideas and history we identify ourselves by. The greater self also somehow feeds the conscious with meaningful input, so we don’t only experience reality, but also makes sense of it and “understand” (not really understand, since that requires thoughts, an attribute of the greater self, not the self/c., but rather we are fed pre-understood thoughts. This might be a though bit, but it seems to make sense to me.) that we are conscious.

Now, a rock would have a conscious self, indeed millions and billions (I haven’t the faintest, really), since it’s made up of quite a few atoms. The problem is, the rock’s greater self wouldn’t have any neural network, nor (supposedly) anything analogous, to feed it with meaningful input. Meaning, the rock would be conscious, but it wouldn’t understand it, think about it or anything else, or sense the world in any familiar, uhm, sense.

My definition of c. is derived, as you might have guessed, from the question “What is the smallest set of attributes a concieved self can have?” The answer, of course, cannot be given if consciousness by my new definition isn’t separated from the bagage of the old definition.

I’m feeling I’m getting a better and better hang of explaining this, so if you feel I’ve been forgetting important information up until now, you’re probably right.

74

Do you think Terri Schiavo was conscious? That there was a “you” there? How about someone brain dead enough to be declared dead and have organs harvested? I think it makes a lot more sense to think that without some minimal level of brain activity and connectedness there is no “you” left.

Where do the pre-understood thoughts come from, if not the brain? Where does the energy to process the information come from? Not an atom, certainly. I don’t understand your reason for multiplying entities. We get our ideas and history quite simply from our genetics and environment. There is nothing mysterious going on.

75

She would be like the stone, and I’m all for killing such people.
Pre-understood thoughts comes from our brain, as you would expect, I never said anything else. There’s not supposed to be anything mysterious about the greater self, the greater self is your body. Doesn’t your version of the body contain ideas and history, originating from genes and/or environment? Calling it the greater self is merely to imply that most people consider themselves to be their entire body, without thinking that most cells or even organs or limbs could be replaced without their self changing. And also to imply that there is some sense in this, since our conscious self recieves input from it.
If you’re reading “mysterious” into any of this, I think you’ll getit wrong. It’s not some new age rant about all life being sacred and conscious as per the old definition, it’s because I don’t see consciousness magically appearing just because there is some thought process in the brain, if the potential isn’t already there.
YET another way to see it. There is something about c. that makes it YOUR c. If this is the result of an emergent property of many cells, I don’t see c. ending up as singular. The brain, being many cells, identify itself as a single organism, but that’s just like many people working at the same place identifying themselves as their firm (Well, not common, but concievable and it will do for the analogy). However, multiple cells actually EXPERIENCING unity with each other would be like many people viewing different parts of a movie and from this, there would evolve a common understanding of the movie as a whole. I don’t see the latter happening, but I do see multiple instances sending information through one point, so that point might get something useful out of it. This one point is my “material” c.

76

Where does a candle flame go when it is blown out? Same place.

77

Not really. People don’t mind clipping their toenails, donating kidneys, or getting new hearts.

Ah. It is certainly true that “thoughts” (unless we define thoughts in terms of awareness) don’t automatically make C. And it is also true that C. won’t emerge if the potential isn’t there. The question is how can we identify this potential? Also, does C. automatically emerge from a brain structure with potential for it, or is there something that starts it?

You see, when you say that brain cells “experience” anything you are assuming that they are C. In fact, it is possible for a structure with property P to be built of components without it.

For example, memory. In a computer, basic logic gates, like NANDs, are stateless, and have no memory. Their outputs are a function of their current inputs (with a lag of a few picoseconds.) However, if you connect a few gates in the right way, you get a flip-flop, a memory cell. The value of this cell does not depend only on current inputs. If you break a connection or two, the memory property goes away. The memory property of the flop does not depend on any kind of memory property of its components, but solely on their interconnection. I think C. is quite similar, depending on the size and structure of the brain, not on its components alone, for our neurons are no different in principle from that of a dog.

78

Well, my claim is still that “you” are nothing but your consciousness, and that the body is your tool, and a lot of people would disagree, even though (my assumption is) all but a single atom in their bodies could be changed without their self changing.

I don’t quite see what you’re getting at, but regarding potential, have a go at my favorite Hobbes quote:

So a brain structure with potential for c. would be a brain struture with c.
Note that this is leaning to your definition of c. I still hold that for some atoms to become c, all atoms must always be c., the difference is merely the input.

I think you need to read my post again. I’ve no doubts whatsoever that individual atoms, cells, people, communities, whatever, could work together, and even identify as a group, but for any single member of that group to “experience” the “thoughts” of that group, that single member must be able to receive these thoughts by itself. It doesn’t have to be able to produce them alone, only to mindlessly “watch” them.
It’s as simple as for you to be able to see a whole movie, you must see that entire movie yourself, not just being a part of a group that watches a part of it each. Thus, everything “you” experience must pass through a point. I suggest this point to be an atom (still greek), but it needn’t be material at all.

By the way, do you agree with my having a seperate definition for c. in itself and the rest of the thought process? Even if they are dependant on each other (though I’m assuming they’re not really), they are different aspects of something.

79

I saw a show with chimpanzee’s and they seemed to be concious of them selves as they looked in a mirror.

Our dog seemed to think:one day some hens were out of the coop in the rain, I stood by my garage and said aloud to my self,“I wonder where those darn hens went they will be soaked to their skins:” My dog was by my side and then in a little while he nudged both of them to my side and I put them in the coop. If I hadn’t seen it I would not have believed it and there were other things he did that seemed to me that he could think and reason.

Now days a person is not called dead unless their brain waves are gone.

This debate has me wondering: if we have a soul, does life leave first or soul?

Monavis

80

Wish I could remember where I read that a study had concluded the weight of the soul by weighing someone shortly before and shortly after their death. It was some doctors in the 18 hundreds I believe. Is there a dramatic change in body weight shortly after death?
After my father’s death and he was laid out in the house, my mother left the window open (and it was cold, windy and raining) so that his soul could leave - not his life - that was over.
Make of this what you will, I don’t have an answer, only these comments.