I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[punshhh]

Okay, again from how I interpret this it's dualism, with the monad reprising the role of the homunculus/ghost in the machine/mind. The basis of the origin doesn't differentiate them enough at least to me.

Yes it is the traditional interpretation, however it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

But you remind me of my sister's cute position on how she considers "the soul" as it were. Our bodies and minds are all just meatbags however we're possessed by a soul that incubates in us and leaves when we die.

I wouldn't put it quite like that. Idealism always boils down to this in some form. Materialism is the same minus the monad.

Either there is a soul or there isn't, that's the question and I can't see any answers to it around here.

 

[tsig]

Yes it is the traditional interpretation, however it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
I wouldn't put it quite like that. Idealism always boils down to this in some form. Materialism is the same minus the monad.

Either there is a soul or there isn't, that's the question and I can't see any answers to it around here.

There is no soul.

That's an answer but you refuse to listen to it.

 

[Pixel42]

I've never really understood what a soul is. Perhaps punshhh can elucidate. How, for instance, could you tell the difference between people who have souls and people who don't?

 

[Belz...]

The soul is a means to explain one's own sense of consciousness and specialness.

 

[tsig]

I've never really understood what a soul is. Perhaps punshhh can elucidate. How, for instance, could you tell the difference between people who have souls and people who don't?

It's a part of you that you can't see, can't feel, can't taste, can't hear and that you'd never know you had if someone didn't tell you you have it but it is your most important part and will live forever.

 

[Lowpro]

Yes it is the traditional interpretation, however it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
I wouldn't put it quite like that. Idealism always boils down to this in some form. Materialism is the same minus the monad.

Either there is a soul or there isn't, that's the question and I can't see any answers to it around here.

Quite simply the bolded statement is begging the question. We aren't even in a position to argue a dichotomous "exists or doesn't exist" question for the soul because we don't have any information about the soul and all supposition for it doesn't infer its existence, just describes the characteristics it may have. We could extend Russell's Teapot to the soul here.

In other words, you don't even get to ask whether a soul exists or doesn't until you prescribe characteristics to it; this is a common burden of proof dilemma for the argument. The monad likewise suffers this same problem, and the mind does as well. Every characteristic that seems prescribed to the mind and has been investigated has inferred a physical relationship with no independent processes (so far) and from a physiological standpoint this could only ever be physical. If the mind did exist then physiology would be in a pickle. We don't get to use "could be" flippantly.

 

[JaysonR]

The soul is a means to explain one's own sense of consciousness and specialness.

Bingo!

And it's fairly simple to show how the impression of a soul is a cognitive byproduct - or at least, really strong evidence: subjective capgras.

Take away someone's ability to emotionally recognize their own face, but still leave them the ability to visually recognize their own face (separate fusiform gyrus from amygdala) and they will damn near go mad, believing their soul, spirit, etc... has been removed in some manner...some claim to be a clone and not the real them, others claim to be zombies, still others believe themselves to be in purgatory - basically a bunch of descriptions with one thing in common: they are 'husks' without a 'soul'.

That is how fragile that soul-filled sense of the self is; one snip and you lose your soul.

Soul is emotional self reference; basically.

 

[Lowpro]

Bingo!

And it's fairly simple to show how the impression of a soul is a cognitive byproduct - or at least, really strong evidence: subjective capgras.

Take away someone's ability to emotionally recognize their own face, but still leave them the ability to visually recognize their own face (separate fusiform gyrus from amygdala) and they will damn near go mad, believing their soul, spirit, etc... has been removed in some manner...some claim to be a clone and not the real them, others claim to be zombies, still others believe themselves to be in purgatory - basically a bunch of descriptions with one thing in common: they are 'husks' without a 'soul'.

That is how fragile that soul-filled sense of the self is; one snip and you lose your soul.

Soul is emotional self reference; basically.

Pshh the one time I did salvia I believed I was a marionette puppet being put away in an attic and that I was watching me die because that's what happens when we die. If the soul exists then dying is the ultimate transgression to it.

 

[punshhh]

There is no soul.

How do you know?

That's an answer but you refuse to listen to it.

You are mistaken, I am familiar with the reasoning and I don't believe in a soul.

 

[punshhh]

I've never really understood what a soul is. Perhaps punshhh can elucidate. How, for instance, could you tell the difference between people who have souls and people who don't?

I can only give the theory as I have come across it. There is quite good correlation between religions on the issue*.
Essentially the soul is a body akin to the physical body but of a different kind of material. It reincarnates and uses physical bodies as vehicles for experience in the physical world. Plants and animals have more embryonic souls or group souls.
I can't see how there can be someone without a soul, perhaps it would be possible, but extremely unlikely.


*I am not going to pick hairs with anyone over the details of religious, or spiritual texts, or teaching.

 

[punshhh]

Quite simply the bolded statement is begging the question. We aren't even in a position to argue a dichotomous "exists or doesn't exist" question for the soul because we don't have any information about the soul and all supposition for it doesn't infer its existence, just describes the characteristics it may have. We could extend Russell's Teapot to the soul here.

Yes from a skeptical point of view it is begging the question. But there is plenty of documented evidence for the soul, or something approximating it. Numerous people throughout history have testified to it, as a result of revelation.

In other words, you don't even get to ask whether a soul exists or doesn't until you prescribe characteristics to it; this is a common burden of proof dilemma for the argument. The monad likewise suffers this same problem, and the mind does as well. Every characteristic that seems prescribed to the mind and has been investigated has inferred a physical relationship with no independent processes (so far) and from a physiological standpoint this could only ever be physical. If the mind did exist then physiology would be in a pickle. We don't get to use "could be" flippantly.

You do get to question if you consider the anecdotal evidence. Your argument that it has been shown there is no independent process and it is all physiological is irrelevant, because we are considering a perfectly functioning physical body being employed as a vehicle of experience.

This may require an exploration of what the mind is, but you can't deny its existence, even if it is an entirely physical phenomena, an emergent presence.

 

[punshhh]

Bingo!

And it's fairly simple to show how the impression of a soul is a cognitive byproduct - or at least, really strong evidence: subjective capgras.

Take away someone's ability to emotionally recognize their own face, but still leave them the ability to visually recognize their own face (separate fusiform gyrus from amygdala) and they will damn near go mad, believing their soul, spirit, etc... has been removed in some manner...some claim to be a clone and not the real them, others claim to be zombies, still others believe themselves to be in purgatory - basically a bunch of descriptions with one thing in common: they are 'husks' without a 'soul'.

That is how fragile that soul-filled sense of the self is; one snip and you lose your soul.

Soul is emotional self reference; basically.

Yes that all sounds fine from a psychological perspective, but doesn't address the issue of whether there is a soul, or not. Only that there doesn't appear to be a need for one(for us to exist).

 

[punshhh]

Pshh the one time I did salvia I believed I was a marionette puppet being put away in an attic and that I was watching me die because that's what happens when we die. If the soul exists then dying is the ultimate transgression to it.

Hey man

Do you think your mind was hard wired to experience it that way.

 

[Belz...]

How do you know?

We've explained to you why we know (are sure for all practical intents and purposes) before. You just refuse to listen because you want a soul. But as a rational person, you should know that wanting something is not basis for concluding that this thing exists.

 

[Lowpro]

Yes from a skeptical point of view it is begging the question. But there is plenty of documented evidence for the soul, or something approximating it. Numerous people throughout history have testified to it, as a result of revelation.
You do get to question if you consider the anecdotal evidence. Your argument that it has been shown there is no independent process and it is all physiological is irrelevant, because we are considering a perfectly functioning physical body being employed as a vehicle of experience.

This may require an exploration of what the mind is, but you can't deny its existence, even if it is an entirely physical phenomena, an emergent presence.

Uh, I call shenanigans. Revelation is not a standard of evidence and any documented evidence has the same validity as Uri Geller's spoon bending; it's bullpies. And if you want to call the physiology irrelevant you would need to demonstrate that there is a monad interacting in that experience, and since your objections above have to merit welcome back to Sucktown, population: your argument.

I completely reject the existence of the mind in any fashion if it attempts to separate its dependency in physiology. There is more evidence to suggest the mind (as in: mental consciousness) being the product of brain activity.

 

[JaysonR]

Yes that all sounds fine from a psychological perspective, but doesn't address the issue of whether there is a soul, or not. Only that there doesn't appear to be a need for one(for us to exist).

It provides a neurological support, not psychological, for the physiological impression of a soul and permits us to observe the impression impressed upon a person when this sensassion is absent.
It provides considerable physical explanation for the impression without requiring the metaphysical and unfalsifiable.

Holding the soul as metaphysically extant in observation of subjective capgras is somewhat akin to claiming that dancing, the action, has a soul in spite of our observation of the production of the dance by the dancers and the music of the players.

 

[Dancing David]

I can only give the theory as I have come across it. There is quite good correlation between religions on the issue*.
Essentially the soul is a body akin to the physical body but of a different kind of material. It reincarnates and uses physical bodies as vehicles for experience in the physical world. Plants and animals have more embryonic souls or group souls.
I can't see how there can be someone without a soul, perhaps it would be possible, but extremely unlikely.


*I am not going to pick hairs with anyone over the details of religious, or spiritual texts, or teaching.

Un asserted unproven ******** and the buddha said "No *********** way", anatta means no atman

 

[JaysonR]

I can only give the theory as I have come across it. There is quite good correlation between religions on the issue*.
Essentially the soul is a body akin to the physical body but of a different kind of material. It reincarnates and uses physical bodies as vehicles for experience in the physical world. Plants and animals have more embryonic souls or group souls.
I can't see how there can be someone without a soul, perhaps it would be possible, but extremely unlikely.


*I am not going to pick hairs with anyone over the details of religious, or spiritual texts, or teaching.

All humans have relatively the same brains. It is not remarkable in an uncanny means that all humans would therefore feel the same sensation in regards to cognitive identity of the self.

The propagation for the sensation of the soul in humans is about on par with the propagation of humans creating pancake-like foods independent of each other.
When the same physical constructs are extent, it is reasonable to expect the same relative consequence in the absence of a new variable.
For most of human evolution, the variable of neuroscience (the ability to observe and catalog the function of the human brain) was not available so the sensation of a soul was left to deduction and discernment only through thinking (for instance, Descartes struggles to grasp the nature of impermanent physical form and persistent conception of identity in spite of such; something we can more easily explain today than he could then).

Again, subjective capgras patients readily match exactly the description you provided above regarding that sensation, but in their case, they are lacking that sensation implicitly and it absolutely destroys their sense of self-identity.

It's not a soul; it's your emotional recognition of you...it's your emotional you; the part of your self-identity in your brain which does not critically analyse and create a label and therefore remains implicit and seemingly elusive in description - like all things relating to emotion.

Give a computer a digital version of our fusiform gyrus, amgydala and mirror neurons (et. al.) and it would very likely tell you that it feels itself inside of itself.
Perhaps one day we'll do just that (see Blue Brain Project).

 

[JaysonR]

Also; I'd like to address this misunderstanding:

...Only that there doesn't appear to be a need for one(for us to exist).

Absolutely not.
If subjective capgras shows us anything it is that the emotional recognition of our self - the feeling of us being inside of ourselves - is absolutely critical to our functional level of sanity.

Removing it, the sensation from which a people interpret as being a soul, absolutely cripples an individual's perspective on reality and in most cases causes the individual to absolutely reject all of reality entirely - not just their own self.

When humans don't feel inside of their own body, then the brain will reject all of reality instead of rejecting the signal telling it that it does not feel inside of itself.

That is the opposite of not needing - that is critically and fundamentally requiring.

That people call it a soul and create metaphysical constructs around the sensation is a cognitive byproduct of this fundamental requirement of self-identity.

What we don't require is the metaphysical description of the emotional identity of one's own self identity, but we very much need the emotional identity of one's own self identity.

On the other hand; if you meant that the person can physically still be alive without feeling like they have a soul (as explicitly claimed by some individuals with subject capgras), then yes - we can physically function without the emotional recognition of our own self identity.
However, it is not a functional existence and requires assisted living.

It is like claiming that one doesn't need the prefrontal lobe to exist.
No, the human being as a thing doesn't need it to physically continue pumping blood through the body and firing neurons around the brain.
However, if what we mean by "exist" is AS the identity the individual PREVIOUSLY understood themselves to be, then no; an identity cannot "exist" as it DID without the components which permitted the formation of THAT identity...which is why they all claim to NO LONGER exist as THEM.

 

[JaysonR]

...you can't deny its existence, even if it is an entirely physical phenomena, an emergent presence.

No; you can't deny the physical phenomena as an existence, but it does not therefore follow that this "soul" (a physical phenomena of the brain) is itself a separate object, even metaphysically, from our brain and that it is therefore clear that this sensation of our self emotionally perpetuates after the brain which supplies that sensation stops functioning.

In fact, again, subjective capgras quite fundamentally indicates that the sensation does not continue without the brain.