Does the Soul Exist?

[MikeG]

In my experience, if there was no subjective soul distinct from the brain and everything was purely physical, the experience could be like I were dead or a robot..........

You're confusing experience with imagination.

 

[surreptitious57]

I sense that I exist distinct from my physical body

First person subjective experience with no independent means of demonstrating its truth value. Which is necessary as senses are not always
reliable [ dreams / nightmares / hallucinations / psychosis ] Also confirmation bias for the conclusion you have arrived at is conveniently the
one that you want to be true and not the one that actually is true. Did you consider other possibilities for why you think that and if not why?

 

[jrhowell]

In my experience, if there was no subjective soul distinct from the brain and everything was purely physical, the experience could be like I were dead or a robot. Rakovsky's physical brain would get electrochemical responses and reactions, but "I" would not observe them, there would be no subject, the phenomenon would be robot-like and soul-less. "I" would not have my sense of free will, creativity, responsibility, observing the world. I would not observe anything at all.

I think that this reflects a failure of imagination on your part. You can't imagine how a physical object could observe and make choices so you conclude that there must be something "higher" than the physical involved.

I, on the other hand, see those as survival skills that could evolve naturally and be carried out by something like a brain. We are just beginning to understand and explore what neural networks are capable of.

If there was no distinction in any way between my Self and my physical body, then this whole discussion about the Self might not be possible. There would be a purely physical brain, but no observer in it experiencing the body in the first person, since an observer experiencing the brain presupposes a distinction between the observer and what is observed. The soul must be the entity that is observing and acting on the world through the brain in the first person.

You make this argument, but then refute it in the first sentence of your next paragraph.

Certainly, the brain could be an entity observing the brain, itself.

...

However, the physical brain is not the same exact thing as the observing soul for another reason: the distinction between the physical body and soul shown at death. After death, the physical brain still exists, but the soul no longer is alive, I am no longer in existence, and I cannot experience the world anymore, unless theories of immortality or afterlife are true.

There is a huge difference between the detailed physical make-up of a living brain vs. a dead brain which explain why one functions while the other does not without any need to reference a soul.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

You're confusing experience with imagination.

I think that this reflects a failure of imagination on your part.

Amazing, two superficially contradictory statements about the same subject; yet both seem to be correct!

 

[rakovsky]

I think that this reflects a failure of imagination on your part. You can't imagine how a physical object could observe and make choices so you conclude that there must be something "higher" than the physical involved.

If there was no distinction in any way between my Self and my physical body, then this whole discussion about the Self might not be possible. There would be a purely physical brain, but no observer in it experiencing the body in the first person, since an observer experiencing the brain presupposes a distinction between the observer and what is observed. The soul must be the entity that is observing and acting on the world through the brain in the first person.

You make this argument, but then refute it in the first sentence of your next paragraph.

Originally Posted by rakovsky View Post
Certainly, the brain could be an entity observing the brain, itself.

I think this is a good point- one could consider an observer to be a brain that is observing itself.

Still, it's one thing to say that there is a brain with my same physical qualities observing itself that I am not observing in the first person, and another to say that I am experiencing my own brain with its physical qualities. There is a major difference - in the first instance, I am not experiencing the brain and in the second instance I am. My own first person experience is different, even if the experiences would look to an outside observer to match up under a microscope. And so there appears to exist a "me" that distinguishes the two cases, even though the two cases would otherwise match in purely physical terms. This Me or Self then would have to be some nonphysical entity.

 

[rakovsky]

A subject can know that he/she exists, he/she can tell that he/she has a mind and a brain, and he/she can sense a difference between himself/herself and his/her physical brain.

How are they going to do this in any sort of meaningful way?

They could do it by observing their brain and others' brains, and then drawing a distinction between themselves as the observer and their physical brain and others' brains.

 

[MikeG]

They could do it by observing their brain and others' brains, and then drawing a distinction between themselves as the observer and their physical brain and others' brains.

You keep on adding layers of ********. Now explain how this is going to work. You can't observe anything without the involvement of the thing you are observing: your own brain. Any distinction is a false one, added in by you solely to provide an excuse for pretending that a soul can exist somewhere in the fuzziness.

 

[rakovsky]

There is a huge difference between the detailed physical make-up of a living brain vs. a dead brain which explain why one functions while the other does not without any need to reference a soul.

Even if all the same physical components are present, and the physical brain still exists, the soul would not. The soul apparently then is a phenomenon of a living brain, but not an entity equated to the brain as a physical object.

"I", the observer, am an entity, but I am not the same exact entity as my brain, since when my brain stops pumping electrochemical processes and dies, I end and vanish - unless immortality and an afterlife are true. This "I", with its end distinguishable from the end of the brain, is the soul.

I suppose one could still propose that "I" still exist in a dead form if my brain is dead and still exists. But there would no longer be any more observation, no one saying "I.... " to anyone, no more experiencing. Would it still be right to say that "I" exist if I no longer think, experience or do anything?

 

[Donn]

Would it still be right to say that "I" exist if I no longer think, experience or do anything?

You would not be present to say anything.

 

[MikeG]

........"I", the observer, am an entity, but I am not the same exact entity as my brain, since when my brain stops pumping electrochemical processes and dies, I end and vanish - unless immortality and an afterlife are true. This "I", with its end distinguishable from the end of the brain, is the soul..........

.

That "I" exists only as a property of your brain. Without the living brain it therefore doesn't exist. It is not much more than the brain recognising its physical host and its environment, and remembering its past.

Every time you try to put in an extra layer of embellishment all you are doing is pandering to your wishes rather than respecting reality. You don't have a soul, but you really really want to have one.

 

[jrhowell]

I suppose one could still propose that "I" still exist in a dead form if my brain is dead and still exists. But there would no longer be any more observation, no one saying "I.... " to anyone, no more experiencing. Would it still be right to say that "I" exist if I no longer think, experience or do anything?

You will no longer exist as a living being after you die. I don't know why you think this is so strange.

If you pull the plug on a television set the picture goes away. The television still exists, but it no longer functions. When you die your brain still exists in some form, but it no longer functions. It is no longer capable of observing, deciding, and all of those other things that it did when alive.

 

[Dancing David]

Would it still be right to say that "I" exist if I no longer think, experience or do anything?

No, the "I" is a process dependent upon a functioning organic brain.

Unless the "I" can be shown absent the organic brain the answer is no

 

[Carlotta]

Agreed. That's why I didn't bother to answer.

Late to the party, but likewise!

 

[rakovsky]

Could the soul be the same thing as the brain's stream of consciousness?

Would a stream of consciousness be distinct from the physical matter of the brain alone?

 

[rakovsky]

One argument for distinguishing the soul from the physical body is that unlike the latter, the soul does not age:

Proof of the Soul
By Cate Montana

I don’t feel any different now, checking out the gathering storm of wrinkles on my face, than I did as a teenager, checking out the zits depressing my chances at getting a Saturday night date.

“I” haven’t changed at all. Never mind it’s not the same face looking back at me from the mirror. Never mind it’s definitely not the same body. (Holy God! If I’d seen then what I see now I wouldn’t have believed my eyes. Or wanted to.) I’ve even recently caught myself making strange grunting noises getting up from my desk after sitting for a few hours. And I don’t do cartwheels in the backyard in springtime anymore. And I can’t do a backbend walkover like I used to.

Yes, my body is definitely older. But “I” am not. The essence that I call my “self” has not aged a day. Of course, anybody over forty knows this phenomenon. At some point every human being on the planet looks in the mirror and says, “I can’t believe I’m 42 (or 62 or 74 or 87 or...). I’m the exact same person on the inside. What the hell happened?”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/cate-montana/proof-of-the-soul_b_10112150.html

Montana then asks whether quantum physics can provide an explanation for this phenomenon of the soul, since she suggests that a materialist explanation of the universe is elusive:

But maybe quantum physics? After all, physicists (not the Newtonian kind) have discovered the world as we know it is actually an intangible realm of information and energy. The great search for the mysterious “point particle”—you know, that elusive smaller-than-an-electron-microscope-can-see grain of matter that was supposed to lie at the foundation of all things material if we could just probe deeply enough—was a complete flop from the materialist perspective.

Despite over a hundred years of searching, we’ve still found nothing material at all. Even structures as massive as electrons are more like events than things. As the noted Austrian physicist Erin Shrodinger put it, “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen [appearances].”
...
Maybe such scientific discoveries will make it easier for behaviorists to embrace the possibility of the soul.

Another argument is the experience of subjectivity itself:

While neuroscience has made tremendous progress illuminating the functioning of the brain, why we have a subjective experience remains mysterious. The problem of the soul lies exactly here, in understanding the nature of the self, the “I” in existence that feels and experiences life.
Read more at https://beyondbiocentrism.com/does-the-soul-exist-evidence-says-yes/#CUUby7Z00pYyxVkT.99

I understand that a simple reply can be that subjective experiences exist because brains observe the world for themselves, and those experiences are experienced by brains in the first person subjective. Still, I don't find this reply satisfactory, maybe because I haven't formulated the argument clearly enough. I can understand that brains observe the world for themselves, but why am I experiencing the world in this brain in this moment? The question might not make sense, objectively speaking. A simple answer can be: Of course you are experiencing the world in your brain, because you are just your brain. Still, this doesn't really get to what I intended to ask, but I don't know how to clarify what I mean because what I said. In asking the question, I am experiencing the world right now, just me. I am having a first person experience that feels totally different than just saying that some brain somewhere observes the world.

Another argument is that even if a brain had the same physical characteristics as mine, it would still not be "me". "I" am qualitatively different than just any brain with a given set of physical traits and stored memories, as "I" only have my subjective experience in this brain alone. Rabbi Aron Moss uses an argument like this:

Dear Rabbi, Ever since the death of my brother seven years ago, I have been grappling with the concept of the soul. I wish I could believe in it.

[REPLY]The pain of losing a loved one is so deep because it is so final. You can never replace a person whom you have lost. But what if you could? Imagine it were possible to clone your late brother. A genetically identical replica could be created who talks, thinks, looks and smells precisely the same as the person you grew up with. Furthermore, what if scientists developed a way to preserve and replicate memory?
...
Would you opt for this? Would you be satisfied with an exact copy of your brother? Would his death be reversed when you met his clone? I can't imagine the answer could be yes. I can't imagine anyone would truly believe that a clone could replace a brother or sister, son or daughter, parent or spouse or best friend.

But why not? Why would a refurbished model be any different from the original? Because something is missing. This is not your brother. ...he doesn't have your brother's soul. It just isn't him.

That's what soul is. It is what makes you, you. It is the fragment of G‑d that makes each one of us unique. Above your body, beyond your personality, transcending genetics and even deeper than memory is the core of your being, the ineffable essence that is you. We call this your soul. It is soul that makes each person irreplaceable. And it is your brother's soul that you miss. You don't need scientific proof of the soul, neither do you need blind faith. You know it to exist just as you know your own existence. You can choose to ignore it, or to remember it constantly.

http://www.chabad.org/library/artic...Is-There-Proof-of-the-Existence-of-a-Soul.htm

Or to give another example, would it make any real difference if you were secretly replaced by an exact AI clone, so that the clone slept with your wife and raised your kids, but you never experienced any of those things? I think that people would reject this and say that lacking your first person subjective experience in your own body make the clone a qualitatively different person.

Some point out that the soul is associated with immaterial phenomena that also appear nonetheless real, such as free will:

Consciousness has 5 states: 1) sensation, 2) thoughts, 3) beliefs, 4) desires, and 5) acts of free will. All of these are non-physical states. Within these states, there are things that cannot be measured as brain activity. That is to say, although our consciousness can feel the sensation of the brain being mechanically stimulated, it’s not the same thing as a brain state.
...
Further, we all know the brain state is physical, and the consciousness is not. ... And therefore, although our body carries a brain, the soul is separate and immaterial, but utilizes the brain, just as we would pick up a tool box and utilize the tools inside for specific purposes.

http://www.chabad.org/library/artic...Is-There-Proof-of-the-Existence-of-a-Soul.htm

Scientists might be able to mechanically trigger a brain to take a course of action, but this would be experienced by you as a reflex and you would not feel it to be a decision that you were making with your free will. Yet your decisionmaking experience of free will does not appear to be itself physically observable.

I read that Dr. Wilder Penfield ran an experiment that showed this. First he asked a subject to raise his hand and say that he raised his own hand, which the subject did.

Then Dr. Penfield, using state-of-the-art technology, artificially activated that part of the brain and the arm rose up. The subject described the event as: “My arm went up.” Dr. Penfield specifically asked: “Did you raise your arm?” The subject replied with full certainty: “I didn't raise my hand. My arm rose up by itself.” When Dr. Penfield deactivated the brain and the arm went down, the patient described: “My arm fell down; I did not bring it down.”

This simple experiment had profound implications: in both cases, the brain was activated to raise and lower the arm. But in the second case, Dr. Penfield, an external agent, was activating the brain. Who was the agent activating it in the first case? In both cases, the brain was serving as the machine to transmit the intention of an agent. In the second case, it transmitted Dr Penfield's intention. In the first case whose intention did it transmit? We can conclude that the intention in the first case, was that of the Self or soul, or will of the patient.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/does-the-soul-exist

The subject was able to distinguish his own free will to raise his arm from the external physical compulsions enacted through his brain to raise his arm, even though in both cases his brain raised his arm.

Perhaps a pure materialist might argue that there is a physical decisionmaking center in the brain and the brain can sense when that center is activated or not to make a decision like raising the arm. This seems like a reasonable proposal.


One of Descartes' proofs for the soul was that he could doubt the existence of his body, but he could not logically doubt the existence of his mind itself. As a result, one's mind and one's body have a real, definite distinguishing characteristic - doubtability. Thus, they are really distinct.

But maybe a skeptic could reply that even if one can conceive of them differently, or even if one thing is doubtful, it doesn't mean that there is a real difference between the two. One might doubt that the fire department building down the street has the same building as a corner store, but this doesn't prove that they are or aren't really the same building.

 

[MikeG]

The soul doesn't exist, Rakovsky. No matter how many times you attempt to assert that it does, or how you twist an internet poll, you are building a castle in the air. As for Descartes......there is a vast difference between "soul" and "mind". The mind (a concept) dies with the brain, and the brain dies when the body dies (and vice versa). The distinguishing feature claimed for a soul is that it is independent of the body, (thus mind is not soul) and thus you attempting to squeeze the nonsense of the existence of the soul into the logic for the existence of the mind is just pure bollocks.

Here is the meaningful poll on the subject, BTW. Not the silly skewed bit of nonsense attached to this thread.

 

[rakovsky]

If my soul, my mind, my creative ability, my free will, and my independent decision-making powers are all illusions and fictions, and I am only a physical brain with predetermined decisions, then why am I also not an illusion or fiction?

Just your soul is a fiction. Don't get carried away here.

Eerok,
Logically it appears that for real, deliberate "free will" to truly exist in the full meaning of the way that people sense it, there must be a decisionmaker really distinct from the physical brain. This is because "free will" is considered decisionmaking unencumbered from any constraints, which would include physical ones.

For example, if a computer "randomly" spits out numbers, or a spinning casino wheel comes naturally to a stop on a certain box, then the results are treated as "random", and not as deliberate, intentional choices.

Likewise, if a set of wires direct electricity, or a set of pipes spit out water in a certain direction, because they physically point that way, then the electricity or water is not treated as falling into the location because of the pipes' "free" decisionmaking.

If a person is only a physical lump of electrolyzed brain matter and body, then the same issue results with "free will". If "free will" was really and truly only a matter of a brain random ejecting electrons to make its "choices", then a person's control over their decisions would be an illusion, and just random emissions.

Likewise, if the person's "free will" was really only the result of the physical memories pre-set into their neurons and cells, the result of preconditioning from physical experiences, and other physical traits in the brain's lump of cells, then the decisions would not be truly "free". The choices and selections would only be an issue of preconditioning and physical lines and patterns physically set into the brain.

However, my personal experience and sense of self and free will suggests to me that I have some ability into which I am not forced by prior conditions and yet which also is not random. I sense that I have a real "free will", but I think that it's not explainable, beyong being something else that others have experienced themselves.

As one philosopher explains how this appears to show that your being exists as a causal force beyond the purely physical world:

Rather than being pipelines for chains of natural causation that go back before our birth, we can initiate our own causal chains. This ability is commonly called free will. Free will is about voluntary choice, being able to choose one’s own actions, and thus the freedom to make choices that are not determined by prior causes. (For if our actions were forced on us by prior causes outside our control, we would not have free will.) But do we really possess free will? Are we really capable of choosing our own actions? Experiment for yourself. To see if you have free will, intentionally do something, anything at all. For instance, try to move your arm. Can you do it? I think I can. And the evidence (direct perceptions) would seem to indicate that we do indeed have free will.
...
Here’s the problem in a nutshell: in a purely physical world, our actions are solely the product of forces completely beyond our control, and thus we would not have free will. ... Because of cause-and-effect ... this corporeal chain of causation would extend back well before we were born. Yet conditions before our birth are clearly outside of our control, so the chain of causation would look something like this:

Natural Processes Outside Our Control
|
CAUSE
|
Inner Brain States
|
CAUSE
|
Mental and Physical Actions​

But if this is accurate, we would not be originating the cause of anything. We would be just like the tree that fell on Bob's car, being a conduit of natural forces outside our control. In this case, our actions would be determined by prior causes. We would not have free will. This is why free will by definition cannot be an effect in corporeality (hence line 4). To have free will we must exist outside this corporeal tapestry (hence line 5). If free will exists and its basis cannot be corporeal, the only logical alternative is the incorporeal realm. Since its basis must be incorporeal, we must logically have souls if we possess free will.
http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/tisthammerw/rlgnphil/soul.html

From this he concludes that the soul exists: "free will involves the freedom to make choices that are not determined by prior causes. Therefore, free will is itself a cause and not an effect in its interactions with corporeality. So if free will is to exist, its basis must" not be corporeal.

For a person's free will to be truly free, it must be free from all encumbrances, free will must be not be the result of physical forces. A brain's decision to pick chocolate ice cream can't be purely the result of prior physical conditioning on the physical neurons. Otherwise, the decisionmaking would not be free, but rather conditioned.

And if the decisionmaking is not just the result of the physical structure of the neurons or other physical factors, then it must be the result of an incorporeal entity, you, the soul.

 

[MikeG]

.......Logically it appears that for real, deliberate "free will" to truly exist in the full meaning of the way that people sense it, there must be a decisionmaker really distinct from the physical brain...........

Nonsense. I don't suppose you've got any evidence? No? That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, or argument.

 

[eerok]

Eerok,
Logically it appears that for real, deliberate "free will" to truly exist in the full meaning of the way that people sense it, there must be a decisionmaker really distinct from the physical brain. This is because "free will" is considered decisionmaking unencumbered from any constraints, which would include physical ones.

Or your absolute "free will" is also a fiction.

 

[Craig B]

For example, if a computer "randomly" spits out numbers ...

In fact they can neither "spit out" random numbers, nor generate them in any other way.

Unfortunately, generating random numbers looks a lot easier than it really is. Indeed, it is fundamentally impossible to produce truly random numbers on any deterministic device. Von Neumann [Neu63] said it best: “Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” The best we can hope for are pseudo-random numbers, a stream of numbers that appear as if they were generated randomly.​

or a spinning casino wheel comes naturally to a stop on a certain box, then the results are treated as "random", and not as deliberate, intentional choices.

Are treated by whom as random? A casino wheel is incapable of choice, random or not. But we can choose, and if we have a physical mechanism that makes choices, why should it be random? Do computers make choices entailing random results when they perform such tasks as controlling spacecraft? No. Do they have souls then, that transcend their physical components? No.
...

However, my personal experience and sense of self and free will suggests to me that I have some ability into which I am not forced by prior conditions and yet which also is not random. I sense that I have a real "free will", but I think that it's not explainable, beyong being something else that others have experienced themselves.

As one philosopher explains how this appears to show that your being exists as a causal force beyond the purely physical world:

Who, please? And on the basis of what reasoning?

From this he concludes that the soul exists: "free will involves the freedom to make choices that are not determined by prior causes. Therefore, free will is itself a cause and not an effect in its interactions with corporeality. So if free will is to exist, its basis must" not be corporeal.

For a person's free will to be truly free, it must be free from all encumbrances, free will must be not be the result of physical forces. A brain's decision to pick chocolate ice cream can't be purely the result of prior physical conditioning on the physical neurons. Otherwise, the decisionmaking would not be free, but rather conditioned.

And have you demonstrated that this is not in fact the case?

And if the decisionmaking is not just the result of the physical structure of the neurons or other physical factors, then it must be the result of an incorporeal entity, you, the soul.

This sequence of arguments is merely one unsubstantiated statement on top of another, culminating in a triumphant tautology: if it's not physical it must be incorporeal. And then a non sequitur: if it's incorporeal it must be "the soul".