Interaction between body and soul

[sackett]

Well hell, lightwave ol' pal, I've had 2 near-death experiences, when I was shot at and missed. I don't recall anything but the immediate circumstances: crack-boom-echo, welp, I'm still here.

Do those count? If they do, why? If not, why not?

I think that maybe, just possibly, you may have to consider that

your opinion is worthless.

 

[Loss Leader]

As long as one begins with reality as a material / physical world, then the notion of a soul can never gain any traction. A material / physical world has no explanaition or possibility of a living conscious being, much less a conscious being that survives death. Yet consciousness is - so begin with a different model. I don't know what the term 'soul' refers to, so this is not my wheelhouse.

What?

Why do you say that a material world has no explanation or possibility of a conscious being?

Quarks behave very differently than atoms. Atoms behave very differently than molecules. A single molecule behaves very different than a mass of them. And yet they're all predicted (and testable) in a single model. What is to prevent that from also including conscious life?

Sure, we may not have a strict definition of consciousness. We know we are, we suspect dolphins are, we've seen mother elephants grieve over the death of their child. Maybe dogs are, maybe birds are. Viruses definitely are not, nor are bacteria. So there's no bright line test of conscious/non-conscious animals. So what? Is there a bright line test between homicide and manslaughter, or male and female, or even our border with Canada? Parts of America that people live on are on the Mexico side of the border wall.

At the edges, things can start to get murky. There's a grey area in everything. There's a grey area in how badly Americans are willing to treat the people who make our clothes. Inside the US, they're treated relatively well. In Cambodia, they may be treated far worse than we could ever in good conscience allow. Yet we still go to Costco for $17.00 shirts.

So there's no good definition of consciousness, let alone a bright line for species to step over - so what? It doesn't change the fact that scientists can track the movement of electricity within the brain and predict whether a person is remembering something or smelling something. It doesn't change the fact that we've identified a massive number of chemical neurotransmitters that do different things when released into different parts of the brain.

The material world fully explains the actions of our brains. We deem ourselves conscious. Thus, the material world fully explains that we deem ourselves conscious.

Playing silly buggers with definitions is all good fun. But, in the end, however you personally define it, consciousness and materialism are completely compatible.

Unless, of course, you can design a repeatable, falsifiable test to show they're not. Can you do that?

 

[litewave]

This therefore can't be the authority for your claim that there are "thousands" of congruent reports.

Prospective studies review groups of individuals (e.g., selected emergency room patients) and then find who had an NDE during the study's time; such studies cost more to perform. In all, close to 3,500 individual cases between 1975 and 2005 had been reviewed in one or another study. All these studies were carried out by some 55 researchers or teams of researchers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Research

 

[litewave]

If you decide to raise your arm and then do so, what just happened? If your hypotheses is true then the “you” that did that was just your physical body and your soul played no part in that action.

That would be true if there was no interaction between the soul and the body during life. But my hypothesis allows such an interaction, so it can be the soul that raises the arm but in a different state of mind/perception than when it doesn't perceive through the body.

 

[litewave]

Name three. Name three neuroscientists and/or doctors who think that. Provide contact information for each.

Bruce Greyson (psychiatrist), Kenneth Ring (psychologist), and Michael Sabom (cardiologist), helped to launch the field of near-death studies and introduced the study of near-death experiences to the academic setting.

Sam Parnia (resuscitation doctor)

Pim van Lommel (cardiologist)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Research

 

[jrhowell]

That would be true if there was no interaction between the soul and the body during life. But my hypothesis allows such an interaction, so it can be the soul that raises the arm but in a different state of mind/perception than when it doesn't perceive through the body.

Then we are back to the soul having an ongoing influence on the brain, something for which no evidence has been found so far.

 

[JayUtah]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Research

Ah, yes, the Handbook. Have you read it?

 

[JayUtah]

That would be true if there was no interaction between the soul and the body during life. But my hypothesis allows such an interaction, so it can be the soul that raises the arm but in a different state of mind/perception than when it doesn't perceive through the body.

Then why are we so focused on the near-death life review as the mechanism of interaction?

 

[Scorpion]

You have said that the soul lays "dormant" during mortal life

No ! I said 'what if' the soul remains dormant? its a question, not a statement.

 

[JayUtah]

No ! I said 'what if' the soul remains dormant? its a question, not a statement.

Weasel words. You asked a hypothetical question and I treated it (gasp!) as a hypothesis. You proposed that the soul could lie dormant, and therefore not interact with the body, as a hypothesis to explain why no signs of interaction would be measured. I asked you to reconcile that with your later claim that you interacted with your soul in order to self-treat your schizophrenia. I don't care which one you choose to argue. I just want you to acknowledge that they can't both be true, and then own the consequences of the hypothesis you abandon. Will you do that?

 

[LarryS]

What?

Why do you say that a material world has no explanation or possibility of a conscious being?

Quarks behave very differently than atoms. Atoms behave very differently than molecules. A single molecule behaves very different than a mass of them. And yet they're all predicted (and testable) in a single model. What is to prevent that from also including conscious life?
Sure, we may not have a strict definition of consciousness. We know we are, we suspect dolphins are, we've seen mother elephants grieve over the death of their child. Maybe dogs are, maybe birds are. Viruses definitely are not, nor are bacteria. So there's no bright line test of conscious/non-conscious animals. So what? Is there a bright line test between homicide and manslaughter, or male and female, or even our border with Canada? Parts of America that people live on are on the Mexico side of the border wall.

At the edges, things can start to get murky. There's a grey area in everything. There's a grey area in how badly Americans are willing to treat the people who make our clothes. Inside the US, they're treated relatively well. In Cambodia, they may be treated far worse than we could ever in good conscience allow. Yet we still go to Costco for $17.00 shirts.

So there's no good definition of consciousness, let alone a bright line for species to step over - so what? It doesn't change the fact that scientists can track the movement of electricity within the brain and predict whether a person is remembering something or smelling something. It doesn't change the fact that we've identified a massive number of chemical neurotransmitters that do different things when released into different parts of the brain.

The material world fully explains the actions of our brains. We deem ourselves conscious. Thus, the material world fully explains that we deem ourselves conscious.

Playing silly buggers with definitions is all good fun. But, in the end, however you personally define it, consciousness and materialism are completely compatible.

Unless, of course, you can design a repeatable, falsifiable test to show they're not. Can you do that?

There is no scientific evidence of consciousness, period. We can test if a 'unit' exhibits behavior we deem as conscious behavor.
The highlighted above reads like any religious apologist.
There are no explainations or even wild hunches how matter becomes conscious because in principle there are none. We need a new / different way of thinking about this.

 

[Belz...]

Because that's what the common elements of thousands of NDE reports suggest.

Nonsense. All they are suggesting is that people near death experience altered consciousness. You are speculating about the source of that alteration, but even that explanation makes no sense: if you're not dead yet, why would you start experiencing the afterlife?

The much more reasonable explanation is that, deprived from its full operational capabilities, the brain is not functioning properly.

 

[Belz...]

There's nothing apparent about that to me. That seems to be a complete non-sequitur.

Why is it apparent that reports of vivid and empathetic states of mind during NDEs would be caused by souls detaching from the brain?

In fact, without a brain attached to the soul, how does it record memories? Does the soul have its own memory system? If so, why the duplication?

 

[Belz...]

Sure, I argue how the soul could interact with the body while eluding observations of physicists and neuroscientists. Because, as you see, a common argument against such an interaction is that physicists or neuroscientists would have detected it.

More accurately, the argument is that it is detectable. And yet somehow its proponents always find a way to make it impossible to detect.

What does the soul do? The brain handles memory, perception, consciousness, personality, etc. What's left for the soul except the feel-good belief in one's immortality?

Are you joking? The Standard model is missing dark matter and gravity and has not been reconciled with general theory of relativity.

What does that have to do with sould? Do you think Dark Matter will turn out to be magic?

 

[JesseCuster]

As I clarified, it is apparent to the near-death experiencer.

In what sense is it apparent? All you've done is say it's apparent and when asked how it's apparent, say that some other people who had NDEs say it's apparent.

But how is it apparent? There's no actual chain of reasoning for why vivid NDEs should be considered evidence of souls detaching from brains.

Also, is it actually apparent to NDE experiences and they have reported this? Have NDE experiencers actually specifically said they think vivid and empathetic NDEs are evidence of souls detaching from bodies? If so , did they give reasoning better than "it's apparent"? Linky to evidence please.

How many NDE experiencers have actually said it's apparent that vivid and empathetic NDEs are evidence of a soul detaching from a brain? How many have said something contradictory to that? You need to build an actual argument, not just handwave it away like this,.

 

[JesseCuster]

I am pointing out a possibility how the soul could interact with the body without being detected by physicists and neuroscientists.

Assuming facts not in evidence.

 

[litewave]

Ah, yes, the Handbook. Have you read it?

No. You?

 

[litewave]

Then why are we so focused on the near-death life review as the mechanism of interaction?

That's an extreme scenario where the soul doesn't interact with the body during life and only interacts with it at the end by downloading memories from the brain, which results in the experience of life review. A more general scenario is that the soul interacts with the body during life, and the experience of life review at the end is a result of experiencing the memories in an altered state of mind for the first time.

 

[JayUtah]

No. You?

Yes, but I don't currently have a copy. NDEs are a perennial subject here. What materials by Greyson have you read?

 

[litewave]

There are no explainations or even wild hunches how matter becomes conscious because in principle there are none. We need a new / different way of thinking about this.

If you mean Chalmers' "hard problem of consciousness", I don't see how a soul would be helpful there. The hard problem is how to explain qualitative stuff (qualia) from quantitative/mathematical theories (of science). I think the best framework for making sense of the qualitative/quantitative dichotomy is something like Russellian monism, where mathematics describes structural relations but since it doesn't make much sense for there to be only relations without something else that stands in those relations, there must also be something else: non-relations, qualitative things. Those qualitative things are mutually associated through their relations but since mathematics describes the relations in a very general way it is difficult for us to imagine how qualities arranged in a specific complex configuration are related to the quality of the configuration (whole) itself. Mathematics can be reduced to pure set theory, which is based on a composition relation (set membership), so it just tells you which things consist of which other things and doesn't elaborate what that means for the qualities of the wholes and their parts.