Does the Soul Exist?

[rakovsky]

Hello, Craig.

One claim could be that the brain is just a lump that randomly spits out numbers. I gave some possible examples, eg. if "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."

You replied:

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?

I think that casinos and gamblers, and most people, would assert that a correctly functioning gambling wheel, delivers random results. Another example is a dice roll. I understand that a dice piece might not be purely a random generator because there could be a minute weighting on one side of the dice due to the manufacture process. Still, the result is considered to be out of the control of any human's deliberate conscious force. The dice's result is not considered to be the will of the dice thrower or of the dice itself.

So if the brain is just an electrolyzed lump, one claims could be that its decisions are just the random results of where its electrons shoot. The electrons randomly choose which neuron pathway to take when given a choice.

But if that were the case, then free will would just be an illusion. There would really be no real conscious, controlled choice if the selections would be random and uncontrolled.

So it sounds like you are disagreeing with the idea that the brain's decisions are random. Do you think that Free Will an illusion or does a person have a real controlled choice over their decisions?

 

[Thor 2]

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

Quote:
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?”

............

What is this tripe?

I for one am distinctly aware of the difference of my "self" (not soul) from what I was so many years ago. Can you live all this time and not experience changes in how you see yourself?

I see the above quotation as an example of extreme delusion or extreme dishonesty.

 

[MikeG]

I'm with Thor 2. You don't get to make up **** on my behalf, rakovsky. It's delusional ****, too.....the very worst kind.

 

[Dancing David]

Hello, Craig.

One claim could be that the brain is just a lump that randomly spits out numbers.

That is a rather ignorant analogy and would goes in the face of development biology and neurology.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

A false dichotomy between randomness and supernatural? Have I wandered into a creationism thread?

 

[Darat]

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.



...snip....

Problem for you is that for that type of free-will would mean mental constraints would also not apply so you have something that can do anything at anytime. Yet we know this is not the case.

 

[Loss Leader]

I think that casinos and gamblers, and most people, would assert that a correctly functioning gambling wheel, delivers random results. Another example is a dice roll. I understand that a dice piece might not be purely a random generator because there could be a minute weighting on one side of the dice due to the manufacture process. Still, the result is considered to be out of the control of any human's deliberate conscious force. The dice's result is not considered to be the will of the dice thrower or of the dice itself.

You're mixing up two concepts - randomness and unpredictability. Wheels and dice aren't random. There are specific forces acting on each of them - weighting, force, air pressure, humidity, gravity, etc. Assuming we could model each of these forces, we could predict them. The systems aren't random, they're chaotic. The interaction of variables quickly gets so complex that their outcomes can't be predicted. Birds don't fly as a flock in random directions, but the few simple rules they follow make those particular turns and swoops impossible to know.

So if the brain is just an electrolyzed lump, one claims could be that its decisions are just the random results of where its electrons shoot. The electrons randomly choose which neuron pathway to take when given a choice.

But if that were the case, then free will would just be an illusion. There would really be no real conscious, controlled choice if the selections would be random and uncontrolled.

So it sounds like you are disagreeing with the idea that the brain's decisions are random. Do you think that Free Will an illusion or does a person have a real controlled choice over their decisions?

This is a false dichotomy. The two choices aren't random/intentional. The three choices (at least) are random, chaotic and intentional. Ou brains can follow just a handful of rules without conscious choice and the results can be nearly infinite.

 

[rakovsky]

This is a false dichotomy. The two choices aren't random/intentional. The three choices (at least) are random, chaotic and intentional. Ou brains can follow just a handful of rules without conscious choice and the results can be nearly infinite.

The argument seems to go that the mind's output could be random, or else chaotic (as you may have suggested: the inevitable result of predetermined material, physical variables), or else the result of deliberate choice unrestrained by prior variables.

In the latter instance, the theory goes that if the free choice was neither random nor predetermined by material variables, then it must be the result of a decisionmaker who has nonrandom, not materially predetermined deliberation.

 

[Loss Leader]

The argument seems to go that the mind's output could be random, or else chaotic (as you may have suggested: the inevitable result of predetermined material, physical variables), or else the result of deliberate choice unrestrained by prior variables.

In the latter instance, the theory goes that if the free choice was neither random nor predetermined by material variables, then it must be the result of a decisionmaker who has nonrandom, not materially predetermined deliberation.

No, it must be the result of input in a complex physical system. Consciousness of the workings of the system is not necessary.

 

[rakovsky]

No, it must be the result of input in a complex physical system. Consciousness of the workings of the system is not necessary.

With no spirit or soul, a purely physical system would seem to me either random or physically predetermined in its outcome.

 

[acbytesla]

I can't believe another thread on this moronic subject.

Our mind/consciousness/soul/spirit/etc or whatever else you want to call it is a function of our brain's activities. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. I think, therefore I am. Thinking, a process that is impossible without the brain. Lose or damage your brain, who you are ceases to exist. Period, end of story.

Move on.

 

[Hungry81]

With no spirit or soul, a purely physical system would seem to me either random or physically predetermined in its outcome.

Was you typing this post "random"?

 

[Kid Eager]

With no spirit or soul, a purely physical system would seem to me either random or physically predetermined in its outcome.

Why that conclusion? And why only those two alternatives?

"Seems" is a useful contraction for "I don't know, but this conclusion aligns with my preconceptions", but is hardly rational nor scientific.

 

[Cainkane1]

I personally do not believe the soul exists. Your body is a self-repairing motor and when the motor shuts down that is the end.

There is no evidence for a soul although I would be overjoyed if I were proven wrong.

 

[eerok]

There is no evidence for a soul although I would be overjoyed if I were proven wrong.

Me, I'm perfectly fine with the big empty. It's not like I could be disappointed with it.

 

[John Freestone]

I'm not sure whether to bother reading much of the thread, but FWIW I'll add my two pieces of eight. First of all, I had to tick the last option, 'not clear enough', especially after reading this:

I started with the idea that "I exist", "I" being the first person subjective. Over 80% of people in my poll as of this moment would say about themselves "I exist"

on another thread http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=326052 . I suspect that had you specified the definition of "I" as "the first person subjective", there'd be fewer hits for "I exist".

I believe I exist, where "I" is defined as the physical process that is my body and its behaviour, including those of the central nervous system. This system includes something (a behavioural something, presumably, not a static structure, but physical none the less) the nature of which I'm less clear about: my subjective experience, consciousness. However, even this seems less and less mysterious to me, but requires accepting a particular axiom, which I'll come to below.

I do not believe in a soul or person separate from this physical system. I could not tick "I understand from my own experience that observing the world and one's body can lead a subject to think that he/she has existence distinguishable from his physical body," simply because of the reference to "a subject" being rather suggestive of a separate entity. The physical body thinks, including (for most people, and erroneously) thinking it is a separate entity from itself.

The axiom I'm considering these days is that all physical entities have a potential capacity to "experience" themselves and their environment. I'm calling it an axiom because I'm guessing it's not a hypothesis - it can't be tested. It's easy to misunderstand this, so I should explain that I don't mean that we can trace "consciousness" down through the evolutionary tree, then back through chemical evolution, and conclude that molecules or atoms are conscious in some way, and some jump to this conclusion. Consciousness has certain parameters (in this view - as I say, we can't know) which are dealt with in the phrase "potential capacity". Given billions of years of evolution and a suitable CNS, we call the experience of such an entity "consciousness", but not that of a stone or tree.

Nevertheless, there is a sense in which a stone "experiences". If I hit one with a hammer, we might say that it experiences strong compression forces, vibrations and perhaps splitting. Really, all I'm saying is that there is a physical internality to everything, which answers the question of why I experience being me rather than everything or you or some other thing, and there is a physical structure which, in evolved beings such as ourselves, have developed something we might call "experience-monitoring". The tree has developed relatively simple experience-monitoring systems. The history of evolution has largely been the development of more and more sophisticated self- and environment- monitoring systems.

This view seems compatible with what we know, and is consistent with the physiological view of "self" - which is a computational model only - and of "soul", which is a computational model that is almost certainly factually incorrect, but was historically very useful, and presumably very useful in human evolution.

As we build more and more sophisticated AIs, they will probably develop computational abstractions of their overall computational system, extended in time across their past, and perhaps projected into their hypothetical future (this may already be the case, I'm not up on the subject). If they attach the word "I" to this, they may tell us, "I exist", and possibly "I am conscious". I hope they won't suffer the other delusion.

 

[rakovsky]

Thank you for your answer.

Is the mind a real thing, subject, or entity with a real existence distinguishable from the physical brain?

Or is the mind purely a process of the brain, in particular the process of the passing of electrons, like the process of walking or the process of electrons passing through a wire?

If the mind is a real subject, then I tend to think that it must not be purely a process, since a subject performs a process, and thus is not the same as a process.

I sense that my mind has a real existence as a subject, and is not the same thing as my brain. eg. If I died, my brain would still be around, but my mind would not be, unless there were an "afterlife" state.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

Thank you for your answer.

Is the mind a real thing, subject, or entity with a real existence distinguishable from the physical brain?

Or is the mind purely a process of the brain, in particular the process of the passing of electrons, like the process of walking or the process of electrons passing through a wire?

If the mind is a real subject, then I tend to think that it must not be purely a process, since a subject performs a process, and thus is not the same as a process.

I sense that my mind has a real existence as a subject, and is not the same thing as my brain. eg. If I died, my brain would still be around, but my mind would not be, unless there were an "afterlife" state.

That does not follow... You claim that the mind isn't a process because after your mind is gone, your brain will still be there.
There's nothing in that assertion that is incongruous with the mind being something the brain does, and there's nothing there that says the mind must be something else...

That's like saying after you become paraplegic, your legs are still there, so 'walking' must be some mysterious independent entity that does not depend on legs.

 

[aleCcowaN]

That's like saying after you become paraplegic, your legs are still there, so 'walking' must be some mysterious independent entity that does not depend on legs.

It would be an excellent analogy if it weren't the leg's controls remain in the brain, undamaged.

But I understand your reaction when you read something motivated by the "existence" of the soul first and then any kind of justification to sustain the needed existence.

By the way, to other mindful readers, a poll on this matter is properly laid out here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=326052

 

[Crossbow]

Thank you for your answer.

Is the mind a real thing, subject, or entity with a real existence distinguishable from the physical brain?

Or is the mind purely a process of the brain, in particular the process of the passing of electrons, like the process of walking or the process of electrons passing through a wire?

If the mind is a real subject, then I tend to think that it must not be purely a process, since a subject performs a process, and thus is not the same as a process.

I sense that my mind has a real existence as a subject, and is not the same thing as my brain. eg. If I died, my brain would still be around, but my mind would not be, unless there were an "afterlife" state.

I cannot figure out what you are talking about.

If your body dies, then your brain also dies.

If you doubt this quite obvious fact, then attach an EEG to a cadaver or do a CAT Scan of the brain, and you will notice that there is not any brain activity. Therefore, the brain is dead.