Is the mind the same as the brain, or do we have souls?

Good question.
When the tv-set breaks/dies/no longer works - does the tv-signal stop transmitting?
'Graham Hancock' youtube.

Try asking Fresco !

Iman, let's suppose your soul is everything about you except your body

The brain is the mushy bit inside your skull. I would say that "mind" and "soul" were two words for the same thing, however those words are not used interchangeably. If you leave out the religious aspect of "soul", you could say that your mind is your consciousness and your soul is those aspects of your mind which make you unique; what make you "tick".

At Fil's suggestion, my answer is "no" !

There there an axiom finally !

If mind and brain are the same thing, then why use different labels? The organ found in the cranium is called the brain. The concept of a soul can be a comfort for people facing death, but should we believe in things based on how the idea makes one feel? Perhaps it's comforting to believe in spirits, angels, or fairy God mothers too.

I tend to think of mind as the combination of the brain plus its accumulated software/algorithms developed during life. The brain is just hardware.

Ah...there speaks the materialist/determinist !
Pragmatists would say 'truth is what it is good to believe'. The fact that you are apparently operating at the transcendent level of human value judgments should give you some indication of the shortcomings of your determinist axioms. I recommend Gilbert Ryle's analogy of 'mind' with 'the university' given as the rejection of the Oxford tourist's question..'where is the university ?'

Irrespective of anything being transcended, the question is if the two (mind and brain) are one and the same. If they are the same, then why use two labels?

You use to say Truth is what works...I noticed you have now improved on it...you still dodge the order, the patterns, and the ratios, in the world we experience...I honestly wish you spare some lines to address them properly without baloney pot shots. Perhaps to much to ask from someone so ingrained in a current of thought as you are.

To be specific the 'refinement' was Rorty's not mine. Obviously 'what works' and 'good' have a great deal of overlap.

You clearly don't get Ryle's point. The concept we call 'mind' may require a concept of 'brain' as a necessary structure but 'brain' may not sufficient to account for it. The analogy is that nobody can 'point to the university' when looking at the buildings in Oxford (perhaps unlike in other cities), but nor can the concept of 'university' in general be divorced from its functional place in 'the academic world' in general.

Certainly mind is used to describe something other than the brain organ.



The fundamental flaw in the analogy is that, with the university, one can locate and identify all the constituent parts. "Mind," however, is some epiphenomenon or metaphysical part, although somewhat comfortably discussed in philosophical circles, leaves much to be desired by us lowly materialists. I know that philosophy is within your comfort zone, so have at it. However, from a linguistic or pragmatic POV, wouldn't it be fine to say that mind and brain related but different?...Just to answer the question that was asked?

You've missed the main point that the 'meaning' of the word 'university' is embedded in a transcendent discourse network about 'education' which is required to give meaning to any constituent parts of a university.

But I make two final points philosophical points.
1 Any two items are trivially both 'similar' and 'different'. They are similar in that they are objects of a comparison, and different because there are two of them.
2. The fact that we have separate words, 'mind' and 'brain' used in different discourse contexts, implies they are not isomorphic.

I do not intend to elaborate here on the specific scientific follies of reductionist materialism and its failure in the field of AI, since this thread is ostensibly about the religious aspects of 'self identity'. Neither of us, I suggest, has anything useful to say about that.

This is a false dichotomy. Whether the mind is the same as the brain is one thing that isn't necessarily negated by the question of whether we have souls.

Sounds reasonable. I guess most folks would say our minds represent some activity within our brains. But the concept of soul is independent of that connection despite having been a subject of much discussion throughout history. I would be surprised if any definition of soul has escaped mention on a2k.

Probably the most critical issue is the question of whether we have souls or simply are souls.

The problem of mind is as complex as wondering why spheres roll...the phenomena of rolling can be explained...there is a road and a sphere, and there is gravity and attrition...but there is no where to point where the rolling is happening... xD