Is there an immaterial soul?

I for one think your reasoning is good. The ancient philosophers believed that the soul is a substance similar to air and fire. In these times there were only the four elements. Some believed that the soul is blood that flows through your heart and brain. Others argued wether the brain or the heart was the seat of the soul.

I have my own little theory about what the soul is. I believe it is non material. Further, I believe it to be antimatter. Think of the four elements again. We know today that there are many more. But there are four states in wich matter can appear. Liquid, solid, vapor and energy- Water, earth, air and fire.
All matter is dead, and cannot by itself change except to return to its purest form. All manipulation of the material world is done by external powers. The soul takes residence in matter, and molds it to its design. All living things have this soul, not just humans.
We know that antimatter is highly volatile. If it comes into contact with matter it reacts. It cannot exist along with matter in the material world. But the soul is different. All living creatures are conduits for safe channeling of antimatter energy into the material world. This is how things evolve. There are two: matter, wich is dead, and something else that is life. It is the purpose we see everywhere that we cannot understand where is coming from. That is what I believe is the soul...

Let's not confuse 'soul' and 'brain.' Any discussion of soul is a spiritual matter. The brain, on the other hand, is a phyisical entity and most of its functions are quite well understood by science. My understanding of 'soul' -- if such exists -- is that it is non-material. I don't think it's 'anti-matter, Cyracuz. It would be totally non-matter, i.e. not a material entity at all.

I was operating under the assumption that antimatter has completely oposite attributes than matter. Is this wrong? I agree that it would be totally non matter, and not antimatter.

I do not doubt the existence of the soul. By soul I mean all the non material functions that can be performed. Thought process, feelings, imagination. All these things are performed by different organs within the body. But the functions are not of the body. The brain enterpets electrical signals, but thoughts are non material. What I do not know is wether or not this soul has a life without the body. It is my belief that it exists and is immortal, but cannot perform any of the functions it can while in a body. It has no memory without a brain, no desires without a heart, and the only way it can evolve is by living in material bodies. So it passes through them, and for each death it is a little closer to god. But until it is with god it will plunge back into life and suffer until it can be freed.

Heimdall: Welcome to A2K.

Looking for a soul is like a puppy chasing its tail: it's fun until it succeeds, then the game is over, and the dog grows up realizing its folly.

Belief in a soul lost its vitality after people realized that Copernicus and Galileo were right in refuting geocentrism. Before that the cosmology of the Church was that the soul shot down from heaven into the newborn baby and conversly shot back to heaven—ideally—after death. In that cosmology the Earth was the center of the universe and everything was created strictly for man. Life on Earth was insignificnt; the afterlife of the soul was the important thing. It's like there was a homunculus, a little man inside each of us that was the real being running us like a robot.

The only way to find if the soul exists is to go on a spiritual quest, and I assume you're already on a quest. Like a dog chasing its tail, it, you may not find what you expect, but it's not a waste of time because you'll learn something and find peace of mind. And if you take somebody else's word for it, some austere authority, then you'll never find out, and you'll never grow up. Still, you could become President.

Is there an immaterial soul? You might ask if music exists. Does it? You could point to a score or a record or cd, but when listening to it, can you pin it down? If you could would it be music? Now you could say that the music has soul, but you can't say the music has a soul, and when you think about music to much you destroy it.

To put it another way, you could say there is music in you, but if you said there is a music in you, people would think you're nuts. And the fundamentalist's obsession with a soul is a sort of lunacy.

Obviously heimdall is not a neurosurgeon, otherwise he/she would know that they only sever the connections between the two hemispheres of the brain - they don't remove half the brain, that would kill you!

But that's not important. I have never heard of anyone believing that there is a chunk of your brain, or a cell, or atom, in your brain which is "the soul." Much more common is the belief that what people refer to as the soul, or mind as I'd prefer to call it - that is, consciousness, emotion, all that stuff - is neither an imaterial thing nor a physical object made of matter. Instead 'mind' is rather like the word 'home.' When you speak of home you are not referring to a physical object - you may be thinking of your house, but if you move house than that house is no longer home - so home can't be a physical, spatial object. But also I doubt you believe that home is something which exists in some kind of non-physical way as you might believe your soul does. 'Home' is really just a word that describes a complex combination of emotions, memories, physical sensations, a sense of familiarity, etc.

Similarly, just because a mind isn't a lump of your brain that could be removed through lobotomy, that does not mean that it is some sort of mystical thing that lurks in some mysterious non-physical plane. It's just a word to describe stuff that our physical brains do. When we say that we feel unhappy, we are not saying that our non-physical, non-spatial minds are in some mystical state. We are pretty much describing a brain state. What we call consciousness is constituted by our brains - that does not mean that you can pin-point a certain cell in the brain where consciousness happens - it means that different emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. are simply different brain states (i.e. different combinations of neurons firing or not firing).

To summarise: the mind/consciousness/soul/spirit/whatever you want to call it is not a lump of matter that you can scoop out of your head. But neither is it some kind of spiritual thing which exists, but which somehow manages not to obey the laws of anything else in the universe, and which is non-spatial - and therefore can't actually be anywhere. Instead, consciousness is constituted by the brain, just as home is constituted by your house, your family, your memories, etc.

That's what I believe, and it it isn't all proven yet, but it seems more rational to me than to get superstitious and spiritual.

Just as the mind is constituted by the behaviour of neurons, music is constituted by the vibration of particles, or atoms, or whatever - stuff. Music is tiny bits of stuff moving around, and creating energy, or something - I'm nto sure, I don't do physics. Consciousness is neurons firing and not firing and causing each other to fire or not fire, and thus send various electronic signals roudn the body.

Music exist because of sound waves, and sound waves can only exist when there's a medium, like particles in the air. What makes music interesting is that it stimulates different parts of your brains.

I'm not a neurosurgeon, but otherwise you are quite wrong. Google for "cerebral hemispherectomy". The operation you are talking about is a "commissurotomy". Both are used in the treament of epileptics.

I don't understand you. In the second sentence cited you are saying consciousness is not non-spatial. Therefore it must be spatial, that is, occupy some space. But, if it occupies space and is not matter, it must be something immaterial that occupies space. Otherwise, I could scoop it out of the head.

Also, to say consciousness is constituted by the brain is to say the consciousness is made up of the brain which is to say consciousness is the brain. This implies it is material and capable of being scooped out.
Therefore, you are saying that consciousness is both material and immaterial.



Therefore, here, too, you are claiming that consciousness is both material and immaterial.

I don't understand what you are trying to say.

As I have said in another thread, I think that consciousness might be an immaterial thing which arises in the phenomenal world from interactions between material things. The consciousness isn't the matter itself. It's just my hypothesis.

I believe that the soul is the tool you are using to define what a soul is. Hard to find a hatch you are standing on.

Is the soul the non material products of mind and heart? If so soul is thought and feeling and so on. If that is it we can all agree that the soul exists.

One of the problems in this debate is similar to a problem wich arises when the debate is on God. The problem is that the church has monopolized the terms for so long that it is hard to remember that these words were adopted by them in the first place. People sought god long before any types of christianity surfaced, and strived to understand the soul. The terms are not the property of religion, but religion has done its part to remove any empirical value from these words, if they ever had any, that is...

heimdal,

Sorry, I need to be a bit clearer...

When I say consciousness is not an immaterial thing, what I mean is that it isn't a 'thing' at all - it's just a concept that we use as a way of understanding, in simple terms, some of what our physical brain does. So when I say the mind is neither physical nor non-physical or neither spatial nor non-spatial, what I mean is that it's not a lump of your brain that you can scoop out with a spoon, and it's also not a spiritual entity that exists in some kind of non-physical, non-spatial way, as Descartes believed.

I mean, literally I suppose my argument is that the mind is non-physical, just as the concept of terrorism is non-physical - it's constituted by the physical behaviour of physical terrorists, but you couldn't, for example, poke terrorism with a stick. Terrorism is just a concept that is our attempt at interpreting the behaviour of terrorists, jsut as the midn is a concrpt that is our attempt at interpreting the behavioru of neurons. It's not a 'thing' at all - it doesn't exist as anything other than a word, really.


Cyracuz,

What has the soul got to do with the heart? And what is your distinction between 'mind' and 'soul'?

Re: Is there an immaterial soul?
heimdall

An immaterial soul, means only something that is not material. That means it doesn't exist in time and space, as no physical atributes.
So, before you ask if that soul exists, I think there is an essencial question: what is that soul that may or not exist?
And there is another problem: existance, within our experience conditions, must be physical.
So, what is that immaterial soul? And how can it exist, if existance supposes to be in space and time?

Agrote: All the vital organs of a body are essential for it to live. Life in the body is a neseccity for the soul to be in it. So the heart is connected to the soul.
The mind is what I see as the concious activity of my brain. The ego, memory and intellectual reasoning. Feelings and imagination are of the soul as I see it, along with all subconcious activity of the brain.. Our DNA is also something of the soul. Not the soul itself, but when the DNA blueprints are followed, and the body is built, the soul moves in. Or was it created along with the body? If so, then it should have a DNA code.

If it does not have a DNA code, can we not then conclude that the soul is immaterial and connected to the body in some kind of synergy, and that it is not of the body, but an independent lifeforce?
I mean, if the body creates the soul, then we should be able to get confirmation of it mathematically by deciffering our DNA.