The Soul and the Brain

[DavidEC]

If we can't detect it, does it affect anything in the universe?

[nickolay1]

Perhaps we merely can't see what make us intelligent.

Yeah! But scientists are hard at work exploring the remaining frontiers of the human body! I even heard a rumor that *gasp* they plan to use a brand new invention called a "scalpel" to see what's inside a human head!!!

[Lyzerious]

If there was a soul, I seriously doubt that it would leave the body upon death. I think it would go strait with the body into the grave and deteriorate over time. Unless some outside influence removed this "personality pattern" and stored it in some massive "cosmic computer". Then after a period of time, the "personality pattern" would be reunited with a recently synthesized replacement body. Hence a resurrection.

[Junghalli]

Here is another all-too perfect example of human stupidity. This "soul" nonsense sounds just as stupid as any other type of mystical and superstitious crap, yet people refuse to let it go. There is absolutely zero evidence for it; in fact, this is a Greek concept that Christians have misunderstood for thousands of years.

It's a classic example of something people believe because they very much want to. Who wouldn't want to be able to somehow survive death?

[Lyzerious]

Well I don't see what’s wrong with believing in something after death, it provides a little comfort, and nobody can prove or disprove it. Besides it isn't like anybody will care once their dead anyway .

[Kanastrous]

Any "Red Dwarf" fans, here?

"Human Heaven? Oh, that's just something they made up to keep you from all going nuts."

[Kanastrous]

Oh, and, it makes a *big* difference, in a lot of ways.

For example, what about all the low-end-of-the-totem-pole poor and downtrodden types, who accept their lot and eat shit their whole lives, because they have been made to believe that they have an immortal soul, that will reside forever in glory after they die...just so long as they don't rock the boat, while they are alive...?

[DavidEC]

Well I don't see what’s wrong with believing in something after death, it provides a little comfort, and nobody can prove or disprove it. Besides it isn't like anybody will care once their dead anyway .

Oh my fuck, it's like a distilled 'softly-softly-solipsist-bullshit' line. Done here.

[Darth Wong]

Well I don't see what’s wrong with believing in something after death, it provides a little comfort, and nobody can prove or disprove it.

Do you see what's wrong with believing that you will get 72 virgins in Paradise after death if you kill some infidels? After all, it provides comfort, and nobody can prove or disprove it.

[Superman]

If there was a soul, I seriously doubt that it would leave the body upon death. I think it would go strait with the body into the grave and deteriorate over time. Unless some outside influence removed this "personality pattern" and stored it in some massive "cosmic computer". Then after a period of time, the "personality pattern" would be reunited with a recently synthesized replacement body. Hence a resurrection.

If a soul does exist, then you need to come up with something more than just "I seriously doubt..." You're in the realm of fantasy, so why would the laws of reality apply in one aspect but not another?

[Junghalli]

If a soul does exist, then you need to come up with something more than just "I seriously doubt..." You're in the realm of fantasy, so why would the laws of reality apply in one aspect but not another?

The irony is the lack of an afterlife renders the soul pretty much philosophically redundant. What's the point of a mystical soul that dies with your body anyway, when living consciousness can be explained just as well as a function of the brain, without introducing an unverified and unnecessary term?

[Darth Wong]

Perhaps we merely can't see what make us intelligent.

Um, yes we can. It's called "the brain". Most of us have one.

[Terralthra]

The soul is just another term that religious people use to differentiate humans from animals. They use it to justify teleological differences between us. Having lost their previous differentiations one by one (communication, tool-using, language, etc.), they turn to more undefinable and unfalsifiable terms to state the supposed 'difference' between humans and 'animals.'

Such a distinction is (of course) ludicrous to draw on anything other than arbitrary means.

[Lyzerious]

Perhaps we merely can't see what make us intelligent.

Um, yes we can. It's called "the brain". Most of us have one.

I was referring to what makes us more intelligent than animals.

And as for your Islam comment. I was referring to believing something and keeping it to yourself, not something you go and kill people over!

As for Superman's comment: I was just hypothesizing, I wasn't serious

[General Zod]

I was referring to what makes us more intelligent than animals.

That would be the fact that we have a bigger brain than them. It's not exactly a problem that requires mystical mumbo jumbo to figure out.

[Terralthra]

Perhaps we merely can't see what make us intelligent.

Um, yes we can. It's called "the brain". Most of us have one.

I was referring to what makes us more intelligent than animals.

We aren't massively more intelligent than 'animals.' The intelligence of various species is a continuum, not a binary of smart and stupid, with humans in smart and everything else in stupid. As I previously mentioned, there's not much keeping us near the high end of that continuum. Many other species communicate with each other in a complex fashion that would be termed language. Many build structures. Many use tools.

It's very possible to make the argument that the only reasons we appear so much smarter than other species are a physical form that appears very well suited to flexible and adaptive behavior in a wide variety of environments, the extended child and adolescent periods being mostly devoted to acquiring the accrued knowledge of previous generations, and the vast network of cohabitation.

And as for your Islam comment. I was referring to believing something and keeping it to yourself, not something you go and kill people over!

Beliefs shape our behavior. Attempting to allow the former while denying the latter is attempting to break the connection of thought->action causality that forms one of the foundations of modern psychology.

As for Superman's comment: I was just hypothesizing, I wasn't serious

Hypotheses involve a statement of supposition that matches observed evidence with a theoretical explanation and predictions. What you did is known in formal debate as an apology, an explanation that attempts to justify a belief based on supposed benefits concurrent with it.

[Superman]

I was referring to what makes us more intelligent than animals.

All you're doing is making blanket generalizations. What, exactly, makes us so different? When you define what makes us different, then this is where you're going to extract the soul?

And as for your Islam comment. I was referring to believing something and keeping it to yourself, not something you go and kill people over!

Are you really so dumb as to not see the point D. Wong was making? If you honestly can't see that, then thanks for confirming my belief about stupid people being the ones who believe in these things. Are you stupid or just lying?

[Elaro]

And as for your Islam comment. I was referring to believing something and keeping it to yourself, not something you go and kill people over!

Ah... So you're okay with believing in a vague, general, undefined "life-after-death yay!" but you don't want to nail down particulars over which people can fight over or use to rationalize their actions. Great lesson to teach kids, that. "Oh, there's life after death, but no use asking me questions! I know nothing!" Really encouraging their curiosity there.

[Darth Wong]

Perhaps we merely can't see what make us intelligent.

Um, yes we can. It's called "the brain". Most of us have one.

I was referring to what makes us more intelligent than animals.

Just how much more intelligent than animals do you think we are?

And as for your Islam comment. I was referring to believing something and keeping it to yourself, not something you go and kill people over!

Why don't you go back and look at what you said just before I responded by applying your logic to a different situation? It's pretty obvious that you have no idea what the point was.

Of course, I know you won't do that, because you are intellectually lazy and clearly not what one would call a "deep thinker". Therefore, I will explain it for you: you asked why someone should not believe in something if it brings him comfort and cannot be proven or disproven. I pointed out that the crazy islamic 72 virgin paradise idea completely fits your criteria. This has nothing to do with the question of how moral or immoral that idea is. It has to do with the validity of your criteria. Do you understand it now, or was that too many words for you? If your eyes glazed over, perhaps you should just go watch the Toon channel or FOXNews until you feel better.

[Durandal]

This reminds me of when I first heard the plot of the movie 21 Grams. I had initially assumed that it was a movie about narcotics trafficking. According to the movie, a person loses 21 grams of body mass when he or she dies, and therefore that must be the weight of the "soul". Congratulations, Hollywood, you've discovered what's commonly known as measurement error. Humans can be in the area of 100,000 grams in weight.

There's also the method of transfer to consider. If a soul is "who we are", then it would have to store all the information about our memories, so all that information has to be encoded somehow. When a person dies, that information would have to be transmitted to a receiver. This implies that a soul would not only have physical manifestation in the form of its storage medium, but that there would have to be a radiation emission from the body after death. By conservation of energy, this means that the receiver must be in our observable world as well. The media storing the information can't just disappear.

If there is something like a soul, we would be able to observe its existence indirectly. But nothing like that has ever been observed.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Perhaps we merely can't see what make us intelligent.

Um, yes we can. It's called "the brain". Most of us have one.

I was referring to what makes us more intelligent than animals.

Ahh in that case we call that the "human brain".

[Sarevok]

What I am curious about is why are we are conscious about our existence instead of our sentience being product of super complex computations that also take the variable self into account. Unless I am mistaken each one of us "feel" we exist. To an outside observer our actions are result of a highly complex computer that is the brain. If we had a fuckton of paper and pencil and time we should be able to do all the computations that go on in any computer. The result of the computations could produce behavior similar to a sentient being. Yet there is no self aware entity involved just a zillion monkeys with paper and pencil. If the brain is just a smaller and more efficient version of the planet of monkeys with pencils then why do we "feel" our existence ?

[Darth Wong]

What I am curious about is why are we are conscious about our existence instead of our sentience being product of super complex computations that also take the variable self into account. Unless I am mistaken each one of us "feel" we exist. To an outside observer our actions are result of a highly complex computer that is the brain. If we had a fuckton of paper and pencil and time we should be able to do all the computations that go on in any computer. The result of the computations could produce behavior similar to a sentient being. Yet there is no self aware entity involved just a zillion monkeys with paper and pencil. If the brain is just a smaller and more efficient version of the planet of monkeys with pencils then why do we "feel" our existence ?

What makes you think our brains do computer-style calculations?

[Gil Hamilton]

We must design a test to detect the presence of the soul! Let's chuck someone into one of those pure water tanks they use to measure neutrino flux and see if we can detect the souls transmission by the energy spike!

[Turin]

What I am curious about is why are we are conscious about our existence instead of our sentience being product of super complex computations that also take the variable self into account. Unless I am mistaken each one of us "feel" we exist.

We feel out existence because evolution has constructed a brain that models its environment. This model of the environment, by necessity, includes a "reflexive" model of the self. And apparently the most convenient way to model the self for a species with our level of intelligence is to create the illusion of consciousness. Presumably species with less intelligence need less involved models-of-the-self, and so have less involved consciousnesses.