Why the soul?

[flipdeadshot22]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Is it simply a concept spewed out by the ego to allow a human to personify himself as something more than matter,

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, so whats wrong with that?

[/ QUOTE ]

There isn't a problem; unless you wish to lead delusion-free life.

[NotReady]

[ QUOTE ]

Why do you need to affix some sort of immortal conciousness to the idea of sentience? Do you believe that the "spirit" of Windows XP lives on even after the destruction of all the computers on earth?


[/ QUOTE ]

There's no issue of immortality. And again, Reppert has dealt with the computer analogy re reason.

[John21]

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is a decent read about split brain patients, plus it gives you some background on the case of phinaes gage, a person who's personality was dramatically altered by brain injury (which shouldn't be the case if there was a conciousness that transcended the consituent matter of his mind.)



[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know if that's quite the idea. The way I understand it, would be to say the brain is like a light-bulb and consciousness is like electricity. So if you altered the filament in the light bulb or the color/shape of the glass it would alter the way that transcendent principle (electricity or consciousness) manifested or displayed itself.

I'm not saying that's the only explanation, but I think we're pretty safe in saying that whatever it is, consciousness appears to be non-local, and at this time, can't be described materialistically.

Here's an interview that some of the non-reductionists might find interesting with Karl Pribram, Ph.D. and Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove link
<font color="brown"> Hello and welcome. Our topic today is the mind-brain relationship, and my guest is Dr. Karl Pribram, professor of neuropsychology at Stanford University, in the Department of Psychology and in the medical school. Dr. Pribram is the author of Languages of the Brain and hundreds of articles about the mind-brain relationship. In fact I would say fairly that Dr. Pribram is probably one of the most influential scholars alive today in probing the mysteries of the mind-brain relationship... </font>

[flipdeadshot22]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think this is a decent read about split brain patients, plus it gives you some background on the case of phinaes gage, a person who's personality was dramatically altered by brain injury (which shouldn't be the case if there was a conciousness that transcended the consituent matter of his mind.)



[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know if that's quite the idea. The way I understand it, would be to say the brain is like a light-bulb and consciousness is like electricity. So if you altered the filament in the light bulb or the color/shape of the glass it would alter the way that transcendent principle (electricity or consciousness) manifested or displayed itself.

I'm not saying that's the only explanation, but I think we're pretty safe in saying that whatever it is, consciousness appears to be non-local, and at this time, can't be described materialistically.

Here's an interview that some of the non-reductionists might find interesting with Karl Pribram, Ph.D. and Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove link
<font color="brown"> Hello and welcome. Our topic today is the mind-brain relationship, and my guest is Dr. Karl Pribram, professor of neuropsychology at Stanford University, in the Department of Psychology and in the medical school. Dr. Pribram is the author of Languages of the Brain and hundreds of articles about the mind-brain relationship. In fact I would say fairly that Dr. Pribram is probably one of the most influential scholars alive today in probing the mysteries of the mind-brain relationship... </font>

[/ QUOTE ]

"Sure, and this is the critical thing -- that if indeed we're right that these quantum-like phenomena, or the rules of quantum mechanics, apply all the way through to our psychological processes, to what's going on in the nervous system -- then we have an explanation perhaps, certainly we have a parallel, to the kind of experiences that people have called spiritual experiences. Because the descriptions you get with spiritual experiences seem to parallel the descriptions of quantum physics. That's why Fritjof Capra wrote The Tao of Physics, why we have The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and all of this sort of thing that's come along. And in fact Bohr and Heisenberg already knew; Schroedinger talked about the Upanishads, and Bohr used the yin and yang as his symbol. Because the conceptions that grew out of watching the quantum level -- and therefore now the neurological and psychophysical level, now that it's a psychological level as well -- seem to have a great deal in common with our spiritual experience. Now what do I mean by spiritual experience? You talked about mental activity, calling it the mind. That aspect of mental activity, which is very human -- it may be true of other species as well, but we don't know -- but in human endeavor many of us at least seem to need to get in contact with larger issues, whether they're cosmology, or some kind of biological larger issue, or a social one, or it's formalized in some kind of religious activity. But we want to belong. And that is what I define as the spiritual aspects of man's nature."

Fortunately, a topic within quantum mechanics happens to be the subject of my graduate thesis (applying to the field of quantum computing,) so a few of these ideas he had spoken about in the interview had resonated a bit more with me than philosophical word games proving the existence of a soul. I have long had the viewpoint that the counter to the materialist argument against the existence of a soul (as posted by NotReady above) is outdated, due to its assumptions about the dynamics of the matter that forms the brain (these assumptions are based on classical reasoning, without taking into account many of the important theoretical and experimental findings of the 20th-21st centuries involving most notably, the measurement postulate of quantum mechanics.)

[John21]

[ QUOTE ]
I have long had the viewpoint...

[/ QUOTE ]

And I appreciate you stating it as a viewpoint.

[MaxWeiss]

[ QUOTE ]
The basic idea is that if our thoughts are nothing but the random motion of electrons then reason is an illusion and the laws of thought have no meaning. How can one bit of matter think about another bit of matter?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is too stupid an idea to even justify.

The combined lack of knowledge about biology and neurophysiology and, to some extent, swarm intelligence do a good job explaining how it could easily be possible even if we don't know the exact details yet.

[MaxWeiss]

Because everybody like to think that they're special.

[John21]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The basic idea is that if our thoughts are nothing but the random motion of electrons then reason is an illusion and the laws of thought have no meaning. How can one bit of matter think about another bit of matter?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is too stupid an idea to even justify.

The combined lack of knowledge about biology and neurophysiology and, to some extent, swarm intelligence do a good job explaining how it could easily be possible even if we don't know the exact details yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes."

- David Bohm

[NotReady]

[ QUOTE ]

This is too stupid an idea to even justify.


[/ QUOTE ]

I wonder why Kant, Lewis and Reppert never thought of that. What idiots.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

This is too stupid an idea to even justify.


[/ QUOTE ]

I wonder why Kant, Lewis and Reppert never thought of that. What idiots.

[/ QUOTE ]

They were at a pretty significant technological and paradigmatic disadvantage.