Soul and Spirit

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Humans, and animals, certainly have a body, something that can be physically discerned: touched, weighed, measured, reflecting light and other forms of energy, etc.

And humans too certainly have something within us - the inner person - something non physical (or is it?) - but we are absolutely sure exists in us, for the mere fact that we know it intuitively and instinctively, just as we know it in others, such as here in this virtual world wherein we sense and see no bodies at all.

But what is this inner person? Is it one or two: just the soul or spirit (taken synonymously) or are there two separate things?

And what about animals? Do they have a spirit? Do they have souls too?

And if all living things have a spirit, do trees and plants have spirit too?

And is this spirit (or soul) of man confined to the body? Can the spirit go beyond the body even before death? (Death being the withdrawal of the spirit from the body.) If so can we communicate and “be” with others although we may be separated in space? in time?

And finally how is the spirit or the soul created in us? When did it happen in us?

2

This part of the question is interesting. I believe in a certain kind of immortality of the soul and refer to it as, “moral imperishability.”

In actual fact, I don’t just believe in it but am certain of it, (and I don’t, as it were, ‘suffer,’ from delusions!)

It is a ‘link’ between me and myself down through the ages. In the past, I wrote to myself in the future. And every so often I discover my past self in the pages of some scripture or other writing to myself across time and space. I know that there is nothing original under the sun and that since I currently write a journal to myself in the future, some other me must have done the same in the past!!!

Put in a more comprehensible and rational way, I seek out minds akin to my own, sometimes just aspects of mind akin to my own.

I thus ‘communicate’ with an aspect of my soul, as it were; one that is the archetypical me and therefore a morally imperishable ‘me’ so to speak.

Fascinating stuff eh? And remember Epictete told you about it first! Enough for now!

3

I originally posted this in another thread earlier today, but I realise it also applies here, forgive me for that if you’ve already read my other post.

are rocks conscious?

Hello everybody. This is my first ever post. I’ll quickly introduce myself: my name is Dale Askew, I am 26, Live in Norwich, UK. I am probably not as “intelligent” as most of the people in this community, in the sense that I haven’t studied philosophy, am not brilliant at English or maths and my brain doesn’t have loads of references about other great philosophers that it can relate to. So, if you can forgive me for that then you may see that I have some good ideas about things. (i say may!).

I had an experience once where I “met” my most true self, became totally conscious - maybe some people call it a moment of enlightenment, I sort of merged with the core of my truest being. If anybody cares to read about that particular experience then you can find it here: trans4mind.com/awakening/ (I didn’t built the website, it was just some personal emails which got put up there)

Anyway, enough about me, back to the original point… could a rock be conscious?

In our dreams we exist as a consciousness of varying degrees, in these dreams we talk to others, we play, we work, we interact, the environments seem real, there are trees, there are rocks…

Even though at the time it all feels very real indeed, when we wake up we realise it was “only” a dream, and that in truth, the entire episode was a product of our imagination/mind. In these dreams EVERYTHING we perceive / interact with is actually a creation of our own minds; the rocks, the trees, the other people… all created by the “higher” (dreamers) mind.

So if I pick up a rock in my dream - the truth would be that there would be no real division between me and it, it being me in the first place. It would be an illusionary division of my own consciousness that is creating and sustaining it in it’s particular form as a rock. The rock would be me, and I would be the rock. I would assume the dream character was me, but infact it would be no more me than the rock, I would simply be using the dream body as a perspective point.

So, my dream body would be an unconscious illusion, the rock would also be an unconsciousness illusion, the separation between me and the rock would be an illusion. The REAL ME would be the whole things, everything, the entire dream.

My point is, when i pick up a rock and look at it, I assume I am conscious and the rock is not, but in fact it could be that neither I nor the rock is conscious, as we are both mere dream elements. the “real” us is the entire thing altogether - one consciousness, many perspectives.

I sort of got a bit to deep for myself there and am not sure if anybody will see what I am saying.

Hope I inspire something.

DALE

4

This is for Changbengchin whose posts i have found to be intriguing at times. Certainly many thinkers have differentiated twixt the inner and outer man as you have done. but you go on to mention spirit, which can be a quite ambiguous word at times. The following excerpt (the numbers for the definitions are missing, despite my most spirited attempts) gives some notion of what i am talking about.

Source: http://www.dictionary.com

I along with Askewd assume you mean consciousness, that, after all, seems to me to be the primary attribute of the inner man.

5

Hello chanbengchin,

You wrote:

One definition of the soul, and I think the best, is: the ultimate internal principle by which bodies are animated. According to this definition, animals and even plants have souls. There may be different technical names for that which animates a plant or a fly or what have you but, in a strict sense, they would have souls too. So, yes, I would say animals do have souls.

Do animals have a spirit? No, but first it is not right to say man has a spirit and a soul either as two separate things, rather, one should say man has a spiritual soul. Why do I say this? I say this because that which animates man is immortal. Why should I say the soul is immortal? I say this because man has an immaterial component to him. How can I say this? Let me give an example:

Suppose we had a dog and suppose we had a bone. The dog can see the bone and run towards it. We, you and me, can see the bone too. It is reasonable to conclude that as far as reacting to the bone materially, there is no difference between the dog and us. BUT, after the dog has run to the bone it cannot reflect on the idea bone. The dog cannot pull out of the first experience of seeing the bone there and distinguish it from an idea but man can do this. The dog knows but the dog doesn’t know it knows but we do. That is why we can construct sciences; invent languages and etc because we can ‘reflect’~we know, we know. That is an immaterial process and the immaterial is indestructible. That is what spirit is, the immaterial. Animals do not have a spirit.

I might add here to that there is something ‘essential’ different from consciousness and spirit for even a dog is conscious yet it does not contemplate consciousness.

6

So you discern or know or see something of yourself in the things you wrote in the past. And similarly you can know something of another of the things they wrote. Separation of two persons in time and space is irrelevant in attaining such knowledge. So I can know something of you wherever you are in the world in reading what you wrote, and I can also know something of the apostle Paul in his epistles written in the first century. I can know how you feel, think and even say in some situations. I can also know of another by what others wrote of him and of what he said and did.

However this knowledge of the other via the medium of a written language, albeit communication, is not necessarily a direct experience of a spirit or soul of another, or is it?

Is this how the spirit (or soul, used indistinguishable at this moment) is immortal? in that it is recreated in someone’s inner being when he read or hear or see (eg video recording) of another?

Or is it that the immortal, invisible and transcedental spirit/soul animates the works of a person - dead or alive - and without it we could not have “understood” any person’s work or act?

We can put such theories to test via animals. But first we have to ascertain whether animals have spirit/soul. If animals do have spirit, the same spirit as in us, then whatever communications and experiences we have of human spirits should also be the same as with animals.

And further if take the hypothesis that animals have spirit but no soul then the difference in the experience we have of animal spirit is that due to the soul in human beings.

So perhaps language is a manifestation of the soul. The soul or part of it is that which allows or the reason for language to happen in human beings. But then experiments with animals have indicated that animals can have a language of sorts, eg with primates and parrots. However there are languages and languages, that which is merely used to communicate instinctively like alarm calls for danger, is certainly a different type from one used for expression of intent, of concepts, of symbols, of abstract notions, of feelings, of philosophy … :smiley:

More thoughts to come …

7

Hrrm, just a quick thought on this issue.

Yes, as stated somewhere above, the material/immaterial distinction has been a topic of debate for quite some time. I certainly see where the mind/body distinction for example may lead one to posit the existence of the soul; however, where is the evidence for this claim? The onus of proof is on the positive (Peikoff/Rand)! It seems that a more probable hypothesis supported by empirical evidence is an identity theory as described by J.J.C. Smart. In other words, the mind may merely be the result of electro-chemical interactions in the brain. Just something to think about as you debate the nature of the soul!

8

Try here for starters:

victorzammit.com/book/index.html

Seems to me like the strongest evidence is FOR separated consciousness.

DALE

9

kizzo54

you say,

“the mind may merely be the result of electro-chemical interactions in the brain”

Isn’t it also possible that “electo-chemical interactions in the brain” “may merely be the result” of mental activity?

10

I don’t think plants and trees have souls and spirits because they don’t have consciousness.

11

How do you know? Did the plants and trees told you? Or did you measure their “consciousness”?

12

No. I can’t explain it here so just go to this webpage of mine geocities.com/justforfunandf … ophy1.html
I know the page originally starts off with the abortion issue, but whatever. Also, remember Murphy’s quote, 'what is difficult to understand is intuitively obvious" I’ll give you an example, my child lied to me and said otherwise, but I know the truth. It’s true I can’t verify it, and have no proof, but I still know the truth. So reality like the truth can be there and yet it can be confusing because it lacks verification, ok?

13

Shoot! I gave the wrong page, it’s,
geocities.com/justforfunandf … tion2.html
Just read it. Also, would you say that just 'cause my child is lying I should accept that as the truth, whatever he/she is saying is true, when my intuition tells me otherwise?

14

Does anybody believe that in this world we have a physical body and the spirit is hidden, while there might be another world where we have a spirit but our body is hidden? I think, we do die in this world in the sense that everything is silent for some seconds or minutes there, but then we re-gain consciousness and although our body disappears, the spirit lives in that world. We remember everything from this world, that we did here, and pay for our actions in a way so we come back to this world again but in this world we don’t remember our past life, in the spirit world we do. In this sense we or the spirit never really dies. I don’t know more.

15

Dualism is a fact.

A body is made matter, there is no doubt about that. Matter is constrained to the laws of nature (i.e. after an action follows an reaction). In other words if we only had a body we should have been closed of free will (i.e. predetermination).

Now, my question is to everyone: can you take your OWN choices?

Now, OWN refers to you as a body but let say we keep the soul out.

If you say yes: you’re ignorant
If you say no: you’re correct

For the simple reason nature is constrained to laws.

But let’s add a soul to a human body.

Definition of soul: a non-material creation/being with selfconsciousness. (e.g. take actions without a cause for it)

There you have it, the solution. You have a human body which is constrained to laws of nature but has a free will thanks to the soul.

That’s also why we can held people resposible for their own actions just because they made their choices on their own (i.e. not predetermination).

Please reply for elaboration.

16

The mere feeling that we do have free will is not enough to infer that we actually do, even if it does invite close examination.

In any case, I am curious how the soul, being wholly non-material, can influence the body.

17

We have language, do we not? This logos we are in possession of is an aspect of what we call ‘soul.’

And as for the material body and the spiritual soul: these are surely just terms of convenience? Who knows what the body is composed of? Could it in fact be an extension of soul?

What is morality if not a kind of controlling of the passions of the body by the ruling reason?

18

Aren’t we all, kyry?

19

So that’s it, huh? You people have already decided that a “soul,” in the sense that you mean it, exists, and are now seeking to discover how it interacts with the body. Typical. Children often spend more time wondering how Santa Claus can fit his big ass down the chimney then they do about whether he really exists.

Maybe this interaction will never be discovered because, well, there isn’t any “soul” in the first place. But hell, once you’ve convinced yourselves that it does exist, you’ll find no problems with further theorizing, right? I mean, any theory will work for something that doesn’t really exist in any one specific way. That is, you will never get to a point where you might say “that can’t be associated with the soul because only this, this, and this can.”

In other words, since you’re not quite sure exactly what is or how a “soul” exists, you can come up with anything and it will work.

If Santa Claus exists, then most likely he uses magic to fit down that chimney, eh?

…granted that he does exist, that is.

The word “soul” made its first appearence when man became intelligent enough to realize that he couldn’t explain everything and needed a contingency plan. He needn’t create the idea of “soul” to explain why he flinched during a suprise, or why he ate a fish when he became hungry, or why he became stronger from hard work. Even though these cases themselves and their explainations wouldn’t be identical to ours here in the modern world of science, they sufficed to provide the primitive man with an intellectual satisfaction to whatever degree he could contain. Ordinary wonders such as these would pass by quietly even without an explaination, in fact. These ideas are no big deal to the simple mind, however, as I said, nor do they constitute any reason for such explaination contingencies.

The point. “Soul” is a term used as an excuse and representation of a limit of knowledge. It is when a man can no longer explain something that he resorts to such hypotheticals.

Now, I’m not saying your right or wrong about it. I’m just showing you the method and process that supplants this kind of thinking.

Don’t you just shiver at the irony?

20

So were are stuck in materialism?

Which means we’re stuck in predetermination? Love and other emotions are nothing except being kind of material interaction?

Free will, doesn’t exist?

Please eloborate, nanook!