The nature of the soul

[Erlaksoo_Astralmirk]

I have been thinking about the soul and have come to some “conclusions” which might seem surprising but makes sense if you think about it (I hope). I experience and feel emotions, feelings, qualia or whatever you want to call it. To me it seems as the “experiencer” (the “I”, the soul, the “object” that experiences emotions, consciousness and qualia, be it material or non-material) must be a single undividable unity. If the “experiencer” consisted of several “objects” each of them would experience, feel etc. on its own, in other words be an experiencer that is separate from the other objects. Obviously it may be so that within each of our brains there are many experiencers, but in that case each experiencer would feel everything by itself so each experiencer would still be a single and undividable “object”. I guess that the idea is similar to the idea that e.g. two stones hitting each other are in reality numerous microscopic particles interacting with each other, the forces are between these particles. In other words a stone doesn’t exist as a stone. What exist are the particles on the lowest, smallest level building up higher, larger, levels of structures forming the stone. Likewise experiencing must take place on the “lowest most basic level”, the “level” on which the actual “objects” exist, as each “object” exists “on its own” and must act (e.g. feel) on its own.

In other words, the objects that experience emotions etc. must be “of the lowest level of structure” as they cannot be formed by smaller particles or have inner structures. If they would have been formed by smaller particles, these particles would be the once that existed and interacted with the surroundings. Therefore, the brain cannot experience and feel, as it consists of (very) many “things”, particles… However, the brain is obviously crucial in processing, organizing and supplying input to the “experiencer” and in “collecting” and processing the output from the experiencer.

Furthermore, it seems obvious to me that the experiencers cannot be simple “by-products” of our brain-processes. The fact that people are discussing their feelings is itself a proof of that whatever that experiences (i.e. our selves) must be able to “communicate” with the surroundings as we otherwise only would have feelings but be unable to talk about them. There must therefore be a a two-way communication, the experiencing object needs input in order to “experience” what is going on around us and it must provide an output to the rest of the brain and our bodies (e.g. so the brain orders our fingers to write “I am conscious, I have feelings”). Don’t get me wrong here, just because someone (a dog, chimp or salmon) isn’t talking about its feelings and emotions, it doesn’t mean that it lacks feelings and emotions, nor does it mean that it lacks a soul. On the contrary, the “apparent” happiness of a dog meeting its family is a strong indication of that the dog also has feelings and emotions and a soul. What do you folks think about “my” ideas? I am not educated in philosophy and maybe these ideas have been discussed before. But, if you think about it and give these ideas “a chance”, don’t they makes sense after all?

[Only_Humean]

There’s a lot more to self than just experience, though; memory, for example, and “character”, or the tendency to behave and interpret things in certain ways. Daniel Kahneman shows some evidence that the remembering-self and the experiencing-self are not the same - that we remember (interpret, process, summarise) experiences differently to the experience itself at the time.

[Erlaksoo_Astralmirk]

There is obviously a lot of things that “constitute” ones personality, but I am not referring to personality. I am referring to “the soul”, inner experiencer or whatever one may call “the thing” that is experiencing, having emotions, feelings, qualia. Or to put it in another way, whatever that “separates” us from “philosophical zombies”*.

*A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. For example, a philosophical zombie could be poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say “ouch” and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie).

[Only_Humean]

@Erlaksoo Astralmirk

There is obviously a lot of things that “constitute” ones personality, but I am not referring to personality. I am referring to “the soul”, inner experiencer or whatever one may call “the thing” that is experiencing, having emotions, feelings, qualia. Or to put it in another way, whatever that “separates” us from “philosophical zombies”*.

*A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. For example, a philosophical zombie could be poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say “ouch” and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie).

Then it sounds like you’ve already concluded that there’s an indivisible inner you, which begs the question. You have no practical access to pure, unmediated sensation not related to other judgements, mental processing, definitions. Or at least, the pure experiencer is incapable of any useful thought - you hear your mother tongue differently to how you hear unfamiliar languages, using different parts of the brain, you experience it differently. Because of history, memory, and so on. Without constructing narratives, you can’t make sense of the constant assault of sensory input, the varying appearance of someone walking past you, the conjunction of seeing a chair and feeling that you cannot move through it.

The existence of a philosophical exercise like p-zombies doesn’t imply that they could exist or are conceptually coherent, much less prove the existence of a soul.

[Amorphos]

The ‘soul’ or experiencing observer may be the same as something universal in nature. …hence communication is possible. Or it may be something which understands, receives and delivers information.

I assume there are only shared realities though, so the question of individuality shouldn’t be about absolutes. The soul cannot be absolutely distinct and peculiar if reality contains no actual absolute entities.

[Erlaksoo_Astralmirk]

Only_Humean, I am not using the idea of philosophical zombies as an evidence that there are souls, I used it to explain what I mean with the term “soul”. Moreover, I do not base my reasoning on the pre-assumption that there is a soul. My reasoning proves, or at least aims at proving, that there must be some sort of undividable unity that experiences. My “proof” is that anything that is dividable cannot experience (or exist or act in any other way) because it is the constituents, the parts, that exist and act. If all particles in a brain would experience, they would, as I see it, experience by themselves, not as one experiencer but as very many individual experiencers.

[Only_Humean]

@Erlaksoo Astralmirk

Moreover, I do not base my reasoning on the pre-assumption that there is a soul. My reasoning proves, or at least aims at proving, that there must be some sort of undividable unity that experiences. My “proof” is that anything that is dividable cannot experience (or exist or act in any other way) because it is the constituents, the parts, that exist and act. If all particles in a brain would experience, they would, as I see it, experience by themselves, not as one experiencer but as very many individual experiencers.

Your proof that there is an indivisible experiencer is the assertion that anything that experiences is indivisible?

You could similarly argue that a car is indivisible because anything less than a car can’t drive anywhere. And yet a car is a concert of different parts, none of which are a car, and none of which “drive anywhere”. Many of which a car can still drive without, most of the time, and some of which it couldn’t. It could be that experience is a divisible process - that there are building blocks of experience that build up into what we think of as “an experience of…”, not all necessary, none sufficient, but none of which on its own counts as experience. You’d have to show some primacy of experience, unadulterated by interpretation, or the confines of language, that is inarguably indivisible.

[zinnat]

@Erlaksoo Astralmirk

I have been thinking about the soul and have come to some “conclusions” which might seem surprising but makes sense if you think about it (I hope). I experience and feel emotions, feelings, qualia or whatever you want to call it. To me it seems as the “experiencer” (the “I”, the soul, the “object” that experiences emotions, consciousness and qualia, be it material or non-material) must be a single undividable unity. If the “experiencer” consisted of several “objects” each of them would experience, feel etc. on its own, in other words be an experiencer that is separate from the other objects. Obviously it may be so that within each of our brains there are many experiencers, but in that case each experiencer would feel everything by itself so each experiencer would still be a single and undividable “object”. I guess that the idea is similar to the idea that e.g. two stones hitting each other are in reality numerous microscopic particles interacting with each other, the forces are between these particles. In other words a stone doesn’t exist as a stone. What exist are the particles on the lowest, smallest level building up higher, larger, levels of structures forming the stone. Likewise experiencing must take place on the “lowest most basic level”, the “level” on which the actual “objects” exist, as each “object” exists “on its own” and must act (e.g. feel) on its own.

In other words, the objects that experience emotions etc. must be “of the lowest level of structure” as they cannot be formed by smaller particles or have inner structures. If they would have been formed by smaller particles, these particles would be the once that existed and interacted with the surroundings. Therefore, the brain cannot experience and feel, as it consists of (very) many “things”, particles… However, the brain is obviously crucial in processing, organizing and supplying input to the “experiencer” and in “collecting” and processing the output from the experiencer.

Furthermore, it seems obvious to me that the experiencers cannot be simple “by-products” of our brain-processes. The fact that people are discussing their feelings is itself a proof of that whatever that experiences (i.e. our selves) must be able to “communicate” with the surroundings as we otherwise only would have feelings but be unable to talk about them. There must therefore be a a two-way communication, the experiencing object needs input in order to “experience” what is going on around us and it must provide an output to the rest of the brain and our bodies (e.g. so the brain orders our fingers to write “I am conscious, I have feelings”). Don’t get me wrong here, just because someone (a dog, chimp or salmon) isn’t talking about its feelings and emotions, it doesn’t mean that it lacks feelings and emotions, nor does it mean that it lacks a soul. On the contrary, the “apparent” happiness of a dog meeting its family is a strong indication of that the dog also has feelings and emotions and a soul. What do you folks think about “my” ideas? I am not educated in philosophy and maybe these ideas have been discussed before. But, if you think about it and give these ideas “a chance”, don’t they makes sense after all?

Yes, it all makes a sense. Your line of thinking is In the right direction, whether perfect or not.

There can be and is only one and indivisible experiencing and analyzing entity possible within any life form. It cannot be a set or collection of some, otherwise it will never be able to work as a singular and unified entity. Every subset will try to dominate and that would ultimately lead to the collapse of the whole system.

Yes, it has to predate the brain also.

Actually, it is quite clear and simple deduction. If there were any other intelligent life form on the earth other than humans, it will conclude the same about humans too.

But, right from Aristotle and Descartes, the opinion that everything starts from the brain, has been permeated so deeply in our thinking that anything other than looks wrong. We are not ready to entertain any other thought at all, no matter how logical it may be.

With love,
Sanjay

[zinnat]

@Erlaksoo Astralmirk

There is obviously a lot of things that “constitute” ones personality, but I am not referring to personality. I am referring to “the soul”, inner experiencer or whatever one may call “the thing” that is experiencing, having emotions, feelings, qualia. Or to put it in another way, whatever that “separates” us from “philosophical zombies”*.

*A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. For example, a philosophical zombie could be poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say “ouch” and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie).

In the terminology which you are using, soul is the combination of two entities, consciousness and mind (not brain). Consciousness is indivisible and at the base of the life as an experiencing entity. Mind analyzes those experiences and form opinions, which later develop spirit (character) of that entity.

With love,
Sanjay

[zinnat]

@Only_Humean

@Erlaksoo Astralmirk

Moreover, I do not base my reasoning on the pre-assumption that there is a soul. My reasoning proves, or at least aims at proving, that there must be some sort of undividable unity that experiences. My “proof” is that anything that is dividable cannot experience (or exist or act in any other way) because it is the constituents, the parts, that exist and act. If all particles in a brain would experience, they would, as I see it, experience by themselves, not as one experiencer but as very many individual experiencers.

Your proof that there is an indivisible experiencer is the assertion that anything that experiences is indivisible?

You could similarly argue that a car is indivisible because anything less than a car can’t drive anywhere. And yet a car is a concert of different parts, none of which are a car, and none of which “drive anywhere”. Many of which a car can still drive without, most of the time, and some of which it couldn’t. It could be that experience is a divisible process - that there are building blocks of experience that build up into what we think of as “an experience of…”, not all necessary, none sufficient, but none of which on its own counts as experience. You’d have to show some primacy of experience, unadulterated by interpretation, or the confines of language, that is inarguably indivisible.

No, OH, you can confusing the issue.

Car is certainly devisable, but it is not at the base of the event of driving. It is not the car but the driver who is in the control of the driving. And, if you give steering to one person, accelerator to second one, and brakes to third one, the car will never reach to desired destination.

The driver has to be one, not many. The same is with any life form too.

With love,
Sanjay

[Erlaksoo_Astralmirk]

@zinnat13

There can be and is only one and indivisible experiencing and analyzing entity possible within any life form. It cannot be a set or collection of some, otherwise it will never be able to work as a singular and unified entity. Every subset will try to dominate and that would ultimately lead to the collapse of the whole system.

Sanjay, my view is not that a soul cannot consist of many parts because the parts would compete for power or strive for different goals. My idea is that if a soul would consist of many parts each part would experience by itself meaning that each part would be an individual soul. I can imagine that there could be many such souls within each person, but they would still be separate individual souls. When it comes to a car, I would claim that it is every individual part, i.e. every individual particle of the car, that moves and interacts with other particles resulting in a “net-movement” (i.e. a “mean-movement”) of all the particles forward along the road.

[zinnat]

@Erlaksoo Astralmirk

@zinnat13

There can be and is only one and indivisible experiencing and analyzing entity possible within any life form. It cannot be a set or collection of some, otherwise it will never be able to work as a singular and unified entity. Every subset will try to dominate and that would ultimately lead to the collapse of the whole system.

Sanjay, my view is not that a soul cannot consist of many parts because the parts would compete for power or strive for different goals. My idea is that if a soul would consist of many parts each part would experience by itself meaning that each part would be an individual soul. I can imagine that there could be many such souls within each person, but they would still be separate individual souls. When it comes to a car, I would claim that it is every individual part, i.e. every individual particle of the car, that moves and interacts with other particles resulting in a “net-movement” (i.e. a “mean-movement”) of all the particles forward along the road.

Again, unless you do not apply teleology, you would never able to get it right.

The real issue is not the car per se, but the act which would enable the car to reach at desired destination. And, for that, the driver has to one, not many.

It is irrelevant whether the car is divisible or not. The only thing that matters is whether the driver (controlling authority of the system) is one or not.

With love,
Sanjay

[Only_Humean]

@zinnat13

Car is certainly devisable, but it is not at the base of the event of driving. It is not the car but the driver who is in the control of the driving. And, if you give steering to one person, accelerator to second one, and brakes to third one, the car will never reach to desired destination.

A battle tank requires several crew, as does a nuclear submarine or a spacecraft. They can work in harmony, while disagreeing and overriding one another in certain situations. A country with a parliament is no more or less a single country than one ruled by an absolute dictator. A mind may be many modules, one of which is the “observer”, but many others of which are taking decisions and squabbling amongst themselves.

In fact, it’s clear from observation that this is indeed a better explanation - we do things without thinking about them, from habit or on impulse, and only afterwards realise that we were not conscious of them. Many people do things that are against their conscious desire - the dieter who catches himself snacking or the struggling alcoholic who takes a drink when stressed despite hating herself for it.

[zinnat]

@Only_Humean

@zinnat13

Car is certainly devisable, but it is not at the base of the event of driving. It is not the car but the driver who is in the control of the driving. And, if you give steering to one person, accelerator to second one, and brakes to third one, the car will never reach to desired destination.

A battle tank requires several crew, as does a nuclear submarine or a spacecraft. They can work in harmony, while disagreeing and overriding one another in certain situations. A country with a parliament is no more or less a single country than one ruled by an absolute dictator. A mind may be many modules, one of which is the “observer”, but many others of which are taking decisions and squabbling amongst themselves.

In fact, it’s clear from observation that this is indeed a better explanation - we do things without thinking about them, from habit or on impulse, and only afterwards realise that we were not conscious of them. Many people do things that are against their conscious desire - the dieter who catches himself snacking or the struggling alcoholic who takes a drink when stressed despite hating herself for it.

I was expecting this counter.

OH, one can argue even in the case of single driver that his eyes control the vision, his hands gears and steering, and his feet clutch, brakes and aceelator. But, does that mean that there are many controlling authorities? Of course not.

The same is the case of multiple crew members. There can be only one in the charge at a given time, not many. Yes, the highest authority can deligate some powers to other persons to make handling easier and efficient, but those delegations can never be autonomous or independent.

These multiple controlling subcentres not only have to work in synchronization but under a supreme commond, whose decision would be final, binding and cannot be overidded in any case.

Like, there can be many members in a crew of a submarine, to take care of different departments like engine, torpedoes, navigation etc, but it is only the Commander who can call the shots. The same is true for any other such arrangement.

It is the only the captain of the submarine, who will decide and dictate which depth is to be maintained and when and where its torpedoes would be fired, not those crew members who are in the immediate charge of the operations.

Yes, of course, subordinates may disagree with each other or from incharge, yet they can only bring their opinion to the notice of the highest decision making authority, not override it.

And, that applies in each and every case, whether an individual organism or a nation. And also, whenever that is not followed, it would lead to the collapse of the system for sure, sooner or later.

Secondly, it is merely an illusion that reflex actions bypass mind. This is all about making reference points. Body cannot do anything without seeking permission from the mind, whether reflexive or cognitive.

Let me take the example of sticking a thorn in the foot. We all know that when it happens, we withdraw our foot immediately from there and it looks that it is a reflex action and mind is not the part and parcel of this process. But, this goes very deep.

When a child starts realizing different sensations during the interactions from other things of this world, his mind starts making references to all incidents. Like, when he was hurt physically in anyway for the first time, his mind realizes the feeling of pain and as it does not find it pleasing, it registers that incident of getting hurt as pain. It must be a cognitive decision for the first time.

And, as the same incident happens again and again, and everytime mind comes across with the same pain, it puts more emphasis on to ger rid or reduce the time of decision making in order to avoid pain, as far as possible. Thus, the referece is now written in bold letters instead of normal language. And, after a certain time, cognitive portions of the mind (brain) gives standing instructions to the less cognitive portions (spinal cord) of the mind to act in a particular way when a particur reference comes out. So, spinal cord starts taking decisions o the behalf of brain in the cases of some clearly predefined references.

That is why it looks that these are relex actions but actually they all are well though out decisions. Though, the thinking process is not repeated everytime.

It is someting like that the same disturbance happens again and again in any country. So, the legislature passes a concering and suitable law after a long debate to solve the issue and that law is told to the local administrators/police, so they do not have to go to the legislature everytime and can act according to that standing instruction. That saves time and enrgey and reduce harm too.

Say, that the troops of any negihboring coutry violates borders againa and again, and the head of the state declayers war and give order to attack the enemy. He will order his military commander to send troops and fight the enemy on the ground. The commander will ask his subordinates and those will further order ordinary soilders to kill the enemy. But, every soilder will not go the head of the state to seek permission before firing each bullet. He has standing order for that but remember, this decision is not his, but comes from the head of the state. He is merely executing that orders.

With love,
Sanjay

[James_S_Saint]

@zinnat13

Yes, of course, subordinates may disagree with each other or from incharge, yet they can only bring their opinion to the notice of the highest decision making authority, not override it.

He was not talking about “subordinates” in the way that you are. He was referring to having no one as above anyone else in the decision making endeavor, but rather each contributing their specialized part (although subordinates would also be included on another level).

[zinnat]

@James S Saint

@zinnat13

Yes, of course, subordinates may disagree with each other or from incharge, yet they can only bring their opinion to the notice of the highest decision making authority, not override it.

He was not talking about “subordinates” in the way that you are. He was referring to having no one as above anyone else in the decision making endeavor, but rather each contributing their specialized part (although subordinates would also be included on another level).

I understood what he was saying. I was explaining to him how different it is from his understanding. Means, you cannot get the system going unless there is only one final decision making authority. Collective or individual decision making by subsets cannot work.

With love,
Sanjay