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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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it is also the source of a lot of human suffering, this belief in "soul." Part of facing up to reality is morning the loss of some cherished, but false belief.. it happens in science all the time... but the benefit is that you don't have to waste your time worrying about stuff that is not real.
I think its far more likely the notion of soul is the natural intuition, an intuition that goes back to prehistory, reflecting that aspect of mind that is so uniquely individual.
And, I would say, from personal and historical perspectives it enjoys a kind of reality. Science as yet has not explained what consciousness is let alone the aspects of consciousness from sensory input to arbitration of that input to experience itself.
The idea that soul is simply a false belief is exactly what I mean by the arrogance of science. No doubt the scientific method may very well prove such unfounded certainty as wrong.
That the notion of soul is a source of human suffering is truly overreaching. Both religion and science have been the tools of human suffering and those tools require human character as an engine of action. Science and religion may serve the largely political machinations that result in human suffering but the reason lies in human action and character. After all, a bolt in a rock wall can justify passionate action of a violent nature. Abandoning the idea of soul will hardly change human nature for the better.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Abandoning the idea of soul will hardly change human nature for the better.
a speculation on your part... may be true, may be false, you have no way of knowing...
and you accuse science as an act of arrogance... I have always found that accusation rather strange.
Is it arrogance to understand something? and having done so, explain that understanding?
It seems the answer is "yes" particularly when in the understanding you question ancient beliefs.
So be it.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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what is "frozen light"?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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it is also the source of a lot of human suffering, this belief in "soul." Part of facing up to reality is morning the loss of some cherished, but false belief..
Speculation? Please, explain how this is not speculation.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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No-thing is not nothing; no-thing is your relationship to the environment when you become unattached from I,me,my. Unattached in the sense where you realize I, Me, My are only mental constructs.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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intimating that those not advocating soul (writers? philosophers?) are at some sort of loss.
No. I was simply pointing out the long held belief in the notion of soul. And my definition of soul is hardly a religious one, I was defining it as simply the self contained entity that is the unique and individual mind, an idea with which many of the writers you mention might agree.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I went to a talk given by Kurt Vonnegut. It was right before the second gulf war, and he railed against it. He was a tiny man whose suit hung all over him. He was bright and engaging.
To the English students he said one thing: Don't use semicolons.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=soul
soul (n.1)
"A substantial entity believed to be that in each person which lives, feels, thinks and wills" [Century Dictionary], Old English sawol "spiritual and emotional part of a person, animate existence; life, living being," from Proto-Germanic *saiwalo (cognates: Old Saxon seola, Old Norse sala, Old Frisian sele, Middle Dutch siele, Dutch ziel, Old High German seula, German Seele, Gothic saiwala ), of uncertain origin.
Sometimes said to mean originally "coming from or belonging to the sea," because that was supposed to be the stopping place of the soul before birth or after death [Barnhart]; if so, it would be from Proto-Germanic *saiwaz (see sea). Klein explains this as "from the lake," as a dwelling-place of souls in ancient northern Europe.
Meaning "spirit of a deceased person" is attested in Old English from 971. As a synonym for "person, individual, human being" (as in every living soul) it dates from early 14c. Soul-searching (n.) is attested from 1871, from the phrase used as a past participle adjective (1610s). Distinguishing soul from spirit is a matter best left to theologians.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I produce these kinds of images in the complex plane all the time by doing peculiar infinite expansions that involve the sine and cosine function. One of my programs provides contrasting colors, but this example is manually colored in one shade in Photoshop.
I post this with reference to images that form behind one's closed eyes when the eyes are rubbed. How many of you have had the experience of "seeing" this sort of thing, intricate and ordered, with the eyes closed?
There are many references on the internet, but there are few efforts to explain the intricate, very symmetric designs that appear. Sometimes the images are fractals, but most are not (this image is not a fractal).
Andy, what say you? (our resident neuroscientist)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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The idea of the soul goes back far beyond its use as an English word. Burials with grave gear from the Paleolithic period suggest an awareness of "soul." the Egyptians believed in a five part soul of which the BA perhaps comes closest to a contemporary understanding. Aristotle wrote about it in the De Anima. Soul is a universal notion with regard to both time and location: all over the world and all through time the human race as a whole has intuitively realized a separation between mind and body. And I see that mind as the individual soul.
You might find "Death of the Soul from Descarte to the Computer" by William Barrett an interesting read. He was chairmen of the philosophy dept. at NYU.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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universal notions have what authority?
what has been done in the name of "saving souls"?
and we no longer need to explain mind, etc.. by supernatural entities... we have a completely natural explanation that doesn't need to invoke the supernatural, and actually describes all life on the planet...
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WBraun
climber
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and we
Who is this "we"
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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all over the world and all through time the human race as a whole has intuitively realized a separation between mind and body. And I see that mind as the individual soul
I see one's personality as one's soul. Death terminates it, but it can live on in the memories of those who have known the deceased.
We have been over this subject before, and pretty much exhausted it.
Move on.
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WBraun
climber
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I see one's personality as one's soul. Death terminates it,
You got half correct and the other half "Death terminates it" 100% wrong.
Because the western material scientists have no real clue to the life force all their knowledge ultimately becomes null ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 7, 2015 - 04:17pm PT
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I don't pontificate on science. I throw out there for discussion stuff that sounds interesting.
Like this whopper from Ed:
all that there is is physical
(which includes those things sourced by the physical).
Now Ed is especially adept at dodging and side-stepping things, while appearing to be on solid ground all the same. Just notice that he NEVER wavers from this basic materialist credo: Material sources everything.
But did material source the big bang? Does material source energy?
About energy: "The law of conservation of energy, also known as the first law of thermodynamics, states that the energy of a closed system must remain constant—it can neither increase nor decrease without interference from outside. The universe itself is a closed system, so the total amount of energy in existence has always been the same. The forms that energy takes, however, are constantly changing."
Go back to Ed's credo: All that there is is physical. What does Ed mean by physical? Does Ed mean that physical and material are both the same? Of course he does since physical means: synonyms: material, concrete, tangible, palpable, solid, substantial, real, actual, visible.
But there is no definition for matter as some soild stuff and nothing even remotely close to one.
Ed says all there is must be physical (meaning it must be an object, stuff, but does this cover energy?
Matt Strassler (physicist and NATURE science writer) sez:
Matter and Energy really aren’t in the same class and shouldn’t be paired in one’s mind.
Matter, in fact, is an ambiguous term. Energy is not ambiguous (not within physics, anyway). But energy is not itself stuff; it is something that all stuff has. The term Dark Energy confuses the issue, since it isn’t (just) energy after all. It also really isn’t stuff; certain kinds of stuff can be responsible for its presence, though we don’t know the details. Photons should not be called `energy’, or `pure energy’, or anything similar. All particles are ripples in fields and have energy; photons are not special in this regard. Photons are stuff; energy is not. The stuff of the universe is all made from fields (the basic ingredients of the universe) and their particles. At least this is the post-1973 viewpoint.
Annihilation of Particles and Antiparticles Isn’t Matter Turning Into Energy. Also forget the notion that “matter and anti-matter annihilate to pure energy.” This, simply put, isn’t true, for several reasons.
Now if energy is not an object/physical (but a property that matter has), nor was it sourced by matter, nor yet can be ever be lost - where does that leave Ed's belief that "all that there is is physical?"
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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energy is physical
you made an equivalence that physical=material and attributed it to me... but I never said that it was.
You really don't get it, do you...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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We have been over this subject before, and pretty much exhausted it.
"Exhausted" as in reached a consensus or as in beating a dead horse?
Here is one more take on soul, mind, body, personality and such. It comes from the Urantia Book, the Mother of all Woo. Urantia being the name of our planet as used by non-local entities. Just check it out. If it really bugs anyone, I will remove it.
0.5.6 These qualities of universal reality are manifest in Urantian human experience on the following levels:
0.5.7 1. Body. The material or physical organism of man. The living electrochemical mechanism of animal nature and origin.
0.5.8 2. Mind. The thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism. The total conscious and unconscious experience. The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level.
0.5.9 3. Spirit. The divine spirit that indwells the mind of man - the Thought Adjuster. This immortal spirit is prepersonal - not a personality, though destined to become a part of the personality of the surviving mortal creature.
0.5.10 4. Soul. The soul of man is an experiential acquirement. As a mortal creature chooses to “do the will of the Father in heaven,” so the indwelling spirit becomes the father of a new reality in human experience. The mortal and material mind is the mother of this same emerging reality. The substance of this new reality is neither material nor spiritual - it is morontial. This is the emerging and immortal soul which is destined to survive mortal death and begin the Paradise ascension.
0.5.11 Personality. The personality of mortal man is neither body, mind, nor spirit; neither is it the soul. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. The personality is the unique bestowal which the Universal Father makes upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and which survives with the survival of the morontial soul.
0.5.12 Morontia is a term designating a vast level intervening between the material and the spiritual. It may designate personal or impersonal realities, living or nonliving energies. The warp of morontia is spiritual; its woof is physical.
Personally, I think there is a little bit in their for everybody. Take it as you will.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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The latter.
Entertaining dialogue between Ed and JL: Physicist vs Metaphysicist.
JL is so far out of his bailiwick his posts are comically amusing.
More please . . .
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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and we no longer need to explain mind, etc.. by supernatural entities... we have a completely natural explanation that doesn't need to invoke the supernatural, and actually describes all life on the planet...
Your assumption here is that the soul is supernatural. And just exactly what is the explanation of mind?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Your assumption here is that the soul is supernatural
In the same way it is assumed ectoplasm is supernatural.
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