Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
I understand that...I also know that inspiration, will, thinking, and reasoning come from the same place. I wouldn't discard the idea that the soul is somewhere in the line.And if you knew that why did you even ask me?
If you understand that the mind is an evanescent biproduct of brain functioning, then you should understand that the mind is attached to the body by nature of being a biproduct of biological functions.
I am asking you to explain how a spirit or a soul is attached to a body since it is not a biproduct of biological functions.
A simple thought experiment.
Originally posted by Seraphim XIII
Can you prove this? You did ask for proof as to how a spirit sticks inside of someone.So, do you have proof as to how thoughts and ideas are a byproduct of the brain's overall function, or what?
All persons with minds have brains, but not all persons with brains have minds.
Originally posted by Seraphim XIII
Can you prove this? You did ask for proof as to how a spirit sticks inside of someone.So, do you have proof as to how thoughts and ideas are a byproduct of the brain's overall function, or what?
It depends on what you mean by "thought" and how specific of an answer you want.
To begin with, there is not yet a human action or function or behaviour that has been found to be inexplicable through neuroscience. Everything we have observed has supported the idea that thought originates in the brain.
To begin with, "thoughts" is not a scientific or provable concept, so I will abandon it right now. However, there are many cognitive processes that amount to what we would consider to be "thoughts". For instance, all of our sensory organs relay information to our brain, which is then assembled by various regions into our general perception. Yes, there is proof that this is how our senses work, it is a massively robust field of psychology and biology. Pick up a biopsychology and sensation & perception textbook, the specifics of this type of "thought" are gone into in GREAT detail.
Well, what about knowledge? Sure, the brain can explain how the light from my computer screen gets into my eye and I become aware of it, but how do I know what is in that light? Well, thats simple. Every time stimuli hits a sensory organ, it elicits a pattern of responses that goes from the receptors to the cortex by way of the thalamus (smelling is a little different, but not enough so to throw off this point). From the cortex, the information travels to the infotemporal cortex and the amygdala (this is specific for sight, I will be honest in saying I don't know where emotional processing of other senses occurs), where semantic and emotional identification of the stimuli occurs. This all happens well before you become conscious of an object. For instance, there is a disorder known as agnosia, which is a disconnection between the amygdala and the hypothalamus (oh man, i think thats the one...). In this disorder, people are able to recognize and interact with everything, except they are unable to retrieve emotional memories for the purpose of identification. For instance, an agnosia patient who sees their father would describe them as "A person who looks exactly like my father, though clearly not them". The reason that the person cannot identify their father is because their brain is not sending the proper father signal. The information never makes it to the hypothalamus, so it can never be emotionally processed. This proof is two fold. To begin with, it shows that parts of the brain are specifically responsible for attributing information to certain aspects of perception. Why would your soul not be able to identify your father just because some brain thing is messed up? The second point is that conscious perception is completely dependent on subconscious processing. Before you become consciously aware of an item, your brain has already decided what it is, how you feel about it, and what you need to do to deal with it.
Well, what about "consciousness". To begin with, I hate the term. It is misleading in the first place, because asking about consciousness supposes that there is a consciousness to look for. The western philosophical and religious traditions basically named and defined the mental process we would term "consciousness" long before science had a chance to look at it. Now that we have things like EEGs and fMRIs, we find that "consciousness" is really diaphanous. For instance, there are things called brainwaves that are the byproduct of electrical charge in active neurons and things called glial cells which create synchronization in neuron activation. Some of these brainwaves, when they occur in certain parts of the brain, can be associated with certain patterns of neural activation, which can be used to determine what people are "thinking". Now, in an experiment, people were asked to move their hand and say when they become consciously aware of their intention to move their hand. What was found, when measuring brainwave activity from the motor cortex (the place responsible for movement) was activation much sooner than the person indicated awareness of the conscious intent to move. This means that people do not become aware of what they are going to do until after their brain has prepared to make that movement. This is a very standard result in cognitive neuroscience.
There is also the existence of something called, by Dr. Gazzaniga, the interpreter. It is within the left side of the brain, and all information must pass through it in order to be included in our interpretation of reality. For instance, a cure for some types of Epilepsy is to cut the corpus callosum, a nerve that connects the left and right sides of the brain. Once this is done, certain types of information can no longer pass from one side to the other. While this is ok in normal conditions, it can be manipulated in experimental conditions to show the inability of the brain to account for all stimuli. A person's left eye sends information to the right side of the brain, and vica versa. So, if a subject with their callosum cut is presented a ball in their left eye and a bike in the other, they will ONLY be aware of the bike (the ball is being sent to the right side of the brain which cannot communicate with the interpreter). Well, you say, thats because they are ignoring the ball (or some other argument that still supports some type of dualism) but wait, if after showing them those images you were to show them a page consisting of 4 images, say a horn, a baseball bat, a birdhouse and a bike helmet, they are most likely to pick something like the baseball bat because it is associated with the ball on the right side of the brain (although they are only consciously aware that they have seen the bike). When asked WHY they pointed to the bat, they will come up with a story like, "oh, well, i used to play baseball as a kid and sometimes my brother would bike up to see me play". This is because the "interpreter" is there, it can see you are pointing at the bat and you saw a bike, now it is looking for the rational explanation. Since it is unable to get the information from the left eye, it can not attribute the selection of the bat to the ball. And yes, this experiment was done with controls. People without a cut in the callosum will generally be able to justify what they selected. There are many, many, MANY experiments like these, many dealing with things like morality or more existential concerns. The have all uniformly shown us that our own beliefs and perceptions are directly related to mental processes, and can be subject to predictable error under experimental conditions. I can't imagine a definition of a "soul" that allows for this type of error.
Similar things can be said about the conception of self, the way we attribute cause to events, and our ability (or inability) to properly remember situations. Hell, the fact that we can trick our perceptive system with optical illusions even when we know how they work seems to indicate that there is nothing inside of us watching through our eyes and making our decisions. Probably the best evidence for this is that there is no place where the "soul" or "self" would be located. For the soul to be sending thoughts and actions to the brain it would need a direct connection. This connection does not exist. Not to mention that you would need to suppose a new type of communication between neurons other than neurotransmitters that allows for "spirit energy" to become electro-chemical energy.
Originally posted by Adam_PoEI am asking you to explain how a spirit or a soul is attached to a body since it is not a biproduct of biological functions.
The best explaination I can give you is a Philosophical one. If you're a man of science then stop reading right here...but if you're willing to discuss this in a philosophical manner keep reading.
Let me introduce you first to my friend Plato. In the Republic, Plato describes the soul as having three parts, which he calls a) reason b)spirit c) appetite. He derived this tripatite conception of the soul from the common experience of internal confusion and conflict all humans share. When he analyzed the nature of this conflict, he discovered that there are three different kinds of activity going on in a person. First, there is an awreness of a goal or a value, and this is the act of reason. Secondly, there is the drive toward action, the spirit which is neutral at first but responds to the direction of reason. Last, there is the desire for things of the body, which are the appetites.
In his philosophy he also mentions two worlds. The world in which you, I, and everyone else sees..which is the physical world. This world can be seen by the physical body. The other, is a world of ideas, thoughts, imagination, and this one can be seen by our mind which I think is the translator for the soul.
The mechanics of how the soul is attached to body is rather difficult to explain. I have my own idea of how it works, but it doesn't come from Plato. It comes from the chinese philosophy call "Chi" (or as we know it in the west "Life Energy"😉 in which is believe humans as they grow gain energy. This energy forms what we call the soul. Once the soul is form in a human, the energy is then regulated to the capacity best fitted for the indiviual. Once the soul is formed from the life energy it cannot be destroyed nor lost.
Thus, the body dies...and this life energy product (i.e. soul) goes into the world which Plato mentions.
That's how I think it works.
Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
The best explaination I can give you is a Philosophical one. If you're a man of science then stop reading right here...but if you're willing to discuss this in a philosophical manner keep reading.Let me introduce you first to my friend Plato. In the Republic, Plato describes the soul as having three parts, which he calls a) reason b)spirit c) appetite. He derived this tripatite conception of the soul from the common experience of internal confusion and conflict all humans share. When he analyzed the nature of this conflict, he discovered that there are three different kinds of activity going on in a person. First, there is an awreness of a goal or a value, and this is the act of reason. Secondly, there is the drive toward action, the spirit which is neutral at first but responds to the direction of reason. Last, there is the desire for things of the body, which are the appetites.
In his philosophy he also mentions two worlds. The world in which you, I, and everyone else sees..which is the physical world. This world can be seen by the physical body. The other, is a world of ideas, thoughts, imagination, and this one can be seen by our mind which I think is the translator for the soul.
The mechanics of how the soul is attached to body is rather difficult to explain. I have my own idea of how it works, but it doesn't come from Plato. It comes from the chinese philosophy call "Chi" (or as we know it in the west "Life Energy"😉 in which is believe humans as they grow gain energy. This energy forms what we call the soul. Once the soul is form in a human, the energy is then regulated to the capacity best fitted for the indiviual. Once the soul is formed from the life energy it cannot be destroyed nor lost.
Thus, the body dies...and this life energy product (i.e. soul) goes into the world which Plato mentions.
That's how I think it works.
Life energy is not incorpeal, nor is it a manifestation of the non-physical characteristics of a person; quite different than a spirit or soul.
no matter what explaination you give or you take.. there is only one.
As humans, we die because we lose the will to live. We could live forever and be immortal.
do we die because it is time for our bodies to rest? Do we die because of illness? Do we die because since the day we were born we were meant to die?
Is it that we lose the WILL to live?
There are many theories as to why humans die,scientific, biological, relegious beliefs and many others.
The reason why which I believe that we die is that written above.
We die becuase we as huamans lose the WILL to LIVE.
ofcourse sometimes our lives are taken from us. But apart from murder and "accidents" we lose our Will to live.
Why is it that the healthiest old man dies of old age? man loses his will. Man loses his will of anything. The WILL to stay young and eventually.... the will to live....
--Valery
that is the only explantion to your question...."I am asking you to explain how a spirit or a soul is attached to a body since it is not a biproduct of biological functions."
the spirit is the master to the body and if the spirit dies then the body dies... They are not attached they are one alone.
Originally posted by DarkRaven
no matter what explaination you give or you take.. there is only one.As humans, we die because we lose the will to live. We could live forever and be immortal.
do we die because it is time for our bodies to rest? Do we die because of illness? Do we die because since the day we were born we were meant to die?
Is it that we lose the WILL to live?
There are many theories as to why humans die,scientific, biological, relegious beliefs and many others.
The reason why which I believe that we die is that written above.
We die becuase we as huamans lose the WILL to LIVE.
ofcourse sometimes our lives are taken from us. But apart from murder and "accidents" we lose our Will to live.
Why is it that the healthiest old man dies of old age? man loses his will. Man loses his will of anything. The WILL to stay young and eventually.... the will to live....
--Valerythat is the only explantion to your question...."I am asking you to explain how a spirit or a soul is attached to a body since it is not a biproduct of biological functions."
the spirit is the master to the body and if the spirit dies then the body dies... They are not attached they are one alone.
alright, there are three experiments that could be done to prove what you are saying.
1) get a gun, 100 people and maybe a few more than that many bullets. Now, 50 of these people need to "have the will to not die" and 50 need to be of a differant mind. Give them each what would be a fatal gunshot wound
2) same experiment only give them aids instead of shooting them
3) same experiment only this time lock them in a room with no food or water
so ya...
not to say that the answer should be self evident, but....
Originally posted by Tangible God
"The only reason we die... is because we accept it... as an inevitability.""So Frank, how did you die and end up in Hell?"
"Well Joe, I was in my bed, deep in sleep, dreaming of the eternal life I knew I'd have since I cannot accept death, when my house exploded and incinerated me."
This post sends me to hell. 🙄
Re: I am Immortal because my soul is..
Originally posted by FistOfThe North
Sure my physical body will expire but my spirit will never die and i believe this about all of us.The essence of me, of all of us, is more significant than the flesh and bones that imprison it.
I truly believe that.
there is no such thing as a spirit or soul. It is just an idea that is apart of religion, and religion is nothing more than a scam put forth to creat order and power for those smart enough to use it to their will. sure, your energy will live on for ever, but electricity is not aware because it has no brain. Once your brain stops functioning, the only thing left of you is your corpse and energy. this is what they tell us right? istead of being ridiculed for believing in something, believe what everyone else believes. There is no creationism only evolution, and energy
Originally posted by FistOfThe North
Just as nonsensical as you sound to me, perhaps.Do you have proof that souls can't have memories? That they are apart of our material brains, that souls have no memories, thoughts, or feelings.
I beg your pardon but the last time I looked, to have a soul, to be soulful, was to be all these things combined.
actually if you are looking for proof. Just refer to the good old Bible. It states somewhere in there how souls do not have recollections of their earthly lives once they depart the body. You essentially will not have any memory of who you where and families and friends. Look it up if you are skeptical
Originally posted by LordFear
actually if you are looking for proof. Just refer to the good old Bible. It states somewhere in there how souls do not have recollections of their earthly lives once they depart the body. You essentially will not have any memory of who you where and families and friends. Look it up if you are skeptical
Had the Bible been as easy to look things up as it is with a dictionary, especially for someone like myself who doesn't read it that often, i would've looked it up.
How about shooting me some scriptures or verse numbers since the Bible is pretty extensive on top of i don't know where to look for that info.
Originally posted by inimalist
It depends on what you mean by "thought" and how specific of an answer you want.To begin with, there is not yet a human action or function or behaviour that has been found to be inexplicable through neuroscience. Everything we have observed has supported the idea that thought originates in the brain.
To begin with, "thoughts" is not a scientific or provable concept, so I will abandon it right now. However, there are many cognitive processes that amount to what we would consider to be "thoughts". For instance, all of our sensory organs relay information to our brain, which is then assembled by various regions into our general perception. Yes, there is proof that this is how our senses work, it is a massively robust field of psychology and biology. Pick up a biopsychology and sensation & perception textbook, the specifics of this type of "thought" are gone into in GREAT detail.
Well, what about knowledge? Sure, the brain can explain how the light from my computer screen gets into my eye and I become aware of it, but how do I know what is in that light? Well, thats simple. Every time stimuli hits a sensory organ, it elicits a pattern of responses that goes from the receptors to the cortex by way of the thalamus (smelling is a little different, but not enough so to throw off this point). From the cortex, the information travels to the infotemporal cortex and the amygdala (this is specific for sight, I will be honest in saying I don't know where emotional processing of other senses occurs), where semantic and emotional identification of the stimuli occurs. This all happens well before you become conscious of an object. For instance, there is a disorder known as agnosia, which is a disconnection between the amygdala and the hypothalamus (oh man, i think thats the one...). In this disorder, people are able to recognize and interact with everything, except they are unable to retrieve emotional memories for the purpose of identification. For instance, an agnosia patient who sees their father would describe them as "A person who looks exactly like my father, though clearly not them". The reason that the person cannot identify their father is because their brain is not sending the proper father signal. The information never makes it to the hypothalamus, so it can never be emotionally processed. This proof is two fold. To begin with, it shows that parts of the brain are specifically responsible for attributing information to certain aspects of perception. Why would your soul not be able to identify your father just because some brain thing is messed up? The second point is that conscious perception is completely dependent on subconscious processing. Before you become consciously aware of an item, your brain has already decided what it is, how you feel about it, and what you need to do to deal with it.
Well, what about "consciousness". To begin with, I hate the term. It is misleading in the first place, because asking about consciousness supposes that there is a consciousness to look for. The western philosophical and religious traditions basically named and defined the mental process we would term "consciousness" long before science had a chance to look at it. Now that we have things like EEGs and fMRIs, we find that "consciousness" is really diaphanous. For instance, there are things called brainwaves that are the byproduct of electrical charge in active neurons and things called glial cells which create synchronization in neuron activation. Some of these brainwaves, when they occur in certain parts of the brain, can be associated with certain patterns of neural activation, which can be used to determine what people are "thinking". Now, in an experiment, people were asked to move their hand and say when they become consciously aware of their intention to move their hand. What was found, when measuring brainwave activity from the motor cortex (the place responsible for movement) was activation much sooner than the person indicated awareness of the conscious intent to move. This means that people do not become aware of what they are going to do until after their brain has prepared to make that movement. This is a very standard result in cognitive neuroscience.
There is also the existence of something called, by Dr. Gazzaniga, the interpreter. It is within the left side of the brain, and all information must pass through it in order to be included in our interpretation of reality. For instance, a cure for some types of Epilepsy is to cut the corpus callosum, a nerve that connects the left and right sides of the brain. Once this is done, certain types of information can no longer pass from one side to the other. While this is ok in normal conditions, it can be manipulated in experimental conditions to show the inability of the brain to account for all stimuli. A person's left eye sends information to the right side of the brain, and vica versa. So, if a subject with their callosum cut is presented a ball in their left eye and a bike in the other, they will ONLY be aware of the bike (the ball is being sent to the right side of the brain which cannot communicate with the interpreter). Well, you say, thats because they are ignoring the ball (or some other argument that still supports some type of dualism) but wait, if after showing them those images you were to show them a page consisting of 4 images, say a horn, a baseball bat, a birdhouse and a bike helmet, they are most likely to pick something like the baseball bat because it is associated with the ball on the right side of the brain (although they are only consciously aware that they have seen the bike). When asked WHY they pointed to the bat, they will come up with a story like, "oh, well, i used to play baseball as a kid and sometimes my brother would bike up to see me play". This is because the "interpreter" is there, it can see you are pointing at the bat and you saw a bike, now it is looking for the rational explanation. Since it is unable to get the information from the left eye, it can not attribute the selection of the bat to the ball. And yes, this experiment was done with controls. People without a cut in the callosum will generally be able to justify what they selected. There are many, many, MANY experiments like these, many dealing with things like morality or more existential concerns. The have all uniformly shown us that our own beliefs and perceptions are directly related to mental processes, and can be subject to predictable error under experimental conditions. I can't imagine a definition of a "soul" that allows for this type of error.
Similar things can be said about the conception of self, the way we attribute cause to events, and our ability (or inability) to properly remember situations. Hell, the fact that we can trick our perceptive system with optical illusions even when we know how they work seems to indicate that there is nothing inside of us watching through our eyes and making our decisions. Probably the best evidence for this is that there is no place where the "soul" or "self" would be located. For the soul to be sending thoughts and actions to the brain it would need a direct connection. This connection does not exist. Not to mention that you would need to suppose a new type of communication between neurons other than neurotransmitters that allows for "spirit energy" to become electro-chemical energy.
How do you know that no connection between the soul and the brain exists?