What separates the soul from the brain, or are they both the same thing?

You’re going to need to define “soul” very carefully for this question to make sense. Same for “true self”. It seems the jury is still out on what either of those terms means.

But all of your personality, awareness, memories and everything else that makes you who you are, biologically speaking that’s all in your brain. There is no other body part that contains that information.
Perhaps a brilliant geneticist could use the information in your DNA to reconstruct what your brain was like when you were born, but that information will find no expression in your body any more.

@Fyrius: Even the brilliant geneticist couldn’t account for epigenetic factors.

Another major challenge for the dualist is explaining how a non-physical entity (i.e. the soul) can causally interact with a physical entity (the brain) from Wikipedia(philosophy_of_mind)#Causal_interaction_2.

No such thing as a “soul”.

Even the concept of “mind” cannot be distinguished from the brain and its functions. The notion of “soul” is a metaphysical or religious one.

Memories, knowledge and personality are functions of a functioning brain. Many may consider such functions to represent what is commonly denoted by the word “Mind.”

Assuming the brain could be successfully transplanted to a new body, the functions of that brain would function in the new body.

The brain that was removed from that body would die and with it the functional characteristics of that brain (personality, memory etc.).

Cartesian tradition dictates that the soul resides in the pineal gland, so if you are going to be a dualist at this late date, why not go all the way, and assume he was right?

Mind or consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. You can’t separate soul from brain any more than you can separate an ant colony from its members.

If you’re going to call anything a soul, might as well be the thinking parts of the brain. Or the thinking parts of the brain that have the ability to effect the things around it.

As for a true-self sort of thing, that goes beyond the brain. Your brain, your body, your immediate environment, all of existence. That all goes in to defining you. It’s pointless to try and define identity on a universal scale. Which is what the word soul is usually used for. fools. is it really so hard to accept that, if we exist at all, we die and are reborn with each passing moment?

@Dr_Lawrence Building upon this – certain brain functions may be affected by differing hormone levels from the new body, but you wouldn’t be able to notice this as you would have the same consciousness. Just the same as if you change your diet in your current body.

The “soul” and consciousness are really semantically the same thing. All all consciousness is is a system which retrieves information from multiple modalities in the brain (ie memory, vision, touch etc etc) and decides which is most important at the time to pay attention to.

There is no scientific evidence for ( or against ) the existence of the soul.

The “soul” is probably a construct of brain activity, having no existence of its own. Robert Heinlein has a good romp with this in “I Will Fear No Evil”.

The soul, as it has been understood in a classical sense, is a myth. Dualism does not make sense on a fundamental level, and there are vast amounts of evidence to support the fact that the whole of a person’s being, thoughts and personality reside in the neurological processes of the brain.

If you are going to take a different interpretation of the term ‘soul’ though, you will have to define it more clearly if you are going to receive more useful answers.

@FireMadeFlesh

I disagree that the “soul” is a myth. I DO, however, agree that Dualism is an inaccurate concept. We, as living creatures, are anchored in this reality as firmly as any other living thing, but it is my belief that all living thngs are connected at a quantum level, which may go a long way toward explaining the instantaneous nature of phenomena such as the empirically proven non-verbal communication of, for example, twins.

@CaptainHarley I understand beliefs like yours, and I find them to be more plausible than the immortal soul that receives justice for the person’s actions during life, which is why I specified the soul as it has been understood in a classical sense, ie. strict Cartesian Dualism and traditional religious concepts of the soul.

@FireMadeFlesh

Good. The classical dualism ( which, by the way is non-biblical, as best I can tell ) has been the cause of much mischief, not the least of which is consideration of the environment as a resource rather than our responsibility as conscious creatures.

The soul is the divine spark around which an individuality forms. The brain is the physical manifestation of the higher emanations of the soul. Most of what makes up the personality of the current lifetime develops in the brain, and these patterns of thought and behavior become imprinted on the individuality. When the body dies, the individuality carries these patterns over into the next lifetime and as the soul emanates a new body, these patterns become manifest in the new brain as talents and potentialities.

@stump

Interesting. What basis do you have for this belief?

The soul exists in a hyper dimension, accessible to each of us individually through our own unique neurochemistry. Each individual soul that we access is actually part of a larger, infinite “soul” that encompasses “everything”.

The soul is there to help keep us sane by giving us an often unconscious glimpse that we are all part of a whole that is greater than the sum of our parts. This also makes our ego The Devil, whispering to us constantly that we are “special” and independent of the whole.

<sigh> i gotta quit smoking so much weed

@CaptainHarley String theory?

@Blondesjon

Heh! Interesting blend of mysticism and classical thought. I almost agree with the concept of “universal soul,” except that I see it as an emergent property of the growing number of conscious beings.

Being that we don’t properly understand the latter and the formers very existence is questionable it’s impossible to answer.

Perhaps it is nothing more than a pattern of firing neurons driven by genetics and response to stimuli. Perhaps there is a deeper consciousness we have yet to understand whose will is carried out through our brain’s processing.

Adding to that a concept of true self, concepts of good and evil… you are you. Is your true self your actions, thoughts, intents, beliefs? Is it all of it? or are those simply descriptors, components expressed by you? good and evil – how much of each is simply a social construct? or are they driven by something deeper, expressed by the choices you make?

To me the soul is an abstract spiritual concept, the mind an abstract entity, and the brain is a physical object.

@CaptainHarley I agree that it is non-Biblical. The Christian denomination I used to belong to also rejected dualism, and believed in resurrection of the body to come before a person could enter heaven. But since I do not think the Bible holds much value anyway, the point is lost on me.

@FireMadeFlesh

As I understand the concept, it was a direct result of the work of Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, and lead directly to the classical science position that it was possible for “mind” to stand “outside” reality and be analytical apart from reality as a whole. This was a tremendous boost to classical science, but was pretty much destroyed as a viable concept by quantum physics: we are so embedded in reality that the very act of viewing anything at the quantum level changes it.

@CaptainHarley
I gather that quantum non-locality doesn’t really support a belief in all life being connected either, though.
And I very much doubt that it would be possible even in theory to use the non-locality of quantum particles to wirelessly send information from one brain to another. Brains operate on a cellular level, or a molecular level at the smallest. They can’t manipulate stuff smaller than that.

@Fyrius

That remains to be seen. : )

Point is, we can’t know. So don’t make yourself think that you do know one way or another. . .

For me my soul is the “center-point” of the spirit, which is my abstract awareness of my “waves” in existence, whatever that means.

It may be best that it’s never known for sure. Ignorance will always be necessary to some degree for intelligence to exist, and to know how we know things might negate the ability of knowing anything. No need to solidify this stuff with any specific beliefs.

@zophu
We only can’t know if you insist on being so vague about it.

@CaptainHarley This is from the Golden Dawn cosmology. It is part of the cabalistic conception of the emanation of the universe. It is not meant to be taken literally, but to be meditated on as if it were true, in the same sense that irrational or imaginary mathmatical expressions do not represent conceivable physical proportions, but reveal truth in the relationships of known physical phenomenon.

@Fyrius

That’s my point. We’re supposed to be vague about it. There are more than enough practical problems that need attention for people to start making stances about the things that can’t be logically analyzed and dealt with. How do you think religions start?

@stump… thank you. I find it intriguing! : ))

@stump . . . i sooo have mr. crowley stuck in my head now . . .

@CaptainHarley . . . I come from a school of thought that believes “everything” happened all at once, during that moment of initial cosmic creation. What we experience now is just the way our specific physical makeup interprets it.

but people need their fucking space candy. . .

@CaptainHarley and @Blondesjon Aleister Crowley was probably the most exciting writer on the western esoteric tradition, but certainly not the most clear. His student, Israel Rigardie is much more straight-forward and comprehensible. Dion Fortune is another great resource. If anyone is interested in discussing this material, I would love to throw ideas around. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I have read a bit on it, and have some small experience in solo ceremonial magic.

the “soul” is an old term used to identify sentient individuals from the non-sentient material world.

Brain = Soul

Identity comes from brain. So put “Joe’s” brain is ”“Susan’s” body. And she is now “Joe.”

@ChazMaz
So, what your saying is, that Joe’s taking a walk on the wild side?
Does Joe now feel like a pervert when he goes to the lav?
Can Joe now retire when he’s 60 instead of 65? that’s just racist!...

WOW, what a mind f#@k! ;-)

Main stream science only seems to use stuff in the material world to make sense of the universe, since (in my interpretation of the word ‘soul’) the soul is of the non-physical, or as I understand it, constructed of some form of energy undetectable by anything main stream science tries, or tries not to confirm the existence of it, using things that can’t detect it, the only real way any of us will ever truly know if the soul exists will be in death, or clairvoyance.

Personally I prefer to keep an open mind, and allow for all possibilities, instead of taking a fixed view. Although I lean very sharply towards the soul existing in the ‘non-physical’ universe based on my own experiences.

The soul is that which gives us the perception of all things.
Spiritual and physical, tangible intangible, visible invisible.

It is on a much plain than the brain which only serve as the hub for the physical senses, which is merely just another form of the intangible knowledge.

It is by the soul we have the ability to know…

The question is, what knowledge do you posses?
For The nature of the soul is determined by this.

“It is by the soul we have the ability to know…”

Actually, having the ability to know. Gives us the liberation to perceive and desire a soul.

I would like to visit the much plane. You don’t think the volcano will interfere, do you?

Go a little “HIGHER” and you’re there.

To answer the one question, your brain is like the body it has a beginning and an ending,
it was born and it will die.
Your Soul on the other hand is totally different. It is the same as you incarnate in lifetime after lifetime.
your bodies die and your Soul stays alive.
the debate is endless, and only those that look within, beyond the debate, will see the
truth of it all.

I looked within and I saw meat. What does that mean, O @babaji?

@dpworkin It means you are not taking what babaji is saying seriously.

@babaji said: “your bodies die and your Soul stays alive.”

what makes you say that? how do you know this is the case?

@ninjacolin Some people remember their past lives. The existence of the soul can not be proved. It has to be experienced first hand.

do they remember their past lives or do they remember a conception of a previous life, mistaken as being real?

@ninjacolin Do you remember what happened yesterday, or your conception of what happened yesterday, mistaken to be real? Unfortunately, experiences that can not be corroborated by our peers have to be taken for what they are worth in and of themselves. It may be that past life experiences are all nonsense. I don’t suggest that anyone should believe in anything they haven’t experienced for themselves. But if you have an experience that you value and that you find makes your life richer and helps you to become a more competent person, I would be a fool to reject it out of hand.

@stump Who could?

well said. all beliefs and conclusions are determined by the cumulative experience of the soul.

mind you, you wouldn’t be a fool to reject something you previously believed was real. you would simply be convinced otherwise.

The soul is separate from the brain. When the body dies, the soul goes to either Heaven or Hell. If a brain were to be transplanted, I suppose the person could have the other one’s characteristics. This would be a really cool movie.

@PacificToast Over two hundred years of philosophical inquiry dispute the point that there is a division between the soul and the brain. What are your cogent arguments to refute that body of literature?

@dpworkin What? Do you mean I can’t just have an opinion based off of my beliefs in Christ?

@PacificToast I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I though you were making a flat statement of fact. To quote your post: The soul is separate from the brain. When the body dies, the soul goes to either Heaven or Hell

Nowhere do I see any indication that this is an opinion, or that it is based upon religious belief.

Although i described previously,
but also the Soul animates the brain, giving it life.
Together in the physical body they work as one, appear in the physical realm as one,
but then when the physical body dies the Soul separates itself and continues it’s journey.
this is my experience,

@babaji You died and came back?

@babaji How does the soul manage to animate the brain? As far as neuroscientists can tell, the brain’s neurological functions are self-contained and is not under the influence of any other ‘force’.

@PacificToast Do you feel comfortable holding that opinion in the face of the evidence?

@FireMadeFlesh Hey, @babaji has experienced this phenomenon. We may have to reevaluate everything we think we know about dualism.

@dpworkin Oh right, like schizophrenics experience voices, so we all must obey? Reminds me of the boy who saw his dead grandmother. In the original report I read, his doctors said that increased carbon dioxide levels can induce visions.

It is the job of science to discover the facts of things. It is the job of belief to discover the truth of things.

@CaptainHarley It’s when you use “truths” to justify condemnation of the facts that it becomes a problem…

and it always happens, sooner or later, when you insist on grasping at things too vast to hold. It’s like trying to fit a river inside a box.

Respect the unknown, and keep it the unknown until you can actually know it.

You humble yourself before your jobs, your education, your supposed duties; while simultaneously claiming understanding of the universe? Do you see how sick that is? It should be the other way around. Own your environment and look to the distance with nothing but wonder, you can trust no shapes you see from here.

@CaptainHarley Beliefs are ideas which are not yet accepted as facts. They cannot discover things, and they do not necessarily reflect truth. Beliefs only coherently express a formulation of one’s intuitions and hunches, with no respect to whether or not those intuitions are correct. It is the role of philosophy and metaphysical reasoning to discover the truth of things.

Gravy.

Both philosophy and metaphysics are based on belief.

@dpworkin So you have evidence that the brain and soul are the same? Please send a link :D

@PacificToast it mostly stems from the philosophical problem of causal interaction that the dualist faces. Nobody can really come up with a good explanation of how a non-physical thing can interact with a physical one. Nobody can even imagine how a fairy-tale imaginary mechanism that would do this would work.

When you really think about it, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you have an explanation I would certainly be fascinated to hear how it might work.

@CaptainHarley Beliefs (or well thought out ones at least) are based on philosophy and metaphysics. I have a belief that I exist, which is based on the philosophical reasoning of Descartes – “I think, therefore I am”. If I were to have a belief that my apparent self is an illusion and I am really a purple pterodactyl, I must provide evidence or reasoning to support such a belief as I did with the former example. You can form a belief about absolutely anything, but philosophical reasoning is the tool we use to determine whether or not that belief is plausible.

All hail the scientific community, for what they have not yet discovered, does not yet exist!........

an anyone who believes it does exist is obviously mentally ill and should be sectioned

@Pazza That is not the point – the point is that it is impossible to make claims about what has not yet or cannot be verified. You can hold whatever beliefs you like (as long as they still allow you to be a moral, valuable human), but as long as they are simply beliefs with no basis in reason or empiricism you cannot claim them to be necessarily true. I honestly don’t care if you believe, as @CaptainHarley does, in a soul on a level that we cannot yet investigate, but the particular claim that the mind does not reside in the brain and that it survives the death of the body is ignorant because it is not in the unverifiable realm.

@gorillapaws The soul is your innermost being in which your thoughts occur. All I know is that the brain is a mechanism necessary for infinite functions of the human.God will judge me at the end by my soul which is either His or Satan’s.

@PacificToast Actually conscious thought predominantly occurs in the frontal lobe and the angular gyrus.

@FireMadeFlesh What about your innermost being?

@PacificToast My innermost being is composed of memories and ideas, which are stored in the Hippocampus, my innate fears which are stored in the amygdala, and my self-awareness, which is thanks to a set of relays called thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits.

@FireMadeFlesh Religion is primarily a temporal lobe phenomenon. “Spiritual” experiences can be induced by TL stimulation.

@dpworkin I read a study once where they found that people with temporal lobe brain damage were far more likely to have spiritual experiences. Of course the researchers stressed at every opportunity that this did not infer anything about the validity of the experiences. I also find it interesting that out of body experiences have been linked with angular gyrus damage.

@FireMadeFlesh Yeah, but what’s God gonna judge you by at the end of the world?

@PacificToast This sort of issue doesn’t lend itself well to discussion. You have strong beliefs, and we don’t share them. That’s what makes horse-races. I hope you spend eternity at the right hand of the Father. I expect to spend eternity dead and senseless.

@dpworkin I know all of this, I’m just trying to save face right now by not ending the “discussion” first. u_u

@PacificToast That is precisely the reason that judgement from some omniscient being is hard for me to accept. I believe that it is impossible to form an absolute stance on whether a person is ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in the majority of cases. For example, people with Tourette’s Syndrome cannot help swearing at or hitting people they love. There are theories that propose a genetic basis for a predisposition to violence, such as Brunner Syndrome. Would a god subject someone to eternal torture because of a genetic abnormality? What about someone who witnessed the atrocities of others, and became desensitised? Too much is dependent on heredity and circumstance to attribute a particular action to a person’s self.

I personally believe that all things are relative. Many people hold the Reformers as a shining light amongst the barbarity of the world at large, but then Calvin burned Michel Servetus at the stake. It was an accepted practice at the time, but we still think of Calvin as being an influence for good because he helped break the stranglehold of the Catholic Church. Stalin was unquestionably evil in many of the things he did, but the Allies still looked to him for support against Hitler, and in providing some measure of support he did more good than some of us ever will.

So what is God going to judge me by at the end of the world? I’m not sure any such judgement could be passed, even by an omniscient being. Some people on Fluther believe that the concept of choice is an illusion. What conceivable line of judgement could be pursued, that would grant some people their wildest dreams, and others their worst nightmare? I would like to believe that in our modern, civilised world, people would reject such black and white divisions out of hand.

@FireMadeFlesh Of course God wouldn’t condemn people for genetic abnormality! Hate the sin not the sinner. Calvin was not perfect. No one was/is/will be. Billy Graham isn’t perfect either. You are not judged by your actions. I don’t mind if you don’t share my beliefs, but I believe them nevertheless.

@PacificToast Please do not mistake my intentions. You seem like a good person, and I am just interested to find out what you believe and how it compares to what I believe. There are certain belief systems that I find offensive and harmful, but yours does not appear to be one of them.

I agree that we should “hate the sin and not the sinner” (I use that as a colloquial phrase, I do not actually believe in sin), but isn’t it the ‘sinner’ that is judged and sentenced? By what terms are they judged? I also agree that no one is perfect, but only because perfection is in the eye of the beholder, and since people are so incredibly diverse perfection doesn’t really exist either.

If you are not judged by your actions, what do you believe people are judged by? It seems you believe that we are judged by the content of the soul correct me if I am wrong, but don’t our actions often reflect our deepest beliefs? If, as many Christians believe, we are judged on whether or not we accept Jesus, does that mean I am going to burn for being an atheist even though I have no serious errors to my name? I would really like to hear your thoughts on this.

@FireMadeFlesh
My point was, I don’t think science will ever be able to verify the existence or non existence of the ‘soul’, but claiming that it doesn’t and ridiculing people who think it does because it hasn’t been scientificaly verified or discounted is ignorant.

Also, why is it that society has to wait for the scientific community to come up with an explanation? science can be just as dogmatic and religeous as any other belief. Just because the ‘scientific method’ says it can’t be varified, doesn’t nesessarily mean it can’t be varified.

There are two schools of thought. One prefers empirical evidence, the other believes whatever it feels like believing, and whines when others don’t just buy in. Also verified is spelled with an “e”, not an “a”. Unless, of course, you have faith that it’s an “a”.

Pick Picky Picky! ;-p
You wear almost funnie then.

That would be “funny.”

@Pazza That depends. Some interpretations of the term have been conclusively proven wrong, while others are still beyond the scope of science. Society does not have to wait for the scientific community to come up with an explanation; philosophers regularly make claims that are not yet and may never be verified by science. The difference between philosophers and the imaginings of religions is that philosophers use reason to support their ideas. I don’t care what you use to support your ideas, as long as they are supported in a manner consistent with the principles of reason.

@FireMadeFlesh I second @Pazza, just because science doesn’t say so, doesn’t mean it isn’t so. You’re actions come from your beliefs “you will know them by their fruit”. Fruit being actions. Good fruit does not come from a good tree and thus, I don’t know your fate.

@PacificToast I think we’ve just come full circle to being judged by our actions, no?

If you read my response to Pazza, you will see that I never stated that science has all the answers. I would just like some sort of support that follows a logical sequence of reasoning, no matter which field you draw your resources from.

@FireMadeFlesh It seems we have, I have read that response, and found you a rational person.

@PacificToast So then back to the original issue; considering the considerable evidence discrediting the classical dualist approach to the brain/mind relationship, why exactly do you believe that there is a soul?

Let me know if you want to switch this conversation to PMs. I would really like to know your thoughts on this. It has always been a viewpoint that has baffled me.

@FireMadeFlesh Sure we can continue this in PMs I shall convert to this immediately.

Keep all thoughts on here please!