Do you believe in a human soul/spirit as a separate entity from the brain?

Changes to the physical makeup of the brain can also alter your personality in a very drastic way.
There was this case of this one man, who was a violent thug. Then he had a stroke and it basically turned him into a polite, tame, docile kitten.
That is clear cut evidence that the “soul” is in no way separate from the brain.

Thinking that the brain is different from the soul is a function of the way the brain works. It is the same mechanism by which children have imaginary friends. That is also why, while typing this, I feel that I am having a dialog with myself.

The brain is a first class modeling software. Everything you see and hear and think is done indirectly by your brain building a model of information it recieves from you eyes, ears, nose, and through touch.

So in essence, you have a soul that was built by your brain. As a reslut, when you brain quits working so does your soul.

There is no evidence one way or the other for a soul. It could be that a soul simply uses the brain’s functions to animate the body.

No.

No.

I believe they are separate, but not because of any particular scientific evidence that they are. I just believe they are. I believe that after my brain stops working and I die, my soul will move on. I’m not sure where it will go or what will happen, but I believe something happens.

@ragingloli & @Ron_C Great answers. Thanks.

@marinelife My approach is to always keep an open mind but to not believe in things in the absence of any good evidence they exist.

@tinyfaery & @Simone_De_Beauvoir Thanksl.

@Seaofclouds I personally hope you are right. I doubt it, but would welcome the surprise of waking up shortly after death to discover I still exist in some form.

“I [...] would welcome the surprise of waking up shortly after death to discover I still exist in some form.”
Not if you wake up set on fire and being poked by a demon with a glowing hot trident.

@ragingloli I could accept the possibility that we can find another existence after death, I can’t, possibly believe in a god that would punish you for eternity for thinking the wrong thoughts. Eternal damnation is an invention of the self-righteous, not of a god.

@Ron_C Same here. I;m a loving parent. That is NOT how I would treat my children, no matter how rebellious they got. I know, because my daughter was a very rebellious teen with bipolar disorder to boot. That never stopped me from loving her and wanting the best for her.

BTW, if you find this earlier question interesting, feel free to join the earlier discussion on dualism and when animals become intelligent enough to need/have a soul.

Nyet. Lo siento pero no hay alma.
Sayonara.

Nope. I didn’t before, and had a Philosophy class that crushed any last remaining doubt. One decent read was Perry’s “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality.” While it doesn’t seem to be available free online, here’s a summary.

I’m not even quite sure what you would define a soul or a spirit as, other than the essence of self. I suppose in that way it can very much be a soul, or whatever, but I’ve never heard any real satisfactory definition that didn’t go beyond a primal sense of association with the unknown and our need to depict it.
The brain is a very complicated thing and I know nothing of it, but I personally think that souls and spirits are the words we’ve given to emotional awareness, since the latter is very hard to conceive and comprehend.
I’m really just pulling this out of my ass though, I’d have to know a hell of a lot more about the human brain, as well as spirituality to give a well informed answer.

@laureth Thanks for a new entry on my reading list. I wonder if the hoi polloi will ever catch up with the explosion of knowledge.

@Symbeline Given what you are able to pull out of there, it sounds like you have a very interesting ass. :-)

I believe. Mainly because of past lives. I, personally, (without a head-shrinker telling me) remember a couple. I believe they are accurate because:

1. I ‘know’ things about the time periods that are only now being proven, and have ‘known’ of them for quite some time.

2. I have met people that I ‘knew’ back then. We recognized each other, and could, independently write out ‘memories’ of specific events, that we both knew, with no input from each other, and have them coincide closely enough to have been two friends remembering together.

3. I can use things I ‘learned’ back then, about myself, to help me in this time.

I believe we go around several times. I do not believe we eventually reach a ‘top’ of the chain, and can do no more, nor do I believe we improve each life we have. Each life is, from what I can tell, completely separate and independent of each other. There is no correlation between them.

I am not Christian. I am not truly religious at all. But the spirit is to me, what we are. And that comes back again and again. It explains deja vu, soul mates, instinctive knowledge, and prodigies. To me, at least.

No, I don’t believe there is any such “entity”. To me, the “spirit” refers to my will power and desires, not something separate from myself.

I submit that the brain is the sole carrier of identity. Your body may have some muscle memory from repeated tasks but the brain holds you memory, personality, thoughts and “soul”. Remember the Terry Schiavo tragedy?

She was taken off life support and her body lived even though her brain was mush and Conservative idiots claimed that they saw life in her body.

When you brain dies or is damaged you become “no person” or a different person. An undetectable soul shouldn’t be so fragile as to be changed by a trauma to the brain.

Therefore, the only soul you have is the one that you intellectually created—independent of supernatural origins.

The physical properties that effect me directly that exist outside of my brain are just as much a part of it as any anatomy. The things I help create in the world, the changes that last—those exist outside of my brain—they are my spirit and my immortality.

@zophu So said Khufu.

@ETpro And so Khufu is now a rock in the desert.

We still don’t know what consciousness is. The mind-body problem remains a problem. The term soul is not a scientific term while the term entity is. So your question mixes two different realms here.

@mattbrowne I disagree. THe root question is, “Do you believe…” In order to specify what it is about, I need a specific, quantifiable term. Entity suits that purpose.

@Keysha I found your past lives theory interesting but have my doubts. This must be my first life because I have never had any such experience.

@Ron_C I cannot say what anyone else does or does not believe. It is my personal belief, as well as that of a few people I have come in contact with. (3 to be exact). And I did not really believe, either, except that it was a good fantasy (I am creative with them), until meeting someone that I ‘knew’ back then. We connected immediately, and, over time, began talking. That was when I started checking into if what we ‘remembered’ could have any basis in reality. And they did.

No, I was not some princess or fine lady. In one I remember being a slave. Nothing glamorous.

@Keysha really, a slave. I am surprised that you would have that much detail. I have heard of people seeming to recognize places they have never visited or particular incidents but never specifics such as occupation or in your case captivity. Very interesting.

@Ron_C
Your lack of memory is easily explainable by buddhism. Most people living today were trees or animals in the past so of course they can not remember anything.

@Ron_C All it takes is a flash of me,starving, in tattered clothing, bronze chains on ankles, being tossed down contemptuously in front of a man. Slave.

could also be a violent murderer in a medieval prison.

@Keysha “All it takes is a flash of me,starving, in tattered clothing, bronze chains on ankles, being tossed down contemptuously in front of a” woman—I’ve had that dream but the hand cuffs were padded.

sorry, that was crude, I’m a pig.

I know I was a slight small woman or girl, so violent murderer is highly unlikely.

@Keysha OH!, that’s awful. I wouldn’t want to remember something like that. I am especially offended when children are harmed.

@Ron_C Trust me. That was better than the flash I had of another life, and no, I am not posting it. That flash is not only NSFW, but not safe for kids, or weak-stomached adults, either.

@ETpro Yeeah…my ass rocks.

@Symbeline Ha! I am sure it does. :-)

@Keysha I wouldn’t ask you to post things like that. Sorry.

IMHO the soul is the combination of the body with the spirit and when the body dies the spirit goes on but the soul is separate and will return on a resurrection. The body and brain is a function of a physical world in which we are a part of. But there is also a spiritual world that our spiritual self is a part of. I accept this because I have passed before and experienced it. I have also communicated to a couple of people that have passed after they were gone.

No

@JustmeAman & @YARNLADY Thanks. I’m not going to argue it one way or the other. Just want to know what others think.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html here is one of many reports of an individual recieving a catscan that reveals hardly any grey brain matter yet he functions almost perfectly normal. This is by no means an argument for a soul but if i may attempt to stretch your perceptions just a bit to allow for more possibilities without so much rigidity. Who says consciousness is limited to brain matter? have you ever felt a gut instinct about something? having you ever felt a heart wrenching sensation in your chest? who says YOU are centrally located in the brain? true enough it is a central processing station to the organic human machine but does that mean as a matter of fact that is where consciousness solely arises? The studies of Dr Rupert Sheldrake reveal very strong cases that there are actual morphogenic fields that appear as a blueprint in all life forms. fields that may be in place before that life form is fully grown. we know the human body has a biomagnetic field as does the body of the planet. who is to say the planet isnt a conscious being and its soul is what we call the atmosphere? if consciousness can be sustained without full brain matter then who is to say consciousness cannot be sustained without the physical body altogether? Just some food for thought.

@jborsheim I did see that story. Thanks for posting a link to it. When we consider how smart crows and parrots are, compared to their brain mass, I am not at all surprised by this man’s story. I don’t see that as convincing evidence that something other than brain is involved in intelligence though.

Your point of the locus of the “I“ness of man is an interesting one. Jellyfish have no brain, and yet they act in a aware manner. They have rudimentary eyes. In fact, box jellies are unique in that they have 32 fully formed eyes with lenses, and corneas. Different sets of box jellyfish eyes are sensitive to different wavelengths of light, so they can see in 360 degrees and in wavelengths well outside our visual range. And with no brain, their network of neurons makes sense of what they see, so they avoid obstacles and pursue prey. Neat animals, but never, never let one sting you. They are likely the most venomous animals on earth.

I digress, but the point is if jellyfish with no brains can see and decide which way to go, it makes perfect sense that out intelligence might be distributed throughout our entire neural network, and that indeed the brain is like a CPU with lots of distributed processing centers connected to it. To tell the truth, I have no innate sense of where the locus of “me” resides in my body. Definitely not in my hair, or nails though, because cutting them has no effect on it.

@ETpro “Definitely not in my hair, or nails though, because cutting them has no effect on it.” But it does seem to have a massive effect on neonazi skinheads’ intelligence

If you practice some basic awareness techniques such as putting your hand out infront of you and observing from a third person perspective, observing your own consciousness observing itself it can kind of trip you out because you start to see the automation of the brain and your consciousness begins to expand beyond its limits. I don’t believe this is proof of the soul I actually believe enough excercises of this nature will create a soul. No different than lifting weights to develop muscle mass, who is to say consciousness should be any different? who is to say a soul is a given?

Despite all the new age thinkers to maintain that consciousness cannot come to an end and is eternal, everytime we go to sleep at night we reduce our consciousness down to nothing. All things in nature struggle, through mass production few survive weather its sea turtles making it to the water off the shore or sperm cells making it to the egg. Very few people actually self reflect. They automate through life, eat sleep shit fuck repeat. procreate the species. Never questioning there own existence. I do believe one can attain higher states of consciousness and develop an energy body or soul. Through dilligent self inquiry. all religions before becoming watered down religions at one point taught meditation and self inquiry.

@ragingloli I guess the skinheads are just mental Samsons. :-)

@jborsheim is it a coincidence that the man is a civil servant? I think not. I bet you could go through Congress and brain scans would show that this man’s problem is not that unusual.

I think I do.

I’m an atheist and a hard-nosed skeptic, not superstitious, not a believer in any supernatural phenomena of any kind.

But I think I believe in a soul in the same sort of way that I believe in Christmas: that is to say, it would be just another day (and for many people it is), but it becomes something more when we invest it with meaning.

So I have a notion of a soul that is sort of a selfness, transcendent in the sense that I don’t see it as located within any one organ, not even the brain, but somehow occupying our interior and radiating outward like an aura to fall within the range of others’ perception.

But I don’t regard this as an immortal entity at all. I think its existence is coterminous with that of our mortal, physical bodies.

Most of all—do you understand me when I say this?—the fact that I believe in it does not mean that I think it’s real: possessed of some independent, objective reality. I think my belief is a feeling that I choose to have and that does not call for proof or defense or rationalization. One puff could blow it away.

@Jeruba isn’t it possible that when an entity has enough processing power that it becomes self-aware. As far as we know, humans have the greatest integrated processing power of any animal on earth. It is possible that beings like elephants, dolphins, and whales have the processing power but not the integration. Therefore the “soul” would be the evolutionary leap that integrates the information processing centers in the brain.

@YARNLADY Human neural networks have special distributed processing and feedback loops capable of self programming. Our vast array of thsese is what gives us sentience. We are able to learn and form associations in ways no other animal on earth currently is capable of doing. I think that therein lies the appearance of a soul.

”We are able to learn and form associations in ways no other animal on earth currently is capable of doing.”
I do not think we have the data to support that kind of conclusion.
There are good animal candidates for that. Like Dolphins.

I do not think we have the data to support that kind of conclusion. There are good animal candidates for that. Like Dolphins.

Agreed. We don’t even know everything about every animal, nor have we even discovered every life form that exists, for starters.