Hello comrades. I was wondering... Do any of you guys believe in souls? Personally, I dont believe in God or souls. I assume the rest of you agree with me about Atheism. But, I am unsure about the souls thing. From what I can tell, people and animals, etc are just complicated formations of chemicals which hold themselves together and reproduce themselves through chemical reactions. Conscious thought is a side effect of developing better decision making to do things that will keep us together and keep us reproducing. That is my opinion. I would like to hear others, or if anyone agrees with me.
I don't subscribe to the Atheist philosophy (there is no God), but I do favor Agnosticism (God either does not exist or is unknowable. At either rate, it's not worth worrying about). While, traditionally, Agnosticism takes the point of view of "I don't know, there's no way to know, so why worry about it?" I am inclined to take into account the approximate probability whether something can be true. It's easy, as most Agnostics would, to say: "I have no reason to believe one way or the other in the existence of the soul." However, the probability with all that we have learned and theorized about universe--in the macrocosm and the microcosm--through sciences such as biology and physics, including the burgeoning field of string theory, I'd venture to say that in all probability the Soul is just a function of primitive conjecture and superstition.
I agree, that our minds are likely the coincidental side-effect, and not the purpose, of brain physiology. I do, however, concede that I don't know the truth and my assumption could be entirely wrong.
I regard the "soul" as the "information content of the brain." Inasmuch as a human being is a physical system it has rules of operation which could be emulated, and encoded information which we have learned (presumably by growing processes, changing the behavior of synapses, or whatever). If you were to set up a duplicate system with the same rules and the same encoded information it would be "you," even if the original "you" was walking around somewhere.
I'd regard this collection of information my "soul." Not me per se, but the hard(wet)ware specification and software pack which would produce me when you run it.
There are some futurists betting on implementing just this sort of thing as a step to immortality, but one problem is that so far the only physical way anybody can envision to collect the data is to start by killing the original you.
OTOH if the Universe is coded at a high level of abstraction we may all be simply object-oriented data structures of Type Mammal.Human which can be conveniently copied and emulated in out-of-body context. That would have a lot of implications for metaphysics, but the system might also be riddled with sanity checks meant to keep us from hacking it.
I don't subscribe to the Atheist philosophy (there is no God), but I do favor Agnosticism (God either does not exist or is unknowable. At either rate, it's not worth worrying about).
Whenever I see someone say that I have to ask, Are you agnostic about werewolves and Mother Goose too?
I regard the "soul" as the "information content of the brain." Inasmuch as a human being is a physical system it has rules of operation which could be emulated, and encoded information which we have learned (presumably by growing processes, changing the behavior of synapses, or whatever). If you were to set up a duplicate system with the same rules and the same encoded information it would be "you," even if the original "you" was walking around somewhere.
That is a perfectly valid interpretation of the word, but I don't think it should be confused with what most people mean when they say "soul".
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There are some futurists betting on implementing just this sort of thing as a step to immortality, but one problem is that so far the only physical way anybody can envision to collect the data is to start by killing the original you.
I don't think that is entirely true, I remember reading about non-destructive scanning techniques at least a decade ago. The main problem with uploading from my perspective is that if it works then I will have a copy in a computer medium (which is good), but I will still be here in physical space and the copy and I will quickly diverge into different minds. It is not a way to immortality.
I am, more or less, agnostic about everything, in that I admit that there is insufficient data necessary to either confirm or deny most theological and mythical constructs, be it God or yeti. But like I said, being of an extremely scientific and therefore naturally skeptic mindset, I am compelled to take into account any evidence for or against a particular idea, and any evidence supporting its opposing ideas, then I approximate the probability of its truthfulness. There is no evidence supporting the existence of werewolves (or Mother Goose, for that matter), which is compounded by the fact that there is no evidence supporting the existence of any supernatural creature (at least no credible evidence), therefore there is a slim-to-none probability that they exist.
Truth is merely the approximation of probabilities. Incidently, this is very similar to Wave Function Theory.
"Of course, we all have at least two. One on each foot." - Hermit
*Preordination There was once a man who said, "Damn! At length I perceive what I am. Just a creature that moves, In predestined grooves, Not a bus, or a car, but a tram."
More usefully, I suspect that the idea of the soul being the sum of experience while self-aware (i.e. from sometime after about 8 months after birth, until death or senility) is a good (based in observation, highly defensible and not contradicting observation) model. The more pedestrian meaning is, I would suggest, based on the fact that we don't recall most of our early formative experiences and most people do not realize how utterly their genes determine their potential (and remarkably often, its realization or lack of it)*. They look at themselves (particularly as they become aware of their own mortality at somewhere between 6 and 10 years old) from when they first recall, and do not see a state (mythical though the the genetic impetus would make this) of tabula rasa, and so assume that their time-line of experience transcends their birth in order to explain themselves. A similar phenomena, triggered by the experience (or at least awareness) of loss of a personality through death, leads the ever optimistic Joe to project existence past the grave.
On Agnostics
Lucifer is, I suspect, entirely correct.
A - without Gnosis - intuitive knowledge of spiritual truths (as claimed by the gnostics).
Here is the unarguable "horse's mouth" (Huxley coined the word) Quote:
...it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny, and repudiate as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence."
["Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays", Thomas Henry Huxley 1889, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992, p. 193.]
So an agnostic, asserts that the nature or attributes of the gods is unknowable except through the intuition. This of course, has as the corollary, as Huxley (as a Deist) most certainly meant, the proposition that gods exist in some shape, form and quantity, albeit "necessarily" objectively unknown** (and sometimes meant as an assertion that these attributes are unknowable) to the agnostic (and sometimes meaning to everyone).
A - without Theism - belief in gods.
So an atheist is merely somebody without belief in gods; and although some atheists (strong atheists) will make the assertion that there are no gods (I have never met one), most atheists, including weak atheists (those atheists who accept that there may be some gods somewhere that we have not yet looked), will deny the existence of particular self- or nature-contradicting gods.
So as you can see, most people who imagine themselves to be agnostics are really "weak atheists", but have been well trained in identifying themselves with the wrong word by a society which tends to consider atheists, nasty, dangerous and imoral. However, despite this widespread abuse, the meaning of the words (as defined by current dictionaries and encyclopedias) has certainly not changed. So, an agnostic, unless he vests belief in gods despite the lack of objective evidence, is neccessarily an atheist. The reverse is equally definitely not the case.
For more, I append and reference earlier discussions on the CoV on this issue.
[Hermit] An Atheist is simply somebody who places no <i>belief<i> in gods. Any gods. This applies to all atheists. If you vest belief in gods, any gods, you are not an atheist.
[Hermit] Atheists come in two principle flavors each having multiple subtly different sub-classes which I will ignore. There are, I am told, "Strong atheists" (I have never met one) who assert, without evidence, that there are no "gods"; and "weak atheists" who acknowledge that there may be "gods" but that it is not worth believing in them.
[Hermit] There are also certain atheists, myself amongst them, that combine these two positions. For example, I assert that the ridiculous and vicious Christian gods cannot exist except in the diseased minds of their followers (innumerable internal and external contradictions) but that there may be some creatures somewhere in the Universe that I might call "gods" if I knew about them. This does not affect my atheism, as I do not consider investing anything (let alone something as pernicious as "belief") in some hypothetical, undefined possibility. I use the singular, as, in our experience, the only way there could be a singular god would be if it were nasty enough to have killed the rest of its own kind - which wouldn't be deserving of acknowledgement, never mind inviting them to tea or anything more personal.
[Hermit] I once described it like this: Quote:
[Hermit 3.2] On the one hand we have "god-thingies as defined by the religious", in other words specific gods with specific attributes and generally speaking, easy refutation due to the "impossible" nature of the assigned attributes (through internal or external contradiction). On the other hand, there is the general class of god-thingies without assigned attributes which are impossible to refute, and in fact not worth refuting as the proponents of the idea of such god-thingies cannot provide any evidence for the necessity of such god-thingies and in fact, generally speaking, the existence or non-existence of such god-thingies would not make a difference to the mankind. Finally we have the idea of god-thingies, which while it definitely exists, has no positive effect on humans.
[Hermit] Most so called agnostics are simply confused. Some people do call themselves agnostics as they prefer to think of themselves as 'not being as nasty' as the common portrayal of atheists as child-murderers and cannibals. But the term agnosticism was invented by Thomas Huxley, so it seems fair to let himself define it. [supra]
[Hermit] So unless an agnostic believes (that word again) that there are reasons to "believe" in gods, without evidence for those gods (which would be even more ludicrous than the typical bible wielding believer's faith), the agnostic is simply an atheist, wearing a label permitting him to socialize with the vicar (and vice versa).
[Hermit] For myself, when I see a turd ("belief") floating in the teapot, I prefer to avoid joining the party no matter who labels it as something else.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
That is a perfectly valid interpretation of the word, but I don't think it should be confused with what most people mean when they say "soul".
While most people wouldn't use information theory I think if you got them to describe exactly what a soul is and what it does in lay terms, you'd find they are describing exactly what I did, just less exactly.
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I remember reading about non-destructive scanning techniques at least a decade ago.
I don't think you can get the resolution required with non-destructive radiation, unless you posit some wholly unsuspected new physical process.
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The main problem with uploading from my perspective is that if it works then I will have a copy in a computer medium (which is good), but I will still be here in physical space and the copy and I will quickly diverge into different minds. It is not a way to immortality.
I'd have to agree with this. John Varley did a really good SFnal treatment of the whole idea in The Ophiuchi Hotline.
So an agnostic, asserts that the nature or attributes of the gods is unknowable except through the intuition. This of course, has as the corollary, as Huxley (as a Deist) most certainly meant, the proposition that gods exist in some shape, form and quantity, albeit "necessarily" objectively unknown** (and sometimes meant as an assertion that these attributes are unknowable) to the agnostic (and sometimes meaning to everyone). .
So as you can see, most people who imagine themselves to be agnostics are really "weak atheists", but have been well trained in identifying themselves with the wrong word by a society which tends to consider atheists, nasty, dangerous and imoral. However, despite this widespread abuse, the meaning of the words (as defined by current dictionaries and encyclopedias) has certainly not changed. So, an agnostic, unless he vests belief in gods despite the lack of objective evidence, is neccessarily an atheist. The reverse is equally definitely not the case.
The above given interpretation is incorrect. Concerning God, Agnosticism holds that IF God exists, "he" can only be known by making himself known. In which case, for the Agnostic, he is as of yet unknowable (because we haven't heard anything from him), or just doesn't exist. Either way there is no point in even considering the nature of God, because he either doesn't want us to know or just isn't there. Juxtapose this with atheism, which asserts that there is no God. This belief is contrary to agnoticism, since it would require the whole of knowledge in the universe to be certain, which certainly no man has.
Back to the topic of the soul, let us not get into the habit of redifining terms to suit our purposes. The soul is a religious, supernatural, ethereal construct. If we find that it is possible to copy the mind (whatever that may mean), to deem that copy to be "the soul" reeks of romanticism. Such practices are the residual effects of years of Judeo-Christian programming in our culture. Science is about progress (ideally), not hanging onto outdated ideas. Being admittedly more disposed to scientifically-based skepticism than agnoticism, I find our susceptibility to such dogma to be repulsive, and would prefer to delete religious jargon from our language.
I based my post on Encyclopedia Brittanica (previous responses on this topic), The Oxford English Dictionary (same), and for this response, a refresher from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and wordsmyth.net.
1. one who believes it is impossible to know anything about the existence of God or the essential nature of anything.
. Notice that a "belief" about the nature of "God" or "the essential nature of anything" is a prerequisite to holding an agnostic position. Just as it was when Huxley coined the word. I am not quite sure upon what "objective" basis you are asserting such a belief may be founded, or why "belief" would be required if "objective evidence" compelled acceptence. This is exactly the point Huxley was making when he coined the word - that there is no "objective" basis for evaluating a super-dooper god-idea. Now you might argue that every dictionary I consulted is wrong, and that when I say you are using the word incorrectly, that I am wrong about that too; but don't you think that just perhaps, tossing the dictionary out of the window and redefining the meanings of words on the fly might just possibly interfere with the ability to communicate? After all, even Humpty-Dumpty chose to define new words, rather than simply serving up new interpretations for old ones (like some Wiccan lamp seller <grin>)?
A brief trip to the library will give you the Encyclopedia Brittanica's lengthy piece on agnosticism as an instantiation of weak atheism. But, perhaps, even if I am not deemed an acceptable source, and my dictionaries flawed, you can save yourself the trouble of a library visit, as the references cited below may suffice to convince you. Note in particular the passage I have highlighted. Huxley held, as I said previously, "He defined an agnostic as someone who disclaimed both ("strong") atheism and theism, and who believed that the question of whether a higher power existed was unsolved and insoluble." (and I would add), because of the "necessary limits of the human mind." Huxley's god (similar to all gods, I would argue and he would disagree) "passed all understanding."
So you might care to save yourself further embarrassment by reading the following two brief excerpts and possibly visiting the linked references. [ RE: virus: sophomoric atheism (literalness issues), Reply #1, 1999-10-28 ] ...[T]he portrayal of an atheist as one who ***believes*** that there are no gods is a distortion, an incorrect definition and attribution, which is propagated by the religious community. The fact that an error is widely held (including by myself for a time :-) ), does not make it less of an error unless the definition itself changes. Which it has not. The redefinition makes it much simpler to argue against atheism. Which is why it is a strawman. The straw man fallacy originates when you misrepresent someone else's position so that it can be attacked more easily, knock down that misrepresented position, then conclude that the original position has been demolished. It's a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made. Let us put the argument into the form of a proposition: "To be an atheist, you have to believe with absolute certainty that there is no God. In order to convince yourself with absolute certainty, you must examine all the Universe and all the places where God could possibly be. Since you obviously haven't, your position is indefensible." The above straw man argument appears about once a week on the net. If, given the definition of atheism, you can't see what's wrong with it, read the "Introduction to Atheism" document at http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html. [Hermit 2] Essentially atheism argues that until some evidence for the existence of gods, other than in diseased minds, comes to light, we should take the position of discarding them.
Atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods. This absence of belief generally comes about either through deliberate choice, or from an inherent inability to believe religious teachings which seem literally incredible. It is not a lack of belief born out of simple ignorance of religious teachings.
Some atheists go beyond a mere absence of belief in gods: they actively believe that particular gods, or all gods, do not exist. Lacking belief in Gods is often referred to as the "weak atheist" position. Believing that gods do not (or cannot) exist is known as "strong atheism". ... It is important, however, to note the difference between the strong and weak atheist positions. "Weak atheism" is simple skepticism; disbelief in the existence of God. "Strong atheism" is a positive belief that God does not exist. Please do not fall into the trap of assuming that all atheists are "strong atheists". There is a qualitative difference in the "strong" and "weak" positions; it's not just a matter of degree.
Some atheists believe in the non-existence of all Gods; others limit their atheism to specific Gods, such as the Christian God, rather than making flat-out denials.
The term 'agnosticism' was coined by Professor T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. He defined an agnostic as someone who disclaimed both ("strong") atheism and theism, and who believed that the question of whether a higher power existed was unsolved and insoluble. Another way of putting it is that an agnostic is someone who believes that we do not and cannot know for sure whether God exists.
They also have a caveat which speaks to the confusion I attempted to address:
Beware of assuming that you can work out someone's philosophical point of view simply from the fact that she calls herself an atheist or an agnostic. For example, many people use agnosticism to mean what is referred to here as "weak atheism", and use the word "atheism" only when referring to "strong atheism".
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
[boygoboom] Back to the topic of the soul, let us not get into the habit of redifining terms to suit our purposes.
[Hermit] Err, is "agnostic" a term?
[Hermit] But in this case, I think that from a scientific perspective, the word "soul" can only be either meaningless, or the perception of self against space-time Let's see.
[boygoboom] The soul is a religious, supernatural, ethereal construct.
[Hermit] Religious has no weight, it is a feeling generated by the electrochemical jelly we use to do our thinking with. (Refer e.g. The God Module)
[Hermit] Supernatural has no weight either. For if the "supernatural" were to become objective, it would be something much more serious, weighty even, it would be natural.
[Hermit] Ethereal. Now there is an appropriately chosen word, again of little weight. "extremely light, airy, and delicate; insubstantial."
[Hermit] So rephrasing the identity you established above, "The soul" = "nothing."
[Hermit] Is that true? I don't think so. I think that when I read the words of poets and playwrights, that when they say "soul", I know of exactly what they speak. That which is almost unique about man, shared with few animals we share our genes with. A sense of self, of context, of time and of empathy. While we can certainly say that all any human is, is encapsulated in a few hundred grams of not terribly good biological computer in a not particularly useful body, that is certainly by no means all that is human. Like any general purpose system, we are (almost; in our experience) unique, because of our Wetware - how we use our brains, and how we develop our brains. Which comes right back to the definition you don't seem to like very much.
[Hermit] So let me offer you a dichotomy (hopefully not false). Is the "soul" of the poets indeed "nothing" - as you offered, or is it what makes each of us unique and precious - at least if we were not born in Iraq. And if the latter, then when we can capture it (and I think the day will be here before all of those now in the CoV are dead), then what have we captured?
[boygoboom] If we find that it is possible to copy the mind (whatever that may mean), to deem that copy to be "the soul" reeks of romanticism.
[Hermit] We are romantic. It is part of the joy of being human and of being alive. Even so, this need not be romantic at all. Think on it. Are you saying that a molecule-by-molecule, charge-by-charge "copy" of a human will not capture the "soul"? If that is the case, are you saying that it does not exist at all? In which case, what is that "essence" that we mean when we speak of the "soul"? Is not the soul "the central or vital part of something"? Once a person is "digitized", their "wetware" captured, is not the complete person - including the "central or vital part" captured?
[boygoboom] Such practices are the residual effects of years of Judeo-Christian programming in our culture.
[Hermit] This is nonsense. Aristotle spoke of the soul. At great length. And that was way before the mythical Christ was invented - and long before Judaism troubled much of the world. And made much more sense than most people who have followed him. Refer e.g. Aristotle, On the Soul, 350 BCE. The idea of the soul is common not only in Theistic cultures, but in many Deistic and atheistic cultures. My partner had heard of the Judeo-Christian mythos only vaguely, as nonsensical myths, carrying diseased lessons for inferior cultures, before she arrived in the US. Yet she talks of the "soul" - meaning exactly what I do - or Socrates did. As the essence of being.
[boygoboom] Science is about progress (ideally), not hanging onto outdated ideas.
[Hermit] Science is not about denying evidence. The evidence is quite clear that we see that spark of self-awareness suspended in spacetime that is ourselves as being more than just a blue-screened biological computer without any software loaded onto it. All the evidence we have points to the fact that each of us carries programs - some important, some trivial, and that those programs are (largely) unique precisely because we have enough chromosomes with enough variance not express duplicates very often if at all, and also because of the number of learning events we experience. And to call that Wetware package other than the soul will make an awful lot of poetry seem less comprehensible than even Chaucer (in the original Middle English) to the average modern reader.
[boygoboom] Being admittedly more disposed to scientifically-based skepticism than agnoticism, I find our susceptibility to such dogma to be repulsive, and would prefer to delete religious jargon from our language.
[Hermit] But as I have, I hope, shown, it is part of man. Scientifically based evidence says it is there. It exists. The soul is certainly not "nothing." And just because the Judeo-Christians appropriated the idea (as they did everything else they could reach), doesn't mean that it has no validity.
Soul and Body POOR Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Foil'd by those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more:—
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men; And death once dead, there's no more dying then.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
[Hermit] Is that true? I don't think so. I think that when I read the words of poets and playwrights, that when they say "soul", I know of exactly what they speak. That which is almost unique about man, shared with few animals we share our genes with. A sense of self, of context, of time and of empathy. While we can certainly say that all any human is, is encapsulated in a few hundred grams of not terribly good biological computer in a not particularly useful body, that is certainly by no means all that is human. Like any general purpose system, we are (almost; in our experience) unique, because of our Wetware - how we use our brains, and how we develop our brains. Which comes right back to the definition you don't seem to like very much.
I defer to what Lucifer said earlier: "That is a perfectly valid interpretation of the word, but I don't think it should be confused with what most people mean when they say 'soul'."
When poets and playwrights refer to the soul, in the ways you describe, they almost definitely mean it in some religiously defined sense of the word. I think most of the problems in the world stem from the fact that people believe that they are special, or that there is specialness in uniqueness, or that "life" or the fact that we live is something special. *Perhaps* life is not special, but merely something that happened as a result of the random evolution of the universe. There is no reason, besides our egos, to believe that "That which is almost unique about man," whatever it is that makes us sentient, is anything special at all, but merely a side effect of physics.
[boygoboom] The soul is a religious, supernatural, ethereal construct.
[Hermit] Religious has no weight, it is a feeling generated by the electrochemical jelly we use to do our thinking with. (Refer e.g. The God Module)
[Hermit] Supernatural has no weight either. For if the "supernatural" were to become objective, it would be something much more serious, weighty even, it would be natural.
[Hermit] Ethereal. Now there is an appropriately chosen word, again of little weight. "extremely light, airy, and delicate; insubstantial."
I agree for the most part, and point out that the word "soul" has no weight. Like the word "love," "soul" has come to mean so many things, its interpretation is almost entirely subjective.
[Hermit] We are romantic. It is part of the joy of being human and of being alive.
Justify romanticism with romanticism. Our romanticism usually results in ridiculousness, like dying for your country and lifelong commitments. There is pleasure beyond the romantic.
Even so, this need not be romantic at all. Think on it. Are you saying that a molecule-by-molecule, charge-by-charge "copy" of a human will not capture the "soul"? If that is the case, are you saying that it does not exist at all? In which case, what is that "essence" that we mean when we speak of the "soul"? Is not the soul "the central or vital part of something"? Once a person is "digitized", their "wetware" captured, is not the complete person - including the "central or vital part" captured?
No, a molecule-by-molecule, charge-by-charge "copy" of a human will not capture the "soul," unless you redefine the soul as being such a thing, our "wetware." The word "soul" is a religious construct, having been created within religion, and per religious definition, was given to us by God (at least in Judeo-Christian and Islamic ideologies). To use the word in the sense you have is to redefine it, which has been done by many a poet and playwright.
[boygoboom] Such practices are the residual effects of years of Judeo-Christian programming in our culture.
[Hermit] This is nonsense. Aristotle spoke of the soul. And that was way before the mythical Christ was invented - and long before Judaism troubled much of the world. The idea of the soul is common not only in Theistic cultures, but in many Deistic and atheistic cultures. My partner had heard of the Judeo-Christian mythos only vaguely, as nonsensical myths, carrying diseased lessons for inferior cultures, before she arrived in the US. Yet she talks of the "soul" - meaning exactly what I do - or Socrates did. As the essence of being.
Ah, Aristotle, Plato's star pupil. Any student of philosophy (which I am minoring in) knows that Christianity began with Plato. Plato had more impact on Christianity than Judaism did. It is fact that Plato's writings directly impacted the development of the Western and many Eastern religions. It is highly likely that Plato's own ideas, like that of the soul (which was the first time that such an idea existed in Western culture), were the result of influence from Egyptian and the Hindu mythologies.
In fact, Aristotle's philosophies were used by St. Thomas Aquinas to justify Catholicism. Aquinas discovered a new translation of Aristotle from the Greek and set out to synthesize Aristotelian ideas in such a way that it was useful for defending The Church. John XXII said that to deny Aquinas was tantamount to heresy. Later, in 1879, Pope Leo XIII proclaimed that Thomist Aristotelian doctrine should be accepted as 'the official doctrine of the church'. To this day, to deny Thomist Aristotelian doctrine is tantamount to heresy, as declared by the Vatican. It is impossible to separate Platonism and Aristotelian philosophy from Christianity, and it is likely that they were influenced by other religions, so one can see how many of today's religions might hold similar ideas.
[boygoboom] Science is about progress (ideally), not hanging onto outdated ideas.
[Hermit] Science is not about denying evidence. The evidence is quite clear that we see that spark of self-awareness suspended in spacetime that is ourselves as being more than just a blue-screened biological computer without any software loaded onto it. All the evidence we have points to the fact that each of us carries programs - some important, some trivial, and that those programs are (largely) unique precisely because we have enough chromosomes with enough variance not express duplicates very often if at all, and also because of the number of learning events we experience. And to call that Wetware package other than the soul will make an awful lot of poetry seem less comprehensible than even Chaucer (in the original Middle English) to the average modern reader.
[boygoboom] Being admittedly more disposed to scientifically-based skepticism than agnoticism, I find our susceptibility to such dogma to be repulsive, and would prefer to delete religious jargon from our language.
[Hermit] But as I have, I hope, shown, it is part of man. Scientifically based evidence says it is there. It exists. The soul is certainly not "nothing." And just because the Judeo-Christians appropriated the idea (as they did everything else they could reach), doesn't mean that it has no validity.
I agree that calling "that Wetware package" anything other than "soul" will confuse a lot of people, but we can't restrict ourselves to the dogma of others. How many people would be confused by this simple conversation. I think we're getting into a debate about semantics here, which is pointless. I guess my point is that the word "soul" is a religious one, at least in most cultures, and most people (like scientists) tend to redefine it for their purposes. This makes what they're really trying to say unclear. I think it is perfectly valid for you to call whatever it is that makes you who you are the "soul," even if you are referring to things based in science and not mysticism. I actually prefer the term "Wetware," and feel (being an IT professional) that it is more intuitive and less dogmatic.
As an opinion, I would suggest that Aristotle surpassed his master by far. I'd go further and suggest that the Egyptians and Indus people were far too "nice" to have had much to do with Christianity as it evolved, even if the Christians stole the gnostics "Christ" (Horus/Osiris), the Hindu Krishna as well as the Buddha and a slew of others in constructing their simulcrum. But I don't think that you give the (very) unpleasant Semites their full due. The nastiness of the JudeoChristian gods and that of the Jewish gods are all of a piece - and it took the bitterness of the "Liar", the Aramaic Saul/Paul to polish its edges into fiendishly competent wickedry on the shards of Rome.
But that is a side issue to why I replied, buried though I am in the depths of a different problem entirely. A small point of fact, relating to "It is highly likely that Plato's own ideas, like that of the soul (which was the first time that such an idea existed in Western culture), were the result of influence from Egyptian and the Hindu mythologies."
I'd suggest that many people had discussed the "soul" prior to Plato. Indeed, I suggest that it dates back into prehistory, and probably beyond. Consider the earliest discovered burial sites where artifacts accompanied the corpse (c180k BCE) - or around 60k to 110k years before we think we began to speak. If these creatures had not envisaged a "soul", what would the point have been of equipping bodies with (very expensive) goods for the afterlife? But for the purpose of the discussion, somebody prior to Plato is all that is required. And there, Aristotle provides us the needed answer (I previously referenced this, Aristotle, On the Soul, 350 BCE in an edit to the post wherein you replied and which you might like to skim again). Anyhow, from: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.1.i.html - Part 2 et ff:
For our study of soul it is necessary, while formulating the problems of which in our further advance we are to find the solutions, to call into council the views of those of our predecessors who have declared any opinion on this subject, in order that we may profit by whatever is sound in their suggestions and avoid their errors.
and he goes on to mention many historical (to him) figures, many of whom predate Plato, and most of whom reached the same conclusions as I suggested on the "nature of the soul" as mind or knowledge/experience. e.g.
"Similarly also Anaxagoras (and whoever agrees with him in saying that mind set the whole in movement) declares the moving cause of things to be soul. His position must, however, be distinguished from that of Democritus. Democritus roundly identifies soul and mind, for he identifies what appears with what is true." etc.
And in III.8 et ff "Let us now summarize our results about soul, and repeat that the soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible: in what way we must inquire.
Knowledge and sensation are divided to correspond with the realities, potential knowledge and sensation answering to potentialities, actual knowledge and sensation to actualities. Within the soul the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially these objects, the one what is knowable, the other what is sensible."
I don't think that this smacks of a religious perspective. Do you? As for your suggestion of "guilt through association", he was dead long before others started manipulating his words, so I don't think it fair to blame him for that.
I suspect that you will find the entire work (not long) fascinating, particularly in the breadth of his integration of fact and in the advanced views of the world which he offers. In all of this work, Aristotle attempted, not always successfully, to focus on the empirical, and in my opinion, it was Socrates, not Aristotle, who comes across (through Plato of course (see esp the Dialogues of Plato, Phaedo, so "it ain't necessarily so") as propounding a Platonic perspective whch most Christians would recognize, e.g. I suppose that we shall attain that which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom, not while we live, but after death, as the argument shows; for if while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow - either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be in herself alone and without the body. In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us.
And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure and hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no impure thing is allowed to approach the pure. There are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true lovers of wisdom cannot help saying to one another, and thinking. You will agree with me in that?
I'm fairly sure that we can both agree to disagree with Socrates, at least on that count.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Socrates... I usually say Plato-crates, since there is no record outside of Plato's writings to verify he ever existed, which is why I didn't refer to him. Agreed, there were references to the soul prior to Plato, but it was Plato (or the alleged Socrates) that first brought it into popular culture. Before Plato, Greece was still a Homeric culture. And it was Plato's version, and even more Aristotle's version, that so influenced (and damn near defined entirely) Western religion. What they referred to was not actually the soul, but something that would be bastardized upon translation into Christianity.
Again I say this is about semantics. My problem is with using the Christian word, not necessarily with the concept.
While most people wouldn't use information theory I think if you got them to describe exactly what a soul is and what it does in lay terms, you'd find they are describing exactly what I did, just less exactly.
Most people that use the word would say a soul is that part of a human that exists before birth and after death. Those that believe in reincarnation would say that one soul could be part of two completely different humans or even part of one or more animals. Does that still agree with the way you defined it?
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