Soul

[karo]

Can some one tell me what a soul is and were it is located?

[attilavolciak07]

It depends what variation you believe about it. I tend to believe in the Platonic soul which emphasizes the mind, emotion and desire. The mind is for logic. Emotion represents glory, bravery, and desire is when passion controls us and drives us to hedonism.

[Bovril]

Given that I believe in souls (this point is debatable) I think the soul is essentially that part of us that corresponds to our consciousness. It seems to me to be the case that all emotions, perceptions, thoughts and so on probably have biological/mechanistic corelates. However, a human being's experience of perceptions, sensations, etc. is not mechanistic.
Interestingly, not all nuerological processes have any effect on our consciousness. For example, keeping your heart beating is not something you are aware of doing, or even could hope to directly controll. However, it is a nuerologcal process. Other processes are more obviously controlled by your 'consciousness', for example posting on TWC (hopefully). Even processes you perceive can have effects you do not 'will', for example, if you see something lunging at you, you may involuntarily flinch. So, for me, the 'soul' is the experiential and willfull part of the self. It is the self that is actively aware of incoming stimuli, and that can will the body to do certain things.
This 'soul' is qualitatively different from anything else. Humans do not experience anything except what their soul experiences. They do all sorts of things with out any experience at all of having done so, from digesting food, to shooting electricity round their brain. All sorts of terms envoke parts of the 'soul'. 'The mind's eye', 'the stream of consciousness', 'sight', 'emotion' and so on are all names of things that are inconceivable without an experiencer, and this experiencer is the 'soul'.

In fact, it could be said that one's soul is the sum of one's reality. Hoever, this would take more explaining than would be worth it (probably).

[Cluny the Scourge]

A soul is a small, spherical object with the gelatinous consistency of toothpaste that has developed a dried outer crust from exposure to the air. It is linked with every part of your body via an intricate system of micro-filaments composed of mystical chi-energy - along which flow outwardly, your emotions, and inwardly, sins and good-works. It is located immediatedly below the lungs and behind the heart, and when you sneeze, that's because your soul has become over-excited by sin and is trying to escape from your wicked body through your trachea. Invoking God's power by saying "God bless you," forces it back in.

[Bovril]

Don't be absurd. The soul is connected to your pineal gland, as Descartes discoverd, like, ages ago.

[C-Rob]

Actually a soul is a sheep kidney painted blue.(I think that's the story when Hitler told his scientists to show him a soul) Really the soul is an intangible concept and has no physical form.

[roy34543]

A soul is a small, spherical object with the gelatinous consistency of toothpaste that has developed a dried outer crust from exposure to the air. It is linked with every part of your body via an intricate system of micro-filaments composed of mystical chi-energy - along which flow outwardly, your emotions, and inwardly, sins and good-works. It is located immediatedly below the lungs and behind the heart, and when you sneeze, that's because your soul has become over-excited by sin and is trying to escape from your wicked body through your trachea. Invoking God's power by saying "God bless you," forces it back in.

I believe that saying god bless you when you sneeze actually originated from the belief that if you were sneezing you died (and the person near the sneezer had to go away fast) .During the plagues this tended to be true i guess.

[Ummon]

The soul is essentially the pattern which unites your different brain activity states throughout life. It doesn't include consciousness nor self-awareness if not as a process in time. It survives the death of your body only if it possesses a peculiar kind of organization which has been defined unproperly as a "crystal", "diamond", "stone", hinting to a very specific characteristic which I won't cover here.

Mental activity stems entirely from physical properties of matter.

[Cluny the Scourge]

The soul is essentially the pattern which unites your different brain activity states throughout life. It doesn't include consciousness nor self-awareness if not as a process in time. It survives the death of your body only if it possesses a peculiar kind of organization which has been defined unproperly as a "crystal", "diamond", "stone", hinting to a very specific characteristic which I won't cover here.

Mental activity stems entirely from physical properties of matter.

You assert first that a soul is the pattern uniting brain activity. You add that mental activity stems entirely from physical properties of matter.

You also assert that it is possible for the "soul" to survive the death of the body.

How do you reconcile these contradictory statements? Either mental activity stems from matter, or it does not. If the body dies, how can the pattern uniting that mental activity survive when there is no more functioning matter?

[Mathais]

The soul as i know to be is the body and the spirit as one as we are now. It also depends on what you consider the soul to be.

[Ummon]

It suffices that the pattern is replicated by other matter allowing it to think and perceive. Or else, it suffices that some other mean of reading the pattern is available as well.

The more the pattern has certain characteristics, the more it is likely it will find a new home in flesh in its integral form. Beyond a certain point, the pattern may hypothetically be read through other, unspecified means.

[Cluny the Scourge]

It suffices that the pattern is replicated by other matter allowing it to think and perceive. Or else, it suffices that some other mean of reading the pattern is available as well.

The more the pattern has certain characteristics, the more it is likely it will find a new home in flesh in its integral form. Beyond a certain point, the pattern may hypothetically be read through other, unspecified means.

That's interesting. What actually is the matter that replicates the pattern? And the secondary means of reading the pattern - what is that? You say it is "unspecified" - specify it.

[Ummon]

Sure.

Today, you can describe all interactions in physical systems with identical artifices. Just as you describe different phenomena with identical equations. This means that completely different entities can share the same forms beyond mere appearance: from a silos full of sand to be used for construction, to a (big) group of people browsing the internet.

We have no reason to think that this cannot happen in a more pronounced way.

Before you reply, notice that there is no "what I am stating is fact" in any of my posts above. Take it as a rant, if you wish.

[Cluny the Scourge]

Sure.

Today, you can describe all interactions in physical systems with identical artifices. Just as you describe different phenomena with identical equations. This means that completely different entities can share the same forms beyond mere appearance: from a silos full of sand to be used for construction, to a (big) group of people browsing the internet.

We have no reason to think that this cannot happen in a more pronounced way.

Nor, indeed, any reason to think it can so happen.

Especially since that "more pronounced way" involves a leap from intellectual constructs applied to help analyse real-world phenomena, to the behaviour of actual physical phenomena themselves.

Before you reply, notice that there is no "what I am stating is fact" in any of my posts above. Take it as a rant, if you wish.

I will take it at as a rant.

Because that is a 2D replica.

Additionally, if I gave you a standardized copy of the proceedings used to make that pipe, machinery to perform the job, and an amount of the materials used to make it, how could you not say that it is one?

A potential one, infact.

Very easily. "It is not one." Done. A pipe is a pipe. A collection of materials, equipment and a procedure-plan are materials, equipment and a procedure-plan.

[Garbarsardar]

Can some one tell me what a soul is and were it is located?

I can tell you that it is a word. It is located in texts. All the rest is speculation.

[Ummon]

Because that is a 2D replica.

Additionally, if I gave you a standardized copy of the proceedings used to make that pipe, machinery to perform the job, and an amount of the materials used to make it, how could you not say that it is one?

A potential one, infact.

[Garbarsardar]

Because that is a 2D replica.

Because by naming something we don't make it real, as Magritte pointed out.

[Ummon]

But here I am not talking of naming, at all. I am infact talking of what does, and not of what is.

[gambit]

I'd say the soul is just an abstact creation we humans invented to label ourselves so we feel grander than we are, among other things. A mixture of giving a supernatural title to our complex minds, (deeper emotions, the human spirit to fight for something much grander than ourselves, complex thought, etc.), feeding humanities natural self-importance, and possible reconciliation to death. (since it doesn't die)

I know we humans are definitely "superior" to animals in spirit and mind; but I'd rather believe it's a cause of our brains and some chemical combination that it set off (which is already an explanation/theory for many things, like love) rather than some abstract "entity" that we hold within ourselves and it just floats on when we die.

[Ummon]

Just changed signature in honour of this thread.

Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167