What is a soul?

[NotYetRegistered]

I never really got the concept. Does it even exist? What would you describe as a soul?

[Del Valle]

Kinda like the person's conscious, will to live, like their mind but more. A person without a soul is often described in fiction to be essentially brain dead, the biological machinery is still moving but sentience is gone and all that's left is a body barely driven by instinct.

To me personally, there is no soul. A person's mind is all they have.

[Ancient Aliens]

Kinda like the person's conscious, will to live, like their mind but more. A person without a soul is often described in fiction to be essentially brain dead, the biological machinery is still moving but sentience is gone and all that's left is a body barely driven by instinct.

To me personally, there is no soul. A person's mind is all they have.

Well said, I clicked on this thread to say the exact same thing.

[Sher Khan]

In religion, and really all existential questions, the soul is the Truth of a person that gets recorded and recognized by the Other, the Higher Power. An appraisal of the superego.

[The spartan]

It is your natural presence in the Warp...wait...

[The Dude]

It's nothing. It's an archaic word meant to give meaning to something that we only thought existed because of a logical error. A soul exists like team spirit exists. It's not a distinct entity alongside its counterparts, its simply the name we give to our collective human sensation. Of course, since in ancient times people knew next to nothing about anything, it was concluded that the soul was a thing that we held somewhere inside. Religions still actively rely on the term, but then that's not surprising since religions also misunderstand life.

[DaniCatBurger]

Soul is a language-game.
We would say, person - which is also a language-game.

Does it even exist?

If you call someone a good soul, e.g. your dog, then it exists in the announcement toward your dog.

[Sher Khan]

Ireligions also misunderstand life.

I wonder considering the way modern advertising of consumerism has adopted many of the same quirks.

[The Dude]

I wonder considering the way modern advertising of consumerism has adopted many of the same quirks.

I'm not sure I get your meaning, though I sense I may agree if I did. Could you elaborate?

[DaniCatBurger]

Missunderstanding life cripples souls and minds and vice versa.

[Sher Khan]

I'm not sure I get your meaning, though I sense I may agree if I did. Could you elaborate?

Atheism has only banished the once uncontested idea that God, the Divine Creator in various old-world religions, is a meaningful judge against which we define who we 'truly are.' There is and was always the idea that you have a True Self independent of who you really are and what you really did.

Modern advertising is fixated on selling 'moments.' Snapshots of an ideal life, and ideal self, which evoke people's need to have their True Selves. It's not real, obviously, but the point of the imagery much like religious icons is to make you believe there is an accessible, perfect version of yourself. The only difference between a temple and an Apple store is the fetish that is also created where said perfect moments are tied to a product.

[(s)AINT]

I think that the secular term "soul" means the relationships between other people and past experiences.


In other words, your brain and memory.

[Claudius Gothicus]

Your inner conscience, it's constantly developing and ascending into new stages, always moving always conflicting with each other and the rest and always overcoming the conflicts... your soul is not an essence it is sentience, awareness, subjective experience and conception of totality, absolutes, universals etc.

[GhirYear]

What is a soul?

That answer to that question depends on your beliefs:

A religious person might answer it is the undying part of you, the part that transcends death.

A rude atheist might answer that it is a fiction for suckers to afraid to face the inevitability of death.

Take your pick or better: find your own answer.

[basics]

NotYetRegistered,

The soul is the Spiritual entity that God put into you at conception. Without it you wouldn't be asking the question.

[The Dude]

NotYetRegistered,

The soul is the Spiritual entity that God put into you at conception. Without it you wouldn't be asking the question.

See this is the logical error that I meant. I owe this one to Gilbert Ryle who I think made a perfect point against Descartes' dualism when he said that Descartes was guilty of a category mistake. A category mistake is this:

Someone is told that a certain football team has team spirit. Upon watching the team play and investigating all the players on the field, this person concludes that he has not seen this "team spirit" anywhere. He is mystified.

Someone is shown around a university campus. After being shown all the buildings, this person goes asks: "so where is the universty?", expecting it to be a building among its counterparts.

The point of a category mistake is that something is expected to be an entity alongside other entities in the same class (category), when in fact it exists in another class entirely. This is the mistake that Descartes made when he formulated his mind-body dualism where the "mind" was conceived to be a substance like a body, except without matter.

Assuming a soul is engaging in exactly the same sort of mistake. The soul is not an entity that enables us to do anything, as basics explained it. I know that he believes this devoutly but again, religion direly misunderstands what life is.

If we are to use the term at all, then we are to use it only as a catch-all term for the collection of biochemical processes that make us who we are. Anything else would be a misrepresentation of human beings.

[basics]

" If we are to use the term at all, then we are to use it only as a catch-all term for the collection of biochemical processes that make us who we are. Anything else would be a misrepresentation of human beings. "

The Dude,

Biochemical processes in themselves cannot form the actions of the mind if only because that's all they are, biochemical processes. For example, when death catches up with you, all these things mean nothing, as the souls is separated from the body. But if you were able to look down at what happens after, the thing that must strike you is that those you have left, gather together to have your remains buried or burnt in the expectation that your soul is elsewhere, why?

Because in their minds, their souls, can only be settled that you are in a better place. Biochemistry does not and never could account for this because it is only the engine and not the thing that makes the engine work through thinking, analysing and projecting the next movement that the body makes. If life was only biochemistry, surely it would be pointless and meaningless.

[The Dude]

" If we are to use the term at all, then we are to use it only as a catch-all term for the collection of biochemical processes that make us who we are. Anything else would be a misrepresentation of human beings. "

The Dude,

Biochemical processes in themselves cannot form the actions of the mind if only because that's all they are, biochemical processes.

Well, I disagree with that. The computer you type on has a construction no different from you or me, albeit it constructed in different materials and its still inherently a thousandfold more simplistic in construction than either of us. And what is the computer other than a selection of digital and physical processes? When you look inside the computer you won't see the things that we describe as "forums", "graphics", "games" or what else. You will only see minute parts that play an important role in a larger system that only as a collective effort is able to give birth to the aforementioned phenomena.

Because in their minds, their souls, can only be settled that you are in a better place.

Not only. It is merely the most traditional way, and if my family can only cope with my death by believing that I am in "a better place", then that is their problem. As we discover more about ourselves and what we are, we will find other means, more accurate means, of coping with death.

[Col. Tartleton]

" If we are to use the term at all, then we are to use it only as a catch-all term for the collection of biochemical processes that make us who we are. Anything else would be a misrepresentation of human beings. "

The Dude,

Biochemical processes in themselves cannot form the actions of the mind if only because that's all they are, biochemical processes. For example, when death catches up with you, all these things mean nothing, as the souls is separated from the body. But if you were able to look down at what happens after, the thing that must strike you is that those you have left, gather together to have your remains buried or burnt in the expectation that your soul is elsewhere, why?

Because in their minds, their souls, can only be settled that you are in a better place. Biochemistry does not and never could account for this because it is only the engine and not the thing that makes the engine work through thinking, analysing and projecting the next movement that the body makes. If life was only biochemistry, surely it would be pointless and meaningless.

Which is what I've been saying in the moral nihilism thread. It is pointless and meaningless.

But think of it this way. By a series of inane events influencing one another you exist here. So do we. So do the animals. So does the land. It's just here. In order to stay here you have to eat, and sleep, and poop and all that human condition stuff which is basically maintaining an ongoing series of biochemical reactions. But eventually we all break. All we are is dust in the wind. So in the sense of the cosmos nothing matters, but effectively our universe starts and ends with us. When we are born the universe is ripe for us, when we die we concede our notions of human grandeur or humbleness alike to the great sleep.

So what is life about? Enjoyment. Have as much fun as you want to and just maybe pass the good feelings along to those around you. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Call it hedonism, but I call it the truest virtue. No one tells you how to find your joy, but when you cause harm to others the others have the right to reciprocate those bad feelings.

[basics]

" All we are is dust in the wind. "

Col. Tartleton,

It is written that God made Adam from the dust of the ground and then breathed life into him. Just so when we die the body returns to the ground from whence it came but what it was that was breathed into him to give him life, that being the soul, is returned to its Maker for one of two directions.

But that is not all because it is also written that these souls resting under the altar in heaven cry out night and day for God to give them satisfaction that whoever were killed for the name of Jesus will be dealt with as only God can. So it is not just a matter of making up the likes of souls to roll the story on but a revelation that you personally have a soul that consists of what you are and how it will have to justify before God what you said throughout your life about Him.