Synaesthesia

Svensky
This is the very problem. However clever the experimenter, there is no conceivable way by which we could disconfirm the existence of the soul. If there were such a method, it would not be clear that the soul would not be simply an extension of materialism.

This argument is a good illustration of how most dualistic conceptions of the soul have no independently testable consequences. By that I mean we have invoked the soul to explain consciousness (or life etc.) but beyond the fact that we are indeed conscious or alive, there is no reason to suppose that any such thing exists. An analogous situation holds in the case of rain gods (Rain occurs because of the gods, it rains, therefore the gods exist QED) and David Gould’s QV22 elves.

In this instance, the argument is doubly empty because we know very well why we are alive: because our physiological systems are functioning. What’s more, we have a fairly comprehensive understanding of exactly how these systems work. Ghosts in the biological machine are, at best, totally inert.

Ojuice5001

Even if our knowledge of the brain is very good, is always room for the soul. In any complex system, there are events that are, in naturalistic terms, indeterminate. In the case of humans, these events are affected by the soul. Read my first post in this thread for a reason to believe this.

Synaesthesia

Ojuice5001
[quote]I've got one. There have been studies suggesting that a spur-of-the-moment decision happens not before the corresponding action, but simultaneously. For example, say the decision is to go left rather than right at a fork in the road. The brain event constituting the decision happens at the same time as your feet turn to the left, not before./quote]

I believe that you refer to Bejamin Libet’s experiments. I’ll describe them shortly but right off the bat I would like to agree that if your interpretation is correct, the results of these experiments would constitute a serious challenge to materialistic theories of not only the mind but of physiology!

Libet’s experiment was conducted during a brain surgery in which the patient is conscious. The somatosensory cortex is stimulated (producing a sensation at a corresponding part of the body) and the time course is compared to an electrical pulse delivered to the hand (or foot etc.) itself. As you may know, the time it takes for the nervous impulses to travel through the body is significantly longer than it takes for them to travel within the brain. One would assume that if the left hand is stimulated at the same time as the left part of the brain corresponding to the right hand, we would experience a tingle first in our right then in our left hand. (corresponding to the distance that the signal has to travel) Surprisingly, it was found that patients felt the stimulation from their left THEN their right hand.

I quote Dennett:

“...if a subject in an experiment says “dog” in response to a visual stimulus, we can work backwards from the behavior, which was clearly controlled by a process that had the content dog... And since it takes on the order of 100 msec to begin to execute a speech intention of this sort (and roughly 200msec to complete it.), we can be quite sure that the content dog was present in (roughly) the language area of the brain 100msec before the utterance began. Working from the other end, again, we can determine the earliest times the content dog could have been computer or extracted by the visual system from the retinal input, and even, perhaps, follow it’s creation and subsequent trajectory through the visual system and into the language areas.
What would be truly anomalous (indeed a cause for lamentations and the gnashing of teeth) would be if the time that expire between the dog-stimulus and the “dog”-utterance was less than the time physically required for this content to be established and moved through the system.”

However, as Dennett goes on to point out, that hasn’t happened. What has happened, and has been shown by Benjamin’s experiment (amongst, I add, many others.) is remarkable incongruity between the time and sequencing of when events occur and the sequence and time of events as they are represented in our minds. Beyond this, there is nothing aberrant about the experiments. It most certainly is not the case that the brain processes that control the movement of your feet occur at the same time as the movements. They happen before, as indicated by brain measurements. It only seems to us that the two events are concurrent.

I find these experiments interesting because they suggest that there IS no fact of the matter about what time we are conscious of something. The fact of the matter is at what time events are represented as happening to other agencies within the mind. (These representations may, of course, disagree from system to system - Only what we should expect from decentralized neural machinery as opposed to a ghostly cartesian theater.)

John Page

Do you have a source on this one? I'm trying to remember where I read the results of an experiment that concluded there is around a 400ms delay from a sound being emitted to its being consciously perceived. However, this is not to say that a reflex action, operating separately from conscious cognition, will not operate autonomously and almost immediately. Seems to me like you have a case of the latter.

crocodile deathroll

What makes you so sure that the only conscious being is yourself? Everyone else are just zombies including the one that posted this message. You are the only conscious being having that so called property of a "soul"
I am more inclined define the "soul" as being a synonym of a "sense of self", an intuitive sense that you are in the center or your own private universe and feeling your body is a vehicle that you are in control of like a car.
Can you objectively observe, then an project this sense of self into any other matter in the universe even though will all on the quantum level share exactly the same physical processes, and parallel the same physical properties? If not then you then you can never be sure that you may well be the only being that possesses a "soul" the rest including crocodile deathroll are just like little clever Japanese toy machines

CD

John Page

Answer: I'm not absolutely sure, I'm a relativist. Comparing my own experiences with those described by others and having comparable physiology I guess. Plus listening to Aaron Neville etc. Maybe its different for zombie crocodiles.

My gosh, the Japanese certainly are clever aren't they. More so than your argument, perhaps. I don't see that it would be necessary to follow the steps above to prove my consciousness exists. As for the soul - that is a chimera in the eye of the perceiver, I don't have to project anything.

Francois Tremblay

That is rather spurious. I merely told you my opinion. If you don't like it, tough.


It may be an interesting idea : however, you'd have to precise what it is you are proposing here. What is the exact positive nature of this "soul" you are upholding ?

My initial challenge was to "supernaturalist" ideas of reality or the mind, but there's no reason why a dual-material point of view can't be examined.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Francois Tremblay

That only compounds the modus operandi problem. Not only would the dualist need to prove that there is a connection, but also explain how the soul can somehow evolve parallel to the brain ! Talk about a blunt Occam's Razor...

Synaesthesia

crocodile deathroll,

Reminds me of a taoist proverb I read in the brilliant book “The Mind’s I”. It goes something like this:

Two monks are standing on a bridge watching the goldfish swim about eating small bits of food. One of them says,
“I wish I was a goldfish for they are so happy.”
“Ah,” his friend rejoins, “but you are not a goldfish. How do you know that they are happy?”
“But you are not me, how do you know that I do not know how goldfish feel?”

Amos

Hello Synaesthesia

From the poem below it is clear that the soul is distict from the mind and is also far greater than the mind. "It is like the empty skies and has no boundries, ever profound and clear." That we cannot "take hold of it" means that it is separate from us yet "when we are silent it speaks" means that it is ours btu we cannot rationally penetrate it (we cannot make our own mind the subject of our inquiry).

You can go through the whole poem like this and clearly see that we are divided from our soul, twain but not twin, and so on.

In our mythology to "be one with" this higher consciousness is to be "one with God" or reside in the Thousand Year Reign of God.

The rain-gods are lesser gods and should not be confused with their superior god. We call them angels because of our desires (it is only because we want or don't want rain that we notice the rain).


Thanks for the poem, it serves this topic well.

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Like the empty sky it has no boundaries,
Yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear.

When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.

You cannot take hold of it,

But you cannot lose it.

In not being able to get it, you get it.

When you are silent, it speaks;

When you speak, it is silent.

The great gate is wide open to bestow alms,

And no crowd is blocking the way.


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