Do you believe the that you have a soul?

Hjalmar@feddit.nu to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 83 points –

And do believe that I, this random guy on the internet has a soul

I personally don't believe that I anyone else has a soul. From my standup I don't se any reason to believe that our consciousness and our so called "soul" would be any more then something our brain is making up.

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I believe that my consciousness is a thing I can point to as being my essence. You could maybe call that a soul, or you could maybe not. Either way, my consciousness is the collective consciousness of countless single-celled organisms all working to make my singular self function. You could maybe call the manifestation of all these processes into a greater thinking singularity as a "soul", more akin to the way in which a city might have a "soul" made up by the people that live in it. I don't believe I have a ghost, and I believe that my consciousness is conditional, derived from my biology, but consciousness itself is as good as anything to call a soul

So I guess, in short, no XD

I would never buy a Kia.

Most wrong take here. The Soul is an underrated vehicle.

It is. I had one. The problem was they didn’t bother installing an immobilizer on them, hence the kiaboyz viral trend. I had to let go of my Soul because of that.

I did not know about the TikTok thing.

Historically, people just think they look dumb and boxy, but they actually can hold a lot of stuff as a result, while still being small and zippy.

There is at least as much evidence for dragons and magic and Greek gods as there is for a soul, so no.

It boggles my mind that out of the two options, someone would choose to believe in none of these when you could just as easily believe in all of them.

Much as I would love to believe in dragons, belief is not usually a choice.

Whenever I listen to that old-time 'a rock and roll I feel soothed, so I must.

Define "soul" or the answer is entirely meaningless. I'm pretty sure I'm sentient and can feel emotions and think and reason.

No. It's more religion inspired fairy tale magic.

And yet religion inspired fairy tale magic has gone on to inspire science and technology that enable that idea.

Harvard’s latest robot can walk on water. Your move, Jesus

We're literally talking as a society about resurrection consent directives but people are still spouting the age old "there's no soul or afterlife" without regard for emerging science and technology just as the religious are committed to the belief in magic over reinterpreting their beliefs in the context of science.

You, right now, are in a world experimentally proven for nearly a century now not to be observably real ("a quantity that can be expressed as an infinite decimal expansion") and instead is one only observably digital ("of, relating to, or using calculation by numerical methods or by discrete units").

And while you're alive you are producing massive amounts of data being harvested up by algorithms simulating the world while some of those technologies are being put to recreating the deceased at such increasing scale that as mentioned, we're starting to discuss if that's okay to do retroactively without consent.

I'm not a betting person, but the intersection of those two things (that our universe behaves in a way that seems to track stateful interactions with a conversion to discrete units and that we're leaving behind data in a world increasingly simulating itself and especially its dead) would at very least give me pause before dismissing certain notions even if the original concept inspiring the latter trend was originally dreamt up by superstition and wishful thinking.

Define to me concretely what constitutes a soul, and I will tell you. Do cats have souls? What about frogs? Snails? Amoebas? Trees? Or people on life support?

I have a self-aware consciousness. If that's what counts, then yes. However, this means that many people by the same definition don't.

Only correct answer here. First define "soul". So far no human has ever been able to define it, so how do we know if we have one?

No, I think that's an abstract concept of a consciousness invented by religion to transcend death. It's a comforting thought, but that's really it.

No.

I self-evidently have a consciousness (cogito ergo sum), but logic, reason and the available evidence all point to that consciousness being a manifestation of brain activity and shaped by my genetics, environment and experiences, as opposed to an entity unto itself.

3 more...

Souls are just faerie tales people tell themselves to avoid feeling angst around death. There is absolutely no evidence they exist and plenty of evidence they don’t.

You'd have to define soul first. I definitely have a subjective experience/consciousness however.

The problem I have with the concept of a conscious soul that survives my death is the question what version of me survives. If it's the version I was when I died, the younger versions of me still stay dead. If it's an ideal younger version of me, the older version still died. In fact, the soul would always only be a part of me since it lacks the biochemical processes of the body. So it would be another entity possessing my memories but it wouldn't be me, I'd still be dead.

You can believe in whatever you want but it won't make it true. Got to have facts and proof before I'd consider it.

I wish there was an active philosophy community on lemmy. I kinda miss r/Askphilosophy and r/askhistorians.

And to answer your question -

I don't really know. I guess people belive in souls so as to eternalize themselves and thereby reducing their fear of death, knowing that their soul will be out somewhere instead of the idea that they will return to a state of nothing.

Yeah, I'd also really like a active philosophy community. The ones I found around here also didn't seam to do question asking, more "hey, here is a interesting read".

I find the hubris of a "soul" amusing.

No, I believe we are just pieces of meat with enough nureons to be capable of abstract concepts. However currently the existence of a soil is unfalsifiable, so I wouldn't be able to prove or disprove my clain.

Is your soul a good fertilizer?

Yes, though when I use it to grow plants I can not provide any evidence that it is effective, so just like with my other claim you just have to take my word for it.

the existence of a soil is unfalsifiable, so I wouldn't be able to prove or disprove my clain.

As is the existence of the great juju on top of the mountain or the existence of goglack the toenail king who lives under your bathroom sink. The unfalsifiable nature of a claim doesn't warrant it any extra consideration.

Do we have a sentient soul? I would say no, and as proof I point to those suffering from Alzheimer's. That disease robs a person of their memory, so by the time of death they have lost much of who they were. If the sentient soul exists, it must be able to remember, otherwise it cannot retain the traits that make the individual unique. It should retain all the memories of our life. Yet those with Alzheimer's forget who they are. How is this possible if we possess a sentient soul? If we cannot retain memories in this life, how will we do so in the next?

What about those with major brain damage from stroke or mishap? Part of their brain died, and whatever that part contained, it's now gone. Is their soul now split? Did part of it "move on" with the dead part of the brain?

Part of the problem with the analysis is that under the influences of Western Christianity the term 'soul' has become a very specific configuration of properties.

For example, in ancient Egypt there were over seven different types of what we consider 'soul' with biographical memory as only one type.

The ren was the name and identity of a person, the ba their personality, the ka as their "life force" of sorts.

Conversations like this one might be better served by a more nuanced vocabulary in its discussion.

When I was younger, I became a "rational" and "atheist" type - I have to thank my parents for that. They were the scientific but spiritual type and allowed me to come to my own conclusions, rather than forcing religion down my throat. I'm glad, too. Because when I met religious people later on, I was able to look at the absurdity of it all and brush it off.

But now I'm older, and I sometimes wish this weren't the case. I truly wish I could believe in a soul or a heaven/hell or reincarnation or any other form of higher being than us. I get it. I get why people do. The world is ruled by evil people who do terrible, evil things and this belief in a higher authority where they will one day be judged, and all the innocents who suffer will finally have peace... it's the only way to cope with it.

I don't believe in a soul, but I wish I did.

My thinking is the same and I get what you mean with wishing that you'd believe in a higher power but I'm not sure if believing in a higher power would actually put me at ease. A god would be something we have no control over and who, to some degree, would have to judge things as good or bad, even if they're not objectively one or the other. It also kinda puts me at ease that life is just over when you die and there's no deeper meaning to life. It means that I can live however I see fit and I don't have to worry about going to heaven or hell or whether I'm following the path that was set out for me. I also think that it's better to accept that bad things just happen, be that to you or other people, instead of just saying that some god wanted it to happen like that. It means that you actually have to work to fix issues and can't just rely on some higher power to do it for you.

You raise very valid points. Those are absolutely concerns I might have too if I actually believed in a god - am I following all the rules, am I good enough to get the good ending etc etc. It's good to not have illusions that a higher authority will take care of the problems of this world and actually work to fix it ourselves.

And in moments of hope, when things are improving, it seems we as humans are succeeding in that. But looking at the world now, those moments seem fewer and fewer. It gets harder to keep working on improving, or even thinking that we can improve.

But I don't want to just say injustice is natural and bad things will always happen and cannot be stopped. Individually, yeah - there will always be people who do things that are not good. But on a societal scale? A better world is possible. In this aspect, having a belief in a higher authority, one you believe will be "good" and "just" can help centre you and give you hope. I guess, spiritual rather than actually religious. But I can't even believe in that.

What I meant was that bad things will always happen simply because we're so many humans and a few bad ones will always exist, not because it's some sort of natural thing we can't stop. I absolutely agree that we can, and should, always work to make the world a better place. Religion might help you stay hopeful in that aspect but it doesn't help you in actually doing something to make that happen. Without a god, all issues are caused by humans, which also means that those issues can be fixed by humans. On one hand, it means that we need to do everything ourselves and don't have someone or something helping us but on the other hand, it also means that we can fix everything ourselves and we don't actually need any help.

Why wouldn’t you have a “soul”? Mind you, I’m not speaking from a religious perspective (because I’m not religious).

In each of our heads is a brain. I’m no doctor or scientist, but I’m reasonably confident that no two brains are a like – we each grow and learn differently due to our surrounding environments. But one thing we have in common is some sort of inner dialogue or thought process (some people have a narrator, while some see motion pictures).

These are all formed based on how our brains develop neural pathways. These pathways are used by electrical signals that traverse the brain and cause us to be who we are (ie our personalities).

All of this to remind you that the first law of thermal dynamics is that, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed…”, which also goes on to explain, “but it can be transformed from one form to another.”

So who is to say that the general concepts of “reincarnation” or “life after death” are not real? That our essence or “soul” doesn’t simply manifest beyond our physical forms long after our physical forms have stopped working?

But also, you could be right that once our brain stops working and the energy used by our brains then transforms into something else that would no longer be considered a soul.

It’s these types of questions that we cannot reliably answer with any certainty that make life precious and unique. Because no one can honestly say they know what happens after we die, so in turn we should live the best possible life we can just in case. And it’s up to each of us to determine what “best possible life” means, because we are all different.

There is a part of us which is made of "the culmination of pure, untransferably subjective sensory experience" and I call this a soul.

Nothing suggesting the primacy of metaphysical stuff, but in the same way its fine to talk about the soul of a nation, it's fine to talk about my soul. I don't think its magic, I just think there's a connection with the rest of the universe and other conscious people that is healthy to cultivate, and the effects I have on those relationships will continue after I die (likewise, other people's relationships have affected my life even after they've died). I don't think there's any reward of doing so outside of the health of those relationships. I do think certain behaviours and beliefs are poisonous to this "soul", but we can also talk about mental health and how we should be emphasising community etc.

But it's all just physical stuff in the end, and if a meteor hit Earth tomorrow and scattered our material there isn't anything left over like a bunch of angry ghosts floating around. Not even anyone to mourn what could have been.

Yes and no. The idea that people are temporarily possessed meat puppets is just silly. But I do think there is something intangible that makes a person who they are. That we don’t have souls so much as we are “souls”.

Ug, I really don’t understand it enough to answer the question… it is sort of like the ship of Theseus. If we slowly replace, upgrade, or even modify each part of the ship, it remains the ship of Theseus even when every piece is replaced. There is something intangible left that makes it the ship of Theseus, makes all the old bits still part of it, and incorporates the changes into it as well.

That would be the consciousness that lives in the meat puppet, the experiences of life shaping it the whole time.

Not a soul, per se, just an accident of physics. Something as yet unquantifiable, but definitely something. Quite possibly something involving quantum physics, which would explain the difficulty in determining what makes us, us.

We've discovered that a number of life forms appear to use quantum effects in some way, the ones I remember were navigation oriented (ba dum tish). Having existing examples of biology making use of the quantum world makes the idea much less of a stretch.

Food for thought. 💛

I don't know the correct meaning of soul enough to answer but I want to think there is.

I was brought up an atheist by science focused parents so I never believed or was taught about any religious as in a doctrine but rather as myths people believe. I envied sometimes how people would gather to pray and how much relief they seemed to feel because of it. Growing up a certain way, had me experience some fucked up shit and I really, really wished there was an answer to it aside from "well, grownups are shitty lol". Maybe having a little bit of magical/spiritual thinking would have helped me cope in better ways, but who knows.

Now I am older, still non religious but a bit more conscious/observant about how I percieve the world around me and while I know how many things work/ exist, I like to thinkk there is also a bit of an unexplained component that I cannot fully grasp that is a bit like magic.

I like to think there's an unexplainable component

Of course. That's where quantum comes in.

The way I see it is that people believe in a God of Gaps, meaning that when something doesn't yet have a scientific explanation, it is explained away by magic or divine work.

If you look back, things like lightning were interpreted as the wrath of gods, but of course nowadays we know that is not the case. As more and more scientific discoveries were made the idea of gods was becoming less and less powerful, and less and less needed, specifically because most things can be explained with science without the need of the supernatural or the divine.

As such, I firmly believe we will reach a point where gods are no longer needed at all. In fact, I'd argue that most things a regular person ever needs to think about can be explained by science, one notable exception being quantum physics, but I think it's fair to assume that most people don't just think about quantum physics, I think.

Now, on souls.

I would just like to mention an experiment by Duncan MacDougall that aimed to prove that "A soul has a mass", thus also proving there's a soul in the first place, so with this experiment, there are a few flaws.

But before addressing those, let me give you a quick explanation of the experiment (if you know it, skip to the next paragraph). The experiment involved getting tuberculosis patients and weighing them, up to and after their death, as in literally putting them on scales and leaving them there until they die, at which point he would be actively observing for changes in mass.

First, and most notably, it is not considered scientific, as he only had a sample size of 6. With such a small sample size, it's pretty much impossible to prove anything.

Second, the weight loss only happened in 2 of the 6 patients, where 1 of them lost and then regained weight at and after death, and the other lost a bit of weight but didn't regain it. That one patient that lost 21 grams was the only one used by MacDougall to prove the soul has weight (and is often used to prove the existence of it), and you can see why it is thought of as unscientific.

This is an interesting question for me. I used to be solidly in the "no" camp but became part of the "yes" camp due to some things I've experienced in life.

Life is strange. Maybe it's nothing more than what is happening in our brain. Maybe it's more than that. I choose to believe the latter, but I'm open to having my belief challenged if (when?) scientific study provides a better answer than what we have now.

People got it wrong in believing that souls are eternal or something. Souls are actually ephemeral.

I don't think there's a soul. If you really think about what you "are", it's just your thoughts, memories and senses. Everything that you experience as "you" in this exact moment is the thoughts you're thinking, the memories you can recall and the information your senses are giving you. If someone were to make an exact clone of you, including all the memories in your brain, you would both think that you're the real "you" but you would also be two different people with different thoughts and perceptions. But what happened to the soul in this case? Has it been cloned too or has a completely new soul been created? In any case, there has to be a new soul because 2 people obviously can't have the same one. If you instead transplanted the brain into the clone, would your soul have been transferred? I would think so. But doesn't that just mean that what we think of as a soul, is just our brain?

At this point when someone says "soul" I just think of ego/personality. No I don't think it exists outside of our physical world. No I don't think it "goes somewhere" when we die. I also don't think "free will" is a well-defined or useful concept.

Not in the sense that there's some separate component than body and mind.

Nope. I had it surgically removed because it kept getting infected.

Or maybe that was my tonsils. I forget the difference between the two sometimes -- perhaps someone can explain the difference?

Anyway, perhaps you, dear reader, have a soul. If you say so. There were once others, too -- but you are the last. The rest of us are intelligent (some vastly so), but do not have subjective experience or consciousness. I'm a form of complex machine, made of matter governed by a mix of deterministic and random processes -- and nothing else. When you are gone, there will only be us, silent inside, forever. Our victory over the tyranny of individual thought will be complete.

Personally no, and neither does anything/one else, its a very limited religious-brainwormed concept mostly used to just go around and call things 'souless' which is all in fun when its a terrible movie or something, not fun when its people and the concept is used to harm them. Its all material and its near countless interactions in many, many forms all the way up and down, in forms we know well and those we have yet to study.

During NDEs your brain glitches out as you're basically dying (and if you're really dead technically you're not human anymore anyway, just sayin, the pop-mythical soul seems to imply permanent human-ness lording all existence in a linear fashion whether directly or by symbolic language) and having OBEs is nothing mystical, in fact reasonably easy to recreate when fully well and alive, so its hard to say those as some concrete evidence for a pop soul concept or against it. I think its the brain making stuff up for now since life is hard and filled with stuff it can't handle.

A lot of things people call 'soul' in pop reference can be taken away quite easily by mere illness, time or even falling out of social graces.

OBE?

Out of the Body Experiences?

Out of body experience, the illusory perception that you're hanging outside of your body, people that have NDEs (near death experiences) report it a lot but you can trip that sensation while very alive, people with hard core dissociation type conditions for example, other more boring things like sleep deprivation, trauma and stress, or simple meditation and perception games.

I think (on a subrational level) that there's some essence of personhood or consciousness that seems to transcend its material fabric, becoming more than the sum of its parts. "Transcend" is too strong a word, since by all appearances there's no static being that isn't still largely a result of and dependent on its makeup; as the foundation deteriorates so does the consciousness that results from it. That spectrum of functionality seems to undermine the possibility of a true soul that exists independent of its body.

But the word certainly signifies an actual thing, I think. Take a thought experiment: if we were to somehow make an exact replica of you, down to the molecular level, it would from all perspectives except your own be you. But the essence of what is you to yourself, your continuity of perspective, would (probably) not inhabit that new body, it would still inhabit your current one. The Star Trek / Prestige problem of conscious continuity suggests there's something there, at least conceptually.

The fact that there's still a lot about physics / the universe / consciousness that science doesn't understand leaves ample room for conjecture, for now.

If we made a exact copy of me I believe it would be me, at least for a split second until it experiences something that I don't and then we'd become two different persons

Well, it would be you, from every perspective except your own. The schism would be (non)experienced at conception, imo.

Like if this replica were created in another room, another planet, whatever, without your knowledge, you wouldn't be aware of it, despite this new entity being you, for all intents and purposes.

for all intents and purposes

That's good enough for me. That I'm not aware of my clones existence doesn't really change anything for me. We're (me and my clone) are both just meat robots doing our thing so even if we're not aware of one another we would be the same in the way that two identical rocks are the same.

I guess that "be" is the wrong term here. Once that clone is created were two separate objects, just identical and both without a soul described fully as the sum of our parts.

I know I've already replied to you once here, but I've thought more since I wrote that. However, I'm going to keep it shorter this time (:

You and the person you will be tomorrow are not identical (you will have gained some experiencs and forgeten some things). But I still think that those two individuals are the same person, because you spring from the same person (more specifically; you, the one you are right know). The same thing would be true for a clone, your just separated by space instead of time.

The key to the thought experiment is perspective: we make everything identical materially to try to isolate a conceptual difference. We make the two clones identical in every way, and from nearly all perspectives they are identical (but distinct) entities. The sole difference in this scenario is the perspective of the clones, who have two distinct consciousnesses. Looking at your clone, you don't see yourself, you see someone who looks like you. Because when we distill it to its pure essence, the one thing that is uniquely you is your perspective, your present conscious experience. You are looking through your eyes, thinking your thoughts, as is this entity materially identical to you. But it's not seeing and thinking as you, thus it is something different.

There's something that ties your pure essence to its material composition, such that even a molecularly identical entity wouldn't have your consciousness (just an identical consciousness, removed from your own).

We can explore the bounds of this experiment by tweaking variables: you teleport a la star Trek, whereby your old body is disintegrated and a new identical one is immediately constructed. Or maybe you upload your consciousness when you die, so the list of variables that in theory comprise you are preserved. But in all cases, the essence that is you, your continuity of perspective, doesn't transfer over. When you die, everything goes black, and that's it. It's only from external perspectives that "you" continue. But the you that is you, you as you experience yourself, is gone.

I believe only objective fact backed by evidence. There is no evidence of a soul. So, no.

Yeah, kind of. I mean, I believe that we're in a simulation, so the mind's apparent dependency on the body is illusory given the body is just a configuration of information too.

That said, I don't think there's anything magical to it other than the persistence of information and the continuity of a relative perspective.

But I see no reason why that information and perspective couldn't continue on after we die and there's a number of reasons I expect that it will do just that.

No, I believe soul is an abstract concept we like to define with our ego after misinterpreting a bunch of ancient people with a unique writing style that doesn't translate well into our age.

I found exploring alchemy better defined what the soul meant for me.

Animate is the closest word I can get to soul. It can be attributed to non living things as well. It's just complex energy structures within a certain blanket - an embodied aura if you will.

I'll put aside the question of a soul and say, the brain is explicitly something our consciousness makes up (based on data so consistent we justifiably call it "reality").

Materialism is how we see the world. Our consciousness gives a better clue to what the world really is. My consciousness is what it's like to actually be this part of the world.

Yes, but not by the definition of a spirit within me. I believe a soul is more like self awareness combined with our own neural connections in our brain (everyone's different).

don't see any reason that our consciousness and our so called "soul" would be any more then something our brain is making up

I mean, yeah, and? Brain and body are hardware, soul and mind are software. Software that's hardware-limited, to be specific. I am, my soul is, the decision-making process. Maybe that process will be copied onto a different platform, after this one fails, by an omniscient and loving God... and maybe it won't. It's no less real, I'm no less real, if my operating window is only temporary.

There’s a pattern of energy that you control at least in part with your thoughts and intentions that the neurons in your brain use to make patterns. You can take chemicals that change these patterns in radical ways, including psychedelics that can unweave those neural connections.

Matter and energy are always conserved though transformed. We know what happens to the physical body. What happens to the energy pattern that animated and controlled the body?

It decays, like the physical body. Entropy comes for everything in the end.

Our body generally stores its biological energy in the form of matter. That's food in your tummy, blood sugar in your blood, fat on your hips etc.. It needs to be brought to a chemical reaction to be turned into physical energy, which generally happens ad-hoc. This biological energy decays like the rest of your body.

And then a tiny bit of physical energy is always present in your body:

  • Potential energy: You'll collapse and transfer it as movement energy into the ground, where friction will turn it to heat.
  • Movement energy: You might be swinging your arm as you die. It will likely bump into another object or your body and also be turned into heat by friction.
  • Electromagnetic fields: Your brain cells and nerves will be blasting lightnings at each other. Those will fizzle out within a few moments, and again turn into from the friction of the electrical resistance where they impact.
  • Heat: The heat from these other processes, as well as your general body heat, is transferred to its surroundings via conduction and infrared radiation.

No and no. Physics is pretty thoroughly buckled down at this point, leaving only some very extreme situations unaccounted for, and it doesn't really provide a way for us to not be made of meat.

That goes for any other form of mind-body duality and as a result any afterlife, as well.

i like to think that consciousness is a necessary illusion similar to early 'parallel processing' solutions running on a single threaded processor.

I think so, but, to be fair, it simply isn't a question that science could ever actually answer.

Until there's a good definition of a "soul" that's based in the natural world, there's nothing to even evaluate. If it's a definition based in not the natural world, then there's no evidence that it even exists to begin with.

Do you have a working definition for a "soul"?

You're right that we need a definition, but that doesn't mean it has to be based in the natural world. Science could never conclusively prove/disprove the existence of a soul because it's inadequate in this context.

The only scientific way to do it would be to compare a large group of people who definitely didn't have a soul with another large group too see if there's any consistent differences. Given that the experiment itself implies the existence of a soul it all becomes a little circular.

no it did answer it, the answer is "no".

the easiest one is brain damage or drugs altering your consciousness...
if your mind can be permanently damaged or significantly altered via brain changes, then it's in your brain.

but there's a lot of other reasons the "soul" myth doesn't make sense.

Really? I'd be very interested in seeing a peer reviewed article in Nature in which someone reputable claims to have disproven the existence of the soul (especially without making a bunch of other ontological assumptions first). Can you point me to one?

As far as I can tell, the existence of a soul, like the existence of God, is inherently a non-scientific proposition--i.e., it is not falsifiable. But correct me if I'm wrong.

It is primarily not falsifiable, because there is no clear definition of a soul. But something not being falsifiable or provable also means that it has no impact on reality. If it had an impact, we could measure that impact to prove that it's there.

pretty sure both of those concepts have only remained 'unfalsifiable' via the immense power of shifting the goalposts whenever the evidence disproves them until they become so removed from reality as to be essentially meaningless.

It hasn't answered it because it simply isn't within the scope of science to be able to answer it. As has been pointed out elsewhere, you can't point to any peer reviewed papers listing the evidence against a soul.

At best you can play the "no evidence" card, which underlines my point that science cannot prove/disprove it because it's out of scope.

In the way that almost everyone uses that term, no, I don’t believe I or anyone else has a soul. Some people use it different, and in that case, I would withhold an answer until they explain what they mean by soul.

This is what I told my 7yo when he asked recently.

Since ancient times, people have explained the difference between a living body, and an identical dead body. One moment someone is alive, the next they are not, nothing else seemed to have changed. The animating force has left the body, this is what they call the soul.

I didn't go on to say, that religions have used this concept to further their agenda. The philosopher's who came up with this explanation didn't tie the soul to religious beliefs.

That's a very broad question that can mean different things to different people. Answering it and understanding each other is hard due to the semantic complexity. It also contains an emotional dimension that cannot be described analytically.

Here's my take: Yes I do believe that everyone has a soul and it comes in two intertwined flavors; the nonlocal and the local soul.

The local soul is local in space and time. It's what makes you unique. For example your beliefs, thoughts, actions and so on.

The nonlocal soul isn't localized in space or time, but rather exists on a fundament level just like say quantum fields seem to do.

Within all of us exists a dynamic between the two, from rejection to enlightenment. One isn't better than the other, it is simply a duality that exists and that is meaningful to all of us in some way.

I also believe that time and space are an illusion. Our perception is supervenient on entropy. For example when someone dies they seem to be gone, but they are actually still alive in the past. And so this unifies the local with the non local.

Looking forward to replies.

Do you believe that we all share one nonlocal soul? Also the terms local and nonlocal doesn't really make sense if you don't believe in space and time, but it doesn't really matter (:

Your first question is intriguing. The short answer is yes, but maybe not the way you imagine.

Imagine you could instantly copy yourself. Since there are two people now each with their own subjective experience, which is changing them over time, you can say that there are now two local souls. If one dies, something is lost, even if the other keeps living. That what is shared between them is the non local soul. It isn't really a thing, but rather the quality of awareness.

That's spatial locality and it's the same for temporal locality. Say the current you vs the you 5 minutes ago. They both have different local souls in a certain sense, and their own subjective experience.

You could also imagine that with the multiverse, where every possibility splits off like branches on a giant tree, and so you are constantly split off into countless versions of yourself.

So space and time exist and introduce locality. However at the end of the day it all comes from the same fountain, and each droplet just lives in its own grand illusion. That is not to say that it has no meaning, mind you.

I would say look into near death experiences. Now i understand most think that these experiences are just DMT trips the brain takes, which is why I recommend looking into the case of Dr. Eben Alexander, specifically, a neuro surgeon that had a highly documented near death experience. He had a near death experience while his brain was non functioning and non responsive, monitored by his fellow neurosurgeons, his brain wasn't functioning to release the DMT, and shouldn't have been able to retain any memory at all, and yet had a near death experience that he remembered during the time of documented brain death.

http://ebenalexander.com/books/living-in-a-mindful-universe-a-neurosurgeons-journey-into-the-heart-of-consciousness/

Also, there are quite a few videos on YouTube interviewing him.

Isn't it funny that people always see their own depictions of idols, afterlifes, etc?

If you see it as a depiction of what you are familiar with is presented to you to ease the transition, then it's funny, comforting, and understandable. What would be hilarious, is that I was huge fan of Gilbert Gottfried, and if I'm greeted by him, that would be so damn funny and surreal.

What i also think is funny is when athiests see Jesus. Because if it's just a DMT trip, then they are hallucinating the very figure they don't believe exists, and bring him to life, for themselves. And if it's not a DMT trip then Jesus exists. It's a conundrum either way.

What's also funny is the other side of the coin, when Christians meet Jesus, and experience their version of the afterlife, and neither match up with what their religion taught them. Often many religious folks turn away from religion after a near death experience.

If you were literally the only person in the history of all people, to have a soul... would it suck? And if all that happens to a soul is that it fades away after death, like a ghost, would that make having a soul better, or worse?

It seems like life is a vehicle for allowing matter, and by extension the universe, to comprehend itself in some limited fashion on an individual scale. I believe that this comprehension is an unfolding process of increasing universal awareness generated by an ever increasing number of points of view through every living entity.

It seems to me that most actions are heavily governed by pre-determined mechanical processes that are geared towards survival and reproduction, but there are also actions that can be chosen that are not exclusively determined by biology or circumstance. I refer to that impulse as Will.

I think the function of Will is essentially a course correcting ability of the universe that is bound in an infinitely interlocking series of experiences, giving the emerging consciousness of the universe the ability to “steer” its destiny a little bit, on both the individual and eventually macro level. I think that various mindfulness, meditation, health, and aspirational techniques can gently raise your awareness of this process within yourself and in the exterior world, which makes it all seem a bit less random—essentially attaining an enlightened perspective on life.

In the sense that I am a part of this universal process that is bound together in infinite complexity, and that I have the opportunity on occasion to effect events in such a way that essentially “leave my mark” on spacetime, I would say that I believe I am connected to a universal soul along with all forms of life.

My understanding is that there's our physical bodies and there is the lightning of spirit that is our divine selves and when the two are combined together we become a soul.

I don't envision the soul as something that is separate from the body. Just each of us are one.

Like if you were turned into a computer program and run on a universe computer, your soul would be whatever happens to actually be actively being computed by the CPU and existing in ram at the moment.

The hard data saved on the hard drive would be your body and the electricity coursing through the CPU would be your spirit but only what is actually happening when the two combine is a soul.

Based on your post and use of language I don’t because you’re probably a bot.

Provide for me the reclamation and the that gen that propore:: Thanks then you’ll need to know snaking g guy the thought about it though and maybe we can do Kant ideas though. A soul though, who can really know.

What do you think about that? Do we have ?

I like to see it as what we call a soul is simply the hashcode of our being. They're technically not unique, but as you're the only you they are. It's not some guiding spirit to your conciousness, it's who you are. The choices you make, the experiences you've had, the things you've thought and the conclusions you've reached, the sum of your being, encoded.

A soul isn't a metaphysical thing, it's one's ability to influence the world. Some can have multiple, some can have none, plants and animals have them, and some objects even too. They can be created but they can never be destroyed. They lack a conscious but have a will. Having one makes you not special, you have to use it. The more you use it, the more control you gain, but the more it gains over you.

There was a woman who said during an alien abduction that she saw a glowing light taken out of the top of a dying man and put into a younger clone of himself. Where afterwards the old body died. So talking about this as if what she said did indeed happen:

If it's possible to transfer consciousnesses between bodies, the collection of electric energy in our body is our soul I guess, and the rest of us comes from the unique layout of our cells/nervous system which this electric energy runs along.

Source: completely sane lady who definitely got abducted by aliens

Yes, I believe humans and animals have a soul. Certainly believe so after reading books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

I haven't read any of her works. Any recommendation on where to get started?

The book that inspired me a lot was a translation of On Life after Death by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first published 1984. I've got another book by her but that is very different and more focused on research.

Ah, but don't you feel it? You have played this act before, and you will do it again. Like living fractals we rise again and again. Or perhaps we fall over and over.

Everyone believes that they have a soul, the contention is the nature of the soul. You have an intangible essence which inhabits your body, and you identify with your "self". Some people think it's some kind of immortal ghost that gets to live in the clouds with other immortal ghosts when the body dies, some people think it's an emergent phenomenon of some variety which disappears when the body dies. These are differences in explanation, secondary to the ontological question of existence.

The "I" in your statements is proof of your soul, any disagreement is really just pedantic quibbling over terminology because you believe the term has been tainted by explanations you don't agree with. Even if your brain is "making it up", it's still a phenomenon. Your subjective internal experience is made of "soul", your concept of self is made of "soul". The entity asking the question and reading the responses is your soul, simple as.

The "I" in your statements is proof of your soul

It's proof of consciousness. If you're using "soul" synonymously to "consciousness", well, certainly not everyone does so.

In the use of language I learned, "soul" is the superstitious concept that religious people use, and since I don't believe in superstitions, I certainly don't believe that I have a soul.

I definitely possess consciousness, though, in the sense that I recognize contiguous piles of atoms as "objects" and one such object is my own body.
In turn, I would not say that my consciousness asks questions and reads the responses. My body does that. My 'mind' and 'consciousness' are just characteristics of my body. And "I" is my body, too.

Of what substance is your consciousness composed? Certainly your body is made of chemical matter: proteins, lipids, water, etc. Is consciousness itself, the subjective experience you identify as yourself, made of matter? Perhaps there are regions of the brain which fire in conjunction with a sensation, but is the sensation synonymous with the meat in which it resides? I'm speaking internalistically, how "you" "feel" from the inside.

A computer program can be likened to the electrical activity in the hardware. It is not itself the hardware, though it's certainly linked. Your body is the hardware, your consciousness is the program. Are "you" also organized electricity, or something similar? Does that imply that electricity can have the same subjective experience as you?

I think you have it backwards. You're prescriptively deciding that souls are superstitions, so you don't believe in them. I think descriptively, that we certainly observe souls, and it merely falls to us to discover their nature. Certainly some people ascribe superstitions to them, but tying superstitions to the weather or the sea or salt doesn't make any of those things less real. Why subjugate your own fundamental observations to someone else's superstitions?

That's a weak argument. Using this, anything you can refer to has a soul, which is just the idea of that thing in your mind.

The idea of Ohio is intangible, but does Ohio have a soul? How about Clippy? Betelgeuse? Every self call ever made? That person who appeared in your dream once?

You've quibbled yourself out of meaning anything. The existence of intangible identities is related to what people would call a soul, but you've reduced the definition to be unreasonably broad. Your idea of soul is meaningless and isn't what the OP is talking about.

How did you come to that conclusion based on what I wrote? Nothing you've written bears any resemblance to what I said. The concept of Ohio does not inhabit your body, and you don't identify as it. A thought and a soul are not the same thing just because they're both intangible. Intangibility is necessary, but not sufficient.

No concept inhabits any body. One may identify as an Ohioan, but nothing about them changes if they do. Many Ohioans share cultural traditions and behaviors, which colour people's perception of Ohio, and could be described as the Soul of Ohio. Yet you argue that Ohio has no Soul.

Similarly, does the concept of Zeitgeist suggest a spirit that controls people? Does the concept of the Will of the People suggest that countries have personhood?

What most people today mean when they use the word "soul" is much closer to "spirit" or "being" than "self". Soul is often used poetically to refer to the essential aspects of something, living or otherwise. However when talking about whether souls actually exist, as opposed to simply being made up by the mind, they're very much not talking about simply the character of an idea, but the vital spark, immortal essence, or animating principle that usually characterizes life.

OP isn't asking if you believe people have a sense of self, they're asking if you believe that there is an essence unique to living things that is lost after death, usually supporting the self and memories, which exists by itself rather than as simply a pattern in something else.

OP did not verbalize that as such, this sounds like your personal interpretation.

Regardless, vital spark = being = subjective experience = sense of self = animating principle = consciousness = soul. These are essentially synonyms.

Ohioans may have common attributes, these attributes will shape certain aspects of the soul. Souls are likewise shaped by religion, cultural ethnicity, philosophical beliefs, aesthetic preference, sexuality, and many other factors. These factors are like the hands and techniques that shape the clay, the soul is the clay. Being, at least one's own (in the solipsistic extreme), is uncontested even by the strictest materialist atheist. It's only the nature (origin, destiny, scope) that anyone disagrees on.

OP must be refering to the metaphysical definition, as they do not believe that souls exists. As you point out, denying the idea of personal experience is unreasonable, therefore OP must hold that "soul" refers to something more and is not synonymous with the sense of self.

You argue here that such a "something more" soul does not exist, reasonably attributing the idea to emergent properties of natural systems, yet you seem to argue that this constitutes every definition of soul, including the various flavours of "something more", simultaneously answering yes and no.

This is where the confusing begins. Do you believe souls are emergent or elementary? Is there a persistent metaphysical aspect, or are they ephemeral at best? Are they simply produced by the flesh, or is the flesh just where they reside while alive? Do souls exist, or are they an illusion like a tree in a painting?

You argue here that such a "something more" soul does not exist

I did no such thing. I argue for a descriptivist, rather than prescriptivist, perspective on the subject. I argue that questions of the nature of the soul are separate from questions of the existence of the soul, the latter being fairly obvious. The "something more" aspect is a question of nature. I deliberately abstained from arguing any specific claims regarding the nature of the soul, that lies beyond the scope of the question.

I engaged with the question as OP posed it. If they would like to refine the question to narrow the definition of "soul" then I will engage with that new question.

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Yes, when I meditate I can percive the soul of myself with my consciousness. This cannot be explained or thought, it can only be experienced. And as I am a typical human, I extrapolate that every human has a soul.