Does the soul exist? | Galen Strawson, Nicholas Humphrey, David Malone

For scientists and philosophers the idea of the soul has been out of fashion for two hundred years. But is it on its way back? Can we explain consciousness without it? Who watches the magic show that is experience?

#conciousness #iaitv #philosophy #soul #experience #science


Philosopher and literary critic Galen Strawson, evolutionary psychologist Nicholas Humphrey and award-winning documentary-maker David Malone investigate the all-seeing I.

[adriaticbatman]

My problem with these discussions is no one defines first the "SOUL" and "CONSCIOUSNESS"....so they talk around each other because each is basing their pitch on their own definition...

[JJKK]

I would have much preferred to hear these gentlemen debate whether or not an *_external soul_* exists. That is, a _thought-described_ entity which is not an epiphenomenon of neurological processes, but which is actually exists at a location that is spatially distant from the bodies over which they exert considerable control.

It is the one conceptualization of The Soul which allows for its continued existence after the body it 'operates' dies, solves the Mind-Body problem, allows for an actual, in reality, Free Will that is not an illusion. It is also a conceptualization which is consistent with what we understand about the laws of science (specifically, the transmissions of sights and sounds through a vacuum via electromagnetic waves).

Indeed, a few hundred years from now, humans will be able to create some very sophisticated robot explorers that they will no doubt send to distant planets. Now if an intelligent alien life-form were to encounter one of these robots, it might easily be mistaken for a 'soul-driven' life-form, given that it responds to its environment and is clearly executing purposeful actions. Through its 'eyes' and 'ears', the scientists back on earth who made it would be able to see what it sees and hear what it hears and we'd be able to give it 'volitional' instructions re: how to take advantage of its evolving situation.

All this would be possible cuz we are able to send and receive info through the vacuum of space via electromagnetic waves. If a meteor were to hit one of these robots and it "died", we could say that its 'soul' back on earth--the scientists who processed its incoming data and gave it instructions--was able to survive its death.

Now we know that sights and sounds can be reduced to electromagnetic wave 'disturbances' which can communicate that data to remote destinations. And we know that all the incoming data collected by the human senses is reduced to electrical 'signals' which are transmitted via the nervous system from the organs to the brain.

With the use of this metaphor, we can suspect that perhaps the human brain is effectively a 'transceiver' which both generates electromagnetic waves and detects incoming data via the same 'information highway.' The soul's thoughts would also generate wave energy which would be picked up by the brain, and there be interpreted by our unwitting brains as signals coming from its own sensory inputs _at some point of interface_ (near the corpus callosum?)

Just as a radio is constructed in such a way that it is able to _be influenced by_ a certain type of electromagnetic wave frequency/pattern, our brains are--by this account--constructed in such a way that 'invasive signals' from a remote Soul is able to interface with the brains that otherwise control our bodies.

I suspect that such a discussion would be of far greater interest to a non-academic audience than the familiar controversies they reviewed in this forum

[adamwayne]

I'm more confused now than when I started. I see several good points in all three arguments. Mostly because it doesn't seem like they're actually having a conversation with each other but just predefined talking points. It's similar to university and having three professors come and give a talk about souls in the same hall that day.

[martin]

The sensory systems are the interface between consciousness & the environment, they are responsive to changes in that environment, this process of responsiveness is extrapolated by the brain which responds to the responses of the senses, it may even respond to its responses a type of meta-responsiveness or consciousness.

[ajgomez]

Can somebody say if an experiment of a human being born and kept isolated from biased knowledge from religion would at some point in life “experience” spirituality or a higher self sort of awareness 🤔?

[carbon]

I really find myself relating to David here, my first time hearing him as well. Also it genuinely has to be that what spins up self-awareness or 'the self' is more primary, and part of the problem with interrogating a 4 year old boy or girl about that is they're much too busy accruing the faculties that they'll need as an adult to pay any attention to such things. I get the impression most people don't have mystical experiences until their twenties, thirties, or later precisely because they're still in a knock-down-drag-out live-or-die with their place in their world and their future to get all that much cross talk with what people have called the 'higher self', Holy Guardian Angel, what Iain McGilchrist has called the Master of the Master and Emissary relationship, or what I think David has very well stated here has been our most pervasive problem-solving framework which operates intuitively rather than discursively and seems to have full-court vision albeit at a more dream-like intensity rather than our self-conscious minds which are as sharp and narrow as scalpels (at least in cases where they're functioning well).

[pfekk]

The soul is the essence of self/consciousness, or is it the other way around?

[ThomasDoubting]

Why are people asking people who do not know who they are from the very core of who they are...

Academia does not have an idea because clearly all that is currently written of the subject of the soul,
the soul is a religious entity.

Which is actually consciousness.

You cannot find the the answer anywhere where else other than from an internal perspective
You don't have soul you are soul..

When you shut up stop thinking.

That's then you because when you are thinking that is thought and that is a mental process and thats linked to knowledge and ego.

[walkingmap]

3 different people talking around each other because the soul is defined differently by each one. The soul as I understand it, (a 4th definition?), is the ghost in the machine. The mover outside of consciousness, outside of the brain, which when life ends continues. A thing which clearly cannot exist since life like consciousness is not a thing but a process. Where does the flame go when the candle goes out?

[poojasoni]

None of them want to give credit to Aristotle who said much more about soul or self than they are saying. People of this age are so self obsessed they don't want to see what others have said

[bradmodd]

I get a kick from hearing theorists use the word "Conchiness" in these debates, Galen is always good for a few

[TheLeonhamm]

Do animals exist? Do you exist? Does the mind exist? If you answer Yes to one some or all of these questions, you are saying the 'soul' exists - if you say No, you deny not it but them. And that, dear souls, is the actual meaning of the terms anima, psyche and moral reason (the kind of mind/ thinking capacity/ state of being that humans have as an innate ability to remember .. even if we rarely use it - much). As for the material of the living soul (an animal) or the matter of the mind (psychology), much of the twaddle kicked around today can be dealt with simply .. by careful use of philosophical terminology. The brain, heart, bowels, nervous system, electro-chemical make-up provide the matter for animal consciousness; the form that this matter takes presents the type of psychological awareness it takes; the thingness - identity - of the being proves (sic, aka demonstrates, signifies, indicates) the reality of the 'I/ you/ it/ they' in its action and of its end (e.g. purpose, wisdom, conscience, morality, reason, intellect, knowledge, knowing, experience, perception, awareness, spirit, sense, reaction, action, relations, potentials, constituents, origins - beginning et al).
Now if you genuinely do doubt that any of this complex simplicity 'exists' (lives, has being, is) then .. God love you, dear .. there's an alienist down the road who might help you. ;o)

[diycraftq]

I dont need to hear the statement
The soul in a secular sense
Talk about an oxymoron how do u claim to speak of the soul with materialists and zero theologians

[truthlivingetc]

Rarely did four people with so little knowledge and care for a subject matter talk so authoritatively about something they just could not care less about .Watch this and gasp at ignorance and conceit on a very impressive scale. We used to produce people like Aldous Huxley. Now we in the west have the likes of this shower of professional analytical goons with zero capacity for insight or intuition. Future beings can marvel at how some of our present sages paw and grovel behind a repressed religiosity which masquerades as a rigorous worldview. Thanks YouTube. We have learned a little more about those who have true wisdom.

[timothyjerome]

Job 10:11 11Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.

[TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns]

How can you have a discussion like this without including philosophers such as Stephen Braude, Michael Sudduth, Robert Alemeder, Edward Feser (who wrote a textbook on philosophy of mind), etc?

[tomjensen]

Biggest problem is the definition of the Soul.The soul is simple the totality of memory assembled by the individual through all lifetimes.If you have any memory at all, you have a soul,

[martin]

Eugene Gendlin's felt sense would be a good candidate for a secular interpretation of the soul

[andreasschoinas]

Consciousness is a file and the brain is a receiver of that file

[tomjensen]

Consciousness is another thing entirely.