How can humans live without a soul/spirit?

[blü 2]

Information in the Holographic Universe

My question is that isn't the abstractions carrying predictive power? And wouldn't that make the abstractions to be very real?

Contrary to my usual rule, I watched your video right through. I disagree with what, for purposes of this discussion, are the basics.

Of the physics, the nature and role of energy are insufficiently examined. Without energy there are no fields, for example. Nor does our narrator ever offer a definition of "information" while attributing amazing values to it (and there I stand by what I said earlier about it). The hologram argument is meaningless without that definition.

Nor do I accept any of the arguments based on George Berkeley, which whose philosophy I'm reasonably familiar. (I agree about quite a few of the points about how we perceive and interpret, but not so as to accept the video's take.)

Nor does our narrator attempt to define "mind", while hinting strongly that it's the ultimate something in the universe. "Mind" I'd say is a loosely defined bundle of human mental functions and processes, including reason, understanding, memory and emotion, but omitting eg waking and sleeping, reflexes, instinct, and not least the release of hormones and related biochemicals that control our mood, level of awareness, emotional interactions, and so on over a huge field.

How does "mind" exist without biochemistry? It doesn't. It IS biochemistry. What has mind other than humans, when these folk speak of it? They never say. Genus homo is only 2.5 million years old, in a universe maybe 13.8 bn years old. H sap sap is only a couple of hundred thousand years old, civilization only 10,000 years or so old. What was mind doing to pass the time for all those preceding billions of years?

But thanks anyway. I'm addressing the vid, not you.

 

[Spirit of Light]

How would one determine the existence of a "soul/spirit"?

I do not know the answer to this question

 

[Truthseeker]

I do not know the answer to this question

Yu can detect it inside you from time to time.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Yu can detect it inside you from time to time.

Yes on a personal level i do too
But explaining it in RF so others can understand it that is difficult, because we all understand it or feel it on different levels of understanding

 

[Truthseeker]

Yes on a personal level i do too
But explaining it in RF so others can understand it that is difficult, because we all understand it or feel it on different levels of understanding

Yes, it is.

 

[Mock Turtle]

That is part of the objection to dualism. How could an immaterial soul or spirit be attached to a physical body? What is the conduit between the two? I have no answer for that. Unless the soul is a physical thing. Then we could at least conceive of questions and formulate hypotheses.

I suppose my issue is, either all life would have such (which perhaps is a big ask) or when exactly did humans (or some previous version of such) get a soul. Just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[WalterTrull]

Our bodies are not physical?

Well, since the only way we apprehend our bodies is mental, it has been suggested that they are merely mental images. Images 'where' gets kind of metaphysical.

 

[Revoltingest]

I do not know the answer to this question

This would make it impossible to answer the titular question, eh.
The necessity of something undefined & untestable wouldn't be knowable.

 

[Dave Watchman]

As the headline say, How can humans live without a soul/spirit?

They can't.

If there is no form of spirit or soul that is the true being, what is keeping us alive?

It's not spirit or soul, it's spirit AND soul. These are two different things.

The soul is nephesh, man became a living soul. The animals are also described as nephesh, living creatures. You can't really sell your soul to the Devil. Unless you jump into a volcano and die for him, for the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

The spirit is ruach, the breath of life from God. Who knows if the spirit of man ascends upward, or the spirit of an animal returns to the earth. Like when Jesus breathed his breath on the disciples and sent Holy Spirit to them:

"And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
​

Peaceful Sabbath.

 

[Dave Watchman]

How would one determine the existence of a "soul/spirit"?

One might remember the first time they cursed a word of foul language.

Did you feel your conscience holding you back?

Like having to spit out the word from your mouth?

Were there types of words you favored, or ones you'd rather avoid?

The answer may be rooted in the neural basis of emotion and self-control. Do not quench the holy spirit. But the answer seems unknowable at this time. Who knows if the spirit of a man goeth upward upwards, or the spirit of the animal return to the earth. Who knows?

Do all people swear?
We can answer this question by saying that all competent English speakers learn how to swear in English. Swearing generally draws from a pool of 10 expressions and occurs at a rate of about 0.5 percent of one’s daily word output. However, it is not informative to think of how an average person swears: Contextual, personality, and even physiological variables are critical for predicting how swearing will occur. While swearing crosses socioeconomic statuses and age ranges and persists across the lifespan, it is more common among adolescents and more frequent among men. Inappropriate swearing can be observed in frontal lobe damage, Tourette’s disorder, and aphasia.

Swearing is positively correlated with extraversion and is a defining feature of a Type A personality. It is negatively correlated with conscientiousness, agreeableness, sexual anxiety, and religiosity. These relationships are complicated by the range of meanings within the diverse group of taboo words. Some religious people might eschew profanities (religious terms), but they may have fewer reservations about offensive sexual terms that the sexually anxious would avoid. We have yet to systematically study swearing with respect to variables such as impulsivity or psychiatric conditions, (e.g., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). These may be fruitful avenues along which to investigate the neural basis of emotion and self-control.

The Science of Swearing
​

Peaceful Sabbath.

 

[Revoltingest]

One might remember the first time they cursed a word of foul language.

Did you feel your conscience holding you back?

Like having to spit out the word from your mouth?

Were there types of words you favored, or ones you'd rather avoid?

The answer may be rooted in the neural basis of emotion and self-control. Do not quench the holy spirit. But the answer seems unknowable at this time. Who knows if the spirit of a man goeth upward upwards, or the spirit of the animal return to the earth. Who knows?

Do all people swear?
We can answer this question by saying that all competent English speakers learn how to swear in English. Swearing generally draws from a pool of 10 expressions and occurs at a rate of about 0.5 percent of one’s daily word output. However, it is not informative to think of how an average person swears: Contextual, personality, and even physiological variables are critical for predicting how swearing will occur. While swearing crosses socioeconomic statuses and age ranges and persists across the lifespan, it is more common among adolescents and more frequent among men. Inappropriate swearing can be observed in frontal lobe damage, Tourette’s disorder, and aphasia.

Swearing is positively correlated with extraversion and is a defining feature of a Type A personality. It is negatively correlated with conscientiousness, agreeableness, sexual anxiety, and religiosity. These relationships are complicated by the range of meanings within the diverse group of taboo words. Some religious people might eschew profanities (religious terms), but they may have fewer reservations about offensive sexual terms that the sexually anxious would avoid. We have yet to systematically study swearing with respect to variables such as impulsivity or psychiatric conditions, (e.g., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). These may be fruitful avenues along which to investigate the neural basis of emotion and self-control.

The Science of Swearing
​

Peaceful Sabbath.

This doesn't really define spirit/soul for me.
Just sentience.

 

[KerimF]

As the headline say, How can humans live without a soul/spirit?

If there is no form of spirit or soul that is the true being, what is keeping us alive?

Please respect that people will have different understanding and views on this, no need for snarky or bad words toward others who may see it different than you do.

Sorry, but do you mean that all other living things (non-human) should have also a spiritual being in them in order to stay alive?!

Or perhaps you mean that, for a flesh to be alive, it depends if it is of a human or else.

Thank you.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

How would one determine the existence of a "soul/spirit"?

The best way it was explained to me by a Hindu the soul is the "person" that experiences (not goung through it-lbw) the role of, say, aging. It's the idea that we are the same person regardless our age and other factors.

So you are Who you are regardless what you go through that changes your life and how old you are.

I tend to agree and add the soul is also ones identity and I'm getting a feel that our identity is determined by our behavior as well as how we identify whether it be someone who takes care of their family, or so have you.

As for the idea we are all disembodied people with a body (guess Greek, Roman, western view), I'm not sure. Maybe it's the ID Plato spoke of.

No one I've spoke with said it was like Casper the friendly ghost but how it's describe by some, it probably is. I don't know.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

The soul needs a body in order to function in this world because the soul works through the physical body while we are alive in a physical body. But after our physical body dies, our soul leaves the physical body and gets a new form to work through, a spiritual body.

In short, the soul cannot function without taking on some kind of form.

Question. Is a soul a disembodied person needing a body? A ghost?

 

[Polymath257]

Right. But the description was from a physicist.

In a physics journal? Or was it being dumbed down for the popular reader?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Yes on a personal level i do too
But explaining it in RF so others can understand it that is difficult, because we all understand it or feel it on different levels of understanding

You can do it from your understanding without need for others to understand fully what you say. I don't believe people would understand everything we say but unless we are, say, teaching, I really think if it makes sense to us it shouldn't matter.

 

[Polymath257]

Information is that which informs, surely? That is, without a brain (or, perhaps, a brain-like thing which can interpret input and respond to it) to be informed, there is no informing, hence no information. The concept is entirely human, not objective at all.
How would such a projection result in eg hadrons? I've never understood the nature of the "projection" involved. Do I recall correctly that the starting point was a claim along the lines that all the information about a sphere could exist on the surface of the sphere? That would again bring up the question of what information might be when there's no one (or nothing) to be informed ─ a single universe-wide occurrence of matter and energy, no?

It has to do with something called the uniqueness principle. For the solutions of certain types of differential equations, the values of a solution on the boundary of a region determine the values inside of the region. And the equations governing a number of basic physical phenomena are that type of differential equation. This is seen in complex analysis and things like Cauchy's Integral formula.

In any case, that allows two different ways to view things mathematically: either as a dynamics in the region itself or as dynamics on the boundary. You can recover either from knowledge of the other. This can simplify the mathematical analysis because you have two equivalent formulations instead of just one and some problems will be simpler in one or the other.

The difficulty comes in interpretation of the mathematics. Since the two formulations are equivalent (you can translate back and forth), they will give the same physical predictions. It's just whether you consider the information to be in the region or on the boundary.

And, frankly, other than the mathematical convenience, which is a big deal, this seems to be a mountain out of a molehill. Again, the type of equations for which this way of thinking is valid is very large (including many classical systems), so claiming it is something novel is, well, rather hyberbolic.

 

[Polymath257]

Sorry, I impugned you for lack of imagination. But I can't see your logic that "objective existence" has to be material. In my faith the spiritual world is much more real than the material world. For you, there's no room for faith. But for me it also goes beyond faith, it also goes to experience. Unfortunately, you can't experience what I've experienced. So we go on this merry-go-round.

But experiences can be wrong. Take any number of optical illusions. Your experience says one thing and the reality is quite another. That means experience alone, without extensive testing, is unreliable.

 

[blü 2]

It has to do with something called the uniqueness principle. For the solutions of certain types of differential equations, the values of a solution on the boundary of a region determine the values inside of the region. And the equations governing a number of basic physical phenomena are that type of differential equation. This is seen in complex analysis and things like Cauchy's Integral formula.

In any case, that allows two different ways to view things mathematically: either as a dynamics in the region itself or as dynamics on the boundary. You can recover either from knowledge of the other. This can simplify the mathematical analysis because you have two equivalent formulations instead of just one and some problems will be simpler in one or the other.

The difficulty comes in interpretation of the mathematics. Since the two formulations are equivalent (you can translate back and forth), they will give the same physical predictions. It's just whether you consider the information to be in the region or on the boundary.

And, frankly, other than the mathematical convenience, which is a big deal, this seems to be a mountain out of a molehill. Again, the type of equations for which this way of thinking is valid is very large (including many classical systems), so claiming it is something novel is, well, rather hyberbolic.

That's clear ─ thanks.

 

[Spirit of Light]

This would make it impossible to answer the titular question, eh.
The necessity of something undefined & untestable wouldn't be knowable.

Not at my current understanding level no