Why we have a soul

[Echogem222]

First off, let me clearly define what I'm saying is a soul (since that word can have many different meanings). I define the soul as existing as someone who is not someone else, to exist as an individual existence, nothing else (so no, it cannot be defined as anything physical or anything that can be seen)

I have awareness that I exist, but I don't have awareness of myself truly being my body/mind. I could think that's true, but I can't actually prove it. On the other hand, I can prove that I actually exist as something, and I can do this by simply being aware of myself. And yet! I can't do this to prove that I am my body/mind. Why? It's because my existence and my body/mind are not the same thing, if they were, I could prove that I am my body/mind at the same time and in the same way I can prove that I exist. So, what is not my body/mind is what I understand is the soul, which is something that is not a body/mind, that needs a body/mind to have consciousness, therefore, the soul is not consciousness since that is created through the body/mind, it is just the fact that you exist as yourself and nothing else (in other words, if you only existed as a soul, you would have no awareness, and time could pass by without affecting you at all. So, if you died in this life, and only existed as a soul again for 1 million years, the moment you gain a new body, you wouldn't be aware any time had passed)

However, I cannot prove to others that I actually exist with certainty. After all, I could just be an AI made to seem like someone who is aware of themselves existing. But I don't need to prove myself existing to know that I exist, I do not need external confirmation to know such a thing because I am myself. Someone can say that you are not yourself, but they can't prove that any more than they can prove themselves to actually be themselves. This is important because it allows us to once again understand that the body/mind is not the true self. If it was, we would be able to know that someone is not secretly an AI made to seem like someone who is aware of themselves existing.

The brain explains why we exist as we do, but it doesn't explain why existence itself exists. The brain allows us to know we likely currently exist with bodies/minds, or at the very least something that gives us awareness (since we could all just be in the Matrix or something), but that does not explain how our existence exists instead of us being nothing. If understanding the brain could truly do that, we would understand what we were before the universe even began. But the brain doesn't go back that far, because it doesn't actually explain that much. It's like how you understand why a ball rolls down a hill, but not why the ball, hill, etc. exist in the first place (so not explaining how balls, hills, etc. can be made, but explaining how what they are made from exists instead of them being a non-applicable existence to reality itself). Understanding a function does not mean understanding an existence, it just means understanding how an existence currently exists as. Therefore, if the brain dies, only our function of being aware ceases, we do not stop existing.

"Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") was said by philosopher René Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637). However, I'm adding to that and saying: "To think is to be aware, but to be aware is not to be the self, it's merely to be aware of the self which is the soul." (And no, to clarify once again, the self is not the ego, in other words the soul is not the ego, the soul is simply to exist as an individual, and to be an individual means simply to not be someone else, to just exist as 1.)

 

[Marwan]

I have seen the soul.

Therefore, it exists.

I am not the body. Absolutely not. Certainly not.

And the brain does not produce consciousness or direct experience. LOL

God is Great.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I have seen the soul.

What does it look like?

 

[Secret Chief]

What does it look like?

Dunno, but I bet it isn't wearing speedos.

 

[Vinayaka]

I do not have a soul, so there is no way to explain why.

That said, I do have an ego/personality, a physical body, an intellectual mind/body, and a pranic sheath.

 

[Marwan]

What does it look like?

White small round eyes. The rest of her form was white light.

She shall and will reach the Absolute Ultimate, and none can stand in her way.

The ego consciousness will die...

The soul will not.

 

[MikeF]

I define the soul as existing as someone who is not someone else, to exist as an individual existence, nothing else (so no, it cannot be defined as anything physical or anything that can be seen)

Why is it not possible to define an individual existence in physical terms? How have you completely eliminated this possibility?

It's because my existence and my body/mind are not the same thing, if they were, I could prove that I am my body/mind at the same time and in the same way I can prove that I exist.

What if you videotaped (archaic language, showing my age) or rather, recorded video of yourself answering a large battery of questions, and then, have a surgeon make physical changes to your central nervous system, then have you repeat the battery of questions on video. Would changes in your responses or ability to respond or ability to even recognize or comprehend some questions provide any evidence to yourself as regards the physicalness of the mental you?

I don't mean any of this literally, but simply as a simple thought experiment. Have you fully availed yourself of what the current scientific consensus is regarding how the central nervous system functions prior to developing your philosophy of the soul, or have you formulated your philosophy solely upon your subjective personal experience?

 

[PureX]

First off, let me clearly define what I'm saying is a soul (since that word can have many different meanings). I define the soul as existing as someone who is not someone else, to exist as an individual existence, nothing else (so no, it cannot be defined as anything physical or anything that can be seen)

I like this definition of a soul a lot. The recognition of an existential individual. A uniqueness of being.

But it seems to me that cognitive awareness is crucial, here. For a soul to exist, it must be aware of itself existing, and of it's doing so autonomously.

 

[Echogem222]

I like this definition of a soul a lot. The recognition of an existential individual. A uniqueness of being.

But it seems to me that cognitive awareness is crucial, here. For a soul to exist, it must be aware of itself existing, and of it's doing so autonomously.

No, that's not what I'm saying, a soul will still exist without awareness, we are only aware of ourselves existing because we have awareness.

 

[MikeF]

I like this definition of a soul a lot. The recognition of an existential individual. A uniqueness of being.

But it seems to me that cognitive awareness is crucial, here. For a soul to exist, it must be aware of itself existing, and of it's doing so autonomously.

Could you elaborate a little bit on what constitutes autonomous awareness and contrast it with any other types of awareness there might be? What for example, would non-autonomous awareness look like, if that is a thing in your view.

 

[Echogem222]

Why is it not possible to define an individual existence in physical terms? How have you completely eliminated this possibility?



What if you videotaped (archaic language, showing my age) or rather, recorded video of yourself answering a large battery of questions, and then, have a surgeon make physical changes to your central nervous system, then have you repeat the battery of questions on video. Would changes in your responses or ability to respond or ability to even recognize or comprehend some questions provide any evidence to yourself as regards the physicalness of the mental you?

I don't mean any of this literally, but simply as a simple thought experiment. Have you fully availed yourself of what the current scientific consensus is regarding how the central nervous system functions prior to developing your philosophy of the soul, or have you formulated your philosophy solely upon your subjective personal experience?

You think that the ego is the self, or the functions of our brain which is how we currently exist as is the self, but it's not. To exist means to simply exist, nothing else. You and many others always feel the need to attach a bunch of things to the soul, which then makes you think you can disprove the soul existing, but this is just a misunderstanding of the soul. You can think that you are more than yourself, but there are people who can think that they are even more than what you think is yourself. It's a flawed type of reasoning because of this, in order to get passed that flawed reasoning, you have to eliminate everything that is unneeded to understand that you exist. Once doing so, you realize that the brain is not needed, it is only needed to have awareness that you actually exist.

 

[PureX]

No, that's not what I'm saying, a soul will still exist without awareness, we are only aware of ourselves existing because we have awareness.

But that is not a logically sound premise. Nothing exists apart from cognition. Existence is the cognitive awareness of being. Whatever might occur apart from that awareness is existentially irrelevant. It neither exists nor does not exist. It's simply and wholly moot.

I think where we need to go next in terms of understanding 'soul' is into the phenomenon of 'awareness'.

Did you know that NDEs are forcing neuroscientists to completely rethink how we understand cognition as it relates to the brain's physical function? The observed evidence directly contradicts our assumptions about what should be happening in the brain as it dies. And the observed evidence is not only piling up, but it's increasingly contradicting our expectations (predictions) about what should be happening at this time. Instead of cognitive functions slowly going "dim" as the oxygen depletes, people are experiencing an intense hyper-awareness that is not fading, over longer and longer periods of time as we are now able to revive people from clinical death far later than we used to. Sometimes hours on.

According to the bio-physics of the brain as we understand it, this should not be happening. Especially as an ongoing phenomena past the first few minutes.

 

[MikeF]

You think that the ego is the self, or the functions of our brain which is how we currently exist as is the self, but it's not. To exist means to simply exist, nothing else. You and many others always feel the need to attach a bunch of things to the soul, which then makes you think you can disprove the soul existing, but this is just a misunderstanding of the soul. You can think that you are more than yourself, but there are people who can think that they are even more than what you think is yourself. It's a flawed type of reasoning because of this, in order to get passed that flawed reasoning, you have to eliminate everything that is unneeded to understand that you exist. Once doing so, you realize that the brain is not needed, it is only needed to have awareness that you actually exist.

For me, reasoning in philosophy requires some set of established facts to reason upon. In that regard, it is not about proving or disproving a soul. If the word 'soul' is a useful label to assign to a set of interrelated facts, then great.

Let's look at the first part of your definition of 'soul': "I define the soul as existing as someone who is not someone else, to exist as an individual existence". So we are talking about someone's, I assume only a Homo sapiens someone, but if not, please clarify. These someones exist, and the exist as descrete entities, not different facets of some unified whole. How are you aware of multiple someones, more than one? How do you know that these multiple entities, if you will, a distinct and separate and not just a part of something else?

Now add to those questions your assertion that the entities have no physicality and cannot be seen (I assume in the broadest sense and not merely with eyeballs). How exactly are you made aware of any property or characteristic of a soul under such circumstances?

 

[MikeF]

clinical death

Seems a rather nebulous term. Does it include neural cellular death of the central nervous system? Any cellular death at all in the body that has clinically died?

 

[PureX]

Seems a rather nebulous term. Does it include neural cellular death of the central nervous system? Any cellular death at all in the body that has clinically died?

Yes. We are learning new ways of re-awakening these cells (neurons, whatever, I'm no scientist) long past the time when we used to think they were beyond this possibility. And as a result we are now able to bring people back from the state of being dead after longer and longer time periods. And what we are hearing from them about what they experienced in this time does not comport with what we believed should be happening in their brains, cognitively speaking. And so far we have no idea why there is such a stark discrepancy. Especially after such long time frames.

One example I read about from a doctor whos patient had died and was declared dead and was awaiting transport to the hospital morgue. The dead man's lunch came to his room and since he was dead, and the doctor had not eaten lunch, he sat down and are the dead man's lunch. Eventually the doctor got up and left and walked down the hall thinking about having to tell the family of his death. Suddenly the man "awakened" after nearly an hour of being declared dead. A few days later the man told the doctor of what he "saw" and experienced during that time, not only that he knew the doctor had eaten his lunch, but he knew specifically what the doctor had on his mind at the time, and all the goings on down the hospital hallway.

The point being that the "dead man" clearly had been in a state of hyper-awareness and intense cognitive ability. Exactly what he should not have been able to experience given his physical state being such that he was deemed to be dead by a physician. And again, it's the time frame that is startling. As this hyper aware state does not fade after a few minutes, as it should have according to biology as we know it.

All I'm saying is that there is more to this story than we know, and even doctors and scientists are waking up to it.

 

[MikeF]

Yes. We are learning new ways of re-awakening these cells (neurons, whatever, I'm no scientist) long past the time when we used to think they were beyond this possibility. And as a result we are now able to bring people back from the state of being dead after longer and longer time periods. And what we are hearing from them about what they experienced in this time does not comport with what we believed should be happening in their brains, cognitively speaking. And so far we have no idea why there is such a stark discrepancy. Especially after such long time frames.

One example I read about from a doctor whos patient had died and was declared dead and was awaiting transport to the hospital morgue. The dead man's lunch came to his room and since he was dead, and the doctor had not eaten lunch, he sat down and are the dead man's lunch. Eventually the doctor got up and left and walked down the hall thinking about having to tell the family of his death. Suddenly the man "awakened" after nearly an hour of being declared dead. A few days later the man told the doctor of what he "saw" and experienced during that time, not only that he knew the doctor had eaten his lunch, but he knew specifically what the doctor had on his mind at the time, and all the goings on down the hospital hallway.

The point being that the "dead man" clearly had been in a state of hyper-awareness and intense cognitive ability. Exactly what he should not have been able to experience given his physical state being such that he was deemed to be dead by a physician. And again, it's the time frame that is startling. As this hyper aware state does not fade after a few minutes, as it should have according to biology as we know it.

All I'm saying is that there is more to this story than we know, and even doctors and scientists are waking up to it.

I'm not going to be a flat-out nay-sayer, only say that I digest this anecdotal story through a filter of rational skepticism.

Things requiring clarification would be whether the man was declared dead based only on heart stopping and efforts to restart failed (flat-line EKG). I assume no EEG was in place monitoring brain-wave activity, but if it was, that would be useful information. Lack of brainwave activity in and of itself is not necessarily an indication of neuronal cellular death however, and I do not know whether there are ways to assess neuronal death in vivo.

I am also interested in whether the doctor ate the lunch in the presence of that man, ie the patient had not been taken from the room, or if the patient was in a different part of the hospital when the lunch arrived and the doctor began digging in.

We also do not have a clear idea of the level of activity that is occurring around the patient, what conversations are being held, etc. This includes not only during the period of heart stoppage, but also during the period of a few days up until the patient made his report to the doctor. There would have to be a lot of controls in place to ensure that there was no informational contamination within the patients presence to have some level of confidence that there was no contamination.

Last, one need look at all the medications that may have been involved and in the patients system at the time of the event and what effect they may have had in either aiding or inhibiting cognition during the period of heart stoppage.

 

[PureX]

I'm not going to be a flat-out nay-sayer, only say that I digest this anecdotal story through a filter of rational skepticism.

Things requiring clarification would be whether the man was declared dead based only on heart stopping and efforts to restart failed (flat-line EKG). I assume no EEG was in place monitoring brain-wave activity, but if it was, that would be useful information. Lack of brainwave activity in and of itself is not necessarily an indication of neuronal cellular death however, and I do not know whether there are ways to assess neuronal death in vivo.

I am also interested in whether the doctor ate the lunch in the presence of that man, ie the patient had not been taken from the room, or if the patient was in a different part of the hospital when the lunch arrived and the doctor began digging in.

We also do not have a clear idea of the level of activity that is occurring around the patient, what conversations are being held, etc. This includes not only during the period of heart stoppage, but also during the period of a few days up until the patient made his report to the doctor. There would have to be a lot of controls in place to ensure that there was no informational contamination within the patients presence to have some level of confidence that there was no contamination.

Last, one need look at all the medications that may have been involved and in the patients system at the time of the event and what effect they may have had in either aiding or inhibiting cognition during the period of heart stoppage.

You're missing the point because you don't like the story.

The point (forget the story) is that according to what we know about brain function as it "dies" we should not be seeing the heightened cognitive awareness for extended periods of time that MANY of the people going through these eperiences and living to tell us about them are having. Their experiences are overwhelmingly of a heightened cognitive state that endures, when they should be experiencing a fairly quickly diminishing state of cognitive awareness. And this is holding true even as the amount of time between death and revival is increasing.

 

[MikeF]

You're missing the point because you don't like the story.

The point (forget the story) is that according to what we know about brain function as it "dies" we should not be seeing the heightened cognitive awareness for extended periods of time that MANY of the people going through these eperiences and living to tell us about them are having. Their experiences are overwhelmingly of a heightened cognitive state that endures, when they should be experiencing a fairly quickly diminishing state of cognitive awareness. And this is holding true even as the amount of time between death and revival is increasing.

I would say it is not about whether I like the story or not, simply an example of how I would receive such a story that you have used as an example.

You say that the period of time has been extending. Has it been extending since the late 20th century, during our current era of modern medical practice? This prompts the immediate question of what has changed, and given what has changed, how does it relate to the anecdotal testimony.

You say that the expectation is for there to be a fairly quickly diminishing state of cognitive awareness. I would simply ask why? What if the awareness was always there, always extended, but the actions taken in the crisis of death in a modern medical setting are not the same as in the past such that there was no bouncing back out of this extended period, people just eventually *completely* died, with no one aware of what was actually going on.

I'm just saying we can't jump to conclusions about what it all "means". It requires study and an attempt to identify and control the variables involved in order to draw some sort of informed conclusion. Fortunately or unfortunately, we can't just run experiments "almost" killing people to explore all the possibilities.

 

[PureX]

You say that the period of time has been extending. Has it been extending since the late 20th century, during our current era of modern medical practice? This prompts the immediate question of what has changed, and given what has changed, how does it relate to the anecdotal testimony.

What is changing is that we have become better, medically, at reviving dead people. And as time passes, the length of time a person can be dead and still be revived is also increasing. And it has increased now says to a point well beyond what we had until now peceived to be the point at which the biological mechanisms of cognition in the brain will have ceased to function.

And yet it is clear from the ever-increasing experiences of people that have died and been revived, that the opposite is happening. As they are experiencing greatly heightened states of awareness and those states are maintaining throughout the time their brains are considered to be biologically dying, and well past the point of cognitive revival.

So as we study why this is happening, we are learning that the mechanics of cognition are far more complicated and 'pliable' than we had previously expected.

You say that the expectation is for there to be a fairly quickly diminishing state of cognitive awareness. I would simply ask why?

Because the biomechanics of the brain as it was 'dying', as we understood it, had convinced us that this would be so.

What if the awareness was always there, always extended, but the actions taken in the crisis of death in a modern medical setting are not the same as in the past such that there was no bouncing back out of this extended period, people just eventually *completely* died, with no one aware of what was actually going on.

What if, indeed. The question is how is this happening? And we do not have that answer.

I'm just saying we can't jump to conclusions about what it all "means". It requires study and an attempt to identify and control the variables involved in order to draw some sort of informed conclusion. Fortunately or unfortunately, we can't just run experiments "almost" killing people to explore all the possibilities.

I'm not jumping to any conclusions. I am simply pointing out a mystery that is very relevant to this question of "soul".

 

[MikeF]

What is changing is that we have become better, medically, at reviving dead people. And as time passes, the length of time a person can be dead and still be revived is also increasing. And it has increased now says to a point well beyond what we had until now peceived to be the point at which the biological mechanisms of cognition in the brain will have ceased to function.

And yet it is clear from the ever-increasing experiences of people that have died and been revived, that the opposite is happening. As they are experiencing greatly heightened states of awareness and those states are maintaining throughout the time their brains are considered to be biologically dying, and well past the point of cognitive revival.

You don't seem to entertaining the idea that perhaps it is the definition of what constitutes being 'dead' that needs to be revisited, and not that people are coming back from the dead.

In other words, none of these folks were ever actually dead at any point.

So as we study why this is happening, we are learning that the mechanics of cognition are far more complicated and 'pliable' than we had previously expected.

No argument from me in saying that the mechanics of cognition are complicated.

What if, indeed. The question is how is this happening? And we do not have that answer.

Not only how, but *what* it is that is actually happening. We'll have to see what the science can uncover.

I'm not jumping to any conclusions. I am simply pointing out a mystery that is very relevant to this question of "soul".

Yet, as a mystery, it doesn't really clarify anything or provide insight.