I think ‘soul’ is not something which exists in itself - it is the idea of the essence of a thing, the thing which causes an individual life.
So theories go around that there are spiritual beings separate from the physical (debatable) and I personally think that it extends to all life, such that trees can have awareness which can also extend beyond their physical bodies.
As such, they obviously exist - but their exact definition and nature is quite hard to grasp. I don’t think they can survive physical death.
It really depends on what you mean? It’s a purposely, nearly obtusely, intangible concept. I’m not unwilling to talk about it if I get a proper definition, but my opinion would be a mere opinion formed from the facts I have on hand. I have some suppositions that are outside the realm of what science has been able to dig in to, but without actually factual backing, I also acknowledge that my ideas are conjecture that line up with how I perceive the world.
I mean, ya, if that’s how you wanna define a soul, I’ll say that exists.
As for the more common definitions which tend to extend to moving that software around and that software moving to the cloud in the case of a system failure, I have no reason to believe the brain has wifi, gps, or satellite functionality.
But if we simply describe it as “the software on the brain”, I hold no objection and can comfortably say it exists.
Not trying to argue at all, just spitballing off your thoughts: I feel like (assuming souls are things that exist) the brain is the hardware and the soul is the software in this scenario. If your computer’s mother board develops a problem, the data on your hard drive still exists and works; the hardware just can’t compute.
That all being said I’m an agnostic and I don’t really know the answer to OP’s question. I’ve kinda always assumed there was some star trekish we-are-just-energy thing going on. But I ultimately accept that we don’t know and can’t know and won’t know until we do.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
I haven’t see any measurable proof of one, or any experiment proposed that would render the idea of a soul falsifiable or not. Honestly, the current debate in philosophy/neuroscience on the existence (or non-existence) of free-will seems like a more important question, that if answered in the negative would have major implications on even the definition of the word ‘soul’.
Fun question though, I’ve enjoyed reading the diversity of thought on the matter in this thread. :)
A soul is at best a description of the electrical and quantum interactions that take place in our brain, a personified phenotype of the sum of these things occurring in our head (and to a degree our eyes, mouth, ears, and skin).
I don’t believe in the soul in the traditional sense as it implies that there is one version of me – is my soul my 9yo self, my 20-something alcoholic self, the self as of this moment, or my Alzheimer’s-ridden self when I die? If it’s supposed to be a “perfect” version of me when I pass, then it’s kind of funny, because my spirit is, in a sense, a version of me that I’ve never actually met and wouldn’t recognize.
I would call myself an agnostic, and I suppose I believe in a soul… In that they are a (potentially inaccurate) way of describing the singularity of oneself.
We contain something which has conscious thoughts, and awareness of “itself” while existing. I suppose that would be a soul, no? We can remember and have individual lives with isolated moments no one else will ever know. Are those memories really only random creases in our brain? Do the feelings and deeper experiences for you wash away as nothing alongside the mechanics of those memories? What makes us… well, us?
I like to think the soul is just that, the part of ourselves that is truly unique, and can only fully be witnessed internally. The part of you that is only ever going to fully exist in the here and now, while still recalling the there and then. That which gives us the full breadth of emotion tied to deeper thought, and hopefully some understanding. That, at least, is a miraculous thing to get to experience… spiritually or not.
The immutability of a soul is a different question, one which we’ll get an answer to after the physical living stops.
Best answer here. Soul is more of a high level concept, I’m not a spiritual person by any means, but say there was a fully conscious AI, I would say there is a difference between that and human consciousness, and that would be what I define as the soul. What is that, is that neurons in the head or is that an amalgamation of our entire being? Idk.
I don’t believe anything happens after death, I think ashes to ashes, but I do think there is a spark, something there that we can’t quite quantify… yet.
Worded even more succinctly than my rambling did! It’s a loaded question, one that has a lot of answers that may all be wrong for what we currently know.
I believe in our consciousness giving us unique personalities and the ability to make complex decisions. Anything past that doesn’t make sense to me, and goes against all logic or understanding we have of the universe.
I think I’ll remain agnostic on that one. Ask me again in 50 years and I’ll probably know the answer by then. Unless I happen to somehow reach the age of 106 without dying, in which case I’ll take a raincheck.
If we mean “consciousness that can exist separate from the body”, then no.
Edit:
By soul I meant a part of consciousness that makes us more than mere collections of atoms, not necessarily an immortal entity capable of afterlife/reincarnation.
Oh. Yes, consciousness itself is some kind of strange emergent order that appears to be more than just the sum of all our atoms.
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