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

[@JJ8KK]

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

[@JJ8KK]

@@estring123 Yeah, attention-span is thing for some people...but no worries, there are any number of distractions in this life for you to lose yourself in... :)

[@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...

[@laserprawn]

My man, they would not be debating anything if anyone had a definition for those things - the debate is about why there are no definitions beyond the sorts of things offered in their opening remarks, and what those definitions could be.

[@adamwayne4413]

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.

[@martin36369]

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.

[@carbon1479]

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).

[@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?

[@tomjensen618]

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,

[@ThomasDoubting5]

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.

[@ajgomez9665]

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 🤔?

[@bradmodd7856]

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

[@poojasoni2609]

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

[@quill444]

What they are essentially debating here is the concept of "belief" or "belief in," rather than the almost arbitrary and virtually meaningless concept of a soul, a term which can obviously mean as much or as little to every particular individual. Even when it comes down to religion and/or dogma, it is often the person's "belief in" something that is what's commonly being discussed or debated. The atheist, for example, is not an adherent of a godless system or entity, as much as he or she merely lacks any belief or "belief in" as a basis for making such unequivocal rationalizations or decisions. For instance: at the "Good Faith" auto repair, their motto is, "If you believe we fixed it, that's good enough for us!" Conversely, for those people who are agnostic or atheist, they treat the realm of what is not yet understood as something which requires more study or knowledge, while those who are more superstitious and therefore "believe" or "believe in" (not just without evidence, but by definition, this both requires and seeks no evidence shall be used as a basis) find it easy to place all such things into the realm of a Supreme Being, an entity in which they "believe in." And so it should come as no surprise that they will often add as many additional abstractions and/or delusions as is required by the group of similar-behaving people, and therefore also "believe in" any number of additional superstitions, such as a soul, or fairies, or dragons, or spirits, etc., all things which cannot be proved or demonstrated and thus must therefore be believed. If you have "belief" or "belief in" as part of your thought system, then basically "anything goes" and this includes (or rather demands) the banishment of rational thinking. - j q t -

[@timothyjerome8891]

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

[@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?

[@cortadew]

The candle may go out but the flame goes indefinitely through another candle and another candle until the flame no longers craves, the flame thus enlightened goes away permanently.

[@pfekk]

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

[@jatgee5195]

Soul is the sun & consciousness is its rays.

[@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)

[@wagfinpis]

-does consciousness operate through quanta? Microtubule's operations in the brain would suggest that it does, or can? -if we assume that consciousness can operate amongst the quanta then space-time limitations, like our mortality, can be survived, hypothetically. *This also implies that consiousness is distinctly meta to at least aspects of thought operation and certain quantum mechanics. - depending on our answers and asumtions pertaining to the above queries me might assume that consciousness can operate independent (before and after life) of our mortal bodies. -now ascribing the complex coherent operation of a soul ego to these potentials is were we need to begin making some anecdotal leaps of faith, based on reasoning of people's experience reports.

[@hsitasamrahs2301]

Excellent.... thanks 🙏 Dr Sharma Mumbai India.

[@martin36369]

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

[@johnellis7614]

In the Judeo-Christian perspective, a soul is a mortal human being, physical earth that has been given a spiritual breath of life. For only the harmless are immortal, death is non-existence and there is no hell.

[@dorisdoris5563]

What we call soul is simply an attribute or trait, and part of our DNA, whatever that amours to, that equips human beings for life and is comparable to instinct in other animals. It is an interesting fact around the concept that although it is usually considered incompatible and counterintuitive with "materialistic" socialism and communism, it is the latter that provides for the fullest development and use of the soul, that is, frees human beings from the drudgery of constant work for mere survival, as noble as work might be, so they can achieve higher and more creative states of being through contemplation and various forms of art.

[@ytehrani3885]

27:28 The claim that chimps or dogs don't have the ability to put themselves in another's mind is wrong. Of course other highly social, mammalian species can sense another individual's brain state. They can predict other's motivations. They very much can detect the emotional states of other individuals.

[@martin36369]

How can anyone not believe in the idea of the soul what are they responding too then?

[@martin36369]

There's also the ideas of the biohologram the interference of the biophotons which some 8 hours after death in what's known as the deathflash, are spontaneously released from the body, & may be connected with the phantom leaf effect in Kirlian photography.

[@diycraftq8658]

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

[@andreasschoinas3203]

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

[@johnbuckner2828]

Like pulling out your eyeballs to look at your eyeballs.

[@ToniWCampbell]

I would have wanted to see a person debating for no soul and no self. These people seemed to have very little understanding of this subject.

[@tomjensen618]

Consciousness is another thing entirely.

[@WinstonWu888]

Also i don't get how some people such as closed minded atheists, can deny that they have a soul, if they had one. That's a paradox. Maybe its true that some people are video game characters and dont have true consciousness. Look up organic portal theory.

"We live by the beauty of our weapons" We welcome extinction.

[@truthlivingetc88]

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 KZbin. We have learned a little more about those who have true wisdom.

[@martin36369]

Immediately the host equates the soul with consciousness, why?

[@johnsmythe7940]

He does not know any differents.

[@NoThankYouToo]

iai “It’s atheists innit?”

[@NoThankYouToo]

This video is a disservice to anyone who partakes.

[@diabolicrealm3693]

Yes, the SOUL exists! Not up for debate! Common sense!

[@danielhopkins296]

Ok captain obvious,, what is it made of?

[@jatgee5195]

@@danielhopkins296 It's formless. Not made of matter or anything in this universe. It simply CAN exert control on matter.

[@enkiepic432]

Nicholas Humphrey is so nervous because he is so wrong!

[@martin36369]

Illusions exist

[@PhillipYewTree]

Professor Swanson is not well informed to claim that physics has nothing to contribute to understanding consciousness. On the contrary physicists have made an enormous contribution to our understanding of the brain and consciousness. The paper by Hemeroff and Penrose is but a single example. If prof Swanson believes that consciousness is the product of molecules, then how can he claim that physics has nothing to say about it ?? In my view his credibility as a panel member is to be disputed.

[@laserprawn]

I would listen to his opening remarks again. He claims that physics can tell you about structure, and nothing more - it is not a legal move in physics to suppose what anything is, only to illustrate its mechanisms. As Strawson does not believe in ghosts, he necessarily maintains that everything is the product of physical processes, but he contests that the field of physics has not managed to produce anything close to a definition of consciousness, and so is likely the wrong mode of science to approach it with. Indeed, physicists are apt to be functionalists, and to dismiss consciousness as an illusory stew of brain chemicals for the biologists to think about.

[@tankgrief1031]

In short. No.

[@clorofilaazul]

Philosophers should be discarded from these debates. They no longer have space for their bullshit :D

[@GUITARDIS]

I know what 'wisdom' is.. WTF is 'wiseness'?

[@ingenuity168]

🤔🤯

[@martin36369]

The host is stupid, "Who here believes in the idea of the soul?" Of course people will put their hands up as the idea of the soul does exist, that doesn't mean they believe in the existence of the soul

[@johnsmythe7940]

The answer was told by Jesus.

[@DanyIsDeadChannel313]

No