Arguments against Soul

[Belacqua]

I am making an argument against the existence of an immaterial soul and/or spirit.  

I understand that. 

But if your argument has something to do with electricity, I think you'd have to show that electricity has something to do with souls. 

If souls exist, how do such interact with matter?

I don't know. I don't know what a soul is, exactly. Other people are telling me that if a soul exists it has to be this way or that way, and I'm asking why. 

I can tell you that Aristotle held souls to be the form of an object, in contrast to its matter -- hylomorphism. But a form is by definition not a material thing in itself. There is no way to detect a form apart from its matter. 

Plato, I think, held souls to be forms or ideas. They express themselves through matter, but are not themselves material. There is no way an electric thingy could detect one, any more than we can detect the presence of the number 5, in the absence of 5 material objects.

[Jehanne]

I am making an argument against the existence of an immaterial soul and/or spirit.  

I understand that. 

But if your argument has something to do with electricity, I think you'd have to show that electricity has something to do with souls. 

If souls exist, how do such interact with matter?

I don't know. I don't know what a soul is, exactly. Other people are telling me that if a soul exists it has to be this way or that way, and I'm asking why. 

I can tell you that Aristotle held souls to be the form of an object, in contrast to its matter -- hylomorphism. But a form is by definition not a material thing in itself. There is no way to see a form apart from its matter. 

Plato, I think, held souls to be forms or ideas. They express themselves through matter, but are not themselves material. There is no way an electric thingy could detect one, any more than we can detect the presence of the number 5, in the absence of 5 material objects.

Your brain is electrochemical, in fact, it's about 20 watts (joules per second) of energy (25 when having sex or watching football, if you are male).  When your EEG shows zero activity, you will be dead.

[Belacqua]

Your brain is electrochemical, in fact, it's about 20 watts (joules per second) of energy (25 when having sex or watching football, if you are male).  When your EEG shows zero activity, you will be dead.

So you have some reason to believe that a soul, if it existed, is a product of the brain? Or that it is in some way connected with the use of electricity? 

I think what you say is probably true of mind. Mind -- whatever it is -- depends on a functioning brain, and the brain uses electrochemical interactions. 

So I guess if you could show that mind and soul are the same thing you'd have proved your point.

[EgoDeath]

@Belaqua

Do you think souls exist?

[Jehanne]

Your brain is electrochemical, in fact, it's about 20 watts (joules per second) of energy (25 when having sex or watching football, if you are male).  When your EEG shows zero activity, you will be dead.

So you have some reason to believe that a soul, if it existed, is a product of the brain? Or that it is in some way connected with the use of electricity? 

I think what you say is probably true of mind. Mind -- whatever it is -- depends on a functioning brain, and the brain uses electrochemical interactions. 

So I guess if you could show that mind and soul are the same thing you'd have proved your point.

I am a materialist, and so, I think that your mind ("you") is entirely and completely the activity of your brain, nothing more.  When you die someday, you will cease to exist.  Think of death as an endless, dreamless "sleep" from which one will never, ever awake.

[Succubus]

Edited to add:

I looked at the link you provided. It doesn't say anything about a soul, so I don't see why it's relevant here.

The link that says Physics and the Immortality of the Soul?

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@Belaqua

Do you think souls exist?

Don't be silly. She's not here for that, she's just asking questions.

[Jehanne]

Edited to add:

I looked at the link you provided. It doesn't say anything about a soul, so I don't see why it's relevant here.

The link that says Physics and the Immortality of the Soul?

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@Belaqua

Do you think souls exist?

Don't be silly. She's not here for that, she's just asking questions.

Great link from Professor Carroll; seems up things very nicely.  An engineer at a company that I once worked for gave a presentation where he had a PowerPoint slide that had in large letters about how "God set about solving Maxwell's equations at the beginning of the Universe," and I remember thinking, "Maxwell??".

Difference between an engineer and a physicist, I suppose...

[Belacqua]

@Belaqua

Do you think souls exist?

I'm waiting for someone to tell me what a soul is, so I can answer that question.

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I am a materialist, and so, I think that your mind ("you") is entirely and completely the activity of your brain, nothing more.  When you die someday, you will cease to exist.  Think of death as an endless, dreamless "sleep" from which one will never, ever awake.

Right, I understand that. But here you're talking about mind again, not soul.

Do you have some argument as to why mind and soul must be identical?

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The link that says Physics and the Immortality of the Soul?

Oops! My mistake. I apologize! 

Somehow I got to the page on the same site called "Seriously, The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Really Are Completely Understood." 

I will go read the correct page now.

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OK, I read the correct page this time.

He is defining soul as:

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV.

I don't know what "spirit energy" is, but if it is in some way related to the kind of energy that physics studies, then yes, physics should be able to study it.

For the record, I don't see any reason to think that kind of soul exists.

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Don't be silly. She's not here for that, she's just asking questions.

Just to avoid confusion:

Belaqua is a boy's name, and I'm a boy.

From Wikipedia:

Belacqua is a minor character in Dante's Purgatorio, Canto IV. He is considered the epitome of indolence and laziness.

[Belacqua]

OK, I've been thinking about the definition of "soul" given by the blog quoted above:

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV.

That seems like a reasonable summary of the way most people use the word these days -- both Christians who believe in soul and those who oppose them. The definition is useful, I think, because it exposes the very poor and fuzzy way we are thinking about the subject.

For example, it relies on something called "spirit energy" which doesn't help us at all. First we'd have to figure out what "spirit" is, and that's another word with no good meaning. Does it mean something ghostly? Does it just mean attitudes, as in the phrase "school spirit"? Defining one unknown term with another unknown term doesn't help much. And not knowing what spirit is means that we don't know what kind of energy we're talking about. Is "spirit energy" anything like the energy physicists study? Does this mean that physicists can study soul (if it exists)? Or is "spirit energy" something else?

We're left talking about words so fuzzy that we can hardly say anything. And we are liable to make assumptions -- for example, that soul must be similar to something we understand better, like electricity.

The reason I brought up Aristotle earlier is because he had a definition of soul which is not at all fuzzy, and which many Christians also used. It's not only clear, it is something non-supernatural which most people could understand, even if they don't think it's helpful.

So, to repeat, here is Aristotle's definition. "Soul" is the morph part of hylomorphism. It is the form of the body, as opposed to its matter. In this case "form" means more than "shape." (A newly-dead body has the same shape, but not the form, in this sense, of a living body.) Form here means shape but also the functions, interactions, and operations. The things that the body does, by its nature.

When the body dies, the matter is still there (at first) but the soul is gone, because it is no longer capable of doing human things.

I think using the word "soul" in this way is still useful, because it gives a more general word to the totality of a person. It includes habits, mental memory, body memory, dispositions, many other things. If you wanted to avoid the word "soul" because of its modern implications you could substitute some longer phrase, like "all the memories, thoughts, habits, and dispositions of what I am."

The only thing spooky about soul, in this sense, is the Christian idea that at death the soul is transferred from its first, fleshly body into a different body, made of some different matter. And the Christians who assert this, if they're honest, recognize that this belief about the transfer of the soul is not at all provable, but only faith-based.

It came up on another thread recently that the term "supernatural" is similar. In today's usage it is so incoherent that it's easy to dismiss it as unreal just because the term means nothing. In the bad old days, however, people gave it a clear use which could be debated. This older definition certainly didn't prove the reality of the supernatural, but it made it clear what we're talking about.

[EgoDeath]

I'm waiting for someone to tell me what a soul is, so I can answer that question.

Base your answer off of what you think a soul is. Go.

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Belacqua is a minor character in Dante's Purgatorio, Canto IV. He is considered the epitome of indolence and laziness.

How ironically hilarious.

You are, intellectually, very lazy, I'll give you that. In fact, you're so lazy that you just directly copied and pasted from Wikipedia, a very scholarly source, may I add. Also, you're even lazier because the quote you gave employs the redundant use of "laziness."

But oh! the great Belauqa replies, actually, indolence in The Divine Comedy is used to describe a person who wasted away their life and blah blah blah blah.

Yea dude, we get it, you're smarter than all of us. Now answer my question about the soul LOL