Are Spirits Scientifically Possible?

[crowonsnow]

You can only say that joy is a physical state if you ignore the subjective feelings associated with those states. Of course, the only way we have to measure the subjective feeling is by experiencing it, which is by definition subjective, and therefore can’t be measured by science. But that is a limitation of science. You can’t just pretend that subjective feelings don’t exist because your favourite investigative method doesn’t work on it.

The “feeling” and the physical state are one and the same. Brain imaging can let us look at specifically how the brain is aroused which corresponds to these “feelings.” It would be fabulously revealing to image brains in which the subjects are “pretending,” and compare that to the real thing. And we do all possess mirror neurons, which is probably the seat of empathy.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

The “feeling” and the physical state are one and the same. Brain imaging can let us look at specifically how the brain is aroused which corresponds to these “feelings.” It would be fabulously revealing to image brains in which the subjects are “pretending,” and compare that to the real thing. And we do all possess mirror neurons, which is probably the seat of empathy.

Yes, the brain is aroused when we experience subjective feeling.

Now, explain to me how you prove that subjective feeling and brain arousal are the same thing? You said it, you prove it.

We can see that brain arousal happens at the same time as subjective feelings. But that doesn’t prove they are the same. Things can happen at the same time due to causality. The brain arousal could cause the subjective experience, or the brain arousal and the subjective experience could both be caused by the same thing. Where’s your proof that they are the same?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

“Strange” is in the eye of the beholder. A soul is a strange concept, same as a gremlin. How would you verify the existence of souls that is different than how I verify the existence of tap-dancing gremlins?

You’ve simply stated that whenever there is a human there is a soul. I’ve simply stated that whenever there is the color red there is a tap dancing gremlin.

Well, you picked the gremlin example because it sounds strange or ridiculous, which is why I called it ‘strange’ I thought that was a common point we could agree on.

The word ‘soul’ is probably going to confuse our conversation. Let’s just speak of the “subjective experience of pain”. I assume we can both agree that we have subjective experiences. That’s all I mean by my ‘soul’, the ‘me’ that subjectively experiences pain and other things. The ‘subject’ in the word ‘subjective’.

 

[Nickkname]

Are spirits scientifically possible?

There have been a few discussions lately about whether gods and faeries exist, and we can add a host of other names to that list, but all these entities are different spirits. So are spirits scientifically possible? Yes? No? And please explain.

I can’t for the life of me find it, but there is a document in EWTN’s online Library that discusses this very topic. It actually shows scientiific evidence for the existence of spirits - I couldn’t believe it when I found it! I just need to find it again. goes to search

 

[Nickkname]

I found something on spiritualism, but I don’t think this is the document I was searching for:

ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/SPIRITSM.TXT

I’ll keep looking

 

[crowonsnow]

Well, you picked the gremlin example because it sounds strange or ridiculous, which is why I called it ‘strange’ I thought that was a common point we could agree on.

The word ‘soul’ is probably going to confuse our conversation. Let’s just speak of the “subjective experience of pain”. I assume we can both agree that we have subjective experiences. That’s all I mean by my ‘soul’, the ‘me’ that subjectively experiences pain and other things. The ‘subject’ in the word ‘subjective’.

I know what soul means generally and it is a type of spirit that supposedly lives in our bodies, and that leaves our bodies when our bodies die. Using the word will not confuse our conversation. How does one go about scientifically verifying the existence of souls?

Soul is always associated with an object, a human body. Just as you cannot separate speed from a speeding object, except semantically, you cannot separate soul from a human body. I could think of a soul as energy transfer, and could understand it that way, but all else is semantics. So a soul is scientifically possible if we think of it as energy transference, but there is nothing more to it than that scientifically.

Of course we can pretend and imagine anything we wish. To pretend is at least human.

Now, explain to me how you prove that subjective feeling and brain arousal are the same thing?

That’s how.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

I know what soul means generally and it is a type of spirit that supposedly lives in our bodies, and that leaves our bodies when our bodies die. Using the word will not confuse our conversation. How does one go about scientifically verifying the existence of souls?

The problem with the word soul is that it has so much baggage. It’s used by many different religions and spiritualities.

I don’t think it’s possible to scientifically prove that a soul goes to heaven or hell, or what it does when we die. The only thing I feel capable of discussing scientifically is the subjective ‘me’ that experiences pain and other sensations and emotions. My religious beliefs make me think thats the same as my ‘soul’ but I wouldn’t want to confuse religious faith with scientific investigation.

Soul is always associated with an object, a human body. Just as you cannot separate speed from a speeding object, except semantically, you cannot separate soul from a human body. I could think of a soul as energy transfer, and could understand it that way, but all else is semantics. So a soul is scientifically possible if we think of it as energy transference, but there is nothing more to it than that scientifically.

I don’t have any scientific evidence to discuss that would say that a spirit or soul can exist apart from the body. But scientifically, we should consider that it might exist along with the body, as a separate entity. We can’t just assume that subjective experience is the same thing as the brain.

Of course we can pretend and imagine anything we wish. To pretend is at least human.
That’s how.

I don’t want to get into speculation and pretending things. My subjective experience is of a quality that is quite unlike any of the qualities that we find associated with objects in physics and chemistry and biology. I can’t compare the experience of pain, for example, with size, mass, volume, velocity, brightness, electrical properties, etc. It’s very different. Those properties don’t really do anything to explain subjective feeling.

 

[Abbadon]

We live in a material world, to speak of immaterial things is to speak of nothing. - I really wish I knew who said that.

I don’t want to get into speculation and pretending things. My subjective experience is of a quality that is quite unlike any of the qualities that we find associated with objects in physics and chemistry and biology. I can’t compare the experience of pain, for example, with size, mass, volume, velocity, brightness, electrical properties, etc. It’s very different. Those properties don’t really do anything to explain subjective feeling.

Why can’t we compare pain? We understand how pain works, and pain can be measured. If we came to a more complete understanding of love, hate, greed or any other emotion. We can compare it. We can map patterns in the brain, electrical signals and what not to determine severity and strength.

I don’t think it’s possible to scientifically prove that a soul goes to heaven or hell, or what it does when we die.

I completely agree, because for that we must work out what a soul is, what it does and how it works. Also how is it connected to me and my consciousness. Currently from strange neurological testing on the brain, especially in split brain patients we understand consciousness needs a physical brain to exist. So where does a soul come into play?

 

[MindOverMatter]

I think that would mean it’s logically possible, but not scientifically possible. I can construct a logical argument with a weak premise that still makes sense strictly on logical terms. For example I can say that whenever I see the color red there is a gremlin doing a tap dance. But that would hardly have made gremlins scientifically possible.

Scientists cannot verify that Reality actually exists, and that other people exist.

 

[MindOverMatter]

We live in a material world, to speak of immaterial things is to speak of nothing. - I really wish I knew who said that.

Why can’t we compare pain? We understand how pain works, and pain can be measured. If we came to a more complete understanding of love, hate, greed or any other emotion. We can compare it. We can map patterns in the brain, electrical signals and what not to determine severity and strength.

I completely agree, because for that we must work out what a soul is, what it does and how it works. Also how is it connected to me and my consciousness. Currently from strange neurological testing on the brain, especially in split brain patients we understand consciousness needs a physical brain to exist. So where does a soul come into play?

It needs a physical brain to function in the body. Whether or not conciousness is therefore a product of the brain and ends with the brain, is yet to be demonstrated. My experience of being a concious being, is that there are immaterial aspects to it that i cannot deny. For instance i have meaningfull ideas. They may very well be a physical process involved in my experiencing things, but when i think of something, that subjective thought in itself is evidently not material, irrespective of whether or not evidence of my thinking can be traced physiologically. Brains states is evidence of the subjective mind, not evidence of that my mind is synonomous with matter. Brains states imply that when i choose to think, physical things occur. This more likely suggests that my will transcends the physical reality of the brain, just as much as it funtions only when united with the brain.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

We live in a material world, to speak of immaterial things is to speak of nothing. - I really wish I knew who said that.

Well, your statement relies on the assumption that there isn’t anything immaterial. It doesn’t prove anything.

Why can’t we compare pain? We understand how pain works, and pain can be measured. If we came to a more complete understanding of love, hate, greed or any other emotion. We can compare it. We can map patterns in the brain, electrical signals and what not to determine severity and strength.

Well, see, how do we really know that someone is suffering more or less because they have more brain activity? What do you say when someone with more brain activity than another person seems to be suffering less? I suppose if you have blind faith in materialism, you would have to say that the person who seems to be suffering more is just a whiner and a complainer.

The fact is, you can measure electrical fields in the brain, but you can only hypothesize about the relationship between those fields and the subjective experience of the person. Pain is not an electrical field, and an electrical field is not pain. Unless you’re willing to tell us you believe that electronic circuits also experience pain.

I completely agree, because for that we must work out what a soul is, what it does and how it works. Also how is it connected to me and my consciousness. Currently from strange neurological testing on the brain, especially in split brain patients we understand consciousness needs a physical brain to exist. So where does a soul come into play?

I’m equating consciousness with a spirit, the way I use the word spirit. I agree that the spirit in human beings is tied into the brain in a way that the consciousness experiences things that the brain brings to it. But we know how to make artificial brains that have (name removed by moderator)uts from the physical world, process them, have electrical activity, and provide outputs, but no one believes that computers have the same subjective experiences that people have.

You’re got to expand your science to find a way to measure subjective things. Although it might be impossible, since the word ‘subjective’ seems to rule out looking at them objectively. It’s just how it is but its not a reason to deny that subjective experience exists.

 

[Abbadon]

Scientists cannot verify that Reality actually exists, and that other people exist.

Ok I will give that at a philosophical level, none of us knows if what we are experiencing is real or not. But there is no point dwelling on it for to long, sure it’s interesting fun and makes great movies like the matrix. But our senses are the only way we can perceive our reality so that is the only way we can test it.

Actually in SEED magazine issue 15, some physicists are actually working on something like that, it was to do with do we create reality by observing it and without observing it does it exist… something like that, physics goes over my head most of the time anyway… Quantum mechanics, gone, no idea so I’ll leave it to the physicists.

 

[Abbadon]

It needs a physical brain to function in the body. Whether or not conciousness is therefore a product of the brain and ends with the brain, is yet to be demonstrated. My experience of being a concious being, is that there are immaterial aspects to it that i cannot deny. For instance i have meaningfull ideas. They may very well be a physical process involved in my experiencing things, but when i think of something, that subjective thought in itself is evidently not material, irrespective of whether or not evidence of my thinking can be traced physiologically. Brains states is evidence of the subjective mind, not evidence of that my mind is synonomous with matter. Brains states imply that when i choose to think, physical things occur. This more likely suggests that my will transcends the physical reality of the brain, just as much as it funtions only when united with the brain.

Yes physical process are required for you to think. WIthout specific physical process you cannot have certain things. I apologize for not recalling exactly the names (or mixing up patients) it’s been a few years since I did psychology. There was this man who had a pole through his brain and he lost the ability to produce certain emotions and also the ability to link faces to names. Then split brain patients, there are instances like when you cover their left eye and show them a tool, and you whisper in there right ear they can identify the tool but not name it. Things like that, this shows us that for our thought processes, even those of that process things of a subjective matter require a physical brain for them to be processed. Without it we are unable to make those thoughts. As current evidence indicates.

This more likely suggests that my will transcends the physical reality of the brain,

I don’t understand how you reached this conclusion, sure even me thinking right now seems very magical, but all the processes that interpert images, sound and language are all in my brain. So the fact that I am talking to my self as I type this and can imagine certain scenarios in images and recall things through memory is not a big deal, I mean its awesome but its all understandably physical. It’s all just electrical signals working in different sectors of my brain, and I have no reason to believe that processes are working through (what? how do thought processes work outside the brain) outside of the physical nature of my brain. If they did and my brain was split in half I should be able to name the tool when whispered in my right ear.

 

[Abbadon]

Well, your statement relies on the assumption that there isn’t anything immaterial. It doesn’t prove anything.

Well if something has no substance then what is it? I don’t have to be able to observe it with my 5 senses. Atoms for example I cannot observe. Other dimensions, if they exist that are parallel and exist on a different frequency to ours, they too would be made of something. If something has nothing to define it it is nothing.

Actually gravity. And other forces of the like (don’t do physics don’t know, I remember hearing strong force, something to do with atoms), these forces do not have substance do they? Still a cool quote, even if its wrong.

Well, see, how do we really know that someone is suffering more or less because they have more brain activity? What do you say when someone with more brain activity than another person seems to be suffering less? I suppose if you have blind faith in materialism, you would have to say that the person who seems to be suffering more is just a whiner and a complainer.

The fact is, you can measure electrical fields in the brain, but you can only hypothesize about the relationship between those fields and the subjective experience of the person. Pain is not an electrical field, and an electrical field is not pain. Unless you’re willing to tell us you believe that electronic circuits also experience pain.

For the record I do not have faith. Faith is belief without reason, I have reasons for all my beliefs. I think… Can’t think of anything I believe without good reason, oh i forgot mirror demons… damn… But there just so hot…

Well no this event occurring in the brain is being measured, is requiring of a brain, I’m sure its more complicated than measuring an electrical field (or is it?). It would be how the brain interprets certain stimuli. And since we all have roughly similar genetic coding, it would be possible to create a bell curve of pain measurement. Of course there would be outliers that would interpret certain signals as no pain or extreme pain. I wonder if thats the case or is the registering of pain the same, as in when we interpret pain subjectively does it readout the same. Like a pin prick may be a little for me but alot for someone else. So do i show little pain receptor activity and the other alot? I wonder what studies have been done, going to have to check it out… Does a person with more brain activity suffer less? And is that activity specific to pain and only pain. I honestly have not done research into this I was merely using it as an example of how what people may call subjective experiences can be measured.

I’m equating consciousness with a spirit, the way I use the word spirit. I agree that the spirit in human beings is tied into the brain in a way that the consciousness experiences things that the brain brings to it.

How could you possibly know this?

But we know how to make artificial brains that have (name removed by moderator)uts from the physical world, process them, have electrical activity, and provide outputs, but no one believes that computers have the same subjective experiences that people have.

Actually I don’t see why not. I see no reason why A.I can’t have the same experiences that we have, and who are you to tell them that they cannot? So your statement of no one is incorrect, I am someone. But it would have to be A.I and self aware, not V.I or just a simple program, but true A.I. Like something out of a science fiction (and soon to be non fiction). I don’t think the V.I programs running on my computer at the moment are capable of self awareness, or at least I hope not because I am doing them a great injustice by allowing them only to monitor and react to data on my computer.

I think you are glorifying humanity a bit to much. Were pretty ****, our body fails all the time, even our minds fail. But hey were better than other species, at least on this planet… for now anyway…

You’re got to expand your science to find a way to measure subjective things. Although it might be impossible, since the word ‘subjective’ seems to rule out looking at them objectively. It’s just how it is but its not a reason to deny that subjective experience exists.

What do you mean by your science? Science isn’t something I or anyone else owns. It’s a process of discovery of which the knowledge base we can all draw from.

I do not see why not, we just need to understand these things and measure them. Say for example beauty, it would not measuring how beautiful an object is it would be measuring how beautiful we think an object is. I don’t know if we can do that now, and as exams are only a few weeks away I do not plan on doing psychology studies for fun atm, maybe I will take it during the summer. So what triggers in our brain identify beauty, when does it activate how etc… Once we understand all about it then we can determine how people think something is beautiful and then it would be easy to test the theory. We could map brain activity and then predict the subjects response and compare to the subjects response.

 

[Abbadon]

Btw

Spirits are Scientifically possible. It would be just like the Hellboy comics. I’m reading them right now, and if spirits and the supernatural are real, thats what our world would be like. We would be studying this stuff, we would have a B.P.R.D. Not just that it would be like make a new field of science and new subsets within the current ones.

Thankfully it’s not, becuase folklore, fables and the supernatural are fracked up.

 

[Dee_Dee_King]

science operates in the physical world and how physical things relate to one another. spirits are obviously non physical but act upon our physical world. science is empirical and experimental. science is dependent on physical objects.

so spirits are outside the proper sphere of science. it belongs to the metaphysical sphere which deals with being as being.

can science prove that a personality or intellect exists?? no more than it can prove spirits exist.

we can use science to infer the existence of spirits, intellect and personalities. but it can’t directly prove they exist. as someone already mentioned, string theory is basically as non scientific as spirits.

 

[Abbadon]

science operates in the physical world and how physical things relate to one another. spirits are obviously non physical but act upon our physical world. science is empirical and experimental. science is dependent on physical objects.

so spirits are outside the proper sphere of science. it belongs to the metaphysical sphere which deals with being as being.

can science prove that a personality or intellect exists?? no more than it can prove spirits exist.

we can use science to infer the existence of spirits, intellect and personalities. but it can’t directly prove they exist. as someone already mentioned, string theory is basically as non scientific as spirits.

But we can test predictions that use string theory. And other quantum mechanic principles are tested and the theories are supported, or so my friends tell me, physics is like economics to me. Until better theories come along. In science your theory is not excepted unless the math is right, so to speak. Unless you have evidence to back up your findings.

Spirits are a theory without any evidence to back it up. No observed predictions, nothing but hearsay and anecdotal evidence.
On the other hand we can observe personalities and intellect.

In BPRD on the other hand they have a real medium on thier team. They communicate with dead spirits for accurate clues and information (Unlike the bs psychics of our world). They have a demon on their team. A fire starter who controls fire through her will. I mean there is so much evidence, and it would be present in our world to if the stories were real. In the BPRD universe I would believe in spirits and forest gods… Becuase they are real…

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Btw

Spirits are Scientifically possible. It would be just like the Hellboy comics. I’m reading them right now, and if spirits and the supernatural are real, thats what our world would be like. We would be studying this stuff, we would have a B.P.R.D. Not just that it would be like make a new field of science and new subsets within the current ones…

What are the spirits in the hellboy comic like?

My understanding of spirits is that they can’t usually interact with physical things because they don’t have physical properties. But the brain is a special device designed to allow a spirit that can control quantum probabilities to interact with the physical world. Somehow only one spirit gets one brain though, I don’t know how the ownership is controlled.

Can we look into that scientifically?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Well if something has no substance then what is it? I don’t have to be able to observe it with my 5 senses. Atoms for example I cannot observe. Other dimensions, if they exist that are parallel and exist on a different frequency to ours, they too would be made of something. If something has nothing to define it it is nothing.

By ‘substance’ do you mean matter? Are you asking if a thing is not made of matter, what it is made of? I don’t know the answer, but I wouldn’t rule out ‘things’ that are not made of matter. The only such thing that I know of directly on a regular basis is my conscience. What is conscience made of? Maybe its made of emotico-atoms. I have no idea.

We would need some tools to investigate it. It seems that the universe is set up in a way that makes it hard to do that. But maybe in the future.

Actually gravity. And other forces of the like (don’t do physics don’t know, I remember hearing strong force, something to do with atoms), these forces do not have substance do they? Still a cool quote, even if its wrong.

I guess gravity is a phenomenon, a force made up of strong atomic forces of all the atoms.

For the record I do not have faith. Faith is belief without reason, I have reasons for all my beliefs. I think… Can’t think of anything I believe without good reason, oh i forgot mirror demons… damn… But there just so hot…

I was being facetious when saying you had faith in science. I was trying to show how your insistence that consciousness only has a physical dimension is irrational, and that it is actually based on a blind faith in science-as-we-know-it-today rather than real objective analysis. My point was that perhaps your insistence on sticking to science is as irrational as you think our faith is.

Well no this event occurring in the brain is being measured, is requiring of a brain, I’m sure its more complicated than measuring an electrical field (or is it?). It would be how the brain interprets certain stimuli. And since we all have roughly similar genetic coding, it would be possible to create a bell curve of pain measurement. Of course there would be outliers that would interpret certain signals as no pain or extreme pain. I wonder if thats the case or is the registering of pain the same, as in when we interpret pain subjectively does it readout the same. Like a pin prick may be a little for me but alot for someone else. So do i show little pain receptor activity and the other alot? I wonder what studies have been done, going to have to check it out… Does a person with more brain activity suffer less? And is that activity specific to pain and only pain. I honestly have not done research into this I was merely using it as an example of how what people may call subjective experiences can be measured.

You should look into it! You’ll find that science can look at behaviour (how did the person react to the pain, did he scream, etc.), physical measurements (brain scans) or by asking the subject to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten.

You’ll find that there isn’t really any way to scientifically compare people’s subjective experiences. Science requires objectivity (thats one of the whole points of science), and by definition subjectivity is not objective. Only one person can measure/see/experience how bad the pain hurts subjectively, and thats the person with the pain. Of course, this is frustrating to people trying to use science to study these things. Some of them will be so frustrated that they’ll convince themselves that subjectivity simply does not exist, that it is in fact a physical state that can be measured with a machine. Don’t be one of those people!

How could you possibly know this?

It’s just my favorite theory about how a person’s spirit interacts with the brain. Subject to scientific and metaphysical study Quantum physics has opened up a way for the physical universe to be controlled by a non-physical thing without violating the laws of physics.

Actually I don’t see why not. I see no reason why A.I can’t have the same experiences that we have, and who are you to tell them that they cannot? So your statement of no one is incorrect, I am someone. But it would have to be A.I and self aware, not V.I or just a simple program, but true A.I. Like something out of a science fiction (and soon to be non fiction). I don’t think the V.I programs running on my computer at the moment are capable of self awareness, or at least I hope not because I am doing them a great injustice by allowing them only to monitor and react to data on my computer.

Well, I would never believe that any of the software programs I’ve written would have subjective experience. But like you said, they’re not really AI. But isn’t AI just a more complex software program? How would this subjective experience arise within the program? Is it something the programmer has to code in?

I think you are glorifying humanity a bit to much. Were pretty ****, our body fails all the time, even our minds fail. But hey were better than other species, at least on this planet… for now anyway…

Well I don’t know if other animals have those experiences like us. For all I know, even inanimate objects have subjective experience. Maybe rocks experience suffering when we crack them in two. How would I know? There is no way to measure it scientifically.

 

[Abbadon]

What are the spirits in the hellboy comic like?

My understanding of spirits is that they can’t usually interact with physical things because they don’t have physical properties. But the brain is a special device designed to allow a spirit that can control quantum probabilities to interact with the physical world. Somehow only one spirit gets one brain though, I don’t know how the ownership is controlled.

Can we look into that scientifically?

Sure… But first you have to define spirit. Then show how what you stated works… As crazy as this sounds I believe you may be right, you just have to provide the evidence to indicate to me that you are. How can you do this? If you cannot are your statements then but merely assertions?