That’s the question that has really been bothering me. If it is only where our intellect and will reside, it would seem that it’s only role is to act as the “little voice” that hopefully keeps our biological self on a higher plain than the animals. Not really a very fulfilling thought.Are there any mental powers that are not biological? Thinking, speaking, planning, feeling, etc all have neurological substrates. What is the role of the soul?
THE soul is spiritual … on loan from God, so to speak.
Personality and a lot of other aspects of our persona may be a complex mix of heredity and DNA and brain chemistry and electrical currents and a lot of other things.
Personality, for example, can be easily altered by various medications for good or ill. [And not just medications and other chemicals. Electrical stimulation and physical assault, for example can also change personality. Psychoanalysis is sometimes called “The Talking Cure” … meaning that WORDS alone can also change personality.]
Interesting book:
alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=8063959&matches=65&title=the+talking+cure&cm_re=workslistingtitle
The soul is unchangeable … except to the extent that it is affected by grace and by sin.
Thousands of books have been written about personality and how to measure it and how to change it … etc, etc, etc. My library on psychology is at least 1000 volumes and I only have a small percentage of the total that are available. ]
Probably if you did a search, you would find almost as many books that discuss and describe the soul.
I’m not really sure. I think I’d say that that’s missing the point. The soul and the brain aren’t separate, not in the same way that the brain and, say, the lymphatic system are separate. The soul overlaps and is intertwined with the body; a human without a body is not a full human. The brain plays an interesting roll in that it’s one of the places of exchange between the body and the soul: the soul can be said to be the seat of free will, but it works by imposing itself upon the grey matter of your brain, sort of like if the body were a remote controlled car and your brain were the remote. It’s not that the soul necessarily performs a specific part of the functioning of the car, but that it controls the whole thing as best it can (obviously, any of a number of things can interfere with the operation of the car).Is there anything specific that the soul “does” that the brain doesn’t do?
Yes, the soul is the seat of knowing and willing and decicison making. The brain is material and seems to be an organ which integrates the information coming in from sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. In the brain, that integrated data is still material. Most people think that they think with their brains; they really think with their intellect, a faculty of the soul.Is there anything specific that the soul “does” that the brain doesn’t do?
I think that by “objective evidence” in this case, you really mean “material” evidence. The only real evidence of one’s ability to form abstract thoughts, general principles, and free decisions is through observing the workings of one’s own intellect and will, since we can not directly touch the workings of another person’s mind or will.But the presence of a soul is largely a matter of faith. There really isn’t any objective evidence that it exists. Thinking (concretely or abstractly), feeling, planning, speaking, remembering, etc all have very specific correlates with brain structures and activity. The purpose of a soul beyond a religious context is not clear. I’m not saying this as a trouble-making atheist, just as a Catholic who sometimes wonders about his own beliefs.
Yes, this is exactly the issue that troubles me. I think things are relatively predictable, including me. I am not entirely sure that I (or anyone) has true, free will. Every action I take, it seems, is more or less predetermined and based mostly on the sum of my experience to that time, with a little chance thrown in.I think that by “objective evidence” in this case, you really mean “material” evidence. The only real evidence of one’s ability to form abstract thoughts, general principles, and free decisions is through observing the workings of one’s own intellect and will, since we can not directly touch the workings of another person’s mind or will.
One has to decide, based upon the internal evidence from introspection, as it were, whether or not one’s thought, ideas, propositions, actions, and judgments flow simply from the electro-chemical workings of the brain, and thus are at root subject to physcial laws and determinism, or whether there is something more to it.
If it is only matter and energy at work, then the twists and turns taken by any thread on this forum should be reducible to physics and chemistry, and should in theory be quite predictable.
I think that also, a distinction needs to be drawn between the brain and the mind.Yes, the soul is the seat of knowing and willing and decicison making. The brain is material and seems to be an organ which integrates the information coming in from sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. In the brain, that integrated data is still material. Most people think that they think with their brains; they really think with their intellect, a faculty of the soul.
Speaking somewhat metaphorically, the intellect takes all the material data from sense perception including that integrated data in the brain, and sucks all the matter out of it, leaving only the immaterial form or idea. That’s how we engage in abstract thought while strictly material beings don’t. It’s a continuous process. As BlaineTog mentioned, soul and body are so intimately intertwined as to form a unity, not a duality.
I would have to agree that psychological factors play a big part in how we act. Our personalities, our proclivities, are partly from genetic factors, partly from the way we were raised. Still, it seems to me that there is an underlying core of non-determinism within each of us, enabling us to choose this and not that, to form abstract thoughts from discrete and material (name removed by moderator)ut.Yes, this is exactly the issue that troubles me. I think things are relatively predictable, including me. I am not entirely sure that I (or anyone) has true, free will. Every action I take, it seems, is more or less predetermined and based mostly on the sum of my experience to that time, with a little chance thrown in.
This is why we should be careful about killing off people we determine to be “brain-dead.”I think that also, a distinction needs to be drawn between the brain and the mind.
Even if a person is in a coma and their brain and their intellect and will and mind and flat-lined, the soul continues until the person is totally dead.
Absolutely right.This is why we should be careful about killing off people we determine to be “brain-dead.”
I can’t think of any examples of “non-deterministic” behavior, though. Can you? If you put me in any given situation, I can pretty much predict how I would act/react. My wife, who knows me well, would probably make the same predictions about me. If you send me to a big party full of strangers, odds are, I will keep to myself and not be loud or wild or boisterous, because that’s my nature, not because in that particular instance I chose to act as an introvert.I would have to agree that psychological factors play a big part in how we act. Our personalities, our proclivities, are partly from genetic factors, partly from the way we were raised. Still, it seems to me that there is an underlying core of non-determinism within each of us, enabling us to choose this and not that, to form abstract thoughts from discrete and material (name removed by moderator)ut.
If in fact our total being is based on nothing but matter and energy, then we can really have no free will, and no independent thought, since it is all formed on (name removed by moderator)ut beyond our control. We then would have no basis for law, since no one has control of his actions, and no basis for merit of any kind. No awards and no punishment.
I don’t think the absence of free will negates the basis of law. Humans are social beings, and society needs rules to function. I think its absence, though, does call into question the notion of eternal responsibility. Sometimes on the news I’ll see a person arrested for a horrible crime - shaking a baby to death, for instance. As good, upstanding people, we always react with horror to such news. Our religion tells us those people will burn eternally for such actions (barring repentance, etc). Occasionally, though, I imagine myself in that evil person’s place. If I had been born into that body and experienced every single event in that person’s life up until that tragic moment, would I have behaved differently, and not shaken the baby? I don’t think so.If in fact our total being is based on nothing but matter and energy, then we can really have no free will, and no independent thought, since it is all formed on (name removed by moderator)ut beyond our control. We then would have no basis for law, since no one has control of his actions, and no basis for merit of any kind. No awards and no punishment.