What exactly is the soul?

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JuanFlorencio said:
inocente;13040539 said:
1. We all know, both subjectively and objectively, that we detect light through the eyes, and only through the eyes.
  1. A number of research teams have found that the only information produced by the eyes are the coded electrical signals. This has been found in other species too. (Nirenberg is the first to be able to decode the signals in human beings, by no means the first to detect them).
  2. Therefore, from 1 and 2, we know the only information available from which to make “the movie” in our mind is this stream of electrical signals coming out of the eyes. I can’t see how that conclusion is in any way speculative, doesn’t it just follow by simple logic?
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You just need to go on with your reasoning:

The brains we can see (and under certain conditions, we might be able to see our very own brain) are part of the world.

Therefore, from 1 and 2, the “movie” of the brain is created by the brain based on the electrical impulses coming out from the eyes.

But the eyes are part of the world too; therefore the “movie” of them is created by the brain based on the electrical signals coming out from those same eyes.

Actually, as the instrumentation used in the laboratory to “see” the electrical signals coming out from the eyes are part of the world. Therefore, their “movie” is also created by the brain.

But whatever the electrical signals might be -after these previous considerations- they themselves are part of the world; so… What is the brain?
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Sure, we could join the solipsists, the substance dualists or the idealists. We could join the spiritualists and visit the astral plane in our dreams. But methinks such other-worldly philosophies can’t heal the mentally ill or help the blind to see.
 
JuanFlorencio said:
Yes, the mirrors! It is possible with a set of mirrors!

It was not my intention to propose a hard question, but to show where Inocente’s idea leads. However, you came from a different path and interpreted the question peculiarly (which is fantastic!).

Following Inocente’s motion it would seem at first that there are my eyes, my brain, and bit streams; and everything else is a “movie” of the world created by my brain. But then, on a second stage of reflection, the brain itself is assimilated into the bit stream; the brain as we see it must be created by the brain. But is it at least a bit stream? No! Because a bit stream is something to which we have access through instruments whose appearance is created by the brain. So, we don’t know what the brain is?

Taken by Inocente’s impulse, the brain could not be the nexus that you imagine; there would not be human heads nor body movements at all. What could reality be? We wouldn’t know.
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There’s a difference between the idea of an elephant and an actual elephant, in that if the real elephant steps on our toe then it really hurts. In the same way, I think we need to differentiate between the mind and the brain - we cannot see the former.

But also: for the definition of recursion, see the definition of recursion.
 
inocente said:
There’s a difference between the idea of an elephant and an actual elephant, in that if the real elephant steps on our toe then it really hurts. In the same way, I think we need to differentiate between the mind and the brain - we cannot see the former.

But also: for the definition of recursion, see the definition of recursion.
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If one reads just this post of yours, without knowing the previous ones, one could derive at least two interpretations:


  1. *]That you consider the mind as a reality of one class (for example, the class of realities that cannot be seen), and the brain as a reality belonging to a different class (the class of realities that can be seen).
    *]That you consider the brain as a reality, and the mind as an idea.

    Let me bring again your statement which says “therefore the ‘movie’ of the world which we see in our mind must be created by the brain from the bit stream alone, since that is the only information it ever has”; and it seems from it that you regard the “we” (or the “I”), the “mind”, and the “brain” as distinguishable realities (not ideas). Then you say “On brain and mind, I’d say the brain is the stuff between our ears while the mind is the faculty of awareness and consciousness”, which seems to confirm that you really make those distinctions. Therefore, I think we can ignore the second possible interpretation; and with the first one we can go back to your previous posts and read them taking good care of interpreting them consistently.

    But it seems also that you wonder what should legitimately be attributed to the mind. This is the way in which I take your words “On ‘spiritual’ or immaterial, I think people uses such words in many different ways, but we can perhaps cut through any confusion by asking: Can the mind, or any aspect of the mind, function only by breaking the laws of nature?”, and what follows.

    We also need to ask ourselves what can legitimately be attributed to the brain (or to the entire body ), and I think that we cannot say legitimately that the “movie” of the world is created by the brain. Recursion destroys this interpretation of research results, as you have noticed.

    In summary, what I think you are doing is repeating yourself when you said: “It would be more meaningful to debate the implications of research results, but that would depend on acknowledging facts”, which I like a lot. What are other research results that you would like to debate and what are the facts that we should acknowledge?
 
inocente said:
. . . we need to differentiate between the mind and the brain - we cannot see the former. . .
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How about considering that they are one and the same thing. This means that the mind, as a collection of ideas, feelings etc exists in physical space as brain.

“Mind” refers to the way in which mental events influence one another while “brain” describes how it all works physically; but, it is ultimately one and the same thing,seen differently depending on the different factors which influence it.

The mental aspect of this moment as we look onto the monitor is probably the best point to start - colours, shapes, words and ideas, the awesome capacity to think and know.

The monitor and ourselves are physical events occurring within the totality of the universe that surrounds us.
We know about materials, electronics, photons, retinas, optic nerves and other tracts, the cerebral cortex.

All these considerations in which we are engaged are involving neurophysiological processes in the brain.
Our senses connect us to matter that surrounds us.
We can visualize them as the pictures and diagrams we find in texts and on the web.
Much of science is mathematics, most is visual.
The visual world is a representation which connects us at a distance; we are separate from that which this sense touches.
This is important in how we relate to that which it reveals. It remains perceptually “out there” although we are actually communing with it.

So, we have a concept of what is brain and know a great deal about its physiology, how it works in its participation in the world of matter.

The brain does not generate mental phenomena; its processes are mental phenomena.

We have analogies, mathematical and visual representations of what is the brain, a neuron, chemicals, atoms and such.
What these material events are in themselves, as they exist as parts of the person, is what is transpiring right here as we read.
This is all brain.

Inocente, as you said the idea of an elephant is not an elephant.
The idea of the brain, is not the brain.
Except that it is in another sense, since a specific process in the brain is the idea of the brain.

It gets more complicated (simpler actually) in that the person, above all, is relational in nature. Our being “connects” to the world and its Ground.

Ultimately, it is a person who has a brain-mind and that person is defined by their unique relational spirit.
 
inocente said:
On brain and mind, I’d say the brain is the stuff between our ears while the mind is the faculty of awareness and consciousness.
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Excellent - and funny :).
On “spiritual” or immaterial, I think people uses such words in many different ways, but we can perhaps cut through any confusion by asking: Can the mind, or any aspect of the mind, function only by breaking the laws of nature?
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Very curious comment. Since at least high school I understood that man’s soul was a spirit, similar to the nature of an angel. We are made in God’s image, right? Shouldn’t that mean that we have a spiritual or immaterial side to our nature, which makes us a " little less " than the angels, " and very, very remotely similar to God, who we know is a Spirit?

And if we have a spiritual or immaterial side to our nature, wouldn’t it most likely be the seat of our reason or intellect? And how would this entail the breaking of the laws of nature? That is a very curious comment.
Perhaps some people might argue that they don’t know how the mind could do some particular trick without breaking a law of nature, but that just says they don’t know. I’ve never seen a coherent claim that the mind cannot in principle do something unless it breaks a law of nature.
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Would you mind explaing how the mind does " tricks " and violates laws of nature. Very curious about that.
And, of course, that would be a huge claim requiring lots of evidence, since it would mean that some aspect of the human mind is the only composite phenomenon in the entire universe which is so disordered that it follows no pattern, even in principle, and is therefore forever inexplicable.
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I know you are just repeating what you have read or heard. It is a very curious comment to make, it needs to be explained. And why are you bringing it up?
On intentionality and I-ness or we-ness, there is a tendency to want such things to have a location on a map.
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I never have and you are the first person I have heard express the need to do so. I am me, the whole shebang, body and soul. From the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet - I am a self aware, conscious, thinking person.
Perhaps they do, but we need maps at different levels (anologous to elementary particle, atom, molecule, cell, organ, elephant. No one could explain an elephant only in terms of quarks and electrons). The map containing a node for intentionality or self-awareness might also need to include dynamics. For instance, the act of self-awareness might be narrative woven out of a conversation between different sub-systems (or not, I’m not intending to add to the speculative dogmas :)).
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We are children of God, like him spiritually and intellectually, unlike him physically.

As Richa said above, " We think with our intellect and love with our will. We share in God’s image and likeness according to these two spiritual powers of our soul. The angels also have intelligence and will but they are wholly spiritual and immaterial and thus they by nature are more like God than we are. Yes, this is catholic dogma. The human souls of the blessed in heaven who see God face to face though they are without their material brains are not there as though they are vegetables. They see and know God with their intellects and love him with their wills and are supremely happy. "

Linus2nd
 
Richca said:
We think with our intellect and love with our will. We share in God’s image and likeness according to these two spiritual powers of our soul. The angels also have intelligence and will but they are wholly spiritual and immaterial and thus they by nature are more like God than we are. Yes, this is catholic dogma. The human souls of the blessed in heaven who see God face to face though they are without their material brains are not there as though they are vegetables. They see and know God with their intellects and love him with their wills and are supremely happy.
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What do you think the brain does? We have aa 30-something girl in our nursing home who had a brain injury and is in a vegatative state. Her brain will never function; she will never be able to think, reason,express herself. How does her intellect come into play?

Now, if there wss someway to reverse her brain damage, she’d be able to think…

Also, can you provide proof that that is Catholic dogma that we think with our intellect, not our brains?
 
Linusthe2nd said:
This particular article deals with experimentations on mice, not men. Because of the difficulty of studying the living, human brain we may never be able to do more than make surmises about the role of the brain in memory. But, as I said before, the soul is in every part of the body, so soul would always be involved in memory, even in sense memory. It would never be the case that we could have sense memory without the active participation of the soul.

Linus2nd
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Linus you are obfuscating are you not?
The question is whether memory must be a purely spiritual power of the soul or is it to be treated like the power of imagination which resides in the body.

Do you now concede that at least sense memory belongs to the body?
 
Faith1960 said:
What do you think the brain does? We have aa 30-something girl in our nursing home who had a brain injury and is in a vegatative state. Her brain will never function; she will never be able to think, reason,express herself. How does her intellect come into play?

Now, if there wss someway to reverse her brain damage, she’d be able to think…

Also, can you provide proof that that is Catholic dogma that we think with our intellect, not our brains?
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Faith I do not believe God gave the Church any authority to pronounce on matters of natural philosophy other than the weighty prudential one that any long and great civilsation/culture, like the Church, please ossesses naturally.
Being prudential it is fallible over time and the emergence of new natural knowledge can require seismic shifts of assumed traditional certainties now and then. Geo-centrism is one example and brain Vs mind looks to be another.

In fact Church Creeds are surely kept intact regardless, though the loss of such philosophic clothes of faith may see us humiliated and cold and confused for a few centuries until we gather new garments to re-express our faith.

It’s really only an issue for those at the top who have too much time to think on these things.
 
Blue_Horizon said:
Faith I do not believe God gave the Church any authority to pronounce on matters of natural philosophy other than the weighty prudential one that any long and great civilsation/culture, like the Church, please ossesses naturally.
Being prudential it is fallible over time and the emergence of new natural knowledge can require seismic shifts of assumed traditional certainties now and then. Geo-centrism is one example and brain Vs mind looks to be another.

In fact Church Creeds are surely kept intact regardless, though the loss of such philosophic clothes of faith may see us humiliated and cold and confused for a few centuries until we gather new garments to re-express our faith.

It’s really only an issue for those at the top who have too much time to think on these things.
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Can you rephrase that in English please?
 
Blue_Horizon said:
Linus you are obfuscating are you not?
The question is whether memory must be a purely spiritual power of the soul or is it to be treated like the power of imagination which resides in the body.

Do you now concede that at least sense memory belongs to the body?
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No, I haven’t seen anything that would convince me.

Linus2nd
 
Faith1960 said:
Linus, what do you think the brain does?
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It is the interface between the soul ( and its powers of intellect and will ) and all of man’s bodily functions and his connection to the outside world. You are coming late to the discussion, I suggest you read all the prior posts, not only mine either.

Linus2nd
 
Faith1960 said:
differencebetween.net/science/health/difference-between-mind-and-brain/
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Yes, I agree with the body of the article, not with everything in the " summary. " I would make one correction to the article. The brain is not the location of the mind. Let me explain. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine taught that the soul is wholely present in every part of the body. And the intellect ( mind ) is a power of he soul: thus it cannot be located anywhere, but it operates through the brain, which is the interface between the soul and the outer world and man’s bodily functions. You see ,the soul, being a spiritual being, does not have parts, it only has powers.

You have noticed that we have debated here where memory is located. That question really is one that cannot be answered with certainty. I say it is located in the soul, others say it is located in the brain. In my view anything that can properly be called the subject of memory must be very like a phantasm, it is basically immaterial, so it cannot be retained in the brain. Sense perceptions are physical, so they can be retained in the brain for a short period of time because the brain is physical. But I would not call these memories. I would call them just what they are, physical impressions.

Linus2nd
 
Faith1960 said:
I think i meant that we think with our intellect and soul, not our brain.
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We visited my aunt today. She suffers from Alzheimer’s and no longer recognizes those she loves. It is difficult to see her this way. The sweetest most demure person, she had been prone to bout of violence; but, she has dipped further, now into a grey blandness and apathy as she continues on her slow course to death.

She retains her human dignity in spite of the deterioration of her faculties by virtue of the love which God has for her as a living spirit.

Her being in this world has crumbled to the point where she does not appear to be thinking much of anything. Although memory and the capacity to reason belong to the soul, they require an intact nervous system to be expressed. I frequently find myself trying to recall words and names which are at the tip of my tongue; so I’ve taken to making frequent use of my cell phone as an aid to accessing those memories when they fail. I actively seek to express what I know. My soul seeks to connect the cognitive-neuronal dots that allow me to communicate within myself and with others.

I am basically saying that we think with our spirit, mind and body in this life. After death and before the resurrection, our spirit alone will be sufficient for us to participate in God’s kingdom.

:twocents:
 
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