Meditations on "the soul"

[Maus]

What is it to say you believe in the human soul?

What are you really articulating when you speak of such a thing?

To be able to qualify even an interest in such matters can you point to any demonstrable instance of the nature or substance of a soul?

Is it simply a matter of speaking on immaterial things and forgetting that as such it equates to speaking of nothing?

Outlandish appeals to the authority of dogmatic maxims might be proffered but that is completely uninteresting to me as, in my estimation, the creationist religions have been dealt with at length and the bad ideas therein been put paid to.

But what if you have reason on your side and you still cannot disabuse yourself of the notion of the soul? What would make you convinced that such a thing might exist? Is it because we feel a mind-body separation intuitively? Is it because we bend to the seduction of wishful thinking which speaks of a continued consciousness beyond the body?

When such a person says “soul” do they in fact fail in saying “spirit”? In other words, are they attributing something charged with natural forces and processes to something immaterial, inexplicable and therefore very likely fallacious?

I suppose what I’m asking is; what would qualify as evidence of a soul for you and if you already believe we are imbued with such a thing then what can you possibly tell us about the nature of a soul. What can you say about the soul at all?

I do apologise if I have negatively transgressed any of the rules here, or failed to follow general posting protocol. But it is my first post here and I hope not the last so bear with me, eh?

[bernee51]

Nick is almost right…we are born with the ‘seed’ of soul - which is emergent. A soul is an emergent phenomenon of a being’s mental faculty. And mental faculty is an emergent phenomenon of the brain’s neural network. The soul is mortal. It exists while we exist, evolves and when we die it too perishes.

A soul entails all thought, intellect, emotions, memories, hopes, dreams, aspirations, suffering, loves, joys, hates, sorrows, regrets, creativity, spite, knowledge, learning, understanding, empathy, sympathy, pity, greed, lust, desire, initiative, and instinct of each and every being with a mental faculty.

Most of what you listed here would have fairly rudimentary scientific explanations though wouldn’t you think? So to take them independently, those characteristics are far less compelling as candidates for attributes denoting a soul, than is something more elusive to science such as consciousness, I think.

Quite so - it is my opinion of the nature of the soul. I take a purely natural view of the soul i.e. the soul is in no way 'supernatural'.

Without consciousness (or the neural network that supports it) we would not have a soul. Perhaps that is why the nature of the soul itself is so elusive.

'Soul' is mechanism by which 'spirit' is accessed.

Perhaps it is. But I would hazard, the word “soul” might be a bit of a white elephant in this respect… just an unnecessary distraction. Spirit, meaning little more to me than wilfulness, verve or determination, requires no mystical connotations.

My idea of spirit is a little more expansive that yours. Spirit, while encompassing the characteristics you mentioned, is more the sum of the structure and process by which we live. It incorporates the core values which guide our life as well as the mechanisms that allow us to express those core values.

[bernee51]

The mechanical change in the being of an acorn as it becomes an oak is a form of mechanical evolution and natural as a form of micro evolution.

To take this to its extreme then the tree is an a constant state of emergence. It is not one day an acorn and the next a tree. This can be said for all of existence including us carbon based bipeds.

The evolution of the seed of the soul as it develops to become a soul is macro evolution. Man becomes a new being: the "New man." It doesn't happen mechanically but requires consciousness that is not native to the earth that has no need for it.

Your comments (and copious citing of the works of others) above notwithstanding, evolution is simply change over time. A process of inclusion and transcendance. there is no specific micro- or macro-. Where the changes are measured brings us the micro/macro fallacy.

But not wanting to start an argument here over distinguishing between macro and micro evolution I just used evolution in its broadest meaning. Even that bombs.

Tell me again - what is it that is bombing and why does it bomb.

For that you would first need to have an idea of what the structure of the universe is and how it relates to levels of reality. Only then could you begin to see how the seed of the soul exists at one level of reality and the soul on another. You would have to understand cosmology even as simply as Dr. Needleman explains it in the book: "A Sense of the Cosmos" the first chapter of which is reproduced here:

http://www.rawpaint.com/library/intro.html

I read this and commented elsewhere.

In summary - shadows on the wall of the cave.

But people as a whole want to argue before experiencing the big picture so consequently get nowhere.

Which indicates that you are yet to see the 'big picture'.

Cosmology and its scale of being that supports both the involutionary and evolutionary flows of being is a giant hypothesis which a person is invited to verify both through the external world and through inner empiricism. In the process the purpose and nature of the soul, from seed to maturity begins to be revealed.

You have yet to demonstrate an example of 'involution' - other than the apparent opinion that consciousness - and nothing else in creation - involves.

Can you see why anything meaningful is impossible in short pithy negative expression?

IOW - ya can't argue with a 'true believer'.

[Maus]

Nick,

Read the first chapter from the Needleman link and find him mostly unconvincing.

If the cosmos has an intellect there seems no reason to assume it is a conscious one. If we make the leap of faith from wonderment at the workings of the great expanse of physical reality to the invocation of supernatural origins for that reality are we really being intellectually or introspectively honest?

The absence of life on this planet would be so negligible to the mechanics of the cosmos one needn’t even factor human consciousness into it save for our condition of experiencing it.

It seems like all this is a strong subscription to the anthropic principle with god/the soul invoked ad hoc.

The ancients surely hit upon some areas of genuine understanding. They were also extremely misguided and misinformed on a number of matters for which they can hardly be held responsible considering their limited scientific resources.

Duality seems to me one of those poorly formed ideas considering there was nothing outside of intuition, tradition and perhaps fear inspired wishful thinking to qualify it. Even now the best argument for the position seems to rely on our lack of understanding about what consciousness actually is.

Of course the ancients were right to accredit life on earth to the awesome power of the sun but it seems to me that where they went wrong was to assume that it was god/s or the working of god/s. It may well be true but we have no good reason to make that assumption. What they did not generally recognize is that ours is a fairly uninteresting star in astronomical terms and that the Goldilocks zone that our planet resides within is quite likely far from unique given the sheer number of such stars in the cosmos.

Anyway if I understand Needleman’s flip-flopping logic, we should search for the answers to life’s ultimate meaning and purpose within and apparently we will find the soul as attributed to gods doing and that we should only consult science for the observable particulars pertaining to this invisible force.

If the cosmos is imbued with intelligence (and I would assume this to mean nothing more than information with the term shifted by slight of hand) I can’t see how it would be any more concerned with the matters of terrestrial life than we are with the individual rights of mitochondria.

If I have not been misled on this factoid, there are more living organisms on the skin of any one human being than there are human beings on the face of the planet. By the sort of reasoning that leads you to believe we have a soul would not every living thing in turn have a soul? And given the atomic composition of inanimate matter would not rocks have souls too?

I can weakly admit that the deist point of view of god (although I see no reason to use the term) moving through all things is hard to counter, I simply don’t understand why someone like you would make the leap of faith into a triple-jump and arrive at something like, ’all things are connected by a universal heredity, the scope of this is awesome beyond imagining therefore god did it and that god must be a Christian one (insert particular patented god) and therefore we must have the soul from the creator within us.

Please correct me if I am getting you all mixed up but this seems to be what you are implying.

I tend to subscribe to this sort of thought process:

A ‘deeper’ understanding is one that has more generality, incorporates more connections between superficially diverse truths, explains more with fewer unexplained assumptions.

- David Deutsch – The Fabric of Reality.

It seems to me that you are on friendly terms with the first two and hostile towards or ignorant of the last. But, as I have said, I might be getting you all mixed up. Needleman didn’t make your position or his any clearer with his constant theoretical channel surfing.

Sorry for the lengthy pause in my response but I’ve been unable to access this site for some days. Perhaps you could clear up my misrepresentation of your views if I am too far off the mark. I do realise that my own responses can be a little schizophrenic at times too.

[Maus]

Nick is almost right…we are born with the ‘seed’ of soul - which is emergent. A soul is an emergent phenomenon of a being’s mental faculty. And mental faculty is an emergent phenomenon of the brain’s neural network. The soul is mortal. It exists while we exist, evolves and when we die it too perishes.

A soul entails all thought, intellect, emotions, memories, hopes, dreams, aspirations, suffering, loves, joys, hates, sorrows, regrets, creativity, spite, knowledge, learning, understanding, empathy, sympathy, pity, greed, lust, desire, initiative, and instinct of each and every being with a mental faculty.

Most of what you listed here would have fairly rudimentary scientific explanations though wouldn’t you think? So to take them independently, those characteristics are far less compelling as candidates for attributes denoting a soul, than is something more elusive to science such as consciousness, I think.

Quite so - it is my opinion of the nature of the soul. I take a purely natural view of the soul i.e. the soul is in no way 'supernatural'.

Without consciousness (or the neural network that supports it) we would not have a soul. Perhaps that is why the nature of the soul itself is so elusive.

'Soul' is mechanism by which 'spirit' is accessed.

Perhaps it is. But I would hazard, the word “soul” might be a bit of a white elephant in this respect… just an unnecessary distraction. Spirit, meaning little more to me than wilfulness, verve or determination, requires no mystical connotations.

My idea of spirit is a little more expansive that yours. Spirit, while encompassing the characteristics you mentioned, is more the sum of the structure and process by which we live. It incorporates the core values which guide our life as well as the mechanisms that allow us to express those core values.

I can see what you mean. Perhaps I'm just being critical of the terminology as it has the tendency of getting bandied about as something beyond the way you frame it... why use the word soul? Makes for too much confusion when the other terms you used would suffice for single-serve purposes, I think.

[Nick_A]

Hi Maus

Apparently the site has been attacked by some lunatic and hopefully all those IP addresses have been reported.

If the cosmos has an intellect there seems no reason to assume it is a conscious one. If we make the leap of faith from wonderment at the workings of the great expanse of physical reality to the invocation of supernatural origins for that reality are we really being intellectually or introspectively honest?

We define and appreciate consciousness differently. I accept Prof. Needleman's explanation explained in the link where you may not.

The absence of life on this planet would be so negligible to the mechanics of the cosmos one needn’t even factor human consciousness into it save for our condition of experiencing it.

Quite true. Mechanical life on earth is meaningless accept for serving the earth.

Duality seems to me one of those poorly formed ideas considering there was nothing outside of intuition, tradition and perhaps fear inspired wishful thinking to qualify it. Even now the best argument for the position seems to rely on our lack of understanding about what consciousness actually is.

Science is based upon interactions and comparisons of various contents of consciousness as they relate to our perceptions we recognize as the classic law of duality or the Law of the Excluded Middle.

http://www.stanford.edu/~bobonich/glanc ... iddle.html

IV. The Law of Excluded Middle

One logical law that is easy to accept is the law of non-contradiction. This law can be expressed by the propositional formula ¬(p^¬p). Breaking the sentence down a little makes it easier to understand. p^¬p means that p is both true and false, which is a contradiction. So, negating this statement means that there can be no contradictions (hence, the name of the law). In other words, the law of non-contradiction tells us that a statement cannot be both true and false at the same time. This law is relatively uncontroversial, though there have been those who believe that it may fail in certain special cases. However, it does lead us to a logical principle that has historically been more controversial: the law of excluded middle.

However, as I understand it, the universe is not constructed on dualistic principles. The universe is a triune reality which means rather than only the two forces of duality, a third force is added which reveals the structure of the universe. The Law of the EXCLUDED Middle has evolved into, at least for some open minded people, the Law of the INCLUDED Middle.

For us to proceed in any meaningful way, we have to agree if consciousness exists without contents of consciousness. I would say yes and I imagine you would say no.

For me, God is simultaneously both one and three. One is outside creation and three establishes all created things or objects of consciousness within creation.

Three consists of three forces. We know the active and passive forces, male and female, from the relationship between Yin and Yang. However it is through the third force that is the basis of the Law of the INCLUDED Middle that allows the forces of yin and yang to exist as an object of consciousness.

Anyway if I understand Needleman’s flip-flopping logic, we should search for the answers to life’s ultimate meaning and purpose within and apparently we will find the soul as attributed to gods doing and that we should only consult science for the observable particulars pertaining to this invisible force.

Prof. Needleman asserts that man is a microcosm but I am not that man. This means that we don't have a soul but rather the potential, the seed of a soul.

If the cosmos is imbued with intelligence (and I would assume this to mean nothing more than information with the term shifted by slight of hand) I can’t see how it would be any more concerned with the matters of terrestrial life than we are with the individual rights of mitochondria.

The accumulation of facts is only one ingredient of intelligence. The larger ingredient and usually overlooked in the West is "perspective." The universal cosmological structure expresses the quality of "now." This is something science cannot appreciate since it measures in linear time connecting before and after. As such "Now" is usually out of the realm of science. The quality of "Now" is a hierarchy of "being" that begins at the conscious level of reality you deny and involutes in lawful descents of unity into diversity forming cosmological levels of reality. It is the basis of "As above, so below."

The conscious universe is something impossible for us to comprehend for humanity lacking in consciousness that allows us to experience the hierarchy of "Now." When Jacob Needleman refers to consciously looking within, it isn't to find God but rather to experience the hierarchy.

If I have not been misled on this factoid, there are more living organisms on the skin of any one human being than there are human beings on the face of the planet. By the sort of reasoning that leads you to believe we have a soul would not every living thing in turn have a soul? And given the atomic composition of inanimate matter would not rocks have souls too?

Soul in this sense of being a fully developed soul can only mean being in the image of God and having a conscious connection. This is not us; but is a potential for us. One of the biggest mistakes of Christendom IMO is that it has given Man a fully developed soul when in reality he has only the seed of one. Man is the only life on earth that has the capacity to be in the image or have a soul that has a conscious connection with the source of consciousness

I can weakly admit that the deist point of view of god (although I see no reason to use the term) moving through all things is hard to counter, I simply don’t understand why someone like you would make the leap of faith into a triple-jump and arrive at something like, ’all things are connected by a universal heredity, the scope of this is awesome beyond imagining therefore god did it and that god must be a Christian one (insert particular patented god) and therefore we must have the soul from the creator within us.

The first question is about universal heredity or why I believe in involution. From ancient times up until now, many people have accepted the relationship between involution and evolution. I see how mountains can be created and then crumble through erosion or involution. Common sense says to me that life evolves mechanically in the direction of consciousness and at the same time consciousness involves in the hierarchal direction towards mechanical life. These two directions forming the quality of "Now" are present in human "being" I believe that all those mentioned in the following have felt it to one degree or another. The reality of it all can only be verified through our own inner empiricism or our efforts to "Know Thyself."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involution ... _cosmology

A ‘deeper’ understanding is one that has more generality, incorporates more connections between superficially diverse truths, explains more with fewer unexplained assumptions.

Believe it or not, this is my attraction to cosmology. It answers questions nothing else has and is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying

"Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy." - Tarrasch

Why is this so for those that love the game? On a deeper level a person senses the lawful relationships between all pieces in the game which has its own laws governing time and space. In the same way I believe some are attracted to universal laws as expressed through the lawful interactions of contents of consciousness we experience in life. We feel intelligent design that is beyond the limitations of the associative mind and rejoice on the inside.

[Nick_A]

Bernee

To take this to its extreme then the tree is an a constant state of emergence. It is not one day an acorn and the next a tree. This can be said for all of existence including us carbon based bipeds.

Yes. The universe is in constant change. The flow of forces are either following the universal directions of involution or evolution.

Your comments (and copious citing of the works of others) above notwithstanding, evolution is simply change over time. A process of inclusion and transcendance. there is no specific micro- or macro-. Where the changes are measured brings us the micro/macro fallacy.

Micro evolution is concerned with adaptations of a quality of being like dogs of different sizes. Macro evolution is concerned with one level of being becoming another like a rock becoming a vegetable.

You have yet to demonstrate an example of 'involution' - other than the apparent opinion that consciousness - and nothing else in creation - involves.

There is both conscious and mechanical involution. Erosion is a form of mechanical involution where unity involutes into diversity. Involution is the movement from wholeness into parts where evolution is the movement of parts into wholeness. This happens both mechanically and consciously.

Universal entropy would be the final stage of involution. "Entropy" from dictionary.com

3. (in cosmology) a hypothetical tendency for the universe to attain a state of maximum homogeneity in which all matter is at a uniform temperature (heat death).

IOW - ya can't argue with a 'true believer'.

Ya also cannot discuss with a denier.

[bernee51]

Bernee

To take this to its extreme then the tree is an a constant state of emergence. It is not one day an acorn and the next a tree. This can be said for all of existence including us carbon based bipeds.

Yes. The universe is in constant change. The flow of forces are either following the universal directions of involution or evolution.

Evolution as change over time does not imply any direction. There is no 'up or down' - there is only change.

'Up and down' are shadows on the wall of your cave.

Your comments (and copious citing of the works of others) above notwithstanding, evolution is simply change over time. A process of inclusion and transcendence. there is no specific micro- or macro-. Where the changes are measured brings us the micro/macro fallacy.

Micro evolution is concerned with adaptations of a quality of being like dogs of different sizes. Macro evolution is concerned with one level of being becoming another like a rock becoming a vegetable.

Evolution is change over time. The 'previous' is incorporated into and transcended by ' the subsequent'. I presume you would say that different races of homo sapiens are a result of micro-evolution and the change from our primate ancestors macro-. The way I see it we all exist in an unbroken line back to the very first living molecule. Any variations extra- or intra- special result from evolution.

You have yet to demonstrate an example of 'involution' - other than the apparent opinion that consciousness - and nothing else in creation - involves.

There is both conscious and mechanical involution. Erosion is a form of mechanical involution where unity involutes into diversity. Involution is the movement from wholeness into parts where evolution is the movement of parts into wholeness. This happens both mechanically and consciously.

Erosion is an example of a universal law - nothing can be destroyed it can only change in form. Again I see a linear view creeping in - up/down. This is understandable given mankind's obsession with time and cause and effect.

[Nick_A]

Bernee

Evolution as change over time does not imply any direction. There is no 'up or down' - there is only change.

We are at a standstill. You are not open to the ideal of relativity of being or levels of reality as described by Prof. Needleman. The relationship between evolution and involution can only be appreciated within the context of the relativity of being that comprises the conscious universe and the interactions of life within it. It seems that for you being is seen as existence in contrast to non existence. It is like saying anything that is not hot is cold. Just as there is a temperature scale, there is also a scale of being.

The "UP" direction is towards a higher level of being in relation to the source of being. "DOWN" is moving lower in the scale of being and away from the source..

Evolution is change over time. The 'previous' is incorporated into and transcended by ' the subsequent'. I presume you would say that different races of homo sapiens are a result of micro-evolution and the change from our primate ancestors macro-. The way I see it we all exist in an unbroken line back to the very first living molecule. Any variations extra- or intra- special result from evolution.

Different races of homo sapiens are the result of the involution of the unity of MAN into the diversity of races that correspond with the qualities of the planet at the source of their arising.

Erosion is an example of a universal law - nothing can be destroyed it can only change in form. Again I see a linear view creeping in - up/down. This is understandable given mankind's obsession with time and cause and effect.

Erosion is involution. The same parts are again used for evolution. mountains are destroyed and created once again.. All the different manifestations of being that compose the planet and organic life on earth are continually involuting and evolving. It is what they are designed to do.

[Pi]

edited...
I suppose what I’m asking is; what would qualify as evidence of a soul for you and if you already believe we are imbued with such a thing then what can you possibly tell us about the nature of a soul. What can you say about the soul at all?

If the soul exists then it, most probably, resembles consciousness.
An 'awakened' soul remembers that it is eternal and presently 'housed' in a physical body (i.e., a human form).
A 'sleeping' soul, it seems, has been 'devoured' by the physical body and, as a result, makes no distinction between itself and the physical body. As a result of this 'inversion' the soul incorrectly believes that it dies when the body dies.

Religion, (some) philosophy and metaphysics attempts to provide methods by which the 'soul/consciousness' can 'remember' that it has an existence independent of the body.

I firmly believe that the 'ancients' called 'consciousness' by the name of 'spirit' or 'soul'. So, perhaps, one can have the 'experience' of 'a soul' by suspending disbelief (for a moment) and experiencing consciousness as being independent of the body.

That (above) seems, to me anyway, to make (a type of) 'rational' sense out of the notion of a 'lost' soul. A spirt that incorrectly believes that it is the body rather than the occupant of the body.

.

[bernee51]

Bernee

Evolution as change over time does not imply any direction. There is no 'up or down' - there is only change.

We are at a standstill. You are not open to the ideal of relativity of being or levels of reality as described by Prof. Needleman.

Perhaps this is because I have seen nothing that would suggest Needleman is talking anything other than nonsense - describing shadows on the wall of his cave.

The relationship between evolution and involution can only be appreciated within the context of the relativity of being that comprises the conscious universe and the interactions of life within it. It seems that for you being is seen as existence in contrast to non existence. It is like saying anything that is not hot is cold. Just as there is a temperature scale, there is also a scale of being.

I know hot from cold, I know the difference between 0c and 20c. I can appreciate the difference between existence and non-existence. Now how about the 'existence equivalent' of the difference between 0c and 20c?

The "UP" direction is towards a higher level of being in relation to the source of being. "DOWN" is moving lower in the scale of being and away from the source.

Only if it is accepted that the source of being is 'UP' in the first place. There is nothing that indicates this is the case.

I repeat - evolution does not recognize 'up' or 'down'. I suggest you see it as such from your narrow anthropocentric view of of existence.

Evolution is change over time. The 'previous' is incorporated into and transcended by ' the subsequent'. I presume you would say that different races of homo sapiens are a result of micro-evolution and the change from our primate ancestors macro-. The way I see it we all exist in an unbroken line back to the very first living molecule. Any variations extra- or intra- special result from evolution.

Different races of homo sapiens are the result of the involution of the unity of MAN into the diversity of races that correspond with the qualities of the planet at the source of their arising.

You would appear to be claiming here that mankind started out as uniform and 'involved' into the different races.

Do you realize how nonsensical that sounds?

Erosion is an example of a universal law - nothing can be destroyed it can only change in form. Again I see a linear view creeping in - up/down. This is understandable given mankind's obsession with time and cause and effect.

Erosion is involution. The same parts are again used for evolution. mountains are destroyed and created once again.. All the different manifestations of being that compose the planet and organic life on earth are continually involuting and evolving. It is what they are designed to do.

Either you are engaging in a category error or equivocation OR evolution anf involution are identical - a change over time. I think the former is more likely the case.