How do you define a soul?

[wysockisauce]

The emergent property of the billions of simple biochemical interactions that makes you a human. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts sort of thing. It's there and it isn't.

[rickyarbino]

Souls have less to do with humanity than personhood IMO.

[magma]

The part of an organism which is capable of registering, processing and/or motivating interactions with surrounding stimulus, so to speak.

Erm, isn't that the brain/central nervous system generally?

[cloaked_up]

a soul is a #TRULAD

[rickyarbino]

The part of an organism which is capable of registering, processing and/or motivating interactions with surrounding stimulus, so to speak.

Erm, isn't that the brain/central nervous system generally?

Partially, mind+brain is what I was going for.
What of it?

[magma]

The part of an organism which is capable of registering, processing and/or motivating interactions with surrounding stimulus, so to speak.

Erm, isn't that the brain/central nervous system generally?

Partially, mind+brain is what I was going for.
What of it?

Not snarking, just wondering if you meant that soul == brain or whether you were trying to get across something more nuanced but struggling for language. What you wrote sums up the whole central nervous system and I wouldn't consider it all to be "soul".

[rickyarbino]

Well, I think the soul is the mind, and there's no mind without a brain, which isn't what I first meant, but you brought it to my attention.
That being said I think this is the case for animals. I also think plants have souls. Not in a moral sense, just in a sense of being able to live for themselves as an end and/or a means to one.

[butter_man]

a wet footprint on the patio of life.

[magma]

Well, I think the soul is the mind, and there's no mind without a brain, which isn't what I first meant, but you brought it to my attention.
That being said I think this is the case for animals. I also think plants have souls. Not in a moral sense, just in a sense of being able to live for themselves as an end and/or a means to one.

So a soul is a mind, but beings without minds still have souls?

It's a good job none of this matters.

[rickyarbino]

[rickyarbino]

Well, I think the soul is the mind, and there's no mind without a brain, which isn't what I first meant, but you brought it to my attention.
That being said I think this is the case for animals. I also think plants have souls. Not in a moral sense, just in a sense of being able to live for themselves as an end and/or a means to one.

So a soul is a mind, but beings without minds still have souls?

It's a good job none of this matters.

For animals being the key phrase there.
I think plants have something akin to a mind which we don't equate to one.
But think of the way venus flytraps eat. Or the way that they weave through space to reach sunlight. The fact that they undergo respiration at night as opposed to photosynthesis.
They can feel and react, even if it's not the same way we do.

[butter_man]

everything must have the same soul that they do at that moment. there isnt individual souls. I might see a dog, it might have my soul, it might not. with plants to. they affect the way the 'soul' works therefore becoming it. so, you dont own your 'soul', you just rent various pieces of spiritual landscape, paid for with emotions, shared with soul sharing things and non soul-sharing things.

I love getting minced and thinking bullshit.

[magma]

Well, I think the soul is the mind, and there's no mind without a brain, which isn't what I first meant, but you brought it to my attention.
That being said I think this is the case for animals. I also think plants have souls. Not in a moral sense, just in a sense of being able to live for themselves as an end and/or a means to one.

So a soul is a mind, but beings without minds still have souls?

It's a good job none of this matters.

For animals being the key phrase there.
I think plants have something akin to a mind which we don't equate to one.
But think of the way venus flytraps eat. Or the way that they weave through space to reach sunlight. The fact that they undergo respiration at night as opposed to photosynthesis.
They can feel and react, even if it's not the same way we do.

That really just tells us that their sentient, it doesn't tell us anything about intelligence or soul.

A mind is by definition consciousness. The ability to take complex stimuli and put them through logical thought processes to decide actions... it doesn't need to come into play for instinctive, pre-programmed, 'reflex-loop' behaviours. Not everything with a brain has a mind and not every action by the nervous system requires a mind.

Those plant behaviour examples are on a similar level to your leg kicking out when you tap your knee or your pupils dilating when you go from dark to light - it's impossible to "decide" not to do either of those things if your body is given the right stimulus.. the Flytrap sits there until something brushes its trigger hairs, like the hammer tapping your knee and then it has no choice about whether to "eat it" or not.

[rickyarbino]

The only reason you can say that is because you recognize it in yourself. I don't disagree with you, but I do recognize that in non-animal beings.
But since we're getting down this road, it seems that the distinction you're making is that of free will, but do you really have that? There's no way you could do something without satisfying the criteria of traits that enable you to do it, correct? So it follows that the sum of all of your traits determines not only what you can do at any given point in time, but what you will do. That's just how causality works. And given the fact that you don't determine your initial conditions and traits, how could you have any influence over what you do? Essentially, we're just consequences. Not deciding, so much as rationalizing our behavior. Now why would a plant be incapable of observing its conditions and providing an adequate response to them?

[magma]

Free will doesn't enter into it. Whether it constitutes "free will" or not, it's pretty easy for a conscious being to recognise whether its mind was involved in a decision or not. When a hammer hits my knee and my leg kicks out, my mind isn't involved; when I read and choose to answer your post on SNH, my mind is involved. That tells us nothing about free will, only the existence of minds. The mind might only present us an illusion of free will - it's still an illusion that a plant's incapable of. A plant has no organ capable of consciousness... it's only capable of knee-jerk reactions.

[rickyarbino]

Free will is decision making.
You can't say that you make a decision without implying that you are able to do so; you can't do it without being able to do so.

In the context of your argument, this is as follows:
You can't respond to my post unless you are able to, which requires it to exist, as well as your motivation and ability to do so.
All the conditions were satisfied, so you did it. If they weren't, you wouldn't have done it.

My point is that we identify our own consciousness by the way we have it, not necesarily by the way consciousness can exist. Personally I don't see why you'd rule it out of something that is largely capable of things you are capable of, and greater things too.
Also, I'm ready to throw out your knee-jerk postulate. Firstly, how does this apply to plants when the process is extended over time? The reason you don't attribute a knee-jerk to your mind is because it happens faster than you can process it, correct? But if the process was slower, you would be able to, wouldn't you? The way your applying this to a plant, whose changes occur slowly doesn't really work.
I'd also like to assert that your body cannot move unless some part of your mind compelling it to. Even in this case, the nervous system, which is the part of the mind that deals with stimulus directly, receives a stimulus and responds accordingly. That's the most you can do under any circumstances.

[wysockisauce]

Consciousness/sentience/self-awareness requires a certain level of complexity that plants don't have.

The reflex example actually works pretty well. A reflex arc in humans and animals actually bypasses the brain and synapses with the effector neuron at the spinal cord. If the sensory nerve is triggered the reaction will happen whether you will it or not. Some reflexes actually do take a long time to be processed (like regulation of the digestive system), but you can't control them directly because you cant actually perceive them, just like with quick reflexes.

Although a plant doesn't have a nervous system and therefore reflexes, it achieves a similar reaction through chemical pathways. The key here being that those pathways are hardwired into the plant; a certain stimulus will always cause the same reaction. All of a plants "actions" are governed by these hardwired pathways.

A neurosurgeon has the ability to move any part of your body by electrically stimulating the corresponding point in the motor cortex of the brain, whether you like it or not. The ability to control the human body doesn't stop at just physical motion either .

[Jhonny2x4]

A soul:



We each have one stuck in our chest. A heart attack is when someone punches you so hard that your soul pops and it shoots frito twists into your heart, just like an attack.

[exfox]

thread keeps getting better

[rickyarbino]

Consciousness/sentience/self-awareness requires a certain level of complexity that plants don't have.

The reflex example actually works pretty well. A reflex arc in humans and animals actually bypasses the brain and synapses with the effector neuron at the spinal cord. If the sensory nerve is triggered the reaction will happen whether you will it or not. Some reflexes actually do take a long time to be processed (like regulation of the digestive system), but you can't control them directly because you cant actually perceive them, just like with quick reflexes.

Although a plant doesn't have a nervous system and therefore reflexes, it achieves a similar reaction through chemical pathways. The key here being that those pathways are hardwired into the plant; a certain stimulus will always cause the same reaction. All of a plants "actions" are governed by these hardwired pathways.

A neurosurgeon has the ability to move any part of your body by electrically stimulating the corresponding point in the motor cortex of the brain, whether you like it or not. The ability to control the human body doesn't stop at just physical motion either .

I think see what you mean here, but I think you're missing my point over the mechanisms through which the soul manifests. In your final example the soul manifests in the unwillingness you speak of.
----------


Aside from that, I have a question.


Imagine that you had undergone a brain transplant. Would you still be yourself in another body or would cease to be?
Would you agree that your soul, whatever it may be, would go with you?
Would you say that your soul had died in the transplant? Does the death of your soul in this case equate to death in the traditional sense?