Please prove that souls exist and that they are either resurrected or reincarnated

[Compassionist]

Most religions claim that souls exist. Some religions claim that souls are immortal and are reincarnated after the death of the body while other religions claim that souls are immortal and are resurrected after the death of the body. Can anyone please prove that souls exist and are either resurrected or reincarnated? Thank you.

[brunumb]

It has been my experience that at the death of a relative they don't appear to be sleeping nor unconscious. They appear empty or depleted. Something seems to have left the room sort to speak. My mother, father, and mother-in-law have all died and the body really does appear to be nothing more than a shell or husk. Something is gone and I believe that something is their soul.

Have you considered that your perceptions may have been influenced by your prior belief in souls? I have observed someone sleeping soundly and been convinced that they were actually dead.

[otseng]

but pretending it is my fault for bringing philosophy into a thread which is asking a question about a philosophical idea, isn't very honest, don't you agree?

You are the one being dishonest from the start. I questioned you when you claimed that you had evidence for your position that the earth is conscious and when you claimed that it is an intelligent organism. Don't pretend that your lack of being able to show that you spoke the truth is my issue please.

Moderator Intervention

Let's please dial it back from both sides with the personal comments.


______________

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[AquinasForGod]

[Replying to Clownboat in post #306]

Yes, I would ask you for your philosophical grounding for fairies and what you think they are.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to Clownboat in post #306]

Yes, I would ask you for your philosophical grounding for fairies and what you think they are.

Perfect! This is why I asked you:
"Is there any observation that might suggest that there might be some external soul thingy involved with supplying consciousness?"
I assume the answer to that is "no" and you just didn't want to type the two letters.

[William]

[Replying to Clownboat in post #508]

I do not wish to discuss philosophical arguments.

Not even Materialist philosophical arguments? Did you not argue that the human brain was the creator of human consciousness? That is a philosophical argument.

I have noted that consciousness seems to be an emergent property of a working brain.

Is the human brain is the creator of human consciousness?

[Compassionist]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #1]

Compassionist...thanks for inviting me here to share my thoughts. I'll wait on joining the other thread you invited me to because this may take a good amount of time and that other thread has a lot of posts to peruse before sharing my thoughts. Here are my initial thoughts. I am indebted to JP Moreland for being put on to this issue and how he approaches it, although I don't accept every argument he gave in support of the existence of the soul.

So, some introductory things first. We know that there is a difference between states and the thing that can be in those states. For instance, things can be in a solid, liquid, or gas state. But this doesn’t answer the question of what has those states. Are we talking about water, alcohol, something else? In the same way, there are different states of consciousness, but this doesn’t settle the question of what it is that has these states.

We must also keep in mind the law of identity which says that if A is the same thing as B, then we have one thing, not two. Whatever is true of A would also have to be true of B and conversely. If there is one thing that is different between A and B, then that violates the law of identity and we would have two distinct things.

Also keep in mind that identity here is not the same thing as cause and effect. Just because fire causes smoke, this doesn’t mean they are identical things. They aren’t identical. So, for instance, when a neuroscientist sends a current to a specific region of the brain and the patient experiences a memory of their mother cooking a meal, this doesn’t mean that the brain event (let’s call that B) is the same thing as the memory event (let’s call that M). Just because B causes M, this doesn’t answer the question of whether B and M are the same thing.

Or to put it another way, just because in Alzheimer patients, the mind depends on the brain to work, that doesn’t prove the mind is the same thing as the brain any more than an engine depending on the starter to work proves the engine is the same thing as the starter.

Now, back to states of consciousness. Philosophers often speak of five states of consciousness: sensation (like tasting a lemon or seeing the color red, having a pain, etc.), thought (that snow is white), belief (that the Cubs will make the playoffs), desire (I want to eat ice cream), and an act of will (turning on the lights…even if I’m kept from doing so, say, by a mad scientist that paralyzed my arms while I was sleeping and I didn’t know it yet). Our conscious life is a flow of one state to another.

While doing this there is neurological activity in our brain, i.e., a series of brain states. But are brain states the same as conscious states? Or are they different but correlated? Here are some reasons to think they are different but correlated:

(1) There seem to be things true of conscious states that aren’t true of brain states. If so, they can’t be the same thing. Suppose you are thinking of the NBA playoffs. The Milwaukee Bucks are down three games to one to the Heat and you are thinking about this series in various ways. While you do this there’s an event going on in your brain that scientists can measure. The brain event while you’re thinking about the Bucks possibly being upset has a location. It’s in the left hemisphere of your brain. It has a size, shape, is closer to your left ear than your right, but the thought about the playoffs doesn’t have a size, shape, or the same location. It doesn’t make sense to ask “how big was that thought you just had or how heavy it was”. That’s a difference. Your mental beliefs can be true or false, but brain states aren’t true or false. They aren’t about something, they just exist. That’s a difference. There’s a what’s it like to be in pain, to be angry, to taste strawberry ice cream. There isn’t a what’s it like to be an electron, to be negatively charged, to be a neuron, to be a chunk of matter or a physical property. That’s a difference.

(2) Then there is the knowledge argument. Suppose that in the distant future neuroscientists knew everything there was to know about the brain, the central nervous system, about matter. Suppose one of those neuroscientists is Mary. She knows everything there is to know about the physical theory of hearing. But she was born deaf. Then, suppose that other scientists finally figure out how to give her the ability to hear. Wouldn’t she now gain knowledge of a different realm of facts about hearing? She would finally know what it’s like to hear. If she knew all the physical facts prior to gaining her hearing, then this state of consciousness, of knowing what it’s like to hear, cannot be fully explained by the physical facts. Thus, consciousness is not identical to simply the physical states.

When people are having rapid eye movement, what’s going on? They are dreaming. How do we know that? We had to wake them up and ask them. We had to do that because we only have access to what is going on in their brain, not their consciousness.

So, what has consciousness? Is it the brain, the body, the eye, or what people call the soul or mind? I think it makes more sense to say the soul. Here is are two arguments:

(1) If you were to destroy 70 percent of the computer you are using to read this, you wouldn’t have a whole computer. You would have 30 percent of your computer. If I had my legs and arms amputated, I’d no longer have a whole body; it’d be like 60 percent or whatever. People who have had parts of their brain removed, don’t have a similar part of their “personhood” removed. Take Dandy-Walker syndrome, for instance. People with that have 10 percent of a brain, but are said to be 60 to 70 percent functional. There isn’t two-thirds of a person or a consciousness there. That person is still wholly there. The functioning of the person is limited, but they still have their consciousness that can undergo various states. If I’m either fully present or not, but my body and brain are divisible, then I can’t be my brain or body.

(2) The ship of Theseus thought experiment. If you took the parts of a ship and replaced different pieces to it, maybe even the whole thing, I think we now have a new ship. I mean, if we replaced the parts of the ship with frozen green Jell-O, would we really say it’s the same ship? Would we have the entire original ship? No. The problem, then, is that material objects can’t really be the same if they gain and lose parts. They become new objects. Our bodies, our brains are constantly gaining and losing parts. If we were our brains, then we’d not be the same self from one day to the next. But we consciously know we are the same person from one moment to the next.

I also think free will is an argument for the existence of a soul, but I know you don’t think free will is the rational position to take and I have already said so much that I don’t want to go fully into a case for free will. I do think it is the universal human intuition and the simplest answer, so I think it is the most rational position to take unless evidence shows otherwise (and I don’t think any evidence sways the balance), but I’ll leave it at that.

I also think other beliefs point to the truth of the soul, ultimately going back to the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus and the reliability of the NT to capture His teachings, but that’s a whole ‘nuther discussion that would take a long time, so I’ll leave the two above for discussion.

Thank you for your detailed reply. I am not convinced by your arguments. If you divide the left and right hemispheres of the human brain by completely cutting the corpus callosum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosotomy the person is no longer the same person. They experience things like Alien Hand Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome Also if you damage the frontal lobe of the human brain that changes a person significantly e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

Unless we are souls plugged into the Maya (illusion) of Hinduism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion) which proposes that things like cells, brains, bodies, planets, stars, galaxies and universes don't actually exist, consciousness is produced by the functioning of the brain. It is impossible to test the Maya Hypothesis. If the brain is not the source of consciousness, why do we become unconscious when anaesthesia is administered?

[The Tanager]

Thank you for your detailed reply. I am not convinced by your arguments. If you divide the left and right hemispheres of the human brain by completely cutting the corpus callosum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosotomy the person is no longer the same person. They experience things like Alien Hand Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

How does this make them a different person, in the sense that you and I are different persons?

Also if you damage the frontal lobe of the human brain that changes a person significantly e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

My personality has changed during my lifetime, that doesn’t mean I’ve been multiple different persons, there is still a connection with my childhood. It is the same with Gage. People said Gage has changed, not that this Gage is completely disconnected from his earlier self in the same way you and are are disconnected persons.

Unless we are souls plugged into the Maya (illusion) of Hinduism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion) which proposes that things like cells, brains, bodies, planets, stars, galaxies and universes don't actually exist, consciousness is produced by the functioning of the brain. It is impossible to test the Maya Hypothesis. If the brain is not the source of consciousness, why do we become unconscious when anaesthesia is administered?

There is a difference between the brain being necessary for a being with a body to be conscious and the brain being necessary for any consciousness to exist. You can't just assume that nothing can be conscious without a brain by looking only at conscious beings who have brains. That would be like assuming all mammals have only feline characteristics because you are just looking at cats and drawing a hasty generalization.

[Compassionist]

Thank you for your detailed reply. I am not convinced by your arguments. If you divide the left and right hemispheres of the human brain by completely cutting the corpus callosum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosotomy the person is no longer the same person. They experience things like Alien Hand Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

How does this make them a different person, in the sense that you and I are different persons?

Also if you damage the frontal lobe of the human brain that changes a person significantly e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

My personality has changed during my lifetime, that doesn’t mean I’ve been multiple different persons, there is still a connection with my childhood. It is the same with Gage. People said Gage has changed, not that this Gage is completely disconnected from his earlier self in the same way you and are are disconnected persons.

Unless we are souls plugged into the Maya (illusion) of Hinduism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion) which proposes that things like cells, brains, bodies, planets, stars, galaxies and universes don't actually exist, consciousness is produced by the functioning of the brain. It is impossible to test the Maya Hypothesis. If the brain is not the source of consciousness, why do we become unconscious when anaesthesia is administered?

There is a difference between the brain being necessary for a being with a body to be conscious and the brain being necessary for any consciousness to exist. You can't just assume that nothing can be conscious without a brain by looking only at conscious beings who have brains. That would be like assuming all mammals have only feline characteristics because you are just looking at cats and drawing a hasty generalization.

By different person I mean that they are different from the way they were before the procedure or accident. Changes to the brain affect the personality and abilities of the person whose brain has changed due to procedures or accidents. There is a fundamental problem when assessing consciousness. For example, I can't prove to you that I am not a philosophical zombie and you can't prove to me that you are not a philosophical zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

There is also the problem of testing the Panpsychism hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

This is why I am an agnostic about who or what is actually conscious even though another human or a dog or a whale appears to be conscious and a rock or a brick or a car appears to be not conscious.

I am also agnostic about whether or not souls exist. It's possible that I am a solipsistic soul and nothing else is real. I can't test the solipsism hypothesis either.

[William]

I am also agnostic about whether or not souls exist. It's possible that I am a solipsistic soul and nothing else is real. I can't test the solipsism hypothesis either.

The idea is to understand if "you" are "real" (or not real) - not whether any "thing" outside of "you" is "real".
Are you "agnostic" about You being "Real"?
Or can you accept it that undoubtable, You are indeed Real?

Even if you were to have that brain operation, would that somehow take away your ability to experience being real?

It doesn't matter whether others experience a "different you" re that question. Would you still experience being a conscious self aware entity?

[Compassionist]

I am also agnostic about whether or not souls exist. It's possible that I am a solipsistic soul and nothing else is real. I can't test the solipsism hypothesis either.

The idea is to understand if "you" are "real" (or not real) - not whether any "thing" outside of "you" is "real".
Are you "agnostic" about You being "Real"?
Or can you accept it that undoubtable, You are indeed Real?

Even if you were to have that brain operation, would that somehow take away your ability to experience being real?

It doesn't matter whether others experience a "different you" re that question. Would you still experience being a conscious self aware entity?

I am completely certain that I am conscious. What I am agnostic about is whether or not my consciousness is due to being a soul or being a brain or both or neither. There are many hypotheses that can't be tested e.g. simulation hypothesis, illusion hypothesis, dream hypothesis, hallucination hypothesis, solipsism hypothesis, philosophical zombie hypothesis, panpsychism hypothesis, pantheism hypothesis, etc. Just because a hypothesis can't be tested it does not mean it is true or false. It just means that it is currently untestable. Please see viewtopic.php?t=41273 if you want to know more about what I am completely certain about and almost completely certain about.