#11: The soul

I actually think most emotions are more or less the same (be it with different intensity), just because of the genetic similarities and similar upbringings. But how we react to different situation does differ greatly, and just because you've been in the same situation doesn't mean you know exactly how the other person feels. I also think that reacting to different situation depends more on upbringing than it does on genetics. People can be raised to be very introvert, for example. Experiments with mice have also been able to document that for example being easily angered is not at all genetic. (Although anger as an emotion doesn't differ too much)

On a side note, I do think most people's blues look very alike, just because I don't see how it could be so very different, when we're genetically pretty similar, but you never know, and we'll probably never know.
 
We have the same emotions but we dont feel them for the same things or at the same time. I think this is the point kash is trying to put across (although I could be wrong).
 
If we all have the same emotions, then why do we need to experience/feel them differently then one someone else? Or am I missing something from what you mean, xanaseviper?
 
Well say a person dies and that person was incredibly mean to you and you dont feel to much sadness for his death you feel a bit happier that he is not bothering you but his wife or his child may be feeling really torn up over him. We have the same emotions but we feel them at different times, that is what I am trying to say.
 
but your example doesn't make too much sense to me. The only reason the wife and child are crying is because they have a bond with the dead person while you don;t...
 
Exactly they feel for him while you have no feeling for him whatsoever. They have emotion which you do not show. They have emotion and you dont.
 
Technically, they're in completely different situations. One side is in a positive situation, the other in a negative, of course there will be different emotions.

What I was getting at in my post, and which I think you want to mean, but are unable to get across, is that we have roughly the same emotions (different degrees of anger, happiness, whatever), but when put in (roughly) the same situation (say, the death of a close friend), we react differently (some might be sad, some might be mad at the world, some might not even feel anything). We have the same emotions, but use them in different circumstances.
 
Oh... same position, right. Well in this case HS you have a point but it is the same thing happening, someone dies and people feel different you have just used a different scenario. Point taken.
 
Whether or not the physically exists I don't think is the true "benefit" of believing in the soul. I think what really matters is how humans view themselves and the soul allows for each and every person to be a unique, freethinking, in control of their own destiny individual.

And I think that's far more important than any scientific or religious affirmation or denial of the existence of the soul; humans believing in and valuing the uniqueness of themselves and others.
 
ogod.
to me the soul is the thing that gives you the ability to have emotions or a personality just pure life everyone has one and its what carries you to the next journey(after death depending on your religous preferences) i dont believe its ctually physical but its like intuition its not physical but its there. metaphysical might be the word.
 
Well basically I was trying to say that we have the same emotions and in SOME situations we can experience near same feelings. So say for example that your mother said I know how it is like, she may be able to as she would probably had a near same emotional upbringing, but this depends on the previous parents. So sometimes she can connect with you as you are related thus allowing her to feel more for you.

I hope I made myself slightly clearer than before
 
Heavenly Spoon :F said:
How would you describe how the person feels anyway? You can see someone observe the colour blue, but you don't know what that person's colour blue looks like. This doesn't mean that the observation of blue is any less valid.

I could also be completely misunderstanding you.
Click to expand...

Well, this is what I am basing my point on. Language, mathematics, everything of the sort only applies to a third person perspective. I can never describe to you what it is like to experience blue, because that is a first person experience.

So therefore, there seems to be a great difference between the two perspectives. We have the empirically verifiable third person, and the mysterious private first person. If a soul were to exist, I'd say it's this first person entity. I think the soul is the difference between observing something and being something. (note: I am not taking the traditional view of the soul here.)
 
So I am reading your post, Scampy and it reminds me of what's called the Observer in the What The Bleep Do We Know movies. About some part that's somehow connected to us but that's...well....I haven't seen the movies or read the book in while....but I think what they call the observer could very well be the Soul... Just a feeling I have.
 
trevorispro, if you read my 1st post, you'll notice that I wasn't arguing for or against the existance of soul, and whether or not its physical, I was just logically concluding what the soul isn't. Do you insist on the existence of an afterlife after reading my post, or have you just not read it?

Zilla, you don't need a belief in a soul to feel unique. The mind is usually the physical soul, it's some form of awareness and intelligence which is not physical, but is the result of the interactions of the neurons. It's what causes our emotions, thoughts, morals, reasoning, and so on, and these things tend to differ greatly from mind to mind. Because experiences can greatly change who you are (identical twins raised in different families can have different personalities), it's therefore useless to believe in a soul just because you want a feeling of individuality, when individuality arises by default.
Technically, every human being is genetically unique anyway, unless you have an identical twin.

bacon, why would research not be doable from a 1st person perspective? When fMRI-scanning to see the active parts of the brain during specific emotions, the patient undergoing the fMRI is fully aware of these emotions. During the split-brain test in my 1st post, the person is fully aware of the fact that he has 2 memories (well, he's aware of one of them). Yes, we don't know what the soul exactly is, but we know what it isn't, and that's the point.
Again, I'm not arguing against the existence of the soul, I'm arguing that the soul is pretty much useless, and it's therefore pointless to believe that the soul even exists, when that only needlessly overcomplicates everything. Nothing, apart from religious texts, has even pointed towards the existence of a soul...
If you're not hypothetically arguing against my post, I don't know who you'd be arguing against, as I was the only who was denying the existence of a soul.

Also, it's not because we don't know what a person's blue looks like, that we don't know that the fact that he sees this blue arises in his brain. We don't need to know exactly what it looks like to know where and how it happens.
 
So, after ruling out some things, are we any closer to the answer yet to what the soul might be? Could it just be that the majority is looking for the soul in the wrong place?
 
I see no reason why there would be a soul, and if it's not any of the things I ruled out, I don't see why I would even have to care about it. If nothing hints towards the existence of a soul, except for religious texts, why bother?

As I said before, it might exist, but why would it?
 
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