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Dude, where's my soul?

  
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:22 / 21.02.04
(Cross posted, with some modifications, from elsewhere...)

Since reading Pinker's How The Mind Works and The Blank Slate (no jumping up and down and screaming "REDUCTIONISM!", please ), I've been thinking a lot about a topic I could loosly term neurology vs. spirituality. To be more precise, how might one square the concept of an immortal componant, the "soul," with the sometime striking and drastic effects of physical brain-damage on the personality?

Take for example the case of Phineas Gage, a railway worker who lived in the ninteenth century. Gage was using a long iron spike to push blasting powder into a rock when a terrible accident occured. A spark set off the blasting powder and the iron spike was driven right through his brain, through an area called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Miraculously, Gage survived... or did he? Before the accident, Gage was described as a polite, conscientious, hardworking man. Afterwards, he became rude, irresponsible and careless. This is because area of the brain destroyed in the accident was the part that deals with thinking about other people: anticipating their desires, thinking about the consequences of our own actions, deciding which behaviour will get the result we want. Empathy and social skills, that sort of thing.

Or we could look at people who've had their left and right hemispheres separated by surgery, a technique sometimes used to treat conditions such as severe epilepsy. If you show a word only to the right (unconscious) hemisphere, a verb like WALK or LAUGH, the patient will comply. Interestinly, if you then ask them what they're laughing at or where they're walking to, they won't reply "Ooh, you've got me there. I just suddenly felt the urge to walk. I don't know why!" No, they (or rather their left hemisphere) will obediently come up with a reason for their behaviour ("I fancied a Coke" "I'm laughing at you and your daft experiments!") The left hemisphere actually generates a plausible but completely phoney explanation for the behaviour, which the patient wholeheartedly belives to be true.

So how come the soul, the inner self who's supposed to be running the show, doesn't step in? What is the difference between "soul" and "self"? If brain damage can turn one kind of person into a completely different kind of person, and cutting the hemispheres apart can effectively create two people, neither of whom is aware of the other, then... dude, where's my soul?

And if soul and personality are not interchangeable then where's my immortality, since with my brain gone I'm argueably no longer "me"?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:06 / 21.02.04
That's a really good question. In fact it may well be THE question, so I'm really not sure. But, William Burroughs once did a routine about the nuclear bomb, where he posited the idea that if the soul was composed of electricity, which in a strictly scientific sense seems as good a guess as any, and that what the A-bomb does is just entirely disrupt any electrical field it comes into contact with, which it apparently does, then what happened at Nagasaki, Hiroshima wasn't just the killing of the people involved, but also what's left when you go on usually, ie, their souls. Which is to say, the soul may be immortal in the best case scenario, but it's not guaranteed. So I guess the same might apply if your soul got crippled, as opposed to snuffed out - It seems much too harsh, and as I say I don't know, but perhaps that's what happens in the situations you've described. But let's hope not though, yeah ?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
21:07 / 21.02.04
My interiour jury is still hung over the existence or otherwise of the soul. If we accept for the sake of argument that the astral body at least exists as an entity in its own right, then I'm afraid that Burroughs' notion that it is made up of electricity is just bunk. Electricity can't just float around all by itself, with no means of storage or conduction. It just doesn't work like that. Ditto just about any of the many appeals to conventional physics I've read over the years.

I'd happily accept the possibility of some unknown force or entity that could make itself manifest via the manipulation of electrical fields, but that's a whole different ballgame.
 
 
macrophage
21:10 / 21.02.04
Are we full of differing selves or are we just full of lots of hyper-excitable neurons? This has been playing at the back of my mind for the last few days. Hmm, food for thought me thinks.
 
 
Warewullf
23:57 / 21.02.04
So how come the soul, the inner self who's supposed to be running the show, doesn't step in?

You're assuming that the soul actually has some form of seperate ability to act. That "it" can take an active hand in your life.

If it can't, then the soul, which can be thought of as an "astral copy" of the personality, is sculpted by one's actions. By ones enviroment and genetics.

If you change the person, you change the soul.


Now, in the case of multiple personalities, hrrmmm...It could be argued that the only soul would be the one from the original personality. But I really don't know enough about split personalities to guess. (Not that I'm implying that I'm a "Soul Expert" or anything...)

(Best topic in ages, by the way! Mini-mexican-wave for Mordant!)
 
 
eddie thirteen
05:44 / 22.02.04
Well...hmmmm. I think a lot of it comes down to where identity and individuality come from, and if those things exist independently of the soul. Or rather...ye gods, I should not be attempting this at this hour, and tired as I am, but --

What makes you *you?* If we're all spiritual beings as well as physical beings, then let's suppose that in essence -- that is to say, in terms of our souls -- we're all pretty much the same thing. Just limitless potential. Not a blank slate, but a slab of marble that has yet to be chopped up into sculpture, and therefore holds within it every conceivable sculpture. In order to experience physical life, we have to take on some form, and so we individuate -- less a process of becoming something than narrowing our options; going from being everything to being something in particular. Maybe a better way of looking at it than the sculpture metaphor is to compare each of us to a prism, each prism unique, each allowing a light to shine through in a slightly different way. If you carve up the prism, the light that comes through it will appear different, but it's still the same light as before. And the light would be the soul.

What's cool about this idea is that it implies a transcendental, eternal spiritual life. What's kinda spooky about this idea is that it implies that just about everything you can think of that makes you an individual is completely transitory, and probably would not survive the death of the body. Even if you reincarnate, your light would be coming through an all-new prism, so all the individuating stuff would be changed. So, even though You would live forever, the you that is *you* would become, at the time of death, quite dead, and would remain so. Which tends, as a concept, to make most people slightly uncomfortable.
 
 
Cypher
14:58 / 22.02.04
Eddie thirteen sort of said what I was thinking, yo. I watched this new-agey woman on cable access talking, and, while most of it appeared to be feel-good tripe, one thing she said had the ring of truth and that was that rather than saying we each have individual souls, it is more accurate to say that we each have soul, since soul is the same raw animating material that permeates everything. It has no innate qualities particular to us (good or bad soul, happy or sad soul, soul of Cleopatra or a shit-eating fly) though, as a raw animating material, the space it dwells in has a lot to do with how it visibly manifests. Brain, flesh, bone, city, family, friends give it form. But soul is soul–it existed long before we where born, and will be around long after we die. I find this sort of comforting...maybe...sort of...a little...

I’m out,

Cypher
 
 
Warewullf
21:59 / 22.02.04
Personally, I hate the idea that the soul is seperate from "me" and will retain nothing of the person I am after I die. It seems pointless. If nothing of "me" will remain after I die, just some bit of energy, then what's the point of having a soul at all?

How's it different from leaving behind a favourite pencil?
Sure, it was yours at one point, but you can't tell from looking at it.

(Fucking wierd analogy. Sorry.)
 
 
Olulabelle
22:36 / 22.02.04
Warewullf, I quite like it actually.

If you read studies on serial killers you'll see that they quite often cite the point where the person they are killing 'goes' and just a body is left as the reason they kill in the first place. What they are apparently fascinated by is the transference point from 'alive' to 'dead', or the 'soul' leaving.

I don't know about the mentality of serial killers but what they say does suggest that there is definitely a difference in state. I can only align my own personal experiences of death with this, and I do know that when I have seen a dead body (both times someone very close to me) the person whom I knew was just totally 'gone'. it's not like watching someone quietly sleeping, it's like looking at an empty body with no real person left in it.

Visual and real images of death are my only scientific experience of soul-there/soul-goneness but both these experiences really made me believe in souls simply because the dead people I looked at were frankly just dead blood and dead skin and dead bone and I couldn't associate the people I knew with the uninhabited bodies at all.

It's quite horribly creepy to look at the dead body of someone you loved and find no trace of them left. And those experiences made me decide that we really do have souls, because it's so completely obvious when the soul is gone.

However, that's not to say that I believe the souls go elsewhere...which is another conversation entirely!
 
 
mixmage
00:29 / 24.02.04
Like MC, my jury is still out. I have no proof either way. None of the incontrovertible kind, at least.

Despite having seen dead humans and animals, even the process of going from alive to dead, I still can't be sure if this because "the soul" departs or simply that the processes we term "life" cease. It's a tricky one because, even if I read or hear other people's accounts, it's still hearsay. Anecdotal evidence.

Instead of bashing my head against an intractable issue, I chose to look at it the other way around: If we have a soul, then Life is the lesson. Those people who talk of the soul often do so in reference to accumulating "right actions", shuffling off this mortal coil with as few blemishes on their record as possible.

If, on the other hand, we are simply these biological bodies, the temptation would be to do just exactly whatever you want. No Hell and damnation, no punishment or prize. No immortal soul.

The only kind of "immortality" in this second scenario is the story you leave behind. The dead live on in the tales of the living.

Really, this afterlife meme can be a stumbling block. Live life as if you have no soul - that when you die, there is no more. Achieve all that you set your sights on and treat others how you wish to be treated. In other words:

Be Excellent to each other... and Party ON, Dudes!
 
 
Perfect Tommy
04:48 / 24.02.04
Have you read my ramblings on ether in my magick LJ, MC? Ether is my catch-all medium for phenomenon which don't fall neatly into a single category of matter or energy, but rather are found within interactions. At first blush, I'd consider the soul to be made of ether. It's not in any one place, or made out of any one thing, but it manifests as your interactions in the world and the social web. The oscillations of those interactions will be bouncing around for a good long time after you're dead. Though eventually they'll be absorbed into the system at large, so maybe that's not quite immortality... or that's exactly what immortality is.
 
 
FinderWolf
14:50 / 24.02.04
I was just thinking about this because my girlfriend has a friend who went to a pet psychic -- seriously. The pet psychic reads the souls of pets and tells about the soul that the pet has (which seems to always be a reincarnated human). I know the idea of animals having reincarnated human souls is hardly a new one...but this was an interesting idea to explore.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
20:46 / 24.02.04
Re: Reincarnation, psychics etc.

Well I went to a medium, but only the once. I was in New York about a couple of years ago, wandering round in one of the markets, with an hour to kill on a washed-up Sunday, towards the long, heavy end of a long weekend, so I figured I'd stop to get my palm done or something, just to clear my head slightly, or for something to do. So I sat down at this table, held out my hand, and was told straight away that there wasn't too much she could say to me really, the reader concerned, because it looked my aura was " covered in ink, " and not looking good, but that if I wanted to go and see her next morning, she'd consult with the spirits, see what she could do. Well, why not...
So off I went anyway, here's what I got told.
That the state of my aura, of my love life etc, of all the bad luck I'd been having just lately ( which I by and large had, ) was due to the fact that in my previous life I'd been destined to go through a " normal existance, " ie, get married, have kids, not a lot more than that, but that this had just seemed like the worst thing ever, to my earlier self, and so I'd sought the help of this arab magician, who'd performed various rituals to alter my fate - do-able apparently, but very much on the dark side - so I'd live out my dream as a Hollywood film star, and that this had worked out. Except the deal was, apparently, that I'd pay the guy back once my name was in lights, instead of reneging on all of my debts, having been, I was told, this evil Hollywood libertine - I know, I know, I should've asked who it was. The result of this being that the Arab magician was now stuck in the next world, that he couldn't move on, because it's forbidden to act to try and alter the fates, and so was spending his time trying to screw up yours truly, as an act of revenge. I suppose it all just sounds, you know, quite Angel Heart, but I hadn't been sleeping, I'd felt dreadful for months, as if there really was something this insane going on, so yeah, fair enough, was there much she could do ?
Well yes, it appeared, there were various rituals, crystals, meditation, that type of thing, as well as spirit world stuff from her side of the pond, and I wasn't necessarily laughing this off, at least until I was told what the bill would be anyway.
Which was six, fucking, grand.
So, er no. The mad Arab, it seemed, would have to go on unchecked.
But then I'm still not sure what to make of this really - I guess it does to tend to raise at least a couple of issues, but then she did seem sincere, and it was such a strange story, that I do sometimes wonder, could you make all that up ? You know, it was so convoluted, just so totally out there... Well, there it is.
 
 
C.Elseware
23:59 / 24.02.04
I found this thread kinda interesting. I have had found it easier to deal with the world since I began to try and accept that I'm not 'me'. I realise that I'm not who I was a few years ago and I'm going to change in the future. What I saw as my soul is not inviolate. I can change. In which case what am I?

It was also usful to accept that I am vulnerable to external change, from extreme trauma to daily grind and also that it's possible to change myself.

"I" am a configuration of information and matter with potential. Part of that potential is for the general configuration to continue for (maybe 50 more years). At which point the configuration will disolve, but the matter and some of the information will persist.

It may be a little non-spiritual sounding, but it works.

It's why I talk so much. Memetic backup of my soul.

My soul won't go anywhere when I die. Just disolve.
 
 
mixmage
00:35 / 25.02.04
^ thanks. One of the purposes of Chi work is said to be to retard dissolution after death.
 
 
eddie thirteen
00:45 / 25.02.04
Alex:

The woman who came up with that story is a genius. Unfortunately, she tried to bilk you for six thousand dollars. This doesn't negate the genius factor, but does make her seem a bit untrustworthy. Is she sexy? Because, like, for me, a woman who could come up with that is someone I'd be interested in, so there's your love life problem solved. On the other hand, if she's actually somehow right, I'd try and take solace from the fact that you were clearly a pretty interesting guy in your previous life. Maybe you should attempt some kind of ritual to contact the Arab sorceror dude, real or not; y'know, as an enemy, he sounds like bad news, but if you can patch things up with him, then....
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:20 / 25.02.04
Alex, that's actually pretty common practice for these tupenny-ha'penny fortune-tellers. The actual reading costs about a tenner, but then you get this line about how you're cursed, or haunted, or you Done Bad Things in a past life, and only the expenditure of a lot of cash with fix things. Bit surprised she went for the full six grand right away though. Most of them will reel you in slowly, start with an eighty or 100 quid proceedure and work up to the big money.

So I wouldn't worry too much about the whole dead mad arab thing.
 
 
Elbereth
16:35 / 25.02.04
I have always thought that the soul was a seperate part of a person as is the conciousness and the body. The soul is like the trunk of a tree that loses its leaves every year. The foilage is like the conciousness of that particular body. It can change the soul but very slowly and not very much because the soul is whats meant to be around for a long period of time. And I also think that this immortal soul thing is a bunch of crap. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden before they ate of the tree of life. We always want to be immortal but we never are. Which makes sense, most of the people around I couldn't stand for more than a century and neither could anyone else.
 
 
LVX23
16:38 / 25.02.04
Some thoughts:

The question of whether we have a soul or not is one that will likely never be answered with any satisfaction. Or rather, the answer only lies across the event horizon of death. But do we really want answers to questions such as these? Do we want to prove (in the Latin sense of "challenge") the existence of God? Much of the mystery of life is what keeps it interesting, and I believe there is a domain of knowledge that is simply beyond our grasp while incarnate.

The discussion is valid, don't get me wrong, but I tend to feel it has little value beyond being a fun thought experiment. What it comes down to for me is What do you want to believe about the Unknown?
What do we gain by believing that the Soul is merely the sum of its neurological parts? Is there any comfort in this? Perhaps... On the other hand, what if I believe that the Soul is eternal, that the ego self is closer to my biology while the Higher Self exists outside of time, guiding me through this manifestation? Does it bring more meaning and joy into my existence to believe that I am a vessel for the experience of the Absolute in matter?

I majored in neuroscience in college and I can tell you that it's a very young and naieve(sp?) field. The brain is a total organic mess of hundreds of millions of neurons arcing off of each other in infinte combinations, bathed in a vast stew of checmicals and EM fields. They really don't have a clue about how to deal with the anatomy of the brain, much less the issue of consciousness. In fact, consciousness is literally a bad word in neuroscience simply because it is so ridiculously inconceivably far beyond our current feeble graspings. In all respects the brain is the most advanced technology on the planet, if not the entire galaxy and we only have a rough idea of how it operates.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
03:34 / 26.02.04
Eddie 13

" Is she sexy ? "

I'd have to say yeah. If you're ever in New York, she has a stall I think off the Rockerfeller Plaza, and an office in the Village. Sister Pat, as I recall. I'm not recommending this, but it's at least nice to know that your various minor, fairly meaningless issues would take SIX GRAND to fix. Y'know, she makes you feel special...
 
 
LVX23
05:36 / 26.02.04
She'd have to make me feel a lot more than special for $6k...
 
 
Ged
14:11 / 08.03.04
Hey Mordant Carnival I don't know if this will be of any use, but here is a really good book on the study of the soul.
40 Questions of the Soul by Jacob Boehme. It might help out.
 
 
Z. deScathach
07:46 / 09.03.04
I can see that this is a resurrected thread, but I really wanted to reply. It's been a question that I've had to wrestle with, as my partner died recently, (I was there), and I talk to her pychically from time to time. I realize that I may be talking to myself, and I've often wondered about the whole, "damaging the brain and it's effect on personality" thing. The one thing that I wonder about though, is that we are essentially electrical impulses, and there is a quantum component to such patterns of energy. Is it not possible that we may exist after death as a quantum echo? While we are alive, our impulses are tied with the physical organ of the brain. Changing it will change the patterns. After death,though, might it not be possible that these patterns remain as a quantum after-effect? If so, might they still be sentient? Just a thought.
 
 
Zheng He
07:38 / 12.03.04
Well, I don't know if it's allright to do a first post in a resurrected thread, but anyway... hi to you all

A very good theme (I was wondering when Boheme was coming up...). I have this little idea of mine (sure not so, but heard elsewhere) that part of the body-mind(or body-soul)problem comes from considering a closed set of three dimensions (or four in space-time). Suppose we consider maybe two more (enough for a vibrating wave). Then we can consider a body (no metaphysical included) with five (six) dimensions and two of them that could account for a soul. Reminds me sometimes of the morphic resonance by Sheldrake... it's a very strange theory though, 'cause he never got explained (and I check his work from time to time) where this morphic field came from. If it exists, communication between fields can be responsible for a lot of magick.

Think of a sigil generating a mophic field of its own that, with its charge and intent, achieves enough energy to influence the other fields surrounding them(not spatially, but in this new-dimension space).

my 2 euro-cents
 
 
LVX23
15:42 / 12.03.04
Z.deScathach - Sorry to hear about your loss. This will certainly be a very challenging period of your life. I always had this semi-romantic shamanic relationship with Death. Then I watched both of my wife's parents die very ugly deaths. Talk about calling my bluff! Our lives turned inside out for about 3 years and have only settled over the past year. But now my relationship with Death (and Life) feels much more real and profound. Not sure just how to relate this to the topic...just wanted to share.

Is it not possible that we may exist after death as a quantum echo?

Yeah, I don't think that the self just blinks out of existence at Death. I suspect there is a transition phase as the self gradually releases from the body (note that the Tibetans believe in a 42-day period after Death when the soul reincarnates). It may be entirely possible to make contact during this phase. It may be that the quantum signature of the individual gets logged in the hologram of existence for eternity (like an archive), while the Soul, the higher self, moves on to be reabsorbed into the Absolute. Now, if Death is a collapsing of Time, then the Soul may move into a suspended state of eternity, seeing all time at once. Perhaps something like a seance or visitation is actually accessing the holographic archives and drawing down the Soul from its n-dimensioanl state into an individualize 4d manifestation...

Zheng He wrote:
Reminds me sometimes of the morphic resonance by Sheldrake... it's a very strange theory though, 'cause he never got explained

I think the morphic field is an emergent property of the species as a whole. Each individual generates its own resonant field as a byproduct of its vitality and existence, the sum of which informs the entire species by affinity. I tend to think of morphic resonance as being somewhat analogous to Jung's collective un/conscious extended to nature - a resonant field binding members of the species and, ultimately, the entire biosphere. Humans add a formalized degree of consciousness to the morphic field - the noosphere - and, more importantly, a frequency of imagination.
 
  
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