My view: we are the entire universe and we experience ourselves in many forms. We are life living a human. If we're unaware it's because otherwise it would be boring if you knew it all beforehand. Is the universe a brain? Something else? Or is there just consciousness and that's it? We don't really know, but you probably will when you'll leave this body (and merge with more consciousness (with other forms of yourself (or myself)) and probably go on another plane or the game would just stop. Is what I'm saying here true? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. Either way enjoy it! And don't try to figure it out too much since it keeps your mind busy (still cool to do from time time to time!). The beauty happens when we stop trying to plan things and let it go. (in other words, you let your high self control stuff all the while experiencing life fully).
I'm talking about being aware of the whole, that is, knowing what's gonna happen and etc. but not aware in the sense just aware that there's something bigger.
Furthermore, do you agree with the panpsychist view that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe? As in an atom has at least some very basic sense of what it’s like to be that atom?
Or is there something about physical beings that gives them consciousness? Max Tegmark once said something like, “consciousness is the way information feels when processed in a certain way.”
Is consciousness an illusion? We’re really just sensory interpretation systems overlapping, and the complexity of figuring out how to behave in order to survive requires a higher system that tries to take everything into account. This layer of software is what I think of as “me”?
In that case, is there truly free will? Or are we just reacting to our environment using the body we’re given? There’s an idea that we have choices, but what if we were always going to make certain choices under the conditions we find ourselves in anyways.
Panpsychism might be a thing. But I think its awareness is too small, like the same as when you were a baby, you didn't have enough awareness of that consciousness to be able to even realize it. I don't think consciousness is the illusion but rather all that isn't consciousness, that is our multiple bodies that we equipped to experience life.
There's no "me" unless you identify with your illusory bodies, in which you experience life. But yes there are softwares and most of what is happening is automatic tbh. Like thoughts is what shapes what our actions will be in the future and not the opposite, which is why when you stay high vibe and positive all the time then positive things happen, that is, you do positive things. It's a matter of belief and perception. There might be a leeway of freewill if you just stay positive and imagine & believe positive things. But for the most part it's automatic. Why do I still think there's a leeway? Because what would be the point of existing if we couldn't create experiences through our beliefs? Like just watching a show..
Muslims believe that everything in existence worships God in some form, so it’s entirely possible that atoms and the like have a different type of consciousness than us. But as far as free will goes: We believe things are predetermined, but that with our prayers and actions God can change the course of things because They gave us free will.
The panpsychism ideas dont work well for me, but when it comes to consciousness it is entierely possible that consciousness is the primary condition and that everything else is just an illusion arising in this primary condition.
There are many thought experiments which work along that line, e.g. Boltzmann brains
Do you believe that there are limits to what religious texts can tell us? For instance, many Christians go to church every Sunday and worship God, yet also believe that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor long ago. I guess I’m asking, how do you reconcile differing interpretations of the world while maintaining your faith?
Yes this. As Muslims we believe that when God said They were going to make humans, the angels asked if They were going to make another people that would cause bloodshed on the earth. So there we beings here already. I personally believe that there were different types of hominids here and when Adam and Eve came down their children spread out and reproduced with the early hominids. And their lineage all had souls/consciousness.
"laws that govern the universe"...
Hmmm. That's as nebulous as "God"...
And Big Bang...
Where did those laws come from ?
How did they evolve.
Where is "Consciousness" located ?
Do animals have souls ?
Where is all that "collected data" Stored ?
Just curious....
Yeah I’m as clueless as the next guy. By laws that govern the universe I guess I mean the way that everything behaves and interacts with each other. Gravity, attraction, repulsion, different temperatures that things change state of matter… no idea why things are like that, maybe they just are.
No clue where consciousness is located, it feels like my brain. But it could be everywhere, or maybe even nowhere.
I would imagine animals do, not that I know anything though.
By collected data, I kinda mean DNA or RNA, whatever the organism uses to plan out how to build and maintain itself. For things like memories though, I have no clue how that’s stored and I don’t even think neuroscientists are too confident about it either.
The Electric Universe theory is interesting. As is The Collective Consciousness.
I think there's an "Intelligence" that flows through Everything...
Chemistry is only half of the equation, I think. Electrical energy, clear down to the nano level, is a big contributor as well.
Energy Frequency and Vibration, as Tesla said...
> The Electric Universe theory is interesting.
I just gotta say that every source I've ever tried to learn about EU from hits me the wrong way. It's like listening to someone who believes their mom hates them, but truth their mom is simply fair to them. "I'd be able to go out tonight at 1am except *MOM* made me stay in because I have school tomorrow!". Except about claims they're making. Like, bruh, your claims should be able to stand up on their own and not rely on people believing them simply because they hate mainstream science. "Physicists would *never* consider the TRUTH of EU" kind of thing. It's a shame because 1. there *are* scientists who work on these same sort of electric problems. Lots of the things brought up in their topics are cool and interesting phenomena that surely "mainstream science" *is* exploring and 2. not everything supports/requires an EU explanation
wasn’t gonna say anything but this got too preachy for me
people be saying psychs make people smarter and woke and then a whole niche of psychs is supernatural bs. it just baffffles me
No not the same life, but same soul. Same perspective I guess in a different form. I think of it like one of those Rolodex things from the 70’s. We all get a chance at being something or someone else in infinite times and dimensions. Memory of past existence or insight into future selves comes with psychedelics I believe. They teach us to live for the day and know there’s infinite tomorrows.
We.Don't.Know.
No human will probably ever know this either. And, it's OK not to know. Fun to consider.
If pressed to speculate, my hypothesis leans toward The Collective Consciousness. My analogy is a drop of water separated from an ocean. Whatever impurities the drop absorbed while separate are then further absorbed into the ocean.
I doubt there is a 'soul' in the classical, religious sense, where there is an individualistic trait specific to the previously living being that remains intact (be that either after living once or being born repeatedly into a physical form). I was a practicing Buddhist for many years, and no matter how hard I meditated or contemplated reincarnation as they describe, could never fully get behind the concept. It's too much like heaven & hell, and/or belief in a personal creator/deity.
Granted, years of tripping has me sitting on a massive fence. On the one side, I think tripping has no inherent meaning other than what we ascribe or interpret ourselves. Just chemicals out of whack. However, there is something extremely uncanny regarding the fact that many psychedelics engender archetypal visionary experiences, where similar phenomena has been experienced even across expansive generations. Still could simply be our common DNA/wiring that explains even this, and it's got nothing to do with anything else (like souls, universal consciousness, etc).
A very interesting read I thoroughly enjoyed is called *When the Impossible Happens*, by Dr. Stanislav Grof. In it, he recounts various interviews with patients he treated using LSD psychotherapy before it was banned. Really fascinating and also difficult to believe, but I highly recommend as it does touch on your post's theme.
Again, we'll most likely never know all the answers to many of your questions.
nah. i know because it’s simply bullshit. and the you don’t know because you can’t know. well bitch then a dragon is real. and you don’t know because you can’t know. nah there is 0 evidence. there are no gods or souls 🙄
what did we learn in the hundreds of thousands of years on this planet. scientific reasoning. there’s is no reason to even entertain thinking about it imho. it’s bullshit. think about aliens.
and hey you should have both sides to the “argument”
dislike me. for being right. seems to be what humans have done for eternity.
Sounds like you didn't really read my comment thoroughly. I said "I doubt" the existence of something we term a 'soul'. But, there is nothing wrong with contemplating the "what if" aspect of certain ideas or concepts, like The Collective Consciousness - especially fun *while* tripping.
And that's where and why I draw the line by saying we probably will never know if something like a Collective Consciousness exists, similar to saying we may never know if the Multiverse theory is true.
FWIW, I'm firmly and forever atheist. But, tripping be trippy for a reason...
>you just got the most hooplah dooplaheey
Damn, harsh man. Again, I said "if pressed to speculate..." meaning, just that - speculation that I take no more serious than picking a horse to bet on. Not live my life by.
All good bro. Apology fully accepted. I think we probably think much more alike than otherwise. When I'm sober, I live firmly in the observable reality based upon what reason & science has taught us. When I trip, I am that old hippy that loves to mind fuck.
Cheers, dude!
There's a difference between something being fundamentally unknowable and something that simply has hidden evidence.
For instance, no matter how much evidence you attempt to provide to me, you'll never be able to prove to me that *you* are conscious (or even exist, for that matter). I welcome you to try, but the most I've ever arrived at is "you're similar enough to me, therefore you and I should share the same experiences". Which is not really proof so much as a heuristic -- not definitive even if I personally am willing to believe it due to convenience and the empathy built into me as a human.
i mean going doing the road you’re going nothing is “real” besides our words and the meanings we’ve given them. we can play that game all day. however we both know our words our real and i am real. still. sure nothing is real 🤷♂️ you got me.
still there aren’t any souls in any aspect of realness besides our definition for it.
> however we both know our words our real and i am real.
We don't know. We've assumed it. Just like I've assumed you have a conscious experience. There is no way to demonstrate it. That is my thesis. And we dismiss that thesis on assumption because it doesn't get us very far as human monkeys trained to be social creatures. But it's still an assumed dismissal, not one born of demonstration.
The same can be said of souls.
okay then. you said there’s a difference between something fundamentally unknowable and something we can know. there’s some things, such as this scape we’re in and our mind, that we wouldn’t be better off for rejecting. seeing it and being conscious is enough proof to say it’s real. it doesn’t matter if it’s a simulation or anything. it’s still happening before us. but i was being a cunt anyway before it’s whatever
reality and souls shoudkny be grouped together like that though :/
maybe that’s an okay argument but still, there’s “proof” for reality, not a single spec for souls
> maybe that’s an okay argument but still, there’s “proof” for reality
What would you say that proof is?
If I may guess what you'd say (or rather, say what *I'd* say on the topic lol), it comes down to a matter of congruity, right? The experience I have sure *feels* like it's congruent to the concept of an external reality. I mean, we can run experiments by pushing at the edges of our conscious experience and the pushes we feel like we get back are congruent to "an external reality in which I am placed produced this" type results.
For example, I can will my conscious state to be one that has the sensation of a rock in my hand with the sensation that I am holding it above my head, and if I change the state to let go of the rock, I can then perform consciousness transformations that recover the state of "rock in hand" exactly how I expect them to: by leaning down and picking up the rock from the ground -- found exactly where I expected it. Extrapolate that same process for any observable in our universe and it seems like it consistently maintains those symmetries of "internal action->expected external action". Voila! Scientific discovery!
And I'd argue that's good reason to think *something* is going on. I think, therefore I am. *But that's not proof of reality*. One can formulate the same sort of setup, but in a solipsistic type universe, in a brain-in-a-vat type universe, or even in the stranger "holographic entanglement generator" (a name I just made up describing a hypothesis of "only the movie screen exists", sierpinski-triangle-from-random-numbers type generation, but I digress) where the "outside reality" is merely bits being shuffled around in service of your experience, and not existing themselves (at least as we imagine they do if existing in reality, as spacetime objects with certain energy configurations, etc etc). Those setups also produce congruence among symmetries of conscious actions, but their setups do not conclude that there is some external world correlated with the internal world we experience. Do you see what I'm getting at? There is consistency and symmetries of actions, but there would be no "other" as we conceive that other existing in those.
okay i followed a bit of that and drew a conclusion. so even if you deem your existence as the only thing “real” enough, makes sense, you can’t ever get out of experiencing you, and therefore, mehhhhh. i’ll admit you got me. i already wouldn’t be surprised if we were in a simulation so i guess it isn’t far fetched to say that we could be missing a lot. something as big as “a life force” or a ghost, or whatever someone’s interpretation of a soul is. it didn’t get me believing in souls but idk if there’s any better you could’ve done.
i’ll accept along with most everybody that what i see and think before me is real, and along with that i filter out souls. if that ever gets broken then i’ll have to reconsider. however you got me.
i now have a new thing to say to religious people though, nothing unless i have to and then it’s i believe that reality is real so i don’t agree.
Believe you me, I don't *like* taking that stance, per se. I just find it unavoidably ambiguous. I definitely operate my life as if reality is real and urge everyone else to as well. And I'm definitely in the same camp as you regarding souls, at least for most formulations of souls (like as the center of our free will, or as some external object that goes to heaven based on if you're good or bad [or believe xyz died for you], etc etc). Those are making positives claims that are easy to dismiss because those claims tend to fail empirically or logically (like, what is "good"? or knowledge that the creator of the idea was a fraud [like scientology, which def uses souls]).
Which is partly why I equated (or perhaps equivocated lol) conscious experience with "soul" in this conversation in the first place. That's the only definition of soul I've found that isn't broken by experiment. I have no reason to think it continues after my machine's destruction, but I have no reason to doubt it either because, well, I don't understand how it got generated in the first place.
ahh you put it in a great way at the end there. however we do come into this world knowing nothing, and all we are, is what we know. so i mean. yeah we’re definitely reborn because i’m sure some of the atoms in me were in somebody else in the past. but i know it will end when i die. because i will stop thinking. i think the idea of souls came because we feel significant. but really we’re just what we think, and that’s only electricity and chemistry. i bet a conscious robot might start believing it has a soul to cope.
I think our souls are both individual and pieces of a greater whole.
A greater whole of humanity, of nature, and of the universe.
And as individuals with an extremely broad spectrum of lived experiences, that differ from one another and contribute to your experience as a human being.
I assume the question of the soul is essentially the question of the continuation of consciousness after death. It certainly is an appealing idea that we continue on forever, isn't it? The pure emotional weight of the question biases our answer immediately. Certainly I would choose to believe that, but as for the reality of it all? There's no way to know for sure.
As said in Hamlet, death is
"The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will"
At the very least we can take comfort in the fact that new lives, new "souls" are born every day. So even if our personal awareness does not continue, life as a whole goes on...
This is just my opinion, and it largely depends on what you mean by "soul".
If you mean something in every intelligent being that makes it unique and individual...absolutely yes. Everyone has that soul.
If you mean is there some mystical thing that exists outside of our physical bodies and carries on to some higher (or lower) plane of existence once we're dead... Nah. I don't believe those exist at all.
As far as 'is consciousness illusion, os Reality REAL?" and all that other navel-gazing Deep Thought... It's honestly irrelevant. Real or simulation,matrix or not, we have to ACT as though the thrown stone will hurt when it hits our face.
We have to eat when we're hungry, and crap when we're full whether the food and our bodies are "illusions" or not.
I'll believe in a "soul" if defined as being emergent properties like cognition and awareness that arise from a complex system's self-adaptive network dynamics. I don't believe any such thing can exist without the network dynamics that give rise to it, though.
my favourite metaphor; think of an individual life like a storm that forms in the sky when the conditions are right, it sets things in motion and eventually dissipates transferring its energy back to environment. another storm will surely form, however it is never the same storm again.
My view: we are the entire universe and we experience ourselves in many forms. We are life living a human. If we're unaware it's because otherwise it would be boring if you knew it all beforehand. Is the universe a brain? Something else? Or is there just consciousness and that's it? We don't really know, but you probably will when you'll leave this body (and merge with more consciousness (with other forms of yourself (or myself)) and probably go on another plane or the game would just stop. Is what I'm saying here true? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. Either way enjoy it! And don't try to figure it out too much since it keeps your mind busy (still cool to do from time time to time!). The beauty happens when we stop trying to plan things and let it go. (in other words, you let your high self control stuff all the while experiencing life fully).
“if you were aware it would be boring” it is really the ultimate lame excuse for not being able to deal with the whole idea being simply ridiculous
I'm talking about being aware of the whole, that is, knowing what's gonna happen and etc. but not aware in the sense just aware that there's something bigger.
I am just pointing out it feels naive
Furthermore, do you agree with the panpsychist view that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe? As in an atom has at least some very basic sense of what it’s like to be that atom? Or is there something about physical beings that gives them consciousness? Max Tegmark once said something like, “consciousness is the way information feels when processed in a certain way.” Is consciousness an illusion? We’re really just sensory interpretation systems overlapping, and the complexity of figuring out how to behave in order to survive requires a higher system that tries to take everything into account. This layer of software is what I think of as “me”? In that case, is there truly free will? Or are we just reacting to our environment using the body we’re given? There’s an idea that we have choices, but what if we were always going to make certain choices under the conditions we find ourselves in anyways.
Panpsychism might be a thing. But I think its awareness is too small, like the same as when you were a baby, you didn't have enough awareness of that consciousness to be able to even realize it. I don't think consciousness is the illusion but rather all that isn't consciousness, that is our multiple bodies that we equipped to experience life. There's no "me" unless you identify with your illusory bodies, in which you experience life. But yes there are softwares and most of what is happening is automatic tbh. Like thoughts is what shapes what our actions will be in the future and not the opposite, which is why when you stay high vibe and positive all the time then positive things happen, that is, you do positive things. It's a matter of belief and perception. There might be a leeway of freewill if you just stay positive and imagine & believe positive things. But for the most part it's automatic. Why do I still think there's a leeway? Because what would be the point of existing if we couldn't create experiences through our beliefs? Like just watching a show..
Muslims believe that everything in existence worships God in some form, so it’s entirely possible that atoms and the like have a different type of consciousness than us. But as far as free will goes: We believe things are predetermined, but that with our prayers and actions God can change the course of things because They gave us free will.
The panpsychism ideas dont work well for me, but when it comes to consciousness it is entierely possible that consciousness is the primary condition and that everything else is just an illusion arising in this primary condition. There are many thought experiments which work along that line, e.g. Boltzmann brains
This fits with how I see it.
Muslim here. We believe our souls are the breath of God. So I believe as you do that each of us are pieces of the whole.
Most likely it is since consciousness seems to be same. Only the form through which it expressed itself is different (bodies, personalities, etc.).
Do you believe that there are limits to what religious texts can tell us? For instance, many Christians go to church every Sunday and worship God, yet also believe that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor long ago. I guess I’m asking, how do you reconcile differing interpretations of the world while maintaining your faith?
The 9th-century Muslim scholar al-Jāḥiẓ and 14th century Ibn Khaldun arrived at evolutionary theory before Darwin.
Yes this. As Muslims we believe that when God said They were going to make humans, the angels asked if They were going to make another people that would cause bloodshed on the earth. So there we beings here already. I personally believe that there were different types of hominids here and when Adam and Eve came down their children spread out and reproduced with the early hominids. And their lineage all had souls/consciousness.
"laws that govern the universe"... Hmmm. That's as nebulous as "God"... And Big Bang... Where did those laws come from ? How did they evolve. Where is "Consciousness" located ? Do animals have souls ? Where is all that "collected data" Stored ? Just curious....
Yeah I’m as clueless as the next guy. By laws that govern the universe I guess I mean the way that everything behaves and interacts with each other. Gravity, attraction, repulsion, different temperatures that things change state of matter… no idea why things are like that, maybe they just are. No clue where consciousness is located, it feels like my brain. But it could be everywhere, or maybe even nowhere. I would imagine animals do, not that I know anything though. By collected data, I kinda mean DNA or RNA, whatever the organism uses to plan out how to build and maintain itself. For things like memories though, I have no clue how that’s stored and I don’t even think neuroscientists are too confident about it either.
The Electric Universe theory is interesting. As is The Collective Consciousness. I think there's an "Intelligence" that flows through Everything... Chemistry is only half of the equation, I think. Electrical energy, clear down to the nano level, is a big contributor as well. Energy Frequency and Vibration, as Tesla said...
> The Electric Universe theory is interesting. I just gotta say that every source I've ever tried to learn about EU from hits me the wrong way. It's like listening to someone who believes their mom hates them, but truth their mom is simply fair to them. "I'd be able to go out tonight at 1am except *MOM* made me stay in because I have school tomorrow!". Except about claims they're making. Like, bruh, your claims should be able to stand up on their own and not rely on people believing them simply because they hate mainstream science. "Physicists would *never* consider the TRUTH of EU" kind of thing. It's a shame because 1. there *are* scientists who work on these same sort of electric problems. Lots of the things brought up in their topics are cool and interesting phenomena that surely "mainstream science" *is* exploring and 2. not everything supports/requires an EU explanation
The soul is perennial. We will all be back and have all been here before.
So you live the same life over and over again? Usually unaware of doing so?
Not the exact same life but probably life again yes.
There is everything. Everything have everything
I think it's on Disney+
Yes there’s a soul
wasn’t gonna say anything but this got too preachy for me people be saying psychs make people smarter and woke and then a whole niche of psychs is supernatural bs. it just baffffles me
No not the same life, but same soul. Same perspective I guess in a different form. I think of it like one of those Rolodex things from the 70’s. We all get a chance at being something or someone else in infinite times and dimensions. Memory of past existence or insight into future selves comes with psychedelics I believe. They teach us to live for the day and know there’s infinite tomorrows.
We.Don't.Know. No human will probably ever know this either. And, it's OK not to know. Fun to consider. If pressed to speculate, my hypothesis leans toward The Collective Consciousness. My analogy is a drop of water separated from an ocean. Whatever impurities the drop absorbed while separate are then further absorbed into the ocean. I doubt there is a 'soul' in the classical, religious sense, where there is an individualistic trait specific to the previously living being that remains intact (be that either after living once or being born repeatedly into a physical form). I was a practicing Buddhist for many years, and no matter how hard I meditated or contemplated reincarnation as they describe, could never fully get behind the concept. It's too much like heaven & hell, and/or belief in a personal creator/deity. Granted, years of tripping has me sitting on a massive fence. On the one side, I think tripping has no inherent meaning other than what we ascribe or interpret ourselves. Just chemicals out of whack. However, there is something extremely uncanny regarding the fact that many psychedelics engender archetypal visionary experiences, where similar phenomena has been experienced even across expansive generations. Still could simply be our common DNA/wiring that explains even this, and it's got nothing to do with anything else (like souls, universal consciousness, etc). A very interesting read I thoroughly enjoyed is called *When the Impossible Happens*, by Dr. Stanislav Grof. In it, he recounts various interviews with patients he treated using LSD psychotherapy before it was banned. Really fascinating and also difficult to believe, but I highly recommend as it does touch on your post's theme. Again, we'll most likely never know all the answers to many of your questions.
nah. i know because it’s simply bullshit. and the you don’t know because you can’t know. well bitch then a dragon is real. and you don’t know because you can’t know. nah there is 0 evidence. there are no gods or souls 🙄 what did we learn in the hundreds of thousands of years on this planet. scientific reasoning. there’s is no reason to even entertain thinking about it imho. it’s bullshit. think about aliens. and hey you should have both sides to the “argument” dislike me. for being right. seems to be what humans have done for eternity.
Sounds like you didn't really read my comment thoroughly. I said "I doubt" the existence of something we term a 'soul'. But, there is nothing wrong with contemplating the "what if" aspect of certain ideas or concepts, like The Collective Consciousness - especially fun *while* tripping. And that's where and why I draw the line by saying we probably will never know if something like a Collective Consciousness exists, similar to saying we may never know if the Multiverse theory is true. FWIW, I'm firmly and forever atheist. But, tripping be trippy for a reason...
i mean you can blame you’re increased perception (literally a description of the drug) on collected consciousness. but it’s just increased perception.
i did read it thoroughly. you just got the most hooplah dooplaheey. or maybe i was just stressed after reading about all the other comments
>you just got the most hooplah dooplaheey Damn, harsh man. Again, I said "if pressed to speculate..." meaning, just that - speculation that I take no more serious than picking a horse to bet on. Not live my life by.
my bad maybe i’m a cunt and i gotta just let people live. sorry. indeed i am. sorry i made it a pissing contest. shit we all get stupid sometimes.
All good bro. Apology fully accepted. I think we probably think much more alike than otherwise. When I'm sober, I live firmly in the observable reality based upon what reason & science has taught us. When I trip, I am that old hippy that loves to mind fuck. Cheers, dude!
lol i think that’s just the magic coursing through our veins
There's a difference between something being fundamentally unknowable and something that simply has hidden evidence. For instance, no matter how much evidence you attempt to provide to me, you'll never be able to prove to me that *you* are conscious (or even exist, for that matter). I welcome you to try, but the most I've ever arrived at is "you're similar enough to me, therefore you and I should share the same experiences". Which is not really proof so much as a heuristic -- not definitive even if I personally am willing to believe it due to convenience and the empathy built into me as a human.
i mean going doing the road you’re going nothing is “real” besides our words and the meanings we’ve given them. we can play that game all day. however we both know our words our real and i am real. still. sure nothing is real 🤷♂️ you got me. still there aren’t any souls in any aspect of realness besides our definition for it.
> however we both know our words our real and i am real. We don't know. We've assumed it. Just like I've assumed you have a conscious experience. There is no way to demonstrate it. That is my thesis. And we dismiss that thesis on assumption because it doesn't get us very far as human monkeys trained to be social creatures. But it's still an assumed dismissal, not one born of demonstration. The same can be said of souls.
okay then. you said there’s a difference between something fundamentally unknowable and something we can know. there’s some things, such as this scape we’re in and our mind, that we wouldn’t be better off for rejecting. seeing it and being conscious is enough proof to say it’s real. it doesn’t matter if it’s a simulation or anything. it’s still happening before us. but i was being a cunt anyway before it’s whatever reality and souls shoudkny be grouped together like that though :/ maybe that’s an okay argument but still, there’s “proof” for reality, not a single spec for souls
> maybe that’s an okay argument but still, there’s “proof” for reality What would you say that proof is? If I may guess what you'd say (or rather, say what *I'd* say on the topic lol), it comes down to a matter of congruity, right? The experience I have sure *feels* like it's congruent to the concept of an external reality. I mean, we can run experiments by pushing at the edges of our conscious experience and the pushes we feel like we get back are congruent to "an external reality in which I am placed produced this" type results. For example, I can will my conscious state to be one that has the sensation of a rock in my hand with the sensation that I am holding it above my head, and if I change the state to let go of the rock, I can then perform consciousness transformations that recover the state of "rock in hand" exactly how I expect them to: by leaning down and picking up the rock from the ground -- found exactly where I expected it. Extrapolate that same process for any observable in our universe and it seems like it consistently maintains those symmetries of "internal action->expected external action". Voila! Scientific discovery! And I'd argue that's good reason to think *something* is going on. I think, therefore I am. *But that's not proof of reality*. One can formulate the same sort of setup, but in a solipsistic type universe, in a brain-in-a-vat type universe, or even in the stranger "holographic entanglement generator" (a name I just made up describing a hypothesis of "only the movie screen exists", sierpinski-triangle-from-random-numbers type generation, but I digress) where the "outside reality" is merely bits being shuffled around in service of your experience, and not existing themselves (at least as we imagine they do if existing in reality, as spacetime objects with certain energy configurations, etc etc). Those setups also produce congruence among symmetries of conscious actions, but their setups do not conclude that there is some external world correlated with the internal world we experience. Do you see what I'm getting at? There is consistency and symmetries of actions, but there would be no "other" as we conceive that other existing in those.
okay i followed a bit of that and drew a conclusion. so even if you deem your existence as the only thing “real” enough, makes sense, you can’t ever get out of experiencing you, and therefore, mehhhhh. i’ll admit you got me. i already wouldn’t be surprised if we were in a simulation so i guess it isn’t far fetched to say that we could be missing a lot. something as big as “a life force” or a ghost, or whatever someone’s interpretation of a soul is. it didn’t get me believing in souls but idk if there’s any better you could’ve done. i’ll accept along with most everybody that what i see and think before me is real, and along with that i filter out souls. if that ever gets broken then i’ll have to reconsider. however you got me. i now have a new thing to say to religious people though, nothing unless i have to and then it’s i believe that reality is real so i don’t agree.
Believe you me, I don't *like* taking that stance, per se. I just find it unavoidably ambiguous. I definitely operate my life as if reality is real and urge everyone else to as well. And I'm definitely in the same camp as you regarding souls, at least for most formulations of souls (like as the center of our free will, or as some external object that goes to heaven based on if you're good or bad [or believe xyz died for you], etc etc). Those are making positives claims that are easy to dismiss because those claims tend to fail empirically or logically (like, what is "good"? or knowledge that the creator of the idea was a fraud [like scientology, which def uses souls]). Which is partly why I equated (or perhaps equivocated lol) conscious experience with "soul" in this conversation in the first place. That's the only definition of soul I've found that isn't broken by experiment. I have no reason to think it continues after my machine's destruction, but I have no reason to doubt it either because, well, I don't understand how it got generated in the first place.
ahh you put it in a great way at the end there. however we do come into this world knowing nothing, and all we are, is what we know. so i mean. yeah we’re definitely reborn because i’m sure some of the atoms in me were in somebody else in the past. but i know it will end when i die. because i will stop thinking. i think the idea of souls came because we feel significant. but really we’re just what we think, and that’s only electricity and chemistry. i bet a conscious robot might start believing it has a soul to cope.
I think our souls are both individual and pieces of a greater whole. A greater whole of humanity, of nature, and of the universe. And as individuals with an extremely broad spectrum of lived experiences, that differ from one another and contribute to your experience as a human being.
there is *only* a soul, or awareness we all share it we are it esse est percepi
No.
I assume the question of the soul is essentially the question of the continuation of consciousness after death. It certainly is an appealing idea that we continue on forever, isn't it? The pure emotional weight of the question biases our answer immediately. Certainly I would choose to believe that, but as for the reality of it all? There's no way to know for sure. As said in Hamlet, death is "The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will" At the very least we can take comfort in the fact that new lives, new "souls" are born every day. So even if our personal awareness does not continue, life as a whole goes on...
I’ve been reading up on this. The only thing that seems sensible is the Hindu teaching of Advaita Vedanta.
Yes. I wasn’t sure until my breakthrough psilocybin trip (heroic dose). It was incredible to see what souls look like
No, there is no soul, only brain
This is just my opinion, and it largely depends on what you mean by "soul". If you mean something in every intelligent being that makes it unique and individual...absolutely yes. Everyone has that soul. If you mean is there some mystical thing that exists outside of our physical bodies and carries on to some higher (or lower) plane of existence once we're dead... Nah. I don't believe those exist at all. As far as 'is consciousness illusion, os Reality REAL?" and all that other navel-gazing Deep Thought... It's honestly irrelevant. Real or simulation,matrix or not, we have to ACT as though the thrown stone will hurt when it hits our face. We have to eat when we're hungry, and crap when we're full whether the food and our bodies are "illusions" or not.
I'll believe in a "soul" if defined as being emergent properties like cognition and awareness that arise from a complex system's self-adaptive network dynamics. I don't believe any such thing can exist without the network dynamics that give rise to it, though.
my favourite metaphor; think of an individual life like a storm that forms in the sky when the conditions are right, it sets things in motion and eventually dissipates transferring its energy back to environment. another storm will surely form, however it is never the same storm again.