Dialogue on the soul

[irichc]

G: Tell me in which way something can be a unity and divisible at the same time.

B: That's easy. I'm one and also divisible, since I am subject to physical and biological laws that effect me.

G: When you say "I am divisible", do you mean that many "I" belonging to you are divisible, or that you, the only "I", are divisible?

B: Obviously I stand for the second assumption. I am an indivisible entity, but I have a divisible body. Both things are true, despite of your attempts of sophistry.

G: Let's examine who is making a less appropriate use of words, me or you. You have stated in the first place that you were divisible. Do you retract from that position?

B: No.

G: But now, in order to clarify your declaration, you add that you have something which is divisible, as far as this posession is singularly yours and, so, it doesn't belong to an indefinite number of "you".

B: Well...

G: And don't we use the verb "to have" for showing accessory qualities, that is, neither essential nor stable ones? For instance, when I say "I have a stomach ache" or "I have something in my hand".

B: Certainly, but... wait a minute.

G: Then, choose: you either have something divisible or you are something divisible. What do you say to it?

B: I admit that what I really wanted to say is that I have something divisible, without being myself a divisible entity.

G: Therefore, you are not your body.

B: How could I accept this?

G: If we refuse the opposite statement, we will be forced to accept the previous proposition. Can you conceive yourself as being indivisible and also being formed by divisible parts?

B: I can't.

G: Will you say, then, that you are formed by indivisible parts?

B: This is nonsensical.

G: You realize the contradiction. You are confusing your subjectivity, your soul, your monad, with the instrument that you use ordinarily when you want to designate it, which is your full person, that is, the metaphysical union between your body and your soul. This is the entity to which we normally refer metonymically as our body (as we point to our chest with the thumbs or with a similar gesture), avoiding futile abstractions.

B: I wouldn't have said it better. But, if we are not lost in our research, why did we get such a strange conclusion, falling away from common sense? Since from your reasoning it follows that my body is mine just like my sandals are mine, without presupposing any intrinsic relationship with my being. Nevertheless, I wouldn't be able to exist if I lacked a body.

G: I have a solution for this mystery. You are right when you say that your body doesn't belong to you in a stronger sense than your sandals. For it is in your individual notion to wear sandals eventually, and also to be united to a body. But being united doesn't mean being a unity. The kind of unity formed by your sandals and you is called a simple predicative unity, whilst the one formed by your body and you is an infinite complex predicative unity. The first conjunction is an artificial machine, an aggregate, but the second one is a natural machine, made by God, assembled since time began and for all the eternity, comprising everything that happened and will happen to you.

B: Are you implying that God works for me when I think that I'm acting according to my free will?

G: No, indeed. I state that your soul acts freely, through its actions, and your body necessarily, through its passions. However, both are perfectly armonized by the first cause, which is God, for whatever that happens in one of them is immediately reflected in the other one; and, by the way, that shouldn't make us think that they exert a mutual influence upon each other. This is also valid for every substance in the present universe.

B: How can it be possible that my body cannot effect my soul, or vice versa?

G: Not effectively, but concomitantly, like two clocks set to run together.

B: And which is the efficient cause for my arm to move when I want, if it is not me?

G: Imputation of causes is metaphysician's duty. A physicist can explain movement in many ways, depending on how he imagines the mobile, either moving by itself or being moved by its environment, that changes with it along with its movement.

B: So, does this mean that physicists and materialists cannot explain us anything useful about our free will?

G: They cannot at all.

B: In this case, we will have to discard Spinoza's system, which claims that everything can be reduced geometrically to physical causes, that is, to the ones produced by a change in the figure, weight and size of the objects. And we will also reject that, anyway, no one really acts, but the addition of causes and effects in the whole universe, which he called God.

G: Absolutely, my dearest friend.

[Technosoul]

If God is the universe then the idea of a soul is mere fantasy, but if God is seperate from the universe then the notion of the soul being sepeate from the physical body is defendable.

Is individualism seperate from the cross-generational essence of a soul that would be as a timeless spirit?

Is that the question up for debate?

[Kuldeep]

Let me put the whole thing in simple words without inclusion of soul, god or anything else unkown.

I am a living person known to my family members, friends and outside world a single person. I am being reffered with respect to my body shape, size, contour, speach sound and my memory etc. Till my death, I am wholy Individual Single (Unity)

But when I die, same people who considered me single (unity) start telling "I am dead" my body which was considered as me is being considered as my body. To the extent, it is also said may my soul rest in peace. These two statements clearly tell us that I am something else than my body, soul...and the like. So, I am not unity but divisible.
Hence problem posed in OP

"Tell me in which way something can be a unity and divisible at the same time."

is answered in simple words.

In fact, every body is different because of our individual metaphysical mind which creates around it individual soul and physical body. That individual meta physical mind is Individual Consciousness, which in the absence of that metaphysical mind is infact UNITY an Universal Consciousness.

[ItsDarts]

You people are on dope!!! What reason do we have to buy any of this if infact, the mind is physical? Why isn't a physical mind ever considered? Is it not true that if we damage parts of the brain, where our mind resides, that this "mind" no longer functions like it did prior to damage? If a different part of our brain is damaged, is it not true that we may no longer be able to move various parts of our body no matter how much "free will" we think we have? Why can't the mind be something that is in our brain we just haven't discovered yet? Why is it that nobody wants to hear that the mind is nothing more than electrochemical reactions and that damage to the physical pathways = damage to the mind?

At what point does this "soul" exist? Is some of the soul in an egg and some of the soul in the sperm? Is it not true that if just one different sperm entered your mothers egg, "you" wouldn't exist? What evidence is available for the point in time a soul enters the body or is switched on at conception? As far as I can tell, "I" am defined by my environment. If I grew up elsewhere, "I" may have a totally different self than if I grew up as I did. If the mind is physical and some studies have shown this could be the case, then without a brain, the mind (self) can't exist once decay sets in. Your physical self is a battery for the mind, again a physical unit of energy. As you decay, the "you" that was once "you" decays into its separate atoms, never to be wholey connected ever again. the individual atoms may each go into something else at some point in time, but there is no "you" the collective whole of your living self, ever again.

[Kuldeep]

Soul can never be proven in physical terms, but analysed with indirect physical happenings, like clearity with which we see a dream, any person talks about the happenings and relations of past life and the like!!

What explanation ItsDrats has given in based on physical data. Soul is metaphysical !!! So can never be proven.

[ItsDarts]

Quote by: Kuldeep Soul can never be proven in physical terms, but analysed with indirect physical happenings, like clearity with which we see a dream, any person talks about the happenings and relations of past life and the like!! What explanation ItsDrats has given in based on physical data. Soul is metaphysical !!! So can never be proven.

Pfffffttttt!!!!!! "metaphysical" is nothing more than wishful thinking. It is speculation of the imagination. There is no real existing "mataphysical" other than your thoughts. Since thoughts can and probably are nothing more than electro-chemical reactions (physical) then metaphysical must be physical as well since we KNOW that metaphysical is nothing more than speculation.

[Kakumei]

Try to link the spiritual with the physical maybe? One religion believe the conciousness is the Light of Christ. If you make 'sinful' choices, that light dims and you become generally insencive to morals, if you make correct choices, your morals tend to grow, you tend to have better marriages, better family ties, less depression, who knows. Perhaps we as we are, are looking at things in the wrong perception. If there is a God, it would make him the ultimate science, right?

[Kuldeep]

Quote by: ItsDarts Since thoughts can and probably are nothing more than electro-chemical reactions (physical) then metaphysical must be physical as well since we KNOW that metaphysical is nothing more than speculation.

Thoughts are the reasons for those electro-chemical reactions (physical) you are reffering to, then metaphysical must definitely be not physical but let it remain metaphysical only in the real sense of meaning.

Kakumei has given another term Spiritual. One may give it any other name say Consciousness but cannot be given any physical name as the reason behind those electro-bio-chemical reactions.

[Kuldeep]

Quote by: ItsDarts You people are on dope!!! What reason do we have to buy any of this if infact, the mind is physical? Why isn't a physical mind ever considered?

No, none of us is on dope. We are are physically real and just debate the way you are.

Physical mind is brain right up to neurons, electric pulses and electro-chemicals...what ever physical terms science has named or would name.

You agree different type of chemicals are formed in brain in case of pleasure and sorrow. There is somebody which reacts through more subttle mechanism (metaphysical) to make those differences in electro-chemical formation. That metaphysical mechanism is MIND. The Somebody is the SELF (Consciousness) also metaphysical.

Is it not true that if we damage parts of the brain, where our mind resides, that this "mind" no longer functions like it did prior to damage? If a different part of our brain is damaged, is it not true that we may no longer be able to move various parts of our body no matter how much "free will" we think we have?

That part of your resoning is quite correct. Just like you close your eyes and you won't be able to see anything but, the power of seeing in your brain still exists and when you would open your eyes, you would be able to see again. Eyes are just fuctioning like a camera. Real perception is in brain. Brain is just one more instrument, which helps the perception. The million dollor point is by whom and how ??? It is very important to know what you call mind is a part of physical brain only. The real MIND, I have defined and explained for you in some other post today only.

Why can't the mind be something that is in our brain we just haven't discovered yet?

What ever science would discover about mind, it would remain a part of brain only. Understand MIND is surely metaphysical.

Why is it that nobody wants to hear that the mind is nothing more than electrochemical reactions and that damage to the physical pathways = damage to the mind?

Damage is to physical brain, which affects mind controlling. Just like eye closing is making black out but eye is not everything while brain continues to function seeing mechanism. Similarly mind continues to function and since physical brain is damaged so it looks as if mind is also damaged.

At what point does this "soul" exist? Is some of the soul in an egg and some of the soul in the sperm? Is it not true that if just one different sperm entered your mothers egg, "you" wouldn't exist? What evidence is available for the point in time a soul enters the body or is switched on at conception?

Please See and Refer my very early posts on this subject in the thread"Does life begins at conception...I think so" in philosophy & Religion forum.

As far as I can tell, "I" am defined by my environment. If I grew up elsewhere, "I" may have a totally different self than if I grew up as I did. If the mind is physical and some studies have shown this could be the case, then without a brain, the mind (self) can't exist once decay sets in.

You can tell in physical terms only. You could never be a different person since you were destined to be what you are. Without going into metaphysical state you can not be correct to mention "the mind (self) can't exist once decay sets in." Limitations of our physical senses keep us in dark about metaphyical. The best example of metaphysical system I can refer is Dream stage of a person. Is it not astonishing that with our eyes closd how clearly we see various scenes in the dream. Who sees and How ??? Just think about this !!!!

Your physical self is a battery for the mind, again a physical unit of energy.

Very true !

As you decay, the "you" that was once "you" decays into its separate atoms, never to be wholey connected ever again. the individual atoms may each go into something else at some point in time, but there is no "you" the collective whole of your living self, ever again.

The Real You is not possible to get concieved in physical terms. I can say only this in gross words.

[Dadoo]

To separate perspectives, one thing may appear 2 ways.
Perhaps the body is how the "soul" appears to a physical mind.
Yet if the brain/mind is physical, what are it's products?

Usually one becomes two when we separate presence from absence, ie:
Cold is the absence of heat, dark the absence of light. No two/ somehow one seen two ways.
No mysteries, however only dark corners to explore, sometimes.
Be good-
Dadu

[Kuldeep]

Quote by: Dadoo To separate perspectives, one thing may appear 2 ways. Perhaps the body is how the "soul" appears to a physical mind.

I do not know what exactly you want to convey. But, definitely something deep valuable sounds me in what you said.

Yes, it is my feeling that the soul is true copy of physical body (same shape and size) but in metaphysical state. I can give glimpse of soul to you. Your soul is exactly what you watch yourself in your dream!!!!

Yet if the brain/mind is physical, what are it's products?

To my mind, the brain is physical while; the mind is metaphysical. The products are therefore both physical as well as metaphysical.

Usually one becomes two when we separate presence from absence, ie: Cold is the absence of heat, dark the absence of light. No two/ somehow one seen two ways. No mysteries, however only dark corners to explore, sometimes.

Very wisely said that dear !!! But, while exploring dark corners (metphysical realities), the lighted ones (physical ones lose contact). I wish to keep that contact intact. Meaning I wish to see light and dark (physical & metaphysical) at one and same time.

That way only, I can prove the presence of soul (metaphysical) to physical world...a real mystrial contribution to the world.???

Be good-

Thanks, you too be good !!!