What is a soul?

[Artemol]

Thinking...

What if the soul is just a compilation of our individual experiences?

There's no physical thing called a "soul", it isn't a "ghost" inside of our bodies.

Think for a second - when your body is formed inside the womb, you/your soul still has experiences in form of sound, touch, smell, light-sight.
While your "self" is forming, your soul is taking in all of the experiences.

The older you get, the more defined your soul becomes as you have more and more experience.

Even if you were confined to a dark room for your entire life, that in it of itself is still an experience - every small detail, every small thing you ever experience makes you YOU.

This still doesn't explain why i am me and im not you though, you feel me?

So the real question shouldn't be "what is my soul made of?" but rather "What makes me, ME and not you".

Which in turn means, if i copy paste myself, down to the last atom, all configurations all electron placements in time and space, if everything was the same, would i be able to control my clone by thought?



Btw, it helps if you are high while asking yourself the question.

[Myradin]

There is no soul.

You are you because your brain is a different bunch of electrical impulses and cells than mine.

It's like why asking why my computer isn't your computer, even if they have the same parts.

[Calfredd]

Thinking...

I'm thinking "Why do you come back at the oddest times making weird threads you don't actually care about participating in?" but then I remember you don't actually care about or participate in your threads; you're like a weird cmdrshep.

[PC2]

Your soul is the current information/software state of your central nervous system which is running a general intelligence program. This includes your memories but does not include ALL of your past experiences because the brain has finite resources and can only afford to remember a subset of your past experiences which remain relevant to your current identity.

Also your soul is not inherently tied to the specific physical objects that make up your body because it's theoretically possible to copy a person's current information state which could then be run on a Turing complete computer. So this is the reason for why it seems like the soul has a non-physical aspect to it.

Which in turn means, if i copy paste myself, down to the last atom, all configurations all electron placements in time and space, if everything was the same, would i be able to control my clone by thought?

No I don't think you can have non-local experiences and control over a copy of yourself. The other copy would be processing its own information which would start to diverge from your own as soon as it comes into existence.

[Artemol]

No I don't think you can have non-local experiences and control over a copy of yourself. The other copy would be processing its own information which would start to diverge from your own as soon as it comes into existence.

What is existence though?

If we are all just chemicals, atoms, molecules, if one were to have an exact copy, down to the rotation of the electrons, their individual ages, everything the same, wouldn't you be two people at once?

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I'm thinking "Why do you come back at the oddest times making weird threads you don't actually care about participating in?" but then I remember you don't actually care about or participate in your threads; you're like a weird cmdrshep.

Didn't know i had fans

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So this ultimatly leads to, do we when our current bodies wither away - become self aware in a new body?

Maybe the question is wrong, and a soul is just the definition of being self aware.

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to be self aware, the body is aware of itself.

This wouldnt mean that you had a soul.

Create an AI that becomes self aware, at what point did we insert a soul into it?

How would something become self aware?

[Shadowferal]

Pfft...you'll find out eventually.

[Elegiac]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabl...Poisoned_Arrow

The Buddha himself pointed out how much of a waste of time metaphysical questions of this sort are. Rather than playing 3D chess against your own brain why not find a real problem to worry about?

[unfilteredJW]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabl...Poisoned_Arrow

The Buddha himself pointed out how much of a waste of time metaphysical questions of this sort are. Rather than playing 3D chess against your own brain why not find a real problem to worry about?

Because sniffing your own farts like OP makes them feel “deep”.

[jonnysensible]

BB King invented the soul in 1950 on Beale street.

The Black Eyed Peas famously sold it in exchange for careers in the early 2000's.

Nobody has seen it since.

[DarkAmbient]

No such thing, just a brain and the manner in which it processes stimuli.

[Artemol]

No such thing, just a brain and the manner in which it processes stimuli.

So how would i control other people?

[Aucald]

I liken the soul to the accumulation of experiences the mind and body have gathered, the track of our persistence across our own personal history. Not only memory but the existential qualities connected to those memories that have changed their tenor and color, like scar tissue of a kind. If the mind and body were collectively the Ship of Theseus, the soul would be those ephemeral qualities that separate iterations of the ship as pieces were replaced or restored, the mainsail that doesn't quite have the same flex in a strong wind, or the rigging made of nylon instead of plaited twine.

Life is full of qualities that don't have concrete existence yet profoundly shape our reality. The soul could, in a way, be said to be the aggregate or essential aspect of those qualities.

[Soulwind]

What is existence though?

If we are all just chemicals, atoms, molecules, if one were to have an exact copy, down to the rotation of the electrons, their individual ages, everything the same, wouldn't you be two people at once?

I believe the word you're looking for is "consciousness", as opposed to mind. Your thoughts, feelings and memories would be replicated in that experiment, but the "pilot", the fact that you are in your mind and not someone else's, is intangible, impossible to measure.

For all we know, every day when we wake up we could be switching our consciousness with someone else and we'd never know it. Perhaps we are fourth dimensional entities attached to three dimensional brains, and who knows what happens to our consciousness when our brains die.

But since we identify ourselves with our thoughts and memories, it's pointless to imagine what we would be if we were in someone else's brain, we'd just be them. Or without a brain at all, we'd be awareness without sensation or mind, and that's nothingness.

But that's not the idea of "soul" that most beliefs have, the one that retains the personality and even appearance of the individual (ghosts). That's just magical thinking, as we know those things are very much tied to our bodies and gone the instant we die.

[Santti]

No such thing as a soul. You are you because of your brain. And that's it.

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So how would i control other people?

Uhhhhh...?

[Captain N]

Wasn't it a show back in the 70s hosted by Don Cornelius?

[diller]

It's just a word that was made up because we can't explain how the brain works.

[PC2]

What is existence though?

There are objects that are moving around in space according to the laws of physics. Some of those objects are alive on planet Earth and the reason why they exist is to survive by modeling reality.

If we are all just chemicals, atoms, molecules, if one were to have an exact copy, down to the rotation of the electrons, their individual ages, everything the same, wouldn't you be two people at once?

Sure but the two copies of you would be independent people each with their own freedom. Over time they would become increasingly differentiated and they could only communicate with each other in the traditional ways that two different individuals communicate with each other.

Rather than playing 3D chess against your own brain why not find a real problem to worry about?

Yeah that's a good point, it's better to talk about a real problem that relates to living people.

[Shadowferal]

Life is full of qualities that don't have concrete existence yet profoundly shape our reality. The soul could, in a way, be said to be the aggregate or essential aspect of those qualities.

Courage...hope...faith...love... compassion...grace, parts of humanity.

[Aucald]

Wasn't it a show back in the 70s hosted by Don Cornelius?

That was the Soul Train, AKA how you knew Saturday morning cartoons were over.

[Biglog]

To me this question is answered by identical twins. It's one egg that is fertilized in identical twins, so if you go back to the very beginning and if that's where soul and experiences begin, that's it. And identical twins have their own personalities and one does not control the other. I grew up with a couple identical twins that had completely different personalities - one a tomboy in athletics and the other into parading in beauty pageants. Total opposites (they didn't even like each other), even though they couldn't be told apart visually.