/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14215413]

I was at a post-mortem today, third dead body I've seen and I'm starting to be convinced that there has to be a soul, because something has to have left this bundle of tissues, because it didn't look real to me at all, I wanted to beat the shit out of the corpse for having the audacity to look like a human being. Any literature for that feel?

[Anonymous No.14215475]

>>14215413
just keep a keen eye out for the real and eventually you'll start to learn the rest of the eternal truths

[Anonymous No.14215499]

The fact that consciousness is so fragile that if one part of the bodily system malfunctions the entire thing ceases to produce, it seems to bode poorly for an eternal consciousness in my view. Emergence seems to be more likely when looking at human consciousness, but if something can explain it away while accounting for the evidence I would be open to it. As it stands I'm having a hard time envisioning a process in which an ephemeral system could produce anything resembling the conscious experience without a vessel to organize, produce it, and contain it.

[Anonymous No.14215762]

>>14215499
Funny, I would say the fragility can speak for the existence of the soul, it doesn't really need a perfect mechanism if you think about the range of bodily variations that can exist while retaining consciousness but it also does require a perfect mechanism in a broader sense, this mechanism generalized as 'being alive'. I probably subscribe to the idea that we're 'running' a soul on our brains, even though I admit I doubt this theory a lot. It would be impossible to distinguish from an emergent consciousness but metacognition just blows my mind too much to accept as simply emerging in the correct sequence of electric impulses.

[Anonymous No.14215808]

>>14215499
>>14215762
I don't think it's at all possible to say which is more likely and I've never seen any argument I found convincing. I've never seen anything discussing what consciousness is and how/if it differs from the world we see outside us that wasn't ultimately speculation.

Like how can the question possibly be solved, we can't look at consciousness in any way except insofar as we just are it all the time. I know this is babby's first foray into the subject, but I have read quite a bit of philosophy and this still seems to me to be the basic situation, you can come up with any number of systems that are consistent with our experience and our reason but there is no way to pick one

[Anonymous No.14215949]

>>14215413
if ever there was someone who could make marble look alive it was Canova. i almost cried when i first saw Psyche and Cupid in the Louvre.

[Anonymous No.14216080]

I've seen someone die, but I did not see the moment when the soul left. It was slow, a slow drain. There were many moments when that person still looked alive, and many more when that person looked clearly dead. Most evidently this is just the degradation of the body after death: blood stops moving and settles, so the skin turns white, muscles contract, the brain too, and the face changes. It takes a while because what you see are physical changes occurring to the body. The thing that makes a dead person look dead could easily be explained by the sum of these changes.

But when all that is done, something still is different.

[Anonymous No.14216145]

>>14215413
I've dissected several, and I know what you mean. There is a distinct feeling you get interacting with them. I'm not sure if I could say if it's the absence of a soul, or my own feeling of being directly confronted with mortality.

[Anonymous No.14216211]

>>14215499
Consider NDEs and psychedelics. Consider them; even if the emergent property part is true, then you should see what they are to their fullest.

[Anonymous No.14217386]

>>14216080

[Anonymous No.14217397]

>>14215413
This is pretty based. I might use this for a novel. Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.14217402]

>>14215413
A corpse starts do disintegrate pretty quickly and the body you've seen has certainly been drained and preparated, which also explains the changes in appearance.

[Anonymous No.14217455]

>>14215413
I've only seen a corpse once, but I know what you mean. Didn't look like the person I'd known my whole life, you could just feel the lifeforce was gone. It's not the same as staring at a sleeping person, or even someone lying down and holding their breath

[Anonymous No.14217680]

Well you see in the noumena all that remains are the inter-subjective decision making.
Therefore decisions made in the "world" affect the noumnon and the relationship that occurs between the subjects affect in "unnatural" ways the phänomenological subjects.
Some gay modern american philosopher said this, but it is quite right: ~ Love is the truest form of epistemology; you recognize the person for who they Really are and loose all the phänomenological crap.
>read Fichte