Does the soul exist?

[Anonymous No.18656264]

Does the soul and exist and is it immortal? I just read Phaedo and Im not convinced. I guess my materialist notion of reality is getting in the way.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18656334]

>>18656264
How could reality get in the way of a good fiction?
Schizophrenics enjoy it so much, they pretend it is reality. It’s like huffing marker ink.

[Anonymous No.18656600]

Compare a living body, say a mouse, to the body of a recently deceased mouse. Both are composed of the same material, the matter, yet only one is living. What effects the difference between the two?

Further, why can the living mouse choose where to move and act independently of external forces that act on him. The only motion of a rock is when an external forces acts upon it to push it somewhere, or the latent potential energy of the Earth's gravity becomes actualised and the rock falls somewhere. But the mouse can navigate and move itself around a maze, or move whereever it chooses, how and why can it perform self-motion?

[Anonymous No.18656639]

>>18656600
Are you serious? All of this is very easily explained by biology.

[Anonymous No.18656641]

>>18656264
It exists as a social construct, which is not at all to downplay its importance. If we didn't treat ourselves and each other as each having an individual soul, we wouldn't have civilization.

[Anonymous No.18656656]

>>18656639
Aesthetics are not
SOVL is ethical and aesthetic of the inner nature embedded on the firmware within

[Anonymous No.18656784]

>>18656641
I dont care about that.. I was told Plato was the greatest philosopher of all time. All this nonsense he shits out in his dont move me. I found the socrates dialogues like apology and crito much more impactful. Am I just too ignorant?

[Anonymous No.18656794]

>>18656656
I guess that makes sense. And stop with the latin V shit its cringe. I can already tell you are a /pol/tard

[Anonymous No.18656813]

>it's a "nerve-stapled American tries to comprehend metaphysics" episode

[Anonymous No.18656819]

>>18656639
Explain it then, there's no psyche or mind in contemporary biology? Where does contemporary biology make constructive rather than regulative commitments? I don't think you're grasping where the issue with Plato lies. Very few have issue with the conceot of a psyche (which most now prefer to translate as mind rather than soul despite it being the same word and concept), the issues lies on whether it is an emergent phenomena of and contained within the body, or whether it is an eternal/pre-existant/outside of time phenomena that the body is contained within.

[Anonymous No.18656821]

>>18656813
I am a begginer and not an American. I dont se how my nationality has any impact on understanding methaphysics. You are proving to be more ignorant than me.

[Anonymous No.18656824]

>>18656264

[Anonymous No.18656828]

There are a few books about the soul written by neuroscientists.
So while it's debatable whether or not it's likely, at least it is plausible even with modern scientific knowledge.

[Anonymous No.18656829]

>>18656656
>larping fashwave shit
>tumblr
go back

[Anonymous No.18656832]

>>18656794
>>18656829
That is indeed the joke

[Anonymous No.18656847]

>>18656600
>how and why can it perform self-motion
people still twitch when they die.

[Anonymous No.18656849]

>>18656641
Flippant. Why would it matter if a soul only comes into proper being in its relations with others? The basis of Fichte's system was the I having relations with the not-I that then gives boundary and definitiveness to the I in the context of its meeting with what it is not.

Relations are not inherently illegitmate, nor do they mean the thing is artificial, nor that it exists only for utility as a useful myth.

[Anonymous No.18656853]

>>18656819
Its hard for me to grasp the idea that consciousness,soul,mind,psyhce (whatever you want to call it) is immortal, immaterial thing that Plato describes. His arguments seem pretty weak. I guess I like the affinity argument the most.. but even that is just clever worda put together. Im new to methaphysicis so I can understand I sound pretty ignorant and dumb.

[Anonymous No.18656867]

>>18656639
If everything is merely physical and has to move according to neccessary laws, like billard balls struck into motion at the big bang, then how and why can the mouse make contigent motions and move where ever it likes?

[Anonymous No.18656889]

>>18656847
Residual action potential of their neurons. But how and why can the living "ensouled" mouse perform directed and intential self-motion and move where ever they like, chosen contigently and not because of any neccessary force like the rock?

[Anonymous No.18656908]

>>18656828
If geologist write about flat earth, then it plausible?

[Anonymous No.18656917]

>>18656853
Because it gives an out to harder problems of mind that serious attention to them reveals. No doubt its counter intuitive and contentious. Just keep it in your back pocket as an option to resolve "hard problems" that philsophy of mind, epistemeology, ontology, and metaphysics leave otherwise unresolved.

[Anonymous No.18656918]

>>18656889
Because they have a brain that sends signals to the muscles which perform movement. What is so hard to grasp? The dead mouse might have died from a heart attack which in turn means that oxygen and blood needed for the brain to work are no longer fueling it.

[Anonymous No.18656929]

>>18656828
Psyche can be translated as either mind or as soul. Same thing, same concept. There is no shortage of contemporary literature about the mind, very few deny it exists.

[Anonymous No.18656944]

>>18656867
Not who you're responding to, but I think something similar to you.
It boils down to that the if mechanism of the brain is ruled by physical, chemical and biological laws, then how can the mind influence it?

There is a narrative that denies the personal account of our own intricate mental realm. Free will, desire, emotions related to desire (fear, stress, disgust, etc...) and the causal relation that implies responsibility for one's actions.

If an evolutionary biologist or behavioral neurologist were to describe consciousness, they would have to include an account of free will.

Sure, it could all be an illusion, but it is the most elaborate ruse of all time if it is.
Or alternatively we could have been missing something : the soul and its subtle influence.

[Anonymous No.18656956]

Not entirely related, but I read this a couple a days ago and it got me thinking about the soul as well:
> My free will scepticism implies that I doubt the mind/body or soul/body duality which the ancient Greeks believed in and which we find in many other traditions, including Descartes’ decontextualised thinking mind or traditional and contemporary views on the afterlife and the like. I don’t think we have sufficient proof to provide credence to the belief that something in us, which is supposed to be our true self, can have an intransient, standalone, indeterminable presence. If the soul exists, it exists as what and where? If it is some ethereal or otherwise different substance, how can it possibly be bound by the body? And if it can be bound by the body, it means that it can be similarly constrained by everything like the body, which includes the universe as we know it, for our body essentially consists of the same star dust and dynamics we observe “out there” (water, carbon, minerals, acids, electricity…). If the soul exists in a different dimension, then there must still be a point at which our dimension connects with that one and so what is the nature of such a link? And how is that other dimension anyhow relevant if the soul is still trapped within the body? There are too many questions and too little in the way of evidence.

Source: https://protesilaos.com/books/2021-07-10-comments-epictetus-enchiridion/

[Anonymous No.18656969]

>>18656918
Not grasping the issue. How does it make a contigent decision to move somewhere and not somewhere else in a universe obeying necessary laws? Theories of psyche or mind do not deny a brain, Plato seated the psyche in the brain against his peers who seated it in the heart.

[Anonymous No.18656975]

>>18656908
>If geologist write about flat earth, then it plausible?
Our world is flat, as evidenced by real, verifiable science. The United Nations even flaunt the lie physically and perpetually with the wave of every single flag of theirs in the breeze of our flat earth, pic related being their flag which is a depiction of the flat earth model.
But on the matter of soul, if we are operating under the consensus that the theory of what can exist, in some specific combination of conditions, must exist, then the only question that matters is
>can a soul exist?

[Anonymous No.18656981]

>>18656908
>If geologist write about flat earth, then it plausible?
Our world is flat, as evidenced by real, verifiable science. The United Nations even flaunt the lie physically and perpetually with the wave of every single flag of theirs in the breeze of our flat earth, pic related being their flag which is a depiction of the flat earth model.
But on the matter of soul, if we are operating under the consensus that the theory of what can exist, in some specific combination of conditions, must exist, then the only question that matters is
>can a soul exist?

[Anonymous No.18656987]

>>18656908
>If geologist write about flat earth, then it plausible?
Our world is flat, as evidenced by real, verifiable science. The United Nations even flaunt the lie physically and perpetually with the wave of every single flag of theirs in the breeze of our flat earth, pic related being their flag which is a depiction of the flat earth model.
But on the matter of soul, if we are operating under the consensus that the theory of what can exist, in some specific combination of conditions, must exist, is valid, then the only question that matters is
>can a soul exist?

[Anonymous No.18656989]

>>18656981
You are a one dumb fuck. Just look at Australia on the map. Do you seriously believe it looks like that?

[Anonymous No.18657005]

>>18656969
>How does it make a contigent decision to move somewhere and not somewhere else in a universe obeying necessary laws?
bro my pc can make a decision if i feed it electricity. its just following magic gates; your brain is doing the same thing

[Anonymous No.18657006]

>>18656264
Okay let’s say for the sake of argument that materialism is real. (Premise 1).

Premise 2: The creation of an infinite Boltzmann Brain is predicted under almost all plausible physical models.

Premise 3: If Boltzmann Brains exist, it is mathematically certain that a given physical brain is a Boltzmann Brain, no matter how specific the brain;

Premise 4: A Boltzmann Brain’s opinions and memories are completely arbitrary, and if one is a Boltzmann Brain one does not have grounds to make an argument.

Combining premise 1 and 3, we have good reason to believe that we are Boltzmann Brains. You may say; we can rule this out by adopting a specific view of reality that means Boltzmann Brains never spawn in the universe. However, it is more likely that you are a Boltzmann Brain with a faulty conception of reality since most plausible frameworks of reality predict them (Premises 2 & 4).

However, since we are Boltzmann Brains, we’re probably completely wrong about reality, so we no longer have sufficient reason to accept any of the above premises.

Thus the materialist theory of the mind is incoherent and no one has any grounds to believe it. Panpsychism also fails to a similar argument. The only acceptable views are dualism, idealism, and absolute skepticism.

[Anonymous No.18657038]

>>18656264
If you are the soul, then if you will get smarter, then you soul will get smarter. But if you get some brain damage and become stupid, then your soul become stupid, and if you die with brain damage, then your immortal soul will be stupid for eternity?

[Anonymous No.18657047]

>>18657038
what if our bodies are like a resistence to wisdom, man, and when we age and learn more, the resistance becomes less, because we beat it, and then when you die, your soul is free again.

[Anonymous No.18657061]

>>18657006
Sounds interesting however I have to read up on the Boltzmann Brain.

[Anonymous No.18657084]

>>18657038
If the soul is the charioteer of the body then it doesn't make sense saying the charioteer is deteriorating because the horse has been hit in the head few too many times.

[Anonymous No.18657085]

>>18657047

[Anonymous No.18657092]

>>18657061
A Boltzmann Brain is a ‘brain’ that spontaneously forms in empty space. It is incredibly rare but over infinite time you get an infinite number of them. Because they’re infinite, any possible brain also occurs an infinite number of times.

[Anonymous No.18657106]

>>18656264
IIRC, in the end even Socrates friends tell him that they are not convinced (reluctantly, because they may be depriving him of his hope just moments before his death)

[Anonymous No.18657107]

>>18657092
>Boltzmann Brains
So it's not like your or my brain are one?

[Anonymous No.18657122]

>>18657084
>it doesn't make sense saying the charioteer is deteriorating because the horse has been hit in the head few too many times.
And vice versa. So how you can get knowledge about quality of soul?

[Anonymous No.18657129]

>>18657107
They could be, if one accepts that matter gives rise to consciousness. I personally do not.

[Anonymous No.18657134]

>>18657129
What do you understand by conciousness and why do you believe it impossible for matter to create it?

[Anonymous No.18657377]

>>18657006
>infinite time
>plausible reality
Hmmmm, how is it different to foundationalism based on an infinite (plus forms)? Once you admit the need for an infinite then many options are open, not just infinite time. Further you need forms for the mechanism of the brain to work, and some will to perform the efficient act that brings infinite time and forms into being.

[Anonymous No.18657424]

>>18657377
I’m assuming that reality is materialistic for the sake of argument. Infinite time seems reasonable given that there is no material reason not to grant it.

>>18657134
My primary reason is that I don’t see a coherent material mechanism for the persistence of self-identity i.e. there’s no way to make the statement X at time 1 is the same mind as Y at time 2 true. This, since my intuition tells me that I persist, I reject materialism. There are many other arguments but I find that one a compelling reason.

[Anonymous No.18657599]

>>18657424
No it isn't reasonable, it's question begging. You're granting to the premise what you suppose to prove in the syllogism. Why would time exist or have being at all, let alone an infinite font of it? What of all the forms needed to add to bare time, all the laws of physics, to generate your random arrangements that coaclese into a brain. Who makes those? Why are they effective? Why are they constant for an infinite duration?

[Anonymous No.18657651]

>>18657599
I’m assuming a premise in order to demonstrate that holding the premise leads to an absurd, paradoxical conclusion.

[Anonymous No.18657685]

>>18656264
Yes, but no book will convince you of its existence. You need to experience it for yourself.

[Anonymous No.18657690]

>>18657599
1) Is a materialism without time conceivable? I would say no. All cosmological models suggest that time will continue eternally, and since materialism is asserting a mind-independent reality there is no reason for time to ‘shut down’.
2. Indeed you could be wrong about those, but materialism presupposes that material laws describe reality. If you throw out material laws, all you can reasonably defend is skepticism.

[Anonymous No.18657708]

What a shit thread. Plato and Socrates and Aristotle would be rolling in their graves!

[Anonymous No.18657712]

>>18656813
how the hell does a 4chan zoomer like you know about SMAC

[Anonymous No.18657990]

>>18656849
It matters because if people don't acknowledge that it's a social construct then they create dogmatic religions like Christianity and Islam that more or less condone the exile and slaughter of those who do not share in believing in those constructs, or who suggest that it is possible to live compatibly with society while also rejecting these constructs.

[Anonymous No.18657992]

>>18656264
1 + 1 = 2
So, yes

[Anonymous No.18657998]

>>18657992
Define 1

[Anonymous No.18658177]

>>18657998
*farts loudly*

[Anonymous No.18658591]

>>18657990

[Anonymous No.18658615]

>>18656849
>Why would it matter if a soul only comes into proper being in its relations with others?
It would change the nature of what it is that is coming into being, wouldn't it? Being a social construct implies more than its existence hindering on relations to the other. It also implies that the soul is an evolutionary construct, developing from pressures in an ecosystem, and that it is solely a design of biopsychology.

[Anonymous No.18658627]

>>18656264
What is a soul exactly? The stoics and epicureans believed it was made of matter, which is basically consistent with the modern view that your consciousness comes from your brain.

[Anonymous No.18658643]

>>18656264
Yes. Go to /x/

[Anonymous No.18658644]

>>18656956
>If the soul exists, it exists as what and where?
People still asking these questions will never find any answers.

>And if it can be bound by the body, it means that it can be similarly constrained by everything like the body, which includes the universe as we know it
He clearly hasnt read the Greeks, so I dont know why hes even making a blog post in the first place.

>There are too many questions
Because he hasnt read the Greeks.

To all anons, READ. THE. FUCKING. GREEKS.

[Anonymous No.18658646]

>>18656264
The soul is literally just your consciousness. Your consciousness is energy. Energy cannot be created not destroyed. There ya go

[Anonymous No.18658649]

>>18658646
Cannot be created or destroyed sorry

[Anonymous No.18658667]

>>18656264

stuff is pretty isn't it? probably some kind of soul there to make you feel that way.

[Anonymous No.18658677]

Embarrassing thread

[Anonymous No.18658731]

>>18656264
>Does the soul exist and is it immortal? I just read Phaedo and Im not convinced.
Then it's time for you to read Shankaracharya (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.18658735]

>>18658644
>READ. THE. FUCKING. GREEKS.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_to_Herodotus
Next, keeping in view our perceptions and feelings (for so shall we have the surest grounds for belief), we must recognize generally that the soul is a corporeal thing, composed of fine particles, dispersed all over the frame, most nearly resembling wind with an admixture of heat, in some respects like wind, in others like heat. But, again, there is the third part which exceeds the other two in the fineness of its particles and thereby keeps in closer touch with the rest of the frame. And this is shown by the mental faculties and feelings, by the ease with which the mind moves, and by thoughts, and by all those things the loss of which causes death. Further, we must keep in mind that soul has the greatest share in causing sensation. Still, it would not have had sensation, had it not been somehow confined within the rest of the frame. But the rest of the frame, though it provides this indispensable conditions for the soul, itself also has a share, derived from the soul, of the said quality; and yet does not possess all the qualities of soul. Hence on the departure of the soul it loses sentience. For it had not this power in itself; but something else, congenital with the body, supplied it to body: which other thing, through the potentiality actualized in it by means of motion, at once acquired for itself a quality of sentience, and, in virtue of the neighborhood and interconnection between them, imparted it (as I said) to the body also.

Hence, so long as the soul is in the body, it never loses sentience through the removal of some other part. The containing sheaths may be dislocated in whole or in part, and portions of the soul may thereby be lost; yet in spite of this the soul, if it manage to survive, will have sentience. But the rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed, which, however few in number, are required to constitute the nature of soul. Moreover, when the whole frame is broken up, the soul is scattered and has no longer the same powers as before, nor the same notions; hence it does not possess sentience either.

[Anonymous No.18658796]

>>18658735
By THE GREEKS he obviously meant Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.18658894]

>>18658796
LXXI

The sciences which we possess come for the most part from the Greeks. For what has been added by Roman, Arabic, or later writers is not much nor of much importance; and whatever it is, it is built on the foundation of Greek discoveries. Now the wisdom of the Greeks was professorial and much given to disputations, a kind of wisdom most adverse to the inquisition of truth. Thus that name of Sophists, which by those who would be thought philosophers was in contempt cast back upon and so transferred to the ancient rhetoricians, Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Polus, does indeed suit the entire class: Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus, and their successors Chrysippus, Carneades, and the rest. There was this difference only, that the former class was wandering and mercenary, going about from town to town, putting up their wisdom to sale, and taking a price for it, while the latter was more pompous and dignified, as composed of men who had fixed abodes, and who opened schools and taught their philosophy without reward. Still both sorts, though in other respects unequal, were professorial; both turned the matter into disputations, and set up and battled for philosophical sects and heresies; so that their doctrines were for the most part (as Dionysius not unaptly rallied Plato) "the talk of idle old men to ignorant youths." But the elder of the Greek philosophers, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Philolaus, and the rest (I omit Pythagoras as a mystic), did not, so far as we know, open schools; but more silently and severely and simply — that is, with less affectation and parade — betook themselves to the inquisition of truth. And therefore they were in my judgment more successful; only that their works were in the course of time obscured by those slighter persons who had more which suits and pleases the capacity and tastes of the vulgar; time, like a river, bringing down to us things which are light and puffed up, but letting weighty matters sink. Still even they were not altogether free from the failing of their nation, but leaned too much to the ambition and vanity of founding a sect and catching popular applause. But the inquisition of truth must be despaired of when it turns aside to trifles of this kind. Nor should we omit that judgment, or rather divination, which was given concerning the Greeks by the Egyptian priest — that "they were always boys, without antiquity of knowledge or knowledge of antiquity." Assuredly they have that which is characteristic of boys: they are prompt to prattle, but cannot generate; for their wisdom abounds in words but is barren of works. And therefore the signs which are taken from the origin and birthplace of the received philosophy are not good.

[Anonymous No.18659206]

>>18656784
> Am I just too ignorant?
Perhaps. Look at it this way: would you choose a belief that causes degeneration over an edifying belief? Neither can be proven. Doesn't it make sense to choose the belief that is more beneficial? I believe in the eternity of the soul both bc I think there are good enough arguments and bc I choose it over other beliefs I regard as debasing.

[Anonymous No.18659217]

>>18658796
Pythagoras too.

[Anonymous No.18659222]

>>18656853
Consider that Nous doesn't have to be personal and individual. We all participate in Nous and its not the same thing as our conditioned egos. It is the unconditioned aspect.

[Anonymous No.18659282]

>>18656944
>Sure, it could all be an illusion, but it is the most elaborate ruse of all time if it is.
>Or alternatively we could have been missing something : the soul and its subtle influence.
The illusion is that there is anything but Soul/Mind/All. With knowledge of this reality the illusion ceases.

[Anonymous No.18659288]

>>18657106
Similar Peter denying Jesus.