Becks Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Is the soul the brain's domain and that which makes up our conciousness? Do we have a spirit? Without a God I see no use for it but something is there and I may be mixing up the brain's function to interpret external stimuli and the processing of it into thoughts, feelings Etc. I'm a little confused because of my indoctrination of God breathing spirit into man, I've always separated my spirit from my soul, which could be the same thing, or maybe my spirit is my mind/brain. Maybe some people think soul and spirit are one and the same. Why did we evolve to have feelings? Why love? Any good books out there from an evolutionary standpoint straighten me out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Pentecostals hold this tripartition because it's important for their theology to have "the spirit" as the sanctified human's receptor of the "gifts of the Spirit." Traditional protestantism, as well as Catholics and (I'm guessing), Orthodox, just hold to bipartition, body and soul. Plato in the Republic and Phaedrus posits a different tripartion of soul: reason/mind, "higher" emotions like honor and pride and spirit, and "lower" emotions and drives tied to the body, like hunger, lust, fear, etc. There is no soul vs. spirit dichotomy in Plato, though. I don't know what modern psychological/brain research would say, but I doubt that many scientists think that the categories "soul" and "spirit" are useful at all. All these functions are functions of the brain and nervous system. The philosopher Wm. Quine argued that we don't even need to hold that "mind" is something separate from the brain and nervous system. He maintained that "mind" is a linguistic construct we use when we're bundling rational functions of the brain together to talk about them. Mind is not some separate thing that exists apart from the brain. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Body and mind are different parts of you. The brain is part of the body while the mind is something a working brain creates. You can divide your mind into conscious and unconscious. Soul and spirit cannot be identified. Generally the part of you that you consider to be the real "you" is your conscious mind. When you sleep you are not really there anymore. Though you sometimes dream you mostly experience that passively. As best as we can tell consciousness is caused by several parts of the brain working together as if in a conference call. A brain can't do it 24 hours a day. It must rest. And when it does the you who is in control fades out of existence. The "conference call" ends and the parts of your brain that had been creating your consciousness start working independently on maintenance routines. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted May 11, 2015 Super Moderator Share Posted May 11, 2015 Though "soul" and "spirit" are very popular constructs few can agree on what they might actually be. There is no evidence that either exists. Our brains obviously do produce feelings or emotions. Regarding "love" http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/2442 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thackerie Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 I think soul and spirit are the same thing -- both totally non-existent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Becks Posted May 11, 2015 Author Share Posted May 11, 2015 This is truly helpful. Thank you. Florduh that's a good article. Thackerie I'm tending to agree now! Ficino, you nailed it. Mymistake, interesting but un-nerving to think we fade away while asleep :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Such things are strange to think and "feel" about. It's true that certain areas of the brain are associated with specific thoughts and actions. Damage to a specific area will cause highly characteristic and reliable changes in cognition, sensory capability or motor control. However, these specialised areas are highly integrated and our best understanding is that our "consciousness" is an emergent property of these processes and integration. From a subjective standpoint it is queer to say the least to have experiences where our sense of "self" is challenged or dissolved. I recently have had such experiences and thinking about them is very difficult as I do not have language to express what I was feeling. This does not mean said experiences are outside of the physical universe or supernatural as contemporary neuroscience has begun to solve the many riddles of consciousness, thought and cognition. We are now aware of key "players" in terms of not only nerve cells but specific receptors and neurotransmitter chemicals. We are far from finished but with such significant advances in understanding, I see no need to entertain non-physical hypotheses that do not make predictions. Remember, we need only to stick a small metal rod into the front of your brain and scramble a few pathways in order to reliably snuff out the "spirit" that most would agree makes you...you. The evolutionary biology of our complex cognition is an unfinished story in terms of a highly robust understanding. However, being such social animals that largely rely on group dynamics to survive, it's not difficult to appreciate how more social and "intelligent" traits make it through the natural selection process. So critical is our brain function, that humans mandate certain social activities. Our babies have an excruciatingly long developmental process before they can survive on their own, so to speak. Much of this development stems from the many years it takes for our complex brains to develop. This is not often seen in many animals that are born in a much less vulnerable state and take much less time to develop. Clearly, our cognitive development is so important and advantageous that even when exposed to rough selection pressures, it "survives" and flourishes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Furball Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Body and mind are different parts of you. The brain is part of the body while the mind is something a working brain creates. You can divide your mind into conscious and unconscious. Soul and spirit cannot be identified. It is weird that i saw this thread. I was reading about scientology for the first time to see what their beliefs are . They say that this about spirit. It is a small paragraph, so easy to read quickly. Scientology Beliefs - Is Man a spirit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Becks Posted May 11, 2015 Author Share Posted May 11, 2015 Body and mind are different parts of you. The brain is part of the body while the mind is something a working brain creates. You can divide your mind into conscious and unconscious. Soul and spirit cannot be identified. It is weird that i saw this thread. I was reading about scientology for the first time to see what their beliefs are . They say that this about spirit. It is a small paragraph, so easy to read quickly. Scientology Beliefs - Is Man a spirit? that's odd. Why think it's a spirit responding to a mental image. Our brain processes the image from stored information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Body and mind are different parts of you. The brain is part of the body while the mind is something a working brain creates. You can divide your mind into conscious and unconscious. Soul and spirit cannot be identified. It is weird that i saw this thread. I was reading about scientology for the first time to see what their beliefs are . They say that this about spirit. It is a small paragraph, so easy to read quickly. Scientology Beliefs - Is Man a spirit? Weird. Imagination doesn't strike me as spirit. I would just call that imagination. We all know what imagination is. There is no need to mystify it as spirit. I'm glad I never joined Scientology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenstar Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I don't think the brain and body are all that separate.. the more I learn about the endocrine and nervous systems and how all the different glands and bio-chemicals work with the body and brain it all seems so interconnected that I just can't say they are two different things. More like localized functions, but even then it gets really murky when you get into hormones and all the organs affects on the brain. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I think hardware vs. software makes for a more useful analogy than body-soul-spirit. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EyesOpened Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I think hardware vs. software makes for a more useful analogy than body-soul-spirit. That's how i always compared them MM. Also, the spirt could be the actual program of the software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pantheory Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I don't think the brain and body are all that separate.. the more I learn about the endocrine and nervous systems and how all the different glands and bio-chemicals work with the body and brain it all seems so interconnected that I just can't say they are two different things. More like localized functions, but even then it gets really murky when you get into hormones and all the organs affects on the brain. Science would agree with you. The brain is just part of the body. Consciousness and thought are simply electrochemical stimuli and progressions within the brain involving continuous feedback to itself and interactions with body parts and sensory organs. The soul and spirit are just fantasies involving religious belief in an afterlife. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ContraBardus Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Soul can also refer to consciousness. I suppose you can technically say it does exist if you look at it that way. The ghostly thing that survives beyond death is bunk, but the existence of consciousness within you that is created or uses energy to exist is what brought about the idea in the first place. Religion took this observable phenomenon and turned it into an immortal ethereal supernatural being that can exist without your body and gave it an imaginary magic sky park or eternal torture dungeon to exist in forever after your body quits out on you. So, technically you can say you have a "soul" but it's silly to believe that it has supernatural properties or that it can exist outside of your body and "live" forever after you die. It's the result of chemical reactions and the energy in your body working with the physical components. There is a lot we don't know or understand about it, but it's not some magic ghostly god breath that is existing in a ghostly chrysalis for some magic spirit butterfly that will flit about God's pleasure garden forever. That's just wishful thinking that also functions as behavior control and incentive, intentional or not, by religion in general. The truth is both more complex and mundane than that. Eternal Life is an idea that sounds flowery and nice, but in actual practice it sounds much better than it would really be. Consciousness isn't something that will float off from your body and get reborn into a new you. Reincarnation is another "sort of true thing" that is both vastly exaggerated and incredibly simplified from what it really is. We end up food for something sooner or later and tiny portions of us may exist within life again, but those are physical components that will get burned for energy or added as cellular material and not some sort of consciousness that jumps from life to life. I find that religious notions of afterlife are extremely exaggerated versions of reality. What they say is technically true to a very small degree, but what they sell is so far removed from it that it's unreasonable to accept as an actual truth. They build a beach around what is literally a grain of truth with their outlandish claims. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Becks Posted May 12, 2015 Author Share Posted May 12, 2015 So good! I need these real, rational, logical, scientific explanations to chase away the cobwebs of religious thought. Thanks everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pantheory Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 So good! I need these real, rational, logical, scientific explanations to chase away the cobwebs of religious thought. Thanks everyone! "real, rational, logical, scientific explanations" and thinking are always the best way to go best wishes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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