Friends, My basic Friends, My basic approach with traditional concepts like “soul” is that they are about something, but not necessarily what the originators or developers of the concept had in mind. That approach serves me well when thinking about soul.
In my Christian heritage “soul” means some sort of immaterial essence of who I am, and that essence is immortal – it can go to heaven or hell.
But as a religious naturalist, I don’t think soul – whatever it is – transcends the boundaries of my life, at least not physically (and certainly not immaterially). Of course it DOES transcend the boundaries of my life, at least to a small degree, psychologically. That is, my being will influence a few friends and relatives, and that influence, while probably waning with the years, can theoretically last a long time.
Thought of like this, soul is simply another word for personality. Neither word is particularly scientific, though I know that psychology departments teach textbook with names like “Theories of Personality.” I could imagine that the concept (or some other similar concept) could garner more specificity and become more and more useful, both for understanding and for therapy.
I’d like to hear how others think of “soul.” I can easily guess that some will think of it as a certain emotional quality, of fullness and meaning. To me that is part of personality, though it may be broader because it can inhabit (for example) art or food or other aspects of culture.
Soul
Re: Soul
Michael,
I pretty much align with you view that soul only transcends our death through our influences on other people while we were alive.
I do think though of soul and personality as somewhat different aspects of the self. When I think of personality I think of Myers-Briggs types: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judgment/perception. When I think of soul I think more of what we call character concerning values and morals and integrity and purpose, as well as how we put ourselves in stuff like art and food, too.
Mark I
I pretty much align with you view that soul only transcends our death through our influences on other people while we were alive.
I do think though of soul and personality as somewhat different aspects of the self. When I think of personality I think of Myers-Briggs types: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judgment/perception. When I think of soul I think more of what we call character concerning values and morals and integrity and purpose, as well as how we put ourselves in stuff like art and food, too.
Mark I
Mark I
Re: Soul
To add to the mix, I'll add what I wrote about soul in the new Sacred Depths, which is in the wheelhouse of emergence. I think I also posted this earlier on RNA net.
As a nontheistic religious naturalist, I call upon the concept of emergence – something else from nothing but -- to help me understand the widespread sense that humans have immaterial souls that can interact with immaterial Spirits and can continue their existence after the death of the body. The emergentist approach suggests that to experience our experience without perceiving its underlying material mechanisms, the neural/hormonal collaborations, is the kind of thing one might expect of emergent dynamics. While the outcome has been given reverent names like spirit or soul, names that conjure up the apparent absence of materiality, we need not interpret this as evidence of some parallel immaterial world. We can now say that the experience of soul or spirit as immaterial is a reflection of the way the process of emergence distances each new level from the details below.
Given such understandings, I have no qualms about referring to my sense of myself as my soul, a soul emergent from material and biological complexity, a soul that will die when my body dies, but nonetheless a soul provisioned with endless opportunities for what some call immanent experience and others describe as a fullness, an overwhelming richness.
The concept that these experiences entail access to some independent spiritual realm doesn’t resonate with me, whereas to think of the mystical dimension as emergent from my mind and heart makes it all the more wondrous and exciting to be a human. I am called to access the mysticism inherent in my participation in the planetary matrix.
As a nontheistic religious naturalist, I call upon the concept of emergence – something else from nothing but -- to help me understand the widespread sense that humans have immaterial souls that can interact with immaterial Spirits and can continue their existence after the death of the body. The emergentist approach suggests that to experience our experience without perceiving its underlying material mechanisms, the neural/hormonal collaborations, is the kind of thing one might expect of emergent dynamics. While the outcome has been given reverent names like spirit or soul, names that conjure up the apparent absence of materiality, we need not interpret this as evidence of some parallel immaterial world. We can now say that the experience of soul or spirit as immaterial is a reflection of the way the process of emergence distances each new level from the details below.
Given such understandings, I have no qualms about referring to my sense of myself as my soul, a soul emergent from material and biological complexity, a soul that will die when my body dies, but nonetheless a soul provisioned with endless opportunities for what some call immanent experience and others describe as a fullness, an overwhelming richness.
The concept that these experiences entail access to some independent spiritual realm doesn’t resonate with me, whereas to think of the mystical dimension as emergent from my mind and heart makes it all the more wondrous and exciting to be a human. I am called to access the mysticism inherent in my participation in the planetary matrix.
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vandermude
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Re: Soul
When it comes to the concept of a soul, I use the term myself.
My attitude is that the concept is the traditional term for what David Chalmers calls the "Hard Problem of Consciousness"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_prob ... sciousness
https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness
Like it or not, there is a subjective reality that differs from objective reality. I am ina agreement with Nagel that this sense of "what it is like" to be conscious is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed. Although I respect the work of people like Daniel Dennet, I agree with the characterization that his 1991 book is more aptly titled "Consciousness Explained" Away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_I ... e_a_Bat%3F
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained
As to an afterlife, I doubt it. As a panprotopsychist, I am of the opinion that there is a substrate that ties the soul to a physical manifestation such as a brain. It is also possible for there to be a non-biological substrate, such as an Artificial Intelligence. This is a form of Property Dualism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism
In any case, if the physical substrate ceases to exist, then, like a soap bubble, the soul ceases to exist.
My attitude is that the concept is the traditional term for what David Chalmers calls the "Hard Problem of Consciousness"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_prob ... sciousness
https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness
Like it or not, there is a subjective reality that differs from objective reality. I am ina agreement with Nagel that this sense of "what it is like" to be conscious is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed. Although I respect the work of people like Daniel Dennet, I agree with the characterization that his 1991 book is more aptly titled "Consciousness Explained" Away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_I ... e_a_Bat%3F
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained
As to an afterlife, I doubt it. As a panprotopsychist, I am of the opinion that there is a substrate that ties the soul to a physical manifestation such as a brain. It is also possible for there to be a non-biological substrate, such as an Artificial Intelligence. This is a form of Property Dualism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism
In any case, if the physical substrate ceases to exist, then, like a soap bubble, the soul ceases to exist.
Re: Soul
My view of soul is not too different from most of what has been expressed already. My working definition of "soul" (until I learn better) is: All of the qualities, collectively, that differentiate a living person from a dead one.
I don't see any reason this definition couldn't apply to all living things as well as humans, but humans seem to be the only creature that needs to talk about it, so I use the term, "person" here.
Most words have more than one definition listed in the dictionary, and religious terms like soul or spirit are no exception. The dictionary I use most often lists fourteen definitions for "soul", and none of them are precisely what I have described as my own understanding, but I recognize the validity of all of them when I find them in their various contexts.
Soul can refer to lots of things, but in the context of religious discussions, I read "soul" as "life". I don't suspect a soul is separable from a body in the sense of being able to exist outside of it, but it is clearly separable in our experience of its utter absence from the body of a loved one who has passed.
Owen
I don't see any reason this definition couldn't apply to all living things as well as humans, but humans seem to be the only creature that needs to talk about it, so I use the term, "person" here.
Most words have more than one definition listed in the dictionary, and religious terms like soul or spirit are no exception. The dictionary I use most often lists fourteen definitions for "soul", and none of them are precisely what I have described as my own understanding, but I recognize the validity of all of them when I find them in their various contexts.
Soul can refer to lots of things, but in the context of religious discussions, I read "soul" as "life". I don't suspect a soul is separable from a body in the sense of being able to exist outside of it, but it is clearly separable in our experience of its utter absence from the body of a loved one who has passed.
Owen
Re: Soul
Owen, thank you for venturing a dictionary-style definition of soul. Yours, all of the qualities, collectively, that differentiate a living person from a dead one, is clear and succinct. You read soul as life, but for me soul is narrower than that. Looking in the online dictionaries, I find I like the first definition given for soul in Macmillan, to wit, the part of a person that is capable of thinking and feeling. (See https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dic ... itish/soul, and american is the same as british.) We honor dear departed Aunt Clara’s soul for her thinking and feeling, not for her adenoids and such that also made up her life. Under the Macmillan definition, I would say animals have souls. I leave for the reader to decide whether E. coli have souls.
Mark I
Mark I
Mark I
Re: Soul
Thanks, Mark. Good points. The thinking and feeling components do seem like the right targets when going in for a tighter focus. Whether the backstage machinery that enables that show to go on should be given equal billing might depend on a given context.
Owen
Owen