Originally posted by: AreaCode707
Originally posted by: So
Originally posted by: AreaCode707
Originally posted by: DangerAardvark
Originally posted by: AreaCode707
Originally posted by: So
Then, can someone explain to me why shocking someone's brain can temporarily change their personality, hitting the brain physically can permanently change it, and application of chemicals (drugs) can mold it in controlled ways?
I'm not sure I see the natural connection between "supernatural soul" and personality. Are you suggesting that personality changes therefore mean that a soul cannot exist?
He means that the only way to even know if someone has a "soul" or consciousness is by interaction with their personality. Yet, said personality is so easily malleable through purely physical means that it seems the simplest explanation, that consciousness is simply an emergent phenomenon of brains. It seems to me that souls are an unnecessary hypothesis.
Ah, ok. I would probably disagree with the premise that somebody's personality or mental function reveals anything at all about a soul.
That is the crux of my argument.
Now, what is this supposed "soul" if not your personality?
I think if you ask ten people that question you'll get twelve answers. So in asking me, I suppose you're asking my personal opinion?
I would say that there's a material world and a spiritual world. Your body exists in the material, your soul exists in the spiritual. My opinion is that your experiences, personality and other things that make you you are part of what bridges the gap. Why do you think what you think? HOW you think is materially-derived, and what you think can be materially-influenced, but the sheer and absolute basis of what you think?
If that's completely material, someday science will be able to dictate what you think by materially manipulating your brain. Is that all individuality is?
We know the brain stores information; is that information gone for good if something happens to the brain? Is a person's self gone for good if something happens to the body? I'd posit that the soul is, in part, the self apart from the body, apart from the brain.
In my opinion, there's not going to be a materially-based explanation and definition for something that's not material, so no matter what answer I supply it won't be satisfactory if you're measuring it against material measures. I know that in advance, so it doesn't bother me that my answer falls short of what you're looking for.
There are people who have a (what I would classify as new age-y) belief that the soul is some kind of electrical-related force that stores information apart from the body itself, that the material body restricts access to this for most people. So you could have a personality change but the pre-existing personality would still exist but not be accessible to you. They'd suggest there's a material cause for this; I don't buy that.
[edit] I realize I'm answering the question with supposition and more questions; this is an age-old human debate so I don't think there is a factual easy answer that will emerge from the thread. It's merely one more discussion in a series of discussions that will go one forever.
To reply specifically to the bolded part, but in relation to the entire post:
Yep. Individuality is something only humans have ever thought necessary. And you know what? How we think and interpret things, is all from prior experience as it is. So how you grow up, who your friends are, what you see on a daily basis, what you read and watch... etc etc etc... these all shape us more than most would care or like to imagine. And that would explain why so many people 'think alike', especially siblings. Siblings experience a lot of the same things. Oh, and then there's the DNA factor. Genes play a large role in how our mind is physically developed, and the other factors of DNA play a role in how our body interprets our daily experiences.
Individuality, in truth, only exists because we are a society that craves it. Third world societies, and older civilizations, did not crave individuality. Hell, most behave and dress and fashion the same things that all the others do, the only difference existing are tribal roles. The physical differences though did exist, either because of DNA, or the slightly different experiences.
I think the only reason we even imagine there is something more, is because we feel like we are more than an animal. We're "special". We think differently than "animals" and we come up with different solutions to problems and what not. Now, there's a semi-truth to all of that. First, we are a social creature, we can communicate in complex patterns; second, we are able to solve problems, which includes the ability to craft and use tools as solutions to problems.
Example:
If we could go back in time, and could find ourselves a newborn caveman ancestor (but technically human, the same DNA), maybe even one of the first, and abduct it and bring it back to our time... guess what, we could teach it to be just like us in every way. Education was a huge problem. It was something that went like this: how do we pass on what we have learned about hunting and creating tools? Well, we teach. That was a solution, and when constantly modified, began a process that has led us to such witchery as making crazy contraptions that launch us to that big bright slowly-changing disk viewable when it's dark out.
But back to that baby. it, minus the likely large amounts of hair, would grow up to be almost just like us, possibly just as intelligent with enough education. Now, that does include the possibility that maybe our genes have changed, at least between caveman and civilized times, to allow us to learn and with more mental capacity for knowledge. Have they? And if so, how much? Who knows.
But regardless. Back to the whole we're special thing. Because we have this ability to do what we do, which is for more advanced that any other species, we think we are super special. And because of that, we started thinking up answers to that question. And in a way, it's been one very important question to exist. For some, the answers that some have proposed over time have been enough (the idea of deities/god(s)), and that's it. For others, who think their is a possibility that there isn't any of that, have continued to push forward to try and FIND the answers, and not accept faith-based answers, or answers that came from mind-altering substances. Drugs make you think some crazy thoughts, many creating 'Revelations' about why we're here. (ahem)
Those individuals that push forward are the ones that have either directly contributed to efforts to do great and amazing things, or have paved the way by seeding ideas here and there.
Hell, the fact that nearly every civilization comes up with their own answer to The Great Question should make people question why we currently accept what we do as being the only truth (eh?), when so many have been proposed before. What makes this one right, if all the others were false? Oh, what's that... this book here says God instructed it be written about, and that this God did all these amazing things? Oh, that's funny. Every other civilization had written accounts of the crraaaazy things their God(s) did.
Maybe it really will take most of humanity dying and a whole new civilization popping up for us to actually have a chance of moving on, past the need for an organized religion. I mean, if religion is so necessary for civil order and what not, why is the world such a fucked up place? Maybe no religion period, with the thought that maybe this is our only chance to live, no afterlife, no rebirth... people may just try harder to make it mean something, to make a name for themselves so that countless people can remember them, and those that will bear their name in the future have a reason to be proud of that name.
Sure, some people do that now, but not nearly enough.
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