Asklemmy

I believe that my consciousness is a thing I can point to as being my essence. You could maybe call that a soul, or you could maybe not. Either way, my consciousness is the collective consciousness of countless single-celled organisms all working to make my singular self function. You could maybe call the manifestation of all these processes into a greater thinking singularity as a "soul", more akin to the way in which a city might have a "soul" made up by the people that live in it. I don't believe I have a ghost, and I believe that my consciousness is conditional, derived from my biology, but consciousness itself is as good as anything to call a soul

So I guess, in short, no XD

I would never buy a Kia.

There is at least as much evidence for dragons and magic and Greek gods as there is for a soul, so no.

Nah, I'm just a flesh computer.

Define "soul" or the answer is entirely meaningless. I'm pretty sure I'm sentient and can feel emotions and think and reason.

Whenever I listen to that old-time 'a rock and roll I feel soothed, so I must.

No. It's more religion inspired fairy tale magic.

Define to me concretely what constitutes a soul, and I will tell you. Do cats have souls? What about frogs? Snails? Amoebas? Trees? Or people on life support?

I have a self-aware consciousness. If that's what counts, then yes. However, this means that many people by the same definition don't.

No, I think that's an abstract concept of a consciousness invented by religion to transcend death. It's a comforting thought, but that's really it.

No. It's religious quackery.

No.

I self-evidently have a consciousness (cogito ergo sum), but logic, reason and the available evidence all point to that consciousness being a manifestation of brain activity and shaped by my genetics, environment and experiences, as opposed to an entity unto itself.

I think the concept of a soul is too vague for that question to really mean anything

Souls are just faerie tales people tell themselves to avoid feeling angst around death. There is absolutely no evidence they exist and plenty of evidence they don’t.

No.

You'd have to define soul first. I definitely have a subjective experience/consciousness however.

Honestly, rather than a "yes" or "no" I'm just gonna say that I don't think anybody's given a clear enough definition of what would constitute a "soul" to even make the question mean anything.

Recent studies suggest that much of consciousness/information synthesis is not in the neurons themselves, but the electromagnetic fields that they generate. Is that a soul?

What about the gut microbiome and how much of an oversized effect it has on a person's day-to-day experience? If the soul is some manifestation of your non-physical existance, would it be affected by those very physical little buggers, since they can affect your mood so much?

Even if you go to the classic religious context about a conscious experience that exists after death, you still have to answer whether or not they can wander earth, or, as some christian denominations think, they're all in heaven, hell, or purgatory so you'll never ever need to care about a non-embodied soul on earth anyway.

I find the hubris of a "soul" amusing.

The problem I have with the concept of a conscious soul that survives my death is the question what version of me survives. If it's the version I was when I died, the younger versions of me still stay dead. If it's an ideal younger version of me, the older version still died. In fact, the soul would always only be a part of me since it lacks the biochemical processes of the body. So it would be another entity possessing my memories but it wouldn't be me, I'd still be dead.

You can believe in whatever you want but it won't make it true. Got to have facts and proof before I'd consider it.

Can a brain injury change who you are?

No, I believe we are just pieces of meat with enough nureons to be capable of abstract concepts. However currently the existence of a soil is unfalsifiable, so I wouldn't be able to prove or disprove my clain.

Electric meat machines

I wish there was an active philosophy community on lemmy. I kinda miss r/Askphilosophy and r/askhistorians.

And to answer your question -

I don't really know. I guess people belive in souls so as to eternalize themselves and thereby reducing their fear of death, knowing that their soul will be out somewhere instead of the idea that they will return to a state of nothing.

When I was younger, I became a "rational" and "atheist" type - I have to thank my parents for that. They were the scientific but spiritual type and allowed me to come to my own conclusions, rather than forcing religion down my throat. I'm glad, too. Because when I met religious people later on, I was able to look at the absurdity of it all and brush it off.

But now I'm older, and I sometimes wish this weren't the case. I truly wish I could believe in a soul or a heaven/hell or reincarnation or any other form of higher being than us. I get it. I get why people do. The world is ruled by evil people who do terrible, evil things and this belief in a higher authority where they will one day be judged, and all the innocents who suffer will finally have peace... it's the only way to cope with it.

I don't believe in a soul, but I wish I did.

Why wouldn’t you have a “soul”? Mind you, I’m not speaking from a religious perspective (because I’m not religious).

In each of our heads is a brain. I’m no doctor or scientist, but I’m reasonably confident that no two brains are a like – we each grow and learn differently due to our surrounding environments. But one thing we have in common is some sort of inner dialogue or thought process (some people have a narrator, while some see motion pictures).

These are all formed based on how our brains develop neural pathways. These pathways are used by electrical signals that traverse the brain and cause us to be who we are (ie our personalities).

All of this to remind you that the first law of thermal dynamics is that, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed…”, which also goes on to explain, “but it can be transformed from one form to another.”

So who is to say that the general concepts of “reincarnation” or “life after death” are not real? That our essence or “soul” doesn’t simply manifest beyond our physical forms long after our physical forms have stopped working?

But also, you could be right that once our brain stops working and the energy used by our brains then transforms into something else that would no longer be considered a soul.

It’s these types of questions that we cannot reliably answer with any certainty that make life precious and unique. Because no one can honestly say they know what happens after we die, so in turn we should live the best possible life we can just in case. And it’s up to each of us to determine what “best possible life” means, because we are all different.

Do we have a sentient soul? I would say no, and as proof I point to those suffering from Alzheimer's. That disease robs a person of their memory, so by the time of death they have lost much of who they were. If the sentient soul exists, it must be able to remember, otherwise it cannot retain the traits that make the individual unique. It should retain all the memories of our life. Yet those with Alzheimer's forget who they are. How is this possible if we possess a sentient soul? If we cannot retain memories in this life, how will we do so in the next?

What about those with major brain damage from stroke or mishap? Part of their brain died, and whatever that part contained, it's now gone. Is their soul now split? Did part of it "move on" with the dead part of the brain?

Not anymore, the demon reached up my ass and stole the bead that contains it. I wonder what he’s doing with it now.

There is a part of us which is made of "the culmination of pure, untransferably subjective sensory experience" and I call this a soul.

Nothing suggesting the primacy of metaphysical stuff, but in the same way its fine to talk about the soul of a nation, it's fine to talk about my soul. I don't think its magic, I just think there's a connection with the rest of the universe and other conscious people that is healthy to cultivate, and the effects I have on those relationships will continue after I die (likewise, other people's relationships have affected my life even after they've died). I don't think there's any reward of doing so outside of the health of those relationships. I do think certain behaviours and beliefs are poisonous to this "soul", but we can also talk about mental health and how we should be emphasising community etc.

But it's all just physical stuff in the end, and if a meteor hit Earth tomorrow and scattered our material there isn't anything left over like a bunch of angry ghosts floating around. Not even anyone to mourn what could have been.

No

I don't know the correct meaning of soul enough to answer but I want to think there is.

I was brought up an atheist by science focused parents so I never believed or was taught about any religious as in a doctrine but rather as myths people believe. I envied sometimes how people would gather to pray and how much relief they seemed to feel because of it. Growing up a certain way, had me experience some fucked up shit and I really, really wished there was an answer to it aside from "well, grownups are shitty lol". Maybe having a little bit of magical/spiritual thinking would have helped me cope in better ways, but who knows.

Now I am older, still non religious but a bit more conscious/observant about how I percieve the world around me and while I know how many things work/ exist, I like to thinkk there is also a bit of an unexplained component that I cannot fully grasp that is a bit like magic.

Yes and no. The idea that people are temporarily possessed meat puppets is just silly. But I do think there is something intangible that makes a person who they are. That we don’t have souls so much as we are “souls”.

Ug, I really don’t understand it enough to answer the question… it is sort of like the ship of Theseus. If we slowly replace, upgrade, or even modify each part of the ship, it remains the ship of Theseus even when every piece is replaced. There is something intangible left that makes it the ship of Theseus, makes all the old bits still part of it, and incorporates the changes into it as well.

I don't believe, because I do not care about the existence of the soul...

This is an interesting question for me. I used to be solidly in the "no" camp but became part of the "yes" camp due to some things I've experienced in life.

Life is strange. Maybe it's nothing more than what is happening in our brain. Maybe it's more than that. I choose to believe the latter, but I'm open to having my belief challenged if (when?) scientific study provides a better answer than what we have now.

I believe only objective fact backed by evidence. There is no evidence of a soul. So, no.

At this point when someone says "soul" I just think of ego/personality. No I don't think it exists outside of our physical world. No I don't think it "goes somewhere" when we die. I also don't think "free will" is a well-defined or useful concept.

I think qualia and the philosophical zombie thing pokes a hole in the whole non-soul thing but I'll admit that I don't have a good materialist explanation.

I'd wager that consciousness is some sort of emergent property of matter operating on a dimension we can't directly interact with. 70% of our understanding of the universe doesn't come from directly observing stuff, it comes from observing the effects of it.

That doesn't mean that you have an eternal soul that survives death, just that consciousness is a bit more complicated than the current materialist explanation.