“If we need a brain for consciousness, then consciousness cannot survive the brain’s destruction.” This is a point I want to hammer home to the believers in a conscious afterlife (read: heaven/hell). If the soul is all that survives death, how are these people planning on admiring streets of gold or agonizing inside the burning hot lava of hell when there will be no possible way of experiencing these things?
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#1 by Egoistpaul on December 19, 2009 - 4:46 am
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For someone with a computer engineering degree like me, it is very easy to understand this dualism. The body is like the hardware; the mind is like the software. Software cannot work without a hardware. If my laptop dies, no software can run in it.
#2 by godlessgirl on December 19, 2009 - 5:01 am
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Ah, I really appreciate analogies like this!
#3 by DrMatt on December 19, 2009 - 3:39 pm
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This is not only an ancient quandry, it is the great philosophical divide between rationalists and empiricists.
Plato's otherworldly Forms were his way of refuting relativism. DesCartes and Leibniz both looked to thought existing outside our physical existance. How the non-material mind communicates with the material body has given rationalist philosophers something to ponder for centuries.
Theosophy to eastern theories of the greater Cosmic Consciousness have conjured non-corporeal existance as a safehaven from physical death.
Thought provoking. Thank you.
#4 by godlessgirl on December 20, 2009 - 5:44 am
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Thanks for commenting! I wish I hadn't avoided challenging philosophy throughout my schooling
#5 by Kylyssa Shay on January 4, 2010 - 5:57 pm
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If a person is or has a "soul" then why does brain damage change who a person is? As a person who suffered a head injury I discovered just how pervasive this "soul" as a separate entity is.
While waiting for an appointment I once overheard a couple of women discussing the one woman's husband, who was in seeing the doctor. They were complaining about how he "let" his brain injury change his personality. The older woman then started talking about how they needed to get him back to going to church and he'd straighten out – as if church could fix a brain injury!
#6 by godlessgirl on January 5, 2010 - 3:16 pm
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oh that poor man
#7 by Jake on May 23, 2010 - 11:33 am
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I think the problem with some of these thoughts is that they already assume too much. The problem is if you are looking at this from a anti-soul standpoint, you automatically think of software on a computer and done. This isn’t the whole idea though. The consciousness is the software and the body is the laptop but the soul is neither of those. the soul is the person using the laptop. Laptop damage will effect the software’s ability to function but not the user’s. The laptop’s failure does not render the user dead though it may render the software useless. Curiously though you can observe the laptop and the software to learn about the user’s usage but not his essence. Similarly, The functionality of the conscious or the brain are unrelated to the soul. And you can tell a lot about the output of the soul by monitoring the brain and personality but it will reveal nothing about the substance of the soul itself.