• Do you think humans have souls? Do you think animals have souls?
    Why or why not?


  • Under the hood, next to the engine, by that battery, just below the alternator.

    No, wait... That's the spleen. My mistake.


  • Nobody knows what consciousness is and how it works. It is most certainly connected to the brain (since you can make people unconscious through some drug obviously) but that does not mean that this is all to it.

    The philosopher Thomas Nagel thematisized this in "What is it like to be a bat?". If it is like anything to be a bat, then a bat is conscious. If it is not like anything to be a bat, if the bat just acts and reacts (including to sensations/feelings), then it is not conscious.

    We cannot know if animals really are conscious. Heck we cannot even know with absolute certainty that the person in front of us is conscious.

    So is it possible that consciousness might actually be something only we humans have? It is definitely a possibility.

    It is also possible that the brain actually is not capable of producing what we perceive as "I" (which some call an illusion anyways), or what we call consciousness: the space in which everything happens that we perceive, all our emotions, sensations, thoughts, and yes, our actions too... It is possible that being conscious requires having a soul...

    To be honest, I've experienced too many – let's call them: – impropable things in my life to still believe in a purely material world. But like any good scientist, I assume I could be wrong.


  • All life has a soul and it is also one big happy family. The human race are cry-babies though.


  • @AuroraFan said in Do you believe in souls?:

    The human race are cry-babies though.

    We are born cry babies and we stay cry babies 😂


  • @petrapark3r How can we not know if animals are really conscious if they are able to learn, feel, and be aware of their surroundings like we do?
    Your definition of consciousness I would say already applies to my dog, and I'm sure many other pets and animals out there too?


  • @OliveOlivia said in Do you believe in souls?:

    @petrapark3r How can we not know if animals are really conscious if they are able to learn, feel, and be aware of their surroundings like we do?
    Your definition of consciousness I would say already applies to my dog, and I'm sure many other pets and animals out there too?

    No, no, it could be the same way, that boston dynamics robots learn, "feel" and are aware of their sorroundings. My definition of consciousness is not, that something acts like a conscious agent (which boston dynamic robots tend to do with simple tasks like carrying boxes from one place to another, and being kicked in the but by mean engineers), but to actually have this... I cannot describe what consciousness is. You know what it is, and so do I, because and only because we are conscious.


  • @OliveOlivia Now that's an interesting note and it shows how our minds control our actions from the very start of life.


  • I think yr worried unnecessarily about what consciousness is, Petra. Consciousness is like when you pour some sherbert in a can of cola and then shake it up and drink it down, only the sherbert is the dendrites in yr neural pathways, and the cola is the axons in yr pre-frontal receptors.

    I dunno whether there's such a thing as a soul or not. All I'd say is, one of the only times I remember blubbing at the TV is that episode of the Simpsons where Bart sells his soul, and then in the end gets it back. Weird, huh?


  • @Indrid-Cold said in Do you believe in souls?:

    I think yr worried unnecessarily about what consciousness is, Petra. Consciousness is like when you pour some sherbert in a can of cola and then shake it up and drink it down, only the sherbert is the dendrites in yr neural pathways, and the cola is the axons in yr pre-frontal receptors.

    I find the topic fascinating. Even more fascinating I find the people who are – without any substantiated argument – fully convinced that consciousness is but a function of matter...

    I dunno whether there's such a thing as a soul or not. All I'd say is, one of the only times I remember blubbing at the TV is that episode of the Simpsons where Bart sells his soul, and then in the end gets it back. Weird, huh?

    What's "blubbing"?


  • @petrapark3r BLUBBING. You know blubbing, mate - lip wobbles, eyes fill up.

    And as for those people poking them robos, I think they've got the right idea. You wanna get proactive with treating them as non-human, otherwise you'll start ANTHROPOMORPHISING them, and then you'll go mad with guilt when you accidentally run them over with a beach buggy ala Bruce Dern in Silent Running.


  • @Indrid-Cold said in Do you believe in souls?:

    @petrapark3r BLUBBING. You know blubbing, mate - lip wobbles, eyes fill up.

    And as for those people poking them robos, I think they've got the right idea. You wanna get proactive with treating them as non-human, otherwise you'll start ANTHROPOMORPHISING them, and then you'll go mad with guilt when you accidentally run them over with a beach buggy ala Bruce Dern in Silent Running.

    :joy: let's give em hell mate


  • @petrapark3r From what you are saying I'm not really sure what consciousness is. I've always been told that it simply being aware of ones self and its surroundings. If that is all it is than I would definitely say that animals have this, Monkeys for instance, I wouldn't say theyre any less conscious than us, dolphins, ocras, etc.
    I think just because animals don't act and 'aren't as smart' as us, people don't realize they are greater than they appear. They are smart, they know what theyre doing, they do not just act and react. They think, they feel, they create, they discover, they know much more than we know they know


  • @OliveOlivia said in Do you believe in souls?:

    @petrapark3r From what you are saying I'm not really sure what consciousness is. I've always been told that it simply being aware of ones self and its surroundings. If that is all it is than I would definitely say that animals have this, Monkeys for instance, I wouldn't say theyre any less conscious than us, dolphins, ocras, etc.
    I think just because animals don't act and 'aren't as smart' as us, people don't realize they are greater than they appear. They are smart, they know what theyre doing, they do not just act and react. They think, they feel, they create, they discover, they know much more than we know they know

    That is propably true.

    Let me try to write up a good explanation of consciousness.... Hmm. Okay, let's take the meditation novice's point of view: Consciousness includes the ability to perceive yourself as the actor of your actions, as the subject, who does things. The ability to perceive your self.

    You have strange dreams, so you might not be able to relate :shrug: but when I dream, I sometimes do it in an "unconscious" way. E.g. I don't control my actions, I don't even realize what I'm doing, things are just happening, and I'm not aware of being a self, of being an actor. And later I remember them and I remember I was in that dream. But this feeling of being the subject who dreams, of being an I, of being a person, returns only when I'm awake. (I also know lucid dreams and other dreams where I'm more conscious btw...)

    What we don't know is wether animals are able to perceive them selves or wether they just act the way they learned to act at one point. They can be smart, they can follow goals, they can even (monkeys at least) realize that the thing in the mirror is their own image. But are they proper aware of being someone? Or are they more in a dream like state? We might not ever know...


  • @OliveOlivia said in Do you believe in souls?:

    @AuroraFan said in Do you believe in souls?:

    The human race are cry-babies though.

    We are born cry babies and we stay cry babies 😂

    People don't grow up. We only pretend to because it's expected of us.


  • @OliveOlivia said in Do you believe in souls?:

    Do you think humans have souls? Do you think animals have souls?
    Why or why not?

    Basically I'm a soul.


  • What do you think soul is?


  • You are probably aware of all the different theories people have had of it over times?


  • @Male101y Dunno, but the best way I could describe it is energy


  • @OliveOlivia Google defines the soul as the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. I don't think anything in me is immortal that is gonna stay forever. And I have no idea in what state it will stay after my body (that is made of matter) will decay. There is not a single shred of evidence something like that exists so I am gonna say there is no soul.