Soul cannot be created
1) Soul is irreducible
2) Something which is irreducible is indesignable
3) The act of creation requires design
4) From (2) and (3) we can deduce that soul cannot be created
2) Something which is irreducible is indesignable
3) The act of creation requires design
4) From (2) and (3) we can deduce that soul cannot be created
Comments (41)
No. I just said that it cannot be created.
Quoting bahman
This is based on what?
I don't know what this means. Why accept that there is such a thing as a soul, in the first place?
I can show that things that can be created can be destroyed also. You just need to reverse time to see this. Now lets suppose that soul is uncreatable but destroyable. Just reverse time to see that soul become creatable.
Quoting BlueBanana
Because that is the very person. But suppose that soul is reducible. This means that it has parts which parts are irreducible. So we are back to home, each part cannot be created.
So nothing can be created because they contain irreducible parts?
Quoting bahman
I'd like to see you reverse time.
And now that you mention it, destroying something irreducible and reversing that would be creation from nothing. I disagree with 3), things can be created without design.
Why should they come into existence? They just simply exist.
No, reducible thing can be built.
Quoting BlueBanana
The creation is an act. You need knowledge to perform any act. This means that we need the knowledge of what we are supposed to create in order to create. This is very definition of design.
What's the difference? Has the universe always existed because it has irreducible parts so it can't have been created?
Quoting bahman
No you don't. Tripping over accidentally doesn't, yet it creates a mark on the ground.
Quoting bahman
It's not the definition of creation.
Irreducible parts of universe have existed since the beginning of time.
Quoting BlueBanana
We are talking about act (what you intend to do) and not event.
Quoting BlueBanana
Well, could you perform any act not knowing what you are doing?
Yes.
Quoting BlueBanana
I already argue about the fact that soul cannot be created or destroyed whether accidentally or intentionally.
Can't find that. From 2) and 3): souls cannot be created (intentional act).
What you are supposed to design? The thing in your disposal is irreducible.
Well if we take irreducible particles for example, they do have different properties (and they can be transformed to other particles but that's beside the point). Those properties can be designed even if what it consists of can't.
Sorry for not being clear enough. The soul cannot be created if you agree with OP. I already argued that soul cannot be destroyed if it cannot be created.
I wasn't talking of the destruction, I meant the creation (or becoming to existence to be more accurate) accidentally.
Souls are same. Why? Because if you dig enough inside you find that there is only a person inside you and difference between you and other people are result of genetics, body and environment. So there is nothing to design. Particles that you talk about are reducible to string. All strings are similar but vibrating at different frequencies. Why all strings are similar? Occam's razor.
A chain of causality cannot start from nothing. Thing is different if you have an agent with ability to decide.
Quoting bahman
Both are debatable. What if souls are different from each other and reducible, and on top of genes and environment are another factor in who a person is? And string theory hasn't been universally accepted yet.
Quoting bahman
Again, debatable, but even if we accept that we could say that soul is just another string with another vibrations.
Again, there are two fundamental questions that are not being addressed, or at least, not to my satisfaction: (1) What is the "soul"? and (2) why even believe that there is such a thing?
?Bertrand Russell, What Is The Soul? (1928)
That seems, so far, irrelevant to the arguments proposed in the OP.
Quoting Mitchell
Also, irrelevant, as the question can be considered to be a hypothetical one, and there are other discussions for that topic itself; this discussion exists within the premises within which it can be considered to be a sensical one in the first place.
Quoting Mitchell
If you read The Apology and related dialogues, 'the soul' is central, insofar as Socrates goes to his death unperturbed because his soul is at peace, and that quality of peace of mind or soul, is presented as being the most excellent of virtues, and indeed is one of the main reasons that Socrates is so well-known to history.
Many of the dialogues around this point are concerned with how best to prepare 'the soul' for the death of the body, as indeed it is assumed that the soul pre-exists the body, and will continue after death. (The Platonic view is different to the Christian in that the pre-existence of the soul was later declared anathema to Christians, as I understand it.)
The idea of the soul could almost be read allegorically, in fact I think it should be, as it is impossible to show that there is really such an entity. However - and this is an important caveat - there is a known problem in modern cognitive science, and also in philosophy, which is accounting for the subjective unity of conscious experience:
Chalmers & Bayne
Now, the faculty which performs that unitive act, that brings everything together into a whole, is not something that has been accounted for by cognitive science - this is the so-called 'neural binding problem', which is discussed here.
So one plausible account of the soul, is that it simply is this unity, or the principle of unity, or what it is that enables the diversity of experience and sensation to hang together. Because, contra Russell, whilst it is true that 'the soul' is not something that science could plausibly investigate, science also doesn't have any obvious solution to what it is that provides the subjective unity of consciousness.
Another point is that, whether the soul is real or not, it is not something you have, or don't have; in other words, if it is considered real, it is not an attribute or an organ, but is the very seat of the identity of the being. It is, in a sense, a reference to the totality of the being - all of the attributes, intentions, memories, talents, and latencies that characterise the being.
This use of 'soul', both by Plato and by Chalmers, makes it synonymous to 'mind;, it is what unifies, or "contains" the mental states that constitute the self. As such, then I can agree that there is a soul, but question whether the soul survives the death of the body. But as neuroscience progresses, the (at least) dependency of mental states on electro-chemical activity in the brain suggesting that once the brain dies, so to does the soul, 'soul' seems to have taken on a meaning of something separate from the mind, something that will survive the death of the brain/mind. This separation of mind from soul is what I question. It is this idea of the soul that is vague and such that I see no evidence to suppose that it exists.
There is evidence from NDE's of consciousness seeming to persist even when the brain itself has no measurable activity. That is the subject of a number of studies by a Dutch cardiologist by the name of Pim Von Lommel. It is of course controversial, but there are data. There are also records of children who apparently recall previous lives, which recollections have been corroborated against documentary and witness testimony. I don't regard any of them as conclusive but they are suggestive.
We already discussed the case that soul is reducible. Soul to me is the "I" and indifferent among individuals.
Quoting BlueBanana
Yes, that is correct.
Quoting BlueBanana
This is off topic so please lets put it aside.
I just received "Living In A Mindful Universe" by Dr. Eben Alexander. Check it out, I can't wait to read it.
How the subject of NDE could remember anything if the brain does not have any measurable activity?
That's exactly the question. And it remains unanswered. But you might also ask how does a plant remember anything when it doesn't have a brain.
Beats me, but it seems to happen.
I was given his first book, Proof of Heaven, for Christmas, 3 years ago. I must confess I found it uncomfortable reading, really, although he does strike me as an utterly sincere individual.
It's not. It's an example how a thing is created without reducing it to anything or building it from anything but by changing its properties.
You cannot change the property of a irreducible thing without changing it. You cannot change a irreducible thing since this requires a destruction and a creation.
What?
I mean a irreducible thing is defined by its property. It is not a same thing when you change its property.
They are more than suggestive. Why not conclusive? what's the sufficiency criteria to be?
One single undeniable evidence should be enough to be counted. When a society stubbornly try hard to be "color blind" then roses are not red.
There is the Heap paradox that tells you the irony of trying to be absolute in everything: if you apply maths way (sort of) to it, it would lead to funny conclusions. It's up to you to go scientificofunny or unapplaudedly sane.
you can think so but it's still a bold statement - nothing can prove that. There is a school of thought about reductionism in modern physics as I heard from a lecture video of Leonard Susskind. And that they think we are reaching the end of it. Basically it means everything (physical) is reducible but we are facing phenomena like monopole and electron not following that concept ...etc.
I am not saying the soul is physical (though I strongly believe so) but even in the simpler matter world, reductionism is still a question. Putting it as a postulate seems to be over the head.