There’s a lot of (mostly very obscure) talk about “the soul” here and elsewhere. (Is it supposed to be different from you, your “mind,” your “ego” etc.? Is it some combo of [some of] them, or what?) A friend recently passed along the following quote from psychologist James Hillman that I thought was nice–and maybe demystifying–at least a little bit.
By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.
It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate — an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence — that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives one the sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity.
In another attempt upon the idea of soul I suggest that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth some years ago. I had begun to use the term freely, usually interchangeably with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, soul refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy — that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
James Hillman — Re-Visioning Psychology
What is made of this same substance, the limits?
ETA: If it’s not clear, that was Erik pontificating thusly, not newton.
Nice story
Never thusly
I missed the event, but I did make the after-party (which was LIT).
But Erik just informed us (quite knowingly) that soul is MADE of spirit!
(It’s ok, though, since neither of those “theories” makes even a teeny bit of sense.)
Thanks, figured something like that. Dualists believe in an immaterial mind, is there a relationship between the soul and the immaterial mind? Creative vs the rational?
Actually, first of all I said this,
If you immediately look for discrepancies between the systems, it means you are not even trying to understand a single one of them.
It is the narrative that is important, details are secondary.
The soul exists in the mind of God in my opinion.
I have an ideal triangle in mind right now
peace
No. You may have an idea of a triangle in there, but there’s nothing triangular in there. And triangles, ideal or otherwise are triangular.
The mistake you make here is among the most common of all fallacies and has resuted in no end of ridiculous philosophy.
Dualism is a different system, something like Charlie quoted. I propose monism, nothing like Charlie quoted.
“Immaterial mind” is most readily applicable to Cartesian dualism. In other systems, the mind is something intermediate, relatively material – immaterial compared to the body, but material compared to spirit.
Third version of the soul, what is the purpose of the soul for you?
It’s amazing to me the variety of silly things people will believe. But as millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump, maybe it shouldn’t be.
To me it’s important to make sense–or at least make a serious attempt to do so. Erik has other goals, obviously.
Just think of all those people who believed Clinton would win. Silly things people will believe indeed!
No. You have other goals:
As long as you don’t explain what makes no sense and why, you are not even trying to make sense.
To me the soul is an obvious concept. To you it evidently isn’t. If you want to know, ask, instead of ridiculing. If you ridicule, you are apparently not taking this seriously, and then I have no reason to take you seriously either and this thread will be short.
Wrong is not the same as ridiculous. Beng often wrong is part of the human condition. But being pefrectly happy spinning webs there is kind of pathetic, no?
True. Though arguably everyone was deeply confused about the difference between concepts and objects before Frege. The Platonic temptation to treat concepts as a weird sort of object has been rampant throughout the history of Western epistemology and metaphysics.
And even Frege had trouble here, since he wanted to treat concepts as denizens of a ‘third realm’ distinct from both physical objects and psychological objects.
For what it’s worth (as you like to say), I don’t think we had a fully adequate alternative to the Platonic temptation until Sellars, because it’s only with Sellars that we get a socio-linguistic normative-function explanation of what concepts are.
His goal seems to be an attempt the describe the indescribable among other things
True enough,they underestimated the gullibility of some of their fellow citizens and the laziness of others
I don’t have any picture of the right way to handle concepts, and am willing to take your word on that. But the fallacy of confusing ideas with what they are of has been known about at least since the scholastics.
When ratio essendi gets garbled with ratio cognoscendi (or territories with maps of them) only nonsense results.
The same as that of an ideal triangle. Plato at a prayer meeting so to speak.
What purpose does the idea in your mind labeled fifthmonarchyman serve?
peace
Would you consider the possibility that its all one “substance”? That physical matter is condensed spirit?
I’m not sure how you can claim to know the shape of an immaterial object.
Well glad you set me strait. Oh what a minute you did no such thing.
peace
You may need to flesh that out a bit…
sean s.
Agreed!!
Yes, I guess so. I don’t mind that, though. It’s kind of sweet, maybe because so Sisyphean. But the cocksure attitude annoys me.
You’re kind of a poet, it seems like. And attempts to describe the indescribable are fitting in that vineyard. But erik is a self-styled philosopher, and nonsense doesn’t cut it in that field.
I would if I could make sense of it. But “condensed spirit” is about as far from sense as any two words next to each other could be.
Well consider the “elements” of the past. Earth, water, air, and fire are equivalent to solid, liquid, gas and heat energy. Generally this can be thought of as a series of rarifications of the substance under study. We are told by physicists that empty space is not really empty but it consists of energetic entities. For a being that could only sense solids, crystals forming in a liquid would seem to be coming into existence from nowhere. Matter takes up space but what is considered to be the surrounding space only appears to be vacant because it is too subtle for our human senses to perceive. I would say that spirit is all encompassing, it is everywhere.
It’s “straight,” and I’ve long known you have no interest in being set straight. But whether or not some kind of strait jacket would be more appropriate, triangles have to have three sides. You can look this up. Nothing has three sides in your mind. You have to start learning that not everything you think exists, actually does–even if your ideas of each of them does.
CharlieM,
Crimity.
Anybody want to suggest that souls are a combination of bananas and lime spritzer? But really really spread out?
Would you say that about matter and energy?
Fmm, there are acts of consciousness and there are (intentional) objects of those acts. The “ideal triangle” whether or not it really exists in some platonic realist way, is not an idea and is not in your head. It is the object of your idea and is nowhere.
I wouldn’t even say it about condensed milk.
I’m sorry to have ridiculed you. As I indicated to Newton, your cocksure attitude regarding difficult questions annoys me. That’s a poor excuse, perhaps, but it’s the truth. I do appreciate your remarks about soul being some sort of principle of life/consciousness–although I think that position is a bit heterodoxical. I believe most people who talk about souls take them to be conscious–and neither “principles” nor “limits” (I think you called them that too) are that. Also I wouldn’t think it would be terribly satisfying to believe that some principle or limit is immortal. People want to be immortal THEMSELVES, and their ministers, etc. tell them that they can be because their souls are.
Anyhow, I think I asked you some follow-up questions about your conception but you didn’t respond to them. I take your position to be largely a barrel of confusions, but I’d still like to hear it.
M
Well I don’t see what point you are trying to make by saying that “condensed spirit” is about as far from sense as any two words next to each other could be.
“Gaseous” and “solid” have entirely different meanings but we can still think of solids as condensed gases.
I will say flat out that I do not know what a soul is, but if anyone wants to work on a theory of soul detection with me I am all for it!
The bible throughout and so through centuries was always consistent. There is the soul, heart, mind, spirit and body.
We are immaterial souls made in gods image. Its a real entity and leaves the body after death.
Its placed in the body. the body is real.
The connection is by the MIND. I think the mind is just a memory machine.
the soul is meshed to the mind and so causes confusion about who is running things.
the spirit is more difficult in understanding it.
its a tool or partner to the soul.
We(soul) can control our spirit but spirit does not control the soul.
the trinity hints at this.
God, jesus, spirit.
We are, probably, a image of the trinity.
In genesis the trinity said LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE.
Is the trinity concept complex?
All other ideas are just plain invention and wrong.
Technically the word is “Criminy”. It’s the name of my avatar.
I think we are in agreement
The ideal triangle is not in my head It’s in my mind. That’s not a physical place of course if that is what you mean. That’s because minds are not physical things.
I’d say that the mistake you make here is among the most common of all fallacies and has resuted in no end of ridiculous philosophy.
peace
ps
I’d also again say that I’m a terrible speller and I often get tripped up on things like strait and straight
I apologize for any difficulties in comprehension that might cause,
Triangles aren’t in minds either fifth. Sorry. Ideas are in minds–possibly heads too, if you think minds are identical to brain processes. Triangles are not in either.
What you say is fallacious in my post is not, incidentally.
Having no size or volume, spirit isn’t the sort of ‘stuff’ that can be condensed. Milk yes, books even, not spirit.
You take a piece of distressed leather, average it with a mind, spread in a bunch of spirit, condense it, add a pinch of vim, imagine a triangle, say the name of Jesus, and voila! Soul!
Easy as pie.
Prefer a campfire under the West Texas sky with stronger spirits than vino, but I see your point.
A narrative often requires invention to help the exposition. A white whale, Comanches stealing a child, but that does not mean they are not a truth
I’m in. We just need to describe it’s purposefully arranged set of parts. Where do we start?
When you’re doing this, please keep in mind that I forgot to mention that the leather, spirit, triangle, etc. have to be lovingly put in a flesh bag and shaken for about five minutes before being placed in an atomic oven on “wicked high” along with at least two cherubs and at least one reincarnation of Vishnu.
Anyhow, it’s all in the directions that can be found in various SCRIPTURES (now available for Kindle download, or, if preferred, can just be listened to by playing various Beatles albums backwards at half speed).
That classical pentism
That’s because minds are not
physicalthings.There, I fixed it for you. As mentioned by another responder on this thread, minds are not things, they are processes.
Do you agree?
Mistaking a process for a thing may lead one to believe in dualism, IMHO.
Processes need processors – in the case of the mind, the brain is the processor. If the brain dies, the process ceases.
All available evidence supports the idea that the mind is what the brain does. The idea of an ideal triangle is represented by physical states and patterns in your physical brain.
Got any evidence to the contrary or is this just another of your baseless claims?