What is Soul?

[Frieda]

self is what you think you are

soul is what reflects who you are

[Stephi_B]

Originally Posted by craig johnston

could someone explain what the difference
between soul and self is?

Gonna try:

Self is more a rational thing imo, left brain half and stuff. Babies develop that only after a while as far I understood (used to watch this BBC docu, God(s) save the BBC! Yeah and their Teletubbies, hehe ), when they start to get that their mirror image actually is themself and they can control it. Self is also that you know/remember (more or less, depending on your memory, amount of certain substances consumed ) who you are (you know what docs ask when you're under shock or hurt: What's your name? What's your adress? When were you born?...), where you are, what is the date (approximately), what you did last week etc. So in short, self is that you kinda know your place in the space-time continuum or seen in another way, that you confine yourself as an individuum from the rest of matter & energy drifting about in the universe. There's also people who have temporarily/permanently lost their self to a high degree (mentally disabled, senile people), have a blurred self (schizophrenia and the like) or have several of them (folks with multiple personalities).

In contrast, soul is unconscious, right brain half and always there.

[brightpearl]

^I kinda like that.

Thinking about it and Frieda's earlier red+white = pink post...
Do you think that there is any part of the soul that is permanent and essential -- an immutable core? Or is it totally subject to eventual change?

I am different now than I was when I was three. Which one is the "real" me?

[Stephi_B]

Originally Posted by brightpearl

^I kinda like that.

Thinking about it and Frieda's earlier red+white = pink post...
Do you think that there is any part of the soul that is permanent and essential -- an immutable core? Or is it totally subject to eventual change?

I am different now than I was when I was three. Which one is the "real" me?

Yoy, that's a difficult one! But if we'd assume that one's soul is strongly connected with the subconsciousness (a lot more than the 'self-part' of personality) then there should be some 'core-soul' although one (body/brain-self-soul) changes quite dramatically during life, particularly during the first two decades, there's this part of one's personality one cannot remember anymore, but which got formed/determined in say the first 3 or 5 years of life - kinda the hard-drive one later runs ever (more or less) changing software on.

Yes, that white+red=pink idea of Frieda's got something! (And not only because of the alchemical choice of colours )

[brightpearl]

My own post in the drive in thread made me think of this thread again. My own thinking about this stuff leads me to suspect that there is no eternally unchanging core to self, no individual soul. Of course, it's nearly impossible to remember that in daily activities. It's quite handy to think of oneself as separate somehow; that's how we tell the difference between food and the plate. It's practical. But it isn't permanent. The need to separate things thusly will fall away, turn into something else. This is not to say, however, that we will cease to exist entirely. Our energy will always exist in some form; it's just that each jet of water changes constantly, arcs and sways moment to moment, and each will return to the fountain in time.

[lukkucairi]

I got soul, and I'm supahbad

Any living thing is like a wave propagating across an ocean - atoms enter and leave our bodies, and as the story goes they're all switched out on average every seven to nine years. None of our physical stuff stays with us, so what ARE we?

A wave is a decent metaphor, since the water atoms transmit the wave but don't actually move along with the wave. Yet the wave persists.

The difference between "self" and "soul" is kind of semantic, and you could argue it down to usage. Personally I think of my "self" as including all the bits of my body that are still stuck together (i.e. a fingernail is part of my "self" but a fingernail paring is not) - where I see my "soul" (personally) as very specifically that part of me that likes to define itself as the part that thinks and is individual. This isn't the same as brain function or mind - it's kind of an illusion created by the self-referential self-awareness of my brain.

I think if you actually tried to look for the distinction between brain function, mind, and soul, you'd get lost in the fractal overlapping between the categories. If you watch someone's personality taken apart by Alzheimer's you wonder about stuff like "soul" - the personality changes, irrevocably, as the brain loses function. What happens to the soul? There's often no recognizable kernel of the original individual personality left behind after years of amyloid plaque degradation.

So is the soul the personality? Or if it's separate from the personality, what happens to it in a damaged brain?

[brightpearl]

I don't have any answers for this. I just wanted to get the spam off the index page.

[Stephi_B]

Originally Posted by brightpearl

(...) My own thinking about this stuff leads me to suspect that there is no eternally unchanging core to self, no individual soul. Of course, it's nearly impossible to remember that in daily activities. It's quite handy to think of oneself as separate somehow; that's how we tell the difference between food and the plate. It's practical. But it isn't permanent. The need to separate things thusly will fall away, turn into something else. (...)

Yes, in the long run I got the same notion, but during an individual's existence I'd figure some soul kernel. But who knows - also wondering about what lukkucairi brought up...

(How) do you folks visualise your soul (a certain colour, shape, pattern) ... or do you maybe relate a certain sound(s), flavour with it?

Mine feels kinda like orange and green at the moment with a bit of a weird pattern

[brightpearl]

Mmm. Synesthesia is delicious.

[Gatsby]

And iridescent and oval-shaped.

[trisherina]

The soul as lozenge.

[T.I.P.]

Originally Posted by Stephi_B

(How) do you folks visualise your soul (a certain colour, shape, pattern) ... or do you maybe relate a certain sound(s), flavour with it?

Mine feels kinda like orange and green at the moment with a bit of a weird pattern

i thought of your post when I saw this south park video about what the church of scientology has to say about soul

[Stephi_B]

Originally Posted by T.I.P.

i thought of your post when I saw this south park video about what the church of scientology has to say about soul

Actually I saw that episode (for the 2nd time?) only this week... Well, and South Park as everybody knows is mind-altering

[Brynn]

^agreed

In general, I have a hard time believing that a purely scientific approach is entirely adequate for explaining what the soul is. It's like hiring an engineer to analyze your dreams, or a plumber to paint your portrait, or a chemist to give you grief counseling. They can attempt to the best of their knowledge and training, but I would imagine that the end result would be lacking something.

[lukkucairi]

NYTimes weighs in on the whole soul-thingy debate

as evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists peer ever deeper into the brain, they are discovering more and more genes, brain structures and other physical correlates to feelings like empathy, disgust and joy. That is, they are discovering physical bases for the feelings from which moral sense emerges — not just in people but in other animals as well.