Kevin's Watch

What's a soul?

Seriously. We throw the term around, but can you actually describe what it is? I honestly don't know of anything that could be described by this term.

Malik,

1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
4. A human: “the homes of some nine hundred souls” (Garrison Keillor).
5. The central or integral part; the vital core: “It saddens me that this network... may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news” (Marvin Kalb).
6. A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.
7. A person's emotional or moral nature: “An actor is... often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not” (Alec Guinness).
8. A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
9. A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.
10. Soul music.

www.dictionary.com

Nice Mhoram. Perhaps we should start a new thread for this though.

It's an interesting and valid question though. I think of it as perhaps the essence of an individual. Whether it is independent, let alone immortal, I can't guess.

I do think that it is something that develops alongside the personality though.

--Avatar

Avatar,

It's an interesting and valid question though. I think of it as perhaps the essence of an individual. Whether it is independent, let alone immortal, I can't guess.

This is certainly open to interpretation isn't it? It all depends, really, on your spirituality/religion/faith, IMO.

Regardless of your faith, my question was asking for a referent to this term, an object that we can examine (perhaps via introspection?) to see if the description we're given (see Lord Mhoram's post) matches the object. Defining a word is one thing, describing an object is another. So far, all I've seen is the description: what a soul might be if we could ever spot one. But I've never spotted one, and I've done lots of introspection.

If you're just going to say it's a "vital principle," credited with thoughts, feelings, actions, etc., then why not just call this "mind"? Or "consciousness"? Soul carries the implications of immortality and something separate from--though mysteriously attached to--the body. However, mind and consciousness can be described as products of biological processes, and do not carry this implication.

One might have faith that something exists, but this is not the same as actually detecting it. I can apprehend my own consciousness. I've never apprehended anything within me that could be described as a "soul."

In response to Avatar's point, I say the "essence of an individual," is to exist. This is an existential distinction: existence precedes essence (Sartre). Humans are distinct from other things in the world because what is essential to us isn't fixed by what kind of being we are. Rather, we define ourselves in the world in the act of living. Humans determine their essence--what they are--by existing. Existing for humans is "self-making-in-a-situation."

In short, we don't have an essence in the traditional sense because we define ourselves. If you're going to say this is the soul, then we define our soul--which doesn't really fit what we usually think of as "soul" (an immortal entity created by God, not us).

Malik,

You do realize you are asking for a lot for us to tell you what a soul is right? Discovery of your soul is in my opinion the greatest question in the history of organized religion and spirituality.

I agree with Avatar; as Socrates said Know thyself; to essentially know yourself, IMO, is to know your soul.

Malik23 wrote:Regardless of your faith, my question was asking for a referent to this term, an object that we can examine (perhaps via introspection?) to see if the description we're given (see Lord Mhoram's post) matches the object. Defining a word is one thing, describing an object is another. So far, all I've seen is the description: what a soul might be if we could ever spot one. But I've never spotted one, and I've done lots of introspection.

I'm sorry, but the attitude of 'If I can't see it, and can't poke at it, then it can't exist' attitude is very naive.

Have you ever 'spotted' an electron, a proton, or any subatomic particle? Have you ever sighted a black hole? Or seen the wind?

Malik23 wrote:existence precedes essence (Sartre).

That is exactly what my point is. You come into existence, and then your "essence" develops.

Perhaps you percieve the "soul" to be an immortal entity created by god, but that is certainly not my interpretation. How could it be? I don't believe in god. Like so many other words, "soul" is a convenient lable, not much more. "Consciousness" alone is too limiting, because the word encompasses more than the simple awareness of even life, let alone thought processes.

The "soul", in the sense that I use it, is a huge aggregation of everything that has combined to make you...well...you. It's existence as an independent "entity" is immaterial, to me at least. It's a handy word to describe the sum of experience, thought, opinion, memory, choice, belief and any other process that affets the way that you view the world.

It is how the act of living has defined us.

While I agree with Edge in a sense, (namely that simply not having seen something is not enough evidence that it isn't there), I can point out that all the things that he mentioned are things that can be measured in some way, whether through direct experience, or observation of their effects on other things. However, as I said, that doesn't make him wrong either.

There are more things in heaven and earth...

--Avatar

Avatar,
I think we are pretty much in agreement. Sorry I misread you at first. You were coming up with an alternate sense of the term completely, while I thought you were merely coming up with a different way to justify the immortal soul concept.


Edge,
I'm not claiming that immortal, immaterial souls don't exist. I'm just pointing out that I don't know of an entity I could describe in terms of an immortal, immaterial soul. I'm not dismissing it completely (similarly with God), I'm just agnostic about the whole thing. I don't know. And because I don't know, I'm suspicious of others' claims when they say they DO know of God and souls. I'm ready to be proven wrong. I just think that people have taken religious stories (along with a certain fantasy writer's stories ) too literally.

Oh yeah, and Avatar, is right: protons are nothing like souls. If you can measure the mass of a soul, bring it on. If you can derive explosive energy from souls--in the same way you can get nuclear energy from sub-atomic particles--let us all know. You could solve the energy crisis for us. But seriously, suggesting that protons and souls are in any way similar, and then using this comparison to accuse me of being naive, is, well, a bit naive. This is part of the whole problem, that people think their faith is justified to the same degree as OBSERVATIONS of real physical objects like protons. This lack of a grasp on the fundamental distinction between science and religion confuses these kinds of dialoguE to the point where we are just talking "around" each other.[/i]