Soul X Body -> connect and disconnect, not in and out

[Bassil]

The relationship between the soul and the body is 'connect and disconnect,' not 'in and out.'

This understanding of the soul to be resided inside the body is wrong and very old. Souls have no mass and no wavelength. Therefore, they can't have a place in the physical world. Bodies are anchor points that anchor us to this physical world and help us navigate and experience it. Think of souls as gamers playing a video game. The video game is the physical world, and the avatars are the bodies that help us navigate the video game's virtual world. Like the gamer can't get inside the video game, so the soul can't be inside the physical world. When the body dies, the soul gets disconnected and the physical world just disappears from the scene.

[CA Steve]

How do souls interact with a physical environment and/or physical entities if they have no mass or wavelength (whatever that means)? How do they even interact with each other?

 

[Calm]

If there is no physical aspect of the spirit, then how can it be connected to the body?  A gamer is connected to the game through a physical device, after all.

[Calm]

3 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

How do souls interact with a physical environment and/or physical entities if they have no mass or wavelength (whatever that means)? How do they even interact with each other?

 

Lol, you got there first. 
 

I suspect Bassil means souls are neither matter (mass ) or energy (wavelength).

Edited August 26, 2023 by Calm

[Bassil]

4 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

How do they even interact with each other?

Think of it like how Earth and the Moon affect each other!

[Bassil]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

I suspect Bassil means souls are neither matter (mass ) or energy (wavelength).

Correct. 🙂

[Bassil]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

If there is no physical aspect of the spirit, then how can it be connected to the body?  A gamer is connected to the game through a physical device, after all.

Think of the Moon and Earth affecting each other. Think of the entanglement between separated particles. Spooky interaction at a distance.

[CA Steve]

11 minutes ago, Bassil said:

Think of it like how Earth and the Moon affect each other!

The analogy does not work. Both the earth and moon have mass. You're proposing an interaction between something with mass/energy and something without.

 

[Bassil]

6 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

The analogy does not work. Both the earth and moon have mass. You're proposing an interaction between something with mass/energy and something without.

Analogy requires things that we know to describe things that we don't know. The point is that the soul doesn't need to physically interact with the body.

[CA Steve]

15 minutes ago, Bassil said:

Analogy requires things that we know to describe things that we don't know.

Analogies can describe things we do know. Describing things we don't know is contradictory. 

16 minutes ago, Bassil said:

The point is that the soul doesn't need to physically interact with the body.

How does a physical body know when the soul is interacting with it?

[Bassil]

8 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

How does a physical body know when the soul is interacting with it?

It doesn't. You are a soul and the body is operated by you. And you are not here in this physical world.

[CA Steve]

3 minutes ago, Bassil said:

It doesn't. You are a soul and the body is operated by you. And you are not here in this physical world.

I have a fire-breathing dragon in my garage.

[JAHS]

7 hours ago, Bassil said:

The relationship between the soul and the body is 'connect and disconnect,' not 'in and out.'

This understanding of the soul to be resided inside the body is wrong and very old. Souls have no mass and no wavelength. Therefore, they can't have a place in the physical world. Bodies are anchor points that anchor us to this physical world and help us navigate and experience it. Think of souls as gamers playing a video game. The video game is the physical world, and the avatars are the bodies that help us navigate the video game's virtual world. Like the gamer can't get inside the video game, so the soul can't be inside the physical world. When the body dies, the soul gets disconnected and the physical world just disappears from the scene.

Joseph Smith said:
"There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter."

Somehow this fine or pure matter is connected with our bodies

Alma 40:11
"Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are ^ctaken ^dhome to that God who gave them life."

Alma 11:43 "The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame"

"the bodies and the spirits of men will be restored one to the other; 2 Nephi 9:12)

Matt 8
28And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with adevils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.
29 And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before athe time?
30 And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.
31 So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.
32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

Somehow Jesus was able to place the evil spirits inside the swine, therefore spirits can exist inside bodies

[manol]

10 hours ago, Bassil said:

Think of souls as gamers playing a video game. The video game is the physical world, and the avatars are the bodies that help us navigate the video game's virtual world.

I think your video game analogy is excellent.  I don't begin to understand the mechanics of how it works, but the imo the basic idea has a great deal of merit. 

Our true self is not who we appear to be here on earth; our true self is an eternal being that is completely safe, but is having the experience of being a highly limited mortal in a dangerous world via this incredibly realistic "video game" reality we are presently participating in.  We cannot remember or currently access our true self because of the "Veil".  And our job, or at least one of our jobs, is to choose to bring the high spiritual energy of Love into this low-spiritual-energy realm.

Here is a video of a man who claims to remember some of his life before he came to earth.  It is cued up to the part where the Veil is put in place, but imo the whole video is excellent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PO-Op38o-k&t=317s

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by manol

[Bassil]

55 minutes ago, manol said:

Here is a video of a man who claims to remember some of his life before he came to earth.

Thanks for the video. 🙏

[mfbukowski]

11 hours ago, Bassil said:

Think of it like how Earth and the Moon affect each other!

Gravity 

[Kenngo1969]

I see my friend @JAHS has beaten me to the punch, but at the risk of being redundant again :

Doctrine and Covenants 131

Quote

7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes[.]

 

[The Nehor]

11 hours ago, manol said:

Our true self is not who we appear to be here on earth; our true self is an eternal being that is completely safe, but is having the experience of being a highly limited mortal in a dangerous world via this incredibly realistic "video game" reality we are presently participating in.  We cannot remember or currently access our true self because of the "Veil".  And our job, or at least one of our jobs, is to choose to bring the high spiritual energy of Love into this low-spiritual-energy realm.

If it is all fake and the world is full of suffering and the game isn’t particularly fun or fair then suicide to get to the game over screen seems like the logical choice.

[mfbukowski]

21 hours ago, Bassil said:

The relationship between the soul and the body is 'connect and disconnect,' not 'in and out.'

This understanding of the soul to be resided inside the body is wrong and very old. Souls have no mass and no wavelength. Therefore, they can't have a place in the physical world. Bodies are anchor points that anchor us to this physical world and help us navigate and experience it. Think of souls as gamers playing a video game. The video game is the physical world, and the avatars are the bodies that help us navigate the video game's virtual world. Like the gamer can't get inside the video game, so the soul can't be inside the physical world. When the body dies, the soul gets disconnected and the physical world just disappears from the scene.

And so pretend I deny this whole idea. 

There is no way to check who is right.

You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-to.

Let's call the whole thing off.

[Bassil]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Let's call the whole thing off.

OK

[manol]

On 8/27/2023 at 4:06 AM, The Nehor said:

If it is all fake and the world is full of suffering and the game isn’t particularly fun or fair then suicide to get to the game over screen seems like the logical choice.

Great post! It cuts right to the heart of the matter. And I agree, suicide seems to be the logical choice in the scenario you describe. (And yes I have looked down the barrel of that gun, no pun intended, but this is neither the time nor the place for that story.)

So here's the thing: Logic is not the solution here. Logic will betray you. Logic does not have your best interest at heart.

Logic is limited to working with that which is in evidence. Logic largely excludes from one's analytical process that which is not in evidence. Supertramp wrote a brilliant song about logic. While not overtly about suicide, The Logical Song portrays the path of logic as stifling and suffocating, ultimately terminating in a soul-crushing dead end (“a vegetable”). Since you are still here, I assume that you have resisted the darkest darkness of the siren call of logic thus far.

So if the application of logic is not the answer, then what is? I don't think we have a word for it, but if we did, that word would mean: “Choose the brightest light, or the highest spiritual energy level, that you can aspire to in the moment, no matter how dark the moment is.”

You see, this game is not a game of logic. It is a game of light versus darkness, and the battleground is largely an internal one. All of the winning moves are moves of choosing the highest light, or the highest spiritual energy level, that one can aspire to in the moment, no matter how illogical they may be. “Love God with all of your thoughts, all of your actions, all of your intensity, and without reservation” is a high spiritual energy level, but logical reasons for doing so may not be in evidence. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a high spiritual energy level, but logical reasons for doing so may not be in evidence. “The Pure Love of Christ” is a high spiritual energy level, regardless of whether is it supported by the outward evidence. “Forgive without keeping score” is a high spiritual energy level, regardless of the outward evidence. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God in everything” is a high spiritual energy level, regardless of the outward evidence. (And yes I know I have strayed from the King James Version with some of these quotes.) And likewise that which makes YOUR soul sing, whether or not it has a corresponding scripture, is a high spiritual energy level.

So how do we change direction to alignment with the path of light and love, when we have built up the momentum of a battleship steaming at logical speed in a direction “so dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical”? It would take a superhuman effort to push the battleship onto a new heading aligned towards the light. But there is ANOTHER way to change the direction of a battleship! All we have to do is ALIGN THE RUDDER to the direction of the light!  In time the whole battleship will re-align to the new heading. 

In this metaphor, The Rudder is our thoughts. We deliberately re-align our thoughts to a brighter light, or a higher spiritual level, than what is in evidence, and we do our best to pay attention to our thoughts and deliberately return them to that higher alignment whenever they default back to darkness in whatever form. We WILL screw up and that is NOT a mistake. The mistake would be, to not make the effort to re-align our thoughts, pushing our Rudder back on course, when we notice that we have defaulted to our old negative (but often perfectly logical) thought patterns. Over time our default will re-set. We will no longer be down in the trenches fighting off suicide with fixed bayonet... but if we ever do find ourselves there again, we will know how to climb the ladder to get out of the trench.

(To take this motif a bit further... we do not beat the “trench war” level of the game by slogging it out in the trenches. We beat that level by climbing out of the trenches and bypassing them. The solution to the lower level comes from raising our consciousness to the higher level, and at the risk of mixing metaphors, the key is once again deliberately re-aligning our Rudder to the highest thoughts or concepts we can aspire to.)

Something interesting happens when one decides in favor of the path of “choosing the brightest light, or the highest spiritual energy level, that one can aspire to in the moment, no matter how dark the moment is.” When those darkest moments come, they are OPPORTUNITIES to make big gains quickly. When we choose the light in the face of the darkest of darkness, even if our so choosing seems imperceptibly feeble in the moment, our power to choose light over darkness grows all out of proportion to the small amount of time spent making that choice in that moment.

The Logical Song doesn't end with “vegetables”. It ends with asking what I believe is the RIGHT question, and asks it over and over: “Please tell me who I am”. Imo this is a very valid question, the pursuit of which can raise our consciousness to that higher level and result in a paradigm shift which is very much Good News. But that's another topic for another day.

Edited August 28, 2023 by manol

[OGHoosier]

On 8/26/2023 at 9:51 AM, CA Steve said:

How do souls interact with a physical environment and/or physical entities if they have no mass or wavelength (whatever that means)? How do they even interact with each other?

On 8/26/2023 at 9:54 AM, Calm said:

If there is no physical aspect of the spirit, then how can it be connected to the body?  A gamer is connected to the game through a physical device, after all.

I never really got this objection to Cartesian dualism. Non-material realities interact with and order material things all the time. We call them "mathematical realities" or "laws of nature." 

I'd recommend this excellent public-access paper by the German philosopher Silvia Jonas: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-021-00356-0#Sec4 . Particularly significant are the sections entitled "Meta-Natural Explanations of Empirical Realities," "Mathematical Explanations of Material Facts," and "Explanations Featuring Mathematics." All emphasis mine.

Quote

The natural sciences are full of mathematics: it is an indispensable tool for the formulation of theories about the physical world. In many of those theories, the mathematics involved plays a merely representational role, for example by representing quantities. However, the mathematical elements involved in the examples above are themselves an integral part of the explanation: Hales’ theorem explains why bees build their honeycombs out of hexagonal cells; the number-theoretic properties of prime numbers explain the length of the life-cycles of Magicicadas; and the irrational number equivalent to the Golden Ratio explains the elegant arrangement of sunflower seeds. How exactly is it possible for a purely mathematical, i.e. causally inert fact to explain a strictly empirical regularity? 

...

As Lyon (2012) observes, the distinction between two kinds of causally relevant properties applies not only to physical, but also to mathematical explanations of empirical phenomena. Consider Putnam’s classic peg-hole example (Putnam 1975, pp. 295ff). We imagine a wooden board with two holes, one circular with a diameter of one inch, the other square with a side-length of one inch. What explains the fact that a cubical peg with a side-length of 15/16ths of an inch on each side will fit through the square hole but not the round hole? The answer to this question will most certainly invoke mathematical properties. For example, we might say that any peg with a side-length of 15/16ths of an inch is too large for any hole with a one-inch diameter.

Strictly speaking, the properties that are efficacious in causing the peg to bump into the board rather than pass through the hole are the peg’s micro-physical properties, such as its spatiotemporal coordinates, the forces acting on the bodies, their molecular structure, fundamental components, etc. However, there is a strong sense in which the peg’s micro-physical properties provide only part of the explanation of the peg’s failure to pass through the hole. A full explanation would also mention the peg’s and the board’s geometrical properties respectively. Using Jackson’s and Pettit’s terminology, the micro-physical properties of peg and board are causally relevant to the peg’s failure to pass the board by being efficacious in the production of the ‘bump;’ the geometrical properties of peg and board are causally relevant because they program for the presence of the relevant micro-physical properties.

Also the honeycombs, the Magicadas, and the sunflower seeds can be analysed in this way: the explanation of the respective empirical regularities (hexagonal cell shapes, prime-numbered life-cycles, Golden Ratio rotation angles) involve a purely mathematical element as well as a causal element that works on the micro-physical level.

What distinguishes empirical instantiations of mathematical truths as well as mathematical representations of empirical facts from mathematical explanations is thus the way in which the mathematical element of an hypothesis contributes to the explanation of the empirical phenomenon in question, i.e. by playing a programming role. Through this role, it is possible for a purely mathematical fact to be causally relevant in the explanation of an empirical regularity. And if, at least sometimes, mathematics plays the programming role indispensably, it is admissible—perhaps even necessary—to draw ontological conclusions from this fact, i.e. to posit the existence of mathematical entities (Baker 2005; 2009; Colyvan 2001).

I'm omitting a lengthy discussion of the "programming role", a concept taken from Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (Jackson, F., & Pettit, P. (1990). Program explanation: a general perspective. Analysis, 69(2), 107–117.) That is worth reading, but it is dense and technical. Jonas does cite a very persuasive argument to the effect that causally relevant causes are not necessarily causally efficacious, ie things can cause phenomena without actually being in the physical chain of events that cause said phenomena.

Quote

A property F is not causally efficacious in the production of an effect e if these three conditions are fulfilled together.

(i) there is a distinct property G such that F is efficacious in the production of e only if G is efficacious in its production [co-instantiated];

(ii) the F-instance does not help to produce the G-instance in the sense in which the G-instance, if G is efficacious, helps to produce e; they are not sequential causal factors [non-sequential];

(iii) the F-instance does not combine with the G-instance, directly or via further effects, to help in the same sense to produce e (nor of course, vice versa): they are not coordinate causal factors [non-coordinate]. (Jackson and Pettit 1990, p. 108)

...

Now, it is plausible to assume that causal explanations of physical phenomena must only invoke causally relevant (as opposed to causally irrelevant) properties. However, as Jackson and Pettit show, it is implausible to assume that causally relevant properties are necessarily causally efficacious properties. The structure of their argument is as follows:

1. Assume that all causal explanations invoke only causally relevant properties.

2. Assume that all causally relevant properties are causally efficacious.

3. Causal explanations thus invoke only causally efficacious properties.

4. Causally efficacious properties contribute directly to the production of X; they do not fulfil conditions (i), (ii), and (iii).

5. The properties invoked in explanations of physical phenomena in basic science, i.e. physics (e.g. ‘having mass X’ or ‘having positive charge’) do not fulfil conditions (i), (ii), and (iii); hence, they are causally efficacious.

6. Explanations of physical phenomena in the special sciences, e.g. sociology, psychology or biology, invoke properties like ‘the property of a group that it is cohesive; of a mental state that it is the belief that p; of a biological trait that it maximizes inclusive fitness’ (Jackson and Pettit 1990, p. 112).

7. The properties invoked in explanations of physical phenomena in the special sciences are not causally efficacious because they fulfil conditions (i), (ii), and (iii).

8. Conclusion: Explanations of physical phenomena in the special sciences are not causal explanations.

The conclusion that causal explanations are only to be found in basic science but not in the special sciences is, of course, absurd.

I'm honestly not so sure about the suitability of the concept of the "programming role", but for the purposes of this discussion, that is unnecessary. I am not particularly worried about accounting for how physically inert causes can still be relevant - we're playing with mysteries beyond our ability to comprehend, I suspect. However, I do think that Jackson and Pettit prove that a causally relevant property need not be causally efficacious - in other words, a cause need not be part of a physical chain of events in order to cause a physical phenomena. 

To assume otherwise is to overthrow all science outside basic physics, which seems more ludicrous to me than the belief that the world as we know it is not a closed circuit of physical causation.

Conclusion: Descartes partially vindicated, materialism btfo, and the causal immateriality of consciousness rendered plausible.  

As for the applications of these things to Latter-day Sainthood, I'd recommend Samuel Morris Brown's Mormons Probably Aren't Materialists (Dialogue, vol. 50 no. 3). I will quote the following:

Quote

On the precise question of materialist monism, Smith’s dualism of fine and coarse matter would satisfy almost no materialists. It sounds more like Ptolemy’s gradations of matter into spirit along a scale of coarseness than any sort of actual philosophical materialism. With rare exceptions, materialists are not interested in positing another species of otherwise-unknown matter for what has historically been called spirit. That’s just dualism wearing dark glasses, a wig, and a beard. One need only glance at Mormon discussions about “having a body” as the core mission of mortality to see through the disguise.

The Australian philosopher David Chalmers famously proposed that consciousness isn’t really an emergence on other forms of matter but its own kind of matter. I’m not sure that Chalmers realized how much like Joseph Smith and his fine matter he sounded, but most physicalist philosophers of consciousness have preferred to leave consciousness unsolved rather than allow Chalmers’s or an equivalent updated dualism.

For Smith the big question is the nature of God and the integrity of existence. He seems to hedge his bets some about the formal philosophical problems. When he says that the spiritual and temporal are the same, he’s talking about harmony and interdependence. He does not appear to me to be claiming strict physical materialism; his fine matter isn’t really the same thing as his coarse matter. Independent of his apparent dualism, the True Light [Brown is not referring to Christ - this is his term for the "code" or basic substance of reality] appears to be something else again.

Assuming the True Light is a metaphysical third, what are the mechanisms by which adoption [Brown's term for the overarching organization of the eternities, essentially the expansion of the parental relationship indefinitely] occurs? Are these mechanisms primarily physical or metaphysical? Or is the pursuit of such material mechanisms a category error? Perhaps adoption doesn’t require a material mechanism (e.g., the fertilization of an ovum by a sperm or the meiosis of chromosomal material within an individual cell) because adoption is structural/conceptual rather than itself material. Adoption could in part be a pattern, a constraint, a way that matter is organized.

I don't know what a spirit is or what it does. I know that we have them, and that there is a LOT I do not understand. At this point, though, I'm downright confident that consciousness is not material, and I believe that what I referenced above demonstrates that immaterial things can affect material things. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by OGHoosier
Added clarifications of Brown's terms which differ from common usage

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

I never really got this objection to Cartesian dualism. Non-material realities interact with and order material things all the time. We call them "mathematical realities" or "laws of nature." 

I'd recommend this excellent public-access paper by the German philosopher Silvia Jonas: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-021-00356-0#Sec4 . Particularly significant are the sections entitled "Meta-Natural Explanations of Empirical Realities," "Mathematical Explanations of Material Facts," and "Explanations Featuring Mathematics." All emphasis mine.

I'm omitting a lengthy discussion of the "programming role", a concept taken from Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (Jackson, F., & Pettit, P. (1990). Program explanation: a general perspective. Analysis, 69(2), 107–117.) That is worth reading, but it is dense and technical. Jonas does cite a very persuasive argument to the effect that causally relevant causes are not necessarily causally efficacious, ie things can cause phenomena without actually being in the physical chain of events that cause said phenomena.

I'm honestly not so sure about the suitability of the concept of the "programming role", but for the purposes of this discussion, that is unnecessary. I am not particularly worried about accounting for how physically inert causes can still be relevant - we're playing with mysteries beyond our ability to comprehend, I suspect. However, I do think that Jackson and Pettit prove that a causally relevant property need not be causally efficacious - in other words, a cause need not be part of a physical chain of events in order to cause a physical phenomena. 

To assume otherwise is to overthrow all science outside basic physics, which seems more ludicrous to me than the belief that the world as we know it is not a closed circuit of physical causation.

Conclusion: Descartes partially vindicated, materialism btfo, and the causal immateriality of consciousness rendered plausible.  

As for the applications of these things to Latter-day Sainthood, I'd recommend Samuel Morris Brown's Mormons Probably Aren't Materialists (Dialogue, vol. 50 no. 3). I will quote the following:

I don't know what a spirit is or what it does. I know that we have them, and that there is a LOT I do not understand. At this point, though, I'm downright confident that consciousness is not material, and I believe that what I referenced above demonstrates that immaterial things can affect material things. 

Fabulous post, thanks!! Not familiar with this interpretation yet- I will get back to you in a few days.

Edited August 29, 2023 by mfbukowski

[OGHoosier]

11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Fabulous post, thanks!! Not familiar with this interpretation yet- I will get back to you in a few days.

I'm looking forward to it 

[CA Steve]

12 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I never really got this objection to Cartesian dualism. Non-material realities interact with and order material things all the time. We call them "mathematical realities" or "laws of nature." 

Please explain how a non-material reality interacts with a physical one and the interaction is not measurable yet occurs? What evidence do we have that it actually occurred if it is not measurable?