The scientific proof of the existence of the soul (and God)

[pgrmdave]

Is it possible to prove the existance of consiousness, or is it merely something which is so obvious, that we all assume it's true?

[Tormod]

Is it possible to prove the existance of consiousness, or is it merely something which is so obvious, that we all assume it's true?

I think it needs some definitions. What is consciousness, self-awareness, intelligence, existence? If we can find some fundamental platform for these, we could establish a theory of how to prove the existence of consciousness.

[lindagarrette]

Julian Janes' theory of the bicameral mind which I've referenced several times is that many entire civilizations were not conscious. His example is the Greeks during a period Homer wrote his epics. In the Illiad, everyone acted based on "voices" from the gods. In the Oddysey, the gods are there but their messages are indirect. People appear to act on their own volition. Children are not conscious until a certain age. In other words, it is a learned trait. Janes explains his theory very convincingly. I was almost taken in. He could be right. People in the Julian Janes Societies seem to think so.

[infamous]

I think it needs some definitions. What is consciousness, self-awareness, intelligence, existence? If we can find some fundamental platform for these, we could establish a theory of how to prove the existence of consciousness.

This may be a somewhat lame attempt, but here is a definition that comes to my mind. Consciousness is the knowledge that your actions today will have consequences in the future. Or more to the point, understanding your place in time. That may be a little weak, but it's the best I can do. Understanding and defining ouselves involved in the abstract notion of time.

[maddog]

I think it needs some definitions. What is consciousness, self-awareness, intelligence, existence? If we can find some fundamental platform for these, we could establish a theory of how to prove the existence of consciousness.

 

I can see where it would possible to detect either conciousness or a soul (and therefore

prove the existence, thereof). However, how do you go about detecting, proving/disproving

God in someone either believes or not ? You believe or not. Simple. :hihi:

 

What's all this chicken squaddle ! :rant:

 

Maddog

[maddog]

Julian Janes' theory of the bicameral mind which I've referenced several times is that many entire civilizations were not conscious. His example is the Greeks during a period Homer wrote his epics. In the Illiad, everyone acted based on "voices" from the gods. In the Oddysey, the gods are there but their messages are indirect. People appear to act on their own volition. Children are not conscious until a certain age. In other words, it is a learned trait. Janes explains his theory very convincingly. I was almost taken in. He could be right. People in the Julian Janes Societies seem to think so.

 

I question that. Though, I am not convinced, I am also lack a critical arguement to knock it.

 

Maddog

[Turtle]

Such proofs are vacuous; Descarte attempted the same thing. The only motivation for such "proofs" is to fortify one's own beliefs.

[J.L. des Alpins]

Consciousness is the knowledge that your actions today will have consequences in the future.

What a fascinating statement, a seed in fertile ground! If you allow me, and without any pretension, I will try to add some water and see what is going to grow…

 

(1) Consciousness is always consciousness of…something. Consciousness can be projected outward into the world. Consciousness can also be directed on itself. When the latter, consciousness becomes conscious of itself as being conscious. This suggests two levels of consciousness: a ‘positional consciousness’, which is projected (outward or inward) and a ‘nonpositional consciousness’, which is the foundation of consciousness. Thus, you cannot be conscious of yourself before first becoming aware of you as being conscious.

 

(2) By being conscious of you as being conscious, what follows is that you become conscious of you as being…in the world. You then become aware of the chair in the kitchen and the moon in the sky. With simple experimentation, you can find out that you can move the chair but not the moon. As you keep experimenting, you discover that there are things you can change, others that you want to change but cannot, and others that you don’t care to change. You have acquired knowledge. You become conscious of you has someone having possibilities (and limits) in the world.

 

(3) As you experiment further, you reach a point where you see more than one possibility in front of you at a time, but you understand that you cannot have them all at once: You have to choose. Let’s look at the following scenario:

 

(3a) Say that you are running for your life, away from a pack of wolves, and find yourself cornered on a riverside by some violent rapids. Quickly you figure out that you have only two choices: you either stay put (and yield and scream) or you jump in the rapids. You realize that there is nothing in the world that can stop you (or decide for you) to either stay put or plunge in the water. The choice is totally yours. You are absolutely free to choose either. You have become conscious of your total freedom of choice.

 

(3b) Freedom it may be, but in that same split second, something else hits you: depending on your choice, different consequences are likely to follow. At the moment that you select one of the two choices (stay put or plunge), the other will immediately vanish forever, and new possibilities will appear. If you stay put, you are likely to be devoured (painful but rapid death) but there is a chance that a hunter bolts from the tree line to save you. If you plunge, however, you can drown (less painful but slower death) or you have a chance to survive after being dragged down the river for miles while rocks break all your bones.

 

(3c) You have two chances of staying alive; still, you hesitate before making your choice. You become aware of yet another problem: you don’t know for sure what will happen. You only know what is likely to happen, the possibilities, but you have no knowledge whatsoever of the future.

 

Let’s see where we are now from the statement we started from.

 

A. “Consciousness is the knowledge…” From (1), consciousness cannot be “knowledge”, since consciousness is “consciousness of something”. In other words, consciousness is being conscious of knowing something, not the knowledge itself.

 

B. “…your actions today…” From (2) and (3a), any and all actions (or inactions) that you consciously take are the expression of your freedom of choice. You have absolute freedom to choose any options that are in the realm of your possibilities and nothing in the world can stop you or make choices for you.

 

C. “…consequences in the future.” From (3b and c), every single choice you make creates new possibilities and, at the same time, annihilates others. These are the consequences of your choices. The tricky thing, however, is that you have no way to know for sure the consequences of your choices; you can only evaluate the likeliness of what may happen.

 

If we put A, B and C together, we get:

 

Consciousness is being conscious of our own total and unrestrainable freedom of creating and annihilating possibilities for ourselves (and, to a point, others) in the world.

A corollary: The greater your knowledge of possibilities (science, wisdom), the higher your consciousness.

 

Another one: The more we experiment with the world, the more we learn about the world, the more we develop our consciousness, the more complex (and rich?) our lives become.

 

Time to pass the ball to someone else who wants to add water (or fire) to this discussion.

[maddog]

In the following site I analyse the incongruencies of the materialistic conception of the mind, on the basis of our present scientific knowledges about brain and matter.

This analysis points out how Quantum Electrodynamics proves that the brain cannot generate consciousness, which existence implies the presence in man of a unbiological/unmaterial element. The problem of consciousness is then strictly connected to the one of the existence of the soul and, consequently, the existence of God.

 

http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html

 

Marco Biagini

 

Ph.D in Solid State Physics

 

I had to go back and requote this, my apologies. I went to this site. Was this guy real a

PhD in Physics or just some Creationist imitating one.

 

I could give the hypothesis some creadence. However, it just sounds like a lame claim

w/o foundation. A hit and run poster. This guy was only in the thread 3 times. Make a

claim and vamoose. :hihi:

 

Maddog

[lindagarrette]

I question that. Though, I am not convinced, I am also lack a critical arguement to knock it.

 

Maddog

I questioned Janes' theory also and still do but he is quite convincing, scientific, with lots of indisputable evidence to backup his claime. There are excerpts of his writing on line.

[maddog]

JL,

 

I really liked you expose on conciousness, though it is to long for me to go point by point

on it. I implicitly accept what you have so eloquently. I am though interested in what is

the minimal set components as to distinguish where conciousness can be detected in a

lifeform (observed).

 

So imagine a person who is blind, deaf, cannot smell and has no tactile sensory input.

His only contact with his environment is his thoughts. This might be complicated to

imagine so we can imagine this condition occured as some debilitating disease as and

adult. This gives the advantage that he knew of these abilities to create memories before

such a disease. Add to that his ability of an idetic or photographic memory. Thus I am

creating this individual to have a complete memory of every experience before his injury

or disease and no ability now.

 

How would his conciousness be directed except toward re-thinking his life over and over.

Could he reason, deduce form conclusions ? He could hypothesize/conjecture to his hearts

desire though could not back up one shred of evidence except to recollect what he already

knew. Could this be concious state or would this look more like a state of coma ? Could

he consider his consequences ? Could he theorize about future events ?

 

Maddog

[hav0k]

JL,

 

So imagine a person who is blind, deaf, cannot smell and has no tactile sensory input.

His only contact with his environment is his thoughts. This might be complicated to

imagine so we can imagine this condition occured as some debilitating disease as and

adult. This gives the advantage that he knew of these abilities to create memories before

such a disease. Add to that his ability of an idetic or photographic memory. Thus I am

creating this individual to have a complete memory of every experience before his injury

or disease and no ability now.

 

How would his conciousness be directed except toward re-thinking his life over and over.

Could he reason, deduce form conclusions ? He could hypothesize/conjecture to his hearts

desire though could not back up one shred of evidence except to recollect what he already

knew. Could this be concious state or would this look more like a state of coma ? Could

he consider his consequences ? Could he theorize about future events ?

 

Maddog

if he could get past his misery to even consider any of those options, i'd imagine his own personal convictions would be his only consequence. he could create new scenarios in his own mind, based on what he has experienced. he would have imagination at best. maybe, if we could meet this imaginary fellow, we could observe his actions and determine for ourselves if there seems to be anything which would imply that he was experiencing something we could not comprehend. it's like his limitations would be our limitations, if that makes any sense. if there is something beyond our physical existance, surely he would be more in tune with it. what other option would he have? the only way to go is down. the question remains: is he standing on the ground? the never ending circle of inquisition... !@#! if i know. =P

[J.L. des Alpins]

So imagine a person who is blind, deaf, cannot smell and has no tactile sensory input. His only contact with his environment is his thoughts. This might be complicated to imagine so we can imagine this condition occured as some debilitating disease as an adult. This gives the advantage that he knew of these abilities to create memories before such a disease. Add to that his ability of an idetic or photographic memory. Thus I am creating this individual to have a complete memory of every experience before his injury or disease and no ability now.

Thanks Maddog for bringing up this mind-stimulating scenario. Let’s try to formulate an answer based on the foundation built in my earlier reply.

 

As per (1): Assuming that the individual you describe (the Subject) is not medically brain dead or otherwise ‘unconscious’, the Subject should still be conscious of himself as being conscious of something. Therefore, the Subject’s ego should not be affected by his condition.

 

As per (2): Assuming a healthy brain, the Subject should remain conscious that he is a conscious being in the world. Now, what ‘world’ is he in? More generally: What ‘world’ is anyone in? What about Maddog’s world? Tormod’s? Freethinker’s? George Bush’s? or mine? I think that it is fair to say that everyone’s world is different. Some people see the colour red as ‘danger’, while others see ‘meat’. How much different is someone’s world from someone else’s? Is my ‘world’ better (or bigger or wider or deeper) than the Subject’s ‘world’? I don’t know. Nobody knows.

 

The Subject’s world, however, is probably anything but static. He may not be able to see the chair by his hospital bed, but he can ‘see’, or recall, the chair in the kitchen of his younger years. In his mind, he can rearrange the furniture in the kitchen and discover a new layout that provides more space for guests, a layout that he has never thought of before. He can develop new knowledge from what he already knows. With new knowledge, he is expanding the possibilities in his mind.

 

As per (3a): The Subject may one day realise that every ‘morning’, he is faced with two choices: Either cussing out his condition all ‘day’, or spending his time working on new discoveries. He is totally free to choose either one; he can even start the day cussing then change his mind later. His freedom of choice is unaffected by his condition.

 

As per (3b): While thinking about his choices, he becomes conscious about consequences. For instance, if he let go and spend too long cursing, he could fall into depression, schizophrenia, even madness for the rest of his life. (A low involving path. A dark prospect.) If, on the other hand, he keeps the discipline up and continues working hard to make discoveries, his mind has a chance to remain healthy and a can live the rest of his live in a better mood. (A high involving path. A brighter prospect.) Even with his condition, he will have to live with the consequences of his choices.

 

As per (3c): The Subject doesn’t know for sure what will happen. When he takes a break of hard work and pouts for a while, he fears of falling into darkness. When he works hard to keep the brain going, he has no guaranty that his good mood will prevail. He has no knowledge whatsoever of the future.

 

Now if we put all of this together, we get:

 

The Subject is conscious of being conscious of his own total and unrestrainable freedom of creating and annihilating possibilities for himself (and for him alone) in his world.

Therefore, his consciousness is no different than yours or mine, except for the fact that his consciousness cannot affect others.

 

Any more thoughts on that?

[hav0k]

is the topic still the scientific proof of the soul and god?

[maddog]

JL,

 

You made more of than I though about. Thanks. Reading your response reminded me of

a movie I saw in college. It was about such a guy. I think it was called "Johnny, get your

gun". In the main character was injured in the First World War (WW I). He had lost his

arms and legs an most of his face in a mortar shell explosion. He could not see nor hear

nor smell nor taste. He was feed through a tube. All he had was his sensory input from

his skin. His day to day was just as you described. Your heart poured out to him as you

watched the movie. I now am thinking of all the troops we as Americans have sent to

elsewhere to war. I wish them safe passage home and that no one suffers as this young

man suffered. :hihi: It was based on a true story.

 

My reason for bringing that up is to still consider that as concious, right. Only how can

you really be sure as an independant observer. How do you determine being concious

without a way to communicate from being unconcious as in a coma ?

 

Maddog

[hav0k]

the observer could monitor brain activity?

[J.L. des Alpins]

is the topic still the scientific proof of the soul and god?

hav0k, we are still working toward that goal. By reviewing a few scenarios, we are trying to determine the boundaries of consciousness. Once we have found a line, we will then be able to cross that line and see what is beyond consciousness. If we are lucky, we may find evidence of the soul.

 

Only how can you really be sure as an independant observer. How do you determine being concious without a way to communicate from being unconcious as in a coma?

Maddog, your question highlights the “Problem of Intersubjectivity” , which is about, in a nutshell, a consciousness being conscious of another consciousness. I am trying to prepare a short reply on that topic. Stay put…