• Syamsu
    132
    The soul more or less means the totality of all emotions throughout life, as a whole.

    So it can be said one has fear in the soul, love in the soul, eventhough one was frightened previously and in love previously.

    Choices are made out of emotion, and in the end a soul is judged for the choices it made.

    By logic, there can be no evidence whatsoever of the agency of a choice, consequently there is no evidence whatsoever of emotions, or the soul. It is a matter of chosen opinion.

    When 2 souls join as one in holy matrimony, it means the husband and wife decide as one. Either husband or wife can take up leadership in some matter, to take up leadership does not neccesarily preclude deciding as one.

    When it is said someone lacks a soul, as a matter of chosen opinion, it either means someone lacks emotions, or it means someone lacks unity of emotions. If someone is angry one minute, and nice the next minute, he or she lacks the unity of soul.

    My guess about the start of someone's soul is when God first likes someone, which may be pre birth or after birth, and only known by faith.
  • neonspectraltoast
    258
    I think a person just has a character that is the soul. I don't really distinguish it from the body, though consciousness is non-local.
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    is when GodSyamsu
    Meaning?
  • Syamsu
    132
    By not distinguishing the soul from the body, then you will have no way to distinguish personal opinions like about what is beautiful, from statements of fact, like the body has 2 arms.
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    You used the phrase, "is when God." I don't know what that means. What do you mean in using that phrase?
  • neonspectraltoast
    258


    Why? I don't understand.

    I'm not saying my body isn't eternal.
  • Syamsu
    132


    An opinion, like to say something is beautiful, has the logic that it is chosen, and expresses what it is that makes a choice. So opinions are in reference to what it is that makes a choice, and the soul is one of the things that makes choices.

    Fact has the logic that, a fact is obtained by evidence of a creation forcing to produce a 1 to 1 corresponding model of it in the mind. So facts only apply to chosen things. Such as the human body.

    Therefore the soul and the body are in completely different categories, but connected by choosing.
  • Syamsu
    132
    The time when God first likes someone.
  • hachit
    237

    Well traditionally the soul is defined as everything required to constitute you.
    In other words the soul is the minimum amount of property's to be recognized as you.

    Note "you" can be replaced with any person, it just easier to express that way.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    Yes. A set of conditions that makes ones life possible but are not "your" conditions if you accept the premises of the explanation.

    One has to give up the desire to connect our experiences to accept the grounds of experience.

    It is a tough sell.
  • Syamsu
    132
    Not really. Some philosophy talks about 3 different souls, the intellectual soul, the instinctive soul, and I forget, or never learned, the last one. The soul generally always refers to the agency of choices, whether it is intellectual choices, or instinctive choices, or otherm
  • Syamsu
    132
    It only makes sense to judge the soul, if the soul makes choices.
  • hachit
    237

    Sorry, I should have said in the Christian/Jewish traditions.
    I'm more familiar with the theology or the soul than that.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    The soul refers to an agency of choices but also to what makes it possible to make them. The arguments about free will versus determinism are interesting up to some point but don't really struggle with why it is even a topic we talk about. When one walks around with one answer or another, what does it change?
  • InPitzotl
    880
    By logic, there can be no evidence whatsoever of the agency of a choice,Syamsu
    Why not?
  • Syamsu
    132
    Supposing there are alternative futures A and B. A is made the present, meaning A is chosen. Then there is the question about agency "what was it that made the choice turn out A?"

    Then we gather evidence in order to establish a fact of what made the decision turn out A, and come to the conclusion that it was in fact X which made the decision turn out A.

    But then X being a definite factual thing, we are saying X forced A, and the decision could not have turned out B. So then there is an error of contradiction between the premise that alternative future B was available, and the conclusion that B could not have been chosen.

    The solution is then to choose the answer to the question, resulting in a subjective opinion on it. Then no definite factual thing is established, and then it is still true that the decision could have turned out B.
  • Syamsu
    132
    Not really. In Christian tradition the soul also chooses. And the philosophy of 3 souls was of a catholic.
  • Syamsu
    132
    What are you referring to with "what makes it possible to make choices"?

    Free will vs determinism makes a lot of practical difference. Determinists generally leave no room for emotion / personal opinion, and objectify emotions.

    To say behaviour is forced by race in the blood, and the content of someone's character is a matter of biological fact, belong together.

    See the logic of determinism always goes together with objectifying emotions, character, because the emotions must be factual things in the determinist chain of cause and effect.
  • InPitzotl
    880
    Supposing there are alternative futures A and B. A is made the present, meaning A is chosen. Then there is the question about agency "what was it that made the choice turn out A?"Syamsu
    Back up a hair. Here's what you're presuming to explain:
    By logic, there can be no evidence whatsoever of the agency of a choiceSyamsu
    I see this as a no-go theorem on having evidence of agency (of a choice). So I would ask you to define agency. I would also ask about choice, but then, I think you're implicitly defining choice sufficiently.
    Then we gather evidence in order to establish a fact of what made the decision turn out A, and come to the conclusion that it was in fact X which made the decision turn out A.Syamsu
    What if X is equivalent to the agency?
    But then X being a definite factual thing, we are saying X forced ASyamsu
    Is an agent not a definite, factual thing?
    So then there is an error of contradiction between the premise that alternative future B was available, and the conclusion that B could not have been chosen.Syamsu
    Let's introduce tags for times; T1<T2<T3. Let's say our agent is Y. Being a real moral dilemma, suppose A is saves a puppy; B is murders a puppy. Say further that the choice happens at T2...
    and the decision could not have turned out B.Syamsu
    ...but I would hope not in an ontic sense; i.e., a sense in which we can say that at time T1, Y is a puppy murderer. So the sense in which B is possible has to be a sense that doesn't make Y culpable for B. And unless we're all puppy murderers, then it should be possible for Y to "force" A. If Y can force A, how come X can't be Y? Can we not at least evidentially confirm that Y is not in a general sense a puppy murderer?
  • hachit
    237
    well I'm Wesleyan and Catholics is hard because it can change easy (something I don't want to get into here and thus why I don't go deep into Catholics Doctrine).

    The ways I was taught the soul was ether a spirit (Greek as a understanding)
    or one entire beings (Jewish play on the word throat) and thus the one protestant should use (not suprises if some don't).

    And we'll it is interesting the that it was a catholic,
    us protestant have the Armenian teachings rather than the Calvinism teachings. (But this is not what you wanted to talk about here.)
  • Syamsu
    132
    I think it should have been clear to you that "agency", is by definition what it was that made the choice turn out A.

    I cannot really follow your argument. I am guessing you want it to be a matter of fact that Jack chose to go left, instead of right. Then Jack being agent of the decision, and agency therefore fact.

    But then I must refer you back to the explanation why it can never be the case that agency is factual.
  • InPitzotl
    880
    I think it should have been clear to you that "agency", is by definition what it was that made the choice turn out A.Syamsu
    No, that was by no means clear. In fact, that makes this less clear, because:
    Then there is the question about agency "what was it that made the choice turn out A?"Syamsu
    ...there can be no question about whether the thing that made a choice is an agent or not if by definition anything that makes a choice is an agent. At best, there's a question of if the choice is made by something.
    I am guessing you want it to be a matter of fact that Jack chose to go left, instead of right.Syamsu
    Want it to be a matter of fact? What a curious phrasing!

    But at this point we don't even care. Something chose to go left, instead of right. That thing is by definition an agent. Who cares if it's Jack or not?
    But then I must refer you back to the explanationSyamsu
    ...what explanation? I certainly may have missed something, but I searched for "agen" on this page, and just saw your original post, a response to hachit, Valentinus's post, and your reply. Your reply doesn't make sense. At best there's an opinion as to whether a choice has the properties you specify (essentially Principle of Alternate Possibilities). But if it does, by definition, whatever made the choice is an agent. I have a suspicion whatever argument you're referring to you simply forgot to give it. The closest I have seen is your original statement, which simply says that by logic, there can be no evidence of an agent, but does not say anything about what logic that is.
  • Syamsu
    132

    The argumentation is about whether agency can be established as fact forced by evidence, or if agency can only be identified with a chosen opinion.

    And then it is demonstrated that establishing agency as fact, leads to an error of contradiction. Therefore it is wrong, which means there are no facts about agency.

    And then it is shown that identifying agency as a matter of chosen opinion works, it does not lead to error.
  • RaniaYoussef
    2
    In the Islamic understanding each individual is made up of three parts. One part material and two part ethereal. In English both ethereal parts have been translated as soul, mistakenly, from Arabic, Farsi, Sawahili, Turkish, and every Middle Eastern language.

    The physical body - Jasad
    The lower Self - Nafs
    The higher Self or Soul - Rouh

    The physical body needs shelter, food, water, physical activity, medicine, and sleep to survive.

    The lower self is used to refer to physical desires that go beyond the basics needs. Some may be justified while others are not. Sex, specific food preference and napping are justified physical wants. While alcohol, drugs, food binging, or over sleeping aren't. We refer to these desires by saying my lower self wants to sleep now, my lower self would kill for some pork chops, and/or my lower self wants to bone this person.

    The higher self is used to refer to the ethereal needs. What does your soul need ?
    1. To connect with our creator through meditation, prayer, visions, dreams, or astral projection. In Arabic we say my soul is being called upon, or missing a part, when referring to needing to pray or meditate.
    2. To love and be loved by those around you. We literally say in Arabic as a figure of speech my soul is in my son, in describing the unconditional love of a parent, and how placing my most valuable component in him to feel his pain and joy instantly. We say my soul has parted, when a loved one passes. We also say my soul is wondering to my living mother, in describing how I miss her.
    3. To serve a purpose. This purpose could be learning, creating, clearing, building, crafting, understanding, simplifying, uncovering or teaching anything. This validates the meaning of our highly vibrating soul withing this weak and dying physical shell. We say my soul is driving this need, ill stop when it stops, to describe the unstoppable force taking over.
    4. To keep vibrating at high frequencies by maintaining good ethics. Staying virtuous keeps the soul vibrant; while breaking values by lying, cheating, or acting evil thickens the pressure on your soul slowing down the vibrations, causing sadness, depression and melancholy to eat away at you.

    Of course it is also believed the more you feed and satisfy your lower self it prevails as the dominant driver over you. And the more you feed and satisfy you higher self the more it dominates your beliefs, choices, and actions. It's also understood that with our death; both the physical and lower self end. Leaving only our higher self to pass on.
  • frank
    15.8k
    Soul is a kind of music closely related to R&B. Prime example:

  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.2k

    Nice post Rania, I'm happy to welcome you here on the forum.
  • ernestm
    1k
    thats very interesting, which particular islamic tradition states that?

    Very similar to Egyptian ideas of ka, ba, and ptha
  • Syamsu
    132
    To talk about "vibrant" the way you do, is to make the soul material. It's like saying the soul is energy. It's a sign of corruption.

    The soul chooses, and only a chosen judgement can identify what emotions are in the soul. That are the rules which logic dictates. To make the soul material, means to make the soul factual. Facts are forced by evidence, not chosen. Which means to throw out chosen judgement based on human emotions, the human spirit, and throw out chosen judgement by God the holy spirit.

    Any materialization of what is properly spiritual dilutes the purity of emotions, faith. And especially in view of the powerful materialistic culture at present in academics, it should be forbidden.

    I think this is the reason that Islam has stopped to function for many muslims, especially in the West. It doesn't work emotionally anymore, because materialistic objective notions have crept into what is properly spiritual and subjective. Even the idea of what is subjective has been corrupted with materialist notions of dopamine chemistry in the brain.

    And when Islam stops working, then a typical response is to hardline the whole of Islam, to get it to work again. But I think just education on the difference between fact and opinion, would get it working again.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.2k
    Facts are forced by evidence, not chosen.Syamsu

    I would say that facts are forced by time. As time passes, whatever has occurred, has occurred, and those are the facts which cannot be changed, set in stone you might say, to emphasize the materiality of facts. But a freely choosing human being can make some decisions as to what will come to be fact.
  • Banno
    25.1k
    The soul more or less means the totality of all emotions throughout life, as a whole.Syamsu

    No, it doesn't.
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