Mind vs. spirit vs. soul
- Thread starter Gaze
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Simple and clear descriptions. But are these concepts necessarily separate. Many perceive the mind as tied to the spirit. They are different but inseparable concepts. For example, the term "mind of God" has always been used to signify the character and nature of God in terms of cognition and spirit. They are combined and work together.
So is a heavy red tomato but that doesn't mean that heavy, red and tomato are the same things. Even though you can't really take one of them away without changing what it is.
In my opinion, they are all the same because they are all in the mind. The mind controls the capacity of thought and intellectualism, data gathering and problem solving. The mind (the brain) gives us our understanding of everything by sending messages to our sensory organs. I do not think the soul (or the essence) is a physical or natural entity, nor the spirit, thus it leads me to conclude that the mind is what creates it. To my mind, they are ideas, and the brain creates ideas.
To add as a little appendix to my thoughts on this: I think only the mind exists, and the other two are sub-components created by the mind. Imagine a flow chart with the physically existing entity at the top being the mind, and below it are two sub-theories (spirits and soul) which are products of the mind.
To add as a little appendix to my thoughts on this: I think only the mind exists, and the other two are sub-components created by the mind. Imagine a flow chart with the physically existing entity at the top being the mind, and below it are two sub-theories (spirits and soul) which are products of the mind.
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You have a state and an abstractable quality of being-ness though.
Imagine if Star Trek teleporters were real. If you could be destroyed in one place and rebuilt in another. How does the teleporter know how to reassemble you with all your particulars? What makes you still be you when it does? You have an abstract superposition which can hypothetically be conveyed as information which does not need to be contained within your particular individual existential state of being.
Star Trek teleports aren't real, so I do think you're basing your comparison of spirits and teleportation on scientifically fictional theory. I have not much knowledge on the existence of real teleportation, but I can say that it does exist in the form of what some physicists describe as the transfer of "quantum states" between separate atoms. This is entirely based on scientific research and computer systems, and bears no resemblance to the existence of spirits or souls.
Do you also discredit Schrodinger's Cat because it is a fiction?
The point of the Star Trek analogy is to make a thought experiment using familiar ideas. Whether it is actually possible or not is irrelevant.
Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that information is not dependent upon physical form.
Do any of you remember the old telephone modems? Do any of you remember paper punch cards? Floppy disks? Magnetic tapes?
Do you remember when you could dial up another computer with one of those modems where you put the handset in a cradle with an actual microphone and speaker inside, and push play on a tape and it would convert the magnetic tape information into electronic information, which got sent to the modem and translated into sound impulses, which the telephone translated back into electrical impulses, which were then translated back into sound impulses at the other end which were translated AGAIN back into electronic impulses, and if they were saving to tape even back into magnetic information?
Information is not dependent on form. It can be light beams, sound waves, writings on paper, an arrangement of poker chips, streams of water, springs and gears... the information is abstract yet we can convey it reliably through all kinds of modulations. Just look at the entire internet - that's what it's all about.
So the question is this: if you could digitize a human into information, and information is not dependent on physical form, and the information could perfectly describe one particular human, is this not unlike a soul? What if you could edit the human while in digitized form? Does that not make the information kind of an ESSENCE which would determine the very nature of the human?
Do any of you remember the old telephone modems? Do any of you remember paper punch cards? Floppy disks? Magnetic tapes?
Do you remember when you could dial up another computer with one of those modems where you put the handset in a cradle with an actual microphone and speaker inside, and push play on a tape and it would convert the magnetic tape information into electronic information, which got sent to the modem and translated into sound impulses, which the telephone translated back into electrical impulses, which were then translated back into sound impulses at the other end which were translated AGAIN back into electronic impulses, and if they were saving to tape even back into magnetic information?
Information is not dependent on form. It can be light beams, sound waves, writings on paper, an arrangement of poker chips, streams of water, springs and gears... the information is abstract yet we can convey it reliably through all kinds of modulations. Just look at the entire internet - that's what it's all about.
So the question is this: if you could digitize a human into information, and information is not dependent on physical form, and the information could perfectly describe one particular human, is this not unlike a soul? What if you could edit the human while in digitized form? Does that not make the information kind of an ESSENCE which would determine the very nature of the human?
The mind's spirit's got soul.
[video=youtube;p3IlAWBQkYc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3IlAWBQkYc[/video]
Soul is who you really are, soul is YOU. You can't exist without it. It's your individuality in this universe, where as Spirit is like a soul in universal form. Spirit comes within the soul, it's how the soul wants to express itself and it's also link back to the universe.
Mind is your human consciousness and thoughts.
Mind is your human consciousness and thoughts.
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Then I should have received the memo stating this thread and the opinions within must only consist of thought experiments, am I correct? No? My original point discussed the existence of physical entities, which can only be said of the human mind. So I think my original opinion still stands in-regards to existence. Thought experiments is nothing that I claimed to want to discuss, but I am sure other members replying to this thread would love to do so.
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No, you dismissed my side out of context without due consideration. You said that I was basing my premise off of fiction as if there's no precedent for using fictions, and I'm telling you that there is one. You just don't care to understand what I'm saying.
Why do you even want to tell us your opinion if we're not even allowed to talk to you about it? What's the point? What do you even get out of it?
Do you want to talk to a wall and have it not talk back? Maybe go talk to yourself then.
Because my original point, which you quoted and took issue with, tried to discuss my opinions in-regards to the existence, which you then claimed to be irrelevant. I did try to be sincere by suggesting other members would love to discuss thought experiments, it is of no interest to me.
I didn't say your opinion was irrelevant. I said the fact that my premise is based on fiction is irrelevant.
I was discussing things with you just fine until YOU tried to shut ME down. There was nothing wrong with what I initially said to you, and I was nice enough and civil even. I provided a counterpoint and it only went wrong when you chose to dismiss my point instead of even trying to look at it.
If you don't want to talk about something then simply don't reply. Or say you don't want to. But if you're going to get an attitude and start some shit when I was trying to fairly engage you then you're going to have a hard time.
The Greek word for mind: Nous - It means your ability to think rationally and critically
The Greek word for soul: Psuche' - It literally means breath/wind, but in the biblical sense it is the breath that animates, it's the breath that God breathed into Adam during creation, and it's our core selves, our will, determination and personality.
The Greek word for Soul is: Pneuma - Pneuma also literally means breath/wind, however Pneuma is contextually used to refer specifically to God as in the Holy Pneuma/Spirit, Spirit is just life and character as Psuche' is but literally God's spirit in you.
There is some pretty good data out there that our minds are not just confined to the brain within our head.
The problem is the taboo within the mainstream scientific “materialist” has historically been career suicide even though the results say there is something going on.
The second problem is there is no good explanation or good working theory on how the mind/brain interact with our universe.
It is just as likely that the brain is a receiver of information (soul) which IMO is the individual representation of (spirit).
Just as we can damage or rewire a radio or TV and it will change how it behaves does not effect the signal being received and interpreted through it.
You can take out the picture tubes of an old TV and get no picture…you can damage or sever connections to the occipital region of the brain and get no visual picture…but the signal hitting the back of the eye is still there.
"When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness."
~Eugene Wigner
The problem is the taboo within the mainstream scientific “materialist” has historically been career suicide even though the results say there is something going on.
The second problem is there is no good explanation or good working theory on how the mind/brain interact with our universe.
It is just as likely that the brain is a receiver of information (soul) which IMO is the individual representation of (spirit).
Just as we can damage or rewire a radio or TV and it will change how it behaves does not effect the signal being received and interpreted through it.
You can take out the picture tubes of an old TV and get no picture…you can damage or sever connections to the occipital region of the brain and get no visual picture…but the signal hitting the back of the eye is still there.
"When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness."
~Eugene Wigner