Philosophy Discussion Forums

What does a soul without a body do? If my body dies but my soul lives on, does it perceive things in the physical world? Does it linger where my body has died or does it travel? As it no longer inhabits a body it does not have access to eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or nerves. Is it therefore blind and deaf? Or are there other, non physical ways of sensing the world? How would they work? People often say of someone who has died that they are "looking down" on their loved ones? If this is not to be taken literally, how is it to be taken? What could figuratively looking down be? We generally know, I think, what figurative uses of words are meant to connote, but here - what?

I realize (and don't deny) there is a note of sarcasm to the above, but my point and my questions are at least somewhat sincere. There are those who are not necessarily religious who believe that the body and mind have separate existences, which operate on their own and could each potentially carry on without the other. But what is a mind without a body? A common answer is to describe it as an awareness or a consciousness. But is not awareness determined by sensing, and is not sensing facilitated by sense organs? Does one need to be embodied first for some period of time before one can exist as an awareness without the body? Does the awareness have to first learn through the sense organs and the functioning of the brain what it is to be aware, before it can live on its own? How does it continue to be aware - that is continue to be an awareness in anything but name - without the body (including brain)? Does it live on memories? Can memories be generated without a brain? How? Does calling it "consciousness" change anything? Would not such consciousness still require at least an apprenticeship in a body?

Such questions are not to be shoved off as trite and immaterial (pardon the pun). If a mind cannot exist, function, operate, without a body, what is the point in saying they are separate, that they exist on different plains? Why even talk about them as both needing to be accounted for? Why this need to bifurcate? We can talk of the mind causing the body to act. But why put it that way when we could just say that a person decides to act?

Many mystics speak of an astral plane that's where your "subtle body" or "astral body" goes. So the incorporeal would be the not-yet-observed corporeal. However, Brian Cox noted that the LHC proved that spirits don't exist because, given the claims about spirits' appearance and actions, anomalies should have been noticed at those energy levels.

Gaps in which spirits may be inserted:
- possible smaller scales than known fundamental particles
- possible strange other dimensions of reality.

Still, there seems to always be a gap in which to insert such things just as there are always tax loopholes for billionaires. Like most other organisms, we are gifted in finding niches, in this case a mental one.

A gap in which spirits may be inserted:
- the apparent randomness of quanta might be attributed to the unnoticed activity of spirits.

Duckrabbit wrote: ↑April 5th, 2018, 4:57 pm What does a soul without a body do?

I guess that what something 'does' equates to 'purpose'.

We are all unique Conscious Perspectives (Souls),
equally distributed at every point (Planck volume) in the entire One Universe, ever,
for a moment,
that perceive the One, unchanging, ALL inclusive Universe/Reality/Truth... God...
The (feature of the) One Omni- Self! that is to be perceived before us. *__-
Some Souls happen to be in a position within a body, others within deep space or a star or a rock...
Thus, ALL is Known! Omni-!
Every moment of Universal existence is a unique moment of Self Knowledge!
All happening simultaneously!!
Now THAT'S a 'Big Bang!'!
And that is the function of Souls. *__-

May I offer a very speculative answer to the OP’s questions about the nature of our soul and how it may might perceive without our sense organs.

If Penrose is right there was a universe before the Big Bang that underwent a Big Crunch prior to our Big Bang.

Using Occham’s razor, to not invent unfamiliar things like “nothingness”, imagine a preexisting one that is like ours but was very old and collapsing.

Let us ask what becomes of the black hole centers of its aging galaxies? Let us also ask what becomes of its very advanced, technologically, social ecosystems that orbited their galactic centers?

Would not the black holes exhibit a new dynamic or physics that Is forced on them as they get closer and closer to each other. We do see in our familiar expanding universe that there are black holes that interact with other black holes.

We would surmise that our universe has evolved from a preexisting one as Penrose suggests. This suggestests that whatever followed that Big Crunch of Stuff could only be what we have observed the Big Bang to be. Plasma cooling into hydrogen and collecting into new galaxies.

There was however in this transition what we could call a change of scale. Rather than a change of “kind” from nothingness to somethingness we see a new galaxy being ultimately formed by the collapse of billions of galaxies in the pre-universe into one galaxy in the post universe, our familiar universe.

Now we need to answer my second question. What became of all the technologically advanced life forms that orbited those ancient galaxies before the B.B.?

According to Paul A. LaViolette, PH. D. In his book “GENESIS of the COSMOS” our ancient legacy before the Egyptians tells of the creation of our world as a “Separation” of the Gods.

Could that Separation Event have been the fleeing of the ancient societies from their collapsing black holes?

If you do the math then you will discover that those ancient societies would be quite small compared to our atoms, considering that one of our atoms may be the size one or more of those crunched black holes and the societies that use to revolve around them would be proportionally smaller.

That makes are souls fractally smaller than us but still technologically advanced and socially empowered as a collective of many other separated societies and able to attach or detach from our atoms.

A living cell in our world than becomes a vessel for huge collections of tiny societies seeking to have some causal efficacy in their new world of now collapsed galactic centers.

BigBango wrote: ↑April 6th, 2018, 8:01 pmIf Penrose is right there was a universe before the Big Bang that underwent a Big Crunch prior to our Big Bang.

Noting that he does not dispute the "big freeze" but proposes a subsequent collapsing in on itself.

BigBango wrote: ↑April 6th, 2018, 8:01 pmLet us ask what becomes of the black hole centers of its aging galaxies? Let us also ask what becomes of its very advanced, technologically, social ecosystems that orbited their galactic centers?

Would not the black holes exhibit a new dynamic or physics that Is forced on them as they get closer and closer to each other. We do see in our familiar expanding universe that there are black holes that interact with other black holes.

Once supermassive black holes have eaten everything around them, they are expected to dissipate away over quadrillions of years (ie. very slowly) via Hawking radiation. Aside from local gravitational situations (like our own as we are drawn to the Great Attractor), for the most part the supermassive black holes of each galaxy will hurtle ever further from each other due to dark energy.

BigBango wrote:What became of all the technologically advanced life forms that orbited those ancient galaxies before the B.B.?

According to Paul A. LaViolette, PH. D. In his book “GENESIS of the COSMOS” our ancient legacy before the Egyptians tells of the creation of our world as a “Separation” of the Gods.

Could that Separation Event have been the fleeing of the ancient societies from their collapsing black holes?

If you do the math then you will discover that those ancient societies would be quite small compared to our atoms, considering that one of our atoms may be the size one or more of those crunched black holes and the societies that use to revolve around them would be proportionally smaller.

That makes are souls fractally smaller than us but still technologically advanced and socially empowered as a collective of many other separated societies and able to attach or detach from our atoms.

A living cell in our world than becomes a vessel for huge collections of tiny societies seeking to have some causal efficacy in their new world of now collapsed galactic centers.

That is one of the trippiest things I have read for some time - well done! :)

Thx Greta! I have done the maths and have concluded that a nominal estimate of the size of a pre-BigBang society would be slightly larger than a Plank volume. That is using the ratio of the mass of our earth social system to our the mass of our black hole center we could conclude that, if our earth system is average, then pre Big Bang societies are now just slightly larger than a Planc Volume. Therefore empirical methods, appropriately constructed, could falsify these claims.

If not it could lead us into explaining how chemistry becomes biology through the subtle nudging of advanced pre-BigBang societies invested in gaining power in their new universe!

My impression is that it's the very (relative) lack of sentience around us that gives us the space to live. The relative passivity of things and many other organisms means we are swamped by the overwhelming competition that would come from being constantly surrounded by equals. If bacteria could strategise as we do, we'd be in big trouble, perhaps even more so if the fundamental bits of reality are sentient.

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Goetscj <[email protected]>
Date: April 7, 2018 at 7:09:16 PM PDT
To: Johnny Goetsch <[email protected]>
Subject: Philmemo1

Greta wrote: ↑April 7th, 2018, 7:02 pm My impression is that it's the very (relative) lack of sentience around us that gives us the space to live. The relative passivity of things and many other organisms means we are swamped by the overwhelming competition that would come from being constantly surrounded by equals. ... perhaps even more so if the fundamental bits of reality are sentient.

That is the problem that I have with pan-psychic Whitehead. His “Actual Entities” underlay everything, even electromagnetic waves.

In my speculative scheme, I see galaxies as centrifuge like objects that, over time, separate ecosystems filled with living entities that carry meaning, from the purely physical galactic centers and all the dead flotsam in its system.

In this view, I am focusing on what happens when the local universe is collapsing and transforms itself into a new young universe. I think Hawking’s as you mentioned earlier, evaporation theory is more relevant in our expanding universe and is not as relevant in a collapsing universe.

Don’t forget that in the competition of life amongst itself size ends up often being more significant than its plans for dominance. For life forms from a pre-universe to survive in a post Big Bang universe it takes a tremendous amount of the kind of power that could only be had by massive amounts of “socialization” and merging of power sources just to have a tiny influence over the physical elements in its new universe.

Greta wrote: ↑April 7th, 2018, 7:02 pm My impression is that it's the very (relative) lack of sentience around us that gives us the space to live. The relative passivity of things and many other organisms means we are swamped by the overwhelming competition that would come from being constantly surrounded by equals. ... perhaps even more so if the fundamental bits of reality are sentient.

That is the problem that I have with pan-psychic Whitehead. His “Actual Entities” underlay everything, even electromagnetic waves.

In my speculative scheme, I see galaxies as centrifuge like objects that, over time, separate ecosystems filled with living entities that carry meaning, from the purely physical galactic centers and all the dead flotsam in its system.

In this view, I am focusing on what happens when the local universe is collapsing and transforms itself into a new young universe. I think Hawking’s as you mentioned earlier, evaporation theory is more relevant in our expanding universe and is not as relevant in a collapsing universe.

Don’t forget that in the competition of life amongst itself size ends up often being more significant than its plans for dominance. For life forms from a pre-universe to survive in a post Big Bang universe it takes a tremendous amount of the kind of power that could only be had by massive amounts of “socialization” and merging of power sources just to have a tiny influence over the physical elements in its new universe.
[/quote]

Before I attend your post, I will try to blow your mind back based on some thoughts in bed last night :)

Everything has a maximum speed. So a black hole is where the gravity is faster than light speed. A sonic black hole occurs when inwards air pressure is greater than the speed of sound.

So I wondered about our mind's have processing speed, the reason why we can never perceive the exact present, always being at least a matter of milliseconds behind. What would a consciousness black hole be like? So I imagined a brain and nervous system that's hauling in information too quickly for conscious processing ... sound familiar? :) What happens to that leftover information? All of the information's disparate qualities are mashed up and compressed into an effective mental black box that we refer to as "general impressions", "instinct" or "intuition".

BigBango wrote: ↑April 7th, 2018, 11:03 pm

Greta wrote: ↑April 7th, 2018, 7:02 pmMy impression is that it's the very (relative) lack of sentience around us that gives us the space to live. The relative passivity of things and many other organisms means we are swamped by the overwhelming competition that would come from being constantly surrounded by equals. ... perhaps even more so if the fundamental bits of reality are sentient.

That is the problem that I have with pan-psychic Whitehead. His “Actual Entities” underlay everything, even electromagnetic waves.

In my speculative scheme, I see galaxies as centrifuge like objects that, over time, separate ecosystems filled with living entities that carry meaning, from the purely physical galactic centers and all the dead flotsam in its system.

In this view, I am focusing on what happens when the local universe is collapsing and transforms itself into a new young universe. I think Hawking’s as you mentioned earlier, evaporation theory is more relevant in our expanding universe and is not as relevant in a collapsing universe.

Don’t forget that in the competition of life amongst itself size ends up often being more significant than its plans for dominance. For life forms from a pre-universe to survive in a post Big Bang universe it takes a tremendous amount of the kind of power that could only be had by massive amounts of “socialization” and merging of power sources just to have a tiny influence over the physical elements in its new universe.

Yes, panvitalism - that the universe is a living system containing living systems - makes more sense to me than panpsychism (with its competition problem).

My impression at present is that it's not earlier forms of life that will be pertinent so much as what will come. It seems very possible that over billions of years ever more advanced civilisations will emerge and once they start swapping information and connecting, the galaxy itself develops a kind of nervous system, just as humans have effectively added significantly to the Earth's "nervous system" - its capacity to notice its environment. Basically the kind of merging you spoke about above.

Now consider the challenges advanced organisms (or post-organisms) must face as the universe ages - asteroids and comets, stellar storms, the death of their star, rogue planets, stars and black holes, supernovae, black hole and neutron star blasts. The capacity to travel interstellar distances is critical. Then consider possible unknown risks that may lurk in the dense and intense centres of galaxies. Then there are the monstrous effects when galaxies collide.

Any entities capable of surviving all that would seemingly be able to tolerate any conditions, including being able to live off the energy of space itself in some bizarre (to us) immaterial manner and may even find a safe way of negotiating collapses in space or another big bang - or they might be the trigger.

Duckrabbit wrote: ↑April 5th, 2018, 4:57 pm What does a soul without a body do? If my body dies but my soul lives on, does it perceive things in the physical world? Does it linger where my body has died or does it travel? As it no longer inhabits a body it does not have access to eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or nerves. Is it therefore blind and deaf? Or are there other, non physical ways of sensing the world? How would they work? People often say of someone who has died that they are "looking down" on their loved ones? If this is not to be taken literally, how is it to be taken? What could figuratively looking down be? We generally know, I think, what figurative uses of words are meant to connote, but here - what?

I realize (and don't deny) there is a note of sarcasm to the above, but my point and my questions are at least somewhat sincere. There are those who are not necessarily religious who believe that the body and mind have separate existences, which operate on their own and could each potentially carry on without the other. But what is a mind without a body? A common answer is to describe it as an awareness or a consciousness. But is not awareness determined by sensing, and is not sensing facilitated by sense organs? Does one need to be embodied first for some period of time before one can exist as an awareness without the body? Does the awareness have to first learn through the sense organs and the functioning of the brain what it is to be aware, before it can live on its own? How does it continue to be aware - that is continue to be an awareness in anything but name - without the body (including brain)? Does it live on memories? Can memories be generated without a brain? How? Does calling it "consciousness" change anything? Would not such consciousness still require at least an apprenticeship in a body?

Such questions are not to be shoved off as trite and immaterial (pardon the pun). If a mind cannot exist, function, operate, without a body, what is the point in saying they are separate, that they exist on different plains? Why even talk about them as both needing to be accounted for? Why this need to bifurcate? We can talk of the mind causing the body to act. But why put it that way when we could just say that a person decides to act?

There's simply no good reason to believe that the mind is something different than the body, just as much as it would sound absurd to say that blood circulation is something different than the heart. Mind is what the brain does with what the sense organs perceive.

Duckrabbit wrote: ↑April 5th, 2018, 4:57 pm What does a soul without a body do? If my body dies but my soul lives on, does it perceive things in the physical world?...

One might reply; no, plainly it doesn't perceive things in the physical world because it would be liberated from the single and peculiar perspective that goes with having a physical body.

Maybe the soul persists as a spirit and 'perceives' things in a different - more liberated - way than is possible through our limited senses. Or maybe it doesn't persist at all, it simply becomes one with everything else and no longer has any point of view. But in either case it has a more coherent relationship with the universe than the dogs-dinner of contradictions served up through our bodily sensations.

What does a soul without a body do?

Nothing! perhaps sleep.

Brain and mind are not the same entity.

The Brain is the source, the holding place, of consciousness, the mind, but the Brain is not consciousness itself, consciousness has no substance, is not a material Reality that is readily apparent, is not measurable as to location and momentum in Space- Time.

First, “beginning”, motion has no angular momentum, no velocity of speed an direction, is not readily apparent, exists as an oscillation, a vibration, is not measurable as to location and momentum in Space-Time, is stagnant, dead, is liken to treading water, exists as the pure energy, as an insignificant innate, inner, motion of a an omnipresent, Infinitely Finite Indivisible Singularity having no relative numerical value, having a numerical value of Zero-0, as the God Particle, as the Higg's Boson, existing within an omniscient State of Singularity, within the Higg's Field.

The Theory of Everything, defines the Nature of Singularity, of Existence itself, of Pure Unadulterated Energy itself, God, the cause of the Reality of Everything, 0/1

The Big Bang never happened. Existence began with a "bump" in the Night, the displacement of a Singularity having no relative, numerical value of Zero-0, which upon displacement was transfigured, converted, was reborn a Singularity having relative, a numerical Value of One-1, the Creation of the Reality of First Cause.

Should read; The Mind is the source, the brain is the holding place of the Mind, Consciousness. The Brain is not consciousness itself, consciousness has no substance, is not a material Reality, is not readily apparent, is not measurable as to location and momentum in Space- Time, is a Creation.

,

The trick is to see that the experiencing we do may be intentional in its essence (not in all cases I think) but to further see that our incarnate circumstances are accidental to experiencing per se and to realize further that there is a second intentionality between the brain and its environment that is mediated again by structures that are accidental (in the medieval sense) namely the senses.

That they are accidental does not make them unimportant for one to know the truth for all of physics is an analysis of these accidental structures.

The moon is an accidental structure. Niel Armstrong was an accidental structure and a further accidental fact is that he stepped on the moon.

Duckrabbit wrote: ↑April 5th, 2018, 4:57 pm
But what is a mind without a body? A common answer is to describe it as an awareness or a consciousness. But is not awareness determined by sensing, and is not sensing facilitated by sense organs? Does one need to be embodied first for some period of time before one can exist as an awareness without the body? Does the awareness have to first learn through the sense organs and the functioning of the brain what it is to be aware, before it can live on its own? How does it continue to be aware - that is continue to be an awareness in anything but name - without the body (including brain)? Does it live on memories? Can memories be generated without a brain? How? Does calling it "consciousness" change anything? Would not such consciousness still require at least an apprenticeship in a body?

All of our sensory organs as well as the atoms that make them up including the quarks and gluons etc as well as the laws by which they interact are accidents of experience. It is easy to imagine that it could have been otherwise. But it isn’t.

We must acknowledge that it seems it is not other and formalize two hypothesis as we go forward. No ghosts. No zombies. These are not necessary laws. They are hypotheses that have a reasonable chance of holding up scientifically. But yes we can imagine ghosts and zombies easily. But they don’t seem to exist. Admittedly more study remains but the vast majority of our current experiencing has a nature that conforms to these principles.

But it is an accident. It is wrong to suggest that non incarnate experiencing - identical in every way to incarnate experiencing save when it looks in a mirror and sees nothing could exist.

You miss something. A mind could exist without a body but it just seems they don’t. A ball dropped on earth moves down. It could move up but they just don’t so we have raised that to a level of physical law. As neurology proceeds we will find what the laws that govern experiencing are.

A good start are these two. No zombies, no ghosts.

Action did not have to be equal and opposite but it looks like it is. Experiencing did not have to be incarnate but it looks like it is.