But yes. I have experienced hell . The despair that I felt from feeling absolutely certain that my life was over, that I had no more Hope, that all I had to do was to wait for my everlasting torture in a Fire after death is the worst psychological torture you can experience. I am 100 percent sure of that — Beebert

From what I've read of the Eastern position, there isn't a bad Eternity, because people who have a some (or lots of) bad coming, don't reach Eternity yet.

According to that position, Eternity is only reached by someone who is pure, good, and fully-completed in those regards..

Michael Ossipoff

— Beebert

Yes, He is defining what God is not:

nor godhead nor goodness — Agustino

In an earlier post, you agreed that God is Goodness.

(...as I said too.)

Michael Ossipoff

Rather, I meant to account for the apparent dualism monistically, e.g. self versus other — jorndoe

Ok, the Dualism that you're referring to is the absence of oneness with our surroundings.

I guess Advaita is the perfect and pure Monism, because it says that there's really only one Existent.

I'm not an Advaitist (though I'm a Vedantist), because I insist on avoiding assumptions, and I consider the avoidance of assumptions to be more important than ultra-perfect Monism.

, as simply being due to (self)identity, while still taking Levine's explanatory gap serious.

Forgive the delay in this reply. I had to look up Levine's explanatory gap. According to Wikipedia, it's the gap that must be be bridged to solve the Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness.

No, don't take that explanatory-gap, or that "Hard Problem Of Consciousness seriously.

It's a made-up makework "problem" invented by Western academic philosophers who evidently need a problem, so that they'll have something to publish about. You know, "Publish or Perish"..

I've answered it many times in these forums.

How could mere physical material, in a physical purposefully-responsive device like us, result in Consciousness?

Let me say it again:

Animals, such as humans, are purposefully-responsive devices, resulting from natural-selection, and designed by natural-selection so as to best achieve survival and reproduction (which includes care for and protection of offspring).

As such, they must respond to their surroundings in a manner that best achieves those purposes.

Our feelings, likes, disllkes, wants, fears, and efforts are exactly what would be expected for such a purposefully-responsive device. So where's the problem???

I repeat:

Where's the problem???

You continued:

All the self stuff...

The self-stuff consists of the animal (that's us).

together already is what our cognition is — our self-awareness, 1st person experiences

1st-person experience is exactly what one would expect for a purposefully-responsive device such as an animal.

, thinking, etc (when occurring) — and is ontologically bound by (self)identity

Of course the animal has self-identity.

, which sets out mentioned partitioning. We're still integral parts of the world like whatever else, interacting, changing, albeit also individuated.

Of course we're part of our life-experience possibility-world, though we're central and primary to it, because we're what it's for and about.

We're a distinct and special part of it. The essential part of it.

So, cutting more or less everything up into fluffy mental stuff and other material stuff is misleading from the get-go; monism of some sort is just fine, and perhaps a better categorization is that mind is something body can do

Ok, but even that needn't be said, because it's an unnecessary separation of us into Mind and body, as if they were two separate metaphysical substances.

, and body is moved by mind

No, that's Dualism.

Instead of separate body and Mind, there's just the animal.

The fact that the word "Animal" is derived from a Latin word for "Spirit" is a reminder that the animal embodies "spirit" and body as one integral unit. No need to even mention Spirit or Mind. There's just the animal, the purposefully-responsive device.

, alike, which (in synthesis) is what we are as individuals.

But there's no need to synthesize the supposed parts of what's already one thing, never separated in the first place.

Michael Ossipoff

I've expanded my reply a bit to:

Yes. The being, the animal, has feelings and does actions based on his/her predispositions and surroundings. — Michael Ossipoff

...to clarify that I don't say that there's free-will.

Michael Ossipoff

Also, mind does not exist; it is a convenient expression for a set of active and passive functions of intellect and will exercised by a being. Therefore, attributing psychological predicates to a mind is nonsense, and attributing them to a brain is mereological confusion. — Galuchat

Yes. The being, the animal, has feelings and does actions based on his/her predispositions and surroundings.

Michael Ossipoff

Google "The Council of Nicea", to read about what I'm talking about.

No one even tries to deny, for example, that a significant number of books were removed from the Bible at Nicea, because they didn't suit the Bishops' &/or the Emperor's agenda

Search Google for James McGrath's completely objective review of Bart Ehrman's Forged: Writing for God

Also, google Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus.

Forgery was rampant in the Bible. McGrath says that most scholars would agree with that. It's well-accepted that about half of the books in the New Testament weren't written by the person to whom they're attributed.

Ehrman is quoted as saying, "The New Testament wasn't written by God. It has human fingerprints all over its pages." But wasn't that obvious to all of us?

Didn't you get the impression that there was something fishy, when the Gospels keep quoting Christ as saying things to the effect of "Believe on me, or else". Does that sound like something that Jesus would say?

And the Old Testament's "wrathful God" was just the product of some wrathful writers.

Acts 4:13 says that Peter and John were illiterate. But, later, books of the Bible are attributed to them as the authors.

It's said, and McGrath seems to agree, that only about half of what was attributed to Paul was really written by Paul.

Paul's forgers contradicted eachother regarding his position on women's participation in the church.

By the way, quashing the notion of women having participation or status in the church was one of the agendas at the Council of Nicea.

In the first few centuries of Christianity, there were about 100 forgeries written in the name of members of Jesus' inner-circle.

If someone wanted to say or promote something, what better way than to attribute it to someone famous.

Such rampant lying is unbecoming for a book claiming to be the Truth.

Does anyone really believe that God wrote the Bible?

Another thing:

I don't usually get an opportunity to talk to a Biblical literalist. Don't take offense when I express disagreement with that position.

...But, don't you see that you're having faith in a bunch of writers? Is that what religious faith should be?

There's no reason why faith in God should mean faith in a bunch of writers who claim to be speaking for God.

Do you see the difference? It isn't the same thing.

You asked why authoritarian authors would have a motive to attribute heinous orders to God.

You've got to be kidding.

Say you want to do something heinous. Say you want to say that God is on your side, and told you to do it, and told other people to support it. Then you'd be strongly motivated to invent a God who gives heinous orders.

And the Abraham murder-order story makes no sense. Why would God give such an order, to murder a child who hadn't done anything to anyone, other than a test of Abraham's obedience to carry out even the most heinous act?

Maybe you believe in such a God. That, and the Canaan massacre-orders that you believe that God issued, wouldn't come from God.

Oh yes, the justification for that belief is always, a statement that God's ways are mysterious. That's being used as a convenient cover, for the most obviously-wrong claims about what God has ordered.

I'm certainly not saying that God is explainable. But when we're told that God ordered something obviously, blltantly heinous, the obvious and simple explanation is that someone is lying.

You said that I'm motivated to promote anti-Church propaganda. Look, do you think that the Church needs me to discredit it? It does that eminently well on its own.

For example, when the Church charges admission to heaven, by running the scam of taking money to help someone get into heaven.

For example, by the disproportionate number of pedophiles in the priesthood. ...and pedophile-enablers in the Church administrative hierarchy.

etc., etc.

Michael Ossipoff

I'd said:

But I’m not mixing separate things. I’m just not unnecessarily separating, dissecting, the animal (including us humans) into artificially separate body and Consciousness. — Michael Ossipoff

You replied:

That was the point (sort of). :)

What choice do we have but the usual local 1st person perspective? There's no self-escape, no becoming whatever else. We're already, always bound by identity

Of course. We're the animal.

, which sets the stage for "dualistic" (or "partitioned") thinking, like this one:

self: mind, consciousness, self-awareness, feelings, map-making, ...
other: the perceived, the modeled, the encountered, the territories,"

As I was saying before, you're using Dualism with a different meaning. You're using it to mean the absence of one-ness with our surroundings.

...whereas the academic Western Dualists use "Dualism" to mean a dissection of the person (the animal) into body and Mind, two distinct substances or entities. ...a belief in Mind as something separate from the body.

I don't say that we're one with our surroundings (though we're central and primary to, and the essential component of, our life-experience story, which can only be because of us.). I do say that the person, the animal, is unitary, and that it's meaningless, pointless, artificial and unnecessary to want to dissect the animal into body and Mind, Soul, Spirit, etc.

As for Searle, from what of his that I've read, he seems, to me, a Dualist, no matter what he calls himself.

But he's also a quasi- or semi- Materialist, because he said that the physical is still the ultimate origin and cause.

Michael Ossipoff

That Timelessness could be regarded as the more "natural" (in the sense of usual or ordinary) state of affairs, because of the (long duration) temporariness of our life-experience(s).

So it certainly can't be regarded as something undesirable, though nearly all of us aren't currently anywhere near ready for it (according to Hinduism and Buddhism, which are probably right about that).

Michael Ossipoff

So much for the "after-life". It wouldn't be much of a life if you aren't aware of anything. — Harry Hindu

At the end of lives (or at the end of this life, if you don't believe in reincarnation) you won't be aware of the world, a body, individuality, or identity. There will be no such thing as time or events, and you won't know that there ever were any of those things.

...or that there ever were such things as problems, menaces, lack, incompletion, or other such undesirable things.

"Life"? Well of course it won't literally be "life", as we know it now, as the experience of an animal.

Michael Ossipoff

[reply= "trueself;d1837"]

That competitivenss, aggressivenss, is probably from our Chimpanzee ancestry. Fortunately we aren't all Primate. We have Pig ancestry too. There's good evidence that humans are a Chimpanzee-Pig hybrid. (Admittedly, nearly all of our pre-human ancestors were of the Chimpanzee lineage--there evidently were only one or a few pigs in our family-tree).

By "hybrid", I'm referring to a hybridization, followed by continuing repeated "back-hybridization", in which all the offspring of successive hybrid generations mated with the same one of the two hybridizing species.

Trans-ordinal hybridization isn't unheard of.

Back-hybridization isn't unheard of.

Unusual? Sure. Are humans a "usual" species?

More can be found on the web, by googling "Are we a Chimpanzee-Pig Hybrid" (or some such question). I believe that the hybridization-specialists geneticist who makes that suggestion is named Eugene McCarthy (not to be confused with the 60s & 70s politician by that name). He has a website that goes into it at great length, and answers objections.

In fact, maybe include his name when you google.

My two questions are,
who's game are we in — trueself

Each of us is in our own story (or game, if you prefer), of course. Who else's?

, and more importantly on which hardware do we run?

As I mentioned in the "Our World a Simulation?" topic, our life-experience possibility story doesn't need simulation-hardware. It's a possibility-story, and the infinitely-many possibility-stories are there already, and don't need a computer simulation.

Computer simulation can't create a possibility-story, because the infinity of possibility-stories are already there. A computer simulation an only create an opportunity for its programmers to observe a story.

Michael Ossipoff

The world, with its ugliness and evil, does not disappear when one goes to heaven — Thorongil

In death, if the last stage near shutdown is reached, at the end of lives, the world (with its ugliness & "evil"), the body, identity, events and time disappear, along with the knowledge that there ever were such things.

Maybe that Timelessness then, at the end of lives, could be called Eternity, and you could word that, in terms of your own religion, as heaven.

But when it's reached, there's no world, or any hint that there ever was one.

By the way, Hinduism, and probably Buddhism too, suggest that, near the beginning of death, well before shutdown has eliminated identity, time, etc., there are temporary heavens (for some people) and temporary hells (for other people) ...something quite distinct from the Eternity at the end of lives.

(...the end of lives being reached only by a very few most fully life-experienced and life-completed people)

If that's so, I don't have an explanation for it.except that it sounds similar to the NDEs at the very beginning of death.

Michael Ossipoff

As for Abraham & Isaac, you're saying that God ordered a murder, to test someone's obedience regarding violence and murder..

That doesn't sound like God. That sounds like some of those authoritarian authors.

It came from those authors.

Michael Ossipoff

I've deleted this duplicate copy of my post. When it didn't post right away, I tried again to post i t, and so it posted twice.

Michael Ossipoff

Then do you also believe that God told Joshua to perpetrate all those massacres in Canaan?

Michael Ossipoff

The Nicea re-write of the Bible doesn't inspire confidence.

Michael Ossipoff

What's the international conference? — Agustino

It was described in a newspaper article. No, I don't believe newspapers to be reliable about everything, but there almost surely really was that conference. There'd be no motive to make it up. It probably took place in 1983. I don't have more information about it. But no, I didn't make it up.

And how are they "Christian" scholars if they claim the Bible misquotes Jesus?

Who says a Christian scholar has to believe everything in the Bible? Because they revere Christ, they critically examined quotes attributed to Christ.

The article was brief, and was a long time ago. I couldn't tell you what the conferees' credentials were, though the article might have briefly mentioned them..

And how the hell did they establish that the Bible misquotes Jesus?

Good question. I was wondering the same thing. Most likely there are mutual contractions among the Bible's quotes of Jesus. If different quotes in the Bible contradict eachother, then at least one of them must be false.

Maybe they compared the post-Nicea Bible to the pre-Nicea Bible.

Presumably they have a separate source for what Jesus said with which they compare the Bible no?

Not necessarily. Mutually-contradictory quotes would be sufficient to establish false quotes.

But, additionally, I heard that the Council of Nicea threw out parts of the Bible that didn't suit their agenda.

You're clearly bullshitting us most likely.

No, I wouldn't make it up.I have no reason to bullshit.

Michael Ossipoff

I'll take that as agreement.

Michael Ossipoff

You mentioned the Upanishads. I subscribe to Vedanta, and my metaphysics can be regarded as a version of Vedanta metaphysics, though it doesn't match any of the 3 usual Vedanta versions.

Michael Ossipoff

Paul was promoting a social-control-system religion, eventually officially codified at Nicea around 300 A.D.

God didn't write the Bible. The Bible was written by some authoritarian men.

If you're tempted to believe the Bible, then look again at the Book of Joshua.

An international conference of Christian scholars concluded that Christ is heavily misquoted in the Bible.

Don't trust doctrinaire authoritarians. Faith in doctrinaire authoritarians is misplaced.

The Catholic Church collected money from my mother, to be prayed into heaven.

Michael Ossipoff

This is what happens when the reality of dualism is denied, we end up with possibility worlds. Then instead of dualism we have infinitism. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's no reason to believe in the reality of Dualism.

You don't like possibility-worlds? My metaphysics based on possibility-worlds is completely parsimonious. No assumptions or brute-facts.

You can't say that about Dualism or Materialism.

Michael Ossipoff

I meant to answer one additional aspect of what you said:

As you said, my life-experience possibility-story includes a lot of things other than me, and those things and I are all part this life-experience possibility-story.

But I’m central to my life-experience story, primary to it, and its essential component. It’s about me, and for me, after all.

(But that isn’t egotism—your life-experience story is about and for you, too.)

Maybe, instead of “for”, I could say, “From the point of view of”. But, “for” is alright too, and could be regarded as a more personally-perceived way of saying the same thing.

Why you’re in this life, or any life at all:

Your centrality and essentialness to your life-experience possibility-story means that your own predispositions, inclinations, needs, wants, etc., and your sense of individuality (something reportedly not possessed by the most life-experienced people, who have completed their lives, and completed/discharged all of the above things, and even their sense of individuality) made you someone about whom there could be a life-experience story…and that’s the reason why you’re in a life. …because there’s one about someone who meets your description and is you.

Michael Ossipoff

You wrote:
.

Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else.

.
Dualistic in the sense that there are all those things, and us, instead of Advaita’s single Fundamental Existent.
.
But, in Western philosophy, doesn’t Dualism have a narrower meaning, and refer only to the separation of us, the animal, into body, and a separate different substance, Mind?
.

there's nothing contradictory in that, except when messing up anything with anything else, self with other, ...

,
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But I’m not mixing separate things. I’m just not unnecessarily separating, dissecting, the animal (including us humans) into artificially separate body and Consciousness.
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Our self consists of an animal, the whole unitary animal.
.

Maybe "'partitioning' thinking" is better wording, e.g. self-awareness versus not-self/other.

.
But when it partitions the animal into separate body and Consciousness, then I feel that it’s artificial and unnecessary, and therefore unparsimonious.
.

We're still part of the same world, along with whatever else, though.

.
Quite so. The possibility world that we all live in is the setting for each of our separate life-experience possibility-stories.
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And it could be asked (Locks implied this question), how is it that all of our life-experience possibility-stories are set in this same possibility-world.
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Well, why not, and how could it be otherwise?
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Obviously there must be a species that you’re a member of, and it must have other individuals in your world.
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There are infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories. So it’s no surprise that there’s one for each possible being, including every being in the possibility-world that is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.
.
Of course you don’t experience any other being’s life-experience story, in this world or any other. But it’s obvious that there’s a life-experience story for every possible being, including each of those other beings in the possibility-world that is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story. …including each being on this forum. Intuitively, and by social instinct, you know that each of them is an inhabitant of this world in the same way that you are, and has at least roughly similar experience in it (within the large diversity of human character and circumstances, of course).
.
Michael Ossipoff

Will our descendants be that much different from us? — Posty McPostface

Better swimmers?

Michael Ossipoff

My apologies then. You didn't say it.

Michael Ossipoff

And if there is interiority, then that is where consciousness resides. You can’t see it, but it’s real. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Not only invisible, but it's completely unnecessary (and therefore unparsimonious) for explaining our experience.

Real? So you imagine....and overactive imagination is what we're talking about here.

For example, you and I are attempting to reach mutual understanding right now. And we say, aha, I understand what you’re saying. But you can’t point to that understanding. Where does it exist? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

In your imagination, if you're referring to some imaginary Mind entity separate from the body.

The animal is unitary, and needn't be unparsimoniously divided into body and Consciousness..

Michael Ossipoff

There have been objections to my calling philosophical Dualists "Spiritualists"

All right, I take it back.

It's unfair to the Spiritualists.

At least they usually only express their belief about people after death. ...whereas philosophical Dualists believe in an unparsimonious division of theliving animal into body and Mind, or body and Soul or Spirit.

I've admitted that we are, or closely approach, pure consciousness at the end of lives (or at the end of this life, if you don' t believe in reincarnation), though we're obviously nothing other than the animal during life.

Michael Ossipoff

Before I answer, a terminology comment:

"Physicalism" is an unfortunate word, because of its two distinct meanings...a philosophy-of-mind meaning, and a metaphysical meaning. So I've begun to say "Materialism" instead of (metaphysical) "Physicalism", and I'd use a substitute for (philosophy-of-mind) "Physicalism" if there's a suitable one.

Maybe my term "Animal-ness" is a good substitute for "philosophy-of-mind Physicalism".

...or maybe the abbreviation-acronym "pomp".

I'll start using one or the other, or maybe alternating them..

like the way Chomsky sets the stage for understanding Descartes' concept of mind. He says Descartes was firstly a scientist living during the scientific revolution (read physicalism). Descartes made progress seeing humans as machines, but couldn't complete the project due to volition. He could see no way to mechanize it. — Mongrel

Yes, the old "Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness". ...a nonsensical, non-existent, philosopher-imagined "problem".

If Descartes perceived humans and other animals as purposefully-responsive devices, he was right.

If he thought that that somehow contradicts volition or consciousness, then he was wrong...like a proud tradition of head-up-the _ _ _ academic philosophers who followed him.

As I've explained, there's nothing in our experience that differs from or contradicts or is inconsistent with how our surroundings, feelings, intents and efforts would be perceived by the purposefully-responsive device that we are.

Michael Ossipoff

... the problem [ :) ]facing Descartes. What do you think of his solution?

I can't believe that the blatantly unparsimonious Dualism is still being considered, or the various silly Spiritualist circumlocutions used by some modern followers of his.

Michael Ossipoff

Undeniably there are some good individuals, and some really good individuals.

Undeniably there's no hope at all for humanity as a whole.

...because of the natural-selection-caused social-animal instincts of most individuals. (e.g. Remember P.T. Barnum's great insight that there's a sucker born every minute.)

Michael Ossipoff

Ok, so "Thanatos" besmirched the name of a philosopher, in addition to a Greek word. :)

By the way, the theory that he was banned is eminently plausible, given his great qualification for being banned. Maybe he somehow convinced the admins to give him another chance. If so, then he seems to have already botched his other-chance.

Michael Ossipoff

"Principle" sounds too un-alive or impersonal.

"Good-ness" is better. I think we all agree that good intent is felt, and is there.

Michael Ossipoff

I guess explanation is only for physics and metaphysics.

Toward God, the Principle of Good, the good-ness of what is, gratitude is all that's possible or needed.

Michael Ossipoff

I did no such thing, since if people are saying the soul is natural — John Harris

In your usage, "supernatural" is the same as "nonphysical", and so, for you then, "natural", must mean "physical" :D

Newsflash: When someone said that the soul is natural, they didn't mean that it's physical.

A more reasonable meaning for "natural" would be "not artificial". Most people who believe in a soul probably don't believe it to be artificial :)

Two good dictionary definitions of "natural":

Not artificial.

Usual or ordinary, rather than an exception..

You're all confused by your funny meaning for "natural".

To anyone who isn't a Materialist, Reality is nonphysical. But such a person doesn't believe that Reality is other than natural.

It's common knowledge that "supernatural" is often used as a double-meaning trick. Anything that isn't physical is, by some people's definition, "supernatural". But, in movies, "supernatural" means "in contravention of physical law", like vampires, walkling skeletons and mummies, witches, sorcerers, etc.

So "supernatural", and its two meanings, can be used to equate non-physicality with contravention of physical law, and vampires, etc.

Sometimes that's dishonest, but sometimes it's just ignorant or sloppy.

If you're trying to advicate Materialism or metaphysical Physicalism, someone should let you know that you aren't an effective advocate of it.

No, there isn't a soul--but not because science hasn't deteected it.

,I was using their own range of applicability, and even if there is a soul, it has no clear range of applicability. I'm not surprised you don't grasp that.

What can be grasped there is that you haven't a clue what "range of applicability" means.

Michael Ossipoff

"You may have noticed that Thanatos imagines himself to be the Defender-Of-Science."

You may have noticed that Michael Ossipoof is making lame personal attacks, which makes him a troll. — John Harris

John Harris is Thanatos Sand, right? Who else could sound so much like Thanatos Sand?


I'd said:

...wanting to apply science outside of its legitimate range of applicability--the workings of this physical world and the interactions of its parts.

...trying to make science into a metaphysics, or even a religion.

John/Thanatos says:

I never did either of these things, and Ossipoff the troll didn't show I did.

Really? Here's a quote that I got from someone else:

if the soul is natural, it would have been detected by now. There's just no chemical entity/human part that could escape sciences exhaustive means of detection. — Thanatos Sand

That's a hilarious example of trying to apply science outside of its legitmate range of applicability. An example of a belief that science decides metaphysical questions. An example of trying to make science into a metaphysics or a religion.

Science is valid within its range of applicability. To try to apply it outside that range is pseudoscience--something regrettably common on Internet forums.

I'm not claiming that there's a soul, but the claim that, if there were one, it would have been detected by science is hilarious.

Scientists have done a pretty good job explaining matter and energy and explaining how that's all the universe is made of, with dark and anti- matter being material forms. — Thanatos Sand

Actually, scientists admit that they don't know what dark matter and dark energy are. They don't claim to have "done a prettiy good job of explaining" them.

Rejecting a notion that hasn't been supported by science or the laws of physics, and is undercut by all we know of those things, isn't mechanical thinking, but rational thinking. — Thanatos Sand

No, it's pseudoscience.

Science and the laws of physics attempt to describe the physical world. That's all they attempt to describe, explain or answer about

Except when a pseudoscientist like Thanatos gets on the subject, and seems to believe that they have metaphysical authority.

Michael Ossipoff

p.s. Disregard John Harris and Thanatos Sand. Evidently they're clones, or else one of them is a sockpuppet. Though I'm not really authorized to, I apologize for them on behalf of this forum's membership.

You wrote:

I am having a hard time understanding how our experience of consciousness as an animal removes the possibility of a soul

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It doesn’t remove the possibility of a soul. It merely removes the need to assume one.
.
The fewer assumptions, the more believable.
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The explanation that doesn’t need unsupported, complicated or elaborate assumptions is more appealing.
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William of Ockham was an English philosopher who lived from late 1200s to around mid 1300s. He’s credited with Ockham’s Principle of Parsimony.
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Here’s how Merriam-Webster describes that principle:
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“A philosophic and scientific rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily, which is interpreted as preference for the simplest of competing theories, over more complex ones. …or a preference that explanations for unknown phenomena be first sought in terms of known quantities.”
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I prefer an explanation that doesn’t need to assume or posit something more than what’s obvious.
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Because our experience can be explained by our animal-ness, then why assume another entity?
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Why assume an artificial dissection of the animal into a body and a soul? We know there’s the body, the animal, and that’s enough to explain our experiences. No need to assume anything else.
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We humans, as animals, could be regarded as more elaborate relatives of the Roomba.
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There are two obvious differences:
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1. We’re much more complex and elaborate.
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2. Completely different origin and purpose. Roomba was designed by humans, for the purpose of floor-vacuuming. We were evolved by natural-selection, selected for survival and reproduction (which of course includes support and protection of offspring).
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But we have something basic in common with Roomba: We’re purposefully-responsive physical devices.
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An animal has been selected by natural-selection, to respond to its surroundings in a way that furthers its natural-selection-caused purposes mentioned above. To do that, of course it must assess its surroundings, and judge what actions would help its purposes. How would that look to the animal? Exactly like our own experiences and efforts look to us
.

or how 'if then' factors interacting with each other disqualify the possibility.

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It doesn’t really disqualify the possibility of another metaphysics being true. No metaphysics can be proved.
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But the metaphysics that I propose, the metaphysics based on those “if-then”s, doesn’t need or make any assumptions, or posit any brute-facts.
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Therefore, among metaphysicses, it’s the hands-down winner, by the Principle of Parsimony.
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if you'd like to expand on them, go for it.

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Well I’m having a go at it in this post.
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If we were born to experience the same world without a soul like influence yet individualized

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Our evaluation of our surroundings and efforts toward our goal, were built into us by natural-selection.
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Individual feeling is natural for us, because our naturally-selected task is to further the survival and reproduction of the individual that we are.
.

, then how did humanity become individuals to begin with?

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Nearly all animals are, for the reasons described above. There are a few kinds of animals, such as ants and bees, in which the individual is completely subordinated to its community. But that’s relatively unusual. I’ve personally experienced that a fire-ant cares nothing for itself. If you’re near its nest, it’ll get onto you and sting you, with the understanding that it will of course get squashed as a result. It doesn’t care. It only cares about making it unpleasant for you to be near its colony’s nest.
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But nearly all kinds of animals instead act as individuals, to further the naturally-selected-for goals for the individual that they are.
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Humans, of course, are social animals, and so our species is strongly influenced by social considerations and interactions among humans. …often or usually to our detriment, of course (…though it must have been adaptive at some time in our prehistory).
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Wolves have a lot of that social-ness too, which is why it so readily happened that some wolves and humans began to work together. (…the wolves being eventually bred into dogs).
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how did culture and artificiality arise

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Yes, some people object that our complex and varied culture, our technology, the ability of some individuals to lie so well, and the ability of other individuals to believe lies so well…Some people object that those things make us too different from the other animals to be called animals.
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But I disagree. We’re just animals with special abilities. And I feel that animalness-deniers overestimate human rationality, as exemplified in societal matters in any particular day’s newscast. Societal affairs routinely exhibit an unmistakable and strong herd-instinct.
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About my name: The direct Latin transcription of its Cyrillic spelling would be Osipov. It probably became Ossipoff when my Russian grandfather pronounced it during his immigration, and, with it written only in an unfamiliar alphabet, the immigration-clerk wrote it down, from its sound, in a customary English-like spelling for how it sounded.
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Two of my grandparents came from Russia right after the Russian-Revolution. My grandfather had been an officer in the Tsar’s army, and had to immediately leave the country when they lost.
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I’d guess that Osipov might roughly approximate the meaning of Josephson, but that’s only a guess. I’ve heard that it isn’t a really unusual name in Russia.
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Michael Ossipoff

Does anyone really believe that God told Abraham to kill his son?

...or that God would order, condone and even assist Joshua's (alleged) massacres in Canaan?

(Actually, archaeological evidence suggests that the Israelites gradually and peacefully assimilated in Canaan, and that their supposed conquest of Canaan never happened.)

Michael Ossipoff

Suppose a child wants to play video-games. If he really wants to, his dad might allow him to. But who says that that dad will or should ensure that he always wins? The variety of outcomes is part of the game.

But, despite the societally messed-up nature of some worlds (such as ours), God has given us better than that.:

Let me quote from a song by the Byrds, entitled "5D":

"I opened my heart to the whole universe, and found it was loving."

(Surely, by "universe", they're referring to Reality, all that is.)

Yes we live in a societally messed-up world, but the larger Reality is good.

It seems to me that both Atheists (Atheists are always Fundamentalists) and many Theists seem to speak of God as an element of metaphysics. God isn't an element of metaphysics. We're talking about a Principle of Good that'sabove metaphysics.

Metaphysics is about what is. But we're talking about a Principle of Good, above metaphysics. ...the reason why what is, is as good as it is.

It isn't something provable. It's a feeling of gratitude that some people have, for the goodness of what is.

It isn't something to argue about or debate.

I debate metaphysics, not religion.

Michael Ossipoff

This is a philosophy of religion discussion... it's not placed in Ethics this topic, you know... — Agustino

Call it what you want. My answer is still valid.

When I say that this philosophy-of-religion discussion is using a made-up term without a meaning ("evil"), I'm validly participating in this discussion of philosophy-of-religion.

P.s. At no extra charge, I'll offer an answer to why there is "evil" in this world:

We were all born in the Land of the Lost.

I suggest that, consistent with that, could be some really messed up conduct or ours in previous lives, whereby we really messed-up our lives..

We discussed reincarnation at a discussion-thread by that name.

You can't very well object to an explanation involving reincarnation, in a philosophy-of-religion discussion. Yes, different people believe differently, but some of you have a difficult time explaining the sorry state of our societal-world. Reincarnation neatly explains our birth in a world such as this.

Michael Ossipoff

I suggest that "evil" isn't well-defined. It isn't possible to discuss something without a good definition.

It sounds to me as if you're re-ifying evil.

Look, there are seriously misguided and lost people, and typically then have a malicious tendency. Some of them are dangerous &/or harmful to others.

That isn't "evil". It's just misguided, lost, malicious &/or dangerous people.

Michael Ossipoff.

You may have noticed that Thanatos imagines himself to be the Defender-Of-Science.

...wanting to apply science outside of its legitimate range of applicability--the workings of this physical world and the interactions of its parts.

...trying to make science into a metaphysics, or even a religion.

But, in that regard, he's merely expressing a common popular belief.

Thanatos is much too far-gone to talk to, but I just wanted to make this comment.

Michael Ossipoff

So then you talk to your disembodied, distributed, Sheldrake morphogenic, holographic, quantum Mind-repository.

Does it tell you what to say?

I guess it won't become a dangerous problem until it starts telling you what to do.

In any case you can hardly fault me for very taking my position, now can you? — Rich

No, there are all sorts of philosophical positions here. Some are sillier than others. I wouldn't criticize you for having silly beliefs.

But, just as a suggestion, the sillier your beliefs, the more advisable it would be for you to learn to disagree politely.

I have been possessed by the Great Natural Laws of Nature.

I don't criticize you. I only criticize your predispositions :)

Oh wait--Behaviorally, your predispositions are you.

Michael Ossiipoff