Are you saying there is no soul?

No. I just said that it cannot be created.

By making it not exist. It's not reduced to anything if nothing is left.

1) Soul is irreducible — bahman

This is based on what?

If souls exist, then how could they not have come from somewhere?

1) Soul is irreducible — bahman

I don't know what this means. Why accept that there is such a thing as a soul, in the first place?

By making it not exist. It's not reduced to anything if nothing is left. — BlueBanana

I can show that things that can be created can be destroyed also. You just need to reverse time to see this. Now lets suppose that soul is uncreatable but destroyable. Just reverse time to see that soul become creatable.

1) Soul is irreducible
— bahman

This is based on what? — BlueBanana

Because that is the very person. But suppose that soul is reducible. This means that it has parts which parts are irreducible. So we are back to home, each part cannot be created.

Because that is the very person. But suppose that soul is reducible. This means that it has parts which parts are irreducible. So we are back to home, each part cannot be created. — bahman

So nothing can be created because they contain irreducible parts?

You just need to reverse time to see this. — bahman

I'd like to see you reverse time.

And now that you mention it, destroying something irreducible and reversing that would be creation from nothing. I disagree with 3), things can be created without design.

Why should they come into existence? They just simply exist.

Because that is the very person. But suppose that soul is reducible. This means that it has parts which parts are irreducible. So we are back to home, each part cannot be created.
— bahman

So nothing can be created because they contain irreducible parts? — BlueBanana

No, reducible thing can be built.

You just need to reverse time to see this.
— bahman

I'd like to see you reverse time.

And now that you mention it, destroying something irreducible and reversing that would be creation from nothing. I disagree with 3), things can be created without design. — BlueBanana

The creation is an act. You need knowledge to perform any act. This means that we need the knowledge of what we are supposed to create in order to create. This is very definition of design.

No, reducible thing can be built. — bahman

What's the difference? Has the universe always existed because it has irreducible parts so it can't have been created?

You need knowledge to perform any act. — bahman

No you don't. Tripping over accidentally doesn't, yet it creates a mark on the ground.

This is very definition of design. — bahman

It's not the definition of creation.

No, reducible thing can be built.
— bahman

What's the difference? Has the universe always existed because it has irreducible parts so it can't have been created? — BlueBanana

Irreducible parts of universe have existed since the beginning of time.

You need knowledge to perform any act.
— bahman

No you don't. Tripping over accidentally doesn't, yet it creates a mark on the ground. — BlueBanana

We are talking about act (what you intend to do) and not event.

This is very definition of design.
— bahman

It's not the definition of creation. — BlueBanana

Well, could you perform any act not knowing what you are doing?

So creation is action, and it's always intentional and planned. Therefor souls can just come to existence (event) but not be intentionally created by conscious agent (act)?

2) Why can't irreducible be designed?

So creation is action, and it's always intentional and planned. — BlueBanana

Yes.

Therefor souls can just come to existence (event) but not be intentionally created by conscious agent (act)? — BlueBanana

I already argue about the fact that soul cannot be created or destroyed whether accidentally or intentionally.

I already argue about the fact that soul cannot be created or destroyed whether accidentally or intentionally. — bahman

Can't find that. From 2) and 3): souls cannot be created (intentional act).

2) Why can't irreducible be designed? — BlueBanana

What you are supposed to design? The thing in your disposal is irreducible.

What you are supposed to design? The thing in your disposal is irreducible. — bahman

Well if we take irreducible particles for example, they do have different properties (and they can be transformed to other particles but that's beside the point). Those properties can be designed even if what it consists of can't.

I already argue about the fact that soul cannot be created or destroyed whether accidentally or intentionally.
— bahman

Can't find that. From 2) and 3): souls cannot be created (intentional act). — BlueBanana

Sorry for not being clear enough. The soul cannot be created if you agree with OP. I already argued that soul cannot be destroyed if it cannot be created.

Sorry for not being clear enough. The soul cannot be created if you agree with OP. I already argued that soul cannot be destroyed if it cannot be created. — bahman

I wasn't talking of the destruction, I meant the creation (or becoming to existence to be more accurate) accidentally.

What you are supposed to design? The thing in your disposal is irreducible.
— bahman

Well if we take irreducible particles for example, they do have different properties (and they can be transformed to other particles but that's beside the point). Those properties can be designed even if what it consists of can't. — BlueBanana

Souls are same. Why? Because if you dig enough inside you find that there is only a person inside you and difference between you and other people are result of genetics, body and environment. So there is nothing to design. Particles that you talk about are reducible to string. All strings are similar but vibrating at different frequencies. Why all strings are similar? Occam's razor.

Sorry for not being clear enough. The soul cannot be created if you agree with OP. I already argued that soul cannot be destroyed if it cannot be created.
— bahman

I wasn't talkng of the destruction, I meant the creation (or becoming to existence to be more accurate) accidentally. — BlueBanana

A chain of causality cannot start from nothing. Thing is different if you have an agent with ability to decide.

Souls are same. Why? Because if you dig enough inside you find that there is only a person inside you and difference between you and other people are result of genetics, body and environment. — bahman

Particles that you talk about are reducible to string. — bahman

Both are debatable. What if souls are different from each other and reducible, and on top of genes and environment are another factor in who a person is? And string theory hasn't been universally accepted yet.

A chain of causality cannot start from nothing. — bahman

Again, debatable, but even if we accept that we could say that soul is just another string with another vibrations.

reducible to what? I am really not understanding the way that term, and its opposite, is being used in this discussion.

Again, there are two fundamental questions that are not being addressed, or at least, not to my satisfaction: (1) What is the "soul"? and (2) why even believe that there is such a thing?

"Modern science gives no indication whatever of the existence of the soul or mind as an entity; indeed the reasons for disbelieving in the soul are very much of the same kind as the reasons for disbelieving in matter. I think the opponents of materialism have always been actuated by two main desires: the first to prove that the mind is immortal, and the second to prove that the ultimate power in the universe is mental rather than physical. In both these respects, I think the materialists were in the right."
―Bertrand Russell, What Is The Soul? (1928)

(1) What is the "soul"? — Mitchell

That seems, so far, irrelevant to the arguments proposed in the OP.

(2) why even believe that there is such a thing? — Mitchell

Also, irrelevant, as the question can be considered to be a hypothetical one, and there are other discussions for that topic itself; this discussion exists within the premises within which it can be considered to be a sensical one in the first place.

Obviously "soul" carries religious meaning, but the Cartesian mind seems distinct from the body, even if we concede it is composed of the same substance. There does seem something meaningfully distinct in critical ways between rocks and perceptions of rocks.

The Catholic doctrine which I think is representative of Christian belief generally is that 'each human soul is individual and immortal, immediately created by God. The soul does not die with the body, from which it is separated by death, and with which it will be reunited in the final resurrection.'

Again, there are two fundamental questions that are not being addressed, or at least, not to my satisfaction: (1) What is the "soul"? and (2) why even believe that there is such a thing? — Mitchell

If you read The Apology and related dialogues, 'the soul' is central, insofar as Socrates goes to his death unperturbed because his soul is at peace, and that quality of peace of mind or soul, is presented as being the most excellent of virtues, and indeed is one of the main reasons that Socrates is so well-known to history.

Many of the dialogues around this point are concerned with how best to prepare 'the soul' for the death of the body, as indeed it is assumed that the soul pre-exists the body, and will continue after death. (The Platonic view is different to the Christian in that the pre-existence of the soul was later declared anathema to Christians, as I understand it.)

The idea of the soul could almost be read allegorically, in fact I think it should be, as it is impossible to show that there is really such an entity. However - and this is an important caveat - there is a known problem in modern cognitive science, and also in philosophy, which is accounting for the subjective unity of conscious experience:

A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of of a single encompassing state of consciousness.

Chalmers & Bayne

Now, the faculty which performs that unitive act, that brings everything together into a whole, is not something that has been accounted for by cognitive science - this is the so-called 'neural binding problem', which is discussed here.

So one plausible account of the soul, is that it simply is this unity, or the principle of unity, or what it is that enables the diversity of experience and sensation to hang together. Because, contra Russell, whilst it is true that 'the soul' is not something that science could plausibly investigate, science also doesn't have any obvious solution to what it is that provides the subjective unity of consciousness.

Another point is that, whether the soul is real or not, it is not something you have, or don't have; in other words, if it is considered real, it is not an attribute or an organ, but is the very seat of the identity of the being. It is, in a sense, a reference to the totality of the being - all of the attributes, intentions, memories, talents, and latencies that characterise the being.

This use of 'soul', both by Plato and by Chalmers, makes it synonymous to 'mind;, it is what unifies, or "contains" the mental states that constitute the self. As such, then I can agree that there is a soul, but question whether the soul survives the death of the body. But as neuroscience progresses, the (at least) dependency of mental states on electro-chemical activity in the brain suggesting that once the brain dies, so to does the soul, 'soul' seems to have taken on a meaning of something separate from the mind, something that will survive the death of the brain/mind. This separation of mind from soul is what I question. It is this idea of the soul that is vague and such that I see no evidence to suppose that it exists.

It is this idea of the soul that is vague and such that I see no evidence to suppose that it exists. — Mitchell

There is evidence from NDE's of consciousness seeming to persist even when the brain itself has no measurable activity. That is the subject of a number of studies by a Dutch cardiologist by the name of Pim Von Lommel. It is of course controversial, but there are data. There are also records of children who apparently recall previous lives, which recollections have been corroborated against documentary and witness testimony. I don't regard any of them as conclusive but they are suggestive.

Souls are same. Why? Because if you dig enough inside you find that there is only a person inside you and difference between you and other people are result of genetics, body and environment.
— bahman

Particles that you talk about are reducible to string.
— bahman

Both are debatable. What if souls are different from each other and reducible, and on top of genes and environment are another factor in who a person is? — BlueBanana

We already discussed the case that soul is reducible. Soul to me is the "I" and indifferent among individuals.

And string theory hasn't been universally accepted yet. — BlueBanana

Yes, that is correct.

A chain of causality cannot start from nothing.
— bahman

Again, debatable, but even if we accept that we could say that soul is just another string with another vibrations. — BlueBanana

This is off topic so please lets put it aside.