Pythagoras or some other Greek philosopher went to Egypt in search of higher knowledge. The Egyptians believed that the Sun god was reborn every day anew. The human soul was similar to the Sun god. In popular belief it was reborn into the afterlife after death. But esoteric tradition held that it was reborn many times unless it was initiated into higher mysteries. Pythagoras or other Greeks took this secret knowledge to Greece and the Greek colonies on the Italic Peninsula. — Apollodorus

I appreciate this sketch. I must have come across this back in the day and then forgot only for me to recall it here via my "rebirth-waking up again" metaphor.

I appreciate this sketch. I must have come across this back in the day and then forgot only for me to recall it here via my "rebirth-waking up again" metaphor. — 180 Proof

Absolutely. As Plato and others said, learning is really a process of remembrance. Memory brings to mind things both unknown and forgotten. Maybe there is some good in this forum, after all ...

Still, seeing how "being re-incarnated" entails a new brain-CNS-body at birth and yet, therefore, without postnatal memories encoded in a neonate (because e.g. a tree can't be stuffed (found) inside an acorn), @Banno's philosophical question remains: "What gets reincarnated" – to which I add – that also belongs to my self?

The soul (psyche) has a higher aspect that remains in contact with the Universal Intelligence (Nous)... — Apollodorus

Stop there. What is the soul?

...to which I add – that belongs to the self? — 180 Proof

Yes; that's the follow-on question: the presumption is that Napoleon gets reincarnated as Apollodorus; but how is Apollodorus the same as Napoleon?

What is the soul? — Banno

The soul is a form of intelligent energy. An immaterial substance that has the power of knowledge and action, of being aware of itself and of other things and of acting upon or interacting with itself and other things.

The physical body (soma) contains the metaphysical soul (psyche) which contains the spirit (pneuma or nous).

The spirit has two two aspects, (1) one that always contemplates the Universal Intelligence and does not descend into the physical world, and (2) one that is connected to the soul and incarnates in a body in the physical world.

The lower part of the soul is the part that retains memories and other impressions of past lives in latent form. When the soul is reincarnated, memories etc. remain dormant with the exception of basic instincts and it acquires a new identity during the course of the current embodied existence.

What reasons do you have for this belief? Universal Intelligence too...

but how is Apollodorus the same as Napoleon? — Banno

He isn't. Unless we also assume that Banno is the same as 180 Proof. But you're denying that.

What evidence do you have for this? — Tom Storm

Evidence for what?

So all you're really saying is something like a universal soul or mind or patterns of attachment is/are constantly dying and being reincarnated as every subsequent being? In that case I, as the individual I take myself to be, could have no more connection to any being born after my death than to any other. Or?

Evidence for what? — Apollodorus

The soul is a form of intelligent energy. An immaterial substance that has the power of knowledge and action, of being aware of itself and of other things and of acting upon or interacting with itself and other things.

The physical body (soma) contains the metaphysical soul (psyche) which contains the spirit (pneuma or nous).

The spirit has two two aspects, (1) one that always contemplates the Universal Intelligence and does not descend into the physical world, and (2) one that is connected to the soul and incarnates in a body in the physical world. — Apollodorus

That.

Reason is the only source of knowledge (sense perception can only provide one with evidence of something insofar as our reason tells us to take such sensations to be 'of' things - to be of a world - and so on). For to know something is to have acquired a true belief in a manner approved of by Reason. And philosophy itself is just the practice of using reason to find out what's true.

As for 'mind', the term refers to an object that bears mental states.

So the question of what it is that is reincarnated, remains.

You've called it "the soul" but haven't told us what it is.

One thing that we cannot conclude is that it is Apollodorus that is reincarnated - those beleifs, memories, intentions, desires...

So what's the point?

It's the opinion of those who studied the subject. Read Plato, Plotinus, and other philosophers. That's why I asked how reincarnation may be justified in philosophical terms.

Read Plato, Plotinus, and other philosophers. — Apollodorus

OK, I see.

The soul is a form of intelligent energy. — Apollodorus

...energy as a magic cloud. This is where reincarnation meets bad physics.

How many Joules in a soul?

As for 'mind', the term refers to an object that bears mental states. — Bartricks

I get that. I normally refer to it as "consciousness" or "intelligence" in itself, like the Universal Intelligence or Nous (with a capital "N"), whereas by "mind" I tend to mean the individual consciousness or intelligence (nous with lower-case "n") especially in the embodied state. It doesn't really matter though.

How many Joules in a soul? — Banno

How many Joules in anger or fear?

So all you're really saying is something like a universal soul or mind or patterns of attachment is/are constantly dying and being reincarnated as every subsequent being? — Janus

Not quite. The Universal Intelligence (Nous) emanates individual intelligences or souls (nous/psyche) which are reborn time and again until they eventually return to their original source like sea waves rising from and subsiding back into the sea. But that's just one way of looking at it.

The soul is a form of intelligent energy. An immaterial substance that has the power of knowledge and action, of being aware of itself and of other things and of acting upon or interacting with itself and other things. — Apollodorus

I think you’d have a fair amount of difficulty supporting that with reference to original sources. I personally believe the notion of an ‘immaterial substance’ is incoherent, as no such ‘substance’ can be detected by means of the senses or instruments.

It’s also worth saying that there’s nothing like ‘intelligent energy’ in Buddhist doctrine also, that I’m aware of.

I’ve reincarnated the following from an old post of mine on this topic.

There was an opinion piece published in Scientific American, by physicist (and physicalist!) Sean Carroll, called Physics and the Immortality of the Soul. Carroll argues that belief in any kind of life after death is equivalent to the belief that the Moon is made from green cheese - that is to say, ridiculous.

But such an assertion is made because of the presuppositions that the writer brings to the question. In other words, he depicts the issue in such a way that it would indeed be ridiculous to believe it. But this is because of a deep misunderstanding about the very nature of the idea.

Carroll says:

Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?

I can think of a straightforward answer to this question, which is that the soul is not 'made of particles'. In fact the idea that the soul is 'made of particles' is not at all characteristic of what is meant by the term 'soul'. (I also think the claim that ‘the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood’ are strongly contestable, but I’ll leave that.)

But I think the soul could more easily be conceived in terms of a field that acts as an organising principle - analogous to the physical and magnetic fields that were discovered during the 19th century, that were found to be fundamental to the behaviour of particles. This is not to say that the soul is a field, but that it might be much more conceivable in terms of fields than of particles, or of energy.

Morphic Fields

Just as magnetic fields organise iron filings into predictable shapes, so too might a biological field effect be responsible for the general form and the persistence of particular attributes of an organism. The question is, is there any evidence of such fields?

Well, the existence of 'moprhic fields' is the brainchild of Rupert Sheldrake, the 'scientific heretic' who claims in a Scientific American interview that:

Morphic resonance is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. It enables memories to pass across both space and time from the past. The greater the similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance. What this means is that all self-organizing systems, such as molecules, crystals, cells, plants, animals and animal societies, have a collective memory on which each individual draws and to which it contributes. In its most general sense this hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

As the morphic field is capable of storing and transmitting remembered information, then 'the soul' could be conceived in such terms. The morphic field does, at the very least, provide an explanatory metaphor for such persistence.

Children with Past-Life Memories

But what, then, is the evidence for such effects in respect to 'life after death'? As mentioned previously in this thread, a researcher by the name of Ian Stevenson assembled a considerable body of data on children with recall of previous lives. Stevenson's data collection comprised the methodical documentation of a child’s purported recollections of a previous life. Then he identified from journals, birth-and-death records, and witnesses the deceased person the child supposedly remembered, and attempted to validate the facts that matched the child’s memory. Yet another Scientific American opinion piece notes that Stevenson even matched birthmarks and birth defects on his child subjects with wounds on the remembered deceased that could be verified by medical records.

On the back of the head of a little boy in Thailand was a small, round puckered birthmark, and at the front was a larger, irregular birthmark, resembling the entry and exit wounds of a bullet; Stevenson had already confirmed the details of the boy’s statements about the life of a man who’d been shot in the head from behind with a rifle, so that seemed to fit. And a child in India who said he remembered the life of boy who’d lost the fingers of his right hand in a fodder-chopping machine mishap was born with boneless stubs for fingers on his right hand only. This type of “unilateral brachydactyly” is so rare, Stevenson pointed out, that he couldn’t find a single medical publication of another case.

Carroll, again

Carroll goes on in his piece to say that 'Everything we know about quantum field theory (QFT) says that there aren’t any sensible answers to these questions (about the persistence of consciousness)'. However, that springs from his starting assumption that 'the soul' must be something physical, which, again, arises from the presumption that everything is physical, or reducible to physics. In other words, it is directly entailed by his belief in the exhaustiveness of physics with respect to the description of what is real.

He then says 'Believing in life after death, to put it mildly, requires physics beyond the Standard Model. Most importantly, we need some way for that "new physics" to interact with the atoms that we do have.'

However, even in ordinary accounts of 'mind-body' medicine, it is clear that mind can have physical consequences and effects on the body. This is the case with, for example, psychosomatic medicine and the placebo effect, but there are many other examples.

He finishes by observing:

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV.

But that is not what 'most people have in mind'. If you start from the understanding that 'everything is physical', then this will indeed dictate the way you think about such questions. And it is indeed the case that there is no such 'blob' as Carroll imagines. But that is not what 'soul' is; but what it is, is something that can't be understood, given the presuppositions he’s starting from.

"There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it." ~Cicero

It's the opinion of those who studied the subject. Read Plato, Plotinus, and other philosophers. — Apollodorus

"Studied the subject?" Those old dudes just made some shit up with which to spackle the huge cracks in the haunted houses of woo they'd built. Brilliant, even genius, woo is still just woo.

:death: :flower:

Not quite. The Universal Intelligence (Nous) emanates individual intelligences or souls (nous/psyche) which are reborn time and again until they eventually return to their original source like sea waves rising from and subsiding back into the sea. But that's just one way of looking at it. — Apollodorus

Is there more than one correct or accurate way of looking at it, or is it all just metaphor? And, if accurate, how do you know these things, anyway? Are you relying on authoritative texts, or do you believe you have direct knowledge? If you are relying on authoritative texts, how do you know they are authoritative?

This is not to say that the soul is a field, but that it might be much more conceivable in terms of fields than of particles, or of energy. — Wayfarer

Well, personally, I called the soul a form of "intelligent energy" because it has the power of self-awareness and knowledge as well as other powers or "energies" (Greek ἐνέργεια energeia).

You can't say something has powers or energies but it isn't a power, energy or force. I'm talking about Greek philosophy, of course, not Buddhism.

But the problem with non-believers in the soul is that they tend to believe that if there is no scientific description of a thing then it doesn't exist. A bit like a blind man who believes that because he can't see color it can't possibly exist.

However, supposing we accept reincarnation either as fact or as theoretical possibility, how would we convincingly justify it in philosophical terms? — Apollodorus

Why would you need to justify it in any terms, once you have already accepted it?

Why would you need to justify it in any terms, once you have already accepted it? — god must be atheist

Why would you need to explain something in scientific terms once you have already accepted it?

Reincarnation is no more consoling than whatever the alternatives are. When whatever pops again to call itself "I am what I am what I am" it might be another you or me. It might again carry disappointing features of its kin.

a researcher by the name of Ian Stevenson assembled a considerable body of data on children with recall of previous lives. — Wayfarer

I think he's saying that many children report being somebody else or describe things connected to a recently deceased person that they wouldn't have any knowledge of, as soon as they start to speak. While in the West parents tend to dismiss such claims, they tend to be taken more seriously in societies where reincarnation is a common belief and, on inquiry, it is often found that the information provided by the child about the deceased person is correct.

I don't know whether you are countering my claim, or agreeing with it. Sounds like countering, but you are actually agreeing: "Any" includes "scientific".

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How many Joules in a soul?
— Banno

How many Joules in anger or fear? — Apollodorus

You've gone back from energy to intentionality.

Basically in inventing "intelligent energy" you are equivocating.