There are things that are true of me but are not true of my brain and body. So "I" am not identical with my body and thus I must be non-material substance called the soul. — nixu

The conclusion doesn't follow.

@nixu Do you care to present the analytic proofs?

So "I" am not identical with my body and thus I must be non-material substance called the soul. — nixu

Rather than say I am not identical with my body, I would say that the more substantial part of my body represents just over aspect of myself. Of course, the more one peers deeper and deeper c into substantiality, the more in becomes insubstantial. So the body, mind, and spirit are a unity which progresses from the more insubstantial (spirit, mind, emotions, qualia) to the more substantial (fluids, muscle, bone, etc.). There is no boundary anywhere.

There are things that are true of me but are not true of my brain and body. — nixu

Such as?

It is I think self-evident that we are not merely material beings. This is because of many reasons but mostly do to the fact that we actually have analytic proofs for the soul. for example: There are things that are true of me but are not true of my brain and body. So "I" am not identical with my body and thus I must be non-material substance called the soul. — nixu

Do you believe that your mind ends at your skull?

There are things that are true about my thought life ect. that are not true of my physical brain and body. Here are few examples:
According to the law of identity, if A=B then what is true of A is true of B and vice versa.
1. We can say that my thoughts that 1+1=3 or all humans are white, are not true. My thoughts thus have a property of being right or wrong but it is not the case with my brain. My mental state (m) (e.g.1+1=3) at a given time (t1) is not identical with my brain function (b) at given time (t1). So m at t1 is not identical with b at t1. This is because it is illogical to say, for example, that my brain function is right or wrong nor is it the case that my thought of a book is oval shaped as is the electric charge in my brain while I think about a book.
2. "I" (ego, my consciousness/person) am not divisible kind of thing. All spatially extended objects can be divided in percents (I don´t mean that we would have the means to divide lets say fermions, but that they can be divided into percents) but I cannot be. I don´t know what it means to say that after a brain surgery (10% of my brains would have been removed) I would be 10% less a person. This seem quite the obvious. 1. So all spatially extended objects are divisible. 2. I am not divisible. 3. I am not spatially extended object. 4. My brain and body are spatially extended objects. 5. Therefore I am not my brain and body.
3. If it would be the case that I am identical with my brain and body I would not be the same thing through the course of time. It is pretty uncontroversial that if I have a pile of 10 bricks and I would take one brick away and change it to another the pile that I know have is not identical with the original pile. Since our bodies are constantly changing, loosing parts and gaining new ones, our bodies and brains are not identical with the bodies and brains we had a week ago. But if we are identical with our brain and body then we are not the same human beings we were in past. If we do not endure through one hour to another due to our metabolic processes many things becomes absurd. One example is that it is obviously stupid to require a payment of loan from a person who have not taken the loan. But this is what banks are doing if we are identical with our brain and body.

These are some of the reasons for thinking that we have a soul/mind.

Ps. Sorry for my english, I am not native speaker.

Since our bodies are constantly changing, loosing parts and gaining new ones, our bodies and brains are not identical with the bodies and brains we had a week ago. — nixu

Someone recently said to me that every so many years all material that a person's body was previously composed of has been replaced with other material. I do not know where he got the number, but, if I recall correctly, every 13 years was the number he said.

If that is true then 13 years after a child is born all of the material that his/her body was composed of at the time of his/her birth is gone.

An interesting POV.

I agree only partially though. Why?

Well, in my view, I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So, indeed, the mind is something greater than the brain. We see this everywhere. Ant/bee colonies, cars, humans, human societies. In fact, everything that is made of more than 1 thing has this feature. I think this is a wonderful thing because it allows for amazing possibilities e.g. an ant colony can be viewed as another organism distinct from the individual ants that compose it. Who knows what such organizing paradigms can achieve. Super-organisms, super-super-organisms and so on.

However, another fact that we can't disregard is that the mind/self/ego is tied inseparably to the brain. There's no evidence whatsoever that shows the mind can exist independently of the brain. So, the notion of a soul, eternal and indestructible, if that's what you're getting at, is still beyond reach.

All the observations you've mentioned are true but they still can't prove, what is to me, the crucial point - that the soul survives death. If that can't be done the soul, immaterial or whatever, is still nothing better than a material soul.

The super-organism (the ant colony) is definitely something greater than the individual ant. Take out one, or two, a few hundred, and the colony still continues to exist. But kill all the ants, and the colony dies with them. There's a difference, agreed, between the individual ant and the colony. But, the difference is not enough for the ant colony to survive the death of all the ants it consists of.

I agree with you that we don´t, at least to my knowledge, have any a priori reasons for thinking that soul is eternal or survives death. My point with this argument is merely to show that naturalism (reductive materialism) is not enough to explain all phenomena in the Universe. But the reason why immateriality of the soul is significant is that it allows for the possibility of libertarian free will and thus for moral responsibility. Since if we are mere material beings (and matter works according the laws of nature, either statistical laws like quantum physics or newtonian mechanics) we have no possibility for free will or action. That is a different topic but that is why I want to argue for immaterial soul and super naturalism apart from my theological convictions.

To the extent that I know, the relationship mind-body or mind-brain, if you prefer, isn't an equal one. To say the least, the mind is lower than the brain on the power/influence heirarchy.

So, free will may not be that easy to entertain as a possibility unless, of course, you think power flows from the mind to the brain too. I think it does, for example, thoughts can have profound influence on the body e.g. the placebo effect, the power of suggestion, etc. But these can be more simply explained as the body affecting the body or the brain playing with itself, if you will.

I am not sure if I am getting it right. Are you proposing that mind is emergent property of brain function. And I do believe that mind has and genuine influence on the body and vice versa. If mind is emergent property of matter it follows that epiphenominalism is true. If epiphenominalism is true then, if you are naturalist, you cannot trust your cognitive faculties (or at least you don´t have justification for trusting them) and if that is the case you cannot trust your reasoning what led you to the conclusion that epiphenominalism is true. Thus you have a defeator for epiphenominalism.

But these can be more simply explained as the body affecting the body or the brain playing with itself, if you will. — TheMadFool

If one thing is affecting another thing with a specific willful action then what is the impetus? Where does this come from? The mind is always lurking somewhere, implicitly or explicitly even if it is transferred outside into some natural force.

It is I think self-evident that we are not merely material beings. This is because of many reasons but mostly do to the fact that we actually have analytic proofs for the soul. for example: There are things that are true of me but are not true of my brain and body. So "I" am not identical with my body and thus I must be non-material substance called the soul. — nixu

Then why do we have a body AND a soul? If it is believed that we can interact with God and other souls when we are merely souls, then why do we need bodies? The band VETO, asks a very pointed question in one of their songs,
"What's the point of a soul when all I'm [my body] being is a faulty copy of myself [my soul]?"

An example of mind over matter is provided by the fact the brain changes function (and even form as in protein synthesis) by mental imagery such as imagining shooting free throws can improve performance. Mental imagery is a domain unaccounted for by physicalism neuroscience.

Much of what is known about mind-brain is gleaned from electrodes (being placed in brain regions and shocking them; or TMS). The most easily cited example of shocking a part of the brain and producing drastic effects in consciousness is at the claustrum (when it's stimulated, consciousness is lost). The source of energy which changes brain function in these experiments is rather arbitrary. Organismically, the voltage differentials of neurons are held in place by energy from the organism and its organization and interaction with the environment and likely stimulated non locally as well as locally. If we want to attribute causation to the electricity coming from an electrode placed in the brain, you have to realize this is nothing like the electrical causation that operates the brain in everyday experience. For the brain to change function naturally there has to be an interaction between the organism and the plenum, not just shocking or magnetism.

Shooting free throws in the mind is ontologically nothing like shocking the brain with electrodes, and how they cause changes in function and form of the brain are in entirely different spheres of causality. We don't go about our daily life shocking the brain with electrodes to cause perceptions and conscious experience. Natural causation of brain-mind is nothing like artificial stimulation of the brain. In the final analysis, I'm not sure I can accept too much of what is learned about the mind by artificial stimulation of brain.

We're material beings called animals.

That's all we are.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing disparaging about that.

Animals are an astonishing, impressive result of natural selection.

I discuss that in more detail in the "Implications of Evolution" topic.

I don't agree with you about what the evidence says. There's no evidence that we're other than an animal, a body. There's nothing in our experience that isn't consistent with that.

I should add that I claim that there's no evidence that our world is other than a hypothetical possibility world. ...and that our life is a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story.

Your life-experience possiblity-story is a story about an animal's experience--your experience.

I discuss that in detail in the topic "A Uniquely Parsimonious and Skeptical Metaphysics", at the Metaphysics and Epistemology forum.

Michael Ossipoff

The mind is more than just the brain. The separation between mind and brain is equivalent, if not more, to that between a rock and life - a giant leap. But just as life, despite its uniqueness and complexity, absolutely depends on matter, the mind too depends on the brain. Put off the brain and the mind closes shop. Doesn't the mind shut down during sleep (brain ceases higher functions)?

The mind is different from the brain but it's not completely independent of the brain. So, it's ok to think that we have a soul but that's where the story comes to an end. After life, free will, etc. don't follow from the existence of a soul.

Even if no brain = no mind, does your mind end at your skull?

I believe that Rupert Sheldrake has suggested that the mind is a field like gravity and that it extends beyond one's skull.

In other words, on a clear day, blue sky, you look up and lo!...there's the inside of your cranium in the upper atmosphere. Exactly. The physicalism of neuroscience and brain scans have gone way off the deep end in trying to make mind follow the brain, culminating in the most inane ideas I've ever heard: eliminative materialism, type physicalism, etc. If you're having a thought or feeling or intuition or mental imagery that can't be correlated with brain scans...guess what...it's like demon possession and you must be crazy. A very naive way of thinking; actually, I don't think there is any thought going into these interpretations of the mind body problem. What a shame to throw away what makes us human: metacognition: that is, not only thought, but thought about thought about thought, and so on.

In other words, on a clear day, blue sky, you look up and lo!...there's the inside of your cranium in the upper atmosphere. Exactly. The physicalism of neuroscience and brain scans have gone way off the deep end in trying to make mind follow the brain, culminating in the most inane ideas I've ever heard: eliminative materialism, type physicalism, etc. If you're having a thought or feeling or intuition or mental imagery that can't be correlated with brain scans...guess what...it's like demon possession and you must be crazy. A very naive way of thinking; actually, I don't think there is any thought going into these interpretations of the mind body problem. What a shame to throw away what makes us human: metacognition: that is, not only thought, but thought about thought about thought, and so on — Anthony

I'm​ not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with Sheldrake.

He is against physicalism/materialism.

I personally believe that everything is interconnected and reciprocal and that the mind is not a dead-end closed system contained in a skull and cut off from everything else.

I would agree. Current philosophy of the mind needs a complete overhaul. Sheldrake's ideas are well worth investigating. I just learned today from an article that, not surprisingly, he was influenced by Bergson, another philosopher way ahead of his time.

It is I think self-evident that we are not merely material beings. This is because of many reasons but mostly do to the fact that we actually have analytic proofs for the soul. — nixu

IT is self evident and yet needs justification?

1. We can say that my thoughts that 1+1=3 or all humans are white, are not true. My thoughts thus have a property of being right or wrong but it is not the case with my brain. My mental state (m) (e.g.1+1=3) at a given time (t1) is not identical with my brain function (b) at given time (t1). So m at t1 is not identical with b at t1. This is because it is illogical to say, for example, that my brain function is right or wrong nor is it the case that my thought of a book is oval shaped as is the electric charge in my brain while I think about a book. — nixu

Claiming that your mental state is not the same as your brain state begs the question.

The right vs. wrong argument needs filling out. If your thought that 1+1=3 is, say, and emergent property, then it is your argument would not follow. It would be analogous to saying that it is not 17ºC, because no molecule in the air is at 17ºC.

2. "I" (ego, my consciousness/person) am not divisible kind of thing. All spatially extended objects can be divided in percents (I don´t mean that we would have the means to divide lets say fermions, but that they can be divided into percents) but I cannot be. I don´t know what it means to say that after a brain surgery (10% of my brains would have been removed) I would be 10% less a person. This seem quite the obvious. 1. So all spatially extended objects are divisible. 2. I am not divisible. 3. I am not spatially extended object. 4. My brain and body are spatially extended objects. 5. Therefore I am not my brain and body. — nixu

Not sure what 10% of a fermion would be.

Are you the same as you were as a child? Your life can be divided into parts, so we might take pause before deciding that your mind is indivisible. You also divide smell from sight.

And again, the claim that you are not extended begs the question - because if you are exactly your body, then you are extended.

3. If it would be the case that I am identical with my brain and body I would not be the same thing through the course of time. It is pretty uncontroversial that if I have a pile of 10 bricks and I would take one brick away and change it to another the pile that I know have is not identical with the original pile. Since our bodies are constantly changing, loosing parts and gaining new ones, our bodies and brains are not identical with the bodies and brains we had a week ago. But if we are identical with our brain and body then we are not the same human beings we were in past. If we do not endure through one hour to another due to our metabolic processes many things becomes absurd. One example is that it is obviously stupid to require a payment of loan from a person who have not taken the loan. But this is what banks are doing if we are identical with our brain and body. — nixu

You never changed your mind?

The Ship of Theseus remains Theseus' Ship, despite such changes, if it is rigidly designated.

Your thinking, I believe has serious flaws. If your cognitive faculties are a result of evolution by natural selection and random genetic mutation you don´t have any reason to trust your cognitive faculties. For evolution "aims" to survival and not to produce true beliefs. Evolution is completely pragmatic process and its end is to produce behavior not beliefs. This does not commit you ontologically to non-existance of truth but it puts you in position in which you have defeator for all of your reasoning.

1.Mathematical thoughts cannot be emergent properties of matter since they are not material things. And I don´t see how the applying of the law of identity is question begging so please open that up a bit.
2. Your analogy of fermion is pretty inadequate unless you think that mind is some sort of particle and thus presuppose materialism which is not good way to argue. And I claim that "I" (ego, self) am not my body, I am a soul and have a body.
3. Change of mind does not mean change in substance. I am not claiming that I am equivocal to my thoughts or beliefs. My soul (substance) have faculties like: Thought, beliefs, intentionality/volition, desires and feelings/perceptions. It does not follow that change of mind (thought are state of consciousness) is change in substance. The ship of Theseus I think is not wholly applicable to my argument for following reasons:
1. I think it is pretty obvious that the ship with which Theseus started his trip is not identical with the ship which arrived to his destination.
2. Then if a person is identical to his brain and body he/she is not identical (law of identity applied here) ego with his/hers old self. This leads to the question "Can we hold person responsible for their moral behavior since they are not literally the same being who committed the actions (lets take Joseph Mengele who died as non-identical to his old self).
3. If we say that Theseus´ ship is still Theseus´ (which, in context of ownership, seems obvious) then who owns the body that I have or what makes my body my body. I Think it is best explained that I (my soul/mind) is what makes my body mine. It makes best sense to say that I am not identical to my body but that I posses a property of having a body, I am a soul.

Yeah, when you say "interconnected" this is what I'm talking about when mentioning the mind as having non local causes, in some way touching on complete information of the universe. When the mind is in superposition, and not making any observations it's boundaries are likely as limitless as the universe.

As for open and closed systems, the mind benefits from being more closed actually. Ours is an information society, and as such, people are apt to try to "eat" way, way, more information than they can actually digest/process. It has to make sense to be more closed to information and process what's already there in your autopoietic system (Maturana). The brain has to have energy and as such is an open system. The mind can be more or less closed to information and organization and is very different from the brain in this way. Most people need to close their minds more, especially to organization. Folks that frequent this board are like me, no doubt, in that we read all the time but could probably think more if we weren't reading. Sometimes it's better to stop reading and start thinking and writing within your closed system of organization and information (to see what's there asking to be processed).

A strict belief in materialism and that we are exclusively material beings is conducive to severe neuroses. The domain of mind is invisible. This is about as obvious as it is overlooked. Also, more correct me if I'm wrong, but a tightly connected brain is usually associated with less efficient processes of mind. An unhealthy brain has to do more work than a healthy one, and I'd assume uses more energy therein, or wastes more energy. As the mind self organizes and informs, and is more efficient, there may actually be a negative correlation with energy in the brain. However you look at it, it is hard to convince me brain is not quite a different system than mind, though it is obviously part of a more global apparatus of psychophysical parallelism.

Mind has no extension in space and may exist in a more or less dilated time. A thought is nowhere, in the quantum vacuum as far as we know. Thoughts aren't subject to measurement in their primordial fettle. So far as we know, it is only the brain which needs energy; perhaps thoughts do not need energy and perhaps neither does the information and organization of mind require energy. Because a thought itself isn't measurable, it is impossible to know.

Nevermind. Or how do you delete a post?

For evolution "aims" to survival and not to produce true beliefs. — nixu

How do you survive in an environment without having some true knowledge of the environment? Is seems to me that your survival is the best catalyst for seeking and acquiring truth. Its no different than if God exists. You need to learn the truth in order to save your soul.

If your cognitive faculties are a result of evolution by natural selection and random genetic mutation you don´t have any reason to trust your cognitive faculties. For evolution "aims" to survival and not to produce true beliefs. — nixu

While I might agree with you that evolution does not produce true beliefs, I didn't see where Michael Ossipoff said otherwise. There was no mention of truth nor belief in his post, and evolution selecting for fitness rather than truth is a far better reason to trust one's cognitive faculties. No, I don't trust my intuitions to be truthful for this reason. That much I recognize, if that's what you mean. But recognizing the lies is more difficult than one might expect. You seem to be arguing for one of them.