"Having" a soul and "being" a soul.

[Jamie123]

We find the idea of the "soul" all over the place, in religion and philosophy. Some religions believe the soul is reincarnated after death and is clothed in many successive physical bodies - human and non-human. Traditional Christianity favours the idea that the soul is created at birth but is immortal thereafter/ The Jehovah's Witnesses (if I understand them) believe the soul also ceases to exist at death but may be later re-created by God. LDS believe (again of I understand rightly) that the soul is co-eternal with God and existed before it entered a physical body: this sort of idea was also taught by Plato.  Yet what a soul actually *is* seems to be universally agreed on: the "noncorporeal" part of a person (or other living creature), which continues to "live" (in some supposed extra-biological sense) after the physical body and brain have died.

Yet there's another (to me) quite distinct idea of the soul as something in some sense separate from its owner. Let me give you some examples:

• William Wordsworth says "The soul that rises with us, our life's star..." i.e. not the soul that we are, but the soul that accompanies us; as if the self and the soul are different. (Like the different archetypes in Jungian psychology.)
• The Simpsons episode where Bart has sold (or believes he has sold) his soul to Milhouse for a dollar. Bart imagines all his friends accompanied by their souls (identical copies of themselves) while his life is drab and dreary because he has none.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Dudley (who has been a jerk to Harry most of his life) starts treating him with respect because he had (in an earlier book) saved him from a "dementor". When Dudly says "He saved my life" Harry denies this saying that the dementor would actually have taken Dudley's soul.
• In the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, people of Lyra's world have "daemons" (not to be confused with "demons") which are their souls in animal form. People can be separated from their daemons (Lyra herself is at one point) but continue to be themselves. Here again the "self" and the "soul" are assumed to be separate.

I find these two ideas: being a soul and having a soul very different; the one doesn't follow from the other at all, and yet the idea of "self/soul separation" (for want of a better term) seems entrenched in our mythology. (The examples I've quoted above are just a few.)  I'd be interested to know if anyone else has ever thought about this.

[zil]

Not to go all technical on you, but what you call "soul", Mormons would call "spirit".  D&C 88:15 And the spirit and the body are the soul of man.

As for the discrepancy between popular culture and scripture, well, that's Satan's job / goal, isn't it?

I have never believed my spirit to be separate from my "self" - it is my "self".  (I suspect that some may consider the body their "self" and their spirit as something "else", and perhaps this is where they get the idea of a spirit being able to be separated from their consciousness / sentience.)

Edited April 27, 2017 by zil

[Jamie123]

2 hours ago, zil said:

Not to go all technical on you, but what you call "soul", Mormons would call "spirit".  D&C 88:15 And the spirit and the body are the soul of man.

OK - I've never really made much distinction between "soul" and "spirit". I guess "spirit" is as good a word as any for what I mean by "soul".

"Spirit" comes from the Latin for "breath", as in physical breathing (cf. "respiration"), but with a secondary supernatural meaning. This is a direct translation of the New Testament Greek "pneuma" (again primarily physical breath/air/wind) from which we get "pneumatic".

"Soul" on the other hand is is Germanic ("Seele" in modern German). The reconstructed proto-Germanic is "saiwalo" which appears to have meant "life force" - without, as far as I can see, any direct connection to physical breathing.

2 hours ago, zil said:

As for the discrepancy between popular culture and scripture, well, that's Satan's job / goal, isn't it?

I have never believed my spirit to be separate from my "self" - it is my "self".  (I suspect that some may consider the body their "self" and their spirit as something "else", and perhaps this is where they get the idea of a spirit being able to be separated from their consciousness / sentience.)

That's the way I've always seen it too - which is why self/soul separation has always seemed strange and interesting to me. That the idea is so perennial makes me wonder if I'm missing something.

[zil]

4 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

That the idea is so perennial makes me wonder if I'm missing something.

I think those who believe in the idea are the ones who are missing something.

[Guest]

Here's my interpretation:

"Self" as used in the above context is what the LDS faith would call "intelligence."  This is not the same as IQ or smarts.  It is that consciousness that is what makes us -- "us".

This consciousness has no form or substance that we know of.  But it was at some point formed into a spirit.  We know very little about the differences between intelligence and spirit.  In some contexts, they seem to be used synonymously.  But through theological discussion we do make a distinction.  My best understanding is that the difference is that one (spirit)has a "form" and the other (intelligence) does not.

"Soul" is what general Christianity uses to mean either of the two above.  But they rarely, if ever, take it to mean the body.  In fact, many have told me that they don't believe we'll be resurrected because the body is only that corrupt part of our creation which will be shed in heaven, in favor of the pure and clean soul.  Obviously, that belief is not universal.  But it sure seems common in my experience.

To a Mormon, the word "soul" specifically is defined as the body and spirit together.  What zil quoted earlier is from our scriptures word for word.   But in common language even among Mormons, it is simply a word to describe US -- sentient beings.  The makeup of that sentient being isn't really thought about much.  And the usage of it in differing contexts precludes a single definition.  But it generally means the thing that makes us "us".  In other words, it is "self" or "intelligence" is what we're talking about in general conversation -- regardless of the technical definition that really only matters when we're putting on our Pharisaic theologian hats.

Wordsworth's usage is simply poetic -- and beautifully done.  I don't see how anyone would take such a beautiful poem and consider it scriptural or doctrinal.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Guest

[zil]

28 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

This consciousness has no form or substance that we know of.

Personally, I believe intelligences are individual, sentient, and have form, but that's me:

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/3.21-22?lang=eng#p20

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/93.29-30,36?lang=eng#p28

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/131.7-8?lang=eng#p6

...and those aren't enough to prove anything, it's just how I see it, and those seem to me to be compatible with that view.  If I'm all wrong, it won't cause me to trip or anything.

[Jamie123]

3 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Wordsworth's usage is simply poetic -- and beautifully done.  I don't see how anyone would take such a beautiful poem and consider it scriptural or doctrinal.

Nor would I really, but he was certainly expressing an idea.

The "soul that rises with us" is really only incidental: what I get from Intimations of Immortality as a whole (and to be honest it's a while since I last read the whole thing) is the poet longing for a time when things were new to him - before they became familiar and ordinary - and suggesting (perhaps wrongly) that the excitement he felt - or at least remembered feeling -  was some residue of what had gone before.

I think Wordsworth was wrong: common things might seem heavenly in the memories of the older person of when they were young: when you left your college for the last time, did you not look around the familiar dreary lecture halls and think wistfully of how exciting they had seemed to you as a freshman? But things can be "appareled in celestial light" for many reasons. When you first realized you are were love, did trees or paving stones or door handles still seem the same as before?

[Just_A_Guy]

1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

Nor would I really, but he was certainly expressing an idea.

The "soul that rises with us" is really only incidental: what I get from Intimations of Immortality as a whole (and to be honest it's a while since I last read the whole thing) is the poet longing for a time when things were new to him - before they became familiar and ordinary - and suggesting (perhaps wrongly) that the excitement he felt - or at least remembered feeling -  was some residue of what had gone before.

I think Wordsworth was wrong: common things might seem heavenly in the memories of the older person of when they were young: when you left your college for the last time, did you not look around the familiar dreary lecture halls and think wistfully of how exciting they had seemed to you as a freshman? But things can be "appareled in celestial light" for many reasons. When you first realized you are were love, did trees or paving stones or door handles still seem the same as before?

It has been a while since I read that poem; but based on your extract could Wordsworth be hinting at dual and dueling natures within a single person--the pure spirit/soul that pines for the things of God, versus the venal nature of "fallen" mankind (what Mormons would call the "natural man")?

[Guest]

7 hours ago, zil said:

Personally, I believe intelligences are individual, sentient, and have form, but that's me:

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/3.21-22?lang=eng#p20

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/93.29-30,36?lang=eng#p28

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/131.7-8?lang=eng#p6

...and those aren't enough to prove anything, it's just how I see it, and those seem to me to be compatible with that view.  If I'm all wrong, it won't cause me to trip or anything.

I don't believe I ever said they are not individual or sentient.  I don't know anything I said that could have been construed to mean that, even as I read back over it.  Throw me a bone?

That they have form?  I said,"that we know of."  We really don't know much about intelligences other than A) they existed.  B) We were intelligences before becoming spirits.  Do they have a form?  Where is that mentioned?  I know of no scripture that says so -- including the ones you cited.  I'm not even sure how you could interpret it from those references.

1. Abraham reference.  I've always found this passage somewhat ambiguous in its usage of "intelligence."  It is talking about both intelligences AND spirits.  But it continues to use the term "intelligences" throughout.  This is exactly what I was referring to when I said,"In some contexts they seem to be used synonymously."  Without getting into the differences, the topic at hand is whether the intelligence had form.  The "intelligences that were organized before the world was" is later clarified by stating,"for he stood among those that were spirits."  What I get is that the intelligences were individual.  But they were not organized (having no form) until they became spirits.
2. The Glory of God is intelligence -- light and truth.  I don't see what that has to do with having a form.
3. Spirit is matter.  Yes.  Intelligence?  "There is no such thing as immaterial matter."  Understood?  Do we really know what this means?  The gist of the passage is meant to say that spirit is matter in some way shape or form.  But even then they did not comprehend matter energy duality.  So, could it simply mean that "spirit" is some form of energy?  And since energy and matter can be interchangeable...  What about strings?  What about photons?  We get into some fairly far out there ideas when we really try to grasp the meaning of this otherwise simple passage.  Then you want to throw intelligence into it that is even less understood than spirit?

When we get to this level of concept both doctrinally and scientifically, we're really out of our depth here.  At least I am.  I don't know if I could possibly say intelligence certainly doesn't have form.  But if so, I'd have no way of even discussing it other than to say,"I really don't know what it is like."

Edited April 28, 2017 by Guest

[zil]

On 4/27/2017 at 8:02 PM, Carborendum said:

I don't believe I ever said they are not individual or sentient.  I don't know anything I said that could have been construed to mean that, even as I read back over it.  Throw me a bone?

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you did.  Was grouping that together with what I've always thought about intelligences having a form of some sort - as I said, no proof, just my own thoughts, and complete speculation, not meant for anyone to base their testimony on or anything...

[Blueskye2]

On 4/27/2017 at 4:21 AM, Jamie123 said:

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has ever thought about this.

Sure.  

A couple of things. Reincarnation as you describe is how people with a Judeo-Christian background describe Eastern philosophy/religious ideas. In them, there is not a belief obout a soul. Eastern beliefs distinguish between being, doing, having.  Being is the focus, in one way or another,  of all meditations and discussions of "enlightenment".  The paths to enlightenment are about being.  Westerners usually confuse being and doing as the same thing.

In Roman Catholicism a soul is the supernatural "ingredient" of a human being.  A human being is an immaterial, incorporeal soul and a corporeal body.  Where Mormonism uses the metaphor, a spirit is slipped into a body like a hand into a glove...this metaphor does not work for Catholics.  Philosophically we reject the concept of two material things taking up the same space.

We are beings, human beings, and a human being is body and soul.  Metaphorically, our soul is like a  spoonful of water dropped into a vase of wine. At death, the corporeal body dies and decays. The immortal, incorporeal, soul does not. Soul separation isn't quite accurate, though, as it is more one aspect of our being dies and the other does not. The resurrection of the dead restores the corporeal to the incorporeal, and visa versa. The being, that we are, is human, and this being that we are is both a soul and a body. 

Having been interested for a few years in Eastern philosophy, and practicing Hindu concepts during that time, I view Roman Catholicism has similar, but different, concepts.  St. Paul tells us we are children of the light and should walk in the light.  This is instruction on being...who we should be. Which is what God has created us to be. It is who we are. Catholics get this, that is, that we are called to be as God created us.  In other Christian traditions there is the same understanding of being, and in others this teaching of St. Paul's (and similar passages elsewhere) are viewed as what we should be doing.

Absolutely our understanding is tied to the understanding of our soul as being, as human beings.  

The Western conflagration of being and doing, being and having, permeates our culture, including in the media and arts. But they are not universally held ideas.  

 

[Jane_Doe]

2 minutes ago, Blueskye2 said:

In Roman Catholicism a soul is the supernatural "ingredient" of a human being.  A human being is an immaterial, incorporeal soul and a corporeal body.  Where Mormonism uses the metaphor, a spirit is slipped into a body like a hand into a glove...this metaphor does not work for Catholics.  Philosophically we reject the concept of two material things taking up the same space.

Striving to better understand your RCC perspective--

In RCC, what would you describe as being the difference between a soul vs a spirit.

I'm assuming you denote your version of soul being immaterial and hence able to share a space with a material body?

 

[Blueskye2]

59 minutes ago, Jane_Doe said:

Striving to better understand your RCC perspective--

In RCC, what would you describe as being the difference between a soul vs a spirit.

I'm assuming you denote your version of soul being immaterial and hence able to share a space with a material body?

 

Usually, your every day Catholic makes no difference, in the context of discussing the human soul, the words spirit and soul are synonymous. In other contexts, Spirit can also refer to the Holy Spirit. 

Catholic and other Christian scholars have much commentary on St. Paul's "mind, soul and spirit" (nous, psyche and pneuma). Among these the RCC rejects a duality of the soul, that is, that man has two kinds, one called spirit and one called soul.  Also rejected is that man is made of parts. The human being is viewed as holistic, so when the "parts" of a human are discussed it is with an understanding the parts are signifying something about being human. Not a description of separate pieces, entities or other disparate things  

We can be nuanced about our usage of spirit and soul. Sometimes spirit can signify that part, or state, of the soul that is in a higher communion with God, often as related to our more carnal tendencies. Such as when St. Paul says the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  St. Paul's "mind" is viewed as the higher rational aspect of the soul, especially in its communion with God. 

Hope that helps. 

[Jane_Doe]

33 minutes ago, Blueskye2 said:

Usually, your every day Catholic makes no difference, in the context of discussing the human soul, the words spirit and soul are synonymous. In other contexts, Spirit can also refer to the Holy Spirit. 

Catholic and other Christian scholars have much commentary on St. Paul's "mind, soul and spirit" (nous, psyche and pneuma). Among these the RCC rejects a duality of the soul, that is, that man has two kinds, one called spirit and one called soul.  Also rejected is that man is made of parts. The human being is viewed as holistic, so when the "parts" of a human are discussed it is with an understanding the parts are signifying something about being human. Not a description of separate pieces, entities or other disparate things  

We can be nuanced about our usage of spirit and soul. Sometimes spirit can signify that part, or state, of the soul that is in a higher communion with God, often as related to our more carnal tendencies. Such as when St. Paul says the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  St. Paul's "mind" is viewed as the higher rational aspect of the soul, especially in its communion with God. 

Hope that helps. 

It sort of helps.  I'm admittedly still confused, but I can't think of a question to better clarify.

[Jamie123]

2 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:

It sort of helps.  I'm admittedly still confused, but I can't think of a question to better clarify.

I remember a few years hearing Susan Greenfield on the radio saying something like "one day we will understand what causes this experience we call 'consciousness'". I don't think that makes any sense: for consciousness to be an "experience" requires someone (or something) to experience that experience, and would not that someone (or something) need to be conscious?

I always had the same sort of problem with Freud and Jung, splitting the pyche into parts (Freud's "complexes" or Jung's "archetypes") and talking about how those parts interact to create personality and behaviour. As a student I always found myself thinking "yes, but..." and lacking the language to go any further. The best I could ever manage was "...but where is the actual person?" I could never buy the notion that "that" (the model for want of a better word) was the person.

If a conscious mind (whatever that actually means) could be reduced to an explainable model, what would stop you creating such a thing artificially? That may be commonplace in science fiction, if anyone claimed to have done it in reality I would find myself saying "Yes, but whatever you say that thing is, I know its really just an assembly of wires and transistors. Where is the....(I would struggle to find a better word and fail miserably)....soul?" At which point I would have to explain what I meant by "soul". "Souls are what human beings really are" would only prompt the AI-scientist to point back at the model and say "So you mean this!" And then the cycle would repeat.

Edited April 29, 2017 by Jamie123

[Blackmarch]

On 4/27/2017 at 4:21 AM, Jamie123 said:

We find the idea of the "soul" all over the place, in religion and philosophy. Some religions believe the soul is reincarnated after death and is clothed in many successive physical bodies - human and non-human. Traditional Christianity favours the idea that the soul is created at birth but is immortal thereafter/ The Jehovah's Witnesses (if I understand them) believe the soul also ceases to exist at death but may be later re-created by God. LDS believe (again of I understand rightly) that the soul is co-eternal with God and existed before it entered a physical body: this sort of idea was also taught by Plato.  Yet what a soul actually *is* seems to be universally agreed on: the "noncorporeal" part of a person (or other living creature), which continues to "live" (in some supposed extra-biological sense) after the physical body and brain have died.

Yet there's another (to me) quite distinct idea of the soul as something in some sense separate from its owner. Let me give you some examples:

• William Wordsworth says "The soul that rises with us, our life's star..." i.e. not the soul that we are, but the soul that accompanies us; as if the self and the soul are different. (Like the different archetypes in Jungian psychology.)
• The Simpsons episode where Bart has sold (or believes he has sold) his soul to Milhouse for a dollar. Bart imagines all his friends accompanied by their souls (identical copies of themselves) while his life is drab and dreary because he has none.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Dudley (who has been a jerk to Harry most of his life) starts treating him with respect because he had (in an earlier book) saved him from a "dementor". When Dudly says "He saved my life" Harry denies this saying that the dementor would actually have taken Dudley's soul.
• In the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, people of Lyra's world have "daemons" (not to be confused with "demons") which are their souls in animal form. People can be separated from their daemons (Lyra herself is at one point) but continue to be themselves. Here again the "self" and the "soul" are assumed to be separate.

I find these two ideas: being a soul and having a soul very different; the one doesn't follow from the other at all, and yet the idea of "self/soul separation" (for want of a better term) seems entrenched in our mythology. (The examples I've quoted above are just a few.)  I'd be interested to know if anyone else has ever thought about this.

the general usage of soul is a very broad spectrum.
My use of it tends to be along the lines that a soul is everything that makes an individual an individual (including spirit and consciousness parts).

It seems however that it's become closer to being synonymous to the term spirit for the most part within christianity (and from thence to the rest of the western civilization, or perhaps this arises from the nonchristian understanding or misunderstanding of the term within christianiy- which eventually influenced christianity later on, sort of a vicious cycle sort of thing). but yeah it's not solely used in any one singular sort of context.

 

[Blueskye2]

7 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

I remember a few years hearing Susan Greenfield on the radio saying something like "one day we will understand what causes this experience we call 'consciousness'". I don't think that makes any sense: for consciousness to be an "experience" requires someone (or something) to experience that experience, and would not that someone (or something) need to be conscious?

I always had the same sort of problem with Freud and Jung, splitting the pyche into parts (Freud's "complexes" or Jung's "archetypes") and talking about how those parts interact to create personality and behaviour. As a student I always found myself thinking "yes, but..." and lacking the language to go any further. The best I could ever manage was "...but where is the actual person?" I could never buy the notion that "that" (the model for want of a better word) was the person.

If a conscious mind (whatever that actually means) could be reduced to an explainable model, what would stop you creating such a thing artificially? That may be commonplace in science fiction, if anyone claimed to have done it in reality I would find myself saying "Yes, but whatever you say that thing is, I know its really just an assembly of wires and transistors. Where is the....(I would struggle to find a better word and fail miserably)....soul?" At which point I would have to explain what I meant by "soul". "Souls are what human beings really are" would only prompt the AI-scientist to point back at the model and say "So you mean this!" And then the cycle would repeat.

For myself, when grace that is left out, then that is the ...but, but...

 I do like this song. 

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Blueskye2