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offline welt on 2018-12-18 00:14 [#02565959]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker



Just what is the soul of a man?


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2018-12-18 00:21 [#02565960]
Points: 23539 Status: Addict



when we're little, we soak in the patterns and sounds our
parents emit. mimic them. eventually, there's enough data
that language takes hold (however it does; we'll leave that
for now). you soak up your parents' patterns -- has your
father ever said, "you're a gentleman and a scholar?" mine
did. so have the dads of other people my age, too. your
parents (or whoever raises you as a babe) form a basis. then
in comes sesame street, youtube, school, human culture at
large. you vacuum up patterns from all over humanity. some
of it is shared, but everyone carries within them a slightly
different set of patterns based on their individual
experience. by the time you're in kindergarten, your
personal archive of patterns has enough variation from
person to person that you've become a bona fide individual.
genetics play the other half, causing you to prefer one set
of patterns over another. put simply, it is like a very long
tape loop continually overwriting itself, until it is
finally switched off, and lost

(like tears in the rain)


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2018-12-18 00:46 [#02565964]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular



a process


 

offline Monoid from one source all things depend on 2018-12-18 03:03 [#02565965]
Points: 10972 Status: Regular



The penis
-Freud


 

offline mermaidman on 2018-12-18 09:35 [#02565966]
Points: 7978 Status: Regular



of course the floaty ghost inside you that leaves when you
dead


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2018-12-18 20:55 [#02565988]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



i think the soul is the puzzle you build about your own
person and what sticks you up as a man


 

offline belb from mmmmmmhhhhzzzz!!! on 2018-12-18 23:42 [#02565996]
Points: 6228 Status: Lurker



an emergent property


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2018-12-19 13:28 [#02566003]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular



I'm really horny for welt to come back and own us with a
righteous list of Soul Facts


 

offline RussellDust on 2018-12-19 15:24 [#02566006]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



The metaphysical us


 

offline Indeksical from Phobiazero Damage Control (United Kingdom) on 2018-12-19 17:11 [#02566007]
Points: 10671 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



LAZY_TITLE


 

offline -crazone from smashing acid over and over on 2018-12-19 21:34 [#02566012]
Points: 11070 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



nothing


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2018-12-19 21:35 [#02566013]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Followup to -crazone: #02566012 | Show recordbag



found a cult over that


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2018-12-19 21:43 [#02566014]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



maybe the ancient chineses already did. 10 years ago next
thing id do was opening a book of chinese philosophy in
search for answers, coming out bored inevitably.


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2018-12-19 21:45 [#02566015]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



face this, welt, before the brain drives your fingers to the
keyboard.


 

offline Tussle Toss from United States on 2018-12-20 23:13 [#02566049]
Points: 1021 Status: Regular



soul of man is pecan nut


 

offline welt on 2019-01-03 23:06 [#02566520]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker | Followup to Tony Danza: #02566003



I'm afraid I don't have any soul facts.

I tend towards the view that whatever it is that is
saying/typing "I" is not the soul. In other words: The
meaning/reference of the term "I" not the soul. But the soul
would - in comparison to that which says "I" - be something
external. Your soul would be something you face - almost
like an external object like a tree, the teeth of a bear or
a glass-bottle. But what is it? I am not my soul. All I know
about myself ("my I") is that I can utter the word "I" right
now (and full sentences with it). But what for? And why is a
soul-shaped entity blocking my view?


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-04 00:18 [#02566525]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



You all know that for humankind the general idea is the
being with the physical presence. You can ponce it all you
want, and for years and years and years, Tony and Welt, you
wonderful, wonderful beings.


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-04 00:19 [#02566526]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



The being without the physical being.

God I’m a cunt to myself.


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-04 02:15 [#02566527]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02566520



Sounds like to me you think the soul is somewhere in the mix
of memory, conscience and perception-distorting
idiosyncracies of consciousness, with perhaps a soupçon of
subjectively uncanny self-awareness.

But we already have words for those things. So over and
above that, what is the soul of a man? Or, why use that word
at all?


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-04 02:18 [#02566528]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to RussellDust: #02566525



🧐


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2019-01-04 19:35 [#02566539]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Followup to welt: #02566520 | Show recordbag



i agree about the shaping of the soul happening from
external causes, but whats going on is totally internal


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2019-01-04 19:37 [#02566540]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



you're the only one who keeps track of it


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-04 22:41 [#02566553]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular | Followup to Tony Danza: #02566528



How much does a conscience weigh?


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-05 05:08 [#02566560]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to RussellDust: #02566553



Category mistake. Also, half its weight when doubled.


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2019-01-05 12:04 [#02566564]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



half its weight when cooked


 

offline welt on 2019-01-20 18:25 [#02567406]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker | Followup to Tony Danza: #02566527



Why use the word ‚soul‘?

I guess to build on the ancient Greek tradition. Soul is
traditionally understood as ( a ) that which makes a living
being alive, and ( b ) a force that naturally has specific
desires and pursues specific aims.

So that’s a richer concept than just affirming the
existence of ‚memory‘, ‚consciousness‘ and
‚self-awareness‘. It’s richer because the concepts
‚memory‘, ‚consciousness‘ and ‚self-awareness‘
are mute about the aims for which they are used. (For
instance: You could use your faculty of memory for the aim
of memorizing the track-lengths of every single Autechre
track or you could use it in order to memorize
every name you’ve ever been called or just about
anything else). But a soul - as traditionally understood -
would have natural aims which essentially belong to
it
. So, using a crude Aristotelian notion, to the
Elephant’s soul would belong the desire to walk around and
trumpet and live an elephanty life and so on. .. So the
initial question could be rephrased: What is the status of
the natural aims living beings find themselves with? What is
it that constitutes being alive? And who are you - since you
obviously are not identical to your soul,
your aims or the matter that makes up your body ?


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2019-01-20 19:10 [#02567412]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



you have to be tuned to the world


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-20 20:25 [#02567419]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567406



sounds like detaching the oink from the pig. would you buy
canned oinks


 

offline welt on 2019-01-20 20:42 [#02567424]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker | Followup to Tony Danza: #02567419



I wouldn't necessarily buy canned oinks. But I would buy a
real pig and I would see a difference between the pig, on
the one hand, and its oinking, on the other hand. And I
would wonder what it is that makes it oink at this point in
time rather than another.

There's some x that makes the pig oink in a specific
situation.

But it's not the pig itself, because it's perfectly
compatible with the nature of the pig that it might not oink
in a certain sitution. And it's not the circumstances,
because the pig might or might not oink in the very same
circumstances.

There is an agent here. And it's not clear who or
what that agent is.


 

offline welt on 2019-01-20 20:45 [#02567425]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker



☔️
🐷🎶


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-21 00:22 [#02567442]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567424



Ah but the pig does not step into the same river twice.
Circumstances are never the same. And in a sense it's never
the same pig twice.


 

offline welt on 2019-01-21 11:16 [#02567461]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker



i have the impression that you’re stuck between two
untenable extremes.

Your first answer amounted to a denial of the difference
between action, agent and situation, because it’s all
connected.

It’s like going to a judge and asking whether the thief
who stole your pigs should be condemned. And the judge
replies: „What are you talking about? The thief and his
thieving are one and the same thing, just like the lightning
is the flesh. I can’t identify a separate thief: there’s
just the action. Go home!“

Your second answer amounts to a denial of there being a
continuous agent, because now - in contrast - you stress
disconnection to the extent that there’s not even a
continuous agent or continuous circumstances.

It’s like going to the judge and asking whether the thief
who stole your pigs should be condemned. And the judge
replies: „What are you talking about? The thief that
existed a second ago is now a different person. I can’t
identify a current thief. Go home!“

But if that’s the case then the judge is simply
refusing to do his work
. Not a judge, but an undead
ghost of a judge, still connected to reality, but fading
from it; reality either [answer 1] condensing into a big
monomorphic blur, or reality [answer 2] fragmenting into a
dissconected mix of atomic pieces and subpieces


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-21 14:38 [#02567463]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567461



We conventionally say it's the same pig or person or river
if it has the proper kind of causal connections from moment
to moment. But the momentary pigs and people and rivers are
not identical in the sense of frozen and unchanging. They're
more like ships of Theseus than unchanging, non-composite,
immutable kernels. They're more like verbs than nouns,
processes than objects. Everypig is fire.

A Thesean pig doesn't need a soul to explain why it oinks
now and not then. It changes over time. Whereas your
"kernel" pig-soul lacks such an explanation. It's a black
box. You'd have to start replicating the Thesean pig within
the kernel pig to give it state, and change... it would have
to become composite... as Joe Pesci says in Casino, if
you're gonna whack someone, make sure you got the hole dug
first, or else pretty soon you're diggin' another fuckin'
hole.

As for what consequences this has on the criminal justice
system - I'm fascinated by how obsessed kernel-thinkers are
with the urge to discipline and punish. But even the justice
system recognizes that people change over time - we offer
time off a sentence for good behaviour, and parole boards
examine whether the Thesean self has reformed (i.e.,
changed), and we recognize that sometimes there are
extenuating circumstances such that actions cannot be
attributed to conscious intent. Justice is properly more
about preventing harm than punishment of "a bad kernel" for
its own sake.


 

offline welt on 2019-01-21 16:29 [#02567466]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker



I really don‘t know what to make of that reply. You seem
to argue against someone who envokes the concept of soul to
explain specific animal or human behavior. But what I‘m
stressing again and again is that a soul does not adequately
explain specific behavior. That’s the very starting point.
And that souls ‘exist’ is undeniable if you use the word
to refer to the linked phenomena of ( a ) being alive and (
b ) goal-directed behavior. You could at best claim that
these phenomena are surface-level illusions and need to be
re-interpreted for an adequate understanding.

In general your position seems to amount to the conviction
that we “need no explanation” because stuff just
changes. But that’s just giving up the project of
understanding, it seems.


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-21 16:52 [#02567467]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567466



lol no, my "conviction" if you want to call it that, is that
explanations of agency are only possible under a Thesean /
composite model of self, and not explicable at all under a
simple / unitary kernel model of self.

I mean, we don't just say that people and pigs do things
when they do because things change. We look at specifically
what's changing and how and why it changes. I'm addressing
the general metaphysics of our disagreement, not the
specific nuts and bolts of psychology and behaviour. I'm
saying that there ARE nuts and bolts. Capisce?


 

offline welt on 2019-01-21 17:22 [#02567473]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker



What do you think is the “general metaphysics of our
disagreement”?

I think we might have talked past each other to a
considerable extent. I really don’t know what this
‘kernel theory’ has to do with anything I said.


 

offline Indeksical from Phobiazero Damage Control (United Kingdom) on 2019-01-21 17:25 [#02567474]
Points: 10671 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



soul is the sum of a persons experiences, that's IT.


 

offline Tony Danza from Fabulous Hollywood on 2019-01-21 17:47 [#02567481]
Points: 3408 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567473



Well, like Stimpy in the Ask Doctor Stupid skit, you want to
explain the can of beans in terms of a queen bean (the soul)
and the other beans are worker beans, whereas I think the
can of beans is its own explanation.

(I tried and tried to find that clip, where is it??)


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 18:30 [#02567486]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



I wonder if the micro organisms that make a lot of who I am
have souls. And if so, wether their souls influence my soul.
Is my soul the master soul?


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 18:31 [#02567487]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular | Followup to Indeksical: #02567474



Yeah, but you’d have to include will. Possibly.


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 18:36 [#02567488]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



I have this mitochondrial cell, goes by the name “Floydd
96 fx”. It wants me to do bad things, and is trying to
create a revolution through my colon. He has a bad soul.
Also bacteria influence what I consume. Soul consumers.
I’m just a bus.


 

offline welt on 2019-01-21 23:12 [#02567500]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker | Followup to Tony Danza: #02567481



You're missing my point.

I don't talk about the soul because I think it's an entity
that could or should explain specific actions.

I just note that souls exist. I note that they don't explain
behavior. I wonder what it is that could explain behavior.

Why is it obvious that souls exist? Look at your hand and
bang it on a piece of wood. That's what you call a hand. Now
'look' at nothing in particular - there are thoughts, ideas,
feelings streaming into your consciousness which you
yourself do not actively produce
. That's what you call a
soul.


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 23:16 [#02567501]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567500



“there are thoughts, ideas, feelings streaming into your
consciousness which you yourself do not actively
produce.”

What do you mean by “do not actually produce”? Are you
talking about will, or the unconscious?


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 23:19 [#02567502]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



I mean, I could take that as saying “well my soul is out
of my control”. Or maybe that you’re a victim of your
soul, and that there’s something else (or greater)
that’s involved.


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 23:25 [#02567503]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular



“obviously are not identical to your soul”

Gosh I missed that part. So yeah you clearly believe
there’s you, and then there’s your soul. You seem to
point out that the non soul bit will rationalise and is the
“calculator” part of your being (your Autechre example).
I just don’t get that. So you believe there’s welt, and
then welt’s soul? Could you help me understand by better
define the part of welt that is “soulless”? Because if
it’s just differentiating artistic sensibility and maths
then I’m just not feeling your groove here.


 

offline welt on 2019-01-21 23:26 [#02567504]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker | Followup to RussellDust: #02567501



I think Nietzsche put it quite nicely when he wrote in
Beyond Good and Evil: "With regard to the superstitions
of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small,
terse fact, which is unwillingly
recognized by these credulous minds--namely, that a
thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish
;
so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say
that the subject "I"
is the condition of the predicate "think".


There are certain thoughts and ideas which you can control.
You can sit down and decide to do maths or finish a
work-project and so on and then you simply do it. But you
can also sit down with no particular aim. And then thoughts
and ideas and feelings come. But you don't actively invite
them. You're very passive with regards to them. ... There's
something going on there. And it's not identical to you
insofar as you are an agent. So what is it?


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 23:30 [#02567505]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular | Followup to RussellDust: #02567503



Sorry, I messed up copy and pasting the quote I was replying
to:

“And who are you - since you obviously are not identical
to your soul, your aims or the matter that makes up your
body ?”




 

offline welt on 2019-01-21 23:30 [#02567506]
Points: 2035 Status: Lurker



I guess I lean towards identifying myself with something
that is active. What is relevant about 'I' is the
agency. ... But if I don't choose which thoughts come, or
which aims I have (because they are natural aims, for
instance). Then it follows that these things don't belong to
my 'I'.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's something very wrong with
that idea. But I'm nut sure what it is.


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 23:31 [#02567507]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular | Followup to RussellDust: #02567505



Are you saying like “the ecosystem part of me isn’t my
soul because it can’t think?”


 

offline RussellDust on 2019-01-21 23:34 [#02567508]
Points: 15860 Status: Regular | Followup to welt: #02567504



Ah don’t hide behind him! I like Nietzsche far more than
tiny does, but I simply don’t agree. I prefer David
lynch’s Anolgy when it comes to getting ideas. Getting an
idea isn’t a passive thing simply because it “just
came”. Thinking that it came out of nowhere is of course
reinforced because you can’t work out where it came from,
where the impulse starts. Doesn’t mean it didn’t come
from somewhere inside you.


 


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