Could Animals Have A Soul?

[sandyRoe]

The house must have been coming down with mice. The new traps have killed six in only two days.
If animals do have a soul is it fair to dispatch them unshriven from this world?

[naomi24]

LG, I don’t think that analogy works. The passage of information zooming around the internet is not self-producing – it emanates from human thought – and we have no idea of what that actually consists of.

[LazyGun]

@ O_G If you can show me - the world, even- those structures in the brain that could act as transmitters or receivers that would make thought independent of the material through which is resides, you will earn yourself a Nobel prize

Absent that - conscious thought, self-identity, ego - all those things attributed to a soul are emergent properties of the biochemical and electrical interactions in the brain and it is highly unlikely therefore that they could exist as a coherent form outside of said brain :)

[jim360]

Thoughts aren't self-producing either -- they require either an external stimulus, or at least a medium in which to travel. And, again, what reason is there to believe that thought is anything more than electrochemical processes?

[Old_Geezer]

If I were able to test it I'd have shown that years ago. If one poses the question one should not be expected to have to have the answers or opt not to pose the question in the first place.

I feel it is likely one has not proved emergence, that it is assumed/believed since one has yet to find evidence of an alternative.

[naomi24]

//it is highly unlikely therefore that they could exist as a coherent form outside of said brain //

I'm not so sure. What if thoughts act like, say, radio waves? What if thoughts are not contained permanently within the brain?

[Octavius]

I think that if you hold a belief in a human soul, then you are quite likely to attribute a similar belief towards its presence in the rest of animalia.

[goodlife]

You see the beliefs about the soul are many and varied.

Even among those who claim to base their beliefs on the Bible, there are differing ideas about what the soul is and what happens to it when we die.

But what does the Bible really teach about the soul? To find out, you need to examine the meanings of the Hebrew and Greek words that are translated soul, in the Bible, and then only if you believe the Bible.

[jomifl]

Naomi, we do have some idea of what thoughts consist of, they seem to consist of electrico-chemical pathways in the brain that are switched on and off by external and internal stimuli. The pathways are modified in the process of learning. There seems to be no need as yet for a more complicated explanation, just a clearer understanding of the detail. It is misleading to 'see' thoughts as conceptual entities jostling around in the brain as if they have an independant existence, they don't they are embedded in the neural circuitry.

[jomifl]

If humans had souls then apes and other mammals would have souls too since there isn't a single human attribute that doesn't exist elswhere in the animal kingdom. I think amoebae would have to have very teeny souls too :o)

[jomifl]

/What if thoughts act like, say, radio waves? What if thoughts are not contained permanently within the brain/
If they did there would be some evidence. There really isn't any evidence. What would be 'like radio waves'.

[jim360]

Given that a thought is in part electrical it already acts in some way like a radio wave! But the electrical activity is too weak to be able to travel beyond the human body. Which is why we needed the invention of such complicated equipment as an electroencephalograph to even realise that there was any such activity going on in the first place.

[jomifl]

Jim, surely the electromagnetic waves produced by neural activity are a by- product and don't play any part in the 'thought' process.

[LazyGun]

As Jim says, we know that thoughts - brainwaves - are electrical, so in that sense they are certainly like radiowaves. We can even attribute different types of thought to different EM frequencies. Given their nature though, they are reliant upon the medium through which they travel, and cannot propagate outside of that.

http://interaxon.ca/blog/2010/11/what-is-a-brain-wave/

http://engineering.mit.edu/live/news/1785-can-brain-waves-interfere-with-radio-waves

[jim360]

Not sure why you can say "surely" jomifl, to that. The electrical activity is very much a part of the thought process. To what extent is an open question, because there are other parts of the process too, such as the chemical component, and the full properties of the medium, and what is going on to trigger a thought, and how external stimuli are involved and interpreted. The brain is unlikely ever to be fully understood, it's too complicated.

[naomi24]

We can examine the process by which we think a thought - or an emotion for that matter - is produced, but we can’t examine either. We know they exist – and we think we know what they result from – but we don’t actually know what they physically consist of. Some form of electricity, yes, but I don't think we can assume we know more than that. We simply don't know.

[jim360]

Strictly speaking, though, LG and I are describing a thought as nothing more than the electrochemical process (together with what started it, which is also part of that process). That is what it physically consists of. By insisting that there may be more to it -- well, you don't know either. And the present assumption, in the absence of any other evidence, is that there is nothing more to the process, and anything else is pure speculation with no grounds whatsoever.

In short, you simply don't know either. So why assume that there could be, or needs to be, anything more?

[LazyGun]

I am still interested to know how people are defining a soul, to be honest. Is it just the sum of all the thoughts and memories and feelings of that individual?

And as for thoughts - Its true to say we do not know what a thought is constructed of, or how it comes to be in the first place, but we do know how thought is propagated, and given that knowledge, it is very difficult for me to see how thoughts can exist outside of the medium of the brain that thinks them up.

[pixie373]

You can use human brainwaves to communicate with a computer, so by thinking "yes" or "no", you can light up the word on the screen.

[LazyGun]

@ Pixie - only if you have a special transmitter/amplifier and receiver/decoder, to act as a brain-computer interface.

[naomi24]

LG, thank you. That’s exactly my point. But, moving on, what if thoughts do act like radio waves and the brain acts as some sort of transmitter – and perhaps, receiver? Then the ‘radio waves’ produced in the brain, could exist separately from it.

For what it’s worth, since ‘energy’ cannot be destroyed, and since both thoughts and emotions are. I believe, constructed from some form of energy, I tend to think that if a ‘soul’ exists it is an accumulation of the energy generated by thoughts and emotions throughout a living creature’s lifetime. Is that energy stored in the brain? No idea, but if my dear friend Chakka sees me using the word ‘energy’ out of what he thinks should be true context, I’ll be in trouble – again. But then, what’s new? ;o)

Fascinating subject though.