Personality and the "soul"

[CoolioVonHoolio]

ANYONE READY FOR SOME PHILOSOPHY?

I am confused as to what my stance is on free will and if a soul exists. First off I am agnostic, leaning strongly against organized religions, but I accept the fact that there are unexplainable things at the moment and know facts always change.

However I just want to get some input from you guys on the "soul." What I think right now is that someones personality is completely predictable. All choices are made because of previous events and the chemical makeup of your brain at the given moment. Determinism at its finest.

However I recently came across a quote by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

And as I reflected on this quote, I came to realize this is entirely true.. if you act like something else for long enough, you become what you originally werent. Its usually considered just a bad chickflick for teenage girls but if you watch Mean Girls (lol I know..) you see how the main character actually changes into what she originally was only acting like. But this seems to contradict my previous assumption.

I've been thinking on their compatibility, but it doesnt end up making too much sense in the end.

 

[PeteAtoms]

I don't see what the dilemma is....

I call myself a determinist. If you look at a person, he or she is just one giant chemical reaction. And like you said, our actions are based on our response to our environment and the chemical state of the mind. The mind changes, which is part of the natural process.

 

[CoolioVonHoolio]

The dilemma is that if everything is in fact a huge chemical reaction, does one really possess the choice to become something different?

Choice does not exist because you cannot choose something other than what you determine to be the "best" decision at that moment. So how can someone "choose" to change their state of mind?

 

[BARBEERIAN]

One of my buddies came up with a great idea of what the soul was (while we we're admittedly pretty stoned). Short version--> The soul is like a hard drive of a computer, storing all the information of everything that's ever happened to you. Anytime you make a decision you access this databank to determine what the best course of action should be (based on what you've experienced previously'). Basically what you said only a lot more long-winded and 'stonery' at the time.

 

[PeteAtoms]

One of my buddies came up with a great idea of what the soul was (while we we're admittedly pretty stoned). Short version--> The soul is like a hard drive of a computer, storing all the information of everything that's ever happened to you. Anytime you make a decision you access this databank to determine what the best course of action should be (based on what you've experienced previously'). Basically what you said only a lot more long-winded and 'stonery' at the time.

That the same thing I think the soul is! Only I call it the brain.

 

[BARBEERIAN]

That the same thing I think the soul is! Only I call it the brain.

That's included in the 'stonery' part I didn't elaborate on, but yes the basic premise of his stoney wisdom was

Brain == Soul

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Chaos theory says no to complete predictability in complex systems.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Chaos theory says no to complete predictability in complex systems.

Hence the illusion of randomness or free will?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Read my sig. The Bozo part.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Perhaps, the point is you can't measure anything accurately enough to predict what will hapen in a chaotic system, that's what the butterfly effect means.

EDIT: And where has Bozo gone? Not seen him here for ages.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Perhaps, the point is you can't measure anything accurately enough to predict what will hapen in a chaotic system, that's what the butterfly effect means.

Right, that's what I thought. There are just so many tiny immeasurable factors in any given thing going on, and each factor influences the outcome, that you can't 100% predict most things that will happen. Whenever I hear "chaos theory" the butterfly effect and the weather are what I think of.

 

[Birdjaguar]

EDIT: And where has Bozo gone? Not seen him here for ages.

He found love and retired to real life. But if everyone in OT claps their hands together, he will hear and perhaps grace us with a visitation.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Well you think of it correctly then.

It DOESN'T mean that butterflies cause hurricanes It means that the teeny tiny change in pressure which is too slight to measure starts feeding back into the system and the results become unpredictable, unless you know the exact value, which you can never measure to infinitessimal accuracy.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

He found love and retired to real life. But if everyone in OT claps their hands together, he will hear and perhaps grace us with a visitation.

I find that very hard to believe, he was a Trekkie was he not

 

[Dachs]

He found love and retired to real life. But if everyone in OT claps their hands together, he will hear and perhaps grace us with a visitation.

He just came back for a thread like last week dude.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

He found love and retired to real life. But if everyone in OT claps their hands together, he will hear and perhaps grace us with a visitation.

Hey, hey, whats all this clapping? Im tryin' ta sleep ova hea...Ohh, a philosophy thread!

Look at the soul as a level of superconsciousness you dont seem to directly experience or are aware of but that nonetheless contributes to making you 'who' you are from moment to moment, just as invisibly and as powerfully as your subconscious mind does. Your day to day walking around consciousness is completely unaware of these two powerful driving forces and believes its calling the shots. Hence the illusion of free will. Then of course theres God, which is yet another level of consciousness. But dont get me started on that. Suffice to say that there is always something greater.

I find that very hard to believe, he was a Trekkie was he not

Good point, but that just makes it more unlikely, not completely impossible.

 

[Phlegmak]

There is no soul regardless of what Scientologists tell you.

 

[kuukkeli]

As a materialist I'm in the Brain == Soul camp. A personality is a combination of physical qualities of our brains and our memories.

And about this:

The illusion of free will is so complete, that it may as well be real.

I think I agree. The latter part is said a bit different from what I'd say but I guess the point remains: The illusion of free will is so complete, that we may as well consider it real.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Choice does not exist because you cannot choose something other than what you determine to be the "best" decision at that moment. So how can someone "choose" to change their state of mind?

By using their mind as it currently is, to transform it into a new state. The point of choice is precisely to determine the "best" decision, according to your own standards of what's best; that's not a bug, it's a feature.

To quote a famous philosopher, if you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Don't make yourself really small. I'd like to see you around.

Great link on compatibilism

 

[Masquerouge]

Bozo, as quoted by BirdJaguar, is right.

Still trying to figure out what he meant in his post. Looks like basic Freudian theory with the subconscious and the superego calling the shots over the poor id, and if that's what he meant, then I think I agree.
And by I, I mean we.