172. 26/27 July 2019
Craig and Alta left for Chicago yesterday after breakfast at Scramblers on US.23. That afternoon Kim called and wanted info on the new Mac Air so you and Carol met them at the Apple Store at Polaris. After some time, everyone decided to go over to MicroCenter on Bethel. Where Kim bought her Mac Air and Carol bought an iMac, the first since about 2002. Her old one has slowed down a bit over the years. This morning you headed to Office Mac and then to Staples to check out a small computer table, so far though you haven't bought one. You just finished a very late lunch or early supper at Smashburgers and are presently at Heritage Park in Westerville. Carol is walking and you are sitting in the shade facing west across from the shelter house. - Amorella
1622 hours. I didn't realize I have skipped a couple of days. Upon re-reading Note 170, I see: "[I am] awaiting directions for 'Modern Theory of Soul' and Miss Havisham's said interview/discussion on the subject." So, it appears that Notes 170 and 171 were preliminary asides to the present.
But Notes, rest assured orndorff, important enough to be included in the blog. By your earlier wish, I control the blog, EncountersinSpirit. - Amorella
1634 hours. Yes, for consistencies' sake that is so, and this was/is so for the EncountersinMind blog also. Below is a review of the material that Miss Havisham is going to comment on from her perspective as a human soul.
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Copied directly from Note 169:
[This is] the material for the Modern Theory of Soul. You found more than you suspected. Below are some examples. - Amorella
[I have divided sentences and/or paragraphs below so that I more easily read them for understanding. - rho]
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Soul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The soul, in many religious, philosophical, and mythological traditions, is the incorporealessence of a living being Soul or psychecomprises the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc.
Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal.
In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality may have been influenced by Plato).
For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal.
Immanuel Kant
In his discussions of rational psychology, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) identified the soul as the "I" in the strictest sense, and argued that the existence of inner experience can neither be proved nor disproved.
We cannot prove a priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all properties and actions of the soul cannot be recognized from materiality.
It is from the "I", or soul, that Kant proposes transcendental rationalization, but cautions that such rationalization can only determine the limits of knowledge if it is to remain practical.
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Philosophy of mind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gilbert Ryle's ghost in the machine argument, which is a rejection of Descartes' mind–body dualism, can provide a contemporary understanding of the soul/mind, and the problem concerning its connection to the brain/body.
James Hillman
Psychologist James Hillman's archetypal psychology is an attempt to restore the concept of the soul, which Hillman viewed as the "self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness rests.
Hillman described the soul as that "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern", as well as "a special relation with death".
Departing from the Cartesian dualism "between outer tangible reality and inner states of mind",
Hillman takes the Neoplatonic stance that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul resides.
Archetypal psychology acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which,
in Hillman's view, soul expresses itself.
Science
The current scientific consensus across all fields is that there is no evidence for the existence of any kind of soul in the traditional sense.
Many modern scientists, such as Julien Musolino, hold that the mind is merely a complex machine that operates on the same physical laws as all other objects in the universe.
According to Musolino, there is currently no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the existence of the soul;he claims there is also considerable evidence that seems to indicate that souls do not exist.
Neuroscience
Neuroscience as an interdisciplinary field, and its branch of cognitive neuroscience particularly, operates under the ontologicalassumption of physicalism. In other words, it assumes—in order to perform its science—that only the fundamental phenomena studied by physics exist.
Thus, neuroscience seeks to understand mental phenomena within the framework according to which human thought and behavior are caused solely by physical processes taking place inside the brain, and it operates by the way of reductionism by seeking an explanation for the mind in terms of brain activity. (See more below)
To study the mind in terms of the brain several methods of functional neuroimaging are used to study the neuroanatomical correlates of various cognitive processes that constitute the mind.
The evidence from brain imaging indicates that all processes of the mind have physical correlates in brain function. However, such correlational studies cannot determine whether neural activity plays a causal role in the occurrence of these cognitive processes (correlation does not imply causation) and they cannot determine if the neural activity is either necessary or sufficient for such processes to occur.
Identification of causation, and of necessary and sufficient conditions requires explicit experimental manipulation of that activity. If manipulation of brain activity changes consciousness, then a causal role for that brain activity can be inferred.
Two of the most common types of manipulation experiments are loss-of-function and gain-of-function experiments. In a loss-of-function (also called "necessity") experiment, a part of the nervous system is diminished or removed in an attempt to determine if it is necessary for a certain process to occur, and in a gain-of-function (also called "sufficiency") experiment, an aspect of the nervous system is increased relative to normal.
Manipulations of brain activity can be performed with direct electrical brain stimulation, magnetic brain stimulation using transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychopharmacological manipulation, optogenetic manipulation and by studying the symptoms of brain damage (case studies) and lesions. In addition, neuroscientists are also investigating how the mind develops with the development of the brain.
Physics
Physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that the idea of a soul is incompatible with quantum field theory (QFT). He writes that for a soul to exist: "Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics.
Within QFT, there can't be a new collection of 'spirit particles' and 'spirit forces' that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments."
Some theorists have invoked quantum indeterminism as an explanatory mechanism for possible soul/brain interaction, but neuroscientist Peter Clarke found errors with this viewpoint, noting there is no evidence that such processes play a role in brain function;
Clarke concluded that a Cartesian soul has no basis from quantum physics.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
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The Mind-Body Problem
The mind-body problem is an ongoing problem in the philosophy of mind and in metaphysics, concerning the nature of the relationship between the mind, or consciousness, and the physical world.
The mind-body problems asks a number of questions: Are the mind and body are separate substances or elements of the same substance? What is their relationship to each other? What is consciousness? And how can consciousness arise out of ordinary matter?
There are a number of responses to the mind-body problem, though none have universal acceptance. A number of these positions are outlined below:
- Dualism, the position that the mind is essentially not physical, and exists separately from the body. Dualism comes in various forms:
- Interactionism, which states that the mind and body have causal interaction.
- Occasionalism, which states the apparently causal links between mind and body are actually divine intervention.
- Parallelism, which states that the apparent causal link between mind and body is an illusion, and that mind and body run parallel to one another.
- Property dualism, which holds that the mind emerges from the body, and obtains status as something separate.
- Monism, the position that the mind and body are not fundamentally separate. There are several types of mind-body monism:
- Physicalism, including most commonly-held positions today, which asserts that the mind may be reduced to the physical processes of the brain.
- Behaviourism, which holds that talk about mental states can be reduced to talk about behaviours.
- Functionalism, which states that mental states are caused by behaviours, senses and other mental states.
- Type physicalism, which argues that mental states are equivalent to brain states.
- Idealism, which claims that the mind is all that exists.
- Phenomenalism, which reduces the physical world to perceptions which exist within the mind alone.
The mind-body problem was brought up in antiquity, and can be seen in the works of Plato, though its modern formulation can be credited to René Descartes, who also presents a dualist response.
Selected and edited from -- http://www dot philosophy-index dot com/philosophy/mind/mind-body.php
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2335 hours. I feel one more aspect needs to be included in reference to the contemporary use of the word, soul.
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Consciousness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about cognition.
Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.
It has been defined variously in terms of sentience, awareness, qualia, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood or soul,
the fact that there is something "that it is like" to "have" or "be" it, and the executive control system of the mind.
Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.
As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness:
"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."
You become aware that your actions have an effect on other people.
Western philosophers, since the time of Descartes and Locke, have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and identify its essential properties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include whether the concept is fundamentally coherent;
whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically;
whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be recognized; how consciousness relates to language;
whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties;
and whether it may ever be possible for computing machines like computersor robots to be conscious, a topic studied in the field of artificial intelligence.
Thanks to developments in technology over the past few decades, consciousness has become a significant topic of interdisciplinary research in cognitive science,
with significant contributions from fields such as psychology, anthropology, neuropsychology and neuroscience. The primary focus is on understanding what it means biologically and psychologically for information to be present in consciousness—that is, on determining the neural and psychological correlates of consciousness.
The majority of experimental studies assess consciousness in humans by asking subjects for a verbal report of their experiences (e.g., "tell me if you notice anything when I do this").
Issues of interest include phenomena such as subliminal perception, blindsight, denial of impairment, and altered states of consciousness produced by alcohol and other drugs, or spiritual or meditative techniques.
In medicine, consciousness is assessed by observing a patient's arousal and responsiveness, and can be seen as a continuum of states ranging from full alertness and comprehension, through disorientation,
delirium, loss of meaningful communication, and finally loss of movement in response to painful stimuli Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill,
comatose, or anesthetized people, and how to treat conditions in which consciousness is impaired or disrupted.
The degree of consciousness is measured by standardized behavior observation scales such as the Glasgow Coma Scale.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
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The above is a summary of what you have placed in yourModern Theory of Soul. I will piece selections so that Miss Havisham may comment if she wishes. Again, this broadens the 'perception' of what a soul is from one who perceives herself as a personification of orndorff's soul, Miss Havisham. Post. - Amorella
I have some things to say from my perspective as a soul alone and as a soul protecting and comforting Mr. Orndorff's spiritual heartanmind. - mh
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This is Amorella. The first piece from above for commentary is:
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Soul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The soul, in many religious, philosophical, and mythological traditions, is the incorporealessence of a living being Soul . . . comprises the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc.
Further Edited by mh
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I agree that the soul is an incorporeal essence, the Greek τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι,τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι,"the what [that] is". - mh
[In philosophy, essence is the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the entity or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity. - from Wikipedia] -
Further Edited by mh
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Immanuel Kant
In his discussions of rational psychology, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) identified the soul as the "I" in the strictest sense, and argued that the existence of inner experience can neither be proved nor disproved . . ..
It is from the "I", or soul, that Kant proposes transcendental rationalization, but cautions that such rationalization can only determine the limits of knowledge if it is to remain practical.
Further Edited by mh
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(Response) How can a transcendental* rationalization be determined only within the limits of knowledge? Spirituality is nonphysical, but spirituality is observed in human behavior, thus it appears human beings are presupposed to experience spiritual-like events. - mh
*[transcendentalism - 1 relating to a spiritual or nonphysical realm: the transcendental importance of each person's soul. • relating to or denoting Transcendentalism. 2 (in Kantian philosophy) presupposed in and necessary to experience; a priori.]
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Philosophy of mind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology, nature, and relationship of the mind to the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigm issue in philosophy of mind, although other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness, and the nature of particular mental states.
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(27 July 2019, afternoon) I am skipping the mind-body problem mainly because its nature is not my own. - mh
James Hillman
Psychologist James Hillman's archetypal psychology is an attempt to restore the concept of the soul, which Hillman viewed as the "self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness rests.
Hillman described the soul as that "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern", as well as "a special relation with death". . ..
Hillman takes the Neoplatonic stance that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul resides.
Archetypal psychology acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which, in Hillman's view, soul expresses itself.
Science
The current scientific consensus across all fields is that there is no evidence for the existence of any kind of soul in the traditional sense.
Neuroscience
Neuroscience as an interdisciplinary field, and its branch of cognitive neuroscience particularly, operates under the ontologicalassumption of physicalism. In other words, it assumes—in order to perform its science—that only the fundamental phenomena studied by physics exist.
Physics
Physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that the idea of a soul is incompatible with quantum field theory (QFT). He writes that for a soul to exist: "Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics . . ..
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
27 July 2019
Afternoon, before lunch. You just awoke from a nap. Carol has been washing/drying clothes. Earlier, Kim, Paul and the boys stopped by. Paul picked up your old Sony TV and is going to put it out on their covered/screened deck since you have not found a use for it. You need to choose a couple blog pages for your weekly share. - Amorella
1324 hours. Sometimes I feel embarrassed and foolish for displaying my wares, so to speak.
That's because they are, to you, authentic heartansoulanmind. - Amorella
Mid-afternoon. You had an excellent lunch at Cracker Barrel on Rt. 36/37 near I-71 and are presently at the Oakland Nursery on the same road in east Delaware city. Ms Havisham continues her editing with the "Philosophy of Mind" article below. - Amorella
Philosophy of mind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Hillman
Psychologist James Hillman's archetypal psychology is an attempt to restore the concept of the soul, which Hillman viewed as the "self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness rests.
Hillman described the soul as that "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern", as well as "a special relation with death". . ..
Hillman takes the Neoplatonic stance that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul resides.
Archetypal psychology acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which, in Hillman's view, soul expresses itself.
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My comments follow the above script. Mr. Hillman's view that the soul is "'self-sustaining and imagining substrate' upon which consciousness rests," is surprisingly accurate from my perspective. However, 'substrate' implies the soul is levelled, a leaf petal upon which the heartanmind reside. If anything, from this sort of logic, the soul would be a ceiling not the floor. Consciousness would be the dirt; the earth if you will, on which the heart and mind flourish. - mh
Mr. Hillman's second paragraph states "the soul makes meaning possible, [deepens] events . . .." I would add, "into spiritual experiences" and let it go at that. - mh
As far as the archetypes, dreams and myths are concerned the soul is usually involved in the mix of heartanmind. Psychopathologies are heartanmind in confusion, obsession, compulsion and the like. If I were in such a mix I would stay out of it so that it might be possible for both a heart and a mind to have a soul to come home to one day, so to speak. - mh
This is a good place to stop and post. - Amorella
1653 hours. I like that we are back on track as far as Ms Havisham is concerned.
We were never off track, Mr. Orndorff. I line the hallways of everything said in both the Encounters in Mind and the Encounters in Spirit blog. When Amorella says heartansoulanmind He means it. - mh
1657 hours. Did you mean to capitalize 'he' or was it a misuse? I would have repeated 'Amorella' again or used sheorhe. I don't feel I would have capitalized the pronouns. I would not use them because it appears to me to be sacrilegious, "a violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred" (Oxford/American).
Mr. Orndorff, the "I" pronoun is the only one I accept as sacred in your sense of the word. - mh
1707 hours. I disagree, but this is about you not me.
It is about the use of the pronoun He, capitalized in reference to Amorella, not you. - mh
1710 hours. Do you see the spirit, Amorella, as a male? I figuratively see her as a female.
Using English as our translating bridge, I see myself as female because I carry your heartanmind. I protect and comfort your heartanmind as a female mother would do. Hence, in this 'personified form' if you will, I see Amorella as a male. I capitalize the pronoun 'He' out of respect. Spirits are not sexual in our nature but as a heartansoulanmind we take the preference of the heartanmind whatever that preference might be. A soul is concerned with the 'I' of the carried heartanmind. - mh
