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Conscousness without a body?

Can our consciousness exist without a body (dead brain)? Are they separate? Is consciousness and the soul the same thing? Do we have a soul? Vote YES if consciousness can exist without a body (brain). Vote NO if consciousness only arises out of a living brain. If a sperm and egg just became fertile, is it conscious? Is it right to kill a zygote that isn't conscious yet?

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  • 34 votes
  • 1 vote
Grecio 7 Oct 1
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20 comments

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1

Can't vote since my answer is: "I don't know".

That's OK. Most of what is on Agnostic.com is opinion, I think. What is your best guess?? Just curious..

@Grecio , There are so many angles on this but allowing for quantum physics, for example, can energy exist without being attached to physical form? And for that matter, if it does, is it free of any effect of time? I don't want to sound like someone grasping at straws but there is just SO much we don't know. Mind you, I reject religion with an open mind because it's simply not feasible.

@chucklesIII I guess that "soul" and "consciousness" could be two different things. Anyway, I wonder what many people mean when they say "I believe something with all my heart". What exactly is "heart"? In a way, I guess it means with "every bit of my being", but what is being?

0

I believe we think sometimes that the soul is our "heart". We say "I feel it in my soul", or I feel it in my heart". We say "I believe it with all my heart and soul". We talk like our consciousness and our souls are two different things. I think some scientists classify infants as being "conscious" when they can look in a mirror and recognize something on their face that doesn't belong, like a smug of chocolate.
Richard Dawkins says that an embryo (up to a certain point) is just a mass of cells, so there is no reason why the stem cells couldn't be harvested for worthwhile purposes.
Does an embryo become a living "soul" as soon as it develops a beating heart. or after it has brain function, or after it exists the womb? At what point is an embryo "living"? Up to what point should a fetus be allowed to be aborted?

1

Need more choices, or B. Without any science to back up consciousness beyond sparking synapses there is nothing going to be left. Of course one can try the argument of what happens to the energy (remember Newton), it gets eaten by microorganisms if not larger creatures -

1

Definately not.Consciousness is a function of a live brain. When the brain dies and decays there is nothing left.

1

D. I don't know

Me too, that’s why I fall more in the agnostic label!

1

In order to discuss this you have to differentiate between bodily sentience and deep conscious awareness. Obviously bodily sentience or bodily consciousness are bodily traits that disappear at death. Deep conscious awareness is something totally different IMO. I lean toward thinking that it is not individual organisms that “have” that kind of awareness—the universe itself is consciously aware.

As an analogy think of a fleet of self-driving cars. Individual cars, sophisticated as they are, have no self-awareness or free will. But the fleet can be controlled by consciousness from a central headquarters.

This is different than the soul concept. A junked car is nothing but junk and there is certainly no car soul that survives in car heaven. At most some of the records of the car might be retained for awhile. The car was never anything but an assemblage of parts that we designate “car”, but that designation is purely artificial and contrived.

I checked the first option, but have to qualify. Our personal identity as an individual is illusion. Our true Self (singular) is consciousness itself, immortal by default because it belongs to ultimate reality beyond our illusory sense-world.

1

I see no evidence that consciousness can exist without a mind.

3

We can’t know this. We can only guess and/or hope.

However, one thought that won’t leave my head lately is: Energy is neither created nor destroyed; it merely changes form. If this is the case, does that mean there’s some aspect of beings that doesn’t end? Could there be a consciousness attached to it? Again, I don’t know, and there’s no way of knowing. Only guessing and/or hoping.

Sounds like a good rationale.

4

I see this line of thinking as pure anthropocentric arrogance. We are not something special but only a slightly (and for some I use the term lightly) advanced life form. When you cut us we bleed and need food/water to survive. Death is a way of all life and we are not separate from this fact.

2

yes, it exists apart from the mind.

What are your grounds for this assertion. I fail to see any tenable grounds.

@wordywalt the vedas

@JeffMesser What are vedas? I have never heard of the term.

@wordywalt I believe it’s a Hindu spiritual text.

@wordywalt I am a hindu. a secular vedantist. I believe that consciousness is the viewer of the movie played by the senses and brain. this is a view known as monism and it's been around in some shape or form for well over 4,000 years. parts of the rig veda have been dated back to the last ice age. you can learn sanskrit and read it on your own. I believe physics is the ultimate truth, not mysticism. But I also believe in the natural yin and yang of all things - thus I have faith when things are bad that they will get better. And I also believe consciousness is the substratum of the universe as it is the very space permeating all things. This ties all of the vedic monistic philosphies together and suggests we are all one single consciousness viewing the present earth through this body and its' senses and memories. I think it's all just science we have yet to deduce so I use a black box to encase it and I focus more on the end.

1

a (living) body without consciousness? no machines, nothing artifical. zero brain activity we can detect, yet living. ???

1

D) It is possible & even probable but has yet to be proven or observed & has likely yet to have occurred.

3

What we call "consciousness" is the result of neural activity in the brain. Once blood flow ends, there is no activity and no "consciousness" - can't see how anyone can get beyond that.

2

D. I don’t know.

2

How would anyone know this? It would not be something anyone would/could know, it is something someone believes. Believing is not knowing.

Knowledge is belief so intense and backed by sufficient current evidence that we are willing to act on it. Much of today's "knowledge" will be disproved in the future by better evidence.

@wordywalt That is true enough

@wordywalt If anything is "backed by sufficient current evidence", then it is not belief, it is accepted fact. Of course if further evidence, facts or data is produced to change what is presently accepted as fact, then our acceptance will also change.

@jlynn37 Your statement does not alter or negate mine. The two are simply different statements of the same thing.

4

I voted no because I'm not aware of any evidence that supports the continuation of consciousness after the body is completely dead. I take the word "soul" to refer to the collective mental capacities of a living human being. Two thousand years before science was invented people could see that humans have those collective capacities, and they had to call it something... so they chose "soul". We still do indeed have those capacities, but since the last two hundred years or so we've become superstitious about using older terminology. We've decided we prefer to think of ourselves as soulless creatures now. I'm not sure that's an improvement.

skado Level 9 Oct 1, 2019

@adaptable1958
Yes, the reification of figures of speech is essentially a superstitious action, whether we then accept the object of that reification or deny its existence. A fully non-superstitious approach would be to recognize it as metaphor to begin with, at which point a decision about the material existence or non-existence of such a figment is neither necessary nor relevant.

4

consciousness is a function of the electrical activity of the brain. that is the closest thing we have to a soul and when the brain dies and its electrical activity ceases, which might not be at the same exact moment (there may be twitches; you can electrocute yourself on an unplugged tv if you don't wait long enough to touch the wires!) then consciousness is GONE.

g

3

This is an old thought experiment that is often used in philosophy courses.

Before you start though
You should define what consciousness is, if it exists, and if it does exist where does it exist.

I would argue consciousness is the electrical signal that makes us function. For some people the electricity signal is reabsorbed at death and for others it lingers around for awhile.

Most people will point to their brain if you ask where it exists, some the entire body, and others the heart. Many will use the term soul as their definition. This of course brings in heaven and hell into the discussion.

It’s a fun conversation but your choices need some work and the set up needs some more explanation.

5

When I die and if my consciousness or energy is transformed and or survives, if I can come back and give you an answer then I will. 🤨🤔😁

2

It's amazing that consciousness arises out of a material brain. Sam Harris talks a lot about this. When a person dies, he seems unconscious, and we see no evidence of a soul. Also, I guess a person has to be born in order to get a soul. His/ her/other may not have a soul before they are born. However, many people believe Jesus existed in Heaven before he came to Earth. Some believe Jesus became God's son when he was born to Mary. Others believe he did not become God's son until he ascended into Heaven. If we are born with a soul, can the soul change as it matures? Can we be born with the soul of a criminal?

Source:

Sam Harris

If a soul enters the body when born, does that mean that premature babies have no soul?

@dahermit None of us have a soul. The concept is humanly created fiction.

@wordywalt I agree...I was being facetious.

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