I will start off by saying it is futile to attempt to define soul because it is an ineffable concept and therefore undefinable. I am sure we all get a general "feeling" about the concept we are talking about which is enough for now...
It actually makes sense to me- how the ‘non-matter’ is ‘very clearly there’. If ‘non-matter’ is referring to that which we sense as subjective experience (“mind, emotions, and sense”), then isn’t it kind of simplistic to dismiss ‘subjective experience’- as possibly not existing- just because there’s no objective criteria by which to qualify the information? I don’t need to ‘see’ pain, sadness, joy, surprise, anger, etc to acknowledge when I’m experiencing them.
This says the point I’m trying to make better than I could paraphrase it. It’s from “The Politics of Experience” by R. D. Laing. He was a psychiatrist who actively spoke out against the tendency in psychiatry to objectify the human mind (i.e. to consider ‘thoughts’ nothing more than the product of some synapses firing).
“Natural science knows nothing of the relation between behavior and experience. The nature of this relation is mysterious- in Marcel’s sense. That is to say, it is not an objective problem. There is no traditional logic to express it. There is no developed method of understanding its nature. But this relation is the copula of our science- if science means a form or knowledge adequate to its subject. The relationship between experience and behavior is the stone that the builders will reject at their peril. Without it the whole structure of our theory and practice must collapse.”
Laing also said this about 'soul':
“Many people used to believe that the ‘seat’ of the soul was somewhere in the brain. Since brains began to be opened up frequently, no one has seen ‘the soul.’ As a result of this and like revelations, many people do not now believe in the soul…..But as Kierkegaard remarked that one will never find consciousness by looking down the microscope at brain cells or anything else, so one will never find persons by studying persons as though they were only objects.”
Edit: Also, I'm not sure how to answer the actual OP because there are too many definitions of soul to consider. I personally need something more specific than 'soul'.
Exactly. The subjective cannot be dismissed. This is the problem of science. As long as these debates go on people are missing the point. We will NEVER understand the intangible. And the intangible will always exist. If it did not, we would not have the tangible. Just like we would not have science and reason without spiritualism and imagination. Reason has its uses and its limitations. If you subscribe solely to reason, and proudly claim your atheism, you are no better than the religious fundamentalists. You accept one side wholly and I daresay irrationally. What!?! an irrational atheist??! Sure, your reasons for being an athiest are quite rational....but you are rejecting the subjective completely (now that's irrational!), refusing to accept it has any validity. In doing so you cannot derive meaning from nothing and as Peguy said that is like saying "I am dead." And effectively you are...that is, if you are a true adherent to this. However, if you get out of bed every morning, and trust yourself to drive to work not thinking about the possibility that, or reality that, the floor might not be there when you get out of bed, or the odds of your death on the drive to work, you are placing faith in something (Those who do not are mad, they have faith in nothing,thus, no faith in life. Their reasoning is infinitely rational, but leaves no meaning). If you are alive you must have some microcosm of faith in something. If you have faith solely in reason, you will have nothing. An intelligent theory is not anything outside of itself. It has no meaning. G.K. Chesterton said:
In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader then themselves
A few more thoughts from G.K. Chesterton who understood this well. ( I am going to quote Chesterton extensively because he puts into words, beautifully, the exact thoughts I have had on this subject because of my own revelations)
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
About materialism … leading to nihilism.
Materialists and madmen have no doubts.
Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger , and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity: I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does) , it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bond, not to loose. They may well call their law the “chain” of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the language when applied to a man locked up in a madhouse. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.
About belief in self leading to solipsism
The horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers whore talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.”
All that concerns us here, however, is to note that this panegoistc stream of thought exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme of materialism. It is equally complete in theory and equally crippling in practice[…]
And now the really important part!
The man who cannot believe his sense, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular.
Which brings us to the point of this post…to defended the ineffable, infinite concept of the soul… or some sense of the immortal being (call it what you will but an infinite concept cannot be describe well enough in finite terms).
So this brings us to the Latin phrase : Credo ut intelligam… meaning “I believe so that I may understand.”
Again, this final quote from Chesterton sums this up well:
Mysticism keeps man sane[…]
[…]He has permitted the twilight.[…]
[…] He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them […]
[…]The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious and everything else becomes lucid. […]
In order to live properly, you must accept this duality in life. It will never go away. In terms of Myers Briggs, T must develop its F and F must develop its T.
If you cannot understand mysticism, and the spiritual nature of man, you are doing something wrong. You are sorely missing something massively important and inexplicablly magnificent. Just because you cannot see it in front of you, or feel consumingly, it does not mean it is not there (However, sometimes it is there...you know, those unexplainble occurances like visions, true seers, NDEs...etc. Things that are universally accounted for and still unexplained.). It exists in everyone who lives. Faith, that is. Spiritualism will never be explained by science, but spiritualism does not try to explain science. They complement each other. You will never believe in soul if you do not allow yourself the possibility of its existence. To develop spiritually you need to be open to it and embrace it fully. It starts off subtle and the first step is awareness. No scientific data will convince you it exists, or make you feel this. It exists in the realm of the infinite. Science is and always will be finite. This is why I believe in the soul. Everything else becomes lucid when you place faith in the infinite. I have gone down the path of extreme solipsism and it does lead to madness. However, I realized things exist outside of me as much as things exist only inside of me. This is ok. It must be this way. Without both light and dark we would see nothing.
If she doesn't believe in non-matter it's her choice (even though it's very clearly there).
