The human soul

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I can't see how this follows from my saying that the human soul develops as a result of our life experience.

Today I have a given set of experience. Tomorrow I will add another day's experience to the pile. As my pile of experience grows, so does my soul or mind or whatever. I have more past experience to relate each current experience to. In a word, I have greater subjective understanding. With new experience, choices might be steered in a different direction. So skills, etc do increase. People change. That's why prisons should seek to reform only, and not to punish.

ANd how did you know that I suck? LoL.

No. Past events have causality over future events, but future events never cause past events. Like we aren't dying now because the world will blow up in a hundred trillion years or such.

On many religious points I disagree with Fnord, but where we might agree is on a reliance on objective reality to ascertain truth. I see many theological truths to be empirical, whereas he may not. The mind, how you define "soul," I believe is real in that we perceive ourselves to exist. Therefore, it's empirical in a sense.

Tabula rasa versus a priori is one of those transcendental kinds of things that don't make much sense to debate. So I choose to look at it this way: The natural tendency is towards the preservation of one's own life. What is morally good and morally wrong, if it is to be judged in any objective, empirical kind of way, must be decided in terms of how one acts for the preservation and advancement of one's own life. The ultimate good is what brings benefit to oneself; the ultimate evil is suicide. Actions which enhance and extend one's life are good. Actions that are destructive, even destructive of one's environment or to other individuals, are evil. Why? Because destructive behavior towards others prompts them to act in their own self-preservation, which means destroying another person who poses a real threat. Criminal behavior, in effect, is self-destructive most of all. Therefore, everything we may say that is morally wrong or immoral may be known by the degree to which it destroys the person perpetuating it.

A healthy infant is physically incapable of immoral behavior. An infant only knows the instinct to feed. It is only as the infant grows that it learns independence and thus becomes aware of the ability to CHOOSE whether to engage in self-sustaining acts or self-destructive acts.

You are either self-destructive or you're not. You either love yourself or you don't (logical law of the excluded middle). Blaming society or "nature vs. nurture" simply will not do to absolve yourself of anything. If you are a self-hater, fault for the harm you cause others is squarely on you. It doesn't make logical sense to justify poor choices as "blaming the baby" because the wrongdoer is fully capable of choice and action--a baby has comparatively few choices.

As an example, let's say you have a baby that's been neglected by its mother. Is the baby evil because it commits suicide by not taking in some form of nutrition and water? No. The baby is an extension of its parents, and thus a negligent mother is harming herself by killing her baby. The baby isn't evil; the mother IS. The baby is incapable of feeding itself and has too few choices available to it; the mother is perfectly capable and CAN make those choices. Given the availability of a bottle or a breast, the infant will invariably choose nourishment. A baby cannot be said to be objectively evil. An adult, however, CAN be.

You cannot blame "nature" because nature doesn't force you to make good decisions. Nature "just is." You cannot blame "society" because you can conceivably act contrary to society. In fact, "Society" has a nasty habit of acting AGAINST the best interests of the individual and it often works out best for the individual to rebel. Rebellion doesn't mean causing harm to others within an oppressive society. But the laws of society can often be such that doing what is morally good violates them, whereas conformity can actually be self-destructive and, hence, immoral. Rebellion simply means non-conformity or acting contrary to laws and society, which could be as simple and harmless as inaction or, say, black-market trade in basic necessities in order to survive. It is only acting for the preservation of oneself, not for the purposeful harm of others (remember, deliberate harm to others is harm to oneself), that is in view here.

Likewise, it's perfectly understandable that people would take calculated risks, behavior that would appear to contradict their need for self-preservation and self-advancement but actually helps ensure an abundance of means and a secure future. While failure results in certain harm to oneself, the one taking a calculated risk can accept and withstand a certain level of harm incurred. This is referred to as a risk-benefit analysis. It's both reasonable and moral to take such risks. Making risky decisions in the absence of logic, however, would be neither reasonable nor moral because it denies the very faculties that work for the benefit of the individual. It's just as immoral as knowing the risks far outweigh the benefits and making a poor decision anyway.

To deny choice and personal responsibility is an exercise in delusion. Of COURSE you get a choice. When people complain that they were "born this way," or a product of nature, or a product of society, what they're really saying is they feel guilty about something and simply want to push their guilt on others. Others are acting out of jealousy or greed. They blame their inability to do great things on the ABILITY of others to do them. We're all each adapted to doing certain things and free to choose to engage in activities or build skills that we're naturally adapted for. I'm a musician. I can play musical instruments for 8 hours at a stretch. I can circular breath on the clarinet and hold notes 5 minutes and longer. I compose music. But I'm NOT well-suited to fly F-16's. I have poor vision and rely on corrective lenses, I've never been in great physical shape, I don't gain muscle mass easily, I'm weak in math, engineering, and related disciplines, and I'm too old at this point. I'm never happy with the available software out there to do what I want to in music. Despite loving computers and computer-based music, I can't code to save my life. I may eventually get lucky and make some mobile apps that can precisely reproduce my work, but in the meantime I'm happy with what I have and what I'm doing with it. COULD I make the choice to try to fly airplanes? Sure. COULD I get better at computer languages? Sure. I have those choices and I CAN make those choices. Would those choices necessarily benefit me in the most positive way? No. I'd likely crash a real plane if I had one. Learning a computer language might take more time and energy than I'm willing to sacrifice doing other creative things. I'm perfectly happy, healthy, and safe just practicing music. I'm not athletic, but I discovered that I can run long distances. I've taken risks, have suffered mild injuries and pain, learned the hard way that running as fast as I like is not what's BEST for me in the literal long-run. But I'm in the final stages of training for a marathon and am looking forward to race day. I can't reasonably expect to set quite the PR I want. I'm just not ready. But I'll finish!

I'm free to make any choice I want. However, I cannot escape consequences of ignoring logic. I cannot blame anyone but myself for the choices I make. If I run and cause myself injury, that's my fault. If I crash an airplane, that's my fault. If I waste my life trying to write a computer program that I'll never finish, that's my fault. If I waste my whole life being jealous of certain types of successful musicians, chasing dreams of flying planes and writing mobile apps, I have no one to blame but myself. Nobody OWES it to me to show me how to code, or fly, or run better. Nor do I OWE it to anyone to attempt to transfer my musical abilities and ideas to anyone else. However, I feel that I owe it to myself to pass own my knowledge and ability, that my children, my students, and other musicians are extensions of myself, and that I can accomplish more with more people. I may not be able to code, but I could save enough money to hire someone to create an app for me. I may not be able to fly a plane, but I could play simulation games or buy a ticket to fly ON an airplane while paying someone to get me to and from whatever destination I choose. In other words, there are ways of getting close to the experience I want EVEN IF I'm impaired by my level of ability in any given area of life. Because those opportunities ARE open, I have no one but myself to blame for not taking them. There is no point in being jealous of those who have while I "have not." I have an abundance in one area and I'm perfectly fine with that.

To avoid getting more verbose than I want - check out Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky with respect to how determinism should effect things like our criminal justice system or how we view aberrant human behavior. They both seem to come to similar conclusions and I think they're right, it's an issue of compassion that we consider place, time, and luck in how people are made and what they're lead to. Sam likes to expand the Charles Whitman example to the whole world (more subtle things than massive brain tumors pushing amygdalas) and I don't think that's a bad way to expand people's intuitions.

I get the impression that if our knowledge of psychology improves properly we're going to get to a place where most 'punishment' is purely instrumental/practical rather than backed by any sort of moral fervor. I say that because it seems like fervor in general is something more for fusing us vs. them and as we attempt to keep a world of 7 billion plus people at peace it increasingly looks crass and outdated.

Sometimes it's like a squirrel trying to figure out where a dog hides his acorns.

What I'm saying is that there is a sense in which the sense that we do make our own choices matters, and there are undesirable consequences to believing that other people are responsible for your shortcomings. It is a condition of poor character, to say the least. The ultimate truth of 'no agency' does not negate the function of human convention. This is not the same as saying that people can't afford to be more compassionate. I'm all for more lenient sentencing where appropriate, and programs directed more towards rehabilitation than retribution.



No, you're not saying it, I am, but whose fault is that?

Then you DO admit that everyone is NOT to blame for everyone else's problems, mainly due to the Principle of Causality. Good. Let's take this one step further:

You are to blame for everyone else's problems since the instant that you were born, provided that your birth is within each of their "Cones of Causality". True or false?

Let's see you weasel out of THIS one!

Well said @techstepgenr8tion. Punishment is not applicable in a deterministic world. If we could just stop and realize that there are reasons why people do what they do, and that those reasons are always products of the person's personal experience of his environment (or genetic error), then we can begin to ascertain our personal effect on the world.

Now I'm off to watch Sapolsky.

People have to know that to do wrong things is....well....wrong!! !

I also believe there has to be some deterrent to people doing wrong things.

Humans are good....but humans are bad, too.

When people are in one kind of torment or another knowing that something's 'wrong' just prevents it from happening sooner.

Why does it seem that those who say things like "All are responsible for the crimes of one" actually mean "YOU all...", et cetera? They never seem to explicitly include themselves in their concept of "shared guilt".

Yes, I will concede that. We can only affect contemporaries and those who come after us.



Yes. That is the idea. Of course, mapping out all of the actions which impacted upon your spiritual (in the sense of mind) development would be impossible, as you'd have to flesh out millions of inter dependencies, and how each experience dovetails with subsequent decisions which are based in those experiences. There is always the possibility that your actions did not have anything to do with a criminal's foul deeds, but I feel that it is dangerous for anyone to assume that and to feel totally innocent of all of the evil in the world, for all time. That's because each of our actions has repercussions for all future eternity. Some of our actions may have promulgated some of the good that we see in the world. And some of our actions may have promulgated some of the evil we see in the world. And we really can't tell which are the good ones and which are the bad ones until we see how our actions play out. I'm sure that the same action could have promulgated good or bad, depending upon the circumstances which a given action impinged upon.

I have not weaseled out of the trap you recognized. You did point out a couple of issues that I did not consider in making my original post. Namely, the issue of retro causality; that doesn't happen. And secondly, it is virtually impossible to point out all of the experiences which impact on any given action. But we know that that is how it happened, by virtue of a neonate blank slate being written on by socialization, into having a soul. That, in my mind, is beyond doubt. Thank you for helping me see my beliefs more crisply.

But, you know kortie, it is not that easy to determine if a thing will ultimately yield good or evil, or a mixture of both. Sometimes we hurt when we intend to help and vice versa. Without knowing the ultimate outcomes of our actions, we can never be sure if our actions promulgate more wrong or more right. And 'wrong' and 'right' change over time too, along with what is considered right and what is considered wrong; witness the treatment of american indians, women, black and brown, and homosexuals. The same thing can be considered good or bad when viewed from different perspectives. There's an old Taoist parable that illustrates this.

"In the Taoist parable of the farmer and his horse: first he loses his most valuable horse, then it returns bringing a dozen new horses with it, then his son breaks his leg while taming one of the new horses, and then the son is spared from being conscripted into the army because of the broken leg. And it could keep going like that."

In the end, good and bad, right and wrong, are subjective judgements which are dependent on who is making the claim and when they are making it. So we should not heed the call to do what is 'right', because we really do not know what is ultimately 'right'. Morality is relative. You can't speak about it with precision, unless you are speaking of the morals that you personally have deduced from your own life experience. A single additional experience can change your entire set of morals.

I agree and accept that there should be deterrents to people doing things which are against the established law. The law is there by common agreement, to protect society. I just see too much of our society thinking of the prison system as a means of punishment, instead of a means of rehabilitation to correct the mistakes that the society has made, in setting an example for this person. Society has to recognize it's part in producing someone who would be intent on hurting it. Then criminals would not be social outcasts, and would have more pride in themselves, and, so, have a greater chance at rehabilitation.

How do you come to know the minds of others so perfectly? But, of course, you are talking about the way it seems to you and not about the general applicability of your pronouncement. If I take you accusation as personally directed towards me, my subjective opinion is that you are mistaken in assuming that I am just trying to extricate myself from guilt, and I can only advise you to reread and try to understand my point. Understand that you are making this accusation based solely on your experience. Perhaps, in your experience, you're just fed up with people shirking their responsibilities, as you see them. All this is, of course, dependent on your life's experience.

Thanks for sticking with me on this. Live long and prosper.

There is no collective guilt, no collective soul, no collective mind, and no collective unconscious.
I am tired of people who try to use fallacious reasoning and false data to try to make me feel guilty for someone else's misfortune, poor decisions, and criminal activity.

I am no more responsible for the actions of Nicholas Cruz than I am for the actions of Lee Harvey Oswald.

And before anyone says that "We are all responsible for each other's feelings", let me say that they have not been doing their fair share to ensure that my feelings are positive ones. Otherwise, I am responsible for my own feelings, my own thoughts, my own actions, and my own words.

No one made me type this, and no one made me click the green 'Submit' button.

Deal with it.

I'm sure that you have reasons wrought of your life experience for feeling that way, and that is your right. Thank you for discussing the matter with me though. I appreciate your interest.

It's not about feeling one way or another. One could be completely empathetic, or just as easily say 'f--- other people', neither makes free will nor breaks the logical arguments for determinism.