Is the existence of soul an illusion? is Nirvana inevitable?

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Firstly I have no fixed view on any of this, however they are concepts I contemplate deeply and regularly.
I acept agnosticism as a default human condition.

What is the soul? some would posit that it is the animating spirit that gives life to the meat vessels we call our bodies, some believe it has divine origins and is eternal while others would propose that it is part of a greater force as described so suscinctly by Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars movie... In South Asia vast numbers of people subscribe to ideas along the lines of the soul being the animating force and the ego as a seperate illusion that occurs as a kind of by-product of the soul and continuity from one life to another is dependent on the attachment of the ego...

Animists believe that absolutely everything has a soul along the 'force' model...

As far as I am concerned nobody is able to give any substance to any of their claims...

I am inclined to see things in something along the following lines.

There is some basically unquantifiable 'life force', 'animating spirit' or some such that gives what we call life to individual organisms, depending on the complexity of the organisms and their niche in their environment they develop some level of sentience, this in turn may lead to the development of some form of ego or 'sense of self'. These things occur on a sliding scale and are not merely there or not [much like ASD's].

eg, A cabbage exists and requires some 'amount' of life giving 'force' however it's life cycle is in a fixed location and of limited complexity and therefore it's degree of sentience is limited to responding to environmental changes such as weather and soil conditions.

eg, A fish lives and is mobile within it's environment however it's activity within this environment is entirely focused on feeding, reproducing and avoiding predation, it adjusts it's location to appropriate positions to satisfy this, usually tightly entrained within a shoal of it's own kind, it appears to have no 'emotional' life. To me this also implies a limited sentience [probably more than a cabbage], however due to it's near insect like behaviour implies only a very limited ego.

eg, A primate [including humans] also containing some of that immeasurable animating spark lives a considerably more complex existence, has 'culture', an emotional life etc, which implies a higher level of sentience and a complex ego.

Now my propositions lie something along these lines,

The ego is a nessasary illusion that results from higher levels of sentience. As the complexity of ones activities and the degree of autonomy from ones own kind increases so does the 'sense of self' or ego. The ego is a nessasary but temporary illusion that serves the purposes of the organism [meat being] but serves no purpose and probably has no continuity once that organism ceases to exist [dies].
It is possible that the 'soul' or 'life force' returns to some communal pool of such energy who knows? However the ego ceases to exist, it ends as sure as the blood stops pumping and the neurons stop firing, therefore I ask - Is Nirvana inevitable? Is it not after all the trancendence of the ego?

Of course all of this does not negate the need for moral or ethical actions while alive, these are after all governed by other nessesities depending on organism or niche. It does not answe the questions of where it all started or how it all ends and why, these are the wonderful 'mysteries' that give my ego something to occupy itself, and in turn give it something to pat itself on the back over when in it's vanity it pretends to understand or answer them.

Just some thoughts for the spiritual philosophers among us...

peace j

All questions worth asking. Vaguely Biological philosophy is always fun for me

That was always one of my favourite questions; what is the spark of life? As a kid, I figured some transcendental property made men men, rather than piles of flesh. Turns out, that there really is no spark (first hinted at by the synthesis of urea; Science pissed on vitalism, yet again ). An original, chemical replicator evolved, gaining layers of chemical complexity until it reached...us. It's hard to envisage at first, but after a while, when the biochemistry and phylogenetic trees sink in, you begin to see it as incontrovertible fact.

The reality of Biology is far more beautiful than the ill-definied notion of a sole.

e

Asking whether an organism is sentient or has an ego is kinda pointless; its difficult to tell. Genetics would say, maybe. Individual fish need to have sex to pass on their genes, so they care about self preservation. This is unlike worker ants, who have to help the queen survive to pass on genes (they are sterile). Ants probably don't have a self.

Shoal behaviour is actually similar to human crowd behaviour; complicated from outside, simple from inside. There are good articles on the net about the "local rules" nature of shoals.



In short, no. Lifes prime "purpose" is to stay organised long enough to make a copy; death is a decay into randomness. All ordered neural activity ceases, all thoughts vanish. All that is left are tubes filled with salt (a neuron). There isn't a "life force"; genetic cloning, and the creation of a new species shows that.

Still, for every philisophical conundrum I end (or hopefully alleviate a little), it's corteous to add one; so here's my deep though.

If the Universe is set to expand indefinitely, and hence the Universe have an infinitely long time span ahead of us, is there a non-zero chance of the Universe spontanously collapsing, starting another Big Bang, and creating a new Universe (or the same one). Via the infinite monkey theorem, nonzero chance, over an infinite time, leads to that event having a probability of 1 (its gonna happen).
That, is Nirvana

I would need to distinguish soul and life force.

Nirvana is to me very problematic.

I've wondered if a sentient life force somewhere in the universe has a part in collapsing the Universe through the knowledge they gain of the Universe. Something much greater than the Haldron Collider. And if so, could our species be that sentient life force? Could a sentient lifeforce be responsible for creating the Universe over and over and over, etc. If there is no free will, could anyone stop it from happening?

And that is a fine kettle of fish to eat the can of worms!

The number of distinct threads that intriguing post would take to treat it fairly is a very tangled heap of spaghetti.

I will not start, though I might push my nose into one or two if they were to happen.

It reminds me of the first atomic test. In theory the extent of the impact would be finite and somewhat predictable, but no one really knew until after the test.

I don't think there is any concern about the Haldron Collider; but who knows what may come a thousands years into the future. It's both amazing and disconcerting over what the species has been able to accomplish, so far.

I guess we have to let theory predict fact sometimes, although strictly speaking it should be visa versa.

Ok I'll start. I think one thing both theists and atheists agree on is the existence of the ego in humans and that it is an illusion created by the mind. If we have a soul it would be our true self lying underneath the ego that could, if it was developed, exercise control over the mind. To those who do not believe it exists it would lie dormant.

This possibility is testable but only on a personal level. For those interested in doing so, I would recommend this book. The author suggests taking a break from constant and addictive thinking and trying to just observe your mind in action. If you can do that, you may find that the observer is the real “you”.

NobelCynic,

"I think one thing both theists and atheists agree on is the existence of the ego in humans and that it is an illusion created by the mind" you say.

I for one heavily doubt that all atheists would concur [my atheist self would not have] and I am quite sure not all theists can go there. Not even if you allow each to rewrite the proposition with individually chosen terms with appropriate associatoions.

i THINK I know what you mean, and THINK some who would class themselves as atheists and some who would class themselves as theists would go there.

But for me, I think we need to differentiate AT LEAST mind / soul / spirit - which I do NOT want to define here and now - but I believe [which I know conflicts with some stances and possibly with your position] the soul includes personality features which some would link instead to fleshbased ego.

This is a fundamental issue in a lot of enneagram diuscussion as well.

The "life force" is the electro chemical forces that migrate sodium and potassium ions through a hydrophyllic membrane. We are chemicals mixed in with a lot of water.

ruveyn

QTF. When (or, more likely, if) you ever learn about the generation of membrane potentials in the mitochondrion you will realise how true this statement it; there is clearly no "transcendental" (which is another word for bogus) life force, when you look into biochemistry.