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the Soul and Alzheimer

yeshua
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Posted 08/10/07 - 06:50 AM: Subject: the Soul and Alzheimer	#1
I read this on wikipedia: Skeptics of the soul cite phenomena such as brain lesions (as in the case of Broca's aphasia) and Alzheimer's disease as evidence that personality is material, and furthermore, exists in discrete components, contrary to the philosophy of an immortal, unified soul. I myself am a Muslim and for me first most authority is the revealed scripture(the Quran). The Quran explains that every human being has a soul, not much is further expounded. Recently I started reading Ghazali and the poetics of imagination, a fantastic book I might say. Here the author explained that Ghazali was influenced by Neo Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Thus I started also reading the introduction to the enneads. However I started browsing wikipedia and I found the comment I have posted above. What would be the counter argument to such a skeptic ? We age, our cells change and deteriorate and still we believe to have a soul. Our identities don't change. Why would we then disbelieve the soul, when the process happens only to the brain, like with alzheimer ? Does the brain function as an archive to the soul, is our identity harbored in the soul or in the brain? Thus the one who suffers alzheimer, is he/she to the sensible world dying? But in the immaterial world still alive ? Still conscious, having her identity ? Is the brain the tool of the soul, or is the brain the soul?

Avedis
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Posted 08/10/07 - 11:17 PM:	#2
Veshua - It seems such skeptics are trying to equate personality with the soul, but, even if personality is equated with the soul, we know for a fact that our physical brain is also linked to personality, thus changes in personality could theoretically be linked to either changes in the soul or changes in the brain. But really, I would challenge that personality can be equated with the soul, and I think most thinkers would challenge that notion as well.

kwidgybo
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Posted 08/11/07 - 08:14 AM:	#3
Avedis wrote: Veshua - It seems such skeptics are trying to equate personality with the soul, but, even if personality is equated with the soul, we know for a fact that our physical brain is also linked to personality, thus changes in personality could theoretically be linked to either changes in the soul or changes in the brain. But really, I would challenge that personality can be equated with the soul, and I think most thinkers would challenge that notion as well. A lot of religious thinkers HAVE equated the memory, mind, personality, etc. with the soul. Personally I don't subscribe to that way of thinking, and there are plenty of thinkers both western and eastern that don't either. The materialists want to focus on the claim that is defeatable. - Kwi

CypressMoon
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Posted 08/13/07 - 04:33 PM:	#4
The "I" (i.e. ego/identity/self image) is the most elusive "thing" in the universe to linguistically define, and/or to know by experience/feeling/intuition. The "I", to the self, is "defined" by the cogito (i.e. a transcendent subject "looking", and "judging" the inner ego as an object.) This subject to object relationship culminates in, and perpetuates a subjective vision of the self/ego; which, in regards to nihilistic wordlview is a self-deception. Further, the ego is a transitory phenomenon, given the case at hand (e.g. time-space) making the ego reach towards infinity in possible essences. Your fictional/prophetic text is, in my humble opinion, a manifestation of the problems perpetuated by language, (e.g. imprecise, inaccurate, intransitory; not capable of elucidating the essence of identity) and the metapsychological apparatus' themselves (i.e. id, ego, supergo) "designed" to preserve existence, negating/denying/repressing/supressing certain aspects essential to an essence, thus creating an idealized desire based upon insufficient evidence. Is there a ghost in the machine? Possibly. I'll either find out, or not find out when I die.
"IN THE spring, Tipasa is inhabited by gods and the gods speak in the sun and the scent of absinthe leaves, in the silver armor of the sea, in the raw blue sky, the flowercovered ruins, and the great bubbles of light among the heaps of stone." - Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays Serve the Gods of language by ignoring their rules and seizing its wholeness. The mind is both a mirror and a map, where the things in the mirror are mapped into concepts.

Reformed Nihilist
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Posted 08/13/07 - 04:55 PM:	#5
"I" is used to refer to the speaker of a phrase. Not that hard really, and it really makes cogito less profound. Identity is more complex, and it works like the sorites paradox. I friend of mine's mother is dying of brain cancer, and has had degenrative psychological problems for years. I can attest to the fact that she is not the same person that she once was. As each little bit of her personality slips away, there is no clear place where one can say "That's is entirely not Alin anymore", in the same way as when taking the grains of sand off of the Sorite's heap doesn't give us one clear place by which to say "This is no longer a heap". So I agree that it does have to do with the fact that language is approximate.
Nobody ever became a famous philosopher by being a champion of ecumenical hybridism Daniel Dennett Freedom Evolves

rabeldin
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Posted 08/13/07 - 05:29 PM:	#6
My wife lost a sister to Alzheimers a few years ago. The personality changes were severe, but in fact, there was no way to assert that we knew enough to assert that "she was no longer the same person". Did we really know her most intimate thoughts before she was afflicted? I doubt it. She demonstrated a paranoic phase in which she saw people who were not physically there and spoke to them and apparently heard them. For how long had she had these thoughts before she exteriorized them?
Leave no assumption unquestioned.

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Posted 08/14/07 - 04:48 AM:	#7
rabeldin wrote: My wife lost a sister to Alzheimers a few years ago. The personality changes were severe, but in fact, there was no way to assert that we knew enough to assert that "she was no longer the same person". Did we really know her most intimate thoughts before she was afflicted? I doubt it. She demonstrated a paranoic phase in which she saw people who were not physically there and spoke to them and apparently heard them. For how long had she had these thoughts before she exteriorized them? What is the distinction between "intimate thoughst" and the thoughts that you are dexcribing?
Nobody ever became a famous philosopher by being a champion of ecumenical hybridism Daniel Dennett Freedom Evolves

kwidgybo
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Posted 08/14/07 - 01:41 PM:	#8
rabeldin wrote: My wife lost a sister to Alzheimers a few years ago. The personality changes were severe, but in fact, there was no way to assert that we knew enough to assert that "she was no longer the same person". Did we really know her most intimate thoughts before she was afflicted? I doubt it. She demonstrated a paranoic phase in which she saw people who were not physically there and spoke to them and apparently heard them. For how long had she had these thoughts before she exteriorized them? This is a point I've rarely seen verbalized. We really cannot know what another's "Self" is like, nor if it has changed or stayed the same. Certainly most of what we view externally as "personality" is tied to physical structures - but what one means by "soul" is much harder to tie down. I have long been quite certain that those who expect their memories, desires, rationality, etc. to survive to some "afterlife" are mistaken. Nevertheless I see every indication that the "self" exists beyond the material and is heavily connected (where by the word exist I mean has significance, and not necessarily physical extension). Certainly any such claim regarding this depends heavily of the precise definitions employed (as pointed out by others). - Kwi

philosofear
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Posted 08/14/07 - 03:03 PM:	#9
Their is no difference in the person regardless of what happens to them physically. It is the same conciousness. Am I the same person I was when I was five? Well yes and no. First of all if we are to say that the self and the body are one in the same, then truly we are different persons every seven years for thats how long it takes for our bodies to regenerate entirely. (In other words all the atoms that used be in you seven years ago, are gone, replaced with others.) I believe that their is a self, call it what you will, but that it exceeds mere physical structure. Their is an obvious connection between the mind and body but this doesn't mean that htey are one in the same.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" -Socrates

Floyd
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 09/09/07 - 04:59 PM:	#10
Regardless of Alzheimer's, I know I am not the same person that "I" was 10 years ago. 10-years-ago-Floyd was not made up of the same atoms as current-Floyd. 10-years-ago-Floyd did not have the same thoughts and opinions that current-Floyd has. Current-Floyd has a lot more in common with other people than he does with 10-years-ago-Floyd. Any workable concept of the soul refers to something beyond our individual personalities, and that's why they are usually tied to a concepts of "oneness" and immortality. The soul would be some more fundamental part of us besides temporal aspects and petty constructs of selves who are just a name and a general body. Of course, most people like the idea of soul because they can use it to fulfill a lame desire to live forever by thinking of the soul as that petty self. -Floyd Edited by Floyd on 09/09/07 - 05:17 PM
Short and to the point. \| Online Philosophy Club \| Book & Reading Forums \| My Philosophy Articles "Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness." ~Immanuel Kant

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