zomgwtf said:
Yeah it's a very interesting course I agree.
@lacy I didn't change what I was saying at all. I was saying quite straight forwardly that we can not change the fundamental definition of soul in order to just keep the souls existence continuing more concretely. It just doesn't make sense to me.
@Ape It's interesting that you bring up emergent properties. I tend to think of the soul as an emergent 'possible property'. The mind however is mostly what gives rise to this 'possible emergent property'. The soul is just something that we've created, this has no bearing on whether it actually exists or not.
It does have a bearing on necessity though. For instance people claim that the universe had a beginning, maybe it did but is it necessary to think about? To believe in? Some current cosmological models I've seen certainly make it unnecessary to think about... in fact, I think it's the mainstream idea now days.
Give me a single definition of what a "Dragon" is. Go on. Make sure it applies to all cultures, and is accurate both historically, and currently.
...
...
...
Yeah, it's not really that easy. Langauge has to evolve with concepts, and that is fundamentally different from using a fallacious argument to win a
rhetorical contest.
This isn't a contest, it's SUPPOSED to be a collaboration, enriched by the fact that we have diverse views, beliefs and perspectives. Frankly, you're not adding to this at all, and you're moving into the realm of being genuinely disruptive. I find that frusterating, because I know that isn't how you NORMALLY act, and it certainly doesn't reflect your intellect.
Would it kill you try a new approach to express the concept you're trying to communicate? You speak of the "mind", but let me tell you as someone more than a little familiar with neurobiology and psychology... believing that you have ONE mind, one single entity that is YOU, is much the same as saying you have a soul.
The ACCURATE scientific view is that what we percieve as consciousness (having nothing more advanced that we know of to compare it to) is an artifact of many complex systems, and interactions in the CNS, and distributed organs which have an effect on the CNS. There are theories as to how we add up to conscious beings, (i.e. People with MINDS), and the best ones currently out there show that when we are most aware of ourselves, our enture brain "lights up" in some very interesting patterns. Of course, all that means really is that we see blood flowing to certain regions, and infer that they must be more active compared to "null" regions.
Then we discover that, no, there is no "quiet" time in the brain. Your DMN (Default Mode Network) is always on, and seems to be either a strong reflection of your mental health (I don't mean 'a little sad' I mean illness) or a cause of it. Hell man, we're still disovering endogenous ligands, for instance [EDIT: Clarification: those that led to] cannibinoid receptors. The brain may well not be mystical, anymore than I think QM is "mystical". It is MYSTERIOUS, and complex, and to couch your argument in terms of scientific certainty, is wrong. Don't believe me?... ask your local friendly neurologist, who will probably laughingly remark that we're essentially Phrenologists with ideas and better tools.
We dont' feel the texture of your skull, now we observe blood-flow, and might I add, in ways that often obscure related data. You have to ignore variables in a system as complex as the brain, and often that leads to discoveries of the role that some small part plays in how we think. It does often miss the forest for the trees however, such as the DMN, or the interaction between the frontal lobe executive functions and other parts of the brain.
I feel confident saying that if you stick a serial murderer under an fMRI, and run the proper tests, you'll find that their frontal lobe is not doing a whole hell of a lot (ditto with sociopaths of many flavours). That tells you SOMETHING, but it hardly goes towards answering questions of a soul.
Once again, we're left with too little information to draw such a strong conclusion either way, although as the notion of a soul seems to be a distinctly human concept, I find it hard to believe they exist. As you said, there is no need for that explanation, but that doesn't rule it out either.
As TheStatutoryApe has implied, one must be able to recognize the world in terms of probablities and work from there. Certainty is rarely useful... just ask Eisntein's Corpse how he feels about "Spukhafte Fernwirking". Uncertainty, as long as you don't use it as an excuse to be apathetic, is motivating! Uncertainty, and the realization of the magnitude of that uncertainty (not talking about HUP at all btw) makes me MORE curious, not less. I'm more driven to understand and gain a greater confidence that, "nope, no soul" or visa versa.
Skepticism and Certainty are fundamental enemies. Certainty requires faith, and Skepticism eschews faith in favour of exploration, and setting a high standard of proof, but neither does it give you the comfort of faith in the absence of something and all that implies. You might want to do some research into the PHILOSOPHY of Skepticism, not just the word as it's often bandied about, usually alongside "cynicism" or "science". Skepticism embraces the scientific METHOD, not all products of science. The former is skepticism, the latter is faith.
) will never believe it unless we see it, and can't point out flaws in the proof. Like the whole green-fire-breathing dragon example- that was wrong, much to many religious people's disappointment. 
The bottom line, is that I agree with your conclusions based on what I've seen, and I would be surprised->shocked if souls were discovered (can't imagine how...). That said, the "mysteries" (not mysticism) of the brain and body do remain. Hell, if you can convince a conference of Psychiatrists/Psychologists that you've discovered the mechanism by which Tourette Syndrome gives birth to coprolalia/-phagia/-axia you would win more awards than... than... you'd win a LOT of awards. 