For those who believe in souls...

[sans qualia]

I'm curious. What do you think is the relationship between a person's soul and their mind? Are they the same thing, or is a soul more of a "subtle mind," ability to to experience qualia sort of thing? Do souls have memories? Thoughts? Feelings? Are they self-aware? Do individual souls have identities, characteristics or qualities that distinguish them from one another, or are they all identical? How much of what we think and feel is just physical activity in our brains, and how much is really going on at the level of the soul?

[Tesibria]

1. ....

i have no answers ... but loved the questions you raised - and wanted you to know I read it ...

i THINK but do not know - just thinking out loud - that our soul is our mind ... but greater than, because it lives on after our mind/brain is gone (and some believe ... before this brain was created).

[luaneryder]

2. That is my thought

Our soul (mind only when it is connected to the brain in flesh) was before, after, always.

[ret5hd]

3. If the soul is our mind...

then what does a brain injury tell us about our souls? Often people with brain injuries experience extreme personality changes...an introvert becomes outgoing, a pacifist becomes violent, a genius becomes "slow".

was the soul expressing itself thru the old or the new personality? does a "good" soul become "bad" or vice-versa?

[luaneryder]

4. I would add to that question

What of savants and genuis'? Did the soul somehow miss something in a previous incarnation that it was to have experienced/learned? All these questions lead me to more questions, but this pondering is good for me. Perhaps all souls have an equal measure of good and bad and the life experience determines which side will be more pronounced at what moment and for what purpose.

[sangh0]

6. If a brain can be damaged, why not a soul?

Or maybe, those corporeal things that can be damaged are not a part of the soul. That is, if you think of a soul as that which is left when all else falls away.

[Proud liberal Kat]

5. My personal thought is that

our brain is the conduit for expressing our soul and informing our soul in this plane of existance. I would like to believe that our souls have individual identities and memories, because I would like to think that *me* in some form of how I see myself now goes on. I like the idea of being able to see and know I am seeing my loved ones after this lifetime, but i am not so sure on it. I think that what we feel in general is brain activity, but that it is influenced by the soul and spirit to a degree. I think they are indivisible while alive because they work in such concert together but they are definitely two different things, one dies and the other lives. What happens to the soul that lives and whether it is unique and something that will maintain is identity...well that is a darned good question!
Kathy

[eridani]

7. Mind and soul are both emergent properties of complex matter

Most people think of souls the way chemists used to think of caloric as a substance. Our brains don't seem to be built to easily grasp the notion that a relationship is not necessarily a detachable thing in itself. Because matter moves, there is heat, and because it is complex, there are souls.

[mrgorth]

8. The soul

is everything non-corporeal about us. It is our spirit, our personalities, our essence, the thing that differentiates us from each other and no, it is not physical.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. Sufis say

that everything is God. An individual is like a drop of water washed up by a wave; for an instant, it is individuated, but eventually it goes back to the ocean. The stress of Sufi practices are on the heart, and direct heart experience. When ones heart is open, one feels the interconnectedness of all beings.