Alva Noe – Can a Person Be a Soul?

21 thoughts on “Alva Noe – Can a Person Be a Soul?”

1. Seemed like a lot of rambling, evading, changing the subject, and saying things that don't actually mean anything…or at least not anything that makes any sense. 🤷🏻‍♂️

2. Here's my follow up to Descartes' Dualism, using modern analogies:

   This conceptualization of The Soul allows for its continued existence after the body it 'owned' dies and it also allows for the existence of an actual Free Will that is not ultimately merely an illusion. It is also a conceptualization which is consistent with what we understand about the laws of science.

   Imagine a few hundred years from now, when humans will be able to create some very sophisticated robot explorers that they will no doubt send to distant planets. If an intelligent alien race were to encounter one of these robots, they just might mistake the robot for a "form of life" given that it appears to respond spontaneously to its environment and also appears to initiate/pursue purposeful actions.

   Through its 'eyes' and 'ears', the scientists back on earth who made it would be able to see what it sees and hear what it hears and we'd be able to give it 'volitional' instructions re: how to take advantage of its changing environmental circumstances.

   All this would be possible cuz we are able to send and receive info (sights and sounds) through the vacuum of space via electromagnetic waves. If a meteor were to hit one of these robots and it "died", we could say that its 'soul' back on earth–the scientists who processed its incoming data and gave it instructions–was able to survive its death.

   Now we know that sights and sounds can be reduced to electromagnetic wave 'disturbances' which can communicate that data to remote destinations. And we know that all the incoming data collected by the human sensory glands is reduced to electrical 'signals' which are transmitted via the nervous system from remote locations to the brain.

   With the use of this metaphor, we can suspect that perhaps the human brain is effectively a 'transceiver' which both generates electromagnetic waves associated with bits of information and detects incoming data via the same EM 'information highway.' The soul's thoughts would also generate wave energy which would be picked up by the brain, where they would be mistakenly interpreted by our unwitting brains as signals coming from its own sensory inputs. So maybe what Descartes was trying to locate was the point of this interface (perhaps near the corpus callosum?)

   Just as a radio is constructed in such a way that it is able to be influenced by a certain type of electromagnetic wave frequency/pattern, our brains are–by this account–constructed in such a way that 'invasive signals' from a remote Soul are able to interface with the brains that otherwise control our bodies.

   Imagine this 'data collection' location in the brain where electrical signal information from the body's sensory glands is directed to. Imagine it as a sort of 'control room' where the incoming sights, sounds, feelings, etc. are 'displayed' on a 'screen' area (actually 3D) which under a microscope is where electrical, and EM events are occurring. The Amygdala would be in a position to monitor this incoming data and when it 'perceives' certain images/sounds/feelings that have been tagged in memory as threats or opportunities, it generates an emotional response.

   Now imagine that these images/sounds/feelings are also transmitted via EM waves in every direction, and that a remotely located 'soul' is able to receive them and perceive them in much the same way the brain (Amygdala) perceives them. Which is another way of saying that the Soul is therefore able to see/feel/etc. everything that is being 'displayed' on the 'screen' everything that the Amygdala is witnessing and responding to.

   Because this EMF interface is so complete, the Soul in its remote location mistakenly perceives the body's incoming sensory data to be its own perceptions . When the soul then 'thinks' about alternative responses to the incoming data (alternative, that is, to the Amygdala's emotional response program) these thoughts are transmitted via 'energy waves' in such a way that they are displayed on this 'screen' in the brain's 'control center.' Here, the brain/amygdala perceives the soul's thoughts, and mistakenly assumes that they are just more of the incoming data that it is always monitoring, according to its genetically determined program (flight, fight, approach).

   In this way, the soul is actually able to indirectly give volitional instructions (idea suggestions) to the body. E.g., the body may initially perceive a threat that it needs to respond to, but if the Mind is thinking of the situation as a possible opportunity to take advantage of, instead of as a threat it must flee or attack, then the biological 'instinct' effectively becomes overridden by 'reason.' Not because the Mind/Soul is actually giving instructions to the body directly, but only because it is able—via the interface—to influence what the body/brain is perceiving.

   How powerful is this influence on the body's biological response program? Well, powerful enough to persuade a soldier to march into machine gun fire to his certain death. What does the brain of a soldier see that makes him 'choose' to intentionally endure great suffering? Answer: the Mind's perception that such mental happiness/satisfaction will be gained from being perceived a hero that it will be fully worth the physical pain/death that is fully expected as a consequence of the effort made.

   Such a conceptualization of The Soul allows for the possibility of an Afterlife (for the Mind, if not the body) which would be a state of affairs that then give us logical permission to embrace all of the meaning and value we see in our lives on a daily basis. Without such a conceptualization of The Human Soul, we are forced by logic to perceive all of our intellectual ambitions and life goals as just so much futile nonsense…

   So we may be remotely-located Souls that are able to interface with Brains. The brains are always running their own genetic programs (materialistic determination of all brain instructions) BUT because their information processing is 'exposed' to other "computers" (like a MODEM link) they can be 'influenced' to perceive the Soul/Mind's thoughts & read them as threats/opportunities they will react to, according to their genetic program. Minds don't "control" their Brains/Bodies directly, but they do discover with experience that they do possess some "volitional" control over certain of their bodies' activity.

   Something to consider? twitter.com/JamesKroeger5

3. Thanks

4. Very hard track to find the soul but I found thanks for my inner been

5. Great job..keep it up till we'll reach closer to truth.

6. Maybe the soul is the Being (the essence, the substrate) of a person. The person is that which is distinct, separate in the world. The mask (persona) of distinction. Thus every living and non living thing is a person, because every thing in the world is a particular, unique thing (who have its own personality, or particular way of being and acting in the world), but interacting or in relation with the rest of the world, which constitutes the unity behind the personhood. Personhood is distinction in unity. There might be different levels or degrees of personhood, but one (thing) doesn't have to be conscious or sentient in order to be a person. Radher consciousness is what integrates, includes and makes one more interactive, interconnected and intertwined (interbeing) with the rest of the world, a high level of personhood which leads and opens one to (and identify with) the unity behind all things and all persons.

7. This guy seems to say a whole lot of nothin

8. Is that man an actor?

9. Physics doesn’t explain how your computer works? Who is this numb nuts?

10. 10 minutes of gibberish.

11. Alva has great insight and makes solid points that cannot be ignored as nonsense.

    Can a radio be a signal raises the question to a more accurate acknowledgement. Just because you answer no doesn't mean there isn't a signal.

    I am a soul vs I have a soul. I'm not sure how it works. However, we know science can't take apart a radio and find a signal.

    Regarding what is the person — some people are more connected to the collective; intuition advises a person through ESP phenomena, whether prophecy, pyschic acknowledgement, clairvoyance — this effects how a person reacts, acts, thinks, behaves; beliefs, thoughts, feelings.
    There's some people who are not spiritual so their very outlook on life is entirely different. Athiests have everything to live for, nothing to die for, whereas a spiritually convicted person has everything to live for as well, however will die for whatever his divine agency may adhere to — not in a violent manner, rather in the context of Divinity: sacredness, truth, justice, unity.
    On the other hand, religious and political people — different from Spiritual persons — will kill for their version of belief or control for power. They — ego oriented — care more about protecting their self idenity to the world & themselves than anything else — narcissists.

    In spirit there is no seperation — like in nature All is one: the eco system, atmosphere, trees, sun, to the bees going around pollinating. Great unification of everything working as one. It's really incredible. Like the human body.

    Life is a great school.

12. I have a Beautiful Heavenly Soul !

13. I thought the discussion was a waste of time. The interviewee rambled on trying to avoid the meat of the matter. I think we might say that the subject boils down to the understanding there is no quality or aspect to material reality which in any sum or multiple can give rise to self-awareness/consciousness. We know that thought is real. For example, Einstein’s special relativity is a product of the mind and has proven to be correct about its claims and definitions of material reality. How then could it be any less real? Yet it is intangible, something apart from what we know materiality is. There is no naturalist explanation and never will be. I would say that consciousness is the manifestation of the soul in the material realm. I would challenge anyone who would deny this as likely to provide an alternative view. The conventional explanations from many scientists can be seen only as childish and just another manifestation of atheist prejudice. That consciousness might be indicative of a soul, the product of a supernatural phenomenon is far more likely and accommodating a notion than any materialist alternative. Why is it scientists are so terrified of the possibility that we are spiritual beings, that there might be a God? I find the product of these interviews a disappointment far more often than of any consequence.

14. He don't know what he's talking about 🤷

15. Hahahahahaha

16. That is pure Aristotle's intelligent formalism. For better understanding try Metaphysic's Zeta & Lambda books.
    So fascinating how questions like the fundamental essence of existence seem not to become old, despite of some people trying to undervalue classical philosophers and scientists.

17. Soul searching!

18. Humans are "special" only in our desire to feel special. We desperately seek and rationalize our specialness in various ways, through unconditional love (being seen as special), art (connecting with something that feels special to the senses), learning (specialization), religion (special creation), and hallucinogenic drugs. It's a product of civilization – since we're no longer connected to nature as we are evolved to be, we've doomed ourselves (or rather, 'our selves') to live out our lives in perpetual search of substitutes for connection and validation.

    We hide our ordinariness behind walls and underneath our clothes, but race to outdo each other, chasing hierarchies which measure how special each one of us is – when in reality, we are absurdly ordinary animals telling ourselves we are "special" as we destroy each other, ruin the planet, and get ripped to shreds by the ordinary unison of the tiniest living being on the planet.

19. The philosopher is not ready to answer this kind of questions at all.

20. Life is the instantiation of individuality in any viable form that can emerge within any viable habitat in space-time. An individual is an instantiated position of view (POV) in space-time. The host form (body) that confuses this reality is the facade, evolved or otherwise, that supports the mechanism which instantiates the POV, the individual. This instantiating mechanism is the entanglement molecule within living cells and is the entanglement cell within complex hosts like you or me or your pet salamander and every living cell that has ever existed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JHFDLSC

21. Would have been a lot quicker if he just said "I have no idea".

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