In order to keep marrog happy.

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1329355]

Comments

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Dunno. What's a soul?

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

In researching further in an attempt to make a decision on the matter I have discovered that a personal year's subscription to the online OED is $295.00 (or if you'd prefer, a low monthly rate of $29.95).

[matgb]

Or you can just join your local library, most then let you use your membership to look at it from home...

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

How can anything be supernatural, really? If it exists, surely it's natural?

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

That was pretty much my first answer but I wanted a better definition of supernatural. My thought was that if it was intrinsic (as a soul is generally considered to be) it was natural.

According to the definitions I've found so far it has to do with observability and/or connection to a deity/magical entity/magical experience. Hence I'm now leaning towards supernatural but I'm still digging so I haven't answered yet.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Who says it exists?

I think I'm mapping metaphysical -> supernatural. If it's not metaphysical, it's not a soul.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

I believe the soul exists, you may disagree. However if a natural creature has a soul then the soul is as natural as its heart or lungs.

If it is merely metaphysical it doesnt really exist and therfore cannot be either natural or supernatural.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's it exactly.

By Definition

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

1 '(You Make me feel like a) Natural Woman' -- Aretha Franklin
2 Aretha is the Queen Of Soul

3 Do i need to go on?

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Where's the "abstract construct invented to help mankind deal with its inadequacy at facing its own mortality" option?

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I strongly believe that all magical phenomena are natural, but not always independently observable due to the sensory and neurological filters that we tend to apply on our surroundings.

I think, in order to make this poll answerable, I'd need specific contextual definitions of "supernatural", "natural" and "soul". I'm assuming that soul means a person which transcends the body, but then how do we define person in that context? Thoughts and memories, inclinations and personality traits?

[nameandnature]

Using Carrier's definition of "supernaturalism" as believing that there are are ontologically basic mental things (that is, those that don't rely on non-mental things for their operation). A soul is usually one of those mental things, as far as I can tell. Some people use it to mean "mind", in which it's not supernatural, assuming materialists are right.

[zz]

tasty?

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I think by definition supernatural: if it were natural I'd call it consciousness.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

What about the subconcience?

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Subconscious is a form of consciousness - as in, it's made of MRI-able phenomena.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Oh ok. In which case that which you call conciousness I would probably call the soul - or I that's what I would understand it to mean in most contexts. (not that I could tell you what is MRI-able but I suspect that most things are, if not now then in theory).

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

According to most major religions, the Soul continues to exist beyond the death of the body.
MRI-able conciousness ceases to exist at the point of death.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Hmm yes this is kind of like 'do you believe in god'; there are really too many questions that spring from it for an a/b answer.

I answered natural because that's more true than the other option and also I wanted to see the results. To me, your soul is your inner sense of being, mixed with your personality, your nature, your thoughts, your behaviours, your dreams (day- and night-) and all that area of the human condition that cannot accurately be written down - such as the reason you love someone is because of their 'soul'; you can't really logically explain it. All of this blatently exists or we would not be able to have this discussion. Therefore I wouldn't call it supernatural.

Belief in a soul which transcends and out/prelives the physical body, however, I suppose I would call supernatural in the sense that I think you mean it.

Lxx

[andrewducker]

Sounds about right to me - It does depend very much on what people mean by "soul".

You might be interest to know that there's now a half-decent understanding of how attraction/love works - including some fascinating results from brainscans of people who are in love.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

I've read various theories of how it works - generally Metro-lite type articles. Not sure if they're the same ones but I have a distant memory of reading them from one of your links to begin with. That may be inaccurate thought, if you want to repost?

Are there any articles on why, as opposed to how?

[andrewducker]

Depends what you mean by "why" :->

There are lots of _theories_ about how it's advantageous to have long-term mates for raising children, especially when human babies are very "expensive" to raise compared to (say) kittens.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Yes but why do we want to raise children?

[andrewducker]

That one I can take a stab at myself :->

Imagine that there's a genetic disposition to go "Awwww, it's so cute! I wanna baby too!"

Imagine that you have it, but I don't.

I don't have any kids, because to me they're just little goblins. You think they're amazing and smell lovely, so you have three of them.

The end result is that the gene for wanting kids is passed onto the new generation, while the gene for not wanting kids vanishes into the mists of time, never to be seen again.

Obviously this is a vast oversimplification - but you can see the mechanism there, yes?

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Ok I didn't realise it has been proven or even theorised that there was a gene for wanting children.

[andrewducker]

There's very unlikely to be one gene for it - and cultural things come into it a lot too.

Mind you, cultural stuff can work in the same way - if your culture believes that children are icky and should be avoided then you'll be outbred by neighbouring ones sharpish.

Anyway - I've read a bunch of stuff about child-rearing, etc. but not seen anything definitive. Not surprising at this point in our understanding of the human brain. Another 10-20 years I suspect for this kind of thing to be nailed down.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

A soul is, by definition, nonphysical and interacts only with supernatural phenomena. It thus must be supernatural itself.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

A soul is not observable or measurable via natural phenomenae. I vote supernatural in this case.

-- Steve'd change his vote if there was some way to detect them other than by hand-waving means.