A “mental construct” is still a thing which exists and is experienced–either tied to physical particles, or else referencing something which has not been discovered or understood fully yet. Emergent entities are still real entities, which I would hope gives some people solace. Science will never reduce “you” to a meaningless nothing (unless you just really want to believe that).
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Any sufficiently advanced emergence theory is indistinguishable from woo.
(I’m here for it.)
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I grew up in a Bhudhist household (probably why I’m a Nihilist Discordian) and “I” is a verb. Such is life…
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It’s truly entertaining watching many of you trying to hang on to self and free will. I imagine the soul is what you’re really desperately defending.
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Soul is a category error. “You” are not a thing, you are a process.
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It’s truly silly to think that because it’s hard to define something precisely, it means it must be an incoherent concept. We knew some things were hot and cold long before we knew what temperature was. Self may be an emergent property, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a property…thinking otherwise is just clinging to the assumption it has to be the homunculus.
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And really, how many people even now can tell you what temperature actually is? Or how, fundamentally, a rainbow forms?
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There are is no single “Eastern Philosophy”!! There are many Eastern philosophies that most certainly include the concept of a Self.
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You made a choice to post those mocking words. I would not have chosen to do that. But do go on about how you’re not responsible for your choices.
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Please be patient and gaze into the abyss a little longer, it’s getting old and needs to find its glasses so it can gaze back.
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Maybe it decided to do something more positive with its time?
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Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, huh?
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okay, sounds good
um, what 
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Huh, wow. It’s like everything about consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems or something… (sorry, couldn’t be arsed to read previous comments, some of which probably had similar snark along the same lines.)
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Literally whole groups of christians believe in a “soul” that is a physical, actual structure that is housed somewhere in the brain or body, yes.
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Do they, though? I never thought the words “physical” and “structure” were part of their concept. The whole point seems to be that it’s intangible.
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It is said that Emperor Frederick II once had a condemned prisoner shut in a cask to see if the soul could be observed escaping a hole when he died, so somebody once thought it was literally physical. But, you know, around 800 years ago. I can’t say I know whose doctrine it would be today.
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Yeah I actually wonder. The mainstream line is that there is some other class of matter that isn’t matter but instead mental stuff like thoughts or feelings… But that this is somehow also sorta like matter when it comes to life after death.
It’s a pretty weak argument though I agree that thoughts and feelings are, for lack of better word, real.
I’ve definitely encountered people who believe the soul will be found in the brain or something, like there’s just a misunderstood part of the brain that houses it that we will understand eventually. I’ve also encountered people who legit believe prayer literally brings the dead to life though. So those definitely might be more fringe beliefs these days.
I also dunno because the official position of churches sometimes differs from what the people attending them generally believe too.
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There have been more recent attempts at this as well.
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I really dont get the point of this, as I would have guessed that the brain was more than the sum of its parts, and even saying the “self” is no one specific spot in my brain but all of my brain, still implies that my whole brain is my self no?
So I still have self, unless your telling me i dont exists and that i am just some how a product of my none existent imagination?
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