the soul/ consciousness and the state..

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Peter Kropotkin
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the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

before I dig too deep into this thread, I should define
my terms before any issues occur...

Soul: soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect
or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality,
and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the
mind or the self....

Consciousness: the state of being awake and aware of one's
surroundings.....

Mind: the element of a person that enables them to be aware
of the world, and their experiences, to think, and to feel;
the faculty of consciousness and thought....

these are commonly accepted definitions of these words...

and the word soul, it is considered to be a religious context
word...in other words, you hear about the soul of human beings
in terms of "saving our eternal soul from damnation" this is
quite a common theme with the word, soul.....

but can we remove the idea of the soul from a religious
context? and what does that even mean, from a religious
context?

the idea of human beings having a soul, can be removed from
a religious context... but what does that look like?

the next idea I wish to work out is this idea of morals/ethics...
and where does the idea of morals/ethics come from?
Is morals/ethics as an idea, comes from the soul, consciousness,
the body?... is morals and ethics about our physical reaction
to something or is an idea that exists within our soul, or
consciousness?

where, if anywhere, does the idea of the soul reside within me?
and in which aspect of the human being, does the soul reside?
if we were to look for the soul, where would we look?

so, let us take the soul out of any type of religious context...
remove the soul from any religious context and what
does the soul look like? and how does the idea of
"good" and ''evil" fit into our idea of soul, with no
religious context? Where does the idea of "good"
and "evil" come from, if not the soul?

Now one could argue that that the idea of "good" and "evil"
come from consciousness... but that leads us to the exact
same place, where is our conscious self, found?
Is "good" and "evil" about the soul or consciousness,
or something physical, we learn about the soul through
our interactions with the physical world?

which leads us to the next question, can the soul, be
considered to have a social, collective thing? do we
have a collective soul? or is it just an individual thing?
can only individuals have a soul? but if that is true,
then how do we account for our collective understanding
of ''good" and ''evil?" If we don't see the soul as being
an collective idea, then where do we look to find
the connection between the soul and the idea of
'"good'' and ''evil?"

I think now is the time to reintroduce the idea of
the state, the society into the mix....
how does the state/society define "good" and ''evil"
considering that the soul or consciousness, is individual
aspect, not a collective one?

ok, let us take an individual action, let us say, I
walk over to an infant and hit that infant in the face?
That would clearly be considered to be "evil", not ''good"
but how do we know that act is ''evil?'' does our knowledge
of that act come from our own individual understanding
of ''evil'', is that based on the soul, or on consciousness,
or some collective idea? or do we know hitting an infant
to be ''evil" based on some collective understanding that we have?
is it a physical idea or is it a mental idea, based on the soul?

this question leads us to think that if we remove the soul,
consciousness from any type of religious context, does
that mean that we consider ''good' and ''evil'' to exist
apart from or outside of the soul? does the idea of
''good'' and ''evil" reside in the soul, the consciousness, or
in the social contract we all made and is a collective
construct of the collective decision we all make in
our understanding of what is ''good' and ''evil?"
and if we remove ''good' and ''evil'' and the idea
of the soul from a religious context, does the idea of
''good' and ''evil'' even mean anything? If ''good' and ''evil"
is a social construct, an arbitrary choice, which then is
situationally based? in other words, is ''good' and ''evil''
really an ''ad hoc" choice? of the moment, a temporary
solution?

or is this idea of ''good' and ''evil'' really a response to
our environment? do we practice ''good'' and ''evil''
because our current environment needs a particular
understanding of what is ''good'' and what is ''evil?"
is ''good' and ''evil'' really a response to our current environmental
needs?

or do we practice ''good' and ''evil'' based on some eternal idea
that comes from our soul, or perhaps god or perhaps
the social needs of our state/society?

so perhaps instead of saying, what is ''good'' and ''evil'',
we should take some time and figure out where does
the concept of ''good'' and ''evil'' comes from?

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

as we seem not to be able to tell what the soul is
and where it comes from, nor can we tell if the
idea of "good'' and ''evil'' come from the soul,
or some idea based on societal needs?
if we can't really tell if we even have a soul,
what does this mean to the idea of ''good'' and ''evil?''

then the idea of ''good'' and ''evil" comes from the state/society and
needs of that state/society.....

If ''good'' and ''evil'' do not have an eternal context, ''good' and ''evil''
is, like the state/society, an ''ad hoc'' solution to the problems
of the state/society....

now let us think about this.... does the idea of the soul,
have a connection to the state/society? an interesting thought
experiment would be, what came first, the soul or the state/society?
I suspect that the soul came about in response to the demands
of the state/society.... do we have a soul because we have a state/society...
one might, rightly so, suggests that the reason animals don't have souls
is because they don't have a state or society....

another step in our thinking is about the needs and wants of
all human beings....we all have, biological needs, of
food and water and shelter and an education and health
care... but we also have psychological needs of esteem,
of belonging, of safety and security.. now do these
psychological needs derive themselves from our biological
needs or do they come from our soul? we are in fact,
social creatures as formed by evolution, and within
an evolutionary need, how do we come to having
a soul? what is the evolutionary purpose of having
a soul?

we have those psychological needs that must be met,
but do these needs come from our soul, our consciousness
or do they come from our biological needs? Where does
the need for esteem come from? or where does
the need for a sense of belonging come from,
our own individual needs, from the soul or
do those psychological needs come from our impact with the
society/state?

perhaps in some very real way, one of our primary human needs
is to have a sense of belonging.. of being a part of something,
something that is bigger than we are... bigger than our own
individual selves...and is that biological or mental/psychological
or is that the soul at work? In one sense, we can consider
the soul, as being part of the psychological understanding
we have of "EGO"....Perhaps what we call soul, is really
just our ''EGO" at work....
and if so, how does the ''EGO" connect to the overall
concept of the state/society?

and as I have noted before, we cannot find solution until
we ask the right questions... so am I even asking the right questions?

what is the connection, if any, between the soul/ego, the state/society,
and our understanding of ethics/morals?

a whole lot of moving parts there... I wonder if a solution is
even possible given how many moving parts there are....

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Harbal
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Harbal »

So many words to say almost nothing; are you conducting some sort of experiment, Kropotkin?
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

now is the soul a biological idea or
is the soul a psychological idea, or even
a philosophical idea?

if the soul is a biological idea, then can science
answer our questions about the soul? can science tell
us about what the soul is and where it is, and how
it began? or is the soul a philosophical idea in which
we think about the soul in philosophical terms?
the same is true of consciousness... is the conscious self
a biological answer or is it a social/philosophical concept?

Julian Jaynes thought that consciousness was not a biological
solution but a social, cultural solution... what if the soul
were the exact same thing?

Is right and wrong, which can be thought of as a mental construct,
based on what the state and the society needs...or is right and
wrong really a religious construct?

is right and wrong a biological construct or a social construct
or a religious construct?
Does right and wrong come from god, or evolution/biological
or the needs of the state/society?
which is another way of asking, where does ethics/morality come
from, evolution/biology or god or the state/society? or even
some other fourth choice?
and how do we even determine this? what standard do we
use to work out where and how ethics/morality come from?

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Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

Harbal wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:47 pm So many words to say almost nothing; are you conducting some sort of experiment, Kropotkin?
K: I sincerely hope you work on your intellectual abilities
enough to be able to understand what I am getting at...
it is quite possible that you will never get what I am
writing about and that is ok, not everyone "gets it"

best of luck...

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Harbal
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Harbal »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 6:15 pm
Harbal wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:47 pm So many words to say almost nothing; are you conducting some sort of experiment, Kropotkin?
K: I sincerely hope you work on your intellectual abilities


Kropotkin
Thank you, Kropotkin. Sincerity is all too rare these days.
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

so there are several questions mixed into this....

where does our moral/ethical basics come from?
where is the biological evidence for consciousness?
how does science account for consciousness?
how does ethics/moral issues fit into our society/state?
Does our understanding of ethics/morals stem from our own
individual answers or does it stem from our collective understanding?
is morals/ethics a social/collective problem?

and any of these questions really deserve a book length
approach to them.... '


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Iwannaplato
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 6:15 pm
Harbal wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:47 pm So many words to say almost nothing; are you conducting some sort of experiment, Kropotkin?
K: I sincerely hope you work on your intellectual abilities
enough to be able to understand what I am getting at...
it is quite possible that you will never get what I am
writing about and that is ok, not everyone "gets it"

best of luck...

Kropotkin
No, Harbal's right. It's meandering babbling lacking focus. When you sum up the thread yourself, you show that it mentions a bunch of huge topics and these could all take up books. And in fact there are books on these things. It's like you realize at the end that you just bopped around a bunch of huge topics.

Is there someone in your life whose feedback on your writing you would find hard to dismiss?

I'm not asking you to claim that you already get feedback from someone you respect and they like your work. That's easy to make up and I truly doubt you do this.

Since your goal is the be the best philosopher, you might want to consider the possibility that the crititicism you dismiss isn't about people's psychology or because they are haters or aren't smart enough to understand what you are doing - there's nothing remotely challenging in this thread because it has not focus.

You have a much better chance of actually accomplishing something significant if you seriously consider that your writing has big problems. If you don't do this, there's no chance you will become even a well respected philosopher. Let alone the best ever.
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in thinking about the soul and the state,
how do we make America a better place?

the path into the future lies with us becoming
moral and ethical....given how we in modern day
America have no sense or value of being moral/ethical,
we have no moral or ethical ideal to live up to in
modern times... in defense of this thesis, I offer
up the last 123 years... of the two World Wars,
of the Holocaust, of the dropping of the atomic bomb,
of various ethnic cleansing over the last 123 years in various
nations, of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968...
of the casual acceptance of torture as valid means
of getting information in the case of "protecting" us...
all of these are failures in terms of being moral or ethical...
the idea that the bad things that happens to others, is
not our problem, is a moral/ethical idea....or lack therein...

if I can get someone, anyone to at least contemplate this notion
of what is moral/ethical in terms of practical application of
our daily lives, I would consider that a win....
what does it mean to be ethical or moral in our daily lives?
to do what is right even if, even if no one was watching...
to put the grocery cart back even if no one was watching
is an example of being moral, ethical....morals, ethics
is about the little issues in life, not the big life and death
matters...how do you treat people? with justice.. which
means you treat people equally, regardless of wealth,
titles, power or material possessions....for that is justice...

and that give us some idea of what being moral and ethical...
to treat people, no matter who they are, as people,
not as a means to another goal.... every single person has
value, regardless of who they are and that is ethical, moral....
and we treat them as having value.... as having more value
than property or money or profits..

now another point to consider is that we engage in morals,
ethical matters in terms of ism's and ideologies...what is
right and wrong is determined by the ism or ideology...
so, that we think of morality as being about that
particular ism.. so morality becomes a question
about that ism, be it Catholicism or Marxism or
Buddhism, or Capitalism... morals and ethics are
part of those isms and not thought of in other terms...
we think of being ethical or moral as a Christian
problem or an Marxist problem or a capitalism problem....

which is to say, we consider morals and ethics to
be engaged with capitalism as a way of life....
or having morals and ethics as being a way of life
in regard to Christainty.....but what we must really do
is engage in morals and ethics as a way of life in
terms of a value... so we think of being moral
or ethical in terms of a value like justice or
love or peace.....so when a question of morals
comes up, we don't answer, how much does it cost,
but how do we approach it in terms of our autonomous value...
in other words, we seek out our moral and ethical values in
terms of values that we ourselves have endorsed...

to be autonomous, is to have a value as a way of life...
be that value as love or peace or justice....
we use a value as a way of life instead of applying the ism/
ideology values of morals/ethics... and that value is
understood and applied by me... that is what autonomous
in my choice...I create the value in which I practice morals
and ethics... I don't follow the social or political or religious
values given to me by the isms and ideologies of a state or society....

the value I practice is justice.. whereas I treat everyone equally..
with no exceptions....
so I don't practice morals and values given to me by the ism
of the state, that of capitalism in which we judge and value
people by the wealth and power they have....
for that is the moral and ethics of the ism capitalism...
to value those who have wealth and power... I hold to
a more autonomous values of justice as chosen by me...

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Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

Iwannaplato wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 9:22 pm
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 6:15 pm
Harbal wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:47 pm I: No, Harbal's right. It's meandering babbling lacking focus. When you sum up the thread yourself, you show that it mentions a bunch of huge topics and these could all take up books. And in fact there are books on these things. It's like you realize at the end that you just bopped around a bunch of huge topics.

Is there someone in your life whose feedback on your writing you would find hard to dismiss?

I'm not asking you to claim that you already get feedback from someone you respect and they like your work. That's easy to make up and I truly doubt you do this.

Since your goal is the be the best philosopher, you might want to consider the possibility that the crititicism you dismiss isn't about people's psychology or because they are haters or aren't smart enough to understand what you are doing - there's nothing remotely challenging in this thread because it has not focus.

You have a much better chance of actually accomplishing something significant if you seriously consider that your writing has big problems. If you don't do this, there's no chance you will become even a well respected philosopher. Let alone the best ever.
K: so I can imagine this is exactly what Iwannaplato would write this
to Nietzsche or Kant if presented the chance... just replace the name
Kropotkin with Nietzsche or Kant or even Wittgenstein....
and he would have the exact same message....

lacking in focus, meandering... a tough read... but the failure
as I have argued before is, not with me.... I am sorry they are unable
to grasp my thoughts, but that is not my problem...
I am not going to change what I write or how I write
just to please people who, as far as I can tell, haven't
presented a single idea to us... basically all they do is
critique and complain about other writers, but
never actually presenting anything vaguely original
or that might be considered to be philosophical...

so the peanut gallery will continue to throw rocks from glass
houses and I will continue to practice and engage in real
philosophy....

rock on....

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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Harbal »

This is far more serious than I thought. :|
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 9:57 pm K: so I can imagine this is exactly what Iwannaplato would write this
to Nietzsche or Kant if presented the chance... just replace the name
Kropotkin with Nietzsche or Kant or even Wittgenstein....
and he would have the exact same message....
We can all imagine all sorts of things to protect ourselves from self-knowledge. But some of us try to avoid that.
lacking in focus, meandering... a tough read...
I never suggested you were a tough read.
but the failure
as I have argued before is, not with me.... I am sorry they are unable
to grasp my thoughts, but that is not my problem...
I am not going to change what I write or how I write
just to please people who, as far as I can tell,
Well, you only focus on your own threads and in your own threads, your own posts.
Iwannaplato
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Iwannaplato »

Harbal wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 10:05 pm This is far more serious than I thought. :|
It is rather remarkable.
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

Iwannaplato:
Well, you only focus on your own threads and in your own threads, your own posts.


K: and what of it?

So, write something interesting or original or
even vaguely philosophical and I might even read you
and if it is interesting or original enough, I might even answer you

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Iwannaplato
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Re: the soul/ consciousness and the state..

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 12:45 am
Iwannaplato:
Well, you only focus on your own threads and in your own threads, your own posts.
K: and what of it?
Thank you for acknowledging you only do this. This means you would not know what you claimed about me.
I have repeatedly said that there is nothing wrong with you ignoring other people's posts and treating your threads in the main like blog entries. Much better than those rarer occasions when you pseudorespond. So there's nothing wrong with focusing only on your own posts and threads. But it does keep you in the dark about some things, like your claim about me. It's really that simple.
So, write something interesting or original or
even vaguely philosophical and I might even read you
and if it is interesting or original enough, I might even answer you
By your own admission, you wouldn't notice it. And you haven't.
Which is also fine.

I've read and gotten a lot out of Wittgenstein, Nietschze and Kant. Though I had a harder time with Kant because he is so damn organized. I prefer the shorter explorations which characterize the first two philosophers. I think it is, too put it mildly, inaccurate to think that your posts share qualities with those philosophers and so I would reject them for the same reasons I am critical of you. The lack of self-knowledge about your skill as a communicator will limit your ability to improve, if you can somehow find a way to conflate your posts here with their work.

All three of those philosophers had long periods of interaction with other people, whether students or peers or both. IOW they were going to get feedback about their work and communication, not all of it positive. That's how one develops skills.

Yes, my communication has gotten snarkier over time, but your responses to criticism and not clear and are generally pseudoresponses: where you label the people disagreeing with you, make assumptiosn about their politics, or like here where you hallucinate something I would do but have not done as if this makes any sense. In this thread, fair enough. I didn't express and specific criticism. But when I have responded to your posts with criticism and done this politely, I get pseudoresponses and a lot of posturing.

You seem incapable of considering that your writing here is unfocused and unclear. Or, for example, that you engage in binary thinking and the way you describe people you disagree with is shallow and problematic. IOW you don't seem able to learn from feedback REGARDLESS of who it comes from and how it is presented to you.

Obviously that's your right. And it's telling that you often react, when it is pointed out that you can't interact well with other people, that it's your right to not respond, etc. Of course. When I argue that you have no right to do this, then that becomes a relevant counterpoint.

All your philosophical heroes had some sustained, long term dialogue with people around their own work. Even people like N and W who both had isolationist tendencies.

I don't think you've done this and it will keep you from developing

Which, again, is, of course, your right.

You have the right to ignore opportunities to learn and improve.

And you have the right to keep an online diary of your thoughts somehow related to philosophy.

A diary of mulling.
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