If we are just physical bodies as biological science suggest, why...?

Question

do we even think of killing ourselves. If we are so simple as just bodies why do we even get a thought of killing our bodies? When we say kill ourSELVES who is that we are trying to kill. In fact WHO is suggesting u to kill ur own SELF? Is it ur body? Is it your brain? Brain is just like a computer and nothing else? Doesn't that prove existence of things other body with in us? When U say to urself I want to walk don't we realiaze there is a different character there other than our body whom WE are COMMANDING to walk? If we say that it is our mind that decides every thing. What is mind then. Medical science in the first step doesn't accept anything that is not visible including mind. Doesn't that prove we are souls. Atleast it proves we are not bodies. Then why are scientists trying to deny the soul so easily?

Thanks for the great answers. I was expecting some nasty answers. Instead, I find some thought provoking responses. Thanks for that.
I thought it would make a lot more sense, to the question itself and to the follow ups, if I add 2 points.
1. My whole point in pointing to killing oneself example was to prove that there is something more than body. That itself is not at all a question. Majority of the answers were giving explanations to that trivial point.
2. To Philosopher MS.. I am glad you bough the point of dualism. It was not a thought made by some modern thinker. This was the one of the core ideas of age old Hindu philosophy. It is called Advaita. I am pointing this out mainly because, every one is carrying a wrong notion that modern thinkers and scientists are the only ones who are correct and reliable. But many great theories relating to the our actual self can be extracted from age old philosophers only.

To greenstreet 2000: If you think that everything is linked to brain that way like letters DGO then I would say that nothing new would ever have happened in the first place. How would you explain the creative arts. Are they somewhere hidden in your brain? As per your argument and in fact medical science research brain just captures what it sees and associates events with what your senses capture. How did creatures evolve at all. If everything was trapped in brain what is motivating factor for new decisions which were never seen or heard? Your description of mind recalculating what events you see and perceive is same thing what philosphers call it illusion. Human body and the environment surrounding it are so complex that we easily can get into the trap that we are nothing but physical bodies. And we keep associating ourselves more with the body. This is also documented very well in certain scriptures and they term it Maya.

Gold c: Do u understand the difference between voluntary and involuntary things. Maintaining the system like pumping blood to heart are involuntary.Something like killing oneself involves a decision. And that cannot be made by a brain. Don't you see that there is an OBSERVER with in you watching every decision happening consciously? More important things that involve creativity definitely require a bigger intellect than just normal functioning of brain. There has to some actor with in you pondering what is this all.
Once a scientist while doing a neuro surgery on a patient asked him to move his hand. And then asked him what happened? He said HE moved his hand. Then the scientist triggered the same neuron using a device and asked him again. This time HE said my hand got moved. This concluded that there is some other entity other than brain doing all this. Later many scientists similar researches and finally named that invisible entity as MIND.

Gold c: Apologize for the misunderstanding. I read first few lines of the answer and jumped to a conclusion. Thanks for pointing me out.

Answer 1

You are operating as if suicide were a rational act. Suicide is usually the act of someone who is not thinking clearly and sees no other way out of his or her circumstances.

Answer 2

Well, your question has been argued throughout philosophy for thousands of years, and there are too important schools of thought that have developed (among others). There are some people that are empiricists, which are like the scientists that you describe. They only want to describe things in a manner that is based on observational reality. Then there are the rationalists, who allow things that are non-physical. A famous rationalist is Aristotle and a famous empiricist would be Plato. Science's main driving force is observational truth, they conduct experiments to prove that things are as they think that they are, thus a scientist will always throw out ideas that are inherently unprovable. What you seem to be suggesting is that there are two different modes to reality, one physical (our bodies) and one non-physical (the mind and soul). This view was first suggested (popularly) by Rene Descartes, and is called dualism. The problem with dualism (for a scientist) is that is presumes that there are things that we can know that are not physically provable, which a scientist cannot accept. Thus, scientists look at things from an empirical perspective, they only rely on observational knowledge and will not stop trying to explain something on this level until they have done so. This is an epistemelogical difference between scientists and rationalists. They hve different requirements for what they consider "knowable." If you believe that there is something besides the brain which does your thinking then, if you accept science, you have a burden of proof that you must answer. A scientist wants physical proof of a soul, especially considering that they have proof of thinking without it. From your question I take it that you think that the soul really is a non-physical entity and you are happy leaving it at that, and you would claim that some of your questions prove that it is so. Basically, you are not wrong logically, but you are arguing about something different than a true scientist. A true scientist cannot rule out a mind, or a soul, but they will search for a provable version of that idea, that is the idea of science. Of course, to lend some help to your idea, David Hume (an empiricist philosopher) stated that we cannot expect the future to resemble the past. This idea of scepticism has caused a lot of grief for the scientific method and scientific thought, but they have largely ignored it. Of course, there are those who have tried to solve this "problem of induction" most notably Karl Popper. If you don't like science's view about this issue you can ignore it, but you must also keep up with the advances that are made in scientific thought, because for all intents and purposes they have been proven experimentally.

Answer 3

"prove the existence of things other that the body within us"

This concept is weak and clouds the notion of how thought is linked to the physical brain.

Thought is linked to the brain more in a manner that the word "god" and "dog" are both linked to the letters D G O.

There is no "god" or "dog" concept attached to the letters.

The notion of soul is an aggregate of thought. And basic thought might be summarized as an emergent property of non thinking parts: neurons.

For example, you cannot perceive in your mind the retinal neurons on your eyes that respond only to lines or the colors such are red or green. These would be considered "Non soul" neurons. However, when they come together in the right combination, you may have the thought for "apple" or "stop sign" because they stimulated neurons higher in your brain in a pattern similar to other apples you have seen before. I you had never seen an apple, a new pattern would emerge for you, and you would think "what is that?"

Where is the mind?

It is nowhere constantly, but it can be captured and described at a point in time as a state of a complex group of neurons.

In short, your brain is like a bunch of letters and if you are hoping to look inside and see a bunch of words and higher level things, they would not be there.

Answer 4

I think that many scientists reject the soul and the spirit because, if it exists, it is not something they are qualified to talk about. Some would completely reject it because they don't like the idea of something to which science does not apply. Others would publically reject it and privately believe it. They don't disbelieve in the spirit and the soul, but they know they are not qualified to talk about it, so publically, particularly when discussing things with media, they skirt the issue by saying "that can't be proven." In a scientific sense, they are right.
Some would say that there is a proof of the soul, but if there is it is philosophical not scientific so what's the point of a scientist saying they believe in that, they still can't explore it with science.
And there is a third group of scientists who will openly say that there is a soul. One day, neurology may shed some insight into the soul from a scientific standpoint. Some neurologists would say they already have uncovered evidence to that effect. But it is not convincing yet, so they scientist who will publically say that they have found the soul with science is very rare.
But we must be cautious about generalizations. Whenever you say, "why do scientists... ?" you are generalizing. If done intentionally, with the purpose of rhetoric and examination, that is fine. But be cautious. Someone might read that and come to the conclusion that ALL scientists feel a certain way, which is no more accurate than all whites or all catholics think a certain thing. We are all individuals.

Answer 5

People mostly kill themselves because they have a disease (depression, or others, such as manic depression) or they made a stupid mistake. If you have diabetes, does that prove that you have a soul? If you have the chicken pox does that prove you have a soul? The brain is a computer, storing thoughts, memories, and emotions because we evolved that way, in order to survive longer, reproduce more, and live better (hunt/gather more food, etc.)

If we did not walk, we would be screwed. We would either starve to death, be eaten by a larger predator, and if there was a mutation that caused humans to not walk, then it died out VERY quickly, I can assure you.

Do I know what "mind is"? No. But I would imagine that eventually science will figure it out. Common place knowledge was considered false or ridiculous a few hundred years ago. maybe in a hundred years scinetists will laugh at out generation and wonder how they did not understand earlier. Who knows?

The reason I "deny the soul" is because the uneducated masses are already infatuated with the idea of religion, but religion is false. All of it. There is no god, I am very positive of that, and if you think differntly, I chalenge you to read The God Delusion and still be religious at the end.

Answer 6

Tough one. You may be aware that there's quite a chasm between the reductionist scientists, who believe that everything can be explained by mere physical equations (and who will argue that a suicidal tendency is just a matter of chemistry), and on the other end i.e. theologians (more probably evangelicals) who will argue that first of all there is creation, and therefore a soul, and that is does not need to be proven.
There is quite a lot of interesting reading to be found. You may be interested in the likes of Daniel C Dennett, if you are more philosophically inclined, who is in a reductionist way still very convincing. On the other hand, the theories of Intelligent Design offer some useful insight in creation, that reductionism does not explain.
All in all, your question is impossible to answer, it does not prove, nor disprove, the existence of a soul, it does however point out that mind and matter will be a nice debate for the centuries to come.

Answer 7

Our brain is a computer. An awfully huge computer with billions of neurons. And it is perfect. It cannot make a mistake. It is impossible.

Then why we have such feelings: suicide or simply killing?

Because our brain often receives wrong data, and counts with the wrong data to. Ergo the rerult cannot be true.

Let's see a little computer: a calculator.

It works fine, 3+7=10

If one of the buttons are pushed permanently, e.g. button 7, then the following situation happens: 377+7777=8154. We typed 3+7, but the computer received the signals 377+7777 and it counts with these numbers. There is no problem with the machinem but with the datas! :))

So we are humans, biological beings. But our brain is a complicated computer system.

And the more complicated the system is, the more mistakes it can make because of the wrong data.

Wrong data can be noise, pain, and even manipulation throught advertisements.

Hopefully most people refuse the thought of suicide! :)) ...lol

Answer 8

I think you are right, there is something acting beyond our bodies, which are souls... actually admitting this takes alot of courage ...especially in this world we live in today... To accept this, that there is a soul.. that spiritual being that has some connections on some other plane... this at the end, will lead to now more about our exitance and the the creator of us.. and many scientists dont believe in a creator from the first place... so every evidence shall be denied... for more inofrmation...

Look on google search for: The Secret Beyond Matter

I am sure you'll find what you want!!
Good luck!!

Answer 9

We are spiritual beings.

We are also quantum beings.

I just saw a program that suggest the greater intelligence a individual possesses the less brain activity shows on scans.........would suggest the people who figure things out tend to function from a place other than anchored in the physical??

I don't know which scientists you are referencing, but the ones into studies of quantum physics, space time, fractals, or any of the new untapped pursuits are most often motivated by the sense of mystery......read some of the books on these topics....there is WAY more to us than meet our senses!

Answer 10

flabbergasting question. there is something that is commanding your brain to do a certain task, totally different from brain's sole jobs to produce more antibodies, pump more oxygen into the heart, or heal itself from any wound. This is the same thing as any other mammals in this world. They have the same anatomy,bodily systems that work around by itself. We don't say e.g 'heart , release more blood in all my veins" or "lungs inhale more 02s and exhale more c02s'. They organs do it themselves when they are necessitated to. But the physical body dies, and all systems shut down by itself. Back to your question, i would like to use the brain organ of the body as an example.The brain does all the commands for the other organs to implement. When the brain thinks 'I want to kill me'. It pauses and thinks of the pros and cons of this certain task. There is this immaterial form that that intrudes other wise the body will just carry out this command with no further ado. It thinks about the pros and cons using contrasting emotions that may result out of the command.These emotions are not connected to any part of any bodily organs but yet we feel them. If they are not connected or correlated with our physical body but they are contained in our so-called psyche. what is governing them?The human brain recognizes a certain truth or reality that is presented to it, it is able to reason out. The brain should automatically carry out the command'i want to kill me' but, it wont because there is an entity more powerful than it using the contrasting effects of emotions, reasoning power more powerful than the brain. it will show the brain how the loved ones left behind my have a hard time over it, or funeral expenses may be hard to come up with etc.This is the Intellect. It is not part of the brain, because it is eternal by nature but it is there to control over the brain in the present life and the departed life. This is why we see ghosts. The intellect, in philosophy, is also the soul.
Additional details:
We already know what is involuntary (reflexes e.g.,urinating) and voluntary actions. And yes these are all controlled by the central nervous system or the brain. I answered exactly the way you're trying to point out as the right answer. I also said there is an entity which is also governing the intellect that intrudes while you're trying to command you to kill you. Decision, you are right. The decision is not just answerable by yes or no. It involves the emotions, total foreseeing of the aftermath of you killing you.. and that entity is what I referred to as the soul. I don't think that you understood what i was trying to point out across. The brain is mainly there to absorb the command, internalize on data that 1-1 equals 0 or killing yourself equals the subtraction of you from your family or so, and may implement(yes or no decision) the command. BUT as I said, there is the intellect which in philosophy is called the soul, that will use the contrasting effects of emotions to show better perspective of what the impacts the command may lead you to.
I minored in philosophy in Univ. majored in Behavioral Sciences two decades ago. Basically i came up with this answer in my own opinion using the acquired knowledge i learned in Univ. I was trying to think which philosopher among the 1 million and 1 inspired my answer. It is Aristotle. He argued that the material organ (brain e.g.) could not have the range and flexibility that are required for the intellect. Godel is another one who believed that there are demonstrably rational forms of mathematical thoughts of which humans are capable but could not be demonstrated by mechanical or formal system of a sort that a physical mind would have to be. Dennett also calls the intellect a syntactic engine that is, something that operates without any fundamental reference. The intellect according to him works as a machine that only shadows the pattern of feeling and meaning.

Answer 11

I'm reflecting on your settling to the idea of MIND. For me that does take us back to the issue of dualism, because Mind is not just biological Body but something associated with body which is not just the biological part of it. Where does mind reside? For spiritual people Mind is that part which opens us up to higher areas of life such as art, music, reasoning, believing, relationship, love and hope. If i did not find the value of any of these in my life then I would not be a complete person.