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Thoughts on the soul

#1
Magical Realist Offline
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ber...-lucidity/

As the above article makes clear, terminal lucidity is a real phenomenon that occurs when people are on their deathbed. Because of this, along with various paranormal phenomena, I conclude that something really does pass out of the dying person, call it a soul or spirit or whatever. Someone asked me in another forum where such a thing would derive its energy. I thought about it and concluded that the quantum vacuum would supply more than enough energy to support such a conscious disembodied entity. First, take a look at how much energy is just needed to support a living functioning brain:

"According to Scientific American, studies indicate that the human brain consumes about 12 watts, or an equivalent of 12 joule seconds. A year is 60 sec. times 60 min. x 24 hr. x 365 days equals 31,536,000 seconds. Multiply by 12 joules and you get just shy of 378 and one half million joules per year. It might sound like a lot, but it is about what a new LED bulb uses over the same year."--- https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-in...-in-a-year

12 joules or watts a second isn't a lot of energy. So where could a soul, which probably requires much less energy than a brain does, get its source of energy? I speculate that the quantum vacuum could supply more than enough energy to support it. Here's how much vacuum energy is in empty space:

"...in both quantum electrodynamics (QED) and stochastic electrodynamics (SED), consistency with the principle of Lorentz covariance and with the magnitude of the Planck constant suggest a much larger value of 10 to the 113 joules per cubic meter."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

That's alot of free energy just sitting around in empty space! I don't think a soul would have any problem supporting itself on this amount of energy. It would also explain the source of energy for poltergeist activity, haunting phenomena, and ufos as well.

“The intimate sense of self-awareness we experience bubbling up at each moment is rooted in the originating activity of the Universe. We are all of us arising together at the invisible center of the cosmos.”― Alexis Karpouzos
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#2
Syne Offline
It's a very odd juxtaposition to assume an immaterial existence requires material energy. Trying to add the soul into the list of things that can be reduced, in some respect, to the physical universe. It's much more likely that any immaterial existence is prior to physical existence and not only produces its own energy, if it even has such needs, but also produces material energy. Trying to ground the soul in the physical world is very much like trying to prove god exists. The means do not fit the goal.
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#3
C C Offline
(Nov 20, 2018 04:03 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ber...-lucidity/

As the above article makes clear, terminal lucidity is a real phenomenon that occurs when people are on their deathbed. Because of this, along with various paranormal phenomena, I conclude that something really does pass out of the dying person, call it a soul or spirit or whatever. Someone asked me in another forum where such a thing would derive its energy. I thought about it and concluded that the quantum vacuum would supply more than enough energy to support such a conscious disembodied entity. [...]


Jesse Bering, of all people? (Why We Can't Imagine Death -copy-) Yep: My paranormal adventure in pursuit of life after death.

It's kind of amusing how past researchers approached something that would be noumenal, immaterial / intellectual, or prior in rank to a material world representation by measuring the weight or mass of a dead body to posit that a soul was never there to leave it. Or bring up issues of needing energy, etc.

In that vein, though, the "infamous" Fred Alan Wolf of Fundamental Fysiks Group fame ventured something in one of his books back in the '90s (maybe The Spiritual Universe?) that vacuum fluctuations, quantum foam, etc might serve as a cryptic communication medium between soul and body --or whatever-- (interactive patterns masked in the otherwise random gibberish?). But it looks like he's elaborated into a grander "Ostronomos-esque" quantum complex with all sorts of refined distinctions between soul, spirit, and self: http://www.fredalanwolf.com/myarticles/a...20soul.pdf

~
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#4
Magical Realist Offline
(Nov 20, 2018 05:33 PM)Syne Wrote: It's a very odd juxtaposition to assume an immaterial existence requires material energy. Trying to add the soul into the list of things that can be reduced, in some respect, to the physical universe. It's much more likely that any immaterial existence is prior to physical existence and not only produces its own energy, if it even has such needs, but also produces material energy. Trying to ground the soul in the physical world is very much like trying to prove god exists. The means do not fit the goal.

Light is immaterial. Gravity is immaterial. Time and space are immaterial. I don't see why an immaterial soul couldn't interface with our physical reality. Paranormal activity certainly suggests it does.

immaterial adjective
im·​ma·​te·​ri·​al | \ˌi-mə-ˈtir-ē-əl \
Definition of immaterial
1 : not consisting of matter : INCORPOREAL

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immaterial
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#5
Zinjanthropos Offline
Are you saying Life is like a compressed/stretched spring? Where does that potential energy go if that spring is dissolved in a pool of acid?(I saw this question once before somewhere but never read the answer.)
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#6
Magical Realist Offline
(Nov 20, 2018 08:36 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Are you saying Life is like a compressed/stretched spring? Where does that potential energy go if that spring is dissolved in a pool of acid?(I saw this question once before somewhere but never read the answer.)

Who says the soul is dissolved in acid? That sounds like a bad metaphor to me. As if life were the source of the soul's existence, which once removed would remove the soul's existence. The soul has a life and force of it's own as evidenced by terminal lucidity and paranormal phenomena.
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#7
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Nov 20, 2018 08:49 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
(Nov 20, 2018 08:36 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Are you saying Life is like a compressed/stretched spring? Where does that potential energy go if that spring is dissolved in a pool of acid?(I saw this question once before somewhere but never read the answer.)

Who says the soul is dissolved in acid? That sounds like a bad metaphor to me. As if life were the source of the soul's existence, which once removed would remove the soul's existence. The soul has a life and force of it's own.

Was wondering if the soul (energy of?) comparison could be made to a coiled/stretched spring .... as in where does the potential energy go if the spring never gets the chance to recoil, like dissolving spring in acid? 

Nothing about souls being dissolved.
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#8
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Was wondering if the soul (energy of?) comparison could be made to a coiled/stretched spring .... as in where does the potential energy go if the spring never gets the chance to recoil, like dissolving spring in acid?

The spring never dissolves in acid. The soul might be connected directly to the quantum vacuum which supplies it with all the needed energy to exist and perform whatever activities it chooses. Your metaphor sucks.
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#9
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Nov 20, 2018 09:09 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:Was wondering if the soul (energy of?) comparison could be made to a coiled/stretched spring .... as in where does the potential energy go if the spring never gets the chance to recoil, like dissolving spring in acid?

The spring never dissolves in acid. The soul might be connected directly to the quantum vacuum which supplies it with all the needed energy to exist and perform whatever activities it chooses. Your metaphor sucks.

Not any worse than your hypothesis.
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#10
C C Offline
(Nov 20, 2018 07:18 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: Light is immaterial. Gravity is immaterial. Time and space are immaterial. I don't see why an immaterial soul couldn't interface with our physical reality. Paranormal activity certainly suggests it does.

immaterial adjective
im·​ma·​te·​ri·​al | \ˌi-mə-ˈtir-ē-əl \
Definition of immaterial
1 : not consisting of matter : INCORPOREAL

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immaterial


"Fields" and their excitations can be treated as immaterial. One of its definitions arguably descended from various folk beliefs around the globe that deemed "spirit" or "incorporeal stuff" to be like the air (invisible, but detectable or felt -- in this case measurable). The physicalistm of today is actually a mix of abstract concepts and corporeal affairs, thus perhaps the impulse to treat both domains (immaterial & material) as addressable in natural context.

I tend instead toward "immaterial" functioning as reference or adjective to a precondition for natural science, extension / size, location / place, external appearance, cause-effect, etc. Dependent upon description or some intellectual medium (purely in terms of our limited ability to handle it) rather than phenomenal characteristics.

Due to anything borrowed from science for paranormal or religious purposes usually being disparaged as acts of distorted abuse -- outside its original discipline / contexts -- I consider what Ostronomos does (as a potential example) to be hopeless[*] for anything other than attracting segments of the general population already possessing a disposition for such. IOW, that it's actually better to stick with paranormal or religion's own justificatory nomenclature and paradigms rather than try to fit within science framework or leach onto the latter's reputation and different motives. But some of those discrete pursuits have already proceeded so far along that kind of course that there's no turning back, and they're potentially stuck evermore with that kind of criticism or negative publicity (side by side with accolades from supporters, followers / believers).

Ironically -- and especially since it disappears after death or via nonconsciousness (resumes a non-phenomenal manner of existence) -- the mathematically described "material world" of today might be deemed perversely "immaterial" (in the intellectual sense) if it wasn't for some of that technical symbolism having corresponding expressions in sensation (i.e. our visually, aurally, tactilely, and even olfactorily experiencing space and time with at least the impression of "distance" and change in some of those modes). Even when stripped of its phenomenal slash "showing" qualities, a material cosmos is still treated as either existing "in the dark" abstractly or as still even having the external appearances that an observer or processor of information provides. (That is, the lights apparently not turned off for some ubiquitous, cosmic-wide and at all scales perceiver.)

---- EDIT footnote ---

[*] I probably need to clarify "hopeless" as in terms of achieving the goal of converting atheists, anti-supernaturalists, scientism advocates, and the like. Which Ostro often brings up as the cause of his desire to be reinstated at SciForums.

~
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