[extropy-chat] Indexical Uncertainty

[BillK]

On 10/17/06, MB wrote:
>
> If my mind were to be transplanted into another body, as in one of the Heinlein
> books - do I become someone else or am I still "me" but in another home - as
> Heinlein indicated in the book?
>
> --------------
>
> The word "soul" and "spirit" have many religious connotations for me, but I do not
> have another word that seems to describe that part of me beyond my body. What word
> do we use here?  It's a given that our bodies are, by now, 100% no longer our
> original cells, isn't it?
>

Ah, this could be a job for my lexical tools.  Let's try.

The dictionary says that 'soul' has a wide range of meanings,
depending on context, some more spiritual, some pretty mundane.
<http://www.tfd.com/soul>

Let's concentrate on the spiritual / religious meanings for you.

First, a bit of background.
In our Western religious tradition "soul" and "spirit" are often
confused. Sometimes meanings are very similar, sometimes very
different, leading to confusing discussions.
The reason for this is that "soul" and "spirit" are used in English
translations of the Old Testament and the New Testament. But the New
Testament was written in Greek, thousands of years after the Old
Testament was written in Ancient Hebrew.
I think it is a mistake to take our idea of a 'soul' which comes from
the Greek philosophers around the time of the New Testament and force
them back thousands of years into the Hebrew Old Testament.
Genesis wasn't written by Greek philosophers.

The Ancient Hebrews didn't have the Greek philosophical conception of
"soul". The Ancient Hebrew words relate to breath or wind. In Genesis,
man is a living soul, but so are animals. (same Hebrew phrase).
Basically, in the Old Testament if you had 'soul' (breath) you were
alive, if you didn't, you were dead.

Now, bearing that in mind, let's look up some dictionaries.

soul - the immaterial part of a person; the actuating cause of an
individual life
        1.  The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with
the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as
an immaterial entity.
        2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal,
separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or
misery in a future state.
        3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.

History:
Old English sawol "spiritual and emotional part of a person, animate
existence"; related to Old Frisian sele, Old Saxon seola, Old High
German seula, of uncertain origin.
Sometimes said to mean originally "coming from or belonging to the
sea," because that was supposed to be the stopping place of the soul
before birth or after death.


psyche 1.  The spirit or soul.
           2. Psychiatry. The mind functioning as the center of
thought, emotion, and behavior and consciously or unconsciously
adjusting or mediating the body's responses to the social and physical
environment.

History: 17thC: from Latin, from Greek psykhe "the soul, mind, spirit,
breath, life, the invisible animating principle or entity which
occupies and directs the physical body" (personified as Psykhe, the
lover of Eros); related to Greek psykhein "to breathe".
The word had extensive sense development in Platonic philosophy and
Jewish-influenced theological writing of St. Paul. In English,
psychological sense is from 1910.


spirit - 1. a. The vital principle or animating force within living beings.
              b. Incorporeal consciousness.
2. The soul, considered as departing from the body of a person at death.
5. The part of a human associated with the mind, will, and feelings:
the vital principle or animating force within living things

History: 13thC: from Old French esperit, from Latin spiritus "soul,
courage, vigor, breath"; related to spirare "to breathe".
Original usage in English mainly from passages in Vulgate, where the
Latin word translates Greek pneuma and Hebrew ruah.


mind -
1.	the reasoning faculty, which thinks, judges, understands, and
directs, in humans capable of great complexity because of the
development of the human brain.
2.      the human faculty to which are ascribed thought, feeling,
etc.; often regarded as an immaterial part of a person distinct from
the body; intellectual power.

History: Old English gemynd "memory, thinking, intention"; related to
Old High German gimunt "memory".


ghost - the visible disembodied soul of a dead person

History: Old English gast "soul, spirit, life, breath"; related to Old
Frisian jest, Old High German geist "spirit, ghost".
The surviving Old English senses are in Christian writing, where it is
used to render Latin spiritus, a sense preserved in Holy Ghost. Modern
sense of "disembodied spirit of a dead person" is attested from c.1385
and returns the word toward its ancient sense.



Hope this gives you something to think about.   :)


BillK