It is probably a sloppy way to put it which you’re picking up on. I suggest that what it is trying to get at are degrees of self-referential consciousness, as opposed to mere instinctive consciousness which would not enable any kind of switching between behaviours.
Seraphim23
JoinedPosts by Seraphim23
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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For believers, prayers requested
by StAnn inmy brother's stepson, wesley reier, accidentally overdosed on drugs.
he is considered brain dead.
his biological parents have decided to put him in a nursing home, where he will remain for the rest of his natural life.
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Seraphim23
How awful for you and your family StAnn. I will pray for his recovery. Miracles do happen sometimes with prayer and it worth trying as it seems from what you say that the doctors can do no more. Although saying that perhaps the answer to the prayer would be in the form of a doctor. Anyhow if there is any more information about his condition you can add I will include that in the prayer as well.
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
Projectionism is a very good word sometimes.
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
Well as I told you already I think science is not wrong.
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
They are not matters of science either.
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
I’m glad I got you to admit that science has limits. You do realise what having a limit means?
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
Believe me I am careful about asserting what science won't or can't know coffy. Science is trying to get the ultimate theory that explains everything we see. This theory goes by the name of the `Unified field theory`. Science if it really can get to the point where it explains all things will, if they get to this goal of a theory of everything, also have complete predictive power, else there is something it doesn’t adequately explain. So if this is possible, the very theory that explains all things will also predict all free will and the fates of all, and if it were rolled back to the beginning of time this theory would even predict its own discovery. At this point such a theory is greater than all those who helped in its discovery, for it can do more than they can, and they can do nothing that it doesn’t permit in itself. Sounds like a God to me. So I think it is very reasonable to except the limits of science.
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
Coffy I think you overcomplicate things. It is just that love is very powerful and people don’t want to think that death is the end of it, as though it never existed along with the beings people loved, which is in fact what it would mean if death lasts forever when you think about forever being an infinite thing. It would mean we shouldn’t be alive even now, as infinity is all expansive without limit, its infinity. That’s not an argument to become credulous, quite the opposite in fact. The word supernatural is just another word for the metaphysical. It is not that unreasonable to think that other things could exist apart from the domain science is limited to i.e this psychical universe. After all we don’t even know why or where it began, which is ironic when you think about it, as why and where would seem to be quintessentially scientific type questions, except their answer lies outside that which can be penetrated by scientific instruments, namely the universe. This is why the word meta physical was invented, meta meaning "after", "beyond", "adjacent".
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
You will always have the advantage coffy because we currently live in a physical universe, and thus of course you can point to example after example of scientific explanations which explain things which were either once either unknown, or assigned to other agency, which to be fair is unfair because science is only the study of the physical universe anyway, and is limited to that. I’m not saying science is wrong I hope you notice, just that human beings and their real life experience should not be unduly ignored either. However dogmatism and certainly seem not to be limited only to JWs.
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165
Do Animals Have Souls?
by Cold Steel ini know most jehovah's witnesses believe in the soul sleeping doctrine.
by this, given that neither man nor beast has a spirit, but that they do possess souls (or "intelligences" unique to themselves).
where this intelligence resides between death and resurrection is more than a passing interest, but again, assuming that yehweh can recreate one's distict soul, does the society believe that animals have souls?
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Seraphim23
It is interesting how the anecdotes of real people come to the surface in these interesting discussions. I take these as evidence especially when they mount up from all different types of people.
One of the claims I have heard is that the soul cannot continue after death because the brain contains the personality, and this starts to deteriorate often before and certainly after death. Evidence for this is things like brain damage from injury, or disease like Alzheimer’s, resulting in corresponding personality damage. This is of course extremely compelling evidence and I agree that in normal circumstances physical correspondence between brain and things associated with the `me` or soul, like memory and personality hold true. However as I said before when things become extreme glimpses of another paradigm start to show.
One example is a phenomenon where someone near their time to die, regardless of brain degeneration, becomes lucid with full personality and memory.
Two of my friends have told me of similar things happening to their loved ones as they lay in bed near the end. This if true is a spoke in the eye yet again, to a materialist view of the soul being the whole deal. There is no reason to think that animals would be any different to us, and if so it means there is evidence to support the idea that memories and personality are interconnected with something else and are only temporarily associated with brain function. That is until events become extreme as with death.
Here is a link to a study called Terminal lucidity: A review and a case collection:
Here is some of it here:
“The unexpected return of mental clarity and memory shortly before death is a curious phenomenon that has so far not received much attention from psychiatrists or other physicians. We refer to such cases as “terminal lucidity.” The most remarkable cases involve patients who were mentally ill but seemed to recover shortly before death. Despite their potential to trigger the development of new forms of therapies and to contribute to an enhanced understanding of cognition and memory processing, terminal lucidity in mental disorders was largely ignored by psychiatrists and other physicians during the 20th century. In this article, we present results of a literature survey regarding terminal lucidity in mental disorders.. . .
After the mid-19th century, academic interest in terminal lucidity decreased. Accounts of terminal lucidity were published most often by authors interested in the philosophy of mind and brain, not necessarily physicians. Because these terminal lucidity reports mirrored the cases described earlier by physicians, we assume that they generally constitute reliable case reports.
It was not until 1975 that another detailed article on terminal lucidity was published in a medical journal, this one concerning 3 cases of chronic schizophrenia (Turetskaia and Romanenko, 1975). That article is the only publication on terminal lucidity in mental disorders we could find in medical journals during the 20th century.
Within the last few years, interest in terminal lucidity in mental disorders has increased again, as indicated in the publication of cases by Brayne et al. (2008) and by Grosso (2004), and the brief review of terminal lucidity in mentally disorders included in Kelly et al. (2007). Most of these recent cases involved terminally ill patients who suffered from severe dementia. In one study of end-of-life experiences, 70% of caregivers in a nursing home reported that during the past 5 years, they had observed patients with dementia becoming lucid a few days before death (Brayne et al., 2008). Members of another palliative care team confirmed that such incidents happen regularly, and one interviewee also reported that her own mother had dementia and could not recognize her family until her last day (Brayne et al., 2008). Similarly, a woman aged 92 who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease for 9 years and did not recognize close family members, including her son, recognized them again 24 hours before she died. Moreover, she knew how old she was and where she was, which she had not known for many years (Grosso, 2004).
Temporal Aspects of Terminal Lucidity
As far back as the early 19th century, Burdach (1826) noted that there are 2 ways in which terminal lucidity may manifest. First, the severity of mental derangement can improve slowly in conjunction with the decline of bodily vitality. The cases of schizophrenia reported by Turetskaia and Romanenko (1975) fall into this category. Second, full mental clarity can appear quite abruptly and unexpectedly shortly before death. Many of the cases involving dementia can be filed in this second category.
Table 2 shows the onset of terminal lucidity as described in the 49 case reports we were able to trace, separated into 4 clusters according to their timing. In 84% of the cases, terminal lucidity seems to occur within the last week before death, with 43% occurring within the last day of life.
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From a medical perspective, terminal lucidity in patients suffering from schizophrenia and dementia is of primordial importance due to its potential to improve the mental conditions of chronic patients by a deeper understanding of the psychopathology and neuropathology involved. Yet, it is rarely if ever mentioned in scholarly books on schizophrenia or dementia and their treatment. . . .
The same applies for patients suffering from the various forms of advanced dementia. Here, it is additionally intriguing that several forms of dementia, notably Alzheimer’s disease, are largely caused by degeneration and irreversible degradation of the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus, resulting among other symptoms in confusion, disorientation, and memory loss (Wenk, 2003). It is unclear how severely demented patients can sometimes recognize their family members and remember their lives again shortly before death, suggesting that the memories in these cases had been rendered inaccessible but not entirely deleted.
We have limited our literature review to cases of terminal lucidity in mental illness that were not satisfactorily explained in medical terms. Most often, a medical explanation was not even attempted. However, some authors suggested that high fever prior to dying might induce terminal lucidity (Freidreich, 1839), a mechanism that was at one time used in a treatment for one specific mental illness.”