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"Is Man Just Another Animal?" Professor Steve Jones says...

Most philosophers would agree that dolphins have souls, just not immortal souls.

The soul is divided into three parts: appetite, emotion and reason. The first two are shared by human beings and animals; the third is uniquely human. Because it does not depend on the body for its existence, reason (nous) is the soul's immortal part.

How do you know dolphin souls don't comprise nous?
 
So.. let me try to follow you, juts for fun like. phildwyer :
When I die, worms will eat my appetite and my emotion, but my reason will live on. Where will it hang out, this reason of mine?
 
So.. let me try to follow you, juts for fun like:
When I die, worms will eat my appetite and my emotion, but my reason will live on. Where will it hang out, this reason of mine?
if we are really lucky (or unlucky?) it will hang out with everyone else in the great gestalt consciosness AI funspace.

But in any case anything that poos is an animal imo.
 
Low IQ, no self-insight, no self-reflection, no morals = animal.
I really hope you aren't arguing this and rather you're paraphrasing how you (wrongly) think people are misrepresenting you're arguments. If it is the latter you need to clearly state it - no question marks, no mad punctuation, just clearly explain exactly what you meant. If it is the former then you're a cunt and can fuck off.
 
So even if we agree to call this I-that-is-I we each have, a soul - how can we possibly say all other animals definitely don't have one? My own experience of animals (anecdotal, yes) leads me to conclude that whatever it is that gives me my me-ness, most if not all mammals have, to a certain extent. Cats, dogs, horses, pigs, rats - they are not all identical. I'm fully convinced that a great many animals besides ourselves have an I-that-is-I.

The versatility creatures possess to make conscious use of this awareness is for me only a matter of degree, not of essence.
 
Told you, Phil, how can expect this lot to understand and especially accept Hegel...??? :D

It matters not you were discerning re. the notion and carefully connected it with the major philosophical tradition - just not gonna go down well, try as hard as you can... :(
 
I really hope you aren't arguing this and rather you're paraphrasing how you (wrongly) think people are misrepresenting you're arguments. If it is the latter you need to clearly state it - no question marks, no mad punctuation, just clearly explain exactly what you meant. If it is the former then you're a cunt and can fuck off.

Would you look at yourself and your own language?:facepalm: Who are you to pontificate to me, when I was defending myself from unending attacks of the brainless:hmm: and "soulless" :D as it were... :p :p :p
 
But you'd have to admit that there's a qualitative difference between human and animals minds, I take it?

No. There's a quantitative difference. Our brains do much 'more' of what it is that brains do, than animal brains - so much more that we've convinced ourselves that we must be different from them. We're not.

It's like comparing a Commodore 64 with the most recent generations of computers. The Commodore had 64k RAM. Looking around, it appears that now, there is 128GB RAM available on a single stick. The capabilities of the two things are vastly different. But at essence, they are the same type of thing.

A qualitative difference would be if human skin contained chlorophyll, and we were able to synthesize energy from light. That's something that no animal can do.
 
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So.. let me try to follow you, juts for fun like. phildwyer :
When I die, worms will eat my appetite and my emotion, but my reason will live on. Where will it hang out, this reason of mine?

No part of the soul is material, so none of it will be eaten by worms or "hang out" as you put it.

But appetite and emotion depend on the body and will therefore die along with it. That isn't necessarily true of reason (though I'm agnostic regarding its immortality as I suspect everyone is).
 
No part of the soul is material, so none of it will be eaten by worms or "hang out" as you put it.

But appetite and emotion depend on the body and will therefore die along with it. That isn't necessarily true of reason (though I'm agnostic regarding its immortality as I suspect everyone is).
I started typing a response to this but really, there;s no point.
 
Johnny, one MUST know Hegel for this one to "work" - you just can not understand it without it. You have some 'notes' in my posts...

Phil did set out various characteristics of what he means by "soul" - but most "debaters" have either forgotten it in a jiffy or never understood it for starters. Not dissimilar to treatment of my posts - ignore and wilfully misinterpret, stretch my meaning madly to suit their needs, never make an effort, never ask the right questions. Bah!

And the nature of questions put forward to him is generally rather lamentable, usually coming from crude materialism, positivism, biologism and whatnot. The worst is that plenty of forumites seem to treat him with blessed, hardly contained contempt, even though he invented thinking for them...
 
J
Phil did set out various characteristics of what he means by "soul" -.

Yes he did; but you didn't. That's why I'm asking you, and not him.

I'm also asking another question, that I haven't seen you address: do you agree with Phil that the basis for human exceptionalism is the possession by humans of an immortal soul?
 
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