<p>So basically in my loads of free time I've been contemplating the existence of free will and have determined that the only possible way that free will could exist is if we had souls that could generate completely new things that caused original ideas to form. However, I don't really believe in this whole concept of randomness but I'm wondering what everyone else thinks for my own sake.</p>
<p>I'm a totally science-preaching, Darwin-loving, physics-backing person, but I can't help but think that my soul is a separate entity and it survives outside of me after death.</p>
<p>I believe they exist. Here's one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis:</p>
<p>"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body."</p>
<p>I don't think they exist; I think they are a neurological illusion.</p>
<p>I have to concur with stone_cutter; a soul does not exist, in a spiritual sense.</p>
<p>I believe they exist.</p>
<p>Define: soul :]</p>
<p>In the commonly dualistic sense then no, we don't.</p>
<p>Oh, and how would subjecting our wills to the tides of pure chance in any way ensure that they be "free?" Define your silly little "free will" while you're at it. ;D</p>
<p>i think we have a soul and i think there is some higher authority or just "something" out there. think about how complex this world is... how complex and little we know of the universe or anything in general. there exists something that we just cannot comprehend.. nothing we have ever seen, heard, or read about will be able to account for whatever that "something" is. </p>
<p>i sometimes sit in class and ask myself .. "how am i looking through these eyes and why is it me that is looking through these eyes and not something or someone else?" why do i exist? i think, therefore i am? what am i exactly? what am i doing? what am i living for? ahhhhhh deep. i hate thinking about things like this cause it makes me think like i'm living like a robot or something programmed... like the movie the matrix..... back to studying i guess?</p>
<p>No, only I do and everything else in the universe exists only within my mind for my own entertainment.</p>
<p>^
I've wondered about that. What if the world as we know it doesn't really exist, I am something completely different, and it's just that everything else is a product of my imagination? Maybe I'm really just a vegtable in some other universe, and this is all some incredible dream...?</p>
<p>I wonder about that a lot too. Like, I'm in a Matrix and my brain is making up every instant of my life. Hm.</p>
<p>If it was my imagination - I'd make it a hell of a lot more interesting and less complex, that's for sure.</p>
<p>Pfft, solipsism is useless -- an ontological dead end. What would it matter anyway? It changes nothing epistemologically and our lives proceed identically regardless. Steer your minds to more lucrative paths of inquiry...</p>
<p>Souls are reeeally far-fetched so no.</p>
<p>I still giggle when people use 'out-of-body experiences' as evidence though... they're from people who've just had traumatic injury, possibly to the brain. I don't trust my memory or dreams of 100-ft T-Rex's named Yamahiri fighting with Dragonball Z characters and neither should you.</p>
<p>solipsism... so that's what it's called. i like it.</p>
<p>Yeti, I had an out of body experience without a traumatic brain injury. Explain to me how I could see everything that was going on around me, even what was happening in the hall outside of my hospital room (where I could not have heard what was going on), through science.</p>
<p>^ Subconsciousness awareness? </p>
<p>I definitely don't believe in "souls" in any metaphysical sense. I'm a pretty hardcore monist.</p>
<p>I'm a strong believer in cause and effect, ya know? You could be fancy and call it determinism, but my belief is as follows: our universe is made of tiny particles that move around according to the laws of physics. When they collide, they move in a predictable manner.* Everything is the result of cause and effect: this atom hits that atom, resulting in its movement. It collides with another atom. IMO, this is all.</p>
<p>I'm interested in neuroscience because I think it's amazing and beautiful that something like consciousness, something like reason, is a result of the movement of tiny particles in our brains. </p>
<p>* Disclaimer: random quantum movement may distract from the "predictability" of these movements.</p>
<p>^That's exactly how i feel, I just am really bad at verbalizing things.</p>
<p>^ But even with subconscious awareness, I could not have known what was happening outside of the range of what I could subconsciously detect. Thus, knowing what happened in my room can be explained, but knowing what happened far outside of my physical location cannot be explained by subconscious awareness. </p>
<p>But, I do not believe it was the "soul" that left my body. </p>
<p>Hmm...</p>
<p>Well, what do you believe? (I mean that in a curious way, not a challenging way.)</p>
<p>And I dunno... I mean, even if the sounds were outside of... hmm, let's put it this way: the sounds were outside of your threshold of hearing. But 'threshold' is a probability function (something within the threshold of any sense is a stimuli that can be consciously detected >50% of the time), and 'subconscious' already implies outside of the threshold, sooo... what I'm saying is, it is quite possible to detect something outside of a sense's normal range. </p>
<p>But you're the one who knows the situation; maybe it was really literally impossible that you could have detected it from where you were. In that case, my opinion would be that you are very perceptive as to people's general behavioral patterns and were subconsciously able to accurately PREDICT what might be going on...</p>