DO you lose you soul when you have a heart transplant?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Cat_with_no_eyes, Jul 20, 2013.

  1. Cat_with_no_eyes Registered Senior Member

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    I am unsure what happens to the soul when your having a heart transplant, such as when the heart is removed.. where does the heart beat of the soul go? where is the soul in this process? Is it contained in the body or the heart?

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    This is a spiritual and biological question, I hope I can get some good replies from you all.
     
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  3. arauca Banned Banned

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    You loos your soul when you are in a respirator in an hospital and your life depend on the electrical power generator .
     
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  5. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    What is a soul composed of? What is the evidence that there even is such a thing? Do animals have souls? Did neanderthals? The human heart is mostly muscle tissue; why would you consider it a more likely repository for a soul than any other muscle in the body?
     
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  7. Pincho_Paxton Banned Banned

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    You lose your sole when you have a foot chopped off.
     
  8. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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    The soul is as far as the human perception has evolved an imaginary concept, since we can't prove its existance in any physical way, so where it resides within the body, or if it needs a body to attach to at all, is a matter of belief. If you believe in the soulconcept and get a heart transplant then I would guess part of the prior owners soul would go with that. You will develop an intimate relationship with the soul of the heart donor, but your own soul will remain intact, because imo it doesn't need that muscle to exist. Then again, if all parts of our bodies are "spirited" then your heart, that was removed and tossed in the trashcan will in turn merge with all the dirt and molecules it comes in contact with and will also add experience to your soul. From that we can embrace the idea of the metaconsciousness of all debris that humans deposit.
     
  9. arauca Banned Banned

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    What kind of evidence would you like to have to b convinced ?
     
  10. andy1033 Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    Whether you people like it or not people that got transplants, ended up with the donors memories.

    Explain that, and there is plenty of cases out there.

    You tune into your long term memories.

    Go and research it, there is plenty of cases of people getting memories from the donors organs, that was from the donors life.
     
  11. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    Site something, because this is simply nonsense.

    Where do you come up with this crap?
     
  12. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    Try beginning with any evidence.
     
  13. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    You only lose your soul when you have a brain transplant.
     
  14. Cat_with_no_eyes Registered Senior Member

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    SOul as in, what gives the human body life, to breathe to think, to talk etc, Where does it go during a heart transplant? If someone receives a heart attack or heart failure then the person will be dead. SO the sould which keeps the person alive has gone? Do you know where it is in this process?
     
  15. Cat_with_no_eyes Registered Senior Member

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    111
    If that is the case, then what happens to those people who suffer heart attacks and die? There soul is lost isnt it?
     
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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  17. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    There are anecdotes or news items about transplant patients who acquired cravings, feelings, interests and personality traits of the organ donors. But when not dismissed by scientists as erroneous conclusions, the fringe community often ascribes them to cellular memory* -- which is a pseudo-biology explanation rather than one of thymidoxic traditions (thymi=soul / spirit; doxic=of beliefs / opinions).

    It would be best if the classic "soul" concept did not intrude upon the territory of methodological naturalism**, or the physical sciences (which is little problem in this sub-forum, anyway). But should instead be explored within the context of conditions that make an empirical world possible, in philosophies like immaterialism, critical idealism, or the "intelligible world" of Greek descent. While unassailable proofs or intellectual evidence for transcendent hypotheses and beliefs (like "soul") submitted therein are not really possible [or never actually succeed], arguments for their necessity / practicality at least become viable. The fruit of which, again, should be kept separate from and not interfere with how the interdependent phenomena of a conditioned domain like Nature hang together.

    ** Immanuel Kant: "Nor does that [natural] science require this for its physical explanations. Nay even if such grounds should be offered from other sources (for instance, the influence of immaterial beings), they must be rejected and not used in the progress of its explanations. For these explanations must only be grounded upon that which as an object of sense can belong to experience, and be brought into connection with our actual perceptions and empirical laws."

    Now that the above preliminaries are out of the way, it can be said that a "soul" (assuming there was such) would not be found residing in the appearances of a body or its organs (heart, lungs, liver, etc). Anymore than the body one has during a dream is truly the source of or a "house" for one's thoughts and perceptions during that dream. Though if it happened to be a prolonged, sensible, lawful dream instead of the more erratic and crazy kind, then recruiting that body as an explanation for being alive and conscious in that virtual environment would be just the direction to take. IOW, conform to and research that world's "own story" about its origins and how it functions; because that's all which one's particular "dream-self" would ever have evidence for, anyway, before its life dissolves away upon waking.

    Needless to say, however, this conventional dream metaphor becomes inadequate from the standpoint that the other "humans" in dreams are just superficial props. Thus the "soul" believer or soul should desire influences (which it converts into consciousness of an external world) which are independent of itself. Perceptions and interactions of one's family, friends, etc, would need to correspond to the influences from other souls. All similar, conscious agents would at least be partially integrated by a common operating system for regulating representations of themselves and other "intelligible powers" as material phenomena that are located and changing in a spatiotemporal place. So that they output / participate in the same world. The inability to control that extrospective environment by personal will is a testament to that shared regulatory system -- this objective governance outrunning the wishes of any particular "game player" -- not permitting its laws / principles to be violated. Likewise, that the chair which one kicks is real is validated by the intersubjectivity of each person also perceiving and feeling it. As opposed to the imaginary, aggressive chair which the town drunk claims he was injured by, which nobody else saw and which left no public trace / effect of itself after its arbitrary attack.

    - - - - - - - - -

    * "Even so, the stories are intriguing and may lead to some serious scientific investigation at some time in the future."
    http://skepdic.com/cellular.html

    "It is well-established that cells receive, interpret and adjust to environmental fluctuations, says microbiologist James Shapiro of the University of Chicago, Illinois. But if the results stand up, he says, 'this paper would add a [less spectacular form of] cellular memory to those capabilities'.
    http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080123/full/451385a.html

    Questioning The Possibility Of Cellular Memory
    http://www.helium.com/items/955752-Schools-of-Thought/print
     
  18. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    You don't loose your soul when you have a heart transplant, as I perceive it the soul is the whole of you, you can perceive it to be in the heart if you want - even after a heart transplant, but it is always the whole of you and it doesn't matter if one piece is missing or replaced as long as the concept of you exists.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The heart is an organ that pumps blood. It doesn't have anything go do with consciousness directly. The soul is a mythical entity with no medical significance.
     
  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    The soul is like a hologram. Cut off a piece of it and you still have the whole, albeit in a weaker faded form. The soul is thus composed of multitudes of persons and subpersons, some that we were, are and have yet to be, all choreographed by the music of one timeless dance.


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  21. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Spidergoat said it before I could. I agree with him.
     

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