Why would I want a soul?

We usually think of the soul as the essence of being human, of existence itself. It's also a comfort to think that when your body dies your soul survives and so you somehow go on in kind of disembodied ghost-like way. Then come the questions:

1) Do souls have memories?
I believe memories are stored in the brain. If it weren't, people who suffer brain damage shouldn't experience any memory loss, but they do. But the brain rots away when we die, so if there is a soul would it be able to carry our memories with it? Assuming that it could, could it also make new memories? Does the soul remember even the things we forgot? Can the soul think? For reincarnation, is memory of past lives affected by brain damage? On the other hand if it doesn't carry any of our memories with it, is the soul that leaves your body still YOU when it contains nothing about you at all?

2) Do souls have emotions?
The way psychology sees it, emotions are experienced by the body. You wouldn't feel fear if you didn't have a gut to clench and palms to get clammy. A soul has none of these and so would it be able to laugh, cry, feel anything that we usually associate with being human? If it can't would you be still YOU, the person with a sense of humor, the person who can empathize with others, or did that person die with the body?

3) Do souls know everything?
Plato says that souls know everything, or at least a lot more than we as embodied humans can possibly know. They are able to see things as they Truly are. It is assumed that in that state we would be perfectly content. But again I ask, is that enlightened being still YOU or is it such an alien state that there is absolutely no connection with the flesh-n-blood person you were, who loved and hated and tried to live on uncertainty and half-truths?

The argument I advance is this: If in the process of becoming undying soul you discard everything that makes you YOU, in short anihilating your identity, what life do you continue in the afterlife if that life is no more? It seems to me that even if we have souls the persons we are still cease to be and will never be again.

What do you think?

An Aborted Universe

Exactly three years ago a role-playing campaign was begun and was left unfinished. Its really such a waste. I take playing God very seriously. When I design a world I want it to have enough culture to fool an anthropologist. Myths, rites of passage, hero stories, exotic food, beliefs about the afterlife, quaint swear words, bizarre sexual customs, the works. It is all excessive on a crazy baroque level since most of it will never be relevant in terms of actual gameplay. Gamers are not aesthetes and its hard to appreciate the ambiance if you have to keep track of hitpoints, gold pieces, the name of the whoreson who stole your bag of holding, etcetera.

Gamers have a Teleological philosophy in the Aristotelian sense. Things exist for a purpose. A +3 assassin's dagger is meant to stab human or humanlike creatures in the back (that is its Final Cause) and so it is a good gamers duty to fulfill the natural order and go find someone to stab in the back. It is hard to argue with such clear reasoning. It is my job to facilitate gamers self-actualizing tendencies and need for violence (DMing is a lot like therapy) while keeping the intricate social fabric responsive and noticable from time to time. Though it is a losing battle, I try to keep everying logical and believable, from the battles to the rubbish in the dungeon cells.

What's really so fascinating about role-playing is the illusion of freedom that is willingly assumed by the gamers. For it to work the players should have the feeling that they are actually in control of their destiny, or at least the destiny of their made up characters. It is the DM's job to make that happen, to make players believe in their self-efficacy, their ability to control (it so happens all of these are psychological constructs). If this is properly done the illusion will be successful, the game will be able to give gamers the feeling of Power. King Kong on speed. Novus Ordo Saeclorum.

"Though its only a clever game" lyrics from Sunny Day Real Estate's "One" and quite true in the case of role-playing. It was Rousseau who said that the illusion of freedom was sufficient in terms of educating the young, meaning real freedom for teenagers was preposterous. Liberty is always sacrificed to order. Role-playing is ultimately a story, and all actions and events should contribute to the grand scheme however obscure. Sudden plot twists, deus ex machina, the bait and switch, cunning yet very obvious clues, diabolical traps, recurrent meetings with a hooded stranger who turns out to be the king's sexy illegitimate daughter who is also a level 10 summoner, the disguised villains in scoobydoo, it all satisfies one thing: the dark humor of the Creator (in this case, Me). Makes you wonder whether its really that easy to make people believe that they are the masters of their fates in real life (actually there are very intriguing experiments on this theme).

In the end, just trying to make an almost believable microcosm is already half of the fun so its not all bad. Like it said in Foucault's Pendulum, its really lonely work being God but someones gotta do it

Game log from October 21, 2003 here
Game log from October 23, 2003 here
Game log from October 30, 2003 here
Game log from November 5, 2003 here
The Races here
The Pantheon here
The Wierd of House Middletower (unfinished) here
The Bright Prince (unfinished) here

Do It Yourself Metaphysics

What follows is a manifesto, a plagiarism, a parody

A Provisional Creed (091006)

1. I believe in an objective reality, one that is composed of the matter and forces of nature;
2. I believe in a subjective reality of the mind that arises from and is concommitant to the objective reality but not entirely commensurable with it;
3. I believe that all phenomena (both objective and subjective) are ultimately caused by matter and forces of nature;
4. I believe that all phenomena (both objective and subjective) can be reduced to simpler or more elementary forms;
5. I believe that all phenomena (both objective and subjective) follow from necessary causal relationships that limit and determine all events in time;
6. I believe that all significance derives from the subjective reality;
7. I believe that all statements about the objective reality, which necessarily arise from the subjective reality, contain the possibility of error because of the incommensurability of the objective and the subjective;
8. I believe that all beliefs have the possibility of being proved false in the future;
9. I believe that 8 applies to all statements before it, including itself.

I contradict

Greenberg and the Milgram experiments

one of those brain itches i get from time to time is the squeaky problem of ethics of the arts and sciences. and a very good question for that is whether ends can really justify means. we will take two cases for analysis: controversial photographer jill greenberg and controversial social psychologist stanley milgram

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/gallery/image/0,,-1010329538560,00.html

jill greenberg's claim to fame/infamy is her series of photographs that feature portraits of young children in obvious distress. the photos are visually arresting and effective. but more interesting was the method: snatch candies from the subjects and then capturing the moment of shock/anguish/anger. the kind of thing they the images have clear human interest and has great composition. in short, it is good art. greenberg assures us that the lollipops were returned to the children within 30 seconds and everything was with parental consent. but then again is all that a good enough excuse for something that might amount to exploitation?

Still on the subtly sinister genre we have Stanley Milgram's classic experiments on obedience to authority. Like any good psych experiment the concept is both simple and ingenious. Volunteers are instructed to "train" a "subject" (who is actually an accomplice of the experimenter). The "training" includes a mechanism whereby the volunteers must administer "electric shocks" to the "subject" as a "punishment" for "mistakes" (the annoying quotation marks are to show that most of what happens is scripted, and the accomplice only pretends to be shocked because there is no real electricity used). Eventually the volunteer (who remains clueless as to the real objective of the experiment) is asked by a man in a lab coat to increase the "voltage" steadily with each "mistake", the highest possible being 450V. It was discovered that most volunteers (about 70%) would obey and continue the experiment even if the "subject" they are "punishing" is showing clear distress. The implications of Milgram's research are far reaching but the question remains: given that the results were important and contributed to human knowledge, was it justified, was it ok to decieve the volunteers and expose them to the distress of going through an experiment that in a way manipulated their emotions to an extent? Did the ends justify the means?

Of course it is expected of both artists and scientists to push boundaries, but shouldn't the line be drawn somewhere? I admit that being a social scientist I know that the temptation of designing research insensitive to human dignity is very real. "The Truman Show" pretty much sums up a psychologist's wet dream (or repressed desire). And how about the arts, with Prophet Mohammed cartoons in an increasingly volatile world, should artists bow down to political correctness? So, how far can you go before you find yourself becoming a rapist?