If we don't have souls...

[Law's Wolf]

'Mind' is also just a convenient fiction. It's not even a thing, really.

Although, to be fair, it is quite useful to study the mind instead of the brain. The mind is a bit easier to grasp and easier to manipulate, the brain is a lot harder to study. Also, considering the evidence we have that identity theory is correct, both give us the same information (just with different rigour).

Agreed. That's what I meant by the 'convenient' part. The word is a place-holder for a wide range of associated behaviors and events, and that's a good thing, but when we use such place-holders routinely, without examination, we (in the generic sense) tend to assume that the mind has thing-like qualities, which AFAICT it doesn't really. Another way of putting it is that 'mind' is fine for conventional reality, but it doesn't have ultimate reality. Whatever that is.

And I think much the same is true for our 'selves', our identity. Conventionally, a person must behave as though s/he were a singular, discrete entity that persists through time and space. However, when you examine things more closely, that assumption unravels. I think that assumption is the foundation for the belief in an eternal soul, afterlife, etc, and fuels religious thinking. That said, it's certainly possible to assume one's singular, persistent identity and not be religious (I assume everyone here does so in everyday life), but I think there's something valuable in examining it more closely.

A lot of intuitive ideas seem to break down when examined, especially those which find religious support.

[Meekychuppet]

I take the word 'soul' as a metaphor.

It is useful as a metaphor, but not without consequences. That is, some people hear the metaphor and take it literally. Like children. Well, unless you're talking about James Brown and Aretha Franklin kinda soul.

'Mind' is also just a convenient fiction. It's not even a thing, really.

Either works, but I would say that the soul is very much a thing. What I am getting at is best expressed as the German, wesen. That means literally 'essence', however, Martin Heidegger translates it as meaning not only essence, as in a thing's nature, but also the thing that it continues to be, and which maintains it as what it is as it travels through time. Think of the soul as the aspect of a thing, i.e. to what is a thing indebted that makes it conspicuously what it is, as opposed to what it is not? I treat the soul as that, therefore the soul has many applications and can be applied to both animate and inamimate entities. Brown and Franklin are great examples, because you could see that soul music takes it's name as the heart and soul of black culture, not just the soul of the singer.

I always think of literature as having a soul.

[FBM]

Either works, but I would say that the soul is very much a thing. What I am getting at is best expressed as the German, wesen. That means literally 'essence', however, Martin Heidegger translates it as meaning not only essence, as in a thing's nature, but also the thing that it continues to be, and which maintains it as what it is as it travels through time. Think of the soul as the aspect of a thing, i.e. to what is a thing indebted that makes it conspicuously what it is, as opposed to what it is not? I treat the soul as that, therefore the soul has many applications and can be applied to both animate and inamimate entities. Brown and Franklin are great examples, because you could see that soul music takes it's name as the heart and soul of black culture, not just the soul of the singer.

I always think of literature as having a soul.

I can see what you mean as long as I interpret it metaphorically or even poetically, but when I say 'thing', I'm pointing towards some fundamental substance, apart from, or even inhering somehow within, the composite that we routinely identify as a singular being. I don't see any essence in anything, actually, if by essence you mean inherent quality, property or identity. If those qualities, properties or identities were inherent, how could they also be transient? Wouldn't they then have to be eternal? I mean this in the strict sense, not the vernacular.