Obituaries

[suresh]

Indian Hockey
died March 9, 2008 in Chile

[Varma]

Carnegie Mellon Professor, Randy Pausch, who became famous with his "Last Lecture" passed away last Friday (25th July 2008). His lecture and the book he authored under the same title inspired millions to look at life from a different perspective. It definitely made a difference to me. My heart goes out to his family, especially his 3 little kids. My sincere condolences to them.

Thanks for making such an impact on this world in the very short time you had, Randy. May your soul rest in peace!

- Varma

[gbelday]

That's pretty sad! I was reading about his death in the papers and the local tv news also had a piece on him. May his soul rest in peace!

For those of you who haven't had a chance before, you can download the transcript of his "Last Lecture"
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ ... script.pdf

[kujo]

Sad indeed.  what a guy! according to his blog entries he was bravely fighting the cancer till a month back, despite some setbacks. then the entries stopped coming...  Now, the news about his death. 

May his soul rest in peace.

[sanjay5goel]

What is a "soul" anyway?

Has anyone seen it? If not why believe?

Sanjay

[gbelday]

Soul

[sanjay5goel]

Thanks Gautam.

However, definition #1 conflicts with the example proverb given in definition #5.

Sanjay

[gbelday]

I think those are definitions of how different people perceive "soul".  To me, it is a "an animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual personal existence." sums it up!

[Atithee]

What is a "soul" anyway?

Has anyone seen it? If not why believe?

Sanjay

What is "played higher than ranking" anyway?  Have we ever seen what each ranking means?  If not, why believe? 

[jayakris]

When somebody feels sad, is there necessarily anything to see?  You may not see that somebody is sad inside, if that person doesn't show it at all.  Is it not real just because you cannot see it, observe it with a physical instrument, or measure it?   Or worse still,  is it correct to say that it is not real just because you do not have the scientific knowledge to make a device that measures it, or do not have the right basic principles in that science that allows for even a virtual (mathematical or logical) model of it. 

Whether any "physical instruments" can measure them or not, your thoughts, your hopes, your ambitions - your sense of your "self" - exists, right?   Now, if it exists, and you die with your physical body instantaneously disintegrating, in say a nuclear blast, what happens to that set of "unmeasured" items?   Probably disintegrated, or probably still sticking together in some form of waves (as per your science, despite its limitations) or exitsing as something else (undefinable due to limitations of your science)?   If so, logically, it should be the case in any death, right?  The sum total of all of that which remains after physical death is called your "soul that departed" .. When you are alive, it is your "soul"

The question should not be whether anybody has seen it.    The question should be whether it has any relevance once the physical body dies.   Some think it has, and some don't.

Indian science and logic of tens of thousands of years (called Hindu "religion" by foreigners in recent times of just a couple of thousand years) always have said that the soul (perhaps some part of it with certain modifications, or in combination with other souls too) can reassemble in a subsequent birth of a life form.  Sounds logical to me.  Much more than the limited science I was taught in school, which is filled with logical inconsistencies when it comes to a lot of things I *know* exists, but the "science" cannot seem to accept to exist.

Jay

[jai_in_canada]

If you can't see the wind, gravity etc. do they exist?  Or is it enough to see the *effects* of the same to conclude that they exist?  I don't know.  This is too deep for me.  I'm getting vertigo.  All I know is that I don't like watching American Idol.

Randy Pausch was an inspiring dude, if a little nerdy in his obsession with "Imagineering."  I watched his "Last Lecture" in rapt attention - very riveting, well put together, funny, inspiring, insightful.  RIP Randy!

[prasen9]

the soul (perhaps some part of it with certain modifications, or in combination with other souls too) can reassemble in a subsequent birth of a life form.  Sounds logical to me.

What is "subsequent birth"?  Is a subsequent birth a one-to-one mapping or a many-to-one mapping or a one-to-many mappining?  Between homo sapiens?  Or can it be across all animals? Plants included?  Why is it "logical"?  How do we know?

I would think all this is speculative.  You are right that we cannot measure or perceive right now something does not mean that it does not exist.  But, it also does not mean it exists.  Science talks about what can be measured/perceived and does not say anything about the non-existence of anything else.  So, we separate what we see and observe and what we think and conjure.

Everything, of course, depends upon how we define things.  Einstein's God is very different from the common man's God.  We can define anything suitably so as to make it exist; we can define the same term in such a way that we can find no proof of its existence (different from it does not exist).

Much more than the limited science I was taught in school, which is filled with logical inconsistencies when it comes to a lot of things I *know* exists, but the "science" cannot seem to accept to exist.

Would be interested to know what you have in mind here.

-pm

[prasen9]

Professor Randy Pausch was a brilliant computer scientist.  His contributions in user interface design and virtual reality were noteworthy; he moved the field of human computer interaction/computer graphics forward.

I am saddened by his passing away.  In January, 2006, I was running a seminar for graduate students at Penn State.  Along with a colleague, we invited Dr. Pausch to give a lecture.  Unfortunately, he declined because his wife was giving birth to their third child.  We thought we would bring him in the next semester.  Next semester never came.  In August, 2006, he got the bad news.  As most of you who watched his talks know, he was a brilliant, flamboyant lecturer and a great educator.  He was an excellent researcher too.  The field will miss him and his work; his students will miss him as will his family.

May his soul rest in peace.

[jayakris]

Sorry to hijack the thread on a wonderful human being's passing.  I am sure he would appreciate some discussion among us that resulted from his "soul"'s passing.

the soul (perhaps some part of it with certain modifications, or in combination with other souls too) can reassemble in a subsequent birth of a life form.  Sounds logical to me.

What is "subsequent birth"?  Is a subsequent birth a one-to-one mapping or a many-to-one mapping or a one-to-many mappining?  Between homo sapiens?  Or can it be across all animals? Plants included?  Why is it "logical"?  How do we know?

May be many-to-many, for all I know.  I had left that as an open question.   According to old Indian logic in vEdAs and purANAs, it can be across animals or humans or plants (and I believe even across what are considered inanimate objects, but I am not fully sure of this).  That makes more sense to me than to say that what I know existed, though not in physical or energy/mass form the "science" perspective (which do not go away at death afterall, according to science), would stop existing at death.

All I said is that a whole bunch of items that science can't seem to measure, do EXIST.  Like I said, thoughts, sadness, hopes, sense of self etc, do EXIST and are REAL - you don't disagree with that do you?

To me it is not logical that measurement-based science that developed in the last 2000 years (mostly in the last 500 odd years, I guess) can define what is real and what is not.  Till electromagnetic waves were discovered or scientifically explained, nothing beyond what can be seen, or can be painted by an artist, was considered REAL (or to exist) by our science.    Then to see the same science insisting that what we all feel and know to be real (what poets wrote for millennia - "feelings") to have no permanency or scientific basis, is illogical to me.    So, if they exist in life forms, why should they go away at death and only what science can define - energy and mass that it has mathematically defined so far - exist beyond the death of a life form?  That is what is illogical to me.

I would think all this is speculative.  You are right that we cannot measure or perceive right now something does not mean that it does not exist.  But, it also does not mean it exists.  Science talks about what can be measured/perceived and does not say anything about the non-existence of anything else.  So, we separate what we see and observe and what we think and conjure.

You seem to be talking down about what we cannot "see and observe" as speculative and as something that is "conjured".   Not really, if sufficient number of people over millennia have "conjured up" the same thing - in India, and probably in other places too.   We have grown up with the notion from science that "nothing beyond what we observe with physical instruments or can conceivably be so observed some day is real".  If meditation leads enough people to come to certain roughly-unique logical conclusions on what exists and what is real, there has got to be something there that we ought to look into.

Everything, of course, depends upon how we define things.  Einstein's God is very different from the common man's God.  We can define anything suitably so as to make it exist; we can define the same term in such a way that we can find no proof of its existence (different from it does not exist).

I don't know what exactly Einstein believed to be God, but he is such an inconsequential (;)) "scientist" in comaprison to Indian theorists like vEdavyAsa or SankarAcharya, who said much more about the world and its realities (and God, which was nothing but a logical necessity to SankarAchArya), thugh ostensibly not based on any experimentation.   You are absolutely right that we can define things in the appropriate reference frame to make it exist or not.  I guess Einstein only went so far as to say that mass and energy can replace each other according to reference frames, but Indian purANAs go beyond that.   Just because Einstein came through the modern scientific school and wrote his theories within that system, we all accept what he said, though we personally do not understand much more.   

These days I tend to believe that there are indeed other ways to try to find explanations of the universe, beyond experimental science.   One needs to first believe that one will find such truth by looking within onself in meditation, for that to be effective though.  The western man has messed it up more for those in places like India by calling all these thoughts "religion" over the last millennium, unfortunately - probably because their concept of religion was prescriptive ideas supposedly from a separate and non-scientific "God" while Indian concepts were what came from man's own self-inquiry and as such were nothing but science for Indians.

Much more than the limited science I was taught in school, which is filled with logical inconsistencies when it comes to a lot of things I *know* exists, but the "science" cannot seem to accept to exist.

Would be interested to know what you have in mind here.

Perhaps my thoughts are also influencd by the fact that people have experiences in life that just do not fit the theories of current science.  Ask any number of people who have had "unexplainable" experiences from Mata Amritanandamayi, for instance.  My own personal experiences are much more limited and not as much through such gurus or spiritual figures.  There is a realm of "reality" that is considered in the "spiritual domain" by modern man because science cannot (and possibly may never) explain it.  It was not considered a part of anything seperate from science in India though.  "Soul" is something that falls there.  Then you come to wonder about things such as how Indians figured out the speed of light and wrote it in the purANAs, with hardly any mention of anybody's having done experimentation in laboratories?  How did vAtmIki know what precisely happens to a human embryo in the first days of conception without ever having a microscope or surgical instrument to write it in rAmAyaNa?   They are all always mentioned as what came from intense meditation.  To me it appears that there has got to be a way to tap into the logical systems that exist out there and explain the world, purely in the domain of thoughts and minds.  Those are all "illogical" to me, if I believe modern science.  I am not as ready to buy that anymore, as perhaps I was earlier.

Jay

[prasen9]

All I said is that a whole bunch of items that science can't seem to measure, do EXIST.

This is true.  That is why we discover new things, new particles, etc.

Like I said, thoughts, sadness, hopes, sense of self etc, do EXIST and are REAL - you don't disagree with that do you?

No.

To me it is not logical that measurement-based science that developed in the last 2000 years (mostly in the last 500 odd years, I guess) can define what is real and what is not.

It does not claim to.  It just claims to explain what is measurable.  Those that make unfounded claims (even wrt negative results of existence) are not strictly speaking scientists.

So, if they exist in life forms, why should they go away at death and only what science can define - energy and mass that it has mathematically defined so far - exist beyond the death of a life form?  That is what is illogical to me.

Not only do they go away at death, they go away within life.  Thoughts, sadness, hopes, sense of self are all temporary things.  They are feelings that come and go.  One reason why it may go away is because its vehicle of expression in a material form, the brain, goes away.  If you define an abstract thought that has its own existence that manifests itself in different people's minds, then the abstract thought does not go away, but then we can no longer say that the manifestation (his thought) remains, but that the abstract thought remains.  As I said, it would all be in the definition.

I would think all this is speculative.  You are right that we cannot measure or perceive right now something does not mean that it does not exist.  But, it also does not mean it exists.  Science talks about what can be measured/perceived and does not say anything about the non-existence of anything else.  So, we separate what we see and observe and what we think and conjure.

You seem to be talking down about what we cannot "see and observe" as speculative and as something that is "conjured".

Jay, a "conjecture" is defined as a " conjecture is an idea or statement which is believed to be true, usually because some evidence has been found to support it."  Another definition is: "a hypothesis drawn from observed patterns in several examples".  See define:conjecture.  The term conjecture usually has a positive sense in that it has not been proven right but could be.  I leave open that possibility.  Most computer programs are merely conjectures in that it does not guarantee the specified relationship between inputs and outputs for it is near impossible to prove them correct.  Also, if you go into Godel's theory, he proves that there are some things that cannot be proved using a rigid mathematical system.

Now, if you see define:speculation, the first definition is "guess: a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence".  Now, working off the definiton of a "soul" being the collection of feelings, emotions, thoughts, personality of a person, surely, we do not have complete evidence of a soul exists after the person dies,  leave aside the notion that it can "rest" and that it can achieve "peace".

Not really, if sufficient number of people over millennia have "conjured up" the same thing - in India, and probably in other places too.

Opinion does not establish fact.  The sun did not go around the world till 1400 AD because most of the world believed that over millennia (assuming western historical accounts are accurate about this belief).

We have grown up with the notion from science that "nothing beyond what we observe with physical instruments or can conceivably be so observed some day is real".

This notion is clearly wrong.  Maybe we grew up with different thoughts taught to us.

If meditation leads enough people to come to certain roughly-unique logical conclusions on what exists and what is real, there has got to be something there that we ought to look into.

We should look into such conjectures and try to buttress the evidence for the conjectures.  We may never be able to prove it.  I realize that we are perhaps using "logical" in two different senses.  I am using "logic" as a formal mathematical system sense, and you are perhaps using it in a "derived from human reasoning" or some sense like that.

I don't know what exactly Einstein believed to be God, but he is such an inconsequential (;)) "scientist" in comaprison to Indian theorists like vEdavyAsa or SankarAcharya, who said much more about the world and its realities (and God, which was nothing but a logical necessity to SankarAchArya), thugh ostensibly not based on any experimentation.  You are absolutely right that we can define things in the appropriate reference frame to make it exist or not.  I guess Einstein only went so far as to say that mass and energy can replace each other according to reference frames, but Indian purANAs go beyond that.  Just because Einstein came through the modern scientific school and wrote his theories within that system, we all accept what he said, though we personally do not understand much more.

I am not debating whether some scientist is more consequential than another.  I find it extremely hard to compare non-quantifiable things and do not find the exercise useful (let us leave it as a personal choice).  I think you will find that there are some similarities in what is described as Einstein's religious thoughts and Indian thought.  There are some stark differences too.

I think that there are two branches of study: philosophy and physics.  Einstein was a great physicist, i.e., he established the proofs and explanations of certain phenomena under a rigid framework of reasonably unambiguous rules; a rigid framework of an experimental science could validate his theories.  That is physics.  He does not claim to be a great philosopher.  I do not think physics is inconsequential.  Both what we can achieve by experimental measurements and by pure thinking alone have value.  His contributions were in a different field of study.

Ask any number of people who have had "unexplainable" experiences from Mata Amritanandamayi, for instance.  My own personal experiences are much more limited and not as much through such gurus or spiritual figures.

The human brain can result in experiences that do not exist.  Just because someone say they saw something does not mean that it exists (nor does it mean that it does not). 

Then you come to wonder about things such as how Indians figured out the speed of light and wrote it in the purANAs, with hardly any mention of anybody's having done experimentation in laboratories?  How did vAtmIki know what precisely happens to a human embryo in the first days of conception without ever having a microscope or surgical instrument to write it in rAmAyaNa?

I do not know how they did it, but, theoretical physicists propose models that are verified by experimentation.  The human mind has always conjectured things based on a leap of faith.  Most paradigm-breaking discoveries are not based on rigorous toil using existing facts and methods but unexplainable brain waves that result in sudden realization.  This is called innovation/creativity now in the western world, perhaps it used to be called meditation/enlightenment in the eastern world.  With regards to your questions, there can be two explanations.  One is the random method.  People could have ventured several guesses and several of them were wrong and one happened to be close to the right number for the speed of light.  If you throw sufficient darts, one will be close enough.  The second is also based on guess work like most inventions, but, very, very educated guess.  The person may have considered all the observable evidences, pursued measurements, thrown out obvious false numbers and then guessed something that was very close.

They are all always mentioned as what came from intense meditation.  To me it appears that there has got to be a way to tap into the logical systems that exist out there and explain the world, purely in the domain of thoughts and minds.  Those are all "illogical" to me, if I believe modern science.  I am not as ready to buy that anymore, as perhaps I was earlier.

Mathematics, the purest form of thought does not say anything about what cannot be proven.  Those that claim that what cannot be proven is not true are not true scientists but are abusing mathematics.  The best we can say is that using the system we cannot say whether it exists or not.  That in my sense is a more accurate way of saying things than going either way.

That is why, I am more of an agnostic than an atheist or a religious person.  Understanding/proving/disproving the existence of God under the common man's (more tangible) definition (not your's, remembering from the last thread on such discussions, I did not find much disagreement with your formulation of God) is beyond me; my attitude is why bother?  I know the same can be said about any question and as humans we have an insatiable thirst for knowledge.  But, let us just say that I am uninquisitive with respect to such questions that I cannot wrap my brain around.  Depending upon the definition, my reasoning will come up with yes/no/don't know.  So, depending upon the definition, a soul exists, does not exist, or I don't know.

p.s. Maybe all of you had already come to the conclusion much earlier that "this guy just does not know"   I am just slow, I confess