21 grams - weight of the soul?

No, as it turns out..it's not.

When a person dies there is a sudden increase in body temperature, mostly due to the lungs not cooling the blood, which has a massive effect on sweating (yes, we can still sweat after death). We sweat out, on average 21 grams of weight around the time of our death.

It's interest to note, Dogs, which do not have sweat glands, don't lose any weight upon death.

Just wanted to clear that up.

Have a nice day.

Hmmm, interesting.

But in islamic philosophy the soul is energy and cannot be weighed... it is an electromagnetic field within the body.

So, that didn't really convince me.

Electromagnetic fields can be measured and targetted (location wise). If the soul were made up like that, they'd have been able to track it's movement out of the body at the point of death.

Believe me, parapsychologists have tried, and failed.

That may be true... I have not really looked into that part of science or read anything to be sure. But we do have electromagnetic energy in our bodies and when it no longer exists our brains shut of and we are no longer alive.
Nobody really knows what happens to our souls when they leave our bodies (suggesting we have them off course), they may not linger around on this earth. Another thing I've read and heard about souls is that they perceive everything differently, and that their senses heighten and life becomes as a dream. My point is, they may be measured and targeted (location wise) but we don't know where they go and if they move or even how big or small the field is. Supposing there are other universes (because of the perception of a soul), and suppose they slip into a different one when we die. How would you measure and target movement in a universe you are not in?
In Islamic philosophy, there is more than one universe. One we live in before we are born (Alam elthar), on we live in now (Alam eldonya) and the one we live in in the afterlife (Alam elakhera)... I do not know how many universes exist, but there may be more than these.
The truth is that we'll never know what happens after we die until we actually die. No matter how far science goes in that direction.

Having seen Death of humans, dogs etc., they lose more than 21 grams of weight. The smell of Death is foul. When the muscles cease contracting, excrement oozes out. That is alot more than 21 grams.

I also do not believe you can weigh Conciousness.
^
The truth is that we'll never know what happens after we die until we actually die. No matter how far science goes in that direction
Here is a link to help explain it,
http://hubpages.com/hub/Encouraging-Word-About-DEATH---Scriptural-Proof--NOT-More-False-Doctrines-of-the-Church--Christianity

I'm just curious... and this is a question for anyone here, what do you view as the "soul"?

Do you see it as independent of the body, as a "spirit" or the "mind"? Do you view it as the dependent of the body and may be reduced to the "brain"? Or is it a higher-level consciousness?

The truth is that water is the source of life, and the water that we sweat out contains our soul. So, yes, Kevin. You, too, have a nice sweaty 21 gram soul somewhere deep, deep, inside of you.

Also, dogs have no soul.

"All Dogs Go to Heaven" would disagree, Narph.

If it isn't a Disney musical, then... BLASPHEMY!
No. I don't know.

But just because this exists...
http://www.ulblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/all-dogs-go-to-heaven-a.jpg

I think the soul is a comfort object that humans devised in order to assure ourselves that we are special, out of a complete lack of understanding of the way a human body works. (its fair to point out that i do agree strongly with the philosophy of the 'artificial brain'.)

our soul is an immeasurable label stuck to emotions (which originate in various parts of the brain), learned behaviors (favorable behavioral traits recycled from generation to generation), instinctual behaviors (genetic memories), and the ability to think which we think we are so special for.

these things are difficult to understand, and theres no great way to understand them entirely, not even top notch scientists and biologists can explain them 100% (though we get a little closer every day.)

a 'soul' is pretty much just linguistic and religious short hand for whatever we dont happen to fully understand and cannot explain at the time in my opinion.

^ I agree with you

What most people call or mean about the soul is actually the mind.
- Now one can either be an (i) idealist, (ii) dualist, (iii) non-realist materialist, or (iv) realist materialist. The latter is the most popular view in our moder day stating that what we call "the mind" is a higher-level physical state that is dependent of the brain (material composition).

The mind, however is also divided into certain phenomena, namely: Consciousness, qualia (subjective qualities of our conscious experiences - my feeling of seeing the color "red" may differ with how you "feel" when you see such color), intentionality (contents of our mental states are directed at some objects in the world) - some would actually include more properties (privacy and ontological subjectivity)

The philosopher who specializes in this field is David Chalmers and he actually states the hard problem of conscioussness which how we bridge the gap by explaining the connection between physical processes in the brain and subjective experience. How is it that these processes yield consciousness at all? What are the basic principles that explain why the connection holds, and that account for experiences' specific nature?

It's very interesting really. :)

Well said you storm trooper duo you!

I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier!

I think its really difficult to measure such a negligible amount as 21 grams anyway. say you did know they're exact weight down to grams (not too unreasonable in a hospital,) do you plan on gathering all his waste material after he dies and weighing that to see if the difference before and after is 21 grams? do you do it before urine has a chance to evaporate?

i think the idea of a soul is sort of irrelevant, we are alive, we are sentient, lets call it good.

^ You are wonderful. I wish to see everything in life with that kind of blunt clarity.

I think the idea of a soul is sort of irrelevant, we are alive, we are sentient, lets call it good.

^ why, of the soul maybe. But if we start talking about the mind, or how consciousness exists, then it would bring off a lot of practical consequences.

Imagine if we could answer the problems of conscioussness, answer how something metaphysical (the mind/conscioussness) could affect something that is material, why, if we could naturalize this and pick out how consciousness if achieved with the functional organization of the material brain, then (as predicted on scientific engineering), one could simulate every function of the human body, from skin to brain, and transfer one's complete conscioussness (what makes him, him), to this simulated machine. Imagine, one could live forever.

If you've seen the movie, "The Island", they had an illegal corporation which clones their clients who are in need of a healthier body organ to replace a dying or unhealthy one, this results to a longer life span, maybe an added 50 years. One may ask, why not longer than 50? The client could keep getting surgery once the heart or the lungs are dying by cloning, again and again. But in the point of view in the film, what makes consciousness is the brain (and we all agree), and the brain in the film cannot be cloned and transferred back to the client for surgery, because then what the client "is" is not him/herself, but the clone.

If we find out the nature of the mind/consciousness, and as we all may agree, it is infinte and immutable... then all we need is a material body, the mind's home which is near immortal, and we may live as long as we wish.

^ That's one possibility out of millions... If we knew the nature of the mind or as you call it consciousness, we would be so powerful. Then we could control things and move them with our minds, we could mind travel, we could have extra senses or enhanced senses... we could do many dangerous things. If the mind were materialized, it would have all the abilities of matter and nothing could stop human ability.

As fascinating as this is, unless you are claiming that consciousness IS the soul, and therefore does or does not have weight, then it is irrelevant to the questions asked. i would however love to start another discussion about what consciousness is.... please join me over there?

Then we could control things and move them with our minds, we could mind travel, we could have extra senses or enhanced senses... we could do many dangerous things.

^ that's assuming that the agent that has this specific consciousness has the ability to access other material objects. Now, even though such "way of access" is admittedly the hard problem of consciousness. (We don't know the access point is/or what its nature is). It seems unikely. Where consciousness is, and where it is attached or dependent upon to (in our case our C is dependent of our brain, without the brain there is no mental state then there is no consciousness). Then I may doubt that we "can" control other material things once the question is answered.

David Chalmer, who specializes in such interesting topic admits that this problem may take about a century or more to be answered. Even states that he doesn't know what school could come up with one (neurology, biology, philosophy = combination of all, or a new science). Exciting. Haha