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U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-than-meets-the-eye dept.

plaastik writes "The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"

42 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Fully articulating hands? by Mgns · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm thinking these soldiers won't be playing the piano anytime soon.

    1. Re:Fully articulating hands? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Doctor, will I be able to play the violin after this operation?

      Yes. I expect so.

      That's amazing. I couldn't play at all, before.

    2. Re:Fully articulating hands? by HeX314 · · Score: 2, Funny

      But they may be folding paper cranes. /GitS anyone?

  2. Innovation by Eightyford · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sadly, nothing sparks innovation and technology like war and disasters.

    --
    Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
    1. Re:Innovation by vandan · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Sadly, nothing sparks innovation and technology like war and disasters.


      Under the current capitalist regime, I agree. I certainly wouldn't expect Dubya to be forking out money for, say, ordinary Americans who have lost limbs and need replacements. Any suggestion of creating some sort of ( I'd better say this quietly ) public health system is met with absolute horror by the Republicans and the ruling class ... and the Democrats too. But of course soldiers are somewhat more useful than ordinary citizens, as they are carrying out the agenda of big business, in particilar big oil and the weapons manufacturers. But don't hold you breath waiting for a worker getting one of these paid for by the state because they lost an arm in an accident at work.

      Axe public health? Check.
      Axe social security? Check.
      Axe public education? They're most certainly working on it.
      Ignore urgent need to invest in renewable resources? Check.

      There's seriously not much more they can axe to funnel more money into the military, is there?

      Exactly how much of this bullshit can Americans handle before they stop bleeting the line that they're 'rulers of the free world'?
    2. Re:Innovation by vandan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Except, of course, for creating the largest public health care segment in decades -- the Medicare prescription plan.

      It depends on which way you measure it. It might be the case that the system has the largest absolute budget, but this is spread across a very large number of people. If you look at the expenditure per capita, a very different picture emerges. The US is practically the worst in the Western world for health care. That's why the most common reason why people are put in gaol ( jail for Yanks ) is for non-payment of medical bills. I wouldn't go around scoffing at your health-care system if I were you. The US system is what everyone else in the western world points at, and say "at least we're not that fucked up yet".

      Except, of course, that this went down to defeat with even the Republicans in Congress showing moderately strong opposition to it.

      Um. I'm not following you here. Are you saying that Republicans actually argued for spending MORE money on social security? I think you're mistaken.

      Except, of course, that more money goes into the public education system from the federal government than ever before. Federal spending on pre-university education in terms of percent GDP rose by more than 40% from 2000 to 2006, and up by about two-thirds in 2000 dollars.

      That's not what I hear. Admittedly, I'm not 100% up to date on the minor details, but I have read numerous articles over the past 10 years about public school closures, and funds being redirected to private education. I think that even in absolute terms the amount of money in the public education system has been reducing significantly, and I can say with absolute certainty that the amount per-capita has been decreasing at an alarming rate.

      I find it hard to fathom that there are people who are actually arguing that the Republicans are supposedly adding to public spending. Even Americans know that is bullshit.

      The US has nearly 17,000 generators combining for a total nameplate output of more than a million megawatts, of which almost 11,000 are fossil fueled plants with nameplate capacities of about 825,000 megawatts. Converting that takes time, and at the moment, there isn't enough renewable capacity to even dent that

      No kidding. You can't argue that there is little research because there are few solutions. The research is intended to produce solutions. Bush has scaled back research into renewables, just as Howard has done here in Australia, while rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and asserting the rights of the big energy companies to keep on polluting ... in the name of jobs of course.

      including the Dept of Energy assisting with a non-PV solar plant in Southern California that will have a rated capacity of about 500MW

      That's a token effort - a drop in the ocean at best. It really means nothing in the long run. We need to be doing this everywhere.

      There has also been significant work done to smooth the process for getting nuclear plants approved, however, so with some luck, we'll be able to take a nice chunk out with that. It's not renewable (not in the conventional sense), but it's a lot more stable than wind and solar.

      No it's not. There is enough uranium in the world for about 10 years of total energy consumption, and then you have millions of tons of radioactive waste that will be around for millions of years to come. Which company - or civilisation for that matter - is going to be around in millions of years to safeguard the world from this waste? Who will pay to maintain the containment? Not the companies that profited from it, you can be sure of that. And then there's the issue of the US breaking the non-proliferation treaty. I say that if Iraq and Iran deserve to be invaded to for

  3. Re:This raises the question by nacturation · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When does someone stop being human [...] What of the soul?

    Perhaps you can first provide a concrete, evidence-based definition of what a soul is, then we can have an intelligent discussion about whatever it is.

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  4. Re:This raises the question by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Futurist Ray Kurzweil talks in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines about these exact notions. He seems to think that consciousness itself is a sort of soul, and once humans are entirely machine--which he thinks is coming fairly soon--we will still be "human".

  5. Re:This raises the question by Raptoer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ghost in the Shell takes a good look at the issued involved with cyberizaion of people.

  6. Re:This raises the question by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Perhaps you can first provide a concrete, evidence-based definition of what a soul is, then we can have an intelligent discussion about whatever it is.

    See Plato's Phaedo, a text anyone with a university education should already be familiar with. All metaphysical investigations are not "evidence-based" in the sense that they are subjectable to the scientific method, but they are still "reasonable", perhaps even "logical".

  7. Better Question: Washington's Hypcrisy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Here are some more disturbing questions?

    1. Why does the same American government that sends soldiers to be permanently mutilated in Iraq refuse to allow the full range of stem cell research that could, one day, re-grow the limbs torn apart by pointless, wasteful war? Why should we condemn the mutilated soldiers to a life of crappy prosthetics?

    2. More fundamentally, why does the American government send soldiers off to sacrifice their lives in Iraq when most Americans, including American politicians, refuse to make any sacrifice for the sake of that war? No one is sacrificing. Only the soldiers are sacrificing -- their lives.

    Question #2 is particularly damning. When the average American refuses to support a surcharge on gasoline (to bring its cost to $4.00 per gallon) to pay for the bloody war in Iraq, why the hell should Washington insist that soldiers sacrifice their lives? In World War II, the entire nation sacrificed for the just cause of the war effort. Clearly, we have no just cause in Iraq. Nearly no one supports the Iraq War.

    We should count most Republicans in the "no one" category. Most Republicans also refuse to support a surcharge to pay for the war. Their mouth says, "I support the war." However, their wallet says, "I oppose the war." Their wallet tells the truth.

  8. Re:This raises the question by tftp · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Well, if your augmented (cyborg) body never wears down then the question is moot, isn't it?

    But if you still insist, it is obvious that the soul, if present to begin with, can be only in the head, and only in the brain then. We do not have prosthetic brains yet, so there is nothing to discuss yet. When we get some decent processing capacity, then ask me again :-)

  9. Re:I for one.. by The+Evil+Couch · · Score: 3, Informative
    Where will all this lead to?

    Cyberlimbs, wired reflexes, datajacks and cyberdecks.

    --
    The World's Worst Webcomic!
  10. We can rebuild him by Skidge · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to The Inflation Calculator:

    What cost $6,000,000 in 1974 would cost $24,945,762.42 in 2005.

    It's not cheap being a .
    1. Re:We can rebuild him by Skidge · · Score: 2, Informative

      I really did preview that one. Twice. ;)

      That should read "It's not cheap being a bionic man."

    2. Re:We can rebuild him by misanthrope101 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I wonder if proper body and vehicle armor is cheaper than prosthetics, multiple surgeries, psychological counseling, and a lifetime of subsequent health problems. I also wonder what these soldiers lost their limbs for. Iraq and Afghanistan aren't exactly basions of freedom, are they? Yes, they'll be peaceful one day in the future, as will the entire earth when the sun runs out of hydrogen. I do realize that every time a flower blooms in Iraq it's because of American resolve and committment, while none of the death and destruction is our fault, but still, one wonders what the hell it's all for.

    3. Re:We can rebuild him by timeOday · · Score: 2, Informative
      I wonder if proper body and vehicle armor is cheaper than prosthetics, multiple surgeries, psychological counseling, and a lifetime of subsequent health problems.
      If only it were so easy. Up-armoring the Humvees is no miracle cure, in fact it may hurt more than it helps.

      Besides, with the quality of explosives the other side is using, they can kill an M1! Charges that cut through a main battle tank are not going to be slowed down by any amount of Humvee up-armoring.

      Speaking of which, I've wondered why we still call them IED's, or "immprovised" explosive devices? They've grown all too sophisticated to be called "improvised."

      As for not starting the war in the first place, good idea. But now it's too late, what should we do? (Besides not repeating the same mistake in the future.)

    4. Re:We can rebuild him by misanthrope101 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The trouble with bringing these people to trial is that there's no assurance that they'll be convicted. They'll look a little stupid if they hold people in jail for years, subject them to what would be known as torture if it were happening in Atlanta or NY, and then there are no charges to file. We're assuming that there is evidence, but I think that's an optimistic assumption. Some of these people were traded for bounty money--some guy brought in someone he assured us was a "big terrorist. big big" and we have him a wad of cash in return. That make an efficient way of filling a jail, but it doesn't constitute evidence that would meet any known standard.

      Look at Joseph Padilla - who really thinks he will be convicted when, if ever, he is brought to trial? If there was real evidence, they would've tried him already. What they want is to suspend habeus corpus without it looking like they're suspending habeus corpus, and just lock whoever they want up forever without any oversight or evidentiary standards to meet. But it's hard to crow about freedom when you run a police state, so a bunch of knickers are tied in knots over what to do. And yes, Virginia, detention without trial, without charges, constitutes a police state, even if the cops don't get cool double lightning-bolts on their lapels.

      I certainly wouldn't want to be in charge. Now that you've had people in custody for years, subjecting them to torture and humiliation, even if they were originally pure as the driven snow they certainly hate us NOW, so what do you do? Anyone you let go could be a terrorist, even if they weren't originally. It was a lot easier for Stalin. But then again, he was what we call a "bad guy." But as has been pointed out, there was no crime in the Soviet Union. They just shot you. Of course, they shot everyone else, too, but as they say, freedom isn't free.

  11. Summary is a little optimisticly misleading by onlysolution · · Score: 5, Informative

    The summary makes it sound like prosthetics fused to the bone and controlled by the nervous impulses are here, but they certainly are not yet. Likewise haven't given superadvanced prosthetics to any wounded soliders yet either. As pointed out by the article, victims of the current war are not getting more advanced than advanced predictive prosthetics like the C-leg, which pretty much represent the latest in production prosthetic technology.
    Don't get to excited yet people, prosthetics like the summary imagines are still a long ways off.

  12. Chips in the user's brain by monkeySauce · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands."

    Hope they get the programming right on those chips!

    Hey doc, sometimes when I'm typing with these artificial hands, I seem to get stuck in a loop! Is it true these are controlled by controlled by controlled by...

    Maybe they should also embed a usb socket into the back of the user's head to allow firmware upgrades.

  13. Cost? by leipzig3 · · Score: 5, Funny
    This sounds like great technology but what is this going to cost? An arm and a leg?

    Thank you, I'll be here until Wednesday. Please tip your waitress.

  14. Re:This raises the question by mi · · Score: 4, Insightful
    When does someone stop being human, once we can replace their body with a machine?

    There is a very funny, insightful, and interesting (and informative too) short SciFi story by Stanislaw Lem on this subject. In it the protagonist (?) — a racing car driver, or something like this — is being sued by the protheses-makers to return the parts, because he defaulted on the payments...

    Lem wrote it in Polish, and I read it in Russian, but there is, no doubt a translation available for your preferred language. Look for it. Lem is one of the greatest SciFi authors... Whatever you find (almost) will be worth reading.

    Now, in the story even half of the guy's brain is artificial (and has a slight defect, causing him to count everything he sees), which really does make the question asked by the parent meaningful. But we are not there yet, and can not replace the brains, so the answer is rather obvious...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  15. Re:This raises the question by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, not really. Because even a theoretically unaging body would, in time, stop working. Maybe the sentience would collapse. Maybe the body would be physically destroyed. Maybe it'd just run out of harvestable energy and go out with teh rest of the temporal universe in cold-death. It would, eventually, die.

    Oh, and as the best scientific evidence shows no room for a physical soul of any weight, the soul cannot be said to exist anywhere physically. It is a spiritual object, and as a spiritual object it exists in all parts of the body and no part of the body, so long as the body can be controled by or in turn influence the will of the soul.

  16. Re:This raises the question by Shrithe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Exactly. We're human because of our physical bodies, but when we talk about being "human", we really mean being conscious entities. I'm not sure about whether I believe in the singularity like Kurzweil et. al. promote, but I have no problem with the possibility of becoming an intelligence within a artificial context at some point in my future. As for now, I don't have a terrible interest in prosthetics, but I am very interested in human-machine interfacing of increasing sophistication, which is something this works towards a lot.

  17. Same old crappy editing by jpetts · · Score: 3, Funny

    and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain

    Well, looks like the editors need prosthetic brains...

    --
    Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
  18. economies of scale by nounderscores · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It can become cheap, once enough people go for it. I'm surprised at how many naysayers are on this forum, possibly conditioned to believe that spiderman villains are villainous because they didn't get their superpowers "naturally".

    There may be benefits to complete prosthetic bodies which have capabilities superior to flesh and blood which would make limb regeneration a less preferred alternative.

    In the article Jeffrey Morgan notes that students at Brown have pierced noses. Limbs and skins impervious to flame, cold, bullets and infection might be the next big thing in body modification. Also, if you break your leg, you can take it down to the shop and get it fixed while the mechanic loans you a courtesy leg to get around in.

    As for concerns to losing your humanity, it's not who you are inside, but what you do that counts.

    Finally, is it just me, or does everyone want to strap on a combination of the Hugh Herr Catapult and the german built Powerskip mechanical jumping boot and go street racing?

    1. Re:economies of scale by NickFortune · · Score: 4, Funny
      I'm surprised at how many naysayers are on this forum, possibly conditioned to believe that spiderman villains are villainous because they didn't get their superpowers "naturally".

      It's that Otto Octavius I blame. If he'd stop knocking over banks, and work to raise awareness of the potential benefits of his research, the cybernetics field would be a lot further forward, I feel.

      There may be benefits to complete prosthetic bodies which have capabilities superior to flesh and blood

      Are you sure you're not just a Cybus Industries shill? John Lumic's full body prosthesis process may look impressive, but there are a few bugs in the system I'd want to see addressed before I got myself upgraded. Although his airships are pretty cool.

      As for concerns to losing your humanity, it's not who you are inside, but what you do that counts.

      Never mind the loss of individuality, I'm waiting for a design that can withstand a little man stepping out of a blue box with a flashing light on top. Until he gets that problem licked, I really can't see any future for the design.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
  19. This just seems like a win for everyone! by TomRitchford · · Score: 4, Funny

    The soldiers get exciting new limbs instead of the boring old ones they had before.

    The Iraqis get killed and get to get their country destroyed.

    And we the taxpayers get to piss away a trillion dollars. Did you need that money? You would have just wasted it selfishly on yourself!

    I guess the only people who lose are Halliburton because they actually have to do some work. No wonder they mark up all their services 100%, who can blame them? What patriots!

    1. Re:This just seems like a win for everyone! by TomRitchford · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What is this fixation that the approximately one-third of Americans who still support Bush have about killing the other two thirds?

      You're already killing people all over the world. If you want to kill Americans, why not start with yourselves?

    2. Re:This just seems like a win for everyone! by TomRitchford · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "In the Iraq War, up to 15,000 military combaants were killed in the face of up to 4,300 civilian noncombatant deaths. During the Desert Storm conflict, 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and 3,500 civilians were killed. 68% of the munitions used in this war were precision-guided, compared with 6.5 % in 1991. I think these statistics speak for themselves."

      4300 non-combatant deaths in the Iraq war? Where in world did you get that number?! President Bush himself said (in a speech on December 12, 2005) that there were 30,000 non-combatant casualties; other, less medacious sources estimate the true number is between two and four times as much as *that* but even that ultra-lowball number from Bush himself is *7* times your 4,300 figure.

      Before correcting your numbers, you might also note that these two wars were utterly, utterly different. The Gulf War took weeks; the Iraq was is taking years. The Gulf War was a conventional war where two armies squared off against each other; the Iraq War has nearly entirely been a form of urban guerilla warfare.

      Finally, perhaps you have forgotten, but the Iraqi people aren't supposed to be the enemy in this "war", at least so claims Bush. Carpet bombing innocent civilians who have done nothing to you is no way to win their hearts and minds.

      Face it, everyone in the world warned the crazy murderous Republicans that invading Iraq would end up being a terrible mistake -- and it turned out to be a worse bloodbath than even our darkest fears. To claim we should have *started* by committing mass murder of innocents makes it clear that you are not entirely a sane human being. I pity your family and intimates.

  20. Mixed Tense Confusion by fbg111 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Note to editors, keep your tenses consistent. The headline and abstract use both present and future tense, and without reading the article I can't tell whether these technologies are actually in use now, or will be in the future. It seems like just a few months ago that monkeys were controlling robotic arms with just their brainwaves, has technology advanced so quickly that we can now physically and neurologically integrate electronic machines with people? The article confuses that crucial point.

    "U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies
    The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"

    --
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  21. Phantom Limbs? by gareth.fletcher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It will be interesting to see a study on the brain plasticity of amputees fitted with these new prosthetics, similar to those done on the adult auditory map of hearing impaired patients (e.g. after sudden unilateral hearing loss).

    Do the phantom sensations, usually experienced by amputees, disappear after these C-legs have been fitted?

  22. Yes why not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "Why not just let those imperialistic fuckers rot in some hospital bed?"

    Here's a serious question for idiot leftist /.'ers whose hatred of America and it's current government matches that of idiot right wingers hatred of Islam and yourself:

    What are you leftist /.'ers actually doing, apart from complaining and bitching, to make things better?

    Seriously, left-leaning ideological /.'ers have turned this place into an anti-american soapbox that mirrors the intense hatred of sites like LGF and FreeRepublic, but I have yet to see any of you do anything about it. Where is the organisation for making things better? Where is the supposed open source community (you know, works in the open) spirit applied to political community?

    All I see is bullshit statements like your own with little action.

    This place is really beginning to stink.

    1. Re:Yes why not? by RealCow · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's called the Free State Project I've already joined and gotten many other people to do the same. I've also joined the ACLU, NORML, and a couple of other organizations that I know better than to talk about in public. Sheesh, what more do you want?

  23. Re:This raises the question by nacturation · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh, and as the best scientific evidence shows no room for a physical soul of any weight, the soul cannot be said to exist anywhere physically. It is a spiritual object, and as a spiritual object it exists in all parts of the body and no part of the body, so long as the body can be controled by or in turn influence the will of the soul.

    You're ignoring the much simpler explanation that it simply doesn't exist... which more than adequately explains the "no room for a physical soul of any weight [mass]".

    --
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  24. Feedback more important than control by DavidV · · Score: 5, Informative

    I lost my left hand, severed below the elbow. I have been keeping an eye on advances prosthetics but thought it would be very difficult for me to control as my hand feels like it's in a fixed position so it would be hard to coordinate the output of my nerves without any feedback. The big advance talked about here is the signal coming back to the brain to make the limb feel like part of the person rather than something just hanging off, which is what prosthetics feel like to me. I have one but I never use it for this reason. Bring on the feedback!

    --
    !sig
  25. Re:This raises the question by pcgabe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gah! Dilemma!

    On one hand, you're bringing religion into a discussion about technology. My initial urge is to stare at you blankly until you go away, or yell "keep your religion off of my science", or tell you that if you object you don't have to take part but you shouldn't tell other people how to live, blah blah etc etc. Most likely, I just wouldn't respond at all.

    On the other hand, you correctly used "raises the question" instead of incorrectly using "begs the question", for which I want to applaud.

    What to do, what to do....

    Anyway, your statements were:

    When does someone stop being human, once we can replace their body with a machine?

    There is an old thought experiment that goes something like this:

    "If you could replace a single neuron with a device that responds exactly the same way, would you be less than human? All input to that device is the same, all output is the same, for all the neurons around it, absolutely nothing has changed. Now, imagine that you start replacing every neuron, one by one. After each replacement, for the natural neurons around it, still nothing has changed. When you are finished, you have a functioning brain that continues to process all input exactly the same as before, only now it is mechanical instead of biological. Now is it less than human? If not, at which point did it change into something else?"

    It's an interesting problem, and if you are as intelligent as you seem, you can ponder it out without me contaminating your process with my opinions.

    Is it just the brain?

    Yup. I hope that wasn't a surprise.

    What of AI then?

    It depends on what you mean when you think of the term "AI". Like so many other terms, it has partially lost its original meaning due to overuse. By the very definition, though, it is artificial. A computer program designed to fool humans is not true intelligence. A computer program that emulates probable human responses is not true intelligence. Ah, but what if, similar to the above thought experiment, we could somehow copy a person's neurological responses... and put that data into a program that would simulate a complete working brain, down to the last neuron. Would =that= be true intelligence? Hmm...

    What of the soul?

    What of it? If you believe in such things, good for you. However, there has never been any scientific evidence* that such a thing exists or exerts any force over my choices or actions. So, I'm comfortable living my day to day life without such worries. YMMV.

    *For those that would respond "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (which is a true statement), I would say "No, but it sure is an =indication= of absence." But as Carl Sagan said, "You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe"

    --
    Don't put advice in your sig.
  26. Re:Simplier solution by megaditto · · Score: 2, Funny

    1st avoid pointless wars, the obvious best solution.

    How dare you imply that our Iraqi Liberation was a pointless effort?

    Remember, that in Iraq we fought for Freedom (trying to liberate our oil trapped under terrorists' sand).

    Report to the nearest Democracy Camp for reeducation.

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
  27. Re:This raises the question by republican+gourd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The primary concern of course, in any bio-replacement scheme, is to make the naked robot chicks *totally* hot.

  28. Re:When we go off to war... by Wdomburg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Funny, I thought we sent people who voluntarily signed up for military service these days. Must have just missed the press gangs.

  29. Re:This raises the question by bar-agent · · Score: 2, Informative

    Phaedo says things about the properties of the soul, but it does not attempt to determine whether there is such a thing to begin with.

    --
    i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
  30. Re:This raises the question by nacturation · · Score: 2, Interesting

    See Plato's Phaedo...

    Okay, I scanned through the Phaedo text, searching for instances of the word "soul". I was unable to find a definition of the word soul, only a very long discussion about death and the body and soul. The very first instance of the word is in this section:

    "Then is it not the release of the soul from the body?
    And this is death,
    the body being released apart from the soul by itself,
    and the soul apart is released from the body by itself?
    Then is death anything else but this?"

    It appears that the existence of a soul is an assumption, upon which this great volume of text has been stacked. Did I miss the definition in this text?

    All metaphysical investigations are not "evidence-based" in the sense that they are subjectable to the scientific method, but they are still "reasonable", perhaps even "logical".

    When talking about a "soul", it must first be agreed upon what this word actually means. It's like Scientology and their entire religion which is based upon thetans and the like. You can have a wonderful metaphysical investigation of these thetans which one might consider reasonable and logical, but what's the point? We may as well be discussing the finer points of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

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