Not quite. Souls—as in “you are not your brain”—run into all the usual problems with brain damage and whatnot. Mind backups make much more sense, because without a secondary “restore from backup” system nothing particularly interesting will happen.
Well, Harry hasn’t actually tested the idea that wizards can suffer brain damage the same way as Muggles. He just assumed they do. But it’s a reasonable assumption.
What happens if you progressively damage Quirrel’s brain? At some point Voldemort will either decide or be forced to go and possess another body or Horcrux. That thing-which-goes-off is for all intents and purposes a soul.
A backup isn’t a good description, because Voldemort is always aware—there’s no point at which he exists only as a backup and may or may not be restored. Also, a backup implies restoring multiple instances, and creating multiple backups; the True Horcrux doesn’t seem to do that.
Muggle science determined that muggle minds are contained in muggle brains, and Harry has been reluctant to let go of this idea even though there are observations against it and he has seen that magic can freely violate very solid muggle conclusions like conservation of matter.
Even if muggle brain damage seems to damage the mind, it could be that it damages the mind’s interface to the body. Here in the real world, this dualism adds additional complications and doesn’t help explain any evidence. In the HPMOR universe there is a great deal that would be explained by mind/body dualism.
Animagus transfigurations almost require it. Skeeter’s mind is not contained in the physical arrangement of a beetle’s brain. Therefore, her mind isn’t just a physical brain in this world. Her brain could be held in some extradimensional pocket and interfacing to the beetle. Her mind could be running on a magical, rather than physical substrate (always or just during transformation?). She could have a soul. (And some versions of “mind on a magical substrate” would also qualify as “souls”.)
As DanArmak says, Quirrel didn’t just have backups of himself in Horcruxes, he was able to think and perceive while this was his only form of existence. Those copies were running, thinking, planning. They were also connected to each other, and still are. Quirrel was not revived from the Pioneer horcrux, but he has the memories of the Pioneer horcruxes experiences. The pioneer plaque or a pebble or whatever is not a physical substrate that a mind can run on by any natural-to-muggle-science means. Again we have dualism. Brain in another dimension, magical substrate, soul. And brain in another dimension gets pretty strained here, I think.
You, boy, you brought that about, you freed my spirit to fly where it pleases and seduce the most opportune victim, by being too casual with your secrets.
Here Quirrel’s mind is totally disembodied through the help of the Resurrection Stone.
Ch. 1:
There’s a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation—that you just have to look at the world and report what you see.
I observe a world where minds are not just physical arrangements of brains. The “we are just our brains” hypothesis is being falsified all over the place in HPMOR.
For me there is no question about whether disembodied minds exist in this universe. My questions are whether minds are disembodied all the time or just when magic requires it. Whether muggles also have disembodied minds that are just much more inaccessible to observation. “Minds are always disembodied” seems more elegant by far than magic translating your physical brain into another equivalent form and creating an interface between that and your body only during animagus transformations and other such events, translating that back when returning to human form, and your mind just being a brain at all other times. That would be way more complicated than dualism.
I suspect that Quirrel’s spell uploaded his brain into an invisible magical computer he calls “spirit”. The biological brain of the body he is possessing is either doing nothing or is limited to low-level unconscious functions.
The Longbottoms were tortured into “insanity”, but their canon appearance in St. Mungo’s looks far more like brain damage from Cruciatus. And lots of Obliviates seem to cause brain damage as well. Breaking a FMC on Bertha Jorkins in book 4 ended up killing her.
Yes, but that’s a new spell—that’s the equivalent of a live-sync system, where you make your “backups” so often that they’re all basically the same anyway. That’s not the default. By that argument, only Quirrell has a soul.
We have two competing theories. One says everyone has a soul, and the True Horcrux ritual lets it survive death. The other says normal people don’t have souls, and the True Horcrux ritual creates one, which can then survive death.
I’m not convinced that the first theory isn’t just as parsimonious. It models the soul as something that needs to be anchored to the world. The (original) living body is always an anchor, and the TH ritual creates more anchors.
This also reminds me of the fact Draco believed Muggles have no souls. I now assign a higher credence to that idea.
Not quite. Souls—as in “you are not your brain”—run into all the usual problems with brain damage and whatnot. Mind backups make much more sense, because without a secondary “restore from backup” system nothing particularly interesting will happen.
Well, Harry hasn’t actually tested the idea that wizards can suffer brain damage the same way as Muggles. He just assumed they do. But it’s a reasonable assumption.
What happens if you progressively damage Quirrel’s brain? At some point Voldemort will either decide or be forced to go and possess another body or Horcrux. That thing-which-goes-off is for all intents and purposes a soul.
A backup isn’t a good description, because Voldemort is always aware—there’s no point at which he exists only as a backup and may or may not be restored. Also, a backup implies restoring multiple instances, and creating multiple backups; the True Horcrux doesn’t seem to do that.
Agreed, and I want to expand that a little:
Muggle science determined that muggle minds are contained in muggle brains, and Harry has been reluctant to let go of this idea even though there are observations against it and he has seen that magic can freely violate very solid muggle conclusions like conservation of matter.
Even if muggle brain damage seems to damage the mind, it could be that it damages the mind’s interface to the body. Here in the real world, this dualism adds additional complications and doesn’t help explain any evidence. In the HPMOR universe there is a great deal that would be explained by mind/body dualism.
Animagus transfigurations almost require it. Skeeter’s mind is not contained in the physical arrangement of a beetle’s brain. Therefore, her mind isn’t just a physical brain in this world. Her brain could be held in some extradimensional pocket and interfacing to the beetle. Her mind could be running on a magical, rather than physical substrate (always or just during transformation?). She could have a soul. (And some versions of “mind on a magical substrate” would also qualify as “souls”.)
As DanArmak says, Quirrel didn’t just have backups of himself in Horcruxes, he was able to think and perceive while this was his only form of existence. Those copies were running, thinking, planning. They were also connected to each other, and still are. Quirrel was not revived from the Pioneer horcrux, but he has the memories of the Pioneer horcruxes experiences. The pioneer plaque or a pebble or whatever is not a physical substrate that a mind can run on by any natural-to-muggle-science means. Again we have dualism. Brain in another dimension, magical substrate, soul. And brain in another dimension gets pretty strained here, I think.
Here Quirrel’s mind is totally disembodied through the help of the Resurrection Stone.
Ch. 1:
I observe a world where minds are not just physical arrangements of brains. The “we are just our brains” hypothesis is being falsified all over the place in HPMOR.
For me there is no question about whether disembodied minds exist in this universe. My questions are whether minds are disembodied all the time or just when magic requires it. Whether muggles also have disembodied minds that are just much more inaccessible to observation. “Minds are always disembodied” seems more elegant by far than magic translating your physical brain into another equivalent form and creating an interface between that and your body only during animagus transformations and other such events, translating that back when returning to human form, and your mind just being a brain at all other times. That would be way more complicated than dualism.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10023949/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Philosopher-s-Zombie
Just for fun.
I suspect that Quirrel’s spell uploaded his brain into an invisible magical computer he calls “spirit”. The biological brain of the body he is possessing is either doing nothing or is limited to low-level unconscious functions.
The Longbottoms were tortured into “insanity”, but their canon appearance in St. Mungo’s looks far more like brain damage from Cruciatus. And lots of Obliviates seem to cause brain damage as well. Breaking a FMC on Bertha Jorkins in book 4 ended up killing her.
Yes, but that’s a new spell—that’s the equivalent of a live-sync system, where you make your “backups” so often that they’re all basically the same anyway. That’s not the default. By that argument, only Quirrell has a soul.
It could also be said that only Quirrel has a soul that survives his body’s death.
… then the theory of a soul is doing no explanatory work and should be discarded.
We have two competing theories. One says everyone has a soul, and the True Horcrux ritual lets it survive death. The other says normal people don’t have souls, and the True Horcrux ritual creates one, which can then survive death.
I’m not convinced that the first theory isn’t just as parsimonious. It models the soul as something that needs to be anchored to the world. The (original) living body is always an anchor, and the TH ritual creates more anchors.
This also reminds me of the fact Draco believed Muggles have no souls. I now assign a higher credence to that idea.