http://www.livescience.com/26413-freakiest-medical-conditions.html
QuoteIs there anything stranger than an otherwise-sane person wholeheartedly believing he or she is dead? Cotard delusion, otherwise known as walking corpse syndrome, is an extremely rare condition whereby people wake up one day and think they have died, that they no longer exist, or that their flesh is rotting off.
It's all in their head, of course, but there's a physical cause nonetheless: The brain region involved in facial recognition has become disconnected from the regions involved in emotion. When the person looks in the mirror, they recognize themselves, but they don't have the usual emotional response. Their appearance has lost its association with their sense of self, and this cognitive dissonance results in the sense that they do not exist, or have died.
Note: There is a "physical" cause for both. Solitary
Do you mean the same brain defect could be responsible for the feeling that one has a soul?
I see a loose connection there.
But I think the real reason people believe they have a soul is they are afraid of dieing and disappearing from the world for ever. That and they want to believe they will see their loved ones who have passed again.
Duh on me. I failed to read your post carefully.
So you are saying the emotional response one gets when seeing one's self, that is to say the sense of self awareness, leads to the belief that one has a soul. I wonder if the concept of a soul was created by religon? Something has to be rewarded for living by the rules and forking over cash, so the idea of a soul becomes an important commodity. That which is passed on to the eternal afterlife. I once read that humans were the only species that were aware of their impending death. If so, and I can think of no other creatures that have this awareness, it is the basis on which religion is founded.
Edit: You beat me to the punch there doorknob.
I think it's partly because humans have never experienced non existence. Sentience is so ingrained in us, and we are so enamored with it, that we think it could never go away.
Everyone dreams, and in our dreams we seem to go 'somewhere else' but our body stays put. I think that's plenty of reason for primitive people who don't understand what dreams are and whose understanding of how the world works is much less advanced than ours to think there is a part of themselves that can leave their bodies...so maybe it doesn't die when the body does.