It has been conclusively proven that in the presence of sense memory surrounding a subject matter, be it positive or negative, a person can never form an objective assessment related to the same subject matter. It has to do with how the amygdala consolidates emotion originating in the limbic brain with other related aspects from higher level brain functions into the hippocampus.
The limbic brain is very simple, there aren't multiple areas for the different kinds of love one may feel i.e. love of a partner, love of a child, love of a friend or family member, love of a pet, or love of inanimate objects. All those hit the same area. Of course with differing intensity and also filtered through some of the higher brains to provide context. Same goes for dislike or hate. And with animals and inanimate objects like a car or a computer we assist this emotional bond through anthropomorphism.
We can certainly discuss things objectively and we can produce written materials that read objectively, when we think about them in absence of any emotional context. But the instant we start adding adjectives describing emotions like 'I enjoy' or 'it's fun', we are automatically applying a subjective view.
Hoo boy. First off, if you're going to throw around terms like "conclusively proven," I'd like to see some links. But I'm not inclined to believe that. For starters, the very fact that we can conceive of separating the rational mind from the emotional self, and can consciously attempt to detach ourselves emotionally from something (however imperfectly) makes for a pretty fair argument that the two are not inextricable from each other. You yourself suggest that this is possible in your last paragraph, yet in your first you say that it isn't...
Second, if it
is true that we can
only give objective consideration to something to which we have
no emotional attachment (which, as I said, I don't buy,) then we essentially have
no objective basis for liking
anything, because if we care about it at all, whether through like or dislike, then we can't be objective about it. This means that (as suggested in the OP) there's no reason other than the emotive for liking the Amiga, but it also means that there's no reason other than the emotive for liking any other operating system, so it says nothing at all about the comparative objective merits of any of them, and our like or dislike of any OS is no more valid or invalid than anybody else's like or dislike of it. Which makes the OP's whole notion that it's "only nostalgia" essentially a meaningless distinction.
Right. I just don't see how "being a soul" is any more likely to answer the question than "being a physical object". What exactly is it about "souls" that make them different from ordinary matter, such that they can have free will, but physical objects can't?
The thing is that basically anyone's definition of a "soul" involves freedom from the constraints of what we believe to be a deterministic physical universe. Asking why they're not subject to determinism like physical matter is like asking why physical matter is subject to conservation of energy; it's part of the inherent parameters of the universe. Souls, if they exist, are non-deterministic free wills because if they weren't, they wouldn't be souls. If you accept the possibility of their existence in the first place, you render the question essentially meaningless (because the question is asking for a scientific explanation of something outside the scope of empirical science in a deterministic physical universe.) If you
don't accept it, then the argument is purely academic and just as meaningless (because the question is asking for a scientific explanation of something that cannot actually exist, at which point any explanation is as good as any other.)
We are not a body with a soul but a soul with a body.
Depends who you ask. I look at it as both being key components in what makes a human being. We have an animal nature because of our flesh-and-blood bodies and brains; we are more than merely animals because of our souls. Take away either one, and you're left with something that isn't fully human.
