Backing Into an Evidentiary Standard for ID
by BradfordIn a comment within the Misusing Science thread Keiths made the following brief remark:
If immaterial souls exist "” particularly souls of the kind that most people envisage "” then there are testable empirical consequences.
The logic of the statement indicates that if we could observe what are reasonably inferred as consequences of an immaterial soul then we would have cause to suspect a soul exists and that the lack of such expected consequences would be evidence against the existence of a soul. I'm not going to explore what those consequences might be or whether the linkage is appropriate but instead want to focus on another implication inherent in the statement.
The belief, shared by ID critics other than Keiths, is an acknowledgement that observable physical consequences can be used as evidence to support a claim, in favor of or opposed to, an immaterial concept. That is noteworthy because intelligence is an immaterial concept about which physical evidence has been linked in such disciplines as forensic science and archeology. ID critics have been quick to point out that a known designer is identifiable in such disciplines and contrast this with ID's unidentified designer as a form of criticism.
Yet look closely at the soul claim again. The souls in question belong to designed organisms namely, humans. The designer is nowhere in evidence even assuming physical consequences consistent with the existence of an immaterial soul. So, in principle, a link between physical consequences and an immaterial entity is established even in the absence of an identified designer. Some neuro-science enthusiasts are inadvertently making claims relevant to ID and a designer centric approach.
July 7th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Hi Bradford,
Unless I am misunderstanding you here. I suspect there are a lot of "immaterial concepts." However, before we get too far into this. Where are you drawing the line?
Love
Fight or flight instinct
Information
Quantum Information
Gravity
Radio Waves
Light Waves/particles
Electron Waves/Particles
Atoms
Molecules
I am also interested in how you treat the issue that forensic science and archeology assumes "intelligence" includes the ability to learn and/or adapt.
Especially archeology.
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 7, 2007 @ 1:03 am
July 7th, 2007 at 3:51 am
This essay, Science, Religion, and the Human Future by Leon Kass in the April issue of Commentary, nicely addresses the question posed by keiths:
On a side note, Steven Pinker and Leon Kass exchanged words over this essay in Commentary's letters to the Editor. Kass knows how to sling the zing:
In fact, Kass address this question precisely in his rebuttal of Pinker:
Comment by todd — July 7, 2007 @ 3:51 am
July 7th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Hi TP,
The point of my post was to ascertain where ID critics draw the line; particularly with reference to the contention that identifying design (a soul in this case) requires identifying the designer too. Is it your view that the existence of a soul is a matter that can be resolved through experimentation?
As for intelligence, last week I posted a comment indicating that a working definition of the term was broader than you allow.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 7:12 am
July 7th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Hi Todd,
I read this at the link to your name:
The existence and non-existence of God is indeed a metaphysical matter. Ultimate questions are answered philosophically by IDists and ID critics alike. It appears that some are of the view though, that ultimate answers are fine as long as they fall within the purview of negating God.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 7:25 am
July 7th, 2007 at 8:05 am
John von Neumann:
His response to an anonymous claim that it is not possible for a machine to think (or have a soul if you like).
Comment by Raevmo — July 7, 2007 @ 8:05 am
July 7th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Raevmo quoting:
It looks like you, me and John are of like minds on this. Souls are intelligently designed (my metaphysical position).
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 8:23 am
July 7th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Bradford wrote:
Hi Bradford,
If I understand your point correctly, you're saying that if an ID critic believes that an immaterial soul has testable consequences, then that critic is implicitly acknowledging that physical evidence can point to design, even though the designer is not identified.
If that's what you are trying to say, then let me point out that there is an unstated assumption underlying your position: that immaterial souls, if they exist, must be designed entities.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 11:57 am
July 7th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Sorry, Bradford, even if the "soul" exists, it evolved. It was not designed. The "evidentiary" status of design is nil. Design is an illusion and even if it wasn't, in case you haven't noticed, all the "evidence of design" is actually evidence of evolution, only badly misunderstood or misinterpreted by the IDers.
When "inadvertently" supplied the slimmest thread by keiths, Bradford took it, fashioned into a noose around his own neck, and jumped!
Keith's gave you an opening and you immediately closed it by assuming a "metaphysical position."
"Souls are intelligently designed (my metaphysical position)." I suppose that by assuming such a metaphysic one can feel immune to "evidentirary standards" and all that sciency-soundin' sorta stuff.
Which is the usual bassackwards approach of the IDers to science. You're not going to back your sorry you-know-what into science! LOL
If you had any "evidence" you'd lay it on the table.
Btw, You won't find the "soul" on modern human anatomy charts because it doesn't exist. What neuroscience has done, in less than two decades is to subsume the "soul" under the functional anatomy of, the structures and processes occurring in, the CNS. Our behavior originates in this world and not some ghostly sphere. You don't have a soul. As empirically determinable a matter-of-fact as the fact that you don't have antlers.
If neuroscientists are just calling the same thing by a different name then we can make positive empirically testable statements about the "soul": It is material (conforms to prior knowledge of basic physico-chemical principles), localizable (to patterns of interactions of CNS with its environment), analyzable (is composed of identifiable parts, each subserving a particular function), predictable, and, of course, evolved over billions of yrs.
Comment by Rock — July 7, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Bradford,
Thanks for reading my pitiful blog – I upgraded MoveableType and haven't fixed any of the styles or layout. I envy those of you with the time to compose – lately, I'm lucky to be able to read and follow these great threads, much less post on them.
As for the topic, I get the sense many anti-ID types have a poor understanding of rigorous epistemology – philosophy, in the hierarchy of knowledge and learning, is above observation – it frames it. There is no such thing as a 'blank-slate' observation – we all come with presuppositions which inform our observations. Theory comes before observation, always.
Comment by todd — July 7, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Rock:
Actually Keiths and his sympathizers were given ample opportunity to demonstrate their claims with empirical proposals but to no avail. The existence of souls is presumed metaphysically.
The difference being that antlers have determinable physical properties by which their absence can be determined. How do you test an immaterial property?
The referenced neuroscientists are feeding their anti-religious biases at someone else's expense. Nothing more.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Keiths:
The assumption is that the process, by which it is determined whether or not they are designed entities, does not require a prior identification of the designer. Your confidence that an immaterial concept lends itself to empirical conclusions, without having to resolve a designer identity issue one way or the other, implies that empirical conclusions of intelligent design could proceed in a likewise manner.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Todd:
I think you are right about the poor understanding of rigorous epistemology but there is also a fundamentalist streak running through EAs that allows them to contend, on the one hand, that absence of evidence does not equate to support for an alternative paradigm when referencing OOL matters and at the same time maintain that the absence of physical evidence for an immaterial soul equates to its non-existence. They are blinded to inconsistencies in their positions and unable to distinguish science from scientism.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
Well, it looks like your thread is going to dissolve into the same old dualing metaphysics. This appears to be where you are most comfortable. You get to complain how the "other side" is being unreasonable. I call it "shield bashing".
However, I am patient. Meanwhile, since you have broaden your working definition, you might want to think about examples of what intelligence isn't by your definition. And, yes, you need to explain it in terms a pseudo-critic can understand and apply (i.e. you can't just arbitrarily declare that Darwinists don't exhibit intelligence because you want too).
P.S. My immaterial/material distinction is coming to the point that everything is immaterial. There is no such thing as solid matter.
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 7, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
TP:
It's too bad you see it that way because the other side, as you put it, is abusing science to further their own metaphysical agenda and I am noting it. I would think you would agree that alloting valued funding to projects like the existence of souls is unwise. I'm not willing to go along with the fiction that attempts to "empirically" assess souls is anything other than anti-science and anti-NOMA in nature.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Raevmo wrote:
Von Neumann was assuming that conscious thought can be precisely defined and explained in terms of something other than conscious thought. But of course, that's exactly what the anti-materialist denies. The anti-materialist position just is the position that conscious thought does not reduce to, nor is explicable by, nor admits of definition in non-conscious, non-thought terms, and in particular the terms of the mechanics of matter.
The materialist is the one saying conscious thought really is nothing more than material in nature. Fine, go ahead and prove it. The onus of proof lies with the camp affirming the positive case, not with the skeptic.
The aptly named Rock wrote:
One doesn't find 'rational mind' there either. So presumably 'you' are mindless and non-rational.
Does this come as a 'surprise', or were 'you', um, 'aware' of this already?
What is a material entity? Answers to this question tend to generate amusing paradoxes.
If a material entity is one that has empirically detectable consequences, and if God created the universe, and if the universe is empirically detectable, then God is a material entity.
And consider this. Zachriel wrote:
This would include all completely mind-independent material entities. For it is plausible to think that there are many portions of the material cosmos that will never be observed by any physical being, and certainly by no human being; for instance, the deep interiors of many planets, stars, black holes, comets, etc. These interiors are, essentially, theoretical entities posited to explain empirical data. But so are minds other than our own. So, for that matter, is God.
Already, concepts of 'dark' matter and 'dark' energy are having to be postulated in order to reconcile observation with what is predicted by the current theory of gravity, while seriously proposed models have theorized that gravitational energy may 'leak' from our universe. And that's before we even get on to various versions of a multiverse hypothesis, most of whose member universes are decidedly unobservable.
So let me reiterate the question: What does it mean to say material entities exist which will never have any observational consequences? As Michael Dummett puts it:
[Emphasis in original]
What if, as theists believe, conscious rational thought is ontologically basic and not reducible to, or explainable in terms of, anything else, in just same way that materialists have held that matter is ontologically basic and not reducible to, or explainable in terms of anything else? Then, of course, it would be quite silly to demand of the theist a further explanation of conscious rational thought, just as it would be silly to demand of a materialist a further explanation of material things in terms of non-material ones.
In other words, conscious rational thought and matter are proposed as two competing candidates for ontological and explanatory ultimacy.
Comment by stunney — July 7, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
stunney:
Perhaps we should ask a medium to interrogate the ghost of Neumann about his assumptions. That might clear things up a bit.
The slightly annoying thing about the anti-materialists is not that they are wrong (hell, they might even be right), but that they are so unhelpful. They are just sitting at the sidelines criticizing the materialists, while they could be more productive and propose models in terms of the mechanics of non-matter (whatever it is).
Well, one could turn your argument upside down and say that anti-materialists make the positive claim that materialism doesn't suffice, and then the onus would be upon them. It seems more economical from where I am sitting to try and explain consciousness in terms of strictly material mechanics (if necessary even invoking quantum weirdness). If one day this approach succeeds in producing a model that can perfectly mimic the behavior of a conscious being, will you be gracious enough to admit that materialism is probably right after all?
Comment by Raevmo — July 7, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Hi, Raevmo,
Let's assume that Neumann creates (or builds if you will) a machine that has a mind. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and allow that any device he comes up with really has a mind. The questioning process now proceeds:
me: Neumann, speak up now, does any part of this device have a part that is identified as mind?
Neumann: points to a a section of the machine. The mind is here he says.
me: Pointing to the parts, I say, Balls, Neumann. Since when is a resistor considered a mind? Since when is a capacitor a mind? Since when is this ic chip considered a mind. Since when are these wires considered a mind?
Neumann: The combination of it all produces the mind.
me: When you built this device, did you build it to produce a mind?
Neumann: yes.
me: To build this device to have a mind, did you have a concept of what a mind is?
Neumann: yes.
me: Where is the concept, Neumann? Come now, point to it.
Neumann: points to the entire device. The mind emerges from it, he says.
me: Well, then where is it? Show it to me. No, don't point to panels and wires and resistors and such. Show me the mind, show me the concept you used when you first started to build the device. For surely the concept must be inside the device somewhere.
Neumann: You're crazy, concepts don't exist like material things.
me: that's correct.
Neumann: then why are you arguing with me?
me: Because you think you know what a mind is, for how else could you determine that this device has one? I was hoping you could show me exactly what a mind looks like. But you can't. All you can do is build a device and point to the parts, and then assert it has a mind because of what the device can do. In all your brilliance, you may be right, but you still cannot produce the mind for me to see. I ask you to show me the mind, and instead you show me parts that could also be used inside of a toaster. You have shown only that you cannot grasp the reality of an idea, and in that we agree.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 7, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Rock:
Sort of makes me wonder why they bother. I suppose there are lots of people out there who are so insecure in their metaphysical beliefs that the physical act of typing them (over and over and over again, paying no attention to classifications) must make them feel better.
As might be topical in a thread about the mis-use of metaphysics to argue about mis-placed metaphysics. keiths insists that 'souls' are evidential, thus he asserts he's proved a negative by then saying they're NOT evidential! That he's just made a complete mockery of rational thought is not a concern, to him or to any of his responders. Who obviously know more about the difference between physics and metaphysics than keiths, neuroscientists, and your (admittedly cute) Leprechaun character.
Comment by Joy — July 7, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Anax talking to the ghost of Von Neumann:
Thanks for producing that amusing dialog, but somehow I don't think Neumann would be very amused.
How do you imagine that you might "see" a mind? How do you know that the people you talk to have a mind?
Comment by Raevmo — July 7, 2007 @ 2:54 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Von Neumann isn't nearly as smart now as he was before he died. Do we all lose 50 IQ points in the afterlife?
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Hi, keiths,
So you believe in an afterlife? I was simply referring to Neumann in the historical present tense, a convention frequently used for famous people no longer living.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 7, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
stunney quotes Dummett (again):
Stunney,
This must be the 7th or 8th time I've seen you quote Dummett on this point. I keep hoping you'll go off and think critically about what Dummett is saying, but instead you just turn around and quote him again.
There is a simple and obvious answer to Dummett's question:
1. Let A be a created material universe containing no conscious observers.
2. Let B be God's conception of such a universe.
3. Let C be a created material universe containing a conscious observer.
4. According to Dummett, there is no difference between A and B.
5. What would it take to get from A to C? God would have to create a conscious observer and place him in A.
6. What would it take to get from B to C? God would have to create a universe, and also create and insert a conscious observer into it.
7. Conclusion: If getting from A to C requires different steps than getting from B to C, then A and B are not equivalent.
Note that this argument does not depend on God actually creating such an observer. The fact that it is possible is enough to demonstrate the difference between A and B.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Hi, Raevmo,
The problem right off the bat is that I wouldn't use "see" in the same way I think you mean it (via sensible perceptions like sight, hearing, touch, etc). I think of the mind as an immaterial concept. If I wanted to have a discussion about mind, in an attempt to learn more about what it is, I would seek out someone who had the same assumption that immaterial things can be real. Without that shared belief, there would only be the endless back and forth that you see going on here on a regular basis. Even among people who believe in immaterial concepts like mind, there would be much disagreement over the cause of the concepts. There is a huge ocean of concepts that can't be seen sensibly, even ones that are thought to be purely material, like color, length, mass, etc. Many material things can demonstate the concepts, and this observation can help to put some meat on the discussion, but there first must be agreement that the objects are not the concepts. If someone is disposed to thinking that matter causes the causes, or that matter is the cause of its own existence, then a fruitful discussion can't even get off the ground, in my opinion.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 7, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Raevmo wrote:
This is a very good question, because it impales the materialist on the horns of a dilemma.
Either the materialist must say that the presence and activity of mind can be scientifically inferred from some set of observed physical+behavioral+functional properties, in which case ID is capable of being scientific. Or, the materialist must concede that no inference to the existence and activity of a mind is rationally warranted simply on the basis of some set of physical+behavioral+functional properties, in which case materialist accounts of mind must be false.
Take your pick, Raevmo.:smile:
The phrase, 'mechanics of non-matter' is a contradiction in terms.
How is saying that X does not suffice for Y a positive claim? The positive claim is: "X suffices for Y". The denial is the negative, and notoriously one cannot prove a universal negative.
Yes, provided it can also come up with a true statement that is not one of, nor provable in a finite number of steps from, the axioms with which it was originally programmed. The Godelian challenge is that there are such statements which a rational mind can generate.
By 'rigorous justification' von Neumann here means provability by a finite machine.
Comment by stunney — July 7, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Joy wrote:
Joy,
Where did you get that bizarre idea? That's not a rhetorical question — I'm genuinely curious to understand how the machinery of misapprehension operates in your head. How do you manage to pervert the position of almost everyone you argue against? Is it intentional dishonesty? Bad reading comprehension?
My actual position: The existence of the immaterial soul, as most people conceive of it, has empirical consequences. The non-existence of the soul also has empirical consequences. The accumulated evidence best matches the latter hypothesis. The issue remains evidential throughout.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Anax:
I think you should cut the materialists some slack (I'm starting to like these US expressions). They are doing the hard work. Why not give them some time to see if they can come up with a working model of the mind? If the project fails, you can claim victory. But until then, let's just see where it goes. Unless of course you have some immaterial experiments to propose right now.
Comment by Raevmo — July 7, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Let me point out an obvious error that mad errorists sometimes make when they don't pay attention to what Dummett actually says, even after one repeats for their consumption what Dummett says seven or eight times.
The mad errorist might reason as follows:
1. Let A be a created material universe containing no conscious observers.
2. Let B be God's conception of such a universe.
3. Let C be a created material universe containing a conscious observer.
4. According to Dummett, there is no difference between A and B.
Then the mad errorist says:
5. What would it take to get from A to C? God would have to create a conscious observer and place him in A.
Why is 5 an exegetical error? Because placing a conscious observer in A so as to get to C would make that universe not be a case of a universe that never contains a conscious observer. Here's Dummett again, with added emphasis:
In other words, premise 1 above needs to be re-written to read like this:
1* Let A be a created material universe that never contains conscious observers
if it is to represent what Dummett actually stated.
Comment by stunney — July 7, 2007 @ 5:01 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
stuntissimo:
This would be my pick, except that I don't see how this implies that ID is capable of being scientific. How does that compute? Don't forget we haven't really agreed upon a definition of mind. What is yours?
Why is that? Even the non-material must "do" something. How else are you going to discriminate between different non-material entities? What non-material properties are the basis of differences between minds?
What I meant is that you make the positive claim that an additional "thing" is needed, namely something immaterial. You know very well what I mean, but for some reason you feel the need to quibble about irrelevant details. I can play that game too. Did you ever get that PhD in philosophy?
A provisional yes. More than I hoped for. A computer can generate Goedel sentences too, so what's the point?
Comment by Raevmo — July 7, 2007 @ 5:01 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Keiths:
As most people conceive of it? How do build a scientifically useful hypothesis from this starting point? Keiths you can assert whatever you wish and I'm grateful we live in a country that allows for the free expression of opinions. But why do you bother? This smacks of an obsession, not sound science.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Der Ravemeister wrote:
It implies that ID is capable of being scientific because it implies that one can detect a mind on the basis of some set of physical+behavioral+functional properties which, once such a set is specified, may be found to apply to the existing or discoverable data concerning pre-human biology.
Well, I'm willing that my fingers type this post, and they're actually doing so.
I've answered this before. In a nutshell (no, I'm not referring to Zachriel's body), persons are individuated on the basis of their intentional acts.
I'm saying there are irreducibly mental states and properties. I don't view that as saying there are 'additional things'. Mental properties are just there, and the question before us is, are they reducible to physical states. You say they are. I'm skeptical of your claim. You have to persuade the skeptic. The skeptic doesn't have to posit additional things. We already know there are mental states and properties. The skeptic doesn't have to prove their existence.
The computer has to do more than just generate a Godel sentence. Here's the relevant exchange:
In other words, it's not just a case of generating a Godel sentence. It has to do that and 'perfectly mimic' human behavior to the point where it passes the Turing test both in general and specifically with regard to mimicking the understanding that a skilful human mathematician or logician typically displays. I suggest that it will not pass the Turing test, because there will always be a Godel sentence that a human can generate which the model will not mimic without being re-programmed.
Comment by stunney — July 7, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
"Actually Keiths and his sympathizers were given ample opportunity"¦""”Bradford
Tu quoque!
Does ID have any "evidentiary standards"? No, because "How do you test an immaterial property?"
I haven't a clue! How "˜bout yourself?
And neuroscientists are doing "nothing more" than feeding anti-religious bigotry?! C'mon, Bradford, thou dost protest too much, methinks? Maybe just a wee bit, huh? (And in your book does it make me a bigot because i have neuroscientists as friends, because I follow neuroscience (and beleive at least some of it), or because I just don't share your religious beliefs? Or all of the above?
That "bigotry card" just got played too often. You lost sympathy pts there.
"Does this come as a 'surprise', or were 'you', um, 'aware' of this already?"
LOL stunney, surprisingly I didn't even feel the insult of your question to my intelligence, so you may be correct, there's just nothing there there. I can accept that as a hypothesis.
[And pardon me, God, I know you're busy, but in your infinite grace could you spare me questions such as stunney asks? I thank you in advance and thank you again for all the wonderful things you've done. Bless your soul, Big Guy. Keep up the good work!]
(And there is no leprechaun amongst all my known multiple personalities, Joy.)
Comment by Rock — July 7, 2007 @ 6:43 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Rock:
Aw, that's a shame. Could'a sworn I detected a faraway Asimov echo in there… he had a leprechaun I rather liked – usually kept in in his vest pocket, since he didn't believe in time enough to have a watch. Guess I'll have to tell Banshee-Joy (a cousin of Poof-Joy) that she's SOL. She won't be happy, will probably keep everybody in the neighborhood up all night screaming inanities at the moon!
I do see this thread has degenerated in to an ad hominem fest of usual proportions. Have fun, y'all.
Comment by Joy — July 7, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Rocks:
We do distinguish intelligently caused events. Symbolic sequencing is a common example. But I know the rules. A functional genome arose through an unidentified process that just had to be devoid of an intelligent causal component. Do you have a clue as to how an initial genome came about?
Referenced modified neuroscientists. The subclass of neuroscientists concerned with empirical testing of souls are feeding their prized, unscientific notions. BTW, if you have doubts about a capacity to test immaterial properties you too should think such neuroscientists are wasting our time and theirs.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Bradford:
Um… don't look now, Bradford. Parapsychology has been a division of AAAS for three decades.
Comment by Joy — July 7, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
stunney wrote:
Stunney,
I see you carefully avoided quoting the one paragraph from my comment where I anticipate and directly address your objection:
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Bradford wrote:
Joy commented:
Not to mention that psychology and neuroscience routinely study cognition, emotion, personality, decision-making, memory, pleasure, pain — all of which have been considered functions of the soul.
Are you telling us that these are not sciences, Bradford?
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
A question for Raevmo or one of his co-religionists:
What, in your opinion, is the proper materialist definition or, if there is no definition, the proper materialist characterization of a computer program, a rule, or an algorithm, and is that definition/characterization sufficient, in your opinion, for defining or characterizing all logically possible minds? If it isn't, please specify what more is needed.
Let me provide an example of disagreement about this question in order to stimulate your thoughts:
PS: Raevmo, were you at least able to understand my explanation (with minor correction) of Kripke's modal argument against mind-brain identity?
Comment by stunney — July 7, 2007 @ 7:34 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I wrote:
Bradford responded:
But we're not trying to determine whether the soul was designed. We're trying to determine if it exists at all.
No. Determining whether something exists is not the same as determining whether it was designed. Establishing sufficient conditions for the former is not the same as doing so for the latter.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
keiths:
Sort of depends on one's conception of soul, seems to me. Conceptions vary widely, even in single religions. I think the closest approximation is probably consciousness, though certain aspects of consciousness are also considered by some to be part of the animal retinue of nature. The Septuagint translates the Hebrew nephesh as "life, vital breath." The animating spirit, so to speak, a version of vitalism.
Plato's version of soul contained three parts. The logos (mind), thymos (emotion, ego) and pathos (animist appetites). Christian conception is predominantly (Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy) immaterial and independent (Aquinas), Bahai' considers soul the 'higher essence,' as do Mahayana Buddhism with the 'Buddha-nature' and Hinduism's concept of Atman ('higher man'). In Tibet's form of Mahayana, there are 3 minds – an immortal 'very subtle' mind, a 'subtle' or 'unconscious' mind, and 'gross mind' that doesn't even have enough power to dream. Both the lower minds disintegrate at death.
Catholics consider soul to be the inmost aspect of humans, signifying the "spiritual principle in man." Some Christians don't believe in souls at all, some think it dies with the body (to be recreated in resurrection), some consider it to be the "likeness of God" instilled in the original creation. SDAs consider soul to be of one substance with body, denying that it has consciousness or sentient existence or immortality.
A Jain text says of soul: "The soul is without taste, colour and cannot be perceived by the five senses. Consciousness is its chief attribute. Know the soul to be free of any gender and not bound by any dimensions of shape and size."
Judaic mysticism (Kabbalah) postulates three souls. The nephesh, which is the part that is alive and can die, feels hate, hunger, love, pain, etc. Then there's the ruach or 'middle soul' identified as spirit. It contains the moral virtues and distinguishes between good and evil. Equating to psyche or ego, personality. Finally there's the Neshamah or higher soul (Higher Self or super-self). It is identified with the intellect, and enjoys an afterlife.
Sikhs believe soul (atma) to be part of the Universal Soul, identical with God. Many religious traditions consider the immortal soul (or part of the soul) to return to the godhead at death, because it is one substance with the godhead.
Scientists generally consider the soul to be identical to the brain, or to the conscious processes enabled by the brain. Agnostics reserve judgment, Atheists don't believe in souls (or, in some cases, consciousness).
So… who's conception of soul are you refuting here, and how do YOU define it for your refutational purposes?
Comment by Joy — July 7, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Joy asked:
I'm glad you asked, because I'm in the middle of writing up a comment that addresses that very question.
Stay tuned.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Keiths:
Only that determinations about souls are not science.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Keiths:
So you believe you can determine whether an immaterial soul exists and therefore should have no objections with determinations as to whether or not x resulted from immaterial intelligence.
You are playing with words. What would exist is an intelligent cause of a designed outcome. We are still testing for existence.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I asked:
Bradford responded:
Psychology studies cognition, emotion, personality, decision-making, memory, pleasure, pain, and will. If "determinations about souls is not science", as you say, then one of the following statements must be true:
By your logic, either
1) psychology is not a science, or
2) cognition, emotion, personality, decision-making, memory, pleasure, pain, and will are not functions of the soul.
Which is it, Bradford?
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Neither. The problem is you are not equiped with a means of detecting souls. You are limited to evaluating entities associated with them but an intolerable level of vagueness hinders a capacity to state anything definitive.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 9:10 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Bradford:
I guess I'll ask you the same thing I asked keiths (in a different way), because I'm not understanding your assertions. While I suspect that the concept of soul can't be scientifically falsified, I have to wonder what YOUR conception of soul is that it's a designed artifact. Which COULD be falsified, I think.
If souls are specially designed artifacts, doesn't that sort of negate notions of soul as 'immaterial'? Or that which is morally cognizant and discerns good and evil (morally responsible)? Are you into predestination?
An overview of your concept of soul would help. If you and keiths are talking about completely different things, this discussion has no meaning. Thanks.
Comment by Joy — July 7, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Bradford,
I'm glad to hear that you don't deny psychology's scientific status.
Psychology is equipped to study cognition, emotion, will, etc. Either those are functions of the soul, in which case you admit that science is capable of making "determinations about souls", or they are not, in which case the soul doesn't do much of anything.
Which is it?
If you disagree with the dichotomy, show us where the logic fails.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 9:21 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Joy, to Bradford:
I made the same request of Bradford before, but he refused to answer, preferring to hide behind the "it's not science" excuse.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
keiths:
Well, I asked you the same thing, but I haven't seen an answer. Pot, meet kettle.
It would appear from reading your posts that you consider soul to be the physical correlates of consciousness. IOW, physical processes in the brain that produce consciousness. Is that a correct impression?
If so, will you answer whether or not you consider the products of those processes to be physical constructs? …oops. Never mind. You already made that clear with the whole Poof-Joy thing.
Comment by Joy — July 7, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Joy:
Hi Joy. The very necessity of having to ask what is my personal, subjective view of what a soul is illustrates the empirical difficulties. I noticed your comment detailing the differing views of souls. I was prepared to post something similar if needed. Within each main group lie individual perceptual differences and there is no objective model by which we can determine which view is correct as we are able to do with physical models of conceptual theories related to physics or biology. Earlier today I read of research into a protein known as ATM. The researchers were attempting to understand the protein's interreactions with other proteins. I've been reading differing views that scientists have as to exactly how ATM is functionally involved with proteins which repair double strand breaks. Since the whole process is not completely understood there are some educated guesses. But there are real mechanisms that exert constraints on concepts. There are no real physical constraints on a soul other than the one which lies beyond the bounds of science- death and what if anything follow it. I could explain my personal view of what a soul is, but in Keith's case, his view is that they do not exist. Where are the objective checks on soul concepts, corresponding to the genomic repair mechanisms, that can be used to eventually confirm or negate differing theories related to ATM function?
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 9:44 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
My personal view has no more bearing on a scientific determination than my view on what preceeded the existence of the universe has on cosmology. The fact that you feel the need to ask this is telling.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 9:48 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Sometimes mad errorists think that there is, contrary to Dummett's thesis, a difference between God's creating a material universe, in the whole of which there never was any creature able to experience it, and His creating nothing at all; that is, between His creating such a universe and His merely conceiving of it, on the grounds that God could insert an observer into an observerless universe.
True, God could insert an observer into an observerless universe. But even God couldn't insert an observer into a permanently observerless universe. Nor could God conceive of Himself inserting an observer into a permanently observerless universe, since doing such a thing is literally inconceivable.
According to Dummett, there is no difference between God creating, and God merely conceiving of a permanently observerless universe existing, call it rU. What would it take to get from rU to a universe containing an observer, call it oU? Allegedly, God would have to create a conscious observer and place her in rU. And what would it take to get from some observerless universe God merely conceives of, call it cU, to oU? God would have to instantiate the concept of cU, and also create and insert a conscious observer into it. Allegedly the fact that this is 'possible' is enough to demonstrate a 'difference' between rU and cU, with nothing depending on oU ever being instantiated.
But is it possible? No, it's not. Does it demonstrate a difference between rU and cU? No, it doesn't.
What is the difference between a) it being the case that God would have to place an observer in rU to make oU obtain, and b) it being the case that God would have to instantiate cU and also insert a conscious observer into it to make oU? There is none, because the notion of placing an observer in rU is either logically impossible, or else is just a confused misnomer for the notion of a possible transition, not from rU to oU, but from cU to oU where the concept of cU is not identical with the concept of rU.
Contrary to the assumption of the mad errorist, there simply isn't any logically possible transition from rU to oU, because there is no possible world in which a member of the set of all forever observerless universes is identical with a member of the set of all universes containing observers. Those sets are, in the Kripkean jargon, 'rigidly designated'—they have their members essentially. Hence such a scenario is no more logically possible than is the scenario of the singletons {the man George Bush who was the US president on 07/07/2007} and {the man Abraham Lincoln who was US president in 1863}
actually being the same set, or the scenario of the referent of "water" actually being identical with the referent of "the smallest prime number between 4 and 12".
God's conceiving of the referent of "rU" and God conceiving of the referent of "oU" is for God to conceive of two distinct and logically incompatible states of affairs. Hence, conceiving of creating and inserting a conscious observer into any possible universe cannot be a thought of—–cannot be a thought that refers to—-the insertion of an observer into rU at all.
Kripke's Naming and Necessity is the essential guide in these matters.
Comment by stunney — July 7, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
The reason why our sentient, percipient, and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture, can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as part of it.
~ Physicist Erwin Schrodinger
Comment by todd — July 7, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Bradford,
Every scientist knows that you have to specify a hypothesis in order to test it. The word 'soul' means different things to different people. If we don't specify which concepts of soul we are talking about, we can't test them. For example, as Joy pointed out, there are scientists and philosophers (Owen Flanagan, for one) who believe that the soul exists, but also believe that it is purely physical and does not survive death. This is obviously very different from your personal view of the soul. It's logically possible for you to be right and Flanagan to be wrong, or vice-versa. If we don't specify whose definition we are using, we can't answer the existence question.
On the other hand, once we specify the kind of soul we are talking about, and provided that the soul has empirical consequences, then we can make some headway in determining whether or not it exists.
If you don't want to commit to a view of the soul, that's fine. Stay tuned as we evaluate different soul-concepts in light of the evidence. I'm sure we'll cover something much like yours.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
todd, quoting Schrödinger:
Todd,
Schrödinger was a smart man, but he bungled that one.
While it's true that a brain can never know itself in the sense of understanding the position and velocity of every particle within itself, or even in the sense of understanding the state of every neuron it contains, that hardly means that we can't come to understand ourselves in a meaningful way at higher levels of abstraction.
No human being can ever know a computer in the sense of being able to hold in mind the state of every transistor at a given moment, but who would argue that humans don't understand computers?
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Stunney,
Dummett asks
… and states that
Neither of those concepts requires the universe to never harbor conscious observers; if there is any time when it does not harbor them, that means, according to Dummett, that the matter and energy within it do not exist at that time, and that it is therefore indistinguishable from a non-existent universe. By Dummett's own logic, the universe does not begin to exist until conscious observers arise or are created within it.
This means that Dummett's "never" qualifier is unnecessary, and thus your objection to my argument breaks down.
My argument stands, and it shows that Dummett is wrong to claim that material existence requires a conscious observer.
Comment by keiths — July 7, 2007 @ 11:23 pm
July 7th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Keiths:
Ah, cherry picking to support a metaphysical agenda. We can all do that. Observe this research result supporting biblical wisdom:
Virtue is supposed to be its own reward, but accumulating evidence suggests that by helping others, people help themselves, improving their mental health, their physical well-being, even their longevity.
One large study published this fall even seems to bear out the biblical wisdom that it is more blessed to give than to receive — a message relevant to many as the holiday donation season begins.
"It might be too early to know whether increasing what we give will make us happier and healthier — however, this is certainly the implication of the recent work in this area," said Stephanie L. Brown, a researcher at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.
She and colleagues recently reported that, among a group of 423 elderly couples followed for five years, the people who reported helping others — even if it was just giving emotional support to a spouse — were only about half as likely to die as those who did not.
Comment by Bradford — July 7, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 12:06 am
It's not cherry-picking. I'm willing to take any soul-concept you throw at me and evaluate it against the evidence.
To get you started, here are a couple of soul-types that might actually exist:
1. Flanagan's physical soul, which I mentioned earlier in the thread, is compatible with the evidence and likely does exist.
2. A Chalmers-like immaterial soul that has no causal influence on the body might exist. The evidence doesn't rule it out, but so far only the "hard problem" motivates its existence.
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 12:06 am
July 8th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Bradford wrote:
There's not merely a lack of evidence for the existence of an immaterial soul; there's a surfeit of evidence against its existence.
The evidence actually rules out a broad variety of soul concepts. Let's start by looking at a typical "folk-dualist" concept of the soul, modifying it as necessary to avoid conflicts with the evidence. By the end of the exercise, you'll see that only an extremely restricted version of the soul remains. This truncated concept of the soul is unlikely to be satisfying to those who currently believe in the soul, especially if they believe for religious reasons.
I realize that many readers of this thread will have concepts of the soul that differ from, and are hopefully more sophisticated than, the folk-dualist soul I am about to present. As I said, we will modify this concept as we go in order to make it compatible with the evidence. At some point I suspect we will be addressing a version of the soul very much like yours. If not, please don't be shy, like Bradford; jump into the discussion and present your soul concept.
Characteristics of the "folk-dualist" soul:
1. It's the "real me". My body is a vehicle for my soul during life.
2. It is the seat of my identity. I continue to exist beyond bodily death because my soul continues to exist (whether or not it is eventually reunited with the body).
3. It is the seat of my mental life. My thoughts, emotions, personality, memory, etc., are functions of the soul. My soul continues to carry out these functions after death, when separated from the body.
4. It makes decisions and possesses a will. This makes it morally responsible for my actions.
5. Each person has one soul. The mapping from souls to bodies is one-to-one. My soul controls my body, but nobody else's. Conversely, my body responds to "commands" from my soul, but nobody else's.
Some ancillary notions about the soul which aren't necessarily part of the folk-dualist view, but are still worth discussing:
6. Humans have souls, but animals don't.
7. The soul is capable of perceiving the world directly, as in near-death or out-of-body experiences.
8. The soul is created by God.
In future comments I'll look at how the evidence impinges on each of these proposed soul properties. If there are others you want to suggest, please do.
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 12:21 am
July 8th, 2007 at 2:44 am
keiths:
I think you almost completely miss what he's saying. It is along the same reasoning over the implications of a required observer. Sentient perception and thought is the source of the rules of Science®. A scientific world picture is framed and given meaning by an ego (soul – whether material or not). All observation is theory-laden. We all reason from a given set of premises science cannot confirm or deny but can lend credence or raise doubts about those premises.
Science cannot provide meaning because meaning is individually unique to sentient beings.
You said
and I agree with you. But look at the terms your perceiving thinking being used – they seem to deny the very thing you wish to assert!
On your material terms – a brain, which I presume you mean the central hub of being and ego, "can never know itself in the sense of understanding the … [position, velocity, state] … of every [particle/neuron]…it contains". First, I wonder what use would you (your brain) get out of knowing all those states? Is that knowledge in any meaningful way? Moreover, if you did know all the material details of your brain, which we both agree you cannot, would you be able to show me where meaning originates? Would you be able to give meaning to any observation on those terms alone?
You go on to say "it hardly means that we can't … understand ourselves in a meaningful way at higher levels of abstraction". But isn't abstraction by definition immaterial? Aren't you saying exactly what the anti-materialists have been saying ad infinitum on this blog? Is knowing the mechanics of your body and brain alone sufficient to know yourself? You say no, apparently, because you seem to recognize you can understand yourself – meaningfully – with higher levels of abstraction. Indeed, inner thoughts – reflections, plans, feelings cannot yield meaning in terms of the mechanics of cranial matter.
Whether a soul is material, immaterial or some combination of both does not negate the fact of you or me or us. I am conscious of myself and aware of you and others. I exist. The you that perceives the world and interprets (gives meaning to) external stimuli is the soul as I picture it. The question is whether you or me are the sum total of every particle in our physical container or if we are something more than that.
You are claiming the ability to use evidence to "impinge on soul properties", which requires you give meaning to material facts. You cannot provide that meaning in terms of your atomic/synaptic mental states. Should the mechanical details of your mind have any bearing on the meaning you lend to facts and present as evidence? If not, why not?
The question is not whether the soul exists – for it does when defined as the perceiving you behind your eyes and other senses – but whether it transcends physical form or not. Because the question is on physical transcendence, empirical science cannot even address it, much less answer it. However, this does not mean it cannot be answered to individual satisfaction – it just cannot be confirmed nor denied by Science®. The answer then must be sought by a chain of reasoning from a given axiom.
And that is what Schroedinger's quote drives at – at every step of the way, your thinking ego frames your perception and perhaps influences that of others, creating group frameworks. You can only fully understand yourself inwardly, reflecting on past experience to give meaning to your present. This cannot be bottled and sampled in a lab. It is real (enough, to you or me), but cannot be known empirically.
Consider the difference between knowing about pain and knowing pain. You can know that nerve cells send signals to the brain which are then interpreted as pain or pleasure or whatnot. But until you experience pain, your knowledge of pain is incomplete. Once you experience it, then you know what it is and this is not reducible in any meaningful way to your physical reaction to painful stimuli. You cannot fully convey the knowledge of your pain experience to someone else who hasn't shared a similar experience.
Comment by todd — July 8, 2007 @ 2:44 am
July 8th, 2007 at 3:34 am
[I'm back, against my better judgment -- but it's cheaper picking fights here than in bars, and I'm only endangering my mental health]
stunney asks:
The formal definition of an algorithm or computer program is well-defined by the concept of Turing machines or (equivalently) computable functions. However, this is a purely mathematical concept so it has little directly to do with materialism one way or the other. (also note that there are some kinds of algorithms that go beyond the Turing definition, such as probabilistic algorithms, but that's not important for this discussion).
As I've said before, real computers are only approximations of formal programs. Formal programs don't, for instance, require electricity to run or generate heat, whereas any physical embodiment of a program does. Turing machines have an infinite memory, real computers have a finite memory. Turing machines cannot make errors, real computers are subject to physical noise and can as a result diverge from their formal definition (although they are engineered to make that happen infrequently).
Brains diverge even further from the mathematical ideal of computation. They are noisy, they have analog aspects, and they are tightly coupled to the body and the surrounding environment. This last is the most profound difference, IMO, from the standard mathematical model of computation, and it's a difference that has been increasingly under consideration by AI since the late-80s or so, when there started to be more emphasis on robotics and situated cognition.
So — real human minds are not well understood as programs in the Turing sense, but they are fully material, and they do implement approximations of a variety of computational algorithms. The thing is, while minds are not exactly computer programs they are closer to computers than they are to anything else, so computational models of thinking are the best we have.
It gets more complicated, though, when you consider that an appropriately programmed computer can simulate basically anything, and in fact there is no guarantee that the universe we inhabit is not a gigantic computer simulation, with computation determining the behavior of every jot, tittle, and quark. On a less cosmic scale, a digital computer can simulate a noisy analog computer like the brain, so in that sense, the brain is an instantiation of a computer program.
It's very easy to be confused about this stuff if you want to be. Searle has built an entire career on confusing himself and others. But it's really quite simple — brains are manifestly complex material devices that can be at least partially understood in computational terms. The brain also manifestly implements the mind, as keiths is in the process of demonstrating. The AI position is that you can make a machine out of something other than neurons and still have it be a mind. There is no in-principle reason to believe this is wrong, although achieving it in fact has been much harder than anticipated, because it turns out we need much better understandings of what the mind and brain actually do than we have in order to do it.
Comment by mtraven — July 8, 2007 @ 3:34 am
July 8th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Ah, cherry picking to support a metaphysical agenda.
Why not start with a feature that most uniquely distinguishes a soul namely, its capacity to survive the death of an organism? What scientific evidence has a bearing on this claim one way or the other?
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 7:05 am
July 8th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Keiths:
If you study the wavelength of the color green you would be foolish to assert that this has anything but a tangential relationship to grass. Thinking that you can make meaningful assertions about souls, the detailed properties of which do not lend themselves to empirically meaningful definitions, based on cognitive research data is the stuff of barroom chats, not serious scientific endeavors. Would this be a fruitful way to make a living?
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 8:14 am
July 8th, 2007 at 9:09 am
mtraven wrote:
Hey, mtraven, welcome back!
Stunney has already sacrificed his mental health. It's only fair that we endanger ours.
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 9:09 am
July 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
One of the many wonderful things about wooden tools is how funny they can be. For example, you can quote Dummett in the presence of a wooden tool repeatedly, and a tool made of wood will mimic a complete inability to display comprehension of the quoted passage. For example, let's say the Dummett passage is this one (with emphasis added):
On being shown this passage again and again, wooden tools will give the impression that, as far as they're concerned, Dummett didn't write the words, 'a material universe, in the whole of which there never was any creature able to experience it'.
What's more, wooden tools will give the impression that one hadn't quoted Dummett saying, "That is not to say that there is no matter or radiation that is unperceived and uninferred; but, unless there are sentient and rational observers, it would not be possible for either observation or inference to occur" earlier in this very thread!
As I said, wooden tools are hysterical.:lol:
Comment by stunney — July 8, 2007 @ 9:20 am
July 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
mtraven wrote:
Let's forget about minds and brains for the moment.
What's the ontological difference between a physical computer and a computer program? In particular, does an actual instance of a computer program necessarily reduce to some physical computer actually existing somewhere in the universe? In other words, do the existence-conditions of (the set of all) computer programs equate to the existence-conditions of (the set of all) physical computers? It seems to me they can't, given almost any version of mathematical realism plus only a finite number of computers.
Comment by stunney — July 8, 2007 @ 9:20 am
July 8th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Consider the following propositions:
1) My soul makes decisions and possesses a will. This makes it morally responsible for my actions.
2) I make decisions and possess a will. This makes me morally responsible for my actions.
Obviously they state, or are about, different ideas. For example, if 1 is true, and if I'm not identical with my will, then I am not necessarily morally responsible for my actions. But a court of law is unlikely to be impressed by my seeking to avoid being held morally responsible for my actions solely on this basis, just as it would be unlikely to be impressed by my seeking to avoid being held morally responsible for my actions solely on the basis of the claim that my brain is the thing that makes decisions and possesses a will, making it, rather than me, morally responsible for my actions.
Not so if 2 is true.
Comment by stunney — July 8, 2007 @ 10:00 am
July 8th, 2007 at 10:21 am
keiths:
Since science is not chartered to examine or attempt to quantify concepts like "soul," what (again) is the point of this exercise, other than demonstrating your misunderstanding of both science and metaphysics?
I gave you a generalized list of soul-concepts from a large variety of religions and denominations. None of them look like the "folk-dualist" version you provide as your starting place for this incredibly foolish attempt to prove a negative about a metaphysical concept and call it Science.
Your items 1 – 5 describing the soul you plan to falsify are ALL objective or subjective properties or aspects of consciousness. Items 7 and 8 are add-ons to claims we already know you will attack by 1. claiming OOB and NDE doesn't happen, and 2. telling us (again) that you don't believe in God. Ho, hum.
This leaves item 6, "Humans have souls, but animals don't." How you plan to falsify that isn't even a slightly interesting question for this doomed enterprise, so we can dismiss it right here and now with a line from a cartoon…
"All dogs go to heaven."
That you might find a sect or sub-sect of some version of some religion that claims not so is entirely irrelevant, as is the assertion itself. It seems clear that your project involves equating soul to consciousness and its properties. Those things for which most people believe there are physical mechanisms to enable.
By equating soul to consciousness, you cannot 'prove' souls don't exist. Which was your original boast. So you're backed into a blind corner by your own pretensions, with no way out. It works like this -
A) The soul *is* consciousness, thus reducible to the physical correlates of consciousness. The soul DOES objectively exist.
Then we go back to the Great Zombie debates about whether or not consciousness itself *is* the physical processes and structures that enable its expression. Something science has not determined and may never determine… a matter of metaphysical belief.
If you still plan to 'prove' that souls do not exist even after equating them to qualitative aspects of consciousness and reducing those to physical mechanisms, you've got only one place to go with it…
B) There is no such thing as consciousness, and no qualitative attributes either. Thus there are no souls.
In which case you end up with the same non-scientific appeal to metaphysical belief. This "my metaphysics is better than your metaphysics" crap has been around as long as humans. It won't be settled here, and it has nothing to do with science.
Comment by Joy — July 8, 2007 @ 10:21 am
July 8th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Do ants have a soul?
Comment by Raevmo — July 8, 2007 @ 10:40 am
July 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Raevmo asks:
If 'soul' equates to a subset of some suitable set of physical+behavioral+functional properties, then very possibly yes.
If 'soul' equates to a capacity for rational thinking, understanding, and willing, then no.
William Hasker, The Emergent Self (Cornell, 1999), pp. 74-75. From the chapter "Why the Physical Isn't Closed."
Comment by stunney — July 8, 2007 @ 11:02 am
July 8th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
todd wrote:
Todd,
Schrödinger is saying the exact opposite — that you cannot fully understand yourself inwardly:
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Bradford asks:
Much of the evidence does bear on that question, as you'll see.
I wrote:
Bradford replied, dodging the question:
Bad choice for an example, Bradford. The green color of grass is due to chlorophyll, the pigment at the heart of photosynthesis. How grass manages to feed itself is hardly a tangential question.
Now, how about answering the question I posed, or explaining why the dichotomy is invalid?
So you say, over and over. But you never back up your claim.
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
stunney asks:
There are of course more possible programs than can be physically instantiated in the universe, just as there are more 1000-digit numbers than can be physically instantiated on paper, given that there are less than 10^100 atoms in the universe. That is so obvious that I feel I may not understand what you are really asking.
Comment by mtraven — July 8, 2007 @ 1:11 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
No, an apt illustration of why the wavelength of the color green is irrelvant to discovering photosynthesis just as your comments are irrelevant to the matter of whether or not a soul exists.
Hey, I'm not the one claiming there is a scientific case to be made for or against the existence of souls. The burden of proof lies with you.
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
keiths to Bradford:
Psychology is a "soft science," keith, a branch of medicine since it split from philosophy. It deals with the manifestations of thought processes 'normal', 'extraordinary' and 'aberrant' in a clinical setting. Someone having issues in their life – depression, OCD, ADHD or other behavioral problems, grief, side effects of abuse, etc., etc. can choose from among a host of 'systems' and practitioners limited only by the patient's income and the State BOM's licensing requirements. In some states, licenses aren't required at all, anybody can hang up a shingle (as can palm-readers, fortune-tellers, hexers, spiritualists, herbalists, homeopaths and yoga or crystal therapists). Everything that can be argued to 'work' in a certain percentage of cases (always self-reported) by means of talk-talk, magick or placebo is loosely grouped under the "Psychology" heading.
Did you know there's a rather large number of practicing *religious* psychologists and psychiatrists out there? Ones who attempt to deal with various PDs and trauma issues from a specifically religious perspective? Maybe you'd believe they're doing "soul healing," and maybe some of them would agree. But psychology won't prove your metaphysics "scientifically" true.
So. Where's your beef, keiths?
Comment by Joy — July 8, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
Shield Bashing 101, always keep the burdon of proof on the other side, even when they are arguing the Status Quo.
But take a look at the title of the thread, doesn't that imply you are accepting at least a little burden of proof for yourself?
So maybe you are ready to tell us where you draw the immaterial/material line.
Is color material or immaterial?
Isn't color a property rather like an ability to learn or adapt?
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 8, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Hmmm…the wavelength of the color green is completely relevant to understanding the molecular mechanism of photosynthesis.
Didn't you ever do the experiment with covering plants with different colors of saran wrap in high school?
Comment by JAM — July 8, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
JAM, I wrote discovering and you substituted the word understanding and followed it up with a question. Are you saying that green led to the discovery of photosynthesis?
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Green is a property and is detectable. What have you detected about souls lately? What scientific papers can you refer me to? TP, if you were not an atheist you would clearly see the absurdity of making scientific proclamations about souls. If I'm wrong and it is indeed absurd to you then why not come out and say it?
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
You know by now that I embrace NOMA and, therefore, believe the unknowable (that which can't be detected) belongs in the metaphysical realm.
I believe what you call a "soul" is undetectable. That is why I indicated this thread was destined to be a continuation of the dueling metaphysics that has been occurring for over 2000 years. I doubt it will be solved anything soon.
That being said, you got into something a little bit different when you talked about the color green. I can detect the color green. I can also detect an ability to learn and adapt. Ergo, I think that means I can detect intelligence based on the commonly understood definition for that term.
But, of course, you appear to have a broader definition.
However, is your definition consistent? Is intelligence only metaphysical when trying to identify soles and designers but detectable when trying to identify design?
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 8, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I'm adept at identifying soles with little difficulty but I'm still awaiting explanations as to how souls are identified experimentally. I'm not sure as to what part, if any, the identification of souls is dependent on IDing an intelligent cause. I guess we'll have to wait on that.
As a general answer to your question though I see no reason to artificially restrict explorations into intelligent causality.
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Hi Bradford,
Bradford! You've come out from behind your shield.
I will try to do this gently.
Since you are adept at identifying soles…
Do Gorilla's have soles? (I understand they mourn the death of loved ones)
If not, why not?
If yes, then do all animals have soles?
How about plants?
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 8, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
stunney wrote:
That's an odd complaint, Stunney, given that I address Dummett's words directly:
More from stunney:
I'm surprised you chose to repeat that quote, given that it supports my position. Dummett says "unless there are sentient and rational observers," not "unless there are or will be sentient and rational observers."
Again, this shows that Dummett's "never" qualifier is unnecessary.
What a strange argument Dummett is making. It's like saying that a rock on Earth wasn't kickable until creatures arose that were capable of kicking it.
It makes a rock's kickability a property of the rest of the universe when it should be a property of the rock itself (and is, to any normal English speaker).
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
TP: Bradford! You've come out from behind your shield.
TP, horses and humans have soles but humans are unique in that they have temporal soles and eternal souls.:lol:
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Hi Bradford,
Forgive me for not recognizing your abilities in not only detecting soles but actually detecting the different types. As tempting as it might be to explore the types further, I will simply inquire about the run-of-the-mill animal sole.
All animals have soles?
Slugs?
Amoebae?
What about plants?
And if I could press. If plants don't have soles, why not?
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 8, 2007 @ 9:55 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
stunney wrote:
Not to a folk dualist, who would say that your soul is you.
How strange. Why should one need to be identical with one's will to be morally responsible? That would leave no room for experiencing, for example.
Indeed.
Although you can make some headway by claiming that your brain is malfunctioning.
One of the biggest challenges facing 21st-century jurisprudence is to develop a coherent doctrine of moral and legal responsibility in the face of powerful evidence that the will and the moral sense are both physically based.
Who, or what, is this "you" that is along for the ride as your brain makes all these decisions and carries out all these actions?
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Because they don't wear shoes!:mrgreen:
Comment by Bradford — July 8, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Joy wrote:
Could you point me to the Science Charter? I've somehow missed it all these years.
And all along I thought science was about using observation and reason to choose among competing hypotheses…
Most of those soul-concepts do overlap considerably with the folk-dualist soul. We'll be ruling out various purported properties of souls as we go along. If, at the end, you're aware of a soul-concept that hasn't been ruled out by virtue of having one or more of its properties shown to be unlikely or impossible, then let us know.
Not really. For example, cognition and memory need not be associated with consciousness.
Given your poor track record at even comprehending, much less anticipating, my positions, you might be wise to refrain from such predictions.
Tell it Bradford, who just wrote:
Bradford, like many Christians, believes that animals do not have souls.
I don't equate soul to consciousness. In fact, outside of fora like TT, I tend not to use the word 'soul' except when I'm being figurative. Here at TT I use 'soul' to refer to an immaterial entity, except when I explicitly state otherwise. Why? Because that is the common usage of the word.
As for my being "backed into a blind corner", perhaps if you repeat that to yourself while clicking your heels together three times, it will come to pass. Meanwhile, keep reading.
Comment by keiths — July 8, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
July 8th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Hi Bradford,
Ok, I see I am being an engineer again.
So much for you coming out from behind your shield.
It get's more and more difficult to be understanding of the positions you are taking.
I have provided in great detail a mechanistic model. I have opened it up to all questions. I am not afraid to have my beliefs questioned and poked at.
I even claim the model is an ID Hypothesis (no one has challenged this yet).
Doesn't it bother you to hide behind your shields while taking pot shots at others who are ethically and earnestly presenting their case and defending it?
Unfortunately, I don't think it does.
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 8, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Planks of wood may have inscribed on them marks such as these:
if there is any time when it does not harbor them, that means, according to Dummett, that the matter and energy within it do not exist at that time, and that it is therefore indistinguishable from a non-existent universe. By Dummett's own logic, the universe does not begin to exist until conscious observers arise or are created within it. This means that Dummett's "never" qualifier is unnecessary, and thus your objection to my argument breaks down.
Such an inscription, of course, is a far cry from what Dummett himself inscribed. Earlier I wrote:
What does it mean to say material entities exist which will never have any observational consequences? As Michael Dummett puts it:
Dummett is obviously distinguishing between a universe that never contains any observer and a universe that at some point within its spacetime contains an observer. If wooden planks had read and understood the extended quote the very first time I posted it, they would know this:
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 12:01 am
July 9th, 2007 at 12:35 am
mtraven wrote:
I may not understand what you mean by 'There are' when you say, "There are of course more possible programs than can be physically instantiated in the universe". I'm asking what is it for a given computer program to be, to exist. Is it just = there being a physical computer that implements that program?
Your answer in the reply I'm quoting suggests an ambiguity. What is it for there to be possible computer programs that cannot 'be physically instantiated in the universe'? What's the difference ontologically between a possible computer program and an actual computer program? Does the difference just come down to a fact regarding whether it is ever loaded into a machine? What of a program that is never loaded or used because its designer died before doing so or sharing it with anyone? Or, the program designer wrote it in sand one night in a Bedouin tent, and they struck camp the following morning, with the program lost to the Sahara.
If minds are software and brains are hardware, does human individuality only come from environmental inputs, or is the starting software package unique to each individual? My impression is that the scientific evidence indicates that most traits are genetic, not acquired. If so, that would tend to indicate that most human 'software packages', though sharing many features in common, are 'customized'.
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 12:35 am
July 9th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Let me add, in reply to mtraven, that the software/hardware analogy (especially if it's no mere analogy, but a true and literal description), strikes me (and always has struck me) as being more consonant with the view that the mind is something that is in essence immaterial rather than material. Programs, codes, languages, symbol systems, etc look like they are no more reducible to their physical medium of expression than mathematical equations are reducible to chalk marks on a chalkboard in Einstein's office.
In other words, why should the software/hardware model be considered a materialist theory of the mind at all?
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 12:55 am
July 9th, 2007 at 12:58 am
keiths said:
The full quote:
Science cannot quantify the experience of sentient being because it is a product of sentient being. That is the gist of this quote.
The subject: our … ego
The action: is met within
The object: our scientific world picture
It doesn't get more explicit that this. Our sentient egos are not met within our scientific world picture because the world picture is an outlooking, thinking sentient ego. Schroedinger isn't remotely saying you cannot fully understand yourself inwardly. He's saying the inner world of the sentient being is not found on Science®'s trophy case of the quantifiable because it is the source of Science® and "cannot be contained in it as part of it".
Keith, I figure you've got a lot of pots stirring with TT members whom you are much more familiar and that is why I'll not interpret your sloppy and shallow exchanges with me as evidence you are incapable of grasping this point. I do admire your tenacity and the respect you seem to show for a good intellectual donnybrook – however, I hope stubbornness will not impede you from yielding a point where you're clearly wrong. Please consider giving my posts a closer reading.
I also hope you'll address the questions I posed to you and explain how I have it wrong – especially on how your own words seem to inadvertently prove the point you argue against.
I wrote:
Comment by todd — July 9, 2007 @ 12:58 am
July 9th, 2007 at 1:11 am
There is a sense of "computer program" which is a formal mathematical object. Such objects have the same sort of existence as other mathematical objects. You can be a Platonist about it and believe they exist somewhere in mathematics land, or not, but in any case that kind of a program has the same kind of relationship to a program running on your laptop, as a perfect mathematical sphere hsd to a billiard ball.
First off, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise — brains can and do differ genetically and anatomically from individual to individual, before any environnmental input is taken into account.
But the premise is not quite right in my view, although it's not a bad approximation of the truth. In fact, the distinction between hardware and software in computer technology is largely artificial, and, in my opinion, comes from the designers of computers projecting their folk-dualism onto their creations.
We think of hardware and software as two very different things — the hardware comes from Dell and requires assembling material components, the software comes from Microsoft and is pure, evanescent information. But in fact you can always convert a hardware-based computational process into software (by simulation) or vice-versa (by encoding a software algorithm into hardware, as is commonly done for things like 3D rendering). So in actual practice hardware and software is treated very differently, but it needn't be that way. I maintain that the reason it's done that way is that computer designers are importing their folk mind/body dualism concepts into their designs, mostly unconsciously.
When we look at real minds though, or real brains, they don't have a strict division between hardware and software. The brain is a hodgepodge of different kinds of mechanisms and representations without the strict abstraction interfaces common in computers.
I was going to post another comment about keiths outline of the folk-dualist worldview, which I thought was very good. The point I wanted to add though is that we are all folk psychologists in daily life and it is quite difficult, even if you are theoretically opposed to dualism, to get away from it. This is a problem that has plagued AI, and also forms the roots of various conceptual confusions such as Searle's Chinese Room argument.
Comment by mtraven — July 9, 2007 @ 1:11 am
July 9th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Todd,
The reason I'm disagreeing with you is that I think you're wrong about what Schrödinger means. If you take the time to parse his words carefully, I think you'll see my point.
Look at the quote again:
Let's analyze his statement into separate assertions:
1. Our feeling, perceiving, thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture.
2. Our feeling, perceiving, thinking ego is our scientific world picture. (Very questionable, but that's what he's saying).
3. Ego = the whole scientific world picture.
4. Therefore ego cannot be a mere part of the scientific world picture.
5. Therefore we don't find our feeling, perceiving, thinking ego represented as part of our scientific world picture.
Your interpretation is that
But Schrödinger is not saying that "the inner world of the sentient being… is the source of Science." He's saying, quite explicitly, that the feeling, perceiving, thinking ego is the scientific world picture.
I would disagree with that, and I suspect you would too — but that is what he's saying.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 2:09 am
July 9th, 2007 at 2:38 am
stunney,
According to you and Dummett, whether a soccer ball exists now depends on whether there will ever be an observer in its universe. And by extension, whether the soccer ball is kickable now depends on whether there will ever be a kicker in its universe.
So existence and kickability are aspects not of the soccer ball, but of everything but the soccer ball.
You're funny, Stunney.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 2:38 am
July 9th, 2007 at 2:45 am
mtraven wrote:
First off, the premise is conditional. Second, it's posed as a question. Third, I made no claim that any conclusion logically followed, instead using words like 'indicate', 'suggest', and 'tend'.
I wonder why they do that. Bastards!
Well, this is ground I've covered before, including recently.
There is no informationless stuff. Which equates to saying there's no 'pure' hardware, 'uncontaminated', as it were, by software.
The 'needn't' here suggests it could all be rendered as hardware. But I don't think it could.
Yup, Bill Gates is a bastard.
But here's the thing. I thought that you were suggesting that mind is to brain as software is to hardware. Are you also a bastard along with Gates and the rest of them? In other words, if you're now saying it's all just 'really' hardware, does the software analogy for mind not simply serve to propagate and perpetuate the Bastard Dualism you denounce?
You may recall me saying that materialism collapses unless it's really eliminitavist, which is why I give eliminativists credit for intellectual honesty and consistency. That's why I said it. They have no truck with folk dualism. They're not bastards.
'Mechanisms and representations' is precisely the insidious dualistic picture the eliminativists are trying to eliminate. Once you say X represents Y, you're implying that at some point or level, there is a conscious awareness or understanding of or about something. I.e., one implies intentionality. The eliminativist believes that intentionality is ontologically reducible to the non-intentional without remainder. If not, then intentionality is ontologically irreducible and hence not naturalistically explained. This explains the New Mysterians. They don't want to be either eliminativists or dualists in their ontology of mind. The only other option they can see is the New Mysterian position which says that:
1) Minds do reduce to hardware
2) It is impossible for us ever to understand how
Therefore, it will always be a mystery.
Searle disagrees, of course. And he's not the only one, though others have slightly different reasons. You've just pointed out how difficult it is to avoid dualistic thoughts. The New Mysterians explain why it's so difficult:
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 2:45 am
July 9th, 2007 at 3:03 am
If there is never anything capable of kicking a piece of wood, then no piece of wood can be kicked.
That's a big if, however.
If no piece of wood is ever capable of understanding any English sentence, then no English sentence can be understood by a piece of wood.
That's not a big if.
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 3:03 am
July 9th, 2007 at 3:19 am
stunney,
It sounds like you're flummoxed — again.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 3:19 am
July 9th, 2007 at 4:35 am
What is a human person?
It's not just a given collection of atoms, for metabolism regularly replaces them.
Raevmo helpfully though unintentionally showed that it's not a particular configuration of atoms either, since any given configuration of atoms can be duplicated. But then configuration cannot be that which individuates persons, for we would not know, given a replicated configuration, which body was the body or bodies of which person.
It is tempting to think consciousness is the key, but rabbits are conscious, yet they're not persons, and persons are still persons when they're asleep or in a coma.
What is required for personhood in my view is the capacity for intentional activity. The reason we do not regard beasts as persons is because we do not regard their activity as intentional or as capable of ever becoming intentional. This is one reason we don't attribute moral properties to the behavior of beasts. Their behavior is instinctual, not intentional. Their mental states don't rise to the level of thought in the strict sense. This is why we might describe an instance of human behavior as 'thoughtless'; but if our cat pees on the floor, we don't say, or don't seriously say, "Ming, that was thoughtless of you." Cats don't form the intention to pee on the floor, but a naughty child might.
Animal brains and bodies are material in just the same way ours are. But they lack intentionality in the proper sense and it's only in an extended sense that we attribute intentional states to them, because we only individuate the intentional content of a given mental state by means of language, and we can't translate, interpret, or understand intentional content otherwise. Schnee ist weiss and Snow is white and La neige est blanche all possess the same intentional content. But what's that thought in Polar Bearese? Is 'Maiowww' feline for 'Tengo hambre' or for 'Tengo sed'? That is the key thing about intentional states—they have semantic content. (Searle's slogan is 'Syntax is not semantics.) It's extremely hard to explicate intentional content"”-the 'stuff' our thoughts are thoughts of, or about"”in purely functional terms, because it has turned out to be well nigh impossible to reduce the meanings of our thoughts to physically observable objects in a way that is really convincing. "The Morning Star is the Evening Star"; or if you prefer, "Phosphorus is Hesperus"; or if you prefer, "See that light in the sky over there"”that is Venus." Six terms all designating the same physical object. And we can prove that there are infinitely many true and infinitely many false propositions. All we need do is note that "Snow is white and one is greater than zero" is one of the true ones in an infinite series whose next member is "Snow is white and two is greater than one", etc. Or just give each atom a name and state how far it is from Richard Dawkins' brain, and then repeat all those statements while trebling each figure for distance. This means that that there are more intentional contents than there are atoms in the observable universe. But then the set of distinct intentional contents does not reduce to the set of observed physical objects. This suggests that intentionality cannot reduce to wholly physical states.
Here's Plantinga's lecture notes about how this idea might be used:
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 4:35 am
July 9th, 2007 at 5:01 am
One of the amusing things about empiricism is that it makes the having of observable consequences a criterion of reality. So it's always funny when one comes across a 'bright' who both advances that criterion and the claim that a universe no part of which could ever be observed because it never contains any sentient being would nonetheless satisfy that criterion. The technical term for such a 'bright' is a 'flummoxed scream'.:mrgreen:
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 5:01 am
July 9th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Time to start testing the properties of the folk-dualist soul against the scientific evidence.
Let's begin with the split-brain evidence. TT veterans will have seen some of this evidence before, but I urge them to reread it and consider it in light of the properties of the folk-dualist soul I sketched out earlier in the thread. These observations are bizarre, amazing and unsettling.
From a previous thread:
In a classic experiment done by Roger Sperry and Joseph Bogen, images were flashed on a screen in front of a split-brain patient. His task was to point to the most closely related drawing, out of an array of eight drawings spread out before him.
The eight drawings were of:
1. A push lawnmower.
2. A broom.
3. A snow shovel.
4. A pick.
5. An apple.
6. A toaster.
7. A hammer.
8. A rooster's head.
Different images were flashed onto the left and right halves of the screen, so that each hemisphere saw only one image. The left hemisphere was shown a picture of a chicken's foot. The right hemisphere was shown a picture of a snowy scene.
Which drawing do you think the patient pointed to?
The answer, amazingly, is that each hand pointed to a different drawing. The left hemisphere, which had seen the chicken's foot, used the right hand (which it alone controls) to point to the rooster's head. The right hemisphere, which had seen the snowy scene, used the left hand (which it alone controls) to point to the snow shovel.
The weirdness doesn't end there. The left hemisphere (which controls speech) explained to the experimenters that the right hand was pointing to the shovel because the shovel "would be used to clean out the chicken house."
Bogen also tells of a split-brain patient, seated in a chair, who picked up a newspaper with his right hand and began to read. His left hand snatched the newspaper away and threw it on the floor. His right hand picked it up again, and his left hand threw it down again.
These experiments show that:
1. Each hemisphere has its own separate visual and olfactory perception. What one hemisphere perceives is not available to the other. One hemisphere smelled the garlic, but the other did not. Each hemisphere saw only one of the two images flashed on the screen.
2. The hemispheres have functional but separate cognitive processes. The left hemisphere was able to associate the chicken foot with the rooster head. The right hemisphere was able to associate the snowy scene with the snow shovel. Yet neither hemisphere knew what the other was thinking. The left hemisphere even made up a false story to explain what the right hemisphere had done.
3. The hemispheres have separate wills. The left hemisphere wanted to read the newspaper, but the right hemisphere didn't. One hemisphere wanted to button up the shirt, but the other hemisphere wanted to unbutton it. When a patient was asked what he wanted to do for a living, his right hemisphere wrote "race-car driver" and his left hemisphere wrote "draftsman." Another man attacked his wife with his left hand while trying to protect her with his right.
4. The hemispheres even have separate emotions and distinct likes and dislikes. The man attacking/protecting his wife is one example. Another is the patient who was asked what he wanted to do for a living. This was during the Watergate era, and when asked whether he liked or disliked Richard Nixon, his right hemisphere selected "dislike" and his left hemisphere selected "like."
To a materialist, these experimental results make perfect sense. If you cut the communications channel between the two hemispheres, they end up functioning separately.
How can a dualist respond?
1. A dualist could claim that split-brain patients possess two souls. But why should cutting a piece of brain tissue create a new soul? Are dualists comfortable with the idea that a human neurosurgeon can create new souls by cutting the corpus callosum? Or does God swoop in and create a new soul whenever the operation is performed? What about the fact that normal people can have their brains temporarily split when anesthesia is selectively administered to only one hemisphere? Does the soul swap back and forth between the hemispheres, or is a new one created?
2. A dualist could claim that there is still only one soul. But which hemisphere is the soul "attached" to? Or is it attached to neither? We know that the hemispheres possess separate perceptions, emotions, cognition, knowledge, and will. If there is only one soul, then at least one hemisphere is perceiving, emoting, thinking, knowing and willing without the assistance of a soul. That rules out the dualist belief that these functions are carried out by the soul.
Ponder these results for a while. They're fascinating.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 6:04 am
July 9th, 2007 at 6:13 am
Wow, Stunney,
You really are flummoxed.
Your "rejoinder" depends on my being an empiricist. But who said I was an empiricist?
The hole is getting deeper. Keep digging.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 6:13 am
July 9th, 2007 at 7:05 am
TP, when I saw you misspell soul as sole I decided to have fun with it. Don't take those sole\soul comments seriously.
Keiths, my comment,
was also said in jest. Humans and horses both wear shoes.
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 7:05 am
July 9th, 2007 at 9:10 am
I had to create an account to comment on this.
Keiths says:
Well, duh! He can obviously respond with:
3. There is one soul, which is utterly confused by the contradictory information it receives from the brain, which is its main (or possibly only) source of sensory information.
How can we then solve the problem of the newspaper, or of simultaneously attacking and defending one's wife? Well, my personal thinking on the mind/brain problem led me to the conclusion that the soul does the thinking part, while the brain does the feeling part. This leads to
3'. The brain being split in two, this practically creates two brains, and each of them can begin to form their own emotions. One brain can like something (newspaper, wife) while the other dislikes the same something. This doesn't help us conclude anything about whether thinking or volition are also themselves split in two. (Both can be influenced by emotions, so we need to be careful when analyzing these split-brain experiments.)
Comment by mdpopescu — July 9, 2007 @ 9:10 am
July 9th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Bradford, Joy, Stunney,
Sorry to chime in so late in this debate – it's all rather confusing to me. For starters I cannot find a single definition of a "soul" or how it works. Here are my starter questions.
1. What is a soul, how do you determine that it exists?
2. Assuming that you have determined that it exists by some kind of philosophical technique (e.g. induction), is there any way of actually confirming the existence of souls experimentally?
3. Assuming that souls exist, how do we know that they are immortal? Assuming that we do know this how do we confirm that it has a kind of existence after death.
4. How can we know anything at all about souls?
Comment by salimfadhley — July 9, 2007 @ 10:24 am
July 9th, 2007 at 10:25 am
keiths:
No, 'we' won't. But you might. I look forward to the show – hope it lives up to the hype you've been spewing.
You have made boasts here that outdo any I've ever heard from the Ringmaster (or even from Mohammed Ali), so 'we' will expect to see you standing victorious over a veritable mountain of dead souls in the end as their blood mixes with the sawdust of center ring. Roar of the greasepaint, smell of the crowd… er… Break a nose!
You want to argue relative 'wisdom' with me? Hahahahaha!!!!! That's a good one, keiths. Meanwhile, I'm over here next to the bandstand (that's me in the coral sequins with the ostrich plumes in my top hat) making book on the bout. Odds are 2-1 in your favor so far, but a lot of people haven't placed their bets. I'm looking for 10-1 before I'll wager my own money.
They might be waiting on Atma the Shining to show up with his Sikh Guards – always a grand parade, should swing the odds sharply (depending on how many souls you've slain before he arrives). Excitement is building!
Keiths, keiths. I don't give a rodent's derriere what Bradford believes or disbelieves about souls. Never did. I'm just here for the main event. As soon as this cotton candy is gone, I'm going to start booing if the show hasn't started yet.
Comment by Joy — July 9, 2007 @ 10:25 am
July 9th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Salimfadhley, you should direct your questions at Keiths. He is making the claim that empircal evidence can be brought to bear on the issue of whether or not a soul exists.
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 11:40 am
July 9th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
salimfadhley asks:
See this comment for a working definition. Testing its existence is like testing any scientific hypothesis — we examine the evidence to see whether it fits.
It depends on the soul-concept you settle on. If your hypothesis makes empirical predictions, you can test it. Otherwise you can't. So, for example, a causally impotent soul that is the seat of conscious awareness, but is otherwise just along for the ride, is difficult (and perhaps impossible) to test. An immaterial soul that is the seat of the will can be tested for, as the split-brain studies show.
If immaterial souls exist at all, I don't see how we could test to see if they are eternal.
Demonstrating that they persist after death is also difficult, for obvious reasons. However, if we show that the functions ascribed to the soul are utterly dependent on the brain, then the case that they survive death is considerably weakened.
It depends on the hypothesized soul.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I'm new to this, but it's certainly amusing watching keiths tie himself up in knots. From the excerpts I've been reading, he's been repeatedly guilty of a hopelessly flawed exegesis of Dummett–or perhaps he's simply having trouble comprehending the English language? He rails against the reality of immaterial souls because such things allegedly have no observable consequences; but then denounces the idea that a forever and entirely unobserved universe can't properly be said to exist; and then denies making the having of observable consequences a criterion of reality.
Surely he's pulling our collective leg?
Comment by Zoskie — July 9, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Joy,
I searched your comment for an actual argument, to no avail. Is mockery your last resort?
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
mdpopescu wrote:
Welcome to the discussion.
But if the soul is confused, and if it is the seat of the will, then why doesn't the patient act confused or otherwise express his confusion? In the Sperry/Bogen experiment, each hand points to the appropriate drawing without hesitation. If the soul is confused, why doesn't the patient waver? Why doesn't he say something like, "You showed me two images on the screen, not one. Which one am I supposed to match?" The answer is clear. Each hemisphere sees a separate image, and there is no place — no "Cartesian theater", to use Dennett's memorable phrase — where the soul becomes aware of both images.
But thinking and volition are split. The left hemisphere figures out that it should match the chicken foot to the rooster head. That's thinking. The right hemisphere figures out that it should match the snowy scene to the snow shovel. That's also thinking. The left hemisphere is not aware of what the right hemisphere is thinking, and vice-versa.
Thinking is split between the two hemispheres.
As for volition: The left hemisphere wants to read the newspaper, and picks it up. The right hemisphere doesn't want that, and throws it back down. The left hemisphere picks it up again, and the right hemisphere throws it down again. The will of the left hemisphere opposes the will of the right hemisphere.
Volition is split between the two hemispheres.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Keiths said:
It depends on the soul-concept you settle on. If your hypothesis makes empirical predictions, you can test it. Otherwise you can't. So, for example, a causally impotent soul that is the seat of conscious awareness, but is otherwise just along for the ride, is difficult (and perhaps impossible) to test. An immaterial soul that is the seat of the will can be tested for, as the split-brain studies show.
So what experimental evidence do we have for that definition of the soul? From what I can see there is none – it's speculation based on some philosophical line of reasoning, but utterly unconfirmed by actual experimentation.
I'd put this in the same category as gods and evil-spirits – things that might make sense according to certain worldview but are somewhat redundant in a strictly naturalistic worldview.
I'd like to hear from somebody who thinks that souls exist – I cannot understand what the relationship between brain and "soul" might be. I'd also like to know how certain they are that souls exist. Can we be as certain that souls exist as we can that brains exist?
Thanks
Comment by salimfadhley — July 9, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Uh, oh. Looks like round 1 goes to the defender. Come on, keiths! I thought this was a slam dunk!
A dualist would wonder why keiths doesn't understand the definition of the term, thus is incapable of framing an argument against it.
Keiths previously stated: "I don't equate soul to consciousness."
Yet here he is in the very first round doing exactly that! Worse, he's equating it with brain tissue and physical "attachments" to brain tissue!. A swing and a miss. The immaterial soul dances circles around the challenger, who just can't seem to land a punch.
Cool! The odds just flipped. I hear some grumbling from the cheap seats, the pot's swelling fast as the hoi palloi line up to get in on the action.
Let's hope the next round goes better for the challenger…
Comment by Joy — July 9, 2007 @ 12:56 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Zoskie wrote:
I'm glad you joined the fray.
No. I disbelieve in certain kinds of soul because the evidence contradicts their existence. Other kinds, like the pure "observer-soul" I mentioned to Salim, are possible despite having no observable consequences.
Because it leads to the absurdities I pointed out regarding the soccer ball. Do you have a counterargument?
Because I don't believe they are.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Zoskie:
Hi, Zoskie! Our keiths is entirely serious, or at least has been playing the braggart role as if he's entirely serious. Maybe he's just a good showman and we'll all have a good laugh later over a round at the pub (winner's treat).
Meanwhile, odds are holding at 2-1 in favor of the immaterial souls, after only a single round. I'm hoping the bout goes at least three rounds, and my purse hopes it goes seven to thirteen. Pull up a stadium seat and order some munchies – this could go on for awhile.
How much can I put you down for? §;o)
Comment by Joy — July 9, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
If, besides assuming that souls exist, you also assume that a soul brings life to the body, then there is a logical argument for the soul's immortality. The argument is purely dielectical, using analogies, and requires an understanding of the platonic forms. Socrates makes the argument shortly before he dies, and it takes up around ten pages or so of the Phaedo dialog.
First he demonstrates that forms have their opposites. Morality/Immorality, Justice/Injustice, Even/Odd, Life/Death, and so on.
He then demonstrates that, in a relation, in which one thing is compared to another thing, the form which is opposite the one that a thing is using in the comparison, is never brought into that thing for that comparison.
As an example, Simmias is taller than Socrates, therefore Tallness is the form that Simmias is using in the comparison of height with respect to Socrates, and Shortness is the form that Socrates is using in the comparison of height with respect to Simmias. With respect to Simmias and Socrates, in regards to their height, Simmias will never use the Shortness form, and Socrates will never incorporate the Tallness form.
In the same breath, since Simmias is shorter than Phaedo, who is present, Simmias has Shortness with respect to Phaedo, but there is no conflict because the Shortness is in respect to a different comparison, i.e, Phaedo instead of Socrates.
So this is how he resolves the apparent contradiction of opposite forms residing in an object at the same time (an extremely important point that he had to make to ward off the knee jerk criticism.) [bear with me now, this is all very important in seeing the logic behind the soul's immortality]
There is another situation where there is an apparent contradiction, and Socrates handles that also, though I think poorly. The contradiction is this, if we say a thing is larger, then that must mean that it is coming from a previous situation of being smaller. If a thing is smaller, then it must have been larger previously. So things seem to be coming from their opposites, yet opposites can't coexist. What's going on here? Socrates says that this type of opposites coming from opposites is not the same thing as his earlier demonstration. That's true, but the difference is extremely subtle, and very easily missed, leading one to think that Socrates has made a logical error. He has not:
the key difference is that, in the earlier case, with the height of Simmias and Socrates being compared, one thing (Simmias) was being compared to another thing (Socrates) at the same time. In the other case, a thing is being compared to itself at different points in time. Think of a snowball rolling down a hill. It is getting bigger. But the comparison is with a thing to itself at different points in time. There is ever only one snowball rolling down the hill. While it's common to think that the snowball is getting larger, it is also true that, for any specific instant of time, the snowball cannot be larger than its present size. Socrates should have pointed this out more clearly, and then use a different form that more approaches the reality of a thing being compared to earlier versions of itself. For the snowball getting larger, it would a growth form, or increasement.
After establishing this, Socrates then demonstrates that if a thing brings with it a form, then the opposite of that form can not come along, even if that form is not the opposite of the thing. For example, the number 3 will never bring the Even along, not because Even is opposite to 3 but because 3 brings with it Odd, and Odd and Even cannot coexist in relation to the same thing, 3 in this case. He then provides some other examples of this idea. One-half and other fractions, for example, can not bring with it the Whole, because Fraction comes with these things and Whole is Fraction's opposite.
There's enough to make the argument now, but Socrates goes through one more discourse first. Life and Death are opposites, the one can never admit the other. Life is deathless, and Death is lifeless.
Now the conclusion is drawn. Since the soul brings Life to the body, its opposite, Death, cannot get into the soul. Meaning the soul is immortal. When the body dies, the soul leaves it and goes to the underworld.
That's the platonic argument for the immortality of the soul.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 9, 2007 @ 1:11 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Joy:
Yet here he is in the very first round doing exactly that! Worse, he's equating it with brain tissue and physical "attachments" to brain tissue!. A swing and a miss. The immaterial soul dances circles around the challenger, who just can't seem to land a punch.
You certainly do seem to be dancing in circles, so quickly that I cannot begin to discern exactly what you think these soul thingies are, or quite why anybody should care about them.
Joy, can you tell me some things you know for sure about souls. Throw me a bone here, because I've got nothing at all to work with!
Stunney says:
One of the amusing things about empiricism is that it makes the having of observable consequences a criterion of reality. So it's always funny when one comes across a 'bright' who both advances that criterion and the claim that a universe no part of which could ever be observed because it never contains any sentient being would nonetheless satisfy that criterion. The technical term for such a 'bright' is a 'flummoxed scream'.
I did not understand Stunney's quote above – he seems to be claiming that some people are claiming that observation is impossible – I'm not sure who he thinks has made that claim.
Perhaps Stunney is arguing that since it is the "soul" that does the observation then people who disbelieve in souls must therefore not believe that any kind of observation is possible. Of course, that would not be the case if people believed that observation does not require souls.
Thanks
Comment by salimfadhley — July 9, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
salim:
Oh, I'm just enjoying the heck out of the show, salim. No one has to care about the subject matter, they just have to be willing to suspend disbelief long enough to be entertained.
I don't know a damned thing 'for sure' about souls, and don't think such knowledge is required for the price of this ticket. Keith claims he knows everything about souls, so can defeat them ALL one by one via argument to matter and energy (physicality). It's been great fun to watch him swing his weighted gloves at that which is immaterial by definition (the dualist conception)… those gloves just pass right on through!
So far there's a lot of wind, but no contact. I'm hoping he'll tackle the vitalist soul next, but have a sinking feeling he's not done with the ghost yet. Whether he'll last long enough to get all the way to Atma the Shining (LOVE those pointy turbans and red satin sashes on his black-bearded guardians!) or Atman the Almighty (he's big, he's blue, he's got four faces and just look at all those hands!) is uncertain after round one.
There's an earlier post here that lists some of the soul-concepts among humanity's greater and lesser spiritual systems. Pick one that you like or look up any other not mentioned there. I'm taking bets.
Even though I personally suspect keiths will fall to the boring old resurrectionist soul, long before he gets to actual godheads. That's the one that dies with the body (ashes to ashes and all that), but is re-created some ages down the road when the dust gets a new lease on life through deific fiat (or universal deflation and time reversal, whichever comes first).
Comment by Joy — July 9, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Quoting salimfadhley:
The soul controls the body; it is possible, maybe even likely, that it does that using the brain as an intermediary. The brain, in other words, might be an antenna "tuned" to the soul.
The only way to be certain of something is by using faith (in other words, by choosing to be certain). That's how one can be as certain that souls exist as he is that brains exist; that's how I am certain that souls exist.
Why only using faith? Empiricism (and even logic) can only take you so far. Yes, the probability that (say) g = 9.81 m/s^2 grows with each experiment. Yes, the probability that E = mc^2 grows with each experiment. But according to science apologists, all such laws are tentative and always subject to change; in fact, they define science by the possibility of falsification. It then follows that the final step from "yes, given the number of experiments, it is enormously probable that E = mc^2" to "yes, I am absolutely certain that E = mc^2" can only be made through an act of volition. That is faith – defined not as "belief without evidence" but as "belief without absolute proof".
Comment by mdpopescu — July 9, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Joy wrote:
Joy,
Your bluster is making me smile. You remind me of the Iraqi Information Minister during the invasion:
I wrote:
Joy responded:
You're confused again, Joy. The dualist claims that the soul is immaterial. If so, I ask why cutting the corpus callosum — a purely material part of the physical brain — should result in two immaterial souls where there was previously one. It makes no sense.
Under a materialist paradigm, it makes perfect sense. Cut the communications channel between the hemispheres, and they function separately.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
That's a theological interpretation by you. Biblical accounts are fillied with references to doublemindedness even without the cited condition. Other versions of soul can also be used to refute your narrow interpretation. You should have left this topic to theologians.
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Hi Keiths
Isn't it a possibility that cutting the corpus callosum merely damages the interface between soul and body, producing undesired physical effects? You might be jumping to conclusions by saying that two souls are produced.
Comment by chunkdz — July 9, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
keiths:
Well I'm glad that my role as on-scene bookie for this circus amuses you, but I do resent the allusion to Bagdad Bob. That's a bit of a low blow (though I admit to having laughed at quite a lot of Bagdad Bob's rhetoric), entirely uncalled for. Somebody's got to report the blow-by-blows here, as well as record the bets. I figure I'm qualified, since I have no soul in this fight.
No, keith. The dualist would say that your surgical disruption of brain unity has caused an unfortunate but entirely predictable disruption of brain unity. Where is this immaterial soul you created? Show it to us. Come to think of it, go ahead and show us the first one while you're at it.
Oddly enough, it makes sense in pretty much anyone's paradigm. Amnesia makes you forget things, general anesthesia makes you unconscious, a blow to the head will raise a lump, a Black and Decker can sever your arm. What matter has to do with immaterial souls is not the least bit evident, and nothing evidential about immaterial souls has been 'proven' by your appeal to matter.
I think the vitalist version comes up in the next bracket. When can we expect that round to begin?
Comment by Joy — July 9, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
chunkdz asks:
Hi Chunk,
The problem with that idea is that we know that each hemisphere is functioning correctly on its own. Look at the details of the Sperry/Bogen experiment again:
1. The left hemisphere correctly sees the chicken foot.
2. The left hemisphere correctly sees the eight drawings.
3. The left hemisphere correctly thinks about the eight drawings and settles on the rooster head as the correct match.
4. The left hemisphere correctly points to the rooster head.
5. The right hemisphere correctly sees the winter scene.
6. The right hemisphere correctly sees the eight drawings.
7. The right hemisphere correctly thinks about the eight drawings and settles on the snow shovel as the correct match.
8. The right hemisphere correctly points to the snow shovel.
Each hemisphere is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. If there were a soul controlling the body, and if damage to the corpus callosum were causing signals to be garbled in either direction, then one or the other hemisphere would behave nonsensically and fail at the task.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Let me state for the record, that I do not doubt the results of this informal, quasi-anecdotal experiment you describe.
Now are you willing to state for the record that you do disbelieve all the anecdotes and informal experiments as well as all of the formal experiments that demonstrate that consciousness cannot be explained as simply the function of a brain?
Comment by mcromer — July 9, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
salimfahdley wrote:
What's 'understanding'?
In the Annals of Mis-Interpretation, this will be preserved as one of the most astounding cases.
Congratulations!
What's 'interpretation'?
That's probably because I don't think anyone has claimed that observation is impossible. How you invented such a notion, God alone knows. Actually, even God's probably stumped.
Perhaps your imagining things.
Yes, that's it. You're imagining things.
And what is 'arguing'? And 'imagining'?
What are 'people'? What is 'observation'? What's a 'belief'? Do 'people' have a capacity for 'understanding'? Are they things that can have other things 'seem' to be the case to them? Are they capable of 'arguing', and of 'imagining' things?
What is 'thanking'?
Do you think that there is any possibility of there being a thing that is in this universe but which has never and will never have any empirical consequences whatsoever? If your answer is yes, what's the difference between that thing existing and it not existing? If your answer is no, what's the difference between that impossible thing and a universe which never has any empirical consequences whatsoever?
Oh, and what's 'thinking' and 'answering'? And, for that matter, 'asking'?
What, if anything, is it like to be 'you'?
What is a 'word'? Is it the same thing as a 'parola' and a 'parole' and a 'wort'?
Let's say you are six feet tall and weigh 200 pounds and believe that epiphenomenalism is false and that 5+1=51 and that tomorrow more than 93 of your ancestors will be reincarnated as bright orange unicorns or bluish centaurs in a parallel universe, and you would love to be a time-traveling psychotic computer program that designs completely undetectable entities. But the thing that is you is suddenly, by a freak accident of nature, physically replicated in Tasmania, and you happen to drop dead.
Your accidental replica has no ancestors and had never read anything about epiphenomenalism, time travel, computer programs or anything else. Can your physical replica have beliefs about such things, given its complete lack of any relevant causal history?
Comment by stunney — July 9, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Keiths, you are aware that a biblical focus on soul centers around moral judgements of human behavoir and not the efficiency of motor functions. The biblical God is acutely concerned with the former and not nearly so much with the latter.
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Keiths
Really? Why do you hold this opinion about how a soul operates?
For that matter, why do you think that severing the CC "garbles" signals? I rather suspect that it pretty much stops them. In that case, we see exactly what we'd expect to see if a soul were interfacing through a suddenly split brain – two sides of a brain that act as if they are not communicating with one another.
I look at your experimental evidence as perfectly compatible with the existence of a soul. That is unless you are claiming that a soul would never do what you describe, in which case I ask again, why do you hold this opinion about how a soul operates?
Comment by chunkdz — July 9, 2007 @ 6:05 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Dualism refers to the concept of an incorporeal aspect of personhood which bears the faculties of intelligence and wisdom. Rene Descartes became the first dualist to clearly identify these qualities with mind, and distinguish this mind from the brain. Thus elucidating the mind-body problem as it exists in philosophy today.
There are three kinds of mind-body dualism. Substance dualism maintains that mind and matter are two fundamentally distinct kinds of substance. The concept of "immaterial" as applied to the soul in theological applications of this form of dualism would assert that the soul is not composed of matter, energy or any combination of matter and energy as we know them in the physical world.
Property dualism would assert that the ontological distinction between mind and body is to be found in the qualitative properties of mind as opposed to the matter comprising the brain. Here one would place the emergentist view of mind. Predicate dualism is the view of most non-reductive physicalists, who maintain that the semantics of description for attributes of mind cannot be reduced to the descriptives used for physical structures or processes. Because the predicates are not interchangeable, we must consider the duality to be inherent to the nature of the phenomena in question.
Keiths has not slain the immaterial soul by physically severing the material brain's unitary operations. He has handicapped the person who owns the brain, but has not handicapped the qualitative operations of the soul (as identified above). If the immaterial soul is the seat of intelligence and wisdom, he has failed rather miserably.
In his response to chunk, keiths explains that each hemisphere correctly perceives the stimulus and correctly responds to the questions. That the researchers have deliberately confused the person by asking one side what the other side saw (I call that mocking the afflicted) and the person couldn't correctly answer, doesn't establish that the person is now stupid (where once he was intelligent). Intelligence appears to be working just fine. The experiment does not measure wisdom, but my guess would be that if we had a way to measure wisdom, it would be as present as the intelligence.
Face it, keith. You lost that round. Please get on with the next version of soul you've promised to slay.
Comment by Joy — July 9, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
mcromer wrote:
Hi Matthew,
I was wondering when you would weigh in on this thread.
The "informal, quasi-anecdotal" experiments you disparage have been replicated many times by different researchers on different split-brain patients. There is no dispute in the scientific community over the veracity of the findings.
I am not aware of any research, of the same quality and reliability as the split-brain research, that demonstrates that the brain is not the seat of consciousness or that an immaterial soul exists.
Scientists have long demonstrated a willingness to accept strange and counterintuitive findings, as long as the evidence is there. Think of wave-particle duality, entanglement, the relativity of time, and the constant speed of light, regardless of the speed of source and receiver.
If the evidence is forthcoming, scientists will come around to your view. For now, the evidence weighs heavily in the other direction.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
mdpopescu wrote:
The obvious danger is that you can choose to be certain of something that is not true.
But why make the leap to a claim of certainty, when certainty is unjustified?
In this case, belief in the kind of immaterial soul we've been describing is not merely "belief without evidence" or "belief without absolute proof" — it's belief against the evidence.
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Bradford,
This is not about the "efficiency of motor functions", no matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise. We are talking about two hemispheres, each of which perceives, thinks, emotes and wills separately from the other. It can't be explained away as simple motor dysfunction, not even if you close your eyes and wish real hard.
And if morality is your concern, then tell us this: Should we praise or blame the soul of the man who attacked his wife with one arm while protecting her with the other? Is he guilty or innocent?
Comment by keiths — July 9, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Keiths:
But it is a physical dysfunction and if it is Larry or Will or Reggie or whomever the concern of the Judeo-Christian God is his moral state of affairs. That's how his soul would be judged.
It is not a matter of my concern. Morality is a dominant biblical theme.
Pretty dramatic stuff. Did you get this from a research study?
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
keiths:
I agree that this appears to damage my view of soul = will = self = mind. Other people's concept might not be similarly affected, as some comments seem to suggest. (I do believe Bradford tries to avoid the problem instead of solving it, as keiths correctly points out – if there are two wills in the experiment, is the man guilty or innocent?)
As for
True, but irrelevant; the original question was about certainty and not truth, while this
is even worse, bringing motivations into the picture. Why do people do anything? Because they choose to, obviously.
So, to restate where I am right now: I believe that the mind (aka soul, aka spirit) is immaterial and controls the body through the brain. The experiments mentioned by keiths suggest that this view is incorrect, given that they strongly point to two independent volitions and two thinking processes in the same person. (I could work around the volition issue by saying that it's strongly influenced by emotions, and I agreed that emotions belong to the brain, but I'm stumped by the thinking process problem).
Hmm. Have to think about it… grin.
Comment by mdpopescu — July 9, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Keiths:
Keiths, how are you separating consciousness from a soul and who told you a soul could not "sit" with the brain?
One more comment for those who might read this and wonder what this has to do with ID etc. For those new to this forum or not very familiar, Keiths is an opponent of ID and an avowed atheist. There would be nothing extraordinary about either except that in his case he is determined to make a scientific case against the existence of souls.
What is remarkable however is the silence of ID critics who ruminate about the threat of a looming theocracy, the ID Trojan Horse and more. Are you all a little embarrassed by this overt attempt to use science as a club against religion or are you secretly applauding but at a safe distance?
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 7:22 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Re-quoting keiths:
I just thought of another possible solution, though I agree that it sounds more like an excuse for preserving my position rather than a plausible argument: the soul might only function as a high-level process, a "4GL specify what not how" to use a programming analogy. That is, the soul directs the brain "point to the correct image"; given that there are two brains attuned to it, each of them solves the problem independently.
However, this leaves too much thinking in the brain. I haven't yet decided whether this is an insurmountable problem or not… I can see pros and cons.
Comment by mdpopescu — July 9, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt- wow, that is impressive evidence relevant to the dominant biblical theme.:roll: In case you or Keiths missed it, right and wrong is a primary scriptural concern and central to a theological view of a soul. Evidence bearing on moral or ethical behavoir is notably lacking from Keith's mantra. Shirt buttoning does not cut it.
Where is a thorough account of the man's life dealing with non-cherry picked items?
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Bradford:
As a non-American, I find this weird. Why do you care? Who cares that Dawkins is a rabid atheist, or that some people want to "use science as a club against religion" This is science worshiping. Your children's education is your responsibility no matter what… and you can do very little about other people's children. (Would you care if someone wanted to use astrology or tarot reading as a club against religion?)
Here's an example of what I mean: according to a post on a list I'm subscribed to, the EU is considering a law that would forbid speaking against the TOE in public schools. (I might have some details wrong, but as I said, I really don't care.) My country is a part of EU… and we have mandatory religious icons in every class room. (We have an official state church.) I have a strong dislike of priests and organized religion, and as a protestant I have a strong dislike of religious icons. But I really don't care that they have them in the classroom, and I don't care that at the same time the EU wants to pass a law saying they're all stupid. Yea, if I were still a student I'd make fun of those icons all the time, and if they demand that my daughter starts paying attention to them I'll take measures… but until then, as Heinlein said, it makes some people happy and harms nobody, so what's the problem?
Comment by mdpopescu — July 9, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Marcel:
Marcel, do you see the experimental problems with this? You say the soul might only function… These speculations are linked to millions more that differ from yours. Other than wasting valuable time and resouces what does the empirical soul angle have to offer?
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
It's about being honest. ID critics pretend on the one hand to be alarmed by an alleged attempt to link science to religion. The real concern of many of them is not this at all. They don't mind a linkage as long as it is headed in one direction i.e. misusing science to advance their own metaphysical ends.
Comment by Bradford — July 9, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Just out of curiosity who has claimed that the soul controls the body?
If this is the lynchpin of your argument why go to all the trouble bringing up the "single slit double brain" study? Just ask anyone who claims such foolishness to control their bodily fuctions and be done with it. Or to control the onslaught of cancer or disease or control their body in a fashion that they regenerate their own cells so that they would never die.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — July 9, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Typical Keith generalisation, how science supposedly supports his atheism. I notice how you handwave any contradictory evidence away, by basically pronouncing 'my science is bigger than yours'. Pah, ludicrous. You're not even interested in NDE or OBE research. Why? Because you already 'know' the answer.
Furthermore, you have not provided empirical evidence that "split-brain patients" also experience two distinct personalities. So far the quotes I've seen suggest these actions are not consciously willed, they just, well, happen. Two 'wills' implies two distinct personalities, where's the evidence for that? All I see is that that split brain patients may experience and apparently manifest unconscious and contradictory physical actions. Willingly buttoning up a shirt while unbuttoning it again is not evidence of a second consciousness inside a person's body. By that standard, unconscious behavior, even unconscious breathing would be such evidence! Ridiculous. As I said before, in KeithWorld, even antidepressives are evidence for his atheism since emotional behavior can be controled by drugs and thus surely consciousness too must be a material emergent propery.
Really Keiths, if this kind of evidence negates the idea that consciousness is something other than just a mere manifestation of matter entirely, don't you think your 'evidence' would be so explicit that hardly anyone could deny it? I don't think you're there yet, not even close, your protestations notwithstanding.
Comment by Jean — July 9, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
stunney:
This seems ludicrously wrong to me. Animals quite obviously have internal states that represent things in the outside world, and that's all intentionality is. If you think your dog doesn't have a representation of you, or your cat doesn't have a mental representation of the neighborhood geography, think again.
What animals chiefly lack is language in the human sense, and the mental abilities that go along with it, but that's a very different thing than intentionality.
Comment by mtraven — July 9, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
How many is "many replications" 2? 3? There was no disparagement in my post. I stated very clearly that I do not doubt the findings of those studies. Anecdotal merely means that the sample size is very small and there have been very few replications. I bring this up only to contrast that with the well controlled and massively replicated studies I cite that you reject in toto, because the results of them differ from your faith-based materialism.
But then again you wouldn't be familiar with that evidence, would you, since you refuse to read it. Just like many scientists. . .
Yes, when findings are compatible with a deeply engrained belief system they tend to be accepted without dispute. Whereas findings that challenge existing beliefs tend to be ignored or "explained away".
Comment by mcromer — July 9, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
keiths,
Firstly, I equate soul with consciousness.
Now, consider this: vision and hearing are radically different conscious experiences. They are nothing alike whatsoever. Yet when you experience sound and sight you do not have two consciousnesses, but only one. Split the brain hemispheres and consciousness experiences two brains and does it's best at directing it's will to both, independently and simultaneously.
When split brain subjects are artificially "split", they have dual experiences. However, when the artificial "split" wears off. They explain the experience as consciousness that is genuinely unified. They remember that it was dual, yet they remember it as a single consciousness, and know that it was the "single them" having a wierd "dual them" experience. The experience is so odd that it is difficult to put into words, and people who have taken hallucinigenics have reported similar experiences.
Split brain experiences do not prove dualism is false. They merely shows by extension what we already know about consciousness with regards to the simultaneous experience of five senses.
One thing is certain, consciousness has not been "explained." Nobody can get from material to what it is we actually experience as instances of consciousness. There's a leap there. And of course, it is damn fascinating to be an instance of it.
Comment by kornbelt888 — July 9, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
July 9th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Various fragments of stunney:
I agree, but take it as a mark against software/hardware dualism rather than an argument for spirits.
Depends what you mean by "reducible". But you are arguing against a phantom. There aren't any materialists who don't recognize the existence of information and higher-order patterns. The difference between naturalists and you is that the former belief that nature and natural laws are enough to support the generation and use of information and patterns, while you think there has to be some sort of outside intervention.
I am not predisposed to disagree with that, although I'm not sure exactly what it means. But it seems to work against your own position, which is that there is this stuff called mere matter which can't possibly live, evolve, and think, without supernatural intervention.
It is a naturalist theory of mind, in that it presumes you can build a mind using all-natural ingredients, no supernatural souls required.
I'm not saying that it's all 'really hardware', that is not at all the point I was trying to make.
I would say that software/hardware dualism is in a metaphorical relation to mind/brain dualism. As such, since we are by nature folk-dualists, it gives us some tools for understanding how its possible for material systems to do things like symbol manipulation. However, if you want to get rid of mind/body dualism, it turns out that standard models of computation seem to undo it while sneaking the same old bad ideas back in. The bad idea is the concept of mind as some kind of transcendental spirit that is somehow independent of material existence.
For what it's worth, the two people I knew who dug deepest into this issue from within AI both ended up outside the field — one became sociologist, the other got wealthy from a startup and is now devoting himself to practicing Buddhism — which has a similarly skeptical take on the transcendental view of mind.
Comment by mtraven — July 9, 2007 @ 10:59 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Keith,
You seem to be convinced that the soul is in the driver's seat to such an extent that the brain really doesn't matter at all. You expect the soul, if it exists, to carry on as though the body were incidental, rather than pivotal, to bodily existence. So despite a damaged brain, the soul should carry on with nary a hitch. Why have a brain at all then?
I really think that we are composite beings, hence the confusion. You seem to think that the soul should be in control. It should be strong. But it is weak, at least while constrained within the body, and the components are all in the fray.
I tend to be a bit of an animist, so I am intrigued by the Platonic argument. It also surprises me that many people equate the intellect with the soul, and more or less dismiss the feelings. I am wondering if this is a gender bias? I tend to think of the emotion side as closer to the definition of soul, because intellect without emotion is a ship without a rudder. Just a computing device. (Yet emotion without intellect is almost unconscious). Of course, humans do sense that we are in a unique category on this planet because of our intellect, which does indeed impart to our being that which defines us. But that doesn't make it the soul itself.
Also, some say there is both soul and spirit, an idea which may have merit. The spirit is the impersonal, animating force, the soul is the moral, experiencing, personal aspect. I tend to think that what is going on here isn't so much that we are souls, as that we are becoming-souls, souls in the making. Through reincarnation, the spirit is dipped again and again into the world of experience, precisely so as to unite the personal with the impersonal, creating a real being. We are in the process of becoming real. Joy's presentation of the Tibetan division of gross mind, subtle mind, and very subtle mind fits in well here.
Stunney,
This is precisely why I don't believe in the 'immaterial.'
Bradford,
I think you missed Keiths' question about the moral question of right and wrong in the man who simultaneously expressed a desire to attack and protect his wife.
But we really need more information. That a normal man might have a conflicting desire to hit and refrain from hitting his wife is nothing new. Did he ever hit her before his operation? If he did not, this would indicate that the restraining force had been disabled.
Says Jean,
Indeed, if there were really two personalities, then how does the split-brain person process the request of the experimenters, which are presumably spoken in the normal fashion?
mtraven,
Sigh. But what if there are no non-natural ingredients, just more subtle energies than we have yet discovered? Just like the electromagnetic spectrum had not been discovered in 1500? What if bodily life requires a soul energy, and that soul is no more supernatural than an ultraviolet ray?
Comment by onething — July 10, 2007 @ 2:08 am
July 10th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Keith,
I'd really like to hear you address my other comments. I think your interpretation of ES is way off, but I'm allowing for your metaphysical blinders now
Hint: A 'world picture' is unique to what? Beuller? Anyone?
Comment by todd — July 10, 2007 @ 2:09 am
July 10th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Bradford:
I do not disagree, but I thought we were doing philosophy here
It's not my resources that get wasted by these speculations. Furthermore, I don't think that scientists speculating about the soul is a bad idea – sure, most of them will try to "demonstrate" that it doesn't exist, or that it's only a material thing, or an emergent property of the brain – whatever. But after this has happened for a while, it becomes a lot more difficult to deny that other people's speculations about the soul are not scientific.
Basically, I have a problem with NOMA. I think the split is artificial, that it's absurd to say "this is God's domain, this is the scientific domain". I believe that by agreeing to this split we let the insane run the asylum for too long. Sure, some people will cry "theocracy". It's not that big of a problem either – as I said, by Dawkins' standards I live in one. The education system is indistinguishable from the US or UK one, except that we have less of a drug problem
Oh, ok…. I don't expect scientists or their defenders to be honest; there's no incentive. I have a general problem with priests, and scientists are a sub-class of that category.
kornbelt888:
Interesting point; I assumed that keiths' story was the whole story. Good comparison with the drugged state, too.
Comment by mdpopescu — July 10, 2007 @ 2:47 am
July 10th, 2007 at 3:35 am
mtraven wrote:
Interesting, 'cos your deeming it ludicrously wrong seems ludicrously wrong to me.
Intentionality, to me at any rate, is a property of beliefs and other mental states possessing propositional content. I could be wrong, but I would be thoroughly astounded if it turned out that dogs, chimpanzees, or any other non-human animal on the planet Earth had any mental relation to propositional contents, or had any mental states that could be true/false, rational/irrational, valid/invalid, right/wrong, etc.
Thermometers, gas gauges, quality control technologies, stock market ticker tapes, and maps have 'internal' states that we take to represent things outside of themselves. But they have no intentional states other than by virtue of human intentions. See also electrons and protons. As for animals, no tiger has ever thought, "Oh wow, look at that young zebra by the river bank. I bet it would taste just ggggrrrreaaatt!" Tigers don't have thoughts, beliefs, or intentions. They do have sentience and instincts. But see also, cockroaches. There is no internal state going on in either type of creature that's a candidate for a truth-value. There's nothing intentional about what they do or experience. If there were, they'd be persons. To think, is to think of something as falling under or satisfying some concept. Tigers have no concepts any more than cockroaches do.
Thinking is what they can't do. You're conflating consciousness and thought, qualia and intentionality. These are quite distinct. My computer has (derivative, because designed) representations of thoughts, but no qualia. It has (derivative) intentionality, but no consciousness. Non-human animals have qualia, but no thoughts. They have consciousness, but no (literal, non-derivative) intentional contents.
There is a possibility that non-human animals have various kinds of non-conceptual mental content, but the differences from conceptual content are probably so great as to be less than usefully included together under a single overarching sense of the term 'content'.
Jocular interlude: when I was an undergraduate at the University of London, one of my philosophy professors gave a small group seminar on the topic of whether language was necessary for thought (he thought so), and there ensued a lively discussion on whether non-human animals could literally think. At the very end, he concluded by suggesting that if we wanted to explore the issue further, we should "get a hold of, Mary Midgley, Man and Beast"; at which one wag retorted: "Yes. But what's the name of her book?". The professor literally fell off his chair and the room was in an uproar for a good couple of minutes. Some years later I saw Ms. Midgley on BBC when, along with Oliver Sachs and Stephen Jay Gould, she 'interviewed' Richard Dawkins (who was much less well known then than he is now). I shall never forget the look on Midgley's face when she saw how incredibly ignorant Dawkins was about a couple of intro level issues in philosophy of science, She was literally horrified, and her facial expression was priceless. Sachs and Gould tried to be nice 'n' all to the bold Dick, but it was clear that they too thought he was an embarrassing ignoramus. That was the first time I encountered Dawkins, and I'll always remember how completely out of his depth he was.
A mere trifle.
No, it's not. A fundamental property of intentional representational states is that they're capable (either directly or indirectly) of having truth-values. This is very much to do with language, propositions, and propositional attitudes, including central ones of belief and desire. Fido has no belief or hope or desire that his owner Samantha Duggyluvver will open a can of nutritious dog-food no later than 8pm today, because Fido has no concepts and knows no propositions. Fido may have appetite-related qualia. But qualia and intentional content are not the same thing.
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 3:35 am
July 10th, 2007 at 3:54 am
From your favorite reference:
So if Fido has a neuron that goes off when he deduces that he's about to be fed, that's an intentional state.
So pretty much any animal with two neurons to rub together can be said to have intentionality. But even if you want to redefine intentionality to be something more, you are still probably wrong. Certain primates are known to engage in deliberate deception and thus almost certainly have the ability to manipulate both true and false propositions, and keep track of other animal's knowledge of those propositions,
Comment by mtraven — July 10, 2007 @ 3:54 am
July 10th, 2007 at 4:06 am
onething wrote:
But, as Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, many later British Idealists, phenomenalists, sense-data theorists such as Russell, logical positivists such as Ayer, and many others have held, it's the conception of a 'material' world completely devoid of sentient or other experiencing beings which is what is unintelligible, and hence incapable of being rationally affirmed as real.
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 4:06 am
July 10th, 2007 at 4:17 am
mtraven wrote:
Fido doesn't deduce anything. Neither do neurons.
Actually, as a fan of Dennett, you should know this. We adopt an 'intentional stance', he says, not merely about dogs, but about humans too. IOW, Dennett, like all good and true and consistent materialists, is not an intentional realist. Intentional states are not things he's prepared ultimately to quantify over. He's an intentional irrealist. That is, in the world as it really is in itself, there are no such things as irreducibly intentional states. Dennett et al adopt the language of intentionality merely as an instrumentalist tool, not as a correct scientific picture of the world (in their opinion).
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 4:17 am
July 10th, 2007 at 4:34 am
By the way, one of Danny Dennett's colleagues at Tufts is Stephen White, author of the technically demanding but well regarded and worthwhile paper:
WHY THE PROPERTY DUALISM ARGUMENT WON'T GO AWAY
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 4:34 am
July 10th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Stunney, is this one of those Socratic monologues, where by asking a series of apparently pointless questions, some great truth is suddenly revealed? If I remember correctly, my original point was that I had difficulty understanding the line of your argument. This one is even harder to understand:
I think that's a false dichotomy. If we have an object that is utterly undetectable and does not interact with the material universe in any way then it makes no difference to me whether this object exists. Can you explain why I should care abut a class of undetectable, apparently non-existent objects?
Why should anybody care what the difference between this hypothetical apparently non-existent object and any other hypothetical object which may or may not exist? I just do not see the point?
I do not see how this gets us any closer to an answer, or even a cogent argument. I could interrupt any discussion by asking for definitions of random words too, but I shall not.
Again, all of the above seems to be a load of philosophical posturing and nonsense. Why is it that all debates with you seem to end up like this. I was hoping for some experimental evidence that souls exist, or even a basic definition of what a soul might be, instead I get an absurd story about cloning and time-travel.
Thanks!
Comment by salimfadhley — July 10, 2007 @ 5:15 am
July 10th, 2007 at 8:02 am
I'm not missing the moral aspect of this. As you pointed out conflicting thinking and even contradictory behavoir is not uncommon. What I think others are missing is the centrality of moral behavoir to the theological significance of a soul. I come from a Judeo-Christian perspective on this and that kind of thinking is the target of Keiths and others even if unacknowledged by them. There are many non-Judeo-Christian conceptions of soul which just muddle any attempts to make clear empirical statements about the matter.
Comment by Bradford — July 10, 2007 @ 8:02 am
July 10th, 2007 at 11:36 am
[sigh!] This show has become so boring the audience went back to the midway.
Keiths offered some of the more dramatic manifestations that occurred in early split-brain patients (they no longer sever all connections in the CC, as this was found to be unnecessary in all but the most stubborn cases of uncontrollable epilepsy), and these are reported all over the web by all sorts of people who interpret these manifestations to support whatever point they're trying to make. As keiths has done here.
So for anyone genuinely interested in the subject, here are a couple of academic overviews, from a professors at Dartmouth and the University of Indiana…
Splitting the Human Brain
The Split Brain Revisited
Both pages mention that while the early subjects have contributed much to our knowledge of what particular faculties each hemisphere excels at (the right hemisphere, for instance, is creative, emotional and mute), they also note that following the surgery patients were capable of maintaining a regular life, and that they learn very quickly how to keep both hemispheres in communication. Dr. Pietsch from Indiana writes about the possible origin of the rare and bizarre behaviors keiths thinks are so telling:
Keiths' self-serving interpretation ignores what would be the MOST important question that might be asked by someone who believes an immaterial soul inhabits the brain (brain being the organ of consciousness) and uses it as means of expression and/or experience during life. IOW, soul-believers who equate the qualities of soul with some or all of the qualities of consciousness…
Do split-brain patients experience a loss of personal identity and self-awareness?
No matter how interesting the different faculties and modular specialties of each brain hemisphere may be for the researcher who shows different pictures to different eyes, in real life the patient is seeing the same thing with both eyes (though I don't see where researchers tested depth perception in split-brain patients to find out if vision is integrated), and in most cases does get around the damage to integrate the processing from one side with the other if called upon to respond.
If each eye were separately shown a card that read: "Who are you?", both hemispheres would respond appropriately. Even if the right were still mute and illiterate (writing does not appear to be linked to language comprehension or reading ability), it could affirmatively pick out his own name or photograph.
Thus identity remains intact, and neither side believes itself to be the sole self or someone else. Thus disabling the normal communications between the hemispheres does not isolate or abandon the person's sense of self. The Kabbalist's 'middle soul' or ruach is covered here, as are all other religious conceptions that equate soul to psyche/ego or self-awareness. Which is not to say that psyche/ego and self-awareness can't be disabled by other types of brain injury or disease, because we know they can be. I'm just pointing out keiths' interpretations here for his purpose of slaying immaterial souls is entirely vacuous. As it's always been.
Now that the thread is over 150 posts, I won't be able to maintain the blow-by-blow. If keiths ever gets around to any more soul-slaying, someone else can call the dance. Please do let me know if Atman or the Sikh Guardians ever show up. Watching keiths attempt pitiful battle with godheads – who will probably just squish him like a bug – would be worth the price of admission… §;o)
Comment by Joy — July 10, 2007 @ 11:36 am
July 10th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Joy, those reports you cited are interesting:
The evolution of the Human Bran is a subject of great fascination to me. I find it wonderful that even obscure concepts in brain science are best understood in an evolutionary framework. I only wish ID proponents could offer such explanatory power to back up their theories.
I'm still not any closer to understanding this soul business – last time I asked somebody what it all meant Stunney asked me to define a bunch of words and then started lecturing me about aliens and time-travel. I guess that was his way of saying that I must be silly for not knowing what a soul or why they must exist.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 10, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
salimfadhley:
There are many websites that delve into the varying beliefs relevant to souls. The point of the thread is it is not a scientific matter.
Comment by Bradford — July 10, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Bradford, sorry I misunderstood the gist of this conversation. I had assumed (perhaps wrongly) that somebody here was alleging that souls were things that objectively exist, and not an imaginary abstract concept rendered all but irrelevant by scientific progress.
Can somebody explain to me what Stunney was trying to get at with his cryptic questions?
Thanks
Comment by salimfadhley — July 10, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
what you quoted:
your observation about this quote:
Explanatory power? Whew, man, you've been drinking some serious koolaid. Since when do faith-like assertions take on the guise of powerful scientific explanations?
To knee-jerk reaction #1: So ID is science? No, I would say that ID is a concept (and thus immaterial
), but it can guide the work of science. It should not be confused as science, however.
To knee-jerk reaction #2: I have the weight of all of the respected opinions of scientific authority on my side, including Richard Dawkins. Intellectually, I would say that you are the respected opinions of scientific authority. They have defined you, and you have accepted on authority their interpretations of what you are. You are indistinguishable from the consensus of Authority. Feel free to take this as a compliment.
As far as your soul search goes, yes, you've got quite a stumper on your hands. It can be a confusing search even for those who are inclined to believe in them and want to discover what they are. One thing most people agree on concerning them, is that they are immaterial. That pretty much takes you out of the game.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 10, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
To knee-jerk reaction #1: So ID is science? No, I would say that ID is a concept (and thus immaterial
), but it can guide the work of science. It should not be confused as science, however.
It definitely is a concept, but one that has never guided science nor has the potential to ever guide anything but the kookiest fringe-science (e.g. the sort of thing that William Brookfield or Kazmer Ujvarosy pretend to do.
From what I can tell, ID has no predictive power at all; I cannot think of one discovery that came about as a result of of studying ID, whereas Evolution as the uniting concept behind modern Biology explains many things from how weeds and bacteria acquire resistance to why winged dragons do not exist.
Sure, ID proponents claim that their pet theory makes a number of predictions (e.g. not all non-coding DNA is 'junk'), however these sort of predictions had been predicted decades earlier by non IDers.
As far as your soul search goes, yes, you've got quite a stumper on your hands. It can be a confusing search even for those who are inclined to believe in them and want to discover what they are. One thing most people agree on concerning them, is that they are immaterial. That pretty much takes you out of the game.
I believe that imaginary things have a kind of existence…
For example if you asked me if Sherlock Holmes exists I would answer yes: He is a fictional character in a series of books available in almost any language all over the world. That's a kind of existence isn't it? If Sherlock Holmes does not exist, then why are there so many books about him?
If we all stopped to think about Sherlock Holmes then we might imagine a detective who smokes a pipe, and wears a deer-stalker cap. The fact that we can all imagine Sherlock in an approximately similar kind of way, is surely significant. Of course, we understand that no flesh and blood Sherlock ever lived, the character is entirely imaginary – but surely that is more than nothing.
I would personally put souls, gods, angels, ghosts and pixies in this category of imagined things. These are not non-existent things, but things that have only ever been shown to exist within our collective imagination.
Even if I do not believe a soul exists in any objective sense, if we can agree on what properties this soul might have, we might subject it to thought-experiment, because as a figment of our imagination that is the only kind of light we will ever be able to shine upon the topic.
Comment by salimfadhley — July 10, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Sez you. That is what is under debate, so just stating your belief doesn't advance the argument any.
That is a misinterpretation of Dennett. The fact that we take different stances towards system says nothing about which stance gives you real concepts vs non-real concepts.
Comment by mtraven — July 10, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
salim:
I also am fascinated with the brain, as well as with the several (always contradictory) evolutionary "explanations" for this or that function or ability. My evolutionary "explanations" are usually quite different and way more reasonable (to me), but then again, I've never claimed my brain is just like anyone else's!
I am probably more fascinated with the anomalous than with the 'normal'. The cog-sci guys so often seem to want to pretend a brain is a brain is a brain, when in reality each is uniquely tailored to serve the needs of the consciousness that expresses through it. Or if not tailored, at least creatively cross-wired – sometimes by sheer will – to get around forms that would stand in the way of its expression.
Until and unless science is willing to accept the proposition that there is a unique conscious identity that expresses itself through the material organ of consciousness – uses it for its own purposes during embodied life in the world rather than being caused by it as an aftereffect – then ID isn't going to be allowed to offer any explanations in a scientific venue that you'd accept as reasonable to consider or analyze.
As long as a critic like Raevmo is uncritically allowed to assert that he can magically poof a physical copy of my brain into existence that wouldn't know it's not me, what's the point? I've never asserted magical poofs, and I have no problem with evolution. This matters not a whit to those whose sole purpose on this forum is to belittle all efforts at understanding.
Stunney has his own interests and reasons for being here, as do we all. I generally ignore the interminable philoso-logic exegeses, mostly because they bore me to tears. If that were my interest, I'd probably find them interesting. To each his/her own, I always say! §;o)
I've said I have no soul in keiths' WWF grudge match. Though I did put myself down for 10-1 on the vitalist version and 100-1 for Atman and the Sikh Guards. I figure those odds were fair based on the so-disappointing first round. I can see keiths isn't going to go any further on his boastful talk-talk – TKO after one. At least Mohammed Ali could deliver the goods when the talking was done.
Everyone who's got a conception of soul defines it slightly differently. And even though this religion or that one have formalized the conceptions into dogma, most of the individual believers still harbor their own ideas just like they harbor their own relationships with the godheads of note. Religions are formal socio-political systems that operate here in the real world, not in any heavens or hells that may or may not exist elsewhere. They are socializing and civilizing forces, have traditionally dispensed education, ethical admonitions, moral imperatives and occasionally forgiveness or abject condemnation.
Those roles have been secularized and greatly weakened in the modern world, which we could argue the relative merits of all day long. Given the amount of evil religions have fomented in the world as cultures and civilizations clashed, it's objectively a good thing to diminish their power if the world is to become small (as our world today is small). But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a good idea either.
Atheism and its various philosophical underpinnings cannot offer any real or socially useful replacements for the ethical and moral imperatives of faith. Nor do its angry, sociopathic radicals offer anything of value to the experience of conscious life in the physical world, per the concerns of the individual about love, sorrow, suffering, belonging, good and evil, great commitments, and the specter of death that awaits us all. And science in the modern world is more often the agent of mass death and destruction (or constant threat thereof) than religion ever was. Scientism isn't any sort of good answer either.
In my opinion. I know keiths and Raevmo and mtraven and all the rest of the 'New Atheist' evangelists would disagree. In this, the demographics are obviously on my side. For whatever that's worth.
Comment by Joy — July 10, 2007 @ 2:57 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
salimfahdley wrote:
Yes. The great truth in this case being that your post was staggeringly idiotic, and so I decided to take the mickey.:lol:
At the same time, however, I chose those questions for a reason. You had asked, in a skeptical tone, about evidence for a soul. I used these questions:
to suggest that 'having a soul' is constituted inter alia by having the capacity to engage in these sorts of activity. So I was killing two birds with one stone: ridiculing you for the mindboggling stupidity of your thinking that I had ever suggested that anyone had asserted that observation is impossible, but doing so in a way that indicated an answer to the question of what the word 'soul' means to me.
That's possibly because you're not very bright. I formed this impression of you a while back. See here and here for why.
There may or may not be intelligent blue aliens in Andromeda, and either way it makes no difference to me. But that doesn't mean that there is no difference between there being some blue aliens in Andromeda and there not being any blue aliens in Andromeda. That's a dichotomy, but there's nothing false about it. Likewise, the putative possibility of the real existence of something which forever has no empirical consequences whatsoever and its putative impossibility is a dichotomy, but it's not a false one. Dummett and I think such a thing is impossible. And someone had disagreed, at which point I made the observation that this was an ironic position to take for anyone who objects to the real existence of God and other immaterial minds on the grounds that such minds (or 'souls') have, allegedly, no empirical consequences. You then displayed a spectacular level of misunderstanding of all this background discussion when you entered the debate with your ludicrous suggestion that I had accused others of saying that observation is impossible, when what I had been actually arguing was that what's impossible is for something to exist in reality which is forever devoid of any possibility of detection because of a forever observerless state of affairs.
Can you explain why you think that I think you should care about them, given that I'm the one claiming that such objects cannot exist? Try and follow the argument before posting about it, ok?:roll:
Yeah, I know you don't. The point is that the consistent application of empirical criteria imply a constitutive role for mind in determining what can truly count as real. So, given the argument proferred by the emeritus Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, foremost authority in the world on Frege, inventor of the massively influential contemporary definition of the realism/antirealism distinction for use in analyzing the The Logical Basis of Metaphysics as well as many other important contributions to contemporary debates—given his arguments for such a constitutive role for mind (i.e. for the subjects of sentience, consciousness, experience, and understanding), perhaps you need to re-think your materialist skepticism about 'souls'.
It gets us closer to an answer by forcing us to think about the meaning of the question. Which is something you badly need to do, believe me.
Because people like you always end up trying to smuggle their ill-thought out materialist metaphysics into contemporary cultural presuppositions while disguising it as 'doing science'. I simply expose that and call it bullsh*t. You don't have to like it.
As for the significance of the question, it's extremely relevant to the idea of an unintended evolutionary biological history being responsible for our cognitive capacities and intentional abilities. It's so relevant a question that it's actually famous.
Think about what a concept is, and then see if you might be able to understand what 'souls' do. Hint: it may have something to do with—guess what— having a capacity for understanding concepts.:roll: And then, when you've figured that one out, you can maybe figure out an answer to this question: how does our evolutionary history explain: a) concepts in general; b) the concept of time-travel in particular? (Hint: we seem to be the only species that has both.)
You're welcome.
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Salimfahdley, I've given my general answer regarding 'souls' (I normally use the term 'minds') before. For instance, here, here,
here, and here.
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
mtraven wrote:
I already gave you a link to discussion of the notion of non-conceptual mental content. I am agnostic as to what that might mean. However even if some such notion was verified, it would not entail that nonhuman organisms also have conceptual contents. And the term 'deduction', as in logical deduction (i.e., not tax deductions) etc is a paradigmatic type of rule-following dependent on conceptual contents. If symbols didn't have determinate conceptual content, we could never derive a theorem in math or any other kind of deductive conclusion. And I don't think Fido or neurons have concepts and hence my view that they are not the sorts of thing that engage in deductive inference. But I also said I could be wrong about this, though I'd be astounded if I was.
His view is that the 'intentional stance' does not tell us what the 'real facts' are concerning the systems towards which we take that stance. I.e., it doesn't state the truth about what is really the case with those systems, where the 'truth about what's really the case' is basically what would be revealed by a mature or ideal science. Certainly he is happy enough to use intentional predicates. But without getting into a detailed exegesis, I'm confident he's not an intentional realist as that term is normally used. (Cf. moral irrealism, possible world irrealism, etc. Btw, Dummett is the one who introduced this as the right kind of way to think about the meanings involved in metaphysical disputes, and it's fairly standard now. 'Antirealism' and 'irrealism' are synonyms in this context.) In other words, Dennett thinks that if you made an inventory of all the real things there are, 'intentionality' wouldn't be among them. There would be brains, other physical objects, and the energy fields by which they interact, but no intentional states.
Comment by stunney — July 10, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Bradford,
I agree, but I also think there is something more fundamental, the life force. Before a soul makes moral determinations, it must exist. What is that quality? Is it the same thing as consciousness? I'm not sure.
How do you see this moral behavior as arising from intellect and/or emotion? Do you not see that both are required?
Stunney,
I'm not sure I understood your reply:
since I don't think I posited such a thing. I merely make the point that I think people are using the term 'immaterial' thoughtlessly, that it might be an outdated idea, because if a thing is truly immaterial, how can it ever have any empirical effect, and if it is truly immaterial, then in what sense does it exist as opposed to not existing?
I promote the unity of all reality.
By the way, I don't have time, unfortunately, to follow up on your link about animal thought, but it certainly appears to me that animals think and problem solve. Dogs appear to me to think just what you said they don't, i.e., to dwell on the hope and worry that the owner will open a can of food. I could give lots of examples, so it might be I don't understand what you consider as qualifying thought.
Surely you are wrong to suppose a tiger has not made any leaps forward in mental capacity compared to a cockroach!
Comment by onething — July 10, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
You may be right, I would have to look into his writings. But I don't care that much, since while I generally like Dennett I don't expect to agree with him on every point, especially metaphysical points like the above. From my perspective, intentionality is a useful concept, in fact an indispensably useful concept, so from a pragmatic standpoint it is as real as anything else.
Comment by mtraven — July 10, 2007 @ 6:50 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
onething:
I believe both are connected with moral behavoir.
Comment by Bradford — July 10, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
For those interested, I touched on some of these topics in an interview on Marcel Cairo's radio show tonight.
The show archive can be downloaded here. . .
Comment by mcromer — July 10, 2007 @ 9:25 pm
July 10th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
salimfadhley Says: I had assumed (perhaps wrongly) that somebody here was alleging that souls were things that objectively exist, and not an imaginary abstract concept rendered all but irrelevant by scientific progress.
"Btw, You won't find the "soul" on modern human anatomy charts because it doesn't exist. What neuroscience has done, in less than two decades is to subsume the "soul" under the functional anatomy of, the structures and processes occurring in, the CNS"¦ If neuroscientists are just calling the same thing by a different name then we can make positive empirically testable statements about the "soul": It is material (conforms to prior knowledge of basic physico-chemical principles), localizable (to patterns of interactions of CNS with its environment), analyzable (is composed of identifiable parts, each subserving a particular function), predictable, and, of course, evolved over billions of yrs."
So, I'm prepared to make the argument, salimfadhley, that souls "objectively exist," are not "˜imaginary," and the concept is not "irrelevant," scientifically.
Neuroscientists, historians, and philosophers have stated that modern neuroscience is just the investigation into the existence of the human soul. I love it! Science is so freakin' cool!
It's too bad that some of the TelicThinkers' antipathy for (unfamiliarity with?) science blinds them to the possibilities.
As you followed the discussion no doubt you noticed that the TelicThinkers point to the diversity of religious opinions (none of which is relevant to ID, of course, because its not religious [Cough.]) and nothing about science, which was repudiated and denigrated right from the top.
I'm very interested in the "neuroscience of the soul." I bet there are a lot of other people too despite Bradford's cloture.
The IDers will be left behind as usual.
Not all conceptions of the "soul" are so obviously unscientific. Even ancient ideas about the soul, such as its essentially pschosomatic and organic nature, are quite consistent with science (I believe).
Comment by Rock — July 10, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 12:09 am
A follow-up to my last note: you can be ultrareductive and say neither bodies, brains, nor rocks have real existence — after all, the only thing that really exists are subatomic particles obeying the Schrodinger equation. But in fact we treat rocks, brains, and bodies as real things, since it is convenient to do so, and to do otherwise would make the very idea of "real" useless. I would say (and I don't know if Dennett would agree, though I suspect he would) that mental representations, selves, and intentionality are real for just the same reasons.
Comment by mtraven — July 11, 2007 @ 12:09 am
July 11th, 2007 at 12:19 am
mtraven:
Wow. I'll have to think a bit on what that means (while I sleep on it, since it's that time of night), but it's quite intriguing. If you can admit that such things are real FAPP – which is all science ever admitted, to tell the truth – you've put your right foot in. Now all we have to do is the Hokey-Pokey!
"Real" must then be independent of the issue of material substance. In which case even thought-forms could have a certain standing, since people hold and talk about some of them endlessly. We could be talking magick here… §;o)
Comment by Joy — July 11, 2007 @ 12:19 am
July 11th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Rock:
Rock:
Nothing like knowing the outcome in advance of "testing."
Rock:
Yeah, doesn't it just tickle your funny bone to claim you are empirically testing a soul? Oh, the wonders of word manipulation. Orwell was a genius.
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 12:36 am
July 11th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Joy, it's not magick, or at least, it's also science — the entire field of cognitive psychology is based on treating mental representations (aka 'thought-forms') as real objects that can be empirically studied.
Comment by mtraven — July 11, 2007 @ 1:55 am
July 11th, 2007 at 3:33 am
Onething,
The key issue about intentional content revolves around concepts and propositions. Beliefs (fears, hopes, desires, promises, expectations, considerings, etc) are propositional attitudes. Dogs and tigers don't have them. We do.
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 3:33 am
July 11th, 2007 at 4:11 am
stunney,
Your ideas about animal cognition are outdated. You should acquaint yourself with the latest research.
See
Krauze's post on bird intelligence
A related post at Neurophilosophy
Many of the videos here
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 4:11 am
July 11th, 2007 at 4:26 am
When I was younger I was heavily influenced by the work of John McDowell, particularly his very stimulating ideas regarding moral philosophy and philosophy of mind. Here's some stuff about that (with emphases added) which I think is relevant to the preceding discussion:
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 4:26 am
July 11th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Joy wrote:
The optic chiasm is deeper in the brain than the corpus callosum, so it is not cut by the operation. Visual information still crosses over afterwards. And keep in mind that the left half of the retinal field of both eyes connects to the left hemisphere, and the right half of the retinal field of both eyes connects to the right hemisphere. You seem to be thinking that each eye connects only to one hemisphere.
Of course it could. If both of your hemispheres learn for years that they are "Joy", and then the corpus callosum is cut, they're not going to suddenly forget and think they're someone else. Isn't this obvious to you? And even after the operation, people would still call you "Joy". A hemisphere has no reason to "decide" it's somebody else.
(And again, you wouldn't show a different card to each eye. You'd show one card to the left visual field, and another to the right. Otherwise it would be as simple as asking the subject to first close one eye, then the other, as the cards were presented.)
Identity remains intact only in the sense that each hemisphere considers itself to be "Joy" and inhabits the same body. But this pales in significance against the fact that they have different perceptions, different thoughts, different emotions, different desires, and carry out different acts, even undoing each other's actions.
The very essence of identity is that it is unified. The hemispheres of split-brain patients can hardly be said to be unified if they don't think, feel, desire, or do the same things.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 5:04 am
July 11th, 2007 at 5:14 am
One of the great things about wood is that it can form part of a living organism, often a tree. Sometimes, however, wood is separated from its tree, becoming 'out of its tree'.
Living organisms in general exhibit learning behavior. This can be attributed to cockroaches, to rats, to chimpanzees, to dolphins, to tigers, to birds, and to Albert Einstein. But as a wise child said, so what?
Having said that I already gave you a link to discussion of the notion of non-conceptual mental content. I am agnostic as to what that might mean. However even if some such notion was verified, it would not entail that nonhuman organisms also have conceptual contents, and having said that Dennett allows for an 'intentional stance' to be adopted towards a variety of organisms, it is remarkable that I should be interpreted as saying that nonhuman organisms are incapable of learning behaviors towards which such a stance may be appropriate, or that such organisms cannot have even non-conceptual mental content. But what exactly is non-conceptual mental content anyway? That's a good question, for it's very hard to say.
Consider bats, sharks, coyote cubs, vultures, and a physical map of the world from which all word symbols are removed. They all 'represent' the world in particular ways. But do we know what those ways are apart from the map case? No, we don't. Do we know how they are alike and how they are unalike? Nope.
We're making educated guesses, and attributing mental content. But science cannot know that such creatures have concepts or propositional attitudes. What science in fact knows is that they don't display possession of concepts, for in order reliably to individuate concepts we need language. And they ain't got it.
Sure, we might say of a rat that it has learned to press a lever as a way of getting food. Likewise, a chicken that has learned not to stray too far from the farmyard where it is fed daily until the farmer comes to ring its neck. But neither rats nor chickens possess concepts, even the concept of 'food'..
Meanwhile, we're still wondering what it is like to be a bat:
[Emphases in original]
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 5:14 am
July 11th, 2007 at 5:33 am
onething wrote:
That's not my position at all, of course, but it is close to the folk-dualist position. Even folk-dualists concede that the brain matters, but they usually relegate it to lower-level functions like the processing of sensory information or the orchestration of routine physical movements. They reserve thoughts, feelings, and intentions for the soul.
Regarding the man who attacked his wife with one arm and tried to protect her with the other, you wrote:
A normal man might have conflicting impulses, but at a given time he acts on one or the other. No normal person would pull his pants on with one arm while the other pulls them back off. No normal person would pick up a newspaper with one hand, begin reading, and then while still reading, grab the newspaper with the other hand and throw it to the floor — and then repeat the whole ridiculous dance. No normal person would attack his wife with one arm while attempting to protect her (from himself!) with the other.
Joy can protest all she wants, and Bradford can ignore the evidence, but these behaviors all point to the existence of two wills in a single skull.
I'm not sure why you find this problematic. Each hemisphere hears the experimenters, and each hemisphere responds. For example, in the Sperry/Bogen study, the experimenter asked the subject, in normal fashion, to point to the drawing that best matched the image flashed on the screen.
The request was normal. What was bizarre was the response. The subject pointed to two drawings simultaneously, one with the right hand and one with the left hand.
If you asked a normal person to "point to the drawing that best matches the image you just saw", nobody would point to different drawings simultaneously unless they were being funny (or deliberately weird). And in this case we know that the left hemisphere, which controls speech, did not know why the right hemisphere was pointing at a different drawing, because it gave a wrong explanation — "the shovel is used to clean out the chicken house."
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 5:33 am
July 11th, 2007 at 5:38 am
kornbelt888 wrote:
No, because in that case both hemispheres would want the same thing. The evidence shows that they do not.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 5:38 am
July 11th, 2007 at 5:45 am
Vividbleau wrote:
Ask around. You'll find that just about everyone does, if they're not acquainted with the research.
You've missed the point in spectacular fashion. We are, of course, talking about voluntary actions, as you'd realize if you read through the thread.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 5:45 am
July 11th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Bradford wrote:
Attacking one's wife isn't a moral issue?
Bradford, you're deliberately ignoring the evidence here.
If you need to do that for emotional or ideological reasons, that's fine, but why pretend otherwise?
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 5:49 am
July 11th, 2007 at 6:01 am
Bradford asks:
Those who believe in a soul usually believe that it is the seat not just of consciousness, but also of the will. It is possible to see consciousness as causally impotent (just "along for the ride"). This is the epiphenomenalist view.
Which hemisphere does the soul "sit with" in a split-brain patient? If both, why don't the hemispheres have a unified will?
Ooh, an avowed atheist. Sounds bad. I bet he's also a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
[For the record, I am a member, but I don't carry my card with me.]
I originally wanted the answer to come out the other way, but I was swayed by the evidence. I suspect that you fear the same outcome, which is why you seem determined to shield yourself from the facts.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 6:01 am
July 11th, 2007 at 6:08 am
I've presented the split-brain evidence, and I'm happy to see that people are pondering and puzzling over it. Even Joy, despite her bluster and naysaying, has gone off to research the topic. There are many layers to that onion; I hope people will keep thinking about it.
Now I'd like to broach a different topic.
For those who believe in a soul and believe that it is the seat of the will, how is it able to carry out its will using the body? How is an immaterial soul able to "reach in" and move particles around in the brain to achieve a desired outcome?
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 6:08 am
July 11th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Bradford:
Keiths
Sorry Keiths but I'm in the habit of distinguishing between evidence and assertions.
Keiths, how are you separating consciousness from a soul"¦
And every day people who believe in autonomous willpower, will themselves to do hundreds of different things. Billions of people have this experience every day. Sometimes they have conflicting desires and may act accordingly but the vast bulk of human experience easily accords with their metaphysical concept of a soul.
You cherry pick extremely unusual medical maladies in an attempt to make a broad generalization about a topic that is laden with imprecise meanings and does not lend itself to scientific proclamations. The attempt to link selected empirical results to broad sweeping metaphysical claims is the obsession of a fringe wanting to justify their atheism. Sample sizes, that can be counted on one's fingers, are countered by the experiences of billions on a daily basis. Why take your selective examples for anything other than the metaphysical apologetics they represent?
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 6:22 am
July 11th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Bradford wrote:
You might want to follow Joy's lead and begin acquainting yourself with the research.
Of course. Nothing about the split-brain results denies the existence of will. It just isn't the unified phenomenon we intuitively believe it to be.
The billions of people you are referring to are not split-brain patients. Their hemispheres are in communication. Only when that communication is disrupted do we see the spectacle of left arm against right arm.
As any scientist can tell you, you can learn a lot more about something by observing it in both its working and broken states. And if your soul hypothesis cannot explain the anomalous cases of split-brain patients, that's a sure sign of trouble. Why not revise your hypothesis to match the evidence?
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 6:37 am
July 11th, 2007 at 6:43 am
onething:
Keiths:
Keiths is right about the 99.999…% of normal people who would not do this. It is an extreme aberration and onething is correct in wanting further information before assessing the relevance of a sample of one to the human experience of billions over historic time periods.
Actually Keiths it is you who ignore the vast amount of counter evidence that occurs on a daily basis. Why would anyone be surprised that conflicting desires (two distinct desires) are found associated with differing brain locations anyway? With severed neural connections or brain damage, very unusual behavoir would be predictable in any case.
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 6:43 am
July 11th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Precisely my point Keiths. They have multiple desires which normal brains are able to process.
You cherry pick extremely unusual medical maladies"¦
You are exposing yourself now Keiths. Up to this point it is a matter of evaluating medical conditions. Now you are asserting incorrectly that my concept of a soul cannot explain the problems you cite. I do not have to revise anything. The metaphysical conclusions you draw from this are not problematic for me. The bigger question is why are you obsessed with the metaphysical values of others? This is not a healthy concern on your part.
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 6:51 am
July 11th, 2007 at 7:08 am
Then let's hear, in detail, how your soul-concept meshes with the split-brain evidence. So far, when people have asked you for this information, you haven't answered except to deny the problem. You try to avoid the question by saying it isn't scientific, or by impugning my motives for asking it. When pressed you merely say that "very unusual behavior" is expected when the CC is cut.
But what we see isn't merely "very unusual behavior." It's two perceiving, thinking, emoting, willing, acting entities in one skull. Two separate moral agents.
Let's hear your explanation for this, in terms of an immaterial soul.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 7:08 am
July 11th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Keiths:
There are two distinct impulses. Nothing unusual about that. It is consistent with NT theology. James in particular delves into this in his epistle. Christ indicated that it is immoral to even wish to do a wrongful act. You do not have to physically take action. A desire to hurt another is sufficient to deduce a moral transgression. In the situation you cite one body part restrains another due to a medical problem. This likely indicates the desire is there to hurt. That's enough in God's eyes to indicate sin. The restraint deals with the degree of sin; not its existence. But this is my view about which I feel no compulsion to universalize. Why do you feel the need to impose your own metaphysical views in the name of science?
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 7:20 am
July 11th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Bradford,
Is a split-brain patient guilty of sin if his right hemisphere desires to hurt, but his left hemisphere desires to protect? Should the left hemisphere be punished for the sins of the right hemisphere, and vice-versa?
I don't. You're free to believe anything you want, for any reason you choose.
This is a blog. It's about discussion. If you don't want your views to be critically scrutinized, don't present them.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 8:12 am
July 11th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Speaking of which, when are you planning on acquainting yourself with the evidence that your views are incorrect?
Comment by mcromer — July 11, 2007 @ 9:05 am
July 11th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Matthew,
For everyone's benefit, could you post citations (and preferably links, if you have them) for all of the research that demonstrates, directly or indirectly, that immaterial souls exist? Thanks.
Comment by keiths — July 11, 2007 @ 9:45 am
July 11th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Rock:
What, are you planning to be Raptured soon? …and if so, how could you even THINK of leaving me behind? §;o)
mtraven:
Strangely enough, out here in the real world where most people can't get their insurance company pencil-pushers to okay a mere consult with an actual psychologist, the contracted GPs are the ones who prescribe the psychoactive drugs Big Pharma tells them will 'cure' disordered thought and emotion. Those wealthy enough to be able to pay their own way to a specialist get the same drugs.
So all we're talking about is biochemically abnormal "brain-states," considered entirely physical and treated with entirely physical psychoactive drugs designed to alter those brain-states by changing the biochemistry. Witches and shamen were doing that regularly with various brews back when humans still lived in caves. It's not the mental representations that are considered worthy of empirical study, it's the biochemical properties of the drugs and their effect on the activity of neurons – and the profit potential for Big Pharma, of course.
Comment by Joy — July 11, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
keiths:
Yeah. And surely you can force everyone to believe an unconscious person has no soul at all from this analysis. Then there are the unfortunates who are born mentally and/or physically handicapped, and those who suffer injuries or strokes and lose some capacities of thought or will or bodily control. They have no souls either.
Looks like rather than accept your defeat at the non-hands of "dualist folk-soul" on the other thread, you've just snuck out the back door to bring your ill-conceived jihad over here. Clearly you will hold to your faith regardless of facts and reason. What I wonder is why you are so emotionally committed to denying other people that same freedom of will. Makes me suspect you've got some further assertions up your sleeve…
"If" humans have no souls, "Then" …what? Go ahead and spill it, keiths. I'm sick of your broken record.
Comment by Joy — July 11, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Hi, keiths,
I don't think what is happening here is so cut and dry. Time might be playing a role here, leading to the illusion of simultaneity. What I mean is, if will directs action (and I would say that it does), then I could say that I have countless different wills on a daily basis. When I argue with myself over the merits of performing some action, I have conflicting wills. There are even times when I undo something that I had just done, and then redo it. Of course, because the passage of time during these acts are noticeable, there is no question of me doing these conflicting things simultaneously.
If I take my coffee cup in hand, place my palm under it, and simultaneously push the cup in opposite directions so that it remains stationary, is my intention to place the cup down, or to keep it where it is? Is there one will in action or two? From my direct experience, I would say one will.
The split-brain patient's conflicting actions might truly be occuring simultaneously in time, or the actions might be switching back and forth very rapidly, to produce the illusion of simultaneity. In fact, the same rapid switching could also have occurred during my coffee cup test, and my direct experience of acting conflictingly at the same time is an erroneous interpretation, even though it was directly experienced.
Another extreme case of different wills are multiple personalities. Not merely different wills at different times but different identities. Where do the different identities come from? I could be wrong, but I vaguely remember reading about split-personalities that are even present at the same time in the person. Again, the simultaneity of the split personalities may also be the result of very rapid switching, creating the illusion of simulaneity.
Obviously, the split-brain patient is not acting normally, however. My point here is that the interpretation might be a little too perfunctory. One thing I'm curious about, were all the observed actions of the split-brain patient conflicting ones?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 11, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Suppose a person has a split brain, the right hemisphere of which causes a desire to hurt, and the left hemisphere causes a desire to protect, and both desires are experienced by the same conscious subject, then we have good grounds for not identifying conscious mental states with brain states. There are two half brains operating independently of each other, but only one experiencing subject who feels both opposing desires and acts accordingly. If brain parts and processes are identical with mental states, the splitting of the brain should result in two experiencing subjects, neither of which ought to experience conflicting desires to hurt and to proect, but only one of those desires. But the scientific evidence shows just one experiencing subject who experiences both desires.
But even if we say there are two persons once the brain is split, this does not show that the capacity for willing simply is a material process. All it would show is that the capacity for willing is causally dependent on certain material processes. And a very plausible principle is that if x causes y, then x does not = y.
Could the subject have acted on both desires if he had not experienced the relevant conscious mental states? If not, then we have support for a counterfactual conditional, If not p, then not q. This suggests that his acts were causally dependent on those conscious mental states. In other words, it suggests the causal correlations run in both directions.
In order for bodily creatures endowed with conscious rationality and moral autonomy to exist, there needs to be not just an appropriate set of laws of physics and physical constants, but also some psychophysical laws as well. If there weren't, then rational agency wouldn't be impossible. And these laws would be contingent. That is, such laws would not be, or represent, necessary truths. There are logically possible worlds in which Ohm's Law, say, doesn't obtain and in which there are zombies. Consider this possibility: the contingent psychophysical laws God has designed entail the following propositions:
1. A living human body is causally necessary for all mental states that body has.
2. A living human body is causally sufficient for all mental states that body has.
3. Propositions 1 and 2 are not necessary truths, but contingent truths.
4. Mental states are neither identical with, nor reducible to, their bodily causes, since effects in general are neither identical with, nor reducible to, their causes.
5. Some mental states cause some bodily states.
6. A human being is one substance, which has physical and non-physical properties.
7. Among the non-physical properties of human beings is the capacity for willing.
8. If the bodily parts specified by psychophysical laws are damaged in a variety of ways, these laws entail a variety of kinds of mental disruption, including disruption of the capacity for willing.
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Keith,
Vivid
Keith
Ask around? You're the one making the claim provide details.
After claiming that everyone claims that the soul controls the body you say in response to my comment
Well if this is not what you are referring to why did you bring it up?
Furthermore you made this statement in response to this
You summarized your answer with
So your response has no effect on the above objection unless you are claiming that the soul controls the body therefore you are NOT of course just talking about voluntatry actions.
You go on to say
Soul moving particles??? If the soul could move particles then it could move the body because the body is made up of particles. So I have not missed the point.
BTW be patient Keith we will all know soon enough whether there is an immaterial soul.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — July 11, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Or one mind responding to two different brain states.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — July 11, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
What human being has not experienced a desire to do something he or she does not do. Restraining our own impulses is commonplace. But what if a severed connection or brain damage interferes with a capacity to restrain. What we could see would be a physical acting out of conflicting desires.
AnaxagorasRules:
We no very little about this individual. Were there times when the patient showed behavoir consistent with his points of view? For example, if he loved his dog or cat or son or daughter could that be detected in his actions? Is a unified viewpoint ever in evidence or was every action of his indicative of a conflict. Where is all the relevant information? Is it all accessible on the web?
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
keiths:
Um. Yeah. Ok. Hate to break it to you, but I'm having different perceptions, thoughts, and emotions than I did yesterday. And in fact I often have conflicting emotions, and sometimes conflicting perceptions, at the same, or almost the same, time. And yet for some bizarre reason I still consider myself to be Zoskie. And I still inhabit the same body. Why on earth would you consider the split brain patient to be any different in that sense? Are you trying to tell me I don't have the same identity I did yesterday?
The question, of course, is how we determine identity, and I'd say you're doing a pretty poor job of defending your idea. I would consider identity to be a combination of mental, physical, physic and spiritual attributes; you cannot reduce identity to simply the brain.
Comment by Zoskie — July 11, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Zoskie:
Or to a physical malfunction of the brain.
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
This thread has grown to over 200 comments, maybe it's time to start a fresh one? Solving the mind-body problem might take awhile, especially for those who want to cling to the obsolete views that have confused people for thousands of years, while ignoring the actual progress that's been made in the last 100 years or so.
Comment by mtraven — July 11, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
mtraven:
There is no ignoring the progress made. What is in dispute is the contention that what we have learned uniquely supports philosophical materialism.
As for the number of comments there are some options being considered.
Comment by Bradford — July 11, 2007 @ 3:23 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
keiths:
But Dummett explicitly states that he's referring to the notion of a universe that never has observers. Here's what he says:
keiths:
This is blatantly incorrect. Here's what Dummett actually says:
keiths:
Garbage, as the preceding quote makes clear.
keiths:
This is sheer nonsense. The "˜never' is clearly essential to the notion he explicitly considering.
keiths:
Your argument is that it's possible for something to exist without observers. Dummett says the same thing. In fact, he says explicitly that our universe had no observers from the Big Bang onwards for the duration of "an era in which no part of it could have sustained life". But this is obviously a universe in which observers came to exist. So it's obviously not an example of a universe which never has observers, and hence it's quite irrelevant to the question Dummett is specifically addressing, which is whether a universe no part of which is ever observed or experienced can exist. What is the difference between a permanently and completely undetectable object and no object? There is none, for to be permanently and completely undetectable is indistinguishable from just not being there.
Comment by Zoskie — July 11, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
His position was subtle and nuanced, but the man who received a Nobel prize for his split-brain work, Roger Sperry, did not think the scientific advances supported materialism.
Nobel winner John Eccles went further and felt they affirmed dualism.
Comment by Pez — July 11, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I need to correct my previous post. I had written:
That last word, of course, should read possible.
salimfahdley wrote:
What about minds, intellects, wills, conscious agents, rational thinkers, rational observers, morally aware persons? Are these merely imaginary? How about scientists? Atheists? I'm not sure what you're saying, salim. Do you have beliefs and intentions? Do you have experiences? Are you saying that consciousness is an illusion? But how could it be? How could something that's not real experience an illusion? Your views don't seem coherent. I think you need to stop believing that believing isn't real. I mean, does your mother know she gave birth to an imaginary being?:lol:
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Although I think the point I made about the illusion of simultaneity is obvious, here is a simple test which can be observed, and shows that the possibility of illusion cannot be ruled out. Here is a short program in C++ that simulates confliction. It writes "Hello", then erases itself and writes "Goodbye", then erases itself and writes "Hello" again, and this repetitive loop continues endlessly until I terminate the program. As the program is written, the "Hello"s and "Goodbye"s are always written in the same space, the top left corner of the screen. Here is the program:
Most of the code should be intuitively understandable. cout writes to the screen "/r" returns the cursor to the beginning of the line. I include the space variables to create the effect of erasure, to hammer down the point that the illusion of simultaneity still exists even though I expressly undo each word before the other one is written to the screen.
Conclusion: the computer is slow enough that I can see the flicker. Even if I were not aware of the code, I would think that the words were being written sequentially, one replacing another, very fast.
However, given a fast enough machine, I contend that I would not even see the flicker. I would see instead a very stable hybrid of the two words. But in fact, that would be an illusion. I simply would not be able to register the switching that was taking place. If I were to have this superfast computer, the only thing making me realize that the hybrid word was not a single form is the fact that I would be aware of the code.
In the same way, I don't think that the split-brain patient should automatically be assumed to be acting conflictingly simultaneously in time
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 11, 2007 @ 4:34 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Dummett:
And what if He created a material universe in which a single sentient being existed for 1 second and none ever before or after? Would that universe exist, or only the sphere with a radius of 1 lightsecond surrounding that sentient being? What about 1 nanosecond?
Zoskie:
You mean like God? Or the inside of a black hole? What is the point and why does Dunnett get paid to confuse people?
Comment by Raevmo — July 11, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Raevmo wrote:
A world that is experienced would exist. A world that is never experienced wouldn't. Simple.
God is detectable. I've had two experiences of God. I'm not the only one either.
Black holes are detectable and we mathematically infer the properties of their interiors. In this regard, the interiors of black holes are theoretical entities. Science has loads of them. Other minds can be treated the same way—-not directly observable, but rationally affirmed as really existing.
The point is as I explained to salimfahdley. The point is that the consistent application of empirical criteria for judgments concerning existence imply a constitutive role for mind in determining what can truly count as real. To be real is to be capable of producing experiential data.
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
stunney:
That just doesn't make any sense. Why would the *part* of the world that is never experienced exist according to this bizarre criterion? Why not make the meta-argument: a world that is never experienced to be experienced wouldn't exist. And so on and so forth. I suppose philosophy can be fun sometimes but it seems mostly a waste of time.
Lucky you. I don't suppose there is any doubt that you might be wrong about that.
Comment by Raevmo — July 11, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Stunney,
Are you actually suggesting that dogs don't have fears, hopes and worries? Is it because you think language is needed to formalize one's fears, hopes and worries into words that represent the thoughts, images and memories they have of what they fear, hope and worry about?
Apparently so,
It seems a bit hard to simply dismiss our observations that give a very strong impression of their internal state because of the obvious problem of their lack of language. Although, in the case of some birds…
Rock said,
Not me. I think science is able to look into all of it, hopefully. I'm no NOMA fan.
Keith,
But really, you are pretending that we are all of a piece, yet in fact we all have internal struggles that are quite similar to these split brain guys. If you consider that the two hemispheres are not the same, it could easily be that one is more emotional for example, or that only one is the newspaper reader. It makes perfect sense for the side that doesn't enjoy reading the paper to throw it down as a bore, and it is certainly true of most people, perhaps not you, that we stand all but paralyzed in conflict over whether to eat that piece of chocolate cake, or smack someone. The war can be quite strong and equal.
I never would have equated these impulses as coming straight from the soul, but maybe that's me. At any rate, you seem quite bent on clinging to your notion of how the soul works, even though you have seen it is inadequate, and many others have told you it is simplistic. People may have made certain assumptions about the soul controlling the body, but it lacks deep thought. Our bodies have very compelling inputs, such as hormones, that affect our emotions, impulses, brains and perceptions.
Keith, even St. Paul agonized that he was unable to do that which he knew was the best thing and yet did the wrong thing. So it is not something new to Christian thought that there are warring impulses within us, and the will is either not unified, or not in control, or not in control by the soul. Joy also quoted some research that showed, that over time, the split brain people made rather heroic efforts to reunify their responses.
Hmmm…but I often get the impression that you are internally motivated to prove just the one possibility. The evidence you cite is not as compelling as you say, and as Mcromer often points out, there is other evidence to the contrary. I wonder how you really feel, inside, about the possibility of a realm of 'spiritual' driving energy to which your consciousness may return?
Does the right hemisphere ever show the ability to restrain its impulses? Does it ever restran the left side's actions? Is it equal? If not, then the right hemisphere is just impulse.
Stunney said,
If you ask me, that is our normal, daily experience.
Comment by onething — July 11, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Anaxagoras wrote:
I agree with this, but would add that even in normal situations we should not assume that the occurrence of qualia entails any ability to report them accurately, either with respect to their qualitative character, or their timing and sequence. If a decision-quale occurs at t1, a related brain-event occurs at t2, and t3 is the earliest that the subject is able to place its occurrence, then there is ample opportunity for inaccurate reporting. One plausible reason for the delay is that qualia take time to occur. They're not instantaneous. But because new qualia are continuously arriving in consciousness as part of a constantly complex stream, it is easy for a subject to get confused about what certain qualia were like, or when and it what sequence they occurred. Splitting a brain would, I surmise, only add to the ordinary inaccuracy associated with trying to analyze and report one's conscious experience.
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
onething to stunney:
Yes indeedy. I infer minds in humans from observing their behavior in certain contexts and correlating that to my own behavior and how I feel in similar contexts. In a very similar way I infer fear, hopes and worries in the bunch of cats that own me. Perhaps stunney is not fully aware of the remarkable capabilities of animals (other than humans), such as new-calidonia crows. Typical for arm-chair philosophers.
Comment by Raevmo — July 11, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Raevmo wrote:
Er, because it's a part of a world that is experienced. When one experiences a part of a world, one is experiencing being in the world of which that is a part. You can't experience a part of a world without experiencing one's presence in that world.
I find your 'meta-argument' unintelligible.
Well, don't bother with it then. Unless you're like me, and quite enjoy wasting time.
No reasonable doubt. But maybe I'm a brain in a vat.
Alvin Plantinga had an extraordinary experience of God when he was a student at Harvard. After it, he says, he still engaged in philosophical discussion about whether there is a God. But he said it was like discussing whether there are minds other than one's own—one doesn't seriously doubt that there are, though it's interesting to pin down the epistemological issue. Later he wrote a book called God and Other Minds on precisely that problem of what, exactly, is it that justifies our belief in other minds. The ID debate is, in my view, just a specific instance of the mind-body problem and the other minds problem.
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Hi Stunney,
You wrote..
Raevmo responded with..
"Lucky you. I don't suppose there is any doubt that you might be wrong about that."
You then wrote..
Ok, for the sake of argument…
You "know" God exists but can't make a convincing argument for me to understand. What am I supposed to do? I won't embrace something I don't understand (as in a mechanistic model).
I may not understand all of the Third Choice, but I am getting there and I will continue my efforts.
I realize that you and I have been agreeing more than not lately, so this may be better answered by others, but your statements provided the opening for this hypothetical.
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 11, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
stunney:
Still doesn't make sense. By this reasoning, if a multiverse existed (and I could call that the "world"), your experiencing being on earth (part of the universe which is part of the multiverse), would guarantee the existence of the multiverse, even if the multiverse included universes which would never have any observers within them. And so forth.
I was unfair there. I obviously enjoy wasting time as well.
I knew I should have gone to Harvard. Would you agree that my doubt that you (or anyone else) really had an experience of God is reasonable, given that I have never had such an experience? And if God really existed, why wouldn't He grant everyone such an experience?
I just watched the TV show Big Love (great show). In it a Mormon woman is shocked when her young son comes home from Catholic school with a rosary. She demands an explanation from one of the school executives and asks her what Catholicism is all about. The executive tells her about transsubstantiation and the mother goes how could anyone believe such nonsense. That was deliciously ironic coming from a Mormon, but I wonder how you justify such beliefs. Just curious.
Comment by Raevmo — July 11, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
onething wrote:
Content is the thing that comes after the 'that' in attributing propositional attitudes; beliefs that p, fears that p, hopes that p, desires that p, promises that p, expectations that p, considering that p, where p is some proposition. I may, for instance believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. But does a dog believe that proposition? This seems doubtful, because to believe it, the dog would have to understand it, and that requires a grasp of the relevant concepts.
Now, does the dog have qualia? Certainly. Do some of those qualia involve emotion? Yes. Can the dog learn new tricks? Sure. But having qualia is not the same as having intentional content. We can see that qualia and intentionality are different by reading a book. The book is full of content, but has no qualia. The trouble with attributing content to a dog is that we have no way of individuating what that content is. We attribute qualia. The dog has senses and emotion. There is something it is like to be a dog. But we should be overstepping the evidence to attribute a specific conceptual content. If we said: Fido is happy that his owner has returned safely from his business trip to Korea, we'd be attributing a 'fine-grained' mental content that there is no evidence the dog possesses. Similarly for human babies. There is a similar problem for adults in what are called 'intensional' (with an 's') contexts. Example:
John believes that Hilary Clinton will win the US presidential election in 2008
John believes that a Republican will win the US presidential election in 2008.
John erroneously believes Clinton is a Republican.
Now suppose you know Clinton's a Democrat, then one is faced with the problem of deciding what belief to attribute to John. One could say "John believes a Democrat will win in 2008" because you know he thinks Clinton will win. But equally you could say "John believes a Republican will win in 2008", because you know he thinks Clinton is a Republican.
We can see the problem this creates for inferences:
1) John believes that Hilary Clinton will win the US presidential election in 2008
2) Hilary Clinton is a Democrat
Therefore, John believes that a Democrat will win the US presidential election in 2008
The intensional context causes the conclusion to be apparently false, even though it seems to follow validly from the premises, which are both true. If we attributed the belief stated in the conclusion, the attribution would be faulty because the content, that a Democrat will win the US presidential election in 2008 is something that John's intentional (with a 't') state actually lacks. This shows how individuating the content of an intentional state is very sensitive to its conceptual components even for humans. Doing it for dogs is probably impossible. So we can't truly say things like Fido prefers to eat the most expensive dog-food on the market if construed intensionally. We must construe it extensionally. But the upshot is that the falsity that ensues from an intensional construal means we cannot truly attribute that content as a mental state of Fido. Fido has no idea how expensive the food he prefers is. There is no mental state in Fido of preferring to eat the most expensive dog-food on the market
But yeah, dogs have qualia.
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Raevmo, TP, I have to eat and later attend a meeting.
But this don't make no sense, man:
If a multiverse existed, it would, er, exist.
If I'm in a multiverse, then there is a multiverse.
And your point is… what?
Try at least to understand what Dummett says:
Comment by stunney — July 11, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
July 11th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I mostly can't make much sense out of Dummett or Stunney's constant citing of him, but here's a try:
This is an argument for radical subjectivism/relativism — objective knowledge is impossible (I might agree with this, but it's odd to hear from a theist).
Um, why is it senseless? If there is some ultimate ground of being, why can't it be a "barren mathematical model" I assume this is just Dummett's gut feeling, since it isn't backed up with argument. Surely, existing in the universe doesn't feel like being part of a mathematical model, but I wouldn't trust my feelings on something like this.
"¦"¦"¦.
So, if I can interpret these convoluted sentences, Dummett is trying to crawl back out of the relativist hole he's dug himself into by postulating God as that-which-apprehends-the-universe-as-it-really-is.
On the whole, this seems like bogus reasoning to me. He seems to be going from the ordinary human situation of a mind, with a certain set of concepts, perceiving the universe subjectively, to reason that there must be a Big Mind perceiving the universe a whole, objectively. In other words, it's an attempt to do the usual theist anthropomorphic projection with a veneer of highly questionable reasoning. I don't buy it. It's perfectly conceivable to me that the universe just is, without a mind to see it that way, other than our small and subjective ones.
Comment by mtraven — July 11, 2007 @ 8:11 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 12:03 am
mtraven wrote:
At least you're honest about your lack of comprehension.
Rubbish. Dummett's whole point is that an objective reality requires an objective mind that's not tied to, say, 20th century physics conducted in German.
Or do scientists just intuit reality directly?
It's senseless because a model is just, as Hawking notes, a model. It's not, obviously, what it's a model of:
On we go, despite your poor start:
Yes it is. Here it is:
The way an orangutan, an ostrich, and a physicist apprehend the world are three different ways of apprehending it. Which one is the way the world really is in itself?
Why is a mathematical model of the universe more 'true' than a human experience of colors, or a dog's hearing of sounds, or an Andromedan's understanding of the nature of spiritual experiences?
You yourself doubted the necessity of ultra-reductive interpretations earlier in this thread. Remember?
Dearie me, you're really irrationally fixated on an immature concept of God, aren't you? How ridiculous would you find it if someone objected to your worldview and scorned your notion of reality because it requires a Big Space and Big Lumps of Matter and Lots of Invisible Energy?
You reject anything that is incapable of yielding empirical data. But then when someone points out that the same criterion means that an objective world requires an objective mind, you get your knickers in a twist. Laughable and pathetic. Your opposition to theism is clearly irrational and emotive. You tie yourself in a knot of endless inconsistency.
What's anthropomorphic about reason?
Is there a way that the universe is in itself?
Comment by stunney — July 12, 2007 @ 12:03 am
July 12th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Raevmo wrote:
Only if I thought your doubt that I have had sex was reasonable on the basis of your never having had sex.
Probably because it's unnecessary. I've never climbed Mount Everest or been to the Moon. But I don't hold it against God.
Transubstantiation is not technically a belief required of Catholics. What the Council of Trent said was required was a belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Transubstantiation was said by the Council to be a fitting way to understand the doctrine that Christ is really present, but it is not an article of faith per se. Which is just as well, because to understand it requires an understanding of the Aristotelian account of substance and accidents, and very few Catholics are familiar with Aristotelian metaphysics.
I personally don't find it any harder to believe that what is present ceases to be bread and wine and becomes the presence of Christ even though the appearances don't change, than believing that despite drastic changes in a person's appearance over a lifetime, it's still the same person.
TP wrote:
Did someone ask you to do something? I know I didn't. Raevmo said God is undetectable. Blame Raevmo.
Like moral and aesthetic value, for instance? Or freedom from things you don't understand via a mechanistic model?
And then there's women.
Such indefatigability!
As I said, blame Raevmo.
Comment by stunney — July 12, 2007 @ 12:39 am
July 12th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Oh dear, stunney's in his nasty mode again — we were being civil there for awhile.
Standard mathematical models are indeed models of some physical system, ie, Newton's model of the gravity models the motion of the planets. But when you get down to ultimate theories, some hold that the ultimate stuff of the universe is actually mathematical structure. Don't ask me to defend or even explain this point of view — I find it thought provoking but not completely convincing. I was assuming that Dummett was attacking this sort of theory as "sterile", otherwise his attack doesn't make much sense.
"More true" is your words, not mine. What science gives us is a more objective point of view than an unaided individual is capable of. Human minds are naturally subjective; science is a bunch of tools for acheiving some degree of objectivity. Oddly enough, the models science gives tend to be mathematical in nature, which lends support to the idea that mathematics is the fundament of the universe.
Subjective experiences are not "less true", but have a different epistemological status than the refined products of science. Your experience might be highly "true" for you, but not for me. Scientific truths are by definition the sort of things that everybody can agree upon. That makes them "more true" in some senses, but also, to some, bland and generic, possibly even "sterile", in comparision to deeply-felt personal experience. Them's the breaks.
Well, the only reasoning systems we know about are humans, with animals and computers possibly qualifying in highly limited ways.
I believe so. I recall having arguments about that with some of the more postmodernistically inclined people in grad school, who did not believe there was an actual state of affairs independent of our subjective points of view. I thought that was pretty stupid. However, we may not be able to access this actual state of affairs. Science and mathematics might get you closer than anything else, or maybe it requires meditating yourself into nirvana.
Comment by mtraven — July 12, 2007 @ 1:07 am
July 12th, 2007 at 1:52 am
Huh, after posting that I see that Tegmark has a new paper that makes the connections I was vaguely alluding to very explicit:
The Mathematical Universe (PDF)
Way cosmic!
Comment by mtraven — July 12, 2007 @ 1:52 am
July 12th, 2007 at 2:05 am
I haven't been following this thread. Shall I start at the top and work my way down?
Comment by Crandaddy — July 12, 2007 @ 2:05 am
July 12th, 2007 at 3:52 am
mtraven wrote:
He does think mathematical models are sterile if what they are models of is not experienced at any time by any sentient creature, but that per se is not Dummett's reason for rejecting such models. His reason is that there is no sound epistemological basis for privileging that (or any other) particular way of apprehending the world over other ways of apprehending it unless there really is a way the world, er, really is in itself. And there can only be such a way the world really is if there's a mind that perceives the full truth about it (hence such a mind would have to be transcendent). For if there's no such mind, then there is no such perceivable, intelligible, full truth about the way the world is in itself; and hence there's no ultimate fact of the matter about what way the world really is in itself, because the existence of facts in general, or of any such transcendent fact about the way world really is in itself, must be detectable. That's how facts are distinguished from non-facts, isn't it?
Now, you won't find much about canine or dinosaur consciousness in textbooks about subatomic particles. Nor do books about the social history of the American West tell us much about the weather on Alpha Centauri. But it would be startling if just one species, and in just the last four centuries or so, had attained a privileged insight into the nature of the universe, into the way it really is in itself , except by design of a mind that already apprehends the way the universe really is in itself.
See the previous link for why mathematical science poses problems for naturalism.
There's considerable debate about whether science is in the business of discovering truths at all. But in any event I'm not sure science is about what everybody can agree on. If that were the distinguishing criterion of science, then belief in unseen spirits would have been science at one time, and everybody would understand quantum mechanics nowadays. Science is what scientists, not everyone, agree upon. You may have heard that some people don't believe in or agree about evolution, for example.
There is no either/or. As Kant put it:
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me"
But we suspect that rational norms are universal. It would be freakish if the reasoning that led to Big Bang cosmology was just the product of a local accident.
Was that before or after the Sokal affair?
An objective world is what makes both truth and error possible. Similarly with objective morality. But there is neither if there is no mind that apprehends the way the material and moral worlds really are in themselves . There's just a lot of species-specific, planet-specific, limited and conflicting subjectivities.
Comment by stunney — July 12, 2007 @ 3:52 am
July 12th, 2007 at 4:35 am
mtraven quoting Tegmark:
I'll try to remember that if I get a toothache, or if they find another fifty severed heads in Baghdad.
What I already remember is saying to you that mathematical information was fundamental to reality, as Plato suggested over two millenia ago, and that mathematical information is essentially correlative to rational minds. If the universe was forever mindless, its putative mathematical structure would be undetectable. And permanent undetectabilty is what distinguishes non-existence.
Comment by stunney — July 12, 2007 @ 4:35 am
July 12th, 2007 at 6:34 am
OK, let me make a couple of observations regarding the discussions in this thread.
First, keiths has attempted to show that the concept of 'soul' that he thinks espoused by Christians is wrong by using findings from 'split-brain' studies. But appears to have failed to do so at any level due to faulty interpretations as I can gather from Joy's post above.
Keiths and every one else, if you are going to attack the Judeo-Christian conception of soul, you would do well to look at what the conception actually is. I would recommend a piece from here which sketches out the concept biblically and also discusses how it relates to Consciousness.
Second, Bradford seems to think that the concept of soul from the Judeo-Christian persepective cannot be scientifically tested. I would suggest that as the biblical terms imply, if Consciousness is what actually the word 'soul' as conceived by the Judeo-Christian tradition means, then there is nothing wrong with trying to understand it scientifically.
Third, mtraven earlier wrote:
mtraven, you allude to the Machiavellian Hypothesis as an explanation for behaviours observed in certain primate societies. AFAIK this hypothesis has not been tested. Do you know of any study that attempted to test this hypothesis? You also point to deliberate deception in primates. Earlier studies that purported to test the 'Theory of Mind' in chimpanzees [e.g, Premack and Woodruff(1978)], have not found conclusive evidence. Further, C.M.Heyes has argued that the behaviours observed in other studies interpreted as attribution of knowledge to others are unwarranted inferences. Such behaviours are also easily explainable by learning by classical and/or operant conditioning. The experimental evidence for "the ability to manipulate both true and false propositions" is very weak when you analyze the findings in this regard. This point also is important for the definition of "intelligence" in ID theory. For if you also include 'learning' in the definition as 'Thought Provoker' has suggested elsewhere, it does not distinguish intelligence from an agentic or mind view to a rudimentary view of intelligence as observed in primates or other animals that appear intelligent by means of classical and/or operant conditioned behaviour. ID as I understand it views intelligence in terms 'agency' which is a sophisticated form of intelligence.
Comment by samsen — July 12, 2007 @ 6:34 am
July 12th, 2007 at 7:25 am
stunney wrote:
Stunney,
Do you honestly not see the fallacy in that? You're assuming a single consciousness that experiences both desires, when that is precisely the thing that you need to demonstrate, against all the evidence.
How did you reach that conclusion? Each hemisphere doesn't even know what the other is thinking. Recall the man whose left hemisphere guessed incorrectly about why the right hemisphere chose the drawing of the shovel.
Which is exactly what happens. Remember the man with the newspaper? His left hemisphere wanted to read the newspaper, so it used his right hand to pick it up again and again. His right hemisphere didn't want to read it, so it used his left hand to snatch it and throw it down, over and over. If the right hemisphere were experiencing conflicting desires, then the left hand would have wavered between throwing the newspaper down and picking it up. If the left hemisphere had been experiencing conflicting desires, then the right hand would have wavered between picking the newspaper up and throwing it down. Neither of these things happened. Each hemisphere experienced a separate and opposing desire.
This is so obvious that it shouldn't need to be asked, but if you saw two old men sitting side by side on a park bench, and one of the men held a newspaper out in front of both of them, and the other snatched it away and threw it to the ground, and this happened over and over again, would you argue that both men were animated by the same soul? Would you say that they were experiencing conflicting desires, but had only one will? Would you say that they constituted one conscious subject experiencing conflicting desires? That would be ridiculous, yet that is exactly what you are doing in the case of the split-brain patient.
Consider:
1a. The left hemisphere has different perceptions from the right hemisphere.
1b. The man on the left has different perceptions from the man on the right.
2a. The left hemisphere has its own thoughts. The right hemisphere does not experience these thoughts. Vice-versa.
2b. The man on the left has his own thoughts. The man on the right does not experience these thoughts. Vice-versa.
3a. The left hemisphere experiences its own emotions. The right hemisphere experiences its own emotions. These emotions may coincide, or they may conflict.
3b. The man on the left experiences his own emotions. The man on the right experiences his own emotions. These emotions may coincide, or they may conflict.
4a. The left hemisphere has its own desires. The right hemisphere is not directly aware of them. Vice-versa.
4b. The man on the left has his own desires. The man on the right is not directly aware of them.
5a. The left hemisphere may have desires which conflict with those of the right hemisphere.
5b. The man on the left may have desires which conflict with those of the man on the right.
6a. The hemispheres may act in different or even opposing, ways.
6b. The men may act in different or even opposing ways.
The evidence is the same in both cases, except that the hemispheres reside in a single body. But two hemispheres, lacking direct communication with each other, don't meld into a single unified consciousness and will just because they happen to be controlling different parts of the same body, any more than an airline captain and her copilot merge into a single consciousness just because they happen to be inside the same airplane but controlling different parts of it.
What evidence? Certainly none of the evidence that's been quoted or linked to on this thread.
No, but it does mean that the soul is not in control of the body. If it were, one hand wouldn't be working against the other. If you want to believe in a spectator soul that cannot control the body and carries no moral responsibility for the actions of the body, then go for it. That soul, at least, is not ruled out by the evidence, even though it seems unnecessarily complicated compared to the simpler materialist explanation of the same phenomena.
Who is the "he" you're talking about? Is it his left hemisphere, his right hemisphere, or both? You're confusing yourself by failing to be specific.
Here's your claim, in precise language:
1. Let B be a brain state.
2. Let M be the mental state of desiring to do X.
3. Let A be the action of doing X.
4. You concede that B causes M.
5. Then you claim that if A never happens unless M happens, then that implies that M causes A.
Your logic is faulty. If B causes M, and B also causes A, then A will never happen unless M happens. Yet M does not cause A; B does.
Comment by keiths — July 12, 2007 @ 7:25 am
July 12th, 2007 at 9:02 am
TP
That might be a bit unfair. If Stunney has tried to do nothing else here, it is to give arguments for the existence of God.
And what do you say about mine? I think the strongest argument for the existence of God is that anything exists at all. That is such a remarkable feat that I think the word God is justified.
Stunney,
All the examples you gave of a dog's possible conceptual states are indeed beyond a dog. But it's a far cry from saying a dog has not the capacity to worry about things to saying a dog has no concept of money and that we pay for its food. I have seen my dog worry intensely, and I knew exactly what she was worried about, and she expressed it obviously and eloquently. And she had a memory (or two) that drove her – that of being left behind when we were leaving for a trip. (If I was just coming and going in a general way, she ignored it.) Also, I have seen a dog find something yummy – an old piece of cheese in a baggie that was lost in the house for weeks or months, and slowly and carefully slink away trying to avoid being seen so she could go eat it herself.
I would never try to state that animals are in the human ballpark of abstract intellect, but yet animals do have thoughts, and do problem solve. Language is not needed for all forms of thought. The most intelligent leap I ever saw in an animal occurred in a hamster.
Keith,
Will you ever consider that perhaps the arisal of emotions aren't the soul? Seeing how animals have emotions and desires, and most Christians don't believe they have souls, doesn't that tell you something? And doesn't it seem that the right hemisphere is sort of like Frued's id? And what religious person denies that it can be a struggle to control one's impulses?
Comment by onething — July 12, 2007 @ 9:02 am
July 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am
It's not against all evidence, It is an open question. Do dual desires belong to individuals? Unquestionably yes. It is witnessed all the time. In fact the duality can consist of contradictory desires. In people who are functioning normally the conflict is internal and may not manifest itself through external actions. Add some brain damage to the mix and the individual may no longer be able to process an unambiguous response to conflicting desires even as he is still aware of them. AnaxagorasRules had an excellent point to make about the limited data introduced to explain these cases. Do such individuals display actions that do not indicate internal conflict?
Comment by Bradford — July 12, 2007 @ 11:33 am
July 12th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Suppose a human being has a split brain, the right hemisphere of which causes a desire to hurt, and the left hemisphere causes a desire to protect; and suppose both desires are experienced by the same conscious subject, then we have good grounds for not identifying conscious mental states with brain states.
If normal brain parts and processes generate one experiencing subject with mental states, the splitting of the brain should result in two experiencing subjects, neither of which ought to experience conflicting desires to hurt and to protect, but only one of those desires. But what does the scientific evidence show? Does it show just one experiencing subject who experiences both desires and thus experiences an inner conflict? Or does it show two subjects neither of whom experiences any inner conflict, but only an unconflicted desire to harm in the case of one subject, and only an unconflicted desire to protect in the case of the other? Or is it just not clear what is being experienced?
We make judgements about what experiences are occurring (in humans other than ourself) on the basis of observed bodily behaviors and from verbal self-reports delivered in the grammatical 1st person. Two ordinary men sitting on a park bench squabbling over a newspaper do not each of them experience both of their conflicting desires. Rather, each only experiences one internally unconflicted desire—his own—-as evidenced by the behavior and verbal statements of each. It is on that basis that we can confidently conclude in the normal case that neither of the two squabbling men experiences the desire of the other, or is internally conflicted. But does a split brain subject report both desires in the grammatical 1st person (either simultaneously or alternating back and forth over very short time periods); and does the split brain subject behave in a manner consistent with experiencing both desires (again, as occurring either simultaneously or alternating back and forth over very short time periods)? If so, then the split brain case is not analogous to a fight between two men about a newspaper while sitting on a park bench, for in that latter case the desires of the two men appear to be each steady and not internally conflicted. In the split brain case the desires that are supposedly being experienced appear to be anything but steady and unconflicted.
Now, we might explain the phenomena associated with the split brain case by hypothesizing that following the splitting of the brain, two experiencing subjects exist in the same body. But notice that we couldn't explain it this way while only using, in the standard way, the standard criteria of a) observed behavior of a single human organism; b) verbal reports delivered by that same organism in the grammatical 1st person. Using the standard criteria in the standard way, what we would reasonably conclude is that there is a subject experiencing bizarrely conflicting desires, or that the subject is unaware of one or more subconscious internally conflictive wishes that are responsible for producing the bizarre, incoherent observed behavior (such as unsplit human brain-owners who are severely mentally ill, developmentally disabled, or severely post-trauma brain-damaged sometimes exhibit).
Moving on…
1. Let B be a brain state.
2. Let M be the mental state of desiring to do X.
3. Let A be the action of doing X.
4. Let B cause M.
Hypothesis: if A never happens unless M happens, then that implies that M causes A.
Is the logic faulty? There may come to be an inscription on wood as follows:
If B causes M, and B also causes A, then A will never happen unless M happens. Yet M does not cause A; B does.
Well, DUH.
Why duh?
Because that inscription is equivalent to this one:
If B causes M, and IF B also causes A, then A will never happen unless M happens. Yet M does not cause A; B does.
Notice how the conclusion is included in the conditional premise? So we have: if B causes A, then B causes A. Which is a result that practically rivals those of Godel in profundity and significance, given its production by wood.
Comment by stunney — July 12, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I have a conjecture to make about conscious activity, using an analogy. The conjecture has nothing to do with souls, and does not require split-brain patients, people with multiple personalities, or confllicting and bizzare actions, all of which would muddle the conjecture. The conjecture would include these, but I want to present the idea using commonplace behavior. The idea is strange enough that I don't need to purposely introduce bizarreness.
Think of a computer system. Some systems have multiple processors and multiple clocks. On these systems, more than one program can run at the same time. This is true parallel processing. These systems have mulitple processors simultaneously performing programs. However, and this is one big however, each program is being run sequentially within itself, independent of the other programs that are also performing independently at the same time. This is true simultaneity in programming. Keep in mind, however, that within each program, the instructions are being processed sequentially. The understanding for my point is that there is one dedicated clock per program, and one program running in its dedicated processor. And this is occuring trully simultaneously.
Humans have only one brain, so there is no hardware analogy between multiple processor computer systems and a human. However, there is a parallel processing analogy between multiple processor computer systems and humans. The many programs running simultaneously in a multiple processor system can be analogized to the human body's many involuntary systems that run concurrently. For example: cardiovascular system, urinary system, digestive system, respiratory system, etc. These systems can be said to be functioning in parallel, in other words, simultaneously.
Therefore, the human body, as far as the involuntary systems are concerned, works in parallel. This ultimately makes sense, for the same reasons why computers with multiple processors are becoming more commonplace. How much less efficient would the human body be if all the involuntary functions were processed sequentially? The mind grovels at how many orders of magnitude would be necesary for the speed of the single controling clock to increase by in order to keep the rate of processing the same as it is now for all the systems.
For a simple example, suppose there are two parallel systems, where each system has a 1-second clock. Every second, something in both systems occurs, and the clock triggers it. Now imagine the same two systems working sequentially with only one clock. The clock speed would have to double, because each particular system would now be clocked on every other pulse. For each system to get clocked every second, the clock pulses would have to be occuring every .5 seconds, vice every second. As I said, when dealing with our involuntary systems, which act in parallel, and try to imagine them all working sequentially (in series would be another apt term), with only one shared clock signal, then the mind grovels.
Now to the conjecture. Can conscious activity be looked at as another function that is operating in parallel with the involuntary systems? I think so. I think that we can look at our involuntary systems and our conscious awareness as parallel systems, truly acting simultaneously.
The ultimate implication that I'm making is that, when it comes to willful and voluntary actions, we really can't chew bubblegum and walk at the same time. Much like the split-brain patient, who is observed to be peforming conflicting actions at the same time, so we normal people also observe simultaneous actions occuring at the same time. But what if the observance of simultaneity is only an illusion, brought on by "clock pulses" that occur so rapidly that we cannot differentiate between the discrete states?
Looked at this way, with conscious activity working as a paralell function alongside the involuntary systems, all of which are running sequentially within themselves, then the answer is yes, the act of bubblegum chewing and walking is not, in effect, being "processed" at the same time, because these are handled sequentially within the conscious awarness "program", each instruction triggered by its "dedicated clock".
If any of this even remotely makes sense to you, to at least consider, then look at the implications it has for time itself. Is time continuous, or is it like a step function, moving the universe along discretly, each change of state triggered by a "master clock"
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 12, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
me,
For a visual of what I mean here, think of a program routine that keeps looping through instructions. With the bubblegum chewing and walking, for example (an admittedly gross example, but to make the point clear):
Bite down
Move left leg
And this continues, until, though the dynamic act of some mysterious programmer, the instructions change to:
Open mouth
Lift right leg
And on and on, sequential actions occuring at a rate so fast that we observe the acts to be ocurring simultaneously.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 12, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
While one half of my brain was intrepid in its usual depredations; beating my wife with one hand while unbuttoning my shirt with the other (I can "multitask"), indoctrinating my children in religion, robbing the local liquor store, and plotting the overthrow of NATO, the other half was poring through my files:
"Healthy Avenues of the Mind" by Tanaquil Taubes, M.D.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.or...
Whaddya think, Bradford? Can anything if your position be salvaged?
Comment by Rock — July 12, 2007 @ 6:35 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
If n yore position came from that salvage yard I shore nuf reckon it can.
Comment by Bradford — July 12, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
stunney talking about Dummett:
I don't buy this logic. It is perfectly conceivable that there is an objective reality but there is no transcendent mind that can perceive all of it at once. In fact, this appears to the way things are.
Why? In a way, you are making the same mistake the postmodernist trendies were making. They, and you, are confusing the epistemic with the ontological, and in doing so are denying there is a reality independent of the mind. In their case they use this peculiar form of reasoning to argue for the subjectivity of both reality and minds, and in your case you are using it to argue the existence of an objective mind to support an objective reality. But why can't their be an objective reality that is only partially perceivable by imperfect, subjective minds? Again, this seems to be the way things are to anybody who hasn't wound themselves up in philosophical or religious knots.
Comment by mtraven — July 12, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
July 12th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
The idea that the universe is mathematical can be traced back to Pythagoras, who predates Plato.
Tegmark's thesis is that mathematical existence is the same as physical existence, and that every consistent mathematical structure exists. Only a few of these support what he calls SAS (Self-aware structures) and we call minds. In other words, it's a many-worlds theory taken to an extreme.
Comment by mtraven — July 12, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 12:41 am
mtraven wrote:
You need to think about both ontology and epistemology together.
Assume there is an objective reality. How would we know if there was? How could we ascertain whether reality was mind-independent, or mind-dependent? We could say this: if reality is mind-dependent, then that would be a mind-independent fact about reality. But that's much too quick. For that inference is very much a mind-dependent conclusion, dependent on the assumption that our logic is a reliable guide to reality and that reality is consistent. But 20th century developments in physics, paraconsistent logics, and other disciplines suggest a certain caution is warranted. Quine also suggests something similar, with his famous attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction, and his view that even arithmetic might be considered an empirical science. And then there's your bete noir Kripke with his plus and quus functions.
What is the best way to preserve objective reality while also doing justice to the basic intuition behind empiricism that reality must be detectable in principle? I explained my thoughts on this basic issue before:
By the way, the number of surviving works of Pythagoras is zero.
Comment by stunney — July 13, 2007 @ 12:41 am
July 13th, 2007 at 5:41 am
stunney denies the existence of propositional attitudes in animals:
Stunney,
You are way off the mark.
See the video entitled "Figure That One Out" at the bottom of this page.
The raven clearly understands the proposition "If I hold onto the string, the meat will not fall all the way back down."
Comment by keiths — July 13, 2007 @ 5:41 am
July 13th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Bradford expresses a point which onething, stunney, and others have also made:
Of course individuals, both normal and split-brain, harbor conflicting impulses. That is a surprise to nobody, least of all to neuroscientists.
The crucial difference is that in a normal person, the conflict is resolved. A decision is made. The body carries out the decision in a unified way, even if the decision is later reversed.
A normal person who is wavering about robbing a bank does not find half of himself deciding to walk away and half of himself moving ahead with the robbery. Yet this is the kind of thing that happens to split-brain patients.
Bradford considers the soul to be the seat of the will, and the locus of moral responsibility:
Yet he cannot answer these simple questions:
1. If the right hemisphere commits a sin which the left hemisphere tries to prevent, is the soul guilty?
2. If the immaterial soul, by itself, makes decisions, why can't it simply decide on one course of action and cause both hemispheres to follow its instructions?
3. If the immaterial soul receives input from both hemispheres, and if the immaterial soul is conscious and expresses itself through speech, why are split-brain patients unable to vocally express the ruminations of the right hemisphere, which are perfectly evident through left-hand writing?
4. If the immaterial soul is the ultimate decision maker, and if souls by themselves are worthy of reward or punishment because they are morally responsible for a person's actions, then why does the simple severing of a bundle of nerve fibers make the difference between a person carrying out a sin versus refraining?
If you concede that the soul requires physical assistance to make decisions, then what becomes of its status as the locus of moral responsibility? It is no longer responsible if a simple physical change can make the difference between a person committing, or not committing, a sin.
Bradford may refuse to answer these questions. Anyone else willing?
Comment by keiths — July 13, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Keiths,
1. I've already pointed out that from a biblical perspective the desire to commit wrongdoing itself is an indicator of sin. Whether the desire is acted on or restrained speaks of the extent of the sin. This issue came into popular foucs for a brief time during the Carter-Ford campaign when Carter uttered the much publicized remark that he had sinned by "lusting in his heart." He meant he had not actually committed physical acts of adultery.
2&3. It was believed in antiquity, long before the age of science, that souls interact with, are influenced by and are part of bodies during the lives of individuals. Analyses would have to be viewed from that perspective.
4. Again the interconnectiveness is there and your assumption of an absence of action equating to an absence of sin is a distinctly unbiblical concept. God is able to perceive more than we can about the individual in question and judge the person accordingly. Noone is responsible for what is beyond their control.
At this point I'm begining to suspect that AnaxagorasRules' point about such patients also displaying non-conflicting behavoir is valid. There has been a lack of emphasis on this.
Comment by Bradford — July 13, 2007 @ 1:37 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Hi, Keiths,
If you read my comments, (I think there are 4 or 5 … ignore the one addressed to salimfadhely, as that one was tongue-in-cheek), you'll see that I am disputing your claim of simultaneity, in regards to the split-brain patient. Specifically, I am conjecturing that, for each specific instant of time, the split-brain patient is peforming only one "instruction", this instruction being necessary to fulfill either the "kill wife" program, or the "protect wife" program. I conjectured a human model that has a "conscious awareness system" running in parallel with the involuntary systems (cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, etc), each of these systems running concurrently (truly simultaneously). However, within in each system, the processing is sequential.
In other words, although the split-brain patient's actions are conflicting, the actions are not conflicting at the same time. To demonstate this, I posted a simple C++ program that simulated "simultaneous" confliction. The observed "simultaneity" of the response was an illusion.
To explain this a little more. Imagine a normal person crossing a street. In the time it takes him to cross the street, he must voluntarily walk across the street, and lets say while he is doing this he looks left, then right, and just before he reaches the opposite curb, let's say he checks his watch.
So, in the time it takes him to cross the street, the following "programs" must be run by his conscious awareness system:
1. Walk (througout the duration of the, say, ten seconds that elapses during the excursion from one curb to the other.
2. Look left (at some time while he is in the street).
3. Look right (at some time while he is in the street, and after he has completed the look left program.
4. Check watch (at some time before he steps up on the opposite curb, and after he has looked both ways)
What is happening (I conjecture), is that the conscious awareness system, during this time frame, will process 4 programs (as stated). They will be processed through time-sharing. At any instant, only one instruction of one of the programs is being processed. The switching is so fast that the actions appear to be occuring simultaneously when they occur. There is no real simultaneity of action.
In the case of the split-brain patient, there are two conflicting programs undergoing timesharing. The "instructions" are not taking place simultaneously. It only looks that way because the switching between programs is happening so fast. That the programs are conflicting is beside the point.
This idea implicity requires time to be discrete, like a step function, and not continuous. Time, in a sense, is clocking the person along, from one discrete state to another, running the programs.
In summary, I think that your assumption of simultaneity of action (by the split-brain patient) may be a gross and erroneous interpretation.
At any given point in time, any number of voluntary programs can be up and running in the conscious awareness system. We could say that we can have many wills (programs) operating at the same time. However, the program instructions are not being executed truly simultaneously. What is doing the timeharing and the starting/terminating of the programs is the real mystery.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 13, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
keiths, I think you are misunderstanding the Christian concept. Have you heard about the Semitic Totality Concept? Because it is central to understand the nature of humans from a Judeo-christian perspective. From your posts I gather that you seem to seperate the soul and body in to seperate entities in a dualistic sort of way. Contrary to that, Ancient Judeo-christian theology has always held that human beings consist of inseperable whole of body and soul i.e. the soul is not a seperate entity that exists in some kind of supernatural realm connected with the body or some kind of "ghost in the machine". People's actions reflect the whole of their person not just one part of them. In this regard, I do not find anything in the findings of the split-brain studies contradicting the concept of soul in relation to christian theology. In fact, it is exactly what I'd expect: fiddling with the body[in this case brain] would reflect in the actions of that persons depending upon what one actually does to the body. I'll pick one question of yours and attempt to answer…….
keiths:
In this case the person is not guilty because he/she is not in their normal state with a normal brain. The person's actions would be abnormal because the person is a totality of his body AND soul, so splitting the brain would affect the persons actions. This view also holds that a person cannot function properly when any part of him/her is affected. It does not matter if it is the body or soul. Remember the actions would reflect the state of the person as a whole.
Comment by samsen — July 13, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Bradford wrote:
And I've already pointed out that one hemisphere can desire to commit an act at the same time as the other hemisphere opposes it. Is the soul guilty if just one hemisphere desires to commit a sin? Is the left hemisphere guilty if the right hemisphere lusts after somebody?
So? The question is whether the concept of the soul makes sense, given the evidence that we now possess.
That is not my assumption.
Is what the right hemisphere does beyond the soul's control? The left? And in what sense is a voluntary action, planned and carried out by one of the hemispheres, beyond a person's control?
I've been meaning to comment on his idea. Stay tuned.
Comment by keiths — July 13, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Alex Kacelnik and his team have done some great research on cognition in birds, lately on tool making in new caledonian crows. Here's a video of such a clever bird:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
And here's part of the discussion of
Weir AAS, Kacelnik A
A New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) creatively re-designs tools by bending or unbending aluminium strips
ANIMAL COGNITION 9 (4): 317-334 OCT 2006
Comment by Raevmo — July 13, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I've already pointed out that from a biblical perspective the desire to commit wrongdoing itself is an indicator of sin.
Does the right hemisphere belong to John Doe? If so then JD is guilty. Localization of desires to particular brain locations is not a startling concept.
2&3. It was believed in antiquity, long before the age of science, that souls interact with, are influenced by and are part of bodies during the lives of individuals. Analyses would have to be viewed from that perspective.
No, actually Keiths, the bigger question is why would a scientist devote his own energies and the resources of others to a theological issue in order to feed his anti-religious impulses?
Maladies are nothing new either Keiths. If x is beyond JD's control, he is not morally responsible.
Comment by Bradford — July 13, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
To bring some threads together here as the comments grow to over 250, let me quote Dennett: "Yes we have a soul, but it's made up of lots of tiny robots."
Comment by mtraven — July 13, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Hi, keiths,
In thinking about this idea, I have modified it a bit. It is better I think to separate conscious awareness from willful acts, and to think of each one as being subsystems within a larger system (I don't know what to call that larger system yet). That larger system runs in parallel with the involuntary systems. Within that larger system, the conscious awareness subsystem and the willfull acts subsystem must have some sort of bi-directional feedback loop working. There might even be some true parallel processing going on within those subsystems, but at the lowest levels the processing will be sequential. The result would be the same, an everchanging number of willfull programs starting and ending, but working more efficiently because each program will have its own dedicated clock.
This is a conceptual model, and I'm not trying to tie body/brain parts to this.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 13, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
I watched a video recently entitled, "Figure That One Out". After doing so, I was asking the same question as to how anyone ever thought it was even remotely relevant to the question of whether non-human species possess propositional attitudes, let alone fine-grained ones involving the concepts of string and meat, as in not an 'elastic band', and not a 'piece of tuna fish'.
To be perfectly frank. I was absolutely flabbergasted that anyone this side of the Moon could consider it as even an iota of evidence that birds or monkeys are capable of understanding concepts, let alone an entire proposition. What next? Malaria species have an entire computerized database on the pharmaceutical industry? Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeze.:mrgreen:
Animals have qualia. And they exhibit learning behavior. But they understand propositions too?
I guess I was mistaken. I thought evangelical atheists, some of whom have denied the existence of qualia, couldn't get any more ridiculous than they already were.
Comment by stunney — July 13, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
mtraven wrote:
I had a gander at this paper, and it only confirms what I have long maintained: 'science' has now reached the nadir of positing, in a desperate and amusingly ironic attempt to explain the empirical data, an infinite number of physically unobservable entities as part of an untestable hypothesis, so as to avoid positing one unobservable transcendent rationally conscious reality.
I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would think it rational to believe in the real existence of infinite sets but irrational to believe in the real existence of an infinite mind.
I suppose they're just sick of mind. And in more ways than one.:wink:
Comment by stunney — July 13, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
An infinite set has a precise mathematical definition, whether or not it corresponds to any physical reality. "An infinite mind" just sounds like nonsense. As for many-worlds theories — quantum superposition is an observable fact, the only question is what is the status of the superimposed states and if they go away at some point (collapse) or if they stick around forever. So, quantum physics has saddled us with multiple universes, once you admit to more than one it's not a stretch to admit to any number of them. A transcendent mind, on the other hand, is radically unlike anything we can observe.
And as for animals and propositional attitudes — what would an animal have to do to convince you that it had propositional attitudes? The definition of that seems highly elastic, but I would think that evidence that some primates practice deception (and thus are reasoning about the propositional contents of other animal minds) is pretty compelling.
Comment by mtraven — July 13, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
mtraven wrote:
So you keep asserting.
That is so, so true. I've often seen dead cats/live cats. But then I sobered up and turned my life around.
Nah, just kidding.
Hate to break this to ya, mtraven, but so are non-transcendent minds.
Here's a radical suggestion: provide evidence that they understand, you know, like, um, propositions? Even one animal understanding one proposition would do.
And don't try to fool me by suggesting a 'bright'. We all know they don't even understand what a proposition is, let alone understand an instance of one.
[Emphasis added]
Then, albeit however reluctantly, I must conclude what I've long suspected.
You're delusional and/or extremely confused.
Comment by stunney — July 13, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
That's a remarkably content-free reply, even for you.
1) the existence of quantum superposition has been established via experiment for a long time.
2) Ordinary minds (or more precisely, their effects and behaviors) are highly observable. Transcendent minds aren't.
3) Animals clearly have some forms of mental representation and cognitive function. Whether these are "propositional attitudes" or not depends on how you define that term . Since you can't give me an answer about what would constitute evidence for the existence of propositional attitudes, I assume you don't have any good theory about what they are and are just blowing smoke to cover up your lack of understanding.
Comment by mtraven — July 13, 2007 @ 11:09 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Stunney would have starved to death trying to get the meat off the end of that string. He feels threatened because the video shows that the raven is smarter than he is.
Comment by keiths — July 13, 2007 @ 11:12 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Speaking of superposition, behold the mysteries of the quantum Chenyverse!
Comment by mtraven — July 13, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
July 13th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
mtraven wrote:
When you figure out what propositional content is, call me. (Hint: it's not perception. Another hint: it's not qualia. Another hint: it's not learned behavior)
Meantime, I look forward to your TV career as Doctor Dolittle.
What was that song? Oh yes, I remember now.
I've Never Seen Anything Like It
Comment by stunney — July 13, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Stunney and Zoskie:
Suppose Dummett is correct, so that a universe (along with its contents) does not exist unless at least one observer exists during its history. Now consider the following two soccer balls:
Soccer ball #1 is contained in a universe which will remain unobserved throughout its entire history.
Soccer ball #2 is contained in a universe in which a single observer will arise. However, the history of the universe is short enough, and the distance between the soccer ball and the observer is great enough, that the light cone of the soccer ball will never include the observer.
According to Dummett, soccer ball #1 does not exist, but soccer ball #2 does because it is contained within a universe which includes an observer at one point during its history.
Yet there is absolutely no possibility that either soccer ball will ever be observed.
How do you justify the claim that only soccer ball #2 exists?
Comment by keiths — July 14, 2007 @ 12:42 am
July 14th, 2007 at 3:13 am
Keith,
I asked you a few questions, but you don't seem to have noted them. You ask if others are willing to answer the questions Bradford didn't, but others have tried. For example, some Christians believe that the soul really isn't separate from the body, and has no consciousness outside of it. I don't think that. But what I did say is that I think we are composite beings, not all of a piece. And by the way, as you said, it's good we are thinking about these things because only ideas that have been fought for, challenged, can be brought into focus. What I am not sure I see happening is that you are also willing to enlarge your ideas. You only expect others to do that, and your remarks are the same as they were at the start. Seemingly, you've taken not note at all of the points made.
You've asked this before, and I said you expect the soul to have such power that the brain is unneeded. You denied it, but that is exactly what you are insisting upon. Why have a brain, if the soul acts perfectly well whether the brain is injured or not?
What I have asked before is, does the right hemisphere ever act in a restraining manner, or is it just impulse? Personally, I find this interesting because perhaps this is what goes on in us regular people when we fight within ourselves against temptation. You say it is smooth, and it may appear so for an outside observer, but it isn't really smooth. Which side will win is in doubt.
All day long I think about it, and at night I say it:
What is the soul?
If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison…
Are you just baiting people, or do you really want answers from the Christian perspective? Have you read much in Buddhism? Are you aware of the doctrine of no-self? I don't think the doctrine is true but it is very, very hard to pin down the location of the soul, and I am not sure it is the ultimate decision maker. The insistence that we have only one lifetime to develop seems quite untenable to me, and makes a mockery of justice. I can't even respond to a question like 4; it is almost a category error.
It isn't so much that the soul requires physical assistance to make decision, as that it is confined and confused by physical/emotional impulses of the body.
Comment by onething — July 14, 2007 @ 3:13 am
July 14th, 2007 at 3:29 am
Stunney,
Your initial statement was that a dog can't have worries. Now you insist that animals can't – what? – think or have intentionality because they don't think in propositional statements, which are linguistic in nature and so you have neatly excluded them by fiat.
Here is a nonlinguistic propositional thought process I witnessed in an animal: (I really am not quite sure what you consider a valid propositional phrase)
If it is water on my body which makes me stop feeling like I'm dying,
and if it is also water that I drink from my little tube,
and if I use my tongue against the tube to release water into my mouth
then if I rub my back against the tube it should also release water onto my body and I can save myself.
Having kept many mice, hamsters and rats, I have never seen one do this before, nor did this one ever do it again once we got out of the desert, and it lived two or three more years. It put two and two together after being dipped into a bowl of water each time it began to wilt and faint, perhaps every hour or so, for almost two days. I did not know hamsters can't tolerate heat, which was 115 the first day, and 112 the second.
When you consider that this was done without language it not only should cause one to to have some awe at the animal's capabilities, but it should also cause one to question the necessity of language for certain types of problems, and even whether we truly think in language as much as we suppose.
Comment by onething — July 14, 2007 @ 3:29 am
July 14th, 2007 at 5:43 am
Dummett does not explicitly argue that for an object smaller than a universe to exist is for that smaller object to be perceivable from within that universe. What he argues is that for a universe to exist is for at least some part of it to be perceivable or inferrable at some point by some sentient inhabitant. This is what he says:
At first sight, the idea that for an object within a universe to exist is for it to be perceivable/inferrable (not necessarily actually perceived or inferred) by a sentient inhabitant may appear a plausible extrapolation from Dummett's narrower explicit thesis. Assume that all the members of the set of all observers contained within our universe are fully earthbound Earthlings. Then the extrapolation would hold that all the members of the set of all really existing objects within our universe would be located on or within one of the members of the set of all light cones of Earthlings, rendering as empirically vacuous the notion of objects existing in the absolute elsewhere of those cones unless they could be somehow inferred from other events within them.
However, I suspect Dummett would reject this broader extrapolation on the grounds that he intends his conclusion to be a general metaphysical one that is independent of, and not hostage to, any particular logically contingent physical law or fact obtaining, such as a speed limit on signals. One can at least conceive of an observer having, say, telepathic powers.
He may also have a theological reason. A forever observerless universe seems an utterly pointless thing for God to create rather than merely conceive, but an infinite universe containing observers need not be, if even only the mere fact of its infinite extent is inferrable and believed to be a sign of God's majesty, glory, power, wisdom, etc. I think Newton and Kant thought of it that way. Such an idea allows for many completely undetectable stars, etc.
Comment by stunney — July 14, 2007 @ 5:43 am
July 14th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Hi Stunney,
In response to mtraven you wrote…
I have to admit I chuckled at this one.
This is getting very disturbing. Not only am I understanding and agreeing with some of the things you say, but I am actually starting to enjoy them. Maybe I had better make an appointment with a specialist that deals with things like this.
Meanwhile, allow me to ramble a few incoherent thoughts of my own. One of the metaphysical aspects on the Orch OR model is that consciousness is directly linked to the "weirdness" of the quantum world. Which implies the possibility that various mental states could interact with various quantum states. Ergo, in the right frame of mind (including "under the influence"), we could "see" quantum superpositions.
Hameroff has often talked about Orch OR effect in dreams..
[Orch OR transitions] implies that pre-conscious activities including Freud's subconscious and our dreams are manifest as quantum information, e.g. as schizophrenic superpositions of multiple possibilities. The bizarre nature of the dream world has been described (Matte Blanco, 1971) as "where paradox reigns and opposites merge to sameness", also an apt description of the quantum world." link
Here is Hameroff (SH) being interviewed by someone named Greg [GT]…
GT: In your opinion, does the hypothesis of 'quantum consciousness' provide a model for anomalous experiences such as Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) and Near Death Experiences (NDEs)?
SH: I would say possibly yes. Under normal circumstances consciousness occurs in the fundamental level of spacetime geometry confined in the brain. But when the metabolism driving quantum coherence (in microtubules) is lost, the quantum information leaks out to the spacetime geometry in the universe at large. Being holographic and entangled it doesnt dissipate. Hence consciousness (or dream-like subconsciousness) can persist.
…
GT:You talk about the action of anesthetics in selectively erasing consciousness. Do hallucinogenic substances also act at a similar level (though not necessarily erasing consciousness)?
SH: Consciousness exists on the boundary between the quantum subconscious and the classical world. I think hallucinogens promote the quantum state in their receptors (there is evidence to support that) and other proteins including microtubules. I think psychedelic altered states (and dreams) are like consciousness except the boundary is pushed more into the quantum phase – multiple coexisting possibilities, deep interconnections, distorted reality, sheaf logic, timelessness….and (for psychedelics) more conscious events per classical clock time, and more intense experience.
Personally, I remember how real dreams felt when I was much, much younger, but in my dreams, I always had the ability to float and fly (more like swimming). As hard as I tried (and I did try) I couldn't do the same thing when I was awake.
Eventually, I used this as a test to decide whether I was awake or just dreaming that I was getting ready for school. If I could fly, I was dreaming and was going to miss the bus in the "real" world.
Did my dream-self understand that the inertial state of the quantum world is free fall? I can assure you my second-grade-self didn't.
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 14, 2007 @ 5:58 am
July 14th, 2007 at 6:14 am
To any TT Moderator,
I have a comment "awaiting moderation".
I would appreciate it, if you could rescue it from purgatory.
Thanks,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — July 14, 2007 @ 6:14 am
July 14th, 2007 at 7:04 am
onething wrote:
I don't think I said 'worries'. I think I used the word 'fears' as part of a list of types of propositional attitudes, for example, fear that such and such. Such attitudes are attitudes towards propositions. I think you are conflating two quite distinct things. A dog may have an attitude to a physical object, such as a human, a ball, a cat, a tree, etc. But a proposition is not a physical object, and the dog doesn't have attitudes towards propositions.
As I have said several times already, the dog does have mental states. I have provided a link to non-conceptual mental content. I've said it has qualia, including emotional qualia. A dog may be anxious when its owner is absent, it may be happy, it may be sad, it may be afraid, in a variety of circumstances, etc. It may be very intelligent.
What I'm skeptical of is simply the claim that any of those abilities or mental states indicates or entails that dogs have attitudes towards propositions. For me to believe they do, I'd have to be convinced that, for any proposition you care to specify, a dog understands the meaning of that proposition. But, as of today I don't think propositions are the kind of thing dogs understand. And it's not just dogs. I don't think newborn human babies understand propositions. I don't think most adult humans understand the meaning of many propositions to do with, say, the finer points of string theory, or biology, or linguistics. So I think they don't have beliefs or hopes or doubts regarding those propositions. They lack attitudes towards many propositions.
But that's ok. Not understanding propositions doesn't make you a bad animal, whether you're a dog or a human.
Comment by stunney — July 14, 2007 @ 7:04 am
July 14th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to try it. I've had a fair amount of trouble with thinking I've woken up when I haven't.
Comment by onething — July 14, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I don't know about any of you, but I've learned a lot here. Including from keiths, as weird as it sounds coming from my position
To get back to the mind/body issue, the problem as I see it now is this: if will = soul = consciousness (my position), and there's only one soul in one body, why does it manifest itself as two distinct (worse, contradictory) actions? Anaxagoras' solution doesn't help, I'm afraid – why are there two contradictory programs, each allowed to control its own hemisphere? I mean, if the two programs ran inside the soul (as I am assuming they do when I have two contradictory impulses) then why don't they switch hemispheres randomly? And if they do run inside the brain… then where is the need for the soul? (Ok, this doesn't remove the soul = consciousness part, but it does remove the soul = will part.)
So far the only idea that (as far as I can see) solves the problem is samsen's position that soul + body = whole. The body is damaged, therefore the whole is damaged, and we can't deduce information about the soul from the behavior of the damaged whole. However, this is not my position: I do not believe the body to be a necessary part of the whole. (I understand its basis… a body, even though a spiritual instead of a physical one, appears to be strongly suggested by Paul. It's just not something that I realized until now, and I'm not going to jump to another position just yet.)
As I said, I learned a lot, and I have a lot more food for thought.
Comment by mdpopescu — July 14, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
mdpopescu, go on now, you are so close. Swear off your religious believe and join the brotherhood of evil atheists. You can do it. Say no to Jesus. Welcome.
Comment by Raevmo — July 14, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Mdpopescu, there have been times when I've felt an urge to do one thing and have had another reason not to do the same. I'm sure others have experienced the same dilemna from time to time. Frankly, I don't see anything unusual about dual intentions. Nor does it seem strange that they could be located in different regions of the brain. The physical acting out can be attributed to the medical condition.
Comment by Bradford — July 14, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Don't listen to Bradford. Salvation can only be found in pure atheism. Join us. Now.
Comment by Raevmo — July 14, 2007 @ 6:50 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Raevmo plays a mean golden fiddle. They really do believe in souls.
Comment by Bradford — July 14, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Bradford wrote:
Bradford,
Nobody sees anything unusual about conflicting impulses. I keep explaining that to you, and you keep ignoring me, probably because you are in desperate need of a strawman to declare victory over.
Read what I wrote, and don't ignore it this time:
Comment by keiths — July 14, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
mdpopescu, the materialists set up a straw man. This straw man is the notion that the soul is a separate independent substance. But the soul isn't that, but this: a set of capacities that a human person possesses, in particular the capacities for rational thinking and willing.
Why on earth would God create non-physical beings who are ontologically independent substances and then embody them? It would be pointless to do such a thing. At least, doing such a thing doesn't make sense to me. But given God's intention of creating embodied beings who can know and love, who can think and will, who are endowed with conscious rationality and moral autonomy, who are, in a word, persons, then there needs to be not just an appropriate set of physical laws and constants, but also some psycho-physical laws as well. If there weren't, then embodied rational and moral agency wouldn't be possible.
So consider this possibility: the contingent psycho-physical laws God has designed entail the following propositions:
1. A living human body is causally necessary for all mental states that body has.
2. A living human body is causally sufficient for all mental states that body has.
3. Propositions 1 and 2 are not necessary truths, but contingent truths.
4. Mental states are neither identical with, nor reducible to, their bodily causes (as per the causal connections specified by the psycho-physical laws God designs), since effects in general are neither identical with, nor reducible to, their causes. If x causes y, then x is not = y.
5. Some mental states cause some bodily states.
6. A human being is one substance, which has physical and non-physical properties.
7. Among the non-physical properties of human beings are the capacities for rational thinking and willing. (This is the aspect of humanity which is "in the image and likeness of God".)
8. If the bodily parts specified by psycho-physical laws are damaged in a variety of ways, these same laws entail a variety of kinds of mental disruption, including disruption of the person's capacity for willing.
All of these propositions are perfectly consistent with the split brain data. And I explained why those data do not entail any conclusion to the effect that there are, after the split, two wills or two conscious subjects or two persons here.
The mad errorists are confused because they think that 'soul' means an independent, self-contained immaterial substance. Vladimir Krondan explained their mistake nicely here and here. 'Soul' in the context of human beings simply means the capacity of humans to possess or instantiate non-material, spiritual properties, i.e., properties which do not reduce, either explanatorily or ontologically, to the properties of matter.
Comment by stunney — July 14, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Hi, mdpopescu,
I think you have to consider modifying your conception of a soul and its relationship to the body. For example, put aside the split-brain patient for the time being. Imagine that you walk from one end of the room to the other, all the while pumping both your arms up and down and turning your head left and right. These are all individual actions…in my analogy, all individual programs. Are there 5 wills = 5 souls = 5 consciousnesses in action ( one each for walking, pumping left arm, pumping right arm, turning head left, turning head right)?
Having this kind of conception is, admittedly, rediculous. Notice in your conception of the soul, you've left out the involuntary functions. The soul has no influence on the digestive system, the respiratory system, etc? The body cannot live without these life-sustaining systems…and the soul has no relationship with these?
All I think you need to do is sit down and revamp your conception of a soul and its relationship to the body and the mind. Nothing serious.
Also, in the case of the split-brain patient, we are not dealing with a normal brain to begin with. With an abnormal brain, is the actuation of two conflicting "programs" running at the same time really that bizarre? There are times when looking specifically at abnormal cases can help the analysis of a situation. This is not one of them. A close look at the normal situations of willful actions, conscious awareness, and involuntary functions, is sufficient to fine tune the model of a soul, imo.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 14, 2007 @ 8:13 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Keiths:
I've responded to this before. I'll do it again and please read carefully this time. You are pointing to the physical acting out of a conflict caused by the malady itself. The physical manifestation of the conflict suggests a short circuiting of the previously existing capacity to avoid an ambiguous physical response through a mental resolution of the conflict. There is no longer an override option. From a Judeo-Christian theological POV if the conflict leads to buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt the consequence is morally trivial. Since morality is central to a soul's importance, from a divine point of view, the example cited would have no more theological significance than a common cold. When the conflict does suggest a moral dimension then the perspective is also clear since morality entails intent from God's point of view; making it possible for thought itself to be sinful. In such cases restraint on acting would signal a lessor degree of sin, not its absence.
Comment by Bradford — July 14, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
They are not confused stunney. It is just an atheist evangelical tactic. They are hoping to win a convert.:twisted:
Comment by Bradford — July 14, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
AnaxagorasRules hits another curveball out of the park. The inability to voluntarily control bodily functions has zero impact on theological conceptions about souls. Combine this observation with comments made about the moral dimensions of souls and you come up with an EA strikeout in an attempt to bash Christianity.
Comment by Bradford — July 14, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
stunney:
If that was all there were to the concept of a soul, there would be no conflict between materialism and soulism. But people who believe in souls also generally believe that they can exist independently of the body (after death, for instance), so your version of soulism is not what is generally meant. Just as your version of God is not what the word generally means.
If you want to believe in a soul that is nothing more than the capacities of a material body, and a God that is nothing more than some abstract capacity for reason, go ahead, I can't criticize anything but your choice of terminology. But then why do you persist in insulting materialists when there is no difference between your views and theirs?
Comment by mtraven — July 14, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
mtraven:
Pointing out that after death the existence of a soul would continue is fair. It is also the reason that a scientific attempt to refute the existence of a soul is an unwise endeavor. Much is made of the attempt to link ID to sociopolitical and religious values. The same criticism can be made of attempts to link evolution to the refutation of religious concepts. It's a wedge mindset and as Yogi Berra would say deja vu all over again.
The difficulty lies with your assumption that "capacities for rational thinking and willing" are reducible to a material body. They are unquestionably linked. However the reduction is fuzzy. There is no detailed explanation linking biochemical reactions within the brain to thought and emotion. One might as well say light is an emergent property of the sun. The linkage suffers from a missing mechanistic understanding of the dynamics of nuclear fusion and electromagnetic waves. Similarly properties of thought is linked to but not explained by brain biochemistry.
Comment by Bradford — July 14, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
July 14th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
mtraven wrote:
I see you missed this bit then:
That position is not compatible with materialism. Or, to reverse the charges, what you're doing is to define a concept of materialism (or physicalism) that's quite compatible with property dualism, indeed is a disguised version of it. (Incidentally, that's the charge that is commonly levelled by materialists at Davidson and Searle.)
You are also blatantly wrong when you say: But people who believe in souls also generally believe that they can exist independently of the body (after death, for instance), at least if you are talking about the West, or about Eastern religions, e.g. Hinduism, which believe in some form of reincarnation. The Islamic conception of the afterlife is quite, er, fleshy too. Or so I'm told.
Certainly as regards Christianity you are in error. One of its ancient credal articles of faith (for instance, the Apostles' Creed) is known as the resurrection of the body. I've explained this before:
See also here and here.
Comment by stunney — July 14, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
July 15th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Property dualism (as defined in wikipedia) is perfectly compatible with materialism. Why shouldn't it be? But all of your point 4 hinges on what you mean by "reducible", which I am beginning to think is a word that should be banned from use, especially by philosophers. Ie, I appear to be composed of a variety of material substances and processes. Am I "reducible" to them? It depends on what you mean. My computer is composed of bits and circuits is it "reducible" to them? It depends on what you mean.
The popular Christian model of the soul has it zipping off to heaven or hell, sans body, to enjoy whatever pleasures or torments await it. In Hinduism, the soul has to go through some sort of intermediate state before reincarnation, during which it is bodiless. In both cases, it's clear that the soul is conceived of as a separate entity from the body, from which it can be detached (and, in the Hindu case, reattached to a new one). So how am I "blatantly wrong"
Comment by mtraven — July 15, 2007 @ 12:48 am
July 15th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Bradford wrote:
Indeed. The 'explanatory gap' is acute. This is recognized even by naturalist philosophers of mind, such as Colin McGinn, Thomas Nagel, Donald Davidson, David Chalmers, Galen Strawson, and Jaegwon Kim. Most commonly the issue that gets the greatest attention is the qualia one. But there is another that, if anything, is even more problematic, and that is the intentionality of thought. Consider for example the thought expressed by this sentence:
Somewhere in a galaxy 9 billion light-years from ours, there is an intelligent conscious alien who looks just like Julius Caesar.
What makes that thought a thought about a Julius Caesar lookalike in a far-off galaxy? Well, it can't be the English words used to express the thought, for those words are merely symbols that have the meaning they do not by metaphysical necessity or some intrinsic power, but by arbitrary convention. For example, we could decide that the word 'galaxy' would from now on mean extremely large star. This mere definitional change could conceivably change the truth-value of the statement from true to false. So what is it that gives the thought itself, and not just the conventional English linguistic expression that's used to state it, the meaning that it has?
The physicalist answer is that there are causal connections between the world and the brain which generates the thought, and that the meaning of the thought is determined by facts concerning the causal history of the world and the brain having that thought. But the word 'cause', like the word 'galaxy', is itself an essentially arbitrary symbol. We could, if we wished, decide to use 'cause' to refer to, say, ice cream. In other words, what is the meaning of the thought expressed by this sentence (with its customary sense):
The meaning of a given thought is determined by facts concerning the causal history of the world and the brain having that thought
More importantly, even if I know what a cause in general is, I have no idea what the specific causal physical history is of my brain chemistry with regard to the Caesar lookalike sentence; yet I'm confident that I understand the thought expressed by that sentence just fine.
Even if I understand the thought from my internal subjective mental perspective, a third party has to interpret me when I say (or write) the sentence, Somewhere in a galaxy 9 billion light-years from ours, there is an intelligent conscious alien who looks just like Julius Caesar, and how does that third party know that my use of the word 'galaxy' means galaxy and not star? Obviously we cannot investigate everybody's brain history every time they utter a sentence. We must rely, for pragmatic reasons, on conventionally agreed upon linguistic rules. But now we have a problem. For now we have to interpret what the rules themselves mean, since the statement of the rules is given in a language. The rules for English can be given in English. Or in Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, etc.
So the issue is: how do we know the meaning of our own and others' thoughts? Investigating brain history is impractical. But even in theory it's hopelessly flawed, because even if we mapped each English-speaker's brain-states in correlation with linguistic behavior, we would still have to interpret each word each speaker used. Utterances of 'galaxy' might correlate with brain state XYZ, and so on. But that would not tell us whether 'galaxy' referred to galaxies rather than stars. So next we would have to look at the behavior of the speaker and his linguistic community. But that has the absurd consequence that most people do not understand their own thoughts, because most linguistic communities are far too large for a typical speaker, especially in childhood, to carry out observational studies on correlations between typical word use and behavior. And even if you did, you'd still have to interpret the word-behavior correlations; and how could you do that without already understanding your own thoughts about what you were doing, your thoughts about words, about behavior, about meanings, about correlations, etc. One would still have to decide whether 'galaxy' meant galaxy and not, for instance, extremely large star.
Meantime, for all I know, I may be the first human in history ever to have considered the thought that:
Somewhere in a galaxy 9 billion light-years from ours, there is an intelligent conscious alien who looks just like Julius Caesar
In other words, thought simply does not appear to reduce either to brain history or observed physical behavior, because the meanings of thoughts, and the capacity to understand those meanings, do not reduce either temporally, explanatorily, or ontologically to observed brain history and observed physical behavior.
Comment by stunney — July 15, 2007 @ 2:20 am
July 15th, 2007 at 3:19 am
mtraven wrote:
As standardly used by philosophers, property dualism and materialism are opposing ideas. Still, it is as I anticipated.
The idea has to do with monism. You are a monist if you think every kind of substance and property reduces to one ontological kind (whether or not we can explain how it reduces). The monist options are materialism, idealism, or neutral monism. A dualist, whether a substance dualist or a property dualist, denies that claim, either for both substances and properties, or just for properties. One can mix and match. For example, I describe my current view as being neutral monist as regards substance, and dualist (physical and spiritual) as regards properties.
I really think you are way off base there. The vast majority of Christians I've known have a very physical idea of heaven and hell, and definitely think of themselves as having a body in the afterlife, if only because it's almost impossible to have an image of a bodiless existence, and for most of them 'pure thinking substance' is way too cerebral an idea to maintain for longer than a couple of seconds. This is also borne out by their notions of angels. And of God, for that matter. Resurrection is a very different idea from disembodied soulism. You probably don't read much popular Christian literature. But you may have heard of two ideas: the Empty Tomb (on Easter Sunday); and the Rapture. Neither suggest a disembodied afterlife. You may want to read the post-resurrection appearances of Christ in the Gospel of John, especially his appearance to Thomas. And Mary of Magdala 'clinging to him'. And the Ascension. Nothing disembodied about it.
Perhaps you've been misled by an excessive insistence on defining yourself in materialist terms so as to distance yourself as much as possible from religion out of ideological opposition to it, but in so doing have ended up with conceptions of what religious believers think that are quite inaccurate.
Because you were talking about ordinary people's conception of the afterlife as being typically bodiless, and it simply isn't. Even in the case of Hinduism, the average Hindu (if not their theologians) places much more store on the bodily in their images of themselves in the afterlife and theophanies, again for the simple enough reason that it's almost impossible to have an image of a bodiless existence, and for most of them 'pure thinking substance' is way too cerebral an idea to maintain for longer than a couple of seconds.. And in the West, the dominant conception has been bodily resurrection for 1600 years. This is also clear in religious art which was very significant for most of the Christian era because, until relatively recently, most people were illiterate.
Even as a scientific matter, every human is constantly shedding their bodies. I read recently that all brain matter is replaced every two months. Though I'm not sure if that applies to 'brights'.
Comment by stunney — July 15, 2007 @ 3:19 am
July 15th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Raevmo:
Funny, if I explain my position, most Christians will declare I am not one. I know I did that years ago, when other people expressed similar positions
However, I find myself in agreement with the words of an atheist friend: "atheism is the most stupid religion; it claims there are no gods, and I have three on my nightstand".
stunney:
Actually, this is my position.
I find absolutely no way of distinguishing between this and the materialist position – the soul (or mind) is what the body does, a consequence of the body. This is Ayn Rand's position and it implies that the soul disappears when the body dies. Saying that the soul is not the body because it's caused by the body is something that I can safely bet keiths can agree with. (For an analogy, let's consider the common argument that God was invented by people; would saying "yeah, but that means that God isn't human, because effects aren't their causes" be a good argument for belief in God?)
AnaxagorasRules:
As explained several times already, we were discussing intentional action. I have absolutely no problem agreeing with keiths that these programs are normally run by the brain without any interference from the soul.
The soul doesn't usually directly influence these systems; however, with training, it can do that. (I have read about cases where people have influenced their heartbeat rates, for example, and I believe this is also the case in the so-called placebo effects – the soul either bypasses the brain or learns how to directly command the parts of the brain that are responsible for these controls.)
All of this has nothing to do with two intentional programs running each in its own hemisphere. I'm guessing the only "saving grace" here would be to claim that (at least) one of them was not intentional – that, say, the hemisphere wanting to read the newspaper was, but the one wanting to throw it away was running without the soul's control. It does sound kinda forced to me, though… as I said, I can understand a dislike being the brain's function, but not something as complex as actually picking a newspaper and throwing it away.
Oh well. I'm looking forward to more comments.
Comment by mdpopescu — July 15, 2007 @ 5:47 am
July 15th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I fail to see how this position differs in any significant way from mine or Dennett's. How disappointing — does that mean we have to stop insulting each other? What will I do for entertainment on a rainy day?
Well, I can't really speak for what the vast majority of Christians believe, but my image is quite different from yours. I take Jack Chick tracts as authoritative, and he's got lots of pictues of the soul rising up from the body like Casper the friendly ghost. Here's some Wikipedianess in favor of the non-embodied-soul view in Xtianity.
And I might add, while the idea of a literal heaven and hell is pretty ridiculous any way you look at it, it's particularly ridiculous if you think of it as populated by physical bodies, which implies it must be a physical space with location and size.
Replacing material in cells is accomplished by purely physical means. Squirting an entire soul off to heaven, hell, or body n+1 cannot be accomplished by any known physical mechanism.
As I noted in earlier discussions, there are plenty of materialists who are essentially hardware/software dualists, and believe that someday they can convert their souls to software and download them onto a computer. I believe this is misguided, but it's less misguided than those who think that souls can get around without any intervening mechanism at all.
Comment by mtraven — July 15, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
July 15th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Hi, mdpopescu,
Those five acts are intentional. What is it exactly that makes the brain completely in the driver's seat with these, and the soul in others? What special type of intentionality is it where the soul is in charge and the brain isn't? Is it strictly intentionality in regards to moral issues? In other words, the brain/body is fully in charge of itself (usually, unless you've trained the soul differently), including the involuntary systems, conscious awareness, and non-moral intentional actions, and it is only during moral intentionality when the soul establishes its influence?
Yikes.
I've read all of Ayn Rand's books, and I think keiths is an intellligent person, but I think he's got a few loose wrenches in his gearbox on this issue. His saving grace could be that he's heard so many versions of what a soul is that he's understandably confused.
But I'll tell you this. If I wanted to get a consistent model of a soul, that a majority of soul believers could agree on, the first prerequisite for joining my team is that you believe in the existence of a soul in the first place. The next prerequiste is that you are willing to tear apart the individual models of the team members, with the goal being to arrive at a consistent, all encompassing, aesthetic model. Get a room of soul believers together and it could turn into one hell of a brawl. It was Pythagoras that carried the idea of the soul to the west, from the egyptians, and there are many many lines that have threaded down from his ancient teachings. Other threads also exist, carried down from the far east, the ancient americas, and africa. Team members should be able to explain the thread or composite of threads that are the foundation of their beliefs.
If I was the captain of that team, stunney, Bradford, and onething gets an invite. keiths isn't even on the list of prospective members. Ayn Rand would be the last person I'd select.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — July 15, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
July 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
mdpopescu and mtraven wrote:
Well, it is not illegal. Substance dualists include Plato, Descartes, Plantinga, and Swinburne. But religious believers are not committed to substance dualism. Most Catholic thinkers, past and present, are not substance dualists. So it's a straw man to suggest otherwise.
It is not what the body does. It is what the person does. I did not say "capacities that a human body possesses". Look at what I did say. The quote is a few lines up. See it?
You are also assuming that a person isn't given another body in another universe after they die. But this is not what Christians believe. They believe in the resurrection. St Paul calls it an incorruptible body. You should read N. T. Wright on what the first Christians were claiming. If they had merely said the soul of Jesus was immortal, people would have said, "Yeah, so what? Plato said all souls are immortal centuries ago".
You are multiply confused. 1) God cannot be caused by human beings. 2) A concept of God can be caused by human beings. 3) A concept of God is not a human being.
mtraven wrote:
If you and Dennett think human persons have some irreducible-to-matter mental states which cause bodily states , then all I can say is, er, welcome.
A picture of a ghost is a picture of a ghost's body. If you see a ghost, you're seeing something bodily. You can't see an invisible body.
Christianity believes the soul is embodied before death and after death. Ask most Christians, "Do you have a soul?" and they'll answer yes. That tells you that they think they have a soul, not that they are a soul. Human persons have souls and bodies, i.e. they possess physical and spiritual properties.
Even theoretical physics these days is quite open to there being other physical realms that are not a part of this universe.
I suggest one here. And see a short essay that I append below.
You need to think about what a material mechanism is. Recall my point that there is no informationless material stuff. Recall Einstein's E=mc^2 (which I make use of at the above-linked post). Matter is pretty immaterial these days. It's all fundamentally little bundles of energized information. A person is a big bundle of energized information, some of which yields physical properties, and some of which yields spiritual properties. (God is an infinite bunch of energized information). The mistake materialists make is thinking that the spiritual properties reduce to the physical properties.
With that in mind, here's my little essay:
Comment by stunney — July 15, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
July 15th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
And I might add, while the idea of a literal heaven and hell is pretty ridiculous any way you look at it, it's particularly ridiculous if you think of it as populated by physical bodies, which implies it must be a physical space with location and size.There are more problems. If in heaven people are immortal, then presumably there is no need to eat, drink, or fight disease. Furthermore, it is said that there is neither male nor female, nor marriage in heaven. But if you think of you organs, they are all tied up with digestion, reproduction, and the immune system. Then, there's the heart and lungs. Does a person in heaven require the blood to circulate or they die? Will they die if they do not breathe air? If they need to have blood and oxy, but not food, and no disease, then the components of the blood would be very simple. Nonetheless, it will take energy. If they do not need food, I wonder what sort of energy will power the circulatory system. It seems to me that in heaven, we will be like empty bags, because surely we do not need intestines, and livers, and kidneys and such. Or maybe these embodied people will eat after all, for fun. If so, will they also – you know?
If they do all that but there isn't male and female or sex, then will people look like barbie and ken dolls?
Yes, but it needen't be a flesh body. It is an astral body. An energy pattern.
I also found this indistinguishable from materialism. Saying it is the person and not reducible to the brain doesn't help. Where is the entity? Who is the person?
They do, but most seem to also believe in an astral-type soul body that goes to heaven, and gets a body after the judgement. And St. Paul if I remember correctly, tried to dissuade people from taking the resurrected body too literally.
Keiths must have a life or something.
Comment by onething — July 15, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
July 16th, 2007 at 1:58 am
onething wrote:
Why? It is very, and quite obviously, distinguishable from materialism, a) because the spiritual properties of the person do not reduce to material properties, and b) because (some of) the irreducible mental states of the person, in particular decisions, cause the intentional acts of the person. No materialist accepts either proposition.
The entity is the person. The person's identity flows from the person's intentional acts, as I explain here, and here, and here.
You also said:
But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
–St Paul's 1st Letter to the Corinthians 2: 9
And he should know, given that he also wrote to the Corinthians, speaking of himself in the 3rd person:
I have knowledge of a man in Christ, fourteen years back (if he was in the body, or out of the body, I am not able to say, but God alone can say), who was taken up to the third heaven.
–St Paul's 2nd Letter to the Corinthians, 12: 2
I knew a man in London to whom something very similar occurred. I asked him to describe the experience. He said it was beyond description. I was friendly with a Jesuit priest (this fellow) who, prior to becoming a Jesuit, had spent 13 months as a young man in a Cistercian monastery. He told me that the abbot there experienced a similar spiritual ecstasy once during Mass, after many years as a monk without undergoing any such thing. Again, it was beyond his power to describe. Plantinga's experience while walking one rainy night from Widenar Library to his dorm building (Thayer Middle) at Harvard he describes thus:
Philosophers Who Believe (Inter-Varsity Press, 1993), pp. 57-58.
I suppose the important thing, however, is not imagining what heaven is like, but living this earthly life in a way that leads there.
Comment by stunney — July 16, 2007 @ 1:58 am
July 16th, 2007 at 3:22 am
Stunney,
In what way do they not reduce? You said it is an error to think the soul means an independent, self-contained immaterial substance. If the soul is the ability to reason and to will, then whence comes this capacity? If it is not arising from just the brain, then from what does it arise if not from an immaterial substance? (Keeping in mind that I use such a term as 'immaterial' for convenience.)
They don't accept that there are irreducible mental states, or they don't accept that mental states cause intentional acts? Surely they believe that mental states cause actions.
I think a person's identity flows from several things. His family, culture, language and personal history and memory. Memory, I think, is the key to identity. But identity isn't the soul, is it? Identity is not a fundamental. First there must be an entity, for it to know itself, identity itself. In order to identify something, there must first be a something.
Comment by onething — July 16, 2007 @ 3:22 am
July 16th, 2007 at 3:25 am
If the soul is the capacity for rational thought and intentional acts, then a baby would not have much soul. So that means the soul is built up over time by the person himself.
Comment by onething — July 16, 2007 @ 3:25 am
July 16th, 2007 at 3:48 am
onething:
Of course. One could still argue that the baby's brain is not developed enough for the mysterious energy field from a higher dimension to be able to manifest itself, but that seems clutching at straws. What if the baby dies? Will its undeveloped soul be beamed up and remain in a state of ignorance forever or will it suddenly be infused with knowledge and wisdom as it enters the parallel universe formerly known as heaven?
Comment by Raevmo — July 16, 2007 @ 3:48 am
July 16th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
onething wrote:
The better question is: In what way do they reduce?
There are two ways they don't: explanatorily and ontologically. Joseph Levine's 1983 article sparked a large literature on the explanatory gap. And he's not even a dualist.
Let us suppose that qualia are brain-states. Let us further suppose brain-states are aggregated states of material particles. Then qualia are aggregated states of material particles. But here's the problem: what a brain in a particular state really is does not depend on what it looks like when it is in that state; however, what the appearance of a brain in that state really is does depend on what it looks like, because what its appearance is, and what it looks like, are one and the same thing. Not so with what that brain state is and what that brain state looks like—those are not one and the same thing.
Think of color and color-sensations. Blue light = electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength. But a state S is not a blue-sensation state if it lacks the phenomenal property of appearing-blue, because the reality of a blue-sensation state and how a blue-sensation appears to phenomenal consciousness are one and the same thing. Take away the blue-appearing, and you've taken away the blue-sensation itself. Yet light of the relevant wavelength could easily remain, filling a given space around a person's brain. (But perhaps the person is blind, or sleeping, or wearing a very good blindfold.) Similarly, a sensation of heat is not essential to what heat is. The sun was hot before any sentient life existed on Earth. But there were no sensations of heat until some conscious organism felt hot. So heat and a sensation of heat are not the same thing.
IOW, one can in many contexts make a distinction between what something is"“"“the 'real nature' of a thing"“"”and how it contingently appears to us. The moon appears to wax and wane. Of course, the moon itself isn't really waxing and waning as much as it appears to. But in the case of states whose nature, unlike lunar states, essentially involves consciousness, such as qualia states, there logically can't be a distinction between the 'real' nature of such states and how such states contingently appear to us. In these cases, the reality of the state and its appearance to conscious minds are, in effect, one and the same thing. To take Kripke's famous example, if one leaves out of a list of pain's essential, constitutive properties (the properties that go to make something actually be pain) the phenomenal property of how pain feels, one would be leaving out the crucial, most essential property pain has. If some state S doesn't feel painful, S just isn't a state of pain. Or, as Kripke famously put it: "For a sensation to be felt as pain is for it to be pain."
So there is an explanatory gap. We can study brain-states all day long and not be able to explain why brains in those states give rise to qualia at all. And there is an ontological gap, because the property of a brain being in a particular physical configuration is just a different property from the property of experiencing sensations of heat, or sensations of color, or sensations of pain. We can go out into the world and find the physical objects we call brains. But the only way we encounter sensations is by having them. This suggests brain properties and sensation properties are at a fundamental ontological level, irreducibly different kinds of property. And that indeed is why there is such a thing as the mind-body problem. Here's Stevan Harnad on what that problem is:
Onwards…
What is a material substance? What is any kind of substance? That question actually turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to answer.
Let's say one defines it as a unified enduring structure made of material particles. Well, on that definition, electrons and photons are not material substances, but a puddle and a cluster of galaxies are. Moreover, insofar as a human being is constituted by electrons, other fundamental particles, and electromagnetic energy (i.e. photons), then human beings are constituted by things which are not material substances. But if, changing the definition, we say that material substances are only the fundamental particles postulated by physics, then humans are not material substances. It gets very complicated.
Think about a cat, call it Ginger. Ginger has physical properties, such as being made of atoms, and mental properties, such as being hungry. Those are not identical properties, since many things are made of atoms without thereby being hungry. For example, the Sun has the first property but not the second. What is the particular substance that we're calling Ginger that has the properties mentioned? Answer: a cat. Now think about me. If I have the physical property of being made of atoms and the mental property of being hungry, what is the the particular substance which is stunney and which has the properties mentioned? Answer: a human being.
A property of my brain (and indeed the of rest of my body) is that it is made up of atoms currently located about 93 million miles from the star closest to the planet Mercury. This property does not 'arise' from my brain. It's simply a physical property of my brain. That is, my brain instantiates that property. Now let's suppose I die and my body is preserved for autopsy purposes. It will still instantiate the property of being made up of atoms located about 93 million miles from the star closest to the planet Mercury. But I, stunney, won't any longer have or instantiate the property of being made up of atoms located about 93 million miles from the star closest to the planet Mercury, because I'll be dead. Yet my erstwhile body will continue of have that property.
Cats and humans are particular kinds of unified, enduring, individual living structures that have certain kinds of essential properties, in particular certain capacities to act in certain ways. But a human isn't just a human body, since some human bodies are dead. A human isn't a body, but a kind of agent—-one that has a body. And it is the type of agent I am which defines the kind of properties I possess.
The relation between a property and the thing that has it is a long-standing philosophical problem. But this is true whether you are a dualist or not. Stars have properties. But what is the star itself, the thing that has stellar properties?
They don't believe irreducible mental states cause intentional acts or anything else. Most of them don't believe there are any irreducible mental states. Some however, known as epiphenomenalists, accept such states exist but hold they do not cause anything. A number of materialists take the view that although there are no irreducible mental states, we will never be able to understand how they reduce, just as a mouse will never understand how to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Mongolian. They're called New Mysterians.
When I say identity in this context, I mean metaphysical identity, not psychological 'sense of identity'. What is it that constitutes one person as against ten persons? If you are counting sheep, there's a way to do that. If you are counting human bodies, there's a way to do that, (let's say you're counting bodies following a large explosion in Baghdad.) But how do we count persons? For a dead body isn't a person. It does not have any intentions and has no capacity to perform intentional acts.
Indeed, there must be an entity. What makes something one entity? Why is a sheep one entity and not ninety-nine billion entities, or however many sheep-cells there are? Is a car one entity, or lots of entities (called car parts)?
Babies have the capacity for rational thought in the sense of potential for it, just as they have the potential to get married. Doors don't have either potential, which is one reason we don't regard doors, but do regard babies, as persons.
I think the capacity is there in essence from the beginning and develops. Acorns have no capacity for rational thought even if they become long-lived oak trees. But humans do.
Raevmo responded:
It's not clutching at straws, it's constructing a straw man. Stop doing that, Raevmo, unless you want me to think you're being irrelevant.
It will not grow up to be a 'bright'.
It will be given the kind of body that Christians refer to when they talk about the resurrection of the body. It will be a very nice kind of body. And in that very nice embodied state, the baby will have delightful experiences.
Comment by stunney — July 16, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
July 16th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
stunney:
Think about a streetcar, call it Desire.
Of course not all atomic configurations correspond to a hungry cat, but some do.
How many dead babies have reported their delightful experiences? That's what I thought. Believe without evidence.
Comment by Raevmo — July 16, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
July 16th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Raevmo wrote:
Two questions: 1) How do clouds of atoms think about something? 2) How do clouds of atoms desire something?
Not all clouds of atoms do, you know.
What is it that makes a configuration of atoms hungry? Why does that configuration get hungry, but not other configurations?
Would a giant replica of a hungry cat but on the scale of most of western China, using bamboo sticks and the latest Japanese robot technology get hungry? Would the giant bamboo stick cat enjoy eating fish?
How many live babies have reported their delightful experiences? How many live puppies, kittens, panda cubs, and archaic hominids have reported theirs?
That's what I thought. Believe without evidence.
Comment by stunney — July 16, 2007 @ 11:17 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Think about a carbon atom, call it Blacky. Blacky has certain physical properties, such as being made of subatomic particles, and certain OTHER physical properties, such as having atomic number 6. Those are not identical properties, since many things are made of subatomic particles without having atomic number 6, like the Sun. What is the particular substance that we're calling Blacky that has the properties mentioned? Answer: a carbon atom.
Note also that the property of "having the atomic number 6" is irreducible to any of the properties of the atom's constituent parts, since only atoms have atomic number, subatomic particles don't.
In case the point isn't clear: just because property x is "irreducible" (a word I still believe should be banned from use) to some simpler property, does not imply that x is not a physical property.
Comment by mtraven — July 17, 2007 @ 1:18 am
July 17th, 2007 at 2:17 am
stunney:
No, but clouds of atoms in the form of living brain tissue do, you know.
You're obviously not familiar with the concept of allometry (before you ask: I am with the Chinese Room).
Quite a few. We can infer pleasure from their behavior. With archaic hominid you presumably mean yourself, so you tell me.
But how do you infer the pleasure experienced by dead babies?
Comment by Raevmo — July 17, 2007 @ 2:17 am
July 17th, 2007 at 2:30 am
A physical property like being composed of subatomic particles and the physical property of having the atomic number 6 are both properties that can be verified and tested objectively by third parties. That's the distinguishing characteristic of physical properties—they are there for all to see, in the sense of there being no privileged vantage point tied uniquely to a single observer.
The qualitative properties of conscious states, unlike Blacky's physical properties, cannot be verified and tested objectively in that way by third parties (which is why Bill Clinton did not, in fact, feel your pain.). Such qualitative properties are directly accessible only as subjective first-person (or first-cat) experiences. This is why young people like to try things out for themselves. They want to see what it's like. Kittens too. Third parties at best must infer the presence and qualitative properties of Ginger's conscious states. By contrast, there is nothing it feels like to be Blacky, of which Blacky alone has subjective experience.
Oh, and Blacky's atomic number property is explained by the fact that among its subatomic particles, it has 18 quarks of the requisite type.
Comment by stunney — July 17, 2007 @ 2:30 am
July 17th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Stunney,
I have struggled with this paragraph to no avail. But I think I know what you're saying anyway. And the question, of course, is why. We come right back to it – what is the soul? What is consciousness?
You have explained that there is a mind/body problem, but we know that.
Me: You said it is an error to think the soul means an independent, self-contained immaterial substance. If the soul is the ability to reason and to will, then whence comes this capacity? If it is not arising from just the brain, then from what does it arise if not from an immaterial substance?
Sure, but we already agree on that as well. As I noted, I use the word immaterial as a convenience. I don't really think the soul is immaterial, I'm not convinced anything is immmaterial, but some things are so far out there that we call them immaterial.
You have stated that a hungry cat has the quality of a cat, and that a hungry human has the quality of a human. But what makes them so? Is it their brains, nervous systems, and so on? Is it anything else?
You mention that a dead body is no longer a person. Why is that? Where is the person?
Sure. But whence the agent? Who is this 'I' that possesses properties. You have said, "I am my properties."
Do you think it is appropriate to compare an inanimate body to a living thing? Is it really the same question? If we were to ask the question, "what is Stunney in himself" it would include more than the nature of his soul. But our concern is, what is the soul?
Alright then, do they agree that reducible mental states cause actions?
Oh, I see. So if a person is identified by his intentional acts, who is the one doing the identification and why do you confine it to only actions? How do animals rate? And were you not impressed with my hamster?
Do the Iraqi bodies count? Can we count them if the press isn't allowed to report them and we don't see them?
There's a lot more it can't do.
I think that body cells are entities in some sense. And I am not certain that we are not part of a larger entity. So the divisions may not be absolute.
Me: If the soul is the capacity for rational thought and intentional acts, then a baby would not have much soul.
So you agree, then, that a baby does not have much of a soul?
Actually, some adults have almost no capacity for rational thought…
Comment by onething — July 17, 2007 @ 2:34 am
July 17th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Raevmo wrote:
What is 'form'? Is it different from 'stuff'?
Would a Chinese Room get hungry? Presumably not if it was also a Chinese Restaurant, eh? Unless it only did takeouts, of course.
But not from their reports.
I forget. It was a long time ago, you know?
Two things: first, from what Jesus said about children in the Gospels.
Plus… I knew a woman in London whose severely depressed 23-year-old daughter strangled her two small children (the woman's grandchildren, whom she doted on and cared for daily). The woman was inconsolable, and in a really bad way, as you'd expect. About two weeks after the funeral, I saw her again and noticed a dramatic change in her demeanor. Gingerly, I tried to discover what the explanation was. She told me with great joy she had gone for a walk, had been drawn to look upwards, and had seen both of the dead youngsters entering heaven. I was skeptical at first. But the change in her mood was so dramatic and enduring despite the tragic circumstances, that I began to doubt it could merely be a case of wishful thinking, and still doubt it.
Comment by stunney — July 17, 2007 @ 3:17 am
July 17th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Compelling evidence from scripture and a deranged woman. Consider me a convert. When can I meet the Pope?
Comment by Raevmo — July 17, 2007 @ 3:54 am
July 17th, 2007 at 5:42 am
onething wrote:
Actually, we just got first silicon for a design I've been working on. That means that any time for blogging comes straight out of the sleep budget.
So far I've been opting for sleep.
It's a shame, though. There's lots more to be said on the subject of souls.
I'll see what I can do.
Comment by keiths — July 17, 2007 @ 5:42 am
July 17th, 2007 at 7:03 am
What Keiths and like-minded individuals are actually doing is recycling an old materialist argument that thoughts and emotions are nothing more than emergent properties of brain cells. The added twist of overlaying souls on top of thoughts and emotions satisfies a metaphysical bias at the cost of making a mockery of an empirical discipline used to "refute" souls.
Comment by Bradford — July 17, 2007 @ 7:03 am
July 17th, 2007 at 10:20 am
AnaxagorasRules wrote:
Which is a good thing, because I would never accept such an invitation. If you're interested in the truth, the last thing you want is a team full of people who already agree on a conclusion and are just looking for ways to justify it.
On an earlier thread, I noted the dangers of this approach. People who already believe in an immaterial soul, and are attached to the idea for various reasons, will be tempted to hang onto it. When confronted with evidence against their belief, many of them will try to reinterpret the evidence in a way that is compatible with their belief.
There is nothing wrong, per se, with reinterpreting evidence in the light of different models — scientists do it all the time. But having reinterpreted the evidence, the question that must be asked again and again is this: Is this the best explanation of all of the available evidence, or is there a better one?
Many of the people in this thread seem to be asking a different question, which is: "Is there an interpretation of the evidence that is compatible with my belief in a soul?" If they find such an interpretation, they heave a sigh of relief, thinking "That means I get to keep believing in the soul."
It's not enough to find an interpretation of the evidence that is compatible with your preexisting beliefs, if there are better, cleaner explanations available. Take aerodynamics, for example. Suppose an aeronautical engineer explains to you how an airplane flies using Bernoulli's Law, Newton's Third Law, and fluid mechanics in general.
You deride her materialist explanation, saying that angels are actually responsible. You explain that a swarm of angels surrounds every airplane, applying forces of all the right magnitudes at all the right times and places. The plane ends up flying not because of aerodynamics, but because of angelic support.
The aeronautical engineer will never be able to prove you wrong, because your her explanation and yours have the same empirical consequences. Yet nobody takes the angelic idea seriously, despite the fact that it matches the evidence.
Why is that? Occam's Razor. The aerodynamic explanation is simpler, resting as it does on a few fundamental principles of physics. All the complexities of circulation, wingtip vortices, laminar flow, angle of attack, etc., are ultimately derived from the simple fact of air particles colliding with airplane particles in simple and well-defined ways.
Your model of the soul as a kind of time-sliced processor switching rapidly between the wills of the two hemispheres is the equivalent of the angelic explanation of airplane flight. It can be made compatible with the evidence, but only at the cost of making it much more complex and unlikely than the materialist hypothesis it competes against.
Consider that in split-brain patients, one hemisphere does not know what the other is thinking and desiring. If your "time-sliced processor" model is correct, that means that in the case of a split-brain patient, the soul rapidly switches from the thoughts and desires of one hemisphere to the other and back.
In the case of the man who attacked his wife with one arm and defended her with the other, according to your model:
a. The soul is angry with the wife.
b. The soul is moving the arm toward the wife to strike her.
c. The soul then "switches" to the other hemisphere.
d. The soul has now completely forgotten that it was angry at the wife a millisecond ago and that it was trying to hit her.
e. It now feels protective of her and is moving the other arm to block the blow from the first arm.
f. The soul switches back to the first hemisphere. It now miraculously remembers that it was angry and trying to strike the wife, even though a millisecond ago it had completely forgotten this. It completely forgets about trying to defend her.
g. The next time the soul switches, it miraculously remembers that it was trying to defend the wife.
A good name for this model might be "Rapidfire Amnesia", or "RA".
Now ask yourself which of the following is a better explanation of the evidence:
1. Rapidfire amnesia, in which the soul forgets and remembers all of its thoughts, desires, emotions, etc., many times every second.
2. A mechanism whereby the cutting of the corpus callosum also manages to cut the soul into two pieces, one of which inhabits each hemisphere and possesses distinct wills.
3. Two physical hemispheres which possess distinct wills because the wiring between them has been cut.
Also consider:
1. I could claim that there is really just one soul inhabiting the bodies of Angelina Jolie and Henry Kissinger and use your model to explain why they seem to have such different personalities and wills. Their soul is just switching back and forth between them many times per second, giving the illusion of simultaneity.
I could even argue that there is only one soul in the entire world (an idea that might appeal to mcromer) and that it just switches among all the world's people very rapidly, many times per second.
Yet I'd wager that neither of these ideas excites you, even though they fit perfectly with your model. Why? Because you want to believe that there is one soul per person, and you only suggested the time-slicing model as a way of defending your belief against the split-brain evidence. You didn't realize that it could be used, with equal justification, to support the idea that Angelina Jolie and Henry Kissinger share a single soul.
2. Your model doesn't even touch on one of the most difficult issues facing a defender of the idea of immaterial souls: How does the immaterial soul "reach in" and influence the behavior of the physical brain?
Comment by keiths — July 17, 2007 @ 10:20 am
July 17th, 2007 at 11:49 am
This argument has been made by certain strains of Eastern mystics and philosopher Daniel Kolak. Makes as much sense as anything else.
This thread is well over 300 comments now…can we get a new one.
Comment by mtraven — July 17, 2007 @ 11:49 am
July 17th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Keiths:
There is a preliminary question that preceeds this: does the phenomenon in question lend itself to empirical study?
Given the fact that a soul is a supernatural construct any doubts were only apparent in the first place. Keiths' proposals are rank with religious objectives; a disturbing trend in what should be an empirically based discipline.
The difference of course lies in the fact that flying is a physical phenomenon appropriate for scientific statements. ID opponents want to have it both ways. They want to rule out ID inferences based on divine causality while attempting to debunk religious concepts through science.
Comment by Bradford — July 17, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
The materialist is trying to argue that qualia are brain states. But what qualia are essentially depends on how they appear to consciousness. Whereas what brain states are does not depend on how they appear to consciousness. A perfect neuroscientific computer aboard an alien spaceship tracking you from a geosynchronous orbit can do hourly print-outs of all your brain states and not have your qualia.
If you are looking for an explanation of conscious experience in terms of something else that isn't conscious experience, I don't think there is one. Why not ask the materialist to explain matter in terms of something immaterial, and see how far you get?
The soul is the set of a person's spiritual properties.
It's what it's like to be the kind of thing you are when you're awake.
Yes, we know that. But you might want to tell the other side.
Is the meaning of that sentence something material?
That's backwards. I said a cat and a human can each have the quality of being hungry.
Sure: their sensations of hunger.
Which presumably have causes. But don't confuse causes and effects. The way hunger feels is as essential to what being hungry is as the way a headache feels is to having a headache. The headache may have been caused by a blow inflicted by a robber. But it would be foolish to identify the way it feels, with the impact of the blunt instrument used on my skull.
The person was never the body to begin with. All the brain cells get replaced several times a year. Body shape also changes quite a bit during a lifetime.
Probably in Purgatory.
That is one traditional answer to the question of what consitutes a substance—that it's a bundle of properties. This theory is called, funnily enough, the Bundle Theory. Seriously. A traditional competitor is the Bare Substratum Theory. Some prefer an ontology of Events rather than Substances, so that persons = a series of events. My own Aristotelian-cum-Kripkean view focuses on natural kinds, each member of which instantiates the essential properties of the kind it falls under.
One might then say that an individual human is an instance of an essence, where an essence is something like a set of probabilistic, self-referential algorithms which together define a rich set of interactive properties, including physical and non-physical ones. This formal structure is what Aristotle called 'substantial form', which then in-forms matter. So rather than matter determining form, it is form determining matter. Furthermore, the non-physical properties cannot be deduced from the physical ones because the interactions are logically contingent. This is because those mutually interactive causal connections were designed by an intelligent and free software designer known as God. They are contingent psycho-physical laws. In other words, the fact that we cannot predict things like language, morality, the experience of beauty, etc from physics indicates that matter does not fully determine human nature; rather, that nature also shapes the way matter behaves; the software causes the hardware to act a certain way. And that's because it is designed in something like the way a program is designed by a computer programmer—the programmer has choices. Within certain broad logical limits and self-imposed constraints which reflect the programmer's purposes, the details of the program aren't logically necessitated, but are instead designed. And the software does not reduce to the properties of hardware. As Aristotle and Aquinas would say: Form does not reduce to Matter. Aristotle strongly attacked the materialism of Democritus and Leucippus and offered his own doctrine (known as hylemorphism) according to which substantial Forms endow chunks of matter with the shapes, attributes, functions, and coherent structure so as to produce a substance of a given kind. In the rise of Modern Science, Aristotelian substantial form and essences were attacked by atomistic materialists. But in fact, neo-Aristotelian ideas have made a big comeback, especially since Kripke rehabilitated essentialism, because information does not reduce to its material medium at any level and is fundamental to the structure and intelligibility of reality.
Well, even a rock such as a meteorite has properties of different sorts, and I think it is fair to ask what is it that has those properties, and a decent enough answer is: a meteorite.
Yes, if you mean reducible mental states which reduce ontologically without remainder to non-mental physical states. The brain is doing it all, and consciousness is a kind of illusion that is always lagging behind.
God. It is virtually impossible to know with complete certainty that an instance of someone else's behavior was intentional, and pretty hard to know if one's own was at times.
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Plus we forget. And who's got time to go around checking up on everyone else's intentions, apart from prosecutors.
I honestly don't know what really goes on with animals. But I know we generally don't treat them as being responsible for intentional behavior.
It was a small sample size. But animals are always impressive.
Those were the ones I had in mind.
The US press isn't what I use. I religiously check good independent websites daily to read about the war and its victims.
Unless it rises.
Scripture says we live and move and have our being in God, and some of the great Catholic mystics recount experiences of profound union with God. So you may well be right.
I don't see it as a quantifiable or linear thing. It has all the potentiality associated with the soul, but hasn't fully actualized it. But then, I often feel that way about my own soul. And a baby has a capacity for union with an infinite God, which is not something to be, you know, sniffed at.
Worse yet, some have it and don't use it.
Comment by stunney — July 17, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Raevmo wrote:
Raevmo, it doesn't matter what evidence anyone offered, because you yourself could be granted a series of heavenly visions, see how babies are wonderfully nurtured in paradise, encounter your deceased relatives, have stimulating conversations with Jesus, and you would attribute it all to an abnormality in your brain because nothing else would be consistent with your worldview.
Did I tell you that one of my uncles is the retired head of the Vatican Archives? He might be able to swing it.
Comment by stunney — July 17, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
stunney:
That's not true. Such evidence might very well change my worldview, honestly. But no luck so far.
No you didn't, but I'm impressed. Then I guess you must have met the infallible man yourself. And your uncle should be able to supply you with enough juicy information to make you the next Dan Brown.
Comment by Raevmo — July 17, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
So why does that sound almost exactly like how academia addresses controversial ideas (like ID or telepathy or religious belief)?
Comment by mcromer — July 17, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
And the belief that non-teleological processes explain the origin of life. Those are the kinds of remarks that come back and bite ID opponents.
Comment by Bradford — July 17, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Pretty accurate, except for the "time slicing" part. . .you're hung up in the notion of time being fundamentally real.
Time and space are relationships between observables. The demonstrated experimental findings of quantum mechanics shows us that all the apparently separate observables are in fact aspects of a single unified whole. A whole appearing as seemingly separate parts.
Mystics of every culture and belief system (including some of the greatest heroes of science) have always spoken of this.
Near-death experiencers describe the same thing. We are one Consciousness, experiencing the illusion of being separate, "material" beings.
Comment by mcromer — July 17, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Earlier in the thread, Bradford was enthusiastically promoting AnaxagorasRules' ideas, saying that they deserved more emphasis and that AR had hit "another curveball out of the park."
Now that I've pointed out some serious flaws in those ideas, Bradford is falling back on his "the soul can't be studied empirically" mantra.
He wrote:
Bradford,
You maintain that the soul is the seat of the will. If you are right, then the action of the soul has physical consequences. If a man decides to propose to his beloved, then according to you his soul sets in motion a series of events culminating in the movement of the man's mouth and lungs to form the words "will you marry me?" It's a physical phenomenon, just like flying.
Not this ID opponent. As I've made abundantly clear, I hold that divine causality, like the soul, can be tested if it has empirical consequences. Some concepts of divine causality do have empirical consequences; others don't.
Comment by keiths — July 17, 2007 @ 6:45 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Keiths:
You assume too much Keiths. I had not read your response to AnaxagorasRules. I still think he hits curve balls well though.
Comment by Bradford — July 17, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Bradford wrote:
Um, Bradford, you quoted from it three times.
Kind of hard to do without reading it first, isn't it?
Comment by keiths — July 17, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
July 17th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
It's old news then?:grin:
Comment by Bradford — July 17, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
July 18th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Raevmo wrote:
That reminds me of a joke a Polish sculptor friend of mine told me. There's a Polish peasant farmer who suffers tragedy after disaster after misfortune. He climbs a local mountain, falls to his knees, and with arms outstretched, tears flowing, and in his rural dialect demands of God to know why. Why such a terrible run of very bad luck. "Why, God? Why me? What have I done to deserve all this? Why have you done this to me? Why, God, why?"
Suddenly the voice of God speaks, using the same rural dialect: "I just don't like you, that's all".:lol:
My father met JP2. But then, so did a lot of people.
I'm more interested in Molinist explanations of papal infallibility in terms of scientia media.
He's too scholarly for that kind of thing, I think. Though he has been on TV in America several times in the past few years. Maybe all he needs is a 8-figure sum and a reason to leave most of it to me in his will.
Can you raise the dosh?
Comment by stunney — July 18, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
July 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
stunney:
If you send me a decent manuscript, I'll see what I can do.
Comment by Raevmo — July 18, 2007 @ 6:05 pm
July 25th, 2007 at 1:13 am
For Keiths:
http://mindfulhack.blogspot.co...
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — July 25, 2007 @ 1:13 am