That’s the title of a new article at the Patheos website, which describes itself as “the world’s homepage for all religion”. The article is the first in a series by Ted Peters, emeritus professor of theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, who understands the threat that materialism (aka physicalism) poses to traditional religious views regarding the self.
There are quite a few misconceptions in the article (and in the others in the series), but I think it’s a good springboard for continuing the discussion we’ve been having in CharlieM’s Body, Soul, and Spirit thread.
A taste:
Did I lose my mind to science? Actually, it was stolen. Who are the thieves? The thieves are the scientific materialists who have eliminated from our cosmology everything that is mental, conscious, meaningful, spiritual, and ideal. You’ll recognize the thieves when you hear them mutter, “the mind is only the brain, ya know.”
CharlieM:
Think about it. If your spleen were transplanted into another body, the recipient wouldn’t become you. Ditto for hearts and livers. But if your brain were transplanted into a new body, then you would have been transplanted with it, and the new body would become yours. Your thoughts, feelings, memories, personality quirks, etc., are associated with your brain, not with your spleen. You aren’t your spleen, but you are your brain.
CharlieM:
No, there are no exceptions. The laws of physics apply everywhere and always. Your living body does not violate Newton’s laws. Your left ear, right pinky finger, clavicles, and adrenal gland all conform to Newton’s laws. Living bodies are not exempt from the laws of physics.
We are physical objects in which processes take place, and all of those processes are simply due to the fact that the particles of which we are composed strictly follow the laws of physics. A couple of comments ago I wrote:
CharlieM:
I await a reasoned argument from you demonstrating that my conception of the brain is a “fictitious caricature”. No such argument has appeared heretofore in anything you’ve written.
The same laws of physics that govern everything else. Creativity and forethought are produced by collections of particles, arranged a certain way, following the laws of physics. Those collections are known as ‘brains’. If the same particles had been arranged differently, then creativity and forethought would not have occurred. Do you remember what I said about how one arrangement of particles could form a can opener, while another arrangement of the very same particles could form a machine for attaching lids to cans? Two machines, both following the same laws of physics, but starkly different in their behavior. The arrangement is crucial.
You are resistant to the idea that certain arrangements of particles can produce creativity and forethought, but when I’ve asked you why you believe that is impossible, you’ve been unable to answer. I predict that you still won’t be able to answer.
The matador’s brain, receiving sensory input indicating that the bull is charging, directs the body to jump to the side, thus sparing the matador from injury. The chain of events is physical from start to finish.
My belief is based on paying attention to my actual experiences. When I panic or get excited I feel my heart rate go up.
A reductionist step too far.
I am a self-conscious being, body and mind. Will I survive death? I cannot be certain. When I am in deep sleep or I’m unconscious my ‘I’ is lost to me. But it isn’t lost forever, because when I regain consciousness the same ‘I’ returns.
It’s not a fact. It’s your declaration based on what you claim to be scientific evidence. And science is supposed to be tentative!
You are the one who is introducing separation into the argument, as if the brain were somehow separate from the body of which it is part.
I think the modern outlook has been influenced too much by a Kantian way of thinking. I align more with Schelling. For him nature is not just a world of ‘things’, of phenomena that stand between us and reality. He regarded the processes of the living world up to and including human consciousness as emanating out of nature. There is no unreachable, hidden nature behind nature. Nature is the all.
Steiner quotes Schelling on those who believe we merely project our ideas into nature:
Nature as “visible spirit” and spirit as “invisible nature” solves your problem of how the soul/spirit can act on the living physical. There is no action at a distance because there is no separation.
And hereby I can overcome the problem of thinking of gravity as action at a distance. We perceive the sun as a separated from the earth by 93 million miles. But this is a perspective from the point of view of our human senses. Why should this be the determinant of this relationship? I believe a more accurate assessment is to think of the being of the sun encompassing the solar system. We perceive ourselves as separate from the sun but in reality we are within the sun.
Markus Gabriel, who I don’t think you would class as a “woo merchant”, agrees with Husserl when he considers the idea of objects to be an empty domain, a fundamental illusion, a generalized object is meaningless. He considers the quote, “It’s not me it’s my brain”, to be a stupid version of current materialistic thinking.
See his book I am Not a Brain: Philosophy of Mind for the 21st Century.
There need be no action at a distance between my mind and my body because the separation you envision does not exist in reality.
And a person can be significantly changed by PTSD which is a disturbance of the mind.
And from Gabriel’s book I am Not a Brain: Philosophy of Mind for the 21st Century
Gabriel calls this the “crude identity thesis”.
Here is Iain Hamilton Grant from the book Philosophies of Nature After Schelling stating that Schelling:
The dynamic polarity of the natural/spiritual removes the ground from under the feet of this kantian account.
From Iain Hamilton Grant’s introduction to Schelling’s, ‘On the World Soul’:
The natural world is a dynamic polarity of two, not quite equal, forces coming from opposite directions, one from the periphery and the other radiating out.
I think you have a one-sided picture of the brain. You are only looking at one pole of the brain and a fairly static one at that. The real state of affairs, in my opinion, is found in a brain/mind dynamism as indicated by Schelling.
It confirms my understanding of death as a dynamic process. Consciousness is something that can disappear but that doesn’t mean that it is permanently lost. He claims that there is no evidence as to how brain cells generate thoughts.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Come on, Charlie. I know you are smart enough to see the fallacy in that reasoning. Don’t insult yourself by asking me to explain it to you.
CharlieM:
All of which is compatible with the fact that you are a purely physical being.
Keith: Hey Charlie, watch what happens when I let go of this rock. Gravity is going to pull it to the ground.
Charlie: That’s just your declaration based on what you claim to be scientific evidence. And science is supposed to be tentative!
“Science is supposed to be tentative!” is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
This is a pattern with you. You’re happy to quote scientific findings when you think they support your position, and I don’t hear you saying “science is supposed to be tentative” then. It’s only when scientific knowledge threatens your position that you start saying “science is only tentative!” or trot out Sri Aurobindo to say something similar.
I haven’t claimed that the brain is separate from the body. It’s right there, encased in your skull, connected to your blood supply and your nervous system. It’s part of the body.
Adrenaline production is local to the adrenal glands, but that doesn’t mean that they are separate from the body. Thoughts and feelings are local to the brain, but that doesn’t mean that it is separate from the body.
As if the problem were simply a problem of action at a distance. It’s a lot worse than that, Charlie. There is no known mechanism by which a nonphysical soul can act on a physical body. You are simply assuming, with no evidence, that there is one. And as I’ve explained many times, the fact that the laws of physics are never violated — which you agree is the case — means that the soul, as you envision it, does not exist.
I’m not sure why you are focusing on this, because I don’t consider action at a distance to be a particular problem for the soul hypothesis. To put it more carefully, I don’t think the need for action at a distance would make the soul hypothesis any less credible than it already is. If you’re already proposing that the nonphysical soul can magically influence the body, why not propose that the magic works over distance?
Action at a distance is nothing compared to the other problems the soul hypothesis faces. And many believers don’t think the soul has a specific location anyway, so distance isn’t even a meaningful consideration for them.
CharlieM:
Which is perfectly compatible with physicalism. Traumatic events are mental events, and mental events are brain events, so traumatic events can affect the brain. And when they do, they affect the person, because the brain is where all the psychology happens.
CharlieM, quoting Markus Gabriel:
That’s an assertion, not an argument. He’s simply asserting that there’s more to conscious life than brain activity. Does he present an actual argument elsewhere in the book?
Charlie, quoting Iain Hamilton Grant:
These wooish “forces” run into the physics problem that we’ve discussed a million times.
The physics problem, Charlie. The physics problem.
The details remain to be worked out, but there is no question that the brain is what does our thinking. Besides, I thought you agreed that the brain is the “organ of thought”.
There is quite a difference between the terms “material” and “physical”. I don’t think it helps to brush this under the carpet.
Is my shadow a physical thing? I can see it and measure it, but it isn’t made of matter or energy, nor is it subject to physical laws.
Brain activity is an outer material process (visible spirit), thinking is an inner mind process (invisible nature). It is the wrong approach to think of these processes in terms of cause and effect. In doing so we are applying classical physics in a sphere which is inappropriate. Physics has moved on from the time in which it was thought that classical physics applied to all levels of reality.
In my opinion souls are immaterial. But why should that prevent some people using the term to mean something physical? If I use the word as I understand Steiner would have used it, then I will use “ssoul”. For instance I might talk about a “rational ssoul” or a “mind ssoul”. Otherwise you can take it that I am using it in its general context. Can you give me an example of where I have used a version of this word which you find to be inappropriate?
The problem with the term ‘physical’ is that in relation to quantum physics, ‘physical’ processes are very different from those in the sphere of gross mechanical forces that we interact with daily.
In my opinion applying the terms ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ to ‘body’ and ‘soul’, leads to confusion and complications. I would prefer to use the terms ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ as descriptive adjectives.
How do you regard the mystery of dark energy or zero point energy which is proposed to be infinite? Should these mysterious forms of energy be classed as ‘woonergy’? Perhaps they would have been at some time.
So physical laws are relative to the domain in which they operate.
Woo for you:
Solids – earth, liquids – water, gases – air, energy – fire, life – aether.
Again, is my shadow a physical thing? Is a rainbow a physical thing? Is my concept organism a physical thing? Is infinity a physical thing?
But in their raw state they are imperceptible to us by means of our everyday senses.
No one you would believe that is. People who claim such abilities are traditionally known as ‘healers’ or ‘quacks’. But there are such people.
I have moved on from a Kantian view of reality which is composed of objects in space, to a more Schellingian orientation with a more process based reality. I look on body and soul as the inner and outer aspects of a single process.
To look for a causal relationship between soul and body is like looking for a causal relationship between thunder and lightning. There is none because they are simply two aspects of one process.
So thank you for helping me to clarify my thoughts in my striving for a consistent worldview. We might be talking past each other a lot of the time and we’re not going to change each other’s position in any meaningful way, but I do feel I am benefitting from our exchanges.
CharlieM:
I’m not trying to brush anything under the carpet. I’m just reminding you that the standard term “immaterial soul” means “nonphysical soul” in practice. So if I use the term “immaterial soul”, I ask you to interpret it as “nonphysical soul”. I’m also pointing out that you agreed to my proposed usage of the word ‘soul’ in this thread, a usage that is designed to avoid confusion and to make the debate as relevant as possible to the largest number of readers.
I am not in any way trying to limit the scenarios you present. If you want to reclassify some nonphysical entity as physical, please do. I will then regard it as a hypothetical physical entity. I only ask that you no longer refer to it as part of the soul, because it isn’t part of the soul given the meaning of ‘soul’ that we are using in this thread.
Your shadow is a physical phenomenon produced by the occlusion of light, and the laws of physics are followed to a T in its creation and maintenance. Nothing about your shadow and its behavior will ever require a violation of the laws of physics or the intervention of a nonphysical entity.
The laws of physics apply to every corner of physical reality, and they are never violated, as you have agreed. The brain and body are physical, and thus they never violate physical law.
Classical physics* is an approximation of general relativity and quantum mechanics, and those in turn are approximations of a yet-to-be-discovered unified theory. But objects didn’t start falling up instead of down when Einstein developed the theory of relativity, so if you had pinned your hopes on that, you would have been disappointed. You are hoping that quantum mechanics or some future theory will do the equivalent of making things fall upward, because nothing short of a massive alteration of physical law as it applies to bodies and brains would allow room for the soul to have any significant influence on our behavior. Don’t pin your hopes on that, Charlie. It ain’t gonna happen.
*Different people use the term ‘classical physics’ differently. I am using it here to refer basically to theories that don’t take into account quantum or relativistic effects.
CharlieM:
You and they should feel free to call it anything you want outside of this discussion. I am just asking that you honor our agreement here, in this discussion, because that will reduce the likelihood of confusion and keep the thread relevant to more people. So in this thread, the word ‘soul’ doesn’t refer to anything physical. It refers to any nonphysical entity, or collection of nonphysical entities, that makes up part of a person.
I’m not complaining that you’ve violated our agreement. I’m just pointing out that when you wrote this…
…you were wrong, because by agreeing to our usage convention, you did assert that the soul was nonphysical.
The ‘immaterial’ vs ‘nonphysical’ distinction seems to be important to you with regard to the soul, so could you explain that further?
Again, feel free to reclassify entities as physical if you wish. I just ask that if you reclassify something as physical, please don’t continue to refer to it as the soul or as part of the soul, since that conflicts with our working definition of ‘soul’.
Quantum physics isn’t going to rescue the soul, for reasons I’ve already given.
That would defeat the purpose of the discussion. You cannot have a meaningful discussion about whether the soul exists without dealing with the fact that it is a nonphysical entity that supposedly has influence on the physical world.
CharlieM:
There are observational and theoretical reasons to take dark energy and ZPE seriously. Not so for woonergy.
The laws of physics operate everywhere, all the time. If you’re hoping for some less-constrained domain of physical reality in which the soul could actually influence the body without violating the laws of physics, sorry. There is no such domain.
Calling it a ‘thing’ might mislead you, so I would recommend calling it a ‘physical phenomenon’.
A physical phenomenon, yes.
Concepts are abstract, but their instantiations are all physical — in brains, on paper, etc.
Ditto. It’s an abstract concept, but all of its instantiations are physical. If you are asking not about the concept but about whether there are actual infinities in nature, I think the answer is that we don’t yet know. For example, we don’t know whether the universe is finite or infinite.
Suppose some of the things you listed turned out to be nonphysical in some way. How would that support your position?
True. And?
If you are suggesting that there might be as-of-yet undiscovered woonergies that could rescue the idea of a soul, don’t get your hopes up. That runs into the same physics problem I keep describing to you. If the soul were able to control the body via woonergies, the effect would have to be large enough that we would have noticed it by now. The known laws of physics would appear to be violated. No one has seen that, and its silly to pin your hopes on the discovery of something that no one has seen and that no one has a rational reason to expect.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Thanks for that link. Synesthesia is fascinating, isn’t it?
I need to check, though — you’re not under the impression that there’s anything paranormal or supernatural about what’s described in that article, are you?
Regarding woonergies, we have an excellent tool called ‘science’ for figuring out whether hypothesized phenomena are real. Wake me up when science detects woonergies. (Seriously! That would be exciting!)
You know that isn’t true. You’ve been looking very hard for a reason to think that the soul can cause things to happen in the body.
I actually don’t think we’re talking past each other that much. I understand what you’re saying, but I just don’t agree with it. I’ve presented arguments that the soul doesn’t exist, and you haven’t been able to refute them. As you say, you probably aren’t going to change your position, but just keep in mind that you have no rational reason to continue believing in the soul. It doesn’t exist. You are choosing to be irrational.
Following A.N. Whitehead, Wolfgang Smith would say that you are engaging in the bifurcation of the world which is a false path that Descartes has led us down.
You speculate that if the brain is transplanted then the so is the personhood. If that did turn out to be true then what would that mean? I would mean that both the essential part of the measurable body along with the immeasurable soul (which are in actual fact a unity that in your opinion should be bifurcated) have now acquired a new set of organs and tissues.
Think of it not as a brain transplanted into a body, but as the person acquiring a new set of organs and tissues. There must be a return to wholeness for there to be a viable person. I regard a person as more than just a physical body, whereas it would appear that you are reducing a person to less than a physical body.
Neither you nor I can tell, if this transplantation were even possible, how it would affect their personality.
There is no denying that the movements are physical, but you have not demonstrated the physical origin of the decision to get out of the way.
In what way do you think the binding problem is overcome?
I am a thinking, feeling person. I feel excited and at the same time I can have thoughts about this feeling. The feelings and the thoughts are not the same thing and do not have the same source.
The feeling of excitement and the pounding heart are the thunder and lightning within us, inner and outer aspects of a single event.
I’m beginning to understand. The alligator brain is the soul.
If the binding problem is how to explain first-person awareness and perception of our immediate environment in terms of brain activity, neurones receiving nervous impulses from the visual cortex, etc firing and producing areas and patterns of excitation and processing that into a reliable model from which to decide and act, or more succinctly, how humans think, then the gap between first person experience and third person explanation is an unbridged gulf.
And will remain so.
CharlieM:
Suppose a guy named ChurlyN says to you:
Please, please tell me you can spot the error in ChurlyN’s reasoning. If you say no, I think I’m going to cry.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Charlie, the “problem of physics” that I keep explaining to you (let’s dub it ‘the PoP’ for future reference) shows you that the soul, even if it existed, could have no role in causing the matador’s body to jump out of the bull’s path. That cow has left the barn, so to speak. The soul that you and Steiner envision does not exist.
It doesn’t matter, because the argument I’m presenting to you shows you that the soul doesn’t exist, whether or not anyone has solved the binding problem. And that ain’t the only argument, either. You need to come to grips with that, Charlie.
You can hope and pray that someone will come along and provide a refutation of the arguments against the existence of the soul. But right now you are faced with an argument you cannot refute, and so the only rational thing for you to do is to accept, at least tentatively, that the soul does not exist. Maybe you’ll get incredibly lucky, and someone will swoop in and rescue the soul for you. But right now, there is no rational reason to continue believing in it.
You will almost certainly choose to continue believing in the soul anyway, for purely emotional reasons. Just be aware that in so doing, you are choosing to be irrational.
CharlieM:
You’re not making a lot of sense in that paragraph. Could you try again? And why are you assuming the existence of an “immeasurable soul” when that is the very issue under dispute?
I’m fine with that. It’s really just two ways of describing the same thing:
1) Miguel’s brain is transplanted into Wanda’s body, and as a result Miguel now has a set of organs and tissues that formerly belonged to Wanda; or
2) Wanda’s body is attached to Miguel’s brain, and as a result Miguel now has a set of organs and tissues that formerly belonged to Wanda.
For the eight millionth time, words like “I” can have more than one meaning. “I” can be used to refer to the brain. It can be used to refer to the brain + body. It can be used to refer to the brain + body + soul, if you believe in a soul. It can be used to refer to the soul alone. The fact that the word “I” can refer to my brain does not mean that it can no longer be used to refer to my brain together with my body. Thus I am not “reducing a person to less than a physical body”. Please think about that, so I don’t have to keep repeating it.
There are strong scientific reasons to think that there would be no effect in the short term. In the longer term, there might be differences, because (for example) the hormones that Miguel’s brain is now exposed to are different from the ones it was exposed to when it was still situated in Miguel’s original body.
What do you think would happen? Would the person with Miguel’s brain and Wanda’s body be Miguel? Would it be Wanda? Someone else entirely? Please explain your reasoning.
I can’t get enough scientific knowledge, but when expounders of scientism confidently proclaim their ‘certainties’, it prompts me to question their reasoning.
Do experimenters on falling objects, and experimenters on photons passing through a double slit set up both have the same amount of confidence in predicting the outcome. Of course they don’t. Generalizations aren’t appropriate here.
Brain processes have precise physical locations, thoughts and feelings do not. They are not objects in space.
I only agreed to non-violation of the laws of physics in their own limited domain. Living systems have their own laws not governed by the laws of physics. It has never been demonstrated that life emerges from non-life. One law of the organism is that life comes from life.
Exactly. The soul is temporal but not spatial. My bodily movement has everything to do with location in space, but I can have desires independent of bodily positioning. Polarity is a feature of my nature. Outer body and inner soul. Not separate entities but the same thing seen from two directions, one inward looking and the other outward looking.
CharlieM:
Find me one reputable physicist who isn’t certain what the result would be if the double-slit experiment were rerun today (which is probably happening right now in some college physics lab somewhere). You won’t be able to come up with a single one.
If your point is that certainty comes in degrees, and that we can’t be 100.0% certain that rerunning the double-slit experiment would give the usual result, then sure. But we also can’t be 100.0% sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, that water will still turn to ice at low temperatures under normal conditions, or that Hershey’s chocolate will still taste like shit. Nevertheless, to pin your hopes on any of those things changing would be foolish and ridiculous since the probabilities are vanishingly small (although it’s conceivable that the Hershey’s situation could improve if there were some sort of a management shakeup).
There is no room for the kind of discovery that you are longing for, one that would rescue the soul from oblivion. For the soul to be able to direct the body would require an influence so large that we would have detected it by now. We’ve seen no such thing. The soul doesn’t exist.
Mental processes, including thinking, occur in the brain. You yourself have said that the brain is the thinking organ.
Their “limited domain” is all of physical reality, everywhere and at all times. Doesn’t sound very limited to me, especially when you consider that physical reality is all there is.
Living organisms are entirely governed by the laws of physics, with no exceptions whatsoever. Every limb, organ, cell, molecule, atom, and particle in your body is completely governed by the laws of physics.
Nothing about the origin of life suggests that it was anything other than a physical process, and in any case, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this discussion. Since the laws of physics are completely binding on brains and bodies, there is no room for a soul to intervene, and that would remain true even if the origin of life had involved a supernatural cause.
There is no such law. Life is what happens when the laws of physics operate on particles arranged in certain ways. There is no life force or life principle, and there doesn’t need to be such a force or principle. The laws of physics take care of everything. Not only isn’t a life force needed, but there cannot be such a force. For a life force to get involved would require that the laws of physics be violated. It’s the same for the soul. There cannot be any nonphysical entity that alters the behavior of the physical body, because the body’s behavior is fully dictated by the laws of physics. There is no room for a soul, and there is no room for a life force.
The arrangement of the particles is the crucial “ingredient” in life. Arrange the particles one way, and you get a living organism. Arrange those same particles differently and you get an inert, nonliving mass. The laws of physics are the same in both cases. How you get the particles into a particular, living arrangement doesn’t matter, because the laws of physics don’t care about that. They don’t remember or care how the particles got into that configuration. They just dictate the future behavior of the particles given that they are in that configuration.
Right now we don’t have the ability to create such arrangements artificially, so we rely on nature’s tried-and-true methods of reproduction. But there isn’t the slightest reason to think that if we did have that capability, that life wouldn’t result. The laws of physics guarantee that it would.
Out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if we created a particle-for-particle replica of you? Would it be alive? Dead? Would it behave like you? Keep the laws of physics in mind as you think about those questions.
Desires are a brain function, so you can have desires wherever your brain is, as long as it is functioning correctly.
Charlie,
The distinction between energy and woonergy has been unclear to you, so I thought I would go looking for a video that explains what ‘energy’ means to a physicist. Here’s a video from Don Lincoln of Fermilab:
What is energy?
To say that mental events are brain events is equivalent to saying that thunder is lightning.
Yes, he presents a philosophical argument to do with identity between conscious thoughts and brain activity. His argument rests on the whole/part relationship. Riding a bicycle is only possible if all the necessary conditions are present. Legs, bodies, bicycle manufacturers, a mind that invented bicycles in the first place, wheels, a suitable surface to ride on, and on and on.
He regards the brain as a necessary condition for mindedness. As is the organism to which the brain belongs.
We may not know how the mind works but we all know that we have one. Gabriel believes that the mindedness of humans and other animals exists in a mindless universe and immortal souls are a mistaken belief.
Obviously, my views differ on the mindless universe.
Yes, this is a problem for Cartesian dualists.
And the eye is the organ of sight. But I see and I think.
Here I am wrestling with the problem of the split between ‘I am’ and ‘I have’.
There is also the topic of thinking, which is my personal activity, and that which I am thinking about, the concepts I grasp. If I have the concept of the Platonic solids, do they belong to me. I say no. The concepts are universal. The geometrical concept ‘dodecahedron’ which I hold is identical to that which anyone else holds. It has no measurable dimensions so it cannot be ‘in the brain’. It is a unity bound by neither time nor space.
Okay. So do you regard time as a physical dimension? I regard the soul as being in time but not in space.
So could we say that shadows are two-dimensional physical, immaterial entities? We could even say non-energetic.
I agree that the laws of physics are not violated in their own specific domain. But, I believe living beings are more than just physical, and so there are laws that apply to them over and above the laws of physics. Hence an animated body such as a dog will have a different reaction to Newton’s 1st law than an inanimate rock will have.
And the physical world is only one aspect of reality.
I see the shoots of grass in my garden are starting to “fall up” again, as is the sap in the trees. The peregrine falcon rises in the thermal to gain altitude then when it spots a pigeon below it swoops downwards. Both it and the air currents are obeying the laws of physics. The difference is the falcon has a choice on which laws to prioritize.
Newton is credited with discovering some important laws of classical physics. I credit Goethe with discovering important laws of living organisms.
As I alluded to in my previous post, I regard the soul as being in time but not in space. So, if that is the case, should it be thought of as physical or non-physical?
I have an embodied soul, not a separate soul.
Your reasons are dependent on the belief that reality is limited to the physical. And this relies heavily on the world of human senses. Limiting reality in this way is reminiscent of the drunk looking for his keys under the light of the street lamp.
I think the difficulty lies in our different conceptions of these physical and immaterial entities. You believe they should be thought of as two separate entities, thus you have labelled me a dualist. I believe they are two aspects of a whole which transcends the physical/ non-physical divide.
CharlieM:
Says Charlie. But the order of your words suggests that you are likening mental events to thunder and brain events to lightning, meaning that brain events cause mental events. That is basically the idea behind epiphenomenalism, and it is not friendly to the notion of a soul, because the causality runs one way: brain events cause mental events, but not vice-versa. I’m sure that’s not what you’re aiming for.
But if you meant to put it the other way around, by saying that mental events cause brain events, then you run smack into the PoP — the problem of physics. The kind of soul you envision, which is a nonphysical entity that can direct the brain and body, isn’t tenable.
Regarding Markus Gabriel, Charlie writes:
The brain depends on the body for sustenance and sensory input, but presumably he means more than that when he says that the organism is a necessary condition for mindedness, right?
keiths:
CharlieM:
It’s a problem for you, and you know it. A big problem.That’s why you’ve been trying so hard to find a way out of it. It shows that the soul doesn’t exist, and It clearly bothers you that you haven’t been able to find a way to circumvent it.
keiths:
There is no separate “I” that uses the brain to think. The brain is the “I” that does the thinking. And if you try to assert that there really is a separate nonphysical “I”, then you run into — you guessed it — the PoP.
To hold the concept of the dodecahedron in your mind simply means that your brain is in a state that represents the dodecahedron. It’s no different in principle from the way a computer represents the number 23. The Platonic solids don’t belong to you, and the number 23 doesn’t belong to the computer, but you can both represent those concepts by instantiating them physically.
And of course, even if you could somehow show that concepts were floating out somewhere in a Platonic realm, you would still face the PoP.
You can’t get around it, Charlie. You need to face it head on.
CharlieM:
Relativity shows that space and time aren’t separate. But even if they were, and even if the soul had no spatial location, you would still face the PoP.
You would run the risk of confusing yourself by doing that. Better to simply say that shadows are fully physical phenomena. No woonergy involved, and no nonphysical entities.
The “specific domain” of physical law is all of physical reality, with no exceptions. All of it. If there is some sort of nonphysical realm with its own laws, then nothing in that realm can “reach over” into physical reality and cause things to happen, because that would violate the laws of physics. It’s the PoP. So when you talk about laws “over and above” the laws of physics, you are talking about laws that could affect only the nonphysical realm.
If a soul exists in that nonphysical realm, it is powerless to affect the physical world. Think about that — if your soul actually existed and was trying to do something like raise your hand, it couldn’t do that. The laws of physics completely determine what the body is going to do, and there is nothing that any nonphysical entity can do about it.
Now, you obviously don’t experience yourself as being helpless. If you try to raise your hand, you’re able to do that. What that is telling you is that your brain is what decides to raise your hand, it is the brain that issues the motor commands that cause this to happen, and it is your brain that observes this happening. The soul has nothing to do with any of it.
No, the laws of physics, including Newton’s First Law, apply to every single particle in the universe, including every particle in that rock and every particle in that dog’s body. No exceptions.
The reason you’re confused is that you are thinking simplistically about Newton’s laws. You appear to believe that Newton’s laws only concern forces external to the rock and to the dog, but that isn’t the case at all. The internal forces matter too. When a dog contracts its muscles, it is generating forces, and those forces cause the dog’s body to move in ways that it wouldn’t if only external forces were operating.
There is not a single place within that dog’s body where Newton’s laws are violated, nor does the dog’s body as a whole violate those laws.
So you say. But if there is a nonphysical realm, then no entity within it can affect the physical world, as I explained above. You envision a nonphysical soul that can direct the body. That is impossible. The soul doesn’t exist.
The falcon’s action in riding the thermal is completely dictated by the laws of physics. That includes the decision to ride the thermal. There can’t be a falcon soul making that decision for the same reason that there can’t be a human soul making your decisions.
Any such laws are completely constrained by the laws of physics. The laws of physics can’t be overridden by other laws, including any purported laws of living organisms. Such laws, if they exist, are the result of the laws of physics, not something above and beyond them.
CharlieM:
Nonphysical, definitely, because it has no physical constituents — no matter, no energy.
Which is odd, since you said above that the soul has no location. It’s in time, but not in space. If so, then it can’t be embodied. It’s at most ‘attached’ to a particular body.
Not at all. The PoP applies to a reality that includes both the physical and the nonphysical.
Them’s weasel words. You’ve tried this before.
Suppose you were right, and the physical and the nonphysical were two aspects of a unified whole. You would still be claiming that the nonphysical aspect can reach over and influence the physical aspect, and I would still be pointing out that the PoP precludes this. You can’t circumvent the PoP; you’ve got to face it head on.
You got sucked into Steiner’s vortex of fantasy, where he talks about all this stuff as if it were real, but Steiner didn’t know what he was talking about. He was a crackpot with a vivid imagination but dismal critical thinking skills. You’ve wasted a lot of time on this guy, Charlie. It’s time to move on to something better, something grounded in reality, not fantasy.
Yes there are. In order to balance the equations between observation and theory there has to be additional energy. Only researchers have been unable to detect this energy, hence they call it ‘dark’. The presence of ZPE implies that matter is produced from energy. From the point of view of the teaching regarding classical elements as states of substances, earth, dense matter, is fire greatly condensed. This is the equivalent to the solidified matter and energy of conventional physics.
That towering figure Hericlitus is credited with saying, “This world order, the same for all, was made by no God and no man, but fire ever was, is and will be, and lives eternally, kindling in measure, and extinguishing in measure.”
I think I’ll adopt ‘woonergy’ as a blanket term for dark energy, ZPE, fire and the quintessential aether. 🙂
The laws of physics are the domain of predictive mathematics. Quantum laws are statistical.
The domain of life has laws which are not based on mathematical formulae. Physical laws can be applied to living organisms but this will only give answers that apply to the physical domain. For instance I can measure my heart rate and discover that it is higher than normal. But there is no formula that will explain the reason for the increase. For that I will have to examine my behaviour.
It is true that shadows and rainbows are not physical things. Yes, they are phenomena in that they require the presence of light sources, objects and observers.
Richard Dawkins bears his soul and reveals his sense of wonder in “Unweaving the Rainbow”
An instantiation is a representation. I perceive a dog and this animal before me is an individual representation of the concept ‘dog’, also of the concept, ‘mammal’, and of the concept organism. But there is much else besides contained in the concept organism. Evolution, development, growth, organs, tissues, metabolism and so on all come within the concept organism.
My perception only gives me a personal account of the entity in my consciousness. But this does not mean that there is a thing in itself behind this entity which is forever hidden. The concepts which I grasp are the way I reach the entity in itself. These concepts belong to the entity.
I wouldn’t say there are examples of infinity in the physical world. But concepts such as ‘circle’ contain the concepts, an infinity of points and an infinity of straight lines. Now the concept ‘circle’ doesn’t rely on the person who has grasped it for its content. Nor is it governed by space or time.
This eternal consistency is a spiritual quality. During the marriage ceremony between my wife and I, our inner feelings were soul qualities. The act of exchanging rings was a physical process. The whole event was a harmonious combination of body, soul and spirit. The physical ring a symbol of the eternal circle. The spirit, the soul, and the physical.
Everything physical is transient, but there are indications of the eternal.
When it boils down to it, matter is coming to be regarded as consisting of the focal points of non-perceptible field-like forces.
I can just see it now, all the criminals in the land appealing to the judge that they should be let off because they have broken no laws of physics. 🙂 What other laws can there be?
Yes it is.
No, precisely the opposite.
No. I’ve been arguing that many of my actions originate in my mind. I argue that thinking, a spiritual activity, through willing, can be the instigator of bodily movements. Feeling, a soul activity, is the instigator of bodily movements in most animal actions. When, I, as a human, act out of feeling without the thinking element, I am acting out of my animal nature. When the feeling is combined with thinking to produce the action, then I am acting out of my human nature.
You fail to see how these three spheres can be connected in the way I believe they are, because, even if you deny it, you are tied to the dualistic Cartesian divide of res cogitans and res extensa. Two separate spheres with an unbridgeable gulf between them. The only way you can see to rescuing this situation is to bring the res cogitans into the sphere of the res extensa, and to make the claim that it’s nothing but this. This is the paradox you have to live with. You know you have inner experiences, your res cogitans, but you have to deny their fundamental reality.
I don’t stand by the duality of Descartes. I believe that in our polar nature. And anything that is polar has three aspects. So I suppose I believe in tripartite monism.
Rational reasoning belongs to the sphere of thinking which is a spiritual activity. The brain uses up energy, not for the purpose of mechanical movement. It has a higher function in that it allows for spiritual activity. At the opposite pole are the limbs. They use up energy performing mechanical movements. The brain allows for spiritual forces at the expense of being mechanically inactive. The limbs allow for mechanical forces at the expense of spiritual inaction.
Animal interests lie in building up and maintaining the body. Human interests are at a higher stage of evolution in which the distinctly human part of the brain contributes nothing to building up and maintaining the body. In fact it uses up resources that could otherwise be used for that task. Our bodies develop to the point where spiritual forces are maintained while bodily forces begin their path of deterioration. Middle age and old age do not come along with any increase in youthful vigour.
How are you at wrestling alligators? The question is can your cerebral cortex get the better of your medulla oblongata? 🙂
CharlieM:
And I’ve shown why that can’t be the case, via an argument you’ve been unable to refute. When you affirmed that the laws of physics are never violated, you inadvertently affirmed that all the nonphysical Steinerian cruft doesn’t exist.
It can’t be. See above.
Mash everything together into a big metaphysical ball, and you still face the problem of physics. There is no room for anything nonphysical to reach into the physical realm and alter your bodily behavior.
Huh? I don’t deny the fundamental reality of my inner experiences. I just acknowledge that they are produced by the brain and not by a nonphysical soul.
CharlieM:
That ‘earth, air, fire, water’ stuff has long been superseded. Why waste time on it when there is so much actual physics to learn?
Heraclitus lived over 2500 years ago. Science has moved on, just a tad, since then.
The laws of physics include quantum laws, and those laws, despite being statistical, leave no room for the intervention of a nonphysical soul. We’ve been over this.
The PoP, Charlie. The laws of physics apply to the body, and they determine everything the body does. There are no independent “laws of life” that can override the laws of physics. Since the laws of physics are never violated, it follows that it’s impossible for nonphysical entities to “reach into” the physical realm and cause bodies to do things. If you had a soul, and it wanted you to get up and walk to the refrigerator, nothing would happen. If your brain wants you to get up and walk to the refrigerator, you get up and walk to the refrigerator. Your soul, if it exists at all, is merely a spectator.
There is nothing about your heart rate that isn’t fully explainable, in principle, in terms of the laws of physics. There are no nonphysical entities, nor any woonergy, involved in determining your heart rate. The laws of physics take care of everything. There is no role for any of that nonphysical Steinerian junk.
keiths, your logic is impeccable. I agree, and have always agreed, that if the extent of reality is limited to the physical with nothing, no being, process, entity of any description, beyond this, then there will be nothing but the physical affecting the physical.
Have you ever thought about the possibility of the physical being just one aspect of a greater whole? If you can contemplate that, what is to prevent interactions within that whole?
Even from the third person point of view the problem remains. Sensory inputs are converted and arrive at the brain as a multitude of single ‘firings’ scattered throughout the cortex. How are all these individual, dynamic activities arranged into a coherent whole?
Fill a theatre with ballet lovers and let them watch swan lake without telling them beforehand what they were going to see. Even restrict some of them to witnessing part of the performance. On subsequently asking them to name the performance, they all say, swan lake. What was taking place inside the brain, combining the sense data, that enabled them to make that judgement?
You will have to admit that there is more magic taking place inside the skull than I any magicians box of tricks.
Did my belief that the heart is the seat of feelings come from Steiner? I’m not sure. I do remember Steiner implying that the midbrain is the seat of the emotions. Perhaps claiming the heart to be the seat of feelings is to think in terms that are too narrow to conform to Steiner’s teachings.
I remember an incident at work which involved myself and some damage to a very expensive piece of equipment. My workmate told me I had a face like an acratork, as I had turned as white as a sheet.
My blood was withdrawing from the periphery being more proximal to my heart as I wanted to vanish altogether. I might have also broken out in a cold sweat but I don’t remember. But I do think that my heart/circulatory system is more vital than my perspiration system. So I’ll stick with the belief that my heart is the centre of my feelings.
CharlieM:
I’m not making that assumption. I’m taking the opposite view for the sake of argument, and showing that it renders any nonphysical entity powerless to control our bodies. The soul, assuming it exists, is just a spectator. You, and Steiner, and everyone else who believes in a soul that does our thinking and directs our bodies are mistaken. It’s impossible.
Yes, I can contemplate it, and long ago I used to believe it. I am showing you that if there is a “greater whole”, then the nonphysical parts, or aspects, or whatever you want to call them, have no influence over the physical parts. The nonphysical stuff can only “watch” the physical, not participate in it.
And of course we don’t feel like spectators, since we can control our bodies. Therefore, the part of us that does the thinking, makes the decisions, and directs the body is the brain, not the soul. There is no role for the soul that isn’t already filled by the brain.
And since there’s nothing for the soul to do, why maintain that it exists? I could just as easily claim that there is an invisible, weightless rhinoceros that follows me around but has no influence whatsoever on the physical world. It can’t be disproven, but there’s no reason to believe it exists. The soul is like that invisible rhinoceros.
CharlieM:
Steiner believed it, so you probably got it from him:
The guy was a crackpot, Charlie. You’ve already wasted too much time on him. There’s a whole world of thinkers out there who are reality-based, so why not take the time you’ve been wasting on Steiner’s fantasies and redirect it toward learning more about the actual world?
CharlieM:
People who have artificial hearts continue to have feelings. Is that because their mechanical hearts are now the center of their feelings?
CharlieM, to Alan:
The same thing that happens when we make any kind of judgment. An amazingly intricate and complicated network of neurons processes the incoming sensory data and reaches the conclusion that it is seeing Swan Lake. The brain is an information processing device. A very sophisticated one.
The stuff going on in the brain is way more sophisticated than anything in a magician’s bag of tricks, and it doesn’t require any magic.
Rationality is overrated. Just ask the circle I frequent. The radii and circumference agree with me. 🙂
How can I argue with your proclamation that if all there is is the physical then I’m being irrational? See my recent post
Rationality depends on logic, and logic is relative to one’s point of view.
CharlieM:
As you already know, that isn’t my ‘proclamation’.
My argument, which you’ve been unable to refute, is that if reality is partly nonphysical, and the laws of physics are never violated, as you’ve acknowledged, then no part of nonphysical reality can have any role in directing the actions of our bodies. The soul, if it exists at all, is powerless to control our bodily actions.
Being unable to refute the argument, but aghast at the conclusion, you are now arguing that rationality is overrated and that each of us has their own logic, depending on their point of view.
I guess if Kellyanne Conway can have her “alternate facts”, then you can have your “alternate logic”. But it won’t be any more credible than her “alternate facts”.
This is reminiscent of what you do regarding science. You’re happy with science as long as it doesn’t threaten your worldview, but the moment it does, you start talking about how science is fallible and only tentative. The same thing appears to be happening with logic and rationality. It’s only now that you’re faced with an argument that you cannot refute that you start talking about how rationality is overrated and logic is relative.
Don’t kid yourself, Charlie.
Conventional science is founded on the split between the cognitive world of physics and the corporeal world of perception. This is what Whitehead termed bifurcation.
From medium.com
You are insisting that our idea of the soul (real or imagined) should conform to this bifurcation. As the soul (res cogitans) is separate from the physical world (res extensa), the means of action between the two requires an explanation. But some of us don’t see the world that way.
I thought the dispute was over there being a soul outside the bounds of the physical. Just because entities are not measurable, it doesn’t follow that they are not real.
I believe in our apparent fourfold nature, physical, etheric, astral and ego. I perceive myself as having a physical body, life, sentience and self-consciousness. It is apparent to me that plants have a physical body plus life. In some cases, if I take a cutting and transplant it, a new plant will grow. I have in effect transplanted the physical and living aspects of the plant. If I took a rose petal and did the same thing it would just wither and die. The life force is strong in the cutting, but not in the petal.
If it was the case that transplanting a brain resulted in restoration of life then in my opinion that would be because along with the perceptible physical brain, the imperceptible life, astral and ego principles were also transplanted.
With liver transplants a partial liver can be used as this organ has a strong life force and so like plants it has the ability to regenerate.
Is that eight million exact or is it an approximation? 🙂
You might like to use ‘I’ in that way. But not I. My brain is not me, my head is not me, my body is not me. I have them but I am not them. And this is not my brain’s opinion, it is not my anal sphincter’s opinion, it is my opinion.
Promises, promises.
If it was just the physical and life component that was transferred, then it would probably result in a living body in a similar state to somebody in a deep coma. If the physical, life and sentient components were transferred, then it would result in a living, feeling body with no self-awareness, If the physical, life, sentient and ego were transferred, then bingo, then there would probably be a very confused person wondering what has just happened.
Maybe I should have referred to experimenters predicting the path of single photon double slit experiments.
I have soul experiences. I feel emotions, I don’t feel brain processes. I can decide to think of particular topics and so doing induce personal emotions. The brain processes are a consequence of my decisions.
I said the brain is the organ of though. “Thinking organ” implies that the brain thinks, and I don’t believe that.
And that is the argument. Is physical reality all that there is? You say yes, I say no.
Yes, the physical aspect of these entities are governed by the laws of physics. But laws of physics are limited. For instance the law of the conservation of energy does not apply to the universe as a whole.
The laws of physics are completely binding on brains and bodies, but they are not binding on creative thoughts, purposeful actions, and the like.
Do you know of any instance where life did not come from life? If no such instances have ever been found then I would say that this is a law which holds. Even if humans could produce life from basic chemicals that would still count as life being created by life.
BY ‘force’ I don’t mean mechanical force. I use the word ‘force’ to refer to a principle common to all living beings. Autopoiesis is a principle of life not of physics.
Internal combustion engines, laptops, skyscrapers all conform to the laws of physics. But would they exist if creative minds did not exist?
You’re making promises, but can they be kept? And if it did happen how do you know that the process wasn’t just a procedure which allowed a living entity to occupy a physical body.
I exist as a result of living processes, not just particles. A more appropriate scenario would be akin to building an aircraft in mid-flight.
Without a will the duplicate wouldn’t move an eyelid let alone a limb.
Desires are not the same thing as brain processes.
The term “science” has become a relative term, especially lately with in the last 3 years. To lose your mind to “science” you must define you mean by the term “science”.
Good luck with that keiths! lol
Apart from maybe the people involved, I didn’t find anything in that video that I wasn’t already aware of.
Arthur Eddington from ‘The Philosophy of Physical Science: Tarner Lectures’ (1938):
According to Eddington, theoretical physicists have been forced into epistemology. Their findings are now demanding it.
Here he expounds on the bifurcation brought about by the path taken by modern science.
Arthur Eddington
And to finish with another of Eddington’s analogies: Your argument of an all-pervading physical reality reminds me of his fishnet parable:
Perhaps physics is too course a net to capture anything outside of its domain.
Others who have expressed views that take physics in an interesting direction are people like John Archibald Wheeler
and:
Nicholas Tesla:
Not to mention Arthur Young and Wolfgang Smith
CharlieM:
I recommended it because in the past you’ve expressed uncertainty about what qualifies as ‘energy’ and what qualifies as ‘physical’. In the video, he explains what physicists mean when they use the term ‘energy’. There is no mention of spiritual energies, or life forces, or any form of woonergy. He’s talking about physical energy, which is the kind physicists study, and the only kind for which we have evidence.
CharlieM:
You keep missing an important point. Yes, I believe that physical reality is all that there is, but I am not basing my arguments against the soul on that assumption.
I’m doing the opposite. I am assuming for the sake of argument that there is a nonphysical component to reality, and that the soul is part of that nonphysical reality. It’s a nonphysical entity.
Then, I look at the implications. Given that the laws of physics are never violated, which you agree to be the case, we can conclude that the soul, if it exists, cannot have a role in directing your bodily actions. It can at most be a spectator, and even that is problematic, as I have explained elsewhere.
The idea that the soul controls the body is untenable. You believe in a soul that controls the body, and that soul cannot exist. It’s a fiction.