There’s a lot of (mostly very obscure) talk about “the soul” here and elsewhere. (Is it supposed to be different from you, your “mind,” your “ego” etc.? Is it some combo of [some of] them, or what?) A friend recently passed along the following quote from psychologist James Hillman that I thought was nice–and maybe demystifying–at least a little bit.
By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.
It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate — an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence — that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives one the sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity.
In another attempt upon the idea of soul I suggest that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth some years ago. I had begun to use the term freely, usually interchangeably with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, soul refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy — that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
James Hillman — Re-Visioning Psychology
Well, this is the issue, right? Are we talking about the irreducibility of the first-person perspective to the third-person perspective? I understand that that’s what you’re talking about, but that is not at all what Patrick is talking about (I don’t think
Patrick is saying that there are no “immaterial” objects or processes when we do ontology in the third-person perspective.
But the idea that our third-person descriptions and explanations of the world are entirely “empirical” or “physical” (and I wouldn’t want to use either of those terms without a lot of explication!) is perfectly compatible with the idea that our first-person (and second-person!) descriptions and explanations of the world (and ourselves) as we experience them are not couched in the language of any of the sciences.
But if that’s right — if phenomenology and science are perfectly compatible because one is in the first- and second-persons and the other is in the third-person — then there’s no support for either immaterialism or materialism.
Look at the topic. Hint: The Soul.
The inadequacy of the third-person perspective in this discussion should be obvious.
Heck, I agree that when we do ontology in the third-person perspective, with our senses alone (and not intellect), then there are no immaterial objects whatsoever. The problem is that limiting ourselves this way doesn’t get us to the bottom of ontology, now does it? You don’t even get to verify the other side of the moon with your senses, that’s how limited it is!
Erik, you seem to confuse the act of thinking, the act of imagining, with the idea being considered or the subject of one’s act of imagining. Then you blame semantics for your confusion.
Nonsense. A space probe is an extension of our senses.
It is surely a mistake to believe that there could be empirical evidence either for or against this (for or against the view that ideas are identical to brain processes). Such things are established by human convention (or human tradition) rather than by empirical evidence.
My confusion?
What are you denying? The act of thinking or the idea that is subject to the act of thinking? It cannot be the first one, so it must be the second one. You are saying that ideas that we think do not exist (because immaterial things don’t exist), right? Your formulation of your idea here is disproof of that. If your idea does not exist, then why bother formulating it?
And that gets you the complete ontology?
Nonsense.
Tell that to those scientists to whom Patrick linked to. And to Patrick.
I’m not sure what your point is here. William claims he has detected psi with his senses, so he accepts claims about psi. I personally have not, nor has anyone I know personally. As such I dismiss his claims of psi and his references on the subject. He and any pro-psi adherent can bitch and moan that I’m being “closed-minded”, “illogical”, “hyperskeptical”, or “unreasonable” (or whatever), but the fact remains that the burden is on them to either provide evidence that I can I can detect with my senses and/or entailments of the effects of this psi for me to accept such claims. There’s no burden on me to either disprove their claims or to investigate it further.
I see this as a different, much latter issue. Psi, for instance, doesn’t even rank (to me) as a theory; it’s simply a dubious claim from my perspective. So there’s no testing it for things like parsimony, fecundity, or consilience at this point.
Ahh…ok. I see where you are coming from on this.
To me, Patrick isn’t making any claim about phenomenon, but rather about the nature of detecting phenomenon. I think his perspective is limited, but overall I think he’s on the right track.
Erik’s claim is one concerning phenomenon, but to me it’s his opinion about the nature of a phenomenon. I disagree with Erik’s opinion that thoughts are immaterial, but I do so because I don’t find “immaterial” to be well-defined. It’s too vague to be useful to me. But I don’t see either as good examples of what I was actually addressing.
Yeah…I’m with you on that. That hits a different area of issues for me though.
If something is “easily experimentally verifiable”, then it either is detectable by the senses or it has entailments. So I don’t understand your comment.
Looks like you didn’t understand your own comment. Hint: Burden of proof.
Immaterial is NOT “easily experimentally verifiable” so imputing (empirical) burden of proof on it is direct nonsense. And you cannot get away from it by yelling “burden of proof” louder and louder.
On the other hand, material IS “easily experimentally verifiable” so the burden of proof thing works exactly the other way round than what you said in your comment.
ETA: In other words, when you demand sense-detection of something that cannot be detected by the senses, then you are not placing the burden of proof rightly, certainly if it’s empirical proof we are talking about. You are placing it wrongly.
I don’t think you do know full well any of that, since none of these remarks about his philosophy makes any sense. I was discussing the de dicto / de re distinction, which you keep getting confused about. If you don’t want to read Plantinga, then read Kripke or Donnellan instead. Or just read a wikipedia article about it.
Actually, disjunctivists have a lot of trouble handling hallucinations. It’s a major obstacle for them.
Again, that’s not clear at all.
My point is that nothing follows about physicalism from something being or not being detectable by the senses.
“Immaterial” is meaningless unless and until you can define it in concise terms, preferably in association with some kind of phenomenon. Right now, to me, your (and others’) use of the term “immaterial” strikes me ask begging the question; you don’t believe that everything can be material and you want to believe there are things that are not material, so you use the term “immaterial” to apply to them. So the term doesn’t actually explain anything about those things; it’s simply a placeholder for some characteristic you believe those things have.
So no…I’m perfectly aware of my own comment; I don’t believe in the “immaterial” and I have no burden to disprove it because there’s nothing about it that is detectable with my senses, nor does it have any apparent entailments. If you feel I really need to accept your claims about it, then you have the burden to point to something about the “immaterial” that either I can perceive with my senses or that has entailments of some kind. Barring that, meh…I got better models of the material aspects of thoughts and consciousness, so I really don’t feel any compunction to chase any rabbits down “immaterial” holes.
Of course it does. You have every right (logically speaking) to note that the burden is on materialists to provide either sensory perception support for their claims of the material or entailments of their material claims. I would never say otherwise.
And…?
Acts of thinking are real processes. What you think about, the subject of your thoughts, are not limited to being real.
I’m saying that the subject of a thought does not have to be real. You can think about Donald Trump or a unicorn. Trump is unfortunately all too real.
Trump or unicorn? Is there a difference?
I think that’s a good point.
Detectable by the senses or having entailments? Can you elaborate?
Alan, you have to distinguish mental acts from their objects. The acts are real (and may very well be identical to physical processes for all we know); the objects need not be real.
Good. I like that. I of course have defined the soul before, so it’s already been done. On the other hand,
If I have a confusion, then you can surely point it out, and not just assert. Bear out what you say. Do it yourself, not by naming names who have written loads of books, none of which is about me anyway. Thanks.
As I mentioned, people have held that what is “detectable by the senses” are images or ideas or sense-data or qualia rather than physical items. Such people may hold that the physical objects are, e.g., “logical constructs” of the images, or sense-data and are not themselves actually “detected” by our senses, even if their existence has causal effects on our sense organs.
My communication skills must be failing. That’s what I’m trying to say!
No. Immaterial is the characteristic itself. And it’s false that immaterial is vague. It’s as vague or clear as material. Namely, it’s the opposite of material. Like cold and warm are opposites. They define each other in mutual contradistinction.
I have told you, perhaps seven times now, that you are confusing de dicto with de re knowledge when you say that our introspections e.g., are not of physical items. Think of the difference between believing that x is F and x being such that you believe of it (perhaps without knowing) that it is F. Say you believe that the guy over there has a beard but don’t know that it is Jones over there and think that Jones is clean-shaven.
You believe that Jones is clean shaven (that’s de dicto), but you also believe of Jones that he has a beard (that’s de re).
I don’t know what else to do for you Erik. You should really read a few things written since the 12th century.
That’s really only a detail of how we try to make sense of our own understanding of the real World. It doesn’t change the point that there is a distinction to be made between something that has entailments, is detectable in some way, however indirectly and the subject of someone’s imagination that exists nowhere else in reality.
But cold and warm are not opposites.
You mean something can be cold and warm at the same time?
The question is what are the entailments of the objects of introspection being physical and how they might differ from the entailments of them not being physical. It’s not so easy.
Nothing can be irritable and a viola da gamba at the same time: that doesn’t make them opposites, Erik. (You know, I don’t know if there’s a person on earth who makes more bad arguments every day than you do.)
Nobody can find viol da gambas irritable? Is it a logical impossibility?
Please. You’re making ME irritable, Erik. That’s for sure.
It’s true! Depends on your perspective. Though I was referring to the fact that there is an absolute minimum temperature and perhaps no theoretical limit to higher temperatures.
You are approaching Patrick in the quantity (and quality) of your unsupported statements.
OK you’re right. Maybe there are one or two people up there with you in the quantity of daily bad arguments. Couldn’t be more than a half dozen though. I mean you are PROLIFIC!
Examples are easy. Unicorns aren’t physical or real, they are figments of the imagination. No matter how hard we try, we can’t find any evidence of their existence, any test we could perform that would demonstrate that.
See you’re making the same confusion again, Alan. Erik isn’t talking about noting the existence of unicorns; he’s talking about noting the existence of thoughts of unicorns. It’s THOSE he claims are “immaterial.”
Thanks for representing me rightly this time.
Also, I note that you are better than Patrick in that you never ask me for evidence where it makes no sense to ask for (empirical) evidence. He does it all the time, so he’s a real meanie.
I thought I’d already said that a thought is real. I can apparently conjure up a vision of a unicorn here and now. That thought is real and the “image” that I’m forming is a real process happening in my brain.
Maybe I’m missing something, dunno.
I’m better than him at political theory too. But he’s better at math and science than I am. So it evens out, I guess.
Well, how do you know that the thought is identical to some process in your brain? Maybe it’s just created by that process, or maybe there’s no particular process than can be perfectly correlated with “a thought of a unicorn.”
The heart stops, blood stops flowing
Your lungs malfunction, you can’t breathe
The brain is damaged, consciousness is gone.
Why single out consciousness as needing some immaterial substrate or supervision to work?
Is this a bit too simplistic?
Just to be clear, is Erik arguing that thought are immaterial? They plainly aren’t, applying my own understanding of the word “immaterial”. But definitions are slippery, here.
You see, material-immaterial is similarly a perspective-dependent scale. For example, the mind is compartmentalizable. It can think of some things while not thinking about others for a while. Memory and “being present in the moment” are contradictory mental functions, so the mind has parts and it changes over time. To this degree, it is material, definitely not as finely immaterial as the soul is. On the other hand, it’s not as crudely material as objects of atoms and molecules. There are levels to reality. Layers. If anybody cared to pay attention to my comments, I have mentioned this before.
Same with cold and warm. You cannot reasonably say something is cold and warm at the same time, while you can give a temperature and leave cold vs warm up to “subjective” judgement.
I’ve always thought the guillotine a very effective demostration of the link between brains and thoughts.
Perfection? That’s another slippery concept.
Many dualists will accept that if there’s no brain there’s no consciousness. They rely on the counterintuitiveness of (to use Alan’s example) a thought of a unicorn just BEING some brain process. And they will insist that those holding the identity theory have the burden of proof here.
I don’t think there’s anything analogous with, e.g., the circulation of the blood.
I disagree. To me, you and others have attempted to define a concept you believe in that I don’t see any actual need for. To me, your explanation of the soul is no different than the explanation for the Luminiferous Aether. And your definition is entirely to abstract and vague for it to provide any practical use or implicit entailments.
For example, up thread you posted: The soul is not a thing, but a principle. Like gravity is not a thing and space is not a thing. And mathematical point is not a thing.
Oookay…
To me, all actual principles have entailments. Gravity, for example, is a principle that has very specific effects on objects based very specifically on mass. So yeah…it’s a very clear, concise, repeatable, predictable, and consistent principle of the universe.
And incidentally, both gravity and space are things. That’s actually what General Relativity implies. But I digress…
Anywhoo…so this “soul” principle you claim “is an obvious concept” does not appear to behave in a similar manner to other principles in that there appear to be no obvious (at least to me) entailments. Can you point to any?
As I noted early, to me the claim of the “soul” is similar to the concept of the Luminiferous Aether. Overly simplified, a number of physicists felt the need for some medium for light to travel through given light’s property to apparently move in waves. The Aether had no detectable properties of its own nor any entailments of its own for anyone to be able to assess it in any way. But, nonetheless the concept persisted because there were those who thought it was “an obvious concept”.
So I don’t readily by into “obvious concepts” that themselves are completely ethereal and vague. They all seem to be stop-gaps for more accurate models of the way things work.
See above. I believe Patrick is the one who accused you of confusion, but I think my response above provides some details.
I’d let him speak for himself if I thought he could make a cogent statement.
I think dualists will say that thoughts are immaterial. What is your basis for saying thoughts “clearly aren’t immaterial”?
This ignores philosophical zombies. They also have all external human features, except for consciousness – that which makes humans truly human. Psychiatric wards are full of people with roughly normal brain patterns and blood pressure, but there are reasons to keep them at the ward. Reasons that you cannot put on the table and that you cannot stick into their brains to fix the problem, i.e. immaterial reasons.
Well I don’t. Brain scans are detectable by the senses and have specific entailments. I find those pretty compelling. Claims of the “soul”? Not so much.
Entailments such as that they tell what the brain is thinking about? Because if not, then thoughts are not as closely related to brain patterns as assumed.