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
Seems weird to argue that immaterial entities can be detected and not use that in your argumentation. Question begging works better?
Who argues that? Me? Why should I?
Yup. Blind people simply don’t see. The dimension of visibility is unknown to them.
Similarly, immateriality is unknown to materialists. They think not-yet-detected is immaterial!
Reading you it would appear that immaterial stuff goes from detectable to undetectable and back to detectable in a matter of seconds.
Of course, when you assume it’s “stuff” just like matter. Wrong assumption.
And you are full of assumptions, but not even half as open about them as I am, so there’s no hope.
*sigh*
You made the false assumption that not-yet-detected (such as black holes at some point) are the same thing as undetectable in principle. It’s a metaphysically important distinction. You of course don’t see it, but please understand, guiding metaphysically blind people is one of the most unrewarding tasks there is.
With some thinking, immaterial should be as simple to grasp as unreal or non-existent, the concepts that you operate with every day. And then understand that they are not interchangeable synonyms, but all different specific metaphysical characteristics. But okay, useless to expect anyone to think here.
Of course I do. You’re the one who posted:
And I noted it was a bad analogy for immaterial. Because all you’re doing is providing a stop-gap (and not a good one at that.)
‘Fraid I’m not the blind one here.
Well…that’s just question begging then.
This makes utterly no sense. Physicalists say unicorns don’t exist because there’s no evidence for them, direct or through entailments. Pretty simple really.
I define unreal as: illogical and unrealistic. See my comments about wizards, leprechauns, and demons above.
And it’s pretty easy for me to classify things into the category “unreal”; things for which there is no direct evidence and no entailments. Done.
Note: nothing about antithesis. Unicorns and similar are not categorized as “unreal” because there real things and thus these things must be unreal by contrast. That would just be silly and would add nothing to anyone’s understanding about the world around us. Honestly, I can’t imagine why anyone would take that approach to define anything.
So you have no idea if it does anything, it doesn’t add anything to one’s knowledge of the body or of life, it doesn’t impact any areas of scientific law, but you hold it because…there are things and you believe there must be something else opposite to those things?
Certainly doesn’t comport with my way of thinking.
False. Physicalists ROUTINELY say unicorns “exist only in the mind”. If you don’t see the METAPHYSICAL implications of this, you are not qualified to have this discussion.
Equivocation. Beliefs, knowledge, etc. can either be de dicto or de re.
It wasn’t me who mentioned black holes. It was Robin. Not like there’s any reason to believe Robin can’t see the difference between not-yet-detected and undetectable in principle, as far as I can tell.
The question is that, if the immaterial is undetectable in principle, then your whining here:
…is sort of laughable
Souls not soles
“Consciousness” is tricky word. “Conscious” is a predicate, but what is consciousness supposed to be?
Better to ask the question about a thought or a desire or a perception, I think. Seems to me those may be either material or immaterial according to your definitions–and we don’t really know which. If they’re identical to neural processes, they’re material, otherwise not.
Sorry, but that’s your fallacy. You confuse beliefs with formulations about them. De dicto and de re distinction applies to propositions, not to beliefs, knowledge, etc.
But I repeat my other question too: Is it not an equivocation to say that the mind/concept/consciousness IS brain processes and patterns? Looks like an obvious failure at several distinctions to me.
Yes. And you quoted my reply to him as if to make a contradiction out of it. It was my reply to him in the context of black holes. I am better at following several lines of discussion than you. You made it so hard that it went over your head.
walto,
This is probably another of my silly questions, but could thought be an abstraction of neural processes? Or perhaps an abstraction of the effects of neural processes?
Okay. The problem is that illogic has real consequences. Being unrealistic also has real consequences. So you are really unqualified for metaphysical discussion.
Fwiw, that is completely wrong. 48th confused post of yours today! And the night is young!
Patrick makes all sorts of claims he can’t back up.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by ‘abstraction.’ Take a desire to go to the movies or a hallucination of a purple whale.
LoL! Gawd.
lol
“De dicto and de re are two phrases used to mark a distinction in intentional statements…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_dicto_and_de_re
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prop-attitude-reports/dere.html
“Distinguish: de dicto necessity: the necessary truth of a proposition de re necessity” http://comp.uark.edu/~efunkho/MetaPlantinga.pdf
It’s easy for me to forgive you if you have your own very idiosyncratic thing in mind with the de dicto and de re distinction, but it’s hard for me to forgive you that you made me google up Plantinga.
So, what idiosyncratic distinction are you making? Teach me. From prior experience I know that analytic specialists of formal logic routinely conflate propositions with what the propositions are about. Thus far you are deep in that.
Thanks walto. I think I get it.
Seems to me that, even if we can’t describe how neural processes produce particular thoughts, the fact that we can observe how drugs and other external factors interfere with neural processes and produce hallucinations, supports the hypothesis that thoughts are indeed material.
Oh, erik. Beliefs in or knowledge of propositions or statements are de dicto. That’s what the term means. Beliefs de re (of things) are not of propositions or statements. You equivocate between them and thus make your usual mess.
The thing is not to link the sites, it’s to READ them.
Is déjà vu immaterial?
Nope. There are at least these relevant distinctions:
– Between a thought and a hallucination
– Between a thought/hallucination when subject to a drug and when not subject to a drug
As long as these things are indistinguishable as neural processes, there is not a shred of evidence that they are material. They are, however, easily distinguished in first-person perspective, and we know, from first-person perspective, how crucial these distinctions are. To ignore this is to ignore the very concepts in question.
Or that immaterial things can be the result of material processes
So you say I equivocate between a statement of belief and belief? Not once have you shown it. FWIW, I never ever in this discussion said anything about a statement or proposition, only about thoughts etc. Should I have said something about statements somewhere? Where? Why not be constructive?
Right. There are several available choices and no empirical basis for picking.
No. For the 12th time, between de re and de dicto beliefs. Nothing to do with the statement of either–except you aren’t clear which type you mean from one second to the next (presumably because you don’t understand the difference and don’t feel like learning anything. Ever.)
Whatever Dennett and Flanagan think they’re writing books about!
Seriously, though: I don’t think there’s a risk of reification simply by using the word “consciousness.” The risk of reification lies in how it is used.
I guess. The mind-brain identity thesis has never seemed coherent to me.
What does make sense (to me) is to say that thoughts, desires, and perceptions can be explained in terms of patterns of brain-body-environment interactions.
(Whether those are good explanations depends on what we want to have explained — patterns of brain-body-environment interactions will not explain why Clinton lost the US election, though we will want to talk about thoughts, desires, and perceptions in the course of explaining why she did.)
The identity thesis just seems to conflate the ratio cognoscendi and the ratio essendi. Of course the fabled Peircean end of inquiry we do want those to line up. But the mind-brain identity thesis is far too presumptuous — not least of which because neurophysiological phenomena are much more complicated than was supposed in the heyday of the identity thesis!
In talking about conscious thoughts, desires, perceptions, etc. we’re explicating the subjective point of view. That’s definitely not ‘material’ by my lights, but it’s not ‘immaterial’ either. It’s phenomenology, not metaphysics.
For the last time: Where?
You have zero examples. Thus zero proof. Just reiterating what is unsustained. From now on, I take it that it’s also unsustainable.
I see. I think I failed to spot the distinction between thoughts being identical to neural processes and thoughts being caused by them. Trying to catch up here. Sorry about that
And yet so much certainty
I have told you. Go back and read my posts to you.
I know, right? Everybody’s so goddam sure about everything–whether it’s an issue that has stymied hundreds of the most brilliant people who’ve ever lived or not.
The mavens here just…KNOW.
You haven’t shown me. I don’t even remember if I ever said anything about any belief in this thread, yet you go on about some belief.
Still idiosyncratic. Still unsustained.
If I made the mistake 12 or 48 times as you say, it should be easy for you to pile up examples and show what your problem is.
Nothing to be sorry about, it is immaterial. I believe Eric disputes that material processes can or do cause immaterial stuff somewhere up thread.
I don’t see that. It’s simply a theory that every so-called ‘mental event’ is also a physical event. It may be false, but I don’t think it invlves the mistake you mention.
Oh, for Christ’s sake. Here you go again. You say your introspections are of mental things. That is a de dicto judgement of yours, like Descartes ‘I can doubt that my body exists.’ but, you see, you don’t actually know whether that which you are apprehending is (also) physical, and Descartes doesn’t actually know that his body is such that he can doubt its existence. He can doubt the proposition that his body exists, surely, but if he is (unbeknownst to him) actually identical to his body, his body is not such that he can doubt its existence (assuming, of course that he’s right when he says he can’t doubt that he exists.)
Please don’t make me explain this again, Erik. It’s all in the sites you yourself linked here.
Do I? Nobody has even given any example of this that could be disputed.
You can surely quote me on this.
*waits*
Until then: As suspected, that distinction is relevant to you alone. My argument is not solely an argument from introspection and, without defining physical and “exists” (which you conspicuously avoid), your objection doesn’t even affect the argument from introspection.
I guess I don’t see how one could be justified in asserting that identity without making precisely that conflation.
Neither do I. Walto evidently sees other things. Must be due to his ontology, not logic. I don’t think he is illogical. He mostly has a reason for saying what he says.
I think Spinoza may have made that mistake when he said the mind was the idea of the body, but Smart et al–I don’t think so. Again, it maybe false (as kripke thinks) but not for that reason.
You have no idea what the hell you are talking about. Which is ok, I guess, but you also insist on pontificating and have no desire to learn anything.
Toxic mix.
Two ways in which “also” in this statement can be understood:
– the mental event is the same thing as the physical event, different names for the same thing
– the mental event is an aspect of the physical event, the two constitute together a bigger whole, the complete event
Which of these do you have in mind? The second one is something that we haven’t discussed before.
And why do you say “so-called” about mental event and why ‘mental event’ with quotes rather than without? You are leaving the impression that you are reluctant to distinguish between mental and physical. So we obviously define those things to make the distinction, if any, clear, or argue for the non-difference.
Talking about your weak ontology. For example, to equate physical and mental as off-handedly as you do, one must disregard their respective natures which are known, the distinctions of kind, treat them as arbitrary nominals.
Still waiting for you to quote me on introspection. Always willing to learn, but you are unwilling to teach.
ETA: You kept whining about some belief thing. Now it turns out it was about introspection. But I haven’t said much about introspection, so as far as I can determine, the equivocation or whatever is purely in your own mind. We can sort it out if you quote me in full. Not forthcoming, I guess. This doesn’t have to be like pulling teeth, but you are making it so.