Why does the soul need the brain?

Why does the soul need the brain seems like a logical question especially in the context of the belief held by the leading ID proponent of the Discovery Institute Michael Egnor. He has written extensively on the theme of the immaterial soul that, in his view, is an independent entity, separate of the human body. What Dr. Egnor consistently fails to acknowledge is the obvious connection or interdependence between a functioning brain and self-awareness or consciousness. I wrote about it here.

If certain parts of human brain are damaged or disabled, just like in case of general anesthesia, the human brain loses the sense of consciousness or self-awareness either permanently or temporarily. The immaterial soul fails to make up for the damaged or disabled brain…

Dr. Egnor’s personal experiences (and he has many) as a neurosurgeon convinced him that many people, including many of his patients, with the great majority of their brains missing have developed and function normally. Egnor is convinced that an immaterial soul makes up for the loss of brain mass that is responsible for normal brain function in people with normal brain size or no damage to any of the brain parts.

It appears Dr. Egnor believes that unlike a computer software that can’t function without the computer hardware, human brain has an ability to make up for the loss of the hardware with the computer software – the immaterial soul.

Is Dr. Egnor’s view consistent with the readily available facts?
I personally see Dr. Egnor building and supporting a strawman by his selective choice of facts…Hey! That’s my opinion and that’s why we have this blog full of experts to disagree with me or Dr. Egnor…(I kinda like the guy though).

Let’s see…First off, not all cases of patients with missing parts of their brains experience the supposed miraculous saving powers of the immaterial soul. It appears that the amount of the missing part of the brain mass doesn’t seem to matter… What seems to matter more is which part (s) of the brain is missing and not how much of the brain mass is actually missing. Some parts of the brain seem essential for consciousness and self-awareness and others do not.

However, the main point of this OP is:

<strong> Why does the soul need the brain? Or why would human body need a brain at all, if the immaterial soul has an ability to compensate for the brain losses?

If the software (the soul) can operate without the hardware (the brain) why do we even need the brain in the first place?</strong>

It seems like a faulty or at least a wasteful design to me…

1,372 thoughts on “Why does the soul need the brain?

  1. keiths:

    CharlieM: An imaginary unchanging unicorn is certainly less real than a physical horse.

    Why, when changelessness is supposed to make something more real, according to you?

    Changelessness does not make something more real. Reality comes from finding the essential nature of a thing. My concept of a unicorn is that it is the product of human imagination and it will remain so unless I happen to stumble upon an actual physical unicorn and I can’t see that happening any time soon. The concept “human imagination” is an essential part of the concept “unicorn”.

  2. CharlieM: Again your imaginary mile-long potato in your imaginary field is your own subjective mental image and has nothing to do with the essential nature of potatoes.

    How does one know the essential nature of potatoes without the disconnected senses?

  3. Neil Rickert: Enjoy your mind reading. But you are no good at it.

    Says the guy who can’t determine whether something is physical or not. Keep talking.

    Reading your mind is too simple: You can’t make up your mind and that’s all there is to know about it.

  4. keiths,

    Would you mind repeating this, but putting “After all, this is the Skeptical Zone!” in it?

    Thanks.

  5. newton: How does one know the essential nature of potatoes without the disconnected senses?

    One doesn’t. But the senses do not give us the full reality, they only give us subjective impressions which we have to work upon with our thinking to approach reality.

  6. Charlie, what you need to think about is why you think changelessness must be a feature of “reality” or “realer reality” (I mean other than that you read it in Steiner.) Only then will it make sense for you to start getting into the claim that “the ideal tetrahedron” (whatever that is, exactly) is changeless. Because, I mean, without that premise, who cares what is less “changeable” than what?

    (I honestly have no reason why folks want to repeat threads that have been discussed numerous times previously here: all “your” views on this matter have been discussed (not to say pounded into oblivion) in prior iterations of it. I mean, you don’t have anything “new” on this matter obviously. And, although you apparently don’t realize this, the problem of universals has been a topic of philosophical discussion since Plato, and there is nothing particularly original, special or interesting about Steiner’s take on the matter.) In any case, as discussed before, that take is extremely susceptible to the “Third Man Argument”–which if you don’t remember, you can look up.)

  7. CharlieM: One doesn’t. But the senses do not give us the full reality, they only give us subjective impressions which we have to work upon with our thinking to approach reality.

    Ok, how do we work upon it with our thinking and determine we are approaching reality?

    For instance , with potatoes. Thanks.

  8. walto:
    Charlie, what you need to think about is why you think changelessness must be a feature of “reality” or “realer reality” (I mean other than that you read it in Steiner.)Only then will it make sense for you to start getting into the claim that “the ideal tetrahedron” (whatever that is, exactly) is changeless. Because, I mean, without that premise, who cares what is less “changeable” than what?

    I don’t think that changelessness is a feature of reality. It was Keith who brought up the term changelessness.

  9. CharlieM: I explained the ideal tetrahedron here. The essential nature of tetrahedra does not include being isosceles, semi-orthocentric or isogonic. The ideal tetrahedron is not a mental picture of a tetraherdon.

    And when you described it, you used terms like edge, side, apex. These are geometrics terms. And it’s vertex, not apex, by the way. And where you used the word “kinetic”, I think you probably meant “abstract” instead, to mean “encompassing multiple specific variants”.

    Humans had to develop math and geometry before the concept of tetrahedron could come about. If humans had not done this, it would have no existence, even as a concept. There might be some forms of mineral crystals that exhibit a shape that, once humans developed the concept of tetrahedron, they could then notice that those crystals come close to that shape.

    I am frequently amused by the number of people who engage in the mind projection fallacy by projecting mathematics onto the universe as if it had an existence prior to humans developing it.

    The universe contains matter and energy, and spacetime, which exhibit behaviors that have certain regularities. Humans developed mathematics as a language to help us represent and reason about such regularities. The universe is not “mathematical” by itself.

    You might believe in some realm where ideal platonic solids are floating around in aesthetic perfection, but I have yet to see any evidence of such a realm.

  10. CharlieM,

    Go back and read what you (not keiths) wrote about the difference between the concept of a tetrahedron and the concept of a black Swan and why you think this difference favors the ‘reality’ of the tetrahedron in some mystical way that tickles you.

    Btw, Neil is right–you have been monkeying with goalpost placement throughout this thread. Tsk tsk.

  11. Erik: Says the guy who can’t determine whether something is physical or not. Keep talking.

    According to keiths, everything is physical. So it must be that there is no possibility of distinguishing between physical and non-physical. And therefore the word “physical” is useless.

  12. walto: (I honestly have no reason why folks want to repeat threads that have been discussed numerous times previously here: all “your” views on this matter have been discussed (not to say pounded into oblivion) in prior iterations of it. I mean, you don’t have anything “new” on this matter obviously. And, although you apparently don’t realize this, the problem of universals has been a topic of philosophical discussion since Plato, and there is nothing particularly original, special or interesting about Steiner’s take on the matter.) In any case, as discussed before, that take is extremely susceptible to the “Third Man Argument”–which if you don’t remember, you can look up.)

    The reason I have been using the form of the tetrahedron is that it is a simple geometric figure, easy to define. We can define a tetrahedron but it is nigh on impossible to define beauty.

    Like you say philosophers have been discussing this for thousands of years, but then you imply that there is nothing worth discussing. History tells us that it is an interesting topic of discussion.

    Steiner believed that the concept triangle is singular, it is numerically identical no matter how many people hold it. Do you agree with this, do you think it is worth discussing and apart from Steiner who else do you know that has held this view?

  13. Neil, to Erik:

    Enjoy your mind reading. But you are no good at it.

    Erik:

    Says the guy who can’t determine whether something is physical or not. Keep talking.

    Neil:

    According to keiths, everything is physical. So it must be that there is no possibility of distinguishing between physical and non-physical. And therefore the word “physical” is useless.

    Your reasoning is terrible, Neil.

    First, whether you can distinguish between the physical and the non-physical should have nothing to do with my position regarding the existence of the latter. Isn’t that obvious? You are actually assuming the truth of physicalism — a position you pointedly reject — in order to establish your claim regarding the “uselessness” of the word “physical”. That’s a classic foot shot.

    Second, your argument doesn’t work even if we ignore that fumble. My physicalism is a scientific position as well as a philosophical one, and it’s provisional. It’s not dogma.

    So the word “physical” and the distinction between “physical” and “non-physical”, remain useful to me. Future evidence or arguments in favor of the non-physical could potentially falsify my physicalism, after all.

    Third, the terms “physical” and “non-physical” would remain useful to me even if I were dogmatically committed to physicalism, which I am not. An atheist can usefully refer to God in explaining his or her rejection of theism. A physicalist can likewise employ the physical/non-physical distinction in explaining his or her embrace of physicalism.

    This is basic stuff, Neil.

  14. CharlieM,

    It comes from Plato. It’s been held by roughly a third of all philosophers that have lived since that time, with the remainder being split between conceptualists and nominalists (including ‘trope’ defenders). There are no knock-down arguments for or against any of these views, which is why it remains a basic philosophical issue (although, as I said, the version you are touting is particularly susceptible to ‘third man’ so it’s among the weakest of them all.)

    Again, there’s nothing original, special, or particularly interesting about Steiner’s views on the subject; he was a second-rate hack.

    ETA: third-rate at best, really.

  15. Neil Rickert,

    Thanks.

    Btw, your remark that if everything is physical, the terms ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ can’t mean anything, betrays an early Vienna Circle version of verificationism. Even those guys dumped that by the 1930s.

  16. walto: Btw, your remark that if everything is physical, the terms ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ can’t mean anything, betrays an early Vienna Circle version of verificationism.

    I didn’t say that it doesn’t mean anything. I only said that it is useless.

  17. BruceS: I think he rejects privileging the Scientific Image over the Manifest Image, saying that each has an equally valid ontology, with things like contacts, money, Missouri, all being real in the Manifest Image without any need to re-express them in the Scientific Image. In particular, there is no need to relate their reality to the Scientific Image using token physicalism, as I understand Keith to be doing.

    Kaufman’s rejection of token physicalism is the reason I asked about something being “over and above” physical dispositions (although as Walt points out, “dispositions” has its own issues in physicalism due to modal issues).

    But where he loses me is in the nature of that separate ontology, eg how to avoid dualism. Put another way, how does he get around the causal closure of the physical which means we should privilege the Scientific Image?

    I don’t know this Kaufman character you’re talking about, but I do have my own take on these issues.

    I think of the manifest image and the scientific image as being, first and foremost, the idealizations of a philosopher. They are like what Max Weber called “ideal-types”: they are simplifications and abstractions that are valuable as aids to thought.

    Second, there’s the question about how each image gets its ontology. I think that the best way of understanding this how we get ontologies internal to the image is by asking the question, “what are we committed to taking as existing in order for us to be involved in this practice?”

    Once we see that as the question, then the most productive way forward is (I think) Kukla’s version of Dennett’s stance/pattern distinction: we are committed to the existence of all sorts of things by virtue of taking up an embodied stance with regard to those things. We can accept the existence of currency fluctuations, waves of political unrest, shadows, interpretations . . . whatever else we find it helpful to talk about as we adopt various stances that are useful for coping with real patterns.

    What’s distinct about the scientific image is that it’s the result of practices — manipulation, intervention, experimentation, quantification, peer-review and other institutionalized error-filters — that are deliberately intended to peel away at least a few ‘layers’ of what our stances bring to the table. We try to let the world get a vote in what we say about it. In our ordinary practices, as long as everything is going smoothly and the practices are allowing us to cope sufficiently well, we’re not surprised. In science, we want to be surprised, because if we’re surprised then that means we’ve discovered something new and important.

    I think that a careful explanation of the epistemic privilege of the scientific image over the manifest image would need to turn on a careful examination of the role of curiosity, imagination, and surprise in epistemic practices.

    As for what I think the ontology of the scientific image involves: what I’ve read over the past several years, from Deleuze and Prigogine to Stuart Kauffman and Alicia Juarrero, indicates that real patterns are dynamical processes. Different sciences — quantum mechanics, molecular biology, ecology, sociology — are basically different ways of detecting and tracking dynamical processes at different spatio-temporal scales and over different spatio-temporal ranges or domains.

    For my purposes I find it sufficient to treat the various ontologies of the manifest image and the dynamical processes of the scientific image as (more or less) like the difference between conventional reality and ultimate reality in two truths doctrine.

    The question then is: is the distinction between conventional and ultimate reality itself conventional or ultimate?

  18. newton:

    CharlieM: One doesn’t. But the senses do not give us the full reality, they only give us subjective impressions which we have to work upon with our thinking to approach reality.

    Ok, how do we work upon it with our thinking and determine we are approaching reality?

    For instance , with potatoes. Thanks.

    It is through out thinking experience that we are able to link the potato in your veg rack with the concepts, plant, organism, growth, starch, food. These and much more all belong to the concept potato and we make these links through thinking. And the more full our conceptual view of potatoes are the more we discover how potatoes fit into reality.

  19. Neil Rickert: I didn’t say that it doesn’t mean anything.I only said that it is useless.

    It’s not, though. It might be useless to a boy scout on a nature walk, admittedly.

  20. Kantian Naturalist: I think that a careful explanation of the epistemic privilege of the scientific image over the manifest image

    Why do you say the scientific image is ‘epistemically privileged? I’d say the opposite (and I would not be saying anything original in doing so).

  21. keiths: That’s completely backwards. Nominalism in mathematics involves the denial, not the affirmation, of the existence of mathematical objects such as sets.

    Quite right. Sets are abstract entities, whether or not they have any members. The empty set is just as abstract as a set with members. A nominalist who denies the existence of abstract entities could not allow the introduction of sets into her ontology.

    The tension between the nominalism implicit in classical empiricism and the necessity of sets for mathematics was one of the major issues that Carnap, Quine, and Putnam all struggled with — to the satisfaction of no one.

  22. walto: Why do you say the scientific image is ‘epistemically privileged? I’d say the opposite (and I would not be saying anything original in doing so).

    “Epistemically privileged” may not have been the best term.

    What I was trying to say is that the explanations generated by scientific inquiry should be preferred over “common sense”, folk wisdom, or intuitions whenever there is conflict between them. That is, the ontology of the scientific image (provisional and under-construction as that is!) is “closer to the truth” about the world than is the ontology of the manifest image.

    I did not mean to deny that we do have to begin with the manifest image, phenomenologically and historically, and that the scientific image grew out of the manifest image, slowly and with considerable difficulty.

  23. Fair Witness:

    CharlieM: I explained the ideal tetrahedron here. The essential nature of tetrahedra does not include being isosceles, semi-orthocentric or isogonic. The ideal tetrahedron is not a mental picture of a tetraherdon.

    And when you described it, you used terms like edge, side, apex.These are geometrics terms.And it’s vertex,not apex, by the way.And where you used the word “kinetic”,I think you probably meant “abstract” instead, to mean “encompassing multiple specific variants”.

    Yes those terms all belong to the tetrahedron. Thank you for pointing out that it would have been better if I had used the term vertex. I used the word kinetic because I was trying to convey the mobility of form. It is not restricted to the static rigidity of any physical tetrahedron.

    Humans had to develop math and geometry before the concept of tetrahedron could come about.If humans had not done this, it would have no existence, even as a concept. There might be some forms of mineral crystals that exhibit a shape that, once humans developed the concept of tetrahedron, they could then notice that those crystals come close to that shape.

    This is one point of difference between us; you see the concept as a human invention,I see it as something that we discover.

    I am frequently amused by the number of people who engage in the mind projection fallacy by projecting mathematics onto the universe as if it had an existence prior to humans developing it.

    So humans had to come along before two hydrogen atoms could become a constituent of water? Or for the ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle to be constant?

    The universe contains matter and energy, and spacetime, which exhibit behaviors that have certain regularities. Humans developed mathematics as a language to help us represent and reason about such regularities.The universe is not “mathematical” by itself.

    You might believe in some realm where ideal platonic solids are floating around in aesthetic perfection, but I have yet to see any evidence of such a realm.

    Yes mathematics is a tool used by humans but quantities are objectively real.

    I don’t believe in any separate realm.

  24. CharlieM:

    We discover the regularities. We invent languages to describe them. See the difference?

    Water molecules and circles inhabit two different ontological categories.
    Water was water before humans came along.
    Humans had to invent geometry before the idea of a perfect circle could exist as a concept within any representation.

    You don’t believe in a separate realm? Then you agree that the ideal tetrahedron exists only as a concept in human culture?

  25. Erik:

    Plenty of mathematicians are nominalists, because they think in terms of sets. And sets, for them, are made of zeroes. And zeroes are inherently empty. That’s nominalism at its purest.

    keiths:

    That’s completely backwards. Nominalism in mathematics involves the denial, not the affirmation, of the existence of mathematical objects such as sets.

    KN:

    Quite right. Sets are abstract entities, whether or not they have any members. The empty set is just as abstract as a set with members. A nominalist who denies the existence of abstract entities could not allow the introduction of sets into her ontology.

    The sad thing is that Erik could have figured this out with five minutes of Googling, if he had just had the presence of mind to do so.

    Walto complained earlier about people who take positions on too many issues, but that isn’t the problem. The real problem is with people who take positions, whether few or many, on things they have no clue about.

  26. Bruce,

    Instead of continuing that ,

    And so yet another discussion is suppressed. Sigh.

    This is obviously an uncomfortable topic for you, but that isn’t a valid reason to avoid it. Take a look at what’s happened:

    1. We had a discussion in an earlier thread that didn’t go the way you wanted. You were unable to defend your version of externalism, based on causal history, against my counterarguments.

    2. The topic came up again in this thread. It’s obviously a topic of interest for you, which is why you discussed it at such length in the earlier thread. Yet here you have claimed that you don’t want to discuss it because you don’t find it interesting, That doesn’t pass the smell test.

    3. The fact that you lost an argument is no big deal, but you were evidently so shaken by it that you chose to lie about it. You even pretended that you didn’t really believe what you had been arguing for, but had only taken it on as an intellectual exercise:

    Well, the devil’s advocate stuff that I later admitted to was meant to imply that I did not hold it; I only wanted to see how far I could defend it for the intellectual challenge.

    4. That’s obviously false, as anyone can see by reading the original thread. See the quote contained in this comment, for instance.

    What’s sad about this is that you’re obviously an intelligent and well-read guy. The fact that you make mistakes doesn’t negate that. So there’s simply no good reason for you to lie in order to cover up those mistakes. If your goal is to protect your image, then lying is counterproductive. It only diminishes your stature.

    Why not set your ego aside? The purpose of TSZ is to foster discussion, not to inhibit it. Don’t let your ego get in the way. Resist the temptation to grab your ball and go home merely because your self-image is being threatened.

  27. Now some comments on your thought experiment.

    First, I’ll note that Joe and T-Joe are no longer exact duplicates once they receive different stimuli, as happens early in the thought experiment. The same applies to Q-Joe.

    However, I don’t think that is fatal to the experiment. We can still reasonably ask what each of them means when using the word “water”.

    My own position is this: in no case is there a metaphysical tether between a particular Joe’s use of the term “water” and a single substance. In other words, I would say that for all three Joes, “water” applies to both water and twater.

  28. keiths:

    The problem is that when ideas are debated, some of them will prevail over others. People being people, this will be perceived as victory not only for the prevailing ideas but also for the people holding and defending them. The losing ideas will likewise impute losses to their holders/defenders. These phenomena simply aren’t separable, given human nature.

    walto:

    Are you really satisfied with this psychological explanation of why everyone must be an asshole on the internet? It’s not only pop-psych bullshit, it’s malevolent.

    Your histrionic overreaction is noted.

    It isn’t malevolent, it isn’t “pop-psych bullshit”, and it doesn’t imply that “everyone must be an asshole on the internet”.

    Think about it. Suppose Rumraket is defending some aspect of evolutionary theory, and Bill Cole is challenging it. We all know how the discussion will go. At the end of it, evolutionary theory will still be standing, and Bill’s ideas will be a smoldering pile of wreckage.

    Evolutionary theory will have prevailed, and Bill’s challenge will have been defeated. That also happens to mean that Rumraket won the debate and Bill lost.

    It’s true, there’s nothing wrong with it, and it doesn’t mean that Rumraket or anyone else “must be an asshole on the Internet.”

    Think, walto.

    My point is that we don’t have to tiptoe around the fact that Bill lost the debate, just as we don’t have to tiptoe around the fact that Bruce lost the debate over externalism.

    There may be bruised egos in both cases, but that’s okay. It’s not a reason to suppress discussion or to walk on eggshells, afraid of speaking the truth lest we offend someone.

  29. keiths:

    You’ve said that you aren’t a physicalist. Do you think that those social constructs are non-physical?

    Neil:

    It doesn’t matter to me whether you think they are physical.

    keiths:

    That’s not what I asked. I asked whether you think they are non-physical.

    It matters, because if you do think they are non-physical, then you face the problem of explaining how they exert a causal influence on the physical world. It’s the same problem faced by those who want to believe that a non-physical soul exerts a causal influence over our physical bodies.

    Neil:

    No, I don’t think that they are non-physical. I also don’t think that they are physical. There’s no need for me to make a decision as to whether or not they are physical.

    To justify your rejection of physicalism, there is a need for you to demonstrate the existence of the non-physical. Unfortunately, your tendency is to curl up into the fetal position when challenged.

    Perhaps you regret it now, but you did at one point take the position that facts and linguistic conventions are non-physical:

    The obvious problem with that, is that there are no physical facts.

    We can talk about fermions and bosons. But nothing physical assigns names “fermion” or “boson” to anything. We cannot have facts without conventions (such as naming conventions). So when we talk of fermions and bosons, we are already going beyond what the physical facts allow.

    This is why I deny that I’m a materialist or a physicalist.

    If facts and linguistic conventions are non-physical, then how do they exert a causal influence on our physical behavior?

  30. Kantian Naturalist,

    That explanation of manifest and scientific image is very helpful.
    I’m still unclear about how to understand ‘stance’ in that context.
    I take it as a point of view relative to some explanatory interest. I’m not clear how the concept of embodiment is involved. Perhaps because we associated points-of-view with embodiment?

  31. keiths:
    Now some comments on your thought experiment.

    My own position is this:in no case is there a metaphysical tether between a particular Joe’s use of the term “water” and a single substance.In other words, I would say that for all three Joes, “water” applies to both water and twater.

    That seems to be meaning internalism. Is that a fair description of your position?

    ETA: Meaning internalism is easily consistent with scientific explanations; externalism is not IMHO. But my philosophical intuitions are with meaning externalism. Hence my cop-out position.

    ETA 2: I think it is inconsistent with the science because psychologists and linguists would explain linguistic behavior without having access to the causal history. They would rely only current psychological states/processes.

    Of course, they would agree such states/processes are made possible because of a particular causal history. But they would not need the details of that history to explain the behavior.

  32. Neil Rickert:
    No, there would be no dinosaurs.All of the same stuff (whatever it is that dinosaurs are constituted of) would be there.But for a dinosaur to exist is for a particular collection of stuff to be singled out and considered a thing.And that’s the part that requires humans.

    Of course, other organisms likely also single out parts of the stuff and consider them things.But what those other organisms take to be things might be different from what we take to be things.

    I see that as roughly compatible with the the most recent post from KN on real patterns and with Wallace’s view on patterns

    A macro-object is a pattern, and the existence of a pattern as a real thing depends on the usefulness—in particular, the explanatory power and predictive reliability—of theories which admit that pattern in their ontology.”

    You are talking about interests in general, but I don’t think this is an important difference. The core similarity is that reality is such that there are consistent patterns which creatures can extract a subset from and rely on in order to to live and reproduce successfully.

    We can also rely on that structure of reality to explain why we are able to do live and reproduce successfully and why organisms can succeed using patterns which differ from those we use.

    A scientific realist would go on to say that the success of the science which underlies those explanations means that the patterns themselves really are there. Of course, “really are there” needs a lot more detail.

  33. walto:

    while 6 suggests that the science is more fundamental than the philosophy even in the determination of how we understand meaning and reference.

    Consider this collection of sciences: anthropology, sociology, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, biology. Anthropology, sociology, linguistics accept without further explanation the existence of language-using humans, along with any other human-specific features like human intentionality or human reasoning. But the others do not.

    What would be missing from the domain of explanations of the totality of these sciences. (I am not saying anything about reduction). Arguably, aesthetics and morality.

    But why meaning?

  34. walto:
    CharlieM,

    Go back and read what you (not keiths) wrote about the difference between the concept of a tetrahedron and the concept of a black Swan and why you think this difference favors the ‘reality’ of the tetrahedron in some mystical way that tickles you.

    Btw, Neil is right–you have been monkeying with goalpost placement throughout this thread. Tsk tsk.

    There is nothing mystical about the concept tetrahedron. Before I attempt to clarify my thoughts for you can you answer the question I asked: Do you agree or disagree that the concept triangle is singular, that it is numerically identical no matter how many people hold it? You can substitute tetrahedron for triangle if you wish.

  35. walto:
    CharlieM,

    It comes from Plato. It’s been held by roughly a third of all philosophers that have lived since that time, with the remainder being split between conceptualists and nominalists (including ‘trope’ defenders). There are no knock-down arguments for or against any of these views, which is why it remains a basic philosophical issue (although, as I said, the version you are touting is particularly susceptible to ‘third man’ so it’s among the weakest of them all.)

    Again, there’s nothing original, special, or particularly interesting about Steiner’s views on the subject; he was a second-rate hack.

    ETA: third-rate at best, really.

    Here Steiner give his views on percept, concept, the self and the evolution of philosophical thinking. You are welcome to make your argument against what he writes here.

    “The perception is the part of reality that is given objectively; the concept is the part given subjectively (through intuition). Our spiritual organization tears reality apart into these two factors. The one factor appears to perception; the other to intuition. Only the union of both, the perception incorporating itself lawfully into the universe, is full reality. If we look at mere perception by itself, we then have no reality, but rather a disconnected chaos; if we look at the lawfulness of our perceptions by itself, we then have to do merely with abstract concepts. The abstract concept does not contain reality; but the thinking observation does indeed do so that considers neither concept nor perception one-sidedly by itself, but rather the union of both.”

    For someone who can make this point of view his own it is then possible to regard fruitful reality as being united with his soul life within the self-conscious “I.” This is the view toward which the evolution of philosophy has been striving since Greek times and which has revealed its first clearly recognizable traces in Goethe’s world view.

    It is becoming recognized that this self-conscious “I” does not experience itself as isolated within itself nor as being outside of the objective world; rather, the “I’s” separation from this world is only a phenomenon of human consciousness and can be overcome by the insight that, as a human being in a certain stage of development, man has assumed a temporary form for the “I” by expelling from consciousness the forces that unite the soul with the world. If these forces worked continuously in human consciousness, one would not then attain a powerful, self-contained consciousness of oneself. One could not experience oneself as an “I” conscious of itself. The development of self-consciousness therefore depends precisely upon the soul’s being given the possibility of perceiving the world without that part of reality which the self-conscious “I” extinguishes at a certain stage — at the stage that precedes knowledge.

    Thus, the cosmic forces in this part of reality work upon the being of the soul in such a way that they withdraw and conceal themselves in order to allow the self-conscious “I” to shine forth powerfully. The “I,” accordingly, must recognize that it owes its knowledge of itself to a factor that casts a veil over its knowledge of the world. It follows necessarily from this that everything which brings the soul to a powerful, energetic experience of the “I” renders invisible the deeper ground in which this “I” has its roots. But now all the knowledge that our ordinary consciousness has is of the kind that makes the self-conscious “I” powerful. The human being feels himself to be a self-conscious “I” through the fact that he perceives an outer world with his senses, through the fact that he experiences himself as outside of this outer world, and through the fact that he stands in a kind of relationship to this outer world that, at a certain stage of scientific investigation, makes the “world seem like an illusion.” If all this were not the case, the self-conscious “I” would not come to manifestation. If, therefore, in one’s activity of knowing, one strives only to make a copy of what was already observed before one’s knowing activity, then one gains no true experience of full reality, but only a copy of “half reality.”

    If one acknowledges that this is how matters stand, one cannot then seek the answer to the riddles of philosophy within the experiences of the soul that present themselves to ordinary consciousness. This consciousness is called upon to strengthen the self-conscious “I”; striving to this end, it must veil our vision of the relationship between the “I” and the objective world; it cannot therefore show how the soul relates to the true world.

    This explains why a cognitive striving that wishes to progress philosophically by using the approach of natural science or something similar must always arrive at a point where what it is striving for in the activity of knowing falls apart. This book has had to point to this falling apart in the case of many modern thinkers, for, basically, all scientific endeavor of modern times works with those scientific, cognitive means that serve to detach the self-conscious “I” from true reality. And the strength and greatness of modern science, especially of natural science, are founded upon the unrestrained application of these cognitive means.

    You write Steiner off, but how much of his works on or about philosophy have you actually studied? For instance, this or this.

  36. Kantian Naturalist: Quite right. Sets are abstract entities, whether or not they have any members. The empty set is just as abstract as a set with members. A nominalist who denies the existence of abstract entities could not allow the introduction of sets into her ontology.

    I’m quite puzzled by this argument.

    Surely a nominalist (someone who thinks that numbers are really just names) would also think that mathematical sets are just names.

    I usually say that I’m a fictionalist, and people seem to take fictionalism to be a kind of nominalism. Of course, I take mathematical sets to be useful fictions.

  37. keiths: To justify your rejection of physicalism, there is a need for you to demonstrate the existence of the non-physical.

    Ridiculous.

    I neither accept nor reject physicalism. There isn’t anything that requires justification.

  38. BruceS: The core similarity is that reality is such that there are consistent patterns which creatures can extract a subset from and rely on in order to to live and reproduce successfully.

    Except that I deny that there are patterns, except as a consequence of human conventions.

  39. Neil Rickert: According to keiths, everything is physical.So it must be that there is no possibility of distinguishing between physical and non-physical.And therefore the word “physical” is useless.

    Is dark energy physical?

  40. Fair Witness: We discover the regularities.We invent languages to describe them.See the difference?

    Water molecules and circles inhabit two different ontological categories.
    Water was water before humans came along.
    Humans had to invent geometry before the idea of a perfect circle could exist as a concept within any representation.

    So if there is a multitude of isolated alien cultures scattered throughout the galaxies do you think that any of them would also have invented geometry with its perfect circle? If so what would be the difference between their perfect circle and ours?

    You don’t believe in a separate realm?Then you agree that the ideal tetrahedron exists only as a concept in human culture?

    The concept of the ideal tetrahedron is arrived at subjectively but does not depend on our subjective nature. It is discovered not invented. Reality is unity, everything is connected. It is only our ignorance that separates.

  41. keiths:

    To justify your rejection of physicalism, there is a need for you to demonstrate the existence of the non-physical. Unfortunately, your tendency is to curl up into the fetal position when challenged.

    Neil:

    Ridiculous.

    I neither accept nor reject physicalism. There isn’t anything that requires justification.

    Christ on a pogo stick, Neil. I just quoted you denying that facts and linguistic conventions are physical.

    That’s a rejection of physicalism.

    Take responsibility for what you write.

  42. keiths:
    keiths:

    walto:

    Your histrionic overreaction is noted.

    It isn’t malevolent, it isn’t “pop-psych bullshit”, and it doesn’t imply that “everyone must be an asshole on the internet”.

    Think about it.Suppose Rumraket is defending some aspect of evolutionary theory, and Bill Cole is challenging it.We all know how the discussion will go.At the end of it, evolutionary theory will still be standing, and Bill’s ideas will be a smoldering pile of wreckage.

    Evolutionary theory will have prevailed, and Bill’s challenge will have been defeated.That also happens to mean that Rumraket won the debate and Bill lost.

    It’s true, there’s nothing wrong with it, and it doesn’t mean that Rumraket or anyone else “must be an asshole on the Internet.”

    Think, walto.

    My point is that we don’t have to tiptoe around the fact that Bill lost the debate, just as we don’t have to tiptoe around the fact that Bruce lost the debate over externalism.

    There may be bruised egos in both cases, but that’s okay.It’s not a reason to suppress discussion or to walk on eggshells, afraid of speaking the truth lest we offend someone.

    Aren’t you just dancing around the fact that you’ve lost THIS debate? That your position is a smoldering pile of wreckage? That it is my own take that has prevailed? Why tiptoe around it? It’s obvious to everyone but you.

    (I hope it’s clear here that I’m just trying to make the simple point above that assumptions of appropriate arbiterhood are exactly as unlikely to be agreed upon as the tenets being disputed. keiths has never actually grokked that simple fact.)

  43. Neil Rickert: I’m quite puzzled by this argument.

    Surely a nominalist (someone who thinks that numbers are really just names) would also think that mathematical sets are just names.

    I usually say that I’m a fictionalist, and people seem to take fictionalism to be a kind of nominalism.Of course, I take mathematical sets to be useful fictions.

    FWIW, I don’t think you guys are actually disagreeing here.

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