mnkbdky

You said, "Indeed, it seems rather clear that you're talking about his J.Phil paper, "Manifest Kinds".

Oops. I took "J.Phil" to be a name and "his" to be a typo. My mistake. Though now J. Phil must mean Journal of Philosophy I guess, sorry not familiar with that.

Do you actually, think that cloning will make "you" immortal? That it will prolong "your" "I" statements? Besides you cannot say "I" survive in both. There is no "I" in this case. Clearly, the fact that you say both could exist causes serious problems. Your clone will claim to be the continuation of you, but you know that he is the clone and you are the actual person who continues the original PC.

ex-xian

I don't believe that it is controversial, Descartes is one of my favorite philosophers to read, I just believe that dualism is wrong.

I've offered an alternate way the identity can be maintained thru time, but you haven't responded to it. Furthermore, you engage in your own "hand waving" regaring the problems of dualism.

It is a false analogy to compare your answer to how the soul exerts causitive influence over the body to respones of the body to stimuli. One is speculative philosophy, the other is empirical science.

Also, you have stated that the soul is immaterial. Thus the in no place does the soul exist. Or to say another way, for all x, there is no x such that the soul exists there. Therefore, the soul exists nowhere.
Ax(~Sx)<=>~ExSx

mnkbdky

I am sorry I don't remember yours, could you please cut and paste it again.

How is it emperical science? Yes, we can see that the pin prick causes pain, but how is the question "Why does it do this and not something else?", part of science. There is nothing that I no of that can emperically answer that question, nor is there any philosophical answer either.

I'll deal with that latter, but for nowI suggest you read my response again.

Clutch

Immortal? No. Heat death of the universe and all. But as you describe the process, yes, in the shorter term being mnk-cloned is a way of being pretty much as diachronically unified as normal experience is.Did the argument happen to fast for me, there?. It looked like a mere assertion. Parfit anticipates this knee-jerk reaction (though I'm quoting from memory here).In short, once diachronic identity is given up in favour of continuity, there is no constraint on how many persons one could in principle be diachronically continuous with. So what? The world seems to rule this out as a matter of fact; no further reason suggests itself for ruling it out conceptually as well.Hmm. Again, I think your job was to argue for this, rather than just asserting it. What's the problem, though? That we'll both claim to have been the same person? In the only tenable sense of diachronic unity, we'll both be right. But synchronically, neither of us will claim to be the other. We'll each say, "I'm me!", or, "I'm Clutch". Neither of us will say, "I'm really that other guy over there!", and our using the same name will be no different than the general phenomenon of distinct persons have the same name. No problem.

Michaelson

Okay, first off, I don't pretend to have the knowledge or capabilities to provide any real substance to this discussion.

However, I have one question for mnkdbky: In Parfit's Personal Identity paper, which is I think what has been refered to for the last few posts, he talks about a scenario which he suggests is not practically unreasonable: that is, that an operation could be performed whereby the left and right sides of the brain are transplanted into host bodies. The bodies had empty skulls before the operation, so the two sides of the brain exist independently from one another or any other brain.

Given your theory of a soul, which of these resulting people would retain that soul, or would neither, or would both? I'd have thought, from what you said before about the soul's position being where it can act out its will (or something along those lines) that you'd be forced into the conclusion that the soul remains in both resulting men. But wouldn't this be precisely the problem that you perceive with the Bundle Theory (which I have to admit, I have no knowledge of whatsoever) in that it supposes that two people with precisely the same mental states are the one and the same? Your theory, assuming I was right in presuming your answer to the question, suggests that two people can share a soul, and thus are the same person, does it not? And so wouldn't that mean your theory is open to precisely the same criticism you're levelling at the BT?

I have to say that I feel quite out-gunned on this thread, and so if I've made a silly error then please be nice about correcting me.

John Page

1. Immateriality. Back to this quote from the OP. Maybe there is a clue here to the underlying disagreements. The term "immaterial substance" is self-contradictory to me and belief in the existence of such a thing irrational.

2. Forms. Now let's ask the question whether a "soul" is defined as material not. Certainly the soul exists, we can define it and discuss it - the issue is what form it takes. The absence of evidence that souls are physical entities (that survive the body in a separate physical form) points to souls being abstract entities.

3. Materialism (in my understanding) admits abstract entities if those abstracts are representations of other things. e.g. a photograph of a person is real but it is just a picture, not a real person. Thus, a person's soul can be an abstract representation (in the mind of the perceiver) of the relevant person's essential properties.

4. Bundles of Joy. Bundle Theory basically advocates compound properties such that any object that is perceived is perceived through the one or more properties that our organs of perception match it to. e.g. We may see (initially) something that is red but will be unable to discern its other features - hence it will have the property of being red plus associated spatio-temporal coordinates (for those not blind etc.). Later, we may perceive more properties of the same object such as car, later still a Chevrolet etc.

5. Identity is Subjective. This may be the other disconnect. I suspect Clutch and mnkbdky differ in their understanding of where identity is formed. Identity is formed within the mind of the perceiver - Ted doesn't (always) go around with a label "Ted" on him, he has the properties of Tedness to which we attach the name identity of Ted. The "properties of Tedness", which are abstract entities in our minds, are collectively the soul of Ted - merely a mental picture that exists in our mind/brain.

Ergo, materialists are not necessarily irrational.

Cheers, John

mnkbdky

Here is the situation:

Here are the questions:

Well, I am not sure I would identify the soul with the brain, or even half the brain. What I would do is say that the soul and the brain work together. Now, if it so happens that the soul has control over two body, then, I see no problem. Because, the person is identical to the soul, not the body. This is to say, one soul can have control over two body, or more for that matter.

No, I am not open to the same objection. The body is not identical to the person. The person is identical to the soul. Therefore, one soul, two bodies=one person, two bodies. The bundle theory objection is an object to the claim that causation is able to retain identity.

It also seems to me to be no problem to say that two souls can exist is one or more bodies. Since the soul is the person and the body is not then each soul would be self identical not to the body. Of course, it might get frustrating if one soul is trying to move the left arm up and another soul is trying to move it down. Perhaps, though, we could say that one soul has control of the left side of the body and one soul has control of the right side of the body. Either way I see no problem. Interestly enough their are conjoined twins who have exactly this situation. They have two head and two sets of organs in one torso and one set of legs. The head on the left controls the left side of the body and the head on the riight controls the right side of their body. What is even more amazing is that they are very active children. In fact, they play baseball and volleyball. It was very cool to watch. You can read about their story at http://members.tripod.com/~midnightwill/twins.html

ex-xian

Why not; I've already posted it twice w/o a response. Third time's the charm, so they say...
Which one? Could you cut and paste it?

The mechanism of the pain is empircal. The mechanism whereby the soul "commands" the body is not.

I look forward to you response.