mnkbdky

[QUOTE]Originally posted by John Page
Can you enlighten me by describing a dog's soul?[QUOTE]

I believe I said I could not. But whatever it is it must remain self identical in order to endure through time.

Q: Are you the same as me?

You, hopefully, belong to same category homo sapiens sapiensbut you are a different person.

I have no beef with this. But sense I am attached to dogs and do think dogs show characteristics of having a soul (e.g., being self aware) I think they have a simple substance that allows them to remain the same over time. It they do not, then, I am delusional and giving in to mere sentimentality.

If there is no soul, then, you are right. But clearly I am the same person who began this conversation and still have the property of being identical to myself.

p.s., man all those typos are embarrassing. Please do forgive me.

mnkbdky

First, let me answer the question pertaining to where the soul resides. The soul resides nowhere. It is a non-spatial entity. Keith Yandell in his article on Hasker’s emergent self in Philosophia Christi gives us Descartes distinguishing principle for two types of location, location of action and location of position.

He states that for any item X and place P, X has location of action at P if and only if X can make things happen at P; and for any item X and place P, X has location of position a P if and only if X is made up of stuff that is extended at P.

Yandell asks; what does it mean for something immaterial to have location other than location of action? This appears to be right. It seems impossible to say where something immaterial might be positionally located.

To answer the question, then, my soul is located wherever I am able to cause action.

How does it function? It merely does. Thinking or experiencing is exactly what this substance does. It does nothing else. As was said in a response to someone above (I do not remember to whom), perhaps you think this is a cop out, but it is not. There are many thing I don't expect the materialist to do, because they cannot be done. I don't expect them to be able to tell me why the firing of a C-fiber causes pain. It seems entirely possible that some other chemical could have been that which causes pain. That is, there is nothing necessary about a C-fiber causing pain. So why does it? It just does. But a how a physical event can cause a mental event and then a mental event cause a physical event. That is something different. That requires an explanation. For me, I have already given it. The mental is a different substance that the physical. The mental substance is that substance that experience and thinks. This is not to deny that the physical effects the mental it does. But I don't see why that is a problem.

Clutch

To debunk A1 and its descendants-plus-commentary (as if rational but looney is usefully distinct from irrational), I need do no such thing. A substance dualist about mental states could reject A1 on the grounds I've limned; the failure of A1 is independent of materialism.

Moreover, it is entirely unclear why materialists should inherit the "task" you decree them to possess. The development of a fabulously successful microbiology was never hostage to the articulation of a theory about the relation between physical events and life-events; nor was the bloated virtus dormativa of "vital spirits" any more plausible in the absence of such a theory. I'm content to live with the ongoing success of explaining learning, dreaming, emotion, pain, perception, sensation, memory, belief and desire in terms of neurophysiology.

Finally, your new mantra about epistemology versus ontology is a red herring. Nobody is confusing the two, when the question is on what grounds we ought to posit a self-substance. Pointing out, as Bill has done, that there is no evidence for such a thing is not merely relevant -- it's decisive.

Let me say, however, that were there any such thing as a personal essence, P-ness would be your essence.

yguy

The ability to divorce metaphysical concepts from common sense is as valuable as the ability to devise a mathematical paradigm based on the equation 1+1=3; or as useful as the schizophrenic's ability to separate his intellect from his emotions.

How would we know that? Because Nietzche said so?

Why doesn't it? If it isn't wrong, as you have clearly implied above, why not do it?

How can there be a necessity of continuation when there is no necessity for life?

John Page

A: Apparently not! Different person = different characteristics == different identity. If I were you then how would we be able to tell ourselves apart? Is there more than one of me? How could you tell? Identical as in "identical twins" or identical as in "exactly the same"?
All things that are self-aware have souls? Or, the defining characteristics of an object, including self-awareness as mandatory, mark the soul?
Cheers, mnkbdky

mnkbdky

Good call. Perhaps, I should just call them rational. However, I do think someone can be rational and believe something false, that is, unless it has been proven false beyond doubt. Now, I don't claim to have proven that what we call persons do retain identity beyond doubt. But merely that if I believe I do retain numerical identity, which I do, then, I must believe in the soul. Pyschological continuity fails on all the levels explained to ex-xian.

Actually, I am still up in the air as to whether numerical identity can be proven beyond doubt. I certainly do think it makes the best sense given all the evidence and arguments.

I guess you should call Donald Davidson, Jaegwon Kim, David Papineau, Scott Sturgeon, Peter Van Inwagen, Kevin Corcoran, Brian Leftow, Keith Yandell, Alvin Plantinga, well I guess you should call all the serious philosopher, who happen to think it is a problem that needs explaining.

Reading is key. Many philosophers, including this one (if I may be so bold) think there is plenty of evidence for the soul, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Plantinga, not to mentional the Indian or Asian philosophers names I cannot spell, let alone pronounce. If there was "no" evidence then why would its existence even be posited? There must be something that makes us think there is. The point should be that there is no conclusive evidence. That I may agree with.

Yes, I am a P-ness and quiet a big one too.

Clutch

From the "I'm no dummy, and I think there's no grounds to believe in a self-substance" files.Hume, Treatise, p.232 (Selby-Biggs ed.)Kant, CPR, A363.

Those are a couple of quotes cut-and-pasted from my Master's thesis. The Kant remark, from the A-version of the Paralogisms, is an especially lovely insight; the underlying idea seems to be that the expression "I", despite having many name-like properties, is also much like a description -- say, the description of a formal position. eg, "I have always liked Parfit and parfait" might have more in common with "The President has always had considerable power in wartime"; in both cases, the subject of the sentence can range over a succession of non-identical position-holders.

mnkbdky

Clutch, you said in the above post that those were quotes from your thesis. May I ask if you were more influenced by continental or analytic philosophy. I guess I already did.

Clutch

Mirabile dick, tu! This has been the entirety of my point, hitherto.Your remarks in those posts were either irrelevant to psychological continuity (eg, your tangent about mental causation) or fallacious (your dismissal of the distinction between constitution and identity on the remarkable grounds: "that's ridiculous") or basic misunderstandings (your "refutation" of the bundle theory on the grounds that it would not bear out diachronic identity -- when in fact that's an explicit consequence of the BT, and precisely why ex-xian raised it as a challenge to your Assumption 1).

Really, you should actually read the stuff before pronouncing it mistaken. Indeed, let me save you from reading Reasons and Persons; the Parfit paper "Personal Identity", in the seminal (for your P-ness) Glover volume Philosophy of Mind, is more explicit and direct. Try also Chapter 13 of Dennett's Consciousness Explained for a neo-bundle theory.Somebody went to a religious college! At least three of your last five names aren't even blips on the radar, to the non-indoctrinated. In any case, it is certainly correct that philosophers have been interested in characterizing the mind-body relation. Golly, I've even done some work on it myself. But your point, and hence mine, was about the tenability of materialism in the absence of such a characterization. If there was no god, why would so many people believe in it? Your evidence for the soul is ad populam, for pete's sake? Sheesh, don't tell me that lots of people have believed that there are souls. Give me the evidence!

I mean, really...

Bill Snedden

I really don't think that will do at all. I suppose what I really meant was, "how is the soul attached to the body?" and "how does it perceive through the body?" This if tangentially related to to my earlier question of how an immutable substance can change. Your delineation of necessary vs. accidental properties really doesn't explain this for if experiences/memories are merely accidental properties, then they are not part of our "soul" and if they are not part of our "soul", then my soul doesn't "remember" any part of my life or even being "me", for that matter.

How can something that has no memories of my life or the experience of "being me" possibly be me?

I don't see this as anything other than special pleading. You claim the materialist has a burden to solve the "hard problem" in order to demonstrate that souls are not needed to justify a belief in person persistence and yet your own solution is no more than "it just does?"

To touch on something you said to Clutch, nobody is denying that the "hard problem" needs a solution. The question is should a solution be required of anyone who holds materialistic explanations of person persistence preferable to supernatural ones? If the supernaturalist is allowed to offer "it just does" as a viable answer, then surely the naturalist should be given the same prerogative...

Finally, although I should have asked this earlier, must this "immutable, immaterial, necessary" entity be supernatural in origin? Why could not an abstract conceptualization serve the same purpose? Indeed, you seemed to offer the same as a defense when you noted that you would continue to name "grandma" as you always had when indeed she had ceased, for all practical purposes, to be your "grandma."

Regards,

Bill Snedden