owleye

Franc...

I was hoping to engage you in a dialog in the challenge you offered to us. However, after having made a response to that challenge, I can't really be certain you were interested in hearing it. I might assume from this one of two things: (1) you overlooked my response; 2) you really did respond but either I couldn't find it, or my reading of all your responses just doesn't appear to me to be one that was directed to what I wrote. If it is the former, I would invite you to look for my post on the first page of this topic. If it is the latter, I think I should consider the post that immediately follows mine on that page to be the best candidate for a response to it. And if so, let me save some time and try to reply to it, as if it were.

"It is not up to me to define what a soul is. I have not observed any souls and see no need to believe in a soul."

Since my post did supply a definition to which I was asking you if you had any objection, this doesn't seem like an appropriate response. After all, it could be you are looking in the wrong place, so to speak, since in order to observe that X is being observed, we need to know what counts as X, so that the observation that refers to it qualifies. That is, either you do know what would count as a soul such that you have never observed one, and that my definition of what that is is not yours (or if it is, it merely means that you have not really made any attempt to find one) or that you are willing to accept any (sensible) definition and are reserving judgement on whether there are souls or not. In any case, the two sentences together don't add up as a consistent response to my post.

"I would say a soul is a non-material mind : however that is not a definition since it does not describe what it is, but rather what it is not."

I would say it is not a definition either, and I would give the additional reason that a soul is not a mind. In any case, if this is how you understand what the soul is, then I gather that if the mind exists, it must be material. Should I understand that software is material as well? If so, how should I understand the distinction between hardware and software?

"It belongs to the dualist (and the supernaturalist who thinks the mind is supernatural) to define positively what a soul is, if his claims are to make sense at all."

Since I did attempt a definition, I wonder if you would care to take a(nother) look at it.

owleye

Jonsey3333

Does that make a clone a zombie?

Only in the sense that there is TWO hemispheres. If you are implying that this is proof for material and supernatural as two forms of dualism, you will have to elaborate. I'm not sure you can since this is all explained within materialism.

So mutations are actually the soul making changes. But I thought the soul operated through the brain. Now it's operating in the chomosomes of a fertilized egg?

This is determinism, and I am in full agreeance there.

I'm having trouble finding how you see this all relating to supernatural-material dualism. To me, it's as if I see a bloody knife at a crime scene, and you say it proves the victim was shot.

So, is the soul a supernatural processor of human experience, and a supernatural mutagen for DNA?

-Mike

Francois Tremblay

Owleye - I did see your previous response. However, since it was not a dualist or supernaturalist viewpoint, I thought you were merely piping in with "an idea", not answering the challenge.


I have nothing against such a view. In fact, it is perhaps a valuable one in terms of semantics. But it's not really the subject of my challenge.

John Page

Amos:

I have a couple of fundamental disagreements:

You said "This knowledge is independent of the physical matter and is able to change through sense perception." I repeat my assertion that abstractions, whether knowledge, thoughts or whatever are not independent of physical matter. Anyway, if knowledge is truly independent of sense perception as you state, then you are contradicting yourself by saying is is able to change through sense perception.

You said "That spells dual nature. If the brain is in charge of its own what the heck am I doing here" Your identity, soul, consciousness whatever is an abstract phenomenon of your mind/body. I think your brain is in charge and I don't know what the heck you're doing here. One of my best friends said "The purpose of life is not to be not."

Seems like we're going to agree to differ here.

Cheers.

Ojuice5001

I've got one. There have been studies suggesting that a spur-of-the-moment decision happens not before the corresponding action, but simultaneously. For example, say the decision is to go left rather than right at a fork in the road. The brain event constituting the decision happens at the same time as your feet turn to the left, not before.

Now if the brain event happens at the same time as your feet move, it cannot be the cause of your feet moving. It is merely moving in synchrony with something else to ensure that you stay on your leftward course. What could this "something else" be? It must be something that can make an intelligent decision--otherwise your feet might just as well make a pointless hop as do something intelligent. But it is not the brain, or any other material part of the body. Sounds like a soul to me. (Also sounds like a god will sometimes interfere with spur-of-the-moment decisions and other random events.)

So there you have it. I have always said (remember some previous posts) that spur-of-the-moment decisions, among other things, are the work of a supernatural reality. And this fact about human and warm-blooded animal neurology suggests I'm right. So humans and warm-blooded animals have souls. Maybe if we investigated other chance events (like dice and the weather), we would find an analagous situation, pointing to the existence of the gods and the souls of inanimate objects.

Francois Tremblay

Another question to be addressed specifically by dualists : how can the notion of "soul" ever be made to be consistent with the evolution of the brain ? This seems to me to be yet another piece of evidence against the notion of an immaterial consciousness.

Ojuice5001

I can see that that's a problem for those who claim that only humans have souls. But what if our ancestors have had souls forever, or since the Triassic? Then souls could have evolved just as gradually as the brain and body did. (BTW, do not allow my first post to go unanswered.)

Amos

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Amos

owleye

Frank...

Thanks for the response, despite that it intends to cut off further dialog. My initial reaction to it is that I would not be so quick to dismiss the position I offered as not associated with a dual ontology. It may not be the kind of dualism that posits forms independent of matter, as one interpretation of Plato would have it, but I see nothing wrong with the idea of an information-based ontology coupled with and supervening upon an ontology that comprises a physical substrata.

What makes you think that the position cannot be understood in the light of a dual ontology?

owleye