I think philosophical naturalism is very often a winning ticket, so long as you don’t misapply it to matters not covered by naturalism of any stripe. But rejecting soul as a meaningful concept on account of empirical findings would be a category error. No finding of naturalism will ever trump your own tastes. loves or values. All would be category errors.
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That’s okay. Try not to over do it. 
Well neither the speaker nor I would disagree with that entirely, but I at least would disagree with characterizing the traditional idea of soul as being based on pre-science thinking. I suspect the idea of soul is not arrived at by any thought process, that it was something directly apprehended probably before language. To toss “soul” out as a poor concept would be an action beyond the power of our rational minds. What soul is is more basic and essential to what we are than is our rational mind. But our rational mind does have the power to fool itself into mis-categorizing soul as a mere label for a primitive idea. “Soul” deserves your continued affirmation not because you can reshape it in a manner more rationally pleasing but because it out ranks and predates you. All life is from the body; our minds have only the power to shut us off from that life. The soul and the body are inseparable.
I don’t partake of any drugs and only a small calories portion of wine with dinner. But there are activities one can engage in which draw out your intuition and open you up to creative inspiration. I’ve always felt more connected and alive when engaged in aesthetic activities and/or in nature. We all have these capacities but it is true that alcohol and drugs are used as a gateway by some.
Exactly.
Interesting. I think our rational minds would live in our animal souls, to build on the hassidic idea. The divine soul would always be other to where we experience ourselves to be. It isn’t and can’t be ours.
At the end of his other video on the divided brain which I posted here once, he concludes by observing that the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant, but today we have forgotten the gift and elevated the servant. I think we are in a relationship of mutual dependence with the sacred.
Yes, and no kool aid for me either, thanks. It is very rare to find Christians capable of accepting a defacto-theist rating on the Dawkins scale where as I find many willing to acknowledge their weak epistemic position as atheists for knowing with certainty if any gods exist. But there are more here on this site capable of keeping their balance from such a position, maintaining strong belief along with realistic humility in the claims they make to others.
Yes and many are not aware of the many “humble” atheists who are simply not interested in religion because they choose to devote their time to other pursuits – particularly in universities. And when confronted by the question they will simply say acknowledge the vast diversity of thought in the world about things like that.
As for me… On the one hand I rate myself as a 1.5 on the Dawkins scale because I equate living accordingly with knowledge itself, rejecting traditional definitions of knowledge as “justified true belief” as little more than hot air since the fact is that nobody believes things they think are not true or not justified. So I know God exists as well I know anything else, but I consider doubt to be a necessity for intellectual integrity and mental health. On the other hand, with respect to objective knowledge (i.e. with a reasonable expectation that others should agree) of the existence of God I am classic agnostic since I don’t think that is possible.
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I tend to agree with you. For Christianity to flourish we have to have a culture that is receptive and in part it is for this reason I object to accommodationalism because why would a culture be receptive when the adherrents don’t believe there is actual historic truth to what we say.
Today I got a note from an old friend who had read my quantum soul blog post. It cheered me up. He said:
That quantum article was really awesome…lifted my spirit after reading it I had to say a prayer myself after reading your article thanking God that He left such breadcrumbs for someone to find…and thanking Him for using you to recognize and communicate such things to the rest of us
For a guy like me at the end of my life, which was spent trying to solve some serious apologetic problems we Christians have, and having my ideas rejected at every step, such tid bits are dear to me as I look back on what I did with my life.
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This reminds me of Descartes, famous but always misquoted statement. What he said was “I doubt, therefor I think, therefore I am(exist).”
The same reasoning would applie to anything that the consciousness does. It seems to me that it is almost a mental illness for me to suggest that I don’t exist. Thus, I could say,
“I love, therefore, I emot, therefore I exist”
Or 'I want spaghetti, therefore I think, therefore I exist."
These statements are only disprovable by each individual denying that there is an ‘I’ inside him who thinks.
Saying that the ‘I’ is an illusion, as some suggest doesn’t escape the problem.
I sense an illusion of an ego inside me. Therefore I am aware, therefore I exist.
After all, what is it that experiences the illusion?
Indeed. So much of what we take notice of seems to be pre-consciously selected by a portion of our mind other than our conscious minds. It seems clear to me that there is more going on with the organism of my body than what I can take credit for as my deliberate doing. It is as though we have a silent partner holding the world together for us to make the kind of experience we have possible. I guess you know, this silent partner is what I think gives rise to and supports God belief. But the notion of God I find much less compelling than that of soul. It doesn’t disturb or anger me that people think differently about it than I do. Frankly I find your lot generally more interested in such things than the crowd I more often hang with online.
What in essence are all these I statements doing? It seems to me that the key feature is ownership.
There is not only a wanting of spagetti and consequent thinking, but this wanting and thinking is mine.
There is not only an experience of illusion but this experience is mine.
I think this claim of ownership is the very essence of conciousness.
So I guess my question would be, what is it that is claiming ownership of these things? That is certainly something I see the spirit doing even if I do not buy into this idea of mental souls operating bodies like puppets.
I seem to remember, however, that making a distinction between self and others is something we acquire at some early stage of childhood development. And perhaps that is one of the things that makes our access to earlier events in our memory so difficult.
Yeah! we agree on a basic point. A rare event indeed. Yes, it is that something owns these qualia.
So I guess my question would be, what is it that is claiming ownership of these things? That is certainly something I see the spirit doing even if I do not buy into this idea of mental souls operating bodies like puppets.
I am less sure what is meant by ‘spirit’ My back ground includes a year of grad work in philosophy and I am a dualist in this regard. My inclination would be to say the soul and spirit are the same thing by a different name. If you don’t believe in the ‘soul’ then you too are a dualist and I would suggest that whatever name we call it that is the thing which holds ownership of the qualia.
What does the spirit do that the soul doesn’t and vice versa?
I seem to remember, however, that making a distinction between self and others is something we acquire at some early stage of childhood development.
My understanding is that memory re-organizes around 3-4 years old and many early memories are lost–not all, there are some people who remember way back. I remember my great grandmother who died with I was 2. I have one image of her on my grandfather’s stair case–there is no picture of her on that staircase, so it isn’t something I saw later.
Nephesh just means a living being. A being with a desire and thoughts. We are souls.
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Physics continually shows hints of God that are quickly stashed away and denied by the major players in physics. Consider the multiverse. I know you have your mind around that concept. The multiverse, like our universe, has a master wavefunction which controls the entire entity. So far as we can tell, a conscious observer is required to collapse that wavefunction to one specific instance out of all possible worlds which could exist. Such an observer for the multiverse MUST be outside of the multiverse. Smolin said this, speaking of the multiverse:
“According to this interpretation, only an observer who lived outside the universe, who had somehow the same relation to the whole universe that we may have towards some atoms of gas in a container, could observe this quantum state of the universe. According to the many-worlds interpretation, it is only such an observer who could know all of reality.
“It thus seems to me that the many-worlds interpretation can be understood as an attempt to preserve, in quantum theory of the whole universe, the notion of single-observer objectivity. I know no other way to understand the desire to posit that the quantum state of the universe corresponds to reality, in spite of the fact that there can be no observer inside the universe (as we ordinarily mean it) who can observe it. This formulation preserves the idea that there is a single objective view of reality by the extreme means of making that the view of an observer who does not live in the world.”
"It seems to me that the only possible name for such an observer is God, and the theory is to be criticized as being unlikely on these grounds.” Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos Oxford University press, 1997 p. 263-264
Note that Smolin immediately discounts the existence of a God but believes that God’s existence is a fatal flaw of the multiverse
Then a bit over a year ago, two physicists tried to apply quantum to the minds of observers actually using quantum. I posted on this in the Wigner’s friend thread. They ended up saying that the 6 observers they used saw contradictory things in their observations of the same event. Take Schroedinger’s cat. Some of the six occasionally say the cat dead while at the same time others saw the cat as alive, yet they were all in the same world. Imagine that argument. Physicist A. I see a live cat. Physicist B. 'You are blind, the cat is clearly dead", “Not so,” says physicist C the cat is purring in the lab. “Are you nuts?” says physicist D. “The cat is on his side with his tongue hanging out” and on and on.
A team actually confirmed that this happens and they suggested a ‘privileged observer’ who has access to all of the multiverse, works to get rid of such conflicts like this, which arise from the application of the mathematics of quantum. Proietti et al said:
"…one way to accommodate our result is by proclaiming that “facts of the world” can only be established by a privileged observer-e.g., one that would have access to the “global wavefunction” in the many worlds interpretation" Massimiliano Proietti et al,"Experimental rejection of observer-independence in the quantum world https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.05080.pdf, p. 4
What would be the name for a privileged being who lives above the multiverse? I would suggest we would call such a being, God!
Of course, one must remember that the multiverse became popular at the same time the Big Bang was discovered. Indeed, the Big bang was a pejorative name invented by Fred Hoyle if my memory serves. And Brubridge called it the First Church of the Big Bang.
" So beguiling is this argument that astronomer Geoffrey Burbridge has lamented that his fellow scientists are rushing off to join the "First Church of Christ of the Big Bang." Stephen Strauss, “An Innocent’s Guide to the Big Bang Theory: Fingerprint in Space Left by the Universe as a Baby Still Has Doubters Hurling Stones,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1992, p. 1.
cited by Theodore Schick Jr. The ‘Big Bang’ Argument for the Existence of God (1998*), Philo, 1:1, 1998, p. 95-96
“Hoyle, in particular, found the big bang abhorrent because he was vehemently antireligious and he thought the cosmological picture was disturbingly close to the biblical account.” Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, Endless Universe, (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 179
Many physicists didn’t like an origin to the universe because it implied a God. But by trying to suppress God in the Big Bang by use of the multiverse, God pops out elsewhere.
Besides with quantum needing a conscious observer to collapse the wavelet, one must ask, who was the observer before any conscious animal arose? Only one answer can arise.
I am reminded of Bishop Berkeley’s limerick exchange. Berkeley’s philosopohy was identical to that of Quantum, although he lived 200 years earlier. From my oldest son’s EE book:
"I just want to mention Berkeley who maintained that matter would cease to exist if unobserved, but luckily there is God who perceives everything, so matter may exist after all. This view was attacked by Ronald Knox in the following limerick:
"There was a young man who said, 'God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.’
Berkeley replied in kind:
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God."
L. Solymar and D. Walsh, Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Matter, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 59
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The spirit does not operate the body or indeed affect body, brain, or mind in any consistent way. That role of taking ownership of experiences and action is in the correct direction from physical to spiritual, so there is no conflict with the data there.
My objection was to the idea of a non-physical soul animating the body and giving it life or intelligence, and to the Gnostic/Plato identification of the soul with the mind operating the body like a puppet. I don’t think that can be reconciled with the results of scientific discovery. That may be where we part ways since you have reacted negatively every time I have stated this before.
By the way this doesn’t mean that nothing like the mind survives death because all of the experiences of the mind are included in the things that the spirit takes ownership of. It also resolves difficulties regarding mental malfunctions/disease because these may be things which the spirit do not take ownership of.
I’m not sure what to say about statements like: “I xxx, therefore I yyy, therefore I exist.” I can’t say as I’ve ever been moved to exclaim anything like that. Perhaps as you say they are a way of asserting ownership, but I just can’t imagine a situation where there’d be a reason to do so. Not sure who the audience would be. But I feel I must be missing your point.
Was there any claim that everyone thinks such things???
It is a typical beginning of rationalism, and for me that was a stage I went through around the age of 13. It is certainly not where I am now, for I don’t think you get around the basic fact the every use of logic takes you from premises to conclusions, and thus where it leads depends entirely on the premises you start with or accept along the way. And it is typically constructed in a backwards way to find what premises allow you to arrive at the conclusions you are already convinced are correct.
In any case, I was not the one making those statements but only using them to point out a particular aspect which I think is connected to consciousness.
I’m afraid I’m not qualified to appreciate your points about QM. I’m probably missing what you’re dishing. Any chance there is a dumbed down, laymen version?
I don’t look at much of this internal stuff mechanistically. Rather than say what any of it is, I only feel comfortable describing the way things seem. Personally I’m not ready to assert anything flat out.
Fair enough. It wasn’t you. But I was responding to this:
So I guess my question would be, what is it that is claiming ownership of these things? That is certainly something I see the spirit doing even if I do not buy into this idea of mental souls operating bodies like puppets
I just didn’t know what to say about that question.
.
A psychologist might suggest that the ownership is a conceptual link between the concept of self and the perceived experience in question. This can be contrasted with experiences one is told about which are not ones own and thus one would not make that link but a heard-about-that link instead. Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if what is actually happening in the mind is even more complicated than this.
A scientist who studies the brain might suggest a neural connection. And one does not have choose between the various options because all three could be happening at the same time.
There is no dish MarkD. We’re ALL at the same helpless level as Robert Browning here: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for… All that is being dished is, to be is to be perceived. You get better from Christmas crackers and fortune cookies. We are not as smart as we need to be. Our (logos) smartest that is. Because their smarts, as McGilchrist quoted Wittegenstein, have lost: Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language. Because of the paradoxes of the relativity of simultaneity, not only must all the many worlds exist, every instant of all of them from eternity must. Uh huh. Minds immeasurably superior to ours are useless. You might as well ask the cat. God is fair: What He gives to the smart on the one hand, He takes away with the other. The smartest of the smart, like Aquinas, Kant, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein all realise it eventually. As Browning and other ‘lesser’ (pathos smart) minds already did.
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I am not a tri-ist,body soul spirt, I think we are body and whatever it is that makes us, us, be it called spirit or soul, is the observer in quantum and I agree with you that the memories must be owned b the thing that makes us, us, because without those memories, we are not us!
You should read Descartes Discourse on method. In it he doubts the existence of everything external. He was an answer to skepticism before Hume. Descartes found that while he could doubt everything else, there was one thing he could not doubt–that something existed that was doing the doubting.
That explains why you have never felt the urge to yell out I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. lol
It is a fascinating book and one of the most influential philosophy books on how to do science. I agree with what Wiki says: " Discourse on the Method is one of the most influential works in the history of modern philosophy, and important to the development of natural sciences."
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I may not be the guy to give the explanation that you can get, but, you would like it as you say you feel comfortable describing the way things seem. That is what Quantum actually does. It can shake one’s faith in the external world, as much as Berkeley’s empiricist philosophy can.
Let’s try this. Any object can be described by a wavefunction. Think of the object as the puppet, which is swinging and moving violently, held by a bunch of strings. You can’t predict where that puppet is because he is constantly moving. The wavefunction (an equation) is the string. The wave function (strings) give the probability that the puppet will be at a particular point. As long as the wavefunction is churning, the puppet can be anywhere at all. When the observer comes in, he cuts the strings and voila, the puppet falls to one particular place.
The wave function is absolutely deterministic and has no mechanism for the puppet to fall to a particular place. The strings (wave function) would never let the puppet fall to a particular place, the equation would grind on forever. Indeed, this is a real concern in quantum because the observer cutting the strings of the equation, steps out of the system to do it. It is really a violation of causality when the wave function collapses (puppet falls to one location.) There is nothing like this event in any other science.
Note, Yes I accommodated here, but I tried to tell a simple but true account of quantum. Accommodation doesn’t require me telling Mark about goblins and hobbits. lol
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