/lit/ - Literature

>>17372549
Guénon 'ruled out' modern science, so you tell me.

>Science has measured the immeasurable!
I genuinely don't understand.

I don’t want to say that there are souls, but why are physicists so arrogant? Many of them are genuinely retarded when it comes to philosophy.

>>17372587
They think it's a zero sum game. The same reason authors put down other ones publicly.

>>17372562
Literal who

>>17372549
>science(TM) has searched the material for the immaterial and found nothing
Gee, thanks.
Also, Brian Cox' physiognomy leads me to believe he is untrustworthy.

>>17372549
they probably would've disagreed.

>>17372549
His argument is literally just "there's no soul because there's no evidence." They would rightfully call him retarded.

Here's a pastebin so nobody has to give these fags views

https://pastebin.com/SuN6Z1Ve

>>17372597
name the scientist that said this then

>>17372598
Brian Cox is who 12 yr olds watch to be inspired with a childlike gaze for all that is new and original and later corrupted by his fedora opinions.

if you aren't a naturalist in 2020 you are a really dumb person, do not reply

>>17372635
Just hide the thread and scamper off. No need to be worried about (you)s genius.

>>17372549
Why do scientists (as general a term as that is) insist on commenting on metaphysical matters? It gets no one anywhere, including themselves.

>we ruled out the nature of the observer without having the observer absent!!!!

>>17372549
Not even religious myself. But no wonder that physics hit a wall with all of this nu-Celebrity pseudo science bullshit.

>>17372549
>brian cox
F A G G O T

Very good, Cox, very good. HOWEVER, we also haven't found particles of consciousness. Does that mean we're all unconscious? Let me ask you about dark energy, mr Cox. Can you explain it? Have you found particles for it? I guess that it doesn't exist then doesn't it? Why are you shaking and sweating mr Cox, I thought you were backed by SCIENCE?

>>17372565
It hasn’t ruled out the immeasurable transcendent invariate laws of logic though. I guess you just didn’t get the memo. It’s actually totally simple and makes sense you see.

People don't "have" souls, they are souls. You are not a body with a soul, you are a soul with a temporary body.

>>17372565
It's just the latest "Science is a religion" bullshit that's being pushed so retards will stay willfully ignorant forever.
It has nothing to do with literature and has been making its way all around this dumb website lately using the flimsiest of excuses to shoehorn it into every board.

>>17372549
Lol I am more upset with people that take this man seriously than I am with him. Can’t help he’s a robotic retard

>>17372549
>humans don't have souls
in the case of jews he's correct

>>17372562

Why can't you guys just admit there's no soul? The whole concept is ridiculous.

>>17372871
why is it ridiculous?

>>17372871
Why can't you guys just admit there's no consciousness? The whole concept is ridiculous.

>>17372549
>>17372565
>In June 2019, Cox explained that he cannot be sure there is no God and that science cannot answer every question.
This fucking guy

Lol. The "soul" is just a bunch of stuff you happen to like the idea of. It's entirely fictitious. Literally a story

>>17372871
It appears to me that when people say soul they mean "essence," which each person undeniably has. Beyond that, you really need to define what you mean by soul.

>>17372549
Guenon is genuinely more intelligent than him.

>>17372549
Brian Cox is a P-zombie confirmed

>>17372911
There's absolutely no proof for it whatsoever.
>>17372918
Consciousness is a thing, it's a result of the brain functioning. Once that goes there's nothing left.
>>17372960
Sure, but it doesn't survive death.

>>17372549
>Brian Edward Cox CBE FRS (born 3 March 1968) is an English physicist and former musician who serves as professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.
>Before his academic career, Cox was a keyboard player for the British bands D:Ream and Dare.

>>17372549
he's right off course. human minds are just information processing implemented in neurons. no need for anything extra magical mysterious woo woo.

When I meet people like this I always dare them so sell their soul to Satan for earthly gains, if they wont; I put in an offer for 10$.

I've yet to meet an "atheist" so secure in his belief to go through with either bargain.

>>17372993
The brain is correlated with consciousness, but as of yet there is no one-to-one mapping of brain states and consciousness. So scientifically, we know jack shit about consciousness. We just assume that consciousness exists because people experience it from their first person perspectives, and they infer that other "people" experience it too.
Notice how psychology doesn't rely on brain states to help improve or predict behavior? It relies on abstractions. And the replication crisis BTFO most psychology papers too. So psychology is quite flawed as of now too. And that goes for cognitive science too
So we say that brains cause consciousness, but we don't know the exact mechanism behind how it causes it. Consciousness is so close because we experience the world through it, and yet so far because it's so ineffable. We can't even access consciousnesses other than our own yet. The closest thing we have to studying consciousness are phenomenologists, who just study consciousness from a first-person-perspective, and cognitive scientists, who do so from an "objective" perspective. But we have never seen the exact process behind how consciousness works, or how a brain state corresponds to a particular conscious experience, unlike the majority of physical phenomena in the universe.

>>17373047
Simpsons did it.

>>17373026
Informartion is sentient? Only when it is 'processed'? Why do you think this makes sense?

>>17373047
The problem with this is it presupposes that there's a binary choice between atheism, and abrahamic religion (which is the source of satan). That's also the problem with Pascal's wager.
But there are many forms of religion and spirituality, so it's presumptuous to just present two choices.
Who's to say what religion/spirituality is true? What if buddhism is true? What if the pagans are correct? What if the "true" religion is one of the heretic sects Christians killed off?

>>17372549
the epitome of søy

>>17373047
Ross Scott managed to buy 20 souls in exchange for candy.

any time i see 'science' try to explain things like God, consciousness and soul I just imagine a goldfish trying to learn calculus. there are things we are not capable or meant to comprehend.

>>17373064
Sure, we're not there yet scientifically, but how does that mean that there's an immortal soul?

>>17373082
no sentience is simply information processing. information processing refers to a class of phenomena. certain types of information processing amounts to what we call sentience.
>Why do you think this makes sense?
cause I've thought about it.

>>17373139
Sorry, I wasn't advocating for the existence of a soul. I was just pointing out that scientific understanding of consciousness is bunk. I wanted to make a comparison because as of now, the idea of consciousness is just as absurd as the idea of a soul, but I feel like most people take consciousness for granted. It has the same mystique as the idea of souls.
Yes, there are no souls, but you can't prove consciousness either.

I've read that article and I'm shocked by how bad that argument is. It's bad even for nu-atheist standards, at least other hacks like Harris or Dawkins will try to give some sort of epistemological reasoning to argue that a lack of evidence should lead us to presuppose the non-existence of God or the soul. Cox seems to be too stupid to even make that simple step.

>>17373111
you miss the point

>>17373064
The replication crisis BTFO'd most of STEM in general. IIRC physics, chemistry and biology are just as bad.
>>17373026
You literally need extra magical mysterious woo (as in, metaphysics) to explain why "information processing" leads to phenomenical consciousness, which is also why serious and rigorous materialists, like Dennett, the Churchlands and Frankish, downright deny that there is any such thing as phenomenical, first-personal experience.
>>17373139
Btw, since Chalmers is obviously right, we can aleeady state that science will never be able to adequately explain consciousness, not even in principle.

>>17373146
> information processing.
why would you think this when all the examples of information processors we have are non-sentient?

>>17373146
This cannot be validated empirically. It's a just so story.

>>17372601
That seems like an exceptionally boneheaded argument for a scientist to make.

>>17372918
But I do admit there's no such thing as consciousness.

>>17373245
>The replication crisis BTFO'd most of STEM in general. IIRC physics, chemistry and biology are just as bad.
I work in chip design and I've never seen or heard of a replication paper ever. It's all "new and novel". Tbh, replication papers would be a great way to introduce phd students into academia but no, everything has to be NEW.

questions for soulfags: where was your soul before you were born? why does sperm fertilizing an egg (a physical process) "create" a soul? where does your soul go when you sleep? why are the functions of the soul altered by physical change to the brain?

>>17373312
Souls are neither created nor destroyed, so conception does not create a soul. Souls don't go anywhere when you sleep. Why do you assume the soul's functions are altered by changes to the brain?

>>17373245
>You literally need extra magical mysterious woo (as in, metaphysics) to explain why "information processing" leads to phenomenical consciousness
no. at a certain level of complexity information processing systems can monitor aspects of their own processing. at a certain arbitrary level of processing sophistication we choose to call it consciousness.
>The replication crisis BTFO'd most of STEM in general
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
>The replication crisis most severely affects the social sciences and medicine.[2][3]
the replication crisis doesn't give you carte blanche to pull stuff out of your ass. if science was all bullshit like you want it to be, satelites should be falling down.
>>17373263
why do you think it's magical soul woo woo stuff when all the examples of magical soul woo woo stuff we have are bullshit.
>>17373281
yes you can always insist there are other things, invisible dragons and such.
>>17373312
dude because we FEEEL it bro. dude purple man cain't explain dat shit mane. purple. dude. qualia dude.

>>17373312
>blocks your path

>>17373365
>dude because we FEEEL it bro. dude purple man cain't explain dat shit mane. purple. dude. qualia dude.
this but unironically

>>17373365
>when all the examples of magical soul woo woo stuff we have are bullshit.
False, Ian Stevenson at the UVA Med School has documented much evidence for transmigration/reincarnation occurring

can hylics scientifically explain the field of parapsychology? Remember that the majority of experiments have proven to be statistically significant

>>17373365
>no. at a certain level of complexity information processing systems can monitor aspects of their own processing. at a certain arbitrary level of processing sophistication we choose to call it consciousness.
What we call consciousness is first and foremost phenomenical, first-personal experience (information processing would at best be a functional correlate of consciousness). I assume you're not familiar with the hard problem of consciousness, I advise you to read on it, since it basically refutes your answer. Anyway, self-monitoring does not require phenomenical experience, in fact claiming otherwise goes against one of the main tenets of physicalism, namely the one of physical closure (since you would have at that point a series of phenomena that could not possible be explained through phhysical mechanisms observable from the objective third point of view). You might still claim that phenomenical experience is epiphenomenal, but this would still not explain a) why it's there in the first place and b) how could you be aware of it, since it's supposed to have no causal power.

Either way, a physicalist reduction of consciousness is a priori impossible.

>>17373406
>functional correlate of consciousness
there's nothing wrong with deciding to use consciousness to refer to the first person feel of a certain information processing process. of course you get into trouble when you take the fundamental information processing that goes on, say "we'll call the outside view functional and the inside view consciousness. now why can't we detect consciousness in the outside view?? woo stuff is going on!".
>I assume you're not familiar with the hard problem of consciousness
I am, and I reject that it is hard. the hard problem is solved when all the easy problems are solved, no need for anything extra.
>self-monitoring does not require phenomenical experience
it doesn't require it, in the sense that you could have self-monitoring that we obviously wouldn't call consciousness like task manager or whatever. but consciousness really is just self-monitoring at a higher level of sophistication, or at least a specific form of self-monitoring. what are you thinking about right now? that's self-monitoring which is phenomenical experience.
>physicalist reduction of consciousness is a priori impossible.
when you state something is a priori impossible or certain or whatever you may be right but you're not saying anything about reality, as it'd be a priori such or such in any reality. you learn nothing new about reality.

>>17372549
I didn't even need science to know this. Soulfags are beyond retarded.

>>17372614
It's in the tweet, you troglodyte.

>>17372975
That was a good read, thank you.

>>17373462
>of course you get into trouble when you take the fundamental information processing that goes on, say "we'll call the outside view functional and the inside view consciousness. now why can't we detect consciousness in the outside view?? woo stuff is going on!".
If we cannot (not even in principle) detect it, then it is obviously the case that woo stuff (as in, non-physicalist processes) is going on. The point of physicalism is that this correlation must apply necessarily for physicalism itself to be true.
>I am, and I reject that it is hard. the hard problem is solved when all the easy problems are solved, no need for anything extra.
Then you don't understand it. Sorry for being too polemical, but you should go back to it. The only respectable physicalist answer to the hard problem is that it is false because there is no consciousness (see Dennett&co). All the other physicalist answers are downright incoherent, due to the reasons I've mentioned in my previous post(concerning causal closure).
>it doesn't require it, in the sense that you could have self-monitoring that we obviously wouldn't call consciousness like task manager or whatever
No, my point was that it doesn't require it because all physicalist information processing can take place without a phenomenical experience, as in: it's not the case that without phenomenical experience, complex information processing is impossible (unless you want to break causal closure, by claiming that third-personal physical mrchanisms are insufficient to explain complex information processing, therefore introducing in the physical world new types of non-0hysical processes)
So, while it is most likely true that information processing is a central part of our conscious life, it is simply a mistake to reduce consciousness to information processing itself, for the latter does not necessarily entail the former, and can exists independently of it.
>when you state something is a priori impossible or certain or whatever you may be right but you're not saying anything about reality, as it'd be a priori such or such in any reality. you learn nothing new about reality.
We certainly learnt something new about reality, namely that reality is not adequately described, not even in principle, by physicalism. Do you really contest the usefulness of knowing that an extremely popular theory of the world is evidently false?

>>17372549
Why do I care what he thinks about the soul?

>>17373539
Nah, Lanier is a bona fide retard who does not know what "philosophical zombie" means. If being a zombie led to different behaviours (e.g. Dennet publicly claiming that there are no qualia), then he would not be a zombie, and the whole concept of it would be refuted. The concept of p-zombie is entirely based on the assumption that p-zombies and their conscious counterparts will express exactly the same behaviour. Fuck Lanier

>>17373543
>If we cannot (not even in principle) detect it, then it is obviously the case
no, you're committing the classical philosophers error of thinking that just because you can ask a question it has an answer, just because you have a word, there's something definite, real thing out there being pointed to.
>there is no consciousness (see Dennett&co)
I've read dennett. he doesn't deny consciousness. that's something confused people like you claim in arguing against him. ('"consciousness explained"?? more like "consciousness explained away" amirite')
>all physicalist information processing can take place without a phenomenical experience
there's no reason to think that. some forms obviously can.
>it's not the case that without phenomenical experience, complex information processing is impossible
I agree. you can probably have very complex info processing (IP) without phenomenological experience (PE). still PE is a form of IP.
>mistake to reduce consciousness to information processing itself, for the latter does not necessarily entail the former, and can exists independently of it.
yes. there's no problem claiming "there is consciousness" => "there is information processing", but not "there is information processing" => "there is consciousness".
>namely that reality is not adequately described, not even in principle, by physicalism
no for when you claim that under a certain def of consciousness, it is a priori impossible that it is consistent with physicalism, therefore physicalism is false, how do you know that that def of consciousness corresponds to anything. you learn nothing about reality by inventing definitions and you learn nothing about reality from a priori deductions.

>>17373675
>no, you're [...] pointed to.
I'm not convinced at all by this objection. Physicalism is a specific theory which makes determinate claims, and if those claims are contradictory, physicalism itself is refuted as a theory. The claim i'm referring to here is that everything in the world is explainable from a purely third-personal point of view, which is evidently contradicted by the irreducibility of consciousness. I don't even have to start talking about ontology to make this point, the whole argument can be derived from the analysis of the tenets of physicalist world-theories.
>I've read dennett. [...] more like "consciousness explained away" amirite')
Then you've misunderstood Dennett. Read "Illusionism as the Default Theory of Consciousness" if you want to see him make the arguments I've attributed to him in explicit terms. He does deny the first-personal aspect of consciousness, claims that it is an illusion, and also claims (against Searle) that an illusion of appearance does not constitute phenomenal consciousness. At the moment, according to Dennett, there is in you no qualitative, phenomenical experience of sounds, colours, shapes, etc.
>there's no reason to think that. some forms obviously can.
We have, according to physicalism, definitive reaosns to think that, insofar as this information processing must be explainable in purely third-personal terms. We could assume that phenomenical consciousness is required to perform these computations only a) in the case in which these computations themselves cannot be performed under physical, third-personal mechanisms. If, instead, b) these computations can be performed through physical, third-personal mechanisms, then we have no reason to assume that consciousness must be correlated for them to take place (this would be, to use Netwon's expression, an "occult cause"). Notice that a) refutes physicalism even as a theory of the physical world, since at that point you have to introduce non-physical causal process to explain phenomena that are actually existing. Instead, b) is still compatibile with a physicalist view of the natural world, since it is compstible with epiphenomenalism.
In both cases, though, physicalism fails as a theory capable of incorporating all available facts about the world.
>I agree. you [...] is a form of IP.
Once you accept the first claim, you have no way to prove this inference in a physicalist framework (unless you're willing to reformulate the concept of IP in non-physicalist terms, e.g. PE is IP, but IP is not to be confused by the IP that can be described in physicalist terms)
>no for when [...] priori deductions
Unlike Dennet&co, I take first-personal experience to be a datum, and this is all I need to make my argument: that there is a first-personal experience, or to use Nagel's terms, a "what it's like" to be me. This definition is not vague, it refers to a fact, and as such deductions can be made, since a world-theory might fail to account for this fact

>>17373884
read a book

>>17374023
Which one?

>>17372758
but your body will be resurrected innit

>>17373047
I don’t get it. Wouldn’t they just take the money of you? You can possibly buy someone’s soul.

non soulfags, your body cells are being constantly replaced. Let's say there's a scientifical method available to replace your neurons one by one. Removing one, letting it adapt to the whole system, then remove some other and insert new neurons. It's insane to think that the hypothetical person whose neurons got replaced one by one is experiencing a new self. So the soul must exist.

>>17372993
>it's a result of the brain functioning
That's not how this works, you're arguing backwards from a given conclusion.
You could choose any part of the body to be the "seat of consciousness" and it would be just as likely to be true, because we can't watch it arise.

You can't test consciousness without consciousness being the means through which you perceive the test, the result, and the entire world.

>>17373139
>we're not there yet scientifically
And we never will be, it's an epistemological problem. It's not up to the empiricists to prove or disprove anything.

Listen to Kant:
"We cannot prove a priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all properties and actions of the soul cannot be recognized from materiality."

>>17374143
I'm not a soulless hack, but this is not a good definitive objection. You can have psychophysical models like the ones of Aristotle and Spinoza, wbere the continuity of consciousness is grounded on the permanence of certain functional roles (as in, I remain this person because my body keeps realizing certain functions without interruption - and this can be clearly done even in your scenario, as long as no substitution disrupt the continuity of these functions). In the case of Aristotle these function would be the vegetative, locomotory, sensitive and rational functions; in the case of Spinoza it would be the conatus. Neither of these theories are outdated, they're both still present in the academic debate (analytic philosophers will call the first theory "functionalist theory of mind", and the second "biosemantical theory of mind")

>>17372549
Great so I can do things you deem evil like being "racis" with no repercussions?

>>17372549
To be fair, his original quote doesn't seem as confrontational.

>>17372562
A heart attack, I see.

>>17374070
mysticism or spirituality. since you are debating that essentially

>>17374075
Traditionalist don't know how to square this one.

>>17372549
I fucking love science
I fucking love it
SCIENCE

>>17374305
Don't be so mean. I didn't argue specifically for souls, God, or things like this. My argument is that even if consciousness is correlated by psychophysical laws, those psychophysical laws still cannot be derived in any concievable way from a physicalist framework. Basically, if there's a psychophysical law that says, for example, "bodies that are able to express the function X have a first-personal experience", then that law is properly a metaphysical law, and it cannot be obtained through any valid inference from a physicalist framework (due to the arguments concerning causal closure I've mentioned earlier).
So, the "woo" doesn't have to be a soul, or a spirit, or God. I've now mentioned psychophysical laws because 1) it is a plausible option and 2) they're often invoked by non-eliminative physicalists. Against them, I would claim that, maybe due to a lack of reflection, they have not realized that this is a metaphysical principle, rather than a physicalist one.

>>17372758
The body and soul are separated only during the death before Judgement Day; after that, the body is resurrected and rejoined with the soul. You are neither body, nor soul, but body, soul, and spirit; three in one.

I want to slap everyone upside the head when they say "Science" like it's some sort of concrete thing.

>>17374023
It’s funny how both in the Buddhism threads and in the philosophy of mind threads that when you get owned your response is the same

>>17373134
That must have been how he survived the mold.

>>17374331
Guenon does in his book ‘Man and His Becoming’, resurrection of the body and other elements of the popular conception of heaven just pertain to the Brahmaloka, but not what is beyond it.

>>17372601
Sounds based ngl

>>17373344
>Why do you assume the soul's functions are altered by changes to the brain?
What makes you think there'd be no connection between brain and soul?

>>17374379
>>17374522
thought you were physicalists. sorry i didnt even read what you wrote

>>17372549
lol

>>17372549
>ruling out the soul
>cant even explain or incorporate notions of value or goal-directedness
Obviously this is bait but still getting Coxy

One word to btfo the soulfags:
>proof

>>17374697
>prove a negative

lol

>>17374697
I don't understand this. Soul and consciousness both describe the same thing. Do you deny consciousness exists? Are you a p zombie?

>A philosophical zombie or p-zombie is a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

>>17374724
Not that anon.
It can describe the same thing, but why should we assume that this is the case? Take two crntral traits of the notion of soul: a soul can survive fhe death of the body; a soul can have super-natural causal powers over the body. None of these two traits seem to be essential to consciousness (it is concievable that a conscious being can stop being conscious after the death of its body, and that his actions and thoughts are entirely caused by physical processes).
I'm not saying this is not the case, just that if it is it should be argued for, since its truth is not evident at all.

>>17374724
Also denying that consciousness exist is not a specific trait of p-zombies. Since p-zombies express the same behaviour as their conscious counterparts, if they deny consciousness, their conscious part would deny it too.

>>17372662
Metaphysical claims are the source of many erroneous explanations about the reality we are capable of perceive, science interprets reality in the most accurate way we are able of understand, thus "scientists" are just spokesmen, their duty is to communicate what has been found and their implications.

>>17372562
Is that true?
ordering all of his works right now if that's so

>>17375084
Yes, absolutely

I hope you enjoy them brother

>>17372549
You don't need Science to tell you that its clearly a made up bulshit

>>17372549
OH GOD IM HAVING THE BRIAN COX FEELING!

>>17372565
For souls to have an influence on the body they need to interact with it, since the body's made of atoms then souls must interact with atoms, therefore if souls do exist they should be detectable by their interaction with atomic matter, science has already ruled out the existence of a new type of interaction affecting baryonic matter at the energy/distance ranges relevant to human life

>>17374143
Neuroscience points to consciousness being derived not from individual neurons but by the structure of the connections between them, in your scenario if a neuron is removed and replaced with another one forming different connections then conciusness would change, we do see this happening in some instances ranging from brain damage to tumors and infection, all of these can someone personality in massive ways, if the soul is a thing then why can changes in the brain change the very essence of a person?

>>17373026
yes and opium induces drowsiness because it has dormitive virtues

>>17375867
There are many notions of soul (e.g. Leibniz' one) which are compatible with natural determinism.

>>17372565
they are cultists, they litteraly worship Moloch. There is nothing to understand.

>>17375867
alternatively "science" is a retard.

>>17375867
Unless all atoms are constantly interacting with some form of soul.

>>17375867
Science has not yet detected the prime mover, and unless it can prove an infinite regress of causality, it's literally not possible for science to disprove or prove the existence of a soul.

>>17372601
It's a bit more nuanced than that, reading from >>17372610.

If I steel-manned the argument into its propositions, it'd look like

>Assertion 1:
People typically argue that souls hold soul control over one's choices, such as the choice to move or not move your hand.

>Assertion 2:
Moving one's hand is moving matter, a physical action.

>Implication 1:
By Assertion 1 and Assertion 2, souls must be interacting with matter, as the soul choice at some point is translating into a physical action

>Implication 2:
Resulting from implication 1, there is some mechanism by which that translation occurs

>Assertion 3:
There are ONLY four forces we're aware of, gravity, the weak and strong nuclear force, and electromagnetism, and none of them much appears to resemble what religions mean by a soul - measurable, physical, modelable, destructable systems with predictable behavior, versus souls, which are claimed to be immaterial, immortal, and inviolable.

>Implication 3:
By assertion 3, and Implication 2, we're therefore facing a serious issue - We think souls exist and interact with matter, but we've exhaustively ruled out the four ways we're aware of for the soul to interact with matter. So what soul-to-physical mechanism, specifically is enabling the soul to make actions?

The author would posit only four possibilities exist:

>Soul-physical interactions ARE wholly emergent from these 4 physical properties
In which case, why call it a soul when it's a wholly physical thing? The author would argue that without huge amounts of mental gymnastics, this is just dualism giving up and admitting defeat.

>Souls emerge from physics we don't or currently can't understand in or outside the above systems, eg. maybe randomness in quantum mechanics or dark matter
Which sounds a lot like a "God of the gaps" fallacy, a tendency by the religious to try to see "acts of God" when explaining phenomena for which science has yet to give a satisfactory account. This would include creating ancient gods of lightning for when you don't yet understand much electromagnetism, and also creating souls when you don't understand much neuroscience

>There's some other property than these four physical forces, a fifth one, that we're unaware of, that gets around this problem
Which probably has the same problem as God of the Gaps above and the author does not believe is the case, as no such force has yet been found despite extremely precise measurement for one.

And last, but most likely given everything we know right now and what we can prove,
>Souls don't exist

>>17376161
>souls must be interacting with matter, as the soul choice at some point is translating into a physical action
The implicit assumption is that souls are somehow physically distinct from matter (dualism), whereas Scholastic, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy assert soul is the root of matter; it does not "interact" with matter. So essentially, while you portrayed his argument correctly, he has misrepresented the common assertion of what soul is.

>>17376161
>The author would argue that without huge amounts of mental gymnastics, this is just dualism giving up and admitting defeat.
Dualism came after the realism and idealism of the classical and Scholastic philosophers. Dualism is actually the defeatist attitude, when people no longer believe matter is grounded in anything substantial, and that substance exists distinct from phenomenal reality.

>>17372871
I have a soul. I'm a soul. I can't prove it to you. Not my fault you are an npc.

>>17372565
read plato

>>17372549
He doesn't have a soul. Doesn't mean that no one does.

Anglos are worse than Jews, more news at 11

>>17373157
>It’s bunk
Depends on what you mean.

We have done the best we can for now. We know, descriptively, where most of the magic is happening from non-damaging brainscans, developmental tracking of infants and designing tedts for children and adults of various ages, monkey studies, extremely limited voluntary experimentation, and have a large number of elucidatory examples that tell us a lot (guy who had the pipe through the skull change his personality, split-brain patients, twin studies, etc.).

It’s not that we can’t go further than this - but this is the same state medieval medicine was in before medical schools and researchers were given legal access to cadavers for dissection and study. When your society prevents you from going further due to squeamishness, you don’t, because you can’t.

This implies that the truth is most of the limits we’re currently facing in cognitive science are ethical in nature, based on the obvious observation that accidentally damaging the brain effectively changes or kills the person.

Society is not willing or able to raise people explicitly for this research purpose, agrees it should not force people into this role because it gets holocaust-y and MKULTRA-y real quick (where the research ends up being done for the explicit purpose of abuse and for the sadistic glee of the researchers against a group that can’t fight back, rather than to actually learn much of notes) and volunteers are uninterested in gambling their selfhood by letting people cut into their brains for prices researchers can afford to pay (low hundreds to thousands).

I think unless something major and inexpected changes that lets us avoid this (eg fetal vs non-fetal stem cell availability), these norms will be pressured away in 200 years as international competition by state actors less attached to western values begin to make significant strides performing research that the West currently finds repugnant-but-groundbreaking.

In the interim I don’t think it’s particularly fair to say we know nothing when we block all avenues of legal knowledge generation in the space.

It’s far more accurate to say
>We know basically all we can right now and
>Progress will continue extremely slowly unless extraordinarily better non-damaging brain and brain-information-access methods are created, or before that happens, our norms are eroded and existing experiment ethics no longer are a concern.

>>17372549
guess i'm off the hook for hell, then.

>>17376161
dont take modern science as facts
perturbation theory is literally "its close enough"

>>17376161
1. The determinacy of the four fundamental forces is inductive, it does not preclude action at levels unnoticeable by us. Although this (taken by itself) makes a soul improbable, it does not make it impossible. We have not 'exhaustively ruled out' the ways that the soul could interact with matter.

2. Developments in QM suggest that consciousness is causally related to matter in a way apparently not described by the four fundamental forces. I'm not talking about 'randomness', I'm talking about actual causality.

3. A physicalist explanation of consciousness and qualia is so weak that some alternative must be grasped. The reason a 'god of the gaps' argument fails is because it's an argument from ignorance. Substance dualism is not an argument from ignorance, but an inference to best explanation. Since we cannot have consciousness being identical to physical interactions, neither can it emerge from physical interactions, then it must be grounded in something else. This something else we call 'the soul'. Hence idealism or dualism.

>>17376591
>2. Developments in QM suggest that consciousness is causally related to matter in a way apparently not described by the four fundamental forces. I'm not talking about 'randomness', I'm talking about actual causality.
Sauce?
Also what's so bad about using the randomness aspect as a possible explanation of an unquantifiable will?

>>17373312
>where was your soul before you were born?
It didn't exist.
>why does sperm fertilizing an egg (a physical process) "create" a soul?
Because God creates the corresponding soul at the moment of conception.
>where does your soul go when you sleep?
For one thing, you soul has no spacial location at any time, any inference that it does is an illusion of sense experience. While the soul is embodied it is reliant upon it's body to act within the physical world. When you sleep certain parts of the soul's functions are prohibited by the body sleeping.
>why are the functions of the soul altered by physical change to the brain?
Because as embodied souls there is a two way causal relationship between the material and immaterial substances which make up a person.

>>17372587
Didn't get the memo? Mathematicians are autistic broder schizos, physicists are arrogant wannabe chads.

It proved Hegel's version of the soul to be correct though

>>17372587
>>17376627
It's actually all just the stubborn Anglo mentality. Blame the Vikings for stealing all of the attractive women and turning the British gene pool into a stagnant mess of cynical beta males.

>>17374930
"All hail Lord Jesus!" is not a metaphysical claim. Explaining causality etc - is.

>>17376601
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRSBaq3vAeY

I don't have a problem with using randomness, I'm just talking about the quantified causal relationship.

>>17376650
>I don't have a problem with using randomness
Some people seem to think it's a "god of the gaps" argument, but it has nothing to do with undiscovered laws. It's baked into the fundamental theoretical laws of QM; it's not "unexplained", it's literally "unexplainable even in theory." If that doesn't make people who think science is the fullest extent of epistemology think that there is more than just scientific knowledge, then I don't know what will. Science literally cannot, according to its own theory, explain or describe something, and it never will. That has to mean something right? And I'm not even someone who believes in God in a religious sense - I'm more inclined towards Hegelian thought (although not fully).

If someone can tell me how my reasoning here is flawed, please do, because I'd rather not make a fool of myself in the future.

>>17376161
The argument here is good but the error is to only talk about a single type of causal relation. I believe in non physical/empirical causation as among other kinds of causes.
I believe the arguments to be in error because it doesn't respond to the supposition of non empirical causes, and which should be at least refuted outright as a nonviable or self-contradictory "axiom".
To defend my position, however, I would say that if there were only material causes leading to only material effects, then regardless of whether or not numbers are mind-dependant, how the effect of the cause of addition, applied to 2 and 1 causes 3.

One could also pose the question of regression of causes, commonly known as one of Aquinas' ways (2nd?).
Even if there were only material causes and material effects, everything is an effect of some material cause, and things exist, then we can regress supposedly unto infinity. However, this physical explanation is in contradiction with there being matter here and now. Until you have a first cause, you cannot explain how, as an effect things currently can exist. Therefore there must be at least one cause without cause. By the same argument of regress, there must be only one such cause, as then these causes would exist materially, and would be an effect of existence.
But existence is not a material/empirical cause, and cannot have a cause outside of itself. Therefore, there are immaterial causes, if only one, namely existence.
In the case of the soul, while it is not asserted, it clearly is not it's own cause. However that is not the same as asserting it is not a material cause (which eg moves a hand), but does highlight the error in assuming all causes must be physical/material/empirical.

>>17376679
Yes, I think you are right, and I was probably too hasty in throwing out QM indeterminacy. Although, I wouldn't ground non-scientific knowledge's epistemological warrant in QM.

>>17376640
How is the claim that Jesus is the divine Logos in whom all things have their being not a metaphysical claim?

>>17374930
Then why were the most important scientists of the 20th century not physicalists? Why don't all scientists agree on metaphysical principles if their metaphysical interpretations seem to be derived from such a fool-proof method? Do you have to agree with Schrödinger on “consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else” because he's an authority in science? What has been found in science since then that disproves it?

>>17372937
>>17372937
The irony is that this image is true, unless the topic to be convinced about is is diversity agenda and racial crime statistics. Then the meme context is reversed.

The Left show some White woman kissing a POC
The Right show the cold hard statistics and facts pertaining to the rate of violence by racial demographics.

>>17376689
I agree with you but I'd like to hear what you have to say to the objection that because every interaction can be explained with material causes, therefore non-material causes don't exist.

>>17372758
This

>>17372549
This nigga looks like ps2 graphics.

>>17376700
>Although, I wouldn't ground non-scientific knowledge's epistemological warrant in QM.
Yes, that's fair and not what I was claiming. My only claim is that reductionist physicalism or materialism is absurd, when it cannot even be theoretically reduced to anything determinable. It essentially leaves the door open for a supra-material epistemology, yet is not a justification for any particular philosophy - the philosophy itself still has to be justified itself. Perhaps we're just waiting for the next 800IQ Kant to come along and finish his work.

Aquinas would likely pointed out Aristotle's observation that matter doesn't move itself. The wood doesn't turn itself into a bench, and the bronze doesn't turn itself into a statue. These things require a craftsman but the craftsman doesn't explain his own movements. Ultimately there must be something immaterial and whatever this is we call the soul.

>>17376761
>Perhaps we're just waiting for the next 800IQ Kant to come along and finish his work.
that's me :) I'm halfway through reading the first critique btw so be patient

>>17376817
Hurry the fuck up then m8 I might be dead soon

edgy

>>17373884
Information prosessing is what is real. That is what experience is. Just because you think they are different because that's how your mind makes sense of the world doesn't mean any thing for reality. Our minds create things which aren't real for processing speed reasons. Like an idea of sound which is different from either air vibrations or auditory senations.

>>17373884
When you explain the information processing that gives rise to the experiences you explain the experiences.

>>17376635
Facts don't care about your feelings.

>>17376928
t. typical Anglo who is so stubborn as to believe he has the "facts."
Maybe you'll be transmigrated into a Nordic Chad in your next life.

>>17376723
Sure. Is existence material?

>>17376940
see how well
>dude objective reality is for dorks, I'm all about emotion
works for you in accomplishing things in the real world. I won't be eager to ride on your plane.

>>17376974
Your Anglo is showing bro.

>>17377023
and your pseud is showing. some of us are trying to be right, others are clowns and jokers trying to be interesting and deep.

>>17377048
Pseud? I never attempted to be an intellectual to begin with, I'm just calling you out for what you are, a cynical little beta Anglo