Some can. Mitchell Porter, for example, saw which philosophical threads I was pulling on, even if he disagreed with them. (I disagree with them! I’m not describing my beliefs or something, I’m making an attempt at steel manning religionesque beliefs into something that I can actually engage with instead of immediately throwing them out the window because one of my cached pieces of wisdom is that whenever someone talks about “souls” they’re obviously confused and need a lecture on Bayes’ theorem.)
Some can. Mitchell Porter, for example, saw which philosophical threads I was pulling on, even if he disagreed with them.
(Note that he is the qualia crank (or was, the last time he mentioned the topic). Somehow on the literary genre level it feels right that he would engage in such a discussion.)
whenever someone talks about “souls” they’re obviously confused
I believe this, and I might as well explain why. Every concept that legitimately falls under the blanket term “souls” is wrong—and every other term that soul proponents attempt to include (such as consciousness, say) is strictly better described by words that do not carry a bunch of wrong baggage.
To my mind, attempting to talk about the introspective nature of consciousness (which is what I got as the gist of your post) by using the word soul and religious terminology is like trying to discuss the current state of American politics with someone who insists on calling the President “Fuhrer”.
I’m not describing my beliefs or something, I’m making an attempt at steel manning religionesque beliefs into something that I can actually engage with
What? I suspected you might be doing something like that, so I reread the intro and context three times! You need to make this clearer.
I don’t like it because I think it obscures the difference between two distinct intellectual duties.
The first is interpreting others in the best possible sense. The second is having the ability to show wrong the best argument that the interlocutor’s argument is reminiscent of.
I recently saw someone unable to see the difference between the two. He was a very smart person insistently arguing with Massimo Pigliucci in an argument over theist claims, and was thereby on the wrong side of truth in a disagreement with him when he should have known better. Embarrassing!
Edit: see the comments below and consider that miscommunication can arise among LWers, or at least that verbosity is required to stave it off, as against the simple alternative of labeling these separate things separately and carving reality at its joints.
Some can. Mitchell Porter, for example, saw which philosophical threads I was pulling on, even if he disagreed with them. (I disagree with them! I’m not describing my beliefs or something, I’m making an attempt at steel manning religionesque beliefs into something that I can actually engage with instead of immediately throwing them out the window because one of my cached pieces of wisdom is that whenever someone talks about “souls” they’re obviously confused and need a lecture on Bayes’ theorem.)
(Note that he is the qualia crank (or was, the last time he mentioned the topic). Somehow on the literary genre level it feels right that he would engage in such a discussion.)
I believe this, and I might as well explain why. Every concept that legitimately falls under the blanket term “souls” is wrong—and every other term that soul proponents attempt to include (such as consciousness, say) is strictly better described by words that do not carry a bunch of wrong baggage.
To my mind, attempting to talk about the introspective nature of consciousness (which is what I got as the gist of your post) by using the word soul and religious terminology is like trying to discuss the current state of American politics with someone who insists on calling the President “Fuhrer”.
What? I suspected you might be doing something like that, so I reread the intro and context three times! You need to make this clearer.
“Steel manning” isn’t a term I’ve heard before, and Googling it yields nothing. I really like it; did you make it up just now?
I don’t like it because I think it obscures the difference between two distinct intellectual duties.
The first is interpreting others in the best possible sense. The second is having the ability to show wrong the best argument that the interlocutor’s argument is reminiscent of.
I recently saw someone unable to see the difference between the two. He was a very smart person insistently arguing with Massimo Pigliucci in an argument over theist claims, and was thereby on the wrong side of truth in a disagreement with him when he should have known better. Embarrassing!
Edit: see the comments below and consider that miscommunication can arise among LWers, or at least that verbosity is required to stave it off, as against the simple alternative of labeling these separate things separately and carving reality at its joints.