Thanks, that’s helpful. Two (related) possible replies for the afterlife believer:
(1) The Y-component is replaceable: brains play the Y role while we’re alive, but we get some kind of replacement device in the afterlife (which qualifies as “us”, rather than a “replica of us”, due to persisting soul identity).
(2) The brain is only needed for physical expressions of mentality (“talking”, etc.), and we revert to purely non-physical mental functioning in the afterlife.
These are silly views, of course, but I’m not yet convinced that the existence of brain damage makes them any more so than they were to begin with. (They seem pretty natural developments of the substance dualist view, rather than big bullets they have to bite.)
Did these fundamentally arbitrary assertions get more stupid? That’s an angel dancing on the head of a pin argument.
Notice that those weren’t the assertions before we learned about brains. The mind was a spirit/soul mysteriously trapped in a physical body. Then we started poking around in brains, and finding that the mind didn’t seem to work so well when bad things happened to the brain. So minds retreat to epiphenomenalism. Then they can retreat in time, and only actually do anything after you’re no longer alive, and no one can see anything actually happening.
So, yes, the original theory of the soul got less likely after we learned about brains, but your new theory of the soul, specifically crafted to avoid contradiction with the new evidence, might not have.
God, souls, immaterial minds, elan vital, essences, etc., are all a bunch of cockroaches, always scurrying back into the darkness, retreating from the expanding light of evidence. How many retreats do we need to see before we’re convinced they will never be able to stand their ground?
I anticipated the “functional swap at death” argument, as it was the logical next rampart to retreat behind, but thought it was pointless to say anything about it. I think we’ve learned by now that the chase never ends. I could just as well say that your mind will continue only if you had duck within a week of your death, and the Spirit of the Duck was within you to transfer the function of your mind to live out the rest of eternity in a lamp post. That’s a spiritual lamp post, of course. We can’t actually see the the lamp post, you silly goose. Or should I say, silly duck?
We really need a clear and concise statement for the rejection of the infinite class of arbitrary assertions consistent with all currently known data.
Notice that those weren’t the assertions before we learned about brains.
The first was an assertion before we knew more about brains. Richard Carrier in particular believes that this is pretty much what Paul and early Christians believed 1,2; that you need to be given a new body in the resurrection in order to have life after your normal body is destroyed. According to Carrier and others it wasn’t an uncommon belief that humans gained another better body spiritual body at the resurrection. Spiritual body in this case doesn’t mean non-physical, but instead is to be interpreted as the element which the heavenly bodies are made from.
If you are interested in reading more about it, I have other books to recommend on the subject. I do agree with you however that these possible replies are stupid.
There are different variations. The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in immaterial souls separate from the body. All life occurs as a material body. They get rid of hell too. Rather sensible, I think.
I couldn’t quite tell from your comments whether you’re referring to people with similar beliefs to the Witnesses, or people who say you have a soul, but it (waits around? exists but has no sensation?) until God gives it a shiny new body.
I assume there are all conceivable permutations of when/where/how/if souls exist, and I don’t have a stand on whether the first Christians believed in immaterial souls or not. Maybe some did, some didn’t? Truth be told, I was thinking about a thousand years back, by which time I believe an immaterial soul was taken as given through most of Christendom. Mind body dualism seems to go a long ways back with animism, ghosts, and spirits. What do you have to say about the general history of materialism versus dualism?
It is similar to the Witnesses as far as your description goes, though I am not very familiar with JW’s beliefs to comment further on the similarities.
My only point was that this is an old idea (that you need a body to function and that you get given a new body of some wondrous sort upon death), and not one contrived as an escape from the physicalists death blow. The debate is over and done for me, and I as you see the moves of the dualist as always failing to substantiate the additional substance.
(2) The brain is only needed for physical expressions of mentality (“talking”, etc.), and we revert to purely non-physical mental functioning in the afterlife.
These are silly views, of course, but I’m not yet convinced that the existence of brain damage makes them any more so than they were to begin with.
It seems the considerations in gjm’s comment actively tear (2) to shreds.
Are you agreeing, then, that X=mind and Y=brain chunks? That’s surprising to me. I would have thought that X was all of the relevant behaviors—walking, talking, breathing, playing games, writing on internet forums, … I didn’t think you would want an identity thesis between Mind and Some Class of Behaviors. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong, but I thought for soul-ish theories, the mind just was the soul. And then you get a causal picture (for interactionists, anyway) that looks like Soul --> Brain --> Intelligent Behaviors.
Thanks, that’s helpful. Two (related) possible replies for the afterlife believer:
(1) The Y-component is replaceable: brains play the Y role while we’re alive, but we get some kind of replacement device in the afterlife (which qualifies as “us”, rather than a “replica of us”, due to persisting soul identity).
(2) The brain is only needed for physical expressions of mentality (“talking”, etc.), and we revert to purely non-physical mental functioning in the afterlife.
These are silly views, of course, but I’m not yet convinced that the existence of brain damage makes them any more so than they were to begin with. (They seem pretty natural developments of the substance dualist view, rather than big bullets they have to bite.)
Did these fundamentally arbitrary assertions get more stupid? That’s an angel dancing on the head of a pin argument.
Notice that those weren’t the assertions before we learned about brains. The mind was a spirit/soul mysteriously trapped in a physical body. Then we started poking around in brains, and finding that the mind didn’t seem to work so well when bad things happened to the brain. So minds retreat to epiphenomenalism. Then they can retreat in time, and only actually do anything after you’re no longer alive, and no one can see anything actually happening.
So, yes, the original theory of the soul got less likely after we learned about brains, but your new theory of the soul, specifically crafted to avoid contradiction with the new evidence, might not have.
God, souls, immaterial minds, elan vital, essences, etc., are all a bunch of cockroaches, always scurrying back into the darkness, retreating from the expanding light of evidence. How many retreats do we need to see before we’re convinced they will never be able to stand their ground?
I anticipated the “functional swap at death” argument, as it was the logical next rampart to retreat behind, but thought it was pointless to say anything about it. I think we’ve learned by now that the chase never ends. I could just as well say that your mind will continue only if you had duck within a week of your death, and the Spirit of the Duck was within you to transfer the function of your mind to live out the rest of eternity in a lamp post. That’s a spiritual lamp post, of course. We can’t actually see the the lamp post, you silly goose. Or should I say, silly duck?
We really need a clear and concise statement for the rejection of the infinite class of arbitrary assertions consistent with all currently known data.
The first was an assertion before we knew more about brains. Richard Carrier in particular believes that this is pretty much what Paul and early Christians believed 1,2; that you need to be given a new body in the resurrection in order to have life after your normal body is destroyed. According to Carrier and others it wasn’t an uncommon belief that humans gained another better body spiritual body at the resurrection. Spiritual body in this case doesn’t mean non-physical, but instead is to be interpreted as the element which the heavenly bodies are made from.
If you are interested in reading more about it, I have other books to recommend on the subject. I do agree with you however that these possible replies are stupid.
There are different variations. The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in immaterial souls separate from the body. All life occurs as a material body. They get rid of hell too. Rather sensible, I think.
I couldn’t quite tell from your comments whether you’re referring to people with similar beliefs to the Witnesses, or people who say you have a soul, but it (waits around? exists but has no sensation?) until God gives it a shiny new body.
I assume there are all conceivable permutations of when/where/how/if souls exist, and I don’t have a stand on whether the first Christians believed in immaterial souls or not. Maybe some did, some didn’t? Truth be told, I was thinking about a thousand years back, by which time I believe an immaterial soul was taken as given through most of Christendom. Mind body dualism seems to go a long ways back with animism, ghosts, and spirits. What do you have to say about the general history of materialism versus dualism?
It is similar to the Witnesses as far as your description goes, though I am not very familiar with JW’s beliefs to comment further on the similarities.
My only point was that this is an old idea (that you need a body to function and that you get given a new body of some wondrous sort upon death), and not one contrived as an escape from the physicalists death blow. The debate is over and done for me, and I as you see the moves of the dualist as always failing to substantiate the additional substance.
It seems the considerations in gjm’s comment actively tear (2) to shreds.
Are you agreeing, then, that X=mind and Y=brain chunks? That’s surprising to me. I would have thought that X was all of the relevant behaviors—walking, talking, breathing, playing games, writing on internet forums, … I didn’t think you would want an identity thesis between Mind and Some Class of Behaviors. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong, but I thought for soul-ish theories, the mind just was the soul. And then you get a causal picture (for interactionists, anyway) that looks like Soul --> Brain --> Intelligent Behaviors.