Powerful Arguments for Dualism
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- In this week's livestream, I discuss a few arguments for Dualism with Dr. Josh Rasmussen and Dr. Dustin Crummett. Dualism is the view that humans are comprised of physical and non-physical components (body and soul).
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#Apologetics #Dualism #Soul
Books and papers referenced in the video:
Trenton Merricks' Objects and Persons (a book on mereology): amzn.to/2XSshxU
"How to Build a Thought" (with A. Bailey): www.researchgate.net/publication/339049423_How_to_build_a_thought
"Building Thoughts from Dust: a Cantorian Puzzle": link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-014-0575-2 (abstract)
"Against Non-Reductive Physicalism": www.researchgate.net/publication/325062054_Against_Nonreductive_Physicalism
How atheists convert you to dualism: these interviews with Searle and Chalmers are indicative: ruclips.net/video/LyPEgKuqrtM/видео.html
You also forgot this link: 1:51:30
Atheist dualist here. Really enjoyed the discussion!
So where does consciousness come from?
Cool! Substance or property dualist?
@@daman7387 Lean towards substance of a non-interactionist sort (either epiphenomenal or occasionalist). I suppose 'non-physicalist' might be a better term - I've got time for both dualisms, panpsychism and idealism.
I just wanna say thanks to CC and the guests and this whole lil community and even the materialists that have contributed here.
I found this and the discussion in the chat so stimulating and intriguing. I mean it may be a lil dry but it corresponds with what we all we all experience. I am out of my league but wow i learned a ton!
Talking in the chat with you was fun!
The Bible Project podcast has some awesome episodes on this topic that really help clarify the original words most commonly used for “soul” (nephesh, psuche) and point to the fact that we don’t have souls, but ARE souls. Fascinating stuff!
The New Testament makes clear that we continue upon death into an unembodied, intermediate state: hence, we are souls. Of course, our full existence is embodied, but we most definitely have an immaterial component.
By the way, you are a soul.
I don't see how saying "you are a soul" is a form of dualism, to me that is just idealism. To have a true form of dualism you'd have to say that "you are a composite of soul and body." If you take the stance that you simply are a soul and not a composite of soul and body then that is just idealism.
@Joshua McGillivray I understand the claims. The point is if I'm only a soul why is there some other thing called matter that we're positing. If a soul exhausts my identity then what does positing matter do?
@Joshua McGillivray Right, hylomorphism says you are a composite of body and soul, and that seems like a proper dualism to me rather than saying you are a soul, which seems monistic. I have nothing against monism though I am a monistic idealist.
I missed this one when it was live. The topic sure is interesting. From the perspective of physicalism ie you write down a physics model and ask if contains consciousness, I think we basically cannot answer. It’s not that it couldn’t. The problem you run into is the problem of other minds in general. There is no foolproof reason to know about other minds at all. Pretty much every other model than physicalism like dualism or idealism run into the same problem basically. They don’t help very much. Either of them could be true. My intuition is to default to physicalism until we get some way of knowing but I have friends who default to idealism and I don’t know of any rational argument to force one of us to change their minds.
Brains are huge extremely complex things and it’s not hard to find enough machinery to explain all that we are and all that we do in there. It doesn’t get us to certainty. I think consciousness probably is not some simple property and I admire the perspective of physicalism to try to explain all the complicated things going on in the mind in terms of more basic physical models.
Physicalist do not need to give up the fact that we have mental lives! If anyone holds to that that’s stupid. They are probably not what we intuitively think from the inside. “It exist but it’s not what you think”, is a better way of putting it.
Physicalists, by and large, do and must assert that mental substance is an illusion. I must confess, I am a dualist as a leap of faith, but I cannot understand how the denial of the self’s existence is sensible.
@@randomperson2078 I don’t think it would be sensible to say that the thinking (that’s how I use self mostly) does not exist. There can’t be thinking that doesn’t exist, that would be contradictory, and there is thinking. The physicalist would just say that the thinking is fundamentally physical.
The fundamental nature of what the experience is may not be exactly what we think it is, so in that sense it may be illusory, but - something that is the experience must exists from the “cogito ergo sum”.
The physicalist denies that the mental substance is anything other than some physical substance. But does not deny that there is an experience.
Denying that the self is something other than a physical substance is not the same as denying there is a self. Previously I used “self” to refer to the thinking. But the term “self” may refer to something more than that, like a particular human body/ personality traits/ memories etc, etc.. Maybe you can clarify how you use it.
The experience may exist and any of those extra bits as well, but - it may or may not be that, fundamentally, they are exactly what we think they are. So they are in that sense potentially illusory. That is true on physicalism but also on dualism or idealism. Either way the experience exists!
😁
I feel like I’m bloviating. Sorry! 😆
All of the philosophers in this comment section should do us all a favor and fill in the gap. Make some videos for or against dualism etc interacting with the lofty ideas in a way a laymen can understand.
Please can you have an argument/discussion about the sabbath? Thank you
Thanks for the great content. You and Jay Dyer should do a talk.
I don't think "you" are a soul. Souls are immaterial and hence immutable, but you are a dynamic person that changes over time. You are both the thing that remains over time through changes AND the thing that changes through time. I distinguish between the mind and the soul on this basis. The brain is the physical organ that changes, because it must, as all physical things do. The soul is immutable, the mind is the synthesis of both entities which create a "you" that persists through time giving you a unified self concept, but also adaptive normativity that changes as your information and situations change.
Your mind needs all of it to be what it is.
" The brain is the physical organ that changes, because it must, as all physical things do. The soul is immutable, the mind is the synthesis of both..."
That's an interesting perspective. I thought that the soul and the mind were supposed to be the same thing. Stories about near death experiences seem to suggest that the mind is still there even when brain isn't functioning, which would seem to suggest that the mind isn't a synthesis of both. What do you think about that?
@@chad969 I'd have to learn more about them. It sounds like the soul would change if these descriptions are accurate, which would tell me then that likely everything changes, and there are no immutable beings. I guess at that point I'd have to deny the existence of the soul entirely and just posit the existence of a mind alone instead, since the soul is the permanent form of your being that persists through time, kind of like a form. It's why Christians say souls stay in hell forever, not because God traps them there, but because the soul is an imprint of the kind of person which would go there and is incapable of change. But if souls really are like minds in all conceivable ways then that model is no good and we have to start over.
@Thymoteo Eevi The unchanging, eternal me is a soul. But the "me" you observe, and the me that's thinking in the present is undergoing change, and must therefore be more than a soul. I am a mind, and my soul is me without a body.
We are not Soul we have soul
I've heard it like this
A candle has wax. The wax is the body, the shape is the soul/form. Along the same lines as what you are saying?
By the way, you are, indeed, a soul.
Can anyone answer this if we have a soul why do we lose consciousness when you get hit on the head or not we our thoughts do not our thoughts come from our soul peoples heart stops peoples brain activity is zero and they observe everything how come when you get hit on the head your brain goes out and you don’t observe everything
The soul is the radio waves. The body is the radio. If the radio is broken, the sound is different. The radio waves coming in are not changed by the radio being broken
@@christianthinker2536 Thanks buddy
@@christianthinker2536 In your analogy does the sound represent conscious states?
Do we have thoughts that are not based on reality or the material world do we have thoughts that our eyes have never seen I will say yes I have had thoughts that are not based on this world or anyting I've seen
by the WAY, you are a soul.
You are a soul
So what happens when the brain is damaged in any way?
A tautology from Dustin. Incoherent metaphysics of mereology from Justin, and confusion from Cameron. A short critique here:
toolateforthegods.com/2020/04/16/critique-of-bertuzzis-powerful-arguments-for-dualism/
Linking your own blog, nice lol.
This is not a dig or anything like that just curious, what your education? I tried to find some credentials(on your blog) and couldn't find any.
Again that is not an argument against what you said
EDIT: What are your thoughts on "hylomorphic dualism"?
Damn, I hate being condemned to death...
Can you also talk about Dualism and Non dualism in Hinduism, Advaita has confused me
How do we know conciousness degrades with the brain? All we know is that peoples function of expression degrades. If consciousness is our subjective experience we don't have access to other people consciousness directly, we experience there expression of their consciousness.
If consciousness doesn't degrade with the brain that would seem to entail some really bizarre consequences. For example, we'd have to suppose that people with severe Down syndrome or Alzheimer's are likely just as mentally competent as anyone else, but they only _appear_ to be mentally deficient, in much the same way that a professional pianist would _appear_ to be a bad musician if he started playing on a broken piano. What kind of hell that must be to have all kinds of intelligent and coherent thoughts that can only be expressed through the broken speech and behavior of someone who appears to be mentally retarded but really isn't.
I mean do we have any knowledge that that isn't the case? How would we go about knowing that of consciousness isn't the brain? I know that people with Alzheimers experience good days where they are capable of being lucid, so perhaps that is the case and on certain days the piano is just in tune again.
@@darrylfraser8980 ^^
Substance Dualism doesn’t entail the existence of souls.
Jon it’s just straightforwardly true. As Josh said, there are even atheists who are substance dualists about the mind. Minds and souls aren’t the same thing by definition, so dualism May provide some evidence for souls but there’s no entitlement relation.
Jon no THAT is what is stupid. Do all property dualists believe in souls too? No. Souls may be immaterial, but it doesn’t follow from that that anything immaterial is a soul. Read some philosophy of mind
Jon Right, but even substance dualism doesn’t entail souls without further explanation unless your definition of souls is minimalistic. Once again, there are atheists who are substance dualists and they obviously don’t believe in souls. A soul is a different thing than just a mental substance.
I mean, its cool that you think that but to dismiss it as being a psychological aversion is tantamount to Freud claiming that religion is just a defense against death anxiety. These attempts at mind reading are just petty and irrelevant to the actual arguments. There's no way for you to know whether someone is being dishonest or not. With that being said, I don't see a logical contradiction if an atheist were to be a substance dualist and claim that the other substance is some sort of ectoplasm that gives rise to mental states, and that this ectoplasm gets destroyed with the physical body upon death. This would be an example of substance dualism without a "soul". But then again it depends on what you mean by soul. If your definition of soul is as broad as "the part of human beings that is non-material", so many different concepts could be conjured up to be placed in this vague category.
What do you mean by "soul" and how can we know if we are indeed souls. An additional question is one posed by Parfit. How can you know that you are a single soul rather than a string of multiple souls? It seems that personal experience couldn't deduce this because you can imagine a hypothetical in which everytime you go to sleep your soul is destroyed and replaced with an identical soul with identical memories. When you wake up nothing in your conscious experience tells you anything has changed. It seems you couldn't distinguish between being a single soul vs having multiple souls that are psychologically continuous with one another.
Basically, what about our experience can allow us to know that we are cartesian egos? Sorry for the jumbled response.
@Jon Nice. What did I say specifically that you think is incorrect?
Wittgenstein described his philosophy as 100 percent Hebraic. One aspect of this Hebraic perspective was the affirmation of the embodied mind in opposition to soul/body dualisms, which have their origins in Greek thought and which Christians have uncritically appropriated as part of their mental furniture. In this regard, it is worth noting that Christ’s resurrection involves a transformed embodied person, not a soul. That makes sense given Jesus came to fulfill the Hebraic tradition. Wittgenstein’s views about personhood and its ramifications for the philosophy of mind have been given extensive treatment in the following work: Hacker, P. & Bennett, M. (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford, Blackwell.
Dr. Crummett looks like Dr. Zaius
By the way, YOU ARE A SOUL :)
what about monism and the idea that we are all god? interview David Hoffman and have your mind blown! Or property dualism? Like panpsychism?
Josh: I like you argument about composing mental states.
What would you say about the fact that any mental state would have to be built by some physical state (like a brain) and so therefore would never be a “true” map of reality.
I.e. your mental picture of a fish (assuming it’s in a brain) will always lack detail at some level. So if you get the task of composing to complicated things you simple cannot do it.
(Still I guess there might be some possible mind who could). It would be interesting to have a bigger mind.
Why do placebos work
Cameron, I think you need to get some books on Thomism. Edward Feser is a great author there. You guys are completely ignoring the most important kind of dualism: hylemorphic dualism!
I think Cameron is familiar with it and Feser’s work :) He said he’s currently undecided on which view he’d subscribe to.
Does this form of dualism hold up against materialist challenges in your opinion? It seems like a form of property dualism, which is inconsistent to scripture since both properties are bound to destruct at death; substance dualism must be the only acceptable view for Christians at least
@@StFelly
Not clear how it is inconsistent with scripture. Could you elaborate?
@@StFelly It is not property dualism. Check out the relevant papers by professor Oderberg.
BTW, you are a soul
Seventh day adventist believe in That we are all soul and is not immortal. I agree with them because I find it biblical and only believers will have immortality but the wicked will die. I'm not Seven day but I agree with that
Elijah L6 Hi! Adventist here and I am grateful that you came this conclusion yourself! It shows that this belief can rational arise of bible study.
To be clear this video about the soul what is all about
Btw, you are a soul!
Josh's argument is begging the question. 30:20
"There are more mental states than physical states."
This doesnt hold if mental states arise from the physical states of the brain.
@Jon I honestly dont know what you mean lol.
I'm saying that the conclusion follows directly (and trivially) from one of the earlier premises, making the rest of the argument unnecessary.
If mental states outnumber physical states, then its obvious that physical states cant fully represent mental states.
You then dont need arguments about 'cardinality' and 'Cantors theorem'.
Also, I reject the premise :p
@Jon from Wikipedia: to beg the question is to put forward a premise which assumes the truth of the conclusion.
So, the premise: "there are more mental states than physical states" , assumes that mental states don't arise from the physical state of the brain.
That's a problem, cos anyone who thinks that thoughts arise from the brain is just going to reject the premise. You could only accept the premise if you accepted the conclusion. That makes it a bad argument, and a textbook case of begging the question.
@@cropcircles5697 Couldn't you say that mental states do arise from physical states but they are still separate things. And that the physical states of the brain give rise to more mental states than there are physical states? I don't see what's wrong with this claim. I don't hold this view tho.
@@1999_reborn If thoughts arise entirely from the brain, you would expect a 1-1 correspondence between brain states and thoughts. If there are more thoughts than physical states, there must be some other, non-physical source.
@@cropcircles5697 Actually yeah, the more I think about it the more what I said doesn't make sense. Unless someone were to propose that a physical state could give rise to more than 1 mental state at a time. But I have no idea how that would work.
BTW, You are a Soul.
Josh has a great start. Now just tell me what "material parts" are. Seems atomistic and long obsolete to "physicists."
btw, you are a soul
By the way, you are a soul
If there was such a thing as a soul then everything about you could not be changed by tinkering with your brain.
The soul is the radio waves. The body is the radio. If the radio is broken, the sound is different. The radio waves coming in are not changed by the radio being broken
@@christianthinker2536 What a desperate and failed analogy! A broken radio doesn't completely forget and refuse to play partial and entire songs permanently 😄. If your supposed "soul" thing exists then how can your entire personality change? How can giant parts of your life dissapear? Why is it that when your corpus callosum is severed you suddenly have 2 distinct and separate personalities alive in your brain at once? Which one of them keeps the "soul"? Why is it that you think that scientists can't detect this magical soul thing when they can even detect gravitational waves?? What's more likely, that there is a magical, undetectable, completely invisible, unproven thing inside your body that contains your every personality trait and memory that magically floats off to an invisible, undetectable, magical place when you die where everyone is young and pretty and perfect and there is no suffering and your bowl never goes beat.....or that it's a ridiculous story made up by ignorant frightened people who just wanted to believe that they never actually die. Only every other animal and insect that exists that we are related to and descended from dies buy not us! Oh no not US! We're special😂
@@donnyh3497 Also animals can have an afterlife like your dog or cat
@@christianthinker2536 Great retort! After all of the points I made in my post, your answer is just another incredibly vacuous assertion. You may want to change your moniker.
Is the body soul
Can someone summarize the best argument from this talk?
Lets see if I can iterate Josh's argument properly. Mental states cannot be identical to physical states because if we take the set of all possible physical states _P_ and posit the set of all possible mental states _M_ as the power set of _P_ , then via Cantor's Theorem _M_ would have a greater cardinality than _P_ , basically meaning that there are more possible mental states than physical states.
That's just what I remember from the livestream. I'll have to read his actual argument.
Dave The Brahman if mental states are physical states, then all mental states should be exhausted by all possible physical states. Cantor’s Theorem shows that the amount of categories and subsets you can have of a thing, outnumber the thing. You can have a mental thought about each subset and category of physical things (ie, these physical thoughts are my favorite, these physical thoughts share the property of being blue, etc.) It thereby show that mental states outnumber physical states, which means they cannot be equal.
@@TheBrunarr " if we take the set of all possible physical states P and posit the set of all possible mental states M as the power set of P"
But what if the set of all possible mental states is necessarily limited by the set of possible physical states?
That would mean that the set of mental states can never exceed the set of possible physical states, as the brain-capacity is just insufficient to create certain mental states.
We can see this in less developed brains. The brain of a newborn for example doesn't have the capacity to create the physical state, that produces the mental state of understanding this argument.
And the brain of a fruitfly has only a very limited set of possible physical states and is therefore limited to a very small set of possible mental states.
Josh's argument seems to rest on the idea, that a human mind is capable of producing ALL theoretically possible mental states, but that's simply not true in practice. Or is there anyone who can think every humanly conceivable thought in every conceivable language while also thinking about every conceivable number at least once? Of course not, that's impossible because the set of possible physical states is limited.
@@TheOriginalTPro well the argument is hinges on the proposition that mental states are the power set of physical states, and I assume Josh makes arguments for why mental states would be the power set of physical states. Like I said I haven't delved into the argument in depth, I'll have to look it up.
@@TheBrunarr what if we are only mental states like monism says and that our conscious reality is just a product of our collective minds?
Search for Pam Reynolds near death experience. It’s very unique because her brain is monitored during her brain surgery. She is also put into a state of clinical “death”. No brain activity corresponding to her account.
Some of the most famous NDE's turned out to be complete BS.
I will find more info. Her surgery was not done by a new age wacko. It’s a clinic with a licensed Doctor.
Look up Pam Reynolds case on Wikipedia. Also, Gary Habermas has written a book on NDE’s. He adds it to the case for afterlife and God but non specifically Trinity. Look up Habermas if you don’t know who he is.
by the way u are a soul
My Reaction
There were no powerful arguments for dualism in here. We heard over and over again the assertion that dualism makes sense based on our first-person experience of qualia, but we certainly heard few, if any, arguments to suppose dualism is true, and we certainly heard no documented evidence it is true.
Bad Argument
The only thing I would sort of count as an "argument" was the suggestion that possible mental states exceed possible physical states and because it seems to us that we have no limit to our mental states we must not be limited (exist only as) physical states. This is obviously a terrible argument, though. (1) First of all it presupposes the point of contention (question begging) - if physicalism were true then the "argument" is just a false statement. (2) Secondly, we know from empirical observation that manifestations in consciousness are limited to the hardware (wetware) you have inside your skull and the inputs you receive from your internal and external sensory apparatuses. Can anybody suppose "what it's like to be a bat" or what UV light "looks like" to a bee? What color looks like to a color-blind individual and vice-versa? No you cannot, because you don't have the physical hardware to imagine what it's like to use echolocation, fly, see UV, etc. The things you are capable of conceptualizing of in your mind's eye are those things the brain allows you to. You can't calculate huge mathematical sums, but other people can, again because your brain is not structured so as to allow for this subjective experience to occur. Could we posit some "other world" in which these calculations are occurring? Sure, but then that doesn't give us explanatory power because that world too would have to be governed by physical laws and limits that explain the limitations we see in our own mind's ability to conceptualize. There's no need to invoke those simply a priori due to Occam's Razor, and we already have verified and plausible physical mechanisms that explain tons of the limits of aspects of our conscious experience. (3) Thirdly, we have no evidence or reason to suppose that a disembodied mental state is even possible, much less exists. We have no examples or referents in reality, or plausible descriptive mechanisms in reality - nobody has ever even suggested a POSSIBLE model for how such an object might be. Everything in our conscious experience is tied to a physical state, and even speculative, hypothetical scenarios about conscious states in advanced computers and such are still 100% based in physical hardware states. (4) Fourthly, it's a thought experiment. Philosophers (and scientists) like these, but in reality they can't really get us anywhere without corroboration (which is why scientists make progress and philosophers don't really...but I digress). And what's more important, and most damning of all, is that the brain states always precede the changes in consciousness. This would be an extremely simple matter to settle in a laboratory if dualism were in any way true. All you would have to do is show that a brain state came into existed AFTER the thought in question, and dualism would be verified. Instead, we see only the opposite. Dualism, as a model to explain the world, is literally as falsified by empirical science as you can get - as a hypothesis, it has a 0% success rate.
Vienna Circle and Pseudo-Statements.
I won't even address the other side of this coin, namely that the philosophers are using incoherent terminology ("soul substance", for example, is an incoherent or forever-undefined idea, again because it has no referents in reality). Suffice it to say that dualism is indeed poorly defined and this alone is fatal to any hypothesis. This is, in fact, a lot of the trouble with philosophy in general: much of it is poor definition and the conjuring of "problems" through the use of not-well-defined or incoherent terminology - pseudo-statements that really have no meaning (reference: go to "Critique of Metaphysics" in the "Vienna Circle" Wikipedia entry).
The Soul as a Mental Construction
When you're talking to your friend, you start learning about them and constructing a mental model of them. When your friend goes away, you still can imagine them, picturing them in a hypothetical scenario. You can imagine what they might do, how they might react, how they would look, what they might say. You have an essence and model in your head of them. When your friend dies and is cremated, you still have the mental model of them, but all referents your model has to reality are gone. And yet, human mind still is capable of using that model after the death - we picture that model in a happy place in the afterlife because it is comforting. We picture the mental model of our enemies in a hell, too, after they die, but again, that has no referent in reality. Hitler is gone - he's not burning in some inferno or having a pineapple shoved up his ass every day for eternity. We like to see our friends happy and our enemies unhappy, so the natural tendency for anybody would be to put that model in these scenarios. This was likely the origin of the idea of the soul and the notion of dualism.
The Mind as Bile
What science has taught us is that our intuitions are wrong, wrong, wrong - humans rely on models that approximate reality and give us predictive power in the world. Plato's allegory of The Cave tells us the same thing - you don't ever really get to the "real reality" - you just see shadows on the wall and can suppose what the "real reality" is. But in actuality, all we ever have is the shadow to interact with. This means we are forced, ontologically, to admit that we have only models to deal with. Dualism as a model doesn't really work, or, if you insist it's true, all you can say is something that basically boils down to physicalism and the positing of an additional "basic fundamental property of matter". Just like the liver produces bile and urea, the brain produces the mind. Just as a body of mass produces gravity, so does our body produce the experience we have. If you want to call this "dualism" go right ahead, but it bears no relation to the idea of dualism as it has commonly been understood (the idea or plausibility of a soul). I'm fine with positing the qualia as some "fundamental" of reality - just add it to the list of nuclear strong force, nuclear weak force, electromagnetic force, gravitational force. But this is even problematic because we can say literally nothing about this fundamental. Cheers.
@Dave The Brahman I agree that there is a sense in which one or the other seems redundant. To me the most logical way to look at this is to recognize that the only useful model for interacting with reality is physicalism, but that the physicalism is really "informationalism" because the very idea of the physical itself presupposes properties that are themselves really misguided notions that we adopt only as heuristics and because our biology infuses our mind with them - they don't apply to all levels of reality. What do I mean? I mean that, for example, empirical science shows us that, contrary to our immediate apprehension that an object is "completely solid", it is, in fact mostly "empty space" - and even those parts that are not "empty space" can they themselves be broken down further in non-physical terms - quantum mathematics, or mass-energy conversion conventions that have no intuitive reference for our biological minds (what does it mean to say mass becomes energy?). Do we really "touch" anything ever? Well, we really are just repelled by electromagnetic forces. If you define "touch" this way, yes we do, and yet, our experience - the way we immediately apprehend it in our qualitative experience - seems contrary to this. In short, physicalism itself is really best understood as a model that can be more comprehensively represented by "informationalism". And the simple observation is that the information that you might call the physical world seems to be wholly inseparable from the qualia information we apprehend. But there's no contradiction - this "informationalism" model unifies the qualia information with the physical information by recognizing that there is just some intrinsic property of physical matter in certain states that includes consciousness.
This simple use of the idea of "informationalism" would have saved the good doctor in this video some time - he wouldn't have needed to spend 1 month debating and trying to define physicalism.
This of course knocks dualism out of the water - it's completely superfluous - because there never was "the realm of the physical" and "the realm of the qualia" - there was only information. This "informationalism" might sound like a sort of dualist idealism but it's really not - it's just the observation that the only thing that we should say "really is" is whatever our best model is. In other words, to go a step further, perhaps "informationalism" might be better replaced by "model-ism" ("all that exists are models"), and we simply need go no further there until we require some sort of model to explain some sort of phenomenon of consciousness that we can't simply directly assume is the by-product, or in some sense the same thing as, the material state in our brain.
The point about evolution is an interesting one. It's as if you're suggesting that the idea of there being some sort of "non-physical" realm with a soul etc. itself would seek no impact on matter, yes? I mean if we really are this thing that is NOT matter itself and our essence is in that not-matter-thing then why would we need to evolve matter anyway?
@Dave The Brahman I too find many philosophers frustrating, particularly when they try to start drawing conclusions about the world based on metaphysics. Philosophy is better suited in my opinion to questions like "how do we influence people?" and "what is moral? what is ethical? what is just?". Those are important questions. Metaphysics, while interesting, is becoming less relevant given the breakthroughs of empirical science.
Which brings me back to the "modelism" point. I would again refer back to Plato's allegory of The Cave. Anything and everything that we experience or create is ultimately going to be not the "actual essence" of the phenomenon in question itself, but rather, some construction that intermediary mechanisms or principles form by funneling information before manifesting in our consciousness. This manifestation is the shadow - the actual object generating the shadow is the actual object in the real world. But you never get to the actual object - you're chained to a cave wall, forced only to see the shadow. I would say that the need for "modelism" comes in when we realize that when we use the phrase "actual essence" in this context, we are using words that they themselves can never be defined clearly, and thus we border on sophistry when even using the allegory of the cave itself to model our world. In actuality, in terms of making coherent statements, we simply are left only with models and not "actual essence" of anything.
So yes, I would argue that the current model - whatever it is in question - is necessarily provisional in the sense that this "modelism" sort of takes for granted the fact that you can never experience "the actual essence" of something, because, in reality, that concept itself is an incoherent terminology. I too agree with your definition of physicalism - essentially it's anything we can quantify and test empirically, and this just seems to be the most useful way to engage with the world hands down. I think that the term physicalism, while appropriate, might be somewhat confusing for some people who haven't thought about this before, however, because there are aspects of empirical, quantitative physics that are not "physical" in the way many people picture things (i.e. a solid table or chair or piece of wood), such as the idea of "forces" themselves. Forces are a part of "physicalism" but to call them "physical" might turn off some people in the sense that the "force itself" is not made of matter and some might argue that this shows that "physicalism" is an incomplete model, missing the point that the word itself is just a label with a connotation that should be ignored and the model itself dealt with straightforwardly based on its rules and not the connotation baggage of the label word itself. The reason to advocate for a physicalism of this kind is that it is simple and seems to account for 99.99+% of the things we deem important in our lives, and the few things it "may not" account for we can't even be sure are coherent notions in the first place. Therefore, if people won't be sidetracked by the terms "modelism" or "informationalism" as much as the term "physicalism", I'm not opposed to using these terms instead, even though they are functional equivalents to the common-sense physicalism we are describing. We are just basically forced to be careful and walk on terminological eggshells because philosophers are capable of semantic sophistry that we have to deal with time and again.
But again, just to address the point you bring up. Yes, "modelism" of this kind would imply that models are necessarily tentative because they never are the "absolute essence" of the thing itself and you could never know if there were a better model out there. The question of "lack of knowledge" being intrinsic to the system is more complex and is basically a question of the semantics of the word "knowledge". If by knowledge you mean a statement of absolute truth about the nature of the "real essence" of reality, yes, you might argue this is necessarily impossible to achieve, and hence say we can "have no knowledge" under "modelism" (I have to keep using quotes because this isn't a formal vocabulary). But I don't think knowledge should be thought of in this way. I would instead say that knowledge is more just a certain kind of information - it would be information that is "useful" or "has utility" within whatever model we are working with. Example: is it "absolutely true" (do we have knowledge) that the computer in front of me "really exists"? No, we don't. But in this "modelism" framework that uses the sort of "physicalism" we talked about earlier, we have information about the computer that has a certain kind of persistent utility that we never see violated - it has physical properties that don't change, and we can therefore say this information is "knowledge".
This is a long-winded way of basically saying that we should throw out the idea of "absolute truth" and just revert to using models (models are axioms and inputs) and logic to guide our actions in the world, because that is the only place you ever get any utility out of. And why should we be concerned with anything except "utility"? I too want to get at a "fundamental reality" but the idea itself of fundamental reality is more like the North Star is to a seaman - it's a guiding light/something to aim for. You never actually get there, and in actuality, it's literally impossible due to the nature of the system. Look up the Munchaussen Trilemma on Wikipedia if you're interested in this.
@Dave The Brahman You know, I'd never heard the term "ens realissimum" - thanks for showing it to me!
Yes, I would say that, as long as the experience model is regular and dependable, we need not be concerned any further. If we are aware that we deal ultimately only with models and shadows and we can't get in further, then there is indeed no need to bemoan or mourn our inability to grasp "absolute truth" or this "ens realissimum". Go with the Stoic philosophers - Marcus Aurelius - who said you should not waste energy on things you cannot control, and instead should redirect energies to that which you have control over. We have become disillusioned from our child-like thinking of concrete, inviolate truths - disillusioned in the positive sense, the sense of realizing the limitations of our own knowledge. If we want to be adults, we cannot be as children. Most people want to have the truth in their back pocket so they can just STOP worrying about it all - hence the bumper sticker one sees on cars: "God SAID it, I BELIEVE it, that SETTLES it!" - it's just human nature to want to think we have "the real truth" because there's a sense of comfort. I just think that once you start considering these deeper metaphysical questions you have to admit that you've got no choice but to concede to the truth of the allegory of The Cave in a very real sense.
Yes - we don't need to worry about it. Stoic philosophy: expend your energies on only those things within your control. We have our models. They work. They contain no contradictions, only puzzles and questions (bad models contain contradictions and try to push themselves into areas where they don't apply, good models simply work within a given scope). IF, and when, these new variables come in to our knowledge in the future that lead to a total collapse, we deal with that then. We must be ready to embrace them at any time! Physicists don't sit around and argue about how Newtonian physics "collapsed" once quantum physics was discovered or special and general relativity were discovered - they embraced the new paradigm once the variables became overwhelming. These modern scientific discoveries are really the thing that has convinced me that we do indeed truly only live in a world of models - "informationalism" - because I just don't see any way to square my limited knowledge of quantum and relativistic phenomena with my intuitive understanding of the world. I just accept the model as a description of reality, knowing it somehow is not the "essence of reality" itself. And I just let the models apply themselves within their defined scope. I don't let the fact that we look through a glass darkly bother me because I learned to accept the limitations of my own knowledge long ago, and my experience teaches me that the Stoics were right: don't go expending energy on things you cannot control. And I certainly agree with you - there seems to be no logical reason to invoke dualism. But! If some evidence comes up, I will embrace it right away! It just cannot be "mysterious" in the sense of lacking coherent definition.
Regarding the Munchaussen Trilemma - it's just the observation that you can never provide a proof for any statement - any statement at all - that is not somehow (1) circular, (2) requires additional proofs infinitely, or (3) relies on axiom. Godel actually proved something like this about mathematic in his incompleteness theorems - if you really want to be confused go look up those. But to illustrate Munchausen simply, use example proofs. Example 1: Let's say you want to prove that "logic validly applies to all aspects of reality without exception" - people don't really disagree, but that statement cannot be proven because to merely state it presupposes the validity of logic (because if logic doesn't apply A=A is both true and not true so words have no meaning) - it is circular. Example 2: If you want to prove that Joe killed Bob, you require infinite proofs to be absolutely certain. You found DNA on the knife? Prove that the DNA came from Joe and not his twin. You proved it came from Joe and not his twin? Prove that someone didn't put the DNA on the knife. You proved someone else didn't put the DNA on the knife? Prove that that knife was in the room at the time of the murder. You proved it was there at the time of the murder? Prove that it actually went into his flesh. You proved that it went into his flesh? Prove that that it was the presence of the knife in the flesh that obstructed blood flow to the brain. You proved it was the knife that stopped blood flow to the brain? Prove that this lack of blood flow is what stopped the brain functioning, etc. ad infinitum - you will never have a termination to the proofs. Example 3: If all swans are white, and I have a swan behind the door, then I conclude it is white. This is a valid proof, but we have no idea if it corresponds to reality because the axiom that all swans are white is unprovable.
The reason I brought up Munchhausen is because it shows you that no matter what you do you are forced only to work with models, and that even if your model was "really the right one" you could never be certain that it was. You mention the "ens realissimum", right? Let's say that God presented himself to you. What Munchausen Trilemma points out to us is that we could, in fact, never know that he REALLY was God in the sense of 100% certainty. My personal thinking on this is that we just need to take certain aspects of reality as axiomatic out of necessity and proceed from there, but never forgetting that we rely on axioms that are merely asserted rather than proven. It prevents us from being overconfident, cocky, and applying our models where it's really not appropriate to do so.
@Dave The Brahman I do agree that we have to make judgments that are probabilistic, rather than definitive. In that sense the standards you mention are obviously reasonable as a tentative social system for now. We can't live our life in the land of philosophical metaphysics, which is why, quite frankly, and in spite of all this talk I (you and I) have given, I don't view philosophy in the same way I view many other areas of endeavor. At least, certain areas of philosophy, particularly metaphysics. I just think it's becoming an irrelevant field given the findings of empirical science. And obviously, dualism is a sort of metaphysics, so to me, the march of empirical science has really begun to - or already has - eroded dualist notions to such an extent that I find its advocates just very tiring. I mean look at this video, for instance. Practically nothing was said (IMO) in two hours. I personally am much more interested in the history of philosophy, and the history of the world, and grappling with the big questions philosophy deals with in ways that are relevant to our times. You say you're especially interested in the New Testament. Any scholars or lectures you'd recommend I check out on RUclips? What do you think of Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier and all those guys?
@Dave The Brahman I think both are fascinating to listen to and I've learned more about understanding the Bible from them two (particularly Price) than probably anybody. I mean the man is like the most knowledgeable guy on the topic I've ever heard - or read - bar none. And he's super reasonable.
The Christ Myth Theory is a hypothesis that is countered only by very little evidence, and has large explanatory scope. But the evidence against it is there so nobody can confidently support the Christ Myth Theory as anything more than a useful framework for much of the evidence, but not all. There are reasons to think there was a historical Jesus. What I like about the mythicists is that their presence has resulted in an explosion of the diffusion of knowledge. Moreover, I have to say that it does seem to me that there is literally almost nothing about the historical Jesus we can say is likely not mythical - and I mean that pretty close to literally. So I'm happy Carrier and Price are around.
Thanks for the Ehrman-Wallace recommendation. If you get a desire to listen to Price, two of my favorites are below. They're not defenses of mythicism really but instead they are Price talking about the limits of historical analysis. It's on this point - the limits of historical analysis - I feel he is rhetorically the best. Cheers and take care.
ruclips.net/video/ITq6Cv-R8JM/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/Mtzgh5fAjnY/видео.html
Btw, you are a soul
Btw u r a soul
Btw, you are a soul.
"um...uh...um..uh...yeah"...smh
BTW you are a soul.
Dualism is the worst philosophical concept out there BOOOOOOOOO!!!!
But great video thanks :)
Really, where is this comment coming from? This topic has been debated and boggled the minds of many intelligent people. Your comment is absurd.
@@jasensargent6176 Yes I know that! Clearly my comment isn't very nuanced or well argued and isn't supposed to be - I was just being silly. I know this is a complex philosophical issue. Below is my actual take on it:
In my opinion the problem with dualism is that it starts with a kind of materialism and tries to understand consciousness from there. Now you need something immaterial to explain consciousness in a world you have assumed is at bottom solid and 'dead' - something unique, ethereal, 'not of this world'. On the other hand if instead you start with consciousness being primary - with matter being form within consciousness - you don't have to live with this confusion.
@@SamuelJFord so you’re an idealist? That’s cool with me lol
@@SamuelJFord i thought you were materialist
If you haven't read, _"Knowledge, Thought, and the Case for Dualism (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)"_ by Richard Fumerton then you need to hush
Arguments are not evidence.
LOL nice! Is that an argument or evidence?
Roofuscat 2 who's name? All evidence (except for self-evidence) can be structured as arguments.
@@mordec1016 Yes. But the reverse is not true.
@Gabe Norman Please don't attack me for stating fact.
Mathematics doesn't proceed based on observable evidence but by abstract arguments. So you gotta say arguments hold some value.
By the way, you are a soul.