Two pounds of stiff bloody lard…
That’s what’s most amazing: our selves not only exist, but are formed out of such infra-mundane matter.
Good thing the plurality isn’t of nothing, then.?
You may have noticed (or not, I’m unsure if you’ve read everything I wrote since you so selectively reply) I’ve only said the unitary self is an illusion. Thinking that the plural self is a collection of unitary selves is just a magnification of that same illusion, but that’s not what the Multiple Drafts model is. Not that it seems you followed up on what Dennett has to say,
since you keep insisting I’ve provided no proof. The proof is in Dennett’s books, especially the experimental work around cognitive illusions. I’m not going to repeat them here , read the books and papers referenced in my cites.
I’ve given multiple cites in this thread, which link to experimental evidence for the multiple drafts model. So yes, I damn well have.
No, they don’t.
…said the unhappy Essentialist to the happy Existentialist.:dubious:
You “believe” “someone” “said” a stupid demotivation poster quote? That’s really convincing. I just might drop my happy philosophy for such a well-argued,
well-cited invitation to nihilism (or, you know, … not!)
Yes, I have. See, I can do that too.
Says the guy who won’t elaborate on the meaning of very specific problematic expressions he’s quoted.
Alanis Morisette fan? Because the irony is palpable.
Huh. And here I thought I’d cited things multiple times - *different *cites, not the same movie review reposted unattributed.
You claim it is neuroscience, then link to one more blog providing one person’s beliefs. That is not evidence that science has anything to do with it. It is a philosophical extract based on a personal interpretation of what one person has chosen to believe based on his own ideas.
You then claim that something is the “prevailing notion,” yet you provide not a single extract from an actual scientific paper, much less any indication of among what group this notion is supposed to prevail.
meh*
I’m starting to think that may be where he is coming from as well. Sure would be nice if he would actually tell us one way or the other.
But if he is under the impression that life is only meaningful if we are endowed with some supernatural anima which can’t be detected by any physical means, I don’t see his problem. By definition, science can never definitely disprove the existence of an entity about which no data can possibly be gathered. So the increasing sophistication of neuroscience doesn’t constitute evidence against the existence of such souls.
Anyway, I came in here because I saw this today and thought of this thread.
Welllll, while it’s not technically possible to disprove the existence of soulish things floating around outside the universe somewhere, it is possible to make observations to suggest that such souls, if they exist, don’t actually do anything - at least not regarding our minds or senses of selfs.
Extraphysical souls, if they handled our thinking and sense of self, wouldn’t be effected by things done to the physical brain. Thus physical substances that do things like that strongly imply that yes, we are in fact using our brains to think with.
There’s a little known substance known as “beer” that gives indications that chemicals can effect the mind and perceptions by the ‘self’. So, since the discovery of that esoteric substance, there has been little justification for trying to attribute the mind to anything other than the physical brain.
Grin! Beer as reductionism!
It is reminiscent of Plato’s question about how much you can remove from a man – arms, legs, eyes, tongue, certain parts of the brain – and still have a “man” remaining.
Oliver Sacks has gone a way down that road, working with stroke patients and people with brains damaged by injuries and cancer. The (rather horrid) truth is that you can remove a lot of brain tissue, and still be dealing with a person.
As begbert2 notes, this somewhat undermines the notion of the immaterial and undamageable soul. Even if the soul exists, it requires brain tissue as an interface, and so there is a brain/soul fusion that is clearly material and damageable.
If enough of your brain is damaged, what the heck does it matter if there is a “soul” floating around, unable to interact? The model doesn’t explain anything that a purely material view of the brain doesn’t.
In absolute seriousness, the real bullet in the brain of the “brains are just interfaces for souls” theory are things like antidepressant drugs. You can find people who rather fervently insist that these drugs literally change their personality. This refutes the idea that the brain is merely an interface that can be ‘fogged’ or ‘disrupted’ by getting soused; if you can change the personality by physically messing with the brain, the personality is sourced in the physical brain.
And to be fair to Machinaforce, he’s not denying any of this. He sure as hell doesn’t like it, though.
Does he even acknowledge it?
I’d say he has. His interaction with me has largely been to argue that the human brain, being (as it is) composed of lots of little bits working together in concert, doesn’t count as a person, because (unclear). He’s also called our meat-computer brains “robots”, intending that to be a bad thing, which suggests he may have a problem with the idea that minds are rational largely-deterministic processes that observe and react to things outside them.
So yeah, I haven’t heard anything from him saying he’s unaware that brains are the source of minds. He just thinks there’s a “person” club that that kicks us out of.
Then I have no idea. All the technicality is lost on me. All I hear is “no self that exists” and nothing else matters. THat’s about the only bit that makes sense, but I cannot process the technical arguments behind it all.
That much has been obvious this whole thread.
You may want to listen to the rest of it…
You do realise that’s entirely you, right? Your own gloss, not an inherent feature of the awareness.
Maybe don’t debate about it if you admit the deeper aspects are beyond you, then? Read more. I recommend Dennett’s Consciousness Explained, it’s pitched fairly entry-level.
I think you overestimate my ability to understand philosophical discourse.
No, the book is a pop-sci one pitched at laymen. If I thought you were capable of following along, I’d have been recommending actual papers. I’m not.
And that explains the whole business about the self?
I am interested in your ideas and would like to know more of this “beer” you speak of.
True, the flip side of defining “soul” in such a way that science doesn’t/can’t disprove it’s existence is that it doesn’t leave anything for the soul to actually do; it can’t be directly related to generating our thoughts or emotions.
But maybe it’s the part of us that survives our deaths, so that our intact personality flies up to Heaven and spends eternity playing harps with Jesus! I think what really bugs people about the naturalistic explanation of consciousness is that it doesn’t allow “us” to survive death, so maybe they might find some comfort in being able to cling to this possibility. I agree that this isn’t the most psychologically mature way of dealing with the concept of death, though.
Why don’t you find it, read it, and get back to us.
Actaully, though I am about as hard an atheist as possible, I can easily think of a way people could ‘fly up to heaven’ after death.
Posit, for a moment, that the universe we exist in is not all of reality, and that in fact it is some sort of simulation. (Yes, I know, a radical idea with no precedent in this thread; stay with me here.) Entities outside the simulation, when they’re not murdering the people within it for fun, might occasionally notice an entity within the simulation that they think is awesome. Perhaps that person is a particularly devout christian. Perhaps that person is a blast at parties. Perhaps they’re skilled at World of Warcraft. Whichever.
Of course, this person they like is just a simulated entity, so what to do? Simple: they make a copy of that person’s brainwaves, either the instant before their death or when they were most awesome and hawt looking, stick those brainwaves into an artificially constructed body that physically exists in their own reality, and then flip a large switch while yelling “IT’S ALIVE!!!”
And thus the chosen person (or a copy of them, anyway) is elevated to heaven, and may frolic with the gods as they order more pizza and continue playing with their simulation.