Reasons for believing in the permanence of the soul?
I would like to preface this by stating that by soul I don't mean anything religious necessarily, but simply the res cogitans, the thinking substance, the thinker, the rational agent, the subject that experiences the world, you get it.
In the third metaphysical meditation of Descartes, we have an argument that follows roughly as:
Though I know that I am here now, it does not follow necessarily that I will be after, that my existence persists through time. He then says that from an inspection of the nature of time, to conserve something, it requires as much power and act as it takes to create it from nothing. He sees that there is nothing in himself that has that much power, so it must be that something else makes it that way. Through a few other arguments he goes on to conclude that it is God.
The argument that allows him to conclude it is God has some questionable premises, such as the hierarchy of perfections. But that aside, if I don't believe in God or in any other greater being that keeps my existence as such, what reason do I have to believe in the maintenance of the self as opposed to its constant creation and subsequent destruction and replacement by another self?
PS: Even though it may be that I feel as though I am the same person as I were yesterday, that might simply be an illusion created by the neurological conditions of the body, which are the memories I/we hold.
Recommended reading: this short fun comic.
In the third metaphysical meditation of Descartes, we have an argument that follows roughly as:
Though I know that I am here now, it does not follow necessarily that I will be after, that my existence persists through time. He then says that from an inspection of the nature of time, to conserve something, it requires as much power and act as it takes to create it from nothing. He sees that there is nothing in himself that has that much power, so it must be that something else makes it that way. Through a few other arguments he goes on to conclude that it is God.
The argument that allows him to conclude it is God has some questionable premises, such as the hierarchy of perfections. But that aside, if I don't believe in God or in any other greater being that keeps my existence as such, what reason do I have to believe in the maintenance of the self as opposed to its constant creation and subsequent destruction and replacement by another self?
PS: Even though it may be that I feel as though I am the same person as I were yesterday, that might simply be an illusion created by the neurological conditions of the body, which are the memories I/we hold.
Recommended reading: this short fun comic.
Comments (189)
We are constantly changing, all the cells that constitute our bodies replaced every seven or so years according to some accounts. On the other hand, are we not distinguishable as the entities that undergo those changes?
I was making this point to my wife yesterday. Persistence overnight might be fairly easy to deal with but me now is my e when I was nine via persistence of self? Seems utterly absurd. But I am clearly the same person so wtf haha
Parfit? Is that you? :nerd:
The issue of identifiying something as that which undergoes change is for me a very deep issue that involves, among other things, mereology and semantics.
Because of that, I summon Theseus' ship. I ask you: is it the same ship?
Quoting Tom Storm
Right. So let's say you are not the same entity as 10 years ago. {That entity from before} and {you now} are separate. We can agree that that entity from 10 years ago is no longer anywhere, it is dead or non-existent. But what stops us from extrapolating those years to days and then to minutes. Are we dying every living second? To quote OP: "what reason do I have to believe in the maintenance of the self as opposed to its constant creation and subsequent destruction and replacement by another self?".
I guess my response is another question- What reason should we care about that question? What experiences are you having where this is important?
If you are not interested in discussing philosophy, I suggest going to Netflix instead.
I don't think the same criteria for identity that apply to self-organizing systems such as biological organisms are relevant in the case of ships.
Why is that, if we are both physicalists?
And if it is a relevant part of your argument, I also wonder what defines self-organizing and how it makes something persist through time. Is the a wooden ship also not self-organizing insofar as the wooden planks move and twitch and compress and crack around to make room for the contraction and expansion that is caused by the temperature fluctuations?
Quoting wonderer1
Amazing comic. It really captures the spirit of the thread, though maybe for narrative reasons it stops short of dying at every (micro-)second and instead keeps it for everytime sleep happens.
Quoting Janus
Not all cells of our body have DNA, such as red blood cells. And some cells have different DNA, such as haploid cells. DNA expression is also different depending on the tissue you are taking the cell from.
DNA can't be used as the essence of a human being, otherwise two perfect twins would be the same person, and Hisashi Ouchi would be a different person after the radiation blast that destroyed the genetic content of the cells in his body, but I doubt that you, or anyone defending personal identity, would agree to that.
You're right about DNA; it was careless of me to say "all cells...", although I find it implausible that all the DNA in his body was destroyed: do you have a reference for this claim?
And how is metabolism a metaphysically important process while the wooden planks shifting around is not? What makes it special from all the other processes in nature?
Quoting Janus
Right, so then DNA is not the deciding factor then.
Metabolism and homeostasis are internally regulated. Another point is that the ship of Theseus could be considered to be the same ship or a different ship depending on your perspective, on what criteria you accept. Think about two examples of the same model of motor vehicle; are they the same or not?
Quoting Lionino
Identical twins do not have the same DNA according to some sources. Do a search if you don't believe me. In any case I didn't claim that DNA is the only criterion for determining identity. Throughout your life you have a unique set of experiences. Even if identical twins were exactly the same at birth, divergence from that sameness begins immediately simply on account of them inhabiting different regions of space and experiencing different things through time.
Is this (.pdf) the one you're referring to? In particular, this passage:
We are not only parts, we are relationships between parts. The parts that make up us are not simply aggregated, but also have functions around a directing teleology.
Probably what we call soul (or that "I" that endures through all my representations) is nothing more than a relationship that endures through constituent parts that possess functions.
Quoting Lionino
I'd treat that question without reference to Descartes, as it is really being dealt with in a way that is quite alien to Descartes' line of argument, which is predicated on the indubitable reality of God and of the soul as 'res cogitans' and as having been created by God. (That said, again, it is just the kind of metaphysical argument that Kant objects to, on the basis of the absence of warrant for such claims, as distinct from religious sentiment.)
But leaving Descartes aside, the problem you're raising is one of agency, isn't it? That there is or isn't an agent who persists through time, such that he or she sets in motion acts that they will then reap the consequences of at some time in the future. The sense in which this agent is or is not the same from one moment to the next, is the point at issue.
This conundrum is also associated with the Ship of Theseus dilemma, which concerns an imaginary ship whose parts are replaced so often as to result in a wholly new vessel, and whether this is the same or a different ship at that point.
I feel that the argument that the agent is illusory must fail at the first step, as illusions are suffered by conscious agents, who mistake one thing for another.
Like synapse between neurons.
If you are asking whether the Third Meditation is the source for one of his ontological arguments, yes, you can find it there. The Meditation itself is titled "That God exists". And though I don't see his proof as being phrased quite like you did (in fact it does not involve perfection as imagined but the causal origin of perfections he finds in himself), it is something along those lines we can say.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes.
Quoting Wayfarer
I was not quite arguing that the agent is illusory. I think that cogit? ergo sum is perfectly valid and even essential if we are discussing consciousness and personal identity. What I am putting in question is whether the agent at time t is the same as the agent that perfectly proceeds that one temporally and spatially in time t+1.
Quoting JuanZu
That would be a part of the whole as it is physical.
Does it have to be, to qualify as 'an agent'? Something can change continually and still maintain an identity, can't it? In fact, isn't that what every compound being is doing?
If Buddhists are asked whether the person who is born as a consequence of past karma is the same as the person in the previous existence that generated said karma, the answer you'll often get is, not the same person, but also not different. Identity is like that.
If one system belongs to another it does not imply equality between the identities of each system. For example, a living system may seek survival and reproduction; But, although the living system belongs to the solar system, we cannot say that the solar system seeks to reproduce and survive.
In so far as hammer XYZ remains hammer XYZ and does not become dolphin ABC because we identify it as such because of its material arrangement and spatiotemporal coordinates, maybe yes. Hammer XYZ at time t and hammer XYZ at t+1 (it did not move positions) are only different in that they are at another point in time. If we assume the passing of time does not kill identity, hammer-XYZ(t) and hammer-XYZ(t+1) are the same. But what if it moved? They now have yet another difference, besides temporal distance: spatial difference. Let's say it also does not destroy identity. What keeps identity? Maybe the material composition of the hammer.
Now, if we took "one atom of wood" from the hammer and replaced it with another atom of wood second by second, in such a way that eventually all atoms were replaced. I believe most people would say it is still the same hammer. How is that so? We must find something that makes them the same. I struggle to find one single thing that establishes identity with hammer-XYZ at the beginning and at the end of the atomic replacement. If anything, it must be that both are the object of this action of atomic replacement. But then that would make it no different from another hammer which also undergoes the same process at another place and time. Even if another identical hammer underwent the exact same process in the same space but at another time, they would not be the same hammer if that hammer does not ultimately come from the original hammer. It seems that spatio-temporal continuity is an important part of identity. Moreover, we also identify hammer-XYZ(t) and hammer-XYZ(t+1) as the same because it is useful to do so.
But then we turn the attention to the thing that identifies, the thinking being. It is a common debate whether the person coming out of the teleportation machine is the same as that that walked in or if it is someone else with the exact same memories, as the spatio-temporal continuity is broken. When it comes to consciousness, is it not interrupted temporally (and spatially as well technically) when we go to sleep? You could argue that consciousness does not fully cease once you go to sleep, but only when your brain dies and thus you as well.
Therefore, even if time is discrete/discontinuous, should we believe that the person walking into time t+1 and the person walking out of it are the same? Is there really such a thing as spatio-temporal continuity in discrete time, and is it enough to account for identity?
Quoting Wayfarer
A tourist in Malaysia is trying to find the way back to his hotel. He sees a local monk and asks him in the little Malaysian he learned how to get there. The monk starts saying something about a rock and a bird. The tourist demands "How does that help me get back to my hotel?". The monk calmly shakes his head with a smile and walks away.
Me three.
That is what universals set out to solve. That specific hammer is an instance of the tool of type 'hammer'. Hence the role of universals in predication - they are what allows something to retain an identity whilst still being an identifiable particular.
Quoting Lionino
Where living beings are different to inanimate objects, is precisely that they maintain an identity whilst also changing. That has ramifications for biology but it becomes more acute in humans, who have a sense of self, a sense of what is right and wrong, and the ability to ponder their own identity. But I don't see any intuitive obstacle to considering the self from the perspective of process philosophy, as a kind of unified mind-stream, as it were. There are elements that change whilst others remain the same - again that's how identity operates, isn't it?
Quoting Lionino
Perhaps sensing there's a communication problem that can't be overcome.
What is relatively persistent, by comparison with with most cells of bodily organs, is neurons and the neural networks structures that supervene on them.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/05/a-tour-of-the-growing-brain-complete-with-upside-down-vision/
In keeping with what a few others have mentioned:
Not that the Ship of Theseus has been satisfactorily resolved by anyone to date, but one way of looking at things in general is that any givens identity is constituted of context-relative functionality. The ship remains the same ship in terms of context-relative functionality if the parts replaced relate to each other in such manner that the ships context-relative functionality is unchanged. I say context-relative because two different ships will hold the same functionality as ships, but their functionality will not be the same in terms of their immediate spatiotemporal contexts.
This, however, can get very abstract in the details of analysis.
All the same, as a thought experiment, I find that the sci-fi notion of teleportation operates on the same basis of identity just mentioned, this in fiction. Or, if a person were to lose a finger, for example, they would remain the same person X; but if a person were to so drastically change in terms of context-relative functionality, we will often state that they are not the same person they used to be, as is sometimes the case for extreme cases of dementia. Or else as can be the case when someone claims hes been a completely different person since he joined that click.
This notion of identity seems to me particularly important to any version of a process philosophy wherein everything spatiotemporal, without exception, is in perpetual change. But then, in this interpretation, identity isnt anchored to material particulars, being instead anchored to, again, a context-relative functionality.
With this perspective in mind, more directly addressing the OP, a persons identity as a context-relative functionality can then be construed to persist subsequent to corporeal death, such as via reincarnationsgranting both extreme outliers and continuity between these, such as in the same persons life commencing with birth as an infant and possibly ending corporeal life with extreme changes in psyche. And, just as a river rock will be relatively permanent in comparison to the rushing waters that surround it, so too can one appraise that some core aspect of a psyche is relatively permanent in comparison to the percepts, etc., it experiences. This core aspect of psyche (which, for example, could conceivably persist from one lifetime to the next) can then be appraised as "that which undergoes changes". I however will emphasize: this does not then entail that there is such a thing as an absolutely permanent soul which thereby withstands any and all changes for all eternity.
This isnt an argument I want to spend significant time in here defending. It would be quite a doozy. But it is the outline of a perspective that, notwithstanding the many details that would yet need to be ironed out, currently makes sense to me.
Do you always resort to second rate abuse when you can't answer a question? :wink:
Quoting Lionino
Indeed, which is why I didn't say 'stop researching'. So well done there. I asked you why the question is important.
I asked what practical difference does it make to our quotidian life? What are the consequences/implications? I'd be interested in hearing your response. I ask the same question of idealism. What are the consequences of such metaphysical models for daily living?
Aside from whatever the OP's response might be, I would think that, if one were to believe that there was indeed a judgement at the time of death, and that the fate of the soul depended on that, then it would make a difference to how you view your life, wouldn't it? I'm not saying I necessarily believe it, but I do fear that it might be true, and it does provoke existential angst. Whereas if one had the certain conviction that death was an absolute end, then this consideration wouldn't figure.
Indeed. Well I attempted to address that above with -
Quoting Tom Storm
Which was my way of saying that it is one thing to think there is an eternal dimension to being and it's an another different thing to wrap a religious system around it. How do we arrive at a judgment model, with or without a deity?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, and that's one answer to the question that often informs these speculations. Fear.
Religions are often depicted in terms of 'carrot and stick' in our secular age, although I think it's a caricature. I understand the goal of Eastern religions, which is mok?a or liberation, in terms of a transition to a wholly other dimension of being, one which is quite unimagineable from the naturalistic perspective and is therefore conveyed in mythological or symbolic form. It is plainly an extremely difficult thing to understand or see, and accordingly there is enormous scope for misunderstanding it, which accounts for a lot of the religious delusion that we see. Against that background, 'sin' is 'missing the mark' - failing to see some incredibly important point. That's what the various prophets, sages and seers are on about. The 'judgment model' that is implied by that is rather different to the historical narrative of Biblical tradition, as it is cyclical rather than linear, although the latter can be accomodated by the former rather more easily than vice versa. It revolves around not-seeing, or ignorance, a.k.a. avidya, which is the normal state of humanity - continuously failing to see the point of existence, so being repeatedly born into it (the meme behind the well-known film Groundhog Day).
Quoting javra
:clap: That is conveyed in the rather poetic Buddhist term of the 'citta-santana', the mind-stream (nothing to do with the band, although, given Carlos' spiritual proclivities, something he probably regards as a happy accident.)
Quoting Wayfarer
I was thrown off when you then said this:
Quoting Wayfarer
Wasn't sure where this left things.
What I meant was, if there really is more to life than physical birth and death - if there were future consequences of actions taken in this life - then that would change the perspective on this life. I'm not saying you *should* believe it, but that if you did then it would change the perspective on what we do now. If you really believed that murder would result in hellish consequences in a future state then your own death may not appear as an escape into oblivion (as an extreme example).
I will add that, as far as Buddhist doctrine is concerned, the belief that at death the body returns to the elements, and there are no consequences of actions committed in life, is regarded as a form of nihilism. Although that said, I think trying to imagine what a next life would be or what that means, is obviously rife with possibilities for self-deception.
So I guess that, beyond functionality (final cause in Aristotelian terms), spatiotemporal continuity is also important?
Quoting javra
Right.
I think that, for everything you said, it addresses a semantic and epistemological side of identity very well. That is, what it means when we call X, X. That is a side that most answers here chose when approaching the question.
One side that has not been exactly addressed so far is the phenomenological, subjective side. Besides any labels or linguistic aspects, are we now going to persist through time to the next second or is our consciousness going to finish and be replaced by another consciousness (someone else) with the appearance of being the same person as before due to memories? Are we gonna die in the next second, or is our conscious experience persisting across time?, is basically what is being asked. Now after thinking I wonder whether that question even makes sense, but maybe someone will bring it to light.
Also, I quite liked your art. The way you use gaps and separation on the canvas is something that I have never seen before.
The issue here is metaphysical, there is nothing in the physical world, I am quite confident, that will tell us "this is a person's essence". Neurons do not fulfill that task, for reasons such as neuroplasticity and the fact that their material composition does indeed change every time they undergo an electric pulse like DNA, it does not change as much as our hair, but it does change. The reason why I made this thread is to address whether a metaphysical essence even exists, or whether the question even makes sense.
As best I can tell, the notion of "essences" doesn't refer to anything, and the use of the term often seems a matter of feigning knowledge where recognizing ignorance seems more warranted.
I'm not really interested in arguing the point though, and I just wanted to point out that there is relevant knowledge to be gained.
Carry on.
Aye. If one gets into the mindset outlined, and if, for example, here tersely outlined, one chooses to understand space as distance-between identities and time as a duration-between a) causes produced by identities and b) their effects/consequencesfurther deeming that space and time when thus understood are logically inseparablethen, spatiotemporal continuity is part and parcel of there being coexistent identities (in the plural). No coexistent identitiesas is said of Moksha or of Nirvana without remainder or, in the West, of the notion of the Onethen, and only then, one would derive there being no spacetime. Here isnt an issue of which came first or of which is more important but, rather, that coexistent identities logically necessitate spacetime (when understood as just outlined, and not necessarily in a physicalist sense).
Quoting Lionino
Addressing this via analogy to Theseuss ship, if one for example replaces one plank on the ship, the ship itself continues through time unchanged (it currently seems to me uncontroversial to so stipulate). In parallel, if one as a conscious being experiences a new percept, one as the conscious being addressed will itself continue through time unchanged. My affinities are with process philosophy, so to me it is a continuation of ontic being as regards both the ship and ones consciousness. This instead of identity consisting of individualized quanta-of-identity that are perpetually obliterated and (re)created over the course of time.
Did you have something else in mind other than the bifurcation of possibilities just specified?
Quoting Lionino
Ah, this gave me a very good blush. Thanks for so saying.
Thanks for the link. :up:
Socio-politically, the problem of personal identity hit a crisis around 1900. Before then you could travel across a hill, or ocean, and just become someone else - unless you were unlucky enough to meet someone from a past life in your new present one.
But around 1900 states began to want to identify 'persistent criminals' and 'immigrants' as having a certain set of characteristics. Passports slowly became more common. Fingerprints emerged as a scientifically dodgy solution, although the Bertillon system in France was much more reliable.
Just, broadly, to emphasise: the problem of continuity of identity is often one for others: I am not the same as I used to be. But 'others' can in this context include versions of oneself at other times. I, in the present, still hold 'myself' responsible responsible for a reprehensible thing 'I' did in 1978: but it cannot be made good by the present I, only acknowledged and, perhaps, entered as a debit on a ledger where moral credits are also claimed.
Speaking in generalized terms, the same applies here. As to regret, in keeping with some of Nietzsches writings as I best interpret them, regret that causes dysfunction, any form of paralysis of being, is unhealthy and should be done away with. Having said that, regret still serves an important purpose in the here and noweven if full atonement for the past deed(s) cannot be obtainedin that it plays a rather crucial role in ones not repeating past mistakes/wrongs in the present and in the future. If there is no regret for X, one will again willfully do X whenever conditions allow. With regret, however, one is often left with (re)paying things forward, so to speak. Although I dont mean to be preaching to the choir here. But yes, regret is one aspect of psychological being that directly points to the continuation of ones psyche over time. :up:
This is another example that shows we intuitively know we are not our bodies. Believing that we are an amalgamation of matter is like pounding a square peg in a round hole: it results in the mind-body problem and impossible-to-resolve paradoxes. It's so much more parsimonious to conclude the physical realm doesn't exist.
It doesn't show me that. I also don't see parsimony in the belief that the physical realm doesn't exist; instead, I see that as contravening Peirce's maxim: "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts".
Again I'll refer to Buddhist philosophy here, as it is one that I have some familiarity with, and secondly, because of the Buddhist principle of anatta or anatma (usually given as no-self) grappled with this question over many centuries.
It is generally understood, and often stridently argued, that 'the Buddha says there is no self or abiding soul'. But this is not quite as it seems. On closer analysis, what the Buddhists argue against is the idea of a permanent self in the sense of being something utterly impervious to change, the same always and everywhere. A couple of canonical examples of the view in question:
These are the views characteristic of what the Buddha describes as 'eternalism', in the context of a culture where there was some belief in repeated births, and against the view that the aim of religious discipline is to secure fortuitous rebirths in perpetuity. The aim of the Buddhist teaching is not to secure fortuitous rebirth, but to escape the cycle of birth and death.
But, against all of this, when the Buddha is asked straight out whether the self exists, he declines to answer, on the grounds that it is not a yes/no question. To answer 'yes' is to side with the 'eternalists' (like those above) whilst to answer 'no' would only confuse the questioner. It turns out that the statement 'nothing is self' is not quite the same as 'there is no self'.
There's a very early text called the Questions of King Milinda, in which a Buddhist monk, Ven. Nagasena, illustrates the principle of anatta in dialogue with a Greco-Bactrian king, King Milinda (thought to be an historical figure, Menander). In it, Nagasena asks the King how he came to their meeting.
[quote=Milindapanha;https://www.budsas.org/ebud/ebsut045.htm#:~:text=I%20did%20not%20come%2C%20Sir%2C%20on%20foot]"I did not come, Sir, on foot, but on a chariot."
"If you have come on a chariot, then please explain to me what a chariot is. Is the pole the chariot?"
"No, Reverend Sir!"
"Is then the axle the chariot?"
"No, Reverend Sir!"
"Is it then the wheels, or the framework, of the flag-staff, or the yoke, or the reins, or the goad-stick?"
"No, Reverend Sir!"
"Then is it the combination of poke, axle, wheels, framework, flag-staff, yoke, reins, and goad which is the "chariot"?"
"No, Reverend Sir!"
"Then, is this "chariot" outside the combination of poke, axle, wheels, framework, flag-staff, yoke, reins and goad?"
"No, Reverend Sir!"
"Then, ask as I may, I can discover no chariot at all. This "chariot" is just a mere sound. But what is the real chariot? Your Majesty has told a lie, has spoken a falsehood! There is really no chariot!"[/quote]
However, I, for one, find that analysis quite unsatisfactory, because what the King possessess over and above any particular chariot, is the idea of a chariot, which, in that day and age, might have meant the difference between having an empire and not having one, as the chariot was an enormously consequential invention. (Put that down to my Platonist cultural heritage).
In any case, the Buddhist tradition itself began to realise some difficulties with this view. Ultimately this gives rise to the later Mah?y?nist teaching of the ?laya-vijñ?na, 'the eighth consciousness, being the substratum or storehouse consciousness according to the philosophy of the Yog?c?ra. The ?laya-vijñ?na acts as the receptacle in which the impressions (known as v?san? or b?ja) of past experiences and karmic actions are stored. From it the remaining seven consciousnesses arise and produce all present and future modes of experience in sa?s?ra, as well as maintaining one's sense of personal continuity (the citta-santana). At the moment of enlightenment (bodhi), the ?laya-vijñ?na is transformed into the Mirror-like Awareness or Prajñ?p?ramit? of a Buddha.'
Comparisons have been made between the Buddhist ?laya-vijñ?na and C G Jung's 'collective unconscious'. According to Jung, this collective unconscious is the source of archetypes universal, archaic symbols and images that derive from the shared experiences of our ancestors. These archetypes manifest in our dreams, mythologies, and religious beliefs.
The comparison between these two concepts often revolves around the idea that both represent a deep, underlying level of consciousness that is not directly accessible to our everyday conscious mind but manifest through our perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors. Both suggest a repository of latent, accumulated experiences in the case of ?laya-vijñ?na, these are individual and karmic, while for the collective unconscious, they are universal and archetypal.
Well you're right that personal identity of say, humans is fundamentally different from the 'ship of Theseus'. But the difference isn't because of DNA, it's because citizens exist both objectively (our bodies) and inter-subjectively (our identities), whereas archeological finds, such as ships, only exist objectively.
The turnover of cells (and thus molecules) of a human's body change our objective existance. However most layperson conversations about who we are do not use objective existance as the defining criteria. Commonly we use our inter-subjective existance (that is our existance as agreed upon by say, our community) as what we mean in conversation. Thus I am: my name, my family position, my profession, my reputation, my history. To myself, I am my memories and my beliefs and outlook. None of these is primarily defined by cells nor molecules.
OTOH a physical ship can slowly devolve from being 97% intact (or authentic) through lower and lower numbers until it hits zero and becomes a reproduction and no longer the ship of Theseus.
He says:
"when I think that a stone is a substance, or a thing capable of existing of itself, and that I am likewise a substance, although I conceive that I am a thinking and non-extended thing, and that the stone, on the contrary, is extended and unconscious, there being thus the greatest diversity between the two concepts, yet these two ideas seem to have this in common that they both represent substances".
Descartes' dualism posits two fundamentally different kinds of substances: the thinking substance (res cogitans) and the extended substance (res extensa). In Descartes' view, the mind (a thinking, non-extended thing) and the body (an extended, non-thinking thing) are distinct types of substances. He emphasizes the ability of these substances to exist independently, which is central to his dualistic framework. But at the same time, he says they both 'have this in common, that they both represent substances'.
It seems to me that here is where there is a major divergence between Descartes' and Aristotelean 'hylomorphic dualism' (as understood in Scholastic philosophy.) I think Descartes concept of 'Substance' in particular is very different, in taking 'a stone' as 'a thing capable of existing of itself'. I would have thought that hylomorphic dualism would not recognise a 'stone' as being a 'substance' in the sense they understand the term, namely, as a composite of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). I wonder if much thought was even given to such things as stones in their philosophy? I would have thought hylomorphic dualism was more concerned with the organic realm than with mineral substances.
Anyway, it is here that Descartes (1) equivocates the meanings of substance (ouisia in the Aristotelean terminology) with the everyday sense of the term (a material with uniform properties), and (2) posts 'res cogitans' as a 'substance' in an objective sense, that is something that exists objectively as a real thing ('res' meaning 'thing'.) I think the case can be made that this is where many of the deep confusions about mind and body that continue to bedevil western philosophy originate.
Good point, hence Kants attribution of problematic idealism to Descartes on the one hand, and his specificity of substance as a pure category on the other.
Best I could come up with, for the substance equivocation in Descartes, was Aristotles physics was still method of the day, re: pre-Newton. Dunno if thats a sustainable premise or not.
Human being, or being human.
I recall reading Plato saying that our innate abstract ideas on the world and objects, and the mathematical knowledge are from our recollection of our previous lives. So based on that perspective, I tried to come up with a syllogistic proof of the permanence of the human soul.
From Descartes famous declaration "cogito ergo zum", one cannot mistake one's own identity who one is, the identity of the human soul is one of the essence or properties of the human soul, therefore it stays the same no matter what happens to the body of the soul residing, or no matter how long time has passed since the birth of the soul.
The other properties of a person are subject to the changes through time or events of course such as the body will grow old, thoughts and views might change depending on the experience and age of the person etc, but the identity of the person remains the same no matter what changes have gone through to the whole body or thoughts, and the base of the identity is one's own memory of the past.
1. I have no recollection of the past experience of my previous life (if there was one) in my daily conscious mind, no matter how hard I try to remember them (it is just blank). But I can imagine my soul's existence in the ancient times, medieval times and 18 centuries. I was imagining meeting up with Plato, and having a chat in the sunny corner of the Roman square talking about the world of ideas. I can imagine myself walking along the medieval town of London dressed in the medieval clothing and a pointed hat going for a beer in the pub.
I am not sure how I can do these imagining if my soul had NOT existed in those times and NOT actually gone through in the real past lives seeing and encountering the images in my mind experiencing them personally. The people I see in my imagination are the ones I have never seen or met before in my real life or seen on TV or films.
2. On some days I have dreams in my sleep. The images I see in my dreams are the ones I have never seen before in my daily real life. The people I see and meet in my dreams are totally strangers to me, as well as the places I see are new and unfamiliar. I have absolutely no control of the contents of my dreams, and they are totally random in nature.
I often wonder why I dreamt these images and saw the people whom I never met or know, but there is no logical or causal explanation for the reasons. The only logical analogy I can come up with is that my soul had existed sometime in the past prior to my birth, and it encountered the places and situations in the images and people in my dreams. The only logical conclusion I could come up with is that all these contents of my imagination and dreams are my recollection of my past lives. If they are not, where else could they be from?
3. According to Descartes, soul is a different existence from body which is distinct itself, independent and composed of different substance to bodies. So it implies, souls can depart the body and keep existing transcending to some other possible worlds or universe for a while until finding a new born body to settle the new life in the body. When bodies get old the memory gets weak, and when the body dies the memory gets killed off too with all the other mental functionalities. But the soul is intact with its identity and all the latent memories, which survives the death, keeps existing, and gets reborn in the new body, which explains all the dreaming and imaginations which are based on its previous lives.
Therefore if one's soul had existed in the past outside one's body of the present life, then there is no reason why it shouldn't exist in the future when one's body no longer exists. The soul must exist throughout past, present and future permanently as long as the universe keeps existing, keep coming back to the profane lives whenever there is a match between a newly being born body and the body-less soul made up by God or coincidence - one of the laws of the universe.
I see. If I am not mistaken, that is Kant's view, that space and time are relational properties and not something in themselves. Modern science has taken a different direction, where space and time are substances that stand by themselves; but, as with (almost) everything in science, it is not set in stone, and it does not touch the metaphysical by definition.
Quoting javra
Is it not the inverse? Going by the first quote, it seems that space and time arise from objects, so space and time would need objects and not the other way. I feel like this could be a semantic nitpick on the way you phrased the statement; if it is, ignore it.
Quoting javra
That is fair, but, ¿in this view of consciousness, when can we say it starts? And if we have a person as a five year old, is it the same consciousness as the same person 80 years later with advanced dementia (may it not happen)?
Quoting javra
Right, that was what I was thinking of. Now, do you think that, if the nature of time is continuous (and time here would be not relative but an independent substance/dimension within which bodies exist), it would favour a process philosophy view of consciousness, and if it is discrete it would favour quanta-of-identity, or that there is no correlation?
Quoting javra
No. You broke it down very well. Thank you for your thoughts, they helped me organise my own.
Quoting javra
Cool, I have a friend who just got his doctorate in Process Philosophy.
I would say that does not follow logically.
I don't think Descartes makes such a mistake. He refers to the stone as a substance as res extensa, not a substance as in matter, atoms bond together in three dimensions.
So, to you, if someone loses their memory, they simply die and become another person?
Quoting Corvus
Are you actually saying that or this is some figurate speech I am not picking up on?
Its there in his own words. What do stones and his soul have in common? Theyre both substances.
He has changed the metaphysical sense, though. Descartes introduced a new meaning to the notion of substance but that this has had deleterious consequences. Recall he says 'these two ideas (i.e. stones and the mind) seem to have this in common that they both represent substances'. But comparing stones (or other such objects) with minds (res cogitans) seems to me a egregious equivocation of the idea of substance.
Also it has to be remembered that Descartes' mind-body dualism is an abstraction like an economic model or explanatory analogy, but I don't think the abstraction holds up very well. Whereas the Aristotelian model of matter and form is, I think, still quite feasible, even in light of modern science. I suppose you could say that hylomorphism gives complementary roles to matter and form - one cannot exist without the other as matter must have form, and forms can only be instantiated in matter, whereas Descartes model has two fundamentally different kinds of substance that are supposed to interact, but Descartes himself was never able to say how, and it's never been clarified since.
How so? Stones are res extensa, they are still substances. What definition of substance are you even using?
Quoting Wayfarer
That much is true, and it is a core problem of dualism. Not that physicalism does not have its problems either.
Not necessarily. One may only lose one's identity. Of course, this doesn't mean that one's objective identity is lost too. One only loses one's subjective identity with the loss of one's memory. The objective identity is intact as a fact whether one can recall who one is or not.
If you lost all your memory, I am sure you wouldn't know who you are. But at the time of one's death, all the memories of that life time will be flushed out into blank.
Hence when having been reborn into the secular world, one cannot recall the previous life's memories clearly. One can only scrounge the previous life memories via imagination and one's own dreams.
Quoting Lionino
As Kant said, any claims made on the Soul, also the opposite is true.
Category mistake?
I'm hoping an analogy might help. Here addressing space alone strictly via geometric points, which, as a reminder, are in themselves defined as volumeless: Conceptually addressed, were there to hypothetically strictly be one geometric point in all of existence, no space would manifest, for all that would here occur is one instantiation of volume-less-ness which, by its very attributes, is spaceless. However, once one allows for the occurrence of two or more geometric points, space (distance-between) will necessarily be coexistent with them. One can here say that space arises from (or is constituted by) a plurality of geometric points, yet here space would need a plurality of geometric points just as much as a plurality of geometric points would need space. Because they they can only be contemporaneous, it then doesn't make sense to ask whether space occurs first and the plurality of geometric points second or vice versa. The two necessitate each other at all times.
Also, as typically understood, objects are only one type of givens that are identity endowed. Thoughts, as well as emotions, can serve as another type of such givens. In so upholding, I then find that cognition is of itself spatiotemporal (although clearly not physical): As one example, because a paradigm (e.g., biological evolution) consists of multiple ideas (e.g., the ideas of species and mutation), a paradigm will then be "larger than" one individual idea contained therein from which it is constituted, such that this relation of "larger than" is here itself a spatial relation (albeit here, clearly not in a physical sense of space). I don't so much want to clarify this here (it would be very cumbersome) as to point out that when I previously mentioned identities I didn't mean to restrict them to objects (again, as objects are typically understood). A conscious being (to which thoughts, emotions, etc. pertain) being another identity that doesn't qualify as an object.
Quoting Lionino
You'll notice that the semantics are here subtly but importantly changed: this in the difference between "a conscious being" and "consciousness". I only know that I cannot know when consciousness started. In terms of a conscious being, however, this is always identified by type. For instance, in supposing that gametes are awareness-endowed and in this sense alone conscious beings, two gametic conscious beings can then unify to produce a different type of conscious being, that of the zygote's. The zygote will then develop and itself change in the nature of what conscious being is addressed till it becomes that type of conscious being which we identify as a human, at which point typically birth occurs. Then the conscious being further changes from a human infant, to a human child, to a human adolescent, etc.
Here, then, in the same sense that a human infant, or human child, and a human elder with advanced dementia (ditto to may it not happen) are different phases of the same exact human being, we can then safely affirm that the infant, or child, and the elder are two different phases of the same conscious being.
Having said this, the conscious being's consciousness will perpetually change throughout.
Here, then, each different type of conscious being will have a different type of quality and magnitude of overall consciousness: hence the sperm's awareness of direction, for example, is of a different magnitude than the awareness of the embryo in utero, is of a different magnitude than the awareness of the birthed human being as a whole.
But I fully acknowledge the many complexities involved. The aforementioned is nevertheless how I currently view the issue.
Quoting Lionino
Yes, this correlation is in keeping with my best current understanding, or at least my best current intuitions. Although I find that time can also be continuous and relative (this being the view I currently take - as in relative to a plurality of identities that are each endowed with the ability of causation).
An addendum to my previous reply: To more directly address this first question, given the aforementioned post's contents, a human conscious being will then approximately commence with birth into the world and will end with corporeal death. As to the threads overall theme, were continuation of conscious being to occur subsequent to deathin this example, via reincarnationsit would then consist of ongoing periods of a human conscious beings life thus understood: this in very rough analogy to how, during ones life, one as a conscious being consists of ongoing periods of awakened states of being which are separated by periods of sleep (which individually commence with awakening from sleep and end with falling asleep at night). The principle difference, to my mind, being consciously accessible recollections or former periods addressed. Yet such periodic states of being, to my mind at least, do not necessitate that process philosophy cannot apply throughout.
Quoting Corvus
Not the case. Res cogitans and res extensa are two distinct things, yet they are both still substances.
Agreed.
Quoting javra
I fully agree with that view of awareness. But in the sense of consciousness I use, it refers to subjective experience. I think most of us would agree that cells (and maybe embryos) do not have subjective experience. Thus, when even a cell has awareness, like we have awareness of light or heat, they don't have partake in the same experience as us.
Quoting javra
As a point of curiousity, this wasn't the subject originally, I did not think of reincarnation as I personally don't take it seriously as an idea, some users however brought it up along the discussion :sweat:
I am trying to capture the meaning of substance in philosophy as distinct from everyday use. I am mindful of the fact that substance, in philosophy, is derived from the Latin translation of Aristotles word, ouisia, which is a form of the verb to be. The meaning of the Greek verb to be is very difficult to define (theres an excellent academic paper that was introduced here some years ago about this, Charles Kahn, The Greek Verb To Be and the Problem of Being which can be downloaded from here. Also see The Meaning of Ousia in Plato.) //A very simple way of putting it is that ousia is much nearer in meaning to being than thing.//
The Latin translators then used substantia, that which stands under, as the translation of ousia, and from there it became substance in English. But as Ive said, the term is nowadays nearly always thought to refer to some kind of stuff or thing (which is the meaning of reification, namely, to turn an abstraction into a thing. The root of that word is res-, the Latin term for thing or object, and the basis of Descartes res cogitans, literally, thinking thing.)
Later, Husserl points to the same issue in his Crisis of the Western Sciences. Whilst he admires Descartes genius for recognising the ineliminable ground of being in the Cogito, and wrote whole books on Cartesian Meditations, he faults him for conceiving of res cogitans as an objective existent, on par with other existents - I seem to recall him saying Descartes made it a little fag-end of the world, which naturally makes it seem an epiphenomenon from the materialist perspective. Again it is a flaw of reification which was identified first by Kant, and later by phenomenology and existentialism, but to see that requires something like a gestalt shift, a change in perspective.
I acknowledge its a difficult issue but theres quite a bit of commentary about it. The underlying problem of post-Cartesianism is the oxymoronic conception of mind as an object or thing, whereas in reality, we never really experience mind as an object. The mind is that which experiences, it is transcendental in Kants sense.
Quoting Corvus
Quite so, although I expect that criticism would have made no sense in Descartes time.
That meaning of substance was the one that I have been using. You brought up in an earlier comment that Descartes is confusing the philosophical substance with the chemical substance, which is not something that we verify in his writings.
Quoting Wayfarer
Now there is something that is interesting. Though it may seem a mistake to objectify the mind, as it is the mind that scans for objects, is it not valid when we talk about self-reflection, or rather, self-analysis? Descartes in his meditations talks about investigating what is this "thinking thing", which is him. Can the memories we have of our mind and/or experiences not be an object which will then be studied by the mind itself? Surely it is not the same thing as a physical body, like a stone, but we could argue that it could be seen as a thing that exists, hence why Descartes calls it a substance.
Quoting Wayfarer
Essent?a is the translation of ?????, for substant?a it is based on ?????????.
As to the Greek language, I am very close to the nation that currently speaks this language, as far as someone who is not from there or naturalised can be, and I can assure Greeks can use the verb "to be" just fine. As to the definition of "being", that is not an issue with the Greek language but with Western philosophy in general.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is this baffling trend of English speakers claiming their words come from Latin. None of their words come from Latin, except for some such as "mass" and "spend" that came from the Catholic usage of Latin during the early Middle Ages when English proper did not exist yet, only its ancestor Anglo-Saxon. Words in English such as "essence", "beauty", and "communication" come from French, whose language is the superstrate base of English when the French conquered England in 1066. Ancient Romans, whose modern descendents of culture and blood are the Portuguese, Italians, French, Romanians, Rhaetic etc, never came in contact with the English because those did not even exist yet, it is anachronistic. Romans had contact with High Germans (ancestors of German speakers today), hence the actual Latin words like zelle and schreiben in modern German, and little contact with Low Germans like Saxons (who still exist today) and Franks (possibly the ancestors of modern Dutch). To exemplify, there is no such word "substance" in Latin, but if you check a French dictionary it is right there; that is where the English lexeme "substance" comes from.
And the root of the word is r?-, not res-, which does not exist.
Whilst Latin may not be a source of much of the daily English lexicon, philosophy was written in Latin up until the 18th century, hence the Latinised origin of the term in philosophy.
I take your point about the root of res cogitans.
More later.
Latin is definitely not the source of any of the daily English lexicon except for the few words I mentioned, French is the source of almost everything productive in English today. English did not exist at the time of Ancient Latin. It is literally no different in quality than saying Akkadian is a source of the English language completely anachronistic. There is no alternative.
In bold are the French words and morphemes.
Via the Latin substantia, as SEP also says.
For example, consider a presentist who considers the concept of change to only refer to objects but not to subjects (since he believes the present to be the only moment of time). Then he might assent to the sentence that "the soul is permanent", as a vulgar way of expressing his view that the word "impermanent" isn't applicable to subjects.
None! In fact I accept the latter entirely. I mean, I'm not like 100% confident in it or anything, but it seems intuitively reasonable to me.
But you're using the word 'thing' and 'existence' very imprecisely here. Surely I can reflect on myself, I can engage in reflection and analysis, but that is always something done by a subject, and the subject itself is never truly an object, as such, except for in the metaphorical sense of 'the object of enquiry'. We relate to the natural world and to others as objects of perception (although understanding of course that others are also subjects), but the 'I' who thus relates is not an object, but that to which or whom objects appear.
I know the following is perhaps tangential to the OP, but recall that this particular digression was based on the quote I mentioned from Descartes which compares stones and minds as instances of substance. I found the reference I was thinking of regarding Husserl's critique of Descartes' tendency to 'objectify' the mind, in the Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, edited by Dermot Moran. He says:
(I believe that's a reference to the 20th century program of naturalised epistemology.)
A little further along he says:
Why? because:
Can substance be further broken down into their constructive elements?
For example, bread is made of flour. Water is made of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen molecules.
What is res extensa made of? What is res cogitans made of?
There is no via. English substance comes from French and it matches usía in meaning likely because of the way the equivalent word in other languages has been used in European philosophy. There is no "via Latin" for English. Albanian has 50% of its vocabulary actually coming from Latin. English is closer to 0%. English speakers have nothing to do with Romans. Nothing to do with Latin. Albanians, Lebanese, Algerians do.
Where is the etymology sourced from? It is completely wrong from foot to head. The Middle English word was substaunce, among other forms such as sobstance. Latin substantia does not mean "substance" (whatever that means, being a distortion of the French word), but being, content or support. As far as we can tell substantia was built straight from substo (instead of substans which is barely attested and does not have a separate meaning from its root verb), which does not mean "stand under".
You insist to talk about a culture that you have nothing to do with and spread misinformation about it. And since your reply barely relates to my rebuttal of your statements about Latin and Greek, here are some unrelated historically accurate Roman opinions instead:
Quoting Cicero
Quoting Cassius Dio
And a bonus Aristotle quotation:
Descartes does not say anything about it. Those two would be fundamental, but both res cogitans and res extensa for him ultimately come from God, causally speaking.
You say so but I don't see the explanation for such. The word is used as standard both in everything English and in philosophy: something that exists.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is fine and all. If you want to separate the "I" and say your memories of it are not equivalent to it, I would even go as far as to say that that it is accurate. But if it is the case, there is nothing to be evaluated besides physical objects, and so our view has to default to physicalism, and the self can then never be investigated.
Quoting Wayfarer
Thanks, it is indeed tangential to the OP, but it is something that I am personally interested in and I will look into it.
This is very interesting and I resonate with it. Relating to self-reference, consciousness can never fully account for itself just like a computer could never simulate itself. But I think it is possible for it to account for itself in parts, just like a computer can simulate itself in parts.
Not at all. Recall the primal dictum given to Socrates by the Oracle of the Temple of Delphi: know thyself! But that is a very different matter to knowing about an objective subject, such as physics or chemistry or cosmology. Not that theyre in any way in conflict, but you can be expert in a technical subject yet still lack the insight typically associated with self-knowledge. (I see Hugh Everett III, who came up with the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, as an example.)
Where I place Descartes in the grand scheme of things, is that he is associated with the advent of the modern world-view. Indeed my first undergraduate unit in philosophy was in Descartes: The First Modern Philosopher. Later I came to understand how the combination of Descartes philosophy with his co-ordinate geometry, combined with Newtonian science and Galileos physics, form one of the pillars of the modern world and the scientific revolution. And obviously it is a momentous cultural and historical achievement. But it also marks the advent of a particularly modern form of consciousness - the self-aware subject situated in the domain of objective forces directed by physical laws. It gives rise to what I have termed the illusion of otherness, which is the sense of separation between self and world which runs deep in modern culture - whereas in earlier cultures, there is a lived sense of kinship with nature (although not in the romantic sense that modern environmentalism understands it.) So the kind of criticism Husserl makes, is a reflection on Descartes and the human condition. This is why phenomenology becomes one of the main sources of the later existentialism of Heidegger, Sartre and others.
This is basically what Ive been studying since I was in my twenties and debating here for the last ten years or so. I get its a lot to take on and also that I might be mistaken about some fundamental aspects of it.
First, I think it strikingly obvious that nothing is permeant, when one is talking about the permeance of the soul, I would think we are then talking about identity. We are born without identity and acquire it through our experiences with our social context. We are all at birth patterns made by a less-than-perfect pattern maker, our DNA, which in turn is governed by change, impermanence, and the ever-changing world. We are an energy form which is of the nature of that which experiences the energies that surround us. Like those energies that surround us, we change form to be unmanifested or manifested into something else. Define your terms, is for this argument the soul consciousness itself? There can only be a serious argument for the permanence of the soul, if the soul is thought to be energy itself.
:up:
edit: For example, you could argue that knowledge represents a form of energy. Then the process of coming into being of knowledge-being in an organic entity could be akin to the igniting of a fire in a combustible material. Then that selfsame fire, when the original pile of material is consumed, can be used to ignite something else, even a completely different phase of matter, like a gas. So, analogously, this soul or what I would characterize as thought-being can move through material phases, although being essentially energy. Something like that.
Thus, in process philosophy, the soul (or mind or whatever you wanna call it) would be not the substances that stay through time but as an integrating process. This is in line with what jarva brought up, when he talked about how, in the context of Theseus ship, the object is that which undergoes change of course, as I explained, that could be necessary but evidently it is not sufficient for identity, otherwise everything that undergoes change would be one, which might be ontologically true but not epistemically true.
In that view, what I propose is that the self could be characterised as a chain of experienced patterns that emerge subjective experience. In simpler language, the self would be fluid, the union of many mental elements which grow (or decrease, in the case of dementia) through time, and often when we try to analyse (literally meaning untie) this process we end up atomising it in a given moment and as someone brought up previously, some philosophers say this is a mistake based on objectifying the mind.
Consciousness then (or the soul etc) would start at birth or whenever we wanna say we first become conscious (mirror test?) and ends in death.
I believe that would work if time is continuous, however if time is discrete that would add some complications, as this process could be divided by virtue of itself being in time. If that would be the case, it seems that a process philosophy view of self would not be favourable against a substance view of self.
And if we have discrete time, the soul would be split temporally into several disconnected instants, each with its corresponding instantaneous mental state, and what connects them? Nothing, in the sense that a mental state only seems to be connected to a past state because it is born with the memory of that past. And why is it born with this memory? This would be a consequence of the material world and neurology, in which the brain conditions the mental state to have this memory, because the brains corresponding to the previous mental state and the current mental state have spatio-temporal continuity.
One may say that the idea of the self is materially false, but I would argue otherwise. Just because we cannot clearly define orange as separate from yellow and red, it does not mean orange is materially false, orange is very much real as science tells us.
These are some thoughts I have had after doing some (though not nearly enough) reading on related subjects. I am open and eager to clearly-explained criticisms and additions.
Quoting Lionino
I don't accept that neurology or the natural sciences, generally, have an adequate grasp of the intricacies of inherited memory and the like. Consider that individuals are born with proclivities, talents, dispositions, and so on. You can account for a certain proportion of it in terms of cultural conditioning and social influence, but there seem traits which seem impossible to account for by those means (precocious talent, for instance.) Furthermore, much of what shapes and influences us is not directly available to conscious awareness or introspection. I'm sure I'd be right in saying that I sometimes do or say things for reasons (or due to impulses) the origin of which I myself am dimly aware of. Western culture has, of course, only naturalistic or materialist grounds on which to account for these factors, but I very much doubt their adequacy.
I think there's a deep underlying issue with the question of agency and moral responsibility. Of course if you accept the reality of karma then that provides the unifying principle that ties that together, but it's not widely popular in our culture.
Such as?
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, we are not aware of everything that is going on in our brain.
Quoting Wayfarer
At no point were these two brought up simultaneously. You keep trying to push Indian religions because you personally subscribe to it/them, not because they are pertinent.
And I do not agree that western culture is materialistic or naturalistic, being that the west is catholic, only that it has this tendency.
I can see why you say that, but it's because they are a source of explanatory frameworks and metaphors which are largely absent in modern discouse.I mean, after all, the subject of the OP is 'reasons for believing in the permanence of the soul'. Who in secular culture even believes there is a soul? I know from long experience on this forum that the idea of the soul is not well-received here.
Quoting Lionino
That's a bit of an over-generalisation, I feel. I do have some knowledge, very limited, of the philosophy of Aquinas, and there are Catholic philosophers I respect considerably, but I don't know if I accept their eschatology.
I am still very much at the beginning of my critical/philosophical thinking journey, so what I say here might seem really basic and unsubstantiated, but I am trying to engage more with people with such wonderful minds as those on this forum.
I found the hammer analogy very interesting. To my mind, changing a single atom changes the hammer to something different. The general perception of the hammer has remained the same - we look at it as a constituent of its parts - carbon, hydrogen, iron etc atoms stacked and bonded in a specific way giving it what the majority of people would perceive to resemble what we have come to call a 'hammer.' I feel that it is still a hammer with that one atom change, but not the same hammer. Our minds don't register this changed atom - we don't suddenly lose our hammer because one atom changed, then think we have a new hammer.
I find the perception part quite interesting. To my mind (in its relatively novice-like manner), we cannot perceive anything as existing. The electron cloud around every atom changes constantly, there is no way to determine an absolutely static template of the hammer because time is infinitely reducible, and the most infinitesimal portion of time will have changed the hammer. Our minds cannot process those changes to that degree, so we have a generalised idea of what a hammer is, how it looks to our eyes through the reflection of light, and we assign 'hammer' to it. But there can be no 'hammer' outside of this perception and....oh dear, now my brain is wondering whether our perception of the hammer actually does make the hammer exist.
Is this what Buddhism is talking about - that nothing exists and there is only emptiness, and realisation of emptiness brings enlightenment?
What are y'all doing to my tiny little pea brain!
Could it be that the 'self' does exist but in a dynamic state, always changing but, for the most part, recognisable over time if you analyse in small enough increments of time
I don't feel so. Since antiquity, even before Diocletianus, the Mediterranean world is split into West and East. This split was reinforced with the Great Schism into making these two synonym with Catholic and Orthodox respectively.
Quoting Wayfarer
In Western philosophy, "soul" is often used as a synonym with mind, reason, etc. I cleared that up a few times in the thread and in the very first line of OP. And personally, I don't even know what else "soul" could even mean whether we (or religious people) attribute things like transmigration and permanence after bodily death to it is besides the point.
By soul I mean mind, reason (of an individual), consciousness, that which has subjective experience as stated in the OP. Those are sufficiently synonymous in this context. As to energy, I only recognise two types: kinetic and potential.
That is a possibility. As suggested before, it could be that thing that undergoes change over time. But that adds a very big problem to it: where does it start and where does it end? If the distinguishing criteria of something is undergoing incremental changes, we can't say where it begins and where it ends, as nothing in this world is created or destroyed, only changed. Likewise, we go from right to left on the electromagnetic spectrum, starting from what we call orange, and we move bit by bit. At what point can we say we are no longer at orange and now at red? Surely, the border between red and purple would no longer be orange, but we have no definite answer for the border where orange turns not-orange.
An answer like that gives us a definition of soul/identity that has very loose borders.
Indeed. One could argue in this case that the 'soul' (or mind, consciousness, whatever one wishes to call it) has always and will always exist within our limited understanding of time and space - just in different forms, which brings a whole host of questions around what was before the big bang and what comes after it is all over. Someone on a spiritual path might say this means the soul always lives on. Someone of a more scientific ilk might suggest that consciousness arises as a result of electrical activity in the brain, and since energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed, some form of soul always exists, but at what point do we stop considering it a soul and just a collection of energy?
I like what you say about orange and red - when does it stop being orange and start being red? On the surface, when the frequency hits a certain point that has been pre-determined, we are told it is orange or red. But we have set that precedent of what is red and what is orange within our relatively limited visual spectrum. But regardless of what we call something, I suppose this is exactly the same problem as dealing with tiny increments of time...at what point does the frequency become red/orange? Frequency in this case would be just like time wouldn't it? In that there are infinite increments, and we can never find the instant it is one thing and not another, because the increments can always be made smaller.
Apologies if that's a bit rambling, it is a very interesting topic!
Welcome to the Forum.
There's definitely something like that idea in Buddhist philosophy. Emptiness (??nyat?) is very easily misunderstood principle, but it means basically 'empty of intrinsic or inherent existence'. Things exist as a consequence of causes and conditions, on the one hand, and because we relate to them in a certain way, on the other. A piece of stone is a hammer in the right circumstances. And of course, a hammer really is a hammer, made for a specific purpose, and something you could not do without if you needed to bang in a nail. But then, as Abraham Maslow said, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. (This is a good intro to Buddhist 'emptiness' - which should never be, but often is, confused with nihilism.)
Quoting Daniel Duffy
It's been said a few times in this thread that soul must be just energy - but energy is not intentional, whereas one would think that intentionality is at the very seat of the soul (or mind or consciousness). Another point about living beings is their ability to maintain their identity while going through change - and that identity can be maintained even through generations. Whereas inanimate material does not have that capacity (even if we can recognise its continuity. An interesting, although superficial, point - one of Aristotle's famous works is usually referred to as 'De Anima', usually translated as 'on the Soul'. I'm intrigued by the connection between 'anima', 'animate', and 'animal' - as if the soul is what 'animates' the body. Although that said, I've only ever read snippets of the actual text.)
Thanks, glad to be here :)
Quoting Wayfarer
Could we define intention as energy behaving in a certain way? I read somewhere about an argument between matter producing consciousness, or consciousness creating matter. Kind of like the chicken and egg, what came first question. If intention is energy, like all other energy, it cannot be created or destroyed (in our current understanding). I realise this is a big, unsubstantiated jump... just trying to explore what my head is thinking haha
True - Old English did not exist in either 100 b.c.e. or 100 c.e., but the language of the people who invaded Britain and that evolved into Old English, Middle English, and Modern English Did exist. French didn't exist in 100 b.c.e. or 100 c.e., either. (Anyone who really wanted to get ahead in Roman society made a point to learn proper Latin.
French words and words derived from French make up a significant portion of the English lexicon. However, it is possible to write a long trilogy (like Lord of the Rings) and use a lexicon that is roughly 80% to 90% derived from AngloSaxon. The 10%-15% remainder are generally French words acquired by Middle English.
I don't have a problem saying that Latin came into English through French. After all, French is derived from Latin. (Can't we say French is the way people in Gaul spoke Latin?)
Quite a few Latinate words were brought directly into English by English speakers who were also competent in Latin. A lot of these words were coined in the 16th and 17th centuries. Why? Because the vernacular English lexicon, a mix of French and AngloSaxon words, was short on abstract terms. An example is 'alienate' coined in the 16th century.
Alienate is French, as evidenced by the -e ending, and the word already existed in Latin.
Quoting BC
You shouldn't, because French is English's mama.
Besides, little of what you said connects to my original statement.
I don't understand why you keep repeating this over and over, it is weirdly funny. You are not Latin. You are French.
And the granny? Latin. :snicker:
Or... West Germanic, in the Indo-European language family?
Finally! You just admitted French is Latin. :smile:
Haha I never denied it!
Jajajaja una leche!
The Simple View (SV) is the view that "that there are no informative, non-trivial persistence conditions for people, that is, that personal persistence is an ultimate and unanalyzable fact".
SV has two versions, IM (identity mysticism) and WR-INI (weakly reductive and in independence non-informative).
IM is: "X at t1 is identical to Y at t2 if and only if X at t1 is identical to Y at t2".
WR-INI is: "X at t1 is identical to Y at t2 iff there is some fact F1 about X at t1, and some fact F2 about Y at t2, and F1 and F2 are irreducible to facts about the subjects psychology or physiology, and X at t1 is identical with Y at t2 in virtue of the fact that the propositions stating F1 and F2 differ only insofar as that X and t1 occur in the former where Y and t2 occur in the latter".
"In their most prominent variants [in WR-INI], these elements [F] are due to references to souls, Cartesian Egos or other spiritual or immaterial substances and/or properties."
We can promptly think of objections to that:
"Initially the idea underlying this claim may appear prejudicial; ultimately it is based on a number of widespread but not universally accepted beliefs about the naturalness of the world and the nature, validity and theoretical implications of physicalism."
"According to this general stance, either both psychological and physiological continuity relations are fully reducible to a domain in which physical explanations are couched, perhaps in terms of the basic elements of a final and unified theory of physics, or they belong themselves to such a domain". So basically, personal identity is either grounded in a non-physical element, or it is ultimately grounded on physical elements. That was my worry when making this thread that, if physicalism obtains, personal identity is arbitrary and continuation of consciousness illusory.
"Nowadays, the Simple View is disparaged as a theory only maintained by thinkers whose religious or spiritual commitments outweigh the reasons that speak against their views on personal identity."
Reductionism:
"Psychological Criteria of personal identity hold that psychological continuity relations, that is, overlapping chains of direct psychological connections, as those causal and cognitive connections between beliefs, desires, intentions, experiential memories, character traits and so forth, constitute personal identity"
"Two apparently physiological theories of personal identity are at bottom psychological, namely (i) the Brain Criterion, which holds that the spatiotemporal continuity of a single functioning brain constitutes personal identity; and (ii) the Physical Criterion, which holds that, necessarily, the spatiotemporal continuity of that which sustains the continuous psychological life of a human being over time, which is, contingently, a sufficient part of the brain that must remain in order to be the brain of a living person, constitutes personal identity"
"Consider a test case. Imagine there to be a tribe of beings who are in all respects like human beings, except for the fact that their brains and livers have swapped bodily functions: their brains regulate, synthesize, store, secrete, transform, and break down many different substances in the body, while their livers are responsible for their cognitive capacities, basic integrated postural and locomotor movement sequences, perception, instincts, emotions, thinking, and other integrative activities. Imagine the brain criterion to be true for human beings. Would we have sufficient reason to believe the brain criterion to be true for members of the tribe in question as well, if we were aware of all facts about their physiologies? No, precisely because the brain criterion is true for human beings, a liver criterion would have to be true for members of this tribe. There is nothing special about the 1.3 kilograms of grey mass that we carry around in our skulls, except for the fact that this mass is the seat of our cognitive capacities."
Yeah, no, the brain and the liver are defined exactly by their functions, as what causes the brain and the liver to have such and such functions is the physical make-up of their cells, the nephrons and the neurons. A brain that stores, secretes and breaks down substance in the body is no longer a brain because it is made of nephrons or something that ultimately works the same as nephrons, making it a liver.
"We can further distinguish between three versions of the psychological criterion: the Narrow version demands psychological continuity to be caused normally, the Wide version permits any reliable cause, and the Widest version allows any cause to be sufficient to secure psychological continuity (cf. Parfit 1984). The Narrow version, we may note, is logically equivalent to the Physical Criterion."
"A criterion of personal identity tells us what our persistence necessarily consists in, which means that it must be able to deliver a verdict in possible scenarios that is consistent with its verdicts in ordinary cases."
"First, some attempts to cash out personal identity relations in psychological terms appeal exclusively to direct psychological connections. These accounts face the problem that identity is a transitive relation (see 1.a.) while many psychological connections are not"
"Appeal to overlapping layers or chains of psychological connections avoids the problem by permitting indirect relations: according to this view, the old man is identical with the kid precisely because they are related to each other by those causal and cognitive relations that connect kid and teacher and teacher and old man."
"Opponents of the psychological criterion typically favour a physiological approach. There are at least two of them: (i) the Bodily Criterion holds that the spatiotemporal continuity of a functioning human body constitutes personal identity (cf. Williams 1956-7; 1970; Thompson 1997); and (ii) the Somatic Criterion holds that the spatiotemporal continuity of the metabolic and other life-sustaining organs of a functioning human animal constitutes personal identity (cf. Mackie 1999; Olson 1997a; 1997b; Snowdon 1991; 1995; 1996)."
Utter slop, but the article provides enough counter-arguments.
Quasi-psychology:
"Assume, for reductio, that personal identity consists in direct memory connections. In that case the kid is identical with the primary school teacher and the primary school teacher is identical with the old man; the old man, however, is not identical with the kid. Since this conclusion violates the transitivity of identity (which states that if an X is identical with a Y, and the Y is identical with a Z, then the X must be identical with the Z), personal identity relations cannot consist in direct memory connections."
Theseus' ship but goofy.
"Second, memory alone is not necessary for personal identity, as lack of memory through periods of sleep or coma do not obliterate ones survival of these states. Appeal to causal and cognitive connections which relate not only memory but other psychological aspects is sufficient to eradicate the problem. Let us say that we are dealing with psychological connectedness if the relations in question are direct causal or cognitive relations, and that we are dealing with psychological continuity if overlapping layers of psychological connections are appealed to (cf. Parfit 1984)."
"consider the case of Teletransportation above: if at t2 Y on Mars remembers having had at t1 Xs experience on earth that the coffee is too hot, then, necessarily, X at t1 is identical with Y at t2. The dialectic of such thought experiments, however, requires that a description of the scenario is possible that does not presuppose the identity of the participants in question. We would wish to say that since X and Y share all psychological features, it is reasonable or intuitive to judge that X and Y are identical, and precisely not that since we describe the case as one in which there is a continuity between Xs and Ys psychologies, X and Y are necessarily identical. If some psychological predicates presuppose personal identity in this way, an account of personal identity which constitutively appeals to such predicates is viciously circular."
A decent article, but very shallow overview.
It seems like you are asking about perdurance, not permanence. The word "permanence" tends to lead to these sorts of considerations:
Quoting Captain Homicide
It seems to me that whether the soul exists from moment to moment and whether the soul exists after death are related questions, with related arguments.
But sticking to perdurance, it strikes me as a subset of the induction problem. If one takes Humean premises then proof of perdurance is impossible. If one takes Aristotelian premises then familiarity with the nature of the soul can allow one to understand that it has the property of perduring. These are two top-level approaches.
Quoting Lionino
Wouldn't the same questions arise, but in this case about the process rather than the substance? It seems that we would simply move to asking whether the process perdures over time.
Those are sufficiently synonymous, but if you wanna make the distinction, I am talking about the former, not of life after death, yes.
Quoting Leontiskos
In the sense that "From that I am the same person I was before, I can't infer that I will be afterwards."? My question is a bit more extreme, it denies the first premise. Though the focus is indeed on the future, as the past is past, the question also applies to the past: ¿how do I know I am the same person I was minutes ago, but not another person with the same memories due to us sharing the same bodily brain?:
Quoting Lionino
This naturally relies on there being a material world. I am not sure how an idealist/panpsychist would reply, or perhaps there is no such problem to them.
Quoting Leontiskos
How so? Descartes dogmatically attributes duration as an attribute of the substance, with no justification (Principles Part 1). The alternative is that it is constantly being annihilated and created through time; although it is not an appealing alternative, he does not address or refute that possibility.
The question has mind-body dualism as a premise, as can be seen especially non-eliminationism about mental states. Though I think the eliminationist physicalist still has to give some account of personal identity.
Quoting Leontiskos
The process is the perdurance through time, so, if there is such a thing as some experience in time, and each successive point in time there is another experience, the soul is the interconnectedness of those experiences, that gives rise to a sense of self which is the subject.
To give a horrible analogy, the origin and the outflow of a river and everything in between is the consciousness/soul at a moment in time for substance philosophy; for process philosophy, it would be the river flowing itself.
Edit: there were some screw-ups, they have been fixed now.
Is this not just the continuity afforded by memory?
We can also say that, for instance, a tree has a persistent identity over time. I plant a tree when a child and then seventy years later I see the tree has grown into a mighty Eucalypt. The tree is a concatenation of self-regulating processes including metabolism. The material constituents are constantly changing, and the form is constantly morphing, but nonetheless it is distinct from all other trees. Shall we then say with Aristotle that trees and all other living things are, on account of hylomorphic perdurance, ensouled?
In the simple sense of, "How do I know that what I have known myself to be will perdure into the future?"
Quoting Lionino
This sounds like a concrete objection to a perdurance view, namely, "But what if you were recreated as a separate person who has the same memories because they possess the same bodily brain?" If such an objection obtains then perdurance fails, but to ask about the objection is different from asking about perdurance per se.
This gets to the separate argument that perdurance is the prima facie view, and that it should stand if there are no good objections.
Quoting Lionino
Familiarity with the soul shows that it perdures, just as familiarity with wood shows that it burns. This familiarity comes both with respect to our own souls and with respect to other person's souls. For example, I can continue my chess game with my friend from yesterday because his soul and mine perdured from yesterday to today.
Quoting Lionino
I don't know if it's the same excerpt, but your quote from page 1 seems to conclude in the idea that one is dependent for their existence, and "that conservation and creation differ merely in respect of our mode of thinking and not in reality." This gets at the idea of distinctions without any difference. If one person says that we are conserved in existence at each moment and another says that we are recreated at each moment, and there is no adjudicable way to distinguish these two views, then what are we even talking about at that point?
Quoting Lionino
We can define 'soul' as "the interconnectedness of those experiences," but in that case the original question seems to simply morph into the question of whether this "soul" exists.
:up: As Witty says, "The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied.
Yes, the idea of the body being the best picture of the soul seems right to me. I am also reminded of Spinoza's "the soul is the idea of the body".
And what else can the idea of hylomorphism pertain to but the body?
:up: :up:
The point here is that I want to ask the question, "What kinds of arguments could be thought capable of adjudicating the question of the soul's perdurance?"
There seem to be two main camps, one where the soul's perdurance is obvious and perhaps properly basic, and a second where there can be no possible argument in favor of the soul's perdurance. It's hard to understand how this thesis is something that can be properly argued about. It reminds me of the arguments for or against Occasionalism in that way.
Suppose you had a nice cup of coffee with grandma at the nursing home yesterday. You go back today and she doesn't recognize you at all, and she is suspicious of your claims to be related to her.
Now the commonsensical interpretation is that her body is the same but her soul is different. If the difference in her soul was manifest in her body then simply upon seeing her you would have noticed the difference, but you didn't.
The objection is presumably something like, "Oh, well the difference is her memory, and her memory is part of her brain, and her brain is part of her body. So it is a bodily change after all." But this is a strange and non-commonsensical way to talk. It is really an elaborate theory of the relation between grandma's lack of recognition and the putative underlying physical causes, and when we talk about "body" we aren't usually talking about such things. For example, you wouldn't go home to your family and tell them, "Grandma experienced a bodily change today."
I never know what to make of common-sense-use of language when it comes up against either its actual meaning, or where it illustrates something clearly untrue such as like "His soul left his body at that jump-scare" where it could be illustrating a genuine dissociation (albeit, extremely transient).
I don't know. That's a good question.
The first thing that comes to mind is to not appeal to reductionistic or highly theoretical answers before acknowledging the prima facie phenomenon. It seems that something about grandma's core identity has changed, in a way that goes beyond a bodily change. So the first thing we should wonder is whether it is worth making a qualitative distinction between grandma suffering a broken leg and grandma suffering dementia.
Quoting AmadeusD
I suppose the rub is that use of the word 'soul' requires a great deal of disambiguation. But then I would wonder how stark the practical difference actually is? An intangible explanatory entity (if this is how we wish to conceive of a soul) in fact seems to have a great deal in common with an intangible explanation. Both possess a healthy share of opacity.
Still, I'm not sure the OP is using 'soul' in the sense of an intangible explanatory entity.
Quoting AmadeusD
In the first place I would want to make sure we are taking stock of whether a word is being used in its colloquial sense or in a specialized technical sense. Grandma's change may relate to her body in the technical sense, but probably not in the colloquial sense. The bugbear here is catch-all theories, such as, say, string theory. "Oh, her new condition has to do with a change in the vibrations of the strings." Perhaps, but is this really going to help us understand what is happening to grandma? It's hard to see how an explanation that does not involve colloquial meanings can function as an explanation to anyone other than the specialist, or to one committed to an elaborate unified theory.
Edit: Maybe the more straightforward answer is simply, "Does positing something like physicalism provide an answer to the OP, for or against?"
An argument for some kind of self permanence, in the sense you are talking, would probably be better grounded in emergentism or something more applicable to entropy at large - meaning metaphysical grounding rather than in physicalism.
That seems to do the same as Descartes, dogmatically attributing duration to the soul without deeper justification.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, that is Descartes saying and I don't immediately agree with it. Especially because I think there is an assumption of discrete time, instead of continuous, there.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is true, because you may argue there is no interconnectedness. That is true if we have different experiences in different points in time.
If we say however that experience is something that flows and cannot exist in a single point time but instead needs to exist in an interval of time, I think doubting the interconnectedness is equal to doubting the self (which Descartes gave the final argument again). For Kant, we must think in terms of space and time, I am willing to accept this idea. If it is true, it may be because there is no snapshot of the mind, it must exist as persisting in time, for as we create a snapshot of it in an instant it is no longer a mind but something else. Like a river, if we create a snapshot of it, it is no longer a river but a lake.
I think the subscriber to substance metaphysics is able to doubt that the interconnected of those experiences exists because it is premised on a snapshot of the soul being possible; while process metaphysics will say that there is no consciousness on an instant of time.
Let me frame it in a different way. Substance metaphysics works under the assumption that there is such a substance that can be located in an instant of time (a snapshot), and for one to say that the substance is not being created and annihilated each instant, one has to say that the soul persists through time. Process metaphysics however will not commit to there being a substance that can be located in time, but that the soul is something that itself exists through time, and thus is also defined by it.
So when I am alive and experiencing, it is not something that happens in an instant but something that happens constinuously, there is no consciousness without time. Therefore process metaphysics doesn't have to prove the persistence of the soul, it is premised in that metaphysics. As soon as we prove our own existence, the existence of the self, and we are premised in that self existing as a constinuous entity (process) rather than a discrete one (substance), we know that the self endures.
I think this post from another thread is relevant https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/895615
Not just memory. If it were memory, the teleportation puzzle would be solved. If all your atoms are dissolved and then over to another place at nearly speed of light, then reassembled, did you die and went to eternal sleep and what is created a perfect copy of you? Or is it you and you simply lost consciousness for an instant? is the question. There is a spatio-temporal, physical continuity between the moments of the tree as it grows, same with our brains; the issue however is whether we are the same consciousness as before.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't find that to be true. In fact for me it is evidently false, which might be based on the same reason why Abrahamic religions would disagree.
The problem with physicalism is that it does not address the sensation of "forever here". This is recognised by physicalist philosophers too:
As was said in my comment 922875, the whole discussion is somewhat reliant on mind-body dualism.
So do you then see my claim about wood as 'dogmatic'?
I think we need a more precise definition of what you mean by the word 'soul'.
Quoting Lionino
You use three different terms here, 'self', 'mind', and 'soul'. Are those three all the same thing in the context of this thread?
The difficulty I see here is that we could concede to the process thinker that the soul can only exist in a duration of time, but this doesn't solve the difficulty. Suppose, for example, that the argument is rephrased in terms of durations rather than instants, perhaps in terms of years. Then we might ask whether the soul from 2020 perdures into 2021, and whether the soul from 2021 perdures into 2022, etc.
Quoting Lionino
If I recall correctly, many Medieval thinkers equate conservation with creation, such that there is no difference between a substance which is conserved and a substance which is annihilated and created. This is part of what I was getting at with the "no adjudicable way to distinguish these two views" comment.
Quoting Lionino
Then the other question comes in. If soul is defined by time, and time does not end at death, then does the soul end at death? If the soul is thought to cease at death then it must be defined by something more than time.
Quoting Lionino
But what is the difference between building an answer to the inquiry into one's premises, and begging the question? This seems to be precisely what a petitio principii is.
Quoting Lionino
If the question here is whether there is a proof for perdurance, then it is the same as the question of whether the process thinker's premise is provable.
Quoting Lionino
Okay, thanks. I agree that there is something goofy about dividing up the soul's temporal experience into instants of time, but I don't think remedying that goofiness solves the question of the perdurance of the soul.
If we want to be more practical we can ask whether the soul perdures in the case of grandma's dementia, or coma, or "brain death," because this is where the ethical rubber meets the road.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting Lionino
Right, but these two statements of yours seem to be in tension. If it is not evident that grandma's previous ability to recognize her family is merely physical, then it cannot be evidently false that her lack of recognition is not a bodily change.
It is both commonsensical and commonplace to attribute memory loss to physical changes in the brain, so it's not clear what point you are trying to make. I would also point out that there would be differences in body language between the granny who recognizes me and the granny who doesn't.
Yes, 'consciousness' too.
I am willing to be more surgical with my terminology and prescribe some definitions of terms if it is needed. But not today.
Quoting Leontiskos
Going straight to the point, I would not say that loss of some information, be a memory or else, implies that someone's soul has been swapped. Their mind/brain has changed accidentally to a small extent (in losing that information, I am not talking about the demented condition as a whole), but essentially it is the same.
Quoting Leontiskos
Since Descartes is in dialogue with the medieval tradition, to then break with it, I would guess so. Perhaps that is why he didn't address the matter.
Quoting Leontiskos
But then you see how it doesn't make sense for them not to be distinct? If our consciousness is being annihilated and created every time, aren't we then dying and a copy of us with the same memories being created each time in an empty-individualism fashion? I think that is starkly distinct from our conscious experience persisting.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
To answer all questions and statements in your posts: yes. But it does not triviliase the proposal because we have two different options for the soul: process or substance. We must choose one. Is it findable in a snapshot of time and space? Choosing substance leads to the problem aforementioned; choosing process seems not to.
Quoting Leontiskos
How not?
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, we know from experience that wood burns. We don't know from experience that the soul lasts, as we are very much philosophising about the subject that experiences.
Quoting Leontiskos
True. I think I address that point in a previous post:
Quoting Lionino
Unfortunate.
I don't actually believe in souls, an afterlife, or that there exists an ontological "essence", but focusing on essence helps to identify the problems: if there is no essence, then there is no soul.
Consider the set of memories you have. This can't be essential (part of your essence) because the set changes over time - we both add memories, and lose them. Further, there's strong evidence memories are "stored" physically in the brain, which implies they cease to exist at death. If some invisible essence (soul) of mine continues to exist after my death, it seems rather irrelevant if it lacks my memories. (When I've brought this up to Theists, they suggest God could basically copy your memories into some immaterial form that attaches to your soul. To an atheist like me, this seems an ad hoc rationalization).
That is true. So the set of our memories can't be our essence. I wrote a short dialogue about that once. However, one could propose that there is a minimal set of select memories that allows us to have a sense of self, and posit that as an essence.
However, that would not be the way 'soul' is used here, as the subject that experiences, instead as what charactised the self or at least self-identity.
Quoting Relativist
God should teach them how not to make unserious arguments.
Quoting Relativist
Pretty much every religious rebuttal is ad hoc. By definition even. They know their conclusion before they even set up the arguments. They are not in an honest search for truth, which is philosophy, but due to their dogma in search of arguments specifically to (ad) support it (hoc).
:rofl: :rofl:
[
So if someone can no longer recognize their family you would say that their "[soul] has changed accidentally to a small extent." What then would be an example of a soul that has changed non-accidentally, and to a large extent?
Quoting Lionino
If we are aware of the annihilation-recreation then the experience is different. If not, it is not. But given that we are obviously not aware of such a thing, the thesis must be posited as something that we are not aware of. The objector is presumably saying, "What if, without your knowing it, your soul is being annihilated and recreated at each moment?"
Quoting Lionino
So in the English-speaking tradition Descartes' dualism and philosophy is distinguished from what came before it. An Aristotelian substance could almost be defined as something which is known to perdure, in the sense that it self-subsists. As this thread shows, Descartes' "substance" cannot be known to perdure and is explicitly claimed not to self-subsist, and is therefore not a substance in the classical sense.
Whitehead in his process thinking was going behind Descartes in order to get beyond him. He was trying to go back to Plato and Aristotle. I think it is a false premise to associate Cartesian dualism with hylemorphism, or Cartesian substances with the classical notion of substance. Pre-moderns and post-moderns both tend to reject Descartes, at least in the English-speaking world. There is no need to choose between the Cartesian soul and a process view, for the classically Aristotelian view of the soul is different from both, and does not posit that the soul is "findable in a snapshot of time and space."
For example:
Quoting Lionino
Classically the soul and the body are not two substances, as Descartes makes them.
Quoting Lionino
Well, you haven't nailed down what you mean by 'soul'. We have candidates: self, mind, consciousness, and memory. Whichever one you want to pick, I have more experience with its perdurance than with the combustibility of wood. So I don't see how a claim that the soul perdures is dogmatic but a claim that wood burns is not.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting Lionino
I don't follow the middle term of these sorts of arguments in this thread (and there are many). For example, if the self or soul is, "a chain of experienced patterns that emerge subjective experience," then how does this tell us that the experienced pattern at birth is connected to the same chain as the experienced pattern at death? Why not say that it ends at dementia, or coma, or brain-death? Why not say that it goes beyond death? Why not, for that matter, say that it ends at a stroke that turns out not to be deadly? Or the day you have a religious experience? Or trip on LSD? What is the concrete argument for the continuity?
The subject that experiences the "eternal here".
Quoting Leontiskos
To change a soul essentially would be to swap souls. We don't consider people to swap their consciousness, they are born with one and die with that same consciousness.
Quoting Leontiskos
Brain-washing or memory loss.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't start paragraphs with quotation marks; "your soul" here tells me that we are not thinking of the same thing. I will explain in another way.
If you die, you stop experiencing.
If you get cloned then die, you stop experiencing, but someone else with the same genes as you keeps living.
You know the famous philosophical problem about teleportation:Quoting Lionino
Some say you died, others say you kept living.
If it is the case that we die, we stop experiencing, and someone else with the same genes and memories as us keeps living.
If the soul is constantly annihilated and another one spawns in its place, the idea is that we are living only for a fraction of time, to then die and be replaced by a clone that will start living right after us, to then die again and be replaced too.
There is a difference between dying and keeping living, just like there is a difference between dying after being teleported or keep living.
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps because, if there is no experience that happens at a point in time, but only experiences that happen through time, we cannot separate one experience from the other. And the continuity between those experiences is indeed the psychological continuity, which is allowed by the spatio-temporal continuity of brain states.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quotation mark!, "death" there stands for brain-death. I think the word 'death' itself is typically meant as brain-death (¿is there another kind?). Coma may be seen neurologically as a long and/or deep sleep. Dementia is a fast decrease of mental elements, leading ultimately to brain death:
Quoting Lionino
.
Quoting Leontiskos
No evidence of consciousness after brain-death.
Quoting Leontiskos
Because there is nothing about these facts that would make us think we are actually dying in that moment if one doesn't subscribe to empty individualism. Meaning: if we are closed individualists in a substance metaphysics, choosing those scenarios as the moment of the death of a consciousness is arbitrary and perhaps straight up wrong.
Well, in a way you could say Descartes' substance is defined as something to perdure. The matter then is whether that substance (1) exists or a substance (2) that has the definition of a substance (1) except perdurance.
Quoting Leontiskos
Surely, very distinct.
Quoting Leontiskos
The contention is exactly on that.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ok, I will study that eventually.
I can prove the existence of an immortal substance that I call the mind. The argument is very long and complicated though. We need to agree on six facts which each is subject to discussion. These facts are:
1) Change exists
2) A single substance, let's call this the first substance, cannot undergo a change
3) This means that we need another substance, let's call this the second substance, to cause a change in the first substance
4) The second substance must have the ability to experience and cause
5) The second substance must be changeless
6) The second substance, I call it the mind, is immortal since it is changeless
Hmm, okay.
Quoting Lionino
Sure, but going back to my contention that this question is not adjudicable, if someone claims that an essential change like this has taken place, don't we just tell them, "We don't consider people to swap their consciousness, they are born with one and die with that same consciousness"? Are these theories and claims falsifiable?
Quoting Lionino
So a larger amount of memory loss than being unable to recognize family members?
Quoting Lionino
A number of folks seem to think that if you get cloned then die, you don't stop experiencing.
Quoting Lionino
Let me put it this way:
(3) is experientially/epistemically distinguishable from (1), but everyone accepts that (3) is false, so the contrast is moot. (2) is not experientially/epistemically distinguishable from (1), and therefore there is no practical difference between (1) and (2). So if we are left to choose between (2) and (3), it would seem that we get to choose between something that is otiose and something that is clearly false. This brings me back to this idea:
Quoting Leontiskos
This whole thing is reminiscent of the Cartesian move that, "We of course have good reason to believe that X, but do we also have the fullness of certitude?" What standard of proof is being imposed, here? Are we trying to jump over the fence or over the moon?
Quoting Lionino
That's a fair argument, but what about sleep? Usually when we sleep we lose consciousness, along with the experiential and psychological continuity.
Quoting Lionino
Well as I understand it there are clearly documented cases of people coming back from brain death, which is why I distinguished it.
Quoting Lionino
How so? Is there evidence of non-consciousness after death? Is your definition of 'soul' necessarily embodied?
Your argument must be something like
Quoting Lionino
I don't see why you think it is arbitrary. You define the soul in terms of consciousness, and in those cases a dramatic and permanent change in consciousness occurs.
Quoting Lionino
I suppose for me the way that Descartes was confronting forms of Pyrrhonism inflects all of these discussions surrounding his positions. Do we have the highest degree of certitude that the soul perdures, such that it could overcome the most extreme version of Pyrrhonism? No, I don't think so. But I also don't really see it as a useful exercise to engage that form of Pyrrhonism.
Nonsense.
Actually, change occurs. What exists is the present, and its propensity to change - arguably because of laws of nature.
[Quote]2) A single substance, let's call this the first substance, cannot undergo a change[/quote]
What's your basis for claiming there is such a thing?
[Quote]3) This means that we need another substance, let's call this the second substance, to cause a change in the first substance[/quote]
Clearly, you have some metaphysical paradigm in mind, but you're only giving vague references to it. Maybe (just maybe) it's coherent, but you need to show why this paradigm should taken seriously, while explicitly defining it
...
The rest of your argument depends on the above.
It seems you are not interested in my argument for each step!
Well, all I need to start my arguments is that change occurs. What are the laws of nature and how they are enforced in nature is beyond the scope of this discussion.
Quoting Relativist
Well, I have an argument for it: Consider a change in a substance. By substance, I mean something that exists and has a set of properties (I call the set of properties the state) like the position of a falling apple which is defined by its altitude to the ground. By change, I mean that the state of the substance changes over time so for example the altitude of the apple reduces over time. Now consider a change in the state of a substance, from X to Y, where X and Y are two states of a substance by which Y occurs after X. X and Y cannot lay on the same point in time since otherwise they would be simultaneous and there cannot be any change. Therefore, X and Y must lay on two different points of time. This means that there is a gap between X and Y. By gap I mean an interval that there is nothing between. But the substance in X cannot possibly cause the substance in Y because of the gap. That is true since the substance in X ceases to exist right at the point that the gap appears. Therefore, a single substance cannot undergo a change.
Quoting Relativist
Let's see if we could agree on (2). We can move forward if we agree on (2).
If time is continuous, there's no gap. If time is discrete, it still doesn't entail a gap, so it's an unsupported assumption.
What is "substance"? If the world is a quantum field, evolving over time consistent with a Schroedinger equation, what is the "substance"?
Quoting MoK
Looks like we can't move on.
The gap exists in the discrete time as well as the continuous time. The gap however is arbitrarily small in the continuous time. If the gap is zero then all points of time lay on the same point therefore there cannot be any change in time.
Quoting Relativist
If time is discrete then it entails a gap. That is true since time exists on a discrete set of points with an interval between which there is nothing.
Quoting Relativist
The quantum field is the substance.
Quoting Relativist
Let me know if we can move forward.
Sorry, I don't buy it. It seems a contrivance to lead to some desired conclusion, or the product of naivetee. But of course, I haven't yet seen your argument that shows it metaphyisically necessary that a gap exists. Got one?
I already mentioned that. Could we agree that if all events lay on the same point then we cannot have any change?
Change to me is the chronological occurrence of events. You cannot possibly order events chronologically if they occur at one point. Does this make things more clear?
There is either no gap or there is a gap. There is no other option. All events lay on the same point if there is no gap or the gap length is zero.
Non-sequitur, and confused.
If time is continuous, it maps to the real number line. There are no "gaps" in the real number line.
If time is discrete, then each point of time corresponds to an indivisible/unmeasureable duration (relative to the real number line) - each unit abutting the next. Still no "gap", as you've described it.
That is not correct.
Quoting Relativist
If the distance between two immediate points on time is absolutely zero then these points are simultaneous. Moreover, the number of points on the real number line is known to be "c" so-called the cardinal number of the continuum. This number however is not the biggest infinity. This means that you could accommodate more points on the real number line therefore the real number line or any small segment of the real number line no matter how small is still divisivable.
Quoting Relativist
Yes, each point of time corresponds to an indivisible duration. But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about two consecutive points on time.
[Quote]Moreover, the number of points on the real number line is known to be "c" so-called the cardinal number of the continuum. [/quote]Apples/oranges. The cardinality of the set of real numbers is not a member of the set of real numbers. Transfinite math is only relevent to comparing sets (e.g. the set of natural numbers to the set of real numbers). It has zero bearing on the discussion.
Quoting MoK
If time is continuous, there are no "consecutive" points of time (there are no consecutive real numbers- just a "less than"/"greater than" relation.
If time is discrete, then the smallest unit of time is a duration, and there's no correspondence to points. (More apples/oranges).
Perhaps my statement was too wrong. Theorems (statements) about a concept must follow the concept's definition, lest we are talking about something else. Within the definition that consciousness is something that starts at birth and ends at death, if a body would happen to die and be somehow reanimated, that would imply they have a different soul now. Maybe that is a problem.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, their view is problematic. If you get cloned and don't die the two bodies share the same consciousness then?
It violates the tansitivity of identity.
Quoting Leontiskos
I didn't know that. I looked into an article, and also found a definition of brain stem death:
"Brain stem death is where a person no longer has any brain stem functions, and has permanently lost the potential for consciousness"
Also "The tendency to asystole in BD can be transient and is attributable more to systemic factors than to absence of brain function per se. If BD is to be equated with death, it must be on some basis more plausible than loss of somatic integrative unity."
So it seems there is some disagreement on "brain death" happening. Not sure what to make of it yet.
Quoting Leontiskos
That is fine. I didn't think we had to accomodate for after-life. For that purpose we could refine the definition to: Consciousness then (or the soul etc) would start at birth or whenever we wanna say we first become conscious (mirror test?) and presumably ends in death.
Quoting Leontiskos
I was proposing an accidental change in the soul, not an essential one. Not recognising family memberes is also an accidental change. An essential change would amount to swapping the soul for another one. I think that is implied from the definition of essence.
Quoting Leontiskos
As I will say below, the fence is good. Your proposal that it is the standard view amounts to me to simply accepting things because it feels better that way dogmatism. I am exploring the reasons why we must think otherwise. I also think that your 1-2-3 arguments comes with an issue.
You will say that 2 is false, but that is circular. We are trying to find out whether we last or not, appealing to knowledge of it ties it in a circle. I want to find out, do we really know these things?
Your trilemma ought to be rephrased instead to "We are being destroyed and recreated, but we can't know it". Then we have something that is epistemically the same as "We are not being destroyed and recreated". But if we can't know whether we are being destroyed and recreated, we can't know otherwise too, so we can't know if we last and the conclusion of the discussion is agnosticism.
Otherwise, there are two possibilities:
And that is the discussion. The knowledge claim depends on the metaphysical claim, not the other way around.
Quoting Leontiskos
If there is a loud noise, we wake up. We dream during sleep. So there is some conscious activity there, even if at a lower level. For example, when we are relaxing at a beach, staring at the cloudless sky, there is much less conscious activity than if we were engaging in engineering work at a live production line.
Quoting Leontiskos
Because "dramatic" is arbitrary, and most changes are permanent, often changing out opinion on a movie is permanent, yet we are not dying. How dramatic does it have to be for us to die? Arbitrary.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think extreme Pyrrhonism can be defeated, only overcome. Which is why the title of the thread is Reasons for believing (aka arguments), not proof. A poor reason to believe that the soul perdures is better than no reason at all.
You don't. But they aren't exclusive either. Prior to destruction, it is set in place that your replacement is similar to what comes before. Because every copy isn't exactly identical, over time there is more and more noticeable change. The idea is to preserve the parts of you that are good over time, and purge the parts of you that are bad over time.
Quoting Lionino
Correct. Its even worse then that. You're really just a ton of brain cells teaming up together to survive. Which is why we need an emphasis on things greater than ourselves. 'We' are extremely temporary. It is the preservation of continued existence of not only our selves, but others where possible which is paramount.
That is my point. If the distance/gap between two events is zero then events are simultaneous.
Quoting Relativist
Are you talking about the power set? It was a mistake on my part to write "c" instead of "R". If we define "R" as the cardinality of the real number lines then this number is the number of members of the set. This number is infinite but it is not the biggest infinity. Therefore, any small interval on the real number line no matter how small is divisible.
Quoting Relativist
There are points. The smallest duration/gap in fact separates points from each other. For example, the gap for any immediate points of natural number is 1.
You're applying the term "simultaneously" in an absurd way by claiming that event-A is "simultaneous with" event-A.
Quoting MoK
My point was simply that if time is continuous, it maps to the ordered set of real numbers:
there is a point in time for every real number, and there is a real number for every point in time.
The cardinality of the set is irrelevant to the mapping. As I said, cardinality is used only to compare two different SETS, and has no bearing on the mapping.
You're conflating the mathematical concept (of points) with a sequence of temporal durations. These durations are not actually divisible into smaller units - except abstractly, which is irrelevant because you're making an ontological claim.
Does consciousness need to be continuous?
Quoting Lionino
It only works backwards. Both people would be the same person at the instant of the copy being made, but then instantly diverge.
From the perspective of either copy though, they've always been the same person. There is no reason why there'd be a discontinuity that's any different from going to sleep.
Quoting Lionino
I guess I'd see the self more as a process than a state in this sense.
No, I am talking about three different types of processes, namely discrete, continuous, and simultaneous. A simultaneous process is a process in which all the events occur at the same point.
Quoting Relativist
I am not conflating anything. If time is discrete then the points are points of time and the interval between two consecutive points is the smallest duration.
OK, I see your point. However, that approach is vulnerable to objections based on special relativity (see this article). Since we're talking about the metaphysics of time in general, it usually makes more sense to consider the temporal evolution of the universe: the universe evolves from state S1 at time T1 to state S2 at time T2. T1 and T2 are points of time, and also correspond to events. On this global scale, there are no "simultaneous events". Does this work for you?
Quoting MoK
Yes, you are. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the chronon:
"A chronon is a proposed quantum of time, that is, a discrete and indivisible "unit" of time as part of a hypothesis that proposes that time is not continuous. In simple language, a chronon is the smallest, discrete, non-decomposable unit of time in a temporal data model. "
You're trying to divide something that is indivisible, treating time as continuous (that's what you're doing when you consider the chronons divisible into points) - but events are merely advancing in stutter-steps. You can't have it both ways.
I think we are running up against a terminus problem. For example, you said, "they are born with one and die with that same consciousness[/soul]." The question is something like, "Do they die with a soul that has perdured, or is death precisely the cessation of the soul?" This is the problem of substantial change, where the cessation of a substance ends up being a kind of cessation tout court. Usually we would say that death is the cessation of the soul, but empirically and not merely definitionally.
Quoting Lionino
I will just agree with you and abandon that line.
Quoting Lionino
Right, but the more pertinent fact is simply that the empirical criteria for death is revisable. So many of these questions about souls can be rephrased as questions about what occurs at death, or of what death is.
Quoting Lionino
Yes, fair enough.
Quoting Lionino
So going back to the problem of substantial change, the classical problem here is that a substantial change is not properly a change, because there is no substrate that underlies it. "Swapping souls" is not a change of either soul; on Descartes' view it would simply be like swapping engines in a car without changing either engine.
Quoting Lionino
If we are searching for reasons why we must think otherwise then we are trying to jump over the moon, not the fence. If your thread is about, "Reasons for believing (aka arguments), not proof," then you can't be looking for necessary reasons ("reasons why we must think otherwise"). There is a vacillation between the fence and the moon.
The standard view is not dogmatism, it is fence-jumping. It is, "It seems to be this way, and no one has offered an argument to overthrow this seeming."
Quoting Lionino
No, I said that it is otiose, or pragmatically inconsequential, or unable to be practically differentiated from (1). The thing I said is false is (3).
Quoting Lionino
Again, this reminds me of Descartes:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Lionino
That is exactly what my (2) was. Your (2) is different.
Quoting Lionino
I would say that either way we last, at least if 'last' is a meaningful term.
Quoting Lionino
How are such contraries the only possibilities? Why assume that we will always be able to know the metaphysical fact of the matter, or have reasonable opinion about it?
Quoting Lionino
Hmm. But we don't always wake up with a loud noise. The argument is fair as far as it goes, but if we are to say that we are conscious of the world when we are in a deep, dreamless sleep, then we have stretched the term "conscious" quite far. Who knows what I am now conscious of, on that definition?
Quoting Lionino
The logical conclusion here seems to be that death is arbitrary.
But perhaps the point is only that the soul can change essentially without dying, like a caterpillar into a butterfly.
Quoting Lionino
"It seems that way and there are no good arguments to the contrary," is a poor reason, better than no reason at all.
I think at the heart of this is the question of what burden or standard of proof is being sought.
I am familiar with the Relativity of simultaneity but that is not what I mean by simultaneous process. By simultaneous process, I mean a process in which all events occur at a single timeless point. Let me give you an example: A film is made of discrete frames. You can watch frames in order one frame at any given time. What you experience is a temporal change namely the movie. You can also watch all the frames at a single point. That is what I mean by simultaneously.
Quoting Relativist
I am not talking about the quantization of time in which time is made of indivisible units so-called Chronon. I am talking about the classical discrete time.
Change doesn't occur at a point of time. Change entails a passage of time.
Quoting MoK
A single point...of what? You could watch a single frame, but time is passing while you look at it.
I get the impression that you are treating time as a metaphysical entity, which I don't agree with. I consider time to be a relation between states. So a passage of time entails transitioning from state to state, while each emerged state is an event.
Also, what is an event? I view an event as a state that was caused by a prior state.
Quoting MoK
Describe it. I'll point out that as you make more assumptions, you weaken your case - because each assumption can be rejected (unless you can show it to be logically necessary).
Correct. Perhaps using the term process is misleading. By process, I simply mean a set of events that occur either in a single timeless point or temporary. The set of events therefore is simultaneous in the first case and temporal in the second case. If you are not happy with the term process then let's call it a set of events or simply S for the sake of discussion.
Quoting Relativist
Well, I think that time is a physical entity. This can be shown but it is not fruitful in the current stage of our discussion. I will need to discuss it later so let's wait for the proper time.
Quoting Relativist
By event, I mean a substance that exists in a specific state.
Quoting Relativist
By discrete time I mean a time that occurs at certain points each consecutive points are separated by a constant interval.
Quoting MoK
You seem to be making a number of specific metaphysical assumption that I disagree with, so it's pointless to continue.
I don't think that all the arguments that I provided are assumptions. You are free to finish the discussion if you wish.
No, my arguments depend on the definitions. So again, consider a change. Is there a gap or isn't? Take your pick.
What is your definition of change by the way?
And that is the reason your argument isn't compelling.
I see absolutely no reason to think there's a "gap" between instants of time, regardless of whether it's continuous or discrete.
Can we make a correct argument without properly defining the terms used?
Quoting Relativist
If there is no gap between two instants of time then they lay on the same point. Is this correct or not?
What is your definition of change?
I can't see why we would pursue it other than a hunch, but thought you might like at least an aesthetic frame for considering other options.
Not correct. There is no gap on the real number line. That's what it means to be continuous.
Another version of why this is incorrect:
A pencil exists at the same instance in time, all along it's length. But that's a continuum, not a set of discreet points appearing at a particular point in time.
It seems to suggest there's a duration of time between the discrete instants of time, which seems self-contradictory.
But if you're invoking something which does not have duration or, at least, has a different sort of duration (think multi-dimensionality, i guess) then the two 'sets' could, in theory, proceed without interacting (which would cause one, interrupted duration as I see it).
It is correct given the definition of gap. The events lay on the same point if there is no gap between them.
Quoting Relativist
If that was true then Aleph_1 was the largest cardinal number.
What is your definition of change?
I don't understand what you are trying to say.
If you think there are gaps (discontinuities) in the real numbers, then you don't understand real numbers.
If you think transfinite numbers (which are not real numbers) somehow implies there are discontinuities in the real numbers, then you don't understand transfinite numbers.
c = "the cardinality of the continuum" = the cardinality of the real numbers. Consider what "continuum" means.
Quoting Lionino
That's fair.